The Kitchen Illiterate

Rosemary Risotto with Grilled Chicken and Green Beans

Risotto is pretty high up there on the all-time favorite things list. So much so that I will stand in front of a hot stove for 45 minutes one one of the HOTTEST DAYS EVER just to have it. Yes, my friends, I am clearly crazy. Yesterday was unbearably hot and muggy (what is with these weather patterns?), but even extreme discomfort could not stop me from a lengthy, stove-front cooking project last night. And after that I baked bread! Lunatic. However, it was totally worth it because this was some absolutely delicious risotto.

Everyone seemed to like the risotto so much when I put cumin in the stock, and I got to thinking of all the other numerous ways you could flavor risotto. One of the first things that occurred to me was rosemary. Rosemary can be awfully strong, and using it to flavor the stock, rather than cooking it directly into the risotto, gave the risotto a more subtle flavor. It might just be one of my best ideas yet (well, after the Mexican pizza, anyway).

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What Can You Do with Beluga Lentils?

My trips to Trader Joe’s are few and far between. So when they add cool new stuff to their shelves, I don’t usually know about it until it’s not exactly cool and new anymore, at least not to anyone but me. I don’t know how long they’ve been selling pre-cooked black Beluga lentils, but I saw them and I had to have them. They look so unique and intriguing, like caviar or little shiny pebbles. But what does one do with lentils?

For some reason, I expected them to taste different from other lentils. Yeah, I’m not always the most logical person. They tasted like lentils, and hence, were not at their best as a side dish. A little dry. A little boring. Thankfully, the swordfish and Moroccan-seasoned vegetables I ate them with were plenty flavorful on their own. And I used the leftovers to make a chicken, lentil, and green bean salad that was more delicious than I expected, so not all of those beautiful, gleaming black lentils were wasted.

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Disaster-free Pizzas At Last! Thank You, Smitten Kitchen!

My time back in the kitchen has been inordinately devoted to pizza, and for this, I have to profusely thank Deb of Smitten Kitchen, one of my all-time favorite food bloggers. A few weeks ago she wrote a post outlining 10 ways to make pizza in the kitchen a bit less painful. And the two pizzas I’ve made in the last two weeks? They have been perfect, all thanks to the parchment paper.

Such a simple thing, really, I could kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. Forming the pizza on parchment paper makes it much, much easier to slide into the oven, without that maddening crust-folding, pizza-sticking frustration that caused countless tantrums in my kitchen. And it doesn’t diminish the pizza’s crust-crisping capabilities one bit! It is like my months upon months of experimentation and rage have been wiped away with one brush of Deb’s capable hands and smarty pants kitchen ways. I am so grateful.

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Cooking some fish in Barcelona

Miss Crystal, former recipient of all my culinary experiments, insisted that I cook her multiple dinners during our time in Barcelona. A more than fair price for her and her housemates’ generosity in letting us sleep in their living room for nine days. So we took a trip to the Boqueria and waiting for inspiration to strike. There is no better place for kitchen inspiration than the Boqueria. We went in there with no idea what to cook, and as we wandered and pondered (ha! I’m a poet!), we seemed to stumble upon what we wanted seconds after we thought of them. “Perhaps some fish? Oooh, look, there are hundreds! Some fresh pasta? Wow, look, they’re making it right there!” If only all my shopping excursions were like that.

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Back from Barcelona and Missing the Boqueria

I can hardly believe how quickly my ten days in Barcelona passed. Coming back to Boston…well, I’ll be honest. It was a bit of a let down. Barcelona is just so coooool. The streets, the people, the food, the cava (and cava, and more cava), the bars, everything just overwhelmed me with awesome. We stayed with a friend in the Barri Gotic, the old part of the Barcelona, which is all narrow, windy streets, old buildings, sweet little bars tucked into tiny corners, walking into unexpected plazas, people watching on the Ramblas, and best of all, the Boqueria. We were only a few blocks away and we visited more than a few times.

The Boqueria is a sensory overload of smells, colors, people, and food items you’ve never seen before. The closest thing to it I’ve seen in the States is the Ferry Plaza Marketplace and Farmers’ Market, but even that isn’t even close. The Boqueria seems to mirror the area in which it’s situated: a labyrinth of narrow aisles that twist and turn and make it very easy to get lost among the jamon. But I could think of worse places to be lost.

