cassoulet vegetariana / vegetarian cassoulet

January 14, 2011 | Simona

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

You can find information on cassoulet, details about the challenge and the recipes provided on this page. Among the options offered, I chose to make the Vegetarian Cassoulet, which is basically a bean stew. The recipe from Gourmet is excellent, so much so that I made it three times in the span of a couple of weeks. And I also made the Leek Confit (more on this below).

For the cassoulet, I always started with dry beans (fagioli secchi). I haven't been using canned beans for years and there is no coming back. The beans I cook are much tastier than the canned ones and cooking a pot of them is no trouble at all. Plus, there are a limited number of bean varieties that are available canned, so purchasing dry beans allows you to expand your horizon. If you have not yet decided on a New Year's resolution, I suggest this one: preparing beans from scratch at least once a month.

My three renditions of the vegetarian cassoulet had some variations. However, in all cases:

I roughly halved the original recipe
I used one cup of beans, soaked overnight in 4 cups of water, then cooked with aromatics (see this post for details on how I cook dry beans)
instead of water, I used the bean broth, adding water to it as needed to obtain the specified amount of liquid
I used my own homemade bread to make the breadcrumbs instead of a baguette (sfilatino)

Here are the variations (the numbers refer to the relevant rendition of the recipe):

I used canario beans
I used black-eyed peas (fagioli dall'occhio) and cut the vegetables (leeks, celery and carrots — porri, sedano e carote) into pieces smaller than specified in the recipe; I did not mash the beans once they were cooked and forgot the breadcrumbs when I served the dish to our guests (sorry, Christine!)
I used canario beans again, and again cut the vegetables into pieces smaller than specified; also, I used baby carrots (1/2 lb.) instead of adult ones

The two photos portray the third incarnation of the recipe.

I personally prefer the dish without breadcrumbs, with a side of polenta. (I am playing with the cornmeal that I received as part of my most recent grain CSA share, and I may soon tell the story.)

Back to cassoulet, the word itself intrigues me for its definite resemblance to cassoeula, a dish typical of Lombardia, the region where Milan is located. The two dishes contain different ingredients. According to the Larousse dictionary, cassoulet is:

nom masculin
(languedocien cassoulet, de cassollo, terrine)
Ragoût de haricots blancs secs avec de la viande de porc, du confit d'oie ou de la viande de mouton.

Cassoeula is made with pork meat (ribs, feet, a type of small salami, rind, etc.) and verza (Savoy cabbage), besides onion, carrots and celery (no beans). If you are interested, on this page there is a recipe.

As it has happened to me before, close to the deadline, I realized I misread the challenge and missed the confit requirement. The recipe I followed did not ask for a confit, so it was easy to overlook that part. Last night, I made Leek Confit. I adapted the recipe given for the challenge to our household's dietary needs using olive oil instead of butter to cook the leeks. I don't have a photo of the leeks, so I will share a recent image of sky and ocean instead.

The days around the Holidays were stormy along the California coast. We did not have snow storms like elsewhere in the country, but we had our kind of winter weather. In between fronts, the sky (cielo) can be remarkably beautiful and the ocean (oceano) amazingly calm, like on the first morning of the New Year.

You will see many variations of the theme of cassoulet, when you browse the creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. A special thank to Jenni and Lisa for an interesting and fun challenge.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

cassoulet vegetariana

or launch the cassoulet vegetariana audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

due crostate / two tarts

November 27, 2010 | Simona

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

Yes, you read correctly: this month I had the honor of hosting the Daring Bakers’ challenge. The required part of the challenge was to make pasta frolla (sweet short crust pastry, or sweet tart dough, made with flour, butter, sugar and eggs) using either of the two recipes provided, and then use that as the base to make a crostata (tart). The recipes for pasta frolla can be found on the Daring Kitchen site. The page includes recipes for three crostate to use as is or as guides. The variations allowed, in fact, pertained the filling for the crostata: that’s where the amazing creativity of the Daring Bakers shone brightly, as you can see by visiting their blogs, where you can get the relevant details.

For the occasion, I made two new crostate. But before I go into the details of my recipes, I’ll share a few thoughts about what it meant to host an edition of Daring Bakers. Before the month appointed for the hosting, I chose the recipe. This was not difficult, since crostata has been a favorite dessert of mine since an early age and its versatility makes it suitable for the challenge.

