Pumpkin on Spinach

Taking advantage of the local fall crop, I bought a big bag of spinach. So now I had a lot of spinach and a lot of pumpkin.  I had seeded, peeled and cut one one of the pumpkins (about 5 pounds total) into quarters then wrapped the quarters tightly and stored them in the refrigerator for future use. Combining one of the quarters of pumpkin with some of the spinach, I made the following dish for dinner.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

While oven is heating cut:

One quarter of a pumpkin (see above for prep) into 1 inch chunks, toss to coat lightly with:

Olive oil

Place in an oven proof dish.  Bake for 15 - 25 minutes, tossing every five minutes after the first ten minutes until the pumpkin is tender and browned.  When pumpkin is almost done, in a skillet or small wok sautee:

1 large or 2 small cloves garlic, minced
1 t olive oil

When the garlic is browned add:

10 ounces fresh spinach, large veins and stems removed, rinsed and drained

Cook until spinach is barely wilted then divide between 2 plates.

Remove pumpkin from oven and add:

2 T dried cranberries
2 T pecans
1 T maple syrup

Toss well then divide mixture on top of the spinach.  Garnish with

2-3 sprigs fresh sage, coarsely chopped

Reviewed 10/1/2017

Pumpkin Time Again

Expecting Alexandra and/or Christopher home at Halloween time and having had a hard time finding big enough pumpkins to carve last year, I got two sugar pumpkins in mid October. Christopher decided to stay in NYC for a Halloween party and Alex was too busy to carve, so I still had the pumpkins and no sentimental attachment to any Jack-o-Lanterns. Time for more pumpkin recipes:

Pumpkin on Spinach
Pumpkin Soup 2010
Sole Variations
Pumpkin Sage Lasagna

Also time to return to:

Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin Steamed Pudding
Fiery Pumpkin Seeds
Baked Pumpkin Slices
Pumpkin Pie Muffins
Poblano Chili Stuffed with Pumpkin

Reviewed 9/19/2017

Lamb Shanks with Fig Sauce

When travelling in Spain recently Ed or I occasionally ordered leg of lamb and soon discovered this usually meant lamb shanks - a favorite of my Mom but something I seldom, if ever, cook.  Long ago, my Mom gave me her recipes for "Lamb Shanks Tra La" and  "Mid Eastern Lamb Shanks" (see recipes at end) but I liked the elegance of the lamb shanks I had recently at La Finca de Susana in Madrid.  These lamb shanks were cooked simply (as I try to reconstruct below) and served with an accompanying fig sauce.  This makes sense to me as this is a rather fatty cut and much fat accumulates in the cooking water.  Removing the lamb completely from the cooking stock and serving the moist tasty meat separately seems to reduce the fat consumed.

Serves 3-4, depending on size of lamb shanks


Heat  in a deep skillet or casserole sized so that lamb shanks just cover the bottom:

1 T olive oil

Add:
3 lamb shanks (~1 pound each), and brown on both sides.

Alternatively broil lamb shanks (as in Mid Eastern Lamb Shanks) turning once or twice until browned on both sides.  No oil necessary, and much neater.  Even neater - sear on gas grill.

Remove the lamb and discard all of the fat.   In same pot sautee:

1 t olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

When garlic is soft, return lamb to pot and add

1/2 c wine (red or white)
Water to almost cover lamb
1 t thyme leaves

Cover and turn the heat to low.  Cook for at least an hour and thirty minutes, turning the shanks every half hour and  adding more water if liquids run low, until the meat is very tender - nearly falling off the bone.  Avoiding or spooning away the accumulated fat, remove lamb from liquid and place on a carving board. Garnish with with fresh rosemary and serve with:

CARAMELIZED ONION, FIG AND PEAR SAUCE

I sometimes make this sauce without the pear as shown in photo at left.

In a small skillet heat:

2 t olive oil

Add:

1 large Vidalia onion, peeled and very thinly sliced.

