The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Risotto With Really Wild Mushrooms

 

I could eat risotto every day if I didn't like so many other foods as well.

On Saturday I made a large batch of risotto and I used some wild mushrooms that our friend, John, had picked in the fall.  (This is why I've called the mushrooms "Really Wild" rather than just plain ol' "Wild.")  John was on a mushroom-foraging kick for quite a while, and fortunately he shared some of his findings with us.

 

The top bag contains Hen of the Woods stems and pieces, and the lower bag is one of two bags of Brown Oak (a sort of Wild Shiitake, I believe) he gave us.  The other bag of Brown Oak is somewhere in my freezer, buried beneath cubes of Red Thai Curry Paste and bags of beef stock and frozen vegetables.

Anyway, I made a rather large amount of risotto - you can reduce the rice and corresponding liquid if you'd like, but I'd keep the mushroom amount the same, because after I'd made this batch, I found myself wishing I'd looked harder for the other bag of Brown Oaks.

Here's my list of ingredients:

3 cups Arborio rice

roughly 2 cups wild mushrooms, cut into large pieces

2 T butter

3 T olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onion

6 cloves of garlic, peeled, each clove cut into 3-4 pieces

1 cup dry white wine

6 cups chicken stock (a mushroom stock would be great, too), kept warm in a pot on the stove

4-6 cups hot water (or you could use more stock.  I only had 6 cups on hand, so i had to use water for the rest of the liquid)

2 cups shredded (not grated) good romano or parmesan

 

And here's what I did:

First, I melted the butter in a large pan on a medium-high flame and added the olive oil so the butter wouldn't burn.

Then I added the mushrooms, onions and garlic and sauteed them until the onions had softened.

Then I poured in the rice and sauteed that, stirring constantly, until the rice was translucent.

Next, in went the wine, I stirred some more, and then added a ladle of chicken stock.  I reduced the heat to medium and stirred, stirred, stirred, until the liquid was just about completely absorbed. 

In went more liquid.   More stirring ensued.  Liquid was absorbed.  I added more liquid.  And so on.  That was pretty much the pattern.

After most of the chicken stock had been added, I started tasting the rice to see how tender it was. 

You want the rice in the finished dish to have a little bite to it (you know, like in pasta - al dente) without being hard and crunchy.

Once the rice has reached that stage, stir in your cheese, add salt and pepper if you wish, and serve.

It's creamy, earthy, cheesy, hearty, and well worth all the stirring!

Printable Recipe!

 

Savory Rugelach - I'm In!

 

I am not alone.  Apparently - and not surprisingly - I'm not the only one who decided that if sweet rugelach is yummy, savory rugelach would probably be pretty tasty, too.  Holly at Phe/MOM/enon and Clara at I*heart*Food4Thought have been thinking along the same lines, just to name a couple.

We made Rugelach for last week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, and ever since that batch disappeared I've been wanting to make more.  So yesterday, while my husband mulched the gardens in preparation for winter, and Julia played in the dirt, I made rugelach.

Four kinds, actually.  Two sweet; two savory.  I used the same cream cheese dough recipe we used for last week's batch - you can find that here if you don't have the book.  And as far as all the different fillings - I didn't measure, really.  I just eyeballed all of it. 

For the sweet -

Batch #1 - I used orange marmalade, dried cranberries, and some sliced almonds chopped up and mixed with a sprinkling of cinnamon.  These are my favorites, and I'll probably make a ton of these to serve/give away in December.

Batch #2 - These were inspired by Alex, my little PB&J man.  I used strawberry jam, chunky peanutbutter, and dried cranberries.  They now have the Alex stamp of approval.

And then the savory -

Batch #1 - Pesto and goat cheese and ham. 

 

Batch #2 - Pesto and goat cheese and shrimp.

 

(sorry - had to use a flash - it was dark out by this point)

They smelled INCREDIBLY good while they were baking, let me just share that with you.  If I could, I'd share some of these rugelach instead, but they're all gone.

Alex loved the ones with ham.  I think he could have eaten all 16 if we'd let him get away with it. 

I lost count of how many Bill had.  He, too, could have eaten more than  his fair share, if given the opportunity.

I liked them, too.  Last night I liked the ham version better, but today, when I did my photo shoot of the remaining 4 (which I hid in the fridge last night so no one could snitch them) (I wanted to photograph them in better light than that poor wedge above), and then ate them all, one by one (you know, for the interior view pictures) I liked the shrimp version better. 

   

But what I really like the best is the fact that the possibilities, as they say, are endless. 

Wonder what I'll be in the mood to try next....

 

Chicken Tetrazagne

Chicken what?

I pronounce it "tet-ra-ZAHN-yah," in case you're curious.

I had roasted a great big chicken recently and we had a lot of leftovers, so I thought I'd make chicken tetrazzini one night.  And chicken stock with the bones.

 

But.  I already had a ton of dishes to do and I didn't want any more than I really, really needed to.  Which meant I didn't want to use a pot to boil up spaghetti.

So.  I had those Barilla no-boil lasagne noodles in the pantry and thought I'd make a lasagne-ish tetrazzini.  Or a tetrazzini-ish lasagne. 

So that meant I'd only dirty a pot for the sauce and a pan for the lasagne.  Yay!

As you can see, my counters are a bit overcrowded. 

 

And that's the tidy area.  What?  The cat food?  Oh, yeah, it absorbs excess liquid and provides extra calcium and other nutrients.  I used about a quarter cup.

Okay, not really.

Here's what I really did.

I melted half a stick of butter in a big pot...

 

And then I whisked in a quarter cup of flour which makes...anyone?...that's right - a roux.

 

To that, I added a about 2 and a half cups of chicken stock, a cup of white wine, and the rest of the gravy I'd made when we first had the chicken.  Once that started bubbling, I stirred in the chicken (maybe about 3 cups or a bit more) and the leftover vegetables - in this case, grilled string beans (about half a cup), and potatoes and onions I'd roasted in the pan with the chicken (about a cup and a half of them).  And once everything was heated through, I stirred in a cup of cream. 

 

Now for the assembly...

I poured a couple of tablespoons of chicken stock in a 13 x 9 inch pyrex baking dish, swirled it around to coat the bottom of the dish, and then placed a layer of the lasagne noodles over that.

 

Then I ladled in a third of the chicken mixture...

then another layer of noodles, half the remaing chicken, more noodles, and then the last of the chicken.

 

(Yes.  I see them.  Sloppy drips I should have wiped off the edge of the pan.  Sorry.)

And before it went in the oven, I topped it with about 1/2 - 3/4 of a cup of grated parmesan cheese.

 

I also sprinkled paprika on top, but that image didn't come out too good, and these shots are wonky enough with the ugly lighting.

I baked the whole thing at 350 degrees for about 35-45 minutes - til it's golden brown on top and all bubbly and hot.

Here's a glimpse of the edge of the pan (because my picture of the top looked horrible).

 

Mmmm...goopy and bubbly and comforty.

Let it sit about ten minutes to set - if you can.  And then go on and dish it up.

 

The kids liked it - Julia especially liked the pasta.  Alex especially liked the chicken and the rest of the inner glop.  (I mean "glop" in the yummiest possible way.)  Bill had his later - he had played a wedding and didn't get home til later.  And he said he wasn't all that hungry, at first, but said he'd have a little, probably because of the "What do you mean you're not HUNGRY???  After I worked for hours and hours and hours slaving away on this?????" look on my open-book face.

And then he went for seconds.

Lasagne of Homemade Components, Mostly

And that's a LOT shorter than the original title, which was "Lasagne of Homemade Ricotta, Homemade Mixed Greens Lasagne Noodles, and a Quick Homemade Tomato Sauce."  The "mostly" refers to the mozzarella string cheese I used (hadn't made my OWN mozzarella at this point) on top of the lasagne.

 

Okay, well, first off, I made the Ricotta cheese.  I love Ricotta, by the way.  In my post about making the ricotta, someone commented that I should not waste milk on making Ricotta, but I disagree - I could eat the whole batch of Ricotta ALL BY MYSELF WITH JUST A SPOON and would consider it a really good use of my time.  There's just something about it.  Yum. 

Okay, so the Ricotta was in the fridge, just waiting to be eaten (either by me with a big spoon, or in some other food form and shared with my family), so I made another batch of pasta dough.  This time, I wanted to make a green pasta, so I just went out to the garden and picked some things.  Really.  I don't have measurements - I just picked a couple of arugula leaves...a couple of swiss chard leaves...a mustard green leaf...a stalk of oregano...some chives...I think that was it.  I also thawed a some basil that had been frozen in olive oil, and I think I used a couple of garlic scallions.  I rinsed off everything from the garden, patted it dry, and then whirled it and three eggs in the food processor.

While the greens were drying (before I pureed them with the eggs), I poured the rest of the Semolina flour I had into my big white bowl (there was maybe half a cup) and added a couple of cups of flour and a sprinkling of salt.  I made a well, and then, after the greens and eggs were combined, poured that mixture into the well.

I stirred the flour into the liquid with a fork, and I added some water as needed to work the mess into a dough.  I think it was about half a cup or so of water.

And then I kneaded for about 10 minutes or so...

until it was a nice, smooth (well, except for the small bits of greens and garlic poking out here and there) ball of dough.

It smelled REALLY good... (I'd invite you to inhale deeply...but it wouldn't do any good...all you can do is look...)

And then I wrapped it in plastic and put it in the fridge.

And I left it in the fridge til the next day.  And oh, boy, did it smell even better when I unwrapped it that following afternoon.

I divided the dough into sixths or eighths, pressed and rolled each piece into a sort of rectangle thin enough to go into the pasta roller, and then I rolled each piece out into sheets.  I then cut each sheet into 3 or 4 pieces - VERY rustic -

and set them on cookie racks while I rolled out and cut up the rest of it. 

 

No - wait, I'm mistaken.  I didn't use all of it up - I used about 2/3.  I saved some to make into linguine later on.  And then there were also the scraps my kids claimed.

(that's a smiley face that Julia made)

Actually - Julia had helped roll out the sheets of dough - she's become a pro with the pasta roller - so much so that if I attempted to assist her in any way, say, by catching the sheet of dough as it came out the bottom, while she guided the dough into the top with one little hand and cranked the roller with the other, she gave me a LOOK and snapped "I can DO it!" in a tone that also distinctly said "So BACK OFF, Mommy!" 

I said fine and let her go to it.

Once I had enough sheets for the lasagne, I started throwing together a sauce.  I used a 28 oz can of whole plum tomatoes, some onion cut up, some garlic, about half a cup of red wine (what was left in the bottle), some water, and a can of fava beans.  I cooked the whole thing, added some salt and pepper, and used my immersion blender to liquify it all - mainly so the kids wouldn't be poking around looking for vegetables to avoid.  The beans added some thickness, too.

I heated a big pot of water while the sauce simmered, and started cooking the lasagne noodles in batches of 5 or 6 noodles at a time.  Because the pasta was fresh, they cooked very quickly - a couple of minutes and they were done.

