Culinary Concoctions Week Five: Romesco Sauce

It's been a while since I've made a good pasta. Considering how unbelievably cold it is here in Portland (Which I say, knowing that the rest of the country is in far, far worse shape than us. I spoke with a client this morning who said Houston is rocking a tepid 28 degrees. My sister in Butte told me not to complain, too; Western Montana is enjoying a brisk NEGATIVE 10 degrees.), I figured a nice steaming pasta would work as a great end-of-the-week tuck in.

While I first imagined making a kind of pesto sauce with the hazelnuts, I decided to head more North in my Mediterranean inspired sauce and land in Spain for Romesco sauce. Although it's usually made with almonds, many recipe variations -- including one from Portland's very beloved Vitaly Paley of, you guessed it, Paley's Place -- swap out almonds with hazelnuts.

So...recipe as follows:

Romesco with Hazelnuts (Thanks Vitaly Paley!)


Ingredients
8 Nyora Chiles
2 large red bell peppers
3/4 cups plus 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil (See Clara? I didn't go all [ugh] Rachel Ray and evoo it there)
1/2 cup raw hazelnuts
2 TBSP fine breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 medium tomato peeled and deseeded (Or if you're super mature like me, dejizzed)
2 TBSP sherry vinegar
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper (But come on, it's me, those go without saying)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Snap the stems of the Nyora peppers. Shake out and discard seeds. Like any pepper, DON'T GET THE SEEDS IN YOUR EYES PEOPLE! (Also, if you're like me, don't cut yourself while chopping them.) Put the peppers in a heatproof bowl and cover with 2 cups of boiling water. Cover the bowl with a plate and the peppers soften for about 20 minutes. CAREFULLY pour the liquid out and dry the peppers on a paper towel.
3. While the Nyora peppers are soaking, roast red bell peppers, for about 30 minutes on a roasting pan. Make sure to turn them every 10 minutes or so. Place in paper bag, close bag and let cool.
4. Heat 2 TBSP olive oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add hazelnuts and cook, shaking the pan, until browned; about 4 minutes. Drain hazelnuts and let cool. Remove as much of the outside paper coating as possible.
5. Combine Nyoras, roasted bell peppers, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, tomatoes, sherry vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil in food processor. Season with salt and pepper. Pulse until completely purees.

The good thing about the Romesco sauce is that it can be made the day before. While it'll go well with homemade pasta, it'd also serve well as a sauce for a mild white fish, prawns, chicken or eggplant stack.

Story to follow...

Week Four: The Story

If you could put every warm feeling of winter -- wool mittens, your favorite sweatshirt right out of the dryer, the warmth of a coffee cup on your hands, the steam of tea -- and pair it against the coldest day of the season -- just miserable with such a bone-aching chill that it takes every iota of strength, courage and iron-will to get out of bed --

You have those two yin and yangs juxtaposed against each other?

Good.

Now just recall how truly, almost other-worldly that warm feeling is when you finally get out of that cold and...

Well...

Then...

You'll have some kind of idea as to how fantastic the vegetarian stuffing filled chard purses were.

Hold on. I need a moment.

Feel free to entertain yourself with this.

Okay. I'm ready.

Pre-leek-tied purse.

The stuffing turned out really great, especially with the warm savory mouth of the chard. I'll admit, in lieu of butter, I opted for a nice healthy dollop of (You guessed it) bacon grease to saute my vegetables in. The bacon grease added an unbelievably savory and subtly smoky flavor.

I'm sorry Meghann; I know you were hoping I wouldn't 'ruin it with bacon' but what can I say? The little blue bowl of warm bacon grease just spoke to me and the greedy little fat kid in me who would kill for that umami taste and texture just couldn't help herself.  Trust me, considering my growing waistline and the fact that I'm supposed to using this cooking experience to be uhm, healthy and sustainable (Which okay, bacon grease isn't healthy but I've got a solid argument that it does, indeed fall into the sustainable, oh-so-Portland tail-to-nose cooking ideology), she's definitely getting a time out in the corner (Followed by another early a.m. ten mile run).

Yeah, you can get an idea of
how small my kitchen really is.

Sidebar conversation aside, the purses were, I'll admit, kind of a pain to make. I'm actually pretty baffled that Epicurious/Gourmet suggested it as an appetizer. I mean, as much I love cooking and entertaining and wowing guests with pretty looking and amazingly tasting food, I'd have to have my arm twisted pretty hard to make these as more than just a meal (Which actually, they're quite filling and can easily stand alone as a hearty vegetarian dish -- hint, hint Piper, Ariel and all you vegetarians and vegans out there. To make it vegan, just use olive oil and swap the recipe's chicken broth for vegetable broth and perhaps add an extra pinch of salt to make up for the flat flavor of veggie broth). After all, one bunch of chard, which was about eight leaves thick, yielded six small-to-medium sized purses.

