Cooking Misc.: July 2003 Archives
Well, Todd was in North Carolina for a couple of days, so I had Three Whole Days of eating whatever I wanted and I blew it, sort of. Actually, Tuesday night I toasted a pita in the oven, then spread goat cheese on it and topped it with peppers I had roasted the night before, and that was pretty good with a lettuce salad and homemade vinaigrette. Last night I had Amy's Bread sourdough toasted with goat cheese, cranberry chutney and smoked turkey (my new favorite combo), like a crostini or open-face sandwich. Also good with some salad and a glass of wine. Basically the same thing I had on Tuesday, with different bread and some different toppings.
Tonight we're going to Dos Caminos to celebrate some good news at Todd's work, so I'll report back on that.
I bought a pint of blueberries and 1/2 pints of raspberries and blackberries on Saturday to make a summer pudding and then decided I didn't want to use all those beautiful berries in one place, so I used 2 1/2 cups-worth to make mixed-berry sorbet (the rest I'm working on, but I mashed some raspberries with sugar to top my yogurt this morning, and ate some more, plain, with lunch).
The recipe was simple, and the results were fantastic: creamy and smooth, a pretty red color and bright berry flavor. First I pureed the berries with 1/2 cup water in the blender, then I strained the mixture to get out the seeds and skin (I had about 2 cups puree). Mixed in almost a cup of sugar, juice of 1 lemon and 1 tablespoon Cointreau (I think the alcohol actually helps the texture by keeping the mixture from freezing solid - just a theory). Chilled the mixture, then froze it in the ice freezer, where it really did become an eatable consistency. Then I put it in a plastic container to freeze further.
This is the fresh parpadelle I made.
Yesterday I took a basic fresh pasta class at the Institute for Culinary Education (formerly Peter Kump's) on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Aves. It's the second cooking class I've taken, and the first at ICE. I took a From the Greenmarket class at the New School last year, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The New School class seemed more like a bunch of people getting together to cook a huge meal from ingredients at the farmers' market; the class I took yesterday seemed slightly more like being in cooking school. They have big kitchens with multiple stainless steel tables and professional-ish equipment, and we each got to make our own batch of fresh pasta. Yesterday we were left to our own devices to a greater degree, which is a little annoying when you've got a time limit in an unfamiliar kitchen, but is kind of nice, too. It's like they have a little faith in our abilities.
Anyway, making fresh pasta is definitely something I'll try to do again here at home. You start with 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. Then, using a fork, beat three eggs with 1 teaspoon salt. Make a well in the flour and pour in the egg mixture. Then, using the fork you used to beat the eggs, continue to stir the eggs, incorporating more and more of the flour until it starts to resemble dough. Then start grabbing and kneading it with your hands, incorporating as much of the flour as you can. Turn it out of the bowl and continue to work it until it feels smooth and dry, almost a little rubbery. You'll be amazed at how stiff and dry the dough is; you can add water if necessary, but I didn't need to (I kept thinking I needed to, but when I broke the dough ball open, the inside was still a little sticky). Then you have to leave it alone for at least half an hour, wrapped in plastic in the refrigerator.
We made chicken ragu, a 4-cheese sauce, a tomato and basil sauce and, my favorite, ricotta ravioli with sauteed Swiss chard and arugula. The filling consisted of 2 cups ricotta, 1/4 cup grated Parmesan, 2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Then you sautee garlic in oil and add Swiss chard, arugula, salt and pepper and cook until the greens are wilted.
Each group made all four sauces, so all four of us at my table were racing around at this point, trying to get all the sauces done in time. After the sauces were completed, we used pasta machines to roll out the dough and cut the shapes, flouring the pasta and putting it on a floured rimmed baking sheet when it was finished. For the ravioli, you roll the pasta out into sheets, make mounds of the filling along one long side of the sheet, brush the top of the other long side of the sheet with beaten egg, and fold it over, pushing out the air as you seal the top layer of pasta around each mound of filling. Then cut into rustic ravioli squares.
Then you cook it up in boiling water, toss it in a saute pan with one of the sauces, and voila! We didn't learn how to hand-roll pasta, which is what I'm going to have to do (too bad, because using the pasta maker was pretty easy and it seems like hand-rolling it is really impractical). It's so satisfying, though, to make your own pasta, and fresh pasta is such a different taste and texture than dried.
We went to the Cloisters yesterday, a beautiful, sunny, breezy day, and had a picnic in Tryon Park, which is the rambling, rocky park visitors must walk through to get to the museum.
