Scaring up a meal

Every home cook has faced this problem before.

It's Sunday, you're too lazy to go shopping, you need a tasty but simple meal that you need to scare up before the evening is over but the larder is bare (or as bare as the CC's larder ever gets.)

What was at hand?

5 tomatoes (from the farmer's market.)
onions and garlic (staples at the CC's.)
the usual arsenal of dried ingredients and spices
the usual arsenal of frozen stock, and pastes in the freezer.
a quarter-chunk of parmigiano-reggiano (a miracle!)

All this inevitably pointed towards pasta, and out came Marcella Hazan. Jump to the section on tomato sauces, a little poking around, and what do you find?

Tomato Sauce with Porcini Mushrooms

A slight modification was made (no pancetta) but it was relatively insignificant.

Ingredients

1 small onion (finely diced)
1 tbsp olive oil
5 large tomatoes (skins removed, passed through food mill.)
1 oz dried porcini mushrooms (+ filtered water from mushrooms)
salt
black pepper
freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Reconstitute the mushrooms.

Fry the onions (or shallots) till it becomes a pale gold. Add the tomatoes, the mushrooms, the strained liquid from the mushrooms, salt, and several grindings of pepper. Adjust heat so that the sauce bubbles at a gentle but steady simmer. Cook in the pan for 40 minutes (yes! this is correct) till the fat and the tomato separate. Skim.

Toss in the pasta, and serve with freshy grated parmigiano-reggiano.

Note: This sauce is surprisingly "rich" (not in the traditional high-fat sense.) It could easily pass as a meat sauce even though it's totally vegetarian.

Marcella Hazan has been beatified, while Julia Child can cry herself to sleep on the bookshelf!

Kitchen Instruments

On my vacation, the CC was asked if he was a "gadget freak" by the sister of the mother of the wife of this dear friend of mine.

"Absolutely not!", cried the CC in alarm, at the risk of being classified along with the Williams-Sonoma freaks!

"In that case," she retorted, "tell me what kitchen instruments you find indispensable."

So the CC hied himself on a mental walk around his kitchen (we were greedily gorging some lamb (cooked deliciously rare) laced with rosemary, and spanakopita on their familial farmhouse at the time.)

Blender, and food-processor

Big duh there!

Coffee grinder

The CC actually uses it to grind fresh spices (both roasted, and unroasted.) Even Indians don't understand good Indian cooking until you have it made with freshly ground spices. (If the CC had to pick just one instrument, this would win hands down!)

Pressure Cooker

Everything from beans to conch!

Juicer

The CC never knew how much he would miss it until he had one. Juice of forty limes? Not a problem!

Food mill

Ditto! Where have you been all my life?

Cheese plane grater

You don't understand until you own one. Trust the CC on this one.

Mortar and pestle

The CC is "old school". Some things cannot be improved upon.

Sure the CC would miss the stones in the oven, and the pizza peel, or the steamers, and the zesters but they are not indispensable. The above constitute "basic necessity", at least in the eyes of the CC.

So, gentle readers, are there things you find indispensable?

Lobster

So the CC has never much cared for lobsters. However, the recent vacation to Maine has changed all that.

Fresh lobster is as delicious as they say. The CC has OD'ed on both lobsters, and lobster rolls, and is eagerly looking forward to his next Maine vacation.

The CC is delighted to learn that some things are distinctly geography-laden, and that even New York's proximity to Maine can change the potential of an edible that much.

Which brings the grand total of things that the CC does not care for down to one : brussel sprouts. However, on the vacation, the CC gathered a crackling new recipe for it, and is raring to try it out. Here's hoping...

Corn Salsa

So the CC is invited to the birthday party of some friends, and was charged with making a bunch of salsas for the occasion.

Over the years, this corn salsa (yes, I'm using the term loosely) has been one of the biggest hits at the CC's parties.

Truth be told, the CC doesn't even remember where he got this recipe.

Ingredients

8-10 cobs of fresh corn (or 2 packages frozen)
6 sun-dried tomatoes (reconstituted with hot water, and then diced)
2-3 chipotles en adobo (diced)

Recipe

Place the corn on a baking sheet, and roast it in the oven at 300F for roughly an hour. Check towards the end, otherwise the corn might get burnt.

Mix the three things together, and add a bit of the sun-dried tomato water.

That's it! The simplicity belies the brilliance of flavors. Only problem? The dried corn sticks to your teeth. Heheheheh.

