This one was a big hit.  I was being lazy, and it turned out for the best.

I started with a box of Pacific Foods’ beef broth, added a can of diced tomatoes, and some Costco frozen Italian meatballs.  Once that was all hot, I dumped in a bunch of spinach (I like the prewashed baby spinach) and just barely wilted it.  At the last minute, I tossed in some torn up fresh basil, which gave it a really nice smell.  Served it up with a loaf of New Seasons’ fabulous Como bread, and all was good.

I was cruising New Seasons last evening, and was inspired by some nice looking greens, so came up with something to host them.  I was thinking about the northern Italian dish whose name I can never remember involving buckwheat noodles, cabbage, potatoes and cheese. 

I got a bag of red fingerling potatoes, and set them to roasting at 400° coated in oil, salt and pepper.  Then boiled up some pasta.  I used organic whole wheat gamelli.  While those were cooking, I sauteed some broccolini and some kale (the really skinny, dark kind, usually labeled “dinosaur” or “lacinto”).  When everything was cooked, I added the pasta and the taters (chopped) to the greens, and tossed in a goodly portion of fontina cheese.  Stirred up enough to melt the cheese, and it was good to go. 

Very tasty.  The kids were down with it too, probably thanks to the cheese.

My wife wanted to host a “tea” at an SCA event this past weekend, and so I needed to whip up some finger sandwiches (since that’s what you have at tea).  I went with the standard egg salad and cucumber and cream cheese, and for something different I tried making a chicken salad for some of the sandwiches.  It turned out to be a really big hit, and since it was so easy I wanted to pass it along.

I used canned white meat chicken (whatever brand they have at Costco, I didn’t notice), added some manyonaise (I use Nasoya brand tofu mayonaise) some salt, a healthy dose of Penzey’s sweet curry powder, and some raisins.  That’s it.  Beat everything together and spead on bread.  I was kind of surprised that it was so popular.  In a perfect world I’d have added some chopped celery, and some roasted cashews, but I didn’t have those things.

I got two great new cookbooks from my Mom at Christmas, and I’ve been cooking out of one of them pretty much non-stop all weekend.  Mangoes & Curry Leaves, by Jeff Alford and Naomi Duguid is my new favorite Indian cookbook. I cooked a bunch of stuff out of it over the weekend, including their pork vindaloo, and scrambled eggs with curry leaves.  Great stuff.  I love all their other books, so I’m not surprised that this one’s a winner too. 

I have yet to try the other one, the Cafe Flora Cookbook.   It’s one of my favorite restaurants ever, so I’m really looking forward to trying some of the recipes for my favorites.  I’ll report back when I do.

I had some leftover green beans from Thanksgiving, so last night I decided to try my hand at something that I always loved as a kid:  greenbeans and spaetzle.  Of course, the ones I loved as a kid were the frozen Birds-Eye variety, so I figured I could do better than that.  If you’ve never had spaetzle, they are little tiny noodles/dumplings made by dropping little bits of batter into boiling water.  Mine came out a little larger than pea-sized, and tasting basically like egg noodles.

I also had some leftover ham, so I decided to work that in too.  I cubed some of the ham and sauteed in in some butter in a heavy pan.  Meanwhile, I blanched the greenbeans for 3 minutes in boiling water, then took them out and ran cold water over them.  The recipe for the spaetzle came from Jeff Smith’s “Our Immigrant Ancestors” which is a great cookbook with a smattering of dishes from all over the world. 

The spaetzle started with 2 eggs, 2 T. of olive oil, and 1/2 cup each of water and milk.  Blend that up (I used a hand blender with a whisk attachment on it) and then add 2 – 2 1/2 cups of white flour, 1/2 t. of salt, and 1/4 t. of baking powder.  You end up with something like thick pancake batter.  Now comes the tricky part if you don’t have the right equipment.  I have a groovy little spaetzle maker I got from Lehman’s that makes it super easy.   If you don’t have one of those, I’ve also used a metal colander (messy) or a big potato ricer (hard to get them even).  If you don’t have a special tool, the colander is probaby your best bet.  Put a couple big scoops of the batter in the bottom of a colander while holding it over a pot of boiling, salted water.  Then rub the spoon around the inside of the colander (use the back of the spoon) to get the little balls to drop through.  When the spaetzle float, they’re done.

I added the spaetzle and greenbeans to the ham, and brought everything up to temperature.  Salt and pepper to taste.  It was quite the hit.  My daughter even ate the greenbeans, despite their green-ness.

For the first time in years I got a chance to cook Thanksgiving dinner at my house, and it was a blast.  I tried something I don’t think I’ve ever done before, and made an entire menu out of a magazine article.  I made pretty much the whole Thanksgiving menu from the latest issue of Chow magazine, which is rapidly becoming my favorite foody rag. 

