Ossobuco

(adapted from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking)

Ready for a serious meal? My dad made this for me when I was home in February, and I've been wanting to make it ever since. Ossobuco is a classic Italian dish (as the cookbook's title would suggest), and is basically veal shank (if you're opposed to veal, you could easily go with beef) simmered in a hearty tomato sauce. There are two things that I think make it unique - one, an "aromatic mixture" of citrus and herbs called gremolada that you add at the end, and two, the fact that it's traditionally served over saffron risotto, if you go Milanese style (you can also just serve it over regular white rice, and it'll still be delicious).

Marcella adds a whole step where she puts the veal in the oven. This recipe has enough steps (although, it's really not too complicated) without adding an oven, so I skipped that.

The risotto takes at least a half an hour, I'd say, so start that a half hour before the veal is done. You have some wiggle room, since the veal is simmering at that point.

Here we go. I kept the sauce at the amount recommended for 6-8 servings, but only used two veal shanks:
OSSOBUCCO
1 cup onion, chopped fine
2/3 cup carrot, sliced thin
2/3 cup celery, sliced thin
2-4 tbsp butter
1 tsp garlic, chopped fine
2 strips lemon peel (avoid the white stuff inside)
Vegetable oil
2 veal shanks (or beef) with the marrow bone, cut no thicker than 1 1/2 inches, ideally
Flour, spread on a plate
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken or beef broth
1 1/2 cups imported Italian plum tomatoes, or San Marzano, with their juice
1/2 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
2-3 sprigs parsley
Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

In a large dutch oven, add 2-3 capfuls of vegetable oil and the butter, and turn the heat to medium high. Let the butter melt. In the meantime, turn the shanks in flour and coat on both sides. Shake off the excess flour and add the shanks to the pan. Brown the meat on both sides, sprinkle with salt and pepper, turn the shanks, and add the wine. Let the wine boil off a bit, and deglaze the pan, scraping up the brown bits with a wooden spoon. Remove the shanks from the pan, and add the carrots, celery, and onion to the pan, along with the thyme and parsley - you can add more butter and/or vegetable oil if it's try. Let the veggies soften, then add the chopped lemon peel and parsley and stir for about a minute. Add the shanks back to the pan. Finally, add the tomatoes, pressing the tomatoes against the side of the pot to crush them. Bring the sauce to a boil, turn down to low, and let simmer as long as you can stand it - at least an hour. 

GREMOLADA
So, I didn't have any fresh parsley, which is really how you want to do it. So instead, I used dried. It worked, but it wasn't nearly as good - so go with fresh if you can. Really, what's delicious about this is the garlic and the unexpected citrus taste from the lemon. It cuts the heaviness of the rest of the dish.
1 tsp grated lemon peel (again, avoid the white pith)
1/4 tsp garlic chopped very, very fine
1 tsp chopped parsley

Combine all the ingredients, and sprinkle over the veal shanks while they're still cooking, about two minutes before you're ready to serve them.

SAFFRON RISOTTO
Pinch saffron threads 
1.5 tbsp olive oil
1/2 white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 cup arborio rice
1/4 cup dry white wine
3-4 cups chicken stock, reduced sodium, simmering
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Start the broth boiling, then turn the broth down to a simmer. Place the saffron in a small bowl and cover with 1.5 tbsp hot water (this is the part where it turns bright yellow!). Let it sit for about 20 minutes, or until needed.

Combine the oil and onion in a large, deeper sauce pan and stir over medium heat until the onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and stir another minute. Add the rice and stir until all the grains are coated, about 2 minutes.

Add the wine and stir into the rice until it's been absorbed. Add a ladleful of the simmering stock and stir that in until it's been absorbed. Continue this process for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is al dente or the stock is used up (do reserve a few tablespoons for later). About halfway through, add the saffron and its liquid along with a ladle of stock. Season lightly with ground black pepper after you add the saffron. 

When the rice is cooked/you're done with the stock, add the parmesan and the remaining couple tablespoons of the stock. Stir it over the heat, then serve with a veal shank and the ossobucco sauce!

