Romesco Sauce

One of the first things people say when coming to my house for the first time is, “wow, you have a lot of cookbooks.” Which is absolutely true. My apartment has two bookcases and three shelves are dedicated to cookbooks. Maybe four of them belong to my roommate. Jeff and I get a lot of cookbooks as presents and we also buy a lot of them at thrift sales and used book stores. But on any given day when I’m looking around for what to make for dinner, I rarely crack open a cookbook and if I do it’s even more rare that I follow the recipe.



Don’t let this confession make you think that my cookbooks sit on the shelf gathering dust. I use them all the time just perhaps not for what most people do. I use about 5% of my cookbooks and the rest I just fish out the sauce-type recipes and make those over and over. By the time I get around to making a meal, I’m often too tired to go out and get any missing ingredients or learn a complicated new method. But by taking the sauce recipes and adding them to my already-tried techniques I could get a whole new dish with fewer complications. And I could arguably claim to be using my cookbooks and thus justify their ever growing number. Perfect.



This is how I fell in love with Romesco sauce, a recipe that came from one of my fanciest cookbooks and which is incredibly easy to make. It uses a lot of odds and ends – a few almonds and hazelnuts, the ends of a loaf of bread toasted golden, and that annoyingly small amount of canned tomatoes left from another experiment. And the end result is much, much more than the sum of its parts. It has a dark and earthy flavor from all the dried chilis and because it is doesn’t require emulsification it can be easily thinned out to create a marinade without creating an oily mess.



The recipe is pretty high in ingredients but don’t let that keep you from making it, especially since it’s mostly a toast-blend-and-serve kind of thing. It’s endlessly versatile – the original recipe it came from called for the sauce to be served on potatoes (an excellent choice) but I also spread it on bread, add it to hummus or yogurt sauce, use it to marinate meat or fish, scramble it into eggs, and drizzle it on roasted vegetables. A jar of it will keep in the fridge for up to three weeks but why wait that long? I find a well made sauce can perk up just about any meal and turn it from weeknight-standby to new-and-delicious, in about 3 tablespoons.



Romesco Sauce
Lightly adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin

Makes 1-2 cups of sauce, depending on thickness.

5 dried ancho chiles – you can substitute New Mexico, pasilla, California/Anaheim, or guajillo chiles
2 tbs raw almonds
2 tbs raw hazelnuts
4 tbs plus 1 cup olive oil
1 slice white bread – any will do – about 1 inch thick
1/3 cup canned tomatoes
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbs chopped flat-leaf or Italian parsley
Juice of half a lemon
Salt to taste, about 2 tsp

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 375F. Spread nuts on a baking sheet and toast for 8-10 minutes until they are golden brown and aromatic.*

Remove and discard the stems and seeds of the chiles. Soak them in warm water for about 15 minutes to soften. Strain and pat dry.

Heat a large sauce pan on high heat with 2 tbs of olive oil. Fry the slice of bread on both sides until a deep golden brown. Remove and cut into one inch cubes.

Keep the pan on high heat and add 2 more tbs of olive oil to the pan and add the chiles and sauté until they blister slightly, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and season with ½ tsp of salt. Cook until tomato juices have mostly evaporated. Turn off heat and let cool slightly.

In a food processor, blender, or with an immersion blender, pulse the toasted nuts, garlic, and bread until coarsely ground. Add the chile/tomato mixture, parsley, and lemon juice and process until smooth and well distributed.

With the motor running add olive oil, up to one cup until the sauce reaches your desired texture.** The sauce may separate into oils and solids – that is normal and it will mix back together with about a minute of blending. Taste to adjust seasoning. Refrigerate for up to three weeks.


*You can skip this step entirely and use roasted nuts instead. I like the extra toasty flavor but it doesn’t make a big difference.
** I prefer to add only ¼ cup of oil and keep it more like a paste because I find it’s easier to use that way. If I need it to be thinner for a marinade, I thin out only the amount I’m using.

Butternut Squash Soup

The weather here has been cold and gray and partly rainy since last week and that means all I want to do is eat soup. To my mind, there are two kinds of soup. There’s the kind that is chock full of things – potatoes, carrots, noodles, meat, maybe some barley or rice. Soup so full of bits and pieces that you could almost skip the broth entirely. Then there’s soup that is only liquid, made of only a few ingredients but so intensely flavored by those few that you scrape the bowl to get every last drop.



