Food | mulberryshoots

February 10, 2015

“Ivan Ramen” . . . sort of

Have you seen the Japanese movie, “Tampopo”? It’s pretty old but it’s a classic about making ramen, a soup noodle in broth simmered for days. “Ivan Ramen” is a memoir cum cookbook about an American from New York who goes to Tokyo and opens a ramen shop.

Just to be clear, the ramen I’m talking about in this post is not the instant ramen noodles in colorful cellophane packets that college students eat for four years plus maybe longer when they’re starting out looking for a job and a place to live. My favorite brand of instant ramen is Sapporo Ichiban. It’s great cooked up quickly for lunch with a handful of baby spinach thrown in just before serving.

Nope, the ramen I’m talking about in this post, in “Ivan Ramen” and in Tampopo, is handmade. The taste and texture of handmade fresh ramen noodles and instant is night and day. Ditto, the soup broth. Then there’s all the add-ons: barbecued pork (char sui) or pork belly, Chinese spinach, halves of a boiled egg, fresh cilantro–you get the picture. Ivan’s cookery book gives detailed instructions on how to make chicken stock from scratch which takes 9 hours of simmering a whole chicken. He combines chicken broth with freshly made dashi broth (seaweed based.)

Because I’m not crazy although I am retired and might have the time to follow Ivan’s recipes, my predisposition is to simplify and still achieve an acceptable meal with a lot less trouble and expense. Here’s my experiment:

1. Make chicken stock using three lbs. of fresh chicken bones from the local asian grocery instead of using a whole chicken. This morning, I roasted the chicken bones for almost an hour, then made broth, simmering for a few hours.

2. Make dashi from kombu, bonito flakes and enrich with a little instant dashi granules.

3. Use fresh Chinese thin noodles from the Asian grocery instead of making from scratch (this one is truly a no-brainer.)

4. Buy char sui pork (barbecued pork) from Chinatown available at the local Vietnamese grocery store on Saturdays (ditto.)

5. De-stem and wash Chinese spinach leaves and rinse fresh cilantro.

6. Boil eggs and hold in ice water.

In ramen sized bowls, place stemmed washed spinach in the bottom of the bowl. Add cooked fresh Chinese noodles in layers. Place slices of Char Sui pork (Chinese barbecued pork). Add boiling hot soup broth, filling the dish. Garnish with eggs sliced in half, sprinkle with fresh cilantro and chopped scallions.

One bowl noodle, spinach and pork in broth is a nice way to handle supper in the midst of these New England snowstorms. Oh, and our hot water heater was finally repaired this afternoon so I ran an overloaded dishwasher through a wash and dry cycle, emptied the warm dishes, glasses and clean silverware before I began assembling our one-bowl ramen noodle supper.

While G. went outside to do more snowblowing to clear areas to make room for more snow expected yesterday and today, I decided to make a half batch of chocolate chip cookies. Using the last stick of unsalted butter, I mixed the cookie dough by hand and baked small cookies for when G. came in from the cold. His face lit up as he reached for a couple of cookies during this very snowy couple of weeks here in New England.

a batch of chocolate chip cookies . . .

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February 7, 2015

“be happy!” . . .

“Be Happy!” That was what my favorite cousin who died a year or so ago, said to me on our last visit together. I was reminded of Pei-Fen today when I saw a photo in the NYTimes of the Martha Graham dance company dancers in motion. Pei-Fen had danced with Martha Graham and Ted Shawn in the last mid-century. Her second husband was composer and clarinetist, Meyer Kupferman. I read in one of the chats online that people lined up to visit them not just for music camaraderie but especially for Pei-Fen’s cooking.

