This week, the folks at food52 have challenged members of the community to submit one “Recipe You Want To Be Remembered For.” This contest theme got me thinking, of course, being 20 weeks into this pregnancy, smack dab in the middle of building our little boy on the best food I can give him. I’ve thought a lot about what I’m eating now – not just what health and developmental benefits I hope to provide for our son through my diet, but what (if any) impact the foods I’m eating will have on his future likes and dislikes.

I probably spend even more time musing about what and how he’ll eat as he gets older. What will food mean to him? What will he look forward to eating, love above anything else, wrinkle his little nose at? Will he have my allergy to oranges and grapefruit, or share his father’s aversion to melon? What will he remember when he’s all grown up and he thinks of me and his dad and the meals we shared as a family?

I can’t tell you how many times over the last few months Mike and I have been sitting at the kitchen table and the conversation has turned to our son and food. We talk about how we can’t wait for Sproggy’s first taste of fresh spring peas, of raspberries picked from the vine, of a tiny tomato bursting with juice and still warm from the sun. About taking him to the farmers’ market and introducing him to the wonderful people who grow and produce so much of our food. About how best to express gratitude for what we eat and the work that went into making it. We talk of rituals, of holidays and gatherings, of our family traditions, of how they might change and evolve over time, and how this little one will be part of them.

I get a little giddy when I think of our son helping Mike bake bread or make pizza, rolling out dough with chubby little hands, flour speckling his clothes. Every time I make tortillas from scratch – a skill I’m still learning – I think about doing so with him at my side, about the smell of toasty corn rising from a hot griddle, and how that scent transports me immediately to my grandmother’s kitchen. I wonder if that aroma, or others, will trigger such great memories for him someday.

We want him to know where and how things grow, to meet chickens and pigs and cows and sheep, to be accustomed to living in a home in which canning jars line the shelves, full of delicious things we’ve grown, picked, or put up ourselves.

But back to the original question – is there a particular dish or meal I that want our little boy to remember above all others? Meatballs, migas, macaroni and cheese, soft scrambled eggs, a lobster roll on a toasted bun, homemade pickles, the family rice and beans, or a crispy chicken cutlet? I can’t possibly choose one thing.

I want to share all sorts of food experiences with him, whether it involves meals we’ve cooked at home, or just sitting with him while we share one perfect cheese, a tin of great sardines with Triscuits and mustard, a juicy ripe peach, cold briny oysters, or a hot dog in the park. I look forward to sitting back and watching him figure out food and flavors, learn his likes and dislikes. I look forward to how he’ll inspire and influence me in the kitchen, and maybe someday, when he’s all grown up and I’m an old woman, he’ll ask me to make him his most favorite thing ever, and I will happily oblige.

But we’ve got a whole lot of eating to do before then, and I look forward to savoring every moment.

I don’t know what to say.

It’s well into February and I haven’t posted here in what feels like forever. We’ve been cooking up a storm, working on projects in the kitchen, eating some truly wonderful things, but I just haven’t had it in me to post.

There’s so much to tell you. But I can’t talk about it just yet.

I do want to talk about this pasta, though. It seems like every time I talk about this dish, something big happens. I last posted about it here in 2007, to an enthusiastic response.

Almost a year later, with Mike in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail and me at home in Providence, I watched wide-eyed as my site meter shot skyward, topping out at 12,127 hits – twelve thousand, one hundred twenty seven hits – thanks to a post on a Yahoo! Shine blog which linked out to that old Linguine con Sarde post.

And now my recipe for this dish, this humble pantry supper I’ve been making for us for years, is the latest addition to the second food52 cookbook.

As in book one’s scallop competition, I was up against the incredibly talented cook melissav, and today, I learned that my Linguine with Sardines, Fennel and Tomato came out on top in the voting. Sardines with pasta! People are cooking this, and enjoying it, people are eating sardines, and that’s not just big, it’s huge. I couldn’t be happier, or more proud.

To all of you who voted, who commented, who are a constant source of support and inspiration, THANK YOU.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had it. We’re not yet done with January and we’ve had more than our yearly average snowfall. My commute has been awful – if the trains aren’t delayed by snow and ice, then switches are breaking, signals malfunctioning, rail cars creeping ever so slowly from station to station. I’ve missed my bus home from the train station every night this week, and tonight looks to be no exception, with more snow expected to begin this afternoon, continuing overnight.

