Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly(ish) post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Since last week I was traveling, this post covers two weeks worth of fun. It's curently 60 degrees in NYC but it will be 28 degrees Saturday morning when I am heading to work. This weather is crazy.
1) My sister-in-law Brigette and I love Ina Garten's cookbooks, and we started a tradition of buying her new cookbook and choosing a three-course meal to cook with each other long distance over Facetime. This year from her Go-To Dinnerscookbook we chose French Bistro Salad, Roast Chicken with Spring Vegetables, and Pannetone Bread Pudding for our menu. We began with the bread pudding, toasting the bread in the oven and then letting it sit the refrigerator all afternoon to soak up the custard.
The toasted pannetone
The French Bistro Salad has sliced radicchio and endive (I subbed Boston lettuce for the endive), roquefort cheese, carmelized walnuts, matchsticked Granny Smith apples and a simple vinaigrette made with champagne vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and olive oil. I loved this simple salad and will be making it often.
The chicken was roasted alongside heirloom baby carrots, yellow onions, Yukon potatoes, and asparagus. Again, it was easy to prepare and so delicious, the best roast chicken I have ever made.
The Pannetone Bread Pudding was the calorie-buster of the meal with lots of eggs and half-and-half, but it was so worth it. I cut the leftovers into squares and froze for future treats.
Brigette and I spent the prep time catching up and when it came for dinner, we placed our IPad on our dining table and shared our meal with our spouses. We both said we must do this more often.
Diiner is served!
2) There is a construction site near us that has been up for a few years now, and the ugly fencing around it has a new covering. A local politician got some money and had a local middle school work on art project. The students created scenes reflecting NYC and those drawings were screened onto fencing covering the site. It makes such a big difference! It used to feel so desolate walking by there and now it is bright and cheery. Great job!
3) Our friends took us to dinner to celebrate my husband's birthday and then to see A Beautiful Noise, the Broadway musical about the life of Neil Diamond. It was fantastic! If you've seen Jersey Boys, the show is in that similar vein. It tells the story of Neil Diamond through his iconic music. There was a lot I didn't know about Neil Diamond, and the performances, especially Mark Jacoby (playing Neil- Now) and Robyn Hurder as Neil's second wife Marcia were wonderful. We were there on a Wednesday night so we saw the alternate, Nick Fradiani, playing Neil-Then, and he was really great. At first I was disappointed that Will Swenson, who plays Neil-Then for seven performances a week wasn't on, but Nick was fabulous. The audience could not hold back, singing along with some songs, and then joining in for the encore of Sweet Caroline. If you like Neil Diamond and/or Broadway, go see this one.
4) I finished watching all 11 seasons of Frasier on my Echo Show in my kitchen while preparing dinners, and I've moved onto NewsRadio, the 1990's NBC sitcom starring Dave Foley, Stephen Root, Maura Tierney (pre-ER), and the brilliant Phil Hartman on Amazon Prime video. Set in a NYC news radio station, it has me laughing out loud. Phil Hartman's blustery, bloviating newsman Bill McNeil is just perfection as he plays a more self-aware Ted Baxter-like character. The cast is top-notch, even if some of them are now better known for other more outrageous things today (Andy Dick and Joe Rogan), and the death of Phil Hartman after season four was so tragic.
5) I read a book I've been looking forward to for a long time now. Ayóbámi Adébáyo’s debut novel, Stay With Me was the most compelling book I read in 2017 and her second novel, A Spell of Good Things is just as powerful. Set in Nigeria, we meet two families, one wealthy and one in poverty, whose worlds collide.
Eniola is a young teen whose family is plunged into poverty when his father is one of 6000 teachers who lost their job. His father comes deeply depressed and he, his mother, and sister are forced into begging family and strangers for money for food, rent, and school tuition.
Wuraola is a doctor from a wealthy family who becomes engaged to longtime family friend. She begins to question her future when her betrothed’s behavior becomes intolerable, knowing that her family will be angry if she calls the wedding off.
Eniola’s involvement with a local group of young men with ties to a powerful politician at first seems to be the answer to his family’s money problems, but soon turns dangerous.
Adébáyo brings the reader directly into this Nigerian setting, with the dichotomy of the poverty of Eniola and the wealth of Wurola’s circle jumping off the page at you. The customs, the food, the education, political, and medical systems provide an eye-opening experience for the reader.
Once again, Adébáyo’s story is heartbreaking and you ache for these characters that you will not soon forget.
Stay safe and healthy, until next time my friends.
Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.
We're all talking about and waiting for election results, so I'm going to skip that.
1) On Saturday, my sister-in-law Brigette and I virtually cooked a three-course dinner from Ina Garten's new cookbook, Modern Comfort Food. We FaceTimed each other as we started on dessert, Boston Cream Pie, which ended up being a three page recipe. We started at 10am, and making the cream, the chocolate glaze, and the cake took at least three hours. The hardest part was cutting the two very thin cakes into two layers each, something I had never attempted before. My pie didn't look like the photo in the book, and for some reason my chocolate glaze was not thin enough.
