Beef Stew with Vadouvan

I didn't believe it was possible to make a flavorful beef stew without beef stock, but this recipe proved me wrong. An unassuming combination of cheap stew meat, green beans, tomatoes, and spices come together on the stove and cook low and slow, turning into something distinctly more than the sum of its parts. The green beans melt into lusciousness while, miraculously, maintaining their texture through hours of cooking. And the tomatoes become a complex, silky sauce that coats the beef and does wonders for a bowl of hot rice.

I adapted this stew from a Food52 recipe that, quite frankly, needed no adapting. It calls for coriander and cumin, which I used in moderation, and which are quite lovely. However, I also added plenty of vadouvan, an intriguing blend combining many of the spices in curry - cumin, tumeric, mustard seeds - with more French spices like shallots and nutmeg. It's positively seductive, and it works magic on this stew.

Susan on Food52 uses an interesting method for cooking this stew, skipping the browning process and instead simply covering the beef with water and cooking it just so. I'm not so bold; I insisted on browning the beef in just a tablespoon of olive oil, and I was happy to have browned the beef before making the stew. That said, I can't think of a time when Amanda and Merrill have steered me wrong, so should you want to skip the browning, I have every faith you'd make something delicious. Go forth, friends. It's beef stew season.

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Beef Stew with Vadouvanadapted from Food52 Serves 6-8

1 tablespoon olive oil 1 lb. stew meat, cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks salt and pepper 16 oz. crushed tomatoes 1 lb. green beans, ends trimmed, halved 2 cloves of garlic 1 teaspoon coriander 1 teaspoon cumin 1 tablespoon vadouvan (if not using, increase coriander and cumin to 2 teaspoons each)

Drizzle the olive oil into a heavy bottomed dutch oven or covered pot and place over medium heat. Sprinkle beef with salt and pepper on all sides, and add beef to the pot in a single layer. Sear, turning as needed, until lightly browned on all sides.

Add water to cover beef, the green beans, and the crushed tomatoes, garlic cloves, and spices. Stir to combine, cover the pot, and reduce heat to low. Simmer, covered, for about 2 hours, until beef is very tender and green beans are soft but still intact. Check on stew periodically, stirring and adding more water if necessary. By the time the beef is thoroughly cooked, the liquid will have reduced considerably, so you'll probably have to add water at least once while the stew cooks.

Serve hot over rice, with plenty of sauce ladled overtop.

Curried Cauliflower Chickpea Salad

You might -- as I did -- assume that any recipe written by the likes of Thomas Keller is completely out of reach for us mere mortals. Yes, he of the Best Restaurant in New York publishes books, with recipes in them. I have one of these books, and it isn't even the crazy-complicated one. It's Ad Hoc, the most approachable of his books, which documents the food from his family-style restaurant in Yountville. I've read it through several times; it's a beautiful volume. It's found a permanent home on our coffee table. Unfortunately, I've been too flat-out intimidated to actually make his food. The recipes look simple enough - farro with butternut squash, summer vegetable gratin, etc - but when you dig deeper, every recipe subtly calls for like eight other recipes. I was a bit put off.

You probably think I'm being lazy, or weak, or something. After all, better women have cooked every recipe from his high-end cookbook without breaking a sweat. (Okay, maybe a little sweat.) But I am not so bold. I confess, I tire at the site of long, involved recipes, especially when they're ultimately meant to be eaten as a weeknight dinner. I believe there's plenty of time to cook good food at home, even on weeknights, but multi-step recipes require either lots of time, or lots of foresight. These days, I have neither. But after this weekend, I do have a newfound enthusiasm and can-do spirit: I'm cooking (slightly adapted) Keller, and you can too.

I've been eyeing this salad of chickpeas and curried cauliflower for as long as I've had Ad Hoc at Home on my coffee table. The picture in the book is gorgeous: it features both dried and fresh chickpeas, sliced green and red endive, little coin-sized cauliflower florets, pretty pickled onions, the works. It looks so fresh and colorful, like something I would totally make.

curried chickpea cauliflower salad

In reading the recipe, I thought the flavors in the dish seemed really well-balanced, so I hesitated to make any changes. But then I realized that I wanted to actually bite the bullet and make this recipe, so I forged ahead. No fresh chickpeas at the markets these days, and canned chickpeas are really fine: one step eliminated. I happened to have some pickled onions left over from another recipe, so I used those. If I hadn't had them, that step is actually quite easy. As for the wine-soaked raisins, I had only currants and red wine, instead of the white wine and golden raisins called for. Still, the end result was quite delicious. I even added dill, because I didn't have any parsley leaves (nor the time to fry them), and I think the salad benefited from the addition.

