Bitter Greens

Leftovers pie

I had all this leftover meat from last week - some lamb, a bit of beef.  It was getting to the refrigerator-age where I didn't really want to eat it, but I knew it was still good.  I also had a miserable collection of vegetables - a crusty, banged-up old parsnip, a bunch of high-maintenance (tiny) shallots, and some celery.  I waste so much food week to week; I thought if I could do something about it this week, perhaps I could pay a bit of karmic debt.

So yesterday (between turns of my danish pastry dough which was complicated but unremarkable) I made a couple pie crusts in anticipation of tonight's dinner.  Stupidly, I put one in the freezer.  I guess I was thinking the meat pie I'd make would be so small I wouldn't need a double crust?  I don't know.  Realizing my mistake, I took the frozen dough out of the freezer and tried to defrost it in its plastic bag in warm water.  I rolled out the first crust while a quart of light chicken stock reduced to ~1c and the vegetables sauteed in butter.

I added some wine to the chicken stock and let that reduce too.  Maybe a glass and a half's worth.  After the veggies had been cooking a while, I added some of the chicken/wine liquid, then added some more once the first had evaporated.  I added the trimmed, chopped meat to the veggies, along with some chopped parsley and a touch of rosemary.  Remember those seasoned bread crumbs I mentioned last time?  Well, I added a handful to the bottom of the rolled-out pie crust before putting in the filling, then threw some more over the top and poured the remainder of the chicken/wine on.

Defrosting that pie crust didn't really work out - it was getting soft and melty on the outside before the inside was thawed.  So I had to make do with the abundant scraps from the bottom crust.  not too bad, eh?  A bit of tinfoil over the top while it's baking and the filling shouldn't even dry out too much.  We shall see.

Delicious pig

My favorite thing to cook in the winter is a stew with turnips, leeks, white beans, and barley.  I'll eat it every week with some steamed greens.  White foods are good for the lungs (according to traditional chinese medicine), and if you've spent any time with me in the winter, you'll know I have a nasty cough that can use whatever help it can get. 

I get a bit stuck in that rut though, to be honest.  I'm still stuck there.  Today I wanted to mix it up with some delicious pig.  I started with a lot of diced leeks, a couple stalks of celery and some wee carrots, sauteed all that in olive oil.  I bought a "picnic ham" - a rolled and smoked pork shoulder - from the Fatted Calf this morning, so I cut that up and threw it in the pot with the vegetables, adding a bunch of soaked white beans and some herbs as well. 

I wanted some ribs but didn't find any at Avedano's so I settled with some amazing looking pork rib chops.  Not wanting to waste the beautiful loin, I cut out the tournedos (dinner tomorrow - wine sauce of some kind?) and threw the meaty ribs into the pot.  Looking to cassoulet as my inspiration for the dish, I made some seasoned bread crumbs for the top.  Sauteed a bunch of shallots in salted butter, then poured that over half a baguette (split and oven-dried) and chopped it up in the food processor with the zest of half a meyer lemon. These bread crumbs are now my favorite condiment.

I thought I'd bought turnips with their greens on, but it turned out they were radishes.  Rookie mistake!  They were so non-radish-shaped that I didn't pay attention to the translucency of the skin.  Thinking it could be salvageable, I stripped the greens of their stems and steamed them with the radishes in chunks.  The greens were fine - bitter and not very pungent, a nice complement to the warm unctuous stew - but the steamed radishes were fishy and stinky.  Blech.

I realized halfway through stripping the greens that I had meant to use cabbage as my green because I'd bought these baby savoy cabbages that are like the kittens of the vegetable world - just try to resist their cuteness!  You can't!!  Anyway, I forgot about them, so I'll have to eat them another time.

Pupusas, holiday baking, and a chicken

It's hard to express how much I like pupusas.  They're so perfect and delicious - the cheese sneaks out and gets all browned and crusty in spots.  The warm cheesy corn contrasts perfectly with the tangy cool cabbage relish.  So good.  At the farmer's market a few weeks ago, Primavera was selling big bags of their wonderful fresh masa for only $3.50(!!), so I jumped.  These photos were from my test run (using Heidi's instructions) before making them over at Ross's place for dinner.  I used goat cheddar (that's why it's so white), and later also refried beans as filling.  They're not that easy to shape well, but Ross got quite good at it after a few tries.

Before Xmas I did quite a bit of cooking and baking.  One thing I made was a chocolate babka, a very enriched yeasted dough - brioche, pretty much - that was lacquered with butter and covered with finely chopped chocolate, the rolled up and twisted into loaves. 
It came out fall-apart tender and richly marbled with dark chocolate.  I particularly liked it toasted slightly so the chocolate got melty.  The recipe follows at the end.  My only complaint from a process standpoint is that I wish the recipe were in weight instead of volume measure.  I think I measured my flour light for that recipe - the dough was almost unmanageably soft.

While I was in VT for xmas, my parents and I went up to Montreal to visit the excellent Atwater market.  One of the many delicious things we bought was some locally-made Toulouse sausage, a pork sausage seasoned with white wine and black pepper.  Mom and I have both been excited about trying to debone a whole chicken, so we tried that.  We chopped out the backbone and deboned the chicken splayed out flat.  Next time, I'll just chop off the wings at the shoulder - they are absolutely not worth the effort.  The legs were a bit tricky too but well worth it.  We cooked the sausage and mixed it up with some sauteed shallots and steamed, finely chopped chard.  Stuffed the legs first, sewed them shut, then tightly stuffed and sewed the rest using cotton twine and a big needle.  Leaving as much skin as you can makes the sewing much easier.  It didn't spit out a whole lot of juice, but we made gravy from what little pan drippings it made plus the stock from the discarded skeleton.  Pretty goddamn good.  Great the next day with mustard between 2 pieces of bread.

Tragedy Strikes

I got home late-ish Monday night and went to the fridge for a beer.  Oh delicious beer!  But it wasn't quite as bitter and floral as I expected.  Then I realized that it also wasn't as cold as I expected.  A moment later, I realized that the refrigerator had been not-working long enough for everything in the freezer to reach room temperature.  That photo was from a few weeks ago, I also had in there some merguez sausage, the rest of that puff pastry, a whole chicken, and a pound of irish rashers destined for the alleged best sandwiches ever (english muffin, stilton, bacon, chutney).  In the fridge were all my tasty salted pig parts from Boccalone this week, the just-opened last jar of apricot jam from the spring, and god knows what else.

I'm pretty sad about it.  New fridge comes Tuesday, just in time for Thanksgiving.

thanksgiving prep

There wasn't a whole lot of time today after I went into the office for a couple of hours.  But I needed to do something productive and fun after working on a Sunday.  I'd bought some quinces yesterday, so I made ye olde poached quinces.  This time I canned the fruit so I can use it later.  As I've mentioned before, I love the old-lady aesthetic of putting up fruit for the winter.  By contrast, I don't like the old-lady aesthetic of my brand-new, short, rather conservative a-line bob hair cut.  Not sure where the line is.

So after I put up the quince, I made two pies.  First just a simple apple pie, with a collection of random apples from my fridge.  One was a pear-tasting russet fella, 2 other very green tasting russet ones, something nice and tart (should've saved it for eating) and a winesap.  That'll be a pie to eat with a fat slice of sharp cheddar or wensleydale and a glass of white wine.  The second pie was a bunch of big wormy gnarly-ass winesap apples - carefully trimmed of course - plus one fruit's worth of poached quince.  The first was thickened with flour, the second with cornstarch.  Check back later for results.

I've got what, almost 3 weeks til thanksgiving?  Pie - check.  On the way home from work I ordered a goose from the butcher up the street.  May I tell you how fucking awesome that place is?   I asked if they had a line on a goose for my holiday dinner, mmlle. just said, "how many pounds? when do you want to pick it up?"  easy as you please.  They render their own lard there too, so if you need some for pies or whatever, just call a day or so ahead.  I also did some thinking about the stuffing: chestnuts, cherries, leeks, onions, bread?  Or something?  I should look at the recipe for that wonderful savory bread pudding that Jen made a couple years back, see if the flavors can be modified appropriately.

What else do I need?  Roasted (in goose fat??) potatoes, bitter greens (obvs)... brussels sprouts? rolls?  Suggestions?

Apples, day 2

Never one to listen to my parents' advice, I didn't go to the bar last night but rather spent the night drinking whiskey in front of the TV.  I'll leave it to your imagination whether the thing was on or not.

I got up bright and early this morning to start making puff pastry.  Puff pastry is basically like unyeasted croissant dough, or like extra-buttery pie crust folded over and over.  The one I made is "rough" puff pastry because it's started like pie crust - with the butter in cubes, rather than like croissant dough - with the butter lacquered on in a single sheet.  You mix the butter, flour, & water in the mixer, then start rolling it into a precise rectangle.  You fold the rectangle in thirds like a letter, then repeat 5 times, allowing the dough to rest in the fridge for a half hour every other turn.  It gets increasingly difficult over time.

In between turns of the dough, I made a cannellini bean and farro soup for lunch with chunks of fatty smoked pork I got from Marin Sun yesterday.  Yum.

 

  The tart (guess where the recipe came from) started with a thick "applesauce" cooked down from apples, poached quinces, and apple cider.  The puff pastry is rolled out in a rectangle, then the edges are cut off and stuck to the new edges with water.  I kinda fucked this up; I think allowing the pastry scraps to overlap a little might keep the tart together better.  Then layer the apple and quince slices for maximum cuteness, and sprinkle the whole thing liberally with sugar.

