Mama's Arroz con Pollo

My Aunt Marisol's mother, Nora Viana (known to everyone as "Mama"), was a very special woman. Well into her eighties, she always looked beautiful, laughed often, and had a twinkle in her eye. And she was a wonderful cook, which is no surprise, since her daughter (my aunt) is the single best home cook and hostess I know and a frequent source of both information and inspiration.

Back in September of 2001, when I was a nervous wreck and was pretty much camping out at aunt and uncle's house in Nyack, Mama and I spent a lot of quality time together (she lived with them in the final years of her life). I found her presence exceptionally comforting during those weeks and it was during an afternoon at their house that she taught me to make arroz con pollo.

Here's my version of her recipe. I use chicken breast instead of chicken thighs, buy jarred roasted red peppers instead of roasting them myself, and bottled not homemade hot sauce. I've also made it with shrimp instead of chicken and it was delicious.

Arroz Con Pollo

serves 8

4 chicken breast halves, cubed

2 cloves garlic, chopped

3 tablespoons oil (Mama recommended canola)

1 chicken bouillon cube

1.5 cups chopped tomato (Mama recommend Pomi)

1/2 teaspoon oregano

2.5 cups water

2 cups uncooked white rice (Mama recommend Uncle Ben's), rinsed and drained

1 medium onion, chopped

1 packet Goya Sazon "con azafran" - keep looking until you find that kind

1 roasted red pepper, chopped

1 cup frozen peas (no need to thaw them)

20 jarred green olives with pimento, whole

1) Mix raw chicken with chopped garlic and 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt and pepper and refrigerate overnight.

2) Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

3) Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon oil in large saucepan. Add chicken and sear. When chicken is beginning to brown, add tomato, chicken bouillon cube, oregano, and water. Simmer over low heat for 20-25 minutes. Remove chicken from simmering broth (DO NOT DISCARD THIS LIQUID) and set aside.

4) Heat remaining tablespoon of oil in a large dutch oven. Add rice and chopped onion and stir to coat. Add Sazon and stir. Add chicken.

5) Pour tomatoey liquid into a large measuring cup. Add as much water as necessary to get up to 4 cups. Pour liquid into dutch oven with chicken. Add olives, peas, roasted pepper and simmer uncovered for 10-15 minutes until little liquid remains.

6) Cover dutch oven and place in oven for 30 minutes. Serve with hot sauce.

Christmas traditions

For the last several years, my family has gone to Fresco by Scotto for dinner on Christmas Eve. They offer a "Feast of the Seven Fishes" inspired prix-fixe menu and usually have carolers moving around the dining room singing Christmas carols (this year the carolers called in sick!). We are not Italian, and I don't even really like fish, but Fresco is a special place for us and I love our tradition of having dinner there on Christmas Eve. Judd and I went on our first official dinner date there in April of 2003. And my sister and I threw our mom's surprise graduation party there in June of 2003 when she finally finished her master's program at NYU which she had started in the late 1970's, prior to getting pregnant with us.

It was a wonderful, if pricey and caroler-free dinner -- just right for a special occasion like Christmas Eve. We all shared an anitpasto platter and several slices each of their famous grilled margarita pizza. Then I had the almond-crusted Fresco crab cake with remoulade. It was very good, though on the small side. Thankfully, both my mom and Judd ordered the fritto misto -- two heaping bowls full of fried shrimp, scallops, calamari, and zucchini. Which I helped them finish. My sister, predictably, had the winter salad. For my entree, I chose tagliolini with lobster "fra diavlo." It wasn't actually that spicy. But I enjoyed it. My mom and sister both had Chilean sea bass piccatta with parsnip puree and sicilian couscous with roasted root vegetables. I didn't try it but they were very happy with that selection. And Judd had herb-roasted chicken. For dessert we shared a platter of biscotti, cookies, and struffoli, along with a brownie sundae, apple crisp with vanilla gelato, tiramisu, and pistachio-crusted cheesecake. It certainly was a feast. And we're not the only people who like Fresco on Christmas Eve - Natalie Morales, one of the hosts of the Today Show, was sitting at the table next to us.

