Two Lazy Gourmets

What Am I, Chopped Liver? Easy Chicken Liver Paté with Cognac Butter

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Robin

Easy chicken liver pate with cognac butter

“What am I, chopped liver?” Such a deft colloquialism, it is. The implication at first glance being that chopped liver is forgettable, not worthy of notice, insignificant. But good chopped liver is such a wonder of culinary genius, combining the cheap, “throw-away” parts of an everyday chicken into a luxurious spread that is worthy of, and often appears on, the chi-chi-est of restaurant menus. And therein lies the rub. Chopped liver is far too often mistakenly overlooked when in reality, it should be heralded as the star of the show, the belle of the ball.

This simple recipe, which is adapted from Tartine Bread, in which it is called “Baker’s Foie,” is totally rustic and yet, well, let’s just say, it ain’t just chopped liver. Unlike my Jewish grandmother’s chopped liver, it contains butter (though I’m sure it would work equally well with schmaltz or even rendered duck fat) and a food processor rather than a food mill for grinding. Calling it Chicken Liver Pate is a good step towards giving it its due, but I think the addition of cognac justifies calling it Pate de Foie de Poulet, just in case anyone might mistake it for just a forgettable dish of chopped liver. I like to serve it as an appetizer on Jewish holidays, especially Hanukkah, or as part of an elegant New Year’s Eve cocktail spread. Continue reading →

Posted in Appetizers, Recipes, Small Plates, Snacks | Tagged butter, chad robertson, chicken, chopped liver, cognac, easy chicken liver pate, easy chicken liver pate recipe, easy chopped liver, easy chopped liver recipe, easy pate recipe, hanukkah, jewish food, jewish holidays, liver, new year's eve, pate, tartine bread | 4 Comments

Easy Homemade Sufganiyot (Israeli Jelly Donuts for Hanukkah)

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Robin

These easy homemade sufganiyote (jelly donuts) are sure to be the hit of the Hanukkah celebration

One day several Decembers ago, a friend mentioned in passing that she had stopped in to Mollie Stone’s on the way to work to pick up Krispy Kreme donuts for her coworkers. “You know, for Hanukkah,” she said casually. Actually, it was the first time I’d heard of the tradition of eating donuts for Hanukkah, though it makes perfect sense since the holiday is all about celebrating the miracle of the oil. What better way to celebrate oil’s miraculousness than with crispy, sweet fried dough? I was intrigued. Could this finally be the excuse I needed to indulge in the most sinful of treats? I believed it was and on the spot, I created my own family tradition of serving an assortment of store-bought donuts for dessert on Hanukkah, including my childhood favorites, buttermilk-based Old Fashioneds with chocolate icing. When I’ve mentioned this Hanukkah tradition to Jewish friends, though, more than a few have scoffed. Apparently, you’re not just supposed to eat just any donuts, but jelly donuts. And, to boot, a very specific type of Israeli jelly donut called sufganiyot. Yeah, I don’t really know how to pronounce it, either (the Internet says it’s SOOF-gun-yote), but this year I decided to try making them and, well, I’m a convert. Continue reading →

Posted in Baking, Desserts, Recipes | Tagged baked donut recipe, baked donuts, baked sufganiyot recipe, chanukkah recipe, donut recipe, easy donut recipe, easy homemade donuts, easy sufganiyot recipe, frying donuts, hanukah recipe, hanukkah donut recipe, hanukkah donuts, homemade donut recipe, homemade donuts recipes, jewish cooking, jewish cuisine, jewish donut recipe, jewish donuts, jewish food, jewish foods, jewish recipe | Leave a comment

Easy Latkes for Hanukkah: Enjoy Crispy, Delicious Potato Pancakes without Missing the Party!

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Robin

Easy, make-ahead latkes are crispy and delicious

The main thing I remember about my childhood Hanukkahs is my mother’s latkes. And not just the latkes themselves—as delicious as they were, crispy-fried, fresh from the frying pan—but also the image of my mother in the kitchen, first peeling and hand-grating (the food processor just doesn’t cut it here) piles of potatoes and then hunched over a pan of hot oil frying the little potato pancakes to a crispy golden brown. Every year she threatened not to make them, but every year, our whining and declarations of how she was the best mother/cook/latke-maker won out and, again, she’d spend an entire night toiling away in the kitchen while the rest of us enjoyed ourselves. No wonder my mother is not the biggest fan of Hanukkah.

