We Like to Cook, and Eat

butter-roasted butternut squash, quiche, and fast fake aioli

2012-02-15T00:29:00.002-05:00

I have to share with you this insanely delicious, absurdly simple way to cook winter squash. Once again what I'm giving you is a recipe adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe (he calls it Roasted Winter Squash Slices), and I'm sure you get it by now - Bittman makes great, simple recipes we should all cook all the time... but I feel the need to share this in particular because the recipe says "oil or melted butter" and if you're anything like me, you usually opt for oil when given the choice between the two, especially for oven roasting. But I'm here to say, forget the oil for once, TRY THE BUTTER! It is COMPLETELY different from roasting in olive oil. The butter - it browns! and turns nutty and fragrant in the oven during the roasting time, and I've never tasted more complex, rich, delicious squash flavor. I'm also going to tell you about a version of a crustless spinach quiche my friend Emily recommended (which she adapted from a recipe on Smitten Kitchen), and which we ate together with the squash for a very delicious eat-the-rainbow type vegetarian meal.

Butter-Roasted Winter Squash

(this works well with a sturdy squash you can peel and cut into slices, like butternut, i.e. I don't think acorn would be ideal here. However, delicata would totally work because you can eat the skin, plus it makes pretty flower shaped slices).

1 winter squash, peeled, seeded and sliced somewhere between a 1/4 and 3/8ths inch thick
3 tbsp salted butter, melted
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375. Brush a sheet pan generously with some of the melted butter using a pastry brush. Lightly butter both sides of each slice of squash, again with the pastry brush, placing them on the sheet pan as you go. Sprinkle the tops with salt and pepper.

Roast in the oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, flipping halfway through.

That's it. And now...

Spinach Quiche Minus The Hassle of Pastry Making

1 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
4 to 6 eggs
salt and pepper
1/4 to 1/3 cup milk or cream if you have it
10 oz package of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed out very throughly
3/4 to 1 cup frozen peas, thawed (optional)
1 russet potato, microwaved for 3 minutes or until cooked through (optional), peeled and diced
4 to 6 scallions, sliced thin
1 to 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar or other melty cheese (jack or swiss or PEPPER jack! etc)

Preheat oven to 375 (at this temperature, you'll have to bake it a relatively long time, probably 45 minutes, but I chose to do it at that temperature so it could bake along with the squash; if you're in a hurry and this is all you're baking you can put the oven up to 425 and it will probably only take 20 minutes or so).

Brush a pie plate with the melted butter (ok if the excess pools up in the bottom). Combine the panko and the parmesan, and sprinkle them into the pie plate, tilting to coat all the buttered surfaces with cheese and breadcrumbs (ok if more sticks to the bottom than to the sides).

In a large bowl beat the eggs with the salt and pepper. Add the milk or cream (you could also add a little sour cream - amounts are very flexible). Add the spinach, peas, potato, scallions and cheese, and stir to combine. Pour into the pie plate, and put it in the oven. Mine took the better part of 45 minutes to get fully cooked all the way to the middle. You can just check with the tip of a knife starting at about 35 minutes.

Let it cool a bit before serving. It's good hot, warm... leftovers were delicious cold, even.

You could serve the quiche with a super fast fake aioli for a dipping sauce (spanish tortilla style):

Super Fast Fake Aioli

1/2 cup Hellman's/Best Foods Mayonnaise
1 medium to small sized garlic clove, finely minced (I grate mine on a microplane zester)
juice of half a lemon (less even, maybe a quarter)
1/4 extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Mix the mayo, garlic and lemon juice. Whisk in the oil a little at a time. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

N! Y! E!

2012-01-29T20:07:00.000-05:00

This post is a little late - but I still wanted to get it up to show you all the things we made for our New Year's Eve party. My basic party philosophy is: 1.) put out lots and lots of delicious food (all over your house so people don't congregate in one place) 2.) pour strong drinks and 3.) bring together engaging, interesting people from all different parts of your life. I guarantee everyone will have a blast...everything else is icing on the cake.

Of course, I love planning parties and half wish it was my profession, but it really was very easy to make a lot of delicious and beautiful food - it's all about taking time to plan your menu and present things in a unique way. We did all appetizers, but there were so many choices that people who were hungrier certainly had many choices to fill their bellies.

Roasted Potatoes with Creme Fraiche, Scallions and Optional Bacon

Poblano Cream Soup Shots (sorry for the spillage!)

Grapefruit Bourbon Punch with Mint Simple Syrup - freeze grapefruit slices for prettier ice cubes

Crostini with Steak, Goat Cheese and Mushrooms

Bloody Mary Shrimp Cocktail (more spills!)

Pork Meatballs in Marinara

Bleu Cheese drizzled with rosemary infused honey

Spiced Almonds

Crostini with Lemon Ricotta, Roasted Butternut Squash and Fried Sage

White Bean, Feta and Sun-Dried Tomato dip - serve with crackers, chips, bread or veggies

Crudites with Homemade Caesar Dip

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of our desserts...delicious persimmon puddings with lemon curd and macaroons from our awesome friend Jess and an assortment of cookies (the best chocolate chocolate chip cookies ever, orange thumbprint cookies) and phenomenal lemon cheesecake from Elaine. A delicious time was had by all.

Transforming Leftover Roast Chicken and Vegetables into a whole other meal

2012-01-23T23:26:00.000-05:00

I roasted a chicken the other night, along with the standard root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, turnips, onions, celery, garlic cloves, etc). It was wonderful (but everyone knows how to do this, I think, so I won't share how I did it, I'm here to talk about the leftovers). See, the chicken (due to being sustainably raised, and my not wanting to spend a ton of money on meat) was tiny, and after the one dinner for the two of us, there wasn't really a full meal for two left for the next day. (Also, Axel F doesn't love eating leftovers, particularly). So to transform what was left into a new and different (and more generous) meal, I took all the meat I could off the bones of what remained of the chicken (half a breast and a thigh), chopped up all the roasted vegetables nice and small (along with some cooked broccoli I had leftover from another meal, and some thawed frozen peas) and threw together a casserole. It turned into enough food to feed an army (or well, 8 people) generously. This could be done meaty or vegetarian, with any kind of leftover cooked meat or vegetables that you have on hand (or if you started with drained canned tuna and frozen peas, it's the classic tuna noodle casserole).

It's basically just: cooked pasta or noodles, white sauce (bechamel) and/or cream of mushroom soup, cooked meat and/or vegetables, breadcrumbs. And it is creamy and rich tasting (without actually packing in much fat), filling and homey, with a nice crunch from the toasty breadcrumbs. It's what Minnesotans call "hot dish," and I love it. If you really want to guild the lily (as our parents like to say), you could grate some cheese in before mixing it all together... but I found it plenty rich as is.

You need:
1-3 cups of cooked meat, medium dice
2-4 cups of cooked vegetables, medium dice
1 cup frozen peas, thawed under a bit of cold running water and drained
1 pound of pasta, in some kind of piece type shape - orecchiette, or farfalle, or penne, or even wide egg noodles would be great
a batch of white sauce (recipe below*) PLUS a can/carton of cream of mushroom soup** OR a double batch of white sauce made with extra seasoning***
3-4 slices of white sandwich bread (or really any bread you've got)
3-4 tbsp butter

Grease a 9 by 13 glass baking dish or similar with soft butter and set aside. Preheat the oven to 375.

Tear up the slices of bread and add to a food processor along with 3 tbsp soft butter and a bit of salt and pepper, and pulse until the bread is in uniform crumbs and the butter is well distributed.

Prepare the white sauce* and combine it with the cream of mushroom soup. Add enough extra milk if necessary to make the mixture loose enough - it should look about as thick as clam chowder or a spaghetti sauce. Pour the mixture into a large bowl.

Boil the pasta or noodles in very well salted rapidly boiling water (it should taste as salty as ocean water). Drain the pasta and add it to the white sauce in the bowl, along with your meat and/or veggies, and mix well to combine. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if necessary, and thin with more milk or some reserved pasta water if it doesn't seem saucy enough. Now would be the time to add cheese if you want it (cheddar or even some grated parmesan would be good). Any other seasonings you like (chopped pickled jalapenos, chopped roasted red pepper, chopped fresh herbs, etc) can be added now.

Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and smooth out the top. Carefully pour on the breadcrumbs, spreading them over the whole surface. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour, till things look bubbly and the breadcrumbs turn nice and golden brown.

*WHITE SAUCE (or, bechamel)
2 cups milk
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
bay leaf
salt and pepper

warm the milk in a saucepan on the stove, or in the microwave, in a microwave safe measuring cup.

In a larger saucepan, melt the butter. When the foaming subsides, and with a whisk handy, sprinkle in the flour and start whisking vigorously to combine thoroughly and get rid of any bits of dry flour. Cook this mixture (keeping it moving) for a minute or two over medium heat. You'll smell that the raw flour scent goes away, and turns buttery and toasty.

Add the warm milk very gradually, little dribbles at a time at first, whisking as you go. Once milk seems to outnumber the flour in the pan, you can add the rest of the milk all at once, and add the bay leaf. Whisking constantly (being sure to get into the corners of the pan), cook until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Sometimes it's nice to add nutmeg to this too, especially if you're using, say, leftover cooked dark greens like kale or chard, and leftover italian sausage for the meat! mmmm.)

**I normally would just make lots of white sauce for something like this, but I happened to have bought (on spec) a carton of condensed cream of portobello mushroom soup at Trader Joes, it seemed like it would be a tasty addition, and lo - it was!

*** if you don't use part cream of mushroom soup, in addition to doubling the amounts for the white sauce, I'd recommend amping up the flavor by adding a finely chopped onion and some garlic to the butter at the beginning, cooking it until soft and translucent but not brown, before adding the flour and continuing with the regular white sauce recipe.

Mark Bittman Couscous casserole, veggie style

2012-01-05T15:17:00.002-05:00

This recipe (from How to Cook Everything) is fairly easy, and the results smell and taste a lot like lasagna (yay!), but without the hassle of boiling/wrangling noodles or the long bake time. The original recipe calls for sauteed ground meat, which you could do if you want, but the way I made it was all vegetables (plus chickpeas and cheese), and it was very filling and satisfying. In the original Bittman recipe he implies that you can used cooked leftover... anything in this (meat or vegetable), and I'm inclined to agree. Also he says it can be assembled up to a day in advance before baking, which is helpful.

Ingredients:
4 cups of your favorite tomato sauce*
1/4 cup water or veggie stock
2-3 pounds of whatever veggies you like (2-3 pounds uncooked if you're going to roast them for this recipe, or about 3-4 cups of already cooked leftover veggies/beans/etc)
1 roasted pepper, seeded peeled and chopped (optional - I didn't have one, but it seems like it would be good)
1/2 cup couscous (whole wheat or regular) (I think you could substitute fine bulgur or quinoa if you are gluten free, without any adjustment to the recipe except maybe a slight increase in stock/water; or other heartier grains you'd want to par cook first, and maybe measure about 1-1 1/2 cups of cooked grains)
1/2 to 1 cup of cheese (I used feta and parmesan) (amount to taste and dictated by what you have on hand - goat cheese would be fun too I think, but feta and parmesan were a great combination)

First, preheat the oven to 400, and cut up your veggies (if you're not using up already-cooked leftover veggies) into smallish chunks or slices. I used sliced zucchini and summer squash and a drained can of chickpeas. You could use things like diced eggplant, winter squash, carrots, peas, any cooked beans, etc. Whatever you choose, if it needs cooking, cut into small and roughly equal pieces, put it on a big baking sheet, drizzle with oil and salt and pepper, and roast till things start to brown, 10-15 minutes or so. I think greens might be good in this - you could sautee (or blanch, drain/squeeze out) and chop chard, spinach, or kale and mix it in with the roasted veggies once they're out of the oven.

Heat your tomato sauce along with the stock or water in a large-ish saucepan until bubbling (I maybe used a bit more than 1/4 cup stock). Stir in the roasted bell pepper if you have it and the couscous, stir, cover, and remove from the heat. Reduce the oven temperature to 350.

Oil a 2 quart baking dish (not metal), and layer the couscous/tomato mixture alternating with the roasted veggies and cheese, till you fill the dish (if you're using leftover pre cooked vegetables, I'd recommend warming them up a bit before layering them, so they don't slow down the baking.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is melty. Cool a bit before serving. This was great with a green salad on the side.

It also made delicious leftovers (the flavor might even improve!) with a fried egg and sriracha on top.

*easiest tomato sauce I make:
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
as many garlic cloves as you like (4 or so), chopped
a 32 oz can of crushed tomatoes
whatever seasoning you like (basil, oregano, parsley)
salt and pepper

fry the onion and garlic in oil until softened (you could chop a carrot very small for this too if you wanted). Add the can of tomatoes and a little water if it seems thick. Add herbs and salt and pepper to taste and simmer over medium low heat for 20 minutes.

EVEN EASIER: Trader Joe's sells 32 oz cans of Marinara Sauce which I was shocked to find is pretty decent tasting. Actually, they sell several different kinds - look for the kind that has the shortest ingredient list (it's impressively short).

Steamed Whiskey and Marmalade Pudding with Sauce Anglaise

2011-12-26T12:20:00.000-05:00

I was put in charge of dessert for Christmas dinner so I gathered a list of Christmasy sounding recipes and presented them to the family for an informal poll. Elaine and Axel F narrowed it down to Frozen Peppermint Bouche de Noel and this one. Upon presenting these two final options to mom and dad I received the response: 'the whiskey one. When we see whiskey, we react.' The whiskey one it was.

This recipe is from last December's issue of Bon Appetit magazine. I was skeptical about whether or not a "steamed pudding" would actually be appetizing...luckily it was not only appetizing but really rich, delicious and special enough for Christmas dinner.

Ingredients:

Sauce:
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/3 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean
2 tbs whiskey (I may have added extra!)

Puddings:
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 sticks butter (1 cup), at room temp
3/4 cup citrus marmalade*
Zest of one orange
4 large eggs
2/3 cup whiskey**
1 3/4 cup self rising flour***

Special equipment: 8 3/4 cup ramekins, buttered and floured (do this thoroughly, you'll be sorry otherwise!)

To do:

To make the sauce, whisk together egg yolks, milk, heavy cream, sugar and vanilla bean seeds. The recipe said to discard the vanilla bean itself, but I threw it in to impart some additional flavor. Place over medium heat and stir constantly until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. The recipe said 9 minutes, I cooked it for more like 12-15. It likely depends on whether your ingredients are cold or at room temperature. I was surprised there was no tempering of the yolks situation but this worked out just fine. I did strain mine at the end to get out some lumpy bits at the bottom of the pan. Once done, transfer sauce to a bowl and put in the refrigerator until cool. This can be done up to 2 days in advance.

For the puddings, beat together the sugar and butter until blended and smooth. Add the marmalade and zest and beat again. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the whiskey and then the flour until combined. Divide the batter equally among the ramekins. I will admit, I only had 6 ramekins and I definitely filled them too full...if you have the prescribed 8, I think you will have better luck in terms of both cooking time (mine took longer than expected) and portion size (these are so rich and mine were definitely too big).

Cover the ramekins with buttered foil (important!) and place in a rack inside a roasting pan. Add hot water to the roasting pan until it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bring the water to a gentle boil then reduce heat to medium high and cover with foil. Steam the puddings for 50 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. At some point you will think, "these are never going to cook!!" Do not despair, they will, although you may need to turn up the heat and or add additional hot water to the pan.

Once cooked through, carefully remove the ramekins from the roasting pan, run a knife around the edge and turn out onto a plate. Mine came out fairly easily with a minimum or angst and drama, but next time, I will take better care with my butter and flour in the crevices as the caked did stick a bit around the edges. Top with sauce and serve.

This was like a cross between a pudding and a cake, extremely moist but with a tender cake crumb. The bitterness from the whiskey and marmalade is a perfect balance to the super sweet sauce.

*You can use any kind of citrus marmalade...orange is fine. I used one that I made in my jams class at the BCAE that was made from oranges, lemons and limes.

**I used Jameson, you use what you like.

***You will definitely need to use self rising flour, as there no other leavening in the pudding. If you cant find or don't want to purchase a whole sack of the stuff, you can make it yourself by combining 1 1/4 teaspoons Baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt to each cup of flour you need.

PIZZA

2011-12-10T23:29:00.001-05:00

A quick post about a WAY to make pizza, rather than a full on recipe (everyone has their favorite pizza dough recipe, OR a buck for a bag of dough at TJ's is a totally great substitute for making your own).

This method is what Mario Batali suggests as a pizza process in his book Molto Gusto (I've referenced the book here before, you should totally get it - gorgeous recipes, most of them vegetarian, but some meat too, totally terrific! and great photos, one for every recipe, which is awesome).

Basically, you par cook your dough on the STOVETOP! You can do many crusts at once and freeze them for super quick pizza making in the future! You need a nice heavy cast iron skillet (if you don't have one, go to a thrift store near you and buy one for a buck. Or, go to a kitchen store and buy a new one for 20 bucks. Read up on how to use and care for them here).

Anyway, you heat a cast iron pan on the stove top over medium heat for several minutes. Make sure your dough is lovely and rested, soft and at room temperature. Pat out small rounds of dough (4 oz. if you have a scale - which if you bought a pound of dough at the store means you're dividing your dough into 4 pieces) - just big enough for an individual pizza size, maybe 8-10 inches when it's patted out (however big your cast iron pan is would be a good way to decide this). Press the dough out (Mario recommends using a mix of flour and semolina to dust your surface, because the semolina gives you a little extra crunch in the final pizza); as you press it out, leave a little rim around the edge, but with the main part as thin as you can possibly make it - in fact, when you think it's thin enough, tell yourself you can get it just a little thinner.

Throw it in the preheated pan and cook it for a few minutes, until lightly brown and dry looking on the underside, with some darker brown spots. Flip it over and cook for slightly less time, until the dough on the second side is definitely dry with some golden spots. You can press on any thicker spots at this point to encourage them to cook through. Remove to a rack or cookie sheet to cool completely. Continue to do this with all your dough.

The fun thing is, you can make pizzas now, but you can also save some crusts for later - they freeze incredibly well. Thaw before you use them.

So the actually turning into pizza part I must differ slightly with Mr. Batali, much as it pains me to do so. His instructions have you top the par cooked crust with your preferred toppings and then slide it under the broiler. In my home oven, this resulted in amazingly crusty tops, but soggy bottoms! I don't like that in a pizza. SO I heated my cast iron griddle (wide and totally flat; if you only have a cast iron skillet with high sides, I'd recommend using an overturned cookie sheet, to make sliding on crusts topped with sauce a cheese easier), and put it in the oven on the top rack under the broiler set on high to preheat, so that I could throw the pizzas on that (I'm afraid the heat of the broiler would kill a pizza stone, can anyone confirm or deny this? I don't want to test my theory on MY pizza stone) - anyway, the cast iron base provided toasty heat to crisp the underside while the broiler melted the cheese (and browned the salami) and turned the top crust mahogany and crispy like I've never managed before.

Next time I might go so far as to briefly broil the crust UPSIDE DOWN before removing it, putting on the toppings, and sliding it back under the broiler right side up.

A warning he gives is that you really want to top and broil these one at a time - so plan this for the kind of meal where that would work out for you. You don't want to have a bunch of them sitting with sauce and cheese and what-have-you on top for any length of time before they go under the broiler or the crust will get soggy. NO TO SOGGY PIZZA! So the method is, top the crust as fast as you can and broil it! Eat it! Top and broil another! And another! Axel F and I ate three of these for dinner once and were very full (but not uncomfortably so). So I'd bank on 1-2 per person.

