• About Me

A Brooklyn Affair

Category Archives: Cooking

Practically Ancient History

21 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by erinjsimpson in Brooklyn, Brownstone, Cooking, Renovation

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1873, Brownstone Renovation, cast iron stoves, New York

DSC_0339

Feast your eyes on this cast iron beauty and tell me how much you’d enjoy cooking a big meal for a large brownstone family. I suggested to Charlie that we keep things simple in the kitchen and, instead of investing in some fancy stainless thing, we just cook on this instead. He was less than amused.

DSC_0348

All kidding aside, this is one of the most impressive stoves I’ve ever seen.

DSC_0344

If you can get a good look at the writing across the top, it says National Stove Works New York. Cursory internet searches have not revealed much of anything about the stove’s origins. But I’m determined to know more. Anyone out there have any insight into enormous cast iron stoves from the late 1800’s? in the photo below, you’ll see that there is date of 1873 listed above the burners.

DSC_0346

My mind is already spinning all kinds of crazy stories and I can practically picture the women who perspired over this stove in layers of crinoline (what else could they be wearing?) cooking hearty suppers for a full house. And I don’t think my daydreams are too far off from reality. Charlie searched through the Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s online newspaper archives and found an ancient clipping for this very same house in the early 1900’s advertising for a full-time cook. Not just any cook. A Protestant cook. Apparently those owners could only consume food cooked with the same religious views. You are what you eat, as they say.

DSC_0343

Late last week, we had the gas meters installed (one of the less interesting aspects of home renovations so I’ll spare you the details). When the gas guy walked through the garden floor, his jaw dropped when he saw the stove. This thing catches everyone’s attention. It’s even more impressive in person.

DSC_0415

 

One of the more daunting tasks is to figure out how to incorporate such a stove into our home. Because I’m fairly positive it will take an army to move it. At least we’ll always a conversational piece close at hand.

Advertisement

Holiday Traditions

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by erinjsimpson in Cooking

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

baking, Irish, St. Patrick's Day, traditions

Many may have spent their morning celebrating with green beers in raucous bars, but I opted for a decidedly more traditional and quieter start to my holiday morning. St. Patrick’s Day has long been a favorite holiday of mine and a traditional Irish soda bread is something I look forward to every year. It’s a basic bread with minimal ingredients, which says a lot of about its country of origin. For a country that has a long, tortuous history with food, soda bread was an easy way to ensure that bread made it to the table each night. I have a feeling that our Irish ancestors would be shocked to learn that we now celebrate something that, to them, was a staple in their diet.

Image

Though, I’ll be honest, some of my additions are far from traditional. I doubt orange zest was readily available to many in the countryside of 19th century Ireland.

Image

This point of this post is more to ramble on about traditions than to actually show the step-by-step baking process. The lack of documentation is my own fault and for a more thorough breakdown of the bread, I will direct you to the inimitable Ina Garten.

Image

According to Irish folklore, a cross was cut into the dough before placing it in the oven (or over an open hearth, if you live in a thatched roof cottage by chance) to let out the evil demons and spirits while baking. While I made sure to etch a cross into my dough, the end result doesn’t show any such markings. But, given the sounds and smells that my oven emits daily, I think it may be too late to purge it of any maleficent spirits.

Image

Also not present here are the snowy flakes that were flying intermintently outside my window. I hear that spring is lurking somewhere around the corner.

Image

I prefer my soda bread with a smear of butter and cup of coffee.

But not to worry, I’ll be sipping my holiday beer before long. It is a holiday, after all.

Comfort Food

14 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by erinjsimpson in Cooking

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Brooklyn, comfort food, Cooking, small spaces

Sometimes, when life throws you a big, round lemon, you just need to take a deep breath and squeeze out some lemonade. Or in my situation, when you’ve got a case of the autumn blues and you’re staring at a counter full of yellow squash from your parents’ overzealous garden, you make gratin.

That’s exactly what I did last week after a particularly grueling few days. Using the last of summer’s vegetables to make a decidedly autumn dish was just what the doctor ordered. Because there are some things that only a bubbly, cheesy, decadent dish can cure. And because there seemed to be no better way to help ease the transition between two seasons. As with all meals in my apartment, I relied on a fail-proof recipe, which you can find here. The only change I made was to substitute half the zucchini with yellow squash. (So daring! I know…)

The best part of this whole dish, for me anyways, is that it comes together in one skillet before being transferred to a baking dish. Can anyone really understand how wonderful one-pot meals can be until they have cooked in a kitchen the size of a shoe box? I’m guessing no.

(Most nights, I watch Charlie’s eyes glaze over as he watches the dishes slowly accumulate in the sink.)

There you have it. Maybe not the prettiest or most elegant of meals. But sometimes elegance is not the goal. After consuming half the gratin, and despite the sensation of a brick lodging itself in my stomach, I started to feel much more clearheaded.

Five Things Catching My Eye This Week

09 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by erinjsimpson in Cooking, Style

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cooking, farmers market, paris, summer, travel

Image

This little tin of lip balm. Because it traveled all the way from Vermont and was given to me by my boss. And that made my Monday just a little more manageable.

Image

A jar of honey that made its way from Northern NY to a tiny Brooklyn apartment and reminds me of home. It’s begging to be swirled into a pitcher of freshly-brewed iced tea.

Image

A fresh batch of blueberry muffins. The perfect coffee companion for early mornings when I am staring down at an inbox full of unread emails.

