M.E.A.T. (and Some Chocolate Too!)

Author’s Note: Apologies for the month-plus of silence! It’s been a busy month around here, since I’m pulling double-duty at work, and my husband and I just moved to a bigger apartment. Of course, the kitchen was the first part of the new apartment that I set up. I was cooking in it the day after we signed the lease. The recipes below are a mix of my cooking adventures at the old apartment and the new one.

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Irish Lamb Stew

15ml bacon drippings
450g boneless lamb leg, in 3/4” pieces
265g chopped onion (1 medium)
13g chopped garlic (2 cloves)
20g whole wheat flour
710ml stout
up to 950ml beef stock
1g dried rosemary
2g dried thyme
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper to taste
560g fingerling potatoes, in 3/4” pieces
180g diced carrots (4 medium-large)

Heat bacon drippings in a large pot; add lamb and brown on all sides. Add onion; sauté 5 minutes, until tender. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute, until fragrant. Add flour, stirring well; add stout and deglaze. Add rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper; add enough beef stock to cover. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat, partially cover, and simmer 30 minutes, until lamb is fork tender. Add potatoes and carrots; add more beef stock to cover. Return to a boil, covered; reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Adjust seasonings and serve hot.

Yield: 1.9L
Cooking time: 110 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: ?
Date prepared: 4 April, 2015
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Bacon drippings, rosemary & thyme – me!
Lamb – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Onion & garlic – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Flour – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Stout – Voodoo American stout, Left Coast Brewing Co. (San Clemente, CA)
Stock – Kitchen Basics (Sparks, MD)
Bay leaf – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Potatoes – Broad Branch Market (5608 Broad Branch Road NW)
Carrots – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)

Comments:
This stew, while very rich, dense and tasty, had a surprising sort of delicacy. It can get very bitter if you’re not careful, and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. But it was still quite a lovely stew, worth polishing off in the chilly, damp days of early spring.

A quick look at the ingredients will show why I think the stew could get bitter: stout and rosemary, as well as cooking to reduce the liquid. If you get too generous with rosemary, it can get bitter on you. And, of course, reducing liquid will just concentrate that flavor.

As for the stout, the original recipe calls for Guinness. Now, if I had made this dish a few weeks before I did, I may very well have used the classic brew. Why? Well, I’ve gotten used to drinking craft beers. So when I had some Guinness at an Irish pub recently, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that Guinness is boring. Next to some of the US’s craft stouts, the Guinness tasted like savory water: it was considerably thinner on the palate and less flavorful than some of the craft stouts and porters I’ve grown accustomed to. (Now, I don’t think I’d have the spine to defend that opinion in a pub in Ireland. On the other hand, I’d bet good money that Guinness in Ireland is made with greater all-around strength than the Guinness made in the US. Because foreign manufacturers often think American consumers have no taste. And they’re not often wrong.)

Speaking of craft beer, I’m starting to feel like stout and porter are becoming styles of beers that craft brewers absolutely have to make to show their bona fides to the discerning drinker. That’s certainly what’s happened with IPA, which is ubiquitous in the craft brewing universe. Not that I mind. It’s nice that American beer is finally pulling itself away from the watery stereotypes that have dogged it for decades. (“It’s like making love in a canoe––fucking close to water.”)

But I do wonder if this recipe could have benefited from the thinness of US-made Guinness. Because the Left Coast’s stout was already super strong in every aspect, its bitterness came roaring out when I let the stew reduce. To the point where my husband, who’s more sensitive to the taste of bitterness than I am, didn’t really want to eat this.

On the other hand, the bitterness can be overcome. By using a not-as-strong beer, for one thing. And being deft with the rosemary. The biggest trick I found, however, was to use more salt than you think you’ll need. (This stew is not for the sodium-conscious.) So take the instruction to adjust seasonings seriously.

Once you take care of the seasonings, this stew is quite lovely. Irish stew is a straightforward, classic dish of the meat-and-potatoes variety. It’s a good dish to make when your winter stocks of keeper vegetables are running low, but nothing else has come in yet. It will also stick to your ribs quite comfortingly as you wait for spring to really kick in.

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Chicken Vermouth

6 crushed garlic cloves
2 1/2 cups dry vermouth
4 tbsp lime juice
5 tbsp chopped tarragon leaves
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved
2 minced scallions
2 tbsp chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream
salt & white pepper to taste
8 tbsp cubed butter
4 beaten egg yolks
2 tbsp vegetable oil

In a medium bowl, mix together garlic, 1 cup vermouth, 3 tbsp lime juice and 3 tbsp tarragon; add chicken, coating well, and marinate at room temperature for 1 hour. (Chicken can also be marinated in the fridge, up to overnight.) In a 2qt saucepan, mix together remaining vermouth, lime juice and tarragon, along with scallions, broth, cream, salt and pepper. Cover and bring to a boil over medium heat; cook 15 minutes, until reduced by one third. Reduce heat to medium-low; whisk in butter one piece at a time. Whisk 1/2 cup of the vermouth mixture into the egg yolks; transfer yolk mixture back to the vermouth mixture. Cover and keep warm, whisking occasionally to re-emulsify if it separates.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12” nonstick skillet over medium heat; remove chicken from marinade, shaking off excess. Lay chicken in the the skillet, then set a 10” skillet on top of it; cook 7 minutes, until chicken is crisp and golden on one side. Flip chicken and set the skillet on top again; cook 10 minutes, until chicken is golden and crisp on that side. Divide chicken between individual plates; spoon sauce over chicken. Serves 2.

Sources:
Garlic, lime, tarragon, cream, butter & oil – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Vermouth – Dolin, Vermouth de Chambéry (Savoy, France)
Chicken – Perdue (Salisbury, MD)
Scallions – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Broth – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Pepper – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Eggs – Pete & Gerry’s (Monroe, NH)

Comments:
Upon tasting it, I could have sworn that that sauce had mustard in it, thanks to its tanginess. Nope, just lime juice. You might also think that there’s mayonnaise in it. No such luck there either. While this sauce is an emulsion, no real mayonnaise features dairy. And I’m not sure you’d need to combine that much butter with mayonnaise. (Try and explain that one to your cardiologist.)

This is a tasty recipe that’s a step up from your usual same-old-same-old sautéed chicken breasts. It’s also a recipe with a long pedigree. It was invented at the Ranch House Restaurant in Ojai, California, a place that’s existed in the same converted old house since 1949. It originally served only vegetarian cuisine, but its owners realized that they couldn’t stay in business at that time without serving meat. (The owners were also reluctant to serve wine, since they didn’t know anything about it, and the restaurant didn’t seek a liquor license until 1964. But because they were located in California, they learned a lot about wine very quickly.)

Anyway, I was about to explain how this was a step up from your typical chicken recipe. Well, for one thing, check out how it’s cooked. The chicken breasts are weighed down by a pan to flatten them, which ensures more even cooking. I think the technique also helps you cook the chicken faster, not only because the heat is even, but because the pan on top also heats up, so the chicken is cooked from both sides. (Boy, the chicken will really release all of its juices. I was rather surprised at how much the chicken pieces shrunk.) The weighting technique also gives the chicken that gorgeous golden brown crust, which adds a nice bit of crispiness in a dish that could just be soft and thus boring.

While this isn’t a quick dish to make, I think it’s easy enough. (You do have to babysit the sauce and the chicken, though.) It’s a good dish for a casual dinner, best served with some chilled white wine––or a few martinis.

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Tequila Roast Pork

3 dried ancho chilies
1 chopped medium onion
2 chopped garlic cloves
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
5/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cloves
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp tequila blanco
1.5 lb pork tenderloin

Soak chilies in water for 15-20 minutes, until softened; pat dry, then remove stems and seeds. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Heat oil in a 10” skillet over medium-high heat; sauté onions for 3-4 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute, until fragrant. Add chilies; stir for 1 minute. Add tequila to deglaze, stirring well; add sugar, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, then cook for 1-2 minutes. Let cool until skillet stops sizzling; transfer mixture to a blender, then purée. (Mixture will still be a bit chunky.) Rub mixture all over pork; grease an 11×7” baking pan and place pork in it. Cover pan with foil (or with its lid); bake 80 minutes, flipping pork halfway through, until done. Remove pork to a cutting board and keep warm; strain pan juices, discarding liquid. Slice pork and serve with the solids from the pan juices. Serves 2-3.

Sources:
Ancho – Christopher Ranch (Gilory, CA)
Onion, garlic, oil & brown sugar – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Cinnamon, cloves & nutmeg – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Tequila (silver) – Cazadores (Los Altos, Jalisco, Mexico)
Pork – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)

Comments:
I had bought the ancho chilies awhile ago for making chili, but then I noticed a recipe on the back of the package. And it’s very difficult to resist a dish called “Tequila Roast Pork.” Impossible, really.

The dish lived up to its billing. The sauce is both very tasty and very unusual. It has a mild heat, with just the slightest hint of sweetness. The tenderloin, well basted in the sauce, was intoxicatingly aromatic as I took it out of the oven.

Actually, speaking of the oven, I was surprised at how much juice the pork released. (I don’t cook tenderloin all that often, I guess.) I was so surprised, I didn’t follow the original recipe’s instructions to bake the pork for a full two hours. The pork was just starting to dry out at the 80-minute mark, and I didn’t want to push it any more. (Don’t worry, the sliced tenderloin wasn’t dry at all, so I grabbed it in time. Another forty minutes, though, seemed a bit much.)

The other instruction I disregarded was to marinate the pork overnight in the ancho chili mixture. I chose to ignore this, because the mixture seemed more like a rub than a marinade, and I figured all that time in the oven would be sufficient. And I think I was right on this point.

Actually, here’s another way to use that delicious chili mixture. Slice the tenderloin in half lengthwise, leaving a hinge; spread the chili mixture evenly on one of the cut sides; fold the tenderloin back together; tie it at 1” intervals with twine; then bake as directed. That has possibilities.

So too does using reposado or añejo tequila. The blanco didn’t seem to add too much to the chili mixture. This isn’t to say that this would be the same dish if you used, say, white wine or vermouth. Something like that would fundamentally alter the character of the dish. So stick with tequila.

Also, given the amount of juices that the pork tenderloin releases, I’m going to try turning them into a pan sauce next time I make this. You wouldn’t need to add anything in terms of seasoning, just some flour perhaps to thicken up the whole thing.

And yes, there will be a next time. This is such a simple, yet such a delicious, dish that it’d be a shame to just make it once.

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Lapin à la Moutarde Crèmeuse

2.5 lb rabbit, in 6 pieces
kosher salt & pepper
4oz pancetta, in 1/2” strips
3/4 cup crème fraîche (or double cream)
6 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 1/2 tsp dried sage
2 tsp dry mustard
4 sliced garlic cloves

Season rabbit generously with salt and pepper; place in a 9×13” roasting pan. Add remaining ingredients: mix together by hand, until rabbit pieces are thoroughly coated. Cover pan; let marinate at room temperature for 1 hour. (Rabbit can be marinated overnight in the fridge. If doing this, let rabbit come to room temperature before proceeding.) Preheat oven to 400ºF; arrange a rack in the lower third of the oven. Place roasting pan with rabbit, covered, in the oven; roast 25-30 minutes, stirring and turning every 5-10 minutes, until rabbit is cooked through. Set oven to broil; uncover pan and cook 5 minutes. Divide rabbit pieces between plates; spoon sauce into a bowl. Serve immediately, with sauce to pass. Serves 2.

Sources:
Rabbit – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Pancetta – Boar’s Head (Sarasota, FL)
Double cream – Brooklyn Creamery Co. (Brooklyn, NY)
Mustard – Maille (Dijon, Burgundy, France)
Thyme & sage – me!
Dry mustard – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Garlic – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
This could have been a dumb idea. Why? Well, this was the first dish I made in our new apartment. It can be a dangerous prospect to inaugurate a new kitchen with a meat that you’ve never cooked before. Particularly when your oven is involved. (More on the oven in a moment.) But this recipe went very well. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let rabbit psych me out.

Not least because that sauce is entirely reasonable to make. It’s also rich and tasty. I must find other uses for it. Interestingly, while the sauce’s flavor is very mustardy, the heat from the Dijon is pretty much gone. This makes for a very mellow sauce, but not one so laid-back that it’s boring.

I accidentally left out a bay leaf, which I suppose is par for the course when you’re still setting up your kitchen and figuring out where you put things the day before. The recipe also calls for crushed mustard seeds (either yellow or black), along with fresh herbs. This was easily adapted to what I had available. If you use mustard seeds, use one teaspoon. Freshly crushed mustard seeds are to bottled ground mustard what cracked black pepper is to ground: an order of magnitude stronger in the flavor department. Oof.

Another standout in the sauce is the double cream, which I used when I couldn’t find crème fraîche. Double cream is an intriguing concoction. It’s much like crème fraîche, but without the subtle tang. It’s also halfway down the road to butter. No wonder this sauce is so rich.

But never mind the sauce, what’s it like to eat a rabbit? Well, it’s reminiscent of chicken, in terms of texture, taste and ease of cooking. (This is why you shouldn’t let it psych you out.) On the other hand, rabbit is considerably leaner than chicken––all that hopping means that there’s not a lot of fat to trim. It also has a much darker aftertaste. Even what we’d call the “white meat”––i.e., the loin––is considerably darker and richer than chicken. I found the front leg particularly good to gnaw on (kind of like a chicken wing), and the back leg is wonderfully meaty, again thanks to all that hopping.

And I promised a note on the oven. While I love my new kitchen (it’s so much bigger than the old one), I noticed right away that I have a full gas range and oven. (The old place had a gas range, but an electric oven.) I also noticed that my oven lacks a window, as well as a beeper for when the oven is at temperature. What to do? Well, for this recipe, I had to guess at how long it took for the oven to reach 400ºF, and then wing it. Oddly, while the recipe said to roast the rabbit for 50-60 minutes, I found that my rabbit was done after 30 minutes. (I’ve noticed a similar effect in my stovetop dishes: they’ve taken considerably less time to cook than the recipes have said. Though part of that may be due to using pots that hold on to heat: enamelware.)

To figure out what was going on, I decided to buy an oven thermometer and then do what is known as “calibrating” the oven. Unbeknownst to me before I moved into this apartment, this is a very important step in ensuring accurate cooking and repeatable recipes. Why? Because the temperature the oven says it’s at may not be what it actually is. The best test is to place your oven thermometer in the center of the oven, preheat the oven to 350ºF, and see where you end up––not only after it’s preheated, but for several minutes after. (Your oven temperature could tick up after reaching the mark you wanted. Which is its own problem.)

And then you should repeat the test in other parts of the oven. Why? You also need to test whether your oven has even heat. The back can be considerably cooler than the front, and so on. This is why you see recipes that direct you to rotate your dishes as they bake: if the oven heats unevenly and you don’t rotate, one side of your dish could be overdone, while the other is underdone. You see the same motive for directions to place a dish in a certain part of the oven. Often, this is to get the dish as close to the heat source as possible––at least in the recipe writer’s oven. (It could also mean the opposite, as in slower-cooking dishes.) But not all ovens are equal.

Now, I haven’t had any major problems with any of the ovens I’ve used before. But that’s because you get used to the idiosyncrasies of the one you have, and you adjust accordingly. My own test on my new one showed something interesting. I set the oven for 375º, and when it finally stopped getting hotter, it had reached 425ºF. Well then. That explains why the cooking time for the rabbit was cut in half. Luckily, I’m pretty vigilant about periodically checking food in the oven. And, for the record, the oven has very even heat, so there was no variation in temperature depending on where I put the thermometer.

And here endeth the lesson on ovens.

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Mortadella Pâté

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 tbsp whole wheat flour
3 tbsp chicken stock
3 tbsp cream, whipped to soft peaks
11oz slab mortadella, in 1/2” cubes
sliced ciabatta

Pour vinegar into a small skillet; cook over medium heat until reduced to 3 tbsp, then set aside. (If it congeals by the time you’re ready to use it, return skillet to medium heat until vinegar is syrupy again.) In another small skillet, melt butter over medium heat; whisk in flour and cook 30-60 seconds. Whisk in chicken stock 1 tbsp at a time; cook 1-2 minutes, until thickened, then remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Put mortadella in a food processor; process until puréed. (It should be coarse and somewhat spreadable, not crumbly.) In a medium bowl, using a rubber scraper, combine mortadella, butter mixture and whipped cream. Drizzle with vinegar reduction. Serve at room temperature, spread on sliced ciabatta.

Sources:
Vinegar – Antica Italia (Modena, Italy)
Butter, cream & stock – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Flour – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Mortadella – Calvert Woodley (4339 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Ciabatta – Breadfurst (4434 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
This pâté was the rich beginning to a very rich dinner that I made for myself, my husband and some of our friends. It’s so rich that it’s basically a savory version of frosting. You’ll want to lick this sort of thing off your fingers.

As pâtés go, I think this one is easier to make than most. Your typical pâté will usually require you to sauté the meat––often liver––before puréeing it with the other ingredients. But where the meat is already cured, there’s no need for that. And while you make a velouté sauce to mix into the mortadella, even that’s easier than sautéing meat for a few minutes.

The only thing that took a fair amount of time was whipping the cream. And this was because I whipped it by hand. Like making mayonnaise or whipping egg whites, this is another experience every cook should have, so that you’ll better appreciate what kitchen tools do for you. Whipping the cream by hand, however, was also sort of necessary––due to a lack of tools. I’ve long since de-commissioned my immersion blender for reasons obvious to anyone who reads this blog. It was, however, my usual tool for whipping cream. (In fact, that’s basically all I used it for, with the fateful exception of trying to purée strawberries that one time.) On the other hand, firing up the immersion blender for just a few tablespoons of cream seemed a bit much. The same thought applies to the stand mixer, which is a lot of power for so little cream. And while an eggbeater also does the job nicely, I actually don’t have one. So I used a whisk. Whipping that little cream doesn’t take particularly long, but I wouldn’t want to do it by hand with a whole lot more.

Anyway, the pâté turns out super creamy, rich and smooth. I think the balsamic reduction is an immense help to it. Next to a pâté with the density and mouthfeel of peanut butter (beware your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth), the tart balsamic helps cut the richness. It’s also best to drizzle the balsamic reduction over the pâté when the latter is at room temperature. That way the vinegar seeps into the pâté a bit, boosting the flavor and making for a luscious combination.

At that point, all you’ll need to do is spread it on some bread worthy of this luxurious stuff.

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Rabos Estofados con Chorizo

4 lbs oxtails
salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp olive oil
1 chopped medium onion
1 chopped small carrot
4oz cured chorizo, casing removed, finely diced
3 minced garlic cloves
1 dried bay leaf
1/3 tsp pimentòn
2/3 cup white wine
28oz whole peeled tomatoes, chopped with juice
2 tsp sherry vinegar

Preheat oven to 350ºF; season oxtails with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat, until hot but not smoking; add oxtails, in batches if necessary. Brown oxtails for 5 minutes, turning occasionally; transfer to a bowl as browned. Pour off all but 1 tbsp rendered fat from the pot; return pot to medium heat. Add chorizo and sauté 2 minutes; add onion and sauté 2 minutes. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute; add carrots and bay leaf, then sauté 1-2 minutes. Add pimenton; stir to incorporate. Add wine to deglaze; bring mixture to a boil. Return oxtails and any accumulated juices to the pot; stir in tomatoes. Let mixture come to a boil; grease a 9×13” baking pan.

Transfer the entire contents of the pot to the baking pan, keeping the oxtails in a single layer; cover pan with its lid (or with foil). Place pan in the lower third of the oven; cook for 3 hours, flipping the oxtails twice, until they’re very tender. (At this point, the dish can be made up to 2 days ahead, if you plan to refrigerate it. Uncover pan and let cool completely; cover pan with wax paper, then the lid. Chill until ready to use, then let it come to room temperature before proceeding. The dish can also be frozen for at least a week and thawed.) Let oxtails cool until easy to handle; remove meat from bones, trimming as much gristle as you can. Discard the bones; shred the meat and return to the baking pan. Working in batches, strain the entire mixture in a fine-mesh sieve to drain off the fat, pressing the solids gently with a spoon. Return mixture to the baking pan, spreading it evenly. Return pan to the oven; cook for 30 minutes, uncovered. Stir in vinegar; season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

Sources:
Oxtails – Pineland Farms (New Gloucester, ME)
Oil – Filippo Berio (Lucca, Italy)
Onion, garlic & tomatoes – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Carrot – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)
Chorizo – Embutidos Palacios (La Rioja, Spain)
Bay leaf – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Pimentòn – Safinter, Valgosa (Barcelona, Spain)
Wine (albariño) – Martín Códax (Rías Baixas, Galicia, Spain)
Vinegar – Miguel & Valentino (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain)

Comments:
This most Spanish of recipes comes from Snooth, a website about wine that I frequent (www.snooth.com). The author, Gregory dal Piaz, suggests that you keep a box of tissues handy for your dinner guests when you serve this. Because it’s so good, you’ll want to cry.

And, oh my god, he came very close to being right.

At the very least, I think I can stop cooking. Because this is just about the best dish I have ever made and probably ever will make. I should just quite while I’m ahead. Nothing will ever live up to this superlatively delicious stew.

I’m exaggerating, yes. But not by much. I suppose no words can begin to describe what this dish tastes and feels like. Except possibly this: M.E.A.T. Yep, in all caps. Perfectly meaty and savory, absolutely tender and velvety, and wonderfully well-seasoned.

To be fair, this dish was right in my wheelhouse. I enjoy elaborate stews and sauces––dishes with copious rich ingredients that take hours to put together, but the payoff of which is immense. (Cassoulet immediately leaps to mind as the apotheosis of this genre of cooking.) This stew has all of that, plus another element that I love when I cook: new ingredients with which to experiment. In this case, that was oxtails. I’d never cooked with them before, and having friends over for a rich meal seemed like a perfect excuse to try it.

The instructions, as you see them written, were the ones I came up with as I cooked my merry way through this dish. Having never cooked with oxtails previously, I just had to follow my chef’s instinct to figure out doneness, and to decide whether to serve them bone-in or boned. The original recipe implies the former. But I decided to strip the meat from the bones––and, my goodness, those are some impressive bones––for several reasons. For one thing, oxtails are a very fatty cut of beef. This makes for extraordinary richness in flavor and silkiness of texture, but it’s very unpleasant to have to pick the meat off the bones as you’re eating each tail-joint when you know you’re going to come across a lot of gristle. It was just easier to cut away all the bone and cartilage. (I also let some of the fat drain off the stew.) In any case, you’ll want to cook the oxtails bone-in: all that fat and marrow adds flavor to the final presentation. For another thing, since I wanted the dinner to be fairly elegant, eating the tail-joints caveman-style was the opposite of what I was going for.

There are lots of little touches of flavor in this dish, all of which do their bit to elevate the meal to something beyond what you can get at even the best restaurant. (I’m abandoning all humility after making this recipe.) These elements also provide the dish’s distinct Spanish zest: pimentòn, Spanish white wine, sherry vinegar, and cured chorizo. It’s these ingredients that distinguish the stew from something more French or Italian. That said, for a dish with such an overwhelming flavor, that’s still a pretty short list of ingredients. But that’s the magic of letting this dish spend so much time in the oven.

A dish as amazingly gigantic as this one screams for a wine to match. Snooth recommends going all out with Spanish reds: go for red reservas from Rioja, as aged as you can find. I served this dish with some elite Napa red blends––The Prisoner and Rubicon––and we all had a grand time.

“Grand” might not even begin to cover it. Just put in the time to make this dish, and you’ll see what I mean.

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Cinnamon Ice Cream

3.75oz dark brown sugar
1 cup whole milk
3 cups heavy cream
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cinnamon oil
pinch of salt

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together sugar and milk until dissolved; blend in cream. Whisk in eggs, cinnamon, cinnamon oil and salt; chill at least 3 hours, or up to overnight. Process for 15 minutes in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Makes just over 1 quart.

Sources:
Sugar, milk & cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Aveue NW)
Eggs – Country Hen (Hubbardston, MA)
Cinnamon – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Cinnamon oil – Lorann Oils (Lansing, MI)

Comments:
Cinnamon ice cream is one of my favorite flavors of ice cream. It’s also one of the hardest to come by. And when you do find it, it’s often not done that well. Too often, cinnamon ice cream will just taste merely sweet, or like a bland vanilla.

But then you discover an ingredient like cinnamon oil, and your entire worldview changes.

This ice cream recipe comes from King Arthur Flour, and it was the cooks in their test kitchen that turned me on to the remarkable stuff known as cinnamon oil. You might not want to take a direct sniff of it, it’s so strong.

And the ice cream you add it to turns out extremely cinnamon-y and very much less sweet. Cinnamon definitely won the battle for dominant flavor in this recipe––so much so that, as my husband noted, the ice cream almost burns. (He suggests a sprinkling of dark brown or turbinado sugar to balance it out.)

He’s sort of right. The cinnamon flavor is so strong here that the ice cream is almost savory in its spiciness. And I do admit that a bit of brown sugar on top helped temper that savor with some more sweetness. On the other hand, that level of non-sweetness does mean that this ice cream makes an excellent, contrasting accompaniment to a sweeter dessert, such as the chocolate-cinnamon pudding below, or apple pie.

But if you’re a cinnamon fiend (as I am starting to become), don’t worry about balance. Just dig in.

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Pôt de Crème au Chocolat et à la Cannelle

4oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 egg yolks
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp turbinado sugar
up to 1/8 tsp cayenne

Preheat oven to 300ºF; place chocolate in a medium bowl, then set a fine-mesh sieve on top. In a 2qt saucepan, whisk egg yolks until frothy; add cream and milk, whisking well. Add sugars, cinnamon and vanilla, whisking thoroughly after each addition, until sugars are dissolved. Set saucepan over medium heat; whisking constantly, cook over medium heat until thoroughly warmed, just beginning to steam, and with bubbles beginning to form around the sides of the saucepan. (Do not let the mixture come to a boil.) Immediately remove from heat; pour through the strainer into the bowl with the chocolate. Add cayenne; switch to a spoon, then stir to melt the chocolate and fully combine the ingredients. Divide mixture between three 1-cup ramekins; place ramekins so they don’t touch in a 9×13” baking dish. Fill the dish 1/2”-3/4” with boiling water; cover loosely with foil. Place baking dish in oven; bake up to 70 minutes, until the pôts jiggle uniformly when shaken. (They will have risen significantly, but they’ll sink back down as they cool.) Remove dish from oven, then remove ramekins from dish; let cool. Cover ramekins with plastic wrap and chill until ready to serve. Serves 3.

Sources:
Chocolate – Ghirardelli (San Francisco, CA)
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)
Cream, milk & sugar – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Cinnamon & cayenne – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Vanilla – Rodelle (Fort Collins, CO)
Turbinado sugar – Sugar in the Raw (Brooklyn, NY)

Comments:
In the genre of desserts you eat with a spoon (that aren’t ice cream), there is a tasty continuum: you begin with pudding, followed by the very French pôt de crème (literally “pot of cream”), and then you end with mousse. Pudding is the softest, most satiny and most liquid of the bunch. Mousse is considerably more solid and less viscous, while still being perfectly smooth. Pôt de crème is somewhere in the middle: it has the density of a mousse, as well as some of its solidity, but it does have a satiny feeling reminiscent of a pudding. It also absolutely luscious, coming with some gentle heat from the cayenne.

What I wrote above is actually not what I made, in terms of amount. Because I made twice what this recipe says. Why? The original is double what you see here on the blog, but it wasn’t clear how much batter the original recipe would make. So rather than risk not making enough pôt de crème for four people by cutting the original recipe in half––horror!––I didn’t scale anything down. The result? I ended up not using about half the batter.

So what to do? It’s basically a capital crime in my house to let food go to waste––particularly for sweet things. Now, I suppose you could just spoon up the batter like it’s cookie dough. But it occurred to me that the batter was almost identical to a typical ice cream base (eggs, sugar and cream). So I chilled the mixture until it was completely cold, which is just what one is supposed to do when making ice cream. Then I popped it into my ice cream maker. And it worked! I wound up with a lovely chocolate-cinnamon ice cream.

Anyway, the pôt de crème itself was a lovely end to a fabulous meal (see above for the Mortadella Pâté and Rabos Estofado con Chorizo). I also topped each ramekin with a scoop of the cinnamon ice cream. Because, you know, why not?

Stick It to Your Ribs

Triple Chocolate Beef & Bean Chili

12g stemmed & seeded dried guajillo chilies (2 whole)
12g stemmed & seeded ancho chili (1 whole)
1 tbsp cocoa
2 tsp dried oregano
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp pimentòn
1/2 tsp cinnamon
kosher salt & pepper to taste
450g boneless beef chucks, in 1” cubes
60ml olive oil
16g chopped garlic (4 cloves)
520g chopped white onions (2 medium-large)
175ml tomato paste
440ml crushed tomatoes
355ml chocolate stout
1 1/2 tbsp brown sugar
590ml chicken stock
56g diced semisweet chocolate
790g canned pinto beans, drained & rinsed
30ml lime juice
sour cream (garnish)
chopped cilantro (garnish)

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat; add chilies and cook 5 minutes, turning once, until toasted. Transfer to a bowlp cover with 2 cups boiling water. Let sit 20 minutes; drain chilies, reserving 1/2 cup soaking liquid. Transfer chilies and reserved liquid to a food processor; add cocoa, oregano, cumin, pimentòn and cinnamon. Puré until smooth; set mixture aside. Return the pot to medium-high heat; add oil. Season beef with salt and pepper; add beef to pot. Cook 4-6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until browned on all sides; transfer beef to a bowl. Add onions to the pot; cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, until fragrant. Add tomato paste, stirring well; add chili mixture, stirring well. Return beef to pot, along with tomatoes, stout, brown sugar and stock; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer 1 hour, until beef is very tender. (It can be cooked another 30 minutes more, if you wish.) Stir in beans, lime juice, chocolate, salt and pepper; heat through, until chocolate is melted and incorporated. Serve, garnished with sour cream and cilantro.

Yield: 2.5L
Cooking time: 150 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: ?
Date prepared: 7 February 2015
Rating: ****

Sources:
Guajillos & ancho – Christopher Ranch (Gilroy, CA)
Cocoa – Droste (Vaassen, Netherlands)
Onion, garlic, oregano, lime, sour cream & cilantro – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue)
Cumin – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Pimentòn – Safinter, Valgosa (Barcelona, Spain)
Cinnamon – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Beef – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Oil – Filippo Berio (Lucca, Italy)
Tomato paste – Contadina (San Francisco, CA)
Crushed tomatoes – Furmano’s (Northumberland, PA)
Stout – Black Chocolate Stout, Brooklyn Brewery (Utica, NY)
Sugar – Domino Foods (Yonkers, NY)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Chocolate – Baker’s (Northfield, IL)
Beans – Goya (Secaucus, NJ)

Comments:
There is chili, and then there is chili. And—oh me oh my—this is most definitely the latter.

Even just a glance at the ingredients will demonstrate that pretty clearly. You start with a remarkable, DIY chili paste. You can stop there, if you’d like, because this chili paste is quite lovely. You’ll want it for other recipes, since it’s highly reminiscent of a tasty mole sauce. I think it’d do well as a basting sauce for beef on the grill or fajitas.

And that’s just the chili paste. You haven’t even gotten to the really good stuff yet. I mean things like the chocolate stout, which is definitely a worthy addition to the stout family—rich, thick, strong.

Then there’s the whole wonderful chili you have when you’re done cooking. It has a superlatively rich flavor, even though the level of heat is actually quite mild. (You can figure out ways to increase the spice, if you’d like.) And the flavor has several elements whose interaction makes for a very harmonious dish. The fundamental taste, of course, is the meaty beef and the starchy beans, infused by the chili paste, tomatoes, etc. But there’s a very light hint of sweetness from the chocolate, which plays a nice descant every few bites. And there’s also a noticeable acidic edge from the tomatoes.

And did I mention that this chili is dense? The liquid in the pot—such as there is at the end—is practically a super-concentrated gravy. Much of the density comes from the fact that not a whole lot of liquid is added to the pot in the first place. What liquid there is thickened up mightily by the beans’ starch. Oof.

Now, I do have a few quibbles. I could have used a more tender cut of meat, for a start, or cut it into smaller pieces so that it wasn’t so chewy. Also, to ensure the beans’ tenderness, I used canned beans, rather than soaking them. If you’re a purist and use dried beans, cook this chili as long as you need to guarantee tender beans. Nothing’s worse than a crunch in a rich stew. (If you use dried beans, you add them when you return the beef to the pot for its long simmer.)

But, those small things aside, I think I can safely say that I will make this chili again. I can’t call it my “go-to” chili recipe, however. Not because of expense, but because I have too many other chili recipes to try to declare this one the winner yet. (Though this one will be some very tough competition.) It’s certainly the fanciest chili I’ve eaten. And perfect for seasons like this one.

–––

Zuppa di Lenticchie con Pancetta

60ml olive oil
85g sliced pancetta, diced
310g diced onion (1 medium-large)
300g chopped celery (10 ribs)
70g chopped carrots (1 large)
15g minced garlic (2 cloves)
15ml tomato paste
1/2 tsp pimentòn
kosher salt & pepper to taste
1.4L chicken stock
500ml water
1.3kg soaked green lentils (for 4-6 hours)
bouquet garni: 2 bay leaves, 3 parsley sprigs, 8 thyme sprigs
diced & fried pancetta (garnish)

In a large pot, heat oil over medium-high heat; add pancetta, sautéing for 2 minutes, until mostly crisp. Add onion; sauté 1 minute. Add celery and carrots; sauté 2-3 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add tomato paste, pimentòn, salt and pepper; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly to incorporate the tomato paste. Add stock, water, lentils and bouquet garni; cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer until lentils are tender. Adjust seasonings; discard bouquet garni. Ladle soup into individual bowls; top with fried pancetta, if you’d like.

Yield: 3.7L
Cooking time: 85 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: ?
Date prepared: 21 February 2015
Rating: ***

Sources:
Oil – Filippo Berio (Lucca, Italy)
Pancetta – Colameco’s, Lou’s Naturals (Swedesboro, NJ)
Onion, garlic, tomato paste, parsley & thyme – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Celery – Dole (Westlake Village, CA)
Carrots – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)
Pimentòn – Safinter, Valgosa (Barcelona, Spain)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Lentils – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Bay leaves – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)

Comments:
I forget where I found this recipe, but I remember the original said to simmer the soup for a very long  time—until the lentils were tender. Now, while I know that you technically don’t have to soak lentils, like you do dried beans, I did anyway. And I think that’s why this soup has such a short cooking time.

This lentil soup is basically your basic soup with some protein, starch and vegetables. Good and filling, it’s perfect for the winter—particularly late winter when your stocks of “keeper” foods (like carrots, onions and apples) are running low. On the other hand, it’s just not very exciting, even though perfectly acceptable and tasty.

The pancetta does bring the soup up a notch. Using some of it as something of a seasoning base for the entire soup helps. It really boosts the richness of flavor and density. Moreover, the fried bits work very well as a garnish. The crisped pancetta serves as a nice texture contrast in a soft soup. And, at the risk of speaking heresy, I must say that pancetta might very well be better than bacon. Moving on…

–––

Louisiana Red Beans & Rice

450g dried red beans
30ml olive oil
200g chopped yellow onion (1 medium-large)
40g sliced scallions (7 whole)
100g chopped celery (4 ribs)
9g minced garlic (2 cloves)
1.1kg smoked ham shanks (2 small-medium)
2 dried bay leaves
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp crushed red pepper
5ml worcestershire sauce
1.89L water
salt & pepper to taste
cooked white rice
hot sauce

Put red beans in a large pot; cover by 2” of water. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat; turn off heat and drain beans. Transfer beans to a large bowl; cover with water by about 1”. Cover and let soak overnight; drain when ready to use. Heat oil in a large pot set over medium-high heat; add onion and cook 3-4 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add scallions; cook 2 minutes, until limp. Add celery; cook 2 minutes, until mostly softened. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, until fragrant. Add worcestershire, water, ham shanks, beans, bay leaves, thyme and crushed red pepper, stirring well; cover and bring to a boil. Once boiling, partially cover pot and simmer over medium heat for 90 minutes, until mixture is thick and beans are very tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper; remove bay leaves. Keeping mixture at a simmer over medium or medium-low heat, remove ham shanks and shred the meat; return meat to the pot and discard the bone. Mash some of the beans until whole mixture is creamy and thick. Serve over rice (about 1 cup bean mixture to 1/2 cup cooked rice), garnished with hot sauce.

Yield: 2.6L beans
Cooking time: 165 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook
Date prepared: 28 February 2015
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Beans, onion & garlic – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Oil – Filippo Berio (Lucca, Italy)
Celery – Dole (Westlake Village, CA)
Scallions – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Ham shanks – Wellshire, Lou’s Naturals (Swedesboro, NJ)
Bay leaves & crushed red pepper – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Thyme – me!
Worcestershire – Lea & Perrin’s (Fair Lawn, NJ)
Rice – Riviana Foods (Houston, TX)
Hot sauce – Little Red Fox (5035 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
Mmm…red beans…And this is a particularly tasty recipe to boot. Remarkably well-seasoned.

But first, a note on beans. I have finally found the best method for soaking beans that ensures their tenderness by the time you’re done cooking them. (Apart from using canned beans, I mean.) It’s a combination of classic overnight soaking and the so-called “quick soak” method, the latter requiring you to bring the beans to boil in water and then just soaking them in the pot for an hour-ish. My method has you bring the beans to a boil, then soak them overnight in a covered bowl. I’ve used this method twice and I think I’ve finally aced it. (I’ve made bean dishes before in which some of the beans remain crunchy, despite my best efforts; or dishes that take considerably longer than anticipated because the beans weren’t tender when I thought they’d be.)

This soaking method had a good knock-on effect too. The original recipe says to cook the beans and ham shanks for 3 1/2 hours over very low heat, partially covered. And while I acknowledge that “low and slow” is an awesome cooking technique, I am not very patient. (Except in special cases, as with some pasta sauces, like the legendary ragù di agnello.) So I left the pot over medium-ish heat. But I also had a feeling that, given my boil-and-soak method for plumping up the dried beans, my beans wouldn’t need that long to become tender. And I was right.

Anyway, the end result is some really tasty beans. With a very creamy and thick texture like here, you can’t really call this dish a stew. All the liquid has basically turned into a gravy for the beans, so infused is everything with starch. No complaints here. It’s a particularly cold and snowy March. You’ll want something this rib-stickingly rich and flavorful to get you through your day.

–––

Canederli Zuppa

225g bread crumbs
20g minced scallions
110g minced pancetta
55g diced hard salami
4g dried thyme
2 pinches of nutmeg
320g flour
2 beaten eggs
350ml whole milk
2.84L chicken stock

In a large bowl, combine crumbs, scallions, pancetta, salami, thyme and nutmeg. Stir in flour until mostly incorporated; add eggs and stir. Pour in 235ml milk; stir until incorporated and the mixture is very sticky. Add remaining milk and stir again until incorporated. (Mixture should be moist, malleable and less sticky than before. If you’re not satisfied, you can add up to 120ml more milk.) Scoop out heaping tablespoons of the mixture; form each into a rough ball and place on a plate as done. Cover with plastic and chill until ready to use. Place chicken broth in a pot set over medium-high heat; partially cover and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer; add the balls of crumb-pancetta mixuture. Without stirring, cook 8 minutes, until all balls are floating on the surface of the broth and are cooked through. Remove dumplings from the broth with a slotted spoon; distribute equally among soup bowls. Ladle broth into bowls and serve immediately.

Yield: makes 54 dumplings
Cooking time: 80 minutes (to make dumplings)
Vegetarian: no
Source: Cucina e Famiglia
Date prepared: 28 February 2015
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Bread (whole wheat baguette) – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Scallions – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Pancetta – Colameco’s, Lou’s Naturals (Swedesboro, NJ)
Salami – Gusto, Olli Salumeria Americana (Mechanicsville, VA)
Thyme – me!
Nutmeg – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Flour – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Eggs – Country Hen (Hubbardston, MA)
Milk – Marva Maid Dairy (Hyattsville, MD)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)

Comments:
In a major oversight on my part, I had never made dumplings––in a soup or otherwise––until this soup. On the other hand, I’ve made meatballs loads of times, so I knew dumplings wouldn’t be that different. Still, I guess I’m used to the meat-bread crumb ratio being reversed, to the point where I held my breath when I boiled these babies, hoping they wouldn’t fall apart.

But everything was fine! Perhaps I needn’t have worried, though boiling is definitely a different cooking medium than frying––and I’m used to the latter in the meatball/croquette/dumpling department.

All this anxiety aside, these were quite tasty dumplings. The pancetta and salami in particular do the heavy lifting flavor-wise, but the occasional nip of scallion adds a nice bite. What seasonings you use is actually up to you, for the most part. While the original recipe in Cucina e Famiglia calls for chives and parsley, Gianni Scappin notes that other herbs can be used in addition to or instead of those; he recommends sage and thyme. I used scallions because the Giant was fresh out of chives.

One thing that’s clear from my pictures is that I need bigger bowls, if I’m going to serve this dumpling soup to two people. My soup bowls don’t hold 13-14 dumplings plus a few cups of chicken broth. But this soup was definitely tasty––made tastier with a crisp pancetta garnish.

The dumplings’ flexibility with seasonings is also apparent in how you can serve this soup. For one thing, you don’t have to use plain old chicken broth. While I’d keep these dumplings to brothy soups, something with a bit more pep would be in order––such as a tomato broth, or anything with more vegetables. Intriguingly, Chef Scappin describes a unique use of the dumpling recipe: the mixture can be formed into a 3”-thick log and boiled in water (though I think stock would work better), then sliced and served in a meaty sauce, as if it were pasta. Which is definitely something I think I’ll try.

–––

Retro Curry

3 tbsp unsalted butter (plus 2 tbsp, if needed)
10oz New York strip steak, in 2×1/4” strips
kosher salt to taste
8oz 26-30ct shrimp, tails removed
1 tbsp curry powder
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
3 minced garlic cloves
2 small minced carrots
1 medium yellow onion, in 1” wedges
1” minced ginger
2 tbsp whole wheat flour
4 cups beef stock
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 small bay leaf
8oz russet potato, in 1” cubes
1 tbsp soy sauce

Melt 3 tbsp butter in a pot over medium-high heat; add beef and season with salt. Cook 6-8 minutes, until browned; transfer to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Add shrimp; cook 1-2 minutes, until pink, then transfer to another bowl with a slotted spoon. Add onion and carrots; sauté 3-4 minutes, until softened. Add garlic and ginger; sauté 1 minute, until fragrant. (If pot looks dry and vegetables are sticking, add remaining butter here, then let melt, stirring continuously.) Add curry, garam masala and flour; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Add stock, bay leaf, beef, potatoes and honey; cover and bring to a rolling boil. Remove lid; cook over medium heat at a hard simmer for 30 minutes, until potatoes and beef are tender. (Mixture will reduce and thicken.) Stir in shrimp and soy sauce; cook 1-2 minutes, until shrimp are done. Serves 2-3.

Sources:
Butter, steak, garlic, carrots, onion & potato – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Shrimp & ginger – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Curry & garam masala – Frontier Natural Products Co-op (Norway, IA)
Flour – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Honey – Nob Hill Orchard (George & Susan Behling; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Bay leaf – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Soy sauce – Kikkoman (Noda, Japan)

Comments:
Speaking of gravy, boy does this sauce really thicken into a rich one.

This recipe comes from Tasting Table, probably my second-favorite online source for recipes (after Saveur). They presented this recipe as a sort of Asian-fusion dish reminiscent of classic Japanese curries. And such curries are more stewlike (as here) than you might be used to with Indian or Thai curries.

This curry (why it’s called “retro” I don’t know) has a particularly good warmth of flavor––especially if you bite down on a bit of ginger––though it isn’t terrifically spicy. Which is sort of the point, from my admittedly brief experience in Tokyo. Curries are simple comfort food, much like the nikujaga I made before. And this curry in particular is thoroughly luscious comfort food. It’s an excellent gateway into the less-familiar territory of Japanese cuisine, signaling that there is indeed something else to it besides sushi and ramen. (Though ramen has its tasty merits.)

Now, the recipe did say to cook the mixture (sans potatoes) for one hour over medium heat, and then to add the potatoes, and cook the whole thing for another thirty minutes. Failing to see the point of all that, I didn’t do it. I just left off the pot’s lid and let the sauce concentrate into a gravy.

I should also note that, while I said this recipe serves 2-3 people, it actually serves two people comfortably without rice and three people happily with plenty of rice. So if you want to stretch this out and serve it to more people, cook a lot of rice. Or play up the Japanese theme and make some side dishes in addition to your curry.

Another point to note is that you can use whatever cut of beef you can find, except ground (because you want some good-size beef chunks here). I used a small cut of strip steak, but the recipe calls for chuck. Anything stew-cut will do.

This is definitely a dish with which to while away a cold winter evening. Savor it with some strong beer or a rich red wine. Then curl up for a long nap afterwards.

–––

Catherine Scorsese’s Pasta Sauce

84oz canned whole peeled tomatoes
36oz canned tomato sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1 minced medium yellow onion
6oz tomato paste
2 peeled carrots
3 peeled garlic cloves
1 peeled large potato, quartered
2 tbsp dried basil
salt & pepper to taste
cayenne to taste
1/4 cup dried bread crumbs
1/4 cup whole milk
16oz ground pork
6oz ground veal
1 beaten egg
1/4 cup grated parmesan

In a food processor, and in batches, purée tomatoes and sauce; set aside in a large bowl as done. Add oil to a large pot set over medium-high heat; add onion and cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add tomato mixture, tomato paste, garlic, carrots, potato, 1 1/2 tbsp basil, salt and cayenne. Cover and bring to a boil; partially cover and keep at a hard simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a small bowl, soak crumbs in milk until softened. In a medium bowl, combine crumb-milk mixture with pork, veal, egg, remaining basil, salt and cayenne; stir until the mixture is mostly uniform, then stir in 1/2 cup sauce. Add dollops of the meat mixture to the sauce, stirring occasionally. Partially cover the pot and simmer 1 hour over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Before serving, remove garlic cloves, carrots and potato chunks; use 3 cups (or so) of sauce for each pound of dried pasta. Makes 12 cups.

