I baked some baguettes over the weekend (I had been intending to make my own sourdough bread, but it didn't work out, so these were just regular white baguettes), and we have a fridge full of really good cheeses after some indulging at City Market, and I had been thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches for a few days now...
Cut 2 slices of baguette per person. I like to cut mine 'on a bias' (at a sharp angle), which results in a wider slice than if you cut cut right across. Butter both sides of each slice. Preheat your oven (or broiler) to 350F. Put an oven-proof pan on the stove over medium heat. Once hot, put your slices in the pan. Allow the first sides to get warm, then flip and top the hot sides (which now face upwards) with slices of your favorite cheese. I used a combination of Cabot Clothbound Cheddar (my favorite cheddar) and Manchego cheese from Spain. Once the second sides are starting to brown, flip one of each pair onto it's partner so that the bread is on the outside and the cheese is in the middle. Put the pan in the oven or under the broiler until the cheese is melted. Enjoy!
You could add extra fillings if you like. I wanted to use bacon, but we had run out - you could crisp it in the pan first before doing the bread, then remove and add to the sandwich when you put it in the oven. We tried sliced tomato (good) and roasted pear (I liked this one). Just be careful not to overload the sandwiches too much...
Note - Metric info: 350F =175C
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Celery Root and Stilton Soup
This was a recipe I read in 'Cooking with Shelburne Farms' by Melissa Pasanen and Rick Gencarelli, and wanted to try after picking up a celery root (celeriac) at the Burlington Farmers' Market. The recipe is actually credited to Vermont chef Aaron Josinsky.
Take 1 celery root. Mine was 9 oz, so if yours is larger or smaller you may have to adjust quantities up or down. Remove the skin (I find a small paring knife best for this) and cut into 1-inch cubes. Put them in a saucepan with 2 cups of milk and a good pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer and maintain until the cubes are soft, about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it, and stir occasionally. Once done, blend with a blender (be very careful with hot liquids - do it in small batches) or immersion blender. Add 1-2 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like your soup - if you like it thicker, use less stock) and 1.5 oz crumbled blue cheese (I used Stilton, which I like, but just about any blue cheese works). Blend again, and reheat gently. Strain through your finest sieve (unless you like your soup thick). Serve and enjoy!
I garnished my soup with oven-roasted pears (I took a pear, de-cored it, sliced it, tossed it with olive oil and salt and roasted for about 30 minutes at 350F). The original recipe suggested finishing it with a little lemon juice and garnishing with roasted apples and blue cheese crumbles.
Note 1 - I left my milk unattended and it curdled. After washing the curds off the celery root and straining the whey through a very fine strainer, I continued with the recipe and strained again at the end. The soup wound up a little grainy, but not a bad save!
Note 2 - Metric info: 9 oz = 255g; 1 inch = 2.5cm; 2 cups = 240ml; 1.5 oz = 43g; 350F = 175C
Take 1 celery root. Mine was 9 oz, so if yours is larger or smaller you may have to adjust quantities up or down. Remove the skin (I find a small paring knife best for this) and cut into 1-inch cubes. Put them in a saucepan with 2 cups of milk and a good pinch of salt. Bring to a simmer and maintain until the cubes are soft, about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it, and stir occasionally. Once done, blend with a blender (be very careful with hot liquids - do it in small batches) or immersion blender. Add 1-2 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like your soup - if you like it thicker, use less stock) and 1.5 oz crumbled blue cheese (I used Stilton, which I like, but just about any blue cheese works). Blend again, and reheat gently. Strain through your finest sieve (unless you like your soup thick). Serve and enjoy!
I garnished my soup with oven-roasted pears (I took a pear, de-cored it, sliced it, tossed it with olive oil and salt and roasted for about 30 minutes at 350F). The original recipe suggested finishing it with a little lemon juice and garnishing with roasted apples and blue cheese crumbles.
Note 1 - I left my milk unattended and it curdled. After washing the curds off the celery root and straining the whey through a very fine strainer, I continued with the recipe and strained again at the end. The soup wound up a little grainy, but not a bad save!
Note 2 - Metric info: 9 oz = 255g; 1 inch = 2.5cm; 2 cups = 240ml; 1.5 oz = 43g; 350F = 175C
Nettle Soup
I picked up some stinging nettles from the Burlington Winter Farmers' Market last Saturday, with a view to making nettle soup. Stinging nettles are extremely prevalent in the UK - I would see them (and be stung by them) all the time growing up. Although I have never seen them growing wild here in Vermont, I am assured that they do (and some of my nettles were from a forager, so that is proof enough). Anyway, I had never eaten them and felt like getting my own back on the weeds for stinging me. Plus I read that they are very good for you - they are supposedly an immune-system booster.
Nettle soup is easy to make. Sweat 1/2 an onion, finely diced and a little garlic (1/2 clove at most, minced) in some butter until soft. Meanwhile, wash your nettles (I used 3 good-sized bunches) and remove the thicker stems (be careful not to get stung - mine had been in the fridge a few days and did not seem to be capable of stinging any more). Add the nettles to your onions and cook in the butter for a minute or two. Add 3 cups of stock (I used chicken stock, but you could use vegetable stock if you prefer) and 3 tbsp cooked rice (optional; to thicken the soup). Bring the stock to a boil and simmer about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and blend the soup (you can use a blender, in which case be very careful - do it in small batches slowly - or you can use a stick/immersion blender, which is what I did).
At this point I strained my soup through a fine sieve. You can decide whether or not to do this depending on how you like your soup - with texture (do not strain) or smooth (strain). Place the soup back on the heat and return to a simmer. At this point, switch off the heat and stir in 1/2 cup heavy cream. Add a little grated (or ground) nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Serve. Enjoy!
This recipe was adapted from one of the same name in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'River Cottage Cookbook', a great guide for producing and cooking your own food.
Note: Metric info - 3 cups = 700 ml; 1/2 cup = 120 ml
Nettle soup is easy to make. Sweat 1/2 an onion, finely diced and a little garlic (1/2 clove at most, minced) in some butter until soft. Meanwhile, wash your nettles (I used 3 good-sized bunches) and remove the thicker stems (be careful not to get stung - mine had been in the fridge a few days and did not seem to be capable of stinging any more). Add the nettles to your onions and cook in the butter for a minute or two. Add 3 cups of stock (I used chicken stock, but you could use vegetable stock if you prefer) and 3 tbsp cooked rice (optional; to thicken the soup). Bring the stock to a boil and simmer about 7 minutes. Remove from heat and blend the soup (you can use a blender, in which case be very careful - do it in small batches slowly - or you can use a stick/immersion blender, which is what I did).
At this point I strained my soup through a fine sieve. You can decide whether or not to do this depending on how you like your soup - with texture (do not strain) or smooth (strain). Place the soup back on the heat and return to a simmer. At this point, switch off the heat and stir in 1/2 cup heavy cream. Add a little grated (or ground) nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Serve. Enjoy!
This recipe was adapted from one of the same name in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'River Cottage Cookbook', a great guide for producing and cooking your own food.
Note: Metric info - 3 cups = 700 ml; 1/2 cup = 120 ml
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Ciabatta Bread
Now to my favorite aspect of cooking - bread. Since deciding to try to live a little cleaner (in terms of what we put into our bodies), we figured we wanted to forego crappy supermarket bread. So, I am working on a sourdough starter, but that is taking a week (more on this in a later post), so I needed a 'faster' bread to start with. And I love ciabatta... Note that a digital scale and a stand mixer are pretty much required for this recipe, which comes from 'Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers' by Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman.
Although it is a lot quicker than making your own sourdough from scratch, ciabatta does require a starter of sorts, called a biga, which should be started 8-16 hours ahead of time - ideally, the night before.
So, the night before you want to bake, take 2.3 oz tepid water (70-78F), 1/2 tsp instant yeast and 3.5 oz white bread flour (I used all purpose, which worked fine) and stir to combine into a dough in a small bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, and leave out at room temperature for 1 hour, then place in the refrigerator for 8-16 hours.
The next day, take the biga, transfer it to a largish bowl, add 15 oz tepid water and stir. Add 2 tsp instant yeast, 17.6 oz white bread flour (or AP) and 0.4 oz salt, and stir to combine. Knead in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for 13-15 min on fairly high speed (speed #8 for a KitchenAid), then on high (#10) for another 2-3 min until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl and becomes elastic.
Transfer the dough to a straight-sided container (preferably transparent). Mark on the side of the container where the dough will come to when it has tripled in size and leave at room temperature, covered, until it reaches the mark - about 3-4 hours.