Hamburgers with Pork Belly and Tomato Jam

2011-12-09T20:16:00.001-05:00

Elaine was over and we were making burgers. And that seemed pretty boring so obviously the only thing to do is to take some left over pork belly (from a DELICIOUS dinner at Vee Vee in Jamaica Plain), fry it up and put it on top. Diabolical? Maybe. Delicious? Definitely. So, the next time you have leftover pork belly in the fridge (all the time, right?) consider this.

Make your burgers as you would normally (I just mixed my meat with worcestershire sauce and salted and peppered the patties before cooking). Fry burgers to your desired doneness (medium rare, obvy) and then quickly fry up your pork belly, just to warm it and give it a little crunch on the outside. Toast some delicious sourdough, spread on some tomato jam (I make this recipe, so spicy and delicious) and top with burgers and pork belly.

I served these with a super simple salad and celery root which I cubed and roasted with butter, salt and pepper in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour until tender and golden brown.

slow roasted tomatoes

2011-11-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

There were a bunch of us together in beautiful midcoast Maine for a weekend back in July, and we took turns making meals. I had signed up to do lunch one day, and figured with a little advance planning, my co-lunch-maker and I would have minimal prep work as well as being flexible on the exact time people ate, which was nice on a hot saturday afternoon (or was it sunday?). Of course, early November is a dumb time for me to be telling you about how to make an easy mid-summer lunch for a group of vacationing people... but you can keep it in mind for next year. Or make it now and pretend it's summer.

Anyway, here was the spread:
Laid out (along with watermelon, cucumber spears and potato chips) for people to pick from to assemble a delicious sandwich we had:
nice thick sliced sourdough bread (kind of thinking I should have toasted it...)
cheeses of all kinds from our hosts' *cheese CSA* (be still, my heart!)
grilled red onions (thrown on the grill in the aftermath of the previous night's dinner grilling and refrigerated overnight, I had to rewarm them on the stove but they still had a nice grilled flavor)
olives (pitted for safety)
avocados (scooped out of skins and cut into wedges)
salt and pepper
slow roasted tomatoes (besides grilling the onions, this was the only advance prep I had to spend any time on; in fact I made them at home a couple days before and brought them up with us in a cooler; that recipe is what I'm giving you here today):

Slow Roasted Tomatoes
adapted from Recipes by Susan Spungen

This would be a great way to preserve and extend the life of an end-of summer glut of tomatoes when you don't feel like canning sauce. Even sad year-round supermarket tomatoes turn out amazingly delicious this way (aha! Year-round relevancy!), and you can store the results for several weeks (submerged in olive oil) in the fridge, and use them in scrambled eggs, on pizza, in a simple pasta sauce with oil and garlic or butter and cream, or roasted vegetables, in a cold cut sandwich, chopped up in a salad with the oil drizzled on top for dressing, in a vegetable soup, with goat cheese and crackers for a nice pre-dinner snack... et cetera. I don't bake these as hot as Spungen does, I bake them for a lot longer at a much lower temperature, because I want to ensure a sort of gooey, juicier-than-dried-fruit texture.

plum tomatoes (whatever amount you want - they shrink way down, so plan accordingly; 3 lbs. made about 3 cups of finished tomatoes)
extra virgin olive oil
garlic cloves (several, sliced very thin)
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350. Have ready rimmed cookie sheets/sheet pans or baking pans, just make sure you have enough square footage to fit all your tomatoes (halved) in a single layer.

Cut the tomatoes in half the long way, and cut out the stem. Throw them all onto your cookie sheets or sheet pans (or baking pans) with rims, drizzle with olive oil, plenty of salt and freshly ground black pepper (crushed red pepper flakes too if you want), and toss them around with your hands till they're all nicely coated. Arrange them so they're all cut side up. Lay a garlic slice on each of the cut sides (fiddly, but worth it - I recommend having the garlic all sliced up and ready before you toss the tomatoes in the oil - your hands will be all nice and greasy from tossing tomatoes, which will make doling out the sticky garlic slices easier). Drizzle on a little more olive oil, if they aren't totally glistening yet.

Put the tomatoes in the 350 degree oven for 30 minutes, then reduce the heat to 225 degrees and leave them for at least 3 hours, and up to 6 (the first time I did this, I started baking them late at night, and left them till morning at 200, for about 8 hours, and they turned out great). You want to see that they're not watery at all, kind of browned and golden at the edges, and plump and shriveled at the same time.

Here they are at 4 hours, they looked nice but I felt they could go longer:

Here they are at 8 hours at 225:

I think if your timing requires that you leave them for 8 hours, roast at 200 instead (like I did the first time), it gives you more leeway, these seemed a little darker than I wanted though they are still quite tasty.

Let them cool, then pack them in a good seal-able container with enough olive oil drizzled on to cover their surface.

Here's a finished sandwich from that nice summer day I wish I was back inside of:

squash and tomatillo soup with nacho garnish

2011-10-22T13:48:00.002-04:00

This soup (from one of the many Moosewood cookbooks) is DYNOMITE*. Rich, a little sweet and creamy from the squash, bright flavor from the tomatillos, and warmly spicy from chipotles. I stole an idea from Nigella Lawson (from her corn chowder recipe) to top it with what are basically nachos, and my only regret was not having a ripe avocado in the house.

You can use any kind of winter squash (mine was one of those ufo squashes, but butternut would be great, sugar pumpkin, delicata, kabocha, hubbard, etc).

I was lucky enough to get 2 pounds of home grown tomatillos for my very own from my friends Felicia and David. They had so many tomatillos from their garden that when I went over to their house for dinner, they had enough for us to make a double batch of this soup, as well as a batch of enchiladas verdes, in addition to the 2 pounds they sent me home with. Don't worry if you aren't so lucky - according to the original recipe, you can substitute canned tomatillos no problem, just drain a 26 oz. can and add it along with the canned tomatoes later on, skipping the roasting step.

Squash and Tomatillo Soup
slightly adapted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
serves 8

for the soup:
tomatillos (about 2 pounds)
onions (4-5 cups chopped, which usually means 4-5 onions)
garlic (8 cloves, smashed and chopped)
squash (6 cups, peeled, seeded and diced, about 3 pounds)
olive oil
salt and pepper
stock (6 cups, vegetable or chicken)
tomatoes (a 28 oz can of either whole plum tomatoes or diced tomatoes, with their juice)
chipotles in adobo (2 teaspoons minced, or more to taste)

for the nacho topping:
corn tortillas (12)
oil
salt
cheddar cheese (2 cups shredded)
pickled jalapenos (whole or chopped)

other awesome toppings you might like to have:
sour cream
chopped cilantro
sliced scallions
diced avocado
more chipotle in adobo
shredded cheese and crumbled tortilla chips (if you want to skip making the nachos)

to make the soup:

Turn your broiler on high.

Remove the husks from the tomatillos, rinse them and slice them in half. Throw them on a sheet pan or cookie sheet with a rim, drizzle with a little olive oil, and place under the broiler for about 5 minutes, or until they soften, their bright green color turns pale, and some get some black spots. (Note: the original recipe says to roast them at 450 for 30 to 35 minutes... you should do it this way if your tomatillos are large, but the broiler method worked great for me because most of my tomatillos were apricot sized or smaller).

In a large heavy soup pot, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and add the onions. Sprinkle on some salt, stir around and turn the heat to medium. Stir often, till they soften and turn a bit golden. Add the chopped garlic and fry till you can smell it. Stir in the squash chunks, the stock and the can of tomatoes with their juice (if you're using canned tomatillos, add them now). Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 or so minutes, until the squash is very soft. Add the chipotles and the roasted tomatillos, and simmer it all together briefly.

In a blender** (or with a stick blender), puree the soup until smooth. I tried my stick blender first, and it just didn't cut it, so I resorted to doing it in batches in my blender, which was totally up to the task. This soup freezes and reheats great. You can serve it right away, of course.

to make the nacho topping (enough for 8 servings):

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Have two sheet pans ready. Using a pastry brush (or your fingers if you don't mind getting messy), lightly oil both sides of each tortilla, then stack them and cut them first in half, then each half in thirds. Arrange the triangles on your cookie sheets, sprinkle on some salt, and bake them near the bottom of the oven (rotate your pans halfway through) for 20 minutes, until light golden and crisp.

Sprinkle cheese onto each nacho (I get ridiculously particular about this... you don't have to. But I really like EACH. NACHO. to have enough cheese on it). Sprinkle on finely chopped diced pickled jalapenos, if you like (or do like we did and just throw a whole pickled jalapeno in your bowl later). Return to the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese.

*if you are a soup lover, you will love this. if you aren't, well, I'm sorry.

**Remember to be really careful when blendering hot soup - take the little clear plastic thingie out of the top of the blender and put a dishtowel folded into quarters over the hole, this lets the hot air out when you start the blender, instead of the whole thing exploding napalm-y soup all over you and your kitchen.

Corn Chowder and Country Style Ribs

2011-10-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

One thing about CSA corn is that it is the most fabulous thing you’ve ever eaten on the day it is picked and deteriorates quickly after that. A hectic few weeks at work meant that I had had 5 ears of corn languishing in the fridge and I knew that eating them boiled on the cob wasn’t going to cut it. Enter the serendipitous finding of a corn chowder recipe in a sample edition of Cook’s Country that Elaine had given me. I adjusted for having one less ear of corn that the recipe called for, but of course mucked it up a little along the way because I wasn’t fully paying attention (oops!). I paired the chowder with some slow cooked, dry rubbed country style pork ribs, recipe also below.

Corn Chowder
Ingredients:
5 ears corn, kernels removed, cobs reserved
1 onion, chopped
1 can corn, drained
4 cups chicken stock
3 slices bacon, thinly sliced
1 lb red bliss potatoes, cut into ½ inch dice
1 cup heavy cream
2 leeks, cleaned and sliced thinly crossways
1 tbs flour
½ cup water

Cook bacon in a soup pot over medium heat until nice and crispy. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and leave about 2 Tbs of bacon grease in your pot. Add the chopped onions, corn and s&p to taste and sautee until cooked, about 8 minutes. In the meantime, puree canned corn with chicken stock – this is where I went wrong. I didn’t reduce the liquid from the original recipe, but I only used 1 can of corn, instead of two.* This mixture acts as a thickener for the chowder, so I sort of, ahem, screwed myself. Not really, it was easily fixable, we’ll get to that later.

Once your veggies have cooked, add potatoes, corn/stock puree and corn cobs and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes are cooked, about 15 minutes. Throw away the coms and stir in the cream, leeks and reserved bacon. At this point I realized my mistake above and knew the chowder wouldn't thicken the way it was supposed to. To remedy this, I made a slurry from 1 tbs flour and half a cup of water and added that to the pot. I cooked the soup an additional 10-15 minutes to allow the raw flour to cook. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

*The original recipe (sorry, can't link to it since I don't subscribe to Cook's Country) calls for 6 ears of corn, 2 cans of corn and 5 cups of chicken stock. Feel free to follow my instructions as my chowder was delicious and a great consistency. But, if you want to do it the original way, puree 2 cans corn with 4 cups stock and add the last cup of stock when you add the potatoes. Then you shouldn't have to use the flour/water slurry.

Country-Style Ribs
Country style pork ribs are cut from the rib end of the pork loin and are generally boneless, although mine did have a few small bones. Mine were quite long, probably about a foot each, so I did cut them in half before cooking them. They are their most delicious when you can cook them low and slow – you’ll have a super tender piece of meat that is literally falling apart. I did a combination of high heat to get a head start (useful to speed up a week night meal) and low heat.

Ingredients:
2 lb Country Style Pork Ribs
2 tbs paprika
2 tbs fresh ground black pepper
2 tbs dry mustard
2 tbs kosher salt
2 tbs Italian seasoning
1 tbs cumin
Canola oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Combine all spices above for your rub. Rub ribs with oil and then thoroughly coat them with your rub. Place ribs on a tin foil lined baking sheet and place in the oven for 20 minutes. At that point, turn the oven down to 250 degrees and let the ribs cook for another hour to hour and half. You want the ribs to reach an internal temperature of 145 degrees and for the to be falling apart tender.

Moroccan Spice Lamb Riblets and Other Super Spiced Stuff

2011-10-03T21:50:00.000-04:00

I had lamb riblets from our CSA - and I asked myself, what the heck do I do with a lamb riblet? It doesn't even seem like a real cut of meat, it sounds like a mini rib from a mini hobbit-type lamb. But they exist. Riblets are cut from the breast and look like ribs but are layered with both fat and meat. Because of this layering, you cannot cook these quickly - braising is pretty much the only option. I did mine with a morroccan spice alongside some acorn squash rings with a apple curry filling. In retrospect, this was probably too much spice on one plate, but Elaine didn't mind so that's all that matters - you can do as you like.

Moroccan Spiced Braised Lamb Riblets
*adapted from this Cook's Illustrated Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbs ground nutmeg
1 tbs ground ginger
2 lb lamb riblets (about 6, or 6 lamb shanks would work as well)
Kosher salt
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large or 2 small jalepenos, minced
2 tbs tomato paste
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup red wine (the recipe calls for 3 cups stock and 2 cups wine, but I wanted to save my wine for drinking)
1 1/2 cups quinoa

To do:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix spices together and set aside.

Sprinkle riblets with salt. Add oil to a large pot (one that has a lid and can go in the oven) and sear riblets until brown on all sides. Remove from pan. Add onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic, jalepenos, tomato paste and spice mixture to pot and saute 3-4 minutes, until veggies are soft. Add liquid and stir to make sure all of the brown bits off the bottom of the pan are scraped up (that's flavor country). Bring liquid to a simmer, add riblets back to the pot, cover and put in preheated oven for about an hour. When 15 minutes remain, add 1 1/2 cups quinoa to pot and cook until quinoa is done. The riblets should be falling off the bone and super tender by the time you are done.

Apple Filled Acorn Squash Rings with Curry Butter
*apparently from Bon Appetit but it was in our CSA newletter - how did they KNOW I would have a glut of acorn squash and apples??

Ingredients:
6 tbs butter
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced
2/3 cup apple juice (I used 2 tbs apple juice concentrate and a splash of water)
1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped (original recipe calls for currants, yuck)
2 acorn squash, cut into 1 inch rings and seeded

To do:
Melt 1 tbs butter in a skillet, add onion and sautee until tender about 2 minutes. Add 1 tbs curry powder and stir, then add apples, apple juice and cranberries. Cook until liquid evaporates about 6-8 minutes. Season filling to taste with salt and pepper.

Melt 5 tbs butter in a small skillet over medium heat. Add 1/2 tablespoon curry powder and stir until fragrant about 1 minute.

Brush a large baking sheet with curry butter and lay your squash rounds down on the baking sheet. Scoop filling into the center of the rings and drizzle the remaining curry butter over the squash. Bake until squash is tender about 30 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer rings to plates when serving, so filling isn't left behind.

JP HAS FOOD TRUCKS

2011-09-28T21:55:00.000-04:00

Thursdays on the Loring Greenough house lawn, my neighborhood has its very own food trucks!! There's a cupcake truck, a BBQ truck (which I'm hoping to try tomorrow) and one called Bon Me which... serves bahn mi, obviously. My friend Elena and I went last month (I went again with Henry K aka Axel F a couple weeks ago). Here are pictures of my first time there - I got the bbq pork bahn mi, and Elena got the tofu soba noodle salad (many choices of sauce, several protein choices (chicken, pork, tofu and shiitake mushroom), and I think they also have rice bowls with those same options.

They have some other little treats, and yummy drinks - hibiscus tea, thai basil limeade, spicy-ginger lemonade, thai iced tea, etc. Here's the menu!

You should go.

thai red curry

2011-09-27T00:34:00.006-04:00

This is so easy, it's shocking. You just have to buy a couple of things you might not have in your pantry right now, but then you'll have them in your pantry, and you'll be psyched because it means that you can make this kind of thing any time. And somehow curry (thai or otherwise) always feels special and delicious to me, even if I'm making it to use up some CSA vegetables...

things you need that you might not have:
thai red curry paste (or green if you want!)
fish sauce (nam pla)
coconut milk (canned, unsweetened, 14 oz)*

Other things you need:
brown sugar
oil (canola or similar)
some kind of protein, cut into small pieces if necessary (chicken or tofu, I used shrimp, Jenean has done sea scallops)
some vegetables (I had eggplant, red bell pepper, and green beans I cut up small and par boiled; you could use tomatoes, carrots, peas, onions, potatoes, bean sprouts, whatever you have and want to use up; you should probably pre-cook harder vegetables)
garlic, minced
ginger, peeled and grated
white or brown rice (ideally jasmine or basmati, all cooked up the way you like it)
basil and cilantro, if you've got it

In a bowl, mix 2 tbsp thai red curry paste, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tsp brown sugar and 2 tbsp water.

In a large frying pan, heat some neutral oil like canola, a couple of tablespoons. Toss in your meat or tofu or seafood. When it has got a little color, remove it to a plate (err on the side of undercooking the seafood, because it goes back in the simmering sauce later; in fact, with shrimp you could probably just wait till the end and skip the first frying step).

Add a little more oil to the pan if it looks dry, and stir fry your vegetables. Add the garlic and ginger and let them fry with the vegetables till you can smell them. Add the curry paste mixture and the coconut milk. Stir to combine and bring the sauce to a simmer. Toss in the meat, scallops or tofu; if you're using shrimp, add it now. Let it all simmer together for about 5 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink, or your meat is cooked and heated through.

Serve over rice, with chopped fresh basil and/or cilantro. A squeeze of lime might be nice, if you like that kind of thing.
*Mark Bittman has a recipe for homemade coconut milk! It's also absurdly easy! You put a cup of unsweetened shredded coconut in a blender with 2 cups of hot water and let it sit for 20 minutes. Blend on high (working up gradually from low so the force doesn't bust the lid of the blender off) for 30 seconds or so. Strain into a bowl through cheesecloth (I use a flour-sack dishtowel) set in a strainer, squeezing on the solids - that's your coconut milk. You can return the solids to the blender and do it again with the same coconut and another 2 cups of hot water, letting it sit a little longer this time, and squeezing a little harder. Combine both batches to get a relatively thin coconut milk ideal for making curry, or skip the second pressing to have 2 cups of thicker coconut milk, more like canned. Keeps in the fridge for a couple of days. It separates as it cools, so you have to shake it up before using.

the best way to eat tomatoes for breakfast

2011-08-15T15:46:00.007-04:00

Sorry for the blurry photo, I was just so excited to hurry up and eat it.

Our dad has always grown tomatoes in his garden, every year whether in California or Massachusetts, and during the height of tomato season (when you have tomatoes coming out your ears) our folks would have this for breakfast. As a little kid (whose ideal breakfast was pancakes with log cabin syrup) I was a little baffled by this. But now I know it's probably the best breakfast in the whole world.

