The one dish I’ve made more than a few times in the past 12 months? Roast chicken. To me it is an ideal Sunday night dinner: easy, comforting–the kind of meal that can fortify a person for a busy week ahead. The leftovers are ideal for adding to weekday lunches, whether in salad, grain bowl, or even sandwich form.

Most of the time, I stick with my go-to recipe, which yields potato chip-crisp skin and juicy, flavorful meat with minimal fuss. But every now and then, especially when you’re stuck at home for yet another quarantined weekend, a little bit of fuss seems appealing.

Enter this feta-brined roast chicken. Melissa Clark uses tangy feta to brine a whole chicken overnight, and then rubs the chicken with a lemon zest-and-oregano spice blend and roasts the chicken at a high heat until it’s crisp.

She (and I) highly recommend you seek out the fresh feta that comes as blocks packed in water — its flavor is fresher than the pre-packed crumbles. While she didn’t use that feta water for her brine, I did (and took the salt down a bit elsewhere in the recipe) to really bump up that salty, savory flavor. I used a Bulgarian sheep’s milk feta, which is extra creamy and rich, and was especially lovely in the post-roast pan sauce.

The results were everything I want from a roast chicken: bright, juicy meat with skin that crackles as you bite into it. I especially loved the pan sauce, luxed up with more crumbled feta and a good squeeze of lemon. Serving the chicken atop a bed of pan sauce-dressed greens ultimately leads to a lighter roast chicken dinner, one that’s ready for spring.

Feta-Brined Roast Chicken

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Ingredients

• 4 ounces fresh feta cheese, crumbled + feta brine
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
• one 4-pound whole chicken
• 1–1/2 tablespoons freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
• 2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 lemons
• 1/4 + 2 tablespoons cup olive oil, divided
• 1 large bunch baby spinach or other sturdy salad greens, to serve

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Instructions

1. The night before cooking, blend 2 ounces of the feta, the feta brine, 1 teaspoon salt, and 3 cups water until smooth. Place the chicken in a mixing bowl large enough to submerge the chicken completely, and cover with the brine. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (or at least 8 hours if you’re prepping the day of cooking). 
2. Four hours before cooking, remove the chicken from brine and transfer to a paper towel-lined plate or baking sheet. Pat dry completely (including the insides). Transfer the chicken, uncovered, back to the fridge so that it dries out a bit (this will ensure crispy skin).
3. One hour before cooking, take the chicken out of the fridge and bring it to room temperature. Combine the remaining teaspoon of salt with the black pepper, oregano, zest of both lemons (roughly two tablespoons), and two tablespoons of olive oil. Generously rub the mixture all over the chicken, then halve the lemons and place three halves in the chicken’s cavity. Tie the chicken legs together with kitchen twine if desired.
4. Just before cooking, preheat the oven to 450F. In a 12-inch cast-iron or otherwise heavy bottomed ovenproof skillet, heat the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil until just smoking. Turn the heat off, then place the chicken in the skillet, breast-side up. Transfer the pan to the oven. 
5. Roast at 450F for 20 minutes, then decrease the heat to 400F and roast for an additional 40-50 minutes. The chicken is done when a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F and the juices run clear. Remove the skillet from the oven and transfer the chicken to a cutting board and let it rest for 10-15 minutes.
6. While the chicken is resting, scatter the baby spinach on a serving platter. Crumble the remaining 2 ounces of feta into the skillet and stir with the pan juices. Drizzle this pan sauce over the greens, then squeeze the juice from the remaining lemon half and top with freshly cracked black pepper. Carve the chicken and serve over the dressed greens. 

Notes

Adapted slightly from Melissa Clark

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I’ve been spending a lot of time home with my parents in Delaware, which means two things: 1. I’ve been letting my mom “take the lead” on cooking (aka doing all of it, not that she minds); and 2. I have watched all of the British murder mystery shows. Midsomer Murders, Endeavour, Father Brown, the entire Agatha Christie oeuvre — if a crime has occurred in the British countryside, I have watched a quaint old person solve it.

I love them. They’re usually charming, set in a cute town that I can’t wait to move to, and riveting enough to forget my existential angst at the state of the world for 60-ish minutes. They also always feature people sitting down for tea, usually with some sort of delicious looking cake on the side.

One of the biggest benefits of being home is that most days feature at least one cup of chai (small solace for being unable to take my annual trip to Kolkata last year). We don’t usually have cake with our tea, but after 1,859 episodes of Miss Marple, I decided it was time to change that.

Finally inspired to return to the kitchen, I turned (as I usually do), to Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen. I’d bookmarked this pistachio loaf cake long ago, and as fate would have it, we had exactly enough pistachios to make it. (Though not the pistachio glaze, an error that I will rectify the next time I make this.)

The cake is dead simple if you have a food processor, nutty and fragrant, and despite my best efforts to ruin it by baking it at 350F for 53 minutes before realizing that the bake temp is actually 325F, incredibly plush and word-that-must-not-be-mentioned-but-starts-with-M. The best part is the color: it bakes up into the loveliest shade of chartreuse, one of my absolute favorite colors to wear, decorate with, and now, eat.