I laid the cooked noodles out on dish towels on top of my cooling racks while I cooked the rest of them, and once all the noodles were cooked I assembled my lasagne.

The unmatched noodle shapes gave each layer a crazy quilt sort of look, but since each layer of noodles was covered with a layer of sauce and a layer of ricotta, it really didn't matter.  Actually, it didn't matter anyway.  Who cares?  This is home cooking, not a Food Network competition.

I also had seven noodles left over, once I'd built four or five layers of lasagne in the pan, so I rolled the remaining ricotta up in the noodles and covered that with the rest of the sauce.  Not manicotti, really.  I don't know what to call it, other than "for the freezer."

I baked both pans uncovered in a hot oven - 400 degrees F.  Since everything was already cooked, I just wanted to heat them through quickly.

And that was dinner that night.  And lunch the next day.

Herb Layered Ravioli Filled with Goat Cheese, Garlic Scallions and Wilted Spinach

  

Those are thyme leaves (from the window box near my kitchen door).  I also used oregano, tarragon, and chives.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've felt the urge to make fresh pasta lately, and I've seen, over the years, pasta with herb leaves pressed between the pasta layers.  So, in that fresh pasta mood, and with PLENTY of herbs (though not all are ready) to choose from, I set to work.

I'd picked up a box of Hodgson Mill Semolina Pasta Flour at the grocery store the other day, so I used that for this batch of dough, and I doubled the recipe on the back of the box because I figured I could freeze any extra ravioli or make spaghetti or something with the trimmings from the ravioli and dry that.

Which is exactly what I did.

I'd also picked up a package of goat cheese for the filling.  I planned to enhance that with some other greens, either herbs or vegetables or something. 

I don't always go into these things with an ingredient list and a recipe.  I just think - hey, goat cheese ravioli would be yummy, and wouldn't it be pretty with whole herb leaves in the pasta dough?  And then I do it.

 Like I said, I doubled the recipe on the back of the box.  Very simple - flour, eggs, olive oil, salt, and water.

I used a big bowl instead of the counter, partly because I'm not always perfect with the stirring in of the flour and occasionally the dam bursts and I get egg all over the counter.

Also - because I like to use this bowl for handmade things like pasta or bread.

It's big and plain white and made in Italy.  It's got some chips along the rim, but otherwise, it's in lovely shape.  I didn't buy it in Italy, but I feel more Italianish when I use it.

Okay, enough of the silly babbling. 

I mixed my flour and salt together in the bowl and set those aside for the moment. 

Then I cracked 4 eggs, and added the olive oil to that.

(And if you look closely in the olive oil, you can see a little upside-down and reversed image of me taking this picture, in my green checked apron.)

I made a well in the center of the flour/salt mixture and poured the eggs and olive oil in.  I also added most of the water called for in the recipe, saving some to add bit by bit, if needed. 

The amount of liquid needed in things like bread and pasta doughs will vary depending on the humidity.  It's been pleasantly cooler and less humid the last few days here, and I ended up adding a touch more water than called for.  Hey - that's what makes all this exciting! 

Anyway, you add the liquid to the center of the flour, and then with a fork (or two fingers), gradually stir in the flour, working from the center outward.  (If you're working directly on the counter, you want to make sure the walls of flour stay intact until you've got enough of the flour worked into the eggs to make it more batter-like than just runny and sticky.)

Once you've got the flour and liquids pretty well incorporated, you can turn this rather shaggy dough out onto your work surface for the kneading.

It won't look very pretty at this point, but all it needs (no pun intended) is a little pushing and pulling and it will evolve into a nice, slightly elastic pasta dough. 

The texture, if you're using semolina flour, will be kind of rough, like a medium-grade sandpaper.  That's fine - that's what it's supposed to feel like.

Anyway, form this blob of dough into a ball and start to knead.  You'll want to knead this for about ten minutes or so.  If anyone has irritated you lately and you're still simmering a bit, now's the time to think about that person and work out all your repressed aggression.  Don't worry, the dough can take it.

To knead, you basically grasp the edge of the dough farthest from you, then pull that up and toward you, then press it down with the heel of your hand and, still with the heel of your hand, gently but firmly shove the dough away from you.  Turn the dough around a quarter turn and repeat.  Again and again and again.

Just for kicks, I kneaded with my left hand so I could take pictures with my right hand, and I set the camera mode to "sports" so I could have that continuous burst of shots as I kneaded.  Here's kind of what kneading looks like (when you're awkwardly kneading with your non-dominant hand.)

And that's all there is to it.  I know, it's much cuter when Julia's doing the kneading, but she was playing outside and couldn't be bothered to pose for this photo shoot.

As you knead, the dough will change from the original loose, shaggy blob into a more cohesive, slightly elastic, smooth (for something made with scratchy semolina flour) blob.  At this point (should be around ten minutes or so) you wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the fridge for at least an hour.

While the dough is resting (and the liquid is permeating the semolina and all the ingredients are working as a team to become pasta dough and not just a blob of stuff), you can get your herb leaves ready and mix up the filling. 

Actually, I made two fillings.  The goat cheese one was the originally intended filling, but Alex doesn't like goat cheese, or pretty much any soft white cheese, so I had to create something for him. 

I had some sliced pepperoni and a few slices of swiss cheese, so I diced those up together and that was the filling for one little batch.

He was happy with that.

For the goat cheese filling, I sliced up an 8 oz log of goat cheese

and two garlic scallions

and put them in a bowl so the cheese could start to soften.

I rinsed off a few ounces of baby spinach leaves

(I don't really know the amount - it was what I had left from last week's Farmers' Market excursion) and put them in a pan with a little olive oil and salt.  I put a lid on the pan, set the flame to medium high until I could hear the snapping and popping of water droplets on oil, and then I shut off the heat and let it steam.

Next, I scraped the spinach leaves into a cheesecloth-lined mesh strainer set on a bowl so the liquid would drain off and the spinach could cool.

But you can't really get rid of a lot of liquid that way, so at some point you'll have to gather up the corners of the cheesecloth and twist them a bit to form a spinach-filled, cheesecloth-wrapped dripping ball. 

And then you squeeze.

(Looks like I'm milking the spinach, doesn't it.)

You'll have to squeeze and then kind of rearrange the little mass of spinach in your hand so you can squeeze again from a different angle - keep doing this until you've squeezed out as much liquid as you possibly can.  You don't want a watery filling.

Once you've squeezed every drop of juice out, you can unwrap the spinach and chop it up a bit.  If you've squeezed nice and hard like you should, you will be able to see the cheesecloth pattern on the mass of mushed up spinach, like this -

After you give it a rough chop, add the spinach to your goat cheese and garlic scallions,

Grind on some pepper and sprinkle on some salt, and then mash it all together with a fork.

And yes, you could just spread that on a cracker and it would be divine.  But be patient.  Ravioli is heavenly, too.  Set the goat cheese mixture aside along with the pepperoni mixture (if you have an Alex or similarly selective child) and get your work area ready to make pasta.

Now, when I made and posted about tortellini on this site, I rolled out the dough with a rolling pin.  I didn't do that this time.  No particular reason - I just felt like using the pasta roller this time. 

You'll need all-purpose flour to dust your work surface and keep your dough from sticking, a rolling pin to get the dough flattened enough to put into the roller (if you're using it), a pizza wheel to slice the dough, some water to cement the ravioli edges together, and something to let your ravioli sit while they dry - I used cookie racks - plenty of air flow all around.  You can also set them on a tea towel dusted with flour.  The idea is - you don't want the dough to start sticking to the surface it's sitting on, because then when you lift it up, the dough will tear, exposing the filling for all the world to see.  There will be pointing and laughing, and, of course, weeping.  You don't want that.

OH!  I forgot to talk about the herbs!  Depending on what you grow (if you do) or what you can buy, and also on your taste preferences, the choices for your herb layers are endless.  I used creeping thyme, tarragon, oregano, and chives, mainly because they're all growing prodigiously and because I thought they'd all go nicely with the filling, individually and as a group.

Rinse off your herbs and dry them, and then carefully pick off the leaves (unless it's chives, and they can just hang out and wait).  You don't want to do this too far in advance, because some of them (like the oregano) will start to discolor pretty quickly after being rinsed and manhandled (however gently).

Set the leaves aside on a dry surface and go get your dough out of the fridge.  It's easier to work in small batches, so I cut mine in half, and then cut each half into thirds as I went along.

Take your first third (or sixth, or whatever size you choose to work with) and, on a lightly floured work area, knead it briefly into a little ball and roll that into a small log.  Take your rolling pin and flatten that log out and roll it out lengthwise somewhat so it's thin enough to fit into the widest opening of your pasta roller. 

Set your pasta roller (which you've clamped tightly to your work table) on stun - just kidding - set it to the widest opening and hold the end of the dough just at the opening of the rollers with one hand and start cranking with the other.  Once the dough catches, you can set it down on top of the roller and "catch" it as it comes out the other end.

Keep repeating the process, only you want to set the roller on narrower and narrower settings.  I went to "4", which was not the thinnest setting ("6" is on mine), but since I was going to be putting leaves in, I figured I wouldn't be able to use the very very thinnest setting without the dough ripping apart in the process as the leaves would catch in the rollers.

(Or, if you're going to do it all with a rolling pin, then just keep rolling and rolling until you have a nice, thin-as-possible sheet of dough.)

Once you've rolled it through the #4 setting (or you've got it as thin as you can with the rolling pin), dust the work area with some flour and lay out the dough. 

Now, with the herbs, you can either do batches of one kind of herb at a time, or you can do them all with a mixture of leaves.  I did both - first I did a batch of each kind, and then I mixed up the remaining herbs for the fifth batch.  (I didn't have enough filling to use the sixth batch, but don't you worry, I made good use of it eventually.) 

My first batch was done with the thyme leaves, but you can use the same guidelines no matter what. 

Eyeball the midpoint of your length of dough (mark it lightly if you need to) and sprinkle or place your herb leaves on one half. 

I'm sorry, but I just have to say, isn't that pretty?  Let's take a closer look.

Sigh.

Okay, now once you're done admiring the little leaves (I'm loopy, I know), gently and carefully lift up the unadorned half of dough and fold it over on top of the leavy half.  Press down to mash the sides together a bit (be gentle) and then run this through the pasta roller - same setting, #4 - or roll it out with your rolling pin to flatten all the layers together.

Cool, huh?  Now, if you want to really impress yourself, lift it up so there's some light behind it and take a look.

Okay, now put that down on your work surface and get your filling out.

I used a small ball of filling - i'm guessing around a teaspoon or so - per ravioli, and set them down along one side of the length of dough, about an inch apart. 

By the way.

My edges are not perfect, my ravioli are not perfect (visually), and maybe yours won't be either, but who cares?  If you've never made ravioli before - keep going, you're almost done! 

Looks aren't everything! 

