Last Night’s Dinner

I’m trying to stay upbeat about the fact that winter is staring me square in the face, really I am, but it’s getting mighty difficult. First off is the fact that Mike and I both seem to be fighting colds, our second colds of this young season. My head is stuffy, my sense of taste is dulled, and gosh it’s hard to get excited about putting together a meal that we will likely neither smell nor taste fully. I’ve got a case of the blahs, and is it just me or did I cook nothing but a week of brown-ish dinners? Yeah. Blah.

Dinner last night was neither colorful nor particularly inspired; in fact, it was a result of pulling a bag of this and a container of that and another container of some such out of our fridge and freezer, adding a boatload of veggies and tossing it all together. Those veggies came first, a combination of chopped leek, a few multicolored carrots and a parsnip, all cut into about 1/2 inch chunks. I sautéed them in a bit of butter, seasoned them with salt, and then covered them with a quart of our most recent batch of homemade chicken stock. We had some shredded cooked chicken in the freezer which I had thawed earlier, and I added that to the pot as well, then I lidded up the pot and let it come to a boil.

I wanted to thicken the stock a bit, but I didn’t want to go with something as rich as cream, so I decided to make a slurry of one part flour to about one and a half parts buttermilk, which I shook up in an old jam jar and then whisked into the boiling liquid. At this point I could have added some rice or pasta or beans to the pot, but I had decided I wanted dumplings, and rather than make a fresh batch, I thought I’d try using something we already had on hand: ricotta gnudi left over from the batch I made for Valentine’s Day, which had been individually frozen on a cookie sheet and stashed in a freezer bag (and which I had pulled out to thaw the night before along with the aforementioned chicken). I added the gnudi to the still-boiling broth, turning them gently with a spoon as they cooked. After a few minutes, I ladled some of the chicken and creamy broth into our bowls, then carefully nestled a couple of dumplings in the center of each.

I hate to even call this a recipe, because honestly, all I really did here was remix some odds and ends, but you know, it worked. I’d even go so far as to say it was quite good, satisfying our craving for something comforting without being super rich or heavy, and I really do believe that a good dumpling can chase the doldrums right away.

November is the season for Nantucket Bay scallops, and when I was putting together my last grocery order, I made sure to snatch some up. These sweet little gems are about midway between a regular bay scallop and a sea scallop in size, and they’re perfect for simple, clean-flavored preparations like this pasta dish. My ex-husband used to make something similar (a recipe ganked from some food magazine I’ve long forgotten), and I’ve updated it by adding two of my favorite flavor boosters – chile flakes and fresh lemon zest. This dish is bright and tasty, comes together in literally minutes, and allows the delicious flavor of the scallops to shine.

Cappellini with Nantucket Bay Scallops

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
Kosher salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
Red chile flakes to taste
1/2 lb. Nantucket Bay scallops (or sea scallops, halved or quartered if large)
1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus more for garnish
3/4 lb. cappellini (angel hair) pasta
Lemon zest
Toasted breadcrumbs

Get a large pot of salted water boiling for the pasta.

Warm olive oil in a wide skillet and add garlic cloves and salt. Cook over medium heat until the garlic is fragrant and beginning to turn golden. Add the wine and chile flakes and let cook for a moment before adding the scallops. Season them with a bit more salt and continue cooking for about 3-4 minutes, until the scallops are just cooked through.

Add the cappellini to the boiling pasta water and cook about 3 minutes. Drain and place into a warmed serving bowl.

Stir the 1/4 cup of parsley into the scallops and remove them from the heat. Pour the scallops and sauce over the pasta and toss gently. Divide between bowls or plates and top each serving with additional chopped parsley, grated lemon zest, and a sprinkling of toasted breadcrumbs.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I generally plan our meals for the week in advance, sketching out which meal I want to serve on which night, but leaving a little wiggle room in case we need to switch things up. I had a porktastic duo scheduled for last night, utilizing some of the leftover roast pork I made over the weekend, as well as some delicious baked ham from a previous meal, which I had pulled from the freezer and thawed. I’m not kidding you when I say I was excited for this dinner – I thought about it all day and my mouth was watering. I Could. Not. Wait.

