Tag Archives: the copycat chef
Recipe: Chicken Fricassee with Mushrooms and Leeks
One blustery day in Paris I was craving French comfort food – not so much a specific thing, but the idea of it. There would be chicken and leeks and mushrooms and a very French sauce.
We were renting an apartment with a kitchen, but I didn’t want to buy a bunch of groceries we’d just have to throw away later, so the recipe would have to be simple. So this is a chicken fricassee-slash-coq au vin blanc, made without chicken broth or lots of extraneous ingredients. Instead, white wine, butter and cream do all the work. Serve with rice for a comforting meal with a French accent. (more…)
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Tagged chicken, French food, French recipes, leeks, mushrooms, the copycat chef, wine
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The Copycat Chef: Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage
This weekend, the Mignorelli stall at the Union Square Greenmarket featured a sign that read:
Winter Over
Broccoli Rabe $3.50
I don’t know if that’s really the particular variety of broccoli rabe, but thank God this long New York winter is over. It’s time to get cooking with one of the first non-root-vegetable vegetables to finally make an appearance at the markets. One dish we’ve seen at a lot of NYC restaurants recently is the Apuglia standard of orecchiette with broccoli rabe and sausage. Though it is often priced at $12 and up on menus, it’s ridiculously easy and inexpensive to make at home. (more…)
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Tagged pasta, the copycat chef
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Recipe: How to Roast a Pig
Last Saturday we had the pleasure of heading out to Brooklyn for my friend Matt Gross‘s annual pig roast. As you might imagine, roasting a pig is no small endeavor. But if you have the right equipment, it can be done – and chances are you will have many friends willing to help you cook it and eat it. (more…)
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Tagged BBQ, entree recipes, grilling recipes, pig roast, the copycat chef
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Recipe: Mom's Pie Crust, Food Processor Version
I gave my mom a food processor for Christmas last year, but I couldn’t really sell her on the whole food processor idea until I showed her how to use it to make pie crust. This time consuming mother-daughter holiday project, which usually involves two blunt dinner knives, a can of Crisco, billowing clouds of flour, and a generous pinch of cursing, could be much easier if we just made the dough in the food processor.
Fast forward to this summer, when the beloved writer Nora Ephron died and her NYT obit listed the things she once wrote that she would miss most out of life:
“Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie.”
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Tagged dessert recipes, pie, the copycat chef
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Recipe: Strawberry White Wine Punch
One of my favorite offerings at the Swedish midsummer festival is the delicious, refreshing and affecting strawberry wine punch served at Gigino. But because of our lamentably retro liquor laws, it can only be enjoyed on the restaurant patio, not in the park, even though the two are part of the same property.
This year I took matters into my own hands and made my own strawberry white wine punch, based on this recipe from Epicurious, to serve at a picnic in the park. I tweaked it by adding sparkling white wine and an interesting liqueur I had lying around the house, Marie-Framboise raspberry cognac. You can buy it online or substitute kirsch, another Scandinavian staple. Adding flavored cognac or brandy nudges the drink closer to sangria, but it still tastes predominantly of berries. There is no need to use expensive wine or champagne, since you’re just adding sugar to it. Put it in an unmarked container, serve in opaque cups, and if anyone asks, it’s lemonade with strawberries in it. (more…)
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Tagged cocktail recipes, Gigino, Swedish midsummer, the copycat chef
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Recipe: New Old-School Meatballs
Recently I’ve been fascinated by the Meatball Shop. I’ve never actually eaten there, because there’s always a line out the door, and every time the owners open a new branch, an additional line forms out of an additional door, with no impact on still crowded original Meatball Shop. And they don’t take reservations, which to me is not a comforting quality for a comfort food place. Still. The place is insanely popular. (more…)
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Tagged American recipes, beef, entree recipes, Italian recipes, meatballs, the copycat chef, tomato sauce
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Recipe: Slow-Cooker Beef Barbacoa Tacos
I’ve been craving homemade tacos ever since Tanya Steel, former model and EIC of Epicurious and Gourmet Live, told Fashion Week Daily that her favorite Epicurious recipe is this one for pork tacos made in a slow cooker. When five friends were coming over for dinner, the opportunity presented itself to cook up a whole slew of tacos. But true confession: I really love Chipotle’s beef barbacoa tacos. Surely there had to be a way to make this style of tacos in a slow cooker to make the whole dinner less of a hassle.
