Simple Gift

For the past couple years, my parents have sent the gift of cheese, from a store they like to visit in Pennsylvania. They know we have enough "stuff" and that gifts of food are always welcome. The variety of cheeses was delicious, including a salsa/jack that we put to a few good uses.

Tucked in with the cheeses was an unassuming packet of herbs and spices from Halladay's Harvest Barn in Vermont. It is labeled "Spicy Garlic Dill Dip and Cooking Blend," but dill is the first ingredient, followed by parsley, onion, garlic, and pepper. Pam made a nice dip for a holiday party, and plenty of the blend was left over in the 0.9 ounce packet, so she suggested I try making the glaze included among the recipes inside the label, because it is said to "pair well with fish."

At first, I envisioned dill with cod or haddock, but decided I would rather try it with salmon. I found a nice filet of king salmon at Kyler's Catch, which I started to grill -- skin side down -- on the cast-iron half plancha griddle in our Big Green Egg, which I had heated to about 350F.

I took some liberties with proportions, whisking together 1-2T each of the herb mix, lemon juice, honey, and olive oil. I brushed it on the fish after about 5 minutes (shown above, when the fish was cooked about halfway through). I let it cook about five more minutes and then rest for a few minutes more. This was as delicious as it was easy, and we will try it again -- we still have enough mix left to do so!

Although my parents bought this mix in Pennsylvania and it is available online, I look forward to visiting the company store, located about half an hour south of our favorite Vermont B&B. It is so close to the main route, in fact, that we must have passed by its front door more than once. I look forward to learning what other concoctions are on offer there.

Savory Side

Extending the Table --
Accessible global cooking

After I decided to make Texas/Maryland oven-fried chicken for dinner, I pulled our copy of Extending the Table from the shelf to look for a side. I soon found the perfect thing on page 145, amidst several options for making rice more interesting. I chose Mexican Rice, which is recommended specifically for serving with chicken.

The recipe calls for a "large heavy frypan" -- I need to try this in our other kitchen next time, using the biggest of our indispensable cast-iron skillets. Since I was in our weekend kitchen, I used a small stock pot instead.

I could tell that some things would need to move quickly once I started cooking, so I minced a small onion (actually half a large onion) and 7 cloves of garlic before starting. The recipe calls for 5 cloves, but my friend Joe has taught me to treat garlic quantities in recipes as minimum suggestions. I also cut a red and a green bell pepper into thin strips, and then cross-cut the strips in half. The recipe calls for two green bell peppers, but I never miss a chance to have a variety of pepper colors. Especially since Mexico is involved.

Once the vegetables were cut, I heated 2T of olive oil in the pan and then added one cup of dry rice. I stirred it constantly at med-high heat for 2 minutes and then added the onion and garlic, stirring for a couple more minutes before adding 1/2 cup of water and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I stirred this about 5 minutes more, until the water was absorbed.

I then added another 1 cup of water (slightly more because I did not quite believe this part), the sliced peppers, and 1 cup of frozen corn. I returned it to a boil (the recipe suggests adding the water -- or optional broth -- already boiling. Once it was boiling, I lowered it to the lowest simmer and covered it -- leaving it unstirred until all the water was absorbed, just under 20 minutes -- watch this carefully!

I then removed the pot from the heat and with a spatula spread one cup of sour cream over all the rice. I topped it with about 4 ounces of freshly shredded Vermont sharp cheese. I covered the pan again to let it melt and meld for another 10 minutes before serving along with the chicken. The result: delish!

This book was published nearly 20 years ago by the Mennonite Central Committee, and is very much in the vein of the better-known More With Less Cookbook. Both are filled with simple recipes. In the case of Extending the Table, the recipes are a great introduction to global cuisines and have been thoroughly tested.

Lagniappe

What do I mean by Texas/Maryland oven-fried chicken? Simply this: I decided that one need not choose between chili powder and Old Bay. I added generous doses of both -- along with black pepper -- to a small bowlful of flour and cornmeal. I whisked all of this together thoroughly. I then beat two eggs together with an overhand glug of Tabasco sauce and a little water.

I briefly dredged each piece of (free-range) chicken in the egg mixture and then the flour mixture and put it in a baking dishes in a 400F oven for 30 minutes before starting the rice. Once the rice was started, I checked on the chicken and decided it needed a bit of a brushing with oil. After about 75 minutes, it was spicy-crispy on the outside and moist-tender on the inside. Perfection!

New Zealand Sweet Potato Chowder

This one comes from The Daily Soup Cookbook which I don't believe we've blogged about, although it does appear that we used it at least once before, judging from the cracked spine and the crumbs on the page for New England Clam Chowder. However, this time I chose a Sweet Potato Chowder recipe. This was relatively simple and I made a few substitutions on the ingredient list. The recipe called for sweet potatoes (natch) and yams. I skipped the yams and put in some carrots instead because I already had some on hand. I also used frozen corn kernels rather than corn cut from the cob.

Otherwise I followed the recipe which called for caramelizing onions with a bit of sugar, adding a bay leaf, thyme, and salt and pepper, followed by vegetable stock, and the sweet potatoes, corn, and carrots. This simmered for 20 minutes. Then I added heavy cream and removed the bay leaf before I used my immersion blender to pureé part of the chowder.

I used my trusty 22-year old bread machine to make french bread to serve with this.

A filling and tasty meal for a December night. Also made for great leftovers.

