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:

Shiitake, Chard Ravioli in Dashi Broth with Watercress and Shimeji Mushrooms
serves 4 people

- Niban Dashi Broth – (from Kimiko Barber’s The Japanese Kitchen)
4 cups water
1 piece of dried konbu (kelp), roughly 4×6 inches
handful of bonito flakes (katsuo-bushi)

- Mushroom Broth -
4 cups water
2 celery stalks
2 carrots, peeled
1 medium yellow onion, peeled
1 tbsp dried porcini mushrooms
handful of fresh white mushrooms
several stalks of parsley

- Ravioli Filling -
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 or 3 large shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
5 thin chard stems (or 2 thick stems, sliced lengthwise), finely chopped
1 tbsp pine nuts, finely chopped
2 tbsp parmesan cheese, finely grated
2 chard leaves, finely chopped
handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
salt
mushroom broth

- Beet Leaf Pasta for Ravioli -
1 bunch of beet leaves (or chard leaves)
2 large eggs
1.5 cups of unbleached all purpose flour

- Final Broth -
All of the dashi broth from above
1 cup of the mushroom broth
2.5 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin sauce
pinch of salt to taste
1 bunch of buna shimeji mushrooms, trimmed
handful of fresh watercress leaves
greens from 2 scallions (spring onions), sliced at an angle

Making the Dashi broth
Place the water, konbu, and bonito flakes in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to low and cook for another 5 minutes. Pour the broth through a strainer lined with a paper towel and set aside.

Making the Mushroom broth
Combine the ingredients in a stockpot, cover, and bring to a boil. Loosen the cover and let simmer for an hour or two. Discard the vegetables, pour the broth through a strainer lined with a paper towel and set aside.

Making the Filling
Heat up a few dashes of olive oil in a large saute pan on medium-low heat, and saute the shallots for several minutes, then add the shiitake mushrooms and chard stems and cook for several more minutes. Stir in the finely chopped chard leaves and parsley. As the vegetables start to dry in the pan (you will feel them start to stick to the bottom of the pan), stir in a ladle of the mushroom broth. When the broth has cooked down, add another ladle-ful. Add in the finely chopped pine nuts, turn the heat all the way down, and cook, covered, for a couple more minutes. Turn off the heat, stir in the cheese, taste for salt, and let cool.

Making the Ravioli
Boil the beet (or chard) leaves for 4 minutes, drain, let cool, and then squeeze out as much of the liquid as you can. Very finely chop.

Either on a work surface or in a bowl, combine the flour, egg, and chopped beet leaves, and work together with your hands until it is fully integrated. Add small amounts of flour until the mass no longer feels moist or sticky. Marcella Hazan has a simple test to see if you need more flour: “wash your hands, dry them… press your thumb deep into center of the mass; if it comes out clean, without any sticky matter it, no more flour is needed.”

Knead the dough for 8 minutes on a dry work surface: steady the dough with one hand, and push down and forward with the heel of the palm of your other hand. Fold the now-stretched dough back in half, give it a half turn (always in the same direction), and repeat.

Cut off one sixth of the dough (Marcella says that “the pieces of dough you end up with for thinning should be three times as many as the eggs you used“), and keep the rest of the dough wrapped in plastic wrap. Thin the dough, and start working it through the pasta machine from the widest setting until you are happy with the thickness (I went to setting 8). The strip of pasta should be about 3 to 4 inches wide.

Cut the strip in half, and place small mounds of the filling about 2.5 inches apart. With a pastry brush and a bowl of water, gently moisten the pasta around the filling, and then place the second half of the pasta strip on top and press around the filling. The water helps create the seal. Then with a knife or pasta cutter, trim the pieces of ravioli and place on a dry, clean kitchen towel.

Repeat these steps until you have made all the raviolis.

Finishing the Dish
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil, for cooking the ravioli. Place the reserved dashi broth in a saucepan and add a cup of the mushroom broth, the soy sauce, the mirin, and a small pinch of salt. Bring it to a simmer.