On Christmas morning, my mom made her traditional big brunch for us to eat while we opened presents. She went way overboard, as is her custom, and had bagels, muffins, croissants, three different cream cheeses, several varieties of smoked fish, bacon, fruit salad, and a ham, basil, and mozzarella cheese frittata (which I contributed).

For dinner on Christmas day, I decided to cook a filet of beef. I have only done this one other time. I also made a very easy and tasty horseradish sauce (recipe below), potatoes Anna and truffled creamed spinach, neither of which I'd made before. And am now of the opinion that Christmas Day is not the time to experiment with new recipes.

Nothing turned out bad per se, but nothing was great. I used this recipe from epicuious for the potatoes, and they ended up more like hashed browns than the elegant potato cake I was imagining. Maybe I should have used grated potatoes? The creamed spinach recipe, which was supposed to be the recipe that the Strip House uses, was fine, but not as good as the recipe I normally use (listed below), which has no grated cheese or truffle oil.

Last year, we ordered Chinese food on Christmas, which is what I think I'll plan for again next year. Especially since it is such an appropriate accompaniment to one of our family's favorite Christmas past times: mah jong!

Easy Horseradish Sauce

1 cup sour cream or creme fraiche

1/2 cup prepared horseradish (or more if you love horseradish)

4 tablespoons chopped chives

3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Chill before serving. Can be made up to two days in advance.

Joe's Creamed Spinach

serves 6 - 8

4 10-ounce boxes frozen chopped spinach, thawed

3 cups light cream

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

freshly ground pepper

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1) Gently squeeze the spinach, discarding excess water. Place in a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly for five minutes until spinach is tender and bright green.

2) Add the cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and simmer for five minutes until the cream has bubbled and reduces slightly.

3) Meanwhile, melt the butter in small skillet. Add the flour and cook over low heat, stirring for 3 to 4 minutes, until opaque. Add the cooked butter-flour mixture (i.e, roux) until the spinach mixture. Simmer for 3 minutes longer until creamy and smooth, but still bright green. Correct the seasoning to your taste and serve hot.

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl. Cover and chill until ready to serve. Can be made 2 days ahead.

Ho Ho Holiday Party

Judd, Kristy, and I co-hosted a holiday party at my apartment last night for our friends who braved the first big snow storm of the winter - we got almost 11" of snow overnight! Judd looked particularly cute with his festive candy cane tie and green sweater.

It was so much fun to plan and host a party again, which I haven't done since our wedding nine months ago. My sister ordered gorgeous flowers from Alexander Brothers on 87th and Madison, and all of the wine and prosecco came from Bottle and Soul, a relatively new wine store on Lexington Avenue and 81st Street.

I turned the reigns of my kitchen over to Elisabeth Weinberg of Miss Elisabeth's Catering. We were delighted by all of her creations, which included a cheese platter with selections from Artisanal (a cheese lover's paradise!) crudite, nine fantastic hors d'oeuvres (meatball sliders; manchego cheese and chorizo quesadillas; crab cakes with a spicy habanero and lime aioli; pepper-crusted filet mignon with horseradish cream on a garlic crostini; duck confit on a polenta cake; wild mushroom and goat cheese tartlets; lamb merguez sausage "pigs in a blanket" with tsatsiki; mini smoked ham biscuits with cranberry chutney; and potato latkes with smoked salmon, tarragon creme fraiche and caviar), and an assortment of holiday cookies. Everything was excellent and I highly recommend Miss Elizabeth's for any catered event.

Here are some pictures from the party. I had a great time - I really enjoyed seeing my friends all dressed up and meeting some of my sister's friends. The only downside of all that fun (and chardonnay) was how I felt this morning when I woke up with my contacts still in and my apartment in a similar state of disarray.

Restaurant review: Five Guys Burgers and Fries

I spent the entire day at a CLE (that stands for continuing legal education, for you non-attorneys) program at the Brooklyn Bar Association today in Brooklyn Heights. And in between a presentation on defending DWI charges and a presentation on the do's and don't of oral argument, I squeezed in a visit to a rare New York City outpost of the Washington, D.C.-based Five Guys Burgers and Fries around the corner.

