Now that we’re in to full-on Autumn, I made one of my favorite Fall dishes for a few of our friends: Beef Bourguignonne. I’m not going to get into that here, but I did want to pass on the terrific appetizer recipe I got from the guy at the cheese counter:
Marinate some pear slices in balsamic vinegar overnight. Next day, caramelize sliced shallots in a saucepan in some butter. Add the pears and saute until slightly soft. Serve on a platter with toasted slices of baguette and a wedge of triple crème cheese. Have guests put some of the cheese on the baguette then top with the pears.
This turned out really good…

When you have a three year old, you can’t always socialize the way you used to. One of my solutions is having friends over for lunch. This week our dear friend Spider’s niece Renee is visiting. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a babysitter for the dinnah pahtee Spider is throwing for her tonight, so I had Spider and Renee over for lunch instead.
I started with a shaved asparagus salad. So easy, fresh and delicious; wash asparagus and snap the tough end off, then take a vegetable peeler and shave off long thin strips of asparagus. Put on a plate, drizzle with olive oil, squeeze some lemon juice over and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Then take the vegetable peeler and shave a few chips and strip off a block of parmesan cheese.
For the main course, I peeled then thinly sliced raw beets with a mandoline. I melted butter in a saute pan then added the beet slices. I sauteed gently until the beets were soft, but still with a bit of crunch. Then I removed the beets from the pan and quickly cooked some shrimp in the same pan. I then deglazed the pan with sherry vinegar, adding that sauce to the beets and shrimp. A little fresh dill on the plate and you’re done.

The weather started getting cooler last week, and that got me in the mood for soup. So Friday night, I made one of my favorites, and threw in a few twists.Roasted Butternut Squash SoupPreheat the oven to 425FSauté about 1/4 C diced pancetta or bacon in a big ovenproof pot. When it starts to brown, add a diced shallot and sauté until translucent. Throw a little olive oil in there too. Cut half a trimmed butternut squash into chunks—about an inch a piece. Sauté the squash along with the bacon and shallots, add salt and pepper and a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes. Stirring frequently, sauté until the squash starts to turn brown around the edges.Put the pot in the oven and roast for 15 minutes, stirring once or twice.Take the pot out of the oven and put back on the stovetop over medium heat. Add four C liquid—I do half water and half chicken stock. I keep Parmesan rinds in my freezer—throw in a good size rind and simmer the soup until the squash is soft enough to mash. Remove the rind and puree the soup with an immersion blender.

This past Monday was Labor Day. Our dear friend Patty was in town from New York and we had a little bbq. It was a very low-key affair, just a few friends, some burgers, chips, spontaneous drawing with crayons and markers. I made my standard grilled vegetables, and also a new salad for me. I had a taste for something cous-cous-y-chick-pea-y, so I threw this together:

Measure 2/3 C of cous cous and cook according to package directions. Once cooked add the following:

1 can chickpeas, drained; 3 or 4 scallions, chopped; a generous handful and a half of radishes, cut into thin half-circles; half a seedless cucumber, diced, 1/2 C crumbled feta; add dressing

Lemon-cumin dressing: put the juice of about half a lemon in a bowl; add a teaspoon or so of red wine vinegar; smash and peel a big garlic clove and add to the lemon juice mixture; add a generous amount of ground cumin—2-3 T; sprinkle about a teaspoon of coarse salt over and let sit for twenty minutes or so. Remove the garlic clove and stream in some olive oil (not sure how much—maybe a third of a cup?) whisk.

Last night we had a dinner party (pronounced “dinnah pahtee” to make it feel extra fancy). I realized recently that this is one of my top joy-bringing activities. It’s worth remembering. Any time depression threatens, throwing a dinner party will almost always pull me right out.

It was a return-the-favor dinner party. About a month ago, Roger and David had us over for a lovely dinner in their stellar garden. We met them through our dear friend Spider. They live next door to her and own both her building and theirs, and the back garden takes up both lots. David is an Iowa farm boy by birth and apparently has gardening in his DNA. Their little bit of paradise is so lush you almost forget you’re in the city. Roger is a wonderful cook and made us a meat pie sort of thing—rich, lightly spicy with a crust that was almost sweet. I’ve never had anything like it and consider it one of the best meals I’ve ever had.

So the stakes were pretty high. Since I can’t even come close to making anything as spectacular as that meat pie, I decided to go simple: grilled steaks.

Inspiration came from a new cookbook I just got. I love cookbooks and really need to do a separate post about some of my favorites sometime. Anyway, this one is called “Good Food to Share,” and is written by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan (that’s a lot of names) who also writes Apartment Therapy’s food blog, TheKitchn.com.

Here’s the menu:

For cocktail hour we had martinis and and a fig/nut/cheese appetizer.

For dinner we had grilled steaks with a fresh herb sauce called charmoula, and some carrots roasted with fennel on the side. I served a nice bottle of Bordeaux that my wine connoisseur friend Lih Min gave me for my birthday a few months ago.

For dessert I served scoops of some honey-ginger ice cream I picked up from our local ice cream parlor and topped each with a wedge of dark chocolate.

We ate on the porch and the weather was perfect. Petit Monsieur entertained us during cocktail hour with a puppet show of Halloween characters. A fine time was had by all!

