Locavore flavors

We're getting the hang of being locavores. Went to the farm stand on Beech just off East-West Highway for peaches, plums and heirloom tomatoes, picked up some green beans at the Silver Spring market, and a Boston butt from a Virginia farm that has forest-fed pigs.

Used the tomatoes and beans for a couple of simple recipes from the oft-cited Olives and Oranges by Sara Jenkins (can't wait for her next book). Her subtitle talks about "recipes and flavor secrets" and it is all about the flavor. I cut the tomatoes into eighths, sprinkled a little salt on them and let them sit for 5 min., then crumbled feta cheese (the Greek kind, not locavore) and sprinkled chopped cilantro over them before drizzling with sherry vinegar and olive oil. Her point is that as good as tomatoes taste with basil, they also taste great with other herbs and that certainly was true in this case.

The beans were simmered for half an hour in a tomato sauce made by sauteeing diced onion and minced garlic in 2 Tbl olive oil, then adding a small can of tomatoes (she says through a food mill, I just pulsed a few times on my mini-processor), simmered together for 10 min before adding the beans. This gets chopped parsley at the end.

The two simple dishes were a great accompaniment to fried chicken with some end of the season rose wine. Terrific.

Tagine bis

Alas, careful as I was, my first tagine cracked and then broke in circumstances I won't go into. I've decided that Tunisian clay pots probably work well in Tunisia, simmering away over some embers, but they are too anxiety-ridden for cooking on gas stoves.

So Tagine bis is a hardened clay artifact from Emile Henry. Even though they do specify it has to be heated up slowly, it seems a good deal more robust than the first one, though the color is not as pretty.

I inaugurated it with another one of Ghillie Basan's recipes, this one a simple chicken with artichokes and green grapes. Chicken breasts are cut into thick slices and marinated for a couple of hours in olive oil, garlic and turmeric (great color!), then cooked with lots of onion for just 15 min. before adding artichoke hearts, another 5 min. cooking, then add grapes and lots of cilantro. Even better the second day with flatbread (in this case, naan from Whole Foods).

Ribs

I've been wanting to try ribs in the Big Green Egg since I got it. Let me say right away the ribs came out really tasty and fairly tender, but they were not moist and falling off the bone and I'm not sure why -- whether it was the meat, the recipe, the Egg, the execution (timing, temperature?).

I followed the Kansas City recipe from Jamisons' Big Book of Outdoor Cooking, which had a rub of many ingredients (paprika, chile powder, smoked salt, etc.), applied one-third the night before, one-third just before smoking, and one-third halfway through the cooking. I got three St. Louis cut slabs which weighed 6.25 lbs altogether. I also went ahead and got the Weber rib rack to hold them in the Egg. I used just beer and Worcestershire sauce for a mop (every hour). I kept the temperature pretty steady at about 200, though in the late stages it snuck up to 250 when I wasn't looking and I had a little trouble bringing it down. I gave up on them getting more tender after 4 hrs and applied the sauce (tomato sauce, brown sugar, corn syrup, tomato paste, etc.), cooking for another 40 min. Then I wrapped then in a double layer of foil for about 45 min.

It occurs to me that brining might get them more like the Rocklands finished product, but I also think these ribs (from Whole Foods) may have been a bit too lean. Researching a bit just now, I'm thinking the "country style ribs" from WF were more like baby backs and less like spareribs. Also the 4-hour cooking time specified by Jamison is too short, 6 hrs would be better. Temperature usually given as 225, so outside the 180-220 range Jamison calls for. Live and learn. I will no longer take Jamison as the last word or the gospel, but will consult other sources, too.

Used the pinto beans with beer and pepper from the same book, with the Rancho Gordo pinto beans. They were great but the recipe called for 2 Tbl of lard to sautee the onions that are added towards the end of cooking and it tasted too much of lard. Also, the beer does lend a slightly bitter taste, which I didn't mind but I might use a blander beer next time (or Mexican, as they recommend).

But it was a great meal, rounded out with Andrea's corn sticks, a big green salad with goat cheese, and a very seasonal fruit salad (peaches, plums, nectarines, raspberries) in mint sugar.

Chicken with plums

I've acquired some new cookbooks recently and I'm going to be trying them out. This simple recipe from Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food was great for a week night.

Originally, this Turkish recipe (Tabaka Piliç) was made with a whole boned chicken but she calls for chicken fillets, both white and dark meat. I shopped at the co-op and all they had was chicken thighs so I skinned and boned them and flattened them into fillets. These simply get sauteed in a skillet and then the plums added to soften. The co-op plums were big and a bit hard so I cut them up to soften more quickly. The real addition here is a sauce made of plum jam (St. Dalfour) with a Tbl of vinegar, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of chile pepper flakes. I also cooked up some bulghur wheat from the co-op (too much, two cups!) and sauteed some zucchini to stir into that. Nice little meal.

Re-creation

You can never really duplicate a meal you eat in a restaurant and that was not our goal when we nonetheless set out this weekend to approximate a couple of the meals we had in France.

If the market had had girolles or any suitable mushroom, we would have tried the tagliatelle with girolles, but it didn't so we went to Plan B, which was to have the salmon rillettes on toasted baguette for a first course and a version of Christophe's pork and polenta for a main course.

The salmon recipe came from Susan Loomis's Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin. It had a great flavor though it did not come out as fluffy and light as the one at Bastide de l'Odeon. Andrea thought it needed more olive oil in proportion to the butter. Other ingredients were steamed fresh salmon, smoked salmon, shallots and chives.