Sauté until onion is wilted and golden, then add:

1 t sugar

Stir until the onion is well coated then add:

1 pear thinly sliced, cook until pear is just barely soft then add:

2-3 T Stonewall Kitchen Vidalia Onion Fig Sauce 

(Stay tuned for a "from scratch" fig sauce recipe)

Cook just  until sauce is throughly heated.


MOOGIE'S LAMB SHANKS TRA LA


[I only recently discoverd that this recipe shares the same name as one from Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cook cookbook, so is probably verbatim or Mom's adaption of Ms. Braken's recipe]

To make sauce combine and heat until jelly melts:

1 large onion, sliced thin
1 c catsup
1 c water
1/2 c mint jelly
2 T lemon juice

Dredge:

4 lamb shanks in
flour, salt and pepper

Brown lamb [in in a deep skillet or casserole sized  that lamb shanks just cover the bottom in 2 T olive oil]. Pour off excess fat and pour sauce over the lamb.  Cover and simmer basting once in a while for 1 1/2 hours.

MOOGIE'S MID EASTERN LAMB SHANKS

[In a large dish with sides,] broil:

6 lamb shanks on each side 7 minutes

Simmer for a few minutes:

2 T butter
1 t dill
4 t parsley, minced
1/4 t cloves

then add and mix well:

1/4 c water
1/2 c chopped nuts
1 T orange peel [zest]
2 t brown sugar
1/2 c raisins
1/2 c white wine
1/2 c catsup

Pour mixture over shanks and bake at 350 degrees F for 2-3 hours until tender.

Reviewed 5/29/2017

Two Restaurants - Three Museums

As we headed from Seville to Madrid on the AVE (one of Spain's super fast trains) on the afternoon of October 2nd,  I found a restaurant described in Lonely Planet's Spain that looked interesting: "Naia has a real buzz about it, with a cooking laboratory overseen by Carlos Lopez Reyes, delightful modern Spanish food.... The emphasis is on natural ingredients, healthy cooking and exciting tastes." I made a reservation for dinner that night.  From Hotel Moderno on Puerta del Sol, where Alex and I had stayed during our trip to Spain in 2002, Ed and I walked through Plaza Mayor and past many tapas bars until we came to Plaza de la Paja and Naia Bistro. Revisiting the menu as I write this, I find the menu has changed considerably to suit the season.  For example, on a warm October night, we started our meal with an Solmorejo - Andalusian gazpacho with celery and lemon sorbet. The gazpacho, like most Andalusian gazpachos was very smooth (not like the chunky soup I usually make and most likely contained bread) and the sorbet was awesome. Next we had wrinkled potatoes with two sauces.  The "wrinkled potatoes" were not exactly what we expected - small round potatoes cooked to perfection, with a slightly wrinkled skin.  I recently got some small carola potatoes at Verrill Farm, boiled them for a few minutes then Ed finished them on the grill.  The effect was very similar. These were served two sauces: "mojo verte and spicy [red] mojo sauce". This was an excellent entree for our main courses which came without any starches or vegetables. Ed had blackened red tuna steak  and I had confit cod with carmelized onion and boletus ali-oli sauce.  Salt dried cod is very common in Spain, served both cold with tomatoes and hot with among other things carmelized sauce.  I had versions of the latter on several occasions but this was by far the best. (For my attempt with fresh cod see: Cod with Caramelized Onions and Mushrooms). For dessert we shared  lime mojito sorbet with rum. brown sugar and mint. This was a perfect finish and a dessert I intend to revisit next summer.  From start to finish this was one of the two best meals we had in Spain (see Barcelona to Biar for the other).

photo © 2010 Edward C. Kern, Jr.

