Ravioli with prosciutto, sun-dried tomatoes, basil and mozzarella

Pasta-making fun with Molly and Josue! Both pasta dough and filling recipes are from Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef.

Everyday Quick Basic Pasta Recipe
(serves 4)
1 lb. bread flour (3½ to 4 cups)
5 fresh, large eggs
semolina flour for dusting

Mixer recipe: use the dough hook. Add the flour to the eggs and mix at a medium speed for about 3 minutes or until it forms a firm dough. Take it out of the mixer and finish kneading by hand for about a minute or until smooth, silky and elastic. Wrap in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the refrigerator for 60 minutes.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide into 4 balls. Re-cover 3 balls and work with one at a time. Flatten the ball of dough slightly with the palm of your hand and run through the pasta machine on the thickest setting. Fold the two ends into the middle and run through on the thickest setting 3 or 4 times. Lightly dust both sides with flour, and run it through on a thinner setting, repeating until the sheets are 1-1.5 mm thick.

For ravioli, you want sheets of pasta that are 3-4 inches wide, and should work in small batches, keeping extra sheets covered with a damp cloth. Lay out pasta on a generously dusted surface and place a good heaped teaspoon of filling in the middle of the sheet at one end. Repeat this all the way along the pasta, spacing 2 inches apart. Then, using a clean pastry brush and some water, lightly but evenly brush the pasta. Lay another similar-sized sheet of pasta on top of the first.

With your thumb or the base of your palm, gently pat the pasta down on the long side farthest away from you. Starting from one side, with the side of your hand, push the pasta down at one end, then slowly curl your fingers and your palm around the filling, eventually cupping and gently pushing down on the other side of the filling. Repeat along the length, making sure it hasn't stuck to the work surface. Then trim and cut the ravioli into shape with a knife or cutter. They can be cooked right away, usually for about 3-4 minutes in salted, gently boiling water. Or you can store it uncooked in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours on a tray generously dusted with semolina.

Prosciutto, Sun-dried Tomatoes, Basil and Mozzarella Ravioli Filling
(serves 4)
1 handful of finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 good handful of fresh basil, torn
12 sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 7 oz. balls buffalo mozzarella cheese, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
10 good slices of prosciutto, fat trimmed
olive oil
extra basil and shaved parmesan to serve

Put the Parmesan, basil, sun-dried tomatoes and mozzarella in a bowl, stir together, and season to taste. Cut the slices of prosciutto in half. Place 1 heaped teaspoon of the filling at one end of the piece of prosciutto, then fold in the sides and roll up so that the filling is enclosed. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients--you should have about 20 small balls. Fill the ravioli and cook in gently boiling salted water for about 3-4 minutes, until tender. Drain carefully. Serve sprinkled with olive oil, black pepper, freshly-shaved Parmesan and torn basil.

We made 2 recipes of pasta, one with all bread flour and one half semolina. We used slightly more than 1 recipe for the ravioli, and cut the rest by hand into pappardelle and dried for later.

Dad's Famous Brownies

So when I was a little kid, my Mom worked nights and my Dad took care of us evenings, feeding us and getting us into bed. Possibly because we inherited my Mom's sweet tooth, possibly because he began to get into cooking and baking at that time, possibly just to buy good behavior on the part of his children, my Dad started making brownies from scratch and modified the recipe from whatever cookbook it originally came from. They became famous. In fact, I'm sure I'm always very well behaved whenever I eat them.

I got the recipe from him at some point and modified it a bit more, mostly when I lived in Germany and was using slightly different ingredients. I started making them for kayaking trips and was once threatened to be left behind if I ever showed up for a trip without them. Yeah, I made a lot of brownies in Germany. Now, I may be gilding the memory but I swear they were absolutely no-fail excellent then. I don't know what's happened, but I can't seem to get them right since I've been back in the States. What's wrong?! Susan, I am counting on you here. Molly and I made them last night and they were so ridiculously runny in the middle, I had to bake them a lot longer. Should I adjust time or temperature? I am using a glass pan here and wonder if that could be it, but for the life of me I don't remember what I made them in in Germany. argh. Don't get me wrong, they're still terribly yummy, but I have a serious consistency issue. No, not that kind, they are very consistently....runny in the middle when the edges are done.

14 T. butter
2 c. sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1¼ c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
generous ¾ c. cocoa powder (don't measure, just scoop away with a ¼ cup measure, and the more rounded it is the deeper the chocolate)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, and grease a pan (13x9 if you want cakier, 9x9 if you want fudgier...maybe I was using 13x9 in Germany?!).

