Artichoke lasagne

Layers of pasta, artichoke hearts sauteed with onions and garlic, rich bechamel sauce, Fontina and Pecorino Romano cheese.
 

Baked at 350°F for about an hour:

Lasagne, pork cutlet piccata, green salad.  Floral stylings by Peg.

Sowing the seeds of yum

Put in the my herbs this morning...

Basil
Rosemary (I'm trying again this year -- I have little luck in getting it to winter over)
Marjoram (first time I've planted it)
Thyme
Cilantro

Plus the perennials sage, chives, and oregano.  My sage plant is about 15 years old...very woody now, but still puts out a beautiful crop of leaves every year.  Chives are starting to bloom already.  And the oregano is beautiful -- I should harvest it now before it gets too unwieldy and dirty, which it usually does by season's end. 

My two curly parsley plants survived the winter nicely, but the Italian parsley did not. 

Surest sign of spring

The asparagus frittata.  Ready for Sunday brunch.

The Gnocchi Tutorial

Details to come...but first, some photos from the evening.

Quick recipe:

2.5 lb potatoes (cooked, cooled, riced -- finished weight.  You'll need about 5 lbs potatoes to start.)
3 eggs
1.5 - 2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
Additional flour as necessary for rolling

 Cooked, riced, cooled potatoes -- 2.5 lb finished weight

Idaho russets, baked until soft, cooled slightly, halved, scooped out.
(Drizzle the leftover skins with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then baked at
350°F for about 20 minutes -- better than potato chips!) 

 Jeanne Z hard at work cutting the gnocchi!

 Rolling out a log of dough.

 The cut gnocchi, ready to be rolled/indented/dimpled to increase the surface area.

 The finished gnocchi, laid out on a linen cloth, ready to be cooked.

 

 Gnocchi al pomodoro

Gnocchi alla Gorgonzola

Chicken soup for supper -- simple and satisfying

Chicken soup for supper.

Onion, carrot, celery, garlic, sauteed for a few minutes until tender. Good, rich chicken stock, made from leftover roasted chicken, a handful of aromatics and herbs, and simmered low for a couple hours. Pastina. Cut-up chicken from the stock added back in.  Warmed through gently, and ready to serve.

Simple. Satisfying.

Sausage skillet supper

I made a simple supper the other night -- skillet-roasted sausages with sweet red bell peppers, onions, and potatoes.

1 lb pork sausage
2 red bell peppers, cored and sliced
2 medium onions, peeled and quartered (hint, leave a bit of the root end on, and the quarters will remain coherent)
3 cloves garlic
2 medium red-skin potatoes

Even better, I used my new heavy-gauge steel skillet which I bought last week at Williams-Sonoma with a gift card.  Love it.

The sausages are from Martin's in Reading Terminal Market. They have an excellent selection of sausages.  I bought their luganega, which is a pork sausage with garlic, cheese, and parsley. 

Zap the potatoes in the microwave for a few minutes until tender. Quarter and let cool a bit. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, garlic powder, and drizzle some olive oil over, tossing to coat completely.

Start the sausages in an ovenproof skillet: add a bit of water, cover, and steam for about 5 minutes.  Uncover, and let the remaining water evaporate. Doing this gives the sausages a good head-start in cooking, so that once in the oven, all they need to do is brown. 

Drizzle in a bit of olive oil, then arrange sliced peppers, quartered onions, and the seasoned, quartered potatoes around.  Peel a few cloves of garlic, and add them whole to the pan.  Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle a bit of thyme over all.  Give it all a good stir. 

Roast in a 400°F oven for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the sausages and potatoes are browned, and the vegetables are tender.  

and 

Happy Pi(e) Day!

 3.14 pies for you.

Morning at the Market

Busy morning at the Market....meat, veggies, fruit, coffee, bread, and a special treat--hot cross buns from Beiler's.

I did get there extra early -- 8 am, just as it opened -- because the Flower Show is still going on, and the crowds and parking later in the morning would make shopping impossible.  

Hot cross buns from Beiler's.

A quick breakfast of Old City coffee (extra cream, Splenda),
and a hunk of herb focaccia from LeBus.

Beiler's awesome whoopee pies.

A special dinner for friends

Just had to post these photos from dinner with my friends last night.  A perfect Sunday supper.  It was Carmen's first outing since his knee surgery, so I made him his favorite, gnocchi.  If I say so myself, they were awfully good!

Made a simple lemon meringue pie for dessert. 

Chocolate chiffon pie

This recipe is from Paula Deen.  Fear not, I own stock in Novo Nordisk. 
 

Gnocchi di patate

Had lunch with Mom and Dad yesterday, and Mom treated us to gnocchi.  So simple, but so very good.  We dressed them with a brown butter-shallot-sage sauce, and a generous sprinkle of grated cheese.  

