So not Kosher: Goat Cheese-stuffed Meatballs

Ok, so when I started thinking about this entry, I wanted to open by quoting Shakespeare. In case my previous post didn't suggest this enough, just take for granted that I'm permanently hard-wired into the Bard's collected works. I kept trying to find something that was said by Shylock, from the Merchant of Venice. He's Jewish, he's Italian. There ended my justification.

I couldn't find anything.

But then! It occurred to me that I was being too classical. Instead, I should be looking to open with a pop-culture reference. And I found the perfect one, too: this dish is very much like Inception. Bear with me: you know about the dream within a dream within a dream? This is goat cheese. Within meatballs. Within the pasta. Within my belly. Now I just need to work in some trains, explosions, and an all-star cast.

I may be trying too hard, but in all seriousness, this is an impressive dish that surprises you with sudden twist of flavour while you're eating it. It would well deserve an epic soundtrack. The idea is pretty simple, and accordingly relatively straightforward to implement: you mash all your meatball ingredients in a bowl first. Then you roll out small spheres of slightly chilled goat cheese, and work the meatball around it. While cooking, the cheese seeps through the meat, keeping it tender. The taste of the cheese spreads delicately in such a way that there's only a whiff of it along the outside of the meat. Of course, when you bite into one, you'll be digging right into the center, where the fresh cheesy goodness is waiting. It's an unexpected, delicious contrast.

This recipe is from another of my graduation cookbooks: "Urban Italian Cooking" by Andrew Carmellini and Gwen Hyman. Much of the food in it is just like this: the chefs take a traditional Italian dish and give it an innovative twist. Moreover, they do so without gimickery. The process is deft, never relying on a cheap "gotcha!" sensation. Instead, one wonders why food hasn't always been made like this. If you're looking to escape cheesy "American-Italian" and don't feel like reverting back to the Traditional ways, give Urban Italian a go. It's well worth it.

Lamb Meatballs Stuffed with Goat Cheese
For the meatballs:

• 3 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander seed
• 1 tsp ground fennel seed
• 1 Tbs rosemary, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup fresh goat cheese
• 1/2 lb merguez sausage, about 8 links (or 2 links hot Italian sausage, if you prefer) with casings cut away
• 1 lb ground lamb /* if you don't want to be overly decadent, beef works well, too */
  
• 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the sauce:

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup)
• 1 28oz can Italian tomatoes (San Marzano, if possible) plus their juice
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano, preferably on the branch

To finish the dish:

• 1/4 cup Crumbs Yo! /* this is his special bread crumbs recipe -- toasted with salt, pepper, and spices of your choice. Nice, but not necessary */
• 1/4 cup grated Pecorino cheese

To make the meatballs:

1. Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and sweat for 3min. Add the garlic and cook for 1min, stirring occasionally.
2. Add the coriander, fennel, and rosemary. Cook together 1min, so that the aromas of the spices and herbs are released. Remove to a bowl and place in the fridge to cool (about 5min), so that you're not combining hot onions with cold meat.
3. Meanwhile, roll the goat cheese between your palms to form 1/2-inch balls (the size of a pebble). Place them on a plate and reserve.
4. When the onion-herb mixture has cooled, combine it in a large bowl with the sausage, lamb, breadcrumbs, eggs, and salt. Mix well with your hands.
5. Form the meatballs: for each meatball, scoop up about 2 Tbs of lamb mixture and roll and press it into an oval, about the size of a distended Ping-Pong ball. Use your thumb to create a goat-cheese-ball-size dent in the middle, and drop a goat-cheese ball inside. Pinch the lamb mixture up around the goat cheese to close the hole, and roll the meatball between your hands till it's round and smooth. Repeat until you've used up all the goat cheese and the lamb mixture.

To make the sauce:

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften, about 1min.
2. Crush the tomatoes in a bowl with the heel of your hand. Add them to the pot, then add the tomato juice, red pepper flakes, salt, sugar, and oregano. Mix to combine. Cook over medium-high heat for 10min, until the flavours combine and the sauce is reduced.
3. Add the meatballs, being careful not to break them. Reduce the heat to low, so the sauce is at a very low simmer, and cover. It's very important that the liquid never come to a boil. You want as slow a simmer as possible, so the flavors really come together, the cheese melts, and the meat becomes rich and tender. Cook for 5min, turn the meatballs with a spoon, and simmer another 5min, until the meat is cooked and the sauce takes on the flavour of the meatballs. (Some goat cheese may find it's way out during the cooking process -- it depends on how tightly you've made your meatballs -- but don't worry about this: the meatballs will still taste good.)

To finish the dish:
Ladle the meatballs and sauce into 6 bowls. Sprinkle with the Crumbs Yo! and the grated cheese. Serve immediately.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but my cooking habits are bizarrely similar to a steam engine. Everything runs smoothly if I'm making things regularly. But if I make too much at once, I run out of steam and can't bear to enter my kitchen for days at a time. Or even worse, if I don't cook anything, the pressure builds up until I'm forced to let it all loose in a massive culinary explosion.

This was the case a few weeks ago. I had been so distracted with the many bureaucratic distractions of day-to-day life that (I'm ashamed to admit) I hadn't used my kitchen for much other than cereal and pasta. This lasted a good long time, and by the end of it, the emergency release valve was going off like there's no tomorrow. The only way to cope was to do something about it that was equally ridiculous.

I made a tapas dinner. It was a dinner for a dozen people that lasted better of 5 hours.

I know. I'm a nutter.

But it was a marvelous experiment, and it finally gave me the opportunity to break in one of my graduation cookbooks (I was given 3 -- my family knows me well): "The Book of Tapas," by Simon and Ines Ortega. I recommend it. The book offers a great variety of hot/cold veggie/meat/fish platters in proportions that will content a small group (giving you the opportunities to make several, if you want them to leave stuffed). The glossy pictures offer some illustration to what you're trying for (which is useful for some of the more creatively-named recipes).

Unfortunately, I can't offer any images of my own. The roommate I tasked with taking a pictures was far more interested in the sangria. It's just as well -- there's no way I could blog about all of it. But since I have been asked to say something about the evening, I suppose I can post some of the better dishes. This will have to come in separate installments, though. I'm not sitting here for all of them.

I guess I'll start with the two dishes that most epitomize tapas in my mind: bacon-wrapped dates and Roquefort-stuffed prunes. They are small -- bite-sized, in this case -- tasty combinations of flavours that you really wouldn't be exposed to otherwise. The feeling you end up with is a rich decadence, though it's unclear as to whether that's due to a cuisine with foreign influence or just because it's a fancy course.


