Weekly Meal Plan

Cinnamon Buns

I’ve developed an odd fascination with Anthony Bourdain’s wife Ottavia, specifically because of her obsession with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. She’s a tiny Italian who can pack a punch with the best of them, what’s not to love? She’s persistent and dedicated – trains five days a week, and doesn’t smoke or drink. Somehow this level of discipline seems to be the antithesis of Bourdain’s scripted lifestyle of excess – maybe she balances him out. (Or maybe I shouldn’t believe what I see on tv.)

I’ve long been tempted to take up martial arts. When I was in elementary school, my best friend’s father was a black belt in multiple disciplines, had a 7th degree in his main practice, and was a Shihan Sensei. He was also a Greek Orthodox priest. Between these things, he had seemingly infinite power in the universe. My first attempt at martial arts was bittersweet – after a glorious morning spent tumbling on mats and learning new grappling skills, I woke up the next morning unable to move – it’s been nearly a decade, but I think I may be ready to try again. (This actually happened to me when I first tried CrossFit. My muscles just don’t adapt quickly to new movements!) My one major obstacle is my bad vision, but I finally broke down this year and acquired a new prescription of contact lenses for my athletic pursuits – so I have no excuse but to go and DO!

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This week I’ve been writing lists of books I’d like to read, lists of things I’d like to write about, financial goals, health goals, things I’d like to eat in the winter – finally today came around and I realized that I didn’t have the one list that I need to get through the week: my meal plan. While I’m waiting on a few new cookbooks in the mail, I decided to stick with my standby culinary crush Jamie Oliver, and catch up on some of his 15 minute meal series on the DVR – the influence for many of the meals this week.

Week of December 28nd

Saturday: Southern Indian seafood soup. With fresh crab, fresh curry leaves (which I pick up at a local market called Russo’s), a multitude of spices, and coconut milk. I had a little bit of extra tomato sauce that needed to be used up, so that went in the pot as well. (Cinnamon buns for dessert!)

Sunday: Beef stroganoff, fluffy rice, red onion and parsley pickle We watched this on Jamie’s 15 minute meals, and it’s slightly more exotic than the Hamburger Helper variety. I have some sierra cut steaks defrosting from my freezer, and I may igloo cooler sous vide them before sticking them in the grill pan. 

Monday: 5 spice duck salad, with pomegranate, mango, lime and gem lettuce. Whole Foods only has smoked breasts and whole duck, so I might have to make a quick trip to get myself a breast or a leg for this dish. (Incidentally, a woman at the store told me to buy the whole duck because I’d be “the talk of the town; just like going to culinary school”. I have no idea what she meant by that one.)

Tuesday: New Year’s Eve! Japanese food – likely takeout. Four or five years ago we were invited to our friend Gary’s house, and his wife cooked a Japanese feast with fresh soba and yuzu that was so very memorable. We made wishes for the new year, and celebrated joyously. We’re not really the types to go out and party on New Year’s Eve, but Japanese takeout is one of our mutual favorite things ever!

Wednesday: Roasted white fish, tomatoes, and leeks. There’s sure to be some bacon in there too, and lots of herby freshness – mint, parsley, whatever else is left in the fridge.

Thursday: Avocado, pancetta and pine nut salad, with crispy grilled chicken thighs.  

Friday: Out? Although, possibly in, given that we’ll be eating takeout on Wednesday. I’m still debating a Whole30 for the month of January, which limits what I can eat out of the house – at minimum we are going to be committing to five home cooked meals a week, and a fairly clean diet.

What are your New Year’s Eve plans?

–– Sam

Weekly Meal Plan

Well Fed 2

Starting my week without a meal plan around here is bad news bears – even worse when I make my grocery trips while hungry. I’ll invariably end up spending double or even triple the amount of food during the week, and end up with things I really don’t need. Don’t shop while hungry folks. Just don’t do it. 

In an attempt to re-enforce good habits before the new year, here’s my meal plan! This week I’m doing a fair amount of cooking inspired by Mel Joulwan’s new cookbook “Well Fed 2“: bold global flavors, lots of fun spice mixes, and some basic condiments like her olive oil mayo on the docket.

Merguez Meatballs

Week of December 22nd

Saturday: merguez burgers with moroccan carrots and spinach salad. Carrots are a confirmed favorite vegetable around here, so I’ve been picking up a few pounds of them each week at the store. Trader Joe’s has a new bag of “carrots of many colors” which make for much more colorful meals!

