Wednesday: Trouts and tarts

Rainbow trout baked with fennel, carrot and sweet peppers.

We improvised this bake to take advantage of the sweet, fatty flavor of upstate rainbow trout, which bears some resemblance to salmon.  (On the basis of that resemblance, we also added a generous amount of dill.)  We sauteed the vegetables with some onion before layering them over the fish in a casserole, and then baked it at 350F for about fifteen minutes.  We probably could have gotten away with a minute or two less - but this all depends on the size of the fish.

We also had a special dessert tonight: a red currant tart, cooked in the brand new ramekins we acquired thanks to Giselle's end-of-law-school Westlaw Points redemption extravaganza.

Monday: Re-Roti

 

Warm black-eyed pea and golden chard salad, served with roti.

Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables: From Amaranth to Zucchini attributes this recipe to Cyprus.  Chard leaves and stems are just simmered briefly and tossed with black-eyed peas, lemon juice, and olive oil.  We were enamored of the roti we made on Friday (why haven't we made it in so long??) so we made another short stack.  Roti is really not that hard:

ROTI

Put 1 cup whole wheat flour into a bowl, and slowly add up to 1/2 cup water, mixing until the dough adheres and you can knead it.  Knead 7-8 minutes.  Then roll into a ball, put it back in the bowl, and cover with a damp cloth.  Leave it there for 1/2 hour to 3 hours.

Put a cast iron skillet on a medium flame to let it heat up.  Meanwhile, knead the dough again and then divide it into eight balls.  Roll each one out on a floured board until it's about five inches in diameter (it should be pretty thin).  Then place each roti directly on the skillet and within about 30 seconds it should start to puff up.  If this doesn't happen, the griddle probably isn't hot enough yet.  Flip the roti and let the other side cook about 30 seconds again.  Remove and gorge.

PS: this recipe, from Madhur Jaffrey's Invitation to Indian Cooking, is technically for "chapati."  But that is apparently the same as roti.

Friday: Caldo Verde

 

Caldo verde, made with lamb's quarters.

"Caldo verde" is a Goan, Portuguese-influenced dish, which calls for kale along with the potatoes, but here we substituted lamb's quarters instead.  You basically simmer the vegetables together for a long time and then puree - the only seasoning is onion and a huge amount of garlic.  It had a very thick, viscous texture because of the starch of the new potatoes.

We also made fresh roti - an unleavened flat bread, cooked on a cast-iron skillet - as an accompaniment.

Monday: It's not delivery, it's D4SA!

Homemade pizza with mozzarella and sunflower sprouts.

Pizza made from scratch on a Monday night might have been a challenge, but Lizz whipped up the dough early in the morning so that it could rise in the fridge during the day. With the dough already made and a jar of tomato puree from Norwich Meadows Farm at the ready, this wasn't a difficult meal. The sunflower sprouts, which were new to us, really do taste a bit like sunflower seeds. They were pretty strong raw, but mellowed when baked.

Wednesday: D4SA fusion night

Idli with stir-fried pea shoots in garlic-black bean sauce.

Idlies are small, steamed South Indian cakes made from a fermented rice and lentil (urad) batter. As you can see from the picture, they have a spongy texture which is perfect for sopping up sauces and chutneys. They also have a pleasant, slightly sour taste. In some parts of India they might serve as a breakfast food.

We had been hoarding some idli batter ever since our recent trip to Jackson Heights, but hadn't decided what to pair it with. We finally settled on this odd combination - the pea shoot recipe is actually Vietnamese. It was a great excuse to use the black bean sauce that Lizz impulse-purchased not too long ago at M2M. We don't know the current status of diplomatic relations between India and Vietnam, but these two dishes got along quite well!

Thursday special: Carrot cake triumph

Carrot cake with maple-cream cheese frosting.

Our CSA provides us with more carrots than two people could possibly eat. It probably provides us with more carrots than ten people could possibly eat. We concluded that we had no choice but to turn them into baked goods!

This was our first attempt at carrot cake. When we tried to find a recipe for it, we discovered that most carrot cakes are made with vast quantities of vegetable oil of one type or another. Apparently, this is what gives it that characteristic moist, very dense texture. (Butter would not have the same effect.) Since evicting the canola from the house, Giselle has been on a crusade against use of vegetable and nut oils in baking, so we needed to find an alternative. Luckily, a little internet research revealed that substituting applesauce (or, apparently, crushed pineapple) for oil will produce the same dense texture and moisture. We still had some of our homemade applesauce in the freezer, which has been waiting for its day in the sun ever since we went apple-picking last fall. Well: today was its day.

