GASTRONORMOUS

I guess I have heard of cooking pasta like a risotto before, but never thought too hard about it. Over at Bitten, Edward Schneider writes about using dried mushroom soaking liquid combined with chicken stock to cook ziti in this manner. The resultant dish looks ridiculously toothsome. I have never been able to make a brothy sauce for pasta totally satisfying, but cooking the pasta in the sauce itself seems to add enough starch to give it some body. I think a splash of red wine might work well to start the process off using a rissoto-ish technique, rather than the stock the recipe calls for.

This recipe for asian slaw over at the Kitchn, sounds suspiciously like the delicious slaw at Rice (I don’t love this restaurant, but the slaw is really good). The salad looks great, though I might experiement with lowering the oil-to-vinegar ratio in their recipe.  I love oil and vinegar coleslaws, and this looks like a great alternative to the mexican-style one I often make.

Eat It: Brooklyn recently ate at two restaurants where I also happened to enjoy a meal: General Greene for dinner and Buttermilk Channel for brunch (yes! they are now open for brunch, but only on Sundays). I forgot to take pictures at both of my meals, so please take a gander at EIB’s posts. While the dishes she (he?) ordered are completely different than mine, the tenor of the review is similar (although I think I might have more thoroughly enjoyed my brunch at BC). And yes, despite my treacherous brunch experience at General Greene, I trepidatiously returned and the dinner wasn’t bad!

Even though I am generally not the hugest fan of recipes calling for canned dough, I admit that this baked gouda recipe over at Half-Assed Kitchen has sort of rocked my world (and no, I haven’t even made it. Just thinking about it is doing the rockin’).

Intriguing post title, no? Whatever could it mean?

The answer is much less obtuse than you might think: These are the names of two cookbooks; one that I gave to the Predicate for Christmas and one that she gave to me. I have blogged previously about Eat Me, which was a thoroughly enjoyable read.  Now I am writing specifically about the recipe from the book I made, and also about the dishes that the Predicate made from Turquoise: A Chef’s Travels in Turkey by Lucy and Greg Malouf. Turquoise is a really gorgeous book, filled with not just recipes but also with spectacular photographs and personal essays. If you are at all interested in Turkish culture and cuisine, I would recommend this book.

Since she gave me a cookbook, and I gave her one, we of course had no choice but to have dinner party featuring dishes cooked from each. The fact that Eat Me is heavy on egg and other breakfasty recipes made it a bit of a challenge for us to coordinate what would go together, but we persevered.  She decided to make some zucchini and feta fritters and cacik (the same thing as tzatziki–but don’t tell the Turks that!), which I thought might go well with soup, especially on this chilly evening, so I went with the African green curry soup (recall be damned! I love those legumes!).

The soup recipe, unusually, calls for Thai green curry, which Shopsin explains seems to have the same flavors as African spice mixes. Lemongrass? Thai basil? These ingredients don’t leap to mind when one thinks of cuisine from any part of the African continent. I admit that I was skeptical, but also intrigued.  I followed Shopsin’s recipe faithfully, with the exception of adding some more colorful vegetables than the all-green mix called for by the recipe. (My mother also mandated that her meals be “colorful,” and I guess that rubbed off on me!)

When the soup was nearly finished, I gave it a taste, and wasn’t happy with it–it just didn’t have a lot of flavor, and the flavors it did have didn’t work well together. I added more peanut butter. Still no good. More curry? That definitely didn’t help. Still more peanut butter. No dice. Hey, maybe some siracha would give it a kick? No. There was just no way this was going to be a good soup, I realized. It could have been a matter of the type of curry used. I bought the only type available at Whole Foods, which was Thai Kitchen brand, and as the cookbook happens to illustrate the tub of curry that Shopsin uses in his soup, i know that it is a different brand. In the end, I don’t think the Predicate minded the soup as much as I did (or she was just being polite!), but it definitely wasn’t a make-again winner in either of our books. I am tempted to go to the restaurant to see if I like his version of it, but that will have to wait until my bad memory of this concoction is long gone.

The Predicate’s fritters and cacik, on the other hand, were fantastic. She showed up armed with the fritter batter already made, and of course the cacik was prepared in advance too (anybody who has made tzatziki knows that it is better after sitting a while). I fired up the frying pan for her, and looked a little warily at the batter–it looked awfully thin. But the fritters really held together well while being pan-fried, and boy were they delicious! The perfect balance of veggies and fats, and a subtle melange of spices. They went perfectly with the cacik she had made using Greek yogurt (tzatziki tip: if you can’t find Greek yogurt in your area, then you can strain regular yogurt–but do look for the Greek type!), garlic, cucumbers, and lots of fresh dill. She left out the mint that the recipe called for, but it was still so delicious. Winners, both! I can’t wait to try other dishes from the book.

It is hard to compare the two cook books. One is about Turkish food and the other about American sort-of-but-not-really diner food, but they are both part personal essay, part recipe book.  In short, if you want to read a thoroughly entertaining, food-centric biography featuring kooky New York personalities, make a grab for Eat Me, but if you are interested in some totally dreamy recipes, accompanied by beautiful photography, then Turquoise might be the book for you.

This is sort of old news, but: in case you need another reminder to check nutritional information before buying: mercury has been found in several brands of high-fructose corn syrup! As this article in U.S. News and World Report notes, very small amounts of mercury can do you damage.  It is scary to think about how many foods marketed to children contain the stuff.

These neoprene oven mitts featured over at the Kitchn look like the ideal alternative to those inflexible-but-very-heat-resistant silicone ones.

In case you have not yet realized your dream of eating an island of mac and cheese floating in a pool of sloppy joe (the mac and cheese floating in the sloppy joe, that is. I am not suggesting you might dream of literally eating mac and cheese while you are floating in a pool filled with sloppy joe. But if so, hey, who am I to judge?), then get yourself to Schnipper’s on 8th Ave, ASAP! (via Midtown Lunch)

Yum! I must make Food Mayhem’s muy delicioso-looking take on Chex mix for my next gathering. It contains the unusual additions of a Guajillo pepper and tequila. Yes, I said tequila.

Eat Drink One Woman continues her entertaining Swedish adventure. Check out this cool, intimate little restaurant she found!

Emily Weinstein waxes euphoric about…pudding? Actually, all she mentions look awesome! Especially the butterscotch and chocolate-bread varieties. Hm, this might be a mandatory weekend activity….