On that note, her cooking was very individual and representative of her nature. The last time we had a meal together in Rhinebeck, New York, she served a single dish for our lunch: Buddha’s Delight on wooden plates. I’ve sampled this dish elsewhere since it’s a favorite dish, and was delighted that she had made it for our leisurely lunch, but also so that I could get a glimpse of how she had prepared it. Everything was cut meticulously. That’s the main message of her dish–the soaked cellophane noodles, tiger lilies, dried shitake mushrooms reconstituted in warm water, tree ear (an important textural element), a little sliced cabbage and seasonings. When I make it, the dish tastes all right but the texture is not the same–I haven’t managed to get everything sliced and trimmed as tidily as she did when making this dish. Her Buddha’s Delight dish was, well, buddha-like in its harmonic simplicity. There was a peaceful aura about it too.

In any event, the photo of Martha Graham Company dancers in the Times today brought back this instant image, memory and message from Pei Fen. “Be Happy” she had said to me, holding my hand, knowing about my family background, my parents and how life had unfolded for me. I took her advice to heart. I remember it when I am feeling down or depressed about things. And how is it that one can uplift one’s spirits to be happy?

Simple: take away what is not working in one’s life and put it aside. Be in the moment of a winter’s day with the sun gilding the horizon, trying to come out in the mid-morning light. Marvel at the whiteness of the snow that has blanketed everything. Be thankful that our hot water tank is working again and it was only the pilot light that got blown out by a draft last night, sparing us the expense of having to call the plumber and replace it on a Friday before the weekend.

Observe how actually nothing is wrong, right this moment. Rejoice that my vertigo is diminishing simply from performing some simple gravity-driven maneuvers called the “Epley Maneuver” for a benign crystal floating around in my inner ear rather than something that might be more serious.

Be glad that my husband and I are so lucky to be together even when things are hard around us that are outside of our control. And let go of how others behave–you can’t do anything about it anyhow by reacting to it. Save and conserve my energy instead of letting it dissipate willy-nilly.

We have a local Councillor with the initials “PP” who has been loyal, consistent and gone to bat for our causes in the past decades: defeating a wetlands development plan two or three times so far; advocating for protecting uninfested trees from rampant clear-cutting during an infestation of beetles in our town. Two years ago during the holidays, I made some mince pies using my Breville pie maker after coming upon jars of British mincemeat at a local emporium. We gave some to PP, family and neighbors.

G. saw PP last night at a hearing to try and save more trees (5000 of them) from being clear-cut by the USDA. We suspect that authorities are more interested in spending their budget so that they can ask for more money rather than doing right by our trees. In any case, I’m going to pick up some prepared pie crusts to make some of these miniature mince pies this weekend and brighten up the kitchen with the delicious smells–and for G. to bring some over to PP as a thank-you for his efforts. He loved them before and there was a twinkle in his eye last night when G. mentioned that there might be more coming soon.

Robertson’s Mincemeat ingredients: apples, raisins, sultanas, candied mixed orange peel, lemon peel, treacle, currants, sugar and spices, everything nice!

So, there you are. Being happy is easy when I focus on what I am grateful for and to do something that makes someone else happy. Mince pies are perfect! They smell divine while they are cooking and are so tasty eaten with a wedge of cheddar cheese.

Being happy is a choice and I choose it! Thanks, Pei-Fen.

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February 4, 2015

after the (big) game . . .

This morning, I made an almond-banana smoothie for breakfast.

Martha Rose Schulman’s recipe includes a frozen banana, flax seeds, some almond butter, a drop of almond extract and a splash of cold buttermilk. Refreshing.

Here’s the best joke I’ve come across online about the Super Bowl this weekend:

Reporter to Pete Carroll:

“Hey, Pete, would you like to win the Super Bowl?” Pete: “No thanks, I think I’ll pass.”

The Patriots landed at Logan Airport and the celebratory Duck Boats parade is scheduled today despite snow removal and public transportation issues in Boston. Fingers crossed that all will go well.

The snow continued yesterday and the temperature is below zero this morning as I write this post.

Hope it warms up a little soon.

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January 14, 2015

buttermilk biscuit crust . . .

I couldn’t decide whether to call this post “chicken pot pie” or “buttermilk biscuit crust” since both are essential halves of tonight’s supper.

