Sausage & Fennel Casserole

Does it count as a casserole if there's no cream of mushroom soup dumped over the top? I dunno. Sausage & Fennel Braise, perhaps? Maybe I should just call this dish 'baked Italian deliciousness', since that's at least accurate (as long as you like fennel, which I really, really do). Add this to the 'make early and often' category.

In other news, I'm going to start adding photos to my posts, since apparently that's what all the cool kids are doing, plus my new camera has a 'gourmet' setting (whatever the hell that means, other than +$20 on the price point), with a little fork and knife icon. We'll see how this goes.

Now excuse me while I go reheat some baked Italian deliciousness for breakfast.

Sausage & Fennel Whatever
A few links of Italian sausage
1 bulb of fennel, with fronds
1 package frozen artichoke hearts
a few springs of parsley and oregano
1 cup chicken broth
a squirt or two of lemon juice
grated Romano cheese
olive oil
S&P to taste

Drizzle a little olive oil over the bottom of a baking dish.

Roughly chop the fennel. Put it in the baking dish.

Roughly chop the herbs. Sprinkle over the fennel.

Roughly chop the artichokes. Layer over the fennel and herbs.

If your sausages are frozen, cut them into inch-long chunks and distribute on top. Otherwise, try bigger pieces, or just score them down the middle so the juices drip down over the veggies while they cook.

Mix the broth and lemon juice. Pour over the whole mess.

Some breadcrumbs scattered on top might be good here, especially if you're running with the casserole idea.

Bake uncovered at around 375 til the sausage is browned and cooked through. Maybe 40 minutes?

Salt & pepper & Romano to taste. Serve with some good bread.

No-Knead Hungarian Pantry Bread

It's January. (Happy 2012!) I wish I could say it's cold out, but it's not - feels like a warm spring afternoon around here, thanks global warming! - so I've got no real reason to be baking bread other than these: a) it makes the apartment smell good; b) it's cheaper than the good bread from the co-op; and c) oh, right, it's also delicious. Also baking my own bread makes me feel badass. Come to think of it, those are some damn good reasons, so there. My recipe of the moment I'm calling Hungarian Pantry Bread. It has nothing to do with Hungary, other than I got it from my friend Nicole, who got it from her father, who's Hungarian. "Pantry" is because I put in it whatever seeds and things I happen to have in my pantry. I stick to the milder, less-ethnically-affiliated seeds, since I'm aiming for an all-purpose kind of bread, but fennel or cumin or whatever other herbs or spices you've got around would probably be delicious too, if less versatile. Lately the mix has included: Quaker oats, caraway, kalonji (onion) seeds, flax seeds, quinoa, wheat germ, green wheat, sesame, poppy, and some things that look kind of like broken rice grains that my subletters left behind, no idea what they actually are. I use roughly a tablespoon or two of each kind, more of the things I really like (caraway) and less of the ones I'm just trying to use up (mystery grains). It's a long process to make, but most of that is waiting rather than actually doing anything, so I still call it easy. Here goes:

No-Knead Hungarian Pantry Bread

4 1/3 cups flour (I use 1/3 cup buckwheat flour, because I can.)

2 1/4 cups of lukewarm water

1 tablespoon of kosher or coarse salt

1 tablespoon of dry yeast

Seeds

Put everything in a container with a lid. The container should be big enough that there is room for the dough to rise. With a wooden spoon mix the ingredients until just mixed more or less evenly. This should just take a couple of minutes. Don’t knead! You’ll get a kind of ‘rough’ dough.

Let it stand for 2 or 2.5 hrs, with lid on, but not airtight, until the dough rises. Put on lid firmly, and put in fridge.

The next day (or later):

Get a board, sprinkle with corn flour/meal. Take out dough from fridge. Put flour on hands, (can sprinkle a little on the dough), and take the dough out of the plastic container. With your hands, form it into a rough square, and fold each edge under until they sort of meet in the middle underneath.

Put ball of dough on board, sprinkle with a little flour, cover with a light cotton dishtowel, and let it warm up and rise for 2 hrs.

Put dutch oven in oven, heat to 450F.

With serrated bread knife, make 2-3 cuts (about 1/4” deep on top of dough.)

Take hot dutch oven out of oven, put in dough.

Put lid on, put back into oven, and bake for 30 mins.

Take lid off, and continue to bake for another 30 mins.

Take out of the oven, put bread on a board, and let cool. Eat.

How to Cook a Squash

More recipes! These are from this fall, made with whatever winter squash you like - butternut, delicata, buttercup, acorn, et al. Both are easy as pie and uber-classy. Easier than pie, in fact. Unless you buy your crust pre-made, in which case they're about the same. Both are pureed 'creamy' soups; tossing a potato in gives it that nice texture without any actual cream. Or, you know, add some cream. If you're into that.

Squash Soup #1: Leeks, Celery Root, Ginger
1 squash
1 leek
1 celery root/celeriac/whatever the hell you call it
1-inch chunk ginger
1 small-ish potato
broth
s&p to taste
oil

Cut the squash in half, set it cut-side-up in a baking dish, brush with olive oil, and roast at around 400 til soft, maybe an hour and a half or so. Poke it with a fork, when it's nice and soft with brown at the edges it's done. Let cool.

Peel your celeriac. I usually do this with a knife, 'cause it's way too knobbly for a vegetable peeler. Cut it into chunks, then either rough-chop by hand or give it a good whiz in the food processor, depending how strong your arm is/how lazy you are. Needless to say, I use the food processor.

Peel your ginger. Use a spoon to scrape off the skin; way better than a peeler or knife, and way less chance of slicing your finger open. Chop roughly/stick in the food processor with the celeriac.

Chop your leek. Feel free to use the green parts, if you don't mind that they'll turn your soup kind of a funny color. I don't. Put the chopped leek into a big bowl of cold water and swirl it around a little to get out the dirt. Fun fact: leeks float, dirt sinks.

Peel your potato. Chop into small cubes/add to food processor with the rest.

Heat some oil in a pot. Add the veggies & saute til everything gets soft. Scoop out the flesh of the squash and add that, along with the broth. Simmer for 15 minutes or so.

Blend the soup to make it smooth. Three options if you don't want to scald yourself with a scalding blender full of hot soup: 1) use an immersion blender, 2) let the soup cool first, or 3) take that little clear plastic circle out of the top of the blender, and only fill the thing about halfway each time. I bet you can guess which I do.

Put it all back in the pot, season to taste, warm before serving, garnish with (optional) bacon, and blow the pants off any guests. In a good way.


Squash Soup #2: Apple & Sage
1 squash
1 apple
Onions
Garlic
1 smallish potato
Sage
broth
oil
S&P

Roast your squash. (See above.)

Peel, core, & chop your apple. (I use Granny Smith, but whatevs.) Chop the alliums and potato. Saute it all til the apple is soft and the onions are translucent.

Add the squash flesh, the broth, and half the sage. Simmer for a bit.

Blend as above. Don't scald yourself.

Season to taste. Add the other half of the sage, chopped fine. Bacon would go well here to.

Crockpot Apple Butter

Wow it's been a while...

So about a month and a half ago I went apple picking with my parents, and came home with a half-bushel of mixed apples. That's a crapload of apples. And most of them, while delicious, were godawful ugly - clearly made for cooking rather than eating. So I made apple muffins and apple bread and squash-apple soup and cheddar-caraway apple pie, and munched on the few that looked presentable. And still I had leftover apples. So I made apple butter, two crockpots full. And it's awesome. Here's what I learned in doing so:

1) All those recipes that say to cook your apple butter for 11 hours in the slow cooker? They LIE. 36 hours seems to do the job.
2) You can use apples for this that have started to go soft, because you're cooking them for 36 hours so who the hell cares whether they were crisp to begin with or not, because now they're mush. Delicious, delicious mush.
3) Be careful peeling those soft apples though, because the vegetable peeler will be prone to slip, and peeling your fingertip is a painful experience, especially when you've got another 5 apples to get through and juice gets everywhere and it stings like a motherfucker. On the plus side, your apple butter will turn out dark brown anyway, so nobody will notice a few drops of blood. Consider it 'iron fortified'.
4) Leaving town for a week with a garbage can full of apple peelings is a surefire way to grow a fruitfly colony in your kitchen. Rice vinegar plus orange juice in a cup topped with a funnel is a good way to destroy said colony. Vacuuming up stray fruitflies also helps, and is way more fun than you'd expect.

And the recipe... (as always, amounts are approximate and everything is optional, except maybe the apples. But I bet it would taste good with pears or something instead.)

Halfway cooked.

Crockpot Apple Butter
A pile of apples, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks, enough to fill the crockpot (~1 gallon?)
1 cup or less of maple syrup and/or brown sugar
1 cup apple cider and/or orange juice
1 tbsp Pumpkin Pie Spice, or a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice, mostly cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
Zest from 1 orange*
Pinch of salt

*My personal favorite citrus-zesting method: Peel the orange with a vegetable peeler, which gets you the nice orange part without any bitter pith. Then mince with a sharp knife. Saves you grating off your knuckles, especially if you've already managed to peel your thumb.

1) Toss everything in the crockpot. Mix. Cook, covered, on the high setting for an hour or two.

2) Stir. Turn to the low setting. Cook covered for another 12 hours. Stir occasionally.

3) Move the cover to one side just a little so steam can get out. Cook another 24 hours, or until you get sick of waiting. Scrape browned bits from the side and pour condensation from the top whenever it occurs to you. (The point here is to cook off the excess moisture. If you're really impatient you could probably shave off 12 hours by boiling on the stove for a while, but that kind of defeats the whole 'slow-cooker' idea.)

With homemade flatbread instead of a bagel.

4) Spread on bread, muffins, apple cake, bread pudding made from stale apple cake, etc.

Update: My absolute favorite way to eat apple butter: with garlic-chive cream cheese on a toasted pumpernickel or everything bagel, with a little salt and maybe some caraway seeds sprinkled on top. Heaven. 

Vietnam in advance

I'll be in Southeast Asia next week, but I made this the other day so I'm posting anyway. I discovered sweet potato noodles through a package of Korean ramen I bought a while back, and I love them because a) they've got a wonderful stretchy chewy bouncy wonderful texture and b) they're made just from sweet potato starch, so my celiac mother can eat them. We had a lot of mint in the house, so I improvised this, based loosely on the flavors of Vietnamese spring rolls and laarb, and served it with grilled pork loin and those mint potatoes from two posts ago. Lovely summer dinner.

Vietnamese Noodle Salad
1 package sweet potato noodles (from Asian markets, probably the Korean section)
Handful (preferably fresh) mint
Handful basil
garlic
soy sauce
a few shakes of fish sauce
sriracha to taste
Optional firm or fried tofu and/or shrimp, if you're into that

Cook the sweet potato noodles til done. Set aside to cool.

Roughly chop the herbs. (Cilantro would probably also go well.) Mince the garlic or put it through a press. Toss everything together, making sure the noodles are coated with dressing. Serve room temp or chilled.

TastyKakes

Um, yes. This. (Plus ~1 tbsp ground fennel seeds, just for kicks.)

www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Orange-Scented-Olive-Oil-Cake

ETA: Here's the actual recipe, straight from the Saveur website. I skip the glaze and the sea salt, and add the fennel seeds with the flour, eggs, etc.

Orange-Scented Olive Oil Cake

2 oranges
2 1⁄3 cups sugar
Unsalted butter, for greasing the pan
2 1⁄2 cups flour, plus more for pan
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla extract
4 eggs
6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1⁄4 cup fresh orange juice
1⁄4 cup confectioners' sugar
Sea salt, for garnish

1. Trim about 1⁄2" from the tops and bottoms of oranges; quarter oranges lengthwise. Bring 6 cups water to a boil in a 4-qt. saucepan; add oranges. Bring water back to a boil; drain. Repeat boiling process twice more with fresh water. Put oranges, 1 cup sugar, and 4 cups water into a 4-qt. saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, stirring often, until sugar dissolves and orange rind can be easily pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes. Remove pan from heat and let cool to room temperature.

2. Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 10" round cake pan with butter and dust with flour; line pan bottom with parchment paper cut to fit. Set pan aside. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a medium bowl and set aside. Remove orange quarters from syrup, remove and discard any seeds, and put oranges into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until oranges form a chunky purée, 10–12 pulses. Add remaining sugar, reserved flour mixture, vanilla, and eggs and process until incorporated, about 2 minutes. Add olive oil; process until combined. Pour batter into prepared pan; bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 40–45 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes.

3. In a small bowl, whisk orange juice and confectioners' sugar to make a thin glaze. Remove cake from pan and transfer to a cake stand or plate. Using a pastry brush, brush orange glaze over top and sides of cake; let cool completely. Garnish cake with salt.

Phnom Penh & Potatoes

Recent recipes I don't want to forget:

Khmer Samla (with thanks to Carol Henderson)
(serves 10)  

10 stalks fresh lemongrass 
1/4 of a lime (kefir, key, or regular) 
1 tsp ground turmeric 
several pinches of salt 
1/3 cup minced galangal or regular ginger 
2 cups chopped shallots (sweet onions work well too, like vidalias) 
10 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed 
4 Tbs shrimp paste  
2 lbs chicken or tofu, cut in small pieces 
1 small eggplant, quartered & thinly sliced 1/3 cup olive oil 
5 c. coconut milk 
1 Tablespoon salt 
2 tsp sugar  

Blend the first 8 ingredients together in a food processor, until they
form a smooth paste. (Traditionally, this would be pounded in a
mortar, so you can try that if you like!)

Heat the oil in a large pot, and saute the blended mixture a minute
or two. Add chicken or tofu, and cook 7 minutes over medium heat.
Add half the coconut milk, salt and sugar, and simmer 10 minutes.
Add eggplant and remaining coconut milk. Simmer half covered
until eggplant is tender, about 10 minutes.

Serve over rice.

Mint Potatoes
new potatoes
crushed garlic
lots of chopped mint
salt, pepper, and olive oil

Cook potatoes. Add the other ingredients. Use a combination of
regular and sea/kosher salt for a nice crunch and distributed salt
flavor. Mix well. Let cool. Tastes better the next day.