Rachel's Housewarming

By Jason
Recipes: White Bean and Basil Crostini & Red Chili Shrimp and Avocado Crostini

Rachel and I are fated friends. We met at a scholarship competition hosted by Syracuse University’s Maxwell School the spring prior to our freshman year. The assignment was to analyze the welfare system and then suggest an alternate policy at either the federal or state level. Yes, I am a closet geek. I am that guy at the party that remembers everyone’s name, when and where we met, and a random fact about whatever the current topic of conversation, even if its astrophysics.

The first step in the competition was to submit an essay. Neither of us put much effort into the paper, but somehow we both got to the next round in which we present our arguments to a panel of judges. We were placed in the same group and hit it off before the discussions began. We didn’t much prepare for the presentation either, another point of bonding. Nor could we contain our laughter as the other one struggled to present and defend the argument.

Following the presentations, the smaller groups convened for the scholarship award, which we, of course, did not get. Rachel and I traded contact information and prepared to go our separate ways. We quickly discovered that our fathers had randomly seated themselves at the same table. In that moment we both knew we would stay friends for years to come.

We ran in separate groups at Syracuse. Rachel fell on the social-activist side of the coin. I spent my four years drunk or recovering from such drunkenness. (Given my inner nerd, I still managed high marks.) Despite our different social circles, we managed to share a few beers from time to time—and the friendship still remains.

After school I immediately moved to NYC while Rachel settled in D.C. Like all smart souls, she eventually relocated to NYC and several apartments later moved into a large studio in the depths of Brooklyn. Just moments after the movers finished, Rachel was planning her housewarming. With her round-the-clock work at a charter school, Rachel didn’t have much time to prepare. So I offered to cook for her 50 guests.

My philosophy for entertaining large groups is to offer small variety of simple appetizers. Vegetarian options provide the bulk; they keep costs low and placate guests with modern diet restrictions. For seafood/meat-eaters, my go-to protein is shrimp – it’s on the cheap side, works in a variety of dishes, and yet somehow makes people feel fancy.

The Menu
White Bean & Basil Crostini
Red Chili Shrimp & Avocado Crostini
Roasted Corn and Poblano Crostini
Fingerling Potatoes with Herb Aioli

The party was a huge success. Guests appeared throughout the night carrying bottles of wine (some even brought cases of beer). Food favorites were the White Bean & Basil and Red Chili Shrimp & Avocado crostini, and the recipes appear below.

In addition to preparing the crostini topping, you will need a few baguettes. Thinly slice the baguette. Brush each slice on both sides with extra virgin olive oil and toast under the broiler, flipping to brown each side. The broiler works its magic quickly – you’ll only need about two minutes per side.

White Bean & Basil Crostini


2 cans cannelloni beans, rinsed
½ cup grated Grana Padano cheese
1/3 cup heavy cream, room temperature
2 cups basil, chopped
Zest from 2 lemons
Kosher salt
Fresh pepper

Combine the rinsed beans, grated cheese, and heavy cream in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until smooth, and season with salt and pepper to taste. The mixture should be thick, but spreadable. If it’s too thick, add additional cream.

In a small bowl combine the chopped basil and lemon zest.

Spread the white bean mixture on the crostini and garnish with a pinch of the basil and lemon zest.

Red Chili Shrimp & Avocado Crostini


1lb medium shrimp, peeled, de-veined, tails removed
2 tbsp fresh red thai chili paste (or 3 tbsp jarred)
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Fresh pepper
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 ripe mangos (should be ripe and soft to the touch)
½ cup finely chopped red onion
2 ripe avocados
½ cup fresh chopped cilantro
Juice and zest of two limes
2 cloves garlic

In a bowl combine the shrimp, thai chili paste, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to marinade. This can be kept in the fridge for a few hours/overnight or kept at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

In a large sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shrimp in one layer so that each is in direct contact with the pan. Cook shrimp about 2 minutes per side, until pink. Remove from heat and the pan. When cool enough to handle, slice each shrimp in half along where the vein would be so that they are butterflied, but separate.

Peel and thinly slice the mangos. I prefer to use a mandoline or vegetable peeler, but you could also just finely dice the mango. Combine with the red onion in a bowl and set aside.

Combine the avocado, cilantro, garlic, lime juice and zest in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Spread the avocado mixture onto the crostini and top with one half shrimp. Garnish with a pinch or two of the mango/red onion mixture.

Read more!

What Happens in Vegas…

by Adrienne
Recipe: Lucky Ladies Salad

Apparently my mother enjoys gambling, a lot. I learned this fun fact on a trip to Las Vegas for work.

