tariqata's Profile

I'm defending my master's project on Monday, so this weekend is a weekend for cramming and I won't be doing much (if any) cooking, but I'm taking tonight off from thinking about it, and my husband and I just spontaneously teamed up to make the salted caramel brownies from Smitten Kitchen.

I've recently been making a pasta dish with preserved lemon paste*, garlic, Aleppo pepper, and loads of kale, which I really love, riffing on this harissa spaghettini.

I chop a big bunch of kale while the pasta water is boiling, cook the pasta (170 g or so of a short, chunky pasta) until it is nearly done and then add the kale to the same pot. Drain the noodles and kale into a colander, return the pot to the stove with a glug of olive oil, and sautee a heaping teaspoon of pepper flakes with 5 or 6 (or more!) cloves of garlic (minced). Stir in the pasta, kale, and 3-4 tablespoons of the preserved lemon paste, a couple tablespoons of olive oil (or more to taste), a half cup or so of the cooking water, and the zest and juice of a fresh lemon and more pepper (to taste; I like it on the spicy side personally).

*Via Melissa Clark: take a few of your preserved lemon quarters, remove the seeds, mince them up in a food processor, scrape into a jar and cover with a thin layer of olive oil. This also makes preserved lemon super easy to incorporate into salad dressings.

I made an old favourite for dinner tonight - encihladas with spinach, corn and roasted red peppers. Some good comfort food to lead into a weekend that will be heavy on work!

I just want to chime in on the issue of "why do you need expensive tools" in response to pearmelon and Chau. I totally agree that you do can be an excellent cook without crazy expensive tools, but at the same time, if you've saved up some money specifically to splurge on something for the kitchen, I think that good tools are a better investment and will be more satisfying in the long run than high-quality ingredients. My husband and I cooked just as much when our knives were super-cheap serrated blades that could barely saw through a tomato, but the 2 good-quality Wusthof knives we received as a wedding gift make the process of preparing our food faster and more enjoyable, and they will last us for a lifetime. Similarly, after my Sunbeam handmixer went out in a (literal) blaze of glory, I whipped cream by hooking the whisk attachment up to a drill, but I'm still not sorry that I saved up for a stand mixer!

That said, I'm in the knife camp. Good knives are a pleasure and you don't need to buy a set - just one or two well-balanced knives to get started.

Tonight was butternut squash soup with ginger and cilantro, garnished with a bit of scallion oil. And I think that for tomorrow, I'm going to screw up my courage and give Smitten Kitchen's gnocchi in tomato broth a shot; the first and only time I made gnocchi from scratch, they disintegrated, but that was a long time ago and I think it's time to try again.

On Sunday I'm going to be cooking out Cradle of Flavor and I'm aiming to have some leftovers to help get through a very busy week: caramelized tempeh and chiles, Malaccan beef and vegetable stew, and stir-fried bok choy with garlic should provide at least another meal!

I don't think that I've ever seen any commercially-produced eggnog being sold around here that isn't gaggingly sweet, so I definitely vote for homemade.

I made the artichoke-stuffed shells in lemon-ricotta bechamel from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook last night - deliciously rich and comforting after a long day of editing a report in minute detail! (Though I think the artichoke filling would be equally fabulous with a slightly less decadent tomato sauce.) After I finish editing the edits today, I'm leaning toward salmon with tapenade sauce tonight, and I plan to roast a chicken tomorrow. I just can't decide between roasting it with lemon and garlic and roasting it in beer. I need to get started on some Christmas cookie baking, too, but we'll see how much time I feel like I have: linzer cookies if it seems like there's lots, basic sugar cookies if not.

Smitten Kitchen's all-butter pie crust is my favourite basic short crust recipe, requires no special tools beyond a pastry cutter, and always gives good results for me:

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/11/pie-crust-102-all-butter-really-flaky-pie-dough/

The one change I make is that instead of drizzling all of the water called for in the recipe on at once, I add a little at a time and mix it in gently with a fork, adding only as much as I need for the dough to hold together.

Once it's made, as barlowgirl says, add any filling that you like!

I definitely love this idea!

I love appetizers and am happy to see them, even before a big meal, but my (Canadian) family typically sits down to big meals like Thanksgiving or Christmas at 6:30 or 7:00pm, and the pre-dinner wine drinking and talking phase usually begins somewhere between 3 and 4. Some veggies and a dip like hummous, a small cheese plate and (potentially, depending on who's hosting) one hot nibble can provide some balance without spoiling the meal.