Beans 'n Greens

After all this time I'd say my diet has changed a little bit. After reading a lot of Mark Bittman, mulling the pros and cons in my head, and considering my own health, I have decided to become a pseudo-vegetarian. Now I say 'pseudo' because I'm not cutting out meat entirely but I am limiting it in my diet to only a couple times per week or only when I'm out to dinner and vegetarian options are limited. It's a win-win -- good for me and good for the environment as Bittman would argue in his book Food Matters.

I understand the vegetarian diet isn't for everyone, and the raw food or vegan diet is for even less. There is a huge commitment to make to live this way, and for foodies it can be even more difficult. If you are the type of person who can do it, then good for you. I cannot live entirely without meat however, but have felt better since limiting it in my diet. It has also been fun to get creative with a whole different way of cooking. Jazzin' up those veggies and whole grains has not been as challenging as I thought. In reality, I don't really miss meat or crave it throughout the week. A meat-free diet can be just as filling and satisfying.

The biggest addition to my diet has been various beans and various greens. I've been honing in on my favorite combinations of beans and greens but excited to try more as certain greens start in season and as I start to incorporate unfamiliar beans into my pantry. A weeknight standby has become great northern beans, escarole, and tomato sauce -- a dish I first had at our neighborhood Italian joint that was so luscious and creamy I had to try to make it at home.

What's your favorite beans 'n greens preparation?

Beans and Escarole with Spicy Tomato Sauce

1 head of escarole, cleaned and chopped into 1 inch pieces

1 can of great northern beans, rinsed and drained well

1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped

28 oz can of your favorite tomato sauce (or homemade)

red pepper flake, to taste

Parmesan cheese

Heat the tomato sauce in a small saucepan, adding red pepper flake and any other seasoning to taste. In a large skillet, heat a few tablespoons of oil then add the garlic. Cook until fragrant, then add the escarole. After 2 or 3 minutes, when the escarole starts too cook down, gently stir in the beans so not to break them. Cook another minute or 2 adding more oil if it gets too dry. Finally ladle in the tomato sauce and turn the heat down to low. Let it sit for a couple more minutes to let the flavors come together. Season with salt and pepper. Top with grated cheese and serve with warm, crusty bread.

best weekend ever

Imagine the best weekend of your life. Now imagine Michelin star dining with top notch wines. A 2+ hour meal of fun and playful dishes. Elusive bars with hidden entrances. Supersized macarons to put in your pocket. Finished with a heaping helping of sizzling meat. This was my weekend. The weekend of your dreams.

It started at Esca -- the Mario Batalli joint. Here I admitted that I don't like oysters but I love halibut belly. I was amazed by every wine we tried from the bubbling champagne to the crisp basil-tinged white and luscious reds.

Then we were off to Jean-Georges for a lunch of incredible value. I was wowed with watermelon and refreshed with their homemade sodas. A quick snack of macarons at Bouchon bakery was only across the street.

A late night reservation at wd50 was a true highlight. A casual atmosphere, wd50 is no Alinea but Chef Wylie Dufresne is all business when it comes to what's on the plate. The dishes were fun and quirky. Mostly tasty but nothing too, too memorable. wd50 is more about experimenting with food and textures than big flavors and challenging the senses like Grant Achatz does at Alinea. Not sure I would eat there again, but this was a meal I will remember for a long time.

Striped bass wrapped in pineapple with chorizo and popcorn

Everything bagel (ice cream) with smoked salmon and crispy cream cheese

Foie gras with passion fruit center and chinese celery and avocado dust

Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, kampachi and fried potatoes

Cold-fried chicken with buttermlk-ricotta, caviar, and honey tobasco

Sweet shrimp with red pepper strands, black sesame and shiso

Beef consommé with bernaise gnocchi and haricot verts

Lamb loin, pickled ramps, black garlic romesco and soybean

Chewy lychee sorbet with pistachios and celery puree

Hazelnut tart filled with coconut, chocolate, and chicory foam

Rainbow sherbet of tarragon, orange, and tarragon over olive oil sponge cake

A few rendezvous at various speakeasies around the East Village rounded out the weekend. Angel's Share was very well hidden behind a nondescript door in a busy sushi restaurant. The Bourgeois Pig was super hip with snazzy decor. And Please Don't Tell, found on the other side of a phone booth inside a hot dog joint where you pick up the phone to gain entrance, was full but will have to be explored next time.

