Friday dinners: The luxury of time

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This is my entry for the third round of Project Food Blog, Foodbuzz's contest to find the next food blogging star. Today's challenge: Host a luxurious dinner party. I'll let you know when the voting starts - and thanks to all of you who've helped me get this far. Thanks also to Nathan Janos for his beautiful photos.

The luxurious dinner party: I've thrown my share. Our annual Trufflepalooza, which this July featured 13 truffle-laced courses for 70 people, certainly qualifies. We use mismatched vintage china, linen cloths, antique crystal and sterling. Every course, from risotto to creamy corn soup to filet mignon, is topped with a thick layer of freshly grated Italian black summer truffles - decadence in each bite. We pour champagne, wine, Port for hours on end. It's a lot of work, but rewarding. I hope it's a summer tradition my kids remember forever.

These days, in the throes of a new school year and a new role at work, my luxury is time. Getting home early enough on a weeknight to make a proper dinner for my family. Stealing a few minutes before work to bake a couple dozen muffins to hand out at my office. An evening when I don't have to go to back-to-school night, work late, raise money for my kid's youth orchestra, or wax enthusiastic about my alma mater at the college fair at a nearby high school. An evening when we can sit down to dinner and eat without constantly checking the clock and calculating how to fit in the remaining homework, violin practice and personal hygiene before bedtime.

That's why Friday dinners are my luxury. Friday dinner ends the week the way punctuation ends a sentence: definitively, assertively, making clear the difference between the busy week past and the more relaxed weekend ahead. We invite friends with kids and without; married couples, dating couples, singles; old, young, and everywhere in between. I'm sure there are those who consider "luxury" and "kids" mutually exclusive. I think having the kids join us for dinner is the best part. We get our grownup time after they finish eating and run off to play. But while they're there, we all reconnect after a long, busy week. Also, they crack me up.

In general, we have an open-door policy when it comes to dinner. We issue invitations freely and spontaneously to those we know well and, often, those we'd like to know better. I'm lucky to have married a man who likes a crowded table as much as I do. I grew up in a house where the same four people had dinner around the kitchen table every night, week in and week out. I'm glad my kids have grown up with so many different personalities dropping in to share a meal in our home.

Dinner for a crowd on a weeknight is a challenge, even on a Friday, when I can usually leave work an hour or two early. I use my early mornings well, and I plan menus around easy prep. Any recipe that requires more than 10 ingredients or more than two pans will not make it onto the menu, no matter how tasty it sounds. And I don't mind subjecting guests to experiments. I want Friday dinners to be comfortable, not fussy. I'm not looking to impress.

A few Fridays ago a friend from work came to dinner with his girlfriend and his mother. Interesting, the way it happened: I'd never had an opportunity to work directly with Nate, an MIT alum who does something I'll never understand involving algorithms and higher math, but he came by my desk from time to time to chat about food and ask for recipes. Then, a few months ago, he emailed: "So what does it take to get an invitation to dinner in Erika's kitchen?" I was flattered. We set a date. I also invited Arianna, a wine writer, and her five-year-old Z. "He's adorable," said Emery, my 11-year-old, when I told him Z was coming to dinner. Z, apparently, was just as pleased: "I love going to the big boys' house!" he said when Arianna told him of the plans.

I always put out cut-up vegetables with dip before dinner. My theory about feeding kids: The more vegetables you put in front of them, the more they're likely to eat, especially if chips are not an option. We started with circles of English cucumber and daikon radish, with a bowl of the avocado spread a Guatemalan friend taught me to make long ago. It's just avocados, cilantro, lemon and salt, blended smooth in the food processor. I also pulled a box of puff pastry from the freezer and spread it with tapenade (olives, fresh basil from the garden, and garlic), then cut it into strips, sprinkled it with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and threw it into a hot oven. Crispy, salty, buttery, they went perfectly with the first glasses of wine.

