The Joy of Cooking

Ottolenghi’s Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast

11.26.2014 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

Last year, we spent Thanksgiving with Mr Faraway’s family, but though he and I have chatted from time to time, there is no such invitation this year. I’ve also not heard from the friend I hosted every Thanksgiving for ten years, but since she made other plans last year, I assume we’ve both moved on, too.

In fact, I’ve heard from no one.

There are probably options, but after The Child and I discuss the matter, the only thing that either of us can come up with that will be missed about Thanksgiving is this: my stuffing. I’ll miss it, but the idea of not only not hosting Thanksgiving, but skipping it entirely, is strangely liberating. This year, there will be no leftovers that linger for too long; this year, we will not suffer through the miserable sameness of the menu.

No matter what new side dish or pie you make each year, no matter where you eat or with whom, Thanksgiving is always the same.

Except this year. I make reservations at a local seafood restaurant, and though I feel slightly guilty that someone will work that day so that I don’t have to, I remind myself that many college students are waiters and appreciate the extra income that guilty, generous people like myself leave on such a day. I resolve to leave a big tip, and with that, am relieved of both my guilt and my obligation to eat turkey.

Not having to make room in my fridge for a turkey has some huge pluses, but mostly this one: I can keep cooking food from all the fun, new cookbooks that the library let me borrow, even though I’ve developed an unfortunate habit of keeping their cookbooks far too long.

The most recent book is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty More. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother with a book about nothing more than vegetables, since I attempted Ottolenghi’s last cookbook when The Child was still a vegetarian, and without much success. It wasn’t a bad book, but I didn’t get excited about it, probably because I was tired of hunting out and cooking things that she could eat, but wouldn’t.

I was much more excited with the recipes in Plenty More, especially this recipe for slow-cooked chickpeas – partly for the chickpeas, but mostly because I’ve lately become obsessed with anything served open-faced on toast, preferably with a soft-boiled egg on top. I ate Smitten Kitchen’s Spinach and Smashed Egg Toast every night for a week, and only stopped making it because I ran out of fresh spinach and didn’t have time to go to the store. The supermarket lines are long and slow this week – what with all those people buying turkeys – so a recipe that can be cooked from the pantry is ideal.

This recipe requires a bit of planning ahead, since you need to soak the chickpeas overnight. Don’t try to substitute canned, because you need dried chickpeas to withstand the long, slow simmer that infuses them with flavor. I did substitute canned tomatoes for the fresh tomato Ottolenghi calls for; use fresh if you like, but canned will save you a trip to the store and after five hours of cooking, you’re not likely to notice any difference.

The long, slow simmer is perfect for a winter weekend, and rewards you at the end with a nicely spicy, savory bean stew that is thick enough to sit politely on a piece of toast while being held and eaten. I was so enthralled with the spicy-bean-on-toast combo that I forgot all about the poached egg that Ottolenghi suggests and the soft-boiled egg I was planning (follow the Smitten Kitchen directions in the link above). The beans don’t need anything else, and they rewarm perfectly for a nice lunch the next day.

And the next.

Unlike turkey, they probably won’t last much longer than that in your fridge, and also unlike turkey, there’s no stuffed feeling, even if you have a second helping.

Ottolenghi's Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast

Author: Yotam Ottolenghi, Plenty More

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in water and 2 tsp of baking soda
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1½ tsp tomato paste
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
¼ tsp smoked paprika
2 medium red peppers, diced (about 1¼ cups)
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes
½ tsp sugar
4 slices of sourdough or rustic bread, sliced thick, brushed with olive oil, and grilled on both sides

Instructions

Drain and rinse the chickpeas and place them in a large saucepan with plenty of water. Place over high heat, bring to a boil, skim the surface, and boil five minutes. Drain and set aside.
Place the oil, onion, garlic, tomato paste, cayenne, paprika, red peppers, 1 tsp salt, and some black pepper into a food processor and blitz until a paste forms.
Place the paste into a large saucepan and fry for five minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the tomatoes, sugar, chickpeas, and 1 cup water. Bring to a low simmer, cover the pan, and cook over very low heat for four hours. Stir every so often and add water if needed to maintain a sauce-like consistency.
Remove the lid and cook for a final hour, allowing the sauce to thicken without the chickpeas becoming dry.
Place a piece of grilled toast on a plate and top with the chickpeas. If you like, you can top this with a poached egg drizzled with a bit of olive oil and za'atar.

Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe

Stuffed Cabbage

11.12.2014 by J. Doe // Leave a Comment

We all have things we wish for, but for the past two weeks, my normally long wish list has shortened down to one simple thing: I wish my shoulder didn’t hurt.

I’ve spent so much time at work, on the computer, that I seem to have pinched a nerve, or possibly several, given the radiating pain from the area. The pain doesn’t respond to Tylenol or Advil. What it does respond to is not sitting in front of a computer holding a mouse.

It’s not as bad as last time this happened, a couple of years ago, when the pain was in my neck, and I couldn’t turn my head, which made driving to the doctor – or anywhere – a bit of a challenge. This time, I can drive, but don’t see a point in going back to the doctor, since I can still remember the advice he gave me: Take some Tylenol and don’t spend so much time in front of the computer.

I tried that for a few miserable days, then had The Departed drive me to a local spa, where the massage therapist pounded the pain out of me.

If only all pains in the neck could be dispensed with so expeditiously.

I’ve been trying to find time to get over to the spa, but the same work schedule that created this situation also prevents its resolution – I can’t get away from my desk long enough. I stop sending emails outside of work hours, and find myself communicating in ways I’d mostly abandoned: I get on the phone. I write an actual letter on actual stationery (I still own some) and put an actual stamp on it.

The eventual recipient of that letter, my aunt, never really warmed to the internet age: When she first got an email account, she sent me a message with it, which I received via email, and then again several days later, by regular mail. She had printed out her email and mailed it to me, even though I had already replied to her electronically. She continued this practice until she finally retired from her job, and with it, her access to email.

After the past couple of weeks, I can say I rather understand her relationship with technology, and I was pleased to realize that I didn’t experience any pain when doing pretty much any task that didn’t involve a computer. I can still walk the dog, and cook a meal, and operate a vacuum, without any shoulder pain, although I’ve eased up on the vacuuming, because, obviously, I don’t want to aggravate my shoulder.

I cook a couple of big meals, so that I can open up the refrigerator and make a nice meal of leftovers even if things take a turn for the worse. I make a big pot of Spicy Three-Bean and Corn Chili, a cauliflower recipe that was pretty much just that, and then some Stuffed Cabbage.

If it has cabbage in the name, it must be good for you.

You can argue the point if you like, but I suggest you don’t, because this stuffed cabbage has all the virtues a recipe should: It’s simple to make, has easy-to-find ingredients, and is crazy delicious. The sweetness from the currants and brown sugar is perfectly balanced against the acid of the red wine vinegar (I used a Cabernet Sauvignon vinegar that I acquired during a rare salad-eating phase a while back). The seasoning is simple (thyme, salt, and pepper).

I made the filling a couple hours ahead of time, then stored it in the refrigerator until I was ready to bake. The whole rolling and filling of cabbage leaves does take a bit of time, and you’ll want to have plenty of clean kitchen towels or papers towels on hand because those leaves hold a lot of water in all the little wrinkles.

I followed the directions for using 1/3 cup of meat in each roll, and found I had one roll too many to fit in my pan. I baked it alongside, in a separate dish, and gave it to the Red Dog, who was exceedingly appreciative. The Child saw the finished dish and announced, You make some really weird-looking food.

She was hungry enough to try it, and though she liked the filling, she would not be induced to even taste the wrapper.

I ate the leftovers for lunch every day until they were gone.

I found this recipe on the Kitchen Repertoire blog, which has much nicer pictures of it.

