In Which a Miracle Occurs

I had a spectacular weekend.  My uncle and cousin came to visit, drawn in by the siren lure of an adorable baby.  I swear, if I'd known how much more often people would visit me, I would have had one years ago!  Ever the gracious hostess, I planned to take my guests out to dinner on Saturday and for Friday night, I expected them to cook for me.  Well, I expected my uncle to cook for me anyway.  He made an absolutely delicious roast chicken which I will try to replicate at some point, some lemony roast broccoli, but most miraculously, he made delicious eggplant.

My friends, there are exactly two vegetables I do not eat: zucchini and eggplant.  Zucchini is pretty much the food of the devil, but eggplant and I have a very touchy relationship.  I want to like it.  I really do.  I've never really minded the flavor, but for whatever reason, eggplant has always made me gag.  I've had it made in the Parmigiana style.  Nope, didn't work.  I've pureed it in pasta sauce, alas, a deep and thorough failure.  But the way my Uncle John made it was so tasty, I went back for a second piece.  That's right, I took seconds of my second most loathed vegetable.

Does that tell you everything you need to know about my uncle's cooking?  No?  You want the recipe too?  Okay!  I got it!  (Totally selfless I am, always thinking of you).

UNCLE JOHN'S EGGPLANT

INGREDIENTS:
2 eggplants
3/4 C extra virgin olive oil plus more for brushing
2 T red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T of capers with juice
1/4 of a small red onion (optional - Uncle John was not pleased with how it turned out using the red onion, I think I liked it, but will try it without next time)

DIRECTIONS:
Slice your two eggplants into 1/2" thick slices.  Set your oven to broil.  Lay out the eggplant slices on a cookie sheet and brush them with olive oil.  Flip them and brush the other side with olive oil.  Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper. Put in the oven to broil for 10 minutes.  Flip them and let them broil for 10 minutes on the other side.  Whilst they are broiling, find yourself a large serving dish with sides.  We used my lasagna pan.  Mix together your olive oil and red wine vinegar.   In the bottom of the pan, pour about 1/4 C of olive oil and the red wine vinegar  and sort of swish it about so it's evenly distributed.  When the eggplant is done, lay it out in the dish.  Add the garlic, capers and onion (if you use it) to the remaining oil and vinegar.  Drizzle this over the eggplant layer.  Add another layer of eggplant and pour over more of the good stuff.  Continue until eggplant is used up and all topping has been poured out.

Let marinate at room temperature for 6 hours.  Ours only sat for 4 hours and was delicious, but don't try to cut it any closer than that.  Uncle John says it's great for dinner parties, because you can make it in advance, but also it takes up no room in your fridge!

Radish!

 

 I can't stop buying radishes at the Farmer's Market. It's like a sickness.  Last weekend they were buy one get one free.  I called my mother and asked her if she needed radishes. It gets worse.  I have three posts about radishes coming up.  That's what it's come to around here.  I've become a radish pusher.  

Come on, they're so pretty, don't you want to try them?  At the bottom of the bowl are the longer, red and white french breakfast radishes.  These are the most mild of the radishes.  Then I have some red and purple ones, they have slightly different flavors but are a bit more bitter than the breakfast radishes. There a white radish, which is spicier still and then of course, the glorious black radish, which is the most peppery.

I was most excited about the black radish, so when I got it home, I peeled it and sliced it so that we could try it right away.  I should have videotaped our reactions.  Ryan made a face like he'd bitten into a lemon, followed by a fairly aggressive blech.  It was bitter and sharp, peppery and had the faintest aftertaste of dirt.

Not exactly delicious. But then again, there are a whole lot of vegetables you shouldn't eat a slice of raw, so despite the inauspicious beginning I wasn't discouraged.  Black radish  is much better suited to be used as a flavoring.  In this seriously tasty spread, the sour cream mellows the bitter flavor and the spicy peppery flavor makes this far more exciting than your usual bland coleslaw. And the vague aura of dirt is completely gone (unless of course, you're the type of person that generally thinks things taste like dirt. If that's you, you should probably avoid radishes).

DELECTABLE RADISH SPREAD/DIP/SLAW
INGREDIENTS:
1/4 C grated black radish (this was one large black radish)
1/3 C grated carrot (this was one carrot)
1/4 C of minced cucumber (seeded and peeled)
3" piece of scallion, minced
2 T sour cream
pinch of salt - less than 1/4 t, just a pinch, really.

DIRECTIONS:
Mix together all ingredients.  Eat as a spread on bread, or a dip.  Consider making in larger batches and pretending it's coleslaw, but more interesting.

Recovery

It has been a whirlwind around here for the last week or so and I have barely cooked. There was a solid 10-15 minute block of time on Christmas Eve where I tried to help with the cooking, but my eyes were closing as I was working and I had to be forcibly sent to the couch for a nap. So have I baked, yes. Oh my yes, but cooked? Not so much. NB: in the last two sentences I have typed cookied instead of cooked each time and had to go back and fix it. Clearly there has been some rewiring of my brain following the week o' baked goods.

Last night all I could think of was clean, fresh, non-butter infused flavors. Something hearty and warming though (because have you been outside? It is insanely cold out there) but not rich or creamy or anything like that. Stellacarolyn's vegetable soup sounded so tempting but I was a bit short in the vegetable departments so instead I turned to Lidia. I adapted a barley and bean soup to make it a bit less labor intensive and it is so delicious. Tomato soup, but better. Vegetable soup, but with fewer pesky vegetables. I am so very happy it made an excessively large quantity.

BARLEY AND BEAN SOUP
gluten-free adaptation at the end...

INGREDIENTS:
1 C chopped turkey bacon
1 C chopped onion
3 cloves garlic
5-6 baby carrots (maybe 2 if using full sized?)
2/3 C crushed tomatoes (from can)
8 C chicken stock
2 baking potatoes, peeled and diced
2/3 C barley
3 bay leaves
1 large sprig of fresh rosemary
about a cup of small white beans, rinsed and drained (or pick your own bean!)
olive oil
1/4 C parm (which I skipped because I accidentally over salted)
salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS:
In a large stock pot, crisp up some turkey bacon. I cooked mine on medium for 8-10 minutes. Remove the bacon, but not the lovely bacon leavings. Toss in the chopped onion and again cook for 8-10 minutes. Toss the onion in the bacon fat so it gets all golden. In a food processor, combine the garlic and carrots with 2 T olive oil. Mix until it is very smooth. Once the onions are softened, add the garlic and carrot mixture to the pot and cook for 2 more minutes over medium low heat. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 8 more minutes. Then add the stock, the potatoes, the barley, the bay leaves and the rosemary. Bring up to a boil and the reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste at this point. Add the beans and cook for 10-15 minutes more. I served mine with little toasts with mozzarella broiled on them, but as long as you have some delicious bread to soak up the sauce, you'll be all set. If adding the parm, I would mix it in right before serving. Sprinkle the reserved bacon on top.

to make gluten-free:
Make sure you're using a gluten-free chicken stock and bacon (believe me, your bacon really shouldn't have gluten in it, if it does you really need to look into better bacon). Barley is a wheat product, so you can substitute rice instead. I'd use about 1 C cooked rice. The rice should be added at the very end, after the beans. I don't like to cook rice directly in soup because it can take on too much water.

Christmas Eve Chaos

It's possible I have stumbled on a fool proof diet for the holidays. It so happens that I may have made a slight error this year when I was deciding how much I could reasonably bake for Christmas. The result is something in the neighborhood of seven dozen decorated butter cookies and gingerbread cookies. And now I honestly don't even want to look at another cookie ever again. This means that my mother, my aunt, my uncle, my husband and my cousin all need to eat around 17 cookies each. Sounds reasonable to me.

I am not making much (any?) of tonight's dinner though, so I might just undo all the good I'm doing by skipping the cookies. As in years past, we're doing a buffet of appetizers. Luckily by we, I mean my uncle and my mother. That's my favorite kind of we. I'm not even sure of the whole menu, but what I do know, I'm happy to share.

