Day Twenty - Five : Cacio Carciofi

Guess what guys, the week is half over? Who is excited? Me!! I am looking forward to the weekend that's for sure!

So I thought for today's recipe, I would take inspiration from the restaurant that I went to for lunch -- Maialino, Danny Meyer's new Roman trattoria in the Gramercy Park Hotel. I went with a client and we split three dishes: their cacio e pepe pasta (all of their pastas are homemade and amazingly delish!!); their carciofini fritti; and a selection of three of their cheeses and definitely a bunch of their homemade breads with olive oil. With all of this mid-day decadence, we each had one glass of Pinot Nero, a light Italian red wine..

In the spirit of Rome, Roman food, and Maialino, I thought I would give you all my quick simple recipe for carciofi...ever since I went to Rome for Christmas, years back when I was in graduate school, I fell in love with carciofi and specifically the roman preparation, somehow making the artichokes to die for!
I am certainly not saying that my simple recipe will even come close to the delish carciofi you can get in Rome, but it is what I do to substitute what I am missing. The best part about it is that it takes about three minutes of prep time and then you just let the artichokes cook without having to worry!

Grab about six proper artichokes, wash them, then cut off the bottoms and cut the remainder into as many vertical pieces as possible. Now take those pieces and place them in a pan with olive oil, garlic, and onion. Cook on top of the stove at medium heat for about ten minutes while you let your oven warm up to 350. Now place this dish in the oven, I like to add a few diced tomatoes here so that their juices combined with the herbs create a nice provencal dimension to the dish. Now top the entire dish with two year aged parmesan along with a little bit of grated young manchego, adding a nutty, olivey, gooey, cheesy side to this dish. Bake all together now at 275. Pull out after twenty minutes or when the cheese is brown and it is done to the taste. Enjoy these babies on their own before a pasta dish, a nice homemade flatbread pizza, or a full portion main entree!

The great thing about this recipe is it really is taking the gem of Roman cuisine and bringing directly to . Lets hope it stays quiet and Olives and all manage to not need the support of this one event, thankfully with our partnership, you should be covered in any and all needs!

Enough about work ladies and gents, enjoy your artichokes/carciofi with a nice light pinot grigio..

Check back tomorrow for further musings, nite all!

Day Twenty - Four : Wine and cheese for a girls night in!

Last night, after I had already posted my grilled cheese and tomato soup recipe, I thought about the fact that I had not done many cheese plate suggestions in my twenty three days of writing to you all. I love cheese plates and I love entertaining in my one hundred and fifty square foot studio....so I decided right then and there, I would made a dedicated effort to do more cheese plates over the course of my Fromagical musings...

Cheese plates are such a fun way to bring friends together! Whether it is for a girls night in or a cocktail party or a family dinner or for an event or say for a watching party for the Oscars or the Superbowl, cheese plates are the perfect addition. Last night, a good friend came over for wine, cheese, and supposedly a fun light hearted movie, it turned into us chatting instead of watching a film...

For our girls night in, I got a nice crisp New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, feeling optimistic that it was March and Spring was around the corner...granted snow is in the forecast tonight, but sauvignon blanc was the perfect wine for a nice cheese plate and a salad.

So lets go over what I made for my cheese plate, instead of placing a series of different cheeses on a board and providing crackers, bread, dried fruit, and nuts I decided to create three distinct pairings:

1. The classic: Toasted baguette topped with some olive oil, a sundried tomato, a sliver of mozzarella from Gourmet Garage (I actually really like their mozzarella, its very fresh, not too liquidy, and definitely melts in your mouth, not overly processed like some supermarket cheeses...), topped with some fresh basil and some black pepper.
2. The health nut: Toasted multigrain, three seed, flax bread from Trader Joe's with a sliced salted almond and a slice of aged Beemster Gouda (A waxy, nutty, carmelly aged gouda cheese, much more dynamic and dimensional and delish than its classic red wax sibling.)
3. The indulgence: Toasted ciabatta with a slice of St. Nectaire.  (A rustic, nutty and barnyardy semi soft raw cow's milk cheese from the Auvergne region of France, this baby has a natural rind that is infused with a slight flavor of the rye mats the cheese ages on for a few months.. The cool thing about this cheese is that the milk used for this cheese comes from cows grazing at 3000 feet above a volcanic mountain with thermal waters.)

