Orecchiette with Cauliflower and Lacinato Kale

You know, I'm not really much of a pasta girl. I don't feel that I've ever fully understood it, or appreciated its value. I never order it at restaurants because the mountain of pasta that arrives seems ridiculous (and in fact according to a former co-worker, the serving size at the Italian restaurant he once cooked at was ONE POUND of pasta per person). I tend to enjoy it as a wrapper of things--like ravioli, or sandwiched in lasagne--but that's about it.

But I have always had this nagging feeling that I'm missing something, and I have a fantasy about going to Italy and eating pasta in small towns and saying OHhhhhhh--THIS is what you're talking about!

I doesn't help that the new book (Gourmet Today if you're slow on the uptake) has Ruth rhapsodizing about pasta in the intro to the pasta chapter. I mean, really showing some love, as in if she could eat one food only for the rest of her life it would be pasta.

That's serious appreciation. And it made me feel bad about neglecting the Pasta, Noodles and Dumplings chapter, which has (according to the labels on my sidebar) been cooked out of only 7 times during this grand and luscious cook-through experience of mine.

I chose Orecchiette with Cauliflower and Lacinato Kale because my farm share has lots-o-kale every single week. A read-through of this recipe is interesting, and since it's not on epicurious I'll just tell you basically what caught my eye.

One, it's based on a country dish that, although meatless, uses anchovies in the sauce. Two, it's Italian by way of Australia, where Thai influence led the chef (Karen Martini) to use fresh serranos instead of the more typical red pepper flakes. Since the dish is now by way of me, I used the jalapenos that were also in my farm share. Three, it calls for fresh coarse bread crumbs. A lot of them. Which made me wonder, but I pressed on anyway.

And just fyi, the recipe says that it takes 1 1/4 hrs to make, but it only took me about 40 minutes, mostly because I combined some steps.

So here's how it goes--you toast the bread crumbs in the oven until they're golden brown. Check.

Cook both the cauliflower and kale in boiling salted water for 8 mins til done. This is where I saved some minutes--instead of cooking them one after another for the exact same amount of time, I cooked them together. Der. Don't bother with the directions of pressing to remove water and the next paragraph will explain why.

Saute anchovies, garlic and chilies for about a minute, then put in the veggies, 1/2 cup parsley, and 2/3 cup reserved vegetable cooking water. Bring to a boil, season w/ s&p and take off heat.

At the same time presumably you're cooking your pasta (in salted water, please). Marry the pasta and the sauce in whichever pot is largest and stir in 3 oz grated parm and another 1/2 cup chopped parsley.

You may have been wondering where the bread crumbs come in, and it's now! You serve the pasta drizzed with extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Really? Yes. Bread on top of pasta! And you know what? That was probably one of my favorite features about this dish--the contrast of the crunchy bread crumbs with the soft pasta, and that olive-y perfume from the oil.

As for the rest of it, it was good! It made a nice meal, and I've been eating it in small amounts as a side dish all week.

And Ruth, we'll have to get together and eat pasta someday. I still feel as if I need educating and I suspect you're the gal to do it.

Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing & Lentils and Curried Rice with Friend Onions

These tough economic times have had me taking a closer look at what's hanging around in my pantry. I have the standard stuff--cornmeal, lentils, tuna fish--but I also have a preponderance of Japanese ingredients, thanks to a Yankee Swap present I received a few years back. Soba noodles, udon noodles, nori, bonito flakes, and a Japanese cookbook that I flip through from time to time.

A perfect opportunity to explore a cuisine that I enjoy eating but don't have that much experience cooking--and Gourmet helpfully provides a recipe that involves one of my pantry ingredients: Udon Noodle Salad with Grilled Chicken and Asian Dressing.

I don't think I've ever eaten udon noodles before--the notes describe them as soft and slightly chewy and that's about right--they are incredibly satisfying to eat. This recipe has you combine three things--the boiled, cooled noodles, marinated, grilled chicken breast, and a cilantro/parsley vinaigrette. It's actually pretty straightforward--the only issue I really had with it is that the recipe needs a little clarification.

For example, it has you combining stock, cilantro springs, parsley etc in a blender, to puree until smooth. This is what it looked like after pureeing:



which resembles something you might find in an unkempt aquarium. This is easy to fix--don't say "cilantro sprigs", say "chopped cilantro".

