A Kitchen Primer

This is the sauce I grew up with, the classic Italian-American take on red sauce with a meat base.  I did learn to make it from my mother, as did my sisters and my nephew, but by now all our sauces are different.  The amount & kind of meat is variable, but my mother’s rule was to always use both beef and pork, and if possible to include some bone-in meat to give the sauce body.  It was much easier to find bone-in cuts in her day, but it is still worth trying.

For a moderately large pot of sauce, enough for 2 to 3 pounds of pasta:

• 2 lb of beef – chuck roast, short ribs, or some other cut usually used for stewing, trimmed & cut up
• 1 lb bone-in shoulder pork chops or neck (unless you used bone-in beef, in which case you can substitute more sausage)
• 1 lb Italian pork sausage, sweet or hot as you prefer
• 1 sweet onion, chopped
• 4 or 5 large cloves of garlic, sliced thin
• 2 or 3 dried hot peppers
• 2 or 3 fillets of anchovy
• 3 large cans crushed tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato paste
• vegetable oil and/or olive oil

Trim the beef and cut it up into cubes about 1-2″ across.ch across.  Sprinkle a little salt on the beef & brown in a little vegetable oil.  If you don’t have a big enough pan to brown all the meat at once, do it in batches; it should brown, not steam.

Cut the sausage into pieces about 2″ long and brown in the same oil, then do the same for the pork chops.

In the same oil, saute the onion.  After a few minutes add the garlic, then the peppers, then the anchovies.  Cook until the onion and garlic are translucent; the garlic can brown a little but be careful not to let it get too brown or it will get bitter.

When the vegetables are softened, add the canned tomatoes.  Rinse the cans in a little water & add it as well.  Add the meat back into the pot.  Add the tomato paste, again rinsing the can in a little water.  Bring the pot to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover but leave the cover ajar.

Cook for a long time – at least 4 hours.  Stir from time to time, and add water as necessary to keep the volume of sauce constant.

This is easily enough sauce for three pounds of pasta.

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A slightly simplified version of Julia Child’s classic recipe.

I cook this in a large saute pan (12″, 5 qt.).  If you don’t have one, you can use a smaller frying pan to brown & saute, and then transfer everything to a large stew pot to finish cooking.  You will need at least 3 utensils to make this dish: either a big saute pan and two smaller fry pans, or a big stew pan and 2 smaller fry pans. The stew pot or saute pan, and the onion pan, should have lids.

Ingredients:

• Eight chicken thighs (bone in)
• One sweet onion (Spanish or Vidalia), chopped.
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery, chopped.
• 1 or 2 carrots, chopped.
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, minced.
• 1 or 2 tablespoons tomato paste.
• a bottle of red wine (can be cheap but must be drinkable, better young than old)
• olive oil, butter, salt, pepper as needed
• chicken broth (a quart box should be enough)

Cooked separately and added later:

• a dozen or so small white onions.
• a pound or so of white mushrooms, cleaned and quartered.

Chop the sweet onion, celery, and carrots fairly fine – 1/4″ dice is about right.  Set aside.

Peel the white onions & set aside (this is easier if you drop them in boiling water for a minute first).

Salt & pepper the chicken & brown the chicken in a little olive oil.  Remove from saute pan (or transfer to stew pot).

Add the chopped vegetables to the saute pan.  Mince and add the garlic.  Saute gently (“sweat”) for about 10 minutes.  They should be soft but should not brown.  Add them to the stew pot, or add the chicken back to the saute pan.

Add the wine & bring to a boil.  Stir in the tomato paste, add chicken broth as needed to cover, and bring back to a simmer.  This will now cook for 35 to 40 minutes while you prepare the trimmings.

As soon as the chicken is in the pot, take a separate pan and saute the white onions in a little oil until they begin to brown.  Add a little chicken broth, lower heat, and cover.  These will be ready when the chicken is.

Finally, saute the mushrooms in a little butter for about 10 to 15 minutes.  The secret here is to use fairly high heat & not crowd the pan – you want them to saute, not steam.  When they’re done you can turn this pan off & set it aside.

From time to time, check the chicken, flip the pieces over at least once, and stir them around.  Allow the sauce to reduce by about half, taste and add salt if you think it needs it. It will get somewhat thick, but you will probably want to add a little thickening agent.  I use white flour, but if you want it gluten free you will need a substitute.  Cornstarch is very easy to find but makes the sauce sort of shiny (it’s what’s used in Chinese stir fries).  Potato starch is probably better if you can find it, or rice flour.  Any of these is used in the same way:  make a paste of 2 tablespoons of starch with an equal amount of cold water; then slowly stir it, a bit at a time, into the pot, until the sauce seems thick enough.  The effect is not always immediate so I recommend you add you thickener gradually.

Finally, fold in the cooked onions and mushrooms, and serve with salad & a baguette.

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My go-to non-vegetarian pot-luck dish.

• 3 or 4 full-sized potatoes (red or yukon gold), peeled & cut into slices about 1/2″ thick
• about 8 chicken thighs, bone in
• juice of a couple lemons
• olive oil, maybe 1/4 cup
• rosemary, a couple of branches, leaves stripped & chopped; or 1 tsp dry
• a dried red pepper or two, crushed, or some crushed red pepper, or 1/2 tsp cayenne
• a few garlic cloves, peeled & sliced
• salt to taste (maybe 1/2 teaspoon, less if there is salt in the tomatoes)
• a big can (28oz) whole italian-style (plum) tomatoes in juice (not crushed, not in puree, etc.)

Mix oil, lemon juice, rosemary, salt, hot pepper, garlic. put a little in a baking pan, just to dampen it. arrange a layer of potatoes on the bottom of the pan. Add a little more of the sauce, then arrange the chicken pieces, skin side up. Open & drain the tomatoes, cut each whole tomato in half. Put 1/2 tomato on top of each piece of chicken. Pour the rest of the sauce over the top.

Cook at 375 for about 50 minutes to an hour. It’s done when you can cut into a thigh near the bone & the juice is clear, not bloody.

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This is a problematic recipe. I’ve been looking for a recipe that Mary likes as well as she does the Bolognese at Siena in Providence. A little research showed a general consensus but a lot of variation.  My first attempt had promise but clearly needed adjustment.

Here’s a draft recipe, with proposed adjustments:

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 lb ground pork
• 1/4 lb pancetta, diced
• 1/2 large sweet onion (Spanish or Vidallia), chopped fine
• 2 large stalks celery, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• [1/2 small can tomato paste]
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 pint milk
• 3 bay leaves
• salt & pepper to taste
• [cream or half-and-half to taste (perhaps 1/2 cup to start …)]

Saute the pancetta for a few minutes but do not brown.  Add the onions & sweat until translucent, about 10 to 15 minutes.  Add the carrots, celery, and bay, and sweat for another 10 minutes.

Push the vegetables aside & gradually add the chopped meat in 6 or 8 small batches, browning each batch before adding the next.  Season each batch with salt and pepper.  The idea is to saute the meat without accumulating water.  At the same time, you do not want to brown the vegetables.  [This turns out to be hard.  It might help to use a large saute pan & to push the vegetables off to the side.  Do not use too high a flame.  Or maybe the thing to do is remove the vegetables while browning the meat, then put them back]

Add the milk and simmer until it is mostly absorbed.  Do the same with the wine.  Finally add the tomatoes, reduce to a low simmer, partially cover, and cook for 2 to 3 hours. [Some recipes insist that the wine goes first, others are equally adamant that the milk goes first.  All agree that the liquid should mostly evaporate]  If necessary, add a little beef stock or water to keep the pot from drying out.

The above results in a tasty but almost solid sauce that is difficult to spread over pasta and lacks the creamy mouth feel I associate with Bolognese.  The remedy appears to be to add some cream (or half-and-half) at the end of the cooking.  Just heat through & serve over tagliatelli or other broad noodles.

The sauce is also brown rather than the pink Mary recalled.  Adding a little tomato paste would remedy this.

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With Hurricane Irene bearing down on us last night, it was time to scrounge through the freezer & cupboards to find ingredients for dinner.  As it turned out, we had a pound of frozen jumbo shrimp (Trader Joe’s), and (surprise!) some pasta.  So I made pasta and shrimp with garlic, hot pepper, and saffron.  I suppose you could call this my version of shrimp scampi (I know, that translates as “shrimp shrimp,” but everybody knows it actually means “shrimp with tons of garlic”).  I’ve recorded it as I made it last night.

To serve two (generously):

• 1/2 lb uncooked shrimp, peeled (and thawed!)
• 1/2 lb pasta: I used maccheroni alla chiatarra, but thin spaghetti or linguini would work as well
• 3 large cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
• 1  dried hot pepper
• 1 red pepper, seeded and julienned (cut into matchstick-sized pieces)
• 12 grape or cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• pinch of saffron
• splash of white wine
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• olive oil

If the shrimp is frozen, remove it from its package and put it in a large bowl of cold water to thaw.  Once it is thawed, peel it if necessary.

