a three ingredient sauce you should know about

Last night I made  Sam Sifton's Adobo Chicken. I was looking for a recipe for chicken thighs and this one has hundreds of four-star ratings on the New York Times site. Pros: super easy and the reduced sauce is rich despite having only a few ingredients.  (Michael thought it was peanut sauce-that's how nutty and creamy it becomes.) Cons: I burned the chicken so would advise a shorter broiling time. I did not take a picture of the chicken because I was so upset that I burned it (and also that I wasn't watching it because I was wiping a tushie...) Takeaway: make the sauce. It's three ingredients that you probably already have, mixed together. Then serve it with some easy broiled chicken.

zucchini soup

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This is seriously one of the best soups I have ever made.

Silky Zucchini Soup c/o Grant Achatz

  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 small onion, finely chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
  • Kosher salt
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 1 1/2 pounds zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/4 inch thick
  • 2/3 cup vegetable stock or low-sodium broth
  • Julienned raw zucchini, for garnish
  1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter in the olive oil. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook over moderately low heat, stirring frequently, until softened, 7 to 8 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, about 10 minutes. Add the stock and 1 1/2 cups of water and bring to a simmer; cook until the zucchini is very soft, about 10 minutes.
  2. Working in 2 batches, puree the soup in a blender until it's silky-smooth. Return the soup to the saucepan and season with salt and pepper. Serve it either hot or chilled, garnished with julienned zucchini. The soup can be refrigerated overnight.

borschtpacho

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Michael heard Anya Von Bremzen being interviewed on NPR talking about Russian cooking. (She's that awesome cookbook writer/traveler who recently wrote a memoir about her childhood in Cold War Russia.) She was friendly with my old boss and I heard wonderful stories about her travels. But now she is writing about her native Russian cuisine. "What is Russian food?" Michael asked. "Can you make it?"

I found an article about her in Food and Wine along with recipes for her take on Russian classics. The only one that even slightly appealed to me was the Borscht meets Gazpacho.

“I hate Borscht and I hate Gazpacho,” Michael said.

“I know me too....but let’s try it. “

The recipe is here. It’s a beautiful soup that I’d someday like to make for my mother-in-law who stores beautiful pottery in her open kitchen cupboards, instead of plates. It was easy enough to make and tasted like a sweeter gazpacho. I served it with all that smoked fish at brunch with Avi and Brook because it seemed to somehow fit into that Eastern European thing. Nobody really loved it though and it wound up sitting in my fridge, dripping beet colored juice for 3 weeks before I finally threw it away.