A winter wine dinner

[All photos courtesy of Meg Kassabaum. Thank you Meg!]


Last month, just to make sure everybody was properly warmed up for the holidays, we put together a full-on bring-your-A-game wine dinner. 5 courses, 5 wines, all original recipes. And I believe we can safely say it was a success...

We fed 14 people that evening, more than we have in the past, but it went off without a hitch (well, with a couple minor hitches, but none that guests ever had to know about...).

We started off with a number of small finger foods for people to snack on while everybody arrived and settled in.

There were farmer's market radishes with salt and butter.

There were boquerones (marinated Spanish white anchovies) and marinated mushrooms.

There was smoked salmon.

And there was Galician canned pulpo.

All of this with plenty of Cava Avinyó.

Off to a good start, we sat down to a spicy roasted tomato soup with garlicky NC shrimp (from our friends at Core Sound Seafood).

For wine, we drank Do Ferreiro's Rebisaca, always a winner with shellfish.

Up next, fresh whole wheat homemade paste made by Lindsey. It's topped with blanched strips of locally-grown Tuscan kale, and Turkish-spiced ground lamb.

Here we moved onto to reds, in this case the fresh, vibrant, yet powerful Garnatxa 2009 from Joan d'Anguera.

Then, it was time for some medallions of roasted pork tenderloin along with garlic brussel sprouts. The sauce is made from cashew cream, (dairy) cream, ancho chilies, and oloroso sherry to produce a deep, rich flavor.

Which of course required a deeper, richer, wine, one which could also handle some spices. For this we turned to an older Rioja, the 2005 Monje Amestoy from Luberri. I'm happy to report the wine was up to the task.

The oloroso sherry in this sauce with the pork provided the transition into our final course, which was paired with the Sangre y Trabajadero oloroso from Gutierrez Colosia.

On the plate were dried dates stuffed with a blue goat cheese, then wrapped in bacon and broiled until crispy. They sat atop a bed of spinach topped with a light and simple balsamic vinaigrette.

People had different opinions about which was their favorite dish of the evening, and which was their favorite wine, but it was pretty much unanimously agreed that this was the killer pairing.

We are already scheming about the next one....

Until then, cheers!

Quick and easy spice cake

Here's the scenario: the holidays are approaching and you're given the task of bringing baked goods for your office meeting/bridge club/lemur appreciation society/whatever, and you want to bring something homemade and seasonally appropriate. But of course you've waited until the last moment. As you open your fridge to start getting your ingredients together you realize – horror! – that you are all out of milk and eggs. What to do?

Here is the recipe for your situation: an absolutely delightful spice cake (really just a sweet quick bread) that requires no milk and no eggs. It is also great fun to play around with in various ways. You can vary the level of sugar depending on whether you want it to be more of a dessert or more of a breakfast item. For spices, you can use whatever sounds good (or whatever you have). Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, etc. – those nice holiday flavors – are all welcome in any combination you fancy. I particularly like to add grated fresh ginger to give it a good bite. But most fun of all for me has been playing around with the liquid: while water works just fine, I have so far used coffee, porter, and hard cider instead, all to great effect.

The recipe is adapted from the Tassajara Recipe Book.

Quick Spice Cake

Preheat oven to 350.

Butter and flour an 8 inch cake pan

Mix together in a big bowl 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup white flour, 1/4 to 3/4 cup sugar (depending on how sweet you want it to be), 1 tsp. baking soda, and spices (any of the following: 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1/4 tsp. cloves, 1 tsp. allspice, 1 tbsp. ginger, or whatever else looks good).

In a small saucepan, melt 1/3 cup butter. Add to this 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar, then 1 cup cold water or other liquid, such as coffee, dark beer, cider, etc.

[Quick note: if your butter is still hot, and your water quite cold, this will produce a very odd reaction, creating a kind of crystallized-looking mixture. Don't worry, this is fine, and it's also kind of cool looking...]

[Quick note #2: you could just use oil instead of butter and make it completely vegan]

Now mix your butter mixture in with your dry ingredients. Do not over-mix! This is a quick bread, so do just enough to moisten all the dry ingredients. It's ok if the batter is still a little lumpy and uneven.

