perfection salad

a salad, being in total control of herself, bitch

white sauce as civilizing agent; the indomitable Fannie Farmer’s final dinner menu replete with “level measured” splendor; strictly color schemed dinner presentations at culinary school commencement ceremonies—Laura Shapiro’s rich book on “women and cooking at the turn of the century” offered too many dainty morsels to begin this post other than in a scramble.

Perfection Salad itself may be obvious but best:

Shortly after the turn of the century there emerged a gelatin salad that crowned all these achievements, for it captured, confined, and molded raw vegetables themselves.  This was Perfection Salad, a mixture of cabbage, celery, and red peppers, all chopped fine and bound by a plain aspic.  During the next decades there was only one notable change in the recipe—the plain aspic became tomato—while the other straightforward ingredients hardly altered. … the Perfection Salad firmly maintained its identity, the very image of a salad at last in control of itself.

my own culinary style as fluid as identity as radical muffins understand identity to be, I find excessive measuring or other rigid ruling in the kitchen hilarious. Yet I admire the moxie of the domestic scientists who founded our countries’ first cooking schools. Their conviction in scientific process to create healthy and homey dwellings that up-lift the body and soul mixed with the emergence of the food industry to serve up gelatin salad as a mark of progress, high-class aspirations, and women’s intellectual equality to men.

these vibrant, science-minded ladies doggedly pursued studies through tracks available to women at the time, like leapfrogging to professors who would deign to teach them chemistry or bacteriology and annexing their programs to schools like MIT and Harvard. They were typically charitable or reformist in character. My hometown girl Jane Addams of Hull House sent a service worker to Ellen Richards’ New England Kitchen to learn from and adopt its’ school to soup kitchen model. Though their themes stayed in the domestic sphere, they founded national publications and organizations, staged World’s Fair exhibitions, and founded academic departments at universities as well as the elementary home economics curricula so many of us grew up with.

Melvil Dewey, originator of the Dewey Decimal system, and his wife Annie hosted a climactic conference in Lake Placid, putting placement in the library system of the newly christened “home economics” in their hot little hands. Side characters include the inventor of a contraption called the Aladdin Stove, who funded these zealous ladies, and Count Rumford— spy, questionable but sizable charitable works organizer, drip-coffee maker inventor, and Mrs. Richards’ idol— whose eulogy included:

It was without loving or esteeming his fellow creatures that he had done them all these services.

for a real Christmas dessert Parisian doll ice cream takes the banner for me this year

in short, what a hoot! if the screenplay isn’t in the works it should be. Starring Meryl Streep as Fannie Farmer bringing taste in the form of precise pimentos to scientific cooking (sorry to type-cast), and Alan Cumming as Edward Atkinson, Bostonian “freelance expert on most of the important political issues of his time,” philanthropist and stove-inventor weirdo.

an imaginative interpretation—or the uncovering of some steamy letters—could offer up some smashing scenes between the domestic scientists and the heads of the turn of the century’s women’s colleges.

as younger women, they may have been pioneering higher-ed schoolmates. Their warm professional collaborations later chilled as the one group’s determination to academically institutionalize home economics met the other’s resistance to include anything “feminine” in curricula determined to compete with Ivy League men’s schools.

Shapiro paints compelling characters, and it’s her wry eye on religion, class and race as well as gender that redeemed my faith in feminist books on homemaking. Plus sends me off to trowel the used bookstores (that remain) for Miss Farmer’s A New Book of Cookery and put a hold at BPL for her own Something from the oven: reinventing dinner in 1950s America.

of cabbages and kings (there were shoes in that bit too)

scape handler

Diogenes advised the young man, “If you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful.”  To this, the courtier replied, “If you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live on cabbage. “

we still had a pound and a half of cabbage after the preacher eater’s adventure in kimchi.  The fermenting project netted us a huge jar of fruity-peppery, gingery pickled cabbage and carrots with plenty to gift to the neighbors, but half a head of Savoy and an entire red cabbage began accruing squatter’s rights in the left crisper drawer.

