porcini e mozzarella

What do you do with a $4 mushroom?
It's a question that most people never face. And, technically, I brought the situation on myself. I mean, I did buy one and a half porcini mushrooms (total: $6) in a fit of excitement at the market.
Since my budget only allowed a small bit of this fungal treasure, I decided to keep it simple. The fresh mozzarella was on sale, too, so I grabbed a ball.

In need of a six o'clock snack to a) go with our cocktails and b) tide us over until a 9 o'clock dinner, I thought of the mushrooms. I sliced them oh-so-thinly, placed torn mozzarella on top, and sprinkled lemon thyme, salt, and freshly ground black pepper over the top. A drizzle of olive oil and a trip under the broiler later, we had an amazing little snack of just-tender porcini and blistered mozzarella. Best mushroom ever.

Porcini e mozzarella


1/8 lb porcini mushrooms (1 large or 2 small)
1/2 c fresh mozzarella
1 tsp lemon thyme leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat broiler. Slice mushrooms vertically into thin slices. Arrange on oven proof plate. Tear mozzarella into pieces and lay over mushrooms. Sprinkle thyme and seasoning; drizzle with olive oil.
Place under broiler until golden and bubbly.

how to make chicken and impress people

My opinion of chicken tenders changed the day I learned the secret of a certain House of Chicken.
Although the quality of chicken and the items you choose to bread it with do count for something, what really makes a tender, savory chicken finger is a brine. A salty solution that you employ as a sort of marinade, a brine can be composed of many different ingredients. It soaks into the meat and has a tenderizing as well as flavoring effect, although it is much more pronounced in a thinner cut of meat. In this particular method however, the secret/only ingredient is...pickle juice! I favor Claussen, or a similar flavored dill.
Let the chicken soak in the juice for a day, an hour, whatever you have to spare. Then flour, egg wash, and coat it in a crumby mixture of your choice. One day, I had just the ends of a baguette, so I supplemented with toasted, ground pecans and grated parmigiano. Needless to say, plain old breadcrumbs don't really do it for me anymore.
I don't deep fry the chicken; I usually just have about a half inch of oil in the pan. It also helps to put a lid over the pan when the chicken is cooking, so you don't burn the outside before you cook it through.



I nearly always serve this chicken with a green salad for lunch, and an additional side if we're having it for dinner. The nasturtiums are blooming vibrant orange and yellow in the garden, so of course they were included. If you've never had a nasturtium, they are edible flowers that have a spicy finish, much like arugula. I prefer to pair them with milder salad greens. They're oh-so pretty perched on a salad, and baby Buckley was almost as excited as I was to be munching on flowers.


chicken fingers

chicken tenders (or breasts)
pickle juice, to cover
1 c breadcrumbs
1 c toasted, coarsely ground pecans
1/2 c grated parmigiano
3-4 eggs
1 c flour

Marinate chicken in pickle juice for thirty minutes to one day (the longer the better).
Season flour and place in a shallow bowl. Add a few tablespoons of water to eggs and whisk. Stir breadcrumbs, pecans, and cheese together in a separate shallow bowl. Dredge chicken through flour, shaking off excess, then eggs, shaking off excess, then crumb mixture.
Heat 1/2 inch vegetable oil over high heat. Fry chicken on both sides until cooked through.

tea for two

We walked down to the Mediterranean Foods Market near our house to marvel at the whole lamb ($99), selection of pita, jarred vegetable spreads and spices. Partially inspired by our friend Alex, we walked away with some new tiny tea glasses, which are the perfect size for a sweet glass of mint tea.

For some reason, there is not really a tea culture in the United States (unless you count sweet tea for Southerners-I don't). In Britain, you get Earl Grey, with lemon or sugar. In many countries, heavily spiced black tea with copious amounts of sugar and milk is ubiquitous. Here, we have a lot of choices, but no national cup per se.

Green tea is good, especially for health-minded people entranced by its potential antioxidant-related benefits. Heavily sweetened, minty green tea is better, especially for people in it mostly for taste. Taken with the morning paper and a Digestive, it's pretty close to heaven.



mint tea

2 c filtered water
2 green tea bags
1 bunch of mint
2 tbsp sugar

Bring water just to a boil. Pour over tea bags, mint, and sugar; let steep for two minutes. Remove tea bags, but leave mint. Stir well and enjoy.

roasted chickpeas, or, the perfect supper

Often the clock has struck ten by the time I return home from work, smelling like a million-dollar meal but with an empty stomach. There's never time to cook up a true dinner; nor do I want one at this hour. If there's nothing waiting on me (husband, what?), I sometimes reheat leftovers. More often, however, I treat myself to what seems to me to be the most perfect supper one could ask for. Little nibbles that go perfectly with a late-night newspaper, an Orhan Pamuk masterpiece, or a slow-moving art house movie.
My balanced meal consists of toasted nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds), a hunk of some mild sheep's milk cheese, crackers (if I'm lucky, this kind), a gin y tonic prepared á la fuego negro, and some roasted chickpeas. Nothing I ever put in my mouth past nine p.m. really makes me happier. Except when I'm in Europe and most of what I eat goes in after nine. I hope you have little meals of pleasure like this. I also hope you've had roasted chickpeas, because they're much different than their raw cousins. If not, here you go.



roasted chickpeas

1 can chickpeas, drained (or dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and simmered until tender)
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne

Combine all ingredients. Roast in 400 degree oven until crunchy, about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

zucchini-carrot muffins

A perfect morning is a good muffin paired with a strong cup of black coffee. But allow me to be a bit picky here....I'm not referring to just any muffins (or any coffee, for that matter, but that's a whole other tirade). I'm talking about newborn muffins still steaming from the oven.
I'd like to make a case for homemade muffins here. They're so much better than any you can buy around town. You don't get that processed taste that you do when muffins come from mixes, designed to withstand days on a shelf. No...homemade muffins are something much more ephemeral.
Which brings me to my second point: making muffins at home is actually an exercise in time-saving convenience. Muffins (and many other breads) freeze beautifully; a sojourn in the oven is like a fountain of youth. They emerge steaming and ready to inhale. The following is an excellent muffin, as well as a peaceful and delicious way to put dying squash and root veggies to their rest. It is adapted from a Joy of Cooking recipe that I beefed up to my taste. The first time I made them, I followed the book's version, using all white flour, copious amounts of sugar, and only one veggie. Smeared with some nice butter, they were amazing amazing amazing. But I just felt not so good about starting my day with a muffin-shaped piece of cake. So this is the slightly more healthful and just-as-delicious version. Bon appetit!


zucchini-carrot muffins


3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 c sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups zucchini, grated and squeezed of excess moisture
1/2 c carrots, grated
1/2 c sultanas


Whisk together dry ingredients through cinnamon.
Blend sugar, eggs, oil, vanilla and salt in a large bowl. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in carrot, zucchini, and sultanas.
Scrape batter into greased muffin pan. Bake at 350 until bread pulls away from sides, about 45 minutes.

*adapted from Joy of Cooking.

penne with prosciutto and peas

What started out as a lunch without hope turned delicious pretty quickly.

I had pulled out some frozen canned tomatoes to thaw, with the thought of throwing together a quick pasta dish. Then, I remembered I wanted to use some of the larger arugula leaves in the garden. On my way back inside, I snagged a handful of mint after I remembered the frozen peas we almost always have on hand in the freezer. Buckley, our 15-month-old girl, loves them, and they are handy for last-minute delights such as pea soup, fava-pea puree, and mashed-potatoes with olive oil and peas.

The canned tomatoes went back in the fridge for another day, and out came leftover cream, parmesan and two lonely slices of prosciutto from the weekend's festivities. All of a sudden, I had the makings of a pasta dish I actually wanted to partake in. The rich creamy pasta has bursts of green and rich pink strips of prosciutto.

The arugula, however, really stole the show. Its peppery bite, enhanced with bright lemon flavor, gave each forkful new life. I regretted not picking more; when I finished it, I settled for squeezing the lemon over the top of my remaining pasta.




penne with prosciutto and peas

3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 c frozen peas, blanched
1 shallot, finely chopped
2 slices of prosciutto
1/3 c parmesan
3/4 c cream
3/4 c whole milk
1 tsp chopped mint
8 oz whole wheat penne pasta
handful of arugula
1/2 lemon


Melt butter and olive oil together over med. high heat. Add shallots, then peas. Season with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, add penne to boiling water to cook.
After a few minutes, add one slice of chopped prosciutto to the peas. After one minute, add the cream and milk and allow to simmer for a few minutes until slightly thickened. Add the parmesan, stir in the chopped mint, then season to taste.
Toss penne with sauce mixture and serve on heated plates. Top with thin strips of uncooked prosciutto and arugula that has been tossed with salt, pepper, and juice from 1/2 lemon.

slowest food

I didn't start my garden because of the Obamas. I didn't start it because it's newly hip to grow your own food. I didn't even start it (solely) to be more eco-friendly.
It was actually an accident.



We moved across the hall in our apartment building in February. On a routine attempt to spruce up the place (an endeavor that stretched our move-in time to about three weeks), I turned my attention to the back yard, which was covered in leaves at least a foot deep. A few forceful swipes revealed, however, more than I ever could have wished for.
Underneath this leaf bed, apparently untouched for at least a dozen years, lay black gold. Compost, that is. Our lazy ex-neighbors had unwittingly been cold composting, a process that involves leaving your brown and green organic matter in a pile and doing nothing. It takes much longer than the high-maintenance composting you hear about, but it's a heck of a lot easier.
So, here I am, food lover and cook, with a plot of land made solely of highly fertile material. Feeling guided by the hands of fate, I started the process in my own makeshift way. I gathered gardening tools from my neighbor's neglected collection, ordered my favorite vegetables in seed form, and bought some lime and a bag of compost just in case.




After a month and a half of gardening, these pictures you see are what I have. So far, the only things I've reaped are some herbs (because I bought parsley, sage, rosemary, lavender, chives, and thyme in plant form), arugula, and green garlic. After eating a deliciously simple soup of green garlic for lunch today, I decided this food blog was the perfect place to post about my gardening experience. After all, hopefully many of my meals will be coming from the garden in a few months. So far I've planted potatoes, garlic, peppers, jalapeños, fava beans, zuchinni, kale, carrots, beets, frisee, bok choy, escarole, microgreens, rapini, fennel, tomatoes (four varieties:brandywine, black cherry, red zebra, and san marzano), edamame, mache, radicchio, turnips, thai hot chile, strawberries, red sail lettuce, okra, and a ton of herbs.




Already I've found that it's so addictive. I'm out there everyday, looking for new weeds to pull, trekking back and forth to the hose on the other side of the building, and, who am I kidding, just staring lovingly at my little plants.



In the left corner, those monstrous plants are my potatoes. To their right you can see little green shoots coming out of the ground-this is green garlic, the immature leafy part of a garlic bulb. They are delicious, in soups, mixed with creamy cheeses, and atop pasta. What's more, you can cut them a few times and they'll keep growing back.



simple green garlic soup

3 c homemade chicken broth
4 sage leaves
2 tbsp chopped green garlic
chopped parsley
2 slices of toasted bread

Bring chicken broth to a boil with sage leaves. Remove leaves and add green garlic, salt, and pepper to taste. Cook five minutes, at a simmer, then add toasted bread drizzled with olive oil to a bowl, top with soup and a pinch of chopped parsley.