Sunday: turkey + cranberry balls with potato pancakes, brussels sprouts with pancetta. (I’ve strayed from Sunday night fish night because I’m less enthused about the market not having a fresh catch.) I like the idea of the festive holiday flavors in this meal!

Monday: deconstructed gyro salad (p. 126) (the cookbook recipe is slightly different). Adding it to the “Greek” rotation in addition to one of my favorites: Andie’s lemony chicken gyros.

Tuesday: I was considering duck and mash, but there was a request for Mexican Christmas foods… tamales/enchiladas/etc. so I’m going to see what I can do.

Wednesday: Chinese + a movie (Jewish Christmas!) I think it’s going to be American Hustle.

Thursday: deli tuna salad (p. 118) on salad/melts. Everyone likes a good tuna recipe! This one uses fancy oil packed, which if you ask me, is the best way to go.

Friday: out! Likely Japanese takeout, or our regular date night restaurant.

Saturday: piña colada chicken (p. 96). I’ve long been a fan of the American Chinese restaurant polynesian flavors – and cooking this stuff at home is far superior.

And that’s a wrap! What are you eating this week in between holiday feasting?

–– Sam

Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese

This review was originally published over at Medium – a new-ish publishing platform that I’ve been playing with for the past few weeks. Medium has a clean, streamlined user interface which is quite conducive to both reading, writing and editing. This was my first post on Medium, but I couldn’t help cross posting here as well – it’s too important of a topic for me to leave off of the second lunch. 

Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese
When friends create something great — there is the perfect Yiddish word to describe it: naches.

Soba Noodles with Brussels Sprouts

Five years ago, working at Omnivore Books, I started collecting cookbooks in earnest. I do my best to acquire a wide variety of subjects for my collection to learn as much as possible, and while doing so I am picky. I do my research. I avoid superfluous acquisitions. At this point, due to constraints in space and time, every new cookbook needs to matter. At Omnivore, I was in the right place at the right time — surrounded by people who cared about food as much as I did, and my desire for cookbooks became as voracious as my appetite. (It didn’t hurt that I could acquire books at cost — thank you Celia — and received many a review copy). My favorite cookbooks are the ones that tell great stories, are personal, and are unique to a time and a place.

After years of reading brilliant works: Nigel Slater, Paula Wolfert, Melissa Clark, Suzanne Goin, and Patience Grey to name a few, I started getting the itch. I wanted to write my own cookbook. I wanted to contribute to the literary canon. To write a cookbook you need a topic, an outline, and a collection of recipes. To write a great cookbook, you need a purpose, a sense of wonder, passion, and adventure, work ethic, and commitment to creating something truly marvelous. You need community — the people around you are just as much a part of the story. Anyone can write a cookbook, but to write a great cookbook takes so much more. For me, the task seemed daunting. After fretting about the magnitude of taking on a cookbook, I decided to repress my urges.

Over the past year, several of my acquaintances and friends have had proposals accepted, their first cookbooks published, and have even made the New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists. The flickering desires may be returning.

———

I met Stephanie Stiavetti in 2009, soon after I moved to the West Coast — I remember it vividly: I was invited to wine dinner at a swank San Francisco restaurant where I knew no one, and immediately felt awkward walking through the door. Wide-eyed and a little panicked, I stepped out into the hallway to breathe and there was this tiny force who saved me from loneliness. Her blog was called Wasabimon (now The Culinary Life), and I knew immediately that I’d like her. We passionately discussed food, technology, family, and then somehow this new acquaintance in an instant became a dear friend. It wasn’t until after I left San Francisco that I started reading Garrett’s blog — this too I remember clearly, because I read a single weekly post and proceeded to start right from the beginning and read the blog for hours over the course of a weekend like a novel. (Incidentally, I love doing this, but I feel like most bloggers would cringe at the thought of someone reading a post of theirs from five years back.)

When Stephanie and Garrett sold their proposal, I was thrilled! And, yet, I’ll be quite honest here: when I heard that it was going to be about macaroni and cheese, I was skeptical. There’s a fine line with monographs — single subject cookbooks have a tendency to be flash in the pan, trendy topics that end up remaindered. The lucky ones though, rise as the true authority on the topic, and these are the ones that I spend a good amount of time trying to collect. [Spoiler alert: Melt is the latter].