Pasta with Sausage, Squash and Sage Brown Butter

The New York Times cooking page never leaves the cook with too much guessing as to what goes into a recipe. The ingredients not mentioned in the name of this dish include olive oil, salt and pepper, and Parmesan cheese. This one took a bit of work with peeling, seeding, and cubing the squash. It also created a lot of dishes to wash. We had a pan to cook the pasta, a colander to drain it, a cutting board, a plate to cool the sausage, our cast iron skillet, and the cheese grater. Not to mention the dishes we ate off of. It did turn out to be a wonderful autumnal meal with a lot of leftovers for lunch.

The full recipe can be found here.

Classic Grilled Cheese with a Twist

We knew it had been a while since we posted a new recipe, but we didn't realize how long! Seems we've gotten lax about finding a recipe, making a shopping list, enjoying (or not) a meal, and then writing about it. For this long overdue post I went to Grilled Cheese, Please in search of something easy, yet enticing.

In addition to shredded cheddar this sandwich has bacon,sliced tomato, and red onion. The onions were sliced and soaked in cold water while the bacon baked (we've recently taken to making bacon in the oven on a foil lined cookie sheet which makes clean up a lot easier). Once the bacon was done the sandwiches were assembled and then grilled on the stove top. The recipe called for sourdough bread, but I just used plain white bread since I had some leftover from the loaf I'd bought for a recent breakfast of french toast. The sandwiches were hearty and full of flavor and texture. We ate them with a side dish of mashed potatoes, and paired with Malbec.

Two easy corn and tomato salads for summer

Corn Salad with Tomatoes, Feta, and Mint
As is often the case with New York Times Cooking recipes, the name of the dish is the ingredient list. In this case, olive oil is the only additional ingredient, but as it turns out, I didn't use it anyway. I had saved the recipe a few days ago, but I couldn't open the recipe online last night when I made the salad so I wasn't able to determine if I was missing anything. And it was fine without the olive oil. I used cherry tomatoes, and fresh sweet corn from the local farmer's market, and mint from my garden. Everything was sweet and fresh.

Update: One perk I have at my job is that my office is next to a meeting room where food is often served. Any leftover food is fair game to take home (I keep Tupperware in my office for just this reason). The day after I made this salad I cut up a cooked chicken breast (procured from the meeting room) and mixed it with the leftover salad for a cool, summer main dish. Both the salad and the chicken's flavor were improved. 

Sweet Corn Salad
Also from the New York Times, this has some overlap with the previous recipe, but in fact has a few more ingredients. The corn, tomatoes, spring onions, and basil were all procured at the farmer's market. I skipped the marjoram. James and I both agreed that the red wine vinegar was overkill. The acidity from the tomatoes would have sufficed. Otherwise, another simple, sweet summer salad.

Loco Moco

We've had a bit of a hiatus on keeping up with trying new recipes, but mostly it's because we were having new experiences traveling in South America to see a total eclipse of the sun, and tasting wine.

But we're back now and ready to take on some new cooking challenges. James made cheeseburgers on Wednesday night, and we had about 1/2 pound of leftover ground beef so I went to the New York Times cooking page to find something new we could do with it. Loco Moco is a Hawaiian dish. I selected it because we already had much of what we needed. It was a bit tricky getting everything timed to be ready at the same time (burgers, fried eggs, rice, caramelized onion) and that was without actually making the gravy indicated in step four.

The result was good, and flavorful. I found that I liked it best when I had a taste of everything on my fork and I expect it would have been better with the gravy. Next time I will not skip that part.

BLT Pasta

This easy dish is just what it sounds like, and perhaps better than it deserves to be. When I asked Pam for suggestions about dinner, she found this NYT recipe in her saved list, and remembered that local bacon was in the freezer from a recent delivery.

The Hiram

The ingredients are few, and I did not worry too much about proportions. As I have seen with other recipes involving spinach, I rightly guessed that the entire 5-ounce bag of arugula would reduce to a reasonable size as it wilted, though writer Colu Henry was correct that it was a bit unwieldy at first, even in Hiram, our rather large indispensable cast-iron skillet. At that stage, rather than stirring in the traditional sense, I lifted large spoonfuls of the pasta from the perimeter of the pan and set it in the center, repeating until regular stirring was manageable.

The recipe also has few steps, but the third step reads like an entire tango. I simplified this a bit, adding the bacon all at once and the reserved pasta liquid as I saw fit. I did not note emulsification or glossiness, but nonetheless had a good sense of when the sauce was ready.

This dish scores very well on the delicious-nutritious-easy-cheap trade-off matrix. My selection of quality local ingredients made it slightly less cheap but still quite reasonable. This paired nicely with a side dish of fresh local strawberries and a well-chilled Pinot Grigio. We are looking forward to the cold leftovers today!

Dying phone battery made for a fuzzy photo of this pleasing dish.

Clovey Chicken

The name refers to the flavor of cloves, not our former dog Clover, the misunderstood Puerto Rican street hound. Yesterday I prepared ham sandwiches that Pam has made a couple of times. I was in charge of our picnic with friends at Westport Rivers Sunset Music, so the Exceptional Picnic Fare seemed appropriate. (They were a success: my friend Rob suggested I could open a sandwich shop when I retire! It would have this one sandwich and some very good coffees.)

Looking for something light and simple this afternoon that would use some of what was left over from the picnic, I noticed a small package of boneless, skinless (or nearly so) chicken thighs in the freezer. I thawed them carefully and then tossed them with a small amount of olive oil and coated them on both sides with freshly ground cloves.

I then heated a bit more olive oil in a small, indispensable cast-iron skillet and added the thighs once the pan was hot. I allowed them to brown until cooked almost through, and turned them, once browning on the other side.