Yesterday, I went to Market Basket (the supermarket chain whose employees went on strike en masse this summer for over two months to reinstate their fired CEO, Arthur T. DeMoulas). I came home with a freshly roasted whole chicken for $4.69! You can’t even buy an uncooked whole bird for that. For supper, G. and I ate the dark meat of the bird along with some corn muffins cut in half, browned in a skillet and a large green salad.

This afternoon, we had chicken sandwiches for lunch from the wings and the rest of the dark meat. Since we’re not white meat eaters (could you tell?) I decided to cook onions, carrots, and cubed chicken breast in a bath of chicken broth until heated through. Then added frozen petite peas. I tasted the stock and it was savory, thickened with a little flour/broth combo that I stirred into the casserole. On the side, I browned half a dozen large button mushrooms in butter, cutting them into large chunks to add at the last minute before putting on the crust and baking the pot pie in the oven.

Even though I had a Pillsbury pie crust in the freezer, I had a hankering for fresh buttermilk biscuit topping to put on top of the fresh ingredients in the pot pie. Since there was a fresh bottle of buttermilk in the fridge, I mixed some flour with very cold butter cut into tiny droplets. I used my trusty Wusthof serrated paring knife, cutting a half stick of butter into thin slices, turning it over, cutting more thin slices and then cutting crosswise letting tiny drops of cold butter fall into the flour with a small pinch of Maldon salt into the bowl.

I mixed the dry flour/butter mixture with my fingers, rubbing the butter bits into the flour until well mixed. Fluffing it with a fork, I added 2 teaspoons of fresh baking powder. Poured a half cup of cold buttermilk into the flour mixture with some leftover in a glass for me to drink (yum!)

After mixing gently with a rubber spatula, I lightly kneaded the dough a few times. Patting it together, I wrapped it in plastic and placed the dough in the fridge until ready to roll out for the top crust of the chicken pot pie.

Another important part of the recipe (learned the hard way) is to heat the chicken filling very gently to make sure it’s bubbling when put into the oven AND that there’s enough broth/gravy for the biscuit crust will absorb. So just to be sure, I made some more stock, added it and allowed it to cook down in the chicken casserole just barely simmering on top of the stove.

About forty-five minutes before supper, I heated the oven to 400 degrees, brought the pot pie in its copper au gratin pot to a bare simmer and rolled out the crust, using the cold dough from the fridge. I added the chunks of mushrooms to the chicken mixture and gently fitted the crust onto the top of the pan. Into the oven it went for about half an hour plus or until the top of the crust became golden brown and the biscuit top cooked through. I made slits in the buttermilk crust to allow steam to escape and put a baking sheet lined in aluminum foil underneath just in case the gravy dripped into the oven.

It took a bit of preparation this afternoon, but we can now feel good about eating a piping hot savory chicken pot pie and finishing all of the roasted bird from yesterday. There’s probably enough leftover for our lunch tomorrow!

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November 19, 2014

that old chestnut! . . .

roasted chestnuts worth their weight in gold . . .

I don’t know if you have ever had roast chestnut dressing with Thanksgiving turkey, but I’ve been making it for over forty years. During that time, I have wrestled with probably a ton of these nuts, going from store to store to find ones that aren’t dried out or rotten inside. That is, if you can even get the peel off without the brown crusty skin sticking to the nutmeat so it’s not usable unless you scrape it out with a spoon. None of the roasting temperatures work including Martha Stewart’s recipe: slicing into the shell whether it’s an “X” or making a slit in the center to let steam out of the chestnut and roasting them in a hot oven for varying timetables from 20 minutes to an hour (!) just don’t work. They haven’t for me for years, which is why I start vetting chestnuts that I can find shortly after Halloween in order to harvest a small cache of tender nutmeats to use in the herb Pepperidge Farm crumb stuffing that I make double quantities of and serve with homemade turkey stock/gravy on top. Some years, the turkey itself seems peripheral to the roast chestnut stuffing and gravy which people love to eat the most.

This year, I had already gone through two sets of chestnuts purchased at the Stop and Shop and at Market Basket. The MB ones were peelable but were tough and tasteless out of the shell. I stuck them in a ziploc bag in the freezer anyhow, thinking I might be able to boil them later to make them more tender if I didn’t have anything else. The Stop and Shop group stuck to their brown fuzzy inner skins and I had only about half a cup of usable nutmeats after roasting and shelling them. That’s twelve dollars down the drain already. I waited to see if Trader Joe’s had chestnuts for sale because I remember last year that theirs were the best. Yesterday, I called TJ and they had just gotten their chestnuts in. I went down and bought two packs of Italian chestnuts, that brand solely available through Trader Joe’s.

In the meantime, I had gone on Youtube to see if people had success harvesting roasted chestnuts and what their methods were. I came across one that microwaved theirs for three minutes after rinsing in cold water first after slitting the shells. Then, I came upon one that made the most sense from a physics/chemistry perspective which also had a video showing roasted chestnuts popping out of their shells with hardly any human intervention.

This method required cutting down each side of the chestnut with a sharp knife. I used a serrated paring knife–and cut them on a layer of soft kitchen towel, otherwise the nuts slip around on a cutting board and you could injure yourself. Having sliced the chestnut down either side, then placed the chestnuts into a large pot of cold water and which I brought to a rolling boil. Let the chestnuts sit in the pot off the heat for twenty minutes. Already, a couple of them had opened up to show a nut inside free of the brown skin, a very good sign. The final step of this method was to then roast them in a preheated oven set at 400 degrees for 20-35 minutes (start checking them after 20 minutes,) placing the still wet chestnuts on a cookie sheet.

parboiling chestnuts. . .

The combination of a) slitting the chestnuts open (long cuts all the way down each side) sufficient for water to enter and permeate the shell, b) parboiling them so that hot water entered the slits inside the chestnuts to loosen the brown skin from the nut; and then c) baking the wet chestnuts in a very hot oven for the final actual roasting step provided extra insurance that the whole thing pops out of the shell at the end of the process.

Because we are so fond of roasted chestnuts to eat, as well as to have in our turkey dressing, this three-part invention for harvesting chestnuts is a Godsend. It also requires, however, that you buy good chestnuts to begin with. I’ve found that loose ones in grocery stores a week before Thanksgiving are often dried out and have rotten parts in more than half of the ones that you buy. Trader Joe’s chestnuts from Italy are the ONLY ones that I have found that are not that way. So, if you want to save a lot of money ($5.99 a pound!) perhaps you’d like to try theirs.

split open chestnuts roasting in the oven. . .

If it works, I’m happy that we’ll be able to eat chestnuts forevermore instead of giving up on them, which is where I was after the second batch of unsuccessful batch last week–and together with other winter fruit like tiny juicy clementines & persimmons you have to buy to ripen on the windowsill that make the Fall a wonderful season of Thanksgiving that keeps on going through the Winter holidays.

And this little experiment reminds me that “Where there’s a will, there’s always (another) way!”

Thank you, Youtube!

freshly peeled . . .

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October 31, 2014

a new england fall day . . .

fall flowers from the garden . . .

The weather has been temperate lately here in New England. The light is soft in the morning and late afternoons, the sun is out for most of the day and the temperature has been in the 60’s and 70’s. Good weather to pay our respects to Tom Menino, Mayor of Boston for twenty years who died yesterday a.m. around 9 o’clock. Tributes on TV have shown examples of his achievements, especially in the revitalization of Boston, his work with the underprivileged and his connections with a wide spectrum of people from all sorts of venues, businesses and walks of life. We are lucky that he was such a strong champion for the city of Boston, the people who live and visit here and that he served with so much dedication and resolve. So, here’s to Tom Menino for a life, well-lived.