And besides, the pretty little leaves in the dough will distract anyone anal enough to peer at your ravioli edges anyway.

Okay, so once you've got a whole row of goat cheese balls (sounds vaguely icky, doesn't it?) along one half of the dough, it's on to the folding and sealing portion of our program.

For this you'll need the water and the pizza wheel I mentioned earlier.  If you don't have a pizza wheel, a sharp knife or even a bench scraper will do (like the one on the left next to the pasta roller).

First thing you want to do is dip your fingers (two is fine) in the water and paint lines along the length of the dough on the outside edge (next to the cheese balls) and on the other side.  And then you need to paint water lines cross-wise, between each cheese ball.  Remember, we're going to seal the dough, so you need cement on all sides.

 

Okay, now the next part is a little tricky, kind of.  You need to fold over the cheeseless half of the dough and press down to seal the cheese inside the dough.  You want to expell any air that may collect next to the cheese, because you don't want the air pocket to expand and burst while you're cooking the pasta.  It's not desirable.

Okay, now see?  See how these aren't perfect?  Don't worry about it.  The more often you make these, the better your technique will become.  I haven't made ravioli in a long time, and I'm out of practice.  But I'm not worrying about it, because hey - it's homemade ravioli!

Okay, next thing you'll need to do is get your pizza roller or knife and cut these into individual ravioli.  I trimmed the edges a bit as I went along, mainly so the cheeseless part of the dough wouln't be lopsided.

Set the ravioli on a rack or floured towel and repeat the process with your next bit of dough.

Here are a few shots from the rest of the process.  First up, the oregano leaves and the pepperoni/cheese filling for Alex....

Next up, the tarragon leaves...

And then the chives.  Now, I learned a little lesson from the chives.  Just because I wanted them to be as flat and thin as the other leaves didn't mean they would.  Next time around I would slice or shred the chives lengthwise before adding them to the dough and that would prevent the pulling and ripping of dough I experienced when I sent the whole mess through the pasta roller.  Ah well, live and learn.

See the wrinkles?  That's where the thickness of the chives was resisting the pasta roller, and the pulling/wrinkling resulted in some little rips in the dough, right along the chives.  But just press it back together and you should be fine.

Once the chive ravioli are formed, I think they look rather dramatic.

Okay, now all that's left is the cooking.

Let the ravioli rest for about an hour (if you can wait that long) and then bring a big pot of water to a boil.  Add a generous amount of salt to the water, and then slide the ravioli into the water.  There should be plenty of wiggle room for the ravioli to cook, so you may need to work in batches.  Not to worry - fresh pasta cooks up very quickly.

Alex was actually pretty hungry about midway through my ravioli-making process, so I cooked up a few of the pepperoni ones for him.

A little butter and some grated parmesan and he was all set.  I tried some (Julia wasn't as hungry as Alex was), and they were pretty yummy - especially when I bit into an oregano leaf.  A little tomato sauce.   on these and it would be like little bite-sized boiled pizzas.  Which, now that I type it out, doesn't sound all that appetizing.  But pizza-flavored ravioli sounds okay.

Anyway.  I froze about half of the goat cheese ravioli and cooked up the rest for dinner.  I served it with a piece of wild-caught Alaskan salmon that I topped with a mixture of herbs and lemon juice, honey, and olive oil and cooked quickly under the broiler.

And that was dinner.

So (will she never stop talking?), to close, I just want to encourage you to make some ravioli, especially if you've never done it before.  Work with some friends or your kids or your spouse/partner/significant other or whoever - you can talk and work at the same time and when you sit down to eat, you can toast yourselves on a job well done!

And then shoot me an email or leave a comment to let me know how it went!

Thai Forbidden Rice Salad - With Info Correction!

From Food 2.0 by Charlie Ayers.  (You know, that from that giveaway I'm hosting.)

I like warm salads.  Or room temperature.  I'm not always in the mood for cold healthy stuff, you know?  I also like my salads to have texture.  And maybe something unexpected.  And I want my salads to dare me - DARE ME - not to have more.  That's what I want in a salad.  I'm not asking too much, am I?

So when I was paging through Food 2.0 early on, this was one of the recipes that caught my eye right away.  I've cooked with Thai Forbidden Rice before

{Hear that scratchy sound?  That's me pulling the needle off the record.  I received a comment from one of the co-founders and co-owners of Lotus Foods (Hi Caryl!) who pointed out some errors in this post, and, by extension, perhaps, Mr. Ayers' recipe.}  Here is her comment:

Hi and thanks for the beautiful blog using Lotus Foods Forbidden Rice®; gorgeous photos and i can't wait to try the recipe as well. Just wanted to correct some mistakes on content; Forbidden Rice is a registered trade mark of lotus foods and should not be confused with Thai black rice which is also known as purple sticky rice. (Perhaps I should write to the charlie ayers as well). Thought you may want to know that Forbidden Rice not only looks and tastes great but has very high nutritional value as well; in chinese medicinal medicine they say it is a blood tonifier, aids in the circulation of the blood and is high in chi. It invigorates the spleen and brightens the eyes. Black foods are considered kidney tonics. Thanks again and have a rice day, caryl co-founder/co-owner lotus foods

Thank you, Caryl - and I'm sorry for the misinformation I was putting forth!   Thank you for correcting me!  I appreciate it!

Oops. 

Back to my enthusing.  I've used Lotus Foods Forbidden Rice before - I love black foods.  (Well, usually.)  Maybe it's the visual drama.  I don't know.  But I digress.

Here's what a package of the rice looks like, at least in my local stores:

Lotus Foods also produces a number of other rices, some organic, including this extremely adorable and petite Kalirira rice, which I just bought recently and haven't used yet.  The grains are TINY.  I measured one.  3/8 of an inch!  I love tiny and cute.

But ANYWAY.  Back to the forbidden rice.  According to Lotus Foods' site, "Legend tells us that this ancient grain was once eaten exclusively by the Emperors."  Fortunately all that is past history, and we commoners are free to eat this beautiful grain, too.  When forbidden rice cooks, it turns from black to a dark, dark purple.  Kind of like that black/purple iris* outside in my garden that I would love to photograph while it's in bloom, but it's so darn windy that I can't get a good shot.  I'm full of digression today, aren't I? 

Perhaps I should just get on with the recipe.  It's simple and bursting with flavors.  Really, you should try it.

According to Charlie Ayers, here's what you need:

1 cup Thai black rice (also called forbidden rice)

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 T tamari (soy sauce brewed purely from soybeans, not like shoyu, which is a blend of soybeans and wheat)

2 tsp toasted sesame oil

juice of 1/2 lime

1/2 tsp sambal oelek  or other hot chili paste

1 cup roasted, unsalted cashews

1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped

1/2 yellow bell pepper, finely chopped

6 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced

Put the rice, 2 cups water, and a pinch of salt in a pan.  Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat, and simmer gently until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the tamari, sesame oil, lime juice, and sambal oelek or chili paste together in a salad bowl. 

Add the cashews, red and yellow bell peppers, and green onions.

When the rice is ready, add it to the mixture

and toss to coat everything well. 

Add salt, pepper, and additional sambal oelek or lime juice to taste.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

If you can't get Thai black rice, try wild rice, or wild rice mixed with long grain rice, instead, and cook according to package directions.

I served this dish Saturday, when our friend John was here to brew beer with my husband and to talk food with both of us.  Here are bits and pieces (my notes were not entirely legible and he spoke quickly while my husband laughed) what John had to say about this salad:

"...vegetal...sweet but not in a bad way...every ingredient jumps out and tells you what it is while the rice remains a toothsome counterpoint to the supporting cast." 

Yes.  That's how John talks when he has a mind to.  The thing is - his words are a perfect summation of this dish.

Go get yourself some No-Longer-Forbidden-To-Us-Common-Folk black rice and make this tonight. 

I dare you.

* P.S.  That black/purple iris I mentioned?  While I was sitting here by the window, typing this post, I looked outside, just to look at all the irises that are blooming right now, and - my black/purple iris was GONE.  I gasped (yes, I did) and looked more closely at that part of the garden, and there, on the ground, was that iris stalk, with the huge dark flower at one end and several buds growing out of the rest of the stalk.  AND, there was a squirrel there, too, CHOMPING ON MY IRIS.  I ran out the front door and grabbed the iris stalk from the ground.  The squirrel had wisely fled.  And so now that iris is in a glass of water in my kitchen.  The original flower is damaged - petals creased and dirty from the fall.  But there will be at least two more blooms, and you can bet every grain of forbidden rice out there that I will take some awesome pictures of them.  So there, rotten squirrel!)

Herb Crust Pizza - One Crust, Many Toppings

I made a bunch of pizzas last night.  Just for fun, I added some dried herbs to the dough. 

Here's what I used for the dough:

5 tsp dried yeast, dissolved in

4 cups warm water in the bowl of my 6-quart stand mixer.

After the yeast softened and started to bubble, I added

10 cups all-purpose flour

5 tsp salt

1 heaping tsp each dried oregano, dried thyme, and dried basil

Mix at second-slowest speed for about 5 minutes.

(If the dough is still sticking to the sides of the bowl, add more flower, about a quarter cup at a time, til the dough comes away from the sides.)

Turn dough onto a lightly flowered surface and knead the dough into a ball.  Flatten slightly, and cut into 8 pieces.  Pour some olive oil into a large bowl.  Shape 8 pieces of dough into balls and place in bowl of oil, turning each ball to coat with the oil.  Pour a little more olive oil over them - you want them to be lightly covered with the oil.  Let sit for half an hour or so in the oil.

While the dough rests in the oil, preheat the oven and prepare the toppings.

Preheat the oven to between 450-500 degrees F. 

Toppings are entirely up to you. 

Here's what I did with mine.

Well, first of all, before I'd even made the dough, I started making a sauce, because I didn't have any canned in the pantry.  I used two small containers of roasted tomatoes from last summer and a 28 oz can of plum tomatoes and their juice.  I also used about half a cup of chianti (what was left in the bottle) and about a tablespoon of fresh oregano I'd frozen in olive oil last summer.  I'd also put in about 8 smashed cloves of garlic.  And some salt and pepper.  And I let that cook down for a while - til I'd made the dough.  Then I put the sauce mixture through a food mill and then back on the stove for a little while longer.  I skimmed some excess olive oil off the top and tasted it - just needed a bit more salt.

Alex and Julia each made their own pizza.

Alex's - as always - some sauce, just a little cheese and an even distribution of pepperoni.

For Julia, I'd sauteed some mushrooms and some minced shallots...

When she made her pizza, she spread out a generous layer of sauce...all of her alotment of cheese plus the cheese Alex didn't use, and poured her bowl of mushrooms right on the center of the pizza.  She topped the mushrooms with a bit of Alex's leftover sauce, and then ate the restspooned the rest of it into her mouth.

 

After the kids had made their pizzas, they left, and I got to play.

I'd bought a pound of fresh mozzarella, and I tore that apart while I was cooking the sauce...

