Food | mulberryshoots

October 12, 2015

ricotta stuffed shells for supper . . .

supper tonight!

giant pasta shells stuffed with whole-milk ricotta, grated romano cheese, a beaten egg, fresh thyme leaves, chives and basil leaves rolled up and cut into strips; filled shells placed face down on a thin layer of tomato sauce, then napped with more marinara tomato sauce, a healthy helping of grated mozzarella cheese and grated fresh parmigano cheese on top.

The quality of the cheeses makes all the difference, it seems to me. Unlike lasagna, the creaminess of the ricotta herb filling balances the acidity of the tomato sauce.

As a side, a caesar dressed hearts of romaine salad. simply scrumptious!

Note: the pasta shells were cooked al dente (6 minutes instead of 10) and the dish was baked at 350 degrees until top was browned – about a half hour (I upped the temp to 375 for the last 8 minutes.)

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October 11, 2015

today’s sunday breakfast . . .

Today’s Sunday breakfast: I’ve been wanting to try Ruth Reichl’s pancake recipe since her cookbook arrived last week and today seemed like a good to make them. But I used fresh buttermilk instead of milk as called for in her ingredients. Here’s Ruth’s recipe, a landslide favorite at Gourmet Magazine:

Melt 1 stick unsalted butter in skillet that you’re going to cook the pancakes in;
Whisk together 1 cup buttermilk (or milk), 2 organic large eggs & 1 tablespoon vegetable oil; then add butter to mixture;
Add 1 cup flour, 4 teaspoons of baking powder (without aluminum) and 4 teaspoons of sugar (scant) plus a pinch of salt.

Mix together by hand and cook the pancakes in the skillet that was used to melt the butter. Heat up some Jones country sausages in another pan until golden brown. Serve with butter, pure maple syrup and cups of hot coffee.

Enjoyed while reading the Sunday New York Times with my husband on a peaceful, sunny Sunday morning. Doesn’t get any better than this!

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October 9, 2015

caesar salad! . . .

A friend told me the other day that one of her favorite meals for lunch is caesar salad. And that the Vermont restaurant she went to near where she lived served “limp lettuce” and the dressing wasn’t very tasty. She said she “loved anchovies” – which coincided with her affection for oysters, clams and other seafood that I also love. We go out for lunch together every two weeks or so when we meet up at an antiques group shop that she runs in New Hampshire.

So today, I bought some buttermilk and a tin of flat anchovies at the grocery store. I rinsed out my small size red Cuisinart food processor and dried it before adding in the following:

2 fresh cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled and ends trimmed

2 fillets of anchovies

Whizzed those ingredients in the small processor; then added:

scant cup Hellmann’s mayonnaise

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice

1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (on a microplane)

small dash of Worcestershire sauce

coarse black pepper (there’s already a lot of salt in the anchovies and parmesan)

1/4 cup of fresh buttermilk (Kate’s)

Blended all of the above in the processor and tasted it: DIVINE!! added a little more buttermilk to thin it out and poured into a clean glass jar.

The recipe I followed (and tweaked) mentioned the dressing is better after it sits in the refrigerator for about 3 hours. It also stated that it would hard to resist dipping a spoon into it for a taste (it’s so good!)

I closed up the tin of flat anchovies and wrapped it tightly in a plastic bag, storing it in the freezer door for future use.

I wanted to try it out for lunch and opened up some hearts of romaine. Into my favorite green bowl, I broke some of the tender center leaves into bite size pieces, added garlic croutons and a few salad shrimp. After adding the dressing and tossing, I grated a little parmesan cheese on top.

It tasted scrumptious! light, tasty and satisfying. The dressing is a keeper recipe for sure and the green salad base could be a supper one-bowl dish with some grilled salmon or teriyaki chicken tenders on top. Yum!

