The Beauty of Béchamel: Impromptu Comfort Food

Even though I’ll happily spend the better part of a Saturday afternoon in the grocery store (much to my husband’s dismay), there are days when I’d rather not—or can’t—leave the house.  Today turned out to be one of those days, primarily because I found it much more enjoyable to sit in my pajamas, drink coffee, and watch the snow fall than to risk life and limb  driving to Whole Foods.  (Okay, “life and limb” may be an exaggeration.) 

When circumstances call for a dinner that’s warm and cozy, you don’t have to bother with a trip to the grocery store; a reasonably well-stocked pantry is all you need.  I came to this realization last December, when DC was in the throes of a record-breaking snowstorm.   We had a couple of fresh links of andouille sausage in the fridge and wanted a way to use them for dinner.    Jambalaya was out of the question, as we lacked about 75% of the ingredients required and couldn’t get to the store.  We thought a pasta with cream sauce might go well with the sausage, but we didn’t have any cream.  In my online searching, I came across a recipe for a “Spicy Sausage and Penne Casserole,” which called for a béchamel sauce.  My feelings as I looked over the recipe were both elation at the discovery and utter disappointment in myself for not having come to this conclusion on my own.   Of course!  Béchamel!  Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

Sauce béchamel  is one of the four “mother sauces” of classic French cuisine.  It’s an extremely versatile white sauce made by adding hot milk to a roux of butter and flour (which serves to thicken the milk) and then finishing with seasonings such as salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

After just a few small adjustments to the Spicy Sausage and Penne Casserole recipe, we had a perfectly cozy meal.  (My changes, based on preference and the ingredients I had in the pantry:  jarred roasted red peppers, instead of fresh bell peppers; broken-up sausage, instead of sliced; no butter in the bread-crumb topping; and whole wheat penne.)

 

A bottle of the slightly sweet “Jennifer’s Jambalaya” white wine from Virginia’s Breaux Vineyards (one of our anniversary-weekend finds) complemented the Creole-spiced dish superbly.

After my béchamel epiphany last month,  I knew exactly what to do when dinnertime came this snowy evening:

Snow-Day Pasta Casserole

Ingredients
9 oz penne pasta
11 oz chicken-breast (about 2 medium)
6oz  frozen spinach* (thawed, excess moisture squeezed out)
6oz frozen peas
4oz freshly grated sharp cheddar*
2 oz freshly grated parmesan 
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups hot milk (preferably whole or 2%)
salt
garlic powder
(white) pepper
nutmeg
cayenne pepper

*Feel free to substitute whatever vegetables and cheeses you like.

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F.

Heat about a teaspoon of olive oil in a nonstick skillet.  Cut chicken into bite-size pieces, season with salt, pepper and garlic powder and sauté over medium heat until cooked through (about 5 minutes).  Set aside.

Meanwhile, bring a 4-qt pot of water to boil.  Generously salt the water and add pasta.  Cook until pasta it is not quite al dente (about a minute less than the package instructions).  Drain and return to pot.  (If the pasta takes 10 minutes to cook, you can add it to the water just before adding the milk to the béchamel—see below.)

The Béchamel

In a 2-qt sauce pan, gently melt butter.  When butter is melted, add flour, whisking constantly until a smooth pasted is formed.  Cook, whisking, about 2-3 minutes over medium heat.  Mixture should begin to have a nutty, toasted smell.  Add hot milk, whisking constantly.  Bring mixture to a simmer and cook, stirring constantly, until thick (3-5 minutes).  Add seasoning to taste.  (Several dashes of salt, pepper, and garlic powder, a couple dashes of nutmeg, and a couple pinches of cayenne pepper. 

Turn off the heat.  Add about half each of the cheddar and parmesan and stir until melted and smooth.  (At this point, it actually becomes sauce mornay, which is simply béchamel with cheese.) 

Add the sauce, chicken, and vegetables to the pasta and fold gently until combined. 

Pour mixture into a 9” x 13” casserole, smooth and top with remaining cheese.

Bake for 20 minutes on rack in the middle of the oven, until edges are bubbly.   Adjust rack closer to the top and broil on high for about 5 minutes (watch it carefully!) until the cheese just begins to brown.

