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!

A Birthday Celebration that created quite a lot of Dishes

A mid-week birthday during final exams means a low-key celebration for James as he enters his sixtieth year. James made his own birthday dinner of an old favorite: Puerto Rican Chicken Fajitas from the Well-Filled Tortilla cookbook. My role was to bake the birthday cake. When I asked James over the weekend what kind of cake he would like he said something with lemon and raspberries. The New York Times Cooking page had just what the (Ph.D.) doctor ordered! Lemon Sheet Cake with Raspberry Whipped Cream.

This recipe is a 12-step program, beginning with preparing the pan. The instructions call for use of a non-stick spray, but I used Crisco shortening. I did follow the instructions to coat the pan, then cover in parchment, and then coat the parchment, which seemed like overkill, but I must say that I have never had such an easy time removing a cake from a pan when it was time to serve. The recipe also calls for vegetable oil. I used lemon-infused olive oil, which really was the right thing to do.

The recipe also calls for an electric mixer in steps 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 11. Still don't have one, so a spoon, a whisk, and some strong arms were put to good use.

Lemons needed to be zested and juiced, and raspberries needed to macerate (a word I did not know before) and then strained. Cream needed to be whipped and flour sifted. We used every mixing bowl in our cabinet, one of which had to be rinsed out so it could be used again. We also used more of our utensils than we usually would with one recipe.

The result was a delicious yellow cake with a thick pink topping. This isn't very sweet, so the flavors of lemon and raspberry come through more than we expected, although neither is overwhelming. 

Photos show our sink after we'd already put round one of dishes into the dishwasher, and our "Julia Child" pegboard with lots of space as as all the utensils were being washed. Unfortunately the photograph of the cake turned out blurry, so I won't be posting it here.

So many dishes!

This is after I'd already washed the flour sifter and put it back in its place. We really did use a lot of utensils.

Honey Chicken

One lesson I have learned over my years of preparing new recipes is that it is not enough to simply ensure that I have all the ingredients (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) before starting; it is imperative to read the instructions as well. Woe has been begotten on more than one occasion when I discovered that I should have started preparing the food hours before I actually did. So I am pleased to report that I was successful in my preparation of this tasty recipe from the New York Times Cooking pages. A marinade of sherry, honey, line juice, crushed garlic, cinammon, salt, and pepper was easily mixed and poured over the whole, fresh, cut up chicken we'd recently procured from Maribett Farm. The chicken marinated in the refrigerator for about 8 hours and then was placed in the oven for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. As the recipe instructed I basted often and was pleased with the juicy, tender, savory, and sweet meal that resulted. I served this was mashed potatoes on the side and a Chardonnay to complement.

Birthday Scallops

Careful readers of this blog will know that on our birthdays, Hayes-Bohs get whatever they want for dinner and dessert. Or pretty close to it. They will also know that throughout the year, our culinary choices are increasingly influenced by the National Day Calendar. Pam's birthday dinner this year was a result of a confluence of these tendencies, though with a fairly flexible application of the calendar.

A couple weeks before the blessed event, Pam noticed that May 16 is National Coquilles Saint Jacques Day. Because it fell on a weekend this year and she noticed it ahead of time, we seriously thought about celebrating this heretofore unknown holiday on its actual date. But the recipe highlighted on the National Day site seemed a bit complicated and more worthy of a birthday celebration.

Bonus: waiting also meant that our visiting son could both be part of the celebration and part of the brain power needed to overcome one challenge we faced: this appetizer (or appetizer-as-meal in our case) is traditionally served on a scallop shell. I hoped our local fishmonger might have them -- as it is located in one of the world's premiere scallop-landing harbors -- but no such luck. Way too late in the planning, I realized that I could get scallop plates online. 

In progress but not in focus -- note
Harvey's skillful potato piping

Here is where our Harvey's creativity came in: the recipe calls for piping mashed potatoes around the edge of the shells, like icing at the edge of a cake. We could therefore use potatoes as the base of this appetizer. We essentially created a seafood version of twice-baked potatoes, following the recipe above to a tee, except that we began by slicing and partly baking potatoes, scooping them out, and then using that for an edge that our artist was able to create using his mad dexterity. He also rightly suggested brushing with olive oil and dusting with paprika before the broiling stage.

