05.31.07
Posted in Dinner, Fish, Seafood, Sides at 9:07 am by julie
The sudden heat wave continued last night. It was approaching 90F when we got home from work yesterday, so we delayed Freyja’s usual after-work walk until later in the evening, bleeding off some of her energy with a play session in the backyard instead. (She caught her very first mid-air frisbee!). After a movie to pass the time—and some Greek yogurt and rather bland California cherries to snack on—we took her on her walk; by the time we got back, it was dusky outside and nearly 9pm. Since the house had also cooled down a touch, I headed into the kitchen to make us a late dinner.
The plan: Wild salmon fillets with a roasted red pepper sauce and sides of sauteed snow peas and quinoa pilaf. I got two red bell peppers anointed with oil and slipped under the broiler, and set about making some cookie dough to chill in the refrigerator (more about that tomorrow) and fighting off the piles of dishes that were threatening to take over the kitchen. The peppers took so long to char that I made a huge dent in cleaning up the kitchen; I am beginning to wonder if the oven broiler isn’t working properly.
Once the peppers were (finally) done, rested and peeled, I got dinner on the table in probably less than 20 minutes. The sauce—I used the recipe here—was very simple to make, though I was still working on dishes and managed to mess up the order of operations. It was none the worse for wear, however, and turned into a gorgeous, bright, thick, and very flavorful sauce. I did the salmon fillets broiled skin side up a la Ming Tsai, my favorite technique for salmon since making his miso-citrus salmon. I just rubbed both sides with salt and pepper, put them skin side up on an oiled roasting pan, drizzled with some olive oil, and broiled them for about 8 minutes. We aren’t fans of medium-cooked salmon, even though Jeremy likes it raw as sushi, so we always let ours go just until it flakes. With this method, the skin protects the fish from drying out.
When the salmon was done, I let it rest for a few minutes, keeping the sauce on low heat, and sauteed some fresh snow peas from the farmer’s market. My basic method is as follows: Heat some olive oil, and briefly saute some minced garlic over medium heat until it becomes fragrant. Add a pint of fresh trimmed and rinsed snow peas, and toss to coat, then add about 1/4 C water, cover, and allow to steam for a minute or two, until they turn bright green. (I plated my salmon and sauce while I waited.) Then uncover, push the heat to medium high, and evaporate the water, tossing the snow peas to keep them from overcooking. Season to taste with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, and serve immediately.
By the time we ate, it must have been after 10pm. But it was a wonderful dinner. The salmon was very meaty and flavorful, and stood up to the roasted peppers nicely. The snow peas tasted very green and fresh, and their brilliant color set off the salmon and its background of red sauce perfectly. I didn’t get around to making the quinoa (and didn’t have the heart to get another burner going in our warm house), but it wasn’t necessary. And now I get to figure out what to do with a leftover piece of salmon and a cup or so of pepper sauce. Lucky me!
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05.30.07
Posted in Dairy, Dinner, Pastas, Veggies at 9:31 am by julie
This weekend we walked over to the Saturday market with puppy in tow, and after Jeremy got Freyja to a safe distance from the SFC booth (safe from jumping up against the table and totally knocking down their display, which she was showing a proclivity for doing), I finally scored a tub of their plain goat cheese. Next, we hit the mushroom booth, where I got a bag of the elusive chestnut mushrooms. We also grabbed a packet of locally-produced bacon, which turned out to be rather oddly cut… I think it might have been from an end piece or something, and better suited to dicing for dish accents than frying up in its own right.
We spent what seemed like most of the day Monday walking. Jeremy took Freyja for a 90-minute walk in the morning to the university and Bush Park, then he and I spent several hours walking over to the mall and getting him a few summery shirts on sale, after which we came home and went right back out again to take the dog for her afternoon walk. When we finally got home to stay, Jeremy conked out for a two-hour nap, which gave me some time to ponder dinner plans. I knew I wanted to do something with the chestnut mushrooms, and the plain goat cheese too, if possible. I got it narrowed down to pasta or risotto, then asked Jeremy to weigh in. Pasta it was, and I scooted off into the kitchen to get it going.
