So, it’s been a while…

(I’m sorry)

But here you go… In preparation for our day of Giving Thanks,  I’m hoping to bridge the gap with an offering of Pumpkin Pie. 

Who can’t resist a pumpkin pie?

This on turned out quite nice…

Here’s what I did…

Pumpkin Pie

1 frozen pie crust (I’m a little embarrassed) cooked per the manufacturer’s instructions.

Then I pooped the top of a can of Libby’s 100% pure Pumpkin (again, my cheeks are reddened), then per the label mixed it with 3/4 c. sugar (I actually used 1/4 c. brown and 1/2 c. granulated), 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. ground ginger, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, 2 large eggs, 1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk. Here’s where I got creative… I added 1/4 tsp. nutmeg, and also sprinkled a little on the top with about a 1/2 tsp. granulated sugar. 

I popped the pie in the oven, 425°F for 15 mins, then 350°F for 45 mins and there you have it… Thanksgiving in a shell.

I promised my tomato sauce recipe a few weeks back.  It wasn’t until I was pulling a container full out of the freezer tonight for a quick, Sunday night, I-haven’t-done-the-laundry-yet dinner, that I remembered.   My folks were in town this weekend, so we loaded up the weekend with activities and eating out, as opposed to routine grocery-story-and-yard-work weekends that we are generally accustomed to, so we decided on a quick and easy dinner of Spaghetti and Meatballs. 

In addition to the sauce that I had stowed away in the freezer, this meal was inspired by the pound of ground turkey that I had forgotten about in the meat drawer (out of sight out of mind — luckily only a day or two of forgetting here), and a pound of pasta that Susie sent us for Christmas.  They all came together tonight in this delicious dish.  Here’s what I did:

My Easy Tomato Sauce

If you remember from the tomato salad a few post back, I picked 67 tomatoes from our garden a few weekends ago.  A few made it into a tomato salad for lunch that day, but the majority of them made their way into a simple tomato sauce.  For the sauce, I started a pot of boiling water, and submerged the tomatoes for a few seconds to loosen their skins.  After their dunk, I pealed the skin from the tomatoes, and threw them through the food mill to collect all the pulpy goodness.  I milled about 60 tomatoes in all, and ended up with about 12 cups of tomato goo. 

I chopped 5 carrots into small half moons, a yellow onion into dime sized pieces, and a jalapeño (seeds and ribs removed) and 5 cloves of garlic into a nice mince. 

I started the carrots and onions in the 7 1/4 qt Creuset with about 3 T olive oil heated until it glistened.  Once the aromatics had nicely browned, I added the minced veggies, and a few crushed red pepper flakes and gave them all a stir, letting them cook until the garlic started to stink (in a good way, of course). 

Once I could smell the garlic (I mean really smell the garlic), I added about a cup of a sensible red wine – nothing too good, nothing too bad.  With some help from the alcohol bubbling away, I made sure to scrape away any brownness from the bottom of the pan.   The veggie-wine concoction would soon become as think as paste -– it was time to add he tomatoes, which I did carefully, so as not to spitter and spatter.  For a little flavor, I added in a few cubes of pesto. and a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

I let the to-be-sauce come to a boil, then reduced the fire to low, and let it cook and cook and cook, about 4 hours total.  Once the sauce had darkened and reduced, I added my secret ingredient – 3T sugar.  You would never know it was in there, but it balances the acidity of the tomatoes perfectly.  After the saice had cooled, I ladled the sauce into freezer storage containers and sent them into the deep freeze.

Turkey Meatballs

For the meatballs, I started by making up a batch of bread crumbs (simply because we didn’t have any in the cupboard).  I took two pieces of wheat bread, pulsed them in the food processor for a few seconds with 1T Penzeys Pizza Seasoning, poured them out over a baking sheet, sprayed a thin layer of olive oil over them, and sent them into a 375°F oven for 10 mins. 