Christmas Eve Menu:
Empanaditas filled with Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese
Deviled Eggs
Anne's Stuffed Mushrooms (I was truly hoping to have that recipe for you, but the making of them was snatched out of my hands).
Spanish Tortilla
Chorizo in Puff Pastry
Pork pie - the original version, although I've made it with turkey too.
Shrimp in garlic sauce

Pretty Is as Pretty Does

When I picked out this recipe to make, I was fondly recalling one of my favorite Philadelphia restaurants, Melograno. They're a relatively big deal in a fairly big space right now, but when we used to go, they had a tiny corner spot just a few blocks from our apartment. Despite a pretty tasty looking menu, I always ordered the same thing, beet ravioli. Here, read the menu description for yourself - homemade pasta filled with roasted beets & mascarpone cheese finished in a brown butter sage sauce and poppy seeds. It's like candy (unless of course, you're someone for whom beets taste like dirt. J, look away honey, it's going to get worse before it gets better). Dessert for dinner, in a delicate pasta shell. So in my head, this was going to be roughly the same thing. After all, it had pasta, beets, poppy seeds and brown butter. This version was much earthier, probably from the farro pasta and the goat cheese rather than ravioli with sweet mascarpone, but definitely still tasty. It wasn't all that filling though, so you may prefer it as an appetizer or with substantial sides. Also, it was seriously, mind bogglingly, pink. So, you know, if you ever need something pink to eat...

PRETTY PINK PASTA
adapted from epicurious

INGREDIENTS:
1 lb red beets, peeled and destemmed, this was about 4 bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball sized beets
1/8 C water
1/8 C olive oil
1/2 lb farro pasta (I'm sure you could use regular or whole-wheat)
4 T butter
1 T poppyseeds
1 t salt
1/4 C pasta water
a young, mild, goat cheese

DIRECTIONS:
So, I tried to do what the recipe said in terms of roasting beets, and it didn't really work. I used a 400 F oven and cut the beets into quarters. I placed them in foil lined roasting pan and added the olive oil and water. I roasted them for an hour, but they weren't done. I upped the temperature to 450 for the last 15 minutes and it was fine. Let them cool.

Make the pasta according the the box directions.

Place the butter in a pan large enough to accommodate the pasta. Turn the heat on high and let the butter sit for 2 minutes. It should get to be a nice golden brown color. Add the poppyseeds and toast for 2 more minutes. Then add the beets, and mix well. Add your pasta water and again stir to combine. Add the drained pasta and toss well to coat. Serve with a dollop of goat cheese on top.

Little Bites of Heaven

Now that I live country-adjacent (the directions to get to my apartment include the words: turn at the corn) and am no longer a city mouse, I have to say that my access to ridiculously amazing produce has increased. Just the other day I stopped by a farm stand and picked up a pair of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Best thing ever? The stand had a tray of tasting bites each labeled with the tomato name. I picked out a Purple Cherokee and a Persimmon. Really, my restraint is admirable, because I did not just eat them in the car on the way home. While you can dress up tomatoes any which way, heirlooms deserve better. They should not be buried in a sandwich or blended into gazpacho. They should be the star. Ryan complained that I even did anything to these, but I think they were delicious with the trimmings, and so easy to make!

HEIRLOOM TOMATO AND RICOTTA BITES

INGREDIENTS:
1 (or more) heirloom tomatoes
ricotta cheese
baguette
salt
extra virgin olive oil

DIRECTIONS:
Slice your tomato into thinnish pieces, don't make them too thin, but don't do huge chunks either. Then cut the largest pieces in half. Count how many you have. Then slice a corresponding number of rounds from your baguette. Make these pretty thin, because you don't want the bread to overpower the tomato. Toast them lightly (I do mine in the toaster oven, but you'd be better off with a real oven than with a toaster-toaster). Smear a bit of ricotta (maybe a tablespoon) on each toast. Gently place a tomato slice on top. Continue until all bites are constructed. Arrange on a plate, sprinkle with salt, drizzle with olive oil, enjoy!