virtuous, humble and reliable, cabbage earned accolades in ancient Rome and held its own among the French Court of Catherine de Medici.  It plays mythical roles from beau diviner to baby-maker to  faerie land wormhole gateway.  Ubiquity and poor handling put this staple out of favor.  Outside of the obligatory 4^th of July coleslaw and a few dedicated sauerkrauters, we mostly avoid cabbage, rumored to generate stink as it cooks and after you eat it.  Like so many misunderstood foods, these unfortunate experiences are not really the cabbages’ fault, yet the stigma remains.

so she was gasping when she called me from the farm share pick-up, Guess what’s in the share? Cabbage!

we almost swapped that cabbage out.  Our CSA site has a box to trade stuff you might not want: hate broccoli?  take your neighbor’s unloved turnips.  One cook’s trash is after all…

we had a cart like that in grade school in the gym turned lunchroom. I kept my much maligned salami sandwiches to myself but always took a cruise around the table for anything interesting.  It was perpetually teaming with inside-out pb&j sandwiches mangled in transit, bashed up bananas, and overly red apples that you knew were mealy despite stiff and shiny skins.  Disappointing.  Although the CSA swap box held far more promise, the farmer was giving us Napa cabbage, a new variety for our growing collection.  Humbled to fate, perhaps, we decided to confront our cabbage surplus head on.

as soon as our newest cabbage arrived home, we went right for the heart, putting away 3 bunches of outer leaves and pulling the central leaves for instant salad.  We also shredded that lingering red cabbage, mixing half with shredded new beets and olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper—jarred this.

for Instant Gratification CSA Salad, combine a quarter of a red cabbage, shredded, with the innermost pale green leaves of Napa cabbage in a huge glass bowl.  Rinse a handful each of the finest of spinach and beet greens.  Stem the spinach and roll the beet greens up like a cigar, slice them and add to the other greens.  Scrub and slice thin three Japanese radishes—not those leg of lamb sized Daikon, these were round like typical red radishes but pure white and milder—and add to the salad.

then come the scapes, wonderfully loopy and green, like bracelets.  Discard the stringy tips at the bulb end then slice the bulb just below the neck then slice it open lengthwise.  Slice a few inches of the green stem the same way, long, elegant, on the diagonal.  Rinse off a handful of pea pods, pop off the stem end if it is tough (ours were utterly edible).  Slice in half if they are long then lengthwise, right through the peas, split their tiny equators.  The cutaway of the inner landscape is pretty like the scapes.  Heat a small frying pan over a medium flame and pour in a few slugs of olive oil.  Toss in the scapes and the peas, salt and pepper and toss them around over high heat for a few minutes, until the peas are bright green.  Dump right from the pan into the salad bowl and toss.  Squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing, toss some more and serve.  This salad accompanied BBQ tempeh sandwiches to our table.

the next night, several bunches of Napa leaves went into a skillet pie reminiscent of stuffed cabbage rolls but far less work:

break dried spaghetti into 1-inch lengths for about a cup of broken noodles; boil and drain them.  Cook a cup of quinoa for about 15 minutes in 2 cups of boiling stock.  While the grains and pasta cook, chop several scapes (or garlic) and shell some peas.  We had about ¼ cup of peas and saved the pods for miso soup.  Toss garlic and peas with the pasta and grains in a big bowl along with salt and pepper.  The stock we had on hand was deep with mushroom flavor, which I think made this the best sort of comfort food, a dish that draws the eater in to pause then wraps you in thick, familiar flavor, smelling really good.

in a big, cast iron skillet, sauté half an onion, chopped, in a bit of butter and olive oil.  Add ½ a pound of tempeh, chopped, along with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and paprika, turning and cooking until it begins to brown.  Ladle in about a cup of stock and a few stalks of spicy basil or other herbs then bring to a simmer, steaming the tempeh.  When the stock has evaporated, turn the tempeh in with the grains and stir.  Let this all cool just a bit then crack in an egg, stir.

preheat the oven to 400° and wipe out your heavy skillet.  Melt 3 tablespoons or so of butter and spread a layer of bread cubes (about 3 slices of bread, cubed) along the bottom of the pan.  Season and toast the bread over high for a few minutes, turning to coat all sides in butter.  Smooth out the bread layer and cover with the grain/tempeh and over that layer several rounds of Napa cabbage leaves.  Crumble fresh feta and shred some parmesan cheese over the leaves; dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika.  Bake the whole thing for about 20 minutes, until the leaves are soft and cheese is melted.  In a bigger casserole, there could be a few layers and, I imagine, delectable.

summer jewelry

we have some of the remaining cabbage earmarked for miso soup, and surely the last bit of red cabbage will go into our daily lunch salads, or maybe this kale and cabbage slaw.  Getting through all this cabbage was originally about conquering it, but this affair turned out much tastier triumphs.  And we still have kimchi.

** with affection to alice & her creator, who gave me so many things to talk about then eat

tagliatelle with mushroom sauce

a plate of pasta.

loves long simmering in mixed company

don’t you feel good already?  Imagine really toothsome pasta, lavish with but not overwhelmed by a subtle sauce.  It is too early in the season for tomatoes, but not for butter.  Butter, onion and mushrooms.

thus inspired, we ate tagliatelle with mushrooms on the fire escape.  Sitting on the chipped dark green iron, amidst the pots of verdant herbs and lettuces, holding green plates of golden yellow noodle nests with earthy brown mushrooms.  A gluttonous silence fell; the sun set.  We lifted the plates to our chins and twined the pasta on our forks, shamelessly plowing mushrooms into our mouths left gleaming with butter.

fresh, hand cut pasta cannot be hyperbolized.  It wants your time and attention then rewards you lavishly.

to make enough to generously (and, really, is there any other way?) feed two, measure out a heaping cup of flour in a large, heavy bowl—one that will be comfortable for the movements of kneading—and make a hollow in the center, like a volcano.  Most Italian cookbooks seem to have extensive discussions of flour, how it varies in glutinousness and absorbency and flavor.  Interesting and tasty information; worth investigating between the pages.  For now, know that unbleached all-purpose flour works well for pasta.

carefully break 4 cold eggs over your fingers to hold the yolk back, letting the whites fall into a large clean bowl and slipping the yolks into the hollow in the flour.  Those egg whites will keep in the fridge for breakfast, or they whip up lickety-split into meringues for dessert that will slowly bake in a low oven while you’re puttering in the kitchen.  Leave all the eggs to come to room temperature.  Do something else for an hour.

whisk the egg yolks into the flour bit by bit with a fork then stir the lot together with a wooden spoon.  Add a bit more flour or egg white as necessary for the dough to come together.  When your dough is pulling into a ball, flour your hands and kneed it against the walls of the bowl, adding more flour if needed.  Cradle the bowl and press into the dough with the heel of your hand, rolling it along the sides of the bowl.  Turn the dough and repeat.  Work the dough until it becomes elastic and satiny.  Pasta dough is a bit stiff, so kneading for 8 to 10 minutes can be a challenge but have faith.  Supposedly spinach pasta is softer and easier to work, and we plan to try spinach noodles for lasagna this week (stay tuned).  Let your ball of dough rest for an hour.

using as many mushrooms of as many sorts as you have, pick the stems off and wipe their caps gently clean with a cloth.  Slice the caps and set aside.  We had a generous 2 cups cremini and maitake.  Peel and quarter a small onion, slice it fine.  Heat a heavy skillet over high heat, and once it is hot turn the heat down.  Add a chunk of butter and puddle of olive oil, heat and add the onions.  When the onions begin to sizzle and soften add the mushrooms.  Stir and toss and cook over high heat for 5 minutes or so.  Sprinkle with salt and fresh pepper.  Turn the heat down and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for an hour.  This takes some care to carry off without scorching, so add more butter as you go and maybe a swig of white wine.  The surprisingly long cook time is a revelation in flavor, and a tip from Marcella Hazan’s Master Class in Marcella Says…

dramatic mushrooms

the untamed, bosky quality that draws you to [mushrooms’] flavor emerges with very long, slow cooking after they have completely shed their vegetal waters….  Cook mushrooms slowly in olive oil for at least an hour, longer if you are making a large amount, until they are gelatinously soft.  Hover over the pan, and when your nose picks up a scent reminiscent of a dark, leaf strewn forest floor, the mushrooms are done.

