Strawberries with Balsamic and Basil

This simple strawberry salad is one of my favorite ways to end a meal. Especially now, when the days are long, warm, and the markets are overflowing with super ripe sweet berries and fruit. Best of all, this dessert is as delicious as as it is beautiful, and it requires zero baking, measuring, and very little time.

Balsamic macerated strawberries are a classic, and yet I've met many who have never tried them. The acidity and murky sweetness of the balsamic (real, good balsamic - read the bottle carefully, make sure it doesn't have artificial coloring or high fructose corn syrup) goes so nicely with the perfectly ripe summer strawberries. I also added juice from an orange, and fresh mint in addition to basil - both those ingredients did something special to the salad. Really, you can mix and match any of the ingredients below and you'll have something that's sooo good. At the end of the day, how can you go wrong with fresh strawberries and cream?

Strawberries with Balsamic, Basil, and Mint, served with Mascarpone Topping
Serves 6

3 pints strawberries, lightly rinsed and dry
3 tablespoons very good aged balsamic vinegar (or to taste, depends on your vinegar)
Juice of 1/2 an orange
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar (or to taste)
8-10 basil leaves, sliced thin (i.e. a chiffonade)
5-6 large mint leaves, chopped fine
1 cup mascarpone
1 tablespoon half and half
1 teaspoon maple syrup.

Slice your berries into halves or quarters, depending on the berry's size and your preference. Add them to a bowl. Add the balsamic vinegar, orange juice and sugar to the berries. Gently toss the berries. Add the basil and mint to the coated berries, lightly toss again. Be careful not to bruise the berries too much. Let the berries for marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to 3 hours.

In a small bowl, combine the mascarpone, half and half, and maple syrup.

Guests can top their serving of berries with a dollop of the very lightly sweetened mascarpone.

The berries should be eaten the same day you make them. They'll last for an afternoon or an evening, but not much more than that. I hardly expect you'll have leftovers.

Marinated Red Bell Peppers

I am a sucker for anything pickled or preserved, and I'm a sucker for my grandmother's cooking She serves these marinated red peppers at dinner nearly every night. These peppers are a nice tangy, garlicky, accompaniment to any meal. I really like them alongside fish or chicken. They would make a great topping for a hot dog on the 4th of July.

I use white vinegar in the recipe because that's what my grandmother uses. I've only changed the recipe slightly, and next time I make these I'll try them out with red wine vinegar. Also, my grandmother usually makes these with a mixture of red and orange peppers. I picked up some lovely red peppers at the farmer's market, but I didn't see any orange ones. Use what you have. Green peppers will not taste as good because they are not as sweet. According to Baba, the exact measurements aren't important, and this recipe is as simple as something roasted and marinated can get.

As I mentioned, these guys are tangy AND garlicky. If you're not into garlic, skip it or add less. If you just started dating someone and you are making that person dinner for the first time, maybe don't serve them this recipe for that meal. Actually, do serve them this recipe. Garlic breath is cancelled out when both people have it. Just make sure you both eat the peppers.

Marinated Red Bell Peppers with Garlic

3-4 large red (or orange) bell peppers
3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon kosher salt
pinch of sugar
1/2 cup white vinegar
3-4 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Lay your peppers out on a foil or parchment lined sheet tray or baking dish. Poke a few holes in each pepper with a small knife, so that the peppers can let out steam as they cook. Place the peppers in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until blackened, softened, and until the skin gets wrinkly and starts to peel off. It helps to flip the peppers over halfway through the cooking process.

Once cooked, transfer the peppers to a clean paper bag and let them continue to steam and then cool for 20-30 minutes.You can use a plastic bag, but I prefer paper. Sometimes, I'm too impatient to let the peppers steam and then also cool, and I try to peel the peppers while they're hot and have barely steamed. This is dumb on my part. 1) They're harder to peel. 2) They're super hot. Patience is helpful here.