I eat fast food very rarely, usually only during long car rides. And since I read "Fast Food Nation" several years ago, I NEVER order hamburgers at fast food restaurants. This position was only further cemented after I read this disturbing article about e-coli in hamburger meat from an October issue of the New York Times. Instead, I go with bean and cheese burritos when at Taco Bell, chicken nuggets and baked potatoes at Wendy's, and ice cream or Egg McMuffins at McDonalds. Those are literally the only things you would ever hear me order at any fast food place. Period.

Why then, you may wonder, was I so excited to get my paws on a Five Guys hamburger? Because I am very impressionable and heard these weren't your "average" fast food burgers. In fact, anyone I know from the D.C. area has raved about Five Guys. Plus, I know our President likes their hamburgers. And I like him. (You may recall from an earlier post that I was equally determined to eat an In-And-Out burger while I was in California a few years ago, also because of all of the praises I'd heard sung about those.)

But enough about me and my easily-compromised principles - how was the burger? DELICIOUS.

A sign above the counter at Five Guys details their handful of unhealthy offerings, which I think were limited to burgers with optional bacon or cheese, hot dogs, fries, and numerous free toppings. Also listed is the caloric value of each item. New York City passed a very annoying law recently which requires that restaurants with multiple locations post the calories of each of the items on their menus. It is shocking and disheartening and all around no-fun to see how many calories there are in something you're excited to order.

Even though the difference between a hamburger (700 calories) and a cheeseburger (840 calories) was significant, I went with the cheeseburger since I really like cheese on burgers. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? Actually, I really like cheese on everything. Plus, it felt like a special occasion to be in Brooklyn with a long lunch break, and to have found a Five Guys. So I ordered a cheeseburger (they only have yellow American cheese) with pickles, sliced tomato, and onion -- I like raw onion on a burger --- but suppressed my urge to get fries (620 calories for a regular, 1464 calories in a large - so precise!), too, even though they really looked tempting. I must admit that Five Guys also had "little" burgers on their menu (~400 calories), but I thought that would be a kid's portion, so I went with their standard size. Which actually has TWO patties of beef. I'm not sure why they didn't explain that their average burger is actually a double-burger . . . I probably would have gotten the bigger version anyway.

The burgers were more well-done than I would have ordered at a restaurant, there was no negotiating that, and really messy to eat. I got melted cheese, ketchup, and burger juice all over myself. But it was also so yummy I didn't care! It tasted really fresh (they don't use frozen beef) and just exactly like a cheeseburger should taste. I was thoroughly impressed. And I think you will be, too, if you can find a Five Guys and simultaneously cast aside your concerns about industrial ground beef. (I have no e-coli to report, yet.)

**

Details:

138 Montague Street

Brooklyn, New York

(718) 797-9380

Excellent cheeseburger for one: $7

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Earlier today, before it started to rain here in NYC, Judd and I bought a Christmas tree from a nice guy who is essentially living on the corner of 62nd Street and Broadway for the next few weeks. This is only our second Christmas tree in the nearly seven years we've been dating since we didn't move into an apartment big enough for a tree until 2008.

Thanksgiving is technically my favorite holiday. But the weeks between Christmas and Thanksgiving are some of my favorite of the year. I could listen to cheesy Christmas music all day, every day, and not tire of it. Trust me - I tested this claim while studying for law school exams three years in a row. And I love Christmas cards, Christmas decorations, and Christmas parties (I will be attending four of them, including my own, this week alone)!

Anyone who has recently received a lot of gifts from Williams-Sonoma might recognize the ornaments on our tree. That's because our 6-foot fir tree is decorated with over 40 of the little bronze pineapple tchotchkes that come on all of their gift-wrapped boxes. I wasn't sure what else to do with them, and I think they look nice.

Hope you're enjoying this time of year as much as I am . . .

No more leftovers

I ate the very last of our Thanksgiving leftovers tonight. I am not sure if I should be proud of my resolve not to waste food, or disgusted that I just ate a rich and utterly nutritionless plate of two-week old side dishes for dinner. All that was left, you see, were mashed potatoes (those don't go bad, right?), stuffing, and my favorite orangey sweet potatoes with a very buttery oatmeal crumble topping.

