October 2007 Archives

... and this new James Lileks book looks like a great present for food lovers:

Not that I want it. And this isn't a hint. At all.

I made a bunch of mac and cheese to freeze yesterday. Actually, it's rigatoni and cheese because that's what I had on hand, but any pasta that can hold lots of gooey cheese works great.

It's really worth the effort to make your own bread crumbs, it's a big part of the flavor.

The recipe is the same on I used before, but it's even better with Survival Spice®!

Been cooking? Email me!

Happy Friday, one and all. Don't you wish the weekend was as long as the rest of the week?

Kathleen has supplied us with a comic appetizer that hopefully will be followed by a 7 course meal of the funny, thanks!

Have a great weekend, everyone! Cook something good, willya?

Cool article at Popular Science in the geekdom behind how our sense of taste works. Check it out if you're so inclined.

h/t Instapundit

I hadn't made a Dutch baby for breakfast since my first attempt, so I thought I'd whip one up this past Sunday for Julie, who wasn't in town the first time.

I have to say, this is really a great change from our Sunday morning 'defaults'- pancakes or French toast, and it's really, really easy to prepare. The recipe calls for a 375 oven temp, which is a little hotter than I like to cook bacon, so I let the cast iron skillet heat up in the oven while I cooked the bacon most of the way through. I then cranked the oven up to the higher temp, and removed the sheet pan with the bacon until the Dutch Baby had risen beautifully and was set, at which point it was safe to pop the bacon back in the oven for the last 10 minutes or so.

I didn't make compote this time, but it was awesome just with the powder sugar and some organic maple syrup. I might add another egg next time, but it's awfully good as is.

Well, it's finally starting to cool down here in Phoenix, and I've found myself cooking more meals inside that outside lately. Not that there's a foot of snow on the grill or anything, but it's usually dark when I get home, so cooking inside just feels right.

This dish was a piece of cake- I guess I could have made a pan sauce, but after stuffing a turkey breast seasoned with Survival Spice® with apples, it stayed nice and moist. I added some polenta wedges to the cast iron skillet during the last 20 minutes, and some steamed brussel sprouts finishied it off really well.

Been cooking? Let's hear about it!

Happy Friday, gang! A crazy week around here is finally drawing to a close. Janella has sent a joke that's so 'fowl' it's funny.

Have a great weekend. If you're gobbling up something good and want to share some pictures, just email me.

John sent this in a while back around the time of the wedding, I missed it because it didn't have a subject line, I think. Shame on me:

here is a shrimp and morrocan olive pizza , I took eggplant, onion , sun dried tomatoz , portabello mushrooms , fennel , garlic and grilled all of them on my rangetop grill pan . then I hand chopped them rough ,then I mixed in capers and chili peppers. Then I added 1 small can of tomato paste and loosened it with h2o to get the desired pizza sauce thickness. then I added a bit of pesto .......take shrimp and 1/2- horizontal -soak in bit o melted butter................... crust : 4 cups ap flour , 1 stick butter melted , 1 pkg yeast added to 1 cup h2o bit o sugar , salt ........mixo .....bit of parm cheez........... oven set to flank speed , ..............@ 15 miuntes take za out of oven and garlic butter the crust , pop back in til med well done , re-garlic crust , eat

Wow, I'll bet that crust was rich. The whole thing is just mind-blowing.

(Cajun catfish, polenta cakes and asparagus)

I've blogged about all this stuff recently, so to keep it interesting (hopefully) I roasted everything in cast iron skillets under the broiler, and plated it up. Actually, it was functional- the asparagus was done first and was starting to cool, so I decided to plate everything on top of if.

When the face emerged, Julie added the olive eyeballs. Once we stopped laughing, we ate it. Good stuff.

How was your weekend? Email me pictures of something you feel like bragging about!

Happy Friday, one and all! I got an email from a friend with some great word play that was originally published in the Washington Post, it says. It was too long to post all at once, so I'll put up part 2 next Friday. I have no idea what happened to #10, by the way.

Have a great weekend! I'll be taking pre-orders for the Tibvrtini Novello next week, so if you want to leave a comment now, that's great. It was fast last year, so let me know as soon as you can.

Crazy day around here, so a picture will have to do of some Cajun catfish we picked up at Sprouts Market.

Uh, doesn't that count as 1,000 words?

Okay, I hate to start the week with something so racy, but let's get the juvenile part of this out of the way- "Puttan" means "whore".

To me, the most credible explanation of the origin of "alla Puttanesca" is that because it's a dish that can be thrown together using only pantry ingredients so quickly, the working girls could have a quick meal in between dates. I've also heard that the aroma would draw in customers. Maybe one led to another, who knows?

Our dinner last night is not the classic version. I make a classic puttanesca the way that I was taught- by sauteeing some roughly chopped tomatoes, garlic, chopped anchovy, capers, olives, with a chiffonade of parsley and basil. Then I add some cooked pasta, toss, then take off the heat, along with a good drizzle of Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgine di Oliva.

I started out to do the classic version last night, but because we wanted to incorporate salmon with the fettucine, the Alfredo option came to mind. Being me, instead of doing one or the other, I decided to try to smash the two sauces together.

I was lucky enough to have some leftover artichokes on hand, so in they went into a saute pan with tomato concassee, black Greek olives, red bell pepper, green onions, and copious amounts of garlic. Once the veggies were done I browned off some cubes of a nice salmon filet. Once the fish was out of the skillet, I deglazed the pan with some white wine, reducing it 50%. I added a little chicken stock, reduced it a bit, then finished it off with some cream. I added back the veggies, seasoned the sauce and then added back my pre cooked fresh fettucine. Quick toss, then a few minutes with the fish back in the pan, and it was all done, ready for lots of Parm Reggiano.

It was really, really good and I didn't have to cook it under a red light...

Happy, happy Friday! Busy day getting things wrapped up for the week, but Steve has sent in a great joke to help the transition from work week pain to weekend happiness!

Thanks for reading, and see you on Monday.

(Photo: John B, of the Benetti women)

Here's a terrific follow up to yesterday's polenta post:

I grew up on polenta , my grand father would let me stand on a pickle bucket and stir the pot, the same when he made risotto. He would make the polenta then bring the pot out to the table where a big cutting board was laying w/ cheese cloth, and he would pour it on the cheese cloth about 2 inches thick and then he would scrape off sections to put on our plates. He would have sometimes a rabbit ragu , or a meat tomato sauce he would "build" all week by cooking roasts (pork, beef, chicken) to make the dishes for sunday dinner. The sauces that were left over from the roasts were saved for ideas to be incorporated on sunday. On sunday we (20 of us) wouldn't eat at the table because it would be filled with the dishes he would create for us. He had his places where he could pick his asparagus, radicchi (dandelion leaves), mushrooms, wild onions, wild herbs. He had his buddies that would make homemade ricotta, salumi's, he would shoot doves and pigeons and rabbits and most of this happened in the city limits. (He guarded his mushroom and asparagus locations to the grave) so in essence everything he cooked during the week fit a plan he had for sunday. His taking sauces such as a chicken drippings from chicken vesuvio might end up in a wild green bean, wild musroom and sautee'd cippollini onion dish. The criss crossing uses of sauces are endless, and it all goes back to a peasant mentality of use everything. I can see the Benetti women in this pic making gnocchi in the kitchen as I come back from church, and the men in the back yard laughing, sputtering italian and drinking home made wine from grape jam glasses.

Polenta is just cornmeal and water but its really a social glue when in the context of family. PS. my dad would make his special eggs basted in marinara with polenta sauteed in butter for the next morn breakfast.

I really enjoyed reading that, John. Isn't it powerful how food triggers such great memories?

I picked up a package of polenta the other day, similar to the one I have linked here. I'd never worked with pre-made stuff, and Julie had never had polenta, so a side dish experiment was in order.

I had a sneaky feeling that Survival Spice® would pair up well, so I heated up a skillet, sprinkled some slices of the polenta, and fried them up while I sauteed a mix of red peppers, Chimayo chiles, yellow squash and white onion.

Man, it worked like a champ. Apparently you can puree this with liquid to make a smooth polenta, which is more what I'm used to. I'll have to try it, but having a few of these in the fridge sure makes life easy. Easy is good these days...