I haven't posted in over a month

I've been busy - getting engaged, working full time and planning a wedding in 6 weeks (which is taking place this Saturday). It's not that I haven't been doing anything - in fact my sister and I did the Great West Village Gelato Tour (which we made up and photographed) and I've cooked pies and cookies and yet nothing has inspired me to actually get any words/photos typed into the blog....until tonight!

It's been a stressful couple of days - people canceling and uncanceling and canceling again, people wanting to bring more people and less people and more people to events, food allergies, family drama and a big hurricane that may or may not be blowing into Queens on my freaking wedding day.

I needed a break.

I threw myself into making Coq au Vin (basically, a red wine chicken stew) from Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking. I got it as a wedding present and this was the first recipe I tried. As I parboiled and peeled pearl onions, butchered a chicken and peeled potatoes, I felt better - my stress was still there under the surface, but I couldn't focus on it - there were things to chop, for god's sake! Thyme to be stripped, wine to be poured, lots of things for my brain to be distracted by.

And then the coolest moment of my cooking non-career happened:

As directed by Julia Child (I could hear that flutey voice of hers in my head), I dumped a quarter cup of cognac in the pan with the chicken and LIT IT ON FIRE with a fireplace starter. Flames shot up to the cupboard above immediately (totally freaking Zack out). I shook the pan until the flames subsided, giggling gleefully the entire time. My stress was on vacation - I lit the kitchen on fire! On purpose! And man, the chicken tasted good after that.

"I should have taken a picture!" I bemoaned to Zack later. "My readers would have loved to see that!"

"Sure," he said. "And maybe next time, you don't light alcohol on fire under a wooden cupboard."

In my defense, the cupboard did not catch on fire. He's such a worrier.

I am not doing well with this lately

Man, I am not doing as well keeping up with the blog as I thought I would be. I know that people are looking at it! But I can't seem to update it as much as I want to. I feel guilt like the Jewish Grandma that I never met would have laid on me (if she knew what a blog was).

So here's my contribution, may it spurn many more.

Chickpea Salad


It looks nice, right? I got the recipe here. But it wasn't a huge hit with my guests. I think that people don't like salads without leaves in them. Or maybe people just don't like salad.

Happy Birthday to Me!

So, as promised, I cooked a lot of food for my birthday. Some people think it's weird that I like to spend my birthday cooking food for other people, but it's my birthday and I'll do what I want.

So I cooked all this food...


And people ate it and fell asleep.


So now, we will go through these recipes and you could make it at home! Let's start with bruschetta.


Bruschetta with sauteed kale:

2 bunches kale
Butter
salt
pepper
Parmesan cheese
Bread of your choice (I used sourdough)
olive oil

1. Toast up some bread! I used my broiler because my oven is broken and I don't have a toaster. Drizzle the bread with some olive oil and set aside.

2. Wash your kale. Discard the stems and chop the leaves. Saute the leaves over high heat until they wilt. Add some butter (as much as you want - the more you add, the better it will taste, but the less healthy it will be. I'm going to shield you from the amount I used). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Put a little bit of kale on each piece of bread. Sprinkle some cheese on top.

In an ideal world, I'd put these in the oven and let the cheese melt a little. But my oven is broken. They still tasted good though. Right? Of course right.

From The Amateur Gourmet (not me)

This seemed like the perfect addition to my blog - a mini musical about cooking.



I'm cooking a lot this weekend, so prepare yourself for some new food!

I'm still here.....

Hey all you people out there! I'm still here. I am now working one job (not two!) and I have time to blog again! I'm sure the three readers I have left will be thrilled (I have more than three readers, right? Maybe? Bueller?).

Anyways, I'm back and I've got yet another recipe for duck legs. I love duck legs. Read about it here. Or here. Or here. This one comes from the New York Times (click for the recipe) and it involves rhubarb (this should tell you how long it's been since I've cooked anything - is rhubarb even still in season?).

Basically, you brown some duck legs and save the fat that comes off (in a glass jar! Zack yelled at me for saving hot duck fat in plastic Tupperware last time - apparently that can give you cancer. Whoops).

You blitz some onion, garlic, ginger, garam masala, vinegar, cayenne, turmeric, black pepper, salt and 1/4 cup water in the blender or food processor (check the link for exact amounts), then saute over medium heat with some of the leftover duck fat. Add some coconut milk and water, bring to a simmer and add your duck legs, a little bit of brown sugar and some chopped rhubarb (it's not just for pies)!


Bring it to a boil, turn the heat to low and simmer (covered) for an hour.


If you have any fresh cilantro or chives, add those on top - I so did not have those. People who sleep five hours a night don't have time to buy fresh herbs. Such is life.

But I'm back! I'm ready to blog and ready to sleep.

I don't have time to bake (or sleep)

I quite literally had one day off in the entire month of June...and it's already past. So I have no time to cook (or clean or watch tv) or most importantly, to blog. All my time is spent teaching, stage managing and riding the subway between 112th street and Union Square. So I don't really have anything to show on my blog. Plus, I can't even plug my show anymore because there is no point - we've sold out the entire run.

Luckily, I have friends who bake and send me pictures! See this nice pie that my friend Ellen baked?


She has a nicer pie plate than I do - I've got to work on that. She made my Strawberry Rhubarb pie recipe! I feel special. It looks really delicious.


I wish I had time to make more pie! Thanks, Ellen for giving me something to blog about. Hope the pie was good.

Finally, I think summer is on its way

Today is the first day of my CSA! That's Community Supported Agriculture for those of you who don't know. You can read about it here. Basically, I get a box full of farm fresh vegetables and fruit from a local farm every week for six months out of the year! It's awesome.

I just had to bake something right off. I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble. But that's not actually what I'm blogging about - I'm blogging about this pie that a made a few weeks ago (back when I didn't work 50 hours a week). But the crumble is very similar to this pie.

First of all, I had some pie dough lying around in the fridge. That's just the kind of girl I am. So that made this a lot easier. You could just buy pie dough if you wanted. Or you could make your own, like I did!


This is basically what I did. I chopped up some rhubarb -


- which is a vegetable, not a fruit. Did you know that? It's a very yummy vegetable. It goes well with pork too. But you probably don't want to put pork in your pie. So I mixed together some strawberries (all sliced and diced), one and a half Tbs flour, some lemon zest, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, 2 Tbs melted butter, some ground ginger (to taste) and 1/2 cup sugar along with the rhubarb.


Then I cut thin strips out of more pie dough and made a nice criss cross pattern. I had too much filling, so I made a few tiny pies too.


I baked it in my stupid broken oven at 300 degrees for about an hour (I really don't recommend this - stupid lousy oven) and then I got so annoyed that I put it in the broiler so that it would get brown on top.


It all turned out well though! I took it to a BBQ and everybody loved it. They all ignored the store bought pies that were there. Store bought pies cannot compete with my homemade goodness! I rule. And you can too! Make some pie. People like pie.