Grain Games

Posted on March 6, 2011 by Chelsea

When I was a teenager, my aunt gave the family a book of board games. There were little flat pieces that looked like mancala stones to play the games in a zip-up baggie that hung off the spiral binding of the book, and lots of games we had never heard of and, in truth, some that we never ended up playing. In fact, after some experimentation there was only one game that ended up being played with any regularity. It was called “Dalmation Pirates and the Volga Bulgars,” and featured a board drawn over a beautiful clay-sculpted background of waves a tiny town, and even a Playdough-looking sea serpent. The objective was for the 24 pieces representing the pirates to try and occupy completely the nine spaces representing the town. The objective for the Bulgars, of course, was to prevent this from happening by capturing (through jumping pieces, like checkers) enough Pirates to make their occupation impossible.

I was never a fan of checkers or chess, or even Othello, because I wasn’t very good at them and didn’t like the idea of investing enough losses to learn the game well and begin to excel, but for some reason this Pirates vs. townspeople game appealed to me. I played it with my dad, and I always wanted to be the Bulgars. Maybe I liked the art surrounding the game, maybe I liked the fact that it was new to both of us, but something about it appealed, and I was good at it. My defense of my town was of paramount importance, and my land- and sea-going people-pieces were strong and resilient and very fond of capturing pirates.

This seems like a strange way for a food-related post to begin, and indeed my memory is based on homophones, not homonyms, but this week’s Bittman choice reminded me of this old favorite:

“49. Halve and seed acorn, butternut or delicata squash and roast until squash begins to soften. Meanwhile, cook bulgur, drain and toss with coarsely chopped pine nuts and currants. Add a bit of the stuffing to each squash half and sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake until squash is tender.”

I don’t cook bulgur very often, but every time I hear the word, see the word, think about this hardy, tasty grain, my mind goes not to the food itself, but back to a winter afternoon, sitting on the floor in the living room with my dad, playing “Dalmation Pirates and the Volga Bulgars” in a room only recently divested of shreds of wrapping paper. It’s that kind of fond memory.

With the autumnal flavor combinations in this dish, I could see it accompanying a game of Pirates vs. Bulgars quite nicely. Here’s what I used:

1 acorn squash, halved, seeded, and balanced by cutting a thin strip from one of the ridges to help it stand up

1 cup bulgur wheat, cooked in 2 ½ cups water or broth

2-3 TB pine nuts, toasted and coarsely chopped

2-3 TB currants

2-3 TB parsley, finely minced

4 TB butter

1 tsp cinnamon or to taste

Salt and pepper

After prepping the squash, I nestled them against each other in a 9-inch metal cake pan, salted and peppered the inside well, added probably ½ TB of butter to each well, and stowed them in the oven, which I’d preheated to 375F.

While the squash began making, I prepared the bulgur. I used 2 ½ cups of water for my 1 cup of bulgur, and tossed in 2 TB of butter just to add some richness. Preparing bulgur is like a combination of rice and couscous: you allow the water to come to a boil, then add the bulgur and cook until the water is absorbed and the grains are tender but still chewy. It took about 25 minutes.

When the bulgur was done, I stirred in the pine nuts, currants, and parsley, which is not on Bittman’s recipe but which I had kicking around in the fridge, begging to add some color to something. I excavated my squash babies from the oven, basted them up the sides a bit with the now-melted butter in their cavities, then filled up those caves with a few mounded scoops of bulgur stuffing. I sprinkled the top with cinnamon and then, spurred perhaps by watching too much Paula Deen on the Food Network, halved my last TB of butter and pressed the little cubes gently atop each mound of stuffing.

My Bittman Bulgurs went back into the oven for about 20 minutes while I prepped the rest of our meal: chicken basil sausages and sautéed greens. Trader Joe’s occasionally has a tremendous sack of mixed “southern” greens including mustard greens, turnip greens, and a few other shreds of deliciousness that I like quite a bit. Taking my cue from last week’s green bean triumph, I blanched a big pot of these greens for a few minutes, scorched off my sausages, then added the drained greens to the sausage pan, where they sizzled insistently and picked up some meaty flavors.

