Mr. Pea Cooks–Chopped Salad with Spicy Pork and Buttermilk Dressing

On Thursdays, I teach a night class after having already taught two day classes. I come in the late afternoon for dinner, which Mr. Pea is always kind enough to prepare. I find something to do in another room or else I get all in the way, fussing over stuff, because I’m a pain in the neck. This week he made a roasted pork tenderloin salad with buttermilk dressing. It was really, really, really good, and from another old issue of Everyday Foods, this time January 2008.

You’ll need:
1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder (he used a bit of chili powder and some of Penzey’s Southwest Seasoning)
s&p
about 1 lb pork tenderloin
1/2 c buttermilk
3 T mayo
2 scallions, whites minced and greens thinly sliced
2 garlic clove, mincd
1 head of romaine, trimmed and chopped
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
1 pkg frozen corn (10 oz)
2 (or 3 or 4, as we had it) cubed pepperjack cheese

The recipe calls for broiling the tenderloin, but because we don’t have a decent broiler, that wasn’t an option. So Mr. Pea rubbed the pork with the seasonings and 1 tsp salt and a 1/4 tsp pepper, put a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, and browned the tenderloin on all sides before putting it inside a 400 degree oven. There it cooked until it reached 145 degrees, about 20 minutes or so, and rested until it hit 155.

In the meantime, he made the dressing by combining buttermilk, mayo, scallion whites, garlic and a little salt and papper. This is combined with lettuce, tomatoes, corn, greens of scallions, and the rested and chopped pork. Toss and serve. Delicious!

You know it’s fall….

when you start making apple crisp. Easier than a pie but just as tasty, apple crisp is one of my go-to fall desserts. When Mr. Pea and I hit up a local orchard recently, in order to complete its corn maze, we bought a bag of apples on our way out. We’re due for a trip of actual picking, but this helps to bridge us to that point.

The last stragglers in the bag had begun to get soft, so it was time for some kind of dessert transformation. Enter the crisp.

You’ll need:
4 T butter, melted
1/3 c flour
1/3 c brown sugar
1/2 c oats
4 apples, peeled, cored, and sectioned

In a baking dish (2 quarts will do), place apples. Add other ingredients to the melted butter, and sprinkle over the apples. After 45-50 minutes in a 350 oven, you’ll have delicious crispy goodness. Yum.

For a change of pace, Moroccan Chicken Stew

The days and especially the evenings have been getting a lot cooler in New England, and Moroccan Chicken Stew is a perfect dish for that kind of night. The spices it contains–ginger and cinnamon–lend it a warm and soothing edge. The recipe calls for chicken thighs, which are hearty enough to stand up to those flavors without absorbing them and tasting like them completely (as in, they still taste like chicken). Sweet potatoes provide some bulk and also go really well with cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together quickly and is served on a heaping pile o’ couscous.

The recipe comes from an old issue of Everyday Foods, this one from October 2007. We haven’t been subscribers in a while, and have lately been digging through backissues for recipes we never made the first time around. There has actually been a lot of them and it’s been fun to rediscover them as we go along.

For Moroccan stew you’ll need:
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/4 c flour
s&p
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled
1 cinnamon stick
1 lb sweet potato, chopped into 1″ cubes
1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth (I cheated and used a bullion cube dissolved in water)
1 c couscous

Sprinkle chicken with a little s &p and dredge in flour. Add oil to a dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook 4-6 minutes on each side. Remove from pan to a plate.

Add onion to the pan, along with ginger and cinnamon stick. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, four or five minutes. Add chicken back to the pan, along with sweet potato and broth. Stir, scraping up bits on the bottom of the pan. Bring to a boil, kick the heat down, and simmer for 15 minutes until chicken is done.

In the meantime, bring 1 1/2 c of water to a boil. Add couscous, stir, and turn heat off, covering pot. Let sit 5 minutes until done, then fluff with a fork.

Before serving, pull cinnamon stick and the piece of ginger out of the pot. Serve stew over couscous. Makes enough for 4, or maybe 3 very hungry people.

Mushroom Risotto: the Perfect Comfort Food

I love, love, love risotto. I could eat it at least once a week, but then I’d weigh a lot more than I do. I love its endless variations and smooth creaminess. This risotto is a mushroom risotto, made with a combination of creminis, also known as baby bellas, and shiitakes. The baby bellas look like button mushrooms, only darker, and have a lot more flavor. Shiitakes were an indulgence, but we only bought four little mushrooms so it cost us well under a dollar. They sell at Whole Foods for $12 a pound, so being able to get just a few for flavor works for us. They’re sweeter and have a more interesting texture than your average cremini. If you really wanted to indulge, you could make the whole thing with shiitakes. Holy cow.

