Tag Archives: #martha

Fresh Corn Chowder: A Soup to Soothe the Savage Cold

Posted on by
4

You know fall is coming when you catch your first cold of the season. I spent a good amount of time last week in a daze of Sudafed and cough syrup, wishing that I felt good enough to enjoy the last of the summer sunshine. Instead I spent every night curled up on my couch watching Season 3 of Drop Dead Diva and eating soup.

I probably deserved to get sick since it seems as though I spent all of September running around with barely any time to rest. First came WAG, followed by a weekend in Tacoma and then the next weekend was FEAST. And FEAST brought with it parties, after parties and after-hours after parties, where I ingested entirely too much free champagne. I got a picture with Fergus Henderson while partying at the top of the Wieden+Kennedy building, shook hands with Sean Brock around 2 am at Nostrana and stalked the hell out of April Bloomfield (though I was too shy to approach her).

And then I caught a serious cold. Even though I’m a little sad about that, I have to say two things:

  1. It was totally, absolutely worth it!
  2. The soups I made to aid my recovery were rockin’!

My favorite one was actually a recipe for White Cheddar Corn Chowder that I pulled from a 2007 issue of Martha Stewart Living. How I managed to wait five years before making this, I’ll never know but I can say I won’t be waiting another five before making it again!

Continue reading →

Soirées & Snacks: My favorite thing about parties is the food…

Posted on by
1

There is nothing I love more than party food. Something about food on toothpicks or passed nibbles on tiny plates just calls out to me. Everything is more fun when it’s on pretty platters and available for grazing. I love having a glass of wine in one hand and a plate brimming with appetizers in the other.

Posting all the food pictures from my birthday party a few weeks ago inspired me to go back through last year’s birthday photos. My first thought upon seeing them was hmm, I need to plan another party very soon.

This is a very dangerous thought — one, that if given a chance, would devour all of my productive energy for months. So I decided to write a bit about party food in an effort to keep the demons at bay.

First up are some delicious hors d’oeuvres. Last year, I did a variation of pub trivia for my birthday party, which was held at my favorite local bar, The Lion’s Eye Tavern. After the quiz portion was done, we walked back to my place to soak up the beer with a whole lot of food.

Greek-salad skewers -- tomatoes, feta, cucmbers and olivesIn planning my menu, I was heavily influenced by these Greek salad skewers I had seen in an issue of Food & Wine and wanted to do a ton of them in a variety of flavors. I bought a salami (whole, not sliced), pitted olives, cucumbers, sharp white cheddar, goat cheese and baby mozzarella balls, pickled pipparras and piquillo peppers, cherry tomatoes and pickled asparagus. Most of the stuff I was able to get at an upscale grocery store’s olive bar. They had so many great things that I just got a little of everything. Then I got to work putting them in assorted patterns on little bamboo skewers.

* Helpful hint: I used some feta too but the brand I bought was apparently too soft and so I had a hard time keeping it on the sticks. Instead I sliced the olives open and stuffed them with the cheese and then slid the whole thing on the skewer. *

The nice thing is there are so many choices, nobody has to pick off the things they don’t like — good for picky eaters as well as the lone vegetarian. Plus they are so colorful, they basically double as party decorations!

Next I needed some fun snack mixes, a nod to the pub theme I had developed. My mind went first to an Asian-style brittle recipe I had seen on Martha’s website. I had been dying to make it since it’s full of tasty morsels  — wasabi peas, various nuts and sesame sticks. It’s a little spicy and a little salty, altogether ideal for a post-pub party. I also wanted some pretzels but not just out of the bag, something a little more festive was required. Luckily, Martha had a recipe for Sweet and Spicy Pretzel Mix using pretzel sticks, almonds, cayenne and sugar. These were a cinch to make and very addictive. I had to remind myself to stay away from them until the party started!

Then I went searching for something more exciting than regular Chex Mix and found this awesome Maple & Soy Chex Mix recipe. It sounded perfect (the recipe even has some curry in it which really intrigued me) and I could tailor the components so I didn’t overlap too many ingredients — I used mainly Chex cereal (rice and corn), sesame sticks and toasted corn since I had already used so many nuts in the other two mixes.

I made a ton of each one of these mixes, thinking I’d have plenty of leftovers to enjoy afterwards, but they were quickly demolished by hungry guests. Which is a good indicator that these recipes are worth making again!

Other party food favorites of mine are, of course, anything on puff pastry as well as a simple old-fashioned charcuterie board, like the one below. I think my husband put this together one lazy Sunday for us to snack on when we didn’t feel like cooking.

I like offer up a few patés (you can usually buy some nice ones at an upscale butcher shop), some salami or prosciutto, some cheese, coarse-grain mustard and cornichons. This plate also has an all-time favorite of mine — a beet terrine made with goat cheese. Some day I will show you how to make this. It is so very good and so pretty.

Finally, here are a few more party nibbles my friend Ariel and I put together when we catered a housewarming party for my parents. We needed it to be relatively simple since we only had one day to prep, but I think we did a nice spread. Ariel had a recipe for a frittata that could be sliced up and I had been dreaming about this recipe for adorable mini mac-and-cheese bites. I used some larger macaroni noodles that I had on hand — in hindsight I should have bought some smaller ones since they might have worked better in the mini-muffin pan, but these still got rave reviews.

Spinach Frittata and Mini Mac'n'Cheeses

A veggie crudite garden

Mammoth cheese ball

The veggies were inspired by this Martha Stewart spread, where the crudite are arranged to look like they are in a garden. We just did ours in a big bowl, but Ariel worked some magic with those veggies and made them beautiful. We had an herb-filled buttermilk dressing for dipping, though you can use any salad dressing you have handy.

