Fancy Comfort Food - Chicken with "a tangle" of noodles

One-Pot Creamy Chicken and Noodles comes from From the New York Times Cooking Pages. It is rather simple, and really is prepared all in one pot, however, it does take two hours. I started by putting some lemon-infused olive oil into our indispensable cast-iron cook pot, placed the whole chicken in, and then dotted with butter. The chicken was seasoned with salt, and lemon pepper (inside and out), and a bit of Paremesan rind was also put inside the cavity. A bunch of garlic cloves (still in their sheathes) were added to the pot as well. This baked in a 500 degree oven for 30 minutes. Then pot was removed to the stovetop, garlic cloves were crushed, and 5 cups of water added and brought to a simmer. Meanwhile the oven temp was lowered to 400. The chicken was placed back in the oven and baked for another hour, whereupon it was again removed to the stovetop so more water, and egg noodles could be added. The noodles and chicken boiled until the noodles were softened and then fresh rosemary was added to the pot. After five minutes several tablespoons of sour cream were added. 

We brought this most appetizing pot to the table with fanfare. I don't believe it would have been possible to have prepared a more tender chicken. We both had seconds, and are looking forward to enjoying the leftovers today for lunch!

Tres por uno

 

Dining out does not matter.
But the pins do!
2017 Valentine Day from the Archives

We established a tradition decades ago of preparing Valentine's Day dinner together rather than eating out at a crowded restaurant. In fact, this is probably the reason we have several ribald cookbook titles on our shelves. While we have had some good meals in restaurants on the lovers' holiday, we more often spent our time struggling to find a table, perhaps finding one after a long wait ... and/or much driving around ... and getting a meal barely as good as something we could make at home. Or giving up all together and making something subpar late in the evening. Since we are apparently never going to get the hang of reservations, we just opt for treating each other to a nice meal at home.

Good thing too since a global pandemic made an in-home celebration a necessity this year. We selected three recipes, one from each of three different cookbooks: main dish, side dish, and dessert. Pam was in charge of dessert. James took on the other two. (Applies to the preparation and to the authorship of the next few paragraphs.)

A tomato dish accompanied by ... a tomato dish!

When we met, I was the tomato eater. I grew up eating tomatoes all summer. On hot days, we lived on sugary iced tea and sandwiches made of white bread, Real mayo, black pepper, and huge slabs of Mr. Foster's tomatoes. My brother and I would walk to the end of Owl's Nest Road and then up his long driveway. On his porch were baskets of tomatoes, stacks of paper bags, a scale and a money box. I dod not even remember what he looked like -- he was in the field, and the money box took care of itself. Prices early in the summer were 2 pounds/dollar, steadily decreasing. The highest number I remember was 13 pounds/dollar, after which people were encouraged just to take as much as they were willing. My mother canned a lot of these for use all year. But eating them fresh was best.

Again, when Pam and I met, I was the tomato eater and it was serious. I hardly think of the fruit at all (it is a fruit, just like coffee) without thinking of how central it was in our northern Virginia summers. Pam, however, was not a fan. Ketchup, pizza sauce, sure. But fresh tomatoes? No way.

Over the years, I maintained my prior level of interest in Solanum lycopersicum (though I learned the Latin name only about 8 seconds ago), while Pamela evolved from resistant to tolerant to obsessed over the course of a couple decades. She not only likes tomatoes: she now has a ranked-order list of tomato varietals she prefers ... and we cook with them often.

All of which I am including not only as a rebuff to those who foolishly wish for brief posts on food blogs but also as an explanation for including two fairly simple tomato-based recipes in a Valentine dinner and having the nerve to call them special.

The main course was rosemary-scented lamb over pasta from Intercourses (see what I mean about titles?). Except that I cannot bring myself to cook lamb, and so used locally raised chicken breast instead. I am certain this resulted in a huge departure from the original intent of this recipe, but we liked the result very much. The preparation probably took less time that it took me to write what you've read so far (if you are still reading). I sautéed minced garlic with strips of chicken and bell pepper. I then deglazed the pan over high heat with white wine and added crushed tomatoes and a sprig of rosemary. Once heated through, I reduced the heat and stirred in salt, pepper, and two tablespoons of heavy cream. I tossed all of this with warm, freshly cooked rigatoni and garnished with Parmesan and freshly chopped rosemary, sage, and oregano. Yum!

Meanwhile, I somehow managed to prepare roasted Parmesan tomatoes from A Taste for Love. I heated the broiler, applied Pam (the cooking spray) to a shallow baking dish, and filled it with 1-inch thick slices of tomato. Given the small tomatoes on hand, this amounted to tomato halves. In a small bowl, I mixed chopped shallots, fresh oregano, and shredded Parmesan. I sprinkled this mixture on each tomato slice, drizzled olive oil over all of them, and placed it in the boiler (not to close) for several minutes, checking frequently. When the cheese was just browned, they were perfect.

Dessert: Three-Quarter-Pound Orange Cake

We have a favorite dessert from Molly Katzen's The Moosewood Cookbook: our award-winning variation of the Mocha Swirl Coffee Cake  and while we considered replaying this recipe for Valentines Day we opted instead to try something different. I read out loud to James the Table of Contents for Katzen's dessert section and after considering a few options chose Orange Cake (I added the "three quarter pound" designation to the heading since it used three sticks of butter rather than four).

I made a list of everything we would need for the recipe and dutifully added them to our grocery list. And, we actually remembered to pack them all up when getting ready to go to our beach house for the three-day Valentines weekend. What we forgot, however, was the bundt cake pan. We normally wouldn't run out to the store for one forgotten item so we made a short list of other things so we could justify the trip out. James successfully returned with not only the necessary cake pan, but some elusive frozen hash brown patties as well. 

I started by buttering the pan and then mixing three softened sticks of butter, and 1+1/3 cup sugar (the recipe calls for 1+3/4 but that seemed excessive). Once the butter and sugar were well mixed I added four eggs (beating after each one). Next I added 1 tsp orange rind and 1 tsp vanilla.