Preparing the recipe made me a bit anxious, because I knew that it would be used by many people around the world. Never before had I experienced such trepidation. Once the challenge got under way, what happened was magical: an extraordinary array of crostate and crostatine (small-size crostate) came out of the Daring Bakers’ ovens. I went from trepidation to exhilaration. On the Daring Kitchen page dedicated to crostata, you can see images scrolling and get a sense of the array of fillings and decorations. Take the time to visit the Daring Bakers’ blogs and you will be inspired. Such inspiration can result in the production of a nice crostata (or two, or more) for your Holiday table, which will surprise and delight the commensali (guests at the table).

What did I do for this challenge, besides admiring the creativity of my fellow Daring Bakers? I prepared two crostate I had never made before. (See the Daring Kitchen page dedicated to crostata for details on how to prepare pasta frolla and to line a tart pan with it.)

crostata di pere e cioccolato (pear and chocolate crostata)
This was inspired by a recipe in the issue of the magazine Sorrisi in tavola dedicated to dessert for special days: I dolci delle feste. My mother gave it to me years ago and I rediscovered it recently while cleaning a cupboard. I used the pasta frolla version 1, because I wanted extra dough to make cookies. I baked the crust with the sliced pears distributed over it at 350 F until the border was light golden, then let it cool (see Note about baking time below). I used two large Asian pears, which worked well, since they didn’t juice. They also remained crisp after baking, which I liked. For the chocolate ganache:

3.5 oz. (100 g) 70% chocolate
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream (panna da montare)

Break the chocolate into pieces and put it in a small metal bowl, then place the bowl on top of a saucepan with steaming water, taking care that the bowl does not touch the water. Stir until the chocolate is thoroughly melted. Add the cream and stir until combined. Distribute over the cooled crostata, targeting the space between pear slices.

crostata di mele, burro di mele e formaggio Cheshire (apple, apple butter and Cheshire cheese crostata)
This was inspired by the version of apple pie with Cheddar cheese. I used the pasta frolla version 2 (variation with almond meal). This crostata had four layers. Starting from the bottom layer:

1/2 cup homemade, low-sugar apple butter (containing various spices: I don’t remember the details, because when I made the butter, I failed to note them)
thinly sliced Stayman-Winesap apples
1/2 cup freshly grated Cheshire cheese of my own production (aged 4.5 months)
thinly sliced Stayman-Winesap apples

Scanning this page on Chowhound gave me the idea of cutting the apples using my mandoline. I used the setting that gave me the thinnest slices. I assembled the crostata and baked it at 350 F until the border was light golden. Note about baking time: when I bake a crostata at 350 F, I check it after 35 minutes and assess how much longer it needs to remain in the oven, then check frequently until it is done.

Many thanks to Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice and Lisa of La Mia Cucina, founders of Daring Bakers, for their guidance, their patience and their support. This has been a remarkable adventure: grazie di cuore (my heartfelt thanks). And thanks to my fellow Daring Bakers for making me smile over and over again during this past four weeks as they shared images of their creations: you all did a great job.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words and expressions mentioned in the post:

due crostate

or launch the due crostate audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

soufflé al formaggio con spinaci / cheese and spinach soufflé

November 14, 2010 | Simona

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

You can find information on soufflés, details about the challenge and the recipes provided on this page. Dave and Linda asked us to "make a baked soufflé using any one of the recipes provided or any other soufflé recipe that looks interesting and tasty." Veteran soufflé makers were asked "to make a soufflé never attempted before." I am no veteran soufflé maker, but I have developed a recipe for zucchini and carrot soufflé that I have been making for a few years. The challenge explicitly asked me not to present that, so I chose another recipe.

Much as the "sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé" appealed to my chocolate-lover self, I wanted to make a savory soufflé, preferably with a good amount of cheese. This is because cheese soufflé was the one soufflé I grew up eating. My mother would use grated Emmental for it. The soufflé al formaggio was always welcome as a menu option.

