Saturday night dinner for two. Birite Market – Five Dot Ranch.
The fat was so tender and tasty; just salt & pepper and the fat was catching on fire at the grill. Crispy on the outside, rare on the inside.
Category: dinner
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“Moon Viewing Noodles” – Udon with Pork & Sweet Potatoes
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The hiatus was not entirely my fault. We had an issue with the kitchen sink’s piping, which, once we went in to fix what seemed simple, turned into quite a mess of replacing one part after another, the crescendo being when the disposal decided to actually fall out.
I was not very motivated to create more messes with no great way to clean them, and shortly after that was fixed the hot water decided to turn a lovely rusty brown. Anyway, we are all back in action and, I’m happy to say, fully functional again!
About this time last year I began cooking lots of Japanese food, mainly from a great cook book I own called Washoku Kitchen ($24.50 at the time of this post)– “recipes for Japanese home cooking.” I picked it back up yesterday and started cooking, with a few modifications.
The thing about good Japanese cooking is that the most delicious items seem to take many steps–5 ingredients, but each one you must create. A soy concentrate. A dashi. A miso mixture. It takes time, and works best if you start cooking a LOT of Japanese food, so you can make these things and use them more than once without duplicating efforts.
[/donotprint]Udon noodles with pork & sweet potatoes/yams
For 3-4 people as a main course
12 oz fresh udon noodles, cooked*
8 cups dashi with shitake**
4 T seasoned soy concentrate***
1/2 large sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1/2 lb pork tenderloin, sliced thinly
2 green onions, sliced thinly on the diagonalBring the dashi to a light simmer, adding the soy concentrate. Place the cooked udon noodles in heated bowls. Using a large skillet and a lightly flavored oil such as avocado, cook the sweet potato on medium high heat until color is deepened, adding a touch of salt.
Add 1 T sake and 2 T water, and cover to steam 3-4 minutes. Push potatoes to side of pan and add pork, trying not to pile the pieces on top of each other. When pork is cooked, pour broth over noodles, add potatoes & pork to one side of bowl and sprinkle green onion over the top.
*cooked in a wide, not too deep pot with plenty of water for 2 minutes boiling, then drained and rinsed in cool water
**combine cold water with strip of kombu (thick kelp) and two dried shitake mushrooms. After 10 minutes, bring to just under a boil and then turn off. Add 1 cup unpacked bonito flakes (large tuna flakes). Let steep 2 minutes, then strain and return to clean pot
***Combine 2/3 cup soy, 1/3 cup sake, 1 dried shitake mushroom & 1/4 cup bonito or other tuna flakes, let steep 1hour-12 hours. Add 2T mirin, 3T water, 3T sugar. Bring to a simmer and reduce by 1/4. Strain and reserve.
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A fine weeknight dinner for two – endive salad & filet mignon with marsala mushroom sauce
Sometimes you just feel like a good meal, and if you can cook, you know you can either make a much nicer one for less money at home, or something better than what you could eat out. So, when my gentleman asked me what I’d like to do that evening, I said, “cook.”
For the Steak
2 filet mignons of a size appropriate to you
1/2 lb crimini or other meaty mushrooms, diced
1/2 leek, sliced finely and sauteed in butter, set aside
dry sherry
leftover bechamel sauce or some cream if you’re desperate (or make a roux and add some milk and salt)
butterHeat the oven to 375. Using a metal skillet (not non stick) big enough for both steaks, heat enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan and add 1-2 T butter, melting at high heat. Salt & pepper the raw steaks. Add to the pan, cooking on one side until browned (about 2 minutes). Flip the steaks, cook 2 more minutes and then without moving the steaks, put the whole pan in the oven. For medium/medium rare, it should take about as long as it takes to make the sauce (5-8 minutes).
In a sautee pan of your choosing, heat 1-2 T butter until melted. Add the chopped mushrooms, cooking at medium heat until slightly shriveled and browned. Raise heat slightly and add 1/2 C sherry, cooking until mostly reduced. Add the bechamel sauce, warming and combining. Add salt & pepper to taste, keep warm.
I served this with wilted spinach (zest of 1 small lemon, juice of same lemon, into a big, hot pan), and couscous (cooked in vegetable stock).
For the salad
2 endives, cleaned and trimmed into seperate leaves
1/3 C candied walnuts (or plain ones, but why bother with going halfway?)
1 bosc pear (or apple, etc), sliced thinly
Blue cheese
Juice of 1 lemon
1-2 tsp walnut oilWhisk lemon juice and blue cheese together. Use a bit of heat if necessary, the dressing should be fairly thick. Add oil and salt & pepper. Taste and adjust. Dress the endive leaves and assemble on plates, alternating with pear slices. Add more blue cheese crumbles on top and place the walnuts into the salad.
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White Lasagna with Kale, Sausage, & Sweet Potatoes
For the lasagna assembly:
1 pack no-boil lasagna sheets (GASP, a shortcut!)
2 small sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
2 lbs kale (mixed is OK), blanched, drained, and chopped finely
1 lb sweet italian sausage, no casing, pan fried and set aside
2 large leeks sliced thinly and cooked at medium low heat in fat from sausageBechamel sauce for white lasagna
8T butter
1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp garlic powder or 1 clove fresh garlic
3 3/4 C milk
1 C chicken or vegetable stock
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 C marsala
1 C mixed grated cheese such as parmesan, pecorino, fontina, gruyere
salt & pepperMelt the butter. Once it reduces spitting/bubbling, add flour and whisk, cooking for 3 minutes at medium heat. Slowly add the milk and the stock, raising heat to high. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, until sauce coats the back of a spoon. Set aside to cool until warm to touch.
Once warm to touch, add the beaten eggs, 1/2 C marsala, 1/2 C of cheese and salt & pepper to taste.
Assemble the lasagna
Preheat oven to 375. Pour a thin layer of bechamel sauce on the bottom of your lasagna pan (preferably 8×10 or something similar/bigger), add two layers of lasagne sheets. Spread the sausage evenly, add salt & pepper, and cover with more sauce.
Add another 2 layers of lasagna sheets, next adding the kale. Top with salt & pepper, sauce, and more lasagna sheets.
Add a thin layer of leeks, and then as if making a gratin spread the sweet potato slices in a single overlapping layer.
Add more salt & pepper, sauce, and the final layer of lasagna sheets. Top with sauce and remaining cheese. Bake for 40 minutes to 1 hour.
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Birthday Dinner: Crab Bisque & Filet Mignon w/ Bernaise + Sweet Potato/Chard Gratin
I hosted 8 (including myself) for dinner on Friday to celebrate my gentleman’s birthday; it was lively all night, everybody got full and we washed about 25 wine glasses. We drank champagne, prosecco, sparkling wine from california; we drank mouvedre from Chateau Margene, cuvee from Beckmen, a roussane blend from Tablas Creek–we had delicious wine, and the food came out great.
Recipes to follow in the next day or two. I wish I’d taken a photo of the refuse after making the crab stock, it was a pretty mess in my backyard compost container.
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St. Louis Style Cannelloni with Pork, Ricotta, & Chard
This recipe will feed about 4 people with a side dish or 3 hungry people without one. It helps to have a food processor available.
Filling
2/3 lb spicy or sweet Italian pork sausage, out of casing
3 cups chopped chard and/or spinach
1 cup ricotta cheese (preferably sheep’s ricotta)
1/2 yellow or white onion, dicedCook the sausage in a medium high heat skillet in a little chunks, seperating with your fingers, until brown on one side. Add the onions, and cook until mostly tender. Add the chard/spinich, and cook briefly until wilted. Allow mixture to cool slightly in pan or in thin metal bowl, and if you have one, use a food processor to make the mixture more even/fine. Once cooled to room temperature or close to it, add the ricotta and stir until blended. Adjust seasoning.
Red Sauce
1 container chopped or strained tomatoes (I used a carton of POMI)
1 stick butter
1/2 onion, peeled and intactCombine all ingredients in sauce pan and simmer until delicious. Add salt. About 30 minutes. Can make ahead.
White Sauce
1 T butter
2 T flour
1-2 cups milk
salt & pepper
1/2 tsp thyme or 2 tsp fresh thyme choppedMelt the butter until the water content has fizzled off, add the flour and whisk, cooking about 1 min until slightly darker. Slowly add milk until you have a nice, somewhat thick consistency sauce. Set aside. You’ll be reheating this shortly and possibly adding more milk to pour over the cannelloni.
Pasta
2 eggs
00 white wheat flour if possible
0 semola / semolina flourUse this recipe and roll out as thin as possible into sheets, cutting into strips about 10 inches long by 4 inches wide, roughly. It is ok if the sheets vary in size, so long as they’ll roll into a cannelloni giving it a few layers around. Boil water, add salt, and one at a time blanch the strips for 30 seconds or so, until they toughen up a bit. Remove, set on paper towels flat, not touching other pasta, in layers, to reserve for use.
Alternatively you can buy cannelloni tubes from the grocery or lasagna sheets without the ruffles.
Assembly
Put a thin layer of red sauce in your baking/casserole dish to prevent pasta from sticking to bottom. Roll several spoonfuls of filling into each pasta sheet, placing each closely against the next in the dish. Once finished, top with red sauce thoroughly, then white sauce. Top with grated parmesan or asiago, bake at 375 for 25 minutes until golden and beautiful on top.
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Gorgonzola and Pear Gnocchi (Gnocchi alla Gorgonzola e Pera)
Gnocchi alla gorgonzola e pera is actually a pretty common dish in the northern half of Italy; the kind of thing any restaurant that might be serving tourists would throw on (without regard to seasonality, local cuisine, etc), and while that might turn you off, it’s actually quite good. That said, I ate it several places in Florence, and am fairly certain I spotted it on other menus around the way.
I couldn’t find much on the history of this dish, so I think it’s more of a modern classic–prior to not-too-many-years-ago, most classic products of regions didn’t get transported or heavily used much in other regions. There was a time when gorgonzola is what you ate when you were in piedmonte; risotto is what you ate in Milan and in the far north, you ate potatoes in Alto Adige and maybe in Emilia-Romagna. Less so now, with the best of the best being desired by Italians everywhere loving food.
Gnocchi is, however, typical of Alto Adige (where potatoes are most common), and gorgonzola–if it is officially DOP gorgonzola–is from Piedmonte. For this dish, you’ll want to use the opposite of what you’d likely want to snack on in a cheese plate. You’ll use Gorgonzola Dolce, which is the young, “sweet” gorgonzola. As the cheese ages it becomes more “piquante” or spicy, hot. It’ll tickle your throat if it’s the wrong type for this job. If you don’t have a quality cheese chop that carries both and can point them out, look for gorgonzola (imported, not pre-crumbled) that has a more soft, creamy texture with less blue bits–that’s usually it.
For 3-4
3 oz gorgonzola dolce cheeese
1 ripe pear, diced
1 T butter
2 T flour
1 cup light vegetable stock
1/2 cup milk
fresh gnocchi*
salt, fresh ground pepperBoil your water and have it ready. If you are using fresh gnocchi (which you could be!), they require VERY little cooking time, take what you think they take and cut it by half. Seconds! Otherwise, they’ll fall apart, and you’ll regret it.
Dice your pear, have your ingredients ready. You may or may not need slightly more or less veg stock & milk. Create a roux by heating the butter in a small sauce pan, until clear and stopped bubbling, medium heat. Add the flour and whisk until color darkens slightly, about 2 minutes. Continue whisking and slowly add the vegetable stock, then the milk, until you get a mac-n-cheese type consistency, or slightly thinner. Add the gorgonzola and continue whisking until smooth.
Add the gnocchi to the water and cook; remove the gnocchi as soon as they float to the top of the pan using a slatted spoon or gnocchi paddle. Add the pear to the sauce and let it warm up, adding the gnocchi to the sauce and stirring gently to coat, with a large wooden spoon (don’t use metal, you’ll chop up the dumplings).
Add some salt and black pepper to taste, serve!
Fresh gnocchi makes a huge difference over the vaccu-packed kind you’ll find on the pasta isle. It’s much less dense and has the texture of a down pillow, collapsing in your mouth. I buy mine in bulk from Rainbow market or from Faletti Foods; both carry gnocchi by the bay area’s “Pasta Shop,” which lots of local stores retail products from.
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Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Chili
Delicious chili made from Rancho Gordo heirloom organic beans, adapted from Smitten Kitchen.
olive oil
2 large yellow or sweet onions, diced
1 T minced garlic
2 large carrots, cubed
1 cup dry pinquito beans
1 cup dry yellow-eye steuben heirloom beans (also rancho gordo but they aren’t selling them online! if you’re in SF try Rainbow’s bulk section)
3 lbs ground beef, turkey, chicken, or pork (I used mostly beef/pork, but a little ground chicken too)
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
4 T chili powder
1 T cumin (ground)
2 T paprika
1 T dry oregano
1 T chili flakes
16 oz tomatoes chopped or stewed/pureed (I use POMI)
2 C beef broth or veal stock
1/4 C cider vinegarGarnish:
Cheddar cheese, grated
Red onion, dicedServe with macaroni OR bread
Beans: Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water. Do not soak more than 9 hours or they will probably burst. They may be mixed for soaking. Try to pre-cook ahead, but if not, start cooking the drained, rinsed, soaked beans in fresh water in a seperate pan as you begin making the chili. Cover and be sure they are cooking at at least a simmer, but not a boil. You want them tender before you add them to the chili at the end. They like to be cooked about an inch of water over the beans; just drain off the extra water if they’re cooked through.