Actually, I just realized that I still have some gravy left and about 2 cups of cranberry sauce. Does anyone have ideas for gravy that DO NOT involved mashed tubers? I guess egg noodles go well with gravy. Or maybe even rice? I could toss in some sauteed mushrooms . . . all ideas are welcome.

The good news is that the fridge has a lot more free space than it used to. Which leaves lots of room for the healthier things I plan to make between now and the Christmas calorie bonanza a few weeks from now. Last week, I sat down with my copy of Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites and scoped out some hopefully tasty and lighter dishes than I've been cooking lately (i.e., no stuffing). I've already made a curried carrot and parsnip soup (pg. 100) and sweet potato and black bean burritos (pg. 172).

Ooh - Judd just got home. That's all for now.

Restaurant review: Carmine's

In honor of my beloved husband's 35th birthday this past Thursday, my mom, sister, and I took him out to Carmine's for dinner on Friday night. Carmine's is near the top of my "oldies-but-goodies" list. My family has been going there for birthdays, family gatherings, and miscellaneous special occasions for over fifteen years. In the last two years alone, we've gone there to celebrate my mother-in-law's 70th birthday and my sister's "last supper" before she moved to London. We also considered it for our wedding rehearsal dinner, but it is very unlikely that I would have fit into my wedding dress if we had ended up there. (In case you're interested, Judd's parents ended up hosting a much less gluttonous and much more elegant and geographically convenient post-rehearsal dinner for us at Giovanni Venti Cinque, just a few blocks from the church where we got married.)

Four is probably the fewest number of diners that sit down to eat at Carmine's with a straight face. That's because they serve hearty Italian food in gigantic "family-sized" portions. Each dish easily serves 4 - 6 people. So get ready to laugh when you hear what we ordered.

We started with THREE appetizers:

Caesar salad,

fried zucchini, and

stuffed mushrooms.

All three were delicious. I don't always love Caesar salad, but Carmine's makes a great one. The mushrooms, all fifteen of them, had a spicy sausage-based stuffing. And who doesn't love fried zucchini? But in retrospect, we shouldn't have ordered that obscene pile of crispy fried zucchini pieces. It was really just too much. That's what happens when hungry people can't decide on which appetizer to order.

For our entrees, we shared chicken parmesan and rigatoni country style (rigatoni with broccoli, cannellini beans, sausage, and onions) - my personal favorite of their many pasta dishes. I rarely order chicken parmesan since it seems like the kind of thing I could make myself if I really wanted to or even order a perfectly fine version of it from a pizzeria. But it was wonderful - possibly even the best I've ever had. Their shrimp parmesan is also delicious, for future reference.

Even though we were all holding our stomachs and groaning after making a serious dent in enough food to feed a small army, we still ordered a tartufo (chocolate covered ball of ice cream) for dessert so Judd could have a candle to blow out.

Hey - at least we didn't order this dessert, which they call the "Titanic."

There are several downsides to eating at Carmine's. First and foremost: they don't take reservations for parties smaller than six. And since it's always a MADHOUSE in there, that can lead to a long wait for a table. My advice is to get there as early as you can or go on a weeknight. Second: the B & T crowd has heard about Carmine's massive servings of delicious and reasonably priced food. And finally: it is nearly impossible to leave Carmine's doors without feeling so full you might never eat again. And that's even if you're carrying a large bag of leftovers. It happens to me every time. But it's loud (borderline raucous) and fun inside and the food is consistently really wonderful.

I have no idea how many hundreds of people must work in the kitchen at Carmine's to generate the volume of food they serve every night, or how many thousands of calories I manage to consume each time I eat there, but I can't wait to go back. Especially with the smartest, funniest, kindest, cutest, and most all-around wonderful man I know, whom I'm lucky enough to call my husband. Happy birthday, Judd!