The day appointed for making soufflé, I bought some fresh spinach leaves at the farmers' market, about 1/3 of a pound (150 g). I didn't have a specific reason for the purchase, but I thought that spinach would be a nice soufflé ingredient. I found the recipe that answered my requirements in my beloved Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison: the variation with Spinach of Goat Cheese Soufflé with Thyme. For my zucchini and carrot soufflé, I usually preare a velouté sauce instead of a bechamel sauce. I did the same for this soufflé using:

3 tablespoons flour (I use 2 tablespoon all-purpose flour and 1 tablespoon white rice flour)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/4 cup of my homemade chicken stock

The stock is already flavored with vegetables and herbs, so I skip the step of the recipe that describes flavoring the milk. I let the flour cook in the olive oil for several minutes, then slowly add the hot stock, stirring constantly. Bring back to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for 10 minutes or so, stirring often. The resulting sauce is thick and velvety. Finally, season it with salt and freshly ground pepper.

For the cheese, I decided to use some of my homemade Gouda (made with mostly cow milk, but also a bit of goat milk) and some of the grateable blue-veined cheese that I showed in this post, and also some locally produced mixed mold, soft-ripened goat milk cheese: Cypress Grove's Lil' Ziggy. I grated a total of half a cup of the homemade cheeses and cut into small pieces half of a Lil' Ziggy. Here's a photo of the remaining half of the ziggurat-shaped cheese. Every now and then it is important for me to look at and taste professionally made cheese. In the photo, you can see the layers of this cheese. I am well aware that I have a long way to go.

To the base mixture of velouté sauce, four egg yolks (tuorli) and cheeses, I added the spinach leaves, cooked with the water clinging to them until tender, then finely chopped and seasoned with salt, freshly ground pepper, and a pinch of grated nutmeg (noce moscata). I beat six egg whites (albumi) and folded them into the base, and baked the soufflé according to the original recipe.

Instead of the specified 6-cup soufflé dish, I used my 8-cup one, which explains why my soufflé did not go overboard. I guess the soufflé does not look as impressive as expected when all contained within the confines of the dish. I am actually quite content, because, while there was not a lot of going up and coming down, the soufflé delivered in terms of texture and flavor. When I prepare this recipe again, I will squeeze the spinach better, as I suspect that a bit of extra liquid from the vegetables may have affected the rising of the soufflé. I have some Red Russian kale growing in my small vegetable garden, so I probably will try using tender leaves of that vegetable.

Update — My suspicion was accurate, as proved by the result of my second realization of the same recipe. Instead of spinach, I used some Red Russian kale from my little garden, ribs removed and cut into 1/2"-ribbons, then cooked in a pan with the water clinging to it until tender, then seasoned as detailed above for the spinach. The cooked kale was quite dry, so I added it to the other ingredients as is.

Voilà! (And actually, by the time I set the camera properly to take the photo, the soufflé had already collapsed a bit. It was excellent.)

I don't didn't like to end my post with a so-so photo, hence I will shared an image I took back in September, of the full moon (luna piena) about to set on a truly Pacific ocean.

You will see many variations of the theme of soufflé, when you browse the creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. A special thank to Dave and Linda for an interesting and fun challenge.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

soufflé al formaggio con spinaci

or launch the soufflé al formaggio con spinaci audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

burro di mele alle more / blackberry apple butter

September 14, 2010 | Simona

The September 2010 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John's source for food preservation information was The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

You can find the information on food preservation that John had compiled on this page. Out of the options John offered us, I chose to make Reduced Sugar Apple Butter from The National Center for Home Food Preservation, roughly halving the recipe.

Apple butter is something I didn't know existed until I visited New England with my husband a number of years ago, in early October. I brought back a jar from the trip and used it mostly as an ingredient in baking goods. I actually made apple butter for the first time at the end of last apple season, so I decided that for the Daring Cooks challenge I would make a variation of the basic recipe.

In my freezer, I had a one cup container of frozen blackberry purée from last year. After making blackberry sorbet (sorbetto alle more) and blackberry risotto many times, not to mention some jars of apple and blackberry preserve, I decided to try and preserve the intense flavor and color of blackberries in the freezer. I puréed the blackberries in my food processor and pressed the result through a mesh strainer to remove the pips. It is a bit of work, but I think it is worth the effort. I then froze the result in a two small plastic containers. The right time to use the frozen (surgelato) blackberry purée never came, and then a new blackberry season got under way. When I saw the Daring Cooks challenge, I decided to thaw some of the blackberry purée and add it to apples from the new crop to make a variation on the base recipe.

