In the Kitchen Now - Page 46 of 67

Roasted Cipollini Onions with Thyme

June 12, 2024February 27, 2015 by Emily

Roasted cipollini onions are a great accompaniment to any meal – they have a sweet and savory caramel flavor that we combine with thyme for added depth.

If you’re not familiar with them, Cipollini onions (pronounced chip-oh-lee-knee) are a thin-skinned, mild onion about the side of a golf ball. They’re pretty easy to recognize because they have a flattened, almost UFO-ish shape that’s very distinctive. The name literally means “little onion” in Italian. Go figure.

These little guys are my all-time favorite onion to roast because they caramelize beautifully and become incredibly soft and sweet.

Like all little onions, they are kind of annoying to peel but if you boil them for 30 seconds and then run ice-cold water over them, it’s really not too bad. My advice is to make more than you think you’ll need because they will disappear quickly.

Duck-Fat Roasted Cipollini Onions with Thyme — Trim off the little root end and peel back the brown skin.

Crispy Duck Breasts with Sherry and Figs

June 12, 2024February 27, 2015 by Emily

In today’s episode of Nerds with Knives (aka Goons with Spoons, aka Dorks with Forks), we explore the many ways you can trick people into thinking you are a much fancier person than you actually are. Sure, you can buy a classic open-top Bentley, like a real-life Mr Toad, and have your chauffeur drive you around town making parping … Read more

Three Layer Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream

July 5, 2024February 20, 2015 by Emily

Three Layer Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel Buttercream

Guys.

Guuuuuuuuuuys.

I just can’t with this cake.

LOOK AT IT!

Is this not the most delightfully bonkers looking cake you’ve ever seen? Hello? Are you listening to me? You’re hypnotized, aren’t you? It’s okay, I get it.

*SNAP*

Welcome back. You can put your shoes back on now and I’ll just hand you back your wallet. Ahem.

Last week, when my oldest and dearest friend Heather decided to come up and hang out with us for her birthday, Matt and I knew we wanted to make something really special for her. Her birthday also happens to fall on Valentines Day so instead of going out to an overpriced restaurant, we decided to Nerd it up at home and go ALL OUT.

Caramelized Green Beans with Soy and Lemon

June 15, 2024February 6, 2015 by Emily

Caramelized green beans is a quick, healthy dish that would be an ideal vegan (and optionally gluten free) side for an Asian-style dinner.

Caramelized Green Beans with Soy and Lemon — …with a little extra chili sauce on top for spice.

We all have our little quirks and one of mine is that I am… let’s just say ambivalent about green beans unless they are cooked one, very specific way. (But when they are cooked this way, I’m adore them and want them all the time). In fact, prepared this way, I find them colossally addictive. I’m odd, I know. I’ve accepted it (and more importantly, so has Matt, who I’m sure would enjoy green beans prepared any number of ways but somehow never complains when they show up tasting exactly the same, time after time).

It’s not like green beans are evil and must be destroyed. I mean, they’re not celery. It’s just that they’re often rather…meh. A bit bland and, even worse, rubbery. And they make a little squeaky sound against your teeth when you chew them (I already admitted to being weird so stop making that face).

Yes, I know those little haricots vert you can sometimes find are tender and perfect (especially steamed and coated with a sharp, mustardy dressing) but, at least around these parts, they are often diabolically expensive. And I like to save my dollars for important things like hats for boiled eggs and gifs of Benedict Cumberbatch being licked by kittens. Like I said, important.

Benedict Cumberbatch being licked by a kitten is what the internet was made for,

Pasta with Sausage, Broccoli Rabe and White Beans

June 15, 2024January 30, 2015 by Matt

Pasta with sausage, broccoli rabe and white beans is a classic combination that needs its own name. While you’re thinking of one, check out our recipe.

Neither one of us grew up in an Italian family. We didn’t have childhoods where there was always a lasagne baking away in the kitchen, twenty people crammed into a dining room, cheerfully shouting at one another to pass the meatballs, Dad sitting at the head of the table with his slicked-back hair, pencil moustache, eating slices of orange, two bodyguards at the door … you know what, I’m thinking of “The Godfather” there, that’s what that is.

Of course, it’s easy to get inspiration from Italian cuisine – there are are a handful of classic pasta dishes that we fall back on for dinner parties or quick weeknight meals, and I think this might be one of our favorites – it’s cheap, easy and phenomenally delicious. We make it all the time.

Pan-Seared Pork Chops with Apples and Onions

June 15, 2024January 23, 2015 by Emily

Pork chops marinated in a spice brine, cooked to perfection and served with garlic-sauteed broccoli rabe and an apple-onion sauce. Chops don’t get much better than this.

One of the things I love about living in Beacon is that it really feels like a community that is growing and changing in an interesting way. For a long time I felt this way about Brooklyn (where I had lived since the early 1990’s) but as wonderful as Brooklyn is, it’s just too damn expensive now for artists and creative people to do anything but hustle every day to make rent.

I know I’m the bazillionth person to complain about how amazing Brooklyn used to be, but I was incredibly lucky to be one of the crazy, hearty few who lived in East Williamsburg back when it was practically deserted. It was a startling, magical, bizarre, occasionally terrifying place back then, and my roommates and I had absolutely no idea what it would become.

In 1995, if you would have told me that one of the hippest restaurants in NYC was going to open two blocks away from my house, I would have laughed loudly enough to startle the poodle-sized rats that lived in the burned-out minivan abandoned outside my front door. All we knew at the time was that you could rent a 3,000 square foot loft for a few hundred dollars, but you had to install your own toilet and either evict or adopt any animals you found on the premises (I love you Special Ed).

So Beacon may not be able to boast quite the same level of grittiness (thankfully), but it does have a bit of that creatively experimental spirit. Case in point, on a rough-looking corner lot, quite a ways off Main Street, has opened one of the coolest new businesses in town, Barb’s Butchery. Run by a former math professor named Barbara Fisher, it’s exactly the kind of butcher shop you dream would open up in your neighborhood. She sources as much as possible directly from local farms and so far, everything we’ve cooked from there has been fantastic.