Beans, it's what's for Dinner

When I was younger, I thought I had the strangest palette of any fourteen years old I knew. While friends my age sat down to dinner tables littered with hamburger helper or homemade meatloaf, I was served escarole and cannellini. It was embarrassing especially since looking back – I had carnivores for friends who swore that the absence of meat in any dish prevented the dish itself from standing as a meal.

Years later I realize how unfortunate it was that I didn’t appreciate the finer things in life when they were served me to me atop a silver platter – literally; to this day my mother still decorates the kitchen and dining room tables with silver colored chargers. 

In the spirit of reconnecting with my younger self and my love of all things green, I decided to cook up a special recommendation from Eric Ripert’s, Avec Eric: A Culinary Journey, a deliciously narrated collection of recipes and stories stemming from all part of the world’s finest gardens.

Here is Eric's Tuscan Bean Soup Recipe:

• 1 can of cannellini beans
• salt & pepper
• 40z. prosciutto 
• 4 cups of chicken stock 
• 1 small onion diced
• 1 cup of peeled and diced carrots/ celery
• 2 garlic cloves thinly sliced (omit for those with easily aggravated tummies)
• 1 small bunch of kale
• 3 plum tomatoes, cored, seeded and roughly chopped
• 2 thyme springs
• 3 tbsp. Italian parsley
• 
  
• Place the beans in a cold pot and add enough water so that the beans are covered. Season with salt. Bring the water to a boil and lower the heat to simmer (for about 20 min). 
• Heat oil and add prosciutto, onion, celery, carrot and garlic. Cook 6 to 8 min. 
• Add the chicken stock, kale, tomatoes, thyme, parsley, and Parmesan cheese to the pot. 
• Add 2 cups of water additionally. 
• Bring the soup to a summer - cooking for about 30 min.     

You Break the Mold Blue Cheese

I get the blues like every other foodie, it comes in waves; sometimes I crave a just warmed mozzarella sprinkled with some roasted red peppers, oil and tomato. Sometimes I want to dig my fork into a beautifully prepared beet salad garnished with pecans and warm goat cheese – perhaps a garlic toast poking out. It is a mood and a consistency thing really. I never feel this way about blue cheese though. When it comes to blue cheese, I have yet to encounter Roquefort I did not want to devour.   

Admittedly, my first encounter with the potent stank of this blue-gray mold involves blue cheese as a kind of sidekick, served with an order of wings. Funny that Sundays still revolve around football and good eats in my house but when I was sixteen and my best friends were teenage boys, we weren’t scooping servings of my Nona’s meatballs and marina onto fine china, the cheese a centerpiece of Italian cuisine, instead we were sinking our teeth into a heaping Styrofoam container of honey BBQ wings and blue cheese dressing to complement those delicious celery sticks. It is and was love at first crunch.

Even now after my aunt serves a beautiful dish of home style chicken noodle soup, whipped up with tri color tortellini and a side of broccoli rabbe and cannellini beans my Uncle insists on putting the baby blue mold on a plate surrounding an array of oranges, pears, and plums – a dreamboat Italian dessert for a man who passes regularly on the tiramisu. Needless to say, I eat well when I visit my father’s family.

That’s what blue cheese embodies for me – a favorite pastime I remember of bodies hovering over freshly laid plates and too warm to touch dishes in dining rooms and kitchens on weekends when my family came together before adolescence and aging crept up on all of us. I remember blue cheese the topping, the stuffing, feeling stuffed because this “stinky cheese” had done it again – had taunted my eyes until they were bigger than my belly and I could only surrender to the Maytag’s saltier serendipity.

This is sounding more and more like an ode to blue cheese or it may resemble more of a celebration of Madame Fromage’s forget-me-not friend, Mr. Blue. In honor of March’s own cheese madness, I am preparing two ground (but lean) beef patties to be stuffed with none other than the man of the hour, gorgonzola blue – a nifty little combo I stumbled across in Hoboken’s own Garden of Eden produce haven. Smooth and inviting, the consistency calls for a cracker or a bed of spinach leaves, a perfect pairing to dress up or dress down a meal. Personally, I like to stuff my burgers with cheese as opposed to caustically dropping the cheese atop and hoping for the best (albeit sloppy) melted results. Cannot say enough about drizzling the finished product with some honey Dijon and mushrooms, terrible cinematography listed below.

Grazie Madame Fromage for including Tavola in this worthwhile project.  

Brunch

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Funny since I cannot recall mornings spent hovering over a countertop clanking around a bowl of milk sodden Rice Krispies. I do however remember Sunday mornings waking up from a slumber party and trudging down a friend’s stairs, the scent of homemade pancakes or eggs wafting; a real treat. My family does not brunch on weekends. Some of us sleep in and others catch a morning run and devour a yogurt chock full of fruit on the bottom – not too intense a meal for a lactose laden lass like myself. My parents do not believe in brunch.

Bobby Flay does though. He even hosted a French toast throw down with restaurateur Omar Giner of La Isla not too long ago. The topic? Omar’s sinful cereal and almond battered stuffed French toast. Allegedly, folks skip Church just for a bite of his cream cheese and guava imbued creation. I salivate just thinking about freshly diced strawberries finding a home on the same plate as butter soaked bread. And then I flashback to weekend mornings in forgotten middle school kitchens eating perfectly poached eggs and left too long bacon and I crave a leather booth at the local diner because I cannot even begin to imagine how to recreate a brunch masterpiece when I was never raised to prepare it myself.

Well, almost never…

There is the time my dad made eggs, a basic enough meal. While meeting in the kitchen to pour our coffee and plan our day, my dad suggested he cook breakfast. I looked at him with this surly grin. Dad wanted to forego the diner, our little tradition and whip something up. I was admittedly reluctant. The man wasn’t exactly known for his waffle making skills. Truthfully I’d only ever really seen him toast an English muffin come breakfast time. Nevertheless, he made for the pantry and I the stool to watch.

He stood cracking eggs carefully over a broken-in skillet in plaid pajamas. He used a wooden spoon and asked me to cut tomatoes while he rummaged in the fridge, the eggs cooking on a mild flame. I chopped. He scoured, eventually returning to the stove with a small Tupperware containing just made spaghetti sauce.  Without explanation, my father began to pour the fresh tomatoes and sauce into the pan. I was dumbfounded. The man had managed to find a way to convert eggs into Italian-American yolks. Unbelievable. They tasted unbelievable. It was absurd that what had started out as a dollop of Extra Virgin Oil could see a metamorphosis into a culinary creation.

When Bobby Flay visited Hoboken, he transformed mascarpone cheese and pumpkin into a Challah Bread concoction of epic proportion, all the while the crowd hooted and high fived him. When my dad tossed some red stuff into a black pot with a handle, he became my hero all over again. It dawned on me while writing this that it doesn’t matter that I do not have a special relationship with brunch the way my friends do and did when we were younger. I have my dad and a special family recipe that only we can find truly rewarding while the neighbors slap some Aunt Jemima on their Pillsbury crescent rolls. I say Mangia!

There is more than One Way to Stack an Eggplant

The weekend I moved to Hoboken, I had no food in the refrigerator and only condiments in the cabinet. My mom and I had spent the better part of the day concerned with finding the right angle to complement the picture of poppies I wanted centered over my bed, rearranging furniture; hell bent on squeezing my couch through the narrow third floor landing. By dinnertime, we had certainly worked up an appetite. It occurred to us while standing barefoot in my apartment on the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend with a shower rod in our hands that we’d worried over the wrong things – what would we eat?

We agreed on one thing – neither of us was volunteering to sort through the ten or so odd unopened bins that were scattered throughout the living room. Neither of us could be bothered with washing dishes. We simply wanted something savory and something fast and we didn’t want to have to go looking for a parking spot to bring it home. 

After drawing straws, I reached for my shoes and turned left at the corner of 11^th. There was a plan. Walk one block in either direction and pick something. I chose an Italian Pizzeria whose menu boasted delicious Eggplant Parmesan and crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t disappoint.

Eggplant never disappointed in the hands of my grandmother and aunt – it never tasted soggy or saturated or overcooked. This eggplant from Napoli’s was a Russian roulette. Craving something hearty and familiar, mom and I took our chances.

This weekend while visiting Pine Bush NY, I found myself in familiar territory. Once again I’d stumbled upon a smaller town with no real sense of the local eateries before my arrival. A true foodie, I knew better than to eat in the town’s famous Japanese restaurant that Zagat gave a fabulous rating. I could have Hibachi on any given night. I was in rural New York surrounded by snow covered winding roads and general store like establishments – the locals definitely got their eat on, I simply needed to take a chance again and turn left.

Like Napoli’s in Hoboken, Culinary Creations brought eggplant to life. An extraordinary little eatery off of Pine Bush’s Main Street, Creations prepared eggplant that was to-die for. A stacked Napoleon as opposed to more traditional square-like lasagna, Culinary Creation’s eggplant sat atop a bed of artichokes and fennel ragout. Lighter than chicken but more so on the heavier side with its mangled forest of mozzarella cheese, eggplant generally tastes like a vegetable floating in a sea of sauce and cheese. This eggplant however reminded me of a perfectly erected hamburger with all the fixings. Spinach leaves and red peppers coated the balsamic drizzled delight. It dawned on me in the dining room of the tiny café that I’d never even considered that eggplant could be prepared anyway but the way I knew – the way my grandmother and aunt and chef around the corner prepared it; that it could have an identity separate from the life of a plateful of skinny eggplant cut like cucumbers fried and garnished across a white dish.

