Dinner in the Yellow House

One sauce, two dinners

Last week I made papardelle with prosciutto and peas, using this cooks.com recipe. We were celebrating a new part-time job for me so we cracked open the Castello de Banfi Poggio Alle Mura 2001 Brunello we'd been saving for a special occasion. This lusty but smooth Sangiovese really should be paired with something heartier, but I didn't want to wait anymore for it, so we opened the bottle and crossed our fingers.

We lucked out, because the wine complimented, rather than clobbered the cream sauce. A lovely match that we won't be enjoying again anytime soon, since the Brunello was a gift that is way out of our normal price range for wine.

The next night, I had nothing planned for dinner, but I did have a fresh bunch of spinach, courtesy of my SPUD harvest box. Now had I been cooking for just myself, I may have just sauteed the whole bunch with garlic and butter, tossed some nutmeg over, and called that dinner, but that's not going to cut it with my spouse and kids, so instead, I scoured the fridge for more LOs (Yellow House shorthand for leftovers) and came up with the remaining prosciutto and pea sauce and some polenta. These all seemed like likely companions and so I conceived...

Polenta with spinach, peas, prosciutto, garlic, and cream

1 bunch fresh spinach washed, dried, and chopped
3 big cloves garlic, chopped
1 T butter
enough cooked polenta to cover a 9'X9' Pyrex dish (I prefer the kind you cook yourself, but some of the stuff that comes precooked in a plastic tube would be okay. Just slice it up and arrange in the dish.)
1 cup prosciutto, peas, and cream sauce (see link above)
3T freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. If the polenta is cold, put your Pyrex dish into the oven and turn on the oven to 300 degrees. My oven takes just under ten minutes to get to temperature, and by that time, the polenta was warmed through.
2. Melt the butter in a pan and add the garlic. Saute the garlic till golden, then add the spinach.
3. Cook the spinach, stirring occasionally, until it is nicely wilted.
4. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the cream sauce.
5. Pour the spinach mixture over the polenta, sprinkling the Parmesan over it.
6. Broil on low for 3-4 minutes, just enough to turn the Parmesan brown.

Serves 4 as an accompaniment to grilled steak or 2-3 as a standalone dinner.

Presto Pasta Night: Addis Ababa Edition

New York one week, Ethiopia the next.  Can you tell I've got a bit of wanderlust right now?  Good thing I can satisfy it (a little, anyway) in the kitchen.  But what does pasta have to do with Addis Ababa?  Well, according to Marcus Samuelsson, Italian is the only type of foreign food you can find there.  So, he published a recipe for trout spaghetti in his wonderful book, The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. 

I am using his book as an entree into the world of African cooking, which I want to learn in order to cook for my little sister, who lives at the base of Mt Kiliminjaro, in Tanzania.  It's a little wimpy of me to start with one of the more European-influenced recipes in the book, I know, but I can't resist anything noodly and furthermore, I'm still a little scared of injera. 

One great thing about this recipe is that it can be made fairly quickly.  The trout has to cure for a few hours, but you could prepare that and then disappear for a couple of hours, say, take in a Tae Kwon-Do class or something?  Then come back and do the rest in about thirty minutes. 

I also loved that I got to use three of the herbs I currently have growing in my garden: mint, chives and basil.  But just a little bit of basil, thank goodness, because my spouse is very protective of that plant. 

As for the berbere, you could make your own, which is probably a smart thing to do, but if you, for example, enter the spice store and realize that there is no way you can happily gad about collecting all the necessary spices with your 17-month child in tow, then don't worry, you can also get a premixed berbere.  I went to my favourite bulk store, For Good Measure, and they mixed me up a pot on the spot. 

So, without further ado, here is how I made Marcus Samuelsson's Trout Spaghetti:

Into a rectangular glass dish, put two trout fillets that you have sliced as thinly as you can manage.  Squeeze two limes over them and add as much chopped mint as you want.  Now add a tablespoon of berbere and 1/4 cup of olive oil and mix it all around.  Cover with Saran wrap and put in the fridge.  Put on your dobok and go to Tae Kwon-Do. 