We obviously were not going to get Basque country heritage pork and I'm not sure you can even get an "echine" cut here (which, according to Julia Child, is the shoulder or blade end of the loin). So we opted for pork tenderloin and used piment d'Espelette to acknowledge the Basque country. I got the tenderloins out of the fridge an hour ahead of time, salted (with our coarse salt from the Camargue) and peppered and pimented them. To cook, I seared them in a combination of lard and peanut oil then put them on a sheet pan in a 350-degree oven. I wanted to pull them out at 140 degrees, but by the time I realized the one instant-read thermometer wasn't functioning correctly, they had reached 160. So no pink, but still very moist and not overdone. I had deglazed the skillet and reduced that in a saucepan, enriching with butter (and a little jam since it was a bit bitter) to drizzle over the carved tenderloin.

The polenta I baked at 350 in my cazuela for an hour and a half, stirring after an hour and checking seasoning. I turned it out onto the pizza paddle and let it cool, cut it into small rectangles, then sauteed the rectangles in olive oil and let them crisp up in that same oven. It actually made for a very nice meal.

We had a white Cote du Rhone with hors d'oeuvres (cheese and crackers) and the salmon, and a slightly chilled Fleurie with the pork. Andrea had her first go at re-creating Ladurrees macarones, but may have made a mistake putting them in the fridge after they cooled because they came out a little tough.

Fresh pasta

So I created enough time and space to experiment with making fresh pasta. It's always something lurking in the back of my mind. My mother often made egg noodles when were growing up and we'd have noodles draped over furniture on towels to dry all over the house when she got in a noodle-making mood. I had attended a session on pasta making in Princeton and bought the machine but never really used it.

I used the recipe and technique from Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy. Very simple -- 2 to 2-1/4 c. flour, 1/2 tsp salt, pinch of nutmeg in a mound, create a well and crack 3 eggs into and add 1 to 2 Tbl olive oil. Break the yolks with a fork, whisk eggs and olive oil together and gradually fork in some flour from the inside of the well to make a batter-like consistency. Then push the flour into the batter and start kneading. She suggest flattening with heel of hand, quarter turn, flattening some more, etc.

My first attempt failed because, as she suggested for hand kneading, I used the maximum amount of flour from the get-go. It was too much and dough came up very stiff and even after resting for half an hour was too stiff and dry to put through the pasta machine. So I started over, using just the 2 c. of flour. We got the "00" imported flour from Vace as recommended by the recipe. This time it worked much better. The dough was smooth and supple, and after resting 1/2 hr. I could cut it into quarters, roll out the quarter into an oval and feed it into the machine (Atlas from Italy) at the #1 setting. Following her technique, I folded it over in thirds and repeated this process 3 or 4 times. Then I started narrowing the setting -- #2,#3,#4,#5 -- feeding it through twice each time. She said to cut noodles at either #5 or #6. I didn't want to press my luck and have the dough start to break on me so I stopped at #5. It turns out this is too thick for fettucini, so next time I will go to #6.

The dough stretched out nicely and the cutting attachment worked perfectly to yield long, even fettucini, which I wrapped around my hand into a nest and dusted with cornmeal while I stretched out the other 3 chunks of dough. The noodles were very long and next time I will probably cut them in half as well as making them thinner.

We had been to the farmer's market in the morning and I got yellow zucchini and a couple of types of mushrooms just because they looked so nice. We found a couple of pasta recipes in Sara Jenkins' Olives and Oranges, one using zucchini and mint and the other using mushrooms and mint and decided to combine them with our fresh pasta. The mint gave me pause, but I used 4 Tbl in the end and the dish did not taste "minty" but the mint gave it a zingy freshness that was very nice. The zucchini got grated and then sauteed with chopped shallot.

For the mushrooms, she had an interesting technique I hadn't seen before. She called for putting just a single layer of trimmed and cut mushrooms into the heated oil and butter, adding some salt and pepper, and cooking them for 2 or 3 min., then pushing them to the side of the pan and adding a another single layer. Of course, the mushrooms reduce and the cooked ones continue to cook and brown, but this worked well for the 3 or 4 layers I had. Then you add some butter and chopped garlic at the end and cook until the butter foams. In both cases, you add the chopped mint at the end. So I tossed the cooked pasta -- it took nearly 5 min. because they were thick -- with the two dressings and some parmesan and it was really good. The mushrooms predominated because we had more of them than zucchini, but the mix worked fine. Jenkins' zucchini recipe has squash blossoms and a couple of other optional ingredients as well as a lot more zucchini, so it would probably be worthwhile to try it on its own someday.

Not sure how often I'll go to the trouble of making fresh pasta, but I will find a place to keep the machine that's easier to get at. We had it way back in a lower cabinet that I had to empty and almost crawl into in order to retrieve the equipment. Also, I have to move some stuff to open up counter space for this operation. When we renovate the kitchen we'll plan for a space that's always available for dough-making.

Web recipes

Among the many wonders of the Web are the wonderful recipes that pop up from various corners. There are Epicurious and Recipes.com and various blogs but you just never know where a good recipe is going to come from -- a wine site, a cooking store email, wherever.

I printed out a recipe for Braised saffron chicken with pasta the other day, and I honestly have no idea where it came from. (Update: It's not where I found it, but it turns out the recipe comes from Epicurious.) It was really good and a simple dish for a weekday. You brown 2-1/2 lbs. of chicken thighs ("with skin and bones") in 2 Tbl olive oil, set them aside and sautée 2 c. chopped white onion with 6 peeled and crushed garlic cloves. Then you add 2 c. (!) white wine with 1 tsp crushed saffron and boil it down to half. Then you add 2 c. chicken broth and the thighs, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hr., turning halfway through. You remove the thighs, let cool, then remove skin and bones and separate meat into bite-size pieces. You skim the fat off the braising juices, and 1 c. heavy cream and 2 Tbl lemon juice and reduce that, then add chicken pieces to heat through. You cook 1 lb of paccheri or rigatoni, drain, put back in pot, pour chicken mixture over, toss, and add 2/3 c. of chopped basil and serve. We also sprinkled parmesan on individually.