Grey-on-gray food made a bit more
photogenic by salad and cool nautical
pepper shaker

While I followed the rest of the recipe carefully in terms of ingredients, I did not do so in terms of sequence. I thought the sauce would take longer than the bouillon and the potatoes longer than either of these, so I did things in an awkward order this really complicated what should have been a very basic white sauce. If I follow this recipe again, I would still start the potatoes early, but I would complete the  bouillon starting the sauce.

Image: Holy Art

On May 16 next year, however, I will be prepared in two ways. First, I will have purchased the correct plates, harvested in the British Isles. Second, curious about the word "coquille" I found out that it means any appetizer of this sort involving a wine and cream sauce. I found several other recipes that do not involve potatoes, and I think they will be easier.  One of those recipes is in Scallops: A New England Coastal Cookbook, which also includes some remarkable information about the natural history of bay scallops. Incidentally, this was my first time cooking with bays -- I had always been intimidated.

DESSERT

We musn't forget dessert! Key lime pie is usually Pam's first choice and I have often managed to make a decent one including, apparently, in May 2017. (For the record, she has been to Key West just once; I have not yet gotten to any of the Florida Keys.)

For this year, however, enter another hero: we won a pair of key lime pies in our church auction, offered by McKayla, a fellow church member, my former student, and (most importantly for this post) a Florida native. Prepared and delivered with care the day before, it was PERFECT.

Lagniappe: That Saint

The adjectival form of James is Jacobian, and my name means "usurper" after Esau's greedy brother Jacob. So the conflation of Saint James and Saint Jacques are familiar to me. What was not familiar is the identity of St. James as the patron of scallopers -- he is sometimes depicted with shells around his neck and Crusaders sometimes adorned themselves with the shells as well. 

Slow Cooker Chicken Ragù with herbed ricotta.

 

I rarely use the slow cooker. James uses it a few times a year, mostly to make chili, but I don't think I've used it myself more than a handful of times since we received one as a wedding gift 34 years ago. However, when this recipe showed up on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago I decided to give it a try. And I did so, once I remembered to get out the slow cooker early in the morning on the day after I remembered to thaw the chicken. I followed the recipe mostly as written, although I was surprised to discover we were out of tomato paste, so I didn't use it. The only tomato product was a can of crushed tomatoes. I also skipped the carrot. We didn't have any and it seemed unnecessary to go out just to pick up "one small carrot".

As with slow cooker meals once everything goes in, the cook's job is mostly to wait (and salivate) as the cooker does its thing all day. There was a little labor at the end shredding the chicken, but as the recipe suggests it was quite tender, so it wasn't difficult. Topping with the herbed ricotta, along with a sprig of fresh basil made for a lovely presentation. 

Another winner from the New York Times cooking pages.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

I don't think I've ever made tortilla soup from scratch before. James and I have occasionally made it from a kit, but in reviewing our shelf of recipe books while looking for a recipe for some chicken breasts I noticed our seldom used The Daily Soup Cookbook where I discovered the tortilla soup recipe. 

Before getting to the recipe, which I only used as a suggestion, it is important for me to discuss our history with tortilla soup. We usually only enjoy this when we eat at Mexican restaurants - something we have not done at all since before the pandemic. Each time we have some of this soup we remince about the first and second times we ever ate it. The first time we couldn't believe our good fortune in finding a restaurant that made such an exquisite soup. The second time we couldn't believe how the soup could have been so thoroughly ruined (too much salt and burned tortillas).

Both times were during our first trip to Mexico in 1989. Both were also at the same restaurant about two weeks apart. 

As I said, I used the recipe only as a guide for what I ultimately made. Which was way better than either the first or second tortilla soups I tried.

