French Onion Soup

It is another drizzly day in New York. I now know what they mean by, ‘April showers before May Flowers’. Growing up in Los Angeles, I never fully understood the meaning of this phrase. Sure, it rained in April, but not that much and certainly no more than in February or March. Note to self, any phrase about weather is probably not referring to Southern California, where I am now convinced we have some of the best weather in the country.

Anyway, it is raining and I have just spent an hour trying to scrub grease stains and oil spills out of my chef’s coats and aprons. Since I don’t have class tonight, I put a pot of soup on the stove and am going to spend the rest of the afternoon inside, eating soup and reading Kim Severson’s Spoon Fed. I highly recommend her memoir. Especially if you, like me, have a hard time buying any novel or memoir that is not food-related. It is a great read and one I totally relate to as a California transplant in New York.

The soup I’m making to keep me and my book company is a super simple French onion soup. Super simple is really a tad redundant because if you have homemade stock on hand, French onion soup should always be simple. The key is cooking your onions low and slow for a long time to get them nice and caramelized. After that, just add stock, let everything simmer away for a bit and season. If you have some crusty bread on hand, all the better. Slice it up, place a slice on each bowl of soup and cover with gruyere cheese. A quick run under the broiler and you have a beautiful bowl of restaurant quality French onion soup. If I have them all on hand I like to use brown or yellow onions, red onions and shallots, but if you only have one kind, that’s okay too. I can’t stress enough what a difference homemade stock makes in a soup like this. If you want to try your hand at it, here are the steps for veal stock. If not, use a good-quality beef stock from your grocery store.

French Onion Soup
Serves 4

2 pounds mixed onions
2 T canola oil
2 quarts (8 cups) beef or veal stock
1 thyme sprig
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
4-8 slices crusty baguette
1/2 cup grated gruyere

Peel the onions. Cut them in half and then into thin slices so you have a large pile of half-moon slices. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Sauté the onions until beginning to soften, season with a little salt and pepper, and cover the pot. The steam captured by covering the pot will help to soften the onions without using too much oil. Uncover the pot and stir occasionally. When the onions are beginning to brown, remove the lid and continue to cook until caramelized. This can take up to 30 minutes.

Add the stock to the pan and bring to a simmer. Add the thyme and bay leaf and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Remove the thyme and bay leaf and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Preheat your broiler. Divide the soup among four serving bowls. Top with one to two slices of bread, depending on what will fit in your bowls, and sprinkle a few tablespoons of gruyere over the bread. Run under the broiler until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Take care when serving the soup as the bowls will be extremely hot from the broiler. Enjoy with a good book on a rainy day.

When Culinary School Hands You Duck Skin...Render It

A year ago, if you asked me if I would ever post a picture of raw duck skin, the answer would have been a definitive no. Clearly, my definition of what constitutes a sexy food photo has changed.

Today, lipids are sexy. Fat is a necessary component of cooking, but we sometimes have a weird relationship with it. On one hand, we tend to shy away from away from it, opting for the fat-free version of anything at the grocery store, but on the other hand, we also drive our cars up to the fast food joint and ask to be supersized. As with most things, fat is good for us if we use it in moderation. It is a vehicle for flavor and there are many fat-soluble nutrients which means, if you’re pouring fat-free dressing over that salad of yours, you could be missing out on a lot of the nutritional benefits.

Now, before I get too preachy, because this blog is about good cooking, not food policy, let’s move on to the duck. If you have yet to cook with duck fat, you are in for a treat. The fat adds a wonderful, rich flavor to things like sautéed potatoes. If you ever cook your eggs in a bit of the bacon grease left in the pan, cooking with duck fat is the same concept. The animal fat comes with its own flavor that, when paired with the right food, just can’t be matched by cooking in olive oil or butter.

