The Naptime Chef

Please, someone call the weatherman and ask him to do something about the temperature, perhaps bring it up to at least 60 degrees, with sun, by the weekend? Pretty please? Once again, last weekend we were forced to spend the majority of time indoors, corralling an extremely active toddler, due to the brutal cold outside. Those who have had to do this will agree with me, keeping a toddler happy indoors for long periods ain’t easy. It is on weekends like these I realize I have actually memorized the theme song to The Backyardigans and could sing it, backwards and forwards, in my sleep. The only upside I can find in this weather is that, during my daughter’s naptime on Sunday, I enjoy the chance to roll up my sleeves and cook a large, stick-to-your-ribs kind of meal. These meals usually take a little longer to make, but they are heavy, delicious, and purposely made in large portions so that the leftovers can be eaten for the first part of the week. Cooking a big meal on Sunday is a common strategy in many households. It is generally more convenient to cook when there is someone else around to help with the kids, and starting off the week with a fridge full of leftovers is hugely convenient come Monday evening at six o’clock. I am going to explain to you how I approach Sunday cooking in my first entry for the Sunday Dinner Series. Like my other series, Emergency Meals, I will write ongoing entries with ideas for Sunday dinners, I hope you find it helpful for your weekend cooking.

On this particular cold and drizzly Sunday I decided to make a large pot of short ribs, the epitome of cold weather food. My father gave me this recipe a few years ago after he made them for us while we were visiting my parents. As a quick aside, I should note that I grew up in a household where both of my parent’s are exceptional cooks. First of all, my father is a retired surgeon and I am pretty sure has better knife skills then any professional chef on television. Secondly, like any good scientist, he is very precise when he is following a recipe for the first time. Only after he has finished and tasted the final result of his first attempt will he sit down and give it an in-depth analysis. Then he will make notes for changes to try the next time he cooks the dish, often only making one change per attempt so as to test each “variable” (i.e. ingredient) independently. I often tease him that he approaches cooking like he did medical research. He concedes that this is true, but is quick to point out that, as a result, our whole family loves his recipes.

Luckily for me my father had already fully vetted this recipe before passing it on, so all I had to do was follow his instructions to a “T”. I read the recipe thoroughly before I began and then followed each step very carefully, trying to replicate his exacting standards. The preparation of the meal was actually quite simple. There was lots of chopping vegetables, browning meat and adding liquids to a dutch oven. It took time, but as long as I kept an eye on everything it was hard to mess up. My favorite part came after I had put the pot in the oven and gorgeous smells of herbs and broth wafted through the apartment for most of the afternoon. Once the sauce was thickened and the short ribs complete I prepared a simple green salad and spooned the broth and meat over fresh egg noodles. The result was delicious. The sauce was a perfectly balanced blend of red wine, beef and vegetables. It tasted like a french minestrone, the olives lending a delicious salty touch to counteract the sweetness of the carrots. The ribs were so tender that the meat shredded at the touch of the fork tines and simply melted away in my mouth with each bite. In fact, it was so tender that our daughter, who only has four teeth, excitedly ate several fistfuls of meat and noodles with no trouble whatsoever.

Like all good Sunday dinners I am pleased to note that the leftovers were extremely easy to keep and we were able to eat them for dinner on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I simply reheated the whole dutch oven in the stove and served the meal again, this time with mashed potatoes. Then, on Tuesday, we shredded the remaining meat and ate it on fresh slices of baguette with a side of cheese and a salad. In times like these I think it is also worth noting the smart economics of this meal. Short ribs are a relatively inexpensive cut of meat compared to, say, a tenderloin, and when prepared properly they can last you for at least three (!) dinners. So, thanks Dad, for sharing the recipe. And thank you also for all those winter weekends you had to keep me entertained indoors, I now have a whole new level of appreciation for your patience.

Winter is the time for Chicken Tortellini Soup. Every parent knows that it is impossible to make it through the winter without Mr. Common Cold paying a visit to your home. Sometimes Mr. Cold brings with him Mrs. Fever and Aunt Ear Infection, both unwelcome guests, but alas, Mr. Cold rarely travels alone. Two weeks ago this threesome visited my house and, frankly, it totally sucked. Not only did they sneak in during the night and meet up with my daughter, over the next few days they also paid a visit to me and my husband.