I then added the super-simple sauce that had worked on the sandwiches: equal parts grainy mustard and peach preserves. I thought of using the cloves because they had worked well in combination with this sauce on the sandwiches yesterday.

I failed to test for doneness while on the stove, so I microwaved them for one minute further. They paired nicely with deli redskin potato salad and In the Buff Chardonnay from Newport, another local vineyard.

And now ...

... the moment you've all been waiting for: a photo of that other Clovey, who we adopted -- through a local shelter -- from the streets of San Juan, where she had spent her first year. She was fiercely loyal to all three of us, but rather unpleasant with most visitors, so few of our friends knew her.

Gumbo Season(ing)

(Way, way overdue post)

As readers of this space know, we often turn to The Wiccan Cookbook on cardinal and cross-quarter dates, and so it was on our most recent vernal equinox, now almost a full season behind us. Authors Jamie Wood and Tara Seefeldt include gumbo as an option, explaining that since fish come from eggs, any fish dish is a good vernal celebration.

That was as good a reason as any for me to undertake gumbo, a dish I have probably had a half-dozen times but which I could not define with any clarity. All I know is from my weak understanding of Professor Hank Williams, to wit:



I had no idea how to spell file or what it meant. (Like, Mexican mole, though, it is spelled like a completely unrelated English word and pronounced differently; sometimes it is spelled filé, but it is not pronounced that way either.) From the cookbook I discerned it was some kind of spice, perhaps even an important one. I tried three grocery stores without finding it, and bravely assumed I could substitute some other spice for it.

I eventually realised that it is made from sassafras, and that there is no substitute (according to the Internet, which usually yields abundant suggestions for such things).  Okra can be used instead, but that results in a different kind of gumbo; it is not a substitution in the usual sense.

The main ingredients are seafood, though, and the "first do no harm" rule of Maryland cooking suggests that Old Bay would be a safe bet.

So I proceeded accordingly. First, I made slow rice, which the authors insist is important. I put 2 cups of rice in 4 cups of water with a little olive oil and left it covered in the oven. I think I had it there for 90 minutes or so at about 325F. The authors suggest two hours, but do not specify a temperature.

I then made a roux in a skillet, warming olive oil and mixing in a little flour. I stirred it until it looked good to me, but never achieved the appearance of a copper penny described in the recipe. I was, however, careful to not let it burn, as admonished.

In another pan, I used another dollop of olive oil to sauté one large onion, two red bell peppers, and six stalks of celery -- all diced. Once softened, I added two 15-ounce cans of whole tomatoes, the better part of 8 cups of chicken broth, and a couple of bay leaves. I simmered this for 20 minutes. I then added about a pound each of fresh fish and shrimp. I simmered for about 10 more minutes, careful not to overcook the seafood. I stirred in the Old Bay, and we removed the bay leaves at table.

The result was better than it deserved to be, and I have already received plenty of gumbo file from Penzey's for next time.

Pepper-forward Pasta

When looking for a dinner idea yesterday, I went to the original intent of this blog -- making use of the unused pages in cookbooks we already own. I headed to our easy chair with The Well-Filled Tortilla and Jane Brody's Good Food Gourmet. Followers of this blog -- or those using the search box at the top of the screen -- will know that we have made very good use of both of these volumes (though most of our Jane Brody references are to her earlier Good Food volume.

Because I had made quesadillas (with cheese!) for lunch, I opened Brody's book first. Because I had recently purchased a few boxes of Rao's penne pasta, I looked at pasta entries in the index, rather than thumbing through the book at random. I quickly found Fusilli with Hot Sausage, and quickly decided that penne would be a very reasonable substitution -- especially since Brody grants "or similar pasta" in the ingredients list.

I followed the directions on page 224 pretty closely, except with regard to proportions. Having purchased a pound of hot italian sausage, I used it all for Brody's first step (my second; see below). I  removed the casings and crumbled the sausage as I cooked it over medium-high heat. I then put it into a bowl (it was lean, so no draining was required).

My step before Brody's first step was to roast the peppers. The recipe calls for a 6.5-ounce jar of roasted peppers. Since my adventures with Mexican mole sauces, I almost never purchase roasted peppers, preferring to cook them directly on the stove. In this case, I went a little overboard and roasted three large ones on the rarely-used oblong center burner. I had done this and placed the peppers in a sealed bowl for sweating while I worked the indispensable cast-iron skillet.

Roasting peppers, in progress. I let them get much
more charred than this.

At some point I heated a pot of water with a little oil and salt. I never rush a sauce, but it is good to have the water ready when it is time to cook the pasta.

While the peppers were sweating -- I added some olive oil to the pan, reduced the heat and slowly cooked one diced onion (I have no idea how its size compares to the called-for 1-1/3 cup) and two teaspoons of garlic.

Just kidding about that quantity of garlic:

My friend Joe has convinced me
never to measure garlic again.

After I scraped, seeded, and cored the peppers, I pureed them in a blender with a can of tomato paste (instead of 2 tablespoons) and a little olive oil. I often do this when substituting home-roasted peppers for those that are bottled in oil. At this point I started boiling the pasta.

Once the onions and garlic were softened, I returned the sausage to the skillet and added the puree along with a modest dousing of cayenne pepper and a small bag of frozen corn. Yes, frozen corn. Because Jane Brody said so. The sauce was to simmer for 10 minutes -- it was quite thick, so I added a little bit of Malbec. Never a bad idea.

Once the penne was al dente, I drained it and combined it in a bowl with the sauce and several finely-sliced scallions.

The result was more delicious than photogenic, which I expected. That is why I favored this space with in-progress photos, rather than the final dish. We will definitely be adding this to the repertoire!

Coq au Vin

An artistic look at our meal
photo credit James

During a recent Costco run James brought back some chicken thighs and I found just the thing to make with them in the W.I.N.O.S (Women in Need of Sanity) Cookbook which features recipes made with wine.

I halved the the recipe (below) as there were only two of us, and I used plain water in lieu of chicken broth, and used a fortified Pinot Noir instead of brandy, but otherwise followed it as directed. I frankly was worried that it wouldn't turn out well (despite the fact that it was made with wine) as it seemed I'd overcooked everything, but once I put it all together it wound up abundantly flavorful and with some lovely texture. We served it with rice on the side and paired with Malbec (the same wine I used to cook it).

Cod Almondine

When I mentioned that I would be stopping by our favorite fishmonger on the way home, Pam quickly found a NYT recipe for Fish with Toasted Almonds. Nigella Lawson recommends cod or "any other meaty white fish" but since I was headed to Kyler's, I knew I could find an excellent cut of the real deal.

Dining outside, with our fish-themed placemats!

The fillet I purchased was skinless, so the skin-up/skin-down question -- debated in the recipe comments section -- was moot. My only other departure from the recipe was to use our well-seasoned, indispensable cast-iron skillet instead of a non-stick pan. My only hesitation in using this pan for fish is that it can retain fishiness, but it is seasoned well enough that a quick scrubbing with salt (never detergent or soap) will leave it ready for the next dish. I did wait until the oil and butter were bubbling nicely before adding the fillet, so it cooked pretty quickly.

I prepared simple sides of petite peas and penne with a bit of cheese and parsley. The preparation of the fish was so fast that I should have gotten the pasta water boiling before I even toasted the almonds. The result was a delicious meal -- a bit expensive because top-quality cod is not cheap -- but very good on the nutritious-delicious-easy-cheap trade-off matrix. And in reality, it was not much more expensive than fast food.

I cannot buy cod at Kyler's without commenting on the boats tied up outside.
Federal marshals are leasing part of Kyler's pier to impound two ships belonging
to the notorious Carlos Rafael, the "Codfather" who cheated the entire industry
and the ocean itself over many years. While he sits in prison, the honest fishery
folks in New Bedford and beyond continue to recover from his frauds.

Avocado Fish

Looking for something interesting to prepare for dinner recently, Pam turned to Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook -- a slender volume that rarely disappoints and that is mentioned about a dozen times throughout this blog. She found Grilled Red Snapper with Avocado Sauce, which reminded us of several other avocado-related successes we have had with the book.

Knowing that our local fishmonger would be unlikely to have red snapper, I checked for substitutions ahead of time, and settled on monkfish as my fill-in fillet. I was encouraged when a fellow customer at the fish counter spontaneously offered his praise of this particular fish.

The recipe calls for cold-marinating the fish in white wine for at least an hour, then brushing it with butter and grilling for 4-5 minutes per side. I was preparing this meal at Cloverfield (Bridgewater), where I do not usually prepare seafood since it is so far from the ocean and where more importantly, I no longer have a grill! The Big Green Egg I'm always going on about is at Whaling House (Fairhaven), almost within sight of the ocean.

All of which is to say that I did something that is often successful when a recipe calls for something to be grilled: I cooked it in butter over fairly high heat in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, seasoning it with paprika. I then removed the fish to a warm plate and followed the rest of the recipe, starting with the sauteeing of onions in the residual butter. I then whisked in flour and salt. Once the oniony roux was complete, I stirred in sour cream, horseradish, and diced avocado.

Before the sauce

I know ... this sounds weird. Avocado does not belong in gravy. But Hopkins and Lockridge have led us to the enjoyment of stranger-sounding concoctions than this, so we plated this with optimism, and paired it with the same white wine I had used for the marinade. (Sorry, Dear Readers, I forgot to take note of the variety.)

After the sauce. At least the lighting was nice.

The result: certainly better than it looks, but not as good as I had hoped. It seems there are a few reasons. I am terrible at buying avocados, and this one was a bit too firm. And it really seems likely that avocados do not belong in this sort of gravy. Grilling might really have brought out better flavor in the fish.

Lagniappe

Foolishly, I did not read the recipe introduction until after I had prepared the meal. Ironically, it makes the case for skipping the sauce entirely:

"This recipe can be prepared with other types of fish, but for my sake [not sure which author this is], please use red snapper. Red snapper takes me back to a beach in Puerto Escondido, an untouristy, beautiful stretch of sand, rocks, and waves on the Pacific side of southern Mexico. Sun-burned and tired, we stumbled onto this open-air restaurant on the quieter end of the beach. Each of us ordered the snapper -- it was prepared simply, just a whole fish grilled with lemon and cilantro. We were living a postcard that night with the palm trees and hammocks swaying around us, and the salty air brushing against our lips. All to say, you may borrow this memory as garnish for your grilled red snapper with avocado sauce."

Birrrrthday Cake

A couple of rules about Casa Hayes-Boh birthdays:

1. The celebration starts early, with Attainment Day. Careful readers of this space will notice a few recipes that I prepared for May 26 celebrations in recent years. 
2. The honoree gets whatever kind of cake they want, providing either a category or a recipe for someone else in the household to make. Pam made my favorite "Stirring Up" Mocha cake to celebrate my birthday earlier this month, for example.
3. We have blanket permission to pronounce "birrrrthday present" like Sméagol/Gollum much more than would otherwise be acceptable.