Fried Date and Bacon Pinchos (Pinchos de dátiles y bacon fritos)

• 20 dates
• 20 slices thin rindless bacon
• 2-3 Tbs peanut or groundnut oil // I'm not convinced this is necessary

Slit the dates along the longest sides and carefully remove and discard the puts. Wrap each date in a strip of bacon and secure with a wooden toothpick. Heat the oil in a skillet or frying pan, add the bacon rolls and cook, turning occasionally, for about 10min, until the bacon is cooked through and lightly browned. Drain well and serve immediately.

Prunes with Roquefort, Raisins and Pine Nuts (Ciruelas rellenas de Roquefort, pasas y piñones)

• 3,1/2 oz (100g) Roquefort cheese
• 1 oz pine nuts
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 Tbs Malaga wine or sweet sherry
• 4 Tbs light cream
• 12 ready-to-eat prunes ("To use standard prunes, soak them in warm water to rehydrate them")

Crumble the Roquefort into a bowl and mash lightly with a fork. Add the pine nuts, raisins, wine or sherry and cream and mix to a paste. Remove the pits from the prunes and fill the cavities with the Roquefort paste. Close the prunes and secure with a wooden toothpick. Put the prunes on a plate, cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.

Fancy Corn Chowder and Homemade Sourdough

I read somewhere that you can recognize novice cooks because they overspice everything. ...Yeah, that would be me. And here I was wondering why I seem to do so much better with heavy autumn and winter dishes. Delicate herbal accents, unembellished purity of produce, not so much. More of a heavy, complicated stew kind of girl, myself.

That unwillingness to let natural bounty shine unadulterated came back and bit me in the arse with this soup. In my defense, the official name doesn't sound delicate ("Chilled Corn and Sun-dried Tomato Chowder with Goat Cheese-Chive Croutons"), and the recipe is as complicated as an Indian curry and as pretentious as one of St. Julia's gems. Which was exactly what I was looking for, with time on my hands and an itch to reestablish my alpha-dominance over the kitchen. A nice, elaborate recipe to conquer.

(Side note: the fridge still works, but Sears mucked up our dishwasher order. Delivery got pushed back from Wednesday to Saturday. sigh).

The recipe comes from SF-based Chronicle Book Publishers' The Wine Lover's Cookbook. A dear friend gave Do the book two Christmases ago to feed his wine pairing fetish. (The year before that, she gave us our copy of Silver Palate... a very dear friend. Whom I just learned is a regular reader of this blog. :) Hi MM!). The cookbook has breathtakingly beautiful photographs. The recipes are erudite and stimulating, along the lines of Gourmet or Food&Wine. The type that surprise you as you scan the ingredient lists, and generate visions of very special events at expensive restaurants. The only disappointments so far have been the few "mainstream" dishes (everyone already has a favorite version of penne with sausage and mushrooms, for example), while the erudite recipes are truly the stuff of fantasies. Or, my fantasies at least.

Really, the recipe would not have been that complicated... but why buy a sourdough baguette when I've got a neglected sourdough starter waiting in the fridge? Why spend an hour in the kitchen if you can spend twelve? I should mention that this heroic starter was a spawn of my father's, and has been very mistreated since it left his custody. Refrigerated only in the evenings during our cross-country road trip, ignored during move-in week, and then abandoned in a defective fridge while we went on vacation. When I finally fed it just before leaving, it scornfully burped starter all over the inside of the fridge. No hard feelings, it was entitled to a fit of displeasure.

It took a day's worth of coaxing, but the results were spectacular. The bread is dense, the crust is almost French, and the flavor is complex. Really, really impressive. Do consider trying this at home, either by stopping by my place to pick up some of my starter, or purchasing your own King Arthur Sourdough Starter (where my father got his). If you're brave and/or cheap and what to create your own sourdough starter, then power to you. I tried last spring and ended up with a soggy mess... but maybe I'll pawn some blame off on the quality of D.C. airborne yeast.

Anyways, the soup itself was very fancy and delicate, and it would have been exquisite if I hadn't botched it by overspicing it. The tarragon-corn combination (which, Mr. Goldstein insists, pairs wonderfully with a buttery American Chardonnay) is insightful, the sun-dried tomatoes are elegant, and the goat cheese croutons were our favorite part (credit goes to my amazing, heroic starter, whom I love very much. pet, pet.). Unfortunately, I got overenthusiastic with the tarragon and the result was somewhat overwhelming. Good, but overwhelming.

Conclusion: a potential gem for buttery Chardonnay pairings, a fancy summer dish (didn't have one for the repertoire), worth repeating if only to discover what it tastes like when I follow the instructions.

Now I've got to figure out what to do with all this leftover Tarragon. Which I'm not sure I like all that much.


Chilled Corn and Sun-dried Tomato Chowder with Goat Cheese-Chive Croutons
Serves 6

4 ears yellow sweet corn
1 1/2 Tbs olive oil
2 cups chopped sweet onions (Maui, Vidalia, or Walla Walla)
1 Tbs chopped fresh tarragon (no more)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tsp minced lemon zest, separated
1 32oz carton of chicken stock
3/4 cup white wine
2 garlic cloves
3/4 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 cup fresh sour cream
3/4 cup sun dried tomato halves (packed in oil, drained, and chopped)
Salt and Pepper
4 oz fresh goat cheese
1 Tbs minced chives
1 sourdough baguette, cut on the diagonal into twelve 1/4" slices

1. Set the oven to 350 degrees. Set garlic cloves on an aluminum sheet, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cover in aluminum foil, leaving a hole for air to escape. Roast for 45 min.
2. Meanwhile, remove the husks from the corn and, using a serrated knife, remove the corn from the cob by scraping down the cob. Reserve the cobs.
3. In a large soup pot, heat olive oil. Add onions, tarragon, cumin, turmeric, and 1 tsp lemon zest and sauté for 8min. Add corn, reserverd corn cobs, stock, and wine and bring to a full rolling boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 12 min. Removed cobs with tongs and discard.
   
4. Once the garlic is roasted and cool enough to handle, squeeze roasted garlic out of the skin. Add roasted garlic, lemon juice, and sour cream to the soup. Using an immersion blender, purée the soup. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and rough chop. Stir thoroughly and season to taste. If you prefer a cold soup, refrigerate it for 3 hours.
   
5. Mix goat cheese, chives, and 1/2 tsp lemon zest. Refrigerate until needed.
   
6. When ready to serve, spread goat cheese mixture onto sourdough slices. Put under broiler for 5 min, until goat cheese starts to color slightly. Divide soup in bowls, place two croutons in each bowl, and garnish with chopped tarragon.
   

America's Test Kitchen, DON'T alienate food bloggers

I really like America's Test Kitchen. My Mom got Do a subscription to their magazine, Cook's Illustrated. He adores it and cooks out of it all the time. In fact, yesterday he picked up an America's Test Kitchen product at the grocery store, and I'm planning on making an America's Test Kitchen recipe tomorrow night.

