I never knew what all the hype was about fresh apricots until I moved to Switzerland. My grandmother used to talk about apricots that she would eat when she was growing up in California, and I never quite understood her fascination with them because well, New England (where I grew up) just isn’t known for its stone fruit – so any time I had them I just wasn’t that thrilled – probably because whatever apricots we did have available were old, from far away, and beaten up from the long journey to the Northeast.  But now I live en Suisse-Romande, the French speaking side of Switzerland, and in the Summer apricots are all the rage, especially those from the canton of Valais.  To me it seems Valais is quite well-known for several specialties – les abricots, la raclette, la petite arvine, la brisolée, la viande sechée… so many culinary treasures that I had never really appreciated or known much about until our hop “across the pond”.

Valais also happens to be one of my favorite cantons for hiking around – because seriously what can top a place that has such gorgeous mountains and views like this?

But then, I didn’t know about a lot of features of Swiss life & culture (let alone of certain cantons!) until I moved here, and I’ve found so many great foods (and places) that I now love because of being en Suisse.

(...)
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I think half the fun of life is in embarking on adventures you’ve never done before, just to see what they would be like.  Sometimes those are the scariest moments (like say, moving halfway across the world to a country where you knew nothing of the local language and all your family and friends are thousands of miles away? ha), but sometimes they are also the moments best suited for growth and development.  Not just in technique/skills, but also a personal evolution.  My passions in life now speak to me in ways I never knew they could before.  Over time I have found this to be just as true in the kitchen.

Comfort is tasty, and the ritualism that comes with the cherished and familiar always works for a tasty meal.  But that’s the thing.  It’s safe, precisely because of its familiarity.  The adrenaline from the rush of doing the unexpected isn’t present in making and eating comfort food – it is the very definition of the expected, and there is immense value in that.  However, if I only ever did what was safe and comfortable, where would I be as a cook? As a person?  Someone who only looks to past successes becomes flat and boring very quickly.

Excitement comes with the scary unknown.  Growth happens during the scary unknown.  Ok, I’m not talking horror film make-you-terrified-of-turning-your-lights-off-at-night scary (though that would be rather timely for the Halloween holiday), just that bit of trepidation that jumps your heart-rate a little giving you a burst of energy, that motivation to conquer the unknown head-on and with confidence.  That place, the one you’re now thinking of but just can’t quite put your finger on that emotion even though you’ve felt it before too, yes that place is what I’m talking and am articulating quite poorly.  I love that place, and actually strive to be there in the kitchen.  I love not quite knowing what I’m doing, and just going with the moment and seeing what comes from the experience.

(...)
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Bolognese, or at least the bolognese I grew up with, is my mom’s pasta sauce (and no, this is not something she calls “California Style“).  I love her sauce – she would make about 20 servings at a time, and then freeze it so we could pull it out and use it whenever we wanted.  Perfect on top of pasta, with veggies, in lasagna, oh so many many delicious plates can be made with a simple bolognese sauce…I’ve played with her recipe a lot, and found that I tend to like it using fresh tomatoes, and adding in some wine – it’s still rich and tomatoey, I just like the flavor and texture a bit better this way.  I hope she doesn’t mind

After reading a bit about bolognese, I’m pretty sure what I grew up with and this sauce are definitely not a traditional bolognese sauce.  According to Wikipedia (obviously a most trusted source in all things culinary), authentic bolognese doesn’t actually have that much tomato in it.  Not only that, but a traditional ragù from Bologna is made with milk!  Actually, this sauce looks to be a pretty interesting hybrid of ragù alla napoletana and ragù alla bolognese.  Maybe I should call this an American ragù?  Seems more fitting than trying to pass it off as an authentic bolognese.  And just to go against tradition a bit more, I happen to like mine served alongside some creamy polenta.(...)
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I love how serendipitous life can be.  Sometimes the most rewarding experiences come in the unlikeliest of places.  For example, my husband and I planned an entire weekend trip to a different country all because of a conversation on twitter.  There, I met a certain M. Jean-Charles Fagot, vintner and restauranteur in the heart of Bourgogne, France, who invited us to come try his wine and food.  We’d been wanting to take some short holidays in France as it was, and so quickly agreed and made reservations.  Ha and yes, we are the types who think nothing of planning an entire trip centered around one meal.

