August 2009 – The Constables Larder

Summer meals: gratins and sauces

I’ve been on a gratin kick again the last few days. The first one was a remake of an eggplant, zucchini, basil and cheese gratin dish I blogged a year ago. It was one of my favorite meals of 2008, and it struck gold again. It should have been enough for 4 people, but was so good, Lisl and I pigged out and finished it off in one sitting! I’ve gone back and updated the recipe if you are interested. Make it while everything is in season!

I also grilled a skirt steak last night and wanted to share/record the sauce after very good reviews from our guests (no photo, was too busy getting food on the table).

Mustard Sauce for Skirt Steak
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp grain mustard
2 tbsp dark rum
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt to taste

On medium-low heat, saute the shallots in a splash of olive oil in a medium-sized pan for a few minutes, until they soften. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Stir in the mustard and rum and reduce to a light sauce consistency, then stir in the vinegar. Taste and add a small amount of salt if you desire.

Note: an important thing with skirt steak is to give it lots of salt and pepper before you toss it on the grill, and then thinly slice across the grain (I usually cut it into 6 inch lengths before grilling, so that it’s easier to slice).

Elise’s Chocolate & Zucchini Cake

What do excess zucchini and a bored, unwell 4 year old have in common? Elise’s Chocolate Zucchini Cake over at Simply Recipes! This made for a fun Sunday afternoon project, and we’ve been happily nibbling the delicious results all week. It has a wonderful chocolate flavor, and stays moist and not too dense. Lisl was worried that the zucchini might give it a vegetable-y flavor, but one taste and she was sold.

At first I was scouring Elise’s post and comments in puzzlement that the grated zucchini was not squeezed to remove the water, but indeed it is not necessary — the recipe already accounts for the moisture. Note that in the below ingredients, posted for my own future reference, I halved the amount of orange zest used.

I heartily recommend that you pop over to Simply Recipes to read the post and directions.

Chocolate & Zucchini Cake
2 1/2 cups regular all-purpose flour, unsifted
1/2 cup cocoa
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup soft butter
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Lulu’s Baked Halibut with Mushrooms and Cream

Some days you see a recipe and weather be damned. That’s what happened to me when I was flipping through Richard Olney’s homage to Lulu Peyraud, Lulu’s Provencal Table and saw:

“Baked Halibut with Mushrooms and Cream”

Yes, I’m a sucker for breadcrumbs.

I cooked the dish that very night to bid adieu to L’s mother, flying back to Sydney the next day. I made a few small adaptations, and the results were absolutely delicious and comforting. This dish will be back on the menu again in future, no question.

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Slow Baked Dry Rubbed Spare Ribs

Theoretically, I should experiment more with dry rubs but, well, it’s just… for me, this stuff is like the grill equivalent of crack. Crack and pork. Pork and crack. I play around with ratios and leading actors, but I always come back to the same basic cast of characters. When these players hit the stage of Fleisher’s berkshire pork, spectacular things happen.

If you are looking to shut down all table conversation, and revert your guests to a neanderthal state of grunting and gnawing, try the following:

Buy two racks of (berkshire if possible) pork spare ribs for every 3 people.

With a mortar and pestle, grind up:
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp yellow mustard seed
1/2 tsp black pepper

Then stir in:
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp kosher salt
heaping tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp dried oregano

I sometimes use pre-ground cumin, but I really like using the seeds for the coriander, mustard seed, and black pepper for that extra texture. I also will note that I don’t bother removing the membrane on the bottom side of the ribs.

Rub the spice mixture all over the ribs, then place them in a suitable holder (I use a baking dish), cover with plastic wrap, and return to the fridge for 6 hours or more (overnight is ideal).

You can cook these with indirect heat on the grill, or with low heat in the oven. In this case, it was raining, so I baked these on broiler trays (so any melted fat didn’t pool) for 3 to 3.5 hours at 250F degrees.

That’s it. Easy peasy. Dig in caveman!

Urgh gllrgh mmmmmmmm

The ribs before cooking

Additional notes: I usually don’t use oregano with this dry rub, but really enjoyed it here. Another good spin is to add some heat with cayenne or red pepper flakes.

Lulu’s Ratatouille (and the benefits of elbow grease)

ratatouille-lulu

I’ve been reading Julia Child’s My Life in France and the difficulties she faced trying to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In 1959, when Houghton Mifflin finally passed on the book, and before Knopf picked it up, Julia read a note from her champion at Houghton who explained the rejection, “They feel [the average housewife] wants ‘shortcuts to something equivalent’ instead of the perfect process to the absolute.”

