Not Quite Joe's Special
I've been just a tad homesick this week. Getting married far from home. Watching the Giants. Seeing all of those fabulous views of San Francisco... Seeing our old season ticket seats at AT&T (nee PacBell) Park. Missing mom and pop... It's been pretty much a whirlwind of emotions...
So, of course, I think of food. It''s what I do.
One of the things that has kept coming forward is "Joe's Special" - a scramble of ground beef, spinach, mushrooms, and eggs. Tradition has it that the Joe's Special was created at "New Joe's" on Broadway in San Francisco back in the 1920's. New Joe's was the precursor to "Original Joe's" on Taylor. Folklore has it that a customer ordered a spinach omelet very late on night. The customer asked the chef if he had anything else available to cook. The chef replied he had some hamburger left. The customer asked him to throw some of the hamburger into his omelet. The dish became so popular that they eventually put it on the menu.
Why I've been thinking of this, I don't quite know. It's not something my mother used to make. It was on the menu of at least three restaurants I worked in in my youth, but it's not something I would immediately associate if someone said "quick, name a San Francisco food."
So... I decided to do what I normally do when irrational thought enters the brain... Run with it!
Except I really wasn't in the mood for a scramble.
So I took the same basic ingredients and just put them together a bit differently. I fried up the mushrooms with a bit of garlic and added the spinach. Toasted 2 slices of bread. Grilled 2 burgers outside and fried 2 eggs, inside.
The result was a layered dish of toast, spinach and mushrooms, and a burger patty topped with a fried egg.
What a treat. Charred burger with egg yolk dripping into it. And spinach and crunchy toast...
Can we say outrageously good, boys and girls?!?
It did everything it was supposed to do - and more.
And one more win and the Giants go to the World Series.
Life is good.
Pear Pastry
Since we can't be at AT&T Park watching the game live and eating garlic fries, we needed something to start tonight's baseball game. We keep seeing our former season ticket seats... It is such an awesome ball park. I miss those seats. Those were fun days.
But I digress...
I picked up a couple of great-looking pears yesterday, thinking they would lend themselves to a fun dessert. They did - except I didn't make the dessert!
We had puff pastry in the freezer...
Victor peeled and cubed the pears and coated them with maybe a quarter-cup of sugar. Into a skillet they went with a tablespoon of butter, a bit of flour, cinnamon and nutmeg.
When they caramelized a bit, he added a splash of apple cider and let that cook down.
Onto the pastry, folded up 2 sides, and baked at 425° for about 15 minutes.
Yum.
Pico de Gallo
One of the things I picked up at Atlantic Spice on Saturday when we were up on The Cape was a bag of pico de gallo. Pico de gallo is generally a salsa of sorts, made with tomatoes, onions, peppers, lemon juice, cilantro... The ingredients vary from area to area and it can be firey hot or fruity mild.
The bag I bought was a blend of spices and seasonings. While I usually don't buy a lot of spice blends, I thought what the heck. Actually, I just think that I don't buy a lot of spice blends... when I opened the spice cabinet to figure out how I was going to fit yet another item in there, I noticed just how many spice blends I don't buy.
I can't believe how many I don't buy.
I decided I needed to do something vaguely Mexican tonight. I had chicken already cooked from the bird I cooked yesterday for the soup, pico de gallo spice... An idea started forming.
My first thought was to do something like a gordita or an El Salvadoran pupusa. (A woman I worked with years ago at San Francisco General Hospital made the best pupusas!!! Alicia, I miss you and your cooking!)
But... I made more of a tamale dough than a pupusa or gordita dough. Much softer and lighter.
So, I decided to make something open-faced.
I made the dough:
- 1 cup masa harina
- 1/3 cup lard
- 1 cup warm water
- pinch salt
The filling was:
- chicken
- pico de gallo
- roasted red peppers
- chopped green chiles
topped with:
- quesso fresco
- cotija
Cotija is an aged Mexican cheese. Salty and dry, it's like a Mexican version of parmesan.
The topless gorditas were very soft, so I put the tray in the 'fridge for an hour for them to firm up. I never would have gotten them off the pan at room temperature.
I fired up the griddle and browned them really well and then stuck the griddle under the broiler to melt the cheeses and heat everything through.
I topped them with salsa verde and a few sliced black olives.
It may not have been the most authentic of Mexican meals, but it definitely hit the spot! I can definitely see some variations on this theme!
Penne al Forno
Today was Victor's first day back at work. I took pity and decided to continue his Pasta Monday for him.
All I can say, is it's not easy following a recipe!
It's funny. I knew that I didn't really follow recipes, but I really didn't realize that I really don't follow recipes! Every fiber of my being was rebelling at measuring and using exactly what was on the printed page - nothing more and nothing less. It's not easy.
But the end result was wonderful!
For all intents and purposes, this is Italian Macaroni and Cheese. And what a macaroni and cheese it is! It has a thick, crunchy-crusty cheese topping that is out of this world. And it's only cheese! The pasta, pancetta , and peas worked perfectly together. The two egg yolks added creamy richness.
It was great.
It made a goodly amount, so Victor will have at least one lunch and we may have a side dish for dinner tomorrow!
Penne al Forno
Ingredients
- Fine sea salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter plus more for baking dish
- 1 large shallot, thinly sliced
- 3 ounces pancetta, roughly chopped (1/2 cup packed)
- 1 1/4 cups frozen peas, thawed
- 3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
- 3/4 pound penne
- 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 1/3 cups whole milk
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 1/4 cups freshly grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Instructions
Heat oven to 450º. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Butter a 2-quart baking dish.
In a small saucepan, combine shallot and pancetta; cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, for 3 minutes. Add peas and 2 tablespoons water; bring to a simmer and cook for 3 minutes more. Remove from heat and stir in parsley.
Add pasta to the boiling water and cook until al dente. Meanwhile, in a large pot, heat butter and flour over medium heat, stirring, until butter is melted and mixture is combined.Add milk and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook, whisking frequently, until béchamel comes to a boil, then cook, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon, for 2 minutes more. Remove from heat.
In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and cream. Add béchamel and whisk to combine. Return to heat and bring just to a boil, then remove from heat.When pasta is al dente, drain pasta and return to pot. Add pea mixture, béchamel and 1/2 cup cheese; stir to combine. Mix well, then transfer to prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese. Bake until top is browned, about 15 minutes.
And pasta deserves fresh-baked bread!
I followed the egg white version of the no-knead bread but used
- 4 cups white flour
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup buckwheat flour
- 1/2 cup unprocessed wheat bran
for the 6 1/2 cups flour.
It worked really well. I'm lovin' this no-knead bread!
And I'm lovin' this Monday Pasta.
Seafood Night on Cape Cod
If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air
Quaint little villages here and there
You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod
Patti Page recorded that in 1957. It's changed a bit in the 53 years since she first sang it... The quaint little villages have grown, but the sand dunes and salty air are still there - along with our dear friend, Dana.
Dana and I were roommates in Boston during her senior year or law school and have remained friends for years in spite of having lived together and knowing all about one another.
After practicing law for years and writing a couple of books, Dana returned to the family compound on the Cape.
The Cape. It really is a magical place. Victor and I both had spent a good amount of time there before we met. This was our first visit, together, and the first time staying with Dana.
What fun!
Sand dunes and salty air translate to seafood and there's no better seafood-shopper than Dana's sister, Franca. Local quahogs, scallops, shrimp, and lobster were all procured from the fish monger whose name escapes me right now, but fresh is the word of the day.
We had an all-day cook-a-thon with Franca, Victor, and myself taking turns creating different courses.
Dana's mom, Floy, came down from her house to join us in the food-fest. It had been quite a while since Floy and I had seen one another, so we had a lot of catching up to do!
Franca started out with Clam Chowder.
This isn't your clam chowder made with bottled clam juice and little cans of minced clams. This is the real McCoy. Scrubbing, steaming, and chopping the quahogs, rendering the bacon, dicing onions, carrots, potatoes... While I didn't get her recipe, we did get a huge container of the base (as seen above before the cream is added) to bring home.
Franca makes a traditional chowder that I call a thin chowder. There's probably a proper name for it but... I think more people are familiar with thick chowders, and they're the type I usually make - but her thin chowder rocks!
My contribution was lobster-stuffed portobello mushrooms.
Fresh-cooked lobster, bread crumbs, onion, celery, mayo, grated parmesano stravecchio cheese, fresh parsley... Very simple and basic. The individual ingredients came through and nothing overpowered.
We ate the chowder, the shrimp, and the mushrooms, and then Victor went into the kitchen to make the lemon scallop dish he created from the La Cucina Italiana magazine.
Cape Cod is fun.
Good food is fun.
Great friends are fun.
But a perfect combination is all three at once!
Fusilli con Carciofi in Rosso
Another Monday, another fabulous pasta. It's amazing how some things just never change.
Maybe not change, per se, but we're both learning just how difficult it is to follow a recipe! Every fiber of our being wants to add something or change something or tweak something. Of course, the whole concept of this is for Victor to cook his way through the magazine, following the recipes. And it's been wonderful and fabulous eating. Biut that doesn't mean it's been easy.
Case in point... Tonight, as I was eating the fabulous pasta, I mentioned that kept expecting to get a little hit of peperoncini. Victor laughed and said he came :::thiiiiiiiis::: close to adding some - but it wasn't in the recipe. The dish was wonderful. I would have added a sprinkling of crushed red peppers if I had been creating it.
But peppers or not, the dish was easy to prepare and tasted fabulous. Warm homemade bread on the side and it was a meal fit for kings!
Fusilli con Carciofi in Rosso
- ½ Lemon
- 4 Globe Artichokes (about 3 lbs)
- 5 tbls extra virgin olive oil
- 2 ounces flat pancetta or thick cut bacon cut crosswise into 1/8 inch strips
- 1 medium onion roughly chopped
- 3 (14 oz) can whole tomatoes in juice
- Fine sea salt
- 1 lb Fusilli
Approximately 4 – 6 servings.
Squeeze the juice from the lemon into a bowl of cold water, then drop the lemon into the water.
Cut off artichoke stems and discard. Cut off top inch of 1 artichoke with a serrated knife. Bend outer leaves backward until they snap off close to the base, then discard several more layers of leaves in the same manner until you reach pale yellow leaves with pale green tips. Cut off green tips. Trim dark green fibrous parts from the base and sides of artichoke with a small sharp knife, cut in half lengthwise and cut out purple leaves and fuzzy choke, then thinly slice. Drop slices artichoke into the acidulated water. Repeat with remaining artichokes.
Heat oil in a large high-sided skillet or wide pot over medium heat. Add pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally for 3 minutes. Add onion and cook for 3 minutes more, then drain artichokes, add to pan and stir to combine. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes and juices and 1 cup of water to artichoke mixture. Cook at a gently simmer stirring occasionally and breaking up tomatoes with a wooden spoon, until artichokes are tender and sauce is slightly thickened, about 35 minutes.
About 15 minutes before sauce is ready, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain and transfer to a large serving bowl. Stir in ½ teaspoon salt into sauce, then immediately add to pasta and toss to combine. Serve immediately.
We've both made dishes similar to this in the past - it's a really quick and easy pasta style. But next time, it will have peperoncini.
And I know Lidia would approve.
Risotto
My friend Vanessa had given me a big ol' zucchini she had grown in her garden. My plan was to stuff it today with a risotto-ish filling. Sadly, when I cut into it to hollow it out a bit, it was just too fibrous for eating.
But having a risotto-ish dish on my mind, I decided to just make ::drum roll, please:: Risotto!
I know... What a concept. But since we're going to be gone next week gettin' married, and all, it actually makes sense to use up the stuff in the house.
Risotto can be made with anything (and around our house, it usually is.) This is a recipe based on ingredients we had on hand.
It starts off with Vialone Nano rice. Here in the USofA, arborio is the most widely-used risotto rice, but in northern Italy the rices of choice are Vialone Nano or Carnaroli.
Vialone Nano is the regional rice of Veneto. It is a round, short-grain rice (nano means “dwarf”) perfectly suited to risotto. The round shape of its grains enables it to absorb twice its weight in liquid, making for incredibly flavorful and rich dishes. This was my first time using it. It won't be my last.
Pork and Sausage Risotto
- 1 small pork tenderloin
- 2 hot Italian sausages
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 8 oz mushrooms, chopped
- 1 cup Vialone Nano rice (or arborio, or carnaroli)
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 4 cups hot stock (I used the turkey stock I made the other day)
- 1/2 tsp basil
- 1/2 tsp Greek oregano
- 2 oz grana padano (or parmesan, romano...)
- salt and pepper, to taste
Begin by sauteing onion in a bit of olive oil. Add garlic. Chop tenderloin into small pieces. Remove sausage from casing.and then add pork and sausage to pan. Brown well. Add 1 cup rice and stir well, coating the rice with the oil.
Add spices. Add wine and stirring constantly, scrape everything up and stir until wine is absorbed.
Add hot broth, one ladle at a time, continually stirring until broth is absorbed. Total cooking time for rice will be about 15 minutes if using Vialone Nano and 20 minutes using arborio.
Stir in cheese and check for seasoning.
Enjoy.
Risotto has a certain mystique about it. Don't tell anybody, but it really is one of the easiest dishes one can make. And you really can make it with anything.
Give it a try.
Turkey Soup
It was sunny and mid-70's today.
I made soup.
Even though it wasn't totally weather-relevant, it tasted great.
The broth was the boiled-down carcass with everything in the kitchen I wanted to get rid of. There was part of an onion, onion skins, garlic, part of a head of lettuce, celery bulb, carrot ends and peels... Odds-and-ends from containers of this-and-that. Seriously clean-out-the-refrigerator.
It made a damned good base! This is the kind of stuff you really can't screw up. It's what every decent restaurant in the world does - boils down that stuff that would otherwise go down the garbage disposal. Other than a little salt and pepper, I don't add any herbs or spices at this point...
The soup itself was chopped carrot, chopped celery, chopped swiss chard, Italian green beans, peas, a can of hominy, and two pastas - pastina and 0's. herb-wise I added a bit more garlic and some dill. And salt and pepper.
And we had a half-loaf of bread from last night.
Good stuff.
Stuffed Peppers
When we were shopping Monday, the idea of stuffed peppers came up. We saw a couple of great peppers, nice flat bottoms so they would stand up... Perfect peppers.
Well... wouldn't you know that the perfect peppers stood up perfectly in the 'fridge, stood up perfectly in the pan, stood up perfectly in the oven, and refused to stand up once I took them out of the oven. Standing up perfectly in the pan. Falling over on the plate.
Go figure.
But standing up or falling over, they were pretty good.
Stuffed peppers are one of those dishes I never use a recipe for - and I don't think I have ever made them remotely the same way twice. I've stuffed them with raw meat and uncooked rice, cooked meat and uncooked rice, raw meat and cooked rice, meat and breadcrumbs, chunked vegetables, with rice without rice, brown rice white rice, gound beef ground pork ground lamb, and various combinatiuons of the above.
They always seem to come out just fine, no matter what I do to them.
Tonight was a mixture of ground pork, ground beef, onion, and cooked rice. And leftover pasta sauce and grated cheese.
Stuffed Peppers
- 2 bell peppers
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 1/3 lb ground beef
- 1/3 lb ground pork
- 1 cup cooked rice
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp sage
- 2 cups pasta sauce
- 1/2 cup shredded romano cheese
- salt and pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 350°. Slice off top of bell pepper and remove seeds and membranes.
Saute onion until translucent. Add beef and pork and cook through. Add rice and mix well. Add seasonings, 1/2 cup pasta sauce and about 1/4 cup grated cheese. Mix well and stuff into peppers.
Put remaining 1 1/2 cups sauce in baking dish. Add peppers and cover with foil.
Bake for 1 hour.
This is a "play-with-it" recipe. Have fun. Cut the peppers in half if they're really big. You'll probably have better luck getting them to lie flat. Put lots of cheese on top and stick them under the broiler to finish.
Go crazy!
Turkey Club
What do you do when you have turkey and are not quite in the mood for turkey a la king or turkey tetrazzini?!?
Make a Turkey Club!
I really love a good clubhouse sandwich, but rarely order one out anymore because it seems they're all made with turkey roll. If I want lunch-meat, I'll buy lunch-meat. A Turkey Club should be made with hand-carved fresh-roasted turkey. And thick-sliced bacon. And fresh ripe tomatoes. Crisp iceberg lettuce. Mayonnaise. Toast.
As basic as basic can be. There really is no big trick. A couple of good, quality ingredients make for a fantastic sandwich.
And I do have to admit that these were pretty good sandwiches.Neither of us cleaned our plates, but we did a good job trying!
And those sweet potatoes?!?
Even better than last night!
Turkey Dinner
A perfectly drismal day. Dreary, dismal, cold, rain... Perfect for a quick shopping trip and back home. Well... not that quick of a shopping trip. Victor went shopping with me, today!
I do the majority of the grocery shopping. I also do most of the cooking. It's one of those divisions-of-labor that couples consciously or unconsciously make. Victor does the laundry. I always have clean clothes, he always has a hot meal. It works for us.
But when the two of us are in a store together?!? Uh-oh...
We tend to encourage the other to buy things and spend money. I'm bad enough on my own - but with the two of us?!? You want Sicilian Blood Orange Marmalade? It costs $12.99 so you're not going to buy it? Go get a jar. It will be our one extravagance this trip.
Sold. We'll add it to the collection of fabulous foods we need to eat one of these days.
So while I was shopping the store with my Wegmans iPhone app grocery list (arranged by aisle and department, thankyouverymuch!!!) Victor was perusing the Italian dinnerware. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the only one he liked was open stock for a dinner plate, salad plate, and soup bowl for $185.00, give or take... Since we would need 4 of each to match our numerous other sets of 4 of each, we decided we really didn't have a place to put them. Or the $740.00 plus tax. They were nice plates. Just not that nice.
Back to that iPhone app for a moment... It's marketing genius. Search for products, add them to your list, bring up past register receipts and click on items to add to your list... And the final saved list is grouped by aisle and department. It's a tech-junkie's paradise. I found several items that I knew I would be needing soon for the holidays and picked them up today. I had no idea they even carried the stuff until I went through the list. Marketing genius.
Because the app drew me over to the meat section to get suet for my Christmas puddings, I espied a fresh turkey breast. Dinner tonight, sandwiches, a big pot of turkey soup... a lot of meals can be made from one of those. Sold.
I have to admit I restrained myself a lot with this. Turkey can often just take on a life of its own... Dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, gravy, cranberry sauce... Craziness can (usually does) ensue. Tonight, I made turkey, sweet potatoes, peas and gravy. That's all.
It was more than enough!
The sweet potatoes were the star tonight.
I peeled and sliced the potatoes and put them into a big bowl with a half-cup of flour. Coated them well.
Meanwhile, I took 6 tbsp butter, 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, a half-teaspoon of cinnamon, and a half-teaspoon of ginger, and placed it in a small saucepan and brought it all to a boil.
I took the floured potatoes, placed them in a buttered pie plate and drizzled the sauce over them, covered the plate with foil, and baked at 350° for an hour.
They were really good.
They made enough for 6 people, easily, so we'll be enjoying them for another day or two.
Drismal outside, fun inside.
Life is good.