Linguine with Raw Tomato Sauce

(from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything)

This is a great spin on everyday tomato sauce. It's great for our new Berkeley surroundings, where we have access to super-fresh produce - in this case, particularly Berkeley Bowl heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil from the garden (although I already killed the first basil plant and am on my second; a green thumb, I don't have!). 

This basically has all the usual components of tomato-basil sauce - tomatoes, garlic, basil - you just don't cook any of it. The garlic becomes more potent, and it's wonderfully fresh and light. The pasta warms the sauce up. It reminds us of the sauce at D'Amico and Sons in Minnesota, a favorite of Joef's when he was growing up.

So, it's quick, fresh, yummy:
2 cups roughly chopped fresh tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste
2 cloves garlic, lightly smashed and then chopped
1/4 - 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 lb pasta
Parmesan cheese for serving

Start your water boiling and salt it. In a large bowl (with a broad, flat bottom, and ideally enough room to hold all the pasta), combine and mash the tomatoes, oil, salt/pepper, garlic, and half the basil. (I use a large, wooden muddler) Don't mash it so much that it becomes a puree - just break it down and combine the flavors a little. The sauce can sit for up to two hours like this (or you can use it right away).

After the pasta is cooked, ladle a little pasta water into the sauce to warm it up and thin it out a little. Bittman removes the garlic at this point (he just smashes it, doesn't chop it) - I think I left it in. Toss the pasta in the sauce, adjust the seasoning as needed, top with the rest of the basil, and serve with parmesan cheese.

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs with Veggies and Toast

I'm a big fan of eggs for lunch. Combine that with an urge to be better at eating vegetables, and an insatiable hunger after a (lousy) 10.5 mile run, and you have this meal. If you can, get the toast crispy enough so you can eat it like an open-faced sandwich (which I suppose it is), without a fork.

1/2 a bunch or so asparagus, quartered
A little white onion, chopped
Olive oil
3 eggs, beaten with dill
1/2 a small tomato, chopped and salted
Shredded cheese, to taste

Saute the asparagus and onion in olive oil over medium/medium-high until both have softened. Pour beaten egg into pan and slowly shift the mixture around, letting the egg turn and cook on all sides. Pour in the tomatoes, and mix them in in the same fashion. Near the end, add the cheese and stir gently to incorporate as it melts. Serve over toast.

Mexican Feast, Part 3: Classic Red Tomato Rice

(adapted from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen)

If you're going to make the Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa from earlier in this series, you might as well make this rice along with it (or vice versa). Just double the salsa recipe from 2 cups to 4 cups, and use 2 of those cups for this rice. We ate this rice with the main chicken dish (Part 4!).

The original recipe calls for baking the rice, which I'm sure would be great. Unfortunately, I didn't have an ovenproof, lidded saucepan - so I just cooked it on the stovetop, much like I would regular rice. And it turned out just fine. Here's how it goes:

2 cups Roasted Tomato-Jalapeno Salsa
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups medium grain rice
1 1/2 cups chicken broth or water
1/2 cup loosely packed cilantro, chopped

Make your salsa. In a saucepan/pot, heat the olive oil over medium, then add the rice and cook for about five minutes while stirring. Add the salsa right to the rice, then add the broth and 1 tsp salt. Bring to a boil, then turn to low and cover until the liquid evaporates and the rice is cooked, about 25 minutes. Sprinkle in the cilantro, fluff, and serve.

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!

Not Chili

Well, I call it chili. But the husband insists that if it has rice in it, it can't be chili, no matter how good it is (and it is good!). This is how my ma always made chili at home - served over rice - and it's still my favorite (and it might soon become the husband's, too).

1 1/2 cups white rice
2-3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
Olive oil
A little salt
A little ground pepper
1 lb ground beef, thawed
1 tbsp chili powder, plus more
1/2 tsp ground cumin, plus more
1 28 oz can whole tomatoes
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 can red kidney beans (you know, whatever the size is between 8 oz and 28 oz - the regular size), drained and rinsed

Cook your rice.

