I was on the fence about what to have for dinner tonight - pancetta and peas or the last of the ribollita (Tuscan bean and vegetable) soup, but selecting the photographs for today's post has ended my quandary. Pancetta and peas it is.
Pancetta is an Italian cured pork product. It is also produced in Spain, and in both cases, it is the same cut of the pig - the belly - that is used to produce bacon. Unlike bacon, pancetta is not smoked, so it doesn't present itself in as pronounced a manner as bacon, though it does add a nice saltiness to a dish without overwhelming it as a smoked bacon might. Pancetta is also used as the base to many Italian pasta sauces, and is traditionally used in Bolognese sauce, though, in an effort to keep the cost of my untraditional version of Bolognese down, I omit it. Pancetta is a natural companion for peas as its saltiness pairs beautifully with the sweetness of the peas. It is slightly more expensive than bacon, at $8.29 per pound at my local Italian market, while bacon averages around $4.99 per pound, but it is worth it for the nuance of flavor it provides, and you don't need more than two ounces per person to produce an incredibly satisfying dish. In fact, you could probably get away with closer to an ounce each, but just in case you have a large appetite, we'll go with two ounces per mangiatore (eater). When you see the 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper in the ingredient list, you may become alarmed, but this little tidbit should assuage your fears: generally speaking, JR does not love spice-generated heat in his food, but for this dish, he happily makes an exception. If he can do it, so can you, so try it spicy first - scale it back to 1/4 teaspoon if you're unconvinced - and if you don't like it, which I think is nearly impossible, omit the hot pepper the next time you make it. Because believe you me, there will be a next time.
Pancetta and Peas with Spaghetti and Egg:
Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 pound pancetta, thinly sliced (specify this at the market when you purchase it, though they should know this as they are professionals) and then cut into roughly one-inch squares
1 medium shallot
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 cups peas
1 pound spaghetti or orecchiette
2 tablespoons olive oil for frying eggs
4 eggs (one per mangiatore)
Salt and pepper
In a large saucepan, start the pasta water to boil. Just before it comes to the boil, heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large saute or frying pan. Add the pancetta, and stir to spread evenly throughout the pan. Don't forget to start cooking the pasta now that its water is boiling. Cook the pancetta for approximately 5 minutes and then add the shallot and crushed red pepper, stirring to combine with the pancetta. Cook the pancetta, shallot and red pepper for approximately 5 minutes, and then add the peas, stirring to combine them with the pancetta mixture.
When the pasta is al dente (cooked through, but firm to the bite), drain it, reserving 1 to 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking water, and add the pasta to the pan with the pancetta mixture. Add one cup of the pasta water to the pan and stir to combine the pasta with the pancetta mixture. Reduce the heat to medium-low. If it looks like the pan is drying out at any time while you're working on the next step, go ahead and add the remaining 1/2 cup pasta water to the pan.
In another frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add the eggs, being careful not to crack the yolks. If you do happen to crack a yolk, it's not the end of the world. I'm sure someone in your family either thinks runny yolks are icky (this person is likely under 10 years old) or some other person will decide that it's their turn to take one for the team and will volunteer to eat the broken-yolk egg. And that person is probably you who is cooking this, for it would be me at my house. The cook goes down with the broken-yolk ship, as it were. Cook the eggs until they are set, but the yolk is not cooked through, also known as Sunny Side Up.
Transfer 1/4th of the pasta with pancetta and peas to each of four plates and top each mound of pasta with an egg. Salt and pepper to taste, and serve them forth.
Serves 4.
This dish is quick to prepare, which, in addition to being inexpensive, is a nice feature. Including the time it takes for the water to come to a boil, the first bite of pasta, pancetta, peas, and runny egg yolk is on your fork in about 35 minutes. To make this for four costs $8.95. The pancetta is $8.29 per pound, so 1/2 pound is $4.15. The olive oil is around 55-cents for both the pancetta and the egg portion of the meal. The shallot is around 25-cents as I just bought 5 for less than $1.25 the other day, and the peas are roughly two-thirds of a bag that cost $1.29. The crushed red pepper probably put us out 10-cents. The pasta shouldn't be any more than $1.99, and if you choose to use orecchiette, that should be no more than $1.79. The eggs are about 26-cents each, so we'll call that $1.05, and the richness of the yolks replaces the need for any Parmigiano-Reggiano shaving, which is why it is employed here. To save a buck or two.
Dinner tonight: You know it. So half of $8.95 is $4.47 plus one-half cent. We'll just call that $4.48, ok?
Now, I realize that you might be reading this and thinking, "um, why, precisely, would I enjoy prunes in my pasta?" And I understand your skepticism. However, you must hear me out. I had a fantastic ricotta and prunes pasta dish for the first time a few years ago in Italy. So fantastic that while I ate it, I committed to making it at home one day. It was the day before my thirty-sixth birthday - "a monumental landmark birthday," JR kept reminding me, quite facetiously - and we had stopped for lunch in a Tuscan spa town. Spas are a big thing in Italy, as far as I can tell. Generally, they involve naturally warm, mineral-rich waters which are fed into some sort of communal pool, and those waters are ascribed healing properties. The primary healing property I've heard about is the cleansing of the liver, which may explain why I saw so many bathing-suit-clad, flip-flop-wearing Italians running for the pools, arms heavy with towels and bottles of wine. It's the Italian version of push-pull. In with the liver-damaging alcohol, and also in with the liver-restoring spa water. Let them duke it out, and with luck, the liver comes out unscathed. JR and I skipped the bathing, and instead had food to help offset the effects of the wine. Possibly not as curative as the healing waters, but it worked for us, as it has many times over.
It took a couple of years for me to get around to finally making pasta with prunes. I think I was stymied by JR's inevitable scrunched up nose at the mention of pasta with prunes, but then one day, just a few months ago, the time seemed right. I had some leeks from the last day of my garden - and by some, I mean approximately a million - that needed to be used. Though there weren't leeks in the Italian spa-town rendition of ricotta and prunes, I thought the sweetness of the leeks would work well with the prunes. And it did. It worked so well, in fact, that JR ate all of his and didn't complain or scrunch his nose when I served it again a week later. And on that second night of pasta with prunes, he said - and I kid you not - "kinda tastes like meat." OK?
The last time I made this dish, I arrived home from the grocery store with three bags of goods to put away and a drying rack full of dishes on the counter - you may know that I am cursed by the space restrictions of my minuscule kitchen and therefore do not have a dishwashing machine, I am the dishwasher. So I arrive home with both groceries and dishes needing to be put away. I put the pot of water on the burner at six minutes past the hour, put the groceries and dishes in their appropriate homes, prepped the leek and prunes while the water came to a boil, and we were eating forty minutes later. I suppose if I had brought the water to a boil more quickly, I could call this a 30-minute meal or some such, but it took until 46 past the hour to hoist a ricotta-and-prune-laden fork to my mouth, and so it likely will for you as well.
Pasta with Ricotta and Prunes:
Ingredients:
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped leek, white and green parts only. The white and light green parts of a medium-sized leek will get you pretty close to a half-cup
12 ounces pitted prunes
(1) 1-pound box of medium-length, thick pasta, such as Gemelli
1/2 cup fresh ricotta, plus an additional 1/4 cup to be divided evenly among the plates before serving.
*I highly recommend using fresh ricotta. The difference in texture between fresh and shelf-stable is remarkable. As it should be. Fresh will go sour on you within a couple weeks from the time it was made, and shelf-stable can hang around your refrigerator months. It's a milk-based product, you know? How much milk have you seen that can stay "good" for months? Right. To be absolutely certain I'm not misguiding you, I have tried this with both types of ricotta, and the shelf-stable variety was not only "good" for four months - alarming - beyond the day on which I purchased it, it also scooped like ice cream. And you do not want ice cream scoops of cheese for this. For this dish, you want light and fluffy ricotta. It's worth the extra money.
salt and pepper
Bring pasta water to a boil over medium-high heat. While the water comes up to the boil, rinse and chop the leek, being sure to clean it of all dirt. Leeks are notorious for hiding dirt in their layers. Chop the prunes into 3-4 pieces per each.