One downside to cooking with duck fat is that it is pretty pricey. So, one night at school, when we finished breaking down a case of whole ducks for the restaurant at FCI and were left with extra duck skin, I jumped at the chance to take it home. Three quart containers of duck fat (think about 16 cups) came home with me for rendering. It may sound like an involved project, but rendering your own duck fat could not be more simple. Here are the basics:

Place your duck skin in a pot. Add no more than one inch of water to the pan. If you only have a small amount of skin, add less. Place the pan over medium heat and let it come to a simmer. Over the course of an hour or so, the skin will render the fat and the small amount of water in the pan will evaporate. When the skin starts to turn golden, you know it has rendered its fat. You can drain off the fat and discard the skin or, if you want a double reward, let the skin continue to render until it turns a dark brown. The skin will be crisp and you are left with both rendered duck fat and delicious duck cracklings. Be sure to keep an eye on it at the end. If the skin goes from brown to burnt, you will impart a burnt flavor to the fat and all will be for not. Just keep in mind that with a bit of salt, duck cracklings can be highly addictive and then that whole moderation thing I mentioned earlier goes completely out the window. The choice is yours.

Three quarts of duck skin left me with about two quarts of duck fat, which is more than I will be able to use anytime soon so I am planning on giving some away as gifts. Trust me. Your food-obsessed friends will be forever grateful. The last time I checked, duck fat was going for about $20 a half quart.

Back to the Grind

I woke this morning slightly confused to find myself in New York City. See, I was supposed to be back here a week ago, but, like so many others, my travel plans fell victim to the blizzard in New York. My original flight was canceled and the earliest that Virgin America could rebook me was not early enough to make it back for my class at The French Culinary Institute last Wednesday. Rather than continue to fight lines and standby lists at the airport, I extended my stay in California and what was meant to be a five-day trip, turned into 12.

I would have been disappointed to miss any class at FCI, but last week was my buffet night. In level 4, students spend two weeks preparing food for a buffet that the entire school attends. I had been working on a foie gras terrine, head cheese, kimchi and bulgogi, a carrot sesame terrine, a dark chocolate crepe cake, duck confit, and cassoulet. I was enormously disappointed that I did not get to taste the final products or help my team present all of the food. Disappointed isn’t the right word, I was inconsolable.

But, as one learns to do, I made the best of it. I visited with old friends and enjoyed walking around town in sandals and a dress, soaking up the sun. So much so, that by the end of my trip, wool coats and waterproof boots seemed like a distant memory. Until of course, I awoke this morning to find myself in my Chelsea apartment, with the floors slanted ever so slightly westward.

I walked the 1.5 miles to work this morning to shock my body back into acceptance of the cold weather. After work, I am heading home to clean out the fridge (food tends to spoil when you are gone a week more than planned) and to make a bevy of soups, including this one, so I have a stockpile of lunches and dinners for the week.

This soup is comforting and hearty. Ground walnuts are used to add flavor and a bit of thickness. The original recipe calls for fresh tomatoes, but this time of year I always use canned in soups and stews. Tomatoes were not meant to grow in January and when they do, they have little flavor. If you are not comfortable with vermicelli or can’t find it, feel free to use a more traditional pasta.

Ground Walnut and Tomato Soup
Adapted from Real Food Magazine

4 T butter
2 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 t salt, plus more to taste
1/2 t ground black pepper
1/2 t whole coriander seed
1 cup walnuts, finely ground
2 cups water
2 oz vermicelli, broken into pieces
28 oz can whole plum tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Heat 3 tablespoons of butter in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and sweat until softened. Place the garlic, salt, pepper and coriander in a food processor and process until ground and combined. Add the spice blend to the onions along with the ground walnuts and water, Bring to a simmer and add the vermicelli. Simmer covered for 20 minutes. In a separate pot, cook the tomatoes over low heat until softened. Add the tomatoes to the soup and simmer for five minutes. Add the parsley, cilantro and remaining tablespoon of butter to the pot and adjust the seasoning, if necessary, before serving.

