Pancetta in pastas

The other week, I made the "Linguine with Slow-Cooked Zucchini, Basil, and Cream" from this NPR story. It turned out pretty well, although I think I didn't use a big enough pan to hold all the zucchini properly, so they didn't cook down quite right, so I'm not really sure that the texture of my dish was what the author intended. I didn't really see the "lovely, pulpy sauce", although it was still quite good.

It was the first time I'd tried pancetta. Usually I substitute bacon, because bacon is what I happen to have. But the pancetta was good enough that I decided to buy a couple more packages to keep in the freezer and use in, y'know, whatever I feel like. I don't know that I'd go around recommending it as a pantry staple as some fancy chefs seem to, though; I really like that conveniently pre-diced, perfectly-sized 4 oz. package, but it costs $4. That's a luxury item, not a staple. Rather like the bottles of red wine whose absence we diligently avoid, I think.

This is what I'm doing lately with pancetta:

1. Pull a 4 oz. box of diced pancetta from the freezer, open it and drop it in a cast-iron skillet with a tablespoon or two of butter. Fry till hot and possibly a little crispy, and then remove the pancetta.
2. Melt a stick of butter* in the same pan, and then throw in 4 onions, sliced up. (I cut them in half to split the rings into C's, and then slice it up into C-shaped fries. Saute the onions; the closer to caramelized the better, but sometimes you're hungry and you just can't wait that long. I tend to cook the onions on medium heat.
   
3. Meanwhile, start a pot of water boiling for pasta.
4. When the onions are cooked to your satisfaction, return the pancetta to the pan. Add 1.5 cups of frozen peas (OR: 1 bunch of asparagus, with the woody ends snapped off, and chopped into 1-inch-ish pieces, OR whatever equivalent green thing you crave). Turn the heat down to low once the green things are cooked, just to keep everything nice and hot.
   
5. When the water boils (which may be in the middle of cooking the onions still - you can wait on step 5 until your veggies are 10 minutes from finished), throw in roughly 1.5 cups dry rotini pasta (OR the equivalent amount of whatever your favorite pasta shape is; the Little Dude's just happens to be rotini). Cook it according to the package directions; mine was about 10 minutes.
6. Drain the pasta, and toss it with the onions/greens/pancetta/butter.
7. Sprinkle some grated Parmesan cheese** over the pasta - I think it was about half a cup, maybe up to a cup - and stir it all up.
8. OM NOM NOM.
   

I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures when I made this the first time; I was very hungry and we ate it up by the time it occurred to me I ought to. It was really, really good, and I want it again. The Little Dude agreed; he ate all his up and wanted more. I'll try to remember to take a picture next time.

Edited to add: come to think of it, the first time I made this, I also threw in a 6-inch sprig of rosemary from the herb garden with the onions as they cooked (snipped in half, and removed near the end of the onion cooking when it had gotten all wilty and used-up), and the juice of one clementine orange at the same time as the peas.

* I admit, this may be an excessive amount of butter. The Butter Police will not come after you if you choose to use less. I'm not sure how much is sufficient to just cook all the vegetables without adding a butter-sauce, though, since I've never tried it. Half a stick, maybe?
** Parm Police warning: real cheese, not the Kraft powder or its knockoffs. There's a part of me that cringes at the pomposity I hear in these words, but: it is seriously not the same. If all I had on hand was the bottle of Kraft, I would skip this step, or just use a little salt; the flavors I want to add just don't exist in the Kraft. I think they might be killed by whatever they do to allow it to be sold unrefrigerated.

Graco's ginger cookies, and attempts at a coconut-ginger cookie

This was one of the last cookies. I took a picture of it, and then I ate it.

I'm committing the sin of editing an adored family recipe. Graco's ginger cookies, as originally passed down, call for shortening, which I am no longer comfortable cooking with, on account of it being a tub of industrialized goo. This was really the only recipe I have that requires it, the only reason I have ever kept shortening on hand at all.

Here are the ingredients, which are to be all mixed together, rolled into balls which are then rolled in granulated sugar, and baked for 10 minutes at 350 degrees:

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground cloves
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups flour

A while back, I successfully replaced the shortening with butter; I'd read that butter causes cookies to spread more, so I added a teaspoon of baking powder for more mid-cooking rising action, and chilled the dough before rolling it to make sure it wasn't starting off already half-melted even before it went in the oven. That worked really well.

But then I read that coconut butter is a decent substitute for shortening, too, being solid at room temperature. I immediately started carrying around this flavor in my head of a coconut-ginger cookie, and became addicted before I even began.