Pistachio Loaf Cake

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As mentioned, I had to forgo the lemon-pistachio glaze that Deb recommends because I ran out of pistachios (I’ll def be trying this next time though). Instead, I made a bit of sour cream-laced whipped cream to serve alongside the cake. But the cake truly doesn’t need either — it’s perfect all on its own. 

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons shelled unsalted pistachios
• 1 teaspoon orange zest (zest from half a medium orange)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• a hefty pinch of salt
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes
• 3 large eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• a heaping 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 325F (not 350F *ahem*). Butter a 9-x-5 loaf pan.
2. Toast the pistachios in a skillet on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until they’re slightly browned and fragrant. Set aside to cool completely. 
3. In the bowl of your food processor (without the blade), rub the orange zest into the sugar so that it forms a wet sand-like texture. Add the salt, and set up the blade. 
4. Add the cooled pistachios and pulse until the pistachios, sugar, and salt are powdery, like dry sand (stop before you make a paste). 
5. Add the butter and mix until the texture is creamy and smooth-ish — it will clump at first, then loosen. (Smitten Kitchen said to look for a frosting-like texture, but my processor could not get it that smooth. The recipe works either way.)
6. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Then add the milk and mix, then the baking powder and the extracts, and mix again until everything is well combined, scraping the bowl down well. Add the flour and pulse until it’s just mixed. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
7. Bake for 65-75 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
8. Serve the cake with a cup of tea and (very optional) dollops of barely sweetened cream.

Notes

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

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Seven weeks ago, like everyone else, I decided that an extended period at home meant I would finally conquer that white whale: bread. Amidst the Great Yeast Shortage of 2020, we struck out at three different grocery stores before finally finding the good stuff at the most unexpected of places — the Indian store.

One problem: I don’t eat a ton of bread, and neither does my family. (This is not to say we don’t eat carbs. There has been plenty of rice and potato consumption over the past month and a half, to the point where I’m no longer sure I can fit into non-stretchy pants.)

So, with a pound of yeast sitting in the freezer, I turned to yeasted coffee cakes. Somewhere between cake and bread, they’re often lightly sweetened, with a plush, tender interior and beautiful bronzed exterior. Take 1 was an apricot-almond wonder that I was too lazy to photograph. Take 2 was a Bee Sting Cake that I started at 6 a.m. on a Saturday and let cool during a two-hour drive from Delaware to NYC.

I was determined to finally photograph Take 3, which meant I needed a real stunner. Truth be told, Takes 1 and 2 were both delicious and I would have happily recreated them here, but my parents wanted something new.

While scouring the internet for recipes that fit a fairly narrow set of parameters (must be: yeasted, a sweet cake, include some sort of nuts [for my mom], a glaze [for my dad], nothing that required interminable kneading* [for me]), the words “Sunshine Coffee Cake” immediately jumped out at me. After seven weeks of stress/anxiety/fear/isolation/ennui, I–and I’m sure many of you–could definitely use some sunshine.

The recipe, from the King Arthur Flour site, is fairly straightforward. You start by mixing the yeast with most of the dough ingredients and letting it sit briefly, which helps get the yeast going and produces a lighter overall texture. Then add the remaining ingredients, knead until the dough is smooth (I didn’t find it overly tacky or hard to knead by hand), and let it rise.

I made two changes: inspired partially by this recipe, I added finely chopped toasted almonds to the filling. I also skipped right on by the complicated shaping suggestion, but my less exciting version looked lovely, especially when covered by drizzled with an orange glaze and showered with slivered almonds.

The resulting cake is actually sunshine on a plate. It’s tender and bursting with orange flavor, pleasantly sweet without veering into dessert territory. I especially loved the texture of the almonds running throughout — little nubbly surprises with every bite. It’s exactly the kind of bright, flavorful cake I want with my morning coffee (or my mid-morning coffee, or my afternoon coffee — don’t judge).

*My parents don’t own a stand mixer (nor do I), so all my kneading is by hand. Since enriched doughs are often pretty soft/tacky and require lots of kneading (usually 5+ minutes in a mixer), I’ve been getting decent arm workouts doing my thing

Almond-Orange Sunshine Coffee Cake

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Ingredients

For the dough:

• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2–1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring surfaces
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 large egg

For the filling:

• the zest of two large-ish oranges (about 2 tablespoons)
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted and chopped finely

For the glaze:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1–2 tablespoons orange juice