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Quick and Easy Dinner: Farfalle with Ricotta, Zucchini, and Italian Sausage

I didn’t think I was going to have anything to share until my return from Barcelona. I had no big dinner plans, no fancy ingredients, nothing, in fact, but whatever was already in the refrigerator, waiting to be used up before I left. And yet, I managed to pull together, in less than twenty minutes, an easy, inexpensive dinner that I decided I just had to share. Sure those multiple hour kitchen projects are fun, but sometimes quick and easy is just as delicious.

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Chicken Mole Poblano

Who would think that a seemingly innocent sauce could leave behind such destruction and havoc? That little measuring cup of mole you see above caused the biggest mess I think my kitchen has ever seen, and left me in its wake, exhausted and covered head to foot in sauce. I gave almost three hours of my evening over to making chicken mole (and cleaning up after it), but in the end, it was totally worth it. No, it didn’t turn out exactly as I expected, but then, I didn’t even really know what to expect, having had mole only once in my life before.

It took me awhile to figure out why none of the recipes I found for mole poblano contained poblano chiles. They generally all use chipotles, anchos, pasillas, anaheims. No poblanos. Then I discovered that poblano is also the name of someone who lives in Puebla, Mexico, the region where mole was pretty much invented. Aha. Well, I’m not sure my mole is in any way Puebla-style. I used the chilis I could find: guajillos, cascabels, chipotles, and a mild, light green pepper which, frankly, I can’t identify and was only labeled “chili” at the supermarket. You gotta love grocery shopping in New England.

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A Little Bit of Sole

The warmer months tend to bring about thoughts of salads and vegetables and all-around healthy eating. It’s around about now that my wintertime heavy cream binging starts to feel like a bad idea, and all my suddenly extra squishy bits start shouting at me, demanding green things and, inevitably, fish. I am not generally a seafood eater. I don’t get excited by the idea of lobster or oysters or salmon or mussels. I still remember the first time I found myself enjoying fish (at a restaurant called Skates in Oakland when I was 13), and similar memories are, well, few and far between. But around about May, when my mac and cheese regrets kick in, I find myself lingering at the seafood counter and buying things like sole.

Yes, it’s the annual “Please Try to Be Healthy, Laura” fest up in here, and I’ve now had sole for dinner two nights in a row. And you know what? I think I’ve also managed to form two new positive fish memories. Tuesday night I took another cue from Blake Makes and Bon Appetit and wrapped my sole fillets with a bit of asparagus up in parchment. Tonight, I threw caution to the wind. I cooked without a recipe of any kind. And I think I’ve decided sole might be one of my favorite kinds of fish. Who knew?

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Sun-dried Tomato and Caramelized Onion Scones

There is a little bakery across the street that consistently makes the Jamaica Plain’s Best list as the best local bakery, and frankly, I have no idea why. Sure, they make vegan cupcakes, and JP is just the sort of neighborhood where people will swoon for a vegan cupcake. And yes, there is a shortage of places to get a cup of decent, non-Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. But nothing, I tell you nothing about this bakery has ever impressed me. The pastries and pies look sloppy: I could frankly do a better job in my own kitchen. The croissants are not proper croissants, but more like bread dough shaped to masquerade as croissants. I ordered a sandwich once and the bread on which it was served was stale. At a bakery! And I won’t even get into the abysmal service.

For reasons unknown to me, however, I still occasionally visit this bakery, as though somewhere I can’t give up hope that my previous bad experiences were flukes, each and every one. I can’t account for my actions sometimes. What is they say about crazy people? On my last visit (the visit of the stale sandwich), I noticed some roasted red pepper, spinach, and caramelized onion scones in the display case, and the hamster wheels in my little brain immediately started spinning. “What a brilliant idea!” I thought. But I was not about to buy one of their scones (vegan, of course) only to be disappointed. No, I decided to go home and make my own.

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Polenta and Vegetables with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

While my chocolate creme brulee may have been a triumph, since then I’ve experienced nothing but culinary catastrophes. “But that food doesn’t look catastrophic,” you may be thinking. That just goes to show that my new camera has more talent in the kitchen than I do. That, my friends, was a burned vegetable, bitter sauce disaster. In fact, the original sauce is NOT the sauce pictured above. The original sauce had to be thrown away because it was horrible and could not be salvaged with all the spices in my gigantic spice rack. I ended up using basic tomato sauce, because I needed something to cover up the taste of burnt asparagus.

I hate it when meals I’ve been anticipating turn out to be completely not rad.

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