I did the “turkey two ways”, which involves removing the legs, brining the carcass, and cooking the legs separately in a confit, i.e. covered in oil in a casserole and baked.  The legs especially were a big hit, as it’s something out of the ordinary.  I’ve never tried a confit of duck before, but I think now I may give it a try some time.  I’ll also never cook a turkey without brining it again.  It came out moist and juicy, with a fabulously crispy skin. 

The stuffing was also a bit hit.  It included some Italian sausage, fresh sage, and chestnuts.  Very flavorful, and easy.

I think the biggest hit with the crowd was the corn dish, which involves heavy cream, roasted red peppers, and chevre.  Very much more interesting than the standard corn with butter, or creamed corn.  (We won’t even talk about corn souflee/hot dish.)  I also made the green beans with bacon (can’t go wrong there) and the acorn squash with red onions and currents, which I liked but didn’t go over with the crowd.  Winter squash can be a hard sell, which I don’t get, as I love it. 

In addition to the magazine recipes, I also made some sweet potatoes, which I chopped into bite-sized pieces and then tossed with some sliced banana and a few prunes in some heavy cream with a little honey, rosewater and cinnamon and then baked until tender.

We rounded out the meal with my Mom’s wonderful pumpkin cheesecake, and her (justly) famous cranberry chutney (which, sadly, is almost gone already).

The menu worked out so well I’m really thinking about trying their Cuban Christmas menu next month.

This worked out really well…

I started with some baby shiitake mushrooms I happened to have (little ones about the size of button mushrooms) and some leftover corn on the cob, so I worked from there.

I got a red bell pepper, chopped it, and sauteed in olive oil until they softened up a bit, then tossed in the mushrooms, and the corn (cut from the cobs).  When that had heated up a bit, I added a box of Imagine Foods new Creamy Sweet Potato Soup, and maybe another 1/2 box of water. 

Seasoned with salt, white pepper, a little thyme, and some ground mace, which worked really nicely with the sweet potato.  I had intened to sprinkle the tops with some green onions, which would have completed the color balance, but I totally spaced it.  Next time.

It came out really well.  Just the thing for a cold and blustery night.

We’ve passed it a bunch of times, but finally decided to try the (relatively) new noodle restaurant in Sisters (OR) called Soba this weekend.  I’m glad we did.  It was great. 

They have a pan-Asian menu, including rice bowls and noodle dishes spanning pretty much all of Asia.  The kids both reported the Teriyaki chicken rice bowl to be superlative, Vikki liked the Cha Siu Ramen, and I had great luck with the Singapore Street Noodles, which were rice noodles in a light curry sauce with cha siu and shrimp. 

I can’t wait to go again and find out what “Crouching Noodle, Hidden Soup” tastes like.

I’m a huge fan of meat pies, but in the past I’ve had limited success.  Last weekend I finally hit the jackpot though, with (IMHO) the best chicken pot-pie I’ve yet made.

I started by melting about 4 T. of butter in an oval casserole (love my LaCruset) on the stove, then added a chopped onion and let it brown a bit.  That was followed by some celery, chopped carrots, and mushrooms.  When most of the water had cooked out of the mushrooms I threw in about 4 T. of flour, cooked briefly, and added around 3 cups of chicken broth and maybe 1/2 cup of half-and-half, and a can of peas (fresh or frozen would have been better, but that’s what I had), and leftover chopped chicken, and brought it to a boil for a bit on the stove.  I seasoned with salt to taste, some black pepper, dried sage, and a little thyme.  It looked a little thin, so I added a little cornstarch and water until it thickened a bit.

The oven, meanwhile, was pre heating to 425°.

The I whipped up a quick batch of biscuits with about 2 cups of flour, 1 t. of salt, 3–4 T. of butter (lard would have been better) and cold milk until it came together.  I dropped the dough in biscuitty shaped on top of the chicken mixture and popped the casserole in the oven for about 30 minutes, until the biscuits were well browned.

It worked out really well.  Not too runny, but not gluey, nice crunchy biscuits on top, very flavorful.  Hopefully the leftovers will work out well too.

This weekend I got a couple of little cans (about the size of small cat food cans) of pre-prepared Thai curry paste.  The recipe on the can said use the whole can with two cups coconut milk, et. al. for a green curry.  Great, said I, I never have enough time to make my own, so lets give it a go.  I figured that such a thing would be scaled for howlies, rather than Thais, but how wrong I was.  I made up a batch last night with tofu, Thai eggplant (the little green ones), bamboo shoots and some canned straw mushrooms. 

The flavor was fantastic, but it was so hot that even I was a bit put off, and I consider myself to be a pretty dedicated chile-head.  Wow, it was hot.  My wife found it almost inedible, and the kids wouldn’t go anywhere near it. 

Ah, well.  Now I know.  I think these may have actually been a Thai brand (I didn’t look that closely).  Taste Of Thai makes some pre-made curry paste that’s a bit more moderate.