Comfort in a Bowl

Most days I push myself pretty hard. I work full time and go to school at night. In my spare minutes I compose posts for Apples and Butter, do a bit of freelance writing and work my tush off at making contacts within my industry here in New York. During my best weeks, I even get up early to stop by the gym on my way in to work.

Today is not one of those days and it is certainly not one of those weeks.

I took my level three final last night at The French Culinary Institute. It was the midterm for the entire program at FCI and worth 50 percent of my grade. In other words, a big deal. While it is a relief to have the thing over with, I am feeling a bit worn down from the whole process.

The flip side of pushing myself so hard is that I also have learned how to hit the brakes and indulge myself a bit when it is truly needed. Today I have plans for a lunchtime trip to Strand to treat myself to a new (used) cookbook or two to flip through while I lay in my cozy bed watching movies, and a big bowl of warm, comforting soup for dinner.

There is something so restorative about a bowl of soup.

This is yet another riff (or shall I say variation? Somewhere between this week and last, I began to hate the word riff, which is entirely unfortunate since it seems to be the favored word of bloggers and established writers alike when referring to their own take on something: ‘My riff on Suzanne Goin’s bacon-wrapped dates,” or “we were riffing on different potato-based soups.” Ugh). I digress. This is yet another way to use my vegetable soup formula. Specifically, this is an example of how to use the formula to make a roasted vegetable soup. Butternut squash is the main ingredient, but I also threw in some roasted mushrooms. I find the savory flavor of mushrooms in pureed soup to add a creaminess that is particularly comforting and I may have mentioned this already, but today I am in need of some comfort.

Refer back to the original vegetable soup formula if you would like to make some changes to this basic variation. And by all means do. Your perfect bowl of comfort may not look exactly like mine.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Mushroom Soup

1 lb cubed butternut squash
8 oz domestic mushrooms, sliced or quartered, plus more for garnish if desired
Canola oil
1 small onion, or half of a larger one, diced
A few sprigs of tarragon
A few springs of thyme
1 1/2 – 2 quarts of vegetable stock (6 – 8 cups)
Salt and pepper to taste
Walnut oil (optional)

Preheat oven to 375˚
Toss the mushrooms and butternut squash with a bit of oil and salt pepper. Spread out the vegetables on a roasting pan and bake until the squash is tender, about 30 to 40 minutes. Add a bit of canola oil to a soup pot placed over medium heat. Add the diced onion and sauté until softened. Add the thyme and tarragon and sauté for a minute or two longer. Add the roasted vegetables to the pot and cover with vegetable stock. Simmer for 30 minutes. Remove the thyme and tarragon and transfer the mixture to a blender to puree, in batches if necessary. Return the pureed soup to the pot and season with salt and pepper. If desired, serve with a garnish of roasted mushrooms and a bit of walnut oil.

Vegetable Soup Formula

Vegetable soups are quickly becoming my savior as I enter my first, cold New York winter. I used to bring salads to work in Los Angeles year-round and they proved sufficient for a quick meal at my desk. I tried that here in New York during the first few weeks of November and it turned out to be less than satisfying. So much so that when faced with the green leaves staring back at me from the office refrigerator, I quickly turned and walked out the door in search of something warm and a bit more comforting.

The main problem with my new lunchtime ritual is the detrimental effect it has had on the snugness of my wardrobe. Add that to the battle already underway with the culinary school bulge and it is a recipe for disaster. One more trip to Guy & Gallard for lobster bisque and no amount of Saturday morning boot camp in Central Park is going to bring me back.

Enter the humble vegetable soup. This is the perfect comfort food compromise. It is warm, thick and packed with the flavors of fall, but if you keep the ingredients to vegetables, stock and a few key flavorings, it is supremely healthy and nourishing.