America’s culture has changed a lot since then, but anyone who reads Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 America Day by Day will be struck by how much has remained consistent. The business instincts of the Houghton execs remains somewhat true today if Rachel Ray’s empire is any evidence. Thankfully, there is room for more ambitious efforts, as Julia Child and Simone Beck proved and as new author/chefs continue to show; a recent example is Paul Bertolli’s almost literary Cooking by Hand.

Ratatouille strikes me as a perfect dish to highlight the merits of the two mindsets (and there are indeed merits to both). Sometimes I will throw together a ratatouille very quickly, let all the components stew together for a while unaided, and enjoy a perfectly good rendition. However, with a little more effort and time, you can take the dish to a different level entirely.

On Friday evening, after picking up some lovely fresh vegetables from the local farm, I rolled up my sleeves and put together an adaptation of Lulu Peyraud’s ratatouille from Richard Olney’s cookbook Lulu’s Provencal Table. It is considerably more involved than my usual, but the result, which we ate the next evening, was the sweetest, most delicious ratatouille I have had in a long while.

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Shiitake, Chard Ravioli in Dashi Broth w Watercress and Shimeji Mushrooms

Homemade ravioli, stuffed with shiitake mushrooms, chard stems, shallots, pine nuts, parsley and parmesan, made from fresh beet-leaf pasta, served with a dashi-mushroom broth with watercress, scallion greens, and shimeji mushrooms.

That’s a mouthful to say, but was an absolute delight to eat. It was also my first attempt to make up an Asian-European fusion dish, and emerged out of my need to give the old creative cooking juices a swift kick in the pants. For the last few months, I poured my energy into a startup project, but unfortunately it became clear that the necessary funding resources were not going to emerge. Creative cooking took a back seat, but last night’s meal was its way of pounding a fist on the table and crying “my turn, dammit!” I was quite proud of the results, if I can say so myself.

I’ve been a fan of fusion since it burst on the New York City restaurant scene in the mid-nineties (flashback to an incredible dinner with Aun, my then-roommate and now the author of the marvelous blog Chubby Hubby, with a Japanese-Italian pasta-and-squid-ink dish served in a bowl made from a huge cheese rind. I love me some cheese!).

With the arrival of my pasta machine (recommended by Zenchef, and after using it last night, I love it!), I decided that I wanted to serve ravioli with a Japanese broth. This led to cracking open Kimiko Barber’s The Japanese Kitchen, which has been waiting to be read for the last 6 months, and a hop down to the Japanese grocery store in Harrison, NY. This is a fairly involved meal, so with no further ado:

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Peach, Blueberry and Apricot Cake

When it comes to baking, one of my favorite test kitchens belongs to a New Jersey blog called Stacey Snacks. I’m not a huge baker, even though I might aspire to Zoe heights, however I’ve mentioned before that baking has become a fun activity where I can involve our 4 yr old munchkin. When Lisl caught sight of a peach and blueberry pie recipe with two thumbs up on Stacey’s site, I knew we had to try it.

The recipe comes from Mango & Tomato, and I followed it pretty much exactly save for replacing one of the peaches with 3 apricots (and I skipped powdered sugar at the end). It is very straightforward — check out her site to see the instructions. Moist and absolutely delicious!

Ingredients (just so I have a record should other blogs disappear)
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon yogurt
zest of half a lemon
1 peach, pitted and sliced
3 apricots, pitted and sliced
1 cup blueberries

And while my savory dish of the evening didn’t quite pass the “bloggable” bar (experimental vegetarian dish), I did take this photo of spinach which I liked enough to share:

Fava, Arugula and Shaved Parmesan: perfect starter or palette cleanser

Here’s a very simple something to start off a meal, or to act as a palette cleanser part way through — best served with a crisp white wine.

I have not been a happy CSA customer this summer (I’ll just say, it’s not *just* the fault of the weather), but I’ll spare you the detail on that. One nice thing they have given us is fava beans, and I was able to pick up some arugula from the farmer’s market this weekend. They paired very nicely here.

Fava Bean, Arugula and Shaved Parmesan Salad
Serves 4
4 large handfuls of fava bean pods, shelled
2 handfuls of arugula leaves, washed with bottom stems removed
1 lemon
olive oil
salt and pepper
dijon mustard
parmesan cheese

After shelling the fava beans, boil them in water for 3-4 minutes then drain and quickly plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Once cool, you want to remove the outer layer of the fava beans. I find it easiest to pinch at the edge of the skin at the dimple of the bean, and then squeeze the bean out — it should slip out quite easily.

Make the dressing by combining the juice of 1 lemon, an equal amount of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a small amount of dijon mustard, and a teaspoon of finely grated parmesan cheese. Wisk it up well with a fork, then combine with the fava beans in a bowl for about 15 – 20 minutes.

Right before serving, gently mix in the arugula leaves and plate with some fresh pepper and some parmesan shavings on top.