Fried chickpeas with rosemary

Here is the perfect crunchy/salty/aromatic snack--fried ceci with rosemary and sea salt! Chickpeas go through an amazing transformation when rolled around in hot oil--they develop a lovely crispy shell enveloping a nutty, creamy bite inside. Add some coarse salt and pungent rosemary and you have the perfect cocktail nibble for before dinner. And you can totally use canned chickpeas, I don't judge.Drain one can and rinse them well. Be sure to dry them off thoroughly because you'll be popping them in hot oil and want to minimize your splattering.Heat up 3 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy pan until it makes that crispy sound when you drop a chickpea into it. Add your dried off chickpeas and stir them around gently until they develop nice brown bits all over (you're not making hot hummus here, so don't mash them!). This takes about 5 minutes, but keep an eye on them so they don't burn up over the high heat.After they're nice and crispy, add in about 2 healthy sprigs worth of chopped fresh rosemary and keep frying.Toss them once with a liberal tablespoon of coarse salt (kosher or sea salt in big flakes), then set out for your guests while still a little bit warm.Make sure everyone has a glass of wine or a cocktail. That's just good advice in general though.

Red sauce for new parents

There is a trend in my life right now...lots of pregnant friends and family and brand-new babies turning up left and right. Melanie and Jeremy just had a lovely little guy themselves and so I made some seriously meaty red sauce for them to keep in their freezer for emergency dinnertime. If you have the same baby epidemic going on, try making your poor friends something delicious. They will thank you in an adorable, sleep-deprived way.I chopped up 2 big onions into dice......and about 6 cloves of garlic as well as a good 1/2 cup of parsley. I want this little baby to appreciate strong southern Italian flavors! The onions and garlic cooked in about 3 tablespoons olive oil over medium-low heat until soft, then I added in 3 pounds of ground meat to brown (one pound each of beef, veal and pork). After the onion was softened and the meats were browned, I put most of two big cans of peeled tomatoes through my food mill for a smoother sauce texture.I saved about a cup's worth to chop up so there would be some nice tomatoey bites in there too.The sauce bubbled away for about 2 hours so it got nice and full-flavored.Because I am a cheese monster, I made labels for the freezer bags that I froze the sauce in. This made just enough for 4 1-quart bags. It's a good size to be able to pull out of the freezer for dinner for 2.Lay them flat to freeze so they will store better. Here they are the next day, ready to be packed up for Mel.I ended up making a gift basket with some pasta, a wedge of parmesan and a much-needed bottle of wine.

Nutella-banana ice cream

This past Sunday there was a whole lot of crazy kitchen activity around here, culminating in the absolutely sinful homemade ice cream combination of nutella and banana. The velvety vanilla-cream base is very easy to make and lends itself to all kinds of creative possibilites. I see production of a zabaglione ice cream on the horizon...or a strawberries and cream, then maybe a lemon-blueberry...infinite variety to lazy summertime Sundays.

I had 3 frozen bananas in my freezer ready to go--they had been getting too ripe so I just peeled them and wrapped them in plastic until I had an opportunity to use them up. You could use fresh ones instead if you don't have any already frozen. These got sliced up into chips and set back in the freezer to wait their turn to be added into the ice cream.Whisk together 1 cup whole milk with 1/2 heaping cup sugar.After the sugar dissolves (about 1-2 minutes), stir in 2 cups heavy cream......and 1 teaspoon vanilla.At this point, this is your basic vanilla ice-cream base, suitable for many different add-ins. Pour this mixture into your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's directions. Mine is this little R2D2 Cuisinart, it takes about 25 minutes of mixing time.Added in the Nutella--about half of this container. Then after about 10 minutes of mix time, the frozen banana slices got added in as well.After the mixing time was through, it needs to get quickly packed into a container and returned to the freezer for at least 1 hour. It is tasty right away but the texture is very soft-serve--if you want it to be more like ice cream, you'll need to let it freeze up some.It was just a really great combination: tiny bites of banana and frozen chunks of Nutella in a light chocolatey-hazelnut base.

