Say It With Me Now: Duck Ham!

It's really a shame that this is probably the single most uninspiring food photo that I've ever posted, because it doesn't do justice to the wonderful root vegetable soup and duck ham that I made yesterday.

"Duck ham" is quick-cured duck breast. I just love saying it. Duck ham!

The idea is that you wrap a duck breast in a mixture of kosher salt, sugar, garlic, thyme, and black pepper for 24 hours and out comes something like a very young prosciutto. Since the recipe for duck ham(!) doesn't involve an oven or a stove, it might be tempting to say but it's raw, it's raw poultry. Danger. It's not raw though -- it's cured.

Here's the thing: the definition of "cooking" is manipulating ingredients chemically. I don't know if that's what it says when you look "cooking" up in the dictionary, but that's what chefs mean when they use the word. When home cooks talk about cooking they're pretty much always talking about heat. But curing is cooking too: salt and sugar draw the water out of meat (osmosis, heard of it?), and dehydrated meat cannot host bacteria, because bacteria need water to survive. Ergo, the meat is safe to eat.

Once the duck was done curing yesterday, I sliced it as thin as possible, but to be honest it was still a little bit too gummy and wet for my taste to eat plain (none of you will be surprised to hear that The Viking sucked it down just fine). But it was perfect as a compliment to the rustic, earthy roasted root vegetable soup.

Root vegetables, roasted almost to the point of burning along with a duck or a chicken, are some of my favorite things to eat in the fall/winter months. This soup captures exactly that flavor in liquid form, which shouldn't be a surprise given the ingredients (root vegetables; chicken stock). Somehow, it was still amazing to me how complex and evocative of a mid-winter dinner the soup was. It's roasted chicken and root vegetables for people who are too lazy to chew. Relatedly, this would be amazing as baby food.

Both recipes are from Tom Colicchio's Think Like A Chef. If you want the full recipes, I encourage you to buy the book here. If you want the executive summaries, see below.


Duck Ham

Remove most of that fat from a duck breast, leaving just a thin protective coating. Mix 1 cup Kosher salt, 3 Tablespoons sugar, 1 Tablespoon thyme leaves, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 Tablespoon black pepper. Put half the salt mixture on a piece of plastic wrap, lay the duck breast on top, and cover the breast with the remaining mixture. Wrap tightly and refrigerate for 24 hours. Remove from the fridge, gently rinse the breast, and pat dry.


Roasted Root Vegetable Soup

Put some oil in a big stew pot (think 5 - 6 quart). Peel, slice, and add the following: 1 parsnip, 1/2 bulb fennel, 1 carrot, 1 small butternut squash, 1 leek (white part only), 1/2 granny smith apple, 1 clove garlic. Let veggies soften, add a knob of butter and a sprig of thyme, let soften further. Add 3 cups of chicken stock gradually, bring to a simmer, and simmer partially covered for 40 minutes. Then puree, thin with another cup of stock, and salt and pepper to taste. Sherry is not called for in the recipe, but indeed would not be out of place.

An Armchair Scientist Takes On The Hangover

Today, I have hangovers on the brain. Literally and figuratively.

Last night was The Scribe's birthday, and a group of us went to DBGB and gorged ourselves on thick, unctuous hamburgers, shoestring fries, and sausages. To drink, I had a martini and [an unnamed quantity of] beer -- all in all it wouldn't have been so bad were it not for the red wine-soaked dinner at Aureole the night before, which left my systems teetering on the brink of collapse.

And thus the situation that I find myself in today. It would all be fine and dandy if I could sit around feeling sorry for myself all day, eating junkfood, snoozing on the couch, watching House reruns, and getting better on my own time. Clearly that is not in the agenda, and I'll assume the same is true for most of you on any given Thursday in October. We lead busy lives, and we need to stay in fighting form.

So, I'm doing damage control. Just as there is a right and wrong way to roast a chicken, there is a right a wrong way to treat a hangover, and after years of experimentation I believe that I've found the winning formula. Let's be clear: there is absolutely no science or data of any kind to back up the following claims. Just one bon vivant's experiences.

First of all, hangovers are not just about the alcohol. Sometime you should try eating a big, rich meal loaded with butter and red meat and carbohydrates while drinking sugary, acidic non-alcoholic beverages and see how you feel the next day. Probably pretty hungover.

Think of it like this: after a night of intense drinking and dining your stomach is like a war zone, and the goal of your hangover treatment is to negotiate peace. Most people will tell you that the best solution is to eat greasy food: a bacony breakfast sandwich, Chipotle, a big, hulking bowl of pad thai. This is certainly what you feel like eating, but it's like sending another unit into combat. It's exactly the type of rationale that led you to say, "Sure, I'd love a nightcap!" And look how that turned out for you.

Without further ado, my hangover cure:

1. Tylenol and coffee: Tylenol dulls the pain, and the caffeine is going to be necessary to keep you alert thanks to the awful night of sleep that you just had (both alcohol and a full stomach keep you from getting into REM sleep, meaning that you aren't really getting your rest).

2. 2 liters of water: Dehydration is more than half your problem after a night on the town, so get a liter of water down the trap the next morning and then drink another liter throughout the day. And by water I mean water --not Gatorade, which is really high in sugar.

