Curried winter squash soup

Much like the last post, this is a recipe of seriously bright color. The batch I made last night featured my favorite winter squash, kabocha, but you can use whichever variety you like best or happen to have lying around the house. Butternut would probably be pretty good. My dad happened to be in town last night, swinging through with his jetsetting lifestyle to socialize with us for an quick evening before heading on his busy way. He said he liked the soup, so if it's good enough for an international xylose fermentation superstar, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

I sautéed 1 large minced onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoon butter. When they were getting soft, I added in 1 teaspoon garam masala, 1 teaspoon yellow curry powder and a pinch of paprika and stirred it all up together. The onions continued to cook for about 10 more minutes. You want them to get very soft but not browned, so keep the heat on the low side. Meanwhile, I chopped in half and de-seeded one large kabocha squash. I peeled up the squash and cut it into small chunks of about 1 ½", then peeled 2 apples and cut them into the same size chunks. Stirred both the squash and the apples into the pot to cook alongside the onions for about 5 minutes, then added 3 cups of chicken stock. Brought it to a low simmer and let it cook until the apples and squash were quite tender, about 25 minutes. At this point I stirred in ½ cup of plain yogurt, ¼ cup sherry, a pinch of red pepper flakes, 2 teaspoons salt and a very healthy grinding of black pepper. Then I turned off the heat and got out my fantastic immersion blender that I love more than life itself, and blended hell out of the soup. It turned a sunshiney bright yellow with the curry and the squash and the flavor mellowed out beautifully with the yogurt. You may find it needs a touch more salt, so taste it to see. I allowed the now-smooth soup to chill out on a back burner covered at a low simmer until my dad showed up, then I added a couple tablespoons of finely minced parsley to finish.

Blanched winter vegetable salad

This is a cheatery recipe because it is really easy. There's nothing particularly seasonal about these vegetables--it's just that they're readily available in the wintertime (thanks southern hemisphere!). They taste crunchy and fresh when prepared this way, and the bright colors are a technicolor medicine for winter doldrums, so give it a shot.

Cut one small head of cauliflower into florets of no more than 1 ½" in size and set aside. Do the same with a head of broccoli, reserving the stalks for another use (I deeply love broccoli stalks and can't imagine throwing them away, in fact I used my reserve of them last night for a delicious brown rice-tofu-broccoli stalk stirfry). Take three large carrots, peel and cut into rounds of about ¾" in width. Try to get each vegetable cut into equal sizes. Get a big pot of water up to a hard boil on the stove. While you're waiting for it to boil, fill a bowl of water with cold cold water and at least one tray of ice cubes. You are making an ice bath for your veggies! When the water is boiling merrily, put your broccoli florets in for exactly one minute. Fish them out with a wire mesh colander (or whatever, just don't drain the boiling water because you are going to keep using it) and dump the broccoli into the ice bath. This will instantly stop their cooking which will preserve the crunchy fresh flavor and the brilliant green color. Swirl them around to cool off, then fish them out and place in the fridge. Meanwhile, hopefully your water in the pot on the stove is back up to a boil again, so add in your cauliflower and let it boil for just under 2 minutes, then repeat the fish out/dump in ice bath/stick in fridge routine that you just did for the broccoli. Do the same exact thing for your carrot rounds, also letting them boil for not-quite 2 minutes. You might need to add a few more ice cubes to the ice bath to keep it chilled between vegetables. When all the vegetables are done, store them in the fridge until it's time for dinner. Serve the mixed vegetables either tossed with a delicious vinaigrette or drizzled with the Trader Joe's goddess dressing (it has tahini in it!). This also makes a great lunchbox addition or colorful finger food for little kids.

Broiled shrimp

I actually think the name of this recipe should be Wintertime Shrimp because Byron's reaction to "do you wanna come over and eat shrimp?" was something like "Shrimp? What? It's February! Shrimp are for summertime!" Hopefully he was convinced and maybe these will be the kind of shrimp you can see yourself consuming in the depths of winter (actually it was, like, 65 degrees out, so it's not actually all that cold). Unlike the shrimp Byron was thinking of, these aren't cooked up with potatoes, corn and sausage like a low country boil. They're still in the shell so you must peel-and-eat, which makes for a fun communal meal (actually, Josh LeF. described it as "primal" so maybe that's it). Also, all the stuff you broil the shrimp in makes an amazing buttery sauce to dip bread into and that might be the best part of all.

I got about 4 pounds of shrimp for 6 people. I bought 2 pounds of the 21/25 counts and 2 pounds of the 26/30 counts. I probably would have gotten all of the bigger size (easier to peel) but they were running out. 4 pounds of shrimp in these sizes will require the use of 2 baking pans (the jelly roll style cookie sheets with a lip on the edges) and you'll probably have to do them in 2 batches in your broiler. Obviously, if you have fewer people and only do 2 pounds, you can fit it all on one sheet and make them in one batch. Wash your shrimp really well and spread them out on your baking sheets. Drizzle each batch with 1/4 cup olive oil, then get your black pepper grinder and grind pepper all over them. Like ALOT of pepper, just keep grinding and grinding until they are liberally covered in a blanket of pepper. Sprinkle salt over the top,probably 2 teaspoons per sheet of shrimp. Then pour about ½ cup of Worcestershire sauce over each batch. Squeeze the juice from 3 lemons over each batch (a total of 6 lemons for 2 batches). Cut about 3 sticks of butter into chunks and dot the shrimp with the butter pieces so that you have at least 1 ½ sticks of butter per batch. OK, so you have shrimp, black pepper, a little salt, worcestershire, lemon, and butter. Now stick it under the broiler for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, cover your table or wherever you'll be eating in newspaper and get out a bowl to put empty shells into. When the shrimp are done, haul them out of the broiler (if you're making two batches, stick the second one in now) and pour the shrimp and all the delicious sauce that has formed beneath them into a large bowl. Make sure you have one or two loaves of good crusty french bread to dip in the sauce, try to stick it in the oven to heat up ahead of time. Call your friends over and begin to eat. You'll probably burn your fingers but it is worth it.

The only accompaniment these delicious shrimp need, besides the bread, might be a good green salad. I had beautiful lettuce from the Morningside farmer's market, with watermelon radishes, cucumbers and a hazelnut oil-champagne vinegar dressing. We had discussed ahead of time that Abita beer is proabably the most delicious libation for shrimp, so we had those and Jeremy also brought a really nice pinot noir. And we drank a bunch of other red wine because that is how I roll, no matter what I am eating for dinner. Unfortunately, you will probably not be able to replicate the awesomeness of having Sara as one of your shrimp eating guests. She brought the most amazing chocolate bundt cake and it was ridiculously good.

Golden risotto with chicken and butter beans

More risotto! 2008 has a theme thus far. I suspect I'll back off after this go-round, but this was a great way to use my roast chicken leftovers. I wanted something that was creamy and delicious, like wintertime comfort food. And risotto totally delivers. It sort of makes me think of an old-fashioned chicken-and-rice recipe. If you don't have butter beans you should use tiny green peas, in fact it might actually be better with those, a little more elegant.

Begin with a whole lot of chicken fat on the bottom of a pan. I was trying to make gribenes, which are chicken skin crisps fried in chicken fat. It was just for fun, because I had a lot of chicken fat left over and a whole chicken skin so I was trying it out. Didn't really work, but I had a tablespoon of chicken fat in my pot afterwards and some delicious golden chicken fat sticking, so I just started my risotto there. Sautéed one small minced onion in the fat until soft and golden, then added 1 cup arborio rice. Continued to sauté for about 3 minutes then began slowly adding 3 ½ cups of chicken stock. As before with cooking a risotto, add the liquid only ½ cup at a time, stirring until it is all absorbed. If you have some white wine, replace a ½ cup of the chicken stock with wine--I didn't have any open on hand so I didn't do that this time. This will not be pure white like a risotto sautéed in butter and wherein you don't allow the onions to color. That's why I'm calling it a golden risotto--possibly it is unorthodox, but whatever, it's tasty. Anyway, after your risotto has absorbed 2 cups of liquid, stir in a ½ cup of butter beans or tiny green peas along with about 1 cup of chicken meat, cut into small ½" pieces. Stir these in along with the remaining 1 ½ cup of liquid, still going only ½ cup at a time. When you are down to your last ½ cup of liquid, add in ¼ cup of grated parmesan cheese, then continue adding liquid until all has been absobed and the rice is creamy and delicious, which it should be by that point. Season with fresh black pepper and enjoy.

Lacinato kale, watermelon radishes and baby turnips

Actually, this post should be entitled "I am a Late Adopter: The Delights of Morningside Market." My friend Katie pointed out to me, as others have done, that there is a really great farmers market up North Highland. I haven't been and I haven't been and finally I saw firsthand some of Katie's vegetables procured there and I went immediately. And guess what--it is indeed great, although not large. There are about 5 stalls, most are vegetables, there seemed like a bread one and then also a meat one, which is really exciting. I don't know if there will be more in the warmer months or not. Anyway, I found these wonderful tiny turnips and gorgeous dark lacinato kale...they are so tender and perfect. And these amazing radishes! Outside they look like big tough balls--they're about the size of baseballs, which is large for a radish--but when you slice them they are beautiful, bright red with a pale green rind. They look like watermelons, especially if you slice them into half moons. I drizzled them with hazelnut oil (olive oil is perfectly fine too) and sprinkled with salt and pepper for an appetizer when Charlie and Colleen came over.

The lacinato kale was very delicate and small--the leaves were not longer than 3". I sort of braised/sautéed them, first swirling around in a hot pan with olive oil, then adding a tiny bit of minced garlic, and then about 2 tablespoons each pinenuts and dried cranberries. Then I added about ¼ cup chicken stock and cooked until it was absorbed and the kale was soft but still bright green. It would have been even more delicious if I had toasted the pinenuts first, so be sure to do that if you think of it.

The baby turnips were wonderful. They had long, perfect greens attached so I sliced those off, leaving about 1" atop. This was at a different dinner than the kale so I cooked up the turnip greens pretty much exactly the same way as described above. The turnips themselves I tossed together in a pan with a head's worth of peeled, whole garlic cloves and 2 teaspoons of sugar. These roasted at 400 degrees underneath a chicken that was roasting already for dinner. It's important to remove a lot of the drippings before you put turnips in the roasting pan beneath the chicken, otherwise the vegetables will get too greasy. You may also need to use the baster to draw some of the juices out as they go along. They'll cook up happily along with the chicken--they need about 40 minutes, give the pan a shake now and then to redistribute.

