wednesday afternoons

From seventh through twelfth grade, Adriana and I went to an interesting school. Depending on where you're from, you might know the type. It was the sort of place where we were allowed to call our teachers by their first names, where art and foreign language were both core classes, and where you could easily fit our entire graduating class into one small classroom. With room to spare.

One of our school's many eccentricities was the Wednesday Half Day. On Wednesdays, we would only have half of our classes, and we would leave the squat building we called our campus at around 12:30. Adriana tells me this half day phenomenon was intended to give us time for the obligatory community service required by the school's founding principles. Most weeks, the two of us used it to fit in an extra study session. Cool we were not, but at least we got some really good grades.

And so it was that Wednesday afternoons constituted some of our first forays into trying to feed ourselves. If we were at Adriana's house, lunch might consist of Cheese Toast, spongy-sweet potato bread laden with Tillamook cheddar and broiled into open-faced sandwiches of bubbly deliciousness. If we found ourselves at my house, lunch often meant quesadillas we assembled in the microwave or Top Ramen boiled on the stove. While we've come quite a long way since then, both culinarily and nutritionally, there is one creation from that time that I am happy to reprise now: Rice noodles with peanut sauce.

Back then, I boiled the noodles and sparingly stirred in a few spoonfuls of the bottled gourmet peanut sauce I found in the fridge. I never lavished the noodles in quite as much sauce as I would have liked, as that stuff tasted so good to me, it might as well have been liquid gold. These days, I don't want to spend the money or the time seeking out the ideal sauce. I would much rather create one that suits my needs exactly. Throw in a little chicken for protein and broccoli florets to sop up all that flavorful sauce, and I have a delicious and nourishing meal. I love how sometimes, growing up is as easy as realizing you can make a sauce better than the one from the bottle. And serving a cucumber salad alongside your noodles.

Peanut Sesame Noodles

Adapted from Gourmet, June 2002

Peanut Sauce:

1/2 cup smooth, organic peanut butter

1/4 cup low sodium tamari

1/3 cup warm water

2 Tbs. chopped ginger

1 large garlic clove, chopped

2 Tbs. rice wine vinegar

1 1/2 Tbs. Asian sesame oil

2 tsp. honey

1 Tbs. crushed red pepper

1 tsp. dulse flakes

Noodle Salad:

3/4 lb. thin dried rice noodles

4 scallions, thinly sliced

3 cooked chicken breasts

1 head broccoli, lightly steamed or sauteed

3 Tbs. toasted sesame seeds

Whisk sauce ingredients in a medium-sized bowl until they form a thick sauce. Cook rice noodles according to directions on package (usually by boiling about 3 minutes), and drain water from noodles. Add chicken, broccoli, sauce, and most of the scallions and sesame seeds, reserving some for garnish. Stir until noodles, chicken, and broccoli are coated with sauce. Serve on plates or shallow bowls, and garnish with reserved scallions and sesame seeds.

Cucumber Salad

Adapted from Gourmet, October 2001

Ingredients:

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1/2 tsp. agave nectar

1 tsp. low sodium tamari

1 tsp. Asian sesame oil

2 medium cucumbers, sliced very thin on a mandolin

Whisk first four ingredients together until agave nectar dissolves. Place sliced cucumbers in a bowl, and pour in enough dressing to coat each slice (you will probably have some dressing left over). Toss the cucumbers to coat, let sit for 15 minutes in the fridge, and toss them again. Serve.

-Kylie

pizza night

Did you have Pizza Night when you were little? If you're like me and most of my friends' families, you did, and that night was Friday night. Fridays, in my opinion, are terrific days. I might even venture to say they're the best days. The thing about Fridays is that they're so full of promise. They're worn down around the edges, tired and rugged with too much crammed into their minutes, with sudden pops of light and joy bubbling up from within because they hold that unavoidable, irrepressible scent of weekend freedom.

Fridays are just peachy-keen, and pizza makes them better.

When I was growing up, my mom would sometimes buy individual Boboli pizzas for the two of us. We would unwrap the fluffy discs and shred firm aged mozzarella onto them, then top the whole thing with discs of spicy pepperoni. If we felt zany, we'd add some sliced mushrooms and black olives. It didn't matter to me that the crust came from the grocery store and the pepperoni slid out of plastic packages. All I cared about was the fact that I got to make something I was going to eat, and my mom let me pull the little pizzas out of the oven when they were finished and scrape the too-hot bits of burned cheese off the cookie sheet to nibble. To me, with my fluffy bangs and scrunchies tied around my wrists, those pizzas were as good as homemade. It was the time my mom took out of her day of working, going to college, and cleaning up after me that mattered, plus the joy we shared as we artfully topped our pies.

I find myself wanting pizza on Friday nights a whole lot more than I do on other days. Which is a good thing if you feel like making your Friday Pizza from scratch. It takes a while for the dough to rise, so you'll probably be having a late dinner, but you don't have to wake up early, because tomorrow is Saturday. I know; I'm a little brilliant sometimes. You might also want to sip some wine and taste some cheese while you wait. Just a thought.