3. A 30 minute jog: Going for a slow, steady run raises your metabolism, which I personally believe "sweats out" the alcohol (so to speak), flushing your system and speeding the entire recovery process.

4. Vegetable juice: Yes, vegetable juice. Not a burger and fries. Vegetable juice is a mild, low sugar, high nutrient way to cleanse a system which needs a break in order to get itself back to normal. Ideally, I go to a juice bar and order the stuff fresh, but in a pinch I'll take V-8. Trust me on this -- if you can exert enough self control to pass on the pizza and stick to vegetable juice until dinner, you will be the better for it.

BYOL: Corn Soup

Is it too late to tell you about corn soup? I don't know. A few days ago I managed to find fantastic local sweet corn at the greenmarket but as I write this it's a blustery, chilly, autumnal evening and nothing could be further from my mind than corn - a vegetable that I most closely associate with clam bakes, backyard barbecues, sunburns, and cold beers.

But this soup? I just have to tell you about this soup. For something that contains no butter, cream, or bacon -- for being, in fact, fully vegan -- it is extraordinarily luxurious and astonishingly flavorful. Thanks to all of the natural sugar and starch in corn, it could almost be confused for a kind of creamy, sweet porridge. Dishes like this one make me wonder why anyone bothers with things like fat free brownies, protein muffins, and low calorie potato chips when you can make soup from nothing but vegetables and a slick of olive oil that tastes this good. And in around 45 minutes and at a price of around $10, no less.

By this point, I have a solid few months under my belt of bringing my lunch to work. I have come to two conclusions: 1) That I can usually make something moderately healthy in an hour or two on a Sunday, which is roughly equivalent to the time I would spend in a five day week consulting takeout menus or wandering up and down Park Avenue trying to decide what to buy for lunch, and 2) That if I don't make my own lunch, I will end up eating something regrettable. That might mean outrageously expensive sushi takeout; since I work for a restaurant, it also might mean caving into "family meal," the food that the kitchen puts out at midday for staff. I know that this might sound like an no-brainer lunch option, but you have to understand that family meal is always both delicious and outrageously heavy. Try eating a grilled cheese sandwich and cream soup or a plate of meat sauce and buttered pasta for lunch and tell me you don't have your head on your desk by 3 PM. Then, tell me you can still button your jeans at the end of the month.

If brown bagging it isn't your thing, a pureed vegetable soup like this is a stellar option to serve at a dinner party. My mother, who was for years in the position of single-handedly putting on multi-course holiday meals, often made a pureed vegetable soup the day before and served it as an hors d'oeuvre about 30 minutes before dinner. In retrospect, it was an ingenious way to keep guests busy while she raced around putting the final touches on dinner.

If local corn is gone by the time you get around to making this soup, never fear -- you can substitute many other vegetables into this recipe, including but not limited to carrots, zucchini, butternut squash, and asparagus.


Sweet Corn Soup

Serves 6

1 small onion, halved and sliced
1 stalk celery
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
9 ears corn
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups vegetable stock
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Sour cream (optional)
Fresh dill (optional)

1. Remove kernels from corn cobs and set aside. Discard cobs.

2. In a large pot, heat oil over medium-low heat until it moves easily across the pan. Add onion and celery and cook until softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

3. Stir in corn, salt, and pepper and let heat for 2-3 minutes. Add vegetable stock and bring stock to a simmer.

4. Cook partially covered for 5-10 minutes, until corn is heated through and beginning to soften. Remove from heat and strain through a mesh sieve, reserving liquid. Puree corn in food processor or blender to desired consistency, adjusting with cooking liquid to desired thickness. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

5. Serve warm or could, with a dallop of sour cream and/or a sprig of dill.

Braised Fish. Yes, Braised.

Yesterday, I had the unpleasant experience of coming face to face with my fall calendar. It was not pretty.

What is on the calender: work events galore, meetings with people that I successfully avoided all summer, weekend travel, everyone's wedding, the safe assumption that I will mostly not get home from work at reasonable hours, and house guests that, quite understandably, would rather do just about anything than have a homemade meal on their trip to New York City.

What is not on the calendar: cooking; quiet moments for blogging.

Ahhh. So this must be what everyone else's schedule looks like.

For the next couple of months, I predict a shortage of posts about do-it-yourself kitchen nerdery (making your own ricotta, carbonating water at home) and a wealth of information about clever new ways to feed yourself when you wind up with no time, mental energy, ambition, nor creativity.

...which is an apt segue into last night's dinner.

The first step towards making last night's dinner was talking myself into actually cooking dinner at all, as opposed to ordering takeout or eating a meal consisting of slightly expired cheddar, a Corona Light, and chocolate chip cookies. It turned out to be the right decision. I made the full meal in under an hour (which included some faffing around with laundry, channel surfing, and the like) and here's what I cooked:



-Tomato salad with fennel and feta: A reminder that a quick dinner doesn't have to be unsightly. I sliced the fennel and tomatoes that came in my CSA box and topped them with leftover crumbled feta, olive oil, rice wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. I took two extra minutes to think about presentation and ended up with something that I might actually serve to guests.



