Memorial Weekend BBQ -- and Kick-Ass Sangria

Had a great BBQ on Saturday with the gang.  Started out with hummus and chips, steamed artichokes with aioli (dang, they were VERY good!), olives and peppadews, and softened goat cheese with zatar on crackers.

Pasta with asparagus -- a spring favorite, even if it did feel like August outside.

Grilled skirt steak, grilled chicken thighs, with chimichurri to go alongside.  (Chimichurri is an Argentine condiment -- think parsley pesto -- parsley, garlic, olive oil, a bit of hot chili, and a squirt of vinegar, too, but no nuts or cheese as the Italians do with basil pesto.)

Potato salad, veggie slaw, baked beans, and deviled eggs as side dishes.

Desserts were banana pudding, pound cake with blueberry-cherry sauce and whipped cream, ice cream, coffee.

I made a kick-ass sangria, too.  Good sangria goes down like soda pop, but packs a wallop.  A tall glass over ice is the perfect outdoor drink.  The trick to great sangria is to make it sweet, and to make it potent.  Wine + fruit isn't sufficient, so you need to add a few things to bolster it.  See recipe below. 

Then of course there's always iced tea and mint iced tea.

 Patio all set up for the BBQ.  With the tree gone, it's a bit sunnier than we liked.

 Dewey and Munro.  

Carmen and your host.

Kick-Ass Sangria

1.5-L bottle of cheap red wine (use that bottle you got for Christmas last year that you'll otherwise never drink)
12-oz can of frozen concentrated apple juice
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 cup liquor -- I do 50/50 Grand Marnier and brandy (You can also use Cointreau, triple sec, or similar potent, fruit-flavored liquor.)
Assorted sweet fruits, cut up -- sweet oranges, apples, pears, dark sweet cherries or maraschino cherries, ripe peaches or nectarines.  (Don't use lemons or limes -- they're too sour for this.)

Pour the wine into a 1-gallon jug.  Add concentrated apple juice, orange juice, and liquor.  Add cut-up fruit.  Let it sit and macerate and hour or so.  Serve over ice.

Spring supper for the cousins

Hosting dinner tonite for my cousins Matt Pacello and Kate Pacello Dunn and her hubby Eric. 

Dinner starts with antipasti -- a few different cheeses, toasts and bread, olives, roasted peppers, and some garlic-infused oil for dipping.

Then penne al pomodoro.  Simple and perfect.  I made the sauce already, and used a lot of sweet, red bell pepper, and a couple anchovy fillets -- my secret ingredient.

Roast pork shoulder, with oven-roasted potatoes, and a green salad with Caesar dressing  . 

The Dunns are bringing dessert. 

Springtime herbs

I've put my herb garden in.   So far: 

• 4 basil plants
• 3 parsley plants
• thyme
• oregano

Basil and parsley are annuals, and the thyme and oregano, perennials.  I had both thyme and oregano from previous years, but neither seem to have weathered our harsh winter. 

The chives are well up and blooming.  The mint is more out of control this year than last, and the sage seems to have recovered from a lackluster 2010.

I planted two parsley plants in the sun, and put one in the shade.  A bit of an experiment to see how well they thrive in each environment.   Parsley typically likes sun, but too much sun and heat make it bolt.  A bit of shade, or shaded sun might favor a more gradual growth. 

I'm looking forward to a summer of abundant herbs. 

The chives in bloom. 

Beautiful sage.  This plant is about 18 years old --
I planted it shortly after moving into my home.

Basil plants.  A bit anemic, but it's not even Memorial Day.

Thyme in the foreground, oregano in the background.

Parsley -- curly up front, flat-leaf in the back. 
I think both have great flavor. 

Mystery herb.  I planted this last summer in one of the
patio pots, but I don't remember what it is!  I think it's
lemon mint, or catmint, or maybe even catnip.  Regardless,
like any mint, it's coming back strong!

 And of course, mint -- peppermint, in this case.  Out of
control, and spreading all over.  But at least I use it!  This shows
just a small part of an 8-foot patch of mint.  That started with one
plant a few years ago. 

Vintage Magnalite® roaster

My friend Chris Z. and his sister Jeanne were cleaning out their mother's house in Northeast Philadelphia.  Mrs. Z. passed away earlier this year.

