stuffed Shells Recipe

As I mention up above, you can make the components for this a couple days ahead of time if needed – i.e. sauce, filling. Also, you won’t be able to fit 25-30 shells in your pan, but a few are always casualties of the boil, so I call for more than you’ll likely need.

zest of one lemon

Sauce:
1/3 cup / 80 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
scant 3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
4 medium cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 28-ounce can crushed red tomatoes
1 14-ounce can crushed red tomatoes

Filling:
1 15-ounce container ricotta cheese
1 egg, beaten
1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 cup / ~5 oz grated mozzarella
1 bunch of chives, minced

25-30 jumbo dried pasta shells

Oil a 13 x 9-inch / 33 x 23-cm baking pan, or equivalent, and sprinkle the zest of 1/2 the lemon across it. Set aside. Get a big pot of water boiling, and preheat your oven to 350F / 180C with a rack in the middle.

To make the sauce, combine the olive oil, red pepper flakes, sea salt, and garlic in a cold saucepan. Stir while you heat the saucepan over medium-high heat. Saute just 45 seconds or so until everything is fragrant – you don’t want the garlic to brown. Now stir in the tomatoes and heat to a gentle simmer, just a minute or two. Remove from heat and carefully take a taste (you don’t want to burn your tongue)…If the sauce needs more salt add it now. Let cool.

To make the filling, combine the ricotta, egg, and salt in a medium bowl. Mix until combined, then stir in the mozzarella, remaining lemon zest, and 3/4 of the chives. Set aside.

Cook the shells according to package instructions in well-salted water – until al dente. If you overcook, the shells will tear as you attempt to fill them. Drain and let cool long enough to handle with your hands – see photo.

Spread 1/3 of sauce across the bottom of the prepared pan. Fill each shell with ricotta, and arrange in a single layer in the pan. Ladle the remaining sauce over the shells, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, uncover for the final 15 minutes or until the shells are cooked through. Sprinkle with the remaining chives and serve hot.

Serves 4 – 6.

Cucumber Peanut Salad

You can prep all the components ahead of time, but don’t toss the salad until just before serving. If you do the peanuts will lose their crunch because the cucumbers give off a good amount of water. If you use two chiles and leave the seeds/veins in – this is quite a spicy salad, so feel free to adapt for your tastes. You can just use one chile, and if you’re still worried, remove the seeds and veins. It can be made vegan by substituting sunflower oil for the ghee.

3 medium cucumbers, partially peeled
1-2 green serrano chiles, stemmed and minced
1/2 cup / 2.5 ounces / 70 g peanuts, toasted
1/3 cup / 1.5 ounces / 45 g dried large-flake coconut, toasted
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon natural cane sugar
1 tablespoon, ghee, clarified butter, or sunflower oil
1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
a handful cilantro, chopped

Halve the cucumbers lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and chop into pieces roughly the size of pencil erasers. Just before you’re ready to serve, transfer to a mixing bowl and toss gently with chiles, peanuts, coconut, lemon juice, and sugar.

Over medium heat melt the ghee in a small skillet. When hot stir in the mustard seeds. They are going to sputter and spit a bit, and when this starts to happen, add the cumin for 15-30 seconds, just long enough to toast the spices. Cover with a lid if needed. Remove from heat, stir in the salt, and immediately stir this into the salad. Turn out onto a patter topped with the cilantro.

Serves 4.

Adapted from Sanjeev Kapoor’s Cucumber Salad {Khamang Kakdi) in How to Cook Indian. Published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, April 2011.

Oatmeal Muffins

Don’t use instant oats here, go for rolled oats. It’s worth noting, I used the crumble-topping from the Tutti-Frutti crumble in Super Natural Every Day – and it makes about double the crumble you’ll need for these muffins. I’m never one to complain about having extra crumble on hand – you can keep it in the freezer until the next time you want a crumble top on something. Crumble, then freeze. Also, this recipe yields a slightly awkward 1 1/2 dozen muffins. Bake all at once, or bake a one-dozen pan batch, keep the leftover batter in the refrigerator for a couple days, then bake the rest.

Crumble topping:
scant 3/4 cup / 3 oz / 85 g whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup / 1.5 oz / 45 g rolled oats
1/2 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g natural cane or brown sugar
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/3 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g unsalted butter, melted

Muffin batter:
1 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g rolled oats
3/4 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
7/8 cup / 7 oz / 200 g unsalted butter, plus more for greasing pan
1/2 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g natural cane or brown sugar
1 1/2 cups / 12 oz / 350 ml plain yogurt
2 large eggs, whisked

Preheat oven to 350F / 180C. Butter one or two muffin pans generously. I didn’t use paper liners, and I’m glad I didn’t. Place oven racks in top third of oven.