I returned to Culinary Creations the next night too. It wasn’t because I didn’t think the Japanese was really as good as the reviewers said or because I didn’t think there wasn’t a better eggplant, I didn’t order the Napoleon the second time around. I went back because I’d dined in a restaurant that challenged the way I thought about food pairings. Chicken didn’t have to be breaded or baked only, it could be pan seared before popping it in the oven. Similarly, vegetables needn’t be doused in extra virgin olive oil before lightly salted and stirred onto a plate. They could be seasoned or nuked in the microwave and eaten bland or drizzled with soy sauce. I’d gone to a café and ordered what I conceived formerly to be an Italian dish and yet, I’d never tasted a better version of eggplant to-date before I’d visited Pine Bush.

I’d gone to a rural part of New York expecting to find the town itself charming but the food mediocre at best. Instead, Pine Bush served me one hell of an eggplant and a dose of humility. 

I wish I could say that I managed to steal the recipe during my visit but I didn't, so get creative!

http://www.culinarycreationscafe.com/

A Casual Affair with Spinach

        I am having an affair with spinach. It started off casually like most vegetable run ins. It would spot me in aisle two of kings; catch me staring and then looking away at the fresh Brussels sprout, sensing my uneasiness. Although I play it off and gravitate toward cans of carrots, I cannot stray for too long. I inevitably find myself returning to spinach and its elegant leaves and palatable texture. I am not picky when we break bread together. Swooning over thawed spinach or spinach that’s been boiled, spinach I can bake or pan fry, I like my spinach tossed with balsamic or teeming with oil and garlic. A good green tastes neither soggy nor stale.

            Tonight’s topic is born of my recent resurrection of one recipe in particular involving of all things, Pillsbury crescent rolls, pepperoni, a host of cheese. This tiny delight has no formal name.  It is a hand-me-down of dinner sorts and I whip it up whenever my apartment feels oversized or like me, famished. Rich in antioxidants and iron, this leafy lettuce head fills me without leaving me stuffed and I truly cannot say enough about the warmth of this dish. Like a good bowl of soup, my little “spinach things” serve as a starter or a worthy main squeeze.

“Spinach things”

§  Boil Fresh Spinach, or thaw frozen spinach

(If boiled, sauté spinach in oil and garlic) and dry thoroughly

Note: If the spinach is left too soggy, it will leave the dough soggy and undesirable.

§  Add salt, pepper to taste.

§  Mix the spinach with Ricotta and graded mozzarella (to your liking) and (shredded) pepperoni.

Note: amount of pepperoni should be relative to intended amount of “spinach things” desired.

§  Bake at 400 at most for ten minutes OR until “golden brown’ after rolling in Pillsbury crescent rolls.  

Surf's Up, Crab

            In apartment ten, dinner for one is served. I need the night off from cutlets and marinara so I settle on a Rachael Ray adaptation of Surf and Turf. Sadly, I serve this dish with steak and a token green but no crab to greet the turf. I have not exactly made amends with crab in apartment ten in my grey and metallic blue backsplash kitchen; not since last summer, when I encountered a brave crustacean ensconced in his ethereal exoskeleton behind an icebox at Di Bruno Bros. in Philly.

            I am not a vegetarian or a vegan or an animal rights activist. Surely, I disagree with animal cruelty, but I am the first person to crave a pan-seared tilapia or to marinate and grill up a petite filet mignon. I did however lock eyes with a little crab and my sympathies went to him; particularly because of a scene in the Little Mermaid in which Arielle’s pal, Sebastian, managed to circumvent a crazed French chef. Fortunately, dinner was salvaged in the film because Arielle brought a fork to dinner to comb her hair with. I digress.

            I still make fish for dinner weekly. Seldom will I compromise the possibility of whipping up a fresh salsa to garnish a tuna steak with because of my crab blues, but these days after reaching for a package of prepared shrimp or a nice cut of Salmon, I’ll saunter to the check out counter feeling horribly guilty for leaving behind Sebastian to fend for himself in the glass-enclosed case resembling a cold-cut counter with the man wearing a butcher smock.

            Regardless, I successfully adapted Rachael Ray’s surf and turf suggestion from her Big Orange Cookbook for my own enjoyment just the other night. Being an Italian, a recipe that calls for ¼ cup of red wine means very little. The kind of wine included in the sauce will dramatically alter the sauce’s taste. I went with a Cabernet. Its mint and eucalyptus undertones offset the sweet finish of the flour and scallions, which create a savory paste to couple with the steak. I imbued the spinach leaves with the leftover garlic and butter I cook the shrimp with, adding nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon as dictated by the recipe. High five Rachael.

            For a night off from Ditalini, this DIY dinner comes together nicely, requiring minimal preparation and clean up. I also slept better because I made it with shrimp. Your call, though.

Tenderloin with Red Wine Gravy and Cracked Garlic Shrimp

·      1 in. thick tenderloin

·      2 tbsp butter

·      1 shallot, finely chopped

·      ¼ tbsp flour

·      1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

·      ¼ cup dry wine

·      ¼ cup of beef stock

·      2 garlic cloves

·      Shrimp (amount is to your liking)

·      Fresh thyme

·      1 tsp hot sauce (I skipped this ingredient)

·      ½ lemon

·      Nutmeg

·      Spinach leaves

      When you remove the meat from its package, sprinkle it with salt and pepper and begin heating a skillet with olive oil Transfer the meat to the pan and let it cook for two min on each side before placing it on a baking sheet and letting it cook in the oven for 5min at 400F for medium rare. Add a bit more oil and butter and cook the shallots for 1 to 2 min. Add flour and allow it to melt before including the Worcestershire sauce and red wine. Whisk in the stock and season with salt and pepper.   

While the meat cooks in the oven, add oil and butter to a skillet to melt. Add garlic and soon after the shrimp and thyme for 3min. Douse the shrimp with lemon and remove from the pan. Heat the spinach leaves in the leftover juice from the shrimp. Allow the spinach leaves to wilt slightly.  Dinner is served.

A Sauce by any other Name would be Blasphemous, would be Gravy

I am consistently floored by the amount of ingredients and sheer preparation cookbooks tout when including a recipe for marinara. Made from fresh essentials like garlic and basil, marinara does not require the same kind of attention needed in piecing together gravy used in Shepherd’s pie or smothers a turkey dinner. Marinara is after all, a sauce.

I know Italians who take their marinara very seriously. They swoon and they fill their gravy bowls with well, gravy – real Bolognese Ragu chock full of stock and one to two glasses of wine and/or milk. The very essence of this gravy suggests that it lingers happily between the fibers of tagliatelle or pappardelle, which is usually layered in pieces of lamb. Gravy in and of itself serves a purpose only if paired with something equally hearty.

Marinara though, glides across a dish of spaghettini like none other, soaks up a ziti likening it to it a penne on a good night and festoons ravioli with a kind of reprieve. Marinara does a dance all of its own. It sits atop a cutlet without overpowering the cutlet’s breadcrumbs, without diminishing its taste. Marinara would never be caught dead on top of a biscuit. Marinara does not play well with other cuisines.

In my apartment, marinara starts with a cutting board, a knife and ideally, a generous eyeballing of garlic. If you’re anything like me though, you do not garnish your marinara liberally otherwise you will be in serious need of an anti acid like the Pink Stuff; not quite a Limón cello finish to a beautifully rendered dinner.  Indigestion aside, the bear minimum is needed to craft an ambrosial array of tangy and sweet red syrup.

In my humble opinion, marinara should taste like beloved Nona’s famed recipe – it should surprise your palette with the subtle hints of balsamic vinegar and the prevalent presence of delicious tomatoes. It should never be jarred or reheated in a microwave. It should compel you to double dip and find yourself fighting the urge to sip it as though it were a soup.

My love affair with marinara comes full circle once I introduce the sauce to my friend Parmesan. Though somewhat of a gastronomical nightmare amidst my mozzarella and tomato side salad, I suffer in ravenous radiance at my countertop with stools for two every time I serendipitously prepare myself a marinara.

Sauce (the way it was intended)

•       Olive Oil – personally I recommend investing in a bottle of Colavita
  
•       Have Morton Salt nearby and black pepper to spare
•       Fresh garlic (eyeball it, you typically need less than you think unless you enjoy tasting it the next morning)
•       Fresh Basil
•       Tomato paste – any type will do
•       Crushed tomatoes – San Morino aren’t half bad and sometimes the grocery store carries them. If you live near a specialty food store, stock up on
•       Parmesan cheese – steer clear of Kraft, it’s imposter
•       Balsamic Vinegar – only to be added after the crushed tomatoes and only pour about a tbsp into your sauce
•      Optional: diced yellow onion – again, not to be overdone otherwise it will drastically change the taste of your marinara

Oil needs time to heat the pot before it can marinate the garlic and basil. Do not add the Parmesan or the vinegar without first cooking the paste and tomatoes together for several minutes. The sauce should only be set on medium heat and should be stirred often. Ideally, give the sauce anywhere from half an hour to an hour to blend nicely enough to serve. Bon appétit.