Chilly mornings call for hot breakfasts, and with apples lining farmers’ market stalls, I made two versions of baked apples this week. First up: a modified version of granola-stuffed baked apples from Macheesmo.com. With all the ingredients in my pantry (see list below), I threw together a batch in less than five minutes (while William stumbled out of bed and groggily got dressed). The apples baked while we walked Bruno in the cold and were ready—steaming and oozing syrupy goodness—when we got home. Soft apple flesh caved under our forks. Brown sugar and butter made a sweet sauce, and nutty granola from Not Just Rugelach provided textural contrast. I served the apples with plain, whole-milk yogurt and a fat cup of coffee. Our hot breakfast craving was satisfied.

William and I favor savory breakfasts, so apple recipe No. 2 used bread crumbs leftover from my stuffed pumpkin, along with cream cheese, sharp cheddar and cream. The cheesy apples were equally (borderline more) delicious than the granola apples, and with a hint of black pepper they also could work as an autumn side dish. If you like a slice of cheddar with your apple pie and apple-cheddar sandwiches (as I do), this is the breakfast for you.

The methods for both recipes are the nearly the same. Just preheat your oven to 350°. Remove the apples’ cores and scrape out a little extra flesh to leave more room for stuffing. I used a pairing knife-spoon combo to do the work, but an apple corer and melon baller would make an even more effective team. For the granola apples, mix together granola, brown sugar and cinnamon; stuff the apples and top each with a teaspoon of butter. For the cheese apples, combine bread crumbs, cream, cream cheese, cheddar, salt and pepper; pack the stuffing into the apple. Next, pop the apples onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, and bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Granola-stuffed baked apple ingredients
2 medium apples
4 tablespoons granola
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Dash cinnamon and/or powdered ginger
2 teaspoons unsalted butter

Cheddar-stuffed baked apple ingredients
2 medium apples
3 tablespoons fresh bread crumbs
Splash cream or milk
1 tablespoon cream cheese
2 tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

I did my pumpkin carving the week after Halloween. Rather than waste the sweet flesh on an evil jack-o’-lantern, blog posts from the Kitchn.com and Dorie Greenspan inspired me to to bake a stuffed pumpkin.

Greenspan’s recipe is simple and elegant, requiring little more than a sharp knife, two hours for the pumpkin to bake and a handful of ingredients. Following Greenspan’s lead, I hollowed out a four and a half pound gourd and stuffed it in layers with two-thirds of a loaf of bread, 6 ounces gruyère, a half cup heavy cream, three chopped garlic cloves, a few tablespoons grated onion and salt and pepper to taste.

I baked the pumpkin—cap on—for an hour and a half, then removed the cap to brown the the stuffing, which puffed beautifully from the top of the gourd. I quartered the pumpkin and served it in wedges.

The sweet pumpkin and rich bread stuffing were a hearty, vegetarian delight. I kept the recipe basic for this first attempt, but I’ll revisit the dish with meat and/or herb add-ins. Greenspan added bacon to one of her pumpkins; sausage would also be nice. Herbs like sage and thyme also are classic pumpkin partners.

This orange beauty makes a capable main course but would work as a side dish, too—just as long as your main dish doesn’t have hang-ups about being overshadowed.

I have no idea how braising big hunks of beef in red wine can go wrong, but my first attempt at cooking short ribs failed. I used a highly rated recipe from Epicurious.com as a guide, adding carrots, leeks, celery and parsley to the braising liquid to improve the flavor of the sauce. The cabernet-based sauce was indeed delicious, but the meat was not melting-off-the-bone tender as I had anticipated. My dining companions had to use serious knife skills to pry meat from bone and were greeted with a forkful of flavorful but chewy beef.

What happened? Did I get bad beef? Is something wrong with my oven? Did storing the dish overnight in the fridge dry out the meat? All of these scenarios seemed unlikely. Instead of getting to bottom of the mystery (I’ll save that for another day), I got down to the business of getting rid of the inevitable leftovers. My choices were A) fattening up our dog Bruno or B) using the short ribs to make new meals. To Bruno’s disappointment, I decided on the latter.

