Maddeningly Simple Panna Cotta

This recipe goes out to my loyal readers who have just regained the ability to refrigerate things and spent today paddling boats further than I drove. Put one cup heavy cream and 1/4 cup white sugar in a saucepan. Heat gently while stirring to dissolve the sugar. Once sugar is dissolved, boil for five minutes. Do not let boil over. Remove from heat. Add 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract or 1 tsp grated ginger with 1/2 tsp vanilla extract or 3 tbs. lemon juice or nothing at all. Stir to combine. Pour into 3 ramekins. Chill for two hours. Serve with fruit. It's a perfect creamy dessert! C has allowed me several spoonfuls while eating them all.

Regaining Balance after the Momofuku Pork Belly

So you take a couple of pounds of pork belly, you rub it all over with a mixture of even parts salt and sugar, and you throw it into a 500 degree oven for an hour, followed by an hour at 200 degrees. Then you slice it, slap it into a steamed bun, and serve it with quick pickles and hoisin sauce. You have guests, because this is a lot of pork, but by then end of the night you feel... you feel like you just ate all of the saturated fat in the world. All of it. Even your thoughts feel greasy.

So you eat nothing but lentils and greens for a week, and do not even feel deprived.

Now you have the last few slices of belly, and about four cups of beautiful rendered fat. You may have even saved a half cup of soy sauce colored drippings. What are you going to do with this bounty?

Use it to make vegetables wonderful. Obviously.

Why yes, you could skip the beautiful greasy belly part and just use bacon and bacon fat.

So! Take the tough outer leaves and dry base off of about twelve brussels sprouts, and then quarter them lengthwise. Microwave them for a minute. Chop up a bacon slice sized piece of pork belly. Heat a cast iron pan so that it's quite hot. Add a teaspoon of pork fat. Let melt. Add the belly. Stir. Add the sprouts. Stir. Cook for about three minutes, tasting occasionally. Season with salt, Sriracha, or lemon juice. (Oh, or kimchi! That would be awesome!)

Cut two heads of broccoli into florets. Repeat the chopped slice of belly, hot pan, dab of pork fat plan from the above recipe. Stir fry the broccoli until just tender. Drizzle about a tablespoon of the pork pan drippings and eat. (Hunched over the dish, on the sofa, ignoring the rest of the meal.)

Microwave about half a pound of potatoes for three minutes. Place three tablespoons of pork fat into a cast iron pan. Quarter the potatoes and put them in the pan cut side down. Cook in a 450 degree oven for fifteen-twenty minutes. Prepare a decoy starch to distract your spouse. Laugh maniacally.

The pan will always be very hot. At no point should you remove the pan from a heat source with a potholder and then transfer the still hot pan to your unprotected hand. I just thought I should mention this. In case.

Tidbit: Miso Butter

Mix equal parts white miso and soft butter. Add it to all of the things. (About a tablespoon of each should be fine for a pound of produce. You know I believe that animal fats are fine in pursuit of eating leaves.)

Roast brussels sprouts are particularly good. So is fresh corn. Broccoli. Blanched kale. Sweet potatoes Or if you want to thicken a sauce, whisk this in at the end.

Chilean Lentil End-of-the-Pay-Period Soup

I like the concept of meat as seasoning, but my world is short on recipes that make it work. I also like the concept of affordable, stick-to-your-ribs meals that use pantry staples, because every trip to the grocery store reminds me of all the things I want to cook. I like this recipe because C gets all nostalgic about it, most of it gets made in the rice cooker, and it's absolutely delightful.

I say 1/8 pound of lean ground beef, but really... I pinch off about a quarter cup and freeze it when I'm making some other ground beef rich recipe. I have also used a frozen hamburger patty, ground pork, chopped chicken thigh, and a slice of bacon. Versatility! End of the pay period meals!

Take a cup and a half of French lentils, and put them in the rice cooker with four cups of water until they are tender. (Or cook them on the stove, fine.)