Speaking of well-lived lives, a book arrived a couple of days ago that exemplifies living with passion (and luxury) in the Medoc countryside of France. Mimi Thorisson’s cookery book, illuminated (that’s the only word for it) by the photographs taken by her husband, Oddur Thorisson, is a cooking biography of a family with seven offspring (his two and their five) and terriers (he breeds them) too numerous to keep count. I had pre-ordered the book from Amazon because her blog, “Manger” had been previewing recipes for some months now in anticipation of their book’s publication.

Seeing her home, countryside and dishes serves as an exciting source of inspiration to live as wholly in my own kitchen and home as I can, each day. I have been remembering that I have a pair of large shino dinner plates in the cupboard that haven’t been used in awhile. Ditto for some other earthenware plates glazed with off-white nautilus spirals. If one is domestically inclined, this kind of book is truly one to savor, admire and enjoy. Kudos to the Thorissens and the passion with which they seem to do everything (looking for cepes in the wet woods for hours to no avail; then making ravioli with a handful that belatedly appear.) I’m glad that the two missing puppies were returned by the nefarious/mischevious fellow who brought them back on the day before Christmas for a “price.”

Later today, I’m planning to meet my daughter C. for afternoon coffee at Verrill Farms in Concord near the high school where she teaches. Along the way there, I’ll stop by Idylwylde Farms in Acton to pick up two small Bell & Evans chickens to make Judy Rodger’s recipe, (roast chicken with bread salad) to serve dinner guests tomorrow evening. In the roasting pan will go carrots, onions and some turnips. As a side dish, I’ll use up the portobella mushrooms in the fridge and stuff them with creamed spinach and garlicky crumbs. Verrill Farms makes delicious pumpkin pie which I’m hoping to pick up for dessert.

We are grateful for these beautiful fall days and feel fortunate in the midst of a swirling hostile world of political crises to be able to be with family, friends and each other.

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October 27, 2014

kabocha squash, and tonight’s dinner . . .

roasted kabocha squash . . .

Have you ever cooked a kabocha squash? Maybe not. They’re not all that commonly found in the grocery store. You’ll come across it in Asian markets and also health food stores. Its origin is Japanese and it’s not altogether evident when you bring home this compact squash what to do with it exactly. It has a hard texture to the dark green striated skin. I’ve had it before in Japanese restaurants and it tastes like a squash but its flesh tastes more like a hearty sweet potato.

Mine has been sitting on the kitchen counter for a few days, reminding me that I wanted to roast it to go with a meal. Yesterday, we had a cabbage moo-shi filling leftover meal, using the homemade wrappers that I made on Saturday to go with the roast duck I picked up from the Vietnamese market in town. For supper tonight, I’m heating up leftover brown rice, stirring it together with some scallions, eggs and the leftover moo-shi vegetables with a dollop of oyster sauce for flavor.

Alongside, there will be a bowl of gently steamed eggs, the heat so low that the custard of the eggs is smooth as silk. A little higher heat and the steamed eggs go to pot, that is, they puff up, filled with air and the silky texture is lost forever. Lest this sound too dramatic for food, here’s the recipe for the steamed eggs:

Luscious Chinese Steamed Eggs:

1. Mix a half cup of fresh ground pork with chopped scallions, a spoonful of cooking sherry, Ohsawa soy sauce and cook quickly in a small saute pan until the meat is tender and still a little pink. Let cool.

2. Break four fresh organic eggs into a bowl and beat gently with a whisk until well combined. Pour a cup of chicken broth and mix well with the beaten eggs.

3. Prepare a bowl to hold the eggs by spraying with Pam; place cooled pork into the bottom of the bowl and then pour egg/broth mixture gently on top. Add tablespoon of Ohsawa organic soy sauce and a tablespoon of cooking sherry. Stir well.

egg mixture ready to steam. . .

4. Place the bowl in a pan with an inch or two of water and then place the bowl into the pan to steam. Bring the water to a boil and then turn down heat until the water barely simmers. Put a lid on the pan and maintain the heat just below boiling. Putting the lid on raises the heat inside the pot so double-check the heat which should probably be turned down even more. With the water barely simmering, It may not look like the dish will cook, but if you let it simmer on very low heat for about twenty minutes, the egg mixture will present a custard-like appearance with a silky sheen on the surface.