-Braised arctic char with lemon rosemary vinaigrette: the marriage of two things you probably never think to do, namely 1) use a vinaigrette on a protein and 2) braise a fish. I highly recommend both. Somewhere along the line vinaigrettes got pigeon-holed into the salad category, but they are so, so much better than that. A vinaigrette can make a versatile sauce as well as a braising medium. How to do it: sear the fish skin side down in an oiled pan over medium heat for 3 minutes, take it out of the pan, add vinaigrette (a cup or less), replace the fish skin side up, and let it sit in the simmering vinaigrette for about three minutes. Keep spooning the liquid over the fish as it cooks. Last night I used lemon rosemary vinaigrette (minced lemon rind, minced rosemary, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, and olive oil) but any kind of vinaigrette will do. I hesitate to call this way of preparing fish "idiot proof," but it's as close as they come.

-Brown rice: Nothing fancy here, just simple brown rice with some salt and olive oil. Always keep brown rice on hand for just these types of occasions. It's healthy and heats up well the next day for leftovers.

BYOL: Barley, Chicken, And Summer Vegetable Salad

Let me start off by saying that barley is delightful. I feel that I need to say that right off the bat because you may have read the title of this post and thought: Barley! Blegh:

A) Only vegans, personal trainers, revolutionary war reenactors, and people weirdly obsessed with their digestion eat barley.
B) I'm positive I remember eating barley once and that it tasted like cardboard.
C) Yawn.
D) All of the above.

But really, barley is great. It's nuttier and more flavorful than most of the rice that you get at the supermarket, and certainly superior to store bought pasta (about which I've become incredibly snobbish in recent months). Barley has stupendous bite and just the right amount of heft (that is to say, it's substantial without sitting in your stomach like a brick), and it holds together in a sort of glistening, pearly, starchy suspension that makes it the perfect grain to mix in with protein and vegetables. Plus, unlike many sources of carbohydrates that wind up in the lunch bag (I'm looking at you, white bread), barley is full of fiber and vitamins and minerals.

This lunch salad took me about an hour to make (slightly more if you include time waiting for the barley to cook) and cost around $14 in ingredients. It can be served cold or warm, so it's an all-year-round kind of recipe.

A word about recipes: I'm including one for this dish because I really want you to make it and I have a feeling that if I just vaguely sketch out the out gist of it, you won't. But, generally speaking, I'm conflicted about handing out recipes. I think they give people a false sense that there's something magical and particular about a given preparation of a dish, as if you're assembling a model airplane and if you don't attach panel B-11 to hinge G-5 the whole thing will fall apart. Not so.

Still, having said that, it's precisely through following recipes and getting the hang of the basic principles of cooking that you'll learn to figure out your own variations, based on what you happen to have in the fridge or see at a farmer's market or are curious about adding in. Friends, just keep in mind that it doesn't have to be exactly 1 medium zucchini and if you don't have any chicken stock for the barley, you can use water. If you don't have parsley you can use chives, or even nothing at all. You get the picture.


Barley, Chicken, And Summer Vegetable Salad
Serves 5

1 cup pearl barley
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 - 1.5 lbs skinless boneless chicken breast, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 eggplant, cut into 1/2" dice
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2" dice
1 tomato, peeled, seeded, and diced
Extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped or torn
1/4 cup parsley leaves, chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper


1. In a medium saucepan, combine barley and stock. Bring to a low simmer, partially cover, and let simmer for 75 minutes.

2. In a medium saute pan, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat until it slides easily across the pan. Add chicken and cook, stirring regularly, until chicken is cooked through and slightly browned. Remove from pan with slotted spoon and set aside.

3. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to saute pan and then add onions and garlic, cooking until soft and translucent. Add zucchini, eggplant, salt, and pepper, and cook until soft. Add tomato and cook for 1-2 minutes, then return chicken to pan and cook for 1-2 minutes more. Add a splash of red wine vinegar, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen brown bits.

4. In a large bowl, combine barley and vegetable and chicken mixture with 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar. Mix in herbs, salt, and pepper.

In Which My Book Club Finishes Most of The Book, But All of the Malbec

Last night was my night to host book club. Our August selection was Isabelle Allende's The House of the Spirits, which presented me with the perfect excuse to cook Latin food. I made empanadas and salsa verde and bought Argentinian wines and Spanish cheeses (sadly, the aged cheese is not part of the Latin repertoire, but I thought this the closest alternative). I also made a raspberry tart -- outside of the theme as well, but we've had two book club members get engaged this month and it seemed like an appropriately dainty, feminine dessert to bake in celebration.

The book club: it's made up of seven of my closest friends and came into being -- embarrassingly -- a year and half ago after I watched The Jane Austen Book Club (on a plane! I swear it was on a plane, okay?). In moment of (perhaps Ambien-induced) sappiness and nostalgia for college lit seminars, I decided that I wanted to start reading decent books again on a regular basis and, lucky as I am to have such clever friends, to get together with them for discussion. I swore that this would not be your typical book club -- it would be about ideas! Critical reading! Challenging ourselves intellectually, as we once did! We started with Edith Wharton and have worked our way through everything from Jhumpa Lahiri to Michael Pollan to Evelyn Waugh over the course of the last 18 months. Generally, the format for our monthly meetings is as follows: we spend some period of time discussing the book (longer in the case of Atlas Shrugged, shorter in the case of The Elegance of the Hedgehog) and then gradually the conversation devolves towards such topics as whether or not white-on-cream is a good motif for a formal wedding reception, which juice cleanse is the most bearable, how this one's relationship with her mother-in-law is going, whether that one is finding her job any more fulfilling these days. We get pretty drunk for a weeknight. As I mentioned, I just finished hosting a meeting with themed refreshments and a double engagement celebration. In short, it is your typical book club, and I'm surprised to find myself totally okay with that.