Place the ravioli in the boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. At the same time, place the chopped scallions and the shimeji mushrooms in the simmering broth, and cook for 4 minutes. Lay out your bowls for plating and place a bunch of watercress leaves at the bottom of each bowl. During that last minute before the ravioli is ready, ladle out a little broth and half of the scallions and shimeji mushrooms at the bottom of each bowl. With a slotted spoon, distribute the ravioli among your waiting bowls, and then top off each bowl with the broth and remainder of the scallions and mushrooms.

Serve and enjoy! I paired this with Sapporo beer.

Dessert
For dessert, we made a blackberry and raspberry version of Food Blogga’s sour cream version of the raspberry cake from Gourmet many people have tried this summer (including us). I think I liked Susan’s sour cream version better than the buttermilk. Topped with some lightly sugared whipped cream, it was absolutely delicious.

Lisl first made this lamb roast not long after we met. If I went for sensational titles I’d call this the “how to impress your new boyfriend without slaving in the kitchen, but make him think you did” lamb roast.  It actually remains my favorite way to cook lamb by a long shot, and it is so easy to do that it isn’t really a recipe but a simple process (which is one reason why I have time to blog it at the moment).

Lisl prefers to do this roast with a leg of lamb, but we used a boneless lamb sirloin roast and while it fell apart a bit when slicing, I found this cut to be incredibly good.  I also loved the gratin we served with it, which I’ll describe at the bottom of the post.

30 minutes before starting the roast, place the lamb in a baking dish and slather grain mustard all over the meat (for this 3lb roast, I think Lisl used about 4 tbsp), and then generously drizzle soy sauce all over.  Pre-heat the oven to 425F.

Roast the lamb for 10 minutes, and then lower the heat to 325F.  Turn the lamb over every 20 minutes or so, and cook until the internal temperature reaches 130F (an instant read thermometer is really handy here). Remove the lamb to a cutting board and loosely cover with aluminum foil until you are ready to slice and serve.

Place the baking dish on the stovetop — we use our pyrex right on the flame, but if you are working with porcelain, use a heat diffuser.  Deglaze the baking dish with water and a tablespoon or two of flour to make the gravy.  It will be very salty, but a little drizzle over the lamb and you’ll be in heaven.

We served this with two sides: a potato, fennel and chard-stem gratin, and the chard greens sauted with shallots and a touch of lemon juice.

I loved this gratin.  It was the same process and basic ingredients as my adaptation of Ina Garten’s potato and fennel gratin (click link for recipe), but this time I added chard stems to the fennel and onion (which is sauted before putting the gratin together).  I also used a mix of gruyere cheese and parmesan cheese.  So good. It is a dish well suited for cooler weather (and we’ve been having very cool, wet weather).

I barely know how to start this post, or write it. It was the story of the recipe that turned into three. Our saga begins with our protagonist (that would be me) adapting a Richard Olney recipe for stuffed savoy cabbage. Enter cabbage stage left. Enter stuffing stage right.  The audience gasps.

Now, I don’t know what kind of uber-cabbages Olney was eating in the south of France, but as my imaginary heckler would say, “zat stuffing will nevarre feet in zat cabbage! Zat ees not a vrai Franche cabbage!”

I had a lot of extra stuffing. I mean I had 6 pork pastries and a meatloaf worth of extra stuffing.  But like all good tales, our protagonist learned along the way and came to a happy conclusion. The learnings: that I prefer to stuff individual leaves to an entire cabbage, and that this stuffing makes a damn good meat pastry/pie!  Yes valiant readers, unlike a French movie, this tale ends happily (and with no cigarettes or accordian music either!).

In order to make this as readable as possible, I am going to start with the stuffing ingredients (which have been halved) and process, and then discuss two delicious uses.

Making the Stuffing

1/2 lb ground or chopped pork
1/8 lb guanciale (or good bacon), chopped
1/8 cup long grain white rice
1/8 cup farro (optional, otherwise use 1/4 cup rice)
5 large leaves of Swiss chard
3 of the best stems from the swiss chard, chopped
1/2 large onion, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp butter
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 medium-sized roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried oregano
chicken or vegetable stock
salt
pepper
nutmeg

In a medium saucepan, bring some water to boil and dunk the tomatoes for 30 seconds (having carved a shallow X in the flower end) in order to skin them.  Bring the water back to a boil, and boil the rice and farro for 12 minutes, then quickly drain. (Note: the farro is optional, but even at this small amount, it brings a nice flavor to the stuffing)

Parboil the chard leaves for 4 minutes, drain and cool, then squeeze out the moisture with your hands and chop.

