Pork with golden beets and black apples

This is perfect for a beautiful fall dinner, when it's cold outside and you want something pretty to look at on your plate. The golden beets are mildly sweet and nutty--perfect with crisp-cooked black apple slices. The whole thing is kind of like applesauce with porkchops but slightly more sophisticated, like it got dressed up for company. I put it all over a bed of wild rice but you can skip that or use something else you like--quinoa, couscous, brown rice, etc.Start with one golden beetroot. Red beets will make everything pink so you may want to avoid that type. You only need to use half of a big one so do that or just get one small one. In this case I just roasted the whole big one and saved half the quantity for a beet-goat cheese salad the next day.Peel and slice the beet into half moons about 1/2" thick...Add salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. Roast in the oven at 400 for about 40 minutes, or until soft. Here's half the beet, after cooking:Now find some really nice apples. These are Arkansas black apples, one of the crispiest types available. Aren't they gorgeous?You can use any type you like, as long as they're pretty crisp so that they don't fall apart into mush while cooking and are able to provide a nice textural counterpoint to the softer beets. Slice up one apple and set aside.Also cut one small onion into paper thin slices. You should now be ready to go with cooked beets, apple slices, and onion all prepared.Now get two boneless porkchops and season well with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat up 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium high heat until sizzly and add your chops to the pan. Give them about 3 minutes per side--you want them to be nice and browned. Don't worry about cooking them through--they'll finish up later on. Just try to get them a nice golden brown. Remove the chops to a plate, add your onion and begin to saute.After it is soft and a nice golden color from all the delicious pork goodness (about 5 minutes), add in your apple slices and 1 tablespoon butter. Turn them around so they get well cooked throughout.Add in your beets.Doesn't this just say "fall" to you? It does to me. Something about the colors, I guess.Add in 1/2 cup of white wine, stir well, then place your chops on top of the vegetables to finish cooking, or simply to reheat, if they are already done inside.Beautiful. Place each chop on a nest of the apples and beets over a small scoop of wild rice.

The best banana bread ever. Full stop, call it a day.

You may think this is hyperbole, especially if your past banana bread experiences have been of the gummy, leaden loaf variety. But this one is a one-way ticket to fluffy, delicate and ridiculously delicious quick bread heaven. Like my last banana bread variation, this one has its roots in Mark Bittman's base recipe. Unlike my last banana bread variation (although it was perfectly serviceable), this one is legitimately transcendental. Enjoy!Grease up a loaf pan with plenty of butter and preheat the oven at 350. While you have the butter out, leave 1 stick of it out to get soft because you'll be creaming it and it's annoying to try to cream cold butter. Mix together 2 cups white flour 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 cups sugar, and 1 teaspoon each cinnamon and cardamon. Add in 1/4 cup of flax seeds. These are key. Now get your stick of butter together with 2 eggs...And add in 3 large, very ripe bananas. Get these all beat up well together. Mix in 1/2 cup of almond butter. This is also key. Between this and the flax seeds, we're talking secret ingredients here. The most recent time I tested this recipe I used peanut butter because I was out of almond butter, and it's good too. Almond butter is absolutely preferable, but if you don't happen to have it on hand but are just dying to make banana bread, go ahead and use peanut instead. It will still be awesome.Once you've incorporated the almond butter into the banana-egg-butter mixture, pour it all into the dry ingredients. Stir it well to combine but do not mix more than necessary. Add vanilla or almond extract (I used a combination of both, actually) and 1/2 cup chopped pecans. I used almonds this time but I think pecans bake up better. Now pour your batter into your buttered loaf pan. Sprinkle a layer of turbinado sugar over the top of the loaf and bake for about 1 hour. Test it with a wooden toothpick--it should come out clean. Let cool for at least 15 minutes, then remove from pan.Allow to more or less cool before slicing unless you are very very hungry.