Cantaloupe and Peach Soup

My first thought as I was pureeing the heck out of this was, wow, this is exactly what I would want to eat if my jaw were wired shut. Granted, I have never had my jaw wired shut, but I do know not one but two people who have suffered this fate. One had her jaw deliberately broken to treat recurring pain from TMJ and the other, a drunken hockey player, fell out of his bunk bed. If I recall correctly, neither could eat solid food for quite some time. This is so light and sweet and refreshing it would brighten up anyone's day (even those of us with fully functioning jaws). I can picture packing a thermos of it for a picnic of cheeses and baguettes, or serving it as a light appetizer before a summer dinner. We served up bowls of it with dollops of vanilla yogurt for dessert. The yogurt is so creamy and silky mixed in with the peach and cantaloupe.
CANTALOUPE AND PEACH SOUP
from Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Necessary equipment: food processor or blender, an immersion blender will not work (in my case this meant blending one cup at a time in my trusty mini-prep. I really thought I was going to burn out its little motor).

INGREDIENTS:
1 cantaloupe (about 5 inches diameter)
4-6 peaches, very ripe
6 T fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 T honey
1 C freshly squeezed orange juice
dash of nutmeg
1/4 t cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:
Peel and slice all the peaches, removing the pits. Place them in a pot with the lemon juice, honey and spices. Bring it to a boil and then lower to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes.Remove the rind and cut the cantaloupe into 1 inch pieces. Add the cantaloupe and orange juice to the peach mixture and then use your blender or food processor to puree the mixture until very smooth. Refrigerate until very cool and serve.

Tasty Toasts

These blue cheese and pear on wheat bread toasts are a bit decadent, but they require very little effort and no cooking skills. If you have a knife, a toaster oven and access to a decent bakery, you're all set. They can be served as an appetizer or an hors d'oeuvre at a party or as a dessert. I like a little flexibility in my food don't you?

BLUE CHEESE, PEAR AND HONEY TOASTS

INGREDIENTS:
1 bosc pear (you can tell if it's ripe, it will be all wrinkly around the stem)
a mild, creamy blue cheese
honey
wheat bread or multigrain from a good bakery

DIRECTIONS:
Slice the pears thinly and arrange across the bread. Crumble the blue cheese over the top. If you are feeling decadent (and I always am), drizzle with a small amount of honey. Then put in the toaster oven. I use the toast button, and it goes for 4 minutes, which is exactly the right amount of time to melt the blue cheese and make the bread able to support the toppings. To use as a passed hors d'oeuvre, I would recommend using the tiny square bread you can get at most grocery stores and dicing the pears instead of slicing, and popping in your conventional oven on a tray for a few minutes.

Alsatian Onion Tart: Good News, Bad News and a Special Treat!

I always used to eat my vegetables first. Who are we kidding, I still do, nothing’s changed. I’m a big fan of getting things over with. So bad news first: I have been longing to make this Alsatian Onion Tart as soon as I laid hands on Baking with Julia. I was pretty thrilled throughout most of the preparations, but as I smeared the soft, sweet onions over the puff pastry dough, it hit me. This is not dinner. Lovely in a rustic sort of way, and promising to be delicious, yes. But dinner? Nope. Absolutely not substantial enough to be a meal. The good news is, I think it would make a fabulous appetizer for a party if you cut it up into nice bite size pieces. It is sweet and buttery rich. In fact, I’m packing up the leftovers and bringing them to my mother’s for snacking on during tree decorating. I’m thinking about making it for our Christmas Eve dinner. I’m planning cocktail parties, just so I can serve it again. But it is not dinner.
Alsatian Onion Tart
adapted from Baking with Julia

INGREDIENTS:
2 -3 large onions chopped (I know it sounds like a lot. I used 1.5 and was sorry it was so skimpy).
1 cup chicken stock
4 slices bacon chopped
1 sheet puff pastry dough, defrosted and rolled out to the size of a large cookie sheet or thereabouts
½ cup shredded gruyere cheese
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350. Put the onions and chicken broth into a pan over low heat and cook for 30 minutes until the onions are very soft. Drain off any extra liquid (I had none, but Julia says to do it, so if you have extra liquid…) In a separate pan, cook the bacon. Don’t let it get too crisp, because it will be going back in the oven, and you want them non-charred. Roll out the puff pastry dough until it’s very thin, 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. This will keep the dough from rising, which is what you want.Transfer the dough to a large ungreased cookie sheet (or a pizza stone I suppose).Spread the gruyere over the dough. Add the onions and spread the onions all the way to the edge. Top with the bacon. Cook for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Surprise Treat: Palmiers
So, it turns out that the Alsatian Onion Tart only requires the use of one puff pastry sheet. And honestly, who’s going to wrap the other sheet up and stick it in the freezer when you could be using it to make palmiers instead!
Recipe halved from Barefoot Contessa
Ingredients:
1 C of sugar
1 sheet puff pastry dough
pinch salt
Directions:
Prehead oven to 450.
Pour half the cup of sugar on the surface you will be using to roll out the dough. Lay down the dough and then pour the other half of sugar on top. Spread the sugar all over the top of the dough, the goal being to coat the dough with sugar. Roll out the dough to a 13x13 square. Then fold the two outside edges in towards the middle so they go halfway to the middle. The fold them again so they touch in the middle, then fold one more time so all the layers are stacked on top of each other. Cut into 3/8" slices and put cut side up on your baking sheet. The recipe tells you to use parchment paper, but I don't own any so I went with out. Lucky for you, things were awfully chaotic in the kitchen when I was making these, so I got to test out several different methods. I have learned: Pepperidge Farm is not kidding when they say not to cook puff pastry in a toaster oven. It heats up far to unevenly. Bad call. Also, if you have a light colored baking sheet (as opposed to your older, deeper gray to black ones), it makes for lighter colored (urm, Not Burnt) palmiers. Cook for ~6 minutes on the first side, and then flip and cook another 3-4 minutes on the other side. Cool down on a baking rack.

The Easiest Onion Tart You'll Ever Make

Quiches and tarts are not inherently difficult to make but with the sauteeing of ingredients, making the crust and mixing the custard, they can end up being a giant pain in the you-know-what. This tart is different. It doesn't have a million ingredients. Just the basics, done right. And it is heavenly.

EASIEST ONION TART
INGREDIENTS
1 large onion (maybe even a tad wee bit more than this)
1/2 to 3/4 C grated cheddar. (Now I'm usually all for adding more cheese to anything, but I've only ever made it with 1/2 C and it's seemed right).
2 eggs (or 1/2 C eggbeaters - that's right, I didn't even use real eggs)
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 T fresh thyme (use less if you're using dried)
1 recipe crust
DIRECTIONS
Slice the onion so that you have long strips of onion, not a dice. Add a T of oil to a non-stick pan on low heat. Cook the onion until carmelized, this can take 20-30 minutes, you can make the crust while it's happening, if you're a good multi-tasker. Onions are carmelized when they turn a golden brown and taste very sweet. Make sure the heat is low, or they will start to crisp up on you, which is not what you want at all. When they're done, add salt and pepper to taste, and the thyme. Put in a bowl and mix with the cheddar and the egg mixture. Pour into the crusts.

I cook mine in the toaster oven at 350 for 25-35 minutes or until the center is set and the crust is browned a bit. If you try it in a regular oven I would probably increase the heat slightly, but feel free to share what worked for you.

Here's the crust:

CRUST
1 C flour
1 T sugar
pinch salt
1/3 C butter
4-6 + T of ice water
DIRECTIONS:
This is a million times easier with a KitchenAid mixer. Cutting shortening/butter in by hand is no fun. So, mix together dry ingredients in the mixer. Add butter (still cold from the fridge, make sure it's not warm or room temp) in small chunks (I tend to cut my in tablespoon sized slabs). Mix until the whole mixture has a coarse sand or pebbley consistency. And this is where it gets hard. Add water. The amount you need varies based on where you live, the weather, the mood of your crust. You'll need to learn to add enough that it all holds together as a dough, but not so much that it's a wet mess. Go slowly, mix carefully. I don't measure anymore. I pour straight from my Brita of ice water into the mix (while the mixer is running) and see if it becomes a ball. I separated it into 4 small disks (because of making the mini-tarts) and let it refridgerate while I was grating the cheddar and finishing the onions. Then I rolled each out, and stuck it in the pie tins.