Update: Two Web recipes in a row. Last night it was Spanish pork burgers that I found on Recipes.com by googling. Very simple. Sautée 3 c. sliced onions (they say Spanish onions, but nobody seems to really know what that means), then chop up half to mix with the ground pork and save the other half to put on the bun. Mix 1 lb. of pork with the chopped onions, 2 tsp of pimenton (doesn't say, but I presumed sweet), 4 cloves chopped garlic, salt and pepper. Don't overmix, then divide into patties (three or four, we like them big). To accompany, mix some lemon zest, lemon juice and a pinch of saffron with mayonnaise. Grill 10-12 min. Delicious, a real keeper!

Pot-roasted chicken with gnocchi

This is a kind of Italian version of chicken and dumplings. It is the first recipe I've tried from my new Canal House Cooking #5, and it appealed to me because it's a simple recipe for a weekday meal, given that I skipped the gnocchi-making and just bought fresh gnocchi at Whole Foods. It turned out well enough but I'm not convinced about this cookbook series.

You are supposed to rub 2 Tbl spoons of softened butter onto the chicken. My butter was soft and my chicken was dry, but it just clumped along the skin and did not spread at all. Oddly, then, I thought, you also rub 2 Tbl of olive oil onto the chicken once you've put it in a enamel cast-iron pot. You salt and pepper it, pour in 2 c. water and 3 sprigs of fresh sage. Then you cover and put the pot into a preheated 375-degree oven.

So far, so good. But then it says to roast a 3-4 lb. chicken (mine was 3.5 lbs.) only 30 min. before taking off the lid, basting the chicken, adding 4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds, and returning to oven uncovered -- for only 15 min.!

I was skeptical about the time and I was right. The chicken was still snow white after 15 min. (supposed to be crispy, golden), so I turned up the heat and after another half hour (total 1 hr 15 min -- about what I would have expected), it was golden enough to be presentable and the juices ran clear. It was still plenty moist (I basted it some more in between). You remove the chicken and let it sit 10 min. before carving.

You cook the fresh potato gnocchi in batches in simmering, salted water, removing with a slotted spoon after they float on the surface for 10 sec. and put on a heated plate. When the gnocci are done, you toss with melted butter and parmesan. Then you serve gnocchi in a wide bowl, with slices of chicken on top, spooning over some broth and carrots. The chicken has a great flavor, the broth is rich and rounded from the sage and carrots, and the gnocchi are a lot like dumplings.

It worked fine for a weekday meal. I see a problem for serving it to guests, though, because getting it to the table with everything hot is a challenge. I'm also concerned that the timing was so far off. Added to that, the cookbook has a quirky selection of recipes and I don't see too many that I'm interested in doing. Bottom line: May not get another Canal House cookbook. I got this one because one of the authors in a book I'm reviewing recommended the series. Pretty photos seem to be the main attraction.

I may try to follow their recipe for gnocchi some weekend, though. It doesn't look that hard, just a little time-consuming for a weekday.

Pork coddled in olive oil

Once in a great while you come across a new technique that opens up undreamed-of flavors. Marcella Hazan's pork loin braised in milk was that kind of revelation and it is a dish we cook at least once a year.

This dish, again from Paula Wolfert's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, is a similar revelation and promises to become a standby. Our first encounter with a coddled dish came only a couple of weeks ago with the salmon coddled in olive oil at Marcel's. I had already dog-eared this recipe in the Wolfert book and was eager to try it after sampling the salmon dish.

This called for boneless pork shoulder cut into 2-in. cubes. I used the pork shoulder I had bought frozen from Blue Rooster Farm (though I think the pork actually comes from a neighboring farm). It looked so red in the package I wondered at one point if they had accidentally given me beef. But it looked like a pork shoulder cut and real heritage pork, of course, belies that ill-advised campaign about "the other white meat."

One of the things I enjoy about cooking is playing butcher, and I enjoyed cutting this off the bone and into cubes. A recent issue of RealEats described a butcher course for hobby cooks in California and I would happily take one if it was offered here.

The cubes then are tossed in a mix of coarse salt, crushed black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves crushed to a powder, bruised fennel seeds and 2 sprigs of thyme. The pungent smells of the spices as you worked them in the mortar was terrific. You seal the meat and spices and put in the fridge overnight. The next day, you squeeze the cubes in one layer in a dutch oven and cover with 2 c. of EVOO. I had recently decided it was worth spending the extra money on a premium imported oil like Colavita rather than Whole Foods 365 brand because something I read suggested that the WF brand was something less than highest quality. Very little of the oil actually goes into the meat and Wolfert suggests using the oil again after draining it off afterwards, but that didn't seem very appetizing to me.

You bring the oil slowly to a boil on top of the stove and then put in a 250-degree oven for 2-1/2 hours, inserting a half-head of garlic. Wolfert says to keep the oil from boiling too much and browning the meat. I'm not sure how you avoid browning the meat, though. She talks about it remaining pink, and I will set the temperature lower next time, but this pork definitely got brown on the outside -- while remaining pink on the inside.

The meat is done when you can tap a chunk and it falls into pieces. It's hard to describe how good that first bite tasted when I pulled out a chunk, tapped it into pieces and tasted it. The savory pork, the pungent spices, the silky oil, the garlic all conspired to create a very special balance of flavors. I set it on the screen porch to cool and warmed it slowly again for serving.