Over a bowl, peel the peppers. If any juice escapes while you are peeling the peppers, save the juice. It is gold. Remove the stems and seeds from the peppers. Again, do this over a bowl or a plate and reserve any juices that have collected inside the pepper.

Slice the peeled peppers into strips. Add the peppers to the bowl of their reserved juices. Add the sliced garlic, peppercorns, salt and sugar to the peppers. Mix them about with your fingers. Cover the peppers with white vinegar. Add the olive oil. Let the peppers marinate overnight before serving. You can also transfer the peppers and their liquids to the jar and store them in that. Peppers will keep (but won't last) for 7-10 days.

Serve as a side salad to any savory meal. Or eat them on their own straight out of the bowl/jar.

Baba's House

I've been fortunate enough to have a number of great culinary influences in my life. At the top of the list, is my grandmother. I call her "Baba", short for Babushka, the Russian word for Grandma as opposed to that scarf thing that you wear on your head when you're pretending to be a poor Soviet immigrant.

I'm up in Seattle this week visiting my grandparents and gratefully being fed in copious amounts by my grandmother. While I'm here, I've been taking notes on her recipes and favorite dishes. I plan to start making and recording them with more regularity. It's an incredible gift to have recipes for dishes that someone has been making for over 60 years... maybe for over 70 years. I should ask her when she officially started cooking, but I suspect it began in her own grandmother's kitchen.

My grandmother is the type of woman who is happiest in her kitchen. She has been cooking, baking, making jams, preserving vegetables, and making incredible meals from scratch since well before my time. My grandparents rarely go out to restaurants, because as my grandfather says, "Why would we eat anywhere else when the best food is here?" My grandfather is my grandmother's number one fan, both of her cooking and otherwise. In fact, I'm currently in negotiations to take them out to lunch this week and to give my grandmother a short break from cooking. My grandma is in, but my grandfather is still resistant.

And he's right. It's hard to imagine wanting to eat other places when you have one of the world's greatest chefs cooking all of your meals.

Above is a photo of a perfectly ordinary weeknight meal for these two. Shown above:

1) Homemade marinated roasted peppers

2) Homemade eggplant salad (roasted eggplant, fresh tomatoes and green onion)

3) Perfectly roasted chicken that had been stuffed with cut up golden delicious apples, lemons and prunes

4) Homemade marinated shitake mushrooms

5) A mix of cauliflower, broccoli, and sauteed and browned enoki mushrooms

6) Sliced challah bread on the side

I've often heard that Russian food is considered bad, but I beg to differ. This Russian food is as delicious as it is soul-warming. 

UPDTAE: My mother helpfully pointed out we shouldn't even really refer to my grandmother's cooking as "Russian Food." Our family's cuisine was influenced by multiple places and ethnicities. For one, our family was living in Ukraine (not Russia) for many years, which at the time when they lived there, had a more abundant harvest of fresh produce than Russia proper, and where the cooking was influenced by neighboring Romania. Also and significantly, Jewish cooking had its own unique qualities as compared to strictly Ukrainian or Russian cooking. Lastly, my grandmother's mother actually came from Odessa, which is a port city where various ethnicities merged and influenced what people ate and cooked. So there. Thanks mom!

Recipes to follow in the coming months...

The best chocolate chip cookie

People tend to fall into two camps: those that like crisp chocolate chip cookies, and those that prefer them chewy. For me, I want a cookie with a slightly crisp edge that is chewy in the center. I don't want a cookie that's too doughy, hard, or crunchy. We can agree to disagree if your preferences don't align.

In the quest for the perfect cookie, I have come to terms with the fact that I will probably continue to pursue a flawless, un-improvable chocolate chip cookie recipe. True perfection may take years to master, and my definition of perfection may change. However, I'm getting pretty close...