I love ordering this second kind of soup in restaurants – it’s so rich and smooth, obviously full of butter and requiring annoying amounts of time. At home I stuck to the soups with lots of pieces of vegetable, meat, and grains, until recently when I discovered a surprising trick to homemade soup. In The French Laundry Cookbook, of which I own a well loved (read: stained) copy, there’s a small ode to soups and how they’re made. For a man known for extremely complex dishes with many, many steps, Thomas Keller’s approach to soup is fascinatingly simple: “Identify your ingredient, cook it perfectly, and adjust the consistency.” Perhaps the “perfectly” is not so simple to achieve but the idea of good soup coming from careful preparation of one or two ingredients caught my eye and I started experimenting with this principle.



The recipe below is for butternut squash soup but it can easily be adapted for just about any vegetable whose flavor improves with roasting (cauliflower, parsnips, broccoli, carrots). The overall method remains pretty much the same – cook the vegetable to the desired taste, puree it, and thin it with water or stock. While the French Laundry method requires straining the resulting puree several times through progressively smaller straining devices, I’m not looking for perfection in my kitchen, just comfort and deliciousness. If I’m feeling industrious I might pass the vegetables through a food mill or my fancy chinois. But normally I just blend them for a few minutes on high using my immersion blender and call it a day. You can add cream for the additional flavor and body but it mutes the flavor of the vegetables, as will butter. I like to keep things simple by adding just a drizzle of oil to my bowl at the table.



For added flavor during cooking my favorite low-cost flavor addition to homemade soup is Parmesan rinds. I save the ends of all my Parmesan wedges after I’ve grated them to the bone and then throw one or two into soups. It adds an extra flavor without the unpleasant graininess that can happen when you put cheese in soup and let it simmer for a while. However, the soup can easily be made vegan by omitting the rinds and still tastes excellent on its own. As a low maintenance recipe with high quality output this soup is something I can really get behind when the weather turns gray. A hot bowl served with some thick bread or a crisp salad is really all it takes at the end of gray day to make things look sunnier. Maybe some slippers too.



Butternut squash soup
Method adapted from the French Laundry Cookbook

Makes 3-4 servings, depending on your preferred texture.

1 large butternut squash, about 3-4 pounds
2-3 tbs olive oil
1 tbs kosher salt
2-4 cups stock or water, more if needed
2 parmesan rinds
Salt and pepper to taste
Good quality oil for serving

Preheat oven to 425F. Peel and chop squash into approximately 1 inch chunks. Line a baking sheet with foil and oil it lightly with about 1 tbs of olive oil to prevent sticking. Arrange squash on the pan, making sure each piece is resting on the sheet, not on it’s neighbor. Drizzle with remaining oil and sprinkle with 1 tbs salt. Roast for 1hour, tossing the squash halfway through to ensure that it cooks evenly and doesn’t burn on the side touching the pan.

While the squash is still warm, puree using a food processor, food mill, blender, or immersion blender. For a smoother texture, pass the resulting puree through a fine-mesh strainer or chinois. Place the vegetable puree in a large pot and add liquid until it reaches desired consistency. Place the pot on low heat, add parmesan rinds, and simmer for at least 30 minutes. If left longer, cover the soup to prevent excess loss of moisture. Taste after 30 minutes and season with salt and pepper until it reaches the desired flavor. Discard rinds before serving. Serve with a drizzle of good quality oil and some chewy bread or a salad for an easy rainy day meal.

Chess Pie

I have a tendency to make unusual word associations, often involving food. Certain words remind me of food and then I have this strange imagery inserted into whatever conversation I’m having. For example, the word “extraordinary” always makes me think of “strawberry.” I’ve found that in conversation, “extraordinary” is often said right before the word “achievement” and then I have this image of a strawberry with a gold star while everyone else is talking about meeting fundraising goals in record time or something of that nature. Strange? Perhaps. Worrying? Never.



A few weeks ago I was playing an ultimate frisbee tournament with a team named “Occupy Sesame Street.” And as tradition goes, right before we took the field each game we would form a huddle and cheer and generally our cheer would be “Occupy.” The team played a total of 6 games over two days and somewhere around game 3 I started to hear “Occu-PIE.” Every time we broke from our huddle all I could think was, “Mmm, pie.” At one point I even asked the team if they heard it too – everyone kind of looked at me like I had grown a new head and then we all laughed it off and I didn’t mention it again. But all weekend I kept thinking of pie and how I could get some.



