Arsip Tag: red

date, feta and red cabbage salad – smitten kitchen

Dipublikasi pada Desember 10, 2023 oleh pbnbigesdi

Sara Jenkins is famous for making the Italian roasted pork street food known as porchetta trendy in New York. She’s also known for her way with pasta (and has a new book out with her famed food writer mom celebrating it). She’s had turns at a handful of great Italian restaurants in New York, earning them stars and accolades and has written at length for The Atlantic about Italian food. And almost all I ever want to talk about here? Her salads.


what we'll use
very thinly sliced red cabbage

I can’t help it — they’re riveting, and while I will forever love roasted pork and pasta, in my life, nothing fills the inspiration deficit that accumulates from the daily repetition of cooking that real life requires like chefs that have a way with vegetables — ways we can take back home and eat food we’re more excited about. It began the first time we went to Porsena nearly 5 years ago, when I fell in love with a green bean salad busy with pickled onions, fried almonds, thinly sliced fennel and celery, which I’m of the opinion never gets enough praise. Crunchy and bright, I became obsessed and made it again and again at home. Last week, we were back for an early Sunday night dinner with our menagerie of mini-humans (fine, just two, but it feels like a lot!) and the giant shells with kale pesto were excellent, my son’s thousand-layer deeply broiled duck lasagna was otherworldly, my husband has nothing but good things to say about the linguine with clams, but the only thing I spent the next week babbling on about was the salad I had with dates, feta and radicchio.

bulgarian feta, our favorite

I also spent the next week telling myself it was too basic, too boring to warrant mention, which is kind of a shame when these simple ingredients that I already had in the kitchen are so spectacularly good together, the perfect balancing act of sweet and salty on crunchy salad. At the restaurant, they use an heirloom radicchio with tender pink leaves that is absolutely nothing like the bitter-as-lemon-peel heads we get at the store, so I replaced it with red cabbage, which is cheap, hearty and holds up well if you’re trying to plan ahead for that big holiday this month. Everything else was guesswork: I detected a lot of olive oil, a bit of lime juice and Aleppo pepper at the restaurant, but couldn’t resist adding two more things at home, very well toasted sesame seeds and a handful of parsley to finish. You could add even more stuff, I don’t think thinly shaved red onion, a splash of pomegranate molasses or even chickpeas would be unwelcome here, but the good news is that you don’t need them to make a really gorgeous November salad that I’m angling to put on the Thanksgiving table this year, and uh, in my belly at lunchtime today.

date, feta and red cabbage salad

One year ago: Pickled Cabbage Salad
Two years ago: Perfect Uncluttered Chicken Stock
Three years ago: Granola-Crusted Nuts
Four years ago: Baked Pumpkin and Sour Cream Puddings
Five years ago: Upside-Down Cranberry Cake
Six years ago: Raisin-Studded Apple Bread Pudding
Seven years ago: Cottage Cheese Pancakes, Cauliflower Salad with Green Olives and Capers and Onion Tart with Mustard and Fennel
Eight years ago: Roasted Stuffed Onions, Simplest Apple Tart and Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
Nine years ago: Indian-Spiced Vegetable Fritters, Dreamy Cream Scones and Shrimp Cocktail

And for the other side of the world:
Six Months Ago: Mushrooms and Greens with Toast
1.5 Years Ago: Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp Bars
2.5 Years Ago: Japanese Vegetable Pancakes
3.5 Years Ago: Warm, Crisp and A Little Melty Salad Croutons
4.5 Years Ago: Leek Toasts with Blue Cheese

Date, Feta and Red Cabbage Salad

If you don’t like your cabbage too crunchy, dressing it as directed and letting it rest in the salad bowl for a while before adding the other ingredients will soften and wilt it a bit.

Serves 4 to 6 as a side

1 to 1 1/4 pounds red cabbage (1 small head or half of a large one), sliced very thin
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lime or lemon juice (I use lime)
Salt and red pepper flakes (I used the mild Aleppo variety) to taste
About 1/2 cup pitted dates, coarsely chopped or sliced
4 ounces feta, crumbled into chunks
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons well-toasted sesame seeds

Toss cabbage with olive oil and first tablespoons of lime juice, plus salt and pepper, coating leaves evenly. Taste and add more lime juice, salt and pepper to taste. I do this a few times, making sure I really get this base well seasoned because it will be hard to do it as well later.