Get your crumble topping for your muffins started first. Use a fork to combine the flour, oats, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Stir in the melted butter. Divide the mixture into three portions, and use your hands to form into three flat-ish patties. Place the patties in a bowl in the freezer for about ten minutes.

Now, onto the muffin batter. In a medium bowl combine the oats, flours, baking soda, and sea salt. Set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Whisk in the yogurt, and then the eggs. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir just until combined. Do your best to avoid over mixing.

Pour the batter into the muffin tins, filling each 3/4 full. Pull the crumble from the freezer and break it up into small and medium pieces. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with crumble, place the muffins in the oven and bake 30 – 35 minutes or until tops are golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool just a minute or so, then turn out onto a cooling rack – important!

Makes about 1 1/2 dozen muffins.

Prep time: 10 min – Cook time: 35 min

I decided to make something new for my signing at Omnivore Books a couple weeks back. Something tasty, tiny, and a little off-beat. I’ve been stuck in a bit of a crostini rut, and tend to make little goat cheese crostini with yellow split peas and chives anytime I want to avoid the use of plates or utensils. People love them, they’re bite-sized, and you can make the components ahead of time. That said, I thought it was time to expand the crostini repertoire and I started thinking about doing a version with black bread and liptauer cheese. For those of you unfamiliar with liptauer cheese, its typically a paprika-kissed, cheese spread punctuated by things like capers, pickles, caraway seeds, mustard, onions. Spread across a slab of dark rye bread or cracker, its the perfect accompaniment to a pint.

Before I get into the specifics related to my liptauer experiments, I thought I’d share a few pics from the Omnivore signing. Thank you all for coming out. It goes without saying – it was fun meeting each of you, and I particularly loved all the little notes, handwritten recipes, and homemade treats you left me. I have a couple more signings coming up related to the release of Super Natural Every Day, all with friends looped in. There’s the one in Portland with Kim Boyce. I’ll be at the Remodelista Local Seattle Market, and then with Lara Ferroni at her lovely studio later that evening.

On the liptauer front – I played around quite a bit trying to get this the way I imagined. People seem to use all different kinds of cheese in their liptauer spreads – cream cheese, sheep milk cheese, cottage cheese, etc. I tried a bunch as well. Let’s just say ricotta was a bad, bad call. But I liked my goat cheese version, so that’s what I’m sharing here. The consistency is thick, spreadable, but not too loose for crostini. As far as all the other add-ins, I just went with what tasted good to me. Try it this way for starters, and if you think you might like more mustard flavor, or paprika, adjust the next time around. The kicker at the end of this story is this. I walked out the door to go to the signing – ice, Prosecco, purse, cellphone, postcards, goat cheese crostini – check. check. check. Left the liptauer plate on the coffee table. :

Liptauer Cheese Crostini

Use room temperature butter and cheese. It helps the spread cream up beautifully. And slice your bread much more thinly than what I’ve done here. I could only track down pre-sliced black bread the day I shot these. You can make the spread a few days ahead of time if needed.

8 ounces / goat cheese, room temperature
4 oz unsalted butter, room temperature
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 big pinches of salt, or to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds, toasted & crushed
1 teaspoon capers, rinsed, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped shallots or onion
1 tablespoon chopped pickles

a few dozen thin crostini or crackers*
one bunch of chopped chives, to serve

Cream the goat cheese in a large bowl wither by hand or with a hand blender. Add the butter and incorporate that as well. Add the paprika, mustard, and salt and cream some more. Now, by hand, beat in the caraway seeds, capers, shallots, and pickles. Taste and adjust until everything is to your liking.

Assemble no more than an hour before serving, so your bread doesn’t go soft. Spread the liptauer across each crostini, and sprinkle with chives.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

*You can make crostini simply by tossing pieces of bite-sized, thinly sliced bread with a couple glugs of olive oil and the placing them on a baking sheet in a 350F/180C oven until deeply toasted. Cool and store in an airtight jar until ready to use.

July 28, 2011 |   124 Comments

These are amazing caramels!

When Caitlin and I were in San Francisco last month, we stopped in the Ferry Building along the Embarcadero.  It was around 11:00 a.m. and, even though had lunch plans in an hour, we thought it would be fun to wander through the marketplace.  We shared a sorbet from the Ciao Bella stand and then went across the hall to a small food store to find (something else) to hold me over until lunch.

