French Onion Soup
It's 80°+ outside, muggier than hell, alternating rain and sunshine, and I made onion soup. Yes, soup. It's one on Nonna's favorites, and since she's heading home tomorrow, I thought I'd make a batch so she could take some with her. Besides, it may be a million degrees outside, but we're doing our part to kill the environment by keeping the air conditioning running. I'm a wuss. What can I say?!?
Onion soup is definitely one of my more favorite meals, as well. It's extremely easy to make - once you peel and slice a bazillion onions, that is. And you do have to pay attention to the caramelizing onions. Ya definitely don't want them to burn.
I usually make a beefy French onion soup - actual chunks of beef in the soup. It's not exactly traditional, but then... neither am I. But dayum, it's good!
I really did make a huge vat - I started with more than 12 pounds of onions - but I plan on freezing the leftovers that Nonna doesn't take so I can drop them off now and then to retain my favorite daughter-in-law status. Whatever it takes, right?!?
French Onion Soup
- 12 pounds onions, sliced
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 8 tbsp butter
- 2 pounds cubed beef
- 3 qts beef broth
- 1 tsp herbs d’Provence
- 2 bay leaves
- salt and pepper, to taste
Place onion and garlic in a large soup pot with the butter and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are deep amber in color. This can definitely take a while. (It took about 1 1/2 hours today.)
When onions start getting close, brown beef in another pan. Add to onions. Add broth, herbs d’Provence, bay leaves, and S&P, to taste.
Bring to a boil and then simmer at least an hour.
I will make it a bit differently from time-to-time, adding red wine and/or brandy or sometimes cooking the beef in bacon fat. I didn't tonight because the wine cellar is getting sparse, but I probably will next time I make it.
Traditionally, it is served with a floating crouton covered with ooey-gooey gruyere cheese, but we eschew the crouton for a crusty loaf of bread and butter.
Who cares what the weather is - this was good!
Sausages and Home-Grown Peppers
Goodness! It's been a week since I last took a picture of dinner! Yes, we've been eating, but the meals have been a bit different. Victor's mom has been staying with us as she recuperates from a bit of a hospital stay.
Fortunately all is swell, she's feeling great, getting around fine on her own, and familiarizing herself with the HD channels of our remote control, but we thought it prudent to have her stay here for a while just to make sure everything was okay. Everything is, and she's heading home on Wednesday.
It's funny how one more person in the house changes the routine. Dinner is still at the same time, but there's a bit of pressure to make sure it really is at the same time because of medications. And while we will eat just about anything, an 86 year old has slightly different taste buds. Chicken cutlets, pasta, and more familiar foods have taken precedence over our more exotic fare. She's not a fussy eater and she would eta anything I made, but it's about having her enjoy the food - not just eat it.
So it's been fun and it's been a bit of a challenge, but none of us have lost any weight this week, so something must have been working.
I actually made a huge batch of macaroni and cheese last night and baked off a separate casserole for her. Victor made stuffed peppers and we froze some of those for her to take home.
Actually, they went over today before I did her shopping. Unbeknownst to Mom, Victor gussied up her kitchen a bit this week - new kitchen towels, dish drainer, canisters... I went in today and got rid of all the old condiments and a few other things that had seen better days, so she now has a sparkling refrigerator/freezer with all new goodies. And a few home-cooked meals for good measure.
And cheesecake. She's diabetic and supposed to watch her desserts, but I make them for her, anyway. Small slices and made with just a bit of sugar.
At 86, quality of life is more important than quantity.
A Spicy Salad
I just came across a recipe I ripped out of a magazine many moons ago. I've been trying to get a handle on recipes most of my life. I see them, clip them, file them, and forget them. Repeat.
A few months ago I went through a folder and tossed a bazillion recipes I knew I would never make - often wondering what could possibly have been going through my mind to have saved them in the first place. One that made the cut was a spicy Argentinian marinade and dipping sauce. I'm not exactly sure what magazine it came from - possibly Bon Appetit or Gourmet - but it surfaced again, yesterday, when I moved the file and it happened to fall on the floor. How fortuitous.