Meanwhile, chop one onion, one peeled carrot, maybe a tomato if there's one in the fridge, and maybe a little cilantro. Saute in vegetable oil until the onion is translucent and salt vigorously. Add 1/8 cup ground beef (frozen is OK)and increase the temperature. Cook, stirring constantly, until the beef is cooked through. (This might involve stabbing frozen ground beef with a spoon. It helps with the aggression.) Add the vegetables and meat to the lentils and stir. Thin soup to desired consistency and simmer for 5-10 minutes to get a magnificent beefy flavor throughout.

I like it with a Chilean cabbage salad (I've been known to put the wonderfully sour salad into the soup), or just steamed broccoli or sliced tomatoes. It's also good for breakfast with a poached egg.

Serves 4.

Greens with bacon stir fry

Our farmer's market is right next to a Ranch 99 superstore- which means we have a greater variety of produce, more reasonable prices, and the actual ability to buy all of the produce that one will eat in a week. I love multiculturalism and the long-term consequences of poorly conceived wars.

There are usually three to seven types of greens for sale- huge two hand bunches for a dollar. I'm terribly unclear on the names (and occasionally the families) but I tend to prepare them all the same way:

Chop one slice of fatty bacon into small bits. Fry on medium-high heat until crispy. Add one bunch chopped greens and stir until greens are tender. Serve.

Sometimes I fry a little onion or garlic with the bacon. Real vegans could just do that and add some oil. I sometimes garnish with lemon juice, chili paste, green onions, or cilantro.

As a pro tip- Ipomoea aquatica is absurdly tasty, the stems of bitter melon and chayote are not.

Homemade Ricotta: a Five Minute Solution for my First World Problem

The milk sometimes starts to go bad before we drink it all. This didn't happen when we drank conventional milk, and it wouldn't happen if my husband didn't reject the milkfat percentages available in smaller cartons.

Someday, after the fall, I will read this post and hate myself. Look at those out-of-season blueberries, future self. They were a dollar. I served them with agave nectar and a sprinkle of cocoa powder.

Hey, at least you still have electricity... And ricotta cheese is always delightful, right? No matter what?

Take six parts almost-bad milk and one part cream. (Milk is almost-bad when it tastes fine, but then five minutes later your mouth tastes like sour milk.) Heat it gently until it is boiling softly. Add two tbs lemon juice for every three cups of milk. Stir vigorously until it separates into curds and whey. Appetizing, right?

Line a colander with several layers of cheesecloth or two layers of paper towels. Place colander in a slightly larger bowl. Gradually pour the curds and whey into the colander, occasionally pouring whey out of the bowl as needed.

Allow to sit for about an hour, and then remove the drained whey. Put the ricotta into a bowl and refrigerate, covered, for up to four days.

Six cups of milk makes just over a cup and a half of cheese.

Bad Idea Saturday: Easy Lasagna.

See the photo? That's a neat little slice of our lasagna, carefully scraped out of the pan. I'd say the recipe was a total failure, but we did eat the entire pan. We like ricotta.

If you have a demanding family member in love with homemade ravioli and a desire to make pasta as infrequently as possible, you might be open to short cuts. When epicurious.com pushes wonton wrappers as good substitutes for pasta dough in a couple of recipes, you might try it out. You might then be terribly disappointed in the result- not only do you still have to do the fiddly sealing bits, but the resulting ravioli does not taste like suffering and gluten. Unacceptable.

But... a box of lasagna noodles is like three dollars. One hundred wonton wrappers are like $1.07. If they're a halfway decent substitute for ravioli, I'm sure they're a mediocre substitute for lasagna. Right? Right?

No.

No. That very same lack of chewy gluten that made them poor ravioli shells allows them to become a barely detectable gummy vein between layers of sauce, other sauce, and cheese. They provide no structure whatsoever, so anything fished out of the pan has the appealing texture of... ricotta cheese.

Other than the lack of reliable pasta, it was actually pretty good.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

I made this for my father-in-law's birthday, but I'm going to use it to celebrate the end of the post every day month.

I think you could very comfortably halve this recipe; six young men bent on Dungeoning and Dragoning managed to eat only half, and eight adults had seconds and thirds and left something like two thirds of the cake. (I made a practice cake and a final cake. I am a paranoid baker.) It's a lot of cake.