We’ve been on a steady diet of comfort food – a hearty pot roast Sunday night, an almost-meatless soup on Monday, loaded with creamy beans, pasta, and bits of pancetta (not yet our own, but we’re oh-so-close). Last night, I threw together this simple pasta dish, a combination of grated beets cooked down in butter with a healthy splash of white balsamic, the pasta par-cooked then added to the beets with some pasta water to finish, becoming infused with beet flavor and that lovely rich hue. There are similar pastas out there that include poppy seeds and mint, but Mike and I both wanted goat cheese, so I crumbled a bit of Vermont Butter & Cheese chevre on our plates, along with some chopped pistachios for a visual and textural pop. The vibrant colors and bright flavors chased my winter blues away, at least for a little while.

If you follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere, you’ve probably already seen me proudly cheering on my cool friends Cathy and Kim, who are featured in the Washington Post today. If you haven’t, check it out. I’m there, too, on page two, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I had no idea, as we planned our meals for this week, that last night’s dinner would turn into such a big fun celebration. We’ve spent most of our time planning for and looking forward to today, our fifth wedding anniversary, and the meal we’ll share tonight, as well as making plans to continue the celebration over the weekend. We’ll have other things to celebrate then, too – my parents‘ 40th (!) anniversary, and my niece‘s second birthday, so much joy packed into a few short days.

But boy did I get a surprise yesterday thanks to the folks at food52 – they chose my Hunters’-Style Chicken as a Wildcard winner, to appear in the second food52 cookbook alongside Amy‘s amazing Short Rib Ragu and countless other mouthwatering dishes. It’s always a rush to have a recipe chosen as a finalist or an Editor’s Pick in a competition, but to have my dish deemed worthy of inclusion in the book just on its own is really something special. I’m incredibly humbled, and so thankful, and it was such a fun coincidence that I had already planned to make this dish last night.

I’m sure we’ll be raising many a glass over the next few days, and you can be sure that as we toast to all of the things we’re grateful for in our lives, we’ll be thinking of all of you and this incredible community we’ve become a part of.

Mike and I have had a copy of Charcuterie in our collection of food and cookery books for almost as long as we’ve been together. This sort of “project cooking” hasn’t traditionally been my thing (although I did make our first batch of house-cured salmon from the book before someone decided to take over), but Mike loves it, and has taken on many curing projects over the years, among them making bacon and a steady supply of duck confit.

Of course, the last several months have found us taking on all sorts of cooking projects together that I never imagined we would: we got bit hard by the canning bug, and we’re even beginning to experiment with lactofermentation, making saurkraut and soon, I hope, kimchi at home. So when our friends Cathy and Kim launched what would turn into this incredible sensation, this celebration of cured meats called Charcutepalooza, we were immediately on board.

Mike did the bulk of the heavy lifting for this first challenge, and can I just say wow, his breasts are not only gorgeous, but they are delicious (fnar, fnar). As for me, aside from tying the buggers up in their cheesecloth to hang at the beginning of the challenge, I’ve had little to do with those duck breasts but to slice, eat, and enjoy. Oh, and to come up with some fun ways to use this lovely prosciutto.

I typically think simple preparations are best when you want to highlight something made with so much care, so for our first dish, I took inspiration from the shaved fennel salad I like to serve with bresaola. I shaved fennel bulb very thin using a mandolin, and shaved thin slices of radish as well, then combined the two and tossed them with a zippy Meyer lemon vinaigrette – just fresh Meyer lemon juice, our best olive oil, sea salt, and plenty of freshly cracked black pepper. I mounded it in the middle of a plate and placed thin slices of the prosciutto around the edges. We ate with our fingers, wrapping bites of the crisp salad up with the prosciutto slices, a delicious combination.

For several days thereafter, the prosciutto sat (mostly) untouched, as we were “on a cleanse”, but this morning I awoke with an idea I couldn’t get out of my head: Duck. Duck. Goose.

We had a nub of foie gras in the freezer, left over from our Christmas Day wellingtons. We had the duck prosciutto, of course. And though we typically have Mike’s own duck confit in the fridge, we were fresh out, so we picked up a leg at Persimmon Provisions and when we got home from our food and drink-procuring rounds, I got to work.

I pulled the confit meat from the bone, mincing it fine, then added shallot, fresh savory, a beaten egg and a small amount of dry breadcrumbs to the mix. I formed the mixture into cocktail-sized meatballs, each one stuffed with a nugget of foie. I melted duck fat in our iron skillet, gently browning the meatballs on all sides, then drained them on paper towels while I prepared a glaze – fig jam and white balsamic, mustard seeds and fresh ground pepper, sticky, tangy and fruity but not too sweet.

