Watermelon and Chocolate

So I was reading Rick Tramonto's Amuse-Bouche the other night and bemoaning the fact that I would probably never own a sous vide machine. After that I bemoaned the fact that the ice cream machine I tried was a dud, and that I probably should have picked up the Zoku popsicle maker in the store the other day. Custom popsicles anytime! Sign me up!

Reading through the book also brought me back to earlier in the weekend, sitting on a friend's porch in sweltering weather, eating some of the first watermelon of the season, liquid dripping to the ground with every bite. Unadorned, watermelon at it's best.

The amuse on page 34 of Tramonto's book caught my attention: watermelon with balsamic vinegar. And like a dream, the memory of the dark chocolate balsamic I'd received for Christmas floated right to me. I was scared to try it over vanilla ice cream. I've seen recipes for a pork tenderloin marinade, a salad dressing, and truffles. But watermelon? With Balsamic vinegar? This is definitely worth hunting down a good bottle of balsamic.

Get brave. It's summer, and definitely time time to challenge your taste buds in miraculous ways. Go to your kitchen and try this unsual combination. Tramonto gussies it all up by suggesting you get a melon baller and scoop out a smallish divet in precisely cut 1 1/2 inch cubes of watermelon. His recipe even says something like juice some watermelon and mix it up with the balsamic. I say, "It's summer, Rick, it's too hot to be fussy."

Sure for the first couple of pieces, I was cautious. I used a knife. I dug a little divet into the chunk of watermelon. And dripped out a teeny puddle of a drizzle of the Dark Chocolate Balsamic. Then I popped the first one in my mouth and moaned with pleasure.

Dear me - must have more. Now. As in, I know I just had a spectacular dark chocolate truffle, but I must have more NOW. Eventually I got impatient with the fussiness and just dipped. Either way, this is totally satisfying, ultra-summery. Yahoo! Bring on the sweet corn, tomatoes, and poolside dining!

Satay Sashay

I'm exploring some recipes from Food Editor's Favorites: Treasured Recipes. When selecting recipes from a cookbook for the blog, I'm looking for a mix that shows off the best of the cookbook (or recipe book as my mom says.) I'm also looking for what will feed me. The Pork Satay on page 81 fit the bill nicely.

I thawed pork overnight in the fridge, then snipped into bite-size chunks. I find that a good pair of kitchen scissors makes chopping meats into small pieces for stir-frys and such much easier than using a knife. It's not as precise, certainly, but also not something I'm worried about for this recipe. No perfection necessary.

For the marinade I combined peanut butter, cayenne, garlic, onion, brown sugar, lemon juice, and soy sauce. I didn't have any ground coriander or fresh cilantro in the house because I'd forgotten to buy it. People either love or hate cilantro; add my name to the list of those who love it. It's light and fresh, and adds a spark of spring to any dish it's added to. The difference between coriander and cilantro is explained well at What's Cooking America.

Marinade Ingredients

So, lacking in any fresh cilantro or dried coriander, I opted to use the remaining parsley from the boring mushroom dish. Parsley isn't a particularly great substitute for cilantro; it doesn't have anywhere near the flavor, but it's OK in a pinch.  I chopped the parsley up and added to the marinade, then stirred to combine.

Completed Marinade

I poured the marinade into a plastic bag added the chopped pork, and squished the bag around. Then I let it sit in the fridge overnight.

Pork Marinade

The  next day, I removed the bag from the fridge and placed the pork on a baking rack and broiled. As suggested in the recipe, I basted with a combination of olive oil and butter.

Pork Satay with Broccoli

Even though I kept my eye on these, I cooked them too long. The first bites of pork were moist and peanuty, but the leftovers the next day and the next were dried out. I can really see this recipe shining as an addition to the ubiquitous backyard barbecue this summer. It's easy to fix, fast to cook, and would work very well on skewers.

Blah-Blah-Blah Helen Gurley Brown Blah-Blah-Blah

The title tells you what you really want to know. This hot mushroom sandwich from Food Editors' Favorites: Treasured Recipes was an unquestionable fail in my book of food.

First, it's not really a two-fisted sandwich, it's party food. It's an appetizer masquerading as dinner. Second, it's boring...really boring; I would prefer an appetizer to head more in the direction of an amuse-bouche, but this sandwich didn't even have a sense of humor.

It did, however, have an intriguing 1970's pedigree. The recipe is said to have been a favorite of Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown; for all young ladies out there who don't know who she is, go read Wikipedia for a fast overview, and thank your lucky, free-wheeling stars that she wrote Sex and the Single Girl many years ago.