I’ve tested a lot of latke recipes over the years, trying earnestly to find one that doesn’t require me to hand-grate pounds of potatoes or spend hours hunched over a pan of hot oil. In the end, I’ve decided that there really is no way to make a delicious latke that doesn’t involve spending a certain amount of time hunched over a pan of hot oil (not to mention, the whole point of the holiday is to celebrate the oil, right? Baking just won’t do). But before you take away my Lazy Gourmet ID card, I have learned one very important latke trick: you can spend a leisurely afternoon frying them ahead of time (days, weeks, probably even months!), freeze them, and reheat them the night of your Hanukkah celebration and—here’s the exciting part—they will still be crispy and delicious. Your guests will wonder if you have a hired latke maker toiling away behind the closed kitchen door. Continue reading →

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes | Tagged easiest latkes, easy latkes, easy latkes for hanukkah, easy latkes recipe, gluten-free latkes, gluten-free potato pancakes, how to make potato pancakes, latkes, latkes recipe, latkes recipes, potato latkes, potato pancake recipe, potato pancakes, potato pancakes recipe, recipe for potato pancakes, recipes for latkes | 15 Comments

The Best Gifts for Cooks: Kitchen Gadgets, Cookbooks, and Cooking Tools Any Home Cook Will Love

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Robin

A few of our picks for the Best Kitchen Gifts: Fancy aged balsamic vinegar, Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi, the handy Belkin Chef's Stand/Stylus, and Kuhn Rikon's 4-Quart SS Pot with Cozy

Every year around this time, my family starts asking me what I want for the holidays. The first thing I always do is to look around my kitchen and contemplate what cool cooking gadget, kitchen tool, or hot new cookbook I can’t live without. Frankly, between not wanting to offend my family with my greediness and being overwhelmed by the vast array of great products to make cooking faster, better, more fun and, of course, lazier, more often than not, I end up paralyzed by indecision. I usually end up telling these well-meaning askers something to the tune of “Oh, I don’t need anything!” But this year I’m taking a new approach and creating a shopping guide for anyone who needs to buy a gift for an obsessive home cook like me. If my family happens to see it, well, they can rest assured that I’d be thrilled to see any of these items under my tree. And—bonus!—now I’ll finally find out whether or not my mom actually reads my blog.

Slice and Dice with Ease
My time-tested method for carving a roast chicken is to say, “Honey, the chicken’s done!” But since I just finally learned how to make an incredibly delicious roast chicken (I’ll be sharing the ingeniously simple method here soon!), it’s time I resolve, once and for all, to learn to carve a chicken myself. Of course, that means I need a new toy and this Zwilling J.A. Henckels 8-Inch Carving Knife looks to be just the thing every would-be chicken carver needs.

This Bamboo Over-the-Sink Cutting Board with Built-In Silicone Colander is the perfect gift for a slightly obsessive, space challenged home cook. Bamboo has natural anti-microbial properties, the colander is made of food-safe silicone, the board is reversible so you can avoid cross-contamination, and the whole thing sits neatly over your sink, avoiding widespread messes and increasing your work space at the same time. Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Products | Tagged 4-way kitchen timer, at-home sous vide, belkin chef stand, best cooking gadgets, best cooking gifts, best gifts for a cook, best gifts for cooks, best gifts for the kitchen, best kitchen gear, best kitchen gifts, carving knife, chef stand and stylus, chef's quad timer, cool kitchen gadgets, cool kitchen tools, cutting board with colander, food smoking gun, great gifts for cooks, great kitchen gear, great kitchen gifts, hand-held smoking gun, igrill, kitchen tools, kuhn rikon, ocd cutting board, over the sink cutting board, pot with cozy, smoking gun, sous vide | 1 Comment

Sweet Potato Biscuits with Honey Butter (Or: What to Do with Those Leftover Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes on Friday Morning)

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Juliana

Sweet Potato Biscuits make a delicious post-Thanksgiving breakfast tradition.

There’s a decent chance that you’ll be finding yourself with some leftover sweet potatoes on your hands this Friday morning. If you love biscuits as much as my family does, you might want to try this sweet potato version for your post-Thanksgiving breakfast. It doesn’t matter how your potatoes were originally cooked, but food writer Adam Ried maintains that roasted sweet potatoes yield a more flavorful biscuit than boiled.

You can cut the butter into the dry ingredients using a hand-held pastry blender, or by pulsing in a food processor for a couple of seconds. Sometimes I just rub the ingredients together by hand, but this is kind of a tedious and time-consuming technique, plus you run the risk of warming the butter with the heat from your hands. (For you pastry newbies, the goal of “cutting” butter into dry ingredients is to wind up with a mixture of uniform consistency. Some recipes call for a coarse cornmeal-like texture, while others might call for tiny pearls of butter to remain intact and visible. Read more about the process here.)

