Scallop Gumbo

Mark Bittman and I don't always agree with each other in the kitchen, but he hit the nail on the head with this one. Simple and delicious. The cayenne pepper is a nice touch. Next time I think I'll use half scallops and half shrimp to mix it up a bit.  Stirring the roux (the mix of flour and butter/oil) is the most labor intensive part of this recipe; you'll be stirring for 15 minutes, so it helps to have a friend over to talk to while you do so.

Note: Serve over rice. Serves 6.

Scallop Gumbo
From: Mark Bittman

Ingredients

1 pound bay scallops
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, cored and chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock (or water) - I used 2 cups chicken stock, half cup of water
2 cups chopped tomatoes in their juices (canned are fine - I used canned)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
1 tablespoon fresh oregano, or 1 teaspoon dried
2 bay leaves
Parsley, chopped, for garnish
Cayenne, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Make the roux: put oil and butter in a large pot over medium-low heat.  When the butter melts, add the flour and stir constantly for about 15 minutes, until the mixture darkens and smells fragrant. Lower the heat a bit if you think the roux is starting to burn.

2. Add the onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic and raise the heat to medium. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables have softened, about 10 minutes.

3. Stir in the stock, tomatoes, thyme, oregano, and bay leaves. Cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat so that the soup bubbles steadily. Cook for about 20 minutes.

4. Add the scallops and cook for 2 minutes, until they are no longer translucent. Remove bay leaves,  and season with cayenne and more salt and pepper, if needed. Serve over rice and garnish with parsley.

Bacon, Cheddar, and Chive Biscuits

Anything that has bacon in it doesn't really need much of an introduction.  These are a great side/addition to any meal, but go especially well with any kind of soup.

Makes: 12 biscuits

Bacon, Cheddar, and Chive Biscuits
From: Bon Appetit

Ingredients

6-8 slices thick cut bacon (you should probably use more, because you'll want to eat a slice or two)
3 3/4 cups bread flour
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small cubes (plus more to melt/brush over tops of biscuits)
2 1/2 (about 12oz) cups grated cheddar cheese
1/3 cup fresh chives, chopped
1 3/4 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper (don't use the cheap-o kind like I did or you'll be peeling off parchment paper from the bottom of the biscuits).

2. In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crispy. Remove bacon from skillet and let cool over some paper towels, then coarsely chop the bacon.

3. In a food processor, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Blend, add butter, and then blend until a coarse, lumpy meal forms. Gradually add in buttermilk and stir everything together.

4. Lightly flour your hands, and drop large (about 1/2 cup) mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart.

5. Bake biscuits for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick/tester inserted into the center comes out clean.  Lightly brush biscuits with butter and let cool 10 minutes before serving.


Mmm, bacon:

Winning combo:

Dough: 

Ready to go: 

 

The Big Cheesy at Openhouse Gallery

The Big Cheesy happened this weekend at Openhouse Gallery and it was probably the best day of 2012 to happen thus far.  There were seven grilled cheese vendors competing for the voters' choice of the best grilled cheese sandwich. Votes were tallied via ping pong balls left at each voter's vendor of choice.  

The amount of deliciousness consumed in our allotted one hour time slot made it worth the convoluted trek from Brooklyn, being that both the 7 and L trains were out of service this weekend. I definitely recommend going to this next year.  Admission was $25, and you get a free Sixpoint beer (or coconut water) upon entry. 

 

 

Casellula Cheese & Wine Cafe was on rye bread, simple, and delicious. 

401 West 52nd Street

New York, NY 10019

 

Here's a close up, with the incredibly tasty pickled relish on top:

Big Daddy's really went all out. They had mac n'cheese in their sandwich. And bacon. Bacon! It actually was a little too much for me, but my friend over at Burger Weekly (seriously, check these guys out if you like burgers) voted it as his favorite.

1596 2nd Avenue
New York, NY 10028 (one of three locations)

My vote went to these sandwiches at Melt. They had 3 choices, and we tried them all. This is the pulled pork:

Melt
601 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022

And the goat cheese with mushrooms and pesto. They also had a third amazing sandwich with bacon and blue cheese. 

Also delicious, Tartinery was serving up croque madame. This place is dangerously close to where I work.

