Gentle reader, I do NOT love a rainy night. Not when it’s raining, like, buckets. (Although it is exciting when the storm drains on my street are clogged by litter and the street floods and I can legitimately say I live on waterfront property.)
But when life gives you rain, you make comfort food. So I perused a few slow-cooker pork ramen recipes online and then, as is my wont, ignored like 90% of their instructions and mashed up the rest according to my own whim.
Okay, fine, gentle reader, you got me. Obviously I could have just called this recipe chicken noodle soup. But listen, me and chicken noodle soup have—no pun intended—beef. I resent the hegemony of chicken noodle soup at every deli in New York. It always seems to have a seat at the table (or rather, beside the buffet table), and I think that is unfair to the marginalized and more creamy and delicious soups such as broccoli-cheddar and cream of cauliflower. Chicken noodle is to soups as the 1% are to the economy: Disproportionally privileged in a society that calls itself a democracy…or a deli, or whatever. The analogy isn’t that sound. The point is, it pisses me off.
Anyhoo. Chicken and noodles in broth do have their medicinal purpose in cold January weather. Having embraced my mission to fill my boyfriend’s thermos at ungodly hours (that was not the weird innuendo that it came off as; please follow this link for clarification), I made him this soup. Okay, fine, it was not such a healthful version.
I know what you’re thinking just reading the post title, gentle reader: That sounds like something that would be on the menu at Chili’s. Well, fine, maybe it would—but at least I’m not killing your buzz by printing the calorie count on a menu, okay?
This weeknight meal (about 30 minutes start to finish; could easily be prepped in advance and reheated covered in foil) was inspired by my lack of motivation to go to the grocery store. In the fridge, I had a 4-pack of Goya chorizo, a 4-oz. can of mild diced green chiles, an 8-oz. package of cream cheese, a block of jalapeno jack, and the last gasp of a bunch of cilantro. In my cupboard, I had some lasagna noodles—which was a small miracle considering that last week I nearly had to be escorted out of the Key Foods after I pointed out to the woman ringing up my groceries that the packages were on sale two-for-one, which she summarily denied, and after I stormed into the pasta aisle and returned with the sale card, she looked at it and goes, “No, it’s not two for one. It says buy one, get one free.” I SWEAR TO GOD, gentle reader. I was like, HOLD MY EARRINGS.
Anyhoo. Although I was in no mood to return to said Key Foods, the two aforementioned cheeses were clearly not adequate for a lasagna, so I got a half pound of sliced cheddar at the Brooklyn Sub on Bergen just off Washington (next to the liquor store where you play a decidedly less titillating variant of Spin the Bottle by putting your purchase into the bulletproof-glass Lazy Susan). Gentle reader, I highly recommend Brooklyn Sub as a place to purchase your deli meats and cheeses. It has a great selection; the staff is super nice; and it is where I first learned of the existence of chipotle Gouda, so it has a special place in my heart—and also, the guy with the ponytail is the most dextrous deli slicer ever, so do not be put off by his ponytail, because he is a true professional, and none of that hair is going to end up in your food, trust.
Anyhoo x2. I got half a pound of sliced cheddar. Okay, now here’s the actual recipe...
Gentle reader, for my second-ever foray into slow-cooker cooking, I had the urge to go old-school-Americana with that classic creamy combo of chicken and Campbell’s canned cream of mushroom soup. (I have a perverse taste for this, as evidenced by the Company Chicken recipe.) I checked out a few recipes online, and they were all pretty similar—as Andy Warhol could’ve told you, Campbell’s soup cans do not really lend themselves to variation. I settled on a pretty simple take on it. You just dump all of the following into the cooker:
Now. Normally I pride myself on making absolutely everything from scratch when I entertain. But there are exceptions.