America's Test Kitchen is one of the only foodie magazines out there that doesn't offer free access to their recipes online. This makes sense, as they are much smaller than Gourmet or Bon Appetit, and need the $ much more than the free publicity.

When blogging about their recipes in the past, this website has tried to a) link to a free copy of the recipes at the America's Test Kitchen website, b) link to a verbatum copy of the original recipe on someone else's blog, or c) post only recipes of our creations that were inspired by an America's Test Kitchen recipe, such as here. We felt comfortable with this, because we were not giving out their copyrighted recipe but we were still giving them the free, positive publicity that they deserved.

Then fellow foodie blogger Melissa had this extremely off-putting run-in with America's Test Kitchen's PR firm, Deborah Broide Publicity.

America's Test Kitchen, the food blog world is your friend. We are a fount of free publicity, we laud you, we encourage others to check out your products. If you don't want us to post your copyrighted recipes without permission, that's legit. But we are real people with real kitchens -- it's absurd to think that you can prevent us from modifying your recipes. America's Test Kitchen, please don't force this fight. At best, you'll encourage a lot of food bloggers to steer clear of America's Test Kitchen all together. At worst, you'll get a backlash of angry bloggers and you'll lose a lot of customers, and you won't gain anything anyway since we'll still blog about what we're cooking. America's Test Kitchen, let's be friends. Don't piss off the foodie blog world. It's a lose-lose idea.

And you may want to rethink your internet PR policies. Unless negative PR is your game plan.

Moving Day 3: Baking Bread while Packing

We're almost there. Yesterday the containers were delivered and we spent an arduous afternoon lugging nearly all of Do's and my worldly possessions down to the curb. We can almost fit everything into one container, but not quite. Bummer. That said, we've kept up a pretty impressive pace: all that's left is half the kitchen and the stuff we've been using (mattresses, sheets, towels, etc.). Today should be the last day.

In other phenomenal news, Do has got us a beautiful new home in North Oakland. It's the bottom half of a duplex, with the adorable landlords and their young daughters living upstairs. The neighborhood is a vibrant, mixed income community, yet safer than the South Side Chicago neighborhood where we lived during college. The place is also very close to all forms of public transportation (yes!! The less we have to use the car, the better!). The apartment itself is HUGE. We have no idea what we're going to do with all that space. My Dad has suggested that he move in six-months a year (I really, really hope that was a joke), and my Mom reminds us that we'll hopefully be living there until Do gets his Ph.D., so we'll definitely be acquiring stuff. Do and I agree that we're going to miss our cute, teeny, European-sized apartment here in D.C., but, well, onward and upward. If its worst flaw is that it's too big, well, I think we'll cope.

SuperMom decided that we were going to have meatloaf sandwiches for lunch yesterday (meatloaf = lots o leftovers), and asked me to bake a loaf of bread (to make a dent in the baking supplies). The cookbooks were already packed, but my little index card-recipe box was still out. In it, I rediscovered the perfect "baking bread while moving" recipe: one that uses baking soda instead of yeast and therefore doesn't need to rise. So, ladies and gents, if you're ever in the middle of moving and suddenly realize that now would be the perfect time to bake a loaf of bread, well, first acknowledge that you're just plain weird, and then use this recipe. As a disclaimer, I baked the bread in the early morning when all my packers were still injecting themselves with coffee. The bread was ready before the caffeine addicts were.

This recipe comes from a Mennonite cookbook, Simply in Season, which was recommended by a friend. The book was really appealing for someone learning how to eat seasonally: recipes organized by season, and the in-season ingredients are highlighted. Pithy little Mennonite blurbs are sprinkled throughout, extolling the virtues of family dinners and local ingredients. There were even some real winners, including several dynamite bread and soup recipes. However, I ended up giving the book to my Mom because most recipes just didn't fit what Do and I enjoy about food and cooking. The food was very middle-America, down-home hearty, no surprising flavor combinations or mind-expanding ideas. It's not a book for folks who are looking for a challenge, technically or cerebrally. The recipes are not sexy. And several of the Americanized adaptations of foreign foods (a curry, a couscous, etc.) were downright awful. So I gave it my Mom and copied down the winner recipes onto index cards.

This bread itself is dense and chewy, rather than dry. The Molasses flavor really comes through, making it perfect for sandwiches or butter & jam. It's also even easier than baking cookies.

No Rise Whole Wheat Molasses Bread (from Simply in Season).

Oil for greasing the pan
1 2/3 cup buttermilk OR plain Yogurt OR 1 1/2 cup milk & 2 Tbs white vinegar
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup molasses

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease loaf pan.
2. If substituting sour milk for buttermilk, warm milk gently (30 seconds in microwave) and add the vinegar. Stir Molasses into soured milk/buttermilk.
3. Mix dry ingredients in a larger bowl. Stir liquid into dry ingredients, just enough to combine, then pour batter into greased loaf pan.
4. Bake until firm and toothpick comes out clean (45min-1 hour). Cool on rack for 15 minutes before removing bread from pan.
   

For a Lighter version:
Use 1 1/2 cups whole wheat and 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour, omit cornmeal. Substitute honey for molasses. Beat 1 egg into wet ingredients. Proceed with recipe.

Help - I Found another Scientist in My Kitchen!

Neen and I are subscribed to three food magazines. And we love 'em. Every month when a new magazine arrives, Neen very carefully goes through and reads the articles and then clips the recipes that interest her and put them into a folder for later use. Once she has finished, I pick it up and do the same thing. By the time we are finished, it is usually time for the next one to arrive (though, really, more often than not the next one is sitting on our table which is why we finally sat down to finish with the old issue).

For Chanukah last year, Neen's mother bought me a year-long subscription to Cook's Illustrated, and now I think I am in love (sorry Neen). There are a number of reasons why I love Cook's Illustrated, and the pictures don't even make the list. The real advantage to cooking with them is that they are scientists. Really, they are! They may not know everything about protein folding or combustion, but they know a lot about how to test recipes, and they tell you about every step. Last year, when I first started cooking, the part about cooking recipes that really bothered me is that, unless one wants to make mountains of a dish and eat it for the next three weeks, it is not possible to test all of the parameters of a recipe. Does the addition of this extra component hurt or help? Do you really need to roast that first, or can it just be browned? I am definitely a scientist when it comes to these kinds of questions - I want answers! And since the method for testing is reasonably straight-forward (the hard part is thinking up all of the things you want to test), I was pretty bothered about not having the answers.