The recipes:

Fig appetizer—quarter figs and smash them lightly with the broad side of a chef’s knife. Serve on a platter with a soft bleu cheese and caramelized walnuts. Instruct guests to spread a little cheese on a fig slice, then top with a nut.

To make the caramelized walnuts: Combine 1T honey and 1T water in a small frying pan with a pinch of sea salt over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and add 1/2 C walnut halves. Stir continuously until liquid evaporates, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and spread into a single layer to cool. Once cooled, transfer to a rimmed baking sheet in a single layer, breaking up any clusters as you go. Toast in a 350F oven until golden brown, 8-10 minutes. Cool.

Grilled steaks with charmoula—grill boneless ribeye steaks, searing first on a very hot grill, then cooking until internal temperature reaches 125F for medium-rare. Let steaks rest under aluminum foil for ten minutes. Slice thinly. Serve with a spoonful of charmoula on the side, putting the extra in a small bowl at the table to pass as desired.

To make the charmoula: put the following ingredients in a food processor or blender and blend until the herbs are finely chopped and the sauce is well-blended; 1 C loosely packed fresh parsley leaves and tender stems, 2 C loosely packed cilantro leaves and tender stems, 1/3 C olive oil, 2 T fresh lemon juice, 4 coarsely chopped garlic cloves, 2 t peeled and grated fresh ginger, 1 t smoked paprika, 1 t ground cumin, 1/2 t sea salt, 1/4 t ground turmeric, pinch of cayenne pepper

Carrots roasted with fennel: put a pound to a pound-and-a-half of baby carrots onto a rimmed baking sheet (regular carrots cut into sticks would be fine too. I actually used some very cool purple and yellow carrots I found at the farmer’s market the other day) toss with 3 T olive oil, 3 t fennel seeds and salt and pepper. Bake in a 425F oven for 25 minutes.

To up the flavor, I lightly toasted the fennel seeds first then crushed them slightly with a mortar and pestle.

As the mom of a three-year-old, my options for socializing are more limited than they used to be. So one thing I do is have friends over for lunch. Petite Monsieur enjoys the company, and so do I. And I get to cook lunch, which is one of my favorite meals to make. It’s so wide open. It could be breakfast-y, it could be dinner-y, it could be leftover-y, and no one seems to mind. Lunch is sort of void of expectations in that way, and thus a lot of fun to concoct.

Today, inspiration and a visit from my friend Leslie (who I call our dog Lana’s Fairy Dogmother for the many kindnesses she has shown her over the years) conspired to create Dream Lunch.  

Here’s what we had:

A poached egg on a piece of toast on a bed of lentils dressed in a mustard vinaigrette with roasted asparagus on the side.

Beyond dreamy.

Details:

THE LENTILS

Leftover from dinner the other night. Recipe: Put one cup of lentils and four cups of water in a big saucepan. Bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cook until lentils tender, about twenty minutes. Drain. Whisk up the following and use it to dress the lentils: 3 T olive oil, 2 t dijon mustard, 2 T red wine vinegar, s&p

THE ASPARAGUS

Roasted. I did a big batch (about a pound) this morning, served part with lunch and will have the rest with dinner tonight. Pre-heat the oven to 425F. Wash asparagus and snap off the tough ends. Put on a piece of foil on a baking pan. Drizzle lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with kosher salt, fresh black pepper and about 2 cloves of minced garlic. Roll them around on the pan to coat in the oil and seasonings. Roast for 8-10 minutes. Squeeze with a little lemon juice when they get out.

THE TOAST

I lightly toasted a piece of white Tuscan bread per serving

THE EGG

Ouef. I am NOT confident at poaching eggs, but Fairy Dogmother helped me, and all was well. Brought about an inch and a half of water with a splash of white vinegar to a boil, then lowered the heat to more of a simmer. Cracked the egg (one at a time) into a little dish. Stirred the simmering water to get a little centrifugal force going, then slipped the egg into the swirling water. Cooked for a minute or two, corralling the egg whites around the yolk as you go. Took it out with a slotted spoon.

ASSEMBLY

In the meantime, I’d spread a nice big circle of the lentils on the plate and placed the asparagus on the side. I put a piece of toast on top of the lentils, then set the poached egg on top of that, sprinkling a little fleur de sel on top.

THE DREAM

Then we sat down to eat. Cutting into the soft yolk, it spilled yellow all over the crisp toast, the greenish-brown lentils and the asparagus. Gooey, crispy, sweet, earthy and bright all at the same time. 

I think I could eat this every day.

So I got all experimental tonight, and it didn’t work. I have some lamb chops I’ve been wanting to grill, so I got them out of the freezer, poked around the internet and some of my cookbooks for inspiration and decided to make a lime-mint-sort of gremolata. After a good half hour of mincing and sniffing and making notes, I gave up. It tasted awful. I’m glad I tried but I’m going to look for a different recipe—one that’s actually been tested by someone else this time—and come back at the lamb chops Thursday night (tomorrow night will probably be après-Farmer’s-Market at T’s).

Thankfully, I had steak in the freezer too. Grilled it up, sliced it and put it on a bed of chopped Romaine with some radicchio, carrots, scallions, tomatoes, avocado and blue cheese. Dressed in a garlic-infused red wine vinegar vinaigrette.