We, in turn, we paid visits to the pediatrician, prime care doctor, and pharmacy, entrusting them to cure the horrible headache, runny nose fog we were experiencing. As you all know, the last thing you want to do when you are feeling under the weather is hang out in the kitchen. You need to expend all of your energy taking care of the baby and trying to heal yourself. In my case, when I am sick, I nap when the baby naps, end of story. Thus, leaving me zero desire or time to cook. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, which is why I am now introducing Emergency Meal #2.

This meal fits the emergency, it is stuff like this Chicken Tortellini Soup that is quick, nutritious, warm and bubbly, all the right elements for sick-bed comfort food. Sure, it is quite easy to heat up canned soup, but in this case you are taking one tiny extra step by combining the ingredients yourself. This nominal effort produces a far superior taste to that of any canned soup I have ever tasted. To assemble the soup it really only takes the laziest of stirring for a few minutes here and there. Then you simply gaze at the pot while it simmers for a while – feel free to make yourself a cup of Lemon Zinger while you are waiting – and finally, voila, and you have a wholesome, healing meal for your family. Plus, this recipe is a big portion, it lasted us for two days – for both lunch and dinner.

The beauty of this Chicken Tortellini Soup is its flexibility, you can add almost any ingredients you want. For example, I prefer sun-dried tomato chicken sausage, but I’ve used regular sliced chicken breasts or even, in a pinch, pork sausage. Or, if you are a vegetarian feel free to use vegetable broth and omit the chicken altogether. I like to use fresh fluffy cheese tortellini, but my mother has used frozen ravioli and it served the same purpose. The flavors of this soup really come out during the last few minutes when it is simmering away. The broth thickens and yields a terrific simple, yet satisfying, tomato base with a clear herbaceous flavor. If you have access to fresh herbs I recommend using them in lieu of the italian seasoning. I usually serve this with bread and cheese, the classic soup accompaniments. Although, in this case I served it with a side of tissues followed by a dropper of cherry-flavored medicine for dessert. At least all is well that ends well, after four days with Mr. Cold, we kicked him and his entourage to the curb, and booked our tickets to Florida.

I come from a family of cookie fanatics, so it is no surprise to me that, as my baby book notes,”cookie” was one of my first words. From as far back as I can remember there were always fresh baked cookies in our house. My mother took great pride in her exceptional baking skills and was never one to rely on the back of chip bags for standard recipes, no sir. Instead, in our house, recipe collecting was a detailed, tightly controlled procedure. As children, my brother and I were taught to approach cookie tasting with an almost scientific mindset, like each recipe was our personal family experiment. It would start with Mom clipping a new recipe to try, following it to a “T”, and then setting out the fresh cookies for us to analyze. She would request that we taste them carefully, consider various details like texture and flavor with each bite, and then ask for a review of the recipe. We found this process was an excellent way to vet recipes, dozens were tossed and a select assortment were kept in a special file. Before Mom filed the keepers she would write notes on them like “crispy & thin,” or “shorten bake time” and “add chopped pecans?” Then there were the recipes with the note “So Good.” These were the recipes that, in our opinion, were the best of the best.

Luckily for my husband and daughter, I strongly believe in carrying on our family tradition of cookie baking and now possess a copy of my mother’s file. I will also proudly note that my daughter can pronounce “cookie” and it was among one of her first words. I am constantly supplying my household with fresh baked cookies and, in fact, am hard pressed to remember the last time I actually purchased a package of cookies at the grocery store. On occasion I will pick up some Tate’s Chocolate Chip, but that is usually in the case of extreme circumstances like when I return from a long trip, or am sick, or have broken both legs and can’t possibly stand in front of the oven. I am constantly on the hunt for new and exciting cookie variations – scouring the internet, clipping from magazines and swapping recipes with friends. However, when I am in the mood for something comforting and familiar, I pull an old favorite out of the file and happily get to work.

Nobody is exactly sure of the origin of our family’s molasses cookie recipe since Mom’s copy is written on a yellowed index card with the note “So Good. From magazine, 1982.” She remembers impulsively ripping out the magazine page, probably because of a sugar craving, while in the waiting room at the obstetrician’s office during her pregnancy with my younger brother. Mom has been making them ever since that year, and though we have sampled several other molasses cookie recipes, we always come back to these. They have a deep molasses flavor with a generous dose of spice which lend the cookies notes of toffee and gingersnap. These cookies are meant to be made small so they are like silver-dollar size bites of sugar and spice, the ideal companions for afternoon tea or coffee. Additionally, I find that they are perfect for serving to almost any group of people. I’ve made them into ice-cream sandwiches after summer barbecues, taken them to the office for meetings, and served them warm with big bowls of vanilla ice cream to dinner guests. Just this week I served them at playgroup and received several compliments. Whenever I am asked for the recipe I always smile inwardly, write it down on a recipe card and hand it over. In short, these cookies have stood the test of time for all the right reasons. I promise I would never give you a 26 year-old recipe if I didn’t think it was so good.