Stuffed Cabbage

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

1 hour

Author: Kitchen Repertoire Blog

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
½ onion, minced
1½ pound ground beef
1 cup cooked rice
2 egg, beaten
Salt and pepper
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
¼ cup currants
2 cups tomato sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1½ tbsp red wine vinegar
1 head Savoy cabbage

Instructions

Melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until just soft and translucent, a minute or two. Combine beef, rice and eggs in a mixing bowl. Add onions and season with a heaping 1 teaspoon sea salt, pepper and thyme. Add currants. Mix well; cover and refrigerate until needed. Whisk together tomato sauce, brown sugar and vinegar. Season with a pinch more salt and set aside.
Carefully peel back outer leaves of cabbage, using a sharp knife to cut leaves from stem. Cut out thick part of spine, creating a narrow long V in each leaf. You will need about 12 leaves. Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice water and set next to stove. Salt boiling water. Working one leaf at a time, blanch until tender, about 30 seconds, remove from boiling water and submerge in ice water. Add more ice to water as needed. When all leaves are blanched and chilled, drain and pat dry with paper towel.
Heat oven to 350. Shape meat into a 12 rectangular shaped patties, using about ⅓ cup of filling apiece. Place patties on leaves and roll up to create a neat package, then place in baking dish with the flap side down. Make sure no meat is exposed; if it is, use an extra cabbage leaf to patch.
Pour tomato sauce over cabbage rolls. Cover baking dish with tin foil, and bake about 50 minutes, until the meat is cooked through and sauce is bubbling.

Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe

Thomas McNaughton’s Braised Short Ribs with Pasta

10.26.2014 by J. Doe // 4 Comments

I got a review copy of Thomas McNaughton’s Flour and Water: Pasta– one of the most-talked-about cookbooks of the fall – and did a terrible thing: I laughed as I perused it.

It’s not that I’m ungrateful: in fact, I felt excessively guilty about my reaction. A considerable amount of time and passion went into the recipes and photos, and someone out there in the publishing world deemed this blog worthy of an advance copy. But why? It appears to be the sort of book that is displayed prominently somewhere and says to people, “A serious foodie lives here. Where shall we go for dinner?”

It’s not that I object to recipes whose names involve words I have to look up: Wild Boar Strozaprettii; Cocoa Tajarin with Brown Butter-Braised Giblets, Butternut Squash, and Sage; and Pappardelle with Braised Goat Shoulder, Anchovy, and Collard Greens. I have a dictionary. I know how to google.

Nor do I object to including things like duck giblets, fuyu persimmons, or spigarello, on my Safeway list – why not turn a routine chore like grocery shopping into a scavenger hunt? It keeps things lively – count me in.

No, my objection is this: Who has time to toast faro and make pasta out of it using a custom bastoncino dowel and hemp comb on a Tuesday night after work?

Still, it was hard to see the cookbook popping up on Amazon and the Tasting Table newsletter and Bon Appetit’s Facebook feed and not think that maybe there was more to it, so one evening I sat down and read a bit of the introductory section, which had some very useful tips for cooking pasta, notably this one: cook your pasta about 80% through in salted water, but then finish the last 20% of cooking in the sauce. It infuses much more of the sauce flavor onto the pasta.

Genius, I thought, and read on.

It turns out, the authors really view the recipes as starting points: If you want to try your hand at making pasta, there are recipes and instructions and helpful tips for doing so. But if you don’t, they make suggestions for store-bought alternatives. There are alternatives for the more challenging ingredients, as well – apples for fuyu persimmons. I can do this.

Armed with that information, I discovered plenty of recipes I could make at home, in a regular suburban kitchen, on a chilly autumn Sunday afternoon, when I have time to cook something in a long, slow, braise. I chose a recipe that would require the fewest substitutions – Toasted Farro Garganelli with Short Ribs, Hazelnuts, and Radicchio – and then took their advice for simplifying it, by simply serving the braised meat on a bed of polenta.