Once the water is boiling, salt and add pasta, cooking to the manufacturers instructions.
In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat, and add the leeks. Cook leeks alone in the pan for approximately 5 minutes. Add prunes, and continue to cook until pasta is al dente (cooked through, but firm to the bite). Add cooked pasta and 1 cup pasta cooking water to the skillet. Stir to combine and simmer for one minute. Add 1/2 cup fresh ricotta and stir until ricotta has melted. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and serve at once. Top each of the plates with a tablespoon or so of fresh ricotta and additional pepper if desired.
Serves 4.
For a quick cost analysis on this quick meal, it cost $7.84 to make this for four people. The ricotta is your big-ticket item at $3.99 for 8 ounces. You're using around 6 ounces, so that's $3.00. The pasta was Barilla Gemelli, which cost $1.39 for the 1-pound box. I used Sunkist pitted prunes which cost $3.99 for 16 ounces, you're using 12 ounces, so that's $3.00. The olive oil is around 11-cents per tablespoon ($7.99 for 67 tablespoons using the Whole Foods store brand), so 45-cents, let's say, and we don't count salt and pepper. Inexpensive, quick to prepare, and a good conversation starter to boot. "Hey, how about this? My kids ate prunes in their pasta last night." See where that takes you, alright?
Dinner tonight: Ribollita, the Tuscan bean and vegetable soup that is one of the staples of cucina povera, or peasant cooking. I made this last week as well, but it wasn't quite as thick as I would have liked, so I'm making it once more to hopefully get it right. Estimated cost for two: $2.96. The beans were around $1.00 in the bulk section at Whole Foods, which is a quarter less than what I paid for beans the week before at the Providence Winter Farmers Market. The celery, onion, and two carrots were no more than a dollar. The leeks were $1.75. The garlic was 12-cents if you consider it was less than a quarter of the 50-cent head of garlic. The can of tomatoes was $1.67. I did buy bread because it was so darned good the last time, so we'll use about a quarter of a loaf that cost $3.39. That's 85-cents. The bread is toasted, then rubbed with garlic and placed at the bottom of the bowl of soup to make one bad-ass garlicky crouton. The cavolo nero, or dinosaur kale, was $2.49. This recipe yields 6 servings at a cost of $8.88, for a grand total of $1.48 per person.
When I was a kid, one of my favorite dinners was actually a theme dinner, Breakfast for Dinner. You remember it. I know you had them, too. Some nights it was apple pancakes, other nights scrambled eggs. I don't remember any French Toast making the Breakfast for Dinner menu, which strikes me as quite a shame.
In my adult years, I came to realize that Breakfast for Dinner was a convenient way to put together a quick, inexpensive meal, and rather than feeling taken, that only adds to its appeal. Nowadays, though, my Breakfast for Dinner usually consists of some variation on Frittata. Frittata is an Italian dish, less like an omelet than it is usually given credit for being - it seems more like a crustless quiche - and lends itself to much improvisation. I like to think of it as egg-based pizza, actually. In the spring, it's great with some asparagus, fresh goat cheese, and peas. During the summer, what could be better than fresh tomato slices, mozzarella, basil, and corn, or zucchini and mint? In the fall, I like to hang onto the tomatoes and corn as long as I am able; and in the winter, it lends itself to earthy additions like mushrooms and cheese, potatoes and sausage, or, as I am about to describe, mushrooms and potato with cheese.
Once you've mastered the basic technique of cooking frittata, you are free to riff on it at will. I occasionally enjoy a simple egg and cheese frittata, sometimes I like to get all crazy-go-wacky and add kalamata olives and feta cheese, and every once in a while the tang of artichoke hearts in concert with the eggs really does it for me.
Mushroom and Potato Frittata with Cheese:
Ingredients:8 large eggs
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 of a medium onion, diced
1 pound mushrooms, washed well and sliced
2 teaspoons thyme
1 medium thin-skinned potato, washed well, and sliced thinly
1 cup grated cheese of your choosing
salt and pepper
In a large mixing bowl, combine the eggs and beat until well blended
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large oven-proof skillet over medium heat, add the oil and heat until just beginning to shimmer. Add the onion and saute until just translucent, approximately 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and thyme, and saute until mushrooms have softened, approximately 5 minutes.
Reduce heat to medium-low and add the egg mixture. Allow to cook on the stovetop until the eggs are just set, approximately 7 minutes. Place the thinly sliced potato rounds all around the surface of the frittata, pressing down gently to cover with a thin layer of liquid egg. Sprinkle grated cheese over top, salt and pepper to taste, and transfer to the oven. Bake on the middle rack for 45 minutes, or until the top of the frittata is just golden brown.
Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes before cutting into 8 even-ish wedges. Serve with a simple green salad and crusty bread, or perhaps some braised fennel if it happens to be too cold outside to consider chilled greens.
Serves 4-8, depending upon your appetite.
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the cost per serving on this is quite low. The eggs were $3.19 for a dozen, so $2.13 for the 8 in this dish. The olive oil worked out to 95-cents, the mushrooms were $2.25, the onion was actually half of an onion, so 25-cents, the thyme we decided was 10-cents worth. The potato was about a half a pound, which, at 58-cents per pound is 29-cents, and the cheese - I used provolone because I had it on hand - was $1.25 for the amount I used. If you used a cup from a two-cup bag of shredded cheese, that would be around $2.00 for the cheese. I'll use that two-dollar figure to tally this bad boy up, and our total for 8 wedges of mushroom and potato frittata with cheese is $7.97, so we'll round up and call it $1.00 per piece. Not too shabby, and completely in the spirit of Breakfast for Dinner.
Dinner tonight: Pancetta with Peas and Spaghetti, Topped with a Fried Egg. Estimated cost for two: $6.05. The pancetta was $8.29 per pound. We're using about a quarter of a pound, so that's $2.07. The pasta is the fancy Rustichella d'Abruzzo, which was $3.29 for a 1-pound bag, and we'll use half of that, so that's $1.65. The peas are frozen, and they were $1.39 per bag, we'll use half of the bag, and that's 70-cents. The shallot is about 50-cents at the most, I'll shake some crushed red pepper into the pan, so let's call that 10-cents, and the olive oil will be around 50-cents. The eggs are 53-cents for two, but you could easily omit them if you like. I'll cook the eggs sunny-side-up, so there will be runny yolk to mix into the pancetta and peas. It comes together quickly, has a great kick of heat, and the savory pancetta contrasting with the sweet peas can't be beat for that price! And that's with the fancy pasta. If you used a less-expensive pasta brand, like Barilla, which you can get for 99-cents for a one-pound box, it would be $1.15 less for two people. And, yes, the recipe is going to be posted soon. It would be unfair of me to keep this kind of inexpensive goodness from you.
I know that when "they" say "luck be a lady", "they" mean for luck to be kind, genteel, and/or ladylike, but for the sake of a lovely alliteration (gotcha!) for today's title, please grant me this folly of luck being a lentil.
In Italian tradition, lentils are eaten at the New Year to help foster wealth in the upcoming year. The lentils resemblance to coins, though incredibly small, greenish-blue coins, is used as an explanation for this tradition, and so I have resolved to eat lentils not just on the New Year, but as frequently as possible, for I could use me some wealth.
As an added bonus, tell anyone you know you're about to eat lentils and they'll respond, "wow. very healthy." Try it. It's amazing. So if you want to give yourself a quite likely false sense of wealth coming your way coupled with a sense of smug satisfaction regarding your healthy eating habits, make yourself up some lentils, and spread the word. Before you know it, you'll be hearing, "Wow, madame. You are so healthy and wealthy." Maybe even wise. I don't know if they'll tell you that, though. To my knowledge, that isn't one of the qualities attributed to lentil consumers, but I could be wrong.
Lentils with bacon and onion:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups dry lentils, the type of your choosing. They come in green, orange, and greenish-blue French types. How do you picture your money? Probably green.
