Like pretty much everyone in food media*, I am obsessed with Alison Roman’s newish cookbook, Dining In. Part of the hype, I suspect, comes from her pedigree: Prior to writing her book, she was an editor at Bon Appétit and then Buzzfeed, dreaming up exciting, not-too-fussy recipes like slow-roasted salmon with crispy greens, and rhubarb almond cake. She’s also written for super-under-the-radar publications like The New York Times and Cherry Bombe, penned an excellent, zine-like, mini-cookbook about lemons for Short Stack Editions, and worked in the kitchens at Momofuku Milk Bar. (I’m missing a couple biographical details here, but you get the gist.) Dining In may be her first cookbook, but she has ample experience to back it up.
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paleo
Roasted Shrimp With Romesco Sauce
As clutter-haters and city-dwellers, Andrew and I do our best to not accumulate many possessions. Two notable exceptions: my cookbook collection, which is currently overflowing into a file cabinet, under the bed, and pretty much everywhere else I can stash them, and Andrew’s massive box of cords, cables, and other electronic doodads (I thought I was pretty clever when I coined the term, “corder” as in cord hoarder).
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Spicy Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Turnips, and Onion With Bacon
Try as I do to resist my urges, I tend to be a bit of a backseat driver when Andrew is cooking. While a desire (or really, an impulse) to tweak and refine are useful qualities to have when testing or developing recipes, it’s hard, verging on impossible to shut off, and is perhaps less of an endearing quality when directed towards one’s significant other. (Sorry, Andrew!) Still, every once in a while, when he hasn’t banished me from our kitchen, our minds and palates come together to create something quite wonderful, like this spicy brussels sprouts, turnip, bacon, and onion situation.
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Marinated Bell Peppers With Pine Nuts and Herbs
Strategic cooking is never a bad idea, but it’s particularly useful during these summer months, when the days are long and hot, park picnics and beaches are beckoning, and social calendars are full. In other words, now is the time to maximize your efforts in the kitchen by embracing make-ahead recipes, like these super-versatile marinated bell peppers. Flavor-packed and tender, they’re an excellent addition to sandwiches (try pairing them with pesto, prosciutto, mozzarella, and focaccia), antipasti platters, or as a stand-alone side for some grilled steak or chicken. They also make for a vegetable-packed, Whole30-friendly breakfast, when topped with a couple fried or poached eggs.
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Prosciutto-Wrapped Almond-Stuffed Dates
At first, I felt a bit silly sharing this three-ingredient snack with y’all. Do you really need a recipe for an appetizer whose name (prosciutto-wrapped almond-stuffed dates) more or less explains how it’s made? Is it really that inventive? Possibly not, but then, I realized, it’d be a shame to keep something so simple and delicious to myself, and so here we are.
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Skirt Steak With Spicy Broccolini and Lemon Mayo
Blood oranges, bitter greens, olives, zippy Etna wines, and marzipan: these are a few of the things I expected to devour in Sicily (check, check, check, check, and check!). What I (perhaps foolishly) didn’t quite foresee was how different my day to day eating would be. With a landscape dominated by wheat, many meals are anchored around pasta and bread. (Pastries, cakes, and cookies are also omnipresent.) A delicious shock, but still, a shock, to the system for someone who typically eats a very-vegetable-centric, lower-carb, high-fat diet.
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Sicilian Blood Orange, Onion, and Olive Salad
Apologies for going dark here recently, but I promise it has been for a good reason. I’m currently writing from Valledolmo, a small village in central Sicily, about an hour and a half away from Palermo, where I arrived a little over three weeks ago to attend Cook the Farm, a 9-week culinary and horticulture program at the Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school. These past few weeks I’ve been busy settling in, cooking, gardening, eating, and learning all about this wonderfully-crazy island and its culture. Though I took a bit of an (unintentional) break from blogging, I have lots of good things coming your way. In the weeks before I left, I was in my kitchen near-round-the-clock testing, tasting, and photographing recipes to share while I’m gone, and will also be updating my Instagram with my adventures.
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Braised Pearl Onions With Pancetta
With their papery skins and mini-me size, pearl onions are some of the most darling vegetables at the market. That said, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll never buy them fresh, and wouldn’t suggest you do so either. Why? Because I like you, and because I suspect you have far better things to do with your time than to painstakingly peel a pound plus of these teeny-tiny alliums, when a perfectly good substitute is in the freezer aisle. Thawed and drained, frozen pearl onions work like a charm in this and many other cooked applications.
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Garam Masala Chicken
While in Paris, Andrew and I were fortunate to be staying in an apartment with a fabulous kitchen; so while we ate out often — if our trip had a hashtag it would’ve been #getfatgobroke — I was able to take advantage of the beautiful markets as well. During our time there, I fell deeply in love with La Grande Épicerie, a specialty foods store of epic proportions (think Eataly, without the Italian food focus). For the most part, the experience of grocery shopping wasn’t much different from shopping stateside — an apple is an apple, no matter that the sign reads “pomme” — but I had a few misunderstandings along the way. A few takeaways: kale is ridiculously, stupid expensive in Paris; ordering meat at the butcher counter can be a very funny experience when your language skills are limited; and that biologique (French for organic) chicken might just be a crazy-looking black chicken if you don’t pay attention to the packaging.
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Cauliflower Fried Rice With Kale and Kimchi
This past spring, I had the pleasure of working with SELF.com’s team on a series of step-by-step recipe videos. As a food stylist, my role was primarily to bring these dishes to life in an enticing manner, but a few involved a bit of recipe development work, as with the site’s take on cauliflower rice. At the time I was a bit of a cauliflower rice skeptic, but eager to try out this low-carb alternative. Because I love Korean food, and also had an inkling that cauliflower’s strong flavor would play well with other bold ingredients, I got to work coming up with a version that paired the grated cruciferous vegetable with kimchi, soy sauce, scallions, sesame seeds, and a runny-yolked poached egg.
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