This recipe, as with most, is just a guideline. Be sure to experiment with your favorite flavors. Keep this simple formula in mind and you will produce a successful soup every time:

1. Sauté diced onions in a bit of oil. After the onions soften add any garlic, ginger or other such flavorings (not herbs) and sauté a bit more. Season with salt and pepper.
2. For a roasted vegetable soup, dice the vegetables and roast at 375˚ until tender. Alternately, you can add the vegetables to the pot with the onions and sauté a bit to achieve some color. If roasting, add the vegetables to the pot with the softened onions after roasting.
3. Add enough vegetable stock to cover everything, toss in any herbs you want to use and simmer for at least 30 minutes. If you did not roast the vegetables, make sure they are tender before proceeding.
4. Remove the herbs and use an immersion blender or a standard blender to purée the soup.
5. Return the puréed soup to the pan and season to taste with salt and pepper.

There. You just made delicious and healthy vegetable soup. The only thing I must insist on is that you, if at all possible, make your own vegetable stock. It is so simple, yet it adds so much to the final product. Not to mention that it is a great way to use up vegetable scraps. For a refresher on vegetable stock, go here. If you are not quite ready to experiment on your own, here is the recipe for my latest concoction, carrot ginger pear soup.

Carrot Ginger Pear Soup
Makes about 2 quarts

1 small onion, diced
2 T vegetable oil
1 pound carrots
2 ripe pears
2 slices fresh ginger
1 1/2 quarts vegetable stock
Salt and pepper

Heat a medium pot over medium high heat. Add the oil and diced onion and sauté until soft. Add the ginger slices and continue to sauté. While the onions are sautéing, peel and roughly chop the carrots and pears. Add the carrots and pears to the pot and sauté until beginning to soften, five to 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add enough stock to cover the vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes until the carrots are tender.

To temper the spice of the ginger, remove the slices before pureeing. If you want more zip, leave the ginger in. Purée the mixture using an immersion or standard blender. Return the purée to the pot and season with salt and pepper to taste. If the soup is too thick, add a bit more vegetable stock to thin it out. Serve or cool and divide into containers for storage.

Years That Answer

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. So says the text on the card I received from my parents today for my 30th birthday. According to my mother, I am in one of those years that answers.

At the moment, I still feel as though as I am asking a lot of questions. Where will this year of culinary school take me? Where will I be working? At the end of this year will I get to stay in New York or head back to Los Angeles? Or somewhere else?

At least one question has been answered. Will I ever go to culinary school? Yes. In fact, I am doing that at this very moment. Every now and then I have to stop and remind myself that I am, in fact, doing that very thing. I have been putting this dream together for years and it is so easy to forget that I am finally here living it.

I feel particularly grateful today. It is 1:30 in the morning and I am up late riding the adrenaline of a day that included the 30th anniversary of my birth and the practical and written finals for level one of culinary school. As we were waiting in the hall at school for our exam to begin, a man walked by and asked if there was a final going on. I glanced up and realized that Jacques Pepin was standing in front of me wishing our class good luck. “Cook from the gut,” were his final words as he continued down the hall after graciously posing for pictures with some of my classmates.

Chef Pepin is a dean at FCI, but it’s not as though the man is there every day roaming the halls. It was, without a doubt, a celebrity sighting. I had already decided it was very apropos that I should spend the night of my 30th birthday chopping vegetables during the level 1 final, but Chef Pepin provided the icing on the cake for a notable evening.

There is a bit more icing in my life right now as I lay in bed eating the slice of devil’s food cake I picked up on my way home from school tonight. Final or no final, a girl has got to have cake on her birthday. Lest you start thinking I eat cake every night, I am including the recipe for one of my more common evening snacks.

By the time we finish with school and I catch the subway home, it is usually at least 11:30 pm. To help myself wind down from a busy and late night in the kitchen, I make a quick snack of pears on rye toast with ricotta and agave nectar. The pears and rye feel judicious after an evening that inevitably includes a butter-enriched something and the ricotta and agave sufficiently satisfy my sweet tooth to spare me yet another visit to Billy’s Bakery and a subsequent trip to the gym.