3 or so changes of cold water for soaking
1/4 pound bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 celery rib, trimmed, rinsed, and cut into 2-inch lengths
1 carrot, peeled, rinsed, and cut into 2-inch lengths
1 small onion, cut into a large dice, in the range of 1/2 inch wide
1-2 cloves garlic
Enough cold water or broth to cover the lentils by 1 inch once they're in the sauce pan
One thing to remember is that when lentils are harvested and sifted, the occasional pebble is going to get caught up in the slew of lentils. And because it is likely a similar size to that of the lentil, it will not sift out of the lentil slew. Therefore, you need to pick over them prior to cooking them. The easiest way to do this is to spread out your cup and a half of dry lentils on a baking sheet and sort through them to remove any small rocks or dirt that will ruin your fantasies of getting rich by eating lentils or becoming the healthiest person you know because of the zeal with which you consume lentils.
Once you have sorted through the lentils to remove stones, rinse them with cold water in a fine mesh colander, or a colander lined with cheesecloth to prevent the lentils from going down the drain. Transfer lentils to a bowl, cover with cold water, and allow to soak. They will soak for approximately 3 hours. Every hour or so, give them a stir to kick up any additional dirt, and then drain them back into the colander, rinse again, and place back in the bowl, covered with cold water. Ideally, by the time you've done this twice, there will be no more dirt in the soaking bowl when you stir them. Be careful not to soak the lentils for too long as they will begin to sprout, and then you will find yourself eating lentil sprouts, not lentils with bacon and onions.
Transfer cleaned, soaked lentils to a medium saucepan and cover with cold water or broth enough that there is one inch of water above the top of the lentils. Add the bacon, celery, carrot, onion, and garlic, bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat to a simmer, and allow to simmer for 1 and 1/2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Remove the celery and carrot, and serve them up with roasted chicken, stewed lamb, pork, or maybe even some haddock or other white fish. And watch the money pile up.
Dinner tonight: Mushroom Frittata and Braised Fennel. Estimated cost for two: $5.68. I just collected 5 eggs from the chicken coop. They were out of water again, so in I went to remedy that situation. I'm already doing better with my "better chicken husbandress" resolution, see? I'm going to use 8 eggs total in the frittata, so I'll use 3 from yesterday's collection as well. If you were purchasing eggs at the market at $3.19 for 12 (as they are at Whole Foods for the store brand), this would total $2.13. The mushrooms were $2.25, the onion was 50-cents, the olive oil will be around $1.00, and the thyme will be just the littlest bit, but we'll call that 10-cents. I will use a little mild provolone in the frittata as well, but nearly any hard cheese you have around would be fine. The provolone cost $4.99/pound, so let's call what I'm using 1/4 pound, and that's $1.25. The frittata is $7.23 for 8 servings, or 90-cents per serving. JR will eat two servings, I will eat one, and that's $2.71 including the fraction of a cent that was left behind in the single-serving cost. Be forewarned if you have teen boys or large men in your household, they'll put down a quarter of the pie, that's for sure. With only three servings eaten tonight, JR will wind up with generous frittata leftovers in his lunch the next few days while I eat lentils. I'm really working this lentil thing. The fennel was exactly $2.00 for two medium bulbs. I will use about 60-cents in olive oil, and a cup of apple cider at $2.99 for 8 cups, so that's 37-cents. If it were warmer out, I'd make a simple green salad, but it's January, damn it, and I want warm food.
I tend to the chickens at our house as often as JR cooks dinner. Which is to say, next to never, and only as an absolute necessity of survival - either the chickens' or ours, as the case may be.
In fact, JR usually does whatever he is able to keep me from tending to the chickens. A few years ago, JR was away for work for a week. Before leaving, he arranged to have his brother and another friend feed and "water" the animals. "Water" or "Watering" is a common term among those who keep livestock, but I've found that for many non-livestock possessing people, it conjures up the idea of livestock in potting soil and a watering can gracefully depositing a spray of water over them. And then it produces giggles in the non-livestock possessing members of the population. Watering, in fact, is the act of providing drinking water to the animals. Larger animals have troughs, dogs and cats have bowls, and chickens have, well, chicken waterers. Yes. That truly is their name. Chicken waterers generally have some sort of vacuum created in order to dispense small amounts of water. Apparently, chickens, left to the devices of their small brains, will drown if allowed too much water as they will push their beaks to the bottom of the reservoir given the opportunity, and then they will stay there and suffocate. Or at least this is the story I've been told. I imagine it could be chicken fiction, but I am living by it regardless.
Chickens don't require a whole lot of tending to, with the exception of collecting the eggs daily, a mucking out of their quarters from time to time, and feeding and watering. If you happen to purchase a large enough feed dispenser and chicken waterer, you can avoid the feeding and watering tasks for days. When we first got the chickens, we had a very small chicken waterer, one that required filling at least once per day. After a year of that, JR purchased a larger chicken waterer, one which could be filled and left for a few days' time before requiring a refill.
Though he had long shielded me from the chicken-tending, JR had an overnight work trip which corresponded with his brother's vacation and a dearth of other friends available to cover for him in these duties. I understand the confusion you may have about JR not wanting me to deal with the chicken chores as a.) I live at the house so isn't it easier for me to take care of the chickens rather than have someone drive over here to do it?, and b.) how difficult can it possibly be to feed and water twenty or so chickens?
JR generally leaves for work between five and six o'clock in the morning, a time at which I am barely cognizant of my name. To review my chicken responsibilities, he called me later in the morning that was to be his night away - I'm not certain why we didn't have the foresight to review the chicken watering prior to him leaving, but suffice it to say, we didn't. He began to describe in detail how to work the new, larger chicken waterer before telling me that the chickens were almost certainly out of water, and as it was the middle of summer, they would need the water before I left for work. Again, I'm not certain why the waterer wasn't filled while he was still home, but, again, it wasn't. Now, I am not a morning person, and as he described how the waterer worked, my eyes, still crusted over with sleep, wandered about the room, thinking of what I needed to do to get ready for work, what ridiculousness would ensue when I got there, when JR would be home, and what we would have for dinner when he returned. All of the important stuff, basically. Then I heard, "you got all that?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said, "sounds like a pain in my ass." As I mentioned, I am not a morning person.
Dressed for work, I approached the chicken coop, which is more like a palatial chicken mansion in its size. In fact, it is larger than my kitchen. I think I'll need to address that with the chickens and JR, now that I'm thinking of it. In any case, I shooed the chickens away from the door as I entered, retrieved the chicken waterer, and carried it to the French drain in the barn. The water is supplied by an old-fashioned pump, one which consists of a pipe as tall as I am, and a level that you pull up to release the water. Attached to the pipe is a hose, which I positioned in the chicken waterer. I lifted the lever, and watched as the hose sprayed out of the waterer, leaving water everywhere on the floor nearby the French drain, though not in the French drain, and, while this is in the barn, it happens to be in the part of the barn that is my studio. I swept the splattered water into the drain, and then made a second attempt. This one was successful, and so I screwed the cap onto the waterer. I mentioned before that chicken waterers involve a vacuum, so the cap is also the bottom of the waterer once you turn it over - it has a ridge around the circumference to contain the water and protect the chickens from certain death by drowning. I flipped the waterer over while still in the studio so that I could carry it by its handle. At this stage, the water should reach its level and then cease to drain as there is a vacuum at work. However, I had missed a critical bit of information in the phone lesson on the waterer, and so I had not sealed the opening that would create a vacuum. Instead, I watched as the water poured all over the floor, putting to shame the relatively small amount of water sprayed by the hose moments earlier.
I flipped the waterer back over, and called JR in a panic. He walked me through the chicken waterer operation once more, I created the vacuum, and was able to transport the waterer back to the coop without any significant loss of water.
JR returned the next night and promptly went to attend to the chickens. He found them standing around a dry waterer-moat though the very large reserve was full of water. I had neglected to remove the vacuum-sealing cap, and had left the water unable to drain into the reservoir, so the chickens had been without water for nearly two days. "I knew it sounded like a pain in my ass," I replied when confronted with the fact that I had nearly killed the chickens by depriving them water.