Toss dressed cabbage gently with half of dates and feta. Sprinkle with remaining dates, then feta, then parsley and sesame seeds. Dig in.

Do ahead: The whole salad can sit assembled for at least an hour, if not longer in the fridge. Mine is going strong on the second day. You can also prepare the parts separately (feta, chopped dates, sliced cabbage) to assemble right before serving, if you’re planning ahead for Thanksgiving or a dinner party.

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the red and black – smitten kitchen

Dipublikasi pada November 29, 2023 oleh pbnbigesdi

For many Junes, this was my favorite cocktail. Yes, I realize that I sound particularly like a weird food writer person and not a person who lives among other people because most normal, sane people do not have a favorite cocktail for each month of the year, even if you agree with me — you do, right? –that a Perfect Manhattan is the ideal way to warm up on the first cold September day and a Porch Swing is the most refreshing way to endure a sultry July afternoon, but hear me out: this is squarely June or the weeks leading up to it because it’s a celebration of strawberries, so we might as well wait until they’re overripe the moment you turn your head and muddle them in a glass.


what you'll need, plus some limes and ice

The core flavor comes from fresh strawberries, black pepper, and lime, a combination I find so likable, I turned it into a popsicle, but at times when you’re not expected to share with kids, you should definitely add some white tequila. The drink was on the menu at Back Forty on Avenue B, an early locavore restaurant that abruptly, and with absolutely no notice, closed and never came back a couple years ago. Like all breakups you didn’t see coming, I’m still a little raw about it. Was it something we did? Something we could have done? But I’m sure they’re not somewhere pouting over us.

for simple syrupblack pepper simple syruplime juicesugar salt pepper rimperfect strawberries i miss all yearmuddled

I was so obsessed with this drink and the fleeting window of it each spring that I attempted to reverse engineer it in my first cookbook, but I think I did just an okay job. Little did I know the restaurant’s owner, Peter Hoffman had shared his bar manager’s recipe with Food & Wine (in fact, one of you told me, thank you) and we made it this week and, look, nothing is as good as having someone else make you your favorite drink (and then wash all the dishes involved and also can we have some rosemary and sea salt fries to go with that?) but if there could ever be a downside, it’s that those freshly muddled strawberries in the bottom of the glass of ice are the most delicious part and though I’ve tried and tried anyway, there’s no graceful way to get them out (it requires a fork) at a bar. At home, there’s nobody to judge you. I think we know exactly what needs to be done.

red and black (cocktail)

The Red and Black (Cocktail)

I whittled this recipe down from the version they shared with Food & Wine because I needed only 2 drinks, not 10. Or at least not today, heh. As will happen when reducing from quarts and cups, the amounts didn’t totally work but fortunately, I’ve had this enough times that I could adjust things to get it right.

Key here is that sparkly black pepper simple syrup, so please don’t skip it. Make more, even, you won’t regret it because it keeps for ages in the fridge. I made it twice; the first time I used 2 solid tablespoons of coarsely ground black pepper and it was so spicy, even smelling it could make you cry. (I was using peppercorns a friend had brought me from Cambodia, lucky me, which might have had more kick.) The second time, I used whole peppercorns and the kick was a bit too mild. Thus, I’ve written it below for something in-between.

  • 1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon (7 grams) coarsely ground black pepper (see Note up top)
  • 4 ounces ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
  • 5 tablespoons fresh lime juice
  • 5 ounces (10 tablespoons) blanco tequila
    • To finish
  • 1 lime wedge
  • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Ice

Make simple syrup: Combine sugar, water, and 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer until sugar fully dissolves, stirring; this takes about 1 minute. Cool completely. You can hasten this along by pouring it into a glass you’ve set inside a shallower bowl of ice water; with this method, it takes all of 10 to 15 minutes. Strain syrup and discard black pepper.

Make drinks: Muddle strawberries a medium-sized jar. Add lime juice, 1/2 cup of cooled syrup (if you’re nervous about sweetness, you can hold a little more back), and tequila and stir to combine. You can chill this mixture in the fridge until needed, up until 2 days.

To finish: Swipe rims of 2 rocks or equivalent 11 or 12-ounce glasses with lime. Combine 1 tablespoon sugar, 3/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper, and salt in a shallow plate and dip rims in it to coat them. Carefully fill glasses with ice. Divide strawberry-tequila mixture between glasses, including the muddled strawberries. Drink slowly and have no shame about using a spoon to get all of the strawberries from the glass to your mouth.