On medium low heat, saute the guanciale (or bacon) until it is just browning (i.e. not yet crispy), then remove to the side.  Leave the melted fat in the pan, turn the heat up slightly and brown your finely chopped or ground pork, and remove to the side.  In the same pan and in the melted fat, saute your onions, chopped chard stems, garlic and butter on low heat for a few minutes.

Stir in the rice, farro, guanciale, pork, tomatoes, chard leaves, thyme, oregano and a pinch of nutmeg and cook for a minute or two, then turn off the heat, letting the mixture cool and tasting for salt and pepper.

[Differences with Olney: he does not pre-cook his stuffing, but I like browning the meat and believe that this process makes it safer to season the mixture with salt and pepper, ie you can taste it without worrying about the raw meat; I also added the use of farro and chard stems, and replaced salt pork with guanciale]

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Recipe 1: Pork Pastries with Pickled Onions

This was the recipe shown in the picture at the top of the blog post, and it made for an great meal.  A mmmfffffgh you can’t talk because your mouth is so happily stuffed kind of meal.  The below amounts will feed 4 ravenous adults.

Pâte Brisée Pastry
Enough for 12 to 15 5″ rounds
3 cups unbleached all purpose flour*
18 tbsp unsalted butter
3/4 tsp salt
icewater

*Note on the flour: I know many people are trying to switch to weight, but I did not have a scale handy, and frankly, since some of my favorite cookbook authors each have their own ratio of flour to butter, I don’t think scientific precision is necessary here for a great result.

There are many ways to make pate brisee pastry. This currently is my favorite method but use whatever method you like best: chop the butter into 1/4 inch cubes and then place in the freezer for a few minutes.  Combine the flour and salt in a food processor, and then add the butter. Pulse quickly twice.  Add 2 tablespoons of water, then pulse, and repeat twice more.

Dump the loose mixture onto your work surface and push it together with your hands.  As needed, add small amounts of ice cold water and mix it in until the pastry dough is starting to stick together.  You do not want to overwork it, or add so much water that the dough is sticky, and there can still be some crumbly elements that are not yet sticking to the mass.  Push it all together into 4 separate balls, including as much of the crumbly elements remaining, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Pre-heat oven to 375F.

Place your stuffing in the food processor and pulse several times until everything is more finely chopped and mixed.

Flour your work surface and roll out one of the balls to approx. 1/8″ thickness, leaving the others in the fridge until needed. You can make whatever size meat pies you want: little 3″ diameter circles like empanadas, or in my case, larger 5.5″ diameter circles that were made by inverting and pressing down with a rimless bowl.  Use a paring knife to trace the circle outline and remove the circle of dough to a different surface.

Withe 3″ circles, you might only want to use a heaping teaspoon of the stuffing. These larger rounds took 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of stuffing.  Wisk up an egg wash (just beat an egg) and apply it around the stuffing with a brush. Fold over the circle creating a half-circle, and use a fork to flute the edges and create the seal.  You can also apply the egg wash to the top and sides of the pie to get a beautiful golden color and gloss, although you can see with the top photo that I did not bother with that step this time around.

Place the pies upright on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 30 to 50 minutes, until nicely golden.

I served these pies with some pickled red onions, and the combination (taking them both in the same bite) was just fantastic. You can do a fast pickle, where you put the sliced onions in a hot mixture, or take a more patient approach. In this case, I applied Stephane’s pickling method for ramps, which you can find halfway down this post [link].

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Recipe 2: Stuffed Cabbage or Cabbage Leaves

Whether you want to stuff the entire cabbage or just the leaves, the first step is the same: remove the outer green leaves of the cabbage, trim the stem, bring a large pot of water to boil and then simmer the cabbage for 10 to 15 minutes, drain in colander and let cool.

