The Quick Puttanesca

And an even quicker photograph of same! My apologies for the blurriness on this one. According to the New York Times puttanesca's name and origin have many explanations, likely apocryphal. Even so, I also appreciate a sexual connotation and my favourite explanation is also that this dish was intended to be created quickly so as to move on to the sexual intercourse.

In creating this I did not go to the New York Times' recipe linked to above. Instead I also improvised from ingredients in the house. This unfortunately omitted the anchovies, one of the best parts, but still ended up being tasty.

The Quick Puttanesca
1 large tomato (juiced and chopped)
1 tbsp fresh parsley (chopped)
1 tbsp capers (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (minced)
1/2 cup of kalamata olives (chopped)
2 tbsps olive oil
salt (to taste)
pepper (fresh ground to taste)

Pre-head a sauce pan, add olive oil and heat until shimmering, then add garlic and brown. Once the garlic is browned, add the rest of the ingredients and simmer until heated through.

Cook your pasta of choice (I used linguine), drain, and serve with the sauce on top.

Your soundtrack for this entry: Times of Grace - Strength in Numbers

The Time I Cooked Lunch

My good friend Gianmichael departed Astoria today for his Great White North homeland. While I'll no doubt see him fairly regularly as he returns to the area on business, it's sad to see one of my favourite people I've met in the last few years depart. This entry's for you GM!

About a week ago I invited him over for lunch (with the Thrifty Sifter, too). Now, after reading this entry you might say I didn't quite cook breakfast and I didn't quite cook lunch, but I refuse to use the portmanteau which combines the two meals!

I forget who exactly clued me in to the wonderful stuffed and roasted tomato which was the centrepiece of this dish, but I modified a recipe from Poor Girl Eats Well. You should read deeper into her blog as she writes and photographs well. In addition to the tomato cups I created a potato and bell pepper hash along the lines of that which Mom Cooks Everything makes.

Baked Eggs, Duck Bacon, and Asparagus in Tomato Cups (recipe for one tomato cup)
1 large, vine-ripened tomato
1 large egg (brown because I said so)
2 slices of duck bacon cooked ahead of time and diced
2 tbsp of diced, sauteed asparagus
1/2 tsp salt
olive oil


Yes, you read that right. Duck bacon. Specifically, while heading over to my usual pork/bacon substitute of turkey bacon, I discovered the grocer's bacon section replete with a new denizen: D'Artagnan Uncured Smoked Duck Bacon. This, this was the product of my dreams and bringing it home it exceeded all expectations. Better than I remember bacon tasting and that verified by both of my pork-eating friends. I have likely found my Mastering the Art of French Cooking bacon substitute.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cook the bacon up ahead of time, like you would normal bacon. Dice. No need to keep it hot. At the same time dice the fresh asparagus into 1/4 inch pieces and sautee in a tsp of olive oil.

There's no need to peel the tomatoes. Simply cut the stem out and then cut a hole around the wider edge of the top. Scoop out the insides, being careful not to puncture the bottom of the tomato.

Spread the salt around the insides of the tomato cup, then fill the tomato 75% of the way with a mixture of your duck bacon and asparagus and place in a cooking sheet, pie shell, or baking dish. Crack the egg into the tomato cup and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until the egg has reached the consistency you desire.

We went for a slightly hard yolk.

Potato and Bell Pepper Hash
1 large brown baking potato (diced, more or less)
1 small leek (sliced)
1 green bell pepper (diced)
1 red bell pepper (diced)
1 tsp fresh thyme (chopped)
salt
pepper
olive oil

Feel free to substitute vegetables in this dish. Hash, at least in my household and many others, is traditionally a dish in which you can use fresh leftovers and "ends of things."

Brown the ingredients in a large pan or pot over medium heat in olive oil. Add a cup or two of water or broth and simmer for about a half hour. The goal is to have a slightly stewy consistency to the dish at the end with all the flavours melded together.

Add the salt and pepper to taste toward the end.