Today it is snowing profusely. I shoveled the deck, made my coffee, drank a cup, and came back out to find the deck as snow-covered as it was before I had shoveled it. I have been carrying wood from the wood pile to the house, stocking up for the storm, and battling with seemingly non-flammable kindling in the studio stove. And, I have been tending to the chickens. JR worked thirteen hours yesterday, and as soon as he arrived home, we went to our neighbor's house for a holiday get-together. The chickens were out of food, and in the winter, the water freezes, so it has to be changed daily. Luckily for the chickens and for me, because of the freezing problem, we use the smaller waterer so that we don't end up with a large block of ice that would take days to melt as it would with the larger waterer.
I poured feed into the feeder and onto their heads while trying to pour it into the feeder. I then removed the waterer and brought it to the house to defrost enough to open and refill. When I returned to the coop, there were two eggs in the nesting boxes. Nesting boxes are just as they sound, boxes made for the chickens to lay eggs within and to set upon if the eggs are fertilized. You don't need a rooster to get eggs, a rooster is only necessary to fertilize eggs - and also to come flying across the backyard, talons first, to scratch the hell out of your legs if he thinks you're coming too close to his girls. You'd be surprised at the horizontal jump a rooster can muster when he feels it necessary. We no longer have a rooster, and, while I wish I could say that it was because he did scratch the hell out of my legs, instead, he met a tragic end in the jowls of some nasty neighborhood dogs. Nonetheless, we still have chickens, and the point is that they don't need a rooster to provide eggs. I put the first egg in my pocket. It was quite cold. I had seen it there when I went in the first time to dispense the feed and collect the waterer, and in this weather, it wouldn't take long for its temperature to drop to near-freezing. The second egg was piping hot. And by piping, I mean around the body temperature of a chicken.
I had had this experience once before, the experience of holding a just-laid egg in my hand moments after it had come out of the chicken. Long before we had the chickens ourselves, JR and I went to Antonelli's Poultry on Federal Hill in Providence. It's a rough place if you don't want to know specifically from where your food comes. The front is a small, narrow store-front, with pantry staples, some vegetables, and meats. Walking past the cash register, you come to a plastic door, which, if you've worked in a restaurant, would be familiar to you as the liner to the walk-in refrigerator. Once you pass through the plastic door, you enter into a room with cages and cages of chickens, ducks, and rabbits. You take a number just as you would at the deli counter, and when it's your turn, you either select an animal for your dinner, or you tell them what type of animal you'd like and around how much you'd like it to weigh, dressed out. The slaughter man then takes care of the killing, draining the blood, gutting, feathering, and rinsing, and within just a few minutes, you are in receipt of that night's dinner. It doesn't get much more fresh than that. As you might imagine, not many people have the stomach to source their poultry in this fashion, but it's worth doing just once if you want a full appreciation of what it takes to get a chicken into the pot. During this visit, a chicken laid an egg as its cage was being moved. One of the workers reached into the cage and held out the egg to me. I held it for a second, warm as it was, with a little mottling on the brown shell, and then reached to hand it back. "No. No. For you," he said. And I carried it around with me while we continued to shop in the neighborhood's Italian markets. We ate it when we arrived home, and it was delicious. But to that point, I hadn't ever considered eggs as anything more than a convenience and a staple. Knowing that a chicken had just laid that egg - and that the chicken was likely not to be alive for another day - made the egg that much more incredible.
I took the warm egg from the coop, and went promptly to the house. I melted some butter in a fry pan, cracked the egg, and started to cook it before it had a chance to cool. There is the saying that the one hundred folds in a chef's toque represent the mastery of the one hundred ways to cook eggs. And I'm just happy to have this one perfect fried egg on this snowy day, the last one before the new year. A year during which I hope to master a few more preparations of fresh eggs, and one during which I plan, among other things, to be a better chicken husbandress.
A Perfect Fried Egg:
Ingredients:
1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 large, fresh egg. Preferably still warm, if you can find one such.
salt
pepper
thyme or fennel seed, or any other herb of your choosing
Over medium heat, melt the butter in a small frying pan. Crack the egg into the butter, and reduce heat to medium low. Cook until egg has reached desired doneness. You must pay attention to the egg if you want a runny yolk, so don't stray too far from the stove. Salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle a favorite herb over if you so desire. Serve at once.
Dinner tonight: Lamb Shanks in a Simple Gravy with mashed potatoes and carrots. Estimated cost for two: $19.50 for a holiday celebration meal. We will also be having Champagne that I purchased at an end-of-bin sale last January. Keep your eyes open for end-of-bin sales - you can get some good bargains on fancy wines at those bad boys. The lamb shanks were $8.43. The wine I will use was $7.99, and I've had a glass out of the bottle, so we'll call the cost of wine $5.35. I am using turkey stock made from the carcass of the turkey-in-a-hole-in-the-ground, but if you were to purchase stock, it would be around $2.19 for 4 cups. I think you'd only need 3 cups, however, so that's a cost of $1.64. I'll use mustard, which won't be more than 20-cents' worth, and oil at around 80-cents. The flour will be negligible, but let's call it 20-cents as well. Potatoes are 57.5-cents per pound, so we'll call that 58-cents. Butter will be around 70-cents. The carrots were $3.99 for 5 pounds, and let's say we'll use a pound, though it will probably be less, and that total is 80-cents. I'm thinking that I may make a custard for dessert, now that I'm embarking on an egg-preparation-mastery quest, but we'll see about that.
I am sometimes guilty of getting a bit carried away with doing things in the most time-consuming fashion.
I'd appreciate it, family, if you would stop laughing now. Thank you.
It's just that I enjoy making things myself - whether it be a gift, artwork, a note card, or a meal - and so I often strive for the end result in equal parts for the end itself and as a means to execute its components. I find the making gratifying, which keeps it from feeling tedious. This meal is one such effort, and so I will walk you through the protracted instructions for constructing the dish, less the make-your-own-ricotta step, which was truly unnecessary as Narragansett Creamery makes a perfectly fluffy and sweet version that is readily available nearby my house. I'm sure there's a good cheesemaker making fresh ricotta near you as well, and so you, too, can forget you even heard of making your own ricotta, which requires you to stand over the stove for one hour while the lemon juice slowly works with the heat to create what seems like infinitesimal curds out of the half-gallon of whole milk. Yes, we will skip that step entirely, and when you are done reading through the instructions, you will realize that you can just as easily purchase butternut squash or pumpkin ravioli, or, if you want to go with that semi-homemade trend, you could purchase won ton wrappers and already pureed butternut squash and still experience the joy of assembling your own ravioli. I, however, did it this way:
Butternut squash ravioli in maple-cream sauce:
For the pasta:
3 to 3 1/2 cups Italian "00" flour (a specialty flour for pasta, but if you can't find it, go ahead and substitute all-purpose flour)
6-7 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
For the squash filling:
2 pounds squash, cubed and roasted - please see the butternut squash lasagna post if you aren't certain of the technique for cubing and roasting - and then mashed. If purchasing, you want approximately 2 cups of pureed or mashed butternut squash.
1/2 cup fresh ricotta, preferably not made in your own home
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 tablespoon thyme
pepper to taste
For the sauce:
4 tablespoons butter
1 large shallot, diced
2 cups light cream
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper
For garnish:
1 slice of bacon per person being served, cooked to desired crispness
In a mixing bowl, combine 3 cups of the flour, oil, salt, and five eggs. Mix to combine. If the dough is not coming together, add another egg. If it is still not coming together, add another. Then, if the dough is too sticky, add additional flour by the tablespoon until you have a cohesive dough that does not adhere to your fingers each time you touch it. Knead the dough, either by machine or by hand, until it is silken and smooth. Form it into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and place it in the refrigerator to rest for 30 minutes, allowing its strands of glutens to relax. You will have around two pounds of pasta.
While the glutens are in a state of repose, mix the mashed roasted butternut squash, ricotta, grated cheese, and thyme in a medium mixing bowl. Pepper to taste. Salt if you so desire, but I skipped this because the overall salt can be adjusted - in my opinion - in the saucing phase.
Once the pasta dough has sufficiently rested, roll it out into long sheets. I use a pasta-roller attachment on my stand mixer for this. I roll it out twice on the first setting, twice on the second, twice on the third, and twice on the fourth. The resulting thickness is what I consider ideal for lasagna noodles and ravioli.