Look, gentle readers, the holiday party I had on Sunday turned out to be quite the freaking production, let me tell you. I made like 6 trips to the Key Foods, formed and froze dozens of meatballs and phyllo triangles, shoehorned some compound butter into a star-shaped cookie cutter … and on and on and on. No rest for the wicked—you might say I was trying to stave off the prospect of getting coal in my stocking.
The menu, which yielded shockingly few leftovers, was as follows:
An 8-pound ham glazed with molasses and studded with pineapples, with sriracha mayo and horseradish sour cream accoutrements.
Two roast chickens, stuffed with orange wedges and leeks for flavor and (dubious) presentation.
An embarrassment of quiches (mushroom-leek, tomato-arugula, and bacon-arugula, all with Swiss cheese).
A tricolor penne salad with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and olives.
I say- Take advantage of the cold to partake in the second best cold weather activity- Eating Comfort Food! (first is skiing)
Oftentimes, the thought of reheating an unfinished restaurant meal at home is only slightly more appetizing the thought of than regurgitating the part you did finish. Sloshing around in its to-go container, your perfectly plated entrée invariably gets caught in a landslide of crap and is no longer enticing. But I’m a believer in extricating the protein from said landslide and giving it a new life as a supporting player in a whole new dish.
This simple meal is effectively just a pseudo-Mexican spin on pork and beans, but I think it’s worth chronicling because it’s a good illustration of two of our core BGC philosophies: (1) There’s always a good meal waiting in your kitchen if you keep the right staples on hand, and (2) There’s always something interesting to do with leftovers. Also, it was really quite delicious. And it cost just $1 in new ingredients—for the bunch of cilantro, which I actually used only a fraction of, so it was more like 25 cents of new ingredients. As per (2) above, it behooves you to always keep on hand onions, garlic, pasta, and tomatoes in fresh or canned form.
First I sautéed some sliced red onion over medium-low heat in butter and a bit of olive oil. Then I tossed/mixed in a bunch of minced garlic, followed by some quartered grape tomatoes and a rinsed/drained can of black beans. While this cooked for a few minutes, I took a brick of brisket left over from a recent excellent dinner at Watty & Meg and shredded it into strips.
So it's hot out. It's so hot that it seems ridiculous to call it hot. It's... Heht. So it's not really cooking weather I get it. It's "if I have to cook I don't want to heat up the kitchen, so let's fire up the grill" heht. Which is why it was so strange that tonight, in the heat, I felt like throwing something together that would require the stove top. And, like I said in the title of this post, I made something weird. I'm going to call it potato leek pasta, and you can just suspend your disbelief while I take you through it, because it came out pretty good!
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This is one of your super-simple, quick weeknight one-dish meals. The balance of sweet, rich, spicy sausage with the bitter greens, the salty Parmesan, and the neutralizing pasta is a perfect harmony.
The secret to good broccoli rabe (or as we call it in our household, broccoli The Rob) is that you have to take the edge off the bitterness, either by “shocking” it in boiling water or siphoning it out into chicken stock or another liquid while sautéing. I find the former method to be more effective—as long as you don’t boil the greens for too long so they lose their crunch and flavor. It works great for pasta since you can just toss it into the same water.
Start by boiling a big covered pot of salted water. I like using one that comes with a lift-out colander basket, since it makes it super easy to lift out the broccoli rabe and then add the pasta into the same boiling water. But if you don’t have one you can use tongs to extricate it.
While you are waiting for the water to boil, heat a little olive oil in a large skillet or wide-bottomed stockpot over medium-high. Add a pound of loose sweet or hot Italian sausage—you can either buy it that way, or use a paring knife to slit the casings of a package of 6 tube-style sausages and “peel” them to extricate the filling.
Sauté the sausage, stabbing it with a wooden spoon to crumble it up into smaller chunks. (BTW, Stabbing to Crumble would be a great name for your new thrash-metal band. You’re welcome!)
When the sausage is cooked through (gray with brown spots; it’s okay if there are hints of pink still), lift it out of the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels or a brown paper bag.