Meanwhile: drizzle a healthy amount of olive oil into the bottom of the pot, then add your garlic and heat over medium, adding a little salt and ground pepper. Just let that get hot and aromatic, then mix in the ground beef, red chili powder, and cumin. Let the beef brown.

Once the beef is browned, add your tomatoes and tomato sauce. Break up the whole tomatoes well with a wooden spoon. Bring the sauce to a boil, then turn to low and partially cover, simmering for about 1/2 to a 1 full hour. You can sprinkle more chili powder and cumin in at this point, according to your taste.

15 minutes before the sauce is done, add the kidney beans and cook another 15 minutes.

Serve over/mix into rice - yes, RICE! - and enjoy!

Goat Cheese, Tomato, and Caramelized Onion Omelette

Here we go, another "recipe" whose name pretty much sums things up. But I've never actually successfully made an omelette, so this was an accomplishment for me. Plus, say you have leftover goat cheese from a certain salad, and leftover tomatoes from a certain fish dish...well, there you go.

3 eggs, beaten
Butter
1/4 cup (ish) cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup (ish) white onion, sliced or chopped
A few sprigs arugula
As much goat cheese, crumbled, as you want

First, caramelize the onions: take a frying pan and grease the bottom with butter, then add the onions and cook them on medium until they begin to soften and brown. Put them aside.

Second, do the same with the tomatoes (will take less time).

Butter the pan again and pour in the egg (turn up the heat a tad). Lift the pan and shift the eggs until the bottom of the pan is covered; you can lift up the sides a bit and let the egg run under itself a little, too. Cook until the top is nearly not runny, then add the onion, tomatoes, arugula, and cheese to one side. Fold the other side over the filling, then flip. Repeat the flip until the cheese is melty and all the egg is cooked. You could even serve it with a little arugula salad on the side.

Tilapia with Beans and Tomatoes

(adapted from, what else, Loukie Werle's "Italian Country Cooking")

My goodness, it's been a whirlwind of activity around here lately. Not a cooking, whirlwind, clearly - or at least not of new recipes. I finally got the chance today for lunch, which worked out because I 1) had time (although this doesn't take much), and 2) wanted to cook something I knew the husband wouldn't go for (not a tilapia fan). I've had this recipe in mind ever since my dad called raving about it. And he knows what he's talking about.

This is a dinner dish as well, or maybe preferably. In any case, it's easy, fast, and delicious.

3 tbsp olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 tsp chili flakes
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup cannellini (great northern) beans, drained
1 handful flat-parsley leaves, coarsely chopped - or, in my case, a healthy dash of dried parsley
3 tilapia filets (or other white fish)
Lemon wedges, to serve (grilled bread suggested and highly recommended, if you have it, also to serve)

Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium (it will need to be large enough to fit the filets next to each other without overlap, and it should have a lid). Add the garlic, chili flakes, tomatoes, and wine and simmer until the tomatoes get soft, about 10 minutes. Add salt partway through if you need it (I did). Add the beans and the parsley and cook another five minutes or so.

Lay the fish on top and season with salt (they can touch, but should not overlap). Cover the pan with a lid and cook on low heat until the fish cooks through and is flaky - about 10-15 minutes. Serve with lemon wedges and, if you're lucky, grilled bread. That's IT!

(Almost) Pasta Primavera

Says Joef, "If it's good enough for us to eat, it's good enough to post!" There's nothing particularly fancy about this dish - sort of a "what's-left-in-the-fridge" kind of deal - but Joef makes a good point, and it was certainly good enough to eat. I call it *almost* pasta primavera because it's close to a delicious dish my mom makes that has similar ingredients, but adds mushrooms (recommended), for one - and some other veggies that I'm forgetting at the moment. Anyway, the point is that you can improvise, and the results will all be good.