Vacation

The CC will be taking a much needed vacation, initially to go visit the wedding of a very close friend in Massachussetts.

Also featured on this trip will be culinary adventures of the seafood kind up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

I promise interesting posts about the trip when I return.

Clam Pizza

Ever since spending his waking hours in Connecticut, the CC finds himself addicted to clam pizza?

"Where have you been all my life?"

Is the CC turning into an East-coaster? (Apologies to all of you on the wrong coast!)

Comments, please!

Penne with Garlic

This is literally one of the simplest dishes the CC knows, and is the ultimate "comfort food".

The CC is a garlic fiend so garlic haters need not apply!

Ingredients

penne

8-12 cloves garlic minced (per person)
parmigianio-reggiano
black pepper

Recipe

Bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add the penne, and cook till al dente.

In a separate pan, fry the garlic in olive oil till pale golden (don't burn it otherwise it will turn bitter.) Toss in the pasta, and stir for 5 seconds.

Dump it on a plate, and shave fresh parmigiano over it. Add freshly cracked black pepper too. (The CC adds very finely minced parsley if he has it.)

Enjoy!

The Universality of Human Taste : A Contest

Is there a culture that doesn't have the combination of fried dough, and sweet stuff?

We can argue about the details, but it seems to me that the above combination is pretty much as universal as it gets!

We have the Italian-American zeppole (fried dough with powdered sugar), the Spanish churros (fried dough with "just-about-you-name-it" sweet stuff), the North-Indian gulab jamun (fried wheat dough dunked in sugar syrup); the list is endless...

Donuts are similar (they use cake dough though.)

Now, the CC is not exactly a sugar fiend, but the CC is organizing a contest.

Add to the above list, and win a prize! (You can't just use a regional term, and win it; it must be original.)

Every participant that offers up an original entry to the modest list above will be given a "no-holds barred dinner chez le CC".

You know you want it!

Tomato Paste : The Pictorial Version

After passing through the food mill

Hour 2

Hour 3

Hour 4.5

Hour 6

The final product

Even though it may not be immediately obvious, the stuff darkens considerably starting from a pale orange to a deep dark brownish-red.

Cookbooks

Recently, a friend of mine sent me an email:

I realized the other day that I have all these fancy schmanzy cookbooks, but for anything basic I always resort to the net, which bugs me, because I prefer to have a giant, ingredient-stained tome on the table behind me when I cook, rather than an ingredient-stained laptop.

What's your favorite basic cookbook?

She also called the CC useless, but the CC refuses to succumb to bitterness.

I'm going to give a non-answer in a Zen sort of way.

I don't have a favorite basic cookbook. There, I've said it!

The CC's shelves are lined with regional cookbooks. Everything from Afghani to Haitian cooking is included. There are regional cookbooks from just about every region of India, and translations of books from the 17th century to the present.

So the CC is really unable to recommend a specific cookbook.

I don't like The Joy of Cooking (too bland!) I do like Julia Child but only when I'm in the mood to be a perfectionist. I prefer Patricia Wells if I just want to put together a quick French bistro-style meal.

So what is the CC good for?

What the CC can do is to recommend a basic cookbook for any given cuisine. For Italian, I'd pick Marcella Hazan, for Mexican, Diana Kennedy, for Greek, Diane Kochilas, and so on and so forth.

How's that for a non-answer?

Tomato Paste

Homemade tomato paste is simply one of those finer pleasures of life. The CC hates to act all rhapsodic but give this a whirl. You'll thank me in February!

When the CC fries the tomato paste in winter, the entire house smells of tomatoes!

The CC prefers to use heirloom tomatoes (preferably federle.)

Photos of the process will be posted in a separate post.

Ingredients

12 lbs ripe summer tomatoes (quartered)
olive oil
salt

Recipe

The recipe is absurdly simple but takes a long time. You don't really have to do anything but you gotta stick around since you don't want your house to burn down.

Fry some olive oil in a pot. Toss in the tomatoes, and let them melt (covered) on a low heat for roughly 30 mins or so. Take a food mill, and pass the stuff through the finest sieve.

Put the strained stuff in a pot, and let it simmer on extremely low heat. This will probably take more than 6 hours or so, and no! you can't hurry the process.

You will have to skim it every hour or so. The oil will separate out rather cleanly because of the extremely low heat. (You can even just sop it up with a paper towel!)

By the end, the tomato paste will be very syrupy (caramelization is taking place,) and it will be a deep dark red.

