For dinner earlier this week: soba noodles, in the manner of Yotam Ottolenghi from his newest cookbook, Plenty, which is changing my life over here. Included are wakame (the seaweed), sesame, red chilies, tiny French breakfast radishes, and tons of farmers market herbs, such as something called “crinkle cress”, a miniscule cress that tastes of wasabi. Amazing stuff.
I got a wild hair today and took myself to the farmers market. It’s shocking how rarely I go; every single time I tell myself I should do it more often. I always come home with the most unusual and wonderful things (and no cash left).
Today, one vendor had the tiniest French breakfast radishes, most of them no longer than an inch. I decided to call their bluff and actually eat them for breakfast, along with some sliced baguette, anchovy-parsley-butter that was lurking in the depths of the fridge, and the mandatory fleur de sel. Not shown, but also appearing were soft-boiled eggs, fat wedges of avocado, and iced coffee.
Totally crushing on this tiny guy on the end:
And one more shot of the fleur de sel, to stress its importance:
A working breakfast on the dining-table-cum-office: eggs fried over panko, with some herb sauce goodness, bread for dipping in the runny yolks, and lots of coarse salt. Oh, and coffee.
I’ve been out of town for a bit, but now I’m back. More on that later; for now, here is a dinner (lightly inspired by David Chang) of green beans, seared in a pan until barely charred, and tossed with Korean chili paste. These are served over polenta and topped with blue cheese and black sesame seeds.
You ever make a batch of cookies, planning to blog about them? You ever bake them while fixing lunch, doing laundry, simmering two pots of stock, and thinking about where you have to be in a few hours and what you have to get done before leaving town the day after next? You ever turn off the timer without even thinking about what the timer means?
Yeah, me neither.
I forgot about this one; it’s from a few days ago. Pizza with a light smear of pesto, fresh sardines, ramps, capers, and finished with more herbs and Korean chili flakes. Is there nothing that gochugaru can’t make better?
No. No, there is not.
An hors d’oeuvre I served at my Kentucky Derby party this weekend: whole-wheat puff pastry, cut into bite-size vol au vents, and filled with pimento cheese (for the uninitiated or un-Southern: a spread of pimentos, sharp yellow cheddar, and mayonnaise). Lovely.
Edit: I substituted roasted red bell peppers here, because I can’t ever seem to find pimentos up here. Many people consider this unacceptable. I am not one of those people.
For dinner: homemade pasta flavored with white pepper, tossed with sautéed portobello, basil, pencil-thin scallions, and probably some other things that I now forget.
For dinner: a quick version of bibimbap. Here, a plate of brown rice is topped with Napa cabbage, which was sautéed with Korean chili paste (gochujang), scallions, garlic, and chives. Finishing the dish is a fried egg over very easy, for maximum runny egg yolk sauce.
Gochujang is my new best friend.
For dinner: a bowl of shiitake-stem broth with homemade noodles, chestnuts, fresh sage, and shavings of ricotta salata. I couldn’t get over the color of the broth, that robust, whiskey-hued amber. So fragrant, and so fitting for a cold early Spring night.