If you are not a fan of the combination of savory and sweet, you can leave out the salt and cracked pepper, but I think it would be a mistake. The more pepper the better and make sure it is freshly ground. It is the perfect offset to the creamy ricotta and sweet agave.

Pear and Ricotta on Rye Toast

1 large slice of rye bread
1/2 small pear
1/3 cup fresh ricotta
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Agave nectar for drizzling

Toast the rye bread. Slice the pear thinly and place the slices on the rye bread. Spread the ricotta over the pear and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Drizzle the agave nectar over everything.

Ice-Pop Diaspora

It turns out that if you like to cook, you have a secret weapon when it comes to making friends in a new city. People like to eat and if you happen to throw say, an ice cream party, and have a bunch of people over to your house and feed them, people will like you for letting them eat good food for free.

I didn’t plan my ice cream party as a ploy to make friends, but in hindsight, it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. It was meant to be a housewarming party, but really any party, at its base, is just a chance to get together with friends, strengthen relationships and hopefully make some new ones. I think the ice cream succeeded in bringing everyone together which, by the way, is what I love about food and cooking

I made a couple of my favorite frozen treats that you can find on Apples and Butter (lemon thyme sorbet, olive oil gelato and apple pie frozen yogurt) and one new recipe courtesy of Saveur Magazine. If you have made it even just a few pages into the current issue of Saveur (The Greece Issue) then you probably noticed the article on the ice-pop that changed a town in Mexico. We were not changing the social makeup of any town or creating a popsicle diaspora at our party, but the unexpected flavors (at least for American palates) of sweet mango and ancho chile powder did manage to start a few conversations. In other words, they served as the perfect icebreaker.

If you like the idea of salty and sweet combinations, then this combination of spicy and sweet won’t be too much of a reach for you. If it seems a little daunting, cut back on the amount of ancho chile powder so that the spiciness is more of an aftertaste. I will be making these again exactly as Saveur suggests. I think the recipe is perfect as is.

Mango-Chile Ice Pops
Saveur Magazine

1 cup store-bought mango juice or nectar
1/4 cup sugar
2 t fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup water
1 t ancho chile powder
I large mango, peeled, seeded and diced

Heat mango juice, sugar, lemon juice and water in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Chill mixture in the refrigerator. Stir in the ancho chile powder and mango chunks. Transfer mixture into popsicle molds of your choice and freeze until solid.

A Simple Salad for a Simple Summer Morning

It is only 73 degrees outside right now. I think that is the coolest it has been since I moved to New York. The boyfriend is in town for the weekend and I cannot wait to get outside and take advantage of the drop in temperature.

Tomorrow morning we head to Philadelphia for the day to visit the neighborhood where my boyfriend grew up, picnic in Valley Forge and if I’m lucky, eat a cheesesteak on South Street before heading back to New York.

Before I get started with all of that, I need to share this delicious summer salad with you. It is so simple. If you can use a knife to cut a tomato, you can make this salad. Because of its simplicity, it is vital that you find the juiciest, ripest, heirloom tomato you can get your hands on. I recommend hitting your local farmers market, even better if you have a plant or two going in your own backyard. If all you can get your hands on is a flavorless, bred-for-shelf-life grocery store tomato, don’t bother with this salad. Everything hinges on the flavor of the tomato.

If you haven’t had raw corn before, trust me, it is delicious. Cut straight from the cob into the salad, it tastes even juicer and sweeter than if you were to cook it for a few minutes on the stove or grill. Finish the cut vegetables with a few torn leaves of basil and a glug (technical term) or two of olive oil and you are finished. It is that simple. You do not need the recipe, but I will include one below just in case. Now get outside and enjoy the summer weather.

Simple Summer Salad

1 juicy tomato
1 ear of corn
6 – 8 leaves of basil
1 T good quality olive oil
1 t vinegar (your choice, I used balsamic)
Kosher salt to taste

Cut the tomato into thick slices and arrange on a plate. Sprinkle generously with kosher salt. Cut the corn from the cob and arrange around the tomato slices. Tear the basil leaves in half or quarters and add to the plate (smell your hands to enjoy the basil scent left behind). Drizzle the salad with a little olive oil and vinegar and share with someone you really like. This is summer on a plate.

