Everybody has a story to tell. I suppose that is why blogs are so popular; it can be liberating to tell a tale. But what about food blogs? They might be about sharing recipes, from my table to yours, but they are also about the story behind the cook.

In this month’s issue of Natural Health there’s a story all about my life in the kitchen. Why would they ask me, a regular old food blogger to write a story for their magazine? Well, I have an unusual tale to tell and, in the interest of complete disclosure, here it is:

When I was 21 years old, just finishing up college, I suffered a hemorrhagic stroke due to an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). It left me completely paralyzed on the right side of my body. The next few years were a blur, of doctors, of therapists, of rehabilitation, and of frustration.

So what does this have to do with food, or blogs for that matter? I am not going to say that a cake came in and sweetly solved all of my problems, but cooking did come in to solve some of my problems. While dealing with physical therapy and all the challenges it involved, I began to spend more and more time cooking. It was lovely to escape into the petty business of the kitchen: chopping, watching a pot boil, or tossing a salad. The kitchen grew to be my place, a warm nook for experimentation, and unlike therapy, there was no one to reprimand me for trying out that failed recipe.

I cooked, and I cooked. And then I cooked for other people, starting with family and friends, and later, clients in a small catering company that I started. I did this all the while rehabilitating. I never got back to where I once was, but I’ve learned to be fine with who I am, each step of the way.

When I started this blog, I was still wobbly like a custard, unsure of who this new me was. I would sit down to tell you all about the latest soup that was simmering on my stove, or my triumphs with a fiddlehead fern. Blogging was liberating for both the new cook and the new me. There is a certain anonymity to blogging, a faceless name behind the computer monitor, and I relished my little secret. No one could watch me fumble to peel a clove of garlic one-handed, they just hungrily saw the final product.

But as I continued to blog one-handed, there was an elephant in the room sitting right next to me. And that proverbial elephant was whispering in my ear that there was an entire other story that I needed to tell, a story of food, of loss, of work, and of joy. So, over the past year and a half, I’ve sat down each day to write that story. I know, I know, a memoir at less than 30 years of age; it doesn’t seem quite possible to me either, but as I began the process, the words came, filling up page after page.

Well, one things leads to another, and a proposal leads to an agent and finally a publisher. I have written a food memoir, tentatively titled Cooking and Screaming. As for the manuscript, it is due in my editors hot little hands May 1!!! That’s soon. The book will be published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) and is due out Spring ’09. That seemed so far off when all of the paper work was signed and the contracts drawn up, but let me tell you, the days are simply flying by.

What does this have to do with the magazine article? I was approached a few months ago by the editors at Natural Health to write a story, based on the memoir, for an upcoming issue. (Now you might be saying to yourself, Natural Health? Did they even read my paen to Easter candy a few weeks ago? I don’t know, what can I say?) Fitting a life’s story into 2,000 words, plus recipes, was certainly a task. I had to leave a few things out.

If you are curious to know more about my story, you’ll just have to wait for the book, and in the meantime, pick up an issue of the magazine. The article also has recipes for a slow roasted chicken with a fennel-apple slaw, a springtime hash with poached eggs, and a chunky watermelon sorbet with coconut tuilles (for those of you who are just hungry!).

So, that’s my story.

My grandma loved the color purple (and no, I am not speaking about the book). She had several pairs of purple slacks, quite a few lavendar tops, dish towels, pot holders, you name it. It seemed that as she got older, her love for the color only increased. But she was not alone in her affection. She had many a friend who was ga-ga for the hue as well. Whenever I pass a group of older women, dressed in their finest or even donning casual kick-around clothes, I see an inordinate amount of purple. It is as if they are creating a flurry of springtime activity in their brightly colored outfits.

But for as much as my grandmother adored the color, I had a dance teacher when I was growing up who detested the color. So much animus was heaped onto the color purple, in all of its various shades that his students were forbidden from wearing the color, and the dance studio had not even a poster with the slightest hint of the color up on the wall. He claimed it made him physically ill; his stomach would turn, nausea would set in, eventually leading to vomit if viewing was forced. One day a girl had forgotten the no-purple rule, and had worn purple socks under her jazz pants. My teacher caught one look of the girl’s pointed feet during warm-ups, stopped the class, and made her borrow leg warmers for the duration. That’s serious. So I wonder what my dance teacher would have thought about this salad:

I went to Astoria for the first time this past weekend. Strolling around the avenues, stopping in the various markets, each with their own specialties, cruising past so many small bakeries selling rows of cookies, pillowy Italian breads, and cannoli by the dozen, was dizzying indeed. I refrained from buying too much; I had a long subway ride ahead of me. But I did find a purple pair: the diminutive Italian eggplant, and the spindly amaranth plant. I wasn’t really sure what to do with the amaranth, never having cooked with it before, but it was so beautiful with its deep green leaves, and gorgeous purple veins running along the stalk and into the splayed out leaves, how could I not buy some?