(If you do halve the recipe, use a 6 inch springform. Reduce the baking time to 16 minutes.)

It's also basically the Ultimate Chocolate Cake over at cook's. It's not remotely good for you. It's really really rich. It's quite tasty.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Warm 8 eggs to room temperature. Grease the sides of a 9 inch springform pan. Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit in the bottom.

Melt one pound of 70% dark chocolate and 1/2 pound of unsalted butter. (I made this with Trader Joe's groceries and I made it with Green and Black's, Strauss butter and cream, and eggs from chickens that allegedly live better than I do. The latter cake was immeasurably better. Sorry.) Break or cut the chocolate and butter into 1 inch pieces, put in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave in 30 second bursts. Stir briefly between each burst. (Yes, you can do this in a double boiler. My mother swears by them. I always burn the chocolate. Sadness ensues.)

At the same time, break all of those freaking eggs into a bowl, and whip (hopefully with a machine) for five minutes, until doubled in volume. This means that one either has a standing mixer, or one does a lot of dancing and utensil switching. It kinda sucks.

When the chocolate is fully melted, give them one more burst of microwaves for good measure. Add 1/4 cup espresso or orange liqueur. (Or nothing.) Whisk melted chocolate and melted butter until they are completely combined. Add the whipped eggs in thirds, mixing throughly between each addition. Pour into springform pan and bang against a counter to smooth the top. Bake in preheated oven for 24 minutes. It won't look done- not even close to done- but look for the crackly surface you get on top of brownies. Let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate overnight, covered.

Unmold a few hours before serving. (Or one hour.) The edges will need to be freed with a knife. The cake will need to be flipped over to remove the parchment paper and then flipped back. Center the cake on a nice plate and make ganache.

Melt 4 oz. chocolate and add 1/2 cup heavy cream. Mix throughly, perhaps with a dash of the flavoring in the cake. Spread on the surface of the cake quickly and let set.

Just before serving, sprinkle cake lightly with kosher salt. Slice into very thin pieces and eat.

Macaroni and Cheese

Look at that. Three decidedly non-vegan recipes in a row. It's like I'm in a slump. A fridge-full-of-cabbage,-beets,-and-unidentified-mustard-greens slump.

Boil 1/2 pound of pasta. I prefer penne, and honestly, if you're going to make mac n' cheese, go ahead and use the white flour pasta. Why skimp on comfort food?

Make a roux from 2 tbs. white flour and 2 tbs butter in a heavy pan. Stir constantly over medium heat until blonde, and then add 1 tbs. good mustard. Immediately add 1 cup white wine and whisk to mix.

I usually add 2 slices bacon, fried and crumbled, and 1 onion, chopped and sauteed. Then add 1 cup grated cheese- usually odds and ends- I use the bits where I have to cut the mold off.

Mix the cooked pasta and the cheese sauce. Put into oven safe dish. Top with 1/4 cup of bread crumbs and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Rest assured, I have ideas for vegan dishes. Unfortunately, I got them after 10 pm. Tomorrow.

Cheesy Pasta Casserole

There's a point in January where the six kinds of Brassica oleracea in the fridge begin to seem wearing. At this point, one might be tempted to go on an imported non-seasonal food binge. This usually ends in tears- bland, insipid, flavorless tears. I find the best cures to be deep breaths, soothing thoughts, citrus fruits, sugar snap peas, and casseroles based on cheese and pasta.

Boil one pound of penne- whole wheat is fine. Dump it into an oven safe container. Saute 12 sliced button mushrooms and 1 chopped onion in 1 tbs. oil for about 10 minutes. Add to the casserole dish along with 1 cup of frozen peas.

Grate about 1/4 pound of mild cheese- jack or mozzarella is good- which will turn into about a cup of grated cheese. Put 2 tbs. flour and 2 tbs. butter or oil into a heavy pot. Heat gently, stirring to combine, until flour smells a little bit like toast and is slightly golden. Grate in a couple of cloves of garlic, using the small side of the grater. Slowly add 1 and 1/2 cups of milk or white wine, whisking to combine. When liquid is about the temperature of hot coffee, add cheese little by little, whisking constantly. Pour complete cheese sauce over pasta and vegetables. Stir to mix. Cover container, and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

I'm a firm believer that eating lots of vegetables is important enough to justify occasionally drizzling (blanketing) them with cheese sauce. C is a firm believer that pasta and cheese are the best flavor friends ever.