While a pain in the rear, they were still so so so worth it.

Really, had I chard in my fridge right now, considering I've still got half a loaf of stuffing...yeah, I'd definitely make them again. Right here, right now.

The great thing about that would be the fact that prep time would last no more than 20 minutes (as opposed to the 90 minutes I spent during round one) and, knowing what I know now (See tips below), I'm pretty certain they'd be even better. 

This one was special.
It needed a lot of leeks.

If you do make these (Which I so so so so SO recommend), keep these tips in mind:

1. Blanch your chard one leaf at a time. Pat dry them immediately after, otherwise, as I talked about before, the water will start to break your leaf down faster than a Portlander can put a bird on something and call it art.

2. Dry your blanched leeks asap too, for the aforementioned reason.
3. Make the stuffing ahead of time. It's not that time consuming to chop a bunch of veggies, but combined with everything else, you could save yourself a solid hour when you're hungry for some winter loving by making the stuffing ahead of time.

4. Use bacon grease. Like really. It's delicious.
5. Get creative with the stuffing. Really, my stuffing was more of a what's-in-the-fridge concoction. You can really play with the flavors, omitting the sage and Craisins for a less-Thanksgiving taste, adding paprika or curry for smoky, curried flavors, adding meat or a par-cooked grain like quinoa for extra carbs. 

Culinary Concoctions Week Four: Swiss Chard Purses with Vegetable Stuffing

I'll admit right off the bat with this meal that the swiss chard purses were not from my own brain but instead from the professional brain trust that was Gourmet (May that magazine rest in peace).

The stuffing is my own though.

Since I'm a bit lazy today and know the recipe, with directions, is online, I'll just do this thing...and force you to Epicurious for the recipe.

I will however, detail my vegetarian stuffing recipe:

Winter Vegetable Stuffing


Ingredients
4 cups dried bread pieces
3 TBSP butter
1/2 cup soy cream
1 apple, diced
1/4 cup pine nuts, roughly chopped
1 cup leeks (white part only), chopped
1/4 cup craisins, roughly chopped
Chard stems, diced
2 kohlrabi, peeled and diced
1 small white onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 TBSP fresh sage, chopped
4 radishes, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
2 eggs

Directions
Preheat oven to 375.
Soak bread in cream for 15 minutes, until softened. Drain excess cream.
Heat large skillet on medium-high and melt butter.
Add all vegetables, salt and pepper. Saute for 10 minutes.
Remove from heat. Add bread crumbs. Mix together.
Add eggs. Mix with hands until the whole stuffing mix is nice and coated.
Spoon stuffing into glass baking pan.
Bake for 45 minutes.

Story to follow!

Bacon Caramel: Boozy Dessert Style

Boy oh boy.

While I may have been more lax and lazy last week with cooking, I think I more than made up for it over the weekend with baking.

The weekend, for those of you who didn't know, Sunday was National Pie Day which coupled oh-so-nicely with Baker and Spice bakery's sixth anniversary (And I apologize for not actually informing everyone before hand; in retrospect, telling you after the fact seems a bit cruel considering you've got to wait 364 more days until the next National Pie Day). They held a pie baking contest which, after I casually dropped that factoid during trivia, Jason immediately averred that I should enter it.

Which I so totally did.

Apple Pie with Oat Streusel and
Bourbon Bacon Caramel Drizzle

I recreated Thanksgiving's apple pie: Apple Pie with Oat Streusel (Thanks Bon Appetit) but topped it off with lavish drizzle of bourbon bacon caramel.

The pie looked...oh, fantastic. And smelled like comfort food heaven, sweet with cinnamon sugar warmth that played harmoniously with the melody of apples which...oh baby, oh baby mingled with the smoky kick of the bourbon and bacon grease. Poor Jason. (Well I say 'poor' but don't really mean it -- let's remember that entering the pie contest WAS HIS idea after all)  I've never seen a grown man so unbelievably distraught while maintaining such iron-willed resistance than Jason, holding the still-warm, unbelievably aromatic apple pie for the entire 18 minute drive up to Hillsdale.

Without eating it.

Sure, his nose was never less than half an inch away from its crumbly, caramely top and, if I recall correctly, he verbalized no fewer than five scenarios that inadvertently put that pie into his mouth, without requiring him to take blame.