Chicken milanese

This is the sort of thing my grandmother always seems to be making us for lunch at her house, except I think she usually uses veal cutlets rather than chicken. I think it's completely delicious and for some reason it always feels quite genuinely Italian to me, probably because both my mother and my grandmother can make these in their sleep as their most basic meat preparation skill. I could eat them any day of the week they're so tasty and so much like comfort food. For a variation, they'd be good on top of a salad of lightly vinagretted baby greens. The most important thing to have on hand is the lemon--it wouldn't seem authentic without it.

I had 3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts on hand, you can make as many as you like. Take each chicken breast and slice them in half lengthwise as evenly as possible with a sharp knife to make 2 thin cutlets. You might find this easier to do if you stick them in the freezer for 5 minutes first. After halving the chicken breasts, flatten them, either with a meat pounder (which I do not own, sadly) or with the palm of your hand (which I do own). Get all the cutlets to an even width. Combine 2 tablespoons water and one egg in one bowl, beat them together and set aside. In another bowl combine ¾ cup of fine bread crumbs with salt, pepper and 2 tablespoons minced parsley. Get a skillet ready and hot with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Dip each chicken cutlet into the egg-water mixture, and next dredge it in the breadcrumb mixture. Sauté in the hot oil until very nicely browned, then flip over and brown the other side, then remove to a plate. You'll probably need to do these in batches and might have to keep adding oil. When all the cutlets are done, serve them with large wedges of lemons and insist that everybody squeeze them liberally over their chicken before eating. Do not take no for an answer.

Farro risotto with cremini mushrooms

Farro is a type of Italian wheat--it is very long and elegant looking with a distinct nutty flavor. It remains firm after cooking, unlike wheat berries or spelt, and this texture makes it particularly enjoyable. I had never seen it just hanging out on store shelves before but last week I found it at the DeKalb market and so picked some up to try making it at home myself. Because it has a very hard exterior, you are supposed to soak it before cooking, so if you remember, do that. I of course did not remember, but it turned out OK. This is cooked like a risotto, but unlike a real risotto it doesn't get super creamy. It is, however, incredibly delicious.

Rinse well 1 cup of farro and boil it in about 8 cups water for 30 minutes. Drain the farro and set aside. Melt 2 tablespoons butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 1 package of sliced cremini mushrooms and sauté until they are golden, about 8-10 minutes. Add 1 clove minced garlic (or 2 minced shallots instead would be tasty if you have them, which I did not) and continue to sauté 1 minute. Add in the preboiled farro and 1 cup white wine. Simmer until almost all liquid evaporates, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Add in a total of 2 cups chicken stock; stir the liquid in slowly, ½ cup at a time, simmering until each ½ cup addition of liquid is absorbed. Do this until all 2 cups are added in and the farro is tender, which will take about 15 minutes. At the end, if you like, stir in a couple tablespoons of parmesan cheese and a little more butter, plus salt and pepper.

We also had these great sirloin steaks that Melanie's parents had sent them around Christmastime. Mel's parents are very smart--they know the best gift of all is a freezer full of meat. I made a port wine sauce for the steaks--pretty much just 3 tablespoons melted butter with 1 clove minced garlic, then add a cup of port and bring it to a simmer, then add in 1 cup chicken stock (better with beef stock but I didn't have any) and then boiled until it all reduced down to 1 cup and got thick. We also had roasted green beans, mostly because I wanted to try making a vinagrette with this hazelnut oil I'd purchased. Hazelnut oil is amazing. It smells fantastic and the flavor is delicate yet full at the same time. I roasted a pound of trimmed green beans in a 425 oven for 8-10 minutes until they were bright green but with a few caramel patches on them. Then, while they were still hot, tossed the beans in a vinagrette made with 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar, 3 tablespoons hazelnut oil, 1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard, salt and pepper. It was great.

Mixed roasted root vegetables

This weekend we celebrated Burns Night at Charlie and Colleen's house. This Scottish holiday traditionally features a haggis, in order to commemorate the stirring Robert Burns poem "Address to a Haggis" (if you want to read it, you can find it here). It's sort of ridiculous good fun and we tried to keep things as Scottish as possible. Charlie made meatloaf instead (a particularly fantastic one) but Katie made a vegetarian haggis so that we could sort of get it right, but without all the intestines and sheep stomachs that go into real haggis. I brought some things for a charcuterie plate--pâté, salami and a delicious goat cheese called Purple Haze that has lavender and wild fennel pollen in it. I also made a batch of particularly well thought out roasted root vegetables. Usually I just chuck whatever I feel like cutting up into the oven without too much thought, but this time I actually spent a lot of time picking out veggies and considering their needs, so it really turned out pretty well. As things are wont to do, if you just take a little patience and time with them. The More You Know!

I selected 1 large rutabaga, 1 large turnip, 3 parsnips, 1 garnet sweet potato, a bag of tiny literally pebble-sized Yukon Gold potatoes and a bag of miniature carrots that still had a bit of green on top so they looked whole but were only maybe 2 ½" long. The tiny potatoes and carrots were really cute and I think they elevated this basic dish into something a little more festive for a special occasion. Oddly, this time I ended up going to Whole Foods for my vegetable shopping rather than my beloved DeKalb Market and they seem to cultivate their own adorable tiny carrots, so if you want to find them yourself, try looking there. I sliced up a bit more than half each of my enormous turnip, rutabaga and sweet potato saving the rest for something else. I ended up using half each of the bag of tiny Yukon Golds (picking out the ones that were tiniest of all) and adorable tiny carrots. You want to keep a balance between the vegetables and also I think it would have made way too much. I left the carrots and Yukon Golds whole, sliced the parsnips and sweet potatoes into matchsticks and cut the rutabaga and turnip into half-moon slices about ½" thick. The goal is to make sure everything is more or less the same width so it will cook at an even rate but also to keep some visual interest with different cuts between the veggies. Tossed all the vegetables together with about 10 whole cloves peeled garlic (it will become soft and mellow as it roasts), 5 tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon each red pepper flakes and cumin, 2 teaspoons salt and a healthy grinding of fresh black pepper over all. I took them over to Charlie & Colleen's, divided them into 2 pans, and roasted for a little while along with the meatloaf and vegetarian haggis at about 350 (I think?). Then after the other things were removed from the oven we cranked it up to 425 and continued to roast. They probably went for about 20 minutes at the lower temperature and then about another 25 at the high one. Shake the pans or stir them often to redistribute the vegetables to ensure even cooking.

Chicken satay, sort of

Like I said, I had all this leftover peanut sauce in the fridge from the soba noodle thing the other day so I decided that we'd have chicken satay at some point. Melanie seemed really enthusiastic about it when I broached the topic at the Tupperware party that we all attended (and, no, that's not code for a sex toy party, we actually went to a real, live tupperparty with a tupperlady and everything. Ariane can verify). So I gave it a shot.

I had just shy of 2 pounds worth of boneless, skinless chicken breast. Mark Bittman says that chicken thighs work better for satay because they don't dry out and he's probably right but I happened to have breasts so breasts it was (whee!). Sliced them into thin strips of about 1 ½ " width (this is easier if they are a little bit frozen so you can stick them in the freezer for five ten minutes). Put the strips into a big (non-tupper) plastic bowl for marinating and added the juice from one lime, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 2 tablespoons olive oil, ½ teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes, 2 crushed cloves garlic, a drizzle of rice wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons minced cilantro, salt and pepper. Tossed it all really well together and left it in the fridge for about 5 hours, giving it a stir every now and then to distribute the marinade. When it was time to cook dinner, I confess I did not end up putting the chicken strips on bamboo skewers and grilling them. That would have been awesome and delicious and maybe I'll do that one of these days. But I hate getting the grill all going just for one little thing and I didn't have any veggies or anything else to use the grill for so I skipped it. Also, as it turns out and as Jeremy later pointed out, my grill is actually sitting on their porch right now, all covered in street grime. So, whatever. I got my cast iron grill pan and heated it up super hot with a thin film of sesame oil on it. Lay the strips of chicken on the very hot grill pan and let them go about 3-4 minutes per side, at least until they were well-marked with brown grill lines. My grill pan is not huge so I had to do this in several batches, keeping the finished strips warm in the oven. I heated up the remaining peanut sauce (about ¾ cup) very gently with a few tablespoons of water whisked in to smooth it out. I sort of got careless and it burned on the bottom because I was toasting sesame seeds for the broccoli and got distracted. Don't let it happen to you! Poured the peanut sauce into a small bowl in the center of a platter surrounded by the grilled chicken strips and let everybody grab their own and pour the sauce over the top. Not as much fun as if it had been on skewers, but pretty delicious anyway.

Peanut sauce with soba noodles and cucumber-pepper relish

Last night Ali and Nik came over for dinner as part of our ongoing automotive-work-for-food exchange program. Nik is gifted with knowledge of diesel engines and a deep understanding of the peculiarities of my particular VW, as he has the exact same one. Apparently one dinner is worth one fuel filter; labor is free because he enjoys it. It's a good deal, especially for Ali because she doesn't have to do any car work at all but still gets to eat. Last night we had sesame salmon in a soy-orange sauce (I think I've written about it before) and soba noodles tossed with peanut sauce and topped with a tangy cucumber-orange pepper relish. It's a good addition for peanut noodles because they can get sort of overly sweet and unctuous if you try to eat a whole pile of them; a spicy, tangy and crunchy counterpoint is sort of needed to go with.

Start by making the cucumber mixture because it needs at least 30 minutes to marinate. Wash, de-seed and chop one orange bell pepper into small ½" chunks. Peel one hothouse cucumber (also known, for some reason, as english cucumbers, they're longer and thinner than the normal kind and usually are found wrapped in plastic. Use a regular one if you can't find this type), and chop it into similarly-sized chunks and toss together in a large mixing bowl with the orange pepper. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 pinch red pepper flakes, 2 small cloves crushed garlic, 2 teaspoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons finely minced cilantro, salt, pepper and about 3-4 tablespoons rice wine vinegar. Mix it up really well and let it sit at room temperature until it’s time to eat. Go over and mix it up now and then while you are getting everything else ready so all the pieces of cucumber and pepper get a chance to marinate. For the record, I decided after the fact that a little bit of chopped red onion would be delicious in this and am sad that I didn’t think of it in time to add it in. Try mixing in about ¼ cup—the marinating time will make it mild and delicious.

