This is how you roast a fish:  Exit home.  Enter market.  Choose a whole fish (1 1/2 pounds for two) with clear eyes and red gills that doesn’t have that leftover, loose skinned look, like it’s been up all night drinking alcohol.  Ask to have it gutted, scaled and rinsed.  Purchase a lemon, a head of garlic, and a few sprigs of rosemary.  Go home.  Get out a pan the fish will fit in, your best olive oil and kosher salt.  Spill the salt into a little dish.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Drizzle olive oil on the bottom of the pan.  Unwrap the fish and dry it with paper towel.  Slice two or three garlic cloves (no need to peel) and lemon slices.  Pour a little olive oil all over the fish, inside and out.  Sprinkle with a little salt, inside and out.  Set the fish in the pan.  Stuff it with lemon slices, rosemary sprigs and garlic slices.  Put a few more lemon slices and garlic slices on the top.  Roast for about 20 minutes.  Check that the fish flakes with a fork in the thickest bit, by the head.  (you wouldn’t need a knife to take a bite.)  It will continue to cook when it comes out of the oven.  Lift the whole fish onto a serving plate.  Swirl a tablespoon of unsalted butter into the juices in the pan, and pour over the fish.  Serve with orzo and sauteed leeks and garlicky sauteed asparagus.  This is delicious with yesterday’s bread ripped into two inch pieces and thrown into the oven for the last few minutes to toast.  Sprinkle bread with olive oil and salt and serve alongside the fish.

This is for my sweet and spicey friend. (adapted from my new favorite cookbook, Sunday Suppers at Luques)

In a piece of cheesecloth, gather a few sprigs of thyme, one bay leaf, 1 pepperoncino, 2 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, and 3 black peppercorns, and tie with cotton string.  Add slightly heaping 1/4 cup of sugar to a non aluminum saucepan, along with 1 cup of water.  Bring to a boil, then add 1/2 cup of red wine, and 1/2 cup of orange juice and 1 1/2 cups of pitted cherries.  Add the cheesecloth bundle.  Simmer about 7 or 8 minutes until the cherries are just tender. Strain cherries and reserve.  Reduce the liquid in the pan by setting it over a high heat until slightly thickened.  Strain.  Stir the cherries into the liquid.  Taste for salt and pepper.  Swirl in a tiny bit of butter.

Rain was predicted for the entire week, but sun is flooding through the cracks. You never know when without waiting or warning things might just go swimmingly well.  I tend to err on the other side–will my car make it down the dirt road without a short flight into the looming ditch, will I be blissfully teaching about the importance of searing and transgress with no possibility of return into the depths of the terrors of teflon, will I remember the vegetable?

I have good reason to worry, but even after breaking 2 glasses, losing the panel of the front door and the fear of full on scorpion attack, I am having a wonderful time.  Everbody got through knife skills without losing more than a few centimeters of fingernail and when I forgot to remember that I was meant to be serving a cucumber salad with mint, after only a few minutes of panic, I noticed carrots stacked in the pantry.  I sliced them every so thinly for a quick simmer in water seasoned with olive oil, a garlic clove and salt to make them already delicious before they even left their bath, and ready by the time the onion had caramelized with thyme and a bay leaf.  They were tossed together and finished off with another spill of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, (a shot of balsamic if you, but I didn’t have) currants and pignoli. 

There have been no recipes this week.  (I am in the valley of Mercatale di Cortona teaching a lovely group of women the joys of cooking.)  We have flung tender garlic shoots with abandon into frittatas and lentils, and braised ribs with unmeasured wine.  There is always the risk that it won’t work out.  There is also the unlimited  possibility of amazing success and unexpected pleasure.  I completely forgot the sugar in the cake I was making for breakfast.  I cursed it, the pan it was sitting in, the oven that it was baking in, and threw a few “Porca Miseria’s” in for good measure.  Then I poured the smug cup of sugar into a sauce pan and melted it with a little water, a little orange juice and a squeeze of a lemon and reduced it by half.  When the cake was hot from the oven, I inverted it onto a plate, poured about a third of the syrup onto the pan, back in went the cake, and then after I poked holes all over the thing, I brushed the rest of the syrup over the top.  Delicous.  The recipe to start from:  1 3/4 cup of flour, 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 2 good pinches of salt, combined.  2 tablespoons of melted and slightly cooled butter, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 3/4 cup room temperature whole milk and 1 slightly beaten room temperature egg, combined.  Mash a very ripe banana.  Stir into the liquid ingredients.  Combine the dry ingredients with the wet, with the outside edge of your hand, only until everything is combined.  Make the syrup using not quite 1/2 cup of sugar, a few tablespoons of water, a few tablespoons of orange juice and the juice from one lemon.  Reduce by half.  When the cake is done (baked at 375 degrees), wait about 5 minutes and invert.  When still warm, pour 1/3 of syrup onto bottom of original pan, or another plate.  Get your cake back on there so it is sitting on a pool of syrup.  Brush the rest of the syrup over the top.  Pile fresh strawberries, uncut in the middle.  Serve slightly warm.