It is served with Tuscan beans. I used cannellini soaked overnight, and then cooked a couple of hours with 2 bay leaves, a dried hot pepper, and 2 peeled cloves of garlic. Wolfert says to serve the warmed-up pork on room temperature beans but we decided that next time we would warm up the beans again, too.

For the final assembly, you drain the pork and let the meat drippings settle in the drained off oil, pour off the oil and make a vinaigrette with the drippings, whisking in 3 Tbl of fresh oil and 1-1/2 Tbl of red wine vinegar, and dress the beans with that. You mound the beans on a platter, sprinkle paper-thin slices of red onion soaked in wine vinegar over the beans, add the pork chunks and garnish with arugula. We accompanied very nicely with a Cotes du Rhone.

Spring

It's nice when thing things start to come together, as with a spring menu we prepared for guests over the weekend. Even though it turned out to be unseasonably cold, it was fun to anticipate the warmer weather with the food we associate with spring.

At the last visit from the New Morning farmer's market earlier this month, I got a leg of lamb from the Blue Rooster Farm, a family-owned Pennsylvania farm that raises its own sheep, beef and pork. The website describes how their Border Collie, Mac, herds the sheep. Like all meat sold at farmer's markets, it was frozen, so I was able to keep it in the freezer for this dinner. We had already used some lamb shoulder from Blue Rooster in another recipe and knew the lamb would be tasty. While it's almost impossible to improve on a leg of lamb roasted with garlic slivers, I wanted to try a recipe from Paula Wolfert's The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen for a slow-roasted leg of lamb with pomegranate glaze and do the roasting in the Big Green Egg.

Our half-leg was smaller than what the recipe called for but it was plenty for four people. The pomegranate glaze was a simple whisking together of pomegranate molasses with water, onion, and garlic. You coat the lamb in the glaze and then let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. You heat the oven, or in this case the Egg, to 450 degrees, put the lamb on the rack and reduce the temperature to 250 degrees. I'm still learning the ropes on temperature control with the Egg, so I had trouble getting the temperature down quickly, and only got it to 300. So I checked the internal temperature early and when it reached the 130 degrees called for, pulled it off and let it rest in a warm oven. The other concession to outdoor cooking was to baste it with the glaze instead of the pan drippings as Wolfert calls for, since pan drippings didn't survive even with the foil pan underneath the lamb.

Once the lamb was off the grill, I switched to direct heat and grilled the asparagus. Ideally, we would have shopped for vegetables at a farmer's market, but it was probably too early for local asparagus anyway and we got this Victoria Island product at Whole Foods. Ditto for the baby spinach that we prepared with bacon and goat cheese in an Epicurious recipe that used some of the bacon grease to dress and wilt the spinach.

I cooked the luscious runner cannellini beans from Rancho Gordo with garlic, olive oil and chopped fresh sage, then dressed them still warm in more olive oil. For dessert, we had Andrea's delicious cornmeal pound cake with strawberries macerated in lavender sugar. A young but classy Bordeaux was an excellent accompaniment to everything.

Everything came out well. The lamb was still nice and pink, not dried out, and had a wonderful flavor. Everything else tasted fresh and Mediterranean. Now all we need is warm weather!

Pulses

The past weekend was a healthy one for eating with two homemade pulse dishes. Pulses are largely synonymous with beans, though referring to dry beans that are cooked as such.

In any case, we had a flageolet and lamb stew from Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans. You soak a pound of beans overnight, then brown lamb shoulder steaks (I used a scant 3 lbs bone-in, though the recipe says 2 lbs), sautee a mirepoix, add the beans and the soaking water, add back the steaks and cook for a couple of hours, until the beans are tender and the meat is falling off the bone. Remove the lamb from the stew and cut meat into bite-sized pieces (discard bones and excess fat) and put the meat back in the pot. To thicken the stew, you can take a cup of beans and broth and puree them and add back to the stew. Serve with a cilantro gremolata of chopped cilantro, garlic and lemon zest. It's a lovely way to transition from winter to spring.

On Sunday, we had a simple dish from Sara Jenkins' Olives and Oranges. You soak chickpeas overnight with a couple cloves unpeeled garlic and a sprig of rosemary, then cook for a couple of hours until tender. Separately you sautee two cloves of minced garlic in olive oil for 1 min., then add 1/4 c. water and simmer for 4 min. (Jenkins says this takes some of the bite out of the garlic), then add a 2 lb. cabbage cut into narrow strips, with 1 c. of water and cook until tender. Then add in cooked chickpeas and blend flavors. This truly does bring out the nice vegetable flavor of the cabbage and chickpeas cooked from scratch are always good. But the broth is thin and this may be too bland for some people. Jenkins does say to doctor it up at will, with harissa or Parmesan, whatever.

Bean dishes always leave me with a nice balanced feeling, never too full. Always ready to try a new recipe for beans.

Goulasch

Eating is a great way to make new discoveries. When traveling, whether in southern Spain or southern U.S., trying new foods and cuisines gives you a connection to the local culture.

But it's also a way of recalling, even revisiting, the past. When I lived in Europe, particularly in Germany, Hungarian goulasch was a common item on menus and it was something I cooked often at home.

I've been puzzled since coming back to the U.S. that it seems hard to find a recipe for goulasch, and winters come and go and I pine for my goulasch. I thought I had finally discovered one in an old edition of the New York Times Cookbook, the old Craig Claiborne version. There was a recipe for Prague three-meat goulasch that I thought would be similar to the one I used to make. But, shockingly, it was a recipe that didn't include paprika -- the quintessential ingredient for goulasch!

So I decided to wing it. I pulled a couple of other (incomplete) recipes from Epicurious to get a better idea of ingredients and proportions and had a go at it. I remembered the essential thing, besides the paprika, was to have almost an equal amount of onion and meat.

