Content
Lurking behind the shiny exterior of this homepage is a Drafts folder, containing every post I’ve ever started. And friends, I could make an entire second blog out of the posts stuck in draft-purgatory. There’s a parsnip cake I made for my mom’s birthday back in 2011; a winter citrus salad that I keep meaning [...]
One of my favorite food-related articles from 2012 came from Slate. It was called, “Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?” and it spoke the truth: caramelizing onions is a matter of patience. Doing it properly takes at least 40 minutes, and the recipes that [...]
Sometimes, when I really want to share a recipe with you, I go a little nuts with the testing and tweaking. The recipes I get most jazzed about are the ones I want to be most perfect. So I make the thing 5 or 6 times, fussing with quantities and baking times and potential extra [...]
It’s me again. Just wanted to tell you that I am still love-loving asparagus season (and still freezing my butt off…DC, get warm already!). To prove my undying love for the green spears, I’ve shared a few more thoughts about asparagus for dinner (okay, and breakfast and lunch, too) over at Food52. Cold soup, hot [...]
Guys, it’s my favorite time of year. Nevermind that May has decided to be about as cold as November and my sad spring dresses are still hanging in the back of the closet: asparagus have arrived! I’ve already downed 4 bunches myself; there’s no stopping me now. You didn’t know I loved asparagus? Can’t be. [...]
Our kitchen’s been busy as ever, with spring finally here. The fridge is full of green (and even some red: rhubarb is back!) and I can’t control the urge to cook a million things all at once. It’s a special kind of attention deficit, and fortunately, its only notable side effects are too many pots [...]
Over the years, my mother has taught me that rarely is restaurant food out of reach for the home cook. Once, she and I went to a Thai restaurant in Tenleytown; while I proceeded to heap spoonfuls of fish curry into my mouth, she speared a small piece of eggplant, took a bite, then another, [...]
It seems the Sequester has had dilatory effects not only on the budget here in DC, but on the weather as well. We’ve waited far too long for spring, and last Sunday, I started to get impatient. There are only so many months for grilling, and I count April as one of them. So, on [...]
As promised, here’s the companion dish to the Burmese black eyed peas I made last week. Can we have an honest moment about fish stew? It’s usually a pain in the butt. Many recipes call for fish stock; they require you to brown the fish before stewing it, which makes a mess and smells up [...]
On our trip to Thailand, we spent some time biking up north between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. For two days of our bike trip, we rode along the Thai-Burmese border. It’s amazing how you can see into one country from the other – they essentially share a big plot of land – and yet, [...]
When I was a kid, my favorite restaurant was a spot called Siddhartha, in downtown Silver Spring. Siddhartha was unfussy, inexpensive, and – at least when we started going – patronized almost exclusively by Indians. In retrospect, I suppose it’s a parent’s dream: kid loves cheap, relatively health Indian food more than pizza, chicken nuggets, [...]
I always say that the true test of a Passover dessert is one simple question: would you eat it not on Passover. In the case of these macaroons, which I first made last June, again in July, and once again in the fall, clearly the answer is yes. They remind me of those piña cola [...]
A few months back, I bought a cookbook for just one recipe. The book was Marion Cunningham’s The Breakfast Book. The recipe was Cream Biscuits, i.e. the most perfect and foolproof biscuits that ever were. I read about them on Molly’s site and knew at once that whatever book they were in was a book [...]
So far, it’s been the kind of month where I’m eating lunch from food trucks and takeout for dinner at the office. Stew season is slipping away, and I haven’t nearly had my fill. (Though, just to be clear, I’ve had more than enough winter weather. Who’s ready for spring?) In weeks like these, where [...]
Remember that post I wrote back in January about our trip to Vietnam? Well, there was a second half to that trip. After traipsing around Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi for a week, we flew over to Chiang Mai and spent a week exploring Thailand. I figured I’d tell you about the trip in stages, because [...]
In the words of Amanda Hesser, this drink is not for delicate flowers. It’s a bit like eggnog, but my god, it’s so much better. It’s foamy and fluffy, hot and sweet and plenty alcoholic. If you’re one of those types who craves a hot toddy from time to time but laments the fact that [...]
It’s cold outside. I hear it’s snowing somewhere. Inside, it’s warm. We made soup. It’s a riff on the rather ubiquitous curried squash soup, but I had a huge bag of carrots to use up, so in they went. Keeping with the whatever’s-in-the-fridge theme, this is a water-based soup; we didn’t have broth, and I’ve [...]
I know folks can get particular about their cornbread. The southerners have their version, savory and packed stiff with cornmeal. The Yankees swear by something sweeter, softer, moister. To loyalists, altering either recipe can amount to heresy. I’m a northerner, of course, and in keeping with the customs of my clan, I like a sweet, [...]
The Jewish holiday of Purim was my favorite as a kid. It was the one day of the year when I got to skip the skirt in favor of sweat pants at school (clue: put on a whistle and, oh look, you’re a coach). We got dismissed early, had a carnival for most of the [...]
I’ve been traveling a bunch for work, which has left our fridge less packed than usual. It’s a bummer to open the fridge and so few bags of produce, but D gets positively gleeful about all the open space. O.C.D Organized people just love empty fridges, am I right? With less time at home, I’m [...]
D and I aren’t big on Valentine’s Day. Forced romance and overpriced, heart-shaped dinners aren’t our thing. However, I’ll take pretty much any excuse to indulge in chocolate, so that, I’m on board with. It’s also my 30th birthday, which means I can do whatever I want. Right? Chocolate for all! We celebrated with a [...]
I know, I know, I still haven’t posted about our trip to Thailand. Sorry! I did just go through my pictures this weekend, and gosh – we really had a fantastic time. The food was amazing and loads of fun to relive. Lots of obsessing about everything Thai is coming your way – I can’t [...]
I’m having a bit of a moment with Asian food right now. If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you’ve seen this born out in a series of slightly-obsessive photos of yam som-o, pomelo salad, which I am very, very close to perfecting (and then posting!). This, of course, is because we traveled to [...]
Every January, I tell myself I’ll eat more salads. The catch: when I’m not saying this with my mouth full of muffin, I’m swearing it in between bites of spaghetti. The cold months make it tough to get it up for leafy greens. Still, I don’t back down so easily. I empty my pockets for [...]
You guys know about monkey bread, right? It’s a pull-apart loaf made from bits of dough that have been rolled in lots of melted butter and sugar. Why it’s called monkey bread is anyone’s guess (though as Nancy Reagan not-so-famously claimed, the bread got its name ”Because when you make it, you have to monkey around [...]
Well clearly, it’s January. I got to the gym yesterday morning and my god was it crowded! You can practically taste the hope in the air. So much ambition, so many plans. Resolutions abound. It’s the second week of January, so I trust we’ve moved past the “I only eat raw vegetables” phase and are [...]
Over brunch last week, my friend Mike – who’s been to a lot of places, but never Southeast Asia – asked me what made me want to visit Vietnam. Actually, I think he asked me if the motivation was purely the country’s food. Can I answer honestly without sounding totally uncurious about everything else? Yes. [...]
Well hi there. Hopefully you’re curled up on the couch in pajamas, eating something tasty and sipping something warm. We’re in comfies on the couch, with coffee in hand. I’m already contemplating a mug of hot chocolate with one of last night’s vanilla-bean marshmallows plopped on. There’s so much time to run around like a [...]
This year. I can’t believe it’s almost through. There was a tremendous trip to the Sugar Bowl (and one of the best food cities there is). There was a 29th birthday, a surprise trip to New York, and a beet dish that so haunted me, I tracked down the recipe and made it myself. There [...]
Two weeks, 30 meals*, and nearly 1,000 photos later, we’ve returned from Southeast Asia. It’s nice to be back in our own home, in our fair city (which compared to the Maryland suburbs has too much pollution but compared to Vietnam smells like I imagine Little House on the Prairie did). But still: even with [...]
Hey lovelies! On vacation so no blog updates for a little bit, but you can follow along with our Southeast Asian adventure on twitter, instagram, and Facebook. Huzzah! © rivka for Not Derby Pie, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags:
This is my bread. It starts with this gurgling little beast, my homemade sourdough: I’m telling you, it’s alive. (I still need a name for the beast. I’m taking suggestions.) I’ve been making this loaf for a few weeks now, tweaking it every so often here and there. It started as a multigrain loaf, with [...]
I think I’ve confessed before that, despite my being Jewish, I really love the all-American, green-and-red, pine-scented, light-twinkling, gift-filled holiday that happens to coincide with Christmas. What better holiday than one that causes my colleague to bake several pounds of fudge, all at once, and give it all away? And the carols. The carols! It’s [...]
Now then. That was fun, wasn’t it? I’m imagining you all with bellies full of turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and cornbread and maybe too much pie. As for me, this past week was fulfilling in other ways. Time in Israel, time with family, a wedding, a weekend, and plenty of food (though none of [...]
Every November, the food industry collectively scrambles to reinvent the wheel on Thanksgiving dinner. We’re told to eschew the recipes handed down by generations of relatives, and instead, spatchcock our turkey. Or steam it. Or let it hang for days, Pekin-duck style. Or tie it to the exhaust manifold. That stuffing we’ve been making all [...]
There may be nothing better than taking the most virtuous ingredient, like kale, and making it as delicious as deep-fried potato slices. I love kale chips. If we’re being honest about our allegiances, I’ll tell you that I might like my taters au gratin even more than as chips. You get that crunchy, browned exterior, [...]
Jerusalem is a city of enclaves. There are Yemenites and Iranians and Bukharians, Russians and Syrians and Brazilians, Ethiopians and Venezuelans and Jordanians, Libyans and Italians, French and Americans. Each group has its own neighborhoods, its own language, its own culture, its own food. And now, there’s finally a book cataloguing everything. Yotam Ottolenghi was [...]
Fresh from the archives, first published October 27, 2007: it’s my Ima’s challah, with new pictures and better instructions. Enjoy! Growing up, there was one option for challah in town: that was Shalom’s, the kosher supermarket in Wheaton, MD. Every Friday my mom would swing by Brookville supermarket and pick up two challot, which were [...]
Perhaps I’m the only one who stresses about these things, but I’ve been away from the blog for some time. Actually, I’ve been away from the kitchen for some time. October has been a busy month for me at work, and getting a big project out the door meant fewer of those fall nights where [...]
Introducing a new occasional column, Indian Feast, where I’ll slowly tackle staples of Indian cooking right here in my kitchen. I recently received an email from a reader (hi, Deborah!) about curry. She said she’d been on a kick lately, and wanted to know if I had any recipes to share. It’s strange and wonderful [...]
We’ve been having some of the most beautiful days in DC these past couple of weeks. The air is crisp but not yet cool, and the sun seems happy to shine all day long. It looks like summer from my office window, but it’s starting to feel like fall. The weather’s confused my compass a [...]
The other day, I spent too many hours at the office. It was dark when I left work, and by the time I got home, all thoughts of roasted eggplant tartines went out the window. I wanted something I could dig into with a spoon, that would be warm and soft and comforting. Strangely, I [...]
Growing up, caponata was a thick, saucy affair. The eggplant was cooked until it almost fell apart, then melted into tomatoes, raisins, olives, and onions until it DID fall apart. The result was a dip you could eat alone, but it was even better spread on crackers or sandwiches. I loved that caponata, and I [...]
With Rosh Hashana less than 12 hours away, it may seem a bit late to be posting a cake for the Jewish New Year. However: however. Some of us leave the cooking until the last minute, yeah? And besides: if someone had shared this cake at the same time last year, I’d have read it [...]
Over years of hosting friends for Saturday lunch, frittata has become a staple of my lunch table. It’s easy to prepare; it makes use of whatever of-the-moment ingredients you have in the fridge or on the counter; best of all, if you’re preparing it in the Italian style, it’s served at room temperature. Unlike Tortilla [...]
I think you’ll be happy to know that I’ve found a legitimately easy way to tame the most finicky of vegetables into submission. I’m talking about eggplant, of course. Eggplant is beautifully purple (or white with purple speckles!) until you cut into it, when it’s suddenly grey-brown. It’s thick and sturdy, until you start frying [...]
When squash blossoms first come out in late spring, I go crazy with the hot oil. I fry them plain; I stuff and fry them; I even shred them, coat them in light batter, and fry them like chips. A couple weeks later, I come to my senses. There’s only so much fried food one [...]
A great salad of creamy potatoes, bright, fresh green beans, and smoked trout. When beans and potatoes are at the height of their season, this salad tastes of pure summer.
Bittman says that spinach is a dish best served cooked, and who am I to disagree? I used to be very into raw spinach salads with strawberries, avocado, and sweet, sweet vinaigrette — you know the salad I’m talking about — but that feels very 90′s LA, or Upper West Side circa my college years. [...]
These are the precious few weeks when everything is in abundance. Normal people get really excited about this: they come home loaded with little yellow tomatoes, bright green beans, beautiful ears of bi-color corn, and – for the few days that they’re available – blackberries. Me? I get stressed. What if I can’t get enough [...]