So here’s what you need:
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
a little over 1/2 lb of mushrooms, sliced thickly
1 T olive oil
2 T butter
1 c arborio rice
4 c chicken broth, preferably low-sodium
1/2 c grated parmesan

Start by heating your broth to a gentle simmer and leaving it there. You want it hot for adding to the rice.

In a wide, deep skillet add 1 T oil and .5 T butter over medium heat. Add half the onions, the garlic, and the mushrooms, along with some s&p; allow to cook until softened, five or so minutes. Remove from pan. Add .5 T butter and remainder of oil to the pan; add rest of onions and cook until softened. Then add rice, stirring, until mostly opaque with white centers. This gives risotto its signature creaminess. Add 1/4 c of white wine if you have it and allow to simmer off; if you don’t have it, add some of the broth. Then begin to ladle in the broth. You want it to just cover the rice and simmer more or less right away. Stir this regularly and add more broth once you can sweep the spoon across the bottom of the pan and see it, rather than liquid. The whole absorption process should take you about 18 minutes. Add the mushroom and onion mixture back when you add the last ladle.

With the end of the broth absorbed, turn off the heat and add the last T of butter. Stir in until it melts. Add the cheese, stir in, and serve. Oh so tasty, you could just curl up in a bowl and stay there.

Peasant Bread

I am probably the last person in the food blogging world who has not yet made no-knead bread, the New York Times recipe for crusty peasant bread that requires just stirring and refrigeration before baking it in a dutch oven. The other day we had an old grad school chum of mine over for dinner and I wished mightily I’d started a batch of it a day or two before. Since that wasn’t about to happen, I found a different NYT recipe for easy, no-knead peasant bread. This one wasn’t as crusty as I’d have liked, but forming a tough crust in this case comes from having a really hot pan in the oven that you pour water into and slam the door to trap steam. I am not nearly so coordinated, and forgot to put the pan in the oven to heat, so this wasn’t so crunchy. It was a small loaf–about 8″ across, fine for the 3 of us for dinner and then some–and was very tasty, and even stayed moist a couple of days. It’s also ridiculously easy to make, which is good for those of you out there terrified of working with yeast. I, on the other hand, have a five-pound block of the stuff and have no fear, even though with some of the messes I’ve made, I probably should.

The NYT got this recipe from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Here’s the cut and pasted recipe:

Time: About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours’ resting and rising
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough
Cornmeal.
1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Another funky pizza–sweet potato, gorgonzola, and spinach

Those of you who have read this blog a while know of our love here at the homestead of unusual pizzas. The other night we tried one that sounded good in my head but didn’t work out so well. I took a dough ball out of the freezer and thawed it (you can freeze pizza dough after its first rise) out, smushing it down onto a greased cookie sheet. Then I nuked a sweet potato and carefully, only burning one finger, smushed its guts out all over the dough. I sprinkled a little olive oil on there. I took a handful of spinach, cooked it quickly, gave it a chop, and sprinkled it on. I added some salt and pepper, a cup of so of grated mozzarella, and the point of contention–a nice, even sprinkle of gorgonzola cheese. It was a stunning-looking pizza after 12 minutes in a 425 degree oven, but was somewhat lacking. Mr. Pea wasn’t crazy over the combination of the pungent cheese (too much?) with the sweet potato (overcooked). But it was a decent base pizza, and maybe I’ll rework it again sometime.

Not so joyful Joy of Cooking

I’m not sure what the people at Joy of Cooking were thinking when they came up with this one. There are now a series of frozen meals offered under the revered cookbook’s brand name. I noticed a billboard last week with a really Donna Reed-esque model for the new line, and it really creeped me out. First off, though I have eaten many a frozen meal, I would never even try to pass it off as cooking, and it seems a disservice to the Joy of Cooking idea to do otherwise. Popping a bag of roasted chicken stuff into the microwave isn’t so much cooking as heating up, and while fine for what it is, I’m sure, it doesn’t nearly present the joy that comes with making your own meal from scratch.

Oh, dear…..and to make matters that much more weird, the model’s name is Joy (duh) and she even has her own pseudo-site: letjoyin.com. Large house, check; white picket fence, check. So for all of you ladies out their pining to recover the Donna Reed in you, here’s a way to do it! It’s just not tongue-in-cheek enough to be funny, and so sort of has this weirdness about it….I know I’m rambling, but there’s just something about this whole thing that really bugs me.

I can’t help but thank that Irma Rombauer, first author of the Joy cookbook, did not ever, ever have this in mind. It contradicts the whole spirit of her enterprise.

One from the archives….