Once the breadcrumbs had cooled, I mixed them together with 1 pound ground turkey, 1/4 c parmesan cheese, 1 egg, salt and pepper.  I rolled golf ball sized meatballs and placed them onto a lightly oiled baking sheet, stuck them into a 375°F oven for 12 mins, rotating once along the way.

You can probably figure out the rest…  heat the sauce, boil the pasta, plop the meatballs on the top, and sprinkle it all with cheese.

Happy Labor Day! 

Why is it that the three day weekends seem to pass along by more quickly than the regular two-day variety?  This year, the fam-in-law was in town for the Labor Day weekend.  We hadn’t planned much for the weekend, thinking that we’d play things by ear.  Highlights were a day trip into New York City, and a dinner at our favorite local restaurant by the railroad tracks.  We also spent a lot of time in pajamas watching movies, out and about doin’-a-little-shoppin’, and even managed to squeeze in a little bit of craft time. 

Even with all that, though, the majority of the weekend was spent eating –- hands down!  If we weren’t eating, we were thinking about eating, or deciding where to eat, or talking about what we ate, or shopping for ingredients to cook.  You know the drill.  I’m going to highlight the guest of honor of today’s barbecue:  Asian Style Kabobs, which were served alongside one of our favorite (and easy) tomato salads, a plate of dressed cucumbers, grilled pineapple, and a big bowl of brown rice.  Here’s what we did:

Asian Style Kabobs

The prep started early in the day (well, o.k. about 11:00, early for the weekend?) with a 3# London broil, which I cubed into one inch pieces.  I made the following marinade in the bottom of a 9 inch square baking dish which would eventually be used as the soaking vessel.  First, I whisked together 3T creamy peanut butter, 2T hoisin sauce, 1/3c tamari (or you could substitute soy sauce), 3 cloves of garlic, minced, and 1t each of the following:  seedless blackberry jam (you could use grape, too or just leave it out), raspberry balsamic vinegar, and toaseted sesame oil.  I thinned down the pasty mixture with 3/4c ginger ale (I used Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew, but any ginger ale would do), and spiced it up with 1/2t red pepper flakes and a few dashes of tobasco sauce. 

By now you are probably beginning to realize that the thought process behind making this marinade was more of, “let’s throw a little bit of this, and as little bit of that together,” rather than having some great culinary vision that I was trying to execute (see what a well stocked pantry can allow you to do?), nonetheless, it turned out great, which is why I’m sharing. 

I added the beef chunks to the tub, making sure that the were all tucked beneath the liquid’s surface, covered the pan with plastic wrap and placed him in the fridge for a healthy six (or so) hours.

Before firing up the grill, we cut up the kabob veggies into one inch squares: 1 red onion, 4 bell peppers (all from the garden), and a pound of mushrooms.  The veggies and the marinated meat cubes were staked upon (soaked) wooden skewers. Two skewers per kabob makes them easier to manage, and separating the veggies and meat onto their own skewers makes managing cooking times and temperatures much easier. 

I set up the grill with a hot and cool side, and brought the whole grill up to 450°F.  I cooked the meat kabobs over the hot coals for about 8 minutes, and the veggies over the “cool” ones for about the same time.  

We (painfully) let the kabobs stand for 10 minutes, before removing the meaty morsels from their skewers, and then dug in.

This past weekend, our tomato vines bore another 67 plump and ripe tomatoes (that’s a total of 147 for the season, for those keeping score), two more jalapeños, and 5 bell peppers.  The vastness of vegetation kept us cooking all weekend –- a few impromptu pizzas, another batch of tomato soup, a pan of eggplant parmesan (eggplant grown by a neighbor down the way), and some killer salsa.   But, what I thought I’d share today is this (surprisingly) fabulous attempt at polenta stuffed peppers (peppers from our garden, by the way). 