Sources:
Onion, tomato sauce & paste, carrots, garlic & potato – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Oil – Filippo Berio (Lucca, Italy)
Tomatoes – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Basil – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Cayenne – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Bread & veal – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Milk – Marva Maid (Hyattsville, MD)
Pork – Les Viandes du Breton (Québec, Canada)
Egg – Country Hen (Hubbardston, MA)
Parmesan – SarVecchio, Sartori (Plymouth, WI)

Comments:
Well, this is a very homey dish. As my husband put it, this sauce may not be a knockout punch for a special occasion (à la the ragù di cardinale or ragù di agnello), but it’s perfect for a family meal. That is, it’s comfort food. At the end of a long work week, when you’re tired and all you want, in order to relax, is some pasta and a bottle of wine, sitting down to this sauce is the best medicine.

Not that this sauce isn’t special. I came across it in the New York Times cooking section. In talking to film director Martin Scorsese, one of the NYT’s writers managed to wheedle his mother’s typical pasta sauce recipe out of him. For which we should be eternally grateful, because this is a tasty sauce. I imagine that this sauce is to the Scorsese family what classic meat sauce (or tuna sauce, for that matter) is to the Camosy family: the kind of thing we love to eat when we all get together.

The sauce has a number of loving touches, most of which are meant to help thicken up the sauce. Take the presence of potatoes, for instance. They’re not meant to make the sauce taste like potatoes. Their starch is meant to enrich the whole thing, making it all the more rib-sticking. Same goes for the milk and parmesan: despite their presence, this recipe doesn’t make a tomato-cream sauce. The dairy is just there to deepen the flavor of the meat. Another nice enhancement is the cayenne. It adds a whisper of heat at the back of your mouth with every bite, and heightens the sauce’s aroma just so.

(N.B.: the dollops of meat aren’t meant to be meatballs. So it’s okay if they disintegrate as they cook in the sauce. Everything that’s mixed with the meat is just meant to season and enhance it. At the same time, if the meat mixture remains clumpy, that’s fine too. The texture doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, or perfecty punctuated by meaty dumplings either.)

Also, I’d like to just put this out there: my god, that’s a lot of tomatoes. There’s a reason I left the lid off for nearly the entire duration of cooking. But boy, when the sauce thickens up––it’s the essence of tomatoes. So do not skimp when you’re buying ingredients for this recipe.

I did make a few changes to the recipe. I figured that would be okay, since family-style pasta sauces are by nature flexible. For instance, the original recipe features fresh herbs––namely, basil and parsley. I left out the parsley because my husband doesn’t like the stuff, and then I used up a jar of dried basil. The original recipe also uses a mix of ground pork, veal and beef, but this is definitely a situation in which you can use what you have on hand or what you can find. (Also, it’s kind of awkward buying six ounces each of three kinds of ground meat. I would have gone with all pork, but I happened to find a 6oz package of ground veal while out grocery shopping.) The final change was leaving out the called-for 2 cups of water. Given the sheer amount of tomato-based liquid in this soup, and how much I wanted to boil it all down into concentrated and acidic deliciousness, adding water seemed unnecessary.

Plus, you should get ready to put at least half (more likely two-thirds) of this sauce into the freezer. Unless you’re planning on serving at least six people when you make it, of course. But this recipe does make a lot of sauce. It’s worth mentioning too that you shouldn’t be quick to throw out the potatoes and carrots when you’re done cooking the sauce. Why? Because, with about a cup of the sauce, they make for a great lunch.

In any case, this is a perfect sauce for a relaxing dinner with family or friends. Just be generous with the red wine, and you’ll have a lovely evening.

Gooey, Chunky, Fancy…Comfort Food

Steak & Chèvre Salad

120ml olive oil
80ml balsamic vinegar
7ml Dijon mustard
410g sirloin steak
255g homemade croutons
200g chopped spinach
85g chopped watercress
290g chopped red onion
195g julienned carrots (8 small)
280g chèvre, crumbled

In a bowl, toss together oil, vinegar and mustard. Brush steak all over with 2 1/2 tbsp dressing. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat; add steak. Cook steak, flipping once, to desired doneness; remove to a cutting board to let rest 5 minutes. In a large bowl, toss together croutons, spinach, watercress, onion and carrots. Thinly slice steak against the grain; arrange on top of salad; sprinkle with chèvre and drizzle remaining dressing over all. Serve immediately.

Yield: serves 5
Cooking time: 100 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: ?
Date prepared: 24 January 2014
Rating: ***

Sources:
Oil & vinegar – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily; Modena, Italy)
Mustard – Maille (Dijon, Burgundy, France)
Sirloin – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Croutons – me! (with bread from Whole Foods)
Spinach – Lakeside Organic Gardens (Watsonville, CA)
Watercress – Mock’s Greenhouse (Berkeley Springs, WV)
Onion – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Carrots – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)
Chèvre – La Bonne Vie, Gourmet Foods International (Atlanta, GA)

Comments:
Rather by accident, it became Balsamic Vinegar Week around here. As in, this is far from the only recipe with balsamic that I made in the course of 48 hours. Our house reeked of it for awhile. But we ardently love the stuff so much that we didn’t care.

This is a fairly classic salad, and simple enough to make: cooked meat on a bed of greens. I only complicated things by making croutons, because the salad otherwise seemed a little bare. (Not that I’m complaining about good steak and goat cheese, mind you.) This salad would go significantly faster if you didn’t make croutons, but I like the herby, garlicky kick that I give them when paired with the sweet and sour vinaigrette and savory meat. And it goes without saying how delicious chèvre is when drizzled with balsamic. That alone is worth the price of admission here.

I scaled up the original recipe (though I don’t remember where I found it), which only served one person with three ounces of steak. The recipe left it up to the cook to decide what sort of greens to use. With steak and balsamic, you’ll want greens that are pretty hefty. Knowing my husband’s disdain for bitter greens, however, I went with spinach and watercress. (I wish I had the cress from G. Flores Produce at the UDC Farmers’ Market.) Arugula would also work, as would lacinato kale.

There isn’t much more to say about this salad except that it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. All it’s supposed to do is be a tasty salad, and it does so. The ingredients are strongly flavored, and they fit well together as a cohesive dish. That’s what you want from any meal, and, without any frills, that’s what you get.

–––

Gratin aux Pommes de Terre, Lardons, Gruyère & Poireaux

1.2kg peeled yukon gold potatoes, sliced 1/8”-thick (6 small-medium)
590ml heavy cream
kosher salt & pepper to taste
110g bacon (5 slices)
215g sliced leeks (3 medium)
225g shredded gruyère
3 tsp thyme leaves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
40g bread crumbs
20g grated parmesan
30ml melted unsalted butter

Position a rack in the center of the oven; preheat oven to 400ºF. Grease a 9×13” baking pan; set aside. Combine potatoes, cream, salt and pepper in a pot; simmer over medium heat for 8-12 minutes, partially covered and stirring occasionally, until potatoes are barely tender, then set aside. In a medium skillet, cover bacon until browned and fully cooked; set aside to cool, then discard all but 2 tbsp rendered fat. Reheat the rendered fat over medium-high heat; add leeks and sauté until tender, fragrant and lightly browned. Crumble bacon; set aside. Transfer half the potatoes to the prepared pan, spreading evenly; layer on leeks, bacon, gruyère, thyme and nutmeg. Top with remaining poatoes; pour over any liquid remaining in the pot. In a small bowl, combine crumbs, parmesan and butter; scatter the mixture over the potatoes. Bake gratin for 30 minutes, until bubbly, with a somewhat browned top and completely tender potatoes. Let sit 10 minutes, so liquid is fully absorbed and layers are cohesively set.

Yield: serves 6-8
Cooking time: 130 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: ?
Date prepared: 24 January 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Potatoes, cream, thyme & butter – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Bacon – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Leeks – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)
Gruyère – Boar’s Head Provision Co. (Sarasota, FL)
Nutmeg – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Bread crumbs – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Parmesan – SarVecchio, Sartori (Plymouth, WI)

Comments:
Straightforward and classic, this recipe makes a lovely gratin worthy of a main course. Of course, “straightforward” is something of a relative term here. Making even the simplest gratin is a long process. But there’s no step in this recipe that will be unfamiliar to experience home cooks. And it’s not like any of us are going to complain about having to fry bacon. (Though, if anything, this gratin could have used a bit more bacon. Because you could always use more bacon.)

Certainly, this recipe is easier than that warm potato salad from Dean & DeLuca. No going overboard on directions this time around. Just cream the potatoes, fry the bacon, sauté the leeks, grate the cheese, layer it all up, and bake it. Easy peasy. And while there is an art to making gratins (don’t forget, for instance, to let it stand a few minutes out of the oven so the layers fully cohere), making them is considerably less of a project than, say, their cousin lasagna.

Actually, creaming the potatoes is a smart step here. You could just as easily cook the potatoes in water, and only pour over the cream once you’re assembling the whole gratin. But creaming the potatoes more fully integrates the cream into the whole dish, since it gets infused with potato flavor. Moreover, creaming the potatoes also “starchifies” the cream, making it stickier so that the layers stick together better. And that makes it easier to slice and serve the gratin later (hence all the emphasis on cohesive layers).

The flavor of the dish is your typical rich gratin. The nutty, buttery gruyère complements the dense potatoes; the nutmeg and thyme give the whole thing a deeply savory aroma. I mentioned that the dish could use some more bacon. More would be nice, if only so that the bacon stands out a bit more, both on its own and to elevate the rest of the dish. Perhaps a slice or two more. On the other hand, because the bacon doesn’t come out swinging that strongly, vegetarians can feel comfortable omitting altogether. Then they can join in the fun of this delicious winter dish.

Like the steak and chèvre salad above, this dish succeeds with flying colors at doing exactly what it set out to do: be a rich and delicious gratin, sufficient to keep one warm on cold January nights. I don’t think it gets so cold in France that they need a dish this rich to stay warm, but we can thank its various cooks for creating such a wonderful thing.

–––

Balsamic Whiskey Steak

1 lb porterhouse steak, in 12 cubes
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp whiskey
1 tbsp honey
salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil

Toss together steak, vinegar, whiskey, honey and salt and pepper in a medium bowl; cover and chill at least 40 minutes. Heat oil in a skillet over high heat. Once smoking, add steak, with the marinade; cook 15 seconds. Reduce heat to medium; cook 2-3 minutes. Flip; cook another 1-2 minutes, depending on desired degree of doneness. Serve immediately. Serves 2.

Sources:
Porterhouse – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Vinegar & oil – Antica Italia (Modena, Italy; Partanna, Sicily)
Whiskey – Famous Grouse, Matthew Gloag & Son (Perth, Scotland, UK)
Honey – Nob Hill Orchard (George & Susan Behling; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)

Comments:
It’s when I make dishes like this that I wish I had a grill, and that it was grilling season. Because a steak dinner like this is perfect for the grill. But alas, it is January, and I live in a studio apartment with no balcony. Oh well. A sauté pan works just as well. The result is that this is a dish you can make all year long, not just during grill season.

Now, while this recipe makes for a tasty steak dinner, there’s no need to use a great cut of steak here. Big flavorful cuts don’t need marinades and pan sauces. They just need a grill or skillet. This recipe is, however, a great way to bring lesser cuts up a few notches. And that allows you to have an elegant supper for cheap. No complaints here.

The marinade is simple but perfect in its lack of complexity. The best part is that, once you add it to the skillet with the cubed steak, it turns into a wonderful pan sauce. Which is something that I think you should always do with marinades. Marinades generally are less effective than dry rubs at imparting their flavor to whatever meat you’re marinating, particularly because recipe directions frequently say to discard the whole thing. The best way to impart flavor and infuse the meat with the marinade is to cook them together. (Think of steeping tea.) That way the marinade metamorphoses into a sauce, and reduces thoroughly in the transformation, concentrating the flavor.

The result in this particular dish is a marinade that manages to simultaneously be both a pan sauce and something of a blackened crust on the steak. You want that ever-so-slightly crisp exterior––lots of caramelized flavor is packed there. And I should finally explain what that flavor is like. It’s sweet, of course, but also smoky (both from the whiskey and a hot pan), and with an equal punch of savoriness, plus a small hint of sourness. It’s lots of fun to have all but one of the major flavor types dance on your palate simultaneously. (The one that’s left out is bitterness. It isn’t missed.) And it’s all done with next to no effort––at least by my standards. Recipes that take only a few minutes feel a bit weird to someone like me, who’s used to vastly more complexity and many more steps to a completed dish. But sometimes simple is just fine.

–––

Fresh Tuna Sauce

For the Tuna:

24oz tuna, in 1” (or smaller) cubes

1 tbsp kosher salt

6 pinches of crushed red pepper

6” rosemary sprig, in 1” pieces

6 thyme sprigs

6 garlic cloves

olive oil

For the Sauce:

2 cups chopped onion

2 crushed garlic cloves

28oz crushed tomatoes

28oz tomato sauce

12oz tomato paste

salt & pepper to taste

fresh linguine

For the tuna: in a small skillet, heat enough oil to cover the bottom over medium heat; add garlic. Cook 4-5 minutes, flipping once or twice, until hot, fragrant and blistered (but not smoking); let cool slightly. In a large bowl, toss tuna with salt, crushed red pepper, rosemary, thyme and oil-garlic mixture. Add enough oil to barely submerge tuna. Cover and chill 24 hours, stirring every few hours, if you’d like. Remove tuna to a paper towel-lined plate, letting it drain; strain oil, discarding solids and reserving oil. For the sauce: place enough oil from the marinade into a large pot to cover the bottom in a thin layer. Set the pot over medium-high heat; once hot, add onions. Sauté until limp; add garlic and cook 1 minute. Add tuna; season with salt and pepper. Cook until mostly cooked through, stirring frequently to prevent scorching; add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce and paste, stirring thoroughly to melt the paste. Bring to a simmer over medium; simmer at least 1 hour (or up to 3 hours), partially covered, stirring often. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat; add linguine and cook unti al dente. Drain pasta and toss with sauce; serve immediately. (Freeze leftover sauce for another use.)

Sources:
Tuna – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Crushed red pepper – Spice Islands (Ankeny, IA)
Rosemary, thyme, onion, crushed tomatoes, tomato paste & sauce – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Garlic – Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (Leola, PA)
Linguine – me!

Comments:
As readers of this blog know, tuna sauce is a Camosy family classic. Canned tuna, canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, pasta––and serve. Utterly easy comfort food. It sometimes feels more like a stew than a pasta dish, and we Camosys have been known to occasionally just make the sauce and eat it with a spoon.

But every now and then, we wonder what this recipe would be like if we changed something. For instance, back in the summer of 2011, I made tuna sauce with fresh tomatoes––down to my own tomato paste. (Kind of like making your own mayonnaise, I don’t think you need go that far. Good to do once, just to see what it’s like, but not something you need to make consistently.) One thing my dad’s often wondered is what this dish would be like with fresh tuna. I decided to finally give it a try.

Well, first, I think the difference between fresh and canned tuna is overblown, at least as far as this recipe goes. While the canned tuna is ready to serve as is out of the can, it and the fresh tuna are going to end up in the same place once you’re done making this sauce. There’s no reason to be scared of using fresh fish in this recipe, even if your experience cooking them is limited. Three hours of high-temperature cooking is enough to kill anything you might be afraid of lurking in the tuna. (Heck, an hour will probably do it too.)

On the other hand, I did want to mimic one of the steps from the original sauce, one that I think goes a long way to making this sauce as deeply and thoroughly oceanic as possible. That is, draining the oil from the tuna cans and cooking the onions in that. This time around, I marinated the tuna in olive oil and a few delicious seasonings (such as whole garlic cloves sautéed to bring out their fragrance). And then I drained some of the oil from the marinade into the pot for the sauce. (What did I say about cooking meat in its marinade?)

After that, whatever differences there are between cooking with canned versus fresh tuna, those disappear. Cooking the sauce becomes just like always.

Now, this isn’t to say that this fresh tuna sauce turns out identical to the canned tuna sauce. Hardly. While these sauces are two branches of one tree, there are some distinctions.

One difference resulted from a preparatory step and, if you want, is easily changed in the future. That is, the fresh tuna sauce was chunkier than the original. The original tuna sauce is basically a uniformly-textured mixture of tuna and crushed tomatoes (interestingly, the uniformity isn’t detrimental to this dish’s deliciousness, as it is with so many puréed soups). The fresh tuna sauce yielded bigger chunks of the fish, making for more textural contrasts throughout. This came about because, before you marinate the tuna, you cut into one-inch cubes. And while the cubes break down somewhat in so much cooking, they still remain in decent-sized chunks when you serve the sauce. If you want smaller pieces, just cut the tuna as small as you want before you toss it with the marinade.

The fresh tuna also changes the flavor of the sauce from the original. The fresh tuna sauce feels and tastes lighter and fresher than the standard Camosy tuna sauce. That the sauce tastes fresher should come as no surprise. What did surprise me was that the sauce had a considerably more acidic edge than I’m used to. This is far from a bad thing. I suppose the fresh tuna brought out the tomatoes more. That, or three hours of cooking down really helped concentrate the flavor. It’s probably some of both.

This version of classic tuna sauce definitely feels like it’s up a few notches in the refinement department, and it is a wonderful variation on a family standard. Still, the family standard is the comfort food of my life, so it’s not like this fresh version will be the only version of tuna sauce I make from this day forward. (For one thing, canned tuna is so much cheaper than fresh.) But whenever you feel like something a little different, this would be simply lovely.

–––

Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Balsamic Swirl

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped & discarded
1 cup balsamic vinegar

Beat yolks with 1/2 cup sugar in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment until ribbony and doubled in volume. Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine cream, milk, remaining sugar and vanilla bean; scald over medium heat. (That is, keeping the saucepan uncovered, heat the mixture to the point where it just begins to steam, and bubbles form where the mixture meets the sides of the saucepan.) With the mixer running on low speed, slowly add hot milk mixture to yolk mixture in a steady stream to temper. Transfer this mixture to the saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring and dragging the bottom continuously with a heatproof rubber scraper. (This is to prevent scorching and curdling. Don’t use a whisk.) Scald the mixture again; remove from heat. Immediately transfer to a cold bowl set in an ice bath to cool rapidly; spin bowl several times in the ice bath, holding the spatula in the mixture without moving it (like a rudder), until temperature significantly drops. Transfer to an airtight container; chill overnight.

In a small skillet, reduce balsamic vinegar at a gentle simmer by exactly half; let cool completely. Remove milk-egg mixture from the fridge; transfer to the bowl of an ice cream maker. Churn 15-20 minutes in the ice cream maker; drizzle in balsamic reduction in the last turn of the blades or so, shutting off the machine before the balsamic loses its swirl. Transfer to an airtight container; freeze at least 5 hours. Makes 1 quart.

Sources:
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)
Brown sugar – Domino Foods (Yonkers, NY)
Milk & cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Vinegar – Antica Italia (Modena, Italy)
Vanilla bean – Nielsen-Massey (Waukegan, IL)

Comments:
This ice cream is a very refined, grown-up, sophisticated, and decadent bit of indulgence. It’s also fairly unique among the ice creams I’ve made (as well as the ice cream recipes I have but haven’t made yet), just in terms of flavor.

This recipe comes from the eponymous cookbook for the New York restaurant Prune. Run by one Gabrielle Hamilton. Yep, that Prune. Readers of this blog will know that I’m a big fan of Chef Hamilton, even though I haven’t even been to New York to visit her restaurant. (Someday…) I just loved her memoir, Blood, Bones and Butter. Her cookbook is a necessary companion to the memoir, because you get to see the cooking philosophy she espouses in the latter fully demonstrated in the former. Nose-to-tail locavorism and seasonality is just the tip of the iceberg. Based on this cookbook, Chef Hamilton manages to make food that is at once the perfect, reinvigorating comfort food of your dreams as well as the most adventurous dish you’ve ever eaten. (A special mention is warranted for the chapters on “Garbage”––how to use food scraps––and “The Family Meal,” when the restaurant staff eats.) Some of the recipes will always be out of my reach (such as those featuring some organ meats), but I can always make her ice cream. And based on the success I had with it, I’ll be poking around the book for other great dishes to make.

First and foremost, this is a great ice cream. I aced the texture on this one, with the perfect balance of creaminess and airiness. (I didn’t even run the machine the full 20 minutes I usually go for that kind of perfection. The ice cream was threatening to overflow the bowl at around the 17-minute mark.)

And then there’s the taste. It’s so very light and fruity, with almost a citrusy edge. (No clue where that came from. There’s not a trace of orange, lemon or lime in sight.) The ice cream is almost like a sorbet from all of that––a remarkable achievement, given the creamy base. My husband isn’t fan of fruity ice creams, but he gobbled down this one with relish. Plus, the balsamic reduction and brown sugar base are so fully integrated that it’s hard to tell which one is the swirl, where one ends and the other begins.

I did alter a few steps from the original recipe, or at least improvise on a few. Note where you return the ice cream base to the saucepan to scald again. The original recipe says to bring the mixture to 180ºF, which at first glance is well-nigh impossible to do when you lack a thermometer. But I decided to look up what happens to milk and cream at that temperature. Once I learned that I was basically scalding them again, I knew I had enough information to basically wing it from there. Do be sure to move quickly once the milk and cream (and the milk, cream and eggs) are scalded, as well as to stir continuously while they scald, or you’ll have a thick film of scorched dairy on your saucepan.

The other step I altered––actually, skipped––was once you take the ice cream base out of the fridge to churn. The recipe says to buzz it with an immersion blender. You, my dear readers, know my feelings about those contraptions. Nothing like getting four stitches in your finger from using one to convince you that your food processor is just fine, thanks. Or, in this case, that you don’t need to blend it at all. (When you reach this stage, the base should have the consistency of a very loose pudding.) While Chef Hamilton would probably just tell me to get over myself, suck it up and use the damn immersion blender, I respectfully disagree and say that it isn’t needed. This ice cream is a knockout without the immersion blender.

As much as I like the ice cream with the balsamic swirl (be ready for a kitchen––indeed, a house––that reeks of the stuff for several hours), it’d be worth it to try the brown sugar base on its own. For one thing, brown sugar is my husband’s favorite pantry ingredient of all time. (He has a point.) Plus, tasting the base set off my cook’s instinct for delicious things. But we never mind getting a bit fancier now, do we? Throw in that balsamic reduction.

(Speaking of fancy, N.B.: there’s no need to use a fancy aged balsamic in this recipe. Chef Hamilton specifically notes in the book that her sous-chefs should use the cheap jugged stuff, not the expensive, DOCG condimento tradizionale.)

