minimally invasive Food Journal

(Promoted from the diaries - Kate)

Originally posted at Minimally Invasive.

With another issue of the catalog just about wrapped up, my main goal was to relax this weekend. To that end, I spent a good portion of today reading, wandering around like a zombie, and napping. Waking refreshed and hungry (for tasty human braaains), I cast about my Bloglines folders looking for inspiration from the host of food bloggers I follow. Inspiration struck, as it so often does, at the feed of Molly of Orangette fame. Months ago, she wrote about a tomato sauce recipe, the simplest one in the world that also just happened to be swoonworthy. Since it required only four ingredients -- canned tomatoes, butter, onion, and salt -- I thought that would make for a perfectly quick and delicious lunch.

And then I realized I had other bits and pieces in my kitchen that would make good additions to the sauce. The basil in my fridge wasn't getting any younger, so I thought a few leaves would lend a subtle flavor to the dish. Then I remembered the fennel in the crisper drawer sharing space with the Italian flat-leaf parsley, and brought those out to the counter, too.

Just then I spied some anchovies and locatelli on the upper shelves and shrugged my shoulders. Well, why not? And of course, when you have fennel and anchovies, it'd be a crime not to add sardines and golden raisins to bring the whole thing to a fabulous pasta con sarde conclusion.

So that's just what I did. Of course I added a few other things here and there as well, but the focus was still on the tomato sauce; it might've been more involved than the one I set out to make, but it was terrifically satisfying (and kept me from throwing out the contents of my crisper drawer next week).

Pasta con Sarde

I don't know if there's a definitive version of this recipe out there, but the constants seem to be sardines and tomatoes. This is delicious finished with toasted bread crumbs, but we're breadless at the moment, so a quick grating of cheese put it over the top for us instead. I've used sherry vinegar in the past (à la Jennifer of Last Night's Dinner), but substituted lemon juice this time so as not to overplay the sweetness of the golden raisins. But I think it'd be really hard to make a bad version of this pasta, provided you love sardines as much as I do.

olive oil
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and thinly sliced, fronds reserved for garnish
3 fat cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3-4 anchovy filets
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes in tomato puree
4-5 basil leaves
dry white wine
juice of 1 lemon
red pepper flakes to taste
1/3 cup golden raisins
1 tin sardines in olive oil
Italian flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
1/2 pound spaghetti or linguine

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add sliced fennel and cook, stirring, until fennel begins to soften. Add garlic slices and cook until fragrant and garlic begins to soften. Add anchovy filets to skillet and crush them into a paste with the back of a spoon, then stir into the fennel and garlic.

Add tomatoes, crushing with the back of the spoon until they're broken up. Throw in the basil leaves, a glug of white wine and and the lemon juice, red pepper flakes, and golden raisins. Stir well, then add sardine filets to the pan and spoon a little sauce over them. Lower heat and simmer for about 30 minutes.

At this point, set a large pot of water over high heat. When water comes to a boil add salt (I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons) and stir in the pasta. Cook until al dente.

When pasta is ready, break up sardines with the spoon and stir them into the sauce. Add pasta to the sauce along with about 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water, stir, and simmer until pasta has cooked through.

To serve, garnish with fennel fronds or parsley, and a big grating of hard cheese, if you're so inclined.

Originally posted at Minimally Invasive.

Happy 2008, everyone! Keeping with our tradition, Gil and I stayed in for a movie marathon last night rather than endure the crowds in the city and the loooong drive home. This year's feature: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (No, really, it was his idea. Something about the big screen HDTV, battle scenes, I dunno. I wasn't going to argue.) We started late and only got up to about the 45-minute mark of The Two Towers, but we'll finish the trilogy soon.

With hours of Middle Earth fun ahead of us, I wanted to make something festive for dinner that wouldn't require too much time in the kitchen, and after my success with two recipes from Simple Chinese Cooking, I turned to its pages again for inspiration. The shrimp dumplings practically leaped off the page and demanded an audition, so I obliged, despite the potential for disaster — eviscerated dumplings churning in a pot of boiling water isn't as appetizing as you might think. But Kylie Kwong's step-by-step photo illustrations of dumpling assembly made the technique seem easy enough, and it really was.