When I dared to peek at the squash boats, and tentatively poked down into their hopefully-now-softened flesh with a fork, I found the stuffing had taken on a crunch-promising-crust and the squash beneath was achingly tender.

When we dug in, cracking through the crunchy tip of the stuffing pinnacles and scraping the soft orange squash beneath it, I wasn’t sure what to anticipate. The cinnamon idea was throwing me off. Even though there was no added sweetener, the cinnamon gave off warm spicy dessert tones, and I think I was expecting that to clash with the squash. But I had forgotten, somehow, momentarily, that propensity of squash to collect flavors and, chameleon-like, transform itself from a savory item to a potential dessert. And yet here, while it blended well with the cinnamon and the currants, neither the stuffing nor its vessel read dessert. They were just warm and comforting, with the surprise spice and crunch on top to add excitement. The bulgur was still slightly chewy, with that golden nuttiness whole grains so often have, and I considered that if you wanted to make this gluten-free, you could use brown rice or quinoa with fairly similar results.

Packing up the remains of dinner, I realized with delight that one slightly manipulated half of acorn squash fits perfectly in one of my round Tupperware containers. I wedged it in carefully, added a bit more stuffing, and offered it a benediction: “Good night, Lunch.”

Snowmageddon

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Chelsea

Last weekend as N. and I headed to the grocery store, we hadn’t yet started thinking about the weather forecast, which called for unseasonably low nighttime temperatures and – gasp – even a smattering of that fluffycold white stuff they get in “Northerly” climates. And yet, despite that, my menu plan ended up full of beans, Nature’s little warmer-uppers. We wanted chili. We wanted my aunt Nancy’s slow cooker baked beans. Even the Bittman pick of the week featured beans:

“58. Pour a mixture of cooked white beans (with a little cooking or canning liquid) and grated, sauteed winter squash into an oiled baking dish. Mix together fresh bread crumbs, dots of butter and chopped fresh sage and spread over the top; broil until golden brown.”

It was like we were physically attuned to the impending chill, though not mentally aware of it. “Use pantry food!” my subconscious suggested, “Canned foods don’t go bad! Stock up on canned foods!” And when Snowmageddon came? A whisperfall of beautiful flakes… for a few hours at most. The inch or two that stacked up in our backyard over Wednesday night was gone by Thursday afternoon. The chance that classes on Friday might have to be canceled due to unsafe morning driving conditions was a quiet dream that faded as quickly as the snow.

And yet we had beans aplenty. To make the Bittman pick, I used:

2 15 oz. cans white kidney beans (or cannelini beans)

½ large butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and grated (I used the grating tool on my food processor)

¼ of a sourdough baguette, a few days old, torn into pieces and splintered into crumbs in the food processor

4 TB. butter

1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped (I didn’t have any fresh sage in the house, and I wasn’t about to venture out to the frosty back garden to see if my sage plant was even still alive)

salt and pepper to taste

After grating the squash, I tossed it into a large skillet with half the butter and plenty of salt and pepper, then sauteed until it was just starting to pick up some color from the bottom of the pan. I took it off the heat and mixed it in a large casserole dish with the two cans of beans, which I forgot to save any liquid from. While the squash warmed the beans a bit, I melted the remaining butter in a bowl and then dumped what amounted to probably almost 2 cups of bread crumbs into it, where I mixed them around with a fork and then my fingers to make sure everyone had some buttery goodness seeped in. I added the rosemary and a little pepper, then spread out a thick layer over the beans and squash.

Because the beans were still pantry-cold and I knew the broiling process would not sufficiently warm them, I stuck the casserole dish into the oven on its lowest setting while I got the rest of dinner working.

Chicken sausages were browning and blistering in a skillet while I blanched some green beans, and then had a brilliant idea. Why not pick up some of that greasy meaty leftover sludge on our veg? That stuff is almost more flavorful than the meat itself, which is why cooks and chefs are always advocating using it as a base for sauces. Quick, quick, quick, I grated about a teaspoon of lemon zest and one clove of garlic on my microplane, then dumped green beans, seasonings, and a few tablespoons of white wine into the same smoking skillet I’d just liberated the sausages from. While the beans wallowed in their hot tub treatment I slid the casserole under the broiler and amazingly, everyone was ready at about the same time.