For the peanut sauce, I used my amazing new immersion blender. You can make the sauce by hand too or in a regular blender, but I’m in love with my new gadget and want to spend all my time with it. It comes with this mixing vessel—sort of a long, tall plastic canister that you can put stuff into for effective blending, so I just made the peanut sauce in that. If you don’t have an immersion blender (or if you do have one but no nifty blender container came with it) just dump everything in a big bowl. Peanut sauce is pretty easy and can be tweaked to suit you, so taste as you go and add more soy sauce or garlic or whatever if you think it needs it. Combine the following: 1 cup smooth peanut butter, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon red chili-garlic paste (you can find it in the Asian foods aisle of the store usually, otherwise just use red pepper flakes), 3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar, 3 minced garlic cloves, 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger and ½ cup hot water. Blend the shit out of it with your mighty immersion blender…or puny human hands. You might find that you need to add more hot water, or vinegar or soy as you go along—add up to another ½ cup liquid with few repercussions. Boil a package of soba noodles (or really whatever kind of Asian noodle you like). When they are al dente, drain lightly so as to keep some water clinging to the noodles, immediately return them to the pot and toss with about ¾ cup of the sauce. Add more sauce if you think it needs it and sprinkle with black and white sesame seeds. Serve with the cucumber-pepper relish to go on top or right next to it or something. Leftover peanut sauce is really useful to have in the fridge—you can always toss it with more cooked noodles for a quick dinner or lunch, or use it to dip fried tofu in or make grilled chicken satay strips. You won’t regret it!

Squash risotto and red pepper-mascarpone dip

Last night was a night of firsts! I cooked some things I had never made before, I used a brand-new kitchen gadget, and our friend Sara came over for dinner for the first time (she brought one Josh Le F. with her, but he was old news, having been over before and therefore not a first). As I have mentioned before, I am really not a gadget person but I had been wanting an immersion blender for some time and my dad totally came through on the Christmas present front with a very nice KitchenAid one. So I wanted to try it out and made an interesting dip for appetizer.

Combined one tablespoon of sherry, salt and pepper with 4 roasted red peppers and 2 healthy tablespoons mascarpone cheese in a container appropriate for immersion blending. Got out the immersion blender, marveled at its power tool-like structure and blended hell out of the cheese-pepper mixture. I only used it at a 5 power level, but that sucker will go up to a 9. A 9, y'all! It turns a lovely pastel shade of orange-y red, so this has the added benefit of being a really pretty appetizer as well. Pour into a bowl, sprinkle with some parsley and serve with robust crackers.

I also wanted to make a squash risotto. Actually, that's how plans for dinner started to begin with--I had a couple squash lying around and I thought it might be tasty. I had about 2 pounds worth of small, sweet winter squash. It wasn't my usual favorite kabocha squash, but I wish it had been. I cut them in half, de-seeded, and roasted them until very soft (about 1 hour), then scooped out the flesh and set it aside for later. Begin the risotto itself by sautéing one medium minced onion in 2 tablespoons butter. Don't let them brown at all but get them nice and soft--about 6-8 minutes. Add 2 cloves minced garlic and 1 ½ cups arborio rice. Sauté for 3 minutes--again, do not brown--then begin to add in chicken stock. You will need 5 ½ cups chicken stock and ½ cup white wine, making 6 cups of liquid total. Add the liquid to your rice ½ cup at a time, stirring each ½ cup addition until it is totally absorbed before adding in the next ½ cup. Sara and I discussed this--there is some contention amongst the risotto-producing Italians as to whether one stirs constantly, stirs just occasionally or stirs not at all...but I went ahead and stirred pretty much constantly. For one thing, I think it works well and for another, I sort of enjoy it. It is meditative and fun and everybody is hanging out chatting in the kitchen anyway, so why not? So after you have added in all 6 cups of liquid (you will find it is a bit liquidy at the end, which is fine because you are about to add more stuff in), stir in the roasted squash from earlier, 1 tablespoon minced fresh sage, salt, pepper, and at least 4 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese. I actually had too much sage in the one I made last night (probably something like 2 tablespoons or more) but it gave a funny alkaline flavor, so I would say keep it to only 1 tablespoon. I really like sage but I think also that it stands up better to my beloved kabocha squash rather than the (pale, watery) one I was using last night, so that was part of the problem too. The lesson? Never try anything new once you have found your dream squash.

We had these massive porkchops also--they were really thick-cut and juicy. I just seared them 2 at a time, in 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium-high heat, on my favorite cast-iron skillet, about 4 minutes per side. Then I transferred them to the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes, basically until the internal temperature rose to 160 degrees. I poured any collected juices from the oven dish back into the pan that I had seared the chops in and stirred it around over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons sherry and ½ tablespoon butter, making sure to bring up any delicious porky bits that had stuck to the pan. Added 1 tablespoon minced parsley and used it as a sauce over the porkchops. We also had broccoli rapini that I sautéed and tossed in the juice and zest from 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon capers, salt, pepper, and 3 tablespoons olive oil.

Black-eyed pea and lentil chili

On New Year's Day in the American south it is good luck to eat black-eyed peas. On New Year's Day in Italy it is good fortune to eat lentils. So this year I made a chicken chili with black-eyed peas and lentils and called it Double Luck chili. Maybe it will bring some good things my way for 2008.

I started the night before by soaking 1 ½ cups black-eyed peas in a bowl of water. As I've said before, I don't think the soaking step is really necessary but it does make the cooking time go faster, so if you remember to do it ahead of time it probably helps. I drained them the next day then covered them with fresh water in a pot along with 1 tablespoon epazote, and boiled for about 45 minutes. When they are soft, take them off heat, drain and set aside. In my dutch oven I heated 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat and sautéed 1 medium, minced onion until soft and golden brown. Then I added 4 cloves minced garlic and sautéed another 2 minutes. Cleared a space in the center of the pot, added a tablespoon more olive oil and when it was hot dumped in 2 teaspoons chile powder and 1 teaspoon cumin. Let the spices bloom in the hot oil for a minute, then stirred up everything together. I de-seeded and minced one fresh poblano pepper and one fresh long, hot pepper and added them into the pot to sauté as well. I also had 2 dried ancho chilies, so I de-seeded those as well and sliced them into thin strips before adding to the mixture in the pot. I de-seeded all these peppers because I was worried they would be too hot, but it actually turned out to be pretty tame heat-wise, so if you want go ahead and leave some of the seeds in to ramp it up a bit. You can use whatever peppers you like--jalapeno or something would be fine. The dried chiles give it a nice smoky flavor so it's good to find a few of those for sure. After sautéeing together the peppers, garlic, onion and spices for a few minutes, I added in about 5 cups of chicken stock, a bouillon cube, 1 ¼ cup dried lentils, the cooked black-eyed peas and a 6 ouce can of tomato paste. Stirred this all up well together, brought to a boil and allowed to simmer for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile I chopped up 1 whole boneless, skinless chicken breast into small 1" chunks, then added into the chili. Let everything cook up together for another 30 minutes or until the lentils were soft and the chicken cooked through. At this point, I stirred in 2 tablespoons of minced cilantro and 1 tablespoon minced parsley. The chili got to be a pretty good, thick-ish consistency but you may wish to add more stock or water to thin it out if it boils down too much for your taste. I also made elbow pasta to serve it over because I sort of like macaroni in my chili. Shredded white cheddar is delicious to put on top, so maybe you should do that too.

I made a jícama salad to go with, as well as cornbread. I think I have already written down the cornbread recipe, but the jícama thing is new. Melanie really liked it. She said it was refreshing and thought it went really well with her wine. In case you've never seen one, jícama (pronounce it "hee-kah-mah") is a really ugly, roundish root vegetable. It's pretty big and brown and usually waxy on the outside. But you just peel it and then inside it is crisp and sweet and wonderful to eat raw. You can shred it, but I just cut it into thin matchsticks. I peeled one carrot into long strips, then cut the strips down to 2" lengths and tossed them together with the jícama, juice from 1 lime, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. It made a crunchy, sweet and tangy salad that contrasts well with a bowl of chili.

Happy new year!

Prime rib roast and saffron pudding

For Christmas this year my mother said she wanted to make "something classic American." On Christmas Eve, we usually try to approximate the traditional Sicilian seven fish dinner. It's not just a clever name: it means you literally eat seven different fishes during the Christmas Eve meal, although sometimes people interpret it as to make seven different seafood dishes. We didn't really manage to do it, I think we only got up to 4 or 5 different fish; pasta with clams, a pasta with sardines, maybe some salmon somewhere, shrimp in the appetizer...don't really remember. My mom said it was OK that many of our fish were actually crustaceans but I think it means that we're all probably going to hell. Oh, in case you are wondering, the reason you eat seven fishes is because it represents the seven sacraments of the Church, or maybe to represent the seven sins or possibly the seven days it took Mary and Joe to get to Bethlehem...yeah, nobody really knows. But for Christmas Day dinner, my mom abandoned the mysticism and we did the real American thing with meat and potatoes. We went a little nutty at dessert though, with a saffron milk pudding with a citrus-pomegranate sauce. Can't abandon your roots.

My mother procured an 8 pound prime rib roast. It was pretty fatty on the outside but you don't want to trim it because it needs the fat to baste itself as it renders out in the oven. We put it on a v-shaped roasting rack that went inside a large roasting pan, let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, and stuck it in the oven at 400 degrees. Notice that we did not salt the meat at all. We poured about 1/2 cup of red wine over the top after about 45 minutes of cook time. NOTE: The better the wine the better the roast! Don't listen to my mother who believes in using wine for cooking that you wouldn't dream of drinking! If the alcohol burns away, all that is left is the flavor, right? So...why use the bad stuff? It doesn't really matter in a situation where you are just pouring a little bit over a roast but then you might as well just use whatever you are drinking while cooking (you are drinking while cooking, right?). Anyway. Don't be cheap. I turned the roast around in the oven every 30 minutes or so to keep it evenly cooking. After 1 1/2 hours at 400 degrees, we turned the temperature down to 350 and let it roast for another 1 hour and 45 minutes. Pull it out and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes, then carved it up. I took the roasting pan that had collected the drippings and red wine for basting, and stuck it over two burners on the stovetop. Added 1/3 cup of red wine, 3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Brought it up to a boil, stirring rapidly, and let it reduce somewhat--about 3-5 minutes. This makes a easy, delicious sauce for the roast and whatever else.