I started with making a vegetable broth by simmering some whole peppercorns, whole coriander seeds, chopped onion, garlic, chopped celery, and some canned diced tomatoes in water. Once the stock was made and strained I prepared the soup by frying a chopped onion and three cloves of chopped garlic in Chipotle-infused olive oil (from L.O.V.E. Emporium). I added some dried oregano, fresh cilantro leaves, and some salt, some canned diced tomatoes, six cups of stock, and some fresh lime juice and simmered for 30 minutes. Finally I added the poached and diced chicken breasts. Once everything was cooked I placed broken up commercial tortilla chips into soup bowls and added the soup on top. This was served with shredded cheddar cheese topping and fresh cilantro garnish.

We had enough for leftovers so I made a change to the second-day offering by adding some frozen corn kernels before reheating.

Of course this would have been even better had I included avocado slices when serving, but alas we had none.

What have I got in my cupboard? New recipes for Stay-At-Home Coronoavirus advisory

This Spanish Tortilla isn't really a new recipe for us. It is essentially the same as this frittata recipe from a few years ago. Typically I'm pretty traditional when it comes to Spanish Tortillas and will only use eggs, onions, potatoes and olive oil (lots of it!) but I didn't want the pepper we bought from the farmer's market to go to waste. We'd already had to toss a nice acorn squash we'd bought but waited too long to use. This is no time to waste food. Limiting trips to the grocery store is what life is all about now.

One way we've been limiting the grocery store visits is by having some additional items added to our weekly milk and egg delivery. This week we ordered turkey tips and I used them as a substitute in for beef chuck in a beef and barley soup recipe I found on the New York Times Cooking page. I ended up making quite a few substitutions in fact. Here's how my recipe played out:
I drained the juice from two 14 oz. cans of diced tomatoes.
I added water to the tomato juice to make one quart of liquid which I put into a big soup pot.
I added the turkey tips along with some salt and pepper some celery stalks and some fresh parsley.
All of this cooked for one hour.
Then 1/4 cup of barley was added and cooked another hour
I removed the celery and parsley and added the reserved canned tomatoes, some frozen peas, and some chopped onion and carrots. 
I brought the soup to a boil and then simmered for 45 minutes.
As I'm writing this I realized that I didn't add the leftover cabbage that was in our refrigerator. It was part of the reason I chose the recipe!

Anyway, I made biscuits to go with this. It was quite good and filling. Now I need to find another cabbage recipe.

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.

Classic Beef Stew (Wets)

Gift card in hand, we headed to Trader Joe's on the day after Christmas and bought (among other things) some stewing beef. I wanted to make a childhood favorite using the classic beef, potato, and carrots mix I remembered from my youth. It seemed only fitting that a classic dish should come from a classic cookbook, so I used the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I made only minor deviations from the recipe. Instead of vegetable juice cocktail and "instant beef boullion granules" (I don't even know what those are) I used a can of tomato sauce and some beef stock from a box. I also used tri-colored baby carrots instead of sliced carrots, and skipped the celery all together. 

Some tasty comfort food for the holiday week. 

A final note on the title of the post: when I was growing up my father always pronounced the name of this dish backwards - "wets".

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili

photo from allrecipes.com

James and I bought a rather large bag of sweet potatoes a few weeks ago, and have been using them in various recipes (both old favorites and new temptations). I noticed that we had several cans of black beans in the cupboard so I started looking for a sweet potato and black bean soup recipe. I thought I would be able to count on good ol' Deborah Madison for this one, and was surprised to discover that her great big vegetarian cookbook in fact does not include such a recipe. My next stop was the New York Times Cooking pages. Once again, I was disappointed. So I next turned to allrecipes.com where I hit the jackpot with this hearty chili.  The ingredient list is rather long, but I am now such a foodie that I had everything in my own pantry (or at least a reasonable facsimile of everything). This isn't especially difficult to prepare, but it does take some time. The sweet potatoes have to be peeled, diced, and roasted. Additionally, the cooking time for the chili is close to an hour.  I made a few minor changes to the ingredients. The recipe calls for coating the sweet potatoes along with a chipotle pepper in olive oil. Since I keep a big bottle of chipotle- infused olive oil in my pantry I just used that to coat the sweet potatoes. (If you are in need of such a bottle I got mine at Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium - they deliver!). In lieu of water I used the coffee that was left in our carafe from our morning brew. And, instead of of the teaspoon each of cocoa powder and sugar called for I used two small pieces of Mexican chocolate which turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Topped with fresh cilantro and sour cream this was rich in colors, flavors, and textures.We both quite enjoyed this meal, and it paired perfectly with a bottle our own Barolo wine. In fact, I don't think we've ever had anything that so perfectly complemented the Barolo. There is no doubt that we will be making this one again.