Toss in quite a bit of salt. You need this to preserve it. You can tone down the salt in the recipe that uses the tomato paste later.

This stuff freezes beautifully, and should last a year.

Risotto

Risotto minus a dusting of parmigiano-reggiano is a travesty. I speak from experience.

Weep, New York restaraunts, and weep, all you New York lovers, this is a fucking travesty.

You may as well live in fucking Idaho!

Mussels with garlic

This is such an easy recipe, but unbelievably good. Try it on some Friday night when you're too tired to cook, but still want a good meal.

Ingredients

3 shallots cut into rounds
10-12 cloves of garlic, cut into thin rounds (or more!)
mussels
clams
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley

salt
lots of black pepper

bottle of dry white
crusty bread

Recipe

Fry the shallots in olive oil till they are light golden, fry the garlic. Add lots of black pepper, and some salt (not too much, the clams will exude some too.) Toss in the mussels, and clams, 1/2 cup of the wine, and 1/2 cup of water.

Steam the mussels till they open (no more than 5-6 minutes.) Take it off the heat (important: or else the mussels and clams will shrink.) Stir in the parsley, and serve with bread. There should be a lot of liquid to sop your bread with (and it's fucking delicious!)

If you like, you can pull the mussels, and clams with tongs, reduce the broth a bit, and then stir in the parsley, and pour it over the mussels.

Dry wine, crusty bread, mussels with garlic. This is the life!

Fava Bean Risotto

OK, we've been through the risotto stuff on this blog before so let's keep this short and simple.

Everyone should know the trick of a making a good risotto. Broth, on a low simmer in a different vessel. Keep adding to rice at periodic intervals, and stir.

Ingredients

2 lbs fresh fava beans (peeled, cooked, and 3/4-th of them pureed, keep the rest.)
6 shallots (finely diced)
4 cloves garlic (finely diced)

4 cups arborio, or vialone nano
5-6 cups vegetable broth (homemade, but use commercial, you wimps!)

salt (depending on broth)
pepper (a tad)

freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
freshly grated black pepper

Recipe

Fry the shallots, and garlic soffrito. Add the rice, and fry for at least a minute or two, till each grain is covered in oil. Add the broth a ladleful at a time, and keep stirring. Add the fava bean puree towards the beginning, and the whole fava beans towards the end.

Serve while hot, with freshly grated Parm, and black pepper to taste.

Pappa al Pomodoro

This is a poor man's recipe that went upscale, and over many years this is the most requested recipe chez the CC.

The CC came across it in a bizarre manner.

Many years ago, the CC was in Firenze on a conference, and we went to a restaurant appropriately titled "The Mad Cook".

Now, this was a family space, and the chef was the seater, order-taker, and waiter.

In deciding the "specials of the day", given that he spoke limited English, he called this "tomato soup".

On ordering it, the CC had furious scorn heaped upon him by his friends -- "You come to Italy, and order tomato soup, etc."

The soup arrived. It was unreal. Everyone wanted a part of the action, and the CC allowed them all a meagre taste, and left them to their pathetic appetizers while he enjoyed a wondrous soup.

Two evenings later, the CC strolled by the restaurant to ask the chef about the recipe. The CC knows barely some Italian (Romance-language related), and the chef barely spoke English but somehow I convinced him that I was no rival chef, that I was a student, and "No, I will not open a restaurant with your recipe."

These are important things in Italy.

Ingredients

1 large red onion (coarsely diced)
lots of garlic cloves (chopped into largish pieces)
1 stalk celery
8 tomatoes (diced)
3 tbsp tomato paste (homemade, but use commercial, you wimps!)

basil leaves (two piles -- one loosely torn, one chiffonaded)
stale bread (cut into largish rounds)
olive oil.

Recipe

Fry the onion and garlic till light golden. Toss in the celery. Fry briefly. Toss in the broth, tomatoes, salt and pepper (to taste), tomato paste. Simmer on extreme low heat till the tomatoes concentrate. This should also sweeten the mixture. Add two cups of broth/water, and bring to a slow rolling boil.

Turn off the heat, add the bread, and mix it all up. Make sure the broth covers all of it. Let it sit for a while.

Add the torn basil just before reheating.

When serving, serve with the chiffonaded basil, and fresh cracked pepper.

Confessional

It's Sunday, and even though I'm not Catholic, it's time to 'fess up on stuff I hate.

Father, forgive me for I have sinned against the temple of cooking by hating:

• Plucking cilantro leaves (or similar.) In fact, it always puts me in a crappy mood to the point where my friends volunteer to do it rather than have me bitch and moan.
  
