Since I last posted here, I've embarked on a new project, drawing All the Restaurants in New York. The response has been wonderful, and I have my first book of restaurant drawings coming out on May 14. You can learn more about the book at this link, and if your order a copy before May 14 and follow the instructions on the form, you'll get a free print of the above image!
You don’t need me to tell you the five easy steps for a perfect Thanksgiving. The Internet is full of suggestions and there have been books written on the subject (my favorite is Sam Sifton’s “Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well”; keep it in mind for next year).
At this point, there are only five other steps you need to take to make your Thanksgiving perfect. Actually, it’s five breaths, not five steps. Just remember to breathe, and everything will be perfect. According to The New York Times (and sages from across time):
Take a deep breath, expanding your belly. Pause. Exhale slowly to the count of five. Repeat four times.
Congratulations. You’ve just calmed your nervous system.
I’ll have my drawing pad, but everyone has their lungs. Make the most of them this holiday. If you want to learn more, here's the Times article.
Polenta has a terrible reputation for requiring endless stirring. But no-stir polenta is not some mythical unicorn. It’s within reach*. And the benefit of no-stir polenta is that you can have a lush and delicious side dish (and, even, a proper entrée, if you top it with roasted beets and cheese, or something equally rich,) with very little work. You just need to know a few small secrets.
About that cornmeal: Go with what tastes good to you. I’ve tried various reputable brands but they did not please the missus. I found one at my local coop that’s marked “New York State Cornmeal.” I know nothing more about it, other than it has a sweet and deep flavor that pleases. Enough said. Do some experimenting.
About the amount of time you will need: Bank on a good 50 minutes to more than an hour.
And you will need to stir the pot. Not continually, but every ten minutes or so. Here are the instructions:
No-Stir Polenta
Bring the water to a boil.
Add the salt.
Whisk in the cornmeal very carefully, practically a grain at a time.
Stir for a good minute.
Cover the pot and turn down to a simmer.
Every ten minutes, stir the pot for a good minute, scraping up off the bottom that which sticks.
Repeat until the polenta is cooked. About 50 minutes to an hour. You can tell by taste and consistency. When it tends to stick to itself, and pull easily from the side of the pot, it is done.
Stir in the butter and cheese.
Enjoy!
*I did not invent this method. Far from it. Marcella Hazan and Mark Bittman each have recipes for it, the former somewhat reluctantly and the latter somewhat gleefully. I’m sure if you looked further, you can find others. The beauty of cooking, of course, is that no one invented fire. It’s just there, and I’m here to help you figure out what to do with it. Same for cornmeal.
We all want to teach our kids the ABCs, but when I step into the kitchen the ABCs take on a different meaning: Always Be Cleaning. Nina, my eldest one, reminded me this morning that it’s one of the first things I taught her about cooking. When we chop vegetables, we clean the counter right away. As soon as we measure out a spice, we return the jar to the cabinet. When we’re done with one pan, we wash it. And so on. In reality, this system often breaks down before the meal is finished, but what it means is that clean up is manageable at the end of the meal, and sometimes there’s nothing more to do than put a few things in the dishwasher.
We were talking about cleaning because Swiffer recently sent me a big green box of supplies, handily outfitted with its Wet Jet cleaning tool. The Wet Jet is a power mop that “traps and locks dirt so it doesn’t get pushed around.” I’m all for not getting pushed around, and the Wet Jet speeds up cleaning up by having a disposable pad. No need to worry about where the mop is drying out. That might sound like an absurd concern, but if you’ve ever tried living in a New York City apartment, you’ll understand.
Swiffer also supplied me with some handy statistics about dads today:
They also wanted me to share a video with Anthony Anderson and other dads talking about their experience cleaning. Pay attention to the dad at around the 58-second mark, who observes that everyone talks about a relationship being 50/50 but it’s more like 100/100. Truer words have never been spoken. Check out the video here. And here:
And thanks to Swiffer for sponsoring this post.
Once or twice during my childhood, my mother made pizza at home, probably with one of my sisters, who were into cooking. Or, at least one of them was—my memory is better at recalling the elegant brown peaks of a long-ago lemon meringue pie, than who actually took it out of the oven. But I do recall hovering about the kitchen, with great anticipation, waiting for the dough to rise. It was all a great mystery to me, but it doesn’t have to be confusing to you.
