"Get Cooking" (Molly Katzen): Spaghetti alla Carbonara

I still remember my first encounter with pasta carbonara at a local family restaraunt called "Malara's" in South Omaha. (I tried it because Calvin Trillin used to repeatedly propose replacing roast turkey with spaghetti carbonara as the traditional Thanksgiving dish).

I was Irish/German, and all I knew about pasta was tomato sauce and/or Alfredo sauce. So this was a revelation - all the virtues of a white sauce with none of the smothering heaviness, salt from the prosciutto, bits of spices, cheese clinging to every strand...I wanted to bury my face in the serving platter (but I refrained because I was on a 2nd date with a woman I hoped to impress). (BTW, it didn't make any difference, impressionwise...we turned out not to have very much chemistry).

It's almost impossible for me to get to Malara's these days, since they keep family restaraunt hours (ie, are always closed whenever I want to go there) are in a really inconvenient part of town, and I can never talk anyone into going with me. And I've had other carbonara dishes, and they were fine, but not like that one.

So I was excited to see that Molly Katzen had a very accessible recipe and explanation of it in her beginner's cook book "Get Cooking": it's essentially bacon and eggs and spaghetti.

• So I got six slices of smoked peppered bacon from Wohlner's and cut them up with scissors into my big skillet and cooked them with a bit of olive oil, then put them on a paper towel to drain.
• I boiled about 2/3 lb spaghetti in salted water for about 10 minutes, drained it in a colander while reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta water.
• While the pasta boiled, I whisked 3 large eggs with a bit of salt and a couple of minced cloves of garlic in a bowl that was big enough to hold the pasta and the eggs mixture. At the last moment I added a couple glugs of milk, which turned out to be an error (but not a fatal one).
• I grated some Parmesan cheese and added it to the mixture.
• Then, I basically tossed the pasta in the egg mixture while the pasta was still hot and added the bacon. I also should have added a Tb of olive oil at this point, but I forgot. I added just a bit of the reserved pasta water to keep things warm and keep it from becoming gummy.

Served with red pepper flakes and lemon wedges and more grated Parmesan on the side. Ground some more black pepper onto it, and I was ready to dive in. I think I steamed some green beans on the side and tossed them with fish sauce or something, but I didn't quite cook them long enough - fresh beans take more time than frozen.

Putting in the extra milk and omitting the oil was a mistake, but it was still pretty good - very close to my sense memory of that first encounter. I could probably add fresh bread crumbs and some parsley or basil too.

This was fun to make and fun to eat. I'll try it again soon.

(Idiot's Guide to) Fast and Fresh Meals: Avgolemeno Soup v 2.0

I liked Sam the Cooking Guy's version of Avogolemeno soup a lot, but it's on his website and not in his book ("Just A Bunch Of Recipes") and I didn't feel like going online to look it up before I went to the grocery store. So I thumbed through this book and found the half-remembered version I'd skimmed past before, and decided to give it a try. It was a little more work than Sam's elementally simple combination of chicken broth, rice, lemon juice, and eggs, but it was still fairly easy, and the resulting mixture was a bit more complex and had more texture than Sam's version. (Which I loved, don't get me wrong).

• 2-3 peeled carrots, grated
• 2-3 ribs of celery, chopped fine
• medium onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 lb or so of chicken white meat. (The recipe called for cubed chicken breasts, I found some tenders on sale, easy swap)
• 2/3 cup orzo (takes the place of rice in Sam's recipe)
• 6-7 cups low sodium chicken stock (since there is so much other stuff in this recipe, I didn't bother to punch up the stock the way I did with the other recipe)
• 4 large eggs
• juice of 2-3 large lemons (the book says 1/3 cup, but I say the more the better, within limits)
• vegetable oil (to saute the aromatics)
• salt and pepper

The book just has you pouring in the chicken stock and adding the raw chicken and bringing it to a boil, but I thought it would be better to brown the seasoned chicken in the Dutch Oven on the stove top and then remove it to a platter while I sweated the carrots and celery in the juices and oil that were left behind. Then I added the stock in, added the browned chicken and the orzo back in, and brought the covered contents to a boil, then dropped the heat to a mild simmer to soften up the orzo. (about 15 minutes).

While the contents of the Dutch Oven simmered, I whisked the eggs and the lemon juice together in a large bowl (with a little more salt).

The Idiots book has you letting the soup cool down to barely warm while you add the eggs/lemon mixture to it, but I went with tempering the eggs with a couple ladles of soup to gently increase its temperature without scrambling the eggs. (It still tastes good if you do this, but loses the silky texture). Then I slowly added the tempered mixture to the Dutch oven, whisking gently all the while, and got everything in there without messing things up. Salted and peppered to taste. Covered over low heat for about 5 minutes to let the mixture thicken while I made some last minute motions, and then served it with roasted potatoes with paprika and parmesan and broccoli. Realized after I served it that peppering the mixture gave you - what else - a great "lemon pepper" effect that people go nuts for. Yum!