The signs were all there, I suppose, from a young age. My mother and father took their twice often trips to Atlantic City, where they wagered $100 each on video poker. Afterwards, they would hit White House Sub Shop, a hole in the wall restaurant in Jersey. To this day, they still serve my favorite cheese steaks. I looked forward to those trips, waiting patiently for them to return home with the ode to meat and cheese, white American. The White House Special, essentially an Italian hoagies, is also amazing.

But I never experienced this addictive side of my mother until this recent business trip. It was Mother’s Day weekend so I figured I would get points for inviting. She’s amusing, at least for a few days. We stayed at the Wynn, one of the classier places on the Strip. And by classier, I mean the garish colors and man-made water features are only slightly less tacky than at those hotels that mimic metropolitan cities or Ancient Rome. And the $28 buffet is among the best in Vegas.

There was routine to our mornings. She woke up way too early and quickly shuffled out of the room to avoid incurring the wrath of a sleeping Adrienne. When I woke up a couple hours later, I would call mom, and she would come rushing up with coffee and oatmeal. Yes, I resort to old roles around my parents; I am the baby. On one particular morning, she hurried up with my breakfast and quickly retreated to walk the Strip and pick up tickets for a show. I meanwhile ate my breakfast in bed while reading Jason’s well-worn copy of A Year in Provence.

I finished my coffee, oatmeal, and the book—but mom never returned. After a couple of hours, I started to get nervous and somewhat impatient as I wanted to sun by the pool. I called my mom, who sheepishly answered the phone. “Where are you?” I said in my usual less-than-courteous tone. She hesitated before responding: “Playing video poker.” It’s at that point that I realized she had never even left the hotel, drawn in by the bells and whistles of video poker. She was up $300. How could she possibly walk away from this hot machine? I mocked her, hung up, and realized she was two steps away from a 12-step program. She never did get tickets to a show, but at least she paid for dinner—several times.

For all of its idiosyncrasies, Las Vegas is a foodie’s dream, albeit one lit in neon. BLT Burger. Osteria del Circo. Joel Robuchon at the Mansion. Now, I’m not typically a fan of Wolfgang Puck, who’s taken his commercial chef shtick a bit too far. But his pink lady salad at Spaggo is simply delicious. Here’s my interpretation:


Lucky Ladies Salad
1 pink lady apple
½ lb. burrata
½ lb. baby arugula
¼ cup hazlenuts
¼ lb. prosciutto
¼ cup of chopped hazlenuts lightly toasted.
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Thinly slice apple into circular pieces. Arrange slices on four plates. Top each part with equal parts of prosciutto and creamy inside of burrata. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

In separate bowl, toss arugula lightly with vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Top apple combination with arugula. Garnish with toasted hazlenuts. Serve.

(In case you didn’t notice, there’s extra burrata. This should be consumed at your leisure, preferably by yourself with a nice glass of red wine and sopresatta.)
Read more!

Sitting by the Dock of the Bay (while Dancing in the Moonlight)

By Jason
Recipes: Wine Poached Scallops with Peaches & Steamed Clams with Hot Italian Sausage

It’s confession time.

I am afraid of the ocean.

Every time I dip a toe in the water I am convinced that will be eaten by sharks, attacked by a rogue colony of crabs, or caught in a rip current and swept out of sight.

My oceanic fears were exposed on a recent weekend trip to the Hamptons. Adrienne laughed as I jumped at every shadow and limited my swimming to the waist-deep bay water.

Thankfully, my love of eating marine wildlife is not affected by these fears. I eat clam chowder for breakfast when hungover, slurp oysters by the dozen for a snack, and cook scallops weekly for dinner. Nothing beats sipping a beer and enjoying the clean, salty brine clams hold hostage in their shells. And as there is no better place to be eating seafood than by the ocean, I fell in love with the cottage on Bittersweet Lane, a house Adrienne shared with friends this summer.

As Adrienne has already said, Bittersweet is the perfect beach house. Outside of a few necessary repairs (no door handle to the outside, decades old wooden beach chairs with broken springs, etc), the cottage is a welcome respite to the well-documented drama of the Hamptons. For both Adrienne and me, cooking is relaxing. So naturally, when we’re relaxed, we cook. This weekend was all about sitting back, reading at a leisurely pace, and eating from first light until the sun set over the bay horizon.

Here’s hoping that everyone remembered the food, and not my yelping after being maliciously attacked by the biggest, my ferocious crab in the history of crabs.

Wine Poached Scallops with Peaches


1lb sea scallops, rinsed and cleaned
1 bottle white wine (anything with citrus or mineral notes preferred), at room temperature
6 sprigs fresh thyme, a few leaves reserved
Juice of 2 lemons, in separate bowls
2 ripe fresh peaches, peeled (the softer the peach the better)
Sea salt
Fresh Pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

In a high-sided sauté pan combine the white wine, thyme, and juice from 1 lemon. Heat over medium until it comes to a bowl and lower to a simmer. Poach scallops (meaning they should be almost, if not completely, submersed in the simmering wine) until cooked through. About 2 minutes per side depending on the size of the scallops. Remove the scallops from the pan, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the fridge until completely cool – at least 1 hour.

Remove scallops from the fridge and slice into thin rounds. Thinly slice the peaches (I use a mandoline). Plate the dish by building a circle on the plate, alternating scallop and peach slices. Sprinkle with sea salt and fresh pepper, and drizzle with olive oil and the remaining lemon juice. Garnish with a few leaves of thyme.

Steamed Clams with Hot Italian Sausage


4 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed clean
8 hot italian sausages
4 bottles of beer (I use Moretti), at room temperature
3 large shallots, finely chopped
4 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp saffron threads
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 ½ cups fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
2 tsp fresh ground pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Cook sausages in 1 beer in a sauté pan with high sides over medium low heat. I never split or puncture sausages because the liquid inside the casing helps cook the meat and keeps it moist when eating. When the beer has evaporated, add in olive oil and raise heat to medium. This will brown the sausage casing. Once cooked through (about 15 minutes in total), set the sausages aside until cool enough to cut into rounds.

Coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil over medium-low heat. Saute the shallots and garlic until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Pour in the beer and let settle. Wisk in the mustard, saffron, lemon juice, zest, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil and then lower to a simmer. Cook for about 15 minutes until slightly reduced. Bring the mixture back up to boiling and add the clams. Cover and cook until clams are opened. You can remove clams as they open so that the others have room.

When all of the clams have opened (those that do not open are dead – just throw these out) place them in a large serving bowl along with the sausage and chopped parsley. Pour over the broth and serve with slices of crusty bread.

Read more!

Hamptons Not-So Chic

By Adrienne

Recipe: Plantain Mash

I’m not one for scenes. I don’t like traffic. And pretension at the beach seems ridiculous. Yet for some reason, I decided to take a share at the Hamptons, the elite New York coastal area where heiresses and financiers summer. As I suspected, there are a lot of annoying things about the Hamptons. It can take an hour to get to a grocery store that’s six miles away. Prada flip flops are commonplace. And people wait in line to go to nightclubs. This is not relaxing at the beach to me.

But there is something quite magical about our house on Bittersweet Lane. The small cottage sits on the edge of the Noyack Bay, which glistens on sunny days. We can walk right down to the water or kayak to a nearby wildlife refuge. You can relax on the screened-in porch and listen to the waves. Other than the neighbors—not so affectionately referred to as the Sopranos—the place is idyllic.

Dinners at the Bittersweet house are a communal affair. My first time out, we fed 15 people, squeezing them all together on a semi-broken picnic table and a round metal patio table. Three people shared the cooking duties. I made a pork loan with a cumin rub. Larry made green beans with almonds. And Al whipped up some pasta with shrimp.

This weekend, Jason and I are handling the cooking duties. As per usual, it was a bit of an affair. Jason started cooking shortly after waking up this morning. And other than a break for a dip in the bay and a way-too-long shopping run, we’ve been puttering around the kitchen most of the day. Here’s what we’re making:

The Menu
Steamed Clams with Hot Italian Sausage
Confusion Ribs
Plantain Mash
Guacamole Salad
Goat Cheesecake

Jason and I have made most of the recipes before. But I decided to test out something new today—the plantain mash. Basically, I just like the idea of combining plantains and goat cheese. (Okay, I pretty much like goat cheese in anything). In any case, it took a bit of experimenting to figure out how to cut the sweetness of the plantains, but I managed to do so with a bit of bacon. I’m thinking I’ll want to try chorizo in this recipe next time, just to keep with the Latin flavor. But a smoky meat is a must, otherwise it’s far to sweet a dish.


Plantain Mash
6 plantains
6 pieces of bacon
1 medium onion
½ cup of whole milk
4 oz. of goat cheese
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil

Dice onions. Chop each plantain into six pieces or so. In pan, sauté olive oil and onions, until translucent. Add plantains and continue sautéing for 10 minutes or until all pieces are somewhat mushy. As plantains browns add a few tablespoons of milk to help deglaze the pan and get all the yummy goodness in the mixture. Continue this process, using about half of the milk.

In separate pan, cook up bacon. When crispy, remove bacon and chop into small pieces. Set aside bacon grease.

In pot combine plantain mixture and chopped up bacon. Add goat cheese and remaining milk. Stir and mash until you reach desired consistency—I tend to like mine on the chunkier side. You can achieve a fluffier version by adding a bit more milk and combining with a hand mixer. Once mashed, add four tablespoons of bacon grease. Stir and serve. (This can also be prepared ahead of time and reheated shortly before dinner.)

Read more!