It didn't really work out quite like I'd hoped, though it did work really well. I bought a jar of virgin coconut oil, which looked pretty solid in the air conditioned grocery store, but melted down in the summer heat of my kitchen. It was super easy to mix the cookies, and the dough looked the right texture, but starting with a liquid fat instead of a solid one made me concerned about spreading again. So I added the baking powder and chilled the dough for maybe twenty minutes, as I had for the butter version. (I'm not sure if chilling was necessary: the exposed dough got sort of crunchy, and then softened up in my hands immediately as I rolled it. The heat of my hands may have undone all the work of the fridge, though it also may have only undone it on the outside bit, leaving a net loss of heat on the cookie. I do not know, and may try without the fridge next time.)

They were still really fabulous cookies, but you couldn't taste the coconut. I don't know if coconut oil just doesn't have a strong flavor, or if the spices are just overpowering, or what. The spices actually tasted stronger than I remembered from the other variations.

So the results of that experiment are thus: coconut oil is definitely a good substitute for shortening, but it failed to provide enough coconut flavor to live up to the imaginary cookie in my head. Laurel and I talked about it a bit, and came up with a couple of ideas. One was to cut the spices; one was to add coconut extract; one was to use the fat off the top of a can of coconut milk. Laurel had used that in some other recipe and it was super coconutty.

We ate all the cookies, so it was time to make more. I didn't have any extract on hand, but I did have the coconut milk, so that's the experiment I tried. One can of coconut milk did have about 3/4 cup of fat on top.

I report: coconut milk fat does not behave in the same manner as butter, shortening, or coconut oil. It might be more analogous to cream than to butter? The dough was more like drop-cookie dough than ball-cookie dough. Brownie dough, maybe. I added another half cup of flour, but it came nowhere near fixing it. I didn't even try to make them into cookies; they just weren't the right texture at all, and I wouldn't have been able to roll them in sugar. I could be wrong, but I was sure that they would spread into big, thin, crispy cookies, instead of being crunchy for only the outer millimeter, and then chewy the rest of the way through.

I coated a pyrex baking pan (roughly 8x12, I think - not my biggest one, but not my square 9x9 either) in coconut oil, and I dumped all the dough into it to bake as brownies, 350 degrees for 30 minutes. They have indeed baked up, and risen to about twice the original height of the dough, filling the pan; a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. They smell good. They taste OK. I think I accidentally made gingerbread. It doesn't taste like coconut at all, either.

Next time, I'm going to use coconut oil, cut the spices in half, and add a teaspoon or two of coconut extract. I wonder if the molasses are also interfering with the coconut flavor, actually. One of my friends substituted honey for the molasses, once, and it worked out well for him. That might be the iteration after.

Strawberry muffins

I made these strawberry muffins the other night, because we had a lot of strawberries left over this past week. I swapped in walnut oil instead of vegetable oil, and "white wheat flour" for the all-purpose. I've never noticed a difference between the white wheat and the all-purpose, texture-wise. The white wheat is supposed to be whole wheat flour made from an albino-ish species of wheat. I'm not actually sure if's as good as traditional whole wheat, healthwise.

Anyway, they were pretty good; Jerry and I liked them. I liked them best hot out of the oven.

I was hoping I could talk the Little Dude into eating them, but so far he's refused. Last night he at least consented to nibble at the top, before he experimentally peeled off the paper, and then put the muffin on his plate along with his other food scraps to toss into the garbage.

Pizza/Spaghetti Sauce

I kept meaning to make a post about spaghetti sauce but never did. Turns out that was a good thing, since after Heather told me about San Marzano tomatoes, I came up with a much simpler and better tasting (imo) sauce. Here it is:

olive oil
28-oz can San Marzano tomatoes
1 small-medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced/crushed/whatever
~1/2 cup dry red wine
~1 tsp salt or to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste
pinch cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
splash balsamic vinegar
several fresh basil leaves, chopped

Saute the onion in olive oil until translucent. Add garlic, cook for another minute, and then add red wine, turn up heat, and let it cook until most of the liquid has boiled off.

Meanwhile, put the tomatoes through a food processor or blender until they're mostly chopped up, but some texture is left (you can just crush them by hand if you like a chunkier sauce, but I found that with the long cooking time it's plenty chunky even with this step). Add tomatoes to the pot, heat to boiling, and then turn down to ~medium heat. Add black and cayenne pepper, then continue to heat uncovered for about 2 hours, or until sauce is the desired consistency (less time for spaghetti sauce, more for pizza). Add salt, basil leaves and balsamic and heat for another minute or so.

This made enough for one pizza with a little left over for dipping breadsticks. I used to have to add a lot of brown sugar to get this sauce sweet enough, but the San Marzano tomatoes were quite sweet already (as Heather had warned me, thankfully!), and I didn't have to add any. For spaghetti sauce, I might still add a little, as I like that sweeter.