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Prep the dough: Bring the milk to a simmer in a small saucepan. Remove it from the heat and add the butter. Once it’s melted, stir in the orange juice. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. When the mixture is just barely warm, stir in the yeast, 1 cup of flour, and the sugar. Cover the bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.
2. After 10 minutes, you should see a few bubbles in the mixture. Mix in the egg and salt. Add another 1-1/2 cups of flour and mix until the dough comes together. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface.
3. Use the remaining 1/4 cup of flour for your hands and your countertop as you knead the dough for 6-8 minutes (though this took me closer to 12), until the dough is smooth and supple. 
4. First rise: Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover and let rise until it doubles in volume (1 to 1-1/2 hours).
5. Make the filling: In a medium bowl, use your fingers to rub the orange zest into the sugar until the mixture resembles wet sand. Add the butter, flour, and finely chopped almonds, using your fingers to combine everything until it forms a coarse paste.
6. Once the dough has finished its first rise, deflate it slightly and pat it into a rectangle. Cover it with greased plastic and let it rest for 5 minutes.
7. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a 12-x-18-inch rectangle. Sprinkle the filling over the rectangle, leaving 1/2 inch on one long edge uncovered. Starting at the covered long edge, carefully roll towards the uncovered edge, creating a long roll. Shape the dough into a circle, pinching the seams to seal. (I used a bit of warm water to help the seal stick.) 
8. The second rise: Using a sharp paring knife, cut slits 1-1/2 inches apart, three-fourths of the way from the center of the ring. Cover with greased plastic and let rise for 40 minutes, until the coffee cake is almost doubled. After 20 minutes of rising time, preheat the oven to 375F. 
9. When the cake completes its second rise, remove the plastic and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cake is golden brown. Let the cake cool on a rack.
10. Finish the coffee cake: In a small bowl, combine the powdered sugar and orange juice until it has a drizzle-able consistency. When the cake is lukewarm, drizzle the glaze over the cake and serve.

Notes

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

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Hi friends! Remember me? It’s been over a year since my last post, an absence that was entirely unplanned. I got busy (with work, life, and then summer … the usual) and stopped cooking. Then inertia took over, so that even when I started cooking again, I stopped pausing every few steps to hover dangerously over counters and take photos. On top of that, on those rare occasions when I did have the time and patience for photos, I wasn’t very inspired to write.

This space has always been a creative outlet for me, a place to share my passion for cooking and eating and talking about food. Suddenly, it felt like work. So, at the start of this year, my 10th (!!!!!) year of blogging, I decided to lean into the break, and come back to blogging when I felt ready to do so, rather than forcing the issue.

And then the world changed. Covid-19 has impacted everyone in some way, and every day, I feel fortunate that my loved ones and I have our health and each other. I fled my small NYC apartment* for the much larger rooms/outdoor space of my parents’ place in Delaware, and like many people, am finding solace in the kitchen.** So far, I’ve made multiple rounds of banana bread, cookies (one batch very good, one batch less so), one mediocre focaccia, and one dreamy almond-apricot coffee cake.***

I’ve really sought out cooking projects, the kind of hours-in-the-kitchen cooking that I either didn’t have time for or didn’t feel excited about for much of the past year. Chief on that list was this recipe for palmiers, the flaky-crisp barely sweetened cookie that I tried on my first trip to Paris more than a decade ago.

Palmiers are made with puff pastry, and most recipes use store-bought. But binging The Great British Bake-Off convinced me that one day, I should try my hand at homemade puff pastry, and then Erin McDowell, baker extraordinaire and star of Food52’s latest show, “Bake It Up A Notch,” gave me the blueprint. The first episode was puff pastry, and each time I watched the video to give edit notes, I convinced myself a little bit more that *I* could make this.

Erin’s palmiers are extra doable because they’re made with “rough puff,” as the Brits say. That means that instead of encasing a block of butter in dough and wrestling with it rolling it out, we’re making a much simpler dough, one that’s fairly similar in technique to pie crusts. The major difference is in the size of the butter pieces–when making pie, you want peas, but here, we’re looking for walnut halves.

I won’t lie: there is some tedium here. Roll, fold, refrigerate; roll, fold, refrigerate — this is a recipe literally ideal for days when you are stuck at home with very little to do. Per my “research,” you can watch about 7 episodes of The Office while making these palmiers, and rather than wonder afterwards why you spent your day watching The Office, you can laud your productivity while eating a flaky, crispy, buttery cookie.

How are y’all coping with Covid-19? Have you made anything delicious? Hope you’re safe and well!

*In some very-important-to-me and not-at-all-relevant-to-you news: last summer, I fulfilled a decade-old dream and bought an apartment! It is a one-bedroom in the same UES neighborhood I’ve lived in since 2014, and I can’t wait to show off the kitchen!

**Also, television. So far, I’ve watched Tiger King, multiple Harry Potter movie marathons, and every British murder mystery show aired in the last three decades. If you have any show suggestions, please (please!) send them my way!

***There’s also been some non-baking cooking: a reasonably successful attempt at chicken curry, sous-chefing mangsho, a very delicious version of Meera Sodha’s Genius Cauliflower Korma, and a lot of pastas and salads and ‘dillas.

Rough Puff Palmiers

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Erin did a very thorough demo of the rough puff pastry dough in video form, though she uses a different folding technique. She demo-ed the folding technique explained here earlier in video (here, in case it helps!)  