All of which is to say that Pam requested that I prepare a sprinkle-festooned Rainbow Sprinkle Cake, courtesy of New York Times Cooking.

Photo: Romulo Yanes for The New York Times.
 Food Stylist: Vivian Lui.

To make the cake, I followed Julia Moskin's instructions carefully, with two small exceptions: I did not try to cut any convexities off the cake layers, though I did put the bottom layer on its plate with the dome side down. Also, I did not measure the vanilla -- I add it in dollops, which is why my frosting was more tan than white.

The result was a somewhat dense but delicious cake. It was colorful enough to draw compliments from our birthday guests. Lacking a food stylist, however, it was not quite as photogenic as the cake featured in the Times. 

I wish I had read some of the comments online before I began; had I done so, I might have heeded the advice of one reader who suggested making only half the called-for frosting. I had enough left over to frost at least one more cake!

And now only one question remains: what, if any, is the difference between frosting and icing?

Posibilidades Pinoleras

(Nicaraguan Possibilities)

Gallo pinto photo by
Aryana Azari

Careful readers of this blog know that its original intention -- and a goal we still pursue to some degree -- was to reduce the number of untried (indeed, unread) recipes filling the pages of our modest collection of cookbooks. Like most people who have cookbooks, many of ours had seen only one dish make it from the page to the table. With some favorites this might have happened a dozen times, perhaps with smudges of sauce adorning a single page of an otherwise pristine cookbook. So, this blog pushes us back to the shelves and into those unturned pages.

But this Matador Network blog post does just the opposite. In 10 traditional Nicaraguan foods the world should know about, photojournalist Aryana Azari draws us toward dishes for which the dozens of cookbooks on our shelves offer no guidance at all. Neither, in fact, does this post provide any actual guidance, as our posts linking to various online recipe sources do.

Rather, this post advises us of 10 dishes we should try when visiting Nicaragua, without providing recipes. I have tried only a few of these, including the ubiquitous gallo pinto and nacatamales prepared as a group activity. I have had indio viejo a few times at restaurants and have no idea how it is made. Most of the rest of these are variations I have not seen or dishes that might be very localized, because they do not look at all familiar. I am relieved, I must admit, to have avoided the tripe soup, though I have enjoyed some other soups that feature root vegetables that were not familiar to me before my Nicaragua travels, such as malanga.

Since recipes are not included, an ideal use of this article would be to carry it on a future visit to Nicaragua, to use as a sort of checklist. Completing the list would reward a traveler with opportunities to find places and people otherwise not encountered, as some of these dishes are quite localized.

For me, the flavor of this post is bittersweet -- sweet with the memories of friends, places, and foods -- but bitter for the separation resulting from the violence of its regime, about which I have written in detail on my main blog at #sosnicaragua.

Pinolillo / Pinolero 

Among the photos used in the Matador Network article is one from a user named pinolero. (Another is from a user named nicaraguitas, the significance of which is explained in my #sosnicaragua post.) Pinolero is a way of describing a person as very Nicaraguan. An awkward equivalent in the U.S. might be "apple-pie American" but I cannot think of anything more precisely parallel.

During our 2016 visit, my friend Doña Petrona -- who always hosts a few of my students and a big meal for my whole group -- provided us with a lesson in making this national drink.

All of the ingredients are grown locally and ground together.
Historically, this would be done on a stone metate,
in a process that adds mineral nutrients.

From grains of corn, nibs of cacao (chocolate), and some
spices emerge a powder that is stirred into hot water
for pinolillo.

Honorary pinolero, stirring the pot.

Painted Rooster

Gallo pinto -- the dish whose photo above I swiped from Azari for this post -- is not something a traveler will have to seek out. If you are in Nicaragua, it will find you. At virtually every meal -- breakfast, lunch, diner -- it will be available. Her photo includes two fruits of note: Bananas or plantains are served with most meals, and in a lunch buffet they will be offered in a few ways. Among the most common is madura, meaning ripe and baked. Also on the plate is an avocado, a fruit that grows quite comfortably alongside coffee.

I have written about the unusual name of gallo pinto -- which has a Rhode Island connection -- on my main blog at painted rooster. I mention a recipe that is on our cookbook shelves but that I apparently have never prepared, in part because I usually have plenty each January. Since I am now at my point of maximum separation from Nicaragua -- 16 months and counting -- I will make this soon, probably for breakfast.

French Onion Sandwich?

From the New York Times recipe pages comes the sandwich version of one of our favorite soups: French Onion. We met in French class, but that is probably not why we like it so much. Could be the cheesy salty sweetness of it. And although we make a lot of complicated soups, our go-to in this category is the frozen blocks from Trader Joe's that transform magically into a layered soup in the oven.

Pam mentioned this recipe when we noticed the Gruyère I had purchased at the very same store --- a cheese introduced to us years ago by the lovely couple from whom we rented our first home in Bridgewater. Since Trader Joe's is a schlepp from here, they would ask us to pick up a package whenever they knew we were headed there.

The recipe is quite simple; it requires a bit of patience but no complicated technique. I sliced a few onions as thinly as I could, and cooked them on medium-high heat, covered for a few minutes. The key was then to lower the heat, uncover, and cook for 20-25 minutes more. For the first half of this, an occasional stir was needed. For the last several minutes, more frequent stirring and steady lowering of the heat was helpful. The result was a darkening, sweetening, and roughly 50 percent reduction in the onions:

Notice I used our enamel pan with a silicone spatula. I would normally use our indispensable cast-iron skillet for this kind of thing, but as he onions got jammier, I was glad to have these tools, to get every smidgeon out and not leave a mess.