Put a big pot of water on for the pasta.

Prepare the vegetables: peel and slice the garlic, seed and chop the pepper, cut up the tomatoes.

Once the water is boiling, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a saute pan.

When the oil is hot:

• Put the pasta in its water & note the time (it will take 8 to 10 minutes to cook, depending on the actual type of pasta you use)
• Put the hot pepper and garlic in the oil & stir.
• As soon as the garlic begins to turn color, add the shrimp and red pepper.  Lower heat to keep the garlic from burning.
• After 2 or 3 minutes, turn the shrimp over.
• After another 2 or 3 minutes, add the white wine & allow to boil off for a minute, then lower heat
• Add the tomatoes, saffron, and lemon juice & heat gently while the pasta finishes cooking
• Taste and add salt if desired.
• When the pasta is done, drain it, add the sauce, and serve.

Comments and possible variations:

• My shrimp were really big, so I cut them up into 3 chucks each.  Leaving them whole makes for a more impressive presentation, but means you won’t get bits of shrimp as you eat your pasta.
• If you have smaller shrimp, it will cook faster, so plan accordingly.  You don’t want to overcook the shrimp.
• The tomatoes were cute but the skins were annoying.  Next time, I think I’ll blanch,  peel, and chop 2 or 3 plum tomatoes if I have them.
• It could have used another hot pepper.

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This is a great one pot meal. The ingredients are inexpensive but the resulting dish is impressive enough to serve to guests.  My recipe is a variant of one published by Pierre Franey in More 60-Minute Gourmet. Both this book and its predecessor 60-Minute Gourmet are highly recommended.  Though they are out of print it’s easy to find a decent copy used at Amazon.

Unlike Franey, who uses a whole chicken, I generally use chicken thighs (bone-in).  Whole legs (thigh + drumstick) are also good, but if you use them you should separate the thigh from the drumstick – if you haven’t done it before, it’s a bit tricky to find the right spot to cut – you want to go through the cartilege, not the bone.  Bone-in thighs need longer to cook than boneless cuts, which means the rice will have enough time to cook without drying out the meat.

Saffron has the reputation of being very expensive.  It is expensive, if you consider its cost per ounce, but what is often missed is that a pinch of saffron doesn’t weigh very much, and is enough to flavor (and color) a potfull of food.   Depending on where you buy it and in what quantity, I would guess that this represents less than a dollar’s worth of saffron.  A sweet onion costs about as much, and yet nobody seems to think using an onion in a dish like this is extravagant.  If you like saffron, you should consider buying it in quantity.  My last order was from saffron.com, and 1/2 ounce has lasted me several years.   If you have the option, always buy thread saffron rather than powdered.

A note on quantities: the original recipe called for less rice, but it always seemed that the rice went before the chicken, so I’ve upped it from 1 cup to 1 1/2.  You could easily go to 2 cups if you like rice.  Once you’ve decided on a quantity of rice, figure on about 2 1/2 cups of liquid for each cup of rice.  This will produce a slightly soupy result, if you want it drier use only 2 cups of liquid per cup of rice.

Finally, you should use a pan that allows you to spread the chicken out in one layer & still leaves some room for the other ingredients.  A 12″ frying pan is ideal.  If you don’t have a big enough pan, use 2, and if necessary saute the chicken in batches & transfer 1/2 to another pot to finish.

To serve 4:

• 8 chicken thighs, bone-in
• olive oil
• one large sweet onion (Spanish or Vidallia), chopped
• 2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 red peppers, cored & seeded, chopped
• generous pinch stem saffron
• a large tomato, cored & cut up; or 1/2 can plum tomoatoes, cut up.  You can substitute diced canned tomatoes but avoid crushed or pureed tomato if possible
• 1 cup dry white wine (optional – if you leave this out, compensate with a little more chicken broth)
• 1 1/2 cups rice – I prefer Arborio, but you can use ordinary long-grained rice instead.
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 1 crumbled dried red pepper, or 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes, or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 cup frozen peas
• salt and pepper to taste

Saute the chicken pieces in a little olive oil, about 3 to 5 minutes per side.  Add the onion, garlic, pepper, and saffron, and continue sauteing for another 5 minutes (the vegetables should not brown).  Add the wine & allow to boil for a minute or two.  Then, add all the remaining ingredients except the peas.  Bring back to a boil, adjust heat to a simmer, and cover.  Cook for about 20 minutes, stirring periodically.  After 10 minutes, flip the chicken pieces over.  Try to make sure the rice doesn’t stick to the pan & that no rice grains are left high & dry outside of the liquid.

At this point, you should check to see if the chicken is done.  Choose one of the larger thighs & cut into it down to the bone; it should look cooked & the juices should not run red.  If in doubt, give it another 5 minutes.

Finally, sprinkle the frozen peas over the dish, toss to mix, adjust the seasonings, and simmer for another 5 minutes to heat the peas through.

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Dried fruit, stewed with spices and an orange or lemon, makes a fine dessert by itself, as a topping for vanilla ice cream, or as filling for a pound cake.  The recipe is a slight elaboration of one I found in Laurel’s Kitchen.  Quantities are approximate.

• 1 lb dried peaches or apricots
• 1 lb dried pears
• 1 lb raisins or dried currants
• 1 orange sliced thin, peel and all.
• 2 sticks cinnamon
• 4 or 5 whole allspice
• 6 or 8 whole cloves
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• (optional) 1/2 cup sugar or honey

Chop the dried fruit into bite sized pieces, or smaller if you intend to use as a filling.

Place all ingredients in a saucepan, cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil and simmer 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until the fruit is plump and soft.

Refrigerate. Will keep more or less indefinitely

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Something I make every year for Christmas. I usually double the following recipe, which is for one pound of pecans.

• 1/2 cup Bourbon (decent quality, but no point wasting your “sipping whiskey.”  I usually use Evan Williams.)
• 1 lb. raw, unsalted pecan halves
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil (corn oil, or something neutral – not olive)
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp. angostura bitters
• 1/2 cup white or raw sugar
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 to 1 tsp. salt

Note: I generally start with 1/2 tsp of salt & add more after tasting.

Preheat oven to 300 to 325.

Mix bourbon with sugar in a small saucepan.  Boil vigorously until reduced by 1/2.

Blanch the pecans in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain.

Mix together the bourbon syrup, oil, Worcestershire and bitters, and toss with the hot pecans in a large bowl.  Spread in one layer over baking sheets (one large one will hold a pound), and place in the oven.  Turn the nuts every 10 minutes until the liquid begins to thicken and stick to the nuts.  This will probably take about 1/2 hour.  Turn into a large, dry bowl.  Mix the salt and spices in a small bowl, then sprinkle over the nuts.  Toss to mix.  Taste and add more salt or spices if needed.  Allow to cool uncovered.  Can be stored for several weeks in tins or sealed leftover dishes.

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I suppose this could be done with a pot roast, but there are a couple of things going for lamb shanks as the prime ingredient:

• lamb is much less a part of the feedlot culture than beef.
• all the bone & connective tissue releases gelatin, which gives the gravy body.
• there’s nothing quite like a whole shank for presentation.

Other than the lamb shanks, the ingredients are pretty easy to find.  The trickiest thing may be finding a pot (or pots) to cook them in.  You want the lamb to braise in a single layer, in a closed pot with a tight lid, and it’s much easier to manage if this pot can also be used to saute the ingredients, meaning it’s got a heavy bottom as well.  Pots like this are expensive.  If you don’t have one, saute in a frying pan and transfer the ingredients to a roasting pan, and cook in the oven.  In that case, preheat the oven to 325.

Ingredients (for six):

• 6 lamb shanks
• olive oil
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 6 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 3 or more drained canned anchovies – I use about 6
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 bay leaves
• a couple sprigs of fresh thyme (or substitute dried, or a big pinch of oregano)
• 6  juniper berries (or substitute a shot of gin)
• dash ground nutmeg
• 2 tbs. or more tomato paste – I’ve used a whole (small) can to no ill effect
• 1 bottle red wine
• 1 quart chicken or beef broth
• salt & pepper to taste

Note: none of these ingredients needs to be precisely measured.  In particular, you can safely substitute your favorite herbs if you don’t have thyme.  Most of the flavorings fade into the background, just making the dish more complex without necessarily being recognizable as themselves, so you can probably omit one or two, or change the proportions, without disrupting the dish.  The exception is the cinnamon, which is quite assertive, and really dominates the dish.  I suppose you could cut it back, but I think the dish would lose some of its identity.

Salt the lamb shanks, and saute in some olive oil to brown, about 10 minutes max per batch.  You can do a few at a time if your pan is small.  Set aside.

Add celery, onion, carrot, garlic, & anchovies to the pot, and saute gently (“sweat”) until the vegetables begin to soften, about 15 minutes.  Add herbs & spices & saute a few minutes longer.  Add the tomato paste, wine, and broth, bring to a boil. Boil for a few minutes to get rid of the alcohol.