• Yield: 30 palmiers (from a half-batch of dough) 1x

Ingredients

• 3–1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1–1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 pound (4 sticks) cold unsalted butter
• turbinado (or regular granulated) sugar, for sprinkling

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.
2. Add the butter cubes to the flour mixture, tossing to coat thoroughly. Using your index finger and thumb, squish the butter cubes until flat-ish, continuing to toss and coat with the flour. You’ll know you’re done when most of the butter pieces are the size of walnut halves.
3. Add the water, mixing until the dough comes together — it shouldn’t be sticky. I’d recommend adding 7-ish ounces to start, then slowly adding the remaining water as needed. (I only needed 8 ounces.) Form the dough into a 4-x-6-inch rectangle, worrying less about the actual size and more that you have sharp edges and corners. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes, until the dough is chilled but pliable.
4. The first fold: On a lightly floured countertop, roll out the dough into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle, roughly 10-x-25 inches (again, you’re worried less about the actual size and more about the thickness of the dough, and whether you have sharp edges and corners). Complete a four-fold: fold the top part of the dough about one-quarter of the way inward, then fold the bottom half to meet it. Then fold the larger half over the smaller half, hiding the seam. You should have four layers. Re-wrap the dough in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
5. The second fold: Lightly flour your surface again, and re-roll the dough to 3/4-inch thickness (approximately 10-x-25 inches again). Now do a three-fold: fold the top part of the dough one-third of the way inward, then fold the bottom half like you would a business letter. You should have three layers. Re-wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
6. The third fold: Again, lightly flour your countertop, then do a second four-fold. Re-wrap the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
7. The fourth (and final!) fold: Lightly flour your countertop, then do another three-fold. Re-wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
8. Shape the palmiers: Divide the dough in half using a sharp knife. (At this point, you could triple-wrap half of the dough and freeze it for future rough puff adventures.) Lightly flour your surface, then roll out the dough to a 13-x-15-inch rectangle that is 1/2-inch thick. Generously sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the dough, then fold the two edges inward so that they meet halfway. Then fold one half over the other, so that you have one long log that looks like a heart.
9. Using a sharp knife, slice the dough into 1/2-inch-thick cookies and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets. Sprinkle the tops with additional turbinado sugar. (Second freezing option: at this point, you could freeze the palmiers on the baking sheets until solid, then transfer them to a freezer bag and keep them for up to 3 months. Bake them straight from the freezer, adding 5-ish minutes to your baking time.) If you’re baking immediately, transfer the baking sheets to the refrigerator for 20 minutes, while your oven preheats to 425F.
10. Once the oven reaches 425F, bake the palmiers for 25-30 minutes (start checking from 20 onwards), until they are a deep golden brown. Cool before serving.

Notes

Adapted (minimally) from Erin McDowell

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I don’t blame you, today’s recipe is well worth skipping over anything I have to say. (Not that I have a lot to say: I’ve been head-down in a bunch of really exciting things, both professionally and personally, but I can’t really talk about them yet because I don’t want to jinx them, so … )

But in this crazy busy time, I haven’t been able to cook very often, which means I’ve been buying my lunch far more frequently than my bank account likes. And lest you think that that means all sorts of exciting salads and sandwiches and grain bowls, I’ll be honest: mostly it means a lot of lentil soup.

It’s a bit of a joke among my foodie co-workers how often I go to the Pret A Manger down the block from my office, but I’ll stan for Pret any day. Or at least its lentil soup. It’s hearty and filling and all the things you would expect from a bowl of lentils, but somehow doesn’t feel heavy or nap-inducing. There’s a brightness to it, likely from the hit of vinegar added at the end (I assume), and the caramelized onions add sweetness and almost a creaminess that make lentils the stuff of dreams.

In the past two months, I’ve made this lentil soup four times, which when you consider that I’ve only cooked six times total, should give you a sense of how much I love this soup. My version, using this Well+Good recipe as a jumping off point, is a bit more intensely spiced than the Pret version, and I doubled up on the vegetables. But I’ve compared it to the original a few times, and it holds up. Definitely worth skipping straight to the recipe for!

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A Pret-Inspired Lentil Soup

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• Yield: 6 servings 1x

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 4-5 shallots (or 1 medium yellow onion), sliced
• a hefty pinch of sugar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 medium carrots, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon harissa
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1 teaspoon coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1-1/2 cups lentils
• 3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
• 3 cups water
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 teaspoon balsamic or red wine vinegar

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. In a large heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter until foaming. On medium-low heat, add the shallots and sugar and saute, stirring occasionally, until the shallots have caramelized, about 20-25 minutes.
2. Add the oil. Stir in the carrots, celery and garlic, and saute for 3-5 minutes, until the garlic has softened slightly. Add the tomato paste, harissa, smoked paprika, garam masala, coriander, cinnamon and cayenne. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes, until the spices are fragrant and have darkened slightly.
3. Add the lentils, vegetable broth, and water, stirring the bottom of the pot to scrape up any browned bits. Increase the heat and bring the stew to a boil, then reduce the heat to a bare simmer and cook the lentils for 20-25 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the vinegar, then serve.

Notes

Adapted from Well + Good

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Why am I talking about a multi-layered baked pasta dish on the cusp of spring? Wouldn’t this dish have been much more appreciated as a cozy respite from a bitterly cold day? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about “swimsuit season” and all its attendant “slim down” strategies, rather than a melange of carbs and cheese?

