Bacon and Onion Calzones

Something about this crust, Jim Lahey's recipe. Perfect. Thin and crisp. The bacon and sauteed onion, always a winning combination. And a light marinara sauce. The perfect end to a busy day.

Acorn Squash Soup with Kale

Do you may remember last week when I purchased a lot of acorn squash. Tonight I  used one of the bags of puree to make this soup. Easy to prepare, having the puree already made, and perfect for a chilly December night.

Acorn Squash Soup with Kale, from Martha Stewart

Ingredients -
4 strips bacon, 4 ounces, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 pound kale, thick stems removed, leaves finely chopped (about 8 cups)
4 cups Acorn Squash Puree, or 2 packages (12 ounces each) frozen winter squash puree, thawed
Coarse salt and ground pepper

Method -
Cook bacon in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until crisp, 4 to 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to a paper-towel-lined plate; set aside.

Add onion to fat in pan, and cook until softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Add kale; cook until soft, 3 to 4 minutes.

Add squash puree and 3 cups water (or more if necessary to achieve desired consistency); bring just to a boil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Serve, garnished with reserved bacon.

Baked Pork Ribs and a Movie

Hey where have I been? It has been a very busy food week and I had no posts. Let's just say I was in a food induced coma. Way too much wonderful food in too short a time span. Looking forward to a few "normal meals", at least until Christmas Eve....

Before we get to dinner I do have sneak peak of one of my favorite meals. I went to my sister's house to learn how to make Cappelletti. A lot of work but so worth every moment...

Dinner was one our of favorites. Baked Pork Ribs with Hoisin Barbecue Sauce. The recipe is from Epicurious.com. Succulent!

Baked Pork Ribs with Hoisin Barbecue Sauce

Ingredients -
4 pounds baby back pork ribs
1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 cup hoisin sauce
1/2 cup bottled chili sauce
1/4 cup Sherry
1 tablespoon oriental sesame oil

Method -
Place ribs in large roasting pan. Pierce meat with fork. Sprinkle with Chinese five-spice powder and onion powder; rub mixture into meat.
Whisk remaining ingredients in small bowl to blend. Pour sauce over ribs, turning to coat. Turn ribs meat side down; cover pan with aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Bake ribs, covered, until just tender, about 30 minutes. Uncover and turn ribs meat side up; bake until ribs are cooked through, basting occasionally, about 35 minutes. Cut meat between bones to separate ribs and serve.

A Most Amazing Soup

Escarole, Chorizo, Chicken and Cannellini Bean Soup. When I finished making this soup I smiled. It looked good and it tasted even better then it looked. I love making meals like this.
I sauteed chopped onion, carrot and celery in a pan with olive oil. When the vegetables were soft I added the washed and chopped escarole. I let the escarole wilt a bit and then added chicken broth, chorizo and chicken (the chicken was from the broth I made in September and had in the freezer). Next I added the rinsed beans and seasoned the pan with salt, pepper and thyme. I let it all simmer and then I squeezed 1/2 a lemon into the pan. It was light and had a fresh taste to it. Perfect for a very cold November night.

Osso Bucco and the Day of the Acorn Squash

It was so darn cold out today. And the winds made it a perfect day for a braised beef dish for dinner.
The recipe for Osso Bucco is from Twice Baked Twins. It was so delicious I ate my whole piece including the marrow.

Osso Bucco, from Twice Baked Twins 

Ingredients -

1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 dry bay leaf
2 whole cloves
3 shanks , veal or beef
sea salt & pepper
all purpose flour, for dredging
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
3 cups chicken stock

Method -
Tie together the rosemary, thyme & bay leaf with twine, set aside. This will be the herb bouquet. For the shanks, pat dry with paper towels, they will brown better if they are dry. Season each piece with salt & pepper and dredge into the flour and shake off the excess. In a large pot, heat the oil and butter until very hot and brown the shanks on each side, about 3 minutes per side. Remove shanks & set aside. In this same pot, add the onion, carrot and celery. Season with salt. Saute until soft, about 8 minutes. Add tomato paste and mix well. Return the shanks to the pot and add the wine and reduce the liquid by about half, about 5 minutes. add the bouquet and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cover pan. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until meat falls off the bone. Keep checking and turning shanks every 15 minutes or so. You can add a little more stock if needed. The cooking liquid should always be 3/4 of the way on the shank. When done remove the bouquet and remove shanks. At this point you can blend the sauce and vegetable with a hand blender. Taste and re-season.