5. When the custard has set, turn the heat off and either serve with the pot on a trivet or remove the bowl from the pan.

Baked Kabocha Squash:

1. Using a very sharp knife, insert it into the squash and cut lengthwise down one edge. Turn the squash over and cut through the other.

2. Scrape the inside of the squash clean (seeds, etc.)

3. For two people, slice half of the squash into segments. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Make a mixture of olive oil, soy sauce and maple syrup (equal parts, about a half cup of glaze.)

4. Stir glaze together until mixed and baste the squash segments all over. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Bake the squash for twenty minutes and then turn the pieces over. Baste on more glaze. When squash is cooked after about twenty more minutes, remove from the oven and let cool.

5. Place the cooked squash pieces into a nice pottery dish, cover and wait for dinner.

leftover fried rice, steamed eggs and glazed kabocha squash. . .

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October 8, 2014

bean and ham soup . . .

It’s a fairly mild day in early October, warmer than it has been with the chilly rainy days we had last week. But the moisture has been great for the garden and the Montauk daisies are almost in full bloom.

These perennial plants are ubiquitous in Rockport, a town close to the ocean, and huge clumps of them can be seen all over town. They multiply and appear in the Fall in great profusion, a notable cousin to shasta daisies which bloom in the summertime. I bought some plants when we had a winter rental there and they are beginning to take hold in our garden this year.

Like the morning glories that we plant for their sky blue color which appear on the second floor deck on foggy mornings this time of year, these Montauk daisies bloom after flowers have virtually disappeared from neighborhood yards altogether.

For some reason, I’ve been hankering for some bean soup that I saw advertised in a Vermont Country Store catalog that came in the mail yesterday. It boasted that its canned bean soup is still served in the Senate dining room. That’s U.S. Senate, I guess. I wonder if anyone is still eating anything there since there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on in the Senate these days. Anyhow, I decided to make my own bean and ham soup.

The recipes online called for boiling the beans, letting them sit (to make them less gassy) and to cook the beans with smoked ham hocks. When I looked at the package of smoked ham hocks in the grocery store, they looked rather gross with skin, bone, gristle and not much ham to speak of. They were almost black with 4-5 of them in a pack and I didn’t want to buy that many anyhow. So, for the same money, I picked up a thick slab of ham which I’ll cut in half and freeze the remainder to use in a batch of green pea soup later in the year.

The parboiled beans are now cooling on the stove. For this recipe, I will:

Cut the slab of ham into chunks and brown in unsalted butter

Take the ham out and saute a chopped vidalia onion in the ham/butter skillet along with a crushed clove of garlic

Add a couple of quarter-cut carrots and celery stalks with the onions

Tie together some sprigs of parsley and thyme from the herb pot on the back deck; add a bay leaf

Add back the beans and ham to the vegetables

Add 1/2 chicken stock and 1/2 spring water to cover; add a small can of stewed tomatoes

second simmering in the soup pot . . .

Cook low on simmer for a couple of hours or so; add more broth/water as needed (I stored the soup in the fridge overnight and then started it simmering again the following day, adding spring water to the soup)

I decided to incorporate the ham pieces into the pureed soup rather than taking them out. When the soup cooled, I spooned all of it into the Vitamix and turned it on low. Gradually increasing the speed, it suddenly took off and turned the whole pot of vegetables, beans and ham into a coarse puree.

I put it all into a saucepan and added another cup or so of chicken broth to lighten the soup consistency a bit. I heated it up on very low heat so as not to burn the soup on the bottom. It tasted delicious. To go along with the soup, I toasted some English muffins, spread with butter and grated gruyere cheese, broiling them until golden brown and bubbly on top.

pureed bean soup . . .

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September 30, 2014

under the weather . . .

vegetable stock . . .

