mulberryshoots

As a fresh start this Spring, I’ve been reading about how to both lighten up our meals and making them more tasty. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we’re going vegetarian, but I’d like to expand possibilities that we’ll enjoy and reign in somen of our rich food consumption.

Tonight, I followed a recipe that I came across in “Gjelina” a cookbook from a restaurant located in Venice, California. Here’s the recipe I followed (and adapted:)

1.  Roast cleaned six orange and dark red beets in a pot with a layer of water, covered with aluminum foil at 375 degrees for an hour and fifteen minutes. When done, I poured them into some cold tap water, skinned them with a vegetable peeler and cut them into bite size pieces.
2. Peeled and harvested orange segments from a large navel orange and a blood orange. The “supreme” segments rested in a bowl with their juice.
3. Made a dressing containing 2 Tablespoons sherry vinegar, 2 Tablespoons orange juice, 2 Tablespoons of honey, 4 Tablespoons of olive oil – whisked together and tasted for balance of sweet and sour flavors.
4. In shallow bowls, I divided the beets of dark and light segments; sprinkled the beets with the orange segments, cut up a whole avocado and sliced up segments, half for each serving.
5. During the cooking time for the beets, I heated up some roasted hazelnuts until golden brown, wrapping them securely in paper towel and crushing the warm nuts with the bottom of a small saucepan.
6. Sprinkled the warm nuts on the vegetables and then poured the sherry vinegar dressing gently over the dish.

On the side, I cooked a box of parmesan couscous, adding a little more butter and parmesan cheese at the end while moistening it with a little more water.

So, our supper was simple, tasty and satisfying. We also had about half a quart of leftover vegetables to store away in the fridge to have for lunch tomorrow or to add to our dinner salad.

A good start to a fresh take – or a fresh start to a good take! More to come!

For supper tonight, I made a tasty dish that required 2 skillets and a saucepan. It didn’t take a lot of effort and used ingredients I already had in the fridge.

1. Angel hair pasta: boil a pot of water with salt; cook about 1/3 box of angel hair pasta until tender (about 6-8 minutes.) Drain well and rinse under cold water.
2. In a large skillet, heat up butter and olive oil. Add to it chopped shallots and cook gently; add broccoli florets (1 cup) and snow peas (1/2 cup.) Saute until cooked, adding a little garlic salt and water to steam it when it’s almost cooked – remove from the heat.
3. In a smaller skillet, melt a tablespoon and a half of butter. Add a tablespoon of flour and blend in with the melted butter. Add a little whole milk and thicken. Add 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, blend and then add about 1/4 cup of heavy cream. Hold until pasta is cooked and well drained. Add pasta (cut up to make handling easier) to the sauce and mix well. Remove from heat.
4. Place the vegetables over med-hi heat again and add about a cup of frozen petite peas and stir until almost cooked. Then add a cup of pre-cooked shrimp (tails removed) until shrimp, peas, broccoli and snow peas are heated through and steaming.

Plate in bowls: add the pasta in Alfredo sauce first; then strain and add vegetable shrimp mixture on top. Top with freshly grated parmesan cheese. It was tasty, not too heavy or thick and the fresh greens reminded us that Spring is here!

Today, I picked up a couple of handfuls of fresh ricotta gnocchi at Whole Foods. I first thought I’d use some homemade tomato sauce that was in the freezer. Then, as dinnertime grew closer, I thought I’d make an alfredo sauce with parmesan, Meyer lemon zest and juice.

Before I started the sauce, I heated up some unsalted butter and sauteed half a chopped shallot until golden. Added half a bag of baby spinach and cooked it until soft. Sprinkled a little ground nutmeg on top. Put the spinach into a dish and rinsed out the skillet.

To the clean, dried skillet, I added a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon or so of flour sprinkled to make a bechamel sauce and smoothed the flour until it was blended. Added a splash of whole milk – would have used cream if I had it, but thought it might okay with freshly grated parmesan, a drop of honey and the Meyer lemon zest and juice. I also added a swath of truffle salt. Yum!

