by rivka
on April 4, 2012
Growing up, Passover was the holiday with all the rules. Among the “must”s were cleaning the whole house, covering the countertops, replacing the spices. Among the “mustn’t”s: bread, muffins, pasta, cake, cookies. Seeing as how I practically subsisted on spaghetti as a kid – homemade tomato sauce was the first food I perfected – I positively dreaded the gluten-less days of Passover. I really wasn’t into all the rules.
Ironically, though, as soon as the holiday arrived, my usual rules of eating went right out the window. Foods I’d never eat during the year, like matzo kugel and whitefish, suddenly seemed delicious. I couldn’t get enough. I remember sitting at my parents’ dining room table on the last day of Passover one year, nibbling on a matzo brei, thinking just how tasty it was, and realizing that in five hours, when the holiday ended, I’d never want to see matzo brie again. Funny how that works.
Terri, D’s stepmom, also breaks some of her own rules on Passover. An exceedingly healthy eater year-round, she goes through an absurd amount of margarine on Passover. What can you do, she says. There isn’t much to work with.
And she’s right. My mother, a mindful and healthy cook, makes a passover carrot kugel recipe that essentially reads like one for chocolate chip cookies. Sub carrots for chocolate, and you’ll have a carrot kugel that actually will make people swoon. On Passover.
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by rivka
on March 28, 2012
Among the highlights of my big New York birthday was dinner at Lupa. I haven’t been to Lupa in ages – not since right after college – and our meal back in February had me vowing not to wait so long before our next trip.
Lupa is a small spot. It’s long and narrow, and waiters constantly are squeezing by your table and muttering polite “excuse me”s under their breath as they navigate the cramped quarters. Apparently, Lupa has grown tremendously popular over the past several years; I’ve heard from friends that even weeknights have long waits.
Lucky for us, that Saturday night, we coasted straight to the back of the restaurant, tucked ourselves into a little table, and almost immediately got to work on a sampling of their verdure. That night, it was citrus-braised salsify that I’ve tried to recreate twice (good, not quite there); broccoli with burrata and chili; and beets coated in a smooth, green pistachio sauce, finished with a light vinaigrette. I took one bite, cooed, and started scheming about what it would take to get those beets on my home table.
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by rivka
on March 21, 2012
Had everything gone according to plan, I’d probably be telling you that I served this cucumber salad to a few close friends at low-key Friday night dinner. That we ate szechuan roasted chicken, white rice, and this cucumber salad with plenty of garlic and ginger. That we stayed up late, drinking wine and telling funny stories. That a couple people asked for the recipe for this salad, and so here I am today, sharing it as asked.
What actually happened: the roast chicken was in the oven, watercress and pea shoots were awaiting a splash of soy vinaigrette, rice was on the stove, and I was standing over the sink, eating every last slice of cucumber right out of the mixing bowl. By the time guests came over, the salad had been reduced to a small puddle of dressing. Whoops.
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by rivka
on March 13, 2012
We’ve had a couple exciting events in the past couple of weeks, and by events, I mean excuses to bake. Chocolate shortbread cookies. Buckwheat coffee thins. Black sesame biscuits. For days, I couldn’t stop. I had bags of flour open on the counter – and not just all-purpose or cake: whole wheat pastry, barley, even amaranth. I was on the warpath through Pure Dessert and Good to the Grain, and I couldn’t be stopped.
Until last week, that is. I took a couple of almond shortbread cookies out of the jar for D and me after dinner. She took one look at the crumbly, sandy cookie in my hand, then looked at me, and then slowly shook her head. “I can’t eat those anymore,” she said. “Can’t you just make normal, ordinary cookies?”
And so, the gauntlet was laid down.
“Normal ordinary” generally means chocolate chip (these ones in particular). But this time, I pulled out my jar of oats. And the little jar next to it, which contains – of course – raisins. I was determined to show D and the world that chocolate chip is not automatically the standard bearer in the ordinary cookie category, and judging by the reaction these cookies  got, I’d say I was successful.
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by rivka
on March 6, 2012
This is a story about the time when I finally learned to cook for my in-laws.
