First Person Singular by Wendy Braitman

Cooking with the Naked Chef

I’m having a crowd for dinner tonight. Chili, cornbread, and lemon bars for dessert. Feeding loved ones is a way I get to nurture, apart from massaging my dog’s ears and keeping her butt clean. Since I didn’t have a lot of prep time, I turned to Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, whose recipes are easy, swift and guaranteed. Oliver is also a prominent activist and educator. Check out his inspiring TED video, in which he talks about how eating right can change the world.

Recipe: Chili Con Carne by Jamie Oliver (from Happy Days with the Naked Chef)
Continue reading »

Home Away from Home

I’m in San Francisco for the weekend, well equipped with a raincoat and boots. I’ve planned some of my most favorite things; hanging with old friends, dining at Delfina, Antica and Hayes Street Grill, Manhattans at the 500 Club, checking out the spring collection at Diana Slavin Womenswear, and highlighting my hair at Primp. While I’m carousing, don’t forget that today is the last day to add your comments to our contest, Why It’s Great to be Single on Valentines Day. Great chocolate awaits.

Mouth-watering and Pink

For those of you sitting on the fence, DON’T. Last week, I previewed a CONTEST and here are more juicy prize details from L.A. Burdick, one of the country’s premier chocolate makers:

Bottom box: Full one pound assortment including hand-cut chocolate heart bonbons.
Middle Box: 20 Sets of Champagne truffles, dusted with confectioners sugar.
Top Box: Caramel Collection including triple caramels of mocha, apricot and vanilla.

Come up with the top reason why it’s great to be single on Valentines Day, and all of this can be yours (or if you’re masochistic, give it away.)

Here’s a recap -

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? A Vegetarian

My Christmas Eve dinner menu was set until yesterday, when I learned that one of the guests is a vegetarian. Actually, he’s a pescatarian, but that didn’t let me off the hook, since the main course I’d planned was filled with meat. For about a minute, I considered racing off to Santa Monica Seafood, which is hands down, the best place in L.A. to buy fish. But the idea of waiting in a frantic line was more than I could deal with. I quickly flipped through my most reliable cookbooks, and came across a delicious spanakopitas recipe that I’d served the last time vegetarians came for a meal. The Christmas miracle? I had most of the ingredients on hand.     Continue reading »

A Night for the Perfect Food

Cooking latkes (the Yiddish word for pancake) wreaks havoc on my kitchen, turning the floor and stovetop into an oily mess. But once a year, it’s worth it, to bite into the crispy potato cake infused with grated onion and salt (and to be the one with a stash of leftovers in the freezer.)

I’ll be serving them to a few friends this evening in honor of the first night of Chanukah. And though I can’t yet vouch for this recipe from Arthur Schwartz’s Jewish Home Cooking (after the jump) I’m going to give it a try. I appreciate that he allows for some leeway to reheat the latkes in a 425 degree oven, hours (or even days) after they’ve been fried, rather than insisting we serve them immediately from the pan. I am not of the generation of women (like my Latvian-born grandmother) who were happy to toil over a hot, messy stove, while their guests sat down to eat.     I want to join in the fun.     Continue reading »

CONTEST: Surviving the Holidays When You’re Single

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO WIN SOMETHING! (and the odds are pretty good)

Christmas muzak is starting to bug me, so I know the holidays are upon us. What’s the best way to glide through the holiday season when you’re SINGLE? You tell me.

Share your tip with us, and the best piece of advice will win a prize: Judith Jones beautiful and useful cookbook, The Pleasures of Cooking for One. As a book editor at Alfred A. Knopf for over 50 years, Jones has introduced Americans to some of the world’s great cooks. If I didn’t already own this cookbook, I’d enter the contest.

Comments must be received by December 18, 2009, and include your full name and email address. And since we still believe in hard copies of books, if you win, we’ll need a U.S. shipping address.

UPDATE: Check out the winning comments!

Sanctity of Food

I’m still obsessing about food, having just returned from my fourth trip to the market. Today, everyone was getting into the spirit of the season, as they picked out the choicest produce and meats, and generally upped their culinary game. I like being part of a moment where the collective thrust is nourishment.

Thanksgiving is the gateway holiday, and the best one. There are no gifts, religious observances, or any obligatory midnight kiss. The biggest question I’m grappling with is whether I’ll be trampling on too many traditions by NOT serving a whole turkey and mashed potatoes. My strategy is to start guests off with jumbo-sized Manhattans, and after that, everything will seem rosy, with or without the drumstick.

The Art of Eating

Cooking soothes me. Battling my way through a congested market right before Thanksgiving, does NOT. My menu and guest list are set. We will be six for Thanksgiving dinner, an arty mix of close friends and acquaintances, varying in age, sexual preference and gender. What links us is being single, though that’s a coincidence, since I invited couples as well, who were unable to come.

Obsessively browsing through recipes this last week, I was reminded of the gifted writer, M.F.K. Fisher, who said in response to all those who questioned why her work was focused on food, eating and drinking:

The easiest answer is to say that, like most humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it.

(Illustration by Andy Warhol for a children’s book, The Little Red Hen, available at auction next month in New York.)

How Not To Be Anxious For the Holidays, Part I

My holiday anxiety has started to kick in. And by anxiety, I mean, the fear of getting stuck ALONE on one of those iconic family-type days, where to be without company is to feel like a loser. I’m relieved that Thanksgiving is handled, now that my dear friend Miguel is driving down from San Francisco for the long weekend. I’ve decided to make a cozy dinner for six and try something new, by preparing a turkey breast, rather than fussing with a whole bird. No carving and no carcass is a real incentive. I have turned to my guide, the always-dependable Ina Garten, aka Barefoot Contessa, because during the holiday season, it’s especially important to have people you can count on. Here’s her recipe for Roasted Turkey Roulade, which will be making an appearance at my table: Continue reading »

Chicken Soup and the Common Cold

At the first sign of a runny nose, I throw together a pot of chicken soup. I say throw, because this is not a delicate dish. I cut big hunks of carrots, onion and celery and add them to the pot with a whole chicken that’s been covered with cold water. It takes only 5 minutes to prep, although for a rich chicken soup, you should simmer the ingredients for at least 2 hours. As the soup is coming to a boil, I hang around the stove to skim the impurities from the top. But I usually get bored doing this, and give up quickly. Today I had some leftover leeks in the fridge, so I tossed them in, along with fresh parsley from the garden.

Making chicken soup is a great way to nurture, and it reminds me of the care I got from my mother and grandmother when I was under the weather. Colds have to run their course, and there’s not much evidence that anything speeds up the healing process. But I swear by chicken soup. Don’t just take my word for it. The Mayo Clinic agrees. Recipe from the Second Avenue Deli in New York follows.

Continue reading »