Because Robin mentioned to me that she likes to eat sweet potato biscuits with honey butter, I’ve included a recipe here for that as well. Really good idea, Robin! Continue reading →

Posted in Baking, Breakfast/Brunch, Condiments, Recipes, Side Dishes, Snacks | Tagged honey butter, leftovers, sweet potato biscuits, sweet potatoes, thanksgiving | 2 Comments

Our Ten Favorite Homemade Holiday Food Gifts (That Aren’t Cookies)

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Juliana

Top Ten Favorite Homemade Holiday Food Gifts

Italian Breadsticks (#8), Refrigerator Pickles (#2), and Spiced Pecans (#10)

Every year around this time I start thinking about the perfect gourmet gifts I’m going to craft with love and care, wrap with Martha Stewart-like flair, and distribute to friends and family who will marvel at my elegance and hospitality. But it never happens. Instead, I wind up nibbling on my friend Hilary’s homemade, raffia-tied marshmallows while staring at her rosemary simple syrup in a glass carafe with handmade label—and thinking about how maybe next year I’ll start planning a little earlier.

Now it’s next year! And with the best of intentions, I’ve started my planning by searching the internet for the most interesting, delicious, easy, do-it-yourself gourmet gift ideas I could find. Will I actually make any of these when mid-December rolls around? I don’t know! (Maybe I’ll just send this list to Hilary and then mind-control her into putting my name on the manually letterpressed gift tags that, naturally, she’s made from her own rose-petal paper slurry.) But let’s not worry about that. Just check out these great gift ideas I probably won’t make!

In no significant order:

1. Rosemary & Garlic Dipping Oil
Looking for creative host/hostess gifts for the holiday season? Bring a loaf of bread and a bottle of your own homemade rosemary and garlic dipping oil to this year’s festivities.

2. Refrigerator Pickles
You don’t need to fuss with traditional canning techniques or supplies to enjoy incredibly delicious homemade pickled vegetables. Our very own Pickled Cauliflower, Carrots, and Red Bell Peppers are beautiful, easy to make, and last in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

3. Sriracha
Sriracha is a Southeast Asian hot sauce made of chili peppers, vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt. (Recognize these?) Your homemade sriracha can be used as a dipping sauce, stirred into Asian noodle soups, dolloped onto seafood dishes—even drizzled over scrambled eggs or spread onto sandwiches.

Continue reading →

Posted in Tips | Tagged basil gimlet, caramel hot cocoa, DIY, do-it-yourself, easy, flavored salts, flavored simple syrup, food, gourmet gifts, Grissini, harissa, holiday, homemade, Italian Breadsticks, Kahlua, kahlua egg nog, Kahlua-cardamom cappuccino, lemongrass, orange-spiced pecans, pickled cauliflower carrots and red bell peppers, refrigerator pickles, rosemary & garlic dipping oil, rosemary greyhound martini, spiced nuts, spiced pecans, sriracha, tangerine, top ten, wasabi | 5 Comments

Another Vegetarian Thanksgiving Entrée: Roasted Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Phyllo Torte

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Robin

Phyllo Torte with butternut squash and goat cheese

Roasted Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Phyllo Torte makes a stunning vegetarian Thanksgiving entree

One of the questions we get asked most often at our book events for The Lazy Gourmet is, “Do you have any vegetarian dishes in the book?” The answer, fortunately, is “Yes! Lots!” Neither of us are vegetarian, but neither of us eat a whole lot of meat, either. Flexitarians, you might call us. So filling the book with vegetarian-friendly dishes wasn’t a huge stretch for us. Still, the age-old problem of finding vegetarian entrees that really stand up to that starring role—especially during the holidays—poses a challenge.

While searching for ideas for a vegetarian Thanksgiving main course, I came across this stunning Feta Cheese Phyllo Torte, from New York Times columnist Melissa Clark. When the photo popped up on my screen, I nearly gasped out loud with delight. But in the very next breath, I was filled with disappointment when I thought, “Oh god, that would probably take a full day to make. It looks so complicated!” Then I noticed that the original title of the recipe was “No-Fear Phyllo Torte,” and I decided to give it a chance.

Baking this torte in a Bundt pan gives it an especially spectacular presence. That it is a bundle of savory, cheesy, herby deliciousness wrapped in crunchy paper-thin layers of buttery phyllo dough makes it completely irresistible. Continue reading →

Posted in Appetizers, Baking, Entrees, Recipes, Small Plates, Vegetarian | Tagged butternut squash, easy thanksgiving recipe, easy vegerarian entree for thanksgiving, fillo dough, filo dough, goat cheese, phyllo bundt, phyllo dough, phyllo torte, ricotta, roasted butternut squash, sage, thanksgiving main course, thanksgiving recipe, vegetarian entree thanksgiving, vegetarian thanksgiving main course, vegetarian thanksgiving recipe | Leave a comment

Thanksgiving Recipe: Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie with Coconut Crust and Pecan Praline Topping

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Robin

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie with Coconut Crust and Pecan Praline Topping is the perfect ending to any Thanksgiving feast

Last week we brought you a meatless entrée fit for the thanksgiving table, and today, I present a delectable gluten-free pumpkin pie. This easy Thanksgiving dessert is a stunning end to a festive meal, and one that’s fit for everyone, including those who forgo gluten.