Postscript (a week later): I’ve just made this salad dressing again and have tweaked it slightly. To me, the flavors are a little stronger, more piquant and so tasty that I have to go and have a spoonful every once in awhile. Stored in a glass jar (previous salsa size) with a screw top:

4-5 fillets of anchovies; 3 cloves of garlic, smashed and cut up; (run through small food processor before adding other ingredients.) Add 1/3 cup shredded romano cheese and process with the garlic/anchovy mixture. Then add cup of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of Poupon dijon mustard, splash of Worcestershire sauce, Maldon salt and coarse pepper; 1/4 cup of cream/milk. Run processor until smooth. Taste for seasoning. Add more cream (or buttermilk) if too thick. Pour into glass jar and lick the bowl.

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September 30, 2015

a new classic in cookery writing . . .

“Ruth Reichl – My Kitchen Year” is a wonderful book that also happens to be a cookbook that I can cook from every day. As a memoir of her days after Gourmet magazine abruptly closed, it’s easy to understand how she returned to the kitchen to assuage her grief during a time of uncertainty. Be that as it may, this book contains handwritten chapter headings with poignant photographs of the countryside throughout the seasons surrounding her home in New York state along with recipes that are classic and easy to follow. There are no foodie stylists around, just one photographer who takes the picture, then joins in eating the goods. This book is intimate in its charm and fresh with recipes that are classic updated with contemporary touches.

I happen to cook a lot and to also cook dishes that are similar to the ones that Ruth Reichl celebrates here. . . although she manages to insert special little touches that I hadn’t thought of before. For example, combining chopped shallots and onions to finest grated cheddar cheese before making a grilled sourdough cheese sandwich. Or, her best fried chicken brined in salt, then soaked in buttermilk and ONION before frying in coconut oil and butter.

Above and beyond the visual and culinary treats that this book offers, it also contains anecdotes that are poignant to Ruth Reichl – one of a woman offering to treat her to a sandwich while she’s waiting in an airport after the sudden demise of Gourmet magazine. Or the memory evoked during a fried chicken picnic at Tanglewood of a youthful trip to Israel, forced on her by her parents where she met another young woman who happened to be Carole King – who, along with James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma, provided the program for that Tanglewood fried-chicken picnic evening.

This all makes me feel that Ruth Reichl has lived a blessed life despite the very public humiliation of the closing of her Gourmet magazine after ten years as its editor. She’s married to Michael who is 75 who happily eats her blinis with sour cream and salmon roe in her videos, she also has a son whom she adores. Best of all, she’s moved from New York City to a low slung contemporary house in New York State that was built overlooking beautiful countryside with nearby farms and other provisioners of vegetables, cheeses and other organic goodies.

It almost seems like the whole demise-cum-survival scenario was “meant to be” as the next chapters of her and her family’s life. She just didn’t know it at the time.

I’ve always liked Ruth Reichl through years of reading cookery magazines and cookbooks. The graphics of those Gourmet magazines under her stewardship were unbelievably rich and beautiful if you might recall. I’ve saved all my copies of Gourmet from those times because they were such a feast for the eyes as well as for the kitchen. And with these few rainy days, I’m looking forward to pulling them out and looking at them once again.

In this book, I am particularly looking forward to trying her New York cheesecake recipe with the chocolate wafer crust and sour cream glaze, and other homey recipes like shirred eggs with pureed potatoes for supper with a simple green salad.

Finally, she makes a big deal out of making turkey stock for gravy at Thanksgiving – and she’s absolutely right that no matter how the roasted bird turns out, the stuffing and the mashed potatoes, with a deeply rich “made from scratch” turkey gravy, everybody will love whatever is on their plate. Not that Ruth Reichl’s “other” offerings would be anything other than tasty and tender.

I’ve reached a time when I shouldn’t be buying any more cookbooks. My cookery library started with Elizabeth David’s Penguin editions and expanded through the years with books by M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Alice Waters, the River Cafe, Nigel Slater, the Conrans, Thomas Keller, Noma and Judy Rodgers. (We celebrated Christmas Eve with Judy Rodgers’ roast chicken and bread salad two years ago when she died at the age of 57 a few weeks before Christmas. It was out of this world and memorably delicious! – see photo on right)

Still, I think that this new volume by Ruth Reichl will now be my favorite and will be a standby to look through for new things to try and to tweak classic recipes I’ve already made many times. It is a beautiful volume on so many levels.