Pour the dough into the cake pan, and bake for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

For an extra nice touch, sprinkle powdered sugar on top before serving.

Cooking oils

Just a quick note today to point you towards this article by Harold McGee in the New York Times. McGee is without a doubt one of the most interesting food writers in operation. His book On Food and Cooking is absolutely essential reading.

His column in the Times this week is about cooking oil. The basic point is that most oils (good olive oil, bad olive oil, refined seed oil, etc.) are pretty much indistinguishable once heated:

We were surprised at how thoroughly heat obliterated the flavors in cooking oil until they all tasted more or less the same. Even prize-winning, and costly, extra-virgin olive oils lost much of what makes them special, though they retain their apparently healthful pungency. To get food with the green and fruity flavor of good olive oil, it seems more economical and effective to fry with an inexpensive refined oil and drizzle on a little fresh olive oil after cooking.

I've always used a slightly fruity but fairly neutral olive oil as my everyday basic cooking oil, but I might consider using more seed oil now.

Readers, do you have any thoughts on this?

Lindsey's beautiful stuffed pumpkin

Lindsey, as you may recall, loves a stuffed pumpkin. And this time she really outdid herself...

These little pie pumpkins were full of rice, caramelized onions, chunks of apple, Italian sausage (from Giacamo's in Greensboro, NC), and shiitakes from our logs (yes, we grow shiitakes in our backyard).

In keeping with the autumnal feel of the dish, basque-style cider was used as a liquid (this style of cider is not at all sweet, and pretty acidic). The whole thing was then topped with cheese and baked. The cheese melted and browned, the pumpkin flesh was softened and infused with cider, and the whole thing came out beautifully... A triumph!

You do not need to soak your beans

I was really glad to see this article in the New York Times yesterday.

It is a common (and, to me, galling) assumption that beans need to be soaked before cooking. I have seen this myth repeated many, many places, including cookbooks where the authors should have known better (Mark Bittman is a notable exception). As beans make up a very large portion of my diet, and I am always proselytizing on their behalf, I'm glad to see the truth spoken in a major media outlet.

Yes, it is true: beans do not need to be soaked before cooking. As in the recipe provided in the NYT article, dried beans can used directly in a long simmered stew, with no ill effect. Quite the contrary, in fact: this technique does a great job at melding flavors together.

But also, it is possible to cook dry beans on their own without soaking. The difference? It will take a little longer, though not nearly as much most cookbooks say.

So why soak at all? Well it will cut down on cutting time somewhat. The other potential reason is texture. This is somewhat anecdotal, but it does seem that sometimes, when using dry beans directly, the beans don't cook quite as evenly. This only seems to happen with older beans, though, which you should try to avoid anyways. And it can also be remedied by cooking the beans slowly and gently. My opinion is that, for texture, the best thing you can do is cook your dry beans in a crockpot for a few hours. It won't save you any time, but it requires practically no labor, and it really produces great results.

But the important thing to remember here: beans do not need to be pre-soaked, so don't let a lack of soaking stop you.

As it get colder... beer bread!

This quick beer bread might be the bread I bake most often. It is extremely satisfying and easy to make – I don't know if I've ever screwed it up. It has a warm, malty, yeasty flavor that I find very comforting, especially as the weather turns cold. And the best: it can be made in under an hour, start to finish. This means I can wake up in the morning, make the bread, eat some for breakfast, and still make it to the office on time.

If it has a drawback, it is that it's not terribly versatile. This is not a bread for mopping up sauces at dinner, and it's nearly useless for making a sandwich. But for some things it's really good: as toast with butter (obviously), and it is great with certain sharp cheeses, like cheddar or aged gouda. Also, it makes good friends with many kinds of hearty cold weather stews.

Oh and of course it's great with a beer! The best autumn lunch ever might be this beer bread with cheddar, mustard, apple, maybe a little salami, and a nice malty British style ale....