Toast bread, spread with good mayo (hellman's/best foods in my house), top with sliced super ripe tomatoes, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

The better the bread you use, the better this breakfast will be, but it's still incredibly good on regular old sandwich bread like we had today.

strawberry gelato

2011-08-05T13:26:00.002-04:00

So, I made this great lemon gelato, I took pictures of every step along the way to freezing it, wrote up the post right away so I wouldn't forget what I did... and then we somehow ate it all before I took a picture of a bowl of the finished gelato. So of course the only way forward is to make lemon gelato a second time, in order to get a picture, right? In the meanwhile, here is the strawberry gelato I made more recently.
I used bits from 3 recipes for this - Mario Batali's from Molto Gusto, which intriguingly uses powdered milk to counteract the water in the strawberries to keep them from turning the gelato icy; this one from Bon Appetit that I found on Epicurious, which unlike Mario's doesn't use any egg yolks, but rather thickens the base with cornstarch (skipping egg altogether lets the flavor of the fruit really stand out, and makes the gelato more refreshing, but still creamy); and Mark Bittman's general recipe for "soft fruit ice milk" in How to Cook Everything, (I got it as an app on my iphone, best 5 bucks I ever spent!) which like many recipes in there makes one feel free to experiment, armed with a general guideline for proportions.

Strawberry Gelato
makes about a quart

2 cups hulled and chopped strawberries (preferably organic)
3/4 cup sugar, divided (I used turbinado, any kind is fine)
a pinch of salt
1/3 cup dry milk powder
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 tbsp alcohol of some kind (I used creme de cacao, you could use a slightly smaller amount of vodka)
2 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl or large (4 cup or greater) measuring cup, combine the chopped strawberries and their juices with 1/4 cup of the sugar and the pinch of salt. Cover and let sit in the fridge for a while to macerate.

Add the dry milk powder to the macerated strawberries along with the cup of cream, cover and return to the fridge.

In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and the tablespoon of cornstarch. Add 1/4 cup of milk to start, whisking to get rid of any lumps. Add the remaining cup of milk, and over medium heat, bring to a boil, and once bubbling, let it simmer over medium low heat for 1 minute (stir pretty constantly throughout this process).

Remove the milk/cornstarch mixture from the heat and cool it down (either put the bottom of the pan in an ice bath, or if you don't mind getting another bowl dirty, scrape it into a metal bowl, and put that in an ice bath (it will cool down really quickly that way). When it's no longer hot, stir it into the strawberry/cream mixture, along with the vodka (or whatever you decide to use) and the vanilla extract.

Chill the base, ideally for several hours, or overnight if you can spare the time (it should be pretty thick, like the texture of yogurt, actually). Freeze in your ice cream maker, then transfer it to a chilled container for storing. The first day (after about 2 hours chilling in the container) the gelato is soft; the next day it's scoopable (thanks to the addition of the alcohol) but firm, so leaving it out for ten minutes before you try to scoop it makes life a bit easier.

Awesome on a sugar cone.

Zucchini and Summer Squash White Pizza

2011-07-27T10:07:00.008-04:00

Summer CSA frenzy is ON...before I could even eat up one week's offerings (head of lettuce, what seemed like 8 cucumbers, a bunch of radishes, blueberries, raspberries, zucchini, squash) another week was upon me with the more of the same plus corn on the cob, potatoes, arugula and basil. I relish the bounty but stress out over using it all up. That's when I start throwing weird stuff on pizza dough. This particular pizza was inspired by smitten kitchen's zucchini galette which is more of a tart made with pie dough. But it works just as well on as a pizza.

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup olive oil

Pizza dough (store bought is totally fine)

1 zucchini

1 summer squash

15 oz ricotta

1 cup mozzarella (or more if you want)

1/2 cup grated parmesan

zest of 1 lemon

s&p

Preheat oven to 475.

Mince garlic and add to olive oil and let marinate to infuse the oil with garlicky goodness. In the meantime, slice your squash into 1/4 inch rounds and spread on a paper towel lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 30 minutes. The squash will release a lot of moisture so you'll need to dry them with paper towels before putting them on your pizza.

Mix ricotta, half the mozzarella and all of the parmesan in a bowl and add a few tablespoons of the garlic/oil mixture and the lemon zest. Season with s&p to taste.

Roll out your pizza dough to fit whatever pan you're using and place dough in the oiled pan. Brush a few tablespoons of the garlic oil over the dough and then spread your cheese mixture over the whole thing, leaving about a 1/4 inch border. Lay your zucchini and squash slices over the cheese then top with the remaining mozzarella. Bake until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown, 15-20 minutes.

Steak Salad with soy, sesame and shallots

2011-07-19T13:05:00.001-04:00

This meal came together really quickly on a super hot day.

I had two 1/4 pound eye round steaks from the csa. If you know anything about the eye round cut, it's usually a roast, which you have to braise for a long time to get tender. It's not a good cut for a nice grilled steak, frankly, but I really didn't want to have to braise it for a long time in the 90 degree weather we've been having, so I decided to marinate it in soy (which tenderizes and kind of brines it), broil it super quickly, and slice it thin to go on a salad.

Summer Soy Steak Salad: Super Simple, Satisfying
serves 2

ingredients:
-2 steaks, 1/4 lb. each (or one 1/2 lb steak), of any type (would be awesome with a better cut like strip steak or flank steak, but it worked surprisingly well with the cheap/untender eye round cut we had from the csa) (I truly think this would be delicious with seitan, tempeh or tofu as well, and really any other kind of meat, come to think of it)
-2 shallots, sliced
-1/4 cup soy sauce
-2 tbsp fish sauce
-2 splashes worcestershire sauce
-freshly ground black pepper, to taste
-garlic powder, to taste (I usually prefer real garlic, but in this case powdered is better)
-1 tbsp sugar (brown or white)
-1/4 c olive oil (plain, not extra virgin, or any other neutral tasting oil)
-1/4 c sesame seeds
-1 large or 2 small cucumbers, sliced in rounds
-mixed greens, torn up into bite size pieces (I had a little head of boston lettuce and some arugula from the csa)

If you have a cheap/tough cut of steak like I had, take a fork and stab the steaks all over a bunch of times. This helps tenderize it, and it's fun. (If you're using tofu, I'd press it for a while to get as much of the water out as possible.)

In a dish with high sides big enough to fit the steaks in one layer, combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, worcestershire sauce, shallots, pepper and garlic powder. Add the steaks, nestling them down into the sauce, and piling the shallots on top of them. Cover and put them in the fridge for at least an hour, turning once, if you can remember to (no big deal if not).

Dry toast your sesame seeds in a small heavy bottomed non-stick frying pan until brown and fragrant, set aside in a small bowl or dish.

Meanwhile get the steaks and shallots out of the marinade and dry them as thoroughly as possible with paper towels, reserving the marinade.

To make the dressing, pour the steak marinade into the pan in which you toasted your sesame seeds. Add the sugar to the marinade, and bring to a boil, shaking the pan occasionally, and reduce by about half. Pour into a bowl to cool briefly, then slowly whisk in the olive oil (a hit of toasted sesame oil would be great here, I just didn't have any). Set the dressing aside to cool (you can put it in the fridge to help this along, but don't leave it in there too long or the oil will solidify).

Preheat your broiler to high, and put your rack as close to the heat source as possible (my oven is kind of lame at this, I hope yours is better). Place some kind of cooling rack on a foil lined baking sheet, and line the rack with foil, poking holes in the foil to allow for drainage (an actual broiler pan would do the same job, come to think of it... I just don't have one, so the foil covered rack on a sheet pan is my work-around).

Place the steaks on the rack, with the shallots spread out around them. Put them under the broiler for 5 minutes. Flip the steaks, stir the shallots (moving them to the edges of the rack if they're getting too dark), and put back under the broiler for another 2-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of your steaks).

Pull them out and put both the steaks and shallots on a cutting board, and allow the steaks to rest for about 5 minutes (the shallots will soak up any juices that escape from the steaks).

Arrange the mixed greens on two plates, with the cucumbers on top (lots of em!), then slice the steaks and divide them and the shallots evenly between the two. Sprinkle on the toasted sesame seeds and drizzle on the dressing. I served it with some sticky white rice, also topped with sesame seeds and the dressing.

make your own greek yogurt, and what to do with the whey

2011-06-05T15:27:00.004-04:00

A quick post, which is hardly a recipe, but it was so easy and the results so delicious that I'll probably do it on a weekly basis from now on.

I strained regular plain yogurt (I did 2% but you could do any kind) and ended up with half the volume I started with of thick creamy greek-style yogurt, and about the same volume of super nutritious whey (the clear liquid that collects on the top of your plain yogurt which you should drink, not discard).

My method of straining was to put a mesh strainer over a large bowl, and lined the strainer with paper coffee filters (I never seem to have cheesecloth when I need it). I poured a full 32 oz container of plain yogurt in, and put it in the fridge, uncovered, over night. In the morning, I just flopped the strained yogurt back into its original container, and it really had reduced by half. Once it's strained even fat free yogurt becomes thick and creamy, and it's so good alone, with a spoon or two of your favorite natural fruit preserves, a drizzle of honey, or some fresh fruit.

With the whey, of which I now had about 2+ cups, I put it into my blender with some frozen mango chunks (about 1 1/2 cups), and it made enough for one light and delicious mango lassi type drink, only it was more refreshing than if it had the creaminess of the yogurt solids in there.

Just to sell this process a little more, even with the volume reducing by half, it's much cheaper than buying greek yogurt ($3 for 32 oz strained down to about 16 oz for plain regular yogurt, vs. as much as $7 for 17.5 oz of greek yogurt). And drinking the whey is so good for you, in fact the whey is probably more nutritious than the yogurt solids, containing more protein, healthy bacteria and calcium. I can imagine using the whey for all kinds of smoothie-type drinks. Yum.

There are no digital cameras in my house right now, so the picture is courtesy of my computer, apologies for the lack of image quality.

Mushroom and Chicken Fake Crepes

2011-05-25T20:57:00.006-04:00

You might come home from work and not feel like making dinner. So you might then look in the refrigerator to see what you can make quickly. And then you might see 2 packages of mushrooms languishing there which you bought because they were 3/$5 but who can eat that many mushrooms? And also you see the remains of a whole chicken breast that you roasted with garlic and lemon. You would think at this point you would decide to make something quick and easy like maybe a SALAD with some CHICKEN and MUSHROOMS on it. Or possibly you would instead decide to make CREPES - not really that easy and certainly not quick. What is wrong with me?

Anyway, I called these fake crepes because they don't have any flour in them, they are just eggs and cream. But they cook up like crepes and are terrific with savory fillings. They might be good with sweet stuff although for some reason, I'm not convinced. You try it and let me know. Your imagination is the limit as far as the fillings go - roasted veggies, cheese, spinach, and any various proteins would be great. Here's how I made mine:

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1/4 cup heavy cream

12 oz. mushrooms

1 tbs chopped thyme, or more to taste

1 tbs parsley, or more to taste

s&p

butter

chicken

shredded cheddar cheese (I bet I used a cup total - really, its up to you to decide - which was a fortune Elaine once got in a fortune cookie, so it just goes to show you - IT'S TRUE, it IS up to you to decide.)

Whisk together the eggs and heavy cream and salt/pepper - you can also use whole milk if you prefer. These proportions made me 6 crepes, plus 3 that went awry, so you can adjust as needed. Heat a small non-stick skillet over medium heat and butter the pan - you don't want too much, just a thin layer. Add 2 tablespoons of egg mixture to the pan and swirl to coat the bottom. Cook about 1 minute until it is set and flip using a spatula. It won't need as long on the second side. Slide crepe out of the pan and onto a plate and repeat until your batter is gone.

For my mushrooms, I heated some butter and oil over medium heat and added the mushrooms and salt and pepper to taste. I don't like to mess around a lot with my mushrooms, just leave them alone and they will get nice and nutty and brown. Once they've browned, add chopped thyme and parsley and let the herbs heat through for just a minute and then remove from heat.

To assemble your crepes, lay a single crepe on the counter and top with mushrooms, chicken and shredded cheese. Roll it up and place it in a baking dish. Repeat with the rest of your crepes. Top the whole thing with more cheddar cheese and put in a 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes until they are warmed through and the cheese on top is melted. Garnish with some fresh chopped tomatoes, or whatever else you like.

Lemon Cheescake

2011-05-11T22:42:00.001-04:00

I thought a good dessert for Mother's Day was a cheesecake, and when I asked my mom about it she enthusiastically agreed. I gave her the choice between strawberry topping or lemon curd, and she chose lemon, saying the strawberry was a little too... typical (she's a unique and classy lady). I really wanted to make the Cook's Illustrated New York style Cheesecake from March/April 2002 because my friend Emily swears by it, but I liked some elements of their Lemon Cheesecake from May/June 2003. There were differences in the ingredients and cooking method (the lemon one was much fussier, and also seemed to be aiming for a denser, wetter texture than I like in a cheesecake, with the New York style trying to have that cake-y texture at the edges, which I like). So this hybrid was born, and lo, it was very good.

Here are some points Jenean suggested I make when writing about this cheesecake:

- WOWZA!

- AMAZING!

- !!

- Light and creamy!

- Not like regular chessecake where you want to die after you've eaten a piece. After you've eaten a piece of this, you just want another piece.

We are a cheesecake loving family, no doubt, but everybody kind of lost their minds about this one. Jenean texted me super late the night we had it to say she's obsessed with it now.

So you should probably try it. Because of all the steps (relatively easy but there are several parts to it) and cooling down process, this is a good cake to make a day in advance. Take it out of the fridge to let it come to room temperature for about 20 minutes before serving it.

Light and Creamy Lemon Cheesecake

adapted from Cook's Illustrated as noted above

Crust:

5 oz animal crackers

2 tbsp sugar

5 tbsp butter, melted, plus an additional 1 tbsp melted to brush the pan with

Filling:

2 1/2 pounds cream cheese (5 blocks)

1/8 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 oz) sugar

1/3 cup sour cream

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp EACH finely grated lemon and orange zest*

2 tsp vanilla extract

6 large whole eggs plus 2 egg yolks

Lemon curd:

1/3 cup juice from 2 lemons**

2 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk

1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz) sugar

2 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut in 1/2 inch cubes

1 tbsp heavy cream***

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

pinch salt

To make the crust:

Use the 1 tbsp of melted butter to grease up your 9 inch springform pan using a pastry brush. Preheat the oven to 325 and make sure your rack is in the middle of the oven.

pulse the animal crackers in the food processor until very finely ground. Add the sugar and pulse to combine. Turn the processor on and drizzle in the 5 tbsp of butter slowly, and pulse until it looks uniformly moist, like wet sand.

Press the cookie mixture into the bottom of the springform pan using a flat bottomed glass or similar to get it packed down and even.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, take it out to cool on a rack.

While it cools make the filling:

Turn the oven up to 500 degrees.

Cut the cream cheese into roughly 1 inch chunks and put them in your stand mixer bowl. The chunks need to sit at room temp for a while, so I waited to juice my lemons and zest my citrus until after I cut up the cream cheese.

Combine the sugar, the lemon juice, the zests, the sour cream, the vanilla and the salt in a bowl. Crack all your eggs and put them with the egg yolks in another bowl.

add a third of the sugar/juice mixture to the cream cheese cubes (which have sat out at room temp at least 30 minutes by now) and turn on the stand mixer to low to combine, then turn up a little more to beat until uniform. Stop the mixer and scrape the beater and the sides and bottom of the bowl well. Do the same with the remaining sugar/juice mixture, in two more parts. Add the eggs and yolks a couple at a time, again scraping the bowl and beater thoroughly between each addition.

Put the springform pan with your golden brown crust onto a big sheet pan or cookie sheet to make transfer easier. Pour the filling into the springform pan (I found I had too much filling, not sure why; it made a good snack, I confess). Put it in the 500 degree oven for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, turn the heat down to 200 WITHOUT OPENING THE OVEN DOOR**** and let bake for about an hour and a half, until and instant read thermometer registers about 150 degrees. I guess if you don't have one of those, you should look for the very middle of the cake to just barely reach the point where it doesn't jiggle. If you go so long the top cracks, you've gone too far, but it'll probably still be delicious.

Take the cake out and after 5 minutes, slide a thin knife all around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the sides, but leave the springform collar on. Cool all the way down at room temperature, 3 hours, about.

While the cake bakes, you can make/cool the lemon curd:

Heat the lemon juice in a non-reactive saucepan, till hot, not boiling (this will happen fast because it's not much juice). In a medium non-reactive bowl, whisk the eggs and egg yolks (try to remove those little white things that stick to the edges of the yolks, if you don't, you'll need to strain the curd later). Gradually add the sugar, whisking the whole time vigorously. Whisking constantly, pour the hot lemon juice very slowly into the yolks (you risk lemony scrambled eggs if you aren't careful with this step). Return the lemon/egg mixture to the saucepan, and stir constantly, scraping every surface, with a heat resistant spatula or a wooden spoon, over medium heat, until it registers 170 on an instant read thermometer - it should thicken enough to cling to the spatula and leave a trail on the bottom which fills in quickly. This should take about 3 minutes. Remove it from the heat and stir in the cold butter cubes. Then add the cream, vanilla and salt and stir till combined. Pour into a bowl, cover with plastic (put it right down on the surface so a skin doesn't form and chill.

Once the cake and the curd are fully cool:

Scrape the curd onto the top of the cheesecake with the springform collar still on. using an offset spatula, smooth the curd over the whole top of the cake evenly. Cover the whole thing well with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours, preferably about 24 hours.

To serve:

Let the cake come to room temperature (about 20 minutes out of the fridge should do it). Remove the springform collar, slice into wedges, and serve. I bet a couple of raspberry would be awesome alongside this, but it was plenty great just like this.

*I recommend using the really tiny holes on a box grater - yes, it's super annoying to clean, but you get really fine zest that disappears beautifully into the filling, and doing it this way allows you to skip a fussy step cooks uses because of grating the zest on a microplane, which I really do not recommend because the chunks are too big.

**I substituted about a third of the lemon juice with orange juice, myself, and I don't recommend it, and won't do it again I don't think - I guess you need a specific acid level from the lemon juice to "denature" the proteins in the eggs and get the curd to set, and my curd very clearly did not set very well, and I blame the orange juice. It TASTED great, but it was a bit of a mess.

***I didn't have any heavy cream, but I did have an excess of cheesecake filling by the time I was making the curd, and I thought, well, THIS is creamy, right? So I used a tablespoon of the cheesecake filling instead of heavy cream. That could be another reason my curd didn't quite set up, don't you think?

****sorry for the all caps. I think you can save yourself some trouble (i.e. an extra 45 minutes of baking time) by paying attention to this point (which I, alas, failed to notice). I think if you open the oven door at this point, it loses a lot of heat, and causes you to have to bake the cake way longer than you would otherwise (or at least, this was my experience, and either that was the problem, or my oven temps are just way off (also possible, I should buy and in-oven thermometer).

Flinstonian Lamb Chops and Grilled Baby Zucchini

2011-04-20T21:20:00.009-04:00

I like Michael Symon because of his cute bald head and homey mid-western accent. I also like him for his delicious herb brined lamb chops featured in last month's Bon Appetit.

The recipe called for 24 lamb rib chops cut from a 1 1/2 lb rack. I had 2 mammoth lamb chops from the CSA - I think they were probably double chops, I don't really know. Elaine and I brine meat a lot, usually a mixture of salt/sugar/water, sometimes some herbs or other spices. This recipe is intriguing because it uses a dry herb brine instead, sort of like a dry rub. The proportions below were for my 2 big chops, see the original for proportions for 24 smaller chops, plus, you know, the standard, I didn't have all the ingredients situation.

Ingredients:

2 large shallots, minced

4 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano

4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

3 large garlic cloves, minced

s&p to taste

lamb chops

olive oil

zest and juice of one lemon

Mix the shallots, oregano, mint, garlic and s&p in a small bowl. Press a tablespoon of the mixture onto both sides of each lamb chop. The recipe calls for you to then cover the chops with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. But maybe sometimes you have a really long week at work and you don't get home until 9 o'clock several nights in a row at which point it is too late to make a complicated dinner. In which case, you will be happy to know that you can actually let the chops brine for 3 days and you'll be totally fine.