So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I got home from work, headed into the kitchen, flung open the refrigerator door to get started and realized that at some point over the last few days, I had put the remaining pork roast into the freezer.

Say it with me, people: “GAAAAAAH!”

My beautiful leftover roast pork was solid as a rock, and with no good way to defrost it quickly, the dinner I had been craving all day would have to wait. And I needed to come up with a Plan B, fast.

We didn’t have anything else thawed that I could prepare instead. I didn’t want to do yet another risotto. I’ve got a pasta dish scheduled for tonight, and while Mike and I both love the stuff, having pasta two nights in a row wasn’t really appealing to us. The takeout options in our little corner of Bushwick aren’t great, and to go out to eat would require us to get on a bus or train for 20 minutes or more. It was late, I was tired, and I just didn’t want to deal with it.

Mike mixed us each a Jack Rose and we sat and thought about what to do. We had enough ham that I could use some of it tonight and still have enough left over for future use. We had potatoes. We had plenty of dairy – butter and cream, and we’ve always got cheese. Why not make a gratin?

I pulled out my deep baking dish, buttered it, set the oven temp to 400, and started chopping, ending up with about 2 cups of ham, cut into about 1/2 inch cubes, and about 4 cups of small Yukon Golds, sliced into 1/4 inch thick rounds. I placed one layer of potato slices in the bottom of the baking dish, sprinkled the ham on top, and then scattered about a cup of grated gruyere over that. I topped it with a layer of the remaining potato slices. I whisked together 12 oz. of half and half, 1/2 cup of crème fraiche, salt, black pepper and a teaspoon of Colman’s mustard powder, added a cup of little green peas I had blanched and frozen over the summer, and poured it over the potatoes and ham. I sealed the baking dish with foil, and put it in the oven for 40 minutes, then pulled it out, removed the foil, added another layer of grated gruyere, some grated parmesan and fresh thyme, and placed it back in the oven for about 15 minutes until the top was golden and bubbly.

I wasn’t sure how this was going to turn out, and I have to say the next time I make a gratin I will take the extra step of making an actual Mornay sauce for it, but despite the rather “broken” cream sauce I ended up with here and the fact that it’s not the prettiest thing I’ve made, our dinner was a tasty, filling, and satisfying meal – not at all bad for a last minute substitution.

It occurred to me as I started to put this post together that the very first time I prepared this dish was for the first Thanksgiving Mike and I ever spent together. I was still living in Boston at the time, and we had planned to spend the long holiday weekend together in New York as well as to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves and a couple of friends. One of those friends was a vegetarian, so I wanted to prepare something that would serve as both a veggie side for us and a substantial main course for her, and thus my roasted vegetable and gruyere tart was born.

This is almost embarrassingly simple to put together – just cut up a variety of autumn vegetables (I used a mixture of tiny Brussels sprouts, parsnips, multicolored carrots, butternut squash, and crimini and chanterelle mushrooms) into roughly the same size, toss them with salt and a bit of olive oil, and roast them in a 375 degree oven until tender, about 40 minutes. Sprinkle a generous amount of fresh thyme and chopped fresh sage over the veggies and gently toss. Roll out your crust and place into a lightly oiled pie plate, leaving a bit of overlap around the edges (I generally use good quality prepared pie crust or, as I did last night, all butter puff pastry. Feel free to use homemade crust if that’s your thing). Spread about half a cup of grated gruyere cheese on the crust, add your veggies, sprinkle a bit more cheese on top and fold over the loose edges of the crust. Place back into the oven (at 400 degrees) for about 20 minutes, until the crust is golden, then slice into wedges and serve. As a side dish or main course, it’s simple enough for a weeknight dinner, but nice enough for company – a real double-duty gem.