It’s possible I am the world’s worst polenta maker, and also possible that their advice was a bit off the mark here, but whatever the reason, it didn’t work: the resulting plate was watery and bland, unless you just ate the braised meat off the top, as The Child did, and fed the polenta to the Red Dog without even a pretense of hiding it from me. The meat was pretty good, she said, but dinner was weird.

The next day, though, I found myself picking on the leftover meat in the refrigerator, and the following evening, we got home, I boiled pasta in one pan and reheated the braised meat in another, and then finished the pasta just as they suggested, cooking it in the sauce for the last couple of minutes.

It may have been the best pasta I ever ate. The Child agreed, declaring it The Best Pasta You Ever Made, eating two servings, and taking the small bit of leftovers to school for lunch the next day.

I omitted the hazelnuts and radicchio from the original recipe, though I think the radicchio in particular would be a welcome addition to the dish. I chopped the carrots and celery into the three-inch chunks as directed, but it would make more sense to me to cut the pieces smaller to begin with, rather than slice them twice. Some of the quantities listed in the recipe were off (I had two cups of meat after braising, rather than four as stated, but it was more than enough), and it called for mysterious quantities – how much is 1/4 bunch of thyme, anyway? I grow my own, so I took a guess and used four three-inch pieces, and that worked out fine. My cooking time was much shorter than indicated, possibly because I cooked it on the stovetop rather than in the oven.

And yet, it all worked, and rather deliciously at that.

Finally, this dish can easily be made ahead of time – do the braise when you have time, then refrigerate until you’re ready to make pasta and serve. And the leftovers are a fantastic lunch.

Don’t do this. Serve it with pasta.

Thomas McNaughton's Braised Short Ribs with Pasta

Author: slightly adapted from Thomas McNaughton's Flour + Water: Pasta Cookbook

Ingredients

The Braise

2 lbs bone-in short ribs
2 tbsp olive oil
3 carrots, cut into 3-inch chunks
1 onion, quartered
2½ celery stalks, cut into 3-inch chunks
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1½ cups red wine
6 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
¼ bunch thyme
½ spring rosemary
1 lb dried casarecce (penne would also work well)

To finish

¼ cup unsalted butter
2 tsp sherry vinegar
parmesan cheese

Instructions

Season the short ribs with salt and pepper. In a large pot, heat olive oil until almost smoking. Add short ribs and sear on all sides until deeply browned, about 15 minutes. Remove short ribs and set aside.
Add the carrots, onion, and celery to the pan and cook until the onion is translucent, about 8 minutes, then add garlic and cook another minute. Add tomato paste and cook a minute more, then pour in the red wine, and cook it down until it is almost gone.
Return the short ribs to the pan and add chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme, and rosemary. Bring to a boil, then decrease the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook several hours, until the meat is falling off the bone.
Allow the short ribs to cool in the braising liquid, then pick the meat from the bone and tear it into pieces. Remove the vegetables and chop into small pieces. Add the meat and vegetables back to the braising liquid, and refrigerate if not using right away. (You may also wish to skim some of the excess fat from the pot at this stage.)
To finish: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; bring the pot with the short ribs to a simmer. Cook the pasta about 80 percent through, then drain and add it to the simmering short ribs along with the butter. Cook until the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Add the sherry vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste.

Notes

The original recipe called for one half onion; I used a whole onion and liked it. I didn't really know what they meant by ¼ bunch thyme, so I used four three-inch pieces of fresh thyme. For ½ spring of rosemary, I used a two-inch piece of fresh rosemary. The original recipe also calls for oven braising, which can be done in a dutch oven, in a 325 degree oven, for about 5 hours (cook until the meat is falling off the bone). Finally, McNaughton uses his own, fresh-made "garganelli" pasta in this dish, but suggests penne as an alternative; I used casarecce, which is similar.

Wordpress Recipe Plugin by EasyRecipe

Ottolenghi’s Slow-Cooked Chickpeas on Toast

Stuffed Cabbage

Thomas McNaughton’s Braised Short Ribs with Pasta

About Me

Legalese