Calvados and ginger

We have been feeling fall around here...time to put away the Campari and uncork the Calvados! This is the drink de casa at the moment so I thought I'd share--combine a few healthy slugs of Calvados with a good ginger beer and a lime twist, over ice. Like a Dark and Stormy but with a sweet apple-y flavor from the Calvados. Delicioso.

Swordfish on leeks

Leeks look like hairy, skinny onions. In the allium world they are the scrawny teenage boy who just learned to grow a mustache, which is totally off-putting. But they turn tender and sweet when they are braised on the stovetop and they make a nice nest for meaty swordfish steaks.
Peel off the toughest outer layer and split your leeks in half longwise. You can trim the ends if you like, but I left them on because I think they look neat--just don't eat them.Leeks are always a bit sandy. Wash them well by swishing them in a bowl of cold water and letting all the dirt settle out while you do other things.Swordfish was on sale at Whole Foods! It's delicious but we barely ever eat it because of the over-fishing issues and the cost. But I figured if it was on sale they probably had a lot of it and who wants any waste of such a top fish?Salt, pepper, and marinate very lightly for 30 minutes with a tablespoon of olive oil and the juice from 1/2 lemon, plus a few slices cut from the squeezed out half.Melt about 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat and add in your (drained and dried) leeks.They'll start to get a little bit soft after 5 minutes or so; add in 1/4 cup chicken stock and a drizzle of white wine. Let them cook for another 10 minutes.Meanwhile, zest a small lemon (or do doubleduty and take the zest from the half lemon you used earlier, if it's big enough).Add the zest to the leeks along with another 1/4 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cup or so more white wine. Cover and turn the heat up to medium-high for 7 minutes, then check on them.They should be dry and looking like this with some yummy browned bits.Flip them around and add in a bit more wine (just pour it out from the glass you're drinking out of anyway) and a splash more chicken stock to deglaze the fond. Add also the lightest sprinkle of sugar, plus salt and pepper. Let it cook down for 5 minutes.Meanwhile, that's practically all the time you need to finish your swordfish steaks! Get your broiler cranked up and put in your swordfish steaks with some olive oil in the pan. Let them cook for 3 minutes per side then remove from heat.The leeks cooked off all their liquid and are lying there exhausted.Pile them into a bed on some couscous...And hello there! Swordfish on top.Enjoy! Have another glass of wine. You've earned it.

Citrus takes Manhattan

Classic Manhattan, but sweet and citrusy. Bourbon, sweet vermouth...Blood orange bitters. I lik the packaging on this bottle. And a cute lil' clementine. A blood orange would be even better, for a total theme, but I had a ton of these little suckers in my fridge already. So clementine it is.Slice off a twist...Pop it in a highball with as many maraschino cherries as your drink recipient requests.Get a cocktail shaker and measure in 2 ounces bourbon.Plus a half an ounce of vermouth.And just a dash of bitters.
Halve your clementine and juice it into the shaker.
Add lots of ice...And shake it for your dog!They love it. Pour out into your highball glass, over the cherries and clementine peel.An old fashioned drink...I have also been known to add a little grenadine for ruby color and even more sweetness.

Pina coladas en fuego

The kitchen is still under renovation. It's driving us to drink. We made some yummy pina coladas because all it needs is a blender (afterward it can so easily be washed in the bathtub!). Basic city--for each drink it's just 3 parts pineapple juice to one part each white rum and coconut cream, plus lots of ice to blend. We tried it with a few twists--for example used fresh pineapple chunks instead of juice. It's a lot less sweet that way, which is a good or bad thing, depending on what you're looking for in a ridiculous fruity cocktail.And here's the firestarter--2 healthy pinches of ancho chile powder per drink. You could also make a rim for the glasses by mixing sugar and a little of the chile powder and that would be super fancy and yummy. But I have no kitchen, so I didn't do anything cool that would create extra dirty dishes. But the thought behind the en fuego part of these pina coladas was how delicious spiced dried mango and pineapple are--I thought it would translate nicely to a frozen drink and kind of chill out the sweetness a little bit.
Yeah, the blender is on the floor. In the bedroom. No kitchen.
But you know what? We can still enjoy a fruity cocktail. So it's not that bad. Sprinkle a little more chile powder on the top before serving.

Drunken fusilli with shrimp

Why is this pasta so drunk? It's downright shameful. You cook dried fusilli in a mixture of white wine and chicken stock until it's all absorbed and the pasta is soft and creamy. Then in go some shrimp and lemons. Easy and yummy. You have to stand over it and stir occasionally, but that's why you should make sure the wine you use is one you want to drink too.I start out by peeling and deveining 1/2 pound of large-ish shrimp. Just because otherwise I'll be annoyed if I forget to do it early on and then have to hustle on it at the end. Stick them in the fridge until you're ready to add them in (which isn't until the last 3 minutes of cooking so they've got a while).Mince up about 1/2 of a large onion and saute in a healthy mix of 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil.Just give the onions about 4 minutes or so over medium-high heat--they don't need to get browned, just lightly softened and flavorful.Now add fusilli! This is half of one of a regular 1 lb. bag (the amounts here are just about perfect for 2 people so increase as needed by using 1 pound of shrimp, the whole bag of pasta, etc). Just add it in and stir it around in the butter-olive oil for about 1 minute or so.Now here's the drinky drunk part. The pasta will absorb a lot of liquid when dry-cooked in this manner, but the trick is not to add it all at once--much like making risotto. I mix one cup white wine with 1 cup chicken stock and add the mixed liquid in 2 cups at a time. You may end up needing to add in nearly 6 cups total. So, a cup of wine...Then plus a cup of stock...and voila. Just repeat as needed throughout the cooking process.Go ahead and pour your first two cups of the wine-chicken stock mixture over the pasta in your pan.Stir it around slowly...it won't seem like anything is really happening at first.But then as you go you'll realize those greedy fusilli are drinking in the wine and getting softer. The liquid will start to dwindle after about 5 minutes, so go ahead and add in another 2 cups of the wine-stock mix. Stir stir stir. You can see how they're absorbing it all and getting cooked through slowly. Hopefully you are also absorbing some wine as you stand there by the stove.Go ahead and taste for doneness after the second batch of liquid is almost absorbed--does it need more? It probably will, but maybe not a full 2 cups so just add a little bit in at a time. Keep on tasting the pasta at this point because you want to know when it's al dente. The whole stirring-and-absorbing process should take you about 15-20 minutes; the pasta should be soft and well-coated with a bit of creamy sauce as a residual from the absorbtion of all that booze and stock. Now, what about those peeled shrimp in the fridge?When the pasta is done to your liking, go ahead and dump in your shrimpies.Roll them around with the pasta until they turn a lovely pink, then remove the pan from heat (about 2 minutes, tops). Squeeze in the juice from a lemon and toss everything with a few slices that you've cut from the squeezed out half. Now is a good time to taste for salt--if your stock was very salty you might not need any or just a little--and add fresh pepper plus some chopped basil, if you have it handy.I served this with my absolute favorite summer vegetable broil. This one was perfect, tiny tomatoes together with okra and peppers. They turned out to be just the right partners for this tipsy pasta.