In a separate bowl I sifted together 3 c flour and 1 T baking soda, and 1 t salt. And in yet another bowl I wisked together 1 c. plain yogurt, 1/2 c. orange juice. Each of these mixtures were added to the butter and sugar mix by alternating dry with wet, stirring after each addition, until everything was well mixed. 

Once everything was mixed together it went into the Bundt pan and baked for an hour at 350.

The cake was left to cool while I mixed and cooked the glaze of 1/2 c orange juice, 1 T sugar, 1 T lemon juice, and 2 T Triple Sec. I put all ingredients into a saucepan, brought to a boil and then simmered for 3 minutes. When the cake was cool I turned it onto a plate and poured on the glaze. 

This made a lot of dishes and a lot of cake. We will be enjoying this for a while still.

Bundt Cake GIF from Bundt GIFs

Lagniappe

About those pins in the photo above. We found them very early in our marriage, at a pharmacy near our home in Oxford, Ohio. Being on graduate stipends at the time, they probably set us back half a day's pay at the time. We have cherished them ever since. We wear them occasionally throughout the year, but especially on two days: Valentine's Day and our anniversary. We love the compliments we get about them throughout those days. This year we forgot to bring them to our weekend house and then realized not much was lost -- as nobody else would see us to comment! Hence the file photo. 

Anniversary Dinner

I suggested to James that perhaps as a treat for our 33rd anniversary we could place an order for carry out or delivery since we had not taken advantage of either of those options during our eight weeks of pandemic stay-at-home orders.He pointed out that we would likely be disappointed in anything that we would be able to get here on the south shore of Massachusetts, and we'd be lucky if it were even served at the proper temperature. I had to concede on all points. So instead we decided to prepare some dishes that we knew we liked.

James made a trip to our favorite fishmonger Kyler's Catch and picked up a salmon filet from which I prepared salmon with blueberry sauce based on this recipe from The New York Times. I used blueberry vinegar from L.O.V. E. (our favorite oil and vinegar emporium) instead of white wine vinegar. I prepared rice with lemon and almonds as a side dish.

This paired perfectly with the Peach Bellini we've been waiting to enjoy

For dessert I reprised the sensual Grapes Rolled in Almonds and Ginger from our Intercourses Cookbook.

Both of these have been featured on this blog before. The salmon is from earlier this year and the grapes from this July 2013 post.

Yummy Valentine Fudge

For Valentine's Day, Pam found a recipe by searching in one of our several romantic cookbooks for recipes that would use ingredients we already had on hand. As the book sat open on the counter for a day or two, we each realized that it was a recipe we had enjoyed before -- Grape Snausages. It ended up being a little different this time,in a good way: I had purchased hot Italian chicken sausage without any particular plan, and it made for a nice hot-sweet main course.

For dessert, Pam (the brains of this operation, as careful readers will have noticed by now) suggested a recipe source that has served mainly as a decoration since we received it some while ago. Java Jolt is a cute little box of cards, each with a recipe or two involving coffee.

I looked through the entire box, and found just one that looked feasible for a holiday that was to fall on the busiest day of my week.

The card entitled Avalon Gold Rush begins with a story about real, old-school fudge like we still find here in New England. It then offers quite a simple recipe for a short-cut fudge.

I varied this only slightly. First, I knew that in my hands, the foil-lining method would just be a way to get shreds of foil into the fudge. So I used a silicon pie-pan liner that my mother had recently given us (and that Pam had remembered). Although we actually had Amaretto on hand, I decided to use cherry Schnapps (this was Valentine's Day, after all). We of course do not have instant coffee on hand, so I added about a half cup of coffee left over from the morning. (We usually do not have leftover coffee, but I had reserved some on purpose.)

The result was yummy, soft fudge that is so rich that we have enjoyed the tiniest of servings over the course of the rest of the week. My Valentine pronounced it extremely delicious.

Strawvacodo Salad

It is summer concert season again, when we return to Westport Rivers -- our favorite local vineyard -- for a weekly picnic with live music and excellent wine. (This season is off to a bit of a rough start, thanks to onerous reinterpretation of puritanical liquor laws. But this is still the place to be for the summer.)

Westport Rivers supports area businesses, so that a raw bar, food truck, or both are usually part of the event. Even if we try some of those items, though, this is a picnic so we always bring some or all of the food we are going to want. Pam turned to Intercourses, the cleverly-named romantic cookbook that we have cited many times on this blog, and found another winner.

Not only is this a case of a book cover that is more photogenic than the actual food; it is also a reminder of just how passionate the authors are about this particular ingredient.

Strawberry and avocado salad brings together two ingredients that each warrant a whole chapter in this book -- buy the book to enjoy all of the rhapsodizing about these two fruits. For now, the basics: chill a dressing and chop a bunch of produce.

Dressing
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup raspberry vinegar (we used blackberry-ginger balsamic from L.O.V.E., our aptly-named favorite provider of infused oils and vinegars, run by a fellow UMBC alumna)

1-1/2 T sugar
1/4 t hot sauce
1/4 t salt
1/8 t pepper
1/4 t cinnamon

Produce
1 head romaine (we used about half a head of green lettuce -- not iceberg -- making the sensual ingredients all the more prominent)

1 orange, sectioned then halved (the recipe calls for half a can of mandarin oranges, but fresh seemed a better choice)
1/2 cup sliced onion (we used a few scallions)
1/4 cup toasted pecans (toasted them myself in a cast-iron skillet)
1/2 avocado (this made no sense to me -- I used a whole one)

Pam made the dressing; I prepared the produce. We tossed it all in a bowl and took it to the vineyard -- perfectly paired with Cinco Cães, the lovely sunset, and the lyrical stylings of Rebecca Correia.

Pasta with Grapes

It's not that we haven't been preparing new recipes of late, it's just that we haven't done a very good job blogging about them. We're finally catching up on our most recent cooking adventures. This recipe comes from the Intercourses cookbook and was quite simple. The recipe calls for pasta spirals. We found a kale, beet, and butternut squash pasta spiral mix at Savas Liquors in Middleboro, Massachusetts which turned out to be a great choice. To the cooked pasta we added some wedges of goat cheese, a handful of seedless grapes, chopped basil (not in the recipe, but it is never wrong to add basil), romaine lettuce (in lieu of watercress), two chopped scallions, zest and juice of one orange, and a bit of olive oil. The cheese melted onto the hot pasta, and blended with the other ingredients to create a sweet, creamy (and rather sensual) dish.