It took a little tasting to get the proportion of lemon juice and parmesan cheese to taste right – but it came out really well. I turned off the heat under the sauce. In the meantime, I trimmed and cooked artichokes from Trader Joe’s in a large pot.

When ready to eat, we took our time eating the artichokes first, dipped in a curry mayonnaise dip of Hellmann’s, curry powder and beau monde powder. Once we were enjoying the hearts, I turned the boiling water up for cooking the gnocchi. Into the salted water, the gnocchi cooked and rose to the top, added a glass of cold water and it rose again. When I was certain the pasta was cooked, I drained it really well, shaking the colander over the sink, and added it gently into the alfredo sauce. Spooned over the hot pasta, I plated it into our shallow bowls and added the sauteed spinach on the side. More parmesan was grated over the top and our dinner was ready. Yum!

Every once in awhile, I look at the NYT cooking suggestions for the week. This dish looked interesting: shell pasta with spinach and artichoke hearts in a cream sauce and parmesan cheese. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

At the store, it took me awhile to find medium pasta shells on the bottom shelf – couldn’t get over how many different shapes of pasta there available, just in a grocery store! I already had a pack of fresh baby spinach to finish up in the fridge. I picked up a can of Cento quartered artichokes in water and a jar of Prego light Alfredo sauce instead of 2 cups of heavy cream called for in the recipe.

In a skillet, I cooked the fresh spinach with chopped garlic in olive oil and a pat of unsalted butter. Took it out and put in a bowl. Reheated the skillet and cut up more garlic – in more olive oil and butter, I drained the artichoke hearts really well and then pressed them in a clean paper towel to release all the water. Then, I sauteed them until golden brown and sprinkled them with some parmesan cheese. Added the spinach back in and combined the two vegetables.

I boiled a cup of dried medium pasta shells for about ten minutes until they were between al dente and tender. Drained them well too before heating up the jar of Prego alfredo sauce and adding the pasta. Mixed gently together with some more parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons.)

In a white fluted oval casserole sprayed with Pam, I placed the spinach and artichoke hearts on the bottom and then poured the pasta in sauce on top. With a large spoon, I gently mixed the ingredients together and sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top. ( I know there sounds like a lot of cheese in this dish but mostly small sprinkles of cheese. . . )

I put the casserole in a 350 degree oven for almost half an hour. I wanted to see if the proportion of pasta to sauce was good – not too cheesy – along with the spinach and artichoke hearts. The balance was good – and a little salty although I didn’t add any salt: might have been the sauce or the parmesan cheese?

The other day at Whole Foods, I bought some fresh pasta: a nest of “lemon parsley” fettucine. Fancy, huh? I thought I’d try it out with an alfredo sauce and fresh spinach and shrimp on top.

The pasta takes about 9-11 minutes to cook. While the water is boiling, I’ll make the sauce: In a skillet, I’ll melt half a stick of unsalted butter, add a cup of heavy whipping cream and half a pack of Philadelphia cream cheese. After it has melted together and combined, I’ll add a teaspoon of finely chopped garlic, Lawry’s garlic salt and a little cracked pepper and nutmeg.

In a separate skillet, I’ll melt more butter and cook some chopped shallot and sliced fresh Shitake mushroom. Be sure to cook the mushrooms through and through. Take them out of the skillet and to more melted butter, cook large peeled and deveined shrimp in chopped garlic and sprinkle a little dried parsley on the shrimp until it is just cooked and still tender. Add the mushrooms back into the shrimp and stir in two handfuls of baby spinach. Stir until the spinach is wilted with the shrimp.

Drain the fettucine very well and stir it into the alfredo sauce to combine. In large shallow bowls, plate the alfredo fettucine and spoon the spinach shrimp over the top. Hand grate parmesan on top and serve.