 

Allow to cool about 10 minutes before serving.

 

Serve with a full-bodied white or light red wine. (The Beaujolais Nouveau we had was lovely.)

Panettone

As usual, my posting is not particularly timely.  Between all of our holiday traveling and the formidable task of recalling and recording all the details of my cooking the past few weeks looming ahead, this post kept slipping to the bottom of my to-do list.
Several weeks ago, a holiday episode of “The  Best Thing I Ever Ate” inspired me to rediscover panettone.   Most of the panettone I had eaten up to this point was either imported for the mass market in America (and had probably been on the shelf a little too long -- yuck) or served in the form of panettone bread pudding (yum!).   Despite the months I spent in Italy, I never had panettone while I was there, but I knew for all its tradition that it must be better than the grocery-store versions I had tried. 
So I set out to find the perfect panettone recipe.  Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with many options.  My Google search for “panettone recipe” yielded little.   Most were for various deserts that called for store-bought panettone (panettone bread pudding, for example).
Food Network offered only one recipe.  Although it had good reviews, it skipped the traditional multi-build yeast recipe in favor of a quick-bread style panettone.  No, thank you. 
Other results were dubious at best.  An All Recipes entry called for yogurt and a mere 1-hour rise time.  Another recipe seemed to be pretty authentic, but it’s poster advised against making it, since it was such a long, drawn-out process.  I can certainly handle long and drawn-out, but I am not interested in a recipe that isn’t even recommended by the guy who posted it. 
My many Italian cookbooks were no help.  I was particularly disappointed that The Silver Spoon offered nothing. (But why would it?  Italians buy their panettone.) 
Finally, I came across a recipe in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.   Despite some problematic instructions in his chapter on sourdough (which he has since amended on his website), I trust Peter Reinhart’s expertise on bread, and I was sure that even if the panettone wasn’t perfectly authentic, it would still produce excellent results.
The first thing to do was revive my sourdough starter.  Since my initial attempts at sourdough last fall, my starter had sat untouched in the refrigerator.  Now, sourdough starter is a pretty robust creature.  A healthy one is supposed to keep in the fridge for a couple of months and should revive to its original potency after a few days of refreshing.  My starter, however, had initially only been fed a few times over the course of about a week and so had not reached its full strength before I allowed it to lie dormant.  I conveniently forgot this little detail and waited to take the starter out of the fridge until two days before I intended to start the panettone.  According to Peter Reinhart, a starter can be revived in only two days, but I quickly realized than mine was going to take more time.   Silly me for waiting until the last minute.
I started by following Mr. Reinhart’s instructions to discard (I actually just set aside) half of the starter and double the remainder by adding equal parts flour and water.   After 6 hours the starter should be bubbly and can then be refrigerated until the next day when it will be ready for use.  However, mine didn’t seem to be waking up that quickly.   I refrigerated the starter anyway, and took it out the next day to try again.  This time I used both the original and the refreshed starter, setting aside half of each and tripling the remainder of each.  That evening, I attempted a couple of test sourdough loaves, using each of the refreshed starters, which seemed to be slightly more active than the previous day. 
Surprisingly, the batch that had only been fed once performed better than the one that had been fed twice.

Final proof and baking of the good loaf:

I’m not sure what went wrong here (aside from the crust that formed on top):

Encouraged by the results of my sourdough loaf, I decided to refresh the starters one more time, experimenting with different ratios with each half of each “generation,” before starting my panettone the next day.  I wish I had been more precise with my methods, measurements, and record-keeping, so I could more accurately report on my little science experiment.  

The following day,  I discarded the two that seemed least active, set one aside as backup, and used the one that looked the most promising: a direct descendent of the sourdough loaf starter and I believe three refreshments from the original starter.

The first build was a “wild yeast sponge” comprised of a cup each of starter, warm milk and flour. 

In a separate bowl, I combined dried fruits to soak overnight in brandy and vanilla, orange, and lemon extracts.

 

Six hours later, I was relieved to find that the sponge had become bubbly and had risen slightly.  I proceeded with the second build, adding to the dried fruits and sponge the rest of the ingredients, including more flour, eggs, butter, blanched almonds, a bit of sugar, and yeast. 

Two hours later, it has risen almost to the top of the panettone papers! (I found them at Sur La Table, and they were so much fun to use!)

The panettone baked for an hour…

        

…and then we had to resist the temptation to eat it, since we were taking it to share with my family the next day.
   
 

I made a second batch when we got back from Arkansas – this time to take to Brian’s family in St. Louis. 

I was happy to find that my starter was alive and kicking!

 

The first batch had been slightly drier than I wanted, so I reduced the cooking time by about 5-10 minutes, which definitely made a difference.

We had the little ones for breakfast the next morning, and they were quite good.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m not an authenticity expert when it comes to panettone.   Brian and I recently tried a panettone imported from Italy by Whole Foods (whom I trust more than, say, T.J. Maxx).  The primary difference between the WF bread and mine (besides the fact that I forgot to buy candied orange peel) was the texture.  The WF bread seemed like it had quite a bit more butter than mine.   It’s melt-in-your-mouth texture was delightful.  I think I still have some research to do for next year.

All this research on panettone has me thinking about another Italian holiday bread.  For a while, I have been curious a bread my family makes every Easter. It's a recipe from my Mom's family, who is from a little town in the foothills of the Italian Alps.  It’s a dense, rich bread that  we’ve dubbed "Easter bread" (it takes three days to rise).  Like panettone, Easter bread is made with raisins and eggs, but has more sugar and calls for oil instead of butter. I did some looking while I was living in Italy, but I was never able to find an Italian name for it.  Around Easter time, I found in an Italian newspaper a very short article  on a raisin bread called “uvetta” (which also just means “raisin”), but my internet searches yielded no further insight.  Maybe it's a regional recipe and my family's dialectical  name for it was lost along with the language.
I think this calls for a research expedition.

Christmas Cutout Cookies

In my Thanksgiving post, I mentioned trying a couple of new recipes in search of the perfect cutout cookie recipe.   I initially thought that they were too much like shortbread for my liking, but one of the recipes in particular grew on me and I’ve since used it for 3 batches of Christmas cookies.   It’s a pretty simple recipe.  The only flavoring it calls for is almond extract.  I tried adding some vanilla and salt, but decided that I prefer the recipe in its original form.

    

The question is: why do these cookies hold their shape so much better than those made with my old sugar cookie recipe?  Is it that one uses baking soda and baking powder and the other only baking powder, or is it that one recipe calls for two eggs, while the other only calls for one.  Maybe it has something to do with the absence of salt in the new recipe.  I suspect that it is related to the leavening and/or eggs.  Once again, my knowledge of food science falls far short of my culinary aspirations.

I hope that this won’t always be the case, however.  I've had my eye out for a book on the subject and came across one at the library a couple of months ago.  I didn’t get to spend near enough time with it, though.  I got about one quarter of the way through a fascinating chapter on the historical significance and chemical behavior of dairy products before I had to return the book.  It’s on my Christmas wish list, and I hope that soon I’ll be one step closer to at least attempting to answer the cutout cookie question and others. 

 

All of the cookies in this picture were made using the same cookie cutter.  Some of them actually look like pumpkins and others are just orange blobs.

In addition to its shape-holding power, the new dough is much easier to roll out and cut.   An added bonus is that it doesn’t call for corn syrup like my old recipe does.   Below are their ingredients for comparison.  The old recipe is baked at 350, and the new one at 400:

Old Recipe                                                                                New Cutout Sugar Cookie Recipe

1 ¼ cups granulated sugar                                                    1 cup sugar
1 cup butter                                                                                  1 cup butter
2 eggs                                                                                               1 egg
1 tablespoon vanilla                                                                 
1-2 tsp almond extract (optional)                                       1 ½ tsp almond extract
¼ cup light corn syrup                                                             2 Tbsp milk

3 cups all-purpose flour                                                           2 ½ cups flour
¾ teaspoon baking teaspoon powder                                1 tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ to 1 teaspoon salt

 

Believe it or not, I don’t spend all my time wondering about the science behind everything I cook.  Sometimes I just enjoy it (not that I don’t enjoy the science part).

This week I even had a friend to bake with!

     

Whew!