Does this prove that you can mess with Keller recipes successfully? N of 1, so I'm doubtful. But it does prove that Ad Hoc is more than coffee table eye candy. It's a book with recipes in it. Those recipes are for making, and after this experience, I'll be making more of them.

Also: One year ago today, I got hitched. Craziness! 10/17/10 was warm and sunny, joyous and spirited, and absolutely unforgettable in every way. Some of you were there in person to share that day with us, others shared it virtually via my post on the blog and your wonderful comments. I'm so happy to find myself in this space one year later, able to reminisce on that wonderful day with y'all. You're the best....and so is my awesome wife. Happy anniversary, D.

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea SaladAdapted from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home

For the Cauliflower: 1 head of cauliflower salt 1 tablespoon white vinegar

For the Salad: 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts 3 heads endive (mix of red and green is pretty) 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained 4 oz. oil-cured black olives, pits removed 1/2 an onion (red or white), halved and sliced into thin rings 1/4 cup white vinegar 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar 1/4 cup raisins or currants, plumped in 1/4 cup wine (red or white) 1 tablespoon minced chives 1/4 cup chopped dill salt and pepper

Curry Vinaigrette: 2 teaspoons good quality curry powder (preferably Madras) 1/4 cup champagne vinegar 1/2 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon minced garlic salt and pepper

Prepare the Cauliflower: Core the cauliflower and remove the leaves. Halve the cauliflower, then cut into florets about the size of a quarter or slightly larger.

Set a medium pot full of salted water on high heat and bring to a boil. Add vinegar and cauliflower, and cook until cauliflower is fully cooked but still firm, about 4 minutes. Strain cauliflower into a bowl and cool completely.

Prepare Onions: Combine onions, vinegar, and sugar in a small bowl. Stir to combine, then set aside for about 10 minutes, longer if you have it.

Prepare Dressing: In a small dry pan over medium heat, toast curry powder until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake vigorously to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble the Salad: Remove the ends of each endive head, and slice into 1/4-inch rings. Transfer to a large bowl. Add cooled cauliflower, chickpeas, pine nuts, olives, onions (drained of their pickling liquid), raisins, and dill in a large bowl. Add dressing, stir to combine, and adjust salt and pepper levels to taste. Serve with chives sprinkled overtop.

Salad can be kept in an airtight container for a few days after serving, but is best the day it is made.

My Israeli Salad

If you ask D about my eating habits, she'll not hesitate a moment before telling you that they're strange. Among what she deems my more odd tendencies is my affinity for salad in the morning. She - and most everyone else - like starting the day with oatmeal, yogurt, pancakes. (I do, too. Not sure how else to explain this, this, this, and, you know, this whole category.) But I'm also quite content to make breakfast from chopped vegetables, some avocado, a squeeze of lemon, and a hunk of feta cheese.

That's what I did while living in Israel. If I wasn't running out the door with a bottle of drinkable goat's milk yogurt in hand, I was frequently making this salad in the mornings. Frankly, I was making a version of this salad nearly three times a day.

Classic Israeli salad doesn't have feta or avocado. It's just tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, lemon, and salt. That's good, too - but this is better. It's more luxurious, and more filling. Serve it with pita and some hummus or labneh, and you've got a complete meal. For years, this has been my Israeli salad. I'll happily stuff it into a falafel sandwich, just like real Israeli salad, but I'll also pile it on wheat toast, taking things in a slightly different (but still delicious) direction.

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When my mom and I are eating together, we often make something like this. The feta she buys is softer than mine, and it has this way of melting into the salad that I really like. If you think you'll enjoy that, buy a soft feta. Sheep's milk feta is especially nice, and the one I get at my local Whole Foods is pretty soft. Otherwise, buy a hard feta and cube it for the salad.

I hope you get a chance to make this while tomatoes are still plentiful and cucumbers are nice and crunchy. Before you know it, we'll be talking about apple pie. Here.Comes.Fall.