A number of things are crucial to the success of this recipe:
1) Cooking time and temperature
2) Equipment
3) The size of your scoop of cookie dough
4) Butter in addition to shortening
5) Starting with ingredients at room temp

Those things matter a lot, but it's important to note that your results will differ based on the fact that every egg is different, the way each person scoops their flour differs, the lightness or darkness of your baking sheet affects the cookie, the quality and type of your sugar matters, the type of chocolate chip you use makes a difference, and so on and so forth. Just like pizza, your cookie will taste good even if it doesn't always match up to your dreams. But if you're unsatisfied with the results, keep fiddling with those things until you arrive at your cookie nirvana.

The one thing that everyone says makes the biggest difference is baking the cookies on a baking stone. I don't own a baking stone (yet), but my stubborn side also feels like there has to be a way to create cookie perfection on a baking sheet. I've done it before with other recipes, so why should this type of cookie be any different?

There are a lot of similar recipes on the Internet, and I have tried so many that my own recipe is derived from all of them. Most recently, I have been using this recipe as my starting point, sent along to me by my friend. After I made these cookies, I found this post which has a similar recipe, and if you want to get super technical it has all the info you need. I'd like to thank all the chocolate chip cookie makers who have come before me and already discovered these ratios... I'm happy I'm catching up.

Classic Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 36 cookies

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt (table salt, which has a different sodium content than kosher salt)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temp
1/2 cup organic vegetable shortening, at room temp
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temp
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 10 oz bag chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate baking chips for their size and flavor) - I also am a fan of mixing 1/2 dark and 1/2 milk chocolate chips)

Preheat the oven to 350°F/176°C.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, sift together your flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a stand mixer using the paddle attachment, beat together the room temp butter, shortening, white and brown sugar. Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy, no less than 3 minutes, and you can go as long as 5 minutes. You can't over beat your dough at this point.

On medium low, add the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. Add the vanilla extract. Beat for a minute.

On low, slowly add your flour mixture to the egg mixture a little at a time. Mix until just incorporated. You can over-beat your dough at this point, so don't let the flour mix too long. If you're nervous, stop the stand mixer, take the bowl out, and finish mixing up the wet and dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Fold in your chocolate chips until they are evenly incorporated. Again, be careful not to over mix. Place your dough in the fridge for 20-30 minutes (truthfully, it didn't make THAT much of a difference whether or not I chilled the dough first, but lots of people swear this step is crucial... so there you go).

At this stage, an inexpensive piece of equipment makes a huge difference in the outcome of the cookie. I use a 1.5 tablespoon ice cream scoop to make even balls of cookie dough. I use that same ice cream scoop for meatballs, matzoh balls, and for ice cream (of course). It's a good investment and really helps these cookies become the right shape and size.

Scoop out 12, 1.5 tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Space each piece of dough a few inches apart. Resist the urge to flatten the dough. The cookies come out less chewy when I've done this.

Bake the cookies in the oven for 8-9 minutes or until the edges are just slightly starting to turn golden. Your cookies will look a little underdone. Don't worry about that. If you want a chewy cookie, err on the side of under-doness. Also, the cookies will continue to cook as they cool. Keep the cookies on the baking sheet for 2 minutes (no more). Transfer them to a cooling rack so that they can cool properly. This final step is as important as any of the ones that came before it. If you leave the cookies in the pan, they will continue to cook and will potentially become too dry and won't stay chewy. That would be a bummer. A cooling rack is another great inexpensive investment, and a must for anyone that likes to bake things.

Let the cookies cool for 8-10 minutes, or for as long as you can resist biting into one. Serve with milk. Cookies will stay chewy and great for 3-5 days after baking, but they probably won't last that long. You can also scoop and freeze the dough. If you are baking frozen cookies, make sure the dough comes to room temp (about 30 minutes) before you bake them in the oven.

Happy cookie baking!

Turkish Pogaca - Savory Pastry

I have an awesome sister-in-law, and she happens to be half Turkish. The merging of her family with ours means that I've been introduced to all sorts of wonderful Turkish foods. Her mom is a fantastic cook, and recently visited us in L.A. One of the dishes she made was Pogaca (pronounced poh-ah-cha). She was kind enough to let me watch her make this popular Turkish savory pastry, which is lovely at tea-time, breakfast, or as a snack. I took careful notes, because these are delicious and I wanted the recipe for my arsenal.

