Easy Carbonara

Historically speaking, my favorite type of pasta is a gnocchi or pappardelle with a lamb ragu. There was one time at ricotta fest when Gretchen made an unbelievable ricotta carbonara, but since then I hardly paid much attention to the dish. That is, until my sister and I ordered the dish at L'Artusi, and now I am obsessed. After L'Artusi, I went to Lupa, then I also went to Ciccio's, and, most recently, I ordered it for lunch one day from Lamarca. I couldn't get enough! Finally I decided to give it a try and make it at home. It was actually very easy! 

Diner en Blanc

At Sunny's house party on a fall night, a few people mentioned an "all white dinner" and I hadn't heard about this. Sunny mentioned it was "Diner en Blanc" and he had an extra ticket, so invited me. I didn't know much other than the party took place at a secret location, you had to dress up in white and you had to bring food. Sounded like my kind of party!

Ricotta Ice Cream

One day, Mai & Paul visisted Di Palo's and found out that you can buy three pounds of ricotta for $12. Not the gross, tasteless kind of ricotta at Gristede's, but REAL ricotta.

Naturally, we decided to host a Ricotta Fest dinner party. By the time we got our schedules organized, it was already June. June means ICE CREAM! Okay, that's a lie. Every month means ICE CREAM, but now that it is just starting to be summer in NYC, we needed reason to celebrate.

In addition to the ice cream, we made several other dishes. Mai and Paul made meatballs with ricotta, ravioli,  crostini, and chicken marsala. Gretchen made pasta with carbonara and a delicious ricotta cheesecake with a strawberry rhubarb topping.

At Di Palo's, we picked up three of these canisters.

Back at home, we opened up our canisters. As you can see below, the ricotta was in a metal-ish canister. We tried to think of eco-friendly uses for them. I suggested that they would be great for milkshakes. Until I realized that there were holes at the bottom and along the sides. 

I also picked up some prosciuotto for us to nibble on while we were prepping.

Mai & Paul had picked up some artisinal honey at a farmer's market. We decided to whip out some cheese & crackers and top with honey. The cheese (pictured below) looks like blue cheese, but it isn't. We don't know the name of this mystery cheese, but you can find it at Fairways. This was quite possibly the best snack idea ever! I've never had honey in this form before, usually mine comes from a squeeze bottle. The honeycomb is on the bottom and you have to scrape the honey off the top. 

We devoured two boxes of crackers and the entire wedge of cheese. What? We got hungry cooking in the hot kitchen...

Mai made some homemade pasta to accompany her ricotta meatballs...

As if we did not purchase enough ricotta cheese, we purchased a pound of parmesan cheese as well. Most of it is in the photo below.

{The finished meatball product}

{Mai prepping the ricotta ravioli} 

{Delicious crostini}

{Chicken Marsala}

{Bacon wrapped dates stuffed with ricotta}

{One of our guests, Nam, made a wonderful green papaya salad}

{Ricotta cheesecake!}

Both of the ricotta ice creams were easy to whip up (strawberry basil to follow this in another post). 

I've never made ice cream with a ricotta base, and this was the perfect time to experiment. I searched far and wide for a recipe and finally picked the one below.

Don't be afraid of this recipe - there is no custard base - so you don't have to worry about scrambled eggs instead of a perfectly fluffy, creamy ice cream. As in, this may be my all time favorite. Huge disclaimer: Apparently, this ice cream loses texture after an overnight freeze. You should probably finish the whole thing the night you make it (and that really shouldn't be that hard). I'm not sure why the texture goes from creamy to chalky, maybe because I didn't strain the ricotta.

Also note: as the weather gets hotter, don't try to churn ice cream in a sauna-ish temperature room. Your precious ice cream mixture will not freeze properly in the canister, and will be milkshake like afterwards. This is what happened to poor little strawberry basil. 

Basically all I did was blend all the ingredients together in Mai & Paul's vitamix!

Below is the only photo I got of the ice cream.  I was so busy eating and mingling!

Ricotta Ice Cream, recipe adapted from food52

Makes 1 Quart

Ingredients

• 1 2/3 cup quality ricotta 
• 3 ounces cream cheese
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Pistachios (optional)

Blend everything until the salt in a blender until smooth. Then add the heavy cream and blend until just combined. 

Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker - I let mine run for about 40 minutes. I also tried really, really hard not to lick the bowl. During the last 5 minutes of the churning process, you can add your mix in's if you desire (i.e.pistachios, etc). 

Transfer your ice cream to an air tight container and let it harden ("bloom" ?) in the freezer for a few hours. I made mine in the afternoon - around 3pm - and served it around 8:30pm - and it was perfection! You could grill up some peaches, drizzle them with honey, and serve with the ice cream as well. Peaches aren't quite in season yet, or else I would have done that as well. 

Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Garlic

Christmas dinner at my house usually involves some kind of lamb dish, since all four five of us love lamb. While catching up on Gossip Girl, my sister and I flipped through our Gourmet Cookbook to find something suitable. We found two recipes that we really liked, and decided to visit the grocery store and make our decision based on what kind of lamb was available. Leg of lamb it was!

Spinach and Fromage Blanc Gnocchi

My sister and I have tried our hand at gnocchi quite a few times. Sometimes it ends up great, sometimes, not so much. This time, we found a recipe that makes gnocchi out of spinach and cheese.
This recipe is from our New Brooklyn Kitchen Cookbook, which features a variety of Brooklyn restaurants / recipes. This particular recipe is served at Convivium Osteria, which, coincidentally, my boss' son recently wrote about on his food blog (sidenote: cute blog, right?)

Caprese Salad

I had basically a whole package of basil left over from my Aubergines & Quinoa dish, and I wanted a quick way to get finish it up. I knew I would be going to the farmer's market on Saturday, and would find some tomatoes, and some kind of artisinal mozzarella cheese or the other. My mind was basically made with what to make - CAPRESE SALAD! Done.

Lamb Sliders

During the holidays, my mom brought home some brioche slider buns from Macrina bakery. After eating one plain, I decided I needed to make sliders to do the buttery, soft rolls some justice. When my sister and I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for our Christmas brunch and dinner, I became inspired to make some lamb sliders as an appetizer. Some kalamata olives, feta cheese and shallots later, we had a full burger!

Guest Blog Post: Gobi Manchurian and Mock Chicken Curry

My friend Trupa and I grew up in Seattle together, and bonded when we were 12 and in some Diwali dance program in which we had to wear fish costumes. Now, Trupa lives in North Carolina, and we gchat daily about recipes, kitchen appliances (yes, you DEFINITELY need the soda machine to make sparkling water), and what we will be making for dinner. Trupa also recently got engaged, so congrats to her! Since she cooks so often, I decided to ask her to contribute her recipes to Hom Nom. She has shared not one, but two recipes with us! Welcome, Trupa! 

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

Well, I think we all noticed summer ended this week.  While summer is always fun (both in the city and out), fall is definitely my favorite season.  I like having non-frizzy hair and wearing cute suede boots.  I was touring the Union Square Farmer's Market, 10 reusable bags in tow, when I found a sample stand.  It's nearly impossible to maneuver the market when you have 300 pounds of butternut squash hanging off your arm, but where there are samples, I find a way.  The sample stand was handing out tastings of butternut squash soup with apples - and was a perfect way to kick of autumn.

Sidenote: I went to the market at around 9:45am on Saturday. HOW WERE THERE SO MANY PEOPLE AWAKE ALREADY? Apparently I miss out on most of Saturday morning by sleeping in until noon.

Home Made Ravioli

I hadn't seen Mai in over a month, so we thought it was long overdue for some cooking fun! We decided to make ravioli - from scratch.  No, we do not have a press or ravioli molds.  We decided to wing it and see where it took us...

Guest Blog Post: Pizza pizza! (Round Two)

Today we have another treat from Asmi, who has blogged about our culinary undertakings on Hom Nom before.  We met again for more pizza experimentation.  Welcome back, Asmi! Good to see you here again. 


When we decided to do Naan Pizza Round 2 Lavi suggested we mix it up by trying some Indian Chinese recipes.  All 3 of us being cheese lovers, chilli paneer was an obvious choice.  We were initially thinking of doing gobi manchurian for the other dish, but I thought the sauce was too similar to chilli paneer.  When did I decide this?  After I had fried the cauliflower and only had a few hours before the girls were coming over, with no other readily available ingredients in the kitchen.  Whatever is girl to do last minute?  MacGuyver a sauce, that's what! See below for the special secret creation!

Truffled Mac and Cheese

It's been a long winter filled with fondue, fondue, and even more fondue.  I wanted some change.  I also love melted cheese.  I said some change not drastic change.  So macaroni and cheese it was! Lucky for me, my friends like melted cheese as much as I do!

Over the holidays, a friend made truffled mac and cheese for a holiday party.  This sounded amazing and so I set off to find the best truffled mac and cheese recipe.  I ended up mixing two different recipes (one that my friend used, and the other that I found online).  The result was perfectly crusted, impeccably cheesey and truffley.  I know the latter is not a word but I'm making it one.

