Saturday Night Comfort Food: Ravioli alla Tortorella

Last night, I invented this dish and named it in honor of the New York Rangers’ coach John Tortorella. There is no particular significance to the ingredients as pertaining to him; I just wanted to pay tribute to the man who has led my secret boyfriend Henrik Lundqvist and his teammates to be NUMBER FREAKING ONE IN THE NHL AND WINNERS OF THE WINTER CLASSIC!!! And whose name just sounds like it should be a pasta. Originally I was actually thinking of inventing a Tortellini alla Tortorella (you know how I love geeky wordplay, gentle reader), but I figured ravioli would work better, because the meat sauce would mingle with the cheese filling once you cut into the ravioli, whereas tortellini are all wound up tight (much like Tortorella).

While heating a large pot of salted water for a package of cheese ravioli (13 count), I sautéed a little over a pound of ground pork in a couple tablespoons of olive oil with a medium chopped onion, a bunch of minced garlic, and a 10-oz. package of cremini (a.k.a. "baby bella") mushrooms sliced and halved. Oh, and coarse salt and pepper of course, and some fresh thyme leaves. I broke up the meat with a wooden spoon as it cooked.

Once the meat was cooked through (it doesn’t really brown, it more like…whites), I added maybe 1/2 cup frozen peas, stirred them in to mix, and transferred the meat mixture to a bowl.

Taco Night!

As countless NYC food carts have proved, there are an infinite ways to make tacos—with a matrix of practically every meat/fish/veggie/legume you can think of, tons of topping combos, and of course, soft vs. hard/corn vs. flour tortilla. I grew up with Taco Night starring the classic American incarnation of ground beef/hard corn shell, but I have no use for the hard shells, which invariably shatter as soon as you take a bite if they haven’t already shattered in the box (plus they’re overpriced and a huge waste of packaging). So, this is my alternate take on the ground beef taco using soft tortillas.

When I made this recently, I heated some bacon fat—but you could use a couple tablespoons of olive oil—to brown 1.5 pounds ground beef over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (you could use a cast iron skillet or a non-nonstick frying pan; nonstick doesn’t brown the meat properly).

Sprinkle kosher salt, ground cumin, chili powder, and paprika over the meat before using a wooden spoon to break it up so it crumbles as it cooks.

New Year's Baby (bok choy)!

Happy New Year Readers!

It's almost a brand new year! I know I never told you about our Thanksgiving fun, brining the turkey. I also realize I haven't said a peep about our Feast of the Seven Fishes at Christmas. Here I've been, dropping the holiday ball, but I promise that I will catch you guys up on everything, it has been mostly delicious!


But here we are, about to ring in the new year, and I have something quick and easy to share. I am hoping to stop by a couple of lovely parties this evening, but I am not sure what the actual food plan is besides snack foods, so I wanted to have something substantial in my stomach before the wine starts to flow, and I had a bag baby bok choy in the fridge. Et Voila! Brown rice and bok choy.

Lamb Shank Stew With Tomato and Butter Beans

It is an all too rare occurrence that my co-blogger and I cook and eat a meal together. But a few days before New Year’s, we found ourselves free of plans. Serendipitously, I had a pot full of lamb shank stew that I had planned to serve over rice, and Alyce was…making rice. It was totally like I was a crocodile and she was that bird that picks food out of its teeth, or something. So, Alyce jumped in her car to come pick me up, I threw my pot into a canvas shopping bag (have lamb, will travel!), and we proceeded to have the best impromptu dinner party ever.

How, gentle reader, did I come to have said pot of stew in my possession? Well, the previous night, I had made tomato soup (recipe to come, sooner or later) and grilled cheese sandwiches (with fancy artisanal bread from Brooklyn Victory Garden and Kraft singles from Met Foods) for myself and The Rob, and prepped this lamb stew for later in the week. See, on weeknights, I like to throw together something quick for that night’s dinner (say, pasta) while simultaneously pre-cooking something that can be reheated another night. Cheap cuts of meat like lamb shank and beef short ribs take a long time to slow-cook but require zero maintenance while doing so, and serving them on the next night or two is actually preferable because (a) the flavors develop that much longer and (b) during overnight refrigeration, a layer of fat congeals at the top of the liquid and can be easily skimmed off before reheating.

