Wine-Soaked Grilled Portobella Mushrooms

I have been off on a whirlwind culinary adventure in New York City, the first of at least a hundred trips to New York in which I was in total control of where I went, what I ate and how late I came home. "Home" in this case was my uncle's house, which used to be my grandparents house, which is also the house my dad grew up in. It's been in the family for 40-odd years and while I'm always grateful to consider it my "New York House," the limitations I'm generally under are...stifling.

When I was in college and living in Rhode Island, I'd spend my Thanksgiving breaks with my grandparents. Though I was itching to get out into the city (it was the heyday of Sex and the City, after all), my worrisome Italian-Catholic grandmother would wring her hands and cross herself just in anticipation of all the horrible things that could happen to me on the subway trains. As I got older and my leash was loosened inch by inch, I would venture to the city only after being dropped off at the 7 station, and with my cell phone at my ear every 20 minutes. Of course I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, so I'd often wind up in a semi-untouristy restaurant in Times Square, irritated knowing there was so much more to see. Ultimately I'd decide it wasn't worth it, and would head back to Queens, but not before a phone call to warn my grandfather that I'd need to be picked up at the station in approximately 35 minutes.

I miss my grandparents. They're still all over that house and the scent of my grandfather overwhelms me with nostalgia every time I step through the front door. But I have to say that I don't miss being any younger than I am now, without license to go where I please and be considered an adult. And look, I made it back to Tennessee in one piece. My grandmother, somewhere, is sighing with relief and probably thanking Jesus personally for my safe return.

Underneath this recipe for grilled portobella mushrooms, which are tied to this post inexplicably save for the fact that it was the first meal I prepared after being waited on for 4 days straight at various NYC eateries, is the full list of everywhere and with everything I stuffed my face while there. Do check them all out next time you're in the big city...if you're allowed to leave the house, that is.

You will need:

2 large portobella mushroom caps
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup dry vermouth or sherry
1/4 cup olive oil
Splash white vinegar
3 garlic cloves, smashed and roughly chopped
Small handful fresh parsley, chopped
Small handful fresh basil, chopped
Small handful fresh chives, chopped
Salt and pepper

Wipe the mushroom caps clean with a damp paper towel. Remove the stem and discard. To remove the gills, scrape them out with a spoon.

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Let mushroom caps sit in the wine bath for up to an hour. Add salt and pepper before grilling over a low flame, cooking until softened.


NYC Eats:

Cafeteria
119 7th Avenue, Manhattan
Classic macaroni and cheese, cheeseburger, fries, Mojito, side of pretention.

Lucy's Whey
Chelsea Market, Manhattan
Grilled cheese sandwich, sea salt and beer-pretzel caramels.

Eleni's Cookies
Chelsea Market, Manhattan
Chocolate cupcake with pink buttercream.

Magnolia Bakery
401 Bleecker Street, Manhattan
Magic bar.

Pop Bar
5 Carmine Street,  Manhattan
We came here once a day - I had a mixed berry sorbetto popsicle, a vanilla gelato popsicle dipped in hazelnuts and dark chocolate, and a coffee gelato popsicle dipped in hazelnuts and milk chocolate.

Dean and Deluca
1150 Madison Avenue, Manhattan
Everything bagel with cream cheese, strawberry-rhubarb juice.

Corona Pizza
5123 108th Street, Corona, Queens
Slice of Rustica pizza and garlic knots.

Balthazar
80 Spring Street, Manhattan
The most perfect Mojito I've ever had, steak tartare, moules frites, strawberry-rhubarb crisp (best meal of the trip).

Southern Hospitality 
1460 2nd Ave, Manhattan
Fried pickle chips, champagne-St. Germain cocktail (classy, no?).

Brooklyn Brewery
79 N 11th Street, Williamsburg
Wheat beer.

Blue Bottle Coffee Co.
160 Berry Street, Williamsburg
New Orleans coffee, s'more.

Taim
220 Waverly Place, Manhattan
Harissa falafel sandwich, fries with saffron aioli, brown sugar lemonade.

MoMA Cafe 2
11 W 53rd Street, Manhattan
Hearts of romaine salad, foccacia, too much of Angela's fontina polenta (sorry girl).