I got about 2 lbs of pork shoulder, beef chuck, and veal stew meat, cubed, and sliced 1-1/2 lbs of onions (more onion would not have hurt it). I browned the meat in vegetable oil and set it aside, then sauteed the onion in a little more oil. Oddly, I was out of garlic, otherwise I would have added a couple of crushed garlic cloves. When the onion was soft, I added 2 Tbl of Szeged Hungarian sweet paprika, and 2 tsp. of hot paprika we brought back from our trip to Budapest 3 years ago (I know, not exactly fresh; it could have taken a little more so maybe it just wasn't so hot anymore). I also added a Tbl. of flour to thicken the sauce and 1 Tbl of tomato paste diluted with a little water. I cooked that for 5 min. or so then added back the meat, 1 Tbl. of marjoram, a bay leaf, and 2 c. of chicken broth. I simmered it for 1-1/2 hours. It seemed a little soupy but we saved it for the next day and by then the sauce had thickened further and it was just right. I got a box of Knorr spaetzle at Whole Foods and of course it was nothing like real spaetzle, but it was edible. Next time I would just use noodles.

The goulasch was great! Some recipes call for mushrooms and I think I would try that the next time. Now goulasch can takes it place among the dishes we cook every winter, along with chili, sauce bolognese, short ribs and brisket.

Cauliflower and fennel cazuela

This dish is delicious but that has as little to do with the vegetables as lobster bisque has to do with crustaceans. Chefs joke that restaurant patrons love bisques because they're 95% cream. The authors of The Barcelona Cookbook disingenuously claim that cauliflower is surprisingly popular because this dish flies out of the kitchen. You'll see why.

You blanche a cauliflower cut into florets for 7 min., plunge in icewater and drain, then blanche a fennel bulb, trimmed of its fronds and cut in half, in the same pot of water, icewater, drain. Then you rub the fennel bulb halves with olive oil, salt and pepper and put under the broiler (or grill, weather permitting) for 5 to 7 min., then cut into 1/8 to 1/4-in. strips. Heat 1/4 c. olive oil in a large skillet and saute a thinly sliced onion for 10 min., add 4 cloves chopped garlic and cook slowly another 8 to 10 min. Add the blanched vegetables, salt and pepper, and cook slowly 15 to 20 min. Then add 1-1/2 c. heavy cream (!), 3/4 c. panko bread crumbs, 2 tsp. lemon juice, 3/4 c. grated Manchego cheese (!), 2 tsp. chopped parsley, 1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme, check seasoning, then set aside.

Then you make a bread crumb topping warming 1/2 c. olive oil in a saute pan, then add 10 cloves of sliced garlic (my cloves were so big I used 5), and cook 5 to 7 min. until garlic is "honey-colored." Then add 3 c. panko crumbs, salt and pepper, and cook for 7 to 10 min., taking care not to scorch the bread crumbs. Add 3/4 c. grated parmesan, 2 Tbl. chopped parsley, and 2 tsp. chopped thyme. Spread topping over vegetable mixture in a casserole (or individual cazuelas) and put in 400-degree oven for 15 to 20 min. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle chopped chives over top and serve.

Now this was really scrumptious, but what you taste is the cream and cheese and oil. The fennel and cauliflower I sampled during cooking were quite good, and presumably those flavors are somewhere in there. But this could have been macaroni and cheese. I served a couple of slices of cold ham with it and it was a delicious dinner. I had planned to use my big cazuela for the final assembly, but it was too big, so I just used a regular oval casserole. I would do it again for company, but it's too much work for a weekday meal and there are presumably ways to cook vegetables where you taste the vegetables.

Petit salé aux lentilles

This class bistro dish was one of my favorites when I lived in France and great winter comfort food. I've been wanting to do more recipes from my Anne Willan books and this seemed very apt in the cold weather between the years.

It's very simple. You put a 2 lb pork shoulder (mine was a little bigger), tied in a cylinder, in a brine made of 2 qu. water, 2 sprigs thyme, 1 bay leaf, 2 sliced garlic cloves, 2 tsp. juniper berries, 1 tsp. peppercorns (oops, forgot these), 2 whole cloves, 1-3/4 c. coarse salt, 3 Tbl. sugar and an optional 2 Tbl. curing salt gently heated and stirred until salt and sugar dissolve then completely cooled. Cover and refrigerate, the recipe says, anywhere from 12 hrs. to a week (I saw too late that the headnote recommends at least two days and cooked mine after 24 hrs.)

To cook, you rinse off the brine and cover pork with water in a pot. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5 min. then pour off water and refill. (If the pork has been in the brine longer than 3 days, soak for 1 hr. in cold water prior to this step.) Bring to a boil and simmer for 1-1/2 hrs. Then stir in 10 oz. French lentils (closer to 12 oz. in my dish), a whole peeled onion with two cloves stuck in it, a crushed clove of garlic and a bouquet garni (parsley, thyme, bay leaf tied together) and cook for another 1/2 hr. Remove pork and cover, drain excess liquid from lentils, take out onion, remove cloves, chop and return to lentils, and remove bouquet garni. Slice pork and serve on bed of lentils. The pork is juicy and tender from the brine, and salty without tasting too salty. Lentils are always great.

I've been loyal to Anne Willan since I attended a cooking course at her Ecole de La Varenne in Paris (before it de-camped for the countryside) and have several of her cookbooks. This recipe was in The Country Cooking of France. Her books tend to be big, heavy coffee table books with lots of text and photos. I don't have the impression that the recipes are quite as meticulously tested for the home cook as you would expect from someone who operated a cooking school. Nothing that can't be overcome if you do a little thinking yourself, which I tend to do after the fact. So I probably should have used a smaller pot, since there was a lot of excess liquid which may have kept the flavor from concentrating. I should have read the headnote about keeping it in the brine for two days, but why should the recipe say something different? The result was nonetheless delicious, but I will put on my thinking cap the next time I use one of her recipes.