The rich combination of deeply sweet brown sugar and darkly sour balsamic makes for an awesome dessert. I hope the rest of the recipes in the Prune cookbook are just as successful, but it’s entirely worth it for the perfect ice cream too.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

Warm Potato Salad with Garlic Sausage & Emmenthal

2.1kg russet potatoes, peeled (9 whole)
470ml chicken stock
155ml white wine
20ml Dijon mustard
40ml white wine vinegar
155ml olive oil
kosher salt & pepper
250g saucisson à l’ail, in one piece
15g chopped tarragon leaves
35g minced scallions
10g minced parsley leaves
220g cubed emmenthal

Steam potatoes in salted water for 30 minutes, until tender; drain, reserving water. Meanwhile, in a 2qt saucepan, boil down stock and wine until reduced to a scant 1/2 cup. For the dressing: place mustard in a small bowl, then whisk in vinegar, followed by oil, blending until smooth. Place emmenthal in a food processor; process until pieces are about the size of sesame seeds. Slice potatoes 1/4”-thick; place in a single layer (or in slightly overlapping layers if necessary) in a roasting pan. Drizzle with stock-wine reduction; season with salt and pepper, then let stand 5 minutes to absorb the reduction. Meanwhile, simmer saucisson in the reserve potato cooking water; remove when just warmed through. Slice saucisson 1/4”-thick; intersperse slices with the potatoes. Sprinkle the potatoes and saucisson with tarragon, scallions, parsley and emmethal. Re-whisk the dressing together, if it has separated; drizzle dressing evenly over potatoes and sausage. Serve warm.

Yield: Serves 6-8
Cooking time: 120 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook
Date prepared: 3 January 2015
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Potatoes, tarragon, scallions & parsley – Safeway (4203 Davenport Street NW)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Wine – Chardonnay, IGP, Louis Latour (Ardèche, France)
Mustard – Maille (Dijon, Burgundy, France)
Vinegar – Aceto di Vino da Pinot Grigio, Oltrepò Pavese DOC, Monini (Carbonara Scrivia, Italy)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Saucisson à l’ail – Les Trois Petits Cochons (Brooklyn, NY)
Emmenthal – Calvert Woodley (4339 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
When my husband saw this dish in its full glory in the baking pan, he questioned whether “salad” was the proper term for it. He then added that, if this dish does indeed count as a salad, I should make more salads like it. (And skip the rabbit food.) Because nothing says “salad” like tossing together meat, potatoes and cheese, right?

To be fair, a salad can basically be a combination of any ingredients. (Dictionary.com helpfully begins its definition of a salad with, “Any of various dishes consisting of foods…” Thanks for clearing that up!) And it’s not like salad ingredients need to be jumbled together. That’s why the French invented salades composes. Salads don’t even need to be served cold. (Exhibit A: the classic French salade du chèvre chaud. Exhibit B: your standard German potato salad.) A salad, therefore, can be anything you like—as long as you don’t add so much dressing that your salad turns into a soup.

I think Dean & DeLuca went a bit overboard with the recipe. Not that the ingredients don’t work well together, but there are too many instructions, in my opinion. I wasn’t quite sure what the chicken stock-wine reduction added after the potatoes were already cooked. Why not cook the potatoes in chicken stock and wine? That would save you a few steps (and a few dishes), and—in my opinion—impart more flavor to the whole thing. I also wasn’t sure what warming the sausage in the potato cooking water did. True, the salad is supposed to be warm, but a flash job under the broiler is going to accomplish that just as well. There’s no need to “starchify” the rich flavor of a perfectly good garlic sausage. (If you followed my “cook the potatoes in stock and wine” suggestion, you could also warm the sausage in that, if you insist on doing so.) It’s for these reasons that the salad doesn’t rate much higher. Effort to payoff is a bit out of whack, though the end result is quite tasty.

Why? Because I have absolutely nothing bad to say about a dish consisting of meat, potatoes and cheese, with some herbs thrown on top for a vague gesture at nutritional value. Especially when the combination has such amazing flavor. The garlicky, dense butteriness of the three main ingredients are contrasted nicely with the bracing tartness of the dressing. The salad and dressing set each other off perfectly—exactly as they’re supposed to. (It’s also a very mustardy dressing, given the proportions.) This is a dish to fill you up on a chilly winter day, either for lunch or dinner. It succeeds with flying colors.

A few more notes. I used a few more potatoes than called for, by about two-thirds of a pound (i.e., not much to worry about). Despite the long list of instructions, I think this recipe could be pretty flexible with some tweaking. You can adjust the proportion of potatoes to sausage, or whatever, as you see fit. You can also swap out the scallions for chives (which is what the original recipe calls for, and which I couldn’t find for some reason). I also used a blessedly unoaky chardonnay—and I suggest that you do too. Somehow the wine I cooked with managed to have both an acidic, mineral flavor and a creamy mouthfeel. Both of which work here: the acid cuts the deep savor of the main ingredients; the creaminess complements it.

Once you get rid of the superfluous instructions, I think this recipe becomes pretty straightforward. Adventurous people may want to try roasting the potatoes and seeing what happens. (I think the caramelization that happens in roasting would work wonders here.) Or you could keep it simple, as I’ve done here. It’s tasty comfort food, so you don’t need to over-complicate things at all.

–––

U.S. Senate Bean Soup

450g dried mixed beans
1.4L water
2-3 tsp dried mixed herbs
dried bay leaf
540g cured ham, in 2 large pieces
350g peeled russet potatoes (3 whole)
60ml whole milk
190g chopped celery (7 ribs)
440g chopped onion (1 large)
7g minced garlic (2 cloves)
1 tsp salt

Thoroughly rinse the beans; transfer to a pot and fill with enough water to cover by 2”. Cover pot and bring to a boil over high heat; once boiling, turn off heat and let cool until easy to handle. Transfer beans with enough cooking water to cover them to a large bowl; cover and let the beans soak overnight. Drain and rinse beans, then transfer to a large pot with the water. Add the mixed herbs, bay leaf and ham; cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; cook 1 hour. Meanwhile, quarter the potatoes; steam until tender. Drain potatoes; mash them with a fork, then stir in milk until mixture is fluffy. To the pot, add celery, onion, garlic and salt; add potato mixture. (The potatoes should disintegrate into the soup, thickening it.) Cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally; remove ham and bay leaf. Discard the bay leaf; dice the ham and return to the soup. Stir and remove from heat; for best flavor, refrigerate overnight and reheat the next day.

Yield: 2.6L
Cooking time: 160 minutes (including boiling the beans beforehand)
Vegetarian: no
Source: Purely American: Great Finds in Regional American Foods
Date prepared: 3 January 2015
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Beans, mixed herbs & bay leaf – Purely American (Athens, OH)
Ham – Cure 81, Hormel (Austin, MN)
Potatoes & onion – Safeway (4302 Davenport Street NW)
Milk – Lucerne Foods (Pleasanton, CA)
Celery – Earthbound Farm (San Juan Bautista, CA)
Garlic – Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (Leola, PA)

Comments:
Yes, the U.S. Senate has a bean soup. Quite a famous one, actually. Rather legendary, in fact. Using the same basic recipe, this bean soup has been served at the Senate cafeteria every day for at least a century. Its origin is a bit hazy, since two senators are credited with its inclusion on the menu: Senator Fred Thomas Dubois of Idaho (served 1901-7), and Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota (served 1895-1923). (I’m trying to imagine a name that could possibly be any more Minnesotan. Olaf Olafsson, perhaps?)

You can see why it’s stayed on the menu. After trying my version of it, I can easily imagine that it’s gotten many a staffer through a late-night session. Because this soup is so rich. It’s definitely a satisfying dinner in this season.

Why did I make this? Well, the U.S. Senate Bean Soup mix—from Purely American—was a gift from my husband, a reporter who covers Congress. It’s rare when my interest in cooking and his profession intersect in such a way. (It’s even rarer for my cooking and my lawyering to intersect.) Once I read the recipe attached to the mix, I knew it was going to be a tasty soup.

I was not wrong. For one thing, there’s the ham. There is your source of flavor, as well as a fair amount of heartiness. Now, the original, official recipe calls for two ham hocks: as instructed in my version, you cook the soup, take out the meat and chop it, then return it to the soup. If you’re using ham hocks (which would be nice, and which I couldn’t find), obviously make sure to not return the bones to the soup when you cut up the meat. But in the name of awesomely good food, cook the soup with the bones in.

The other source of immense richness is the potatoes. As if the beans didn’t make this starchy enough. Adding essentially mashed potatoes has an interesting effect on the soup: the potatoes basically disintegrate, radically thickening the soup to the point where little broth is left. (Lesser recipes might use cornstarch or flour to achieve the same effect. And while a roux has its place in gumbo, that takes time. This special potato effect was practically instantaneous.)

The only thing I can’t really explain is the seasonings, since they just came mixed together in a little packet accompanying the beans. The only thing I know for sure is in there is onion powder. So I suppose you can just use what dried herbs and other seasonings you like. (Sage would be a good place to start. Probably some thyme too.) Just be fairly generous. This isn’t a soup in which you should skimp on anything.

My husband, thanks to his job, recently visited the Senate cafeteria for lunch, where he sampled the real Senate bean soup. I was anxious to find out how it compared. His verdict was that mine was better. And no, he’s not just saying this to ensure domestic tranquility, though he does have some background in diplomacy. He noted that I used more ham (always a plus in his book), and that mine was more strongly seasoned (always a plus in my book). Both were rich, though. That’s as it should be. With so much winter ahead of us, I suggest you make this soup.

–––

Brava Soup (Version 2)

For the Osso Buco Mix:
14g grated lemon zest (1 lemon)
1 tsp dried crumbled sage
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
11g crushed garlic (3 cloves)
70g drained green olives

For the Soup:
215g cured Spanish chorizo, thinly sliced
290g diced onion (1 medium)
6g minced garlic (1 clove)
130g diced celery (4 ribs)
270g diced carrots (7 small-medium)
5g minced serranos (2 small)
375ml red wine
55g chopped basil leaves (1 bunch)
440ml crushed tomatoes
4 tsp pimentòn
1.9L chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste
450g dried fusilli
30ml lemon juice (1 lemon)

For the osso buco mix: purée all ingredients in a food processor. For the soup: set a pot over medium-high heat. Once hot, add chorizo; add 2 minutes to let it render its fat. (It will get a bit smoky.) Add onion; sauté 3 minutes, until translucent. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add celery and carrots; sauté 1-2 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add serranos; cook 1 minute, until fragrant. Add 145ml wine; simmer 5 minutes, until at least half the liquid is evaporated. Add osso buco mix, stirring well; add basil, stirring 1 minute to wilt. Stir in crushed tomatoes and pimentòn; add stock and remaining wine. Cover and bring mixture to a boil over high heat; add fusilli, cooking about 10 minutes, until al dente. Add lemon juice; season with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Yield: 4L
Cooking time: 110 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: me!
Date prepared: 10 January 2015
Rating: ****

Sources:
Lemon, onion & carrots – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Sage, rosemary & thyme – me!
Garlic – Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (Leola, PA)
Olives – Reese (Bloomfield, NJ)
Chorizo – Embutidos Palacios (La Rioja, Spain)
Celery – Earthbound Farm (San Juan Bautista, CA)
Serranos – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Wine – Chianti Classico DOCG, Rocca della Macìe, Famiglia Zingarelli (Tuscany, Italy)
Basil – Shenandoah Growers (Harrisonburg, VA)
Tomatoes – Furmano’s (Northumberland, PA)
Pimentòn – Safinter, Valgosa (Barcelona, Spain)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Fusilli – De Cecco (Fara San Martino, Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy)

Comments:
Well, I said I was going to try making this soup with pasta. It ended up like more of a stew than a soup, but that’s okay. The official taxonomy doesn’t matter if it tastes good, right?

Why did this end up more like a stew (or, I suppose, a hot pasta salad)? Because I fell into the classic trap of noodle soups: not serving it immediately. This dish was considerably soupier when I first finished it. But I walked away for 10-15 minutes, so that the soup would cool off enough to put it in Tupperware. When I came back, the fusilli had soaked up pretty much all of the liquid. The lesson here is that if you want more of a soup than a glorified pasta salad—and, oh, what a pasta salad!—serve this immediately. If you had to, though, you could also cook the pasta separately as needed, then drain it thoroughly (like, sticky-dry) before transferring it to the soup pot.

Ultimately, I didn’t mind too much that the fusilli were rather past al dente. Oh well. The soup/stew/whatever is still superbly flavorful, and your teeth are going to have enough work to do with the chorizo. Version 2 is perhaps not quite as spicy as Version 1—at least when I tasted this in the pot—since I think having more liquid diffused the heat some. (I couldn’t quite tell once the fusilli had absorbed the broth. Then again, I added considerably more chorizo.) Speaking of liquid, I did add considerably more wine, if only just to have more liquid to cook the fusilli.

As readers of this blog can tell, I did make several changes to the recipe between Versions 1 and 2. My parents pointed out that, while the soup sounded lovely, it also sounded like a lot of work, thanks to two uses of the food processor, plus a good load of chopping. So I streamlined a few steps—notably, you no longer make the brava sauce separately. Which is totally fine. Version 2 also saves you the step of dicing potatoes, for what it’s worth. So hopefully this version is a bit easier to make.

I also swapped out the kale for basil, since my husband isn’t a fan of bitter greens. You can experiment with your own seasonings and herbs. Fresh oregano could be fun. In addition, I doubled the amount of chorizo I added to the soup, since my husband loves the stuff. Do be careful when you saute the chorizo, however. With or without a dab of oil in the pot, the chorizo gets rather smoky. It gets better once you add the onions and they start sweating. But still, turn on your vent fan or open a window.

The result is still a fantastically in-your-face soup. Which is just as it should be. Certainly, most cooks and diners are more accepting of titanically-flavored stews, but I don’t think there’s a reason why soups have to remain stew’s more delicate cousins. A bowl of hot soup is what’s going to get you through the winter, after all. You might as well make one with some big flavors. And while this version of my Brava Soup is a bit different in structure, it matches Version 1 in taste. And if you manage to serve it immediately, you’ll actually have a soup. But it’s hearty either way, and it makes the winter go by.

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Shrimp Mozambique

3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 lb 26-30 count shrimp, peeled & deveined
kosher salt & pepper
1 small diced yellow onion
2 minced garlic cloves
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp dried oregano
6oz lager
1/4 cup hot sauce
lemon wedges

Melt 1 1/2 tbsp butter in a 12” skillet over medium-high heat; season shrimp with salt and pepper. Add shrimp to skillet; cook 2 minutes, turning once, until just pink. Transfer shrimp to a bowl; set aside. Melt remaining butter in the skillet; add onions, cooking 3-4 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, until fragrant. Stir in turmeric, paprika, coriander, cumin and oregano; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly, until fragrant. Add beer and bring mixture to a boil; cook 5-6 minutes, until reduced by half. Stir in hot sauce; cook 2-3 minutes, until sauce is rather thick. Return shrimp to skillet; cook 2 minutes, until cooked through. Serve with lemon wedges. Serves 2.

Sources:
Butter, coriander & cumin – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Shrimp – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Onion & lemon – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Garlic – Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (Leola, PA)
Turmeric – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Paprika – Szeged, SpiceCo (Avenel, NJ)
Oregano – me!
Lager – Red Stripe, City Brewing Co. (Latrobe, PA)
Hot sauce – Texas Pete (Winston-Salem, NC)

Comments:
You eat a shrimp dish like this, and you long for summer. These sautéed shrimp are so unbelievably tropical, you shouldn’t look out your window right now if you make them. Take a bite, be happy, and ignore the snow falling outside.

Despite the name, this dish originated in Portugal. The Portuguese named the dish for their former colony. But as you well know, I tend not to care about the name or origin of a dish, as long as it tastes good.

And boy, does this shrimp dish taste good. It’s intoxicatingly fragrant, for a start. The shrimp are well-spiced with a good lip tingle and pleasant burn, but you can’t stop eating them like popcorn. The dish also has the advantage of coming together about as fast as you can chop an onion and some garlic. And it cooks quickly, if you keep the heat high enough. (You’re a cook: fear not the heat, and fire is your friend. Don’t take that advice too far, though.)

Actually, one thing that caught my attention was cooking down the beer. It made me wonder what a beer reduction on its own—i.e., without garlic stirred in—would taste like. (Wine reductions are so pedestrian these days. *sarcasm*) Could be worth a try. Also, this dish would be worth trying with different styles of lagers, just to see how the character of the dish is altered. I went with Jamaican-style because it seemed fitting next to such a warm-weather dish. But there are a lot of lagers out there, and this dish became such an instant favorite that I’ll definitely make it again and again.

Another note in the flavor department: the lemon isn’t there just as a garnish, in my opinion. Its tang adds some deeper zestiness to the heat. Like the Brava Soup, this is a dish that does not back down. Its in-your-face quality, however, will change a bit depending on what hot sauce you use. Saveur, where I found this recipe, recommends Frank’s Red Hot; one reviewer recommended Tabasco; another suggested Sriracha. Texas Pete worked very well for us. And which hot sauce you use is, obviously, up to you, though I’d stay away from sweeter ones. (As tasty as, say, Rocklands BBQ’s “Heartbreaking Dawns” sauce is, thanks to the mango and habanero, I can’t endorse it in this context. The sweetness would just clash too much.) You can also swap out the turmeric and paprika for the more traditional annatto. I have no room in my spice rack for any more jars (particularly for seasonings I don’t use much of), so I went with a simple substitution.

My husband and I just ate these shrimp unadorned, no silverware needed. (And I was licking off the shrimp tails to get all the sauce. All the sauce!) And that’s a perfectly fine way to serve this dish—particularly if you use large shrimp. That would make an awesome appetizer for a dinner party or reception. Saveur suggests serving the shrimp over rice, or even French fries. One reviewer had tossed their shrimp with pasta. My husband thought that, with a few tweaks to the recipe, these shrimp could be grilled and the sauce basted on. The smokiness of the grill could be a nice touch. Don’t forget to wash it all down with a goodly amount of beer, though that goes without saying.

If you want to go for full-on, elegant decadence, however, I suggest serving these shrimp over a classic, no-frills risotto. The shrimp will bring the frills (and the thrills), the risotto will bring the richness and depth. And instead of beer, pop open a bottle of bubbly. Then this dish becomes date night.

However you serve this dish, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to love it. We certainly did.

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Stuffed Shells

For the Sauce:
28oz crushed tomatoes
28oz tomato sauce
6oz tomato paste
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
2 diced onions
3 large crushed garlic cloves
1 lb uncased & crumbled Italian sausage

For the Shells & Filling:
36 dried jumbo pasta shells
1.5 lb ricotta, drained until dry
16oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed & drained until dry
3 beaten eggs
juice of 1 lemon
nutmeg to taste
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup grated parmesan

For the sauce: set a pot over medium-high heat. Once hot, add sausage; cook until browned. Add onions; sauté 3-4 minutes, until softened. Add garlic; sauté 1-2 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce and paste, oregano, basil, salt and pepper. Keep at a hard simmer for at least 1 hour, partially covered, to let the sauce reduce slightly. (The sauce is very bubbly and splashy, so do keep a lid mostly on it.) For the shells: cook shells in boiling salted water until just barely al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water; place in a single layer on wax paper. For the filling: preheat oven to 375ºF, and oil a 9×13” baking pan. In a large bowl, combine ricotta, spinach, eggs, lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, pepper and parmesan. (Add more parmesan if needed to make the filling fairly stiff.) Stuff the cooked pasta shells with equal amounts of the filling. Spread a thin layer of sauce over the bottom of the baking pan. Arrange stuffed shells tightly in a single layer. (Don’t worry about even or straight columns and rows.) Pour enough sauce to cover the shells over all. (There will be leftover sauce.) Bake 20-30 minutes, until done. Serve, garnished with more parmesan, if you’d like. Serves 4-6.

Sources:
Crushed tomatoes, onions, spinach & lemon – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Tomato sauce – Tuttorosso (Elwood, IN)
Tomato paste – Contadina (San Francisco, CA)
Oregano – me!
Basil – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Garlic – Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative (Leola, PA)
Sausage – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Ricotta – Maplebrook Farm (Bennington, VT)
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)
Nutmeg – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Parmesan – SarVecchio, Sartori (Plymouth, WI)
Shells – San Giorgio, New World Pasta (Allentown, PA)

Comments:
I haven’t had this dish in quite some time—several years, in fact—so I’d forgotten how much of a project it is. And it is project cooking at its finest (except for Julia Child’s cassoulet, which can take several days). But all the effort is entirely worth it. Trust me.

While you can occasionally find stuffed shells on the menus of Italian restaurants here and there, I consider this dish a Camosy family classic. I remember helping my mom stuff the filling into the cooked shells when I was a kid. And speaking of the filling, this recipe is the Camosy standard spinach-ricotta mix for, in addition to shells, lasagna and ravioli. Actually, you can sorta think of stuffed shells as something of a ravioli alternative. They’re both stuffed. (Though I do wonder if the Camosy recipe for meat filling for ravioli would work in shells. Yes, we make meat ravioli.) Stuffed shells may, in fact, be slightly easier than ravioli, but some assembly is required for both.

The classic spinach-ricotta filling does boast a few surprises. The eggs and parmesan are there to help hold the filling together (à la meatballs), so that’s no surprise. Neither is the lemon juice. The real eyebrow-raiser is the nutmeg. It adds a unique aroma to the filling, once it gets cooked in the shells, providing more depth and richness. You’d miss it if it weren’t there. (Though, if you’re using freshly grated stuff like I do, go light. Because freshly grated nutmeg is immensely strong.)

One big technical note: how to drain ricotta. I initially attempted to drain the ricotta by lining a colander with a few layers of cheesecloth and then letting the ricotta slowly drain out. That was taking too long, because the bowl of my colander is too flat to really get rid of water unless you’re moving the colander around (like you’re washing fruit). So I went with the method that works every time: pressing the water out of small handfuls of ricotta, using nothing but paper towels while flattening the ricotta into a pancake by hand. It takes time, but it’s tried and true. You’ll use a lot of paper towels, but I’d rather do that than have too wet of a filling. (Not much water evaporates from it, since the shells are covered in wet sauce. Best to have a dry filling to begin with.) How do you know when the ricotta is dry enough? You’ve done enough when you set the ricotta “pancake” on some dry paper towel, and the ricotta pretty much doesn’t stick.

It’s actually the draining of the ricotta that, I think, really turns this dish into a project. Making the sauce and actually cooking the shells is pretty straightforward. (You don’t have to worry about the shells being perfectly al dente when you drain them. They will finish cooking in the oven. They fundamentally need to be flexible enough to stuff the filling into them.) Mixing the filling is no biggie either. Actually stuffing the shells can take time, so having a helper at that stage is nice, since it’s more friendly with two (as Winnie the Pooh would say). But then you slide the pan of shells into the oven, and you get take a break before a perfectly lovely meal.

Speaking of the sauce, I used a sort of “pizza sauce” here. It’s a basic sauce recipe with some sausage added—a concoction Mom came up with when she started experimenting with making her own pizza. It obviously works on pasta too, and I’ve served it atop polenta. I chose this sauce for the shells because my husband likes meat sauces, and I wanted a simple one so that the filling could shine, rather than be buried. (Interestingly, my family will happily dine on meat ravioli served with meat sauce. It’s the sort of thing that causes meatovers.) Other tomato sauces will work here too, preferably ones that aren’t too chunky, such as a classic marinara. I basically smothered my shells in sauce, but you can artfully dab your sauce over your shells if you want them to be more visible.