Since fall is rolling in here in New England, I thought I’d trot out one of my autumn favorites from the archives. I made these this morning, when it was all of 53 degrees outside.

I love these pancakes. I started making them last year from a recipe on allrecipes. I like them because they contain very little added sugar or fat, and take most of their deliciousness from the spices. Again with the cutting and pasting. Original can be found here.

* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 3 tablespoons brown sugar
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/2 cups milk
* 1 cup pumpkin puree
* 1 egg
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 2 tablespoons vinegar

DIRECTIONS
1. In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, pumpkin, egg, oil and vinegar. Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and salt, stir into the pumpkin mixture just enough to combine.
2. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.

This breakfast/brunch is lovely on the cool mornings we’ve been having lately. The other day when I got up, it was only 42 outside. It’s only the beginning, so we might as well enjoy it now!

Yee Haw!

I thought it was high time for a crafty post over here. I’ve gotten a lot more crafting in since the move, in large part because I’ve discovered the Gilmore Girls. I never watched it when it was on TV, but caught enough occasional snippets that made me think I’d really enjoy it if I had. Arriving in the new state, our local library has the first two seasons on DVD. Much better than jamming our netflix queue with them, I’ve been taking them out for a couple of weeks at a time. I’m almost through season 1. At any rate, I like to do something with my hands while watching TV, and cutting and doing hand-sewing works for me. I don’t knit–I was taught by my grandma years ago but have rather forgotten–so this has to do for now.

One of my most recent crafty projects is this small quilt. It’s about 4 or so feet long and a bit narrower across. It’s made from stash bits–half a yard or so of Alexander Henry’s Buckarettes (cowgirls), and equal parts from Jen Paganelli’s Sisboom basics. It’s bound with strips of blue corduroy, which give it a nice, rustic trim. I even had leftover batting, so the whole thing cost me nothing!

Instead of actually quilting the layers together, I cheated and knotted them at each corner between squares. I used alternating shades of embroidery floss for that. It was really very easy and the whole thing came together in a couple of weeks of on-and-off work. Since it’s for my 2-year-old niece, I don’t think she’ll fuss too much about the quilt-versus-knot option; I only hope she likes it, since right now she’s into stuff like Dora the Explorer. But if she takes after my genes in the slightest, she’ll someday have a horse phase, and then it will be perfect.

So what do you think of my first pass at quilting? I think it’s cute, and hopefully only I can see the places where it’s less than perfect

Ooooh, cinnamon raisin bread….

There are few things more tasty than cinnamon raisin bread, in my opinion. Cinnamony, doughy things are my favorite treats; I’ll take a cinnamon roll over chocolate cake pretty much any day of the week. This recipe is one I sort of cobbled together from a bunch of different recipes in order to make it work with what I had on hand. It’s lovely toasted and slathered with butter.

For two loaves, you’ll need:
1/2 c milk
2 T white sugar
2 T brown sugar
2 t salt
3 T butter
2 pkgs of active dry yeast (or 4 1/2 tsp for those of you who have it in bulk)
1 1/2 c warm water
3 c whole wheat flour
2-3 c regular AP flour

First, in a small saucepan over medium heat, warm milk, sugars, salt and butter until the butter is nearly melted. Once it’s cooled to around 100 degrees (or when you can safely keep your hand on the bottom of the pan for several seconds), add it to the yeast in a big bowl, along with the water. Allow to sit for 10 minutes so the yeast can ferment. I let it sit for five because I am notoriously impatient.

Once that’s done, add your wheat flour, stirring with a wooden spoon to work it in. Add 2 c of white flour, stirring. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead a good 6-8 minutes, working in more white flour if necessary. Kneading gives your bread structure in the baking process.

Pop into an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit until doubled, 45-90 minutes depending on how warm the space is. In the meantime, mix together 2/3 c sugar, 3 T cinnamon, and 2/3 c raisins (I added more, but I like raisins).

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down, turn it out, and split in half. Roll each half into a rectangle, oh, about 12 inches by 8 inches, I’d guess. Sprinkle with half the cinnamon mixture, and tightly roll up. My outermost layer was not tight enough and thus I have big ol’ holes in my bread that are a little sketchy in the toaster.

Place rolled loaves in greased 9×5 inch loaf pans, cover with wrap, and let sit until doubled, about an hour, depending on the circumstances. Keep an eye on them; breads that over-rise can collapse due to a lack of internal structure and too much air. Interesting, isn’t it? I only know this because it happens to me all the time.

Heat your oven to 400 degrees and pop loaves in. Half an hour later, tap them to see if they’re done–they should sound hollow if they are–and CAREFULLY remove from the pans. This keeps the crust from over-browning. Let cool, if you can, and enjoy!