 

We sat down to chicken thighs braised with bacon, shallots, prunes and Armagnac, another opportunity to experiment on friends. Recently I acquired a slow cooker, and I want to love it - I'm trying. Friday night dinner seemed the perfect time to give it another chance. The carpool picks my kids up for school quite early, so after they leave the house I've got at least an hour before I need to be out the door. That Friday I chopped the shallots while the kids ate breakfast. When they left, I used my hour to cook the bacon, brown the chicken, saute the shallots, and dump the whole mess in the slow cooker with some dried prunes and a splash of Armagnac. When I got home from work late that afternoon and lifted the lid, the smell made me smile. We ate the rich braised chicken over brown jasmine rice, and with that I served broccoli, roasted in a hot oven and topped with grated cheese. I always make a green salad, which this time included hearts of crispy romaine, halved red grapes, crumbled French feta, and toasted pumpkin seeds, tossed in a mustardy French-style vinaigrette.

We ended the meal with a simple plum tart, which I put together while everyone was arriving. I use the same crust, a simple press-in dough made with olive oil, for both savory and sweet tarts. It's adapted from a recipe in Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte, one of my favorite examples of the "cookoir" genre. I sliced late-season purple plums and arranged them over the crust, then mixed sugar, butter and a little flour with Chinese five-spice powder to sprinkle on top of the fruit.

Here's one thing you should know about me: I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. No raised eyebrows, now. What I mean is that I really like to cook with spectators. We have a good kitchen for it. I work at the long granite-topped peninsula that separates the kitchen from the dining room, then clear it off and put out the food so guests can serve themselves before sitting down. I can be in the kitchen and at the party at the same time - my favorite combination.

If you're in southern California and find yourself free on a Friday night, whoever you are, drop me a line and drop in for dinner. Nothing would make me happier.

Gesztenye palacsintak (Hungarian pancakes with chestnut filling and chocolate sauce)

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This is my entry for the second round of Project Food Blog, Foodbuzz's contest to find the next food blogging star. Today's challenge: Tackle a classic dish from another country. Watch for details on voting. I'll be asking for your help.

When you marry into a family, you acquire all sorts of things. In my case, in addition to the promise of a long life with the man I loved, I got a new last name, two wonderful "other parents," the sister I'd always wanted, and a set of very old sterling flatware that had traveled from Hungary a few pieces at a time in dozens of suitcases over nearly 20 years. I also married the concept of dessert after breakfast. Needless to say, I consider myself quite lucky.

My in-laws left Hungary in 1956 during the Hungarian revolution. They are fully Californian now, and according to my husband, they don't even speak English with accents (love, in addition to being blind, is apparently somewhat hard of hearing). But even after all these years, my mother-in-law's cooking still favors the Hungarian. Over the years I've tasted paprikas csirke (chicken with paprika), korozott (a spread of soft cheese, paprika and caraway seeds), lecso (a stew of Hungarian peppers and sausage), and szilvas gomboc (potato dumplings stuffed with plums and rolled in breadcrumbs). They're all interesting, with the exception of the korozott, which I'll admit I've never learned to love.

But my mother-in-law's go-to family dish is palacsintak, thin pancakes stuffed with sweet or savory fillings. Every cuisine has its pancakes, and these are Hungary's. They're similar to French crepes, although the batter is simpler and less rich. We've had family dinners where the main course was palacsintak filled with meat and spinach, and dessert featured the same pancakes filled with chocolate and nuts. When my kids visit their grandparents, it's palacsintak they request.

Michael and I traveled to Hungary once about 15 years ago. It was early spring, the end of chestnut season. While chestnuts in the U.S. seem to appear only in Christmas stuffing, in eastern Europe they are celebrated and glorified as dessert. Several times on our trip we ended our meals (or ruined our appetites) with large bowls of gesztenye pure, pureed cooked chestnuts mixed with sugar, vanilla and rum, then pushed through a ricer into fluffy piles atop clouds of whipped cream. No one loves chestnuts like Hungarians.