Not feeling entirely satisfied with any one carrot cake recipe on the internet, we cobbled this one together based on a few different sites:

FOR THE CAKE:

2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 cup shredded carrots
1 cup applesauce
2 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs

FOR THE ICING:

8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
5 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup

INSTRUCTIONS:

Combine flour and the rest of the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add carrots, applesauce, vanilla, and eggs and mix well. Pour batter into a greased and floured 13x9 inch baking dish and bake for 50-60 minutes or until cake is completely done in the middle. Allow to cool before frosting.
To make icing, combine cream cheese and butter, then add maple syrup and mix in powdered sugar. When it is a smooth consistency spread it over the sheet cake.

The final result was creamy and delicious, and was the perfect dessert for our dinner party.

Thursday: Having our cake...and eating it, too

Golden cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and homemade royal icing.

This is a first for us - a cake made completely from scratch, down to the icing. A student in Lizz's lab is graduating, and following lab tradition Lizz provided the homemade cake. As you can see, the cake featured a scientific theme (an illustration of the localized surface plasmon resonance of metal nanopaticles), as well as other lovely details, all thanks to Giselle (and a cake decorating kit).

Here's a close-up of the blue rosettes and the purple ribbon along the side of the cake:



Although the terms are often used interchangeably, there is in fact a distinction between frosting and icing. Frosting is the softer "all-over" layer, while icing is the harder substance used for the decorative elements.

Buttercream frosting is more or less what it sounds like: copious amounts of creamed butter and confectioner's sugar, plus a smaller amount of cream (or milk). The sugar and cream are added alternately to the butter until everything is blended.

Royal icing, on the other hand, is trickier (and more painful, if you don't have an electric mixer...which we don't). Egg whites are beaten with confectioner's sugar and a little vanilla until the mixture reaches the "stiff peaks" stage. Once it reaches this point, it can be separated into batches and mixed with food coloring. To make the decorations, it is spooned into a pastry bag and piped out through differently-shaped metal tips.



Not to be too modest or anything, but we thought that this cake was a rather amazing accomplishment.

Wednesday: Quiche Ambition

Pea shoot and garlic cheddar quiche with homemade crust.

Our fridge is currently stuffed with CSA eggs, and so a quiche seemed like a logical way to use some of them. A quiche is actually less work than you might think - with the exception of the crust, which is definitely as much work as you might think. In the past, we've (stop reading, Dad/Charles) actually purchased pre-made crusts to make quiche a quicker and easier weeknight meal, but tonight we decided to make everything from scratch.

We follow the basic quiche recipe in How to Cook Everything, and for the crust we used the suggested "Generous Pie Shell" recipe. It was indeed generous...with respect to butter, that is. Although the result was definitely better than a store-bought crust, I think we might have to try a less overwhelmingly buttery recipe next time.

Here's the crust before the addition of filling. Note the lovely scalloped edges, courtesy of Giselle:

Tuesday: Banana Muffins

Half whole/half white banana muffins.

Mark Bittman recently published a recipe for whole-wheat muffins incorporating fruit or vegetable puree to lend a natural sweetness, moisture, and a lighter texture. Giselle made these muffins using banana, and they came out quite well indeed.

Super Bowl Sunday (with Gumbo!)

Vegetarian gumbo with homemade crackers.

Gumbo is a thick soup, really more of a stew, which puts the natural sliminess of okra to good use. It comes to us from Louisiana, and so we felt it was appropriate to make as we cheered on the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV.

We had always thought of okra as the defining constituent of gumbo, but Wikipedia informs us that either okra or filé powder can be used as the thickener. (Filé powder is dried, ground sassafras leaves - we have yet to add it to our spice collection.) The recipe that we (loosely) followed actually called for both. Apparently this is not very authentic, nor is the addition of tofu. Gumbo would typically include shellfish, pork, or poultry.

In addition to the okra and/or filé powder, a roux base is used to make gumbo just a little bit thicker. To make a roux, flour is cooked in butter or oil over medium-low heat until it reaches the desired color, which can range from golden (a light roux) to copper-brown (a dark roux). Here, we started the gumbo with a dark roux.

To go with the gumbo, Giselle made crackers following Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything. These made use of our half-white flour from Cayuga Pure Organics, and they were topped with salt and nigella seeds.

Sunday brunch: Oh crepe

Homemade crepes with cranberry "preserves."