Chicken and dumplings

One of the strongest food memories from my childhood is the time we went to a Methodist church supper for chicken and dumplings. We attended Catholic schools, and I worried that it was vaguely sinful to go to a Protestant church for dinner. But what a revelation! These anonymous ladies at the Methodist church created a fabulous meal with plump dumplings, a luscious broth and melt-in-your-mouth chicken.

My mother never cooked chicken and dumplings because her fried chicken was so good. Perhaps because the standard was set so high by the Methodist ladies, I've rarely attempted it myself. But the recipe in Molly Stevens' All About Braising was too appealing to resist.

Rather than the traditional method of poaching the dumplings in the broth the chicken is cooking in, Stevens has you cook everything separately. So first you sear the salted and peppered chicken parts in 2 Tbl. butter (I elected the thighs and legs option instead of the cut-up chicken). She insists that you just color the chicken pieces frying 4 min. a side, not brown them. Remove, pour off the fat, heat 2 more Tbl. butter, and sautee 1 medium onion chopped into 1/2-in. pieces, 2 celery stalks likewise chopped, 1 large shallot chopped, 2 strips lemon zest, and scant 1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg with sprinkling of salt and pepper until vegetables are soft. Add 1/2 c. dry white wine and simmer for 7 min. (until 3/4 of the wine is gone), add another 1/2 c. wine and simmer another 6 or 7 min. Add the stock and bring to simmer, then add the chicken pieces (if using cut-up chicken, keep the breasts out for the first 10 min.). Check heat after 10 min. to make sure braise is at a slow simmer, turn chicken pieces (add white meat) and simmer a further 25 to 30 min.

Remove the chicken pieces to platter and loosely cover with foil. In the meantime, you have mixed the dumpling batter, whisking 1 c. flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. coarse salt, 1 Tbl. chopped parsley, 1 Tbl. chopped chives or scallion ends (I just used 2 Tbl. parsley), and scant 1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg (call it a pinch). You make a well in the dry ingredients, put in a whole egg at room temperature and add 6 Tbl. milk. Whisk ingredients together, adding up to 2 Tbl. more milk if batter is too stiff (mine was still pretty stiff with all 8 Tbl. milk), then whisk in 2 Tbl. butter, melted and cooled. Don't overmix, Stevens warns, because that will toughen dumplings. Form the dumplings with 2 tablespoons and put into the braising liquid, which you have strained to remove the aromatics (and skimmed for fat, a step I skipped). Simmer for 5 min. on one side, then gently turn and simmer for another 5 min. Remove to platter with the chicken.

Whisk together a liaison from 2 egg yolks, 1/2 c. heavy cream, salt and pepper. Whisk in a ladle-full of the braising liquid, and then whisk the liaison back into the pan with the rest of the braising liquid, stir and avoid bringing to a boil. If sauce tastes starchy, add a squeeze of lemon (I did anyway, what the heck). When sauce has thickened, pour over chicken and dumplings, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

This was different than the church supper, but it was extremely good. The Stevens book has been a great find, with many wonderful braising recipes.

Eye of the Goat beans

This has nothing to do with Men Who Stare at Goats. It is a pinto-like bean from Rancho Gordo and I used a pound in two more wonderful dishes from Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans.

The first was Posole with Eye of the Goat beans and chicken. I also got the posole -- husked, dried kernels of corn -- from Rancho Gordo. I soaked the beans and 2/3 c. posole (separately) overnight. I cooked the beans for 1-1/2 hrs with chopped onion and garlic sauteed in lard. The posole, following this recipe, I cooked 1/4 chopped onion for a little over 2 hrs (recipe said 3 hrs but they were plenty tender before that). Meanwhile, I slit 3 New Mexico chiles (next time maybe something a little hotter) and removed stems and seeds, roasted them in a skillet then poured boiling water over them and let them soak 30 min. Afterwards, I pureed them with some of the soaking water to "the consistency of buttermilk."

For the final assembly, I thinly sliced 2 more onion quarters and sauteed 3 to 4 min. in 2 Tbl oil with 2 chopped garlic cloves. I added 4 c. chicken broth, 1-1/2 tsp. Mexican oregano, the pureed chiles, and 4 canned tomatoes, chopped. Then I added the posole with 1 c. of the cooking liquid, brought all that to a boil, checked the salt, added 2 c. of cooked beans and simmered 20 min. to blend. Then I added 2 c. (recipe said 1-1/2 c.) of shredded chicken from a rotisserie chicken and warmed through. The stew was served with chopped onion, cilantro leaves, limes, and diced avocado on the side, accompanied by warm corn tortillas. Very satisfying.

To use up the other 2 c. of beans, I used Sando's Chili verde with Anasazi beans, where Eye of Goat beans were listed as a suitable substitute. This was even better. I husked 8 tomatillos (first time I've ever cooked with these little green tomatoes!), boiled them for 5 min. and chopped them. I roasted 8 poblano chiles under the broiler for 15 min., turning often, put them into towels to steam for 10 min., peeled, seeded and cut into strips. In a large Dutch oven, I sauteed 1/2 chopped white onion in 2 Tbl oil, 3 chopped garlic cloves, and 1 tsp. of toasted, ground cumin seeds for about 10 min. Then I added 3 lbs. boneless pork shoulder cut into 3/4-in. cubes, chiles, tomatillos, 1/2 c. cilantro leaves and 1 tsp. Mexican oregano, and poured in chicken broth to cover. I seasoned with salt and pepper and simmered for 1-1/2 hrs. until pork was very tender, added 2 c. cooked beans and simmered another 30 min. Served with chopped cilantro. The green chiles lent a very satisfying heat to the tender, slightly fatty (I'd cut off a good deal of the fat) pork. Sando continues to astonish us.