4 c leftover mashed potatoes
4 eggs
2-3 c all-purpose flour

Measure out the potatoes into a large bowl.  Add the eggs and mix well.  You probably won't need salt for these, as the potatoes were already well seasoned when they were served the first time.

Add flour to the potato mixture.  Mix it well with your hands until it comes together as a dough.  Depending on how moist your potatoes are, the dough might need more flour until it is no longer sticky.  Turn out the dough onto a floured pastry board, and give it a few kneads.  If it is still sticky, add some flour until it is no longer sticky.  You can add a fair amount of flour, but keep in mind that the more flour you add, the less tender the gnocchi will be, and the longer they will take to cook. 

At this point you can return the dough to the bowl, cover it with a towel, and let it sit for a few hours until you're ready to make the gnocchi.

Cut the ball of dough into 8 equal-sized pieces.  Roll each piece into a log about the diameter of your thumb.  Use ample flour so that it does not stick.

Cut the log into small dumplings, about the size of a big, fat grape.  Again, flour the surface as necessary so the gnocchi don't stick.

Roll each dumpling gently across the floured surface of the board with your index and middle finger, in order to create a 'dent' in the surface.  This 'dent' increases surface area, allowing for better cooking and more area onto which sauce can cling.  Gnocchi can and are sometimes called 'cavatelli,' which means 'little things that have been pulled out,' which describes the rolling method used to make the indentation: you sort of 'pull' them across the work surface.  Alternately you can roll the gnocchi on the tines of a fork, which creates a ridged pattern.  Either method works fine, but my grandmothers always used their fingers, so I do, too.

As you finish a 'rope' of them, pick them up with a bench-scraper, toss in a bit of flour, and lay them on a baking sheet that has been covered with a linen towel.  

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  Pick up the towel with the gnocchi, and carefully pour them into the water.  Boil them until they float, which will only take a few minutes. (Again, the more flour you used, the longer they will take to cook.) 

Meanwhile, melt butter in a skillet large enough to hold all the gnocchi, add minced shallot, and saute until the shallots are softened.  Add in chopped fresh sage (or dry rubbed sage, if that's all you have). 

Scoop the cooked gnocchi from the pot with a spider or large slotted spoon right into the skillet.  Toss gently, and add some of the pasta cooking water to make a sauce. 

Serve immediately, passing cheese at the table. 

Gnocchi, dressed with a brown butter-shallot-sage sauce, and a generous
sprinkle of grated pecorino.  It doesn't get any better than this. 

Lasagne al forno

A classic of the Italian cucina.  This style of lasagne is a bit different than what most might know -- there's no ricotta, no mozzarella, no basil -- a style reminiscent of the lasagne I enjoyed when traveling in Toscana many years ago. 

It's a bit of work, no question, and requires creating both a pot of meat sauce, and the besciamella, then assembling all the components.  It's well worth making a couple pans of it at once, and freezing what isn't used immediately for another occasion. 

The meat sauce -- ragù alla bolognese

3 lb ground beef (or a mixture of beef-pork-veal, as you desire)

2 carrots

2 celery stalks

6 cloves garlic

1 onion

1/2 red bell pepper

1/2 lb button or crimini mushrooms

28-oz can crushed tomatoes

1/2 can tomato paste

10.5-oz can condensed beef consommé

1 c red wine   

Salt and pepper

Create a pestata (a well-chopped mixture) of the carrot, onion, garlic, and celery in a food processor.  In a 5-qt enameled Dutch oven, sauté the pestata in a few Tbp olive oil until softened and slightly colored.   Salt and pepper to taste.  Remove and set aside.

Film the Dutch oven with a bit more oil, and brown the beef (or meat mixture).  Salt and pepper to taste.  Remove and set aside. 

Process the mushrooms in the food processor to a fine mince.  Add to the Dutch oven, and sauté a few minutes until the moisture has evaporated.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Add the tomato paste and cook for a few minutes.

Add back the meat and pestata.  Add the tomatoes, wine, and beef consommé.  Bring to a simmer, then cook over very low heat about 2 hours, until the flavors have mellowed.  If the sauce seems dry, add some boiling water.  Taste carefully for salt and pepper. 

The white sauce -- besciamella

8 Tbp butter

8 Tbp flour

1 qt whole milk

1 Tbp Worcestershire sauce

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Melt the butter in a saucepan.  Add flour and cook for a minute or two to make a roux.  Warm the milk (either in a saucepan on the stovetop, or easier, in the microwave), and add to the roux.   Mix well with a whisk to eliminate any lumps.  Cook over moderate heat about 5 minutes until thickened.  Add the Worcestershire sauce, and a few scratches of nutmeg.  Taste carefully for salt – this is very bland, and it will need a fair amount.  Remove from the heat, and set aside. 