While I was cooking I broke the wishbone from The Roast Chicken with Wasabi Sauce with the Thrifty Sifter. We ended up with ends that were the same length. What happens then!?

More hashy hash further along in its cooking. 

My new magnetic timer. I suspect it's a cheap piece of crap, but so far it's doing the job. 

And here I realized the hash was done before the tomato cups. The Thrifty Sifter was hungry!

Gianmichael relaxing on my couch while we wait for the main dish. 

Lunch is served!

As you can see, the tomato fell apart. This happened with all three tomatoes and I'm unsure why. 

Still, served with some ciabatta from the Gian & Piero Bakery (toasted for GM, not for me and the Thrifty Sifter), this was a fantastic meal. I got rave reviews from my guests!

Your soundtrack for this entry: Type O Negative - Love You to Death

The Basic Marinara

It has been weeks and weeks since I've seen Ali from yumveggieburger.com. Between hoity toity film shoots and holiday travel she's been too busy for us plebians (just kidding Ali!). You should read her year-end recap of the best and worst veggie burgers in New York City.

I thought I wouldn't see her before the new year, but turns out she had a free Thursday evening and so did I. What I also had were some remainders of onions, fresh parsley, romano cheese, and a hankering for pasta. So Ali got invited over for a vegetarian-friendly pasta dinner.

This was all made from scratch and on-the-fly. The ingredients list included below is slightly different than what we actually used, but I've only made modifications to it in the interest of better flavour (mostly just less onion). I don't claim this is a true marinara, but it sounds better than only saying tomato sauce!

Ingredients for the basic marinara:
5 vine-ripe tomatoes (peeled, juiced and diced)
1/2 white onion (diced)
1/2 yellow onion (diced)
3 garlic cloves (sliced)
1/2 cup fresh parsley (roughly chopped)
1 small can of tomato paste
2 - 3 tbsp of olive oil
fresh ground pepper
salt


Having an extra pair of hands around to take photos results in the entry beginning with a picture of me drinking in an apron.

I'm also more able to show off proper knife technique. 

And of course you get plenty of shots of tomatoes ready to blanch. 

While I was waiting for the water to come to a boil I prepared our salad. It's very basic and incredibly tasty. Simply thin-slice a head of romaine, quarter 5 - 10 radishes, and do the same for a lime. Ring the salad with the lime pieces and keep in the fridge until you're ready to eat.

I served this with olive oil and white wine vinegar on the side. I may occasionally make a dressing for salad and present it on this blog, but I prefer some type of vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper on the side.

Blanching the maters. 

After peeling the tomatoes I took out the stem with my paring knife. I then juiced these. You can read about how to do that in my entry on the thon à la provençal. We didn't get pictures of the following part, but put the tomatoes and onions in a food processor and puree until mostly smooth.

This time around I sliced the garlic because I was lazy, though I still think you should probably do a nice mince on it. Either way it added the proper flavour. In that light, slice the garlic, then pre-heat your sauce pan over medium high heat. Add two to three tablespoons of olive oil and let it heat up until it shimmers. Then add the garlic and let it cook until a golden brown. 

Once your garlic is ready, add the tomato and onion mixture. 

Add fresh ground pepper (about a teaspoon). 

Stir in about a tablespoon of salt. 

Let the mixture cook over medium high heat for about ten minutes, then add the can of tomato paste. This will give it the rich, red colour you're looking for in a pasta sauce. Pink sauces bother me...

Give this another ten minutes to simmer, then add the fresh parsley and cook for another five minutes or so. You could probably just serve now, but then you wouldn't be following my recipe. I'd know about it and it would make me sad.

While the sauce was cooking I had a pot of water roiling. I merely like to have it ready to go when the sauce is perfect. For this I used a linguini rigati, which is a ridged version of linguini. The texture adds a good mouth feel as some would say (or texture as I would call it). 

While I was at it I showed off my new Doctor Who-inspired scarf knitted for me by the Thrifty Sifter. She has a new blog entry out on a wonderful cranberry and pear pie she baked for Ali's last pie party. I highly-recommend baking this pie as both times the Thrifty Sifter made these for me I almost asked her to elope. (I'm only kind of kidding (seriously).)

