Last Night’s Dinner

In the days leading up to our departure from NYC, Mike and I were keeping a very close eye on Lucy’s Greenmarket Report to monitor the anticipated arrival of asparagus at Union Square. We were hoping we could get our hands on some before the move, and one recent day we mentioned our asparagus watch on Twitter. One friend was a little confused as to why we were making such a fuss - after all, asparagus is in supermarkets year-round, isn’t it? She’s right, of course, but as Mike replied to her with a smile, “we’re snobby locavores.”

Now, I don’t know about the “snobby” part (and I’d hope we’re not actually snobs), but the whole exchange really made me realize how much our way of eating has changed over the last couple of years. Buying supermarket asparagus doesn’t even occur to me anymore, even in the dead of winter when I’m desperate for it. It just tastes better in the springtime, when it’s in season and grown close to home, and I’m happy to wait for it and then indulge until I can’t bear looking at another fat green stalk.

Though we moved away before our favorite New York area farmers brought their asparagus to market, we scored a big bag of Rhode Island asparagus at the market at AS220 on Saturday. I pulled out the thickest ones for grilling Saturday evening, figuring I’d save the rest for a meatless Monday dinner. By Monday evening, the warm, sunny weather we enjoyed all weekend had turned to wind and rain, so something rich and creamy was in order.

I chopped up my remaining asparagus spears and some fresh chanterelles (sorry, not local), and sauteed them in a bit of butter. I seasoned them with fresh thyme and gently stirred them into a pot of my basic risotto, adding about half a cup of creme fraiche and some finely grated Pecorino Romano off the heat to finish the dish.

The mushrooms were a lovely foil for the crisp-tender asparagus, and the risotto was a wonderful carrier for both. As the weather warms up and asparagus season continues, I look forward to lighter and simpler preparations, but this was a fine way to renew my acquaintance with an old friend.

(Interesting reading on local asparagus here.)

The last week has been a struggle, but with two weeks left to go before our move, we’re trying hard to get on with our lives. There’s a lot left to do and not much time to do it, and honestly, the sorting and packing have been a welcome distraction. I’ve gotten to the point in my grieving where I have actually been able to get back into the routine of making dinner, though I’ll admit that much of what I’ve put on the table has been uninspired. It’s going to take a while before I get that spark back.

I put together a quick pasta last night, using some really nice spaghettini di farro I had picked up recently at Formaggio Essex. I cooked it until al dente and tossed it with a few odds and ends from the fridge – some sautéed shallot and leftover crimini mushrooms, finely sliced red chard, toasted pine nuts and Pecorino Romano. It was a tasty dish if a little flat; the farro pasta definitely needed more salt in its cooking water, and Mike and I both agreed that some chile flakes or lemon zest or a punchier cheese would have made for a better dish. I’m definitely not back on my game, but this was a start.

(On an unrelated note, check out who’s blogging Tales of the Cocktail… )

Happy post-Valentine’s Day! I hope you are all basking in the afterglow of whatever sort of fun you engaged in yesterday.

In the nearly five years that Mike and I have been together, we have never gone out to dinner on Valentine’s Day. In fact, with the exception of our traditional anniversary meal at Marlow and Sons, we prefer dining in on most real or manufactured holidays. It gives us a chance to do a bit of “stunt cooking,” trying new preparations and working with higher-end ingredients. When brainstorming ideas for our meal, I looked back through a long list of bookmarked recipes. I came across a photoset of the mini Beef Wellingtons the dynamic duo over at Married with Dinner had prepared over the Christmas holiday and it sounded like just what I was looking for. I mean, really, filets of beef, mushroom duxelles, puff pastry, foie gras… what’s not to love? As it turned out it was an extremely easy dish to put together on a weeknight since the most labor-intensive stuff could be done ahead of time.

Mike mixed up a batch of pastry dough on Wednesday, experimenting with a mix of half butter and half rendered leaf lard, but he was a little unsure about how well it would work for the Wellingtons, so I picked up an emergency back-up package of DuFour all butter puff pastry. He seared the filets in our cast iron skillet when he got home from work on Thursday and set them in the fridge to chill, and I prepared the duxelles in the same pan when he was finished. Once the mushrooms and meat were both well-chilled, I rolled out the pastry and got ready to assemble, layering the duxelles and filets on top of the pastry, topping each with a slice of foie gras, sealing them up and brushing them with a bit of egg wash before placing them into a preheated 400 degree oven.

