Braised pork ragu
Anna came home a few weeks ago with Random House cookbook full of recipes contributed by employees. I think it's actually going to become one of our most-used recipe sources -- cooking as it really is at home, rather than as cookbooks often pretend it to be. This one has immediately entered the regular rotation.
Ingredients
2 1/2 lb. boneless pork shoulder roast (or more if bone-in)
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large can of whole tomatoes
1 cup red wine
1 tsp each of thyme, oregano, and red chili flakes
1 tbsp fennel seeds
How To
Preheat the oven to 325.
Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. When the bubbles from the butter subside, brown the pork shoulder on all sides, 10-15 minutes. Add the onions and garlic and saute for a minute. Add the tomatoes, spices, and wine and bring to a boil, then cover and put in the oven for 3-4 hours, turning roughly every hour.
Once the pork is falling apart, remove it from the oven and shred the pork with a fork. Return the meat to the pot, stir it all together, and serve it over pasta.
Cavatelli with bacon, cream and snap peas
A guilty pleasure for a cold night.
Ingredients
1 lb. cavatelli or other tube pasta
3/4 lb snap peas, ends removed and cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1 garlic clove, minced
1 shallot, minced
2-3 strips thick-cut bacon, cubed
Handful of parsley, minced
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
3/4 cup light or heavy cream
Lots of pepper to taste
How to
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to boil. The pasta should come out of the water just as you're completing assembly of the sauce, so begin browning the bacon about 5 minutes before you add the pasta to the water. (Reserve a little pasta water for thinning the sauce, just in case. You probably won't need it but better safe than sorry.)
Brown the bacon in a large skillet. When the bacon has started to crisp up add the shallots and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Next add the peas; stir to coat them with fat and cook for no more than another 2-3 minutes. The peas should darken and maybe even brown in a few spots but you don't want them to lose their crunch. Stir in the garlic for 30 seconds, then the cream.
At this point the pasta should be out of the pot and into a colander.
Allow the cream to reach a simmer, then throw in half the cheese, half the parsley, and all of the pasta. Stir everything together and allow to simmer for a minute or two, or until the sauce is at an ideal consistently. Serve immediately topped with the rest of the parsley and parmesan and a few healthy turns of black pepper.
Rigatoni with sausage and fennel
This one comes from Lidia's Family Table, one of the many cook books that have piled up in our kitchen thanks to Anna's employer. I've generally not been that thrilled with the book, but this one is a winner because it hits most of what I look for in a recipe: It's fast, it's cheap, and it pays off.
I'll save myself some time and just link out to the original.
World's best tomato sauce
The first time you take a bite of the sauce you'll feel joy -- it's that good. By the second chew, anger sets in -- "Why have I spent all these years wasting all this effort making sauce more complicated than this?!" And by the third, creeping guilt -- "What have I done to deserve this divine revelation? At whose hand will I later suffer as a result?"
The only guilt I now feel every time I make this sauce is in my inability to track down the place where I first saw the recipe. Googling "world's best tomato sauce" has not been much help. Well, at the very least if you are reading this then I can sleep a little easier at night. Everyone deserves to know this recipe.
Ingredients
One can whole peeled tomatoes
1 medium onion, cut in half crosswise
4 tbsp butter
How to
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the onion and the canned tomatoes, bring to a simmer, and lower to the lowest possible heat. Either break the tomatoes up with a wooden spoon against the side of the pot, or squeeze them through your fingers before adding them to the pot. Cover and simmer for at least 45 minutes, then remove the onion and serve.
That's it! The butter adds a rich, uncomplicated silkiness that doesn't interfere with the tomatoes' intensity. The onion lends its depth without altering the texture. The end result is a complex-tasting sauce with a richness beyond belief.
Udon, grilled chicken, peas, quick pickles, egg, scallions
Sometimes I get ideas. Often they aren't very good ideas, but as a matter of principle I tend to stubbornly pursue them until they prove to be really, truly bad.
Making my own ramen broth certainly appeared to be one of these bad ideas. It required a trip to the further-than-usual supermarket to track down "meaty pork bones." (I soon triumphantly returned holding aloft a bag containing 5 pounds of pig vertebrae.) It also required turning the oven to 400 degrees in the middle of a heat wave.
But this idea turned out to be a great one. Not only because I have woken every day since to an apartment that still smells of smoky pork goodness, but because the broth itself is mighty fine.
David Chang's Momofuku cookbook is not the sort of thing you'd want to cook from every day. It's one part cookbook, but also one part picture book, one part memoir, and eight parts vanity project. Many of the recipes explicitly make the point that they relate exactly how things are made in Chang's restaurants while also implicitly making the point that you can't cook them because you're not David Chang.
Nevertheless, this broth is great. It is certainly a time-consuming production, but in terms of real work and technical skill it is a breeze, mostly just throwing various meats into a pot and watching to make sure nothing boils over. I will direct you to a literal relating of the recipe here and note only that it requires four pounds of chicken, five pounds of the aforementioned meaty pork bones, a pound of pork belly, a few strips of seaweed and a handful of vegetables.