While the tart was baking, I made the sauce, which is just quince poaching liquid and apple cider cooked down to a thick syrup.  The first time, I spaced out while it was cooking down, and it was very thick and beginning to scorch at the bottom, so i poured it out into a rice bowl and started over.  When I poked at it after it was cool, I found that it was jelly!  I didn't realize there was enough pectin just in the juices, but I guess there is.  So I cut it up into pieces and tossed it with sugar.  It's wonderful; the quinces have a lovely almost rosy fragrance. 

As you can see, the sides of the tart came apart a bit, and the juice leaked out and burned the bottom and edges some.  I expect the apples will be a bit tough and dry for this reason (and because they're the kind of apples you want in a pie, that don't turn to mush when cooked).  The second batch of cooked-down juices were poured over the top once it cooled a bit.  Pectin has similar behavior to gelatin - they have very similar uses in desserts/sweets, of course, I guess I'm just used to my soups turning to a wobbly solid in the fridge, while when a fruit sauce gets all viscous and clingy, it's surprising and magical.

Apples

Although I can still get the peaches and plums I was so hungry for in the early summer, my attention has turned to apples.  Growing up in Vermont, I was spoiled by the quality and variety of apples available directly from farms in the fall.  While California dominates in nearly every other food arena (another exception noted later), apples at their best here are still only nearly as good as at home. 

Part of the problem is that I like fragrant, tart, crispy apples, the kind that are alarmingly bright but don't store well.  I think the taste for apples out here generally trends toward bland sweet ones - think Fuji or Golden Delicious.  Blech.  There are a few farms represented at the farmer's market that at this time of year have apples I really like.  At one, you talk to them and say, "I'm from the east coast, I want an apple that tastes like home" and they'll pick you out a nice one.

Anyway, I bought a crapload of apples this week.  A green russet (not shiny) kind, and some little red ones along the line of macoun / rome /macintosh.  I also had some Philo Golds from last week; pie apples that I've been eating out of hand - usually a winning strategy for me, but in this case somewhat disappointing.  So I used the little green ones in a recipe for braised chicken in calvados sauce found, once again, in the Chez Panisse Fruit cookbook.  They're tart and dry - just right.

Easily my least favorite aspect of cooking is butchery.  I admit that I most often roast my chickens so I can do a minimum of cleaver-work.  This recipe requires separating the legs, trimming the wings, then removing the back and quartering the breast.  I almost didn't make it because of that, but I was taken in by the onion-apple combo, by the mass quantities of creme fraiche involved, and by the calvados flambe.

It's pretty easy after the chicken's cut up, though there are a lot of steps. Brown the chicken, fry some onions & carrots, add Calvados and ignite it (if I hadn't been on the phone with my parents at the time, I would've taken a photo of that), then add the chicken & some hard cider and cook it through.  Then fry pearl onions very slowly in another pan.  Then fry peeled apple slices in butter with salt & pepper (they make a crust and puff up a bit - cute!).  Remove the chicken, strain its cooking liquid, add a CUP of creme fraiche, and reduce the sauce by half.  Then get all the parts together and heat them through in the sauce.

Delicious.  The quality of the chicken and the creme fraiche are probably the biggest contributors.  I was using Cowgirl Creamery brand for a couple years, but I recently tried the Vermont Butter & Cheese Co stuff because it's a hair cheaper and their butter is so good.  Winner! It's soooo nutty and rich, whereas the Cowgirl stuff is rather more fresh and bright.  I think VT B&C might ferment the creme in the package - it separates to a creamier layer and liquidier layer, so it is probably just stronger.

Probably tomorrow: puff pastry, a quince/apple tart, and maybe an apple pie for the freezer.  The freezer is hungry for pie.  For now I'm off to the bar to drink my troubles away, on the advice of my parents.

Quince weekend

I made damson plum jam last weekend and was told that that's an old-lady thing to do.  I aspire to being an old lady - filling my freezer with things, putting up jam, making my own pickles and sausage.  It seems natural that I'm also interested in overlooked, old-fashioned, and high-maintenance fruits and vegetables.  A farmer at the market on Saturday had quinces, and since I knew they were a pain in the ass AND I've never had them before, I had to buy some.
Why are they a pain in the ass?  Quinces are related to apples but with some key differences.  They're inedible raw - astringent, dry, and hard.  Their cores are tougher, so cutting them requires leaning into the knife, and cutting the seeds out is pretty dangerous.  They also oxidize faster than apples, so you have to do all that as quickly as possible.  As I found out later, they are also very tasty, like the most perfumed apple you've ever had, and their texture is denser so they hold up to long cooking.

The first thing I did was to peel, core, and slice a couple pounds of them and poach them in sugar water with a bit of lemon and half a vanilla bean.  I think I'd like to put the poached slices over a vanilla pastry cream filled tart or something like that.  For now, they live in the refrigerator.

Now, this doesn't look like much, but it's obscenely tasty.   The man I bought the quinces from told me a Persian woman had bought some earlier and said she'd cook them with lamb, so I went straight from there to Marin Sun for a chunk of lamb shoulder.  I found in the - once again, exceptional - Chez Panisse Fruit book a recipe for lamb tagine with quinces. There's a lot of reasons I was afraid I wouldn't like this.  It's got a fair amount of cinnamon, which I don't like, plus honey and fruit, and I don't much like sweet things (see blog title).  But isn't it always the case that things that tread just to one side of the "hate" line are the things that are most sublime?  People who eat with me often know I love perfumey and fragrant foods, and I just adore the flavor/fragrance of honey, the kind found in french ice cream or sauternes or tokaji, not to be confused with the american hippie brown bread with honey flavor.  So this stew turns out slightly sweet but oniony-rich, and super flowery-fragrant both from the honey and from the uncircumcised quince.  Peels on, that is.  Perfectly complemented by a Racer 5 chaser.

Sometimes I suck

A lot of my discussions about food are like, "I made this and it was so great," which I guess comes out as kinda cocky.  So for a little balance, I'll post about something I made that was an ill-conceived disaster. 
First, I roasted some vegetables.  I cored these here tomatoes and filled the cores with olive oil, salt, and a bit of pepper.  Roasted them, 2 onions, and 3 pimientos in the oven at about 400.  Removed the peels from the tomatoes & peppers, put it all in a saucepan, cooked it down until the clear juices from the tomatoes were pretty well reduced, then pureed it.  Salt & pepper to taste.  So far so good, but there was a wicked metallic tang, probably from the pan I roasted the peppers & onions in.  The salt helped mask it, but it was still detectable.
Then I cooked up some white beans.  Soaked overnight, then cooked with herbs and shallots til soft, salting toward the end.  Drained the beans, left half whole, and pureed half with some chopped parsley and ricotta.  Boy, did that need a lot of salt to taste like anything.

So then I cooked up some pasta with ridges on one side and a scoop shape that I hoped would cuddle with the whole beans.  I tossed the pasta with the bean puree & whole beans and put it in a casserole pan.  Added blobs of ricotta and dotted it with oil-cured olives.  Then poured the roasted vegetable sauce over the top in ribbons.  Baked it until the sides started getting crusty.

Yuck!  I mentioned in my post about duck that beans are really drying.  The moisture level in the pasta and beans mingled and turned into a sticky, mushy yuck, whereas I was looking for that slightly slippery pasta texture.  I wasn't really thinking about how that would be achieved.  I'd reduced the red sauce so far that it couldn't contribute any lubrication, it was just more sticky goop.  The olives that I'd expected to be a salty, tangy counterpoint ended up being way too sweet.  I ate some because I was hungry, then threw the rest in the trash.  Booo! 

I think the right way to do this dish is to toss the pasta with the red sauce, and add little blobs of the bean puree here & there, use tangier olives, and cover the top so it can't dry out too much.  Is the idea even worth it?  Not sure.

There was plenty of sauce leftover, which was salvageable.  For lunch today I heated it up with some slices of finocchona salame and a little water to thin it back out, and tossed it with pasta.  It was remarkable mostly for the delicious salame.

Chicken pie

This week's chicken was too big to eat all the leftovers as chicken, creme fraiche & arugula sandwiches, so I thought I'd make a pie.  I didn't grow up eating chicken pot pie; I don't think I had one until I was well into adulthood.  After years of kinda sucking at it, I've finally been getting pretty good at making pie crust.  I love pie; I love savory things - what could be better than eating pie for dinner?

I use Tartine's all-butter "flaky tart dough" recipe, made in the food processor.  That's my secret: doing it exactly the way my mom said not to.  3c flour, 2 1/2 sticks of butter, 2/3c water, 1t salt. I sauteed 2 small white carrots, 1 celery rib and a big waxy potato in butter (some cow, some goat - it's what I had), adding a handful of haricots verts toward the end.  Salt and pepper to taste, add a big handful of minced parsley.  The meat is from 2 legs from a 5-lb bird, plus assorted odds and ends.  Leftover gravy from the roast dinner, and 3c stock + 1c wine reduced down to less than half.

Here is the tricky part: I want to thicken it with bread instead of flour, but I am winging it, so there's no telling how much to use.  I made bread crumbs from 1/3 of a loaf of Della Fattoria  Ciabatta, and used 2 big handfuls of the coarse stuff.  Poured the meat & veg filling over the top, closed it up, and stuck it in the freezer.  It'll be dinner later in the week.  If your name starts with an "R" this dinner may be in your near future.