Assembling the lasagne

12 oz young provolone cheese, shredded

8 oz pecorino romano cheese

Ragù alla bolognese

Besciamella

2 lb no-boil lasagne sheets

In a roomy oblong casserole, spread about 1 cup of the bolognese sauce on the bottom.  Cover with lasagne sheets.  Cover with more sauce, besciamella, and cheese.  Repeat for several layers, finishing with the besciamella and cheese on top.

Cover the bottom of the casserole with sauce.

Lasagne sheets on top.

More sauce, then besciamella.

Cover with a mixture of provolone and pecorino cheeses.

Repeat, and finish with the cheese mixture.

Cover closely with non-stick aluminum foil.  Place on a baking sheet, and into a 350°F oven for about 1 hour, or until hot and bubbly around the edges.  Check the internal temperature with an instant-read thermometer – it should be 130°F or higher.  Remove the foil covering, and bake uncovered an additional 15-20 minutes, until the top is brown. 

Remove, and let stand 20 minutes before serving.  Cut into generous squares and pass grated cheese at the table.

Of course, I neglected to photograph the final product, so we'll have to go with this stock photo.  Mine didn't look all too different....

Scrapple

It's a snowy Saturday today, so what better thing to make than scrapple?  Yes, yes, I can hear the skeptics: "Why make scrapple when you can buy it?" My answer is that I can make scrapple that tastes the way I like it, I can control the amount of fat in it, and I can avoid using the pork scraps used for commercially prepared scrapple.

The signature flavor in scrapple is pork liver, which I think most don't realize.  You can't have scrapple without that liver-y flavor.  It's masked with the spices and mellowed by the mush, but the fundamental flavor is liver.  You get that flavor using liverwurst, which is a sausage made of pork liver.  I then add good roasted pork to that, to bolster the meatiness, season it aggressively (I like sage and pepper), and bind it all together with a cornmeal mush.  Old-fashioned scrapple typically used buckwheat mush as well as cornmeal mush, the buckwheat imparting its own distinctive flavor.  I didn't have buckwheat flour in my pantry, so I used a whole-wheat cooked cereal, along with the cornmeal, in a one-to-one ratio. 

The mush:
1 c cornmeal
1 c whole-wheat or mixed-grain cereal
6 c stock
3 T bacon fat
1 Tbp salt

Add the cereals to cold water.  Add salt.  Bring to a boil.  Cook over low heat until, well, mushy, and sufficiently stiff that upon cooling, it will hold its shape.  That might take 30 minutes over a low flame. 

The meat and seasoning:
10 oz leftover roasted pork (I used spare ribs)
8 oz liverwurst
1 Tbp dry sage, rubbed
1 tsp thyme
2 tsp pepper
2 tsp salt

The assembly:
Mince the pork in a food processor.  Dump into a mixing bowl.  Add the liverwurst, and mash up the liverwurst with the minced pork until there is a uniform mixture.  Add herbs.  Add about 6 cups of the mush.  Mix well.  You can add more mush if you want, but I've kept it to just enough to hold it all together.  Season well with salt and pepper.  Taste for seasoning.  There's nothing raw in the mixture, so don't be fearsome about tasting. 

Pour the mix into loaf tins that have been lined with non-stick foil.  Smooth the top.  Cover.  Cool completely.

To serve, remove the loaf from the tin, slice it into half-inch slices, dredge in flour, and fry over medium heat in an oil-filmed skillet.  Turn and brown each side.  Serve with eggs, pancakes, waffles, toast.

Fried scrapple, with a couple eggs....

Pork & broccoli stir fry

Quick.  Simple.  Delicious.  Satisfying.

Cheater shortcut -- I buy pre-seasoned thin-sliced pork shoulder at HMart, the local Korean supermarket.

Steam the broccoli in salted water for a few minutes in a deep skillet, drain, and set aside.  In the same pan, heat some peanut oil.  Add chopped red bell pepper, sliced onion, chopped garlic, and the white parts of a few scallions.  Saute until tender.  Season with sesame oil and a bit of soy sauce.  Add back broccoli, and warm through.  Set aside.

Wipe out the skillet, and film with a bit more peanut oil.  Saute the pork, which has been cut up into bite-sized pieces, until just done -- it only takes a few minutes.  Add back the veggies, combine, and top with the chopped green parts of the scallions. 

Serve with steamed white rice.

Shepherd's pie

Had about half the boneless lamb roast leftover, so decided to use it up and make shepherd's pie. 

I minced the cold lamb into small pieces and set it aside. 

