36 hours before I ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon, a mean sore throat snuck up from out of nowhere. It had me up during the night when I should have been resting; it had me down during the day when I should have been dancing on tiptoes in anticipation for what would be my longest run to date. The run was trying, and I am proud of myself for running 13.1 mi. Five years ago I could barely run a block. But I am more proud of combating the ailment that, had I let it, could have marred my entire run.

When I ran Prospect Park on Thursday night, my body had begun to slow down, and I had to wrestle the pollen that looked so thickly frozen in time I literally had to push it out of the way. I had a bad tickle in my throat that couldn’t be spit. It seemed like everyone was in the park that night, getting in their final runs before it all went down on Saturday. I felt so sad & weak! I wanted to feel strong again, clearheaded, alert. I jogged to my parents’ that night prepared to do whatever they said I should do to rid this block of physical and mental fuddle. Gargle with warm salt water, they both said practically in unison. Gargling makes me gag, I whined. So what? Do it anyway, they shot. 

I suppose if you want something bad enough, or in my case, you want something to go away bad enough, you do what needs to be done, regardless of whether or not you believe any of it will work to your advantage. When you’re at a disadvantage, it’s hard to trust there’s anything or anyone out there that wants to help you. It’s very easy to sit back and just feel sorry for yourself. I said a few times: This is so unfair. 

So it’s unfair. So what?

I gargled like I’ve never gargled before. I gagged a couple of times, but for the most part, I didn’t gag. I toughened up and added more salt. And then added more salt. And then gargled for longer. I bought fresh ginger root and peeled off little pieces to chew and spit out. I drank bottled water after bottled water, sipped hot ginger tea and slurped soup without spoons. I was never without a lozenge; a co-worker slipped me elderberry tablets (really good for speeding up recovery and nice & high in antioxidants; i was fresh out of blueberries) and let those sit on my tongue a couple of times. I left work early on Friday because I wanted to leave enough time to get uptown to pick up race #s & t-shirts for Max, Michael, and I so that I could also get to Third Street for an early dinner of tortellini. (I hadn’t done a good job of eating throughout the day because I’d been too busy gargling, drinking, and peeing.) I wanted to be asleep by 9pm. Right before bed I prayed to Saint Rosalia, the patron saint of Palermo, to fix me and make me well come morning. After all, she’s-a-known-to-make-a-the-miracles. 

That night I dreamt that it was go-time. I was running…but then all of a sudden I wasn’t running. Instead I was sitting in a stale classroom watching a movie. At the beginning of the movie, I thought: Ok, you’ll just watch a little bit of it… because you also have to run… but then before I knew it the movie was over and I could now say that I was a good 3 hours behind race schedule. I was pissed. How could I have let this happen? How could I have settled into watching a movie when I knew there was a race going on? A race that I’d spent much time and energy preparing for? All that work… to watch a movie? 

I think what this dream stood for was the ease in which I will normally allow for and tolerate bad shit. I will slide over and make room for it when I should be actively shooing it away, not unlike the Mad Hatter and March Hare who screamed “No room!” at Alice when there was plenty of it. There was roomfor this sore throat but I didn’t want to make the room this time around and I took it upon myself to do whatever I could to blackball it. (i.e. A Jewish girl praying to an Italian saint? Come on.) Choosing to watch a movie while I knew I should be running? I was herding myself in an opposite direction and it was plain to see how quickly I obliged. I even provided myself with an excuse along the way.  

I woke up Saturday morning feeling 100x better than the day before, already feeling like I’d won something. It was both a great mental and physical boost! I’ll never forget it. 