I used about two to three slices of bread for each and cut each piece of bread down so you would have bite size portions of each sandwich. Then I thought with our cheese plate, that I'd make a simple green salad to complement all the bread. I made a really simple salad of arugula, almonds, crumbled herb goat cheese, some of my fav, chopped up goldball turnips, all tossed with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette (olive oil, balsamic, Maille mustard, and some chopped up garlic, herbs, salt and pepper). I tossed that all together and served it in two small bowls with the cheese plate and the wine. If I do say so myself, it was quite enjoyable!

Have a good night, lets keep our fingers crossed for no snow!!!

Day Twenty-Three - As promised, Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

Happy March everyone! Can you believe it is already March? I can't! Spring is hopefully on the horizon, no more snow, warmer temperatures, and the chance to actually enjoy the outdoors rather than running to get out of it! Granted, this week's weather forecast is not looking particularly promising, with yet more snow on the horizon. Bummer!

As promised, today's blog post will be my favorite tomato soup and grilled cheese recipe. Let me disclose a little secret, I'm not the biggest fan of soups, granted they definitely have their appropriate time and place and a nice cup of homemade tomato soup and a grilled cheese are a great antidote to the winter weather and such a classic combo, how can you go wrong?!?

Lets do the soup portion first, since it takes longer to make but as you do, the soup's perfume starts to spread throughout your house, such a nice treat! I always love it when your apartment or house is enhanced by the aroma of whatever it is you are cooking that day...this is definitely a dish that does that!

Ok ladies and gents, ready to roll your sleeves up and get cooking?!

Here's the list of ingredients that I recommend for a tomato soup, granted you totally do not have to follow this, if you have your favorite tomato soup recipe...I think that's one of those things that most people like, just so..

2 lb tomatoes
1 cup of sundried tomatoes diced
1 large onion, diced
1 scallion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 medium carrots, chopped
1 large piece of celery, chopped
1 red pepper diced
1/2 orange pepper diced
Olive Oil
2 globs or tablespoons of tomato paste
2 cups of vegetable stock (I don't eat meat, so I like veggie stock, however if you do, and prefer chicken stock, go for it and substitute away!)
2 cups of water
A little bit of white cooking wine
Thyme
Rosemary
Bay Leaves
Fresh Basil and Parsley
Red Pepper Flakes
Salt
Black pepper

Okie dokie, now that you have all of your ingredients out, lets get the tomatoes going. Make a small x in the bottom of the tomatoes before tossing them in boiling water to blanch them, this makes it so that you can easily peel their skins off. While blanching, toss the carrots, celery, red and orange peppers, sundried tomatoes, scallions, onions, garlic, black and red pepper, salt, and herbs with olive oil and some white cooking wine in a pan, and saute till everything is just barely cooked, but all the flavors have melded together. Now take your blanched tomatoes and cut them in half. Take the tomatoes, all the other veggies that have been sauteed, veggie stock, water, more olive oil, fresh basil, parsley, bay leaf, tomato paste, and I like to add a little more wine or even Madeira here and now simmer for about thirty minutes over a very low heat. I like to take off the stove and blend the soup so you get a nice smooth texture but if you prefer chunky soup then definitely don't choose this route. Some people like their tomato soup creamy and if you do, add between a half and a full cup of  whipping cream to the pot while you cook.

Now that you have your soup done, I like to garnish it with some freshly grated Parmesan and a couple fresh basil leaves. Resist gobbling up the entire bowl, till you've made your sandwich!