First up was a three-meat pizza with chopped short ribs, Italian sausage and a bacon-infused tomato leftover from last month’s pasta all’amatriciana. William and I almost always eat vegetarian pizzas so this fat-oozing pie was a special treat. Even better than the pizza was shepherd’s pie with red wine gravy and cheddar mashed potatoes. Up to now, I have always started shepherd’s pie with leftover potatoes. I tend to make a quick and dirty version with ground beef, vegetables and a little stock. Basing the dish on higher-quality beef and vino-infused sauce yielded my best pie to date.

I didn’t go too gourmet with the pie. I simply sauteed carrots and onions in beef fat rendered from the ribs, threw in the beef and some flour, poured in wine, and added sprightly frozen green peas. I smashed yukon gold potatoes with cream, butter, parsley and a handful of sharp cheddar. The pie filling had an intense beef flavor, and the extra cooking time and liquid erased any hint of the ribs’ dryness. Married with cheesy potatoes, this dish is comfort food at its best.

It’s my hope that you won’t have to endure beef failure before you can enjoy this shepherd’s pie. Leftovers from your next pot roast or steak or short ribs will work just as well. But William and I enjoyed our second-chance short rib dinners so much I wouldn’t mind screwing up another batch.

Shepherd’s Pie with Leftover Beef and Cheddar Mashed Potatoes
2 pounds yukon gold potatoes
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup whole milk or cream
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon beef fat or extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
2 1/2 cups chopped cooked beef
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 cup red wine (or beef stock)
1 cup frozen peas

Instructions
Preheat oven to 375º.

Place unpeeled potatoes in a medium pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Add a heavy dose of salt, and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Drain the water. Return pot and potatoes to the stove on low heat for two to three minutes, allowing excess water to evaporate. Turn off heat. Add butter, milk, cheese, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Mash with a potato masher until the mixture reaches a desired consistency.

Meanwhile, heat beef fat in a large frying pan. Add onions and carrots, and cook until the vegetables begin to caramelize, about 8 minutes. Add beef, and cook three minutes more. Sprinkle flour over the beef mixture and stir, cooking for two minutes. Pour in wine, bring to a boil, and stir until the mixture thickens. Add peas, and season with salt and pepper.

Pour beef mixture into a deep dish pie pan or 9″x9″ baking dish. Spread potatoes evenly over the beef, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes until golden and bubbling.

Serves 6

]]> http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/11/01/overcoming-short-rib-shortcomings/feed/ 1 http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/10/26/black-magic-chili-goes-local/ http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/10/26/black-magic-chili-goes-local/#comments Tue, 26 Oct 2010 17:15:52 +0000 Caroline http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/?p=2323

I bought my first bag of Cayuga Pure Organics beans at the farmers’ market last week and made a batch of Black Magic Chili—a vegan mole-like chili I prepared for the first time last winter. At $4 a bag, Cayuga’s black beans are cheaper than any reputable protein, and I’ll pay the premium in the future in favor of going back to Goya.

Cayuga’s fall harvest began in mid-October, and this year they’ll have soy, kidney, navy, pinto, small red, black, Jacobs cattle, adzuki, orca, tiger eye and cannelloni beans for sale. The latter three varieties will be available in the next few weeks in limited quantities.

The fresher dried black beans I used last week required a shorter soaking and cooking time than normal, three hours and one and a half hours respectively, and they maintained a firm texture and distinct flavor in the spice-infused final product. William and I ate the first few servings of Black Magic Chili simply dressed with cilantro and avocado. As the supply dwindled, I used the last of the chili to make the ultimate weeknight dinner: black bean nachos. I fried tortillas and topped them with the chili, sharp cheddar and blistered padron peppers (known as Russian roulette peppers because only one in 20 is spicy). We enjoyed the healthy and not-so-healthy meals this big black pot of local beans provided.

And I’ve been informed by Mr. Nicholson that I have to make a big man pot of meaty chili—and chili cheese fries with the leftovers—in the not-too-distant future. At least the kidney beans will be respectable.