Gentle reader, I have a most terrible confession to make. Once upon a time, in a dark hour, a moment of weakness I shall regret forever, I actually entertained the idea of...using red sauce from a jar. (I know! I know! I need to go to Our Lady of Perpetual Pasta and say ten Hail Mama Celestes in penance.) Thankfully, my soul was saved by a good Catholic girl who would not allow me to abandon my faith in the healing power of cooking from scratch. Hence this recipe is named in her honor.
Here’s how this narrowly averted sin went down. One lovely summer weekend, I was invited to my friend Karen’s house in Woodstock for a girls’ weekend. The deal was that each of us would contribute a meal, and I said I’d make pizza on the grill. But I didn't have time to grocery-shop before leaving, and to my eternal shame, I—after much agonizing, soul-searching, and conscience-wrestling—suggested getting a jar of spaghetti sauce to save time.
Karen, a good Catholic girl, responded by visibly shuddering, making the sign of the cross, and saying she would get the ingredients for me to make the sauce from scratch. Hallelujah! She kept me from wandering into the valley of prepackaged, overpriced, preservative-laden darkness.
Making the sauce is, and was, easy—even after the many glasses of wine our group of girlfriends had consumed by the time I started cooking (gentle reader, our conversation that evening would have made Madonna blush—and I don't mean the virginal one). This sauce is of course perfect for pasta or any other dish that calls for red sauce, and it freezes great to reheat for a spaghetti dinner in 10 minutes (more on this after the jump).
My two-prong 2012 resolution was to do more cooking at home, and to end up throwing out fewer leftovers by repurposing them for future dinners and/or work lunches. This resolution seemed like a manageable, money-saving one that will yield some good meals and blogging inspiration. Plus, I figured, if the world is going to end this coming December, there’s no point in resolving to exercise, eat healthy, or quit smoking—amirite, gentle reader?
Anyhoo, I have done pretty well thus far—I've brought lunch to work more days than not, and managed to make some creative use of leftovers. The Taco Night I recently blogged about actually occurred twice over the course of a few weeks—once with corn tortillas, once with flour. And following both occasions, I came up with excellent ways to use up the leftover ground beef filling.
Last night, I invented this dish and named it in honor of the New York Rangers’ coach John Tortorella. There is no particular significance to the ingredients as pertaining to him; I just wanted to pay tribute to the man who has led my secret boyfriend Henrik Lundqvist and his teammates to be NUMBER FREAKING ONE IN THE NHL AND WINNERS OF THE WINTER CLASSIC!!! And whose name just sounds like it should be a pasta. Originally I was actually thinking of inventing a Tortellini alla Tortorella (you know how I love geeky wordplay, gentle reader), but I figured ravioli would work better, because the meat sauce would mingle with the cheese filling once you cut into the ravioli, whereas tortellini are all wound up tight (much like Tortorella).
While heating a large pot of salted water for a package of cheese ravioli (13 count), I sautéed a little over a pound of ground pork in a couple tablespoons of olive oil with a medium chopped onion, a bunch of minced garlic, and a 10-oz. package of cremini (a.k.a. "baby bella") mushrooms sliced and halved. Oh, and coarse salt and pepper of course, and some fresh thyme leaves. I broke up the meat with a wooden spoon as it cooked.
Once the meat was cooked through (it doesn’t really brown, it more like…whites), I added maybe 1/2 cup frozen peas, stirred them in to mix, and transferred the meat mixture to a bowl.
Gentle reader, at every Brooklyn street fair, it seems I end up disappointing myself. I gravitate toward the first greasy street foods in sight, then end up too full to try things I encounter later. (Hint: Avoid the mozzarepas—they expand in your stomach and ruin you for the rest of the day in one shot.) However, this past Sunday, at the Fifth Avenue Street Fair, I had the opposite problem: not getting enough street food. Oh, the irony!