The meatballs went in until they were nicely coated, then I removed them and wrapped each one in a sheet of the duck prosciutto, threading a toothpick through to secure them. After a minute or three under the broiler they were ready to eat, the foie having melted into the rich ducky meatballs, the prosciutto having been rendered crisp and brown at the edges.

Little bites of heaven (now with recipe!).

The Charcutepalooza February Challenge is up, and I’ve got a five pound slab of Pat’s Pastured pork belly in the fridge. I’m taking the lead on this one, and I couldn’t be more excited (but we just might have a little something extra up our sleeves – stay tuned).

We’re up to our elbows in snow, and a good four days into our 10-day adaptation of the Food Lovers’ Cleanse. The biggest problem I’ve had (as I suspected would be the case) is that it has been really difficult to make the plan’s suggested breakfasts and lunches work with my weekday schedule, but I’ve also found that the recipes in general have been really hit or miss.

I was almost ready to give up entirely after our first dinner, the disastrous Ultimate Winter Couscous, which smelled so lovely in the oven but tasted like a whole lot of unpleasantly-textured nothing on the plate (and I’m still at a loss as to why those vegetables needed four whole tablespoons of olive oil). Mike tried and really liked Heidi’s cinnamon quinoa, the edamame hummus (both of which I look forward to trying), and the tuna with celery root and apple salad, but I couldn’t even smell that salad without gagging (and I love celery root). I ended up eating dry tuna with even drier Wasa crackers.

On a positive note, we truly loved the salmon in Bengali mustard sauce and the black-eyed pea curry (for which I used yellow-eye beans from Freedom Bean Farm in Maine), both of which we’d happily put into regular rotation.

Perhaps my favorite recipe so far, though, is one that does not appear in the original BA Food Lovers’ Cleanse, but one I decided to swap in for the OMG-are-you-serious? on-a-weeknight? Successively Simmered Koya-Dofu and Vegetables, the incredibly aromatic, delicious, satisfying, and – wait for it – easy enough for a weeknight (or any darned time) Vegetarian Pho by our friend Winnie Abramson.

You toast coriander seeds, cloves, star anise, and a cinnamon stick in a dry skillet until fragrant, add them to some warm vegetable broth with an onion and some peeled and smashed ginger, plus an Indonesian soy sauce (which I couldn’t find, so I used her suggested substitution of brown sugar and tamari). You bring it to a boil, simmer, strain out the solids, chop the softened onion and ginger, then add them back to the pot along with edamame and chopped bok choy. Cook a little longer, add your rice noodles (I even used whole grain rice noodles! Healthy!), and finish with a big hit of fresh lime juice, Sriracha, cilantro and fresh scallions. Easy. Peasy. Delicious. And so nice we ate it twice.

It’s so full of promise, isn’t it? A chance to start fresh, a whole year stretched out before you, filled with possibilities and hope.

I used to make grand lists of all the things I’d like to accomplish in a year, but this year my list is far smaller, and more meaningful. As far as food and cooking resolutions go, we’ll make meat. We’ll keep canning. Once our holiday leftovers are gone, we’ll work on some version of that cleanse everyone is talking about. I want to make tortillas from scratch, and tamales, too, just like grandma used to make. I want to cook for my family, not just Mike, but the family we’ve been away from for far too long. This year will be about living more simply, and moving toward the next phase of our lives, surrounded by family and friends, sharing meals and more every chance we get. I can’t wait to get started in earnest.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, and fulfilling 2011.

I’ve been working on my perfect chicken cutlet recipe for what seems like ages, inspired by our many Bay Area friends-who-feel-like-family and their delicious tales of Bakesale Betty sandwiches. So I was a little tickled when, in the midst of much discussion and tweeting about a certain salad Anita (and I, despite never having tasted the original myself) fell hard for during her (and Cam’s) recent Boston visit, Anita deemed my cutlet “drool-worthy.”

I’ll probably continue to tweak this because, well, that’s what I do, but I was extremely happy with how these cutlets came out, and I think I’m finally ready to share my recipe with you.

Wishing you all a safe and joyful holiday – may you get everything you hope for and more.

