February | 2015 | culinary flights of fancy

February 25, 2015
by Craig Leave a comment

Classic French Onion Soup

I made homemade baguettes. You can find a good quality baguette at Biagio’s or Kings (they sell an organic version that is pretty good).

There are a couple of keys things to consider when making French onion soup. One, using a combination of beef and veal stock adds a depth of flavor that’s tough to beat. Two, the onions need to caramelized for quite a long time to really develop the flavor of the onions and to provide an even deeper flavor to the stock. With such a simple soup, it becomes really important to develop the flavors of the few individual components. Traditionally, the soup is accented with some fresh thyme and usually a splash of either Cognac, red wine, or dry sherry to finish. Personally, I’ve tried it with all of those and though they do add a punch of background flavor at the end, I really feel that it’s not all that necessary. However, if you try the finished soup and feel it needs a little extra something, certainly feel free to throw in a bit of one of those.

Note: This soup is better when prepared a day or two ahead of time, giving the combined flavors a chance to meld together prior to final serving.

I apologize for this taking so long as I promised this recipe a while ago but once again time got away from me as I juggled not feeling super well with leaving for a few days to meet Tara in Phoenix. In the middle of that, I tried a basic Asian pork belly recipe and thought that would be ready to roll but it turns out that it’s not really ready for prime time so I will have to play with that particular dish a bit more and post the resulting recipe once I arrive at one I think is both doable and delicious. So, stay tuned for that at some point soon! Recipe and more photos follow after the jump… Continue reading →

February 18, 2015
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Classic Spanish Tapas: Shrimp with Garlic and Garlic and Tomato Toasts

Shrimp with Garlic served on Classic Garlic Tomato Toasts.

Shrimp with Garlic in a classic cazuela or Spanish earthen ware bowl.

Classic Spanish Shrimp with Garlic with Garlic and Tomato Toasts:

I love Spanish cuisine and one of the great things about it are the various Tapas or small plates that are available at most Spanish restaurants. Not only do they taste great individually but they also allow you to sample a few different things which affords the opportunity to get to know the cuisine a little faster. This shrimp dish is very simple with just a few flavors taking the driver’s seat. The bread is prepared very similarly to classic Italian garlic bread but with tomato dredged across it at the last minute. Placed together, you get a tasty garlicky toast with which to sop up all the great tasting olive oil and garlic from the shrimp dish. Pair this with a few tossed greens and you can make a meal of the whole thing or simply make them a tapas and enjoy the two together with friends or family as small plates. Recipe and more pictures follow after the jump… Continue reading →

February 13, 2015
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Valentine’s Day Part 3 Continued, The Finish: Apple Galette with Honey, Lemon, and Thyme

Apple galette with honey, lemon, and thyme.

The tart shell, per the recipe, can be made in a food processor. However, I prefer to do it by hand on the counter top.

Here is a very easy tart shell recipe that will give great results. Beyond that, I took 4 red apples and sliced them very, very thinly. I used a mandolin for this actually. If you don’t have a mandolin, just slice the apple as thinly as possible going slowly so you don’t cut yourself. Once done with the slicing, add some lemon juice to the apple slices and mix well to prevent them from browning. About 30 minutes prior to assembling the tart, take about 1/2 Cup of honey and place it in a small saucepan. Add a few sprigs of thyme and the zest of one lemon. Place the pan on simmer (or the lowest setting you have) and allow the mixture to steep until you are ready to assemble the tart.

When ready, remove the thyme springs and then add all but two tablespoons to the sliced apples and toss the apples in the honey mixture. Place the filling in the tart shell that’s been rolled out. Place filling in the middle of the tart allowing about a two inch border. Once the apples are in the middle, simply fold the crust up and around the apples. Once done, brush the dough with a bit of olive oil. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes (mine took 35ish). However start checking the tart at the 20 minute point and check it every 5-10 minutes after that until it’s well browned and done. Once done, take the remaining couple tablespoons of the honey mix and lightly and carefully brush it over the top of the tart. Allow tart to cool a bit before moving it to a platter to serve. Reheat it in a low oven if you prefer to serve it warm.

I was going to do a main course for the Valentine’s Day menu but for a number of reasons, my wife and I decided to celebrate the holiday at home next week. We are leaving town for the actual holiday. However, I planned on serving all of this with a roasted leg of lamb. I think any roast or steak would go very well with this general progression of dishes and certainly will be quite nice on a cold and likely snowy Valentine’s Day evening. So enjoy the holiday and the long weekend! Next week…French onion soup is on the docket.

February 13, 2015
by Craig Leave a comment

Valentine’s Day Part 3, The Finish: Chocolate Cake with Brandied Cherries

Chocolate cake drizzled with brandied cherries. If you don’t have brandied cherries, any liqueur would work well too.

Chocolate cake soaked with brandied cherries.

