Get in the kitchen already

I’ve been thinking about the art of repetition lately, of routine, about how it is less than an art sometimes.

Or, about how if it was an art, it would be akin to medieval madonna and childs, the ones that dominated thirteenth century Christian art with reds, and yellows, and the hard lines like Modigliani’s, but less inspiring and about 800 years older. And it would be the Madonna by the guy who was only copying the important guy who painted it first.


In short, we’ve seen it before, and it has its place, but it’s not really worth a special trip, at least not once you’ve seen it before.

Every morning, I shuffle to the coffee machine and fill it, my eyelids still half-mast and my hair settling into its three new cowlicks. (Now, this is an art. The cowlicks and the blind coffee-making both.) I let Luke out, feed him, sit down at my computer: email, times, orangette, smitten kitchen, the wednesday chef, maybe npr, maybe eater.

Repeat.

Lately, this routine has grown to include peanut butter sandwiches and other simple (read: boring) foods. Eaten invariably between noon and one, with water from the mason jar with the star on it, the sandwiches are the very definition of routine: bland, boring, same.


Do you see where I’m going? Routine can be a lovely, comforting thing, certainly if there is peanut butter involved. At least in respect to my morning coffee, I rely on it heavily every day. But when it leads you to contemplate a peanut butter sandwich for dinner on your night off, when you have a full fridge, well then, then it has betrayed you, gravely.

And so it was last night, while I was talking about which peanut varietal would suit twelve grain bread most favorably, I met a demand, a sharp Kenzi, go cook something, cook something now.


Because the people who love us know us best, right? They know that even at the risk of sounding chauvinistic and slandering women everywhere, sometimes the right thing to do is to tell me to just get in the kitchen already. Sternly. I was nearly yelled at.


I am very thankful for that. After some vague, mumbling comments about how there was nothing to cook, I found myself soon slinging pots, pans, chickpeas, spinach. I made two lovely olive oil fried eggs. I roasted potatoes, rosemary, Vidalia onions. And I felt so much better.

This surely doesn’t need to be your breakthrough recipe after a stint out of the kitchen, but it was mine. For your sake I hope you’ve been in the kitchen all along. This can just be your next one.

Spinach and Chickpeas
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Note: This recipe is very adaptable, which is fun. Feel free to play with the spices, depending on what you have on hand. Use a little less spinach, a little more. It’s up to you.

½ pound dried chickpeas, cooked until soft and tender or two 15 oz cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
6 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound spinach, washed
½ cup diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
½ teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt, black pepper

Place a large saucepan over medium heat and add half the olive oil. When it is hot, add the spinach with a pinch of salt and stir well. Remove when the leaves are tender, drain in a colander and set aside.

Heat remaining olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Saute garlic, cumin and red pepper. Cook for 1 minute more or until the garlic is nutty brown. Add the chickpeas, tomato sauce and paste. Stir until the chickpeas have absorbed the flavors and are hot. Season with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

Add the spinach and cook until it is hot. Check for seasoning and serve with paprika on top, with crusty bread. An egg on top is also excellent.

The love affair

This food is the holy grail of food. It’s almost like the culinary world’s femme fatale, disguised neatly in a power business suit.

But then, then you look down, and there are red, six-inch heels. Bright red. Just the perfect amount of flair to make it no longer just neat and professional and technically executed, but creative, slightly mysterious. And suddenly, the food has the power to make you do strange things, like buy a twenty-six dollar glass of sparkling wine.


Does that make any sense? Probably not. It’s all to say, really that the food at this place is unreal. In the way that makes you try and compare it to high-powered businesswomen with red stilettos - because in reality, there aren’t many other words fit to describe it. In the way that makes you think you may as well stop cooking now, and resign yourself to meals of potato chips and frozen pizza, because once you’ve tasted this, everything else will drastically pale in comparison.

And when they take you back into the kitchen (the kitchen!) for reasons unknown - to see the chefs and make you edible Old Fashioneds (edible old fashioneds!) – the whole experience just gets better, crazier, even harder to describe.

And so the love affair with New York continues.

Me and this little site

I suppose this took long enough.

(Drum Roll)

Rue le Sel now has an about / FAQ page.

(Cymbal crash)

Just in case anyone reading is not my mother, or father, or brother, or another such close blood relative, you can learn all about me and this little site. You might even learn about things painted on my bathroom wall.

It's over there (Right now I'm pointing to the right side of your browser), listed with the Recipe Index. Check it out.

Have a lovely evening, and talk to you soon.

A little of this

So I got this new job. Same field. Only now, instead of research about confit, and Black Prince tomatoes, and saddles of rabbit and what have you, the focus has switched.

Now, it’s all about copper stills, and distillation proofs, and bisongrass versus Russian standard, and things the likes of which I’m not even legally allowed to be well-versed in, since my age is somewhat limiting in that particular, alcoholic field.


I’ve been feeling slightly inspired by all of this cocktail business, and so tonight, I started juicing my own citrus and pouring it all into my little-used shaker. It was reminiscent of my childhood concoctions, minus the booze: a little of this, a little of that, a lot of ambivalence and mostly no idea what I was doing.

It wasn’t half bad. I’m sure my new boss would have his own opinions; I’ve probably messed infinitely with the balance of spirit to bitter, sweet to rounder. Either way, here it is:

Equal parts vodka*: cointreau
1 oz. each lemon juice, grapefruit juice
splash simple syrup

and remember,

I have no idea what alcohol tastes like. (Read: I might have an idea.)