Once you are ready to cook your chops, whisk olive oil, lemon juice and lemon peel until well blended. You want a 2:1 ratio of oil to lemon juice. Season with s&p. Spoon mixture over both sides of the chops and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour. Grill chops until they reach an internal temp of about 140 degrees for medium rare - mine took at least 5 minutes a side since they were so thick.

As always, tent your meat and let it stand for about 10 minutes before serving. I served these with grilled baby zucchini that I tossed with olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper - because obviously very large chops go well with abnormally small vegetables.

Chinese Style Spareribs

2011-04-12T16:53:00.004-04:00

We had a tiny little rack of spareribs from the CSA, and I felt like trying something different with it than my usual barbecue. Actually, this is just another kind of barbecue, and wonderfully, can all be done in your oven. There are a lot of recipes out there if you ask the internet, many based on hoisin sauce. But I was out of hoisin sauce. So I used (gasp!) ketchup (actually I read that it's kind of the legit Hong Kong approach, though I'm not sure that's actually true...) You need to be able to set these to marinate ahead of time - at least 2 hours; more is totally ok, so if you want to do this on a weeknight, put them in the marinade in the morning, they'll be ready to cook when you get home from work.

Chinese Style Sticky Barbecue Spareribs

a rack of pork ribs (plan on having 4-5 individual ribs per person)

4 cloves of garlic, smashed then finely minced

1/4 c soy sauce

1/2 c ketchup

2 tbsp oyster sauce (or hoisin, or black bean paste)

2 tsbp sweet chili sauce (optional)

1 tbsp sriracha

1 tbsp white wine, sherry or rice vinegar

1/3 c hot water

2 tbsp honey

Start by cutting up the rack into individual ribs. Combine the garlic, soy sauce, ketchup, oyster sauce (if you have/use hoisin sauce, you can use more, like 1/4 cup), chili sauce, sriracha (use more if you like spicy) and the wine (or sherry or vinegar) in a large, shallow dish, big enough to hold all the ribs in a single layer. When it's all thoroughly mixed, add in the ribs and toss around till they're all thoroughly coated. Leave to marinate at least a couple hours, preferably more.

Preheat the oven to 350. Line a sheet pan with foil, and on top of that put a rack (I used one of my cookie racks) that fits well inside the pan and will hold all the ribs. Remove the ribs from the marinade, shaking off some of the excess, but leaving them pretty well coated, and arrange them on the rack.

Put them in the oven for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile mix your hot water and honey. Halfway through the first 30 minutes in the oven, pull out the ribs and using a pastry brush, brush on the honey/water mixture, and flip the ribs over. Bake for another 30 minutes, basting and flipping again.

They should be getting pretty nicely dark and lacquered looking by now. Let them go longer if not.

Serve with rice and stir fried broccoli* on the side.

*Toss broccoli (cut into florets, stems sliced) in a hot pan with minced garlic, ginger, crushed red pepper flakes, salt and 2 tsp of sugar. Fry till the garlic and ginger become fragrant and take on a little color, then add 1/4 c water and cover; cook for two minutes, just until the broccoli is tender and bright green. Uncover the pan and cook off the water over high heat. Optional yummy addition - make your very first step to fry some cashew pieces in your oil (in the pan you're going to cook the broccoli) until nice and dark; drain them out of the oil with a slotted spoon and reserve till you've cooked up the broccoli. Throw the toasted cashews on top before serving.

Chicken with Spinach Two Ways

2011-04-03T18:56:00.004-04:00

Calling this chicken with spinach two ways is really just a fancy way to say that all I had in my fridge was a chicken breast and a half a bag of spinach. And I was really bored and cranky and didn't want to eat something boring which would make me even more cranky. So, I improvised. What you see above is a sauteed chicken breast on a bed of garlicky spinach, topped with a spinach pesto. Super simple, but a ton of flavor.

What you need:

Chicken breast(s)

Spinach

Hazelnuts

Garlic

Lemon juice

Parmesan cheese

Olive Oil

S&P

For the garlicky bed of spinach, thinly slice one clove of garlic and saute in about 2 tbs of olive oil. Add your washed spinach (about 2 cups in this case) - no need to dry it too thoroughly as the excess water will help to cook the spinach in the pan. Turn the spinach to coat it in the garlic and olive oil and allow to wilt until done.

For the pesto, add 2 cups spinach, a handful of hazelnuts, 1 clove garlic and 2 tbs lemon juice to a food processor and combine. Slowly stream in olive oil, about 1/4 cup to start - check your consistency...it should be, well, pesto-y. Taste and adjust seasonings, adding more lemon juice, salt and pepper according to your liking. I like to add grated parmesan cheese at the end just before serving, in this case about 1/4 cup.

This method for the spinach pesto is exactly like a regular basil pesto. I also like to make this with arugula or kale and walnuts. Its a fresh accompaniment to grilled chicken or a nice piece of fish.

I just sauteed my chicken very simply in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper.

To serve, and pretend that you made something way fancier than you actually did, make a bed of sauteed spinach on your plate, place chicken on spinach and spoon pesto over top.

squash and potato pizza (with an optional sprinkle of bacon)

2011-03-28T11:38:00.000-04:00

Next time you have some squash (maybe from your winter CSA) sitting around malingering, and you don't have anything in mind to do with them and don't feel like eating it right away, you can roast them up and store them in the fridge or freezer, till you're ready to try this, a pizza where mashed squash replaces tomato sauce, and potatoes join the ranks of whatever cheese you have in the house. Any kind of winter squash will work - it was a butternut squash in this case, acorn squash would work too. You could probably use about 2 pounds worth on a large pizza, but you can make do with any amount you might happen to have around.

Amounts on everything are intentionally vague because really any amount of anything here can be made to work.

Squash and Potato Pizza

a batch of your favorite pizza dough (you could use that kind they sell in a bag at the store)

winter squash (1 big, or 2 small)

chopped garlic

chopped parsley

chopped fresh rosemary

salt and pepper

par-cooked* whole small waxy potatoes, sliced thin

extra virgin olive oil

cheese of practically any variety you have on hand (a total of about 2-3 cups shredded will make a nice cheesy layer; cheddar is a great match for the potatoes, ricotta would be fun, and parmigiano would be great for crisping up on the very top)

scallions, sliced

bacon, crumbled (optional)**

Roast the squash in whatever way you prefer (I like a 400 degree oven for an hour, cutting the squash in half, removing the seeds and lightly oiling the cut side before roasting. Our friend Jeremy roasts acorn squash entirely whole until soft, just on a sheet pan, and cuts in and removes the seeds after they're all cooled down, which I suspect imparts an extra squashy flavor and moist texture); this squash-roasting can be done well ahead of time and refrigerated, just be sure to get your squash to room temp or warmer to put on the pizza. After removing the peel (skin?) of the squash, break it down into chunks and place in a bowl. Add garlic, parsley, rosemary, salt and pepper and some extra virgin olive oil, and mash around until it has a sort of paste-like consistency.

In another bowl, toss the sliced potatoes with some olive oil and salt and pepper.

Grate or crumble your cheeses. As you can see, I was using this opportunity to use up the alarming hoards of bits of cheese in our cheese drawer.

We had bits of cheddar, taleggio, queso blanco, gruyere, parmigiano and romano. I used most of the cheese you see here, on this and one other pizza I'm not telling you about (it's not a secret or anything, it's just no big deal, tomato sauce, etc).

Roll or press out your dough onto the oiled pan of your choice - I've been using an 11x17 sheet pan for pizza lately. Oil it generously before fitting the dough in there or it'll stick when you bake it and you'll feel sad. If you have trouble with the dough shrinking back, leave the dough for 20 minutes to rest (if you can) and then it should be more cooperative.

Drizzle a little olive oil onto the dough and then spread on the squash in an even layer. Lay out the sliced potatoes over the whole surface, and sprinkle on your cheeses.

Let the pizza sit in a warm place, like on top of your preheating oven, to allow the dough to rise, about 20 minutes.

Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes, until the cheeses are all melted and the crust is nice and golden brown. When you get it out of the oven, sprinkle on the sliced scallions and the bacon, if you want it, and then let the pizza cool briefly before slicing it up and eating it.

This was delicious leftover. Actually I ate cold pieces of it for lunch the next few days and it was awesome.

*For quick par-cooking to speed up things like this (or for home fries) I like to wash potatoes and pop them whole into the microwave for 2-3 minutes until they give a little when pressed.

**What I actually had was some leftover bacon wrapped (pecan stuffed) dates from a party, which I chopped up and put on there. While bacon wrapped dates stuffed with pecans are over the top delicious on their own, the pizza would also have been great with regular chopped crispy bacon, or actually no bacon at all would really have also been good, and that way I could have shared it with my vegetarian friends.

The most work intensive cookies I've ever made

2011-03-21T20:41:00.013-04:00

Many times on this blog we find ourselves writing "this is so easy and fast" as a reason why you should try to one recipe or another. What I am about to share with you is neither easy nor fast. It will take you a lot of time. Possibly several or 5 hours. It isn't that easy (although I guess once you get the hang of it, its definitely not brain surgery). I had to read the instructions 5 times and I still didn't understand what was going on. Thank goodness our friend Jess (who orchestrated this cookie adventure) is smart, because I definitely wasn't going to figure it out.

These cookies are beautiful once baked and totally impressive. They are a pretty simple shortbread cookie but the addition of hazelnuts and orange zest make their flavor something special, to match their beautiful appearance. I'm proud that we made these - I generally think of myself as a good baker, but I'm not that great at intricate desserts. Those cake pop things? Forget it. Beautifully decorated cupcakes? Well....mine TASTE good. But, successfully making these cookies give me hope that I'll be able to tackle my next aspiration - macarons. I'll let you know how it works out (obvy).

We found the recipe here, but decided to double it. Our measurements are below, for a single batch, see the original.

Checkerboard Cookies

from Joyofbaking.com

Ingredients:

2/3 cup hazelnuts

4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder - Jess had Valrhona, because she's fancy

5 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups butter at room temperature - Jess had Plugra, again, fancy

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

3 tsp vanilla extract

3 tsp orange zest - we used the zest of one orange and we definitely wish we had used more, at least the zest of 2 oranges

Toast your hazelnuts in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until you start to smell them. Don't burn them! (You always have to say that when toasting nuts, its so easy to forget about them.) Wrap them in a towel, then rub them to get the skins off. Combine the skinned hazelnuts and cocoa powder in a food processor and process until the nuts are finely ground.

Mix together flour and salt and set aside.

Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs, vanilla and orange zest and mix. Add the flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, don't over-mix. Divide the dough in half and mix one half of the dough with the cocoa/hazelnut mixture in the bowl of your mixer until incorporated. Now you have your two colors of dough ready. Gird your loins, because from here on out its a lot of measuring and rolling and chilling your dough. Oh, and don't even try to do this without parchment paper. It won't work.

Lay out parchment paper and roll out the vanilla dough to two 6 1/2" x 10 1/2" rectangles. Or one 6 1/2" x 21" rectangle. Either one. Or, if you're not doubling it, just do one smaller rectangle. I trust you to figure it out. Wrap in the parchment and put in the freezer to chill for about 15 minutes.

Remove about 1 cup of chocolate dough and set aside. This is what you will use to wrap the entire thing and create that pretty chocolate border you see around the edges of the cookies above. On another sheet of parchment paper, roll out the remaining chocolate dough to two more 6 1/2" x 10 1/2" rectangles. Wrap and put in freezer to chill.

Once the dough is firm, take the out of the freezer. Lay the vanilla dough on the counter, brush with water and lay the chocolate dough directly on top of the vanilla dough. In some fantasy world, these two layers of dough will be exactly them same size. In real life, you will have to trim the edges and square of the corners - you should have a final rectangle of 6" x 10" (yes, we did measure, a lot). Add all your trimmings to the reserved chocolate dough.

Cut this stack of dough into thirds, lengthwise. Stack these strips so that the colors alternate, brown, white, brown, white and so on (above). Press down to get the layers to meld together. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the freezer until firm, about 15 minutes.

Once the stack is firm, cut it into four slices, lengthwise, about 1/2" wide. Turn every other strip so that you again have alternating colors (above). Re-wrap and pop back in the freezer for another 15 minutes or so.

While those firm up, take your chocolate trimmings and roll out into a rectangle about 9 1/2 x 10 1/2. Put in the freezer to firm (surprise!!). Once firm, remove the stack of dough and chocolate sheet from the freezer. Carefully wrap the stack with the chocolate dough. Smooth out and trim any extra from around the edges. You will have to do some cajoling to get all of this to go down correctly, but don't worry, just keep at it and you'll do fine. All the time in the freezer is really your friend as you can mold the dough to do what you want and then pop it in the freezer to solidify the shape. Once you've wrapped the chocolate dough around the stack, wrap again and put back in the freezer for another 15 minutes or until firm.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dough from the freezer, unwrap and slice (with a very sharp knife, may I add) into 1/4 inch slices. Slicing these suckers was the easiest part of the day. Put on a baking sheet and bake for 5-8 minutes until slightly brown around the edges. Cool on a wire rack. Then, decide if you want to shovel all that hard work down your gullet or just stare at how pretty they are and marvel at the fact that you just made those!! I say, eat them!

Oatmeal Molasses Bread

2011-03-20T22:56:00.000-04:00

This is a very slightly modified version of the Oatmeal Molasses Bread in the Joy of Cooking (the updated one from the late 90s). I just wanted it a little softer so I subbed in some milk and an egg where the original uses only water.

total prep/rise/bake time: 4 1/2 to 5 hours (mostly hands off rising time)

makes 2 loaves (or a lot of rolls, if you want)

Combine and allow to come to room temperature:

1/2 c milk

1/3 c molasses

1 egg

In a medium saucepan, combine:

1 1/4 c oatmeal

1 3/4 c water

1 tbsp butter

3/4 tsp salt

bring to a boil, and cook on low for about 20 minutes until it's super thick and dense. Get it out of the pan, and onto a plate to cool to about 115 degrees (if you don't have an instant read thermometer, 115 feels just pleasantly warm, not hot). Incidentally, if you ever have about 2 cups of leftover cooked oatmeal (it might happen...), you could just use that, adding the melted butter and salt separately.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine:

2 tbsp room temperature sourdough starter (optional)

1/4 c warm (115 degree) water

2 tsp yeast (if you don't use any starter, use 2 1/2 tsp yeast total)

let it stand for 5-10 minutes, till it's bubbly. When the oatmeal is cool enough to touch (115 degrees), add it, along with the milk/molasses/egg mixture to the yeast/starter mixture and combine thoroughly. Add:

2 c bread flour

2 c whole wheat flour

Using the dough hook, mix on low until thoroughly combined (or stir with a spoon by hand until it mostly comes together and then turn it out onto a board to continue kneading). Continue to add up to 1 extra cup of flour, until you have a dough that's moist but not sticky. If you're using a mixer, let it knead the dough for 10-15 minutes. I would recommend pulling it out to knead in a bit more flour on your countertop to make sure the dough is cohesive.

Plop the dough into an oiled bowl, turning it to coat it all over with oil, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it somewhere warm to rise, 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until doubled (I put it on my radiator). Punch down the dough (or just sort of knead the air out of it, really) and divide the dough into two pieces (at this point I cut out an extra 30 minutes of "resting" time and saw no ill effects... if you have a lot of time on your hands you can add that in here).

Now you have a couple of options for forming the loaves. The original recipe is for two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 bread pans, which you could do; but I only have one 9 by 5 bread pan - so instead of dividing the dough in equal halves, I separated it 2/3 (for the 9 by 5 pan) and 1/3 (for a free form loaf I baked on a sheet pan) (by the way I totally recommend getting a scale so you can weigh out your dough, mine was only about $15 and I use it all the time for baking and it's great); however you divide it, if you use loaf pans, grease them up really throughly, and if you want to make free form loaves, bake them on parchment lined (or cornmeal sprinkled) sheet pans.

Shape the loaves (I did a batard for my free form one, which is like a big fat baguette); put them in/on the pans, cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place (on top of your preheating oven, for example) again until doubled, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

During the rising time, preheat your oven to 375. Bake the loaves for about 40 minutes, or until they're deep golden brown, and they sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom.

Cool on a rack for about 30 minutes before cutting into it, if you can stand to wait that long. Actually we couldn't stand to wait that long, and it was fine. In fact, it was awesome, because the butter totally melted right onto that delicious hot bread and it was soooo goooooooooood.

Very special thanks to my crack team of photographers and lighting experts, who put in a lot of work at 2 in the morning to make these photos happen - big ups, Reba, Josh and Axel F!

Kale and Sausage Fry

2011-03-15T14:38:00.000-04:00

This is a quick and easy (and very filling and satisfying) wintery dinner.

Kale and Sausage Fry

serves 4

8 small waxy-type potatoes, scrubbed clean, skins left on

olive oil

4-6 sweet or hot italian pork sausage,* whole

2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled, crushed and chopped

crushed red pepper

2 lbs kale, washed, stemmed and chopped

1 cup stock (any kind) or water

salt and pepper

Pre-cook the potatoes, either for 3 minutes in the microwave, or by parboiling (whole) in plenty of water, until just barely tender. Cut into quarters and set aside.

In a large heavy bottomed frying pan, heat some olive oil and add the sausages, turning occasionally to brown them nice and dark on all sides (don't worry about cooking them all the way through right now). Remove them to a plate.

Add a little more oil to the pan if it looks dry (if you have nice pork-fatty sausages this might not be necessary, but you want a fair amount of fat in the pan, a tbsp or so) and then add the potato chunks - leave them with one of their cut sides down until it gets some golden color, then toss them around and let them brown a little more, seasoning with salt and pepper. Remove them to the plate with the sausages.

Add a little more oil to the pan, turn the heat up to high and then add the garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. Fry briefly until the garlic becomes fragrant, and then add the chopped kale. Salt and pepper generously to taste, and toss it all around until the kale darkens and starts to wilt down. Add the cup of stock or water (eyeball it, add more if you think it needs it), add back the sausage and potatoes, stir it all up (scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan) and cover.

Let it cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until the kale is tender and the sausages are cooked through** and the potatoes fall easily back to the pan when you pierce them with a knife and attempt to lift them. Uncover and turn the heat up to high to cook off any remaining stock or water.

Serve with a drizzle of sriracha if desired. It could also be really good with some parmigiano grated on top, or some toasted breadcrumbs for crunch.

*We had some beautiful italian sausages from our meat CSA that were quite large (no comment) and one was plenty for each of us. I've noticed that supermarket italian sausages seem to be about half the size of ours, and you might want more than one per person, depending on your appetite and the appetites of your dining companions. Of course you can use any kind of sausage here - linguica would be intense but yummy (maybe fewer than one per person in that case), Trader Joe's makes a really delicious turkey kielbasa that would be good, brats would be fun, if you like them, etc. Even veggie sausages would work, I've had a fake italian sausage that was actually quite delicious considering it lacked pork.

**I just check to see if they're done by cutting into one. Not very scientific. If you opt for a precooked sausage like linguica, kielbasa or vegetarian sausage, wait to add the sausages till the very end - just add the potatoes at this point, and cover to cook them through, then add the sausage to re-warm as you cook off the stock.