While the roast was going, I sliced in half 1 1/2 pounds of brussels sprouts and tossed them on a baking sheet with 3 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, salt, pepper, 2 teaspoons sugar and a teeny pinch of red pepper flakes. Put them cut side down on the baking sheet and put them in the oven at the same temperature as the roast. They went along merrily for about 20 minutes, then after the roast got taken out, I stirred the sprouts around, turned the temperature up to 425, and let them roast quickly for another 8-10 minutes. They are done when they are browned in spots on top and caramelized on the cut edges. We had roasted a ton of chestnuts and I made Francesca help me peel them. I then chopped about 1 cup worth of the chestnuts up into chunks and tossed them together with the roasted brussels spouts and about 2 teaspoons of white balsamic vinegar and a smidge more olive oil before serving. It was really delicious. We also made mashed potatoes. The only difference between these and my usual yukon gold mashed potatoes is that I mixed in about 2 tablespoons of horseradish condiment, which really makes it go well with a rich prime roast. My mother also made a salad with mixed greens, green apple slices, and olives.

The dessert was really interesting--we wanted to make something exciting but light so we settled on a beautiful citrus-saffron pudding. We doubled the recipe and took a few other liberties, but here is the basic idea. It will make just about enough for 10 people, but not in a big American dessert kind of way. Soak 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads in 3 tablespoons boiling water. Combine 3 cups milk, 2 cups heavy cream and 1/2 cup sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stir it until the sugar is all dissolved. Remove it from heat and stir in the saffron threads and water that it was soaking in. Stir 2 packets of unflavored gelatin into the hot milk mixture (we had some trouble with this, we originally used only 1 1/2 packets and it wasn't enough. Learn from our mistakes) and let it cool down to room temperature, then pour it into whatever serving dish you plan to use and refrigerate it for between 6-8 hours. I'm not sure how long it really needs to take--the original recipe calls for you to put the pudding into individual serving dishes or molds but we used a big communal dish so it took a bit longer to gel up than it would have in individual dishes. It would be so cute in little personal cups though so you should do that if you aren't as lazy as I am. While it is chilling, make the sauce. Combine the juice from 2 sweet oranges with 1/4 cup pomegranate juice, the juice from 2 lemons and 1/2 cup Vincotto (a dark, supersweet Italian vinegar) in a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Stir in at least 2 teaspoons honey, let it boil hard for about 1 minute, then take it off the heat. I then stirred in 2 tablespoons sweet marsala; the recipe actually called for Grand Marnier but my mother refused to buy a big bottle of it for such a small amount. For some reason I couldn't find a smaller container at the liqour store and so cheapness reigned once more. I encourage you to use it though, it would certainly be a better choice--if you use it, double the amount to 4 tablespoons instead of 2. Let it cool to room temperature, then store it in the fridge until it's time to eat dessert. Seve the pudding with a spoonful of the sauce over the top. Here are some notes on the pudding--the recipe actually called for blood oranges (my mother calls them "bloody oranges" which is HILARIOUS and sort of gross if you think about it), so if you want to, use 4 of those instead of the regular oranges and omit the pomegranate juice. Also, we decided that an aromatic note of cardamom would be excellent in this--add in 1/2 teaspoon with the hot milk mixture if you think you'd like to try it that way. There's a lot of potential for experimentation with this recipe. Also, if you don't want to call it pudding, you can say you are making a "fior di latte," as that is the Italian name for this kind of dessert. Impress your friends!

Gingersnaps and shortbread

I'm at my parent's house for the holidays and there is an unbelievable quantity of snow. Not to mention how damn cold it is. So my mother and I stayed indoors yesterday and made a couple really good cookies. My mom has a stand mixer so these were an easier time to make than they would have been just by hand.

First we tried to make some gingersnaps because Mom found a recipe on the flipside of a lid that was on a container of crystallized ginger. We made a few modifications. First beat together 3/4 cup of softened butter with 1 cup sugar and 1/4 cup molasses. Dump in 1 egg and beat it into the mixture. Mix 2 teaspoons baking soda really well with 2 cups flour, about 1/2 teaspoon salt, at least 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon and about 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves.

Here is a little one-act play that I like to call Mom's Old Cloves:

Mom, brandishing a dusty aquamarine canister: "I have ground cloves!"
Me: "How old are those?"
Mom: "They were a wedding shower present!"
Me, to the dog: "Wedding shower present? Her wedding shower?"

My mother has been married for 33 years. Moving on.

Dump the dry flour mixture into the wet mixture and beat in along with 1/2 cup of crystallized ginger that you have cut up into teeny chunks. Mix it all up really well. If it's too goopy for you to mess with you can refrigerate it for half an hour to make it easier to handle. We just went ahead and rolled it into 1" balls and put them on baking sheets. Don't squish them down. My mom kept doing that and I had to slap her hands to make her quit. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Let them cool on racks. They'll be more crispy if you chill the dough before baking but we liked them soft.

We also made a shortbread recipe that mom found in the local paper, which I am including here because I have never made shortbread before. Mix in a large bowl 2 1/4 cup flour with 3/4 cup slivered almonds, 3 tablespoons poppyseeds, and 1/2 teaspoon salt (Mom: "I have never heard of poppyseeds and almonds together!"). In another bowl, hopefully the workbowl of your supersweet KitchenAid mixer but it's OK if it's not, add together 2 sticks of softened butter, 1 cup sugar, and 3 tablespoons honey. Beat together until fluffy, then add 2 egg yolks and the zest from 2 oranges (my mom's zester SUCKS, it is not up to Microplane standards AT ALL. That is what she is getting for her birthday, now that I know the sad state of affairs). Beat in until smooth. Slowly add in your flour/poppyseed/almond mixture until it has all been fully incorporated. Here's the fun part. Split your dough in two and plop each half onto a sheet of wax paper. Roll it and shape it to form a 12" rectangular log. Wrap it up in the wax paper and stick it in the fridge for 2 hours or more (my mother found this directive ridiculous and so we just stuck it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. I'm pretty sure that worked just fine too, so do whichever works better for your schedule). Haul it out of fridge or freezer and slice the logs into thin, 1/8" slices. Bake them on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets in a pre-heated 350 degree oven until the edges are golden brown (about 12-15 minutes). You don't want them to brown all over, just the edges. The bottoms will be lightly golden as well. Cool on racks. The recipe also indicated a simple glaze (whisk 1 cup powdered sugar with vanilla and 1 tablespoon milk) for the edges and to decorate with festive suagr sprinkles, but I think these are actually better without any embellishment. Maybe if you added citrus to the glaze to make it a little piquant and referential, and definitely skip the sprinkles. Our container of red and green jimmies was seriously from the year I was born.

Spinach rice

This is like risotto for losers. It's pretty easy and is great if you feel lazy because it doesn't really use a traditional risotto technique or anything. I made this last night with roasted chicken and also this red cabbage-bacon-cranberry-pine nut thing that I made last year. It's in the 2006 posts, if you are interested. But I don't think I've ever written about spinach rice before, even though it is one of my standards, so here you go:

Take a big bunch of spinach (I use the flat-leaf kind rather than crinkly) and cut off the stems. Slice into strips or chop it up. Wash the spinach really really well--it is often muddy or gritty. You can dump it into a sink full of water, swish it around, and then dry it off well. I usually put it through the salad spinner, which I consider to be one of the rare kitchen gadgets that is actually worth owning. Anyway, chop and clean your spinach and set aside. Sauté 1 small minced onion in at least 1 tablespoon butter--since I was roasting a chicken, I actually ended up using the chicken fat from the bottom of the pan rather than just butter. You could use olive oil instead but some kind of fat is necessary. When the onion is soft and golden, add in 1 ½ cup short grain rice. I usually rinse the rice first but if you would like the consistency to be more starchy and risotto-like, don't rinse it at all. Sauté the rice with the onion for about 2 minutes, until the grains are sort of clear looking but not browned. Slowly add in 3 cups of chicken stock (or you could use a good vegetable stock), stirring it in well until it is up to a light boil. Turn it down to a simmer, cover and let the rice absorb all the cooking liquid--about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large pan, sauté 3 cloves minced garlic in olive oil (or butter or chicken fat) until golden then add a pinch red pepper flakes. Add in your cleaned, chopped spinach and toss with the garlic and pepper flakes over medium-high heat until it is all wilty. It will go from being a huge pile of raw spinach to, like, maybe a cup of cooked down greens. A fascinating thing to watch. After it is cooked down, let it sit a minute and then pour off any of the liquid that has accumulated, unless you like green spinach water. When the rice is all cooked, stir it around then add in the cooked spinach and mix it thoroughly so the spinach is all distributed and the rice is kind of green. Remove from heat and add the juice of one lemon and as much lemon zest as you feel like peeling off. You can never have too much.

Spiced nuts with brown sugar bacon

A long time ago in our big dirty house in Milwaukee I cooked up a batch of bacon in brown sugar with pecans. It was really good and completely addictive. It also made the house smell like burned, sugary pork product for about a week. This last week I saw a recipe in the New York Times for roasted nuts topped with sugared bacon--it kind of reminded me of the pig candy episode from many years earlier so I decided to make something like it for Melanie's holiday potluck party last night. It turns out that there is a way to make sugared bacon in your oven without making your house smell porky. Who knew?

I got a bag of cashews and a bag of almonds from the market, both were roasted, unsalted nuts. I think each bag probably had about 1 ½ cups of nuts in it. I added in the rest of a bag of pecans that I had to make about 3 ½ - 4 cups of nuts total. This is a successful mix--cashews, pecans and almonds--but you could do all cashews or something if you prefer. Separated the whites out from 2 eggs and beat them lightly in a big bowl (I saved the yolks to make zabaglione the next morning). Dumped all the nuts into the beaten egg whites and tossed until they were coated. Added 1 ½ teaspoon kosher salt, 5 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon allspice, 1 teaspoon cayenne and 2 teaspoons garam masala. Stirred everything up really well so all the spices were evenly mixed throughout the nuts. Spread the spiced nuts out on a baking sheet and popped into the oven to roast at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Keep a really good eye on them--get in there with a spoon and move them around often. They will be soft while they are in the oven but will crisp up after you get them out of the heat. If you're vegetarian, you can skip this next part and you'll just have some delicious holiday spiced nuts to eat, but the bacon is what really elevates this, so here's what you do next: Take a package of bacon (usually 1 pound) and lay the strips flat on a sheet of parchment paper over a baking sheet. If you don't use parchment paper then you will have a bacony mess everywhere, so be sure to do that. Also be sure to use the kind of baking/cookie sheet that has a raised edge--I think they're properly called jelly roll pans--because then the bacon grease will be contained. Needless to say, the first time I made this years ago I did not use parchment paper nor a jelly roll pan...so the oven got all spattered and it's amazing we didn't have a grease fire or something. Also, that's clearly what accounted for the semi-permanent sugar/piggy smell in our house thereafter. Anyway. Lay out your bacon on your parchment papered jelly roll baking sheet and proceed to sprinkle brown sugar all over the slices, at least 1/2 cup of sugar. Rub it all over the bacon strips so both sides are covered then stick it in the oven with the nuts at 350 degrees. The bacon will also probably take about 20 - 25 minutes, again keep a good eye on it and turn the pan around if one side appears to be browning faster than the other. There is nothing sadder than burnt bacon, after all. Take it out when the bacon is golden and crispy looking. Take the strips of bacon off the parchment paper and let them cool on a wire rack--they'll become delightfully crispy. Now break (or cut) the strips of sugared bacon up into teensy pieces and toss them in a serving bowl together with your spiced, roasted nuts. Byron and I were eating these alongside our tumblers of bourbon and it is a seriously good cocktail snack--salty, sweet and spicy all at the same time.