That Saturday was the first truly springtime-like weather of the season, and as I sat on the subway train back home, the amaranth leaves flopping over beside me, I couldn’t wait to do a bit of reading on this green. Here is what I learned: amaranth is an old green, and has been eaten in its various forms for centuries all over the world. Young amaranth is often beet colored, and the new green can be eaten raw in salad. As the vegetable grows older, it’s leaves become large and varigated, and it is most often wilted and sauteed. As I looked at my leaves, as large as baseballs, I figured cooking was the way to go.

I roasted the eggplant first in a heavy cast-iron skillet, then finished them in a warm oven. The skin became blistery, and the flesh soft. I then sauteed the amaranth leaves in a bit of olive oil scented with fresh garlic cloves. Cooling the vegetables to room temperature, I dressed my salad in a simple lemon-tahini dressing, topping it with slivers of red onion, and coarsely chopped cilantro. The greens were similar to spinach, yet more astringent, and the eggplant was meaty and substantial, the perfect compliment for a creamy dressing with a bit of a kick. And upon cooking, the vegetables lost their vibrant purple tone, maybe even enough for my old dance teacher.

I am not the neatest person. I am not however the messiest– comfortably lived-in is what I like to call it. There are always stacks of paper lying about my desk. Pens don’t always have caps. The coffee table can actually be used to hold a cup of coffee, and sometimes hours will pass before I pick the empty cup up and bring it to the sink. I guess this bleeds over into how I am in the kitchen as well. My counters are always wiped clean, my utensils pristine, but as I write this, the coffee pot has not yet been cleaned-out, still holding the latest murky brew, and there is a package of graham crackers sitting out from last night’s snack. So be it.

I always keep a small pad of paper with me. Tucked into my bag it becomes an invaluable resource. I jot down things that occur to me throughout the day: books to read, shopping lists, recipes to try. And when I am at home, the electronic Post-It for the computer, is similar to my pad of paper. They are a thing of functional beauty for the pack rat in me. The only problem with this method, is the desktop of my computer becomes so littered with small yellow “sheets” of paper it looks like a autumn has arrived at my desk.

All of this would be fine if I routinely checked my amassing of notes, but I stack up the tiny Post-It notes, burying ideas one on top of the other. Well, no more! At least no more for this week– I did a bit of spring cleaning. There were recipes, and food combinations by the bundle. Some actually seemed tasty, some just seemed odd (what was I doing when I though of that?), and some seemed to be both. Like this one:

“Apple bruleed with marshmallows.” Hhmm, sounds interesting enough, don’t ask me when this particular doozy occurred to me, but since we are still in apple season (she writes, annoyed), I’ll give it a shot. I’m not really sure if I originally intended to make apple sauce, and then brulee a coating of marshmallows like a meringue– but that is what I did.

I don’t have to tell you, marshmallows can be cloyingly sweet, so I made my apple sauce from the tartest apples that I could find. I simmered my apple chunks in a bit of water and a vanilla bean. Leaving the sauce still chunky, I put it in a ramekin, then topped each with a small handful of mini marshmallows. Popping the whole mess under the broiler, I let the marshmallows bloat and blister, before removing and eating up.

Well this was strange– good, but strange. The nearest thing I can equate it to, would be mochi, another chewy, delightfully strange dessert. Contrasting the tart apples, the crispy marshmallow topping melted over the sauce, creating a unique melange. So the next time you’re up for something a tad bit bizarre, give this brulee a try and tell me what you think.

When I was in my first year of college I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. While my friends spent winter break on ski holidays in Lake Tahoe, or went for a tropical beach vacation in Hawaii, I returned home to my parents house to have exciting oral surgery. I subsisted on a mainly liquid diet, punctuated by the occasional cup of translucent Jello. And the only high point of my break was that my parents had finally gotten cable television, and sucked in by the novelty, I watched quite a bit of TV that first swollen week.