A New York View

This, to me, is a quintessential New York sidewalk scene. Perhaps if I had shot it looking through the fire escape that sits outside my living room window, it would be even more so, but then I would have interrupted the beautiful view.

My quiet (relatively), tree-lined street is why I love where I live. The trees, the front stoops, the fire escapes, they make me feel as though I am walking through a movie set as I walk though New York. It all has a tendency to feel a bit surreal. At least it did.

This is the end of my third week in New York and I noticed yesterday that, even if just ever so slightly, New York is starting to feel a little less like a movie set and a bit more like home. It happened in the simplest of ways.

I was heading out to meet a friend from out of town. I had a place to be and a set time to be there (a rare occurrence for me these days). I arrived at my subway station only to learn that the train I needed was not running this weekend. No bother. I came back up to the street, and without even a glance at my subway map, walked one crosstown block to the next line over. Then, when I reached the end of my train ride, I came back up to street level and started walking to my destination. No pause to try and sense which way was North, no reaching for the iPhone to use the direction of the one-way streets to orient myself, I just walked. I walked and I reached my destination five minutes before I was supposed to be there.

It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless and one that made me feel I may just get to know this movie set (err city) after all.

Roasted Beet Timbale

Week one of culinary school is officially behind me. In only four classes we covered knife skills, taillage, tournage (turning vegetables into cocottes and other maddening seven-sided football shapes that I am pretty sure are going to give me carpal tunnel), ServSafe and all the many ways I can kill you if I don’t handle food properly, cooking a l’anglaise and a l’etuvee, ratatouille, timbales, and a vegetable dish made up almost entirely of cocottes. At least, it was supposed to be made up entirely of cocottes. I have a long way to go before those seven sides come out evenly. It was an exciting if not slightly frenetic week and though I am not yet working during the day, I was grateful for this past weekend to catch my breath, find my footing and prepare for this week’s lessons.

A roasted beet timbale was the most attractive dish we made last week. For that reason, and because of its surprisingly simple preparation, I recreated the dish at home to share with you here. Well, those reasons and I snagged the extra roasted beets from class. Aside from the precarious beet juggling it took to get them home on the subway without a bag, I was thrilled. Extra beets meant I could make this timbale for you without even turning on my oven. At the risk of beating a dead horse I must say, the idea of turning on my oven for anything is still a bit off-putting.



Once your beets are roasted (or donated by a generous culinary school instructor), this salad is just a few simple steps of chopping, mixing and stacking. It looks slightly intimidating because of its lovely composition, but trust me, this is simple stuff. I did not even look at the recipe the second time I made it.

In a few hours I am off to school for lesson five – stock night. I have made my fair share of chicken and vegetable stocks so I am hoping for a beef or veal stock assignment. Though I am not sure we will even make those in class this evening as they need to simmer for longer than the five hours we have available. Perhaps we will set them to simmer overnight and tomorrow’s day class will take it from there.



Roasted Beet Timbale
Adapted from The French Culinary Institute Level 1
Yield 4 Servings

3 large beets (approximately 1 lb), roasted
2.5 oz extra virgin olive oil
1 oz white wine vinegar
1 shallot, finely chopped
1/2 bunch fresh tarragon, chopped
1 granny smith apple
4 oz goat cheese
1 T chopped parsley
6 chives, cut into 1-inch segments
1 T chopped chervil
1/4 head frisee, picked, washed and dried
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel the beets and cut into a small dice (to be exact, we cut them into a shape called macedoine which is a 1/2 cm x 1/2 cm cube). Place the chopped shallots in a small bowl and add the vinegar and a sprinkling of kosher salt. While whisking, slowly pour in the olive oil. Add the tarragon leaves and adjust the seasoning. Use a few spoonfuls of vinaigrette to dress the beets and set aside.

