Posts tagged Sarah Simmons

Recipe, Notes, and the scoop on Emile DeFelice, Caw Caw Creek, and Columbia’s All-Local Farmer’s Market at sarahmcsimmons.com.

It’s been a little over a year that I decided to change careers completely. I left a three year old retail consulting practice that was just starting to take off to cook full time. Some days I wonder what the hell I was thinking. But most days I still have to pinch myself when I think about what has happened over 378 days.

I served my dishes to Eric Ripert, Daniel Boulud, April Bloomfield, Anita Lo, and more at the Michelin Restaurant Guide NYC Release party. I shot videos for Daily Candy and with the crew at Food 52. I was on the TODAY Show, as well as local NY news programs, and filmed a pilot for a TV show. I wrote articles for Bon Appetit and Glamour and had articles written about me. And I started a catering business taking on jobs serving 250 conference-goers and four-course dinners for some of the world’s most prominent brands.

All of that is super cool and exciting. But I have to be honest, I’m most excited about the next 378 days. My team and I are still developing TV programming and I’m still catering, but I’ve also decided to expand my supper club as a first step towards something HUGE.

Once I can talk about Project HUGE, I’ll share the details.  In the meantime, I’m taking City Grit out of my home and into larger venues in NYC, as well as hitting the road to host dinners in other cities. And my dear friend, Michael Galpert is joining me. Me is now a WE!

Next week, we’re hosting our first series of dinners in NYC. I’ve been working with my good friend, Jeremy Kittredge – known as the King of Breakfast, and we’ve got a fantastic menu planned for Breakfast for Dinner on Wednesday, April 6th.

Here’s a glimpse of our last Breakfast for Dinner dishes.

The new menu we’re working on puts this menu to shame! Grab tickets while you can as it is close to selling out!

We’re also hosting two weekend dinners on Friday & Saturday nights. These dinners which we’re calling “Parlez Vous Francais, Y’all!” will feature an eight-course tasting menu of classic French dishes with a Southern twist. I’ve been working on this menu for weeks and can’t wait to serve it. I’ll be sharing sneak peaks of the dishes in progress throughout the next week or so.

So for the next two weeks, I’m going to be heads down working on this. But hopefully, I’ll have some time to post a recipe or two, as well as celebrate all of the exciting things that lie ahead! 

It’s so cold outside. Yesterday when I woke up at 5 AM the weather genie on my iphone said it was 17 degrees and “feels like 4 degrees.” Two hours later it read 19 degrees and “feels like 2 degrees.” The wind was so strong it blew Sheldon’s little hind legs out from under him when he was jumping up on a curb.

So windy. So cold.

So I’m back on the soup kick – this time making soups out of the excess veggies and herbs in my fridge. I rarely have excess mushrooms. They are usually cooked and consumed within two days of purchase. But not this week. So I decided to try to make a creamy soup with as little cream as possible. And with a vitamix blender, that’s usually a pretty doable task.

But in my rush to finish this soup before running to a meeting, I poured it into the vitamix before it has sufficiently cooled. AND was careless about checking to make sure the lid was tightly secured. This, my friends, is a recipe for danger. I scalded my right arm. And was wearing more soup than was left in the blender. And returned home from my meeting to the task of cleaning mushroom soup off the floor, walls, and CEILING.

But after the kitchen was clean, at least I was able to enjoy a nice, warm bowl of creamy mushroom bisque!

Recipe, Notes, and Nutritional Information via sarahmcsimmons.com. 

I’m definitely on a Thai kick these days. I don’t know if it’s the cold weather or a serious lack of spice in my personal life, but all I’ve been craving is curry.

Curry I love. Tilapia I do not. It’s like chicken to me – so boring. But this past weekend I decided to see if I could a) make tilapia less boring and b) play around with a new curry dish.

Much to my surprise and delight, it turned out better than I’d imagined in my head. The flavors were so spectacular, it felt like I was dressing tilapia up for the prom.

Since I had a bag of forbidden rice in the cupboard waiting to accompany an asian dish, I decided to experiment with a lightly curry flavored side dish. The name “forbidden rice” cracks me up. It’s really just a black rice that has a more nutty flavor and a deep purple color than the white variety, but an old wives tale says at one time it was considered to be the Emperor’s rice in China and, therefore, forbidden for anyone else to eat.

It certainly rounds out this dish and, as a bonus, makes me feel a little bit like royalty.

Recipe, Notes, and Nutritional Information via sarahmcsimmons.com.