The Warm Spinach Artichoke Dip appetizer was very good, I think the carmelized onions made all the difference there. My husband would have preferred a creamier texture, so maybe next time I'll add more cream cheese.
The big winner was the Skillet Roasted Chicken and Potatoes. I thought maybe our choice of entree was a little bland, but the buttermilk marinated chicken thighs were tender and juicy, and the drippings from the chicken gave the potatoes layered underneath them a wonderful flavor.
We virtually shared our dinners together and it was so much fun, more family members want to join in next time.
Brigette's & my chicken entrees
2) On 81st Street near me, a group of neighbors got together to build and decorate birdhouses. Many people created them with their children, and they proudly displayed them on trees along 81st St. Late one night, a woman cut down all the birdhouses and destroyed them, leaving a note that said that they were not allowed to tie anything to trees along the street, that it damages the trees. It became quite a controversy, and I didn't understand why she didn't leave a note asking them to take them down, she just destroyed them on her own. (They have still photos from security cameras of her deed.) Anyway, the families got together and created more birdhouses and now they are displayed in the front window of a real estate office on 81st Street. It's a great way to build community spirit.
3) It was so warm on Thursday that we ventured out to our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Lusardi's, for dinner. Our table was outside, right on 2nd Ave. During dinner, we heard a man singing Frank Sinatra songs. We looked over and he had parked his bike, with his IPad attached, and had a microphone and was strolling along the street singing. After he had sung a few songs, he walked from table to table and asked for donations. We happily gave him something, but I did find it odd that the restaurant would allow him to do it. Then he packed up, grabbed his bike, and moved down the street to the next group of outside restaurants. Ya gotta love the ingenuity of people; if the places where he normally performs are shut down, he goes to the people himself.
4) After starting Jenny Colgan's new novel, Christmas at the Island Hotel, last week, I was in a Christmas mood. I don't watch many Hallmark Channel movies, but I saw that One Royal Holidaystarred some of my favorite Broadway actors, so to get my head out of all the politics, I watched it. Laura Osnes (she played Cinderella on Broadway) plays Anna, a young nurse going home to Connecticut for Christmas. She runs into a young man James (Aaron Tveit, star of Broadway's Moulin Rouge) and his mother, played by Victoria Clark (who was the Fairy Godmother to Osnes' Cinderella!), whose plane is grounded during a snowstorm. James is the Prince of a Northern European country, his mother the Queen, and they go with Anna to her father's inn. It's a charming story, and this movie is elevated because of the quality of the performances. I hope that more Broadway performers (Krystal Joy Brown from Hamilton and Motown, The Musical plays the town mayor here) are put to work in Hallmark movies.
5) I also watched a new movie on Apple TV+- On The Rocks. Rashida Jones' Laura is married to Marlon Wayans, and they have two young girls. They live in New York City, and he travels frequently for his job. Jones is struggling to write her next book, and begins to have doubts about her husband's fidelity. She shares her fears with her father Felix, played by Bill Murray. Felix cheated on Laura's mom, and he suggests that they follow Laura's husband to see if he is cheating. This may be Murray's best role yet, allowing him to combine his comedic skills with his vulnerability as the bon vivant Felix. He is fantastic here, he and Jones have a great chemistry as father and daughter, and the movie is a love letter to New York City. Sofia Copppla beautifully directs this fanastic film. If you have Apple TV+, this is a must-see.
Stay safe and socially distant, wash your hands and wear a mask.
This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking. If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.
Every October my sister-in-law and I look forward to the latest Barefoot Contessa cookbook from Ina Garten. Her recipes are not very complicated but do require a certain skill, and she uses fresh, fairly readily accessible ingredients.
I saw her on The Today Show last week promoting her Cooking For Jeffrey cookbook and she made a filet mignon. Now there are only so many ways to cook a filet, but she had two twists. She seared the filets on the stovetop and then placed the pan in the oven to finish, as many good steakhouses do.
I have never done that before, so I was intrigued. I made the dish for my husband, and it was so delicious. I'm never cooking my steaks any other way. She also made a mushroom sauce that had mustard in it. The sauce was so good that we used it on top of our broccoli too.
Since I was on a Barefoot Contessa roll, I made one of her classic recipes later in the week- Coq Au Vin. This one required a little more prep, a half of a bottle of red wine and a hint of brandy, but the result was a hearty, flavorful dish, perfect for the cooler fall days. The link to the video for that recipe is here. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/coq-au-vin-recipe4.html
Coq Au Vin- photo from Food Network
You can find more recipes from Ina Garten and information about her new cookbook here.
I can't believe it is November so soon; I had to order my Thanksgiving cakes from Two Little Red Hens already!
