Results tagged “cookinginthecity”

These ribs feature date molasses, a flavorful sweet syrup you can pick up at Kalustyan's, and mesquite smoke powder, which you can order from Auntie Arwen's Spices (a really wonderful resource, where we also love to stock up on Two Knives Special Curry Blend and Thief in a Jug Garam Masala).

This post actually contains two recipes: Roasted Leg of Lamb Stuffed With Pork, Chestnuts, and Morels and Lamby Cranberry Beans with Itsy Bitsy Potatoes.

Our mother gave us a bag of dried cherries the other day. She'd picked them up for herself, but after tasting them she decided that they weren't for eating. They were for baking, she said, and while she doesn't bake herself, she loves it when we do. In search of sustenance to get us through apple-picking last weekend (yes, it's apple season again!), we turned to those cherries at last. What goes better than cherries and chocolate, after all?

We sailed around the Cyclades in Greece a few summers ago, and while we felt that the cuisine on the islands became tedious after a while, there were a few things we never tired of: dolmas, spanikopita, and milk pies.

When you get to the Greenmarket and there is a bunch of basil the size of a small shrub, offered for the meager price of one dollar, staring at you there is only one thing to do. Buy it, head home and make some pesto. If you have a food processor or a blender, your best bet is to whip up as much as you can handle. It is easily frozen, allowing you to taste summer all year round.

As anyone who grows vegetables can tell you, it is easy to find yourself drowning in summer squash. We're not gardeners, but even so we find ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of squash this month. Last week, we were wandering around Prospect Heights when we came across a plastic bag full of zucchini hanging from the fence in front of one of the brownstones. A sign above the bag declared that the zucchini came from a farm upstate, and begged passers by to take some. There is no escaping the summer squash! Not that drowning in summer squash sounds like such a bad way to go, mind.

Stuffing is generally seen as a Thanksgiving tradition, and we know very few people who bother with it at any other time of year, ourselves included. What a damn shame. Now is the time for stuffing, it turns out, while the markets are full of fresh figs and local sweet potatoes. The figs add so much flavor to this stuffing, added in raw at the very end. The sweet potatoes add richness and pull up the figs' sweetness to a level we prefer, and the texture of the wild rice is the perfect foil for the rest.

Our wok has been yearning for seasonal vegetables, those colorful, tasty treats soon to go out of season and disappear until next spring. So when some pattypan squash and garlic scapes conveniently appeared in our kitchen, we knew just what to do with them.

This started out as an attempt at making Fesenjan, an intense Afghani and Persian concoction of chicken in a thick pomegranate walnut sauce. We got a bit carried away with it, though, and with the replacement of chicken stock and pomegranate molasses for mere pomegranate juice and a big splash of Shaoxing (Chinese rice wine) later, this really became a creation of its own.

We haven’t been that impressed with much of the corn in the city so far. Much has been shrink-wrapped and as yellow as a Crayola sun, a sure sign of tough, dry ears. But not any longer. Fairway has a nice batch of bi-color corn that’s slightly sweet, juicy, and at a fairly remarkable price to back it up. At $1.99 for eight ears of corn, you’ll have enough corn for any large gathering and more leftovers than you’ll ever know what to do with.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We’ve been avoiding the London Broil for months now. Running into the large cut is usually as hard as opening up a weekly circular, and it seems to taunt us at every turn. It appears as an insanely cheap steak, but done wrong and it's the toughest, driest piece of meat that's hard to chew that we can imagine. The cut could refer to any number of parts of the cow, and fetches prices usually under the $4 mark. C-Town, Pathmark, and the Met have all had specials for weeks now. But it wasn’t until Key Food had the steaks going buy one get one free that we paid attention.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We get our baking equipment at a number of places in town: Williams-Sonoma, Broadway Panhandler, Bridge Kitchenware, and they've each got a decent selection of baking sheets and silpat and tart molds.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We've already told you where to find your gefilte fish, so let's talk about some of the other Seder staples:

Something new to add to the list of kitchen gear that very well may change your life forever: the Baker’s Edge Brownie Pan. Rejoice, all you edge-lovers of brownies, blondies, snickerdoodle bars, whatever- this one’s for you. Made of cast aluminum and sporting a blocky M-shape, with interior sidewalls spaced 2 and ½ inches apart, the Baker’s Edge pan is designed to give every slice of finished product at least 2, sometimes 3, edges of corner-style distinction. The company claims that the additional surface area provided by the pan’s interior labyrinth not only creates more edge-pieces, but also optimizes their crispiness; the mad scientists over at Cooking For Engineers did a side-by-side comparison test with a standard 9”x13” nonstick baking pan. Baker’s Edge has a retail price of $34 and yields about 15 square brownies per pan, and can also be used for lasagna and gratins. With scissors, some parchment paper, and a can of nonstick spray, it is also entirely conceivable to make one giant, wavy brownie for someone you love- perfect for people whose name starts with the letter M! (or W). At the very least, the maze-like effect of this pan’s unfilled interior is enough to flummox small, furry denizens of some NYC kitchens, so even if you don’t plan on doing a lot of home baking, merely keeping the Baker’s Edge in your cupboard may be enough to slow down some this new wave of rodent intelligentsia that has been plaguing our city’s great restaurants. You never know. Buy it online, or locally at The Brooklyn Kitchen.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

The vagaries of a properly made Tortilla Española have plagued Gothamist for years. A thick egg based dish, a tortilla has a more robust structure than its slutty cousin, the omelet, and is traditionally made with only potato and egg. The addition of other vegetables (peppers, peas, chives and onions most frequently) or other leftover foodstuff--from noodles to ham--is also common in the Spanish home.

The Coupon Clipper scours the specials for the best deals in New York's big grocery stores.

We tried to warn you. But now, Valentine's Day is upon us and you haven't gotten a reservation for dinner. It's okay. In fact, it's even better. We're of the opinion that a home-cooked meal is far more romantic than dinner out (plus, it's closer to where you want to end up at the end of the evening, if all goes well). So -- get thee to the grocery store, grab some candles and, if your local bodega isn't already picked clean, some flowers, and get cookin'.

Though you may only be able to dream of ordering that whole lobster this Valentine’s Day, Fairway is making a home cooked one a little more plausible. Though not exactly a steal, lobsters are available at a reasonable markdown that will bring one of the most expensive items of that romantic meal a little closer to affordability. At $8.99 a pound, a regular small sized lobster (1.5 pounds) will run around $13.50 - not exactly a bargain. But if there were any season to spend a wee bit more, it’s now.