Mark and I haven’t been on the same page in a while. His Wednesday Minimalist columns just haven’t tickled my culinary curiosity. And it hurt.

But this week, I’m happy to report, we reconnected through recipe ESP. Last Sunday, I bought a bowl-full of October tomatoes, destined for a pot of pasta all’Amatriciana. And in yesterday’s Minimalist column, Mr. Bittman supplied his readers a simple pasta sauce recipe that makes the most of the season’s last tomatoes. In contrast to his back-to-basics recipe, I augmented my late-season tomato sauce with lots of bacon and onions, but our hearts were in the same place!

Traditionally, pasta all’Amatriciana is prepared with guanciale (an Italian bacon made from pig cheeks), onions, tomatoes, Pecorino Romano cheese, and bucatini (long, thin, tubular pasta). The dish originated in the tiny town of Amatrice outside of Rome. And the latter, larger city is where William and I first sampled the dish on a gut-busting evening at a casual hostaria. William has since requested the dish, but his cries for bacon, tomatoes and onion have been denied until now.

Although I can get guanciale in New York, I Americanized the dish and used thick-cut bacon. If I were making this for a dinner party, I would splurge and get the real thing. For a weeknight meal, I opted for what I had on hand. I also used fresh linguine instead of bucatini—similar shape, no tube. Lastly, recipes for pasta all’Amatriciana call for canned tomatoes (here’s one from Babbo and another from Food and Wine), but using fresh tomatoes lightens the dish and gives it a new sweetness. The tomato flavor is more subtle but it tastes like real tomato—the last gasp of summer that’s been smothered in bacon.

Pasta all’Amatriciana Americana
2 pounds tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup diced thick-cut bacon
1 onion, diced
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pound linguine
Pecorino Romano cheese

Instructions
To prepare the tomatoes, bring a large pot of water to a low boil. Core tomatoes, and cut a shallow X into the bottom of the fruit. Place the tomatoes in the boiling water for 10 to 15 seconds. Remove the tomatoes from the water with tongs or a slotted spoon, allow them to cool, and pull off the skin. (You can omit this step if you don’t have time, but you need hot water for pasta anyway. And you can get this step going while you cook the bacon and onion.) Reserve water for cooking the pasta. Roughly dice the tomatoes, and set aside.

Heat olive oil on medium in a large frying pan. Add diced bacon, and cook until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon, leaving fat in the pan (all of it, unless you’re counting calories). Add onion and cook until browned, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle in red pepper flakes, and cook 1 minute more. Pour in tomatoes and their juices, and cook 10 to 15 minutes, until they break down and the sauce begins to thicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, bring the pot of water back to a boil. Salt the water, and cook pasta according to package instructions.

Drain the pasta, toss with sauce, and portion into bowls. Top the pasta with bacon and grated Pecorino Romano.

Serves 4 (main course) or 6 (first course)

The hallowed Motorino doesn’t have a monopoly on brussels sprout pizza. With a current crop of brussels sprouts dotting farmers’ market stalls, a sprout-studded pie is the pizza-of-the-moment in our kitchen. Motorino chef, Mathieu Palombino makes a white pie with the petite cabbages, garlic, buffalo mozzarella and pancetta. (You can learn how to make Motorino’s sprout pizza at slice.seriouseats.com.) It’s certainly a worthy list of ingredients. But since I haven’t quite mastered Neapolitan-style pizza dough in my humble oven, my sauceless pies tend to come out dry and unappealing.

To compensate for my good but far-from-ethereal dough, I made a sauce of sorts by caramelizing four spanish onions with plenty of butter and rosemary—much like French pissaladerie. After cooking for at least an hour, the onions yielded about a cup of moisture-supplying goodness, along with intense caramel flavor and a richness seldom found in vegetarian pies. To pack even more flavor into the dish, I used fontina cheese. It melts just as well as mozzarella but has a bit more funk.

As for the green crown jewels of the pie, I sliced the sprouts into lengthwise quarters and tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper before sprinkling them over the pizza. But after 15ish minutes in a 500° oven, some of the brussels sprouts still had too much raw crunch for my taste. In retrospect, I should have sliced the sprouts thinner or cooked the pizza another five minutes. An easy fix for next time.