***

Details:

Carmine's Upper West Side

2450 Broadway (between 90th and 91st Streets)

New York, New York

(212) 362-2200

Dinner for four + leftovers for ten: ~$200

Restaurant review: Salumeria Rosi

Last night, my sister and I saw Guster at the Beacon Theatre, a small theater about 10 blocks north of my apartment. It was a fabulous show -- after intermission, Guster played their entire album, "Lost and Gone Forever." We sang, we laughed, we danced. It was great.

Anyway, before all that excitement, we had a lovely dinner at Salumeria Rosi around the corner from the Beacon Theater. Salumeria Rosi is part tiny restaurant and part salumi shop. I have stopped by there many times to pick up some of their cured meats and grissini (thin breadsticks). They make great pre-dinner snacks.

Salumeria Rosi's menu is made up of a selection of small plates - think Italian tapas. As a general rule, I do not like the small plate style of dining. I never feel like I've eaten enough. But I will go along with it if I'm dining with only one other person. Any more than that and you only get a bite or two of each small plate - so unsatisfying.

We started with three small plates: burrata, the world's most delicious mozzarella cheese; caponata, a delicious sweet and sour eggplant relish; and mortadella di bologna with pistachios, which, as its name suggests, is essentially Italian bologna. YUM! I LOVE bologna. I was annoyed that our $3 plate of mortadella only included two slices of it. Since I buy it at their deli counter pretty often, I know that you can get 1/4 pound of mortadella for $5, so $3 for two slices was a rip off. I also was surprised that the two grissini we requested cost $1 each, instead of $0.25 each, which is what they cost if you buy them to go. Hmph.

Next we shared 4 additional small plates: roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta and garlic; rigatoni all'Amatriciana, a pasta sauce made with cured pork, red onions, and tomatoes; homemade pork sausage cooked in a tomato sauce with chickpeas; and soft polenta with a butternut squash and vegetable ragu. The sprouts, pasta, and sausage were delicious. I love al dente pasta and this rigatoni was cooked perfectly and had just the right amount of sauce. But the polenta dish was underwhelming. The polenta was much too runny for me and the ragu was lackluster - no texture contrast among the vegetables. Just mush upon mush.

For dessert, we shared a pumpkin bread pudding with a vanilla anglaise sauce which was really wonderful. It was remarkably light and fluffy for a bread pudding. And not too sweet.

Overall, we were pleased with our meal. The service wasn't great, and the hostess reminded us at least twice that she'd need our table back by 8 pm even though when we left at 8 pm, there were many empty tables. Also, the wine by the glass was really expensive - $20 for a glass of barolo!? As my long lost friend Andrew Brophy would say, that's bonkers! But everything but that polenta dish was really good. So I will certainly be back.

**

Details:

Salumeria Rosi

283 Amsterdam Avenue (between 73rd and 74th Streets)

New York, New York

(212) 877-4800

Dinner for two: ~$150 nearly half of which can be attributed to the super expensive wine

Wow. I'm full.

I am emerging from the haze of yesterday's calorie overdose. I made way too much food. It was absurd. But almost everything turned out just exactly as I planned it. And now we have a refrigerator full of leftover-stuffed tupperware.

Judd took the entire day off and was very helpful in the kitchen. In fact, he made the very tasty pear, onion, and dry jack cheese hors d'oeuvres we nibbled on while the turkey was in the oven. I had actually tried that recipe when Ann and Brian came over last weekend, but used sheets of phyllo instead of the cups, which was a big mess. I definitely recommend using phyllo cups if you are going to try this recipe.

Since my refrigerator is so small, our raw turkey had been awaiting its destiny in my mother's refrigerator across town. But my mom and sister brought it west when they came over around 1pm, and it went right into the oven. We roasted our 12 lb turkey for just under 3 hours with nothing more than butter, salt, and pepper on the outside and an onion and a bunch of fresh thyme on the inside and it turned out beautifully. Though you'll have to trust me on that, since I forgot to take its picture in all of the excitement.

Without further ado, here are some photos of our massive spread.

I certainly straddled the line of a lot of a good thing and too much of a good thing. If you'd asked me last night, I probably would have chosen the latter of those two. But that's what Thanksgiving is all about. Overeating. And family, too. And then eating pie.