I took a recipe from California’s Café Pasqual and merged it with the Epicurious version. You can put the beef in the slow cooker before leaving for work in the morning and finish it when you get home, or even make the whole thing a day ahead of time. Either way, it’s set it and forget it. (more…)
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Tagged beef, entree recipes, Mexican recipes, slow cooker, tacos, the copycat chef
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The Copycat Chef: Asparagus with Deep-Fried Egg
This spring, ABC Kitchen served up a delectable appetizer of wood-grilled asparagus topped with a crispy, runny, just-slightly-spicy deep fried egg. It’s the sort of miracle work with eggs that you’d expect from a James Beard award-winning restaurant, but when we started craving it afterwards, we wondered if there a way to recreate this dish at home. (more…)
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Tagged ABC Kitchen, American recipes, asparagus recipe, sides recipes, the copycat chef
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The Copycat Chef: Garlic and Rosemary Lamb Chops
In springtime I always start craving lamb with garlic and rosemary. But if you don’t have eight or more people to feed and several hours to spare, there’s not much reason to roast a whole leg of lamb. The solution: lamb chops for two, marinated and grilled for a short amount of time with the same intense flavor. This recipe is just as good for a casual weeknight meal as it is for a special occasion like Easter.
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The Copycat Chef: Roasted Vegetable Antipasto
One of the best things about many Milanese restaurants is the antipasti bar. You pay one fixed, economical price for a buffet plate full of vegetables, olives, calamari, salumi and cheeses, rather than order antipasti item by item as in New York. It’s a much cheaper and easier way to get a mealtime supply of veggies.
When I came back to the U.S., I couldn’t find a recipe that replicated the roasted zucchini in the delicious antipasti plate at Primafila, a little pizza place on a side street off the Duomo, pictured above. This recipe for a mix of roasted vegetables came close, but here’s a revised recipe, simplified further, which can be served as an antipasto or as a contorno. All fresh vegetables need is a little olive oil, lemon, pepper and salt to become the perfect side dish.
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Tagged appetizer recipes, Italian recipes, Milan, sides recipes, the copycat chef, vegetable recipes
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The Copycat Chef: Penne with Ricotta and Pancetta
Down the street from me in Milan was a little neighborhood trattoria, La Ragazza, that served the most delicious pasta. The rich pancetta and tomato sauce in their signature penne dish included lots of creamy, fresh ricotta – a combination you don’t see often stateside. The only problem was, when I returned from Milan, La Ragazza was no longer down the street from me, and I was still craving their house specialty. So I set to Googling, and found the traditional recipe from an Italian pasta blog, Pasta Recipes Made Easy. Success! Here it is re-envisioned with American measurements and a few pasta-making tricks of my own.
La Ragazza’s penne is housemade and dried. If you can’t find this at a specialty pastaria near you (there are many more in Italy than here), use artisanal-quality packaged pasta. (more…)
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Tagged entree recipes, Italian recipes, pasta recipes, the copycat chef
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Cocktail Recipe: The Big Apple
Put away the mojito ingredients: Fall calls for a new type of cocktail. We went looking for a cocktail recipe that incorporates bourbon and apples, two favorite autumn flavors, but ended up getting creative, since none of the recipes we found involved calvados, the classic apple brandy from Normandy.
“The Big Apple” seems like an apt name for this cocktail, an apple-y spin on the Manhattan. Also like a Manhattan, it’s strong. It may be a good way to gird yourself for Thanksgiving dinner, no matter where you celebrate it. (more…)
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Recipe: Banana Buckwheat Bread
Like a lot of culinary inventions, this recipe for banana bread came about by accident. I had enough white flour to make half a recipe originally given to me by my college friend California Girl, but not enough to make the whole thing. Rather than make a sad, small loaf of banana bread, I decided to substitute 1/2 cup of buckwheat flour for the missing white flour.
The results were surprisingly good, since buckwheat flour adds a slight edge of bitterness to balance out the sweet bananas and sugar – I often find banana bread to be too sweet. This banana bread is like the ideal banana pancakes, in loaf form. (more…)
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Tagged American recipes, breakfast recipes, snack recipes, the copycat chef
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Recipe: Toasted Corn and Tomato Salad
Corn is wonderfully good right now. If, like me, you find yourself buying more than you can eat, this toasted corn salad is a great use for extra corn and tomatoes. Farmer’s market produce like this should never go to waste when it’s sweet as candy in late August. (more…)
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Tagged American recipes, salad recipes, sides recipes, the copycat chef, vegetable recipes
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Recipe: Grilled Artichokes
This is one of those great minimalist Italian recipes that requires nothing more than super fresh produce, olive oil, salt and a little panache. It’s another artichoke recipe from Jib Girl Daniela, handed down through her family.
For the artichokes, trim and de-choke them as described in the Stuffed Artichokes recipe, then proceed from there. (more…)
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Tagged appetizer recipes, artichokes, sides recipes, the copycat chef, vegetable recipes
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