Carnitas + Mexican Crema

The first few months of quarantine, I prepared all of our meals at home – zero takeout or curbside pick-up. It was, at first, a nice distraction from the realities of our strange new world. With bakeries closed, I joined the sourdough bread-making bandwagon. Kitchen fatigue eventually gave way and packaged ramen entered the picture for many lunch meals. There was also a day over the summer when, upon desperate pleas from my kids, I googled, “Is Taco Bell drive-through safe?”

I started thinking more strategically about how my cooking efforts could be further stretched into multiple meals – more bang for my buck and, more importantly, my time. Enter: carnitas, a delicious Mexican preparation of pork, simmered slowly until tender and caramelized.

I’ve been making this version of carnitas, which literally translates to “little meats,” for years. It’s one of many brilliant recipes from David Lebovitz. We like carnitas on corn tortillas topped with crumbled cotija cheese, pickled red onion, cilantro and a dollop of Mexican crema*. (The adults also prefer some heat in the form of fresh or pickled jalapenos and green or red hot sauce.)

Perfect Beans

I have long wanted to post this recipe as a return to the blogging world, but a pot of beans didn’t feel significant or thrilling enough after such a long hiatus.* However, I have changed my tune now that grocery runs are limited and bags of dried beans — which have nearly vanished from store shelves (mine, anyway) – now seem worth their weight in gold. Perhaps you have a package of beans in a forgotten corner of your pantry that could use some inspiration?

Blueberry-Cinnamon-Hazelnut Omelet

I am not one of those women whose weight melts off while breastfeeding. For me, it falls off slowly, very slowly, as perhaps it should.  When I nurse, I’m constantly hungry. I try to own it and not fret, but there are moments postpartum when I, admittedly, do not own it very well and want to press fast-forward with weight loss.

Six months after I had my third child, I decided to clean up my diet (and hopefully shed a few pounds) doing the Whole 30 program, a strict paleo diet for 30 days. I researched, meal-planned and was prepared. On day five, I experienced the dreaded “carb flu.” It was so profound I thought I was, in fact, sick. I woke up feeling chilled, clammy, feverish and nauseated. Jason was out of town for work and I had to roll out of bed to face the day caring for three children while feeling severely under the weather. The last thing I wanted to eat was a paleo breakfast. I needed something starchy. Not a donut, per se, but not a fried egg with a side of sausage either. In my carb flu fog, I recalled a recipe I stumbled upon in my Whole 30 research that sounded good: a sweet omelet of sorts with cinnamon, blueberries and hazelnuts. To my carb-deprived palate it tasted like a pastry. I ate two.

Herb-Roasted Pork Loin With Mustard Breadcrumbs

As the holidays near and you’re contemplating a main course to serve your family and friends, I’d like to suggest – as an alternative to ham or turkey – one of my favorite entertaining dishes. It makes for an impressive presentation and is a crowd pleaser. I’m still amazed my children, who often dismiss meals with layered textures, love this meal.

The pork loin is smothered in a mustard-herb-garlic marinade overnight, then browned in a hot pan before slow roasting in the oven, rendering it juicy and flavorful. At the table, it’s topped with buttery, mustard-herb bread crumbs and jus made from the brown bits in the pan.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Quick, Thin-Crust Pizza

Pizza is my answer for a quick, homemade dinner. Quick pizza is a relative concept, of course. Truly speedy pizza is what you order by phone or online, the kind that arrives at the door 30 minutes after ordering, or a pie that’s hot and bubbly 20 minutes from freezer to oven. This recipe still requires a few hours lead time, but it makes for the quickest, tastiest, thin pizza crust I’ve discovered, and I’ve made my fair share of pizza over the years.

A few tips:

• * Less is more when it comes to tomato sauce, especially if you’re feeding kids. One of my first mistakes when I began making pizza was adding too much sauce. Just a light coating will do.
• * Brush the outer crust (ring) with an olive oil-garlic powder mixture; it adds a depth of flavor.
• * Toss all vegetables in a tablespoon of olive oil prior to adding to the pizza to encourage even cooking.
• * Add more toppings than you think you’ll need; they’ll shrivel in the oven.
• * Invest in a baking stone (sometimes called a pizza stone), which is inexpensive and can often be found in the kitchen equipment section of your grocery store. A stone is imperative for this recipe.

Homemade Ricotta + Baked Ricotta

Six years ago, Jason built three raised garden beds in our backyard, and we planted our first garden. It proved to be our most bountiful crop to date – beginner’s luck perhaps – and tomatoes and peppers appeared on the vines for months and months until I was weary of them come October. (Oh, to have the problem now.) The garden project was inspired in part by Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” in which she chronicles a year of growing, making and cooking her own food. One chapter discusses making cheese at home, and I overzealously decided I, too, would start making my own cheese. I bought a fancy kit that included everything you needed to make several soft and hard cheeses. I started with mozzarella, supposedly one of the easier cheeses to make. I tried different milks (the less processed and pasteurized the better), but all of my attempts lacked the desired texture and flavor. I never got around to trying any of the hard cheeses after reading they were difficult. Kingsolver herself admits this. Given my lack of success with the mozzarella, I decided to leave the cheese-making to the experts.