The complete plate is to justify my not-very-healthy recipe. Please note the Chileanish cabbage salad and the color swapped beet and orange salad.

Lentils with a Poached Egg: What I Eat When I Eat Alone.

Here "alone" means "alone, inside, with access to a kitchen and really good eggs".

It's green lentils, boiled until mushy. They are drained and sprinkled with too much salt. (I'm a Saggitarius, and the only scientifically proven trait in all astrology is that Saggitarius, Scorpio, and Capricorn have a marked affinity for salty foods. {Study done in temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere.} I will continue oversalting until my blood pressure stops giving me a free ride.) I poach the kind of egg that has cheddar-yellow yolks and break it over the lentils. Then I eat it. It's pretty complex.

Pie Dough

One of the biggest surprises college held for me was young ladies who did not care a fig about their pastry technique. I was as bamboozled as my brother is by my husband's complete lack of interest in shooting things and throwing himself down precipices. I mean, yes, feminism rah rah rah, but someone must make the pies.

Fortunately, the lovely people at Cook's illustrated have a foolproof pie dough, without any worries about cracking or toughness. It does shrink a bit, so make sure there's a generous half inch margin around the rim of the pie. Makes two crusts.

Process 1 and 1/2 cups flour with 20 tablespoons shortening or butter or a combination of the two- I haven't been able to taste a significant difference, but I loath shortening with great passion. It seems to cover everything with a fine oily scum- I feel like I'm in New Orleans. Not after the oil spill, just in general. Add also a pinch of salt and a dash of sugar. The ingredients will form a paste; forbidden in traditional pastry making because unmixed butter is thought to cause flakiness. It is in fact caused by flour mixed with water, surrounded by hot fat, causing tiny crispy crackers to form within the crust. Thus, when one adds an additional one cup flour, one wants to avoid processing it in completely. Add 1/4 cup cold water and 1/4 cup vodka (gluten can't form in a non polar liquid, so toughness is mitigated) and pulse until there's a delightfully manageable dough. Chill it in two discs for about an hour, and then roll it out between sheets of saran wrap before removing the top sheet and flopping it into the pie dish. (Then remove the other sheet, etc, etc.) Remember to leave generous margins around the edge- scalloping is a good choice here- and bake it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. (You may want to weigh the dough with beans in tin foil or pie weights for the first 15 minutes.) Fill with filling and bake at 300 degrees for eternity.

Why yes, filling will have to either be a custard (pumpkin) or already cooked before being added. I suppose you could skip the blind baking, fill it to overflowing with apples or apricots and a half cup of sugar, and then cover it with the other half. Bake that at 350 degrees until pretty. After fussing with the absurdly complicated pumpkin pie recipe all morning, I really wish I'd done that instead.

Nikujaga

When Europeans first landed in Japan, they brought beef stew with them. The Japanese thought that it could be pretty good if it weren't so patently disgusting. Thus was nikujaga born- a hearty dish with very little meat content.

Serves 4.

Wash 1/2 pound potatoes. I've also used combinations of sweet potatoes and winter squash- go for a half pound total. Traditionally, the potatoes are peeled, but it's just fine if they aren't. Remember to peel the winter squash. Cut into rough chunks- just a little larger than bite sized. Peel one large carrot and one half onion and cut into slices. Slice 6 oz. beef or pork into very thin strips- tritip is a good cut for this, as is a pork chop. Place the above ingredients into a pot.

Add three tablespoons soy sauce. (There are recipes out there that add six or eight. Gross.) Add either three tablespoons of sake and one tablespoon of sugar or three tablespoons of mirin. Add one cup or broth or water.

Simmer uncovered for about 40 minutes. The uncovered part is important, so that the broth can cook down into a salty sweet broth. Stir frequently so that all of the potatoes are stained golden brown. When the potatoes are so tender that they are beginning to fall apart it is done.

Serve over rice, because we love starch beyond reason.