Come back from Tae Kwon-Do, take your dobok off, put on some pajamas, and stir the trout bits around. 

Put on some salted water to boil.  Once it has boiled, add your spaghetti and cook for nine minutes.  Chop up an onion and put it into a frying pan with 1/4 cup olive oil, a tablespoon of berbere, and 3 tablespoons of butter.  Cook over low-medium heat for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Meanwhile, string and cook some delicious fresh peas to serve alongside.  Also, get your ricotta ready.  I used storebought ricotta, but Marcus Samuellson would have you make your own fresh cheese.  If you want instructions for that, you're own your own, because I took the lazy route: stir some salt and chopped chives into a half cup or so of ricotta. 

Now, drain your spaghetti, put it back in its pot and scrape every last tasty bit of the onions and sauce into the pot and mix well to combine.  Fold in your trout bits and a couple of chopped up basil leaves.  Serve dolloped with the cheese and with some nice sweet peas alongside. 

The berbere-flavoured noodles make for a very unusual pasta.  It definitely tastes like Ethiopian-Italian fusion, which is exactly what it is, I suppose.  I will make this again soon. 

Thank you again to Ruth, the host of Presto Pasta Nights, who appears to be persisting in her South Beach Diet efforts.  What stamina!

Burgáns Albariño and Pistachio Trout

Ever since we first tried Burgáns Albariño for Wine Blogging Wednesday 20, Tobias and I have gotten regular cravings for it.  Interesting that Tobias only thought it was okay that first time, and now he's a real fan. 

Last Saturday evening we wandered down to Mark Anthony's for a bottle and stopped at Pepper's for some trout, which I thought might be a nice match.

"So, any great new recipes for me today?"  I asked Nick, our favourite wineseller and the genius behind the Tokaji and apricot bread pudding idea that is my favourite food/wine pairing to date. 

"Recipes?  Oh, I've always got recipes.  What are you thinking about having with it?"

"I've just bought some trout fillets."

"Ah, trout.  That will be good.  Here's what you should do: bread the fillets in ground up pistachios.  That would be a very nice match with the Albariño.  A little beurre blanc, mmmm."

"I've got pistachios!  That sounds great.  And beurre blanc.  Okay, I'll do it."

And here is how I did:

1 recipe of Virgin butter
2 trout fillets
1/2 cup shelled pistachios, ground fairly fine in the blender or in a coffee grinder

Smush the nuts onto both sides of the fillets then broil them about 4 inches from the broiler until they are done.  Mine took about 3 minutes a side, but you'll have to judge for yourself, depending on the thickness of your fillets.  Pour over the virgin butter.  Serve with  boiled or steamed asparagus (with a generous amount of the virgin butter poured over that as well), orzo, and Burgáns Albariño.

This is a nice easy Saturday night dinner, easily and quickly made for two, by two.  A word of caution: only attempt the "by two" part if your kitchen is large and neither of the two is suffering from pre-menstrual syndrome.  Otherwise the wine may end up being more than purely a taste sensation, and become a necessity for continued marital peace. 

And here is how I make orzo:

1T butter
1/2 cup orzo
1 cup chicken stock
1T chopped fresh basil, or 1 teaspoon dried
1T freshly grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano

Melt the butter in a saucepan.  Add the orzo and stir until all the pieces are coated with butter and go ahead and let them get a little bit brown if you like.  Now pour in the stock and turn up the heat.  Let it come to a boil then immediately turn to low and cover.  Leave for 9 minutes.  Turn off heat and stir in basil and Parmy.  If I wasn't serving this with the Virgin butter, I would add more Parmy. 

Presto Pasta Night: I ♥ NY Edition

The truth is, I've only ever been to New York once, and it was 11 years ago.  But I can love it from afar, can't I?  And one day I will love it in person again.  And when that day comes, the first thing I will love is a visit to S'mac, the macaroni and cheese restaurant.  Yes that's right, a restaurant that serves nothing but macaroni and cheese!  Only in New York. 