There are many ways to form ravioli, and I have been making a valiant attempt to try them all. There is the machine-way, which involves another attachment for the stand mixer, and this is quick, provides you with small, uniform ravioli, but wastes a lot of pasta in the process. You can also use ravioli cutters and stamp out the shapes before filling them, resulting in you creating your own won ton wrappers, but this also results in much waste of the pasta. The easiest and least-wasteful way I have found is to roll out the sheets, place them on a well-floured surface - pasta dough is always wanting to stick to itself or the counter if allowed - and create a half-way mark on the short end of the dough as your guide. Place mounds of filling - approximately 1 tablespoon each - an inch or so apart from one another all on the same side of the dividing line. So you have a row of filling mounds, and a row that is naked. Take some warm water in a small bowl, dip your finger in it, and moisten the edge of the dough all around the perimeter. Next, make a line in the same fashion down the length of your dough on your imaginary dividing line, making it real. Then draw a water line between each mound all the way across the dough, such that the line is equidistant from the mound on either side. Gently fold the naked side of the dough up over the mounds, being careful to push out all of the air prior to sealing. This may take a little bit of practice, and you may wind up with an air bubble or two, but neither lack of practice nor air bubbles will ruin the dish. If you have a pasta crimping tool, roll it across the edges to crimp them together and be sure the ravioli are sealed. If not, use the tines of a fork to crimp all around the edge of each ravioli.
If you are using won ton wrappers, the idea is the same, only the wrappers are already ravioli shaped for your ravioli-constructing convenience. Put a mound of filling in the middle of the square, moisten the edges of the wrapper, then moisten the edges of a naked wrapper, and press the moistened edges of each together to seal, also being careful to push out all of the air.
If using neither of these techniques, get thee to a nearby Italian market and purchase some butternut squash ravioli.
With this amount of pasta, which for me was slightly over two pounds, I had 30 ravioli, plus 6 ounces of fettuccine from the remainder of the dough, so using that as a guide, one and a half pounds of pasta dough should yield you enough to make 5 servings of ravioli. They're filling, remember, and the cream sauce is fairly light, but it is still cream sauce, so 6 ravioli per person is more than ample.
In a large sauce pot, bring salted water to boil. At the same time, if using bacon, cook it to your desired crispness.
Just before the pasta water is at a boil, melt the butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the shallot, and cook until translucent, approximately 2 minutes. Add the cream, and allow to simmer for one minute to meld flavors. Add the maple syrup, stirring to combine, then add thyme, salt and pepper to taste, and cook sauce over medium heat, stirring occasionally until ravioli are done. Even fresh, the ravioli will take approximately 7-10 minutes to cook through. The ravioli should be entirely pasta-colored when fully cooked. If they have butternut squash color coming through in the filling area, they aren't quite done. Add the cooked ravioli to the saute pan and allow to simmer in the sauce for a minute or two, spooning sauce over top to coat.
Transfer to serving plates, garnish with salt, pepper, and bacon, and serve them forth. As you may have noticed, this is a very quick recipe if you make it with purchased ravioli, so this could be a weeknight dinner if you go that route, or it could be a lazy winter Sunday meal if you want to make your own pasta and take on all of the making tasks yourself. The sauce comes together in 10 minutes, and would also be good with pork or roasted chicken, so don't miss the opportunity to use it elsewhere. That's part of the fun, after all.
If you have leftover ravioli, you can place them on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper and place in the freezer for 2-3 hours, or until frozen through. Then, transfer them to a freezer storage bag and use them within a month or so.
Dinner tonight: Ribollita, which is a Tuscan vegetable soup and an important dish in cucina povera, which translates roughly as "the poor-person's kitchen" and which is peasant cuisine. The soup is comprised of beans, celery, carrots, onion, garlic, leeks, and tomato, and the broth is made as it cooks, so it is only water that is added to create the broth. Estimated cost for two: $3.04. The beans were purchased at the Providence Winter Farmers Market, which is in the most amazing renovated mill building, so even if you don't need bread, cheese, grass-fed beef or pork, shellfish, apples, other veggies, or locally-grown beans, you should still check it out. In any event, the beans were $1.25. The celery, onion, and two carrots were no more than a dollar. The leeks were $1.75. The garlic was 12-cents if you consider it was less than a quarter of the 50-cent head of garlic. The can of tomatoes was $1.67. I did buy bread because I was all from-scratched out after making the ravioli AND ricotta myself, so we'll use about a quarter of a loaf that cost $3.39. That's 85-cents. The bread is toasted, then rubbed with garlic and placed at the bottom of the bowl of soup to make one bad-ass garlicky crouton. The cavolo nero, or dinosaur kale, was $2.49. This results in 6 servings at a cost of $9.13 for a grand total of $1.52 per person. Poor-person's kitchen, indeed.
For our Christmas celebration this year, my sister came up with the idea that we should have a bake-off. The only criteria of the bake-off being that each person bring a dessert they had never before made. Now, my normal holiday dessert is Tiramisu, which I love, and which normally gets pretty good reviews, mostly nonverbal, like the double batch that was completely wiped out in twenty minutes at Easter, but given the rules, Tiramisu was out of contention. I had already planned to make a pull-apart cinnamon bread, but that was more of a breakfast pastry/roll option to go with the brunch my mother was putting on. I had eaten the most fabulous sticky toffee pudding at one of my favorite restaurants, Trattoria della Nonna in Mansfield, Massachusetts (if ever you're going to a concert at the Comcast Center, you should stop at Trattoria della Nonna for dinner first), so I did a little research, and found this recipe, which also makes good use of coffee or espresso like the Tiramisu. And I'm all for using coffee and espresso in desserts as there is often leftover from each morning's brewing.
Which leads me to the substitution I made. The recipe called for instant coffee granules, which I don't keep on hand, for I do not drink Nescafe or the like, so I made myself a pot of espresso on Christmas morning and used one cup for the pudding. Regular coffee would work just as well, and the only ingredient you might have to go out of your way to have in your larder are dates. Or possibly cream for the caramel sauce if you don't keep cream hanging about. The pudding is easily put together, and, as previously mentioned, I made it on Christmas morning without adding stress to the day. In fact, for a limited amount of effort, this produces an incredibly delicious dessert that pairs beautifully with vanilla ice cream. And that makes the I've-personally-never-made-it-before-December-25-2008 sticky toffee pudding a go-to dessert in my book.
Sticky Toffee Pudding, adapted from Bon Appetit via Epicurious (and they, in turn, requested the recipe from the Beginish Restaurant in Dingle, Ireland):
For the cake:
1/2 pound dates, pitted and chopped fine
1 cup hot coffee or espresso
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
For the Caramel Sauce:
2 cups heavy cream (a one pint container contains 2 cups)
1 cup brown sugar (dark brown sugar will result in a darker caramel which matches the color of the cake better than a light caramel, but the choice is yours)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
Combine the dates and 1 cup of hot coffee in a medium bowl and set aside until cooled, approximately 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. You will be using a 9" springform pan. Before greasing the pan, cut a circle out of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan. This can be done easily by placing the parchment over the bottom of the pan and running a knife through the parchment following the groove in the bottom of the pan. Now, grease the pan well, press the parchment round down atop the bottom of the pan, and also butter it well. You could also use a square pan and line it with parchment such that the parchment overhangs the edges of the pan slightly and will allow you to remove the cake without cutting into it. Or, if presentation isn't your primary concern, to hell with it, just bake it in a well-greased 9" pan and accept some crumbling of cake. The taste certainly won't suffer for the loss of a clean edge here and there.
In a large mixing bowl, mix butter and sugar until well-blended. Add two eggs, one at a time, beating to combine each egg after its addition. Add one cup of flour, and blend well. Now, back to the eggs. Add the remaining two eggs, one at a time, beating until combined, just like before. Add 3/4 cup flour and blend well.
Add the teaspoon of baking soda to the coffee-date mixture and stir to combine. Add the coffee-date mixture to the batter, and mix well to combine. Pour into pan, place on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake in the center of the oven until cake is set and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, approximately 1 hour. Allow to cool slightly before cutting.