Thanksgiving

I know it has been a while since I posted anything new...there was traveling and then thesis work...all these things conspired to keep me from making anything noteworthy. Until Thanksgiving! Jocelyn & Nick took the train down from Philadelphia for the long weekend and we had a great time. Lots of basketball watching, 3-D movies, walks with small dog...and of course, cooking and pie-making. The turkey was made the same way I made it last year--if you are actually curious on the step-by-step or how to carve and all that, see the post from November 2006. It's a high-heat cooking method that makes the time much shorter--our 14.8 pound bird cooked up in just over 2 hours. As always, a good digital meat thermometer is essential--you want to make sure the temperature at the thickest part of the thigh is 170 degrees before you pull it out. Then it gets a resting period of 30 minutes, during which the temperature continues to rise to 175, which is perfect. Here's what we made this year that was noteworthy and different from last year:

Cranberry-port-tangerine relish! This was fantastic and remarkably easy. We only had 7 people for dinner so I just used one 12 ounce bag of fresh cranberries but you may wish to double it. Pour a healthy 1/2 cup of port wine into a large saucepan and heat it to boiling. Dump in your bag of fresh cranberries (wash and pick them over first) and stir around. When they begin to pop (maybe 3-5 minutes over medium-high heat, if that) add 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sugar, zest from 2 tangerines and the juice of one tangerine. Stir it all up and continue to cook for about 5 minutes, then cover & turn off the heat. That's it! After it is cooled off some, pour it into a container and stick it in the fridge for whenever dinnertime is. It will get all jelly-like and awesome.

We also made butter beans. They are sort of like lima beans but I think they are more tasty. They're probably hard to find outside of the south though, so you could probably just use frozen baby limas. Wash 3 cups butter beans well and boil until soft but not mushy. Drain and set aside. In the same pot, lightly saute 1/4 cup minced shallots in 2 tablespoons of butter, but don't let them brown or anything. Add the beans back in, add salt, plenty of fresh ground pepper, 1 tablespoon minced parsley and 1 cup heavy cream. Stir occasionally over medium heat until cream has cooked down a little bit--about 5 minutes. Delicious! You could also use chives instead of shallots, if you wanted to. I also put in about 1/2 cup of frozen corn kernels to cook with the cream for added sweetness and to make Jocelyn think it was succotash.

Let's see, what else did we have? There was the turkey, of course, and gravy. We made mashed potatoes, but I have discussed those at length in the past. Also, green salad with fennel, goat cheese and pomegranate seeds that I know I mentioned a couple weeks ago. And roasted kabocha squash and roasted brussels sprouts. Those were really neat--the ones in the the bin at the market were too big so I ended up buying a whole stalk and cutting them off myself. They were much tinier and really delicious. Ryan and Betsy made cornbread. For appetizers we had roasted garlic and the goat cheese crostini with cherry preserves that I made a couple weeks ago also. Jocelyn made awesome stuffed mushrooms. She's really good at it. You clean and de-stem a bunch of largish mushrooms, then chop the stems up very fine and combine them with bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, parsley, sage (anything else, Jocelyn?) then stuff the caps , mounding the stuffing up attractively on top. Then you bake them at 350 for about 10 minutes, I think. I'm not sure how she does it but they are simple and delicious.

We also made two pies--one pumpkin and one that was chocolate-pecan pie. That one was really particularly good. I have seen recipes for it before but Gourmet ran one this month so I thought we'd give it a shot. It's really easy, especially if you are too lazy to make your own pie crust. Melt one bar of bittersweet chocolate (you can do this in a bowl over boiling water if you don't have a double boiler). Spread it into a crust that you have ready in a 9-inch pie plate. Let it harden up, then cover with 2 cups toasted pecan halves. Whisk in a bowl 3 eggs, 1/3 cup light brown sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt. When it is all mixed up, whisk in 3/4 cup dark corn syrup. Pour this over the pecans in the pie plate and stick in the oven at 375. Keep an eye on it--ours took about 50 minutes. It gets all puffy and golden and irresistibly delicious looking. Jocelyn and I felt perhaps this recipe was a little bit too sweet--perhaps you could cut down the sugar to 1/4 cup or maybe some bourbon in the mix would temper the sweetness a little. But it is a really good pie, especially with the whiskey whipped cream that Jocelyn made to go with. We had lots of Baileys and hot chocolate, and also this cocktail called a Dark and Stormy that Melanie made--I think it was ginger beer, lime juice and rum, shaken with ice. Between that and the many sparkling wines, it was a highly successful Thanksgiving, regardless of food.

Chicken with garlic

I felt inspired to make a version of the classic chicken with 40 cloves of garlic after reading about someone's recipe in this week's New York Times. Mine is different--less of a crispy saute and more of a chicken pot-au-feu in texture. The garlic is super soft and not as browned. I wanted to make special dinner because Melanie was leaving to run the New York City Marathon over the weekend and Jeremy was going along to cheer her on (in fact, she is running it right now as I am writing this and she is making great time! go, Mel, go!) and I'm traveling to a conference this whole week so it was to celebrate and also because we're not going to see each other for a little while. So I figured we'd eat something particulary delicious, full of protein for a runner, and super-garlicky to keep the competition back several paces.

Before I tell you about the 40 clove chicken, I need to tell you about our appetizers because they were really tasty. Melanie had brought us some really great cherry preserves from her trip to the Bay Area last week so we made goat cheese crostini--slice a baguette into thin rounds, rub a little olive oil on them, top with a slice of goat cheese, salt, pepper and a sprinkle of parsley. Toast in the oven at 350 until the bread is slightly crispy and the goat cheese is warm--about 10 minutes. Pull them out and dab a little cherry preserve on top. We also had an entire head of roasted garlic--just to fully embrace the theme of the evening. This is an easy and delicious thing that you will want to make over and over again. Take an entire head of garlic and slice off the top 1/2" so that the cloves are exposed. Rub it all over with olive oil. Put it in a small ovenproof dish of some kind, like a ramekin. Pour in about 1/3 cup of white wine, drizzle over a little more olive oil, sprinkle with parsley, salt and pepper and put a healthy tablespoon of butter on top of the garlic head. Stick it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes-1 hour. Occasionally you can baste it or roll it around in the cooking liquid in the bottom of the baking dish. It is done when the garlic cloves are as soft as butter when you prod them with a knife. Take it out, warn everyone that the dish is hot and serve with good bread. You eat it by taking a clove off the head and squeezing out the roasted garlic onto slices of bread. The wine-butter-olive oil in the bottom of the baking dish is also completely delicious to mop up with the bread.

Now for the chicken. This is VERY easy and you will want to make it often because it is delicious. Get a large chicken--mine was about 5 pounds--and have your butcher cut it up into 10 pieces. Or just buy it cut up already, I don't care how you do it. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and set aside. In a large dutch oven (or any other big heavy pot), melt 2 tablespoons butter with 2 tablespoon olive oil over medium-high heat. When it is hot but not smoking, add the chicken pieces (you will probably need to do this in 2 batches) and brown them in the hot butter/olive oil, 5 minutes on each side. Remove all the chicken after this initial browning step and turn your heat down to medium. Add an unbelievable quantity of peeled garlic cloves. If you feel like actually peeling up 3 heads of garlic, be my guest, but I went ahead and bought one of those containers you find in the refrigerated part of the produce section--there's a company that sells plastic bottles of pre-peeled garlic. I think I used one that was 6 ounces of garlic--you can use even more if you want! Anyway, take your peeled garlic cloves and toss them around in the hot fat at the bottom of the pot until they get a little browned, then cover them with all your chicken pieces so it is a layer of garlic, then a chicken stack on top. Let it cook for about 10 minutes like this then add 3/4 cup of chicken stock and 3/4 cup of white wine. I wasn't measuring very accurately and I daresay it doesn't matter a whole helluva lot. Stir it around every now and then and let it cook for about 30 minutes then fish out all your chicken pieces onto a serving platter and put them in the oven to keep warm. Take a look at the cooking liquid left behind in your pot--is it thin or thick? You want it to get sort of reduced and it should be, after cooking uncovered for 30 minutes, But if it is still really liquidy, turn up the heat and stir it around until it is a bit thick. This sauce here is so delicious it will make you want to slap somebody. When it is a saucey consistency, take it off heat and pour it over your chicken pieces on their serving platter--turn the chicken pieces over so they get nice and coated in the sauce and be sure to pour more over and fish out the soft garlic cloves when you serve it. We had the usual toasted large grain couscous on the side to maximize the potential of the delicious garlic clove sauce. Rice or potatoes or anything else starchy that floats your boat would be good too.

We also had a good salad--mixed greens tossed with a thinly sliced head of fennel. Topped this with sliced goat cheese, pomegranate seeds and toasted almonds. Tossed all together with a dressing made with equal parts olive oil to champagne vinegar, 1 teaspoon sugar, salt and pepper. It was delicious.

Root soup

For many years in Milwaukee, the root soup at County Clare was one of my favorite things. I would go there with Jocelyn, or any number of other people, and we would get that and maybe a salad (Waitron: "How is everything?" Jocelyn: "This is the best fucking salad I have ever had.") and I would definitely drink beer and there were some good times. I had a birthday party there once, years ago, that's where we met Brent for the first time, if you can believe that there was a time when we didn't know Brent. And my going-away party, when I left Milwaukee for Atlanta, was there, in the Saint's Snug, which is in the corner by the fireplace and a prime location if you can snag it early on a weekend night. Our roommate, Not-Gay-Jonathan, his father used to run the giftshop (now there's a soccer watching room where the giftshop used to be) and they always decorated really really well for the holidays. And they would put a little shamrock into the foam atop your Guinness. Anyway, there's some other great Irish bars in Milwaukee (I also can wax profoundly upon the merits of Paddy's), but County Clare has a special place in my heart. I didn't realize until writing this just how how much time we spent there--I think we must have wound up there a lot more often than I thought. I remember us walking past the building in the daylight once and I said "what? it's PINK?" Apparently it is, I had just never noticed. Their root soup is that fantastic. Here's my version of it; not as good, but when you are 800 miles from home, beggars simply can't be choosers.