Grilled new potatoes

I got these fantastic little potatoes from the Morningside farmers market. I love the mixed bag of tiny new potatoes--purple potatoes, golden yellow ones...just all different colors and textures. I decided to make these adorable little guys on the grill alongside a new york strip steak and it was a really really good idea. I had just about 1 pound of these teeny potatoes: first pricked each one all over with a fork, then rolled them around in 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and at least 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary.I slapped them on the cooler end of a hot grill, being careful not to lose any of the especially small ones between the grates. I guess you could thread them on a skewer if you steamed them a bit first, but I just threw them on there as they were.They got their head start and eventually were joined by the steak, which I placed on the hotter side of the grill.I do recommend getting a taller grill if possible. Otherwise you might attract some unwanted dog attention.Turn the potatoes over a few times to get them nicely browned on all sides. If some are bigger than others, you may need to cut them down to the same size so they all cook at the same rate. Pull them off when they are cooked through and soft with a nicely crisped exterior; the timing here is quite variable depending on size of potatoes and your grill heat, but it should probably take somewhere between 30-45 minutes. Taste them as you go to see if they are done to your liking. Then roll them back in the same pan of olive oil-rosemary mixture so they get another coating of delicious flavor.This and a steak...they belong together.

Rooster chicken

I thought it would be interesting to show a work in progress for once, instead of a recipe that I feel totally confident in. A couple weeks ago I read a good article in the New York Times about Sriracha sauce and decided I wanted to try making a glaze for chicken. This will work really well on grilled chicken--the version I tried out here was roasted in the oven and basted with the sauce. It was tasty but I think glazing grilled chicken pieces (or better yet, a whole chicken on the grill) with this sauce would be even better. I whisked together Sriracha sauce with brown sugar, soy sauce, a little minced ginger and garlic.Brushed this over my chicken as it roasted in the oven...After it was fully roasted (thigh temperature at 170 degrees, which takes about 1 hour or so for a small bird in a 400 degree oven), I added one more coat of sauce then squeezed lime juice over everything as I sliced it.It makes a delicious, tangy, spicy bird done this way, but I plan to refine this further for the grill.

Octopus salad

My mother, who loves me very much, came to visit me recently. She cleaned my house, walked my dogs and we cooked. One night she made an excellent white bean-chicory stew and I decided to try to make an octopus salad based on what I had learned on my flight down to Puerto Rico last month. My seatmate described a simple salad with spicy tinned octopus (and some other sea creatures, possibly squid?) tossed together with avocado and other veggies. I decided to make mine with diced sweet onion on top of arugula, dressed simply in lemon juice and olive oil. On one of our wanderings through Rincon, I picked up a couple of these tins of octopus. Happily, they were not confiscated by the USDA on my return flight because these are great for delicious, no-heat summertime cooking. They probably sell the tinned octopus here in the states too, I just like bringing food back with me from trips as a sort of evanescent souvenir. One tin of octopus plus one avocado was the right amount as a first-course salad for two people. Cut up one avocado, slice into chunks and dress lightly with lime juice to prevent browning while you get the rest of the salad ready.Toss the octopus gently together in a bowl with your avocado and about 1/4 cup diced onion. I have tons of Vidalias right now due to living in Georgia so I used those. Something with more bite might be nice though. Or green onion...anyway. I added a little bit more lime juice, salt, pepper, a teeny pinch red pepper flakes as I combined them.Then I tossed some arugula with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice, then rested the octopus mixture on top. Perfect for an early summer dinner out on the porch.

Comida de Puerto Rico

Rick and Emma were kind enough to get married in a tropical paradise so I was already looking forward to eating tons of exciting food while there for their wedding. And it was clearly meant to be--on my flight down I was lucky to be sitting next to this guy who had encyclopedic knowledge of his island's specialties (I took copious notes the whole time which he found hilarious for some reason). I'm pretty sure I got to try most of the dishes he mentioned and I'm planning to make some of his recipes in the very near future now that I'm home (coming soon: an octopus salad with avocado). So a big thank you to Food-Obsessed PR Mystery Man In Seat 11B--you got the party started right.Most nights were cooking in--people staying at this big beach house all took turns. The night that I was cooking, our group made fish and meat tacos. The fish ones were tilapia chopped in a pan with cilantro and soaked in lime juice at the end.The meat was for carnitas--I ended up roasting it in the oven in pineapple juice for a quick and dirty version of carne al pastor. We also had mashed yuca, black beans and all kinds of other good stuff. Just glancing around the environment in Puerto Rico really explains why the Caribbean has such incredible food. Everywhere you looked there were coconuts or mangos falling out of the trees--and there were fish everywhere! Rick and I saw a fresh catch of mahi-mahi and red snapper for sale on the roadside one afternoon that looked amazing. One day a few of us hiked down to Rincon and ended up drinking rum and eating for the afternoon. Stephen had something that I think was mofongo--a stew topped with mashed plantains.
These tostones were great--crispy mashed and fried plantains, delicious with the tangy green chile sauce.And more carnitas...because fried pork? Is delicious.Even on the day of the wedding we ended up going in search of more street food.This place had an amazing cornmeal fritter that was filled with cheese and slightly sweet. I think they're called sorullos and when I die I want to be buried in a nest of them. We also ended up with great empanadillas from here.I really like the seafood empanadillas best but these were a pretty amazing carne asado version.At the wedding dinner we had barbecued chicken, shrimp all kinds of wonderful things...Grilled slices of mango, papaya, pepper, pineapple and sweet onion.I'm completely in love with this style of eating--naturally local, fresh and simple. And there were so many other great things! These fried potato puffs in Old San Juan, piononos (fried, stuffed plantains), light and dark rum in everything you are drinking, the flan with cheese that Rick and Emma had for their wedding cake (and that eventually got smashed into his face late that night while we were all playing in the ocean)...anyway. And that's all just the food! I haven't even talked about how damn pretty it was there.Damn. So pretty.

A delicious sandwich

I intended to post on halibut topped with a wonderful, fresh-tasting relish (pistachios and tiny green olives chopped together with blood orange segments and olive oil). But then the power went out and it was too dark to take pictures or even really see what I was doing, although dinner turned out pretty well despite it all (I have found in the past that being able to cook in the dark is just a necessity for living through stormy summers in Atlanta). So eff it--here instead is an emergency leftovers sandwich I made the other day that was completely delicious: toasted whole wheat sourdough bread with slices of flank steak, arugula, roasted red peppers and goat cheese.

Langoustine pasta

Langoustine tails (aka "baby lobsters" as certain parties know them) are tossed along with white wine and lemon into an easy, quick pasta dish. You can always make this with shrimp (or adult lobster) instead, but if you can easily find langoustine, go ahead and use it. This really will only take a few minutes to throw together and it doesn't take a lot of ingredients so it's particularly good for lazy nights.Mince up 2 cloves of garlic and add them to 3 tablespoons of butter in a big pan over medium low heat. Keep a good eye on it--you don't want the garlic to get over-browned or burn--it should only take about 2 minutes. Mix 1 tablespoon flour into the butter until it is all incorporated, then whisk in a generous 1/2 cup white wine. You can always pour more in your glass, don't worry. If it needs additional thinning as you go along, add a splash of chicken stock or more white wine. Stir the sauce until it slightly thickens, then add in 1 tablespoon minced parsley (I actually used cilantro because that's what I had around in the fridge). Add in your peeled langoustines--mine came in a 12-oz bag from Trader Joe's and I just tossed them all in still frozen--and stir a few times over low heat. Taste one after a few minutes to see if they are warm through, you really don't want to leave them on heat for too long, especially if they came precooked, as mine did. I probably only let mine go for about 3 minutes or so before adding in the pasta. Stir in the juice (and zest too, if you like) from one lemon, along with salt and pepper, then add pasta--cooked just shy of al dente--and turn it lightly to coat with the sauce. I used these pretty tri-color linguine and it was a nice combination.