One pound of unsalted butter: ~$3.50

One quart of cream: ~$6

2 lbs of challah: ~$9

One 12 lb organic turkey from Lobel's: $100 (thanks, Kristy!)

Spending my favorite holiday with my new husband and old mom and sister: priceless.

Thanksgiving Eve

If I am not in a tryptophan-and-gluttony-induced coma at this time tomorrow, something will have gone terribly wrong. Which seems unlikely at this point since we are on track to eat a massive Thanksgiving feast around 4:00 pm tomorrow.

I got home from work around 3:30 this afternoon and got to work. First order of business: baking 8 yams in a hot oven for about 90 minutes, skin on. I wanted sweet potatoes, but they didn't have any at Fairway last night. Oh well - I doubt I will notice a difference, if one in fact exists, between sweet potatoes and yams. Once the yams were cool enough to touch, I peeled their skins off with my fingers and mixed the yam flesh with marmalade, fresh ginger, fresh orange juice, butter, brown sugar, and a salt. The resulting delicious orange mush is in a baking dish in my refrigerator now.

Next I peeled, thinly sliced, and caramelized about twenty shallots for my mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots. It took nearly 40 minutes to get them a golden brown color. They are also in a plastic container in my refrigerator, ready to be added to mashed yukon gold potatoes with creme fraiche much closer to dinner time.

Finally, I made the oatmeal crumble topping for the orangey yam mixture. Since I couldn't find the Archway oatmeal cookies, I am substituting the oatmeal crumble topping from the Barefoot Contessa's Old-Fashioned Apple Crisp on page 226 of "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" - I think should work out just fine since it has all the same ingredients that you'd find in oatmeal cookies (i.e., butter, oatmeal, brown sugar, sugar, and flour). Fingers crossed.

Wedged between those containers of light cream (for creamed spinach) is the large black container of oatmeal crumble topping, and the small white container of caramelized shallots. I'll spread the crumble on top of the yam mixture before baking it tomorrow afternoon.

And now my infected ear and I are getting in bed. Yes, readers, I have come down with yet another ailment in less than two months: an ear infection. But I am on antibiotics and am hoping for a speedy recovery.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Greetings from Thanksgiving headquarters

The preparations for my favorite meal of the year have begun. Yesterday, after a 7:00 am trip to Fairway, I finalized the menu for our Thanksgiving feast, made my shopping list for later in the week, and got to work on two things that can be done several days in advance: turkey stock and cranberry sauce. Fairway is a mad house on an average day, and in the days leading up to Thanksgiving or a snow storm, shopping there can inspire a nervous breakdown. Early morning or late at night is the only way to go.

First item: turkey stock from this 2008 New York Times recipe for turkey gravy from scratch. I won't recite the entire process, but it started with over 6 pounds of buttered turkey legs and wings roasting in the oven for two hours,

followed by 6 hours of simmering those parts in water on the stove.

I now have two quarts of rich brown turkey stock and at least 1/2 a cup of turkey fat, which hopefully will make for some delicious gravy on Thursday.

Next up, the cranberry sauce. I have made Ina Garten's Cranberry Fruit Conserve for the last few years. It's very easy and texturally appealing with chunks of walnuts and raisins.

That recipe is on page 225 of "Barefoot Contessa Parties!" and may be in some of her other books, too. I find that her recipe calls for FAR too much sugar. So I only used about 1/2 a cup of sugar instead of the 1 3/4 cups she recommends. Then I added two packs of Splenda to achieve the desired sweetness, in honor of my mom with diabetes.

I plan to shop for the remaining items LATE on Monday night and spend Wednesday afternoon cooking most of the sides for our feast with my sister's help - she's coming home on Tuesday - including apple chestnut stuffing, the shallot portion of mashed potatoes with caramelized shallots, creamed spinach, and my single favorite Thanksgiving side of all time: orange-flavored sweet potatoes with an oatmeal cookie topping. I am going to have to improvise the topping this year since Archway, the brand that had made the oatmeal cookies my Aunt Marisol or I have historically used for this recipe, has gone under and I can't find any other oatmeal cookies that don't have raisin paste in them.

