Bigos!

The Christmas holiday season truly is one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy the chance to pause and reflect with friends and family. I enjoy giving gifts and repeating traditions (some silly) year after year. And perhaps most of all, I enjoy the food. And of all the food I enjoy, bigos is my favorite.

Bigos is - as I understand it - the general term for Polish Hunters Stew. I learned about it and learned to love it from Meg shortly after I first met her. Her family has roots in Poland and through a combination of family lore and modern tradition, Meg started making this wonderful dish during the Holidays. These days, as Meg is a vegetarian, the bigos is part of a holiday hiatus where tradition trumps health concerns and we indulge in several meat dishes.

As I understand it, the specific recipe for bigos is mostly dependent on what the hunters bring home. Ours is adapted from an adaptation of a recipe The Best of Polish Cooking and includes pork, kielbasa, bacon, lots of cabbage and sauerkraut, mushrooms, red wine and ... you get the idea. You cook the main ingredients down for several hours before it gets finished with a sort of tomato and mushroom roux. The recipe calls for it then to be chilled overnight and reheated adding fresh red wine before serving. It also says it peaks around the third day!

 
Meg asked me today when we had this year's bigos - reheated for lunch - how this batch compared to previous years. The bigos had just been reheated for the second time; I replied it was the best ever!

Spicy Beans with Coconut Milk

Last night we made one of the easiest and most delicious good for you meals you can imagine: a spicy mix of beans, tomatoes, coconut milk over rice. Its an incredibly easy dish to make, is very good for you and provides considerable spice and tang. 

As with most delicious things you start by sautéing chopped onion, then adding garlic and then the key: red Thai curry. This is where the heat comes from so tune this part carefully. We backed off of the recipe slightly using about 1½ tablespoons of curry paste instead of the full 2 the recipe calls for. Then in goes canned beans, tomatoes, coconut milk. Along with this goes lime zest and lime juice and this is the tang that adds to the excitement.

Bring all this to a boil and let it simmer while you make the rice. When the rice is done you are ready to go. This is not only simple but has a great flow to it.

By the way, we thought the 1½ tablespoons of curry paste was pretty close to perfect. Definitely quite spicy but not overpowering.

Buvez: We tried a new Dogfishhead Imperial IPA which was wonderful.

Scallops with Chipotle-Orange Sauce.

Cooking on Friday nights can be tough. After a long work week, cooking a nice dinner can be a nice distraction but can also be ... just a little more than I feel like doing. With this in mind, and leveraging a sale on scallops at the Co-Op, we made one of our favorite easy dishes last night: Scallops with Chipotle-Orange Sauce.

Its a simple recipe where you brown the scallops with a little salt and paprika, then set them aside and reduce a sauce of orange juice and chipotles in adobo. Oh yes, there is a bit of butter thrown in as well which never hurts. When Meg first found this recipe we wondered how the scallops would stand up to the chipotles and indeed this is a tricky balance.

I've made it a couple times before and it has always hinted at excellence but I've always missed the mark in some way. The first effort was good but the sauce was not quite right (I rarely have the fortitude to properly reduce a sauce), the second effort too hot (chipotles in adobo need to be used carefully) so I was trying to actually refine and improve my efforts. 

I didn't perfect it but I did improve. First I got the heat right - for the canned Goya chipotles we get, a full tablespoon will definitely overwhelm the scallops so I cut back a bit. I also got the sauce reduction right, maintaining a high enough heat that the sauce thickened up nicely. 

Sadly I failed at the one thing that I pride myself on getting right: I overcooked the scallops. Not drastically but noticeably. I cooked at the right temperature to get the browned bits for the sauce but 3 minutes per side is way too much at that heat level. I'll back off a bit next time.

We served them with crispy green beans and rice and dinner was delicious.

A footnote: I was reading through a trial copy of Cook's Country that arrived in the mail a couple weeks ago and noticed a short reader comment about being unable to make good sauces in non-stick pans. If you're making a sauce that relies on the browned bits from, in this case scallops, you just don't get the same kind of browning when using a non-stick pan. So for this recipe, I used our simple stainless steel frying pan and both the browning and the sauce came out great, with good flavor from the scallops.

