Small kitchens, big solutions

Chicken and Rice in a Pot, a quick one-pot dish adapted from the Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook. Recipe below.

Update: See Other Notes below for a timely food blog find.

In at least one previous post, I’ve mentioned New Yorkers’ collective penchant for ordering delivery instead of cooking, and my Brooklyn buddy Ronnie has backed me up on this. One huge reason is the tiny kitchens in most New York apartments. Real estate is expensive in New York. Really expensive. And usually, kitchen space is the first thing sacrificed on the altar of square footage.

For New Yorkers determined to cook at home—or for space-challenged cooks anywhere—there are solutions. Smaller sized appliances, for instance, that pack all the features of their bigger brethren, just in a smaller footprint. Forget hot plates and dorm fridges—these are high-end appliances made by the likes of Jenn-Air and Viking. It’s possible to drop a grand or two [or more] on an undercounter fridge, as an example. But for creative cooks, solutions to small kitchens come in all sizes, shapes and price ranges.

Which brings me to Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen’s Smallest Coolest Kitchen Contest. Last year, parent site Apartment Therapy held its first annual Smallest Coolest Apartment contest and showcased some wonderful apartments whose residents packed maximum living and versatility into minimal square footage. This year, they’ve rolled it out across all their sites: The Apartment, The Kitchen, Home Tech [home office or audio visual] and The Nursery. Site co-founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and his wife Sara Kate live with their baby, born in November 2006, in a 265-square foot apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, so they know whereof they speak.

When you live in an apartment, smart use of space is an ongoing challenge, no matter how big or small your place is. So checking out last year’s entries and their solutions that ranged from brilliant to creative to sometimes a little bizarre became a daily obsession. Besides, let’s be honest—seeing other people’s apartments is just plain voyeuristic fun. Now that there’s a kitchen-focused category, I may need a 12-step program once it’s over.

There’s still time to enter, by the way. The deadline is April 16. So if you’ve got a small kitchen, apartment, nursery or home office you’d like to show off, go to the site for details.

If anyone is qualified to give advice on organizing and working in a small kitchen, it’s Justin Spring. For more than a dozen years now, he has cooked in a kitchen that is just 45 square feet. And he grew up cooking weekends, vacations and summers on the 36-foot family sailboat, where the kitchen consisted of a camp stove, ice chest and bucket. Spring has written an appropriately diminutive book on small kitchens with a ridiculously oversized title: The Itty Bitty Kitchen Handbook: Everything You Need to Know About Setting Up and Cooking in the Most Ridiculously Small Kitchen in the World—Your Own.

Unlike most kitchen books whose ideas are guaranteed to make your wallet bleed, Itty Bitty is refreshingly all about editing and purging, making pots and utensils do double duty and making space work efficiently. Besides lots of solid advice on equipping, organizing, cleaning, cooking in and entertaining from a small kitchen, you’ll find plenty of encouragement and inspiration, all in a friendly, fun, quick read.

You’ll also find recipes. A hundred of them, to be exact, all of which can be accomplished with no more than two burners and a toaster oven, if necessary. And while you won’t find haute cuisine, you’ll find some decent, doable eats. The recipes all feature what Spring calls “the combined imperatives of (1) being breathtakingly simple and (2) being interesting enough to merit the trouble of cooking.” The quick one-pot dish above is my adaptation of one from Spring’s teeny kitchen. The recipe follows. Continue reading “Small kitchens, big solutions” →

Spicy Salmon with Mango Salsa

Mango salsa with a touch of chili powder brings bold taste to salmon fillets with a hint of cayenne pepper. Recipe below.

The kitchen is open. Again. Sort of. Our new apartment is still filled with boxes and chaos, but we’re making headway. I was on the phone with a friend the other day and said, “It still looks like a bomb went off in here, but a much smaller bomb.” Marion added, “And a bomb that folded a little laundry.” I’ve decided that we either have to move more often, so we don’t acquire too much stuff, or else never move at all.

But I’ve actually managed to cook a few meals now. It feels good to be back in the kitchen—even a kitchen where I can’t find anything yet and the stove and fridge are in completely different places from where my brain says they should be. It’s almost like cooking in a parallel universe—pans and utensils seem reassuringly familiar, but everything is slightly out of whack, slightly off kilter. Cue ominous background music.

The good news is the new stove is vented, a first for me. I’ve been itching to try it out since the first time I saw it; I figured pan seared salmon would be the acid test. I had learned from Helen over at Beyond Salmon that one reason my Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables didn’t stink up the place with my unvented stove was that I was using a cooking method involving liquid, steaming it. She also said that pan searing does cause the house to smell, particularly with fatty fish. Enter the salmon.