*If I’ve learned anything so far, I think I’m supposed to tell you that a vodka like bisongrass mixes very well with fruit juices, so that would be the best choice here.

Also, I have a feeling this drink would be awesome with a heat component – jalepeno infused something? Chili flakes? I’m still learning.

Hop on over here

This is potentially shameless. I am aware.

But, in an effort to equalize the disadvantage that our small-town chefs have, I'm posting this everywhere possible. I would paint it on my building, if I had paint, or if I wouldn't get evicted for doing it. Hop on over here:

to vote

for Kara Brooks - for Food and Wine's People's Best New Chef - my wonderful boss and the executive chef of Still River Cafe.

Then hop on another computer, and do it again.

(Kidding. Maybe.)

Thanks so much to all of you who vote, I'll keep you updated!

A bunch of extra carrots

I have this book sitting on my kitchen counter, as though, in a pinch, I could open it to help me find that one missing step from my torchon of foies gras, or my locally foraged hearts of palm dish.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful book, but I always think of the recipes within as being so complicated, so finicky in that lovely French Laundry way, that I forget those little anecdotes written before the hearts of palm and after the torchon - the ones that are applicable to all normal ingredients, locally foraged or otherwise.


In these interim pages, the little intermissions before the real recipes begin again, Keller offers simple advice over and over again: how to big-pot blanch correctly, “the importance of hollandaise,” how to make the best soups.

For soups, verbatim: “identify your ingredient, cook it perfectly, and adjust the consistency.” So, if you happen to have a bunch of extra carrots lying around, as I did: carrots, glazed, adjust consistency with chicken stock. (Remember when I talked about the glory of not following recipes and ignoring finicky baking? This is it, in it’s finest.)

I added ginger, and a bit of onion, because I’m into being rogue when I make soup. Now I probably can’t call it something like essence of carrot, fit for the vegetable tasting at the French laundry, but it’s still lovely, every bit as warming and carroty as a winter carrot soup should be.


Below is an approximation of the recipe, but again, adjust it to your liking: more liquid, less, wing it if you’re feeling into that; this soup is very forgiving. In that way this recipe, or the rough blueprint of it, is a great confidence builder. Oh yeah, and buy this book, if you ignored my first urging.

Carrot and Ginger Soup

3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
¼ cup peeled and finely chopped ginger root
6 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 pounds carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch chunks
Salt & ground pepper

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add onion and ginger; saute for five to ten minutes until softened and fragrant. Set aside. Warm stock in a saucepan over low heat.

In a large pot of salted boiling water, blanch the carrots until tender, about ten minutes. Drain and shock in ice water to stop the cooking process and retain their color.

Puree the blanched carrots with the onion and ginger with an immersion blender or in batches in a blender or food processor, adding liquid to your desired consistency. You’ll need six cups of stock if you like your soup still fairly liquid, but if you like a thicker soup, use less. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This soup refrigerates and freezes well, and is even better on the second day. Serve with crusty bread, if you can.

Mental kryptonite

I’ve lost all ability to euphemize snow. The first snowflakes were fun, nostalgic even, New England’s frosty reminder that the next months ahead were going to be a little colder, a little whiter.

Four (five? six?) feet later, I am experiencing a vast change of heart. I curse the stuff. It’s likely the only weather pattern that, to date, has had the ability to seriously screw with my head. Snow, in these proportions, is some kind of sick, mental, kryptonite.


It’s given me a lot of opportunity for potential stove-front time, yes, but even that I can’t properly appreciate. Butchering my first rabbit became an experience slightly jaded by the fact that I was inside again that day. And then it was soured by the fact that a rabbit ragu was even seasonally appropriate. Because that meant it was cold outside. Then I went outside, and it was actually freezing, not just cold. Later that night it sleeted for six hours.

See what I mean? This much snow is terrible for the mind. And also for the windshield wipers, which by this point I’m pretty sure are permanently frozen.

All I’m saying is that I’ve had enough of winter, and that there becomes a real problem when even rabbit ragu can’t make me feel better. (That’s backwards, right?) I hope it works for you.

**Thanks to my mother for this picture, taken at the house where I grew up.

Rabbit Ragu
Adapted from Gourmet

Note: I made polenta with this, which worked really nicely, but have also been eating leftovers with pasta, and even spaghetti squash. I also substituted bacon for the pancetta and it came out just fine, so feel free to do that as well.

¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 (1/4-lb) piece pancetta cut into 1/4-inch dice
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh sage
1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 (3-lb) boned, butchered, cut into 1-inch pieces (1 1/2 lb boned)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 cup light dry red wine
1 14-oz can diced Italian tomatoes
1 ¼ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper

Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet (2 inches deep) over moderate heat until hot but not smoking, then add pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally, 2 minutes. Add sage and rosemary and cook, stirring, 30 seconds.

Add rabbit and cook, stirring occasionally, until rabbit is no longer pink on outside, 2 to 3 minutes. Add onion and carrot and continue to cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add wine and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until liquid is reduced to about 1 cup, 10 to 15 minutes.

Add tomatoes, sea salt, and pepper and simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce is thickened, 5 to 10 minutes. Serve hot.