After the hustle and bustle of our current lives en Suisse, the entire trip was a welcome reprieve, with a theme of leisure and relaxation.  From the fresh Springtime flowers, to the gorgeous textured old buildings, to the sweet and succulent tastes of everything from delicate macaron cakes (did you know you can make a layered cake from giant macaron cookies? omg amazing) to succulent and rich l’escarboeuf, the entire weekend was about stopping to admire and fill the senses.  Dinner at Jean-Charle’s restaurant was no exception.  On the taxi ride to Corpeau we got a great tour of some of the history and wines of the area, and entering the restaurant, we were immediately greeted by Jean-Charles, whose charisma can fill a room with excitement and energy.  Down into le cave we went to taste some wines – I really wish I knew more about how to taste wine – I knew which I liked best, and we talked a bit about the differences between American and European tastes – what I tasted as lusciously smooth he remarked most local people would think was rather spicy.  I think this means I just need to taste more wine from the area and broaden my current wine palate.  He also explained to us how the Côte d’Or gets its name, from the blazing golden hue all the hills become in the Fall when the leaves on the vines change color.  I shall have to go back I think, just to see this

(...)
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Yes, this is osso buco stew, not osso buco.  Why? Mainly because sometimes I am lazy.  I did not want to have to check it and baste it, especially since it was an amazing miracle that the pot I cooked it in even fit in my countertop oven.  Yes, I slow cooked osso buco for nearly 4 hours in a fancy toaster oven.  And know what? It worked  The veal (queues de veau) was totally fall off the bone fork tender and flavorful.  To be lazy, I added more liquid so that the entire thing really stewed.  Another part of my lazyness is that I didn’t feel like carrying cans of stewed tomatoes the half mile back with me from the grocery store, so just used some tomatoes I already had in the kitchen instead.  I also used leeks instead of onions, and then, I didn’t even serve it over the classic risotto milanese.  I just dished it up in a bowl and we devoured it.  At this point I probably shouldn’t even be allowed to call it osso buco anymore haha – so I call it osso buco stew.

But then I am one for breaking all the rules and being more concerned about cooking and eating what suits me than getting everything exactly right.  I think the world does not need to be quite so worried about doing everything exactly the same.  It’s one of the beauties of cooking, because like an art, you cannot help but add your own colors to the canvas that is the food we eat.  What would the state of art be if impressionist artists had to see the world exactly as Monet did, or if we all had to listen to music by one composer?  Well Monet is a bad example because I love his works and would never tire of seeing them.  But you get the idea – creativity and diversity of thought are good things, and no one benefits from cooking everything the same way.  That is not to say that people should not learn the proper skills to cook, because understanding how to use the tools you have to work with is important – but  a recipe is not a technique, it is an idea, a personal and unique expression.  Sometimes I think we should not be so fussy to get every detail just right, and be able to play.

I’m not saying that is an excuse for me being lazy and not wanting to carry cans of stewed tomatoes back with me – but my end creation was something a little different and yet still satisfying.  In fact, it was perfect on a cool blustery Winter day that desperately tried to be Spring.(...)
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I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s -all those silly chalky conversation hearts that taste like Tums just don’t do it for me.  Most years it just feels like another “Hallmark holiday” – I mean, if you truly love someone, do you really need a special day during the year to tell them?  I follow the belief that you should celebrate love every day, no matter what the occasion

Maybe living far away from all of our friends and family changes that sentiment a bit though, because this year we both felt that we needed to properly celebrate Valentine’s Day.  We didn’t do anything extravagant or exciting, just a fun home-cooked dinner with some wine, staying warm together inside watching the Olympics while outside the sky teased us with hints of snow flurries.

What could be more elegant than soft, buttery cod that literally melts in your mouth with every bite?  No need for a knife with this meal.  That’s the beauty of poached fish – it is relatively inexpensive and so simple to make, but when done correctly can elicit such rich taste that you have to make an effort to tell yourself that you are not sitting in a 5 star restaurant.  This is not a traditional beurre blanc sauce.  Normally you would cook the shallots and reduce wine with vinegar, only adding in the butter off the heat to make it creamy and smooth.  For this, I did things a bit differently.  Shallots and thyme were sauteed in a lot of butter, and then wine was whisked in.  The filets were then poached in the wine and butter until soft and tender.  When I lifted them out of the pan they were already flaking apart beautifully, just the way cod should be.

To accompany the fish, we made spiced lentils out of my current favorite cookbook, Gordon Ramsay’s Maze. We ate here in NYC as a mini celebration for each other right after our anniversary, so it seemed perfect to make something that came from one of our favorite restaurants.  My husband made the crème fraiche mashed potatoes with rosemary and chives and brought out the chilled Sancerre, finishing the last component to the meal.

So while we are not big on the gushy gushy stuff, Valentine’s was the perfect excuse for making a decadent private dinner for us to share.  Love does not have to be said with big boxes of candy hearts.  Sometimes it can be said just by the act of cooking and eating together.

Submitted to this week’s What Can I Eat That’s Gluten Free?

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Hi!