At the checkout stand, there was a tin bin, filled with several varieties of caramels.  I can’t remember the different kinds, but I do know that we grabbed two or three to have “later.”

When we had gone to Santa Fe, I posted a cornbread recipe inspired by that trip.  After sampling the sourdough at Boudin Bakery, I thought it would be fun to try to make my own sourdough.  Unfortunately, creating the sourdough starter seemed a little intimidating.  So, subsequent thoughts turned towards our trip through the Ferry Building.  And that’s when I settled on these caramels.

These caramels were really easy to make and turned out so well.  They turned out so well, in fact, that I decided it was not safe to keep all twenty of them in my apartment.  The morning I rolled them, I promptly went to the Post Office and mailed Caitlin half of them, knowing that her will-power vastly exceeded my own!

Homemade sea salt caramels

PREP TIME: Requires a few hours of cooling
COOK TIME: 20 minutes
YIELD: 16 to 20 Caramels

WHAT TO GRAB:
Vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

HOW YOU DO IT:

1.  Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper.  Lightly brush the paper with the vegetable oil.

2.  In a small pot, bring the cream, butter, and one teaspoon of the sea salt to a simmer, over medium heat.  Do not let it boil.  Once it has reached a simmer, turn off the heat, and set it aside.

3.  In a deep saucepan, combine the water, corn syrup, and sugar.  Over medium-high heat, stir only until the sugar has dissolved.  Then allow the mixture to boil, without stirring, until the mixture is a warm, golden brown.  Watch very carefully, as the caramel can burn quickly toward the end.  (It can be helpful to use a wooden spoon and drip some of the caramel onto a white plate to gauge the exact color).

4.  When the sugar mixture is done, remove it from the heat and slowly add the cream mixture to the sugar mixture.  Be careful because it will bubble up violently.  Stir in the vanilla.

5.  Return the mixture to the heat and cook over medium heat until a candy thermometer reads 248 degrees (firm ball), about 10 minutes.  Pour the caramel into the prepared pan.  (Don’t scrape the pot).  Refrigerate for a few hours, until firm.

6.  Remove the caramel from the refrigerator and allow it to come close to room temperature.  Pry the caramel from the pan.  On a cutting board, cut the square in half.  Using parchment paper, roll each piece of caramel into a tight 8- to 10-inch log.  Sprinkle the logs with sea salt.  Cut each log into 3/4-inch or 1-inch pieces.  Individually wrap each caramel in glassine or parchment paper, twisting the ends.  Store in the refrigerator or in an air-tight container.

What happens to old cooking trends after they die?

Case in point: we own a full-size French fish poacher.  It’s lurking in our basement like a giant carp resting on the bottom of a pond.  How it ended up there is no mystery.  It’s a beast, an unwieldy piece of steel, heavy as plate armor, a narrow oval the better part of a yard long, six inches deep and task-specific to the point of disdain.  If we want to poach a  swordfish the size of East Providence, we can winch the damn thing upstairs.  It has no other uses.  Unless you count its possible utility a planter.  Still, we hang on to it.  Our children will inherit it.

During the first flush of the culinary revolution led by Julia Child, James Beard and their contemporaries quite a few devices escaped their imprisonment in restaurant kitchens and found refuge with sympathetic home cooks (why do you think people today chop shallots with surgical steel instead of the steak knives you used to get at gas stations?).  If some of those early escapees couldn’t adapt to civilian life (fish poacher), so what?   We tested our limits, and we’re better for it.  We make pho now.  Who wants to go back to the days when Swiss fondue was exotic, if not daring, and fashionable parties were built around omelettes, for God’s sake?  (Rent the 1970 movie Diary of a Mad Housewife if you don’t believe me.)  If nothing else, we’ve become more educated cooks and diners.

Once in awhile a technique drops off the radar for no more reason than the fact that everyone everywhere seems to be doing it, and becoming aware they’re doing it.  That’s my theory about cooking seafood en papillote – baking it in parchment – a perfectly respectable  technique that became a menu cliché, probably because it’s so easy and effective.  Some people believe the trimmed parchment sheet used to fold a papillote resembles a young lycée student’s outline of a papillon, a butterfly.  I think it resembles a young lycée student’s outline of a heart, but I must be in the minority.  In any event papillon becomes papillote, a butterfly-shaped package.

