Crostini with toasted pine nuts, asparagus, asiago, and tomato

Spaghetti with mizuna with lemon-garlic and thyme sauce

Roast chicken

Sabayon with fresh strawberries

 

 Since we were having company I actually planned out the menu in advance rather than trying with greater or less success to wing it.  This meal was structured around a huge bag of mizuna from the garden of Gary Grossman.  Mizuna is native to Japan and has a peppery flavor that some compare to arugula.  It goes well with citrus, and I had originally thought to wilt it and put it on top of the crostini, where it would have been great with lemon, pine nuts and tomato.  I was already committed to lemon garlic sauce for the pasta, however, and I didn’t want to have two lemon-based dishes.

Like Clara I am using oven-roasted tomatoes for preparations like the crostini.  The intensification of flavor produced is a great way to improve the quality of you off-season tomatoes trucked in from thousands of miles away.  I got my way of doing it from Mark Bittman (Minimalist Gourmet) who includes it in Mark Bittman Takes on Amnerica’s Chefs, although I roast them (sliced with salt pepper, olive oil, and thyme) for longer and at a slightly higher temperature than he does (300 degrees).   

For the pasta dish I dipped the mizuna in boiling water for 40 seconds, fished it out, drained, chopped, and added it to the spaghetti after it had drained.  The sauce was very simple:  ½ cup olive oil, four cloves garlic rough-chopped, salt cooked at medium-low heat for 20 minutes.  The garlic pieces to not brown but lose all of their sharpness.   I don’t strain them out but put them right in with the pasta.  After the cooking was done I put in a tablespoon or so of fresh thyme and poured the whole thing over the drained pasta.  

I made the decision yesterday to harvest garlic (photo), even though it was not quite mature.  It may just be a little too slow developing to win a place in such a small garden as ours, and that row was slated for other things.  Too bad it couldn't have gone into last night's dinner.  Instead, it is curing on the patio.

We are starting to get fresh strawberries at the farmer’s market and so had them in cups for dessert, covered with a spoonful of sabayon, a sauce made form egg yolks, sugar and marsala wine whisked on the stovetop until thickened, then finished with some sweetened whipped cream folded in and chilled.  Good stuff.

Wednesday menu

Hunter’s Chicken   (= Cacciatore Ital. = Chasseur Fr.)

Orzo pasta ( rice-shaped, store-bought)

Roasted new potatoes with garlic and serrano pepper

Salad

 

Today I went with this very simple, low-fat dish using skinless, boneless breasts, and served it on a bed of rice-shaped orzo pasta.

 

Prep work:

1 ½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 2-inch pieces, seasoned with salt and pepper

one large onion sliced vertically and cut into thin half-rings

1-2 cloves garlic, diced

one cup sliced mushrooms (optional)

2 15-oz cans of diced tomatoes

¼ cup white wine

½ cup chicken stock

fresh or dried herbs (I used oregano, thyme, and rosemary.  Dice finely, tie them in a bundle, or put them in a tea ball (see photo)

parsley, chopped roughly

Cooking:

1. Sear chicken in 2 T. olive oil in a Dutch Oven at medium-high heat, just enough to give them some color and texture. Be careful not to overcook.  The chicken in your pot still has a long way to go before it reaches your plate, so don’t worry if it is still pretty pink at this point.  I like to get a good sear on one side of the pieces and just cook the others for a minute or so.  Remove the cooked pieces to a plate
2. Lower heat to medium.  In the same pot add onions and cook, scraping up anything that is left from the chicken and stirring occasionally until the onions begin to brown.  Add garlic about half way through. 
3. Add wine and stock, stirring to get everything in the bottom of the pot incorporated.  Let that liquid reduce by half.
4. Add tomatoes.  Add herbs.  Return chicken to pot.  Cook uncovered on medium to reduce liquid, maybe 15 minutes.  If the sauce is too thin it will run all over the plate so you may want to remove the chicken after it is done, crank up the stove, and boil until you get the consistency you want.  Note:  don’t use the same plate for the chicken that you used earlier for your semi-cooked breasts to avoid picking up bacteria.
5. Serve over noodles, rice, potatoes. 

  

Our favorite summer meal

Sorry to make a debut entrance with such a simple recipe, particularly with one that features a trick stolen directly from my father, but this is a warm up people! And it's Heath's favorite. I have a feeling that my contribution to this blog will often focus on the cheapest and simplest way to eat well, but I hope you will find me no less inspired.