During the last 20 minutes of baking, combine the cream, sugar, and butter in a medium saucepan and bring to a low boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Once the mixture is at a boil, reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer, and stir occasionally. Simmer until mixture is reduced by half, approximately 15 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. Don't mentally force this caramel sauce into a sticky toffee pudding box, either. You can use this for topping ice cream and any other dessert use you desire as it comes together quickly and easily, and costs around $3.50 for 1 and 3/4 cups of goodness. So useful and budget-friendly, the caramel sauce is.
Cut the cake into wedges, drizzle caramel sauce over top, hit it with a little vanilla ice cream, and serve it forth.
Yield: 10-12 servings.
Dinner tonight: Homemade butternut squash ravioli with maple cream sauce, bacon, and caramelized butternut squash. Estimated cost for two: $6.89. I made two pounds of pasta using 7 eggs and about a half bag of "tipo 00" Italian flour, which is used for pasta-making. The eggs were from our chickens, but if you were to use store-bought, that would be $1.86 at $3.19/dozen. The flour was $2.19 for the bag, so we'll call that $1.10. I will use about 3/4 pound of pasta for the ravioli, so that's $1.11 at $1.48 per pound. I made my own ricotta. Yes. I also agree that's a bit too much, but I did it, so there we are. The milk was $2.39, and the one lemon was 50-cents, so it cost me $2.89 for two cups of ricotta. I'll use 1/4 cup at the most, and that expense is 36-cents. I'll toss in a few tablespoons of pecorino romano, which was $7.99/pound, so at 1.99 tablespoons per ounce, we'll call that 50-cents. The squash was 75-cents from my neighbor's farm stand/patio table in the front yard, and it's nearly 3 pounds. For you to buy it at a larger farm stand, it should be 79-cents per pound, so that would be $2.37, you'll need half of that, which we'll call $1.19. The bacon was $5.75 for 12 pieces, I'll use two, so that's 96-cents. I'll use one cup of cream for $1.50, a shallot, which we'll call 50-cents, and a tablespoon of maple syrup, which we'll call 25-cents. The total amount of butter used in the dish is 6 tablespoons, and that's 52-cents. And we will wrap it up with sticky toffee pudding and vanilla ice cream. And extra caramel sauce. Yay caramel sauce.
I wanted to wish you all a happy holiday season while I'm between baking tasks. I have been reading August Escoffier's autobiography the last few days. If you aren't familiar with him, he is a French chef who worked in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His legacy is frequently cited as that of having brought dignity to the profession of chef, and having brought modern French cuisine to the forefront of the culinary world. While he is responsible for inventing dishes such as Peach Melba (created for the performer Nellie Melba) and, together with Cesar Ritz helped to create the reputation of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, I am most struck by his philanthropy and sense of doing what is right. Throughout his career, he donated money to houses for elderly chefs, he set up chefs in jobs whenever he had the chance, and, spoke his mind to heads of state when he had the opportunity. His own experience in the Franco-Prussian War shaped his anti-war philosophy, for he saw much suffering during his deployment and his eventual imprisonment at a German war camp.
During Escoffier's time as a prisoner of war, he was held in the camp until he was assigned to cook for the officers being held in town. While at the camp, the enlisted men would be fed only once a day, and their turn to eat would be rotated, such that it was possible to be the first to eat one day and the last to eat the next. This often resulted in thirty-six hours passing between meals, and the meals themselves were pitiful. Each week, potatoes were brought in to feed the prisoners, but the peels and water to rinse the potatoes would be left on the as-yet unpeeled potatoes so that by the end of the week, the potatoes being served were all but rotten. Escoffier said that even at the end of the week, when the food was decaying, he would see men lunge at the food wagon because they were so hungry.
On Christmas Day that year, Escoffier asked the officers for whom he was cooking if he could go back to the camp to visit. They agreed, and he brought with him a feast from the officers larder for his friends. It was the first acceptable food they had had in months. They sat at a table, sharing stories and camaraderie, and enjoying the good food Escoffier had provided. He stayed all day with them, until finally he had to return to the officers residence. The other POWs begged him to stay, but he was, of course, unable. It was a small bright spot in an otherwise dismal existence, and Escoffier knew at the time that the one simple meal had done wonders to help his comrades' morale.
Happy Holidays to you all, and I hope your holidays and the year ahead are filled with many bright spots.
This holiday season, I'm giving a little more baking cheer than material cheer, though I suppose that the baking cheer could result in an extra pound or two on the midsection of those receiving apple cake, assorted cookies, and - a new addition to my baking repertoire, one which also happens to fulfill my yeast-bread-a-week requirement - panettone. And if you gain a pound or two, is that not material? Possibly not material cheer, but certainly material.
In order to help spread the weight - I mean cheer - around this holiday season, I had decided to embark upon the quest for perfect homemade panettone. However, I started on this mission prior to reading anything regarding the pitfalls of such a quest. The Gastronomy of Italy by Anna Del Conte, a very handy reference for all things, well, gastronomic as pertains to Italy, actually says something along the lines of "panettone is rarely made at home due to the difficulty, particularly with regard to the rising time." Sometimes it's best to be ignorant of obstacles and just jump right in.
I had already made one panettone before learning that panettone is too difficult and time-consuming to make at home. No one wants to be the recipient of crap baked goods at the holidays, and I certainly don't want to be accused of distributing crap baked goods, so I decided to test a few recipes first before tying a lovely bow on some cello-wrap over the bread and handing it over to my loved ones. Somehow, I had skipped the fear-phase of panettone making and had just blindly forged on to the testing of recipes.
This first loaf was quickly assembled and quick to rise, but I wasn't madly in love with it. When in love with panettone, I typically will compulsively eat the loaf. Oh how I love the candied bits of citron. But this first homemade panettone did not have that effect on me - so I continued my search, still in pursuit of the perfect panettone recipe. In my meanderings through the vast world of panettone recipes on the internet, I found a one at Epicurious, which I have yet to try, though it is on the docket. Right after Apple Pandowdy. One of the comments following the recipe made me nervous: "the rising time was about 13 hours!". Okay. Good to know. Another comment made me more nervous: "I've read that if kneading by hand, you have to knead for 50 minutes. If kneading by machine, it's 20 minutes." Egads. Really, maybe Del Conte was right. Maybe I should forgo the panettone quest. However, I've found that many culinary endeavors - such as pie crust or souffles - have mythology built around their difficulty or their ability to try the cook's patience, and this invariably ends up being just that - a myth. So I decided to continue on in pursuit of the perfect homemade panettone. Of course, the fact that I am unemployed and therefore do actually have thirteen hours available to wait for dough to rise makes it easier for me to soldier on. And the added fact that as a result of being unemployed, I'm better able to afford flour and candied citron than jewels or electronics for gift-giving made it more appealing to continue in my pursuit.
The Gastronomy of Italy informed me that panettone as we now know it was created in Milan, and was known as panettone di Milano when it was first created. In fact, there is a creation myth for the panettone di Milano (and why not?). The myth says that panettone was the result of a Milanese aristocrat falling in love with the daughter of a baker with the surname Toni. The aristocrat knew that their cross-class relationship wouldn't work, so he would have to change classes, and so he became the baker's assistant. At that time, every bakery created a large loaf of bread, known as Pan Grande, which had a cross sliced into the top. The aristocrat reworked the recipe to include more butter and more eggs, and then added candied citron and orange peel. Before long, all of the society ladies of Milan were buying up this Pan di Toni, and later the name was contracted to Panettone. This is a very romantic story, and one which I like very much, but to burst our little romance bubble, it turns out that this story cannot be verified (what?) and the creation of Panettone di Milano is attributed to a gentleman named Motta in the 1920s. Together with Alemagna, the Motta company is one of the biggest producers of Panettone. Panettone was traditionally produced only for the Christmas holiday, but is now produced year-round and exported around the world. My panettone will not be exported around the world - it probably won't make it out of Massachusetts - but my second attempt yielded results that could be characterized as "inspiring compulsive eating". In other words, success.