The mango salsa is a variation on one I’ve been making for a while. Fruit alone—the mango and strawberries, in this case—would be too sweet for the fish. The addition of green onion tops [you could also use chives] gives it a fresh wildness and just a bit of a bite, making it play nicely with something savory—the salmon, for instance, or grilled chops or chicken. You could also use minced shallot, but I think this would cause a definite onion taste to take over, rather than just the lively green flavor of green onions or chives.

Adding the chili powder gives the salsa just the tiniest bit of heat, but it really ramps up the taste. Similarly, the cayenne pepper only adds a hint of heat to the salmon; don’t expect a fiery Thai dish intensity with this meal. Continue reading “Spicy Salmon with Mango Salsa” →

Champagne, a missing cat and Abbott & Costello

We moved last weekend. Actually, the process has been ongoing in earnest for a few months now, but Saturday morning the actual movers came with the truck. We’d hired them to move the big stuff—furniture, mainly. That meant we were moving everything else, carload by exhausting carload.

Friday night we made two runs, then packed the car again to drive it full when we led the movers to the new place. We ended up getting to bed at 3 o’clock Saturday morning and got up at 7:30 to finish getting ready for the movers arriving at 9.

I don’t recommend moving on four and a half hours’ sleep.

We’d heard and read all kinds of horror stories about movers showing up late or not at all, but our crew arrived about 15 minutes early. Which was the cue for our 17-year-old cat Cosmo to add to the drama of the day by disappearing. He’s been an indoor only cat for the last ten years, but springtime always awakens the prowling gene in him, and he starts hanging out around windows and doors, sniffing the air and looking hopeful. We were afraid he’d already managed to slip out somehow—or would do so once the movers were going in and out. Finally, though, he nonchalantly sauntered out of a room we had each searched top to bottom, twice. How the hell do they do that? We promptly confined him in the room he’d just exited, and the move got under way.

The movers were amazingly efficient; when they finished unloading on the other end, it was only noon. And Marion and I were only getting started. We made another run to the old place, picking up another load, this one including Cosmo. Once he was safely installed in the new place, we unpacked boxes for a few hours, then made a run to what I’ve dubbed the holy trinity: Target, Home Depot and Petsmart [otherwise known as the cat food store in our household]. By the time we’d hit all three, it was eight o’clock and no dinner plans had been made, other than we needed to eat some. Fast. Continue reading “Champagne, a missing cat and Abbott & Costello” →

A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 2

Marion’s robust chili uses red wine and soy sauce, along with more traditional ingredients, for a big, satisfying flavor. Recipe below.

I am nothing if not a procrastinator. Back in January, when I posted A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 1, I promised to follow up with Marion’s excellent chili recipe as Part 2. So here we are with spring right around the corner and I’m finally getting to it.

I also have a nice white bean chili dish made with chicken that I’d intended to get to as a hearty cold weather dish. But after two different chilis, my Tuscan beans from last week and Patricia’s delicious Brazilian rice and beans, I think I’ll take a little break from writing about beans.

That said, we don’t think of chili as a strictly cold weather meal at our house. Except for when the weather turns blazing hot—usually all of August here in Chicago—we’re happy to make it and eat it pretty much year ’round. Try Marion’s robust chili recipe below and I think you’ll be right there with us. I’ll turn the kitchen over to her now. Continue reading “A Tale of Two Chilis, Part 2” →

A Little Something on the Side: Tuscan Beans

Rosemary and mirepoix, a sautéed mix of onion, carrots and celery, are at the heart of rustic, delicious Tuscan beans. Two recipes below.

As much as possible, I try to be a “waste not, want not” kind of guy. So, having some nice rosemary left over from my last week’s Rosemary Apricots post done for Weekend Herb Blogging, I thought I’d make this simple, delicious side dish. Also being a “two birds, one stone” kind of guy, I decided to post this one on Weekend Herb Blogging too. This week, it’s hosted by the newly married Anna over at Morsels and Musings [best wishes, Anna!]. Continue reading “A Little Something on the Side: Tuscan Beans” →

Rosemary Apricots: Toute de sweet

Rosemary, apricots, sugar and water come together quickly in a very simple, very French dessert. Recipe below.

ROSEMARY IS PROBABLY MY FAVORITE HERB. Every year we grow some in the yard and some in a pot on the back porch, and I always watch it impatiently, waiting for it to get big and hardy enough for me to start harvesting occasional sprigs. Even when I’m not clipping bits to use in some dish or another, I like brushing against the plants as I pass, catching a whiff of the big, distinctive fragrance they release. Rosemary does wonderful things to lamb, chicken, pork, roasted potatoes—and to apricots, in this wonderfully simple French dessert. Continue reading “Rosemary Apricots: Toute de sweet” →

Chocolate cake: Easy on the flour, easy to make

Quality chocolate and butter are key to this easy-to-make, almost flourless cake. Recipe below.