If you have any new fall recipes you'd like to share, tell me about them in comments.
This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking. If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.
Anyone who is a fan of the Food Network knows Ina Garten, known as the Barefoot Contessa. The popular cook appeared recently at the Providence Performing Arts Center in conversation with local restauranteur and her friend Johanne Killeen, owner of Al Forno.
The place was completely sold out, like Garten was a rock star, which in the world of food she is. The ladies joked that it was like an episode of James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio, which it did sort of resemble.
They reviewed Garten's life, which is familiar to most of her fans. Garten worked for the White House, writing papers on nuclear policy. She was married to the love of her life, Jeffrey, whom fans of her show and many cookbooks know very well. It was so sweet to hear her speak so lovingly about her husband, it is clear what a fabulous match they are.
Garten is a cook, not a trained chef, and learned much of what she knows she learned on her own, through trial and error. She is such an accomplished, determined woman so it is not surprising that she would succeed at cooking.
She was looking for a challenge, and while spending the summer in the Hamptons on Long Island, she found that a small gourmet food shop, The Barefoot Contessa, was for sale. She made a lowball offer, which and Jeffrey figured would not be accepted, but it was.
Now she was the owner of The Barefoot Contessa, with no real restaurant food experience to her name. It was hard work, but with the help of employees, it became a huge success. She told a story of working like crazy on Thanksgiving day, getting out hundreds of orders, then serving a small group Thanksgiving dinner and after that (as if that wasn't exhausting enough) completely redecorating the store for Christmas, decorated trees and all for tomorrow's opening.
My husband and I owned a fast food restaurant in a mall for many years, and all I could think of was us trying to do that on Black Friday. I was exhausted just thinking about it.
Garten also told a funny Martha Stewart story. She had invited eight people, including Martha, for lunch. That is a lot of pressure, serving a luncheon for Martha Stewart. Four people were unable to make it, so they were down to four. After prepping for that, the four people who cancelled showed up on her doorstep, saying they could make it after all, and they had a few extra people in the car with them.
Can you imagine? Garten didn't panic, instead, she smiled and starting splitting the four entrees and salads to make twelve servings. She joked that she and Jeffery ate leftover chicken salad at that meal. That woman is the definition of a cool cookie.
Garten was there promoting her newest cookbook, Foolproof, and she discussed her basic food philosophy, which is to use simple, fresh ingredients to make an enjoyable meal. She said something that really resonated with everyone there: No one will appreciate enough the fact that you spent all day making a complicated meal. You will end up being resentful, so why do it?
She decorates her table simply, but beautifully, and music is always important. When the first guest arrives, there should be lively music playing, so there isn't an awkward silence. Switch to Sinatra or Tony Bennett during the meal, so that everyone can chat and enjoy his or her meal. Always have a nice cocktail beverage ready as well.
The evening was quite enjoyable, and Garten took many questions from the audience. She also had a line of probably more than a hundred people eagerly waiting to get an autographed copy of Garten's book.
I will leave you with a link to my favorite Barefoot Contessa recipe, Chicken Piccata. It's my go-to meal when I have to get dinner on the table in a hurry. The Barefoot Contessa's Chicken Piccata
The video on how to make it is below:
If you have a favorite Barefoot Contessa recipe, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section below.
This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking. If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at the home of my sister-in-law Brigette, who is an amazing cook. She made 15 different dishes, and all were winners. It was the tastiest Thanksgiving we have ever had.
Among the highlights were a Cooks Illustrated recipe for Stuffed Mushrooms with Spinach and Bacon, Ina Garten's Roasted Turkey Roulade, Make Ahead Gravy, Homemade Cranberry Sauce and old family classics like Broccoli Casserole, Lemon Jello, Chocolate Mousse and Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake.
We also made a few recipes that we pulled off of Pinterest. Our cocktail was a pretty and refreshing Sparkling Cranberry Punch. We made some modifications on the second batch, adding less Sprite and more sparkling wine. You could also add some vodka for more of a kick.
Last week I made Autumn Chopped Salad from Pinterest, and it was so good we put it on the Thanksgiving menu. My sister-in-law Necole dressed up the presentation to make it as lovely as it was tasty. One of Necole's young sons had three helpings! Our one tweak was to mix the poppy seed dressing dressing and balsamic dressing together and serving it on the side so we could have the leftovers the next day. It has chopped romaine, chopped pears, bacon, feta, dried cranberries and chopped pecans, which we served on the side.
Last week I also made Cheesy Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole off Pinterest, which is perfect for using leftover turkey. This was seriously one the best casseroles I have ever made (maybe it was the 2 1/2 cups of cheese?), and I ate the leftovers for lunch and dinner for the next three days.
I hope you had a terrific Thanksgiving and I'd love for you to share your favorite recipe you had on your Thanksgiving table this year in the comments section below.