Buvez: Maybe in the future I'll just include this if we don't pair our dinner with the Big-A IPA from Smuttynose Brewery. Actually this Imperial IPA is a perfect match for the spicy sea taste of this dish.

Kali Dal Makhani and Chana Masala

Today, we made a couple of our favorite vegetarian Indian dishes. It's a good time of year for these because we're between big food holidays but craving comfort food. We made Creamy Black Gram Dal (Kali Dal Makhani) and Chana Masala. I found the dal recipe on the internet a few years ago and printed it but there's no information about its origin on the page. The chana masala recipe was given to us by our good friend (and fantastic cook!) Kavita.

We tackled the dal first. Last night, we soaked two cups of whole black urad, or matpe beans, and about a quarter cup of dried kidney beans. After lunch today, we washed and drained the beans and put them on the stove with water, turmeric, chili powder, salt, onions, garlic, fresh ginger and whole red chilies. The recipe calls for using a pressure cooker but we don't have one, so we cooked this concoction for about five hours. When the gram/ bean mixture was pretty soft, we added yoghurt, a bit of half and half, and chopped green chilies and simmered for awhile longer. Meanwhile, we started the "tarka". One of our favorite Indian cookbooks is Madhur Jaffrey's "An Invitation to Indian Cooking". In it, she describes how to "give a tarka" to a dish. Our recipe called it "tempering". We heated ghee in a pan until it was very hot and then added cumin seeds until they "splutter". Next, we added asafoetida, more chopped onion, red and green chilies, garlic, fresh ginger, and chopped tomato. After this cooked for a bit, we added it to the pot of gram/beans and let it simmer for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, about an hour before the dal was done, we started the chana masala. I was a hero and chopped four onions (after chopping four for the dal). I'm not a very fast chopper and our knives need to be sharpened so this takes much longer than it should. Tyler prepared the garlic and ginger paste and chopped two green chilies. Then, he browned the onions in ghee, making sure that they were fully cooked, or, as Kavita warned us, the dish would taste of raw onion. Next came the ginger garlic paste, tomato and green chilies. After the mixture cooked for awhile longer, we added two cans of garbanzo beans and chana masala spices (we bought a box of this at our local Indian market). We cooked the mixture thoroughly, added water, and then brought it to a boil. We reduced the heat, added salt, ghee and a bit of lemon juice. The house smelled incredible.

So, we made a batch of basmati rice and had a feast! Kali Dal Makhani, Chana Masala (garnished with cilantro) and rice. 

 

Spicy South Asian Roasted Fish

[Meg] When I saw this recipe, it reminded me of a wonderful Ina Garten recipe (which I'll share next time we make it). They are both simple and delicious because you combine a few ingredients to make the sauce, smother the fish in it, and then roast the concoction in the oven. 

This recipe calls for halibut and that's what we used but I'm going to find a less expensive alternative the next time we make it. Anyway, the sauce includes fresh lemongrass, ginger and lime juice, chili sauce (we used half Heinz and half Sriracha), coconut milk, fish sauce and garlic. Blend in the processor and pour over the fish. Bake for about 15 minutes. Wow - seriously, it was just incredible! We paired it with leftover Fiery Sweet Potatoes and tangy cole slaw. In terms of presentation, there was a lot of orange on the plate so we lost some points for that. But the flavor was fantastic! Here's the link to the recipe.

  
[Tyler] This is one of the best things that I've ever eaten...ever, no joke. I fear actually that there was some kind of perfect storm that resulted in the onslaught of flavor we loosed upon our taste buds. Will it ever be as good as the first time? Experience tells me it will be much better.

Two things - no three things stood out for me.

First the halibut was wonderful. I could tell when I washed it; it was firm, it was not slimy and it didn't smell fishy. Second, the fish sauce we used was, let's say, well aged and this turned out to be a good thing. In the final dish, the fish sauce was discernible (this is not generally the case in my experience) but it was wonderful! Lastly, the spice was perfect. The Heinz chili sauce (which I didn't even know we owned) was sweet and tangy while the Sriracha brought the spice and heat to the party. Oh, and the lemongrass was definitely present and lent a wonderful freshness to the dish. OK, four things. I can't wait to make this again! 