The deep-dish crust is made with flaked coconut, pecans, and brown rice flour. After par-baking, it’s filled with a velvety smooth, lightly spiced pumpkin custard with just a touch of coconut milk to carry the flavor through from the crust. Once baked and set, the whole thing is topped with a crunchy-sweet praline topping made from butter, brown sugar, and pecans (if that feels like too many steps to you, feel free to skip the praline topping and garnish each slice with a dollop of lightly sweetened whipped cream, spiked with a sprinkling of ground cinnamon if you like. It will be just as delicious!)

Any gluten-intolerant guests at your table will be thankful for this decadent dessert made just for them, and the rest will be equally pleased to indulge in it. Believe me, no one will miss the gluten. Continue reading →

Posted in Baking, Desserts, Recipes | Tagged coconut, coconut crust, coconut milk, easy gluten free pumpkin pie, easy thanksgiving dessert, easy thanksgiving recipe, gluten-free, gluten-free pumpkin pie, gluten-free thanksgiving, gluten-free thanksgiving recipes, pecan, pecan praline, pecan praline topping, pumpkin, pumpkin pie, thanksgiving pumpkin pie | 2 Comments

For Your Vegetarian Thanksgiving: Savory Mushroom Gravy

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Juliana

Savory Mushroom Gravy adds the finishing touch to your vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner.

And now for the vegetarian mushroom gravy that I promised you in yesterday’s post! This gravy is a must for the meatless Thanksgiving table. It’s so rich and savory that you’ll swear there’s something dead in there—but it’s 100% carcass-free.

While you can use plain old water to make this gravy, a flavorful mushroom broth will yield a much tastier result. You can find mushroom broth in many supermarkets—or make your own with a mushroom base like this one made by Better Than Bouillon. A flavorful vegetable broth will work fine too. Even better, use your reserved porcini-soaking water from yesterday’s Vegetarian Wild Mushroom “Meatloaf.”

As for the mushroom prep, you can chop them to whatever size you like—fine, chunky, or a combo. I chopped them by hand, rather than in the food processor, because I wanted the pieces to be small but not too small (see photo). But you can do it however you like.

Special thanks to Dorothy Corder for the inspiration, and for many wonderful years of gravy-filled Christmas dinners! Continue reading →

Posted in Condiments, Recipes, Vegetarian | Tagged Better Than Bouillon, button, christmas, cremini, gravy, mushroom, mushroom base, mushroom broth, mushroom gravy, porcini, portobello, thanksgiving, vegetarian, Vegetarian Wild Mushroom Meatloaf | 1 Comment

For Your Vegetarian Thanksgiving: A Meatless Wild Mushroom “Meatloaf”

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Juliana

Vegetarian Wild Mushroom "Meatloaf" makes a perfect meatless Thanksgiving entree.

Thanksgiving can be a challenge for vegetarians, as well as for those hosting vegetarians. Everyone’s just so obsessed with that bird! (That succulent, savory, delectable, cooked-to-perfection bird!) Although vegetarians do get to enjoy all the other traditional goodies—sweet potatoes, stuffing, veggies, pies—they’re often left without a real entrée on their plates. In an attempt to help rectify this deficit, I decided to come up with a really good meat-free Thanksgiving entrée this year that would satisfy the vegetarians and entice the bird-eaters, too.

For guidance, I turned to a foodie friend whom I consider to be my vegetarian consultant. Her main advice was to please not stuff something into a squash. She’s a little tired of that. Ok, no stuffed squash. As a second criteria (in addition to not being a stuffed squash), I wanted my veggie entrée to be able to stand on its own as a real main course—to be more than just another side dish. And third, I wanted it to fit in seamlessly with the rest of the traditional Thanksgiving meal.

The happy result of all the above criteria-crunching is this Vegetarian Wild Mushroom “Meatloaf”—a far cry from “that ’70s vegetarian food” that my consultant warned me about. The dried porcinis and Parmesan give this dish a sophisticated flavor, while the nuts and rice give it a dense and hardy meat-like texture. It’s tasty, filling, and holds its own as a genuine entrée that goes perfectly with potatoes, green beans, gravy, et al. Continue reading →

Posted in Entrees, Recipes, Vegetarian | Tagged button, cashews, cremini, domestic mushrooms, dried porcinis, holiday, meatless, meatloaf, parmesan, pine nuts, portobello, sherry, thanksgiving, thyme, vegetarian, wild mushrooms | 9 Comments