Last Night’s Dinner

I was cooped up in the office all day yesterday, but from the windows on the 52nd floor of my building it sure looked like a great spring day outside. Since we didn’t have anything planned for dinner, Mike and I tossed a few ideas back and forth over email, and when I suggested chicken with a Mediterranean spin, he offered to break out the grill for the first time this season. Unfortunately, at some point during my commute home, the sky clouded over and a cold mist began to fall, and there went our plans for grilling.

I decided to roast the bird instead, after marinating the pieces in a mixture of fresh lemon juice, olive oil, lots of garlic, kosher salt and ground cumin. We snacked on hummus, marinated goat cheese and warm wedges of pita while the chicken cooked, and when it was ready I squeezed a bit more lemon juice on top and served it with a sauce of Greek yogurt, lemon and fresh dill, with marinated artichokes and garlicky olives on the side. The evening may have turned damp and grey, but our dinner was warm and bright, a reminder that sunnier days are just ahead.

So remember last month when you were all clamoring for Mike’s cast iron skillet pizza recipe? Here it is in all its glory, brought to you by the man himself. Enjoy!

Cast Iron Skillet Pizza

NOTE: The original recipe says this makes two 9-inch pizzas. We have a used a modification of this recipe several times in a 12-inch iron skillet and have finally decided that it’s too much dough, even for a 12-incher. When next we make this, we’ll reduce the flour from 4 cups to 3, and we’ll reduce the amounts of other ingredients accordingly. When we do, we’ll post the revised recipe. For now, though, our original version:

Crust:

1 package (1/4-ounce) active yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water (about 110°F)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for oiling the bowl and skillet, divided

Toppings:

1 recipe Mike’s Pizza Sauce
1 lb. hot Italian sausage
1/2 to 1 ball fresh mozzarella
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chiffonade

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the yeast, sugar and water and let stand 5 minutes until foamy. Add the butter, flour and salt and combine well, using the paddle attachment. Knead, using a dough hook, until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and crawls up the dough hook. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons water if dough is dry and not coming together. If dough is too wet, add 1 to 2 tablespoons flour. Remove the dough from the bowl. Grease the bowl with olive oil and return the dough to the bowl. Cover and let the dough rise until it doubles in bulk, about an hour. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide in half. Shape the dough into two balls, cover and let rest for 15 to 20 minutes.

(This recipe calls for letting the dough rise at room temp for about an hour. For this latest pizza, however, we made the dough a day before and allowed it to rise overnight. Heidi Swanson has a great explanation of this process, if you want to know more. We did find that it makes a better crust.)

Heat a cast-iron skillet on the stove top over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons olive oil; crumble 1 pound of Italian sausage into the skillet and brown. Remove the sausage to a plate lined with paper towels. Do not remove the oil and fat from the iron skillet. (If your sausage is on the fatty side, you might remove some of the fat, but be sure to leave the skillet well greased.)
Preheat oven to 400°F. Pat or roll dough into a circle and transfer it to the skillet. Press dough down into bottom of skillets and up the sides. Drizzle a little olive oil over the crust then layer the sauce, sausage and mozzarella. Bake on bottom rack of oven for 30 minutes. Start checking the pizza for doneness; you’ll want the pizza crust to be golden brown, and the toppings to be just starting to brown. Remove pizza from oven and top with grated parm and basil.

Mike’s Pizza Sauce:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic
Half of a 28 oz. can of imported San Marzano tomatoes (tomatoes and juice)
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon red chile flakes
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Add olive oil to a small saucepan and warm over medium heat. Chop garlic and add to the pan, sautéing until golden and fragrant. Add the tomatoes with their juice, crushing lightly. Add salt, oregano and chile flakes, stirring well. Make a hot spot in the bottom of the pan and add tomato paste, allowing it to caramelize a bit before stirring through. Reduce heat to low and cook, uncovered, until the sauce thickens.

Sitting down with this stack of books and magazines, flipping through them, sketching out a menu for the week and beyond, well, it’s about all that has kept me sane over the last few days. A health scare for a beloved family member and an extremely busy period at work have had me frazzled, the end result being that I haven’t spent much time actually cooking. On the upside, we had a great time hanging out with old friends and new over the weekend, and we ate more meals out over the course of 3 or 4 days than we probably had in the entire month prior. I’m itching to cook more, but I must say this break has definitely provided me with some culinary inspiration.

I promised you guys a rundown of my lunch at Le Bernardin, and as expected it was a fantastic experience. The meal began with a starter of lightly smoked salmon rilletes for the table. My first course was a plate of six perfect raw oysters, ranging from teeny tiny and briny to big and plump and sweet, followed by a gorgeous main course of Florida grouper with shiso and maitake mushrooms in a lemon-miso broth. My boss likes to make sure I get the “full experience” when we go out to these lunches, so I was able to sample his selections as well – his first course of super-sweet peekytoe crab and entrée of red snapper in a ginger and scallion broth were also just wonderful. To go along with our lunch, we had a bottle of 2005 Shafer Red Shoulder Chardonnay, a really lovely and complex wine. The food and drink were amazing, the service was top-notch, and it was really a special experience I am grateful to have had. I came away with some fun ideas for future seafood dinners.

As for the rest of our weekend, Mike did the heavy lifting where dinners were concerned. On Friday night, he put together a delicious rendition of Fergus Henderson’s braised duck and carrots from “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating,” then on Sunday he seared a couple of grass-fed ribeyes and made a batch of fries to go alongside. My contribution to the meal was inspired both by the dish I had at Sweetwater Tavern on Thursday night, as well as by a recent Blue Kitchen post – a bright and tasty chimichurri sauce which was a perfect foil for our rich steaks.

I decided to put together a big batch of Bolognese sauce on Sunday and let it cook all afternoon while Mike and I did other things around the house, and as it turned out, it was a good thing I did. My workweek has been extremely busy, so while I wasn’t able to prepare the meal I had planned for Monday night, we didn’t have to scramble for a plan B – I just reheated some of the sauce (to which I added a healthy dollop of ricotta and the rest of a batch of pesto I made last week), cooked up some pasta and had dinner on the table in no time.

Not the prettiest dish in the world, but curling up with a glass of Barbera d’Alba and a rich and meaty dish of pasta at the end of a 13+ hour day was just what I needed.

It’s entirely possible that I’ll be eating takeout at my desk tonight as we finish up this big project, but once we’ve finished I look forward to going through my cookbooks and magazines and my little red notebook and getting back in the kitchen to take some of these recipes and ideas for a spin.

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.

During our last trip to the Saturday Greenmarket in Union Square, I spotted some gorgeous plump teardrop-shaped tomatoes at the Mountain Sweet Berry stand. Sadly, the entire box was spoken for – the gentleman buying them said these Canestrino tomatoes make the best sauce he’s ever tasted, so of course I was intrigued. We walked away empty-handed that day, but I asked Mike to swing by Mountain Sweet Berry on Wednesday morning and see if he could score some. He brought home four fat beauties, and I made plans to cook up a test batch of sauce over the weekend. I’ve had a very un-seasonal craving for meatballs lately, so I decided to make a batch of those to go with our sauce and pasta.

After I blanched and peeled the tomatoes, I placed them into a bowl to crush them, and the minute the aroma hit my nose, I knew we were going to have a winner on our hands. The scent was sweet and intensely tomato-ey, with rich notes of minerals and earth. They smelled exactly like what a tomato should smell like, and they made an incredible sauce. The heat of August may not be ideal for spending time in the kitchen making big batches of tomato sauce, but for flavor like this, I’m going to do just that.

Basic Tomato Sauce

4 large Canestrino tomatoes
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 red onion, chopped fine
1 carrot, peeled and chopped fine
2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 cup white vermouth
Kosher salt
(Optional: fresh basil, thyme, flat-leaf parsley or marjoram)

Cut a shallow X in the bottom end of each tomato. Drop into a pot of boiling water and cook 1-2 minutes. Remove the tomatoes from the boiling water, drop them into a bowl of cold water and set aside until cool enough to handle. Peel the tomatoes, place into a bowl and crush them gently with your hands. You should have about 2 cups of puree.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, add onion and carrot to pan, season with salt and cook until softened. Add the garlic and cook another minute or two, then add the tomato paste, letting it sit for a moment to caramelize before stirring it into the other ingredients. Add the crushed tomatoes, vermouth, and a bit more salt. Cover and cook over medium-low heat 25-30 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed.

Meatballs

1 lb. ground chuck
1 lb. ground pork
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon water
1/2 red onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil for frying

Place breadcrumbs in a large bowl and moisten them with a tablespoon of water. Add egg and season well with salt and pepper.

In a mini-chopper, pulse onion and garlic until they are very finely minced. Add the onion/garlic mixture to the moistened breadcrumbs, add the chopped herbs, and stir until well combined. Add the beef and pork, and gently mix with clean hands until all ingredients are well incorporated. Take about 2-3 tablespoons of the meat mixture and roll into balls (you should end up with 28-30 total). Fry in hot oil until browned, then drain on paper towels. Add meatballs to tomato sauce, cover, and simmer 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve with crusty bread or hot cooked pasta tossed with the remaining tomato sauce and freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano.

