Photo: 2005 snow storm in Times Square (Edward/Wired New York)

As sleet pierced my face like needles today, I couldn’t help but think of busting out a barbecue grill. In the past five years, winter grilling has steadily increased across the country. Some hardcore fans smoke meat for 20 hours during blizzards. For the rest of us, here’s some tips (it’s actually easy if you keep the lid closed and use a meat thermometer), courtesy of an article I wrote for the AP.

Try these specially designed winter recipes for Grilled Pork Chops with Squash, Apples and Cider-bourbon Jus and Asian Grilled Flank Steak.

Update: Download the podcast in MP3 form for your iPod!

Photo: Steven Sunshine/NY Daily News

During my first year in New York, my best friend from high school mailed me a bright orange sweater for my birthday. She wanted me to stay warm and bring some Californian attitude to dreary New Yorkers. The truth was, I already fit in with my charcoal-hued clothes. I hardly wear bright colors, because I’m afraid of looking disastrous. For example, one St. Patrick’s Day I wore a fluorescent green parka, which I’ve never worn since.

“Ouch, you’re blinding me! Turn your windbreaker inside out!” people said.

That’s why I was mortified when the picture above appeared in the New York Daily News’ review of Caffe Falai. Last Saturday, I had just finished working out (playing on a trapeze and hula hooping!) and needed to refuel. Too lazy to change into street clothes, I stumbled into the pristine white restaurant wearing a ratty orange T-shirt. The scene was something straight out of Sex and the City: posh food and people who looked like they just stepped off a runway. To add to the glamour, there was a photographer snapping pictures. I was afraid that I would be refused service, but I figured I had a right to experience chef Iacopo Falai’s food.

Falai, the ex-pastry chef from Le Cirque (where Jacques Torres also worked), now has a total of three restaurants in the city. Each serves carefully crafted Italian food, but the desserts are French. Each location includes my three favorite foods: bread, olive oil and chocolate.

Caffe Falai didn’t disappoint. I had the stewed figs with fresh DiPaolo ricotta and almonds. The figs were bursting with a caramelized wine sauce, and the ricotta was like unsweetened room temperature ice cream. The almonds weren’t just a garnish; they were made into almond brittle to contrast the soft cheese. It exceeded all my expectations. My only complaint was that the sauce was so sweet that you needed a lot of cheese to tone it down.

Also on the menu were fresh salads (about $6), bruleed eggs (about $10) and panini ($7). Each table came with freshly grilled housemade bread and olive oil.

All of Falai’s restaurants are comparable in quality, but Caffe Falai is the easiest to get to. The original Falai is the fanciest, but also the most expensive and has the smallest portions. Falai Panetteria has the heartiest food: fresh whole wheat lasagna with Bolognese sauce and polenta with wild boar ragù.

I can’t believe the Daily News ran that picture. Maybe it’s because I let the photographer hang around; I sympathized with his plight. Or maybe it’s because the orange t-shirt made me stand out, just like my best friend would have wanted.

Caffe Falai
265 Lafayette Street (between Prince and Spring), Soho; (917) 338-6207

Falai Panetteria
79 Clinton Street (Rivington Street), Lower East Side; (212) 777-8956

Falai
68 Clinton Street, Lower East Side; (212) 253-1960

More info:
Daily News review of Caffe Falai
The First Bite is the Sweetest (Caffe Falai video from Gridskipper)
One Dessert, Many Flavors, Even Sweet (NY Times article with recipe)
Star Chefs profile of Iacopo Falai

Photo: What We’re Eating

You can take the New Orleanian out of Mardi Gras, but you can’t take Mardi Gras out of the New Orleanian. Ever since Hurricane Katrina struck, evacuees have spread their culture and cuisine to other states. For Mardi Gras, some order four king cakes, others import 40 pounds of crawfish and still others adapt their favorite recipes to local ingredients. For more info and tasty recipes, check out an article I wrote for the Associated Press!

More info:

Extended profile on a Mardi Gras Indian I interviewed

What the heck is Mardi Gras, anyway?
Nola.com guide
Wikipedia entry

I once ate a chocolate chip cookie that fell in the dirt. I wash ziplock bags and reuse them. I like taking the second-to-last item on a dish so someone else will feel guilty about taking the last one.

Up until I visited my first food blog three years ago, “I like to eat Nutella straight off my finger” would have joined the list of culinary confessions above. I was so crazy about that chocolate-hazelnut spread that I Googled it, which brought me to Il Forno’s post about Nutella’s 40th birthday. After reading about Nutella’s history in sweet detail, I no longer felt like a nut. I may eaten a jar of Nutella in one week, but one girl she finished it by the spoonful over three days.

Another case in point: Sara from Ms. Adventures in Italy and Shelley from At Home in Rome solemnly declare today “World Nutella Day” - a day to celebrate, to get creative with, and most importantly, to EAT Nutella.

I made a Nutella tart from Pierre Herme, known worldwide as the Picasso of Pastry. When I went to Paris last November, I bought a 6 Euro slice of cake and a 2 Euro macaroon from his store. Boy, were they worth it. All the textures and flavors were perfectly balanced. That man is a culinary engineer.

