Category Archives: roasting

Relishing

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I can’t remember the last time Labor Day was a holiday for me.  I mean, I haven’t worked on Labor Day in a long time – perhaps ever.  But I spent the past eleven years or so attending universities organized around the quarter system: school starts in late September and ends in mid June.  That means when this magical Monday hit and working stiffs got to switch off their alarms, I was still on summer vacation.

Boo hoo, you say, poor thing!  You had to suffer through a non-holiday because you were on holiday!  But I’d remind you that for a graduate student, even allotted holidays don’t read as such.  A Monday is another toil-on-the-dissertation day.

And yet, today, with one week of class behind me at my new job, I did not have to make the pilgrimage to Burbank.  I did not have to spend the weekend lesson planning.  Ahead of me spans a week with one (one!) day of class.  It’s enough to make a girl sob with joy!

And then there are onions.  Which are enough to make a girl sob as well, though the accompanying emotion differs a little.

These are two Bittman “recipes.”  I realized recently that, as usual, my Bittman project has fallen by the wayside.  A brief count reveals that, of the list of 82 with which I began (the whole collection has 101 items, but I knew there were some N. and I would just never eat), 34 still remain unmade.  Most are soups.  That sounds like decent progress, until I remind you that I began this project 2 years ago.  But this year, beginning for me – as for every eternal academic – at the end of summer, is a year of renewed possibility.  It’s a year of everything refreshed: new home, new jobs, new opportunities.  It’s a year to relish.

3. Red Onion with Red Wine and Rosemary: Thinly slice red onions and cook them in olive oil until very soft.  Add chopped rosemary and red wine, and cook until the jam thickens.

I used:

1 big red onion, halved, peeled, and cut into thin half-moons

1 TB olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

2 TB rosemary, finely chopped

1-2 cups red wine

1 TB brown sugar

Onions take a long time to cook down the way I suspected they needed to for this recipe.  High heat makes for crumpled, browned, crispy-edged rings.  Delicious in their own right, but not for jam.  I baby-sat the onions over medium-low heat for at least half an hour.  Their pearly-white interiors turned fragile gold as if stained by the olive oil, and their textures changed, gaining an unctuous flexibility.

I added the salt and pepper, the rosemary, the red wine and the brown sugar and stirred together carefully to dissolve the sugar.  This simmered for another half hour until the wine, sugar, and onions came together into a sticky heady mahogany swamp in the pan.  As the wine reduced, I lowered the temperature to prevent any burning.

The finished jam slumped wonderfully over baked squares of polenta, providing contrast in all the best ways: the colors were sharp, the textures played together, the flavors were rich and lovely.  The onion jam was sweet with the tang of wine and the pine-forest warmth of rosemary.  The polenta was comforting and even flavored, and it needed the sharp sweetness the jam provided.  Steamed asparagus finished out the meal.

It sounds crazy, but the next morning I had the urge to drape some of this sticky, savory jam over a piece of whole-grain toast smeared with cream cheese.  It would also, I suspect, serve well spread over a turkey burger.

1. Onion-Pumpkinseed Relish: Roast thick slices of red onion with olive oil until softened and nicely browned.  Chop, then toss with minced chives, toasted pumpkinseeds and a little more olive oil.

A number of circumstances divide these two onion concoctions.  One was made in Oregon, one was made in California.  One was made in the cold drear of an oppressively long winter, one was made on a day of endless sun as August closed.  One was slowly reduced over an electric stove, one was browned in a gas oven, and though both were shot with digital cameras, you’re seeing one through the lens of an everything-automatic Canon PowerShot, and the other through a Nikon DSLR.  Changes to relish.

½ a huge red onion

3 TB olive oil

3-4 TB pumpkinseeds, toasted in a dry pan until they are flushed with brown and starting to pop

2 TB fresh chives

In a 400F oven, I roasted the olive oil coated onion slices until they collapsed, taking on a lovely burnished crispness.  This took probably 10-20 minutes.  Check often after 10 minutes, depending upon how hot your oven runs.  Liberate the toasty onion slices and let them cool.

When onions are cool, chop them finely and toss them with the other ingredients.  I had plenty of olive oil in my baking pan to coat all the ingredients so the relish glistened, but if you need it, feel free to add another glug or two.

I served lovely little spoons of this mixture over black bean cakes.  We traded tastes, taking in the relish in one bite and an avocado tomato salad in the next.  It was a nice pairing: the relish was moist and crunchy and savory, with the right kind of nutty richness to complement the dense potential blandness of the beans.

But I don’t think this relish ends as a condiment for beans.  It would be a spectacular topping for lamb.  Spiced with a little chili powder, it would fit perfectly atop pumpkin enchiladas.  It might even be a good garnish for butternut squash soup: a small heap of confetti in a velvet orange sea, interrupting the endless smoothness with a well-oiled crunch.

Will I finish this Bittman project by the end of the calendar year?  I don’t know.  But I’m enjoying it again, whereas during the last few months of dissertating I was finding it burdensome.  The thrill of guessing quantities, rather than being annoyed by lack of specificity, is returning.  The intuition about temperature and time is audible again.  And now, on this holiday that has never felt like a holiday before, I’m relishing it all.

Roots!

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This is not a Bittman recipe.  But it is something I made.  It’s hearty, it’s autumnal, it’s colorful, and it’s easy.  Oh, and it allows you to turn your oven on for around an hour and thereby heat up your house a bit!

Roasted Root Vegetables

3 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

3 parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

2 purple topped turnips, peeled and cut into chunks

2 rutabegas, peeled and cut into chunks (see a pattern here?)

1 sweet potato (or 1/2 of a mammoth yam), peeled and cut into chunks

1 tsp dried rosemary, or to taste

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

olive oil to coat

Preheat your oven to 400F.  Peel and cut all vegetables into equal, bite-sized chunks.  Toss them with seasonings and olive oil in a 9×13 inch glass baking dish.  Use enough olive oil so that all chunks of root vegetable get an even coating and glisten slightly.  Depending on size of vegetables, this might range from between 1/2 – 1 cup of oil.

Roast until all vegetables are tender and begin to brown on the outside, 45 minutes to an hour, depending on size.

As you can see, this is almost ridiculously easy.  You can substitute for any of these vegetables you don’t like – easy additions or change-outs would be regular or fingerling potatoes, beets, even celery root.  Choose what you love, mix them well, and enjoy!

Loaded to bear

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Considering my avid distaste for filling either roast bird or pork chops with stuffing (with the exception of chicken cordon bleu, which I love), I often forget the merit possible in stuffing other things – namely fruits and vegetables.  The built-in cavities in fruits like peppers and winter squash, and the concave shape of stemmed mushrooms seems to call out to be filled with something delicious, and too often I am deaf to those calls.  Fortunately this week’s Bittman choice reminded me to open my ears a bit.

“38. Trim crimini or portobello mushrooms and chop stems.  Sauté stems in butter or olive oil with chopped prosciutto, onions, chopped fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, parsley, etc.) and coarse fresh bread crumbs.  Stuff spoonfuls of the mixture into mushroom caps; roast until tender.”

This dish was a clear win.  For those of you who don’t like mushrooms, I can see this same parade of ingredients marching well together in a hollowed out zucchini half, but you will be missing the earthy indulgence of mushroom – that rich, meaty, brown flavor that is so intriguing and so deliciously musky.

The collected players:

1 package (4 oz. or so?) proscuitto, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

4 green onions, white and green portions, thinly sliced

5-6 crimini mushrooms, chopped (I used these because I had some lying around.  If you didn’t have them, you could certainly omit them and just use the guts of the portobellos)

4 portobello mushrooms, stems removed, gills and insides excavated (you want only a thin shell so you can fit the maximum amount of stuffing)

scant tsp. each thyme and rosemary

black pepper

2 cups fresh white bread crumbs

olive oil

I turned the oven on to preheat to 350F and then set the prosciutto to cooking in a pan on medium high with just a touch of olive oil to help it along.  While it slowly rendered and crisped and crackled toward doneness, I prepped my vegetables.  When the meat was almost crispy, I added garlic, green onions, chopped mushrooms, herbs, and a bit more olive oil to the pan.  While that cooked down for a few minutes, I tore up half a loaf of leftover French bread and ground it into coarse crumbs in my food processor.

I dumped the crumbs into my skillet of veggie, turned the heat off, and added another tablespoon or two of olive oil to bind the ingredients together.  At this point I considered adding Parmesan cheese, thinking of both its binding power and its stellar flavor, but I tasted the crumbly filling and realized that the prosciutto was making it quite salty enough, and an extra pow of sharp cheese might be overkill.

I loaded the mushrooms to bear with heaping spoonfuls of filling, tamping it down in each cavity to fit as much as possible.  This was almost too much for four medium portobellos to handle.

With one last, loving drizzle of olive oil over the tops of my brimming vessels, I put the mushroom-laden casserole dish in the oven for half an hour.  Quick steamed green beans in the final minutes and we were ready!

Cutting into one of these roasted boats was an explosion.  The filling did not adhere to itself and instead came collapsing down onto the plate and covered the green beans.  This was not a bad thing.  In fact, the bread, now flavored with the porky richness of prosciutto and the fruity softness of olive oil, was a crisp and delectable crunch atop my barely tender beans.  As for the mushroom itself, it softened and took on a thick meatiness that was perfect with the prosciutto.  The crunchy bread crumbs soaked in the earthy juice of their vessel and we scarfed down all four mushrooms between the two of us.  And then I may have scraped the baking dish clean with my fingers.

