Rhubarb Ice Cream with Caramel Swirl

Since I'm a sucker for rhubarb, I couldn't resist trying this recipe from the New York Times. It was great! The sour cream gives a unique richness and creamy texture, the rhubarb is tart and awesome, and the caramel adds extra sweetness and something toothsome. The chunks of rhubarb are great, too. It's a little bit of a labor of love, but if you love rhubarb, ice cream, and time consuming weekend cooking projects (guilty), then this is perfect!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 3/4 cup plus 6 tbsp granulated sugar
pinch kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups sour cream
3/4 pounds rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch dice
1/2 cup heavy cream

Garden Week 10 - Memorial Day

Hope you all had a good Memorial Day! Jamie was down in Nashville with friends for his bachelor party and I was out in Southampton biking around with my mom, gardening, walking on the beach, and enjoying the first weekend of summer. Isn't it amazing?

The garden is now looking like a real, thriving garden! Everything is green and growing. On Monday, suddenly the peas were flowering - so we should have some little snap pea pods next weekend!

Spicy Beet Green and Arugula Pasta

I had beet greens and arugula from the garden, so I thought I'd saute them up for an easy weeknight pasta dinner. Just to make it a little special, I made my own pappardelle at Jamie's request. Yum!

(Yes, that's a Missoni for Target towel - it's easier to just lay a big towel down)

The sauteed greens were super tasty, and the little bit of sugar offset the bitterness perfectly. You could definitely eat them on their own as a side, but great tossed with pasta. (I made a few too many noodles so we were a little light on the sauce, but it was still good.)

Arugula and White Bean Dip

After a very successful weekend in the garden, I had lots of arugula to take back to the city. Now I'm just wondering what I'm going to be making all summer with this excess of the peppery plant. Last night when we got back to the city we knew we were having a light dinner of this awesome pizza and salad, so I wanted a little dip while we caught up on Thursday night TV.

I mashed up a garlic clove with some kosher salt and put it in a food processor with about a cup of arugula and a little olive oil and ground it down. Then added about 1.5 tbsp grated Pecorino and pulsed. Then added 1 can of white beans, drained, and about 2 tbsp water and 1 tbsp olive oil and pureed. I added salt, pepper, honey (only a drizzle to fight the bitterness), and cayenne to taste and blended it until smooth. It was super tasty! Really light with that peppery bite of fresh arugula. Jamie loved it. We ate it with carrots before our pizza course and an evening of Game of Thrones and Mad Men. Haven't Sunday nights gotten so great with that TV line up? Makes looking forward to Monday a little less sad.

Vegetable Garden Week 9

The garden is looking awesome! Everything is growing and blooming and looking healthy and green. It's really looking like a thriving summer garden. The tomatoes etc that were a little stunted by the cold snap are coming back and getting greener - though it's still amazing the difference between those in the wall o waters and those outside of them. Look at this - two of the Super Sweet 100s I planted from seeds. The one in the wall o water is double the size! Next year I really need to order like 20 of them.

The peas have gotten to be almost 3 feet tall and are grabbing onto everything, yay.

Veggie Plan

Here's my veggie garden layout! Just thought it would be good to post a little map. I think it's missing the cilantro, but it's the general gist!

Bourgeois Pig

I met up with my friend Lara last night for dinner and we went to Bourgeois Pig. I'd walked by it several times and always wanted to try it. It was very cute! And Wednesday is a great night to go because they have $6 mussels all night! It's really Gothic in there (decor-wise) and eclectic with lots of reds and blacks and velvets and mismatched chairs, but super cute and fun. We got a champagne punch bowl, which I loved! So perfect for dinner with girls, or later at night for a romantic date dinner. It's fun to ladle your own punch into the little glass mugs they give you.

Braised Pork Chops

I couldn't wait to try out my beautiful new cherry red Le Creuset braiser! It was an early wedding present from one of my very best friends, Alice, and her boyfriend Ryan. (Thanks guys!!!) I LOVE it. I feel so fancy owning such a pretty and well made piece of cooking equipment. Jamie requested pork chops, so I googled around and found a few recipes for braised pork chops, then kind of made up my own. They were tasty! And pretty easy, too.