I knew I wanted to have fresh pasta, preferably in the form of wide noodles like pappardelle. I looked at a few recipes for inspiration, but rejected the ones that used tomatoes, because it seems like all of the pasta recipes I’ve made recently have been full of them, and I wanted to really taste the chestnut mushrooms’ flavor. In the end, I went with a variation on a mushroom pasta I’ve made before. I didn’t really look at the recipe, but went with that idea, making a mushroom broth with the tough stems, shallot and garlic peelings. I sauteed the cleaned and sliced mushrooms with shallot and garlic, deglazed with white wine, and strained in the broth, reducing it by at least half. All the while I rolled out sheets of egg pasta and cut it into broad ribbons; Marcella’s basic egg pasta recipe (1 C AP flour, 2 eggs) makes just the right amount of pasta for the two of us, and I love how fresh pasta cooks almost before you can blink. I tossed everything together in the saute pan at the end with some pasta water, piled it into bowls, and topped it with some freshly toasted walnuts and crumbles of goat cheese that melted silkily into the noodles when stirred through. The chestnut mushrooms had very good flavor, though they seemed quite stemmy to me, and I think the meal did a good job of highlighting them. Topped off with some palate-cleansing blood orange sorbet, it was a lovely light meal for Memorial Day.
Speaking of which, I just have to add that apparently Memorial Day was the cut-off for reasonable spring-time weather around here. Up through Monday, we had had weeks of 60-70F weather, which is right in my ideal comfort zone; but yesterday someone must have flipped the hot switch in the sky, because it went from a perfect breezy 71F on Memorial Day, to 86F and steamy yesterday, and the potential for even hotter weather today. Does that just not seem right to anyone besides me? The puppy is clearly not amused… she doesn’t seem to do well in temperatures above 75F. So we’ll keep plying her with ice cubes, one of her very favorite treats, and ourselves with ice cream and sorbet. Next on the list is cheesecake ice cream… yum!
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05.29.07
Posted in Dessert, Fruits, Ice Cream at 7:54 pm by julie
A few (gulp… has it really been that long?) months ago, I snapped up some blood oranges at Whole Foods with all sorts of ideas for what to make with them. We hardly ever see them down in Salem, so my mind was spinning with possibilities, such that—as is my wont—I couldn’t decide what to make and left them sitting in the veg bin of the fridge, rolling around forlornly whenever I poked my head in to grab an onion or some carrots. I finally determined to get it over with and use them up in a blood orange sorbet before they went bad, so this weekend I pulled them out, none the worse for wear, along with a big lonely Navel orange. After zesting one of the blood oranges, I peeled everything and chucked all the segments in the food processor, deciding that my life is just too short to try and wring every last drop of juice out of them by hand (a reamer
is something I have yet to purchase). They were zapped into juice and strained to catch out the last bits of pulp and pith. I ended up with barely over a cup of violently red juice from 4 small Moro blood oranges and a big Navel.
Meanwhile, I combined about 1/2 C water with 1/3 C sugar and brought it to a boil to dissolve the sugar. When it had cooled, I added the orange zest and a teaspoon of vanilla paste, and stirred it into the juice. Next time I would probably add the zest to the boiling water in bigger strips rather than grating it on my microplane, and then straining it out again before adding it to the juice, because the finished sorbet had hard little bits of zest that interfered with its otherwise smooth texture for me. At any rate, the sorbet base went in the fridge overnight, and when we were ready for dessert on Memorial Day, I poured it into our ice cream maker and churned it up. It retained that lovely rosy color, as you can see, and struck a good balance between sweet and tart, with a little vanilla undertone. It was great right out of the machine, so we’ll see how the texture is from the freezer instead.
And I should just note that although making sorbet is incredibly easy and quick with the ice cream maker, you don’t really need one to make it. I made fabulous nectarine sorbet long before we had this machine, using pureed squishy/overripe nectarines and simple syrup, popped in the freezer and stirred up vigorously every hour until it had achieved the right consistency.