It's hard to recapture the utter surprise and rapture of your first encounter with Avgolemeno soup, but we both were glad to reprise the experience. And we think this recipe version is actually a little better.

A Man and His Pan: Quick Skillet Charcroute

This was the result of another dip into my stash of cookbooks to try stuff that either didn't appeal when I first got them or seemed intimidating or too much work at the time. I stopped at the grocery store to get some supplies for supper before the threatened blizzard conditions buried us and brought this book along and just tried the first recipe the book opened to.

I've never been sure what a "charcroute" really was - my eyes tended to glaze over when I encountered the word in various books on bistro and European style cooking. But apparently it involves a lot of meat (or pork products) and cabbage and really plangent flavors. Definitely a "heavy" meal, but that was what I was looking for in response to a shudderingly cold night outside.

• 6-7 country style pork ribs (the author chose these for several reasons, but the best one is that they are the right shape to fit in a big skillet) - patted dry and seasoned with salt and pepper


• 1+ lb of sauerkraut, rinsed and drained (but not too thoroughly - you want to cut down on the briny taste, but you don't want to get rid of it entirely).


• 3 brat links, cut in half lengthwise (or several 3 inch pieces of a mild kielbasa)


• 12 oz or so of beer (I used a lager beer, Heineken, it worked fine)


• 1 generous Tb of dijon mustard


• 1 generous Tb of brown sugar


• 1/2+ tsp of caraway seeds


• 1 onion, roughly chopped


• olive oil


• salt and pepper to taste

I used my giant 15 inch skillet for this. Sauteed the onions in oil in the skillet over medium heat until they were soft, then added the country style ribs over medium high heat and browned them on all sides for a little more than 5 minutes.

Then I poured in the beer, and found a little free area in the skillet to mix in the brown sugar and Dijon mustard. When the resulting liquid started bubbling, I put the semi-brine free sauerkraut on top of the ribs and around them and mixed things around so the kraut would pick up some of the liquid. I dropped the heat to a simmer, added the caraway seeds, covered the skillet, and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.

Then I took off the lid, turned over the ribs, recovered them in kraut, and tucked the sliced brats around the edge of the skillet, nestled as far down as I could get them, recovered the skillet, and simmered for another 20+ minutes (the recipe says 20-25).

Rye bread was recommended as a side, but I had some pumpernickel left over, and buttered slices of that worked very well.

This was a fine dish. The brown sugar and the mustard worked beautifully with the sauerkraut, and this was just long enough a cooking period to make the ribs reasonably tender, and the brats were out of this world. As I said, not a light dish by any means, but we took our time eating it, limited our selves to one plate each, and decided it was a nice recipe indeed.

A Whole Lot Of Shoveling Going On

This week was the last straw; I am officially joining the ranks of the snow-blower owners.

It isn't that I mind spending an hour now and then scooping 3 or 4 or 5 inches from the sidewalks of our corner lot, or another 20 minutes on the driveway, honest. (I did that Tuesday night so any kids walking around the neighborhood wouldn't have to walk in the street). BUT...11 inches of snow overnight, with Volkswagen sized drifts here and there, PLUS city snowplow fallout in front of the driveway, PLUS having to dig my car out from drifts out on the street in front of our house PLUS getting stuck/high centered twice trying to get onto the main street...in wind chills of minus 15-20 F...I swear that Sisyphus himself would have conceded the need for a heavy duty snow blower at least a couple of times a year.

Not to mention that I could come to the aid of neighbors who were similarly beset and insure good neighbor karma. Like the kind fellow who came to my aid when I was halfway through the last giant drift and beginning to lose momentum.

The good news, of course, is that even after a whole bunch of shoveling in the last two days (and helping to pushout several random cars stuck in the snow) , I'm only the tiniest bit sore in my right biceps and the small of my back. That's a lot of progress from 7 years ago when just shoving a scoop around on a driveway hurt like crazy. (There were probably emotional tension related issues going on then also).

The Frugal Foodie: A Rather Decent Vegetable Beef Stew

"M" liked this so much that she had this for dinner the first night, then lunch the next day, and then for dinner again that night. And I have to agree with her - this is a nice variation that wears very well and tastes even better the next day.