Ruth the cat came over to help me and Anna consume the broth. Usually she just eats milk for dinner but on special nights we serve her ramen.
A few notes on the other accoutrements:
Chicken was done quickly on high heat on the grill after an hour or so marinating in a combination of ginger, garlic, canola oil, soy sauce and fish sauce. Hard boiled eggs were, well, boiled. Fresh peas, which are perfectly in season right now, required no work other than shelling and were sweet as could be when thrown into the bowl raw. Scallions were sliced and tossed in.
Quick pickles were also from Chang, and are simple enough: Slice the cucumbers thin. Toss with one part salt to three parts sugar until well coated, and leave for 15 minutes. If they taste a little too salty or sweet, rinse them in water. Otherwise, they're good to go.
Papardelle, creamy bacon corn pesto
This is one of my favorite recipes in a long, long time. It's easy. It's fresh. It's cheap. It's fantastic.
Soba, cabbage, chicken, pickled zucchini
Wednesday was Fourth of July, meaning a whole crowd of people joined us in our backyard for burgers, chicken, hot dogs, coleslaw, and a few beers. But what to do with all the leftovers? Easy -- cold soba noodles.
The cabbage was undressed, and leftover from the slaw. Chicken cutlets were simply marinated -- olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, lemon juice, a little hot sauce -- and we just yanked them out of the fridge when the soba noodles were ready. The pickled zucchini were a result of having too much fresh zucchini left over; rather than let it rot, I tossed it into the brine of some pickles I'd made for the Wednesday party. Two days later they still had some snap.
The rest is easy. Boil the noodles. Dunk them in cold water. Toss them with a dressing of ginger and soy sauce (see this post from last month). Fast, resourceful, refreshing, tasty as hell.
Spring vegetable risotto
Risotto is easy. I'll say it again: Risotto is easy!
Sure, when it's done right and served fresh it tastes creamy and deep and time-intensive. And yes, the dish has a bit of a reputation of being lots of trouble. But these are all illusions.
If you have a couple ingredients lying around that harmonize, a cup or so of short-grained rice (arborio or something like it), and some chicken or vegetable stock, you can cook something that tastes like you stood over a stove for hours and hours. Here's how.
Ingredients
Half an onion, chopped fine
Two cloves garlic, minced
6-8 cups chicken or vegetable stock, warmed
1-2 cups short-grained rice (1 cup will lead to 3 or 4 servings at least, so no need to go overboard)
Vegetables or meat of your choosing (tonight it was chopped snap peas, halved cherry tomatoes, and pancetta browned in a pan)
1/4 cup white wine or white wine vinegar
2 tbsp butter
1 cup parmesan cheese
Chopped herbs for garnish
How to
Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a thick-bottomed deep skillet or pot. Add the onions and cook on high heat until translucent. Stir in the garlic for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Stir in the rice until each grain is coated with oil. When the ends of the grains of rice begin to become translucent (this takes a minute or two , no more) add the white wine or vinegar and let it cook off for a minute or two longer. At this point the edges of the rice should be translucent and the grains should be a little slimy -- not dry, but not soupy either. Add a cup of stock and turn the heat to low. Allow the liquid to cook down, stirring occasionally. When the liquid is almost gone -- the rice should almost be sitting at the upper edge of the liquid -- add a half cup more and keep stirring. Continue this process one half cup at a time for 15 to 20 minutes. Taste the rice periodically. When ready, the grains should be toothsome but clearly cooked through. Stir in the cheese, butter, and vegetables and/or meat and allow to cook for a couple minutes more. Spoon into shallow bowls and serve garnished with the herbs, more cheese, and some fresh pepper.
Campagnelle, spicy bacon tomato sauce
Spicy bacon tomato sauce. Now those are four words I can get behind!
Saute a quarter pound of bacon lardons until they begin to brown. Add in the onion. When the onion becomes translucent, clear a small area in the saucepan and add a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Let those puppies brown for about 30 seconds -- any longer and they'll begin to put off smoke and your teary eyes will be calling for mercy. Throw in the garlic, stir, and add a large can of tomatoes. (I like to crush the tomatoes between my fingers before adding them, both to relieve the stress of a long day and to save myself the trouble of trying to break them up with a wooden spoon later.) Cover the sauce, allow it to simmer on low for at least 45 minutes, and serve.
Japanese noodles, scallion-ginger sauce
Dressing (loosely based on this)
Oil
Ginger, minced
Cilantro, chopped
Scallions, chopped thin
Honey, salt and pepper to taste
Noodles and accompaniments
Somen noodles
Hard boiled egg
Scallions, sliced
Thick-cut bacon
How to
Anything in the family of Asian noodles will work here. My favorite, though they were not used here, are soba (buckwheat) noodles because they are a little earthier and work well in cold dishes with bright ingredients.
After pulling the noodles from boiling water, immediately throw them under cold running water to stop the cooking process. Toss with the dressing and then add anything that sounds good. Tonight it was had boiled egg, thick-cut bacon, scallions, and tomato jam, but tomorrow it will be something else.