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05.28.07
Posted in Dairy, Dinner, Sides at 2:29 pm by julie
Saturday before last, I headed out for the farmer’s market by myself because the puppy was just recovering from a night of upset tummy and not up for a long walk. I began with my usual quick survey of the booths, on the alert for newly arrived produce or interesting herbs and plants; it’s a bit early yet for produce at the Saturday market, but I can always hope. Halfway around the market, I spotted a booth that made my heart skip a beat: Silver Falls Creamery. My first impulse was to run ecstatically in that direction, but I managed to contain myself with a (likely no less undignified) hop and skip, and calmly walked in that direction. I gave myself away pretty quickly, though, by grinning maniacally and gushing about how excited I was to see them and their wonderful goat cheese at the market.
You see, I first tasted Silver Falls cheese over a year ago, and fell in love. It was on a little spinach salad with toasted walnuts and a strawberry vinaigrette, served at Goudy’s now-famous Small Plates station on a Thursday (as visited by Rachael “Yum-o” Ray in her Salem episode of $40-A-Day). Its gentle tang and velvet creaminess was my first willing taste of goat cheese, ever, and I’ve been unsuccessfully watching for it in the stores ever since.
My first impulse at the booth was to get a container of plain goat cheese for salads. I’m not particularly drawn to flavored cheeses, because I want to be able to pair it with anything I want, and I can always make my own flavors if the notion takes me. Unfortunately, they were out of the plain sort, and all the other mild flavors, because I didn’t get to the market until the afternoon; all that was left were chipotle, jalapeño, and rosemary-peppercorn. I don’t do spicy, so I went home with a tub of the latter flavor and a suggestion to pair it with steak and potatoes. I can handle that!
A few days later we sat down to a lovely dinner of chivey baked potato fans and thick grilled petite sirloins, topped with a melting crown of goat cheese. The cheese stood up nicely to the juicy, simply seasoned steaks, so it was definitely a great suggestion. The potatoes elicited an excited response from Jeremy, who seems to recall me making potato fans stuffed with bacon and cheese. I must have blocked out that memory, because I can’t recall ever having made potatoes that way, but he sounded so very hopeful that I’ll have to try making something along those lines one day.
Update 5/31/07: Jeremy said last night that this steak was probably one of the better ones he’s ever had. Yay, goat cheese!
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05.25.07
Posted in Chocolate, Dairy, Dessert, Ice Cream at 1:38 pm by julie
We ran out of leche merengada, so I had to make a snap decision on what dessert to make next. I suggested roasted banana ice cream, but Jeremy shot that down in favor of banana bread. The next suggestion, peanut butter ice cream and chocolate sauce, was heartily condoned, but I didn’t have quite enough half-and-half in the fridge. But as I was paging through The Perfect Scoop looking for the latter recipe to see whether I could reduce quantities or even fudge the difference with some whole milk, I happened across the recipe for chocolate peanut butter ice cream. It called for the amount of half-and-half I had, and I could still have some peanut buttery goodness, with the bonus of chocolate mixed right in.
It was incredibly easy to make, though we got impatient after an hour or two of waiting for the mixture to chill. It was still lukewarm at that point, so I surrounded the bowl with an ice bath, and we hung around anxiously for another half hour, then gave in and churned it up. I used natural peanut butter and Droste cocoa, and we ended up with a rich, smooth ice cream with a perfect balance between the two flavors. Jeremy’s only complaint was that I didn’t make enough!
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05.24.07
Posted in Dairy, Dinner, Meats, Poultry, Soups at 1:28 pm by julie
We had hardly finished off the last of the white bean chicken chili I made a week or two back when we went back to the grocery store. Jeremy popped another whole chicken into the cart, indicating that he really likes it when I make roasted chickens because of the leftovers. So on Sunday I roasted that up, and Jeremy’s been happily eating roast chicken sandwiches from the leftovers. He also requested another batch of white bean chicken chili, and I happily obliged. It’s perhaps not quite as white as it is supposed to be, because of the amounts of red spices mixed in and the bright orange cheddar grated over top, but it’s just delicious, and reheats well for my lunches while Jeremy’s making sandwiches.
White Bean Chicken Chili
The original recipe came from Epicurious, but I made a number of adjustments that worked really nicely for my palate, so I’m rewriting it here for my own benefit.