Here is where Cook's Illustrated comes to the rescue! They have already done it for me. When I picked up the recipe for Creamy Tomato Pasta Sauce, I could read the two pages of text associated with the recipe and learn that, indeed, using a full Italian soffrito (the mixture of celery, carrots, onions, garlic, etc.) in this recipe makes it too vegetal. So your better off just using onion and garlic - keep it simple. The kinds of tomato used also have a significant impact on the flavor of the sauce - even the difference between canned whole and crushed tomatoes makes a difference because of the calcium chloride that is often added to the whole tomatoes as firming agent. I love that - I didn't know that calcium chloride was a firming agent! But there it is - I learn something every time. If you haven't ever read a Cook's Illustrated I would highly recommend it. They don't do that many recipes in an issue (usually around 10), but each recipe is worth reading, and they also do a lot of tests on cooking utensils and ingredients (which is the tastiest Turkey on market - you might be surprised by the answer). Besides, at $6.00 an issue they are really a steal.

With their recipes, given the care that goes into generating them, I am usually pretty careful not to modify unless I really think they missed a flavor component that I want (heat, for instance...). In this case, however, as I was reaching for the Serrano peppers I forced myself to stop. Maybe not everything has to be hot, right. The rest of recipe was straightforward to make and extremely delicious. The flavor of the sauce was rich and deep. It had a fuller flavor then I usually associate with tomato-cream sauces, but without the monotony that can develop from too much RICH and CREAM flavor and not enough tomato flavor. This was avoided by the addition uncooked crushed tomato at the very end when adding the cream, which brightened the flavor profile of the dish substantially. Neen commented that she didn't even miss the meat! There actually were pieces of prosciutto put in, but they were small enough that I didn't really notice them. So for a vegetarian version, just remove all meat from the dish.

Oh... and when I said maybe not everything needs heat - well, I was wrong. This is definitely a sauce that could take some extra heat. And I would be very tempted to add just the smallest touch of vinegar (really, really small). The flavor is very delicate and I like how it gives it just a little more body.


Pasta with Creamy Tomato Sauce (Do's take on Cook's Illustrated's version)
Serves 4

3 Tbs unsalted butter
3 oz thick ham or pancetta, minced
1 small onion, diced fine
1 bay leaf
generous shake of Red Pepper Flakes
2 Serrano Peppers, stemmed and chopped
1 tsp vinegar
Salt
3 medium garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbs tomato paste
4 oz oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained, rinsed, patted dry, and chopped coarse.
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs dry white wine
2 cups plus 2 Tbs crushed tomatoes (from one 28 oz can)
1 pound short pasta
1/2 cup heavy cream
Ground black pepper
Grated Parmesan, for serving

1. Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add ham, onion, Serrano peppers, bay leaf, pepper flakes, and 1/4 tsp salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is very soft and beginning to turn light gold, 8-12 min. Increase heat to medium-high, add garlic, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in tomato paste and sun-dried tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly darkened, 1-2 min. Add 1/4 cup wine and cook, stirring frequently, until liquid has evaporated, 1-2min.
2. Add 2 cups crushed tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until sauce is thickened (spoon should leave trail when dragged through sauce), 25-30min.
3. Meanwhile, bring 4 quarts water to boil. Add pasta and 1 Tbs salt and cook until al dente.
   Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water; drain pasta and transfer back to cooking pot.
4. Remove bay leaf from sauce and discard. Stir cream, remaining 2 Tbs crushed tomatoes, 1 tsp vinegar, and remaining 2 Tbs wine into sauce; season to taste with salt and pepper. Add sauce to cooked pasta, adjusting consistency with up to 1/2 cup pasta cooking water. Serve immediately, passing Parmesan separately.
   

1. We're submitting this to Ruth's Kitchen Experiment's Bookmarked Recipes, a new weekly event that could sure help us get through our giant file folder of magazine clippings!

Poulet Basquaise

On Monday this week (yeah, the post has been in the pipeline for a little while...), I made a dish that I fell in love with. Really. The recipe comes out of our Bistro Cooking cookbook, which I highly recommend if you can get your hands on a copy. Ours comes from a used bookstore in Austin, and it is fabulous. We have made a number of recipes out of it in the last 6 months and they are consistently surprising. My only caveat is that, despite having an entire chapter on potatoes, they are mostly potato gratin dishes (which I am reluctant to make just because of the time requirement for slicing all those potatoes). The rest of the cookbook has fantastic recipes, most of which are fairly simple to make but have a distinctly French flavor. High marks overall. (Though, I don't think I will be so bold as to recommend it to Kate, over at Thyme for Cooking.... There are some distinct advantages to living in the French countryside....)

The dish in question, in case you managed to miss the title of the post, is Poulet Basquaise. The dish is centered around the contrast of sweetness of bell peppers/chicken and the spice of hot peppers, but actually only calls for two hot peppers (seeded) to be used. Of course, since there are only two of us, I halved the recipe. I just didn't halve the hot peppers - and I didn't seed 'em either. :) This is yet another example of the dilemma that Neen finds herself in almost constantly. The pleasure of having a lover that will cook her dinner (and enjoy doing it), while simultaneously wishing that he would lay off the heat. The problem is that I really enjoy hot food, and there are very few dishes that would not be improved by adding some hot pepper. I am trying to be better, though - if only so that she will keep eating what I cook. Last night I made a pasta dish (to be described later) that I was very tempted to add Serrano peppers to, but I didn't! It took so much self-control not to add those little packets of delicious heat. They would have tasted great... I hope she appreciated it!

Back to the Poulet Basquaise, though. The dish worked out really well, but it was not at all what I had expected it to be. It was cooked in three different pots. One pot for the noodles (of course), one pot for the tomato and onion sauce, and one pot to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... Wait, that's not it. The other pot was for the fusion of chicken, bell peppers, hot peppers, ham, and garlic. I also added a reasonable dash of white wine. The result was fascinating - after cooking for an hour while covered the bell peppers released so much liquid as to make an almost soup-like mixture. The flavors had melded together to form a seamless whole that tasted richly of chicken and yet also light, almost spring-like with the flavors of bell- and Serrano peppers. One taste was enough - I was sold. I loved the combination of the chicken, garlic, and Serrano peppers all brought together by the sweetness of bell-peppers. The flavor of the wine offered additional complexity to the flavors, without being over-bearing.

To serve, the directions were very specific: the tomato sauce should put down and then the chicken placed on top. Of course, I added noodles (it sounded like a noodle kind of dish) so I put those on the bottom of everything.

I should note that while this dish quickly gained a spot in my heart, Neen had a couple of reservations. The chicken came out looking fairly dilapidated and the chicken skin had a flabby texture. Also, the sauce, since it is so broth like, will seep to the bottom of a bowl making it tricky to get a piece of chicken, noodles, and sauce all in one bite. I have two suggestions for modification to the recipe to correct for these issues. One, I would coat the chicken in seasoned flour before browning. Two, I would use the extra flour at the last step to make a roux for the soup and thicken it slightly. Not too much - you might loose the lightness of the flavor, but I would want to thicken it just enough that it can grab onto pasta noodles.
[Neen inserts: or we can serve the dish over rice, as the original recipe suggests, and thereby bypass the whole problem....]