she also recommends butter-based sauces for fresh pastas, whose texture is glossed over by oil.  The loving handling of the dough, tugged and pulled, gently roughens the surface, which swells luxuriantly with a coating of hot butter.

returning to your pasta, separate the ball into two or three parts, whatever is manageable for your work space.  Lightly flour a clean counter or tabletop.  Flatten the dough into a disk then roll it out, moving from the center to the edge, turning the disk a quarter turn every few passes.  When it is as wide as works, lengthen the sheet by rolling towards and away from you without turning the dough.  As you work, stretch the dough on the rolling pin or, in my case, empty juice jar.  Starting at the end farthest from you, roll the edge over the pin towards you and hold down the sheet resting on the counter and gently pull, rolling the pin towards you.  Work the dough on the pin by moving your hands away from each other from the center out towards the edges, tugging the dough along.  Let the sheet fall over the side of your work surface and hang.  The dough can be worked so thin you can read newsprint through it.  If the dough seems too fragile then thicker pasta is still delicious.  Let this sheet rest while you roll out the next sheet.

to cut noodles, dust a rested sheet of dough with flour and roll it into a loose log about 3 inches wide.  With a sharp knife, slice across the roll to make ribbons in whatever noodle width suites you.  Ours were slightly wider than traditional tagliatelle which is slightly wider than fettuccine.  Unroll the slices and spread your noodles out on dry cloths to dry.

bring a big pot of water to boil; salt it generously.  Gently hand your noodles into the rolling water.  Stir them a few times and cook for about 6 minutes, until al dente.  Try one, you’ll know.  Drain and toss with butter, salt and fresh pepper.  Serve immediately in shallow bowls or plates topped by the mushrooms.

fire escape salad

come as you are!

the trouble with writing about salad is that making salad is not really cooking but assembling.  Yet, these are essential ensembles.  Consider this your salad reminder— salads make a fine meal from a cool kitchen.  With global weirding subjecting us at random from this day forth to the heat formally relegated to the official months of summer, the oven’s days are numbered.  Even off the shaded garbage courtyard, this Brooklyn apartment kitchen can get hotter than crêpes suzette come summer.  Maybe the possibilities of salad make hot weather an ideal time for wooers-not-cookers to court; salad can be high on haute and low on technique.  What matters most is the freshness of the goods, and the whole rainbow of plantdom is pretty much a candidate. It goes without saying that salad is really good for you.

this salad thrills because it is composed mostly of bounty off our fire escape, where we’re nurturing a container garden of lettuce and herbs, plus catnip for the miraculous flying cat, the K. Pidds.

the k. pidds

in scavenged tubs, two kinds of lettuce are putting out sails of green and red leaves.  After harvesting greens the size of my hand, the still unfurling centers promise more salad to come.  I hope to add Tom Thumb and Little Gem.  If we add rocket, soon we’ll have mesclun.

authorities claim the key to a gorgeous salad is well-rinsed and gently, thoroughly dried greens.  Simple oil and vinegar dressing clings to dry leaf sides.  In Unplugged Kitchen, Viana la Place not only feels “a keen excitement” when she sits down to eat a dish of beautiful green leaves, she writes: “Harvesting lettuce leaves in the garden right before supper creates a romantic vision, but it also allows us to derive the full benefits from each ruffled, fragrant leaf.”

a heartfelt Italian cook, Viana delivers 25 recipes for lovely salads, including beloved veggies: purslane, artichokes, beets, and old fashioned potato and nasturium salad.  As I nod to her here, she gleefully shares “salade fatigue” by 1960s fashion impresario Simonetta, an Italian in Paris and a Snob in the Kitchen:

many of Simonetta’s salads, including this one, call for the salad to “season” for an hour before serving.  For Simonetta, a salad must be fatigué, “tired,” to be good; it must be “mixed, beaten, and drunk with its dressing.”