Though I just stick with the basic recipe most of the time, there are a number of possible felicitous variations here:

-Try different types of beers. This is the most obvious variable. Try lighter and darker beers for different results (but avoid heavily hopped beers, unless you want bitter bread). If you want to get a little crazy, try a pumpkin ale or other seasonal spiced beers. (As a side note, the Joy of Cooking says to use any beer except stout, but I have used porter before, and the line between porters and stouts is thin to non-existent. Does anybody know why the Joy would say that? Hit up the comments if you have thoughts)

-Add in a quarter cup of nutritional yeast for additional savoriness.

-Add in grated cheddar (or other cheese) for increased cheesiness.

-Play around with the ratio of whole wheat to all purpose flour. Or substitute some fine corn meal for some of the wheat flour for a different texture.

-A favorite at our house: bake in muffin tins instead of a loaf pan (reduce cooking time to about 20 mins.)


This recipe is straight out of the Joy of Cooking. As with all quick breads, the key is to not over-mix when you add the beer to your dry ingredients.

Quick Beer Bread

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
12 oz. beer (not flat)

Mix together all the dry ingredients.

Fold in the beer, but don't over-mix. It's fine if the dough is a little lumpy.

Pour into a lightly greased loaf pan, and bake at 400 for 35 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Doing crab cakes a little differently

Pretty much all recipes for crab cakes require mayonnaise.

That's what I learned yesterday evening as I tried to make dinner. We had about a half-pound of crab meat left from our most recent CSF delivery, and Lindsey had requested crab cakes (a CSF is a Community Supported Fishery, like a CSA but for fish. Ours is called Core Sound Seafood – check them out they do excellent work).

Now I had made crab cakes numerous times before (pretty successfully, I believe, as the repeated request demonstrated). As per my usual cooking style, in making them previously I had based my approach on an existing recipe to get the basic idea, then taken it and done my own thing, adjusting and seasoning as I saw fit. The recipes always include some mayonnaise.

The problem was that last night I didn't have any mayonnaise. We usually make our own (much better tasting than the store-bought stuff), and I just didn't feel like taking the extra step. So I decided to wing it, without mayonnaise.

The result? Excellent! More straight crab flavor, and a little lighter. I would in fact probably do it this way again (though I have to say, a little dollop aïoli on top would be quite nice...).

Here's what I did (all measurements are very, very approximate):

I mixed the 1/2 pound of crab meat with a 1/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs. For flavoring, I used a generous dash of pimentón (smoked paprika – it belongs in pretty much everything), a pinch of cayenne for heat, a couple tablespoons of mustard, a few splashes of cider vinegar, and some salt. To bind it, I added tablespoon of olive oil and a small egg. I combined it all thoroughly, shaped it into 4 cakes, and dredged the cakes in a little flour. These were fried on medium-high heat in a mixture of butter and olive oil until nicely browned. Add a squeeze of lemon on top and it's ready.

And to drink with this? Txakoli of course!

Cutting potatoes, Spanish-style

The last time I was in Spain, we were served patatas a la riojana at a winery in - where else? - La Rioja. This dish is typical of much Spanish cooking in that it relies not on complexity, but on specific techniques and high quality ingredients. In this case, it's just onions, a little garlic, chorizo, potatoes, and broth.

The idea is always simple - like with padrón peppers. These peppers are served all over the place in tapas bars when they're in season. They are fried in olive oil until slightly charred, then sprinkled in salt. That's it. Sounds incredibly simple; and it is. But, crucially, what makes them so delicious in the tapas bars is that they are just the right peppers grown in just the right soils in Galicia. They are fried in high quality olive oil and sprinkled with high quality coarse salt. You have to put all these elements together to make padrón peppers just right.

The patatas a la riojana we had that day were incredible. What, we asked, is the key to making something seemingly so simple so good? The matriarch of the place gladly explained how to make dish to us. According to her, there are two key things. One is in the ingredients: to make it just right, you need to use chorizo that hasn't completely finished curing. This way, the chorizo releases more of its flavor into the dish (this, clearly, cannot be reproduced at home, unless you're curing your own chorizo) The second crucial thing is in the cutting of the potatoes: they need to be cut into little irregular pieces in a technique called cascar. This verb translates roughly to "crack" or "chip." The idea is that instead of cutting through the potato, you stick a pairing knife into it, then pull back so the potato breaks naturally where it wants and creates irregularly shaped pieces.