I looked like a chipmunk, my face packed tightly with mouthfuls of crusty gauze, but my fingers worked just fine, and I became one with the remote control. Cable television was good then, Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda aired each night on Nic’ at Nite, and there was a new channel called The Food Channel that played fabulous imports such as the Naked Chef and the rolly-polly Two Fat Ladies, as well as superb American chefs like The Too Hot Tamales, Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. (Aahh, the good ol’ days!)

I loved these ladies. Their show was both informative and entertaining, and their dishes always looked delectable. I have picked up their cookbooks through the years, and let me tell you, the recipes never disappoint. So when I stumbled upon the recipe for these Green Corn Tamales, trying them was a no brainer.

And yes, I know it is not summer, so therefore corn is not in season, but I still made these dense maize pillows. In their book, they give the option of using 3 cups, drained, canned corn pulverized in the food processor. So pulse away I did. Now, never having had the pleasure of a fresh corn tamale–which might be stupendous–let me just say that these “green” corn tamales were pretty darn good. Pleasantly sweet, with just enough body to make them interesting, these tamales were like a little taste of Mexico right here in New York. And there is something so delightful about unwrapping your meal before you eat.

I ate my tamales with roasted tomato salsa, and a dollop of sour cream and dreamed of summer. Three for three, Too Hot Tamales!

Rite Aid was a mess, a disastrous mess. The indoor/outdoor carpet tiles covering the floor were peeling upwards displaying the worn concrete.  Loofahs, bottles of shampoo, and light bulbs were scattered helter-skelter on the ground. There was one frazzled checker and a line of customers 12 deep. When we walked in the store, I calmly muttered to Brian, “Okay, I just need a few things, and then we’re out of here,” thinking that this was not how my husband envisioned spending his Friday night.

But all of this changed for me when I caught a glimpse of the store’s Seasonal Products aisle. It was Easter! Bags of cellophane grass, miniature baby chicks made of polyester pom-poms, and row upon row of Easter candy, I was in heaven. Turning to Brian I exclaimed, “Why, this place is magnificent!” I’m not kidding.

Now, I had been to the drugstore since the first Easter items rolled in. I had seen the sparkling Peeps show their colored sugar skin, but it was not until I had entered this drugstore hell on the Upper West Side, that I had experienced all that Easter had to offer. This means that this Rite Aid had the one Easter candy from my youth, a bag of little animals that no one–save for a few highly judicious people with discriminating palates–eats and loves. The Chicks and Bunnies.

Can you tell that I love these things? They are strange. And entirely man-made. I don’t think that it is even possible for something so sweet and so blue to exist in nature. They are in fact, a gussied up version of the Circus Peanut, a very special sweet treat that I remember sharing with my mother from time to time growing up. The Chick or the Bunny (and the Circus Peanut for that matter), for those who have not had the amazing fortune of trying one for themselves, are a dried up, sort-of marshmallow, vaguely banana-tasting confection. They are malleable, and can be pushed into a tiny cube without much force. And they are sweet. Really sweet. I will just put it this way, The Chick and The Bunny are kind of like high heels– they’re not for everyone.

Yes I am a Jewish girl, but this does not exclude me from reveling in all of the wonder Easter treats have to offer. So get yourself to a Rite Aid tout suite, and revel with me. Easter is March 23!

I’m over the cupcake, in theory. They are so fashionable that they have become passé. A new Magnolia Bakery has moved in to the Upper West Side, so now ladies, babies and dogs can experience their confections a little closer to home. Hauling your butt down to the West Village, waiting in line with countless tourists for that bite-sized treat can be a grueling task.

So, in theory, I’m over them… and yet, I keep making them.

Hypocrisy? Perhaps. Delicious? Definitely. I feel like a hamster in a sugar-coated wheel, running away from and to this American dessert. There is just something about the cupcake. For a person like myself, a girl who is often looking for her will-power, a diminutive dessert is ideal. I could cut myself a huge hunk of cake, or I can savor one darling little cupcake. They are the perfect size to satiate my sweet tooth.

These cupcakes were topped with Swiss Meringue, a not too sweet concoction of egg whites and sugar that beats the pants off of 7 Minute Icing. After mounding each cupcake with the pillowy topping, I put them in the broiler for a moment. They browned to a lovely, crisp top, firming ever so slightly. The cupcakes were like little bites of meringue pie.

So I guess I will continue making cupcakes, I will just hate myself while eating every delightful morsel. I’m just a cupcake masochist.

I love potatoes. Who doesn’t? Even a bad french fry, when the potato has behaved like a sponge and soaked up a bit more oil than intended, is good. And who did not live off of the classic baked potato when they were in college? With some broccoli tossed on, and a sprinkling of cheddar cheese, an entire, homey meal, made for a king– or a college student. Boiled, steamed, hash-browned, or sauteed, I am an equal-opportunity queen of the starches.

