foodie nyc

Aglio Oilio, Bastardized

By now, you've read enough about the simple, traditional pasta we always have on Christmas Eve.    Olive oil, garlic, peperoncino, parsley and parm regg make up the dish.   Despite all of the adventures I like to take with ingredients, I can rarely muster the nerve to mess with this dish.

But as part of the post Kate Nash dinner, I said screw tradition. 

The concept and technique for the dish remained the same, but the ingredients were turned upside down.   I started with olive oil in a pan, but rather than infusing with garlic and peperocino, I went with garlic, smoked paprika and a dash of ground cardamom.   After a handful of parsley, the oil stays on low heat for all of the flavors to come together. 

After cooking the pasta to the point of almost al dente, it's added to the oil to cook just a bit more to immerse itself in the flavored oil.   To take this bit of heresy to another level, I finished the dish with grated 5 year old aged gouda instead of the traditional parm regg.   

The smokey, fragrant oil was intense, flavorful and earthy.   I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the aged gouda in the pasta.    It lent the same nutty, salty flavor of the parm regg, but the caramel flavors were an interesting twist. 

Cooking For One: Jersey Sans Jersey

I looked in my fridge and saw a large eggplant, leftover ricotta and kafir lime leaves.  Surely, a run to the store was in my future for dinner tonight.

But wait.  Today's Iron Chef tasting and judgment panel would consist of me and only me.  Time to make the best of it and get creative.

I thought about eggplant parmigiana.  A natural progression for me, as this was one of the first dishes I'd ever made.  (C'mon people, I'm from Jersey after all).

Rather than labor to make a traditional eggplant parm, I thought it would be interesting to explore multiple preparations and textures of eggplant within a single dish. 

These little stacks of eggplant would feature a layer of crispy, crusty baked eggplant, coated in a crust of curry and bread crumbs.  A second layer of curried fresh ricotta would add an earthy creaminess.  The third layer of this 'not eggplant parmigiana' would be slices of eggplant cooked slowly in a kafir lime infused coconut milk.

This dish was very simple to make.  Simply slice 1/4 inch thick slices of eggplant (use a ring mold to make them uniform if presentation is important to you).  Beat an egg and brush it on half the eggplant.  Then sprinkle these slices with a bit of salt, pepper, curry powder and bread crumbs (both sides).  Give them a drizzle of olive oil over the top, then bake the eggplant in a 350 oven for 10 minutes, finishing on broil for maximum crispiness.

In the meantime, add the rest of the eggplant slices to a pot and cover with coconut milk, a bit of stock, a few kafir lime leaves and a squeeze of lime juice.  Simmer on low heat (avoid boiling) and cook until the eggplant are tender, about 10-12 minutes. While waiting for the eggplant to cook, mix a pinch of curry and chopped chive into the ricotta.

To serve, make layers of the crispy eggplant, a dollop of ricotta and finally the coconut kafir eggplant, repeating twice.  Finish with the crispy eggplant slice and you're ready to serve.  A few tablespoons of the coconut kafir lime sauce is a welcome finish to the dish.

And there you have it.  Jersey, sans the Jersey.

Cooking for One: Smoked Paprika Rigatoni

I rarely cook for myself. 

For me, cooking at home is not a utilitarian exercise - I don't do it to satisfy my gluttonous desires.  Cooking, in many ways, is about personal expression.  Sometimes the expression is in the ideas that have led me to prepare a dish a certain way.  Other times, the expression is in the flavors I've married together. I don't cook from recipes, but I'd imagine the above would continue to hold true if I did. 

Even if I make a simple, straightforward dish, it just doesn't taste the same without someone enjoying it with me.  Expression almost always begs for a reaction. As all cooks know, once you get used to receiving the reactions, they become a continuous source of pleasure.  I'm all about the reactions to the food I make, as well as the conversation that usually comes along with a meal. I love to see natural expressions of joy, satisfaction, surprise or even skepticism someone has while eating food I've prepared for them.   I also enjoy hearing thoughts and ideas on how a dish could be better.  I can't tell you how many of my dishes have been improved based on these dialogues.

Based on where I was in my life a few years ago, my personal situation has changed dramatically.  Single life has been treating me well so far, but just like everything, it certainly has its ups and downs. As it relates to cooking, I don't have that reliable dining partner to enjoy the day-to-day cooking I do at home.  Since I have to pursue dinner guests now (not a great personality attribute of mine), having people over for dinner has become more like an occasion vs. a daily part of life.  As such, I've slowed down tremendously in terms of my cooking output.  It's led to lack of food porn for this site but more importantly, has hindered me from landing on those special culinary moments - when a few spontaneous kitchen maneuvers result in a personal culinary breakthrough.

All of this has led me to the conclusion that I need to cook for myself.   While the drawbacks I mention above will certainly be there, I need to continue on with my exploration in the kitchen, even if that means solo.  I obviously won't want to go all out for myself, but I can make simple, interesting, flavorful food that I can enjoy on my own without the need to overanalyze it, right?

In an effort to keep myself committed to this idea, I'm starting a series on this site called Cooking for One.  The food I feature will be simple, easy to execute dishes I've made for myself on any given weeknight.  As with most content on this site, I cannot commit to a posting schedule but my goal is to get Cooking for One posts up every week and a half.

I'll kick off Cooking for One with a simple pasta dish that I made in 20 minutes last night - smoked paprika rigatoni with sausage and sage.

One of the principles that I'll need to employ while cooking for myself is the fact that I probably will not want to go food shopping for the meal.  It needs to be residing at my apartment already.  That means it's all about what I have in the fridge and in the pantry at the time.   

For this meal, I had some sausage, sage and Parmigiano Reggiano in the fridge.  Pasta was a natural pairing, and I immediately went with an olive oil based condiment to dress the pasta.  My bit of experimentation was to create an oil infused with smoked paprika.  All I did was brown sausage, removing it (and the fat) from the pan once cooked.  I then put some fresh EV olive oil in the pan, along with a heaping teaspoon of smoked paprika and a pinch of chili pepper flakes. After I blended these ingredients into the oil, I heated the oil over very low heat for a few minutes.  I then added some chopped garlic and sage to the pan for a minute, then the sliced sausage and the cooked rigatoni.   Salt, pepper, some grated Parmigiano Reggiano finished it off, along with a heaping serving of Top Chef.  Now if only I could convince Padma to come over for a tasting.

Cheers to all you solo eaters out there.