FEAST MODE: Pasta e Fagioli

I'm making several soups this weekend.  This is partially because the magazine in question has a lot of soups in it and partially because soups freeze well and make good lunches.  The first soup is called "Pasta e Fagioli" and is described as 'chock full of pasta, beans and vegetables, making it a hearty one-dish meal."  If that's not Minestrone then I don't know what is but evidently "Fine Cooking" doesn't stoop to Minestrone like the rest of us.

In any case, the soup starts off with bacon but I'm going to digress a bit from the get go and talk about stock pots instead.

When it comes to life's possessions I try to be a bit of a minimalist and that's no different in the kitchen.  I have two knives - a small one (paring) and a big one (chef).  I have two pans.  A small one (egg) and a big one (affectionately known as my 'big ass frying pan.')  Until recently I've only ever had two pots as well (you can probably guess at their classifications) but my parents bought me a stock pot for Christmas and I have to admit it's been a bit of a guilty pleasure.  You can certainly get by in the kitchen without a stock pot but it is nice to have one.  Not only is it useful for making stock (which I should probably do given that I've purchased 9 boxes of chicken broth for my adventures this weekend) but the very large pot is also good for making large amounts of soup or stew which I sometimes do.

Back to the Minestrone.  Before I start any soup I always try to chop all the ingredients.  This saves on unnecessary stress later when you discover that you really need to add the garlic but it's not ready to go yet.

The wine is not actually for the soup

We start with slicing 8 slices of bacon into small pieces and frying them in the bottom of the stock pot.  This really illustrates the necessity of having a good thick bottom stock pot because the bacon will burn in a thin bottomed cheap one (I know from experience).  You should cook the bacon as to be to the texture you want in your soup because you won't be boiling it more later.  Once that's done, remove the bacon and set it aside on some paper towels.




The bottom of your stock pot will likely be covered in some delicious half burned bacon fat.  You can and should let the bottom of the pan coat with this substance but let it get too dark and you run the risk of making your entire soup taste like burned meat.  Try to avoid that.

Once you've removed the bacon add three diced red onions.  Now - if you have a the aforementioned large food processor you can always chop it in there.  If not, I recommend the following technique:  Peel the onion, chop off the end that's not the root and then score the onion into little squares:

Then, all you have to do is slice it the long way.  Add the diced onion and saute it in that bacon fat until it's a nice soft consistency.  Then add 3 cloves of diced garlic and 1/2 teaspoon of dried rosemary to the mix and cook it for about a minute. Speaking of diced garlic, I have this totally amazing tool specifically for the task.  You just throw the garlic in there, put on the lid and twist it.  IT'S MAGICAL.  And besides, everyone hates dicing garlic anyway.

After the minute, you add pretty much everything else.  That includes 2 quarts of low sodium chicken broth, 2 cans of rinsed chickpeas, 1 can of petite diced tomatoes (plus juice), 4 chopped carrots, 3 sticks of celery, 1 cinnamon stick, 3/4 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, and one cup of water.  Bring it to a boil, then reduce to simmer for a half hour.

That half hour is a nice time to catch up with our roast.  I've been basting it from time to time (turkey basters do not make my list of necessities for the kitchen but I do happen to have one.  If you don't, you can use a big spoon.  It works just as well.)  This is also the time to cook the pasta.  This magazine recommends tubettini' which I imagine is Italian for 'very tiny little tubes of pasta.'  They didn't have that at my store so I just bought a random bag of fancy pasta instead.

After the half hour is over you remove the cinnamon stick and add the bacon plus 1.5 tsp of red vinegar.  (side note:  I don't know how this happened in all my non-cooking for the past four years but I have a really massive collection of vinegars.)  Then you season to taste with salt, pepper and more red wine vinegar.  This assumes that you have not been steadily drinking from your Red Table Wine.  I have left the final salt count for my future self.

Roast update:  We are now at 150 degrees with 10 more to go.  It smells fucking delicious and the braising broth tastes pretty damn good too.  I'm feeling optimistic about our pork/beef bastard of a roast.

Thank you and good night.  We shall continue tomorrow.

FEAST MODE: Pastalicious

I've been saying to myself for awhile that I wish I could get back to a place where I cooked 80%-90% of my meals like I used to.  Then I realized that 'awhile' has actually been the past four years.  Home cooked meals are almost always cheaper than the alternative and making a decent salary removes the necessity to actually cook.

That said, back when I did actually cook my folks used to sometimes give me gourmet magazines to draw inspiration from.  Our recipes for the rest of the weekend come from "Fine Cooking - January 2009."  This simple pasta dish is from the back cover.

It's generally a good idea to read through recipes before you get started on them.  That way you don't get caught off guard by instructions like 'marinade overnight' or 'chill until hardened.'  In this case, the recipe asks that you reserve a cup of the water that you boiled the pasta in so you can use that water to finish the dish.  Hard to recreate that ingredient after the fact and while pasta water won't make or break your dish it does add something a little special.  Bill Buford, the author of "Heat" assigns the pasta water an almost mythical quality and who wants to miss out on mysticism?  Not me.  Also, the recipe doesn't mention boiling the pasta until last but if you want to finish the recipe in a timely fashion then it's better to do the pasta first while you prepare the other ingredients.  Do so in salted water.

The recipe calls for Orecchiette (pasta).  I don't know what that is.  But the picture looks like shells and I found something like it on the shelves.  As I said before, I like to make sure the primary ingredient in my recipes is quality, so I bought a good quality dried pasta.  I think they make a pretty big difference in the final outcome.