I’m the gluten free husband, Ryan, and I decided today to muster up the courage and try a gluten free recipe on my own!  That’s right – Jenn was nowhere to be seen during the making of this dish.  I have been waiting on my new job to start and have been playing stay-at-home husband for the last month or so.  Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the time off and the chance to explore other hobbies.  Oddly, I did not expect cooking to be one of those hobbies that would attract my attention.  Normally I’m perfectly content with just eating the food Jenn makes.  However, with Jenn at work most of the day during the week and the brunt of the food preparation falling on my shoulders, I decided to make the most of it and found out I enjoy cooking too.  Also, there is something to be said about the feeling you get when your loved one gets home after a hard day’s work and smiles and hugs you for preparing a nice meal and cleaning up the apartment a bit.  Love is about giving after all, and it is extremely rewarding to know that I can show my love in this way as well, even by giving something as simple as dinner.

I have been gluten free for about 7 years now.  In fact, most of my immediate family has gluten issues (of differing intensity/denial).  While I have not officially been diagnosed as celiac, through trial and error and a very competent and patient allergist it is pretty obvious that gluten is the bane of my existence, literally.   In only half an hour from ingesting said evil the symptoms start, and then it takes a good few days to feel normal and human again.  Before I met Jenn, I really didn’t have a good handle on how to live gluten free, and mainly lived off of Benadryl and constant reactions from cross-contamination and lack of established gluten free eating habits.  When I was able to follow being gluten free, my diet was so repetitive and bland that I hated it.  I had come to the point where I just wasn’t even excited about food anymore.  But I also didn’t know how to cook very well back then.

They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and I know it’s cliché, especially being near Valentine’s Day and all, but Jenn swept me off my feet with each meal she would make.  I was able to taste flavors and dishes that I hadn’t eaten in years.  And some things that were totally new to me as well.  I’m not saying that’s the only thing I fell in love with because she is awesome in many ways, but it’s a great perk and food is something we have come to love sharing together.  We have a lot of fun cooking together.  You may not know it, but I am the BEST sous chef ever.  I can chop onions like no one’s business.  Ok not really.  But Jenn tells me I am and so I’ll take it.

So to give back, and show her my love in return, I want to use my rare bit of free time to try out more cooking on my own.  I chose this dish because the instant I saw the recipe I immediately thought it was a perfect comfort food, and something I could handle.  Mashed potatoes blended with cheese is always a winner for me, though with this recipe it takes the idea a little farther.  When you add bacon and butter into the mix it creates wonderful flavors, which remind me of my childhood with my grandmother cooking bacon and cornbread, as well as a slew of other dishes with bacon involved.  Bacon is pretty much a constant with my family.  So making this dish was not complex in the context of the recipe but complex in the meaning, because each bite brought me back to those happy memories.  Even now at 90 years old, my grandma is still cooking.  She simply amazes me, and even today if you walk into her place the first thing she will ask is “Are you hungry?”.  This dish seemed like the perfect place for me to start.  By being able to cook on my own, I can help out Jenn more, take more control over my own food restrictions, and connect old and new memories.

I was attempting to make this tartiflette brûlée posted on Food 52 by Mardi of Eat Live Travel Write.  I doubled the recipe so that we could make leftovers for lunch, and baked it all in one large dish rather than individual ramekins so it became more of a casserole.  I also used camembert cheese instead of the traditional Reblochon.  It worked fantastically.  Let me tell you, mashed potatoes with crème fraiche and chives are now the only way I am going to make mashed potatoes ever again.  This recipe changed my entire perspective on mashed potatoes, it’s a life altering thing.  Plus, adding onions and bacon makes everything better.  I used a local wine here from Vaud that blended really nicely.  This will definitely be something I make again, and I think I can try some different variations too.

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Aperitifs seem to be pretty popular here, and almost every time I have gone out to eat, we socialize and drink from the cocktail menu before ever thinking about ordering food.  It’s a type of restauranting that is very different from what I am accustomed to in the States.  For one, I have yet to see a sit-down chain restaurant here, and two, no dinner has been under two hours yet, even at the most casual of places.  Contrast that with my myriad experiences in large national chain restaurants in the States, where everything is so rushed that before you even realize it, you are out the door and never really had a chance to think about what your food tasted like.  All of a sudden you realize that you’ve really missed being able to take time to actually enjoy food and the company around you.  Going out to eat can be more than just a way to grab some grub because you don’t want to cook, it can be an experience all in of itself.

Part of that experience has often started with aperitifs, a nice taste to sip on while you start to become tantalized by the beckoning aromas wafting from the kitchen.  One of my favorite drinks that I have had here is a combination of champagne and crème de cassis, a sweet blackcurrant liqueur.  I have a penchant for champagne-based cocktails, mainly because I love how the fizz laughs and dances on my nose every time I lift the glass to my lips.  A dry champagne helps temper the almost sickly sweet of the cassis, and the addition of a little bit of peach nectar really rounds out this drink as well.

