Winter Meal

We went to a Schreiner's Meat Market in Montrose. It is a German market that sells an unbelievable selection of homemade sausages and smoked meats. We purchased a smoked ham-hock and decided to make soup. The weather has been cold, damp and rainy and it definitely was perfect for a hot soup.

We made Heirloom Bean and Escarole Soup from the cookbook Ad Hoc by Thomas Keller. I don’t know why but I always forget that escarole is like a lettuce. It is a delicious soup.  Perfect dish for a cold night. You can get the recipe from our blog of: Dec. 8, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

As long as we were porking out, we decided to make Loin Of Pork  "A L'Apicius" from It’s About Time by Michael Schlow. I really liked the dish. The pork was glazed with the sweet and tangy sauce. It is unusual for a pork dish to be cooked with curry powder and it added a 3^rd dimension to the flavors.

Loin Of Pork  "A L'Apicius"

It’s About Time

by Michael Schlow

1         cup honey

4          ounces (1/2 cup) red wine vinegar

1         teaspoon curry powder

¼         teaspoon cayenne pepper

2         ounces (4 tablespoons)canola oil

1         center loin of pork, trimmed of any excess fat (about 3 pounds, 6 inches in diameter)

Salt and pepper

4          ounces (1/2 cup) water

3 to 4 ounces (6 to 8 tablespoons) Chicken Stock water can be substituted)

2         tablespoons butter

Does this sound like a fancy dish, or what?

Relax — it just sounds fancy. I make this all of the time at my house and even at guest-chef events, because people really seem to enjoy the balanced seasoning of sweet, spicy, tart, and aromatic.

Since you already have an audience sitting around the dinner table, and you are discussing everything from politics to history, I thought I would give you the history part of the conversation. Your family will really be im­pressed; in fact, they will suggest you audition for Jeopardy someday soon.

Apicius was a Roman chef and bon vivant whose first cookbook only contained sauces. (I wonder how he ever got that idea past his agent!) He liked to experiment with his cooking and created dishes using nightingales' tongues and camels' heels, among other oddities. These dishes were apparently meant to startle the complacent citizenry, but other interesting things came out of it: The historian Pliny credits Apicius with the idea of force-feeding geese to enlarge their livers, some of our very first foie gras!

Apicius eventually went broke and committed suicide to save his pride, but now you can enjoy his roast pork loin and do your part to help his legacy live on. You can serve this with just about anything — roasted pota­toes, rice of any kind, or just vegetables.

Makes 6 dinner-sized portions

Heat the oven to 300°F.

·      Mix the honey, vinegar, curry powder, and cayenne pepper in a bowl and I set aside.

·      Place a large, ovenproof pan on the stove over medium heat and add the canola oil.

·      Season the pork liberally with salt and pepper and place in the pan.

·      Cook pork gently, just 30 seconds per side, to obtain a light change in color. Do not sear.

·      Pour the honey mixture over the pork

·      Pour the water into the bottom of the pan, taking care not to pour in on the pork

·      Place the pan in the oven and roast for 1 hour, turning the pork and basting it with the pan juices every 3 to 5 minutes

·      Turn the oven off

·      Remove the pork from the pan, place on a baking sheet, and return it to the oven to stay warm, about 10 minutes, while you prepare the sauce

·      Transfer the pan juices to a medium-sized sauce pot.

·     Add the chicken stock or water to the sauce pot and reduce over medium heat until about Vi cup remains.

·     Swirl in the butter, stirring until melted, and remove from heat.

·     Remove the pork from the oven and carve into thick slices. Arrange on a platter, drizzle the sauce over the top,and serve.

White Truffles are here!

We were at The Cheese Store of Silverlake and Chris told me they had their first white truffles of the season. Mucho expensive, but we couldn’t resist. We bought one fairly large one ¾ of an ounce. We also purchased some truffle butter.

We first made a Sunday lunch with scrambled eggs topped with shaved truffles. It was perfect! No recipe needed, scramble eggs, thinly slice truffles (truffle slicer works best) top eggs with truffles. Eat slowly savoring every bite.

We used ½ of the truffle on the eggs.

For the other half of the truffle, we made a pasta with truffles. When the noodles were cooked and drained, we returned the noodles to the warm pot we cooked the pasta in, and added truffle butter (can’t have too much of a good thing). We then served the pasta topped with the truffles.

