What the staff eats before the restaurant opens: Baked Mussels with Saffron and Tomatoes

Adapted from a staff meal at Atlanta’s Bacchanalia, mussels are quickly baked over sautéed scallions, garlic, parsley, oregano, saffron and tomatoes. Recipe below.

Open kitchens in restaurants are popular for one reason: We all like a peek behind the culinary curtain into the world of chefs, sous chefs, line cooks and even dishwashers. And I’m not just speaking of high-end restaurants where tables in the kitchen come at a premium price. I remember a lunch years ago at the counter at Heaven on Seven in Chicago, watching line cooks crank out order after order with practiced skill, plating the food beautifully and effortlessly and tossing used skillets, still hot, into a deep stainless sink. The hostess apologized for not having a table for me during the busy lunch hour, but I was in, well, heaven at the counter.

So imagine my delight when I heard about Marissa Guggiana’s new cookbook, Off the Menu: Staff Meals from America’s Top Restaurants, published last month by Welcome Books. This is the ultimate peek behind the curtain. It’s not just watching chefs cook, it’s getting to see what they cook for their staffs before the restaurant opens. Continue reading “What the staff eats before the restaurant opens: Baked Mussels with Saffron and Tomatoes” →

Everyday French made easy: Roasted Shrimp and Green Lentils

Shrimp roasted with garlic, scallions and tarragon tops French green lentils for a quick, satisfying, quintessentially French meal. Recipe below.

For all the complex, multi-stepped recipes that give French cuisine its daunting reputation, everyday French home cooking is filled with countless utterly simple dishes as perfect and impressive in their own way as the hautest restaurant cuisine.

Wini Moranville’s new book, The Bonne Femme Cookbook: Simple, Splendid Food That French Women Cook Every Day, proves this with recipe after recipe. La bonne femme is French for “the good wife,” the introduction tells us, but in French cuisine, “it refers to a style of cooking—namely, the fresh, honest, and simple cuisine served at home, no matter who does the actual cooking, femme, mari (husband), or partenaire domestique (significant other).” Continue reading “Everyday French made easy: Roasted Shrimp and Green Lentils” →

The delicious root of the matter: Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables

Roasting chicken, sweet potatoes, parsnips, onions, garlic and rosemary together melds flavors beautifully in this one-pan meal. Recipe below.

This time of year brings a certain amount of angst for those trying to eat locally, seasonally and sustainably. Pickings are getting slim at farmers markets, especially here in the Midwest. The land is hunkering down for a long, cold winter, and summer’s produce bounty is receding in the rear view mirror. So what do we eat?

To answer this question, we need to look back to a time when eating locally, seasonally and sustainably was just called eating. For most of our grandparents (and certainly our great-grandparents), if the fruits and vegetables they ate didn’t come from their own gardens, they came from family farms not far from where they lived. To have produce to eat when the snows came, they would do a couple of things. Continue reading “The delicious root of the matter: Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables” →

A big, delicious bowl of healthy: Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard

Sweet Hungarian paprika, garlic, cayenne pepper, sumac, diced tomatoes with green chilies and just a bit of lamb make Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard a lively, healthy, robust meal in a bowl. Recipe below.

As the weather has been turning cooler, Marion has been messing around with lentils in the kitchen, trying a dazzling array of recipes. I’ll let her tell you about her most recent delicious results.

We mostly try to eat fairly sensibly. But on occasion, we don’t (and when we don’t, it’s usually pretty wonderful). When we have had a shockingly sumptuous meal, I often say for the rest of the week all I am going to eat is one lentil.

Not that eating lentils is suffering. Really, I can’t say enough about how good and important they are. Lentils are not only so, so delicious, but so, so healthy. Continue reading “A big, delicious bowl of healthy: Turkish Style Red Lentil Soup with Chard” →

Breakfast for dinner grows up: Savory Waffles with Mushrooms and Braised Veal

Savory waffles, flavored with fresh thyme and buckwheat flour, are topped with a mushroom and braised veal sauce. Recipe below.

Lots of people love eating breakfast for dinner. To me, though, it’s often been more of a meal of last resort. What you eat when you haven’t gotten to the store for more serious groceries, but hey, you’ve got eggs, and the bread is fresh enough if you toast it.

But recently, I stumbled across the idea of savory waffles—can’t remember where now—and breakfast for dinner suddenly became more interesting. For starters, you’ve got waffles, elegant city cousins of the country pancake. They even require their own machine to make—no mere cast iron skillet will do. Whenever my mom hauled out the waffle iron (always on a weekend morning, and certainly never for dinner), breakfast just felt fancier, more fun. Continue reading “Breakfast for dinner grows up: Savory Waffles with Mushrooms and Braised Veal” →

Sauce Vierge: A no-cook sauce livens up steak, fish, chicken, chops…

Sauce vierge, an uncooked French sauce, combines tomato, basil, garlic, shallots, capers and Dijon mustard to liven up steaks, fish, chops and more. Here, it’s served over pan grilled strip steak. Recipes below.