The sausages were tasty, but they were storebought and nothing particularly special. The Bittman dish was good, and I’ll say more about that in a moment, but I cannot extol enough the virtues of these green beans! They were perfectly cooked – still slightly crisp to give your teeth something to play with, and scented by the sharpness of garlic, lemon, and the slightly acidic wine, which reduced to almost nothing in the minute and a half or so it was in the pan. And the browned bits from the bursting sausages gave the beans a richness they scarcely deserved. It was like those good restaurant vegetables: crisp and buttery because they are drenched in the stuff, but here it was the tiniest slick of fat distributed beautifully over half a pound of slender beans, giving them all the right flavors to awaken pretty much every kind of taste bud. So delicious.

As for the Bittman dish, it was a bit eclipsed by its green side. The butternut squash, seasoned well and sauteed gently before meeting its companion ingredients, was delicious. It was light and fresh, and combined with zucchini, carrots, potatoes, or parsnips (or any combination thereof), it would make wonderful latke-style shredded vegetable pancakes or hash browns. Perhaps because I neglected to save any canning liquid from the beans, the dish itself needed a binder. It was good, and our snow-fearing, protein-craving bodies ate big servings, but it needed something to become spectacular.

Addressing the leftovers a day or two later, I figured out what had to be done to elevate this dish. It needed green. It needed more complexity. It needed to cease being a side, but to become a casserole-type-main in its own right. It needed to be, if such a thing exists, a baked hash.

In a big serving bowl, I layered some fresh spinach, half a leftover sausage, chopped into small pieces, and plenty of the squash and bean mixture and heated them up together with a little bit of butter. Putting the spinach on the bottom helped it wilt under the heat of the other ingredients. This was the way to eat this dish. In the spinach, the beans found a flavor to sing harmony, and the sausage pieces added a saltiness the relatively bland beans and bread crumbs needed. We will have this again, but next time I will add chopped spinach, chard, or perhaps zucchini, and maybe some crumbled cooked pork sausage. Good things. Warming things. Warm bellies to stand against the snow. Even if it only lasts a few hours.

Going Greek

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Chelsea

On some Friday nights, after visiting a bar near campus where we share Happy Hour with folks from our department, N. and I stroll back to the parking lot where we’ve left our car, arm in arm and happy to be starting the weekend together. We approach the lot, now almost empty of cars, only to find it occupied by three or four large, noisy, overstuffed school buses, jammed to the gills with undergrads in disco dresses, in plastic pants, in formalwear and stacked heels and spiked hair and too-short skirts. Last week there were a few girls in lederhosen. They are from fraternities and sororities, heading out to formal nights or costume nights or party-till-you-forget-who-you-are nights, and we have to skirt around the buses in our car to escape from the parking lot and head home.

The lederhosen last week got me thinking: I’ve seen a definite shortage of togas among these party-goers (and I’m not just punning on the shortness of skirts here), replaced by lots of skimpy costumes. It made me wonder whether they know that the tradition of fraternity toga parties is from the designation of these organizations as “Greek.” Do they recognize this connection, or have they made the leap that togas are costumes, but there are lots of other costumes, so let’s just have a costume party?

I was never a sorority girl, and though I love a good costume party, I haven’t yet attempted the complex transformation from innocent white bed sheet to Classical garment. Togas are one thing, but this week’s Bittman choice is, to me, a much more enjoyable way of going Greek.

“62. Spinach-Cheese Pie: Sauté chopped garlic and two pounds of chopped spinach in plenty of olive oil until wilted and tender. Remove from the heat and stir in ½ to ¾ cup crumbled feta or firm goat cheese, and a tablespoon chopped dill or mint. Layer 5 sheets phyllo dough in a greased baking dish, brushing each one with olive oil before adding the next. Spread the spinach over the phyllo, then top with 5 more phyllo sheets, each brushed with olive oil. Tuck in the edges if they extend over the ends of the pan, slash the top of the pie diagonally in a few places and bake until golden brown, 30-40 minutes.”