Unfortunately, my little pie didn't win. However, I do get to pick up a Thanks-for-playing $10 gift card to Sweet Wares (Which I think I'm going to drop on a pastry cutter I keep always wishing I had). And, while I didn't have crust to make a second pie, I did make a crumble-crust, using flour, sugar, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon and...of course, bacon grease in lieu of butter, for a crumbly, crispy apple pie that really, regardless of what the professionals think, is a winner in my book.

Butter. Nice, fatty cold creamy butter.

And for your viewing pleasure: I also made (For my friend Meghann who FREAKISHLY, at least in my eyes, doesn't like pork) a dark chocolate caramel, SANS bacon grease, which apparently made one the best caramel latte/mochas ever.

Yes Megs, it's officially in the mail and on its way to you.

Dark Chocolate Caramel Sauce

My Resources

Let's face it, I'm not just a swimming pool of culinary knowledge. I have resources. I figured, so at least you all know (Whoever you all are, aside from my mother, friend Meghann and occasional UP alumus) I'm not just making stuff up and, if you're curious in conducting further solitary research on something I write or cook about that (Good god hopefully!) strikes your fancy, you'll know where to go.

First, and easiest, my go-to web resources:

Oregon Environmental Council: Sure I geek out on figuring out what's in season in Oregon on this site but it's also a super helpful resource for what we can do now, easily, from our teeny tiny Northwest Portland apartments to make and keep our awesome state...errr...awesome!

Oregon Fresh: It's a  better resource than the OEC for finding local fruits and vegetables that are in season, year round. I wish it gave me information about meat and seafood.

Sustainable Table: This is a sweet site because it provides information on seasonal ingredients for each state. What's more, it goes more in-depth, dividing each month in early and late season. It also helps you locate farmers markets nearby your abode. (For my Butte-dwelling family, did you know there was one on Park and Main!?)

New Seasons: The website offers a lot of great information about what's in store now -- which you know, as it's part of New Seasons' mantra, that it's fresh, local and in season.

Epicurious: Because...well, you know...sometimes I need a little bit of inspiration.

For my in-house, non-web references:

The New Food Lover's Companion: I love love love love love LOVE this book. It's a mini encyclopedia of every ingredient you can think of (Okay, the deluxe version really is every ingredient but whatever), giving the history, use, cultivation, etc. about it. Thank you ex boyfriend for first introducing me to this lovely masterpiece of a reference.

The Joy of Cooking: Of course, my stickiest most used pages are either in the dessert section or in the pork section. I don't care how Julie and Julia portrayed Irma Rombauer, I still love the book.

(Speaking of pork) Pig: King of the Southern Table: A new edition to my cookbook library, thanks to Jason, this book offers everything I could ever want to know about pig, pork and everything in between. I'm still waiting for the perfect time to try out the bacon peanut butter muffins.

Stack upon stacks of FOODday recipes and articles. What can I say, I'm a nerd who saves newspaper clippings (Yes I've got choice comic strips and squares hung up on my fridge), and the Oregonian typically does a sweet job of offering up tidbits of local food knowledge and cooking suggestions.

Alas, my library is incomplete. I'm sorely jonesing for Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Larousse Gastronomique: The World's Greatest Food Encyclopedia, Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, Mastering the Art Of French Cooking and The Food Substitutions Bible -- because, let's face it, sometimes my non-dairy substitution ratios still come out a little funky.

Sadly, that's just the beginning the list. Looks like I better start saving, eh?

Let me know (If anyone's out there?) of any other really great resources, web or physical, out there!

Culinary Concoctions Week One: Grilled Halibut with Spinach and Thai Chiles over Maitake Mushroom Quinoa

1 1/2 pounds of fresh, Alaskan halibut. What else to do but grill it with a Japanese twist?

Recipe:

Ingredients
5 TBSP sugar
5 TBSP fish sauce
1/4 cup water
3 TBSP fresh lime juice
2 TBSP minced peeled ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Thai bird chiles or 1/2 large jalapeño, diced

1 small carrot, peeled and matchsticked
1 1/2 pound halibut filleted, quartered
3 TBSP vegetable oil, divided

1 shallot, thinly sliced
3/4 pound fresh spinach (About 12 cups packed)

1 cup quinoa
2 cups vegetable stock
3 TSPN soy sauce
1/2 white onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1/3 pound maitake mushroom

Directions
Mix first 7 ingredients in medium glass bowl. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper (It can be made 2 days ahead; just cover and refrigerate).

Mix quinoa and vegetable stock in medium sauce pan over high heat. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered until all liquid is absorbed; about 20 minutes.

In medium skillet, heat 2 TBSP vegetable oil.  Add onion, garlic. Saute until translucent and fragrant; about 6 minutes. Add soy sauce, lemon juice and diced maitake mushrooms. Saute until mushrooms are soft, but still with some buoyancy and tooth; about 8 minutes. Add to quinoa, with 'juice' when done.