I got this recipe off of 101 Cookbooks, another one of my favorite food blogs. It’s technique-free; you’re just mincing herbs and marrying it with garlic and olive oil. But it’s the paprika that brings that serious dose of seduction to the pan. It’s so red and cruel. (In a good way.) What’s so magical about this sauce is how versatile it is - it can be added to anything and everything - making whatever you’re eating that much more delicious. A few weekends ago I used it as a dressing for a dish of broccoli, kidney beans, radish, avocado, and feta. A weird dressing for a weird dish, I know, but trust me, it ruled. I’ve got shrimp marinating in the magic right now…

Finely chop some rosemary; this is what fresh rosemary looks like.

Finely chop some thyme; this is what fresh thyme looks like.

Finely chop some oregano; this is what fresh oregano looks like.

Pound these herbs together with a mortar and pestle if ya got one.

(reminder to myself: search 335 for an “extra” mortar and pestle.)

Now, take 1/2 cup of extra virgin oo

and gently warm it over medium-low heat until it’s - ouch - just hot.  

at that point, flame off! the rest just gets stirred in…

Add 2 tsp of paprika

2 cloves of garlique, smashed to a paste.

(I used 4 because I was feeling adventurous.)

1 (count one!) (count not the whole container!) bay leaf. crushed.

plus a pinch or two of crushed red (depending on your spice palette).

+ 1/4 tsp salt

aaaaaand a tbsp of fresh lemon

look how gorgeous; it’s just asking for a pinky taste.

you can essentially use this now, but i have a feeling it just gets better over time… 

my advice? refrigerate!

Bonus points for not having much of a mess to clean up afterwards.

In high school (and throughout college) I was on the hunt for the perfect mozzarella stick. Crispy hot on the outside, strings of goo on the inside. To this day, I’m still not sure why I never found it. How hard could it be to perfect the stick? I feel similarly towards mac n cheese. So many restaurants screw it up! It’s pasta and cheese, people. Pasta. And. Cheese. If I want mac n cheese from now on, I make it myself. A lot of places are thinking too hard on it. From bechamel to bacon to bleu cheese to buffalo chicken, sometimes the best version is the one your mom grew up on. Cheez whiz and elbows.

Ok. So maybe not the cheez whiz part. But elbows! (And lots and lots and lots of cheddar cheese.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and butta your pan.

See: Butta

In a blender, puree 1 cup of cottage cheese +

2 cups of milk +

1 tsp dry mustard +

a pinch of nutmeg +

1/2 tsp salt +

1/4 tsp pepps.

Grate TWO of these bad boys.

Start grating while it’s light out…

… stopping only when it’s dark.

Dump it all on top of your cheesy milky spice mixture.

Like a load of laundry, fold it into one another.

Pop your elbows open (or whatever pasta you choose to use.)

Remember the days of macaroni art? Yeah, I miss those days.

(Uncooked!) elbows are such party crashers.

Add to the pan o’ butta.

Mix & even out. 

Foil and bake for 30 minutes. 

After 30 minutes, remove the foil and give it a gentle stir. Sprinkle a little MORE cheese on top and bake uncovered for 30 minutes more. 

Fall in love / gain a couple of pounds. What’s the difference these days anyway? 

Last month, one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, posted a recipe for cheddar, beer and mustard pull-apart bread. (I still can’t decide which part sounds the best: the cheddar, the beer, the mustard, the pull-apart, or the bread.) Within minutes of the post going up, my friend Laura M. e-mailed me with the subject header: Umm, did you see this?! Yes. Yes, I had. And since I was due for a visit to her new apartment, we decided to christen her kitchen with this awesome recipe. Plus, if there’s anyone I trust when it comes to baking bread… it’s Laura M. She’s pretty much responsible for this work of art. I was there to stir things, take photographs, and say things like: “Do you think it’s ready yet?”

This is a lengthy recipe so follow carefully.

First, we made the dough. In a small saucepan, we heated 4 tbsp butter and…

1/4 cup beer. Just until the butter had melted. When it had melted, we removed from the heat, adding another 1/3 cup beer. We set it aside to let cool.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, we stirred two cups of all-purpose flour…

2 1/4 tsp yeast, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp salt. 