The result of this project is an eminently tasty, and very rustic, dish. I think it looks a bit less elegant than, say, ravioli, but classic pasta dishes tossed in sauce are meant to be the diametric opposite to the refined composition of, say, a salade niçoise. Besides, it’s fun to dig into a big pan of stuffed shells and scoop up the stuffed tasties with lots of sauce. That’s what comfort food is about. And it’s amazing when project cooking and comfort food intersect. It’s probably the height of deliciousness.

New Year, New Soup, New Vegetable

Chestnut Soup

590g chestnuts in the shell
310g halved & sliced leeks (2 large)
90ml butter
235ml white wine
745g cubed acorn squash (2 small)
1.3L vegetable stock
115ml whole milk
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400ºF; with a paring knife, make an X on the flat side of each chestnut. Lay chestnuts, X-side up, in a single layer on an ungreased baking sheet. Roast 15 minutes, until fragrant; peel off shells and inner skins. (If peeling the chestnuts is troublesome, or some cool off too much to be easy to peel, put them in a bowl, rinse with water, and microwave for 1 minute.) Melt butter in a soup pot over medium heat; add leeks and sauté 4 minutes. Add wine; simmer 3 minutes. Add squash, chestnuts and stock. Cover pot and increase heat to high to quickly bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat to medium (or low-medium), partially cover pot and simmer 20 minutes, until squash is tender. Stir in milk; let soup cool slightly. Purée until smooth; season with salt and pepper. Serve hot.

Yield: 2.6L
Cooking time: 180 minutes
Vegetarian: yes
Source: Sacred Feasts
Date prepared: 27 December 2014
Rating: ***

Sources:
Chestnuts & squash – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Leeks – Cal-Organic (Bakersfield, CA)
Butter – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Wine (sauvignon blanc) – Kenwood (Sonoma County, CA)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Milk – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
Every now and then, I decide to try a new ingredient, usually a certain vegetable that I’ve seen frequently but never cooked with. This season that ingredient is chestnuts. And no, I wasn’t inspired by the Christmas carol. I was more inspired by a weird confluence of two facts: chestnuts’ current ubiquity, and then seeing no one buy those two-pound bags of them at the grocery store. Because, let’s face it, would you know how to prepare a chestnut if you had one?

I certainly didn’t know before I started. I didn’t really know once I’d started either. I had a few notes, but I found myself looking at YouTube videos about how to peel chestnuts while I was making this soup. (Hence the somewhat long prep time. If you know what you’re doing, I doubt this soup takes three hours.) The instructions you see here reflect my newly-acquired wisdom on roasting and peeling chestnuts, not what I did in making this soup, which involved considerably more poking of my fingers with a paring knife than I expected in order to get the shells off.

(I do recommend having more than one pound of chestnuts on hand when you make this soup, particularly if you’re new to chestnuts like me. This is because a few of them will be recalcitrant enough when you peel them that you’ll be left with too much “inner shell” to use them.)

These travails aside, this soup is actually a gentle way to introduce oneself to what chestnuts can do. I’ve been curious about chestnuts since I went to Paris and saw chestnut-flavored everything in patisseries. Because crème de marron (or crème de châtaigne) was probably one of the most popular flavors of pastries that I saw, behind chocolate and ahead of coffee. This soup shows you the savory side of chestnuts. I’ve yet to really experiment with what they’re capable of in desserts. (I didn’t eat chestnut-flavored pastries in France because I was too busy sampling all the unbelievably delicious chocolate ones.)

The problem with prep taking so long here is that I was too tired to take the extra step of preparing the garnish. Brother Victor suggests setting aside some of the peeled chestnuts to be sautéed and crumbled. I definitely thought this was a good idea—before I’d spent over two hours roasting and peeling all the chestnuts, and then peeling and dicing the squash (which takes a long time in its own right). After that, I wasn’t up to do so, since I had another soup to make afterwards.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed this soup. It feels mild and light on the tongue, but the flavor is rich. Probably thanks to all that butter. The squash brings a very light overtone of sweetness, while the chestnuts really provide the depth, density and—dare I say—nuttiness to the taste. This soup almost made me a fan of purees again. (As in, the uniform texture didn’t bug me as much as it usually does.) But the soup did make me a fan of chestnuts, not least because occasionally I’d run into a remarkably tender piece of chestnut that escaped the food processor blade. There’s something luxurious about them, and I must find more recipes for them.

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Brava Soup

For the Brava Sauce:
440ml crushed tomatoes
60ml olive oil
30ml red wine
4 tsp pimentòn
1 tsp superfine sugar
2 seeded & minced serranos

For the Osso Buco Mix:
grated zest of 1 lemon
3 large sage leaves
2 tsp rosemary leaves
2 tsp thyme leaves
3 crushed garlic cloves
10 large quartered green olives

For the Soup:
15ml olive oil
115g cured chorizo, thinly sliced
190g diced onion (1 medium)
4g minced garlic (1 clove)
220g diced celery (4 ribs)
180g diced carrots (10 small)
530g peeled & diced russet potatoes (2 large)
120ml red wine
145g chopped kale (1 small bunch)
945ml chicken stock
salt & pepper to taste
lemon juice to taste
oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, well-drained, patted dry & chopped

For the brava sauce: purée all ingredients in a food processor. For the osso buco mix: purée all ingredients in a food processor. For the soup: heat oil in a pot set over medium-high heat. Once hot, add chorizo; sauté 2 minutes to let it render its fat and begin to crisp. Add onion; sauté 3 minutes, until translucent. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add celery and carrots; sauté 1-2 minutes, until beginning to soften. Add wine; simmer 5 minutes, until at least half the liquid is evaporated. Add osso buco mix, stirring well; add kale, stirring to wilt for 1 minute. Stir in brava sauce, followed by stock; add potatoes. Partially cover pot and cook 20 minutes, letting soup come to a boil, until vegetables are tender. Season to taste with salt, pepper and up to 1 lemon’s worth of juice. Serve hot, garnished with sun-dried tomatoes.

Yield: 2.5L
Cooking time: 120 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: me!
Date prepared: 27 December 2014
Rating: ****

Sources:
Crushed tomatoes – Furmano’s (Northumberland, PA)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Wine – Chianti Classico DOCG, Rocca della Maciè, Famiglia Zingarelli (Tuscany, Italy)
Pimentòn – Safinter, Valgosa (Barcelona, Spain)
Serranos – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Lemon, sage, rosemary, thyme, garlic, olives, onion & potatoes – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Chorizo – Embutidos Palacios (La Rioja, Spain)
Celery – Dole (Westlake Village, CA)
Carrots – Earthbound Farm (San Juan Bautista, CA)
Kale – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Sun-dried tomatoes – Jeff’s Naturals (American Canyon, CA)

Comments:
Yes indeedy, this is a soup that I created. I’m very proud of myself.

How did this come about? Well, before I left for my Christmas vacation, I made some oven fries. More importantly, I made too much of a dipping sauce for said oven fries, and I was searching for something to do with the leftovers (besides serving it as a dip again). In fact, the dipping sauce gives the soup its name. The sauce is called brava, and it’s usually served alongside twice-fried and seasoned potatoes—a classic Spanish dish called patatas bravas.

Given that brava sauce is mostly crushed tomatoes, I thought of treating it like canned tomato sauce and building a soup around that. The question then became what everything else in the soup would be.

I initially thought of a variation on pasta fazool, the Italian soup that features both pasta and beans. My original idea would have featured both fusilli and potatoes (to use up some more leftovers from  the oven fries). But ultimately I just went with the potatoes.

I also decided to continue playing the Spanish theme, and that led me to use cured (i.e., Spanish-style) chorizo as the soup’s base. (I did look for a small bottle of Spanish wine, but couldn’t find any.) Between that and the brava sauce, this soup became quite spicy. Not inedibly so, but I do recommend having some bread, olives or cheese on hand to help cut the heat. (I should mention that the brava sauce had been in the freezer for awhile, and then defrosted. I don’t remember it being this hot when I first made it, so I guess the serranos really infused the whole mix, thus turning up the heat.) Feel free to use more chorizo if you like your soups to make your nose run; I only added about half of a not-quite eight-ounce sausage.

Most of the other veggies featured are typical of a soup, such as onions, garlic, celery and carrots. I added the kale to use up a bunch from the previous night’s dinner (see below).

The other unique component to this soup is the “osso buco mix.” It comes from a soup of Brother Victor, which I made in 2010—the year before I started this blog—and which I thought was utterly delicious. Not least because it featured a full bottle of white wine. I thought of it when I decided that something sour and tart should go in the soup. Why did I decide that? Well, basically at this point I’d realized that, except for the chorizo, I was making something of a Bloody Mary soup. And I always love a wedge of lemon on my Bloodies. Sour things in general tend to go well with tomatoes, and I thought they might temper the spice somewhat. The sun-dried tomato garnish continued the tart tomato theme.

The result of these disparate inspirations was a remarkably delicious soup. It had an immense amount of flavor, with the spice, sourness and vegetal sweetness merging together quite harmoniously (and singing forte to boot). The kale and chorizo kept the soup savory, with the latter also providing a fair amount of heft and richness. This is not a gentle soup, which is just fine with me. Everything about it is in your face, and I wanted it to be that way.

I definitely plan on making this again, if only because I made when my husband was traveling and so I want him to try this. I’ll adjust it a bit for his tastes (such as leaving out the greens, of which he’s not a fan). And I still think it could work with pasta, so you may see that in the future. This is a soup, after all, so it’s flexible. But I’m happy to add the invention of this recipe to my list of cooking accomplishments.

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Open-Faced Breakfast Sandwich

2 halved English muffins
1 tbsp butter
4 tbsp smoky onion mustard
8 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained
4 slices cooked bacon, broken in half
4 cheddar slices (small, but thick-cut)

Preheat oven to broil; butter each English muffin half. Spread each with 1 tbsp mustard, then top each with 2 sun-dried tomatoes, a slice of bacon and a slice of cheese. Place sandwiches on a baking sheet; broil 5” from heat element for 4 minutes, until cheese melts and is bubbly. Serves 2.

Sources:
English muffins – Breadfurst (4434 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Butter – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Smoky onion mustard – National Mustard Museum (Middleton, WI)
Tomatoes – Jeff’s Naturals (Napa Valley, CA)
Bacon – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Cheddar – Gourmet Foods International (Atlanta, GA)

Comments:
Quick and easy, these are immensely tasty breakfast sandwiches. They’re a reminder why I should make breakfasts more often. (I usually don’t for a few reasons: I do all the grocery shopping on Saturday morning, and that can take so long I don’t feel like cooking when I get back; and I’m usually so up to my neck in cooking for the week on Sunday morning that starting something else is problematic, to say the least.) These sandwiches are simple and straightforward enough that I could put something like this together even at my busiest.

The recipe comes from the National Mustard Museum’s website. As with the mustard spice cake, I was poking around the site to find ideas for using a particular mustard—in this case, the smoky onion mustard, another gift of the Mustard of the Month Club. And while the recipe is simple enough, I’m not sure I could have figured it out on my own. Not least because I tend not to think of having mustard for breakfast. This sandwich made me rethink all that.

But the combination of flavors and ingredients here works wonders. The smoky mustard complements the smoke in the bacon, and the sun-dried tomatoes provide a slightly sweeter (and more tart) note to break up all the saltiness. Throw on some creamy cheddar and you have yourself a small, but delectable, feast. The sandwiches, in fact, are rich enough that two halves of an English muffin are quite sufficient for a meal. For that, you can thank the mustard: it’s a gigantic flavor kick in a small package.

(I also find it helps to have some real English muffins—not the cardboard storebought crap. Quite happily, you can get wonderfully dense and tasty ones from Breadfurst. They stand up to the rich toppings here, as well they should.)

I should note that these sandwiches can be rather dehydrating, thanks to all the salt and rich tastes. But that’s in part due to my swapping sun-dried tomatoes for fresh. I did that for the obvious reason: tomatoes are not in season, and I refuse to put a pale, chalky slice of tomato on a respectable sandwich. If you want to use fresh tomatoes, once they’re back in season, place a slice on top of the mustard, followed by the bacon and cheese. You’ll get a juicier sandwich, and that’d definitely be worth trying. I’ll probably give it a whirl next summer, since this sandwich is certainly worth having again and again.

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Penne al Verdure con Salsiccia e Balsamico

1 lb uncased & crumbled hot Italian sausage (4 links)
1 small diced white onion
2 minced garlic cloves
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1 cup broccolini florets
1 cup diced kale
1/3 cup chopped black olives (about 14)
15oz tomato sauce
15oz crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
4 tbsp minced basil
2 tbsp dried marjoram
cracked black pepper to taste
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lb dried penne, cooked until al dente & drained
grated parmesan (garnish)

Heat a large pot over medium heat until hot; add sausage and cook 4 minutes, until fat is rendered. Add onion; cook 2 minutes. Add garlic; cook 1 minute. Stir in broccolini, kale, broth and olive; cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in tomato sauce, crushed tomatoes and vinegar; simmer 10-15 minutes, letting sauce reduce, until vegetables are tender. Remove from heat; stir in basil, marjoram, black pepper, crushed red pepper and salt. Toss with penne, then serve hot, garnished with parmesan.

Sources:
Sausage, kale, olives & marjoram – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Onion, garlic & basil – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Broth – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Broccolini – Earthbound Farm (San Juan Bautista, CA)
Tomato sauce & crushed tomatoes – Furmano’s (Northumberland, PA)
Vinegar – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Black pepper – Williams-Sonoma (San Francisco, CA)
Crushed red pepper – Spice Islands (Ankeny, IA)
Penne – De Cecco (Fara San Martino, Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy)
Parmesan – SarVecchio, Sartori (Plymouth, WI)

Comments:
I forget where I found this recipe, but I’m sure glad I did, because it’s quite lovely. If it makes any sense to say this, you can sort of think of this as a salad in sauce form, thanks to the presence of broccolini, kale, olives and balsamic. The latter two provide this sauce with a few sour notes that tend not to show up in traditional tomato-based pasta sauces. The former added a very subtle note of bitterness, which I appreciated for its ability to take the edge off the heat from the sausage and crushed red pepper. (My husband thought the bitterness was almost too strong for him—i.e., strong but not so much as to prevent him from eating seconds. He tends not to like bitter greens, and may be more sensitive to the flavor they impart to salads and other dishes. I tend to love them, however).

The broccolini is a particularly interesting addition. For one thing, I admit that I used it instead of regular broccoli, which is what the recipe had asked for. I made the switch because the broccolini felt a bit more apropos, since it acts as sort of both a vegetable and a green. (It also comes in smaller bunches, making leftovers less likely.) The broccolini also really brings out the vegetal sweetness of the tomatoes, again to act as a foil for the sausage and crushed red pepper.

(And while we’re speaking of substitutions, I swapped the called-for oregano for marjoram, since Whole Foods was out of the classic Italian herb. Marjoram certainly has its unique aroma, which lent itself well to the salad-y nature of the sauce.)

Without the additions of more unusual ingredients like these, this would be your standard pasta sauce with sausage. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. Indeed, that kind of sauce is one of my favorite things in the world to eat. On the other hand, olives are a classic addition to puttanesca sauce, and there are plenty of pasta dishes that feature greens. So maybe some of these additions aren’t so unusual after all.

The ultimate effect on the eater of this pasta sauce is something like the kitchen sink. There’s a lot in this sauce, so you needn’t worry that the presence of rabbit food will make it any less rich. I think the presence of all the veggies on top of the Italian sausage makes the sauce that much richer, since so many more ingredients get to infuse it. (I suppose you could call this “V8 Sauce,” à la the juice.) So toss a generous amount with some pasta, and have yourself a feast!

Have a Zesty, Spicy Holiday!

Superb Sweet Potato Stuffing

920g sweet potatoes (5 small)
olive oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
360g bratwurst, uncased & crumbled (4 links)
300g chopped onion
170g chopped celery (4 ribs)
120ml white wine
2g dried rosemary
2g dried sage

Preheat oven to 350ºF; cut potatoes into 1/2” chunks. Toss potatoes with oil, salt and pepepr; spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake 30 minutes, until soft; keep warm. In a large skillet, cook bratwurst in a little bit of oil until browned. Add onions and celery, sautéing until soft. Add wine; simmer 30 seconds. Remove from heat; add sage and rosemary. Toss sausage mixture with sweet potatoes; adjust seasonings. Serve.

Yield: Serves 3-4
Cooking time: 85 minutes
Vegetarian: no (but sausage is optional)
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 6 December 2014
Rating: ***

Sources:
Potatoes & onion – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Bratwurst – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Celery – Dole (Westlake Village, CA)
Wine (sauvignon blanc) – Kenwood (Sonoma County, CA)
Rosemary & sage – me!

Comments:
Well, I didn’t stuff this stuffing into anything, because it was tasty enough on its own. It may not have quite deserved the “superb” label, but it’s a dish you’ll be happy to lap up in this season.

While this is more of a side dish, rather than, say, a lunch main course, it’s a hefty one. Thank the bratwurst for that. Though it may seem a bit odd to put meat in a side dish, it’s not so unusual if you think of people mixing bacon bits into mashed potatoes. In any case, I say this is more of a side dish because it’s too uniform to really stand out as a lunch.

The pairing of roasted sweet potatoes with wine-simmered bratwurst is pitch-perfect. Something about the potatoes’ sweetness and the well-seasoned sausage fits. Of course, you could simmer the brats in beer. The recipe even suggests that, but I hesitated because I wasn’t sure what beer would go well with the potatoes and other vegetables. White wine is a safer choice, in that sense, but do feel free to experiment.

Speaking of variations, Mr. Grohsgal and Ms. Shanks also suggest an alternative protein—particularly if you’re going to be stuffing this into a bird (chicken or turkey). The alternative is to save the giblets (liver and heart, especially), and then mince and saute them with the onions and celery. While I do like poultry liver in some things, I think the sausage really brings the stuffing up a few notches, since it comes with its own set of seasonings that can enhance the rest of the dish.

On the other hand, I don’t think that there’s much you can do to this dish that would render it un-delicious. The sweet potatoes are the dominant taste and texture, and they basically are complemented and heightened by everything else. It’s hard to make sweet potatoes un-delicious, unless you sweeten them too much—but that’s not a problem here, given all the savory ingredients. In short, this is a well-balanced side dish, one that you may end up liking better than the main course.

Author’s note: I apologize for the lack of photos. This stuffing is so good I ate it before I remembered to grab my camera.

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Thai Red Curry with Chicken & Vegetables

30ml sesame oil
salt & pepper to taste
860g boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced 1/4”-thick (1 whole large breast)
250g chopped onion (1 medium)
5g chopped garlic (1 clove)
70ml red curry paste
380ml unsweetened coconut milk
30ml fish sauce
545g cauliflower florets (2 small-medium heads)
680g red potatoes, in 3/4” chunks
130g chopped kale (1 bunch)

Season chicken with salt and pepper; heat a large skillet over high heat. Add 1 tbsp oil, then chicken, onion and garlic. Stir-fry for 4-5 minutes, until chicken is barely cooked through and onions are soft. Remove chicken pieces to a plate, letting juices accumulate. Heat remaining oil over high heat; add curry paste, stir-frying for 1 minute. Add coconut milk, fish sauce and potatoes; cover and simmer 3-5 minutes. Add cauliflower and kale; simmer 1-2 minutes, until greens are bright. Return chicken to pot; cover and cook until all vegetables are tender. Serve over rice, if you’d like.

Yield: Serves 6
Cooking time: 85 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 6 December 2014
Rating: ***

Sources:
Oil – Hain Pure Foods (Melville, NY)
Chicken – Broad Branch Market (5608 Broad Branch Road NW)
Onion & potatoes – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma NW)
Curry paste – Thai Kitchen (Berkeley, CA)
Coconut milk & fish sauce – Ka Me (Saddle Brook, NJ)
Cauliflower & kale – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)

Comments:
Back in October, I made a wonderful Thai-style red curry dish featuring the bounty of late summer/autumnal produce. This is the winter version of that dish. The original recipe was too good to not revisit, though I think the original wins pretty handily. But then again, most normal people get more excited about summer veggies than winter ones.

Because the vegetables I used certainly weren’t as exciting as the summer ones. It’s hard to disagree with the proposition that tomatoes and summer squash are better than cauliflower. (Potatoes made an appearance in both versions.)

The vegetables I used this time around definitely had less of a water content than the juicy summer ones. And that makes more of a difference than I’d anticipated, because the summer version of this recipe was considerably soupier. This recipe doesn’t call for stock or water: the liquid came, for the most part, from the vegetables.

For that matter, I probably should have read my notes on the summer version before I made this, because then I would have noticed what cut of chicken I used. This time around, I used chicken breasts, instead of thighs. Chicken breast, while meaty (obviously), can be dry because it doesn’t contain a lot of fat. Chicken thighs, on the other hand, are a very juicy cut of meat, as I noticed when I made this curry last time. A good part of the liquid in that version came from the thighs rendering their fat, something breast meat doesn’t do much of.

But less liquid did make for a more interesting sauce, since the curry and coconut milk weren’t diluted by the vegetables I was sweating. (It does make it a bit of a challenge to get the potatoes, but you’ll manage with enough time and a lid on your pot.) So this curry was considerably spicier, I thought, than the last one. And there’s something to that. Enough to keep this dish worth a three-star rating, even though the vegetables in it weren’t terribly exciting.

The nice thing is that the winter version of this curry is as flexible as the summer one. The Farmer’s Kitchen also suggests turnips, radishes, broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, cabbage and various other greens as alternatives or additions to what I used. (I do think I should have used broccoli to give this dish some more color besides red and white. But cauliflower was what I could find at the farmers’ market.) I think the pungency of turnips would have added an interesting note to the curry’s already strong fragrance and taste. I’m not sure I’d throw in sweet potatoes, though. To each his own, though. It’s nice to have a recipe that’s this accommodating.

In short, while this recipe ended up being less exciting than its summer counterpart, I do think it was worthwhile to make. It did take the chill out of a few winter days, so I can’t complain about that. And while there were a few lessons learned, this was still tasty.

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Harira

45ml olive oil
240g chopped onion
200g boneless lamb leg, diced
235ml tomato sauce
1 tbsp superfine sugar
1.2L canned diced tomatoes
525g drained canned chickpeas
1.3L chicken stock
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ginger
large pinch of saffron, crumbled
280g chopped spinach
salt & pepper to taste

Set a large saucepan over medium heat; add oil. Add onion; fry until soft and translucent. Increase heat and add lamb; sauté 2-3 minutes, until cooked on all sides. Add 2 tbsp tomato sauce and sugar; cook 2 minutes, letting liquid evaporate and caramelize on the lamb and onions. Add remaining sauce, diced tomatoes, chickpeas and stock; cover and bring soup to a boil. Uncover and continue to simmer for 35 minutes (reducing heat, if necessary), so that soup reduces. Add lemon, cumin, ginger, saffron, salt and pepper. Add spinach, stirring just to wilt before serving. Serve hot.