The following morning we got up early to be among the first to arrive at the Prado.  I had just finished reading Terry Tempest William's Leap and was delighted to have Room 56A with Boch paintings including The Garden of Earthly Delights and Table of the Seven Deadly Sins to ourselves for some time before any other visitors arrived.  I had been to the Prado with Alexandra in 2002 but this was Ed's first visit and he along with me enjoyed the awesome collection of Velazque paintings as well as those of El Greco and Goya. His favorite, however, is Raphael's The Cardinal.  From the Prado we went to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Renia Sofia.  Again a first for Ed and a return visit for me. We saw Guernica again as well as a model of the Pavillion that Jose Lluis Sert designed to house this painting for the Paris International Exposition in the 1937 Worlds Fair.  After a tapas lunch at a nearby restaurant our final stop for the day was at the  Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, a collection of over 800 works collected by the Thyssen-Bornemiza Family over two generations.  We focused mostly on the nineteenth and twentieth century works which included a lot of paintings with marine themes our favorites of which were Kingston Point Hudson River by Francis Silva (1873) and Summer Clouds by Emil Nolde (1913).  A Miro favorite, Mujer, Pajaro y Estrella (a print of which hangs in Alex's Lincoln bedroom) and which Alex and I enjoyed when we were there was no where to be found and apparently is no longer at this museum.

photo © 2010 Edward C. Kern, Jr.

Along the way we took time to admire the Caixa Forum Museum Le Mur Vegtal designed by Patrick Blank (photo below, left).  The plants are grown hydroponically in felt pockets attached to a rigid plastic backing. We also did a walk in the light rain through the Royal Botanical Garden next to the Prado where we serendipitously ran into an excellent photo exhibit, Imagenes de un Siglo en Espana, one hundred mounted photos depicting the history and daily life of Spain for the past century, actually 114 years starting with Spain's departure from Cuba in 1896.

We made it back to the hotel as the rain intensified and were glad we did not have to walk far for dinner.  Based on a good review in Lonely Planet's Spain we decided to try La Finca de Susana. Since this restaurant does not take reservations and we had seen a fairly long line there the previous night we arrived shorthly after their eight thirty opening and found the restaurant close to full.  It felt like having lunch at Google (though the food was not as good), I really had to look to find anyone much over thirty, and the few diners who looked over forty appeared to be there with their children and the children's friends. The setting was good but the food was mixed.  My lamb leg  (actually lamb shanks) with fig sauce was excellent and inspired me to try a similar dish when we returned home.

Reviewed 0/20/2017

Chicken Biar

Roberto Medoro, the owner/chef of Mas Fontanelles, a delightful "Hotel Rural - Restaurante"  in Biar, Spain was kind enough to share the recipe for a dish he had cooked for Ed and me the previous night.  While he carefully explained the proceedure, he apologized that he did not measure the ingredients, just did it by eye. Since I often cook this way (and have had to make a point of measuring when checking out recipes for this blog), I can appreciate his approach.  To date I have made this by  "by eye" so offer photos but no exact measurements. While Ed and I have enjoyed this rendition, neither of my attempts have met the bar set by Mas Fontanelles in either taste or presentation. Perhaps it is a combination of my reluctance to use butter,  the size of the chicken pieces I have used,  not exactly hitting the magic combination of the "mixture", or no doubt the exaggerated memory of a perfect evening.

Make a very thin omelette using 1/2 an egg in a standard size omelette pan.

[Bone, skin and trim the excess fat]
3 small/2 medium second joints per person

Slice open so they are still in one piece but lie flat and stuff with:

Omelette, thin slice
Ham [Iberian/Prosciutto]
"A mixture" of: anchoives, garlic, tyme. pepper, tapenade  [I used Whole Foods black olive tapenade]
Fresh sage

Roll each chicken piece and secure with small wooden skewers [toothpicks]

In a skillet large enough to accommodate all of the chicken, heat to cover bottom

Butter [olive oil]

Sautee until chicken is nicely browned on the bottom, then turn chicken and brown opposite side. Add:

Dry white wine [I used about 1/3 c for 9 pieces of chicken]

While chicken is cooking prepare:

1 carrot per person, washed and thinly sliced on the diagonal
1-2 thinly sliced rings of onion per person [last night since I had no onion 1 used 1 thinly sliced shallot for 2]

Saute in a separate pan; cooking the chicken and the carrots separately makes it much easier to get each cooked to perfection, with [a small amount of]:

Butter [olive oil]

Cook until the onion is wilted and the carrots are just barely soft. [Do not overcook and if it appears carrots will be ready before chicken turn off heat under pan before carotts are fully cooked].