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
Olive oil
Handful and a half green beans, cleaned and broken into pieces
4-5 on-the-vine tomatoes, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese for serving, grated
3/4 lb pasta, like mezze rigatoni

Get your water boiling and cook the pasta as you cook the sauce. Olive oil (yes, that's a verb now) your pan over medium-high heat. Add all the ingredients, minus the pasta and the cheese, to the pan (if you want crunchier green beans, add those a little later). Cook them until the tomatoes are breaking down; reduce heat if necessary. When the pasta is done, add it right to the pan and cook a minute on low. Serve with plenty of parmesan.

Pasta Fresca

Yes, the name is made up. It felt right, though. Better suggestions welcome! (Joef suggests Pasta Caprese.)

Tonight's pasta would make a great summer meal. That being said, tonight it's raining and in the low 40s, and we still liked it.

Fresh basil, torn into pieces
4-5 fresh roma tomatoes, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2-3 tbsp or balsamic vinegar, or to taste
1/3 cup or so extra virgin olive oil
Red pepper flakes, if you want
3/4 lb pasta
Fresh mozzarella, about 1/2 cup
Prosciutto, in small pieces (assuming your "butcher" doesn't shave the meat instead of slice it, leaving you with a pile of mushy, tasteless meat...curse you, Super Target)
Salt (if it needs it) and shredded parmesan to taste

Combine the olive oil, basil, tomatoes, balsamic, garlic, and red pepper flakes in a bowl; stir and let sit while you start boiling the water for the pasta. When you add the pasta to the boiling water, add the mozzarella to the other ingredients.

Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce, adding the prosciutto. Add salt if you want it and shredded parmesan as desired. It's nice with sliced french bread. And that's it!

(Sunflower courtesy of the husband!)

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:

Rigatoni with Prosciutto, Tomatoes, and Olives

Oh, this is decadent. I haven't made this one in months, and it's already a pretty squishy recipe since I made it up, so I probably would do a few things differently next time - less prosciutto, maybe more cherry tomatoes. In any case, it was a little salty this time, but it's delicious, so take it, mess around with it a little - I certainly do! It's that kind of meal.

(We also realized tonight, as we probably should have much earlier, that it's much cheaper to buy prosciutto custom-sliced at the deli than pre-packaged. Which is probably why I got a little over-excited about how cheap it was and added a tad too much. But hey, good news!)

3/4 lb rigatoni
2-3 tbsp (?) olive oil
1 or 1 1/2 tbsp butter, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 package (maybe 1 1/2?) cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup or so thinly-sliced prosciutto, shredded (gosh...maybe even less. 3-4 slices?)
Pitted kalmata olives, however many you want
Red pepper flakes, to taste
1/4 cup pasta water

Start the water boiling for the rigatoni and cook until al dente. In the meantime, drizzle a little pool of olive oil in a pan and add half the butter, and heat over medium-high until butter melts. Add the garlic and stir it around for a bit, letting the flavors combine, and being careful not to burn the garlic. Turn the heat to medium. Next, add the halved tomatoes and do the same, letting them soften and soak up the butter. Sprinkle red pepper flakes to taste over the tomatoes (add earlier if you want it hotter, later if you don't). If the sauce starts to get a little dry, add the rest of the butter and let that melt and mix in, too. Add the prosciutto and turn down the heat a bit. Just before the pasta is done cooking, add however many kalmata olives you want. Again, if the sauce is dry, add 1/4 cup or so of pasta water before you drain it, and let that cook into the sauce.

(Note: it may be that the pasta takes longer to cook than the sauce, as it did for me tonight. If it seems like your sauce is going to overcook, you can just go through all the steps up to the pasta water, then turn the heat back on just to warm it up right as the pasta is finishing.)

Drain the pasta and add to the still-heated pan. Mix around so the sauce coats the rigatoni, and serve. Ignore the pug at your feet begging for prosciutto scraps.


LUNCH NOTE:
We planned ahead and bought a demi-baguette and some goat brie so that I could make a sandwich with the unused prosciutto the next day. Brie, prosciutto, bread - that's it. Perfect.

Shakshuka

(from smittenkitchen.com)

Oy, I'm blogging a recipe on my food blog that I found on another food blog...that's probably not necessary. However, we had friends over for brunch this morning, and I've been wanting to make this for awhile, so - here is is, again.