But since that visit is still long off, I have decided that I am going to try to recreate all of the scrumptious-sounding mac n' cheeses on the S'mac menu.  I see now that they have put up an instructional video and a recipe for their mozzarella mac n' cheese.  I didn't see that the last time I visited the website, or else I would have started my quest with that one.  Instead, I started with the one that sounded the tastiest: the manchego mac with fennel and shallots. 

Here is how I made it:

5 T butter
2 T flour
2 cups milk
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/2 onion, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
2 1/4 grated manchego cheese (available at Charelli's)
2 cups elbow macaroni
1-2 fennel bulbs, sliced
1 T olive oil
8 shallots, chopped
1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs

Put shallots and fennel in a pyrex dish with the olive oil and cook at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the fennel is to desired crunchiness.  Remove from oven, lower the oven temp to 350 degrees and chop up the vegetables a bit more if desired.  Set 6 cups of water to boiling in one large pot and the butter to melting in another.  Once the butter has melted, add the flour and cook over medium heat for a minute or so while whisking.  Whisk in the milk, add the onion, paprika and bay leaf and simmer for fifteen minutes to thicken, stirring frequently.  When the water boils, add salt and macaroni and cook for eight minutes. 

After the white sauce has thickened, remove from heat, remove the bay leaf, add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the cheese.  Keep stirring until it has all melted.  This is the most fun part of the recipe.  Drain the macaroni and add it, with the vegetables, to the the sauce, mixing well.  Now spoon the mac n' cheese into a nice blue casserole.  Non-blue casseroles are also acceptable.

Melt the remaining 3 T of butter in a small pan and add the bread crumbs.  Cook over medium heat until browned a little, mixing with a wooden spoon.  Spread breadcrumbs over mac n' cheese and cook at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until bubbly. 

Serves 4 for supper, with a green salad in a plain vinaigrette and a nice crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc (or in my case, beer and nothing). 

In the yellow house, everyone loved this, though the flavour of the manchego is pretty subtle.  Next time I would add more fennel (I used just one small bulb) and more shallots (I used six).  I am not opposed to a little Tabasco on top, but keep in mind that manchego is expensive and subtly flavoured, so if you want to taste it, go easy on the hot sauce and/or ketchup. 

Thanks again to the wonderful, stalwart Ruth, who is undertaking the amazing task of hosting Presto Pasta Night while she is in the throes of the South Beach Diet, Phase 1!  Good luck Ruth!

Kafka's Red Russian Soup

I am loving Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love, which I bought after hearing her speak so charmingly about in on NPR last year.  This is a great quote,

When Barbara Kafka hears that someone's children won't eat vegetables, she thinks to herself: 'My dear, if you would only learn how to cook them'

...even though it doesn't ring true in the yellow house so much.  There's nothing my children love more than plain boiled or steamed broccoli, and that doesn't exactly require much skill from the cook.  The picky seven-year-old complains loudly if she's expected to eat spinach any way other than raw and turns up her nose at any really tarted-up veggie dish such as Kafka's cardamom cabbage, which I think is just heavenly. 

It was while sipping a bowl of the Red Russian Soup from this book that I felt inspired to write my Soup is Life entry.  This soup really epitomizes that statement, and for a moment I thought "This is better than pho!"  Then I came back down to earth and realized nothing is better than pho, and that actually the RRS is only my fourth favourite soup in the world.  The top three are

1. Pho, any time, any place
2. My chicken noodle soup, which I have to be feeling pretty flush and generous to make because it starts with a whole, fresh chicken and a bunch of herb-picking and takes hours.  But the result, especially in the winter when everyone has a cold, is really worth it. 
3. Minestrone from the Joy of Cooking.  Especially if I toss some Parmy rinds into it. 