The recipe was first posted on Il Forno’s site. It’s a mouth-shattering crust with a layer of Nutella, bittersweet chocolate cream, and toasted hazelnuts on top. A couple notes:

• Use unsalted butter, or else the salt will drown out the flavor of the chocolate. If you only have regular butter, you can be a smart aleck and call it “salted chocolate hazelnut tart” (not that it’s my thing).
• Drizzle the butter into the chocolate mixture and mix thoroughly. The mixture will want to split because it’s so greasy. I actually think silken tofu would make a fine substitute, but that’s another post.
• You only need half the amount of hazelnuts called for: a half cup.
• If you don’t have a tart pan, form the dough in a 9-inch springform pan, making the sides 1-inch tall.
• People have complained that Herme’s tart dough is difficult to work with, so here’s a recipe from Into to Fine Baking at The New School’s Culinary Arts program.

Lynn’s Tart Dough - Pate Brisee aux Oeufs (French Pastry Dough with Eggs)

by Lynn Kutner

This dough is a dream to work with: it hardly sticks and can withstand heavy rolling. The secret ingredient, an egg, enriches the dough.

Take the extra effort to blind bake the dough so it doesn’t warp in the oven. Brushing it with egg wash and sugar makes the crust stay crispy. A soggy crust just destroys all your hard work.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 egg yolk (save the white to glaze the crust)
2 tablespoons ice water (a few more drops if necessary)

In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. With your fingers, rub in the butter until the mixture feels mealy (small bits of butter are still visible). Aerate the dough with your hands as you work.
In a measuring cup, add the egg yolk. Add water ALMOST to the 1/4 cup mark. (1/4 cup is the maximum total of egg and water)

Make a well in the flour-butter mixture and pour the liquid in the center. With a rubber spatula, flip the flour from the outside in. If the dough is too dry, break it up in the center and add a few more teaspoons of water.

Flatten the dough into a circle about 1/2″ to 3/4″-thick. Wrap in plastic and chill two hours to overnight.

If you chilled the dough overnight or froze it, let it sit at room temperature until it is pliable but not soft. If the dough cracks when you work it, let it heat up a little longer.

Lightly dust a rolling pin and work surface with flour. Roll the dough 1/8″-thick. Work from the center and roll in one direction, stopping just short of the edge. Turn the dough 90 degrees and continue till finished. Gently ease the dough into a tart mold and trim the edges. Cover with the surface plastic wrap or wax paper and freeze while you preheat the oven to 400 F.

When the oven is ready, prick the dough with a fork all over. Cover the dough with foil and weigh it down with raw dried beans, rice or metal pie weights. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the crust is lightly colored.

Remove the foil. In a small bowl, combine the leftover egg white and a couple teaspoons of water. Brush the egg wash on the crust and sprinkle with a couple teaspoons of sugar. Return the crust to the oven and bake for until golden brown, about 5-10 minutes.

Resources:
Nutella cake
Su Good Eats’ homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread recipe
All other Nutella posts
World Nutella Day posts

In Legally Blonde, Elle Woods shows her bumbling stylist the sure way to get any man.
“Whoops, I dropped my pencil,” Elle demonstrates. Then she bends down and snaps up. “Bend and snap! Works every time!”

Some would argue that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. In that case, the bend and snap also works. For the holidays (I am way behind in posts), I made the famous Chez Panisse gingersnaps. Although they’re gingerSNAPS, they’re bendy and chewy if you underbake them.

Why are these cookies so famous?  Renee at Feeding Dexygus Seconds once applied to be a pastry chef at Chez Panisse, the restaurant pioneered eating seasonal, local produce (30 years after it opened, the rest of the country finally caught on with the food politics/organic/vegetarian craze). Renee didn’t get the job, but she walked away with one of their recipes. Since sharing this heartwarming story, the recipe spread like wildfire at The Amateur Gourmet, Chocolate & Zucchini, Kottke, The Baking Sheet, Tarting it Up, The Recipe Box, Simply Recipes…you get the idea. I compulsively clip recipes, so it took me a good two years before I had a chance to try it out.

They are one of my favorite non-chocolate cookies, the other being potato chip cookies. Although they look like mis-shapen blobs (the dough is very soft), no one can say no to butter, sugar and warm, tingly spices. If you want them to live true to their name, bake them till they are dark brown. Forget the rule of pulling cookies out of the oven just when the edges brown and the middle is still soft set.

I cheated and actually like the cookies chewy. There’s so much molasses that they’ll be “gingerbends” unless you bake them to death.

They’re more presentable if you slice the dough from a log. Forming it in a loaf pan makes for really big cookies that squish under the knife. If you make rounds, decrease the baking time to 8-9 minutes. I would send you over to Feeding Dexygus Seconds for the recipe, but it doesn’t work now. So here it is in my words. You can actually make the cookies without an electric beater. In Into to Fine Baking at The New School, we didn’t use machines for any of the doughs!

Chez Panisse Gingersnaps

8 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 small eggs or 1 1/2 large eggs
1/3 cup molasses
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, cream the butter until soft. Beat in the sugar, then add the vanilla and eggs. Add molasses and beat until well-incorporated. Sift the dry ingredients, and add to the mixture. On low speed, mix until it all just comes together.

Line a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan with plastic wrap, so that some hangs over the edges. Firmly press the dough into the bottom of the pan, making the top as level as possible. Cover the dough with the plastic overhangs. Freeze until very firm, preferably overnight.

Unwrap and remove dough from the pan. Slice the brick into thin slices, no more than 1/8″. Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper or ungreased foil. Bake in a preheated 350 F oven until the edges turn dark brown, about 12 minutes.

Notes:

• Alternatively, you can form the dough into a couple logs that are 1 1/2″ in diameter. Slice as directed above and bake for 8-9 min.
• The dough gets soft quickly, so work quickly.
• Because the cookies are thin, there’s a fine line between underbaked and burned.