elise.com-simply recipes Sat, 04 Feb 2012 03:48:55 -0800
Beef and Barley Stew with Mushrooms ...
Although the days are getting longer, the sun just beginning to ride a little higher in the sky, the nights are still bone-chilling. Honestly, I never look forward to winter. But when I'm smack in the middle of it, I do appreciate its comfortswarm clothes, thick blankets, an excuse to use the fireplace, and a big pot of stew. And I mean a big pot. Heck, if you are going to go through all that trouble, you may as well make enough for plenty of meals during the week. This is one such stew, a hearty cousin of beef barley soup, but bulked up with carrots, celery root, and lots of mushrooms.
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Caramelized Onion Dip ...
I've always been a fan of onion dip, have you? Especially with ruffled potato chips. Most of the flavor in the onion dip with which many of us are familiar comes from a package of dried onion soup, which works if you have only 2 minutes to put together a dip. But if you are looking for something a little more special, you can make your own onion dip from scratch. The key is to caramelize the onions first.
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Cheesy Jalapeño Pull Bread ...
Meandering along the Internet highway one day I happened upon several recipes for what looked like a hedgehog made of bread, stuffed with melted cheese and bacon. Brilliant! A lot like cheesy bread but more fun. I thought I would do my own version with jack and jalapeños. Yum! It's like a bread version of nachos. In the shape of a hedgehog. That you have to get your fingers messy with melted cheese to eat. Just the thing for a bunch of rowdies gathered to watch football, don't you think? Speaking of which, we have several fine Superbowl recipes on the site if you are looking for ideas. And go Niners. (Yes, I know they're not playing. There's always next season.)
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Sweet and Spicy Mushroom Stir Fry ...
Please welcome guest author Garrett McCord as he shares a lip-smacking recipe for mushroom stir-fry he recreated from one he enjoyed in China. ~Elise
During a recent trip through China I ate a lot of life changing food. Sichuan stir-fried duck tongues, homemade noodles in beef sauce, spicy lotus root with ginger, Sandouping-style boiled peanuts, curried yak with butter, deep fried river shrimp with garlic... Oh! The list goes on! You can believe that I was taking plenty of notes so that I could recreate these dishes back in the States.
While in Beijing and Xi'an I noticed that much of the food there was sweeter than the rest of China. One particular dish we had quite a few times was a simple mushroom stir-fry. It was spicy, but not too much. Just enough to make the tongue tingle a bit. It was also quite sweet, but not sickeningly so. When I asked one of the cooks what made it sweet he pulled down a jar of practically-black honey whose musky fragrance, even with the lid firmly closed, dominated a kitchen packed with garlic and scallions. I was smitten.
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Jerusalem Artichoke Soup ...
When I was a kid, my mother often used to add sliced raw jerusalem artichokes to our salads. I have no idea why. She doesn't do it any more, and hasn't for years. At the time I just thought they were weird looking and didn't taste like much. Nothing at all like the real artichokes that we kids fought over at the dinner table. My kid's mind decided that they didn't grow very good artichokes in Jerusalem. Hah! Well, mystery solved. Turns out jerusalem artichokes are neither artichokes, nor are they from Jerusalem. They're tubers, native of North America, and the plant is related to and resembles sunflowers. (In fact, these days they are often called "sunchokes".) "Jerusalem" is thought to have evolved from the Italian name for the plant, "girasole" for sunflower. Why "artichoke"? If my mom had only cooked them, then that part of the mystery would have been solved for me. Cooked, they taste surprisingly like artichokes. Yum!
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Glazed Oxtails ...
"Now this is how oxtails should taste," my father declared after taking a bite of these glazed oxtails. I couldn't agree more. We have a thing for oxtails in our family. Oxtail stew was a favorite winter dish my mom prepared when we were growing up. If you are unfamiliar with oxtails, they are tails of steers, typically sold cut into segments. Most of what you buy is bone, and the meat is well exercised and fatty, so oxtail preparations lend themselves to slow cooking. Much like short-ribs, but in my opinion, even better. Think of the best pulled pork imaginable, but with beef. In this recipe the oxtails are first browned, then slow cooked with red wine and stock. Then the segments are removed so you can strip the meat off of them and the liquid is reduced to a glaze. It's actually pretty easy to make, most of the cooking time is hands-off while the oxtails are simmering.
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Blanched Cabbage with Butter and Caraway ...
Gobsmacked. I thought I was pretty well versed in what one could do with cabbage, addicted to the stuff as I am. Whether it's braised, in stewed, stuffed, boiled, or made into coleslaw, we eat cabbage in every which way around here. But this my friends, this has to be the easiest way to prepare cabbage and still have it taste great. (Boiled cabbage is probably the easiest, but then what you have is just boiled cabbage.) My mother made something like this the other day with curly cabbage. You just simply blanch the torn or roughly cut cabbage leaves in boiling salted water, drain them, and toss with butter, and seasonings. Butter and cabbage together? A dream team. And caraway and celery seeds just make them dance.
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Veal Goulash with Sauerkraut ...