It shouldn’t be so hard, really. I love to cook. I do it pretty much every day. I have a food blog, for heaven’s sake. But in the past, cooking for the in-laws has proven more than I could handle. Don’t believe me? Just ask my father-in-law. Ask him about the time I bought frozen peas – the man loves peas – and then forgot them in the freezer. Ask him about the time I toiled over an apple pie (his favorite) only to realize that I’d ruined it with too much orange zest. Just don’t mention all those times I’ve made chicken. A different kind, every time, and never worth making again.
This weekend, I nearly repeated my past mistakes. Thursday evening, I had maple parsnip cake in the oven, and smoky chiles in a blender along with all the ingredients for mole poblano. I blended it smooth, dunked my finger in for a taste, and….shit! That stuff was spicy. Of course, I loved it. It burned, a long, slow burn that lingers on your tongue and builds with each bite. But people, it was seriously hot. That’s when I had the honest moment: between you, me, and the blender of mole, my father-in-law doesn’t do spice.
I’m not sure what I was thinking when I started on that mole recipe, but there I was, 2 hours later, with lots of mole that I really couldn’t serve for Friday night dinner. Instead of plugging forth stubbornly (yea, I just admitted to being stubborn; first step, right?), I piled that mole into a jar, tucked it in the fridge, promised myself top-notch enchiladas later in the week, and went back to square one. Square one, in this case, was an innocent-seeming recipe for chicken with apricots.
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by rivka
on February 25, 2012
There’s no good way to say this, and I’m sure that when I do, most of you will dismiss me as a loon. I don’t care much for mashed things. Sure, I make sweet potato puree at Thanksgiving. I do very much like applesauce, so I suppose that’s an exception right there. And if you puree butternut squash with plenty of cream, stuff it into pasta, and pan fry it in sage butter, well, I just as well might take back that little declaration altogether. But mashed parsnips, potatoes, celeriac – those things aren’t my bag. If I cooked steak more often, I might enjoy making them to accompany the meat. But as things are, I’ll usually pass.
Which is why this ginger-laced broccoli puree jumped out at me from the pages of the New York Times Essential Cookbook. I realize I just said I don’t like mashed things, but reading this broccoli recipe, I thought better. It’s just root vegetables I prefer solid. Mash up those avocados as much as you like. I love guacamole. And mangos – you can mash those into a great lassi. And you know what? Mashed broccoli. Who knew? It’s sublime.
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by rivka
on February 18, 2012
Lately, I’ve been on something of a snacking cake kick. Snacking cakes: hardly a new concept, they’re the loaf on the counter to enjoy with tea on a Saturday afternoon, or — in my case — the slices of sweet tucked into my lunch bag for when the 3 pm slump rolls around. The best snacking cake ever to leave my kitchen, for certain, is this number. I still make it at least monthly. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I default to it, perhaps slighting other, equally wonderful cakes that deserve their moment in the sun.
When we visited Jess and Eli last month, Jess made a whole wheat cinnamon snacking cake from Melissa Clark that blew me away.  Here I was stuck on maple and yogurt, and Jess had whipped up warm, wheaty cinnamon magic.  I needed to  branch out.
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by rivka
on February 13, 2012
Last week, NDP caught a bug of sorts. The front end of the site looked just fine, but when I tried to get behind the curtain and share my latest cooking projects with you all, I got a scary blank screen and an “access denied” message. Over the last several days, I’ve discovered that messages like “access denied” fall into a scary purgatory of blog management: neither the host’s problem nor WordPress’s problem. I was on my own.
Over the past 5 years of blogging, I’ve stared down more than one scary white screen. In fact, having to learn (just) enough HTML, CSS, PHP, & SSH to fix my own blog issues has been among the most challenging and rewarding aspects of writing Not Derby Pie. (And that’s not to mention the actual cooking and blogging, which no doubt have been the ultimate reward.) The malfunctions have had me in fits, and yes, there have been tears; but by the time last week’s scary moments had passed, I had a shiny new back-up, a working blog dashboard, and a fair amount of new knowledge about how the blog actually works. I’d say I got even more than I bargained for. I’m pretty sure I’ve nipped this thing in the bud, but in case we have a recurrence of scary white-screen – be patient. I’ll try to have things back up and running asap.
And of course, those of you who follow me on Twitter already know that this weekend wasn’t all spent in front of a computer screen. D, who pretty much laps the crowd for wife of the year, whisked me away on a semi-surprise trip to New York for my 29th birthday. The trip was delicious from start to finish; but I’ll have to tell you about it another time. Because today, we’re talking about soup.
Now then: shall we?
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