The book: it's lushly written, fantastical and tragic in a way typical of Latin American literature from the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julia Alvarez. Perhaps a little dark for my taste but if you have a high tolerance for fictional misfortune, I recommend it. While only half the group had made it all the way through the book in time for last night, the verdict was strongly positive.

The empanadas: I am a white girl from Sleepy Hollow whose experience with South American cuisine is limited to dining at a couple of those all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse horror shows and traveling to Buenos Aires once, so I have absolutely no business making empanadas. Nonetheless my virgin effort at the savory pies was well received, which is to say that the group of us, most of whom are not ravenous in the face of doughy, beefy things, finished off nine empanadas over the course of the night. Afterwards The Viking gobbled up the remains and declared that "they tasted like a Cornish pasty." I have no idea what that means but it appears to have been a compliment.



The raspberry tart: Serviceable. The pistachio crust, which I made in accordance with the instructions despite my intuition that the ratio of butter to flour was off, was sure enough too buttery to be workable. Once I managed to practically spoon it into the tart shell it shrunk during its time in the oven, and cooked unevenly. But the flavor ended up okay in the end and it didn't crumble to dust when sliced as feared. All seemed to enjoy it, but then again it's hard to stray too far from the mark when you're using vanilla pastry cream and local raspberries.



The salsa verde: a monster hit, served with tortilla chips and the first thing to be completely polished off last night (aside from several bottles of wine, natch). Salsa verde (the Mexican kind) is typically made with tomatillos but this one substitutes zucchini. Once all the lime and cilantro is piled in you would never know it was zucchini you were tasting. I'm not sure whether this always counts as a good thing, but if you're dying to get rid of zucchini and/or can't find any tomatillos, then it does. Used as a dip, it's a great way to demonstrate a modicum of effort with guests without actually having to roll up your sleeves and make a real hors d'oeuvre. And in addition to going well with tortilla chips, it's also a great garnish for steak or fish.



The recipe is from this month's Bon Appetit. Don't feel that you need to pay particularly close attention to the quantities, because this is one of those recipes for which there is truly no need for precision.

Zucchini Salsa Verde

Makes about 2 cups

10 ounces zucchini (about 2 medium), trimmed, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup chopped white onion
5 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon chopped seeded jalapeño chiles
Grated peel of 1 lime
Kosher salt

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Serve immediately, or keep refrigerated for up to one week.

Long Live The Zucchini

It's the middle of August, and if you're a certain type of person -- the type who attends farmers markets and talks about "food systems" and reads five different cooking magazines each month -- it's a very special time for food. That's because corn, tomatoes, peaches, plums, and zucchini have hit the farm stands with a vengeance, and we can all finally stop pretending that we're satisfied with our local selection of dandelion greens, pole beans, baby lettuces, stinging nettles, and the like. The heavy-hitters are finally here. It's all very exciting.

This also means that right about now, Yuppie Foodies (Yoodies? No. Fuppies.) are working themselves into a lather over all this August produce (especially the heirloom tomatoes -- ohhh, do fuppies LOVE their heirloom tomatoes), feasting on it with an enthusiasm that borders on mania. This one can't help working into every conversation how she gets just the best sweet corn at a little roadside stand in Quogue; that one will tell you that her community garden is putting out so much zucchini that she can't give it away fast enough.

The moral of the story is that for this four week period when every farmer's market is bursting at the seams with such primo local offerings, those fruits and vegetables are king. Don't bother cooking with anything else.

Rewind to this past weekend, when we had seven friends over for Sunday dinner. It was meant to be a barbecue (in the Yankee sense of the word) but the weather had other ideas. So, we sent The Viking outside to cook strip steaks in the rain and sat inside drinking cold beers, eating bruschetta, and clumsily decanting a Double Magnum of 1996 Barberesco that The Viking had been given as a gift. There have been worse Sundays.

I wanted to incorporate lots of fresh, local produce into the dinner, and my rule of thumb is that the less you do to tamper with these things, the better.

I made a salad of roasted corn, tomato, avocado, and cilantro, simply dressed with a splash of lime juice.



I also did a second salad of thinly shaved zucchini (I shaved it on a mandolin, but you can do it with a vegetable peeler or knife), toasted pine nuts, and chopped basil, tossed in olive oil and lemon juice and topped with some fresh Parmesan (pictured at top).

For dessert, I cut up a quart of local plums, mixed them with brown sugar and cinnamon, rolled them up in tin foil and stuck them under the broiler. I served them, bubbling and juicy, with homemade pound cake and vanilla ice cream.

