Burgers and Farro Salad
I'm lovin' me some farro! I tend to like it better as a cold salad, although I've been known to make a mean risotto with it. Versatile. that's what I like.
Tonight, it was a simple salad. This could be made with lentils, beans, rice, pasta, or any combination of the above. It's just adding chopped vegetables to the grain and adding a bit of oil and vinegar. Have some fresh herbs?!? Chop them up and add them. It's a clean-out-the-refrigerator salad. Anything will work.
Trust me.
And we had burgers and fruit salad along with it...
The burger was an open-faced concoction sitting on toasted Italian bread with sliced tomatoes, pecorino toscano cheese, and bacon. Yumlicious.
Tomorrow is going to be even more salads - and ribs.
Can't wait.
Bean Salad
Time to start cooking, again. Except when it's this hot... who wants to cook?
That's where canned beans come in handy. A can of cannellini beans, a can of pink beans, chopped red onion, chopped celery, some frozen peas, herbs from the garden - oregano, basil, and lots of parsley - and a splash of red wine vinegar and olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Five minutes to prepare and enough for several meals.
The new plate is one of our Italy treasures. We bought a couple of small platters and a nice-sized bowl for pasta or salads - not counting the dinnerware that's being made. When in Rome...
Food pictures are going to get a lot more colorful...
La Cucina Italiana
The past week or so has been interesting eating around the Dineen/Martorano household. We have been in serious clean out the refrigerator mode in anticipation of our little trek to Italy on Friday.
What?!? You didn't know we were heading to Italy for 15 glorious days?!? With apartments in Rome and Florence?!? You been hiding under a rock?!?
Really... I'm sure my coworkers would gladly take up a collection to get me to stay home for the next two days if they could. I mean... It's not like I've been totally obnoxious. Much...
In less than 71 hours, we're on our way.
And that means a clean refrigerator before we go. Waste not, want not and all that...
Renting apartments - with kitchens, washing machines, living rooms and real chairs and couches - is going to really make the trip. I've been scoping out the neighborhoods around our apartments and already know where the grocery stores, supermarkets, specialty stores, and other mercatos are located. We have one store directly around the corner from us in Rome. I'll be there early Saturday.
I want to cook in Italy. I want to eat in Italy. I want to experience as many flavors as I can. And I want to shop and bring home as much as I can. I'm traveling with a big suitcase.
La Cucina Italiana, indeed.
Besides the mercatos, I've been checking out kitchen stores. Who knows what tool or gadget I'll find that I just won't be able to live without.
And while I've been checking out kitchen stores, Victor has been checking out pottery, dishes, platters, bowls, and the like. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with a new set of china... Hand-painted Tuscan... We shall see...
We will be posting regularly here and at TimAndVictor.com.
I just can't wait.
Mad Men Monday - Dessert
I have to admit it's been a while since I bought Jell-O, but two small boxes of the artificially-flavored Island Pineapple made it into my shopping cart today. They were a necessary ingredient for the Aloha Pineapple Cream Squares we had for dessert tonight while watching the second-to-last episode of Mad Men. I have just loved this show - and it's been a lot of fun culling through my mom's recipe books looking for fitting foods to match the times.
This dessert epitomizes the '60s - from the Jell-O to the fact that it actually takes time to prepare. This really would have been considered a time-saving recipe in its day, but because of refrigeration and cooling times, it took several hours from start to fork.
This really is the kind of stuff my mom used to make - and this particular recipe is written out in her hand. I don't know how or where it came from. It may have been on the back of a Jell-O box or she may have taken three recipes and combined them. She was good at doing that. All I do know is it was really good!
There was a surprise for me, though. The final step is to pour a "family-sized" box of cooled Jell-O over the cream layer after it has refrigerated for 4 hours. I thought it would add a top layer of Jell-O. It actually seeped under the cream and created a layer between the cookie crust and the cream. 1960s magic.
The recipe states any flavor of Jell-O. I went with pineapple to stay with my theme.
And it does make a lot.
Only one more week of Mad Men. I guess I'll just have to drown my sorrows with Italian Food. In Italy!
Mad Men Monday
If this was a magazine, tonight would be the Pineapple Issue.
Tonight's dinner is pretty much brought to you from the Hawai'ian Islands and the nice people at Dole. Well... It's probably more of what the folks on the mainland envisioned Hawai'i to be rather than what it really was. Madison Avenue was selling us Hawai'i the same way they were selling us Ford's, Oldsmobile's, and Speedy Alka-Seltzer. And we all know how Madison Avenue sells illusion rather than truth. That's the show we're watching!
My first visit to Hawai'i wasn't until 1973 - and while I was only there for about 8 hours, it definitely was different than I had expected. It was actually a lot better. Granted, I was weeks before my 21st birthday and I was highly intoxicated the entire time I was there, but it really was a lot nicer than I had imagined. I was on a Pan Am 747 that was flying from Saigon to San Francisco. Problems in Hawai'i kept us on the island for many Mai Tai's.
But back to the mainland and the 1960s...
Chicken and pineapple and teriyaki sauce were all the rage for the backyard luau on the lanai. So for this one I started off with Auntie's Teriyaki Sauce. It was probably Uncle Tommy's, but...
Auntie’s Teriyaki Sauce
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1/4 cup bourbon
- 2 tbsp oil
- pinch black pepper
Mix all ingredients. Use for chicken, beef, or pork.
So tonight, I made chicken ka-bobs. Anything on a skewer was a kabob - I didn't learn the word brochette until I started working in restaurants. These were alternating pieces of tomato, pineapple, marinated chicken, onion, and red bell pepper. Grilled to perfection.
They were served atop a Rice and Noodle Pilaf. Shades of Rice-A-Roni! My mom used to make homemade variations of Rice-A-Roni all of the time. This is a classic - and it worked perfectly with the ka-bobs. In fact, it worked really, really good. I'll be making this again.
I halved the recipe and still had way too much, but it will make great leftovers...
And then, because I wanted to stay with the pineapple theme, we had Pineapple Carrots.
These were merely okay. They weren't stellar, but they didn't suck, either. They might work better with brown sugar and a splash - a very small splash - of rum... I'll get back to you...
And I figured I really should show a picture of Aunt Dolores and Uncle Tommy. Here they are in Honolulu in 1958 having breakfast with their driver on their last morning before heading back to California.
They vacationed in Hawai'i several times...
And then we have dessert - which will get its own post after we watch Mad Men. Aloha Pineapple Cream Squares.
These promise to be interesting...
The Week In Review
I haven't been writing much here, this week. It has nothing to do with us heading to Italy in 12 days, 7 hours, and 32 minutes. Really.
I mean... just because I've been spending every waking moment looking at maps, train schedules, events, and attractions for our 15-day vacation doesn't mean I haven't been cooking. I have been. But I must admit that The Vacation has taken up most of my time.
It hasn't been about planning the vacation. Tickets are bought and apartments are rented. We have tickets to get there and places to stay when we arrive. It's more about learning the lay of the land. Studying maps and figuring out where things are, what's going on, how to get from Point A to Point B.
While there are a few things that I definitely would like to see - and we have bought some advance tickets - for the most part, it's doing what we feel like doing when we feel like doing it.
The one thing we have NOT done is search out restaurants or take restaurant recommendations from friends. We're going to be in Italy. The food is going to be good. As I said in the Travel Blog, I’m not a fussy eater. Some of the best and most memorable food I have ever had in my life has been street food. I’d rather eat with the locals than a celebrity Chef del giorno. Really. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love a great meal prepared with the best ingredients with the utmost care and skill, but both of my feet are generally planted down here in reality-land.
Your best whatever and mine would probably be different, anyway, because so much of what makes something "the best" is more than the ingredients or presentation. It's the weather, the lighting, the comfort of the chair, two glasses or three glasses of wine... Was the waiter flirting with you as you ordered and what was the wait? Were you seated immediately or did you have to wait for an hour for your table? It's amazing how horrible a wonderful meal can be when the peripherals were off... It's also amazing how wonderful an otherwise mediocre meal can be when the stars are all aligned...
The whole reason for going is not to see everything we can see - it's more about experiencing the culture and being a part of it. It's why we have rented apartments instead of staying in hotels. I worked in hotels for close to 15 years. The room amenities and decorations may vary, but at their core - they're all the same no matter where you are.
So... where was I?!?
Ah, yes. that wonderful Blueberry Tart up there. It was quite simple. A single crust blind-baked and filled with a vanilla pudding and topped with blueberries.
I have a standard pudding I make and just tweak it a bit for a firmer or looser consistency.
Basic Vanilla Pudding
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 egg
- 1 tbsp vanilla
- 2 tbsp butter
Mix sugar and cornstarch in saucepan. Add milk and whisk until smooth. Cook over medium heat until thickened – about 3-4 minutes. Beat egg in small bowl. Add a bit of the hot milk mixture to the egg to temper. Add it all back to the pot and cook until thickened – another 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and butter – stirring until butter is melted.
If you want it a tad thicker, use two egg yolks and a couple of scant cups of milk. Thinner? Add a scosh more milk. Basic.
Now... man does not live by dessert, alone - although I'll hit the dessert buffet before the entrees if they'll let me - so we have had a few other goodies. A green bean salad, for one... Fresh green beans, tomatoes, red onion, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. And just because I had three slices of bacon in the 'fridge, crumbled bacon on top. It carried us through a couple of meals - along with Mom's Potato Salad. A salad I cannot make in a small quantity.
With grilled pork chops and roasted potatoes.
With BBQ'd Short Ribs.
A salad with grilled chicken.
And another salad with grilled pork chops.
So the culinary week in review is posted. The Travel Searching is still ongoing.
And Mad Men Monday is back tomorrow. I skipped it this week because we didn't watch it until Thursday. But with just two episodes left... something special is going to be called for...
Missed Meals
We don't miss meals in our house. But, occasionally, I do miss getting them posted. Here are a few of the gastronomic delights we feasted on this week!
First off is a Spinach Pasta with a quick sauce of fresh tomatoes, bacon, langostinos, garlic, and olive oil. Freshly-grated parmesan cheese on the top. And it really was that simple. A couple of good ingredients in the skillet makes for a powerful taste sensation. This is one of those use what you have dinners. It was absolutely great and the odds of us having exactly these ingredients together again are slim. But it's okay, because we'll always have some variation of them - along with other fun things.
Next was a Tomato and Asparagus Salad. Asparagus, tomato, red onion, garlic, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.
It doesn't get any easier - and it doesn't get any better - especially since Victor was doing the cooking. Again, it's a few simple ingredients that just explode with flavor.
The salad accompanied Grilled Tuna Steaks.
A quick marinade of red wine, olive oil, and fresh herbs from the garden. It went great with the salad.
And then we had Stuffed Peppers.
These are a favorite. Victor usually makes them and makes extra for his mom. I'll bring a couple over tomorrow when I do her shopping.
These were a simple ground beef filling with garlic, Italian seasoning, bread crumbs, some cheese... Nothing fancy - just really tasty.
Victor made Strawberry Shortcakes for dessert last night. I was too busy drooling to take pictures, but rest assured they were good - albeit a bit messy. the recipe he used said to place the shortcake dough into an ungreased 8"x8" pan. UNgreased. It stuck. Go figure.
It broke apart but was still really yummy. Strawberries, cake, and whipped cream. How could it be bad?!?
Teriyaki Steaks
Some of you may not believe it, but once upon a time, teriyaki sauce was virtually unknown in the non-Asian USofA. Yes... back in the Culinary Dark Ages, even Kikkoman was a fairly unheard-of name - except for soya sauce in those shaker bottles in certain Chinese restaurants.
And then Hawai'i became the 50th State. Exotic Polynesian Hawai'i. In no time at all, little umbrellas were everywhere.