This recipe, which I found at the King Arthur Flour website, does require a long rise. At least in my house it did. The first rise took about two hours, and the second rise about eight hours. The temperature of your house does impact the rising time, and the warmer the space, the more quickly it the bread will rise. However, you can only rush it so much, so I would just let it take its course without increasing your heating bill in an attempt to speed up the process. This panettone requires a biga, which is Italian for starter. The biga comes together easily, and I recommend making it in the morning and letting it sit for the 8 to 12 hours required while you go about your daily business. Then, in the evening, make the dough, let it rise for 1-2 hours, then knead in the fruit, and let it have its second rise overnight. This allows you to be productively dreaming away while it rises rather than grousing over the time commitment, and there will be no cloud of perceived patience-trying hanging over your appreciation of the bread.
I did purchase candied citron and orange peel from King Arthur Flour, as well as an extract called Fiori di Sicilia (flowers of Sicily) especially to make this bread, though the recipe, which is from the King Arthur Flour website, gives a good work-around for both the candied fruit and the Fiori di Sicilia. I'm including both options here.
Panettone, adapted from King Arthur Flour:
Ingredients:
For the biga:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon yeast
1/3 cup water
For the dough:
All of the biga
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla & 1/8 teaspoon orange oil/extract.
1 tablespoon yeast
1/3 cup sugar
zest of one lemon or one orange
2/3 cups raisins
2/3 cups candied citron
2/3 cups candied orange peel
(or, if candied peels aren't available, use 1/2 cup raisins, 1/2 cup dried cranberries, 1/2 cup dried pineapple - chopped, and 1/2 cup dried apricots - chopped.)
For the biga: In a medium bowl, combine the flour, water, and yeast. Cover and set in a warm, draft-free location for 8 to 12 hours (or overnight).
For the dough: in a large mixing bowl, combine the biga, flour, milk, eggs, butter, salt, Fiori di Sicilia or Vanilla & Orange extract, yeast, sugar, and zest. Stir first with a spoon to break egg yolks and combine ingredients somewhat. Once the ingredients are somewhat combined, use a dough hook to completely combine ingredients and then knead by machine for 7 to 8 minutes, until dough comes together but is still sticky. Some of the dough will stick to the sides of the bowl, this is fine, but you will need a silicone spatula or spoon to scrape the stuck dough into the main ball of dough before you transfer the dough to your well-floured countertop for the next step.
Yes. Transfer the dough to your well-floured countertop, and knead briefly, just enough that the dough comes together and is smooth. You may need to dust your fingertips with flour to make the transfer happen more easily, and you may need to dust the top of the dough to make the brief kneading happen more easily as well. Once the dough is smooth, transfer to a greased bowl, cover, and set aside in a warm, draft-free area until dough is fluffy though not necessarily double its original size, approximately 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Return dough to lightly floured countertop and knead in the fruit. I start by flattening the dough out slightly on the countertop and scattering fruit over the surface, save for an inch or so around the edge. Then, I fold a "corner" (yes, I realize it's round dough - work with me here) over a portion of the scattered fruit, and scatter fruit on that empty space. I then fold another corner over, and top that off with fruit, and then fold the top over - it's as though I'm making a doughy fruit envelope - and scatter more fruit on that. I then fold the whole thing over itself and add more fruit if necessary. You may need to gently press the fruit into the dough to keep it from falling inward as you fold the dough over itself. Then, knead the dough gently to be sure the fruit is distributed throughout. Place in a greased panettone pan or paper baking pan (no need to grease the paper pan), cover, and set aside in a warm spot without what? Without a draft, and allow to rise until the dough has crested one inch over the top of the pan. Approximately 8 hours. So go to bed and get up, let's pretend it's Christmas morning now, and everyone is very excited about Santa having shown up in spite of it all (fill in your own, personal "it all" here). And you are very excited about homemade panettone, so preheat the oven to 400 degrees to get that underway.
Bake the bread at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 375, and bake the bread for an additional 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 and bake a further 25 minutes. I had to tent foil over the bread at the end of the 400-degree cooking period to avoid the crust browning too much, and the end result was perfect. Use your best judgment, though, and keep an eye on the browning - your oven may not cook the crust as quickly as mine did. In any case, you do not want an over-browned crust.
Not for the sake of art - for these photos are not artful - but for the sake of additional information, here are some photos from my poorly lit kitchen of the panettone in progress:
the dough is sticky & sticks to the sides of the mixing bowl - not to worry, just scrape the side-dwelling dough down to incorporate it into the rest of the dough when you turn it out onto the counter to do a quick hand-kneading.
the dough prior to its first rise
the first phase of adding fruit to the dough
fold the "corner" of the dough over the fruit
top the fold with fruit
fold the other "corner" over - top it with fruit
and again!
place the dough in a panettone pan or paper panettone pan & let rise again. It has a way to go before it crests over the top of the pan, as you can see.
Dinner tonight: leftover Bolognese, probably as a lasagna, though as I am baking peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Panettone, and apple cakes tonight, it could wind up being Bolognese with pasta. I'll pretend I'm ambitious, though, and we'll estimate the cost for the lasagna. Estimated cost for two: $3.77. The sauce cost $8.29 as made in the Untraditional Bolognese post, we had 2 servings of it over pasta on the night I made it, so 6 servings are going into the lasagna, and that's $6.22. The lasagna noodles are one-half of a box that cost $1.59, so that's 80-cents. The Bechamel sauce consists of 4 cups of milk which was $1.39, the butter was 43-cents, the flour was 6-cents at $3.99 for 76 quarter-cups per 5 pound bag, and we used the less-expensive, already grated, but still real - no green jars of faux cheese for us - parmigiano-reggiano from Venda Ravioli, 3 ounces of that cost us $2.43. The total cost for the lasagna is $11.33, and that works out to $1.88 per serving. Happily, this will keep us covered for dinner options through Christmas Eve as all of my cooking and baking energy is now focused on treats for gift-giving, and Christmas dinner fare. Speaking of which, Happy Holidays to you!
I'd like to call these cookies gingersnaps, but that would be a misnomer. These ginger cookies don't snap at all. They chew. And they chew good, if you don't mind my saying so. I've been making them around the holidays for the past eight or so years, and every time I pawn them off on my friends, they get rave reviews. I'm not much of a traditional Christmas cookie baker, so I tend to gift out chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, and these little bits of ginger heaven, in addition to baked breads and, this year, apple cakes. This recipe is quick and easy, and is originally from the back of a Ginger People crystallized ginger canister so I have to say, I'm happy to document it here in order that I can finally throw away the eight-year old canister that is one of many items cluttering my already too small kitchen space.
Gingery Gingerchews, adapted from Ginger People:
3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/3 cup crystallized ginger, cut into a fine dice
approximately 1/3 cup turbinado sugar for coating cookies in prior to baking. If you don't have turbinado sugar, which is frequently sold as Sugar in the Raw, granulated sugar is a fine substitute. I like the texture of the turbinado better, however, and it doesn't hurt that it's a larger grain, and therefore more sparkle-y than granulated, but sugar coating is sugar coating when you get right down to it.
In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, molasses, and egg.
In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger, and ground cloves. Stir well to combine.
Add the flour mixture to the sugar-molasses mixture and stir well to combine. Mix in the crystallized ginger bits and refrigerate for one hour.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease a large, rimmed baking sheet and set aside.
Roll dough into one-inch balls, and then roll in sugar to coat completely. Set on baking sheet, two inches apart from one another. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges are browned. The middle of the cookie may be somewhat puffy when you remove them, but they will flatten out and reward you with fantastic gingery chewiness.
Yield: approximately 36 cookies. Even with eating a little bit of the dough. I'm making a lot of cookies, so I'm not nearly as compelled to waste 2 or 3 cookies worth in dough-eating. In fact, it's kind of like a smorgasbord of dough that I'm able to graze through for the next few days. Ahhhh. The holidays. Such great joy they bring.