In an interview published by the New York Times last week, Ruth Reichl was quoted as saying “You should have as much fun as you can because you don’t know what’s coming down the road.” Well, it looks like she not only survived what she didn’t see coming down the road, but with this memoir/cookbook, she’s also managed to illustrate how she’s landed on her feet, built a new home and produced what I think will become a true classic in the ever mushrooming world of cooking.

Good for her! – and good for us too!

Postscript: since this post was written, I’ve tried out Ruth Reichl’s pancake recipe. The only change I made was to use buttermilk instead of whole milk. They are truly the best pancakes I’ve ever had – delectably tender in the middle and slightly crispy on the edges. You might think pancakes are easy to make (and they are) but this recipe is head and shoulders (and different) from any others that I’ve tried.

Am also looking forward to roasting filet of beef sprinkled with truffle salt and eaten at room temperature with leftovers for sandwiches the next day!

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September 20, 2015

“chef’s table” . . .

I’ve been watching a documentary series called “Chef’s Table” on Netflix and am two thirds of the way through them. In each one, a chef is featured along with a biographical sketch and geographical context (Italy, Patagonia, New York, L.A.) The format is crisp and the photography is gorgeous. Way better than the standard fare on PBS!

The protagonists selected are not “pop stars” of cuisine as featured on the Cooking Channel. Instead, the message of each one depicts the individual journey each person follows in order to discover and create his/her own identity in the food that they prepare and serve. Instead of imitating and replicating the kind of cuisine that one has been taught, they use the techniques to discover or rediscover their cultural origins and most importantly, what they really want to do with their cooking. And we thought cooking was just about satisfying us because we’re hungry?

So, the “holy grail”quest for chefs portrayed in this series is finding one’s identity in one’s cooking. In writing, it’s called finding your voice. It’s not enough just to provide tasty dishes, the soul of the chef must be communicated to those who eat his/her food. I’ve experienced this while listening to pianists who succeed in communicating in this way to listeners and you can tell when it’s there and regrettably, when it’s not.

And these chefs are very human, warts and all – Dan Barber is particularly cranky and verbally abusive to his “team” of chefs in the kitchen. He owns up to the fact that he has a temper but doesn’t care to do much about it, even while the camera is rolling as he criticizes and swears at his sous chefs.

Ego is a big element too, especially with the male chef, Francis Mallman who revels repeatedly about his freedom to wander and to love and leave whomever and whenever he feels like it, traveling four-five times a week. When he was invited to participate in an international cooking competition in Europe (he’s from Argentina) he smuggled in half a ton of Andes potatoes, creating ten dishes including dessert made from his native spuds. He won, by the way.

Or, reverse ego with the Japanese woman chef (Niki Nakayama) who comes off as defensive, wanting to please and to succeed because people say she can’t. Couldn’t the producers have found a female chef who didn’t epitomize issues of chauvinism all around? Oh, and they also chose to out her relationship with her female sous chef as part of the gratuitous characterization of the one woman chef in the series. Really?

One “farm to table” chapter (Dan Barber) illustrated how our food products have been so over-processed to make profits for the manufacturers that there is no taste nor nutrition left in what we are offered in grocery stores. For example, what does true wheat tastes like? One grower was astonished to be asked to develop a smaller butternut squash with less water and more flavor, saying that he had never been asked to grow something to taste better, only to enhance crop production and shelf life.

So, if you follow that thread and look around you, one discovers that what we buy is for the benefit of the producers in terms of profit and not nutrition and taste for consumers. DUH!!??? How did it take this long for us to realize this economic reality so that we can pay more attention to what we buy and how we cook?

We’ll probably never serve the kinds of dishes featured in these restaurants nor cook meals over huge fires dug into the earth, but our eyes and ears can be opened further by this very interesting documentary series called “Chef’s Table.”

