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.

simple shwarma

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My new favorite easy dinner party recipe, which I've now made three times, is Sam Sifton's recipe for oven roasted chicken shwarma. It's easy to make and serve and all three tries have been huge successes. The basic idea is to marinate chicken thighs, bake them until crispy, then cut them in pieces and serve on a big tray with a mix of any of the following: couscous, greek salad, feta, olives, parsley, humous, pita, tahini, yogurt sauce, etc. I also serve it with my secret special sauce which I adapted from something called "white sauce" and is supposedly Turkish. 

secret special sauce

  • 1/2 cup mayo
  • 1/2 cup greek yogurt
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup chopped parsley
  • salt/papper

    Whisk everything together and chill. 

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.

my ma-po

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Last night I continued our week of healthy dinners with Mark Bittman's Ma-Po Tofu. Bittman's premise is that a little meat goes a long way so he suggests more tofu and tomatoes than ground pork. (The traditional dish is fairly heavy with ground beef and also more complicated with chile paste and fermented black beans.) I doubled the recipe below and probably added a touch more ground pork that suggested. I also added a tablespoon of cream to bring out the creaminess of the tofu; and of course a squeeze of lemon. Served over Soba noodles, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Super simple and hearty, and more or less healthy.

Simmered Tofu With Ground Pork (Ma-Po Tofu)

  • 1 tablespoon peanut or other oil
  • 1 tablespoon minced garlic
  • 1 tablespoon minced ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, plus more to taste
  • 1/4 to 1/2 pound ground pork
  • 1/2 cup chopped scallions, green part only
  • 1/2 cup stock or water
  • 1 pound soft or silken tofu, cut in 1/2-inch cubes
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • Salt to taste
  • Minced cilantro for garnish, optional
  1. Put oil in a deep 10-inch skillet or wok, preferably nonstick, and turn heat to medium-high. A minute later, add garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes, and cook just until they begin to sizzle, less than a minute. Add pork, and stir to break it up; cook, stirring occasionally, until it loses most of its pink color.
  2. Add scallions and stir; add stock. Cook for a minute or so, scraping bottom of pan with a wooden spoon if necessary to loosen any stuck bits of meat, then add tofu. Cook, stirring once or twice, until tofu is heated through, about 2 minutes.
  3. Stir in the soy sauce; taste, and add salt and red pepper flakes as necessary. Garnish with cilantro if you like, and serve.

time for beans and greens

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It's veggie/healthy/detox week here at the Casa Moshan. We have indulged in rich food and drink for too long and need a break. So this weekend I got out my healthy cookbooks: Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food II. And last night, as the temperatures outside dropped to 5 degrees, I made an adapted version of her White Bean and Broccoli Rabe Soup (recipe below).

A few months ago I paid $65 to see her speak about food and wound up drinking a plastic cup of water in a middle school auditorium while the speakers crackled and buzzed and I could barely hear her answers to inane questions like "How did you start cooking?"

But I gotta say this soup was perfect. I altered the original a bit: bacon instead of pancetta, canned white beans instead of dried chickpeas, and simplified it (ie no fresh herbs which I never have on hand.) But it was super satisfying and a good model for hearty winter soups in general-use any beans, any greens, etc.

White Bean and Broccoli Rabe Soup

  • 2 slices bacon, chopped
  • 2 carrots, diced
  • 2 celery stalks, diced
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 1 tsp spices: dried oregano, cayenne, salt, pepper
  • 4 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 can white beans
  • 2 cups stock and 2 cups water
  • 1 bunch of broccoli rabe; washed, drained, and coarsely chopped
  1. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion and bacon and cook for 3 minutes.
  2. Add carrots and celery and cook until soft, about 15 minutes. Turn down the heat if the vegetables start to brown too quickly.
  3. Add salt, pinch of cayenne, 1 tsp dried oregano, pepper, garlic and beans. Cook for 3 minutes
  4. Add beans and their liquid, plus 2 cups broth and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil then simmer for 10-15 minutes.
  5. Throw in the broccoli rabe and cook for another 10 min.
  6. Taste for salt and garnish with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

genius?

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Michael was in the Berkshires on a boy's weekend (read drinking Tequila and sleeping late) until Sunday. Alone, I ate bagels with cream cheese, pickles and nachos and whatever the boys didn't finish. Michael got home Sunday, hungover, and took the boys for a couple hours so I could do something that didn't involve legos.

Even though Pasta Sunday had been cancelled I decided to make pasta. Crazy, I know. I wanted to try  this recipe from Food52. I had been thinking about it because it was this week's "genius pasta." The word genius is very compelling. I don’t think I’d be sucked in by ‘best” or “greatest” or “number one” but genius speaks to me because there can be more than one genius pastas and I'll respect them all. 

The most exciting part was caramelizing the onions. I love watching how they transform over time.

I also added small broccoli florets (frozen) and canned mushrooms, making it a super easy dish and kinda of healthy dish.

Verdict: I thought it was good, not genius. The sauce -- consisting of greek/strained yogurt and pasta water-- wasn't quite rich enough to carry the dish. (I like the idea of using greek yogurt as a creaminess enhancer-- ie in place of cream-- and mixing it with starchy liquid. I guess that's the genius part,) But it needed a lot of cheese and salt and even then seemed missing something. Butter, probably. 

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.

the long lost pork chop

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This week's monthly mag entry is The New York Times magazine, specifically the great Sam Sifton's article on Diner's pork chop. Such an important article about how Williamsburg has changed/is changing using food as a metaphor. It's happening so fast right around us that it's good to keep remembering and tasting what's becoming extinct, which is often the best. But this piece is really about Sifton's pining for a bygone dish.- the pork chop served at the seminal Diner restaurant.

I bought the chops through , an awesome service that delivers from farm to your door--whatever you order. Not just what the farm/CSA wants you to have. So it's Fresh Direct meets Good Eggs. 

While I was cooking, there were several animals and dinosaurs calling for help from their cage. A bad guy, perhaps a power ranger?, had landed them there. But when the animals were finally freed (and put away), the boys in bed, we feasted.

The sauce was pretty memorable. It was a little sweeter than I expected but rich and silky and light enough to let the meat shine though. In fact, in the afterglow of our dinner, Michael sent a text to his broker friend, Tina telling her how I made the chops, how delicious it was, and to convey that information to her husband, Sam Sifton.