This satisfying scramble is the perfect weekend breakfast food, but it’s so scrumptious that I often crave it for a simple weekday dinner, my mouth salivating in anticipation as I cook at the stove.
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Mushrooms. This is what comes to mind when I think about my beloved friend Sky Pape.
Mushrooms. That’s what Sky orders whenever we manage to steal a little time away from our hectic lives to have dinner together. Whether it be roasted portobello mushrooms tossed in a salad, porcini mingling with fresh pasta, or flatbreads adorned with wild mushrooms and aged cheeses, if mushrooms are on the menu, I know that’s what she’s ordering.
Sky is an extraordinary artist. For her latest drawings, Water Works: Surface Tension, she worked on the floor and blew ink through tubes and funnels onto handmade papers from Japan, Korea and Nepal. Sky “breathes life” into each drawing to create “forms and lines that divulge our connectedness with nature, a reminder of our shared fragility.”
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There are times in life when I am painfully aware that I wasn’t born in this country. As a foreign born, one misses a whole lot of things that US born take for granted.
Take this conversation I had with Bill, a good friend and a very talented percussionist who plays in my husband’s band. The musicians were over for dinner before last Sunday’s gig at the Turning Point in Piermont. Before long, the conversation drifted to food.
“Liz [Bill's wife] planted all kinds of fruit trees in our backyard” he says proudly. They have a beautiful home in downtown Nyack. “We have cherries, apples and even service berries” he gloats.
“What on earth are service berries?!” I blurted out… feeling there was a good chance I’d just said something stupid.
Two days later, only minutes before yet another gig, this time at The Living Room in the East Village, he handed me a little plastic box wrapped with blue masking tape. Written on the tape were the words: “service berries”! If the box hadn’t been so tightly wrapped I would have dived right in!
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Last week, my very dear friend Mary Lynn came over for lunch. I thought I would have time to make something creative, seasonal and new, but some unexpected busyness took over my morning and before I knew it, it was 11:45am and I hadn’t even set the table. She was due here at 12:30pm! I had a Rachael Ray moment: only 30 minutes to make this lunch!
A quick look in the fridge and I thanked god for those gorgeous blood oranges I’d bought a few days before.
While dashing around to set the table, I planned the menu (talking to myself just like my grandmother use to). We’ll start with a panini: marbled rye bread, avocados, tomatoes and gruyère (I’d been planning on testing that recipe so I had everything on hand!). I’ll serve it with a baby green salad and a balsamic vinaigrette – so we’re good here… What about dessert? It needs to be quick and light – I’m still trying to shed those pounds I accumulated since the holidays!
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It’s Sunday morning. Freezing cold outside. But the thought that I’m about to prepare the most delicious pancakes is enough to fill me warmth!
I grew up making French crêpes with my grandmother, something that excited me no end as a child, but also filled me with apprehension (I never quite mastered the art of flipping them!). Just about everybody knows crêpes. But not everybody knows that virtually every country in Europe has its own version of the pancake. The Italians have crespelli. The Russians have blinis. Germans and Austrians have Palatschinken, and the English, Central Europeans and Scandinavians all have their own take on it.
But for my money, there’s nothing like the big, light, moist American pancake… I’ve adopted it wholeheartedly as my favorite, with my own twist, of course! My version of the pancake reflects not only my own heritage, but my favorite cooking styles: American, French and Italian.
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