Yield: 2.75L
Cooking time: ? (forgot to set a timer…)
Vegetarian: no
Source: Ottolenghi
Date prepared: 13 December 2014
Rating: ****

Sources:
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Onion, tomatoes & lemon – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Lamb – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Sauce – Contadina (San Francisco, CA)
Superfine sugar – me!
Chickpeas – Goya (Secaucus, NJ)
Stock – Swanson (Camden, NJ)
Cumin, ginger & saffron – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Spinach – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)

Comments:
Well, wow. Chef Ottolenghi specializes in dishes that, quite frankly, sparkle. They are bright, in both color and flavor. I don’t think there’s anything in his cookbook that wouldn’t make you smile.

This soup does not disappoint. It may actually be the best use of canned tomatoes I’ve had outside of pasta sauces. For one thing, this soup’s acidity is eye-wideningly wonderful. You may actually be hard-pressed to say whether the tomatoes in this soup are canned or fresh—unless you look at a calendar and remember that tomatoes are not in season right now.

I would say that this soup is “tomatoes unadorned,” but, in fact, the tomatoes are adorned. With tasty things like lamb, chickpeas and kale. Interestingly, harira—almost always served with beef, lamb or chicken—is light on the meat. In this, it reminds me of nikujaga, the classic Japanese beef stew that really stretches the meat out as far as it can go by slicing it paper-thin. Chef Ottolenghi doesn’t require you to go that far with the lamb, but he does require a small dice. In fact, classic harira traditionally only requires a small amount of meat: as in nikujaga, the meat is there as a one element among several, not as the main ingredient.

I should say more about harira. It’s a traditional North African dish, and, apart from a few basic elements, its contents vary depending on what cook you’re asking and where you are. Tomatoes are always a necessity, as is a starch of some sort—chickpeas, lentils or rice. Herbs or greens are also required, such as celery, parsley or coriander (Chef Ottolenghi suggests spinach). And then there’s the choice of meat and seasonings, the latter centering on saffron and ginger. Beyond that, it’s up to the cook.

One thing that I missed out on this time—but which will be corrected in future iterations of this soup (and there will be future iterations)—was the garnish. Chef Ottolenghi suggests chopped cilantro and lemon wedges, but I left those off because the soup itself was so amazing I didn’t want anything to distract. (Besides, it’s not like you need the lemon wedges to enhance the soup’s tart acidity. The lemon juice you add to the soup does enough of that, thanks.) I’ve also read that harira is often served with hard-boiled eggs that are seasoned with salt and cumin. Which sounds interesting, to say the least.

To make this soup as tasty as it sounds, it’s imperative that you let it reduce. Simmer it the full 35 minutes after letting it come to a strong boil. (Feel free to simmer it longer, if you want the tomato flavor to be even stronger, but do beware of diminishing returns.) And don’t worry about the superfine sugar making this soup sweet. A secret ingredient of Chef Ottolenghi (he puts it in a lot of unexpected dishes), the superfine sugar here has the job of bringing out the tomatoes’ natural, vegetal sweetness. That is, it gives the tomatoes a stronger flavor, which in turn helps bring out the other seasonings.

This is definitely a soup that will satisfy any nostalgic cravings for summer tomatoes. It’s truly hard to beat this dense not-quite-a-stew-but-close dish for flavor. Chef Ottolenghi has helped me find another favorite.

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Mustard Spice Cake

2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup sugar
3 beaten eggs
1/3 cup hot honey mustard
2/3 cup molasses
2 tbsp honey
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
3/4 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350ºF; grease an 11×7” baking pan. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom and dry mustard; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together shortening and sugar; beat in eggs. Add honey mustard, molasses, applesauce and honey; beat until smooth. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, 1/3 at a time, blending just until no trace of dry ingredients show; batter will be thin. Pour into baking pan. Bake 50 minutes, until sides begin to brown and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in pan; store, well-wrapped, in the fridge. (Cake tastes better the next day.) Slice and serve.

Sources:
Flour – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Cinnamon, cardamom & dry mustard – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Ginger, cloves & applesauce – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Shortening – Crisco (Orrville, OH)
Sugar, eggs & buttermilk – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Molasses – Plantation, Allied Old English (Port Reading, NJ)
Honey – Nob Hill Orchard (George & Susan Behling; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Hot honey mustard – Slimm & Nunne “Sweet & Nicely Hot,” National Mustard Museum (Middleton, WI)

Comments:
“Whiskey tango foxtrot!” you might say. Actually, given everything else that goes into this cake, whiskey is about the only thing missing. Not that this is quite a “kitchen sink” cake, but I certainly had to raid my spice rack and pantry to make it. And if the idea of a dessert made with mustard sounds a bit out there to you, let me point out that I’ve had mustard ice cream. Good stuff. (And even that wasn’t as strange as some ice cream flavors I had while on honeymoon in Tokyo. But that’s a tale for another day.)

My work history should provide a giveaway clue as to where I found this recipe. Why, the website of the National Mustard Museum, of course! (mustardmuseum.org) Even the honey mustard I used comes from there, made for them by Beaverton Foods in Oregon. I went with the Slimm & Nunne because that’s what the recipe calls for, but if you pay the Museum a visit, the staff will be glad to direct you to some alternatives.

What inspired my making this? Well, as a Christmas present to ourselves, my husband and I joined the Mustard of the Month Club. The Slimm & Nunne was the first we received, so I immediately had to think of uses for it besides a pretzel dip. A few clicks around the Museum’s website and I found this cake. It was too good to pass up the chance to make it. And, while I felt making it was a bold experiment, it was an entirely worthwhile effort. Because the results were tasty. Quite tasty, indeed.

For one thing, this spice cake has a ton going on. Let’s start with the mustard. The Slimm & Nunne “sweet ‘n’ nicely hot” honey mustard is a mix of mustard seed, sugar, cider vinegar, honey, pineapple syrup, three fruit concentrates (apple, peach and pear, to be precise), salt and peach purée. That is a textbook example of “a lot going on.”

Then there’s the rest of the cake. With the exception of dry mustard and possibly the cardamom, pretty much every spice in this cake is fairly typical for a dessert of this nature. This means the cake is a thoroughbred spice cake, living up to and exceeding the expectations evoked by the simple label of “spice cake.”

How so? Well, first there’s the perfect texture. This cake is decadently moist and dense. You can thank the mustard, buttermilk, shortening and applesauce for that. You needn’t fear that this cake will dry out. It also achieves a Goldilocks level of crumbliness: a little bit, not too much––just right.

Then there’s the flavor. This cake is very dark, to say the least. All those spices, plus mustard and molasses. Perhaps the flavor was darker than it should have been, since recipe calls for “light” molasses, while I could only find blackstrap. If one of you makes this recipe with light molasses, let me know how it goes. I should also mention that the classic pungency of mustard is hardly present here. All the spices basically just blend together into one giant knock-out. But the mustard does provide a subtle, but occasionally eyebrow-raising, tingle of heat. The cake would certainly lack a lot of punch and depth if the mustard weren’t there.

The cake is also not particularly sweet, since the sugar and honey get strongly swirled into the rest of the seasonings. But the cake doesn’t have to be that sweet to count as a tasty dessert, as dark chocolate fans will attest. The rich spices, with the occasional light lip tingle from the mustard making itself felt, are quite an experience in themselves. On the other hand, my husband and I found that a simple glaze of powdered sugar, milk and vanilla––when drizzled deftly and judiciously over the cake––provided a sweet, and welcome, counterpoint to the spices’ luxuriousness and the density of the mouthfeel.

While we ate this cake over several days for dessert, I think that it would also be a lovely bread for tea, brunch or breakfast (with or without glaze). Whenever you eat it, it’s a decadent treat. And, as the recipe says, it is indeed better the next day. But good luck waiting that long, because the aroma as it comes out of the oven is so intoxicating, you’ll want to take a bite right away.

Mustard: it’s not just for brats anymore.

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Author’s Note: There won’t be a post next week, as I won’t have really cooked anything to post about, thanks to Christmas travel. Happy holidays, everyone!

DIY Richness

The Camosys’ Meat Dressing

olive oil
2-3 diced chicken livers
1 lb ground pork
1 chopped small onion
1 chopped garlic clove
1 chopped celery stalk
4 slices Genoa salami, diced
4 slices mortadella, diced
4 sliced prosciutto, diced (trimmed if fatty)
8 pimiento-stuffed green olives, sliced (halved first, if large)
6 beaten eggs
salt & pepper to taste
5 slices country bread, cubed (most crust removed)

Preheat oven to 350ºF; grease a 9×13” baking dish or pan. Heat a bit of oil in a large skillet; once hot, add livers and pork, then sauté until starting to brown. Add onion, garlic and celery; sauté until meat is cooked. Stir in salami, mortadella, prosciutto and olives; remove from heat. Mix bread cubes into meat mixture; spread in the baking dish. Season eggs with salt and pepper; pour eggs over meat-bread mixture, then mix well to coat. Spread mixture evenly in the pan, pressing down to eliminate air pockets; cover with foil. Bake 20 minutes; uncover and bake 15 minutes, until bread is golden brown.

Sources:
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Livers & pork – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Onion – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Celery – Dole (Westlake Village, CA)
Salami, mortadella & prosciutto – Calvert Woodley (4339 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Olives – Santa Barbara Olive Co. (Santa Barbara, CA)
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)
Bread (palladin) – Breadfurst (4434 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
As its name implies, this is a family recipe. It’s a classic side dish at the Camosy Thanksgiving table, and one that I’ve certainly never seen on the table of anyone who isn’t related to me. It was also the dish that I missed the most this year, since we visited my husband’s family for the holiday. So I decided to make it myself. For the first time, since, despite having eaten this at 26 Thanksgivings in a row, I’ve never actually made it on my own start to finish. (To my credit, I’ve helped make it.)

But it’s obviously not a difficult dish to make, since it’s just a casserole. And while the ingredients are unusual for a one-pan dish, they’re par for the course in Italian kitchens. That said, salami, mortadella and prosciutto do tend to find themselves more as sandwich components. Yet they work beautifully here as salty bites in a marvelously savory dish.

I did tweak the recipe here and there to accommodate different tastes and what I had available. I left out the called-for handful of chopped parsley, since my husband doesn’t like the stuff. If you add parsley, throw it in the skillet with the onion, garlic and celery. It’ll provide a darker appearance to your casserole: mine looked lighter than I remembered for that reason. You can also use other herbs, such as sage or rosemary if you want to match the typical Thanksgiving palate, or thyme or oregano if you want a more classically Italian aroma.

The other tweak was to the cooked meat (not the cold cuts). The original recipe calls for a mix of ground veal, beef and pork. But I used only ground pork, which was easier than buying small amounts of several meats. (Plus, I could buy from a farmstand rather than a supermarket. Thanks, Whitmore Farm!) Using some beef will impart a slightly deeper and darker flavor to the casserole, but the whole dish is dense enough and sufficiently satisfying that you won’t miss it.

I also switched out a turkey liver for two chicken livers. The chief reason being that I didn’t have a turkey whose liver I could use. That’s how my family does it on Thanksgiving: buy a turkey, remove the giblets for use in this dressing, and then roast the rest of the bird. Talk about adding a deeper and darker flavor to the dish—organ meat wins every time. Chicken livers do the job, though they aren’t as strongly flavored as turkey liver. (And if you have leftover livers, saute them, then puree them with some seasonings into a pâté.)

The dressing, as I made it, definitely had all the Thanksgiving nostalgia I wanted. It did taste and look a bit lighter than what I remember, but that was quite all right. (Feel free to bake it uncovered for a bit longer than I did for more golden-brown goodness.) My choice of an airy, ciabatta-style loaf lent the dish a fluffier texture, I suppose. But I’m not going to complain that much when this is the first dish I’ve made in awhile that my husband wanted thirds of. (And he polished off the leftovers for lunch the next day.) Because this is a tasty, tasty casserole. Perhaps I won’t wait until next Thanksgiving to have it again.

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Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

18oz drained canned chickpeas
1/2 cup tahini
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tsp cumin
2 peeled garlic cloves
3.5oz drained jarred roasted red peppers
kosher salt to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor; purée until smooth and airy, adjusting seasonings as needed.

Sources:
Chickpeas – Goya (Secaucus, NJ)
Tahini & cumin – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Lemon – Broad Branch Market (5608 Broad Branch Road NW)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Peppers – Cento (West Deptford, NJ)

Comments:
Making my own hummus is something I’m really starting to get into. For one thing, it’s only slightly less easy than making my own pesto. I’ve made hummus before, but I’ve never posted about it until now. Why did I change my mind? Because I’d like to make a point.

That point being the wisdom of making your own sauce, dips and condiments. Things like pesto and hummus are so easy to make on your own, you wonder why you spend the money to buy jars of the stuff.

This point was driven home for me a few years ago (2011) in the New York Times magazine’s food issue. One of the food writers, Kelly Alexander, was asked what a cook should stop buying and make instead. Her answer was condiments, and she said that things like “mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, steak sauce, tartar sauce and cocktail sauce are better, brighter, zingier and zestier when freshly made.” She added that it’s a control freak’s dream to make one’s own sauces, because doing so gives the cook total control over what’s being served to guests—which means any given dip can be as awesome as you can possibly make it.

Ms. Alexander noted that the point of a condiment was to enhance a dish. So why not make it yourself? Indeed. The biggest investment is your labor, but I think you more than make up for the time and effort spent cooking by being able to decide what ingredients will go into your sauce. And, depending on which sauce or dip you’re making, your end product will be at least as good as what you can buy ready-made. Probably better, based on my experience with pesto, hummus and tartar sauce.

On the other hand, I can’t embrace the make-your-own concept without reservation. Why? Because once upon a time I made my own mayonnaise. By hand. This was because I couldn’t get a recipe involving a blender, food processor or electric mixer to work. So I had to do it the old-fashioned way, dripping in vegetable oil drop by drop for 25 minutes as I whisked constantly. As when I beat egg whites to stiff peaks by hand for the Torta Caprese—back in October—this is an experience every cook should have. It makes you appreciate modern technology, for one thing. And in the case of mayonnaise, it makes you appreciate the availability of a jar of Hellmann’s. While I made a very lovely jar’s worth of mayonnaise, I wouldn’t do it again—at least not by hand. Unless I find a recipe that works with some electrical equipment, there’s no need to confess to the sin of buying mayonnaise.

(My husband will remember the making of the mayonnaise, since he was the one dripping in the oil from a squeeze bottle while I whisked. Or as my dad put it, “It was your job to whisk, and his job to get yelled at.” And I can’t deny that during all of that whisking, you’ll be in enough pain that you’ll want to yell at someone. Sorry, honey!)

If, however, you have the chance to make your own sauces, dips and condiments, do so—for the most part.

As for the hummus, I, my husband and a friend munched happily away at it with crackers. It was very good hummus—the first I’ve made that wasn’t straight-up chickpeas and tahini. The texture was perfect and the taste was rich and flavorful. Next time around, however, I’d probably add more peppers, just to kick up their taste a bit more; the tahini sort of dominated here, and I obviously don’t want the peppers to just be there for color. That small gripe aside, however, the hummus perfectly exemplified the yumminess that comes from making your own fresh dips.

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Prosciutto-Wrapped Lamb Burgers

1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup minced basil
1 beaten egg
2 tbsp whole milk
1/2 cup grated pecorino
1/4 cup chopped sun-dried tomatoes (oil-packed, well-drained)
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp black pepper
1 lb ground lamb
6 large prosciutto slices
1/4 cup olive oil
chèvre
sliced brioche
mint sauce

In a large bowl, combine crumbs, basil, egg, milk, cheese, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Add lamb, mixing by hand until incorporated. Divide mixture into 6 1”-thick patties; chill to let firm up. Place one patty in the center of a slice of prosciutto, and wrap prosciutto around patty; repeat with remaining patties and prosciutto. Set a large skillet over medium heat; add oil and heat 2 minutes. Place burgers in the pan; cook 6-8 minutes, until prosciutto is golden. Flip burgers; cook 6-8 minutes, until prosciutto on that side is golden. Remove burgers to individual plates. Serve atop sliced brioche, with chèvre and mint sauce. Serves 3.

Sources:
Bread (palladin) & brioche – Breadfurst (4434 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Basil – Shenandoah Growers (Harrisonburg, VA)
Egg & milk – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Pecorino – BelGioioso (Denmark, WI)
Tomatoes – Jeff’s Naturals (American Canyon, CA)
Lamb – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Prosciutto – Calvert Woodley (4339 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Chèvre – Couturier (Hudson, NY)
Mint sauce – Duerr’s (Manchester, UK)

Comments:
I forget where I found this recipe, but I’m certainly not going to forget about it itself. My goodness, this is a rich burger. Though the patties the recipes calls for are fairly small, the flavor punch is so powerful that you’ll forget you’re eating something that’s not really a whole lot larger than a slider. (I kid, but not by much.)

Blame the prosciutto. Not just for its salty kick in the teeth, but for what it does to the texture. Wrapping the burgers in prosciutto slices has an interesting effect when you cook them. The burgers basically cook in the fat that the fatty prosciutto renders, making for a superlatively moist interior. (It is a bit tricky to check when the burgers are done, but a few small pricks with a knife and fork to peek inside the prosciutto-flavored gift wrap are sufficient.) At the same time, the prosciutto gets fairly crispy. This makes for a wonderful dining experience, in terms of texture. One would be tempted to abandon bacon for prosciutto in any recipe that involves wrapping food in the stuff.

And then there are the burger patties themselves—those utterly luscious things. Knowing that my husband dislikes parsley, I switched that out for basil. Boy, did that make a difference. The combination of basil and sun-dried tomato is pretty potent, as you can imagine. Throw in the rich lamb, with boosts from the dairy, and this is very rich and dense even without the prosciutto wrapping. I didn’t really taste the dairy in the burger, but some sharper pecorino might fix that. I think it’s more there to help bind the burgers and to add more depth of flavor, even if it doesn’t really manifest an independent taste. (Which can be taken as my saying that, if you want to leave out the dairy, you could probably do so without too much of a loss in the overall dish.)

There is the question of serving these burgers. The original recipe basically says to ignore a bun and just serve them as is. I went for a sort of open-face style, using slices of a brioche loaf that were spread with chèvre. I then drizzled some Duerr’s mint sauce on top. (It’s a very vinegary condiment—using malt vinegar—and the flavor contrast works, though the dish is rather overwhelming at that point.) The recipe does say that, if you want to serve the burgers on buns, they can be topped with a slice of tomato, some basil leaves and balsamic vinegar. Which then transforms this dish from something more wintry into a summertime grillfest. Either way, however, these burgers are delectable and everyone should make them.

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Dark Chocolate Ice Cream with Dulce de Leche Swirl & Chocolate Chips

2 cups milk
4 tsp cornstarch
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp light corn syrup
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3 tbsp cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup brewed coffee
1.5oz bittersweet chocolate, in pieces
8oz mini semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup dulce de leche (heaping), at room temperature (to ensure spreadability)

In a bowl, stir together 1/4 cup milk and cornstarch; set slurry aside. In a 4qt saucepan, whisk together remaining milk, cream, 1/2 cup sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat, taking care that it doesn’t bubble over. (It may threaten to do so.) Cook 4 minutes, stirring occasionally; stir in slurry. Return mixture to a boil; cook 2-3 minutes, stirring continuously, until thickened. Place cream cheese in a medium bowl; pour in 1/4 cup hot milk mixture. Whisk until smooth. (Mixture will look like cottage cheese for awhile. Keep whisking through this stage.) Whisk in remaining milk mixture; set aside.

In a 2qt saucepan, combine cocoa, coffee and remaining sugar; bring to a boil over high heat. Cook 30 seconds; remove from heat. Stir in chocolate, mixing until it’s completely melted and incorporated, and mixture is smooth. Stir chocolate mixture into milk mixture, mixing until thoroughly combined. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least 2 hours (preferably overnight). The base should have the texture and consistency of a dense pudding.

Pour mixture into the ice cream maker; process according to manufacturer’s directions, churning the ice cream for 20 minutes. In the last five minutes of churning, add chocolate chips. (Ice cream should have the consistency of soft-serve or frozen custard.) Pour half the ice cream into a large airtight container; dab with half the dulce de leche. Run a spoon or rubber scraper through the ice cream in a zigzag motion to create a swirl effect. Repeat with remaining ice cream and dulce de leche. Cover and freeze until set. Makes just over 1 quart.

Sources:
Milk, cornstarch, cream, sugar & cream cheese – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Corn syrup – Karo (Memphis, TN)
Cocoa – Hershey (Hershey, PA)
Coffee – Gevalia Kaffe (Dover, DE)
Chocolate & chocolate chips – Ghirardelli (San Francisco, CA)
Dulce de leche – La Salamandra (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Comments:
Well, well, well. This was an astonishingly rich ice cream. From now on, when I ever make a chocolate ice cream––either on its own or with mix-ins, as here––I’m using this recipe. That’s how good it is. It’s even better when you swirl in dulce de leche. As well as chocolate chips, of course. Because everything is better with chocolate chips.

(I also should add that the cocoa-coffee-sugar mixture would make an eye-poppingly excellent chocolate sauce on its own.)

This is certainly the fanciest ice cream I’ve made, and it’s also the one that has worked the best. Why did I make it? Well, one of my goals in getting an ice cream maker in the first place was to recreate the ice cream we had at our wedding. Part of our catering deal (with the great and wonderful Spiaggia in Chicago) included designing our own flavor of ice cream. After much thought, consideration and discussion of this serious subject, my husband and I settled on exactly the name you see at the top of this recipe. Then we let Spiaggia’s pastry chefs work their magic.

And magical it was. So much so that our event manager said that they’ll have to consider adding the flavor to Spiaggia’s roster of ice creams. Once I had my own ice cream maker, I set making this flavor as my goal. And I’ve met it.

To put this ice cream together, I borrowed from multiple recipes. The ice cream base (sans dulce de leche and chocolate chips) comes from one recipe, though I can’t remember where I found it. I’m glad I did unearth it, obviously. And while it’s a fairly instruction-heavy recipe (i.e., there are a lot of steps to go through), I found it pretty easy to make. Not least because I didn’t have to temper eggs––probably the most stressful part of making some ice creams, due to having to be very careful with heat. In any case, the results are so outstanding that the labor is entirely worth it.

The other component was the dulce de leche swirl. And, unless you’re going to make your own dulce de leche, this is only a technique thing. I did look at multiple ice cream recipes with a swirl of something in them to figure it out. The zigzag motion that I came up with is basically correct. A little practice will be necessary to get it right enough to satisfy Goldilocks. (Some more up and down motions in addition to side to side will help stir in the dulce de leche, distributing it more evenly.) But that’s a very, very small gripe in a monumentally rich, deeply-flavored ice cream.

The other minor tweak will be the chocolate chips. I got miniature ones, but I think I added too many. Basically every bite was crunchy from the chips. Which my husband didn’t complain about, but I do think that ice cream shouldn’t have that much crunch. This is a balance issue. I need to source the chocolate pieces that appear in classic mint chocolate chip ice cream. But this is another minor thing.