This is one of Giselle's favorite weekend breakfasts (though ideally it'd be served with some quality dulce de leche, which we haven't been able to find anywhere up north). These were again made with half white/half whole wheat bread flour. Hilariously, last time we made crepes we tried to use pastry flour, and were mystified when they kept falling apart as we tried to flip them. Based on today's success, this seems to be because the higher gluten content of bread flour helps the thin batter hold together better during cooking.

The cranberry "preserves" were made by cooking the remainder of our frozen cranberries into a sauce and sweetening to taste.

Try Giselle's family crepe recipe at home!:

CREPES

Dry ingredients:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp powdered or confectioner's sugar

Wet ingredients:
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup water (this is for all-purpose flour; if you are using bread flour, increase to 2/3 cup water)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, or grated lemon rind, or almond extract

Whisk the dry ingredients together in one bowl, and separately blend the wet ingredients in another. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Mix with a few swift strokes, being careful not to overmix. (It will be a little lumpy.)
Preheat a frying pan over low-medium heat and grease with a little butter. Add a small amount of batter, and then lift up the pan and tip it around in all directions so that the batter spreads out into a thin layer. Set it back down and wait until the top of the crepe looks dry. (E.g. when it stops glistening.) Then gently flip it over. Let it cook for about ten seconds, and then remove.

Serve by spreading on a layer of jam, lemon juice and powdered sugar, dulce de leche, or honey, and then rolling up the crepe. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar on top.

Thursday: Heavenly Pizza

Homemade pizza with butternut squash "sauce," walnuts, green olives, ricotta salata and Pecorino Toscano cheeses, and fresh parsley.

We really can't say enough about how good this is. We got the inspiration from a few online recipes that used a roasted butternut squash puree as a pizza sauce, but from there we decided to improvise with the rest of the toppings.

The dough was made with our local half white/half whole wheat bread flour. This was the first time we'd made pizza dough solely with bread flour instead of all-purpose, and we found it drastically improved the texture, giving it that great chewy consistency that pizza crust should have. The flavor improved too: instead of just being a vehicle for the toppings, the crust itself was toasty and interesting.

One of our favorite butternut squash recipes is this pasta sauce, which also pairs the squash with parsley and tangy ricotta salata to cut its sweetness, so we decided to import the same flavor profile into this recipe. To make it more complex, we added a second cheese - the Pecorino, which contributed some pungency - some chopped walnuts for texture, and quality green olives for a salty kick.

This might sound like a lot of trouble for pizza, but actually if we had made the dough in advance and frozen it for later use, this would have been a remarkably fast meal. We already had frozen butternut squash puree from our winter CSA, but that's also the type of thing you could prepare in bulk and then freeze in individual servings for later.

Sunday dinner: It's CHOWDA! Say it right!!

Hake chowder with homemade biscuits.

This was our first time making chowder - and quite a success. Chowder always seemed to us to be one of those meals that can only be had at a restaurant. But of course it's been a staple in the Northeast for years in average homes. After making it, we can see why: there's no easier or more practical winter meal than a mix of long-storing potatoes, fresh-caught winter fish, and a little dairy.

In this recipe the fillet gets chopped before being added, but as it cooks the pieces fall apart, giving the chowder that characteristic creamy texture. (In fact, this recipe actually contains no cream - only milk.) We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that this is of course a New England-style chowder, not a Manhattan or Rhode Island-style, which are tomato-based. The long and sordid history of the battle between these two chowder factions is featured extensively in The Food of a Younger Land, and we highly recommend the book to anyone invested in the question.

Faithful readers might notice that these biscuits look a little different from those we made only a short while ago - these are made mostly with whole wheat pastry flour, with only a little half-white bread flour added. Using pastry flour, which has a much lower protein content, changed the texture of the biscuits markedly: they had a much finer crumb and denser consistency.

In the past we always used to use "all-purpose" flour, which has a medium protein content and is therefore pretty versatile. But lately we've discovered the wonders of fresh-milled local bread and pastry flours, which frankly taste a lot better. We've found there's a learning curve involved because the two types of flour act differently in recipes; to cook with them, you need to get a sense of when to use each one and how to adapt recipes to cope with the higher or lower protein content. For example, bread flour can hold a lot more moisture than pastry flour, so to get a similar batter you might need to add a lot more milk or water when using bread flour.

(And by the way, yes, you DO have to say "chowda.")