When the chicken is cooked through, place on individual plates and top with the onions and carrots.

At Mas Fontanelles the chicken was served with fresh grilled asparagus.

VARIATION:  Mr. Medoro said he constantly varies the stuffing "mixture", using different kinds of olives (black, green or both), sometimes adding sun-dried tomatoes (which have been boiled for one minute).

January 2012: VARIATION (photo left): While this is really best with second joints, I also make this with boneless chicken breasts (much less fatty than second joints) and when my herb garden is bountiful, throw a few extra sprigs of sage into the sautee.

Reviewed 5/13/17

Barcelona to Biar

Ed's memories of Barcelona,  navigating with a map with street names in Spanish while the street signs were in Catalan, were not the best.  I hoped with the GPS this trip would be different. We had reservations at El Jardi a small hotel on Placa Sant Josep Oriol in the heart of  Barri Gotic; the rooms are very small but very clean and the location is excellent. The GPS took us right to the foot of the Ramblas which was closed to vehicular traffic due to pedestrian crowds.  The GPS proceeded to take us to every street with access into Barri Gotic and we found each street in turn to be closed also. Finally on our second circumnavigation of Barri Gotic, a policeman let us go up the Ramblas to the first parking garage, near Placa Reial. We hoofed it from there, getting separated from each other in the dense crowds that had gathered all through Barcelona for a huge music festival.  Ed found the hotel about nine o'clock, half an hour after I did.  By then we had missed our reservation at Cheriff, a restaurant recommended for its paella by Mark Bittman, and they were unable to take us later in the evening or the next evening.  We settled for tapas in the square near the hotel. The next day we walked, first taking in Gaudi buildings in L'Eixample though we chose not to stand in the long lines to see the inside of La Sagrada Familia again. As we walked around Barcelona we saw huge sound stages set up on most every large public plaza reminding us of the previous night's crowds.  We stopped for lunch at Cafe Viena on the Ramblas touted by Mark Bittman as having the "world's best sandwich".  The Jabugo, salt cured ham,  was excellent but little of the fat had been trimmed off (see photo in the NY Times article - the white stuff is pure fat) and the bread was excellent but, best sandwich I've ever had?  Not so sure.  In the afternoon we went to Ed's favorite, Santa Maria del Mar then on to the waterfront where Ed was fascinated by an old wood submarine, up to Montjuic and finally to Foundation Miro. For dinner, we found a local crowd and excellent paella at Elche though I would make the same comment about Elche's paella that Bitman made about Cheriff's: "Unfortunately, the waiter didn’t let the rice sit in the paella pan long enough to form a socarrat, the golden carmelized crust formed at the bottom of the pan."

The next morning (September 26th) we headed for Biar.  Ed needed to be near Almeria on Monday night so he suggested I pick a place about half-way between Barcelona and Almeria for Sunday night. In the course of finding a place, I discovered Inns of Spain and the Mas Fontanelles in Biar.  This small inn ("Hotel Rural - Restaurante") looked like a delightful spot to break our drive.  At lunch time we were near Benicassim.  We got some bread and cheese there then drove a short distance into the hills to Desierto de las Palmas, a hilly nature reserve with a Carmelite monastery (1697) at its heart. We ate our lunch overlooking the Mediterranean in the distance.  Just before we got to Biar, I noticed a large lake, then realized the "lake" was sloping.  This turned out to be a large PV installation in Beneixama, nestled into the landscape.  We had a quick walk around Biar, a tiny medieval town surrounded by hills with olive trees, then checked in at Mas Fontanelles where we found we were two of  four overnignt guests (the inn has only 8 rooms and is, I suspect, more of a weekend/holiday destination) and the only dinner guests.  We arrived at the dining room at the appointed time where the chef/owner, Robert Medoro, greeted us with a plate of red and yellow sauteed peppers and wonderful fresh bread.  This was followed by excellent stuffed chicken thighs (more on this later) and fresh asparagus grilled to perfection.  Dessert was a delicious lemon tart. One of the best dinners of our trip!  In the morning when I was checking out I told Mr. Medoro again how much we had enjoyed the inn and dinner and asked if he might share the chicken recipe - see next post :-)