Two extremely wonderful truffle dishes, that are candidates for courses in my last meal.

Ad Hoc Dinner

We made two recipes one from the Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller. The other for Rice with Roasted Cauliflower was in the LA Times. It is always a joy to find a new, unusual recipe that we have never made before and the Rice with Roasted Cauliflower was new to us. It is vaguely Indian and maybe that is why we liked it so much. I really recommend giving it a try.

We made his Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with Olives, Lemon and Fennel previously and really liked it. Talk about the flavors of Provence. This dish has it! The final sauce of leeks flavored with the fenel and olives was delicious poured over the Ad Hoc rice. This is a great meal for a cold winter night.

You can find the recipe in our blog of: Dec. 10, 2009. Click the date to get the recipe.

Ad Hoc's rice with roasted cauliflower

Los Angeles Times

Total time: 45 minutes

Servings: 8 to 10

·      1/2 head white cauliflower, cut into florets

·      2 tablespoons canola oil

·      Salt

·      Pepper

·      Pinch of curry powder

·      6 cups water

·      1 cup Carolina, or long grain, rice

·      1 teaspoon red chili flakes

·      2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

·      2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

·      1/4 cup chopped green onions

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with the canola oil and season with one-fourth teaspoon salt and a pinch of pepper, or to taste.

3. Place the cauliflower in a roasting pan (reserve the bowl) and roast until the cauliflower is a deep brown and tender throughout when pierced with a knife, 20 to 25 minutes, tossing every few minutes for even coloring and cooking. Remove the cauliflower from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 250 degrees.

4. While the cauliflower is roasting, cook the rice: In a large saucepan, add the water and a generous pinch of salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in the rice and chili flakes and reduce the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook the rice just until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the rice well, then spread the rice in a thin shallow layer in a large baking dish.

5. Place the rice in the oven to dry out for 5 minutes. Remove, then stir in the olive oil. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired with salt and pepper.

6. Place the cauliflower back in the bowl and toss with the curry powder. Taste and season, if desired, with additional salt and pepper.

7. Gently stir in the warmed rice and butter, tossing until the butter is melted and evenly coats the rice and cauliflower. Stir in the green onions and serve immediately.

Sausage and Beans

We saw a recipe for Herbed White Bean and Sausage Stew in the New York Times and couldn’t resist making it. You could call it Pork and Beans, but if you added preserved duck you could call it a French Cassoulet. We purchased the sausage at McCall’s Meat and Fish. The recipe was delicious and yielded lots of leftovers.

We started with an Arugula Salad with dates, shaved Parmesan Cheese and Almonds, all from The Cheese Store of Silverlake.

New York Times

October 29, 2010

Herbed White Bean and Sausage Stew

Time: 2 1/2 hours

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for serving

1 pound sweet Italian sausage, sliced 3/4-inch thick

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

2 medium carrots, finely diced

2 celery stalks, finely diced

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 pound dried Great Northern beans, rinsed and picked through

2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste

2 thyme sprigs

1 large rosemary sprig

1 bay leaf

2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar, more for serving

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, more to taste.

1. Heat the oil in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and brown until cooked through, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a plate lined with a paper towel.

2. Add the tomato paste and cumin to the pot. Cook, stirring, until dark golden, about 2 minutes. Add the carrots, celery, onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the beans, 8 cups water, salt, thyme, rosemary and bay leaf. Turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat to low and simmer gently until the beans are tender, about 2 hours, adding more water if needed to make sure the beans remain submerged.

3. When the beans are tender, return the sausage to the pot. Simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the vinegar and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning. Ladle into warm bowls and serve drizzled with additional vinegar and olive oil.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

Pasta All Amatriciana

We made Zuni’s Café’s version of the much-loved dish from Abruzzo, PASTA ALL 'AMATRICIANA. The exceptional cookbook by Judy Rodgers is called: The Zuni Café Cookbook.

You can find this recipe in our blog of: Nov. 21, 2007. Click the date to get the recipe. One of the joys of the pasta is that it is made from caned tomatoes making it a year around treat! We used bacon and pancetta this time in the sauce. We prefer the Pecorino cheese, which we always buy at The Cheese Store of Silverlake. The choice of pasta is critical with this dish. Even though the recipe says you can use alternative pastas we would only recommend using: bucatini. It really soaks up the pasta sauce.