Years ago in Manhattan, there was a rather famous German restaurant by the name of Luchow's. It was established in 1882 and operated continuously for a hundred years, finally shutting down in 1984. In its heyday Luchow's was well known as a hang out for musicians and entertainers such as Steinway, Dvorak, and later, Oscar Hammerstein. It even had a room named after Diamond Jim Brady, a regular.
I don't recall how it happened, but my father came across a used copy of Luchow's German Cookbook, a compilation of recipes from that now long gone restaurant.
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Garlic Knots ...
"Got knots?" Simply Recipes contributor Hank Shaw does, and boy are they good. Enjoy! ~Elise
When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, one of my absolute favorite after-school treats would be to walk over to Ferraro's, dig through my pockets for loose change and buy some garlic knots garlicky, buttery rolls made from stray bits of pizza dough. At 25 cents apiece, I could buy a lotta knots with a little change.
Garlic knots are a pizzeria favorite, and in New Jersey, their presence was a sign that the pizza joint you just walked into was legit. Making knots is a thrifty way to use scraps of dough and the leftover garlic-butter-parsley sauce most pizzerias would use for their white pizzas or garlic bread.
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Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder with Savory Apple Gravy ...
Updated. First posted in 2005.
Now here's a good one for a cold winter day. Talk about melt-in-your-mouth delicious! A hefty pork shoulder is slathered with a rub of fennel seeds, pepper, thyme, rosemary, and garlic and set to marinate for a day or two in the fridge. It is then nestled in a bed of sliced apples and onions, first browned on high heat in the oven, and then covered and allowed to cook low and slow, until it is almost falling apart. You don't need a knife to eat this slow-roasted pork shoulder. Just a big appetite.
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Bread Soup (Panade) with Onions, Chard, and Mushrooms ...
Although at first glance it may not look like it, with our Northern California sunny skies and green lawns, winter truly is here. The leaves have all fallen. The fish in the pond are half asleep. Several of the lettuces in the garden have succumbed to frost, while the chard and parsley thankfully are thriving. It's still, quiet, and chilly most days. Perfect weather for a hearty soup. Even though this bread soup is meatless (if you use veggie stock), it is thick and filling. In fact, it's really more of a stew than a soup. The bread absorbs much of the liquid. It's called a panade, or panada, from the Latin base "pan" for bread. The recipe is based on one introduced to me by my friend Ann Martin Rolke, cookbook author, Sacramento local, and co-founder along with Amber Stott, of the California Food Literacy Center, a recently formed non-profit with the mission to help us understand the impact of our food choices.
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Pumpkin Ricotta Gnocchi ...
Hank Shaw is back, tempting us with pumpkin ricotta gnocchi. It's crazy good, and actually not as hard as you would think to make. Enjoy! ~Elise
Pumpkin ravioli with brown butter and sage is a classic for a reason: The color, the texture and the flavors of winter squash, fried sage and browned butter are a match made in heaven. But making ravioli requires a fair bit of skill. Gnocchi, however, are easy to make once you get the hang of it.
The key to making any dumplings is to make them as light as possible. We've all had leaden lumps of unhappiness before; they're memorable, and not in a good way. What keeps these gnocchi fluffy are the ricotta cheese and a light hand with the flour. Gnocchi dough is often sticky, and it's the ability to resist the urge to keep adding more and more flour that separates a good dumpling from a heavy one.
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How to Make Vegetable Stock ...
Homemade stock almost always tastes better than boxed or canned, and this is never more true than with vegetable stock. In the case of chicken or beef stock, the stock comes from cooking bones in water on low heat, for several hours. With vegetable stock, there are no bones to cook, so the richness of the stock comes from the variety of vegetables you use. It helps to brown the veggies first, so the stock gets infused with some of the flavors from caramelization. Unlike chicken or beef stock, which needs time to extract all the goodness from the bones, with vegetable stock, you cook the stock for only an hour to an hour and half. Beyond that, the flavors begin to disintegrate.
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Edamame Dip ...
Edamame (eh-dah-MAH-may) are nothing more than fresh soy beans. Typically cooked in heavily salted water, they are usually found in the shell served at Japanese restaurants. Having first encountered them in bars when I lived in Japan, I've always thought of them as the Japanese version of a beer nutthey're salty and go great with beer. They've recently become more popular in the states and you can usually easily find them frozen, both shelled and shell-on. They are rather tasty beans, so I thought we would make a simple bean dip with them. So good! This dip includes cilantro, lime juice, yogurt, and a whole avocado. Also just a little bit of Tabasco and dark sesame oil for some sparkle.
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Chicken Soup with Ginger and Shiitake Mushrooms ...
Chicken soup doesn't need to take hours to make. This is a simple, light chicken soup that is richly flavored with shiitake mushrooms, and brightened with fresh ginger and soy sauce. The stock is very light, and comes just from the cooking of the ingredients for less than half an hour. But the combination of the ginger, chicken, mushrooms, soy sauce and a touch of salt and sugar is just lovely, and I highly recommend trying this soup. The recipe is an adaptation of one I discovered in a most curious cookbook, The Cultural Revolution Cookbook
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