Melt isn’t really a book about macaroni and cheese. It’s a book about cheese, about discovery, and pushing boundaries in the kitchen. It’s a book for people who truly love food, who will seek out new flavors, and take risks. The recipes, while many of them are quite simple to make, are new, innovative, and may even seem a little bizarre. Risk in a cookbook is hard — as a home cook with a new book in hand you have to place a good deal of trust in the author. And with these two, I do.

Melt Cover

At the core of this book is cheese. And it comes at a good time — cheese lovers these days have much to get excited about. In Boston, we are truly lucky to have Formaggio Kitchen in the neighborhood, where Ishan Gurdal and his family have been building something very special these past twenty years. Formaggio is one of my second homes; their cheese cave rivals none.

For those not lucky enough to live by big city shops, no longer does one have to suffer with supermarket brick cheese as the primary option — many of the great cheesemongers including Formaggio, Murray’s, and Zingerman’s will ship. (I’d be remiss not to mention that Kirsten Jackson, who helped develop many of the pairings in this cookbook book has just started her own cheese of the month club.)

Melt Photos

Photos shot and styled by the talented Matt Armendariz /Adam Pearson— make every recipe stand out

The truth is, I don’t usually write much about cookbooks because reviews make me nervous. To do a book justice, you have to write critically — and writing critically of people you hero-worship is a challenge. But here I’ll try to do my best, to share a taste of the cookbook, and the recipes within.

Melt is divided into five main chapters — the first one is 25 pages about the basics — how cheese is made, types of cheese, sourcing cheese, cooking with cheese, pasta, and cooking methods. The second chapter is completely devoted to salads with cheese and pasta. The third ‘Stovetop Delights’ has many of the more classic recipes you’d think of as macaroni and cheese. There are hearty recipes, and a chapter of desserts.

Each recipe has suggestions for alternative cheeses, wine pairings, and additional pairings for the cheese. The breadth of information in this book is quite impressive, but to give a better picture, I cooked through several recipes.

———

After reading through Melt from cover to cover, the first recipe that I tried was one of Garrett’s (the two split headnote writing duties) — soba noodles with parmesan and pan-seared brussels sprouts (pictured up top), one of those dishes that I almost always have the ingredients for: soba, oil, brussels sprouts, salt, pepper, chili flakes, garlic, and cheese. I loved the recipe because it was simple — and lately simple has been all that I’ve had time to make.

The Case at Formaggio

The case at Formaggio Kitchen

After the first attempt was a success — I wanted to push the boundaries a little bit, explore new cheeses I hadn’t tried. There are flavor combinations in Melt that are unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, and so many of them looked enticing. Would it be the chocolate pasta with Bucherondin, hazelnuts, and cherries? Or the Rogue River Blue with crab sauce over fettucine which looked awfully good, as did the Beecher’s Flagship Cheddar, with avocado, lime, and shell pasta. And then there was the Roquefort macaroni with beets, shallots, and poppy seeds. Or maybe thepaneer korma with idiyappam noodles. And then there were the smoked Idiazabal mason-jar potpies with lamb and tomato sauce. These were so cute, I couldn’t stand it.

I finally landed on a dish that was too exciting to pass up: the chicken breast stuffed with Leonora goat cheese, star pasta, and crushed gingersnaps. Leonora was a new-to-me cheese, a citrus-y goat cheese from the Léon region of Spain. The headnote, Stephanie’s this time, was alluring — magical.

The only tweak I made was to use chicken thighs instead of breasts, because, well, I think that white meat chicken is a waste of time, and the thighs are so much more robust. Heh.

Leonora Cheese

Leonora cheese

Leonora and Gingersnap Stuffing

Leonora, Rosemary and Gingersnaps

Chicken Stuffed with Goat Cheese Gingersnaps and Orzo

Chicken stuffed with Leonora cheese, rosemary, orzo, and gingersnaps.

I admit that while making this recipe, I was nervous— sure everything smelled delicious, but could I convince my better half that a dish that included a good amount of pungent goat cheese rind (you keep it in), and crushed cookies would actually be edible? Knowing that perception is half the battle, I decided to bite my tongue and just serve our meal. We tucked in, the bowls were finished, and the only critique being that the meal was a tad rich. (In my excitement, I had neglected to cook any vegetables.) Score #2 for my testing.