Today, I’m of the firm mind that, even if you love being in the kitchen, not everything needs to be made from scratch to create an exceptional meal, especially if you have a gaggle of children at your feet — my reality a portion of the day. Shortcuts are welcome and necessary. Dried, canned or fresh beans. Canned tomatoes or fresh tomatoes. Boxed or fresh pasta. We’re all doing our best, yes. Yes.

Last year, though, I made mental note of a homemade ricotta recipe circulating magazines and the web because it looked easy, as in no-fail easy. During a trip to Louisville in late 2014, two ricotta dishes inspired me to revisit cheese-making. At The Garage Bar, my friends and I enjoyed an afternoon appetizer of ricotta served alongside roasted beets and bread. At Proof on Main, we ordered a memorable baked ricotta dish topped with fresh horseradish and oregano.

Gougères (Cheese Puffs)

Everyone needs a simple, elegant hors d’oeuvre in their repertoire, a recipe they don’t have to overthink and that doesn’t require a grocery store run. Gougères, French cheese puffs, are savory pastry clouds made of eggs, milk, flour, cheese and butter. For dinner parties, these airy, bite-size puffs are an ideal, light starter for guests to nibble on while you’re wrapping up your preparations.  Adults and children alike love them, and they go beautifully with champagne. I often serve them alongside cake at my kids’ birthday parties.

Gougères can be elegantly piped (as pictured) or dropped in spoonfuls. They can also be made ahead – once baked, you can freeze and reheat them in the oven. I’ve found the reheated puffs taste as delicious as the freshly baked ones.

Pretzel Roll Buns

The quest for a homemade soft pretzel began when I was pregnant with Maxwell. As quirky pregnancy appetites go, the image of a specific food – in this case, a soft pretzel – appeared to me one morning and didn’t vanish until the craving was satisfied. I found a recipe from a trusted source. (All hail, Alton Brown.) To accompany the pretzels, I made a cheese sauce of the neon-orange, processed variety. I make no apologies in the name of maternal health. The combination was sublime.

Then I had the baby, winter turned into spring, and when summer hit, I longed to grill. But our grill bit the dust this year – RIP. So, pretzel rolls seemed like a good way to dress up a stovetop burger. However, I wasn’t blown away by the first pretzel bun recipe I tried even though it was a recipe specifically for pretzel buns. The next time around, I used Brown’s  recipe and everyone agreed: the pretzel buns were perfect. No need to experiment further.

Egg “Crepe”

I began this post in May with the working title, “The Way My Kids Eat Eggs,” because for years those little whippersnappers would eat eggs one way and one way only. But in the months that followed, Walker and Esme expanded their egg repertoire. Impressively, I might add and with no coaxing from me. Walker’s taken a liking to scrambled eggs: on their own, nestled in a tortilla with sausage and cheese, or alongside toast. Esme now requests demands an “egg with yolk” (fried egg), preferably runny.

I am, to put it mildly, thrilled.

Several years ago when I was out of town, Jason tried to talk the kids into eating the eggs he’d prepared (with a little milk and scrambled) by marketing them as “Papa’s Fluffy Cloud Eggs.” Tough sell.

The method I’m sharing today, still a family favorite, produces an egg with a crepe-like consistency. The key is to whisk, whisk, whisk prior to pouring the egg into a hot, butter-glazed pan, where it expands into a paper-thin disc with a glossy, yellow finish.

Pesto Vegetable Soup

Two months ago my friend Angela brought over the best vegetable soup I’d ever tasted. It lasted but a day or two, and I found myself scraping the bottom of the pot for the final spoonful.

I knew Angela had adapted the recipe from a cookbook we both own — “Around My French Table” by Dorie Greenspan — so I immediately set out to make another batch. I was concerned, however, that my soup wouldn’t taste as good Angela’s, figuring she used her husband Tim’s homemade stock. It’s challenging to replicate your own homemade stock let alone someone else’s, and I knew Tim’s was likely better than most. He’s a craftsman in the kitchen, paying close attention to detail and not one to rush the process. Exhibit A: this beautiful bread he made to go along with the soup:

They didn’t use homemade stock I was relieved to learn. It was the homemade pesto stirred in at the end that was (in large part) responsible for giving the soup such incredible flavor. (After making this discovery, I started craving pesto regularly and smothered it on everything from eggs to salami.)