Lentil Soup with Ham
Like a turkey, the biggest reason to cook a ham is for the bone. I love making soup. Leftovers are great, sandwiches are great, all-the-other-things-you-can-make-with-leftover-turkey-or-ham are great. But The Soup is The Best. Especially when it's really cold outside.
For a ham bone, bean soup, split pea soup, or lentil soup come immediately to mind. It's almost a free meal. And soup is flat-out one of the easiest things in the world to make.
We chose lentil tonight. There are lots of lentils in the cabinet. Red, yellow, brown, and a few pounds of French green lentils (lentilles du Puy) I picked up at Atlantic Spice. I went with the French lentils tonight, although any will work. These hold their shape and don't disintegrate like some of the others do - both a plus and a minus when making soup.
Lentil Soup
- 1 ham bone
- 2 qts chicken broth
- 1 qt water
- 1 cup diced onion
- 3 stalks celery, diced
- 3 carrots, diced
- 2 1/2 cups lentils
- salt
- pepper
- 1/2 tsp herbs d'Provence
- 2 bay leaves
- splash of Tabasco or cayenne pepper
Saute onion, celery, and carrots in soup pot. Add broth, water, and bone. Simmer about an hour.
Remove bone. Add lentils and herbs.
Cut any remaining meat from bone and add to pot. Simmer until lentils are cooked through, 20-30 minutes, depending on type of lentils.
Add a splash or two of tabasco. Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.
Hit the pot with an immersion blender for a few spins to thicken a bit.
Serve with warm, crusty bread.
There are a million-and-one variations on lentil soup. You can add tomatoes, you can add a bit of balsamic vinegar, it can be vegetarian, vegan, thick or thin. You should note that lentils take longer to cook in salty or acidic liquid, so add your salt and tomatoes, vinegars, etc., after they are cooked.
And not only are they good, but they're good for you, too. Lentils are high in fiber, protein, folate, amino acids, antioxidants, iron, magnesium and zinc. They are also low in fat.
Andouille and Langostino
I have been having more fun going through and posting the recipes that have been coming in from my email and Facebook plea. Holiday Cooking. Most of us have to do it - or at least some of it. What a concept to have a whole bunch of fun recipes from fun people posted in one place! If you haven't sent one in, yet... well... do it! And take a look at the ones already there!
Fun, indeed!
But I digress...
It's a bit cold outside, so I thought something a bit hot would warm us up, inside. Andouille sausage will do that - especially if you add just a bit more spice to it!
This was a total throw-together meal. I sliced andouille sausage and placed it in a skillet with a bit of chopped onion. I added a splash (literally) of red wine to deglaze the pan and then added a can of diced tomatoes in juice. When it was hot I added a chopped bell pepper, a pinch of thyme, a splash of Tabasco, and a bit of salt and pepper.
I then added a handful of langostino and heated them through.
Served it over mahogany rice.
Sausage was spicy, peppers were still crunchy, sauce was flavorful and just hot enough...
It was a great almost-New-Orleans-style dinner with lots of crusty bread to sop up the juices.
Tagliatelle al Burro al Tartufo
We have pretty much run out of the La Cucina Pasta Issue recipes. Tonight, Victor made one of their pastas, but the sauce was pure Victor.
In his TV cooking-show-watching, he saw a couple of different pasta recipes with truffles. One was a Wolfgang Puck dish with billion-dollar-a-pound white truffles. Another was Ina - the Barefoot Contessa - making a pasta butter or something.
So...
Tagliatelle al Burro al Tartufo - Tagliatelle with Truffle Butter - was born.
The sauce is definitely not for the faint of heart, but I tell ya... if ya have to go, this is the way to do it - with a smile on your face.
And we have to thank Ann and Julie for letting us know that it was okay to have real, fresh truffles in the house in the first place. They brought us truffles last year when they visited and after using them up, decided I really could buy one myself now and again.
They really are a very special treat!
Tagliatelle al Burro al Tartufo
Tagliatelle Fresche
Ingredients
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 2 large eggs
- 2 large egg yolks
- Coarse sea salt
Instructions
On a clean work surface, mound flour and form a well in the center. Add eggs and egg yolks to the well. Using a fork, gently break up yolks and slowly incorporate flour from inside rim of well. Continue until liquid is absorbed, then knead for 10 minutes. Wrap dough tightly in plastic and let rest for 30 minutes.
Divide dough into 3 pieces. Cover 2 pieces with plastic wrap. Flatten remaining dough piece so that it will fit through the rollers of a pasta machine.Set rollers of pasta machine at the widest setting, then feed pasta through rollers 3 or 4 times, folding and turning pasta until it is smooth and the width of the machine.
Roll pasta through machine, decreasing the setting, one notch at a time (do not fold or turn pasta), until pasta sheet is scant 1/16 inch thick.Cut sheet in half widthwise; dust both sides of sheets with flour. Layer sheets between floured pieces of parchment or wax paper. Cover with paper and repeat with remaining dough.
With the short end of 1 pasta sheet facing you, loosely fold up sheet, folding sheet over two or three times from short ends toward the center. With a large chefs knife, cut folded sheet into ribbons, a scant 1/4 inch wide. Unroll strips and lightly dust with flour; spread on a lightly floured baking sheet. Repeat with remaining pasta sheets.
To cook the tagliatelle, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain pasta, transfer to a large serving bowl and toss with sauce.
In the meantime, in a large skillet:
Sauce
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 cup freshly grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- 7 oz truffle butter
Truffle butter
- 1 small, fresh truffle
- 7 oz softened butter
Grate the truffle with a fine plane and in a mixer (or by hand) whip the truffle and butter together. You can do this a day ahead and refrigerate, covered.
While the pasta is cooking, add the heavy cream to the skillet and bring to just a simmer. Add the butter and let it melt into the cream. Remove from heat and immediately add the drained pasta to the skillet with the grated cheese, reserving some cheese for topping. Serve immediately.
Victor only used about half of the truffle butter. It was more than adequate.
And better markets will probably have truffle butter already made, if you're so inclined.
Lemon Polenta Cake
Today has been a non-stop cook-and-bake day at our house.
I baked bread and a fruitcake, and Victor made pasta for tomorrow and a Lemon Polenta Cake for dessert tonight!
Gastronomic heaven.
The Lemon Polenta Cake comes from the Food Network's Nigella Lawson. He saw her make it on TV and decided we needed one. This is further proof that a well-stocked larder always comes in handy. We had the ingredients in the house.
And OMG! Am I glad we did! This is G-O-O-D!!!
Lemon curd in cake form is a perfect description. It is lemony-tart, moist but not wet or under-cooked, and it has a perfectly luscious texture.
Everything about it is good.
I am seriously resisting going back for more.
Lemon Polenta Cake
Nigella Lawson
Directions
This cake is a sort of Anglo-Italian amalgam. The flat, plain disc is reminiscent of the confections that sit geometrically arranged in patisserie windows in Italy; the sharp, syrupy sogginess borrows from the classic English teatime favorite, the lemon drizzle cake. It is a good marriage: I love Italian cooking in all respects save one - I find their cakes both too dry and too sweet. Here, though, the flavorsome grittiness of the polenta and tender rubble of ground almond meal provide so much better a foil for the wholly desirable dampness than does the usual flour.
But there is more to it than that. By some alchemical process, the lemon highlights the eggy butteriness of the cake, making it rich and sharp at the same time. If you were to try to imagine what lemon curd would taste like in cake form, this would be it.
Although I am greedily happy to slice and cram messily straight into my mouth, letting damp clumps fall where they will, this cake is best eaten - in company at least - with spoon and fork. Either way, consider it a contender for teatime comfort and supper-party celebration alike.
Ingredients
Cake:
- 1 3/4 sticks (14 tablespoons) soft unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
- 1 cup superfine sugar
- 2 cups almond meal/flour
- 3/4 cup fine polenta/cornmeal
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten-free if required)
- 3 eggs
- Zest 2 lemons (save the juice for the syrup)
Syrup:
- Juice 2 lemons (see above)
- Heaping 1 cup confectioners' sugar
Special Equipment: 1 (9-inch) springform pan
For the cake: Line the base of your cake pan with parchment paper and grease its sides lightly with butter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.
Mix together the almond meal, polenta and baking powder, and beat some of this into the butter-sugar mixture, followed by 1 egg, then alternate dry ingredients and eggs, beating all the while.
Finally, beat in the lemon zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared pan and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes. It may seem wibbly but, if the cake is cooked, a cake tester should come out cleanish and, most significantly, the edges of the cake will have begun to shrink away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the oven to a wire cooling rack, but leave in its pan.
For the syrup: Make the syrup by boiling together the lemon juice and confectioners' sugar in a smallish saucepan. Once the confectioners' sugar has dissolved into the juice, you're done. Prick the top of the cake all over with a cake tester (a skewer would be too destructive), pour the warm syrup over the cake, and leave to cool before taking it out of its pan.
Make Ahead Note: The cake can be baked up to 3 days ahead and stored in airtight container in a cool place. Will keep for total of 5 to 6 days.
Freeze Note: The cake can be frozen on its lining paper as soon as cooled, wrapped in double layer of plastic wrap and a layer of foil, for up to 1 month. Thaw for 3 to 4 hours at room temperature.
This is definitely going into the dessert rotation!
Spiral-Sliced Ham & Potato Pancakes
Every now and again I have to get a bone-in ham so I can get a ham bone. Lentil, navy bean, or split pea soup is the real reason for having a ham in the first place. I loves me soups.
And I like ham.
I picked up a quarter-ham (which is still way too much ham for just the two of us) and then played clean-out-the-refrigerator for the rest of dinner.
We had leftover mashed potatoes from a few days ago that I specifically asked Victor to save so I could make potato pancakes. He laughed and said his Uncle Rudy always wanted the leftover mashed potatoes to be saved for the same reason - and never made them. The not so subtle implication was that I wasn't going to, either.
He was almost correct. I had forgotten all about them until Victor was looking through tupperware for lunch.
He found The Potatoes.
I immediately announced we would be having them for dinner! It was almost as if I had planned it all along. We both knew I hadn't.
But I did make potato pancakes for dinner with the ham!
To about a cup and a half of potatoes, I added a hefty couple of tablespoons of flour and 1 egg. A pinch of salt, pepper, and garlic powder, mixed well, and they went into a hot skillet with a bit of olive oil.
The brussels sprouts were merely cut in half and sauted.
Tomorrow I think I will bring Victor's mom over a bit of ham when I do her shopping and package a bit up for the freezer.
I think Victor should make lentil soup with the bone on Tuesday. He just finished his fresh pasta for tomorrow...
White Bread
I remember my mom making a chocolate fruitcake many many moons ago. I really don't remember much about it other than I liked it at the time. I think she only made it once , or, at least, I only remember it once. It definitely wasn't a Christmas tradition.
It's a bit of a cold day out there, I'm getting that Christmas-Baking-Bug, and I decided to see if I could find that recipe. I got out her cook books and started looking. I didn't find it, but I did find a score of bread recipes. Being the easily-sidetracked person that I am, I decided to bake a loaf of bread as well as make a fruitcake.
We had the ingredients.
I have the cook books scanned into the computer but there really is nothing like pulling out and holding and reading the real thing. The notes she made, comments, alterations... It really does bring me back to a simpler place and time. Well... simpler for me... I really can't imagine having six kids in the house.
It's a really loose batter bread. Really loose. It's a no-knead bread because there's no way it could ever be kneaded. The batter literally pours into the pan.
But it came out looking great!
The top split in the oven but it has all the appearances of a very light bread. I have a small ham for dinner tonight but I'm thinking ham sandwiches might be on the menu!
Light without being "squishy" with a great crust! It's definitely going to be a good sandwich bread.
Christmas Fruit Cake
It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas!
While we're not doing the mega-baking of years past, I do have to make a few things for the holidays - and fruitcake is really one of my favorites.
I know.. I know... Fruitcake has a really bad rap. Many moons ago I started making an Apricot and Macadamia Nut Fruitcake just to ease folks back into the mood. The past couple of years I've abandoned all pretense and have gone for the real McCoy.
This year I made one fruitcake. Just one. And as soon as it is completely cooled it's going down into the basement until Christmas.
It's an easy cake to make - and well worth the cost of ingredients.
While there are often very traditional dried fruits used. I chose what we had in the house already. 8 cups or so of dried and candied fruit and a hefty cup of nuts.
Mix 'em up.
Christmas Fruit Cake
- 2 cups mixed diced glacéed fruits
- 3 cups golden raisins
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 1 cup dried cherries
- 1 cup dried apricots, chopped
- 3/4 cup rum
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/2 tsp cloves
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 5 large eggs
- 1 cup almond meal
- 1 1/2 cups chopped assorted nuts
- 1/4 cup peach jam mixed with 1 tbsp rum
In a large bowl combine all of the fruits with the rum and let macerate overnight.
Line the bottom of a well-buttered 9 1/2-inch springform pan with a round of parchment paper and butter the paper. Into a small bowl sift together the flour, the baking powder, and the spices.
Cream together the butter and the brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy and beat in 4 of the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
Drain the fruit mixture well and mix the juices into the batter.
Stir the flour mixture into the batter, one fourth at a time, stir in the fruit mixture, the almond meal, and the nuts, stirring until the mixture is just combined, and turn the batter out into the prepared pan.
Put 2 loaf pans, each filled with hot water, in a preheated 300°F. oven and put the springform pan between them. Bake the cake for 1 hour, brush the top with the remaining egg, beaten lightly, and bake the cake for 1 hour more. While the cake is baking, in a saucepan melt the peach jam with the remaining 1 tablespoon rum over moderate heat, bring the mixture to a boil, and strain it through a fine sieve into a bowl, pressing hard on the solids.
Cool cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes. Remove from pan. Brush the top of the cake with glaze.
The cake will keep, covered, for 6 months.
Pear and Raisin Pie
I had a craving for a pear pie yesterday. I hadn't had one in a long time and decided I was going to bake one when I got home from work. I broke down and bought a frozen pie crust.
I don't know why I do this stuff. I should know better. I'm always disappointed. It's not that this particular crust was bad. It wasn't. It just wasn't all that good.
And then there's the time-factor. Folks talk about a frozen crust being this big time-saver. Well... I guess it is if you planned the pie days in advance, thawed the crust in the refrigerator and pulled it out and filled it with your jar of pre-made pie-filling it may be a time-saver, but what about if you decide you want to make a pie today? Or, right now?
It's a different story when you're waiting (and waiting) for the dough to thaw enough to unfold it. And after two hours on the counter it's still going to break into quarters no matter what, so out comes the rolling pin to put it back together.
The pie could have been made, baked, and cooled by the time the damned dough almost thawed.
Time-saving, indeed.
And I really am beginning to think that even a bad homemade crust is going to taste better than a store-bought.
They just do.
So while the pie shell may have been a bit disappointing, the filing was superb. Very simple, yet richly flavored. Boiling down the pear nectar really concentrates that pear flavor and a bit of lemon juice adds the tartness to offset the sweet.
Really good.
The recipe is based upon a Bon Appetit recipe from years ago.
Pear and Raisin Pie
- 1 cup pear nectar
- 1 cup raisins
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ginger
- 3 lbs pears, peeled, quartered, cored, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices
Pie pastry for double crust
Preheat to 400°. Prepare double crust according to your favorite recipe. (see below fr mine)
Boil nectar in heavy medium saucepan until reduced to 1/3 cup. Pour into large bowl and mix in raisins. Cool. Mix in sugar and remaining ingredients, then pears.
Spoon filling into crust. Seal top crust to bottom crust. Cut slits in top crust to allow steam to escape.
Bake pie until pears are tender, about 1 hour. Cool.
And make a pie crust.
Pie Crust
This may be the easiest pie crust in the world! Try it with 2/3 butter and 1/3 (not shortening) if you have it available.
- 2 cups flour
- 1/3 cup pastry/cake flour
- 2 sticks butter, frozen
- pinch salt
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 cup ice water
Using a food processor, add flours, salt, and sugar. Pulse to mix.
Chop up frozen butter and add. Pulse until butter is incorporated and mixture looks grainy.
Slowly add ice water and pulse until mixed.
Turn out onto counter. Press and form mixture into two disks . I usually use right away, but you should really wrap it in plastic and refrigerate about an hour to allow the flour to properly absorb the water and to relax the gluten.
Roll out crust and place in pie plate. Crimp edges and fill.
Chicken Parmigiana
There's something about a breaded chicken cutlet that just makes my tummy smile. I like them in just about any fashion or mode. Highly seasoned, simple with sauce, plain, fancy. With cheese, without. I'm not that picky. I like 'em.
But when a chicken cutlet gets hooked up with homemade sauce and slices of parmesan cheese under a blanket of melted mozzarella... well... my tummy does more than smile - and the rest of me is pretty happy, as well!
That was tonight's dinner. Served with ravioli and broccoli drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I used the cheesy sauce in the pan for the ravioli. We waste nothing!
Very simple. Very quick. Very good.
I made a Pear and Raisin Pie for dessert tonight, too!
I bought a frozen crust.
More on that, later...
Franca's Clam Chowder
When we were honeymooning on Cape Cod at our friend Dana's, her sister Franca made her famous Clam Chowder for us one night. Franca's chowder is the real thing. She starts with local clams in the shell and spends the day in the kitchen. The result is nothing short of spectacular.
We received a large container of the base to bring home with us. The base merely needs cream and a check for seasoning to finish it off. It has been sitting in the freezer awaiting the proper time to come forth. Tonight was that time.
The Eilers clan prefers a thin chowder, and while I adored every drop we ate that night on The Cape, when I make chowder, I tend to thicken it a bit. I understand this is sacrilege, but we're 300 miles away. They can't get us tonight.
And the chowder was perfect. Delicious. Wonderful. Thick or thin, this chowder rocks! It has a rich clam flavor that you just can't get from bottled clam juice or canned clams. It really is stellar.
Just the dish to start off the first night of Hanukkah. (ooops!)
Which reminds me of a story from a few years back...
When I worked at UCSF, one of my jobs was to answer the comments and suggestions from the "Suggestion Box" in the Moffitt Cafe. I posted about 20 questions and my responses in a bulletin board by the Nutrition Services office down the hall from the cafe. For the most part I ignored the %$#@# comments but I always included at least one snarky comment - and gave it a professionally-snarky response. It was always fun to watch the crowds gather around the board and see their reaction to my latest epistles...
So one day I receive a comment from a woman who was incensed that we put salt pork in our New England Clam Chowder. She went on at great length about how we were deceiving our Jewish customers who can't eat pork and that we were pretty much condemning them to hell because of our insensitivity. She was extremely rude to put it mildly.
I was just so sweet in my response. I explained to her that salt pork or bacon was an integral ingredient in clam chowder dating back to the beginning of time. It was used in the original Fannie Farmer cook book of 1896 and was a completely traditional ingredient. Every recipe called for it and while it was true we did not have a huge sign stating it contained pork, we generally did not alert people to ingredients that were supposed to be in a dish.
I thanked her for caring so much for our Jewish customers that she would take us to task for including pork in our clam chowder. I then informed her that in all probability having pork in a clam chowder probably wouldn't be an issue to most Jews as they would most likely not be eating a soup make from shellfish in the first place.
It was the most fun job I have ever had.