Part of the fun of the Red Russian soup was buying a cut of meat I've never had before: beef short ribs.  I read on Lex Culinaria that short ribs were all the rage last year, but I had never tried them, so ordering them at The Village Butcher was a little thrilling.  But they were a little bit expensive, so when I tasted the meat after their 90-minute simmer and found it to be tough and tasteless, I was unhappy. 

What I didn't realize was that adding them later back into the broth where all their flavour had gone would re-imbue them with that flavour, so the end result was that the meat was very tasty in the soup.  But not the tastiest bit!  The tastiest chunks were the red cabbage.  It was almost like eating candy, it was so good.  My one-year-old wouldn't stand for my usual way of sharing a bowl of food with him (one bite for you, one bite for Mummy) and I had to adjust it slightly so that he wouldn't get frantic while I was having my spoonful.  I'd have to give him a very large piece of cabbage and then put another hunk of beet on his high-chair tray before I could have a spoonful myself.  It's just so tasty!  It's Life!

I don't usually copy out recipes from a cookbook verbatim, but I'm going to take the risk of betraying copyright laws here and just give it to you.  If it sounds like something you wouldn't normally eat, please try it anyway!  I am not a big fan of beets and overall, soups that call for sour cream on top are not the ones I gravitate towards, but this food is just amazing.  I really think it is a soup that everyone will like.

Red Russian Soup (Meat version) -- reprinted without permission from Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka

2 1/2 pounds beef short ribs, cut into pieces between the bones
2 pounds beets, trimmed and scrubbed
4 cups canned tomatoes (not plum) with their juices
3/4 pound carrots, peeled, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch rounds
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium red cabbage, cored and cut into 1 1/2-inch square pieces
1 large bunch fresh dill, fronds only, coarsely chopped
1 cup red wine vinegar
3/4 cup sugar, or to taste
3 tablespoons kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For Serving

smallish waxy potatoes, boiled, peeled, and halved
sour cream
coarsely chopped fresh dill -- lots

Place the short ribs and 8 cups water in a large stockpot and bring to boil over high heat.

(Note: take the "large" here very seriously.  I had to change pots midway because my Dutch oven was just not big enough.)

Reduce the heat to a slow simmer.  Cook, skimming occasionally, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until the meat is tender. 

(Note:  I put the ribs in half-frozen and they were definitely done after 90 minutes)

Remove the short ribs from the liquid.  When cool, separate the meat from the bones and trim off any fat.  Cut the meat into cubes and reserve.  Skim the liquid, then measure it and add enough cold water to equal 7 cups.  Skim any fat that rises to the surface, and return to the pot. 

While the short ribs are cooking, cook the beets.  Place them in enough water to cover by 2 inches in a large pot.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the beets can easily be pierced with a knife, 30 to 45 minutes.  Strain the cooking liquid.  You want 5 cups liquid; add water if necessary.  Set aside. 

Add the tomatoes, with their liquid, the carrots, onion and cabbage to the short rib cooking liquid.  Add half the chopped dill.  Bring to a simmer and cook until the carrots are almost tender, about 20 minutes. 

Add the beet sticks and cook for 20 minutes longer.  Add the 5 cups reserved beet liquid, the vinegar, sugar, remaining dill, the short ribs, salt and pepper.  Remove from the heat and allow the flavours to blend for 1 hour, or overnight. 

The serve, reheat the soup.

Place a boiled potato half in each bowl. Ladle in 1 cup hot soup.  Float 1 tablespoon sour cream on top and sprinkle with additional chopped dill.  Serves 10 as a main course.

(Note: I dispensed with the potatoes after the first few servings I devoured.  But the sour cream and dill were key.)

Snickerdoodles to the Rescue

Yesterday afternoon I was feeling a bit raw and downtrodden.  Several things led up to me feeling that way:

1) Reading Maus in bed the night before.  A very bad idea.  Maus is an excellent, excellent book, but the material couldn't be grimmer.  I dreamt about Nazis all night.  I woke up to find that I had tied my nightgown in a big knot in my sleep.  Not a good way to start the day.

