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Peanut Noodles With Stir-Fried Chicken

October 26, 2015
peanut noodles with chicken

I've made different versions of peanut noodles from time to time over the years - some good, some not especially. This one is the best. It's the ultimate comfort food - peanutty and soy saucey and pasta, I mean come on: what more do you want? And you can also do lots of variations on it: add more vegetables or a couple of handfuls of coleslaw lettuce if you want to make it lighter; add chili sauce to the dressing if you want it spicy; throw in chow mein noodles if you want some crunch. All good.

PEANUT NOODLES WITH STIR-FRIED CHICKEN (adapted from this recipe)

What You Need:

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ENTREES

Lentil “Bolognese”

October 19, 2015
how to make lentil bolognese

I now grow my own basil and make meatless sauces. Oh California, what have you done to me?

A couple of weeks ago a vegetarian friend of mine came to stay with us for a few days, and I was at a total loss for what to cook. So often, it seems like vegetarians just kind of get handed a side dish "that's totally hearty enough to double as an entree!" and I felt...I don't know, like I wanted our guest to feel a little more special. Except over the past couple of months I've grown so reliant on my go-to system of throwing some meat on the grill, tossing a salad and calling it a day that I couldn't for the life of me think of anything to make her. (I ended up not actually doing that badly; I made cool pizzas and a really delicious grain-vegetable-egg combo and such, but still: we're talking about a limited repertoire.)

This would have been a really good solution. Because it's not only vegetarian, it's also really healthy (full of vegetables and protein) and REALLY good. Like, as good as "real" (meaning meat-containing) bolognese. Maybe even better. No joke. It's not going to trick your tastebuds - it tastes like it's own thing, not like traditional bolognese - but it's super flavorful and hearty without being heavy. I like it so much that I prepared each serving with way more sauce than pasta, because it's so good that it's not even as much of a dressing for pasta as it is a really delicious stew.

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Bad New Yorker

September 30, 2015
tomato mozzarella basil calzone

Erin and I were making pizzas for dinner the other day and she said, "Oh, we should use the extra dough to make calzones for lunch tomorrow." And when I replied, all offhand-like, "Sure, that sounds good. I've never had one before," there was this long silence, and I looked over to see Erin staring at me like I had just burst out into a rousing rendition of "Don't Rain On My Parade."

So apparently never having eaten a calzone is kind of strange. And apparently it's extremely strange for someone who spent the bulk of her life living in various New York City apartments, all of which were located approximately ten feet away from a pizza place (or three).

(If we're being totally honest here, I'm not even sure I could have told you what a calzone looks like. I had a vague impression of it being lumpy and bready with...something or another inside, but I think that's also a decent description of a gyro, a.k.a. another thing that I couldn't have described very well even upon pain of death until five minutes ago, when I googled it. And since we're tangentially on the topic of gyros, I also feel that it's important to let you know that up until the age of twelve I confused the word "gyro" with the word "orgy," which means that I had an extremely skewed interpretation of that photo of a woman eating a meat-filled sandwichy-thing that's posted on the door of every Italian to-go place in New York.)

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Recipes

Frozen Pineapple-Mango CocoRita

September 20, 2015
frozen pineapple mango cocorita

Alright, so summer is technically over (or maybe not technically-techically, but we're post-Labor Day, in any case), and frozen drink recipes are typically the kind of thing I post closer to mid-July than mid-September. But it's Sunday, it's warm and sunny out today, and whatever: this thing is really good.

What I made for today's poolside festivities: the pretty cocktails pictured above, which I very helpfully called exactly what they are: Frozen Pineapple-Mango CocoRitas. The recipe was inspired by the video you can see on my FB page here, in which designer Thaddeus O'Neil and mixologist Jillian Vose collaborate on three custom cocktails, all featuring CORZO Silver tequila - basically, I just saw that drink that they made in a coconut and decided to make my own coconut-y thing using ingredients that I already had sitting in my refrigerator. I even gave mild consideration to the idea of going out in search of actual coconuts in which to serve my CocoRitas, but: eh. Getting straight to the drinking-them part sounded better than running out to Trader Joe's.

Suggestion: make these this weekend, while the sun is still shining and you don't feel ridiculous drinking frozen-tropical things. Or choose not to care about matters of seasonal propriety, and make them all year round (I recommend the latter; they're quite delicious).

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