Pancetta or bacon would obviously work well on this pie. If you have either on hand, add some meat. But you can have pig any time of year. Farm-fresh sprouts are as fleeting as fall. And this former Miami girl is celebrating all this season has to offer before things get ugly.

For all the effort I’ve made in the last few years to eat local produce, hormone-free dairy, grass-fed beef, etc., I have been a little slow in switching to sustainable seafood—mostly because I don’t cook seafood that often, and I forget to check out which fish are O.K. until after I leave for the market.

But lately, I’ve felt an extra dose of guilt (probably due to my friendship with Rachel Sohn, an ocean-watchdog extraordinaire) when buying maybe-not-so-responsible seafood. So I’ve started to do my fish homework before I buy and find recipes based on more sustainable choices. Choices like bluefish: an omega-3-ripped, pungently flavored, Atlantic swimmer dubbed a “Good Alternative” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch.

The only downside to bluefish is its hallmark fishiness—all the recipes and articles I’ve read on the species feature equally strong flavors like bacon and lemon to tame its fishy flesh. I gravitated toward the latter this week, finding a recipe for Broiled Bluefish Filets with Fennel Mayonnaise on Epicurious.com. If you are a fennel lover, compulsive mayonnaise spreader and/or ocean groupie, you’re going to love this dish.

Since I’d never cooked bluefish, I (almost) stuck to the simple recipe that combines mayonnaise, toasted fennel seeds, garlic, salt and lemon juice. Just smear the mayonnaise on top of the filets and broil for eight minutes—the short cooking time will keep the fatty fish moist and tender. My only changes: I made a little extra mayo (which was rich and ably cut through the fish funk), was heavy-handed with the lemon juice and threw in chopped fennel fronds for good measure and beauty.

]]> http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/09/23/one-fish-two-fish-mayo-smeared-bluefish/feed/ 0 http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/09/20/heirloom-bean-convert/ http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/2010/09/20/heirloom-bean-convert/#comments Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:33:11 +0000 Caroline http://www.occasionalomnivore.com/?p=2253

My New York kitchen is almost organized. I’ve found a nearby Sunday farmers’ market. Fresh Direct is about to deliver my weekly rations. And after more than a month of dining out and cooking with limited resources, I’m back at the helm of my eating.

Instead of playing blog post catch-up, I want to start with now—the latest from my kitchen—and my new obsession: beans. You may well know that beans are a staple of the Occasional Omnivore diet (namely Cuban-style black beans), but our trip to San Francisco and Napa transformed my level of bean appreciation. Meal after meal (at Canteen, Chez Panisse and Ubunto) I ate the most thoughtful and delicious bean preparations. The legumes were firm and flavorful and surrounded by a riotous and righteous mix of Californian vegetables.

I also discovered—a bit behind the curve—Rancho Gordo, a purveyor of heirloom beans. Rancho Gordo has been on the chef/foodie radar for some time, appearing last year in New York Magazine and the Times and on TheKitchn.com. It doesn’t need bean cred from me. Somehow I missed the press and buzz of these beans that are fresher and vastly more flavorful than dried beans from the supermarket.

Now, I’m educated and armed with a Rancho Gordo cookbook and 1-pound packs of beans (eye of the goat, Christmas lima, scarlett runner and rebosero) we picked up at the Rancho Gordo store in Napa.

I baptized my first pot of Rancho Gordo beans last week. I soaked and simmered eye of the goat beans and dressed them up in their Latin Sunday best, mixing in Spanish chorizo and topping the beans with queso fresco, lime, diced onion and cilantro. I served this meat-infused version of Rancho Gordo’s “pot beans” with an avocado-tomato salad, tomatillo salsa and warm corn tortillas. William and I agreed that a bean had never been so well cast (in our house at least) as the star of the meal. We ate with abandon and moaned as if we were biting into the soft fat of pork belly or bloody center of a steak.

But these were beans, people. Beans. Try one pot, and you’ll be converted. 

