blender salsa

This is so easy and so satisfying! Put into a blender (don't chop at all!) 2 small tomatoes (or a container of grape tomatoes), 1 peeled onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 entire bunch of cilantro, 1/2 of a seeded jalapeño (or actually, imho, hot pickled jalapeños are even better than fresh!), the juice of 1 lime, 1 pinch cumin or cumin seeds, and 1 tsp (or more) of salt. Blend briefly, or just pulse it, or alternate pulsing and shaking of the blender pitcher. You don't want to pulverize it all completely (although that's good too!).

Enjoy with chips. Or quesadillas. Or fish. Or freezer burritos. This salsa gets better with time; make it hours in advance if you can. Increase the jalapeño (or include more seeds) if you want it hotter. If you don't have jalapeños, use dashes of hot sauce instead. Add cucumber or mango. Leave out the cilantro if you have haters in your group, and serve with chopped cilantro on the side. Advanced technique: Burn the ingredients in a very hot pan before starting to add some char. Another advanced technique: Blend 3/4 of the ingredients, chop 1/4, and mix it up at the end.

white bean and chard soup

I made a beautiful quarantine soup from the larder today: Burn merguez sausage in a pot so that it leaves nice brown sticky stuff on the pan. Substitute anything here; you could use other sausage or fake meat or a chicken thigh or a bone. Or go old-school vegan! (If you go vegan, get your brown from the mirepoix.) Remove the meat to a bowl.

Clean the pan by sautéeing diced onions, carrots, and celery (that is, mirepoix) in olive oil. Add white beans (either from a can or parboiled from dry for 40 minutes in water). Add water, salt, pepper, garlic, and maybe a mushroom-broth cube or something like that. Bring this all to a boil on the stove and then simmer it in the oven at 300 F (150 C) for 40 min.

At the end, add a bunch of finely chopped swiss chard (silver beet or equivalent; any lettuce will do), and the crispy sausage bits. Return to the oven for 15 min or until the lettuce is wilted. Serve with harissa for hotness.

I'm being unspecific about quantities here, but this truly isn't rocket science. The only thing that really matters is the ratio of salt to total mass.

pasta with anchovy red sauce

I love how easy and fast this is! And in these times of crisis, it can be made with long-lived pantry ingredients. So it is a self-quarantine specialty. It comes from the 'fuzz's friend Emily.

While your pasta water is heating, sauté in olive oil one finely chopped onion and one finely chopped clove of garlic and one 2-oz can of anchovies until the onions are very soft. The anchovies will dissolve in this process. Add one 6-ish-oz can of tomato paste and as much red-pepper flakes as you can stand, and maybe a bit of salt (the anchovies already provide some salt). Simmer this mess while half of a one-pound package of pasta cooks (preferably spaghetti, says the 'fuzz). When the pasta is done (don't over-cook it), mix the very thick sauce with one cup of pasta water and the pasta itself.

Serves four. If it isn't the end times, garnish with lots of chopped parsley. Variation: Cook without the hot flakes and add them to the garnish. That's good if you have some guests who don't like it hot.

Update: This post supersedes this slower and slightly more boring version of this dish.

pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes

It being end of summer and all, and me being over-confident in my no-recipe kitchen skills, I did the following today: I softened up two chopped onions and a bit of red pepper (because it was there) in a stick of butter. I then filled the pot with halved tomatoes (maybe 15 tomatoes) that the 'fuzz brought me from the Union Square Farmer's Market. I didn't peel the tomatoes first because (a) it isn't rocket science, and (b) I know I will be able to fish out the peels later. I added two cloves of garlic (smacked), 1 tbsp of red-wine vinegar, some fresh basil, some sprigs of fresh thyme, and a lot of salt and pepper (and a bit of that Japanese hot spice I have for ramen).

