Last Night’s Dinner

Where did our June weather go? After a stretch of mostly sunny, beautiful and warm days, we woke to grey, gloomy and COLD. How am I supposed to play with light, bright springtime flavors when all I want to do is curl up under blankets with a mug of tea to get the chill out of my bones? I really must protest.

My crankiness about the weather aside, soup is often the first thing I think of making on damp, rainy days, and I suppose I could have gone with an elegant, light puree of peas or asparagus, but I wanted something a little heartier. Not winter-strength hearty, but a soup with a little more heft.

I rummaged through the fridge and pantry and came up with a pound of chicken and red pepper sausage, roasted red pepper strips with garlic and herbs in olive oil, some of my homemade chicken stock, canned tomatoes and a box of Puy lentils. I removed the sausage from its casings and crumbled it into my soup pot with a little bit of olive oil to brown while I chopped up an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. Those went into the pot next, along with the roasted peppers and a generous dollop of harissa paste for some heat. Once everything was nicely toasty, I added the tomatoes (half of a large can, plus juices), stock, and a cup of the lentils, lidded up the pan and let it cook away until the lentils were tender. I adjusted the seasoning and tossed in a couple of handfuls of another kitchen staple – some frozen chopped spinach.

While the soup cooked I sliced a couple of thick pieces of the sourdough loaf Mike baked yesterday and re-warmed them in the oven. (I’ll let him go into more depth about the bread if he wants to – but trust me when I say it’s pretty awesome to come home from work and walk directly into a kitchen filled with the smell of bread baking, and sharing the first slice still warm from the oven is pretty freaking amazing. I think we’ve eaten half of the loaf already. It’s delicious and I am, as ever, a lucky girl.)

This soup was a winner with its light and savory broth, the lentils and spinach providing a little earthiness, and the sausage lending a satisfying meatiness. The heat of the harissa was definitely present, but it was more of an overall warmth in each spoonful rather than a knock-you-over-the-head pepperiness. This was not the most seasonal dinner, but I can see us coming back to this in September and October, when autumn’s chill is in the air and we’ve got an abundance of late-season, home-roasted peppers.

I have a confession to make. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands since our move, a lot of time to spend puttering around in the kitchen, working on photos and putting together meals. I haven’t been working, you see. And by the time I start my new job next Monday, I will have had an entire month off from working, more time off than I have had since I was a teenager.

It drove me crazy, at first, the time off, the vast stretch of hours ahead of me in any given day in which I could choose to do anything or nothing. I took advantage, sure, taking the time to set up our kitchen, going out to explore our new city, hanging out with friends, but no job means no paycheck, and as you can imagine, that has been a bit limiting.

Though I had questioned the wisdom of moving so much food from our Brooklyn freezer and pantry to our new home in Providence, I’m glad I did, as it has made it far easier to prepare interesting and tasty meals without having to shell out a ton of money for fresh ingredients. I’ve also been able to really stretch the things we have bought fresh, using them in two or three different dishes.

These enchiladas were built almost entirely on pantry staples, leftovers, and odds and ends. Diced potatoes, sautéed until golden with lots of red onion, provided the base of the filling, and reconstituted dried mushrooms added an earthy, meaty bite. The sauce was a smoky combination of grape tomatoes, garlic and more onion, roasted until meltingly soft, then pureed in a blender with the last roasted red pepper lingering in a jar in the fridge, ground chipotle and ground cumin.

The tortillas, left over from a couple of earlier meals, had gotten a little stale, but a quick fry in olive oil and a dip in the enchilada sauce softened them up nicely. I crumbled the rest of a chunk of Narragansett Creamery Queso Blanco over the top of the stuffed enchiladas and baked them until the cheese was soft and burnished. They got a squirt of fresh lime juice at the end, as well as a drizzle of thinned crème fraiche, some chopped radish and fresh cilantro.

And then there were the beans – oh, those beans. Rancho Gordo, of course. Vaquero beans, simmered gently with onion and garlic and bay leaf and oregano until soft, seasoned toward the end with salt and cumin, and then mashed and fried with a little fat until super-creamy. I could marry those beans.