• Peeling the skin off the garlic.
  
• Mincing garlic (ok! I hate it but it's gotta be done 'cause the end product matters, and the CC is a perfectionist.)
  
• Taking the skin off the goddamn' fava beans.
  

I used to hate my life until I bought a juicer. Now, I can juice 40 lemons (yep! 40), and not hate it.

Fresh Fava Beans

If you haven't ever eaten them, or cooked them, consider suicide as an alternative, given that you seem to be leading a mere simulacrum of a life eating crapola!

They are easy to cook but time-consuming.

Pod them, drop them in boiling water for 5-8 minutes, dunk them in cold water, and take off the papery outside shell.

A bit of work, but not that much if you drink a fine glass of wine, and listen to some music while doing it.

Vegetable Broth

Most people don't seem to realize how easy broths are to make. They take time and effort, but the commercial crap is so fucking awful that the CC wants to cry over the death of the culinary arts.

Normally, the CC's freezer is chock-full of broths, but I didn't have an appropriate broth for tomorrow's meal.

So it was off to the local farmers' market to get fresh veggies in pissing rain.

Everyone has a favorite broth recipe so you should take what's below as "generic", and feel free to muck with it.

The only caveat that I want to add is that mushroom-based broths have a unique character so be sure that's what you want before you head there.

I wanted a light summer broth, and wanted a mild citrusy flavor so I added lemon-grass (but you don't have to.)

Ingredients

1 red onion (chopped into large pieces)
3 carrots (with fronds, chopped coarsely)
1 zucchini (chopped into large rounds)
3 leeks (cut into large rounds)
3 stalks of celery (coarsley chopped)
1 potato (cut into chunks)

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
3 bay leaves

Recipe

Fry the onion, and the leeks until they are translucent. Add the celery, and fry for a minute or two. Add the fennel, peppercorns, and bay leaves and fry for a minute.

Now add the rest of the veggies, and fry them for at least 5-7 minutes. (I will explain the science behind this in a later post.)

Add cold water to the brim of the pot (it is crucial that the water be cold!)

Now the hard part, let the mixture come to a slow boil. As it does, the fat will come to the surface.

Skim, baby, skim

Let it simmer (uncovered) on a very slow heat for the better part of two hours. Keep skimming. (Yes, this is painful.)

Take a cheese-cloth, and separate the broth from the crap. (Toss out the crap!)

If you plan to freeze it, add salt to it. Don't worry about the fact that it is concentrated, you can always dilute it later.

A Grand Meal

Well, a grand meal is being prepared at the CC's place for a cousin (of sorts) whom I haven't seen in ages.

The requirements are vegetarian ("trivial! you call that a challenge?") and kid-friendly ("there's a challenge") but also grand ("now, I double-dare you!")

Watch this space. I will be blogging as I prepare the various items from scratch.

Persistence Pays : A Black Bean Soup story

In times past, the CC lived in another city, and within that city there was a Jamaican restaurant. They made a killer black bean soup.

Now, this being one of those happy, clappy neighborhoods, they made it vegetarian (tradionally, they would've used some ham.)

Oh, how we loved that soup!

So, a friend and I went there three days in a row trying to discover the secret of this soup. Finally, one of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed waiters noticed, and asked us what was up. So we told him, and he ran into the kitchen. He ran back (being all of 18, and not yet quite jaded) and told us the "important part", and the rest we just kinda figured out ourselves.

Patience is required since this requires some planning.

Ingredients

4 cups dried black beans
1 red onion (finely diced)
2 tomatoes (finely diced)
4 cloves garlic (finely minced)

1/2 scotch bonnet (yep! 1/2, diced)

2 tbsp fresh rosemary (finely chopped)
1 tsp cumin
3 bay leaves
1/2 tsp ground cloves
black pepper (lots)
cilantro (finely minced)

cooking sherry (sweet)

Pre-preparation

Soak the beans in water overnight. Next morning, rinse them, and then soak them in cooking sherry for at least 8 hours. Before cooking, separate the beans from the sherry, but keep the sherry.

Recipe

Fry the onion, and the garlic. Toss in the tomatoes, beans, water to cover, and the spices, and a good fraction of the sherry (depending on how sweet you want it to taste.) Cook for about an hour or more till the beans are cooked through.

Throw in the scotch-bonnets towards the end otherwise it'll make the soup too hot.

The cilantro is for sprinkling right before serving.