Dinner tonight: As it is Sunday, we are having our big, fancy meal of the week. Tonight, we will have a roasted chicken with mushroom risotto and sauteed mushrooms. I'm feeling the funghi this weekend, as you can see. Estimated cost for two: $10.26. Not bad for the fancy meal of the week, wouldn't you agree? The chicken is $4.38, and we'll eat about half of that. The other half will make up JR's lunch for the short holiday week in the form of chicken salad. The risotto consists of Carnaroli rice for about 80-cents for the two of us. The butter used will be about 44-cents. The shallot we'll call 50-cents. The mushroom broth, which I purchased and which is not the Whole Foods store brand was $2.79 for 4 cups. We'll use 5 or 6 cups, so that's $4.19, rounding up. I'm going to use grated pecorino romano in place of Parmigiano-Reggiano as it's about five dollars less per pound, and I'll use about two dollar's worth. The wine will be spilled in from the bottle I'm drinking tonight, so at $10.99 for 3 cups (there are roughly 3 cups of wine in a 750ml bottle) that's about 1.83 for a half cup. I'll be sad to see it go, but I'm sure I'll make do. Plus, the risotto will be more delicious for the sacrifice. Both the mushrooms being sauteed and those being added into the risotto were $1.95 for a package. I'll use about 1 and a half packages, with the half-package going into the risotto, so we'll call that $2.93 for all mushrooms, 98-cents of which has been tallied into the risotto tab. The total for four servings of risotto is $10.74, so $2.68 for 1 serving, and $5.37 for two servings. I will use a little bit of cream in the sauteed mushrooms, so at $2.99 for 2 cups, a half-cup (which I think is generous for this use), is 75-cents. I've been in an apple cake baking frenzy, and I didn't neglect our apple cake addiction in my baking, so I currently have three to give away for Christmas, and 1 for us to keep us in desserts until Christmas. We'll be having that tonight in front of the fire, keeping warm as the next 4 inches of snow falls. I hope you'll be warm and toasty, too.
And P is also for Pizza, which, if you're trying to figure out a low-cost party concept for the holidays, happens to pair well with Prosecco. I've long been a fan of Prosecco, Italy's sparkling white wine, and would always serve a cocktail of limoncello and Prosecco to dinner guests as they'd arrive at my house. However, it's an easy-drinking festive tipple on its own, and would work well as the drink of choice for any party, but also for an inexpensive to pull-off Prosecco and make-your-own pizza party this holiday season. I hosted a Champagne and pizza party a few years ago, and it's surprising how well bubbly goes with pizza. It has the added allure of bringing sparkling wines into a more "ordinary" realm. I, for one, think the world would be a better place if we didn't always reserve the bubbly for special occasions. So, though I'm recommending Prosecco and Pizza for the holidays, I think it's a fitting party theme throughout the year.
Prosecco is produced in the Veneto region of Italy, which is the region in the northeast that borders the Adriatic Sea, with Venice, its capital, as it's sparkly jewel on the coast. Austria borders its very northern tip, and Verona is its largest city at the western edge of the province. Friuli-Venezia Giulia is its neighbor to the west, just beyond Verona, and, while the grape's lineage is somewhat dubious, it is thought by some that the Prosecco grape originated in Friuli-Venezia Giulia in the town of Prosecco. However, this has not been proven, but I'm fairly certain you won't be worrying about this as you're raising your glass in the air, full of lovely, sparkling Prosecco.
The Veneto is the third most productive wine region in Italy, following behind Sicily and Puglia, with over two-hundred and fifty million bottles of wine produced in the Prosecco DOC (Denominazione Origine Controllata) zone alone. You may recall from last week's post on Sassotondo that DOC and DOCG (Denominazione Origine Controllata e Garantita) are terms of the classification system employed by the Italian government throughout Italy to guarantee what types of grapes are in which wines as well as what percentages of which grapes are used in blends. The Prosecco zone of Conegliano-Valdobbiadene is north of Venice, and is situated on rolling hills between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene. Prosecco has been grown there for at least two hundred years, though its modern era began in 1868 when Antonio Carpene, founder of the Prosecco house Carpene-Malvotti, began to employ a new method to add the characteristic fizz. This technique was invented by a Frenchman of the name Charmat, and is now known as Metodo Italiano, or Methode Charmat.
There are two fermentations in the creation of sparkling wines. The first one occurs after the harvest. In early, or farm-style, Prosecco production, the grapes were harvested late, so they were laden with sugar, and they would ferment in open vats until winter, when the cold stopped the fermentation process. Then, in the springtime, the warmth would spark a second fermentation which resulted in carbon dioxide bubbles in the wine. This resulted in a very sweet sparkling wine. In the modern era of Prosecco, and of all sparkling wines, the second fermentation is controlled rather than left to the spring thaw. Champagne, which refers only to the sparkling wines produced in the Champagne region of France, employs a method of introducing that second, bubble-producing, fermentation into wines already in the bottle, rather than prior to bottling. This is known as methode Champenoise. Wines outside of the Champagne region may employ methode Champenoise, and many sparkling wines do, but in Prosecco, they employ Metodo Italiano, which introduces the second fermentation in the tank, so prior to bottling. Metodo Italiano is a less expensive process than methode Champenoise. As you can imagine, introducing the second fermentation into individual bottles is a very time-consuming process, whereas introducing it to a vat holding a large quantity of wine prior to bottling involves far less labor, hence, the savings are passed on to the consumer. And we consumers are then able to have sparkling wine with pizza any time we like. Thank you Monsieur Charmat for your Metodo Italiano.
As a result of the difference in second fermentation process, Prosecco is a less-expensive wine than Champagne. There is one type of Prosecco, from the vineyards of Cartizze within the DOC zone, that does command up to three times the price of other Prosecco bottlings, but most Prosecco you will find in the United States will be a bargain as compared with Champagne. It does lack the complexity of a fine Champagne, but it is no less festive.
The Cavit Lunetta Prosecco which I sampled on Wednesday night is, of course, easy on the pocketbook or wallet at $11.99 per bottle. It's a light and easy-drinking wine, not terribly complex - as mentioned above, but happily bubbling away and pleasant to drink just the same. It has a pretty, floral nose with some peach and honeysuckle scents. It isn't a wine that's going to challenge you, but you have enough going on right now, so just enjoy it. It's good. And refreshing.
Cavit is a wine making cooperative based in Trentino, which is the region to the north of the Veneto, and just north of the Prosecco di Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOC. While truthfully, I wouldn't rush right out and purchase Cavit still table wines, I did find the Lunetta to be very pleasant and would buy it again. So give it a go, or try another producer's Prosecco and have yourself a very merry whatever you choose to celebrate. I'm going to celebrate dough, sauce, and cheese, myself. And then Christmas.
Dinner tonight: meatballs and spaghetti with red sauce. Estimated cost for two: $5.30. The meatballs consist of 20 ounces of ground meat; cost per pound was $3.79, so the total for the meat is $4.73. The milk is 25-cents (one cup at $1.99 for 8 cups), the bread was $2.29 for 18 or so slices, and I am going to use 6 slices, so 76-cents. The eggs are 50-cents, and the cheese is less expensive than parmigiano-reggiano as I bought pecorino romano instead. It costs $7.99 per pound, and I'll use a maximum of 4 ounces, so we'll call that $2.00 for our accounting purposes. The sauce is going to be $2.00 for a 24 ounce can of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes, plus around a dollar-fifty for carrot, onion, celery, and garlic, and we'll throw in 50-cents for anchovy paste and tomato paste. So the meatballs cost $8.24, and I'll get fifteen two-ouncers out of this batch, so 55-cents per meatball. JR and I will have 3 between the two of us, I'm sure, so $1.65 for those. The tomato sauce costs $4.00, and I'll get four servings out of that. The pasta is a splurge - we're going with our favorite fancy Italian pasta, Rustichella d'Abruzzo, and are using their spaghetti, which was $3.29 for a bag, and we'll use about half of that for a total of $1.65 in pasta. I think I should play 1-6-5 in the lotto tonight, no? When I made this last, the battle I had chosen to fight was the battle for fancy parmigiano-reggiano in the meatballs. Today's battle is for the Rustichella d'Abruzzo pasta, and, you know what? The last time I made this, it was $5.27 for two with the parmigiano. Today, it's $5.30. All's fair in love and food budgeting, I'd say.