For this sandwich, I like to use a nice crusty french baguette and keep it really simple. If you are starting with a full baguette, cut off between 1/3 and 1/4 of the bread and then cut this horizontally. On either side, drizzle a bit of both regular extra virgin olive oil and basil oil. Then grind some fresh pepper and salt on either side, what really makes this I think is the peppery oomph! Add a bit of rosemary and thyme and then top with a few slices of raclette cheese. Raclette is a raw cow's milk semi soft cheese from the Savoie region of France, it has similar characteristics to some Swiss cheeses like Gruyere and Appenzeller, excellent melting cheeses, but this baby is sweeter and softer than its swiss neighbors and is an oustandingly dynamic when melted. Once you've put the cheese on and have your herbs and oils on the baguette, go ahead and toast!

Now you've got both components ready for a delish meal, enjoy them separately, together, or one right after the other, however you prefer....I like this with a nice beer or a nice red wine, like a nice smooth Cabernet.

Enjoy and let's keep our fingers crossed that it will be Gazpacho season soon.

Day Twenty Two - Mastering the habit and further!

Who has heard the common saying that it takes twenty-one days to make a habit and three days to break it? I have! And guess what guys, I am on day twenty-two of my blog, meaning that I've made my musings to the utterly endless world of the internet a habit, yippee! And now, if I ever wanted to stop, it'd take three days a way from writing to you to break the habit, doesn't that seem somewhat unbalanced? It takes a seventh of the time to break a habit than it does to make one...hmmmm...

So I had promised a good friend, I would do a good tomato soup and grilled cheese recipe today, but I think I am going to save that recipe, quintessential comfort food as something to look forward to after my Monday at the office. As I am sure you all agree Mondays are no fun, the jolt of the beginning of the week,  depressing all together -- you definitely need something to look forward to at the end of a Monday! Seeing as I've really only had one day away from the office, it feels like very little time to decompress...therefore I knew I'd want to share a fun recipe and comfort food experiment with you all after Monday ( a comforting recipe) instead of after a day like today which certainly was not a taxing and draining Monday. Today consisted of some photo work, a great run at race pace and then a trip to Cobble Hill to see Jeff Bridges in his Academy Award nominated role in Crazy Heart with a few girlfriends and then some wine and small plates along Smith Street. So I thought, hmmm, if I'm saving the fun Tomato soup and Grilled cheese recipe for tomorrow, what shall I do today, shall I play off of the movie, and do the Alcoholic's on the go, grilled cheese recipe or a play on the blue cheese, endive, hazelnut salad I had tonight..so I thought why not do a bit of both...

In Crazy Heart, the only food we see Jeff Bridges' character, Bad Blake ingest is variations on steak (manly man food, hehe), of course what you imagine that sort of country singer to eat -- hunks of meat! Apart from the meat, Bad drinks a ton of McClures Whiskey, smokes an enormous amount of cigarettes, and has his favorite biscuits recipe that he makes for the woman he falls in love with and her son....needless to say, I thought hmmm, lets play off of the Whiskey and go for a grown up grilled cheese that might go with his drink of choice, simple:

1. Take a homemade or store bought buttermilk scone, I like to make my own, but if you don't, I recommend you go to your favorite bakery and grab a nice buttermilk scone, the bakery stand at the greenmarket at Lincoln Square on Saturdays has great scones as does Whole Foods, Amy's and well pretty much any really good bakery! The important thing is to get a buttermilk non-flavored scone, you want that mouth coating of a dense scone for this sandwich -- it should be reminiscent of what you would imagine Bad Blake's biscuits to taste like.
2. Now, grab some Moody Blue cheese -- made by the Roth Kase creamery in Wisconson, this baby is a  four month aged smoked cow's milk blue cheese - creamy, smooth, stinky, smoky, and outstanding!!! I chose this cheese for a few reasons: one because of it played off the blue cheese in my endive salad, two because it was smoked, just like some of Bad's meats I am sure and since I do not eat meat, I wasn't about to put meat into this sandwich and then lastly because I think this cheese is so multidimensional, it would work so wonderfully with your buttermilk biscuit!
3. Now you need some aged balsamic vinegar, like an aged Balsamic from Modena, ideally aged for twelve years so it is thick, syrupy, and really distinctly developed. This will bring out and simultaneously highlight the nuanced flavors of the moody blue, reminiscent of the misplaced dressing on my endive salad and what you might imagine Bad's steaks glazed with in the flick.
4.  Now ladies and gents, you need some fruit or veggie to cut the heavy mouth feel of the other three ingredients and again playing off the nice balance between my meal and what you imagined Bad Blake to eat, you need a few simply sauted shittakes, with their stems and all. No herbs, nothing, besides a little chopped pearl onion and olive oil, just lightly saute so as to get them minimally tender but while still maintaining the majority of the integrity of the raw mushroom's "crunch." They will really successfully complement the balsamic vinegar/reduction and in turn the smokeyness of the blue..
5. Lastly, I'd suggest a few nice leaves of spinach instead of the endive I ate earlier and totally raw, unlike the preparations for the sides you might get at a steakhouse -- sauteed or creamed.