The other moment of hesitation for me was what to do with the vinaigrette (there was a lot of it). Are the noodles supposed to sit in the vinaigrette like soup? Or are they supposed to be just lightly coated and then drain the vinaigrette off? I ended up letting the leftovers hang out in the same bowl as the vinaigrette, which ended up being a mistake--the noodles break down and lose that lovely chewy consistency by the next day.



These small niggly things aside, I would make this dish again in a minute, especially for a fun summer dinner. The flavors are bright, and it's easy to put together.


**********************************************************************************


Lentils were another thing I had floating around in my pantry, and it was pretty easy to find a recipe would put them to good use. Lentils and Curried Rice with Fried Onions is based on an Indian dish called khichri (explain the notes) and the fried onions are not what you're thinking of--no batter, just simple sliced onions fried in vegetable oil until they're brown and crispy.

This is another recipe that has you making components separately and combining them to delicious effect. The lentils are boiled and drained, the onions are fried and salted, and the rice is cooked with lots a curry powder and a little bit of cayenne.

The lentils and the rice are tossed together with some chopped parsley, and onions top off the show. I should say, the onions that didn't go into my mouth topped off the show--it is very hard to resist crispy salted things hanging about on the counter.



This makes a lot and we had great leftovers for days. It's worth noting that the onions don't retain their lovely crispy nature in the refrigerator but that's ok. If you're struggling with mid-winter food blahs this might be just the thing to spice up your dinner plate.

**********************************************************************************

Gluten-Free recipe in this post: Lentils and Curried Rice with Fried Onions

Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach

Dear readers, I offer you profound apologies. It's not that I haven't been cooking, it's that I haven't been blogging about it. Oh for Teena's discipline! I'd like a large helping of that with my turkey, please.

In the weeks since I last wrote, here's a sample of what's been gracing our tables:

Chinese Beef Noodle Soup (the broth: heaven, and finally a cut of beef (short ribs) that doesn't shrink and toughen up like stew beef)

Kale and White Bean Soup (my biggest gripe with this was using dry beans, which sometimes just never fully soften up. Grrr.)

Shrimp, Crab, and Oyster Gumbo (Amazing, and expensive. Make this only if you are wealthy, or somebody wealthy is footing the bill, or you live in shrimp/crab/oyster country. Measurement note: Gourmet says 24 oysters = half a cup, but not in this part of the world. More like two cups, and have fun shucking those oysters.)

Beef and Sausage Lasagne (Meat lover's lasagne--mmmmm. My major complaint is that 13X9 baking dishes just aren't deep enough to really hold lasagne.)

Slow Roasted Salmon with Mustard and Parsley Glaze (pretty good and would have been better if I hadn't started with salmon that was still ever-so-slightly frozen in the middle)

Old-Fashioned Gingerbread (words cannot adequately describe how much I loved this cake. And please note that in spite of the instructions, I DID use blackstrap molasses, and thought it was better for it.)

Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars (technically challenging, this recipe gave my Kitchen Aide a workout. The cake: swoony.)

Russian Tea Room Cheesecake (a cross between a lemon souffle and a cheesecake, another Kitchen Aide exerciser, and a perfect complement to the above-mentioned Hungarian Chocolate Mousse Cake Bars)

Coffee Bourbon Barbeque Sauce (the flavor is fine, but it's so thin!! Perhaps it would be better as a marinade?)

Well! Now that I've told you all about the food I was too busy to tell you about, I don't have time to write about Barley Risotto and Creamed Spinach. So until next time....

Pasta with Mussels and Chorizo and Fresh Banana Layer Cake

Sometimes at work I just get it wrong.

For example, yesterday I thought I'd make a pasta dish (to rectify my ignoring the Pasta section) partly because grandson G. loves pasta.

And on Sunday night, Don and I had the most amazing tapas at Zoe's--mussels with chorizo sausage. It was so incredibly good that I was overjoyed to find a similar recipe in the book, the bonus being that it involved pasta. A hearty dish, with great flavors--what could go wrong?