This affects the starch structure of the potatoes and has two effects. The first is that the starch from the potatoes thickens the sauce properly, and the second is that the potatoes more readily absorb the flavors of the sauce. If anyone knows a more detailed scientific explanation for this, please hit up the comments, I'd love to hear it... Looking around, I can hardly find any information on this cutting technique. The best I could find was this.

I find it fascinating, and I wonder why it's not better known.

And beyond stews and saucy dishes, I've found that cutting potatoes this way is great for frying too. In fact, a few Spanish sources insist that this is the proper way to cut potatoes for a tortilla de patatas, a statement with which I will not disagree. The potatoes seem to develop a beautiful golden color and that comforting creamy texture inside far more readily. Again, any information on why this is would be appreciated.

So try cutting your potatoes like this next time, whether it's for a stew, a tortilla, a breakfast hash, or any number of other dishes. Take a starchy potato and peel it. Using a pairing knife, hold the potato in one hand, insert the knife, then pull it back and upwards towards you. You will feel the potato break and crack. With a little practice, it goes very fast, and I find it much more fun than regular potato cutting.

Aaand we're back.

Getting married!

Cooking live lobsters from the Vieques fishmarket on our honeymoon!

Our Lobster feast!

Tropical rice and beans with coconut, mango chile salsa and avocado lime salad. We make it good wherever we are.

Sorry for the long interruption folks. We had a busy spring and early summer. Highlights: Getting hitched on May 15th at the Celebrity Dairy and traveling to Puerto Rico for a 2 week honeymoon. After all the excitement (and with the arrival of full summer excellence) we're ready to get back to posting about cooking and food! We've got a lot of new stuff to tell you about, including adventures in backyard chicken raising and cooking with our own fresh eggs so look out for updates over the next few weeks. For now I'll leave you with some shots from the spring.

Ravioli lessons with Chris and Meg: a photo essay

The finished product.
waiting to be cut...
closing...
Closing...
Flip!
The key is no more than a teaspoon of filling

The pasta machine... fold and then roll... repeat...

Slow carmelizing onions...

Feta...

Butternut Squash...

The raw ingrediants: Our beginning dough...

The Fifth Taste

What's up world? Well it's obviously been a little while since anything has happened with this blog... I could try to give excuses - holidays, travels, change of routine, etc. - but in the end there's not much point. The only point is that, well, we're back, and hopefully on a regular basis.

Now just because I haven't been updating the blog does not mean that I have not been thinking about food. I have been. Pretty much all the time.

And one of the topics that's been on my mind lately is umami. Umami is the least well known and least well understood of all the tastes, by a long shot. In fact, my spell check doesn't even recognize the word...

But its importance should not be underestimated. Umami is a crucial element of all cooking, but it's especially important to think about in vegetarian and vegan cooking, because most umami-ness comes from animal products.

But first, what is umami? Well umami is the fifth taste. We all know about sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, but then there's this other one. The word is Japanese, and it doesn't really have an appropriate translation. The best is probably "savory," or even "deep savory". It's that meaty, hearty, rich mouth filling taste. It's difficult to convey verbally what umami is, since it's not something we really have the vocabulary for. If this helps, the purest form of umami taste is found in MSG.

Umami is what makes a meaty stew so satisfying, especially in comparison to, say, a vegetarian bean stew. And that brings me to the heart of the topic.

I believe that when vegetarian cooking seems flat and unsatisfying, it is often due to a lack of attention to umami (and I hope it's clear at this point that I am no foe of vegetarian cooking). Everybody knows about salty and sweet, most know to think at least a little about sour and bitter too, but do many home cooks think about umami? Probably not...

So where do you find umami? Well the most obvious is meat, but that's not much help for vegetarian cooking. Seafood is also a particularly fertile source, with fish sauce and anchovies being prime examples. There's also marmite, if you're into that kind of thing (ok I'll admit it I kind of like marmite). But the most versatile is surely soy sauce.