Oops, looks like a bit of shrimp got away from me there. We'll just ignore that.

Didn't affect the outcome, at least:

Awww ... they couldn't be cuter if they were a pile of puppies frolicking on the cutting board. Hairier and completely unsanitary, yes, but definitely not cuter.

Wonton regiment 24 reporting for duty!

And you may find this hard to believe (I certainly did), but not one dumpling burst in the boiling water! That's a success rate I haven't come near with homemade ravioli, so I think there's something to Ms. Kwong's techniques. Hmmm, maybe I'll start making "tortellini" instead — sneaky, sneaky.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Gil and I have to get back to our movie research; he has a theory that Ed Wood was resurrected to direct Orlando Bloom in this trilogy, and I'm having trouble disproving it.

Originally posted at Minimally Invasive. (Promoted from the diaries to the front page - Kate)

I'm not usually the most pleasant person during my commute -- not that I'm particularly unpleasant, but I typically don't go out of my way to socialize with other people on the bus. In fact, I find it really annoying when I'm sitting near people who won'tjustshutupfortheloveofgodandlettherestofustakeanaporread, so I try to do unto others, etc. But one evening, I happened to sit next to a woman who, like me, was reading and dog-earing a cooking magazine; well, one thing led to another and before I knew it we were trading recipes and sharing stories.

Gawd, I can be SO annoying.

I've thought about her often in the months since -- how she doesn't bake bread anymore since a sudden onset of psoriatic arthritis left her in near-constant pain, about her love of Italian food, and of her passion for finding healthy recipes her brother can test, given his own health woes. One of the recipes she shared with me was for salmon with an orange marinade and smoked paprika that sounded divine, even though, she warned me sotto voce, "It's a McCormick's recipe." It slipped my mind until I saw that very same recipe in an ad in this month's Gourmet magazine, so I gave it a try last night before I could forget about it again.

Gil defrosted the salmon we'd bought on our last Trader Joe's run and started the marinade before I got home, so all I had to do was assemble the dry rub (though I didn't use McCormick's spices), pat down the salmon with it, and set it in the oven to roast for 10 minutes. While that was cooking, I quickly sautéed some baby spinach in olive oil and garlic, and dinner was on the table in about 20 minutes.

I guess sometimes it pays to venture out of my circumscribed little world. The routine of commuting can be wearying and it's always easier to conserve energy than to make a connection, but I'm happy that at least in this one instance, it really paid off. The salmon had wonderful depth of flavor. The ingredients didn't mingle together so much as wash over the tongue in waves; the bright, sunny citrus gave way to sugar and smoky paprika which morphed into a puff of cinnamon before leaving only the flavor of the salmon behind. I'll keep this recipe handy for quick, healthy dinners.

Smoked Paprika-Roasted Salmon with Wilted Spinach adapted very slightly from McCormick Recipes

The only thing I'd change next time is maybe to use a little less cinnamon than the recipe calls for, but it's really terrific as-is.

1/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided
2 teaspoons thyme, divided
2 pounds salmon fillets
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon smoked paprika (I used bittersweet pimentòn)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 bag (10 ounces) fresh spinach leaves
1 garlic clove, minced

Mix orange juice, 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1 teaspoon of the thyme in small bowl. Place salmon in glass dish. Add marinade; turn to coat. Cover. Refrigerate 30 minutes or longer for extra flavor.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix brown sugar, smoked paprika, cinnamon, orange peel, remaining 1 teaspoon thyme and sea salt in small bowl. Remove salmon from marinade. Place in greased foil-lined baking pan. Discard any remaining marinade.