Now about that Acorn Squash. I stopped at Whole Foods the other night to pick up some things and to get the Acorn Squash for the dish I am bringing to my sister's house on Thanksgiving. The squash were a little larger than I was looking for but I picked 8 of them anyway. On the way home the same night I stopped at Bishop's Orchard for some escarole, the escarole at Whole Foods was just awful, and of course they had the size Acorn Squash that I was looking for. Now I have a few too many squash.

I roasted the ones I was not going to bring to my sister's house and ended up with four 2 cup bags of puree, 2 halves of a squash filled with Pearl Barley, Dried Cherries and Pecans, and a small dish of Acorn Squash Lasagna.

 

All of these went in the freezer.

And being a Sunday some of us took a cat nap...

Chorizo & Spinach with Pappardelle

 

Tonight's dinner came together really fast. I cut Chorizo sausage into 1/4 cubes. Sauteed the cubes in a little olive oil until the edges just started to crisp up. I added fresh spinach,  a knob of butter (that's about 2 tablespoons) and some white wine.  How much... I think it was about a 1/2 cup. I let the wine simmer for about 5 minutes. And I added some sliced grape tomatoes to the pan.

Meanwhile the Pappardelle were cooking in a pan of boiling salted water. When they were just about done I added them to the saute pan along with about a 1/4 cup of pasta water. All the ingredients were stirred together and the pasta finish cooking.

This dinner was very good. The Chorizo had just enough spice and the noodles were a perfect match for the sauce. A glass of red wine and some bread were all that was needed.

Today would have been my Dad's birthday, 97th birthday.

 I am sure they have vanilla ice cream in heaven... just not sure about Coco Puffs.

Cinghiale in Umido

 

Happy Birthday Chris! For this birthday dinner I pulled out all the stops. I ordered a Boar Roast from the Meat Shop. I got a 1 3/4 pound roast. Price - $35. Other than the Christmas roast this was the most I spent on meat for one meal. But just put the cost out of your mind because it was so amazingly delicious. Chris has requested this to be on our weekly menu, I hope he was kidding...

The recipe, Cinghiale in Umido (Braised Wild Boar) was supplied by my brother-in-law, Ralph, who also gave us a bottle of wine to go with dinner. The recipe is by Lidia Bastianich. Her recipe serves 8 so I cut it in half, I should have made the whole thing!

Ingredients -

3 1/2 pound boneless boar roast

salt and pepper to taste, plus 1/2 tsp of each

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 olive oil

 

6 oz pancetta cut into 1-inch cubes (1 1/4 cups)

1 large yellow onion, diced, (1 1/2 cups)

2 large carrots, shredded (1 1/2 cups)

4 stalks celery, diced (1 1/2 cups)

6 whole garlic cloves (I did use the garlic!!!)

2 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped (or 1 tsp dried)

1 bottle Chianti or other hearty red wine (this is not what we drank with dinner)

1 28 oz can peeled Italian whole plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)

2 cups chicken stock

Method -
Preheat oven to 350˚.

To prepare the roast, dry the meat and season well with salt and pepper. Place the flour in a large shallow plate and turn the meat in the flour to coat lightly, shaking off the excess.

In a large, heavy bottomed stock pot or Dutch oven, heat 1/4 cup of olive oil (enough to fully cover the base of the pot) over medium high flame until the oil is shimmering but not yet smoking. Add the meat and brown deeply on all sides, allowing the pieces to sit on each side long enough to develop a thick brown crust. There will be considerable splattering of oil during this process, so use caution. The total browning time should about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the other 1/4 cup of olive oil in a heavy bottomed skillet or saute pan over medium-low flame. Add the diced pancetta and saute about 7 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic cloves, rosemary and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper to the pot, increasing the heat to medium high and saute about 10 minutes, or until the onions are translucent and the other vegetables are soft and almost mushy. Remove the mixture from the pot and set it aside.

When the meat is finished browning, begin to add the wine one cup at a time. It will splatter and hiss, which is good – you want the alcohol to burn off. Bring the wine to a full boil around the browning meat. Boil for 5 minutes, then add the sauteed vegetables and the reserved pancetta. Pour in the can of tomatoes, the 2 cups of stock and 2 cups of water.