Oh, no! There was a snafu with Laura’s kitchen-aid mixer so we had to pull out the old-fashioned hand mixer. It was like stepping into a time machine from hereon! 

With the mixer on low, we poured in the butter/beer mixture and mixed just until the flour was moistened.

Then we added eggs. Two of them.

And added another 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour…

and 1/3 cup of rye flour.

We mixed some more.

Then it was time to knead!

Laura M. is an excellent kneader.

Look at that perfect dough ball.

Next, we oiled a bowl and put the perfect dough ball inside.

It got covered loosely with plastic wrap and then set aside for about an hour, as we waited for it to double in size.

Then it was on to the good stuff.

In the same pan we melted the butter and beer in, we melted 3 more tbsp butter. 

We then removed the pan from the heat and whisked in a tbsp of dijon…

1 1/2 tsp Worcestershire…

and a splash of Frank’s.

Whisk, whisk, whisk. Set aside.

At the bottom of a clean bowl, we combined 1 tsp mustard powder…

1 tsp paprika…

+salt

+pepper

and then spent a few minutes giving 1 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese “the shred.”

(which I enjoyed sampling)

Tossed the cheese with the spice…

really making it into a party cheese! 

Then I took a two-minute break to go hug Cooper the dog.

When I was finished hugging Cooper the dog, we coated this pan with butter…

and took a peeksie at our doubled dough! HELLO.

It was obviously time to flour the counter.

Plop.

Laura began rolling the dough into a 20x12 inch rectangle.

Great form.

Just making sure we were doing everything right…

Yes, yes we were.

Next up, it was time to brush the dough with the butter-Worcestershire-frank’s-mustard mixture. We brushed all the way to the edge!

Then we cut the dough crosswise into five strips with each strip 12x4 inches long.

And so the fun began with the sprinkling of the party cheese…

layering one on top of the other…

one on top of the other…

one on top of the other…

and then once all 5 strips were piled high, we gently sliced six 2-inch segments…

like so.

Carefully lifting them up, we stacked them and made.them.fit.

After loosely plastic wrapping it again, we set aside for 30-45 more minutes.

(tick.tock.tick.tock.)

Meanwhile, we preheated the oven to 350.

Chatted about this. about that. about this. 

We baked for 25-35 minutes, until the loaf got all puffed and brown. 

We were so excited to see this!

New angle.

New angle.

We ate it with a side of pasta and tomato sauce, and it.was.the.best. In fact, Laura used some of the leftover bread for french toast the next morning. Can you imagine?!

If you’re anything like me, you can never remember what you have (or don’t have) in the kitchen. And for that reason, I never think I have garlic. I always, always have garlic… yet I NEVER think I have garlic. I literally walk home every night after work and say to myself: “I should probably pick up garlic.” And so then I buy the garlic, come home, and see that I have a CRAPLOAD of garlic. Gets me every time. My plan on this snowy Saturday morning was to USE UP that crapload by making a wintry garlic soup. That way, next week when I’ve stepped off the train after work, I can honestly say to myself: “Sylvie, you need to buy garlic.” (And it will be true!)

You’ll want 30 cloves of unpeeled garlic 

And then 20 cloves of peeled garlic

Preheat the oven to 350. Put the unpeeled garlic into a small baking dish. 

Take 2 tsp olive o

And a sprinkle of s&p

A little toss

Foil tightly, and send to the oven for 45 minutes.

Peel an onion; try not to cry

Slice it up - should be about 2 cups worth

If garlic and onion had a baby, it would be the shallot.  

I’m working on my Goodfellas slice

Ding! 45 minutes! Out comes the garlic. If you could smell my apartment at this moment in time, you’d ask to sleep over. 

Let cool, and then squeeze the garlic with your fingers to release the cloves. (They come out very easily.) Set aside.