I then shredded the cheese -- more than the 4 ounces suggested, as I always do -- and mixed it in a bowl with the caramelized onion. The result was not pretty, so I was pleasantly surprised when my photo of the final result turned out better than the photo posted by NYT on the recipe page. The golden-hour setting sun at our beach house was responsible for that, I think.

Lagniappe

It was a Gruyère purchase that got us into this meal, but right before I started, I noticed that I had only seen Gruyère at TJs, but that I had picked up some fancy cheddar instead. This will be a good excuse to make these again soon. I will also have mustard in some form for dipping, as both the recipe and one of my friends suggest. So it will be EVEN MORE BETTER.

Salmon Provençal

Lucky Day -- my
fishmonger
ticket showed
my birthday
#Maythe4thbewithyou

As we have started spending most weekends (and the occasional weekday evening) at our Fairhaven house near maritime New Bedford -- where we even have a favorite fishmonger -- it is rare for us to eat seafood at our landlocked home in Bridgewater. It is even rarer that we would buy seafood here, so far (almost 20 miles) from the ocean. (This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but increasingly true.)

Every once in a while, though, circumstances lead to me bringing some seafood to Bridgewater, and when I suggested that I might do so today, Pam looked up a couple of NY Times salmon recipes she had saved. When she read the ingredients list to me, I decided to try Provençal Salmon With Fennel, Rosemary and Orange Zest. The recipe's title is essentially its shopping list, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Provence. 

Fennel, rosemary, orange zest

I followed the recipe rather carefully, including asking the expert at Kyler's Catch to skin the salmon fillet I had chosen. I do not bother with this step when grilling, but since the recipe called for it, I did so, and I learned previously that the combination of super-sharp knife and years of experience means that the job is done quickly and efficiently in the shop.

For the two of us, I used a single, one-pound fillet. I did not divide it until the very end, when I tested it for doneness. Whenever I divide a fillet, by the way, I do so crosswise so that we both end up with the same curve from thick to thin.

I preheated the oven to 400F and then combined the titular flavorings in a small bowl after grinding and mincing them myself. The combined aroma was so beautiful that I paused to take the bowl to Pam so she could appreciate a wafting before the cooking began.

Ready for a hot pan

I lightly applied salt and pepper to both sides of the fillet, and then pressed the spice mixture into one side, being careful to cover it. I then heated our indispensable cast-iron skillet and added oil and butter, heating a bit further. I could have let the pan get just a bit hotter, but it was sizzling decently when I put the fillet in -- orange-spice side down. I carefully flipped it after just over a minute, and a nice crust had indeed formed.

The recipe calls for a non-stick skillet, but seasoned cast-iron is preferable to the Teflon-style coatings, especially since this goes into the oven once the bottom has been seared and the fillet turned once. I kept this in the oven for 6 minutes before dividing it to check doneness. It was perfect after a total of 8 minutes.

Sizzling, crusty side up

The result: even though this was quick and easy, it was among the best salmon dish we have made, and we have made a lot of salmon dishes. This paired beautifully with mashed potatoes (which I prepared using a technique Pam recently posted), an orange (from whence I had garnered the zest), and Malbec. 

Lagniappe

I don't know how I failed to include a map in the original post! Provence is the southeast coast of France, nestled against the Mediterranean and Italy.

Khachapuri-Georgian Cheese Bread

Two years ago we had a Geology student from Georgia (the country) stay with us for a semester. Luka also came back last spring and stayed again for a few weeks. We shared some good times and he introduced us to Churchkhela (aka Georgian "Snickers" bars). I immediately thought of him when I saw this story from Gastro Obscura about Khacahpuri. I sent him the link to the story and asked how to make it, and he replied with this link . That was over a year ago, and on Friday I finally made this tasty dish for dinner. I started on Thursday night by making the dough in our 21-year old bread machine.

The recipe indicated that the dough could be made ahead of time and refrigerated. Once I was ready to use it, I broke it into fourths and rolled each quarter out and then shaped into a "boat"with points on each end. I filled each with a mix of shredded Fontina and Parmesan cheese and baked at 450 for 15 minutes on our baking stone - I eschewed the parchment lined baking pan called for in the recipe. This made for an especially crispy crust. The bread was then taken out of the oven and I used a spoon to make an indentation into the middle of each in order to crack eggs into them, then baked again until the eggs were cooked. You can see from the photos below that two of the "boats" ended up with double-yolk eggs.

Bread with cheese after initial baking

The double yolks were just a bit of luck. Each boat had only one egg cracked into it.

Prêt à manger!

As the recipe indicated, I left the whites a bit runny and mixed them together with the cheeses before eating. These were really filling. James and I each ate two (one each single yolk, and one each double yolk). We would easily have been satisfied with one, but it didn't seem as if these would keep very well for leftovers, so they were eaten all in one sitting.

Bloggers and their muse
Luka Adikashvili, May 2017

James adds: Delicious indeed, and filling, as Pam wrote. A late breakfast the next day was strongly indicated.

Berry Berry Basil

Pam has made Basil Blackberry Crumble a few times before, because she likes berries and loves basil. Even though Barbara Kingsolver and her family include it as a summer dish in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I decided I should make it for St. Patrick's Day, to complement the shepherd's pie she would be making. I got lazy, though, and did not make it until the following day.

Doing this out of season meant that I settled for doing a half-recipe (and honestly a bit less than half), since blackberries in this season are not bounteous or inexpensive. So I used a pie pan (Pam's suggestion) instead of a casserole, but otherwise followed the instructions above. For the balsamic, I used a pomegranate-infused balsamic from our friends at L.O.V.E. in Frederick, Maryland.