Preheat your oven to 475 F with a pan of water in the bottom (to generate steam), and a pizza stone or baking sheet in it, so that it preheats with the oven.
While it is preheating, take a pizza peel or upturned baking sheet and cover with parchment paper and a sprinkling of flour. Flour your counter and set down your dough on it. Cut into 2 pieces. Pick up a piece by the ends, stretching it and setting it on the parchment paper. Repeat with the other piece. 'Dimple' the tops of your loaves with your fingers, cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 30-40 min, until you can see bubbles below the surface.
Remove plastic wrap and slide off peel onto stone in oven. Bake until loaves are golden, 30-35 min. Remove and cool on wire rack for 1 hour before slicing or freezing. Enjoy!
Note 1: The pizza stone and peel are useful but not essential. I have neither, and my bread worked out fine.
Note 2 : Organic stone-ground flour is recommended by the authors of the book. I used standard unbleached flour from the supermarket. It worked OK. All bread recipes benefit from the use of spring water, which does not have any chlorine, which could inhibit the growth of the yeast. I used tap water, which worked OK, but am now using spring water for my breads. The original recipe also called for sea salt, which I used, but normal salt is fine.
Note 3: Weights are used instead of volumes in baking because the same volume of flour (and other powdery ingredients) can weigh different amounts depending on the brand of flour, how it settles, etc. I use the volume for yeast because it is so small, and its accuracy is not paramount.
Note 4: Metric info - 2.3 oz = 65g, 3.5 oz = 100g, 15 oz = 425g, 17.6 oz =500g, 0.4 oz =11g, 475 F = 250 C.
Pasta with Porcini Mushroom Cream Sauce and Crispy Kale
This was a very simple pasta and sauce recipe, made with my current favorite mushroom - porcini (also known as ceps or boletes).
I used dried porcini mushrooms (the most easily available kind). I added plenty of water to them in a saucepan and brought it to the boil, covered it. let it simmer a few minutes, then switched it off and let it stand, covered for a while (half an hour is good). I then strained them, saving the liquid and the mushrooms (although I did not use the reconstituted mushrooms here) separately.
I then cooked my pasta (I tried both egg noodles and angel hair with the sauce and much preferred the angel hair) until al dente. Meanwhile, I sauteed (cooked in fat over medium-high heat) a mix of fresh mushrooms in a pan with shallots and a little garlic. I used oyster mushrooms (another favorite), and king oyster mushrooms. I deglazed the pan with some sherry, allowing it to boil away, and then added some of my porcini 'stock', allowing it to simmer, then adding cream and finishing with a little cold butter. Season with salt and pepper, and toss with the drained pasta.
The kale can be cooked at the same time as the mushrooms and pasta. Melt butter in a pan. Add chopped kale (remove ribs) and a little salt. Increase the heat to medium-high and allow it to brown slightly, tossing it when it does so to expose all of it to the bottom of the pan. This results in crispy kale. If you prefer your kale wilted, follow the instructions for wilted swiss chard in the last post (but omit the stems). I served the kale on top of the pasta.
Pan-roasted Pork with Roasted Apples, Sunchoke-Potato Puree, Swiss Chard and Mustard Cream Sauce
First off, apologies to all for the lack of posts lately. We just moved house and do not have internet at home yet, so my blogging opportunities have been somewhat limited...
Since moving, we've been trying to switch over to buying organic food over conventionally-farmed food wherever possible, in an effort to avoid pesticides and other contaminants in our food (and of course there are environmental benefits too). The first thing we have discovered is that shopping organic is expensive, at least at the store (farmer's markets and CSAs are the exception - we did the former yesterday and are considering the latter for the summer). And organic meat, not just hard to find, is very pricy. We are thinking about cutting down on our meat consumption so that we can afford it, but I'm sure there will be exceptions... Anyway, we stopped by City Market in Burlington the other day and picked up some local, 'naturally raised' pork chops (not organic, but at least not factory-farmed). Here is what I did with them:
Season your pork chops by sprinkling them generously with salt and pepper. Get a pan hot and add some butter. Once it is melted, add your chops and moderate the heat so that the pork sizzles but the butter doesn't burn. Cook until the first side is nicely browned then flip and cook the second side the same way. Once both sides are browned, check to see if it is cooked to your desired doneness (yes, at least in the US, where there is no trichinosis in pigs, you can eat your pork below well-done; I prefer mine slightly pink (medium-well)). If you are not familiar with 'temping' meat, you can make a very fine slit in the chop and peek in at the center of the meat to see what color it is. Bear in mind that, as it rests, it will continue to cook slightly more. Once cooked, 'rest' the meat on a plate, covered with a foil 'tent' for at least 10 minutes. This is important, as it allows the juices to redistribute through the meat.
Take the pan that you used to cook the meat, and pour out and discard any fat. Put it back on the heat, and add some white wine (1/4 cup or so). As the wine boils away, scrape the browned bits on the bottom of the pan so that they dissolve into the liquid. This is called 'deglazing' the pan. Allow the wine to boil almost dry (careful - if it does get dry it will burn), then add a little water and a touch of cream. Bring to a boil, taste (it should not taste 'thin' - if it does, then allow it to reduce in volume a little), whisk in some cold butter, add up to a teaspoon of mustard, taste again and season if necessary.
While cooking, and then resting, the meat, you can prepare the sides:
Roasted apples - peel, core and slice an apple. Cook in a small oven-proof pan in butter over medium-high heat until the slices brown. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast until soft - at least 20 minutes at 350 F.
Sunchoke-Potato Puree - boil peeled sunchokes (also known as jerusalem artichokes) and potatoes separately; drain and combine with some hot cream, butter and salt and pepper and mash together.
Swiss Chard - chop the ribs of the chard and sweat (cook over very low heat so they don't color) in butter with a little garlic. Add the chopped leaves with a little water, and cook gently until wilted. Season.
Since moving, we've been trying to switch over to buying organic food over conventionally-farmed food wherever possible, in an effort to avoid pesticides and other contaminants in our food (and of course there are environmental benefits too). The first thing we have discovered is that shopping organic is expensive, at least at the store (farmer's markets and CSAs are the exception - we did the former yesterday and are considering the latter for the summer). And organic meat, not just hard to find, is very pricy. We are thinking about cutting down on our meat consumption so that we can afford it, but I'm sure there will be exceptions... Anyway, we stopped by City Market in Burlington the other day and picked up some local, 'naturally raised' pork chops (not organic, but at least not factory-farmed). Here is what I did with them:
Season your pork chops by sprinkling them generously with salt and pepper. Get a pan hot and add some butter. Once it is melted, add your chops and moderate the heat so that the pork sizzles but the butter doesn't burn. Cook until the first side is nicely browned then flip and cook the second side the same way. Once both sides are browned, check to see if it is cooked to your desired doneness (yes, at least in the US, where there is no trichinosis in pigs, you can eat your pork below well-done; I prefer mine slightly pink (medium-well)). If you are not familiar with 'temping' meat, you can make a very fine slit in the chop and peek in at the center of the meat to see what color it is. Bear in mind that, as it rests, it will continue to cook slightly more. Once cooked, 'rest' the meat on a plate, covered with a foil 'tent' for at least 10 minutes. This is important, as it allows the juices to redistribute through the meat.
Take the pan that you used to cook the meat, and pour out and discard any fat. Put it back on the heat, and add some white wine (1/4 cup or so). As the wine boils away, scrape the browned bits on the bottom of the pan so that they dissolve into the liquid. This is called 'deglazing' the pan. Allow the wine to boil almost dry (careful - if it does get dry it will burn), then add a little water and a touch of cream. Bring to a boil, taste (it should not taste 'thin' - if it does, then allow it to reduce in volume a little), whisk in some cold butter, add up to a teaspoon of mustard, taste again and season if necessary.
While cooking, and then resting, the meat, you can prepare the sides:
Roasted apples - peel, core and slice an apple. Cook in a small oven-proof pan in butter over medium-high heat until the slices brown. Transfer the pan to the oven and roast until soft - at least 20 minutes at 350 F.
Sunchoke-Potato Puree - boil peeled sunchokes (also known as jerusalem artichokes) and potatoes separately; drain and combine with some hot cream, butter and salt and pepper and mash together.
Swiss Chard - chop the ribs of the chard and sweat (cook over very low heat so they don't color) in butter with a little garlic. Add the chopped leaves with a little water, and cook gently until wilted. Season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)