The recipe came from celebrated caterer Donald Bruce White who said it was one of Mrs. Brown's favorites. White is worth talking about all on his own, let along thinking about this particularly snooze-inducing appetizer. An article in New York Magazine about 1983's new, hot caterers had this to say about White:

"Donald Bruce White's loyal clients love using his Coalport dinner plates; their Park Avenue drawing rooms are grand enough to accomodate his sterling-silver rolling carving board with it shuge dome-shaped top. White's soirees - deb parties, benefits, late suppers- have a comfortable gentility, an old-money propriety, an enormous sense of style. What would he serve for a buffet supper? Lump crabmeat made with a fine julienne of orange, served with Smithfield ham and corn sticks, spinach in Maderia, and crunchy coleslaw. No hors d'oeuvre with this supper. For dessert, an orange souffle and tuiles, the crispy curved almond cookies. This supper would cost $40 per person. For a first course at a seated dinner, he suggests small mousselines of smoked salmon and heavy cramy formed into tiny eggs and arranged aorund slices of brioche, garnished with caviar." 

Regardless, the sandwich isn't too hard to fix, and I suppose wouldn't be bad for one appetizer among several others for a cocktail party if you do that kind of thing. I don't.

I minced up the mushrooms and placed them in a pan with butter and minced scallion. I cooked until all liquid had disappeared.

Minced Mushrooms

Cooked Mushrooms with Scallions and Butter

Simultaneously, I placed more butter into a pan, added all-purpose flour, and made a lovely roux in no time. I added homemade chicken stock, heavy cream, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne. That really should have been enough to make it tasty. Yeah right. It was also not enough to make it particularly photogenic.

Then the creamy mixture was combined with the mushrooms. Getting sleepy yet?

At that point I pulled out a square loaf of sourdough bread and trimmed the crust off all the way around...

and cut into slices. Thick slices. The recipe says thin, but I didn't read closely so without a doubt, these were too thick. 

Then I spread the mushroom cream sauce on the bread, another slice stacked on top, more mushroom sauce, and another slice of bread.

Even the pictures of this make me start to yawn. The sandwich went into the oven at 400 for 10 minutes and came out semi-toasty.

I really wanted to like this sandwich. I also really wanted to add roasted red pepper and arugula and something -almost anything- into the mix for zest. Even the cayenne pepper didn't intimidate my taste buds like it so often does, and I couldn't even taste the nutmeg. I can maybe see the appeal of this appetizer with thinner sliced bread; the mushroom sauce was beginning to soak the bread - think both crunchy and soft simultaneously. That was a waste of good sourdough bread; instead of make additional sandwiches, I saved the bread and used it for very tasty French Toast.

Macaroni for Poor Folks

This week I'm exploring Red, White & Greens: The Italian Way With Vegetables by Faith Willinger. Today's recipe, like many in the book, has an entrancing story. The title of the recipe is "Livia's Genoa Macaroni for Artistocrats and Poor Folks: Maccheroni alla Genovese" and it can be found on pages 221-222.

Willinger begins talking about this recipe by describing the produce she sees on the journey to the restaurant Don Alfonso: there are olive trees, lemon groves, vegetable gardens, artichoke plants, onions, garlic, and staked tomato plants. The Don Alfonso serves fancy food, "..like lobster and foie gras and covers food with silver domes..." writes Willinger, but Livia Iaccarino (wife of restaurant owner Alfonso Iaccarino) told a story about traditional macaroni.

Livia says that, in days gone by, the artistocrats would braise meat and onions for hours; eventually the onions would turn into a cream sauce. The peasants, on the other hand, omitted the beat, and simply cooked the onions for hours with other vegetables to create a savory sauce. I gathered the ingredients.

Then I chopped up the onion, carrot, parsley, and celery and placed them in a pot with olive oil.

I sauted this mixture until the vegetables were tender, then added white wine, salt, and pepper and set it on the burner to cook long and slow.

This where the magic is supposed to happen. If you're a patient cook (which I sure can be when The Grit's Golden Bowl is involved) you are rewarded as the onions turn into a cream sauce.After two hours of simmering, I had no broth. I did, however, have nicely sauted vegetables that tasted very good.

I let the vegetables keep simmering as I put pasta water on to boil. I cooked the pasta, drained, and reserved two cups of pasta water.

I mixed the cooked pasta in with the vegetables, and added some of the pasta water. No magic onion sauce appeared. I was tempted to puree the whole thing (sans pasta) with my hand blender, but resisted. In retrospect, that probably would have been a good idea.

The resulting dish was certainly tasty, but nothing I'd make again. And though Ivan was interesting in nibbling, only I ate Macaroni for Poor Folks.

If I was to try this again, which probably won't happen, I would definitely cook the vegetables longer. I also think I needed more liquid, and the hand blender would have been a good thing to use. Regardless, I enjoyed falling under the spell of the "upstairs/downstairs" dish.

Nude Is Where It's At

Red, White and Greens: The Italian Way with Vegetables is by Faith Willinger and was published by Harper Collins in 1996. I came across the book shortly thereafter, cooked from it a few times, and gave the cookbook away or took it to a used book place - I don't remember. Regardless, I forgot about the cookbook.

Kind of. A few of the recipes really sang out to me, so I went hunting for a used copy, found one, and happily revisited fond meals. I'll definitely be doing that this week, and also exploring new recipes in this secret-revealing book.

Willinger lives in Italy, and has developed a relationship with many chefs. More importantly, she's developed relationships with vendors at various farmer's markets throughout the country, thus receiving Italian family-style approach to preparing vegetables.

On page 180, Nudies aren't quite a family secret, but they are a bit of a Florentine joke on a dish from the Casterino. Willinger explains that in Casterino they make a dish like the ravioli made by the Flornetines. However, the spinach walnut-sized balls aren't "wearing" pasta and are considered "nude." What a better recipe to make for a blog called Cookbook Fetish?

I've tried to make gnocchi before to horrible results. If I have a hankering for gnocchi, I'm just as likely to head to a restaurant or to the freezer section at my local grocery store. So here we go - keep your fingers crossed.

The Nudies call for wild greens. I found some spinach and figured that would work. Not many wild greens available when the ground is covered with snow.

I put a kettle of water on to boil, and quickly removed some of the larger spinach stems. All of the spinach went into the salted water for a quick 3-5 minute boil, and then into a colander for a rinse under cold water.

Then I got out the cheese cloth and squeezed the spinach as hard as I could. It shrunk in size. I squeezed again, and it shrunk more. I was worried - the recipe calls for 1 1/3 cup spinach. I had maybe 2/3 of a cup.

Spinach

I placed the spinach into a bowl and added the ricotta, grated Parmesan cheese, egg, and nutmeg. I didn't use quite as much as the recipe called for because I had less spinach that was required.

I mixed it up until it resembled a smooth paste. Or a big ball of spinach and stuff.

I placed the mixture into a plastic bag that I had (as the recipe suggests) cut a corner off of. I took a picture.

And then the camera battery died. I put the spinach into the fridge. I thought about cutting veggies for another recipe, but realized I needed a camera to take pictures of that. And the camera was out of commission for at least two hours.

I watched the Jamie Cullum Live at Blenheim video. I'd had it playing while preparing the food and, by the time Cullum tiptoed into the start of the "High & Dry/Singing In The Rain" medley, I was without camera. I wondered when Cullum would ever play anywhere near my tiny town. I saw him from the third row in a small theater in Knoxville, Tennessee years before and was blown away by both Cullum and opening act The Gabe Dixon Band. I was also disappointed Cullum didn't even touch the state of Michigan during the 2010 tour. Hear me Jamie? Stop by Michigan - I'll be there with dancing shoes on.

I watched the snow fall, the cats sleep. I made a sandwich, checked email, and waited. I made No-Bake Chocolate Cookies, ate several, looked at a genealogy question, contemplated my navel. Finally, the camera battery was replenished.

I raced to the kitchen, threw on my apron, and returned to work. I cleaned the counter and laid down flour. I retrieved the spinach dough from the fridge. I put the reserved spinach cooking water on to boil.

I piped out blobs of spinach dough onto the floured surface.

Blobs of Nudies

I covered them with more dough, and gently rolled one at a time between my hands until they were more or less round.

Lined Up Nudies

And into the boiling water they went. Except the water wasn't quite boiling, and it wasn't quite deep enough. Still, I proceeded.

Boilin' Nudies

And in two or three minutes, I removed cooked Nudies with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Slimey Lookin' Nudies

Impatient and hungry as always, I plopped five into a Fiestaware dish, added some leftover marinara sauce, sprinkled on more parmesan, salt, and pepper, and rolled in into the preheated oven.

In 10 minutes or so, I had this lovely dish piping hot and ready to eat.

The Nudies tasted like little spinach un-meatballs, like little melt-in-your-mouth spinach/cheese balls. They could have stayed in the oven a bit longer, but I didn't mind. The pinch of nutmeg sneaks up on you, bearing a subtle undertone to your taste buds.

This is a delightful way to get your dark, leafy green vegetables. Because the spinach was cooked and chopped, there are no long strings of potentially unidentified stuff in your mouth. And that always freaks me out,like orange juice pulp floating around in my mouth - don't get me started. With Nudies, your greens are dressed up, but still naked.

And though prep takes a long time (in my case given camera battery problems - 5 hours) it's well worth it as the oven time is only 15 minutes tops. Combine this with some crusty garlic bread, a small side salad, and a glass of red wine and you're in Italian heaven. Belissimo!

Afternoon Snack/Late Night Munchie - Seafood Nachos

Cookbook: The Stocked Kitchen ™ by Sarah Kallio and Stacey Krastins
Recipe: Seafood Nachos, page 180

One of the things that most frustrates me about cooking for one person is the amount of stuff I have sitting in the fridge that I’ll never use again. The authors of The Stocked Kitchen call these remainders “crusty little soldiers,” and have created a system to eliminate the army of half-used containers from your life.