209 Mulberry Street
New York, NY 10012

Little Muenster was smart in adding a side of tomato sauce, because who doesn't love dipping grilled cheese into tomato sauce? Both the grilled cheese (which was a little sweet, in a good way) and the tomato soup were great:

100 Stanton Street
New York, NY 10002

Lucy's Whey had really good cheese, but the sandwich itself was a bit too heavy on the bread for me.

425 West 15th Street
New York, NY 10011 (in Chelsea Market)

And last, but not least, Murray's. I enjoyed this sandwich because it has a bit of a spicy kick to it from their special sauce, which I'd like to purchase at some point.

73 Grand Central Terminal
New York, NY 10017 

I just found out that Melt won the grilled cheese-off with their trio of sandwiches, but these vendors all had amazingly delicious grilled cheese sandwiches; it was definitely a difficult decision to choose just one.

Baked Rigatoni with Gorgonzola, Brussels Sprouts, and Figs

 

By the time I finally made a plan to make this, figs were out of season (go fig-ure) so I used dried figs instead.  I really liked the combination of flavors here, but wasn't crazy about all the dried figs, so I reduced the quantity in this recipe. You can always add more, or it's possible that this recipe is just better with fresh figs.  I guess I'll have to find out next year ...

Serves 4


Rigatoni with Gorgonzola, Brussels Sprouts, and FigsAdapted from: Mark Bittman

Ingredients

8oz (1/2 pound) rigatoni
4 oz gorgonzola, or other blue cheese, crumbled (gorgonzola dulce worked well)
1 1/2 pounds brussels sprouts, roughly chopped
6-8 fresh figs, or 1/2 cup dried, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup chopped almonds
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup reserved pasta water

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a 9x13 baking dish with a little olive oil.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the rigatoni halfway through and add the chopped brussels sprouts to the pot.  Cook until the pasta and sprouts are barely tender, about 3 more minutes.  Reserve a 1/2 cup of pasta water and drain the pasta/sprouts, then return to pot.

3. Stir in the gorgonzola, figs, olive oil, and a splash of pasta water. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour the pasta into the baking pan.

4. Bake pasta for 15-20 minutes, checking occasionally, and adding more pasta water if the pasta looks like it's starting to dry out. Garnish with chopped almonds. 

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

 

I've been slacking on the blogging, but now that I've finally finished all of the released books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (nerd alert), I don't have much of an excuse to keep slacking. Except I just went and started Downton Abbey, and now I'm done for.  

Moving onward... this is a very basic chicken noodle soup recipe. If you don't want to make homemade noodles, you can use as many egg noodles as you want for the soup.  There's also a lot of room to add other stuff that you might like to put in a soup.  

The whole chicken I used for the stock was a "soup chicken" from the farmer's market. Soup chickens are older and no longer laying eggs. I found the soup chicken to be really tough, so it didn't yield much in the way of extra chicken meat for the soup. I may have needed to cook it longer.  I'll use a regular roasting chicken or whatnot next time.

Makes about 8 servings.

Chicken Noodle Soup
Adapted from: Epicurious

Ingredients

1 pound chicken parts (I used thighs/legs)
2 stalks celery, cut into 3 inch pieces
1 whole chicken (about 3 pounds), rinsed
1 large whole onion, unpeeled
4 large carrots, peeled
1 medium whole parsnip, peeled
2 leeks, white and light green parts only
Homemade noodles, or egg noodles
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 bunch dill, tied together

1.  Pour 14 cups of water into a large stockpot.  Add chicken parts and celery and bring to a boil.  Meanwhile, rub the inside of the whole chicken with salt.

2. Add the whole chicken to the pot and, if need be, add extra water so that the whole chicken is entirely submerged in water.  Cover pot, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes.  Test the chicken with a fork to make sure that it's fully cooked. When it is, remove from pot and set aside. Leave chicken pieces in pot.

3.  Add carrots, onion, turnip, leeks, bay leaves, salt, and pepper. Let soup simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  Use a mesh strainer to skim the surface of the soup and remove any bits of goop that have floated to the top of the soup.    

4. When the chicken cools, remove skin and shred meat into bite-sized pieces. Add the chicken to the soup (or you can make it into chicken salad, but the soup is better with more chicken).

5. Strain the soup and discard anything solid except for the carrots and the chicken pieces.  Shred chicken pieces into the soup. 

6. Two minutes before serving, add dill to the soup and then remove. Add salt and pepper to taste and slice carrots into the soup.  Add noodles to each bowl of soup before serving. 