Saturday special: Muffins

It's hard to find a good muffin. They're often either way too dense, or sticky and sickly sweet. We whipped up some basic muffins with frozen cranberries left over from the holiday as a part of our Saturday brunch this weekend.

Friday: 15 Minute Biscuits (Plus Soup)

Cream of heirloom tomato soup with homemade biscuits.

We made this comforting cream of tomato soup with special out-of-town guest chef Tom. The soup was pretty straightforward, although it benefited from the delicious heirloom tomatoes provided by our CSAs.

We follow Mark Bittman's standard recipe for biscuits; they're surprisingly quick and easy:

Biscuits

2 c all-purpose or cake flour
1 scant tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 - 5 tbsp cold butter
7/8 c milk

1. Preheat the oven to 450 F.

2. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and then use your hands to rub them into the dry mixture until the butter is thoroughly blended in. (It might look a little like bread crumbs.)

3. Stir in the milk just until the mixture forms a ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it 10 times - no more!

4. Press the dough into a 3/4 inch thick slab and cut into circles using the rim of a drinking glass. Place the rounds on an ungreased baking sheet.

5. Bake 7 - 9 minutes or until the biscuits are a beautiful golden brown.

Note: if you have yogurt, substitute it for the milk and reduce to 3 tsp baking powder.

Special Christmas PSA: Stollen

What is stollen, you ask? You must not have German grandparents. But seriously, stollen is a family Christmas tradition in the vein of panettone or fruitcake. But don't be put off by the mention of fruitcake - stollen is a soft, bready concoction studded with candied fruit, really more akin to challah in taste and texture.

Why only make it once a year? Well, aside from being a Dresden custom, making stollen is a huge pain in the butt(er). Because it needs several cycles of rising to develop its rich flavor, it takes about a day's worth of on-and-off labor to make one big batch. The process is much like that of any yeast bread, with a few extra complications: the batter is mixed, then left to rise and stirred down several times over the course of a few hours, adding butter halfway through. Afterwards even more flour is added to get the dough to its final bulk, followed by a few more cycles of kneading and rising. Some lemon juice, cardamom, vanilla, and almond extract are added for flavor.



The best part, of course, is adding your choice of candied fruits. Half of D4SA (Giselle) doesn't take too kindly to raisins, so we left them out, but traditionally they provide the bulk of the added fruit. We decided to stick with these guys:


Candied clementines, purchased from the Italian market


Green candied citron


Closeup of candied cherries

After some final cycles of kneading and resting, the dough is rolled out, braided into loaves, brushed with beaten egg and sprinkled with slivered almonds, and finally baked. When it comes out warm and shiny the final touch is a sprinkling of powdered sugar.



One day of kitchen craziness is worth it for this much Chrismas cheer.

Tuesday: Comforting Winter Stew

Chestnut-lentil soup with homemade biscuits.

In our pre-blog life, we had purchased chestnuts a few times and had always roasted them and eaten them plain. But this year we've discovered how versatile chestnuts are in cooking. Perhaps chestnuts have faded from the American culinary memory because of the blight, but good recipe ideas can be found in other countries, particularly Italy and Japan.

This thick soup, really more of a stew, combines chestnuts with brown lentils and carrots. The chestnuts and carrots both add a little sweetness and texture to the otherwise fairly standard lentil soup.

Biscuits are surprisingly easy and quick to make from scratch, and they require very few ingredients. You'll probably see them from time to time on this humble blog.

Yet more uses for summer squash

Usually there is a point at the end of the summer at which zucchini plants completely overrun the garden and overproduce their veggies, and everyone in the family gets sick of eating summer squash for dinner and desperately tries to give it away to neighbors. In any case, I recall that generally happening when I was growing up. Given our small New York apartment we don't have a garden nor the problem of overproducing zucchinis, but in honor of this summer tradition we decided to buy a bunch extra and make some good old-fashioned zucchini bread.

I imagine you can make this with other kinds of summer squashes, though I haven't ever tried - basically all quickbreads just call for adding a cup of grated, squeezed squash to the regular ingredients. This adds flavor and also moisture to the bread. You can make carrot bread, apple bread, and others in the same way.

Dinner party

Last night, we had a few friends over for dinner. (Not pictured: Richard.) In addition to the homemade ginger ale (see previous post), we made macaroni and cheese with a side of peas.



1 out of 1 Josephs agree - macaroni and cheese is delicious. (We used the local cheddar cheese from Hawthorne Valley Farm.)

To round out this very "American" dinner, we made a cherry cobbler with the pie cherries that we bought last week at the greenmarket:



Yum.