Now take your buttermilk biscuit, coat both sides with a small drop of butter, I know, I don't like butter but for  this particular recipe, you need some, then top with the balsamic reduction, cheese, mushrooms, and lastly the spinach. I'd definitely leave this as an open faced sandwich, too messy to combine both sides into one sandwich. Also, important, do NOT toast this, leave everything at room temperature, toasting melds  the flavors too much here and you want the tastes to differentiate themselves from one another. Of course according to Bad Blake, you'd drink this with a McClure's, probably on the rocks. And well, according to me tonight, you'd drink a Cote du Rhone, like I did with my endive salad, yes I admit  it did not pair particularly well, but it was just what I needed at that moment. I might recommend sticking with the "harder stuff" for this sandwich, in honor of Bad -- why not a scotch and soda? Or something? However a tea might be nice as well to play the sober card, just as Bridges' does.

Anyhow ladies and gents, enjoy my stretching of my imagination and my daily experiences...
Who is ready for tomato soup and Grilled cheese yummyness tomorrow?!!? MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Day Twenty One - How to replenish after an exhausting day

It has finally stopped snowing, how exciting is that? And its the weekend! Granted, I did not really get to enjoy my Saturday off, instead, I had what I thought would be an hour long meeting with my CEO, turn into over  three and a half hours. Don't get me wrong, getting some face time is great, but it would have been much better to have during the week, meaning that I could avoid getting up six days in a row at 6am to keep up with my running training schedule nor when it means you really do not have much of a day left, you have part of an afternoon and of course in that part of an afternoon, you want  to accomplish about seventeen million things and also be able to relax, I must be seriously crazy if I thought I could fit all of that into the span of a few hours! Maybe crazy is the wrong word and overly ambitious is the right word...I like that better, no negative connotations. Right?

Anyhow, when you have a three and a half hour meeting with your CEO or let alone any meeting that requires a significant amount of focusing/brain power, it takes until you are finished for you to realize hooooooooow drained you actually are, and wow, does it hit you like a ton of bricks. That's exactly how I felt when I arrived home, hours after I planned....so I thought apart from coffee, what is going to invigorate me for the afternoon and evening of tasks that I have ahead, well that's easy, an awesome, nutritious, and delish open faced sandwich or a tartine...got the idea for this from having my meeting earlier at Le Pain Quotidien. A Belgian originated chain that has organic sandwiches, salads, homebaked breads, etc -- an upscale chain coffeeshop. Their tartines are outstanding and so it got me thinking, hmm, there we go I will give you a recipe for a tartine!