Honestly, if you ask me what I like to put on my steaks, my usual answer is salt, pepper, a knife, a fork and my teeth. I’ve never been a bottled steak sauce kind of guy. And the first time I ordered steak at Tango Sur, an Argentine restaurant in Chicago, I ignored the side of chimichurri sauce for the first several bites. (It was delicious, of course, when I finally sampled it.) I have since made my own version of the big flavored, garlicky, slightly spicy chimichurri sauce many times. Continue reading “Sauce Vierge: A no-cook sauce livens up steak, fish, chicken, chops…” →

Inspired by Columbus: Braised Pork Chops, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Swiss Chard

A trip to food-obsessed Columbus, Ohio inspires this autumnal combination of Braised Pork Chops with Sage, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Sautéed Swiss Chard with Garlic. Recipes below.

I don’t know if I’ve ever eaten so much in such a short time span as I did on a recent press trip to Columbus, Ohio. One afternoon, I called Marion from the hotel, where we’d been delivered to briefly rest and attempt to digest the day’s many delicious meals and snacks. I told her, “I’m full as a tick, and in an hour, they’re taking us to dinner!” Continue reading “Inspired by Columbus: Braised Pork Chops, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Swiss Chard” →

Two great cooking methods, one delicious dish: Braised/Roasted Duck Legs with Vegetables

Braised/Roasted Duck Legs with Vegetables combines rustic, one-pan cooking with a few elegant ingredients for a simple, delicious fall dinner. Recipe below.

Two things led to this week’s recipe. First, fall is officially here. That makes me officially very happy; it’s my favorite season of the year for many reasons, none of them having to do with football or season premieres.

One place I enjoy fall the most is in the kitchen. Braising and roasting various meats (usually surrounded with various aromatics, vegetables and herbs) or making stews and soups are some of my favorite ways to cook. And they produce some of my favorite things to eat. Which brings me to the second thing. Continue reading “Two great cooking methods, one delicious dish: Braised/Roasted Duck Legs with Vegetables” →

Summer on a plate: Grilled Peaches and Tomatoes with Whole Grain Pasta

Pan-grilled peaches, cherry tomatoes, scallions and Parmesan create a satisfying, summery, sweet/savory vegetarian meal—Grilled Peaches and Tomatoes with Whole Grain Pasta. Recipe below.

We’re always looking for ways to mix sweet and savory in our kitchen. When Marion first described the idea for this dish, I knew it would be delicious. I was right. I’ll let her tell you about it.

Who doesn’t love a peach? And already this year we are getting some really luscious ones, sweet, tart, juicy, fragrant beauties that always seem to be sneaking into my lunch bag or onto my breakfast cereal. They are the best 4 PM pick-me-up and the perfect weekday dessert, all on their lonesome. I may not be having my lunch on a faded old sheet spread in the shade of a tree at the edge of a humming, warm meadow, but with a perfect ripe peach in my hand, I am almost there. There are so many ways to cook them, but when they are so brilliant on their own, why?

Then Terry’s PBJ on the outdoor grill a few weeks back got me thinking. At this time of year, I am always insincerely chattering about making things like peach pie, peach cobbler, peach tart, poached peaches. But how about peaches in a savory entrée? Continue reading “Summer on a plate: Grilled Peaches and Tomatoes with Whole Grain Pasta” →

Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry

Ground pork, English cucumber, red bell pepper, scallions, lemongrass and ginger come together quickly in Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry—perfect for hot summer cooking. Recipe below.

Extreme weather puts us in the mood to take it extremely easy in the kitchen. I’ll let Marion tell you about a quick stir-fry she whipped up that tastes far more delicious than the short time spent in the kitchen would suggest.

All my complaining about the cool, non-summery weather has led to it being miserably hot and humid and weird. This month alone, we’ve had a giant hailstorm that swept across the city accompanied by lightning (we heard it coming, this low drumming advancing toward us in the dark, long before we figured out what it was, and then so much hail, no rain, just hail); then a derecho uprooting trees and hurling around heavy objects on its thousand-mile path; then, this weekend, a day of basement-flooding, record-setting rainfall.

And in between all of this, most of the time it’s been hot—at times so hot that my colleagues in places like Florida and Arizona and California have been helpfully pointing out that it was actually being cooler there, in all those places. (Guys! Thanks, guys!) And along with the heat is a chemical veil over everything, so that when the wind blows, you actually feel worse.

So we have been hunting for dinners that cook up fast. Things mostly made from ingredients, not products, things refreshing to the eye, and nothing including the word slow. Continue reading “Too hot to cook? Not with this quick Peppery Pork Cucumber Stir-fry” →