Reviewed 7/20/2017

Cod with Carmelized Onions and Mushrooms

This recipe was inspired by Ed's and my recent trip to Spain. At La Table in Perpignan Ed had turbot and porcini -  with "net crusted" potatoes. And, at Naia Restaurante Bistro in Madrid I had confit cod with carmelized onion and boletus (a kind of mushroom) ali-oli sauce.  For some reason, although I cook a lot of cod, it had never occurred to me to serve it with a mushroom sauce.  And, although I serve cod on crisp potatoes (Cod with Roasted Veggies), it had not occurred to me to serve it on a mashed potato base.  For the record "net crusted" potatoes are mashed/whipped potatoes covered with a pastry crust lattice.  Ed has encouraged me to add this to my version of the dish but it is not going to happen!

Serves 2, scale accordingly.


Prep and start cooking the sauce and potatoes (see below) so that both will be done at the same time as the fish. If scaling up for a dinner group, sauce could be made ahead and reheated.

COOK THE FISH

On the top of a broiling pan that has been lightly coated with olive oil place:

2/3 - 3/4 pound fresh cod

Sprinkle the fish with:

1 t herbes de Provence

Bake at 400 degrees F, approximately ~15 minutes*, depending on thickness of fish, until fish is opaque and flakes easily with a fork. Note: In his cookbook Fish Mark Bittman advises starting the fish on broil and cooking less time,   “(about 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness, measured to the thickest point). If the fish is cooking too quickly, turn off the broiler and finish cooking with the oven set at 500 degrees F. Cod begins to “gape” – its sections separate – when it is done, is opaque throughout, and will offer no resistance to a thin-bladed knife; avoid overcooking."

CHECK AFTER 10 minutes to see how done the fish looks (see criteria above).

MAKE THE SAUCE:


In a small sautee pan heat:


1 T olive oil 
1/2 large sweet onion thinly sliced (cut rings in half)


Cook until the onions are wilted, about 2-3 minutes and then add:


1 t sugar


Cook an additional 2-3 minutes until the onion is browned, then add:


6-8 mushrooms thinly sliced (I use shitake, crimini or baby bella)
Fresh sage, several leaves, coarsely chopped


Cook until the mushrooms are soft.


Then add: 


4 T  Demi-Glace/Demi-Glace with Olive Oil Roux and cook until heated through. If you have no premade Demi Glace on hand, in a small pan combine:

1 T Demi-Glace Gold
1/4 c boiling water water

Wisk over medium heat until all of the demi-glace is dissolved and sauce is smooth. Then add this to the onion-mushroom mixture.


COOK THE POTATOES: 


In a small pan half filled with boiling water put:


2-3 small potatoes, cut in half 
1 large clove garlic (do not peel)


Cook just until potatoes are tender, drain well, squeeze pulp out of garlic skin into potatoes and mash with a potato masher.


ASSEMBLE FISH, SAUCE AND POTATOES:


Divide potatoes between 2 plates, top with 1/2 of the cod and then 1/2 of the sauce. Garnish with fresh sage.

VARIATION - NOVEMBER 2012

I had a little leftover Mushroom Risotto (made with sage and no cheese) and spotted a nice piece of cod in the market. I warmed the risotto adding a bit more chicken stock and serverd the cod and the mushroom sage sauce over the risotto.






Reviewed 5/22/2017