We survived hosting our first Thanksgiving!   Usually the holiday is a huge extended-family affair, but since we couldn’t get down to Arkansas this year, we decided to host Thanksgiving for our friends who were also spending the weekend here. 

I was really excited about making my first turkey, which was pretty much my only consolation for not being able to go home.  We reserved a turkey at the farmers' market a few weeks in advance, so we got it fresh and straight from the farm!

I spent lots of time in the kitchen and even laid out a cooking plan for the days leading up to Thanksgiving and a detailed schedule, in 15 minute intervals, for the hours leading up to dinner time.  I knew if I hadn’t done this we would not have eaten until well into the evening.  As it was, we sat down just barely an hour after our 2:30pm dinner time.   There were plenty of appetizers to nibble on in the mean time, and no one seemed to mind the wait.

Saturday:
Groceries
Bake bread for stuffing

Sunday:
Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce

Monday:
Pumpkin-Spice Cheesecake

Tuesday:
Salt Turkey

It was my first time dealing with a whole bird.  I was a little intimidated when I first saw the giblets, but I quickly got over it and went to working dry-brining the turkey.

Make Cookie dough
Make Cheese ball
Bake and skin sweet potatoes

We bought some at the farmers’ market and realized we didn’t have enough, so we had to supplement with a couple of supermarket sweet potatoes.  Look how much deeper in color the local potatoes are!

Make pie crust

Wednesday:
Dry bread for stuffing
Bake Cookies

I have a sugar cookie recipe that I have used for years.   It makes wonderfully chewy and delicious sugar cookies.  However, the cookies spread quite a bit when baked, which all but ruins most cookie-cutter shapes.  So this time, in addition to my usual sugar cookie recipe, I tried a couple of new recipes (which came in the mail with my beautiful new cookie cutters).

While they were much more shortbread-like than my usual sugar cookies, they still tasted great and held their shapes perfectly.
  

Bake pies

My favorite holiday pie is the Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie that my mother has made for years.   Since one of our guests can’t eat chocolate and Brian can’t eat pecans, I decided to make miniature variations for the special diets:
2 miniature chocolate-bourbon pies and 2 miniature pecan-bourbon pies.

Make frosting and decorate cookies

Since I didn’t start frosting the cookies until  after midnight, I decided to skip the butter cream just use a glaze.

 
Make bourbon cream
Make streusel for sweet potato casserole
Start gravy
   (I’ll spare you the photo of the giblets frying.)
Wash veggies and herbs

I didn’t do all the work.  Brian made sure the apartment was spotless and washed all the produce for me.

Thursday:
Stuffing, turkey, gravy, sweet potato casserole, corn casserole, rolls…
Stuffing and Roasting the Turkey

Salt pork lends flavor:
 
Several hours later

Setting the Table

Carving the Turkey


The Spread


  
Dinnertime
 
The Aftermath

nothing like the real thing

One: I have a wonderful husband who loves me a lot.

In addition to being a master taste-tester, idea-guy, dishwasher, and kitchen-hand extraordinaire who provides musical entertainment while I cook and occasionally whips up a mean Irish beef stew, he now bakes! 

Chocolate chip cookies.  For me.  As a surprise.  When I am exhausted from working constantly.   

And he uses the Cook’s Illustrated recipe I have been testing, substituting light brown sugar for dark and topping the cookies with sea salt before baking – just the adjustments I had been planning to try!

The sea salt garnish was perfect.  I think the cookies look prettier and still have plenty of flavor when made with light brown sugar.  I do still plan to do a side-by-side taste test of dark vs. light and a couple more hybrid versions of the CI and NYT recipes  at some point.

Two: Homemade chocolate hazelnut spread will do in a pinch, but there’s really only one thing that can help ease my separation anxiety. 

 

Get your own here!

Fall Back, Part 4

These last few days have felt like a marathon of catch-up blogging.  The following gets us through most of  October and constitutes the final segment of “Fall Back.”

October 6, 2009

I worked on a recipe for pumpkin cookies.  All of the many variations (including one with molasses and another with chocolate chips!) were yummy, but not quite what I was going for.  There were very cakey and thus felt more like muffin tops than cookies.
 