I have to say I spent far less time photographing my food this weekend than I did just sitting back and enjoying it, and while that may not be great for the blog, it was just what the doctor ordered. Here’s a little sample of what our weekend looked like:

First up, baked eggs with scallion, thyme, coppa and grated Manchester, and toasted multigrain from Bread Alone, eaten on the sofa while we watched the parade and the dog show.

We enjoyed a midafternoon snack of duck mousse and wine to keep us going until our Thanksgiving meal at Dressler (he had the quail and venison; I had the artichoke and turkey - all of it was delicious).

Friday evening, a little Veuve kept our tradition of Fizzy Fridays going while we waited for dinner that night:

Bone-in Berkshire pork loin roast with a mix of Maille extra-hot dijon, garlic, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, lemon zest, fennel seeds and olive oil (adapted from Ina Garten’s recipe), and served with a little classic risotto and sautéed green beans with pine nuts.

Expect the leftover roast pork to make a repeat appearance this week.

I got a big pot of no-frills chili going when we returned from Greenmarketing on Saturday, and made a batch of fish stock on Sunday, letting it slowly simmer away while I made plans for the coming week’s meals:

Mike and I have got some fun things planned for the coming weeks, and I can’t wait to share them with you. Stay tuned…

We’re back! We took a train out of Penn Station early Friday and spent four glorious days in Providence, Rhode Island. What a lovely time, and as you can see, we ate VERY well (click here to see our biggest splurge, a 7 course tasting at Gracie’s, with wine pairings). I’m glad it’s a short week for us, because we’re still regrouping - I threw together a quick-and-dirty pasta all’amatriciana when we arrived home last night (which went unphotographed, as my memory card was bulging), and my darling husband is taking apart a couple of chickens as we speak (as I type?) for tonight’s meal.

Thanksgiving is just days away now, and some of you may be wondering what we have planned. I must admit that with our trip falling so close to the holiday, we elected to make the simplest thing possible: reservations. After pulling out all of the stops for the last couple of years in what limited workspace we have to prepare a feast for two, I just couldn’t do it this year. Still, we have a great meal to look forward to, and Mike and I both send warm wishes to all of you for a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. See you next week!

We began another meal cycle last weekend, this time with a whole duck. Mike and I have become big fans of duck as much for its flavor as for its versatility, so this was a series of dinners we were particularly looking forward to. We took a quick trip to The Brooklyn Kitchen on Saturday to get some new tools, returning home with a shiny new boning knife and poultry shears which Mike was eager to put to use.

He took the duck apart, setting the backbone, wings and organs aside for me, and reserving the extra skin and fatty bits to render down later. I placed the duck trimmings into a stockpot with some vegetable trimmings, salt and water and let them perk away to make a stock, then I stepped aside and let Mike get to work on confit.

Here’s what happened next, in his words:

After breaking the duck apart into its components, I sliced the breasts away from the bone and set the legs aside for confit. We had two additional legs that we had ordered separately, which I used as well.

I had previously made a batch of cure mix, based on a recipe by Dan Barber of New York’s Blue Hill restaurants. I sliced a shallot and scattered it on the bottom of a small casserole. I then sprinkled generous portions of the cure mix over the duck legs and rubbed it in. The casserole then went into the fridge for 24 hours. (I have cured legs for as long as 72 hours, but it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference how long you cure them, once you pass the 24-hour mark.)

The next day, I pulled the casserole from the fridge, brushed the cure mix and shallot off the duck legs, and placed the legs into a larger casserole. Meanwhile, I gently warmed about three to four cups of duck fat on the stove, so that it would melt. I poured that over the legs and put the casserole in the oven on 200. I let them bake for two hours, turned off the heat, and left them in until the casserole was cool to the touch. The legs went into a plastic container, with the fat poured over them. I lidded up the container and placed it in the fridge. You could, if you can spare the casserole, simply store them in the fridge that way, as long as you cover them with plastic wrap.

When you’re ready to use the legs, be sure to pull the confit container out of the chill at least one hour before you need them. This helps the fat soften up enough that you can pull the legs out without all the meat shredding off the bone and remaining in the fat. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.