And here's the final product with some Pellegrino and a toasted loaf of whole wheat crusty bread Ali brought over from her neck of Astoria. We had wine while cooking, though not with dinner, in this case a roero arneis from the Bordone winery. 

Ali tries her second bite and heartily approves. 

Salad's almost gone!

Our wonderful bread. Hopefully Ali will chime in and remind us what bakery this came from. 

Your soundtrack for this entry: Music for a While - Paul Desmond

The Thon à la Provençal

Yes, I finally cracked open my own copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Mom Cooks Everything bought me my own two-volume copy of the Julia Child classic last year and until last night I had yet to dive in.

Part of my issue is not one of laziness, ability, or volition, but rather something I've been reticent to speak about in public to strangers. Namely I keep kosher...mostly. Anyone reading out there who keeps kosher could probably point out several "violations" of kashrut in my kitchen (or even my lifestyle). Basically I just want to avoid drive-by comments about how I don't keep kosher.

Still for the past 16 years, even though I am not religious, I have kept what I consider a kosher eating regimen. No meat and dairy together (though I do eat poultry and dairy together), no shellfish, no locusts, and of course no pork. It's that last bit that threw a spanner in my making of any Julia Child recipe.

After all, mastering the art of French cooking involves the French love for bacon, bacon fat, and creamy sauces on many things. Even making dessert involves bacon. I have no qualms with any of that, but if you keep kosher it's fairly difficult to make many of Child's recipes. More on how I plan to find ways around that later. 

NOTE: This recipe requires an hour and a half to two hours of marinating and basting the fish.

To get started, you'll want to open your copy of Mastering the Art of French cooking to page 505. At least, you'll want to do that if you're unfamiliar with juicing a tomato. You'll notice the instructions include squeezing the seeds out over a strainer over a measuring cup. This may come in handy for reserving juices for later use in some recipes, but you can safely discard the seeds and juice for this one.

Blanch and shock yer maters. 

This will make them terribly easy to peel and you can wear the tomato skins on your fingers and pretend to be a tomato monster. When you're done playing with your food, cut out the tomato stem and cut the tomatoes in half across their width. 

This makes it easy to squeeze out those pesky pips. 

My Snufkin kitchen towel purchased in Finland last year. This comes from the Moomintroll series of books which I enjoyed as a child (and still do!). 

I chose a tuna steak for this recipe because I was concerned about the quality of swordfish I could get at the supermarket and couldn't make it over to the fish market yesterday. If you're following along from page 219, you'll see the first step is to mix the lemon and salt in your baking dish. Beating in the olive oil and pepper is as simple as whisking them in with your measuring spoon.

Add the fish to the baking tray, baste all over, and cover for an hour and a half to two hours, basting and turning every ten minutes or so. You'll notice I used a Pyrex pie shell for this. If you're as of yet uncomfortable with using glass directly over flame (like I was) this is a great recipe to get you comfortable. 

In the meantime, I chopped up the tomatoes, mashed my garlic cloves, and placed them both with the seasoning in a plastic container which waited patiently in the fridge. At this point I also took some time to chop up half my yellow onion. 

Magically we're an hour and a half later! The fish looked great and I dried its outsides thoroughly before placing it in a very hot skillet with oil, searing both sides for a couple of minutes.

You can see my reserved dry Riesling there on the trolley-top. For this I chose a wine from Alsace, the Joseph Cattin Riesling. Riesling is generally-known for being sweet, but it's possible to produce wine from these grapes of many types. This was a fantastic dry one.

Right about here you'll want to pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Here was where I realized I forgot to purchase tomato paste, but it wasn't necessary as I had at least two more tomatoes than I needed. While in the end I didn't have the darkest red colour, there was no flavour missed.

Over medium heat, cook up the onions until they are tender. Then stir in the tomato and garlic mixture; cover and cook for five minutes.