Please take note--it does not take an hour and fifteen minutes to make this recipe, because I did it in 30 minutes. I did have three burners going at once (pasta, mussels, and chorizo/shallots/garlic/wine). Please also note that the recipe on Epicurious has you steam and shuck the mussels, but the book would have you leave the mussels in the shell, which is traditional.

So what went wrong was this--turns out L. doesn't eat "filter feeders". And G. was a little skittish about the whole thing. And Mrs. S., unbelievably, had never seen or eaten mussels before. This amazes me, because the family is well familiar with oysters and clams, in many sorts of raw and cooked states.

So Mrs. S. picked at her food, G. removed almost all of his mussels and devoured the pasta, L. got some leftover pasta and put on a jarred pesto sauce she had picked up camping, and D. (youngest son of Dr. and Mrs. S.) consumed a mountain of mussels. Happily.

I ate it, and the combo was as good as it had been at the restaurant. (sigh) Well, today's another day.



I also made Fresh Banana Layer Cake yesterday, and since I gave it serious short shrift the last time I made it, merely listing it along with a lot of other recipes, I thought I'd throw in a picture and tell you that for a cake, this one is fast and easy. Just make sure your butter and cream cheese is super soft. And if you use Pam Baking Spray, you can cut out that whole butter-and-flour-the-pans bit.

Char Siu and Chow Fun with Chinese Barbecued Pork and Snow Peas

The whole time I was making both Char Siu and Chow Fun, I was pretty much convinced that I was doing it wrong. In fact, I was thinking about not posting at all about them because I didn't think I had quite captured the essence of these recipes.

Asian food is where I feel at a disadvantage with no photos to emulate. I'm not a photo-cookbook gal, but that's because most everything I cook is Western and I can visualize it easily.

Let's start with the Char Siu. In case your Chinese isn't up to snuff, I think that translates to "barbecued pork". If you were to go to Chinatown (I think I go once a year for dim sum in Boston) you might see these but they'd be scary bright red.

The recipe is pretty straightforward--marinate in tasty stuff, roast over water pan while basting. I just wasn't sure if I had cut the pork right--the recipe says to cut the shoulder along the grain into long strips 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide. This is where my anxiety started. The pork shoulder was about an inch tall--did that mean to cut it up into, say, 8 blocks of pork an inch tall and an inch and a half wide? (all the while I'm turning the pork this way and that, figuring out which way the grain went). Could that be considered a "strip"? I didn't think so.

Anyway, I went with my first notion, and after marinating and roasting it looked like this:



At this point I could see that the smaller pieces definitely looked better--crisper and more saucy--and I was regretting my earlier cutting decision. And I'll confess--those small pieces didn't make it very far out of the oven before they went into my mouth. Mmm.

Well, on to the Chow Fun. By the way, I have to stop for a moment and tell you that usually if I see a recipe embedded in a recipe, it's a deal-breaker. Like, a long list of ingredients, with one (or more!) being something like this: tomato sauce (page 117). So Chow Fun lists the char sui as an embedded recipe, but the char siu looked so easy I went along. Well, also there's the whole "I"m cooking the entire book thing".

Anyway, here are some things I discovered while I was shopping for the Chow Fun. You can't buy peanut oil anymore. Where has it gone?? Another thing I discovered: Stop n Shop, for some idiotic reason, stocks dried rice noodles in the fresh pasta section. Why? Why?

Being unfamiliar with these ingredients, I didn't cotton on to this fact until I was at home, saying Hmmm, these don't feel that pliable. No, I had to soak them in hot water. More anxiety. Would it be right? Also, this stuff is the equivalent of angel hair pasta, maybe even thinner. Would THAT be ok?

I have a lovely deep wide flat pan that is perfect for stir-fries. And even though I suck at shopping and cutting the ingredients for Chinese food (obviously) I am opinionated enough to tell you that unless you have a stove that looks like this:



...there's no point in cooking with a wok. Why? Because the idea of a wok is that there is even HOT temperature on the bottom AND the sides. Notice how all those woks are sitting in nest-type things? That's what they do. The older ones (I'm told) just had holes in the top of the stoves and the rounded bottoms were exposed to fire below.

Can you duplicate this on your little flat-top stove? No, you cannot. Can you buy an expensive stove to replicate a Chinese restaurant kitchen stove? Yes, you can.



But it would be much less expensive for you to buy a wide, flat-bottomed pan that will heat evenly, that will fit YOUR stove. The snow peas will not sneer at you, I promise.

On with the cooking. It's standard stir-fry stuff--hot pan, cook ingredients in order of density, add sauce at end.

Hm. Now here I had some issues. The sauce (which was supposed to be complemented shortly thereafter by a cornstarch mix) was instantly absorbed by the rice noodles. Sluuuuuuurp! So, I left the cornstarch out--nothing to thicken up!

Here was the final dinner bowl:



Tasty? God yes. Did I wake up at 5 am starving? Yes, I did, but that's ok. And the next time I see fresh rice noodles--wherever I am (they must be somewhere)--I will snatch them up so I can try this again.

Garlic Bread, Tomato Sauce and Black Forest Cake

People, this Garlic Bread rocks the house. There is nothing, and I mean nothing that compares with biting into greasy, soft, garlicky bread that is hot out of the oven. The only modification the book had over this recipe on Epicurious is the addition of a little salt, which you grind up the garlic with. You know how you do that, right? By smooshing the salt and garlic together with the flat of your chef's knife? The salt helps to break down the garlic so you get a nice paste and no unpleasant chunks to get stuck between your teeth.



And it's just the thing, of course, to to with Tomato Sauce. The Gourmet Cookbook offers a number of sauce recipes; this one is a winter sauce that uses canned whole tomatoes, onions, garlic and dried oregano. Simple, and really tasty.

Why the Italian meal? I hear you ask. Not my typical MO. Well, when I was discussing with Dr. and Mrs. S. what might be an appropriate pre-Thanksgiving day dinner, I said I thought something light might be good, to make a little room for the feasting.

"How about spaghetti?" Dr. S. asked? God love him.

I rearranged the menu and gave them spaghetti (capellini, actually), garlic bread and salad for lunch, and mushroom soup for dinner.

Now folks, I am not really so much of a pasta cook. So when I went to boil the capellini, I figured for six people, two pounds of pasta should do, right? I mean, I used to work with this kid Patrick who used to work in an Italian restaurant, and their portion sizes were one pound of pasta PER PERSON. Yes, you read that correctly.

Can I just tell you that two pounds of capellini makes an ENORMOUS amount of pasta? It filled a three foot long oval platter. I don't understand the physics behind this, at all. If somebody can explain it to me, help me out with it. But my six or seven cups of sauce were kind of lost in the middle so the moral of the story is a) if you're cooking capellini, good luck, and b) if you're making tomato sauce, don't put it on too much pasta.

Dr. S., by the way, had two helpings. They all loved it, and there had to be at least half a platter left over. Amazing.

What do you follow a meal like this with?



Some yummy Black Forest Cake!

This is a spectacular creation, both to look at, and to eat. Dr. S. was completely on board with the idea of this cake once I gave him the parameters: chocolate, kirsch, and cherries.

It's even better the next day, once the cake has had a chance to soak up some of the liquid from the sour cherry jam and the kirsch syrup. And this is no wimpy Betty Crocker cake either--it has backbone from ground almonds in the mix. Epicurious doesn't list this recipe (at least not in the format the book uses) so if you want the recipe just let me know.

Now get away from this computer and go walk off some of those Thanksgiving calories!

Wild Boar Bolognese, or Melissa Gets Experimental

It's been a long time since I've been hunting, and a REALLY long time since I hunted boar. But last weekend in Newport I just couldn't resist.

I'm just kidding. There are bores in Newport, but you can't kill them (unfortunately).

Actually I was at the Fruitful Basket and saw a little packaged roast that said "Wild Boar". How could any chef resist? Bobby said the cut is basically like pork shoulder, responds well to "low and slow", and tastes fab with Bolognese sauce.

So I trotted back to work with my little boar roast, and readers, not only did I think to experiment with a new meat, I thought I'd top it off by trying a new cooking technique too.

Fans of Top Chef will have noticed that Hung, one of the final three contestants this season, makes frequent use of a cooking technique called sous vide. From what I could tell (from watching it on tv), it involved vacuum-sealing ingredients in a bag and cooking them in a pot of water. We happen to have a Food Saver at work--it's one of my favorite new kitchen gadgets. And so, friends, I decided to put the boar and the ingredients for Bolognese Sauce in a vacuum sealed bag, and then I boiled that sucker for about three hours.