We didn’t eat any of our duck that first night, but we had the makings of three duck dinners at the ready, and on Sunday, I tackled the first in the series, a duck and sausage gumbo. My first taste of duck and sausage gumbo came years ago, at the now-defunct LeBleau’s Cajun Kitchen outside Destin, Florida. I was smitten and began work on my own version soon after I returned home, and while it may not be the most traditional gumbo recipe out there, it’s a crowd-pleaser.

Duck and Sausage Gumbo

I usually make a big batch of gumbo for friends shortly after Thanksgiving, using the carcass of the bird to make stock and adding some of the leftover turkey meat to the gumbo. If you’re looking for a new way to use up some of your post-turkey day leftovers, this is a good option – just use turkey stock and meat in place of the duck in the recipe below.

For the roux:
1 cup fat (you can use vegetable oil or whatever sort of fat you wish; I used duck fat for this)
1 cup flour

For the gumbo:
8-10 cups stock (I used duck stock, but you can substitute chicken)
1 bay leaf
Several sprigs fresh thyme
1 lb. spicy smoked sausage (andouille or something similar), sliced
2 cups cooked shredded duck meat
2 cups diced onion
2 cups diced celery
2 cups diced bell pepper (green is traditional but I’m not a fan, so I use red)
Salt
Cayenne pepper to taste

For serving:
Steamed white rice
Sliced scallions
Crusty bread
Your favorite vinegar-based hot pepper sauce

Melt fat or heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the flour to the oil and begin whisking until incorporated. Stir or whisk often, keeping a close eye on the color of the roux; you want a deep, toasty aroma and caramel-to-brown color, but be careful, as the mixture can burn very easily. This amount of roux cooked over medium heat usually takes between 30-45 minutes start to finish.

While the roux cooks, add the stock, bay leaf, thyme and meats to a large stock pot and bring to a simmer.

Once the roux is ready, add the diced onion, celery and bell pepper carefully to the skillet, stirring to coat the vegetables with the roux. Cook for another minute or two, then ladle in a cup or two of the hot stock, stirring well. Carefully pour the vegetable/roux mixture from the skillet into the stock pot. Season with salt and cayenne, stir, cover and simmer until the liquid thickens, adjusting seasoning as necessary. Cook for 30 minutes (or longer over very low heat). Remove the thyme stems and bay leaf, and ladle into bowls. Add a spoonful of white rice and garnish with scallions. Pass hot sauce and bread at the table.

Mike took the reins for our next duck dinner – smoked duck breasts with sautéed kale and farro with cranberries and a bit of Rogue River Creamery Smoky Blue cheese crumbled in. He says:

The smoked duck breast was easy. Following the instructions that came with our Cameron smoker, I set the smoker on the stove top and piled about 1-1/2 tablespoons of cherry wood chips in the center. I placed the drip pan on top, lined with a sheet of foil. The rack went atop the drip pan. I scored the skin of the breasts and generously salted and peppered them. I placed them on the rack and turned the heat to just under medium. They smoked for 20 minutes. When I removed them from the smoker, I placed them into a hot iron skillet with a bit of olive oil, to sear the skin of the breasts.

Mike felt that they were a little more done than we usually like, but thanks to the smoker they still were tender and juicy, with an irresistible hint of cherry smoke present in the meat, skin and fat.

We’re having the third meal of this duck cycle tonight: a couple of confit legs, crisped up in our cast iron skillet, potatoes fried in duck fat, frisee salad and a nice bottle of red. It’s one of our favorite easy weeknight dinners – sort of a grown-up version of convenience food, but elegant and delicious.

(I’m taking brief but much needed hiatus and plan to return sometime next week. Be well!)

We took a break from our duck cycle last night for a meatless Monday dinner of mushroom lasagna. Last night was damp and chilly, and while this wasn’t exactly a quick and easy weeknight dinner, it was a perfect night for a rich, baked and layered pasta dish. This was a bit of an experiment; my standard lasagna is a more traditional Bolognese version and I wasn’t really working from a recipe here, so while it needs a bit of tweaking I was mostly pleased with the result. I started by soaking some dried porcinis and slicing about a pound of fresh mushrooms (a mixture of criminis, chanterelles and shiitakes). I sautéed some chopped shallot in a mixture of butter and olive oil until soft, and then added the mushrooms and a pinch of salt. When the mushrooms had browned and cooked down a bit, I added a tablespoon of tomato paste to the pan to caramelize, then stirred it through and added the liquid I had strained and reserved from soaking the dried porcini. I added a generous amount of fresh thyme and let the mixture cook until almost all of the liquid was gone, then transferred the mushrooms to a bowl and set them aside.

I made a béchamel in the same pan I had used to cook the mushrooms, enriching it with about a cup each of finely grated Fontina and Parmagiano Reggiano cheeses. When the cheeses were melted and the sauce was smooth, I began layering: a bit of olive oil rubbed in the bottom and sides of my baking dish, a bit of béchamel, and a layer of partially cooked egg pasta sheets, then béchamel, mushrooms, sliced fresh mozzarella and another layer of pasta. I repeated the layers, finishing with the remaining béchamel, mozzarella, and a grating of parm on top, then placed the lasagna into a preheated 400 degree oven for about half an hour, until browned and bubbly. I let the lasagna rest for about 10 minutes before serving.

I wasn’t entirely pleased with the texture of the pasta sheets I used, and I think the dish could have used a bit more béchamel than I made, but overall, the flavors were there and this was a tasty and satisfying meal – it’s definitely a recipe worth working on.

I’ve got a lot to write up, but I just haven’t had the time or the words yet. We spent a good part of our weekend playing with duck - another cycle of dinners similar to last week’s adventures with pork shoulder, and I have recipes to share, but I need a bit more time to collect myself.

So an American, an Italian and a Mexican walk into a pork store…

Okay, lame joke, but seriously, isn’t it amazing how the same piece of pork can yield three very different meals? I think Mike and I were both surprised that we haven’t felt like we were eating leftovers all week, though we really were. A little creative remixing works wonders.

The third and final embodiment of our pork shoulder was a savory Mexican stew called posole (or pozole, depending on who you ask). I think the most important components of the dish are a good, rich stock and flavorful chile powder, and I was happy that we had both – chicken stock left over from the batch I made Sunday, plus Mike’s take on Alton Brown’s chile powder (which he generally makes with whatever varieties of dried chiles we have in the pantry, so each batch is a bit different).

I began by softening about a cup and a half of diced onion in olive oil, and added three fat garlic cloves which I had peeled and smashed. I seasoned them with salt and allowed the onion and garlic to cook until the garlic was fragrant, then I added a tablespoon or so of tomato paste to a hot spot and allowed it to cook for a few moments before stirring it through. I then added two generous tablespoons of the chile powder to the onion mixture and stirred so the onions were coated. The pork went in next – the shoulder bone along with all the meat still clinging to it, plus the fat I had trimmed off after the initial braising. I added two cups of our chicken stock plus two cups of water, covered the pot and let it come to a boil, then reduced the heat and let it simmer for about half an hour.

The pork that had been left on the bone had mostly fallen off in big chunks at that point, so I removed the meat and bone from the pot and set them aside for a moment. I added two cans of white hominy, drained and rinsed, to the broth, chopped the pork into chunks and returned the meat to the pot. I added the juice of one lime, adjusted the salt, and let the pozole cook for about 10 more minutes before serving. For garnish, I used lime wedges and thinly sliced radishes; you can also use diced avocado, tomato, fresh cilantro or grated cheese.

Mike said that this was by far my best posole yet, and I have to agree with him, though I can’t take all the credit since his chile powder played a major part. But the way the pork bone and especially the pork fat enriched the stock was really something special – using those parts that I might have otherwise discarded or used another way added a wonderful richness to the broth. Our pork shoulder is now gone, but we got three great dinners out of it (four if you count the remaining ragu in the freezer), and I think this cycle was a big success.