I've said this before, but I add a dash of soy sauce to pretty much everything I cook. I don't do this to make my food taste like soy sauce - you certainly wouldn't want all your food to take on the distinctive taste of soy sauce - I do it to bring a little umami to the dish. Soy sauce does wonders in small quantities. Seriously, try adding a dash to your sauces, stews, whatever. It makes a huge difference.

Other really great (vegetarian) ways to get your umami include mushrooms, parmesan, and seaweed.

Mushrooms, especially intensely flavored wild mushrooms, can also do wonders. We keep dried wild mushrooms in the pantry all the time to use in cooking. Again, it's not necessarily about making your dish take like mushrooms (though of course it can be), it's about using the mushrooms for their umami giving properties.

Parmesan really doesn't need much said about it. It's great for finishing many types of dishes, especially Mediterranean style ones. One trick that not enough people know about is to save the rinds form your parmesan, then stick them in your soups or stews while they're cooking. They'll give the dish a wonderful richness and lushness (not to mention umaminess!). Pull the rind out right before your dish is done, and spread the gooey deliciousness on a piece of bread for an incredible treat.

Seaweed might need a little explanation. One of the important topics in umami, for me, is beans. I cook - and eat - a fair amount of beans. They are a fantastic and wonderfully useful ingredient, but they are also singularly lacking in umami. Seriously, try just making, say, a simple black bean stew with tomatoes and cilantro, and it will fall flat, unless you have incredibly ripe fresh tomatoes or you're topping it with a bunch of cheese, or you make it with chicken stock. The problem, as I see it, is that while beans are "meaty" in some sense, they're distinctly not meaty in the sense that, by themselves, they lack the power to bring that delicious savory satisfaction. In short, they lack umami.

But try cooking your beans with a piece of kombu first, and it's a whole different story. Kombu is a type of Japanese seaweed that packs a serious umami punch, and putting a little strip in the water when you're cooking your beans is a brilliant way to bring some glutamic acid to the party.
I'm not saying you wouldn't want to finish your stew with little cheese in the end, but it's a lot less necessary when you're cooking your beans with kombu.

So in short, don't underestimate the importance of umami! If you're cooking with lots of bacon or chicken stock or cheese, you probably don't have to think about it too much, but otherwise it is totally essential. It's one of just five tastes, for Christ's sake - you can't afford to ignore it.

If you've got other ideas about bringing the umami, hit up the comments. I'd love to hear them.

Simplest chickpea stew

In case you haven't noticed, we're all about simple, frugal, and delicious cooking here. This might be the epitome of all these things: almost comically simple, it's delightful to eat, and your wallet will hardly even notice.

In short, you saute some onion, carrot, and garlic in a little olive oil and butter, add a little wine, then chickpeas with stock and tomato paste. You let it hang out a little all together for a while, then season with some paprika or other red pepper, finish with a little lemon and parmesan, and that's it. Serve with some grain - couscous, orzo, and quinoa are some of my favorites - and something green, and you've got dinner.

This is obviously just a template. In its simplicity, this dish also contains another virtue: it invites additions and modifications. Here are just a few ideas:

Little bits of meat, whether leftover chicken or some chopped up bacon or pancetta, would be right at home here.

Mushrooms would also be a decidedly delicious addition.

Add a Parmesan rind with your stock to make a richer and more luscious dish.

Onions, carrot, and garlic usually form the base of this dish for me, but there are plenty of other options. Shallots, celery, bell peppers, and leeks come to mind... Or even some chopped olives...

For the pepper, paprika is the default, but you can switch it up: try Turkish Aleppo pepper, or smoked paprika, or try stirring in some Harissa (a Morrocan chili paste).

Options abound...

A quick note about two of the main elements of this dish: the chickpeas and the stock.

I highly recommend using dried chickpeas that you cook yourself. Like with most canned beans, canned chickpeas are too mushy for my taste. You can get more toothsome chickpeas by cooking them at home and pulling them off when there's just the right texture. You can also make them extra delicious by cooking them with a piece of kombu.