Buvez: This is getting boring isn't it.

Fiery Sweet Potatoes

Tyler and I have been previewing some Thanksgiving side dishes lately in preparation for the Big Day. In addition to brussels sprouts, we made a recipe for sweet potatoes that I saw in the New York Times. Our local Coop had yams but not sweet potatoes. Some people use them interchangeably but the sweet potato has much more nutritional value so I shopped around to find them.  

The recipe calls for baking the potatoes in the oven for about an hour until they are "very soft". I cooked mine for an hour and twenty minutes and they probably could have cooked a little longer. I peeled and mashed them and then put them in the fridge until dinnertime. 

That evening, Tyler and I mixed coconut milk and Thai red curry paste and combined it with the mashed sweet potatoes. Then we added brown sugar, unsalted butter and salt, and baked it in the oven. They were delicious - kind of sweet and exotic, but not too spicy. I think we would add a bit more curry paste for additional heat next time, but for the average palate, this level was perfect. Here's the link to the recipe.

The combination of the brussels sprouts (shown below with a couple of Tofurky kielbasa), the fiery sweet potatoes, and some of Meg's famous tangy cole slaw made for a great meal!


Buvez: Stuck on the Big A IPA for this hearty fall fare - and it works!

Brussels Sprouts!

This years participation in the local CSA at Cedar Circle Farm brought many unfamiliar (to me) vegetables into the house. Kale, bok choy, and mustard greens all made their way through our kitchen this year. One of the more welcome sights late in the year was a stalk - a legitimate tool for home defense - of brussels sprouts. 

I know brussels sprouts are not too popular in general. Last week I heard Jane Stern refer to them on The Splendid Table as one of the 10 most hated foods (how can you hate food?) in America. However they have always had a spot in my heart and about ten years ago Meg and I started making them a regular part of our Thanksgiving Day meal. My family can attest to this. 

So what to do with this stalk of delight? Meg found the answer in this wonderful recipe that we cooked up the other night. It combines applewood smoked bacon (we are lucky to have the North Country Smokehouse nearby in Claremont NH) with apples (still using apples from our own trees!), red onion, some vinegar and of course the brussels sprouts. 

There is always the question of how much to cook the brussels sprouts - you want them tender but not too chewy. I cooked them more than the recipe called for but they were still a bit underdone in Meg's view. Despite their small size, I think next time I will cut them in half as many recipes suggest.

Regardless, they were wonderful with a tangy fruitiness that joined the comforting earthiness of the brussels sprouts. My family might just have another form of brussels sprouts to enjoy this Thanksgiving!

Thirds?

Thirds.

I've had a portion. It was good enough that I had another. But wait - it is good enough that I need to go back and have one more portion. 

Despite girth-like evidence to the contrary, this doesn't happen to me very often - but it did the other night when we had the Moroccan Chickpea Stew. It was so delicious and wonderfully spiced and so ... approachable... I simply couldn't resist it. 

As I slowly cleaned up my last bowlful, I was reminded of Teresa Lust's wonderful book Pass the Polenta where she describes the phenomenon of "thirds" while relating her grandmother observing her father learn about polenta: 

In her experience, if a guest ate only seconds, he had done so merely to be polite. The meal was not so bad that he would refuse a second taste, but perhaps not so well prepared that he would lose sight of manners. The genuine culinary triumph came when a guest succumbed to the flavorful temptations on the table before him and dove in with abandon for a third helping.  

I succumbed BIG TIME!!

Khitcherie unda (Indian Eggs!)

A true Sunday brunch entry today; the kind that inspired this blog. Meg made Indian Eggs, or as Madhur Jaffrey - who inspired their construction in our house - calls them Khitcherie unda: scrambled eggs Indian Style.

Meg starts by dicing onion, tomato, cilantro and green chilies and sauteing all this in a small (I mean it) amount of butter. In our case we get a couple packages of these chilies from the Indian store in Lebanon (yes, we have one). They are found in the freezer and we keep them there as well, in two zip lock bags to keep them "fresh". They are pretty darn hot so we don't go through them too quickly.