I packed sweet-tart, ripe plums and smoked turkey wraps with provolone (mine had apple-cranberry chutney; Todd's had mustard). We ate sitting on a park bench watching a boy try to learn to catch a baseball, then walked around the museum for a while. My favorite part of the Cloisters is the edibles garden, where they have fig, quince, pear and olive trees, as well as lots of greens and herbs. Got some ice cream from the truck at the entrance to the park, then took the subway down to the Union Square farmers' market. It was a perfect day.
I bought a focaccia at the Union Square farmers' market Monday on my day off, and last night Todd and I had some pretty good pressed sandwiches with some of the leftovers from our feast on Sunday. Todd had mozzarella, roasted pepper and proscuitto, and I had eggplant, squash, mozzarella and proscuitto.
I wasn't sure it would work, but the focaccia got really crisp and thin. I heated my cast-iron round grill pan for a while (cast-iron is a slow conductor of heat, I've heard, so I knew it would hold the heat for long enough to cook the sandwiches). Then I heated my round nonstick skillet, put the sandwiches in, topped them with the hot cast-iron pan and pressed down to compress the sandwiches. The cast-iron pan fit perfectly inside the other pan and both the top and bottom of the sandwiches got toasted at once.
It's not officially a wine-tasting primer, but Meg has described the various summer smells of New York City, and given me a couple aha! moments about how to taste wines:
This dessert was so easy to make, and very pretty (it's kind of hard to tell with the white-on-white, but it was so soft and silky looking, and such a pure white). My first time with unflavored gelatin; I don't really like jello but this has an entirely different texture.
Sprinkle one packet (about 2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin over 2 tablespoons water and let it sit for 10 minutes for the gelatin to soften. While that's doing, put 1 cup whipping cream and 7 tablespoons sugar in a saucepan, then, over medium heat, get the cream hot and dissolve all the sugar into the cream (don't let the cream boil). Add the gelatin mixture and stir until it dissolves. (I still had a few lumps, but it doesn't matter at this point.) Let that sit for about 30 minutes to come to room temperature, then add 2 cups buttermilk and 3/4 teaspoon vanilla. Pour the mixture through a strainer into a 4-cup measuring cup with a spout, then divide the mixture between the various custard cups and ramekins you have available (I used 3 custard cups, 3 mise-en-place bowls and 2 ramekins). Refrigerate at least 6 hours. Unmold by dipping the cups in warm water for 30 seconds, then loosening the edge with the tip of a knife. I had to push the knife in a little further along one side to get it to release.
I served it with macerated strawberries; it's wonderful stuff, creamy, tangy, rich and cool. Todd said it almost tasted like lemon, and it did even though there wasn't any lemon in it.
This recipe sort of comes from Gourmet. It was an appetizer recipe in there, served on little mini arepas, but I modified it to be a main course and use the ingredients I had available. The recipe took up a whole page, but broken down over the course of 24 hours it didn't seem that labor intensive.
Saturday night I cut a red onion in quarters and sliced them into thin quarter-rings. Then I tossed that with 1/2 cup vinegar, a diced jalapeno and some oregano and salt and left it all the fridge. Sunday around noon I diced up some garlic, mashing it with salt to make a paste, then added cumin, oregano, allspice and pepper (I'm not giving amounts because I think I should've added more--maybe a good tablespoon of each?). Mixed it into equal parts orange juice and vinegar in a baking dish, then added three 3/4-inch-thick pork chops and put it in the fridge, covered with foil, to marinate. A couple hours before dinner I popped it in a 325 degree oven.
To make up for no arepas, I mixed up cornbread batter and spread some in the bottom of this inane muffin-top tin I picked up off the giveaway table at work. I added a layer of shredded mozzarella and then topped it with more cornbread batter. Baked it for 10 minutes in 425 degree oven after I took the pork out to make these big, flat corn cakes (the muffin-top tin does have another use!). While those were baking I shredded the pork in its baking dish and mixed it with the remaining liquid in there. We ate the corn cakes topped with shredded pork and the pickled onions. I would've liked more spice, but the bite of the vinegary onion was a good contrast to the subtlety of the other flavors. And I really liked the technique for the shredded pork.
Once I buy any kind of bakery bread, it's like a sprint to finish it off before it's rendered inedible by the passage of time. And this weather always makes me feel like gnawing on a baguette and some fruit and cheese instead of preparing something more elaborate. I guess it's just that, to me, that type of meal feels like a picnic, and it's been picnic weather lately.
So I've been eating on a baguette all week, culminating with bread salad last night.
