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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/dining/26mini.html?ref=style

Late Night Pizza

I made the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day on Sunday, and it's been proofing in a bowl in the fridge since then.  I put the grill pan on high, turned the broiler on high, and rolled out a mini-pie for myself.  I grilled both sides of the dough, slathered on some homemade tomato sauce (which is one of those things that will never taste better from a jar), tossed on fresh mozz, and then let it finish in the broiler for a minute.

Took about the same time as your average frozen tv dinner.  And much faster than making a loaf of bread from a book that is the ultimate lie.

This has been posted in The Pineapple Spoon Rest too.

p.s. You know there is a specific line in my lease about NOT using knives directly on the counters?  Because there is.

Pasta and Bread

I've been in sort of a cooking funk recently, but two of my friends were coming over tonight and I knew I needed to come up with something.  I don't typically do pasta dishes for guests, but like I said, cooking funk, so I made Mark Bittman's multi-grain pasta with butternut squash and ground lamb.

The recipe calls for packaged cubed butternut squash, which baffles me for a lot of reasons.  Can't someone just do some of the tedious prep work the night before instead of wasting money?  Cripes.  Order take out or cook for real.  Anyway, I didn't take any pictures, but my friend Chris did so maybe I will post those another time.  The dish was pretty delicious and hearty, and the flavors were described as "subtle."  I could tell with Adam's first bite he was wishing it was covered in a heap of tomato sauce.  This is not that kind of pasta dish - how could it be with cinnamon and cumin?

I served it with some homemade bread from the Master Recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is a recent addition to my culinary library.

After Meredith asked me to start blogging here, I realized I liked writing about food a lot and started my own blog called The Pineapple Spoon Rest.  I recently wrote a very brief entry about the sham that is bread in five minutes a day. After baking and eating mini-boules three nights in a row, I can say it's delicious, but five minutes?  PLEASE. I read the introduction for the book after I got in the mail, and already forgot what it said (oops), so maybe it described what they actually meant by five minutes (the ease in having fresh bread once you make the initial recipe and can lob off chunks of dough while you're prepping the real dinner), but I don't get how twenty minutes of preheating/dough resting and half an hour of baking equal five minutes.  They should rename the book Easy Artisan Bread and call it a day, and then I would be a lot less agitated.

Oh It's Good to be Sixty

My birthday present from my scuba-diving brother was seven succulent tails of lobsters he caught in the ocean off the coast near San Diego. He sent them via Fed-Ex on dry ice with the dates and locations they were caught. We are going to feast on every one. Tonight, a beauty caught a few hundred yards off the shore at about 35-40 feet was sauteed with vegetables and a black bean ginger sauce and eaten with fresh Chinese noodles in front of the fire. The roses were a present from my husband Larry, the chopsticks were a gift from the Benders and the Gifts of the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh was from my colleague, Jocelyn. It's good to be sixty. You have something to look forward to.

This was supposed to be about Indian food.

I try to bring lunch to work every day, and I try to cook dinner Monday through Thursday and Sunday. I do not often cook from a box or bag, and I try to make everything relatively healthy. But Friday and Saturday are no holds barred, and I love my local Chinese take-out spots. Like, love them. I guess that's how some people love pizza - in all its disgusting, congealed mozzarella glory. I like pizza enough, but I only really love it when it's grilled. There was this place in New Brunswick called Jack 'N Grill, and they used to make really awesome grilled pizza. The problem is they only ever made this awesome grilled pizza once, and every other time it sucked so bad that until Adam and I finally gave up and moved on to Tido's (note to self: discuss Tido 'n His Junkyard Dogs at another point in time).

Al Forno in Providence, RI has the most amazing grilled pizza, which is what the restaurant is famous for. It's topped with strands of scallions, and it's BANANAS. I celebrated my 27th birthday there, and now that I'm heading deeper into my late 20's, I realize how important it is to mark your birthdays with memorable food experiences.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about bringing lunches, cooking dinners, and how I've cooked Indian food twice in the past week and how much I love it, but then I got distracted by pizza. I'll save my green chicken masala for another time.

New Year's Day Party

These are pictures of our 2nd Annual New Year's Day party. Everyone seems to like the menu, so we will probably make the same things every year. This should make Meredith and Ben very happy because they like to bring home leftovers.

We always have little bowls of nuts and olives and lots of fresh flowers

I made a Gateau Semoline (semolina cake), center, that has raisins and is flavored with vanilla and nutmeg with a caramel glaze.

I also made gravlax, which is salmon cured in vodka for three days. It has a similar texture to lox. We also had crab cakes and french toast casserole. Dieting starts tomorrow!