My in-laws have brought me sweet, rum-laced chestnut puree from their various trips. Somehow, I never think to use it. But when I decided to tackle palacsintak for this Project Food Blog challenge - a dish which, up to this point, I've left to my mother-in-law - I dug around in the pantry for a jar. Chestnuts, a classic Hungarian filling; chocolate sauce, the perfect complement. Time for breakfast.

Gesztenye palacsintak - Hungarian pancakes with chestnut filling and chocolate sauce

• 3 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1 cup plus 5 Tbsp milk, divided
• 1 tsp sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup sparkling water
• 1 cup sweetened chestnut puree
• 1/2 tsp rum
• 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
• 2 tsp butter

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, flour, 1 cup milk, sugar and salt until smooth. Let the batter rest in the refrigerator at least two hours. (I do this part the night before and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.)

Make the pancakes: Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Stir the sparkling water into the batter - you want to do this right before you start making the pancakes. Spray the hot skillet with cooking spray and quickly ladle in a scant 1/4 cup of batter. Pick up the skillet and tilt it so the batter swirls around to coat the entire bottom of the skillet. Keep swirling until the batter is set and no longer runs.

Put the skillet down and cook until the edges of the pancake start to lift up, about 30 seconds. Carefully, with a spatula (or your fingers if you're brave), pick up the pancake and flip it. The cooked side should be slightly browned, but barely. Cook the other side for about 20 seconds, then slide onto a plate or cutting board. Repeat with the rest of the batter until you have a stack of thin pancakes.

Make the filling: In a small bowl, mix together the chestnut puree, 3 Tbsp milk, and the rum until the mixture is smooth. It should be the consistency of hummus; if it's too thick, add a little more milk.

Make the chocolate sauce: Put the chocolate chips and 2 Tbsp milk in a glass or Pyrex measuring cup. Microwave 30 seconds, let stand 30 seconds, then stir. If the chocolate isn't completely melted, microwave for another 20 seconds. Stir until smooth.

Assemble the palacsintak: Spread about 1 Tbsp chestnut filling in the center of one pancake. Fold in all four sides to make a square package: top, bottom, left, right. Repeat until all pancakes and filling are used. You can make the pancakes up to this point a few hours ahead and keep them in one layer on a baking sheet covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

When you're ready to serve, heat the butter in the same nonstick skillet. Place the square pancake packages in the skillet and brown in the butter a minute or two on each side, just until they turn golden brown and crispy around the edges. Put the palacsintak on a plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce. Serve immediately.

Makes 1 dozen pancakes.

Please vote for me!

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Voting for Foodbuzz's Project Food Blog challenge #1 is now open. I'd be grateful for your support. And that's all I'm saying. Click here to vote for me. And  thanks.

Project Food Blog challenge #1: Life In Erika's Kitchen

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This is my first entry in Project Food Blog, Foodbuzz's contest to find the next food blogging star. This challenge: Define myself as a food blogger and prove I've got what it takes to win. Details on voting to come...

I didn't learn to cook at my mother's feet. My mother is a serviceable but disinterested cook who got dinner on the table but never enjoyed a minute of it. My grandmother had a small but tasty repertoire: stuffed cabbage, chicken fricassee with tiny meatballs, and matzoh ball soup, though I found out in my twenties that the broth was Lipton's. I don't specifically remember being excluded from the kitchen, but I wasn't specifically invited in, either.

The first meal I remember making was for 15 people during my senior year of college. I belonged to a "secret society" that met for Sunday dinner. George Bush's society had a stone building with no windows where, legend had it, butlers served dinner on fine china to young men wielding antique silver flatware. My society had a run-down house at the edge of campus where we took turns cooking in the grimy, ill-equipped kitchen and ate off plastic plates.