Chris and Jeanne, knowing that I enjoy cooking, invited me to the house to go through the kitchenware and take away what I wanted.  Well, I made out like a bandit:  a big, square Corningware® casserole, an almost-unused tube cake pan, a couple 9-inch round cake pans, a stainless roasting pan, and probably best of all, a magnificent Magnalite® covered roaster.

My grandmother had several pieces of Magnalite, which is cast aluminum cookware.  It's sturdy, durable, even-heating, shiny, ovenproof, and beautiful.  I always loved my grandmother's pots and roaster, but my aunt still uses them.  Now I have my own.  And I am eternally grateful to Chris and Jeanne. 

I washed it up tonite, and will use it this weekend.  A nice pot roast, perhaps?

 

I look forward to preparing a wonderful meal and inviting Chris and Jeanne for dinner.

Goyische Seder 2011

Last night was my goyische Seder, and once again, we had a great meal celebrating Passover, Easter, and Tony's birthday.

The menu hewed closely to a Seder – matzot  with homemade haroset, horseradish, and hummus to top them; matzoh ball soup; roasted chicken (this wasn't a 'lamb' crowd, so really not an option); oven-roasted potatoes, white and sweet, with herbs; broccoli rabe (our bitter herb); and tea, the iced variety.  Dessert was fresh fruit.  Oh, and an Italian rum cake from Isgro's in South Philly, for Tony's birthday.  OK, not quite kosher!

I have to admit, the homemade haroset was terrific, like a mince-pie filling.  On top of a piece of matzoh, with a dab of horseradish – dang, that's good!

Haroset
1 cup chopped dates
1 cup chopped figs
1 cup raisins (black, golden, or a mix)
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 large apple, peeled and diced
1 cup chunky applesauce
1/4 cup apricot preserves
3 Tbp port
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground allspice

Cover the dried fruit with boiling water, let stand to soften 15 minutes.  Drain.  Combine with all the other ingredients.  Mix well.  Serve.

The leftovers will be turned into a mince tart, using a store-bought pie crust.  I should wait until Passover is over before doing that, huh?

Chicken pot pie

I've been wanting to do a pot pie for a while, and this lazy Sunday afternoon was the perfect opportunity.  Serve this with a green salad, and you have a complete meal.  This is an excellent choice for inviting the gang over for Sunday supper.  

8 chicken legs, roasted with salt, pepper, herbs -- thyme, rosemary, sage

1 lb mushrooms, quartered
1/2 small onion, finely diced

1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
2 carrots, diced

8 Tbp butter
8 Tbp flour
4-6 cups liquid – chicken stock + milk
Salt & pepper to taste
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, to taste

8 oz frozen pearl onions
8 oz frozen peas
1/2 chopped parsley

2 Pillsbury pie crusts

Roast the chicken at 400°F until done, about 45 mins.  Let cool to room temperature.  Pick the meat from the bones, cut up into bite-size pieces, and set aside.  Save the bones and skin for stock. 

Sauté onion and mushrooms in 2 Tbp butter until browned.  Set aside.

Sauté chopped veggies in 2 Tbp butter until softened, about 10 minutes.  Set aside.

Melt butter in a saucepan, and add flour, cooking for 2 minutes.  Add liquids – stock + milk – and whisk until the sauce is smooth and thickened.  This is a "velouté" sauce, cousin to the béchamel.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  I will often add a couple teaspoons Worcestershire sauce to bump up the flavor of the sauce. 

In a large mixing bowl, combine the chopped chicken, mushrooms, sautéed veggies, pearl onions, peas, and parsley.  Add the velouté sauce, and mix well.  Pour into a greased 12-cup baking dish (12" x 9" x 1.5").  Cover with pie crusts.  (You'll probably need most of two crusts, but might have a bit more than you need.  Just cut off what you do not need.)

Bake in a 375°F oven for about 45 mins until bubbly and the crust has browned.  Let cool slightly before serving.

 Hot and bubbly from the oven.

An excellent Sunday supper.

One can never have too many wooden spoons...

Right?

 Or utensils in general.

My favorite cookbook

My favorite cookbook, James Beard's American Cookery, has been reissued in hardcover.  There's virtually nothing in the book that Beard doesn't cover, and he does it with a descriptive and appetite-inducing prose. 

American Cookery goes beyond merely recipes: if that's what you're looking for, stick to Irma Rombauer's Joy of Cooking.  Instead, Beard manages to tell great stories of food origins, family suppers, historic places important to cookery, and his own love of food.  Remarkably he'll even tell you in a recipe's preamble that he might not particularly care for that dish, but he nonetheless offers the best recipe for it he knows.