Making your own pizza dough is easy. Nina and I made a batch this weekend, and we wanted to share the recipe with you. I’d like to say that this is my mother’s old family recipe, but it’s not. It’s Mark Bittman’s, and I thank him for bringing to the masses the basics of cooking that have been lost to a generation, through his books (chiefly “How to Cook Everything”) and his other writings. He likes to use a food processor to make this dough. To find those instructions, pick up a copy of “How to Cook Everything.” Otherwise, make it by hand. Here’s how I do it:
Pizza Dough
Combine half the flour with the yeast and salt, mix well.
Add the water and the two tablespoons of oil.
Mix with a wooden spoon.
Slowly add the remaining flour, mixing with the wooden spoon.
If necessary, add a touch more water—you want it moist but not sticky.
When it thickens to the point where it’s hard to mix with the spoon, kneed the dough until smooth, about ten minutes (or less), forming a roundish ball.
Grease a clean bowl with the remaining oil, and place the ball of dough in it to rise.
Cover with a cloth or plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm room for two hours, until it doubles in size, or in the refrigerator for six to eight hours.
Makes enough dough for two large pizzas or four modest ones; serves four.
A quick note on kneading: If you don’t know how to do it, there’s nothing to it. Even a child can do it. Here's Nina demonstrating (the punching is optional):
*And speaking of confusion, when I checked this post for an online link to Bittman’s recipe, I discovered that I might have been using the wrong kind of yeast all along. His recipe calls for “instant or rapid-rise” yeast. I’ve been using “active dry yeast” all along. What’s clear, though, is it works for my family. Nina wanted me to be sure to say that you should make more dough. She didn’t feel like there was enough pizza for her. If you want more clarity about the different yeasts, this post on The Kitchn is helpful.
Sweets have never been a weakness of mine, but lately I’ve been addressing my character flaws. Last week, I had some friends over for dinner, and I thought to buy a key lime pie, from Steve’s, for dessert. For me, that’s progress.
This weekend, I had a hankering for meringues. As far as desserts go, I consider them to be optimal. They’re rich in protein, and not too sweet. Plus, I can make them. In the mood to experiment, I decided to make a rhubarb compote, to put over the meringues. For as Bob Dylan said, “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
I can’t say that it was the greatest dessert in the world, but a nice aspect about knowing how to make a compote is that it can go with many things. Rhubarb is fairly tart, and my compote might well have been better served if it was spooned over vanilla ice cream. Or as Santa Maria later remarked, spread on warm biscuits. It could even go as a pie filling, but that’s way beyond my ken.
Compote is easy. So easy that I didn’t even measure anything. If you feel like you need some more specific directions, check out this link and this one. That’s what I did first. Then I cut the stalks into small pieces, to speed the cooking. I started with enough water to cover the fruit. I brought it to a boil, and then simmered it all afternoon, until it was creamy. At that point, I added a spoon or two of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice, until it tasted right to me.
Rhubarb Compote
Wash the stalks of rhubarb and slice it crosswise, into small pieces
Put it in a pot, with just enough water to cover it.
Bring it to a boil, and then turn down to a simmer.
Cover it.
Simmer until the rhubarb falls apart.
Add some sugar, until it is as sweet as you want.
Squeeze in a bit of lemon juice.
And here's how it looked all put together, garnished with a sprig of fresh basil.
I believe that great meals don’t have to take a great deal of effort, so long as you start with high-quality ingredients. This is not a new idea. At a recent dinner at Annisa, a three-star restaurant in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, its chef, Anita Lo came out to speak to the diners, and she talked about the value of starting with the best sources. “The French always say, ‘Shopping is half the work,’” she remarked. Knowing this can make you days much easier. Life is too complicated as it is, so why make mealtime into something that causes trouble.
In the summer (and just about anytime, really), I love a fresh salad. My preferred green is romaine lettuce, which is what I grew up eating. (As a bonus, I recently discovered that you can re-grow your own romaine at home, using the heart that remains after you have pulled off the leaves.) As a child, we had it all the time. My mother was born on a farm in Ireland and she spurned American conveniences like shrink-wrapped supermarket greens. I still remember the thrill of ordering a head of iceberg with Thousand Island dressing at a fancy restaurant once. We never had iceberg.