I started this all cooking. The tomatoes immediately released a lot of water and their skins, which I fished out (easily). I then executed the ultimate total-neglect move: I put the pot, uncovered, into a 275 F (135 C) oven and waited, stirring once an hour.

After 3 hours I pulled it out, pulled out the thyme sprigs, mashed the rest (with a potato masher) and then put it on the stovetop to reduce it further. That is, it wasn't thick enough (for my taste). Next time I'll do it at 300, not 275, with the hope that it will come out thicker. But it tastes great!

Recipes on the internet say you should peel and then seed the tomatoes before starting. I'm not sure why.

black beans

The 'fuzz gave me a pressure cooker for my birthday and I am learning how to use it. I made great lentils and great vegetable stew, but bad beans. So I am trying again, with a very small quantity. Here's what I tried tonight:

• three rashers bacon, cut into small pieces
• one small onion, chopped
• one clove garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup dried black beans
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp cumin

Fry onions and bacon for a few minutes, then add garlic and beans and water and cumin, bring to high pressure for 40 min, let cool off for 10 min. Add salt and pepper to taste.

They came out good. We ate some in quesadillas and ate some more mixed with corn and hot salsa. Next time I will make them with a lower bacon-to-bean ratio and a slightly lower water-to-bean ratio.

winter vegetable stew

Try out cut-up bacon with olive oil. Soften onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, chopped coarsely. Add some wine (red or white), white beans, canned tomatoes, vegetable stock (or water I am sure would work), thyme, salt, and pepper. Simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile, blanch chard, drain, chop, and add for the last few minutes of simmering.

Serve with hard cheese and crusty bread. This stew looks beautiful at every stage of cooking and pleased the 'fuzz. Apologies to PMC that I didn't take a photo.

bean "gravy" for roast chicken

PMC, in his infinite wisdom, dumped two cans of white beans (we could have used dry beans boiled in water until tender), a few sprigs of rosemary, and some roasted garlic into the pan in which we were roasting two small chickens. This, in the last half-hour of roasting, turned into a bean gravy that went beautifully with the chicken and mashed potatoes. All the awesome of gravy, more food value than gravy, and none of the effort of gravy! (Note: We skimmed off no fat, so this was pretty damned rich!) Well done, PMC.

"vegan" mashed parsnips

As our loyal reader knows, we love to mash vegetables here in the F,NRS NYC office. Recently, parsnips have come under the masher, to good effect. I only post it here because we mash these babies for Liz and Lisa, who eat kosher and therefore can't have milk or butter in the mash (if it is to be eaten with chicken, as it so often is), and Liz needs the recipe. These mashed are vegan so that we can all eat meat, if you know what I mean.

Before starting, if you want them garlicky, put many peeled cloves of garlic into a dish with many tablespoons of olive oil and put it into a low oven (say 300 F) to soften and sweeten. Then cut up—no need to peel, as far as I am concerned—parsnips, potatoes, and carrots into substantial chunks for boiling. I usually go something like four parsnips for every potato and carrot, but mix it up! Boil the parsnips for 30 minutes and the carrots and potatoes for 20. That is, you want the parsnips very done. Save some of the cooking water (remember, no milk will be permitted). Mash it all with the garlic and olive oil from the oven (or just plain olive oil if you don't want to go garlicky), insane amounts of salt and some pepper, and just enough cooking water (not much) to get them mushy.

These mashed parsnips are so sweet, you can't help asking: Parsnips, where have you been all my life?

hand-chopped pesto

At the suggestion of the 'fuzz, I took a small handful of pine nuts, a small handful of hazelnuts, a few cloves of garlic, a large bunch of fresh basil leaves, a small hunk of hard cheese, a bit of salt, and chopped and chopped and chopped. Then I mixed it with enough olive oil (home-made, thanks Kate and Yanni!) to make a solid mass of pesto. We mixed this with spaghetti and ate it with a side of fresh tomato and mozzarella to make a surprisingly awesome late-summer dinner.