A Simple and Dish for Valentine's Day - Creamy Carrot Soup

We had the privilege of witnessing a true Valentine's Day Wedding this year when two members of church married after many years of dating. The wedding was simple - a 15 minute ceremony after our regular church service followed by a small reception in the parish hall with food brought in by other members of the church. We've been to weddings of all sizes and budgets, all of them are lovely and joyous. While the reception was small the food was good and there was plenty of it, so we decided not to our usual Valentine's Day date of preparing a fancy meal together, and instead had a light supper. It was a bitterly cold day in southeastern Massachusetts with temperatures well below zero and a wind chill factor of -30 so soup seemed in order. We found this easy recipe from the Extending the Table cookbook. We had all of the ingredients already in our kitchen and were glad not to have to go back out in the cold to buy anything.

I started by melting 2 T of butter in a skillet and added 2 chopped carrots. Here the recipe calls for adding some sugar to glaze the carrots, but I used up the last bit of our maple syrup instead. A bit of flour, some ground ginger (in lieu of curry powder) and 2 cups of chicken broth were added and everything was heated until the carrots were soft. This went into the blender along with a dollop of plain yogurt and 2 T. of white wine. Everything was pureed together until well mixed and creamy. We paired this with the same wine we put into the soup and also enjoyed some homemade biscuits with it. This can easily be made vegetarian by substituting vegetable stock for the chicken broth.

Grape Snausages

"Sausages with Grape Sauce" was a nice mid-week meal, as simple as its name. We found the recipe in Intercourses, a fun little cookbook that we have featured several times on this blog.

I began by cutting one pound of locally-raised sweet Italian sausages from Crescent Ridge into 4-inch chunks and placing them in boiling water for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I preheated the oven to 425. I diced one shallot and put it with 1 T olive oil to cover the bottom of a one-quart baking dish (essentially a loaf pan).

I then used tongs to place the sausages in the pan, covered with about 3/4 cup of dry white wine and baked for 35 minutes (during which time I should have turned them once to brown evenly).

The last step was unusual but simple. Using the tongs, I removed the sausages to a shallow, warm bowl and then placed the baking dish on the stove top -- it had the wine, shallots, and some fat from the sausage in it. Over medium-low heat, I whisked in one tablespoon of dijon mustard. I then stirred in one cup of halved, red seedless grapes. When all was blended, I poured this sauce over the sausages and brought it to the table.

This was delicious with some Italian bread and butter, and of course the rest of that bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Feast of St. Valentine

A quick glance at the blog shows that we've hardly kept the "cada semana" pace of late -- we have gone from one holiday to another without pausing. Fortunately, the convergence of a snow day, a Saturday, and a holiday brought us back into the kitchen ... all day. This was especially the case since Valentine's Day is definitely a day we avoid restaurants. Why struggle to get a table for food that is probably not as good as what we can make ourselves?

We started the day, of course, with some good coffee. Coffee with heart, no less: some hand-ground El Corazón from Just Coffee in Madison was the perfect start to the day. We usually eschew blends, but this blend does include Nicaraguan coffee, along with ethically-sourced coffees from Colombia and Ecuador. The blend of medium and dark roasts make this both sweet and smokey -- the perfect romantic coffee.

Coffee was served in our matching cicada-wedding mugs. It might seem peculiar to have big insects involved in our romantic day, but our wedding took place in the midst of an epic swarm, so we have a soft spot for these hard bugs.

Brunch was bacon and French toast -- made even more French by the inclusion of a bit of Courvoisier VSOP in the batter.

Soon after brunch, we began preparing dessert, since it would need time to chill. We used a mousse recipe from Boston Globe Magazine. It is in one of those articles that describes a recipe in detail, with variations following. Despite our best efforts, we missed a step this way -- using water where we should have used rum -- but it worked out OK. We discovered we did not have rum anyway -- HOW DID THIS HAPPEN AT CASA HAYES-BOH? -- but substituted bourbon, adding it where there should have been water. It worked out very well in the end. (See below.)

It being a romantic holiday, for the main course and beverage we turned to two favorites that will be familiar to regular readers oft this blog -- Intercourses and Booty Food, respectively. Both of these books are full of fun and interesting foods, as well as fun and interesting essays on love and romance.

For the main course, we selected enchiladas with asparagus, beans, and chicken. We've not made enchiladas much before. We found these to be absolutely scrumptious!

A lot of good food is not easy to photograph, and this is no exception. It looked best at this intermediate stage, before final assembly and baking.

The finished dish photographs best at a distance.

For the beverage, we worked for the first time with fresh pomegranate to make margaritas. With four feet of snow on the ground, a frozen beverage might have seemed an odd choice, but the fresh summery fruits were very welcome, and we were fortunate to be in a very warm and cozy home for the occasion.

The dessert was AMAZING and we will certainly be making this again. We were glad to be using local eggs we could trust, and we paired it with Farmer's Fizz from our favorite vineyard. We learned recently that sparkling Pinot Noir is a thing, and a thing that pairs perfectly for chocolate. So despite our loyalty to local white sparklers, we will be spending some time in the coming year looking for that wine!

One Day, Two Sexy Cookbooks

On Saturday we picked up our fresh produce from our CSA and began looking for recipes to use some of the bounty. For lunch we selected cucumber sandwiches from the Intercourses Cookbook. The recipe was really for the seasoned mayonnaise because we actually do know enough about food to figure out how to slice up a cucumber and put it between two slices of bread without further instruction. To 1/4 cup of mayonnaise I added a dash of red wine vinegar; a bit of chopped fresh basil, parsley, and rosemary; and a dash each of garlic salt, chili powder, and cumin. I used a blender to mix and to ensure optimal creaminess. We turned an otherwise bland lunch into something rather special. We had a side of seasonal fruit salad (blueberries, peaches, and bananas - Pam's favorite mix)!