As for the stock, sorry vegetarians - chicken is really where it's at. Of course a good vegetable stock will work wonderfully too; the best, as with the chickpeas, is to make it yourself, whether it be meat of plant based.

One last thing: I say to finish this dish with some lemon juice; if you don't have any on hand, use a splash of red wine or sherry vinegar instead, but don't omit this acidic touch, or the dish will likely seem a little flat...

















Simplest Chickpea Stew

Chop up an onion and a couple carrots, and heat a little olive oil and butter in a deep skillet. Cook onion and carrot over medium heat for 5 minutes.

Add a few minced cloves of garlic (I use about 7 or 8), cook for a couple more minutes.

Turn up the heat to fairly high, and when heated up add a generous splash of wine (any color will work well, but I prefer white here).

After a minute or so, add a couple cups of stock and couple tablespoons of tomato paste.

Stir to dissolve, then add 3 cups cooked chickpeas.

Cook for 15-20 minutes, until sauce has reduced and thickened to your liking.

Add paprika or other red pepper to taste (sorry, can't be much more precise here since peppers vary so wildly in heat and intensity. For mild paprika, you'll probably want about 2-3 tsp.). Add fresh herbs (thyme and oregano are great) if using. A splash of soy sauce can be really nice here too, especially if you're not using a meat stock.

Let it all get acquainted for a couple minutes, then turn off the heat and stir in 1 tbsp. or so of lemon juice.

Top with a little parmesan when serving.

Best cabbage ever

Cabbage is not the sexiest of ingredients, I'll admit it. But I love cabbage. I love its texture when it's been cooked just the right amount of time (i.e. not boiled to death), just lightly toothsome, and the slightly sweet flavor it develops. I'll vouch for cabbage.

But there's no convincing to be done with this dish. This is seriously the best cabbage I've ever had. Hands down. It comes from Bryant Terry, whose vegan soul style, as I've said before, I really like.

Around here barbecue joints often serve cabbage cooked in pork fat. This is Terry's re-interpretation of the dish. To "make up" for not using pork fat, he uses mustard seeds, pepper flakes, and a little sugar. I put the verb in the previous sentence in scare quotes because really we're not making up for anything here; this cabbage is better than any I've had, animal products or no. And for this one, I actually followed the recipe and don't intend to change it. So simple, yet the result is much more than the sum of its parts. Try it.


"Fried" Cabbage
Adapted from Bryant Terry's Vegan Soul Kitchen

Quarter, core, and slice into thin ribbons a smallish head of cabbage (about 2 pounds).

In a large saute pan, over medium heat combine 2 tbsp. olive oil, 2 tsp. mustard seeds, 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes, 1 tsp. sugar, and 1/2 tsp. salt. Cook, stirring, until seeds begin to pop after a couple minutes.

Add the cabbage and cooks for 4-5 minutes until it begins to wilt. Add water, stir, cover, and cook another 4-5 minutes, until water is mostly evaporated.

Voila!

Croute en potiron (pumpkin with cheesy soup / bread pudding)

This is a really awesome special occasion dish for vegetarians. It is indulgent, delicious and fussy, everything I like. I made it for "New Dishwasher day" when Alex and I got our new dishwasher installed a week after the old one crapped out on us. It is a bit of a lengthy process but no step is complicated in the slightest and the results are both attractive and tasty.


Croute en potiron

Ingredients for 2 servings:
One small pie pumpkin per person
About 1/4 lb. grated Emmenthal or other Swiss style cheese (I mixed it with parmesan since ours was boring)
About 3 cups stock (I used chicken this time but veggie stock is delightful)
1/2 stale baguette cut into thin rounds and toasted.
Fresh parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, or other fresh herbs
Garlic
Wine or brandy

Preheat the oven to 375.

Scoop out your pumpkins (set aside seeds to roast if you like). After they are all nicely hollowed out, rub the inside with salt and garlic. Set aside.

Warm up your stock and add brandy or wine to taste, let it simmer together for a bit to burn off some of the alcohol.