Romaine has more nutrients than iceberg, but it alone is not enough for a meal for me. I need protein, too. Chicken salad is nice, especially when the weather gets warm. You don’t really want to heat up your kitchen like the sky on the Fourth of July, so sticking with fresh vegetables makes great sense. And I can cook the chicken on the stovetop quickly for the salad, so things stay cool around the house.
This simple chicken salad is perfect for a weeknight dinner. It’s quick and easy. For a long time I struggled with cooking boneless chicken breasts. I don’t like watching things on the stove for too long, and most are so thick that they talk a long time to cook through. I speed up the cooking process by cutting each chicken breast in half lengthwise, so it’s half as thin (I cut them at least in half; sometimes in half again, if necessary). Then I get a frying pan good and hot and I add a bit of oil. I sear the breast so it browns up nicely on one side, then I flip it. By the time the other side is browned a bit, it’s usually cooked properly inside. The meat needs to be opaque, but not dried out. That’s the trick. To season the chicken, I squeeze fresh lemon juice over the meat as it cooks. If you really want to increase the flavor, and since I was inspired to write this post through Kraft’s Tastemakers program, you can also try mixing a batch of Good Seasons Italian in your cruet and then pouring the dressing over the breasts and placing them in Ziploc bags to marinate them for a few hours, or overnight.
After the breasts are cooked, I slice them crosswise, and let them cool a few minutes while I get my salad ready.
Once I’ve assembled my salad (and this is the simple version—you can add red peppers, onions, olives, tomatoes, and just about anything you like to your salad), I dress the salad with Good Seasons Italian, and divide the greens into serving bowls. Then I layer the meat over the greens and enjoy! If you start with fresh lettuce, good chicken, and the tasty herbs of Kraft Good Season’s Italian dressing, you can’t go wrong. The recipe for Simple Summer Salad with Good Seasons is here.
I’m too young to have heard Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” on the radio when it became a hit, in 1972, and I’m not much of a heavy-metal fan, but know its refrain well, hailing the end of work and the start of something leisurely. My tastes lean more towards Mungo Jerry and their 1970 chart topper, “In the Summertime,” and George Gershwin’s classic “Summertime,” with its line about the living being easy.
If only things were really that way. June is as busy as any other month (maybe I don’t have to dig out the car from under a pile of snow, but I still have to move it for alternate-side-of-the-street parking), and I’m often packing lunches in the morning (for camp, instead of school), and schlepping the kids to swimming classes and other activities, along with doing the food shop and cooking. And did I mention working? There’s always that, too (and thankfully so). Yes, life’s a rich pageant (and I sometimes feel it makes as much sense as R.E.M.’s “Begin the Begin”).
In many ways, June and July is even more busy than the rest of the year, with graduation parties, beach trips, Father’s Day (okay, I’m goofing about that one—I usually get the day off), and the Fourth of July. All I’m saying is that having a good time takes time. I love entertaining and cooking for people, and with everything that’s typically going on, I have to use my time well. Whether I’m hosting a gathering or taking food to a pot luck, I want a recipe that’s quick, easy, flavorful, and filling. I make a quinoa salad, and I spice it up with a bit of ham to turn it into a dish that can work as a side dish for very large parties—replacing something like a pasta salad, to go with kabobs, say—and yet is tasty and filling enough to be a main course for a smaller gathering.
Ouinoa is a grain from South America that’s been hailed as a super food (maybe you’ve heard of it? 2013 was officially the International Year of Quinoa, according to the United Nations). The Incas reportedly considered it sacred, and it’s full of protein and other nutrients. It’s gluten-free, too. I make my salad with cucumber, tomato, red pepper, scallions, and cilantro, but the dish lends itself to experimentation. Feel free to use whatever vegetables you prefer. I have an outsized appetite, so I like mine with meat. If you’re a vegetarian, you can skip that ingredient, and still have a complete meal. June is national fruit and vegetable month, too, so if you bring this dish to a party, I’m sure people will be singing its praises (and yours).
Recently, I was invited to join the Kraft Tastemakers program, which encourages home cooking, and I’m very excited to be a part of their initiative. I write this blog to help others see how a little time in the kitchen can pay large dividends in their lives. And speaking of dividends, it’s nice to be compensated for my time here sharing recipes. This is the first of a dozen paid posts that I’ll be doing over the coming year. Thanks for coming along for the ride. The recipe for the Summer Smoked Ham and Quinoa Salad can be found over at their site, here.