Roasted Cauliflower with Parmesan, Nuts and Parsley

2011-03-10T20:10:00.009-05:00

I went to Via Matta, an Italian restaurant here in Boston on Saturday night and had some really delicious cauliflower. Really delicious CAULIFLOWER, you ask? Yes, really, really delicious. It was roasted and encrusted in parmesan and it was delightful. Today I realized I had a cauliflower languishing the refrigerator and what better way to use it than to try to reproduce Via Matta's version. I would say that I almost succeeded, mine wasn't quite right, but it was very good - theirs had breadcrumbs, I didn't have any bread so I improvised with some ground nuts. Here's how I did it...

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower

1/2 cup nuts (I used a combo of walnuts and pecans, but I imagine almonds would be perfect)

2 cloves garlic

Olive oil

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/4 cup chopped parsley

s&p

Pre-heat oven to 350. Break down your cauliflower - easiest way to do it? Just slice the entire head into 1" slices and from there you can remove the core and cut the florets into smaller pieces if you want. Put the cauliflower on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and place in your pre-heated oven for 25 minutes. At the 25 minute mark raise your heat to 400 and roast for an additional 10 minutes until the cauliflower is cooked through and a beautiful golden brown. Grate about 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese over the cauliflower and return to the oven for just a few minutes to let the cheese melt.

While the cauliflower cooks, combine nuts and garlic in a food processor until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. See what I did there? FAKE breadcrumbs. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a small pan and add your nut/garlic mixture to toast the nuts and cook the garlic. Remove from the heat and add the remaining 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese.

When the cauliflower is cooked through, transfer it to your serving dish and top with garlicky nut "breadcrumbs" and chopped parsley. Easy and delicious.

Note: I ended up with quite a bit extra nut mixture, so, super! I have it for later. But, either feel free to use it all, or make less, whichever you prefer.

Chicken Cacciatore!

2011-02-21T18:24:00.000-05:00

Several events happily conspired to the creation of this meal - Top Chef's Fabio Viviani made chicken cacciatore on the show the same week that I saw Anne Burrell make her version of it on her show. Then we got a whole chicken in our CSA and Bon Appetit magazine had a tutorial on how to break down a whole chicken into pieces. So the stars aligned and I knew this is what I wanted to do with the pretty bird you see below.

I have to say, I've always been a little unsure of exactly how to cut a whole chicken into pieces so I generally don't do it - hey, a whole roasted chicken has always been just fine for me! But, it was actually really easy and I'm glad I know how.

Chicken Cacciatore

adapted from recipes by Fabio Viviani and Anne Burrell

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken cut into 8 pieces

1/2 cup flour for dredging

s&p

olive oil

1 red onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 tsp red pepper flakes

10 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced

1 red pepper, diced

1 yellow pepper, diced

1 1/2 cups red wine

1 cup chicken stock

3 springs rosemary, chopped

1 tsp dried oregano

1 28 oz can plum tomatoes, diced

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Salt and pepper your chicken. Put flour in a shallow dish, season with salt and pepper and dredge your chicken pieces in flour, shaking off all the excess. Heat olive oil in an oven proof pot and brown your chicken. You want to get it nice and seared on the outside, but you don't need to cook it all the way through as it will cook the rest of the way in the oven. Remove chicken from pan.

Add a little more olive oil to the pan, if needed, and sautee your garlic, red pepper flakes, onions and mushrooms, scraping up all those delicious chicken bits. Season with s&p. Once your onions and mushrooms have cooked down and are slightly caramelized, add your diced peppers and cook until soft. Turn up the heat and add the wine, stock and herbs. Bring to a boil and let cook for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, dice up your tomatoes and then add them and their juice to the pot. Add the chicken back to the sauce, cover and put in the oven for 45 minutes. When my 45 minutes was up, I have to admit, my sauce was really soupy, a lot soupier than I wanted. I put it on the stove top and brought it to a boil in the hopes of reducing it a bit more. But everyone was hungry and it tasted really good already (like, REALLY GOOD) so we just decided to eat it as it was. It did thicken up as it cooled.

While the chicken is in the oven, make your polenta. You can also serve it over egg noodles, but when there is creamy, cheesy delicious polenta as an option, I don't know why you would.

Polenta:

2 cups heavy cream

2 cups water

2 bay leaves

Salt

1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal

2 tbs butter

2 cups grated parmesan cheese

Add cream, water and bay leaves to a pot and bring to a boil. When at a boil add the salt. Chef Anne says you should salt it almost to the point of over-salting it. Interesting! I guess, like pasta, it is your only chance to flavor the corn itself. Sprinkle in the cornmeal (I forgot about the sprinkling and dumped it in, so mine was just a little lumpy) and stir, stir, stir until the polenta is done about 45 minutes. I did end up adding water a few times.

I have to admit some confusion about polenta - is it supposed to stay creamy? Because mine pretty much seized up as soon as it cooled a little. It tasted delicious, but I'm unsure of my consistency. In Bill Buford's great book Heat, he discusses this very situation and finally comes to the realization (wish I had remembered this when I was cooking the polenta) that you should add water to the polenta until it "behave[s] as though it...quenched its thirst." In other words, you should just keep adding liquid until it doesn't immediately soak it up anymore and then cook until it is done. I don't know - either way, mine tasted good and was a great base for the cacciatore sauce. Steeping the bay leaf in the liquid while bringing it up to a boil is a genius move and adds great flavor.

I was hoping this would be delicious, but I actually knocked my own socks off, and Elaine said it was good too, and she really knows what she's talking about. The chicken was so tender and the sauce was absolutely lip-smackingly delicious. I think Axel F had two servings. Boom.

Elaine AGAIN made a really unique and delicious dessert, which I have no doubt she will share soon.

Creme Tangerine

2011-02-11T19:42:00.011-05:00

Here's the agreeably weird dessert I made the other night to go with Jenean's incredibly delicious Pasta Puttanesca (and the insanely good cheesy bread OMG so good). I had seen something similar to the tangerine part of it in a martha stewart as a quick dessert (just sliced clementines steeped in a cinnamon simple syrup). I made some additions and adjustments (including star anise, which turns out to give sweet things an unusual and very wonderful flavor), adding a creamy component inspired by a dessert I had when I was in Paris (frommage blanc and rhubarb compote, which was similarly weird, in that it was unlike any dessert I had ever eaten, and also sort of addictively good, creamy and tart and refreshing). I'm calling it Creme Tangerine in honor of the Beatles song (Savoy Truffle), written by my favorite Beatle, George.

Creme Tangerine

serves 6

6 to 8 tangerines (or clementines)

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 cinnamon sticks

4-6 cardamom pods

1 star anise

1 16 oz tub of cottage cheese*

In a medium saucepan combine the sugar, water, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods and star anise. Bring to a boil, and simmer for at least 10 minutes.

While the simple syrup simmers, peel the tangerines, break into 4 quarters** and cut into slices about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Place the tangerine pieces in a dish that will allow the syrup to submerge and soak all of them equally. Pour the hot syrup over the tangerine pieces and leave them to marinate for about an hour.

In a food processor or blender, whip up the cottage cheese until very creamy and smooth - it will take on a beautiful silky texture.

To serve, spoon out the cottage cheese cream equally among 6 bowls, and top with tangerine pieces and plenty of the delicious syrup.

*The cottage cheese was wonderful, and a little salty, in a really pleasant way combined with the tart and spicy tangerines and syrup, and I recommend trying it that way, considering it was so cheap and uncomplicated. However I'm thinking the next time I try this I might do half cottage cheese and half mascarpone, which seems like it would have to be awesome; or 2 parts cottage cheese to one part yogurt, which I read is a way of imitating fromage blanc. ACTUALLY I just found this recipe for making fromage blanc at home (which looks a lot like a great Michael Chiarello recipe I've used for homemade ricotta)... which I'll do when I want to turn this fast and easy recipe into a bigger project, because it sounds delicious.

**As you see in the picture, I just sliced the tangerines whole, across the sections, into rounds. It's very beautiful looking, but we all agreed it was a little hard to eat, which is why I suggest breaking it into quarters before slicing. If you love the look of the rounds, go for it that way - it wasn't THAT hard to eat, honestly.

Fast and Easy Pasta Puttanesca, If You Know What I Mean

2011-02-06T14:52:00.000-05:00

Elaine and Axel F came over last Saturday for dinner and a viewing of Inception, so I'm not even sure if we really ate this meal or if it was all in someone's mind. I made pasta with a tuna puttanesca sauce which really was the stuff of dreams (lamest joke ever? possibly). I've seen several people do this and I think its just delicious - the tuna makes it a heartier dish and puttanesca is one of my favorites with all the brininess of the olives and capers which just seem to go so well with a seafood component.

Ingredients:

1 lb pasta (I used spaghetti, you can use whatever you want)

salt

olive oil

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp red pepper flakes

2 cans good tuna (really, do yourself a favor, at least for this dish and get some good tuna packed in oil)

1/2 cup chopped kalamata olives (I don't have to tell you to take the pits out, right?)

3 tbs capers

1/2 cup white wine (I used a delicious South African Sauvignon Blanc, which was perfect for drinking with dinner as well - wish I remembered the name of it, sorry!)

1 can tomatoes (mine were whole plum, but you could certainly used diced as well; but again, get the good stuff)

flat leaf parsley

zest of one lemon

s&p

reserved pasta water

Put a pot of water over high heat and bring to a boil. Season generously with salt, bring back to the boil and add pasta. Cook until al dente. Reserve about a cup of pasta water before you chuck it all down the drain! But, remember that you want to take this water out of the pot near the end of the cooking time so that its nice and starchy.

While the pasta is cooking, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and add minced garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook for a couple of minutes just until you can smell the garlic and then add the tuna, breaking it down with your spoon. Add the olives and capers, cook for a few minutes and then add white wine. (You may want to turn the heat up a little before you add the wine, so you don't lose too much heat off the pan.) Let reduce slightly, about a minute and then add your tomatoes and their juice. If you've opted for whole ones, you will need to break them up with your cooking utensil. Add the chopped parsley, lemon zest and pepper to taste. Depending on the consistency of your sauce at this point, this is where you want to add the pasta water - you want it saucy with enough liquid to coat all your pasta, but not soupy. Best way to do it is to add your pasta to the sauce, stir to coat and then judge if you want to put the pasta water in. I like to undercook my pasta just the tiniest bit, add it to the sauce with some pasta water and let it finish cooking in the sauce, so that some of the deliciousness cooks into the pasta. If you've added too much liquid, this method will allow the pasta to soak some of that up as it finishes cooking. You shouldn't need to add salt because of the olives, capers and salty pasta water, but taste your sauce at this point to make sure.

I served this dish with slices of crusty bread, slathered in garlic oil, topped with asiago and toasted in the oven for a few minutes.

Elaine made a surprising, refreshing and absolutely delicious dessert that I hope she'll tell you all about really soon.

Salmon Cakes (Burgers?)

2011-02-02T20:35:00.010-05:00

Choose whichever name sounds more appetizing to you. Cakes make me think of crab cakes, which are always awesome. Burgers make me think of... burgers, which are almost always awesome. But I didn't have any rolls to put them on, so I think we can't call them burgers in this case (you can though, if you want! Get some rolls, but get good ones, ok? Also make some yummy seasoned mayo to put on them, and some good crunchy lettuce maybe?)

This is another pantry recipe, using a can of salmon I bought in the tuna aisle out of curiosity, and I will say to begin with that when I first opened the can I was VERY AFRAID. It's as though they chop whole fish into chunks and throw them into the cans to get cooked, and... I'm going to level with you: there's skin and bones in there. But it was all I had to make dinner with, and Jenean was over and F was on the way home, and we just had to go ahead with it. And they turned out great! I removed the skin because it seemed irredeemably gross, but the bones, due to the in-can cooking process, are completely edible (they basically pulverize at the slightest pressure), so except for removing what appeared to be the spine [shudder], I left in all the other bones, which broke up and disappeared when we mixed things up, and according to an article I read... somewhere, bones from canned fish are an excellent, absorb-able source of calcium! Better than calcium pills!

Salmon Cakes/Burgers

Serves 3-4

1 14.75 oz can salmon, drained, large bones and skin removed

8 scallions (all the white and half of the green), finely minced

1 egg

2 slices of bread, ground fine in the food processor

salt and pepper

hot sauce (optional)

rolls (optional, if you want to call them burgers*)

In a medium bowl combine salmon, chopped scallions (ok to sub in onion), egg, and about two thirds of the fresh breadcrumbs (some finely chopped parsley might be good in there too if you had it**). Add salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste. Mix, breaking up the fish as you go, until it's thoroughly combined. Use a knife or your fingers to divide the mix evenly into 3 or 4 sections (size depending on how hungry you are I guess) and form into cakes/burgers (patties??). Coat heavily on each side with the remaining fresh breadcrumbs, and allow to sit briefly (10-30 minutes) to let the crumbs adhere. Fry in olive oil over medium high heat until deep brown on both sides.

We had them with new-to-me barley risotto, not-very-carefully following this recipe from smitten kitchen (and leaving out the greens and beans, though that does sound yummy), and a version of raw kale salad like my friend Sylvie told me about (finely chopped raw kale, tossed with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, the tiniest bit of lemon juice, dried cranberries, and in this case, instead of toasted pine nuts, I tossed in some leftover garlicky toasted breadcrumbs and grated parmesan cheese - you let all that sit together for a while, and the kale begins to wilt just a little, but it's still crunchy, and it's so good).

*What am I, the name police? Call them whatever you want, serve em however you want. Have fun.

**I feel like adding cilantro, and seasoning it up with soy sauce or fish sauce, and sriracha, would make a yummy asian-influenced variation. Maybe some minced green chiles, too, and chopped garlic? ginger? Use panko bread crumbs instead of fresh? If you try it this way, let us know!

The Most Boring Sounding Soup Ever

2011-01-20T20:16:00.009-05:00

Perhaps some of you have heard of or experienced this incredible weather we've been having here in the Northeast. Its just been really amazing with about 12 feet of snow every week or so. I just love it so much. So Much. Last Wednesday the office was closed, hence my first snow day of 2011! What else to do on a snow day to stave off the cabin fever but make a pot of soup.

I had a head and a half of cabbage in the refrigerator from our CSA. What in the name of farts I am supposed to do with a head and a half of cabbage?? If you search cabbage recipes you find a lot of slaw recipes. I can only eat so much slaw, people! And stuffed cabbage seems like just giving up on life completely. I am totally willing to be proven wrong on this point, so please, send me your recipes!

Ingredients:

Olive oil

Stew beef (I had a pound, you could definitely use more)

2 Tbs flour

3 cups chopped onions

3 cups shredded cabbage

2 cups shredded potatoes

2 quarts chicken stock

1 cup cream

S&P

Salt and pepper your meat and let it sit for about 15 minutes. Spread a couple tablespoons of flour on a plate and coat the meat with it. Heat a few tablespoons of oil in your soup pot and sear your meat. Remove from the pan. Add a little more oil to the pan and add the onions and cook until tender, seasoning with s&p and scraping up all the brown bits from the beef. Mix in the cabbage and potatoes and let cook for a few minutes. Add stock and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat, add the stew meat and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the cream and simmer for another 10 minutes, then check your seasoning. I thought the soup would be completely bland and boring, but I was shocked, SHOCKED I say, to find how delicious it was. This soup is super flavorful, hearty and will use up most of your cabbage.

Yes, I still have a lot of cabbage left. Any ideas??

Finally Made Short Ribs!

2011-01-17T23:51:00.001-05:00

And they were very good. Don't know why I waited this long. Oh I know why, they're expensive. I had a groupon to a butcher shop (in fact, to The Butcher Shop) and got them for half price. Sorry for the blurry picture. We were too excited to start eating to take the time to set it up better.

Tomato and Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs

adapted from Anne Burrell's awesome recipe

serves 6 reasonably, 4 ravenously

4-5 lbs short ribs

2 medium onions

3 carrots

2 ribs of celery

3 cloves of garlic

1 6 oz. can of tomato paste

1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes in juice

2 1/2 cups red wine

1 quart of stock or water

1 bay leaf

3 sprigs of rosemary

for serving: a pound of wide egg noodles, boiled, drained and tossed with a tablespoon or two of butter, some chopped parsley, turnip and carrot chunks, roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper until tender and golden brown.

Season the short ribs with plenty of salt and pepper. In a big heavy bottomed pot (I used my dutch oven), heat about a tablespoon of oil and then brown the ribs thoroughly and deeply on all sides. While the ribs are browning you can cut all your veggies into chunks, and throw them all together into the food processor - grind them up to a fine paste. When the ribs are all browned, move them to a plate (remove some of the fat now in the pan, if there's a lot), throw in the minced garlic and stir around for about 30 seconds, and then add the veggie paste to the pot. Turn up the heat as high as it goes and let it cook - all the water will have to boil off first, and then it'll start to brown on the bottom of the pot. Anne Burrell says to let it brown and crust up on the bottom, and then scrape up the brown bits and stir them around, let it brown and crust up on the bottom again, scrape and stir again*. Add the tomato paste and stir around, let that brown really dark too. Then add the can of diced tomatoes and the wine, and a quart of either water or stock. Bring it to a boil, and let it bubble with the lid off until the liquid reduces by about a quarter to a third. Add the meat back in, cover it, and put it in a 375 degree oven for an hour. Reduce the oven to 300 and cook for another 3 hours.

At that point I took it out so I could bake a pie**, and so I let it sit on the stove top. Just before I put my egg noodles into boiling water, I removed the bones from the ribs, re-covered the pot, and put it back in the 350 degree oven for the 10 minutes it took to cook the noodles, etc. and then served it, with some roasted carrots and turnips.

*Full disclosure: during veggie-paste-browning-crust stage 1, I got distracted and accidentally let the bottom BURN. Not willing to give up/throw it away, I added some water and scraped up some of the bottom layer, then removed it all to a bowl while I cleaned the worst burned bits up off the bottom of the pan. Then starting with the cleaned pan, and feeling sure that those burned bits I had left in the veggie paste would just give the sauce a very deep rich flavor, I continued as if nothing had happened... and it turned out great. Even so I plan not to burn it next time, of course.

** here are some pie pictures, kind of like a before and after thing:

I made the crust with a mix of AP flour, white whole wheat flour and cake flour (because I was low on AP flour). It turned out great! Very flaky (I also credit this to the Cook's Illustrated method of substituting half of your ice water with ice cold vodka). Plus I used up the last of our malingering CSA apples all in one place. PLUS I had gotten some locally made SALTED CARAMEL ICE CREAM to put on top... so even cardboard would have been delicious that way, frankly.

Curried Carrot and Potato Soup

2011-01-12T14:40:00.001-05:00

Yet another nearly-no-ingredient recipe! For those of you in the northeast trapped in by snow, you might be able to make this soup without leaving the house for ingredients - at least for me, everything in this soup is usually in my house. I pretty much made this one up (though it does bear some resemblance to the leek and potato soup our mom makes), and I love how it turned out, plus I think it could be used as a template recipe, and swap out the carrots for any number of other vegetables (cauliflower, sweet potato, broccoli, squash of various kinds... totally bulletproof: vegetarian, rich and satisfying, yet low fat).