These are all valid questions. (Well, minus the swimsuit one — I am firmly in this camp.) Yes, this mushroom lasagna recipe might have been helpful to share a month ago, especially since it is basically the food equivalent of a hug* or pulling on your go-to sweater.

However. This is not a lasagna that requires a nap immediately after. No need for pounds of ricotta or two types of meat for a bolognese — mushrooms and a bechamel sauce take the starring roles, and there’s only one cup of Parmesan involved cheese-wise.

The mushrooms are sauteed in butter until they become nutty and caramelized, the bechamel gets cooked in the same pan so they pick up a lot of those flavors, and then the Parmesan adds an extra punch of umami and depth. Paired with a simple green side salad (not pictured, because I actually made this in January where side salads were far from my consciousness), it is a perfect bridge between the last gasps (gusts?) of winter and the warmer weather to come.

*Can I let you in on a weird and kind of embarrassing secret? I hate hugs. I’m not sure what it says about me (I’m sure nothing good) but seriously, don’t come at me with open arms — I will duck.

Mushroom Lasagna

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There are a fair amount of steps here, so I’d never say that this is an easy weeknight dinner. But the days are technically longer now, and the steps themselves are fairly stress-free (depending on your familiarity and comfort with a bechamel), so go ahead and pour yourself a glass of wine, pull on an apron and spend an hour putting this together. You won’t regret it.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound (8 ounces) dried lasagna noodles
• 12 tablespoons cup (1–1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided
• 2 pounds cremini or portobello mushrooms, sliced
• 4 cups whole milk, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• a hefty pinch of ground nutmeg
• 1 heaping cup freshly grated Parmesan

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 375F.
2. Prep the lasagna noodles: bring a large pot of water to boil with a lot of salt (salty like the sea!) and a splash of olive oil. Add the lasagna noodles and cook for 10 minutes. (I had to use no-boil noodles because that’s all they had at the store, so I par-boiled them for 5 minutes. I’d hesitate to go totally no-boil because the noodles will pull moisture from other sources and then the lasagna might become dry.) Drain and set aside.
3. Saute the mushrooms: Slice the mushrooms 1/4-inch thick. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive and 2 tablespoons of butter over medium-high heat in a saute pan or high-walled skillet. Cook half of the mushrooms with a few pinches of salt for 5 minutes, until they’ve browned and start to release some of their juices, tossing a few times. Set aside, then add more oil and butter and cook the remaining half of the mushrooms.
4. Brown your butter: Reduce the heat to medium-low. In the same saute pan or skillet that you used for the mushrooms, melt and brown the remaining 8 tablespoons (1 stick) of butter, watching it carefully and stirring frequently to ensure the butter browns evenly. (Here’s a nice step-by-step tutorial).
5. Make the bechamel: Add the flour and cook for 1 minute on low heat, whisking constantly. Pour in the milk slowly, a little at a time and stirring until combined. Once you’ve added half of the milk and combined it, you can add the rest all at once, with 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, and the nutmeg. Cook over medium-low, whisking frequently, until the mixture is thick — about 5 minutes. Set aside.
6. Assemble the lasagna: Spread some of the sauce in the bottom of a 9-x-13 baking dish. Arrange a layer of noodles on top (I did three, with no overlap, which made slicing the lasagna a total breeze), then more sauce (about 1/4 of the remaining mixture). Top with 1/3 of the mushrooms and 1/4 of the grated Parmesan. Repeat twice more, then top with a final layer of noodles, the remaining sauce and the last bit of Parmesan.
7. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is bronzed and the sauce is bubbly. Let the lasagna sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving.

Notes

Lasagnas are a dream to prep ahead and freeze. You can either freeze it unbaked, by assembling it in a foil pan and then triple-wrapping it with plastic wrap (which I’d recommend of the two options), or after it’s baked — allow it to cool completely and then triple-wrap before freezing. Either way, defrost and bake for the suggested time. You may need a bit longer if your lasagna hasn’t totally defrosted beforehand, or a bit less if you’ve already baked your lasagna and don’t want it to over-brown (you can also reheat it covered with tin foil if you’re concerned about over-browning).

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

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As to be expected, my new job has done wonders for my own cooking. Learning via osmosis is a very real thing, and being surrounded day in and day out by professionals means I’ve picked up quite a few tricks: microplaning upside down so you catch more zest,

But the biggest boon has been in recipe inspiration — my coworkers are gems at discovering fascinating things to cook. Sometimes, they spark me to seek out classics, but in this instance, a Genius drove me straight to the source of this savory, bright, impossibly flavorful braised chicken.

It had me at “braised.” And then again at “salami.” And “olives” too. Crisped golden chicken doesn’t hurt either, nor does fennel, rosemary, oregano, and lemon juice. There are layers upon layers of flavor here, each adding a bit of zing. The salami and olives are here to add salt, sure — but they also add depth, and they infuse the sauce with so much punch that I literally drank it with a spoon.

The recipe comes from Donald Link, the mastermind behind the best thing I ate in New Orleans, and it is exactly the kind of chicken I want in the dead of winter: sharp and snappy and so jazzed up that I forget warm weather is still many many months away.