About nine years ago I met a really great guy. He was smart, sweet, handsome and funny, and I couldn’t stop gushing about him to all my family and friends. Our initial courtship activities included the usual trips to museums, walks in the park, coffee houses on Sunday morning, and restaurant reservations. Lots of reservations. I didn’t see the need to cook for him since Jean-George and Mr. Meyer were doing a bang-up job for us. I figured, if all went according to plan, we would probably just eat out for the rest of our natural lives. At the time it didn’t seem important that I impress him with my own, somewhat limited, culinary skills. However, I shared this strategy with my mother one night and she became very concerned, pointing out that I would indeed have to start cooking for him at some point. I didn’t quite understand what she was getting at, encouraging me to start feeding him, so the time came for her to teach me a very important life lesson. It is the lesson known as “The Way to a Man’s Heart is Through His Stomach.” It is a lesson I hold very dear to this day because, boy, she was right. I don’t think it is a coincidence that my parents have been happily married for over 35 years.

Armed with this valuable knowledge, it was clearly time for me to stop making reservations and start cooking. So, I began my newest adventure, learning how to cook. Really cook. Not the kind where I would add hot water to noodles, throw in some extra veggies and call it innovative. Mom started clipping and sending me recipes for simple but flavorful dishes like Roasted Lemon Chicken, Green Beans with Slivered Almonds, Vegetable Ratatouille, and Prosciutto wrapped Pork Tenderloin. These were all the right things to teach a budding cook how to build a “no-fail” recipe repertoire whilst romancing a man who loved to eat. Once I started this cooking quest our relationship went from “dating” to “serious couple” practically overnight. I was lucky that this man was a willing taste-tester. He always applauded my efforts and supported the idea of letting me try whatever recipe I had received in the mail that week. In the end I think that romancing his stomach was definitely the right strategy, to this day he is my biggest fan.

This lasagna was one of our all-time favorites right from the start. It also was a milestone of sorts for me because it was my first recipe adaptation. I received a recipe for lasagna with roasted mushrooms and pancetta. But I don’t really like mushrooms and I purchased prosciutto by accident. Thus, I made some substitutions and came up with a recipe for roasted eggplant and prosciutto lasagna. It was a little scary at first, substituting ingredients, but it also felt kind of rebellious and exciting. I made the dish with great care and served it to him with a little bit of trepidation. However, I needn’t have worried, the result was a wonderful, deeply flavored lasagna that left us full and happy. To this day, every time I make it we remark that the eggplant and prosciutto give the dish an excellent balance of salty and sweet. Plus, the herb and shallots mixture, which really give it that deep warm flavor, are all covered in a decadent, silky bechamel sauce. Everyone likes a good bechamel sauce. So, after all the restaurant reservations and cooking experiments, the rest is history. Following several more successes in the kitchen, including a particularly decadent chocolate souffle, we got married and had a baby. I guess, in the end, some couples will always have Paris, and we’ll always have a great lasagna.

In the past week the temperature in my neighborhood has averaged 22 degrees, without the wind chill. These days getting out of the house is a hideous affair involving wrestling a toddler into several layers of wool, zipping her into a fleece sleeping bag and enveloping the entire stroller in a plastic bubble, which has a small vent for air circulation. She is essentially rendered immobile by all of her layers and doesn’t understand why we won’t take her to Florida to visit her grandparents, toute suite! I am not keen on this weather whatsoever, and neither is she. The only shred of silver lining I can find at this time of year is that it is finally Meyer lemon season. The moment Meyer lemons first appear in the store I purchase as many as I can carry (or afford) and run to my kitchen to begin work.

To say I’m slightly enthusiastic about Meyer lemons is like saying Julia Child kind of liked french food, or Giada seems to enjoy cooking with mascarpone cheese. Since Meyer lemons are, in fact, a cross between a mandarin orange and regular lemon their juice is sweeter than that of a ho-hum regular lemon. When cooking they add a deeper, more intense flavor to any dish, making them perfect for squeezing over seafood, adding to baked goods, and even stirring into cocktails. Also, as an added bonus, when I am zesting away with the microplane, my kitchen becomes filled with a delicious uplifting lemon scent, conjuring up images of warm beaches, sunny days and fruity summer sangria.