I minced half a shallot and sauteed that with a big handful of baby arugula leaves...

...and then I stirred in about a quarter cup of pureed basil and olive oil (from last summer) that had been in the freezer.  And then I stirred in the last of a container of ricotta cheese - maybe 3/4 of a cup or so.  And then I was happy.

Next pizza - half of the arugula/basil/ricotta mixture topped with torn mozzarella.

 

And then...sauce, a whole lot of shredded (pre-packaged) mozzarella, and the rest of the mushrooms.

And then...sauce, a lot of shredded (pre-packaged) mozzarella, and plenty of pepperoni.

And then the other half of the arugula/basil/ricotta mixture, a little parmesan, and a generous sprinkling of red pepper flakes.

Last two...

First - simple one - just sauce and both the shredded (pre-packaged) AND the fresh mozzarellas.

And finally - my favorite of the bunch - pre-packaged mozzarella, then the last of the fresh mozzarella, a tablespoon of minced shallots, and a little can of smoked oysters.

   

Of course, 8 pizzas was far more than we needed for dinner last night, and that's the whole point of making that many.  Lunch the next day.  And a late night snack the day after that.  And lunches for everyone when Monday rolls back around.

So go - make some pizza.  Be creative.  Have fun!

Cornish Pasties

Comfort food at its finest.  Cornish Pasties (pronounced "PASS-tees") are simply meat pies you can hold in your hand to eat.  As I understand it, they probably originated in Cornwall, in the south of England, as something miners could bring with them for lunch, as they could not come out of the mine shaft mid-day.  The pasties were portable, and the filling would stay warm for hours.  And they can be made with other fillings, but traditionally it's cubed beef, potatoes and onions. 

My Dad's mother was from Cornwall, and came here when she was - if I'm remembering this correctly - sixteen, to live with her married sister.  Anyway, fast forward to after she was married and a mother, she would make these for my dad and his younger sister.

And then when my parents were married, she taught my mother to make them.  I use the word "taught" in a rather loose sense.  In the "For Days of Auld Lang Syne" compilation of recipes that my mother put together for me when I was engages, here's the story:

"Leek Pasties"

(my mother writes) - "This recipe was sent May 3, 1970 to us from...Grandmother Wilke, after they moved out west.  Their first intention was to locate in California but then opted for Arizona, where they stayed for a number of years.  This pasty was not the more readily made beef and potato one, but a variation from Cornwall."

In her (my grandmother's) words:  "Thought I'd start off and tell you about the leek pasty - You make that in one big one, so roll out pastry as big as you want.  (Usually a 9-10 inch pie plate).  Slice up a bunch of leeks into 1/4 inch slices (3-4 leeks).  Lay pastry into pie plate and add sliced leeks.  Beat together 2 eggs, some chopped ham or bacon then pour over leeks.  Cover with top layer of pastry.  Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes until nicely browned.  May be served hot or at room temperature."

That's the recipe.

Oddly enough, I don't remember having the leek version as a child - I remember the meat ones.  I remember my mother rolling out the dough, standing at her floating work island in the kitchen (actually it was the dishwasher - it had a thick cutting board on top and she used it for most of her baking projects- and it was on wheels, so when she needed it she could roll it into place closer to the sink and stove and fridge).  I also remember her chipping the potatoes - cutting them into little pieces as she made each pasty.  She made one for each of us, and cut slits in the top crust to form our initials.  This was also so that no one would get hers - she liked a bit of turnip in there besides the meat and potatoes. 

Pasties were often specifically dinner for Dad's birthday.  And the way I remember eating them was this - you'd slice open the top of the pasty, right around the curved part, just above the crimped edge.  Then you'd put some butter on each side, and pour a little milk on it.

Yeah, I can see some of you cringing.  Huh?  Pour milk on it?  No, it's not traditional.  But according to my father, when he was a boy, his mom did that to cool it down for him.  So that's how HE ate them, and that's kind of how we learned to.   But it's not required. 

To my horror, my husband puts ketchup on his.  I can't watch that.  Although I'm sure people put all sorts of things on them - HP sauce comes to mind.

The first time I made them on my own was for my father's birthday.  My mother wasn't available to do it that year, so I decided to do it myself.  And for some reason I was a nervous wreck about it.  But I was often a nervous wreck back then, so I guess it's not all that surprising.  But pasties are pretty forgiving things - and mine came out fine.

I made them last night for part of our dinner, and I must say they were the best ones I've ever made.  I don't know how that happened, but I'm not complaining.

Here's what you do:

Make the pastry dough.  Now, you can use any pastry dough recipe you want to use - whatever you're comfortable with. 

I wanted to make a lot of them, so I used the following:

4 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1   1/2 cups chilled vegetable shortening, cut into approximately 1/2 inch cubes

8-12 (or more) T ice water (it will vary depending on the humidity in your kitchen, the time of year, the hour of the day, whether you part your hair on the right or the left, and so forth.)

Combine the flour and salt and either put them in a food processor (my new favorite way) or in a large bowl. 

Add the cubed shortening

and either pulse about 5 times in the processor or cut the shortening in with a pastry cutter or two knives or your hands.  You want the dough to have some lumps of shortening around the size of peas, and the rest to look look like coarse sand.

Next - add the water a little at a time.  If using the food processor, pour in a few tablespoons, then pulse.  Add another tablespoon or two, then pulse.  If you're working in a bowl, then drizzle in some water, and toss the flour/shortening mixture with a fork.  Then more water, then toss again.  The idea is to GENTLY incorporate JUST ENOUGH water to bind the flour/shortening mixture.  You don't want it soggy, you don't want it too dry, and you definitely don't want to overwork the dough because it will activate the glutens in the flour and the final product - the pie shell or pasty shell - will be tough.  For pies and so forth, and pasties, you want flaky and tender.

Once the dough JUST comes together, pat it into a ball, press down into a disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least half an hour.  While the dough is chilling, you can prepare the filling ingredients.

You will need:

About a pound of stew beef, either  cut in chunks or not.

   

4-5 medium red potatoes, or any other kind of potato you want.  You want about the same amount of potatoes as meat, once it's all cut up.

1 small onion

Salt and pepper

two egg yolks mixed with a tiny bit of water (to glaze the pasties with)

Cut the beef into small pieces - about 1/4 inch thick and about 1/2 inch to an inch wide.

Cut the potatoes into pieces about the same size as the beef, except you want them about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Dice up the onion into 1/4 inch pieces

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. 

Get out a couple of baking sheets and line them with parchment or foil.

Okay, now take the dough out of the fridge, unwrap it, and cut it into eight equal pieces.  (They don't have to be perfect - just eyeball it.)

Roll out four of them into rough circles about 1/8" thick.

Place some potatoes on one half of each dough circle, leaving about 3/4 inch of an edge for sealing the pasty. 

Next, place some meat on top of that, and then a healthy sprinkling of onions.  Do all 4 this way, then sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

Now, carefully, fold the other half of the dough over the filling and press down along the edges to seal. 

Curl the dough over on itself to keep it sealed, or press with the tines of a fork, or crimp it - whatever you want to do to make it pretty. 

Place on one of the baking sheets.  Cut a few holes in the top with the tip of a knife to allow the steam to escape, and the brush with the egg wash.  Do the same with the other three you just made.

And now repeat the entire procedure with the other 4 pieces of dough and the rest of the filling ingredients and place on a second baking sheet.

Place sheets in the oven and set your timer for 15 minutes.  When the timer goes off, rotate the pans so all the pasties bake evenly.  Set for another 15 minutes, and then check again every five minutes or so if they still aren't done.  Pasties should be golden brown and steaming hot.

Serve with a salad if you want to.  Do the butter and milk thing - or not.  They're fine without that.  I added just a bit of butter because hey, it tastes good, it adds a bit more moisture to the crust, and because I'm a creature of habit.  But mostly because it tastes good.

Enjoy!

Risotto with Artichoke Hearts, Crabmeat and Shrimp

I made this last night.  I first made risotto about 4 years ago, I think, and kicked myself for not making it sooner.  It's ultimate soft starchy comfort food, and once you've got the basic procedure down, you can be as creative as you want.

My favorite risotto is with mushrooms.  But Alex doesn't like mushrooms, and I was trying to make something he would like.  (It didn't work.  He's not big on starchy comfort food.)  So I thought he'd like something with seafood.  I also had a can of artichoke hearts and thought they'd go nicely with the seafood.  They did, and would have gone even better if I'd used fresh.  Same with the crabmeat.  Ah well.  It was still pretty yummy.

Here's what I did...

I got 3 cloves of garlic

and cut them into skinny slivers.

And I cut a chunk of red onion

into small pieces, but not too small.

I got the rest of the fresh basil that was in the fridge

And gave it a rough chop.  And I opened a can of artichokes - plain, not marinated -

rinsed them,

and quartered them.

Next up - two cans of lump crab meat. 

I dumped the meat and the liquid in a measuring cup.  Next time I think I'll leave out the liquid - it tasted of can.

I also got out some chicken stock and put it in a pot on the stove over a medium flame to keep it warm.  I used about 6 cups of the chicken stock (roughly)

and 2-3 cups of dry white wine (just grabbed something I had on the rack)

and - no, this is not traditional, but I had some left and wanted to use it up - some of this (inexpensive) caviar spread -

it's got a nice mild salty fish taste.  I had about 2-3 tablespoons of the stuff, and I used all of it.  Obviously this isn't required.

I used two types of cheese - asiago and aged parmesan.

some butter (which I didn't photograph), and, of course, olive oil.  Extra virgin.

2 cups of Arborio rice

salt and pepper (to taste)

and about a pound of shrimp - 51/60 size.

I put the shrimp in some water to thaw (so I could peel them)...

Then I got out my big 14 inch saute pan, put it on the power burner on my stovetop, on medium high, and drizzled on some olive oil.

Once the oil was hot, the first thing I did was partially cook the shrimp.  I wanted some of the shrimp flavor to infuse the oil.  I didn't want to cook it all the way, because I wanted it to finish cooking in the risotto, but I also didn't want to leave the shrimp in there for the whole cooking process, because it would get tough.  So I went the half now/half later route.

I cooked the shrimp until they were just pink on both sides (I'm about halfway there in this picture)

Once the shrimp were where I wanted them, I removed them from the oil and set aside in a bowl.  Then I added my onion and garlic to the oil and sauteed til they were soft.

Next, I poured in the rice

And stirred it around in the oil until the rice was translucent.  (Below - almost there!)

Next up - a ladle of the chicken stock, that has been warming in a pot on another burner.

And I stirred and stirred until the liquid was just about absorbed.  Next up - a cup of the wine:

And more stirring. 

(Making risotto (at least, this way) is kind of like that song

"To ev'ry thing (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)"

Only the Making Risotto song would be more like this:

"Pour in your stock (stir, stir, stir)

Then add some wine and (stir, stir, stir)")

Um, yeah.  Anyway...