Braised Chicken with Salami and Olives

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I made a few tweaks, including *gasp* omitting the white wine because I was drinking red and didn’t want to open a whole bottle of white. It sounds insane, I know, but I didn’t miss the wine. I also omitted the flour to keep things gluten-free, which means my sauce was a bit thinner than Kristen’s, but it still reduces nicely without a thickener.

Ingredients

• 8 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs (about 3–1/2 to 4 pounds)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 3/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons neutral oil
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
• 1 rosemary branch, about 8 inches
• 6 ounces hard salami, cut into a 1/2-inch dice (I used a spicy Calabrian-style, but any hard dry sausage will do)
• 1 cup pitted green olives, rinsed and cut in half (I used Castelvetrano, but picholine or Sicilian olives also work — if yours aren’t pre-pitted, here’s a great technique for pitting olives without wanting to throw something [see, I told you I’ve learned some things!])
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2–1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 4 bay leaves
• juice of 1 lemon

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375F. Pat the chicken dry, then season it with salt and pepper.
2. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat and sear the chicken in batches until golden, 5-7 minutes per side. Transfer the cooked chicken to a 9-x-13-inch baking dish. Once you’ve finished browning the chicken, transfer the accumulated oil and chicken fat into a small bowl. Add two tablespoons of that fat mixture back into to the skillet.
3. Add the onions to the skillet and until softened and beginning to brown, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, fennel, rosemary branch, salami, olives, oregano and red pepper flakes. Add the tomato paste and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Pour in the chicken broth in batches and stir to incorporate. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook until slightly thickened, 5-7 minutes. Stir in the bay leaves and lemon juice.
5. Carefully transfer the contents of the skillet over the chicken in the baking dish, pouring the sauce to cover the chicken. Roast in the oven, basting every 30 minutes, until the chicken is very tender, about 1-1/2 hours. Discard the bay leaves and rosemary. Serve the chicken warm with plenty of sauce, and lots of bread (or mashed potatoes or egg noodles) to soak up all of that goodness.

Notes

Adapted from Donald Link via Food52

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The most popular style in Kolkata is “khosha,” meaning cooked low and slow with frequent stirring. The sauce ends up thicker and more luxe this way, and it’s a staple at most celebrations. Our family’s version* is possibly the most-requested dish at my parents’ home, and according to the extremely unbiased family members who have made the comparison, it holds its own against the mangsho served in any restaurant in Kolkata. Coincidentally, it’s the only thing my dad really cooks.**

The recipe is my personal white whale. It’s always seemed complicated and time-consuming, with the added challenge of, like any of my family recipes, a complete lack of precise instruction. (“Add a little bit of this and then some this and cook it until it smells right” … )

But after multiple trips home to Delaware last year where I diligently watched/helped/took notes while my parents cooked mangsho (like I said, it’s very popular in our home), I finally mustered up the courage to give this recipe a try on my own. (Apparently, 2019 is the year for conquering cooking challenges.)

Goat is not the easiest to find. My parents go to a Pakistani grocery store in Delaware, but the closest one to me in New York is in Queens, and if you think I’m trekking out to Queens for three pounds of meat, you’re funny. I will only trek to Queens for dumplings. So I went with bone-in lamb pieces, available via Fresh Direct.

To me, lamb has a slightly gamier taste than goat, but since I cooked the meat in the spice mixture for so long, all of that gaminess got masked. Really, the biggest difference ended up being the size of the pieces of meat — my lamb was cut fairly large, so the meat took a long time to get tender. (Usually, we buy baby goat, and the pieces are roughly 2 inches in size.)

Because I was using lamb and was a little concerned about getting the meat as soft as baby goat, I marinated the meat overnight in a mixture of yogurt and turmeric. I’d highly recommend this if you’re going the lamb route — it helped tenderize the meat and get rid of some of that gaminess.

From there, I hewed very closely to my parents’ outline: slowly caramelizing a lot of onions until they’re sweet, building a rich base. Then, a ginger-garlic-onion-tomato paste and a turmeric-cumin-coriander-chili spice blend add even more flavor and heat. Cooking the spices is really important, as it deepens and amplifies them, which is extra-crucial since there are so few of them. (I’ve had plenty of versions with additional spices [and there are a lot of many-spiced versions on the Internet], but I really think simple is best.) The lamb (or goat) cooks low and slow for more than two hours, absorbing all of these flavors and spices until they’ve fully permeated every part of the meat. You’ll want to stir regularly to make sure that the bottom of the pot doesn’t burn, and using a heavy-bottomed pot is key.

While I personally thought this version was fairly close to the original, I ended up carrying some of this back to Delaware to get an expert opinion. The ‘rents agreed, with their only critique being that I should have used more oil and more salt. Feel free to take their suggestions, but know that even without them, this mangsho is pretty dang good.

Next cooking challenge on the docket? Focaccia! Anyone have a go-to recipe?

*To be totally honest, most of the time my parents cook a slightly different style of mangsho — in a pressure cooker, with a more liquidy sauce. The pressure cooker realllllly gets the meat tender (like fall-apart tender), and the less rich style is easier to consume on a semi-regular basis.