The potato is like the little black dress of the culinary world. However you decide to dress it, it is infinitely adaptable. So when it is dreary out, cold and gloomy, when you wake up each morning, put on your glasses, and gaze out the window toward the barren, bud-less trees, hoping that maybe tomorrow, you will see a burgeoning bit of greenery, sometimes the only thing left to do is retreat into the kitchen with your good ol’ friend– the potato.

My mom sent me this recipe, for a crispy potato cake. It’s been sitting in my inbox, just waiting for the right, somber day to do a little savory baking. Perhaps little is not the correct word, rather, fat or heavy might be more appropriate, because that is what this cake is. Made by ricing 5 lbs. of potatoes, the batter is mostly that– potatoes. Mixed with prosciutto, bechamel, Parmesan, et al., this cake is not for the timid. It is for the hungry, those that have a gaping hole where their stomachs used to be, waiting for some starch to come by and spackle it.

Delightfully neutral, the potatoes get warm and crisp on top, smooth and hearty on the inside. The recipe is a bit labor-intensive, with the boiling, ricing, mixing, making bechamel, etc., but it proved to be the perfect meal to make when the only thing you wanted to do was to curl up inside anyway. Just make sure and do your calisthenics beforehand. With eight potatoes, this cake weighed a ton.

Crispy Potato Cake

8 med. boiling potatoes (about 5 pounds)
salt to taste
4 tablspoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 large eggs
1/4 lb. sliced prosciutto or baked ham, diced
2 tablspoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg
1 cup bechamel sauce (recipe below)
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup fine dried bread crumbs

Put the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover them generously with cold water. Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the potatoes can easily be pierced with a long knife, 25 to 35 minutes. Drain the potatoes and let cool slightly.

Preheat the oven to 400 and butter a 10 in. springform pan and coat the bottom and sides with the bread crumbs.

As soon as the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them and pass them through a food mill or a potato ricer into a large bowl. (Do not use a food processor to mash the potatoes; it will make them very gummy.) Season with salt.

Melt the butter in a small pan (or microwave) and add to the potatoes. Beat 2 of the eggs in a small bowl and add to the potatoes, along with the ham, flour, parsley, nutmeg, bechamel, cheese, and mix thoroughly.

Put the potato mixture in the prepared pan, shake the pan lightly to distribute it evenly, and smooth the top with a spatula. Beat the remaining egg and brush it over the top of the potatoes. Bake on the middle rack of the oven until the cake has a crisp brown crust on top and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean (about 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 15 minutes. Remove the sides of the pan and transfer to serving dish. Serve warm or at room temp.

Bechamel Sauce

1 1/2 cups milk, plus more if needed
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoon flour
pinch of salt

Heat the milk in a small saucepan over low heat. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan over med low heat. When the butter begins to foam, beat in the flour with a wooden spoon or a whisk and cook, stirring for about 2 min. making sure not to let the flour brown.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the hot milk all at once, whisking energetically to prevent lumps. Put the pan back over low heat, add the salt, and cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce is med. thick, about 5 minutes. If the sauce is too thick, stir in a little more milk, too thin, cook it longer.

Innards. It’s what’s for dinnards. Awhile back, when finally coming clean to you all about my, well…diversity of eating habits, I mentioned that offal, delicious though it may be, “doesn’t photograph too well.” I stand corrected. Though it may not be the beautiful girl, with a sparkling smile, and hair so buttery blond she is simply crying out to have her picture taken, it is not necessarily the gangly, pre-pubescent, girl with wiry hair and a mouth full of metal either. I guess it is all in how one handles a little bit of liver, that makes one exclaim– beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I myself was not always a lover of liver. When I was young my mom would prepare them every so often for Sunday supper, and I would gag. She would drag out the heavy, cast-iron skillet, and set the individual chicken livers to sizzle in the buttered pan, with a healthy seasoning of sliced onions, salt and pepper. My nose would set to twitching even before I could see what we were having for dinner. My family would sit down to eat, my parents each taking a hearty portion of liver, and even my sister, my kindred spirit of sorts, with an even more timid palate then my own, liked the liver too. I, on the other hand, would take a small serving, poking it, rolling it around my plate, smelling its acrid, pungent odor, and ultimately leave it. It was just plain nasty.