Double Deglazed Stew

Pam and I met in French class, so it is appropriate that this evening's meal includes a bit of a language lesson. Autumn has been warm and slow in arriving, with leaves lingering longer than we ever remember them doing. But finally in the past week or two our thoughts have turned to autumnal favorites, and one of those is beef stew -- known in the Hayes family as WETS, which is STEW backwards.

The healthiest part of this dinner, and the only part that really would photograph well.

Pam found a NY Times stew recipe and jotted down the major ingredients for me. I was intrigued by one in particular -- cognac. And oddly enough, we were out of cognac, so I went off to a newly-expanded package store (packie) in our town to fetch some. It was a greater challenge than I expected, but I did find some. Good news for this dinner, and good news in general.

I followed the recipe more or less as written, though readers of this blog know that some exceptions are certainly following. The first of these was that I did not begin with salt pork; I used an equivalent amount of butter and a little salt instead, cooking the onions and shallots in butter, and transferring them to a bowl. I then added the lightly-floured cubes of beef (store-bought organic -- our farmers-market source for local beef is gone for the season) in two rounds.

While the aromatics and beef rested in the bowl, I broke out the cognac for deglazing, and in that moment realized what it is -- the use of any cool liquid in a hot pan to break up the bits that are stuck -- in a sugary glaze -- to the bottom. This is the beginning of many sauces, and as someone who loves the charred bits stuck to any pan, a very welcome step. Using a bit of cognac made it even more satisfying! From The Reluctant Gourmet, we learn that those bits on the bottom are called fond -- not because I am fond of them, but because this is the French word for bottom, like fundamental, foundation, and so on.

So this stew -- like other French beef stews we have made -- is as much a vehicle for sauce as anything. The use of cognac in deglazing was just the start. The Dijon made the sauce rich and flavorful, without a mustardish edge. I was curious about the second suggested mustard -- Pommery. A substitution post on Chow Hound taught me two things: 1) any whole-grain mustard would do in a pinch (we did not have any, and I was not going out again); and 2) this specific recipe is a popular use of Pommery mustard.

The final touch was a red wine, and regular readers will not be surprised to see that I used a small amount of Malbec, reserving the rest for a brilliant pairing. Together with some freshly-baked biscuits, we enjoyed this stew immensely. Our cognac should last until the next time we prepare it, and we have time to pick up that grainy mustard!

Oh right: the double deglazing! I almost neglected to explain the title. Our weekend galley has an electric stove, which I am trying very hard to learn how to use. My initial simmer on medium instead of low started scorching the stew before I knew what was happening. I moved the pan off the heat, scooped most of the contents into the large bowl that was on hand, and put it back on the heat with another splash of cognac. The back of the spoon liberated a second round of fond, perhaps making this even better than it would have been.

The Apple of My Egg

Our Egg, actually....

This is the brief story of a nice desert we prepared on the Big Green Egg. We need once again to promise not to make this blog all about the Egg, while posting yet another item about our use of it.

This time, it was for dessert with friends. We decided to try the manufacturer's recipe for smoked apples, which begins with hollowing out each apple and filling it with a sweet mix of raisins, sugar, and spices. We could not figure out how an apple corer would be of any use -- I simply used a paring knife and a small spoon to turn each apple into a bit of a cup.

I decided to forego the recommended half marshmallow capping each of these, and simply put this entire pan in the Egg, once it had reached 325F. The recipe calls for 60-75 minutes at this temperature; I think I went closer to 90, with no ill effect.

The result looks like a mess, but with all that sweetness, nobody even noticed. Especially since I did follow the recommendation to serve these with vanilla ice cream.

All six of us tucked into our apples with abandon -- the mostly gooey sweetness contrasting with the occasional crusty bit that had gone beyond caramelized. Even our daughter who usually eschews raisins enjoyed every bite!
I have no idea how much the success of this dish was owing to the smoke flavor, nor how similar would have been the results from a conventional oven. But we had a nicely cooked dessert in a small kitchen in late summer, with all the heat being outside in the Egg. So we will do it this way again!

Breaking in the Big Green Egg

A Day-Long Cooking Adventure in Three Acts
(Photo captions adapted from the Facebook posts with which James kept the rest of the world informed about our progress, whether they cared to be or not.)

Act I: James Builds
Last summer, we visited a friend in Colorado who had become a proud owner of a Big Green Egg -- a grill we had heard was special enough to be worth its rather high selling price. She prepared amazing ribs without standing over the grill the whole time, and convinced us that this might be just the thing for our weekend home. Like many people who are not very serious about grilling, we have had a series of lower-priced grills that eventually succumb to the elements.

We decided to wait until spring -- late spring, in fact -- to embark on our Big Green Egg adventure, and decided that it would be good to purchase it as my birthday present. Having a relatively empty Saturday schedule, I set off to the hardware store (these are only available from authorized dealers, one of which is already our favorite local store, Rocky's).

As with most purchases larger than a deck of cards these days, we were not actually buying a product: we were buying an assembly project. (Thanks, IKEA!) Fortunately, the weather was fine, we had not very much else to do, and we knew the end result would be worthwhile. And in general, the instructions -- combination of print and video -- were reasonably clear, though a few steps did seem like they would be easy to achieve only in zero gravity.

If Big Green Egg is a cult, then assembly is the hazing ritual. #whalinghouse#someassemblyrequired #worthit #mybirthdaypresent

The assembly process was not without risk. This warning really got my attention!

Do not taunt Big Green Egg.
(For SNL allusion, see Happy Fun Ball)

And although this step was not actually dangerous, the image was a bit alarming. I'm testing for airflow, once I lined up the inner and outer parts of the lower egg.

To at least one observer, these resembled carrots.  

By the time the Big Green Egg was ready to use, we had a bit of a conundrum. It was close to our normal evening-meal time, so we needed something relatively simple to prepare and that could cook quickly. Some recipes provided by the company require only 12 minutes of cooking time. But these are close to the upper end of its temperature range (which is 750F!), but the first couple of uses are supposed to be kept at 350F or below. So Pam did some investigating and improvising.

Act II: Pam Prepares
The folks at BigGreenEgg.com  would be well advised to have some simple "starter recipes" ideas readily available  for new users. Once you've spent all day putting something together, you don't need to look at online recipes that require you to have started a marinade "yesterday." As it was, I still had to go back to the place where James bought Big Green and buy some of the special fire starter needed to heat the Egg. And really, asking my butcher to de-bone my chicken is not an option when all I'm doing is running to the grocery store and picking up a whole bird.

I wound up making a coffee rub from some stale coffee ground and a variety spices including garlic salt, Chipotle pepper, ginger, and cloves. There were some other things as well, but I don't remember what they all were. I just started grabbing things from the cupboard and shaking them into the bowl. I covered the chicken with the rub, which we then put into the Egg.

We baked potatoes with it, which turned out to be some of the softest we've ever had.

Cookin' without gas!
And the cleanest this grill will ever be.

Act III: James Cooks

After all this, the cooking part was fairly easy. It took only seven minutes to get the coals ready, and from there just a few minutes to reach the called-for 350F in the closed grill. Just a little tweaking of the air vents allowed us to maintain that temperature. Once this was set up, "cooking" became synonymous with "ignoring" until the food was ready. For next time, we will have an thermometer to help us judge the doneness, because the chicken appeared to be done before it actually was. This was easily remedied, though, by returning it to the grill and reopening the air vents.

He is the egg man

Epilogue

The results were great -- moist inside and crispy outside, as EGGers promise. And of course the coffee made it even better!