On the note of having a ton of errands to check off on my to-do list this afternoon, I thought this has to be a quick easy simple recipe. Again inspired by Le Pain Quotidien, I decided to make the star of my sandwich a Young Belgian Goat cheese infused with honey, available for purchase at Fairway and one of my favorite recent discoveries. This baby is affordable, melts in your mouth, a welcome addition to any dish and is that perfect blend of being easily approachable but complex. I decided to use the bread I had in house, however, I think this sandwich would be best on a nice crunchy baguette, like the type you can buy at Le Pain Quotidien. I used though, Gourmet Garage's Pane Rustica, an Italian crunchy bread that makes a huge mess of crumbs on the floor when you slice it, but is a great base for our ingredients. Grab two slices of bread and put a dollop of honey on each. Honey in small quantities is really good for you and gives you that little sugar kick. Then top with a nice slab of your goat cheese. On top of that, for each side of the sandwich, I sliced up a dried fig and then topped it with a few leaves of arugula and a little bit of black pepper. That's it folks, easy, delish, and provides you with carbs, veggies, fruit, protein, and some sweetness to give you energy to get through the afternoon. I had it with a cup of coffee, but feel free to have it with the beverage of your choice. A nice cup of green tea would be lovely or at night, a nice crisp white wine would do the trick.

I hope you enjoy the tartine, I know it is a simple recipe for today, but it is a classically delish flavor pairing and will give you energy to get through your afternoon and evening.
Check back tomorrow for longer, more relaxed musings....

Day Twenty - In which I propose a new acronym

Happy Friday Ladies and Gents! I hope you all are enjoying the constant snow that has been falling for over twenty four hours now! It is supposed to continue for another twenty four too, lets keep our fingers crossed this is the LAST big snowstorm of the season. February 2010 has been snow central for us New Yorkers, right? Lets hope instead of March going in like a lion and out like a lamb, March is completely lamb like...

I got to thinking this morning while running in the snow in a beautiful yet un-plowed Central Park about our beloved acronym for Friday - TGIF, thank god its Friday! I remember while growing up a television station even had a whole evening of programming dedicated to TGIF. Who doesn't enjoy it? For most of us in the work force, it means we have two whole days off and away from the office, now isn't that exciting! I know I am excited, mostly due to the fact that I do not have to get up at 6 am to go running, that I can go running just a little later, is totally thrilling. Let me propose to you another acronym, GCF - Grilled Cheese Fridays! Easy, simple, meals that don't require too much time or commitment from you after a long week at work, good to accompany a beverage, great to eat on the run before going out, or well pretty much any time of day. But I thought for our blog purposes, we'd start a little tradition of GCFs, now that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have grilled cheese recipes other days of the week, but it's kind of a nice treat to specifically focus on them on Fridays.

Today, I thought we would do a play on a ratatouille -- a ratatouille grilled cheese! Doesn't that sound delish? I know it sounds great to me! It's simple, easy, and delish. Ratatouille in case you are not familiar with it is a classic Provencal dish that basically allows roasted vegetables the opportunity to sing! It is typically a mixture of garlic, onions, tomatoes (the fixture), zucchini, carrots, eggplants, bell peppers, basil, marjoram, bay leaves (if you feel like it), thyme, and some olive oil. Some people like to saute all the ingredients together, some people like to layer and bake them. It is as classic a dish as you can come for Provencal flavors.

For our sandwich, I am going to propose a little bit of a different route:

Start with one of Grandaisy's medium ciabattas, perfect for making this large sandwich and a nice crunch. Start by toasting both sides of bread, then on either side, spread a sundried tomato paste, if you are feeling up to it, you can make your own here, but if you are feeling like you are in a Friday lazy mode, Fairway sells a great sundried tomato paste. Now take a zucchini and eggplant and slice them so you can get thin long slices that you can then place on a stove top grill or a George Foreman grill with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled parmesan to get their flavors to pop. Once they are nicely browned and cooked through, take them off place them on top of the sundried tomato paste. In a different pan, I recommend sauteing sliced up garlic, onions, carrots, tomoatoes, and a half a red bell pepper with all of the above mentioned herbs, I like to add oregano too. I like to cook this so that all the flavors meld together, but not for too too long, like five to seven minutes over medium heat, then turn it on really low heat while you cut your cheeses. This sandwich will contain two cheeses: first off, Cabra Romero (which we discussed previously and is a young Spanish Goat cheese with a rosemary rind. This cheese will be great because it will accentuate the herbaceous qualities of the classic ratatouille where herbs de provence are definitely the star!) Then I think you want to keep with the goat and Spain theme for cheeses and go with a Garrotxa which means "worth knowing" in Catalan and it certainly is! Aged for about two to three months, this awesome goat cheese had a grey-ish moldy rind, but the most amazingly smooth finish and melted will be a nice cheese to meld all the flavors together. So once you have your cheeses ready to go on the sandwich, top with some of your carrot, tomato, pepper, aromatics mixture. Now you are ready to heat up your sandwich and consequently enjoy! I think this sandwich would go with at least in the winter, a nice Cotes du Rhone or even if you want to go the white route, a nice Sancerre. Keeping the French terroir going...however, I also think this is the sort of sandwich that being that it is meant to be comforting, you might want to go with a beverage of your choice that is comforting! A beer even?