Quality is dependent upon what goes into the food we eat and it’s helpful to recognize that we’re not getting it in most grocery stores. The chefs’ search for identity aside, the photography of wilderness and closeups of food offer a moveable feast for any foodie who likes to eat or to cook, especially both.

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September 16, 2015

“have as much fun as you can” . . .

This morning at breakfast, I read a quotation to live by from Ruth Reichl, cook and former head of Gourmet Magazine:

“At this point in your life,” she said, “you have to have as much fun in life as you can because you don’t know what’s coming down the road.”

She is 67 and her husband, Michael Singer, is 75. They live in a vast glass house they built eleven years ago in New York State. More can be found at this link:

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September 13, 2015

sunday supper . . .

Twice-baked potatoes are a favorite of a friend of ours. He’s joining us for dinner tonight and everything on the menu can be eaten easily with just a fork: roast chicken, yellow beans and the baked potatoes. I put them in the oven midday, oiling the skins with a little vegetable oil after pricking the skins all over – having had a burst baked potato in the oven when I forgot to do that.

They came out of the oven beautifully baked, slightly soft to the touch and yielding their tender insides to the mixing bowl, beaten gently using an electric mixer, the milk, butter and salt combining smoothly into a thick, creamy mixture. Scooped back into the baked skins, I mounded them high and sprinkled grated cheddar cheese on top.

When the roast chicken is done, resting after its own high-temperature stint in the oven, unsalted butter slathered all over the golden skin anointing the bird at the end, I’ll place the potatoes to bake its second time, melding the flavors and melting the cheese on top. The yellow beans take awhile to cook so that they are tender to the bite.

And so this meal is our supper on a cool, September Sunday.

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August 28, 2015

a nice vinaigrette! . . .

Last night, I tried out a new way to make vinaigrette. It included Alice Waters’ process of macerating a clove of garlic with salt in a mortar and pestle before adding vinegar and oil. Here’s the recipe with tweaking suggestions. It’s a combination of Alice Waters’ garlic process and my own vinaigrette ingredients.

Its success depends on tweaking the amount of vinegars, sugar and garlic – the macerated garlic tends to make it a little bitter, I think.

1. Peel a good sized clove of garlic. cut into pieces to make pounding it easier.

2. In a mortar with a pestle, scrape and press the garlic with 2-3 pinches of Maldon salt (sea salt) until the garlic is pureed.

This is not as easy as it sounds and I’m thinking you could do it in a small food processor too.

3. Add 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and 2 tablespoons Marukan gourmet seasoned Japanese vinegar.

4. Whisk in 6 tablespoons of olive oil until well combined.

5. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of Poupon Dijon country mustard

6. Add cracked pepper and zest/juice of a wedge of fresh lemon to taste.

Now, you’ve got the basics and the tweaking begins – let it sit for a few minutes, whisk it again and dip a leaf of lettuce in it.

If it’s too bitter, I added more Marukan vinegar and more lemon. If it’s too sour, add a dab more sugar.

It’s very important to empty your greens into a salad spinner and soak it in very cold water. Rinse well and spin it thoroughly. Then store the spun greens in the fridge. This cleaning and rinsing step provides a freshness and the cold air a crispiness to the greens. Doing this ahead of time makes it so much easier to put the salad together when dinner is ready.

I like to keep a salad simple without too many ingredients since the dressing is complex. A handful of fresh thyme, basil cut up in strips goes with anything you want to include: fresh tomatoes, cucumber, red onion.

If I’m making a salad with fruit (fresh orange sections or pears with or without pomegranate seeds) I would omit the garlic macerating step and just make the vinaigrette with some chopped up garlic pieces marinating in the dressing ahead of time. The vinaigrette keeps in the fridge and also at room temperature if it’s not too hot.

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August 28, 2015

a new chocolate cake! . . .

