Food to Soothe the Soul

I woke up this morning very much on the wrong side of the bed. Nothing could pull me out of this one.

Until lunch.

Thanks to Ben's Kosher Deli on 38th Street in NYC, little pieces of my soul began to heal.

One 2" thick house-cured corned beef sandwich
One house-made potato knish
One Kosher pickle
One Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda

The comfort foods of my childhood. And apparently my adulthood, too.

I'm still amazed of the power a simple meal can have.

“A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the body.”
Frederick W. Hackwood, Good Cheer (1911)

When Printed Recipes Go Bad

One of my pet peeves recently reared its ugly head: Poorly written and/or edited recipes. Especially when printed in food and/or wine related magazines, it’s just unacceptable. When I was working for Wine Enthusiast Magazine, I discovered why these recipes could sometimes look so wrong – they’re written by restaurant chefs.

Why would this pose a problem? Reason 1: typically, restaurant chefs don’t write recipes. Their expertise is making the food. Reason 2: The recipes these are based off can have a yield of “serves 25” or “serves 50” Frequently, proportions can’t just be cut in half or a sixth or more without needing to make other modifications.

An even bigger pet peeve is when non-food magazines print recipes – and badly. If someone is getting a recipe from People magazine, that person is most likely not a seasoned cook. This means that EXTRA care should be taken to make sure the recipe is clean, concise, CORRECT and printed WITHOUT typos.

In People magazine’s April 27, 2009 issue, there is recipe printed on page 94 from a Mario Batali cookbook. Here are my biggest issues with this recipe [that’s printed for non-cooks]:

• The quantity for the Linguini pasta is 1¼ lb. to feed 4 people. Noone is going to open or buy two boxes of pasta to get this quantity. Come on people, scale the recipe so it makes sense and people will actually have a chance at making it correctly.
• Since it doesn’t say otherwise, I have to assume that the pasta is dried from a box (as opposed to fresh). Therefore, the cooking time of 1-2 minutes is ridiculous. I’m assuming they meant 11-12 minutes (which is standard for a dried linguini).

For someone who doesn’t know how to cook or doesn’t have confidence in their cooking abilities, how do you think they’re going to feel when they’re pasta is crunchy and essentially raw??

I have nothing against People magazine at all – in fact, it’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures. But please, take a few extra minutes to proof these. I wouldn’t want to see Mario mad.

Broccoli Rabe and Sausage Over Orchiette

Playing in the kitchen today. Here's the result:

1 clove garlic, minced
¾ lb sweet Italian sausage (no casing)
pinch of cayenne pepper
pinch of dried basil
pinch of dried oregano
~ 1 cup prepared marinara sauce
1 lb. broccoli rabe (rappini), trimmed
¼ cup Panko breadcrumbs
1/3 lb orchiette pasta (ear shaped pasta)
Parmesan cheese

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt generously and add broccoli rabe. Let cook for ~5 minutes or until bright green and tender. Remove using tongs or a slotted spoon and immediately run under icy cold water. Drain any excess water out, chop and set aside in a large bowl.

Bring the same water the broccoli rabe was cooked in back to a boil and add orchiette pasta. Cook according to package directions (10-11 minutes). When cooked, drain thoroughly and add to bowl with broccoli rabe.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat and add garlic. Once fragrant, add sausage and cook until browned, breaking up large pieces with a wooden spoon or silicone spatula. Add cayenne, basil, oregano and marinara sauce. Once he sauce is heated through, add sausage mixture to pasta and broccoli rabe.

Toss broccoli rabe, sausage mixture and pasta well.

In the same skillet the sausage mixture was cooked in, heat 1 Tbs olive oil over medium heat and add breadcrumbs and gently toast until golden brown. Do not burn.

Add breadcrumbs on top of pasta mixture and serve with parmesan cheese.

Serves 3-4 with a green salad.

How to Make Matzo Not Taste Like Cardboard

A question that was recently asked of me by an old friend who had never really had the opportunity to eat Matzo. "How do you make matzoh not taste so much like cardboard?"

Most Jewish people I know fall into one of two groups: Group #1) They actually don't mind the taste or texture of it and will eat it straight, as my 5-year old Nephew does. Group #2) Work as hard as they can to mask or modify the bland, dry cardboard-like taste and texture. (Guess which group I fall into)

Before continuing, I feel compelled to provide a very quick history/religious lesson. Matzo is not designed to be delicious. Every Passover, Jews eat Matzo for 8 days to remember the exodus of the enslaved Jews from Egypt. In their haste to escape, there was no time to let the bread rise. There is much more to the story, but for the purposes of this post, I will focus on making modern matzo palatable.


Some simple serving suggestions:

* Spread with SOFTENED salted butter (if it's not softened, your matzoh will break into a million pieces)

* Spread with unsalted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar

* Spread with cream cheese

* Peanut butter and jelly either open-faced or as a sandwich

* Make a sandwich with turkey and mustard (or substitute favorite Kosher deli meat)

* Another favorite is Matzo Brei, which is somewhere between scrambled eggs and French Toast. Pour hot water over matzoh (1 sheet per person), let soak briefly (don't walk away). While soaking, beat 1 egg per sheet of matzo, with either cinnamon and vanilla (to make it taste like French Toast) or salt/pepper. Drain matzo well and add to egg mixture. Pour into hot, non-stick pan with a pat of butter and scramble around like you would make scrambled eggs. Popular toppings include granulated sugar, cinnamon-sugar, maple syrup or if you go the savory route, ketchup or hot sauce.

Happy Pesach!

Another Scrounge Dinner - Tuna Tonnato-ish

It was another night to scrounge. Nothing sounded good and I was out of my normal weeknight dinner options. My pantry is getting pretty bare so I needed to a little more digging than usual. The result wound up based on an Italian dish called Tuna Tonnato

Tuna Tonnato-ish over Linguini

1 tsp anchovy paste
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small shallot, finely chopped
1 can tuna in olive oil, undrained
1/4 cup white wine
Trader Joe's Starter Sauce ~ 17 oz
(contains tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, salt and olive oil)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dried basil
¼ tsp ground Black pepper
3 heaping Tbs drained capers
~ 15 cured black olives, pitted and chopped (Kalamata)
Romano Cheese
1/3 lb thin linguini


Cook linguini according to package directions in a generous amount of salted boiling water.

Meanwhile, add anchovy paste to 1 Tbs olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add shallot and cook until shallot begins to soften, stirring frequently so it doesn’t burn. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and shallot is softened.

Add tuna (along with olive oil) to pan and stir. Pour white wine and cook for ~ 30 seconds, stirring and breaking up big pieces of tuna with a wooden spoon or spatula.

Add Starter Sauce* to the pan then stir in red pepper, basil and black pepper. Mix in capers and black olives. Lower heat to medium and cook for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Taste and add salt as necessary but the capers and black olives should add enough salt.

Add cooked linguini to pan with the sauce and stir together using tongs.

Serve with cheese.

Yields: 2 servings

Substitutions and other Suggestions:
• If you're not lucky enough to have Trader Joe’s Starter Sauce in your pantry, use 14-16 oz canned tomatoes. Whatever you have in your pantry is fine: chopped, diced, whole or even crushed.
• If I’d had artichoke hearts, I would have added them.
• I happened to have Romano cheese for a previous dish. Parmesan cheese works great as well but no cheese is necessary. Just a personal preference.
• I didn’t have red pepper flake or I would have used that instead of the cayenne. ~ 1 tsp+ depending on your heat tolerance
• Toss with Fussily or Rotini pasta and serve chilled or at room temperature.