I got it all ready before Pam made the next evening's dinner, and then cooked it while we ate.

The result was delicious and would indeed have paired well with the shepherd's pie. It was equally delicious with a cool glass of milk after a dinner of BLTs and Malbec.

St. Patrick's Day Shepherd's Pie

We are low-key celebrators of St. Patrick's Day. I (Pam) have some Irish heritage on my father's side, so we wear green, and admonish everyone to do the same. (Everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day!) We also eat an appropriate meal, generally one featuring potatoes. This year's repast was Shepherd's Pie made with a recipe from the New York Times Cooking Page. 

I started by peeling, cubing and boiling 3 large potatoes. While they cooked I peeled and diced 2 carrots, one onion, and 4 garlic cloves, and shredded a cup of cheddar cheese. 

When the potatoes were ready to mash I drained the water and put them back in the pot, and let them sit while I melted 6 tablespoons of butter and cooked with 1/2 cup of milk in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. Then I added the butter/milk mixture to the potatoes and mashed together, and then stirred in the shredded cheddar, along with a bit of salt and pepper. A taste test told me that this is a method I should use in the future for preparing mashed potatoes. They were way tastier than usual. The potatoes then waited while I prepared the rest of the dish.

The cast iron skillet was put back to work to sauteé the onions, garlic, and carrots in 2 tablespoons of butter. Once the onions were translucent I added a pound of ground beef and cooked until it was no longer pink. At this point the recipe calls for a can of tomato paste. I used some left over tomato sauce instead. It also calls for some beef stock, which I totally missed. So even though I saw it on the list of ingredients and had James buy some, it never made it into the dish. Finally, I added some rosemary leaves and thyme before spreading the mixture evenly across the skillet. This was topped with the mashed potatoes, and again spread evenly. The skillet then was placed in a 375 degree oven for about 25 minutes, at which point the potatoes were a lovely golden brown. I let the dish sit for 12 minutes before serving. This was divine. Wonderfully tasty, with a lot of texture. It made for lovely leftovers the next day as well.

Cabbage with Apples, Onions, and Caraway

This one comes from the New York Times Cooking Page, and was selected because I had some leftover cabbage from the cole slaw James made last week, and an apple that needed to be eaten soon, or be composted. Fortunately I already had the other ingredients (onions, celery and caraway) on hand. The recipe also called for sprinkling sliced scallions on top before serving, but that would have required a trip to the grocery store, so I skipped that part.

I started by cutting the 1/2 head of cabbage into strips and cooking in boiling salted water for less than one minute. This was drained and rinsed in cold water.

Next I sliced the apple and onion and cooked with salt and pepper in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. Once they were browned I added the celery and caraway seeds. All of this was placed into a casserole dish with the cabbage and cooked at 400 for 10 minutes.

It made a fine side dish to accompany a family-favorite, comfort-food, hamburger-helper type meal.

I wouldn't go out of my way to prepare it again, but it was an excellent way to use up produce that otherwise would have gone bad.

My First Turnovers

James recently discovered a Greek grocery store and picked up a tub of feta cheese and then suggested that I find a recipe with which to use it. Deborah Madison to the rescue! The first thing in the ingredient list is Galette Dough, and refers the cook to p. 696. The recipe for the dough was quite simple with ingredients of 2 cups flour; 1/2 t salt;  2 t. sugar, and a bit of water. Once the dough was combined it was placed in the refrigerator while I prepared the filling (goat cheese, feta, scallions, dill, thyme, and pepper.

After preparing the filling I divided the dough into four more or less equal size pieces and rolled each into a small circle and placed 1/4 of the filling into each and pinched the edges closed.

Each turnover was brushed with a bit of beaten egg, and sprinkled liberally with sesame seeds. Then baked at 375 for 35 minutes.

Yum!

Chili Verde

Southwestern Cooking 1992, no author
Assembled by committee
This cover reminds me that I
sure miss saguaros!

On a very cold afternoon last week, I decided it would be a good day for an "original intent" recipe for this blog. That is, I would take take an actual cookbook from one of our shelves (we have a few shelf-fulls by now) and find something we had not prepared before.

Many of the recipes in this book are for dishes we have already prepared, either from similar recipes or from our own experiments born of seven years living in the Southwest.

I selected Chili Verde because it uses pork -- an ingredient we do not use very often -- and because it seemed perfect for fending off the cold winds of late January.

I began by cutting two pounds of lean pork shoulder into 1-inch cubes, and browning them in oil. I did this in two rounds to take advantage of our indispensable cast-iron skillet, transferring the browned pork to a deeper pot for the rest of the cooking.

I then added mild and hot peppers (seeded and chopped -- I use a variety of colors), cooking a few minutes to soften, and then scallions, and minced garlic. 

I then added cumin, coriander, and oregano -- if you are measuring these, you're not doing it right -- a can of chickpeas, and 3 cups of low-sodium chicken stock. (Beer or water are offered as alternatives). I cooked this for an hour (60-90 minutes recommended, but I had not started the recipe early enough to keep it lingering) and then added 2t corn starch dissolved in a small bowl of water, cooking for a few minutes further as a thickener.

The result was a thinner soup than any chili I have had, but it was delicious -- I credit the herbs. I chopped an avocado in 1/2-inch dice, tossed it with lime juice, and we used this to top each bowl. Avocado is notoriously quick to discolor, but the lime juice and a tight glass jar allowed us to keep half the avocado for leftovers the next day. Pam made delicious skillet cornbread for the second round.