Good news, bad news…our Internet is wonky today and I’ve been on the line with Verizon off and on this morning trying to fix it. So, the bad news is that I really can’t post an extensive recipe today. The good news, however, is that I can post from my phone and I can provide pictures and some basic suggestions. The even better news is that for this one, I used someone’s recipe for the cake and used my own recipe for the brandied cherries. I believe most liquor stores now sell brandied cherries so they are generally available for purchase. However if you don’t have time or the inclination to run to the liquor store, feel free to enjoy the cake on it’s own or drizzle another liqueur over the top. There are cherry liqueurs that would work great as cherry and chocolate really work well together. Baileys, cognac, brandy, and bourbon would all work too. Really the possibilities are endless. So go with what you like. Here is the link to the cake…it’s very easy and quite good.

Once the cake is cooled, add the brandied cherries liquid over the top by the spoonful until the entire cake has soaked in some of the liquid. Allow that to sit for a bit and then take a fine mesh strainer and place some powdered sugar in it and gently shake the strainer over the cake to finish.

February 12, 2015
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Valentine’s Day Menu Part 2: Roasted Beet and Blood Orange Salad with Pea Shoots

Roasted Beet Salad with Blood Oranges and Pea Shoots. Serve as a beautiful side dish to go with a nice roast or steak.

For a nice little salad or side dish, this beet and blood orange salad is great for Valentine’s Day for the color alone. As a bonus, it’s both sweet and tangy with a bit of heat from red pepper flakes. The pea shoots provide both a nice crunch as well as a burst of green color to finish the whole thing off. They also hint of things to come as peas season will be here before you know it as spring creeps every closer.

This couldn’t really be easier which is, as always, a real bonus. It also is very simple and allows the three ingredients to really shine. As such, use the best quality olive oil you have. Now’s the time to break it out. Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →

February 12, 2015
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Valentine’s Day Menu: Start with Roasted and Blanched Vegetables

Blanched Broccoli and Cauliflower. Serve with a shallot and tarragon mayonnaise dip or apple cider vinegar honey mustard vinaigrette.

Roasted mushrooms with olive oil and fresh tarragon. Serve while warm or at room temperature.

Let me forewarn you that I will be posting multiple recipes for Valentine’s Day today and likely tomorrow. Let me apologize in advance if Valentine’s Day isn’t your favorite day. However, Valentine’s Day is just a few days away so let’s make a nice meal to celebrate. Who’s staying in? If you live locally in the Jerz, then you are probably aware that it’s supposed to snow. So, even if you plan on going out for a nice dinner, you might need a plan B. Either way, this is a great tasting and healthy starter for any special meal. More after the jump… Continue reading →

February 11, 2015
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Baked White Bean Soup with Herbed Breadcrumb and Parmesan Crust

The whole dish in the casserole pan.

Plated dish drizzled with a bit of olive oil.

This recipe is really a two-fer in that it really is a dish created for using up leftover bean soup when you are sick of eating the same bean soup after multiple days (at least that’s why I made it). It’s a dish that uses both tomato sauce and chicken stock (though vegetable stock would be fine), vegetables typical in soups, cooked beans, and hearty herbs to infuse the whole thing.

The leftover soup is then ladled into a an earthen casserole dish and slow cooked for several hours in a low temperature oven. After that, you simply make the topping, crank the heat to brown the top and you are done! Cooking it on low heat over a longer period of time allows the soup to really thicken into something resembling an actual baked bean dish.

I’ve been meaning to mention this as well. If you find cooking dried beans or making braises too time consuming given your schedule, you can use a pressure cooker. In a fraction of the time, you can achieve great results with dishes that typically take hours to cook. It’s a fairly pricey investment…about $100 or so but if you like slow cooked meals and are always short on time, it might be a great thing to consider. They are fairly easy and straight-forward to use as well. Anyway, recipe and more pictures follow after the jump… Continue reading →

February 9, 2015
by Craig Leave a comment

Products Worth Mentioning: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Happy icy Monday from New Jersey! I just wanted to do a quick post about this cookbook. I received my first copy over the Christmas holiday and am really finding it a great resource. For those of you who don’t know, Mark Bittman is a writer for the New York Times, an award winning cookbook writer, and is on the forefront of thought pertaining to healthy eating habits using whole foods as the basis for a healthy, sustainable diet and lifestyle. Anyway, I really like this particular book for several reasons. First, it’s a great comprehensive cookbook that is as broad and deep as say The Joy of Cooking. However, it really is much more than that. Rather than focusing on recipes alone, Bittman’s book also details different techniques for cooking the same ingredients and offering multiple recipes and methods. So, for example, if you have a sunchoke and do not really know how to go about preparing one, you can simply look up sunchoke in the index and you will find multiple preparations and various alternative flavor options within the same general recipes. Further, he delves into how to properly choose the ingredient at the grocery store so you can understand what to and not to look for when picking specific produce, dairy, or meat items. So really, more than a cookbook, this book provides you with lots of advice and options when cooking and, even better, helps you choose to very best, freshest possible ingredients. Further he often discusses how to store those ingredients.