Peel the apple and cut into a small dice (again a macedoine if you want to be exact). Dress the apple with a bit of vinaigrette to slow oxidization and set aside.

Bring the goat cheese to room temperature. In a small bowl, work the goat cheese until it is spreadable and season with salt and pepper. Blot the beets with a paper towel to remove any excess liquid. Place a 3-inch ring mold on a plate and put the beets in the mold, pressing down slightly to create an even layer. Top with the goat cheese, smoothing the top so it is flush with the mold (my ring mold was too tall so the goat cheese was not flush with the top of the mold). Gently remove the ring mold.

In a separate bowl, mix together the herbs and frisee and season with salt and pepper. Add olive oil to lightly coat the leaves. Top the goat cheese with the small herb salad. Place some of the apples around the plate and spoon the vinaigrette over the plate in a decorative manner.

Note – you may have some leftover vinaigrette, salad and apple. Do not feel as though you have to fit it all on the plate. Toss them together and enjoy separately from the timbale.

Finally a Food Photo

I find it appropriate that Panzanella is the first thing I made in my New York kitchen. After a week-long restaurant binge that could rival my best vacation eating on record (Cookshop, Tipsy Parson, Crema Restaurante, Oyster Bar, Bleecker Street Pizza, Txikito, Shake Shack, a culinary tour through Chinatown, and Otto Enotecca) I needed to slow down and make a simple and affordable dish.

Panzanella is considered peasant food in Italy. At least it was when the salad was created as a way to use up stale bread. A bit of a peasant myself these days (no paycheck in site and a culinary education to pay for) I am trying to take on my own waste-not-want-not mentality. Rather than discarding stale bread, I can chop it up, sauté it with a little olive oil and garlic and toss it with some chopped vegetables already on hand. It means lunch is thrown together without running out for additional ingredients. Simply put, Panzanella is delicious and makes me feel good about my grocery budget. Added bonus? I do not have to preheat my oven in the sweltering New York heat.

I ate this salad right away, but it gets even better after a few hours as the flavors meld together.

Next up – finding ways to use up mounds of julienned carrots without turning on my oven. Practicing my knife skills at home, where there is no industrial pot of chicken stock waiting at the ready for my carrot donations, may turn me orange from carrot consumption.



Panzanella

7-inch long piece of baguette (multigrain or other)
3 T of extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 garlic clove, smashed and skin removed
1/2 cucumber
6 baby roma tomatoes (or 2 regular roma tomatoes, roughly chopped)
2 oz buffalo mozzarella
2 t balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Cut the baguette into 1-inch chunks. Heat a large sauté pan over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan and fry the garlic clove for one minute. Add the bread and salt liberally. Reduce heat to medium and sauté until bread is crisp and golden brown, about 10 minutes. While the bread is cooking, peel the cucumber and chop into 1-inch pieces. Cut the tomatoes into quarters. When the bread is crisp, place it in a medium bowl along with the cucumber and tomatoes. Using your hands, rip the mozzarella into small pieces and add to the bowl. Drizzle the balsamic vinegar and remaining tablespoon of olive oil over the bread mixture. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

New York Lessons

I am sitting in the living room of my Chelsea apartment, as close to the air conditioner as I can get, with my feet elevated. It is nearing midnight on day three in New York and I am wiped out. So much has happened in the past 72 hours and I feel as though it may all pass me by in a whirlwind if I do not start documenting it.

Things I have learned about New York so far:

1. It is July and air conditioning is supremely important. I am grateful for the powerful unit in our living room and even more grateful for my favorite Chelsea discovery: Manhattan Fruit Exchange. The entire place is refrigerated like a walk-in cooler and they have at least 12 varieties of mushrooms at wholesale prices. Though I must admit, 12 is an estimate because I forgot to count. I was too happy about being cold.

2. For some reason, a lot of well-cooled retail establishments have their doors open. Walk slowly as you pass these places.

