Cooking Away the Post Mexico Blues

After 10 days in Mexico, we returned to NYC earlier this week to freezing sleet. I quickly retreated to my recent memories of lounging on the beach and eating seafood for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with cold micheladas and tequila…for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Last night I couldn’t bring the sun back, but I could at least cook up some saltwater delicacies. I opted for scallops with spinach and lemon risotto since I didn’t want to compete with the tasty fish, shrimp and octopus ceviche we had grown accustomed to.

I used the lemon risotto recipe from Bon Appetit but I skipped the extra butter and parsley at the end. It also made enough for six so next time I would half the recipe.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Risotto-106451

For the scallops and spinach, I followed this recipe from the Unemployed Chef. I liked their hint about not moving the scallops around in the pan so that they get that nice carmelized color.

http://theunemployedcook.blogspot.com/2006/03/seared-scallops-over-wilted-spinach.html

After finishing our meal, we didn’t plunge into the ocean and nap under a palm tree. Instead we had ice cream and watched The Wire. In other words, time to go back to Mexico.

Tackling Gnocchi

During one of my precious nights out a few weeks ago, I had the Gnocchi with Gorgonzola sauce at Malatesta in the West Village. I rarely order gnocchi as they are often defrosted lumps of goo, but I needed something to soak up the wine in anticipation of an early morning baby wake up. Surprisingly, they were amazing and reminded me that gnocchi can be spectacular when done right.

Coincidently, Rupal called me a few days later and suggested we try making gnocchi in my little kitchen that night. She was inspired by the recipe in this article:

http://thedailycure.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/gnocchi/

She brought over some fresh eggs from an urban farming project she visited earlier in the day and after picking up some flour and potatoes, we were ready to go. There was something deeply satisfying about really making a meal from scratch. We riced the potatoes (more physically demanding than expected), kneaded the dough, rolled it out into little gnocchi snakes, and then cut them into little pillows. We laughed at the fact that we had bought six potatoes since we ended up with enough dough to feed 30 people. (See previous entry about being measurement challenged.)

The gnocchi weren’t perfect. I would add a bit more flour next time. But as we surveyed the mess of raw ingredients around us, we both felt ridiculously proud of our truly homemade meal and ourselves.

Measurement Challenged

I have no sense of distance, size, weight or anything else that requires estimating with numbers. To the amusement of Ryan, I’m constantly underestimating how many people live in NYC, how long the bike ride was or how heavy Xavier is. My obsession with frequent flyer miles has helped a bit with getting a sense of distance but other than that, I’m pretty useless. Not surprisingly then, when a carrot cake recipe calls for two cups of chopped carrots, I have no idea if that is ten carrots or three. (For the record it’s closer to 3.) To make a long story short, after making carrot cake for Valentines Day, I had more than a few leftover carrots.

I already wrote about carrot soup so I was hesitant to include this recipe but it’s awesome. And this is coming from somebody who hates cooked carrots. It’s called Moroccan Carrot Soup and I followed it almost exactly except I used ground cumin instead of toasted cumin seeds and I substituted nutmeg and cinnamon for the all spice.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Moroccan-Carrot-Soup-357911

I still have left over carrots.