Reason for Not Eating Out #6: Dinner parties are contagious

Here's what I ate on Sunday: Chicken chilaquiles with green sauce and black beans for brunch made by Sam and Richard. Baked brie and mango spread on crackers for a dinner appetizer made by Sean and Meredith.

Cheesy Fennel Rice Casserole and Fennel Salad with Celery and Pecans

I'm ashamed to say that I've never picked up a fennel bulb and cooked with it, and am not quite sure if I've tried it before. I had a leftover fennel bulb after using some of the sprigs for a jarred experiment I've been working on (more on that to come), so it was high time.

The Problem with Pizza

Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours making sauce, dough, preparing the toppings and putting it all together in a cheesy, sausage and jalepeno pizza to share with a couple of friends. We all had a great time. Then afterwards, I got really sad when I realized, thinking about the cost calculator section of the blog post that would be, that I probably would have spent just the same if I'd just bought a large sausage and jalepeno pie at any of the pie joints down the block. Such highs and lows are the life of the home cooker.

Homestyle Soy Sauce Chicken Stew

that's a spice satchel in the middle which should have been removed for the shot It might seem a little redundant for a blog only about food that's cooked at home to post a recipe for something "homestyle." But I defend my usage here to emphasize the fact that you will never see or eat this dish in a respectable restaurant (ever). And yet most Chinese people will probably have eaten something very similar to this recipe at home more times than they can count. I also mentioned it on Eat Drink One Woman and received a request for the recipe, so here goes...

Pasta with Roasted Sweet Potato and Beurre Blanc

Of course, I have been discovering all the classic French sauces with the help of my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and am scandalized by the amounts of butter and fats they require. I just have never cooked (aside from baking) with that much butter before. My immediate thoughts: was I really eating that every time I went to a French restaurant? Was that why it tasted so good and...French? So when I felt like coating my pasta in butter and parsley for this dish I went to the book for the recipe of tasty beurre blanc, infused my butter in wine, vinegar, and shallots, and used only half the amount of butter they called for in their beurre blanc recipe for a lighter, not-quite-sauce.

A Dinner O’Cajun

Isn't it a pity New York seems to have a relative dearth of really good cajun restaurants? There's tons of barbecue and even soul food spots, but New Orleans-style cajun cookin' is hard to come by. Menupages.com listed only 25 restaurants in the "Cajun and Creole" category, and from just eyeballing it I noticed some that were definitely not. I wondered about this after visiting Portland last summer and eating at a great, cute restaurant called Montage which served an extensive cajun-inspired menu and was crammed with locals every night. They even served dishes with gator meat; this was Portland, about as geographically far from New Orleans as you could get in the continental US. So why have I never seen gator meat in New York before?

Add a Few Pounds Cake

And while you're at it, slug back a few hundred calories. Just because. As someone who only cooks for one or two, I'm a natural user-upper, which means that something deep inside me feels very unfulfilled when I see half a tomato in the fridge begin to rot before it can be used. Or half a lemon--which, poor thing, doesn't last too long without its sliced-off other half. So when I opened my fridge the other night I looked at one half a lemon, dewy teardrops glistening inside its cage of a plastic bag, I thought, poor, poor lemon. I'll have to use it somehow.

Pasta with Chicken, Asparagus, Grape Tomatoes and Olives

Food that looks as good as a summer's evening. And it almost was, after the temperature reached seventy degrees this Saturday in New York. I put on a light sweater and headed outside, with the tune from Amelie in my head as I strolled over to Fort Greene Park, thinking of the scene about the man who buys a chicken every day and cooks it with great care and tenderness, savoring the moment he bites into the oysters. I had thoughts of Provencal fare on my mind as well, even though I don't know anything about how to prepare it except for a hunch that very colorful vegetables are lightly cooked with lots of garlic by sauteeing, or stir-frying them, a process very familiar to me.

Post-Holiday Backlash

A few things I ate recently: burgers, pizza, and lasagna. I guess the abundance of Chinese food over the holidays has left me craving the good 'ol stuff. And none of them very creatively executed, with perhaps the exception of the burger, because I swung by by Amy's Bread on Bleecker St. and picked up a couple of “mini” sourdough rolls. Well, they were far too big for one burger. In retrospect I think my original idea of making one giant burger and slicing the whole thing in half to make two normal-sized burgers would have made for a better photo op than what I did: grill the burger patties separately, and place each inside a hacked-down-the-middle Amy’s sourdough roll.

Mini Party Pizzas

I'd really like to tell you that this was a quick, fun and easy recipe that makes for a great snack to bring to parties or entertain with. But it wasn't. It was really difficult and frustrating. Hopefully next time that won't be the case with the experience and skills learned in the two or three hour-long process. I have a newfound respect for pizzas the size that they're supposed to be. I'm always happy to put in some effort on food that's being served to friends though, so if you share this value, then these baby pizza pies can be an impressive show of handiwork.