My Israeli SaladServes 2 as a side salad

2 cups cherry tomatoes (I like to use more than one color) 1 avocado, halved, pitted, and cut into chunks 3 Persian or other small cucumbers, quartered lengthwise and cut into chunks 5 oz. feta cheese, cubed or crumbled juice and zest 1 lemon 3 tablespoons olive oil 1/4 teaspoon salt freshly cracked pepper

In a medium bowl, combine vegetables and toss to combine. Add cheese, and give the mixture a few turns, avoiding breaking up the cubed feta too much. (This is less of an issue if you're using crumbled feta.)

In a small bowl, combine lemon juice and zest, olive oil, salt, and several grinds of pepper. Pour over salad, toss gently, and taste. Add more salt, pepper, or lemon as needed. Serve.

Zucchini and Snap Peas with Sesame Oil

In some sense, it's hard to come up with anything insightful to say about a dish containing four ingredients, one of which is salt and the other three of which are in this post's title. On the other hand, one taste had me going on and on about how simple, how delicious, it all was. It's a dish of contradictions: complex flavor from very few ingredients, a celebration of the bounty of summer with none of the fuss involved in, say, sour cherry pie.

We're talking about zucchini and snap peas, two of summer's greatest-hit vegetables. If you've seen those very small zucchini at the market and wondered what to do with them, this is the perfect recipe for showing off their shape. (If you can't find baby zucchini, regular zucchini sliced into thick coins will work just fine.) I've spent many summers sauteing zucchini coins in butter; never once did I consider ditching the butter in favor of water. (Ditching butter? Would I ever? No.) But this is an exception: when you're dealing with summer's freshest vegetables, at the peak of the season, a little salted water is all you need.

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I first had simple blanched baby zucchini at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Theirs were blanched very briefly, kept still somewhat crunchy, then coated in sesame seeds and served just so, as a first course. Zucchini and sesame are a great match, and I echoed that pair here, but using sesame oil instead of the seeds. The blanched vegetables need little else: just some flaky salt to make the flavors really pop.

It's important to really drain the blanched vegetables well. By the time you're dressing them, you really want them completely dry, or else the oil will mix with the water and make a very diluted dressing at the bottom of the bowl. Usually I love that sort of delicious runoff, but here it's not welcome. You're looking for bone-dry vegetables, lightly coated in sesame oil and speckled with good, flaky salt. That is all. You will eat these on the porch, on a long summer evening. Or in the hot kitchen, off the platter, with your fingers. And then (I hope!) you will thank me.

Zucchini and Snap Peas with Sesame Oil

As I said in the post, you really want the vegetables to be completely dry before you dress them. Let them strain well for several minutes, and you'll be all set.

Also, two different ways to serve this dish. The first is to drizzle the sesame oil and sprinkle the salt over the vegetables. The second is to serve the vegetables unadorned on a platter, and give each of your guests a small bowl with a tablespoon or so of sesame oil and a sprinkling of salt. That way, they can grab a warm zucchini, dip it in the salted oil, and eat with their fingers. I think I actually prefer the second method, but both are great.

Serves 4 as a side dish

1 pound zucchini (if using baby zucchini, leave whole; if using large zucchini, slice into 1/2-inch coins) 1 pound snap peas 3-4 T sesame oil flaky salt

Put a pot of salted water over high heat and bring to a boil. Add zucchini to the pot and cook 1 minute. Add snap peas, cook 1 minute more, and drain. You're serving these vegetables warm, so no need to use an ice bath; instead, you just slightly undercook them, and they cook the rest of the way while cooling.

If using coins of large zucchini instead of whole baby zucchini, add them at the same time as the snowpeas, and cook just about 1 minute, maybe 10 seconds more.

Drain vegetables well, wiping with a towel if necessary. Transfer to a serving platter. Drizzle with sesame oil, enough so that when you give the platter a few shakes, all the vegetables look thinly coated. Then sprinkle some flaky salt over the whole dish. Taste one. Does it need more oil? More salt? Adjust seasoning accordingly. Serve now, or later. They're great at room temperature, too.

As I mentioned above, if you'd prefer, you can serve the vegetables plain on a platter, and put out the salted sesame oil in a bowl for dipping. I think I prefer the dish this way, but both work just great.