• 2 1/2 to 3 lbs chuck, cubed, or just get the same amount of beef stew meat


• A couple Tb of all purpose flour


• 2- 3 TB of olive oil
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
• A few Tbs of tomato paste


• 20 oz of pearl onions, peeled (I just bought frozen, which come pre-peeled)


• 4 carrots, sliced thin (I bought organic, so I just scrubbed them without peeling them)


• 8 oz or so of mushrooms (the authors recommended wild mushrooms, but I couldn't find any, so I just went with sliced bellas)


• 1 regular onion, roughly chopped


• 2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced


• package of frozen peas, any convenient size


• 3 cups low sodium beef broth


• 3 cups red wine (I had an open bottle of a cheap tempranillo/grenache I didn't care too much about, it worked fine)


• 1 Tb chopped dried rosemary


• 1 Tb of Herb's Provence (?? the famous blend of rosemary, oregano, thyme, etc)

The only real drawback to the recipe is that it takes two hours in the oven, even when you saute the chopped onion/mushrooms/garlic separately in a skillet and add them 30 minutes from the end. And the recipe is a little confusing - it has you adding "onions" in two different places, and isn't clear about which variety goes in when. So I added the pearl onions to the Dutch Oven after browning the dredged-in-flour beef pieces in two batches on top of the stove and stirred everything around for another 3-4 minutes to get them soft. Then I added the herbs, tomato paste, the beef broth and the red wine to everything, put the Dutch Oven top on, and put in the 375 F oven for 90 minutes. Pulled it out, added the previously sauteed onion/mushrooms/garlic and carrots and frozen peas, stirred things around,covered up and back into the oven for 30 more minutes.

"M" decided what the meal needed to be perfect was: fresh biscuits, bless her heart. So she sifted flour, cut in shortening and put the dough disks on a baking pan and when I pulled the Dutch Oven out of the oven, she increased the heat to 450 F and put in the biscuits. The stew kept plenty warm covered on top of the stove while the biscuits baked for 10 minutes, and then...we ate like royalty.

Let It Snow, Let It Sn - Wait! Wait!! I Take That Back!

Barring the freakish early October blizzard conditions in North Platte, yesterday was the first "real" snow fall to hit Omaha - 2 inches or so, and a low of "5" instead of the 21 F we were promised. As "M" remarked this morning, "That's...DISGUSTING!"

We city bound Nebraskans tend not to have the hardiness and stoicism of our more rural brethren. I sure don't. I notice the same phenomenon every year - that first real cold, snowy day, I tighten up like a tow truck cable with a school bus on the working end. 50 minutes of yoga and 2 glasses of wine basically had no effect, so at 10:00 pm, I said "screw it" and just went with it - if I'm "low level" anxious, that's just how it is. There are worse things to be. And also, "M" let me watch one of my MST3K movies that night on the DVD player. "Prince Of Space", no less. This supremely silly re-assembled version of a Japanese juvenile TV series was goofy enough on its own before Mike and the Bots got through with it. So MST and good company and snuggling got me through the night in good order.

So for now, I walk indoors at the DCHC and the Westroads for 45-50 minutes (not unlike a hamster on a treadmill) several times a week for just to relax and loosen up, along with some yoga, some chi kung, and some pushups and pushup board related exercises. As for the pushup board - I dunno. I'm feeling major strain on the shoulder (bicepital groove) where the pec minor attaches on every exercise variation, so I am proceeding very slowly and easily. This may be one toy I can't play with.

Kitchen Express: Coconut Salmon Curry

Since Monday night's recipe was quite agreeable and easy (and quick), I had another go from Mark Bittman's "Kitchen Express" last night.


I started some basmati rice in a sauce pan (directions on the back of the box said to let it sit it water for 20 minutes, then bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes) and defrosted a big salmon fillet under running tap water (still in its plastic bag, of course).

In my big stainless steel skillet over medium high heat,I sauteed a sliced onion and some minced garlic in butter and oil. When they were brownish, I added a generous Tb of mild curry to the ingredients and stirred it around and let it bloom in the oil.

Then I added a can of coconut milk and let it bubble for a bit; then I added the juice from a freshly squeezed lime, some minced ginger, several dashes of fish sauce. Then I added 2 peeled, diced sweet potatoes, covered, and let things simmer for about 5 minutes (had to dial down the heat a bit at this point).

Then I added some frozen green beans and the cubed, skinned salmon in small pieces to the mix, covered the skillet again, and let it simmer for another five minutes.

When the rice was ready, I served this over it, and had some lime wedges ready for garnish (which worked very nicely). Bittman says to also garnish with cilantro, but I just can't get used to it, so I left it out. The fish sauce and the curry made it need only a little more salt, but I also ground some pepper over it, and that was a nice addition.

Another very nice dish. The coconut milk made this very satiating and one serving was more than enough.