AS MUCH AS I LOVE TO COOK, WHEN IT COMES TO DESSERT I’m often all too ready to follow the advice given with so many main course recipes in cooking magazines: Cap off the meal with a nice store-bought dessert. With all the premium ice creams out there and lots of little bakeries churning out a dazzling [sometimes almost daunting] assortment of goodies, it’s an easy default. But there’s just something so nice about finishing a great meal with something homemade.

Fortunately for me, Marion is far more ready than I am to ignore the easy charms of store-bought and whip up something sinfully sweet and delicious at home. This decadent, rich, nearly flourless chocolate cake is a perfect example. So I’ll get out of the kitchen and let Marion tell you how to make it. Continue reading “Chocolate cake: Easy on the flour, easy to make” →

Can I get that to go?

A quick heads up—today’s post is potluck. After you read it, I expect you to bring a comment to share with everyone. Also, I’m doing a double post today, the second in honor of Valentine’s Day. So be sure to scroll down.

If you’re a regular at Blue Kitchen, I figure you either like to cook or are a friend or family member who feels honor bound to visit. Or maybe you’re C.) all of the above. But there are times even those of us who loooove to cook either don’t have the time or the energy or C.) all of the above. What do you do then? Drive through? Pizza? What are your defaults? Your delights? I’ll go first.

For us, if we’re not up to cooking, it’s usually because we’ve worked late or have umpteen things to accomplish after dinner. If that’s the case, we also don’t have the energy or time to go someplace and sit down for a nice relaxing meal. So it’s got to be fast and on the way home. Cheap is good too. Our defaults, driven more by geography and speed than desire, are usually Chipotle or Taco Bell. I know. Shut up.

But then there are the guilty pleasures. We recently rediscovered one: Egg foo yung, those pancakelike deep-fried patties of egg, vegetables and meat or seafood. A longtime staple of rather suspect Chinese American restaurants, they’re often found next to those ersatz Chinese dishes, chop suey and chow mein on the menu. And in St. Louis, they’ve even invented something called the St. Paul Sandwich—an egg foo yung patty on white bread with lettuce, tomatoes, mayo and pickles. So I was stunned to recently discover that egg foo yung is actually based on an authentic Shanghai dish.

Before going any further, I have to say that Marion and I are regulars at more than a couple of restaurants in Chicago’s Chinatown, places where we would probably not be allowed back if we ordered egg foo yung. And we tend to avoid generic food court Chinese food at all costs, in no small measure because the foods they serve tend to feature the same gloppy brown sauce that is a key ingredient of egg foo yung. But there’s something about egg foo yung that transcends national origin to become one of the world’s true comfort foods.

And never was it more comforting than one night a few years ago. In a fit of temporary insanity, we had agreed to our older daughter’s request for a sleepover birthday party with six guests. A total of seven girls, including the birthday girl, who needed all the caffeine and sugar buzz we’d also intelligently provided like a shark needs swim fins. They weren’t being bad, mind you—it was just the perfect storm of noise and energy and gross out humor. Silly me. I thought having daughters, it would be all Barbies and tea parties and I would escape the various bodily function jokes of my own childhood. I’ll wait while my women readers enjoy a good laugh at my naivete about now. That’s okay. I deserve it.

Marion and I were hunkered down in our room, grimly watching Saturday night TV and each privately longing for a tranquilizer dart gun as the party raged on outside our door.

And then we remembered the late night Chinese take-out place not two blocks from our house.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in our room with wonderfully satisfying plates of egg foo yung, steamed rice and gloppy brown sauce. I think we must have also had a couple of glasses of some modest white wine. The world was suddenly a better place.

Okay, your turn. What’s your default take-out or delivery? What’s your guilty pleasure? Try to stick with fast and cheap and, if at all possible, greasy this time. I’m sure we’ll talk about fancier options in a future post.

Note to self: Get organized

I keep promising myself to put together an editorial calendar for Blue Kitchen, mapping out topics I want to cover, especially around the holidays. If I’d done that, last week you would have read about some romantic Valentine dinner or a sinfully rich dessert in time to perhaps actually plan for it tonight. But I didn’t. And if I’d gone ahead and written about something like that for today’s post, you’d just be pissed that there was no time to get things together. So instead, I wrote about egg foo yung.

Just so you know I’m not a total doofus, Marion and I won’t be eating egg foo yung tonight, assuming the winter weather cooperates. I made dinner reservations at one of our favorite little Chicago bistros, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe. Sharing the kitchen with the [only slightly] more formal Cafe Bernard, the tiny Red Rooster offers exquisitely prepared simple French cuisine in a relaxed country atmosphere. If you ever find yourself in Chicago for dinner, you could do far worse than this cozy, friendly place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.