A week of good dinners

Monday: another dress-rehearsal for Thanksgiving: roast turkey breast, roasted red potatoes with rosemary, sauteed brussels sprouts, and a truffle-scented pan gravy. I had smeared some black truffle butter under the skin of the turkey before I cooked it, but I did not think it imparted any truffle flavor to the finished turkey breast. So I used more truffle butter to make the gravy.

Tuesday: spaghetti squash with marinara sauce, Nate's meatless meatballs (don't knock em till you've tried em! I recommend the "classic flavor") and steamed broccoli with pecorino cheese.

Wednesday: salumi and pecorino fritters; mini calzones with tomato and mozzarella; and meatball and ricotta lasagna at the Enoteca at I Trulli with Alexis. Their bar menu is considerably less expensive than the restaurant menu.

Thursday: Mu shu vegetables (no mushrooms!) and the world's best steamed vegetable dumplings from Ollie's.

Friday: an enormous serving of yummy meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes at City Grill with Steph.

Restaurant review: Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Judd and I received a very generous gift certificate for dinner Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York, as a wedding present from our friend Anastasia. My sister, who had eaten there a few times, suggested we cash in our lovely gift in the fall since that was a very pretty time of year to eat there. So in September, I naively called to make a dinner reservation for two. Little did I know that to make a dinner reservation for a Saturday night, I would need to call two months in advance of the calendar day on which I wanted to dine. So in our case, I made a reservation on Monday, September 14th for dinner on Saturday, November 14th. And that date finally arrived last night!

Pocantico Hills is in Westchester County about 45 minutes north of the Upper West Side, near Tarrytown. The restaurant is literally housed in a beautiful old stone barn, which is just one part of the larger Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The farm at Stone Barns grows or produces most of the food that fellow Tufts grad Dan Barber cooks in the kitchen of Blue Hill.

The entire place is stunning and beautifully furnished. There was a roaring fire in the cozy bar area and stylish black leather wing chairs to relax in. The dining room at Blue Hill is even more spectacular. It has vaulted ceilings and a large wooden table in its center with enormous candles and an arrangement of seasonal branches. There is no menu at Blue Hill. Instead, diners are presented with a list of over 100 possible seasonal ingredients and choose between a 5- or 8-course Farmer's Feast which is custom-comprised by the chef based on those ingredients and any restrictions you impose. We chose the 8-course Farmer's Feast - thanks, Stash! - and I asked for no fish (I am very picky about fish and thought it was easier just to exclude it), no venison, and no chocolate. Magic ensued.

Our 3 hour meal started with the arrival of three little starters: small glasses of velvety fennel soup, tiny vegetables impaled on a rectangular piece of wood (e.g., a small radish, a miniature carrot, a floret of purple cauliflower), and smoked kale and red Adirondack potato chips.

Next up: tiny beet burgers and skewered salsify wrapped in pancetta and covered in sesame seeds. Wow- these were two of the tastiest bites of food from the entire night.

The warm homemade bread followed with homemade butter, homemade ricotta cheese, and homemade arugula salt (the arugula is dehydrated and crumbled into the salt). I wasn't into the arugula salt, which we were encouraged to sprinkle onto our bread, but the butter was exceptional on its own. None of these three courses counted toward our eight course meal, which I will now list:

Course 1: Smoked tomato soup with a tiny quenelle of tomato confit, a mini crouton, and far too many other accoutrements to list

Course 2: forono beets with pine nut butter and micro greens (our server even brought over some raw forono beets so we could see what they look like - they grow in cold weather which makes them sweeter for their struggle)

Course 3: braised fennel with apple for me and local striped bass with cauliflower puree and concord grapes for Judd

Course 4: "this morning's egg," poached and served with spicy lentils and lettuce broth (our server brought over a nest full of eggs and explained the lives of the chickens at Stone Barns who had laid them that morning)

Course 5: homemade ravioli with Hudson Valley beef, grated horseradish, and beet puree - another standout

Course 6: pork tenderloin and pork belly with tender chunks of carrot and crispy Brussels sprouts leaves

Course 7: pickled quince with fromage blanc, crumbled nuts, and ginger ice cream - I love ginger ice-cream!