Curried Carrot and Potato Soup

serves 6 generously

2 tbsp ghee* or 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp oil (or just 2 tbsp oil if you wanna go vegan style)

2 large or 3 medium onions, chopped

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced

3-4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 jalapeno (or any green chile), minced (I took out almost all of the seeds and the soup was nice and spicy... you should check your chile's spiciness before deciding how many of the seeds and ribs to include)

8 carrots (4 cups coarsely chopped)

2 big potatoes (4 cups coarsely chopped)

2 quarts of water

1 tbsp of your favorite curry mix, or a tsp each of ground cumin, turmeric, coriander; 1/2 tsp of ground cardamom, and maybe some allspice

salt and pepper

for garnishes you could throw on: plain yogurt, chopped cilantro, a little sprinkle of garam masala, crisp toasted pita chips**

In a large heavy bottomed pot, heat ghee (or oil, or oil and butter) till it's nice and hot, and add the onions, sprinkling on a little salt to help the onion to soften. Let them cook on medium high for about 7 minutes, till they're soft and a little bit golden. Add the garlic, ginger and chile. Let all that cook for another 5 minutes, till it smells awesome. Then add all the spices, and some salt and pepper. Let the spices toast a while, and then add the carrots and potatoes. Turn the heat down a little, and stir everything around and cover partially. After about another 5 minutes, add 2 quarts of water. Bring it all to a boil over high heat, then turn it down low and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes until the vegetables are very soft. Puree the soup, either in batches in a blender*** or with a stick blender (definitely the best way! You should get one if you don't have one), until nice and smooth.

We had this with a big salad and it was a great dinner on a very cold night, garnished with a dollop of plain yogurt, a sprinkle of garam masala and some chopped fresh cilantro. This froze really super well, also.

*you can make your own ghee really easily! Melt any amount of butter (this stuff keeps for a long time in a jar in the fridge) - I did 2 sticks - in a heavy bottomed pan. Let it cook over low heat for... a long time. Scoop the foamy stuff off the top and discard, and some solids will fall to the bottom and brown (don't let them get super dark, just golden). Strain it through cheesecloth and store it in a jar in the fridge.

**The pita chips I had made a while ago by baking fresh pitas in 350 degree oven till it dried out and then broke them into pieces; the second time we had this soup, I decided to turn the remaining pita chips into croutons - I heated some olive oil in a big frying pan, added some crushed red pepper and a minced clove of garlic, then added the pita chips and browned them, and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper. They were super great in the soup - salty and crispy.

***if you use the blender, be really careful, maybe let the soup cool down a while before pureeing, if you have time (you can make this ahead easily and re-heat when it's dinner time). Also when you put the top on your blender to puree hot stuff, you should take the middle cap out of the top of the blender and put a kitchen towel over the hole and hold it on securely while you puree - that way the head of steam won't blow the lid off and spew boiling soup everywhere. Be really careful, start the blender on low and increase the speed gradually. I only go so far as to mention all this (which I'm sure you all know already) because I have blasted hot soup all over my kitchen and myself before, and want to spare you the experience.

Baked Galletti with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe

2011-01-05T12:44:00.004-05:00

For my birthday, our beautiful friend Rebecca gave me David Tanis' cookbook A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes which is an absolutely gorgeous book and I can't wait to make every single thing in it. David Tanis is the part time head chef at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' restaurant in Berkeley. As such, he obviously puts a lot of emphasis on eating seasonally and locally. The idea of a recipe for a "platter of figs" is clearly silly since that would require no recipe at all. But the point is that if you are eating seasonally, you really don't need to do much at all with your ingredients – they are already absolutely delicious as is.

Anyway, last night I made his Orechiette with Fennel Sausage with some slight modifications. As you know, we like to cook what we might already have around, so I used a galletti style pasta instead of orechiette, since I had that in the pantry. Galletti means cocks combs and they do look like little rooster combs, semi circular with a little ruffle on the edge.

Instead of making my own fennel sausage as the recipe suggests, I just bought some at the store. GASP! This was a hearty and delicious baked pasta dish, but the addition of broccoli rabe and the use of only one type of cheese lightened it up in a really great way so it wasn’t as heavy as you might expect.

Ingredients: (this is cut in half from the recipe)
1 lb short cut pasta
1 lb sausage (we used a mild Italian, not in the casing)
1 bunch broccoli rabe
½ lb ricotta cheese
Grated pecorino
Olive oil
S&P
Crushed red pepper
Butter for baking dish

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and then salt it generously. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Strain pasta out of the water (you will use the same water for cooking the broccoli rabe so don’t chuck it down the drain) and spread on a baking sheet. Drizzle with a little olive oil so it doesn’t stick together.

Add broccoli rabe to the pasta water and cook for one minute. Strain and roughly chop.

In the meantime, heat olive oil in a pan and add minced garlic and crushed red pepper. Add the sausage (removed from casing, if applicable) and brown.

Combine the pasta, broccoli rabe and sausage in a bowl and then add your ricotta. Stir to combine and pour into a buttered baking dish. Sprinkle with grated pecorino (I used about ½ cup) and cook covered at 400 degrees for 15 minutes then uncover and cook for an additional 5 minutes to brown the top.

Cooking Makes Me Happy

2010-12-16T19:52:00.006-05:00

I had a crap week. One of the worst in a long time. No one died, no one is terminally ill and compared to a lot of folks out there it probably wasn't that bad. But for me, it sucked. There was a lot of crying hysterically in both public and private places. There were a lot of demons dealt with and sadness about the past. There was not a lot of cooking, or eating. Not once time during this suck of a week did I even think about cooking something for myself, let alone eating anything. But tonight I realized, I not only like to cook. I love to cook. And cooking makes me happy. And so I forced myself to cook something tonight. It wasn't the most creative or intricate thing I've ever done. But I made myself do it, I enjoyed the process and for the first time since last Tuesday, I ate a delicious meal that I WANTED to eat. And I ate all of it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, follow your happiness, whatever it is, even if you have to force yourself to do it. And to everyone who has lent their words of support this past week, thank you. You make me happy too.

In case you're wondering, that's a parmesan crusted pork chop, roasted white and sweet potatoes with sage and slaw. It was awesome.

XO.

Potato and Onion Cakes for Share Our Strength

2010-12-13T08:00:00.002-05:00

While we were always lucky enough as children to have three squares a day, there are many kids (17 million in fact) in this, the wealthiest nation on earth, who shockingly do not. There is an organization many of you have probably heard of called Share Our Strength, which has a simple mission - to end childhood hunger in America. We are very happy to be participating in their Share Our Holiday Table blog event, to help spread the word and raise money and awareness for this important issue.

Our contribution to the virtual potluck is a "gourmet" side dish (because we are oh so gourmet) and we decided to do one which we made for Christmas a few years ago, but wanted to tweak a little bit: Potato and Onion Cakes. They're fairly easy to make, but result in lovely individual servings (they get baked in a muffin tin) to go with your Roast Beast (or what have you).

Potato and Onion Cakes
modified slightly from Martha Stewart Living
makes 12

ingredients:

4 tbsp unsalted butter, plus more for tin
salt and pepper
brown sugar
balsamic vinegar
white wine vinegar (or red wine, whatever you have)
whole sage leaves, 12 for garnish
2 small red onions, sliced into 12 1/4 inch thick slices (to fit into the bottom of
1 heaping tbsp chopped herbs - we used a mix of thyme, sage, and rosemary from my garden
6 medium potatoes (some red, some white)
2 small-ish sweet potatoes
4 eggs
1/2 cup shredded gruyere
1/4 finely grated parmesan
1/2 cup finely ground fresh breadcrumbs

Preheat your oven to 400.

Shred the potatoes (we had small red and white ones, and also a couple sweet potatoes from the CSA). We used the shredding function on the food processor, one of the world's greatest inventions. You could also use a box grater, if you like to shred a little skin into your meal. Just kidding. Allow the shredded potatoes to drain in a colander.

Meanwhile, prepare your muffin tin (this recipe makes 12). You'll need to HEAVILY butter the bottom and sides of each cup, so use softened butter, which slathers easier. Do not skimp. Sprinkle each cup generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then sprinkle into each cup 1/4 tsp brown sugar. Lay a sage leaf (pretty side down) in the center of each cup on top of the sugar. Place a round of red onion on top of that and press down. Finally, each cup needs 1/4 tsp balsamic vinegar, and 1/4 tsp white wine vinegar on top of the onion.

Now for the potato mixture: In a large bowl beat 2 eggs lightly, add the chopped herbs and salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze as much liquid as you can from your shredded potatoes (I did it a handful at a time) and add them to the egg mixture. Add the cheeses and the breadcrumbs and stir gently but thoroughly until combined.

Heap the potato mixture onto each onion round in the muffin tin, packing it down lightly and smoothing the top flat.

Cut the 4 tbsp butter into 12 equal pieces, and dot the tops of each potato cake with its fair share of butter.

Pop the tin into the oven and bake (on the bottom rack) for 30-40 minutes - the cakes should be deep brown around the edges.

Take the tin out and let the cakes rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then slide a knife around the edges to loosen. To turn them all out at once, we put a sheet of wax paper on top of the muffin tin, then an inverted baking sheet on top of that, and flipped them all over. Full disclosure - some of the onion rounds stuck and needed to be coaxed out. But that was easy to do. And they still looked pretty.

To learn more about Share Our Strength, and to find out what you can do this holiday season, please visit The Share Our Holiday Table Donation Page.

Here's a short video about the No Kid Hungry Campaign (and who doesn't love the Dude?):

And please take a minute to check out the Share Our Strength site:

Finally, here are some other blogs participating in Share Our Holiday Table, please visit them!

December 13: Sides

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Vegetarian

Gluten Free

December 10: Entrees

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Vegetarian

The Peche (read the post)

Gluten Free

December 9: Soup

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Vegetarian

Gluten Free

December 8: Salads

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Food For My Family (read the post)

Vegetarian

Glugle Gluten-Free (read the post)

Gluten Free

December 7: Drinks

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Fat Wuz Here (read the post)

Vegetarian

Gluten Free

Gluten Free Easily (read the post)

December 6: Appetizers

Gourmet

Family Friendly

Vegetarian

Gluten Free

pasta with swiss chard ragu

2010-12-07T11:27:00.010-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I had two vegetarian friends (Phil from NYC and Reba from Maine) coming for dinner (plus Axel F of course), so it seemed like a perfect time to try out this intriguing recipe (Pennette with Swiss Chard Ragu) I read in a Mario Batali cookbook that our friends Keith and Heather gave us for a wedding present. The cookbook is really fantastic - it's the kind of Italian cooking where there are about 4 ingredients, and the preparation is pretty simple, but the flavor is great. I had a beautiful bunch of chard from the winter CSA, so it was perfect. Sorry - only one (rather poor) photo taken when Phil was having seconds and suggested I should blog it...

You'll see, this is another one of those nearly-no-ingredients meals, but it was so so good. Plus the extra beauty of this recipe is that you can make the ragu ahead of time - which was great since I was teaching late that night (our friends and I were converging on my house all at the same time). So I made the ragu the night before, and kept it in the fridge, then all I had to do when we all got to my house was boil pasta and reheat the chard and toast some breadcrumbs.

Pasta with Swiss Chard Ragu
adapted from Mario Batali's Molto Gusto

serves 6

Ingredients (I'll put my changes and additions in brackets):
-1/4 c extra virgin olive oil [I probably added a bit more than this during the cooking process]
-1 small white onion, halved and sliced 1/4 inch thick
-3 [or 4] garlic cloves, smashed and peeled [and coarsely chopped]
-1 pound Swiss Chard, trimmed and sliced 1/4 inch thick [I chopped up the stems separately into a pretty small dice, and just did the leaves in 1/4 inch ribbons]
-4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
-salt and pepper [Batali lists salt twice, first Maldon salt or other flaky sea salt, which at something like $80/lb, I have never tried... I'm sure flaky salt is miraculously wonderful and all... but I just used regular kosher salt, which he also calls for later in the ingredient list. I think we can just use one kind of salt and still live with ourselves]
-1 pound pennette [I used spaghetti instead, it was really nice actually]
-3/4 c freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus extra for serving
-1/2 c coarse fresh bread crumbs [plus another crushed garlic clove and some crushed red pepper flakes]
-[I also roasted some grape tomatoes to toss in, see below]

How I did it:

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large, wide bottomed pot. Add the garlic, onions a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes if you want, and the chard stems - they ought to cook a little before you add the leaves, since they're tougher. Stir it all around and season with salt to help the onions and the stems soften. After a minute or so, add the chard leaves, a little more salt, and some freshly ground pepper, and let cook another 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally to encourage the chard to wilt down. Then add 1/4 c of water and cover and reduce the heat to low. Let it cook another 20 minutes or so, until it is very soft (continue to stir occasionally).

Now in the recipe, he adds the butter chunks, stirs till they melt, and then he says you can stop here, set the ragu aside to cool and store in the fridge for up to 2 days. I left the butter step till later - because I felt like something special probably happens when the cold butter emulsifies into the hot chard juices, so I wanted to do that right before serving. So I stored it pre-butter.

When you're ready to eat, put a big pot of water on for the pasta (once it's at a full boil add a generous amount of salt and the pasta and stir around), put the ragu in a very large, deep saucepan (big enough to hold the addition of the cooked pound of pasta when the time comes), and warm the ragu gently - when it's hot is when I would stir in the 4 tbsp of butter.

For the breadcrumbs, I ground up in the food processor about 3 slices of some bread I had made that was a few days old, and good only for toasted breadcrumbs by then. I been baking earlier in the morning, so I took the opportunity to put the breadcrumbs on a baking sheet (tossed them thoroughly with a few tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper) and put them into a 350 oven for about ten minutes. I set it aside, on the pan, while I left for the day to teach. When I was back home and the pasta was boiling, I turned on the broiler and put them under the broiler and kept pretty constant watch over them, stirring a couple of times so they didn't burn.

You could also do them in one step, in a non-stick frying pan: heat 2 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp butter, a peeled and crushed clove of garlic, and a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes, add in the breadcrumbs, toss around thoroughly to get all the oil distributed among the bread evenly, and fry, stirring semi-constantly, until they start to turn golden and sound dry in the pan.

Either way set the breadcrumbs (once golden) aside in a bowl to keep them from over-browning.

When the pasta is al dente, drain (saving a little pasta water) and add it to the chard ragu along with 1/4 cup of the pasta water, and toss the pasta with the ragu over medium heat until the pasta looks evenly coated with the chard sauce. Add more pasta water if things look dry. Add the cheese and toss around to combine. As the pasta water heats, the starch in it thickens and turns silky - yum.

OH YES, the tomatoes! I had some grape tomatoes (one of those rectangular packages, not the small square ones) - I had roasted them ahead of time with olive oil, salt and pepper, at 350 for 30 or 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they looked collapsed and a little golden. I tossed these with the finished pasta. They made for a nice bright contrast to the deep dark ragu flavor. Consider this an optional addition, but it was darn good.

Serve the pasta with the breadcrumbs and additional cheese on the side.

Winter CSA Update

2010-11-23T18:56:00.003-05:00

I continue to be amazed by the amount of food in our winter CSA share. This week's haul:

Arugula

Broccoli

Butternut Squash

Acorn Squash

Spring mix

Carrots

Sweet Potatoes

Parsnips

Radishes

Cabbage

Turnip

Kale

Swiss Chard

Bell Pepper

Pears

Apples

Red and White Potatoes

Off to enjoy the bounty!

Pastel Tres Leches

2010-11-21T20:46:00.005-05:00

Our friend Jess, who is also a native Californian living in the barren Wasteland of Mexican Food that is Boston, recently threw a potluck BASH featuring only Mexican delicacies. There were enchiladas, chile rellenos, pozole, tamales, beans and rice and my contribution to the fiesta - Pastel Tres Leches or Three Milk Cake. I've never made it before, never even eaten it before but I've longed for it for a very long time. Approximately 100 years ago I bought this amazing Mexican cookbook (Mexico The Beautiful Cookbook, Susanna Palazuelos) - it was one of those things you find in the lobby of a Barnes and Noble on sale for, like, a dollar. Its one of the best cookbooks I've ever purchased - the recipes are authentic and the pictures are gorgeous, not only of the delicious food but also of all the regions of Mexico, which is how the book is segmented. There is a Pastel Tres Leches recipe that I have been eyeing since I bought this book and I finally made it - and now I will make it whenever I can. It is a pretty dense cake that gets soaked with a combination of evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and cream (the tres leches) and topped with a lime meringue. Believe me when I say this cake was refreshing...refreshing! Who ever heard of a refreshing cake? This is it. It isn't too complicated and it was actually pretty fun to make, a nice departure from your standard baking operation. I hope you try it and enjoy it!

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

7 eggs, separated

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 can (12 fl oz) evaporated milk

1 can (14 fl oz) sweetened condensed milk

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup brandy (optional, I didn't use it)

Frosting:

6 egg whites

pinch of salt

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

3/4 cup water

1 1/2 cup sugar

zest of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 inch spring-form pan. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites (I used an electric mixture as the recipe recommended, I'm sure a kitchen aid would be fine) until frothy. Add the sugar and beat to form stiff peaks, then add the egg yolks one at a time. Turn down the mixer to a slower speed and add one third of the flour and one third of the milk. Repeat until all the flour and milk are incorporated, then add the vanilla. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes and remove from the pan. Once cooled, cut the cake into 3 layers.

In a bowl combine the evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream. Stir in the brandy, if you're using it. Pour one third of the milk mixture over the bottom layer of cake, set the middle layer on top, pour another third of the milk mixture over that, put on the top layer and pour the remaining milk mixture over it.

A couple things: 1) I cut off the very top of my cake before cutting into three layers so that it would be flat - I recommend this as otherwise the milk will slide right down the sides. 2) the cake will soak up the majority of the milk, but I definitely had some overflow, so make sure the cake is on a plate with sides so it doesn't spill all over your counters. I did have to pour some milk off that the cake didn't end up soaking into it. 3) as you can see, my layers weren't totally even - if you know how to do that, more power to you - but, you'll end up covering it with frosting anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

To prepare the frosting, beat the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar in a large bowl until the whites hold soft peaks and set aside.

Mix the water, sugar and lime zest in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-heat and cook until a candy thermometer registers 238 degrees or soft ball stage.**

**Guess what? I don't have a candy thermometer. I sort of got it to the soft ball stage - you know, where you drop some of the molten sugar syrup in a glass of cold water and it forms a soft ball...sort of. So, what I'm trying to say is, if you have a candy thermometer, great! Use it and I'm sure this step will be a lot easier. But if you don't, just go with it and I don't think you'll ruin it too badly, especially since I didn't.**

Remove from heat and add the syrup to the beaten egg whites in a thin stream. Beat for 6 minutes or until the mixture is stiff. It will get voluminous and although it started out a little yellow-y it will turn a snowy white.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with the frosting and refrigerate until just before serving. Its this last part (the refrigeration) that really added to the refreshment...nice and cool, moist with a subtle nutty-sweet flavor complimented by the lime in the frosting. Sorry there are no pictures of the inside - we ate it all up!

I garnished mine with lime peel, you could easily use some beautiful fresh flowers or just leave it as is!

Stillman's Farms Lamb Chops and Other Delicious Stillman's Farm Offerings

2010-11-08T19:57:00.006-05:00

This muy romantico picture has A LOT going on, almost all of it from either our Stillman's Farm veg or meat CSA:

- Stillman's Farm lamb chop

- Stillman's Farm lamb riblet

- Roasted Stillman's Farm butternut squash with bleu cheese and pecans

- Sauteed Stillman's Farm brussel sprouts with Stillman's Farm ham

Ok, I won't say Stillman's Farm anymore. For this post I'll focus on the lamb, the veg sides are pretty straight forward.

