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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Basic Tomato Sauce
adapted from Mozza, by Nancy Silverton

Meatballs are the new cupcake. Restaurants devoted entirely to the sphere have sprouted in NYC and in every major city, and high-profile, upscale restaurants have put them on the menu. I can hear guys from Long Island to the Jersey shore saying “Fuggedaboutit! Friggin’ meatballs, I can get at every pizza joint in the tri-state area, so what’s the biggie?”

Ah…but there are meatballs—rubbery, dense, flavorless, smothered in industrial sauce, more breadcrumbs than meat, food service frozen, mystery meat containing, greasy and grisly—and then there are MEATBALLS (angel’s chorus!!) like this one.

I too, was skeptical when I spied this recipe in Mozza, a sometimes daunting cookbook by Nancy Silverton, Chef/Owner of the restaurant in Los Angeles that the book is named for.  I say daunting because Silverton is a perfectionist and her recipes do not cut corners, or cut you slack when it comes to the quality of ingredients or techniques needed to achieve her delicious and authentic results. This recipe looked deceptively simple, but the resulting meatball is etherial.  I’ll admit I cursed a few of the steps and made a mental note that dredging the meatballs in flour and pan browning them, before braising them in homemade (!) tomato sauce might be skippable.  Why not just bake the darn balls on a sheet pan, all at once, and save the calories from flour and the fat from frying them? The answer assaults your senses when you taste one. BECAUSE THOSE DETAILS MAKE A DIFFERENCE! They were perfect.

I ate 5 of them just standing around taking pictures and I won’t say how many later when I served them to my husband and daughter for dinner that evening. Without pasta, by the way, or a big doughy roll wrapped around them either. These meatballs are no side dish. They beg to be the center of the meal. I served them with shaved Parmesan, a slice of buttered semolina toast (just like they do at Mozza) and a fantastic Caponata, also from Mozza, which you will have to wait until another time to hear about.

Warning: the recipe asks you to provide a quart of homemade Passata di Pomodoro, a basic tomato sauce that is a Silverton staple used throughout the book. Since I didn’t heed the advice I always give my students to read through entire recipes before you start to cook, I was surprised by this little detail when I got to it. When I scrambled to make the sauce, I was surprised again by how simple and delicious it turned out, in under 30 minutes, and worth the small delay. I recommend making an enormous batch of this sauce and freezing it in 1/2 quart containers so you’ll always have some on hand.

I often dream of opening a small restaurant with a menu of fresh, house made comfort foods, the kind of foods that everyone loves whether times are good, bad, happy or sad. Food that brings people together over common ground, (I mean who doesn’t like a meatball?)  Good solid food without cutting any corners on quality and technique. I know I’d have a version of these meatballs on the menu. Put them on yours and enjoy!

 My Oh My Meatballs
adapted from Mozza, by Nancy Silverton

(To get these super cool temporary tattoos I designed, go to my new Food Fix Kitchen Pantry now. Then come back and read the post!)

When I decided to go to culinary school shortly after I packed my 19-year-old son off the Culinary Institute of America, I couldn’t wait to get my very own chef coat and enter the professional culinary world myself. I wasn’t thinking about inspiring others. At 52, with a professed preferred bedtime of 10 pm,  I was barely hanging on to the whirlwind I had set in motion by entering that “second course” of my life with it’s long commute into The City, and it’s late night classes.

My fourth year into this “reinvention”, with my blog gaining popularity and the cooking school booked well in advance these days, the subject of 99 per cent of the emails I get from readers, or people that have seen me on TV, or read about me in the press, are about how inspired they are by my story and what I’m doing. I have one of those “who me?” moments every time. Hey, I’m just over here trying to keep boredom and brain atrophy at bay for as long as possible, and hopefully earn a living doing something I love. But inspiring others? Cool.

So far this year I’ve been asked by one charitable organization to speak on a panel of “women we admire,” to teach a workshop for a women’s group conference on “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things,” and I’m working on a presentation for another group called “Reinvention at Any Age.” There is nothing like the spectre of an expectant audience that has paid good money to hear and see you, to make you sit down real fast and figure out what you are going to say in order to entertain and inspire.

The three graphics you see here are part of what has come out of some of these sessions in which I face a blank page and wonder just what it is I believe in, or how I try to live my life, or in what way I could possibly be an inspiration and yet not take myself too seriously.

A few whimsical kitchen tools, and a few thoughtfully placed words and arrows later, I have what I think is my credo. And since I am a chef after all, it makes total sense to want to turn these into tattoos. And since I want to share them with you, it makes sense to turn them into fun temporary tattoos that you can wear or not wear on a whim, or give to someone you love for Valentine’s Day (or any day) who needs a little “stirring  up”.

Get some tattoos inside my new Food Fix Pantry. It’s the “store” I’m sort of starting…mainly to offer up stuff like this that I design (I see t-shirts, aprons, and grocery totes in my future) and other unique things I may come across that I want to share.