Yep, there must be enough high cholesterol ingredients in this dish to use up your quota for a month! But, what the heck, you only live once and besides, daylight savings time will take away an hour this weekend, right?! So, enjoy!

While G. went outside to clearing the snow accumulation this morning, I prepared our lunch of grilled sandwiches. His was grilled black forest ham and cheddar cheese with dijon mustard. Mine was brie cheese and thin slices of honey crisp apple.

Simple to make and tasty!

On Saturday, I bought an Asian roasted duck at the local Vietnamese market. I usually call up and ask the cashier to reserve one for me. On these days, I spend the late afternoon before dinner making “wrappers” from flour, water and sesame oil. These wrappers are very thin, being half of a rolled out pancake that separates after cooking (sesame oil inbetween the layers.) I keep them warmed on a plate with a clean plastic bag around it and the wrappers stay warm and steamy inside.

Today, I made a mixture of ground pork, bamboo shoots, shrimp and sliced cabbage to eat inside wrappers along with the leftover duck. There’s about enough duck to make three roll-ups. The moo-shi pork and shrimp filling will also be tasty and crunchy in the wrappers, spread with hoisin sauce.

Here’s what I stir-fried together. In a skillet heated and coated with vegetable oil, add:  about 1/3 cup of ground pork; a can of bamboo shoots, cut into small pieces; 3 extra large shrimp, shelled and cut up into bite size pieces. Stir together with cut up scallions and a swirl of soy sauce. When the pork and shrimp mixture is cooked, transfer it all to a bowl and hold aside.

In the meantime, slice thinly about half of a small head of cabbage (not Napa but regular cabbage.) Fry in more vegetable oil in the skillet until softened, then add the pork, shrimp, bamboo shoots back in. Stir together and hold until cooled and ready to eat.

When serving, spread some hoisin sauce on a wrapper crosswise and add filling, fold the pancake lengthwise together and bend the bottom up so the juices won’t spill out when you bite into it.

Footnote: making the wrappers is not difficult but messy and time-consuming. I boil some water and add it in a deep bowl to about 2-3 cups of flour. I stir it together and handle it when it’s not too hot until it is malleable. Here’s the tricky part – if the dough is too sticky, add more flour until it is pliable. If it is too stiff, it’s too dry. Sorry but I don’t have proportions – I do it by feel.

When the dough is cool enough to handle, knead it gently and only enough to amalgamate the flour and water. Roll it out into a two inch thick snake and cut it into 2 inch pieces. On a well-floured surface, Take one of the pieces and flatten it slightly. Then brush on the entire surface some sesame oil. Place another piece on top of it and gently flatten it together. Then, gently roll out the two pieces together until it’s about 6-8 inches in diameter as evenly as you can. Heat a skillet on medium-hi heat and place the rolled out wrapper in the skillet. Check for small golden brown patches and turn it over. When it is slightly browned on both sides, pick it up and place it on the plate with the plastic bag over it.

Roll out and cook the rest of the flour dough wrappers in the same manner. When a cooked wrapper has rested a few minutes on the dish, open it up and gently peel the layers apart. Then place both layers back on the plate. Each wrapper that you cook this way yields two pancakes. I made extra yesterday so that we could use them for the moo-shi filling I made on this post.

The wrappers take a little getting used to making – just be sure to spread the sesame oil completely across the surface and gently place the other roll on top of it and press them down with your hand before rolling it out. If the dough is too sticky, this doesn’t work and you’ll have to add more flour to the dough before kneading it, rolling the snake and cutting up the pieces. Good luck!

It’s worth it – when you bite into the thin, chewy wrapper. Most restaurants don’t make their own because it’s too labor intensive and serve flour tortillas instead. On the second day eating the wrappers, I gently steam them with a plate of the leftover duck on top – covered until everything is warmed. YUM!

Yesterday, there was an article rhapsodizing about Marcella Hazan’s old recipe for bolognese sauce. I was puzzled while reading it because it sounded somewhat mysterious, using a milk addition to absorb, and then white wine, then simmering it for four hours. Yep, you read that right.