October 13, 2009
Orecchiette con Verdure e Pesce
orecchiette with vegetables and fish

This was the first recipe I attempted from my latest issue of La Cucina Italiana.  I adapted it to the ingredients I had on hand:
mahi mahi instead of monkfish,
chard instead of dandelion greens,
kohlrabi instead of celery root,
broccoli instead of cauliflower,
and homemade orecchiette instead of pasta shells.
The dish also included butternut squash, carrots and onions.
All the vegetables were julienned and sautéed, with the fish added in the last several minutes of cooking.

It was my first attempt at making orecchiette by hand.  It’s a fairly simple shape to make.  Just take a small ball of pasta dough (about the diameter of the nail of your index finger) and press it into the palm of your hand with the opposite thumb.  The dough should curl up around your finger. 


The challenge is making them all the same size and thickness.  Mine were all over the place, and thus did not all get cooked to the same degree. 

Oh, well.



October 25, 2009

Carnival Squash Soup
The following recipe will work with any winter squash.  I like carnival squash not only for it’s sweet, nutty flavor, but also because it make a great table decoration before it’s used for cooking.
Serves 6 as a starter.
2 medium carnival squash
olive oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
4-8 cups vegetable stock (store bought or homemade, see below*)
Preheat oven to 425 F.
Halve the squash.  Not an easy task.  I initially went with the Cook’s Illustrated recommendations to used a large chef’s knife or a metal bench scraper and a hammer.  Neither method worked well for me, so I ended up sawing through the squash with a serrated bread knife.
 
Clean out the seeds and fibers and reserve for vegetable broth. 
Place squash halves on sheet pan or baking dish and drizzle with olive oil (not extra virgin).
 
Roast in preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, until flesh is tender and can be easily pierced with a fork.  Set aside to cool.


Meanwhile heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil a medium saucepan.  Sauté onions in oil until translucent, stirring frequently.

When squash is cool enough to handle, remove skin and roughly chop squash.  Add squash to saucepan.   Add 4 cups vegetable stock and allow to simmer for several minutes. 

Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches in a traditional blender or food processor.

Add more vegetable broth until desired consistency is reached.  Season to taste with salt and white pepper.

At this point, you can add cream to the soup, but I find it is just as delicious (and a little healthier) without the cream!

 
Garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, fried sage, or freshly cracked black pepper.

*For this particular soup, I improvised a vegetable stock, using things I had on hand.  Feel free to use a store-bought stock or any other recipe for vegetable stock.  Do use the squash seeds and fibers for the stock, if possible.  It will boost the squash flavor in your final soup.  While the squash is roasting, fill a stockpot with onion scraps, a few stalks of celery (including leaves), parsley, reserved squash seeds and fibers.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for at least an hour.  Season with salt.

Grandma’s Soup (Fall Back, Part 3)

October 1, 2009

No one knows the exact history of this soup, except that my mother’s family has been making it for a long time.  Whether my grandmother or her mother or some previous  generation originated the recipe I am not sure, but it has since been passed down through my mother to my sisters and me.  It’s something like what Americans think of as “Tuscan bean soup” or “pasta e fagioli”: a rustic, inexpensive but filling soup of homemade pasta, vegetables, and beans.  The perfect meal for those days when you’re short on cash or abstaining from meat.  Or if you just feel like a hug from your grandma who may not be around anymore…

Some of my most vivid memories of visits to my grandparents’ farm in Northwest Arkansas are of this soup.  We always arrived late in the evening, and Grandma always had a pot of soup keeping warm on the stove for us.  As we groggily stumbled through the door, disoriented by the long car ride, the  first thing I would notice was the familiar aroma of Grandma’s soup.  Sitting around the table with a hot bowl of soup and a few saltine crackers or a slice of homemade bread was the perfect welcome. 

The first time I ever made this soup was during my junior year of undergrad, about two years after my grandmother had passed away.  I remember standing over the stove in a townhouse I share with two friends, waiting for the soup to come together.  The moment that familiar smell hit my nose, it brought me to tears.  It’s still one of the most significant cooking moments of my life.  I remember thinking how amazing it was that something so simple could be so powerful, that the aroma of this soup could affect me so deeply and make me feel like I was right back in Grandma’s kitchen. 