Next, roast half a head of cauliflower and a pint of grape tomatoes in olive oil, salt and pepper.  Pro tip:  'roast' nearly always means a temperature between 400 and 450 degrees.  In this case, 425 for 15 minutes.

Before roasting

While that's in the oven you're supposed to pulse four cloves of garlic and 9 leaves of fresh sage in a food processor.  I have three thoughts about that.

1.)

When you buy fresh herbs, you pretty much always wind up with more than you need.  Fortunately, most fresh herbs actually freeze pretty well so at least you can do something with them rather than throw them out or try like hell to use all that fresh sage.

2.)

When you buy garlic, try to buy a head that has paper that's tight to the garlic.  That means it's fresh.  Also, fresh garlic is purple in color so if you can find some in the store that has a little purple in it, that's a good bet.

3.)  Food processors are big and take a lot of space in your kitchen.  If you're going to buy one, get in the habit of using it a lot and right away, otherwise you're wasting your money.  I have the little one that's pictured and it triples with other attachments as a submersion blender and a motorized whisk.  I love it and use it all the time when I'm cooking.

When the garlic and sage has been diced in the processor, add about 3oz of prosciutto.  I feel about prosciutto the same way I do about bacon.  It's great as a flavoring agent but not really meant to be the main attraction of the meal.  

Add that to the cauliflower and tomatoes once their done and roast for another 5 minutes.

Roasted

By the time the roasting is done your pasta should also be done.  You'll want to mix everything together along with a little of that pasta water to add mysticism plus about 3/4 cup of parmigiano-reggiano cheese and 5 ounces of arugula.  I don't know how much 5oz of arugula is so I just added a couple of handfuls and called it good.

By the way - this is really fucking good.  I mean like - wow!  Add a little of that Red Table Wine and you have one fantastic dinner!

(Also, the roast is setting pretty at 87.2 internal degrees)

FEAST MODE Where's the Beef?

In an effort to reconnect with my love of cooking and my love of food I'm taking this weekend to live blog some culinary adventures.  We're starting with pork roast.  It's pork roast not pot roast because I got into a hurry at the store and picked up the wrong kind.  But whatever.  Pork shoulder is good too.  What follows is something I've just made up.  It could be awful.  Life is full of adventure.

Whenever I'm taking a day to cook a lot I like to make sure to get a roast, a chicken or something else that takes a lot of time and only a little effort to make.  I figure that if I'm already spending the day in the kitchen I might as well use the oven or the slow cooker while I'm in there.

Pro tip:  Whenever I'm making something that has one big primary ingredient I try to make sure that the primary ingredient is of a high quality, otherwise the whole dish kind of goes to hell.  In this case, that means getting a really nice piece of pork.  I found a shoulder roast at PCC.  3.8 pounds for about $15 and sustainably raised to boot.  Sure, it costs a little more than the regular kind but it tastes a lot better and there's some research to suggest that all the crap they feed factory raised meat makes its way into the fat storage of the animal so not only are there a multitude of ethical concerns with factory raised meat, it's also probably not very good for you.

I started today by roasting up some bone marrow.

So yes - this would have made a hell of a lot more sense for a pot roast but should still make the pork fatty and delicious.  Marrow bones can usually be found somewhere in the deli section of your grocery store and if you can't find it, ask the butcher.  They always have some on hand.  In this case, I've split the bone with a knife and a hammer and set it to roast at 400 degrees in a roasting pan until it starts to brown.

Before

After

You can't really overcook marrow but if it stays too hot for too long it will render and just be liquid fat which we actually want to save for the next step.

We're bothering with the marrow because I'd like to make a nice braising liquid for the roast.  Braising something means that you have enough liquid for the meat to sit in but not enough to cover it.  I've transferred the marrow into a large pan and rendered it into liquid.

Then I add one very thinly sliced yellow onion and caramelize it on a low heat.

As the onion carmalizes, I add a little beef stock and a little red wine.  We're reducing the beef stock and letting the alcohol boil off the wine.  So the liquid will taste very concentrated and beefy with a little tang to take the thickness off the marrow.

A note on cooking with wine:  As a general rule, I buy whatever's cheapest and use that.  Today, I'm using red wine and so I bought a wine that I also like to drink - Red Table Wine by Townshend Cellers.  If I'm cooking with white wine I buy whatever's $3 and leave it in the fridge until it dies.  I don't drink white wine.

When you're cooking from your brain and not from a recipe it's really important to taste as you go.  That's actually true for regular recipes too.  The great thing about doing that is it prevents you from over or under seasoning your food and also gives you the opportunity to flavor your food exactly the way you want it, not the way the author of the recipe imagined it - and isn't that better?  In this case I'm not adding salt yet because I'm planning on rubbing the roast with salt and herbs before it all goes in the pot.

Speaking of herbs, I've combined rosemary, thyme and kosher salt together and worked them over a bit with dried thyme and rosemary.

Then I rub the roast with it and throw it in the pot along with some large chunks of carrots, a bay leaf and the braising liquid.  From there it goes on low until it's done.

There are several different methods for knowing when a roast is done, but my favorite is a thermometer like this one. It takes the guesswork out of it and only costs about $25.

So there's my roast.  Hopefully the beef/pork combination will be delightful and not completely weird.  I'll keep you posted.