We ended the weekend with Peter Luger's monstrous meat (a 40 oz porterhouse!) while World Cup blared from the next room. Chocolate coins dipped in a bowl of "schlag" finished the perfect weekend. I've never been so happy and so full.

Green Bananas

Call me crazy (ahem bananas...) but I hate ripe bananas. In fact I only eat green bananas. Now I don't mean so green that you can barely bite through them or peel them but just green enough. I find them refreshingly grassy that way and the riper they get the sweeter and worse they become. Ripe bananas are just too strong in flavor and I can't stand the mushy texture.

I have to admit, I feel quite badly about throwing away my bananas as soon as they turn a bright, bright yellow. Smelling their unpleasant sweetness while eying the trash can the other day, I thought instead to save those inedible fruits. I decided to bake banana bread!

Seldom do I have such a strong feeling to bake and actually have all of the ingredients on hand. Most of the time there is always one ingredient missing and that is what happened in the case of this bread. OK actually I was missing two ingredients.... chocolate chips and white flour. The chocolate chips are any easy omit but the flour, well I'm ashamed for not having any in my kitchen. I did however have some wheat flour stowed deep in the cabinets from a past bread experiment. So I went with the wheat and was pleasantly surprised with the results.

This comes from Molly and is so easy a monkey could mix it together (doh!). Moist and tender, and tastes best the day after.


Banana Whole Wheat Bread
adapted from Orangette

3 ripe bananas (medium or large)
2 eggs
1 ½ cups whole grain wheat flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (or nuts, optional)

Preheat the oven to 375. Mash the bananas in a large bowl. Add the eggs and combine. Stir in the remaining ingredients until smooth. Pour batter into a parchment-lined or oiled loaf pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

The Great Cupcake Debate

How many cupcake shops does one city really need? Cupcakes have been on my mind since moving to Pittsburgh. Early on I realized that there was some debate among bloggers, locals, and the like who makes the best cupcakes in the city.

I decided to see for myself and started with Coco's in Shadyside. This shop sells cupcakes, the occasional caffeinated beverage, and is always empty when I visit. Maybe I just miss the cupcake rush hour. The best thing about Coco's is that it is walking distance from my apartment. This cuts the guilt of eating a lot of cupcakes a bit since I have to walk about 1.5 miles round trip to satisfy my needs. Coco's also has different flavors daily and seasonally so there's always something new to try. They also have vegan options on occasion.


I first tried the orange kahlua cupcake. Rich with kahlua icing and just a hint of orange in the cake.

The vegan margarita cupcake. Vanilla cupcake (I think) with a really nice lime icing. Salt may have been an interesting addition...

S'more cupcake. Chocolate cake, marshmallow-y icing, chocolate fudge, mini marshmallows, and graham cracker dust.

Peanut Butter Banana. Ripe banana cake with peanut butter icing so soft and light it melted a bit on the way home.

Coco's does cupcakes pretty well. Their flavors are adventurous and come together nicely. The s'more cupcakes taste like s'mores. The peanut butter banana tastes like peanut butter smeared on a ripe banana. The icing is never sickening but perfectly light and just sweet enough. My only complaint is the underlying cake.

The inside is dense and somewhat oily. I'd much prefer a lighter, more tender cake underneath. The cake to icing portion is a little off as well leaving me slightly overwhelmed by the icing and missing the flavor of the cake. Give Coco's a try if you're walking down Ellsworth.

Next stop, Dozen's Bakeshop. After I recover from the sugar overload.

New town, new tastes

Apologies for the delay. Since we last spoke I've traveled across the world and returned only to move to another state. The good eats have been abundant so there is a lot of catching up to do.

I am recently back from Southern Vietnam where I and the rest of our group provided chiropractic care to the needy. I wish I could say the food was the best part of the trip but I can only say it was an afterthought after many long days of sightseeing, relaxing at a beautiful resort, and of course sweating it out for patients in various hospitals. Some of the food was awesome but most of it not quite as exciting as you'd think. Vietnamese food has never been on the top of my list of preferred cuisines but I did have pho most mornings for breakfast, spring rolls at nearly every meal, fresh seafood, and enough fish sauce to drown in.

The real food highlight of the trip were the fruits. Instead of sweet dessert, every meal was followed with exotic fruits like dragon fruit, rambutan, mangosteen, lychee, and tropical variations of watermelons, oranges, bananas, and pineapple.