Put a thin layer of cheese inside the bottom of the pumpkin, sprinkle fresh herbs and then layer toast. Continue layering alternating cheese herbs and toast until the pumpkin is full.

Put the full pumpkin on a baking sheet then pour your doctored stock into the pumpkin over the layers of cheese and bread. Top with a final layer of cheese and herbs.

Bake the pumpkins in the middle of the oven until the cheese is golden brown and pumpkins yields to the tip of a knife (err on the side of caution, you do NOT want to overcook the pumpkin or the whole thing will collapse.)

Serve the soup in the pumpkin and as you eat it scoop out the pumpkin flesh with the cheesy melty bready soup. Decadence.

End of summer roasted tomatoes

This is the perfect thing to do with end of summer tomatoes and it only takes a few minutes. After you broil them you can freeze them or use them right away and it is dead simple. We usually buy the "ugly" (1.50/lb.) tomatoes at the farmers' market. Any kind will do. Preheat the broiler on your oven. Core and slice in half up to 3 lbs. tomatoes, leave the skin on (unless you don't like it, then take it off.) Arrange the tomatoes skins side up in a casserole pan or deep baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Put tomatoes in oven on the center rack and broil until golden brown on top (about 15-20 minutes, but check on them.) At this point you have delicious broiled tomatoes that make a 15 minute sauce taste like you simmered it for hours. We make these on Sunday and use them on weekdays. Enjoy!

You learn something new every day...

Who knew that it makes a difference whether you cook your beans with the lid on or off?

Not I... at least not until today.

This is why I'm hot

This is why I'm hot, I don't got to rap
I can make a mil saying nothing on a track....

That's kind of how I feel about weeknight dinners sometimes. Ok maybe minus some of the boisterousness, plus we always need to do some work... But the point is that it's possible to put out banging meals on a weeknight with very little effort, which is almost the same thing as making a million dollars for not saying anything....

Anyways what I want to talk about here is always having semi-prepared foods around. No I don't mean packaged stuff you buy from Trader Joe's, but items that you partially put together on weekends or whenever you have time or feel inspired, then keep around in the fridge. This allows you to cook meals in 20 minutes that taste like they take hours. This is the key to making killer weeknight dinners.

Here are some things you'll often find in our fridge and freezer:

Marinated veggies: Blanch or roast veggies like carrots or peppers. Cook them until barely soft, then put in a jar with salt and cover with olive oil. If you're feeling fancy add a little vinegar or a clove of garlic. These are great additions to sauces.

Pesto cubes: at the end of the summer when we rip up our basil plants we make a huge batch of pesto, then freeze it in ice cube trays. A cube of this stuff can do magic to many dishes, or just be used with pasta.

Stock cubes: homemade stock, frozen in ice cube trays, are crucial. Thinning a sauce? Deglazing a pan? This is good stuff to use.

Marinated tofu: you'll find it a lot easier to make tofu tasty if it's already marinated in your fridge.

Cooked beans: I guess you could just stock canned beans, if you don't mind your beans mushy and metallic tasting. But the dried ones are so much better (and not as much of a hassle as many think; more on that in a later post). I like to cook them until they're just barely tender to allow for better control over their texture when I'm using with them later. This is a great habit to get into on sunday afternoons: prepare a pot of beans to use throughout the week.

Cooked grains: whenever you cook some grains, why not cook twice as much as you need? Keep the rest in your fridge, and it's ready to go for next time.

Chopped up leftover meats: let's say you do some grilling on the weekend, and there's a couple of chicken drumsticks leftover. Take the meat of the bone, chop it up into little bits, and keep it around. Now it's ready to go into stews, soups, sauces, frittatas, whatever...

There's plenty more options of course. Anything you use that's not on the list? Hit up the comments!

Now to come full circle, I'll leave you with this pretty hot remix of the song quoted at the top:

Food thought....

The folks over at Ideas in Food come up with some pretty crazy stuff. They probe, deconstruct, and examine food in ways I would never think of. Case in point: this recent post about pasta. They figured out that you can leave pasta to soak for a while in cold liquid, and then cook it like fresh pasta by just dropping it in a hot water for a minute.