3. They say you are a real New Yorker when you stop looking up. I think you are a real New Yorker when you stop talking about air conditioning in July.

4. Your feet are going to hurt. Your feet will hurt slightly less if you change shoes often and vary the height of the heel.

5. Even with my Ray-Ban sunglasses, I am not fashionable enough to be mistaken for a local.

I am sure there are more New York lessons on the way, but by all means, if you are a local and can save me the trouble of having to learn them the hard way, please help a girl out.

Pantry Cooking and Boxes

Welcome to my breakfast. This is what I have come to call pantry eating. I have not been to the grocery store in a week and a half. I refuse to buy new groceries in an attempt to use up the many boxes of various grains that crowd my pantry and the stocks, proteins and numerous containers that are taking up my freezer. I am hoping to use, not throw away, the contents of my kitchen before I clear out.

The picture is of the grits and eggs and that are quickly becoming a staple for breakfast. I wish I had something more elegant to show you or even a recipe to share, but it is just not in the cards this week. My kitchen is in boxes halfway to New York and I have done next to no cooking.



Instead, my week has been filled with finding places to store boxes, trips to Goodwill and realizations that I really did not ever need so much stuff anyway. I think any move is a good time to go through your belongings and trim the fat, but a move to a small New York apartment will really show you how little you need to exist comfortably.

Today is day four of official unemployment and as I awake to find that I have already found a home for every box and that most of my furniture is spoken for, I realize it is time to slow down and start to say my goodbyes to those I care about in Los Angeles. I am much better at the busy ‘doing’ rather than the slow and sometimes painful feelings associated with goodbye. Unfortunately, with no more boxes to move and only four days left in Los Angeles, I cannot avoid the goodbyes any longer.

Decisions, Decisions.

What is a girl to do?

At last count my cookbook collection had grown to include between 80 and 90 books. Even if you don't live in New York, which I still do not, you probably have at least heard about the size of New York apartments. I lucked out with my place. It is the only apartment I looked at that had a full-size stove and fridge. Unfortunately, that is where you must stop using the words full and size to describe anything in my apartment. So, sadly, I must leave the majority of my cookbooks at home.

My boyfriend has agreed to hold onto the surplus of books. I would like to believe he is doing this out of the kindness of his heart, but I have a feeling his motivations have more to do with the leverage he will have when trying to convince me to come home at the end of a year.

My dilemma now lies in trying to decide which 10 books come with me. How do you whittle down a collection of 90 to just 10 books? As I stare at the pile of half-packed boxes sitting in my living room, this question is just a bit too overwhelming. I need your help. If you were moving across the country and could take just one book with you, what book would that be?

This is Not a Food Photo

So this is not a photo of food. ‘Obviously,’ you might point out. Well, it is obviously not a food photo, but it is actually, not so obviously, food-related. I know it is just a building and the residents would probably disagree, but to me, it is absolutely food-related. This photo is of the building I will be living in one month from now, when I move to New York City to attend culinary school.

There. I said it. It’s out.

I have researched and considered and pondered the thought of going to culinary school for years. I finally decided it was time to stop waiting to start the rest of my life. The timing was never going to be perfect, the circumstances were never going to be ideal and I certainly couldn’t wait for someone else to make it happen for me. So now I have made the decision to leave and low and behold, the timing couldn’t get much better, the circumstances are as good as they’re ever going to be and the best part, I made it happen for myself (with the help of a huge support network).

So, I am leaving. I am packing up and I am leaving. I am leaving behind my boyfriend, a steady paycheck, the comforts of a comfortable life and risking it all in the hope that someone will pay me to play with food.

The French Culinary Institute in SoHo will be my home away from home for the next nine months as I complete their Classic Culinary Arts program. I’ll be living not too far away in Chelsea, doing my best to take advantage of all that New York has to offer and sharing as much of it as I can with you here, at Apples and Butter.

No recipe today. Just this really exciting (for me) news.