Prepare barbecue (or broiler) on medium high heat.

Place carrot in medium bowl, cover with ice water. Let stand 15 minutes, then drain well.

Brush fish on all sides with 2 TBSP oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill until opaque in the center; about 4 minutes per side.

Meanwhile, heat 1 TBSP oil in large nonstick skillet over medium heat (You really do want a large one because, even though the spinach will wilt, it'll take up a lot of room at the beginning). Add shallot. Stir 1 minute. Add spinach. Sprinkle with salt. Toss until wilted but still bright green; about 2 minutes.

Plating 

Divide spinach onto four plates. Mold 1/4 cup mushroom quinoa into loose patty and place on top of spinach bed. Carefully place fish on top of the spinach. Sprinkle each fillet with carrot and drizzle with 2 TBSP sauce and a swirl onto the plate. Serve with a  rich and fruity wine, like a dry rose or Gewurztraminer. If, like me, you prefer something less fruity and sweet, a clean, crisp beer -- like Sapporo, to stick with the theme -- will go nicely, too.

Pictures and the story to follow...

Culinary Adventures of a Saucier

Okay...it's time to humbly brag about my latest culinary adventure: Sauces.

If I were a chef, I'd be a saucier (Pronounced sauce-ee-ay). At least, that's where my cooking prowess shined through on Sunday. Even though hot July temperatures warmed up the apartment to a toasty 90 degrees, I spent the majority of my afternoon in our teeny kitchen, sweating over (but not into) steaming sauce pans making two very different yet pretty dang good sauces.

The first was just my typical tomato sauce for a farfalle (bowtie) noodle "lasagna" I made for Clara's friend. I spent a solid 45 minutes dicing onions, garlic, shallots, basil, parsley and chopping tomatoes, bell peppers an mushrooms. Next, I sauteed my aromatics (plus salt, pepper and chili flakes) until the apartment teems with an olive oily-garlic aroma before dropping in two jars of Trader Joe's plain tomato sauce and once can of diced tomatoes, turned down the heat to medium-low then letting that baby simmer for a solid three hours. When it comes to tomato sauces, the longer, the better.

The second sauce is what I'm most proud of (I sort of have the consistently delicious tomato sauce down. Sure, sometimes I make it a titch too salty or tad too runny but those occasions happen about as often as Valentine's Day...once a year, and I'm typically the only one who really rues it), mainly because I totally made it up all on my very own.

The previous Sunday I had purchased a package of bone-in pork chops from Zupan's ($4.36 for 5 ounces of high-quality, lean protein per person? How could I pass that up?) and wanted to use them for dinner for Walker and myself. We still had a ton of berries from our Saturday trek out to suburbia to the Beaverton Farmer's Market that neeeeeeeeeded to be used. So...what did I do? I made a savory sauce for the pork, of course:

Blackberry Mint Red Wine Reduction
1 1/2 pints blackberries
1/2 bottle of cabernet sauvignon
2 cups vegetable or pork stock
1/3 white onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Aromatics: Mint, rosemary, tarragon, finely diced
2 TBSP rendered bacon grease
Salt, pepper

Heat bacon fat in medium sized sauce pan. Once melted and giving off smoky aroma, add aromatics, garlic, onion, salt and pepper. Sautee until you get the heavenly smell of garlic, onions (which should be translucent) and mint swirling in your nostrils (Mixed with the smokiness of the beacon, these aromas are to freaking die for). Add berries. Sautee and coat the berries with aromatic bacon grease, but don't let the berries caramelize...coast them just enough to them sigh, for about two minutes. After two minutes, add wine and stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and let simmer until the sauce reduces to a near-syrupy consistency. The berries won't totally break down, which is good, because it gives your sauce a bit of a thickness.

I was a bit afraid that the sauce might be too sweet but, surprisingly, the smoky flavor of the beacon grease, the savory stock, the full-bodied wine and the refreshingly savory profiles of the aromatics harmonized nicely together and served as a nice sauce for the pork chops which I left very simple: Sprinkled with salt and pepper, I performed a quick sear on both sides, about two minutes each, before finishing the chops in the oven, topped with some sauce and mint sprigs. Grilling the chops would have added another smoky profile to the palate which, indeed, would have been divine.

At any rate, I'm pretty happy with this sauce because it's one of the first I've ever made without first scouring my cookbook, Epicurious or the Food Network for hours, looking for inspiration. And it turned out to be a success (Well, according to Walker anyway).

The next big culinary test is quickly approaching...cooking a once-tried (though ravely reviewed) menu, not for two, but for 15 people. Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun.

To be continued...