Fare for the family table
The Farm Bill, yet another victim of our government shut-down.
On October 1st, the day when our do-little Congress decided to hijack the federal government and shut a chunk of it down like a kid throwing a tantrum, the Farm Bill also expired. Sadly, the bill's expiration garnered hardly any press as there were more exciting stories to cover, like watching Senator Ted Cruz reciting Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham" ad naseum in front of an empty Senate chamber.
I love a good cookie….really, I do.
I love making them, eating them, discovering new ones, and returning time and again to old favorites.
Since I was a kid, my favorite mass produced cookie has been the Fig Newton, hands down. Their fruity-cakey goodness easily beat the competitors of the day, the lowly Oreo and Chips-Ahoy. I have found over time though, that my love of the Newton is not universally shared. It is hard to find someone who doesn't love a good chocolate chip cookie, but when asked about Newtons I find that nearly half the people I ask can't stand them (not that I've spent a great deal of time trying to discern people's love/hate of Newtons, but I'm just sayin'). I don't understand these Newton haters.
I arrived a little early to a Share Our Strength benefit a few weeks back, and having missed lunch that day, was starving. Luckily the event was being held at the fabulous Lincoln Tavern and Restaurant in South Boston so there was plenty of good food on offer. I grabbed a seat at the bar, ordered an IPA and one of their more popular bar appetizers, meatballs over creamy polenta.
In short order I was a very happy guy.
I know I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again….I could kiss Molly Stevens. Queen of one-pot cooking (her cookbook All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking is a must own), this nearly one-pot meal is another of hers that I fell in-love with by just reading the recipe.
I saw a photo of a chicken hash dish in Saveur not long ago and knew immediately that I needed to take a swing at this dish myself. I can think of few meals more soulful and satisfying than a good hash bathed by a flowing yolk from a perfectly poached egg. Do you hear what I'm sayin'?
This killer of a pasta dish is a twice adapted version of one originally by Lynne Rossetto Kasper of APM's "The Splendid Table". I say twice adapted because the version I was working from was itself adapted from the original, and appeared recently in the cooking section of a Sunday Boston Globe.
I love fresh peaches, I really do. They are among my favorite fruits, and when they're in season I eat a ton of them. About the only thing bad I can say about peaches is that they are only perfectly ripe for about a milli-second before they start to rapidly deteriorate to a state of shriveled, squishy sadness.
Despite their name, sunchokes, often called Jerusalem Artichokes, are not from Jerusalem nor are they artichokes. Members of the daisy family, the plants that grow above these tubers resemble sunflowers and can grow to 10 feet tall. The Italian word for sunflower is "girasole", and it is thought that Italian immigrants that settled in the Northeast US, where sunchokes were abundant, attached this name to them and over time it morphed from girasol to Jerusalem. Who knows how they got their name really, but this explanation is as pausible as any other I've found, so I'm sticking with it.
Got a bottle of bubbly that's just itching for a culinary companion? Look no further, 'cause this taste of summer is the perfect cocktail party treat, and oh so pretty to boot!
This little ditty is a simplified version of a recipe I saw on Epicurious some time ago. Not that the original was much more complicated, but it called for tossing the peach wedges in a mixture of sugar, sherry vinegar and cumin.
The local peaches we had were so perfectly ripe, sweet and succulent that I couldn't bring myself to #$%& with them in any way, so I simply wrapped them gently in prosciutto and skewered them to fresh basil leaves from the garden. Each was a little wedge of heaven, I must say.
If I had less than stellar peaches I'm sure that the recipe as written would have really kicked them up a notch, but we certainly enjoyed the sweet-salty-herbal perfection of this unadulterated version. This one is so simple that I'm not even going to type out a formal recipe.
Simply slice each peach into 6 wedges, and slice each piece of prosciutto or serrano ham in half lengthwise. Wrap each piece of ham around a peach wedge, place atop a basil leaf and skewer the whole thing together with a toothpick, metal, or bamboo pick. If your peaches are less than perfect and you want to dress them up some, the original recipe called for tossing 3 peaches worth of wedges in a mix of 1/4 teaspoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon sherry vinegar, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin. Enjoy!
Cheers – Steve
I'm not sure where my friends at Cooking Light found their budding culinary superstar, Matisse Reid (age 12), but we are big fans of hers here at Oui, Chef. Matisse is featured every few months in Cooking Light where she offers up "Kid in the Kitchen – Family Friendly" fare, and once again she's knocked it out of the park with this chicken dish.
Her secret?