Unfortunately, however, Meyer lemon season is criminally short, so it is important to act fast from when the first crate arrives in the store. So far this winter I’ve made pasta with Meyer lemon zest, cream fraiche, arugula and pine nuts, creamy Meyer lemon risotto, and Meyer lemon poundcake. I have squeezed it over fish, chicken and even added the zest to a herb salt I made for a potato dish. This week, during naptime, I whipped up a batch of Lemon Sables. These are the most delicious, crumbly, sandy lemon cookies I have ever tasted. The lemon flavor is distinct but delicate and couples nicely with the rich butter content and sugar coating. The best part is that these cookies get better with age, the flavor deepening with each day you keep them in the container. These cookies do a lot for my frame of mind as well. Their bright citrus flavor continually makes me “think summer”, helping me look forward to the day when we can shed our winter layers, put away the fleece and wave good-bye to frostbite. At this point, those days can’t come soon enough. Pass the sangria, please.

In the summer of 2007 I was kicking off the third trimester of my pregnancy. I was sporting a huge tummy, a nice outie belly button and a kick-ass set of cankles. I was definitely not your glamorous yummy mummy to-be, but I didn’t care, I was pretty darn excited. One of the many joys of pregnancy, in addition to how beautiful you feel (not!), is that all sorts of people volunteer to celebrate your impending parenthood with parties commonly known as baby showers. I was very fortunate that several friends and family members decided to get in on the party-throwing action. The gist of each event was a gathering of good friends, the giving of gifts to the baby-to-be, lots of rubbing my belly and many platters of delicious food.

Eating good food is a great form of pleasure for me and pregnancy only exacerbated this pleasure. For those joyous nine months I could not get enough food. Could. Not. Get. Enough. I know it was a minor miracle that I never had a whiff of nausea, not once. This was a good thing because, oh man, I could pack it in like a truck driver. I starting eating around week 6 of my pregnancy and steadily consumed half of Manhattan’s food offerings for eight straight months. And then, after 40 weeks and 3 days of pregnancy, I delivered quite a large baby, 9lbs 9oz to be exact. People ohhhhed and ahhhed over her round cheeks and thick thighs, exclaiming “What a big baby!” but I can’t say I was surprised.

This vegetable pie was served at my baby shower on Martha’s Vineyard. The minute I got home from this event I called the hostess, to thank her for the car seat, of course, and politely beg for this recipe. I loved it at first bite because it is really a cross between a quiche and a pie. It is egg-y, cheese-y and full of vegetables which are all baked into a wonderful buttery pie crust. It serves as a nice departure from the egg “strata-sphere”, as my brother and I used to refer to our mother’s Sunday brunch entertaining regimen. The beauty of it is that you can really substitute any vegetables you want as long as you keep the ratio of eggs, cheese and cream constant. It has become one of my go-to recipes for brunch when we entertain at home. It is fun to change up the flavors seasonly, I tend to use whatever vegetables are fresh at the farmer’s market.

I wish I was napping in Spain right now. Don’t you? I would be taking a nice long siesta mid-day in a little inn somewhere between Salamanca and Segovia. Which is, incidentally, where this recipe originated. I found this recipe while reading the book “Spain, A Culinary Road Trip” which is written to accompany my most recent favorite foodie show, Spain…On The Road Again. I just adore watching almost any TV show about food and this is definitely one of my top three favorite shows of all time. While watching Mario, Gwyneth, Mark and Claudia literally eat their way through Spain I felt like I was right there with them savoring every single glass of cava, slice of jamon and morning churro. At one point during the series, when they were eating fresh paella by the sea, I think my mouth literally started to water. Sadly, like all good TV, this series came to an end in December. However, fortunately for me, Mario & Co. had the foresight to publish this book so that their road trip could live on for all of us.

I chose to make this particular soup because it is the perfect foil for cold winter weather. It is served hot, spiked with a sweet smoky paprika and has a delicate base of chicken broth with notes of garlic. As Mario writes, this soup is “Really simple, really satisfying, really good.” I couldn’t agree more. Enjoy!
Note: I found the Hot Pimenton at Dean & Deluca, but most specialty stores should carry it.