Fresh lemons are a workhorse in my kitchen, finding their way into everything from ice cream and tarts, to bitters and homemade cheese, to my go-to household cleaner. In fact, I thought I’d pretty much exhausted my uses for lemons—that is, until a fall afternoon in 2006, when I met a friend for lunch at the then new-to-me Cafe Mogador in New York’s East Village. … Continue reading preserved lemons.
We have a thing for lemons on ¡dpm does! They turn up in tarts and in sorbet, as popsicles and in our homemade ricotta. And now, cake. This cake is one of our most favorite sweets, and we’ve made it so often that when we turned to our index this weekend to pull up the recipe, we were surprised to find we’d not yet posted … Continue reading lemon olive oil cake.
Ah, summers in New York! Makes me think of sticky nights (hugging a fan by an open window), the squeal of neighbors splashing in open fire hydrants, and the pervasive ditty of the ice cream truck. Yes, summer in New York makes me think of the ice cream truck, and with good reason — they are everywhere. Whether it’s the quintessential truck of our childhoods, … Continue reading cassata.
Ah, the caper. That polarizing garnish that oh-so-often languishes uneaten on plates of smoked salmon or trays of creamy deviled eggs. The tiny green buds tend to inspire extremes–it’s either love it or hate it–and understandably so. Capers themselves are extreme: the briny buds, which call to mind olives and anchovies, pack a powerful punch. I’d wager they have one of the highest flavor-to-size ratios … Continue reading capers and caper berries.
And here we are again with the lemons. These days, they’ve taken the form of limonata, and lots of it. The stickier it gets in New York, the more of this we drink. There’s nothing quite as refreshing and evocative of summer pleasantness as a chilled glass of that ubiquitous sparkling Italian beverage. With the stickiness here to stay, and our small fridge taxed by … Continue reading san pellegrino limonata.
It’s been rather quiet here on ¡dpm does!. You can blame the wedding. Yes, we decided to make it government official this October. It was marvelous and meaningful, with puppets and brass bands and parades and a lot of DIY fun. When we got engaged, we considered celebrating as we always do, by making lots of food and having everyone over for a big ol’ … Continue reading wedding cake.
Spring has struggled to blossom in the Northeast this year; the greenmarkets offering up mostly glassy white cabbage and knobby carrots, still into May. When a springy green vegetable does appear in some quantity, it’s snatched, hungrily, gone before noon, before most have rubbed the sleep from their eyes, pulled their compost from the freezer, and made their way to the park. Such had been … Continue reading spring snack: sugar snap peas & green garlic aioli.
And we’ve come to our favorite — and, last! — color dinner: indigo continuum, or black to purple (skipping true blue, which doesn’t actually occur naturally in nature). Favorite because it’s the greatest of the color challenges, and the most visually striking, and because it’s full of opportunities to use exotic ingredients like black basil seeds and squid ink. And other delicious things, too, like … Continue reading indigo continuum.
I spent the fall of 2004 studying in Bologna, and to this day, even so many years later, the mere mention of the city and its mothering region Emilia Romagna makes me slightly weepy. Perhaps Giacomo Leopardi said it best, about the beauty of Bologna: Io sospiro per Bologna…dove non si pensa ad altro che a viver allegramente senze diplomazie, dove i forestieri non trovano … Continue reading sorbetto di limone.
It’s been a week of dinners with friends visiting from far-away places, and as usual it’s a bit bittersweet. Early January’s something of a European pilgrimage to NYC, and it’s hard when it comes to an end to know it will be another year before we see many of our friends again. For our last dinner, we had an extra-special sweet tooth to appease, so, … Continue reading french pear tart.
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