Posted by Lucy Baker, May 2, 2008 at 7:15 PM
In this, the era of fast food restaurants, take-out dinners, and microwave ovens, it's easy to forget the pleasures of leisurely cooking. But spending all Sunday in the kitchen stirring and seasoning is one of life's greatest pleasures!
Today's Cook the Book recipe, excepted from Lidia's Italy, is for Tuscan Meat and Tomato Ragù. A rustic classic from the hills of Maremma, it's perfect for saucing spaghetti, or served over a scoop of creamy polenta. And while it needs to simmer for hours in order for the flavors to develop, the preparation method is simple, straightforward, and stress-free.
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Posted by Blake Royer, April 29, 2008 at 4:30 PM
This "mojo" sauce has nothing to do with the word for magic touch, but you could have fooled me: this is one of the most delicious marinades I've had in ages. The recipe comes from Our Latin Table, and describes mojo sauce paired with pork as what Cubans are weaned on and live for. It "might possibly have all the ingredients that make up Cuban cookery," which isn't surprising. The marinade is simply olive oil, garlic, oregano, cumin, and citrus, yet it's far more than the sum of its parts. This stuff tastes good enough to build an entire cuisine on.
It also did wonders for the juiciness of thick cut pork chops, though it may have helped that I also brined them beforehand. But I'm convinced that the acidity of the citrus—traditionally made from sour Cuban oranges, but in this case with a combination of orange and lime juice—makes its way into the chop and tenderizes. Though it wasn't quite warm enough outside to go through the trouble of lighting coals when I made this, it did fine on a very hot cast iron skillet. As soon as summer gets here, I'm keeping some of this marinade very close at hand—it will go fine with that one other Cuban ingredient that mojo doesn't have: rum. Is it warm enough for mojitos yet?
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 23, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I usually reserve eating ribeye for when I am alone. When the fiancée is off interviewing for jobs and going to school, I’m home alone with a simply prepared steak and usually absolutely no vegetables. It’s simple, indulgent, and slightly embarrassing. The only flourish of cooking prowess was a pan sauce, most often made with red wine. Sometimes I didn’t even bother—too many times the sauce would come out bitter or too fatty. I needed some help.
According to Simple to Spectacular, this is as simple as pan sauces get. Luckily, it doesn’t really taste like it. The trick, I’ve learned, is to let the pan cool slightly and drain as much of the fat from the pan before deglazing. I’m always leery of adding anything extraneous to my steaks, but the ginger and soy never feel like they’re trying to steal the steak’s thunder. And that’s the way it should be. What the ginger and soy do for this recipe is accentuate some of the higher notes. The results tickle the back of your tongue instead of obscuring the seared goodness of a perfect steak.
This is also the first time I’ve ever not put salt on a steak. It felt weird. But the soy sauce more than made up for the missing sodium.
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Posted by Blake Royer, April 22, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Sometimes I find myself in a rut when it comes to quick pasta tomato sauces. The usual canned tomatoes, a few herbs, garlic and onions—it's good, but it's a little boring. I thoroughly enjoy Batali's marinara on a regular basis, which grates carrots into the sauce, but I've been eating it all winter out of the freezer. When it's the middle of summer, I can chop up some juicy market heirloom tomatoes, marinate them with garlic, basil, and olive oil, then serve uncooked with hot linguine. But what about when tomatoes still suck and I'm out of ideas?
This recipe suggests simmering pork sausages in white wine, then using the resulting fat-infused liquid to flavor the sauce. I was further convinced by the use of butter instead of olive oil to begin the onions and garlic, which adds a little richness and creaminess to everything. And finally, freshly shelled peas are appearing at my farmer's market, and this recipe calls for those, too. Once again, Diana Seed's The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces came through in a clutch.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 9, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I've been having a lot of fun flipping through The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. It's unpretentious, easy to use, and full of tasty dishes that seem to be entirely too simple, if a little hard to believe. And this one is no different. The sauce is the perfect counterpoint to the broiled chicken—it takes on an almost mustard-like tang, but has a much brighter flavor thanks to the lemon. It's so perfect, in fact, that it's easy to forget that the recipe has raw potatoes in it.
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Posted by Blake Royer, April 8, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I'm usually suspicious of any alterations to traditional basil pesto—those fancy, misguided ideas like trading out pine nuts for pistachios. "Don't mess with perfection," is my feeling. Except in many cases, these other pestos aren't trying to mess up a good thing—they're traditions of their own. Pine nuts, basil, Parmesan, and olive oil may be the most popular and arguably the most sublime of these concoctions (known officially as pesto Genovese), but there are others great ones, like this one from Sicily: pesto Trapanese.
Other than replacing pine nuts with almonds, it's not a sweeping change. But the recipe also adds cherry tomatoes, and they offer a little sweetness. Their crushed juices also help counteract the relative dryness of the almonds, which, unlike softer pine nuts, refuse to give themselves up to the pesto—they remain distinct and crunchy, adding a wonderful textural interest to the dish that pesto Genovese sometimes lacks. I found that a little pasta water was the essential step to keep it from drying out too much and helping to bind everything together.