No Ifs, Ands, Or Halibuts

Meet Exhibit A: the red snapper that I bought for dinner with my brother and his wife this past weekend. Unbeknownst to me at the time, red snapper populations are at very low levels due to overfishing and it's best not to eat them. Note Red's expression here: bored, annoyed, put-upon. Watching, judging. All this, and I haven't even done a terrible job at grilling him yet.

The trouble with eating is that almost anything you put in your mouth these days is problematic in one way or another. If the food isn't unhealthy (artery-hardening; cancer-causing; diabetes-inducing), it's unethically grown (cruelly raised; brutally slaughtered), grown or processed in an environmentally harmful way (water-intensive; petroleum-guzzling; toxic in its byproducts), or unsustainably hunted (devastating to wild populations).

After I read all of Michael Pollan's books last year, it appeared that in order to eat with a clean conscience I should stick to a diet of barnacles, forest weeds, pond scum, and wild fish.

Now, a few new books on fish and fishing have hit the shelves and spawned (pun intended) interesting reviews by the likes of Sam Sifton and Elizabeth Kolbert in the New York Times and New Yorker respectively. To make a long story short, it appears that wild fish are off the "safe" list too.

I recommend reading the reviews for the full story, but here's the summary version:

1. The history of commercial fishery is one of progressively working our way though various fish species once thought too numerous to be harmed, fishing them to the brink of extinction, and then moving on to the next one.

2. At the current time we've all but obliterated wild populations of most any fish you can think to eat -- this is surprising given that fish are one of few things which Americans are encouraged to eat more of.

3. Farmed fish isn't necessarily a solution, because farmed fish are fed wild fish (is this not mind-bogglingly backward?), and the farms themselves often pollute natural fish populations/habitats.
Unfortunately none of the authors goes so far as to suggest a solution to this sad state of affairs, they just leave you feeling like a nasty, awful, greedy person for eating fish.

But a little additional research revealed that there are certain species that you can eat with a relatively guilt-free conscience. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium puts out a pocket-size Seafood Watch Guide (in fact, a separate guide for each region of the USA) to make seafood buying decisions easy (or, as easy as they can be given that you still need to distinguish between US-farmed and Central America-farmed tilapia). They also have a handy iPhone app.



Consulting my regional Seafood Watch Guide revealed that one of the things that I am encouraged to eat is wild Pacific halibut. This brings me to Exhibit B: pictured above is last night's dinner, a 6 ounce portion of broiled wild halibut, served with a homemade organic zucchini salsa verde and roasted organic new potatoes.

I'm pretty sure that we got through the meal without committing any major moral offenses.

Furthermore, the zucchini salsa verde is from the August issue of Bon Appetit and is highly recommended -- you can find the recipe here.

BYOL: Curried Chicken Salad

Today is a big day. It's the day that I pass my curried chicken salad recipe on to you.

Curried chicken salad has a special place in my heart because it was one of four foods that I made on loop from August 2006 to the spring of 2008. At the time I was making $24,000 -- per annum -- as an editorial assistant at a magazine. In order to live in Manhattan on that budget I had to impose WWII style rationing, alotting an average of just $10 a day for food and drink. New Yorkers can spend more than that each day on coffee alone. To meet my budget, soda, gum, desserts, storebought coffee, and bottled water were eliminated as needless extravagances; snacks were considered a special treat; dinner date invitations were accepted as a matter of principle. A girl needs to eat, as the saying goes. Indeed.

Most of my breakfasts, lunches, and dinners during that time were cooked from scratch. Aside from curried chicken salad, the other three foods I made consistently during this period were this dish (or variations thereof), pastel omelets, and a recipe that I have dubbed Poverty Chili. The Viking happens to love Poverty Chili, much in the same way that Marie Antoinette loved her Norman Hamlet.

I look back on this (admittedly, deeply bourgeois) flirtation-with-poverty period of life with particular fondness, choosing to celebrate my own plucky self-reliance and conveniently forget about the wide, soft safety net laid by parents who would never have let anything truly nasty happen to their only daughter.

In my memories, I was a Dickensian heroine in fingerless gloves, rifling through trash bins and peering from the cold into warm, glowing shop windows. I specifically remember walking by Pierre Marcolini Chocolates on Park Avenue one January day and having an immense, otherworldy, primeval craving for one of the $7 hot chocolates that they serve there. After some mental anguish I finally allowed myself to buy a cup, and still remember sipping it, warm, thick, and silky, as I made my way down 57th street in a state of elation.

Now that I have virtually free reign with the food and wine budget, sensory experiences on this level rarely happen for me. When they do, they tend to involve a lot more than a $7 hot chocolate. That's truly a shame, and ought to serve as a lesson about the value of a little deprivation.

Back to the curried chicken salad. When I was in college I frequently bought the dish from a cafe called Atticus, which is where I got the idea to make it for myself in the first place. Not only did I love the taste of it, but it embodied the Holy Trinity of poverty foods: cheap, healthy, and quick to prepare.



What makes this curried chicken salad recipe so special, you may ask? Okay, it's not exactly the formula for Coke, but I did play around with a lot of different curried chicken salad recipes before I came up with what I deem to be the perfect version. It's based off a recipe that I originally found in a 2002 issue of Gourmet.

Curried chicken salads tend to have fruit and/or nuts in them, most frequently grapes and walnuts. I immensely dislike mixing fruit with meat (besides apples with pork), plus grapes and walnuts are expensive, so they were eliminated right off the bat.



However, you'll need to keep a sweet element in the dressing to counterbalance the earthy, musky flavor of the curry powder. I love Cross & Blackwell's Major Grey's Chutney for this (partly for the way it tastes, mostly for the winsome association with English Colonialism), but you can substitute 1 teaspoon of honey if that's what you have on hand. The touch of sweetness brings an otherwise flat dressing to life.

Then there's the nutrition factor. I substitute fat free Greek yogurt (in all its improbable thickness and creaminess) and low fat mayonnaise in the place of full-fat mayo. I use only white meat chicken. Even the curry powder itself has health credentials -- curry is a spice combination made from turmeric, cumin, allspice, cinnamon, etc, many of which are known to boost immunity, decrease inflammation, and soothe the digestive system.



As for the recipe's ease and simplicity, that mainly comes down to how the chicken is prepared. Listen, simmering boneless, skinless chicken breasts in broth and water is not something they're going to teach you to do at the Cordon Bleu. I'm not going to vouch for the culinary merits, but I can tell you that it's a fuss-free way to cut out all the unpleasantness of a hot oven, dirty dishes, and having to trim and debone a chicken carcass.

Curried Chicken Salad
Adapted From Gourmet Magazine

Serves 5

2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 lb skinless boneless chicken breast
1/2 c. light mayonnaise
1/3 c. Greek yogurt
5 teaspoons curry powder
1 Tablespoon lime juice
1 -2 Tablespoons Major Gray's Chutney (to taste)
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
5 whole wheat pitas
Romaine lettuce (optional

1. Bring chicken broth and 4 cups water to a simmer.
2. Add chicken and simmer, uncovered, 6 minutes. Remove pan from heat and cover, then let stand until chicken is cooked through, about 15 minutes. Transfer chicken to a plate, cool and chop into 1/2-inch pieces.
3. Whisk together mayonnaise, yogurt, curry, lime juice, chutney, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.
4. Add chicken, and onion and stir gently to combine.
5. Each morning, cut a pita in half an stuff with chicken salad and lettuce.

Go Fish

Be honest: does fish scare you?

Because recently it's come to my attention that the majority of Americans are freaked out by the idea of cooking fish. In a meeting with the product development team from a national kitchen and home goods store, I was told that food items relating to fish preparation (spices, marinades, sauces, etc.) typically didn't sell well in their stores, which has led them to realize that their customers don't cook much fish at home. Later in the same week an editor at a large entertainment news weekly informed me that they do not print fish recipes as a matter of policy, having deemed fish to be inaccessible by their readership.

To me, this is bizarre and worrisome. You want to know what's actually difficult to cook well? Chicken. Lean cuts of pork. In fact, all leans cuts of all meat. You know what's easy? Fish.

I assume that you, my readers, represent a higher order of person than those scared off by our legless friends. But just in case any of you number among the fish-phobic, I'm here to help. Today I bring you a cheap, quick, easy - dare I say foolproof? - method for cooking fish.

Take the lowly tilapia. This does not number among my favorite fish. It sounds like a tropical disease and, cooked plain, it tastes of wet sock. As soon as it begins to cook, tilapia gets VERY flaky and begins to fall apart. Every time I have cooked it in a skillet it has come out the other end looking like a pile of mashed potatoes. I've never tried grilling it, but can assume that that's a non-starter.

HOWEVER...tilapia is cheap, one of the most environmentally sustainable fish out there, and very low in fat and calories, so we should stop being such snobs and learn how to cook it properly. Let's focus on the positive, shall we?



Think of tilapia as the fish equivalent of tofu: it may not have a lot of flavor on its own, but it soaks up the flavors around it. When cooked with the right mix of pungent ingredients, it can really be lovely.

Here is how I recommend you prepare it: wrap it in a tin foil pouch with assorted flavorful things and stick it under the broiler for 20-30 minutes. This creates hassle-free, flavor-packed steamed fish with very minimal cleanup (just ball up the tin foil and throw it away). It also pretty much eliminates any wafting fish odors that threaten to weasel their way into your carpets and fabrics, which is always a consideration when pan-roasting fish.



I made tilapia this way last night, and have included below a recipe for the preparation I used. I've named it Tilapia Marseillaise, since the ingredients I used were a mix of Provencal and North African flavors, ones that you generally find in the cuisine of Marseilles (think Bouillabaisse). Also, today is Bastille Day, so I felt that I should nod in the direction of France. Ergo, Tilapia Marseillaise.

But get creative here, people; no need to use the same ingredients as I did. This is an opportunity to comb through your refrigerator and cupboards and experiment. You will be amazed at how exciting it is when you successfully cook something that you thought up all by yourself. The only guideline here is to include strong herbs and/or spices (mine were a Moroccan spice blend called ras el hanout and saffron).



Tilapia Marseillaise
Serves 2

2 6-8 oz tilapia fillets
1.5 cups chopped tomatoes
2 pinches saffron
1 Tbsp. ras el hanout
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
6 sprigs thyme
2 cloves garlic, halved and crushed
2 large sheets tin foil

1. Place each fillet on its own sheet of tin foil, and sprinkle them with salt, pepper, ras el hanout, and saffron.
2. Squeeze lemon onto the fillets, coat with them olive oil, and place thyme, garlic, and tomatoes on top.
3. Wrap the tin foil sheets into pouches (folding the short ends inwards, and then rolling the long ends together like the top of a lunch bag).
4. Place them directly under broiler, seam side up, and let cook 20 - 30 minutes.
5. Unwrap and transfer to plates.

The Return Of BYOL

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
-Somerset Maugham

Bad habits: we all have them, privately hate them, ritualistically try to break them, almost always fail, and then doggedly try, try again. It's what makes us human. That, and opposable thumbs.

Since I'm in the habit (whether good or bad, only time will tell) of sharing things with you, here are some of my nasty practices:

-I do not make my bed
-I do not hang up wet towels after using them
-I pick my nails
-I leave doors/cabinets/drawers open
-I do not drink enough water
-I consume too much caffeine
-I floss irregularly
-I sometimes conform to the technical definition of a binge drinker ("consuming four or more drinks on a single occasion")
-I eat less than 2 hours before bedtime
-I do not bring my own lunch to work.

This last one is of particular concern. I like to think of myself as the kind of person who packs an economical, healthy lunch each day, but a Saturday morning audit of my most recent credit card statement revealed that things have really been slipping. Most days, I spend $10.02 at Le Pain Quotidien for some extremely mediocre vegan soup and a mint lemonade. That's over $50 per week, which is appalling. Something must be done.

Habit-breaking seems to happen in waves (see: New Years, Lent, Intervention), so this was all-around a weekend of resolutions and good intentions. I made the bed each morning, hung up my towels post-shower, flossed every night, and plunged head-first into the routine of making my own lunch again.

I got back in the swing of things with a simple, satisfying dish that was one of my old standbys: roast chicken + brown rice + vegetable of choice, tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs. This time, the guest stars were sauteed Swiss chard, basil, and parsley. The ingredients for 5 lunches cost around $20, and it took two hours to make (including cleanup).

It's important to start with a good chicken, not one of the deformed, big-breasted monsters sold by Butterball or Purdue. I don't want to go into all the details here, but suffice it to say that these are the chicken equivalent of Heidi Montag. An all-natural, free-range chicken (like the ones I get from Epicurian Farms) should be only 3-4 lbs in size and all of its body parts should be proportional.



For all of you in the 'set it and forget it' camp, I have some bad news regarding the roasting of a chicken: doing it well requires a fair bit of fussing and tending (I use Julia Child's method; I'm by no means saying it's definitive, but it's the best I've found so far).

First you must truss the bird (getting the chicken in a tight football shape helps it cook evenly and keeps the juices in; leaving the legs and wings to jangle around on their own in a hot oven really has a bad effect on the meat) and slather the whole thing with butter, salt, and pepper. Once it's in the oven, there's a lot of chicken calisthenics to tend to during the cooking process -- basting, turning, adjusting, etc. etc.

Here's a breakdown of how Miss J suggests doing things:

0:00 - 0:05 - Oven at 425, birdie breast side down.
0:05 - 0:10 - Move the bird onto its right side; baste.
0:10 - 0:15 - Move the bird onto its left side; baste.
0:15 - 0:35 - Turn oven down to 350; baste bird every 8 minutes.
0:35 - 0:55 - Move bird back onto right side; baste every 8 minutes.
0:55 - 1:10 - Turn the bird breast side up and cook until juices run clear, basting frequently.

I don't know that the timing of the turning and basting has to be all that precise, but the important thing is to only put the carcass breast side up for the last 15 minutes. This is because the breast meat tends to be the driest, and cooking breast side down lets the juices pool in and around that area of the bird.

While you're babysitting your roasting chicken you can prepare the rest of the dish. Start the brown rice according to the instructions on the bag (liquid, rice, simmer, you get the picture). Use a knob of butter, a pinch of salt, and stock instead of water if you have it on hand. Make about 6 servings.



Then it's time for the vegetables. Chop up a few cloves of garlic (I used spring garlic), and a couple of small shallots or red spring onions, and then saute them in a large skillet over medium heat in olive oil. Separate the stems from the leaves of the Swiss chard, chopping each separately. Add the chopped stems, salt, pepper, and a splash of water to the skillet; cook covered for 2-3 minutes. Add the leaves and a splash of water and cook covered until wilted, around 10 minutes. Set aside.

You should let the chicken rest until it cools and then take as much meat off the carcass as possible, cutting it into bite-sized pieces. Mix this in with the chard and brown rice, and add a tablespoon of olive oil and a a couple of tablespoons each of chopped basil and parsley to finish it off.

There you have it: two hours and $20 later, you've got five days worth of lunch tucked neatly in your fridge. Now that's a habit worth keeping.

Qu'est Que C'est Dans Ma Boite Du CSA? Kale, Swiss Chard, Lettuces, Radishes, Carrots, Spring Garlic, & Garlic Scapes

Another Wednesday, another batch of sad vegetables languishing in my crisper drawer. I didn't get a chance to do much cooking these past days (too much World Cup, too many Real Housewives reruns, too little culinary ambition), and as a result was again unable to make the most of my CSA delivery. Whimper.

I'm becoming slightly worried that this CSA produce is going to function much in the same way as my New Yorker subscription, which exists to sit around the house and make me feel bad about myself, reminding me of the person that I could be: someone who reads contemporary short fiction and doesn't let good food go to waste.

But, let's start with the high points.

Kale and carrots went into this gorgeous white bean & kale soup. It's Dan Barber's recipe (courtesy of Bon Appetit, available here), and I have to say that it seemed suspiciously healthy when I first encountered it. I worried that it might turn out to be one of those things that personal trainers and trophy wives eat and rave about but that really tastes like sawdust mixed with dishwater.



It does not. It's tangy and light and delicious. The key here is the Sherry vinegar added in at the end -- if you don't have Sherry vinegar on hand, do not skip this step. You can use white wine vinegar instead. Also, make sure to give the stock and white wine plenty of time to reduce down to make a concentrated broth, even if you exceed the timing marked in the recipe.

The Viking and I ate the soup with some disappointing store bought bread. The whole meal happened to be vegan, for those of you who go in for that sort of thing. For those that don't: I'd suggest frying bacon or pancetta in with the shallots at the beginning for a heartier soup.

The next night, I made a pasta dish from the Swiss chard, garlic scapes, and spring garlic, and served it with with pork cutlets in a cider-mustard sauce.



For the pasta dish, I separated the leaves and stems of the Swiss chard, chopping them separately. Then I sliced and sauteed garlic scapes and spring garlic (white parts only) in olive oil. I added in the sliced stems and a little water, letting them soften and then adding the leaves and little bit more water. Then I added almost 2 cups of chopped San Marzano tomatoes. That all got mixed together with a pound of penne and 1/2 cup Parmesan. As a side note, do yourself a favor and buy high quality pasta -- something other than Ronzoni, De Cecco, and Barilla if you can find it. It has more texture and flavor, and really makes all the difference.

I digress. I suppose I shouldn't spend any more effort trying to distract you from the issue at hand, which is of course the big bag of lettuces and radishes left in my fridge. I briefly considered eating a side salad with my double espresso this morning, but ultimately decided against it. They're still sitting in the fridge wilting right now, probably wishing that they were delivered to someone who really appreciated them.

The Redcoats Are Coming, And They Want Our Pudding Snacks

I spent last Friday night indulging in one of my all-time favorite activities: curling up on the couch alone in a warm, dark apartment, eating takeout, and watching bad TV. It's like being in the womb, except with better snacks. There I was with a steaming bowl of Pad Thai and a bottle of Rioja, contemplating my choice between Who Is Clark Rockefeller? and reruns of Designing Women. The night was off to a promising start.

While scrolling through the channels, I came across Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and thought I would give it a look-see.

The show’s premise: Jamie Oliver, of Naked Chef fame, travels to the outrageously obese town of Huntington, West Virginia, hell-bent on getting processed foods out of school cafeterias and teaching local families about proper nutrition.

Let me be clear: the whole thing is mortifying.

In a country chockablock with celebrity chefs, it's a foreigner who has managed to launch a massive national health campaign complete with prime time network TV coverage. Like Angelina Jolie decamping in Darfur or Wyclef Jean pulling babies out of the rubble in Haiti, America’s fatness has gotten to the point where it's the subject of international celebrity philanthropy. And Jamie Oliver is our Sally Struthers.

That he's English only adds insult to injury. The last time the Brits took part in a revolution in the US it didn't go so well for them, but it's 2010 and now we're taking nutritional advice from the people who brought the world "mushy peas," baked beans on toast, Marmite, and Branston Pickle.

But we're the people who market peanut butter in squeeze tubes as a snack, so hey, I guess we're not in a position to argue.

I can get past the idea of having our food systems reformed by an English guy, but watching my country's appalling eating habits immortilized on film is just beyond embarassing. I hope that this show never gets aired in Europe, or all the progress that Obama has made in convincing the rest of the Western world that we're really not so bad after all will be undone with the image of a 200-pound fourth grader eating Twinkies for breakfast.

Midway through the episode I saw, Jamie cruises around an elementary school lunchroom and examines what the kiddies have brought to eat from home. Among his findings are radioactive green fruit chews, some sort of Windex-hued jello, and bright pink flavored milk. These are colors that belong on an Italian teenager, not on a lunch tray. And the effects of this diet are nothing if not clear; in Huntington, the children are Santa-shaped, and the adults look like walruses.

It may have been the Rioja talking, but as I kept watching, Jamie and his winsome cockney inflection began to grow on me. I think that the folks in Huntington like him too. He sounds like the GEICO gecko as he finger-wags at teen moms, imparting such non-nonsense advice for reading food labels as “If it sounds like a NASA science lesson, don’t buy it; if it sounds like stuff you’d find in your nan’s pantry, then do.”

I still wish that the Marios and Emerils among us had gotten their heads out of their asses to do what Jamie came cross the pond for. But, he actually seems to be making some serious headway on school lunch reform, an issue about which much is said and little is done, so I'm inclined to support his efforts. If you are too, signing this petition is a good start:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition