Beef Pot Pie
Ya know how sometimes you can just surprise yourself at how good something turns out?
That is exactly how I felt tonight with the Beef Pot Pie! It came out G-O-O-D!
Surprisingly good. And made all the better because it wasn't what I had originally planned for dinner! Well... mostly. I had planned the pot pie, but I was going to go easy on myself and use frozen puff pastry for the crust. Except... when I got home and looked in the freezer, there wasn't any puff pastry in there. Oh well.
My first thought was to make a half-batch of pie dough and just do a top crust. But I immediately threw out that idea in favor of a two-crust pot pie. Two crusts really is the way Mother Nature intended a pot pie to be, after all.
I used a braising pan just slightly larger than the casserole I was filling because I wanted to try and contain myself. Soups and stews and the like tend to grow under my tutelage. They easily swell to the size of the vessel they inhabit - and can often require larger quarters.
Tonight, I just wanted to make enough for the pot pie. And I almost succeeded.
I cubed about 3/4 pound of beef from a top round and dredged it in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. I then browned it all very well in about a tablespoon of bacon fat. Yes, bacon fat. Remember those BLT's yesterday? I save my bacon fat as did my mother before me and her mother before her. I never throw it away.
But I digress...
After the meat was browned I deglazed the pan with a cup of coffee. As I scraped up the bits of fond in the pan, I knew I was on to something, It smelled great. Into the pan went a quart of beef broth and I brought it all to a boil and then let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
Next into the pan went about a cup of chopped celery and 6 red-skinned potatoes that I quartered. mIt simmered for about another 15 minutes and then I added about a half-bag of frozen mixed vegetables. Frozen mixed vegetables are the perfect soup, stew, and pot pie ingredient. I always have a bag or two in the freezer.
When the potatoes were just about done, I made a paste of the leftover dredging flour and a bit of water and thickened the filling a bit. No exact measurement, here. I probably had a third of a cup of seasoned flour before adding the water and possibly used half of it to thicken. It's a judgment thing. Don't add it all at once.
I spooned it into the crust-lined dish, added the top crust, brushed it with egg, cut steam slits, and put it into a 425° oven for 45 minutes.
I used my favorite pie crust recipe but I didn't add the sugar and used all all-purpose flour. It was light, buttery, flaky, and just the perfect crust. (Why I bought that frozen crust the other day.....)
The perfect dinner and Victor is now in the kitchen making macadamia nut-orange biscotti...
Life is good.
Italian Sausage Polenta Pie
Our Monday La Cucina Pasta went on hiatus this week. Neither of us felt like actually cooking. I thought it would be nice to do something vaguely Italian and originally was thinking a baked pasta dish of sorts.
I needed a bit of inspiration and came across a fun recipe in my Mom's Cook Book - Italian-Sausage Polenta Pie. It fit the criterion for dinner tonight. Italian and baked in the oven. Plus I had all the ingredients.
That cook book is a lot of fun. It really is a snapshot into what cooking was like 45 years ago. Balsamic vinegar is unheard of. A convenience product is Bisquick. Someone really would make "Meat Loaf en Croute" using pie crust mix - and serve it or a special occasion.
Cooking - and eating - was a lot more fun and adventurous.
So on that fun and adventurous note, I followed the basic concept but added a few twists and turns. I had some homemade sauce in the freezer, so I didn't need to make the sauce from the recipe. I also added some mushrooms with the sausage and added a layer of cooked arugula in the middle.
And Mozzarella cheese.
It was perfectly ooey-gooey. And I only dirtied something like 4 pots to make a one-pot meal.
Mom would have been proud.
A Basic BLT
Tomatoes, bacon, and iceberg lettuce. On toast with mayonnaise.
It doesn't get much better - except the bread was the homemade bread I made on Saturday. It is definitely one of the better homemade sandwich breads I've had.
An Ruffles potato chips.
That was an impulse-buy at the grocery store this morning. I really don't remember the last time I had a bag of Ruffles. I usually opt for kettle chips or tortilla chips on those rare occasions I actually break down and buy them.
I have nothing against potato chips. I just don't need the calories. But every now and again they're fun.
And I have nothing against iceberg lettuce, either. I like the crunch and you can't get that with other lettuces. And for those of you who wouldn't dream of buying iceberg but buy those packages of romaine hearts by the truckload?!? Guess what?!? Nutritional value of the two is the same.
Christmas Cookies
It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas! It's almost semi-miraculous since the cold-from-hell had made my sniffer almost worthless. But Christmas Baking waits for no man, so Typhoid Timmy headed in to the kitchen with Victor to make a batch of Aunt Emma's Apricot Cookies.
This was supposed to be the weekend Gino and Elizabeth baked cookies with us, but they wisely chose to stay out of the quarantine area. There will be more cookies and other years.
(And yes, the hands were washed often and no sneezing or coughing over the cookies occurred.)
Victor had made the apricot filling yesterday and made the dough this morning. My job this year was to roll and cut. It's the easy part.
The dough was perfect. Very easy to roll and cut.
Victor did the filling and forming. Definitely the more labor-intensive part of the job. I know. It's the job I usually do. he had me roll this year. I immediately agreed!
Aunt Emma's Apricot Cookies
Filling:
- 1 pound dried apricots, chopped fine (soaked overnight – we soak in apricot brandy!)
- 3 cups sugar
- grated lemon rind (we use about a tablespoon – the amount was never specified)
Drain apricots. Place in saucepan with lemon rind, sugar, and water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cook until water is absorbed. Be really careful — it burns easily. Cool.
Dough:
- 2 pkg dry yeast
- 5 cups flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 pound lard (Yes, lard. Shortening just doesn’t cut it.)
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 shot whiskey
- Juice and rind from 1 lemon
Proof yeast with 1 tsp sugar and 1/4 cup warm water. Cut lard into flour, as you would for a pie dough. Make a well in the mixture and add all the other ingredients, including yeast.
Work dough with your hands and form into a ball. (Don’t overwork. Use a light hand.) Refrigerate overnight.
Roll cold dough to about 1/8″ thick. Aunt Emma would cut the dough into triangles, place a scant teaspoon of filling at the wide end, then roll up and shape into a crescent similar to a croissant. It takes a bit of practice. The easier way is to cut squares, fill, and fold over. Cut into 2″ squares or circles. Place scant teaspoon of filling, fold and seal. Shape into crescent.
Bake at 325° until golden brown on lightly greased sheets or ungreased parchment paper. (Investing in a box of parchment paper is the only way to fly!!)
Cool completely and dust with powdered sugar.
And since we were low on bread, I baked a loaf of the no-knead bread from my Mom's cook book that I made last week. It was really good and this one looks to be just as good - if not better!
Chicken and Cranberries
Yesterday about 11:00am, I realized it was happening. I am in the early throes of the 2010 Cold-From-Hell.
I am so not amused.
'Tis the Season, and all that. When you are working with the public, it's just inevitable.
Did I mention I am not amused?!?
Feed a cold, feed a fever, I always say, so I decided on a quick and easy dinner. I had chicken in the 'fridge, potatoes, and a butternut squash. Set.
The potatoes got drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic powder, salt, and pepper and went into a 350° oven for 45 minutes. The butternut squash got peeled, cut and cubed, drizzled with maple syrup and a bit of salt and went into the same oven for the same 45 minutes.
The chicken was salted, peppered, garlicked, and saged, and went into a nice hot skillet. When it was just about done, I pulled the chicken out of the pan, deglazed it with a bit of grenadine liqueur and a splash of water and when it cooked down, added some fresh cranberry sauce. Fresh as in homemade. It's been hanging around since Thanksgiving. (The stuff has a shelf life just short of plutonium.)
The chicken went back into the skillet, heated all the way through, and dinner was served.
My taste buds are still working. Sweet and savory was a good combination.
I think it's gonna be an early night.
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.