There was no need to correct the seasoning here, so once I was done I put everything over the fish in the baking dish.  Cover that with tin foil and bring it to a simmer on the stove. Once it's bubbling, put it in the oven for fifteen minutes or so. Then pour in your wine and bake for another 30 minutes. The recipe calls for turning the oven down to 325 once the mixture is simmering. This will, I believe, prevent the fish from drying out.

When you're done with the oven, put the fish on your serving platter, scraping all the sauce into the baking dish.

It took me a bit longer to reduce the sauce than the recipe suggests, maybe 20 minutes instead of five.  

Still, having it over high heat directly on the stove was a fun experience, especially looking through the sauce to the blue flame below. Once it was reduced I stirred in the butter and flour mixture which thickens it up considerably. Brought it back to a simmer and then put on the fish. 

After eating this fine dish (served with boiled potatoes as Julia Child suggests), I stated that it had shaken my world to its foundations. That's no joke: I just made the best tuna I've ever had for myself. The flavours blend so well together and the tanginess mixes perfectly with the hearty fish. 

Your soundtrack for this entry: Amon Amarth - The Fate of Norns. That's right, Julia Child and Amon Amarth are together at last.

The Black Prince Chicken

This week I have two somewhat ad hoc recipes for you. Last night I was tired after a long weekend doing nothing. Seriously. It was the first weekend in a long time upon which I had no plans. First was an ice cream social party with the fine folks of Reddit Astoria. Saturday I had the Thrifty Sifter, my friend GM, and a friend of his over for lamb burgers. Sorry folks, but I didn't photograph this meal. The reviews were great, though.

Sunday was spent lazily with Ms. Thrifty Sifter in the park. The bad Sifter hasn't updated in a while, but I'm probably distracting her with fun swinging in hammocks in the park. She left for her abode and it was time for me to make dinner. I still had pearl onions (frozen) from The Chicken Pot Pie and I still had waffle fries left over from the lamb burgers.

Of course I wanted to use my trusty iron skillet, so I settled on some inexpensive, bone-in chicken breasts at the grocery. That's the fine folks at Key Food. When you get a chance, take a look at their Recipe of the Day page.

You know what else I have laying around? The Black Prince peppers from my dried chilies entry. Enter my cheapo mortar and pestle from Key Food rival C-Town. They also have a recipe page, but I digress.

To prepare, add two dried chilies to the mortar.

You'll also want (from left to right on my recipe shelf) standard adobo (about a tablespoon), Coleman's dry mustard (about a teaspoon), and cumin (about a tablespoon). 

Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to 450. I didn't use a baking sheet, just placed the waffle fries and a dozen and a half pearl onions (still frozen) in a stainless steel pan. I'll admit it: this was totally lazy and didn't work out all that well. The onions are great roasted and the waffle fries are, of course, just fine out of the over, but...they really didn't work all that well together.

Next time stuff a baked potato with roasted pearl onions. I bet that will do the trick.

 Back to our pestling already in progress. I think you can guess what to do with this...

I did not separate the skin from the chicken here like I normally do for roasting chicken. The mixture was simply rubbed over every available surface. 

Heat up about three tablespoons of oil in the skillet and then place the chicken in. I did about 20 minutes per side as these were fat breasts. To distract you from what I just said, make sure to watch this episode on cooking oils from Alton Brown's "Good Eats."

Even after a weekend of carousing I was famished. So before the main course I made a simple salad with leftover toppings from the lamb burger enterprise. Part of a beefsteak tomato, half a small onion, and some iceberg lettuce. Topped with olive oil, salt, fresh ground pepper, and cider vinegar, I was pleased. 

And here's the finished product. I'm going to have to try a Black Prince pepper fresh at some point as what I made here made it difficult to distinguish its flavour. The heat wasn't overpowering and I feel the spices mixed well. However, this isn't one of my best impromptu recipes (though it did lead to tomorrow's entry which was). 

Your soundtrack for this entry: Rotting Christ - Aealo (This whole album is quality, but the opener is a classic.)