French Onion (Bacon) Soup

I had a craving for French Onion Soup a couple weeks ago, and when I bumped into Anthony Bourdain’s recipe on Chow.com I figured I’d try it. Hmm. I will try it again but cut down on the bacon–it completely overpowered the onions and beef stock; the soup was far too smoky for me. After two disapointments with bacon in soup in one week, I think I’ll stick to eating it any other way I can think of instead.

A few pics:

BTW, I used my Oxo mandoline to cut up all trillion onions (even for a half batch it was a lot!) and it made nice thin slices but I was very frustrated by the design of the grippy hand thing and how much onion you can cut on the mandoline. Hard to explain but annoying. I think solid things that won’t go to pieces will work better? But why not just use the slice blade on my cuisinart for things that won’t go to mush? I haven’t yet got the hang of having actual kitchen tools aside from my 8″ knife.

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Huzzah for short ribs

Two fridays ago we had our friends Chris and Greta to dinner, and since Greta is a fabulous cook who worked in a great NYC restaurant before moving to NH, I wanted to try something new and really cook a great meal. I got my very own copy of Sunday Suppers at Lucques for Christmas, and decided to try Suzanne Goin’s short ribs recipe, and serve it with her parsnip-potato puree. To start I made another cauliflower soup, this time a recipe from Bon Appetit (I got a subscription for Christmas) with much more stuff in it. For dessert I tried my hand at another BA recipe, a caramel pudding tart in almond shortbread crust. That was topped with candied almonds and whipped cream. I basically cooked for a day and a half straight, but luckily everything came out very well.

Thursday night I rubbed the short ribs in salt, pepper and herbs, as directed, and tucked them into the fridge to rest. I made the shortbread dough and put it in the tart pan, then froze that overnight. Friday morning I baked off the crust and candied the almonds, and after lunch I made the pudding and put the tart in the fridge to chill.

Then I pulled out the short ribs to warm up, broiled some pearl onions that would later be served with the ribs, and browned the ribs (I made 6, but couldn’t brown them all at once):

I made a mirepoix, cooked down red wine, port and balsamic vinegar, squeezed all the ribs in, and then….oh, then. Goin’s instructions say to cover the braising pot tightly with PLASTIC WRAP, then with tinfoil. She very carefully says not to worry, that it’ll be fine in the oven. I was dubious, to say the least, but this is the woman responsible for the pork burgers that are so complicated but come out so perfectly, so I trusted her. I put the pot in the oven and ignored it for over three hours.

Meanwhile I cleaned two huge bunches of red chard (there wasn’t any swiss in stock at the Coop, and I found the bright fuschia veins charming):

Then I made the parsnip puree, a relative nightmare since my Williams-Sonoma ricer likes to spray everything back out of the hopper, instead of through the screen. Awful. I and most of the kitchen was covered in hot potato and parsnip. This wasn’t helped by the fact that parsnips have lots of fibers, which clogged the ricer up terribly. I persevered, relieved that no one was home to hear me cursing or see me with parsnip on my nose, and the puree was very creamy and tasty, though not very different from straight potato. Finally, after Ben got home and was sent on an emergency chicken stock quest to the Coop, I made the soup.

Eh. As you can see, it’s got much more going on than the last version. It starts with bacon, and then celery and onion, and then the cauliflower and stock and a chunk of pecorino cheese. It was finished with “truffle oil” (we ended up returning it, it smelled/tasted like plain stale olive oil; obviously past the use by date) and shaved pecorino. It didn’t have as nice of a color, since the browned bacon and fat made everything browner. And the bacon was a little overpowering. I prefer the simpler version by quite a lot.

Just before Chris and Greta got to the house I pulled out the short ribs to see how they were doing. Well, surprise, surprise. The plastic wrap was visible fused to the outside of my Le Creuset, but inside: Nothing. It had vanished, obviously melted into the ribs. My stomach dropped into the basement, and I yelled for Ben to help me fish out the sheets of plastic wrap we could find. I was pretty freaked out–we didn’t find much, and I didn’t know what to do. In the end I admitted what had happened to Greta, and we just…served it. No one choked or got sick, so all’s well that ends well? I guess. Anyway, NO PLASTIC WRAP in the OVEN. After letting the ribs rest while we all got drinks, etc., I cranked up the oven to brown the ribs while the braising liquid reduced a bit.

I served the soup, which was good but not fantastic:

Then cooked the chard with the pearl onion, heated up the puree and put it in a serving bowl, heated up plates and plated everything:

I have to say the ribs were fantastic. The chard and onions provided great contrast, the sauce from the braising liquid was incredibly rich and flavorful, and the meat was meltingly tender and very, very delicious. It was a huge production, but at least I’d picked the right people to cook it for–Greta said short ribs are their favorite meat. (When I discussed the menu with my mom she was hesitant about the ribs because they’re so prehistoric-looking and fatty, until I told her where Greta had worked, and she said “oh, it’s perfect!”) The puree was a nice counterpoint too, as was a horseradish crème fraîche that Goin recommends serving with the meat.

It was a long time before we were able to face dessert, but that was a hit too. It was too sweet for me but the guys especially loved it. (Ugh, WAY too sweet for me.)
A messy photo:

It was actually really fun to go all-out on a menu, and I am in love with the Lucques cookbook, though the plastic wrap thing threw me. Soon we will be trying Grilled Pork Confit! Liz has 2 quarts of duck fat coming our direction!

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Quick cauliflower soup for two

I have been on a big available-in-winter vegetable kick lately, craving things like brussels sprouts, broccoli, parsnips, etc. I love, love love cauliflower, and brought home a big head of it last weekend to make soup out of. The recipe came from the Williams-Sonoma Soups cookbook, which I received as a wedding gift together with the soup bowls I completely forgot to pull out the other night (oops!), but I simplified it a little since it called for spices I didn’t have on hand. Very quick and easy though:
Sauté a thinly sliced onion in olive oil for a couple minutes, until it starts to brown, add a few cloves of minced garlic, sauté those for a minute, add in a head of cauliflower (cut into florets, leave in any stem that is tender (peel it)) and 4 cups of stock, bring to a simmer and cook 15 minutes or so until the cauliflower is tender. Puree in a blender or with an immersion blender. Stir in one cup of sharp cheddar cheese; season to taste.

Yum. I love how cauliflower, once it’s pureed on its own or in soup, could almost pass for potatoes but it has a little bit of a more intriguing flavor to it. You couldn’t really taste the cheese, but it added substance and depth to the soup, and thickened it a little. We ate huge bowls for dinner with a few slices of toasted sourdough to dunk in it, and then wolfed the leftovers yesterday. No photos, because this was very white-on-white; not much to see. I would make it for a dinner party first course (it’s really quite elegant), garnished with a little something to make it stand out. I also have another recipe, similar but without cheddar and with pecorino curls and some truffle oil on top, that is much dressier.

Next up: Experiments with parsnips and turnips, both of which are languishing in the veggie drawer right now.

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Farmer Boy dinner for two

As kids my brother and I both read the Little House series until our copies fell apart, and recently I picked up a used copy of Farmer Boy at a library sale and we both reread it. FB was always my favorite because instead of detailing the brutal struggle of pioneer life, it talks about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s husband Almanzo’s childhood, on a prosperous horse farm in upstate New York (WAY upstate, by the Canadian border). A lot of time is devoted to talking about the amazing food that Almanzo’s mother and sisters prepared to keep everyone fueled up for dawn-to-dusk manual labor, and I always loved the detailed meal descriptions. Breakfasts on the Wilder farm involved ham steaks, pancakes, pie, cheese, etc.—huge piles of food. At one point Almanzo and his brother Royal talk about what they like best to eat, and Almanzo says his favorite is Fried Apples ‘n Onions. Tom and I were discussing that after we reread the book last fall, and when I brought home a ham steak to fry for dinner the other day, I also picked up a few granny smith apples and figured I’d give it a try.

There are lots of Apples ‘n Onions recipes on the internet (there appears to be a Little House cookbook, which I should investigate), and Bittman also has a recipe in “How to Cook Everything”—I read them all and then kept it simple. I sliced two onions very thin, and then peeled and cut up two apples. I used a tablespoon or two of butter, sautéed the onions until they were starting to brown, then added in the apples and cooked until they were starting to soften (I could have cooked them a little longer).

I also baked baking powder biscuits, then pan-fried the ham steak and plated up a nice big Farmer Boy breakfast for dinner.

Very satisfying, and I want to play with the apples and onions a bit more. I could have cut the onions a little thicker and put the apples in earlier so they could soften more while the onions browned. Some recipes also recommend adding a tiny bit of brown sugar, which would have been a nice addition.

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Absorption Pasta (!) for two

Another inspiration from Chocolate and Zucchini, this time for a pasta technique that I’m now in love with. This is a way of cooking pasta that is closer to making risotto than typical throw-it-in-boiling-water pasta. You sauté garlic or onion in olive oil (just a little bit), add in your cut pasta, rattle it around very noisily for a minute or two to get it really coated in the oil and a little toasty, then add hot stock to cover it and simmer it for about 10 minutes. You might need a little more stock, but it doesn’t take that much—I cooked about 2/3 of a bag of pasta and used a little over 2 cups of broth, and shouldn’t have added in the last bit. Partway through cooking I added in broccoli, and at the end I stirred in sausage that I’d cooked in the pan before starting. Because of the extra broth the pasta was a tiny bit overcooked, but still delicious and very appealing-looking:

Looks rather restauranty, no? Because the pasta is sucking in all that flavorful broth, instead of tossing around in hot water, it is coated in a glossy jacket of starch rather than being washed fairly clean. That let the small pieces of broccoli and sausage cling to the pasta and gave it a very substantial feel, compared to when I’ve tossed veggies with boiled pasta. I will use this technique going forward for any pasta that I am dressing with something besides a tomato sauce, etc. It’s great for making a simple, quick dinner that feels a bit dressier. As Clotilde said in her blog entry, not having to boil water (boring) is another major plus!

ETA: I was just flipping through my Mark Bittman “The Minimalist Cooks Dinner,” and he has an absorption pasta recipe, simply called “Pasta, Risotto Style.” I must have flipped past it a million times… I will try his method next time; he recommends tossing the pasta for up to 5 minutes before adding broth, until it really starts to brown, and then adding the broth a little bit at a time and cooking uncovered.

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December catch-up: Christmas Eve

We were on Long Island for Christmas, and I volunteered to cook Christmas Eve dinner for the four of us: Ben, his mom and brother John, and me. Ben’s mom can’t eat gluten, so risotto seemed like a natural fit, especially since we were having a big ham on Christmas and a meat-heavy meal wasn’t required.

I made a double batch of mushroom and sausage risotto, since B’s brother eats as only a 6’5″ 20 year old can. It nearly outgrew the pot by the end, but I eked by.

For salad I dressed mesclun with a sherry-vinegar vinaigrette, then topped it with slices from a beautiful Oregon Comice pear, and walnuts that I’d sort of candied with some brown sugar. Here you see my normal-sized salad next to John’s big one:

I was very brave and made a flan for dessert, complete with caramel. Sadly the vanilla extract had gone a little funny, so it had a strange alcoholic overtone, but it looked great—I couldn’t believe it came out of the pan in one piece. I cooked down a bag of frozen organic cherries with a little amaretto for a sauce.

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December catch-up: Cocktails for 35+

12/13: We had a slightly last-minute cocktail party for our friends who were still in town by the second week of December. Ben bought a very large quantity of cheese at the Coop, and we still have tons of cashews from an unfortunate bulk-buy this fall. Our friend Nancy (the Foods that Begin with P genius) volunteered to bring sweets, so I was off the hook for dessert, thank god. I had made a double batch of the strange flavor eggplant earlier in the week so I’d have a bunch for the party, and we put that out with fresh croutons. Note to self: those flavors don’t just pull together as they sit, they strengthen. What had been sweet and spicy on Sunday was CRAZILY garlicky on Wednesday. Very potent.

For hot snacks we grilled sausages and cut them up into coins, which we passed around hot. I made about 80 little mozzarella balls wrapped in prosciutto, inspired by an appetizer I’d eaten in Boston that week. These were broiled and served hot, but sadly I didn’t think it through AT ALL, and I used fresh mozzarella balls instead of cutting up a wedge of firm mozzarella. The water content, of course, was far too high, and they melted all over the place instead of staying in tidy balls. They tasted great, though, and I want to try again soon with the right cheese! Here’s the top of my prepared mountain of them, before they met their melty fate:

Inspired by an old, old post on Chocolate and Zucchini for creatively flavored palmiers, I set out to make a savory version, using a couple spreads I bought at the Coop: one sun-dried tomato (not usually my favorite, but it worked here) and an olivata. This is SUPER simple and a useful trick. I thawed store-bought (Pepperidge Farms) puff pastry, laid it out flat, spread it with the…spreads, grated a bunch of parmesan over it, and then rolled it up from both sides. Once it was rolled all the way up (I don’t have a photo of that stage) I pressed the whole thing together firmly so it wouldn’t unroll, then threw it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up. You don’t want it frozen, just hard enough that you can cut thin slices off with a serrated knife. I baked those, and voila, savory cocktail nibbles!

There was slight confusion over the desserts and palmiers: one of the desserts was a fabulous batch of little turnovers filled with chocolate and nuts. I had couple people tell me they bit into those expecting meat, and the palmiers expecting sweet!

It was fun, though I didn’t have a sip of wine until all but a couple friends had left (we forced them to stay and visit and help us eat the cheese.) Amazing how many people can cram into a little house if you push all the furniture back against the wall…

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December catch-up: Chinese food for four

December 10 we had our friends Stephen and Danielle over for dinner, and I broke out my wok and made a big stir-fry. Earlier in the day I made another double batch of Strange Flavor Eggplant, using the biggest eggplant I’ve ever seen:

I also spent much of the afternoon prepping, in my excruciatingly slow way, all the ingredients for the stir-fry, so that once the guests arrived I wouldn’t still be slaving away over the cutting board. I made Lemon Hoisin Chicken, another recipe from Barbara Tropp’s wonderful China Moon Cookbook, and an old favorite of my family’s. When I have made it before I left out the peppers completely (since I don’t like them), but I left them in this time so there would be some nice color contrast in the dish, which otherwise is a bit Blah Beige. I love napa cabbage, which plays a large role in this dish–I need to find some kind of good slaw recipe to use it when I make this stir-fry, since you use about half the head.

I used a set of divided glass dishes my mom gave B a few years ago for the eggplant and some cashews:

And used the handy pasta bowls for the stir-fry (they were out of white short-grain rice at the Coop, so I used Brown…eh.):

For dessert I made caramel sauce (a recipe from Chris Kimball’s cookbook). It was very simple, though I burned the hell out of my finger. One flaw: it hardened as soon as it went on ice cream (and it was billed in the book as ice cream sauce), and not in a “oh, this fudge sauce firmed up” way, this was a solid caramel shell, nearly impossible to beat your way through with a spoon. We all ended up eating our ice cream and then sucking on the lumps of caramel at the end. It looked nice, though! I love salted caramels, so I sprinkled sea salt on before serving it.

All in all a nice casual dinner with friends. Ben thought the stir-fry was a bit too spicy but he was in the minority!

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