Over medium-high heat, add a little olive o, the sliced onion, shallots, peeled garlic, roasted garlic…

and a couple tsp of thyme

After 6 or so minutes, pour in 3 1/2 cups of chicken stock and then let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

If you have an immersion blender, now would be a good time to whip it out!

(I don’t have one, so I used a normal blender.)

Blend until smooth, and then transfer back to the pot.

Add 1/2 a cup of milk and bring to a simmer

1/2 cup of parmesan cheese because I live with someone who wouldn’t have it any other way.

a final touch isn’t a final touch without a squeeze of lemon

And… I’m all out of garlic. (Honest!)

A couple of days ago, my friend, Rebecca T., texted me: “What are you doing this weekend? I wanna cook with you!” Great, I thought. An extra pair of hands in the kitchen. Awesome. Little did I know that what she really wanted was for me to COOK HER FOOD (and not chop shallots, which I had decided her contribution was going to be.) She’s lucky I don’t mind a good cry over my cutting boards.

I made us baked shrimp scampi along with a spinach, raspberry and cashew salad in a homemade dijon vinaigrette. The above picture displays the majority of the ingredients needed for the scampi: a stick of butter, the juice of one lemon and its zest, 4 cloves of garlic (minced), 1/4 cup of shallots (minced), 1/4 cup of parsley, an egg yolk, 2/3 cup of bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and crushed pepper flakes. Get it? Got it? Good.

2 lbs of shrimp (crucial ingredient when making shrimp scampi) in a medium-sized bowl

this lady! is totally somebody’s grandma! i love her!

(and her olive oil’s not so bad either)

pour 3 tbsp of her atop the shrimp

also add 2 tbsp dry white

and 2 tsp salt

and 1 tsp of the pepps

mix her up and set aside.

(that’s some good flavor right there. i would cook that all by itself if i wasn’t so into the scampi idea.)

There’s something so adorable about pasta nests. It might be more adorable if the nests actually kept their nest-shape, you know? And then you could place a little bird on top. Everything looks better with a bird on it. 

(Start boiling a big pot of water.)

You’ve got your water on… so now it’s time to get serious… there’s no time to chit chat it up with Rebecca T. who is sitting pretty on the couch and TALKING TO MY BOYFRIEND about GOD KNOWS WHAT

room temperature stick of butter, plop her into a small bowl

add a 1/4 cup of minced shallots and 4 cloves of minced garlic

and 1/4 cup of parsley

also, the zest and juice of one lemon

and 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

and 2/3 cup of bread crumbs (but reserve some of it)

and even though i forgot to take a picture of the egg yolk, don’t forget the egg yolk 

mix that gook in with the shrimp 

(that looks pretty gross - my apologies!)

er, but that looks amazing

i baked it in the oven at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes until it got hot and bubbly, and then sprinkled the reserved bread crumbs on top and pushed it into the broiler for 1 minute.

over the tagliatelle (nests)

On the second night of Chanukah, I joined forces with fellow blogger, baking fiend, and dear old friend of mine, Danielle A., for a schnecken good time in her Boerum Hill kitchen. Schnecken is not just a funny word that is German for snails; it was once a very popular breakfast treat throughout Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where many bakers happened to be Jewish. While my Hungarian great-grandmother was known for her mandelbread and rugelach recipes, I had never, ever heard of schnecken. Danielle A. and I will show you how to make it.

First we need to make the dough, which will eventually get pressed out in a large rectangular shape and rolled up like a jelly roll. So to begin: 3 1/3 cups of bread flour.

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 package of rapid rise yeast

Mix it altogether in a big bowl

1/3 cup of butter 

1/2 cup + 2 tbsp milk

Combine both & then melt

Whip together two large eggs…

and this is how we “dough it.” 

Pour the melted milk butter into the bowl with all the dry ingredients and then beat in the eggs. Knead for 5 or so minutes with a dough hook. 

When it’s springy and satiny, form it into a ball like Danielle A. is so wonderfully accustomed to doing.