See, after much cautious passing-up of various pulled-pork purveyors, I threw in my lot with a brisket slider from Benchmark. (Yummy, if messy. Note to self: Put Wet-Naps in purse before next street fair.) But by then it was getting pretty late, and it started to rain, and all the vendors started packing up, so I was unable to follow up with a chicken taco, much less funnel cake for dessert. And let me just say—at the risk of sounding melodramatic, which I would never, ever, ever do—that for a moment I hoped those people carrying signs about the End of Days coming next Saturday were right. Because seriously, what kind of a God would want to rain on His children’s funnel-cake parade?!
After I finished shaking my fists at the heavens, I proceeded to the after-party, chez the Beez (what, you don’t have after-parties for street fairs? Laaame), where I proceeded to overcompensate by eating pizza (you never saw a group of people tear into a pizza like that straight off a street-fair fried-food crawl) … at which point someone brought over a triple-crème cheese and crackers … and then I may have stopped for a couple of fried chicken drumsticks at Yafa Deli on the way home. What? Don’t judge me! I did a lot of walking at that fair!
Anyhoo. My point being: For the past couple of days, I’ve felt the need to eat relatively healthy, vegetable-driven meals that are neither deep-fried or on a stick. Hence I came up with this simple pasta, with a low ratio of noodles to veggies.
(Yes, that’s where I was going all this time. I’ll pause for you to overcome your indignation.)
So, yeah! This is a no-brainer-easy, vegetarian alternative to your average pasta with preservative-laden jar red sauce. Ingredients total around $5—and might be even cheaper come summer’s end, if you have a garden overflowing with tomatoes and zucchini. Personally, I don’t have a vegetable garden, so if you do, gentle reader, the polite thing would probably be to share some of your extra produce with me. I did share this recipe with you, after all, so it’s really the least you could do.
In case you have not noticed, gentle reader, my recipes have been on the hearty and rich side lately. That is because right now in Brooklyn, it is about 7 degrees out. Which kind of sucks in a largely car-free culture where you have to walk everywhere. So you can understand why I would be drawn to seriously belly-filling fare these days. I'm calling it Carbopalooza 2011.
This naturally brings us to mac and cheese, another ’Merickan classic. There are almost infinite variations of this dish you can whip up ... though The Rob would far rather have a box of Kraft—old-school powdered cheese-style—than any other incarnation, so, I'm ashamed to say, the neon-orange stuff does sometimes make an appearance on our plates.
This from-scratch baked version, with three cheeses, prosciutto, and peas (yet another spin on my go-to pasta formula), seems pretty fancy but is simple to throw together with ingredients you can get at your supermarket’s deli counter. I made it for a recent dinner with my friend Tom, a good Italian boy who is naturally a fan of the non-box-based cheesy pasta. (I apologize if that was Italian stereotyping and our advertisers pull out like with Jersey Shore. Not that we have any advertisers, but we might someday, and I don't want to have to go back and edit.)
I had decided that I would indulge on snacks (chips and salsa, bleu cheese and crackers) while making myself my most favorite, most comforting dish ever: Aglia e Olio. If you're new here- guess what, I love garlic. I also love the simplicity of aglia e olio. pasta, garlic, parsley, olive oil, red pepper flakes, topped with parmesan. there is nothing better. I was going to feel better. I won't lie, I have eaten my feelings before, I figured I would try to make it a productive exercise for myself and you, dear readers, by chronicling a simple, straightforward, immensely appealing recipe.
There is a category of my cooking I refer to as “Ignorant American Fusion”: basically, it involves dilettante-y co-opting of other cultures’ cuisines much as Madonna does to their fashion, religion, and dancing styles. This dish (much like the Hoisin Pork with Scallion Crepes) falls into that category, since it derives inspiration from American Chinese food but in no way is an attempt to reproduce it authentically. Hell, that would involve actual research, as opposed to just throwing something together!