I hope to return to Vietnam in the future to truly explore the flavors of the region. Due to the size of our group and the circumstances, I think we missed out on a lot of the good eats of Ho Chi Minh City and Vung Tau.

We have said goodbye to Florida and relocated to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the food is so good here (and cheap!) that I find myself not cooking often. Because there is good food on every street, this blog may evolve into something a little different. I hope to share all of our Pittsburgh dining experiences here with you beginning in the days ahead.

Favorite Chicken Curry of the Moment

Unfortunately my downstairs Indian neighbors have vanished. They left as mysteriously as they came. No moving truck, cars, or furniture. Poof. Vanished. Now I no longer come home to the sweet smells of their bustling little kitchen. Indirectly thanks to them, I am now better in the kitchen when it comes to Indian dishes. My new downstairs neighbors may now be tempted with the smells of curry from my upstairs kitchen.

This recipe has been tweaked a little based on my own trials and errors. I've gotten in the habit of pureeing all the base ingredients to improve the texture and richness. Ever since an incredible korma I had in Atlanta, I'm also hooked on adding golden raisins and almonds for a whole different experience.


Favorite Chicken Curry
adapted from My Husband Cooks

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed of some fat and veins
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
1 tblsp curry powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp garam masala
3 cloves garlic
1 tblsp fresh ginger
1 serrano pepper (jalapeno works as well)

1 tblsp + 1 tsp curry powder (use a hot curry powder if you like more heat)
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cinnamon

14 oz can coconut milk
1 onion, chopped
2 serrano peppers, chopped (or jalapeno)
5 cloves garlic
1/2 cup dry white wine (or chicken broth)
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup golden raisins
fresh cilantro

Don't be too frightened by the ingredients list! First marinade the chicken. Put all the pieces in a large ziploc bag and add the yogurt. In a food processor blend the first set of ingredients. Pour the puree into the ziploc bag and mix everything together to coat the chicken thoroughly. Let chicken marinade over night or for however long you have to spare.

When you're ready to cook, take the chicken out of the marinade and shake off the excess. If you have a grill, grill the chicken to simulate the tandoori oven. If not, cook the chicken under the broiler, pouring off excess fat to prevent the future sauce being too oily.

In a small bowl, combine the spice mix. Set aside.

In a large pot, using a neutral oil like ghee or some butter, saute the onion, peppers, and garlic until just soft and slightly caramelized. Once soft, remove the saute and puree in a food processor until you have a nice paste. Return the paste to the pot and stir in the spice mix. Cook for no more than a minute then pour in the wine (or broth) and scrape up the bits on the bottom of the pot. Once the wine reduces, add the can of coconut milk and stir to combine.

Let this simmer for several minutes on low heat so it thickens nicely. After 10 minutes add the raisins, almonds, a little cilantro. If the chicken is done you can either chop it into pieces or place it whole in the pot. Stir around at a low simmer so the flavors come together. Add salt to taste. Serve piping hot over some rice or with naan.

Note: This makes a ton of thick, delicious sauce. Save the leftover sauce for another meal. Serve it over cauliflower, paneer, or whatever other leftovers for a real treat. The raisins will zing as they pop in your mouth.

Tired of Takeout

I'll be honest. I haven't been cooking much lately. It has gotten so bad that our favorite takeout guys recognize me on the street. They know where I live! I'm slowly coming back around. I just had some minor set backs. There was that week long illness that may or may not have been swine flu, the mysterious poison sumac incident, a bit of traveling, and don't forget about the 30 inches of rain.

This simple tofu dish can be made with ingredients you probably already have on hand. Replace the tofu with another protein if you prefer. You can throw this dinner together faster than that familiar takeout boy can make it to your door.


Sweet and Sour Tofu
adapted from Serious Eats

1 package (14-ounce) firm tofu
1 red onion, halved and sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
3 tblsp white wine vinegar
3 tblsp soy sauce
1 tblsp honey
1 tblsp brown sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

Drain the tofu with a heavy dish on top with paper towels for at least half an hour, changing the paper towels now and then. The drier, the better. Slice the tofu into small cubes and fry them in a bit of oil until browned on all sides. Add the onion, peppers, and garlic and cook until just soft, about 5 minutes. In a small bowl combine 1/3 cup hot water with the vinegar, soy sauce, honey, brown sugar, cornstarch, and red pepper flakes. Pour this sauce over the tofu once the vegetables have softened and let it thicken for a minute or two. Serve with rice.