When it was my Sunday, I got my mother's recipe for sesame chicken. It was just her speed: You roll the pieces in melted butter, coat them with seasoned breadcrumbs and sesame seeds, and bake. For dessert I made a vat of applesauce, heavy on the cinnamon, with apples I'd picked at a nearby orchard that morning; I served it over vanilla ice cream. As the other members walked in the door, I saw their noses lift; the house had never smelled that good. I didn't fit in with the group - meetings involved lots of beer, and even then I wasn't much of a drinker - but that night they liked me quite a bit.

After that I was hooked. Spend time cooking and people will shower you with compliments and want more of you the next day? Yes, please. I spent my twenties in New York shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket, along the sidewalks of Chinatown, and in the ethnic markets (mostly gone now) along lower Ninth Avenue. I brought home goat meat, rye flour, Chinese vegetables whose names I never learned. In my tiny kitchen I learned to bake bread, cooked Thanksgiving dinner the year my parents abandoned me for a Caribbean cruise, made an all-pink menu (tuna salad with beets, anyone?) for my future sister-in-law's bridal shower.

Now I live in southern California with my husband and sons. My kitchen is bigger and busier. I feed my family, friends, acquaintances, sometimes strangers. We host dinner on the first night of Rosh Hashanah for 25, Passover seders for 35, school parties for 50, 13-course truffle dinners for 75. I love a crowd gathered in my dining room, snatching canapes as fast as I can set them out. I love watching kids who never eat vegetables eat vegetables at my table. I love that my kids stand with me at the counter, chop the figs, peel the cucumbers, pit the plums, stir the soup.

I started writing In Erika's Kitchen in 2008, after getting sick of my mother asking, "When are you writing a cookbook already?" I'm writing about my life in my kitchen, my family's life in our kitchen, to create a record of the flavors of my kids' youth, so they can recreate them for their own families someday. I have lucky food blogger friends who inherited hundreds of precious family recipes from generations past. I don't have that, but my kids will.

I've also found that writing about food is better than therapy. As a working mom, I spend my life multitasking and juggling. When I'm writing, I'm focusing on one thing. Working on a post about banana chocolate chip bread pudding, I concentrate on the story: It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end that leads neatly into the recipe, all in three or four paragraphs. And the recipe: How many eggs did I use? Was the oven at 350 or 375? Fifty minutes or an hour? I'm careful with recipes; readers tell me they're clear and they work, which makes me happy. When I'm done and hit "publish" I feel as renewed as if I'd had a nap.

Blogging has brought me amazing opportunities. I've decorated cakes with Kelly Ripa and the Cake Boss, interviewed Alice Waters, and watched Curtis Stone show my star-struck son around his kitchen. I've talked pie on National Public Radio's "Good Food," contributed to a best-selling cookbook, made guacamole with the Too Hot Tamales, rubbed elbows with movie stars at hot restaurant openings, and gotten up the nerve to audition for The Next Food Network Star.

Another amazing thing: new friends. A conversation on an airplane leads to lunching on Trinidadian stew chicken with flight attendants on layover. Food Bloggers Los Angeles (FBLA), the networking group I co-founded in 2009, meets for monthly potlucks. Without my food blogger friends, I could not have pulled off this year's Trufflepalooza; they came hours early to prep, assemble, stir and serve.

But most amazing: watching my boys catch the bug. Emery, my 11-year-old, has written original recipes (one of which was featured on Steamy Kitchen), and has guest posted on my blog. Weston, at eight, emailed everyone in his address book his guacamole recipe. The boys and I will be cooking together for a long time.

Between my blog and my LA Cooking Examiner column I've written more than 500 posts and 300 recipes in 20 months. Factor in my full-time job, my family, and our open-door dinner policy, and even I'm not sure how I've done it. Do I have enough for that cookbook my mother keeps mentioning? I'm working on it. Meantime, I'm doing something I love, meeting wonderful people, and keeping my family and friends well fed. Life is good.