Eye of the Goat Beans with Chorizo
1/2 pound eye of the goat beans
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 teaspoon salt
1 small link Spanish chorizo
1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
4 lime wedges

Instructions
Wash beans of dirt and debris, and soak for 4 to 8 hours in cold water.

Heat olive oil in a medium pot on medium heat. Add half of the diced onion (reserving the second half for raw garnish) and garlic, and cook until soft, about 8 minutes. Pour beans and soaking liquid into the pot. If necessary, add water to cover the beans by about 1 inch. Bring to a brisk boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to low, and cook beans at a gentle simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Stir occasionally, adding warm water to the pot if beans soak up too much of the liquid.

When beans are firm-tender, add salt, and cook 10 minutes. Stir in diced chorizo, cooking 5 minutes more. Ladle beans into bowls, and top with onion, queso fresco, and cilantro. Serve with a lime wedge.

Serves 3 to 4 (main dishes)

The rumblings of my stomach have been silent for too long. Don’t worry. I have been eating well for the past month … just far from home. I went camping with my family, played bridesmaid in an Atlanta wedding and went apartment hunting in NYC—yep, William and I are moving from tropical South Florida back to the Big Apple where William (and hopefully I) will start work in the fall. We returned home for a few days then dashed to Apalachicola, Florida, to visit William’s parents and then Baxley, Georgia, to see mine.

Our best meals along the way were at Cascabel Taqueria, Bhojan (kosher, vegetarian Indian) and Zoma (Ethiopian) in New York; Natalia’s (Italian) in Macon, Georgia; Elements (American) in teeny Lyons, Georgia; B & J’s (fried seafood—get the shrimp basket) in coastal Darien, Georgia; and my Grandma’s house for fried frog legs in Delray Beach, Florida.

Also, with the help of my forester Father, I foraged for edible plant life in the mountains of western North Carolina. We found poke weed, dandelion greens, blackberries, buck berries, sassafras, thistle, mint, and wild apples. To collect the apples, Dad and I trudged through an overgrown field where we disturbed a colony of yellow jackets. I exchanged five stings for eight small apples—a not-so-friendly reminder that I am an urban condo dweller and not a woman of the woods. If Dad humors my locavore longings in the future, I’ll wear boots and long pants.

Our bounty yielded a few oddities and two great appetizers. I made sweet bruschetta by stewing blackberries with a bit of sugar and red wine vinegar. I tossed the syrupy mixture with wilted dandelion greens and placed the topping on toasted and buttered ciabatta. I cooked my prized apples with lemon zest and sugar, spooned the warm apples onto hunks of sharp cheddar and garnished the bites with sprigs of mint. The dishes were simple and spot on delicious.

William and I have been home for less than a week now, packing (and packing) and making meals out of remnants from our fridge. But we leave again tomorrow for San Francisco and Napa (to celebrate the end of William’s law school), and then we’re off to our new home with an unimaginably small kitchen. I’ll keep you posted!

It had been a while since I’d enjoyed the simple pleasures of a croque monsieur—a gussied up ham and swiss sandwich that wears a smear of broiled béchamel. The sandwiches are filling, fun and French, of course, and they’re perfect for weeknight belly filling.

With so few ingredients, quality is a must. Buy the best bread, cheese and ham you can. And use whole milk for the sauce—it’s not like you eat these every day!

Here’s the gist of the epicurious.com recipe I used: Make a creamy, peppery béchamel. Set aside. Slip ham and cheese between two slices of sturdy sandwich bread. Brush bread with melted butter, and cook each side in a frying pan until golden. Top the bread with a heaping glop of béchamel, and sprinkle with grated swiss. Broil sandwiches until cheese is golden. Done.

My only change to the recipe was subbing tarragon for chives—you’ll want to add some type of herb to this otherwise veggie-barren sandwich. We served baked fries on the side, but a lightly-dressed salad would make a more nutritious partner.

Whatever you do, be sure to use a knife and fork, lest your fingers fall into the peril of sloppy béchamel. Or skip the silverware and lick your digits clean.