At 80 Kenyon Street, in a room made into a phone booth by the following tenant, there was no place for an aging pair of jeans to chew its cud.  Before a new pair of jeans came in, the old pair was cut and accessorized into a whole new life that took up less space and a different drawer.  My original 16.99 for a cornerstone of my wardrobe ended as a denim wallet, tote bag, a mini skirt and possibly even a throw pillow.  Denim was “in” because there was no throwing denim out.  It was too available, too durable, and too transitional.  Which takes me to chicken.
Rework it.

Saute a cleaned, sliced leek in a spill of olive oil with a sprig of fresh thyme of a few leaves of basil and a clove of garlic that has been cut once, in half.  The leek should be completely softened over a low flame.  Scrape out the leek, add another spill of olive oil, increase the heat, and a package of thickly sliced mushrooms.  No salt or stirring until the mushrooms are beginning to go golden.  Then a few pinches of kosher salt (table salt has silicone and silicone is hell on your body) and a stir.  Scrape the mushrooms onto the leek plate; another spill of olive oil and toss in halved, cherry tomatoes that you have thumbed the seeds from.  Season with salt.  Serve as a ragoux on top of room temperature, lovely chicken left over from last night.

I know it’s Spring and I appreciate that tender asparagus and furry fave pods are available in heaps of new born chlorophyll.  I have been making menus, shopping, marinating, chopping, boning, searing, braising, and roasting. Coaxing peas out of their jackets, stripping artichokes, smashing basil, and slicing tiny fennel bulbs into slivers.

When I come home, I want ice cream.  Full fat, no chemicals, smooth and creamy, grandma-would-a-made-it (except she is 98 and busy watching 24 hour Bonanza reruns).  It soothes, it lifts (spiritually), and it nurtures.

You could probably whip a pile of string beans into a puree and then pour some crazy lobster flavored liquor over the top, set them on fire, shave truffles over that and serve it in a long stemmed glass with a swizzle stick of fresh peas and a chaser of hot lemon cream, but I prefer my string beans alone, and practically naked.  Especially when I am nervous.
I had a cooking audition last night in a home with a view normally reserved for the winged; 76 stories up and windows that wrapped around the hills of New Jersey, the Statue of Liberty the bridges that connect Manhattan on the East, Manhattan on the West, the whole of Central Park, some of all of the boroughs and I’m sure if I squinted I could see Connecticut.  I was thinking about a tasting menu with 46 items, and instead I decided on my classic meat sauce with all the love I have to give, seared chicken with a warm carrot salad tossed with shallot, currant and pignoli and practically naked green beans.  They liked it.

If it’s a day when you have it all together and you want to shake things up, simmer the beans with a dash of olive oil and salt until they are just tender.  In a saute pan at the same time, drizzle in a little olive oil and add a shallot for a pound of beans, about a tablespoon of fresh parsley, the same of mint, a little salt and once the shallot has begun to caramelize, a handful of pignoli, shaking the pan until the pignoli begin to go golden. (No further) Toss with the string beans and taste for salt and freshly ground black pepper.  This is also good with a tumble of your favorite goat cheese.

The perfect thing to take to somebody’s house for Easter:

Cupcakes with fresh coconut on top and a few jelly beans.  Toasted almonds with rosemary, lemon zest, garlic and a little red pepper.  A lasagna with homemade noodles, stuffed with spinach, garlic, sauteed mushrooms, white sauce (no red) and parmesan.  A charcuterie platter.  A cheesecake.  A chocolate rabbit.

A ham with a mustardy, brown sugary, dried apricot glaze.  A roasted turkey breast that you baste with the dedication of a new mother.  A chocolate rabbit.  Fried zucchini pancakes (In case you need something to do when you get there; these need to made in the minute.)  Popovers with a little gruyere cheese in the batter.