Here’s the problem: I will not buy a slice of pie with mediocre crust. I just can’t do it. So if I want pie I am often forced to make it for myself. I know. My life is just so hard. But I must say, you do an excellent job playing such a small violin.



I lasted approximately three hours after getting home from the tournament, if you don’t include the time I spent sleeping, before I made myself a pie. I woke up, opened the fridge to find some breakfast, saw a half container of leftover buttermilk, and immediately started thinking about chess pie. Chess pie, for the Yankees among you who have never experienced this Southern delight, is a custard pie flavored with lemon or vinegar. It’s pretty typical in the South but not so common above the Mason-Dixon line and I think it’s time to expose that delicious secret. This is a one bowl pie, not including the crust , and it takes about ten minutes to throw the filling together if you spend five of them looking for the ingredients in the fridge. And the result is delicious – silky delicate custard with just enough sweetness countered by the tang of buttermilk and lemon. This pie is also best served the day it’s baked so invite over a few friends and share it around. Or don’t. I won’t tell.



Chess Pie
From the Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

1 recipe flaky piecrust
1 egg white

3 eggs
1 ½ tsp cornstarch
1 cup sugar
1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 stick (8 tbs) butter, melted and cooled
2 tsp lemon zest
Juice of half a lemon (approximately 1-2 tbs)
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425F for at least 20 minutes so that it is uniformly hot. Roll out pie dough and arrange it in the pie pan. Place a piece of parchment or oiled tinfoil on the unbaked shell and fill with pie beans or pie weights.* Bake for 20 minutes. Then remove the beans or weights and lightly prick the crust with a fork, making sure the tines only go halfway through the dough so the filling won’t leak. Continue baking crust for 5-10 minutes until it pale golden brown. Check it halfway through and prick it again if the dough begins to bubble up. Remove the prebaked crust from the oven and when it has cooled slightly but is still warm, brush it with egg white.** Let crust cool to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 325F and place an oven rack on the lowest level of the oven. Put a foil lined baking sheet on the rack to preheat with the oven.

In a large bowl, combine egg, cornstarch, and sugar and whisk until well mixed. Beat in buttermilk, alternating with the melted butter, in several parts. Beat in the lemon zest and juice, nutmeg, and salt. Pour the filling into the dough and bake for one hour or until surface is lightly browned and filling is set. The filling will jiggle slightly when moved but will not stick to your finger when lightly pressed. A knife inserted between the crust and filling should come out clean. Serve at room temperature

*I use a half pound of black beans that I keep in a bag clearly marked “pie beans” so that I don’t accidentally try to cook them.
** Egg white will create a shield so that the wet filling won’t make the bottom crust soggy.

Chimichurri Couscous

Parsley gets a bit of a bad rap. It’s so often the unfortunate garnish or the superfluous ingredient that people seem to dismiss it as a serious ingredient. For years when a recipe called for parsley I would like as not skip it. I saw no real point in using parsley, other than for color. Also at fault are some horrible memories I have of eating (or at least attempting to eat) curly parsley while feeling like my mouth was full of plastic toothpick frills.



Then I fell in love with chimichurri sauce. I loved the tang and the heat, but mostly I loved the clean, grassy, herbal flavor of the parsley that makes up the majority of the sauce. There are of course about as many variations of chimichurri as there are people who make it, but most recipes agree that parsley plays a key role, if not the sole herbal element. So when my roommate bought an extra bunch of parsley and asked if I wanted to use it, I had a good idea where it was going to end up.



Chimichurri as a sauce on already cooked foods is great but as a dressing for an Israeli couscous salad it leaves sometimes to be desired. The chile flakes that distribute heat so well through the oil and vinegar provide an uneven heat when mixed into a salad. Some bites have too much heat, some none at all. The raw garlic that’s traditional in chimichurri also doesn’t play nice in a room temperature salad. Without something rich and fatty to cut through, the sharpness of the garlic tends to overwhelm just about everything, including my breath for the next day or so. Those flavors are still really important to the finished product so I gave them both a bit of a pick me up to help them meld better in the final dish.