So, here’s how to put this dish together. It takes time management (you want it to cook 4 hours on night 1) but very little hands-on time.

Christmas Dinner 2011: Beef Tenderloin and Nostalgia

Christmas Day, we drove up to my grandmother’s house in Western Massachusetts—where she always cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family when I was growing up—and my mom, the Beez, and I cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family. Though I have fond childhood memories of making E-Z-Bake Oven mini-cakes and baking cookies with my grandmother (I was particularly excited by her pizzelle press), this was the first time I’ve ever actually prepared a meal in her kitchen.

Our mission was to update some family Christmas classics, which include a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern influences (we’re of Assyrian descent—look it up) and 1950s Americana. So, on the appetizer table was pre-cooked shrimp with cocktail sauce straight from the jar, alongside stuffed grape leaves and spinach-feta-phyllo triangles. However, we skipped the canned-peas-with-meatballs-in-tomato sauce that was a vile annual staple of the holiday dinner table, and the Kool-Whip-and-God-knows-what-else-based frozen green pie for dessert. And since Aunty Olga was out of town, there were no Tollhouse cookies for the first time in my memory.

As is customary, we overdid appetizers—but this year we were shockingly conservative on desserts, with only two for seven people (compare with Thanksgiving). For the main course, we eschewed my grandmother’s usual entrée excess (we’re talking a roast turkey, a ham, roast beef, and maybe a lasagna thrown in for good measure) for a single beef tenderloin.

The tenderloin was cooked to perfection (we cut it with butter knives) but a little overwhelmed by the flavor of the smoked paprika I had carelessly overused in the dry rub. Everyone assured me it was good, but I imagine Tom and Padma might have sent me packing for that paprika-palooza.

In any case, here is our Christmas Day menu:

My Favorite Christmas Cookies

Gentle reader, this recipe isn’t an original, but I keep coming back to it year after year. This holiday season, if you care enough to give your loved ones something homemade (read: can’t afford/are too late to actually buy them presents), this Martha recipe has everything going for it: It combines the classic holiday-treat flavors of chocolate and gingerbread for an unexpected twist while remaining fully in keeping with tradition; and it keeps and travels well for at least a week or two, pretty much without crumbling or breaking.

The one original spin I put on them is to use M&Ms, sometimes the mini red and green ones, in lieu of the chocolate chunks, to make them look more festive. (And I use regular cocoa powder since that’s what I keep in the cupboard.) Oh, and rather than have the actual shreds of fresh ginger in the cookie, which can have an annoyingly fibrous consistency, I grate the ginger into a bowl—maybe a little more than the recipe calls for—and squeeze the liquid out into the butter.

Leftovers Love: Chicken Tetrazzini

What exactly is tetrazzini? In order to use up leftovers, I made a variation on what I thought its main constituent parts to be—turkey or chicken, pasta, cream sauce, peas, and mushrooms—only to look it up after the fact and learn that there is no actual consensus on what exactly it consists of. (Also, that the dish was named after the opera singer at left.) So my variation was as good as any—not to mention being a quick and hearty reworking of leftovers to the tune of $3 in new ingredients.

Backstory: Monday, I made roast chicken, which I had marinated in Brooklyn Lager topped off with some chicken stock, rubbed under the skin with Old Bay and garlic powder, and stuffed with a sliced clementine and a head of garlic for flavor infusion. While the chicken rested, I made pan gravy with the drippings and more chicken stock plus a little of that beer brew. Also, I made frozen peas and Stove Top. (As regular readers may recall, the Rob loves his Stove Top.) This was a very satisfying meal, and also I made a very flavorful stock out of the chicken carcass.

Fast-forward to this evening (is this an action-packed saga or what?!): I purchased a bunch of parsley, an 8-oz. package of mushrooms, and a box of linguine—which frankly I should have already had on hand, but for once I was out of dried pasta.