Even now it brings back so many memories:   My adult relatives crowded around the table after dinner playing cards and my grandmother’s laugh.   Snipping fresh green beans on the front porch with Grandma.  Picking blackberries for cobbler.  Exploring the “timber.”  Tractor rides.  Getting unexpectedly snowed in and Grandpa building us a sled from scratch. Playing on bales stacked to the top of the hay barn in the late Fall and our disappointment  in finding the barn empty come Spring.   

There’s certainly a part of me that longs for those days.  I would appreciate so many things about my grandparents’ way of life  so much more now.   Vegetables came straight from the garden, and those that weren’t eaten fresh my grandma canned for the winter.  Grandpa’s cows grazed freely in large, open pastures.   The recent movement towards eating locally and reports on the significant health benefits of grass-fed beef make me think of the farm.  Whenever I succeed in doing something like not buying bread in over a month (baking it myself), I feel that in some small way, I am closer to them and the spirit of simpler times.  Maybe someday I’ll even have a vegetable garden of my own.

Pasta e Fagioli alla Nonna
     (or Grandma’s Soup)

2-3 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cans cannellini beans*, undrained
3-4 chicken bouillon cubes (I use 3-4 tsp. “Better than Bouillon”)
2 medium potatoes**, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
~1/3 cup ketchup
Homemade pasta (about 3 cups)
Salt and pepper to taste
Dash of oregano

In a large soup pot heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil.  Sauté onion, stirring occasionally.


Meanwhile, mash 1 can of beans with a potato masher or fork.  (This will make for a nice, thick broth!)

 
When onions are translucent, add mashed beans and 4 cups water.  Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

 

Add chicken bouillon, stir to dissolve.  Add vegetables and second can of beans.  Stir in ketchup and a dash of oregano.
Cook until vegetables are tender.
Add pasta and cook about 10 minutes more. 
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

* My grandmother used something called “horticulture beans,” but since they are not easy to find, cannellini, great northern, and pinto beans (or a combination of the above) can be used. 

**  I always add (frozen) green peas and sometimes leave out the potatoes in favor of more green vegetables. 

Ravioli, fatti a mano (Fall Back, Part 2)

September 29, 2009

Butternut Squash Ravioli
Handmade stuffed pasta is truly a labor of love:  it can be quite time-consuming, but so fulfilling--especially when there is someone special to share it with.  At least once each fall, I like to make either pumpkin or butternut squash ravioli.  My first batch this year was butternut squash.  You can use the same method for any other winter squash, such as pumpkin or acorn.

for the filling
(This can be done up to a day in advance or while the pasta dough is being made.)

about 1 pound butternut squash
olive oil
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
nutmeg
salt
pepper
Preheat the oven to 425°F.  Quarter the squash (carefully!), remove seeds and fibers (reserve for another use, if desired),  drizzle with olive oil (not extra virgin) and roast in a baking dish for 30-40 minutes, until the flesh is tender and can be pierced easily with a fork. 
Once the squash is cool enough to handle, remove the skin and puree the squash. (You can mash it with a fork or potato masher.  A food mill or potato ricer would also work well.) 
Combine pureed squash with freshly grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

fresh pasta for ravioli
2 3/4 cups of flour*, plus extra as needed for dusting                           
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
water, as needed

*Up to 1 1/2 cups whole wheat “pastry” flour can be substituted.

On a clean surface measure flour and salt.   Stir to combine and form a mound.

Create a well in the center and crack one egg.
  

Slowly incorporate the egg and flour by gradually drawing flour from the sides of the well with a fork.  Be careful not to go through the sides of the flour mound or you will have egg all over the counter!


Once first egg is mostly incorporated, crack second egg and incorporate as before.
 

Repeat with the third egg.



Once all three are incorporated, use your hands to carefully combine the remaining dry flour with the egg mixture.  It should look something like this:
 

Add water a few drops at a time until all the flour is moistened and you have a cohesive dough.
Knead for 5 – 10 minutes until ingredients are thoroughly incorporated.  (The dough won't be completely smooth.)
  

Wrap dough in plastic and let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes.


After resting the dough should be supple and elastic and much easier to work with.