While back at Rocky's, Pam had picked up a huge cook book for Big Green Egg cultists -- er, users -- and James has ordered a second cooking thermometer to keep at Whaling House.

So let the EGGing begin!

Coq au Riesling

A funny thing happened on our most recent visit to Plymouth, Massachusetts (America's hometown). We passed a rather large winery - Plymouth Bay Winery. Neither one of us remembered ever having seen it before, so we figured it must be new. It looked like perhaps it has moved into a former restaurant space. We're not ones to pass up a tasting so we went in. Some friendly folks greeted us and we asked how long they had been there. "Eighteen years". This is roughly the same amount of time we have lived in the area, and we visit Plymouth at least half a dozen times a year. You'd think we would have noticed something like that, especially since we're usually on the lookout for local wines! Go figure.

Anyway, we enjoyed a tasting of ten different wines including blackberry, apricot, and cranberry. We purchased several different bottles after the tasting, including two of the Widow's Walk - "a tribute to classic German Rieslings and Gewürztraminers" since I had just read this recipe for the a twist on the coq-au-vin I took it as a sign. The recipe was pretty simple to follow. I used chicken breasts instead of thighs because that's what I had in the freezer. I think I allowed too much of the liquid to boil away because mine didn't look as "stew like" as the photograph did. It was tender and tasty, however.

Lumberjack Stew

In Casa Hayes-Boh, the Sedaris family is a favorite source of high-brow/low-brow humor. We have read and heard almost everything brother David has written, and have made a couple of pilgrimages to see him in person. He once even gave us cake mix, and his inscription "...with the honor of meeting bakers ..." makes his copy of Holidays on Ice one of our household's great treasures. David specializes in tawdry word play for the NPR set; his twisted sister Amy takes the family business to a new level, most notably as a middle-aged former sex worker attending high school in Strangers with Candy.

Amy has a distinctly domestic side that is expressed -- with a bit of a twist -- in I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, which has been our guide for a couple other Nueva Receta entries. The book offers recipes in the context of entire home-entertainment events organized around a particular kind of guest.

As the title of this post suggests, for a few pages she applies her fertile imagination to the prospect of a visiting lumberjack. Queue up the obligatory musical reference, which my own Male Bonding Band has been known to perform on occasion.

Welcome back ...

Amy's Lumberjack Crosscut Stump Stew is part of a (fantasized) evening's entertainment with a strapping arborist, for whom she would also prepare a stack of white bread and her Lumberjack's Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. She also suggests a series of gift ideas for visiting lumberjacks, from an ax guard to tea tree oil shampoo.

The stew itself is rather simple to prepare -- we adapted it slightly to the cookware we have in our smaller kitchen at our Whaling House in Fairhaven. We began with very good, very local beef that we acquired at the farmer's market held each Sunday at Fairhaven High School (a.k.a. Hogwarts -- have a look). It was packaged specifically as stew beef by  J.H. Beaulieu Livestock and Produce Farm in Fairhaven, scarcely a mile away.

I browned the cubed beef in olive oil on high heat and then transferred it to a crock pot (not the casserole that Sedaris calls for). I then cooked a chopped onion and two minced cloves of garlic in the same pan the beef had been in, and added crushed tomatoes (she calls for puree), red wine, and a bit of balsamic (in place of white vinegar). To this I added a bit of sugar (trusting in Amy), salt, pepper, whole cloves and a stick of cinammon. I simmered them all together briefly and then transferred the whole mess to the crock pot.

After one hour, I boiled a package (10 ounces) of pearl onions in water, rinsed them and removed the outer skins, and then added them to the pot for another hour and a half of stewing. (NOTE: Pearl onions are great, though working with them is tedious.)

Meanwhile, Pam prepared drop biscuits from our kitchen bible by Deborah Madison. We enjoyed the biscuits along with some local cinnamon apple sauce, local milk (for Pam) and the decidedly non-local Malbec that had been used in the stew (for James).

The result -- a delicious, hearty stew that served as both lunch and dinner, with perfectly autumnal spice. As good as it was, it will be even better next time, when I will cook it at least an hour longer to make sure that the local, lean  beef has time to get uniformly tender.

Heritage Chili

With chili, it is never just one thing. When done right, everything that is added to the chili makes it better. This evening's chili (which of course started cooking around sunset yesterday) came together especially well. It might be my imagination, but I have to credit a secret ingredient -- one inspired by my Scottish heritage.

It all began with a calendar item we noticed last fall -- the second annual brewfest aboard the fantail of the USS Massachusetts in Battleship Cove, Fall River. We had a chance to learn some nautical history, honor veterans, and enjoy an extraordinary variety of beers in a unique setting, so we got tickets right away. (If there is to be a 3rd annual, it has not yet been announced -- fingers are crossed!)

Among the most interesting beers was a Scottish ale that was aged in bourbon-infused oak. I did not note the brewer and could not find a recipe -- nor do I have any oak barrels. But I did purchase a kit for Scottish Wee Heavy, along with some French oak chips that are like those I use when making red wine. It was not difficult to find bourbon in our kitchen. I soaked the chips in the bourbon, and then put them in the fermenter with the ale. I think it is going to be terrific when we open them in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, we had a little problem on bottling day -- not enough caps! We had already started to the process, and realized we would have the equivalent of a wine bottle's worth of beer that we would not be able to bottle. That is, it would not be proofed or sealed, and would just be flat beer -- albeit it a flat beer with strong, complex flavor.

So guess what was the first ingredient in the family crock pot -- a bit of oakey, bourbonish, wee heavy!  We don't yet know how the beer will be, but the chili was magnificent -- sweet, tangy, and complex.

(Incidentally, a quick search of this blog for the word chili reveals that I have still not divulged the basic recipe, though I described the other key ingredient -- time -- in our silver-anniversary post. The rest of the story will be told ... eventually!

My first pot roast

We spent some time with the family in Maryland over the holiday break. I did much of the food preparation for my mother and stepfather who are both experiencing some health problems. We did some food shopping with the list my mother prepared which included a pot roast. I wasn't even sure what to look for in the meat department, but a nice piece of beef labeled "chuck roast" seemed to fill the bill. I took it back, and with my mother guiding me through, I put the meat in the slow cooker along with a bit of wine, some garlic, onions, celery, and carrots. It cooked for a very long time (hence the name slow cooker, I guess) and in the mean time some friends of my parents came by with crab cakes from G&M, so the roast had to wait until the next day to be eaten. I was pleasantly surprised that even after being taken out of the slow cooker, put in the refrigerator, and then heated in the microwave that it was still very tender (and tasty too!) James had already left Maryland by then, but as an added bonus I got to enjoy this meal with my brother, whom I rarely get to see. It was almost like a family dinner. James and I are not big beef eaters, but next time we decide to have a red-meat based meal, I think I will try this at home.

A soup enjoyed by all

I happened across this recipe for Andalusian Chickpea and Spinach Soup in the New York Times yesterday. The description says it is a "comforting soup this is still suitable for a late spring/early summer meal. With heavy rains, and cool temperatures, it seemed like the perfect day for a hearty soup. And although I had no chickpeas, figured I could adapt it with some other kind of bean. My daughter, now home from boarding school for this summer, doesn't like garbanzos in any case. I used some dried black beans instead which I was able to begin soaking when I was home for lunch, so they'd be ready when I came back from work. I followed the directions for cooking the soaked beans, and then after they'd cooked a bit over an hour, began the other preparations. I used our indispensable cast iron cooking pot to sautee the onion and garlic, then added the canned tomato and paprika, Once this cooked down a bit I added the potatoes, beans, and cooking wine, and let simmer for 1/2 an hour. Before serving I added the spinach (less than the pound called for in the recipe, but it was what I had frozen from a previous meal) and a pinch of saffron, some garlic salt, and pepper. Everyone liked this, especially served with some warm yogurt bread from our bread machine (which I was also able to start during my lunch break - living next to work sure has its advantages). Yogurt bread, by the way is about the simplest recipe found in my bread machine recipe book. Yogurt, brown sugar, flour and yeast are the only ingredients.

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.