current food fashions have veered away from greens besotted with dressing but beaten and drunk have a certain camp appeal.  She recommends whacking towel wrapped greens against the counter to tenderize them, also a satisfying way to call forth the essential oils in herbs going whole leaf into salad.

fire escape salad

our herb garden includes spicy or Greek basil, a diminutive cousin of the towering Italian type classically paired with fresh sliced tomatoes and creamy mozzarella in mid-summer.  Also tiny, forest green peppermint.  Lime basil, with slender, petal-thin leaves.  Sage that has since been menaced by the weather and lost its leaves but seems to be reviving.  Creeping thyme, lots of it, my favorite.

rosemary too, which is now only three branches strong but with care will become a bush and burst forth with fragrant purple blossoms.  Those will go in the salad too.  Rosemary needles, with the resiny toughness of an evergreen (though it’s a member of the mint family), are better cooked, even for salad.  Bringing me off the fire escape and into the pantry for staples that made this salad a meal.

cannellini beans cooked with one healthy branch of our little shrub and a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper.  When boiled tender, drain the beans in a colander and toss with a pour of olive oil, salt, fresh pepper and handfuls of fresh herbs.  While the beans cook, slice a red onion very fine and soak the shreds in ice water for at least 10 minutes to take the bite out.  Marinade in balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper for as long as you like.

in your biggest, best salad bowl, gently combine the beans and onions with your greens, including that succulent lettuce and fresh herbs.  Just lift the onions out of their marinade with a fork.  Despite Simonetta’s preferences, the vinegar soaked onions and oiled beans will carry plenty of dressing into the salad.  Croutons are nice, and grated parmesan.  Serve with crusty white bread toasted and sliced, along with a plate of very fine olive oil with a pool of honey in its center, sprinkle with sea salt and a crank of fresh pepper.  Trust me.

soupe bonne femme avec faggot

“Many recipes call for a faggot.”   — Louis Diat

mais oui—everything is tastier with a dash of faggotry!  I’m not talking buggery— although many of us could use a soupcon of that too, survey says up to half of gay men never do it up the butt anyway — but the joie de vivre, the je ne sais quoi of a fabulous queen.  In the radical muffin kitchen, cooking gusto evokes a certain make-do and then some learned at the hip of sassy men who could out stomp me in their platform shoes and draw suitors to them through the din of crowded bars with their eyes.   Certainly, a femme is better with a faggot.

this is perhaps not what monsieur Diat had in mind.  No, the French born chef was the head at the New York Ritz-Carlton kitchens, where he not only trained many chefs in the U.S. but also made it his life’s work to translate French cooking techniques into English.  In Gourmet’s Basic French Cooking: Techniques of French Cuisine, published for the first time in 1961, he includes among Tricks of the Chef:

Faggot Many recipes call for a faggot.  To make a faggot, cut a stalk of celery in 2 pieces 3 or 4 inches long.  In the curve of one piece, tuck a few sprigs of parsley, folding in the ends, lay on this a bay leaf, and sprinkle with a little thyme.  If the recipe does not include carrots, a small piece of carrot is sometimes tucked in with the parsley.  Place the other piece of celery on top very firmly and secure the faggot by winding a long piece of string closely around it.  Unless you assemble a faggot firmly and bind it tightly with plenty of string, it is apt to roll apart during the cooking.

Soupe Bonne Femme is simply potato leek soup, although all the following “bonne femme” recipes in his magnum opus seem to be “with mushrooms” and how this all relates remains a mystery to me.   The soup would probably be delicious with mushrooms, but as it is or rich with cream, Soupe Bonne Femme is perfect fare for blustery March weather.

scrub clean 4-5 potatoes.  chop them and put them aside in a bowl of cold water.  Slice the greens and roots from 4 medium-small leeks, clean them well in cold running water.  Dice the white part of the leek along with 1 small onion and a few peeled garlic cloves.  Melt a tablespoon or so of butter in a big, heavy pot, add the leeks, onions and garlic, and cook until soft but not brown, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

drain the potatoes and stir them into the leeks, turning to coat with butter; cook for about 5 minutes.  Pour in 4 cups of hot water or stock.  Assemble and bind a faggot of celery, carrot, parsley and thyme.  Add this to the soup pot along with a dash of salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for ½ an hour to 45 minutes or until the potatoes are beginning to fall apart.

