Meat & Potatoes, Italian-style!

Let's take the "What Am I Gonna Make For Dinner?" Challenge. You know the drill, whatever kind of day you've had, no matter your mood, sometimes you'd rather sit in a dentist's chair, sans Novocain, than think about putting one more meal on the table. Well friend, I'm here to help.

Surely you have onion and garlic in the pantry. Maybe some canned tomatoes and dried herbs. If you're a true foodie, I'll bet olives and pine nuts are regular items on your shopping list, if not, no worries. I've never been in a house that didn't have pasta in the cupboard, and if you don't have vegetable, chicken or beef stock on hand, well that metal spigot thingy in the kitchen has nature's most readily available cooking liquid: water. But then there's the matter of protein. Here in Belmont, grizzled Italians still stuff sausages the old fashioned way. If you're stuck in a flyover state, even breakfast sausage will do in a pinch, or frozen chicken breasts, hamburger meat, pork chops!!! Dinner has practically made itself.

And here are Blog O. Food's failsafe secrets:

Build a flavor base - sear meat in a heavy sauté pan with a couple tablespoons of good olive oil. Don't fuss with the meat too much, let it develop a nice brown covering. Once browned on the outside, remove meat to a bowl.

Enrich the base - To the same pan, add chopped onion and cook until translucent. Scrape up the brown bits from the pan as you sweat your onions. That's built in flavor right there. Next, toss in a few cloves of chopped garlic and heat through for a minute or two. Caution: if the onions or garlic brown too quickly they turn bitter, and your flavor base is lost. It's like burnt toast. There is almost nothing you can do to correct it, so a little care with this step if you please.

Layer in complexity - Remember those olives and pine nuts? Layering opportunities. Don't like olives? Think pine nuts are a New York affectation? March to your own drummer then. How about celery and carrots? Bell peppers, bitter greens, whatever. The key is, you're building something from the ground up. Be creative. Do not fear failure. Add whole, diced, chopped, puréed tomatoes, or even tomato paste and let things heat up a bit.

Low & slow - Return meat to the pan. Add cooking liquid, seasonings and herbs. Want a one-pot meal? Toss dried pasta right into the liquid. Bring everything to a simmer, Cover and lower the heat way down on your sauce to give all the separate ingredients a chance to meld and combine into something altogether different than a mere sum of its individual parts.

Nurturing - Occasionally stir and taste your sauce. Go easy on salt in the beginning stages. It's easy to add more salt later, and impossible to remove once you've put too much in early on.

And just like that, dinner is done. I texted Jean-9, flipped through the mail, and spied on my Facebook buddies all the while not constantly hovering over a pot on the stove.

See how easy that was?

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Mature Audiences Only

I've been guilty of peeping at food pornography all week. Yeah, the new Williams-Sonoma catalog arrived, stirring me to bouts of self-pleasure. I always stash my credit card in another room while I leaf through the colorful pages. My fiscal reserve is no match for all that stark-white china, polished steel and kitchen gadgetry.  In this issue, Bill tried mightily to get me to buy his immersion blender and Le Creuset grill pan, but I'm in a committed relationship with my cast iron stovetop grill and Cuisinart food processor. I'm not above swiping his printed recipes, however, and I sure would love to work in that test kitchen. Maybe then I'd get an employee discount on all those sinfully expensive shiny objects!

White Bean Soup - adapted from Williams-Sonoma

¼ cup olive oil, plus extra for brush ¼ cup pancetta, chopped ½ yellow onion, chopped 1 each carrot & celery stalk, chopped 4 garlic cloves, minced 3 cans (15 oz) cannellini beans, drained 5 cups chicken stock ¾ tsp fresh thyme, finely chopped ½ cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, grated Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Cook pancetta for 5 minutes. Add onion, carrot and celery. Cook for 8 minutes. Add garlic and cook and additional minute. Add beans, chicken stock and thyme. Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Off heat, puree in a food processor in batches, until smooth. Return to Dutch oven and stir in cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot, with Roasted Red Pepper Crostini on the side.

Roasted Red Pepper Crostini - from Williams-Sonoma

12 baguette slices, ½" thick 4 red bell peppers, roasted, skins, membrane & seeds removed, chopped ½ tsp Kosher salt 2 Tbsp olive oil 2 Tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 1 tsp sherry vinegar ½ tsp red pepper flake ½ tsp honey

Brush baguette slices on both sides with olive oil, and  season with salt. Toast bread on a hot cast iron grill over medium-high heat, 2 minutes on each side. In a small mixing bowl, toss to combine chopped roasted peppers, salt, olive oil, parsley, vinegar, red pepper flakes honey and a little ground black pepper. Top each toasted baguette slice with roasted pepper tapenade. Serve with white bean soup.

Not bad, William, not bad. Earthy and nutty soup made smoky by the the bacon. Puréed was the way to go. Smooth and creamy, without the cream!

Spring is struggling for a foothold in New York. White bean soup will keep the chill at bay until the sun finally warms things up and the first buds open on the trees.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Blog O. Food Makes Salsa

“And Then There Was Salsa” from Frito Lay Dips on Vimeo.

Olé!!! - Blog O. Food