So we eat pesto about once a week in the summer, and always with fresh pasta which I buy at our local fish store for $4.50 a hit and will serve 4. Best option is to follow instructions in pasta making post, but in a pinch, I still say fresh is the only way. For the pesto I never use a recipe, just combine traditional ingredients in food processor and go heavy on the garlic, adding more of whatever's needed. I also like varied texture in pesto so I always experiment with adding whole toasted pine nuts, toasted garlic chips. My favorite is to add fresh tomatoes, but Dad recently showed me this trick of roasting them beforehand to draw out the strongest possible flavor. These could have even stayed in longer but the house started to fill with smoke. Fortunately I long ago removed the fire alarm during the Pineapple Upside Down Cake Pyrotechnic Event of 2008.

I like to serve this all tossed together in a big bowl with crusty French bread and a crisp white wine. Bowl scraping de rigueur.

A New Sandwich

We spent Monday doing yard work so there was not time for elaborate preparations.  I was going in the direction of grilled cheese sandwiches while Alice was reading Bon Appetit, to which we are subscribed, thanks to the kindness of our friends The Poling-Millers.  Anyway, she suggested Monte Christos, which are essentially grilled ham and cheese sandwiches (aka Croque Monsieur) dipped in egg (like French toast) and fried in butter.  We didn’t have ham but we did have salami and some Sini Fulvi Montegrappa, a nutty tasting Italian cheese, which seemed like a promising combo.  We didn’t have any sliced bread strong enough to hold all this together so Alice went out to get some and came back with sourdough and two varieties of potato chips. 

Sandwich assembly couldn’t be simpler.  I put Dijon mustard on each slice, but you could add mayonnaise.  The BA recipe had you adding a quince spread, pushing the sandwich toward the sweet side of things, and I thought about using some apple compote, which would have done something similar.  Anyway, add your ham slices and cheese.  Meanwhile, scramble eggs in a pie dish or whatever you use to make French toast.   Hold the sandwich together and dredge it in the eggs.  Turn, and do the other side.  Be careful here to make sure your soaked bread doesn’t give way.  Transfer to a large skillet and fry in 1-2 T. butter.  The temperature needs to be low enough that the cheese has time to melt before the outside is cooked too much. 

We made a TV dinner out of the sandwiches, a garden salad, potato chips bottle of white Vacqueyras.  See photo (my barbeque chips not pictured).  There is a lot of salad on the menu right now.  The lettuce is getting restless and wants to bolt.

 

As I mentioned, I was outside most of the day but I did have some whole grains (polenta, wheat bran, and cracked wheat) soaking to add to Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Extraordinaire.  A few tablespoons of cooked rice also gets added when you make the dough.  Here is a picture.  The bread is very moist and so toasts slowly but it is extremely good.

Bread

You may feel like bread making is an art you can live without, but if you really like to know how good food is made from the bottom up, and/or like me you live in a town where the baking sector of the economy is underdeveloped, you might want to reconsider, especially with the abundance of good books on artisinal baking that are now available. Some of you know that I have been extremely interested in Peter Reinhart’s book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which if full of beautiful photos—and so looks like a coffee table book—but in fact is a great baking resource. The author has his own blog over at www.peterreinhart.typepad.com, and there is a lot of interesting material there. He has a new book on whole-grain baking that I have not worked with yet but if The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is any indication it will be worth having on your shelf.

Today I made what Reinhart calls pain à l’ancienne. It involves a slow overnight fermentation so I mixed up the dough last night using cold water (20 minutes), left it in the refrigerator for the night, took it out for a couple of hours this morning to wake up the yeast, and baked it around midday. I probably spent about an hour and a half shaping the loaves and baking them today, not counting the time the dough spent waking up unattended and the time I spent going out for camera batteries to take pictures. So for about two hours work I have six excellent baguettes.

I won’t go through the bread-making process right now, having just written a long post about pasta. Suffice to say that they are excellent baguettes and freeze well. I put them in Louise’s lunch bag straight out of the freezer and by midday they are perfect. Granted, they take some time to prepare (but not that much), but if you can build up a supply on the weekend you will have a greatly enhanced quality of life through the week.

I am planning a future post about pork belly, of which I have several pounds, thanks to Nature's Harmony Farm near Elberton, GA. Tim and Liz Young have a great operation dedicated to sustainable agriculture You can check out their farm blog at http://www.naturesharmonyfarm.com/grass-fed-meat-farm-blog/. Typically, we buy their products through Athens Locally Grown, one of the co-ops operating in the area. They, too, have a blog, available at http://athens.locallygrown.net/weblog.

Pasta

The sauce that I mentioned in the last post made it into Saturday’s dinner with fettuccine. We also had a salad from the head lettuce we are growing in the garden, fortified with farmer’s market arugula, in a vinaigrette of oregano, rosemary, and mustard. Of oregano and rosemary we have a virtually unlimited supply, since it grows very well on the slope of our front yard. In fact, if you know where we live you are welcome to come by and get some.