1 medium sweet onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, coarsely minced
2 T olive oil
¼ C unsalted butter
1/3 C all-purpose flour
1 C chicken broth, heated
2 C 1% milk, heated
½ tsp chili powder
1 ½ tsp ground cumin
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
½ tsp hot paprika
½ tsp salt, or to taste
½ tsp white pepper, or to taste
1 can navy, cannellini or Great Northern beans, drained
1 can creamed corn
2 dried chipotle chilies (optional)
Leftover roasted chicken, shredded (I used one each of breast, thigh and leg)
½ C sour cream
½ C grated Monterey Jack or cheddar (about 6 ounces)
In a soup pot, cook onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons oil over moderate heat with a pinch of salt, until softened. Remove from pan and set aside.
In the same pot, melt 4 tablespoons butter over moderately low heat and whisk in flour. Cook roux, whisking constantly, 3 minutes. Stir in onion and gradually add hot broth and milk, whisking constantly. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer, stirring, for 3-5 minutes or until thickened. Whisk in spices. Add beans, corn, and dried chipotles, and shredded chicken, and cook mixture over moderately low heat, stirring, 20 minutes. Stir sour cream into chili and heat through. Serve with shredded cheese as a garnish, and some biscuits for dipping.
Notes: The second time I made this, I didn’t have creamed corn, so I just tossed in some frozen white corn kernels. They tasted great, but I noticed there wasn’t quite as much chili, so I’d probably add an extra cup or so of broth to compensate. It’s so thick already that I don’t think that would be a problem.
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05.22.07
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Pastas, Spanish at 2:46 pm by julie
In sifting through puppy pictures we’ve taken in the past month, I happened back across a few weeknight pasta dishes that I’ve made, and which we were pretty pleased with. It hardly seems fair to let them languish in iPhoto while writing about more blustery dishes like roasted chickens, jagerschnitzel, and legs of lamb, so here you go.
Back in the first week of May, I was rooting around in my trusty Marcella cookbook for a pasta dish, and hit on her Amatriciana, a sauce that is usually made to accompany bucatini, a fat spaghetti-ish noodle with a hole in the middle like a hose. Since I’ve never yet found bucatini for sale in Oregon, I substituted rigatoni. I added a tablespoon of tomato paste to the onions before adding in the canned tomatoes, for extra depth of flavor. I also used thick-cut bacon in place of the pancetta called for, since the only pancetta I can find is presliced transparently thin. Jeremy, I noticed, picked out every bite of bacon and just ate the pasta and tomatoes, likely because the bacon wasn’t crisp after simmering in all that sauce, but the pasta had a lovely bacony flavor nevertheless. And Freyja liked the bacon, so we gave some of it to her for obeying commands like sit, stay and leave it.
A few days later, I made a shrimp pasta based partially on Spanish tapas flavors and partially on shrimp a la Buzara from watching Lidia’s Italy. I used ¾ lb of shrimp (thawed and peeled, pre-deveined) and a box of quinoa-corn spaghetti. Here’s a rundown of what I did, since Jeremy seemed to like it and I thought it was pretty tasty as well.
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ C extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
2 T tomato paste
About 1 C cooking sherry
¾ lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 T sherry vinegar
Smoked paprika, garlic powder, chile flakes to taste
1 8-oz box quinoa-corn spaghetti
In a large stockpot, get the water for the pasta boiling. In a sauté pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat and add the onion. When it begins to turn translucent, add the garlic and a good sprinkle of salt, and cook until the onion begins to brown and the garlic is fragrant. Stir in tomato paste and a grind of pepper, and stir for a minute or two to cook the paste; then add the sherry. Stir through and allow it to reduce for a few minutes.
By now the pasta water should be boiling. Toss in some kosher salt and the pasta, and cook for about 4.5 minutes. Meanwhile, turn the heat on the sauce down to medium and add the shrimp, turning them over once they have turned pink. When they are done, the sauce should have thickened somewhat but still be rather loose. Add the sherry vinegar, and seasonings to your tastes. Drain the pasta, reserving some pasta water if your shrimp sauce seems too thick; the pasta should be on the hard side of al dente and will finish cooking in the sauce. Combine the pasta and sauce and toss through; if it seems tight, add a bit of pasta water to loosen it up. Stir and combine for a minute or two more, until the noodles have soaked up some of the sauce and finished cooking to al dente. Serve in warmed pasta bowls with a sprinkle of black sea salt for garnish.
We liked the pasta just fine, but it could use some tweaking. I think I added a bit too much vinegar, so I compensated with some other spices, but it all balanced out once it soaked into the noodles somewhat. We couldn’t tell the spaghetti was wheat-free, and I think the corn flavor worked well with the shrimp and tomatoes. Jeremy suggested some chile flakes added next time, and I had actually considered adding some, so that’s something to remember. All in all, it was pretty tasty.
On the 17th, after a vigorous walk with the puppy, I pulled out that trusty Marcella again and found a recipe for tomato-porcini pasta sauce that sounded like just the ticket. I headed for the kitchen and got that simmering. It’s a very simple recipe: pretty much just onion browned in some oil and butter, a bit of pancetta, a can of diced tomatoes and a good handful of reconstituted dried porcini with soaking liquid, all simmered together for an hour or less. When the sauce was almost ready to go, I recruited Jeremy to make some fresh egg tagliatelle for us while I cleaned up in the kitchen some, and it all came out really nicely. The sauce had good flavor, even if it was a little soupy. That might have been because I didn’t simmer it hard enough, or maybe because there was a lot of water clinging to the pasta when we transferred it to the sauce. It didn’t bother Jeremy one whit, though… just gave him a reason to get out some bread to soak up all that porcini goodness.
Update 9/21/07: Tonight’s dinner was pasta with the tomato-porcini sauce. I think Jeremy forgot we had had it once before with rousing success, and was unenthusiastic until he started eating. Then he commented several times on how good it was. This time around I used some whole wheat-flaxseed penne from Trader Joe’s, and although it was a bit thick, it stood up nicely to the flavor of the sauce, which was not too soupy.
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05.20.07
Posted in Dinner, Meats, Poultry, Sides at 11:22 am by julie
Jeremy requested another roasted chicken the last time we were at the grocery store, in part (I think) because the white chicken chili I made with the leftovers of our last roast chicken was so tasty. So that was dinner last night. Thomas Keller’s recipe is definitely my go-to roast chicken nowadays, because it is so quick and unfussy, and you end up with an extremely moist chicken with shatteringly crisp bronzed skin. I like making a simple jus with the pan drippings deglazed with a bit of white wine and water, then reduced down with a dollop of grainy mustard.
To go with the chicken, I decided use up the lone celery root that has been rattling around my vegetable drawer. I cut it into thick matchsticks and braised it slowly with half a stick of butter, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some salt and pepper. It was covered on medium low heat for at least half an hour, and stirred a few times, until the celeriac was thoroughly tender but still holding its shape.
I also used a beautiful bagful of fresh maitake or hen of the woods mushrooms that I found at the farmer’s market yesterday, and pan-roasted them along the lines of Craft, with shallots and garlic, olive oil, butter, and fresh thyme from the garden. They were pretty tasty, and played nicely off the rest of the meal, but I don’t know if I really get what all the fuss is about with these mushrooms. I tasted sauteed chestnut mushrooms at the market and thought they had a much nicer flavor, but of course they had just run out, so we’ll have to try them another time.
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05.19.07
Posted in Cuisines, Dessert, Dinner, German, Ice Cream, Italian, Pastas, Spanish at 5:08 pm by julie
It’s funny how one thing leads to another. For instance, because Jeremy stayed home from work last Wednesday, I got to have wonderful memories of making snow ice cream as a child in Colorado winters.
You see, we’ve been going home for lunch every day since we got Freyja… just one more way she’s turned our lives upside down. That meant that I missed the first Wednesday farmer’s market in downtown Salem. We walked down to the Saturday market with the pup the following Saturday, and she had an awesome time meeting folks and other dogs of all shapes and ages, but there wasn’t much in the way of foodstuffs for sale yet. We did get some bags of lovely fresh oyster, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms for $10, which was very exciting (and with which I made the jagerschnitzel above), but I wanted more. So when Jeremy stayed home last Wednesday, I happily scurried off to the farmer’s market to see what I could find.