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.

Of the many pieces of equipment in our kitchen, there are a few I consider essential. One of these is our cast iron grill pan - it’s a great tool for cooking food quickly, and as much as I love the rich soups, stews and braises we’ve been eating, sometimes it’s nice to have something lighter. I can cook a couple of pieces of fish in the grill pan with just a touch of oil and have our meal ready in a flash.

I seasoned a couple of swordfish steaks with kosher salt and cracked black pepper, then coated them lightly with a bit of extra virgin and placed them into the hot grill pan. The fish cooked for about 5 minutes per side - and as I’ve said before, when it goes into the hot pan, don’t move it around until you’re ready to flip it; you want it to sear and get grill marks so it doesn’t fall apart.

While the swordfish cooked, I put together a salsa verde, which has become one of my favorite accompaniments for fish. I combined about 2 cups of fresh herbs (we had flat-leaf parsley, thyme, sage, dill and fennel fronds on hand, so I used all of those) with two fat cloves of garlic (peeled and smashed), a chopped shallot, and 2-3 tablespoons of capers. All of that went into the mini-chopper with a pinch of salt and a few grindings of pepper, and I pulsed it until it was a chunky paste. In a separate bowl, I whisked together the juice of a lemon with a tablespoon or so of sherry vinegar and a few tablespoons of olive oil, then added the herb-garlic-caper paste to that and mixed it well.

When the swordfish was done, I plated it and topped each steak with a generous spoonful of the salsa verde. The combination of the fresh herbs, briny capers, lemon and vinegar really highlighted the richness of the fish. I served this with a simple salad, but you can certainly cook some rice, couscous, or a vegetable to go alongside in about the same time as it takes to prepare the fish and salsa.

Winter’s short days and blustery weather may keep us from grilling outdoors, but it’s nice to know we can get a taste of warmer days with a grill pan and a hot burner.

Cold winter days just cry out for meals that fill up your entire home with savory aromas and that fill up your belly with something warm and nourishing. One of the most satisfying things to make when I know I’m going to be housebound on days like that is a big pot of Ragu Bolognese.

The recipe I generally follow is Marcella Hazan’s ragu from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and I think it’s just about foolproof. What always strikes me about the recipe is that it is actually quite simple in terms of what goes into the ragu - the quality of your ingredients and the length of time you let the sauce simmer make all the difference.

Marcella’s recipe calls for softening onion, carrot and celery in a mixture of butter and oil, but since we always have lard on hand (the good stuff, leaf lard rendered down at home from pasture-raised pigs), I often use that. Add the onion to the pan with a good pinch of kosher salt and let that cook for a couple of minutes, then add the carrot and celery, a little more salt, and let those go for a few minutes more. One thing I do that is NOT in Marcella’s recipe, but which I think adds more depth of flavor, is that I add about a tablespoon-or-so sized dollop of tomato paste (from a tube - one of the best inventions ever) to the pan and let it caramelize for a few moments before stirring it through with the softened veggies.

Add the meat (I use two parts ground beef to one part ground pork) and season with salt and a few grindings of pepper. Once the meat browns, add whole milk and a grating of nutmeg and simmer until the milk evaporates away, and then add a cup of white wine and allow that to evaporate as well. Keeping an eye on the sauce while you are waiting for the milk and then the wine to cook off is probably the hardest part of the process - it takes some time, and you do have to watch the pot closely and stir often so you don’t scorch the bottom - but I think it really builds good layers of flavor into the sauce.

Canned tomatoes (preferably San Marzano) with their juices go in next - you can smoosh them with your fingers to break them up or stick a knife in the can to chop them before adding. Give everything a good stir and leave the pot to cook away uncovered over the lowest heat possible for at least 3 hours, checking on it and stirring from time to time, and adding a little bit of water if the sauce gets too dry.

I don’t recall the proportions for Marcella’s original recipe off hand, but I do remember it yields about 2 cups of sauce. When I make this I generally do a big batch so I can portion it out and freeze what I don’t use right away – it freezes beautifully.

These are the proportions I generally use:

2 lbs. ground beef
1 lb. ground pork
1 cup each red onion, carrot and celery, diced
About 1 tbsp. tomato paste
1 cup whole milk
1 cup dry white wine
Freshly grated nutmeg
1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, broken up or roughly chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Water as needed

This makes a BIG pot of sauce – enough to properly sauce a classic lasagna Bolognese, share with your friends, and still have a few cups left over to freeze for later. It’s totally worth the time and effort.