Cut off 1/4 of the dough and wrap the remainder in plastic wrap.  Flatten dough with your hands until it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Using the flat plates of a pasta machine set to the widest setting (a rolling pin works too, but isn’t as precise), roll dough through to flatten.  Fold the dough into thirds (like a letter), rotate 90° and feed back through the pasta machine on the same setting.  Repeat one or two more times until the dough is a smooth, uniform shape the same width as the pasta machine.

Roll the dough back through the machine (not folding or turning), gradually decreasing the width each time, until you reach the desired thickness. (The last two settings both work, although the final setting makes for a more delicate pasta.  If you go all the way to the final setting, be sure not to over stuff the ravioli, so that the filling won't break through the pasta during cooking.)

At this point, you should have a long strip of pasta about 5 inches wide.  Lay it across a clean, lightly floured surface.  Place about 2 teaspoons of filling approximately 3/4  inch from the closest edge and spaced 1-2 inches apart down the length of the dough. 

Using water and a pastry brush or your fingers, moisten the edges of the dough (in a square around each mound of filling) and carefully fold the far edge over the near edge, enclosing the filling as pictured below:
  

Using your fingers, carefully press the dough on the far side of each mound of filling and in between each mound.  Gradually work your way to the near edge of the dough, ensuring that any extra air is allowed to escape before the near edge is sealed.


Starting with the long edges, trim the dough with a ridged ravioli-cutter (a pizza cutter will work too).  Then cut between each mound to create individual ravioli.
 

Seal the edges of each raviolo with the tines of a fork to ensure that no filling escapes during cooking.
 
 

Place finished ravioli on a floured surface to dry slightly before cooking.  (I used floured waxed paper on a cookie sheet).
 
Repeat with remaining dough (1/4 at a time).

Don’t discard the pasta scraps!  Toss them with flour, and spread them out to dry.  Once they are completely dry (usually overnight), they can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature and used for soup.
 

Cooking and serving

with Sage and Brown Butter Sauce, for two:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
fresh sage leaves ( about 6-8 large or 10 small)
salt
pepper
freshly grated parmesan

Bring a large pot of water to boil. (A pot with a pasta insert works particularly well for fragile stuffed pastas.)  Generously salt the water. 

Carefully add about 20 ravioli* to the pot and cook until desired tenderness is reached.  (Cooking times will vary.  Start with 5 minutes.  Remove a raviolo and test a small corner for doneness at 5 minutes and every minute or 2 after that until pasta is al dente).  To drain, either lift pasta insert or remove ravioli with a slotted spoon or mesh strainer.

While the pasta cooks, melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Once butter is melted, add sage and fry until sage is crispy and butter is browned.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  (At this point, you could also add cream to the sauce, but the butter and sage are excellent on their own.)


Arrange drained ravioli on two plates.  Top with browned butter and garnish with sage leaves, freshly grated pepper and parmesan. 

  

 

Serve immediately.

*8-10 of these ravioli are usually plenty for one person as a main course.  The recipe makes about 50.  The remaining ravioli can be stored in the refrigerator (layer with flour and waxed paper in a sealed container) for a few days or frozen for several months.

Fall Back, Part 1

I’ve been working really long hours the past several weeks and most of my free time has been spent cooking instead of writing about cooking.  My work schedule has finally let up, and in honor of the time change, here’s a recap of the last week of September:

September 24, 2009

We made pretzels:

Until we started our little pantry project, there were many things that found their way into our pantry and never found their way out again.  Among the ranks was a make-your-own pretzel kit that we got in a gift exchange last Christmas (see what I mean).   Despite our best intentions, it didn’t see the light of day until a few weeks ago.  It was a fun change of pace to have a project we could both work on in the kitchen.  

September 25, 2009

We stopped buying bread.

This is my first multigrain loaf -- from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, with a couple of adjustments.  
 
Although  I own a couple of appliances that will do it for me, I really enjoy kneading dough by hand.  It’s a pretty good upper body workout and makes for a much more satisfying bread-baking experience.   That said, I did break down and let my stand mixer do the work for me on a whole wheat loaf I made last week.  I was in the middle of another cooking project (more on that later) and with the help of the mixer, turned out a loaf of bread in less than 30 minutes of active time!

