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