Two things always struck me about the recipe - Sherry vinegar and LOTS of cayenne pepper. I don't have any sherry vinegar at home because every time I see it at the grocery store it costs more than I'm willing to pay. And considering how much I've paid for other things, that says a lot. It's just ludicrously expensive for dinky bottles. But I always have lots of cayenne pepper - and hot Hungarian paprika. And sweet paprika and smoked paprika...
I decided on salads tonight and had a small piece of top round steak that needed marinating. This was definitely it!
Spicy Argentinian Marinade and Dipping Sauce
- 1/2 cup Spanish sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 1/2 tbsp hot paprika
- 2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp salt
Mix ingredients well.
I sliced the beef into thin strips and marinated them for about 45 minutes. They then went on the grill for just a few minutes.
The salads were pretty basic - romaine lettuce, a tomato from the garden, green onions, avocado, mushrooms, and - because I needed to cut the heat a bit from the beef - a creamy dressing. Mayo, catsup, and dill pickle relish.
I toasted a couple of the homemade rolls from the other night, and dinner was served!
Grilled Chicken Sandwiches
A year or two ago the Food Network Star was a guy who made sandwiches. Over-the-top, bizarre sandwiches. I generally don't watch these shows because I don't believe in cooking as competition. The shows are totally unrealistic with unrealistic goals for situations that would just never exist. I'd rather watch black and white reruns of The French Chef.
But I liked the sandwich concept. I'm a sandwich kinda guy. I really like the idea of putting tons of stuff between slices of bread or rolls. Unique stuff. Interesting stuff. Stuff you wouldn't necessarily think to put between slices of bread - but once bit into, realize it's a natural.
Tonight's dinner idea started with the rolls I made yesterday. Homemade bread does not have a lot of holding power - it's really meant to be eaten within a couple of days. We use it up - bread salads to bread crumbs - but it's always best as bread. And for me, that meant sandwiches.
Sandwiches. The very word conjurers up visions of so many sandwiches past... plain bologna between two slices of bread - a favorite of childhood, and one I still like now and again. Fried, gooey triple-decker Monte Cristos at the Red Chimney, open-faced Turkey with dressing and gravy at the Old Post Office, the Kentucky Hot Brown at Vencor Hospital, or that fabulous mushroom and cheddar cheese with caramelized onions that Ruth made years ago - that I still make on a regular basis.
Sandwiches. Love 'em. In all of their various manifestations.
I especially like sandwiches that not only take two hands to eat, but make such a mess that they're impossible to put down. The kind that no number of napkins will do. Tonight's sandwich met most of those criterion - a two-handed mess that was almost impossible to put down - and no amount of napkins could cleanse the hands.
It was a rather simple sandwich, too... the split roll covered with chipotle mayonnaise (mayo and a bit of chipotle in adobo) and topped with sliced tomato from the garden, grilled chicken breast topped with melted pepper jack cheese, and a ton of fried peppers.
The green hot peppers came from our yard. I fried them up yesterday and today fried up 8 sweet red peppers to balance them. They were hot. They have a great refrigerated shelf-life - not that we have them around for too long since they go in everything from sandwiches to salads - and everything in-between.
I actually considered adding bacon and avocado to the sandwiches tonight but decided they would be messy enough without them.
Maybe next time.
Scallops and Lentils
I really wasn't planning to make scallops tonight.
I had seen a recipe for scallops in the aforementioned copy of La Cucina Italiana Magazine and thought it sounded good, but that was about as far as I had gotten with it. However, walking through the local Wegman's this morning, I spied a pile of fresh scallops that immediately called my name. Within moments, I had 8 U-10 scallops in my cart. U-10 refers to the size - U stands for under and the ten is the number per pound - so they are ten or less per pound by weight. Big scallops.
I came home, made my rolls, and then glanced at the scallop recipe. Ooops! The recipe called for them to be atop a celery root puree. And wouldn't you know it - I was fresh out of celery root. But I had lentils. A recipe was born!
Scallops and Lentils
The Lentils:
- 4 slices bacon
- 1/2 cup onion
- 1 carrot
- 1 stalk celery
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 cup French green lentils (lentilles du Puy)
- 5 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
- 3 cups water
- salt and pepper
The Scallops:
- fresh scallops
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
The Crumbs:
- Fresh bread crumbs
- walnuts
- butter
To make the lentils:
Mince bacon in a food processor. Place in 2-quart saucepan and cook until nicely browned. Mince carrot, celery, garlic, and onion, and add to bacon and cook until vegetables are wilted.
Add lentils, tomatoes, water, and a pinch of S&P. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, about 35 minutes - or until lentils are tender. Check water and add more, as necessary.
To make the scallops:
Heat large skillet with a small amount of olive oil. Pat scallops dry and add to skillet. Cook over fairly high heat about 3 minutes per side.
To make the crumbs:
Blend walnuts and bread in food processor until chopped but still with some texture. Melt butter in a small skillet and brown bread and walnut mixture.
To assemble:
Ladle lentils into a shallow bowl, add scallops and top with crumbs.
I was really happy with how this came out. The scallops were perfectly tender, the lentils were really flavorful, and the crumbs added a perfect crunch. It seems like a lot of work, but it really took no time, at all.
I can see a lot of variations on this one - including the celery root!
Happy Birthday, Julia Child
Happy 100th Birthday, Julia!
I was 11 years old when The French Chef premiered on PBS. Even at that tender age, I was enthralled with food. I was already working Saturday mornings for a couple of hours at the neighborhood donut shop - a job my father had gotten for me to get me out of the house. It's hard to believe that I was a paralyzingly-shy child back in the day. Pop knew I needed to interact with people and the donut shop was just the right place.
It seems impossible that it was 49 years ago that Julia Child first went on TV. Even more impossible that I've been playing with food in one way or another for 51. Impossible.
I don't really recall wanting to be a cook. It was just something that happened. From the donut shop - where I actually ended up working for almost 6 years - to Blums, and then Pirro's, it was the path of least resistance. I could go to school, make money on the side, eat all I wanted, and do something that came easily to me.
Even after taking the placement exams in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club - where I actually scored high enough to get into any field I wanted - including nukes - I chose to be a Commissaryman - a Navy cook - because it took the least amount of effort. Or so I thought. I sailed through school and was assigned to an aircraft carrier. They found out I could bake and it was Bakeshop Aweigh. 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 45 or more days in a row, I baked bread, cakes, cookies, pies. Donuts. OMG did I make donuts. About 18,000 rations of dessert in the aft bakeshop and 700 loaves of bread, 500 hamburger buns, 500 hot dog buns, and a few hundred loaves of a specialty bread in the forward bakeshop - every 24 hours. About 15 of us did that every day.
As hard as the hours were, the actual work wasn't difficult. I spent most of my time in the forward bakeshop with the bread and rolls. At the ripe old age of 19, I had a feel for dough. I had worked for a couple of exacting task-masters and had learned well. We had a very free hand working in the bakeshop. We were required to make whatever amounts of things, and we were supposed to use the official Armed Forces Recipe Card Service recipes, but our specialty breads - and the breads and baked goods we sent to the Wardrooms - The Officers - we had more of a free hand in creating.
The military and I did not really get along very well. Although I worked hard and really did learn a lot, mentally, I was always a civilian in a uniform. A civilian who got to travel throughout Southeast Asia and eat some of the most foreign and fantastic food I had ever had.
My eyes were opened to F-O-O-D and more than just cooking, it became a fascination. I wanted to try more things, I wanted to know how things were done. My problem then as now, was I didn't want to be taught, I wanted to experience. Hotel Restaurant School was horrible. I learned next to nothing. It was extremely difficult being at least three years older than everyone else in the class - and being a Viet Nam veteran with a full-time job and a shitty attitude. I pity some of those teachers.
But while I was hating school, I was loving cooking - and this is where Julia Child came back into play. The attitude and arrogance of some of the teachers contrasted so sharply with the attitude and openness of Julia. While the school was teaching presentation and how to impress, Julia was teaching technique and how to do it right.
For years I would read a Julia Child recipe and marvel at how she could write a three page recipe for a baguette that only had three ingredients. But she was writing her recipes in such a way that literally anyone with half a desire could create a fabulous meal. They can be intimidating, but she was about Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It wasn't about 20-Minute Meals.
But even more important to me than the fool-proof recipes was the concept of just getting into the kitchen and cooking. She said to never apologize for what you made and to not be afraid of what you were doing. Those were concepts that I have brought with me to every job I've had since. At home, my mantra has been the worst thing that can happen is I throw it all out and call for pizza. I have never called for pizza, although there are more than a few things I won't bother making again...
Julia Child first brought French cooking - authentic French cooking - to the masses in the early '60s, but through the subsequent years - decades - she brought cooking to the masses.
She was a real person with a real passion for food. She explained the art of cooking, the techniques, and she wasn't afraid to show the mistakes. Cooking was something real.
Today, cooking shows are about getting dropped in the dessert and cooking a meal for 300 people with yak butter in 20 minutes. I rarely watch cooking shows anymore. I love Ina Garten and a couple others, but none of these Celebrity Chefs can hold a spatula to Julia Child and none of them will ever have the impact she had on food or cooking.
She believed in doing it right and cooking with real ingredients. She believed in the pleasure of food and just didn't worry about using real butter, real eggs, and real cream. Her emphasis was enjoying the right way to cook and eat something.
I knew I wasn't going to be able to make a Julia Child dinner tonight, so I made mine on Monday. A simple roast chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, and French-cut green beans - that I French-cut, myself, of course. In "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" she wrote "A well-roasted chicken is the mark of a fine cook."
I didn't follow her Poulet Roti recipe verbatim, but I did re-read it before coming up with my own version. Julia Child believed in learning through experience - and after 51 years, I'm still learning!
Here's her recipe...
Poulet Roti
(Roast Chicken)
Adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Ingredients
- 1 3-pound whole chicken
- 3/4 teaspoon salt, divided
- 5 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature, divided
- 1 carrot, sliced
- 1 onion, sliced
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/2 tablespoon shallot or green onion, minced
- 1 cup chicken stock or broth
Directions
Preheat oven to 425°. Sprinkle inside of chicken with 1/4 teaspoon salt and smear in 1 tablespoon butter. Truss the chicken. Dry it thoroughly with paper towels, and rub the skin with 1 tablespoon butter. Place chicken, breast side up, in a roasting pan. Strew carrot and onion around it, and set it on a middle rack of the preheated oven. Meanwhile, in a small sauce pan, melt 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil to use for basting.
Allow chicken to brown lightly for 5 minutes. Turn it on its left side, basting it with the butter and oil mixture, and allow it to brown for 5 minutes. Turn it on its right side, baste it, and allow to it to brown for 5 minutes.
Reduce oven to 350°. Leave chicken on its right side, and baste every 8 to 10 minutes, using the fat in the roasting pan when butter-and-oil mixture is empty. Halfway through estimated roasting time (when the right side of chicken is golden brown, about 40 minutes), sprinkle chicken with 1/4 teaspoon salt then turn it on its left side. Continue roasting and basting for another 20-30 minutes, until left side is golden brown. Then, sprinkle chicken with 1/4 teaspoon salt and turn the chicken, breast side up.
Continue basting and cook for another 10-20 minutes or until chicken has an internal temperature of 165°.
When done, cut and discard trussing strings, and allow chicken to rest on a hot platter for 5 to 10 minutes
Remove 2 tablespoons of fat from the pan, and discard. Then, strain the cooked vegetables and pan juices through a chinois. In a small sauce pan, combine strained pan juices and minced shallot (or green onion), and cook over low flame for 1 minute.
Add stock, and boil rapidly over high heat, scraping and discarding any white foam, until liquid reduces to 1/2 cup. Season with salt and pepper.
Turn off flame, and just before serving, swirl in 1 to 2 tablespoons of butter into the pan sauce.
Pour a spoonful of sauce over the chicken, then ladle the remaining sauce in a gravy boat for the table.
Panini and Potatoes
Last night I roasted a chicken in honor of Julia Child's 100th Birthday, tomorrow. I'm still doing physical therapy, and between it and work tomorrow, I really wouldn't have had the time I wanted tomorrow and still eat at a decent hour. I figured Julia would understand.
I thought a simple roasted chicken would be the best tribute to her. It's one of the easiest and most intimidating of dishes. Easy, because what's difficult about putting a chicken in the oven? Intimidating, because they rarely come out as planned.
But this is about the leftovers. My tome to Roast Chicken is tomorrow...
With chicken in the 'fridge, sandwiches were my first choice - but not just any sandwich... grilled panini loaded with all sorts of fun things! I mean, would you expect a plain ol' chicken sandwich with mayo on squishy white bread?!? Not that I don't have a place in my heart for turkey and squishy white bread sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving, but that's still a few months away...
These panini started with a Tuscan pane. If you're gonna go Italian, go Italian, right?!? Then came a sharp imported provolone. Atop that went slices of fresh tomatoes from our garden. Next was the aforementioned chicken, topped with fried peppers, also from the garden. Next was a Locatelli with peppercorns, and then the final slice of bread. Both slices were liberally (I love the word Liberal) doused with olive oil and placed on the panini maker.
Meanwhile, I made Italian potato pancakes. I got this idea from La Cucina Italiana. I've been making potato pancakes for as long as I can remember, but these were really, really simple. They were just mashed potatoes - with nothing added - mixed with shredded provolone cheese, salt, pepper, and minced fresh basil. I formed them into patties and cooked them on a griddle with just enough olive oil to keep them from sticking.
The perfect leftover meal.
Chicken Spinach and Salsa
Monday is Shopping Day. Grocery shopping is the only type of shopping I like. Well... except maybe new computer shopping, but I don't get to do that on a weekly basis...
My shopping patterns have changed a bit since Wegmans opened up the road from us. I used to head to The Acme in Paoli for Victor's mom about 9:30am - I wanted to start sooner but they never had the apple strudel bites she wants out of the oven before then - and after dropping off her groceries, would hit the local PathMark for our shopping. I don't really care for the Acme and don't shop there for us. I wouldn't shop there for Nonna, either, but she's in a rut about a few of their products. She's 86. I let her slide on it.
If I were lucky, I'd be home by noon. Nowadays, I make my list out Sunday night and by 8am Monday, I'm off to do our shopping - I like the nearly-empty-store shopping experience - and even after getting home and putting everything away, I still get over to The Acme before 10 and home by 11.
Life is good.
Monday dinner can be entirely new, clean out the refrigerator, or a combination of the two. Today was a clean-out day.
I had pulled chicken breasts out of the freezer with no real idea of what to do with them. I had some heirloom tomatoes I wanted to use up and first thought of making some salsa and doing a chipotle rub for the chicken. Then the mind switched to Italy. Funny how that keeps happening!
The salsa became an
Italian salsa
- chopped tomatoes
- chopped onion
- minced garlic
- minced fresh basil
- olive oil
- red wine vinegar
- salt & pepper
Mix all ingredients adding salt & pepper, to taste. Refrigerate until ready to use.
It was very simple but really flavorful. Use ripe tomatoes - homegrown if possible - and enjoy. Quantities will depend on how many tomatoes you have. Regardless, just a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar are needed.
The chicken I marinated in white wine, olive oil, and garlic. Then grilled with indirect heat about 30 minutes - they're big bone-in breasts. We actually only eat half of them for dinner - the rest becomes lunch for the following day.
The pasta was a fun last-minute idea. We had a bit of spinach pasta in the cupboard, some frozen spinach in the freezer, and more of the Locatelli with peppercorns in the fridge. I cooked the pasta, put it into a skillet with the spinach and a drizzle of olive oil, and when it was hot, I stirred in some shredded cheese.
Voilà! A side dish was born!
The flavors all worked together well. I had some sourdough bread and made little bite-sized chicken and salsa sandwiches
It was yum.
Pork and Polenta
I tend to buy whole pork loins, beef loins, and the like, and cut them and freeze them. Picked up on special, I can get chops and roasts for a great price. There's always a bit at the tail that doesn't quite work for a chop or steak. These I put away fro stewing or braising.
I pulled about a pound of pork out of the freezer today with the intent of cooking it with our less-than-stellar home-grown tomatoes. Something vaguely Italian to serve over polenta.
The February issue of La Cucina Italiana had quite a few polenta recipes as well as a pork ragu. I wasn't quite as ambitious as I would have needed to be to create any of their recipes, but it did give my lazy self a few ideas.
I started off with a really big shallot that I sauteed in a bit of olive oil. Next went 2 cloves of chopped garlic, the pork pieces and a 4oz container of pancetta. I browned it all a bit and then added about 8 chopped roma tomatoes and 2 chopped beefsteak tomatoes. I lowered the heat, put a lid on it, and walked away for a couple of hours.
I came back in, shredded the pork, added a bit of S&P and some crushed red pepper. Nothing else. I let it simmer some more.
Meanwhile, I made the polenta. Here, I did get an idea from the magazine. They made one polenta dish with something called polenta taragna - a polenta and buckwheat flour combination. I didn't have it, but I did have buckwheat flour. (What a surprise huh?!?)
Per the notes in the recipe, I mixed some flour with the polenta. Their ratio is 5:1 polenta to buckwheat flour.
I made the polenta with 2 cups of milk, 1/2 cup polenta mixture, and a pinch of garlic powder, salt and pepper. After cooking the required time, I stirred in some shredded Locatelli cheese with peppercorns we picked up at the shore last weekend.
I have to say it came out pretty swell.
The flavors all worked together really well. I could have really spiced the pork to no end - my first idea this morning was a spicy BBQ'd pork - but it worked really well with the more subtle flavors. It was actually a bit of a change from some of the dishes I've made in the past.
And there was enough left over to make a couple of really good sandwiches for lunch tomorrow!
The best kind of fast food.
Hot Peppers from the Garden
Our garden hasn't been all that great this year. The Critters ate the broccoli and brussels sprouts and the tomatoes have been pretty dismal. Lots of black rot.
But the hot peppers have been coming along well...
Victor harvested about 10 of them this morning. The timing was perfect, because I had planned to make chicken sandwiches with fried red peppers tonight.
A fresh chicken sandwich made without the 100 ingredients in a Chick-fil-a sandwich. High fructose corn syrup? MSG? Artificial colors and flavors? It's no secret that I can be a bit of a food snob. And I've actually never eaten a Chick-fil-a sandwich. But after reading the ingredient list, there's just no way I would consume one. And that doesn't even begin to address their hate-filled political agenda. I know, I know... you're sick of hearing about Chick-fil-a. But being an American who happens to be gay, it's more than a bit personal. No... it's real food from people who aren't trying to eradicate me.
So, properly politically-motivated, the fried red peppers became fried red and green peppers. One should always be flexible and be able to adapt to new situations, right?!? Right.
Not knowing how hot they were, I took a bit off the tip. Nothing. Victor took a bit off the tip. Nothing. He cut it in half and we each took a chunk. H-O-T!!! They were seeded before cooking.
They went into the skillet with nothing more than some olive oil. I cooked them for about 30 minutes - 10 minutes uncovered and 20 minutes covered. At the end I added a pinch of salt and black pepper.
Stellar. Just hot enough to be interesting, but still really flavorful.
The chicken went on the grill with just a bit of garlic powder, smoked paprika, and S&P.
Little rolls and fries finished it off.
I really like mixing hot and sweet peppers together like this. They come together really well and can be used on absolutely anything - from sandwiches to omelettes and everything in-between.
Yum.
BBQ Ribs
♫ Summertime, and the livin' is easy... ♫
Finally a decent-weather day. Low 80s and low humidity. I could live with this. Alas, today is the only day we're getting good weather. Back to high humidity tonight.
Oh well... I enjoyed it while it was here.
And I enjoyed getting outside and grilling some ribs! But before I grilled ribs, I made pasta salad and Phoebe's Baked Beans.
The pasta salad was easy.
I cooked up a package of perline pasta (you could use mini-ravioli) and added 4oz of diced speck (use prosciutto) a small red onion, a yellow and a green zucchini, diced, some frozen peas, and some chopped sun-dried tomatoes. The dressing was a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Salt & pepper.
It was really simple and really good. A good pasta salad is a clean out the refrigerator salad. Seriously. Anything goes.
The beans were perfect - as always. This is just such a good recipe...
Phoebe's Baked Beans
- 1/2 cup minced shallots
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1/2 cup tomato puree (I use tomato paste – I never have puree in the house!)
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons molasses
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 chipotle chiles, canned in adobo sauce, seeded and chopped
- 2 (28-ounce) cans baked beans
Preheat oven to 300°.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add shallots; sauté 4 minutes or until golden. Add cumin and garlic; sauté for 1 minute. Add tomato puree and oil, and cook for 2 minutes or until thick, stirring constantly. Add remaining ingredients (except beans.). Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Combine beans and shallot mixture in a 2-quart baking dish. Bake at 300° for 1 hour or until thick and bubbly.
They seriously come out perfect every time.
And the ribs...
I did a dry rub of smoked paprika, chipotle powder, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. I put the ribs into a 250° oven for about 2 hours before putting them on the grill with BBQ sauce.
We went through lots of napkins.
And... I picked up more peaches, today. Another dessert coming up!
Roasted Tomatoes
We were down at the shore this past weekend celebrating birthdays - my 60th and my nephews 16th. We were in Point Pleasant - way north of Atlantic City and only 11 miles south of Asbury Park.
I have some pretty foggy memories of Asbury Park circa 1978. I was living in Tahoe and one of my roommates was an east coast boy. We flew east for a 2-week vacation that included Memorial Day weekend at a "little summer home" in Cape May. But before we could get to Cape May, we had to stop off and see the family of another friend of ours - who owned a bar in Asbury Park. It was named Killeen's and was near the boardwalk, somewhere. It may have been across the street. Alas, I was only there once, and when I left, I was quite drunk. Pat Killeen's sister, Colleen - I think - was bartending, and when she learned we were friends of Pat's... well... let us just say that the liquor flowed like liquor. We didn't pay a cent and got totally trashed - before noon.
We then drove the 110 miles to Cape May. It was also the weekend Resorts opened in Atlantic City - the first casino. There were no worries of speeding. It was a great introduction to New Jersey and The Jersey Shore.
But back to Point Pleasant...
There's an Italian specialty store in Point Pleasant named Joe Leone's that has some pretty remarkable - and rather expensive - gastronomic delights. Lots of fresh breads, cheeses and meats, but also freshly-prepared foods that included meatballs, cutlets, eggplant... tons of stuff. I picked up a few things - Locatelli with peppercorns, some "00" flour, a bag of Polenta Puffs (don't ask) and some sesame cookies for Victor's mom.
One thing we saw - and didn't buy - was roasted tomatoes. They really looked good, but they were selling for more than I wanted to pay. Besides, we both knew we could make them at home with no problem.
And today, Victor did just that!
The tomatoes at Joe Lone's were thick-sliced beefsteaks, but we had roma tomatoes from our garden, so we used those. He did some sliced in rings and some sliced lengthwise and seeded.
Roasted Tomatoes
- tomatoes
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- garlic cloves, minced
- sugar
- salt
- pepper
Preheat oven to 450°.
Arrange the tomatoes on a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with the garlic, sugar, salt, and pepper. Add a pinch of fresh herbs, if you want.
Roast about 30 minutes or until the tomatoes begin to caramelize.
No measurements because it will depend on how many tomatoes you're doing. Drizzle means just that. No need to soak anything.
A bit of sugar - just a bit - helps to create that kinda gooey caramelly texture and flavor. Even a sweet tomato will benefit from it. And don't be afraid of the garlic. Use a lot.
They went excellently with some hot Italian sausage, imported provolone cheese, and a loaf of fresh bread.
I see more of these in our future...