For dinner we selected a recipe from BootyFood - Five-Spice Jerk Chicken Breast

We started the sauce by sautéeing diced onion and garlic, than added diced jalapeño pepper. In a separate bowl we mixed a bit cayenne pepper, curry powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves, and salt and pepper, then added 1/8  c. each of orange juice and mango juice, and a dash of red wine vinegar. This mix was added to the onion, garlic and pepper mixture and simmered for 20 minutes. The sauce was then cooled and most was then poured over two chicken breasts (a bit was saved out for basting). We let it marinate for about four hours, then baked in the oven. We served this over some leftover rice, and had a side salad, also made with ingredients from our farm box.

Cab Coolers

We'd been planning on making Cabernet Sauvignon Coolers for a few months, and decided that this would be the weekend for it, when serendipitous-ly, I found two bottles of Charles Shaw (aka three-buck Chuck) "Cab" on a wine rack of what was otherwise empty wine bottles on Saturday when I cleaned out the basement. How lucky is that? It was like finding money!

The recipe comes from our Intercourses cookbook and is pretty simple, although it is not something that can be whipped together at the last minute as it needs several hours for cooling and freezing. I started by boiling together 3/4 c. Cabernet Sauvingnon and 1/2 c. each of water and sugar in a saucepan. After it boiled I put it on simmer for a few minutes, then took it off the heat to cool a bit. Next I added 3/4 c. white grape juice and 1/3 c. lemon juice and put the mixture into the refrigerator to cool completely. Once cool it was poured into ice cube trays and then frozen. Once frozen, the ice cubes were removed from the tray and put into our blender and pureed. I needed to add a bit more wine to the mix to get it moving in the blender. I divided the frozen treat into two bowls, and garnished with mint (from our garden), and grapes.  A refreshing dessert for a summer evening.

Bonus! This recipe filled two ice-cube trays, and we only needed the cubes from one for last night's fare, so we will be able to enjoy this treat again this summer with only a minimal of prep time!

I must say Intercourses sure doesn't fail to please!

Solstice Supper

It being the first day of summer -- and the longest day of the year -- Pam made two good suggestions. The first was to look for solstice recipe ideas in our Wicca Cookbook. The second was to enjoy the resultant feast-for-two outside. It was also the first day of the new CSA-farmbox season at Colchester Neighborhood Farm, so her third suggestion was a a very fresh and local salad!

Stonehenge solstice image lifted from Pixie Campbell.
Not sure whether or where she lifted it!

 Cherry Pottage

I begin this post at the end of the meal. Because this dish required heating and then considerable cooling, I started it first. In fact, because we selected the menu after doing most of the day's chores, we procured cherries rather later in the day than would have been ideal. This should ideally be prepared very early in the day.

Before getting into the preparation, I should address the question on everyone's mind: what the flaming heck is a pottage? Is it just a misspelling of porridge? Well, yes, basically. I thought of it as an archaic form of the word porridge -- which I associate with oatmeal -- probably owing to its use in archaic biblical translations as in "Esau traded his birthright for a mess of pottage."

Our Friend the OED tells us that the word is indeed an archaic (as early as 1225) form of "porridge," further defining it as 

A thick soup or stew, typically made from vegetables, pulses, meat, etc., boiled in water until soft, and usually seasoned

Which raises a further question: What does this have to do with cherries? The cookbook includes a narrative ahead of each recipe, so I turned to this, hoping for clues. Not a word! The authors do, however, ruminate on the value of "special" meals and other things that we use only on certain occasions. In this case, the white sugar used in this recipe meant that it would only have been served as part of a celebration. As with fine silver or china, such a use presents an interesting paradox. We bring out our "special" items in part to show off -- and show thanks for -- our prosperity, yet we have to use these things sparingly, for we are never quite that prosperous. And once we are, the specialness is gone. White sugar is a perfect example; I think of the cherries as a special splurge, but white sugar is about as ordinary an ingredient as we can have.

I hand-pitted an entire quart of fresh cherries with a paring knife (a better tool is on its way for next time) and placed them directly into the blender, with 2/3 cup of red wine and 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. The wine was from a partial bottle of our home-made Barolo that we had set aside for cooking. I pureed this mixture until smooth. Then I melted about two tablespoons of butter in our indispensable cast-iron saucepan and poured in the fruit along with an additional 2/3 cup wine and 1/3 cup sugar.

Meanwhile, Pam cut up a few slices of wheat bread to provide what the recipe calls "soft bread crumbs" because we had no idea how else to do that! We added these and continued heating until bubbly. The recipe calls for "low heat" but also bringing this huge mixture to sufficient activity to reduce and thicken it. So I turned up the heat a bit and stirred this continuously for approximately ever. It was not reducing, so we added one teaspoon of cornstarch (dissolved in a little hot water) to thicken the mixture.

We cooled this on the counter and then in the fridge for a couple of hours, until well after dinner. This definitely falls in the category of a "better on the second day" food. We have not (yet) tested the theory that it also falls in the category of a "better topped with vanilla ice cream and/or cherry liqueur" but odds are high.

Midsummer Ale Bread

This brings to mind another question: "Where have you been all my life?" For several years we used beer as an ingredient in our bread-machine pizza dough, until we realized that it made it too doughy, and that the entire family prefers crustier crust. I had not thought of ale as a main leavening agent, though perhaps I should have. This was amazingly simple: I whisked together 3 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1-1/2 teaspoons salt, and 2 tablespoons sugar (which I took for granted, until reading the discourse on pottage, see above). To this I mixed in 12 ounces of our special Scotch ale, making a thick dough.

I then turned this into a 6x9-inch pan and drizzled 1/2 cup (one stick) of butter over it. Actually, I could tell that was WAY too much butter, so I used some of it to brush the bottom of the pan, and still had plenty to drizzle and plenty more to reserve for the main course (see below).

The directions called for three smaller pans, which would have had the advantage of even more buttery-crusty goodness, but the single pan worked great -- 350F for 50 minutes, plus just a few minutes once I tested it. This was a very easy, delicious bread. A bit crumbly, but designed to break apart for sharing. The authors recommend it for housewarming parties, since a blessing can be said with each piece that is shared, and love will fill every room of a house. We ate it outside -- the longest day of the year and all -- but still blessed our house!