Cooking in parchment is both simple and easy, the antithesis of using a fish poacher.  You place a piece of seasoned seafood on your butterfly cut-out, throw in some cut vegetables, fresh herbs, and a bit of fat in the form of butter, olive oil or coconut milk.  Fold the butterfly in half, crimping the edges of the wings together, and then bake it.

Ten or fifteen minutes later everyone gets their own very cool package to open.  Lots of oohs and aahs and no roasting pans to clean.  You can even use parchment made from recycled paper like we did, or foil, although with foil you don’t get that wonderful crackly effect that you do with baked paper.  Edible origami.

Jody and I don’t consign anything to the dustbin of culinary history.  We just send it to the basement.  Everything was new once and you never know when an out-of-fashion technique or piece of superannuated kitchen equipment will put in a return appearance, revivified in its absence.  Plus, you need a whole-poached-fish period in your life to bulk up your culinary muscles.  And if ten-pound halibut become the thing to serve your friends this winter, you’ll know where to find me – in the basement.

Curried Cod Baked in Parchment

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 8 teaspoons unsalted butter or 4 teaspoons butter and 4 tablespoons coconut milk
• 4 ounces cauliflower florettes
• 2 tablespoons very thinly sliced garlic scapes or 4 tablespoons thinly sliced scallions
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice + more after the fish is done
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
• 4 pieces of cod, skinned and boned, approximately 4 ounces each, about 1 inch thick (or any other firm-fleshed fish, skinned and boned, such as halibut, bass, or snapper)
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 16  sugar snap pea pods, split, strings removed
• 4 sprigs mint or a handful of chive blossoms for garnish (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Cut 4 sheets of parchment into hearts.  The width of each heart is about the  width of the roll of parchment.  Look at the photograph to get an idea of their size and orientation.  Crease them down the center like Valentines, then open them back up.  Brush the exposed surface of each heart with 1 teaspoon butter, leaving a 1-inch border untouched all the way around.
3. Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife, cut the cauliflower into slices ⅛-inch thick.  Put the cauliflower into a bowl with the scapes or scallions, season with salt, pepper, a tablespoon of lime juice, and 1 teaspoon mint.  Toss well.
4. Arrange the cauliflower over one side of each heart in a single layer, leaving the 1-inch border free.  Again, see the photo.  Don’t rinse the bowl.
5. Put the cod into the cauliflower bowl, season all over with salt, pepper, curry powder and the remaining lime juice.  Toss gently to coat each piece with the seasonings. Set a piece of cod atop the cauliflower.  Sprinkle with mint, dot with the remaining butter (or sprinkle with coconut milk).  Put 4 sugar snap pea pods on top of each piece of fish.
6. Fold the empty half of the heart over the cod and vegetables, securing the edges with a series of overlapping folds.  Start at the rounded end, working your way down to the point, twisting it into a tail.  Tuck the tail under the bundle.  We’ve left it up in the photograph so you can see it.
7. Transfer the packages to a sheet pan.  Bake 10 minutes, or until the fish is done. Let rest 4 minutes.  To serve, cut a cross in the top of each package.  Peel back the paper and garnish with mint sprigs or chive blossoms.

notes:

The last time I wrote a recipe for fish baked in parchment was 1997 so when Ken brought up the idea of fish en papillotte it was a total blast from the past.

I wanted to use stuff currently available at farmers’ markets.  Garlic scapes and sugar snap peas were expected, but the cauliflower was a surprise, as was the cod that a vendor was selling out of his truck in the parking lot at Allandale Farm.  Back home I landed on the idea of tying the peas and cauliflower together with curry, and I stuck to the French spirit of the technique by using butter.  (Feel free to add a little more butter to the recipe if you want to.)

Fish in parchment can be prepared ahead and refrigerated,  takes just 10 minutes to bake, and is tasty and healthy. . . leaving room for cheese or chocolate after dinner.  Nothing with the same wow factor is anything near as easy to make.

After testing the recipe using only butter, we had some extra ingredients and since Ken had lobbied for coconut milk, I humored him by trying it.  It was good, but missing something. Roxanne figured it out: “Don’t they put sugar in some Thai food?”  We added a sprinkle of sugar, then tasted it again.  She was right.

This particular recipe should get you started cooking in parchment.  The formula’s pretty simple: firm fish; vegetables; butter, coconut milk, or olive oil; fresh herbs; some sliced lemon if you like.  Remember to cut the vegetables thinly or they won’t by done by the time the fish finishes.  Let the bundles rest for 4-5 minutes before serving.