This dish is a mouthful of spring. And I think spring is finally unpacking it’s boxes and staying for while here in the northeast.

This dish is easy and fresh with all that fennel and all those herbs and a quick umami-fied pan sauce. This is a week-night dinner in under 40 minutes and impressive enough in flavor for weekend guests. It uses a few techniques that you may not use often but that will make all the difference in taste and texture. You’ll pound the chicken out to make the breast a uniform thickness, which results in a tender, consistently cooked piece of meat, and you’ll grind spices in a mortar and pestle or spice grinder instead of using a pre-ground version, for more freshness and flavor and a bit of aromatherapy while you are at it.

What you see pictured is the “mise en place” (MEESE ON PLAHCE. French for “put in place”) for this dish and another that I will post next time that goes perfectly with this, an Israeli cous cous and asparagus mash up that is a new favorite in my house since I made it for a William-Sonoma demo last month, (especially since quinoa can be substituted for the cous cous with great success for my gluten-sensitive stomach). Don’t you just admire the organization here? Don’t you just want to run out and get some little Pyrex bowls and get all mise en plac-y yourself when you are cooking, so that it is much less stressful and enjoyable to cook? It’s worth having to wash out all those little bowls in exchange for the way it really takes preparing and executing a dish to a more professional and less haphazard level. I think people would enjoy the process of cooking a lot more if they approached it this way. Gathering the ingredients and “mise-ing them out”  makes pulling together a recipe more meditative and zen for me, and even calms the OCD part of me that gets all agitated when things get too messy. Eight out of ten times I question a new student who says they “don’t cook much” or “freak out about” cooking, I discover that the main reason they dislike cooking is because of how chaotic it seems and out-of-control it makes them feel. $20 worth of pyrex dishes and some sheet pans (for separating ingredients by recipe)  can change all that.

Make this little bit of spring, whether you have the little bowls or not. Another thing that makes cooking less stressful? Wine. A nice glass of crisp white wine would be lovely. I feel myself exhaling already!

I love spring. It’s the tentative, yet warm, wet kiss of seasons. Who doesn’t want the weather to warm, the sprouting bulbs to wend their way through the earth to find sunlight, and bare trees lining streets to explode into canopies of green? Yet, for me spring comes with one long melancholy sigh as I realize I will be seeing much less of my slow cooker over the next several months and much less of the comforting fall-apart meat I love that is the result of the low-slow process the utilitarian cooker gives us. While I was browsing around for good spring recipes, I came across one for a lamb stew that starting me thinking about a classic French “navarin printanier” we made in culinary school. Navarin means lamb or mutton stew and when vegetables are added, particularly blushing new spring vegetables like asparagus, baby turnips and English peas, that’s when the “printanier” or spring part comes in.

With a little tweaking of the recipe normally done in the oven or stovetop, and the help of the smart new Cuisinart 6-quart Multi-Cooker I was given by Cuisinart recently to play with, I am happy to report a wonderful spring excuse for slow-cooking!

The absolute stunning thing about this particular cooker, and why I loved working with it, is that it has a “browning” setting. It actually browns and sears, right in the cooker pot, right inside the cooker.

Browning meat for a stew, even a slow cooker stew, is a flavor-building technique that should not be skipped, even though, for convenience sake, a lot of slow cooker recipes do skip it. With this Cusinart cooker, you don’t have to mess up an extra pot, or your stove with the browning process…and all the flavor stays right in the pot you’ll be slow cooking in.

The browning function allows you to set the temperature as high as 400 degrees F which is hot enough to get a nice sear on the meat. It also allows you to bring things to a boil, as in reducing the sauce at the end of the cooking time, without dirtying yet another pot!