Next, I thought I'd add my artichokes.  I wanted them to absorb flavor from the wine and onion and garlic.  So I moved the rice to the edges of the pan and sauteed the artichokes in the middle for a little bit. 

I'm not sure if I'd do the same thing next time.  For one thing, I'd go with fresh artichokes or leave them out.  For another, maybe I'd sautee the artichokes with some onion in a separate pan and add it in later.  Just some thoughts.

I stirred the artichokes into the rice and then, what the hey, I thought, I added another cup of wine.

More stirring until the liquid was just about absorbed...

And I took a look at the rice to see how it was coming along. 

You can see the rice is still partly translucent in the above picture.  I chewed a few grains, just to see how far along things were, and the rice was still pretty crunchy.  So - more chicken stock and more stirring.

It's a slow process; a labor of love.  It really doesn't take an eternity, and to me, there's something meditative about stirring the rice and watching (and feeling) it change.

Here it is a little later - very little translucency at this point.  It's still not finished, but it's more than halfway there.  Oh, and I added in the basil, too.

I figured this was a good time to stir in the caviar spread.

Once the rice is al dente - or softer if you prefer - it's time to finish things up.  Turn the heat off and stir in some butter (I used 3 tablespoons) (the butter is optional)...

 

And finally, the cheeses.  I didn't measure. 

I'm guessing I used about half a cup each of shredded asiago

and parmesan.

And that was it.

Next time - nothing canned.  Or I'll find a way to rid the canned items of their canned taste.  But otherwise the risotto came out just fine - creamy and comforting.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Every Wednesday the Providence Journal publishes their Food Section - a collection of articles about food, recipes, local food-related events, and so forth.  I would love to get the paper delivered every day - and have time to read it - but we cancelled our subscription long ago because the papers would pile up and we'd end up either recycling them or using them to start fires (in the fireplace or on the grill - not just random ones).  So, we cancelled.  And the only thing I miss is the Food Section.  Of course, fortunately the paper is online, so I can check out the food stuff there, but it's not the same as turning the actual pages, so sometimes I'll buy the Wednesday paper. 

All that long and rambling opening to explain where I got this recipe.  It was featured in last week's Food Section, in a regular feature called "Chef's Secret."  People will write the editor of the food section to ask if she can get the recipe for something they'd had at a local restuarant, and each week a includes another example from these requests.  Last week someone wrote in to ask about the house gnocchi at the Blue Grotto, a restaurant in Providence.  You can read the article and get the recipe here.

I love gnocchi, as you may already know (see here), but I've never had or made sweet potato gnocchi before.  So I bookmarked the recipe and bought everything for it (with one exception - the baby spinach - oops), and planned to make it Saturday for dinner, but that changed unexpectedly, so I made it yesterday instead.

If you're going to make it (or regular gnocchi, for that matter), plan on several hours of prep work.  I know, that's a lot of time.  Some of it is just the cooking time for the potatoes, but still - it's all part of the process.  I will say - the reward is worth the effort.

Okay.  Per the recipe in Bold, with my own notes in italics...

SWEET POTATO GNOCCHI

6 sweet potatoes (4 1/2 pounds)

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon white pepper (didn't have any - I used freshly ground black pepper.)

1 pound ricotta cheese

2 eggs

4-5 cups all purpose flour

Bake sweet potatoes at 450 degrees for 1 hour 15 minutes. Overbake slightly making sure they’re soft inside. Let potatoes cool just enough to be able to handle; they should not cool down completely.

Scrape out the insides of the potatoes with a spoon into a mixing bowl with all of the other ingredients except the flour.

I actually had my able-bodied assistant, Julia, combine all the other ingredients (except the brown sugar and the flour) while I scraped out the potatoes.  She wanted to help.

I added the brown sugar to the scraped out sweet potato flesh...

and then we added Julia's mixture to mine.

and Julia mixed it all together.

Use the dough hook attachment. (We didn't - we did it all by hand.)  When the ingredients are incorporated, add the flour, one cup at a time.

Julia opted out of helping me at this point - the dough gets stiffer as you work the flour in, and it was too hard for her to mix anything.

The dough is finished when it is firm but yielding and slightly sticky. Knead by hand and roll into a ball. Place a damp cloth over the ball and put into the refrigerator for one hour.  (Didn't do that - the fridge part - I didn't have enough time.)

Lightly flour your working surface. Cut the ball into six pieces,

and roll each into a rope between 1/2-inch and 3/4-inch in diameter.

Cut into 1/2-inch pieces flouring them as you go.

Roll each piece on the back side of a fork or a gnocchi board.

The gnocchi are now ready to cook or freeze.

About 8 ounces of gnocchi is a good portion.

When cooking the gnocchi, bring water to a boil and cook until they float for 2 minutes.

I ended up with 5 cookie sheets of gnocchi.  I made the Blue Grotto's sauce while I cooked the gnocchi in batches.

Here's the Blue Grotto's sauce recipe - any changes I made are in italics:

BLUE GROTTO GNOCCHI SAUCE

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup white wine

2 tablespoons oil

3 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup thinly sliced fennel (I diced mine - I was unfortunately trying to do too much at once and i didn't realize it said "sliced.")

1/4 cup white onion, thinly sliced  (again, I diced when I should have sliced)

1/8 cup roasted red pepper strips (once again - mine were diced, not sliced, and I used 1/4 cup)

1 tablespoon fresh basil (I used a handful - mostly because i forgot the spinach and - yes, this is ridiculous reasoning - I wanted more green)

1 teaspoon minced shallot (I used a whole shallot - about a tablespoon minced)

1 teaspoon minced garlic

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese (I used Asiago.  I just felt like it.)

Small handful of baby spinach (like I said, I forgot to get the spinach)

And before I launch into things - here's a picture of a fennel bulb, in case you haven't looked for one before:

Fennel has a fresh, bright anise flavor and can be used in salads, soups, etc.  I remember trying a fennel and blood orange salad recipe a long time ago and it was really refreshing and different.  So go buy some fennel.

Heat pan with oil over medium heat. Add fennel, onion and roasted red peppers.

Sauté 1 to 2 minutes. Add garlic and shallots cook for 30 seconds. 

Add wine, basil and brown sugar.

Reduce by 1/3.

Add cream and reduce by 1/3.

Add butter and salt and pepper. Cook until butter is melted.

Add cooked gnocchi and toss with baby spinach (if you remembered to buy it) 

and grated Romano cheese. (Or, if you're me, Asiago.) 