If you are a home cook just beginning this a great, indispensable resource and tool to get started. If you are more advanced and experienced with your cooking, this book offers lots of interesting variations on classic preparations that will surely entice you to either try his ideas or better yet, inspire you to try some of your own!

February 4, 2015
by Craig 2 Comments

Pizza Night Part Two: Crust Reconsidered

Garlic scape pizza with shallot, tomato sauce and homemade mozzarella

Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza with Homemade Mozzarella and Parmesan Reggiano

A few months ago I posted a ‘family pizza night’ recipe/menu and while I think the toppings are still solid, I wasn’t super excited about the crust. It worked and it’s tasty though I think it lacked that crispiness that good quality ‘pizzeria’ pizza possesses. So, I’ve experimented, read, and chatted with some pizza makers including one in Italy that made a pretty spectacular pizza in Florence. So, I’m going to post my new favorite pizza dough recipe.

You can still use the ingredients from my previous post. Also, the pictures are from Super Bowl Sunday and have different toppings as an option. The great thing about pizza, however, is that really creates a blank canvas for you and your family to use your imagination and create something all your own. As I mentioned in the first post, pizza night is a great opportunity to get kids involved in making dinner.

So the good news is that this dough is pretty easy to make and doesn’t take a lot of effort at all. However, the bad news is that, unlike the earlier pizza dough recipe I posted, this recipe takes 36 hours or more to make…yikes, I know. But it’s worth it. It takes no time at all to put together and you only work the dough for a couple minutes. From there, you just slip the dough into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap before placing it in the refrigerator for the 36 hours or so to rise slowly. This develops the flavor of the crust and helps provide that crunchiness that my other recipe lacked.

Beyond the rise time, I tweaked the type of flours I used from a simple unbleached AP to a combination of unbleached AP and 00 flour. 00 flour is finely ground and comes from soft wheat’. Most flours like AP or Bread flour comes from ‘hard wheat’ varietals. There are a number of different types of hard and soft wheat and certainly feel free to experiment around with the various wheat types and whole grains. 00 Flour is commonly found in Italy but, while available in the US, it is certainly less common. You can purchase 00 flour at specialty and gourmet grocery stores. I can tell you that stop ‘n shop locally in Berkeley Heights does not carry it. However, Kings does and it runs around 4-5 per bag and the bags are typically smaller than the large bags of AP flour that are offered. So, it’s certainly more expensive. The investment in making a special meal is definitely worth it in this case as it makes a world of difference.

One last note: I know if you scroll through the site of late, it has been very heavily skewing towards Italian food. I plan to rectify that pretty quickly with some things I’m working on right now. So, if you don’t care for Italian food (who are you??), don’t worry…changes are coming. If you love Italian, don’t worry. I’m not abandoning Italian food altogether. I just want it to be a part of what’s offered and discussed. Anyway, stay tuned for new directions. Until then, have a pizza night with family or friends and show off your ability to create quality crusts…it will definitely impress!

PS- this recipe can be used for flatbreads as well. Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →

February 4, 2015
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Chestnut Flour Pasta with Mixed Mushrooms in Light Cream Sauce

Making fresh pasta can be a daunting task and one I have to admit I was a bit intimidated about tackling several years ago. Luckily, though, it really isn’t very difficult and, like bread making, can be a very hand-on and rewarding experience. Unfortunately, like bread making, there is also a bit of an art to making pasta and recipes for the dough can be a little off each time…a little too dry or too wet, etc. Over time, you develop a sense for those sorts of variances and can adjust. So, if you haven’t attempted making pasta before, it may take a few attempts for you to really get the hang of it. Otherwise, it’s a very simple process usually involving a dough with just a couple of ingredients.

When my wife and I visited Italy recently, there were chestnuts everywhere. Roasting on the street during festivals, the smell was pretty incredible. Chestnut flour, though not commonly found or used here in the US, is pretty regularly used in Italy. The chestnuts, dried and ground, flavor the pasta with a deep nutty and earthy flavor. The moment you crack open the chestnut flour the smell envelops you. The darker flour it creates also colors the pasta in a unique way when compared to pastas made with semolina or white flours.

Chestnut pasta can be used in a variety of ways but classically it’s paired with mushrooms as the nutty earthiness of the pasta is enhanced by the earthiness of the mushrooms. The light cream sauce helps cut through some of the overpowering earthiness to bring a nice balance of flavor. Here, I used both dried (porcini) and fresh (crimini) mushrooms. Feel free to use all fresh or all dried or a combination of both. Also, fresh peas and other fresh vegetables are great to add to the mix. However, given the unique flavor of the chestnut pasta itself, I think everyone owes it to themselves to make a simple dish at first with just a few flavors and ingredients so that you can really savor the flavor and texture of this pasta and allow it to stand on its own. From there, go where your imagination takes you! Recipe and notes follow after the jump… Continue reading →

culinary flights of fancy

Home Cooking Adventures in Berkeley Heights

Monthly Archives: February 2015