Since this is a post about fresh pasta, I should probably say something about tools. Here in the Athens kitchen (we are still waiting for Princeton to step up) there are not a lot of fancy gadgets. As you will see in random photographs, the stove has a pretty ordinary ceramic cooktop, the pots and pans are adequate but unremarkable, and the knife selection desultory. I do have a Kitchen Aid, though, which I use a lot for mixing dough. I also got the pasta-making attachments as a Christmas gift. They are just like those models that you bolt onto a table and crank, minus the bolting and cranking. You just open the secret panel on the front of the Kitchen Aid, slide on the roller/cutter, tighten the screw, and you are good to go. Unsurprisingly, this speeds up the making of fresh pasta incredibly. I make it once or twice a week now. In fact, I have stopped buying dried pasta at all. The only exception is that for her school lunch Louise likes to have dried bow-ties (cooked, of course) since they don’t get crushed as easily as fresh, egg-based noodles. At any rate, the pasta-making gear is expensive but greatly appreciated since the quality of the pasta is very high.

Recipes for fresh pasta are infinitely variable. I start with two cups all-purpose flour in the mixing bowl, add one and one-half teaspoons salt plus two eggs, and mix, adding water until you get a dough that will adhere. You have to determine this by hand since the pasta dough doesn’t come together in a ball like a bread dough does, so go easy on the water until you are sure. On the other hand make sure there is enough liquid so that you don’t end up with a crumbly mess.

If you want spinach pasta add chopped cooked spinach before you add any water. Squeeze out as much of the liquid as is practical. Some recipes don’t use eggs at all, substituting a tablespoon of olive oil and using hot water to make the dough easier to handle. Other recipes use additional eggs. You can also substitute semolina flour for part of the all-purpose, yielding a pasta with a different texture.

Once the dough will come together in the bowl, put it on a floured counter, knead it into a roll, then cut into about 6 pieces. If the dough feels sticky at all roll it in flour. Fire up the mixer now and start rolling the pasta at the thickest setting. You will have to roll it through multiple times, folding and re-folding, to get a piece of dough that is more or less uniform and beginning to take on that silky feeling that you are looking for. Repeat with the other pieces, letting the dough rest in between and making it unnecessary to constantly change the settings. When you have done all the pieces at the thickest level change the thickness setting and gradually work you way until you get the thickness you need. You will end up with long strips and nowhere particularly good to put them (see photo).

Let your sheets of pasta dry for a while, but not for too long because they will get brittle. At this point they can be used for lasagna noodles, or cut them with a knife (a pizza cutter also works) and pinch to get farfalle (see photo). Technique leaves something to be desired. No doubt you improve with practice. It is easy to do in principle but kind of a pain to keep the size consistent. So while I think everybody should give fresh pasta a try, the jury is still out on hand-shaping.

If you aren’t making lasagna or hundreds of dough sculptures, you can go on to cut noodles with your machine. If the sheets are still damp you may want to try dusting them with additional flour so the individual noodles don’t stick together. You also may want to cut the sheets into two or three pieces for easier handling. To cut, just feed the sheets through and catch them on the other end—you can put the mixer at full speed for this once you get used to the process. It really makes the job fast. Stray pieces of raw noodle will drop on the floor, inevitably, so you may want to secure the services of a pet to keep the floor clean. Put your cut noodles on a rack to dry, if you have one. I leave them on the counter well floured then just pick them up and shake to get rid of the extra flour before cooking.

Final point—cooking fresh pasta is like cooking dried pasta in that you don’t want to crowd the noodles. Use lots of water, heated to a full boil. Unlike dried pasta, however, fresh is done in 3-4 minutes (a little longer for thicker shapes, folded, or ravioli). Also remember that the pasta continues to cook after it leaves the pot. Choose to err, therefore, on the al dente side of things.

Friday's Menu

Yesterday’s menu was fried rice, a pretty easy dish, and a good way to use up the loose ends of things. The loose ends are good this time of year. We are starting to get early summer produce from the co-op, and so have squash, carrots, bok choy, and spring bulb onions. There was also flank steak left over from the steak-frites so I marinated thin strips that in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili-garlic paste. In the photo are the prep bowls.

The key thing about fried rice is to not to let everything get mucked up together too soon. If you prepare the following three things are prepared in advance, then add them to the dish at the end to warm, you will have fried rice that is both delicious and beautiful.

1. The steak pieces get their own treatment, so they aren’t overcooked.

2. The rice also needs to be chilled, or at least cool so that it is no longer sticky. This is easy if you have made extra rice and already have it in the fridge.

3. Eggs are scrambled separately so the egg doesn’t take on the color of the sauce.

Once those three things are prepped and stowed you can fry the onion, squash, carrot, boy choy and whatever else you are using in peanut oil. Sometimes I add fresh ginger and garlic at this point. Don’t overcook the vegetables at this stage! When you start adding the rice, the eggs, and the steak it will take several minutes for them to re-heat. Meanwhile, your vegetables will continue to cook, so if you fry them until they are soft you will end up with mushy vegetables by the time everything is heated.