Serves four.

~~~~~

I didn't toss ALL the gnocchi with the sauce.  I put about one cookie sheet's worth (1/5 the recipe) in a separate bowl and just tossed with some butter.  I had a feeling that Alex would dislike it on sight if he saw bits of onion and onion-like substances in the sauce, not to mention the bits of red that he would think are tomato, and would therefore refuse, and even if he knew they were roasted red pepper, he'd probably refuse that, too.  But I thought, maybe, just maybe, if it was just served with butter and grated cheese, he'd try it without prejudice.

And he did.

And after eating a piece of sweet potato gnocchi, he shut his eyes, stretched out his arms, and let his fork fall dramatically to the floor.  I wasn't sure if this was happy drama or not, so I asked if he liked the gnocchi, and he said no, he LOVED it.  That it was "THE BEST PASTA I EVER HAD!"  So a big thanks to Chef Robert Hanson at the Blue Grotto Restaurant for sharing the recipe with Food Editor Gail Ciampa at The Providence Journal and making my son a happy boy.

 

As far as the rest of the meal went, my husband and I loved this dish.  The sweetness from the brown sugar reminded us of balsamic vinegar, sort of.  In fact, now that I think about it, it reminds me of a tortellini dish we had at another local restaurant before it closed.  But anyway - I know I made some changes to the Blue Grotto's Gnocchi Sauce, but I don't think my end result strays too far from the way it would taste at the restaurant.  Guess we'll have to get a babysitter and go out for a meal some night soon.  But for now...

homemade will suffice.

Sushi Rice

If you're going to make sushi or maki rolls, you need to first learn to make sushi rice. 

Bill is the sushi rice maker in our house.  I don't even do it any more - it's his job.  The basic ratio of rice to water is 1:1, and his cooking time is 10 minutes of cooking followed by 10 minutes of steaming.  But I'm jumping ahead of things.

First of all, it seems obvious, but if you're going to make sushi, buy sushi rice.  You can get it in many grocery stores or health food stores.  Sushi rice is a short grain rice, so if you must substitute, you want something short-grain.

You will also need rice wine vinegar, sugar, mirin, and salt.

First thing you'll need to do is rinse the rice in cold water.  Bill does this in a strainer, under running water.

What you're doing here is washing the starch off of the grains of rice.  Starch is great if you're making risotto, and you want that creamy texture, but when you're making sushi, you want each grain to be distinct and separate from the other grains.  So keep rinsing.

Get your fingers in there and work the grains of rice under the water.  You want the water to run clear.

Once that's all set, place the rice in a pot with an equal amount of water (by volume - i.e. 1 cup to 1 cup).  Bring to a boil and cook for ten minutes, then shut the heat off and leave the lid on and let it sit for another ten  minutes.  DON'T OPEN THE LID.  You'll let the steam out too soon and the rice won't cook properly.

When the rice is cooked, fluff it up a bit with a fork to separate the grains.  Taste it - you want it firm, but not al dente.  It should be cooked all the way through.

While the rice is cooking and steaming, you need to make the vinegar mixture. 

There are different recipes for the vinegar mixture, but the preparation is the same.

The ratio Bill has been using for some time now comes from a book he bought me way back when, called Sushi Making at Home, by Yasuko Kamimura. 

It's a fun book with lots of step-by-step photos on how to make sushi rice, how to make various kinds of maki rolls and all sorts of other related dishes.

(On a side note, some of the translation is amusing.  There's a dish called Ichimatsu Oshi-Zushi, which is basically layers of rice and vegetables in a square mold, topped with diced scrambled egg alternating with mashed shrimp in a checkerboard pattern.  There's a picture of a serving of the finished dish at the top of the page, and just below the picture, above the name of the dish, it reads:  "Girls will be delighted.  Use a pan."  Huh?  Girls will love it - because it's pink and yellow, apparently.  And oh, by the way, use a pan.  I don't know, it just cracked us up.)

Anyway.

Combine the following in a sauce pan:

6 T rice vinegar

2 T sugar

2 tsp mirin (sweet sake)

2 tsp salt.

Heat these together to dissolve the sugar and the salt.  (The above proportions are for a 3 cup batch of rice - 3 cups before cooking).

Okay.

Put the cooked rice in a large bowl and pour the vinegar mixture over the rice.  With a paddle or wooden spoon, you want to mix the rice with the vinegar using a cutting motion.  At the same time, you're also slowly cooling the rice.

  The book also says to fan the rice with one hand while you're mixing the vinegar in with the other hand.  Sort of a culinary version of patting your head and rubbing your stomach. 

Anyway, once it's mixed well and cooled, cover with plastic or a damp cloth so the rice doesn't dry out. 

Bill also mentioned just now that he makes more of the vinegar mixture than called for, to rehydrate the rice if needed.

* And another useful tip - keep a bowl of water mixed with a little rice vinegar handy - the sticky rice will adhere to your hands after you work with it for a bit, and rinsing your hands often in the vinegar water will help counteract that.

All set?  Okay, now you can go make a Soft Shell Crab Roll.

Sesame Noodles

As I mentioned in this post yesterday, my kids love Sesame Noodles.  And my husband has his own recipe for them, which is not written down and does not use actual measurements or anything.  He just wings it. 

But way back when, the first recipe we used for Sesame Noodles came from a bargain book called Classic Oriental Dishes, edited by Lisa Dyer, that we bought around 10 years ago or so.  And since my husband has a bad sore throat and shouldn't be talking anyway, I'll post the recipe from this book instead of his version, simply because any recipe that has EXCELLENT!!! scrawled a the top of the page - and the date we first made it - 1/23/1998 (okay, 9 years ago - it'll be exactly nine years next Wednesday, in fact!  Happy Anniversary, Sesame Noodles recipe page!) has to be worth sharing.

The recipe is actually Sesame Hot Noodles - but you can leave out the heat if you'd rather.  Bill makes non-spicy noodles for the kids, and then we add our own heat to it separately. 

Here's what you need:

OH - wait, before I give you the recipe, I have to share this little moment with you.  Way back when we were still living in our tiny converted summer cottage and cooking all kinds of great things in our tiny kitchen (which I should tell you about because it's like no other kitchen I've ever experienced), including Sesame Noodles, we also used to go out to eat a lot because it was fun, no dishes to clean up (it was a VERY tiny kitchen), and we didn't have kids, so we had lots of options as to WHERE to go.  Plus, having no kids, we had money, and yeah, we should have been saving it, but we were younger and foolisher and so we at out.  Plus, we'd eat out, and then try to duplicate recipes at home, so it was actually RESEARCH.  Can we agree on that?  Okay, good. 

So anyway, there was one good Chinese restaurant near our house, and one that was, um, how do I say this nicely?.....a dump.  It was mainly a cheap place for locals to go and have Tiki cocktails in the dark bar and then stagger home.  Which is all well and good...but still.  I think either they changed ownership or the current owners decided they wanted some new clients...but anyway, suddenly some work was done on the place and word spread that it was now a Chinese Restaurant Worth Going To.  And naturally, we went.

I don't remember what meals we ordered.  Or how they were.  I just remember that we ordered Sesame Noodles as an appetizer.  Cool!  They have Sesame Noodles!  We love Sesame Noodles!  Let's see how theirs are!  So we ordered them, and probably some other appetizer to split, and waited.  The dining room had been spruced up - the booths were nicer, there were pictures on the wall...the lighting was a bit bright, but maybe that was to prove that they weren't JUST a dark bar with Tiki drinks.  (That part seemed unchanged.)

So anyway...we are sitting there, eagerly awaiting our Sesame Noodles.  And then - here she comes!  Here comes the waitress with the platter!  And with a smile, she set the oval platter down between us and went on her way.  Bill and I stared.

The platter held a decent mound of noodles...and I believe they had been tossed with some kind of thin, dark brown watery sauce (like soy or something) - but the best part, oh the VERY best part, was the big smear of peanutbutter (Skippy or Jif - one of those kinds of peanutbutter) across the top of the noodles.  And I believe they may have sprinkled a couple of sesame seeds on top.

A BIG SMEAR OF PEANUTBUTTER.  That was it.  That was our exotic taste of the Orient that night.  Peanutbutter on spaghetti. 

The follwing recipe is much better.

You will need:

2  8 oz packages of medium egg noodles.  (We've also found that Barilla Spaghetti Rigati works really well, too.)

3 T sunflower oil (or any other vegetable oil.  Not olive.)

2 T sesame oil

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 T smooth peanutbutter

1 small fresh green chili, deseeded and very finely chopped

3 T toasted sesame seeds

4 T light soy sauce

1-2 T lime juice

salt and pepper (to taste)

4 T chopped fresh cilantro

Okay, once you've got all that assembled, here's what you do -

1.  Place the noodles in a large pan of boiling water, then immediately remove from the heat.  Cover and let stand for 6 minutes, stirring once half way through.  At the end of the 6 minutes, the noodles will be perfectly cooked.  Otherwise, follow directions on the package.

2.  Meanwhile, mix the sunflower and sesame oils with the garlic and peanutbutter until smooth. 

3.  Add the chilis, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and the lime juice according to taste, and mix well.  Season with salt and pepper.

4.  Drain the noodles well, them place in a large heated serving bowl.  Add the peanut dressing and fresh cilantro, and toss well to mix.  Serve immediately.

And that's all you do.  Pretty simple, huh?  And way better then just a smear of peanutbutter....

Homemade Tortellini

My sister and my brother-in-law went out to eat the other night at Arturo Joe's - a fabulous restaurant in Narragansett.  They both had the Tortellini Carbonara for their meals - my brother-in-law had chicken added to his - and of course the food was sublime.

Anyway, I couldn't figure out a way to sneak down to their house and steal the leftovers, so I figured I had to make my own. 

I used to make pasta a long time ago (back before I had anything else to do with my spare time) and I learned to shape tortellini from a book - though I can't remember which book.  It may have been a book of my mom's, actually.  Anyway.  I was in the mood for tortellini, and in the mood to play with some dough, so yesterday that's what I did.

The ratio of ingredients I used came from The Splendid Table, by Lynne Rosetto Kasper.

I used the egg pasta recipe on page 80, which calls for 4 jumbo eggs and 3  1/2 cups of all purpose flour.  I didn't have jumbo eggs - I had large, so I used 5 of them.

And here's what you do:

Mound the flour on your work surface and make a well in the center.  Put your eggs in the well...

and whisk the eggs together with a fork.  As you do this, begin to incorporate flour into the eggs, working around the edges of the well, keeping the walls intact so you don't have a flood of egg on your counter.

You'll get to a point where using the fork is pointless, so squeeze the dough off that fork, toss it in the sink and dust your hands with flour.  And start kneading.  It will take a while for the whole rough mass to come together into something actually workable.  Initially, it will look a lot like this (and I have too much flour on the work surface, so please ignore my slovenly ways).

The dough will seem uncooperative and you'll think you did something wrong.  You didn't.  It just doesn't look pretty right off the bat.  You've got to knead it for a long time.  About half an hour by hand.  Or, if you are not in the mood to do it all by hand, or you have carpal tunnel or wrist issues, or whatever, you can work the dough in your stand mixer or a food processor.  I put this mess in my Kitchen Aid mixer - the 6 quart one, which is more heavy-duty than the smaller one I have - with the dough hook, and let the machine do the work for about ten minutes, until it was a more cohesive ball of dough that I was happier to work by hand.

This is what the dough looked like, more or less, when I took it out of the mixer.

Looks a lot friendlier, doesn't it?  But it's still done.  Or, rather, YOU are still not done.  It's a nice workable ball, but the gluten hasn't developed, and so if you pull your fingers in opposite directions along the surface of the dough, it will just break.  You don't want that - your pasta won't hold together while you're rolling it out, and it won't stretch nicely when you're wrapping it around a filling.

So get to kneading.  With the fingers of one hand, pull the farthest edge of the dough toward you, folding it over onto the rest of the dough ball, and then with the heel of that same hand, press the dough down and in.  Turn the dough a quarter turn and repeat.  It takes a while before this feels natural, but eventually you get a rhythm going and it's kind of relaxing.  It's also a good way to work out any anger you've got kicking around in your head - the harder your work the dough, the better.

I don't know exactly how long I kneaded this dough after I took it out of the mixer, but when the dough has been kneaded the right amount, you will know.  The surface will be smooth and soft, and as you are kneading, you'll notice that when you do that pulling part, stretching the surface of the dough, the surface won't crack any more.  The dough will seem to breathe.  You can poke it and the indentation will push back when you've taken your finger or knuckle away. 

(Unfortunately, the picture I took of the finished dough came out fuzzy, so I don't have one for you.  But see how in that picture above, the dough looks kind of lumpy and lifeless?  The finished dough will look poised and energetic in comparison.  Same color.)

At this point, wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temp.