*To be fair, my mom does the prep and can make a mean version of this mangsho herself, but my dad is the official “mangsho master” in our home.

My Family’s Mangsho (Goat or Lamb Curry)

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Ingredients

For the marinade:

• 3 pounds bone-in lamb stew meat (or goat, if you can find it!)
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used 2% Greek, but any will do)
• 1 tablespoon turmeric powder

For the curry:

• 3 large onions — 2-1/2 should be thinly sliced, and half can be roughly chopped
• 4 inches ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1–1/2 Roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne powder
• 2 teaspoons coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt + more to taste
• 2 large Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 3-inch pieces (place them in a bowl and cover with water so that they don’t brown)

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Place the lamb in a large bowl and cover with warm water. Let sit for 30 minutes, then pick the pieces out of the water and transfer to another large bowl or Tupperware. Mix the lamb pieces with the yogurt and turmeric, then cover with plastic wrap (or a lid) and marinate for 24 hours.
2. Blend the roughly chopped half-onion, ginger, garlic and tomatoes with 1 cup of water until smooth. Set aside.
3. In a 6- or 8-quart heavy-bottomed pot with a tight-fitting lid, heat the canola oil on medium heat. Once it starts to shimmer, add the remaining 2-1/2 onions and the sugar. Saute, stirring often, until the onions have softened and started to caramelize — this will take 20-25 minutes.
4. Stir in the turmeric, cayenne, coriander and cumin. Cook the spices for 5 minutes, until they’ve darkened and are fragrant.
5. Transfer the meat pieces to the pot (don’t dump the bowl in — you don’t want the meat juices that have collected at the bottom of the bowl). Stir until the meat is coated in the spices and onions, then add a teaspoon of salt. Cover and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes, then stir in the ginger-garlic paste.
6. Cover and cook, stirring every 15 minutes, making sure to really pick up anything on the bottom (to prevent sticking/burning), for 60-75 minutes, or until the meat is almost tender. You should see the oil from the meat rising to the top, and the water from the meat should have cooked off.
7. Uncover the curry and stir in 4 cups of water. Simmer, stirring occasionally. After 15 minutes, add the potatoes. Continue to simmer until the potatoes and meat are tender (this took me another 30 minutes). Add salt to taste. Serve immediately, with rice, parathas or naan.

The post My Family’s Mangsho (Goat or Lamb Curry) appeared first on bites out of life.

I am terrible at keeping up with New Year’s resolutions. I dutifully set them every year (exercise more, eat healthier, read more books / less of the Internet — the usual), but invariably fail because the New Year coincides with my hibernation period, and the last thing I want to do when it’s 6 degrees outside (actual temperature I woke up to on Thursday) is exercise.

So this year, I decided to take my #NewYearNewMe aspirations to a smaller, more manageable level. Each month, I’m setting mini goals for myself, because while eating healthier in 2019 seems a little daunting, eating one extra serving of fruits or vegetables per day in January does not.

Inspired by many, many episodes of The Great British Bake Off, one of my January mini goals was to bake bread. I decided to start with a tried-and-true classic, one of the first “viral” recipes of the Internet — literally everyone has made it. Except me. Until now.

For the uninitiated: back in 2006, Jim Lahey, of Sullivan Street Bakery fame (if you live in or ever find yourself in New York, GO HERE.) shared his recipe for a crusty, light-crumbed, delicious bread with Mark Bittman and the New York Times. It created a sensation due to its ease: the dough comes together in five minutes, and then the yeast does all the work for you. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt breaks down the science better than I ever could, but it really is magical how such little effort can yield such stunning results.

Since I was a total bread-making newbie, I wasn’t totally sure what I was doing, and my loaf definitely came out a bit more … bronzed than it should have. But the taste was incredible, and a week’s worth of toast for breakfast was a dream. This was definitely a promising first foray into the world of bread-making, and I envision many more no-knead loaves in my future.

Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread

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Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
• 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1–1/2 teaspoons salt

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Make the dough: In a large bowl combine the flour, yeast and salt. Add 1-1/2 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest 15-18 hours at room temperature. The dough will be ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles.
2. Lightly flour a work surface and place the dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover the dough loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest about 15 minutes.
3. Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Sprinkle flour over a large piece of parchment, then place the dough seam-side down on the parchment and dust with more flour. Cover with another piece of parchment and let rise for 2-1/2 hours. When it is ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not spring back when poked with a finger.
4. At least 30 minutes before the dough is ready, heat the oven to 450F. Place a 4-quart heavy covered pot (I used enameled cast-iron, but you could also use Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven. Carefully flip the dough into the pot so that it’s seam-side up. (If it looks like a mess, that’s ok — shake the pan once or twice if the dough is unevenly distributed.)
5. Cover with the lid and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 15-30 minutes, until the loaf is browned nicely (… maybe check on yours once or twice, to avoid my mistake) and the loaf sounds hollow when you knock on it. Cool on a rack.