To tackle the chile flakes I infused them into some neutral oil to mix into the final dish. Infused oil is a great way to evenly distribute a dried herb throughout a salad. Add the herbs to cold oil and put it over medium heat for a few minutes until the oil takes on the scent of the herb. Then strain it and bottle it for future use. The chile oil added a nice even heat to the couscous and it doesn’t hurt that the dried chile flakes dye the oil a brilliant orange. To mellow the garlic I used roasted cloves instead of fresh which added the garlic flavor without the sharp sting. Even if you’re not making this dish, roasted garlic is a great thing to have around to add to recipes or just to spread on good bread with some quality olive oil. Additionally, the soft garlic can be a great addition to salad dressing since it will dissolve into the vinegar with a little whisking.



The final dish has a good amount of heat and some sweet nuttiness from the roasted garlic, but it’s the parsley that really steals the show. Green and herbal, it’s a great example of how an overlooked ingredient can make a huge difference in a dish.

Note: I made this with Israeli couscous because it’s what I had around the house. Would it be equally delicious with other grains, including regular couscous, barley, farro, quinoa, and pasta? You bet.

Chimichurri Couscous

1 cup uncooked Israeli couscous
2 cups water or chicken stock
1 tbs salt + additional for seasoning

1/3 cup neutral oil, such as canola or safflower
1 tbs red chile flakes
¼ cup red wine vinegar
4-6 cloves roasted garlic (recipe below)
1 large bunch flat leaf or Italian parsley, finely minced

Bring the water or stock to a boil in a medium pot and add the Israeli couscous and the salt. Stir in the couscous and cook for 6-8 minutes or until couscous is tender all the way through. Drain and set aside.

Place the oil in a small pot and add the chile flakes to the cold oil. Place it over medium low heat and cook for 5 minutes or until oil takes on the scent of the chile flakes and turns a bright orange color. The longer it cooks the spicier the oil but avoid burning the chile flakes which will make the oil bitter. When oil reaches the desired spice level, take it off the heat and strain out the chile flakes.

Mash garlic cloves into vinegar and whisk until garlic is fully incorporated. Mix vinegar/garlic mixture with oil to create a loose vinaigrette. Combine vinaigrette, couscous, and parsley and stir to distribute evenly. Taste to adjust seasoning. Serve warm or at room temperature.



Easy Roasted Garlic

1 head raw garlic
2 tbs olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400F. Place the garlic in a small baking dish and add water to come a quarter inch up the side of the dish.* Pour the olive oil over the garlic head and cover with foil. Roast for 1 hour or until garlic cloves are soft to the touch. Let cool and peel cloves. Store peeled cloves in a well sealed container in the fridge. Avoid plastic if possible because it can hold the smell of garlic even after washing.

*Roasting the garlic in a small amount of water prevent the bottom of the garlic from burning and adding a bitter flavor to the roasted cloves.

How To - Flaky Piecrust

Ahh, pie crust. Pie dough is one of those things that is pretty good from a package. But well done homemade pie dough can take a pie from “this is good pie” to “this pie is amazing.” I make a pretty mean pie crust. And there’s no reason you shouldn’t too. Don’t know how? Well this is your lucky day.

“This pie crust is so good that it makes anyone who uses store bought pie crust look like someone who doesn’t know how to make pie crust.” – Michael Tyler Frederickson.

Nicely said! Added bonus, when you make this pie dough you know exactly what goes into it. And it doesn’t include Yellow 5 or Red 40 or preservatives. Unless you’re into that thing. In which case this recipe will not help. But for the rest of us, let’s begin.

You’ll need:
1 stick (8 tbs) cold butter
1 cup flour, sift before measuring – this part is really important for consistent results! It minimizes differences in the amount measured due to how tightly the flour is packed.
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tbs apple cider vinegar - makes the crust more tender and relaxes the gluten formed while mixing.
Up to 1/3 cup of water, added 2 tbs at a time.

Step 1: Place the flour and salt in a mixing bowl and add the butter, cut in slices. Mix the flour/salt and butter together using just your fingers. Don’t use your whole hand to do the mixing since your palms are usually pretty warm and you want to keep the butter as cold as possible. Mix until most of the flour has at least some butter on it but there are still some large chunks of butter hanging around. Those big pieces are essential to lovely flaky layers so err on the side of undermixing.



Step 2: Add the vinegar and then add water a few tablespoons at a time until the flour comes together into a dough. It should all stick together but it shouldn’t stick to the bowl or to your hands when you press it.



Step 3: Place the dough on a piece of plastic wrap and flatten it with your hands into a disc about 6 inches across. This can also be a last minute check for stickiness. If the dough sticks to your fingers when you press it out, sprinkle it with a little extra four, then wrap it up. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. You can even make the dough a few days ahead and leave it in the fridge or freeze it for up to a month before using.