Because of the thickness of our filets, I let them bake for about 18 minutes before removing them and letting them rest while I sautéed a handful of green beans and made a quick pan sauce, again using our cast iron skillet. I combined about half a cup of red wine and an equal amount of Bobolink’s suckled veal demi-glace, reducing it until it was thick and syrupy, and finishing it with a knob of cold butter before spooning it onto our plates, setting the Wellingtons on top.

This was a truly luxurious meal, and as it turned out, when we added the cost of the filets of grass-fed Angus beef from Elk Trails, the tin of D’Artagnan duck foie gras, the puff pastry, the ingredients for the duxelles and pan sauce and the bottle of wine we picked up to go with it, we actually spent less than we do on most dinners out at our regular haunts. Nice, and we didn’t have to worry about disapproving stares when we mopped up the last little bits of pan sauce/beef juices/melty foie gras with our fingers.

Wine Pairing: Once we decided what we were cooking, we made a beeline for Uva Wines and asked wine guy Dan to recommend a bottle. We wanted something a little splurgier than normal, and he had a few good suggestions in our price range. He went to retrieve a bottle we had selected from the cellar but returned with that and another option, this 1999 Billard-Gonnet Pommard Premier Cru. One of the other store employees had recommended it as a great wine and a good match for our meal, and because it had a few more years in the bottle than the other wine we were considering, we decided to go for it. It was a delicious wine, round and velvety in the mouth with aromas of dark fruit and leather.

I’ve been playing with recipes for meatless chili for some time now, trying to develop one that will become my go-to version. This black bean chili has come closest so far, though it still needs a bit of work. I used fresh mushrooms to approximate the texture of ground beef in the dish, and I was pleased with the result, though I think next time I’ll try a coarser grind. While this dish still needs some tweaking, it was very, very good, and is going to make great lunchtime leftovers.

I’m going to keep working on this one, and when I get it right I’ll post a recipe.

My earliest memories of chicken cacciatore are of the Italian chain restaurant variety, of sauces loaded with chunky bell pepper and an inexplicable blanket or filling of cheese on or inside the chicken. The dish was more heavy than hearty, and as such it was never a favorite of mine. As I got older and my love of Italian food led me to convert to the church of Marcella, Lidia and Mario, I learned there was a better way. A simpler way, in fact, because really, this “hunters-style” braise needs little more than mushrooms, onions, tomato and herbs to make it a cacciatore.

This is a loose adaptation of Mario’s Molto Italiano recipe which keeps his addition of pancetta as well as the delicious garlic and rosemary rub for the chicken, but I’ve chosen to go with whole, small cipollini onions in place of diced, as well as the richer, earthier taste of dried porcini mushrooms in the sauce. Don’t let the browning and peeling/chopping steps put you off, because once everything is in the pot all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the delicious aromas filling your home – the end result is well worth the effort, and a satisfying meal on a blustery winter night.

Hunter’s-Style Chicken

1 chicken (about 3 lbs.), cut into quarters, or an equivalent amount of skin-on parts of your choice
3 large garlic peeled garlic cloves
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
Olive oil
1 cup dried porcini
1 cup hot tap water
12 small cipollini onions, peeled and trimmed
2 thick slices pancetta
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup white wine
1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
1 tablespoon dried oregano or marjoram
Several sprigs fresh thyme
Red chile flakes to taste

Arrange the chicken pieces on a platter and pat them dry. In a food processor or mini chopper, pulse the garlic, salt, pepper and rosemary, then add enough olive oil to form a thick paste. Rub the paste all over the chicken pieces and let them sit in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.

Place porcini in a bowl, cover with hot tap water and let them sit until the mushrooms are soft. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid and set aside. Strain the liquid to remove any grit and reserve.

Warm the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat and add the chicken pieces in batches, allowing them to brown on all sides. When the last chicken pieces have been browned, remove them to a platter, discard the oil and any burnt garlic from the pot and return it to the heat. Add the pancetta and let it render and brown for a few minutes. Add the onions and porcini and a pinch of salt. Make a hot spot on the side of the pan and add the tomato paste, allowing it to cook for a minute or two before stirring it through.