Remove the stock pot from the stove top, cover it with aluminum foil, and place it on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Simmer for 3 hours, until the liquid had reduced and the meat is literally falling off the bone. The mixture should be thick and gelatinous.

Remove from the oven and carefully remove the meat, using two large spoons or spatulas.

 

Take the remaining liquids and solids in the pot and press them through a fine sieve using the back of a wooden spoon, collecting the liquid in a large bowl. Skim the fat from the surface of the strained liquid. At this point you may either slice the meat and serve it topped the liquid or shred the meat with a knife or by hand and combine it with the liquid to create a thick pasta sauce.

We opted for the pasta sauce. 

The noodles were homemade pappardelle noodles, recipe from Tide and Thyme.

This meal is going to be on this year's top ten list.

And I baked a cake. I made my Mom's Two Egg Cake. I added Chocolate Shots to the batter. The batter is enough for a 9 inch square pan, perfect size for 2 people (and some people at work!).

Mom's Two Egg Cake with Chocolate Shots

Ingredients -
2 eggs
1 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups sifted flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup Chocolate Shots

Method -
Blend shortening and sugar. Add eggs, beating well after adding each egg. Add flour to egg mixture and blend well on low speed. Add 1/2 cup chocolate shots. Mix. Pour into a well greased and floured pan. Bake 35 minutes at 350 degrees. Bake until tester comes out clean. Cool on rack.

The wine we had with dinner was Castelgreve Chianti Classico Riserva 2009. Perfect match to tonight's dinner.

Butternut Squash Ribbons & Pancetta with Spinach Tagliatelle

You have all visited the Proud Italian blog haven't you? Don't worry I will wait while you visit....

Okay it is an amazing blog. The photos are drool inducing. I wish I lived next door to the writer. But I do not so I just make her recipes. Tonight I made Butternut Squash Ribbons with Spinach Tagliatelle. But I made a couple of changes in the recipe. Chris is not a mushroom fan so I substituted zucchini. And I added pancetta. Yeah that was a nice addition. I picked up pancetta at the Meat House, more on that later in the week. I had it sliced into 1/2 inch slabs. I diced one of the slabs and fried it up. Nice and crisp! Then I cleaned the pan and sauteed the zucchini in a little olive oil, seasoning it with salt and pepper. I made the cream sauce following the recipe and added the squash and other ingredients at the end. Gosh this was so good. Not heavy at all. And did I mention how good the pancetta cubes were?

Here is my version of the recipe but if you want the original version, Click Here.

Ingredients -
12 oz. spinach tagliatelle
butternut squash ribbons created from the neck only of a butternut squash
1 cup of sauteed zucchini
1/3 cup cream or half and half
1/3 cup of stock, chicken or vegetable
1/3 cup of grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
parsley for garnish
olive oil

Method -
Cut the top off of a long neck medium sized butternut squash, peel skin off then make long ribbons using a vegetable peeler. Turn as you peel. Toss into a bowl and drizzle olive oil and salt and pepper all over then place on a rimmed baking sheet and roast at 375 to 400 until edges start to curl, keep watching as to not burn. Set aside.
Cook tagliatelle al dente.
In a saute pan drizzle olive oil. Pour in the cream, stock and cheese, cook until slightly thickens.
Add the zucchini and gently toss everything together and place on a platter adding more grated cheese, a nice drizzle of olive oil and fresh parsley for garnish.

While dinner was cooking we had some munchies. I picked up some bacon wrapped jalepeno poppers, what's not to like about that! And some cheese. English Cheddar Cheese with Mustard and Ale. Yum!

Frittata Sandwiches

Homemade Foccaccia and a Frittata consisting of zucchini, yellow squash, onion, Italian frying peppers and bacon. Perfect meal after a very crowded commute.

Chicken Cutlets and a Thanksgiving Sneak Preview

If you are reading this and will be eating at my sister's house on Thanksgiving - SPOILER ALERT!!!

Tonight I did a test run with what I will be bringing to dinner. Baked Acorn Squash with Chestnuts, Apples and Leeks from Food and Wine. Just need to adjust the seasonings a bit but it should be a perfect side dish!

And we had Chicken Cutlets that I had in the freezer.