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly, then stir in the sugar. When you're sure it's cool enough, stir in the eggs and vanilla, mixing thorougly. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, then beat into butter mixture well. Spread in pan. Bake 30 minutes or until brownies start to pull away from sides of pan...but do not overbake or they get tough once they've set.

Yeah, I know, this is not a recipe for the faint of heart. But Susan, you'd really be sacrificing for the team if you had to bake these a couple of times and play with them in the interest of helping the recipe.

Cod with Coconut, Lime, and Lemongrass Curry Sauce

Modified from this epicurious recipe.

Sauce
2 shallots, peeled and cut into large chunks
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 lemongrass stalk, sliced into rounds
1-inch knob ginger, peeled and cut into chunks
1 tablespoon butter
3 kaffir lime leaves
1 tablespoon red or green curry paste
3 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup fresh coconut milk, or canned
4 cilantro sprigs
Fine sea salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

4 7-ounce cod fillets, 1 1/2-inches thick
salt and freshly ground pepper

Place the shallots, garlic, lemongrass and ginger in a small chopper, and chop until minced together. Heat the butter in a skillet, and add the chopped ingredients. Put in the lime leaves and curry paste, and saute until the chopped ingredients are tender and colorless, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock, bring to a boil, and adjust the heat to simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Add the coconut milk and cilantro, simmering for 5 more minutes. Remove from heat, season to taste with salt and pepper, and remove the lime leaves. Return to a chopper or blender and puree, then set aside.

Heat several tablespoons of oil in a skillet, and rinse the fish and salt and pepper on both sides. Saute the fish on the first side until golden brown and crusted, then flip and finish the fish on the other side until cooked properly. Serve over rice, with sauce poured on top; they also suggest bok choy sauteed in butter on the side. Enough for 4.

Fragrant Rice Noodles with Vegetables

Modified from a recipe in The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home.

Sauce:
3 T. fresh lime juice
zest of one lime
¾ c. peanut butter
2 tsp. brown sugar
¾ c. stock (vegetable, chicken, whatever)
1 T. fish sauce
½ tsp. salt
3 garlic cloves, minced
rooster (red chili) sauce to taste

6 oz. rice noodles (¼-inch wide)

2 leeks, well rinsed
2 small zucchini
2 small yellow squash
3 T. vegetable oil
¼ c. water

In a covered pot, bring 1½ quarts water to a boil. While the water heats, put all sauce ingredients except for the rooster sauce in a blender and puree until smooth. Gradually add rooster sauce to taste; adjust with lime juice, pb, brown sugar, or fish sauce as necessary to balance flavors.

When the water boils, add the noodles and cook for 3-5 minutes or until just tender. Drain, rinse briefly under cool water, drain again, and set aside.

Cut the leeks, zucchini, and squash into julienne sticks 2 to 3 inches long and ½ to ¼ inch wide. Heat the oil in a wok, and stir-fry the leek sticks on medium-high for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the zucchini and squash and stire fry for about 3 to 4 minutes, until the vegetables are just tender, adding a little water if necessary to prevent scorching. Add the noodles and about half of the sauce, and toss well until heated through. Serve immediately, with extra sauce on the side.

Linzer Heart cookies

from The Silver Palate cookbook (only modified slightly). Must be made every Valentine's day, along with whatever raw meat pink wheat flour cookies Monika chooses.

¾ pound butter, softened
1¾ c. confectioner's sugar, divided
1 egg
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
1 c. cornstarch
2 c. grated almonds
½ c. red raspberry preserves

Cream butter and 1 c. of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix well. Sift together flour and cornstarch; add to creamed mixture and blend well. Mix in almonds thoroughly. Gather dough into a ball, wrap in wax paper, and chill for 4 to 6 hours.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Roll dough out to ¼-inch thickness between sheets of parchment paper. Using heart-shaped cookie cutters, cut out cookies, leaving ¼-inch space between each one. Peel the excess dough from around them, and re-wrap and refrigerate or freeze to be rolled out again in a few minutes. Slide cookies, still on parchment, onto a baking sheet. Bake cookies for 10-15 minutes, or until evenly and very lightly browned. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

Spread the bottom halves of the cookies lightly with raspberry preserves, and top each one with a remaining cookie. (This is especially nice if your cookie lids have inner heart-shaped holes in the middle for the preserves to show through.) Place confectioner's sugar in a sifter and dust cookie tops with it.

Who me, fixated on all things Linzer?