Noodles Della Italia

For the main course, I cooked fettuccini in one pot (this did not make it pottage!) while re-using our indispensable cast-iron saucepan to saute onion, garlic, red bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, and fresh oregano and basil from our front yard. When I read this recipe, I thought it would be rather like pasta primavera, but it had no tomatoes, and I had caramelized the vegetables just enough to give this a much earthier feel and sweeter taste.

What does this have to do with solstice? I'm not sure, except that we do have oregano and basil this time of year. The authors cite Stregheria, the Italian earth-based religion, but the opportunity to share a family recipe that is light and suitable for summer cooking seems to be the main motivation.

Salad

As mentioned above, Pam put together a delicious salad with local Romaine and other leafies, along with a couple kinds of berries. This went very well with a Maine blueberry vinaigrette, and the whole meal went very well with Westport Rivers Pinot Noir, one of the very few good red wines from our region.

Honey-Peppered Salmon, Honey

This week's nueva receta was for our anniversary dinner, so we turned of course to a few of the more romantic titles in our cook-book book case. And since it was on a Friday after my Thursday rowing, we looked for seafood recipes.

While I was looking through Booty Food (yes, that is a real book), Pam found a simple recipe in our early edition of InterCourses. Regular readers of this blog will know that both are full of delicious and delectable ideas for cooking together. In this case, Pam found a very simple recipe for salmon that I was able to prepare on my own with minimal effort.

Honey-Peppered Salmon starts with salmon steaks, which I purchased at Kyler's Catch. On Friday evening, I simply whisked together the following in a flat-bottomed bowl:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 T honey
• 2 T Dijon mustard
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 t cayenne pepper
• 1/2 t dried cilantro (the recipe calls for ground coriander)
• 2 T lemon

We had been invited to festivities on campus, and I should have prepared this marinade before heading out, but it worked out well anyway, since this was easy to prepare and required leaving the salmon steaks in this marinade for only 30 minutes, at room temperature.

The recipe calls for baking the fish, 6-7 minutes on each side, at 350. I had started with a cold oven, so it was going a bit slowly. So after about a dozen minutes, I turned on the broiler. The result was a delicious, slightly caramelized glaze -- hot and sweet! We will definitely try this again.

These sweet, peppery steaks brought out the very best in an ordinary Shiraz from Yellow Tail.

The Secret Ingredient is L.O.V.E.

We planned our Valentine's dinner for over a week, with one overriding goal: no crowded restaurants for us. With a little work and forethought, we knew we could have a superior dinner with no reservations. Each year at this time, we recall an evening spent wandering from restaurant to restaurant, skipping a 20-minute wait only to find a 40-minute wait, eventually settling for a dinner that was made enjoyable mostly by our readiness to eat anything.

Once we established the Valentine's-Day-at-Home tradition, actually, we have endeavored to make it both a romantic and delicious experience, and this year we seem to have done quite well. We each prepared an entree, waited a bit, and then each of us created part of dessert.

James: A week before the event, I accidentally recycled the newspaper in which I had seen a very intriguing recipe for steak tips with mole (moh-LAY) sauce. Librarian Pam said, "Have no fear!" (or words to that effect), since newspaper recipes are all syndicated and will show up easily on some other paper's site. About 2.5 seconds later, I was looking at Beef Mole with Buttery Baguette, courtesy of The Oregonian.

Fans of this blog will know that we have an affinity for mole, more properly known as mole poblano, after the Mexican state of Puebla, where we spent the summer of 1989. Although I love making "real" mole, it was nice to find this "express" version of the recipe, a gringo simplification that required no pepper roasting and a simplified ingredient list. I followed the recipe as written, using our new immersion blender for the sauce itself. Just as I was bringing it to boil, I realized that two vinegars from our friends and fellow Retrievers at Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium (hence the L.O.V.E.) would make it even better. I added the dark chocolate and espresso balsamics, and as with our first mole encounter in July 2012, it turned out loverly, indeed! (Careful readers will recall that the chocolate balsamic also figured in the success of our award-winning mocha cake later that year.)

Pam: I knew that I'd find an appropriate Valentine's Day recipe in Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook, but Wow! How could we have imagined how great the strawberry pasta would turn out! This super simple recipe had only a few ingredients. To the 1/4 pound cooked spaghetti I added some shredded Parmesan cheese and then about a dozen pureed strawberries and some melted butter heated with 1/4 c. heavy cream. This was all tossed together in one bowl and then garnished with fresh chopped mint leaves. It was sweet, incredibly creamy, and a perfect complement to the chocolate in the mole sauce. It truly had a sensuous flavor and texture. Everything was served with sparkling Brut Curvee "RJR" from Westport Rivers Winery.

Pam: After allowing our fabulous dinner to settle a bit we made our dessert and coffee. A Facebook friend posted this recipe for "Cake Batter Ice Cream" (essentially an ambitious banana ice cream). We already had frozen banana slices in the freezer as anytime I have a banana go past ripe I slice it up and freeze it to use for smoothies. These had been frozen for several months and gave our blender quite the workout. It actually began to smoke. I modified the recipe a bit to use ingredients we had on hand, although James did go out and get romantic red sugar sprinkles to put on top! Smooth, creamy and sweet!

Proportions are 4 ripe, frozen bananas; a t. each of vanilla, and almond extracts, 1/4 t. baking soda; 1 T. agave nectar; 1 T Butter Pecan syrup; sprinkles to taste.

James: The two-shelf collection of cookbooks that got this blog started includes several that are specifically about the romance of preparing and sharing food. One of these is called quite simply Coffee Love (which is incidentally also the title of the PG-13 section of my Geography of Coffee web site). Leafing through the book, my eye settled quickly on Café de Olla on page 52. I started one cup of coarsely hand-ground Sol y Luna coffee from my good friends in the Corrales family. It is not dark-roasted, but it was grown and prepared with love, and just happens to be some of the best coffee on the planet. I added 1/2 teaspoon of anise seed and a two-inch piece of cinnamon stick to one quart of cool, filtered water in a saucepan. I had hoped to add four ounces of piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar), but had to substitute a half cup of regular brown sugar and a tablespoon of molasses. I brought all of this gently to a boil, while briskly stirring with our molinillo. After letting it simmer for 15 minutes, I filtered it. The recipe does not specify how to filter it, but no better method could be found than our trusty Chemex.