Bacon-Green Chile Mashed Sweet Potatoes

I love sweet potatoes. Josh loves sweet potatoes. But the last two bags of sweet potatoes we bought completely went to waste because we didn't eat them in time. There was abosolutely no excuse, unless the fact that I'm sick of sweet potato fries counts. I needed something new to entice me into cooking and eating the current bag - which, given our recent pattern with sweet potatoes, may be our last for a while.

What a great sendoff! Green chiles are surprisingly well matched with the sweet potatoes, and the bacon is a no-brainer. Served with a few dashes of hot sauce, these were the best sweet potatoes I've had in ages.

You will need:

4-5 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons sour cream (or light sour cream)
1 can green chiles
3 slices bacon, cooked and chopped
Dash chili powder
Salt and pepper

Add potatoes to a large pot of salted boiling water. Cook until potatoes are fork-tender and drain. Rinse the potatoes well under cool water and return to pot over very low heat. Add sour cream, butter, chiles, salt and pepper and chili powder and mash until smooth. Add bacon, stir and adjust seasonings if necessary. Serve warm with a dash of hot sauce.

Savory Bread Pudding

Man. Is it just me, or is it really hard to go back to eating normally after Thanksgiving? All I want are cookies.

Alas, I refuse to undo the work I've done all year and nullify my thrice weekly workouts by eating cookies morning, noon and night. Add to that the fact that I've become a part of my company's Wellness Committee, and therefore I. must. resist.

My carb cravings hit full tilt this time of year also, and they eventually become unignorable to the point that I have to give in from time to time, despite my best efforts to ingest main-dish salads every night leading up to Christmas (as the buffalo wings digesting from dinner laugh at that best effort).

Enter bread pudding...but not the sort that would quell my cookie craving. This is a savory bread pudding, which I'd like to think is fairly original and imaginative, but I'm sure I'm not the first to give it a shot. I had leftover Italian bread from my parents' visit over Thanksgiving, as well as half and half and a smattering of good cheeses from the same visit (my Italian father is a Grana Padano snob, while I'm generally content with Parmesan in a tub). Josh had just dried the final sprigs of a hearty sage plant that had survived at least two overnight frosts, so you see, I had no choice.

How do I know when a new dish is a hit? Josh tells me he loves me with his mouth full.

You will need:

2-3 slices bacon (peppered bacon would be sooo goooood)
1 shallot, sliced thinly into rings
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 or 4 leaves of chopped sage/2 teaspoons dried sage
4 1/2 cups of French or Italian bread cubes, cut from a loaf and loosely packed into a measuring cup
1 cup mixed grated cheeses (I used Grana Padano, white cheddar and muenster)
4 tablespoons heavy cream
Salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crispy. Remove, crumble, and set aside. In the same pan, cook the shallot until beginning to brown, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sage and cook just until fragrant, about one minute (don't burn the garlic).

In a medium bowl, combine the shallot mixture, bread cubes, cheeses, and bacon. Pour in the cream and stir until everything is moistened. Add a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Transfer to a greased casserole dish and cook for 20-30 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Roasted Potato Salad

As fall approached (and soon returned from whence it came, but that’s neither here nor there) this year, in the midst of stockpiling canned pumpkin, planting potted mums and dreaming up Halloween costumes, Josh and I attempted to wax nostalgic about the autumnal orange-hued pleasures of last fall.

We got nothin’. Not a single memory apart from making a mad dash to a Halloween superstore on Halloween to rummage through the wreckage of picked-over eleventh-hour bits and bobs left over from Halloweeners with better organizational skills (and far more free time). Somehow we managed to find cohesive costumes in a pair, even though our “costumes” consisted only of devil horns. But I digress.

Our memories of last fall are inclusive of little aside from turning Lowe’s into our second home, my griping about that blasted second coat of paint, packing up my apartment and covering ourselves in sawdust. Hearty homemade meals, mums, weekend baking and pumpkins? Not so much when deep in the throes of an all-consuming home remodel. We didn't even have an operational oven.

Needless to say, this fall I have been nothing short of the happy homemaker, with my 18 cans of pumpkin on reserve and purple (what else?) fall mums coddled occasionally tended to by the front door. I’ve baked sticky, sugary, cinnamony treats every weekend, have fed my family their fill of slow-cooked meats and ensured their bellies are full of hot, chunky soups.

So when Alyssa of all people requested salad for dinner last Friday night, and Josh requested grilled burgers, I resolved to find a side dish that would throw a little fall into our suddenly-summery early November evening meal. There’s nothing I love more than potatoes with burgers, but sweet potato fries seemed too easy, too obvious. Cold, boiled potato salad would be all wrong.

Enter: roasted potato salad. Served warm or cold, roasting the potato chunks prior to tossing them in mayonnaise brings out amazing caramelized flavor, and a depth you would never find in a boiled potato. I’m not sure I’ll ever serve potato salad another way; since potato salad is so versatile as it is, it can be easily customized to suit your favorite potato salad recipe. Just roast the potato pieces instead of boiling them. Who knew?

For my variation, you will need:

6-8 medium potatoes, skin intact, cut into medium-sized cubes and/or wedges
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt and black pepper

2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
4 green onions, white and light green parts only
3 chives, diced
1 teaspoon smoked (or regular) paprika
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Toss potato pieces in a bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast on a sheet pan or pizza stone for 20 minutes, until easily pierced with a fork. Remove potatoes to a plate and let cool to nearly room temperature if serving warm, or cool in the refrigerator if serving cold.

In another bowl, combine mayonnaise, sour cream, onions, chives, paprika, salt and pepper. Stir to blend thoroughly. Add potatoes and toss to coat in mayonnaise mixture. Serve immediately.

Bracciole

Please enjoy another guest post on an Italian favorite, bracciole (bra-johl) from someone who's perfected it: my brother Craig. Bracciole is basically a slow-cooked/braised meat roll that's excellent served alongside pasta.

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While my sister is out and about exploring new things on her end of the blog, my contributions always represent the good ol' standbys, the food you can make without needing to refer to a recipe list. Not that I'm in a rut, but it's the easiest thing for me to whip up when I get a text message from Vic asking me to contribute something WITHOUT an expense account or reimbursement. So until one of those things comes into fruition, she can do all the fancy uncharted territory dishes and I'll do what my poor college student lifestyle with way too much student loan debt can make me.

This is of course a meal that costs about nineteen dollars, but tastes like a million. It does, I promise. Bracciole! Now the spell check is wanting me to replace that with bronchioles, which is part of the lung. I can only hope that you don't eat this so fast that you get some food down the wrong pipe and get some bracciole in your bronchiole.

First, get these things:

Thin thin steaks, like top round steaks or “specialty”cuts from your grocery store saying they're thin
Parmesan cheese
Garlic, about three cloves worth, super chopped
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Your own homemade tomato sauce. Ragu will not be tolerated (note: Ragu will be tolerated - homemade is best, of course, but do what you want. Craig is just pretentious).
Butcher's string
A knife
A cutting board
A pan
Patience

To begin, make the steaks as thin as possible without seeing through them. If they're over 1/8” thick, pound the tar out of them. Here is a good comparison between stock height and post-flattening.

Lay them out and trim them into square-ish forms. The scraps can either be pan-fried for snacking on or can go into the sauce to bring out it's awesome meatiness. Now, this is the easy part: add the salt, pepper, cheese and some garlic to each one. Don't be prissy about it.

And the hard part: roll them up without losing as much of that stuff as possible. In comes the string – tie a surgeons knot (two loops) in the center, then finish off with a regular knot. Follow that with one on each side, about an inch or so inside the ends.

Heat up your pan and your sauce and throw the meat rolls into the pan with hot oil, a couple at a time. All you need to do is brown them all around.

Once they've been dealt with, throw them in the pot of red sauce. Let them sit for no less than two hours, if not until tomorrow.

Corn and Black Bean Salad

Today is the hottest day of the year. It's 102 degrees outside, and apparently that makes it the hottest day in Nashville since 2007. To that I say "screw the oven."

Well...that was my intention. But our grill is out of propane, so that didn't happen. But, I still rebelled against my oven-broiled chicken with a cold salad!

This recipe mushes up two recipes from two of my favorite bloggers. One part of it is Ree Drummond's corn and avocado salsa, and the other is Smitten Kitchen's black bean and pepper salad. From Ree, I took the corn, avocado, cilantro and hot pepper. From SK, I took the black beans, red pepper, and honey-lime vinaigrette.

I love this served very cold straight out of the refrigerator. It takes time for the ingredients to marry, so I'd suggest leaving it in the fridge for a solid hour - two if you can stand to wait.

For the salad, you will need:

2 ears fresh corn, scraped from the cob, or 1 can canned corn (I like no salt added canned corn), drained

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1-2 avocados, diced

1/2 a red onion, diced

1/2 a jalapeno, diced, ribs and seeds removed (unless you like it hot)

1 bell pepper, diced (color of your choice)

Handful chopped cilantro

Salt and pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette, you will need:

Juice of one lime
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons honey
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 clove garlic, minced

Combine corn, beans, avocados, onion, jalapeno, bell pepper in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, whisk vinaigrette ingredients together, taking care to add the olive oil last in a slow stream to emulsify the vinaigrette. Pour over corn-black bean mixture, toss to coat and adjust seasonings to taste. Cover and refrigerate for 1-2 hours before serving.

Turnips Au Gratin

On a low-carb diet, even with the vast number of delicious "legal" dishes one can create, there are certainly things one misses, with only the memory of purposely-removed comfort foods remaining. For me, those often-craved bites include cheeseburgers with a bun (preferably a buttery brioche bun), chicken fried steak with cream gravy, Wavy Lay's with onion dip, and French Toast.

The fact that not one of those foods would be welcome on any realistic diet notwithstanding, with a little creativity, the low-carb foodie can find suitable replacements for some of the dearly departed foods. For example: boiled and pureed cauliflower to replace mashed potatoes, Splenda to replace sugar, baked parmesan chips (more on that another time) to replace crackers...but sliced turnips in place of sliced potatoes remains my favorite.

This is a variation of a Pioneer Woman recipe I stumbled upon when I first started reading her site. I never would have come up with it myself, nor would I have considered turnips in any way, shape, or form - simply because I had never tried one (even though they are a bit purple, and in my opinion, adorable).

After a few attempts at this dish, my biggest tip to a turnip first-timer would be to find the smallest turnips possible when selecting. I was all set to turn my family's notions on turnips upside down with this dish during a recent trip to New York, so I ventured across town to the one place I knew I'd find them: the giant Union Square Whole Foods, where I picked up 3 softball-size turnips and didn't give them a second thought as I hauled them back on the 7 train. When all was said and done and covered in thank-you-very-much-New-York-City-$17 Gruyere cheese, they tasted sharp and bit back like a raw radish would. The smaller ones here in Tennessee have proven to be much more tender and sweet, and much closer in taste to a potato. Plus, one cup of cooked turnips has 4.77 net carbs, while one cup of cooked potatoes has 15.7 carbs!

You will need:

5-6 small turnips, rinsed
2 cups Gruyere cheese (or whatever you want - Gruyere is just fantastic)
1 1/2 cups heavy cream or half and half
2 scallions, white and green parts, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons butter (optional)
Salt and pepper

Start by bringing a pot of salted water to a boil. I will also add sugar or simple syrup to the water - I'm not really sure if it does anything, but I like to think that it sweetens the turnips just a tad to take the edge off.

Thinly slice the turnips. I leave the skins on, but you can take them off.

Add turnips to the boiling water and cook while you obsess over getting the perfect photo of yourself chopping scallions, which you won't even wind up including in your silly blog. By that point, the water will be boiling over and the turnips should be fork-tender. Drain immediately but do not rinse.

Allow the turnips to cool for easy handling, then remove one by one to a glass baking dish. Layer the turnip slices, slightly overlapping each other across the bottom of the baking dish.

Sprinkle on a little salt and pepper, a little garlic, a little scallion, and a few blobs of butter. Then...go for the cream.

Just do it.

Then, layer on some cheese.

Repeat until you've run out of turnips and/or room in your baking dish. Cook the turnips at 250 degrees for at least an hour - sometimes I go for two hours. Remove when the cream and cheese have reduced and the top is brown and bubbly.

Find yourself so transfixed by the gooey, cheesy plate that Dr. Atkins would bless as diet food in front of you that you forget to take a picture of the final product.

White Polenta

Polenta is a smoother variation on the southern corn-based favorite, grits. In researching the dish, I learned that it was and still is considered a peasant dish, which explains nothing of why the polenta tube my grocery store sells is close to $5. Don't buy the polenta tube when it's so easy to make at home, and not at all difficult!

My version of my Northern Italian grandmother's favorite is made with white cornmeal instead of the traditional yellow. Don't think I'm super creative and knowledgeable about various types and colors of cornmeal - I just had white cornmeal on hand from an experimental dish a while back, and figured it needed to be used up.

I did, however, put a twist on this polenta from the traditional recipe, using both Parmigiano Reggiano and a healthy dollop of Chevre (goat cheese), which makes for a velvety smooth dish to sit alongside chicken, veal, beef or fish. I also happen to like green onions in just about anything, polenta included, but I think Grandma may have turned up her nose at their appearance in her beloved polenta.

You will need:

4½ cups whole milk

1 cup (scant) white cornmeal

2 ounces goat cheese (chevre)

2 ounces finely grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons butter

1 stalk green onion, white and green parts chopped

1 tablespoon garlic powder

Salt and black pepper to taste

Over medium heat, bring the milk to a soft boil, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching. Reduce temperature to medium-low and slowly add cornmeal. Whisk constantly until thickened. Add salt and pepper and continue to whisk.

When mixture has thickened to the consistency of mashed potatoes, add butter, cheeses and green onion and whisk until combined/melted. Season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Reduce temperature to low/warm until ready to serve.

Leftovers can be refrigerated and when set, cut into chunks, grilled or sauteed in olive oil until crisp on the outside.

Sweet Potato Fries

First of all, I have to get this out: OH MY GOD we have an oven.


You're thinking, ok - so do I, overly-emphatic oven lover, stater of the obvious and sharer of nonessential news. Well, try living without one for almost 6 months and then re-read this post. Maybe you'll get it then.

Back when we were putting the kitchen together, I have to say with complete dorky honesty that I was most anticipating sliding the stove in its little nook. That seemed so final. It meant my kitchen was functional and finished, and that meant I could get to cooking. But something went wrong. Josh is a whiz when it comes to household stuff - he can do plumbing, lighting, electrical work, construction and carpentry. There's not much that falls beyond his grasp, which I am continuously amazed and confused by.

Talent notwithstanding, he accidentally crossed some wires when hooking up the stove (appropriate electrical technology description fails me) and we watched in brief horror as the clock display zapped off the screen and the top of the stove began to smoke. There was no going back - the computer controlling the clock and oven settings was fried, and the oven was rendered useless. Palpable disappointment aside, we consoled our loss with the realization that the stovetop still worked, the oven control computer could (eventually, as it was a $170 part) be replaced, and we could use the toaster oven and outdoor grill in the meantime.

I'll tell you what - in the last 6 months or so I've become a toaster oven whiz. I can cook just about anything in that thing, and I have - successfully. That may be another post in the future - how to get more mileage out of your oft-neglected toaster oven.

More about sweet potato fries now. Last night I had to use the oven. I just had to. Because it was there, and because I could - finally. So I roasted some julienned sweet potatoes. The trick here is to let the potatoes soften in the oven for a significant amount of time - soft enough that you could technically call them "done" and eat them, but you could never call them "fries." Once they're softened in the oven, you have to throw them in some hot oil. You just do.

When they're fried in oil after baking in the oven for the majority of their cook time, all the sugars and starches have softened and will very easily caramelize when dunked in hot oil. The outside of the fry becomes crispy like the top of creme brulee, but the inside stays mushy like any french fry should be.

You will need:

2-3 sweet potatoes, sliced julienne
Olive oil for coating
Sea salt
Garlic powder
2 cups vegetable oil
Table salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the sweet potatoes julienne, then dunk in a bowl of cool water to soak for 5-10 minutes.

Pat dry, and toss sweet potato fries in olive oil, add sea salt and garlic powder, and toss around in a bowl to coat. Dump onto a cookie sheet or baking pan in one layer; make sure they don't overlap one another. Bake for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, heat vegetable oil in a large pot. When the fries come out of the oven, drop a tester fry in the oil (350 degrees). It should float on the surface of the oil and brown relatively slowly - you don't want the oil to get too hot. When you're at the right temperature, drop them all in there at once. If they get tangled up, I don't care, but maybe you're a french fry purist. In that case, take your time and drop them in small batches. Actually, if you were a french fry purist, would you even consider sweet potato fries?

Let them fry away for 2-3 minutes, watching them fervently as they crisp and bubble away without burning, if you've been careful enough with your oil. When crispy, remove to a paper towel to drain, and sprinkle table salt over them immediately.

I like to serve these with a mix of ketchup and Sriracha - the spicy chili sauce really balances out the sweetness of the potato. I also like a mixture of wasabi powder, onion powder and mayonnaise.