It is the cookbook I almost always go to first to read up on a particular ingredient or food prep method. 

I own several of the volumes of American Cookery, both hardcover and softcover.  At one point, I'd gotten into the habit of scouring used book stores for it, and buying them up cheap.  I've given the book a couple times as a gift, when it had been long out of print in hardcover. 

My favorite Beard shorthand recipe is for white, or béchamel, sauce:  3-3-1, 2-2-1, 1-1-1 -- the ratios of butter-flour-milk needed to make one cup of a thick, medium, or thin white sauce, respectively.   What could be easier?

Snow!! French toast!!

French toast is the official food of snowstorms.  What else is everyone making with all the bread, eggs, and milk they're hoarding??

Go make a batch.  Use good Italian bread for it -- gives it a bit of character.  Or sourdough.  Or challah.  Use cream or half-and-half instead of milk.  Add a bit of sugar to the batter. 

Fry it, but not too much -- you want a bit of that custard that has soaked into the bread to still be there. 

Sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar.  And lots of butter.  And real maple syrup.  Mmmmm.

 

Chicken biryani

Remarkably easy to do, and great for a crowd.  Be sure to prep all your ingredients ahead of time and have them at the ready to use.  

If you're wary of Indian food, you'll find that this is a good dish to try -- it's not 'challenging' to the Western palate, and this particular recipe is fragrant and flavorful, without being 'spicy' or hot.  The raisins add a nice sweetness to the rice.  

You might well not have coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cardamom pods, or whole dried chilis in your pantry.  If that's the case, you can use the dry ground spices you'll find in the supermarket.  You'll need to ratchet down the quantities -- 2 tsp coriander seeds are equivalent to probably 1 tsp dry ground coriander, and so on. 

8 chicken thighs

Salt and pepper

1/4 c vegetable oil

2 cinnamon sticks

1 bay leaf

2 tsp coriander seeds

6 cardamom pods

2 tsp cumin seeds

3 dried chili pepper pods

1 medium onion

6 cloves garlic

2 Tbp fresh ginger

2 c basmati rice

4 cups chicken stock

1/2 c raisins

Sliced toasted almonds 

Whole-milk Greek yogurt

Chopped cilantro

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Peel the onions, garlic, and ginger.  Chop coarsely, and process to a paste in a food processor.  Set aside. 

Combine the coriander, cardamom, and cumin seeds, and crush gently in a mortar.   Set aside.

Pour oil into a 6-quart Dutch oven and heat.  Dry the chicken pieces, season liberally with salt and pepper, and place skin side down in the hot oil.  Sauté until the skin is well browned, about 8 minutes. Turn and brown the other side.   Remove pieces to a warm platter.

Remove about half the oil and set aside.  Add the crushed spices, cinnamon sticks, bay leaf, and chili peppers to the hot oil and sauté briefly until the aromas are released -- about 30 seconds.  Add the onion-ginger-garlic paste, and sauté briefly. 

Add uncooked rice, and sauté a few minutes.  Add raisins.  Add stock and salt to taste, and return the chicken pieces to the Dutch oven.  Bring to a simmer on the stovetop, then put into a 350°F oven.  Let cook in the oven about 40-50 minutes, until all the liquid has been absorbed, and the rice is cooked.  Fluff with a fork.

Serve the rice on a warmed platter, with the chicken pieces arranged on top. Sprinkle with sliced toasted almonds.

Serve with whole-milk Greek yogurt into which fresh chopped cilantro has been stirred.  

Everything that's wrong with American cooking....

....can be summed up in this recipe:

Pioneer Woman -- Pig Cake

Mind you, I like much of what Ree Drummond writes about, but the notion that good food -- even a cake -- can be made from a box mix, instant pudding, canned fruit, margarine, and Cool Whip® is false.  Mark Bittman will support me on this point.

  

I'll get off my soapbox now.  Thank you for letting me vent.

New Year's Eve supper

A late supper for six, followed by champagne toasts into the New Year.  Welcome 2011!

Porchetta -- boned pork shoulder, rubbed with herbs, garlic, and olive oil, and roasted in a low oven, with a crackling crisp skin
Sauteed cabbage -- with onions, garlic, thyme, apple, white wine, and stock
Cannellini beans Tuscan-style -- with sage, onion, and olive oil
Noodles Alfredo -- not quite fettuccine, but with butter, a touch of cream, grated pecorino cheese, and a sprinkle of parsley

Dessert is sweet potato pie, cookies, coffee.