The result was surprisingly delicious -- I usually do not like to have anything at all in my coffee except for coffee, but this was an exception worth making. It was quite good while hot, though the flavor did not withstand cooling very well at all. Next time, though, I hope to use real piloncillo, and a real olla instead of our steel saucepan!

Rustic Enough?

During our most recent stay at the fabulous Golden Stage Inn, we found our way to a Vermont attraction that we had missed previously -- a cooking demonstration at the Hidden Kitchen, which is attached to the Inn at Weathersfield, another B&B in the area. (Stay there if the Golden Stage is full -- it seems quite nice!)

Although we lived for a stint in Texas, where all things Bar-B-Q are decided, the iron-lung sized grill many of our neighbors there owned had nothing on the true open-pit roast we experienced right here in New England -- a real hole in the ground filled with vegetation and coals, and a lamb from the nearby Newall Farm. We had no trouble finding the pit once we arrived at the Inn: we simply followed the wonderful scent of smoke and roasting meat. We were a bit early for the class (unless one counts coffee, this was actually our very first cooking class, at least since junior high school in the 1970s!) and we were graciously greeted by the Inn proprietors and offered a beverage while we waited.

At the appointed time we were joined by other class members and taken on a tour of the gardens and the open pit roast procedure was explained to us. Here the term "field to fork" is measured in dozens of steps. This quartered lamb had been in the pit for about 8 hours, on coals that had taken a dozen hours to prepare prior to that! We then went into the kitchen where the rest of the demonstration took place.

We started with learning how to make Native American Fry Bread, and Pam took a turn hand-forming and frying a piece, which turned out the be the puffiest one made that day! Next we we shown how to make a super-simple blackberry jam (no pectin needed since we would eat it right then) and a roasted corn salad. The fry bread was then topped with everything else we made (the lamb, the jam, the salad) and then folded over so that it looked not entirely unlike a taco. We also had a delicious fruit punch based on a fortified apple cider from the very same farm as the lamb itself.

It was Pam's first time eating lamb, and probably the second ever for James. My, it was good!

Instructions for building the open pit, selecting a lamb, and all the recipes were provided to us and can be found in this document.

Romantic Farm Box Fare

With the parental visit over, and our daughter away on a sleepover it seemed the time was ripe to for a "nueva receta" from Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook. I had spotted the recipe for basil-eggplant soup when browsing the cookbook earlier this year and marked it with a plan to make it whenever we got some eggplant in our farm box. As it turned out this week's pick-up included just about all the ingredients we needed to make this delicious soup. I started by boiling and peeling some of the fresh tomatoes, and then peeling, dicing and boiling the eggplant. While the eggplant was cooking I sauteed some onions and garlic (also from the farm) in olive oil. I then added the tomatoes and eggplant to the pot with the onions and garlic, and then added 1 3/4 c. chicken stock, a bit of cayenne and some pepper. This was simmered for about half an hour. While the soup cooked I made the basil paste with 2 T. olive oil, 1 c. fresh basil (from the farm) and some feta cheese. These were put in the blender until a well mixed. The soup was then ladled into bowls with a dollop of the basil paste. Paired with some of our own IPA homebrew, and served some bread on the side it was a filling meal. It was a beautiful evening so we ate al fresco.

Grapes rolled in ginger and almonds

Stormy weather, and our daughter is gone all day and all night. Seemed the time was right to break out the  good old Intercourses cookbook.

These took longer to make than I expected, but it was worth it. Eating them was a completely sensual experience. I started by chopping some candied ginger and some roasted almonds. The ginger was then put in the blender with 3 oz. of cream cheese and mixed until the ginger was well chopped and the cream cheese was especially creamy. Red seedless grapes were rolled in the cream cheese mix and then in the chopped nuts and placed on waxed paper. The grapes were then chilled for several hours. They turned out sweet, creamy, and crunchy. A wonderful ending to our stuffed pepper dinner. Delightfully paired with some "3-buck Chuck" Pinot Grigot.

Once again we learn that food photography is a special skill. They were much better than they look here.

It's Maryland Day!

Maryland holds a special place in the hearts of the Nueva Receta bloggers. Not only is it the land of Pam's birth, it is where we met and fell in love. See the whole story here. We started celebrating Maryland Day a few years ago, which then morphed into a year long project of recognizing the anniversary of each state with food, books, and movies. We no longer do every state, but do try to remember Arizona, Texas, and Maryland every year, and often our honorary home in Wisconsin as well. We began this year's celebration with coffee in our Maryland-themed mugs, accompanied by fresh-baked basil-corn muffins from the Dishing Up Maryland cookbook.

I began by mixing 1 1/4 c. Flour with 1/2 c. Cornmeal. I used twice the amount of cornmeal that the recipe indicated because I did not have the fresh corn kernels called for. I mixed this with 2 T. sugar, 3 t. baking powder, and 1/2 t. of salt. Once these were mixed I added 1 c. milk, 1 egg, 1/4 c. Canola oil and 1 T. chopped fresh basil (which was harvested right out of our windowsill). I divided the batter into 12 muffin cups and baked in my convection oven for 20 minutes at 375. James and I enjoyed these warm from the oven with a pat of butter. Savory taste with a wonderful texture, we will definitely make these again - perhaps late in the summer when we can be sure to add the fresh corn kernels.

(Note from James:  Pam was the  "I" who prepared the muffins above and the shrimp pate below. The muffins were even better than I thought they would be. Light and airy, sweet and just slightly savory. Much more suitable for breakfast than it might sound.)

Dinner comprised two more recipes from Dishing Up Maryland - an appetizer of shrimp pate and a chicken salad. The pate was easy to make, and put James in mind of the old Bass-o-Matic gag from the original Saturday Night Live. The cooked shrimp (about 3/4 lb.) was put into a blender along with  2 T. softened cream cheese, 3 T. softened butter, a healthy dollop of mayonnaise, the juice of one lime, 1 chopped garlic clove, a bit of dill, a generous helping of Old Bay (what would Maryland Day be without that!) and a few shakes of Tabasco sauce. I used the pulse setting until everything was finely chopped and evenly distributed. We spread the pate onto some good artisan bread. Delicious, and with plenty of leftovers so we can enjoy more tomorrow.

We picked this cookbook up in Nantucket!

Dinner was a delicious salad from the same book. We could not use ingredients from Washington County's Rinehart Orchards, as suggested at the top of the recipe, but managed to make quite a tasty salad with the store-bought apples and pears we can get this time of year. To make the salad, we (James taking the lead on this one, both in the kitchen and on the blog) modified the recipe entitled Apple and Pear Salad with Grilled Chicken and Pecans, on page 160.

We were fortunate to have firm apples and pears. I sliced the top and bottom off of each so that some skin would be retained, but not too much. I sliced them thin and set them aside. I then heated blood-orange-infused olive oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, to which I added three boneless, skinless chicken breasts, also sliced fairly thin. The recipe had called for grilling chicken, but at the end of a long -- though beautiful -- day this was not in the cards. The high-temp saute worked well with this tender, organic chicken.

Meanwhile, Pam rinsed spinach greens and arranged them on plates, adding the fruit slices, crumbled feta, and chopped walnuts (pecans having not made it onto our shopping list). We then added the chicken and a dressing I had made by vaguely following the recipe and whisking together about 3T each of the blood-orange olive oil and regular canola oil, together with about 1T each of Dijon, honey, and serrano-honey balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt.

The result was a salad that was both sweet and substantial, with many vibrant flavors. We paired it not-so-perfectly with a Snake Dog IPA from Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, Maryland (home of our favorite oil and vinegar emporium). We had found it this afternoon in a shop in Concord after we had celebrated the day with a nice jaunt around Walden Pond. We had been hoping for a Maryland wine -- which would have paired beautifully -- but were happy to find several beers and ales from a brewery we have already enjoyed. The beer/wine clerk was delighted to learn it was Maryland Day, so that he could let his wife and father-in-law (from Bethesda) know that he had marked the occasion. We chilled the ale thoroughly and it was delicious -- more like an extra course than a side beverage.

Leftover plans: Maryland Day will be the culinary gift that keeps on giving. Monday morning's breakfast will feature omelets made with some Vermont extremely sharp cheddar cheese, some eggs from a friend in Bridgewater, and the remainder of the pear and apple slices. We had a bit of chicken left over, which we stored in the dressing -- a kind of post-cooked marinade. We do not know quite how we use this, but it will be put to a good use, and the delicious shrimp dip will of course not be lingering long in the fridge!

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(This is co-written by Pam and James, using the royal "we" throughout, even though we each took the lead in both baking and writing different parts; sorry if that causes confusion!)

We awoke this morning with the zymurgy doing the real work -- Barolo fermenting profusely in the parlor and ginger-wheat beer just getting started in the conservatory. After a bit of FTO Colombian (already fermented at a wet mill somewhere in the Andean foothills), we decided to take on the day. Pi Day, that is.

(The digits used above extend to 27 in honor of Pam's upcoming birthday (that's the date, not the age!); you can get all the digits you need at Pi Day.)

A little math was in order. Our Pumpkin Cookbook (purchased at a genuine clearance sale at a funky old book store in Stoughton a few years ago) calls for six ounces of ginger snaps in the crust of the cheese cake we are making. (See Pam's Eggnog Pumpkin Pie post for more from this little volume.)

Our first inclination was to guesstimate, because this did not seem like a job for which it would be worth going to campus to get a precision coffee scale. But then we decided to honor math day by figuring this out. we said we would need three-fifths of the 10-ounce bag of cookies, so we simply counted them into bowls -- two in the small bowl for every three in the big bowl. Broken cookies ended up in both bowls, resulting in minimal, offsetting errors that are presumed to be within the tolerance limits of this recipe. We are building a pie, after all, rather than a watch.

After sampling a couple from the small bowl for safety and efficacy, we returned them to the bag for future use. Each being round, we may use them to calculate circumferences if things get really crazy later in the day. (Pi Day never ends, after all!) The other small bowl contains raisins soaking in Triple Sec. The half stick of butter is the other half of a stick that was melting in the plate warmer at the time of the photo. That other half is still half a stick in a mathematical sense, but not a stick at all in appearance.

A great thing about this recipe is that we got to use some kitchen instruments that don't get very much employ (Bill Murray fans contain yourselves; this is a family blog) -- starting with our marble gourmet rolling pin (and we know it is gourmet because it is labeled as such).  The pin was used to crush the ginger snaps which were placed in a large ziploc bag first. The crumbled snaps were then mixed in a bowl with the melted butter and then used for the crust at the bottom of a springform pan (another seldom used item). The recipe called for the pan to be oiled. The decision of which oil to use could not be taken lightly, of course. After careful consideration, we settled on the blood orange olive oil.

The main supporting actors in today's blog.

Once the pan was ready, it was time to start on the filling. We started with 1 lb. of cottage cheese which was put in the blender and mixed until smoooooth. Then 1 can of pumpkin was added, along with the last bit of ginger syrup leftover from our Valentine's day ginger cake. When all of this was well blended we added two eggs, 1/2 c. of light cream, and 1/3 c. of sugar, and blended some more. Finally the juice of half an orange was added, giving us the chance to use our manual juicer. When all of this was completely mixed, the nicely plumped raisins were sprinkled on top of the ginger snap crust, and the pumpkin mix was poured over.  We worried a bit when we saw the pan leaking, but once we placed it onto a cookie sheet, and into the oven it was fine. We love our convection oven, but as with everything we bake, the baking time in the recipe had no bearing on reality. Forty minutes turned into about 70 minutes.

Pie for Real Men

Back in the 1980s Bruce Feirstein wrote a book called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, though in our house we know that quiche is usually made by the resident man- he will make his quiche, and eat it too.

Quiche -- a savory, eggish pie -- is the perfect meal to complement the pumpkin dream described above. We made a standard crust from Deborah Madison, using 1-1/2 cups white flour (plus a dusting of wheat for the counter), 1/2 teaspoon of salt, one stick of butter, and ice water added by small spoons until the dough would just form. The only departure from this standard recipe was the addition of a bit of Old Bay with the dry ingredients.

The filling was made with eight eggs (it is an egg dish, after all) from the happily husbanded hens of Hanson farm, two miles from our house, about a cup of light cream, a dash of Tabasco, and a splash of sherry. This was prepared while the crust crisped in the oven. About 2/3 of a pound of Swiss cheese was cut into small slivers, and a half pound of lobster from Kyler's Catch in New Bedford was cut into chunks and tossed with ... of course ... more Old Bay.

This was all baked at 425 for 40 minutes, which made it beautiful but not quite done. Another 20 minutes at 350 (with paper atop to prevent burning) made it perfect!

Tapas-less
Between the morning and afternoon baking sessions, we visited New Bedford, where nautical interests are drawing us with greater frequency. There we had lunch at a tapas bar -- James' first visit to one -- but had no tapas. Rather, at Cork Wine and Tapas on the waterfront, Pam had a delightful sangria and James a leggy, complex Malbec. We shared a flat bread with pear, arugula and goat cheese; and a chicken and cabbage empanada. That's right: meat pie. The highlight, though, was the dish that had caused our daughter to recommend the place: a heaping pile of fries prepared with herbs and truffle oil that might be the best fries on this planet. Just go and find out.

Pi Day Film Festival
We began our preparations for Pi Day by moving the film Humble Pie to the top of our Netflix queue so that it would be here in time. The producers of Napolean Dynamite have created a similarly enigmatic film centered around a young man who seems uncomfortable in his own skin. The connections to food were uncomfortable as well, as the protagonist's eating disorder plays out between his dysfunctional household and the grocery store that is his professional world.

And, although it will not be released on Netflix until next month, Life of Pi was cleverly made available at the cash/warp for an impulse purchase at Target on this auspicious day. Our usual steely sales resistance was quickly overcome, and we are the proud new owners of the DVD.

To summarize the day: Our enjoyment of two pies was sandwiched (as it were, between two pi/pie films, all of which followed a lovely trip to New Bedford and one incidental meat pie.

Beverage pairings, by the way, were a nice Chardonnay from just about as far away as wine can be brought and an OFT decaf from Chiapas. Both were lovely.

Piem (See if you can figure out the formula for writing your own).

Pie I made: a round sweetness of squash purée.
The slab's triangle perfectly adheres;
Sensually it's on the pleasure spot, giving us ...
Hmmmmm, good pie.

The lagniappe has us: AUREOLE.

No Vampires Were Harmed

... in the preparation of this dinner. 

We originally planned to make this dinner on Sunday evening. Our choice to delay until Monday was entirely based on its long cooking time; it is only a coincidence that our presentation at church Sunday morning had been about our real-life journey to Transylvania, where we encountered no vampires but developed an intense interest in them!

The coincidence came to mind as this slow-cooking meal cooked slowly this afternoon, and the house filled with garlic. We use a lot of garlic in our house, usually a clove or two at a time, either fresh or frozen from our organic summer harvest. I usually avoid recipes that are as garlic-forward as Slow-Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken turned out to be, but the recommendation of a fellow foodie convinced us to try. The ease of preparation was also an enticement.

Earlier today, we had been invited to speak to students in a nutrition course about several areas of our shared interest, including coffee, chocolate, and food in general. This very blog was among the topics we discussed, since those with an interest in eating better -- especially students without much time or money -- can use all the help they can get.

Prior to the presentation, I had spent about a half hour tidying the kitchen and getting this meal ready to cook later in the day. Instead of one bulb of garlic, I used about 3/4 of a bulb of elephant garlic. The individual cloves were so big that I chopped them into big chunks, so that they did not retain their paper husks. Otherwise, I followed the recipe as described.

After the presentation, I had just a few minutes at home before my next class, but it was enough time to transfer the covered roasting pan from the refrigerator to the convection oven. Since our oven lives in the United States (Burma and Liberia are the only other countries where this would be a problem), I had to convert the temperatures in the recipe to our pre-1799 Farenheit system. I put it in the oven at 325 (the real number is 320, but we are used to working in increments of 25) and send a note to Pam about the timing of the second phase. After two hours, she uncovered it and kicked it up to 400 (392 is the actual equivalent).

When I returned from my class, Pam was steaming some beans from our CSA. As we had told our students earlier, Colchester Neighborhood Farm is a very important part of how we approach healthy, sustainable eating in our house. These had been frozen in season, and today were ready to provide some fiber, crispness, simple flavor and complimentary nutrients to balance the succulence and rich flavor of the chicken.

Food photography is a special skill that I do not possess, so I will spare readers the shabby photograph, but will ask that doubt be set aside when I report that the huge chunks of garlic turned green in this slow-roasting process. As Pam exclaimed early in the meal, this is company dinner -- especially if we want to share a savory treat on a day when we have no time for cooking. We had this incredible meal -- and will have leftovers -- for less than the cost of a fast-food "meal" and for about as much effort as mac & cheese.

We paired it with one of the last bottles of our first batch of Chardonnay -- adding about $3 to the cost of the meal. That is, for the cost of two soft drinks, we had two glasses each of pretty decent wine.

Just as important as preparing a good meal is taking the time to enjoy it together, using real plates, real place mats, and real napkins to reduce waste and add elegance. Even more elegance was provided, courtesy of the class we had visited earlier in the day. At the end of our talk "Coffee, Cacao, Campus, and Comida," we were very surprised to receive a nice note and very thoughtful gift from the students who had invited us. The candlestick they presented certainly enhanced the meal. Moreover, the star, sun, and moon evoke one of the coffees we had discussed with them. The family of Byron, the "Poet of Coffee" we had mentioned, sells its coffee in Nicaragua under the name Sol & Luna (Sun & Moon). Many of my coffee students tell me it is the best coffee they have ever had, and this candlestick will always remind us of one of our very favorite coffee growers.