The photo shows some of the apples I used (organic and locally grown) and the two jars of apple butter I got as result. My list of ingredients:

slightly more than 2 lbs of apples, unpeeled, cut into eights
blackberry purée, approximately 3/4 cup
apple honey (miele), about 20% of the weight of the apples

I brought the fruit to a boil. After 10 minutes of cooking, I mashed the apples with a potato masher. Towards the end, I added the spices specified in the recipe, halving the quantity of cloves and allspice and using one teaspoon of cinnamon. After I turned off the heat, I used my immersion blender to obtain a smooth purée.

I jarred the hot apple butter according to the method described in this post (see step 4), which I learned when I took a conserve-making class last year, as recounted in this post. Once cooled, I labelled the two jars (vasetti) I had filled, so I would know what fruit is in them, the quantity of sweetener, and the date of preparation. I am planning to use some of the apple butter right away in recipes like this torta di mele, where I use it as a substitute for some of the butter and sugar.

The slice of bread in the photo will look lovely when topped with a layer of my apple butter with blackberries, don't you think? Like other mystery baked goods shown in previous posts, I will soon reveal the source of the recipes. Stay tuned.

You will find out about different preservation efforts, when you browse the creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. A special thank to John for an interesting and fun challenge.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

burro di mele alle more

or launch the burro di mele alle more audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

burro di noci / walnut butter

July 10, 2010 | Simona

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Margie and Natashya put together an impressive amount of information on nut butters and a nice selection of recipes. You can find everything on this page. From the array of choices offered, I selected to make burro di noci (walnut butter) and use it in the preparation of Walnut White Bean Dip with Rosemary & Sage (salsa cremosa di fagioli bianchi e noci con rosmarino e salvia). The most important adjustment I made to the original recipe is that I started from dry beans — cannellini, to be precise (a.k.a, white kidney beans).

Cooking dry beans. The way I cook beans for further use comes from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison (Beans with Aromatics). After soaking half a cup of dry beans for several hours or overnight in enough water to cover them by about an inch (I use two cups), empty the whole bowl into a saucepan and add half of a small onion (or a quarter of a medium one), halved, a bay leaf, a small clove of garlic, sliced, and a couple of sprigs of fresh parsley. Bring the water to a lively boil quickly, and keep it there for five minutes, then turn down the heat and let the beans simmer, covered, until they are ready. How long this takes depends on the type of beans and their freshness. Let them cool in their broth, then remove the aromatics and discard them.

The walnuts I used to make walnut butter are local and came to me still in their shells (gusci). While I recognize the ease of use of shelled walnuts, I like to do the shelling myself, playing the same game I played as a child, nutcracker (schiaccianoci) in hand, i.e., to crack the shell leaving the gheriglio whole. The whole walnut (noce) will soon be broken into pieces by my teeth, but I enjoy the skill displayed into imparting the right amount of pressure to the nutcracker to achieve the stated goal.

The process I apply to walnuts before I use them comes also from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison, and is described in this post. If I don’t use all the walnuts I have prepared, I store the leftovers in the fridge. Finally, the fresh rosmarino and salvia (rosemary and sage) for the dip came from my herb garden.

Once the ingredients were ready, the food processor made the preparation of the walnut butter and then of the dip a breeze. My husband and I enjoyed the dip for dinner. By chance, on the table there was a trio of foods all including walnuts: besides the dip, the other two were my homemade Walnut Sourdough Bread and my homemade Stirred-Curd Cheddar with Walnuts. You may remember that in a recent post, I showed a photo of this cheese when it was still in the aging phase and I mentioned a secret ingredient. The secret is now revealed: chopped walnuts. I must say I love the result: The walnuts pair well with the slightly sharp cheddar.