Course 8: cream of toasted what with comice pear slivers, some kind of cookie, and lemon verbena ice cream

Everything about this meal - and, true to its name, it really was a feast - was exceptional from the beautiful farmhouse setting, the elegant and slightly modern plates, bowls, and glasses, and the impeccable service. Judd left our camera in the car, but I probably wouldn't have taken any photos anyway since it was too serene inside the dining room for flash photography. But the food was the real star. I have never before tasted vegetables prepared with such imagination, precision, or intensity.

I had told our server that I had also gone to Tufts and we got a lovely handwritten note from Dan Barber on our way out inviting us to return for the winter harvest. Mr. Barber, I accept your kind invitation with pleasure, though I probably should call on Monday to make a reservation to get back there while it's still winter.

****

Details:

Blue Hill at Stone Barns

630 Bedford Road

Pocantico Hills, New York

(914) 366-9600

Dinner for two: ~$450 (thank goodness we had a gift certificate to cover most of that!)

Chicken Stock

An anonymous commenter recently asked for my chicken stock recipe. I've only made it twice (though last year I made my own turkey stock!) but I'm happy to share my technique, since I wouldn't really call this a recipe.

Step one: stick chicken carcass in a large pot with 3 unpeeled carrots, 1 unpeeled onion, two ribs of celery, a bunch of dill, a bunch of parsley, a bunch of thyme, 6-10 peppercorns, and water to cover.

Step 2: cook over medium heat for a long time (2 - 3 hours).

Step 3: strain contents of pot reserving the liquid - VOILA! You have made chicken stock.

Any excuse to make stuffing

Thank goodness for Veterans' Day -- a rare and refreshing mid-week day off. Good news: I got to test out another stuffing recipe with my found time. Bad news: I think I am getting sick AGAIN!!! I even have a fever. WTF!? I just got over a sinus and throat infection six weeks ago! Ugh.

On last night's menu: roast chicken with pan gravy; chestnut and dried cranberry stuffing; and steamed asparagus.

I started with a 4.5lb Murray's chicken from the Fairway in Red Hook and I stuffed it with a lemon, thyme, and a head of garlic.

Some butter, a hot oven, and 90 minutes later, I had a roast chicken!

When the chicken was cooked, I made gravy by combining the chicken fat in the roasting pan with some flour, chicken stock (which I made during my last roast chicken adventure), and white wine.

The stuffing recipe came from an old Williams-Sonoma catalog. (If you read them cover to cover, you'll find at least one or two recipes in each catalog.) And it was pretty good - even better tonight, actually.

Here's the recipe:

Chestnut and Cranberry Stuffing

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup dried cranberries

4 tablespoons (that's half a stick!) unsalted butter

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1/2 lb pork sausage, casings removed (I used sweet italian sausage, I am sure breakfast sausage would also be ok)

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 lb loaf of bread (I used an enormous baguette), cut into 1" pieces and lightly toasted in the oven

2 cups prepared French chestnuts, halved

2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley

salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 2 1/4 - 3 quart baking dish.

2. In a small saucepan over medium heat, warm stock until steam begins to rise. Remove from heat and add cranberries. Set aside.

3. Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add onion, celery, and carrot. Saute, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are tender and translucent (~3 minutes). Add parsley, sage, and thyme, and cook for an additional minute. Remove vegetable-herb mixture from pan and add to bowl. In the same pan, saute the sausage meat, breaking it up while cooking, until browned and cooked through (~10 minutes). Transfer sausage to the bowl with vegetables.

4. In a large bowl, stir egg while slowly pouring in the stock and cranberries. Add toasted bread and stir until well mixed. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until stock is absorbed (~6 minutes). Add vegetables and sausage. Season with salt and pepper and stir well to mix.

5. Transfer stuffing to baking dish and bake until brown and crispy (~45 minutes).

Serves 6-10 (depending on how many other sides you're serving).

I am still leaning toward using the challah, apple, and chestnut recipe I tried last year, which didn't have any sausage. But I will try one more recipe - probably one with cornbread - before I make the final selection.