Ingredients:
2 pork chops (preferably boneless)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 bay leaf
water

Directions:
Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan.

Doesn't the oil look so nice in the pot?

Best Lunch - Burritos

Often I have to run out during lunch and end up spending like $10 on a little salad. I hate spending lots of money on lunch just because those are the only options. I do bring leftovers a lot, but not every day. Then I decided I should make some burritos and freeze them, wrapped individually, to take to work for lunch. Also, if I made them myself, I knew I could make them taste just the way I like, and be sure they're actually pretty healthy at the same time. I made 8 the other day and Jamie flipped out and loved them so much he begged me to make more, so last week I went to the store and loaded up on supplies.

Vegetable Garden Week 8

Good weekend for the garden! It was beautiful and sunny and everything looked pretty good! My mom and I went to Lynch's and I picked up a bunch of herbs and some marigolds and nasturtiums to fill in the garden and give it some color. (Marigolds also keep bad bugs away from vegetable plants and even put something in the soil to keep them out down there, too.) Nasturtiums are beautiful and also very tasty in salads - a sort of mustardy, watercress flavor. Plus, both keep more bees and butterflies etc around to pollinate everything.

Doesn't it look much better already? I also gave in and bought some carrot plants at Lynch's to fill out the row that I thought wasn't growing - but there are actually a few sprouting out. I think they must just take a while. The Brussels Sprouts are super happy, as are the beets and Swiss Chard that you can see up there.

Thai Chicken and Spicy Asparagus Stir Fry

After Cinco de Mayo tamales (recipe coming soon) and other fun eating with Chip and Siobhan last weekend, once again, Jamie and I found ourselves craving healthy, fresh food on Monday night. I picked one recipe from the Times and one from Food & Wine, partially from the mouthwatering pictures printed alongside them - Thai Chicken with Hot-Sour-Salty-Sweet Sauce (also, can you resist that name?) and Stir-Fried Spicy Asparagus because asparagus is fresh, healthy, and so delicious this time of year. It's also nice that the asparagus takes less than 2 minutes to cook. It's delicious! The asparagus is extremely fresh and light, and the chicken is juicy. The real star is the dipping sauce. I want to make a gallon of it and pour it on everything. It's pretty much a winning combination of all of the tastes. Yum!

Thai Chicken, serves 4
Ingredients:
Marinated Chicken:
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 tbsp Asian fish sauce
1 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
4 whole chicken legs
Dipping Sauce:
1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate dissolved in 1 tsp water (or 1 tsp tamarind paste)
1/4 cup Asian fish sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
1 small garlic clove, minced
1 small  Thai chili (or jalapeno) seeded and minced
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp water
1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Vegetable Garden Week 7

Back out to Long Island this weekend to check on the garden! It's doing really well! The Swiss Chard is sprouting well, the beets are really happy. Brussels Sprouts too. Lots of good greens! I'm excited that I don't have to thin the beets until the leaves are about 4-5 inches high, then I can eat the baby beet greens in salad. Perfect! The peas are almost a foot high and are really hanging on to the string. Hopefully, by June we'll have tons of snap peas to snack on. And since we planted them earlier this year, they're much further along than this time last year - so we'll get peas earlier, yay!

The warm weather plants inside the wall o waters are much happier than those outside.

Lowcountry

I had walked by Lowcountry a bunch of times and was always curious, so when it popped up on Savored, Jamie and I thought we'd give it a try. It was cute inside. The tables were made of pieces of wooden doors with the carved out moldings filled with glass - charming. They had lots and lots of bourbon, so if you're a bourbon lover it would be great! They also had some fun bourbon cocktails. All in all, the food was pretty tasty southern food, but the stand out dish was the Fried Pickles with Green Goddess Dressing. Oh my goodness! They're amazing. I want to go back right now and just order 10 of those. They are covered in cornmeal and fried so they're crispy but not overly so, and it's a great texture. And the dressing is tangy and perfect. Plus I just love pickles.

Happy May!

Rabbit rabbit! I can't believe it's May. This gloomy day isn't too exciting, but now it means warmer days are definitely coming, Memorial Day is around the corner, and summer will be here in no time. Any fun spring plans? I'm trying to help Kara plan her birthday party and would love any good, late-May ideas for a fun Thursday night out with friends.