My point is this: It's Friday. You've worked hard. Reward yourself with a delectable cooking (and dining) experience, and make this pizza. I followed Gourmet's recipe exactly, minus using a large cookie sheet instead of a pizza stone. Mary claimed it was the best pizza she's ever eaten in her life. While I will admit that, as my girlfriend, she is biased, I will also say that the girl is from Brooklyn, and if there's anything she knows, it's pizza. If I were you, I'd trust her.

-Kylie

The Little Things

Sometimes, when life gets you all stressed out, you need to take a moment, breathe in (and out), and think about the little things that make you want to jump up and down with joy and exuberance. I've been stressed lately, and so I've spent the entire evening thinking of things that make me want to do just that. In doing so, I realized that summer is a terrific time to be delighted by small things. Convenient. I also realized that I should do this more. It's fun! For instance, while washing the dishes a few minutes ago, I realized that my toes were really enjoying the dimpled fuzziness of the rug beneath them. See? It's the little things. Here are a few more things I thought of. Oh, and by the way, what's on your list?

1. Cherries are in season. Hold me back.

2. A young feminist blogger declared August Self-Esteem Awareness Month. Yeah! Young people rock!

3. The fantastic progressive comedians who work tirelessly to keep our silly culture in check.

4. Hugs. Big ones, small ones, good ones.

5. The fact that one of my favorite bloggers is involved in a New York-style thin crust pizza endeavor in Seattle, officially starting August 12th.

6. After a ridiculous amount of patience, my hair is finally long enough to put in a ponytail. (Thanks, Terra.)

7. The IKEA 2010 catalog has finally arrived! It seems I am the only person who is really excited about this. I feel as if I should be embarrassed by the extent of my excitement, but I'm not. Not at all.

8. The way The Maybelles wrap me up in their lilting, witty tunes.

9. Getting letters in the mail. Isn't that just the best?

10. The best herb store I've found in New York is right off the Q train in Brooklyn

11. This salad is so yummy and fresh, and it reminds me of one of my best friends.

Israeli Salad with Basil and Mozzarella

Serves 2

1 cucumber, preferably from the farmer's market

2 tomatoes, the tastiest you can find

4 basil leaves, julienned

2 Tb. olive oil

The juice of one lemon

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Several slices of fresh mozzarella

Dice the cucumber and tomato as finely as possible and place in a bowl. In a small cup, whisk together olive oil and lemon juice. Pour over vegetables and mix together. Add salt and pepper to taste. I served this over fresh mozzarella because we had some, but I would usually eat this with hummus and pita, scrambled eggs, or anything else, really.

-Kylie

Ooey Gooey

I wish you could smell it in here right now. It's kind of like when you're walking around an indoor shopping mall, trying to figure out how quickly you can do what you need to do and get the heck out of there, and then you suddenly smell the Mrs. Fields cookie shop, and you realize you need to go home right away despite the fact that you still haven't found what you came for and bake chocolate chip cookies. Yeah; it's kind of like that. But better. Because, thankfully, this is my apartment, and not a shopping mall. It's breezy in here, and warm, and having the oven on has made me a little sweaty, in a good way. It's the middle of summer in Brooklyn, and I'm baking David Leite's chocolate chip cookies as if it's winter and our breath is freezing outside.

After making this recipe several times (they're that good), I have a few tips for you: Use good-quality chocolate chips for this recipe, if possible. I've used both Callebut 60% and Ghiradelli Bittersweet, and I slightly preferred the Callebut. Do include the salt on top; that's one of my favorite things about these cookies. Also, these really do taste best after at least 24 hours in the fridge. A final rule: Make these cookies only for people you really like.

David Leite's Famous NY Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from NY Times

3 2/3 cups minus 2 Tbs. all-purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. coarse salt

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups light brown sugar

1 cup plus 2 Tbs. granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or feves, at least 60 percent cacao content

Sea salt

First sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a medium-sized bowl. Set aside.

Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes (really). Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well and scraping the sides after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and stir them in without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough can be used in batches and refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

Scoop 6 mounds of dough the size of golf balls onto baking sheet using an ice cream scoop, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Definitely eat these warm.

Yields 18 5-inch cookies, or a whole bunch of smaller cookies.

-Kylie

Hello, There! We've missed you.

Well, we've certainly been absent for a while, haven't we? There's no excuse. There isn't. Okay, well, I'm going to try to make an excuse now. Here it is: For my part, I've been thoroughly consumed by the people and places of summer in New York City and beyond. I've been disengaged from the computer, and from cooking, and from writing on the computer about food. But finally, after long last, my inspiration to cook and write and share all of that returned. Phew.

So, hello there! I've missed you! And Adriana? Well, she has a really good excuse for her absence, but I'm not going to tell you now. It's too good; you're going to have to wait for her to give you the news.

For now, here are some glimpses of summer so far through my eyes.

Hugs,

Kylie