2010 Thanksgiving Menu

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I get excited about holidays that involve cooking waaaayyyyy earlier than I should (then again, since our Target already has a Christmas section erected, complete with at least six artificial trees, maybe I’m not totally unhealthy).  I even told my mom over the phone this past Sunday that I’d probably go grocery shopping for the holiday late this week or this weekend.  Right, with two weeks to go.  I was already a week ahead of myself and willing to completely skip seven days of reality so I could buy a turkey.

But I love the way food impacts a holiday, and not just because I love eating.  For my family, food has a binding quality.  I love to cook, my mom taught me how and she loves to cook, my sister is developing an enjoyment and adventuresome spirit in the kitchen, and my dad… likes eating the food we make.  But still, it gives us something to talk about, something to share with each other, and something to do together, when we are in the same kitchen.  I feel close to them through the food we create.

At Thanksgiving, my mom and I make most of the dinner, my sister pipes in with seasoning suggestions, my dad carves the turkey, N. tastes things and generally tries to stay out of the way, and Lucy’s nose never stops twitching.  Every hour or so, little click-clacking dog claws tiptoe into the kitchen to take a sniff and clean the floor.

So I’ve already thought through the entire menu.  I know exactly what we’re having.  I’m even contemplating spending my evening tonight making a detailed grocery list for the big shopping trip.  Excessive?  Premature?  Perhaps.  But so delicious.

Here’s the menu for our Thanksgiving this year:

Appetizers: whole heads of roasted garlic with soft goat cheese and toasted baguette, roasted nuts with brown sugar and rosemary, assorted dried fruit.

Dinner: herb roasted turkey with giblet gravy, stuffing, chipotle mashed sweet potatoes,  creamed spinach and artichoke bake, and whole berry cranberry sauce.

Desserts: Mom’s pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and pumpkin cheesecake squares.  My sister doesn’t love pumpkin pie, so this year there will be two desserts.  If the recipe I invent for her works out well, I’ll post it here.

What are you having for Thanksgiving dinner this year?

Seattle: Day One

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As the end of my first year of marriage to N. approached, we decided that instead of gifts, our anniversary treats to ourselves (and each other) would be brief trips to see or do something fantastic.  Our first wedding anniversary, we saw Eddie Izzard live in Portland.  It was fantastic.  Then we went to the zoo.  Our second year, we saw Macbeth in Ashland, then went to Crater Lake.  Again, fantastic.  This year, we outdid ourselves a bit and spent a few days in Seattle (again, ending the trip with the zoo… I have a weak spot for zoos…).

I write this here because we took this opportunity not only to see the sights, but to taste them.  Seattle has a bit of a reputation for being a foodie haunt, and we decided if we were treating ourselves to the voyage, we might as well… well… eat well… during it.  I sent out a call for suggestions and my friend S. responded with an impressive list of possibilities, so what I’ll present to you here are our highlights of Seattle in food.

After lunch on the road (smoked mozzarella sandwich at the McMenamin’s in Centralia, which unexpectedly came free because our server forgot to put in our order and consequently comped our whole lunch), we set foot in Seattle in mid-afternoon with plenty of time to sightsee a bit before dinner.  We planned our evening at the top of the Space Needle, and ended up deciding on Oddfellows Café and Bar.  The space was great: open and airy with lots of exposed wood ceiling beams, and one old, mellow brick wall.   It’s close to the campus of Seattle Central Community College, and we could feel the youthful vibe of the place in the décor and the demeanor of our fellow diners.  Our server had probably finished up classes an hour or two before serving us dinner.

And what a dinner!  We started off with drinks, since it had been a long drive.  N. had a local porter, and I had pear cider.

The menu was simple and clean, and though at first I was a bit disappointed by the small number of entrée choices, it only took me the first two lines on the menu to decide what I was having and to guess (accurately) what N. would order.

I had the rotolo, a beautiful rolled pasta, like conchiglioni mated with lasagna, lovingly topped with a blanket of this beautiful tangy, sweet, slightly acidic tomato sauce.  The pasta itself was stuffed, rolled, sliced and flipped on its side to expose its creamy filling to the eye.  It was filled with a mixture of spinach and ricotta cheese, with a light herbiness I haven’t figured out yet.  Oregano, maybe, and perhaps chives.  Though we had agreed upon ordering, I was almost unwilling to hand my plate across the table to share. 