Speaking of marriage, as I’ve mentioned before I usually leave the stunt cooking to my husband, but unlike me Mike has been working very hard since we arrived here and hasn’t had much time for it. I think I’ll take advantage of the time I have left before going back to work to have some labor-intensive fun in the kitchen. Time to put all our fabulous counter space to use, right?

Sometimes dinner is more about putting together a few items from the fridge and pantry and less about actual cooking. Last night was one of those times - I had something planned for dinner, but as the morning’s rains moved out, leaving us with a beautiful, warm evening, the meal I originally had in mind seemed too heavy. I needed a Plan B.

In addition to my outline of meals for the week, I keep a running list of ideas for quick pantry dinners in my menu planning notebook. Often this list is nothing more than combinations of ingredients that I think would work well together, and I often turn to the list when I need to come up with dinner on the fly.

We’re big fans of canned and tinned fish of all types, so we’ve always got some in the pantry. I thought of the two tins of Cole’s Petite Rainbow Trout we had on hand, and decided to go with one of the combinations listed in my little red book: trout+potatoes+mustard. I whisked together a couple of tablespoons each of mayo, creme fraiche and Dijon mustard, fresh lemon juice, a minced shallot, salt, pepper and a teaspoon or so of brown mustard seeds to make a tangy and lightly creamy dressing. I added a good handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley for color and an herbal kick, and then gently tossed the potatoes and trout in the dressing until coated. I mounded the salad over a big bed of baby lettuces, added a little more freshly ground pepper, and that was that - dinner in minutes, with a minimum of time, effort or fuss.

I’ve admitted in the past that I have a secret love for canned soup casseroles, but it has been years since I’ve made one at home because I just don’t cook that way anymore. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve missed them, and from time to time, I think about how I might put one together without adding a can or three of that sodium-laden, over-processed cream-of-whatever to the mix.

Dinners this week have been largely unplanned. All of the energy I would normally have put toward sketching out a meal plan for the week has been directed elsewhere: to making lists, making plans, making arrangements and sorting out the numbers in preparation for our move. And again, there is the matter of clearing the freezer and pantry, paring things down so we can start fresh at our new home.

By the time lunch rolled around yesterday, I was in the unfamiliar (for me) position of still not knowing what I was going to cook for dinner. We are, as you can imagine, trying to be particularly thrifty these days so going out wasn’t really an option, and though I could have had Mike stop and pick up something fresh to cook up, that really goes against the whole culling thing that we’re trying to do. So I thought back to the cupboards, fridge and freezer, and inspiration struck: I had half a brick of cream cheese left over from Wednesday night’s stuffed chicken breasts, a couple of cans of good tuna on the shelves, and the last of the peas I shelled, blanched and froze last summer. The cream cheese, when mixed into a basic béchamel sauce, might just work as the base for a tuna noodle casserole…

It did work, and beautifully, making a thick, creamy and flavorful sauce to bind the cooked pasta, fresh peas, drained and chunked tuna and some mushrooms which I had chopped and sautéed until golden with shallot, sherry and dried marjoram. As with all good canned soup casseroles, this one got a cheesy, crisp topping of grated parm and dried breadcrumbs, which baked to a golden crust. This was the comfort food of my youth elevated to a new (guilt-free) level, and I can’t wait to play with future variations.

Project Pantry Cull took another small step forward last night, as I pulled out a long-neglected can of Wild Alaskan pink salmon and turned it into surprisingly tasty salmon “burgers.” I feel a bit silly referring to them as burgers because they were really more like croquettes, but I served them on little wheat rolls with a lemon-caper mayo and sweet potato oven fries on the side, so the spirit of the burger was there.

These were extremely simple to prepare: I drained off the liquid from the salmon, placed it into a big mixing bowl and removed as much of the skin and little bones as I could. I added one finely minced large shallot, salt, pepper, a beaten egg and some plain dry breadcrumbs, then formed the mixture into patties (I ended up with 3) and placed them in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up. They got a quick fry in a bit of olive oil in a hot cast iron skillet for about 3 minutes per side, then a quick blot on paper towels before I placed them on the rolls and dressed them.