Luckily, these drinks are super easy to make at home, and serving drinks with little bites before a meal can help create a social atmosphere for visiting with family and friends.  After all, while eating and tasting delicious food is well and good, it is the memories that we make with each other that we really cherish.  Sometimes it’s better to not focus solely on getting a meal out.  Delay the food for a bit, and enjoy spending a bit of time with each other.

Ideally one would serve these in cute champagne flutes.  We don’t own any yet, please bear with us as we navigate home and kitchen shopping in a language we really need to learn more of quickly!

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Simplicity can come in a bowl.

There are days when it takes all the energy I have to convince myself to drag my feet down the icy sidewalk, wind whipping at my face and chapped lips, hunching my shoulders up to try to keep my scarf in place as I walk home after a long day at work.  By the time I make it through the two subway lines, over the hill and up the stairs, the last thing I want to do is stand on my feet for 2 hours to cook dinner, and I am craving something simple.

Shauna of Gluten Free Girl got me thinking about leeks after her post and ever since, leeks have been on my mind.  I picked some up at the market and decided to cook them the other day.  Nothing pretentious here, I wanted to make a meal that did not require much thought or care when cooking, because sometimes when I get home I just want to shut off the world and forget it exists.  This dish is the perfect remedy for nights like that.

Potatoes – chopped quickly and tossed into boiling water.  Done.  Bacon – sizzling quietly in the skillet.  Done.  Now I sit down and lean back, and closing my eyes I clear my mind to conjure up the most calming image I can conceive – nothing.  Yes, pure black and shapeless nothing, accented only by the constant sizzling and bubbling from the stove of the bacon and potatoes happily cooking away, which is just enough distraction to invoke a trance-like state of calm.   I focus on the sound of the kitchen, slow my breathing, and think about nothing for 15 minutes.  In 15 minutes I can change my entire state of being.  This can be a good thing.  But 15 minutes of nothing – really nothing, not even that little voice in your head that loves to nag you about your upcoming responsibilities, is harder than you think.  It means not checking your email.  Not logging into twitter, and not turning on the TV.  It takes some practice to do nothing.  But once you figure it out, clearing the mind of literally everything can be one of the most refreshing events of a busy day.

The smell of the bacon wafting up my nose reminds me I am cooking dinner.  I, now a bit more recharged, get up and walk over to my quaint oven-less (for the moment, this will be corrected shortly) two-burner kitchen. I lift out the bacon, strain the potatoes, and throw everything together into the skillet with some leeks, garlic, and a little spinach tossed in at the end.  A quick sauté in the bacon fat, and only a few short minutes later I have the perfect effortless dinner.  A simple bowl of delicious food, for those days when sophisticated just seems a little too much effort, and what I really want is simply, food.

Potato bowls are very flexible recipes.  Check out Lauren’s of Celiac Teen for a totally different but also tasty looking bowl.

This dish is greatly aided when your husband gets home before you and remembers to chill the wine.  At David Lebovitz’s suggestion, we sought out a bottle of Sancerre wine.  15 CHF later, I was convinced this was the perfect marriage to my potato bowl.  If you find it, I highly recommend it.  Just perfect.

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My husband and I were both super excited when Starbucks came out with their gluten free orange cake, and since then have indulged in many more  However, my father in law can’t have oranges due to the crazy number of allergies he has developed along with his gluten issues, and I wanted to create a similar cake for him to enjoy.  I came across this recipe for homemade Starbucks GF orange cake, and after some motivational encouragement from Elana over twitter, decided to try it out using lemons instead.  The result came out great.  Instead of using 2 oranges, I used 3 lemons.  The result was probably not as sweet as the original cake since lemons tend to be quite a bit more tart, and so to make up for that rather than play with the recipe much I just decided to create a sweet tasty sauce to serve on top that I thought would contrast and thus complement the lemon cake well.

Thus started a 4 hr long labor of love that I think is going to have to become my signature dessert sauce – chocolate strawberry port wine sauce!  Good for you all, I like to share my food and recipes because I believe others should be able to make yummy food too – if I were a recipe hoarder, this would totally be my secret sauce I may still work on it to get it more perfect, but as simple as this sauce is, it comes pretty close.  And you can use it on anything!  Waffles, crepes, ice cream, brownies, just spoonfuls for random dessert cravings, I am still coming up with ideas

When my husband tasted this, he said each flavor came out in your mouth – first the strawberry, then the chocolate, and finally the subtle port, and yet still all at once.  Magic.  This sauce is pure magic.  And if you have the time to devote to it, it is so worth it.  And it works awesome on GF lemon cake, because like I have been saying, strawberries and lemons were meant to be married with each other.  I can’t wait til it becomes raspberry season later this summer and I can try this again with raspberries! I see so much potential for this sauce, it is great.  It will definitely find a home in my regular repertoire.

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