But it’s good to share.  Really, really good.  N. ordered the roasted chicken with summer vegetables, and when it came, almost half a chicken, I knew how good this would be.  With N. a white meat man and me a dark meat fan, he would take a nibble of the thigh, consume the breast, and gladly pass along the rich leg to me.  The chicken was very simply roasted, hot and juicy with crisp brown skin and perfect saltiness.  Really a sexy lady all around.  The meat was tender and rich, and as our knives took turns plunging into the flesh, little rivulets of fat trickled across the plate into the vegetables on the other side, which became the unexpected superstars of the dinner experience.

“Summer vegetables,” in this case, meant a mélange of green beans and thick medallions of green and yellow zucchini.  They were crisp tender and lovingly coated in lemony buttery perfection.  Crunchy, citrusy, peppery, and with the addition of the chicken fat mixing in, perfectly indulgent too.

We passed on dessert this evening, but only because we didn’t want to overdo it on the first night…

Excuses and slow-roasted salmon

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I know, I know, I broke my once-a-week resolution.  But you see, I have this exam hanging over my head.  It’s a two part oral examination that involves me reading a paper I’ve written about a 14th century poem, and a committee of three professors listening and then quizzing me both about the paper, and then in the second part of the exam, about medieval literature in general, based upon a hundred-or-so item list I have put together.  My exam is next Friday.  It’s a little intimidating.

But I don’t want to talk about that now.  I want to talk about salmon.  Even if you are not a seafood person, chances are you are okay with salmon.  It’s a beautiful fish.  It’s meaty and rich and juicy and can be cooked in a number of ways.  One of our treats in the last few days of the winter break was slow roasting a huge filet of it.

I had never experimented with slow roasting like this before.  Per my recipe’s directions, I stirred together brown sugar, sea salt, and a big handful of fresh, finely chopped dill.  I love dill.  It has this fresh green smell to it that makes me feel alive and happy, and mixing it with sugar had to be a good thing.  Once combined, I sprinkled the mixture over the fish and packed it in, rubbing and pushing the herbed sugar against the flesh so the flavors could penetrate.  Then I slapped plastic wrap over the top of my baking dish and stowed it in the fridge for 5 hours.

With eons to go before dinner, I preheated the oven to 175F, unwrapped the baking dish and transferred the fish to a cookie sheet before sticking it in the barely-warmed oven and leaving it for over an hour.  Over an hour!  For fish!  I could hardly believe it either.  Trusting in the recipe, I left it alone for what felt like forever.  After a time, the smell of roasted fish and caramelizing sugar started to fill the house, and this wasn’t a briny, salty, fishy kind of smell, this was almost like a thick roast of red meat.  Once in a while there was a crackling noise from hot fat oozing out of the fish and sizzling against the cookie sheet.

Meanwhile, I prepped our side dishes: barley simmered in chicken broth and a green salad of butter lettuce, cucumbers, and sliced avocado.  As the fish recipe called for a dipping sauce of mayonnaise and whole grain mustard, I made a salad dressing with the same two flavors, adding white wine vinegar to thin it out, and a drizzle of honey to prevent it from being too bitter.  Hooray for tying flavors together!

When the timer went off for the fish, I opened the oven door and despaired.  The little cracks in the sugar coating that I could see fish through looked bright pinky-red still, as if the fish was quite raw.  Gulping back disappointment, I gently flaked into the filet with a fork and almost had to pick myself up off the floor, where my knees were threatening to melt into a puddle.  The fish was perfect.  It was cooked, and the texture was silky but firm and buttery smooth.

We ate.  The salmon was remarkable.  Though I only had it in the refrigerator for five hours (hey, we were hungry!) and the recipe called for eight, the meat was on its way toward the texture of smoked salmon, rather than baked or roasted.  I don’t know what the slow heat did, exactly, but the fish peeled off its skin in perfect fork sized chunks.  It was so rich and smooth that it was almost like eating a slice of warm butter.  The sugar surprisingly did not overpower the taste of the fish, and the mayonnaise-mustard sauce was tangy and added just the perfect touch of acid.  I was surprised that it wasn’t too creamy, with the silkiness of the salmon, the smooth mayonnaise, and the sweet sugar, but the punch of chewiness from the barley leant a nice contrast in texture, and the crisp butter lettuce and cucumbers in our salad didn’t hurt either.

Let’s see a close-up:

I think if the fish had chilled and marinated inside its sweet rub for a full eight hours before getting the slow heat treatment, the texture would have been even more pleasing.  N., who isn’t a big seafood fan, pronounced this a tentative success the first night, but the next day, when he had a cured salmon sandwich with thinly slice cucumbers, mayonnaise sauce, and a crisp leaf of lettuce on toasted sourdough, he was a complete convert.  We will have this again, when my exam is over and time operates normally again.  When I have time to devote to a dinner I begin almost ten hours ahead, and time to linger over it when it is finally, triumphantly ready.  Here’s the recipe I used, if you want to give it a try yourself.