Anyway while that's cooking and making the house smell fantastic, you beat eggs well in a separate bowl and when the onions etc. are ready, you add the eggs to the mix.

Then the magic happens. Meg has a way of very gently cooking eggs, letting the curds form slowly and stopping before things get dry, that makes her eggs sublime. She repeated the performance today and the results were transcendent.

And spicy!! Today's incarnation had four of the spicy chilies which was a perfect heat level for me and I'm glad to say also for her.

Buvez: I stumbled here a bit. We had a snakebite made with Guinness draft and Dogfishhead Festina Pêche. It was nice, but this meal really needs a fine IPA such as the Smuttynose Big A double IPA.

I love Sundays!

Saturday...

It's Saturday night and time for some more martini poetry, this time from Dorothy Parker:

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.

Moroccan Chickpea Stew

Last night, we merged two recipes that I had found a couple of years ago in Cooking Light; one for Moroccan Chickpea Chili and the other for Moroccan Chickpea Stew and we came up with a great hybrid.

The recipes were pretty similar, but there were a few key differences. They both called for onions, carrots, garlic, chickpeas, tomatoes, and various spices. But the chili called for celery and the stew recipe added jalapeno (unseeded) and potato, so we added them all. The spice combo was great. Both recipes called for cumin, turmeric and salt. The stew also had chili powder, which we added. The chili included ground ginger, freshly ground black pepper, cinnamon and ground red pepper. Cowabunga! 

We added some organic vegetable broth and let it simmer for awhile. When the veggies were tender, we served the stew with rice and garnished with cilantro. Great hearty meal!

Friday...

It's Friday and time for some Ogden Nash:

There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish that I had one at present.

There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin.

Puttanesca

Last night we whipped up a batch of puttanesca. I'd never heard of puttanesca before trying it at Sweet Tomatoes (now Three Tomatoes) in Lebanon. It quickly became a favorite of mine.

Meg drove the production and we followed fairly closely the recipe found in The Joy of Cooking. We didn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary but the combination of anchovies, black olives and of course garlic proved once again that the ordinary can be divine. It was.


Buvez: Ruffino Chianti Superiore.

Shirred Eggs

Posted by Meg: Getting back to our theme of Sunday brunch, today we made shirred eggs.

I always wanted to make these because they just sound so good, but I haven't done it until now. They are very easy and absolutely delicious. I wasn't sure how to make them so I checked The Joy of Cooking. Remarkably, there was no recipe. I think the earlier edition must have had one. (This would be the same edition that tells you how to skin and cook a squirrel). Anyway, then I checked Christopher Kimball's, The Cook's Bible, and he had a recipe but he strongly recommended cooking the eggs in a water bath for 40 minutes. I was too impatient so I went to the internet. I checked out one of my favorite online references, myrecipes.com. This site searches the recipes from Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset, Coastal Living, All You, Real Simple, and Health and rates them.

I found a recipe for shirred eggs that looked pretty straightforward, so I went with it. First you coat a 6 oz. ramekin with butter, add cream (I used light cream instead of heavy cream), 2 eggs, salt, pepper, chives, and top with grated hard cheese. I used Parmigiano-Reggiano. Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes then let set for 2 or 3 more. While the eggs were baking, I wondered if Julia Child had a shirred egg recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Yes she did! But wait, what? "Shirred eggs should never be attempted in oven, as it toughens them." Drat. Too late. I'll try her method next time.

The eggs were delicious! They were a cross between an egg dish and a custard, rich, but not over-the-top. Paired with buttered toast and a glass of white wine, a perfect Sunday brunch!

Chutney Verde

Posted by Meg: This is a typical dilemma for us. We buy a bunch of parsley because some recipe that we are making calls for a small amount of it. We use about a quarter of a cup at most and then we have most of a bunch left. Usually it goes bad and I go into denial for a couple of weeks, keeping the mushy bag in the crisper. Not this time! We had a convergence of three kinds of parsley and I was determined not to let them rot.

Here we go: we had curly parsley, cilantro and flat leaf parsley. We washed it all and put it in the Cuisinart. We had equal parts of cilantro and flat leaf parsley and a handful of curly. We added some onion, fresh ginger, 2 jalapenos and 1/2 of a serrano pepper, seeded. Pulse. Then sweetened coconut, a handful of unsalted peanuts, lemon juice, rice vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin and chili powder. Voila - green chutney! We served it with our leftover harira and pita bread. Not bad at all!

Tyler: I have to jump in and say this stuff was really wonderful! Fresh and vibrant with a really nice bit of heat and tang. It was fantastic with the soup and pita.

Buvez: McNeil's Warlord Imperial IPA (not Long Trail as reported earlier...)

Harira?

Posted by Meg: Last night for dinner, we made a vegetarian version of harira, a traditional Moroccan dish. Harira is usually eaten during the holy month of Ramadan at dinner to break the day of fast but it is also served for special occasions. The recipe varies by region and family and typically includes lamb. It also almost always includes onion, celery, fresh ginger, lentils, chickpeas, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, saffron and other spices.

We followed a recipe from Cooking Light magazine, which also called for mushroom stock which added heartiness to the dish. It also included cinnamon, cayenne and garlic. The harira was fantastic! It was somewhere between a soup and a stew and we served it with toasted pita bread. We did a little research this morning and found out that it is often paired with hard boiled eggs sprinkled with salt and cumin or with lemon juice on the side. I think we'll try this tonight.

Mushroom Frittata

Posted by Meg: Today, we decided to make a frittata. This was our third attempt and we are still trying to master it. The recipe was from the latest edition of Cooking Light - a Mushroom Frittata. Let me start by saying that if you throw wild mushrooms, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, fresh thyme and fresh eggs together, it's hard to go wrong unless you overcook things. But the devil is in the details. First, cook the mushrooms.

A quick aside: we saw "Julie and Julia" last week and the concept of "don't crowd the mushrooms" was reinforced. I always crowd the mushrooms. They reduce to a fraction of their original size so I figured you might as well pack as many as you can into a frying pan. Wrong approach, according to Julia and she makes sense. If you put too many in the pan, "their juices escape and they do not brown". So this time, I gave the mushrooms much more space although probably not enough. The frittata recipe suggested an 8-inch ovenproof pan and since we had a 6" and a 9" caphalon pan, we went with the 9".

The recipe said to coat the pan with cooking spray but, since we are recently so influenced by Julie Child, we went with butter. Bottom line, the frittata was delicious but a bit thin. Should have used a smaller pan. Also, part of the frittata stuck to the pan. I don't know if the outcome would have been different with cooking spray.


A footnote: we subscribe to Cooking Light for a reason. Great recipes, great flavor, less fat and bad stuff in our diet. But Tyler and I are both pretty frugal. The frittata recipe called for 3 egg whites. What to do with the yolks? Fry them up and eat them along side the frittata! I'm a little embarrassed by that. But last time I had to use egg whites and not yolks, the yolks languished in my refrigerator for a couple of weeks before I tossed them. But isn't that better than eating them? Tyler would not agree with me on that.

Prosciutto is my friend...

As part of the ongoing birthday week celebration, Meg brought home some prosciutto for me and today I tried, for the first time, the pairing (tripling?) of figs, blue cheese and prosciutto. We halved the figs, added a chunk of blue cheese and then wrapped the result in prosciutto. Because of the ongoing downpour outside, we didn't fire up the grill but rather broiled them in the little electric toaster oven.

Oh my goodness!

The tastes of the three meld together to form a deliciously fruity fig taste with the salt from the blue cheese balancing the meatiness of the prosciutto. One of those mouthfuls that you simply don't want to actually swallow. Wow! I love birthdays!

Buvez: Hennepin Saison from the Ommegang (O My God This is Good!) Brewery.

Birthday Steak au Poivre...

Meg and I caught the movie Julie and Julia the other night which, along with my birthday, inspired a trip through our volume of the Mastering The Art of French Cooking. What's the easiest thing in the book that I love? That's easy: Steak au Poivre. My reaction when I see a nice steak is to fire up the grill but this steak is cooked in a skillet. Hmmm... Oh, and then they put a sauce on it. Huh? Flaming brandy?

I wrote for help. My friend Roger, who years ago helped me understand how to use my fingers to tell when a steak is done, was kind enough to send along some helpful hints including 1) use some good beef stock for the sauce and 2) use a sear/oven technique to cook the steak.

So last night Meg and I melded Roger and Julia's ideas together and went for it using a cast iron skillet and a non-flaming approach to adding the brandy as we finished off the sauce.

Add to that some delicious roasted vegetables (potatoes, onions, fennel, celeriac with rosemary and olive oil) and a fantastic Maple Walnut Apple Crisp that Meg made with our own apples and it was a feast!

Buvez: Smashed Pumpkin Ale from Shipyard Brewing (preparation) and a 2000 Januik Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State (from the dark years).

Eggs a la Kevin

I heard about a brunch recipe made by Pierre Schaedelin, chef and co-owner with Alain Ducasse of Benoit, in Manhattan and we decided to make it this weekend. The recipe, called "Eggs a la Kevin" apparently got its name because it is a favorite of one of Martha Stewart's editors. (Schaedelin also used to be a personal chef for Martha Stewart).

Here's the short version: first, we baked fresh tomatoes that had been cored, seeded and peeled, in the oven with olive oil, garlic and fresh thyme.

Then, we sauteed a couple of sliced onions in butter until they were caramelized. In a small pan, we cooked two sunny-side-up eggs briefly, then arranged the baked tomato and caramelized onion on the egg whites.


We topped with thin slices of Comte cheese and broiled in the saute pan for about a minute or less. Then we garnished with fresh chopped basil. It was fantastic!

Buvez: Bell's Two Hearted Ale (thanks Wom!) and Delirium Tremens.

Corn Chowder

Ok so it's the second post here and I'm already violating the title of the blog. As Kurt said, "So it goes".

Meg made some delicious corn chowder last night. Corn Chowder turns out it is a favorite of both of ours but we've never made it before. We were again working to get through the onslaught of vegetables, including corn, from the Cedar Circle CSA and this worked pretty well. Meg consulted a number of recipes and ended up working from Chris Kimball's Cooks Bible version and making a few improvements. There was lots of fresh Vermont onions and corn in it but the kicker was a fresh jalapeño which we forgot to sauté though it simmered in the chowder for a good spell. I think this actually turned out to be a good thing as it added a fresh flavor to the whole thing without overpowering at all.

It was absolutely delicious and we made some more good progress on our vegetable backlog!

Quesadillas? Oh yeah!

Yesterday, we made a nice lunch using some of the corn we've been getting as part of our CSA here in East Thetford, VT. We grilled it, mixed it with local goat cheese and added to corn tortillas for a delicious quesadilla. We were lucky enough to have some leftover salsa verde that we made with fresh tomatillas a couple days before to drizzle over the quesadillas.

Anyway, the quesadillas were awesome and we had a couple left over and used them as the basis for today's Sunday Brunch.

We grilled a couple poblano peppers, skinned them and cut them into strips. We then heated yesterday's quesadillas in a frying pan, plated them, added salsa, refried beans and strips of grilled poblano, topping it off with a couple of eggs fried sunny side up - yolks ready to roll.

We served this with some no-fat sour cream, some more refried beans and salsa, some leftover roasted vegetables, fresh cherry tomatoes, and a few choice bits of chipotle with adobo to add some fire. It was awesome! The quesadillas should be made fresh (the tortilla suffers during storage) but this was super convenient and oh so good.

Add to this a nice Red Sox 3-1 win over the Rays and we had yet another memorable Sunday Brunch!

Buvez: McNeils Warlord Imperial IPA & Long Trail Double IPA. Splendid indeed.

Why?

My wife and I try to make it a habit of reserving our Sunday's for time together, with a special focus on spending some time cooking up a delicious meal midday. It's our chance to improvise and play and more often than not results in some of our most memorable meals. Add a fine IPA or flavorful bubbly to the mix and it is the meal of the week.

We always talk about writing down what we cook (so we can remember to do it again) and I thought it might make a fun blog. I guess you'll be the judge of that.

Here goes!