This is basically spanakopita, so I knew from the beginning it would be good. With the addition of 3-4 thinly sliced green onions and liberal seasoning of salt and pepper in my spinach, I followed this unusually precise almost-recipe to the letter. Here’s what I used:

2 10 oz. packages frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and very well drained (I know this isn’t two pounds, but it’s what I had in the freezer)

4 cloves garlic, finely minced

4 green onions, finely sliced (white and green parts)

1 generous TB finely chopped dill

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

10 sheets phyllo dough

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

I forgot to snap a shot of the filling before tucking it in, but the fully constructed “pie” was lovely. I opted not to fold under all the edges after layering up in a baking dish, because I love that crunchy paper-thin crispness exposed edges of phyllo take on in the oven. Messy sheets are not always a bad thing.

I let the crisping, warming, melting, softening happen for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 375F, and readied our soup course.

To contrast the green and soft matte golden brown of the spanakopita, I turned to a frozen friend: butternut squash soup from this fall, which we’d consumed half of and stashed away the remainder for a lazier day. I plunked the solid orange disk into a pot and added a splash of roasted garlic-infused chicken broth to loosen it up a little (the original batch had been more like a puree than a soup). Then I left it to its own devices on medium low until sluggish bubbles were forming and the spanakopita was golden and done.

This is why I love phyllo: look at those edges! Fragile shards of flaky crunch where the edges protrude alone, but the soft tender feeling of pastry on the inner layers. I decided I like the flavor and texture of butter between the sheets slightly better than olive oil, but this way was probably better for us. Butter just adds additional richness.

This was so tasty, and so surprisingly light that we were glad of the soup as a hearty accompaniment. The phyllo really does give the impression, when it is layered together like this, of a thick crust, but it is so thin and fragile that it’s almost like having no starch at all in the dish. The spinach, dill, and feta mixture is the perfect blend: green hearty healthy tenderness from the spinach, bright freshness from the dill, and crumbly tart salty brine from the feta interspersed amidst the vegetation. If you didn’t want to take the time with the phyllo, this would also make a great quiche filling, or a Mediterranean option to pack into stuffed mushrooms.

The feta was so good in the spanakopita itself that I thought it would make a nice topping for the soup, brightening the slow comforting sweetness of the squash and potato mixture.

It’s good to be right.

Stacked

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Chelsea

One of the most impressive looking desserts, to me, is a trifle. Those elegant layers in wonderful colors (especially if one of those colors is the dark rich brown of chocolate), stacked carefully together and topped with whipped cream and fruit and dark chocolate shavings…

But the impressive thing about them, to me, is how skilled the artist who puts them together has to be to get everything just so – the layers sit happily atop one another, the beautiful serving glass doesn’t have smears of pudding where the cake should be – it’s a skill I, with my limited patience and tendency for mess in the kitchen, simply do not possess. Of course, I don’t make a lot of trifles.

For this week’s Bittman, however, I made what he calls a Vegetable Torta, which apparently is supposed to have layers. He says:

“47. Vegetable Torta: Roast sliced eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and onions. Stack in layers with fresh basil in a well-oiled springform or roasting pan and top with bread crumbs or Parmesan (or both); bake for 20 minutes or so.”

I made a number of decisions about these directions, at least two of which were evidently somewhat silly. I don’t care for roasted tomatoes (unless they are intended for salsa or are being oven dried), so I opted for a shiny orange bell pepper instead. Because I often overestimate how much of everything I will need and end up with WAY more dinner than N. and I could consume in 2 or 3 days, let alone one sitting, I am trying to be more conscious about my tendency to overbuy. For this dinner, therefore, I proudly limited myself to only one eggplant, two zucchini, one pepper… in short, less than I ordinarily would have used. Because N. is such a big fan of any kind of bread product, which includes panko or toasty bread crumbs of any kind, I decided to use a shallow, oval Corningware-type baking dish I bought myself recently rather than a tall sided pan, because this would allow more space for bread crumbs, which means more bread. This was silly because when it came time to layer, there was neither enough material nor enough room. The vegetables nestled nicely in with each other, but they settled in on the same level. No stacking necessary, apparently.