1/4 cup olive oil
5 Anaheim chiles (you could use a hotter pepper, too, or a blend)
1 small yellow onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed then sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon paprika
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained
Salt to taste
6 eggs (or enough for one of each of your guests, provided it fits in the pot)
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
Warm naan or pita for dipping

Heat oil in a skillet or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chiles and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and golden brown. Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, and cook, stirring frequently, until garlic is soft.

Put tomatoes and their liquid into a medium bowl and crush with your hands. Add crushed tomatoes and their liquid to the pot along with 1/2 cup water, lower heat to medium, and simmer, stirring as needed, until thickened a bit, about 15 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Crack eggs over sauce so that eggs are evenly distributed across sauce’s surface. Cover skillet and cook until yolks are just set, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle shakshuka with feta (I should've followed the recipe and actually used the 1/2 cup - it needed more) and parsley. To serve, scoop out an egg with some sauce and use the naan for dipping.


LUNCH NOTE:
I brought the shakshuka sauce, sans egg, along with some leftover feta and naan, to work the next day for lunch. Heated up the sauce and the naan in the microwave, sprinkled the feta onto the sauce, and used the naan for dipping. Pretty good!

Gorgonzola Mac 'n Cheese

(Adapted...nah, just downright stolen from...Mark Bittman/The Minimalist)

And the secret ingredient is...you guessed it, arugula! Hey, I'm actually really proud because I was able to make this all from ingredients we already had in the house, left over from things we had already made! We are terrible grocery shoppers, so this almost never happens. While Joef is "melting" in the "blast furnace" of a lovely 75-degree evening, it's been a good night in that we worked out, Modern Family was on, and we were introduced to a new beer (Gouden Carolus - Cuvee Van De Keizer, 2008), a blond Belgian, which was absolutely fantastic. And we ate this.

So...right, the recipe! Extremely easy and quick:

3/4 lb pasta
1/2 package cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
A few handfuls of (here it is, folks) arugula
1 cup milk (I use skim)
1 cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese
Ground pepper to taste

Start boiling the water for the pasta. At the same time, in a small saucepan, combine the milk and the gorgonzola and slowly melt together (it's OK if it's a little chunky), at first over medium heat, but then turning to low while you wait for the pasta to cook.

Once the pasta is done and drained, simply add in the halved tomatoes, the arugula, and pour the still-hot melted cheese over all of it. Stir to mix it all together - the arugula will melt. Serve topped with a little ground pepper, to taste.

Salmon Salad

My friend Alexis would be so proud of me - a salad, AND no pork products! Of course, it does have arugula...again. But that's not a bad thing, right?

This is adapted from my dad's recipe. It's great when you've been, er, cooking a lot of delicious things with butter and pork products and are getting a little, er, soft around the edges.

You'll need:
Arugula (a few handfuls)
1 handful cherry or grape tomatoes
Pink salmon (1 package or 1 can)
One avocado, chopped
1/2 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 light squeeze of fresh lemon
3 tsp-ish olive oil
1.5 tsp-ish balsamic vinegar
Fresh dill to taste (optional - we couldn't find any tonight, but we prefer when we do)

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, mix, and serve!

Baked Eggs with Prosciutto

(adapted from Mark Bittman)

My best friend was in town for the weekend, so it was time to get cookin'! Joef managed the waffles, while I...well, I WAY overcooked these potentially-delicious baked eggs...however, the concept is there. I'll trust the cook time on the recipe next time, and the fact that these will continue to cook even after they've been taken out of the oven because of the heat of the ramekin. Also - the prosciutto could be added afterwards; it adds a lot of salt to the dish. If you want to bake the prosciutto with the eggs, you certainly don't need to add salt.

Preheat the oven to 375. Put tomato and prosciutto in a ramekin, then break an egg over it. Pop them in an oven on a baking pan. Cook for about 10-12 minutes. Top them with a little parmesan cheese and red pepper.