Chili: In a soup pot or dutch oven, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil or butter. When hot, add diced onions. Cook until almost translucent, at medium heat. Add the garlic & carrots, cooking another 2-3 minutes. Add the meat, and let it cook through.
While meat is cooking, dice your peppers and gather your other ingredients.
When meat is cooked, add all of the spices. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, beef stock, and vinegar. You may wish to reserve additional beef stock in case you prefer looser chili. Prepare your garnishes. Add the drained, cooked beans to the chili and you may serve in 10 minutes (simmering) or any amount of time after. The longer it sits, the better; I like to put the lid back on the pan and let it cool down very slowly, so that the flavors meld.
Serve with cheddar and red onion on top.
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Matsutake Mushroom Gnocci with Watercress
Preface: The only other context I’ve eaten matsutake is in dashi and in a quesadilla (a delicious quesadilla). I don’t think I would make this dish exactly the same next time; I think it would be better in more broth, without the creme fraiche, with egg noodles (Asian style). I used really good quality, fluffy, fresh gnocci for this dish and I think it was really competing with the matsutake, which is a shame because they should have been the feature of the dish.
Luckily, matsutakes had a bumper crop this year and they were only $20/lb. In SF, they can be found for $40 or more most years, so this was a really nice surprise last time I popped in at the Japanese market. Yesterday, I even saw them at Rainbow Foods!
I do think simmering the matsutakes in dashi (it was small amounts of mirin, soy sauce, sake, walnut oil and then a larger amount of straight up dashi–water infused with kombu and i-forget-the-name tuna flakes) worked well, I just would have made more of it next time and omitted the creme fraiche I added. The watercress also worked well. So go ahead and do that, and sub those gnocci for egg noodles and I’m pretty sure you’ll have a delicious meal.
Anyway, no recipe here since I won’t stand behind it, but thought you might learn from my experience.
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Spaghetti & Shrimp in Spicy Chevre Sauce (Pasta with Goat Cheese Sauce)
I was reading the Times a couple of days ago and saw an article about whole wheat pasta and its merits. Yeah, it’s merits. I haven’t tried the stuff in years and 100% agreed with the starting sentiment of the article–it’s icky stuff, and I’m a pasta traditionalist, picky as hell about my Italian food in general.
But the author won my trust as I read and knowing I could get their “favorite” brand at my neighborhood grocer, I grabbed some when I was at the store later in the week and gave it a go. It’s really non offensive. It even has a nice texture. We’ll try rigatoni next time.
Also, I just returned from a fabulous trip to Mexico with my S.O., and am seriously craving some pasta! We ate pretty much meat, and a little bit of vegetables, and a lot of coconut milk and wine (oh come on, not together!).
Pasta with Goat Cheese for two:
12 shrimp of your preference (blue Mexican gulf prawns for me, until they don’t have them next year..)
2 T butter
2 tsp olive oil
2 T goat cheese
3/4 C vegetable stock
1/4 C heavy cream
120 grams spaghetti (I used bionature whole wheat organic spaghetti)
1 tsp chili flakes
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp mixed Italian dry spices
salt & pepperStart your water to boil and chop the garlic finely. When you add the pasta to the boiling water, warm a skillet to medium high heat and add the butter and oil.
When the oil and butter are hot, reduce to medium and add the garlic. When the garlic is fragrant, add the veg stock, cream, chili flakes and spices.
De-vein and peel your shrimp, patting dry and tossing with a little salt. When the sauce is bubbly and slightly reduced, add the goat cheese until incorporated, and then immediately the shrimp.
The pasta should be about done; drain and add it immediately to the sauce*. If you should need to wait for it to finish, DO NOT over cook the shrimp–take them out slightly underdone and set aside, re-adding them with the pasta. Simmer a bit as you see in the picture above and serve it up!
*You could also add some swiss chard, kale, or spinach to this dish at the end, throw a lid on it to wilt and serve.
*In my opinion, the trick to really good home pasta is to simmer the pasta a bit in the sauce, getting it really hot.