Celery root and wild rice chowder

This was actually the first course in the meal with the Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, but I wanted to feature it in its own posting because it is so good and the first recipe I've used from Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets by Deborah Madison.

This dish is earthy, elegant and relatively simple -- a real keeper. You simmer 1/2 c. wild rice in 5 c. water for 45 min. (She doesn't specify, but I drained after it was done.)

Separately, you cut away the skin of a 1 lb. celery root (also known as celeriac), quarter it, and then cut into bite-size pieces. Chop and wash the white part of 2 large leeks. Dice one celery rib and thinly slice 1 c. russet potato. Melt 2 Tbl. butter in a soup pot, add the vegetables with 1/4 c. chopped parsley, bay leaf, sprig of thyme, and 1-1/2 tsp. salt. Cook over medium-high heat for 5 min., then add 2 c. vegetable or chicken stock (I used chicken), bring to boil, then simmer for 20 min. Add 2 c. half-and-half (or milk, I used half-and-half) and cook until vegetables are tender (didn't take that much longer). Check seasoning. For extra creaminess, purree 1 c. of chowder in blender and add back in to pot. Thin with stock or milk if chowder is too thick. Ladle soup into bowl, add mound of wild rice, and garnish with more chopped parsley and an optional drop of truffle oil.

This probably tastes great without the truffle oil, but I have to say I felt like the money for the oil was well-spent because that little whiff of truffles brings an added dimension to this chowder. We will certainly serve again this winter!

Zürcher Geschnetzeltes

This is one of the all-time classic European dishes, at least in German-speaking countries, so I was surprised that my well-traveled dining companions had never heard of it. It's a great winter dish and relatively easy, though pricey if you use veal as in the original.

Geschnetzeltes just means cut up, and this veal dish is to Zurich what Fegato alla veneziana (calves' liver, Venetian style) is to Venice. The recipe in the Swiss cookbook I've been carrying around for decades (Cooking in Switzerland by Marianne Haltenbach) was too vague. For instance, she neglected to mention that the veal should be cut in narrow strips, perhaps because she figures, wrongly, that everyone knows this. So I scoured the Web and settled on a recipe by Manuela Darling-Gansser carried at sbs.com.au/food as my guide.

She calls for veal back strap, whatever that is. Since American supermarkets carry very few cuts of veal, I just got scaloppini from the leg, buying 1-1/2 lbs for 4 people. I cut 3/4-in. strips cross-wise to get strips 2-4 in. long. Alone among the recipes, this one calls for flouring the veal, and since this works so well for scaloppini, I thought it made sense. However, the flour burned on the skillet and I had to change pans, so I would probably skip this the next time.

You sautée the veal quickly in butter and oil to brown the strips and set them aside. Add more butter and oil and sautée a finely sliced onion, 2 sliced cloves of garlic and 15 fresh sage leaves, chopped. After a few minutes, add a half-pound of "Swiss brown mushrooms" (I used cremini), thickly sliced. When the mushrooms are softened, add a cup of dry white wine, deglaze skillet, add the veal back in and cook until the wine evaporates, check seasoning. I stopped here to save the finish for just before serving. To finish, add 10 oz. of heavy cream and let bubble a couple of minutes, then serve.

The traditional accompaniment is rösti, a simple Swiss version of home fries. You are supposed to boil Yukon gold potatoes, let them cool, and then refrigerate covered for at least 4 hours and up to 2 days. I barely made the minimum and it probably works better if you can do it a day ahead of time. You peel and grate the potatoes in the large-hole side of the grater, and toss with salt and pepper. You heat butter and oil in a skillet, put in the potatoes, press into a flat "cake" with a spatula. Mine did not come out quite right (still tasted good because you can't really screw up with those ingredients). I used a skillet that was too big instead of the 9 to 9-1/2 in. called for. Other recipes call for it to be covered, but perhaps that was a mistake with this one, since it gets turned. Anyway, after 10 min. or so, a brown crust should form on the bottom of the cake, and you flip it onto a plate and slide the cake bakc into the skillet (with more butter and oil) with the uncooked side down and form a crust on that side for another 10 min. To serve, you cut into wedges.

Halibut, Short ribs

Two separate recipes and meals -- not together! Just catching up.

I've written several glowing reports about Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans but the best recipe yet was his fabulous Flageolet bean and halibut stew with asparagus and parsley-mint pistou. What a great balance of flavors that brings the wonderful qualities of halibut to the forefront -- white, chunky, tasty in a non-fishy way.

First you cook the half-pound of beans, soaked overnight, in a dutch oven where you sautée two garlic cloves, a chopped celery stalk and a chopped half onion for 10 minutes, then add the beans and soaking water, bring to a boil and simmer for an hour, until the beans are almost tender.

In the meantime, make the pistou by chopping a garlic clove and salt in a food processor to make a paste. Sando specifies 1/2 c. parsley and 1/3 c. mint with 2 Tbl. of EVOO to make the pistou, but that amount is small even for my mini-food processor, so it's probably a good idea to double it and have a little extra in order to get a smoother pistou.