If you’ve been sauteing in the same pot you’ll use to finish the dish, add the lamb shanks, cover, and reduce heat until the dish is just simmering.  You can finish the dish on top of the stove.

If you’re finishing the dish in the oven, put the lamb shanks & the sauce into the roasting pan, cover, and put into the pre-heated oven.

In either case, you want the liquid in the dish to be simmering, not boiling madly away.  Adjust the heat accordingly.  Every 1/2 an hour or so, turn the lamb shanks & baste, and after about 2 hours, begin to check for doneness.

This is the crux of the dish: cooking it long enough, but not too long.  At first, the meat will seem raw.  Then, it will look cooked, but it will require considerable effort, and a knife, to cut off a piece.  Eventually, the meat will begin to separate along the natural muscle boundaries, and will pull off the bone with increasing ease.  Finally, the meat will fall off the bone entirely, and will break up into shreds (like pulled pork).

You want to stop cooking at the second-to-last stage above, when the meat is still attached to the bone, but separates fairly easily.  Depending on the size of the shanks, and whether you cook on top of the stove or in the oven, it will take between 2 and 3 hours to reach this stage.

Another point to watch is the salt.  You need to add some salt at the beginning, so that the lamb will absorb some of it.  But you should leave the dish seemingly undersalted, because the next step (reducing the stock) will concentrate the salt as well as all the other flavors.  Also, if you use regular salted chicken or beef stock, you may not want to add any additional salt till the end, but some of the organic stocks are unsalted, and in that case I’d add a little salt at the beginning.

Once the lamb is done, transfer it to another container (a platter if you’re going to serve it immediately).  If necessary, reduce the stock to concentrate it until it is fairly thick.  Process the stock through a food mill (my preference), a blender, or a food processor, or force it through a sieve or collander.  Adjust seasonings & reduce further if necessary.  Pour over the lamb shanks.

The dish may be prepared ahead, and reheated.

This dish is a great foil for an old red wine.  Almost any older red will do: Chateauneuf, Barolo, Bordeaux.  It is hard to beat a 10 year old Vosne-Romanee or Oregon Pinot.  If you don’t have a cellar, a Rioja Gran Riserva is probably your best bet.

I recently tried this with boneless short ribs, largely because I can find these regularly at Costco.  This particular cut was OK but perhaps a little too lean – next time I’ll look for bone-in.  And even though I cut the meat into smallish pieces (about 2″x2″x3″), it took a good 3 hours to reach the not-quite-falling-apart stage.  For 3 pounds of boneless ribs, I needed a bit more than half the liquid called for in the recipe.

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I have been in the habit of buying the Near East brand boxed tabouli mix, but really it’s kind of like stone soup – you have to add your own oil, lemon juice, and tomato, so all you’re really getting in the mix is the bulgur wheat and some dried herbs.  I happened upon a bag of bulgur  in the supermarket the other day, and decided to try making some tabouli from scratch.   This also gave me the opportunity to use some of the mint from the ever-spreading patch next to my house.  I followed the recipe on the bag, more or less, and I think it came out better than the stuff from the mix:

Tabouli salad

• 1/2 cup bulgur
• 1 large or 2 small tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
• 1 large bunch scallions, chopped
• 1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 small buch of fresh mint, chopped
• juice of 2 lemons, or 1/3 of a cup
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Wash bulgur in several changes of cold water, drain.

Cover with boiling water (allow for swelling of the bulgur)  and set aside for 30 minutes.

Cut tomato in half, widthwise (like you would a grapefruit).  Squeeze & roll in your hand to loosen & remove most of the seeds and loose liquid around them.  Remove stem end and chop.

Peel the cucumber, then quarter lengthwise, and use a paring knife to remove most of the seeds, then chop.

Trim and chop the scallions.  Use all the white and as much of the green as you can – you just want to omit the dried outer leaves and the tough, dark green tips.

Pick over the parsley and mint, removing leaves from stems, then chop.  (If you’re picking your own, you want about a cup of parsley and 1/2 a cup of mint.  The bunches of parsley they sell in the stores are huge, I never can figure out how to use them up.  I suppose I could just double this recipe, but then I’d have to eat tabouli every day for a week to use it up!)

Drain the bulgur and squeeze out as much water as you can.

Put the bulgur in a large bowl, and add the chopped vegetables, lemon juice, and olive oil.  Season to taste.

If possible, prepare ahead of time so the bulgur has time to cool.  1/2 an hour in the fridge will do it.

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