Another evening, the weather was cold, and I decided to try the tomato soup with star pasta and Vella dry jack crisps. I couldn’t find Vella Jack anywhere, so I ended up making the crisps with parmesan, one of the suggested alternatives. Normally when I want tomato soup, I take a jar of Rao’s tomato sauce, and thin it down with a little water. It does the trick, but comes at a steep cost, as Rao’s is priced high enough to put one into debt, quickly. This recipe was easy to make, getting depth of flavor from roasting canned tomatoes in the oven before starting the soup.

Tomato Soup with Cheese Crisps

The cheese crisps too are remarkably easy: preheat the oven to 350 degrees, line a baking tray with parchment or a silicon mat, and bake little mounds of shredded cheese for 13-15 minutes until they crisp up. (I only had foil, and this still worked brilliantly.)

Making Cheese Crisps Parmigiano Crisps

After three successes, and so many more recipes that I’d like to try, I’m able to say confidently that this book is well worth the purchase. It’d make a nice addition to the piles of cookbooks you’ll be giving underneath the Christmas tree. Or maybe consider it for a late Hanukkah gift. Or New Years. Or screw gift giving, and buy it for yourself.

What I’m even more excited about is that this is the very beginning — I’m already looking forward to the next volumes of Stephanie and Garrett that will grace my shelves.

Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese
by Stephanie Stiavetti and Garrett McCord
Published by Little, Brown and Company
224 pages

Eating down the fridge.

When I committed to eating down my fridge before our trip to Canada this coming weekend, I wasn’t quite sure what I had on hand. Which is to say, I was pretty sure that there were some edible things in my pantry, but perhaps not enough to create cohesive meals, and certainly not enough fresh leafy greens. Nevertheless, I set off with a mission, and I’ve been largely sticking to my resolve.

For the last night of Hanukkah, we feasted on latkes with sour cream and apple sauce. There was salad with butternut squash, pepitas, and feta– and (please don’t smite me food gods) Lasagne Hamburger Helper. You just can’t recreate that with real food and hit the perfect ratios. You can’t make it paleo. You can’t make it wholesome. I don’t drink soda, I rarely drink booze, I keep my home largely free of processed foods, but sometimes, something’s gotta give.

Last night of hanukkah

Eighth Night

Thursday night, we each had our holiday parties, so dinner was provided – I held back from over-indulging on too many passed appetizers, and introduced several of my coworkers to the sidecar. Friday, we had our date night, at the Cottage, in Wellesley – we’re pretty much regulars there – mostly because their lamb burger is divine, and they are highly accommodating to my penchant for substitutions (even the few times I’ve been on Whole30).

On Saturday, I defrosted a lamb’s neck in my freezer – with about enough meat on it for only one very patient person – and you really have to pick at it. I decided to braise it sweet, spicy, any sour, and made a braising liquid of two shallots, a few cloves of garlic, a knob of ginger, some salt, cumin, and a few large scoops of orange marmalade – processed with some water in my Vitamix. I cooked the lamb in this for nearly two hours on the stovetop, turning the neck every half an hour or so. At the very end, I tossed in a few warmed Swedish meatballs for Devon. To go with the lamb, I made some bulgur with orzo, mint and goat cheese – cooked to consistency of polenta.

Lamb Neck

Sunday night, I cooked a batch of Rancho Gordo red beans, which I warmed with a little bit of salt, cumin, and salsa. I cooked some chicken thighs between two hot cast iron pans, and made myself a big bowl of collard greens. I topped my greens with a little bit of the beans, and added a few spoonfuls of whole milk yogurt.

Chicken between pansChicken thighs

Tonight, I simmered meatballs in some tomato sauce. I rummaged around for something to go with it all – a vegetable perhaps? There was a package of frozen pizza dough that I had defrosted – and I thought to myself that I could make rolls. When the dough failed to rise, perhaps because it was nearly two years old, and then seemed to be dried out, and then baked into lumps of hardened play dough consistency, I gave up and dumped the failure into the trash.

And so meatballs were all we had.

I think I might have to give up and get us some vegetables.

Seventh Night.

Seven Candles

My little Hanukkah ledge reminds me of the desert. I’d be pretty happy to be hanging out in Joshua Tree right about now. Well maybe not at this very minute – night time and it starts getting cold. Seven candles tonight, and I don’t want the holiday to end. There are so many latkes left to eat, and I haven’t yet played any dreidel! Dinner tonight was a mish-mash of pantry food: Rancho Gordo Florida butter beans, brussels sprouts, a little bacon, and a couple of eggs.