This was really the first time I have cooked with canned salmon, but I was impressed by the flavor, and you can’t beat the price – I think our whole meal easily came in at under $10 – so I’ll definitely want to keep it on hand as a pantry staple. I went a little light on the seasonings for my burgers, but I think there’s definitely room to play around there as well – some fresh herbs, spicy mustard or zingy Asian seasonings would all be great additions to future versions of this recipe. If you have any favorite ways to prepare canned salmon, I’d love to hear about them.

A week or two ago, my friend Kelly Sue asked for a split pea soup recipe. I told her about my version, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually made a pot of split pea soup in far too long. I knew there was a bag of split peas lurking in the back of the cupboard somewhere, so I resolved to dig it out and cook a batch of soup for our meatless Monday dinner.

This is not a “recipe” per se, but rather the basic method I use for most of the bean or legume soups I do. I always start with a base of onion and carrot, diced and sautéed in your lipid of choice (generally olive oil or butter in our kitchen). Since I had the last of a bunch of celery in the crisper, I chopped that up and added it as well. The chopped veggies go into the hot fat in a large heavy-bottomed pot with a pinch of kosher or sea salt, then cook over medium heat until they are beginning to get tender. If you want to add garlic, do so now and let it go for just a minute until golden and fragrant, then and add your split peas (or lentils or soaked beans or canned/drained/rinsed beans). Add a bay leaf and a few sprigs of fresh thyme and cover with liquid. The amount of liquid will vary depending on how many peas/beans/whatever you use, and how brothy you like your soup – I used five cups of homemade chicken stock to my 1.5 cups of dried split peas. Vegetable stock, canned or boxed broth or even plain water all work well.

Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the peas/beans/whatever are tender – about 45 minutes to an hour, in this case. Fish out the bay leaf and thyme stems, taste and adjust the salt if necessary. At this point I generally add a dash or three of hot sauce, and since I wanted a little hit of acidity to balance the earthiness of the split peas, I splashed a couple of teaspoons of sherry vinegar into last night’s version. If you want to guild the lily even more, a dollop of crème fraiche added at the end is lovely.

Some people like pork in their pea soup. If that’s what I want I generally go with pancetta, half a pound, thick-sliced, diced into about 3/4- to 1-inch pieces and sautéed in a small amount of olive oil before the onion and carrot go into the pan. The rendered pancetta fat then becomes part of the cooking fat and gives a subtle porky flavor to soup.

As with most soups, a green salad, some crusty bread and a nice glass of wine (or three, if you’re glued to coverage of the latest political scandal while dining) are all you need to round out your meal, and the flavor of the soup is even better the next day.

What do you do when time, money and inspiration are in limited supply, but you still need to get dinner on the table? Fall back on an old standby, of course.

I was driven to distraction yesterday by all of the buzz about Mark Bittman’s tomato paella - thinking about the combination of rice and tomatoes, saffron and smoky Spanish paprika, my mouth was watering. I didn’t want to put aside the black sea bass I had originally planned to cook on Wednesday for yet another night, so I decided to incorporate the flavors of Bittman’s tomato paella into a sauce for my fish and serve rice alongside.

I sautéed about 1/4 cup of diced red onion and a couple of fat garlic cloves in a bit of olive oil until they were soft and fragrant, then sprinkled on some pímenton (I added it about 1/4 teaspoon at a time, and ended up adding a full teaspoon total). I had some red and yellow bell peppers that I had charred on the grill, then peeled and marinated in Sherry vinegar and olive oil, so I added those to the pan along with their liquid. I poured in the remainder of the fresh plum tomato juice I made earlier in the week (about a cup worth), added some salt, a pinch of saffron and a splash of white vermouth, and let the mixture come to a boil. I tasted the sauce and adjusted the seasoning, adding a little additional salt and Sherry vinegar to balance the flavors, and then I pureed the mixture in a mini-chopper until it was smooth. I set the sauce aside while I pan-fried the fish as I usually do (seasoned with salt, dipped in a light coating of flour and cooked in a hot cast iron skillet with a bit of olive oil until crisp and golden). We didn’t have any Bomba rice in the pantry, but we did have short-grain sushi rice, and it was a decent stand-in. I packed the cooked rice into a ramekin and turned it out onto each plate, spooned a bit of the sauce around and served the fish on top.

I was incredibly pleased with how the sauce turned out - the smokiness of the pímenton, the brightness of Sherry vinegar, the sweet tomatoes and roasted peppers and the aromatic saffron were all present but in good balance, and they were an excellent accompaniment to the mild and meaty bass. I still plan to get out my old paella pan and try Bittman’s recipe, but this was a great way to satisfy my craving for those flavors in the interim.

If you follow this site then you know that our schedules have been a bit crazy of late, with Mike working steady overtime, so it has been hard to get into a good groove where weeknight meals are concerned. I had a plan for last night, but I’ve been battling insomnia for the last several days and I pretty much hit the wall soon after Mike got home from work yesterday evening. I was too tired to think straight, much less put together the meal I had hoped to. Luckily, our fridge and pantry are well-stocked for situations like this - a good thing, because as I’ve mentioned before, dining and takeout options in our neighborhood are practically nonexistent.

Whoever came up with the idea of slowly cooking then preserving seasoned pieces of duck in their own fat deserves a holiday in their honor, an award named after them, and a statue in the center of town. Because seriously, what a genius idea, and what a wonderful thing to be able to pull out of the fridge for a superfast dinner.

Mike had prepared the duck confit to begin with, and it was he who removed a few pieces from their blanket of fat and crisped them up in the cast iron skillet while I sat on the sofa struggling to stay awake long enough to eat. He also cooked thin slices of red and Yukon gold potatoes in duck fat, starting them on the stovetop and finishing them in the oven until they were crisp on the outside and tender inside. I was able to get my act together enough to toss a salad (we usually do frisee with duck confit, but arugula was what we had on hand, so that was what I used) and then plate everything up. It was just what the doctor ordered - quick, satisfying and utterly delicious.

It can be difficult to do things like cooking or even just eating when life hands you something ugly, but I try to use cooking as a coping mechanism – a distraction of sorts, a way to busy myself with the process of creating something good and restorative for myself and those around me. Feeding yourself and those you love is a basic, nurturing thing, and spending a bit of time in the kitchen, even when I feel like I’m just going through the motions, is something I rely on to get through rough patches.

I am grateful at times like these that we tend to sketch out menus for the week in advance, and that we have an abundance of pantry staples to pull out when we need something nourishing but fuss-free. As much as I love being inspired by what is fresh and shiny at the market, sometimes I just need to cook up one of those meals that I have done countless times and don’t have to think too much about.

We’ve always got sardines in the pantry for snacking or light lunches, but I also love using them with pasta. We generally get the King Oscar brand, which I believe are readily available in most stores, but we recently picked up a box of these imported Portuguese sardines at Russ and Daughters, so I decided to use them.

I got a big pot of water boiling for the pasta while I trimmed and sliced a fennel bulb and chopped half of a large ripe tomato (I used fresh because we had a leftover fresh tomato on hand; you could certainly substitute chopped canned tomatoes – about a cup worth). I placed about 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat, and then added three fat cloves of garlic (peeled and chopped). I added two anchovy filets to the garlic and oil and mashed them with the back of my spoon until they melted into the oil. The fennel went in next with a pinch of salt, and I cooked it for about 5 minutes. I added a splash of white vermouth next and let that bubble down, then added the tomatoes and a splash of sherry vinegar. I stirred this all together, lidded it up, and let it simmer over low heat while the pasta cooked.

I cooked about half a pound of linguine in boiling salted water until it was short of al dente – roughly 6-7 minutes. Shortly before the pasta was ready, and after the sauce had reduced a bit, I added my sardines to the sauce – one can, with their oil. I broke the sardines up just a little with my spoon, added the linguine to the sauce along with a little bit of the pasta water and tossed everything through. I placed the pasta into bowls and topped it with a little fresh parsley and toasted breadcrumbs. (I had intended to top the pasta with fennel fronds and lemon zest, but frankly, I forgot.)

Mike poured a couple of glasses of Nero d’Avola, and as we sat in the dim light of our living room with our plates in our laps, quietly eating our meal, I felt a bit of calm come over me. Despite everything that was going on, I was eating good food with someone I love very much beside me, and I knew that things would be all right. Besides, as any cook knows, you sometimes need a little something bitter to bring out the sweet.