In a saucepan, I sauteed two small onions, and two carrots in 4 Tbp butter, until softened a bit.  Salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of thyme added to season it.  Added 4 Tbp flour, and cooked a minute or two.  Added the leftover lamb roast drippings and a 10.5-oz can of chicken stock (Horrors! Canned stock!).  Brought it to a simmer, then added 2 Tbp Worcestershire sauce.  Added one cup frozen peas, and the reserved minced lamb meat.  Stirred until combined, and warmed through.  Turned out into a shallow baking dish. 

Made some mashed potatoes.  (If you need a recipe for that, you're reading the wrong food blog.)  Topped the lamb stew with the mashed potatoes, and tossed a handful of shredded cheddar cheese on top. 

Into a 350°F oven for 25 minutes, until bubbly around the edges and the cheesy top was browned. 

Looks especially tasty in the new china.

Le Creuset roaster

My brother and sister-in-law gave me a beautiful oval 5-qt Le Creuset roaster for Christmas.  It's beautiful.  It's a great addition to the other enameled cast-iron pieces I own -- a perfect size for a chicken, a small roast, or a pot of sauce or soup.

To christen it, I roasted a 2.5-lb boneless lamb roast.  Browned it in some oil, seasoned it well, then surrounded it with quartered onions and carrots.  Covered the roast, and into a 350°F oven.  An hour into the roasting, I made a paste of parsley, rosemary, garlic, and olive oil, and slathered it on top.  I poured a bit of red wine around, too.  Total time -- about 2 hours (N.B.  the roast was nearly frozen solid when I started, so this is a longer roast time than if it has been thawed.)

New Years good luck

Pork and beans have come to signify good luck for the New Years holiday, thus the appearance of hoppin' John, pernil, pork and sauerkraut, and so on.

I put my faith in pork chili, which I've written about before.  I"m making a big pot to bring to a potluck New Years Day supper.

I'd slow-roasted a pork shoulder the other day, a portion of which we ate for pulled pork sammiches.  The rest I've cut up and used in the chili (and the remaining bone was saved for stock).  I also had some sweet Italian sausage in the freezer, so I cooked that up, too.  All the oniony cooking juices from the pulled pork, which I'd saved, were added to the chili as well.  (When the cooled in the fridge, there was a layer of pork fat on top.  I removed that and discarded it, and the remaining juices were nicely gelatinous, meaning that the juices would add not only flavor to the chili, but also body.)

One thing to try -- once you have the whole pot together, put it in a 350-degree oven to cook, rather than on the stovetop, for slow, even cooking. 

And for those of you pondering the beans/no-beans conundrum, read here:   Chili con carne. 

Festa della Vigilia

Or Christmas Eve dinner, if you wish.

I'm up early today, and starting in my prep for tonight's Christmas Eve dinner.  It revolves around fish, though there won't be quite as many as seven.

•  Shrimp cocktail and a platter of antipasti -- cheese, salami, olives
•  Spaghettini al tonno -- pasta with tuna sauce -- tomatoes, anchovies, olives, capers, oil-packed tuna
•  Fried flounder
•  Broccoli rabe
•  Roasted filet of beef (for the fish-phobic in the crowd)
•  Green salad
•  Homemade bread

Dessert will be a chocolate whipped cream cake, fruitcake, and one of our favorite Christmas treats, calzoniti (or "cauciun" in Abruzzese dialect) -- chocolate, fruit, and nuts in a fried ravioli treat.
 

We'll wash it all down with cocktails, wine, iced tea. 

This year, in an effort to streamline the menu, we've foregone the stuffed calamari and the baked clams.  Just not enough folks attending will eat them.  :-(

Latkes!

Anticipating the Hanukkah holiday, I made potato latkes last night, accompanied by a roasted chicken, broccoli sauteed in olive oil and garlic, and a green salad.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was so absorbed in the making of the latkes that I didn't get the opportunity to photograph any part of the process or the crisp, brown, crunchy product.  I have signed affidavits from my dinner guests as to how wonderful they were.

6 medium potatoes

1 small yellow onion or 1/2 cup chopped scallion (or throw caution to the wind and add both)

salt and pepper

4 - 6 T flour

2 eggs

Peel the potatoes and shred in a food processor.  Gather up the shredded potatoes in a linen tea towel (about 2 cups at a time) and squeeze out as much liquid as you can.  Shred the onion and add to the squeezed, shredded potatoes.  Add salt and pepper liberally.  Add flour.  Mix to coat.  Beat the eggs and add to mixture.  Mix well.  Drop by large spoonfuls (you'll want about 3 T of potato for each pancake) into hot olive oil.  Fry until brown on one side.  Turn, and brown on the other side.  Drain on paper towels.  Keep warm in a 200°F oven until ready to serve. 

Serve with apple sauce or sour cream.