Image

This pair of shoes, because they have been slowing falling apart for some time and this might be their last week traipsing city streets. But they remind me of the summer I spent in Paris with the most amazing friend and I’ll have a hard time letting them go.

Image

This pile of basil from the farmers market. Because, well, see post below.

What is making  you happy this week?

Summer Memories

07 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by erinjsimpson in Cooking

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

city life, Cooking, Memories, pasta, summer

Image

One of my favorite things about food is its ability to evoke nostalgia with the slightest smell, or spoonful, or slice. We so often in our lives commune around the table so it is only fitting that some of our fondest memories might include food.

For me, nothing spells summer like fresh basil picked from the garden and pulsed into pesto. Growing up in a small town in Upstate NY, summers were slow and languid. Progression in the summer months was marked by the height of the corn rows and the yielding of a tomato plant. But it was the promise of summer pesto that I looked forward to the most. Kneeling in our garden, plucking those little, green leaves, and then leaning over the sink, soaking them in a warm bowl of water.

These were the images that popped into my head when I spied my favorite greens at our local farmers market this past weekend. The first pesto of the season is like a rite of passage. Or so I tried to impress upon Charlie as I dreamed up our elaborate, last minute dinner plans. As if autumn might never arrive if we don’t consume an unspecified amount of pesto.

So, we headed home with our bundles of green and uncorked a bottle of wine (a privelege my childhood summers lacked) and set to work. With a generous helping of olive oil and some freshly grated parmesan, basil becomes my favorite pasta sauce.

Image

With our apartment full of the smell of summer, we sat at our narrow kitchen table and listened to the air conditioner humming in the window. And the baby crying next door. And the sirens blaring off in the distance. But mostly, we marveled at how lucky we are to live in a city where we can still reap all the benefits of a garden without having an ounce of soil between the two of us.

Image

What are some of your fondest summer memories?

Food for a New Generation of Thought

08 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by erinjsimpson in Cooking

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

About, Cooking, Food, Recipes

As if the post-college job search isn’t hard enough these days, a friend told me a particularly disconcerting story that I haven’t quite been able to shake. She went on an interview for a position with a large financial company where she met with a woman who had worked with the company for years. At one point, the woman asked my friend what she likes to do in her free time, to which my friend responded that she enjoys cooking.  At that, the woman looked at her in horror, surmising that my friend is merely a housewife in disguise, and said: “You really like to cook? I never cook anything.”

Now, aside from sharing in my friend’s shock over this interaction, I can’t help but wonder why we are so quick to equate cooking with domestic stereotypes. In fact, everywhere I look, I see encouraging signs that more people are cooking at home more frequently. With the resurgence of the locavore movement, not only are more people looking to their local farms for fresh vegetables and ingredients, but it is becoming increasingly cool and popular to do so. In some areas, dare I say, almost the norm. In Brooklyn, while you might not find a crop of tomatoes growing in a vacant lot, you will see that there are restaurants on every corner boasting a local, farm-fresh menu. The emphasis here is not on whom the responsibility falls for preparing the meal, but rather, on what you are putting into your body. Food is no longer a chore that a woman must endure. It many households, it is a ritual that has taken on new meaning.

I, for one, find few things more relaxing after a long day than leisurely preparing a meal with fresh ingredients and a glass of wine in hand. We can’t forget the wine, it’s crucial to the relaxation element. Oh, and the recipe. I will fully admit that I am rule-follower in most aspects of life, but especially in cooking. Throwing open the door to the refrigerator and concocting a dinner with whatever happens to be sitting idly inside is not my strong point. But give me a recipe to follow, and I’m in business.

Last week, I set out to conquer my fear of risotto. My first interaction with the creamy, rice-pasta last year ended disastrously and I have been avoiding it ever since. But my cravings overcame me and, after a thorough tutorial with my mother, I decided to fly solo. Now, as I mentioned, no culinary adventure starts without a recipe and you can find this recipe here.

After preparing all of my ingredients, I held my breath and began adding in the broth.

Few things test my resilience and arm muscles like the constant stirring of risotto. But I bent myself to the task, knowing a creamy, perfectly balanced, and smooth risotto would be worth the sweat. And I stirred.

And I stirred.

And I stirred some more.

And then, finally, my risotto reached the perfect, elusive consistency of soft, melt-in-your-mouth pasta. This may have been a small victory, but culinary accomplishments are far from drudgery to me.

Recent Posts

  • Winter Doldrums
  • Upstate Escape
  • An Overdue Update…Featuring Woodwork!
  • Autumnal Remnants
  • Ghostly Renovations

Archives

  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • December 2011

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 29 other subscribers

Blogs I’m Currently Reading

  • Invasionista
  • Bucket List Publications
  • The Best Remedy
  • hula seventy
  • Red Otter Creative
  • Unruly Things
  • Butter Me Up Brooklyn
  • Hither and Thither
  • A Bloomsbury Life
  • Honey Kennedy

Blog at WordPress.com.

Invasionista

Bucket List Publications

Indulge- Travel, Adventure, & New Experiences

The Best Remedy

hula seventy

Red Otter Creative

Unruly Things

Butter Me Up Brooklyn

baking makes friends.

Hither and Thither

A Bloomsbury Life

Honey Kennedy

Sail Away to Fancy

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • A Brooklyn Affair
    • Join 29 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • A Brooklyn Affair
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...