What are your favorite non-Genovese pestos?
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 17, 2008 at 3:30 PM
This dish succeeds almost in spite of itself. I mean, look at what the fish is up against; it has to fight against both bacon and mayonnaise for some kind of balance, with only a lemon to help its cause. But what wonders that lemon does—with a combination of zest and juice, it brightens every aspect of the dish making this seem somehow healthy. That doesn't mean it isn’t filling, though. The bacon makes the fish taste luscious and full bodied, almost like a pork chop, but without the grease.
I’ll thank Jamie Oliver and his great new cookbook, Cook with Jamie
, for this one. He just calls for a white fish, and although mahi mahi may be a little firmer than what he intended, it worked. And it couldn’t have really been easier, especially the sauce. The lemon mayonnaise is as simple to prepare as the name suggests. Jamie does recommend a homemade version of the mayonnaise, which would increase the prep time a little bit, but also acknowledges the jar stuff works fine in a pinch. I agree.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 14, 2008 at 4:00 PM
The fiancée and I have something for sweet potatoes, especially in fry form. We like them fried or baked, crisp or soggy. They are such an odd twist on an old standby, and they work more often than not. So I was quickly sold on this recipe, which presented not only big fat sweet potato fries but an interesting-looking sauce with lots of lime.
I suppose it’s a side dish, but we just dumped the wedges into a large bowl and went at them without any thought of a main course. It might not seem healthy attacking a large greasy stack of French fries, but these are baked, and the yogurt sauce felt light and satisfying. It succeeds because of the play between the pungent, earthy seasonings and the quick, zippy sauce. Either way, it’s another adaptation from Martha. And for that we thank her.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 14, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Enchiladas may not be an essential part of everyone’s cooking repertoire, but this recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook is so easy and versatile that I tend to be evangelical about it. Though the results are not authentically Mexican or even authentically Tex-Mex, they are consistently yummy.
The key here is that you can substitute two to three cups of just about anything pre-cooked for the three cups of chicken in the ingredients list. I like to make them with beans and kale, pulled pork, and even roasted potatoes and cauliflower. You could try beans and squash (inspired by 24 Boxes), and I’ve been meaning to try a breakfast version with scrambled eggs for a while now. (My only unsuccessful combination so far involved rice, which was just too starchy baked into the tortillas. This recipe is also not really good for cheese enchiladas. For cheese enchiladas, do yourself a favor and turn to Homesick Texan.)
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I’ve been dreaming about enchiladas recently. I’m not sure where the hankering came from, but it certainly wasn’t helped after I had some spectacularly bad ones at a local Tex-Mex outlet. I decided to tackle them myself. There is no standard sauce, and some can get very complicated. When I found this basic red sauce that contained six ingredients and could be done in less than 20 minutes, I gave it a shot. To my amazement, there’s not a tomato to be found in it. Shows how much I know about enchiladas.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, January 24, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Marcella Hazan, who introduced an America familiar with red sauce joints to true Italian food, is a teacher and writer with whom every home cook should spend some time. She was born in Italy but immigrated to the United States as a bride. Though she had never cooked before, she had to learn to feed her husband (hey, it was the 1950s), and luckily for all of us it turned out that she was no slouch. She began teaching Italian cooking in New York City and eventually published several books of her beautifully simple, authentic recipes.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
combines two books Hazan published in the 1970s. The food here is, for the most part, straightforward and homey, and the instructions are detailed and clear. I often turn to this book when I’m not sure what to do with a vegetable or need new ideas for saucing pasta, but there are lots of big meaty dishes as well.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, January 16, 2008 at 4:00 PM
Every time I trek back to the parents house to arrange plans for the fiancée to become the wife, I sneak a peak at my mom’s enormous cookbook collection. She has a wide arrange of professional classics, and her fair number of local books of varying quality. The latter are usually the most fun to wade through, and that’s where this recipe came from. It’s called Colorado Farmers' Market Cookbook
, and it’s fairly typical of most farmer’s market books. It’s complete with lots of pictures, and talk about eating fresh, local ingredients. Which is all well and good, unless you live a few states away.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, January 15, 2008 at 9:00 PM
Here's an extra recipe for guacamole from this week's Cook the Book, Techniques of Healthy Cooking.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, January 15, 2008 at 9:00 PM
Here's an extra recipe for tomatillo salsa from this week's Cook the Book, Techniques of Healthy Cooking.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 4, 2007 at 4:15 PM
James Beard, "the dean of American gastronomy," on capers: "I use capers a lot. I like their distinctive, herby flavor and the additional bite imparted by the vinegar, which makes them a most piquant and interesting condiment or seasoning."
This recipe, English in origin, is for what Beard calls a "famous and rather unusual cream sauce, to which the pickled buds are added at the last minute, as the traditional accompaniment to boiled leg of mutton or lamb."
As with all the Cook the Book entries this week, this recipe comes from Beard on Food
.
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