There’s been a sour cream chocolate cake made with cocoa that has been a favorite in my family since my kids were young. It was called Ethel Bruce’s Grandmother’s chocolate cake. Yesterday, I couldn’t find the recipe and looked online for a “chocolate sour cream cake recipe.” I found one and decided to make a few changes to it and make it for dessert tonight.

We are having a dinner celebration for someone who has just passed his Ph.D. exams and the cake will top off a dinner menu of wild Atlantic salmon, farm stand corn on the cob and a big green salad with garden tomatoes from next door and fresh thyme, chives and basil.

I’ve discovered that if I cut dessert recipes in half that there’s more than enough for four (with enough left over for tomorrow night too!) and that it’s more fun to make a good-looking cake in an antique cake tin too! So, here’s the recipe I followed:

Dark Chocolate Sour Cream Cake:

1/2 cup Ghiardelli unsweetened baking cocoa (already had some in the pantry!)

1/2 cup boiling water

1 stick unsalted butter softened (in the microwave)

1 1/4 cup turbinado sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon Maldon sea salt

1/2 cup sour cream (I used Oikos Greek plain yogurt)

Boil water and combine with powdered cocoa to blend. With mixer on low, add butter, sugar and eggs gradually and mix at medium speed. Combine dry ingredients and add slowly while mixing. Lastly, add the sour cream or yogurt and combine.

I used a 9 inch fluted antique cake pan which had an indented bottom. I buttered it thoroughly making sure all the ridges had butter on them. Filled the pan with the batter and found it was too full. Spooned out three paper muffin cups with batter to bake in a separate pan.

Preheated the oven to 350 degrees. Baked the cakes with a sheet of aluminum foil underneath to catch any overrun drips. Thankfully, the batter held in the fluted pan.

Tested at 25 minutes and left in for another 8 minutes. When toothpicks came out clean, turned off the oven, opened the door and slid the rack halfway out of the oven. Let sit for 10 minutes so cake would not fall. Moved to a plate and countertop to cool.

Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting:

I’ve made very thin chocolate chip cookies before with cut-up bars of Lindt or Ghiardelli chocolate and toasted macadamia nuts before with yummy results. So instead of using semi-sweet chocolate chips for this frosting, I’m using a 3.5 ounce bar of Lindt dark chocolate (smooth texture,) breaking the chocolate into small pieces.

Melt chocolate with half stick unsalted butter in the microwave. Stir to combine.

Add 1/2 cup sour cream (no substitutions here) and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. With mixer, add 1 cup confectioners sugar and taste. Add a little more up to 1 1/2 cups total so that it is not too sweet. Chill.

When cake and frosting are cooled, frost the cake (and cupcakes) leaving the edges showing to make it easier to loosen the cake from the fluted edge of the pan.

So, this goes to show that one can move forward from the past and that there are no hard and fast rules that one has to follow to make something delicious and a little different. Making the frosting from a dark chocolate bar as a departure from boring semi-chocolate chips elevates the flavor of the frosting (and the cake) to another level.

I guess that’s what they mean when they talk about letting go of the past and taking life to the next level, right?

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August 25, 2015

national peach pie day! . . .

Someone said that today is National Peach Pie Day.

So, here’s our contribution, made with a shortcrust lattice edging and woven top; no bottom crust; peeled fresh peaches from our local Concord farm stand, Verrill Farm. To sliced peaches, added a tablespoon of flour, heaping teaspoons of cinnamon and nutmeg, 1 tablespoon of agave nectar, dotted with unsalted butter before weaving lattice top (like a potholder when I was 7!)

Shortcrust pie crust made this a.m. in small food processor: 1 cup flour, 1/3 stick cold butter, 2 Tablespoons cold lard; 4-5 tablespoons ice water. Whirred dry ingredients until blended, then added ice water until blended into a ball– wrapped and refrigerated until ready to use.

These lattice strips were cut with a vintage handmade wooden pastry wheel. Brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with turbinado sugar. Baked at 375 for 15-20 minutes until brown and bubbly. Will serve with a scoop of Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream on warm pie after supper tonight.

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Category: Food