I think with this ice cream flavor I have hit top-end with decadence and luxuriousness. The ice cream is extraordinarily rich, dense and thick––thanks, cream cheese!––with a satisfyingly deep and dark, and none-too-sweet, chocolate flavor. The chocolate chips provide a sweet shot, and the dulce de leche envelops everything nicely. Because the ice cream just wouldn’t have been rich enough without it.

When I asked my husband what flavor I should make next, he said to just make this one again. I very much think I will.

Sweet Potato Bludgeon

Author’s Note: Many apologies for the delayed posts! But thanks to Thanksgiving travel (not to mention some busy times at work), I was running around a bit too much to get the posts posted. Hopefully, this holiday season won’t keep me so busy that I can’t write this blog.

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Italian Greens & Garlic Soup

15ml olive oil
450g crumbled mild Italian sausage
340g chopped onion (1 large)
15g chopped garlic (6 cloves)
140g chopped celery (4 ribs)
300ml white wine
1.9ml vegetable stock
125g chopped celery leaves
260g chopped Tuscan kale (2 trimmed bunches)
handfuls of dried spaghetti
55g chopped basil
grated parmesan (garnish)

Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat; add sausage and brown. Add onion; sauté 3 minutes. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add celery; sauté 2 minutes. Add wine and let cook 3 minutes. Add stock; cover pot and bring soup to a boil. Add celery leaves and kale in handfuls, stirring until wilted after each addition. (If serving the soup later, stop here. Reheat soup to boiling when ready to serve.) A few minutes before serving, add spaghetti, cooking until al dente. Stir in basil and serve immediately, garnished with parmesan.

Yield: 3L
Cooking time: 100 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 15 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Sausage – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Onion – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Garlic, celery & celery leaves – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Wine (pinot grigio) – Tomaiolo (Tuscany, Italy)
Stock – Kitchen Basics (Sparks, MD)
Kale – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Basil – Shenandoah Growers (Harrisonburg, VA)Parmesan – SarVecchio, Sartori (Plymouth, WI)

Comments:
This is a very basic, but very classic, autumn soup. It’s even simpler if you leave out the sausage, but to me it’s a near-necessity in an Italian soup. (I went with mild sausage here, in order to not overwhelm the flavor of the greens and garlic—the title roles and stars of this soup.) The recipe is eminently flexible too, of course: I added considerably more wine to the soup, because why not? Not least because your kitchen smells wonderful when you pour in that much wine to a hot pot full of sautéing vegetables.

Brett Grohsgal, co-author of The Farmer’s Kitchen and a farmer himself, says that he makes this soup to recover from working outside on the farm on a cold day. He describes it as highly restorative, particularly when he also has a loaf of bread and bottle of wine on hand. The recipe actually includes the bread and wine as ingredients, noting that the bread is for soaking up the broth, and that the wine is for you to drink.

Now, while I work hard, I’m certainly not out in chilly farm fields on brisk, gusty autumn days. So I can’t quite speak to just how restorative this soup. But it is very flavorful and very tasty. As well it should be. The spaghetti is a nice touch, and a good alternative to potatoes as a source of hefty starch. If you don’t want to spool up the spaghetti onto a spoon, some small shape pastas would work just fine too, as would tube pastas.

So this is definitely a soup to add to my growing arsenal of late-fall one-pot dishes. Most of the soups I’ve made are of a piece, with similar ingredients and instructions. But that doesn’t mean they’re less delicious for their resemblance. The reason why autumnal greens soups are practically their own sub-genre is because they feature combinations of ingredients that work well together, and they’re highly nourishing and tasty. Plus, there are a lot of greens available right now, and you should do something with all of them. It’s quite easy to buy a bucketload of spinach, chard or kale, and then saute the greens down into a state of wilted juiciness while pouring some broth over them. Make sure the wine’s handy.

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Sumptuous Sweet Potato Salad

For the Salad:
1.4kg peeled sweet potatoes, in 3/4” cubes
60ml olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
180g chopped green pepper (1 large)
275g chopped red pepper (2 medium-large)
70g chopped scallions (7 trimmed)
70g chopped parsley (2 bunches)
200g toasted & chopped pecans

For the Dressing:
175ml olive oil
45ml maple syrup
45ml orange juice (1/2 orange)
45ml sherry vinegar
45ml lime juice (1-2 limes)
12g minced ginger
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/8 tsp nutmeg
3/8 tsp cardamom

For the salad: preheat oven to 425ºF. Toss potatoes with oil, salt and pepper; spread in a single layer on baking sheets. Roast 15 minutes, until tender; let cool to room temperature. Place potatoes in a serving bowl; toss in peppers, scallions, parsley and pecans. For the dressing: whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl. Pour dressing over salad, toss gently to blend and serve.

Yield: 1.6kg salad (360ml dressing)
Cooking time: 140 minutes
Vegetarian: yes (vegan)
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 15 November 2014
Rating: ****

Sources:
Potatoes – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Red pepper – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW) & G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Green pepper – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Scallions & parsley – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Pecans – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Syrup – Nature’s Promise (Landover, MD)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Orange & lime – Broad Branch Market (5608 Broad Branch Road NW)
Vinegar – Miguel & Valentino (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain)
Ginger – Whole Foods (4530 40^th Street NW)
Cinnamon & cardamom – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Nutmeg – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)

Comments:
Before I say anything else, let us all admire and gaze at the wonder that is this sweet potato:

When you pull something like that out of a bucket of sweet potatoes at the farmers’ market, you just have to buy it. I got a few other small ones to round out what I needed for this salad. Speaking of which, this sweet potato salad packs a considerably bigger punch than it may seem at first glance. By which I mean, it meets—if not exceeds—the expectations of its billing. It is indeed quite sumptuous. Mmm…

Certainly, this salad has a lot going on. Roasted sweet potatoes are practically a dish unto themselves, though one that’s better on the side of something else. But then you throw in the bell peppers, pecans and scallions. The result is a trippy mix of sweet and savory: bell peppers and sweet potatoes are sweet, though in different ways; pecans and scallions are both savory. The latter two ingredients also provide a nice crunch, which make for a good textural balance too. (Notice I didn’t say “textural contrast.” Your potatoes should be tenderly al dente, not mushily soft, which is difficult to do with roasting in any event.)

The component that merited this salad four stars, however, wasn’t so much the vegetables as the dressing. Talk about having a lot going on. This dressing is outstanding. It’s a perfect match for the sweet potatoes, but it’s not a terrifically sweet sauce itself. Thank the unusual flavors of the spices, ginger and vinegar—they really sing out. My normal comment here would be an expression of hope to find more stuff to do with the dressing, but I’m not sure how transferable it is to other things. It could work with salmon: I once upon a time baked some salmon in a maple syrup-cardamom sauce, and many of the same elements are at play here. You could, if you’re adventurous, try basting some shrimp with it, but I think that’s pushing it. While shrimp can work in a sweet sauce (à la sweet and sour), I don’t think they work with maple; this sauce has the wrong kind of sweetness, and not enough sour. (This is despite the aromatic and citrusy edge from the orange and limes.)

One thing the recipe suggested was to add raisins, either brown or golden. I did buy golden raisins for the purpose, but then forgot about them as I was putting the salad together. I remembered them after eating the salad for lunch one day. They could have their place, but I feel like adding them would be overegging the pudding a bit. The balance of vegetal sweetness and savoriness is delicate here, and adding raisins would throw it off too much in favor of sweet. (I’m also not positive that raisins and bell peppers go together.) It may be worth a try, however, on the next go-round with this salad. For there will be a next go-round.

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Fromage Fort

4oz pecorino romano, shredded
4oz fontina, shredded
8oz provolone, shredded
4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup white wine
chopped leaves of 1 bunch oregano
1 crushed garlic clove
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/2 tsp black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a food processor; process 2 minutes, until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Mixture should be soft and spreadable. Keeps for a week, covered, in the fridge. Serve with crackers or a sliced baguette, as well as on sandwiches or in omelettes. Makes 3 cups.

Sources:
Pecorino, fontina & provolone – Calvert Woodley (4339 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Butter – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Wine (pinot grigio) – Tomaiolo (Tuscany, Italy)
Oregano & garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Mustard – Maille (Dijon, Burgundy, France)
Pepper (tellicherry) – Williams-Sonoma (San Francisco, CA)

Comments:
Fromage fort is a delicious invention that only the French could make up. The name literally translates to “strong cheese,” and the recipe fits squarely in the tradition of “waste not, want not.” Why? Because it’s meant to use up odd bits of cheese and other leftover thingy-dingys that one might have in a pantry or fridge. Pretty much any combination of cheese and herbs that you can think of would be acceptable. The only thing you have to do is slice off any rinds, and cube soft cheeses, if you’re using them.

For whatever reason, I managed to take this most French of spreads and turn it into something Italian. I mean, just look at what I used: pecorino, fontina, provolone (which is technically Italian-American), pinot grigio and oregano. The only French touches are mustard and butter, neither of which the Italians use much of. But I think that only goes to show that fromage fort can basically be whatever you want it to be.

The iteration I made came out quite tasty, thank you very much. And sharp too, unsurprisingly. I had hoped to add some basil, but my usual source of herbs—G. Flores Produce—was fresh out for the season. (I guess it really is fall…) So I just bought more oregano, which really made for an aromatic spread. And that combination of ingredients is quite addictive. It’s altogether too easy to keep dunking crackers into a bowl of this stuff and munching them like popcorn. (I just wish I could have tried fromage fort in an omelette. Perhaps next time I make this.)

A note on texture: do make sure to let this spread/dip come to room temperature before serving it. This is to ensure that it’s actually soft and spreadable, as the recipe says. Besides, if it’s chilled, you won’t be able to dunk crackers in it without breaking them. Also worth noting is that you shouldn’t try to accelerate the process of warming it up by microwaving it. That’ll just melt the cheese. And while that makes for a lovely fondue, this is fromage fort. Bon appétit!

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Potato, Creamed Greens & Mushroom Hash

15ml olive oil
450g uncased & crumbled apple sausage
1.2kg potatoes, in 3/4-1” cubes (8 small-medium)
415g onion, quartered lengthwise & thinly sliced (1 large)
8g minced garlic (4 cloves)
150g stemmed shiitake mushrooms, sliced 1/4”-thick (halved if large)
175ml white wine
350ml heavy cream
345g stemmed kale, torn or chopped in large pieces
salt & pepper to taste

Heat oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Once oil is hot, add sausage; cook until most of its fat has rendered. Add potatoes; cook 5 minutes, until beginning to brown and soften. Add onion; cook 3-4 minutes, until translucent and softening. Add garlic; cook 1 minute, until fragrant. Add mushrooms; cook 1 minute, stirring often. Add wine; simmer 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and add cream; cook to reduce for 5 minutes. (Vegetables should be soft and well-lacquered with cream, and very little liquid should be in the pot.) Add kale in large handfuls, stirring to wilt after each addition; season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Yield: serves 5
Cooking time: 100 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 22 November 2014
Rating: ***

Sources:
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Apple sausage – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Potatoes & onion – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Mushrooms – Even Star (Brett Grohsgal & Christine Bergmark; Lexington Park, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Wine (pinot grigio) – Tomaiolo (Tuscany, Italy)
Cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Kale (curly) – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)

Comments:
While I credit this dish to The Farmer’s Kitchen, I consider what I ultimately made to be more of a riff on one of its recipes. The original, called “Button Mushrooms & Greens” suggests serving the dish with potatoes on the side. I thought that incorporating the side dish into main dish would work well—i.e., adding the potatoes to the dish proper, rather than serve them on the side.

In doing so, I created another sort of hash. Adding the potatoes to the mushroom-greens mixture did necessitate a few alterations, such as adding more liquid. Read: wine. Because everything is better with more wine. I also used the same technique  for sautéing the potatoes, rather than parcooking them in some way. Plus, the apple sausage—a somewhat sweet and very porky sausage—was my idea, in order to get my husband to eat some rabbit food.

Because this is a hash along the lines of the Savory Greens & Potatoes of a few weeks ago—only with dairy added—the recipe is fundamentally flexible. Instead of kale, for example, you can also use chard, collards or mustard greens—or whatever else you can come up with, like turnip greens, beet greens, and spinach. You can also play with mushroom varieties a bit. The original recipe calls for button mushrooms, and because I planned on using the apple sausage, I thought about getting them because they’re fairly mild and therefore wouldn’t clash with whatever apple flavor the sausage had. But I just couldn’t resist the fresh shiitakes at Even Star’s stand. Market mushrooms are always a treat, and I probably should have bought more of them so that they could have stood out better.

The recipe also suggests alternatives to potatoes, such as bread (either on the side or cubed and tossed in as for stuffing) and pasta (tossed together with creamed mushrooms and greens). And if you want to add protein, the recipe suggests that chicken would always work (of course), as would scallops, if tossed in with only a few quick minutes of sautéing left to go. Because this is basically a hash—and therefore easy to make—I’d be happy to give this a try with some scallops. The seafood could provide a fun flair to an otherwise humble dish.

But because I say this is a humble dish, don’t take me to mean that it’s not good. It’s very much in the vein of comfort food. Interestingly, the wine provides a nice, if subtle, flavor boost to what otherwise would basically be a pleasant and simple side dish of creamed mushrooms and greens. Adding the potatoes provides some much needed density, though the whole dish is pretty hefty. It’s definitely a good hash to eat a big bowl of, and then go take a nap. The days are getting colder, so spend your evenings staying warm with something like this. Mmm…

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Insalata di Rucola, Pere, Prosciutto e Parmigiano

For the Dressing:
45g diced shallots (2 small)
30ml Dijon mustard
120ml sherry vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
210ml olive oil

For the Salad:
315g arugula, chopped
170g sliced prosciutto, julienned
640g quartered & cored bosc pears, chopped (3 medium)
225g dried figs, stemmed & quartered
150g shaved parmesan

For the dressing: whisk together all ingredients in a small bowl until emulsified. For the salad: toss together all ingredients in a large bowl. Toss dressing into salad, divide among individual plates and serve.

Yield: 1.5kg salad (360ml dressing)
Cooking time: 60 minutes
Vegetarian: yes (lacto-ovo)
Source: Cucina e Famiglia
Date prepared: 22 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Shallots & pears – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Mustard – Maille (Dijon, Burgundy, France)
Vinegar – Miguel & Valentino (Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Arugula – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Prosciutto – Del Duca (Pascoag, RI)
Figs – Valley Fig Growers (Fresno, CA)
Parmesan – Parmissimo (Modena, Italy)

Comments:
Yep, I’m branching out a bit here in search of lovely salad recipes. This one counts. And it comes from Cucina e Famiglia, by Joan Tropiano Tucci and Gianni Scappin.

Chef Scappin notes that, in Italian cooking, it’s traditional to only serve baby arugula in salads, since chefs there tend to believe that salads warrant more delicate greens. More mature arugula—as called for and used here—is fed to cows to flavor their milk for certain cheeses. (Now I’m definitely curious about what sort of cheese these would be.) Chef Scappin said that he makes salads like this one to show Italians that mature arugula can be more than animal feed.

In fact, I find the interest in baby greens—in Italy and elsewhere—to be a bit odd. Why? In my experience, baby greens of any sort—spinach, lettuce, arugula, etc.—taste insipid. They’re nothing, either in flavor or texture, next to the mature greens that I find at the farmers’ markets I go to. But that could just be the baby greens I can find here. The Broad Branch and UDC Farmers’ Markets don’t sell baby greens, only grocery stores do. And I don’t really have stellar luck in that department.

But you’ll want the mature arugula in this recipe, because it has to stand up to super-strongly flavored ingredients like prosciutto and parmesan, as well as a TKO shallot vinaigrette. Feel free to leave this spicy green as whole leaves, if you’d like. I find it’s easier to chop my greens, since I’m carrying a lunch bag to work, and I want to get everything in a single container that fits in my bag.

It basically goes without saying that this salad tastes wonderful. Which is what tends to happen when you start with ingredients that are lovely on their own, but are even better when put together. I actually borrowed the figs from one of Chef Scappin’s several suggested variations on this salad. Instead of the pears and parmesan, for instance, you can use figs (fresh or dried) and crumbled chèvre. Or add some orange slices, chopped fennel and red onion. (I was sorry to not try this one: fennel is a strikingly underused vegetable in salads.) And there’s the classic combination of tart apples, walnuts and blue cheese. True, these variations are basically different salads, but the base of prosciutto and arugula stays.

Also, this was the first time I’d ever shaved parmesan. Which seems like an oversight on my part, given how much I use it. But I ordinarily give it a fine shredding, or I grate it. As elegant as shavings are, I just haven’t done that at home. And it’s not for lack of tools or skills. All you need is a vegetable peeler to give your salad—or any dish requiring a light garnish of parmesan—a bit of elegant flair from a sophisticated restaurant. Which is quite fitting for an elegant salad.

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Chocolate Ice Cream (with Hot Fudge)

For the Ice Cream:
3/4 cup cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
pinch of salt
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 cups heavy cream

For the Hot Fudge:
8oz chopped unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
8 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp vanilla
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 2/3 cup water

For the ice cream: whisk together cocoa, sugars and salt in a medium bowl. Add milk; whisk to combine, until cocoa, sugars and salt are dissolved. Stir in vanilla and cream until incorporated; cover and chill at least 2 hours (or overnight), until very cold. Turn on ice cream maker; pour in chocolate mixture. Let churn 15-20 minutes, until thickened to the consistency of soft-serve. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container; freeze at least 2 hours, until desired consistency is reached. Makes 1.25 quart.

For the hot fudge: combine all ingredients in a 2qt saucepan. Set over medium-high heat, cover and bring to a boil. As mixture comes to a boil, start whisking it constantly. (The mixture will bubble very hard and could threaten to boil over.) Cook 10 minutes, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens. Let cool slightly before serving; it should still be pourable, but no longer hot. Store in the fridge, in an airtight container, for up to 1 week. Gently reheat before serving. Makes 3 cups.

Sources:
Cocoa – Hershey (Hershey, PA)
Sugar, milk, cream & butter – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Brown sugar – Domino Foods (Yonkers, NY)
Vanilla – Madécasse (Brooklyn, NY) & Rodelle (Ft. Collins, CO)
Chocolate – Scharffen-Berger
Corn syrup – Karo (Cordova, TN)

Comments:
I made this simple ice cream after deciding to back off and slow down a bit in the ice cream-making department. This was a decision I came to after making two more elaborate recipes, which were good but not spectacular. Now, admittedly I’m still new at this ice cream thing, but it’s precisely because I’m new at it that I shouldn’t rush headlong into complex recipes. I should nail down my skills first—particularly when it comes to getting the texture right. Not just right, but perfect.

Because texture has sort of been eluding me—until now. And the fix was really quite simple, as far as I can tell. All it took was five more minutes of churning in the ice cream maker. I suppose that was just the right amount of air to whip into the base to get the volume where it should be. Once the ice cream froze, the texture was perfect. Perfectly scoopable and smooth, not crumbly at all, holding its dome shape once scooped into the bowl. It was a bit meltier than previous recipes, but I’m okay with that. After all, something’s wrong with your ice cream if it doesn’t melt.

I was actually quite surprised that all it took was five more minutes (for a total of twenty) in the machine. But sometimes things are just that easy. With quite tasty results to boot. Because as chocolate ice cream recipes go, this one was rich and creamy. While not a pure “dark chocolate” ice cream, I did appreciate the depth of flavor that came from the brown sugar, as well as the effect from starting with cocoa, rather than a sweetened chocolate of some sort.

(As a side note, I made the hot fudge so that my husband and I could do something of a sundae bar at home. Talk about rich stuff. A pot of it on the stove smells practically paradisical.)

Now I think I’ve really got the hang of things. We’ll see if I can repeat the experiment next time around.

French Hash

Author’s Note: Apologies for the late post! Though the post was all written and set to go, I didn’t have time to get the photos together, thanks to a weekend that was busy busy and loads of fun.

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Savory Greens & Potatoes

715g small russet potatoes, in 1/2” dice
1/2 tsp salt
450g chopped smoked ham steak
1/2 tsp ground cumin (or 1 tsp cumin seeds)
7g stemmed, seeded & minced serrano chilies (4 small)
180g red kale (1 large bunch), coarsely chopped
260g arugula (2 bunches), coarsely chopped
45ml olive oil
415g chopped onion (1 large)
5g chopped garlic (3 cloves)
1 tsp black pepper
90g chopped scallions (7 whole)
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried rosemary
grated cheddar (garnish)
sour cream (garnish)

Toss potatoes with salt; let sit 5 minutes. To a heavy skillet (at least 12”-wide) set over medium-high heat, add oil; add ham and sauté, letting it render at least 3 tbsp fat. Add cumin and chilies, tossing well; cook 1 minute. Add potatoes; sauté 5 minutes, until they start to brown. Add onion; cook 3-4 minutes, until just barely soft. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute, until fragrant. Add kale and arugula by the large handful, stirring until just barely wilted after each addition. Stir in pepper, scallions, basil and rosemary; adjust seasonings. Serve hot, garnished with cheddar and sour cream.

Yield: serves 6-7
Cooking time: 90 minutes
Vegetarian: no (but can be made vegan without ham & garnishes)
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 8 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Potatoes & onion – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Ham – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Cumin – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Chilies & scallions – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Kale & arugula – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Pepper (tellicherry) – Williams-Sonoma (San Francisco, CA)
Basil – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Rosemary – me!
Cheddar – Boar’s Head Provision Co. (Sarasota, FL)
Sour cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)

Comments:
The name of this recipe doesn’t do it justice, especially once ham is involved. (As usual, I added the meat to an otherwise vegetarian recipe.) But even without the added protein, calling this dish “savory greens and potatoes” doesn’t quite get it right. I’d call it a hash. As such, this would make for a great breakfast, brunch or lunch.

The kicker is the chilies, which are optional, but do provide a necessary seasoning kick. I bought a full pint of tiny serranos, but only used four; I froze the rest, and I don’t think I’ll need to get chili peppers for a long time. Four was quite enough. The spice leaves your tongue quite tingly, and any more heat would mean that the depth of flavor from the greens would be overwhelmed. So be judicious in how you season this dish. It’s a hash, so it can bear a lot, but you don’t want one element to dominate the rest.

And because this dish is a hash, it’s an eminently flexible recipe. I used kale and arugula, but the recipe also suggests collards and chard as alternatives. You should also leave your greens in decently big pieces—about 2” or so—so that they don’t wilt away and vanish when you cook them. (Don’t worry about getting rid of the big stems and ribs in the kale leaves. I think they’ll cook long enough that the ribs will be soft.)

If you want to keep meat in this recipe—though you, by no means, do not have to—you can continue strumming along to the vaguely Mexican theme by adding crumbled fresh chorizo. (You could probably scale down or leave out the chilies at that point.) I say “vaguely Mexican,” thanks to the shredded cheddar and sour cream, along with the cumin and chilies. The recipe also suggests garnishing the dish with guacamole.