I love learning recipes from mothers/fathers/grandmothers and people who have been making stuff for decades without a recipe. I love watching home cooks prepare food with ease and grace, as though the recipe is part of their DNA; it always appears as though the seasoned home cook is relying on sensory memory and little more.

These lovely things are quite easy to make, even if you're not Turkish and haven't been cooking them for years. The dough is really nice, and requires no yeast or rising time or special equipment or any other nonsense. I filled the pastry with a combination of spinach and feta, but you could fill pogaca with any kind of vegetable, potato, meat, or fruit that you are inspired to fill them with.

Spinach and Feta Pogaca
From Ayse's family recipe, makes 24-26 pogaca

for the pastry
2 cups flour + more as needed for dusting
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup whole milk plain yogurt 

1 cup melted butter or canola oil
1 large egg white
1-2 large egg yolk(s)
sesame seeds to garnish

for the filling
3 cups chopped frozen spinach (you can use fresh if you prefer)
3 scallions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 oz. or 3/4 cup crumbled feta
1/2 cup dill, chopped fine
salt and lots of freshly ground pepper

for the dough-
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt. Lightly stir the mixture until combined. Make a well in the flour, add the melted (cooled) butter or oil, yogurt, and egg white. Combine everything with your hands until a dough forms. The dough will be sticky and slightly wet, but you'll know it's right if it does not really stick to your hands (which it won't). If it is super wet and sticky, add a little more flour until it doesn't stick to your hands when you pick it up. It should look more or less like this:

That's it! Your dough is done. Ayse uses the dough immediately, but she told me about a relative that insists it needs to be in the fridge for several hours before you use it. She hasn't found any significant difference between letting the dough chill and using it immediately. I put mine in the fridge for 30 minutes while I made the filling; that seemed to help it firm up and made it easy to use. If you're impatient for pastry, it clearly works without letting it rest.

for the filling-

Add a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan on medium heat. Once the pan heats up, add the scallions and garlic to the oil. Sauté the garlic and onion for a minute until fragrant, then add the frozen spinach. The nice thing about the frozen spinach is that it is already wilted down and all that. You can use fresh spinach, but you will probably need to squeeze out the extra liquid in it once it has cooked before you add it to the pastry, otherwise it may be too wet. I sauté the spinach, onions and garlic together until the moisture has fully evaporated from the spinach (it will start to stick to the pan). Add salt and pepper to season the spinach to your liking. 

Transfer your spinach mixture to a bowl and let it cool. I speed this process up by sticking it in the freezer. Once it has cooled, add the feta and dill to the spinach and mix everything together. Now, you're ready to assemble your pogaca.

to assemble-

Preheat your oven to 350°F/176°C.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Dust your cutting board generously with flour. Have more waiting on standby. The dough is sticky and the extra flour is essential. 

Take a heaping tablespoon sized amount of dough, and flatten it into an oval with your hand. Make sure the dough doesn't stick to the board, if it does dust it with a little more flour. You can see how imprecise this process is, and you can also see that there's a lot of flour hanging out on the board. :

Fill each oval with about a teaspoon of filling. Fold over the dough and press it together with your fingers. Because the dough is so sticky and wonderful, you won't need to do much to close up these pockets of filling. Basically, you want to form the pogaca into an empanada shape.

Place the folded up pogaca onto your lined baking sheet.

Make an egg wash by lightly beating your egg yolk. Using a pastry brush, brush the egg yolk onto the top of the pastry. Depending on the size of your yolk, you may need to use 2 yolks to brush all of the pogaca. Sprinkle tops of the dough with sesame seeds.

Place both trays of pogaca in the oven and bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through. Halfway through cooking, rotate the sheet trays by putting the one that was on top below, and the one that was below on the top rack.

Transfer the hot pogaca onto a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temp.

Enjoy any time of day, they're especially good with a hot cup of tea.

Vincent's Pizza

My good friend and a very talented French artist, Vincent, is visiting L.A. for three months. Vincent and I met 2 years ago on his first trip to Los Angeles, and since then I've visited him in Berlin, we've met up in Paris, and now he's back in Cali. It's been great to be able to visit each other in different parts of the world, and to be able to stay in touch via Skype when we're not in the same country. 

Vincent is here with his close friend and collaborator, Elise. You can check out their recent projects here.

Aside from his artistic abilities, Vincent is a great cook. He's incredibly inventive and adventurous in his cooking (he made cereal crusted turkey burgers drizzled with honey and topped with guac the other night), but he also has a handle on classic techniques. Lately, he's formed a minor obsession with pizza and bread making. The other night, while Elise and Vincent were staying at my place Vincent shared his pizza recipe with me. 

In my experience asking people for recipes, I've noticed that my French friends rely more heavily on touch, smell and taste as opposed to cups, tablespoons or other measurements. This pizza recipe is no different. If you're looking for something exact, hit up Mark Bittman or Smitten Kitchen - they are experts at exactitude. I appreciate any and all forms of cooking, but I do think it's worthwhile to experiment with relying on your senses if you're interested in developing your cooking skills. If you're a perfectionist (and I can speak to this), cooking without precise measurements is also a good opportunity to let go and trust your instincts.

This recipe will make 3 pizzas, which you can top with anything you'd like. 

Pizza is always the best.

Vincent's Romana Pizza

Dough makes 3 thin-crust pizzas, serves 4-6

for the pizza dough

300 grams of unbleached all purpose flour, plus 1/4 a cup reserved 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 packet yeast

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup - 1 cup water (or however much you'll need)

for the sauce

canned plum tomatoes

onions

garlic

olive oil

pinch of sugar

salt and pepper

dried oregano

for the toppings

fresh mozzarella, sliced

shredded gruyere or swiss or both

dried oregano

arugula (optional)

prosciutto (optional)

for the pizza dough

Add 300 grams of flour to a large bowl. Make a well in the flour, and into the well add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 packet of yeast, and salt. 

Start mixing the dough with your hands until the mixture looks like a coarse meal, or very grainy sand. Next, enlist your friend or family member to help you out. 

(Vincent and Elise!)

Have said friend slowly add water to the flour mixture as you continue to mix it all up with your hands. Add water a little at a time. Once the dough starts making a ploppy sound (this is an instruction directly from Vince) and is starting to get very sticky, hold off on adding any more water. Have the same friend slowly add extra flour to the mixture. Vincent says the key is that you want to add flour until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. So you continue to mix the dough while someone sprinkles flour into the bowl, like so:

This is what the dough looks like when it no longer needs any more flour or water:

Cover the bowl with a towel, and leave it in a warm place (near your oven, or out on your porch), and let the dough rise for 3-4 hours. 

While the dough is rising, you can prep your toppings. Make a tomato sauce by sauteing some onions and garlic until they're soft, add canned tomatoes, seasonings, and herbs to the onions and garlic. Simmer everything for 45 minutes, and then puree the mixture with an immersion blender or in a blender. The homemade sauce should be pretty thick; a thicker sauce holds up better on a pizza. Alternatively, you can buy pre-made pizza sauce or marinara.  

Cut up your mozzarella, shred your cheese, and get any other toppings ready.

Once the dough has risen, take it out of the bowl, kneed it for a couple minutes, and then divide the bowl of dough into thirds.

Preheat the oven to 500°F/260°C. Line 2-3 baking sheets with parchment paper and lightly dust the paper with flour.  

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to whatever thickness you would like. Vincent likes thin pizzas, and so do I. He rolled the dough out to approximately a quarter or an eighth of an inch thick.

Once rolled out, the dough basically fits a standard baking sheet. If you are fancy, you could also roll this out into a circle instead of an oval and place it on a pizza stone.

Add sauce to the dough, then top with the mozz, shredded cheese, and dried oregano. You could drizzle this with olive oil if you'd like. 

Bake in the oven at 500°F for 5-6 minutes or until the dough is browned, and the cheese is melted and bubbly. 

VOILA!

At this point, you can eat the beautiful pizza as is. If you would like you can top the pizza with arugula and/or prosciutto once it's fresh out of the oven.

Enjoy with good friends, a glass of French wine, and good conversation. Bon appetit!

Roasted Green Beans with Smokey Yogurt Tahini Sauce

I make and use tahini sauce A LOT. Tahini sauce comes from tahini paste, and tahini paste is made out of ground sesame seeds. Sesame seeds are full of magnesium and calcium, and other super good vitamins and minerals. My pantry is always stocked with back-up jars of tahini. Tahini on its own is a little bland, but with a few additional ingredients it's magic. I drizzle it on roasted eggplant, use it as a dressing on kale salads, and put it on whatever vegetable or protein that calls its name. It only takes a few minutes to make a good tahini sauce, and it adds so much flavor and goodness to whatever you're eating.

This week's CSA came with some lovely bright string beans. They were beautiful to look at, and tasted particularly fresh and beany, but their skins were a little tougher than normal. Generally, I prefer string beans that are small and delicate; the French call them haricot verts. I knew roasting the beans would soften and caramelize these tough guys, and so into the oven at high heat they went.

Roasted green beans are very good on their own, with some salt and pepper and maybe a squeeze of lemon... but roasted green beans with tahini sauce take these legumes to another level.

This version of tahini sauce includes yogurt for creaminess and tang, smoked paprika for smokiness and interest, sumac for complexity of flavor (optional), and lemon juice because lemon juice is everything to tahini.

Roasted Green Beans with Smokey Yogurt Tahini Sauce

Serves 4

for the beans:

1 lb. green beans, ends trimmed

olive oil

salt and pepper

sesame seeds for garnish (optional)

for the sauce:

3 tablespoons tahini paste

2 tablespoons yogurt (I prefer plain whole milk, but any plain yogurt works, even Greek)

juice of half a lemon

2-3 tablespoons warm water

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika 

1/2 teaspoon sumac (optional)

1 tablespoon chopped parsley (optional)

salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 425°F/215°C

Wash, dry and trim the ends off of your green beans. Lay the green beans onto a baking sheet. Drizzle them with a few tablespoons of good olive oil. Toss the beans with your hands until they are coated with the oil. If they don't seem coated enough, add a little more oil. Season the beans with salt and pepper.

Bake the beans in the oven for 15-25 minutes (roasting time will depend on the beans and your oven), or until they are golden browned and softened. Ten minutes into baking, take the beans out and shake them around a bit so that they brown evenly.  

While the beans are baking, make your tahini sauce. In a bowl, add your tahini paste, yogurt and lemon juice. The acid from the lemon juice will counterintuitively cause the tahini sauce to thicken and become unwieldy. This is where the warm water comes in. Add warm water, a tablespoon at a time, until you have thinned the sauce to your liking. If you over-water your sauce, just add a little more tahini and yogurt. No one will be mad at having extra sauce lying about. Once the sauce is thick or thin enough, add the olive oil. Season your sauce with smoked paprika (so nice and smokey!), sumac (it adds a lemony earthy flavor), fresh parsley, and salt and pepper. With all sauces and vinaigrettes, the balance of flavors depends entirely on your ingredients, and ingredients differ - from the juiciness and tartness of a lemon, to the smokiness of paprika - so taste, taste, taste, and adjust everything to your liking. Any extra sauce will keep in the fridge for 3-5 days. 

To complete the dish, drizzle the beans with the sauce, sprinkle everything with sesame seeds and serve hot or  at room temp with extra sauce on the side. Extra sauce is always a good thing. Enjoy!