Pork tenderloin

Pork and dried fruit is a nice combination.  We like this recipe, but it is a fair bit of work with both the compote and a cream sauce.  Tonight I made a simpler roast pork tenderloin with fruit compote, and it was good.  The only thing against it was that we could only find one of those pre-brined tenderloins at the store, and it was too salty and had an overtone of artificial flavor.  Fresh pork tenderloins are much better (and you're not paying for the 30% brine by weight!).

Scheherazade Casserole

From the original Moosewood Cookbook.

¾ cup raw soybeans, soaked in lots of water for at least 4 hours (or canned, drained and rinsed)
1 c. raw bulghur, soaked 15 minutes in 1 c. boiling water
2 medium bell peppers, chopped (they say green, I use red or yellow)
4 medium-sized fresh tomatoes, chopped
1½ c. chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, crushed
¼ c. freshly-chopped parsley
3 T. tomato paste
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. basil
salt, pepper, tobasco to taste
1½ c. crubled feta

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Place soaked soybeans in the blender with 1½ cups water (could cut down by ¼ cup or so). Puree. Combine pureed soybeans and soaked bulghur.

Saute the onions and garlic in a little olive oil, lightly salted. When soft, add peppers and saute 5 more minutes. Combine all ingredients except feta. Place in a large buttered casserole; sprinkle feta on top. Bake one hour at 375 degrees, covered for the first 45 minutes and uncovered for the last 15.

Szechwan-style eggplant

Tried this from Gourmet, via epicurious, and liked it.

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• a 1 1/4-pound eggplant, peeled if desired and cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 6 cups)
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh gingerroot
• 2 to 3 teaspoons Szechwan chili paste*, or to taste
• 1 teaspoon hoisin sauce*
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar* or white-wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dry Sherry
• 3 scallions, sliced thin
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1 red bell pepper, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon Oriental sesame oil, or to taste

In a wok or large skillet heat the vegetable oil over high heat until it is hot but not smoking and in it stir-fry the eggplant over moderately high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, or until it is tender and browned. Transfer the eggplant with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain.

In a small bowl dissolve the cornstarch in the broth. To the wok add the garlic, the gingerroot, the chili paste, the hoisin sauce, the vinegar, and the Sherry and stir-fry the mixture for 30 seconds. Add the scallions and stir-fry the mixture for 30 seconds. Add the soy sauce, the brown sugar, the cornstarch mixture, stirred, the bell pepper, and the eggplant and stir-fry the mixture for 1 minute, or until the eggplant has absorbed most of the liquid. Remove the wok from the heat, add the sesame oil and salt and pepper to taste, and toss the mixture well. The eggplant mixture may be made 1 day in advance and kept covered and chilled.

They suggest serving it with pita wedges, but I just made it as a side with lemongrass chicken and rice.

Bagna cauda

Bagna cauda has been on my radar screen since it was in the New York Times a few months ago.  I hadn't gotten around to making it, but then I saw a recipe in Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food.  It's more olive oil than butter, compared with Craig Claiborn's recipe which was two parts butter to one part oil.  I made a half recipe, which was a lot for two of us.  I'm sure that the buttery version would be good too, but I liked the olive oil-dominated recipe.  It wasn't too fishy from the anchovies, but they give it a nice savory umami flavor.

Broccoli with Bagna Cauda

6 tbl. butter
1 cup olive oil
8 cloves garlic,minced
12 anchovy fillets, rinsed and dried
1 lb. broccoli

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.  Add the garlic and cook over a gentle heat for 2-3 minutes.  It must not brown and turn bitter.  Add the anchovies, which will virtually dissolve with a bit of stirring.  Pour in the olive oil slowly, stirring all the time.  Simmer, not boil, for 10 minutes.  Blanche the broccoli in boiling water for a couple of minutes; keep it crisp.  Serve the sauce hot. in a bowl, stirring it up  with the drained sprigs of broccoli each time you dip them in.  Soak up the remaining sauce with hunks of bread.

Pizza Crust

Pizza is something I've always wanted to be better at.  Over the past year or so I think I've improved quite a bit.  I like Chicago style pizza as well, but this one is a nice crisp thin crust.  The most important thing is to have a good pizza stone, and also helpful is to have a peel that you can use to slide your raw pizza onto the stone.  The other secret is, I think, to knead the dough long enough to really be elastic.  The recipe I use is based on Alton Brown's, but as is often the case with his recipes, you do have to be careful.  The one that's easiest to find online has way too much sugar and salt.  There are two errors in the recipe from I'm Just Here for More Food, which I've corrected in my version below.  The flour in the book's recipe was off by a factor of two, and it called for a children's aspirin instead of vitamin C (I skip it completely).