Step 4: Roll it out so that it’s about an inch or two bigger than your pie pan on all sides. This part will be important for sealing the top crust or making a pretty crimped edge. And those lovely big pieces of butter in the dough? Those are going to make some nice flaky pastry!



Step 5: The best way I’ve found to transfer dough is sprinkle extra flour on top, fold it into quarters, then place it so the tip of the triangle is in the center of the pie pan and unfold. Works like a charm.



Bonus step: Crimp the edges by folding that extra inch of dough under so you now have a double layer of dough on the rim of the pie pan with the edge hidden under the dough. If some areas of the dough are longer, rip that piece off and use it to patch a shorter piece. To get that traditional crimp place your index finger and middle finger on the outer edge of the dough about a half inch apart and your thumb on the inner edge of the dough between them. Pinch lightly. Now move your index finger to the indent made by your middle finger and repeat. End result, a beautifully crimped edge.



Use with your favorite pie recipe. Also with your second favorites. Try this one. Wow your friends. Tell them, “It was easy.” Right?

Madeleines

My kitchen is not particularly large. This is perhaps not a unique problem for someone who rents an apartment in a city, especially if that city is San Francisco. But it has had a serious impact on my kitchen purchases over the last few years. Alarming quickly our cabinet filled with dishes, pantry goods, odd Tupperware lids, pots and pans, as well as my relatively small collection of bake ware. So when it comes time to buy a new piece, I always have to consider – how much do I want this and what else can I use it for?



This has led to several dilemmas where I want something that has only one purpose. Like a special pan to make Madeleine cookies. Light and chewy – they are really everything good about cake but in a cookie size with a beautiful shape. But I just couldn’t justify the space for something that only makes one thing.



I apparently talked about my love of Madeleines a lot because a few years ago some great friends bought me one for my birthday. And well, you can’t just throw away such a thoughtful present, right? I didn’t think so. So I decided that to make up for the fact that it had only one use, I would just make a lot of Madeleine cookies with it.



I can’t say that I’ve kept up that part of the bargain as well as I should. With all the other interesting dessert recipes to try (like a delicious pie I’ll be sharing soon!) there just aren’t as many Madeleines in my life as I’d like. That’s not to say I don’t make them a lot. I make Madeleines probably more than any other cookie so at this point I’ve learned the finer points of how to make these delicious “tumor cookies,” as a friend once called them.



The lemon is my favorite thing about Madeleines so I don’t fuss around with other flavors. There’s zest mixed into the dough and I also like some extra lemon flavor just before baking. I take toasted lemon powder (strips of lemon peel, pith removed, left to dry for a few days, toasted lightly for a few minutes, then ground in a spice grinder) and sprinkle it on the tops before baking. It increases the lemon flavor and aroma without the tartness that lemon juice would add. Normally I like a little tart and sweet but it just doesn’t work here – use extra lemon zest if you don’t want to be bothered making lemon powder. And if you don’t have the Madeleine pan, you can use a muffin tin instead and divide the batter evenly among the 12 cups. They won’t have the nice seashell shape but you’ll still get that sweet bump in the middle.



Madeleines
Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Makes 12

2/3 cup flour
¾ tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
½ cup sugar
Zest of 1 lemon or 2 tsp of toasted lemon powder
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
6 tbs butter, melted and cooled

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Put sugar and zest in a large mixing bowl and stir with your fingers until the sugar is fragrant. Working with a whisk, hand mixer, or stand mixer, beat in eggs until light and foamy. Whisk in vanilla, then flour mix, and then butter. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, 6 or 8 is ideal.

Preheat over to 400F. Butter your Madeleine pan/muffin tray well to ensure that cookies release after baking. Spoon the batter into the molds, making sure it’s evenly divided. Once all the batter is in, give the pan a little shake to ensure that the batter is evenly distributed in each mold. Bake for 10 minutes or until the top are puffed up and the edges of the cookies are a dark golden brown. Immediately remove cookies by turning the pan upside down and then place them on a cooling rack; use a knife to pry out any stragglers – removing them quickly ensures a crisp edge. Eat warm or at room temperature, depending on how you like your cake.

A Call For Internet Freedom

No post today. Instead, check this out. Let Congress know that internet censorship is not the way to deal with piracy.