On another note, you shouldn’t worry about the potatoes not being done. The time it takes to cook small cubes of them is pretty short, and they’ll be plenty tender, meltingly so. What happens is that, given how full your skillet (or pot) will be, the potato cubes will basically be steamed as they’re sautéed. So don’t feel like you need to parboil or roast the potatoes before you add them to the skillet—unless you want to add them nearer the end of the skillet-cooking, and thereby make more work for yourself and use more dishes. One of the great advantages of this dish is that all the stovetop work is confined to one pan.

This hash makes a satisfying meal on its own—certainly if you add meat. And even if you don’t, to some extent. Without meat, the hash may be more appealing as a side dish, whether for brunch (alongside a breakfast sandwich) or dinner. It’s a hash to have fun with, since that’s the nature of this genre of recipes. Don’t forget the sour cream.

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Swiss Chard Quiche

For the Crust:
1 3/4 cup flour (all-purpose or whole wheat)
8 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed & chilled
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp dried thyme
75-90ml ice water

For the Filling:
230g stemmed swiss chard (1 bunch)
8ml olive oil
225g chopped onion (1 medium)
8g chopped garlic (3 cloves)
30ml dry vermouth
470ml heavy cream
4 eggs
35g chopped dill (1 bunch)
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
115g finely shredded gruyère

For the crust: combine flour, thyme, butter and salt in a bowl; rub together with a pastry cutter until pea-size crumbles form. Add water; mix with a spoon until a dough forms. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth; form into a disc, wrap tightly in plastic and chill 1 hour or so. Preheat oven to 250ºF; on a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to fit a 9” pie plate (1/4”-1/2” thickness). Transfer dough to the pie plate; trim or flute edges as you like. Line dough with parchment; pour in pie weights or dried beans. Bake 12 minutes; remove pie weights and parchment. Prick crust all over with a fork; bake 5 minutes, then set aside.

For the filling: increase oven temperature to 350ºF. Steam chard over boiling water, then drain thoroughly; coarsely chop and set aside. In a small sauté pan over medium heat, add oil; once hot, add onion and sauté 3-4 minutes, until barely translucent. Add garlic; sauté at least 1 minute, until onions are translucent. Add vermouth; simmer 1 minute, then remove from heat and let cool. Heat cream in the microwave for 30 seconds (it will be barely lukewarm); beat eggs in a large bowl. Slowly drizzle cream into eggs while whisking constantly (this makes for a very smooth quiche base); add salt, pepper, dill, thyme and onion mixture. Spread chard evenly in the pie crust; sprinkle with gruyère (you can add more if there’s room), then pour cream mixture over all. Bake 50 minutes, until center of quiche doesn’t jiggle when pie plate is lightly shaken, and the top of the filling is golden brown. (If it’s not quite done, turn off the oven and leave the quiche inside for a few minutes. The residual heat will finish baking the quiche.) Remove from oven; let quiche cool 10-60 minutes before serving, so that the filling sets for easier slicing.

Yield: makes 1 9” quiche
Cooking time: 160 minutes (excluding chilling time for the dough)
Vegetarian: yes (lacto-ovo)
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 8 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Flour (mixed all-purpose & whole wheat) – King Arthur Flour (Norwich, VT)
Butter & cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Thyme – me!
Chard – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Onion – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Vermouth – Dolin, Vermouth de Chambéry (Savoy, France)
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)
Dill – King’s Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Gruyère – Boar’s Head (Sarasota, FL)

Comments:
Well, this was a lovely quiche. As well as a colorful one: parts of the creamy, eggy filling were dyed pink and orange from the chard stems. Which is a nice side effect of using rainbow chard, rather than plain old swiss chard.

The quiche was as rich as you want a quiche to be. I thought the filling was denser than other quiches I’ve made or had recently, and I think that came from having to stuff considerably more ingredients into the crust. You have the chard, the dill, the cheese and the onion-garlic mixture, with the eggs and cream on top. I was slightly worried that my pie shell wouldn’t hold everything. But I managed to jam everything in there. Beware, however, that you’ll probably need less chard, dill and cheese than you think.

In any event, the dill raises this quiche up a few notches, because the aroma is so strong. Chard, while hefty on the palate with a strong flavor, isn’t a fragrant green, so the herby boost is quite helpful. The same goes for the thyme in the crust. It’s rare that a pie crust smells amazing coming straight out of the oven. (I was following a recipe suggestion. I should think it would be more of a requirement given its effectiveness.)

Ordinarily, I’d give a quiche four stars—if only because I feel like it’s impossible to make one that doesn’t taste good. I backed off here a bit as an admonition to myself: I didn’t get the crust quite right. How so? Well, I ran out of all-purpose flour early on, so I substituted whole wheat flour. Now, I know that you can’t make a 1:1 substitution of all-purpose to whole wheat flour, but the math gets complicated if you have to use a mix of the two on the fly. (The standard ratio is ¾ cup whole wheat to 1 cup all-purpose.) And I was trying to get a quiche done, so 1:1 it was. The result was a slightly tougher—and thicker—quiche crust than usual, and less flaky than it should be. (The dough was also harder to roll out.) The dark color was quite nice, though, and it did taste pretty good. But the 3 ½ stars is for me to learn my lesson on flour substitution.

Actually, speaking of substitutions, this recipe ends up being pretty flexible. For one thing, it calls for white wine instead of vermouth for the onion and garlic. I’d forgotten to buy a half-bottle of wine, but I always keep vermouth on hand for martinis, and it makes a good substitute if you’re suddenly short or out of wine. (An obvious N.B.: don’t use vermouth—even even red vermouth—as a substitute for red wine. They’re too dissimilar.) The recipe also suggests adding pine nuts or blanched and chopped almonds to the quiche before pouring in the batter. I think the pine nuts would be interesting, but I’m not sure almonds would ever be tender enough to not distract with their crunchiness. (Quiche filling shouldn’t be crunchy.) You can also swap basil for the dill for a more Italian flair.

Despite crusty issues, this quiche was a tasty, aromatic lunch (and dinner)—not to mention a rich one. It certainly made my colleagues jealous. I feel like I’m getting better at making this staple of French cuisine. It’s not quite as tough as it looks, and the results are always delicious.

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Perche au Pinot Noir

2 8oz rockfish fillets
salt & pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbsp salted butter
1 diced large carrot
1 chopped large celery rib
1 chopped medium onion
1 halved & sliced leek
5oz stemmed white mushrooms, in 1/2-3/4” pieces
3/4 cup + 4 tbsp pinot noir
1 tsp tomato paste
1 bay leaf
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tbsp heavy cream

Season fish generously with salt and pepper; preheat oven to 350º. In a 12” skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat; add onion and leek, sautéing 5 minutes or so, until just translucent. Add carrots; sauté 3-5 minutes, until softening. Add celery; sauté 3 minutes, until all vegetables are soft. Add mushrooms; cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in 3/4 cup wine, tomato paste, bay leaf and thyme; once incorporated, transfer mixture to a baking dish. Nestle fish among vegetables, leaving tops mostly exposed; cover dish with waxed paper. Braise in oven for 30 minutes, without turning, until fish flakes easily. Remove pan from oven; turn off oven. Leave fish in the baking dish and return to oven to keep warm, while you transfer the vegetable mixture back to the skillet. Set skillet over medium-high heat; once vegetables are simmering and crackling again, add remaining wine. Cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid is almost completely reduced. Reduce heat to medium; stir in cream, tossing until vegetables are coated. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide fish fillets and vegetable mixture between individual plates, and serve immediately. Serves 2.

Sources:
Rockfish – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Butter, mushrooms & cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Carrot, celery & leek – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Onion – Valencia’s Produce (Montrose, VA; UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Pinot noir – Louis Jadot, AOC (Côte d’Or & Côte Chalonnaise, Burgundy, France)
Tomato paste – Contadina (San Francisco, CA)
Bay leaf & thyme – me!

Comments:
This is a very scaled-down version of a French dish that is meant to serve eight people. It starts with a whole ocean perch (or walleye, tilapia or rockfish), which is a significant challenge for me right there because I’ve never cooked whole fish before. The rest of the recipe is equally big: a full pound of mushrooms, and a whole bottle of pinot noir. As decadent as that sounds, two people—me and my husband—can’t eat all of that. So I adapted this dish for a few fillets.

In doing so, I gave some thought to making this dish completely stovetop. But, given the still-large quantity of vegetables, some oven time seemed appropriate. Also, that baking dish looks mighty pretty coming out of the oven, with the very rich, autumnal color palette and the pale fish nestled in among the vegetables. Interestingly, the recipe says to cook the whole dish in the baking dish—stovetop and oven. While I think I could do this, I’m always worried about heat: sautéing vegetables would take forever if they were spread out in a 9×13” baking dish, while my gas flame was just under the center. It’s also no real biggie to transfer everything from a skillet to the dish, and then back again.

Also, the original recipe calls for some water in the vegetable mixture before the fish is added. My veggies weren’t looking dry—they were very moist, in fact—so I didn’t add the water before I put everything in the oven. I just added more wine on the other end. Because wine is far more exciting than simple water.

One thing that’s striking about this dish is that it is a very autumnal (even wintry) seafood dish. I feel like pairing fish with summer vegetables is considerably easier, not to mention considerably more popular. Seafood doesn’t often leap to mind as fall or winter food, though I suppose there are many cold, coastal areas that defy that generalization.

At the same time, the dish is classically French, featuring a great use of many vegetables, some lovely wine and a simple, central element. The dish is rich and flavorful, and very homey. Put a hunk of bread in your left hand, sip some more pinot noir, and enjoy the food.

Seasonal Ice Cream & a Protein Boost

Soupe aux Pois Chiches à la Provençale

60ml olive oil
340g uncased & crumbled loukaniko sausage (4 links)
510g halved & sliced leeks (4 large)
20g minced garlic (4 large cloves)
200g chopped celery (4 ribs)
1.9L vegetable stock
1kg canned & drained chickpeas (from 4 cans)
145g chopped spinach
2g dried thyme
2g dried rosemary
2g dried oregano
2 fresh bay leaves
salt & pepper to taste
20ml salted butter

Put oil in a soup pot and set the pot over medium-high heat. Once oil is hot, add sausage and cook 2 minutes, breaking up large chunks with the cooking spoon. Add leeks; sauté 3 minutes. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add celery and cook 1 minute. Add stock, followed by chickpeas, spinach and herbs. Cover and cook 15 minutes, letting the soup come to a boil. Season with salt and pepper to taste; add butter and let melt, stirring, for 2 minutes. Serve hot.

Yield: 4L
Cooking time: 85 minutes
Vegetarian: no
Source: 12 Months of Monastery Soups
Date prepared: 1 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Loukaniko sausage – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Leeks & celery – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Stock – Kitchen Basics (Sparks, MD)
Chickpeas, bay leaves & butter – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Spinach – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch NW)
Thyme & rosemary – me!
Oregano – Spice Islands (Ankeny, IA)

Comments:
I think this soup edges out last week’s more typically autumnal fare. Better seasonings, for a start, which I griped about last time around. This soup can also be served at more points of the year, including in the depths of winter. Certainly, you can have a bowl of it and feel like hibernating for awhile afterwards.

I blame the sausage. Crumbled sausage of any sort is a rich addition to a soup or stew. Loukaniko is something special, however, and I’d seen it advertised at Whimore Farm’s stand at the market for weeks. So I finally decided to try this Greek classic.

Now, loukaniko simply means, in Greek, “pork sausage,” without referring to a specific kind. In the Anglophone world, however, it refers to a pork sausage with a few specific seasonings, most notably orange zest. (Whitmore Farm’s version includes the zest, along with red wine, garlic, coriander, fennel seeds, cumin and allspice.) The sausage I bought was unsmoked, but some kinds of loukaniko are smoked. I was also intrigued to learn that loukaniko has a rich history, with production of it dating back to the 300s. (The sausage’s name actually is borrowed from Latin lucanica, referring to a spicy pork sausage from Lucania, a Roman province that is now Basilicata and Salerno.)

It’s worth noting that the sausage in this soup is entirely optional. On the other hand, you don’t have to use loukaniko, if you want to go the carnivorous route. Italian sausage is always an option, as is kielbasa (to give the soup a more northern European feel). A more unusual variety like merguez—a North African beef or lamb sausage with chilies and a famously red color—would add a nice touch.

Certainly, the seasoning boost came from the sausage, though the generous use of herbs helped. When my husband and I were eating this soup, we certainly noticed a special something in its remarkable depth of flavor. We can thank all those seasonings in the sausage, as well as the meatiness of the pork. (I should note that the butter is for added silkiness in the texture.) Once you throw in the chickpeas, you have a dense stew.

It would be even denser if you follow Brother Victor’s advice and garnish this soup with croutons. I thought about doing so, but then thought that the two leftover ciabatta rolls in my fridge would do better on the week’s salad. For one thing, Brother Victor also suggests puréeing  the soup—something I thought impossible once I decided to add meat. Croutons make sense on top of a purée, which is basically liquid, but not on a chunky stew like this. Besides, our soup bowls were full enough already.

This is a soup that I’d be very happy to make again. I may need to: we’ll see how harsh the upcoming winter will be.

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Braised Endives with Watercress & Apple Salad

535g whole endives, trimmed & halved lengthwise
4 tbsp sugar
175ml lemon juice (from 4 lemons)
105g finely shredded gruyère
525g cored & thinly sliced tart apples (2 large)
350g chopped watercress
130g chopped spinach
95g chopped shallots (2 medium)
450g bacon, cooked until crisp & crumbled (12 large slices)
cider vinegar to taste
olive oil to taste
croutons (garnish, optional)

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Combine endives, sugar and lemon juice in a 2qt saucepan; cover with water. Cover and bring to a boil over medium heat; uncover and simmer until endives are very tender when pierced with a fork. (This won’t take long.) Drain endives and place them in a 9” pie plate; sprinkle with gruyère. Bake 5 minutes, until cheese is melted. Meanwhile, toss together apples, watercress, spinach, shallots, bacon, vinegar and oil in a large bowl. Serve endives on individual plates with some of the watercress-apple salad, garnished with croutons, if you like.

Yield: 1.3kg salad (excluding endives)
Cooking time: 80 minutes (excluding cooking bacon)
Vegetarian: no
Source: The Farmer’s Kitchen
Date prepared: 1 November 2014
Rating: ***1/2

Sources:
Endives – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Sugar & vinegar – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Lemon, gruyère & shallots – Broad Branch Market (5608 Broad Branch Road NW)
Apples (stayman winesap) – Nob Hill Orchard (George & Susan Behling; Gerrardstown, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Watercress – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Spinach – Redbud Organic Farm (Haroun Hallack & Clarissa Mathews; Inwood, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch NW)
Bacon – Whitmore Farm (Emmitsburg, MD; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)

Comments:
Mmm…gratinéed endives…Why have I never thought of this before? Why have I never eaten this before? Rich and tasty, to be sure. Somewhat tart, thanks to the lemon; and subtly sweet, thanks to the sugar, though it’s mostly there to keep the endives from becoming too bitter to eat. Then there’s all that rich butteriness of the gruyere, enveloping the endives and perfectly setting off the lemon. When I was a kid, I used to like melting slices of cheese onto crackers. This may be the more grown-up version of that.

The rest of the salad has a lot going for it too. The spinach was leftover from the soup. (I forgot I had a second bag of it in the fridge. So if you make this week’s soup, double the amount of spinach.) But I still did appreciate its heft. The green that does the driving here, however, is the watercress. And I have to say that the watercress from G. Flores Produce is the best I’ve had in years. Highly aromatic, with the classic peppery, pungent, spicy kick on the palate. (What were those round leaves with the pallid green flavor I got at Whole Foods? That used to be the only watercress I could find.)

When I was looking at the recipe and saw that it required endives and watercress, it occurred to me that bacon would be a natural complement. (Adding meat to ordinarily vegetarian dishes is how I get my husband to eat them. Hence my additions to recipes.) Bacon almost always appears in endive salads, and its strong flavor pairs well with that of watercress. All that was missing was the classic blue cheese, but the gruyere was just fine, thanks—though it also pairs quite wonderfully with bacon. And, while apples and bacon are somewhat odd bedfellows, they worked well enough together. (Pears might be a better addition, but apples are available at the market right now.) Be sure to get tart apples, however: this isn’t a salad that needs to be sweet.

The whole lovely salad is wrapped up in a drizzling of cider vinaigrette. I should note that The Farmer’s Kitchen isn’t particularly precise with its dressing recipes (unlike Brother Victor). The cookbook usually just offers suggested ingredients and lets you—the cook—play with the amounts. Which isn’t a bad way to put together a salad. I do suggest keeping the dressing light here, since you don’t want to drown the delicious watercress and cheesy endives in vinegar. This is a salad with a balance of big flavors, so it should be savored and enjoyed. It’s a great way to enjoy the last warm days of autumn.

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Farfalle with Tuna & Sun-Dried Tomatoes

1/2 lb dried farfalle
1/4 cup olive oil (preferably from the sun-dried tomatoes)
1 halved & thinly sliced small onion
20 oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
3 minced garlic cloves
1 tsp crushed red pepper
30 chopped kalamata olives
1 tuna fillet, in bite-size pieces
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp dried thyme

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil over high heat; add farfalle and cook until just al dente, then drain. Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12” skillet over medium heat; add onion and sauté 3 minutes. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add tomatoes; cook 5-7 minutes, until onions are very tender. Add crushed red pepper and olives, stirring well; increase heat to medium-high. Add tuna and all herbs; cook, stirring frequently, until tuna is cooked to desired doneness. Stir in farfalle and serve. Serves 2.

Sources:
Farfalle – De Cecco (Fara San Martino, Chieti, Abruzzo, Italy)
Oil – Antica Italia (Partanna, Sicily)
Onion – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Tomatoes – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Garlic – G. Flores Produce (UDC Farmers’ Market, Connecticut Avenue & Yuma Street NW)
Crushed red pepper & oregano – Spice Islands (Ankeny, IA)
Olives & tuna – Whole Foods (4530 40th Street NW)
Basil – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Thyme – me!

Comments:
Well, I can’t really claim this dish as mine, but it comes pretty damn close. The original recipe sounded appealing—featuring much of what you see above, with the addition of several carrots and lots of parsley. So I decided to make it, and then realized that my husband doesn’t really like carrots or parsley. Ordinarily, I would have just decided to make something else entirely. But that combination of sun-dried tomatoes and tuna called to me. So instead, I just decided to adapt the recipe, and probably severely altering it beyond recognition.

The resulting dish was classically Mediterranean. Sharp-tasting and fragrant, it managed to be rich and satisfying, while also light and fresh on the palate. (But still heavy enough to warrant a red wine. We got an agiorgitiko from Nemea.) It did come with a bit of a kick, thanks to the crushed red pepper, but nothing overwhelming. The pepper actually melded quite well with the tangy olives, sweet-ish tomatoes, and herbs and garlic.

The fun part about this pasta dish is that putting it together was almost pure improvisational sprezzatura. Before getting everything started, I didn’t know how much of anything was going into the skillet (except for the tuna). All I knew was that carrots were not going to make an appearance. So I decided to use up a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, and then guessed my way through everything else. The result was off-the-cuff sophistication, something I would have been quite happy with at a restaurant—but that I made!

Yes, I’m very proud.

One thing you have to be careful about in making this dish is the amount of liquid and the cooking temperature. Okay, two things you have to be careful about, but they are related. This dish doesn’t have a lot of added liquid, nor do the ingredients render much, so you need to be careful about how hot your skillet is, to prevent ingredients from drying out and burning. At the time, I didn’t have wine on hand to toss in the pan to help ameliorate the situation. And while I thought about adding some vermouth or arak, I ultimately decided to press on, keeping a close eye on the gas. The dish turned out just fine. Future iterations of this sauce, however, would probably be helped a bit by a few tablespoons of wine—not much more, though. I actually liked the sauce’s “chunkier,” drier texture, and I wouldn’t want things to get too damp.

But these are quibbles on the margins. I managed to fairly make up a pasta dish. A quite a good one, I might add.

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Cider Cinnamon Ice Cream

2 cups apple cider
3/4 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 tsp cinnamon
6 egg yolks

Whisk together cider, sugar and cinnamon stick in a small pot over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and cook 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until reduced to 2/3 cup. Remove from heat and discard cinnamon stick. Stir in milk and cream; add cinnamon and egg yolks, whisk until smooth. Return pot to medium heat; cook 15-20 minutes, stirring often, until mixture thickens and densely coats the back of a spoon. Strain custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a medium bowl; cover and refrigerate until completely chilled. Process in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to a freezer-safe container; freeze at least 4 hours, until firm. Makes 1-1.5 quart.

Sources:
Cider – Nob Hill Orchard Nob Hill Orchard (George & Susan Behling; Gerrardstown, WV; Broad Branch Farmers’ Market, 5701 Broad Branch Road NW)
Sugar, milk & cream – Giant Food (4303 Connecticut Avenue NW)
Cinnamon stick – 365 Organics (Austin, TX)
Cinnamon – McCormick & Co. (Sparks, MD)
Eggs – Organic Valley (La Farge, WI)

Comments:
Cinnamon ice cream is one of my favorite flavors of ice cream, but I can hardly ever find it at ice cream parlors or in pint form in the freezer section. Now, on the other hand, the single greatest benefit of having my own ice cream maker is that I can figure out how to make my favorite, hard-to-find flavors.

This cider-cinnamon one-two punch is a good step along the way. For one thing, it showed me why cinnamon ice cream may be a bit difficult to come by. How so? Because cinnamon ice cream is a tad touchy to make. It’s a challenge to get the texture right: ground cinnamon is rather coarse-grained, such that the ice cream is a little bit gritty. Not too badly, in my opinion, but my husband objects that it’s rather distracting. So, when the time comes to make my own cinnamon ice cream, I think I’ll follow King Arthur Flour’s lead and use a bit of cinnamon oil, rather than ground cinnamon.

On the other hand, the cider component of this ice cream is fabulous. The cinnamon-infused cider reduction has all sorts of alternative uses besides this ice cream. As its own topping for ice cream, for instance, or any sort of desert that calls for a garnish. On the savory end, I see it working with pork chops. And, of course, it would also work in various cocktails.

One way to dress up this ice cream would be to add some finely diced apples. Once upon a time, on a visit to Madison’s wonderful Chocolate Shoppe (an ice cream store that’s been around since 1962), I had an apple-cinnamon ice cream. Cinnamon ice cream base, apple chunks and a caramel ripple. Heavenly. In this ice cream, if you wanted to go that route, toss in the chopped apple in the last few minutes of churning. And I’d recommend a variety that’s on the sweeter side of sweet-tart, and perhaps a bit soft in texture. As much as I love crisp apples to eat out of hand, I don’t want to make that much effort when I’m eating ice cream.

Speaking of caramel, it probably goes without saying that this ice cream goes well with caramel sauce of some sort. We had a jar of espresso caramel from Little Red Fox (littleredfoxdc.com), and its dark undertones were a lovely complement to the ice cream’s sweetness. And it was rather fun to stir the caramel into the ice cream itself.

The few gripes about texture aside, I still enjoyed this ice cream very much. I think I’m really starting to get the hang of it, though I do need to really figure out the nuances of getting texture right. But still, we’re enjoying homemade ice cream. I can’t really complain too much. And let’s face it: it’s kind of fun to have an ice cream that’s appropriate for the season.