To stuff the full cabbage, lay it atop a large square of cheesecloth and gently peel back the outer 20 or so leaves. Then remove the heart by slicing across the core, being careful not to cut through the stem holding your 20 leaves. You can then chop up some of the heart and add to the stuffing, if desired. Shape the stuffing into a ball, placing it atop the center, and reform the cabbage leaf by leaf. Enclose the cabbage with the cheesecloth and tightly tie off the top using kitchen string. This can be kept in the fridge overnight, or you can move ahead to cooking, covered in chicken or vegetable broth (you might need as much as 3 to 5 quarts depending on pot and cabbage sizes), for 3 to 4 hours at a very light simmer.

To serve, place it in a bowl and unfold the top of the cheesecloth. Place a plate on top of the bowl and flip. Remove the cheesecloth, and flip the cabbage back into the bowl.

Now, serving an entire cabbage has a nice rustic, family feel to it, but we decided we preferred individually stuffing cabbage leaves (or if you prefer, large chard leaves with the stems removed). The advantage of stuffing leaves is that you can just get two cabbages and use as many leaves as you need, not having to worry about matching stuffing amount to cabbage size (although that problem did lead to delicious pork pastries!).  Individual leaves also create nicely packaged portions.

To stuff individual leaves, mold the stuffing into individual meatballs 1.5 or 2 inches thick, and roll each one up in a parboiled cabbage leaf. Place in an oven capable pot, like a large dutch oven, and pour enough heated broth to cover. Place in an oven set to 325F and cook for an hour or two.

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Postscript: Meatloaf

As I mentioned, I did also make a meatloaf with extra stuffing (which had gone through the food processor, similar to pork pastry recipe), by mixing in two eggs, molding into a loaf on a baking dish, covering with bacon, and cooking for an hour at 350F.  It was a huge hit with my 4 year old, and I enjoyed it paired with a shallot, spring onion and mushroom pilaf.  I still prefer my normal meatloaf recipe, but this made for a nice change.

Meeting the Foodbuzz team was great fun (that’s me second to the left). We ate lunch on the water at La Mar and had some great peruvian-style seafood dishes. I continue to be impressed with the passion of the Foodbuzz team, and they are all super-nice people. I enjoyed our conversation about the food blogosphere, the rise of twitter among food bloggers, and the changing Foodbuzz site itself, and look forward to seeing their business grow and evolve.

Pancetta, Chard, Cranberry Bean and Gouda Gratin

0.15 lb pancetta (one thick slice), diced
1 medium onion, chopped finely
4 small cloves of garlic, minced
large bunch of swiss chard (instructions below)
2 medium tomatoes
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup reserved bean cooking liquid
1 tsp tomato paste
1 to 2 cups fresh or soaked cranberry beans
3/4 cup fresh breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grated gouda cheese
2 tbsp unsalted butter
several sprigs of thyme
olive oil
salt and pepper

Place the cranberry beans in a large pot, fill with water an inch above the top of the beans, and add 1/4 tsp of salt, 1 bay leaf, and 2 sprigs of thyme. Bring to a boil then lower to a gentle simmer. Cook uncovered until tender (start checking around 20 minutes). Reserve about 1/3 of a cup of the cooking liquid, drain and set aside.

Pre-heat oven to 375F.

Prep the chard by washing the leaves and removing the stems, discarding all but two of them (keep the two firmest, freshest stems). Chop the leaves, and thinly slice the two stems.

Grab a big hunk of country bread (stale or fresh), remove the crust, and turn into breadcrumbs in a food processor.

In an oven-ready large skillet (I like to use cast-iron), heat up a splash of olive oil and cook the diced pancetta on medium heat for 2 minutes. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the diced onion, and cook until the onions turn translucent. Add the chard leaves, chard stems, minced garlic, a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Cook until the chard leaves are wilted, and then stir in the cranberry beans, chopped tomatoes, white wine, reserved bean liquid, and about 1/4 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves. Cook for 5 to 10 minutes, stir in the tomato paste and 1 tbsp of butter, taste for salt, and cook for 10 minutes more.

Turn off the heat. Sprinkle a mixture of breadcrumbs and grated gouda cheese on top. Cut a tablespoon of butter into small pieces and sprinkle around the top. Place in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes. If the top is not browned, you can finish it off with about 30 to 60 seconds under the broiler.

I am going to submit this to My Legume Love Affair, one of my favorite blog events (run by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook) — this month being hosted by Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska.