Cooking Lesson!...and Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese and Strawberries

Back in April, I auctioned off a La Piccina Cucina cooking lesson to support Yale SOM's summer internship fund. Greg, a good friend of ours, was the "lucky" winner! He and his fiancee Jen came over last week to cash in on their winnings. It was a blast - for me, at least! Greg did great, too.

Greg made the excellent choice of Risotto with Broccoli Rabe and Pancetta. Not only is this delicious, but it's a useful recipe - risotto is a nice, fancy-seeming dish that's actually pretty simple, and really, once you've learned how to make basic risotto, you can really improvise with all kinds of additions. AND, this particular risotto recipe basically also teaches you how to make broccoli rabe as a side.

We also made a quick salad - Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese and Strawberries. Really, the name is the recipe. I wanted to do a salad to show how to make a basic olive oil/balsamic dressing. We used a bag of arugula, about 4-5 strawberries, sliced, and a healthy sprinkling of goat cheese  crumbles. We dressed it with 4 large spoonfuls of olive oil and 2 of balsamic. (2:1 ratio!) If you want the salad to stay pretty, dress the strawberries and arugula first, then just sprinkle with goat cheese. Or, do as we did (after this photo was taken) and dress it all together and mix (it won't look pretty anymore, but the cheese and dressing will coat the salad nicely).

We ended the night with a lesson from Joef on hot fudge (no Indian Ghost Pepper this time, to his chagrin) - probably one of the more fickle recipes we know, but definitely worth the effort.

Thanks to Greg and Jen for bidding on the lesson and for letting me geek out about cooking all night! Can't wait to do it again.

Fried Sweet Plantains

(from Tyler Florence's recipe on FoodNetwork.com)

Well, fry me in butter and sugar, and call me hooked on plantains! This recipe is a doozy when it comes to fat content, but mmm, oh-so good. The sauce was just perfect. I mean, I guess you can't really miss with brown sugar and butter. The cinnamon was really nice, too. And they are simple and quick. We had them as a side, but I think they'd make a good dessert or accompaniment to breakfast.

Next time, I'd cook them a little longer than the original recipe called for (I've made that adjustment below). Also, I'd love to try a version cooked in ramekins in the oven - you'd slice up the plantains, mix them with brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla, put maybe 1 tbsp. of butter in each ramekin (1/2 tbsp on top, 1/2 on bottom?), then bake them up for a few minutes and have 'em for breakfast. Whaddya think?

But here's how I did it this time:

3 ripe, black plantains
5 tbsp unsalted butter, divided
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp natural vanilla extract
2 tbsp brown sugar

To peel the plantains: first, cut off ends and discard. Then, with a paring knife, make 3 shallow slits lengthwise along the seams of the skin and peel away. Cut the plantains in half lengthwise.

Heat 4 tbsp of the butter in a large skillet and place over medium-low heat. Fry the plantains in a single layer, until golden on the bottom, then flip with a spatula. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar and let cook a couple more minutes, until the sugar begins to caramelize and the other side of the plantain has started to turn golden.

Just before serving, melt remaining tablespoon of butter to finish the sauce. Serve immediately.

Steak with Habanero Butter (with Rabe and Mashed Potatoes)

This was Joef's "welcome home from Japan safe and sound" dinner. Rabe was, of course, a requisite item, as was the addition of something spicy - in this case, habanero butter for the steak, which was seriously delicious.

This is maybe the second time I've made steak. I'm not sure what cut I got - it was inexpensive, didn't have a bone, and was somehow really, really good. Probably because it was just a leeeeetle bit fatty. Mmm.

MASHED POTATOES
4-5 small red potatoes, chopped into largish chunks
Milk
1-2 tbsp butter
Garlic powder
Dill
Salt

Boil the potatoes until softened. Drain, then stir in butter until it melts. Stir in milk, mashing the potatoes, until they're at the consistency you want. Add garlic powder and dill to taste. Season with salt to your liking.

STEAK with HABANERO BUTTER
2 steaks
Salt
Pepper
Habanero butter for serving (see instructions below)

With steaks at room temperature, salt and pepper on both sides, pressing the seasoning into the steak. Cook under the oven broiler. Turn once, cooking for a total of about 6-10 minutes, depending on how well done you want them. For the habanero butter, melt 2 or so tablespoons of butter and add habanero pepper flakes - a few pinches - stir to combine and pour over steaks once they're cooked. Enjoy!