Patricia Wells' Poulet Basquaise: Chicken with Hot Peppers, Ham, Tomatoes, and Onions
4-6 Servings

4 small, mildly hot green chiles (such as serrano), or 2 hot green chilies, or 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes (I doubled the quantity of chiles)
1 chicken (3-4 pounds), well rinsed, patted dry, cut into 8 serving pieces, and at room temperature
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
5 Tbs vegetable oil
12 fat garlic cloves, cut into thin slices
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
2 lb tomatoes, peeled, cored, seeded and chopped (or substitute 1 28oz can plum tomatoes, drained)
White Wine (my addition)

1. If you're a weenie, Core and seed the chiles. Slice into 1/8-inch strips; set aside
2. Season the chicken liberally with salt and pepper. Ina deep 12-inch skillet, heat 3 Tbs of oil over high heat. When the oil is hot but not smoking, add the chicken and brown on one side until the skin turns an even golden brown , about 5 min. Turn the pieces and brown them on the other side for an additional 5 min. Work in batches, if necessary.
   
3. Return all the chicken to the skillet. Add the garlic, bell peppers, chiles, and ham, burying all the ingredients admist the chicken pieces. (Add a general cup or so of white wine). Cook covered, over medium heat, until the chicken is cooked through and the peppers are meltingly soft (45min-1hr). The pan will make a lot of crackling noises as the peppers give off much of their liquid. Turn the mixture from time to time, and adjust the heat to avoid scorching. You want a tender sauce.
   
4. Meanwhile, in another large skillet, heat the remaining 2 Tbs of oil over high heat until hot but not smoking. Ad the onions. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook until very soft, about 5 min. Add the tomatoes and continue cooking for another 30min. The mixture should be soft and well-blended. Season to taste with salt. (The dish can be easily made ahead at this point. Reheat both mixtures separately.)
5. To serve, layer the tomato and onion mixture on a preheated platter. Cover with the chicken mixture, and serve immediately, with white rice. (oops, I used noodles).
   

Leftovers Pizza = Effortless Glamor

Giddy with excitement! I'm feeling really bubbly due to tonight's unexpected success. :)

What you have to realize is that I had no desire to cook. None. Our house was a pigsty, with semi-unpacked luggage and unopened mail and magazines and various electric cords and clothes all over the place. The drain in the kitchen is on the spritz, making dish washing very slow and frustrating. We're also still moderately sleep-deprived from the late Austin flight and haven't been to a grocery store for a week. Ugh. None of the above is conducive for culinary inspiration. It's Leftovers Night.

But! Leftovers....put leftovers on bread...and you get... PIZZA!! Leftovers = blah, but Homemade Pizza = sophisticated party! The very thought of it magically transformed our messy apartment into an "artistic" Yuppie loft (at least in my mind's eye). Pour some leftover cornerstore Chianti, turn on some Jazz (or better yet, some very hip bluegrass from Austin -- you have to be really in-the-know to play Texas bluegrass in your "loft" while sipping cheap chianti), and suddenly the world looks so much better. I even got inspired enough to do a load of laundry and face the evil kitchen drain, and D swiftered the hell out of the living room.

In general, I've found homemade pizza to be one of those quick, easy but fun and surprising entertaining ideas, at least when we've invited other twenty-somethings over. When you're in our age bracket, a "dinner party" means either a) order pizza and bring beer or b) feel really awkward as the host(ess) "plays grown-up" and serves poorly executed, complicated food which you eat on plastic plates. I know, I've done both. One of the most successful dinner parties we've had since moving to D.C. was when we had a couple of D's Physics graduate student friends over and made pizza dough and had everyone "design" their own pizzas. No dirty pots, didn't even have to turn on the stovetop. We just let everyone loose into the kitchen to grab a bit of this and a bit of that and design the perfect pizza. Sounds like a trick that would work with preschoolers you say? Well, I won't dwell on the comparison between preschoolers and graduate students, but it was a hellova a lot of fun and not at all pretentious. Which is a fine line to walk when you're a twenty-three year old foodie who collects wine.

Now, you can serve "homemade" pizza by picking up pizza dough from the freezer in ye local grocery store. Or, you can make reasonably yummy dough pretty easily by hand. Or, you can produce Superlative pizza dough by using the best Bread Cookbook I have ever encountered. Richard Bertinet, a French baker based out of Bath (UK), revolutionized my whole approach to bread. D received his Crust cookbook from my grandparents for Christmas, and we were so impressed with it that we immediately purchased Bertinet's first book, Dough. The former deals with sourdough and other intense breads, and the latter with doughs that require only one rising. The amazing thing about Bertinet is that he is able to teach you how to "feel" bread -- how to interpret what your senses tell you, what is going on, what are you trying to achieve, what should it look like... with very very precise, comparative photos. Kind of like the Cook's Illustrated approach, only a LOT MORE photos and explanations, and without getting into his learning process. There's even a full-page chart explaining how the weather will affect the rising.

Best of all is his technique for "kneading" the dough. Instead of the common "punch" method, which stretchs dough out, he uses a slap-and-pull technique that captures air inside the dough. Essentially, you grab a rectangle of dough from one end and slap the front end onto the counter, then take the end that you're holding and lift up and over... and grab the dough that's stuck to the counter, capturing air between the two parts of the dough rectangle. You clearly have no idea what I'm talking about, but he's got several pages of photos and a dvd is included in the books to explain the technique. The first time I used his method, it was like magic -- the dough became this vibrant, living being, unlike any other bread I had made before. Using his technique and a higher ratio of liquid to flour, I ended up with gorgeous French baguettes. Who needs Julia Child's 18 page recipe, when you can bake bread on a worknight using Richard Bertinet? If I had to throw away all but one cookbook in my collection, his would be the one that I would keep. (If I could keep two cookbooks, it would be his and something by Madhur Jaffrey; both use techniques and an understanding of ingredient proportion that I just can't replicate on my own).

Okay, enough evangelizing. Now that I'm up here on the podium, I would also like to thank my little brother, who gave me a bread stone for my 23rd birthday, without which this pizza would have been no where near as good. No question, bread stones are WORTH IT. The difference is immeasurable. I would also like to thank D's Dad, who loves to feed our kitchen fetishes, and got us our kitchen scale. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

and, for those of you keeping track, this was a 100% vegetarian meal. We used some leftover tomato sauce, parmesan, spinach, fresh tomatoes, olives, capers, dried basil, hot peppers, and more parmesan. Maybe our eating habits did change with that whole Lenten experiment.