Crispy Chicken Cutlets

2 whole skinless boneless chicken breasts, tenders removed, breasts pounded to an even thickness
grapeseed or other neutral oil for frying

for the brine:
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
2 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning
½ teaspoon hot paprika
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon Colman’s mustard powder

for the dredge:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning
½ teaspoon hot paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons dried marjoram
1 teaspoon ground coriander
2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon Colmans mustard powder

for the batter:
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon baking powder

Combine the ingredients for the brine in a lidded container or zip-top plastic bag, stirring or shaking to combine. Add the chicken to the brine, cover or seal, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Remove the chicken in its brine from the refrigerator about half an hour before cooking and set aside. Combine the ingredients for the dredge and the batter in separate individual containers. Remove the chicken from the brine, shaking off excess, then dip the chicken pieces in the dredge, making sure they are evenly coated. Dip the chicken pieces in the batter, shaking off excess, then dip them once more in the dredge before setting aside on a plate or platter. (They’ll look pretty shaggy, but you’ll get nice crisp layers of crust on the chicken once it’s cooked.)

Pour about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thickness of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan (I used our cast iron skillet) and heat until shimmering. Add the chicken pieces to the hot oil and cook until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 170 degrees, flipping the pieces once (I find that using an offset spatula to do the actual flipping, with a pair of tongs to guide, works well – you can gently flip the pieces while keeping the crust intact). When the chicken is cooked, you can finish each piece with a sprinkle of flaky salt or chopped fresh parsley.

If you’re scaling up the recipe to serve more people, you can place the cooked chicken pieces on a rack set over a baking sheet and hold them in a low oven until you are ready to serve.

There are times when I really have to pinch myself and ask, “Is this really my life? How the heck did I get here, to this place, with these people… how the heck did I get so lucky?”

This past Thursday was definitely one of those times.

When I heard Amanda Hesser would be speaking at the Boston Athenaeum as part of her book tour for The Essential New York Times Cook Book, Mike and I knew we’d want to attend. When I got an email that Amanda would like to share a post-event dinner with us and a few other Boston-area food52 folks (Dave and Mary Reilly, Peg Loftus, and our wonderful coordinator Steven Dunn), I was even more excited. I had met and even gotten a chance to cook with Amanda (and Merrill Stubbs, her food52 co-founder) a little over a year ago at the food52 launch party, and though I was nervous as could be about meeting someone I so admired, I found her to be incredibly warm, funny, and totally down to earth, so I was thrilled to have another chance to spend some time with her.

What made this dinner extra special was the venue, Chef Jason Bond’s not-yet-open restaurant Bondir in Cambridge. Jason and his staff greeted us warmly, handing us flutes of bubbly as we gathered around a roaring hearth, and then proceeded to treat us to a wonderful feast. There was cheese, heirloom apples, and tiny sweet carrots draped in tissue-thin sheets of house Mangalitsa pork guanciale which we nibbled on in front of the fire, then once seated in the dining room, we were each presented with a pair of sweet tender scallops harvested that morning from waters off Scituate, Mass.

Also from those waters, beautiful lobster tails, poached in Vin Jaune and served with buttercup squash, crosnes, Roxbury russet and onion greens. Chef brought out a beautiful copper roasting pan with racks of roast Tamworth pork next, the aroma of succulent meat and bronze fennel filling the dining room before he returned to the kitchen to carve and serve it forth. The finale was probably the biggest revelation, a tart of Jerusalem artichokes enrobed in a black pepper caramel and served with a cardoamaro cream. As I’ve said many times, I’m not big on desserts, but this one hit all the right notes.

The food, drink, and conversation flowed, the cozy space was filled with laughter, and though we were there for hours it felt all too brief as Mike and I bid our farewells and headed back to South Station to catch the last train back to Providence. I felt more than a little zombie-like on Friday as I struggled through my workday on just a few hours of sleep, but it was so worth it.

Huge thanks to Amanda, to Chef Jason and Monica and the staff at Bondir, and to my wonderful food52 friends. Evenings like this are truly what community, what gathering around a table and sharing the gift of a good meal, what savoring life, is all about.

We love a good pot of chili, and our kitchen has turned out dozens of variations over the years. Mike is partial to a meaty, Alton Brown-style version, while I tend to favor a chili with lots of beans and sometimes no meat at all. With the weather turning colder I decided to make chili my next project, and set out on Sunday to come up with a version that would satisfy both of us.

For the meat, I used Aquidneck Farm beef short ribs, boned out, trimmed, and cut into chunks. I made a puree of chiles and spices, added fire-roasted tomatoes and some rich dark beer, and let everything cook low and slow for the better part of the day. I added some crushed tortilla chips for texture and a hint of toasty corn flavor, and a hit of fresh lime juice at the end for brightness and balance. And after my pot of chili had cooked for the better part of the day, I cooled it down and let it sit overnight. We ate it on Monday with a bevy of garnishes, and I have to tell you, it was so worth the wait. You can get my recipe at food52.