Before I get there, though, I have to tell this story to set the stage…

A week or so ago, Rick, a super friend and faithful reader (a big heido-ho to all 5 of you, by the way!) was pondering the potential pleasures of polenta.  His first foray into the world of this creamy corn concoction was fruitful, although (self-admittedly) a little lumpy.  Not deterred by a few corny clumps (there’s no use crying over lumpy polenta, now is there? [[ side note –- picture it: Madonna (or Eva Perón, your choice) stepping out upon the balcony of Argentine Presidential Palace, hands raised to the heavens, singing to the onlookers gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, “Don’t cry ov-er lum-py po-len-ta…” ]]), he picked up his whisk, and pledged to take another ride on the Polenta Express.  (Sorry, I’m getting a little corny [[ha, ha – polenta, corny, polenta… corn… nevermind.]] ).

We exchanged several e-mails that week… discussing several “polential” possibilities for his sophomore endeavor:

Rachel Ray’s Pumpkin Polenta with Chorizo and Black Beans ?

Martha Stewart’s Parmesan Polenta Wedges ?

Heidi Swanson’s Polenta Fries or Breakfast Polenta ?

I hope Rick will respond to this post with a narrative (and a picture!) of his most recent polenta pursuit.  In hopes of providing some inspiration, I attempted this recipe from Food Network [dot] com, with a few minor (and meatier) modification.  Here’s what I did:

Polenta Stuffed Peppers

I started by slicing 4 bell peppers (plucked from my garden [[did I already say that?]]) from stem to stamen, and removed the ribs and seeds.  I placed the half-bells in a small baking pan that had been lubed with a dose of olive oil (a few tablespoons).

Now is when I probably should have preheated the oven to 350°F (I always forget that part).

I sided three scallions, whites and greens (no need to segregate), and minced three cloves of garlic, two jalapeños, and chopped a handful of cilantro (the more the merrier – about 1/2c).  Now this is where I started to diverge from the above prescription…  I cut three slices of bacon into quarter-sized pieces, and fried them up in my Calphalin Tri-ply Chef’s pan… curved sides… better for whisking… but any ol’ pan will do.  Once the big bacon bits were crispy, I removed them and all but 1T of grease from the pan. [[There really isn’t a pleasant word for grease, is there?]] To the (cringe) grease (end cringe) I added 1T butter.   Once the butter had melted and began to bubble, I threw in the jalapeños for a few minutes, then added the minced garlic for another minute or two.

When everything started smelling pretty potent, I added 1c of polenta to the pan, and stirred to coat every finely ground grain with the buttery (cringe) grease (end cringe).  Whisk in hand, I added 2 1/2 c chicken broth and 1/2 c milk to the pan of stinky, spicy, greasy crushed corn kernels.  [[I’m not a well trained or highly experienced polenta maker, but I have to say… I like this method of starting with the polenta in the pan before adding the cooking liquid (as opposed to steadily streaming the corn meal into the bubbling liquid).  I think this contributed to the clump-free consistency of the final dish]]. 

Whisk. Whisk. Whisk.  (love those curved sides!)

As the polenta began to thicken [[the suspense keeping me at the edge of my seat]], I added the following to the pan: the chopped cilantro, scallions, an 8.5oz can of creamed corn (which is why I reduced the prescribed cooking liquid by 1 c), 1/2 c parmesan cheese, and the bacon bits. (If you’re checking against the recipe, I didn’t add the basil or Gruyere cheese, exchanged the cream for milk, and onion for scallions).

Once the polenta had thickened, about 7-10 minutes, I removed the pan from the stove, added salt and pepper to please, and spooned the silky mixture into the prepared peppers.  I placed the pan of peppers in the preheated oven and paced the kitchen for 30 minutes, while the peppers percolated (o.k., I know, “percolated” was a stretch).

Pure polenta perfection!

I picked 67 tomatoes from the garden this morning.  67!  30 alone from the single Roma plant that I have, and there must be another 30 still clinging tight to the vine, waiting to turn from pink to red. 

Most of these tomatoes I peeled and milled to make a big batch of puree for sauce (stay tuned), but I couldn’t resist cutting up just a few for a cool summer tomato salad.  It’s almost too simple to share, but here’s what I did.

Tomato Salad

I cut up one each of the 5 tomato varieties that I’ve been growing: A Brandywine, a Roma, a Carolina Gold, a Marglobe, and an Early Girl.  I placed the tomato chunks into two bowls.  I cut up half a globe of fresh mozzarella ad added the cheezy chunks to the tomatoes.  I took 6 leaves of basil, picked from the pot on the patio, folded them into a tight bundle and cut them into a chiffonade to sprinkle over the bowls.  I topped the ‘maters with a little olive oil (I’ve been using Trader Joe’s Spanish Extra Virgin, which carries a lovely floral fragrance), and salted and peppered to please. 

The result was this brightly filled bowl.  The sweet and tangy tomatoes were perfectly ripe.  The fruity olive oil complemented the creamy, milky mozzarella, and the musty basil added a pungent bite.  Summer is definitely here. 

This snap was taken while on a business trip to San Francisco in 2006.  Did you know that Napa Valley is only a short rental car ride from the board rooms and conference centers of San Francisco?  I recall missing a meeting or two that day.

At any rate, with no other suggestion than from a AAA guide book that I had bought for the trip, I found myself at Hess Vineyards.  I’m no wine expert, but what a great winery.  They offered several wines to taste for a very modest fee.  I can’t say that I always tasted the grapefruit or the cherries, the vanilla beans or the coffee that I was “supposed to,” but the wines that I tasted were well balanced, crisp and clean when they were supposed to be, and genuinely a tasteful.

As we went to leave the winery, 2005 Chardonnay Reserve in hand, I made a wrong turn (perhaps on purpose), and found myself amongst these corked casks.   The room was quiet, cool, a bit moist, dimly lit, with the scent of oak perfuming the room.  Saluté.

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

This was the first “big” tomato harvest of the season.  Yes, we’ve eaten one or two sliced on a sandwich, had a mozzarella, basil and tomato salad, and several handfuls of cherry tomatoes, but last weekend was the first time this year, that I was able to pick a few fruits off multiple plants.

I had been watching several tomatoes turn from green to orange to pink through the week, and ended up picking 15 ripe tomatoes on Sunday.  2 Marglobes, 6 Romas, 4 Carolina Golds, 3 Early Girls (and too many Sugary-s to count).  No Brandywines, yet.

The big decision was sauce or soup.  Sauce or soup, sauce or soup…  sauce…  soup? 

Well, soup won.  I have a favorite tomato soup recipe (Thank you, Martha) that I’ve made (and tweaked) several times, but from canned tomatoes. This was the first attempt, however, with fresh tomatoes, our fresh tomatoes, from the garden, which made enough soup for lunches for the week.   Here’s what I did:

Easy Tomato Soup

I started by peeling the tomatoes, 15 remember?  I set a large sauce pan of water on the stove to boil. Once it was bubbling, I dunked the tomatoes, about 5 seconds each, and then rinsed under cold water, cut an “X” in the bottom of the ripe fruit and the skin peeled right off, no need for a knife –- well, mostly.  Once peeled, I cut the tomatoes into chunks and passed them through a food mill (Thank you, Santa), to collect all the seeds and debris.  Surprisingly, tomatoes produce a lot of debris.  In all, I collected about 8c of tomato puree.

In a large saucepan over medium heat I sautéed one onion, and three carrots chopped into half moon pieces, in 3T olive oil, until the onions were past translucent, but not yet caramelized, and the carrots were noticeably soft.  Then I added a sprinkle of flour to the pan, letting it sop up the oil and begin to brown.  To the pan I then added 1T of tomato paste (I like to keep small scoopfuls of paste in the freezer –- you never know when you’re going to need one –- letting it caramelize just a bit, but scraping vigorously, so that it did not burn to the bottom of the pan… brown is good, black is bad.  Once the paste had browned a bit, I whisked in 2c chicken broth, making sure to break up any flour clumps.  Then poured in the tomato puree, and left the pot to simmer over low heat, with the lid only half way on. 

What a picture-perfect pot of bubbling tomato perfection… sniff, sniff. 