Now's a good time to make a filling.

All I did was combine some ricotta cheese with shredded mozzarella and grated parmesan.  And I got an interesting picture of the parmesan that I will share with you now.   I had been grating this last little bit of it and dropped the lump in the bowl.  When I found it, I thought the partial shredding looked interesting.  So - here it is:

This is how I entertain myself.

Anyway - I don't have measurements.  And even if I did, it would be way more than you will need.  So I will estimate that to fill the tortellini that you are making now, you'll need maybe a cup and a half of the ricotta, about 4 ounces of the mozzarella, and oh, a quarter cup or so (loosely packed, not crammed in like brown sugar) of parmesan cheese, freshly grated (that's a microplane - you get very fine, thin shredded results from it) if possible.  Mix all this together and add salt and pepper to taste.  You could also add fresh or dried herbs, some nutmeg, red pepper flakes (for some drama at the dinner table) - use your imagination.  Mainly, you don't want anything that's going to leak a lot of water. 

Okay, now imagine that at least a half an hour has elapsed, and you are ready to actually form your tortellini.

Unwrap the ball of dough, and cut it into quarters.  Keep one of them out and wrap up the other three.  This is a very dry dough - it won't stick to your work surface, for instance, so you do not need to dust that with flour.  It's great to work with, but if you don't keep it wrapped up, it will dry out quickly.  Just so you know.

Anyway, get your rolling pin out and flatten the piece of dough a bit.  Now start rolling.  This isn't a quick and easy process, like rolling out cookie dough.  Blame the gluten strands.  And just keep rolling.  You want to roll from the center out - away from you and toward you.  Flip the dough over, and do it again.  Middle, away.  Middle, toward.  If your work surface is large enough, you can roll this out into a circle, or something approximating a circle.  I was rolling mine out on the counter between the sink and my mixer, so I just rolled it into a long, flat, roughly oval shape.

Now, to make it easier on yourself, you can use a pasta machine - the kind with the rollers, like this one:

You need to start the dough off as a long, slender piece and put the pasta machine on the widest setting, pass the dough through a couple of times, and then move the setting to the next one, rolling the dough through a couple times and narrowing the space between the rollers, over and over, until you get a long, very thin, sheet of dough.  You may have to cut the sheets in half to work with them on the thinner settings - unless you have really long arms and a lot of space to work in.

Or you can just keep rolling and rolling and rolling.  That's what I did.  I can feel it in my shoulders and neck and upper abs today.  In part because I had to stand up on my toes to get the right height and angle to really apply pressure and stretch that dough out.  But it was fun, and it felt like I was accomplishing something.

Next time, I'll use my regular work table, just so I have a bit more room.  I think I will be able to get the dough thinner.  Ideally, you want the dough thin enough to almost see through.  You should be able to hold, say, a playing card under the dough and know if it's a red or a black suit.  Mine was thin enough to detect color, but it could - and probably should - have been even thinner.

Here's how thin I managed to get it:

And here, too -

Okay, next you need to cut out little circles to make your tortellini.  The cutter I used was about 1  7/8 inches in diameter.  Somewhere between 1  3/4 - 2 inches is good.  Smaller is better, but if you're new at this, a bit larger is easier to work with.

As you cut the circles out, stack them up and cover them with a drinking glass or bowl or something to prevent them from drying out.  You can also sprinkle a TINY bit of flour on each side of the dough before you start cutting, and smooth it over the dough surface with your hand, just to prevent the circles from sticking together.

Okay, now you can either go through each quarter piece of dough and cut ALL the circles out first, or you can do it in batches, which is what I chose to do.  Either way is fine.

So you take some circles - a few at a time, because the dough will dry out - and set them down on your work surface, and place a VERY SMALL bit of your filling in the center.  And I mean VERY SMALL.  In fact, what you think is very small probably won't be small enough, and when you seal the pasta closed, some of that filling will seep out the edges.  Which is what I kept doing.  But eventually you will figure out just the right amount, and all will be well.  And as long as you seal the edges well, the tortellini won't burst open while cooking.

See those?  That's too much filling.  If you look at the completed tortellini in the upper right corner, you can see bits of ricotta along the edges and on the surface. 

To form the tortellini, after you put a teeny tiny bit of filling in the center, dip the tip of your finger in some water and very lightly moisten the dough all around the edge of the circle.  Then you want to fold the circle in half and press along the edges to seal the filling inside.  Then, holding the half moon of dough with the rounded side toward you, bring the points together and overlap them, pressing together to seal them.

 

Place the finished tortellini on a dry dish towel or other clean cloth, and leave them at room temp.  They'll start to dry out, but that's just fine at this point.

This process takes a while.  Especially if you're flying solo.  If you've got able-bodied help available, you could set it up as an assembly line and go through the process much faster.  But I actually liked the process - just like kneading the dough earlier, there's something soothing about it all.  (Unless you're my husband, in which case it would drive you insane in a matter of minutes.  Which is odd to me because he can play the same section of  "Subdivisions" by RUSH over and over and over and over and over and over and over when he's practicing, just to get it exactly right, and while listening to that over and over and over and over and over like that makes me want to puncture my eardrums with rusty nails, it doesn't seem to affect him that way at all.  Funny, huh?)

Anyway - once you've got all your tortellini made, give yourself a pat on the back - the time-consuming part is over and soon you can eat.

Put a large pot of water on the stove and while it's heating up, make a sauce, if you're making one.  (You can also just put butter and salt and pepper and parmesan on top, which is perfectly delicious and my go-to topping for just about anything.)

I actually had planned to make tortellini and meatballs, and serve them in a homemade tomato sauce, but my son wanted to help make meatballs, and he was playing at a friend's house, so I changed plans, put the sauce in the fridge, and did this instead:

I sliced about 8-10 ounces of fresh mushrooms - I used baby bella, but you can use whatever you want.  I sauteed them in melted butter (I like the flavor of butter with the mushrooms) and a small onion, diced.  I also poured a bit of cognac on the mixture after the mushrooms had started to brown.  I would have used sherry, but we were out of it.  Leave the pan on a low flame so most of the moisture cooks out and the flavors concentrate.  Salt and pepper to taste.

In another pan I cooked half a package of sliced bacon until it was crisp, and after the bacon slices had cooled, I broke them up and put them in a bowl for later. 

Then I took a little of the bacon fat and added it to the mushroom mixture.  I had found some chicken in the freezer the day before and had left it in the fridge to thaw.  There were two boneless, skinless breasts in the package, so I sliced them up and set them in with the mushrooms, turned the heat up a bit, put a lid on the pan, and cooked the chicken that way.  I flipped the chicken pieces over after a couple of minutes, just to make sure it cooked all the way through, and when the chicken was cooked, I sliced that into smaller, bite-sized pieces and mixed them back in with the mushrooms.  Heat off, lid on.

When the water was nearly at the boil (it's a really really big thick pot and it takes a long time to heat the water) I mixed together milk and butter according to the package directions of the Wildtree Alfredo Extraordinaire blend we had, whisked in the dry blend of herbs and powdered cheese and all the other good stuff they have in there, and set it aside.  Actually, my husband kept whisking it a bit longer while I cooked the pasta.

When the water came to a full boil, I added some salt to it - probably a couple tablespoons, maybe less - and gently added about half the tortellini.  They sank to the bottom, and as they cooked through, they gently floated to the top.

As they floated up, I scooped them out with a big slotted spoon

and put them in a bowl until all of the pasta was cooked.

I warmed the mushroom chicken mixture back up a bit, added the alfredo sauce mixture to that, and then added about a third of the broken bits of bacon to that.  Let them simmer briefly, then I poured the whole mixture over the pasta.

I'm unhappy to report that we ate the leftovers for lunch today and tragically there is no tortellini left in the house. 

On a constructively critical note, the dough really should have been thinner.  These tasted yummy, but the balance of pasta to filling was off.  But since I love starch in all its many forms, I didn't mind.

And on a FYI note, I don't get paid to mention any of these products - I just figure, if I like them, I'll let you know about them.  The Wildtree Herb company is based in RI and I've used their products before.  Their scampi blend is really good, too. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed today's little lesson, and more than that, I hope you will take an afternoon to go through the hands-on process of making pasta dough, and if you don't want to spend all that time making tortellini, you can also just roll out the dough, then dust it very lightly with flour, roll it up like a diploma (not that they do that any more) and slice it into spaghetti or linguine or fettuccine....

But definitely give it a shot. 

There's something very satisfying about making foods from scratch.

And also from flour and eggs.

Potato Gnocchi

I've made this a couple of times lately. 

I love gnocchi.  I love potatoes.  I love pasta.  I admit it - my name is Jayne, and I'm a Starchaholic.

Now that we're clear on that point, let's get back on track.

The guidelines I'm giving you here are from a book called Potatoes by Sue Kreitzman and published by Crown Publishing Company in 1989.  I think I bought it when I was a vegetarian (for almost a whole year) and needed some new ideas. 

Potato gnocchi are soft and pillowy and not really as terrible for you as you might think.  Okay, yes, they've got white flour.  And yes, potatoes.  But potatoes are also full of vitamins and potassium and other nutrients.  And there are eggs in the recipe - a perfect source of protein.  And olive oil - one of the good fats.  And some salt.  And that's the basic recipe. 

First thing, you want to roast the potatoes.  When they're cooked through, let them cool a little bit - not too much, while you measure out the other ingredients.  For this basic recipe, you want about 6 large baking potatoes. 

While they cool, measure out the following:

3 cups all-purpose flour.  (I always always use King Arthur.)

4 tsp salt  (add that to the flour and whisk them together)

4 T olive oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten.

Okay, now get a very large bowl and get your potatoes.

Cut the potatoes in half, lengthwise. 

Hold one half potato in your palm and, with a fork, scrape the flesh out into the bowl.

You can also peel the potatoes and put the flesh through a ricer.  My ricer is small and it would have taken more time just to peel and cut them down to a workable size than it did just to scrape them out with the fork.  And I have no idea what sort of odd pose this is with my hand.  It's not a comfortable position to actually work with the potato.  Also - if you are not fond of holding a scalding hot potato against your bare flesh, you can use a dish towel or pot holder to save your skin.  But try to do the scraping while the potato is still hot.  It works better.

You want to have about 4 cups of potato.  You might have some little lumps, but just smash them against the bowl and you should be fine.

Next, add the flour/salt mixture to the potatoes and mix it together gently with the fork.

Then mix in the olive oil...

 

And then the eggs...

The dough will be very sticky.  You'll need plenty of extra flour to keep the dough from sticking to your hands and your work surface.

Dust the work surface with some flour and scoop a baseball-sized amount of the dough out onto the flour.  Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough and dust your hands with it as well.  Now, with gentle pressure, roll the dough into a rope about half an inch in diameter. 

Cut the rope into pieces about an inch long...

Now, if you want, you can stop here and either freeze them or boil them.  They taste perfectly yummy regardless.

Or...if you're feeling adventurous, you can get a clean fork and place one of the little gnocchi pieces on the back of the tines and press gently, like so:

Then, with your thumb, start to curl the dough down the tines to create little striations in the surface.  You'll end up with something like this:

Lay these all out on a lightly floured surface...

You might want to use a little more flour than I did in the picture above - the dough is still pretty sticky and will adhere to the parchment paper after a while...scraping blobs of dough off the parchment kind of spoils the pretty stripes you worked so hard to create.  Just a little tip for you.

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add some salt, and gently lower the gnocchi in batches into the water with a big slotted spoon.  (Don't be a dummy like I was recently - I dropped them in and the boiling water splashed up, scooted around my glasses and hit me in the eye.  It stung.  My husband stared at me for a long moment and then asked if I was okay.  Sort of like one might ask someone to pass the salt.  And then he went on to tell me that I should have lowered them gently into the water.  I snapped "Yeah, thanks, I know that" at him - my eye was still suffering and no one cared!  Sniff...! - and he went downstairs to hang out with the kids.)