Mexican Feast, Part 2: Chipotle Shrimp

(from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen)

The second course we served for our Mexican Feast, along with the chips and salsa, was Chipotle Shrimp, which tided us over till I finished making the chicken...erm, a few hours later. I love these shrimp - I've made them a few times before, and they are great - pop-in-your-mouth smoky-spicy.

This is really two recipes in one: first, the Essential Sweet-and-Smoky (ah, there's the adjective combo I was looking for) Chipotle Seasoning Salsa, and then the Chipotle Shrimp, which calls for that seasoning. The seasoning makes a lot of leftovers (it makes 1 1/4 cups, and you only use 2-4 spoonfuls in the shrimp themselves), which can be stored in the fridge and used for other things (added to wine for mussels, added to dips, etc.) - although truth be told, I've never done any of that. Missed opportunity!

Let's start with the Chipotle Seasoning:
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp molasses
Vegetable oil to a depth of 1/4 inch, for frying
4 oz dried chipotle chiles (Bayless prefers the red moritas, but I always use - because I can only find - the brown mecos), stemmed
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 tsp salt

In a medium saucepan, measure 1 1/4 cups of water, add the sugar and molasses, bring to a boil, remove from heat and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Set a skillet with the vegetable oil over medium heat, and when the oil gets hot (before it starts to smoke), add half the chiles. Stir and coat in oil until they start to smell spicy; some will puff up - cook for about 2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to scoop them out of the oil and drop them into the sweet water and stir. Do the same with the rest of the chiles.

Pour off most of the oil in the pan, leaving a thin layer. Return to medium heat and cook the garlic, stirring until golden - about 4 minutes. Add to the chiles. Pour the chile mixture into a blender (with the water) and puree.

Return the same skillet to medium-high. When it's hot, add all of the chile puree to the pan. Stir, then reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. It will be very thick and will blacken and be shiny on top when it's ready. Season with salt if you want. Set aside.

Chipotle Shrimp
6 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 small white onion, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 medium tomato
3/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
2-4 tbsp Essential Sweet-and-Smoky Chipotle Seasoning Salsa (see above)
1/2 tsp salt
2 lbs (about 50) medium-large uncooked shrimp, deveined and peeled, but with final joint and tails kept on

Roast the garlic cloves on an ungreased skilled over medium until they blacken in spots. If you have a large enough skillet, you can simultaneously roast the onion by placing it in a square of aluminum foil and putting that on the skillet as well. Let it brown and soften, turning as needed. While this is going on, roast the tomatoes on a baking sheet below a broiler until the skin blackens; flip and allow the opposite side to blacken as well, then remove from the oven and let cool before removing the skin. Let the garlic cool and remove its skin, too.

Combine all of the roasted ingredients in a blender along with the pepper, cloves, and 1/4 cup water. Puree.

Heat the oil over medium-high in a very large skillet. When the skillet is hot enough to make a drop of the puree sizzle, add the puree all at once and stir for several minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and keep cooking and stirring another 5 minutes or so. Now, stir in your Chipotle Seasoning Sauce a tablespoon at a time until they reach the heat you want (I used 3 heaping tablespoons). Remove from heat; add salt if needed.

Once your shrimp are prepped, return the sauce to medium-high and stir into the sauce until the shrimp are cooked, about 3-4 minutes. The sauce will coat the shrimp. Serve and enjoy!

Rick Bayless Mexican Feast, Part 1: Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa

(from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen)

Back in college, our friend Joseph treated us to a Mexican feast inspired by chef Rick Bayless. Over five years later, I still remember that meal. It was delicious, different, and I left fantastically stuffed.

Since then, I've made a couple things from the Mexican Kitchen cookbook - specifically, the Chipotle Shrimp and the Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa. But I hadn't really done much more than that - every recipe in the book looks amazing, but I will say that they're not exactly the kind of recipes that you just pick up and decide to make after work. So when we had our friends Steve and Johnna over for dinner last night, I decided to test out a few more.

The meal was great - even if we ended up eating the final course after 10:30pm. We started with the tried-and-true salsa and shrimp, and then...hours later...had Classic Red Tomato Rice (which uses the same salsa) and Red-Chile Braised Chicken with Potatoes and Greens.

I'll do this post in four installments, one for each dish. Note that if you were making this salsa and the tomato rice, you'd just double the salsa recipe and use half (2 cups) for the rice. Also, if you were making all the dishes at once, you could roast five tomatoes and about 20 cloves of unpeeled garlic, to save time (which I clearly did not).

So, for starters: Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa! (2 cups)

2 medium-large round tomatoes
2 large fresh jalapeno chiles
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 small white onion, very finely chopped and rinsed/drained
1/3 cup loosely packed cilantro, chopped
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar (optional)

You start by roasting the tomatoes, jalapenos, and unpeeled garlic. Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet right below a very hot oven broiler. Roast until the skins begin to blacken, then flip and roast until the other side does the same. In the meantime, place the jalapenos and the garlic on a frying pan or skillet over medium. Turn them occasionally until both are blackened in spots.

In the meantime, place the chopped onion, cilantro, and cider vinegar in a bowl.

Remove the tomatoes from the oven and let cool with the jalapenos and the garlic, then remove the skin from the tomatoes, the peels from the garlic, and the stems from the jalapenos.

Combine the jalapenos and garlic in a food processor and 1/4 tsp of the salt until they make a coarse paste. Transfer into a blender and add the tomatoes. (You could do it all in the blender, but the garlic and jalapenos get broken down better in the smaller food processor, at least mine.)

Pour the tomato mixture into your bowl with the onion, stir, and add the remaining 1/4 tsp salt. Let it sit and cool for awhile (you can put it in the fridge), then serve with tortilla chips!

Hummus!

Aaaaaaand we're back! Back means we successfully navigated the Boundary Waters and have now moved into our new place in New Haven, CT. First-time east-coasters, are we. The best part so far is our ability to WALK to anything and everything. Like for ice cream, after dinner. Fantastic.

Of course, we're still Midwesterners at heart. So consider this hummus, which I confess to making when I was still in Madison, a tribute to our true home.

This was not as good as my Aunt Wendy's hummus, but it's a good start, and not too tough to make. I suggest starting with the below and modifying it to taste and texture as you go.

2 cups (aka two cans) chick peas/garbanzos
1/2 cup tahini, technically, but in this case - 1 oz sesame seeds and 1-2 tbsp sesame oil
3 cloves garlic
juice from 1 lemon
Salt, pepper, and paprika to taste

Start by making a paste with mortar and pestle of the sesame seeds and sesame oil to imitate the tahini. Then combine the ingredients (minus the paprika, salt, pepper) in a food processor and blend, adding more (regular) olive oil and/or water if it gets too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste

Finish with paprika sprinkled over the top. Again, taste and modify with lemon juice and oil (sesame or olive) to adjust the taste/consistency. Serve, of course, with pita.

Empanadillas

(from "Tapas: Seasonal Small Plates from Spain", by Joyce Goldstein)

This cookbook (an engagement gift from our friends Shauna and Maher) is one of my favorites. We had friends over for lawn games and grilling, and these are neither of those, but they were yummy. I'd make a few changes the next time - for example, I had some trouble with the dough - I used the water they recommended and it was much too dry, so I added some beer to moisten it up. I'll just include what the cookbook says in case I did it wrong - if it gets too dry, just add some more liquid till it feels right. I'd also cut the rounds bigger so I could fit more of the delicious filling in each one. (The filling, of which there was about a ton left over, is good on a french bread sandwich the next day.) Finally, I replaced the ham the recipe called for with pancetta - good choice - and added just a dash of paprika to the filling, near the end with the pepper.

And here we go:

DOUGH
2 cups flour
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tbsp solid vegetable shortening
1/4 cup whole milk, water, or beer
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
(plus one egg, lightly beaten and set aside)

FILLING
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped (that was messy)
2 cloves garlic, minced
About 4 oz diced pancetta
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and coarsely chopped
Freshly ground black pepper and paprika

To make the dough, put the flour in a bowl and make a well in its center, adding the oil, shortening, water (or milk or beer), baking soda, and salt to the well. Use a wooden spoon to gradually work the wet ingredients into the flour, mixing until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead a bit till it comes together, then shape it into a ball, cover it, and let it sit for about 20 minutes at room temp.

While the dough is resting, you can make the filling. Heat the oil over medium in a saute pan, then add the onions and cook until they soften and turn a pale gold (stir occasionally). Add the tomatoes and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes juices have evaporated (5-8 minutes). Add the pancetta and cook until its cooked through. Remove from heat and add the eggs. Season to taste with pepper and a pinch of paprika. Let it cool.

Preheat the oven to 350 and come back to the dough. Roll out the dough until its about 1/8 of an inch thick or less, then use a glass (wide as you can - recipe says 3 inches, but I'd say larger) to cut out rounds. Once you have all of your rounds, spoon the filling into each one, using the egg to dampen the edges of the dough. Fold the dough over the filling in a half-moon shape, using the tines of a fork to press the edges together.

Put the pastries on a baking sheet and brush with egg, then bake until golden, about 20 minutes.

Toothpick Caprese

My cousin Jake tells me it's been a bit of a dry spell over here. So Jake: here are three recipes today to remedy that problem!

I actually did very little, if any, cooking this weekend, because my parents visited for Mothers' Day. This means that the blog gets the added benefit of two recipes from two highly-accomplished chefs (i.e., not me): my mom and dad. This toothpick caprese salad was my only contribution. It is rather tasty, though - a nice appetizer for the rest of the meal.

All you need is fresh basil, grape tomatoes (or cherry, if you halved them), fresh mozarella (in our case, by local Crave Brothers Farm), ground pepper, olive oil, and vinegar. Use toothpicks to skewer the mozzarella, basil, and tomato together until you have as many as you want. Place them on a platter, and lightly drizzle with olive oil and less vinegar. Grind black pepper on top.

UPDATE: No toothpicks? Just put all the ingredients in a bowl and eat it like a salad:

Oysters on the Half Shell

Technically, this isn't a recipe. I'm just kind of excited we had oysters at home. I love oysters. And we found this great little fish market in Madison that we'll definitely be heading back to. Joef did the honors opening them up, then we served them over ice with fresh lemon and a choice of fresh-ground horseradish or cocktail sauce. Oh, and this probably should have grossed me out, but we found a LIVE CRAB inside one of the oysters. There was nothing left in that shell but that little guy. Wild.

In any event - a great way to kick off the derby - off to the races!

Mussels; Aglio e Olio; Arugula Salad

My best friend was in town for the weekend, so I decided to actually prepare a full-out meal, with sides and salad and everything. Mussels are a great way to go - they're delicious, truly easy, and significantly less expensive than clams. Plus, I'll eat seafood any chance I get.

1. Mussel with White Wine, Shallots, and Thyme (from www.cookthink.com)
Black mussels (scrubbed, de-bearded), 2 pounds
Butter, 2 tbsp
Small shallots (minced), 3
Garlic (minced), 2
Fresh thyme, 3 sprigs
White wine, 1/2 cup
Chopped fresh parsley, 1/2 cup

Put the mussels in a large pot of cold water; scrub each one clean and remove the beard and any grime on the shells. Drain them in a collander.

In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat. When it's hot and foaming, add the shallots and cook 2-3 minutes, until they just begin to soften. Stir in the garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add the thyme, wine and mussels. Stir, then cover the pot and turn the heat up to medium-high. Steam the mussels until they open. (Throw them out if they don't.) Sprinkle over the parsley and stir to combine the mussels with the sauce.

2. Aglio e Olio
Garlic (minced), 3 cloves
Olive oil
Salt
Red pepper flakes
Pasta

Start heating the olive oil (a generous amount, since it makes up most of the sauce) over medium heat. Add the garlic and let it simmer - don't let it burn. It should get nice and golden. Depending on the level of heat you want, add the red pepper flakes either early, with the oil, or late. Once the garlic is golden, mix the sauce into the spaghetti. Add a little fresh parsley if ya have it.

3. Arugula Salad
Arugula
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Put arugula in a bowl, drizzle some olive oil over it, and add less balsamic vinegar. Mix it up.

Squid with Green Sauce

(adapted from TAPAS, by Joyce Goldstein)

This is a nice tapas/appetizer. The recipe calls for clams, but suggests you can try it with squid, too. So let it be done, as my father would say!

Squid, cleaned (eight or more)
Flat-leaf parsley (1/4 cup)
Green onions (2 - the whole stalk)
Garlic (2 cloves)
Fresh lemon juice (2 tablespoons)
Olive oil (1/2 cup)

In a small bowl, mix together all the ingredients but the squid.

Rinse the squid and cut it into squares, triangles, or strips. Put the squid into a hot saucepan and cook until they turn white and start to curl a little.

Drain out any excess liquid from the squid and mix it with the rest of the ingredients you've combined. Ready to go.