This brings up a couple of questions:

Most immediately, how can we use this technique to create new and delicious things? Soaking in chicken stock or tomato broth immediately come to mind....

But thinking bigger for a moment, what else do we prepare unthinkingly that could be done in new ways? What else could we do differently to open up new doors?

Quick tip: egg in your pasta

Here's a quick tip to add a little something to quick simple pasta sauces: crack and egg over your hot pasta before you add your sauce. 

The idea is to add a little creaminess, a little luxuriance, to your dish, but without rendering it heavy. This can bring a simple pasta with, say, olive oil, garlic, herbs, and cherry tomatoes to the next level.

Here's how you do it: when your pasta is ready, strain it and quickly return it to the pot (or to a separate bowl). Crack an egg over the pasta, and mix it in vigorously. The result should be a kind of airy creamy sauce (it should not be little bits of scrambled eggs). This essentially is the technique you use to make carbonara: add a bunch of cheese and bacon and you've got that dish. But add instead some veggies sauteed in olive oil, and finish with just a touch of parmesan, and you've got a brilliant summer dish: light and delicious, with just the slightest hint of decadence. Try it with ripe bell peppers, or with shredded zucchini brightened with lemon.  

One more advantage of this technique: it does great things to whole wheat pasta, which I don't normally love.

Here's my current favorite way of using this idea. It hardly seems like it necessitates a recipe, but here it is. Use about 1 egg for every 1/2 pound of pasta.

Heat water for pasta. Add pasta when water is boiling.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet and chop a bunch of garlic. Cook (along with some dried hot pepper, if desired) until garlic just turns golden. 

Add in a splash of white wine, a couple tablespoons of the pasta water, some salt, and let cook for a few minutes. Add fresh herbs just a couple minutes before the pasta is done.

When pasta is ready, quickly drain, return to pot, crack an egg over the pasta, and mix vigorously for about 30 seconds. You should have a light, airy creamy sauce.

Add some halved cherry tomatoes and the garlic/oil/herb mix and toss all together. 

Finish with a little parmesan and some fresh ground pepper, and serve immediately. 

White wine sangria: my new favorite summer drink

Sangria often sucks. In fact, I don't think I've ever encountered a red wine sangria I've really liked. Red wine seems to me to lack the brightness, the vitality, to make a good summer drink. Add that to the fact that most seem to think you should use the crappiest wine you can find to make the drink, and you've got a recipe for disgusting.

White wine, sangria, on the other hand, can be truly excellent. With higher acidity levels, less tannins, and generally less volatile components, white wine lends itself much better to this type of drink. I remember a version from a cuban restaurant in Portland (Pambiche) called the Palm Beach Cooler. I can't recall what exactly was in it, but it definitely involved lime and fresh sugarcane. That was good stuff: delicious, refreshing, vivacious, it was everything a summer drink should be. 

So this summer I've set about refining and perfecting a white wine sangria of my own, working off a recipe Lindsey originally used. This drink is brightened with lime juice, sweetened with ginger ale, and fortified with rum, creating a kind of Cuban/Caribbean flavor profile (I told you that palm beach cooler has been on my mind...). Then you add in whatever fruit is fresh and on hand (often peaches for me) and serve it over ice. I've dubbed the drink El Veraniego, which translates roughly to something like "the summery one".

A note on the wine: as you might have gathered from what I said earlier, I don't believe in using crap wine to make sangria. Boring wine, sure. Bad wine, no. The things you add in might mask some off flavors, but using bad wine will still make an inferior drink. Conversely, any subtleties of a good white will be lost, so don't bother using anything too nice. Dry and unremarkable is ideal. 

El Veraniego 

1 750ml bottle of decent dry white wine

10 oz. (1 1/4 cup) ginger ale

4 tbsp. (1/4 cup) rum

2 tbsp. (or more, depending on your wine) fresh lime juice

Fresh fruit, cut up

A few crushed mint leaves (optional)

Combine all ingredients. Let sit all together in the fridge for an hour or two.

Serve over ice.

Watch out!