Watch me compete as a “Chopped Champion!” I’m up against four tough competitors who all won their respective shows, so it’s an interesting battle, with a just a hint of controversy. I’ll be interested to see how they edit it and what you all think about it. I’m proud I earned the right to wear the red “champ” coat. When I look at this image of myself on the online promo for the show, it seems surreal that I actually got the chance to compete on Chopped, won the 10K prize and came back for a second show! Thank you for all the emails, pats on the back, messages on Facebook and Twitter and in-person congrats from those I’ve met at demos, classes and other appearances since the first show aired in November. God bless the excited kids and others who’ve stopped me at the gym and at the mall to ask for autographs! You made my fifteen minutes of fame that much sweeter and fun!

So…watch and if you are so inclined leave a message after the show on the Food Network Facebook page and let them know what you think! And leave a comment here too! I will probably write my own take on the experience in the next post, but can’t talk about it until after it airs.

AIRS: Tuesday, 1/22/13 on Food Network. 10 pm EST

Check local listings for air times in your area. Show should be available, after the air date, to view online at at various outlets that show full episodes of Chopped, including FoodNetwork.com or On Demand, if you don’t catch it in real time.

When I told my son that a journalist from NJ Monthly Magazine wanted to do an article on me, with angle of “son inspires mom to go to culinary school,” he thought it was a great idea! As long as he didn’t have to be there, say anything or have his picture taken. If you are a mother, or have ever had one, you know that we are accustomed to moving forward with what what we need to get done, amid protestations of our young. In other words, I ignored his shy, man-of-few-words nature and begged him to be there anyway. “We’ll cook him lunch while he snaps some pics. I promise you won’t have to say that much.” And he didn’t have to. Because the soup Max made while I chatted up the reporter, (and prepped for the Vinegar Braised Greens with Runny Egg we served after the soup), spoke volumes about the skill, passion and finesse he brings to his work.

Now, a white soup is not going to “pop” in a picture, no matter how aromatic and velvety it is, but don’t let that distract you. The flavor of the sweated, sweet shallots, earthy celery root and nutty turnips, simmered with fresh rosemary and homemade chicken stock will make you HAPPY, I SAY HAPPY, that it is winter and time for soup. And this soup is the quintessence of winter, all roots and pears and rosemary. You know I love the combination of pears and rosemary from a certain jaw-dropping upside down cake I’ve posted and made with students in dozens of cooking-party classes, and the marriage works brilliantly here too. A finishing touch of cream could almost be eliminated (for those who would rather skip the dairy or fat) because the creamy, buttery texture of the blended vegetables has a luxurious, rich mouthfeel. Lower fat options are half and half or plain whole milk, but please don’t do soy or almond milk or something that is going to make this wonderfully balanced soup sweeter. The pear takes care of the sweetness quite nicely, without being overly so.

I had two great gadgets to play with for this recipe, that I am excited about giving away! One is this extra-wide ceramic MEGA peeler you see posing in the background. It’s from Kyocera. I immediately love it for being red, of course, but it has other great qualities. It is extra wide so you can employ it for peeling more challenging produce like these gnarly celery roots, or try it with mango, papaya, jicama, and cabbage. (Works perfectly fine on the slim parsnips too.) The ceramic blade is super sharp and will never rust on you. If you want to get those beautiful wide curls of chocolate shavings like those on deserts you see in restaurants, or equally bold strips of hard-aged cheeses (or you want to shave chocolate directly into your mouth on any given day around 4 pm when you start feel a bit draggy), this peeler should be the tool of choice. Leave a comment, and tell me what “a-peels” to you about having this new peeler in your drawer and two of you will be chosen at random to receive one. 

Next, I had this shiny “stick blender,” as we called them in culinary school, but Cuisinart would probably prefer if we took a deep breath and called it the Smart Stick Power Trio High Torque Hand Blender. It comes with a 4-cup mini food processor attachment, that slices, chops, and dices, and a whisk attachment too, so it’s not one of those dreaded “one-trick” gadgets that I advise people to avoid accumulating. (This rule does not apply to the corkscrew.)

When my son made this glorious soup the day of the interview, I didn’t have this magic wand at my disposal, so as you can see in the picture above, he used my workhorse of a Vita-Mix, which I love (and know it will outlive me it’s so strong and durable!) But, not everyone is going to want or need a $600+ blender in their kitchen, and some days you just don’t want the extra steps or cleanup of using a conventional blender. This powerful (400 watts) tool made short work of blending the soup to a creamy puree, when I made it again for this post, and I was able to do the blending right in the pot. To enter the giveaway for one of these stainless steel beauties, leave a comment below, and tell me the first blended drink you remember having.

Don’t skip the Vanilla Almond Oil part of this recipe (make a day or at least a few hours ahead), it really finishes the soup visually, and adds wonderful nutty, vanilla notes to this wintery melange. Save any leftover oil to drizzle over oatmeal, yogurt, seared scallops, or roasted potatoes. The last thing I’ll say is if you’ve never tried celery root, you really should. I hadn’t, until I went to culinary school four years ago, and now I happily puree, mash, roast, caramelize and eat them all winter long. Parnsips too are a neglected root, relegated to chicken soup making and other peripheral tasks, and should rightfully capture some of the limelight that it’s more colorful cousin, the carrot, always gets.

Note: Giveaway winners are chosen by random by a computer widget, to keep things fair and save me the angst  from having to choose among you. Keep commenting!

Photo of Max Robbins, Rachel Willen by Eric Levin, NJ Monthly Magazine