serve as is or…stir in another tablespoon of butter  and 2 cups of whole milk or 1 cup of cream.  If you add the cream or milk, be sure not to return to a boil but only gently reheat.  In the alternative, to go entirely vegan, cook all the veggies in olive oil.

the dessert that outdid itself: meyer lemon blueberry pastry

over this glorious pastry as it cooled (admittedly near the unpicturesque sinkful of dishes), our friend from India leaned in and cooed, oh, I don’t know what you usually do—but you’ve outdone yourself.

in a sudden fit of late winter, Brooklyn was covered in snow.  it was getting late.  the kitchen fugged with cookery; the laughter of the folks at table in the living room where the Christmas lights are still up at the windows.  the pastry was golden and layered with sunny lemons, smelling of lemons and buttered sugar.

this dessert is the best kind of cooking, ridiculously easy and utterly delectable.   because the Russian bodega on the corner sells frozen puff pastry for a buck o’five thus making the splurge on meyer lemons and grossly out of season blueberries doable.

thaw frozen pastry dough and gently stretch it until it is about a quarter of an inch thin.  I just carefully pull it and stretch it with my fingertips like pizza dough then drape it over a towel covered chair and let it hang out.  Depending on how your pastry comes, you may need to roll it out.  If you make your own, that’s all you my friend and kudos!

melt half a stick of butter over low heat.  When just foaming, turn off the heat and grate in the peel of meyer lemon and about an inch of peeled and minced ginger.  Cut the ends off a fresh, unzested, lemon and slice thinly.

heat your oven to 375°.  On a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, lay out your pastry dough.  Spoon lemon ginger butter over the surface and spread.  Gently fold over each edge of the dough to make a rimmed rectangle of pastry and smooth the seams with your fingertips.  Brush the newly revealed surfaces with butter, and sprinkle the center with brown sugar.  Lay in the slices of lemon, touching but not overlapping.  Drop two handfuls of the best blueberries picked from a pint over the lemons.  Drizzle the whole thing with the remaining butter and finish with a bit more brown sugar.  Bake for 20 minutes to half an hour or until the edges are golden brown and the center cooked through.  Cool enough to eat, slice and serve.

i prepared this before any of the dinner and set it out on our fire escape, putting it in the oven as we sat down to eat, and it was perfectly ready come dessert time.

vol au vent mushrooms

vol-au-vent: a large shell of light, flaky pastry for filling with vegetable, fish, or meat mixtures.
origin: 1820–30; < F: lit., flight on the wind

marcella hazan writes that mushrooms are nature’s own vol au vent.
begging to be filled and bedded and baked together.
these are not flaky bottoms, no, but succulent and earthy with notes of ancient witchiness.

for our most recent feast, i translated this nonna di cucina’s cappelle di funghi ripiene recipe for the radical muffin kitchen.  so I omitted the pancetta and anchovies, but I did add the egg, which I think binds the whole thing together and is hazan’s best advice.  i also left out the parsley, only because i forgot, and it wasn’t missed.

with just a dry towel, we wiped off about two dozen mushrooms, a mix of cremini and shitake, then chose those with the deepest, sturdiest hollows for stuffing.  Any casserole of an accommodating size will work, and we had a wonderful piece: a round shallow, terra cotta casserole with a glazed interior and raw exterior.  Sweep your casserole with olive oil and nestle the mushrooms in side by side, touching but not over lapping.  You won’t use so many mushrooms – i think a baker’s dozen fit in our pan- so save some for the filling and some for something else wonderful.  Unless, of course, you have a huge pan then double the recipe for the filling and have a grand fete…

mince half a red onion and begin sautéing it in a hot fry pan with melted butter, about 4 tablespoons.  Use 1/3 cup olive oil if you want less dairy fat.  Mince and add 4 or 5 mushroom heads and 3 or 4 cloves of garlic.  Salt a bit; pepper a bit.  Find your zen.  When the onions are translucent turn off the heat and add several stripped stems of thyme.

in a bowl, mix together ¼ cup each ricotta cheese, shredded parmesan and bread crumbs.  Add a beaten egg then the cooled onion/mushroom mixture along with several shredded leaves of basil.  Pack each of the mushroom heads generously with the cheese mixture.

in a smaller bowl, mix about ¼ each of bread crumbs, shredded parmesan, and chopped and whole pine nuts.  Sprinkle this over the stuffed shrooms.  Dash with paprika if you like.  Bake at 375° for half an hour or until the top is beautifully crusted and golden.  Partway through baking, it is lovely to splash a little moscato in the pan if you are drinking it anyway.  Turn the pan at least once for good measure.  Serve to friends just out of the oven or throughout dinner; they sit fairly well.

manga manga!

white beans italiana

dear maria,

sorry for the delay in sending the recipe, but I needed to experiment to see how I make white beans.  I made herbed white beans with roasted garlic, and I think it will work for you:

Dried beans generally double in size when you soak and cook them, so three cups dried will come out about 6 cups cooked and that is probably a good amount for a family dinner leaving some for the next day (hooray!).  I used and favor dried cannellini beans, white kidney beans, one of the beans common to Italian cooking, but this will work with any white bean, like navy beans, too.

Bring a big stockpot of water to a boil, turn off the heat and leave your dried beans for an hour to soak.  Drain the soaked beans and bring a fresh pot of water to a boil, about double the amount of water to beans.  Peel a few cloves of garlic and quarter a small onion; add these to the boiling water.  Add a few stalks of rosemary, thyme or both as well.  Add your beans, cover the pot and bring it back to a boil.  Salt and pepper the water and give it all a good stirring.  Simmer, stirring occasionally, for half an hour and check the beans for tenderness.  They may need to cook for up to half an hour more.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 400° and strip off the papery outermost layers of three heads of garlic.  Slice off the tough, root end.  Coat with olive oil and bundle in foil.  Stick them in the oven and roast, turning occasionally, for half an hour.  Let cool on top of the stove or out of the way until cool to handle.

Drain the cooked beans and dump into a big serving bowl, picking out the onion, garlic and herb stems.  Chop a few tablespoons of fresh thyme or rosemary or both and stir them in.  Pop the roasted garlic from their skins and stir them in.  Drizzle with rosemary, sprinkle with salt and pepper, stir.  Drizzle again with olive oil, sprinkle with paprika and serve with grated paramesean cheese.

Good hot or room temperature or reheated, so this is a fine dish for making in advance and sitting for a long time at the table.

pumpkin and white bean soup

pumpkin soup

from the Greens cookbook (1987) written by the chefs of the same-named restaurant in California to which I have never been.  So sad.

found the most beautiful Cinderella pumpkin at the Cortelyou Farmer’s market.  It would have made a wonderful carriage, green like patina on copper, frosty white in patches.  Not being a fairy godmother, I made a soup instead.  It was a hefty pumpkin, and I used half, approximately ¾ pound or 4-5 cups when cut in chunks.

halving a pumpkin and skinning it is not for the faint of heart—a serious knife should be employed for the purpose.  If you don’t yet have a beloved blade then ask a friend with kitchen wits and witchery (and a bit of cash flow) to get you a good Chef’s knife for your birthday.  A fine knife will make you more eager to cut up veggies and entices your foodie friends to cook in your kitchen.  Back to the pumpkin: plunge your knife tip into the skin near the stem, the bottom is usually the flattest part of the thing and should sit steadily on your cutting board but having a friend help you steady it is not a bad idea, and carefully bear down along the whole blade, towards the bottom of the pumpkin.  Pull out the blade and start again as often as you need.  Bit by bit is better than a dramatic cleaving and trip to the emergency room.  Repeat on the other side.

scoop the seeds and goop from the pumpkin halves.  if you want, reserve some of the seeds for toasted pumpkin seeds, and pile up at least some of the seeds and all of the pulp to use for the stock.  slice of the pumpkin skins and set aside for stock as well.  cut the pumpkin into slices about an inch wide then across to make large chunks.

wash one medium or two small leeks.  Slice off the greens and set aside.  Slice down the center of the leeks and across into thin half moon strips.  Smash and peel two or three cloves of garlic.  Scrub and chop a few carrots or parsnips (parsnips are really nice) and several ribs of celery.

in a large pot, heat a tablespoon of olive oil.  add the garlic and leek greens and stir to coat and cook a few moments.  stir in the celery.  add in the pumpkin pulp and seeds and a few stalks of parsley.  Salt and pepper the whole lot.  Pour in about six cups of water.  Bring to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let cool a bit before draining, squeezing the rich broth from the veggies by pressing them in a colander over a bowl or pot.

in a soup pot, heat a few slugs of olive oil.  add the leeks and stir, cooking over a medium flame until they begin to soften.  toss in the pumpkin and carrots, stirring to coat.  Cook for about 9 minutes, stirring occasionally or often depending on how wide or narrow your pot is.  salt and pepper (white pepper if you have it) and stir in a handful of sage and/or thyme.  Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer.  Cook for about half an hour (sometimes longer) until the pumpkin begins to fall apart.  Stir it every once and awhile.

add a few cups of cooked white beans* and a cup or two of the bean cooking liquid and stir.  Cook for another 15 minutes or so, until the pumpkin is an orange velvet background to the beans.

top with a drizzle of olive oil, chopped parsley and a squeeze of lemon or swirl in a spoonful of plain yoghurt, crème fraiche or sour cream.  Serve with piles of warm, excellent bread.

* to make the beans: pick through two cups of dried small white beans, like navy beans, and remove any bad beans or junk.  bring a pot of water to a boil, about three time the amount of beans.  turn off the heat and add the beans and let sit for an hour.   rinse the soaked beans in cold water, combine with fresh water in the pot, add in stalks of fresh or dried sage and thyme and bring to a boil.  cook for about an hour or al dente.  drain, saving some of the cooking liquid.

fried mashed potatoes

put a large pot of water on to boil.  scrub 6 small potatoes; I like the red ones.  Quarter them and plop them into the water at a rolling boil.  Cook for 8-10 minutes or until soft.  Drain and return to the pot if your pot can stand the up-coming beating or dump into a heavy bowl.

add three tablespoons of butter to the potatoes.  Sprinkle liberally with sea salt and pepper and herbs; pick about 2 tablespoons of fresh thyme if you have it, but this round I just used dried thyme and basil, about a teaspoon each.  Drizzle with about a ¼ cup of heavy cream.  Using one of the most fabulous inventions of all time—the hand potato masher—mash mash mash.  Save a few lumps for texture, having left the skins on helps some bits hold together (plus – pretty!).

shred about ½ a cup of hard cheese like parmesan or gruyere would be nice; we had some schmany delectable cheese I cannot remember the name of now.  Beat an egg or, to be really decadent, an egg plus one yolk.  Stir in half the egg and most of the cheese, just saving some for decorative pre-table topping, into the potatoes with a wooden spoon.  Set aside the egg in a shallow bowl and whisk in a little cream.  In another shallow bowl, spread panko flakes or bread crumbs.

heat a cast iron skillet or your heaviest, if you are not blessed with cast iron, which should acquire as soon as possible.  Add a bit of olive oil or butter or a nice half’n’half mix of the two.

form the potato mash into patties, dredge quickly in the egg/cream, press a few sage leaves into it – or one big dramatic one- then press the patty in the breading, flip and press the other side.  Fry.  A few minutes on each side, going for golden brown.  Transfer to a toweled plate to rest and drain excess oil.

you can fry two or three potato patties at a time, just be sure not to crowd the skillet.  Dredge out any escaped bits of breading before they burn and taint your oil.  This does not have to be a deep fry job; using just enough oil for things not to stick creates plenty of golden fried goodness to satisfy.

these are freaking amazing.  I cannot imagine what they would not be good with, but here are some ideas: oniony, garlicky sautéd greens like kale or collards; veggie sausage (which I like to pepper a lot and eat with maple syrup) and a fried egg; red lentils with plain yoghurt and hot pepper sauce; fried apples’n’onions…oh, yes- with sour cream.  I love fall.