What’s that? You say it’s spring and you want a delicious, refreshing cocktail. Oh, and it has to be perfectly balanced, not too sweet, not too tart? So demanding!
Well, you are in luck, my nerdy friends. Let me introduce you to the Rhubarb 75.
As you may know, a classic French 75 is made with gin, simple syrup, lemon juice and champagne so all you need to do is make a Rhubarb Syrup, and you’re good to go.
We make grilled swordfish as soon as the weather is warm enough to fire the grill up – we use a quick marinade and serve it up with tomatoes and ramps.
I’m going to set a little scene for you. Ready?
It’s a warm, early summer evening and after days of torrential, flooding rains, the sky finally clears and you can see a million stars. You can smell the damp earth and the new leaves on the trees. You can hear the frogs that have just woken up from their winter-long sleep. You pull up to the lovely, perfect little restaurant where you’ve reserved a table, excited because you’ve heard great things about it and also because it’s been a long, hard winter and you haven’t gone out in what feels like forever. You hold your husband’s hand as you walk to the entryway, listening to a stream gurgling in the distance that you can’t see because it’s the country and it’s dark. You walk in and the place is adorable and there’s a seasonal cocktail menu written on the chalkboard above the bar and then they seat you at a table RIGHT NEXT TO PETER FRIGGIN DINKLAGE.
Yup. In the car on the way to the restaurant, Matt and I talked about how there was no Game of Thrones on Sunday because of Memorial Day and then they seat us right next to Tyrion Lannister himself. How tempted was I to say the waitress “Bring us bread, two of those little fish, and some bacon burned black?” Very. But I restrained myself. Just barely.
Oh, and they also had grilled ramps. So, yeah. It was a good night.
Baked Egg Breakfast Tarts: Buttery, puff pastry tarts filled with everything we love at brunch; creamy spinach, bacon, cheddar cheese and eggs. This is a real breakfast special.
Well, I don’t know about you but so far my spring has been…less than stellar. Not to bore you with the details but I’ve been pretty much out of commission for the last few weeks with shingles. If you’ve ever had them, you know that the majority of your day is spent sitting stock-still so absolutely nothing touches you (when what you really want to do is raise your fists up to the sky and scream “Why God, why!” at the top of your lungs). I’ll just say that if, next time (please, please let there not be a next time), I’m given a choice between wearing a helmet of bees and having shingles again, I’m going with the bees.
This is my long-winded explanation for the lack of posts recently, because honestly, cooking and photographing were just not happening around the ol’ Clifton place of late.
But the weather has turned warm and I’m not writhing in pain anymore so, for my triumphant come-back, I wanted to post something really special.
The idea for some kind of spinach-y, cheese-y and egg-y tart or pie had been kicking around my noodle for awhile and over the weekend I realized we had all the ingredients I thought would work on hand so I decided to give it a whirl.
I’m calling it a “breakfast tart” because of the bacon and egg components but we had them for dinner (and then for lunch the next day) and they were perfect. They’re really easy to make and would be great for a brunch party. You could easily customize them for the crowd (no bacon on one, mushrooms on another, etc).
Creating your own home-made Greek yogurt is easier than you might think and doesn’t require any special ingredients, just a little time.
The missus has been out sick this week, so I’ve taken over blog duties. Last weekend I expanded on my bread baking with a really good multigrain recipe from Martha Stewart (to be blogged later) that involved three kinds of flour, two kinds of grain, and four kinds of seeds, and after all that I had to have a good lie down in a darkened room.
For this post, conversely, I decided to try something else I’d never done but keep it as simple as possible. Yogurt is something that we always try to have in stock in the fridge – not only is it a fantastic breakfast option, especially with some toasted nuts or seeds, maple syrup or honey, or (when in season) fresh berries, but it’s a great stand-by for a host of other recipes, such as marinades, dips and saucy dishes such as curries. We often use it in place of sour cream, like in this Lemon Basil Sauce.
We almost always buy the Greek varieties of plain yogurt, which are strained and therefore thicker than the “regular” variety. People have started wars over their preferred brand of Greek yogurt – to avoid bloodshed, I won’t reveal the specific brand we prefer, other to say that it’s the one that’s not Chobani.
Home-made Greek yogurt is so much more delicious than even the best store-bought kind, and is also much more affordable. The best part is that you get to control the quality of the milk that goes into it and we found that even using the best organic, grass-fed, free-range, hormone-free milk was cheaper than buying it already made.
Somehow polenta has gotten the reputation of being difficult to cook. That you have to stand over it and stir and stir, and if you stop for even one moment, your lovely silky cornmeal will turn into a brick of yellow concrete. To that I say “pshaw!” [Matt says: I don’t know where she gets these expressions, I really don’t.]
The truth is, make sure the liquid (which could be water, milk, broth or a combination) is hot, and whisk the polenta in slowly, making sure it doesn’t clump. Once it’s all mixed in, you can cover the pot and just stir it every ten minutes or so, and it will be perfect and ready to serve in 30 to 40 minutes.
This recipe, which was inspired by Melissa Clark, has grated butternut squash in it, which gives it a lovely vegetal sweetness. We used it to make Polenta With Sausage and Onion, but it would be great for any dish that you would have polenta with. I’ve changed the recipe slightly because I like using coarse rather than finely ground polenta. I also added a little milk to the liquid, increased the amount of squash and decreased the butter.
Don’t use quick-cooking polenta for this. Not just because it doesn’t taste the same, but it also won’t give the squash the time it needs to cook.
This is the topping that we made to go on the Butternut Squash Polenta. It’s one of those really satisfying, but incredibly simple recipes that barely takes any prep. Once you’ve got the polenta going, you can relax, have a little wine (since you’ve already opened it to make the sauce so, why not?), do a little chopping, and you’re ready to cook.
There aren’t a lot of ingredients in this so use the best quality sausage you can get. It works well with pork but I really love using turkey sausage from DiPaola‘s. You can get it at several farmers’ markets around New York City but sadly, we have’t seen it around here yet.
A great vegetarian option would be to use cannellini beans. Rinse them well and sauté them with a little olive oil, garlic, rosemary and chile flakes.
This was adapted from Melissa Clark’s version. I wanted a bit of a sauce to go with it so I added the wine and mustard. The result is a delicious, savory, quick and easy dinner.