So, today is Sunday and what better time to try it out than today when I can start it around noon and let it do its magic all afternoon. After I read the recipe through a couple of times – and then reading lots of comments attached to it, I realized that this is good old meat and tomato sauce – that I’ve hastily put together many a time when I didn’t have the time to make meatballs.

But the instructions of this classic recipe was compelling and so I’m game to try it today. The differences from plain tomato meat sauce are:

a. Starting with a melange of browned onions, then adding chopped celery and carrots. Then, brown some ground beef – not too lean, not too fatty. I chose 85%.

b. After both above are cooked, add them together with some plum tomato sauce. Here’s the tricky part. Marzano tomatoes are supposed to be the true Italian tomatoes to use – and they’re priced double what other “tomato” products are – but I bought two cans since I’m going to double the sauce with single the amount of meat.

c. Let the combined sauce cook and add milk to it – letting the milk cook off in an half an hour. Add some freshly grated nutmeg.

d. Add white wine (I had an opened bottle of Gewurtztraminer wine) and let it cook off in a half an hour.

e. Add two cans of Cento brand of peeled marzano tomatoes and let the sauce barely simmer (a bubble or two once in awhile) for a long time: all afternoon.

f. Cook the pasta (I’m using fettucine) and drain well. Add a nob of butter to the hot, drained noodles and toss well.

g. Serve the pasta, sauce and fresh parmesan cheese grated on the top.

I saw fresh jumbo ocean scallops glistening in the fish market today and bought some to make for V-day supper tonight. The rest of the dish includes parmesan brown rice risotto with zucchini and fresh spinach. There’s a recipe for brown butter scallops online and I plan to follow most of it except that I might cream the spinach and add a little nutmeg to it.

Lundberg makes a brown rice parmesan risotto in a box. I usually saute some fresh zucchini and mushrooms before preparing the risotto. The only caveat is to add less water than it calls for – otherwise, it turns out too mushy. The spinach is washed, dried and browned in butter-olive oil. When it has cooked, I cut it up and sprinkle a little nutmeg on it along with a little cream. Luscious!

As for the scallops, I dry them off and sear them quickly on each side, holding them in a separate dish. The last step is to melt some unsalted butter until it gradually browns. Serve the risotto with the spinach alongside and the seared scallops. Spoon the brown butter on top of the scallops and serve with a glass of Prosecco. Alongside are honey biscuits that G. picked up at the store and which we’re trying out for the first time.

Happy Valentine’s Day – and Bon Appetit!

There has been a wave of snowstorms across the Midwest, some of them heading our way in New England this afternoon. We’re supposed to have six inches of snow late afternoon and evening followed by rain all night. Damp and cold!

When I was in the grocery store, I asked for the butcher to cut up some beef shin to make a homemade vegetable soup that I’ve been making for many years. The basic recipe steps are:

1. Buy a meaty beef shin and sprinkle with Lawry’s garlic salt and pepper.
2. In a large dutch oven, heat up some vegetable oil, add the beef shin to brown with chopped onions, chopped carrots and celery stalks and leaves.
3. Turn the beef over and brown the other side, stirring the simmering vegetables.
4. Chop some tomatoes (looking for a home in the fridge) or a can of Del Monte stewed tomatoes.
5. Add beef flavoring (I use 2 Knorr gelatin packs) and add Spring water until there’s a good proportion of broth for the soup to simmer all afternoon.

As the soup cooks, taste the broth and check whether there’s too much beef flavor or not enough – add more water as needed. The meat will cook until it falls off the bone – remove the sinew and cut the beef into bite-size pieces.

6.   A half hour before serving, add freshly cut up cabbage to the soup.

I sometimes also add a handful of tiny alphabet macaroni to the soup which expands a little while it cooks.

For dinner, I might bake some cornbread or biscuits to accompany the soup. Here’s hoping we get less snow than more! Stay warm!