(FYI, you see two balls because we made two batches.) Put the ball into an oiled bowl, turn to coat for a nice shine, and cover with plastic wrap.

Then leave it in a warm place (the oven seemed like a good choice; we left the door ajar) and let sit for an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. 

Assemble the muffin pan

Act II: Make the syrup

That’s 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp turbinado sugar, 4 tbsp maple syrup, and 3 tbsp light corn syrup. Using an electric mixer, beat until soft and smooth. 

Divide evenly amongst muffin cups

Top with walnut or pecan pieces. (We went the walnut route.)

While we waited for the oven to preheat to 350 degrees, we made some fresh ginger ale with her seltzer maker. Danielle A. is queen of having awesome ingredients hidden in her cupboards. 

Act III: Create a glaze

Glaze calls for 1 large egg and 2 tbsp milk. (Again, don’t be confused by our image shown doubled recipe.)

Mix 

What makes all desserts delicious? Filling.

Filling calls for 3 tbsp sugar + 1/2 cup turbinado sugar, and 1 tbsp cinnamon

Mix 

Remember the dough that was warming up in the oven? It’s ready now. We’re going to knead it out once or twice and then roll it out into a large rectangular shape.

Here’s Danielle A. kneading

Here she is rolling it out into a large rectangular shape.

Here she is glazing the dough with her fingers. 

Once she sprinkles the cinnamon sugar filling atop the glaze, the fun begins.

Rollin’

Rollin’

Rollin’ on a river… or a countertop

Almost there

We made it

Cut into 12 even slices.

Raw schnecken! (See, it looks like a snail.)

This one looks likes a fat caterpillar, but we know it’s still schnecken.

Lie each slice snaily side up atop the nuts and syrup that were already in the cups, and then let them rise and puff up for about 20 minutes before putting them into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Gombotz the cat thinks we’re up to no good. 

He was right.

Cut open and enjoy… especially while they’re hot.

A big thank you and Chanukah hug to Danielle A. for opening my eyes to the wonder that is schnecken!

*Be sure to check out her blog at http://middleclassblues.tumblr.com/

cauliflower season is upon us and the selection is FRESH

so fresh, in fact, that i came across a little green worm

which is why it’s good to wash your veggies

we’re spicing the cauliflower with cumin, pepper…

and salt

mix it all up with a tbsp or two of olive oil, then pop it into the oven (at 425 degrees) to roast for 30 minutes 

i have been plowing through pomegranate seeds lately - i eat them every morning with grape nuts and vanilla yogurt - i love an excuse to use them…

plain greek yogurt, use it up

voila 

I was this close to using white beans…

when this happened

so i turned to the black bean

washed ‘em

found me one of these guys

broke off 3 cloves

tore off 3 cloves’ clothes

minced her up

got the big guy out

little splash in the pan to get beans n’ garlic excited

baby bok

the babiest of them all… i just want to put a little hat on it.

halved lengthwise

quick bath

garlic breath tonight

babies in the pan + garlic

my friend and yours… or maybe more my friend… 

trusty stock in a box

2 tsp of the hot stuff + 2 tsp stock + a little salt & pepps = the kick i need

striped bass (caught by paul flatow)

!

veruca

paprika & pepps

sift together

give it a coat, it’s cold out.

splash of olive oil, almost done…

fliparoo

perfect!

my cousin, arik, got married! time to challah at your big, hungry, jewish family!

uncle henri whippin’ a dozen eggs

get a gallon of milk in there

foamy batter up

crucial

3 pans at a time, let’s go

now dip baby, dip

low heat, get it all (michael) browned

crisp

keep the fun up with corn oil (and more butter)

keep ‘em hot in the oven until there ain’t nothin’ but challah crumbs on the table

get grandma to cut up some fruit

nicely done

plain yogurt for a cool touch of goo

little sift of the good stuff

get your silverware ready

time for the best homemade french toast ever