You will find a lot of variety, both in terms of the kind of nut butter made and the dish in which it was used, when you browse the creations of my fellow Daring Cooks. A special thank to Margie and Natashya for an interesting and fun challenge. I will certainly revisit it later to make another type of nut butter.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

burro di noci

or launch the burro di noci audio file [mp3].

dolce al rabarbaro (cotto al vapore) / rhubarb steamed pudding

April 27, 2010 | Simona

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Our DB’s host introduced us to two important elements of traditional English pudding: the ingredient, suet (sugna), and the cooking method, steaming (al vapore).

Information on pudding and suet, and various recipes for pudding, both savory and sweet, can be found here.

To start with, I decided to look up the work pudding in my dictionary, and this is what I found:

1 a dessert with a creamy consistency (chocolate pudding, rice pudding).
• chiefly Brit. any dessert.
• chiefly Brit. the dessert course of a meal (what’s for pudding?).
2 a sweet or savory steamed dish made with flour (Yorkshire pudding).
• the intestines of a pig or sheep stuffed with oatmeal, spices, and meat and boiled.

So, pudding has a broad application, as you can see also by scanning the different recipes presented by Esther here. [The Italian word budino corresponds to the first meaning: a dessert with a creamy consistency.]

Back to the DB’s British pudding challenge, what was there for pudding at our house? Follow me and you’ll find out.

I have never used suet or seen it in the stores where I shop. On the other hand, I grew up in a household where rendered pork fat (strutto) had specific uses. Since I had just made strutto for the first time, I decided to use that instead. Lisa of Champaign Taste, my partner in the Novel Food event, recently wrote a post about her experience rendering lard, which worked as the prompt I needed to push me from planning into action. I asked the butcher at our local Co-op to set aside some lard for me, and soon I had about two pounds of it to experiment with. The process went smoothly and at the end, I got a nice jar of strutto.

The purchase of the first rhubarb (rabarbaro) of the season made me look for a recipe for pudding that would allow me to use rhubarb and butter. Among the ones listed by Esther under the heading “Butter based versions of steamed pudding,” I found one that looked perfect: Rhubarb Steamed Pudding.

I decided to substitute only a small quantity of butter with strutto, since I was a bit worried it would impart too strong of a taste (this being my first experience with it). I also made a few adjustments to the recipe, namely:

I bought the rhubarb before finding the recipe, and had 250 g (8 oz.), instead of 350 g.
I added 50 g of sugar to the rhubarb and then 100 g to the batter.
I added a tablespoon of water to the rhubarb before cooking it. That resulted in a bit of juice at the end, which I added to the batter.
I used freshly grated ginger (zenzero) instead of ground ginger.
I used 6 tablespoons of butter (85 g) and a tablespoon of strutto instead of 125 g of butter (approx. 9 tablespoons).
Since I did not have self-rising flour, I weighed 165 g of all-purpose flour and added to it half a teaspoon of salt and 1 and 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder.

I did not have a pudding basin and could not find one at the local kitchen store, so I decided to use a quart-size pyrex measuring cup instead. I had to be a bit creative when it came time to tie a string around the measuring cup to secure the waxed paper (carta oleata) and foil, since the handle got in the way, but I managed, and I also tied a string around the bottom to use as a handle to lower the cup into the steaming pot and then lift it out of it at the end of the cooking time. I used my pressure cooker as pot and placed a round rack in it to avoid direct contact between the measuring cup and the bottom of the pot.

The steaming method of cooking was a bit unnerving, because I could not check the progress without disrupting it, and since I had never steamed a cake before, I did not have references to help me. I patiently waited the required amount of time and then lifted the measuring cup out of the hot water bath (the handle came out very handy). Seeing that the pudding had risen was a pleasant surprise (photo above), as I had prepared myself for some sort of failure. I ran a knife around the pudding to detach it from the container and then turned it over onto a plate. It looked quite nice.

The head of my Quality Assurance department (i.e., my husband) immediately got on the job and tasted a slice. He approved it with a suggestion to further lower the sugar content next time, then ate another slice. We are only at the beginning of rhubarb season, so I will make this again, using the correct amount of rhubarb, a bit less sugar and substituting more of the butter with strutto. Stay tuned for updates.

A special thank you goes to our host for her choice and her efforts. It was an interesting and fun challenge. I hope you will take the time to go around and look at the creative output of my talented fellow Daring Bakers.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

dolce al rabarbaro

or launch the dolce al rabarbaro audio file [mp3].