Add the wine and let it come to a boil, then reduce the heat and add the reserved porcini liquid, the tomatoes with their juice, the oregano or marjoram, the thyme sprigs and the chile flakes. Stir well, crushing the tomatoes with the back of a spoon, then return the chicken pieces to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated on the platter. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 30 minutes or more, until the chicken is cooked through and very tender and the sauce is slightly thickened.

Serve chicken and sauce over soft polenta, garnishing with additional fresh rosemary or thyme if desired.

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.

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 decided to surprise him this year. His office wasn’t closed for the Columbus Day holiday, and mine was, so I had the apartment to myself and it would be easy. The plan was to make gnocchi – I haven’t done it in over a year, and a friend recently asked for some tips, so I’ve had gnocchi on the brain lately.

I’ve made dozens of batches of these little dumplings over the years, with varying degrees of success. The ones I made last night were my lightest yet, though I think they were almost too delicate. Still, I was pleased overall with the result and more importantly, Mike loved them.

I’m not going to print a recipe here, because I think gnocchi are something you just need to try and try and try again until you get a feel for them. I’ve always used Lidia’s recipe as a base, and I referred to Heidi and Elise this time around as well. I would estimate that I ended up using about 2 cups of potato, one egg seasoned with about 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt, and about a cup of flour – far less flour than I have ever used before.

As I said above, this made for extremely light gnocchi, but a few of them just barely held together in the sauce. It’s possible that gnocchi like this would do better in a lighter sauce – sage brown butter, perhaps – as opposed to the wild mushroom cream sauce I served them with last night.

The birthday boy had no complaints, though, and he happily downed two helpings between phone calls from our families passing along their well-wishes. We opened a bottle of Bindella Vino Nobile di Montepulciano with our meal, and drank a toast to the year ahead.

You may notice a theme this week, as I’m trying to use up some of the leftover odds and ends from our party. The mushroom filling I stuffed into puff pastry rolls uses a mix of dried and fresh mushrooms, and while the dried ones will keep just fine in the cupboard, the fresh ones (shiitake and crimini, in this case) have a far shorter shelf life.

I often use my mushroom filling as a topping for pasta or gnocchi, enriching it with a bit of cream, but I wanted to do something a little lighter. I did a quick search of foodandwine.com and found a recipe for Spaghetti with Shiitakes, Parmesan and Pepper, which really appealed to me, and since I could get it ready in plenty of time for us to watch Heroes, it sounded perfect.

I ended up following the recipe pretty closely, though I did add a generous amount of fresh thyme and a tablespoon of sherry vinegar to the sauce, which I think added a little more complexity to the dish. The earthiness of the mushrooms and the bite of black pepper were delicious together, and the Dolcetto we drank with our meal complemented the flavors really nicely.

We were very excited to hear that local chanterelles hit the Greenmarket last Wednesday, but they were snapped up before Mike could get some. He got an earlier start yesterday morning and scored two containers, along with some gorgeous center-cut pork chops, and those two ingredients immediately brought to mind an old favorite preparation – pork chops with a mushroom bourbon cream sauce, inspired by Elise’s dish on Simply Recipes.

Mike not only brought home the ingredients (and an excellent bottle of wine – more on that later), but he decided to prepare dinner as well. As he did the first time he cooked this recipe, he made a few modifications, skipping the step of breading the chops and instead searing them in a cast iron skillet, then constructing the chanterelle sauce right in the pan. He again used vermouth instead of white wine in the sauce, and he also used a bit of water in place of the chicken stock since we didn’t have any thawed.

This was an even lighter take on the original recipe, and the flavors in the dish were just delicious. It’s a meal I’m happy to have Mike cook for me any time.

Wine Pairing: Why I love my husband, reason #52,784 - not only did he prepare an amazing dinner for us, but he picked up this gorgeous (and a bit splurgey) Vigneti La Selvanella Chianti Classico to go with it. It was rich and earthy, medium-bodied with a velvety mouthfeel, and it paired beautifully with the pork and mushroom sauce.