We also spent a good portion of the evening before the party making a laughably enormous cheese ball. I honestly don’t know how it happened, but it was larger than a softball. We started with some goat cheese (like maybe a pound, which might explain why it was so huge) mixed with cream cheese and then threw in store-bought pesto plus extra pine nuts and basil. I think we had half of this sucker left over, but it was a great post-party snack. I even used some with cooked pasta as an easy creamy and very cheesy sauce.

So basic rules for party food: cheese should always be present, food that can be eaten with one hand is ideal and anything on a stick will make people happy.

Now go forth and party on!

Easy Breezy Valentines (AKA a simple way to kiss ass at work)

Posted on by
Reply

I come from a family that loves to give gifts. I realized this, with excitement, at a young age and have reveled in it ever since. My grandparents used to buy me a gift on my brother’s birthday (seriously!) and vice versa. We also got presents — not just candy — for Halloween, Valentines Day, Easter and, honestly, just for arriving at their house at the start of summer vacation.

I vividly remember getting out of car, suitcase in hand, and running into “my” bedroom to see what book was on my pillow, wrapped in my grandma’s trademark tissue paper. I guess the best word to describe me at this age would be spoiled. But hey, it was a book. It’s not like I got my own car or anything.

I also come from a family with plenty of affection for sweets so it’s no surprise that I love a well-stocked candy dish. One magically wonderful thing about my grandparents’ house is that every time I show up, there is a candy dish on my nightstand. As a kid, it used to contain M&Ms or Starbursts, with the occasional Swedish Fish thrown in for good measure. Since college, knowing my taste for tart candies, my dish has been filled with Sour Patch Kids and the like. There is really no better treat than candy at arms reach.

The reason I bring this up is because I also like to give random gifts and candy is generally a crowd-pleaser.

Since Valentines Day is a ridiculous holiday anyways, it’s a fun one to surprise people on. Last year I decided to try out this cute thing I had pulled out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine just a few weeks prior. It was not only an adorable idea but also affordable. And since I wanted to make one for each girl in my office, cheap was kind of a necessity.

I bought the cookie cutters, paper dish and goodie bags at JoAnns and put the gifts together the night before. They were so cute I felt the need to share the idea just in case you’re looking for a simple but tasty way to let someone in your office know you are thinking of them — especially when it’s in a positive way for once.

Candy Hearts

Finished and ready to gift!

The best part is you can tailor this for any holiday using different cookie cutters and candy colors. The possibilities are endless. Just remember — you get to eat all the leftovers, so don’t pick out any crappy candy flavors!

Pork Paillards with Sour Cream, Egg Noodles and Paprika

Posted on by
Reply

My husband scoffs at the idea of comfort food — to the point where if I even see that phrase, I can hear him sardonically asking what foods actually make people uncomfortable. This would be a better point except that a few foods have been known to make me extremely uncomfortable, like brains, fish heads and the occasional mushroom. I, on the other hand, love comfort food – dishes like beef stroganoff or chicken casserole that make you feel warm and happy are eternally appealing to me.

So it should come as no surprise that I was mesmerized by this recipe in a Martha Stewart magazine. It was actually part of a small collection on paillards (basically a fancy term for cutlets). I tore out that whole section so fast I’m surprised I didn’t get a paper cut. There was a recipe for chicken paillards with lemon and butter and another one involving veal and sherry. But the first one that I was determined to try was the pork. It was something about the sour cream sauce that did me in.

First comes the pork tenderloin, cut into medallions and pounded thin. I may be married to a chef and own a ton of kitchen utensils, but I have never owned a meat pounder. Luckily I have a small very heavy sauté pan that does the job just fine. A word of advice though — do not pound your meat late at night when it could disturb your neighbors…or early in the morning for that matter. Meat pounding can be loud and you don’t want to have to avoid eye contact the next time you take your trash to the curb. Unless you don’t like your neighbors, of course — in that case feel free to pound away at all hours.

Okay, enough of that — back to the pork.

Sear the cutlets until they are a dark golden brown — the crust is where the flavor is. Just make sure you don’t over cook them, you’ll want them still pink in the center. Once they are finished, put them on a plate and cover in foil. Now it’s time for the sauce.

This is where it can get a bit tricky. The thing is this is not a complicated dish. It’s the coordination that can make it annoying. You should have your noodles already cooked, but by this point they’ve probably cooled down just enough to make you want to heat them back up. It’s seriously times like this that I miss being in a professional kitchen, where you’d have your pasta water on a rolling boil ready to give your cooked noodles a quick dunk. The pork is resting, which is good, but cuts of meat that thin will cool down pretty quickly. There’s also the sauce and any other vegetables you may be cooking — unless you’re fine with just meat and noodles. No judgement here. You don’t see any greens on my plate, do you?

Basically it’s a simple meal with fairly little prep or time commitment, but with an intense ten minutes of scrambling around doing the finishing touches. My plan of attack is to dump the noodles in a large sauté pan with some melted butter while I reduce the sauce. This is probably where I should tell you to be generous when making the sauce — better too much than too little and I always find myself scraping up every last bit from the pan.

The good thing is once you sit down to eat this, you will be happy you went through the effort. The pork should be fork tender and the sauce tangy, with the parsley in the noodles helping to freshen the flavors. It’s a perfect dinner for one or two people. I tend to make this when I’m the only one home, saving a plate for my husband when he gets off work. Who wouldn’t want to come home to this?

Another benefit is that you will hopefully still have some pork tenderloin left over. In which case please make this and tell me how it is. It’s another recipe in my folder I’ve been meaning to get around to.