The Wednesday market is definitely the place to find local fruits and veggies in Salem. I immediately snapped up some fresh leeks, gorgeous ruby red rhubarb, the requisite bunch of asparagus, and a pile of pea shoots for $1, which I’ve never eaten before. After work I lugged my pounds of organic booty home, along with a lemon thyme plant that is now safely tucked into my herb garden, and paged through cookbooks until I came up with a plan. The leeks and asparagus would go into a prosciutto-tinged risotto I’ve made before for my parents; the rhubarb (or at least part of it) would turn into rhubarb custard bars; and the pea shoots would be tossed into an orecchiette carbonara with bacon and blanched peas, from Sunday Suppers at Lucques.
I’ve never made pasta carbonara before. It’s right up my alley in terms of flavor: creamy, eggy sauce with lots of Parmesan and, of course, bacon (plus, it kind of cracks me up that spellcheck suggests coronary as the best alternate spelling to carbonara). But the bit where the sauce is made of raw eggs that basically get cooked by stirring them into the hot pasta… that was a little intimidating. What if it didn’t work and the pasta ended up just covered with nasty slimy raw egg? I needn’t have worried, though I might have drained my pasta a bit more. The sauce came out creamy and not at all raw-looking, though a bit thin. It was delicious, with lovely little bits of crisp bacon, onion and peas nestled into the orecchiette, one of my very favorite pasta shapes. The pea shoots didn’t particularly impress in terms of flavor, but I certainly got my dollar’s worth of enjoyment from them, just by smelling their peapod aroma as I snapped off the larger leaves and stems.
Jeremy threatened to boycott dessert when he saw me with an armful of rhubarb, which he doesn’t care for, even when I brought out a plate of cooling rhubarb custard bars. His tune changed once he tried them, though, and later that evening I caught him sneaking back into the kitchen for seconds. These bars tasted like pie on top, with a much quicker (and I have to say, equally satisfying) shortbread crust underneath. I added vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg to the custard filling, and it hit a nice balance with the gentle tartness of the rhubarb, especially when still slightly warm from the oven.
Don’t worry… I’m still getting back around to the snow ice cream. To encourage you, here’s the recipe for the rhubarb bars.
Rhubarb Custard Bars
Crust:
1 1/4 C AP flour
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C butter (1 stick), room temperature
Filling:
1 C sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 C AP flour (more as needed)
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Hefty pinches of cinnamon and nutmeg
4 C rhubarb, thinly sliced into small pieces (about 4-5 large stalks)
Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 9×13 inch baking pan with cooking spray.
Put flour and sugar in a food processor and pulse to mix, then add the butter and pulse until thoroughly combined. Press crust into baking pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Prepare filling while crust is baking.
In a large batter bowl, blend sugar and flour, then add eggs, vanilla, spices, and rhubarb and blend well. If your rhubarb is especially juicy, you may want to add some additional flour to thicken the batter. Pour this mixture over the partially baked crust and continue baking for 30-35 minutes, until set and lightly browned. Serve warm or cooled. Store leftovers in the refrigerator.
Moving along, that orecchiette carbonara required more egg yolks than whites, so when I was looking into rhubarb options, I considered making a pie or bars topped with meringue. I’m not the hugest fan of meringue, though (give me whipped cream instead anytime), and meringue doesn’t keep all that well. Since I wasn’t convinced Jeremy would help me eat up the rhubarb, I didn’t want to be stuck eating soggy meringue for a week. I decided to look at other options for my whites, and perhaps make some vanilla ice cream to go with the rhubarb bars.
With no heavy cream on hand and no car to make a quick grocery trip, however, I was having problems finding something that would work…until, that is, I looked in the sorbet section of David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop book and saw his recipe for leche merengada. I’d never heard of it, but made with whole milk, two meringue-ified egg whites and hints of cinnamon and lemon, I thought it was the perfect solution for my ingredient and accompaniment needs. It took me a few days to find enough time to pull out the ice cream maker, but that asparagus-leek risotto afforded just enough idle time in the kitchen between ladling and stirring to get it going, and the next day we had frozen meringue sorbet with our rhubarb bars.
What a lovely, unusual recipe. My whole milk sat in the fridge for an extra day or two after heating with the cinnamon and lemon, so I strained it before mixing in the meringue, but the flavors come through beautifully. After all that, Jeremy didn’t care for the merengada in conjunction with the rhubarb bars, preferring each separately, but I thought they made a great light pairing for spring. The thing that really struck me about the recipe, though, was how much it reminded me of the snow ice cream I used to make as a child. (There it is! Patience rewarded…) You know the stuff—a bowlful of absolutely fresh snow, scooped into a big bowl while the snow was still falling, then mixed with milk, sugar and vanilla extract until you ended up with a sweet, soupy concoction that had to be gobbled up at top speed before it completely melted. Leche merengada is what I always wanted snow ice cream to be: Snow white and lightly sweetened, not too hard out of the freezer, and with an almost crisp texture that melts instantly on your tongue.
The weather here is just starting to warm up, though for the most part the mercury is hanging right at 70F. I can’t wait to make more of the ice creams and sorbets from David’s book this summer, but I’m having one heck of a time deciding what to make next. Chocolate hazelnut, roasted banana, frozen yogurt, olive oil, or peanut butter? I’d better hurry up and choose, though, because it’s getting close to strawberry season, and I don’t think I will be able to resist making that strawberry sour cream ice cream…
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05.09.07
Posted in Breakfast at 3:37 pm by julie
Jeremy loves oatmeal. I like it too, but perhaps not on as frequent a basis as he would like. We use Bob’s Red Mill rolled oats, which are thick and hearty, and although oatmeal seems like one of those no-brainer things, I find that when I make batches according to the Good Enough to Eat cookbook, it comes out lighter and almost fluffy, so that’s always what I do.
More recently, we’ve taken to eating steel cut oats instead of rolled oats. I didn’t like it at all the first time around, because compared to regular oatmeal, it seemed too crunchy, chewy and kind of slimy at the same time. I’ve gotten used to it now, though, or perhaps I am getting the hang of cooking it, because I have started preferring it to rolled oats.
Most oatmeals reheat well, so it may be worthwhile to make a supersized batch and keep it in the fridge for quick hearty breakfasts that make instant oatmeal look and taste like cement (isn’t it?). When I reheat mine in the microwave, I add a tablespoon or two of cold water and cover it, and it ends up perfectly fresh and creamy again.
Oatmeal That’s Good Enough to Eat
1 1/4 C rolled oats
2 1/4 C cold water
Put the oats and water in a medium sauce pan, stir to combine, cover, and bring to a boil over medium high heat. When it begins to boil, stir it, lower the heat to medium low, keep covered, and simmer gently for about 5 minutes, stirring 2-3 times, which encourages a creamier texture. When the consistency is to your liking, remove from the heat. If desired, add cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or vanilla extract, and top with brown sugar, milk, nuts, dried fruits, toasted wheat germ, etc. to your tastes. I like cinnamon, vanilla, plenty of brown sugar and a splash of milk on mine.
Alton Brown’s Steel Cut Oatmeal
1 T butter
1 C steel cut oats
3 C boiling water (an electric kettle is quick and handy for this)
1/2 C whole milk
1/2 C plus 1 T low-fat buttermilk
1 T brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
In a large saucepot, melt the butter and add the oats. Stir for 2 minutes to toast. Add the boiling water and reduce heat to a simmer. Keep at a low simmer for 25 minutes, without stirring.
Combine the milk and half of the buttermilk with the oatmeal. Stir gently to combine and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Spoon into a serving bowl and top with remaining buttermilk, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
Source: Good Eats, with Alton Brown
Update: 5/18/07: The first time I made steel-cut oats I followed the recipe and it was fine, though I’m not the hugest fan of flat-out buttermilk flavor (wouldn’t just drink it, say). The next time I added some desiccated coconut to the oats before toasting, used 1% milk mixed with some plain yogurt, and stirred some brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon right in. I thought it was perfect just like that, sprinkled with a bit of demerara sugar for crunch, but Jeremy also garnished his with walnuts and dried cranberries. Very creamy and hearty. Another option, and one I used last night, was just to use straight whole milk in place of the buttermilk.
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