Today I see from my research that sous vide is actually this:

Sous-vide (IPA pronunciation: [suː viːd]), French for "under vacuum", is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period of time at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. But unlike a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (Usually around 60°C = 140°F).

The method was developed by Georges Pralus in the mid-1970s for the Restaurant Troisgros (of Pierre and Michel Troigros) in Roanne, France. He discovered that when cooking foie gras in this manner, it kept its original appearance, did not lose excess amounts of fat and even improved the texture. The method is used in a number of top-end restaurants under Thomas Keller, Paul Bocuse, Joel Robuchon and Charlie Trotter and other chefs. Non-professional cooks are also beginning to use vacuum cooking.

Deadly botulinum bacteria can grow in food in the absence of oxygen: sous vide cooking must be performed under carefully controlled conditions to avoid botulism poisoning. To help with food safety and taste, relatively expensive water-bath machines are used to circulate precisely heated water; differences of even one degree can affect the finished product.

Thanks, Wikipedia. Especially about that last part.

My husband asked me, when I called him in the afternoon, if I had a Plan B if this meal didn't work out. I was very nonchalant--oh I suppose, I said, but I'm sure it will be just fine.

I did have the foresight to open the bag around 6pm, an hour before dinner. I wanted to reduce the Bolognese, and I figured I would keep the meat warm and add it at the end. I cut open the netting that surrounded the meat, expecting it to fall apart like pork shoulder, but all it did was sit there like a sullen grey lump. So I started slicing. And tasting.

Uh oh.

Dry, dry, dry, and not all that tasty. Certainly not falling apart. In fact, there was hardly any fat on that meat at all, or in it--just a few veins of gristle. (Der, I'm thinking to myself, it's GAME, not a grain-fed stockyard prisoner.)

I did the only thing I could do (besides ordering pizza), I minced the heck out of it and threw it in with the sauce. And I added about three tablespoons of butter to the sauce to make up for the lack of fat in the meat.

Then I presented it with a flourish to Dr. and Mrs. S, who hardly ever eat Italian. In fact, I think I've served them pasta twice, this being the second. Dr. S. devoured it (once he got over his initial reservations)--Mrs. S. picked at hers.

My backroom audience (the nursing assistants) went cuckoo over it--Peggy said she could eat it every night all fall and winter.

So I would recommend the Bolognese sauce if you like that sort of thing. And since The Gourmet Cookbook makes no mention of either boar or sous vide, you can safely follow that recipe to a happy end, and leave the experimental cooking to me.

Penne with Broccoli Rabe

Can you believe this is the first recipe I've cooked out of the "Pasta, Noodles and Dumplings" chapter? We're not big pasta eaters in our house. When we cook pasta, the first thing I do is check the box for bugs because it's been sitting around for so long. Dr. and Mrs. S don't care that much for pasta either, so I was thinking that about three years from now, when I've cooked my way through this cookbook, I'd be left with a long list of pasta dishes to finish the project off.

But yesterday afternoon when I asked my husband what he wanted for dinner, he said "comfort food". And for Don, half Italian and half Jewish by birth, one hundred percent Italian by upbringing, comfort food means pasta. It also, inexplicably, means broccoli rabe, a vegetable I've never really made friends with. This man comes home with two bunches of it (that's two pounds, folks), sautes it with at least two pounds of minced garlic and red chili flakes, and eats it. All of it. He swears that if it weren't such hard work to cook he would eat it every single day. He is a strange man, my husband.

So how wonderful that the Gourmet Cookbook has a recipe entitled "Penne with Broccoli Rabe"! Perfect. Epicurious does not provide this recipe, but it's not rocket science. Cook the pasta in salted water, cook the chopped rabe in salted water (I used the same pot with a strainer divider), then saute the cooked rabe in XVO with previously sauteed garlic and red pepper flakes. Toss with pasta.

I liked it. Don loved it. I think what made me like it more than I thought was the extra step of boiling the rabe (which must draw some bitterness out) and then sauteing it. I also used a Trader Joe's penne that was basil and garlic flavored. All in all, not a bad way to step into the "pasta, noodles and dumplings" world.