Richard Bertinet's Pizza Dough (3 pizzas) We halved this recipe to make one big pizza for the two of us, and finished half.

1/2 oz fresh yeast
18 oz Italian white bread flour (3 3/4 - 3 7/8 cups)
2 tsp fine grain salt
5 Tbs Olive Oil
11 1/2 oz Water

1. Rub yeast into flour with your fingertips. Ass salt, olive oil, and water, and then use Bertinet's slap and pull method (described above, or just buy the book). Let the dough rise for 1 hour or so (it always needs at least 2 hours in our house) or, to acheive a better crust and taste, rest it overnight in the fridge. By doing this, you will enable the dough to rise very slowly and it will develop a little acidity that will improve its flavor and give a texture that is crispy on the outside and slightly chewy inside. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
   
   
2. Gently turn the dough out onto the counter and let it rest for 10 min more. Lightly flour the counter and place the ball of dough upon the counter. Divide into three.



3. Place the heel of your hand in the center of each piece of dough and push it away from you so that it stretches the dough out. Turn slightly and repeat. Keep stretching the dough until you have a roughly circular pizza shape of about 8-9 inches in diameter. The edge should be slightly thicker than the dough in the middle.



4. Lift the pizza base onto a piece of parchment paper and add toppings. Put the parchment + pizza onto a peel (or cutting board or flat cookie sheet) and slide it into your oven (preferably on top of your baking stone, or a preheated baking tray as a substitute). Turn the heat down to 460 degrees and bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges become golden brown and crispy.

Hamantaschen for Good Friday... er, Purim

Thursday morning, at o'dawn o'clock, I was rolling out dough for Hamantaschen. Yup. me. Hamantaschen. For Purim. Pre-dawn.

To fully appreciate how ridiculous this situation is, you have to go back a bazillion years to when some Jewish dude wrote the book of Esther. The quick and dirty of it is that Queen Esther of Persia [Yaaay!], secretly Jewish, thwarts the evil plot of Haman [Boooo!] to have the King kill all the Jews. There's some mighty creepy epilogue, including Haman and all his sons being hanged and the Jews killing 75,000 men defending themselves against their enemies. Ya know, it's biblical. So, to celebrate escaping genocide, we have the lesser holiday of Purim, a raucous commemoration that's sort of like a Jewish version of Mardi Gras. One of the days' mitzvot is to have a "festive meal," which gets liberally interpreted to mean costumes, lots of wine, puppets, songs, etc. Purim started Thursday at sundown, and goes through until sundown on Friday.

Friday? As in, Good Friday? The most solemn day in the Christian Calendar coincides with one of the most jovial holidays in the Jewish Calendar?

Yup. Someone up there definitely has a sense of humor. I mean, if the Almighty was going to schedule St. Paddy's Day, the drunken holiday of the WASPs, during Holy Week, He might as well add Purim to the pile. The more the merrier! It kind of reminds me of that Tom Lehrer song, "Doing the Vatican Rag," with the mind-boggling mix of High Holiness and Laughing-at-oneself. Which, frankly, isn't a bad approach to religion anyway.

But back to Hamantaschen. These little pastries are either named after Haman's [tricorn] Hat or Haman's Pocket (neither one of which is mentionned in the book of Esther, but it kind of makes you think of Haman as a little Napoleon, doesn't it?). I'm told that, in Israel, the pastries are called Haman's Ears. You have to have a pretty vivid imagination to see their resemblance to ears, but a few swigs of Purim wine might just do the trick. The catch here is that Hamantaschen are an Ashkanazi tradition and are predominant in American Judaism mostly because, well, guess where most American Jews' ancestors came from?

So here I am, at o'dawn o'clock, a literal White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, trying to figure out how to make Hamantaschen for my Tunisian/French/Irish boyfriend, whose Jewish side of the family didn't even come from anywhere remotely resembling Eastern Europe! Oy! Just another step in the somewhat exciting, somewhat petrifying process of taking two distinct heritages and weaving a new set family traditions that we can share together.

Entertainingly, the closest claim we have to Hamantaschen is the spoof Great Latke-Hamantash Debate that our Alma Mater puts on every December. It's a fabulously irreverent tradition that gets great professors (Martha Nussbaum, Milton Friendman and the like) to substantiate their culinary preferences with "academic" arguments. Some of the greatest included "the roundness of the latke clearly suggests the circle of perfection (Plato's ideal form)" or "the latke increases the United States' dependence on oil." Hehe. I love nerds. Needless to say, I had no idea what either a Latke or a Hamantash was before college.

The Hamantaschen that I made yesterday, for a first try, turned out damn good. I used Gil Marks' The World of Jewish Cooking, a historical cookbook that delves into the cooking traditions of the entire Jewish diaspora. I usually take Gil Marks' recipes with a grain of salt, as he sometimes chooses historical accuracy over tastiness (and let's face it, culinary traditions of the medieval masses tend to be dubious at best in terms of tastiness). Hamantaschen used to be made predominantly with yeast dough, but our 21st century sweet-tooth has made a cookie-dough version more popular. I shouldn't have worried about insufficient yumminess: the cookie dough in this recipe is almost pastry-like in thin, flaky kind of way -- they look so cute and delicate! As D noted, they are just sweet enough not to be a biscuit. Unfortunately, the cookbook doesn't mention that the dough becomes more crumbly and more difficult to seal as it warms up; so you need to toss it in the fridge between batches.

I also made a half batch of the traditional poppy seed filling (Mohnfullung), which was enough for all but 10 cookies (those we filled with jam). The Poppy Seed filling was Outstanding. I love the flavor of poppy seeds. It had an interesting texture with the dried fruit and the nuts, yet it wasn't overwhelmingly sweet. I opted for an orange flavor, but his suggestion to use lemon juice could have produced an interesting sweet-and-sour filling. All in all, interesting and different in a way that makes for a fairly sophisticated pastry. And, as we found out this morning, they go VERY WELL with tea for breakfast! D has been dropping several not-so-subtle hints that we (read: I) should make them more often -- my response is that he should learn to bake! (His response was that, on the list of cooking skills that he needs to acquire, baking is still pretty low on the list.)

Gil Marks' Cookie Dough Hamantaschen

1/2 cup + 3 Tbs butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3 Tbs orange juice, or sweet red wine, or a water/lemon juice combo
1 tsp vanilla extract or grated lemon zest
1/4 tsp salt
About 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
About 1 1/2 cups Mohnfullung (see below), or prune jam, or plum preserves

1. Beat the butter until smooth. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy (5-10 min). Beat in egg. Blend in juice (or wine, or water), vanilla (or zest), and salt. Stir in enough flour to make a soft dough. I'm not sure what this means, but I added about 2.5 cups.