The weather has been unseasonably warm (87 degrees over the weekend) and is now rapidly cooling off. They say that rapid shifts in temperature are liable to make people vulnerable to colds.

I’m fighting one off the last two days and can’t remember the last time I had one. Lots of sneezing, sore throat and congestion. The plumber who installed the faucet and Insinkerator the other night was wheezing and coughing, saying he had just come from the clinic with a Z-pack prescription. Hmmmmm. Turns out the dishwasher he installed earlier in the week wasn’t getting water during the wash cycle.This became evident after I emptied dishes caked with drying fluid and still greasy. It finally dawned on me that nothing had been washed even though we had set the one hour cycle the night before.

One of G.’s workmen, J., came yesterday to troubleshoot the dishwasher and after testing the water valve in the house and the machine, discovered there was a kink in the hose looped around the back of the dishwasher that was obstructing water from coming in. I was relieved it wasn’t an electronic board fault that would have required a service call on a brand new machine–and thankfully it wasn’t. Anyway, that was a puzzling glitch yesterday. And hopefully the last.

My daughter, M. who is studying nursing skyped this morning and suggested I use my spirometer–a breath strength measurer they gave me after surgery to boost lung strength and to keep congestion at bay. I also followed her suggestion to humidify the area and took out ingredients to make a vegetable stock that would simmer on the stove all day: leeks, onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes and parsley. It was satisfying to cut up all the vegetables and stir them in olive oil, then after browning, adding a gallon or so of spring water. It’s on the back burner of the stove right now, quietly cooking goodness that will supply us with stock to make fresh vegetable soup tomorrow and to freeze. I’ve found that the rich, hearty taste of this homemade vegetable stock is more appetizing than either the beef or chicken/pork bone broths that I made a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it was the proportion of ingredients to water but there wasn’t as much flavor as the vegetable stock.

french onion soup . . .

Because J. is coming again today to work on some carpentry, I also decided to make a separate batch of French onion soup, using some bone broth I had in the freezer and two large onions which I browned in unsalted butter until softened and golden brown. This soup is one of our favorites and we’ll have it for lunch. I have a dry end of a French baguette that I’ll broil with gruyere cheese on top that will soften when we float them on top of the soup right before serving. Yum!

I’ve also been taking Airborne–cold-preventative tablets that fizz up in some cold water (I like to add an ice cube) that both G. and I have taken the last couple of years whenever we felt a cold coming on. It’s done us well as neither of us has had a serious cold since then. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to nip this one in the bud too.

humidifying . . .

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September 21, 2014

mushrooms! . . .

cooked portobella mushroom dish . . .

Trader Joe’s is a great local store to pick up things you can’t get elsewhere, like Kerrygold Irish butter made from grass-fed cow’s milk. A NYTimes food tasting survey led by Melissa Clark a few months ago pronounced another butter as the “best” butter around. It started with a “P” but I can’t remember the name of it now. I made a special trip to Whole Foods to buy some to try it out but wasn’t impressed.

My daughter, M., told me about Kerrygold butter while we were out in Seattle and it was the best butter I ever tasted, melted and eaten with chunks of Dungeness crab. In contrast, Kate’s Butter, a locally made butter that I’ve been using, has very little flavor and a wax-like texture compared to Kerrygold’s buttery, creamy taste. While I was at Trader Joe’s this morning, I saw some beautiful large portobella mushrooms for $2.99 that I thought I’d cook up for dinner tonight although I wasn’t sure what to do yet.

At Barnes and Noble on the way home, I saw a photo of large mushrooms stuffed with spinach and breadcrumbs in a European cookery magazine. Perfect for tonight because I have some tired baby spinach I’ve used for smoothies and a heel of sourdough bread in the fridge that might make a tasty stuffing for the mushrooms.