2) Discovering that the local Starbucks charges $7.50 an hour for wi-fi.  $7.50 an hour.

3) Because of 2), making the unfortunate choice to read The National Post's Opinion page while I sipped a very untasty mug of Earl Grey.  If I had hoped to find comfort in the fact that the Holocaust is behind us now, reading the vitriol and barely-concealed hatred evident in the Post's letters was not the way to do that. 

4) Catching a few minutes of a ghastly TV programme called Flavor of Love.  My goodness it was awful.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to enjoy Public Enemy again. 

My daughter was going to be home from school in 25 minutes or so, and I had the idea to make her something yummy and comforting for an after school snack, and in so doing, also comfort myself a little.  I opened up one of a handful of recipe books on my shelf that I've never actually looked at, Jean Pare's Cookies.  I inherited this cookbook from my father-in-law after he passed away and the idea of making a recipe that maybe Grandpa had made upped the comfort factor of this activity.

I was spoiled for choice, and made the Snickerdoodles mostly, I admit, because of the name.  I just thought Sahsez (who is seven) would love to come home to a house smelling of cinnamon and the news that she was about to eat something called a Snickerdoodle.  I was right on both counts. 

Also, I figured that once I had made the first batch, she would probably make the rest of them for me, since the process is very kid-friendly.  And when I say kid-friendly, I don't mean something that a kid can do, but something that a kid would actually want to do.  Rolling dough into one-inch balls and then coating them with cinnamon and sugar definitely falls into that category. 

Snickerdoodles are tasty, sweet and cinnamony and doughy, but not the cookie to end all cookies.  Make them if you want to keep little hands busy, or if you need something sweet and soothing for yourself, but don't want to put forth a lot of effort (they are easy in the extreme). 

The recipe below makes four dozen, so make sure you have a plan in place to give some away.  Sahsez' best friend is ill so she took a dozen over to her place.  And if you get sick of eating them plain, and can't give anymore away, they do make a mean ice cream sandwich.

And did I feel better after baking four trays of what is essentially blobs of fat, sugar and starch?  Yes ma'am, I did.  Hooray for comfort food!

New Recipe Number 9: Jean Pare's Snickerdoodles

Blessed are those who own Kitchenaid mixers, for they will easily: cream together 1.5 cups sugar and 1 cup butter or margarine, then add two eggs, one at a time.  Then they will add 2.5 cups flour, 2 tsp. cream of tartar, 1 tsp. baking soda and 1/4 tsp. salt.  Then they will roll the dough into little one-inch balls and roll the balls around in 2 tbsp. sugar mixed with 2 tsp. cinnamon and cook the little balls of goodness at 400 for about 8 minutes.

For those without wicked-ass mixers, I'm sure you have your own way of dealing with this, and much better biceps than me.

Birthday Lasagne

I love to eat and make lasagne.  I have only ever tried five different lasagne recipes, and two of those I wouldn't make again (a spinach lasagne and a goat cheese and roasted red pepper lasagne).  The three that I make over and over again are Anna del Conte's from Gastronomy of Italy, The Podleski sisters' vegetarian version and The Best of Bridge's "Death to Dieters" Chicken Lasagne.  The third one is the one I have designated Birthday Lasagne, simply because we would all be at serious risk of cardiac arrest if we ate it at any time other than just birthdays. 

I made it this week for Tobias' 30th and mmm it was just as good as I remember it being for my mother's 59th last year.  It's pretty easy to make, as lasagnes go, because you don't have to slave over a long-cooking sauce.  The Anna del Conte one has a Bolognese sauce which, while wonderful, takes several hours to cook.  The Podleski one has a veggie-packed sauce with about twenty ingredients and tonnes of chopping to do.  Birthday Lasagne, by contrast, uses Knorr Hollandaise sauce, which sounds almost immoral, but it is surprisingly good.  Here is how you make it.

And here is the scrumptious result.