Preheat broiler. Add 1-1/2 lbs. halibut cut into 2-inch pieces, a large bunch of asparagus with ends removed and cut into bite-sized pieces, and an optional 3 stems of green garlic (I opted out) to the pot with beans. Submerge ingredients gently with wooden spoon and simmer on top of stove about 10 to 15 min., turning fish once carefully to not break in pieces. When asparagus is tender and fish cooked through, top with 1/3 c. toasted bread crumbs, drizzle with 1 Tbl. olive oil, and put under broiler until stew is bubbling and bread crumbs are brown. Serve in shallow bowls and garnish each portion with the pistou. Serves 4.

One of my RSS feeds came up with a recipe for Sherry-braised short ribs with autumn vegetables from The Barcelona Cookbook. It was such a hit I ordered the cookbook (the point of the exercise, I suppose).

You brine the short ribs -- they say 1 4-in. short rib per person for 6 but I did more -- in a marinade of 1 small chopped celery, 1/2 chopped carrot, 1/2 small chopped onion, 1/2 small head garlic halved (you tell me what that means, I just put in some garlic), 3 sprigs coarsely chopped parsley, 2 sprigs chopped thyme, 1 sprig chopped rosemary, 1 c. apple cider, 3/4 c. cream or other sweet sherry, 2 Tbl. sherry vinegar, 4 black peppercorns, 1 bay leaf, 2 tsp. kosher salt. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hrs. to 2 days.

Parboil and peel 2 c. pearl onions. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. The other vegetables get peeled and cut into 3/4 dice (though the book curiously does not specify this preparation for the potatoes, they certainly can't mean to leave them unpeeled and whole) -- 2 Yukon Gold potatoes, 2 parsnips, 2 carrots, 1 celery root, 1 turnip. You toss these with 3 Tbl olive oil, then salt and pepper. Spread 1 more Tbl olive oil in roasting pan and roast vegetables for 20 to 25 min., stirring after 10 min. (and rotating roasting pans if you need more than one to keep vegetables spread out).

To braise the ribs, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix 2 c. flour, 1/2 cup paprika (not smoked paprika), 1/4 c. chili powder, 3 tsp. kosher salt, 1-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper in a ziploc bag. Remove ribs from brine (keep the brine!), pat dry, and drop two at a time into bag to coat. Heat 3/4 c. olive oil in a roasting pan and brown ribs over medium high heat. Drain oil from pan and wipe clean. Return ribs to pan and pour 1 c. of brine and 5 c. veal stock over them. Cover with foil, bring to boil, and transfer to oven to braise 1-1/2 hrs. Remove ribs from braise and after it has cooled, strain braise. Skim fat or put into freezer to congeal fat on top. I did everything to this point ahead of time. For final assembly you raise oven to 425 degrees, put short ribs into pan with onions, veggies, strained braising liquid, bring to boil on stove and then roast in oven for 35 to 40 min. The meat is falling off the bone and the braising sauce is almost a demi-glace. Magnifique!

We served with a very nice Bradford Mountain Winery Grist Vineyard Dry Creek Valley Syrah 2006 that got 90 points from Wine Spectator and that I got at a good price from Wines Til Sold Out.

Bean salad

Beans aren't only for cold weather, as these lovely salads in Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans demonstrate (see my blog from last year on these beans). I forgot the volume that a pound of dried beans swells into, so I had a chance to try three salads in quick succession when I cooked up a pound of Rancho Gordo's Mayacoba beans.

I cooked the beans per Sando's instructions with a mirepoix (one carrot, one celery and half an onion) and a crushed garlic. After soaking overnight, they only required a little over an hour to get soft. Sando encourages you to make the salads with the beans slightly warmed so I brought them to room temperature and briefly warmed them in a skillet with a couple tablespoons water in it before making each salad.

With a cup and a half of the cooked beans, I made the Fennel and Radicchio with Mayacoba bean salad. Two fennel bulbs sliced lengthwise are tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and sautéed until golden brown and soft. These are mixed with sliced radicchio, 6 slices of bacon fried and crumbled and the beans and tossed in a dressing of 1/2 chopped shallot, 1 tsp. dijon mustard, 1 Tbl. fresh lemon juice, 1 Tbl. red wine vinegar and 4 Tbl. EVOO. Shaved parmesan is added to the tossed salad. (Sando's recipe also includes hazelnuts roasted and rubbed to remove the skin, then chopped -- but I omitted these. He calls for radicchio di Treviso, but I had to make do with California radicchio and it still tasted excellent.)

With another two cups of the cooked beans, I made the Mayacoba bean salad with pesto and shrimp. A half pound of medium shrimp are peeled and deveined and then cooked 30 seconds in a court bouillon of 1 bay leaf, 1/4 tsp. fennel seads, 1/4 tsp. coriander seeds, 4 to 5 peppercorns, 1 crushed garlic clove, a 1/3 c. dry white wine, 1/2 lemon, and 1/2 tsp salt simmered in a small saucepan of water for 10 min. The pesto, which expressly omits the usual parmesan and pine nuts, is made from 2 c. loosely packed fresh basil leaves, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/3 c. EVOO processed in a food processor. To assemble, toss the beans and shrimp together with 1 c. cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half, pour over the pesto and toss again, then season with salt, pepper and the juice of 1/2 lemon. Very tasty.

With the remaining 2-1/2 c. of Mayacoba beans I made the Italian marrow bean with tuna salad, a variation on a standard Mediterranean dish. Sando specifies that you use imported tuna packed in oil (standard 5 oz. can). You break this up with a fork in a salad bowl, add the beans, 1/2 thinly sliced medium sweet onion, 1 celery stalk half lengthwise then sliced on the diagonal, 1/3 c. chopped fresh parsley, and then drizzle with 3 Tbl EVOO, 2 tsp red wine vinegar, and toss with salt and pepper.

Believe it or not, I didn't get tired of beans. Each salad is so different and has such a nice balance of flavors, you forget that they're all made from the same batch of beans.