Enjoy guys and stay dry getting home.

Day Nineteen - Yet more snow!

Who signed up to live in New England?? I certainly didn't! But it seems like this winter is turning out to be not that different from a New Hampshire winter...I thought I left Hanover for a reason!

Thinking about snow and snow flakes falling, my mind turned in a variety of different directions when deciding what to write about today...at first I thought about grated cheese as being somewhat reminiscent of snow flakes or like the way in which a topping of pecorino or parmesan would top a Cacio e Peppe (a traditional Roman dish with cacio - cheese and peppe - pepper, homey, comforting, simple and delish), just like the way in which snow blankets a mountain top..Then my mind drifted to panna cottas and the such which as edible representations of snow banks in Central Park...then I settled on a goat's cheese snowy dusting of a salad for an end of winter salad recipe..

Yes I know that I let my mind drift to far off places when thinking of cheese and snow and how we could tie them together...but why not let your mind wander? Broaden your horizons people!

Ok with that said, lets get going with our recipe, a bit along the lines of yesterday's blog, I thought I would take a classic recipe and turn it on its head just to get you all in the practice of thinking outside of the box when it comes to cooking. What is the one goat cheese salad that you tend to see on most restaurant menus?! Does it include beets, walnuts, some sort of green, typically arugula and a balsamic? I know the salad I am thinking of does. It is a tried and true flavor pairing, yes. The other version of this is taking a goat cheese disk, coating it in bread crumbs, placing it over mixed greens, maybe adding some nuts here and there and a dressing and calling it a warm goat cheese salad..Let me suggest to you my version of a winter goat cheese salad:

Instead of using beets, lets use a different winter vegetable, how about gold ball turnips? I know your first thought is turnips, ick! But no no, gold ball turnips have a very delicate but yet somewhat sweet and rooty sort of taste. They actually, in my opinion, do not need to be cooked, just wash, dice, and place in your salad bowl. The turnips will also give you a nice crunch to replace the crunch of the nuts..With the gold ball turnips, I recommend using some steamed peas to look towards future seasons unlike the gold ball turnips which are celebrating the now..Keeping the salad to a minimal number of ingredients, just as the classic version does, we'll take these two vegetables and toss them with some arugula and some sauteed shallots and then some crumbled goat cheese for our salad's snow..I like to use either crumbled alouette cheese or crumbled montrachet or a young crottin goat cheese or if you feel like going the more expensive route, crumbled boucheron would be fantastic! To dress this salad instead of making a balsamic vinaigrette, I'd probably make a lemon, herb, olive oil, a drop of white wine, a drop of mustard and some basil oil vinaigrette, keeping it lighter in flavor and bouncier in a way than its balsamic counter part. You're ready to serve!

Now now guys I know this may sound like a weird mixture of ingredients but the crunch of the turnip, with the smooth and mushiness of the peas, the aromatics of the shallots, and the tang of the goat cheese all fit together really nicely in the salad. I'd enjoy this salad with either a nice glass of light white wine or a sparkling or even a Hendrick's and tonic, light but full of flavor.

Enjoy guys. Lets all say goodbye to Thursday and hello to Friday, we're almost through the week!