Christmas morning -- zeppole

I was up early this morning -- and standing at my stove frying zeppole, small twists of dough, drizzled with honey and sugar.  These were my grandmother Catherine's specialty at Christmas.  Very Neapolitan. 

This recipe makes a lot of zeppole.  Feel free to halve these proportions.

5 c             flour

1 t              baking powder

2 c             boiling water

2/3 c          oil

1 t              vanilla

Mound the flour in a deep mixing bowl.  Add baking powder.  Pour in the boiling water, the oil, and the vanilla.  Mix well.  The dough will be sticky at first, but as it is mixed it will become less so.  Turn out onto a board and knead gently for a couple of minutes.  Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes. 

Cut the ball of dough into 8 parts.  Roll each part into a long rope and cut the rope into 1-inch lengths.  Roll each bit further into a slim log, the size of your little finger and about 2 to 3 inches long.  Cross the ends into a little bow.  Set aside.

 

A portion of the rested dough.

Rolled into a rope. 

 Cut into small dumpling-sized sections. 

 Rolled out and twisted into a bow.  

Lined up on a baking sheet, ready to fry.

Fry the bows in deep hot oil, until lightly brown.  Do not overcook.  Drain well on paper towels.  Transfer to a serving bowl.  Warm some honey to thin it out (a microwave does this best) and pour the honey generously over the zeppole.  Sprinkle with granulated sugar.  A unique and delicious Christmas treat.

Frying the zeppole in hot oil.  

Draining on paper towels.

Christmas Eve!

I'm just done in the kitchen....made the stuffed calamari, the calzoniti, the marinara sauce and the tuna sauce for pasta.  Bringing it all over Aunt El's for our traditional family Christmas Eve dinner.  Should be great fun!

Recipes to follow....

 

Tuna sauce -- a once-a-year treat -- tuna, olives, capers, anchovies

 Stuffed calamari in tomato sauce.  

  Calzoniti (or "cauciun" in Abruzzese dialect) -- 

chocolate, fruit, and nuts in a fried ravioli treat

All the best for a Merry Christmas
and a Joyous New Year!

Union Square Greenmarket at Christmas

The gang ventured up to NYC for its annual Christmas stroll through Union Square.  We go in particular for the Christmas Market, but one of the delights is also the Greenmarket, which is there every Wednesday and Saturday. 

The Greenmarket features only locally produced foods, so veggies this time of year are apples, pears, cabbages and Brussels sprouts, carrots, potatoes, and all sorts of root vegetables like celeriac, beets, radishes, and Jerusalem artichokes.  Beyond the produce are baked goods, honey, jams and pickles, pasta, cheese and eggs.  This time of year there are also lots of Christmas greens. 

It's a beautiful place to visit.  I only wish I could shop and bring the stuff home to cook. 

Apple pandowdy

Simple as pie.  Piece of cake.

Peel, core, and cut up 8-10 nice apples.  Add 1/2 cup raisins, the zest of half an orange, a couple tablespoons orange juice, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ginger, 1 tsp allspice, pinch of salt, 2 tablespoons Minute® tapioca, mix well, and arrange in a baking dish.  I used a shallow, terra cotta cazuela from Spain, about 12" across and 2" deep.  Dot with a couple tablespoons butter. 

Cut up 1 sheet of Pillsbury pie crust into strips using a ravioli cutter.  (Sure, go ahead, make your own, but on a drizzly, drab Sunday, that was not in the plans.)

Artfully arrange the strips on top of the apples.  Or just fling them on top, whatever you like.  Brush the pastry with some cream and sprinkle with coarse brown sugar. 

Bake in a 350°F oven for about an hour until the apples are bubbly and the crust is nicely browned. 

 

I mean, really, how beautiful is that?

I'm never making fruitcake again

Made a big batch of fruitcake -- three loaves -- and they all stuck to the pans, despite the pans being well greased.

I give up.  $20 of raisins, nuts, dried fruits.  I'll have the best fed squirrels in the neighborhood.

 Disaster!

A big pile of fruits and nuts.

 

Fruits and nuts tossed in a few tablespoons of flour.

 

Held together with batter.

 Three loaf pans.  I was able to rescue the center one (a foil pan), by peeling the foil off.