This is a delicious, nutritious, easy, and cheap meal we will try again. 

Green Chicken

Regular readers will know that The Well-Filled Tortilla is a well-worn cookbook in Casa Hayes-Boh.  This volume by Victoria Wise and Susanna Hoffman is one of the first cookbooks we purchased, at a wonderful independent book store in Tucson over 20 years ago.

The contents are as varied as the taco genre itself. Some recipes -- such as one featuring squid and olives -- are never likely to emerge from our kitchen, but this book remains one that allows us to carry out the original mission of this blog: using the many unused pages of cookbooks that were already on our shelves.

Noticing that I had both a bit of spare time and a few tortillas available, I thumbed through this familiar volume and found a title I had not read carefully before: Red or Green Chicken.

¿Qué?

It turns out, the colors do not refer to the chicken, nor to nautical channel markings. Rather, the authors refer to salsa options within the recipe. I chose green, in the form of a commercial tomatillo salsa, because a decent homemade salsa verde is way out of season around here.

This was a fairly simple, if messy, recipe. I opted for working with boneless, skinless chicken, which I simply boiled until cooked through and then shredded. (To shred chicken Mexican-restaurant style, simpy place it in a bowl and tear at it with two ordinary forks until it is course or fine strands.) Meanwhile, I chopped a couple of onions and cooked them -- in our indispensable cast-iron skillet -- in olive oil with plenty of oregano and a little salt until soft and translucent. I then mixed in the shredded chicken thoroughly over low heat.

I then rolled about 1/3 cup of this mix into each tortilla. I followed the recipe's instruction to soften teach tortilla with a little oil on the griddle first. This made rolling them up rather more messy than need be, and a little painful. In future I'll revert to one of two other methods we use for softening tortillas: microwaving for 30 seconds while loosely wrapped in a paper towel or heating for a few seconds on a hot but dry griddle.

In any case, I placed the rolled-up tortillas (now known as enchiladas) into a baking pan. Six of them fit nicely. I then covered with a cup of the aforementioned salsa verde, followed by a generous cup (maybe close to two) of shredded cheese. I used (Monterrey) pepper jack with a little sharp cheddar, both from our favorite farmer-owned cheese company.  I baked at 350F for 12 minutes.

The result: mildly piquant, slightly complex, creamy, filling, and delicious. Not photogenic, but delicious. We will definitely be making this again!

Chipotle Chicken Improv

Many thanks to our friend Fernanda for inventing this dish and posting it online. Pam's response as soon as she saw a photo of Fernanda's invention was "James, we're making this!" Fortunately, we had all of the ingredients on hand, except a butternut squash. Here is how I proceeded, modifying our friend's recipe only slightly.

I began by hacking apart a large butternut squash -- I think we're a bit out of season, so it was harder than I remember in the past -- and cubing it. I then sauteed onion and garlic in some olive oil until translucent and added the squash. I continued on medium-high heat until all was fairly soft.

Meanwhile, I cut a package of Free Bird chicken breasts into big chunks, 3 or 4 per piece. I browned these in a large pan, adding a little salt and a half a package of chipotle rub from the inimitable Salem Spice.

At this point, the whole house was already smelling delicious! I poured the vegetables into the pan with the chicken and added about 2 cups of low-sodium, free-range chicken broth. I covered and simmered for about 15 minutes, and then continued simmering uncovered until the broth had reduced. The result was not as photogenic as what Fernanda had posted, but it was delicious, more like a stew, perhaps because I had gone farther in softening the squash.

We garnished with cilantro and enjoyed this, paired with tap water (we had Malbecked for lunch) and found it to be delicious! The sauce was more like a gravy, though it had no flour in it. We will definitely be repeating Pollo la Fernanda!

Lagniappe

Fernanda's more visually appealing original version, ready for a cookbook cover.

Bourbon Turkey Bourbon

After a weekend of somewhat adventurous cooking, I decided to try something simple for Monday evening. A green bell pepper in the fridge got me started on a plan, along with Bourbon Street Style marinated turkey tips that I had added to our weekly dairy delivery.

The first step in this non-recipe recipe was to start thawing the turkey tips as soon as they arrived. About an hour before dinner, I put the tips -- with their brine -- into a small bowl. The print was too fine on the ingredients label for me to be certain, but the brine has little if anything to do with actual bourbon. Fortunately, this is Casa Hayes-Boh, so I reached into the Gilligan (our kitchen island cum liquor cabinet) and grabbed the bourbon I had picked up at Stroudwater Distillery last summer. I poured this over the turkey and brine, and topped it off with a few tablespoons of (Saint) Newman's Own honey barbeque sauce.

Not a green bell pepper.
Photo credit: this very blog!

Once the enhanced marinade had been underway for about a half hour, I started to heat a pan of water for pasta and then started to fire-roast that pepper. (See my Busy Kitchen post for details.)

While the pepper was sweating, I heated olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet and chopped an onion. I sliced up the pepper and added it to the onion, simmering (med-high) until the onions were translucent.

Meanwhile, I put penne in the boiling water and shredded some parmesan.

I then used tongs to remove the turkey tips from the marinade and added them to the hot pan. Some of the "tips" were about double the size of others, so I cut them in half right in the pan. I continued cooking until browned, adding a bit more of that honey barbecue near the end.

The pasta was al dente just as the turkey was cooked through and the sauce slightly reduced. The result was a very nice sweet-and-sour entree that paired well (as we often notice) with Malbec.

It tasted far better than it photographed.