Morocco meatballs

These are the meatballs I made and froze last month. The sauce came together really quickly, actually - I should have started the roast potatoes cooking first. I kept the recipe very simple this time; I wanted to see what effect the ras el hanout would have before I started throwing in sage or bourbon or god only knows what else. Maybe when we taste it, we will say: mmm, I bet X would be fabulous in this!

• 1 onion, chopped
  
• olive oil
• 1 tbsp. minced garlic
• 1 large can (28-32 oz.?) tomatoes - my can read "kitchen cut", which appears to be diced with a lot of sauce
• 1 tbsp. ras el hanout
  
• 1/2 the recipe of Morocco meatballs

I sauteed the onion, then tossed in the garlic and tomatoes, and stirred. Added the ras el hanout, stirred again. I let it cook for a few minutes, then threw in the meatballs too, and let it all cook on low heat while the potatoes cooked - about half an hour, till I decided I didn't want it getting any thicker, turned off the heat, and put the lid on. The potatoes looked like they only needed a little while longer, so I figured the meatballs would cool enough to eat, or something.

The potatoes are:

• 1 bag baby red potatoes, quartered
  
• olive oil
• salt, from the salt shaker
• a handful of chives, chopped up
  

I tossed the potatoes in the oil and salt and put them in the oven at 375 degrees, and it ended up taking 45 minutes. When they came out, I tossed in the chives - also a monster plant in my herb garden - and stirred it up.

The Little Dude had not yet woken up from his nap, so I put both the dutch oven full of meatballs and the roasting pan full of potatoes back in the warm oven, to wait.

It was OK, but not awesome. It was... too tomatoey? Not savory enough? Maybe it needed more ras el hanout, or tomato is the wrong sauce for these meatballs. I'm not sure what the other options are, though. And I'm not sure how you'd make... whatever canned cream of mushroom soup is supposed to emulate.

Beefy veggie brown rice

My husband laughed when I told him we were starting a cooking blog. "Let me know if you need any comic relief," he said. "I'll make white rice." He's much better at rice than I am, actually.

I hear brown rice is much better for you, anyway, so I've decided to learn to cook it. I also think we don't eat enough leafy greens, so I decided to hide some spinach in it.

I like Fine Cooking's choose-your-own-adventure recipes a lot. What I did with the brown rice here is sort of based on their risotto, except of course I'm breaking the rule about the arborio, right from the get-go.

• ~ 1 cup carrots, chopped
• 5 oz. shiitake mushrooms, chopped
• olive oil to saute them in
• ~1.5 cups brown rice, uncooked
• 2 containers beef stock (~6 cups)
  
• 5 oz. baby spinach
• handful fresh sage leaves (from my monster sage plant), chopped
• ~ 3 oz. shredded asiago/fontina/parm cheese mix
  

First, I chopped up the mushrooms and carrots, and sauteed them in some olive oil until they were soft. (I'm never sure how much oil to use. Recipes always claim something like 2 tbsp., but that never looks like enough to me; it looks suspiciously like it'll burn to the bottom of the pan with that little. So I add more, until it looks right.)

While that was going, I put all the beef stock in a pot and simmered it. I think it's supposed to absorb into the rice better if everything's hot.

When the vegetables were done, I added a ladleful of the beef stock to deglaze the pan, waited for it to cook down a bit, and then I threw in the rice. Actually, looking at the recipe now, I think I should have toasted the rice in the oil before I'd diluted it with the broth. But whatever. I toasted the rice in my broth-adulterated oil, and then ladled in more broth - enough to cover all the rice.

At this stage, you stir the rice, wait for it to cook down until when you scrape your spoon across the bottom of the pan, the rice/broth is slower to fill the gap in again, and then ladle in another cup or so of broth. Repeat, until the broth is absorbed and the rice is the texture you want it.

But after about half an hour of this, I was getting to the end of the stock - maybe a cup and a half left - and my rice was still crunchy. So I dumped all the stock in and I covered the pan, and for about 15 minutes, I let it cook like regular rice rather than like risotto. That fixed it right up; it absorbed much of the broth and wasn't crunchy anymore.

At that point, I threw in my spinach and sage, and stirred and cooked it until the spinach wilted. (It always looks so discouraging at first: the spinach just sits there, taking up all that space, and for like two minutes I stand there wondering if it's ever going to wilt. But then it does.) Then I took it off the heat, and I added the cheese, a little bit at a time because the rice already tasted good, and I didn't know how much cheese would be too much and ruin it.

I call this one a success: we all liked it, even the toddler. Although he did find the spinach and pick some of it out.