After the soup had simmered about an hour and a half, I guess, I plopped in a pat of butter, about 2T, salt and pepper to please, and went at it with an immersion blender (Thank you, Santa), but not too long…  I like mine with a few carrot and onion morsels to savor. 

I certainly have not yet Mastered the Art of French Cooking, but lunch today, was a small step in the “bonne direction.”

This lunch was inspired by, Julie and Julia, which we saw on Friday evening.  Read the book, see the film, laugh out loud. What a hoot.  Meryl Streep could not have done a better job portraying the legendary Julia Child, Stanley Tucci and Amy Adams were clever and quirky, respectively, and a big woo hoo for Mary Lynn Rajskub (I’m a big fan!).

Anyway -– back to lunch.

Beurre Blanc is a classic French sauce made with a reduction of vinegar or lemon juice, some minced shallot or onion and a couple of pats of butter.  Apparently, this contraption was first made by accident, but since has been renowned for it warm, thick and creamy consistency.

Stanley Tucci reminds Meryl Streep of Beurre Blanc’s tanginess in one of Julie and Julia’s most endearing scenes, and the great Julia Child herself proclaims to those, Mastering the Art,”…it is a far easier sauce system than the long simmered classics.”

With all this praise and seeming simplicity, how could I resist an attempt.  Here what I did:

Pasta and Shrimp with Beurre Blanc and Basil

I started by boiling off some pasta:  water, pasta, salt, simmer — 8 mins.  While the pasta was boiling, I pulled a few shrimp from the freezer, placed them in a colander and ran them under cool water to thaw.  Now for the sauce:  I poured 1/2 c of white wine vinegar into a small sauce pan and placed it on the stove to simmer.  I minced one small onion (I didn’t have a shallot nearby), and added him to the pot.  When the vinegar had reduced to about half, I removed it from the heat, and added 3T butter.  As the butter began to melt and curdle I placed the shrimp in the warm liquid to cook.  Once cooked, I drained and added the pasta to the thickened sauce –- salted and peppered to please. I moved the pasta to a bowl, and sprinkled chiffonade of basil.

Bon Appetit!

This weekend it was back to the Bar-B-Que –- and smoked chicken was the flavor of the day.   This version is one of the easiest that I’ve tried and was so flavorful that I almost swallowed the bone.  Here’s what I did:

This was an easy prep so I started by heating up the grill and placing the mesquite chips in a bowl of hot water to steep.  I set the grill up with a hot side, where I put the coals, and a cool side (under the chimney if you have one), where I placed a cleaned and oiled grill rack; the side which would eventually host our guest.

I took one whole chicken removed the “package of gifts” from the inside, and quartered it (the chicken, not the package).  I’ve found that the easiest way to quarter a chicken (besides buying it already in said state) is to employ the use of kitchen sheers.  I will spare you the gory details, but will recommend to you, The Professional Chief, by Culinary Institute of America, for vivid instructions in living (well, not exactly) color. 

Once the fowl had been appropriately divided, I made a quick spice rub of 1 part spice –- I used BBQ 3000 from Penzeys –- a mixture of salt, paprika, black pepper, nutmeg, mustard, allspice, citric acid, garlic powder, ginger, sage, thyme, white pepper, and cinnamon –- cause that’s what I had on hand, and 2 parts brown sugar.  I also sprinkled in a little bit of ground chili pepper for some kick (but not too hard).  In all I probably had a half-a-cup of rub.  Lifting the skin of the bird, without completely removing it, I coated its underneeths with the potent powder. 

When the grill was nice and warm – about 400°F, I placed the quarters on the greased racks, taking care to aim the thickest parts of the chicken chunks toward the flames.  I threw the first fistful of wood chips on the charcoal, and left the bird to bake.  I added fresh wood chips to the grill about every thirty minutes-or-so, until he reached a nice 170°F, in all about 2 hours.

In the end, he turned out a nice shade of smoky orange, and tasted like a savory candy apple being enjoyed alongside an autumn campfire.  The meaty morsels fell right off the bones, but were as moist and juicy as a medium rare steak, so much so that I forgot to add the sauce.  How’s that!