Scottish bacon on crusty bread.  Pate.  A brand new cheese that no one has ever tasted before. Artichoke puree.  A chocolate rabbit. Or champagne.  Or a kiss.

Here is a link to the pancakes:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/dining/081vrex.html?ref=dining

Lord and Taylor had a 40 percent off sale, plus I had the 20 percent off coupon from the paper, and on top of that I was one of the first 250 customers at the door, which meant there was a man standing there handing out coupons for another 15% off.  Mama is feeling pretty good at the moment.  You know what screams Spring to me?  A pair of knee hi Wellies like the Queen wears, along with a pound of “natural” ground beef; and that is exactly what I bought.  (Are other cows not natural?  Now that I have the boots, I can go and have a look for myself.
I am tempted to make the classic Friday night treat, Sloppy Joes, except without the can.  You can’t serve dinner from a can, in a pair of classy new rain boots.  Saute a clove of garlic, whole, an onion, half a carrot, and half a stalk of celery, finely minced, in your best olive oil with a little salt, freshly ground pepper, a few red pepper flakes, a sprig of rosemary, and a bay leaf, until it cries out to you to be eaten.  It should take about 15 minutes over a medium/low flame.  Push them to the side, and add about 1 to 2 tablespoons of tomato paste.  Toast for about 1 minute.  Stir into onion mix.  Remove from the pan.  Add another drizzle of olive oil, and a pound of ground beef.  Season the beef, and cook slowly with plenty of attention, until the meat is nearly cooked through.  Drain, and get it back in the pan with your onion mixture.  The garlic at this point should be softened; smash it thoroughly with a fork, and stir it into everything else.   Add one or two whole plum tomates from a can that you squish first, so that there are no big bits.  If you have homemade chicken stock, add about 1 cup.  (If not, a half cup of dry red wine).  Or both.  If you have the boots on, go for it.

Let this simmer for about an hour, adding a little more liquid if you need to.  Serve over a toasted slice of thick, delicious bread, that has been brushed with your best olive oil.

On the side–wine, and that new Parmigiano made with buffalo’s milk at Fairway Market (74th street and Broadway) and RAIN!!!!

It may be because I am a child of the 70’s when convenience started to pop itself up another notch.  Cooking with boxed cakes and canned spaghetti was an art and if we could have afforded TV dinners with cake included for all the kids at my birthday party, I would have stapled a balloon to each one and included myself as a member of the Hartford, Connecticut Jet Set.  Or maybe it’s because my mother could make dinner (never from a mix), for 6 in the under 7 minute time frame she had when she got home from work, which inspired me to thrive on the challenge of cooking AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

It’s not always the right choice.

Fritattas are already a convenience food.  The other night, when I was making fritattas for 35 I decided to use the biggest pan I had.  Why make 18 that each serve two when you can make 2 that each serve 18?

I’ll tell you why–because if you are using a pan that has rubber fixed to the handle, you can’t put it in the oven, and if you can’t put it in the oven, it’s hard to have control when it’s time for flipping and that thing is air born.
So make your fritattas in little batches, and make your people wait if they have to.  That’s what nuts are for.  Start by caramelizing your onions.  Ease a tablespoon of unsalted butter to melting, and then add a spill of olive oil.  Bang the skin off a clove of garlic and throw it in the pan uncut, along with a sprig of thyme and a bay leaf.  Slice one bursting with youth yellow or red onion as thinly as possible and add to the pan.  Give it a little kosher salt and saute over a low to medium heat until it is so delicious that it becomes to difficult to think about sharing it.  That’s how you know it’s done.  Cool to room temperature.  Whisk no more than 6 eggs together and season them with a grind of black pepper and a pinch of salt.  Wipe out the saute pan so that it is completely clean.  Heat the pan over a medium flame and give it another pour of olive oil (the better the olive oil, the better the flavor).  Add the onions to the egg and pour into the pan.  Let it set for a minute, and then very carefully push the edges towards the middle of the pan (just a half an inch or so) with a wooden spoon, to let the egg flow underneath itself.  When the top still looks very wet, but not like it has big pools of egg left, slide the egg without flipping, onto a plate of the same size.  Put a pat of butter in the pan.  Now get your courage up, and flip the whole plate onto the pan so that the frittata is cooked side up.  Almost immediately to about 10 seconds later, your frittata will be done.  It should be still slightly wet in the middle.

Serve with sauteed asparagus, French green olives with the pits and ridiculously good bread.