Complete with freshly cooked wheat berries in the mix.

There was enough dough left over to make a couple of rolls….
 
…which were perfect for roast beef sandwiches the next day.


You’ll notice my imperfect shaping skills in the gap at the top of the loaf… I’m getting there…

September 26, 2009

I attempted my first French omelet a la Cook’s Illustrated. 

My pan was 9” instead of the recommended 8,” so I didn’t quite have enough egg mixture to go around. 

I didn’t have chives, so minced red onion served as a substitute.
   
It didn’t roll out of the pan quite as easily as promised.

I ended up rolling it up with my fingers, instead  of the recommended paper towel.  The paper towel is supposed to protect your fingers from the hot omelet, while providing an aide to roll it perfectly.  I found it unnecessary for the heat and easier to roll without the paper towel. 
 
Cheating?  Probably…


It still tasted quite good, however. 

Next time, I’ll give Julia’s method a go – and make sure I have an 8” pan.

September 27, 2009

I made my very own sourdough starter from scratch (also with the help of The Bread Baker's Apprentice).  The first attempt didn’t go so well:

I read up on the unwanted bacteria that exist in the air and can grow in a sourdough starter and prevent the good bacteria (yeast) from growing.  After finding some solutions online, I attempted to rescue the first batch of starter and began building a second batch, which went off without a hitch.   I tested the first batch by making a loaf with it. 
  
Although it didn’t rise as much as I wanted, but it tasted great and gave me high hopes for the other batch of starter.
  
My second mostly-whole-wheat sourdough boule rose properly and was just delicious.   Hopefully this week, I’ll have time to refresh the starter and make some more!

September 29, 2009

I concocted a slightly healthier twist on my mother’s recipe for pumpkin bread, substituting whole wheat for half of the flour, reducing the sugar, and reducing the oil.   The addition of whole wheat flour was undetectable and the sugar and oil were hardly missed.

The Original Recipe                              The New Recipe
3 cups sugar                                                  2 ¼ cups sugar
1 cup oil                                                          just more than 3/4 cup oil
4 eggs                                                              4 eggs
½ cup water                                                 1/2 cup water
3 ½ cups flour                                             2 cups whole wheat flour 
                                                                           1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp. baking soda                                       2 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon                                            3 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg                                                 1 tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp cloves (optional)                           ¼ tsp cloves (optional) 
1 ½ tsp salt                                                    1 ½ tsp salt   
2 cups (16oz) pumpkin                             2 ½ cups (20 oz) pumpkin
1 cup walnuts (opt)                                     1 cup walnuts (optional)
Beat together oil and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time, beating between each.  Add water and beat until combined.   Sift together dry ingredients, add to wet ingredients and beat until blended.   Stir in pumpkin until blended. Pour into greased and floured loaf pans and bake at 350 for 1 hour.
 

Concord Grape Streusel

What do we do with extra concord grapes that are going to go bad if we don’t eat them soon?


Bake them, of course.
This is a little experiment I like to call “Concord Grape Streusel” – so named because the crust is streusel, and I couldn’t come up with anything better.
Ingredients:
for the filling:
2 cups concord grapes, washed and de-stemmed
2 Tbsp flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
pinch of salt
for the streusel:
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup butter
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Remove the skins from the grapes by pinching the end opposite the stem.  Set skins aside.
 

In a small saucepan, bring grape pulp to a boil.  Cook for about 3 minutes, until the pulp is soft.  While it is still hot, press pulp through a fine mesh sieve with a spatula (or run through a food mill) to remove the seeds.

In a medium bowl, combine pulp with grape skins,  sugar, flour, lemon juice, and salt.  Set aside.


For the streusel, combine the first three ingredients.  Then cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until it is evenly distributed.
 
Press a little more than half the streusel into the bottom of a small baking dish. (Mine was a 9in x 6in oval.)


Pour filling over the crust and sprinkle remaining streusel  evenly over the top.

Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and topping is melted.

We had it warm immediately and then at room temperature the next morning with coffee.  It was great both ways.  We didn’t have any at the time, but I’m sure vanilla ice cream or whipped cream would go beautifully.