Wouldn’t you love to have one of these lovely cookers right now? Even though it’s spring? Just to make this lovely slow-cooked spring lamb? Well, as a memorable way to introduce myself to the readers of the great site KosherEye, and because Cuisinart was generous enough to give me a brand-new, in-the-box one of these to give-away, one lucky reader will give this beauty a home. To enter, go to my post on KosherEye, and leave a comment, answering one of two questions in the comments area below the post: what’s your favorite thing to make in a slow cooker? Or how do you use your slow cooker in the spring or summer?

Now, a final word on this lamb stew. It’s has the depth of a classic boeuf bourguignon, but on day-light savings time! It’s perfect for the still cool nights we are having but gives a wonderful hint of all the green freshness to come. The herby-fresh pistou (fancy-French for pesto) with mint and parsley and basil along with the new potatoes, boiled, lightly smashed and pan-fried to a crispy, creamy perfection make this a meal fit for a spring celebration!

The phone rings on a sunny Sunday morning. The caller ID reads the name of a hospital. You know the moment the woman at the other end of the phone asks “is this Mrs So and So”, that your life is over. The life you knew. Your life as a daughter. You can’t remember a time when you weren’t trying to prepare for this moment, this terrifying moment when your worst nightmare comes true. Mommy. I’m coming. Don’t die. Please don’t die. But she does, even though she was just at my kitchen table celebrating my husband’s birthday an hour before; even though she was strong and healthy and lucid at 86 and swam an hour each morning at the Y, and still worked part-time as a private chef; even though she lived through the Holocaust, managed to escape Hitler—for crying out loud—when someone careless and distracted drove through a red light at 70 miles an hour and killed her. Just like that.

Phones have been ringing in Boston. Lives have been changed forever by tragedy and sorrow whirling out of the blue like a fierce, blinding tornado. Dumbstruck. Heartbroken. Wild with grief. There is no quick way, or perhaps any way, back from sudden, irrevocable loss, and Boston has lost much in the time it takes to explode two bombs. And with such loss, comes something that never leaves you—the undeniable knowledge that you never have been, and never will be able to predict or prevent such loss. Whatever notion of control I thought I had, (through hyper-vigilance, prayer, feng shui, organic eating, exercise, lucky underwear, or dumb luck), over life’s peril, was shattered the day I lost my mother. I was lucky enough to reach my late 40s without ever having suffered such a loss, but it didn’t make it any easier. We have been lucky, as a country, to have had mostly peace on our own soil, mostly great good fortune, but lately the losses are piling up. Sandy. Newtown. Now Boston.  As I watch the news in the obsessive way that today’s media allows us to do, I feel the panic and helplessness overwhelming me. That’s when I head to the kitchen and start pulling stuff out of the pantry and fridge. I’m not hungry, but I need to cook.

Baking is a great way to regain control. I don’t do a lot of it because I’m gluten intolerant and everyone in my house is always trying to avoid carbs, but nevertheless it’s what I needed to do today, especially when I thought about doing this confectionary tribute to the city. Baking is precise. You have to measure and as you do, you focus on what’s at hand. Flour, sugar, eggs, butter, chocolate = comfort.

There’s order and purpose and mindless repetition to calm you.

There is normalcy and even hope that springs from taking simple steps that result in something sweet and wonderful.

By the time I have made the pastry creme and the ganache and assembled all the parts into a satisfying whole, I have completed too a kind of sticky-fingered meditation in being present, on acceptance, on taking joy where you can. It’s just a cake, Boston. It’s not superhero stuff, and it won’t banish evil or pain or grief from the world. But…it’s my way of chasing that stuff back into the shadows for a bit, and of saying, my heart is with you.

It’s official! I’ll be hosting a group on the Oceania Cruise Lines’ Riviera, a floating country-club-of-a-ship that looks like my life in hazy dreams I’ve had after consuming multiple dry Henckles martinis, shaken, not stirred. Leaving from Lisbon in late September, we’ll cruise through Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, stopping at Seville, and Morocco, Cartegena, Malaga, and Barcelona, then on to Marseilles, Florence, Rome and winding up in Monte Carlo. DAHLING, that last sentence sounds like something I heard in a black and white movie, coming from the mouth of Grace Kelly, or Audrey Hepburn, but not me. Words like opulent, gorgeous, upscale, pinnacle, quality, excellence, shiny, fantastic, spotless, spectacular and magnificent have full-time jobs on this ship, with extra help in the six distinct and stunning onboard restaurants from well-trained words like delicious, elegant, savory, beautiful, succulent, tasteful, scrumptious, and addictive, with a stow-away of finger-licking. I was invited for a quick trip to Miami last week, where the ship was docked for a day, which allowed me to stroll it’s decks, take a peek at the Bon Apetit Culinary Center where I’ll be teaching classes during the trip, and wine and dine onboard with execs from Oceania and Valerie Wilson Travel who are making this trip possible for me…and any of you who decide to join!

 
The above are not “official photos” of the ship, just mine snapped with my iPad during my tour and lunch, but I wanted to give you a sneak peek from my POV. Here are a few shots of the Bon Apetit Culinary Center. Included in the trip are two cooking classes highlighting food and culinary techniques from ports we’ll be visiting (taught by me, with the help of the top-notch Bon Apetit Culinary Center staff), along with two onshore excursions I’ll lead to explore food, wine and markets along the way. Here are a few short videos that really highlight the essence of Oceania Cruise Lines’ for me: Cuisine, Luxury, Family.

For more info on the details, pricing, accommodations or itinerary for the trip, you can visit the Oceania site.  Note that there will be no information on my group on the Oceania site, so to book you must  call a travel advisor at Valerie Wilson Travel at (212) 592-1211 and ask to speak to someone about this trip, or fill out a contact form via their website. The group is limited in size, so book sooner than later. I’m so excited about this trip and hope to share great meals and memories with some of you this fall. By the way, my birthday falls on the 2nd day of this cruise so we will be having a private dinner and cocktail party on board to celebrate as well! Can’t wait!!

Food, like music, can be an instrument of time travel. The notes of a particular refrain, the four or five bars of intro to a song, often act as a drone missile to an exact location in your past. You hear it and explode with not just memories, but emotions and sensations connected to a very specific moment in your history. Flavors, aromas and textures are the notes in food that take us on a similar journey. One minute I’m old as dirt (or maybe just top soil) and in my kitchen getting that tingly feeling on my tongue, tasting the creamy, oily eggplant in this perfectly-balanced Caponata from Nancy Silverton’s Mozza Cookbook, and the next minute I’m a child of indiscriminate age in my mother’s knotty pine kitchen, pushing her garlicky pan-fried eggplant awash in cheap olive oil onto my fork with a crust of French bread.

My mother sliced eggplant into thinnish rounds, salted it, let it sweat out in a colander for a while, then just pan fried it in plenty of oil.  She then packed it away in Tupperware, layer upon layer, with a few dozen cloves of sliced garlic in between. It was a side dish from my father’s Mediterranean roots that my DNA responded to. That’s how I feel about this caponata. My genome is lighting up over it even though Silverton describes caponata as a “traditional Sicilian preparation” and I’m not Italian. Eggplant, extra-virgin olive oil, onion, garlic, currants, red pepper flakes, tomatoes, and vinegar and you could be reciting a partial ingredient list of recipes found on both sides of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Istanbul.

This dish, like my roasted balsamic herb tomatoes, could definitely become a staple of my refrigerator, now that I’ve had this version of it. It’s so easy to make (though it does call for 1/2 cup of the Passata di Pomodoro or basic tomato sauce I posted with the recent insanely good meatballs from Mozza)…

…and could easily find it’s way onto pasta, sandwiches, baked fish or as a side for grilled anything, could dress up a store-bought rotisserie, turn rice or an omelette into a complete meal, and so forth. Or you can just eat it alone with a nice hunk of bread instead.