Pizza Dough

1¼ cups warm water
2½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. sugar
4 cups (454 g) flour
2½ tsp. yeast

Mix the ingredients in a stand mixer with dough hook, then knead on 4 (out of 10) for 5 minutes.  Work the dough into a ball, put in a bowl lightly greased with olive oil, cover with a towel and put it in a warm place, until it doubles in size, about 1 hour.

Divide the dough in half, then work one half into a pizza crust, them place on a pizza peel dusted with cornmeal or semolina.  (The other half can be refrigerated for a few days or frozen if you don't need both.)  Top and slide onto a preheated pizza stone in a 550° F oven.  Keep an eye on it, it should be done in 5-6 minutes.

My biggest remaining problem is that the cheese starts to burn before the crust is completely done.  What I've done the last couple times is take it out and turn the oven off when the cheese gets done, then after having the first piece, if it could use a little more time, slide the rest back on the pizza stone for a few minutes.  That tends to get more cheese & sauce on the pizza stone than usual, making it harder to clean.  Next time I think I'll try 500° F for slightly longer.

Chicken with Orange and Black Olives

This is a really nice sauce for chicken.  We made it with chicken thighs and served it with bulgar, as suggested in the original.

Chicken with Orange and Black Olives

2 tbl. olive oil
4 tbl. butter
2 whole chicken legs
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp. dried thyme
12 black olives, pitted
1 orange, cut in half then thinly sliced
1 tbl. chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Heat the oil and half the butter in a shallow pan. Brown the chicken peices until golden brown on both sides, then add the stock. Stir in the thyme, olives and orange slices. Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Check chicken is cooked—when pierced with the point of a knife the juices should run clear—then remove the meat to a warm serving plate.  Taste the sauce, add parsley, and season with pepper and very carefully, if at all, with salt. Turn up the heat and reduce the liquid by bubbling down to cup, then whisk in the remaining butter.  The sauce will be shiny and slightly thickened when it is ready.  Plate the chicken pieces and pour over the sauce.  Serve with a starchy accessory such as wide noodles or potatoes.

Nigel Slater, Real Fast Food

Lemon-Ricotta Hotcakes

Shelley and Russ made the best pancakes I think I've ever tasted this morning!  They made Lemon-Ricotta Hotcakes from Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis.  I think we haven't had enough variety in our pancake making, we'll definitely have to add this to our repertoire.

Cooking with Julia

My most-used Christmas present so far is a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which is popular this year because of the movie Julie & Julia.  I can't believe we didn't have a copy for this long.

We started out with a cheese souffle, and then a béarnaise sauce for roast beef, with individual vanilla soufflés with chocolate crème anglaise for dessert.  Last night was our most ambitious project, making homard aux aromates (lobster steamed in wine with herb sauce) for 10.  The sauce was excellent, and not overpowering for the lobsters (also good on mashed potatoes).  I also liked splitting the lobster before serving, it makes it a lot easier to eat at the table, although there is still some claw cracking to do.

We've been through a lot of eggs and butter already.  I don't have any ambition to make every recipe in the book like some other blogs, but I'm looking forward to trying more out.

Roast turkey

There are many ways to roast a turkey.  I'm sure there are a number of ways to get good results.  There are also many different kinds of turkey, which react differently to different methods.  We had a 19.3 lb. fresh turkey from Ashley Farms.  I was reading up before Thanksgiving on the recipes I'd used before, and other advice on the web.  There are a number of decisions to make: to stuff or not to stuff?  To baste or not to baste?  To truss or not to truss?  Cover it with cheesecloth?  High temperature or low temperature, or high and then low?  Some recipes may be suitable for an injected supermarket turkey but not a natural bird.

The main methods I considered were from the Joy of Cooking (1975 edition), which has you put the bird into a 450°F oven and immediately turn it down to 350°; Barbara Kafka's high temperature recipe which has it at 500° F the entire time; and Alton Brown's brined roast turkey which starts at 500° for 30 minutes before being reduced to 350°.  The other common method, to keep it at 325° the entire cooking time, is also mentioned in the Joy of Cooking, where it is said to be foolproof and "has been rumored to entail much less shrinkage", but that the flavor is superior when starting with high heat.

I decided to go with 450°F for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350°, unstuffed and untrussed.  The Joy of Cooking says 13-15 minutes per pound, but since I would keep the oven hot a bit longer and was aiming for a lower temperature (the USDA recommendation is now 165°F interior temperature, it used to be 180°F), I was ready for it to be a bit shorter than that.  I wasn't prepared for how fast it went.