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baked brie with balsamic red onions – smitten kitchen

Dipublikasi pada November 14, 2023 oleh pbnbigesdi

Despite my deep affection for cheese, to the point that one of my favorite things to do on a New York City weekend is to dip into Murray’s and treat us to something crumbly or aged or rich and runny, I don’t love cheese plates. It feels really good to get this off my chest. At first, it was just a budget issue; I still feel the sticker shock from the first time I tried to put together one of those cute boards with five or six different wedges on them, plus the crackers, breads, pickles, dried fruit, toasted almonds, olives, cured meats, and all of the other minimum requirements of our latter-day horns of plenty. But I was also put off by the waste. Even though so much went unfinished, the leftovers were unsalvageable, as fingers, forks, knives, and crumbs got into everything (a particularly shuddering thought in the age of Covid). Instead, when people come over, or what I remember of it, I prefer to focus on one or two decadent, attention-grabbing things and nothing grabs attention on a cold winter day like warm, runny cheese.


NEW: Watch me make this baked brie on YouTube!

make a flaky galette doughwilt onions in butterbalsamic jammy red onionsassembly, not cutebrush with egg washready to bake

Baked brie was all the entertaining rage in the 1970s and 80s. Nothing was more glamorous but accessible, an imported cheese that everyone knew and could pronounce. But as Americans got more sophisticated about imported cheese — manchego! Humboldt Fog! — in a crushing fall from grace, brie became the opposite of chic. And this is where my interest piqued — dated and unhip, you say? Where can I sign up?

baked brie with balsamic red onions

Thus, this is baked brie, my way. First, I use my easy galette dough for a flaky pastry that tastes a million times better than most frozen puffed pastry and requires no extra grocery store trip. I’ve never been a fan of the sweet compotes and fruity jams usually paired with brie, but I love a thin layer sweet-sour jammy red onions under and over the cheese — here, softened in butter, then wilted down further with salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and brown sugar. A paper-thin slick of smooth Dijon mustard offsets the sweetness, a sprinkling of thyme gives it an herbal element, a scattering of sesame seeds on top adds a little extra crackle, or you can skip all three and it’s still delicious. Brie — and yes, even commercial, grocery store brie works well here — is attainably-priced and even the basic stuff warms up beautifully, so no need to splurge here. Plus, it often comes in 8-ounce rounds, absolutely perfect for our tiny, at-home New Years celebrations this week to send 2020 packing.

baked brie with balsamic red onions

The Year In Smitten Kitchen

Best of 2020 on Smitten Kitchen

I love looking up which recipes you cooked the most each year, and could anything be more apt for 2020 than an Ultimate Banana Bread? In a year with so much none of us liked, a bright spot for me was the way the simplicity of our Covid pantries nudged me towards simpler, core recipes in previous years I foolishly dismissed as not interesting enough. You know what’s interesting? Crispy crumbled potatoes, schmaltzy roast chicken, and what I hope will be the last classic vegetable lasagna you’ll ever need. And speaking of pantries, I wrote about how I “organize” (spoiler: it’s not) my SK pantry over here and while not a recipe, it was one of the most-read posts this year. You can view all top 16 recipes from this page or individually below.

 

Previously: Best of 2019, Best of 2018 (Savory, Sweet), Best of 2017 (Savory, Sweet), Best of 2016 (Savory, Sweet).

Happy New Year, friends. Thank you for spending some of your time with me.

 

Previously

6 months ago: Dulce de Leche Chocoflan
1 year ago: Banana Toffee Cake
2 year ago: Baklava Babka
3 years ago: Dutch Apple Pie
4 years ago: Homemade Irish Cream
5 years ago: Eggnog Waffles
6 years ago: Jelly Doughnuts and Endives with Orange and Almonds
7 years ago: Linzer Torte and Breakfast Slab Pie
8 years ago: Cashew Butter Balls
9 years ago: Peppermint Hot Fudge Sauce
10 years ago: Iced Oatmeal Cookies and Broiled Mussels
11 years ago: Vanilla Roasted Pears and Creamed Mushrooms on Chive-Butter Toast
12 years ago: Cranberry-Vanilla Coffee Cake and Seven-Layer Cookies
13 years ago: Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies and Peanut Butter Cookies
14 years ago: Boozy Baked French Toast and Parmesan Black Pepper Biscotti

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