But then I went to Italy. Oh, and about 10 years passed. In Florence, on a warm July evening, with people zooming by on their scooters, anything, even chicken liver, smeared on a crostini, and drizzled with fruity, olive oil is going to taste good. Smooth and creamy, with just the right amount of heft to truly remember what it was that you were eating, I was now a chicken liver convert. And I have never gone back. Now it is me, who drags out my cast-iron skillet to fry up some liver for dinner. I make my own rustic pates. That smell that was once so acrid is now deeply savory, and a bit smoky.

So this weekend, while watching cooking shows on PBS, I saw Lidia make a pasta sauce with chopped-up chicken liver and I knew that this was a sauce I had to try. Although this may appear to look like a hearty bolognese, it is anything but. Don’t get me wrong, it is no primavera, but it is simply not heavy and rib-sticking either.

To make the chicken liver sauce, saute an onion and a few cloves of garlic with a bay leaf. Add a few tablespoon of butter, and a bit of tomato paste. When all is toasty, add about a pound of coarsely chopped chicken liver, and some peas. Continue to saute, until the liver has a nice crust on the outside, and then add a bit of stock. Stir well to mix, and heat through. Season with salt and pepper, then add in your cooked pasta (I used linguini) and some Parmesan cheese.

Delicate and buttery, smooth in both consistency and texture, with a pop of sweetness from the peas, this sauce was a dream for those who have a taste for the innards. And maybe it is even unassuming enough to sneak past the liver haters left out there.

I can be a lazy cook. I am not however a lazy eater. I often have very lofty aspirations about what I want to eat, it is just getting there that can seem a bit daunting. But I have found that from laziness often comes resourcefulness, or pudding, as it was this time.

Pudding is not something that is in my file under often-rotated recipes. I generally prefer something I can sink my fork into for dessert, and well, pudding is the stuff which won’t even hold your spoon straight. But when it is a snowy Sunday, with the wind whipping around so quickly the flakes do not fall softly to the ground but briskly fly at you, perpendicular to the sidewalk, in a pinch, pudding will have to do.

Making pudding from scratch is just about as simple as making it from the box. In fact, I made this dessert with ingredients I found in the fridge and pantry– you can’t beat that. For this particular batch, I substituted light brown sugar for white sugar. I suppose that makes this pudding butterscotch, but I found the dessert not so much butterscotch-y as just different from the usual.

Cool and creamy, with just the right amount of sweetness to satisfy my sweet tooth in even the nastiest of weather. I set the plastic wrap right on top of the surface of the pudding, so nary a skin was in sight as I set it to chill. Then spoonful after wobbly spoonful I ate the pudding up. If you would like the recipe, a similar one is found here.

Looking over my past posts to Nosheteria, I make a lot of salads. Because I eat a lot of salads. There is nothing more satisfying to me than a pile of crisp lettuce, a crumbling of cheese, and for interest, a melange of crudite. What can I say, I grew up in California– bring on the sprouts. So, I realize that it is possible for my readers to think I am a vegetarian, or at least close to one. Well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

I will eat just about anything. There were the bunny hearts of last year, grilled and skewered on pine-y rosemary branches. They were chewy. I have loved sweetbreads from the time that I was young and traveling in France with my father. At the time, I thought they were artichoke hearts and ate them right up. Yes, give me your snails, slippery and drenched in garlicky butter! I don’t suppose I cover my carnivorous leanings on this site because offal usually doesn’t photograph too well. But roasted mustard rabbit, wrapped in salty prosciutto, adorned with pan juices deglazed with cream and lying on a bed of soft polenta, that looked, and tasted pretty darn fine.

When my sister (who still lives in California) called me this weekend, our conversation went something like this:

“So what are you doing?”
“Making dinner.”
“Oh, what are you having,” she asked, as she heard pans clattering in the background.
“Rabbit.”

Silence.

“That’s gross. I couldn’t.”

And I realize many people couldn’t. No amount of soothing my sister’s nerves by telling her how they were farm-raised, or that many people think that rabbit tastes just like chicken could alleviate her gag reflex. And I understand, I really do. But I thought that you, my faithful readers might like to see what I had for dinner this weekend.

I can see why parallels are so often created between rabbits and clucking barnyard fowl. The meat tends to exactly the same in color and texture. But with rabbit it is more subtle, more delicate. I tucked one fresh sage leaf under each slice of prosciutto, this perfumed the meat in a woodsy, herbaceous way. And the pan-juices, salty from the ham, and pale from the cream, were perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed my supper, but you should feel free to make the same recipe with chicken as well.