Fresh Tart

Do you invite people to your home for dinner or do you break into a January-in-Minnesota sweat at the thought? I love eating in restaurants, but the nights spent with friends and family in our home, or in theirs, are the best of all. When I was a newlywed, I was so excited to be a grown up that I almost killed myself preparing elaborate dinner parties in tiny kitchens. I don't regret those experiences one bit, but these busy days, I prefer to keep it simple. I think my guests have more fun and I know that I do.

Especially when the dinner party is spontaneous! I just love a last-minute dinner party, when guests pitch in with the chopping, and setting the table, and we all sit around chatting and relaxed. Hear this Minnesotans - there is no need for fancy appetizers before dinner! Sometimes I think the pressure of fussy appetizers kills a party more than the dinner itself. Pop some bubbles and set out some salty nuts, raw vegetables, and a slab of good butter. Delicious. Done.

Or make frico! If you keep a block of Parmesan cheese in your fridge, you're ready to impress in mere minutes. Frico is basically fried grated cheese, toasted in a pan to a crisp wafer of whoa, ready in five minutes or less. Slide the golden crunchy cheese onto a plate and let your guests break off pieces to devour between sips of wine.

It's lovely to fry a bit of sage in the pan before sprinkling in the cheese. Ditto stirring around a bit of garlic. This Melissa Clark version from the New York Times jumped right out at me a couple of weeks ago. Isn't the scorched zucchini pretty? It's also a nice foil for the richness of all that toasted cheese. Clark's introduction didn't put me off either: WHY there is no cult devoted to crunchy fried cheese is beyond me. It’s as rich as bacon or pork belly, as crisp as chicken wings, and as tempting as a foie gras doughnut.

I couldn't agree more!

Recipe for Melissa Clark's Zucchini Frico at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

OK yes, I realize that I'm posting yet another fried egg dish, but this one is just too good to not share. I had actually forgotten about it, which is rather amazing given how many times I've made the dish since Mark Bittman first wrote about it in the New York Times two years ago.

This is a Jean-Georges Vongerichten recipe, simple and elegant and exactly how I like to cook and eat. The fried rice itself has but three ingredients: oil, leeks, and rice. You wouldn't expect just rice and leeks to be so addictive, but they are, particularly when topped with a fried egg, particularly when topped with crispy ginger and garlic. A drizzle of soy sauce and sesame oil to finish makes the whole completely sublime.

If you make an effort to keep leeks around, count this as a perfect quick dinner when you invite someone over and forget to swing by the store to pick up ingredients. I don't often find myself with leftover rice, so I make a fresh batch and cool it on a baking sheet before continuing; works perfectly.

Photo of Eggs in Purgatory, from Tiny Kitchen, Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

I could spend a month continuously mining just today's version of the New York Times website and still not make a dent in it.  It's a faux-productive time-waster's dream!  There's of course "all the news that's fit to print," but when you scratch more than the surface, and start messing around with all the interactive videos and slideshows and blogs...wow, endless coolness.  Here are a few highlights, these just pertaining to food, see what you think:

The NYTimes Magazine blog, called The Moment, focuses on women's and men's fashion, design, travel, and of course...food.  Short, quirky entries.  Great fun.

All NYTimes videos can be found here, but it's the food videos (surprise!) that I've been enjoying the most, particularly The Minimalist and Tiny Kitchen (links to featured recipes are under the videos).  Like the blog entries above, they're short (a couple of minutes) yet thoroughly entertaining.  The Parmesan Cream Crackers post I did below is one example.  Here's another, The Minimalist on Savory Breakfasts, yum.  So much more interesting to me than watching a whole cooking show (I know, it's weird, I'm not a fan of cooking shows...).

And check out the fantastic visual blog Abstract City, not specifically pertaining to food but musings on NYC which of course include food, by illustrator Christoph Niemann.  My sister Etta sent around the link under the title "for anyone who loves New York."

OK, this one has nothing to do with food at all, but I think photographer Bill Cunningham's On the Street fashion photos (Sunday Styles section) are really neat.  Here you can peruse them all, as audio slideshows.

I'll stop there, days of content with just the little I've pointed out.  Have FUN!