The meat on the riblets was super gamey and there was a ton of fat - I probably should have cooked them lower and slower to render out the fat, but I didn't and I enjoyed them nonetheless. Anyway, here's what I did to achieve the above result on the chop:

Heat your pan and add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Sear your chops for about 3-4 minutes per side until really nicely carmelized. This is important and where a lot of your awesome flavor is going to come from! Transfer to a baking sheet and pop them a 350 degree oven for about 5-7 minutes or until they are cooked to your preferred doneness. As always, its important to tent your meat and let it rest for about 10 minutes before you serve.

For the sauce, process toasted almonds (I'll say 1/2 cup sliced) and roasted red peppers (I'll say 1 whole pepper) together in a food process and pour in olive oil until it reaches a saucy yet still thick consistency...mine was similar to hummus. Season to taste with s&p.

To serve, top meat with sauce. Knife. Fork. You know the rest.

What you see to the right of the chop is a lovely light salad of thinly sliced red onions and fennel, lemon, olive oil, s&p. It beautifully cut the richness of the chop.

Winter CSA Bounty and Savory Veggie Pancakes!

2010-11-03T20:30:00.008-04:00

Our winter CSA started this past week and boy did we get a haul. I kind of love the winter CSA; you think the fun is all gone because its not warm anymore, but NOOOOOO! You get more! In this week's box: red and white potatoes, apples, bell peppers, acorn squash, butternut squash, lettuce, spring mix, radishes, BEAUTIFUL carrots (see above, aren't they awesome?), radishes, arugula and brussel sprouts. Did I miss anything? This will keep us (or at least me) stocked for a while.

As you can probably tell, I was pretty excited about the carrots and remembered an Indian inspired vegetable fritter from Smitten Kitchen. What you should have already anticipated by now is that I didn't have all the ingredients (what?? you didn't??) for those. But it doesn't really matter, because the idea of a pancake chock full of veggies is an easy concept and you can do it in many different ways (see here for an awesome Korean version of the same idea.) Use the veggies you have on hand and decide on your spice profile and go from there. Here's how I did mine:

Ingredients:

1 bunch kale

2 medium carrots

2 small potatoes

1 small onion

3 eggs

3 Tbs flour

1 Tbs cumin

1 tps paprika

1 Tbs chopped ginger

1 large garlic clove

Olive oil

s&p

To do:

Wash and chop kale. Heat olive oil and add crushed garlic clove. Once the garlic is brown remove from oil and discard. Add kale to the garlic flavored oil, add a few tablespoons of water and cover. Cook until wilted and the stems are cooked through.

Grate the onion, potatoes and carrots on a box grater and put in a colander to drain. In a large bowl combine beaten eggs, flour and spices (including ginger). Squeeze grated veggies to get out as much moisture as possible. Add veggies (don't forget the kale!) to egg mixture and stir to completely incorporate. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat olive oil in a skillet and fry pancakes. I was able to do 4 at a time and kept them warm in the oven while I cooked the rest. Top with a fried egg, drizzle with soy sauce (or don't, whatever you like) and you've got yourself a meal! (Not to mention that the leftovers, topped with plain Greek yogurt made for a fantastic breakfast.)

Rib dinner: this post has giant-itis

2010-11-01T01:31:00.006-04:00

In our September meat CSA haul, we got a slab of ribs. A modest, dare I say small, slab. But ribs are ribs, which means they thrill me no matter what (getting Pork 3 Ways at Craigie on Main is to me one of the world's best ideas, and one of the ways is a rib - that's right, ONE RIB, but I'm not even complaining because that one rib is SO INCREDIBLY GOOD). So since it was October and our next meat pick up was imminent, we decided to eat those ribs. But it's too cold for barbecue. The internet confirmed my suspicion that I could make darn good ribs in my oven (low and slow being the name of the game). We had a lot of apples around, so I decided to use them to make some BBQ sauce from scratch (so easy and so worth it, even for vegetarians, to whom I offer the idea of putting homemade BBQ sauce on veggie burgers, with cole slaw if you have it!). I'll tell you my ribs and sauce methods, and just link to some of the other things I made, to try to keep the size of this post somewhat under control - caramelized onion and goat cheese cornbread (I didn't have any fresh corn kernels and mine turned out very differently from hers, though still very delicious), and clementine almond cake, both from smitten kitchen.

RIBS:

-you'll need a spice rub - any one will do, use your favorite. It should feature things like salt, pepper, sugar, paprika, maybe cayenne, maybe cumin, maybe garlic or onion powder.
-a rack or two of ribs (I wish we'd had two!)
-A sheet pan with a cooling rack that will fit inside of it and go in the oven without a problem
-BBQ sauce (see below for a recipe, or any one you like or have around is great)

For easy cleanup later, line the bottom of your sheet pan with foil, then put the cooling rack on top of the foil. Lay the rack of ribs on the cookling rack. Rub it all over quite thoroughly with your spice rub. I probably used about 1/4 cup total for one modest rack. Don't be shy with the rub, you want to coat all visible meat, basically. Cover, and leave to flavor up. I left it for about an hour and a half at room temperature. If you wanted to let it go longer, put it in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 250. Put in the ribs, and leave em! 2 1/2 hours. Paint on a little BBQ sauce, and leave for another 1/2 hour. Take them out and cover them with foil, and prepare anything else you want to put on the plate - that's when I made the cornbread and the clementine cake (photo of this at the end), which both needed higher oven temperatures). When those came out, I upped the temperature on the oven even farther to 400, spooned a little more BBQ sauce onto those ribs, and put them back in the oven for another 1/2 hour, to warm back up and brown a little more, at which time they are ready to cut up and eat, and you will wish you had a whole rack to yourself.
That last half hour with the ribs in the oven gave us the right amount of time for Jenean to bread and me to fry some green tomatoes our dad gave us (thanks Da!) - which I forgot to mention before! It is easy to do, you just slice green tomatoes just shy of 1/2 inch thick,
then set up 3 plates: in #1, put flour heavily seasoned with at least salt and pepper, maybe garlic powder, in #2, 2 eggs well beaten with salt and a little water, and in #3 breadcrumbs, preferably panko, but any kind of dry breadcrumbs are ok. Then you just go 1, 2, 3, coating completely in each one, then fry in a large, flat bottomed very hot pan with plenty of oil - canola or olive or peanut oil are good; drain on paper towels and sprinkle with coarse salt while they're still piping hot).
Meanwhile we boiled up the last of the CSA potatoes and Jenean mashed them with some Roquefort butter she made, SERIOUSLY. I die.
Quick Apple Maple BBQ sauce:
1/2 onion, finely minced
2 small apples, cored, peeled and chopped
1 smashed garlic clove (optional)
1 1/2 cups ketchup
salt and pepper
cider vinegar
maple syrup
brown sugar
mustard
(last 5 entirely to taste)

In a heavy bottomed small saucepan, fry the onions over medium heat in a little oil until soft and translucent. Add the apples and the garlic clove
and let them cook (sprinkle in a little salt to help them start releasing their juices) till they start to break down and look a little like applesauce. It helps to put the lid on for a while, and keep the heat medium to low. When they're soft, use a potato masher or a big spoon to smash up the apple chunks into smaller bits, but it's ok for it to still be pretty chunky. Turn up the heat to high, and add the cider vinegar, about 2 tablespoons, and let it boil a little. Then add the ketchup, some maple syrup (a couple glugs), brown sugar (a tablespoon or two), and a squirt of some nice brown mustard, if you want. Stir it all together and check for seasoning. You might like a splash or two of worcestershire sauce in there. It won't be great until you bring it to the boil and let it simmer, turned down to low, for at least 15 minutes. Cover it and stir it often, you don't want it to reduce too much, or scorch on the bottom.
Dessert was the clementine almond cake (not everything I dreamed of, but good) with a little cordial glass of Amaretto liqueur, a gift from our friends Reba and Jay, and it is pretty much the most delicious liquid you'll ever drink, ever. Love and thanks, Reba and Jay! And a shout-out to Eve for the adorable dessert plates.

Apples, Two Ways

2010-10-19T20:13:00.009-04:00

I went apple picking last weekend, which always seems like an awesome idea at the time and then you get home and you have eleventy billion apples (not to mention the half dozen apple-cider donuts, really?? I really need those?) and you can't possibly EAT all these apples as snacks and what I am I supposed to do with all these? Here are two things I did with them: apple pancakes and upside-down caramel apple muffins.

First up, apple pancakes.

Elaine came over on Sunday for apple pancakes and I decided to use this recipe from smittenkitchen. They were really easy to put together and CHOCK FULL of apples. I wanted to snaz them up a little (and use up another apple) so I melted some maple sugar I had on hand and sauteed apple slices in the resulting syrup. I put one slice in each pancake before I flipped it.

Then, we melted butter in the leftover melted maple sugar, along with additional maple syrup to top the pancakes. Delicious.

The second thing I made were these Caramel Apple Muffins.

As you may have observed by now, I sometimes start cooking things without having all the ingredients. I THOUGHT I had enough butter. But I didn't. So I sliced up all the apples last Thursday, but didn't actually make these muffins until last night. They still turned out awesome.

A couple of notes...you'll sautee your apple slices in butter and brown sugar for the delicious caramel apple topping. I had a TON of the butter syrup left over, so I included a spoonful of it on top of the apples before adding the batter and also on top of the batter before putting the muffins in the oven. I did have a few accidents with the sugar spilling out of the muffin tins, but oh well. I also have a self cleaning oven. Second, I needed to add milk (actually buttermilk, since that what I had) to the batter...it was SO stiff that I could hardly combine it all together. I would say that I added probably a total of 1/2 cup possibly even 3/4 cup. I doubled the recipe so its possible I miscalculated something somewhere, let me know what happens for you.

Now I only have 9 billion apples left.

Baked Figs, a Fancy Snack

2010-10-16T13:00:00.010-04:00

I love figs. I'm not going to lie, I would eat them anytime anywhere. They are so exotic yet so homey, modern and ancient at the same time. Our next door neighbors growing up had a fig tree in their yard and when the figs were in season I would stand under that tree and literally eat my fill. It was awesome. These days, I have to find them in the store and commit to paying slightly more than they might be worth, but I don't really mind because again, I love figs.

Now that we've got that covered, I acquired some figs and I wanted to do something very simple with them. David Tanis in his book "A Platter of Figs" has an easy recipe for baked figs. While I was making them, I realized I also had a beautiful block of blue cheese leftover from E's wedding which would be perfect with the figs. (I imagine the original recipe is delicious as well, but I can hardly ever resist a salty/sweet combo.)

Ingredients:

Figs, cut in half (how ever many you want, or have on hand)

A few sprigs of thyme

olive oil

s&p

blue cheese

To Do:

Put thyme sprigs in the bottom of a glass baking dish and layer figs halves on top. The dish you bake them in should be just big enough to fit your figs. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Pop in a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes, at which point you want to take the pan out of the oven and smush little pieces of blue cheese into each fig. Cook about 5-10 minutes longer, until cheese is melted. Remove from oven, let cool slightly, eat. Try not to eat them all at once. Then, eat them all at once.

Black Beans and Rice

2010-10-14T21:26:00.005-04:00

I think we had beans and rice once a week growing up, although it definitely seemed like more. My folks were and are huge fans of making large amounts of things, freezing portions and unthawing for quick and easy dinners. I hated beans and rice night when I was a kid, but now I really appreciate this delicious and hearty dinner, especially when paired with a salad, as we always did growing up. I think you'll find this a simple, delicious, healthy and not to mention cheap staple in your repertoire.

Ingredients:

1 lb black beans

2 cups chicken or veggie stock

Water

Olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 jalapeno, diced

2 Tbs ginger, chopped

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

Salt and pepper to taste

To Do:

Soak beans overnight. Drain and put in large pot. Add chicken stock and water to cover by 2 inches. Bring beans to a simmer and then lower heat. Meanwhile, saute onion, pepper, jalapeno and ginger in olive oil until soft. Add cumin, coriander and s&p and stir until combined. Add veg mixture to the beans and cook until beans are done. Smash a few of the beans against the side of the pan to make a nice thick gravy. Don't forget to taste and adjust seasoning. Serve over rice. We always topped them with chopped onion, but cheese, sour cream and a nice squirt of lime would work nicely as well. ENJOY!

Jumping the Gun on Autumn

2010-09-25T20:19:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here, unseasonably warm, as though we were getting one over on Mother Nature and squeezing a few more heavenly days out of summer. However, I had a fully fall meal planned - baked pasta with roasted veggies - and I went through with it despite the fact that it involved turning on the oven in an apartment with no AC.

I had roasted butternut squash left over from the salad I made a few days ago and an eggplant that needed to get eaten. I diced the eggplant, dressed it with olive oil and salt and pepper and roasted in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes, stirring at the half way point.

Once you have your veggies roasted you need a pound of cooked pasta (I used penne, you should use any type of short pasta you like), a white sauce and some cheese (I used fontina and parmesan). Here's what I used for the white sauce (all already in my fridge!):

6 Tbs butter

4 Tbs flour

salt and pepper

nutmeg

heavy cream

milk

Melt the butter in a saucepan and then whisk in flour. Let this cook for a few minutes...you will be able to smell it when the flour is no longer raw. Add your heavy cream, I'm guessing I had about half a pint and your salt, pepper and nutmeg (s&p should be to taste, probably about a 1/2 tsp of nutmeg). I didn't expect this but the mixture at this stage got REALLY thick so I added milk...I'm not exactly sure how much, probably somewhere between 1/2 cup and a cup and it settled down nicely and became a creamy sauce. Check your seasonings at this point and adjust, mine was pretty bland so I added more salt.

Once you have everything done to this point, combine pasta, veggies, white sauce and 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese. Pour half of this mixture into an oiled baking dish and top with grated fontina cheese, then layer the second half of the past mixture, more fontina and more parmesan cheese. The crunchies you see around the edges of the pan are fried leeks - they were maybe a little TOO well done, but so delicious none the less...just the savory addition needed for this dish, since the butternut squash adds quite a bit of sweetness. I just thin sliced the white and light green parts of a leek and fried in quite a bit of olive oil until they were nice and crunchy.

Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes, until bubbly.

pear and apple crisp I liked

2010-09-22T23:57:00.006-04:00

I have to say something that might shock you. I don't really like apple crisp. I don't like how the underside of the topping gets wet and gummy, and the apples cook down so far that you don't even really have any apples left when it's done baking, you just have a thin film of apple sauce kind of, covered in sort of soggy topping.

But see, we had three apples and two pears from the CSA malingering on the counter, and I didn't want to wait for pie crust to chill. Well frankly, I didn't want to spend time making a pie crust. So my hand was forced. But I thought of a way to maybe make it so that I would enjoy it. And it worked!

This made 4 servings. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

1. peel and cut the apples and pears in BIG chunks, like 1 inch pieces (so it doesn't cook down into applesauce! One problem solved).

2. toss them with cinnamon and sugar and a pinch of salt and put them in a very small baking dish, mine was 4 cup capacity for 5 apples/pears... basically, what you want to do is FILL the baking dish to the top with fruit (this too helps with avoiding the applesauce problem - greater fruit to topping ratio).

3. then make the topping: melt 6 tbsp. butter, mix in thoroughly 1/3 cup sliced or slivered almonds, 1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut* (this is how I made it good, i.e. not gummy! shredded coconut instead of flour!), a heaping 1/2 cup oatmeal, and about 1/4 cup brown sugar.

4. mash this topping down onto the apples, packing it onto the fruit to make a smooth top.

5. put it in the 400 degree oven (I put it on a piece of aluminum foil, on a baking sheet, because once the apples get nice and hot they'll get really juicy, and boil over onto the bottom of your oven and SCORCH) for about 10 minutes, and then turned it down to 350, for another... I don't know how long - maybe another 20 or 30 minutes? When the topping was golden brown, and the juices were all bubbly I took it out.

6. Axel F got some vanilla ice cream to put on top, because there really is no substitute for putting vanilla ice cream on apple crisp, especially when it's actually good and crispy apple (and pear) crisp with crunchy almonds and toasty, brown sugary, buttery coconut. Thanks again to him for these quality photos, especially considering the surpassingly poor quality of our camera and lighting situation.*don't skimp and use sweetened flake coconut, that stuff is gross and doesn't really taste like coconut. The unsweetened flake coconut, like this, is totally different, and worth a trip to Whole Foods for. It actually has a very fine texture - tiny little flakes, rather than being big thick ribbons, so it's an excellent flour substitute in this situation.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Arugula Salad

2010-09-20T10:19:00.006-04:00

Two cute baby butternut squash and a bunch of arugula walked into a bar...no, not really. But I did find myself with two small butternut squash from our parents' garden and a bunch of arugula from this week's CSA. The squash had been hanging around for a while and I wanted to use them up and the arugula DOES NOT KEEP so had to be used immediately. A quick internet search led me to an Ina Garten recipe with EXACTLY these two ingredients. Serendipity. Of course, I didn't have ALL the ingredients on hand but I improvised and results were still delicioso, although I do look forward to making this by the book next time. For example, I substituted apple cider with apple cider syrup diluted with water - the syrup is really tangy and intense so it was still flavorful, but I'd still like to do this with the apple cider. Anyway, here is what I had:

2 little butternut squash

1 Tbs real maple syrup

2 Tbs dried cherries (instead of cranberries)

1 bunch arugula

Apple cider syrup (diluted with water, instead of apple cider, total 3/4 cup liquid)

2 Tbs white wine vinegar (instead of cider vinegar)

2 Tbs chopped onion and garlic (instead of shallots)

2 tps Dijon mustard

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup toasted pecans (instead of walnuts)

Parmesan cheese

Peel and dice (3/4 inch) the butternut squash. Place on baking sheet with 2 tbs olive oil, maple syrup and s&p and roast at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Add the dried cherries with about 5 minutes left.

To make the dressing, I combined apple cider syrup and water (about half and half, but if you use cider or juice this won't be an issue), vinegar and onions/garlic and brought it to a boil. Let it simmer until its reduced to about 1/4 cup. Remove from heat and whisk in mustard, olive oil and s&p to taste.

Top your arugula with the warm butternut squash and a few tablespoons of dressing. Sprinkle with toasted nuts and parmesan cheese - I used a vegetable peeler to make ribbons but you can use grated as well.

You'll find that the flavors in this salad complement each other beautifully - the hint of maple syrup with the sweet squash and tart cherries, the nutty parmesan with the peppery arugula and pecans. And I have tons of the roasted squash leftover, so there will be a pasta recipe to follow soon!

B! L! T!

2010-09-17T00:03:00.004-04:00

Jenean and I were driving home from somewhere last weekend, and we were discussing what we had left of our meat CSA - a modestly sized ham steak, and a package of super thick sliced smoked bacon. I said, what totally awesome use of bacon is there? What should we do?

And then Jenean had one of the all time great ideas - we should make BLTs. Axel F had picked up the CSA, and I called him to confirm that we had gotten a couple tomatoes and a lot of lettuce. So Jenean and I stopped at Trader Joes for some good white bread (they call it "The Shepherd's Bread"), and then I made a special trip to the 7-Eleven for Hellmann's mayonnaise (I will accept no substitution when it comes to mayo - I grew up on the west coast so I prefer to call it Best Foods*, but it's the same mayo, i.e. the best mayo money can buy, hands down, no doubt about it).

Then we agreed that the best way to cook that beautiful bacon was to bake it, so I put my cooling rack inside my sheet pan, and laid out the bacon slices, and baked them at 450 for about 20 minutes. To be honest, my actual timing method was: when F said, "hey, that bacon is smelling good," that's when i went it to check on it, and it was done. Boom. Pulled it out, and while it cooled down and crisped up, I toasted bread, sliced tomatoes, selected lettuce leaves, spread mayo on said bread, laid on the bacon, then the lettuce, then the tomato, then salt and pepper, then topped with another slice of bread (also spread with mayo of course).