Since I had just acquired a remote temperature probe, I recorded the internal temperature at irregular intervals throughout the cooking.  It turned out to have been done in just over 2 hours, about 6½ minutes per pound!  I then had to keep it warm for a couple hours and warm it up before serving.  It was very good, though, tender and juicy with a nice skin.

This is not something I do often enough to do systematic experiments, but here is the time series data for this trial:

Cranberry Chutney with Tart Green Apple

Getting ready for Thanksgiving, and thinking about recipes.  This is an old favorite we've used since the mid-90s.  I don't have the original source, but it's likely that I got it from The Boston Globe.

Cranberry Chutney with Tart Green Apple

Makes 1 quart.

¾ lb. cranberries, fresh
1½ lb. peeled, cored, chopped tart green apples
¼ cup chopped onions
2 tsp. minced ginger
½ cup cider vinegar
1 cup granulated white sugar
¼ tsp. salt
⅛ tsp. cayenne pepper powder
1½ cup sliced celery

Combine all ingredients but the celery in a 3-quart pot.  Over high heat, bring the mixture to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, until mixture is thick (15 to 20 minutes).  Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.  Add the celery and cook 5 more minutes.

Serve while still warm.

Keeps several weeks in the refrigerator.

Poppy seed muffins

As Alton Brown would say, these aren't really muffins, they're cupcakes.  But they're good.  It's a very runny batter, like a cake batter instead of muffin batter.  I didn't realize what a huge recipe I was making until I was already too far along to back out, so I made a dozen muffins and two small loaves.  The glaze is nice, but so sweet that I wish I had backed off on the sugar in the muffins themselves.

Poppy Seed Muffins

3 eggs
2½ cups white sugar
1⅛ cups vegetable oil
1½ cups milk
1½ teaspoons salt
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ tablespoons poppy seeds
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons almond extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup white sugar
¼ cup orange juice [I used lemon juice]
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
2 teaspoons butter, melted

1. Beat together the eggs, 2½ cups white sugar and vegetable oil. Add in milk, salt, baking powder, poppy seeds, vanilla, almond flavoring, and flour. Mix well.
2. Bake in paper lined muffin cups (filled ¾ full or 3 small greased loaf pans) at 350° F (175° C) for 15-20 minutes for muffins and 50-60 minutes for loaves. The tops should be browned and a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.
3. Remove muffins as soon as you can while still warm/hot and dunk tops into glaze. Turn right side up and cool on a cookie rack. With loaves just pour the glaze evenly over the three loaves while still in pans. Let cool to a warm temp. and remove from pans. Yes, it is a little messy but it is really good.
4. To Make Glaze: In a saucepan over low heat, combine ¾ cup sugar, orange juice, ½ teaspoon vanilla, ½ teaspoon almond flavoring and 2 teaspoons melted butter. Warm in pan until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over loaf pans or dunk muffin tops into glaze when cooled to room temperature. (Omit the glaze altogether if you don't like the mess.) 

Allrecipes.com

Final week

This is our final batch of farm vegetables for the year.  Right now, that's OK with me as far as arugula, radicchio and radishes go, and we have enough sweet potatoes to last a while, but we will miss the rest of it until next spring.

• Arugula
• Beets
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• 12 sweet potatoes (only 6¼ lbs., less than half last week)
• Radicchio
• Rutabaga
• Scallions
• Turnips

A metric ton of sweet potatoes

OK, only 6.13 kg (13½ lbs.)  There was a whole extra bag of 19 sweet potatoes outside the box this week.  Luckily, they keep.

• Arugula
• Beets
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Kohlrabi
• Leeks
• Lettuce
• Radicchio
• Sweet potatoes    
• Rutabaga
• Spinach

Daikon and carrot pickles

Using a recipe from the NY Times and a recipe from Epicurious, I made some daikon and carrot pickles tonight. Very simple and good. The daikon is still a little bitter, but the sugar and salt helps cut that.

2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2 inch matchsticks
2 medium daikons, peeled and cut into 2 inch matchsticks
½ cup rice vinegar
2 tsp. + ¼ cup sugar
1 tsp. salt

Sprinkle the vegetables with salt and 2 tsp. sugar.  Let sit for 10 minutes, then drain, rinse, and drain again.  Dissolve the ¼ cup sugar in the rice vinegar, and pour over vegetables.  It's good right away, better after it sits for a while.

The Pickle Guys

I had no idea there was a pickle district in Manhattan!  A story on NPR tonight about The Pickle Guys made me want to go there sometime soon.

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