Savory

Charoset, Two Ways

   Adam Zolkover
Charoset, Two Ways

Ask me why Monday night is different from all other nights. Come on — ask me. I got four reasons for you right here.

Bitter vegetables, double dipping, hardtack, and — why I oughta!

But seriously, folks: Monday night is different from all other nights in that it’s the first night of Passover. It is one long, well-ordered feast in which the wine starts dribbling in at sundown, and doesn’t stop flowing until legally-mandated closing time at midnight. And it is — traditionally — my favorite holiday of the year. Or at least, one of them.

Meat Pies with Broccoli Rabe

   Adam Zolkover
Meat Pies with Broccoli Rabe

I’d like to begin by assuring you all that this post in no way promotes cannibalism. Nor cattibalism, neither. It seems as though, as with my quiche lorraine, a great deal rides on a name. And while an empanada might be perfectly innocent, and while a Cornish pasty might pass with little more than a blush and a raised eyebrow, a meat pie is a horse of a different feather.

Quiche Lorraine

   Adam Zolkover
Quiche Lorraine

There’s something that’s brilliantly, deceptively pedestrian about a quiche Lorraine. We tend to think of it as elegant, perhaps because its name is French, or perhaps because Julia Child famously made one, or perhaps because so many people — so much to my confusion — seem to find shortcrust pastry to be a challenge. But in the immortal words of The Simpsons: would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet?

Not, conclude Bart and Homer, if you called it Stench Blossom. Or Crap Weed.

Meatballs Marinara, Italian Style

   Adam Zolkover
Meatballs Marinara, Italian Style

Culinary comrades, fellow food fanatics who follow this blog, if you have not seen Big Night — Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub’s 1996 ode to a failing Italian restaurant — you simply must. It is delicious.

Big Night is one of my all-time favorite films about food. Along with a precious few others — like Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, of all things — it landed at a malleable moment in my life, at a time when my interests could have gone in a lot of different directions, and it nudged me toward the kitchen. Primo, Shalhoub’s talented, unbending, self-righteous portrait of a brilliant chef, is exactly the kind of character I found fascinating in my teenage years. And the food — oh, the food.

Honey Wheat Boule

   Adam Zolkover
Honey Wheat Boule

Fresh baked bread: hot, straight from the oven, crust crackling as it cools on its wire rack in the chill air of winter. You wait, mouth watering. And then — like some Maenad with a sacrificial goat — you tear it apart with your bare hands and share it out, letting its steaming insides warm you all over.

Romantic? Yes. Gruesome? A bit. Rife with all manner of problems? Most definitely.

Saag Paneer

   Adam Zolkover
Saag Paneer

Real saag! exclaimed my friend Allia, smiling as I put the dish on the table. Most restaurants say saag paneer, but what they mean is palak. Spinach. Saag is always mustard greens.

Allia would know. Not only is her family from India, but they are avid cooks. Her aunt alone, I am informed, is responsible for untold gustatory delights. She is the sort of person who converts food haters into food enthusiasts, the sort who teaches classes on the delicate art of Indian cuisine — and sets her own price for her time.

Thanksgiving Thoughts: Vegan Pumpkin Soup

   Adam Zolkover
Thanksgiving Thoughts: Vegan Pumpkin Soup

It’s strangely appropriate, I thought as I was roasting pumpkins, that the making of this soup has required something borrowed (vegetable stock) and something blue (my good old trusty Dutch oven). After all, the reason why I am able to plan ahead this year — the reason why I am able to offer you some […]