Here’s what I used:

1 eggplant, cut in ½ inch slices

2 medium zucchini, cut in ¼ inch slices

1 orange bell pepper, seeded, cut in ¼ inch rings

1 leek, white and light green parts thinly sliced

Olive oil

2 cups fresh white bread crumbs

1 TB butter

2 TB freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

8-10 julienned oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained

I tossed the vegetables in a liberal bath of olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper, then spread them out onto two cookie sheets, trying to keep them all in a single layer so they wouldn’t inhibit one another’s roasting. In an oven preheated to 400F, I roasted them for about half an hour. They softened and collected lovely dark roasty spots and it was a good thing I left the house for a while, because otherwise I probably would have stood over the cooling racks and eaten half the eggplant right then and there.

Resisting the urge to eat dinner at 3:30pm, I returned to the cooled slices later. With the oven preheating to 375F, I (failing to layer) arranged the vegetables in my shallow oval dish. As a last minute flash of inspiration and idiocy, I tucked a handful of sun-dried tomatoes in and around my little veg slices, and completely forgot the basil.

Since I made the bread crumbs by running the torn scraps of a sourdough baguette through my food processor, I dumped the butter, cheese, garlic powder, and some pepper right in on top of the crumbs and pulsed the whole thing a few times until the fat seemed evenly distributed. I topped the vegetables with a liberal crumb layer and stowed it in the oven.

While the vegetables softened even more and offered each other new flavor profiles, I heated some chicken stock and olive oil to make couscous. At the last minute, as I fluffed the tiny pasta with a fork (trying in vain not to scratch up the bottom of the pot), I added some toasted pine nuts and a few tablespoons of minced fresh parsley for added nuttiness and freshness.

The flavors of both torta and couscous were excellent. I will continue to make couscous this way (I usually use chicken stock but haven’t ever really stirred in additional components before), but the torta needed some adjustments. As I mentioned with my first Bittman experiment, it was really just roasted vegetables with a crumb topping. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but I felt as though it were missing a binding agent. Perhaps using tomatoes instead of a bell pepper would yield some juices, which would make the collection a bit saucier. Perhaps using the recommended pan and enough vegetables to layer things up would have married flavors and created more cohesion. Perhaps basil would have magically tied the whole thing together. Perhaps, and this is badness from the baddest part of me, integrating slices of fresh mozzarella cheese before baking would make this dish – it would become like a mixed vegetable Eggplant Parmesan, but with the breading in crumbled topping form rather than fried around the eggplant slices.

How does it always end up being about the cheese?

Currying flavors

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Chelsea

The thing about Mark Bittman’s make-ahead sides is that they are all ostensibly created with a main of turkey in mind. They are, after all, Thanksgiving inspirations. Therefore, when I ask myself the inevitable question each week “what should I serve this with?”, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when the first thing that pops into my head is “that would taste really good with roast fowl!” Of course it would. That plays into the composition of Bittman’s list.

But we don’t want turkey every week, or chicken, for that matter. Lately, both for ease, for cleanliness, for cost, and in some minor and embarrassingly halfhearted respects for moral and environmental concerns, I’ve been more drawn to vegetarian fare. Potatoes, rice, grains, beans: these guys don’t cross-contaminate my kitchen.

So I’m having to be unusually creative in my search for accompaniments for the accompaniments I’m cooking. This week N. chose, from a short list, an interesting combination:

“43. Toss chunks of butternut squash with butter and curry powder. Roast until half-tender, then stir in chunks of apple and some maple syrup. Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until everything is nicely browned and tender.”

The mystery about butternut squash is, for me, as with some other orange produce, whether to treat it as a starch or a vegetable. It seems to occupy some strange and unnecessarily cryptic middle ground. It’s not green or leafy, but it’s also clearly not a tuber, no matter how much its deep autumnal color reminds me of a good hearty yam. Yet, if I’m not serving meat with dinner, pairing a butternut squash roast with vegetables seems not substantial enough, but opting to serve it alongside, say, mashed potatoes, seems excessively filling and somehow repetitive.

I opted for another strange middle ground and went for sauteed red chard stirred into quinoa. As a nod to the seasonal intentions of the squash dish, I cooked my quinoa in turkey broth I made and froze a day or two after Thanksgiving. I like the deeper, richer flavor that results from cooking grains and small pastas in broth or milk rather than water. So our dinner basically consisted of two side dishes, but I decided I didn’t really mind.

Here’s how it went:

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and chopped into small chunks

2 apples (I used Braeburns) quartered, cored, and chopped into chunks

1 onion, diced (I thought the extra savory flavor would be nice, since apples and squash are so sweet)

1 TB curry powder

2 TB melted butter

1-2 TB maple syrup

I tossed the chunks of squash on a cookie sheet with melted butter and curry powder, then slid it into a preheated 375F oven to roast for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I prepped my apples and onions. After 20 minutes when the squash chunks were just beginning to give, I pulled the pan out of the oven and added the apples, onions, and maple syrup – a decadent drizzle over the top that I hoped would pair well with the curry – mixed it all around together, and dropped it back in the oven for another 20 minutes (but really, it took almost half an hour).

While the roasting fruits softened and the maple syrup made suggestions of carmelization on their corners, I addressed our other side dish. I stripped the chard leaves from the stems, chopped the stems into a fairly small dice, and plunged them into a pot with a couple teaspoons of olive oil. I sauteed them over medium heat until they were just beginning to soften, then added the quinoa. In one of my favorite quinoa recipes, Danny (the Chef of Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef ) suggests toasting the quinoa before adding any liquid, much as you toast the rice in a risotto before deglazing the pan. I toasted for a few minutes, then poured in the turkey stock and clapped on the lid. When there were only five minutes left on my timer, I added the chopped chard leaves into the mix, stirred it together well, and replaced the lid so it could finish cooking. It worked perfectly. The chard had just enough time to steam as the final few tablespoons of water were absorbed, but not enough time to overcook and lose all semblance of texture. I can’t stand that sliminess that greens sometimes get after too much contact with the heat. To my delight, the quinoa had taken on a lovely deep rosy color thanks to the chard stems, and the toasty nutty crunch of the grain worked really nicely with the healthful greenness of the chard leaves.

When I pulled the butternut and apple mixture out of the oven, all I could smell was sweetness and curry. The maple syrup had thinned in the heat, but cloyed onto the chunks of fruit as it cooled again. The mixture was really nice. Butternut squash and apples are very good friends, and leaving the skins of the apples on was a wise choice because it added textural interest to the dish. The curry made the flavors deep and warm and spiced, and the maple syrup was a nice hit of sweetness. This one I would make again with no reservations, and only one (okay, maybe two) changes. I put the diced onions right onto the cookie sheet, raw from my cutting board. When I make this again, I will soften them lightly in butter first. They didn’t roast quite long enough to quell the astringent tang onions sometimes have, and I could feel them in the back of my throat afterward. Mellowing them out on the stovetop first would be the right thing to do.

To change it up from curry, I think garam masala would also be delicious on this mixture, and fortunately (and conveniently!) enough, Aarti of aarti paarti has just posted suggestions for making your own! How timely! How fortuitous! Let’s make some! And then, make this autumnal dish. Maybe with turkey. Maybe with chicken sausage. Maybe, as I realized only after dinner was over, with potato masala burgers from Trader Joe’s. What a congenial blend of spices that would be to curry favor with your family!

Apologies for the punning… I couldn’t resist.

Bittman 1: Baking Broccolini

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Chelsea

With the first week of January down, I am happy to report that I’ve kept up with my resolution so far (yeah, yeah, so it’s only been one week…). This past week we enjoyed our first in the series of Mark Bittman’s Thanksgiving sides. Here is his suggestion:

“65. Sauté garlic and pine nuts in olive oil until the garlic softens; add trimmed, blanched, chopped broccoli rabe (or broccoli). Put into a buttered baking dish, top with Parmesan and bread crumbs and bake until the topping browns.”

As you can see, he gives lots of room for adjustments and personal preference: this is not a recipe, this is a collection of ingredients that dance together well, and what rhythms you might coax them into. I did the following, in these approximated proportions:

6-8 cloves garlic, smashed and minced

¼ cup pine nuts

2 TB olive oil

2 bunches broccolini (splitting the broccoli / broccoli rabe difference)

½ cup panko bread crumbs

1 TB butter

2 TB Parmesan cheese

I heated the olive oil over medium heat and sauteed away. Though I can see the need to blanch both broccoli and broccoli rabe before letting it color in the pan with the pine nuts and garlic, my broccolini was a touch on the soft side by the time it came out of the oven, so it probably didn’t need the 3-4 minutes I gave it in boiling water. Even when I bake them, I like my veggies to maintain a little crispness, and this had almost none.

While the broccolini absorbed the garlicky nutty olive oil in the skillet, I mooshed together my panko, butter, and Parmesan into little crackery clumps. After spraying a casserole dish with olive oil cooking spray and dumping in the vegetable mix, I topped it with the panko crumbles and stuck it in the oven at 350F for half an hour. The panko got a little brown, but not quite the golden color I was hoping for. My thoughts for repairing this are two: 1.) either the oven temperature needed to be hotter, or 2.) I needed more butter in the topping mixture.

This was a good start – aside from the slightly limp broccolini, the flavors were nice and sharp and salivary-gland-inducing. Garlic and Parmesan are never a bad thing together, and the toasty buttery crunch of the pine nuts went well with the slightly bitter greenness of the broccolini. We did think, however, that the mix was a little on the dry side. I was expecting something casserole-ish, and what I got could just as easily have been tossed on a cookie sheet and served: more like roasted vegetables than a finished casserole dish. It needed, if it was to become a casserole, some kind of sauce or binding ingredient.

Enter the rest of our meal: butternut and pumpkin stuffed shells with gorgonzola cream sauce.

I had some butternut squash ravioli filling kicking around in my freezer, and part of a can of pumpkin in the fridge. That, along with the half cup or so of gorgonzola in my cheese drawer and the remaining glugs of half and half from a richer project, became a use-all-this-stuff-up-as-soon-as-possible challenge. I cooked off some large pasta shells, leaving them a little underdone, and arranged them in a pie plate. Then I added the pumpkin to the squash mixture, loaded into a gallon ziploc bag with one corner snipped off, and piped the filling into my shells. I dusted them with a snowy layer of Parmesan cheese and loaded them into the oven with my broccolini.

While pasta and veg baked for half an hour, I set my attention to the sauce I was about to make up. I fried some sage leaves in butter, my new favorite trick, and then lifted them out and set them to dry on a paper towel. With the sage-infused butter bubbling, I added some wine and let it reduce a little. Then I glugged in some half and half, which promptly separated a little – I think it was the acidity of the wine and the refrigerator cold temperature of the dairy, which made it want to curdle. I should have added the half and half first and the wine second. I was a little worried about this separation, but it only affected the appearance of the sauce, and not the taste or texture. Onward! I crumbled my gorgonzola into the pan and stirred gently until it melted. That was it. No thickening agents – the cheese did that job for me – no extra spices or herbs or aromatics, just butter, wine, cream, and cheese.

When the shells were done, with just little golden tips on the exposed edges of pasta, I poured the silky rich blue-veined sauce right over top of them. Then I crumbled my fried sage over the drenched shells, and sprinkled the whole thing with some pulverized gingersnap cookies. A touch of fancy, if you will.

The shells were divine. Not much texture, besides the cookie crumbles, but really, don’t you want just velvet and richness in a stuffed shell? The cheese sauce was the missing link the broccolini needed. It was tangy and rich and silken and perfect, and I ended up letting it trickle across my plate to meld with the vegetables and gently perfect them. Next time, we may add a little cheese sauce before baking the broccolini, and see how that turns out. I imagine the perfect, decadent accompaniment to baked potatoes…