Mamma Mia

#instafood

I didn’t have the luxury of growing up in a food driven family. My mom wasn’t the domestic type. I specifically remember one meal she made that left little to be desire. She pulled out a delicious smelling, but not homemade, loaf of garlic bread from the oven. Hungry and eager to dig in, we quickly noticed that she hadn’t taken the plastic wrap off, creating an inedible layer. I cannot remember if we threw the loaf in the trash compactor, or if we cut it the long way and ate the buttery, garlicky middle—something tells me the latter happened—but I think it highlights my mom’s cooking prowess. Eating out and takeout was the Pulkkinen-Harvey way.  Sorry if you read this, mom: you were great at everything else. Except driving…I digress, I digress!

I got a real dosage of home cooking when I dated this kid named Matt Giglio in high school. Minus the large family, they were the stereotypical, loveable, loud Italians. And there was always food on the table. How he and his sister stayed so skinny, I will never know. Despite my true Haitian heritage, and my very English-German last name, I like to think that if kids are in my future (sweet lord I hope they aren’t!) that I would be of the Italian mom variety. Home cooked meals on the table five nights out of the week, whipped together with love and adoration…and of course a little bit of brassy attitude. The other two nights, if you were curious, would be reserved for a nice restaurant meal and the other would be for leftovers. Yeah, I’ve put a little thought into this.

So, a few nights ago I ignored my pungent fish sauce and decided to go the Italian route. Sorry Asian food, you’ll have to wait. I went with the laziest meal possible, while still being able to keep my culinary muscles flexed. Think of it as an ‘active rest’ day in the kitchen. Folks, you guessed it, I made some pasta. And since I can kind of be an ingredient snob from time to time, I turned my nose up at the jarred, thick, preservative laden sauces that filled the shelves. I find that pasta only feels like a heavy meal when slathered in that red goop, so I ventured out and made my own. Well, I actually slightly modified a Martha Stewart version. Something tells me Stewart isn’t an Italian last name, but her sauce utilizes fresh ingredients, so I figured Mamma Giglio, if she could see me, wouldn’t mind.

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 pounds unrefrigerated ripe tomatoes (preferably plum)
• 1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
• 1 tablespoon flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic (from 2 garlic cloves), plus more if desired
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• Variation: 1 cap-ful of balsamic vinegar to give it a little punch
• 1 pound spaghetti or spaghettini
• Grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (optional)

Directions

1. Finely chop tomatoes, basil, parsley,balsamic, and garlic, and mix together with oil (or pulse ingredients, including oil, in a food processor to blend).*The photo above is an example of a halved recipe. If you are doing the small one, and only have a small food processor, you are going to want to do this in two or possibly three batches
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta, and cook until al dente. Drain pasta, and toss it in a serving bowl with the raw sauce. Transfer to 6 shallow bowls, and drizzle with oil. Serve with cheese.

I like to make the sauce and let it rest for at least fifteen minutes, an hour would be ideal, to let the flavors mingle. This sauce tastes great warmed but, but it is also phenomenal cold. Fresh basil is absolutely necessary in this recipe. The dried kind can’t compare. If you aren’t sure what to do with the leftover basil leaves, which can understandably be a deterrent when buying fresh herbs, make sure to grab a lemon at the grocery store and make some lemon-basil water, which is so refreshing after a workout (yeah, people, I’ve actually been working out!)

Lemom-basil water and my new fruit bowl. Isn’t it massive and magnificent?!

Peel Away ❤

Jocellyn

Foliage and Butternut Squash

#instasoup

I never truly appreciated New England Fall until I spent my first semester of college at High Point University in North Carolina. I expected the leaves to do their gussied up business of turning all orange and rougey, but they kind of just fell off the tree in a zero climax death. Now I see why people travel up north to stop—dangerously—on the side of the road and take snap shots of our calendar worthy foliage, which is still hauntingly beautiful every single year.

I like fall for many reasons. For one I can pull out my arsenal of cowl neck scarves that sit, unloved, in the closet during the humid months. I can eat a few more sweet treats because all the layers of clothing hide my stomach which had to be at attention for days at the beach. And I can also fill said tummy with a variety of soups. I love soups because they give you artistic leeway in the kitchen, they are generally cheap and easy to make, and slurps are inevitable. Who doesn’t love slurping? So, behold the first soup of the season! It’s a homemade butternut squash recipe from the Whole Foods website.

I’ve never really been a huge squash fan or foe—I don’t really eat it much except during Thanksgiving when it takes on an applesauce form—so I was hesitant. Much to my surprise, the soup turned out superb.

It has a wholesome simplicity to it. It’s not filled with a myriad of flavors, but it isn’t bland either. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on top and you have yourself a warm, soothing bowl that can be a main dish or paired with half a sandwich or even chicken. Tip: if you have the self-control to hold off, make it during the evening and don’t eat it until the following afternoon. Just like you shouldn’t immediately cut into meat that’s hot out of the oven, soup also needs time to settle, which allows the flavors to mingle.

Whole Food’s Classic Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 carrot, diced [I used 2 carrots and omitted the celery; I detest celery]
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 cups cubed butternut squash, fresh or frozen [I got more than 4 cups worth for $3.00]
• 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
• 4 cups low-sodium chicken broth [Since this soup doesn’t need lots of expensive ingredients, look for the best broth you can find!]
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Method:

Heat oil in a large soup pot. Add carrot, celery and onion. Cook until vegetables have begun to soften and onion turns translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in butternut squash, thyme, chicken broth, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until squash is fork-tender, about 30 minutes. Use an immersion blender [the best gadget you could possibly buy] to purée soup. Alternatively, let the soup cool slightly and carefully purée in batches in a traditional blender.

Peel Away ❤

Jocellyn

Sake Bombs and Boozy Afternoons

Evan questioning the legitimacy of my sake. Hey, I originally bought it for cooking!

I read The Great Gatsby when I was a sixteen year old in boarding school. I didn’t really understand the eggs, or the American dream, and all the other literary sneak-ins we were supposed to grasp, but I was intrigued by this idea of day drinking. And I mean casual day drinking. Not like Saint Patrick’s Day drinking where someone is inevitably booting their brains out by noon. I wanted to be one of those mostly classy, but sometimes loose, women in fun dresses drinking casually, but sometimes wildly, in those awesome pent house apartments in broad day light. Day drinking is opportunistic. You have more energy. You have hours to drink instead of a few short ones where you pound back Trashcans, Vodka Redbulls, and Kamikazee’s hoping to get drunk, have fun, and be back in bed in three to four hours. How unappealing, yet we all force ourselves to do it. Le Sigh.

Romanticizing aside, I’m usually the one trying to wrangle my friends into afternoon drinks while the bars are still quiet and you can hold a conversation without yelling and expelling little bits of spit. Or I’m trying to convince them that, yes, a glass of wine on the porch while watching people drive by would be a glorious idea. Alas, these plans usually never take off. Expect for yesterday, when in return for someday using my friends huge claw foot bath tub (the type that you can take a bath in and your boobs will actually make it fully underwater!) I said he could do laundry at my place. Laundry is a mundane task, but when you add in some Sake Bombs and a sunny day on the porch, followed by a trip to the bar during the dry cycle, life could not be any better.

The Sake bomb is simple. Fill a glass with beer, precariously balance of shot of sake on chop sticks (or bamboo skewers, which I think keeps in line with the Asian theme), and bang your fists on the table yelling out “ichi..ni..san!” (one, two, three in Japanese) until it falls in, and then you chug, chug, chug while silently praying your gag reflex doesn’t kick in. Or you can just drop it in, which I did because the mason jar mouth wasn’t extremely wide, but it felt so lack luster, so Jagermeister. Bring out a wide class for this feat.

So maybe this day would be better classified as mildly wild (I don’t think Sake Bombs constitute classy drinking), but there is always time for Sunday brunch with accompanying mimosas– fresh squeezed OJ, of course.
Peel Away ❤

Jocellyn