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White Bean Stew with Crusty Parmesan Toast and Fifth-Try Poached Egg

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White Bean Stew with Crusty Parmesan Toast and Fifth-Try Poached Egg I ate my first egg about a year and a half ago.  For awhile after that I still found eggs intensely creepy and could only eat them in certain contexts.  But lately I’ve been chowing down on them all over town, and also incorporating them into my own cooking (although I have yet to sample the most dreaded of egg varieties — i.e. hard-boiled and/or in “salad” form). I’d been playing around with a recipe idea in my head that involved a perfect poached egg perched atop a crusty parmesan toast swimming in a big bowl of rustic white bean stew.  Tim and I got home from a busy weekend visit to Toronto late yesterday afternoon and were both craving something warm and comforting to stave off the oh-god-work-tomorrow blues.  So it was a perfect opportunity to test out my recipe brain child.  Before getting straight into the recipe, can we talk about how freaking hard it is to poach a simple egg?  It took me f
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Braised Beef with Leeks, Orange and Cinnamon

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Braised Beef with Leeks, Orange and Cinnamon According to the weather forecast, it’s basically supposed to rain for the next 800 years.  This morning I ran a very soggy 3 miles around the neighborhood and came back looking like a drowned rat.  Something about rain always makes me yearn for straight-up comfort food, and nothing is more intensely comforting than a steaming bowl of rich, savory, soul-quenching stew.  And the star ingredient (which I forgot to include in the lineup above):    Ingredients:   1 tsp salt & 1 tsp pepper (plus more to taste) 1 tbsp flour 1 lb beef chuck, cubed 2 tbsp canola oil, 1 tbsp olive oil 1 Spanish onion, small dice 1 large carrot, small dice 1 celery stalk, small dice 2 leeks, white and green parts only, sliced in rings 1 tbsp fresh thyme, finely chopped 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped 1 fresh bay leaf, or 2 dried 1 tbsp fresh sage, finely chopped 1 stick of cinnamon 1/4 cup tomato paste 3/4 cup red wine 2
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Japanese beef & potato stew

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Japanese beef & potato stew Nothing goes better with Sunday than stew.  It’s quick, it’s easy, it makes the house smell like heaven all day , and  it lets you feel industrious, even if you’re just sitting around. These days, my favorite stew to make is Niku Jaga, which is a homestyle Japanese beef & potato stew.  Before we moved to Brooklyn, Ace* lived in the Lower East Side, on Suffolk Street, across from the most adorable restaurant in the world, which is where we went about three times a week to get our Niku Jaga fix. Overall, we weren’t really too crushed about trading in the LES for Boerum Hill (much as we loved wading through teeming crowds of 18-year-olds while dodging puddles of puke and lurching drunkards on any given night). But we were  very  sad to leave  Soy  behind, especially because it didn’t occur to us that Niku Jaga was something we could actually make, like  in our own home . Well, turns out it is.  It contains about four ingredie
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Grilled Corn & Avocado Salad

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Grilled Corn & Avocado Salad Ingredients: 3 ears of corn 1 red onion 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved (I used a mix of red and yellow) Sprinkle of sugar 1 avocado, cubed 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 sweet red pepper, small dice 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp red wine vinegar Sprinkle of cayenne pepper Instructions: Sprinkle halved cherry tomatoes with sugar & salt and set aside.  Sprinkle chopped avocado with lemon juice and set aside as well.  Soak wooden skewers in water for 5-10 minutes.  Slice red onion into thick slices, then skewer with wooden skewers.  Spray corn cobs and onion slices with cooking spray or brush lightly with olive oil.   Grill for 5-6 minutes, turning corn frequently and flipping onion slices at least once.  Remove veggies from grill when corn is bright yellow and browned in spots, and onion slices are beginning to char.  Cut niblets off corn cobs using a big knife (watch your fingers!)
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Watermelon Salad with Feta and Mint

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Watermelon Salad with Feta and Mint Ingredients: 3 cups watermelon, cubed 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved 1/2 cup good feta, cubed Handful of baby arugula 1/4 cup fresh mint, torn into small pieces 2 green onions, white and light green parts, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil 1 tbsp red wine vinegar 1 tsp honey Instructions: Toss first six ingredients together.  Combine vinegar & honey, then slowly stream in olive oil, stirring, to emulsify.  Drizzle salad with dressing.  Enjoy!
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How to Build a Healthy(er) Big Mac

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How to Build a Healthy(er) Big Mac [This recipe is inspired by (and heavily based on)  this Big Mac recipe  by K. Kenji Lopez-Alt on Serious Eats.  I never would have thought to dehydrate the onions in the microwave to make them more Big Mac-y,  or  to put turmeric or Marmite in the sauce.  Sheer genius.]             Ingredients: §     12 oz extra lean ground beef (you’ll only actually use 3 oz per burger, but it’s easier to roll the burgers out if you start with more) Cooking spray 1 Kraft Single (American Cheese) 2 Wonderbread hamburger buns + 2 extra bottom buns 1/4 cup finely chopped onion + 1 tsp finely grated onion 1 egg white 1 tbsp sesame seeds 2 tbsp Hellmans light mayo 2 tsp sweet green relish 1/2 tsp yellow mustard 1 tsp granulated sugar 1/4 tsp Marmite or Vegemite 1/4 tsp turmeric 1/2 cup shredded iceberg lettuce (or romaine heart) 8 slices dill pickle Salt & pepper Instructions: For Mac
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