Add the rice and whatever adjuncts you are using (except for the eggs) once the vegetables are cooked but not overcooked. Add 1-2 t. sesame oil, mixed with a couple 3T. soysauce and a large tablespoon of Hoisin sauce. When all of this is warmed, add the eggs and serve.

We also have been buying bags of tomatoes frozen from last year’s crop. I don’t know about the energy costs to keep these in storage for six months but they are good to have now a couple of months before tomatoes start coming in. The ones in the photo were destined for a ragu fortified with a pound each of local ground beef and pork sausage. I was waiting for them to thaw in the bowl so the skin could be removed before cooking. In the end I don’t know if that was necessary. I processed them raw in the blender before putting them in the pot, which probably would have eliminated the large skin pieces. The sauce cooked all evening to reduce the liquid from the tomatoes and the cup or so of red wine I added. The sausage, of course, is fatty so I skimmed the fat with a spoon before I put it up. I ended up with a good half-gallon of sauce. We will probably eat some tonight (stay tuned!) but most of it will be frozen in appropriate portions for later use.

Today's Menu

Steak-frites with a pan sauce of Calvados, spring onions, and chicken stock.  The thieving hand is Louise's.

We still had chicken stock left from the last chicken I roasted, using a very simple recipe from Thomas Keller of The French Laundry.  In fact, the simplicity of the process means that the bones are perfect for stock.  

I used flank steak, seared on both sides for 4 minutes, then finished in the oven at 350.  Since it's flank steak thin sliced as in the picture is probably the best.It is a good vehicle for the sauce that way, anyway. Make the sauce while the steak is resting.  The fries can hang out in the hot oven.  I put them in a metal bowl with layers of newspaper to absorb oil.  Make sure to salt them as they come out of the fryer.  I use a salad spinner to remove excess water from the potatoes before I put them in the fryer.  It is much less of a mess than drying them on a towel.

Today's Menu

1. Sauteed tilapia over mashed potatoes with a lime butter and jalapeno Sauce

2. Salad  from garden with an oregano vinaigrette.

Alice developed this dish a while back, maybe borrowing from Epicurous.  It is extremely quick and easy, and looks great on a plate.  If you got it at a restaurant you’d be pretty happy, I think.  We haven’t been so happy with the quality of the jalapenos we have been buying at the local grocery store, however.  Help is on the way, though.  We have them growing in the garden.  But until the crop comes in we are going to experiment by  adding some of diced habanero pepper (¼ of a pepper, or less).  They are extremely hot so a little goes a long way. 

You can use the rest of the habanero in a Black Bean Soup.  I seem to remember a good recipe for a Carribbean chili in The Joy of Cooking.  That recipe, too, uses a lot of lime juice

Wash your hands carefully after working with habaneros!  Even a little bit rubbed into your eye will burn like crazy.  You will have to turn the garden hose on it for relief.

The fish will kick up a lot of oil when you cook it, so it’s good if you have one of those splatter guards that fit over your frying pan.  Swimming goggles work fine, too, and can be cleaned with the same spray cleaner you use on the stovetop.

The following is pretty obvious but here is an important key to getting this all together.  You won’t fry the fish until the potatoes are hanging out in the oven, the sauce is made, the salad prepped, and the vinaigrette made.  As a result, when the fish is done, assembling plates is quick, maybe 30 seconds per.  This has an important implication:  the chairperson of the tasting panel needs to stop playing computer games now and wash her hands.  Otherwise, the fish is going to set on the plates and continue to cook until it has the consistency of wet cardboard.  The moral of the story, which I often forget to follow, is that when the fish goes on it’s time to give everybody a five-minute warning.  That will also give you time enough to dress the salad after the plates are ready to go out to the table.

I will post a picture later, together with the proportions for the sauce.

Welcome to the Menu!

This is the cooking log of the Platter family,  located in Athens, Georgia and Princeton, New Jersey. Daughter Clara (Princeton) suggested starting a family poetry blog, but we cook more than we write poetry.   Daughter Mary Louise (Athens) came up with the name. Our subject is what's for dinner in our widely-separated households, with dining reviews and food observations by our crack panel of testers/family members: Alice, Mary Louise, and Mike.  

This is a blog about family cooking.  We are neither professional nor aspiring chefs. Our primary audience is friends and family, basically people who eat our food at one time or another.  We would be happy to hear from others as well.  We read with alarm news reports about the relatively small number of families who cook and eat together nowadays.  There are lots of reasons for this phenomenon that we can't control:  school schedules, two-career families, etc. We would like to see the trend reversed, however, and will be happy if this blog can provide some small encouragement to cooks and their families everywhere.