2. Wrap dough in a plastic wrap and chill until firm, 1 hour minimum. At this point, tt can be fridged for days or frozen for months. Let stand at room temperature for several minutes, until workable but not soft.
   


3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
   


4. For easy handling, divide the dough into 4 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece 1/8" thick. Using a 3 inch glass (ish), cut out rounds. Reroll the scraps.
   


5. Place 1tsp of filling in the center of each round. Pinch the bottom side of the dough round together over the filling. Fold down the top flap and pinch the two other sides together to form a triangle, leaving some filling exposed in the center. Hamantaschen can be prepared ahead to this point and frozen for several months. Defrost before baking.
   


6. Place the Hamantaschen 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, about 13 minutes. Let cool completely.
   

Makes about 40 small cookies.

Gil Marks' Mohnfullung (Traditional poppy filling)

1 cup poppy seeds, crushed or ground
1/2 cup water or milk
1/2 cup sugar or honey
Pinch of salt
2 Tbs lemon or orange juice or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp grated lemon or orange zest
1/2 cup golden raisins or chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts or almonds (optional)

1. Combine the poppy seeds, water or milk, sugar or honey, and salt in a small saucepan. Simmer over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens, about 10 min.
   


2. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Let cool. Store in the refrigerator

Makes about 2 cups.

Chicken Cacciatore, for when your brain hurts

During our 4th year in college, we lived in this gorgeous, old low-rise apartment building in Chicago. Unlike our current place, the rooms were ample and always full of light, making it a great place to have people over. Our dining room table was (and is) a well-used ikea number that doubles as a two person desk during most of the day, and we had more than enough room for two couches where you could often find my little brother hammering away at his 1st year English essays or Calculus problem sets. I would let him know that something yummy was on that night's menu, and that there would be more than enough to share (being as yet unwilling to experiment with the proportions of all these 4 person recipes. Without my brother to act as an appreciative garbage disposal, we have since become very good at halving every recipe off the bat), and he would wander over sometime after afternoon class and plug himself into our wall sockets for hours on end. D would drag himself away from lab and bring a graduate student friend with him, enticed away from experiments in favor of a non-cafeteria, non-eateria dinner. It was great. I really miss it. Unfortunately, neither one of us has a brother in D.C. and we live too far away from our jobs to casually drag unsuspecting colleagues home. Ah well, hopefully when we go to grad school in the fall...

This recipe, I believe, may have been what convinced D to defer grad school and follow me out to DC for a year. It's that good. Or at least, he reacted that positively when I made it for the first time in college... in retrospect that may say more about what I'd been serving him to date, but ehh. :) Chicken Cacciatore is like pure yumminess in a bowl, slathered in hearty tomato sauce over pasta. This recipe is hearty and flavorful and classic, without being reduced to some trite Italian reference. D inserts, "It's everything you like about a classic pasta sauce, but more. More spiced, more complex, deeper." The chicken is super moist and melts off the bone. We always serve it over noodles, to lap up that great sauce and to make the dinner stretch to feed 3 hungry University boys. Best of all, it's simple enough that even I, a super inexperienced cook (at the time) and nervous hostess (still), could pull it off without thinking twice. If I had to list only three culinary successes that we got out of that year, Chicken Cacciatore would top the list.

A quick word on the source. I clearly didn't take the photo above (notice the lack of pasta and the professional lighting -- definitely not me); it's the photo that accompanies the recipe in the "Real Simple: Meals Made Easy" cookbook. I really recommend it, we've had good luck with everything we tried. Unlike with most cookbooks that are marketed as "simple" or "college-level," these recipes have all been very flavorful, well-balanced texture-wise, aesthetically pretty, crowd-pleasers, and INTERESTING. I've heard some folks complain that Rachel Ray-type recipes are more "simple," but I find these recipes very clearly written, straight-forward in terms of steps and techniques, and really not requiring a lot of stressful juggling in the kitchen. And every one can be accomplished on a weeknight. The only drawback is that some of the recipes are less inspiring to me, mostly the "empty pantry" and the "no-cook" meals. Ah well, definitely worth leafing through in a bookstore!

Chicken Cacciatore with Pasta
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
kosher salt and black pepper
1 3 1/2- to 4-pound chicken, cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced (eeh, optional)
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 sprigs fresh thyme (more is always better)

1 bay leaf
1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes
Cayenne pepper to taste
1/3 cup dry red wine
1 lb pasta (more or less depending on how many you're feeding)
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves

In a shallow bowl, combine the flour, 1 teaspoon of the salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of the pepper. Rinse the chicken and pat it dry with paper towels. Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium heat. Working in batches, lightly coat the chicken in the flour mixture, shaking off any excess. Add some of the chicken to the pan, being careful not to crowd the pieces. Cook the chicken until browned, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate; set aside. Repeat with the remaining chicken.

Add the onion to the pan and cook for 2 minutes. Add the carrot, celery, garlic, thyme, and bay leaf. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Stir the tomatoes into the vegetables, crushing them with the back of your spoon as you go along. Add the wine, and salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken, reduce heat, and cover. Simmer for 45 minutes, turning the pieces occasionally.

In the mean time, cook the pasta in boiling water. When the Chicken is ready, remove and discard the bay leaf. Serve the cacciatore on top of the pasta and sprinkle with parsley.

Serves 3-5, depending on how many starving college boys you have at your table.

Check out the Presto Pasta Nights roundup at Once Upon a Feast.

The Great Clam Massacre

Clam pasta
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

Neen tells me that there is nothing sexier then a man passionate about cooking. Thankfully, she appears to be unconcerned about the actually quality of the dishes created. I suspect that my cooking scores high in the "Creative" category (with little idiosyncratic touches thrown in to the dish), but lower than average in "Quality."

Tonight was no exception. I saw a jar of clam juice at the grocery store this weekend and made an impromptu decision to make my mother's creamy clam pasta sauce. Neen picked up some cans of clams for me on her way home (yes, it is made with canned clams - I come from the Midwest, there is no such thing as fresh clams). I was prepared to produce this dish, when I realized that I also happened to have the ingredients for a clam pasta sauce from the Silver Palate.

Now, usually, cooking out of the Silver Palate is nothing but a good idea. I have a very healthy respect for their recipes. Tonight, however, not only did I decide I would cook their sauce, I also decide I would "improve" it. The base of the Silver Palate sauce is garlic, clam juice, herbs, and olive oil. (This can be compared to my mother's recipe which uses: garlic, garlic, clam juice, garlic, butter, and garlic. Oh, and cream and garlic.)