An Eclectic Dinner for 3

Oooh! Time to cook with Mai and Paul! Mai has this wonderful commercial style stove in her kitchen, not to mention vast counter space and room for all involved parties.  So it's no surprise I love having the opportunity to cook at Mai's! We opted for a more simple meal since we were meeting on a school-night, and we really wanted to catch up with each other.

Some new additions to Mai's apartment include a tripod and...a marvelous, class-room sized map of the world.  The map ALSO included dots as to where Mai has visited.  You have NO idea how much I squealed with excitement when I saw this.  Well, maybe you do.  I guess it made sense that our dinner featured an assortment of dishes: hummus and pita, salad and toppings, and lemon souffle pudding.  I'm not sure if it could get any more random than that mix! Though, now that I think about it, I think the theme of the night was, "Once Jyoti has tried it home made, she can never go back to store bought".

Case in point: hummus and vanilla extract.

Outdoorsy cooking in a little NYC apartment

Becca and I were cooking together (yet again) and we didn't have a specific craving - which is odd - usually one of us requests something.  This time I suggested burgers - so we looked up many different recipes.  While I realize we don't have a proper grill - I also realize that where there is a will, there is a way.  My first go was the recipe from serious eats for In and Out burgers.  Too boring.  We wanted EXCITEMENT.  We decided to mix it up with portobello burgers and a burger infused with basil and sun-dried tomatoes.

pizza-licious

A few Saturdays back, we had a pizza experimentation night.  And by "we" I mean Asmi was inspired by a recipe she found here and wanted to use us as her taste-testers.  I was, of course, happy to oblige!  Asmi, domesticated goddess that she is, made everything from scratch: the paneer for the pizza, the pizza sauces, and the naan itself.  As you recall from prior experiments, I love home made naan.  I also love home made paneer (oops.  I just realized I never posted about my home made paneer experiment.  Sorry.) because I love how crumbly it is, and the overall taste is (obviously) not processed at ALL.  You can make home made paneer into the cube shape like you get at Whole Foods, but I've never tried that.  And, really, home made paneer is not time consuming at all!  You just have to boil milk, throw in some vinegar or lemon juice, let it curdle, strain it through cheese cloth, and put something heavy on it and let it relax.

Instead of going into detail about what Asmi made, I decided to let her guest blog again!  Thanks Asmi!

Even More Fondue!

More fondue! To ring in the new year (now that we are all back in NYC), Becca, Alyx and Nicholas came over for dinner.  Alyx made two fantastic loaves of bread (I believe it was a recipe from Jim Lahey) for us to eat with our fondue.

I made a three cheese fondue...and this time the special ingredient was a tomato onion chutney.  In addition to Alyx's crusty and just slightly salty bread, we also dipped tortellini! So YUM!

New Years Eve Dinner

 My family and I usually go out for dinner on New Years Eve (often includes lots of foie gras and lots of champagne), but this year we decided we wanted to cook at home.  My mom wanted to try out an authentic Hyderabad biryani and stuffed mushrooms.  I wanted to try making some kind of citrus dessert and some kind of champagne dessert, as citrus is in season now, and, well, champagne is always in season. 

So on the menu for New Years Eve, we started with some gruyere, bread crumbs, and black truffle stuffed mushrooms, Hyderabad biriyani, citrus ice cream and a champagne bread pudding.  And in all honesty, I think it beat most, if not all, of the New Years Eve dinners I have had.  Now, if only we could transport my kitchen to a dock in Moorea and New Years would be complete.

Apple-Scented Fondue

I'm telling you.  Fondue is the ice cream of winter.  I think I've made it like 4 times in the past month alone.  I was watching Rachel Ray randomly while waiting for Alton Brown to start and she made this yum looking fondue (well...let's be honest...ALL fondue looks yum).  Asmi was coming over for dinner for some fondue so I figured this would be the best time to try it out!

Dumac and Cheese

Over Thanksgiving break, I made my sister a Gossip Girl gift bag that I put together myself.  It included a head band from Bendel's (channeling Blair), white truffle oil (channeling Serena), macarons (and Blair again) and...The New Brooklyn Cookbook (channeling the Humphrey clan + Vanessa).  And apparently since then, this cook book is the cook book to have.  See here and here.

Lo and behold from all the Thanksgiving cooking, baking, cookie party and ice cream making, we had a lot of heavy cream and whole milk left over.  So of course mac and cheese was a logical recipe to make with all our left over ingredients.

Brie and Wild Mushroom Fondue

Fondue night with Kim! Since Fondue will be an on-going winter delicacy, I needed to find another recipe that was more, um, sparkly, than your basic emmental and gruyere.  Yes, I have now decided that I am going to describe food as sparkly when it makes me feel the same way a pair of glittery pink high heels would.