Rub top of salmon evenly with smoked paprika mixture. Roast 10 to 15 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 teaspoon oil in large skillet on medium heat and sauté garlic until golden. Add spinach; cook 2 minutes or until wilted. Serve salmon over spinach.

Originally posted at Minimally Invasive.

What does a girl do for sustenance when an ice storm is raging outside and her kitchen counters and oven are laden with sweets? She turns to tried-and-true, low maintenance beef stew! And when her husband decides to make her baking duty even more pleasurable by playing ABBA's Greatest Hits, well ... you get the point of the post.

Opting for a simple approach to this stew given my already busy cooking schedule, I kept the ingredient list short -- chuck roast, onions, salt and black pepper, chicken stock, baby portobello mushrooms, fresh thyme and sage. And instead of cooking this stew with copious amounts of red wine the way I usually do, I decided to use stout to give the stew an earthier, richer flavor; it paired nicely with the mushrooms and its richness held up to the buttered egg noodles we served them over.

If only I'd made enough for leftovers.

(Promoted from the diaries to the front page - Kate)

Originally posted at my site, Minimally Invasive.

Because of my need to give homemade food gifts for the holidays, this is traditionally the weekend I atone for my lack of baking throughout the year — all at once. But instead of saying two dozen Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers, my personal penance was making THREE batches of pralines, a few POUNDS of spiced nuts, and TWO types of cookies. Oh, my friends, I’m on a sugar high that would do Beavis proud. (What? You’ve never heard of quality assurance?)

For the pralines, I dug out my dad’s recipe which adulterates the traditional praline with marshmallows, but you’ve never tasted anything like them; they’re really creamy instead of gritty the way straight-sugar pralines can sometimes be. Gil would chime in to agree, only he’s shoving broken praline bits into his mouth and banging his head on the wall in the kitchen. Don’t worry — he’s wearing a bucket for protection. The sugar crash is going to be ugly.

But the real surprise of the weekend were the cookies, primarily surprising for the fact that I baked them and did not burn even one. I normally bring in savory treats for my co-workers (last year — bacon brittle and gougères), but I suspect people appreciate the sweet stuff a little bit more, so I was willing to go that extra mile for them. And we weren’t disappointed; I really hope they won’t be, either.

Here’s the really soft and sticky sugar cookie dough, cut and ready to be moved (CAREFULLY) to the parchment paper-lined baking sheet.

As it turns out, I didn’t really need to be SO careful because these cookies s-p-r-e-a-d in the oven.

But dressed up with chocolate and nut toupées, they turned very suave, indeed.

So I’m really looking forward to a well-deserved break from baking this week. Maybe I’ll be chained to my desk at work, but at least I won’t be in the kitchen, forced to bake and sample delicious sweets!

Are those tiny violins I hear in the distance?

When you daydream, what do you see? A new toy? An upcoming vacation? That boy or girl you've had your eye on for the past few weeks?

Or maybe you're like me -- as often as not, when I let my mind wander, the mental pathways are lined with food. With little time to cook in the evenings, I spend my commute dreaming of the upcoming weekend's creations. Perhaps there's a new soup to try or a hearty braise to master if the weather's going to force us indoors. If it's nice out, the smoker or grill will surely be fired up at some point. But the destination of my mental journey usually is bread pudding, as anyone who knows me well can tell you.

I grew up eating my grandmother's plain, dense bread pudding and still miss it, but I'm not above adding a twist or two every time I get a craving -- savory or sweet, artisanal or plain-jane bread, it just doesn't matter. This is a dish that rewards creativity.

I was especially pleased with the latest version, which involved a shameful amount of caramelized opalescent apples, fresh from the farmers' market. It really felt like a virtuous apple pie without the heavy, greasy feel you sometimes get from pie crusts or the tooth-achingly sweet bourbon sauce some people seem to love with their bread pudding. I won't give up on the bananas foster version I made a few months ago, but this one hit all the right notes with its nutty browned butter, aggressive cinnamon, and whisper of mace.

The best part? It isn't just dessert; it's perfect for breakfast, too.