gougères + stuffed mushrooms

My in-laws had a cocktail party on Saturday night and in case you are new here, what this meant was that there was so much food, just the of plating of the appetizers took four people nearly an hour. (It also means that although there was much conversation and liveliness, I captured none of it. “Alex, what are they laughing at?” “He told a joke.” “What was it?” “It was funny.” “Thanks.”)

Recipe

hazelnut truffles

I confess that I roll my eyes a bit at the overhearing of some new truffle recipe. I don’t mean to over-simplify them — yes, fabulous chocolatiers from time to time find new ways to flavor, construct or adorn these decadent orbs of Awesome — but it all simmers down to the same thing: they’re just firm ganache, and ganache is just melted chocolate mixed with cream.

Recipe

parmesan black pepper biscotti

Short and sweet today, like me after my morning latte — bah! If you are feeling positively sugared out but you still have days of office baked goods and well-intentioned gift bags to go, I offer up this antidote: parmesan black-pepper biscotti. Oh, it’s indulgent but in a way that is precisely 180-degrees from the half of the coconut lemon bar I did not just scarf down. (It was homemade! From scratch! I have principles, you know.) Bright and sharp, accented with mini ka-pows of black pepper, it pairs so well with red wine, eating it without may leave you with a distinct Chianti-tinged longing. Or it would if you’re a wino like me.

Recipe

marzipan

Some people — like my husband who claims it “tastes like medicine,” — fail to see marzipan’s charms but you won’t find any of these misguided souls on my side of the family. My mother loves marzipan, and not those little food dye brushed animals and fruits; she does not wish to eat miniature sculptures, just rolls and rolls of marzipan swaddled in bittersweet chocolate.

Recipe

robert linxe’s chocolate tart

Over the years, I’ve made endless desserts for family gatherings: orange-chocolate bundt cakes, flourless chocolate cakes, chocolate caramel cheesecakes, bourbon-pumpkin cheesecakes, apple pies, peach pies, fruit crisps and crumbles, fresh fruit tarts, lemon bundts, but the only things that our families simply never shut up about in the days, months and years after are those that specialize in cocoa. Thus, for our Hanukah dinner I figured I’d cut out the middle men, so to speak — the flour, the baking powder, fruits and cheese — and just give people the big old pile of chocolate they want, namely in the form of Robert Linxe’s Chocolate Tart in Dorie Greenspan’s wonderful Paris Sweets.

Recipe

short ribs bourguignon

Living in a 660 square foot apartment makes in impossible for us to host Thanksgiving dinner, which is too bad because you just know I’ve got that meal all planned out in my head, from the cornbread-chorizo stuffing to the turkey recipe and root vegetable gratin, ready and waiting for the day we get a dining room table! (Also, a dining room. Details.) We also can’t host the major Jewish holidays or but when we asked for the less-popular or significant Hanukah, we were deemed acceptable hosts so long as we don’t poison anyone, so for the second year now, we’ve run with it.

Recipe

zucchini latkes

Despite the fact that it takes some kind of crazy to cook a separate meal while embedded in preparing a multi-course meal for a dinner party, yet another night of take-out — even from my beloved Kitchen Market — seemed unbearable last night, and seeing as it was the first night of Hanukah, it was only appropriate to make a batch of latkes. But tradition is so boring, isn’t it? Thank goodness for Food & Wine’s deliriously enticing latke-vodka party feature, pairing them with the wasabi cream topping, the suggested accompaniment for the sweet potato variety. Awesome, awesome. We skipped the caviar and whatnot on top as only one of us would have loved that and it was not the person standing over the stove, tra-la-la. It all went perfectly with a lightly-dressed napa cabbage salad and, you betcha, a hefty glass of wine.

Recipe

new york, i’m yours

Why Deb can’t come to the blog today

Dude, the errands, they never stop.
I got permission last week to stop wearing my sling, which is awesome since I kinda hadn’t been wearing it for some time before then. My shoulder is almost 100% better as are my ick-tastic bruises. Good news, right? Let’s celebrate! Let’s go chop some very difficult things! Meh. Now that there is no risk of permanent damage/deformity, no flagrant disobeying of the doctor’s orders, it’s so much less fun.
The discovery of Kitchen Market. Why should I cook? I could live on their black bean soup and perfect cumin-sherry vinaigrette green salads for the rest of my life, or at least this month.

Recipe

onion soup

[Psst! There’s a newer, less fussy and more focused version of this recipe over here.]

We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non-reactive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche’s preposterous mustache, which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead. — The Principles of Uncertainty