Here’s my impromptu preparation steps:

First, I cleaned the huge mushrooms with a paper towel and browned the flat end of the mushrooms in butter, placing them in a large copper au gratin pan. This initial browning step is important to give the thick mushrooms a head start on softening; otherwise, it takes too long for them to cook through without overbaking the spinach/crumb filling.

2. Crushed a large clove of garlic into little bits, browned it in some butter and dried parsley.

3. Toasted a third of a leftover loaf of sourdough bread. Put the toasted slices in a VItamix and crumbled it into smooth breadcrumbs.

4. Added half of the fresh breadcrumbs into browning garlic and parsley, added a sprinkle of Lawry’s garlic salt and coarse pepper, stirring the tender garlicky breadcrumb mixture and then let it cool.

fresh breadcrumbs with garlic and parsley. . .

5. Melted another dab of butter, added chopped shallot and two handfuls of baby spinach; stirring until it quickly wilted; turned the warm spinach onto a board and chopped it finely with a cleaver.

6. Added finely chopped spinach, moistened with a little cream, to garlicky crumb mixture, adding salt and coarse pepper as needed. Maybe sprinkle on a little nutmeg (which I meant to do but forgot.)

fresh spinach and shallots. . .

7. Spoon heavenly mixture onto three large portobella mushroom caps, underside up.

8. Grate a little fresh gruyere cheese and add on top of mushrooms.

9. Bake at 375 oven for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown and mushrooms are cooked through. We couldn’t wait that long and split the smallest one which was done the soonest and let the other two cook a bit longer.

While they were finishing in the oven, I sauteed some cleaned asparagus and squeezed a little lemon on it. That’s all.

This was a satisfyingly simple meal with just two dishes to eat for our Sunday night supper. We knew there was pumpkin spice cake for dessert so it was easy to be satisfied without a salad.

A special treat will be to use some Cabot’s whipped cream (I love that stuff but can’t stay away from it) on top of the warmed slices of cake tonight while we watch that new show, “Madam Secretary” featuring Tea Leoni as Secretary of State and the opener for “The Good Wife’s Fall season.

Oh, and that’s after we watched the Patriots struggle against Oakland in their first home game this afternoon at Gillette Stadium. Tom Brady missed a couple of touchdown tries and they only won when an Oakland touchdown was disqualified at the very last minute.

Still, fun, fun, fun!

P.S. I learned that choosing smallish large mushrooms works better because they cook more quickly than the really thick ones–and the proportion of the stuffing to a thinner mushroom works well.

Although it’s a little more effort, toasting freshly made bread crumbs ensures a texture for the crumb dressing that can’t be had from using off the shelf panko or other prepared breadcrumbs. Coarse, buttery, garlicky warm crumbs with fresh chopped spinach (not frozen) makes for delectable eating!

This dish was so satisfying that I’m thinking of making it as an accompaniment for our Christmas Eve dinner! Actually, it’s gotten me thinking about learning how to poach a salmon in court bouillon to go along with it!

Postscript a week later: I made these again today and had some modifications to offer up. I selected today’s portobella mushrooms from an open bin at the market. I chose smaller, less thick ones (as noted above) because they would require less baking time in the oven. I used my largest copper au gratin pan to brown the bottoms and six of them barely fit. I then placed them in a cold oven to rest while I made the stuffing. When I pulled them out, they had shrunk to at least half their size!

So, I removed them to my medium size au gratin pan where they fit snugly with spinach dressing and gruyere cheese on top. I also microplaned the gruyere although the cheese was soft from sitting out and clumped up. No matter, I spread the cheese on top and put a clean dishcloth over it to rest until sliding them under a hot broiler. I don’t think the mushrooms will require baking as such, just browning the tops and heating them up a little under the broiler will do nicely. My daughter, C. is coming for lunch to see the new soapstone countertop today and we’ll have the stuffed mushrooms and a salad of field greens, endive, mandarin oranges, craisins and glazed walnuts with a simple vinaigrette.

Next time, I’ll go back to selecting way big portobella mushrooms and just cook them a little longer in the first step. Live and learn, I guess.

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Category: Food