Peeled and chopped into smallish chunks 1 large sweet potato. Dumped it in a roasting pan along with a ton of peeled, chopped carrots--probably at least 2 pounds worth. I just had a ton of extra carrots in the fridge for some reason. Put the pan with the veggies into the oven at 400 and roasted them until soft and lightly browned, tossing often, for about 25-30 minutes. Heated 2 tablespoons butter with 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat in my large cast iron dutch oven pot. Added 1 small onion, chopped and stirred around until it started to get a little bit soft, then added in the roasted sweet potato and carrots from the oven. Also put in about 8 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed and chopped. I don't think the original version uses parsnips, but I would have added it if I had had one around the house. I also added one small peeled and chopped up potato because I felt like I had a lot of carrot and needed to balance it out. You don't need to do that if you don't want. After the vegetables were all getting soft, added in about 5 cups of chicken stock and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream and covered to simmer for 25 minutes or so. The cream thickens up everything as it simmers. Took the pot off heat and poured the soup through a food mill and cranked it into a clean container. I actually ended up putting it through the food mill twice to smooth it out. If you have a good blender that might work better, but make sure you don't burn yourself. Pour the smooth soup back into your original cooking pot to reheat if necessary and taste for seasoning--I ended up adding a bit of black pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and some salt. By the way, since you had the oven going anyway to roast the carrots and sweet potatoes, dump some cubes of bread (I had pumpernickel and mulitgrain) into the now-empty roasting pan and cover them with olive oil, salt and pepper, toss them around and return them to the oven to crisp up into croutons. Keep a good eye on them, they can burn up, so probably no more than 10 minutes or so. County Clare never put croutons in their soup--but they did drizzle a little crème fraîche shamrock shape on top.

Glazed turnips

Turnips are an underappreciated vegetable. You’d think people would be naturally drawn to them—they’re so pretty, all white and purple. And they’re very sweet and flavorful, especially if you buy them organic and from a farm stand (as I did with these particular specimens) and they are on the smallish side. They will keep a long time in the fridge crisper if you wrap them up in a bag.

Peeled 4 smallish turnips and cut them into small cubes. They peel really easily, which is a nice change from some other stubborn root vegetables that I could mention here. Put them in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter over medium-high heat. Stir them around occasionally until they begin to get soft. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar over the top along with salt and a lot of fresh ground black pepper, stir well, then leave them alone over the heat (but keep an eye on them so they don’t burn!) and allow them to become golden brown in places—about 2 minutes. Add ½ cup of chicken stock and turn up the heat to reduce the liquid down into a glaze. When most of the liquid is gone, add a couple tablespoons of sherry or white wine and cook for a few more minutes. The turnips should be soft and golden brown with a shiny glaze. You can add fresh minced parsley or any other herb you have handy if you like. Chives would be good.

Happy birthday

You may have noticed a few changes here. That's because today is the one year anniversary of Il Piatto Blu and I thought the old girl deserved a facelift, maybe a little Botox around the eyes. They say you can't start too young.

This blog started mostly because I realized one day that I was forgetting everything I had cooked. I would make something one day then be unable to duplicate it on another because I had no record of what on earth I had done to begin with. I guess I could just have typed it up and saved it or written onto little index notecards and saved them in my recipe file...but I'm sure I would never have maintained that as a habit. There's something about knowing that people might be reading that makes you keep up your behavior. So, in addition to the original intent of this blog as culinary memory aid, it has turned out to be a great way to let those who I love and miss, those who I don't get to see as much as I'd like to, know what's going on around here. My mother, bless her shit-starting little heart, told me that I only seem happy when I'm talking about fashion or cooking. To which I say "well, yeah."

So happy one year old to me and to us. Good for me for sticking with something. Good for you for reading. Let's keep in touch.

Pumpkin soup

On Saturday we had our annual Little 5 Points parade viewing and pumpkin carving festivities. In case you are unfamiliar, Little 5 Points is a wacky little neighborhood that is right by where we live now--actually, it was where we first lived in Atlanta--and every year they hold a really excellent parade to celebrate Halloween. All the local businesses make insane floats and there are some fantastic costumes on display. You really have to see it for yourself-there's not a good way to do it justice in words. Anyway, over the years it has become traditional for friends to meet up and walk to the parade with beers, sit in the exact same place to watch it (I like my traditions VERY traditional, thank you), drink more beers, then walk back to our place to carve pumpkins and drink even MORE beers. It's pretty great. There were some particularly good pumpkins this year. Dana made one that was supposed to say "Boo!" but it might have ended up saying "Roo!" or possibly "Doo!" Byron's pumpkin had another, smaller pumpkin in its mouth, sort of like a pumpkin cannibal. And Emma etched a crying elephant stuck in a spider web onto hers. It was neat. Katie made these really, truly amazing deviled eggs that are based on a recipe from an Atlanta chef that we both admire--Scott Peacock from Watershed restaurant. And I made a pumpkin soup that was sort of based on about a million different things, but it ended up coming together pretty well in the end. You could also make this with any type of winter squash, if you like.

I got about 2-3 pounds total of small sweet pie pumpkin. These are VERY DIFFERENT from the pumpkins that we carve up for jack o'lanterns. They look like tiny versions of the big ones but are sweet and suited for cooking. So be sure to grab that kind, not the decorative kind for your doorstep. I cut them in half and pulled out the seeds, then chopped up the flesh off the rind. I wanted to roast the pumpkin for a deeper flavor but it got late and I ran out of time. If you aren't in a hurry to get to a Halloween parade with all your friends, you should roast the pumpkin or squash or whatever before proceeding--it will be much more tasty. Just cut it in half and stick it in the oven at 350 for about an hour. Then it will pop right out of the rind and that's much easier than slicing the flesh off, as I had to do. Anyway, get your pumpkin out of its natural state in some way or another and toss it into 3 tablespoons of butter mixed with 1 tablespoon of olive oil that is heated up over medium high heat in a big pot or dutch oven on the stovetop. Add 4-5 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped, 2 small onions, coarsely chopped up and 2 apples, peeled and coarsely chopped. Stir everything around and add more butter if it seems dry. Allow this all to get soft and tasty and lightly browned, and then add in 2 teaspoons nutmeg, 3-4 tablespoons of minced, fresh tarragon, lots of salt and black pepper. Let cook for another 5 minutes, and then pour in chicken (or vegetable) stock. I am so sorry that I didn't measure it better. I used one and a half of one of those organic, shelf-stable packages. They are 32 ounces, so I guess that means I used 48 ounces all together. I don't know what that is in cups though, sorry. So mix up your chicken stock and all the vegetables, then cover and let it cook up for about 30 minutes. Then get somebody like Jeremy to put down his dang drink for a second and pour it through a food mill for you. Food mills are very useful and incredibly low-tech. You just crank your soup into a clean container through this gadget to get a smooth puree. I always use it for making gnocchi and things that need to be all smoothed out. I guess you could use a blender or a food processor instead, if you don't have a food mill. Return your pureed soup to the cleaned out pot that it cooked in originally and put it over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons of minced chives, 1/2 cup of medium-dry sherry and 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Cook another 10 minutes (do not allow it to boil), then taste and correct for salt.

While the soup is cooking, cut up half a loaf of dark pumpernickel bread into small 1" chunks and toss in a baking dish with lots of salt, pepper, a few red pepper flakes and about 2 tablespoons olive oil. Put this in the oven at 400 degrees, tossing often until crunchy--about 10 minutes. Also cut up a round of Camembert cheese (rind and all) and set this out along with more minced chives and the pumpernickel croutons. Your guests put a couple chunks of cheese and croutons into their bowls and then ladle soup over the top and add more chives if they like. It is delicious.

I almost carved out a pumpkin to serve this in but Jeremy pointed out that it would be a little bit over the top so I didn't do that in the end. Also I ran out of time! There was a parade to get to! Beers to drink! You know how it goes.

Macaroni and cheese

Macaroni and cheese is a good thing to know how to make from scratch. It always seems to make people happy and it is really easy yet lightly impressive for some reason--maybe because it involves making a cheese sauce which sounds cool but is not at all difficult. Ho-made macaroni and cheese is especially delicious when consumed with red wine and America's Next Top Model, which is totally not at all what Melanie and I might have done the other night.

First off, you need to make a roux, which will be the base for a simple white sauce to which you will simply add shredded cheese, thereby magically elevating it into a cheese sauce. Melt a couple tablespoons of butter over medium heat. When it is hot, sprinkle in a couple tablespoons of flour. The amounts do not matter too much, just keep the proportions about 1:1 and you'll be OK. Stir around your flour in the hot butter until it is all thickened up and browned lightly--about 2 minutes. There is your roux. Add in about 3/4 cup of milk, slowly in a drizzly kind of way. Stir it in and keep stirring until it is a thick, smooth sauce. If it is thick like paste, it is too thick and you should keep adding milk until it is the consistency of thin yogurt. Now you have made a white sauce--aren't you smart! Add 1 teaspoon of cayenne and dump in a whole lot of shredded cheese. I used about 1/2 cup of white cheddar and also mozzarella and provolone to make somewhat less than 1 cup total. It was tragic, actually--I had gone out on purpose over my lunch break to find special cheeses and pasta to make this for dinner then went and left everything in my fridge at work. So it was lame and I scrambled to make it work with the odds and ends of cheese at my house already. Turned out that I didn't really need to go out and buy any cheese to make mac and cheese--I had plenty lying around. Same with the pasta--I just ended up combining the leftovers from two different packages of pasta shapes. So the moral of the story is actually how ho-made mac and cheese can be very easy, spontaneous, economical, and a good use for leftovers! But I’m still lame for forgetting my ingredients at work. Anyway, I digress. Stir the cheeses into your white sauce until it is melty; you may actually wish to add some more milk if it thickens up too much. When the sauce is done, add salt and pepper, stir it up again and then add into the cheese sauce a little less than a pound of cooked up pasta. I boiled my odds and ends of pasta until they were not quite al dente--they will be cooking further in the oven so it is important not to over boil them at this point. You can use whatever shape you like. Elbows are traditional, I guess, but shells or other fancier shapes are fun too. Mix up your cooked pasta into the cheese sauce, and then pour the whole lot into a baking dish. You could, of course, just stop right here and you'd have pretty good mac and cheese but I think it is the baking step that really elevates it. Take about a cup of breadcrumbs and toast them in 2 tablespoons of butter until they are browned (I used panko because I was making this with leftover packages of things from my pantry and it worked really well, but you can use breadcrumbs made from scratch or from the store or from the depths of hell or wherever, it doesn't matter one bit). Mix the breadcrumbs with a few tablespoons of finely grated sharp, hard cheese--I used more provolone--then cover the cheesy pasta in the baking dish with a nice layer of the toasty, cheesy breadcrumbs. You could even sandwich another layer of cheese of your liking in between the pasta and the breadcrumbs if you really really really like cheese, as I know some of you do. Then put the baking dish into the oven at about 350 for around 25 minutes or so--you want it bubbly, browned and completely irresistible.

Obviously, this is a great dish for additional improvisation. Adding a tablespoon of mustard to the cheese sauce will give a more piquant flavor. Add hot sauce in for a similarly kicky effect. Cut grape tomatoes in half and stir them in with the pasta before pouring into the baking dish. Try mixing in some teeny green peas. You get the idea.

Smoked turkey lentil soup

I was trying to think of a more catchy name for this post. Like "french lentil soup" or something. Because, while the preparation itself was not so french, the lentils I used were of the small, green lentil du pays variety. You can use any kind of lentil you want, I just like those best. But I guess what makes it most interesting is that I went and got a smoked turkey leg to make the stock with, then shredded the meat to add into the soup. If you don't have a source for smoked turkey legs, just use a chicken carcass after you roast a chicken...or just skip the stock making step all together and use a good packaged chicken stock. It won't be exactly the same thing but it will still be a tasty soup. Or you can make it vegetarian by using vegetable stock. You may need to adjust the seasonings somewhat but you'll still end up with lentil soup.

Covered one smoked turkey leg with water to fill up my dutch oven pot and brought to a boil. While it was heating up I sloppily chopped up one very small onion, 2 cloves garlic, 2 celery stalks and 3 carrots and added those in to join the turkey leg, along with 2 bay leaves. Brought it all up to a boil together, covered and let simmer for at least 45 minutes, possibly even one full hour. You just need to make sure you keep it more or less covered so you don't boil off all the liquid. Removed the turkey leg and set aside to cool off slightly. Poured the rest of the stock through a fine mesh strainer into a clean container and set aside. When the turkey leg was cool enough to handle, pulled off the skin and shredded all the usable meat off the bone and set it aside to add back into the soup later. In the now-empty dutch oven, sauteed 1 small minced onion in 2 tablespoons butter. When they were softened, added 3 diced celery stalks and 2 diced carrots and a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. When all the vegetables were very soft but not browned, added back in the stock and 2 cups of lentils. Stirred everything well, added a bouillon cube and a pinch of thyme and brought it to a simmer/light boil until the lentils were just beginning to get soft-about 10 minutes. Added back in the shredded smoked turkey. Covered the pot at this point and turned it down to a simmer. Once the lentils were very soft (about 30-40 more minutes, depending on your lentil type) added 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste and 1/4 cup red wine. When the soup had thickened to a consistency that pleased me (you may want to add more water or wine if you want it thinner or perhaps let it boil a little bit harder with the cover off to reduce it if you want it thicker) and the lentils were soft and delicious, stirred in 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, let it cook for 2 more minutes, then removed from heat to serve. If you have fresh herbs such as parsley or anything else you like, feel free to stir them in at the end.

Kielbasa and red cabbage with apples

Something about the advent of October makes me want to cook hearty Germanic things like sausages. It doesn't really feel like fall in Georgia yet but last night we did have windows open and were able to enjoy a cool evening. Melanie said it was a fantastic weekend, weather-wise. I wouldn't know as I was busy working on my thesis--beautiful weather and I squandered it in front of the computer. But we had a seasonally appropriate dinner last night, so that kind of made up for things:

I bought 4 kielbasa sausages from the DeKalb market and put them into a dry saucepan over medium-high heat. I let them sear until browned, then flipped them over to do the same on the other side. Each side probably took about 2 minutes to develop a nice browning. Then I covered the sausages with almost an entire bottle of Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout. I used it because the one lone bottle had been lingering in our fridge for ages and nobody seemed likely to drink it anytime soon. You can use any kind of stout that you like, otherwise any darker beer would be fine too. The stout adds an interesting malty sweetness though. I also added 1 chopped/smashed garlic clove and 2 heaping tablespoons of tomato paste and mixed them into the stout over the sausages. Let the kielbasa cook in this liquid for about 10 minutes, or until done through. The liquid will cook down into a thick sort of sauce. Serve the kielbasa one per person with some of the sauce.

We also made mashed potatoes (you know how, cut up Yukon Gold potatoes, boil them until soft, make Jeremy mash them up with lots of butter, some milk and tons of salt and pepper). The stout-tomato sauce from cooking the kielbasa is really tasty drizzled over the mashed potatoes like gravy on the side as well.

I appropriated the red cabbage and apples recipe from something in Gourmet magazine. Melanie sliced up 1 small head of red cabbage into thin strips. I sauteed lightly 2 chopped cloves of garlic in 1-2 tablespoon of butter until soft. Then dumped in all the red cabbage sliced up by Melanie, tossed it around in the butter over medium-high heat. We chunked up 1 apple into 1" pieces and added that to the cabbage along with about 1/4 cup of apple cider. Mixed everything up well, added a teeny pinch of allspice, salt and pepper, then turned the heat down to medium and covered the pot. Checked on it about 7 minutes later, stirred it up and uncovered to cook down some of the liquid. It cooked for another 10 minnutes or so. It turns this brilliant, pretty purple-red color and the apples get very soft. At that point, turn off the heat and add 1-2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar and more salt and pepper to taste.

We also had another variation on arugula salad. This time first toasted pine nuts in butter and salt and pepper until they were lightly browned--no more than 1 or so minutes stirring them over high heat should do it. Tossed the arugula with one chopped yellow tomato, half the pine nuts, a ton of grated parmesan and a dressing (made with juice of 1 lemon, 3 tablespoons olive oil, salt and pepper, all shook up together in a jar, as usual). When it was all tossed up, topped it with the rest of the toasted pine nuts and small chunks of parmesan.

Dessert was sort of exciting--I never make dessert but the tomato tarts from earlier in September had me thinking about a sweet(ish) version. Took a sheet of puff pastry and trimmed it into an oval shape. Spread the center with about 1/2 cup of marscapone cheese. Drizzled the cheese with honey. Thinly sliced 2 black plums in half and then the halves in half--to make lots of little half moon shapes. Placed the plum slices in an overlapping concentric circle pattern over the honey and marscapone. Drizzled with some more honey and tucked almond slices in all around. Pulled up the sides of the puff pastry to form an open faced tart around the plum slices. Baked it at 350 degrees, until the pastry was poofed up and seemed to be fairly set--about 25 minutes. Delicious and fall-appropriate.

Kabocha squash and bok choy

We're coming up on the winter squash season. Kabocha ("Japanese pumpkin," according to some sources) is my favorite sweet, winter squash. I use it for gnocchi di zucca but also just simply roast it. It comes in many sizes but always looks about the same--kind of a ball shape that has been squished slightly top and bottom. It's a pretty, deep-green color, sometimes with yellow or orangey stripes. I have found it ranging from baseball sized to football sized, so you can see there's quite a bit of variation there. It's my favorite because it is incredibly sweet and not at all watery. The flesh is a deep orange color, which is usually a good indication that the vegetable in question is good for you--kabocha is high in vitamins A & C, as well as a great source of potassium, omega 3, beta carotene...the list goes on. It has an affinity for butter, rosemary, sage, curry, spicy things and would be great in a soup. And if that all wasn't enough, it is incredibly easy to make--I found a big one at the market the other day and just roasted it:

I used my cleaver to cut up my large kabocha, but you can probably just use a large, sharp knife if you don't have one. Hacked it in half, then each half into 3 pieces to make 6 more or less even, half-moon slices of squash (we had not just Jeremy and Melanie over, but also Josh and Paul so it was a full house for dinner). Scrape out the seeds from the center of each squash slice and discard (although, I guess you can roast them like pumpkin seeds and they are delicious, so maybe you should try doing that and tell me how it goes). Put the pieces cut side down in a large baking dish. Added about 1/2 cup of water to the bottom of the dish--this is to prevent burning as the sugars caramelize while the squash roasts. I was already roasting a chicken in the oven at the time so I just chucked the squash in to go along with it--it took a little less than 1 hour at 350 degrees, and this was quite a large squash. After 40 minutes into the cooking, I flipped over the pieces so the cut sides were faced up and basted them with the chicken fat & juices that were collected in the bottom of my chicken roasting pan. If you aren't roasting a chicken, just dab some butter or something on top. At this point I also added a teensy sprinkle of sugar and ground lots of salt and pepper liberally over the top. They're done when they're totally soft and delicious looking. After hauling them out of the oven and feel free to add more butter if you like.

In addition to the chicken and squash we had the large grain couscous that I usually make alongside chicken--I know I've talked about it here before so I won't get into it. But it is really delicious. I also sauteed baby bok choy for some healthy green vegetables to complement the squash. Took about 6 tiny heads of baby bok choy and sliced off the ends so they fell apart into separate leaves. Washed them really really well and set aside. In a frying pan, heated 2 tablespoons olive oil, salt and 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes. When it was hot, added all the bok choy and moved it around until the hot oil and seasonings have gotten on all the leaves. This takes a second, but don't worry. It looks at first as if the bok choy will overflow your pan but actually it will cook down to fit very quickly as long as you keep it moving over the heat. Sometimes I use tongs to move things around at first. It is done when it is bright green in color and wilted down but still a bit crisp in the white stems. Doesn't take more than 4-5 minutes. If you can't find baby bok choy just get a head of the big stuff and cut it up into little pieces. After it is all done, sprinkle with black and white sesame seeds and serve right away while hot.

Fried spinach

Years ago I went on a post-vegetarianism meat eating binge. I think everybody goes a little cray-cray after finding themselves out of self-imposed dietary restrictions. And I was vegan before that for years, so you can imagine the fallout! Bacon! Bacon cooked in brown sugar! Actually, I didn't cook a whole lot of meat, but I did tend to order it whenever possible. Once I was out at the Metro in Milwaukee (not sure now if that is the right name? or was that the place that had free hors d'oeuvres on Thursdays? and we would go order a couple drinks and stuff ourselves at the buffet like whores for shrimp cocktail? anyway) with Jocelyn and her moms and I ordered a big ol' burger that had as a topping fried spinach. Fried spinach! It was super crispy and along with that amazing texture it had a delicious silky flavor. So fast-forward to now and I have wicked cut back on the meat eating but I still remember the weirdly awesome fried spinach. So I warned Melanie ahead of time that it was an experiment but I went ahead and tried making it for part of our dinner last night:

I used a great big bunch of spinach for this--not the bagged-up, wee little baby leaves. Those are generally preferred for salads and most light cookery as they are more delicate and tender. But for frying, I got a bunch that had much larger leaves and was more robust looking. Trimmed the stems off and washed them very well--spinach is incredibly sandy so don't screw around. Get out your salad spinner. If you don't have a salad spinner, fill your sink with cold water and dump your trimmed up leaves in there and swish them around real well, then dry them off. You don't want Melanie to be eating sand. She'll be nice about it but secretly upset. When your spinach is clean, stack up about 8-10 leaves flat on top of each other, roll them up like a cigar and then slice down crosswise to make thin strips. We have used this technique before with greens--it is a chiffonade and is very useful. When you have finished getting all your spinach into a chiffonade, set it aside and heat up about 1/2 cup of olive oil in a large pot. Get it super hot and sizzly, then dump in your spinach. Grab some tongs and move your spinach around in the hot oil. It will shrivel up and get wilty pretty quick, but you're not done yet! Keep it moving in the hot ass oil until it turns dark dark green and is crispy in texture. It takes a little while, maybe almost 10 minutes. I suspect in the restaurant they probably just popped it into the deep fryer--much easier. You can tell when it gets crispy though, so remove it from the hot oil, spread it out on paper towels to drain and crisp further as it cools. Sprinkle with sea salt and fresh black pepper. You won't be sorry--it's ridiculously delicious. Fried spinach is a really special side dish and it would also make a great garnish for some interesting main course.

Melanie and I drank wine and ate butternut ravioli from the farmer's market with sage and butter, to go with our fabulous fried spinach. We also had salmon and roasted spaghetti squash and probably ate too much.

Arugula salad

This might not be very interesting but it is really good, especially if you like arugula. And who doesn't? I buy my arugula at at the DeKalb Market where they are packed up into little plastic bags by the employees there. If you hover over their shoulder you can get a really nice looking bag of greens (and a few dirty looks). I know you can buy it in bulk, in the loose bins in the produce section at Whole Foods and maybe at a Publix. Otherwise you probably would get it in the prepackaged salad greens cooler at any old grocery store. Arugula is for people who want something real out of their salads. It is a dark green with small, delicate leaves that have a full and sort of peppery flavor. It is actual, real food, as different from your average lettuce as wet cellulose is from a hardy, well-built wasp's nest under a Rhode Island porch (a full 24 hours elapsed between the two parts of that simile, so don't hate).

Tossed one bunch of washed and dried arugula with a quarter head of shredded red cabbage. To that mixture I added about 3 tablespoons each of pine nutes and grated parmesan. Tossed this together with grape tomatoes (about half the container) and then with a dressing made like this: 4 tablespoons olive oil, juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 tablespoon champagne/white wine vinegar , salt, pepper, all shook up in a little glass jar. After you have dressed & tossed the salad, top with 1 avocado, cut up into chunks and sprinkled with lemon or lime juice.

Beef vegetable stew

I'm back from my sojourn in Rhode Island. I'd like to say "back and better than ever" but that's not true as I have acquired both a broken toe and an eye infection since being away. While in the Ocean State, I cooked a number of little things but none were really particularly new so I won't go into them much. Caesar salad, sweet potatoes with curry, that sort of thing. But last night I really got it into my head to make a beef stew of some kind, so that's the first thing I did in the kitchen upon getting back home. Even if it is still a bajillion degrees here in the south and feels just like summer, in my mind, fall has begun, so it is time for stews, braises and things like that.

Chopped up about 3/4 of a package of cremini mushrooms into quarters or slices, depending on their size. If you have a whole package, feel free to use all of them--the only reason I used a smaller amount was because that was all that was left over in the fridge. I used my large, cast iron dutch oven pot to make this, so if you have one, use it. Otherwise any big, heavy pot will do. Sauteed the mushrooms in 2 tablespoons of butter until they became soft and were begining to exude their juices. Added 3 cloves of thinly shaved garlic--not chopped, actually go ahead and shave the garlic cloves with your knife to create thin slivers. After the garlic has lightly browned and the mushrooms are soft and getting a little brown, remove from the pot and set aside. Next I dredged small chunks of stew beef in 1/2 cup flour mixed with salt and pepper. I only bought somewhere between 1/2 to 1 pound of stew beef chunks from the butcher (actually, I think it was 0.72 lbs on the scale), so you don't really need all that much. Then when I got home, I cut the chunks into smaller little pieces before dredging them with the flour mixture. Heated 3 tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of the pot over medium-high heat and when it was sizzly, added the floured chunks of stew meat. Turned them over to brown in the pot; it probably took no more than 5 minutes to brown all sides of the beef chunks. When they were browned, I added 3 shallots, thinly sliced. Stirred everything around over the heat until the shallots were softened (about 3 minutes) then added 2 small, diced carrots, 1 large, diced parsnip and about 4 tiny, diced Yokon Gold potatoes. Stirred all the veggies and beef chunks up together and let it cook over heat for 2-3 minutes, then added 1 package of beef stock. I used Pacific Organic beef broth--it comes in an aseptic package, looks like a soymilk container. The package size is 32 ounces and I used all of it. After I poured that in, I added back the mushrooms and garlic, along with 1/2 cup of pearled barley to cook along with everything else and brought it up to a simmer. Then I covered the pot, turned the heat down to medium and left it alone for about 30 minutes. When I returned, the liquid had reduced down somewhat and the barley had softened. I added 1/2 - 3/4 cup of lima beans (if you hate lima beans use green peas instead), let it cook for another 5 minutes, then added 3 tablespoons of tomato paste and 3/4 cup of red wine (I believe cabernet, but I don't think it really matters since it was 2-Buck Chuck. Sigh). Stirred everything in really well and added about 1 cup of water since the liquid had really decreased quite a bit. Cooked for another 10 minutes then removed from heat. It's really to taste at this point: if you think it is too thick--add a little more wine then a bit more water, let it cook off the alcohol and proceed. If it is too thin, simply turn the heat up a bit and let it cook uncovered to reduce. However, if you keep it over night it will not only improve in flavor but it will thicken up considerably so keep that in mind. You can always add a little more liquid when reheating. And this one last thing, I forgot to do this last night, but I will when I reheat it--at the end of cooking, add 2 tablespoons each minced parsley and chives. This will also freeze really well, if you're the kind of person who likes to cook ahead. Make sure you have more red wine to drink alongside and also some good bread.

Tomato tarts and grilled vegetables

I haven't had a chance to post on the cooking I've been doing lately...Angelica and Marc had a baby so I am here in Rhode Island, enjoying my new baby nephew. Let me tell you--he is one ridiculously cute baby. But there were a few interesting things that have been made recently, so I'll try to write them out.

I first made these tomato tarts back at home last week but I made them again yesterday for a big family meal. They are based on a recipe I read in the New York Times. Marc's parents and younger sister were here, as were my parents and Francesca. Oh, and of course little baby William, but he didn't eat any of these on account of the fact that he's only a few days old. You need to get puff pastry to make these--it should be in the freezer section at the grocery store. Usually it is next to the frozen pie crusts in a box. Defrost it to a point where you can unfold the sheets of puff pastry (usually a package will contain 2 sheets of pastry). Unfold them and cut out circles of about 4 inches diameter. Place the circles on a baking sheet that is covered with a sheet of parchment paper. Take one or two very good tomatoes--hopefully you can find some good heirloom varieties at your farmer's market--and slice them into thin rounds (less than 1/2") that will fit inside the circles of puff pastry with room all around to pull the edges up. Don't worry about making them perfectly tidy--you can cut them to fit inside if you need to. Spread about 1 or 2 tablespoons of marscapone cheese onto each circle of pastry, then sprinkle about 1 teaspoon chopped fresh basil over the cheese. Put a slice of tomato over the basil, salt and pepper on top, then pull up the pastry round and pinch the edges to make a sealed tart with the tomato slice showing out of the top, but the edges all around sealed up. Do this for all the tarts, then sticke them in an oven at 425 for 15 minutes. A good variation would be to add pine nuts sprinkled inside. Also maybe instead of tomato you could make this with slices of roasted eggplant and some mint instead of the basil. Or a sweet variation would involve thin slices of plum with slivered almonds and a drizzle of honey on top. Lots of fun.

For the big family dinner we grilled out flank steaks and I made a compound butter for on top. Minced up 1 small clove of garlic, 1 tablespoon capers and 1 tablespoon parsley. Mixed these all up with half a stick or so of very soft butter until it was well incorporated, shaped it into a little mound, then stuck it into the fridge to solidify. When the flank steak was done grilling, sliced it thinly against the grain then put the flavored butter out for people to put on top. We also had grilled red peppers and small portobello mushroom caps. These are really easy and I know I've written about simple grilled vegetables before but Marc would like to know how to do it so I'll write it out again for him, in simple language that even a professor of of international conflict and territorial disputes can understand: Slice well-washed red peppers in half the long way and remove the very top with the seeds and stem. Take your pepper halves and rinse them well to remove any more seeds that might be hanging around. If the halves seem large to you, slice them in half again, but you probably shouldn't cut them any smaller or they will fall through the grill. Put your pepper slices in a large bowl; and cover them with a liberal amount of olive oil, at least a couple tablespoons. Add salt and pepper and red pepper flakes for a little bit of heat. Toss the peppers around they are well coated, then stick them on a hot grill and turn them continually, keeping a good eye on them. They will get very soft and the skins will blacken a little bit. They shouldn't take more than 10 minutes or so to cook. You can use red, yellow or orange peppers with success; however, green peppers are a fool's errand and should be avoided at all costs. They are not really mature vegtables, did you know that? They are unripe peppers that have not yet reached the delicious status of a full grown red pepper. They are gross. For grilled portobello mushroom caps you just take the stems out of the cleaned mushrooms then cover them with olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, 1 small minced clove of garlic, salt and pepper. Mix them up well in this marinade, let them sit for about 20-30 minutes, then toss them on the grill. Turn them frequently and let them stay over the heat until they are very soft and getting a little browned. They take about 10-15 minutes, but don't let them burn.