The stuff. Chicken legs/thighs from Raghoo Farms in Fort Plain, NY, and soup chicken from Arcadian Pastures in Sloansville, NY.  Good stuff.

Homemade Noodles

I've been talking about getting a pasta maker for a few years now. I think I have some kind of pasta maker commitment phobia because I just can't decide which one I want to get.  There are heated online debates about the pros and cons of each one as well as friends' varying opinions.  Rather than make a decision, I made some noodles without a pasta maker for some chicken noodle soup (next post).  I spent a good portion of both Saturday and Sunday getting covered in flour as I tried to improve on the first batch of noodles.  It was worth it.   

My first attempt, I followed a homemade pasta recipe from The Pioneer Woman website.  It was easy, but the noodles weren't exactly what I wanted, which was mostly my fault because I cut them too thick. 

The second time around, I used tips from various recipes as well as from people who commanded their authority on the matter because of Italian ancestry: olive oil in the dough, using 00 flour, rolling the dough out very thin, and cutting the noodles very thin.  This recipe is what I came up with.  It's a basic noodle recipe that you can turn into any kind of dish that you like. 

Note: For increasing or decreasing measurements; it's 2 eggs per 1 1/3 cup of flour.  One egg will generally feed one person; so if you're cooking for 2, it would be 2 eggs and 1 1/3 cup of flour; for 4 people; 4 eggs and 2 2/3 cups of flour, and so on... That's about as much math as I'm willing to do here.  These measurements may also vary depending on how much your company tends to eat ...

Homemade Pasta Noodles

4 eggs
2 2/3 cups "00" flour
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pinch of salt

1.  In a bowl or on a cutting board, make a well in the center of a mound of flour.  Crack the eggs into the well.  Add a pinch of salt and the olive oil into the well.

2. Using your hands, combine the egg mixture into the flour until a dough forms and you can roll everything together into a ball.

3.  Break the dough into smaller pieces (it makes it easier to knead) and use your hands to move the dough around in any way you can until it's smooth inside and out (punch it, roll it, knead it, squeeze it, etc).  Repeat with each piece of dough. 

4.  On a lightly floured surface, use a rolling pin (also lightly floured) to roll out each piece of dough as thinly as you possibly can.  Use a pizza cutter, a sharp knife, or a bread cutter to cut the noodles into thin lines.   

5.  Bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil, with some added olive oil. Cook the noodles for about 4 minutes and drain.

6. Add the noodles to any kind of pasta sauce or soup!



Egg well:

Dough:

Kneaded dough: 

Broken into smaller pieces: 

Rolled very thinly: 

 

 Cut into thin noodles:

These noodles are from the first batch I made, which were too thick ... they also came out stiff and gooey. I think cutting the noodles thinner, the 00 flour, and the olive oil in the mixture and in the boiling water all helped to make the second batch much better. 

White Bean, Pasta, and Kale Soup

 

After a strict holiday diet of cake pops, ham, and various foods filled or covered with some kind of melted cheese, something lighter was in order. This won't last very long ...

Notes: For leftovers, you might need to add some more water or stock; the pasta and beans start to soak up the broth.  Lastly, I didn't toast the bread because my toaster oven has a tendency to catch on fire lately, but the bread was fine un-toasted.  

White Bean, Pasta, and Kale Soup
Adapted from: Martha Stewart

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 pound kale, stems removed and cut into 1/2 inch strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced or smashed (with a garlic press)
1 14oz can cannellini beans
1 14oz can navy beans (or you can use 2 cans of either one of these beans)
1/8 (or a tad under 1/4) cup ditalini pasta (or other small pasta)
4 cups water
4 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons sriracha sauce (optional, or more for added spiciness)
4 thick slices country bread
Grated parmesan cheese, toasted or un-toasted
Salt and pepper

1. In a medium-large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

2. Add half of the beans to the pot and lightly mash with a fork (a potato masher worked well here). Add water and stock and bring to a boil. Stir in kale, remaining beans, dried pasta, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.  Reduce heat and partially cover pot; simmer until kale is tender, about 20 minutes. 

3. Stir in sriracha sauce and pour soup into bowls. Add a slice of bread to each bowl and top with grated parmesan cheese.



These photos are from the first time I made the soup, when I carelessly threw in almost half a box of pasta:

I have a visitor this week. Chubs has been doing his best to discreetly torment Gracie: