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Bread

Oh, the things that you can do with bread!

1. Suzanne Goin's Chestnut Stuffing (from Lucques), with fennel, pancetta, and many other wonderful things. This was the side dish to a veal chop, marinated in thyme, rosemary, garlic, and olive oil, and which was itself incredible, and yet: I'm going back for the stuffing.

2. Bread Pudding, from Simply Recipes. Odds are, you've got everything you need to make this bread pudding; I decided to make it at 9pm, because I wanted something sweet, and I had leftover bread from the stuffing, and, because I'm a normal person, I have milk, vanilla, eggs, sugar, and spices. And that's all you need! And it's absolutely delicious.

Steak!

Dinner tonight: a boneless ribeye (around 10oz), pan-roasted, with a shallot & red wine sauce; fries [1]; and a watercress salad dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Absolutely wonderful.

And here's a photo, albeit taken with an iPhone:

[1] This is a great, easy recipe for french fries. But that recipe there doesn't say how long the fries will take, which makes it difficult to time against the other stuff you might be making. So, from my experience, it's somewhere between 15 minutes, or around the time it'll take to heat your pan, cook your steak, and let it rest for a couple of minutes. Which is sort of perfect, really.

Coconut Cake

Last night we watched this coconut cake episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay, where Flay challenged the head chef at Charleston's Peninsula Grill to a coconut cake challenge. And Bobby Flay actually won, which seems ludicrous to me; now, obviously I didn't taste his coconut cake, but in 2004, we ate the coconut cake from the Peninsula Grill, and I can say, with certainty, that it's the greatest cake in the entire world (and it better be, with 3 pounds--12 sticks--of butter in it!).

The broccoli people

This is my absolute nightmare: little tiny green heads on broccoli stalks. I can never eat broccoli again. (via Serious Eats)

Hungry for Pork

I've been craving pork ever since I saw the photo of this beautiful pork sandwich--at New York's Porchetta--on Serious Eats last week.

Cocktails on the iPhone

Cocktails, on the phone: the future is truly here!

Photo from spiritsandcocktails.com

Cocktails--my absolute favorite iPhone app, both for reference (while at the store, looking to buy everything I need to make a cocktail) and for browsing fun--just got a recent upgrade. Along with the usual bug fixes, speed improvements, &c., they've added a new collection of recipes, which they're calling the Contemporary Masters series:

Our inaugural release includes a generous 78 recipes from Seattle mixologist Jamie Boudreau. We’re confident you will find in his recipes a rich trove of fresh ideas and techniques. In another first, we’re implementing in this release our first real batch of ingredient recipes: formulations for extraordinary ingredients you make yourself, ahead of time.

The drink I'm most excited to try is the Twelve Five Cocktail, a mixture of scotch, absinthe, Punt e Mes, and Benedictine.

Warm Kabocha Squash Salad

Another weekend, and yet another winner from the Lucques cookbook! This was a warm kabocha squash salad with bacon, roncal (I substituted manchego), and pecans.

This recipe from a 2004 issue of Sunset (penned by Suzanne Goin) approximates the recipe from the cookbook, as you'd expect, with a couple of slight changes.

I love kabocha squash, especially roasted as it was here, with olive oil, thyme, and some salt and pepper: it's sweet and delicious, and paired with bacon, a sherry-based vinaigrette, toasted pecans, shaved manchego, arugula... I'm hungry again, just thinking about it.

Bucatini all'Amatriciana

One of the major benefits of having made a batch of basic tomato sauce a couple of weeks ago is that I can now make one of my favorite pasta recipes, bucatini all'Amatriciana, using Mario Batali's recipe.

I've been making this dish for a couple of years, after we ate it at local Italian restaurant and loved it. It's a simple dish, at heart, and it can withstand a lot of experimentation & tweaking: I've made it with bacon, as well as with pancetta; I've made it with a basic 28oz can of San Marzano tomatoes, as well as with the aforementioned basic tomato sauce; I've even made it, once or twice, with a pasta other than bucatini.

But I've never been as happy with the Bucatini all'Amatriciana as I was the other night, when I made it with lovely chunks of pancetta and the basic tomato sauce. It was simple, hearty, and delicious.

Braised Chicken with Saffron Onions, Italian Couscous, and Dates

From the Lucques cookbook, dinner Saturday night, marinated for 24 hours or so: braised chicken with saffron onions, italian couscous, and a date relish. It was delicious, and our kitchen smelled incredible for hours afterward. The flavors all came together really well: tasted individually, the onions, date relish, and italian couscous (actually, fregola sarda) were just okay, but when they came together, they created a fantastic and fragrant dish.

I didn't take any photos, unfortunately. But Well Fed made this dish a couple of years ago and has some lovely photos.

Ginger Syrup

A couple of months ago, Mena bought me The Art of the Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the Classics, written by bartenders from Absinthe Brasserie & Bar. I've made a bunch of lovely drinks from it, including some that featured my beloved rye.

Yesterday, I made their recipe for ginger syrup: 2oz thinly-sliced ginger; 1 cup of sugar; 1.5 cups of water; and 1.5 tsp of whole black peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 35-45 minutes, until the syrup is nice and strong and gingery. And then, use in your favorite cocktails that call for ginger syrup!