Notes

The only change I made from the original recipe was bumping down the water a bit (per Jim Lahey’s advice in a video he did with Mark Bittman), and increasing the salt a touch, since I’d read that the bread could use more seasoning. I also followed some of Mark’s tips — doing a longer second rise and using a smaller Dutch oven (mostly because I only have a 4-quart one). There are a million versions out there and plenty of advice, so go forth, you bread-making superstar you!

• Author: Mark Bittman, by way of Jim Lahey

The post Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread appeared first on bites out of life.

You’d think, after almost 9(!!) years of blogging, and now working at Food52(!!!), that I’d have mastered simple things like layer cakes. (Indeed, I’ve had successes with a few in the past.) You’d think, would you not, that after endless cakes, a little something like turning a cake out of a pan would be no sweat.

You’d be so so so wrong.

I volunteered to bake my sister a birthday cake to celebrate her 29th year of existence, and she asked for a layer cake starring Deb Perelman’s chocolate olive oil cake. Reasonable request, right? Deb has never steered me wrong, and I already knew chocolate and olive oil were a match made in fudgy heaven.

And yet. The cake is simple enough — it requires only 9 ingredients, most of which are pantry staples, and creates an incredibly plush, deeply chocolate-y cake. I made a double batch, expecting to slice the layers into thin halves to create a four-layer cake. (Ambitious, I know.) The only problem? The cakes were basically glued to the bottom of my pans. Deb recommends lining the cake pans with parchment, but I figured since my pans were nonstick that a good solid buttering would suffice. Life lesson learned: always listen to the experts …

But nine years of blogging (not to mention, 30+ years of life) have taught me that often, fails are salvageable — very delicious but crumbled cake most of all. Cake balls immediately jumped to mind, and the fact that they’re much easier to transport cross-borough was the icing (pun intended) on the top. My original plan was to layer the cake with mascarpone-orange frosting, so that became the binder for these cake balls.*

I’m not going to lie to you: it was a huge pain to stand there and roll these out. I had a LOT of cake (two 9-inchers) and I used 1.5 of them to make 101(!!!) cake balls. I ended up freezing a third of them in rolled-out-but-pre-chocolate-coated form, because I didn’t have the patience or the chocolate chips to coat them all. So I think one 9-inch cake will yield 60 cake balls, which is lucky for you because cake fails aside, these are DELICIOUS.

They’re fudgy and deeply chocolate-y, with a subtle hint of orange. I didn’t sweeten the mascarpone, so it keeps the cake balls tangy and tender, but I did use a sweeter chocolate for the coating than I would otherwise (semi-sweet chocolate, which is usually 42% cacao — if you like your desserts a bit sweeter, I’d use milk chocolate for the coating). You could also of course use candy coating, which is technically better suited for this purpose and will likely give you a better looking cake ball. (Though in my humble opinion, nothing *tastes* better than real chocolate, and that’s what we’re really here for, amirite?)

I’m sure there are great takeaways from this experience about not giving up and learning from failure, etc. etc. but I’m a little busy eating cake balls to philosophize. May all your lessons in 2019 be this delicious!

*I love the creamy tanginess of mascarpone, but if you don’t want to bother with getting both mascarpone and cream cheese, then one or other will do!

Dark Chocolate Orange Cake Balls

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• Yield: 60 cake balls 1x

Ingredients

For the chocolate cake:

• 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (Dutch or natural), sifted if lumpy
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1–1/2 cups water or coffee (I used coffee, which I highly recommend)
• 1 tablespoon white or apple cider vinegar (I used ACV)

For the “frosting”:

• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 4 ounces mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon orange extract

For the cake balls:

• 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (42% or higher)
• sprinkles or nonpareils for decorating (optional)

Cook Mode

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9-inch cake pan.
2. Make the cake: Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and granulated sugar in the bottom of a large bowl. Whisk in the brown sugar and olive oil. Add the coffee (or water) and vinegar, and whisk until smooth. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the top is springy and a tester inserted in the center comes out with just a few sticky crumbs (but not a wet batter). Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack. Once the cake has cooled completely, crumble it.
4. Make the “frosting”: Using electric beaters, beat the cream cheese, mascarpone and orange extract until well combined and fluffy.
5. Line two baking sheets with wax or parchment paper. Stir in the cake crumbs and combine well, until the mixture has formed a “dough” that clumps easily. Roll the dough into tablespoon-sized balls, pressing the mixture together tightly, and place them on the prepared baking sheets. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour (alternately, you can freeze them for 15 minutes).
6. Transfer the cold cake balls to one baking sheet, so that you have one with all of the cake balls, and one empty sheet lined with parchment or wax.
7. Melt the chocolate chips, either in the microwave (in 20-second bursts, stirring in between to ensure even heating) or in a double-boiler. Carefully coat each cake ball in chocolate, transferring them to the baking sheet to cool. (I found this easiest to do in batches — melt a quarter of the chocolate, coat 15 balls, sprinkle with nonpareils, melt more chocolate, coat more balls, sprinkle, etc. Don’t melt all of the chocolate at once, in case it overheats or seizes.)
8. Let the cake balls cool completely, then try not to eat them all at once.

Notes

Cake recipe adapted slightly from Smitten Kitchen

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