Let me tell you how awesome that bacon was - about a quarter inch thick, and the package happened to have 15 slices. That meant 5 beautiful thick smoky slices per person, meaning that in combination with the best mayo money can buy, the freshest ripest tomato in big thick juicy slices, and some crispy lettuce, we had the world's best BLT. It's not hard to get there, really. You should probably do it.
Thanks to Axel F for the muy romantico pictures.

*You probably already know this, but Best Foods and Hellmann's are the same company. Best Foods is obviously the better name than Hellmann's, especially considering their jingle: Bring out the Best Foods, and Bring out the Best! It's a lame jingle for Hellmann's, and yet, east of the Mississippi, they say Bring out the Hellmann's and Bring the Best. Lame, I say! But... it is the best.

Garlicky Lemony Roast Chicken

2010-09-08T22:30:00.005-04:00

We got a beautiful whole chicken in last month's CSA which Elaine kindly split in two so that we could each have a half. I wanted to roast mine and I also wanted the skin to get crispy, the meat to stay juicy and I wanted to add a big kick of flavor so I settled on garlic and lemon with some roasted potatoes and onions on the side. I modified a Cook's Illustrated reecipe and it turned out just the way I wanted! Here's what you need (double it if you have a whole chicken, which you probably do):

Half chicken

5 cloves garlic

2 tsp kosher salt

1 lemon

potatoes, quartered (however many you want)

onions, quartered (however many you want)

olive oil

Make a garlic paste:

Smash your garlic cloves then add the kosher salt and work into a paste using the flat of your knife. Just keep chopping and smashing until its a pasty consistency.

Gently separate the chicken skin from the chicken but don't remove it. Using your fingers, spread the garlic paste between the skin and meat. Really get in there and coat the entire chicken. Then, squeeze the juice of one lemon all over the chicken.

I don't have a roasting pan so I used a wire cooling rack set over a 9" x 13" baking pan. I cut the squeezed lemon into quarters and put them on the cooling rack and put the chicken, breast side down, on top of the lemons. If you're using a whole chicken, you can probably just put the lemons inside the cavity. Place the chicken in a 375 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and raise the oven temperature to 450 degrees. Turn the chicken over so the breast side is up. Once the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken back in and cook for another 20-25 minutes until your juices run clear.

Nothing can be easier than roasted veggies - I added my potatoes and onions, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, to the oven when I turned it up to 450 and everything was done at the same time.

Peach Shortcakes!

2010-09-01T10:08:00.004-04:00

I was in Trader Joe's last week and they were selling local peachs in these adorable cardboard baskets that said "These are from here!" and so of course I bought them. They were so declicious and juicy, perfectly ripe and fresh. However, I soon realized buying these was dumb, because there were about 15 peaches in the basket and now I live alone and that is WAY TOO MANY PEACHES for one person to consume before they get all mushy and gross. Nothing to do but bake with them.

Our friend Jess is a pie baker extraordinaire, and she and Elaine made DELICIOUS peach pies several weeks ago. I can't get involved in pie making - the crust is crazy intimidating to me. Although last week I made this zucchini gallette from smittenkitchen and while it wasn't perfect, I'm going to try again so it CAN be perfect. But anyway, making a pie seemed like too much and crisps and crumbles seemed too fall/winter for these summer beauties. I found a recipe for peach shortcakes on the Cook's Illustrated website - I HEART SHORTCAKES, so this seemed perfect. Kind of strange I never thought of making them with anything other than strawberries. But now that its a possibility, I will make them all the time, with everything because these are easy and awesome.

(Cook's did a lot of fussy things with the peaches that I didn't do...maybe next time, but I doubt it.)

For the peaches you need:

2 lb peaches (about 4-5)

4 tbs sugar (reduced from 6)

For the biscuits you need:

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tbs sugar

3/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1 stick melted butter (unsalted), cooled slightly

For the peaches:

Slice peaches into 1/4 inch thick segments, sprinkle with sugar and let sit to get the juices flowing. Cook's suggests chopping 1/4 of the peaches up smaller and adding peach schnapps to the mix and microwaving it, but I think this was to ramp up the peach flavor when you don't have good peaches, which I did, so I didn't bother.

For the biscuits:

Combine dry ingredients. Whisk together buttermilk, egg and melted butter. Pour wet ingredients into dry until just combined, then stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for 30 seconds. Shocking, I know. Instead of a loose, wet biscuit dough like I expected, it held together quite well and was kind of smooth. Using a greased 1/3 cup measuring cup, scoop 6 biscuits onto a greased or parchment lined baking sheet. Sprinkle biscuits with 1 tbs sugar and bake at 475 degrees for about 15 minutes until golden brown on top. Let cool on a rack.

To assemble:

Split a biscuit, spoon some peaches on the bottom half, top with whipped cream and the top of the biscuit. Eat. Enjoy.

Such a simple dessert but so delicious because of the freshness of the peaches - a great example of how perfect simple dishes can be if you use ingredients that are in season.

Cherry-Almond Yogurt Parfait

2010-08-22T09:48:00.005-04:00

Cherry-Almond Yogurt Parfait is a super fancy name for this super easy dessert Elaine whipped up last night. Whilst moving, we not only lost the camera (hence the crap photo, again), we also found morello cherries from Trader Joe's and teeny tiny amaretti cookies. Hurray!

We layered plain Greek Yogurt, cherries and cookies and enjoyed. I think you will enjoy also.

Grilled Sausage and Stone Fruit with Pom-Cumin Dressing

2010-08-18T19:06:00.001-04:00

Well, it finally happened. Elaine and I broke up. We still love each other though, so that means this blog adventure will continue. We had our first dinner date at my new apartment on Monday night and I whipped up this dish I found in my bon appetit magazine - although I changed it a bit based on what I had (are you surprised?? or perhaps annoyed that I can never ever ever follow a recipe?? I am annoyed at myself.) Really fast, minimal stove/oven use (great for a hot summer night) and super delicioso.

Here is what you need to serve 4:

4 sausages (we used roasted garlic chicken sausage, you can also use spicy Italian or Lamb...looking for a stronger flavor with no sweetness)

2 plums cut into eighths (recipe called for figs - YUM! - but we couldn't find any)

Lettuce or some type of mixed greens

Red onion, sliced in thick rounds

Goat cheese

Chopped mint for garnish

Pomegranate Cumin Dressing

- 7 1/2 Tbs olive oil

- 4 1/2 Tbs balsamic vinegar (reciped called for white, I used regular)

- 3 Tbs mint leaves, sliced

- 1 1/2 Tbs pomegranate molasses (see note below)*

- 1 Tbs ground cumin

- 6 Tbs minced shallots

*If you can't find pomegranate molasses, get some ubiquitous pomegranate juice and reduce 1 cup about 15 minutes until you have about 3 Tbs left.

For Dressing:

Whisk first 5 ingredients together, mix in shallots, season with s&p.

Then, watch how easy this is...

Brush dressing on sausages, onions and plums (or figs if using) and grill. Toss salad greens with dressing and divide onto plates. Slice sausage and arrange sausage, onion slices, fruit, crumbled goat cheese and mint on top. Eat. Enjoy.

Apologies for the picture, I can't find my camera since the move so this beauty was taken with my phone. Also, thank you to our friend Phil for shaming us (or at least me), via Facebook, into getting back on this horse. I think his exact quote was "Whither WLtCaE?" I didn't think anyone was paying attention. ;)

Fast BBQ ribs; Beet and Rosemary Rosti

2010-08-02T23:57:00.004-04:00

This meal came together way faster than I would have expected, probably an hour total. Fast cooked ribs are obviously different than melting, fall-off-the-bone tender, dreamy 9 hour slow cooked ribs... but these were honestly really good, and kind of scratched the bbq itch sufficiently. And the Beet Rosti may be my new favorite way to eat beets. We also had cold creamy cole slaw and a green salad, and it was a really fun hot day meal.

First the ribs:

I used about 2 pounds of country style pork ribs. To jump start the cooking process, I threw them in a big pot with enough water to cover, 4 cloves of garlic, some salt and some whole peppercorns. I covered it and brought the water up to a boil, then turned it down to medium low and let it simmer just until the meat seemed to be cooked, only about 10 or 15 minutes. It will look disturbingly gray and pathetic, I'm just being honest.

Meanwhile I had my charcoal getting hot outside, in my chimney starter, and my barbecue sauce simmering on the stove (recipe another time maybe).

I removed the ribs to a platter, and seasoned them well with salt and pepper, and drizzled with a little light olive oil (I prefer to cook with the light stuff, since it's cheaper, and save the extra virgin for using raw i.e. sparingly). I put them on the grill and covered it, and came back turned them after about 7 minutes - they had gotten beautifully brown.

I painted the browned side with some hot barbecue sauce, let the other side cook, and then flipped again, and painted the other side with sauce. Then I messed up and left them on there for way too long (was upstairs making the Beet Rosti!) and they burned on one side a little... but not so much that we didn't eat them all up and enjoy every bite.

Scattered throughout the rib preparation was the Beet Rosti preparation, which is a Mark Bittman recipe which I've had saved in an email draft for a LONG time, I'm glad I finally tried it. A rosti (umlaut over the o I think) is a usually a shredded potato pancake, very swiss (like our grandma Jean). This is a great way to use beets differently than the expected roasted/sliced way, which is good and all, but gets a little old, for me, frankly (we get beets almost every week in our CSA) (not complaining at all! I love beets! Keep em coming!). Anyway, this way of cooking beets emphasizes their sweetness, and transforms their texture in a way I really enjoyed.

Beet and Rosemary Rosti

adapted from Mark Bittman

2 pounds of beets, peeled with vegetable peeler

2 carrots (optional), peeled

2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary (honestly skip it if all you have is dried - it'll just turn to inedible little sticks)

1/2 cup flour

2 tbsp butter

salt and pepper

Shred the beets and carrots (thank the good Lord for food processors!) and put in a bowl, season liberally with salt and pepper. Start to preheat a 12 inch non-stick skillet. Mark Bittman warns that the temperature should never be very high on this, or it will burn (lots of sugar in them beets). To the bowl of shredded beets/carrots, sprinkle in 1/4 cup of the flour and mix thoroughly (it will turn lovely and pink!), then add the chopped rosemary and the rest of the flour, mixing until completely combined.

I think I might throw in a little finely chopped garlic next time, and thyme would sure be yummy in there too.

Melt 1 tbsp of the butter in the hot skillet, and when the foam subsides, let it go just a little longer (browned butter tastes better!) and then add the beet mixture, pressing it out all the way to the edges of the pan, into a flat round. Axel F said it looked pretty unappetizing at this point. Like some bloody and violent event has taken place, rather than food preparation.

Let it cook on medium heat, shaking occasionally, until you see the edges getting quite brown, maybe about 10 minutes. Now, get yourself two dinner plates. First slide the whole pancake out onto one plate. Then put the other plate upside down over the top of the pancake, hold the two plates tightly together, and flip - remove what is now the top plate to reveal the golden crispy underside! Hooray, it looks so yummy! (To me at least. I believe Axel had his doubts right through until he actually tried it.)

Melt the other tbsp of butter in the pan, and slide the pancake back in to brown the other side, same deal. Be sure to adjust the heat so it doesn't burn, but also so it browns up nicely. You'll know when it's done by the way it shakes around in the pan, it will sound and feel like a dry surface is sliding around in the pan - you have to listen for it. I cut it in three equal pieces and none of us had any trouble finishing it, though the recipe is supposedly for 4 servings. In any case, super good.

Polenta Almond Cake

2010-07-27T16:47:00.008-04:00

This is a cake I've been sort of thinking in the back of my mind I wanted to make for a very long time, but hadn't gotten around to it. It's sort of like the recipe I didn't make with those boiled and accidentally burned clementines, the smitten kitchen/Nigella/Orangette type of cake. Only it's also like this one of Jamie Oliver's which I almost requested from the lady who Axel F and I almost hired to made our wedding cake, before we decide that we don't need to have one.

In any case, I went on the hunt for a recipe again, because I wanted the kind made with almonds (because we had some in the pantry that needed to get used up), corn meal (i.e. polenta) (again because we had some that needed to get used up, and we only had a little bit), and olive oil (Dad had just picked us up a nice big bottle, so we could spare it). Thanks to the power of google, I found exactly what I was looking for, plus more! A version of the recipe which uses preserved lemons! Of which we happen to have a large jar in the fridge courtesy of our dear friends Elena and Matthew, whose house we all happened to be going to that night for dinner! The very coolest part about this is that the cake is gluten free by its very nature, and Matthew is a gluten free kind of guy most of the time! It seemed like fate that I should make this cake.

Preserved Lemon Almond Polenta Cake

from threetastes.com

adapted from a Boston Globe recipe from 2003 which uses a whole raw lemon!

one whole raw or preserved lemon

1/2 cup cornmeal

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 cups blanched toasted whole almonds (almond skins are no good here, but toasting nuts is always good)

1 1/4 cups sugar

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup either milk, evaporated milk, or a half/half mixture of milk and plain yogurt (option #3 is what I did)

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 cup good quality whole milk ricotta (beaten with 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla extract) for serving, some fresh berries are nice too, we had blueberries

Preheat your oven to 350. Grease a 9 inch cake pan* (my only 9 incher is my springform pan. I wrapped the bottom with foil to avoid leaks, and it worked great). You might want to line the bottom with parchment**.

If your lemon is raw, wash it thoroughly. You have two options from here -the Globe has you use it raw, or you could do like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson and boil it in plenty of water until soft, about 30 minutes. (You could definitely substitute an orange or a couple clementines, if you wanted. I'm going to have to test kitchen it with limes before I recommend that to anyone).

Raw, boiled or preserved, cut your lemon (or other citrus fruit) into smaller pieces, removing all the pits. If it's preserved, give it a gentle rinse to get rid of some of the salt.

In a small bowl, mix the cornmeal and baking powder, and if you're using a boiled or raw citrus, 1/2 tsp salt (skip this if you're using a preserved lemon, as it is plenty salty on its own).

In your food processor, grind up the almonds with 1 cup of the sugar, until it's coarse but fairly uniform. Add in the lemon pieces, and continue to puree until it's a smooth paste. taste it, and if it seems a little too tangy, add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar (to taste).

Add in the oil, milk (or milk/yogurt), eggs and almond extract and let it puree 1 to 2 minutes more, until very smooth. Add the cornmeal/baking powder mix and pulse to combine.

Pour the batter into the greased pan, and bake for 50-60 minutes depending on your oven, turning the pan once midway through baking to brown it evenly. Let it cool slightly in the pan, then turn it out onto a cooling rack to cool down completely (I just ran a knife around the outside and popped the springform pan sides off, and left it on the bottom to cool - worked fine and very easy).

I did the Boston Globe's recommended garnish - the sweetened ricotta (you can add vanilla, cinnamon, citrus zest, orange liqueur...) and I have to highly recommend that you spend a little extra and buy top shelf ricotta from Whole Foods or a specialty cheese shop - it's a totally different product - soft, smooth and creamy. Regular grocery store ricotta is a little too mealy/gritty to be really enjoyable in this situation. You could substitute lightly sweetened plain yogurt, or even mascarpone or sour cream thinned with a little orange juice! Or heck, you could top it with whipped cream, why not?

*To grease your pan, I can't recommend highly enough that you go buy yourself a bottle of Wilton Cake Release - it's oil and flour mixed in a shelf stable bottle, you use a pastry brush and squeeze out about a teaspoon of the stuff and paint it evenly all around the inside of the pan, the cake comes out perfectly, it has yet to fail me, even in a complicated Octopus cake mold, for use in which the Cake Release was originally purchased.

** you won't have to do that if you get the Cake Release. Seriously. Wilton paid me nothing to make this enthusiastic recommendation. It seemed like a gimmick product when you look at it in the cake decorating aisle in Michaels, but it really seriously works, and saves so much time and mess and annoyance (greasing, flouring, cutting parchment into circles, blech).

Sourdough Starter Pizza dough, CSA toppings!

2010-07-19T00:11:00.002-04:00

I hope you're all growing sourdough starters by now! I have something resembling an actual recipe to offer you for making a really nice, loose pizza dough (it's a modified version of a sourdough english muffin recipe I tried recently, which I found in a really old bread cookbook I accidentally stole from my co-op senior year in college a hundred million years ago). The only trouble is that it is so ridiculously hot these days that making pizza seems sort of... ill-advised. However, last week we got a big gorgeous tomato from our CSA and a big bunch of basil, and the first thing Jenean said when she saw it was "margarita pizza!" and that seemed 100% right, so we just went ahead and did it. Frankly, it turned the kitchen into a burning inferno, and we probably should have resisted the urge to bake... but boy was it delicious, and we had so much pizza leftover for lunches, I don't regret a thing.

For the Dough:

1/2 cup sourdough starter

1 cup water (or half water half milk, if you want)

2 cups flour, plus another 1-2+ cups later on

2 tsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

In a big bowl, combine the starter, the water (or water/milk), 2 cups of the flour, the sugar, the salt and the oil, using a wooden spoon (it will be pretty wet and sticky). Leave it, covered with plastic wrap, at warm-ish room temperature for an hour.

Put a cup of flour out on a large clean work surface, and turn the dough out onto it. Knead it till it absorbs all that flour, and continue adding more flour till you get a dough that, though it's still pretty sticky, holds its own.

Oil the bowl and put the dough in, flipping it over so all of it gets coated with a little oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap again, and leave for at least an hour, more if you can (you could park it in the fridge and use it the next day, even; when you take it out of the fridge, knead briefly then let it come to room temp again before trying to roll it out). This will make enough dough to fill the bottom of two well oiled half sheet pans (the 13x18 type cookie sheet). I think it might be too wet to try on a peel/stone, though maybe given enough flour and cornmeal, it could be done. I don't have a pizza stone, or I might have tried it out.

Anyway, it's lovely and soft, so you just have to sort of gently stretch and prod it out (it rips easily, so really, be gentle) into an even thickness (or rather, thinness) in the sheet pan.
After I got both sheet pans all filled out, I let them rest another 20 minutes or so.

I already mentioned our margarita pizza - I bought some fresh mozzarella just for the purpose, sliced it up and laid it on the dough (left an inch or so between pieces), topped it with nice thin slices of the tomato, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper and parmigiano, and that's how I baked it (Jenean added the thin sliced basil after it came out of the oven).

To top the other pizza, I had (a day or two before) cooked up a bunch of spinach (the previous week's csa spinach looking too sad not to just cook up), with onions, garlic and some chopped up zucchini - all sauteed down till it was practically a uniform green color and nice and thick (I think I meant to make a quiche or fritatta with it, but this use came up sooner). I treated that like my sauce (green sauce!) and spread it all out on the dough evenly, sprinkled on the last little bit of mozzarella left, and then dolloped on spoonfuls of ricotta, spread that all around, and then grated on some parmigiano.

I had the oven as hot as I dared (475 F) and put them both in at once, one of the racks up high and the other down low, and rotated and swapped them several times.
I think next time I'll only swap them once halfway through baking, and have the strength of will to leave them in longer, because though the edges were gorgeously crisp and yummy, the very bottom wasn't nearly as brown as I wanted it - so I think each of those pizzas deserved a while longer near the bottom of the oven (where our heat source happens to be). Probably it would be better to end up with a couple corners burned and the whole thing crispy, right? Anyway, it was still good - I got no complaints from anybody.