It actually started in the mid-1950s as we were gearing up towards statehood. While I don't know what was going on in the rest of the country, California was certainly embracing it. I remember my Aunt Dolores (of the famous Rum Balls) and Uncle Tommy doing backyard barbecues and having wild and exotic things like grilled chicken brochettes with pineapple chunks and everyone had tall drinks with umbrellas - even the kids - although ours were definitely sans alcohol. Tiki torches were everywhere, too - and the backyard patio became "The Lanai." Pretentious?!? Of course.
Teriyaki sauce back then was more of a Hawai'ian sauce than Japanese. Or... at least that is how I remember it. Teriyaki sauce was essential for your backyard Luau. And everyone was having backyard Luaus. It was the thing to do.
Right around the time Hawai'i became a state, I was even in a ukelele group. (I would love to find a picture of of that!) Hawai'i was the omnipresent theme.
But theme or no - teriyaki sauce wasn't something you picked up at the store. You made it.
Yes. Made It. And everyone was trying to outdo their neighbors with their newest or best-tasting creation.
I think this particular recipe came from Aunt Dolores. I can't be sure of the provenance because there's no one left to ask, but I did get it from my mother, originally. Like so many recipes of the time, it was just a few things jotted on a scrap of paper.
Auntie's Teriyaki Sauce
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ground ginger
- 1/4 cup bourbon
- 2 tbsp oil
- pinch black pepper
Mix all ingredients. Use for chicken, beef, or pork.
It also has a liberal amount of alcohol in it. If you're watching Mad Men, you'll definitely understand. It's just the way things were.
Tonight's stroll down Memory Lane came about because I wanted grilled pineapple. I had already taken the steaks out of the freezer and the only way I could tie the steaks together with the pineapple was to make the teriyaki. Baked sweet potatoes - which should have been fabulous Hawai'ian Purple Sweet Potatoes - finished the plate. Alas... the Hawai'ian Purple Sweets are not readily available back here in PA-Burbia...
From steaks to Aunt Dolores and tiki torches to Hawai'i statehood and ukelele groups. All because of a pineapple. I even amaze myself sometimes at how I can come up with some of these associations.
Aloha.
Mad Men Monday
This dinner is going to come with a warning: Danger! Do Not Try This At Home!
The '60s could be cruel - and this proved it.
Okay... To be fair, the chicken was a bit different, but it wasn't atrocious. The corn was atrocious. Really atrocious. I wonder if my mother had been hitting the cooking sherry when she wrote "Great!" and "Very Tasty!" on the page. She didn't fail very often in her cooking, but this one... sorry, Mom. It sucked.
The lemon juice simply ruined it. I mean... It's not like the ingredients couldn't work together a bit, but the lemon juice really threw it out of balance.
It will not be repeated. Ever.
The chicken was also decidedly different - but in a different way. It combined flavors that I really wouldn't have combined with a cooking technique I didn't really agree with and ended up with a final product that - if reworked quite a bit, could probably be fun. This worked - but barely.
First thing you will probably realize is that if you pour a sauce over bacon, the bacon will not crisp. It was thoroughly cooked - anything cooked for three hours will be cooked, trust me - but it would have been better if there had been a bit of sear to it. And the chicken was more poached than baked from sitting in the sauce. The surprise was the chipped beef. It actually added a bit of a fun saltiness to the dish. With those ingredients, absolutely no salt was added to the dish.
As I said... It wasn't bad - it just wasn't great. And I'm not sure it would be worth trying to rework into something better. It may just work better as a memory.
My mom used to make creamed chipped beef on toast and I may have been the only kid who liked it back then. I haven't made it in 30 years - at least - but I do have some chipped beef left over.
Maybe Sunday breakfast...
Hunter's Recipe Duck Rub
Oh boy! Another great rub!
I've been wanting to try Hunter's Recipe Duck Rub since it arrived a couple of weeks ago. I've had a "meh" relationship with duck for years. I probably had my fill of it when I was cooking at Hugo's Rotisserie at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe circa 1976. We went through a lot of duck back in those days. A lot of duck. We did a lot of great sauces, too. The lingonberry was my favorite.
Alas, Hugo's is no longer there - in fact, the entire building has been completely renovated - or replaced. The lakeside restaurant is now The Lone Eagle Grill. The casino restaurant I next cooked for and eventually managed - Alpine Jack's - is gone, as well. It's now The Sierra Cafe. Last time I was there I barely recognized it.
And yes, I have a name tag from a job I had some 34 years ago - readily available. Notice the old Hyatt logo... Pack-rat?!? MOI?!?
But I digress...
Back in the present, I had a couple of duck breasts in the freezer I had picked up just for grins and giggles because I'm always ready to try something yet, again.
I'm quite happy I had them.
I pulled the fat from the duck breasts and rendered it separately. I'm not a huge fan of hunks of fat attached to what I'm eating. I then followed the instructions on the spice rub - I drizzled the breasts with olive oil and then liberally coated them with the rub. I let them set for about 2 hours before I grilled them.
Outstanding Flavor!
I was impressed. Again. Chef Jeremy says the Duck Rub is his favorite - and I can see why. It is a great blend of kinda sweet and savory herbs and spices that just work together. They played off the slight gaminess of the duck perfectly.
I have to admit that pulling all of the fat off the breasts probably wasn't the smartest move from a culinary standpoint. The breast was a bit drier than I would have preferred, but it was a trade-off, because I wanted to really taste the rub and if I had left the fat on, I would have cut it all off before eating it - and lost the spice rub.
A little dryness was worth the burst of flavor from the rub.
Chef Jeremy stated that he really works to create flavors that compliment and work well with the individual meats. And it was obvious with the Duck Rub because the flavors and the duck worked perfectly together.
So not only did I get a great dinner, I got a stroll down Memory Lane.
Tahoe in the mid-to-late '70s was a great place to live. And it's nothing short of a miracle that I survived it!
Repurposed with a Purpose
I love it when there are enough odds and ends laying about that I can create dinner without having to really do anything.
And tonight was a perfect case in point.
Yesterday I had grilled pork chops. Not the two thick chops I thought I had pulled out of the freezer, but 5 thin chops I had cut and thought I'd use for pork scallops or some such thing. After they had thawed and I realized they weren't quite what I was expecting, I marinated them all in some red wine, garlic, and olive oil and then grilled them. We ate the two larger ones and the remaining three went into the 'fridge.
Also in the 'fridge - sitting in a lovely tupperware container - was a couple of cups of sauce left over from Sunday's Lasagne. It was a great homemade sauce - we eschew jarred sauce in our house - and was just crying out for some pasta to cover.
And lo! A half-box of pasta on the shelf! Could this have really been planned all along?
Well. No. It's just what our kitchen is like on most days. We can always cook dinner without going to the store.
So the pork cutlets were cubed and dropped into the sauce. The pasta was dropped into the boiling water. The end of the wedge of pecorino romano cheese was grated. Yesterday's bread was sliced.
Dinner was served!
And while dinner was a bevy of leftovers, dessert is fresh - fresh blackberries in a homemade custard. It's cooling in the 'fridge right now...
Mother's Day and Birthdays
Mother's Day is a bit different when your mom's no longer around. It's even more so when Mother's Day and Mom's Birthday fall on the same day.
Mother's Day and Mom's Birthday were always the start of the month-long May Birthday Celebration in our house. All four of my sisters are May-Babies, as well. Yes, it was a crazy time. But none of those birthdays topped Moms. She was the Queen Bee. And even though they were often just days apart - when they didn't fall on the same day - they were two separate occasions.
My father set the mood by having stacks of presents on the table when she got up. He had a great eye and bought a good portion of her clothes. He knew what she looked good in and she loved what he bought. She very rarely returned anything. And shoes... Her father and brother both sold high-end women's shoes. Back in the day she had every matching shoe/bag/belt/hat-combo there was. Imelda Marcos sought advice from her.
Mama had six kids but Mama had style.
And while she ooed and awed over her gifts, she spent extra-special attention on the things we made her. Every picture was a Michelangelo original. Every card, every 29¢ bottle of perfume, every inedible cake we baked, was greeted with praise worthy of an Old Master or chef de pâtisserie. And she saved every one of those scribbled cards.
Victor's mom and my mom were born 2 days apart, on opposite coasts, in 1926. Friday we took his mom out for dinner at the local diner - her choice - and yesterday we had his family over for a combo Birthday Mother's Day dinner. Since I've been doing through Mom's recipes for our Mad Men Mondays I've kept eying her Chinese Casserole. It's a dish she made up back in the '60s and feeds an army. I haven't made it in years and years - because it feeds an army. I decided her birthday was the perfect excuse to introduce it to the east coast family.
My mom never really followed recipes and never really quite had her measurements down. It's a trait I totally understand, so I never have a problem following them. You can go with them as written or play around a bit. They always come out great. For the casserole, the only things I changed were the soups and the mushrooms. I used organic cream of soups - I just couldn't do the national brand and she probably used Lady Lee brand from Lucky Market, anyway... and I added a package of exotic mushroom blend to the mushroom mix. As I said, mom would experiment all the time and as new things caught her eye she would include them when she could.
The Rice-A-Roni Wid Rice mix was a bit different, as well. It's now labelled "Nature's Way" and calls itself "all natural." Strange... But it worked.
In fact, all of it worked quite well. It was Mom's Chinese Casserole. No doubt about it. The only things missing were her - and the huge Corning Ware casserole she made it in.
And then we had the rest of the meal...
I made a huge lasagne. And I do mean huge.
Lasagne is something I have never used a recipe for. I simply worked in too many Italian restaurants and made too many of them to ever think I needed one. And I don't use no-boil noodles. I think they make a gummy lasagne and you can't encapsulate the filling with them. Lasagne is a wrapped package of goodness - not a semi-layered gooey mess. Spend the extra ten minutes cooking your noodles.
The filling for this lasagne included cooked ground beef, hard cooked eggs, porchetta, speck, prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, ricotta, and lots of shredded cheeses - mozzarella, fontina, asiago...
I baked it covered Saturday night for 1 1/2 hours at 350° and then re-baked - also covered - it Sunday for 2 hours at 300°.
For the last 30 minutes I raised the temperature to 350°, uncovered it, and added shredded cheese to the top.
It made much more than we needed. Even with doggie bags leaving, I froze a goodly amount for another day.
The meal didn't stop there... We also had Chicken cutlets.
I breaded them with panko breadcrumbs and corn meal. It gave them a nice crunch.
We also had another huge fruit salad - in Mom's 1960s Salad Bowl...
And the pièce de résistance was a Coconut Cake!
This was a much simpler cake than the monstrosity I made last year. Last year was good, but it was really a one-time cake. I don't see another one of those in my future.
This cake was much lighter and actually more enjoyable because of it.
I made a lightly-flavored coconut whipped cream for the filling and top and sprinkled shredded coconut on top.
The recipe will make either three 8" layers or 2 10" layers. I chose width over height and used 2 10" springform pans.
Coconut Cake
All ingredients should be at room temperature.
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ cup whole milk
- ½ cup unsweetened coconut milk
- ¼ cup Coco Lopez or other coconut cream
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 8 large egg whites
Preheat oven to 350°. Butter two 10" or three 8" pans. Line with parchment, and butter parchment. Flour pans and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir together the milk, coconut milk, vanilla, and coconut cream. Add the dry and wet ingredients to the butter mixture in three increments, starting and ending with the dry.
Whip the egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter until evenly blended. Divide the cake batter evenly among the two or three prepared cake pans.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes for 8" cakes or 40-45 minutes for 10" cakes - or until toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in pans about 15 minutes, remove from pans and set on racks until completely cool.
For Whipped Cream Icing:
Whip 1 1/2 cups whipping cream with 1/4 cup Coco Lopez. Place about 1/3 whipped cream on first layer. Top with second layer and spread remaining 2/3 cream on top. Generously top with shredded coconut.
This was an easy one to make and really took no time at all. I can see it - and a few variations - becoming a part of the repertoire.
All-in-all It was a good day with a lot of good food and fond memories.
And Mad Men Monday?!? There's a 1960s Chinese Casserole in the 'fridge right now.
Leftovers. What a concept!