When they float to the top, the gnocchi are done.  Scoop them out and put them into a bowl until you're finished cooking the whole batch.

And now?  Well, you can toss them with a tomato sauce, or pesto, or butter and salt and pepper and grated parmesan.  Whatever sounds good to you.  The other night we served them along with coq au vin and some roasted root vegetables.  Very satisfying on a cold winter night.  Or even a not-so-cold winter night. 

OktoberFeast - Part 4 - the Spaetzle

In my slowly continuing recap of a meal we put together for Oct 13th, here is the 4th recipe I'm posting.

You can see the others here:

OktoberFeast - Part 1 - the Sauerkraut

OktoberFeast - Part 2 - the Onion Cake

OktoberFeast - Part 3 - the Sauerbraten

Today it's all about the Spaetzle.  Pronunciation of the word varies - some say "Spay-tsl" while Bill's mother said "speh-tchle" or something like that.  Whatever way you say it, spaetzle = comfort food.  Little freshly made noodles or dumplings (depending on how you make them - thin and noodly or thicker and dumplingy) tossed with gravy or even some butter - they are light, pillowy, starchy bites of goodness.

Anyway.  I have a feeling Bill's mom put the ingredients together from memory, though he says he saw a recipe.  I couldn't find it, but this is a good, workable ratio of ingredients:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of freshly rendered lard (actually i think we used bacon fat, you can use oil if you want, or melted and cooled butter)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup milk

2  1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoons salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Beat the first 4 ingredients (all the wet ingredients)together in a bowl.  In another bowl, stir together the last 3 ingredients (the dry ones).  Then blend the dry mixture into the wet mixture and set aside.  How easy is that?

Get a big pot of water boiling and add in some salt - about 2 teaspoons. 

Put the bowl of the spaetzle dough (actually, it's rather loose and more like a batter, to me, than a dough) near the stove.  You'll also want a slotted spoon handy, and a bowl to put the cooked spaetzle in.

Now here's the tricky part.  You can use a spaetzle press if you have one (we don't) or a ricer.  We tried the ricer:

but the batter was too thin and it all just smushed back together before it hit the water.  We tried a collander as well, with the same unsatisfactory result.  I suggested we add a little more flour to thicken it, but my idea was dismissed.  I still think it would have worked.  But what do I know.

So - it was back to basics time.

Bill's mom always used a spaetzlebrot or spaetzle board.  We have hers, and this is what it looks like:

Now, Bill's the one who has actually made the spaetzle, and so has his nephew, Joe.  Joe was here for the dinner that night, and since Bill had other things to attend to, he put Joe in charge of the spaetzle-making.  I believe you get the surface of the board a little wet, then put some of the dough/batter on about mid-way.  Then, with a knife, you smear some of the batter toward the front (the straight edge) and then slice it and shove it off the end into the boiling water.

See all the little knife lines on there? 

You work with a portion of the dough/batter at a time.  The spaetzle will sink to the bottom of the water initially, and when they float to the top, they are done.  Using your slotted spoon, scoop them out and place in a bowl while you make the next batch.

Unfortunately, I don't have any more pictures of that process.  I think I was probably putting the rest of the food on the table or taking knives out of Julia's hands or making faces behind Bill's back for ignoring my additional flour idea.  Something like that.  But I'll post this picture again of the table of food. 

Those two bowls on the right contain the spaetzle, mixed with some gravy from the sauerbraten.  My brother-in-law, Jacques, is helping himself to some of the spaetzle. 

We will make this again, and when we do, I'll take better pictures, or, actually, MORE pictures, so you can really see the process better. 

Next up - the scary foods.  I think. 

Two Pizzas

I made two pizzas tonight.

Here's what I did:

Took two 16 oz packages of store-bought pizza dough out of the fridge about a couple hours before my projected dinner time.  Set them out on a counter - still in their packages - to come to room temperature.

Then I got the toppings ready...

First pizza -

Chopped about 3 strips of bacon into 3/4 inch square pieces (approximately).  Cooked them over high heat in a large saute pan until they had rendered most of their fat and were crisp.  Took them out of the pan and set them on a few layers of paper towel on a plate. 

Next - dumped in about, oh, 8 cups of sliced onions.  (I'm guessing - I just used up what I had, which was maybe 8 to 10 small to medium onions.)  Sprinkled a little salt over them and stirred them all around to coat the onions with the bacon fat.  Turned the heat down to medium low and let them go, stirring every now and then, until they just started to caramelize - roughly a half an hour.

While the onions were cooking, I combined about a third to a half of a cup of crumbled feta cheese with about the same amount of ricotta cheese.  Set that aside with the bacon.

Preheated the oven to 450 degrees F.

Then I started working on the topping for pizza number two.

I combined about a third of a cup of basil pureed with olive oil (this had been in the freezer all ready to go from when we harvested all the basil a few weeks ago) - with 3 big fat cloves of garlic, minced.  And about a tablespoon (all I had left) of grated parmesan.  Set that aside.

Assembly:

Pizza number one:  I spread the dough out on the baking sheet.  Rubbed a little olive oil over the surface.  Dotted the top with blobs of the ricotta/feta mixture.  Topped that with about half of the caramelized onions, and then sprinkled the bits of bacon over the top.

Pizza number two:  I drizzled olive oil over the pizza dough (already stretched out and ready to go).  Then smeared the basil mixture on top, and dotted (my word of the day) with ricotta cheese and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

They both took about 25 minutes to cook.  Alex liked the basil pizza.  Julia liked both.  So did Bill and I.  Bill's been sick, so he had tea.  Alex and Julia had juice, and I had some pinot grigio...hang on, let me see which one...Carsasa - estate bottled in Italy...it's actually a pinot grigio/pinot blanc blend (51%/49%)...and oddly enough, I couldn't see the year anywhere on the bottle...I'll look again later.  Maybe it was hiding.

Anyway - that's what we had for dinner tonight.

Oh!  Almost forgot - I've put the other half of the caramelized onions in the freezer.  I figured they'd be nice to have on hand.  If we were planning to have, oh, steak tomorrow, I'd have kept them in the fridge...and I would have bought mushrooms while I was at the store today, too....

Arugula Pesto

I don't have complete or precise measurements - this was just a "wing it" thing tonight.

Here's what I threw in the food processer:

A couple of big handfuls (handsful?) of arugula (from the garden)
A few small bunches of basil (from the garden)
Some Italian flat-leaf parsley (from the garden)
And some oregano (from the garden)
A couple cloves of garlic, smashed and warmed in about half a cup or so...maybe less...extra virgin olive oil
Around a quarter cup or more of good aged parmigiano reggiano (okay I'm probably making a lot of spelling mistakes today - I don't care - I'm just happy to have time to type) cheese
About the same amount of walnuts
Some salt and pepper
A few drops of lime juice (it's the green theme going on)
And half an avocado - for creaminess and to continue the color scheme, apparently

Added some cubed cooked chicken to this just before serving over tortellini.

Yummy.

It's nice to be home on maternity leave....

Variation on a Theme - Shrimp and Fettucine

(from my old blog...)

I've got this idea of making a pesto with the leaves from our nasturtium plants. The flowers and leaves are edible, and both are kind of peppery. No, not kind of, they are peppery.

Anyway, tonight's dinner was sort of an easing into that idea. I figured I'd cut the nasturtiom peppery-ness with the traditional fresh, bright flavor of basil. So, out to the garden with my scissors....I snipped a bunch of basil and several big nasturtium leaves. Brought them inside, rinsed them off, and proceeded to make this dinner:

Couple of handfuls of frozen shrimp, thawed and peeled. (Save the shells in the freezer to make a seafood stock some time.)
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Red pepper flakes
About 10 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed, and minced
A handful of shelled walnuts, finely chopped
About...um...6 big nasturtium leaves, and about 30-40 leaves of fresh basil, assorted sizes
A slug of white wine (mine was a pinot grigio/pinot bianco blend - Luna di Luna, because that is what we had in the fridge)
Freshly grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano cheese to taste
A pound of whole wheat fettucine

Okay.

Start water boiling in a pot.

While that's working, put about 2 T of butter and about the same amount of olive oil in a pan and warm it to melt the butter. Add the minced garlic to soften.

While the garlic is softening, chop the walnuts. Add them to the garlic, stir, and increase the flame a tiny bit.

Chiffonade the nasturtium and basil leaves: Lay the leaves (do one kind at a time) on top of each other, roll tightly, and then finely slice. They'll be long, thin green strips. Mix the basil and nasturtium leaves together and set aside.

When the water in the pot comes to a boil, throw in some salt and then put in the fettucine.

While the pasta cooks, heat the oil/butter/garlic/walnut mixture so it's bubbling, throw in a slug of wine (probably about 3/4 of a cup) and cook to reduce and burn off some/most/all of the alcohol.

When the liquid has reduced and the mixture doesn't smell so obviously of wine, add your shrimp and coat with the mixture in the pan. Cook slowly, stirring and tossing the shrimp, until they are almost completely cooked. Add the nasturtium and basil, some salt, some red pepper flakes, toss to combine, reduce flame to the lowest setting, and cover with a lid.

Drain the pasta (when it's cooked to your taste).

Uncover the shrimp mixture, grate the cheese onto it, and serve over the pasta.

It was pretty good.

Next time, I'm making a straight pesto with mostly the nasturtiums...just to see how that is.

I'll let you know.

Green Spaghetti

(from my old blog...)

When I was a kid my mother would make spaghetti with just butter and chopped parsley sometimes. She (and we) called it "green spaghetti."

I'm not a huge fan of parsley, but we are growing it anyway. (Just like I'm not a huge fan of broccoli, but we grew some of that too this year...thank you, John.)

Anyway, the parsley is doing very well, so I suggested making green spaghetti tonight. We have left over whole wheat spaghetti in the fridge, so it would take very little time to prepare. Bill went out and harvested parsley...and some basil...some chives...and the last little florets of broccoli. He roughly chopped all the green stuff, and threw in some chopped olives and some capers....(hmmm...this is no longer the original green spaghetti...and I had very little to do with the creation of this dish as well...oh well...I was giving Alex a bath.)

I heated some olive oil in a pan, tossed in all the chopped ingredients, and just basically warmed them slowly in the oil. Sprinkled that with some salt and pepper, and warmed up the spaghetti in a ziploc bag in the microwave. There was a little bit of spaghetti sauce on the spaghetti, too, so there was that little tomato element thrown into the final dish. When the spaghetti was warmed up I put that in the pot with the greens and oil, tossed them all together, and we served it with some grated parmigan. Alex shoved handfuls of it into his mouth. He likes everything. He eats his veggies without a complaint. (He likes sauteed chicken livers too, with a little onion, served over some couscous mixed with diced tomato, basil and olive oil...honest!)

Anyway, dinner was very nice, very quick, very simple. I love having the garden. Bill is the gardener, as he has more time in the summer than I do...and he likes to do it. He is, in this respect, his mother's son. Which works for me. I'm looking forward to later this summer, when the "bigger" things start coming in...eggplant, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers...different kinds of salad greens...herbs...the peas are just about finished, now that the hot weather has arrived...oh, and we have asparagus...horseradish...raspberry plants that were Bill's mom's...not a bad little farm this year.

I look forward to fresh tomatoes, sliced, with slices of fresh mozzarella, mixed with fresh basil and olive oil and a little salt....or fresh eggplant and zucchini on the grill...a thick sliced tomato sandwich with mayo and a pinch of salt. That is the flavor of summer to me.

Whole Wheat Linguine with Leeks and Mushrooms

(from my old blog...)

I made this the other night...

Trimmed and chopped a couple of big leeks and let them sit in a bowl of cold water for a while to clean off any dirt.

Poured some olive oil and some butter in a pan and when the butter melted I added the leeks and also a package of sliced mushrooms. Covered the pan to sweat them a bit.

Filled a pot with water and started bringing that to a boil...

Took the cover off the leeks and mushrooms, added some salt and pepper and a sprinkling of flour (to thicken the juices, eventually) and poured some sherry into it. Cooked that for a little while, then added about 2 cups of chicken stock. Kept it bubbling.

When the water came to a boil, I added some salt and a package of whole wheat linguine. (You could use any shape pasta you like. I will just insist that you use whole wheat. It has a great texture and flavor.)

When the liquid had reduced somewhat in the pan of leeks and mushrooms, I lowered the heat just to keep it at a very low simmer. When the pasta was done, I drizzled a VERY little bit of cream into the leeks and mushroom mixture.

Drained the pasta, put some in a couple of bowls for Bill and I, and spooned some of the leek/mushroom mixture over the top. Grated a little parmesan onto that, and ta-da - dinner.