My improvements for the Silver Palate recipe were the addition of white wine (if you have also read my post on Lamb Stew, you may begin to see a trend), changing the oil for butter (a little richer), and thickening the sauce with a roux at the very end (I like thicker sauces).

The results were less then impressive. The dish did not carry any of the subtlety of the herbs or the white wine. It was a good consistency, but the flavor was saltier then it should be and basically only tasted of garlic and clams (I am not complaining, but I was hoping for something a little more impressive given the extra effort). My suspicion is, if I had left the sauce alone (particularly without thickening it), the flavors would have been milder (or, at least, less concentrated) and the fresh parsley would have been more present as a flavor. Similarly, the use of butter added a rich (and probably salty) flavor that actually worked against the dish. In fact, what I created was exactly what I should have expected, I suppose. It was the average between the rich, potent, sauce my mother makes and the lighter, more subtle sauce of Silver Palate.

In the future I think I will stick to my mother's recipe when cooking with canned clams - the subtle sauce of Silver Palate is probably also not well suited to the coarser flavors that canned clams offer. But it may just be worth it to try making the Silver Palate sauce using fresh clams, since I can buy them around D.C.

Lamb Stew in Three Layers

Sunday night, I took a turn at cooking a new stew. Stew is how I first began to cook for large groups in college. My father has recipe for Beef Stew that I have grown up with. It is an incredibly simple recipe (Beef, potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, and a few seasonings), but it is my ideal for beef stew. That said, I have tried to branch into other kinds of beef stew before, but it has always ended in disaster. In particular, there was the beef and beer stew that we made about a year ago. It was a very nice rendition of beef in a brown sauce, but it hardly qualified as stew for me. So last night, I was not prepared to tackle another beef stew. Instead, I choose an easier opponent, a lamb stew from Gourmet Cookbook.

The first step in the recipe is to cut off and render the fat. Render? I render something inactive or, in my geekier moments, I render graphics - I do not render fat. For my companions in ignorance, rendering fat, refers to cooking fat over low heat, in an effort to melt it. At first taking special care to add fat to lamb (which is a fatty meat already) may seem counterintuitive, but it really did result in a stew with a full, rich flavor. After cooking the lamb meat, carrots, and onions in the rendered fat, the stew was then prepared in layers. That's right, layers - like a casserole. The bottom layer was lamb, then a layer of carrots and onions, and, finally, the potatoes. I have never used layers in a stew before, and I couldn't tell if it made a difference in the cooking. I may try this recipe again and not add the layers, just to see what happens.

If you have any interest in lamb stew, I would recommend this recipe as a lighter, fresher version of lamb stew. The short cooking time (1 hour of simmering), keeps the flavors from blending to the point of homogeneity, and the use of chicken broth and white wine (the recipe didn't call for it, but I thought it would make a nice addition) keeps the stew lighter then others made with beef broth.

Nothing says 'I love you' like labor-intensive Indian Food

Yesterday, I went all out and spent multiple hours in the kitchen in order to produce an edible love letter. The final results:

Finished plate
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

(Indian meatballs, Lentil Dal, Chapati, Cilantro-Yogurt Chutney, and Basmati rice).

D. loves spicy food and culinary adventures, yet has had relatively little experience with Indian food. Not that I'm any Hindustani diva. I did date a fellow from Kerala once, which spurred enough insanity that I a) watched as many bollywood movies as possible with the goal of both picking up some Hindi and getting an eyeful of Sharukh Khan, b) did my best to get along with his silently disapproving mother, and c) started teaching myself how to cook out of my parents' crumbling copy of Madhur Jaffrey's "Introduction to Indian Cooking." I was studying hard for International Baccalaureate exams at the time, and cooking gradually morphed into a physical outlet, a good break from Rousseau and Organic Chemistry that yielded significant rewards on the familial gratitude front. Having conquered the exams in late May, I decided to throw a big sha-bang for my Dad's birthday, presenting everything from Lamb Korma to Tomato-Tamarind Chutney to Kulfi (Indian ice-cream, sort of). It was outrageous. The whole episode ended with my Dad being one happy cookie, the cookbook finally falling into five or six distinct pieces, and me setting aside both the Indian boyfriend and any overly-ambitious culinary interests for college.

Fast forward four and a half years. D. and I are eating mostly vegetarian for Lent (another topic for another day), and I started poking around with Indian recipes as a way to make veggies more interesting. With a little help from amazon.com, I replaced the old crumbled Jaffrey cookbook with a copy that has an intact spine. And set aside Saturday to introduce D. to Indian food beyond cheap all-you-can-eat restaurants.

Koftas (Indian meatballs)
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

These meatballs were incredibly dense, very middle-eastern instead of the fluffy-breadcumbly-eggy American things. They were stuffed with an onion-chili paste, which was actually really soothing in contrast with the dense meat. Very complex spicing, but not overwhelmingly hot. I was a little disappointed by the sauce, which was onion-based instead of tomato-based or meat-based. Really, it was just because it looks like an Italian sauce. D. really loved it. Which is good, because he'll be eating it all week.

Lentil Dal
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

The Lentil dal was perhaps the biggest flavor success of the evening, namely because they in no way resembled the "woody"-tasting lentils that we have all fallen victim to at some point. Given the amount of protein and spicing in them, the dal was surprisingly light (thank you limes!) and meaty-flavored. Search me, maybe it was the combination of spices that made it so succulent?

Finally, the diva of the evening, the Chapatis. Chapatis are an Indian puffed bread made out of whole wheat flour and water. THAT's IT! After my bouts of wrestling with Baguettes (successfully) and Ciabatta (unsuccessfully), this seemed eerily easy. Something had to be amiss. Clearly Madhur Jaffrey had never met Julia Child, or she would have devised some more complicated devilry. Or at the very least require that I use a bread stone.

But no. Mix flour and water, and let the dough "rise" for 3 hours (it won't). Divide it into teeny-weeny lumps about the size of a cookie, and roll it as thin as possible. Plop this paper-thin creation onto a smoking hot pan, and in thirty seconds it will start developing bubbles. No joke:

Chapati starts to bubble
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

Once you do this to both sides of your less-flat-by-now pancake, you have your loving partner whisk the pan out of the way and lower the flame, and you DROP THE BREAD ONTO THE OPEN FLAME. You then holler sacrilegious exclamations as the bread PROCEEDS TO INFLATE ITSELF LIKE A BALLOON!!!!!

Chapati
Originally uploaded by Neenabeena

Okay, so how outrageously cool is that?

So that's where Madhur Jaffrey gets you. Pre-collegiate, an absurdly grateful father and a renewed commitment to global urbanity. Post-collegiate, an absurdly grateful partner and a realization that, sometimes, all that 120K+ education hasn't enhanced your ability to appreciate some pretty sweet self-inflating chemistry in action.