Rice pudding

Rice pudding! So easy, so yummy. This version has a hint of cardamom that gives a warmly exotic background flavor. I think next time maybe I'll use some coconut milk as well. Warning: these pictures are all very white. There's a nice yellow egg yolk that adds a pop of color at one point, but for the most part it is white city.Start with 1/2 cup of arborio rice. You can use regular long grain rice too--I just thought the extra-creaminess from arborio would be nice here. Combine the rice in a pot with 1/2 cup sugar, a generous 1 tablespoon of butter and a teeny pinch of salt.Add 1 quart whole milk...Stirring, bring this whole mixture to a boil over medium heat. After it comes to a boil, immediately reduce the heat and simmer it uncovered, stirring frequently, until the rice is very tender. This takes maybe about 45 minutes or so. I added a handful of golden raisins in after about 30 minutes of cooking but Angelica has informed me that these are a polarizing ingredient so you can, of course, leave them out.When it is about finished cooking, get 1 egg in a bowl.Turn the heat off from under the pot and scoop out some of your hot rice/milk mixture. Gently mix it into your egg--this is called tempering. If you just added a beaten egg all at once into your pot of hot rice & milk, your egg would cook and the whites would set. You don't want that because then it wouldn't be pudding, it would just be hot milky rice with stringy eggy bits. So tempering is important--a slightly annoying step, but it is worth it.Now mix the tempered egg back into your rice mixture, along with about 1/2 cup of heavy cream (confession: I did not really measure this. Just drizzled it in) and 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and cardamom. It will thicken up slightly and will get even thicker as it cools, so don't worry if it appears runny.Let it set in a pan in the fridge for at least an hour. Delicious. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top of each serving for prettiness, which I forgot to do. This makes about 4 dessert-sized servings so you can always double it up if you're having friends over. Friends who love rice pudding.

Happy birthday

Today Il Piatto Blu is 3 years old! I hope it's been as much fun for you as it has been for me...

Pineapple...on fire!

I got some pineapple with a half -baked plan to wrap it in bacon for an appetizer of some kind. But then I got lazy. So I set it on fire instead! Voila--last-minute dessert and postprandial entertainment, all in one! I have never before attempted to flambé anything but now I'm pretty sure it's gonna be my all-purpose cooking finish. Gnocchi? Flambé! Mashed potatoes? Flambé! 5-alarm chili? Flambé! Word to the wise(r than me): this was a great idea I had after a few drinks during dinner. Please be careful and don't set your house on fire. First things first: add a few tablespoons brown sugar to 3 cups of fresh, chunked pineapple and allow to macerate for at least 10 minutes. Meanwhile, mix 2 shots coconut liquor with two shots rum and 1/4 cup orange juice and set aside. When you're ready for dessert, melt 2 tablespoons butter in a heavy pan over medium-high heat.When the butter is hot, add in your sugared pineapple chunks. Add a healthy two pinches (or more) of chili powder and any other spices you like (I think I put in some cardamom as well but not sure about that). Let the fruit get brown and slightly caramelized. Now the fun part! Turn up the heat to high and dump in your booze/oj mixture...And set it on fire! Light a match to it and step the hell back.Fwoomp! Steve was sitting all the way out on the porch while Lydia and I were doing this in the kitchen and he says it made an impressively large fireball. We're very brave.It subsides pretty fast.And leaves a beautiful brown sauce with an exciting "I-just-caught-on-fire" flavor.The chili with the pineapple is really great--a subtle background heat that feels right with the instant caramel from the flambé.Pour the pineapple with its sauce over some vanilla ice cream. This would also be great on poundcake or something.

Columbus Day pot roast

This past Monday I had off from work for Columbus Day. It's one of those holidays that most people don't really seem to get off work for, so if your workplace happens to observe it there's this amazing feeling of playing hooky, although it's totally legit. Then I found out my evening class was canceled! It was a Columbus Day miracle! A whole day and night, stretching out in front of me! I was delirious with this magical gift of time and decided I should cook something special for dinner. Something that would just get more and more delicious the longer it cooked, thereby taking advantage of all this time. But it needed to be something totally hands-off, so that I could get all my studying done and (very important) play with the dogs. Voila: Columbus Day pot roast. I figure the fennel, tomato paste and red wine make it Italian. This is a great candidate for those with slow cookers, although I made mine in my dutch oven.After prepping up your vegetables (I used 1 onion, 3 small carrot, 3 small celery, 1/2 fennel bulb, all chopped to roughly the same size), get 2 tablespoons of olive oil hot over medium-high on the stovetop and brown some pot roast beef--this piece was 1.65 lbs.Be sure to salt and pepper both sides--turn it over after a couple minutes to brown the other side as well.Remove the beef and set aside. In the same pot, add in your vegetables and cook until softened and lightly colored.
Clear a space in the center and add 1 small can tomato paste and brown it slightly to get the metallic taste off.Then add some wine! I used about 1/2 cup.Mix everything up--you'll have a nice, chunky sauce going. This will completely fall apart as it slow cooks in the oven.Return your browned beef to the pot and add at least 10 whole garlic cloves.Cover the pot, stick it in the oven at 250 degrees...and just walk away from it to do other things with your amazing, incredible free time. Come back every now and then to peek in and see how yummy it looks. You don't even need to stir it but you might want to just for funsies. I cooked mine for at least 5 hours, simply because I could. It's probably good sooner than that. The equation is simply low heat + long time = amazing pot roast. Here it is right before I sliced it up--no, it doesn't look particularly glamourous, but hey--it's pot roast.I served it over horseradish mashed potatoes, with some of that incredible slow-cooked sauce spooned over the top.

Simplified life roasted chicken

It seemed simple enough up until now just to roast a whole chicken, but I have found lately that roasting parts on a bed of vegetables and white wine is even better. I started doing it after reading the gorgeous book A Tale of 12 Kitchens -- by the way, I really can't do this book justice. It's part travel memoir, part graphic design wonderland, and is my current favorite cookbook. A great gift for someone you know who loves art, food, and travel in equal measures. Anyway, after reading this, now I just place pieces (of any combination you like! unless you are cutting up a whole bird yourself) over any delicious, cut up root veggies and a bit of white wine. I don't need to carve anything after it's done and I have great leftovers for the week. So it's not really rocket science or anything, but seeing as it really has replaced roasting a whole bird as my new chicken approach, I figured I should write it up. This recent time, for veggies I used 1 large carrot and 2 small yukon gold potatoes cut into cubes of even size along with about 8-10 whole garlic cloves.I added salt, pepper and a bit of rosemary to the veggies...Then about 3/4 cup white wine. The chicken parts (1 split breast, cut in half, 2 thighs, and 4 legs) were layered on top of the vegetables, skin side down.I drizzled a little olive oil over the chicken and added salt and pepper.This goes in the oven to roast at 400 degrees for 1 hour, at which point you should flip the pieces over to skin side up. You can maybe add a little butter on top to facilitate browning, if you like. Let it go for another 30 minutes or so to get browned.Beautiful. And delicious, especially if you use whole garlic which becomes perfectly mellow as it slow roasts in all that chicken fat and wine.

Sweet potato and roasted beet confetti

This recipe features candy-like root vegetables that are sweet in two totally different ways. Cooking them separately preserves their beautiful colors and enhances the texture of each--they look amazing together and taste even better. Start by peeling and cubing one medium sized beet (I try to do this on a plastic bag to prevent from staining everything around me).You want little cubes about the size of the end of your thumb. Toss them in a baking dish with about 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt, and a teeny pinch of sugar and let them roast at 400 for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally. You want them to get shriveled and very concentrated in flavor, kind of like making beet raisins.Meanwhile, cube up one sweet potato.Cook the cubes in a pan with about 1/2 cup of water for 10 minutes or so to get them softened.Drain off the water and add 1 tablespoon olive oil to the pan and begin to saute your sweet potato cubes. Add 1 teaspoon each of cumin and chile powder. Be careful not to mush the sweet potato cubes but do turn them around so they get browned and delicious in the pan.When the sweet potatoes are soft and lightly browned, add in your roasted beets. Remove them from heat and very gently mix in 1 - 2 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar and a tablespoon minced parsley. You want your sweet potatoes and beets to be separate from each other so don't mash them up while you mix.Taste to make sure all the flavors are correct--does it need salt or a little more vinegar or sugar? Top with a good handful of crumbled goat cheese to serve. Each creamy and spicy bite of the sweet potatoes is perfect with the intensely sweet and earthy beets. They were made for each other!