Stuffed Cannelloni

Homemade Stuffed Cannelloni


My latest obsession - the pasta making process. It is long, arduous and messy, but there is also a great sense of accomplishment and almost zen when you are done. It is not difficult - with a little practice a basic level of competence can be reached.

Last night, I found myself with an empty house and 2 1/2 hours of downtime. My relaxation of choice? The adult version of PlayDoh!

I decided on a simple pasta - cannelloni - rolled 3"x5" squares stuffed with whatever. First step - make the pasta.


Egg Bowl

Give yourself a lot of room to work. Most basic dough recipes are some combination of flour, eggs, maybe oil and salt. I used one without oil, but with lots of eggs (2 1/3 C flour, 4 egg yolks, 2 whole eggs, 1/2 tspn salt). Use the fluor to make a bowl to hold the eggs, and salt. mix the eggs and salt together encorporating the flour slowly to make a paste.


Flour and Egg Mixture

Keep mixing in the flour and then start the kneading process with your hands. If the dough is too hard to work with, add a tablespoon of water, working it into the dough with your thumbs. Be patient. Be kind. The dough is your friend. Keep kneading the dough until it is somewhat elastic, but doesn't significantly change shape when you take your hands away. This process usually takes me 10-20 minutes by hand.

Now let the poor dough rest. Wrap it in plastic and let it sit for an hour. Go pour yourself a nice glass of Chianti - you've earned it - kneading is hard work.

Now get back to work. You have sauce and stuffing to make. For my stuffing, I diced onion, celery and carrot and sauteed it with garlic (I put the garlic in at the end of the saute so it wouldn't burn and taste bitter). I then browned bison meat with the veggies, added tomato paste, diced mushrooms, paprika, salt (taste to make sure you use enough)and pepper. A little reduced stock, parsley and a couple more eggs, a few pulses in the food processor, and voila!


Beef and Mushroom Stuffing

The last component is the sauce. I sauteed diced onions, added diced tomatoes, fresh basil, salt and pepper and let it cook down a bit. Meanwhile, I rolled out the pasta to make the squares (I went to setting 5 for thickness).



Roll Out the Pasta!

The pasta squares, once cut, need to boil for a minute or two. The sauce goes in the baking pan, the stuffed squares go on top of the sauce, a mix of 1/2C of cream, 1/2C parmesan goes on top, as well as a few pieces of butter. Bake at 400 deg for 20 minutes till brown on top. Maybe do some situps and pushups while you are waiting - have you seen what's in this recipe?

Festival of Light

The Corcoran College of Art + Design Advanced Lighting class brings you the 2011 Festival of Lights in Rockville Town Square. Students and lighting industry professionals will be working together in teams all day to create temporary themed lighting installations in the Square!

While you are waiting for the sun to set, come up to the Rooftop for lighting talks and activities and great local music. There is a minimal admission charge, and food and drink will be available for sale.

Once it gets dark, walk through the Square with the student led teams, hearing about the installations and seeing Rockville Town Square in a whole new "light"!

See you there!

Corn and Lobster Chowder

Corn and Lobster Chowder

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Corn-and-Lobster-Chowder-106800

Soup is one of those dishes that can be made quickly in a pinch - store bought broth and precut or frozen vegetables definitely speed up the process. Last night I had the luxury of breaking a soup into its individual parts, and pulling as much flavor as possible out of each of those components. Was the difference noticeable? Who knows. I can tell you the personal satisfaction was significant.

This is a simple recipe. Start with a fat, add onions, add stock and aromatics, add more vegetables, top with lobster. Season to taste. Done.

Or not. Start by thinking about the stock. The recipe calls for chicken broth - but this is corn and lobster soup - no chicken in the name. It makes sense to use chicken broth - it adds some richness without overpowering the other flavors, but its the other flavors that are so important to the soup. So - to increase the corn flavor, I cooked the corn on the cob, cut off the kernals and tossed the cobs in the broth. All of that milky corn sweetness was transferred to the broth.

As for the lobster, I am a chicken. I hate it that I don't have the guts to throw the lobster in the pot myself, and have to ask the fish monger at the store to be my lobster hit man, but there it is. I had two lobsters steamed and brought them home. As delicious as the meat is, the shells and juices are equally valuable. I opend up the lobsters over the broth, draining all the delicious juices into the pot, salvaged the sweet meat and threw the shells in the stock to add as much briny seafood flavor as possible. The chicken broth is now but a memory - adding lovely color and richness, but truly overshadowed by lobster and corn.

And the rest goes back to being simple. The fresher and sweeter the corn, the better. Fresh off the cob can't be beat - every bite ends in sweetness. I used red bell pepper instead of yellow to add a bit of color - since the soup isn't pureed color consistency is not a major issue. I also used very thinly sliced leek instead of scallions - just what was on hand. I didn't add any heat, but next time I think I will throw in a bit of cayenne - if the corn is sweet enough, it really can stand up to it, and the half and half will help with the balance. Too hot and the corn will be lost though, so it will be important to taste as I add. A handful of chopped parsley (added after I pulled the shells and cobs out)added more color, flavors and a bit of thickening to the soup. The flat leaf was the right choice for this soup - curly would have been too peppery.

Finally, season to taste. Possibly the least helphul phrase known to man. I added smoked salt and pepper. Tasted, added a bit more smoked salt, until I was at about two teaspoons. Probably could have added a bit more, but the smokiness was tastable, and I hadn't overtaken the sweetness of the stock, so I quit while I was ahead.

Start to finish, this version took about two hours (and one glass of wine). I would say, with store stock, lobster tales and frozen corn, probably you could cut it to an hour and the results will be fine. As for the satisfaction...

Beef, Borscht and Beyond

Beef Borscht

My earliest memories of borscht are my Mom taking the container of purple liquid with the occasional beet chunk out of the refrigerator, adding some hard boiled egg, and pouring it in a bowl. It is a wonder I ever tried borscht again.

Many years later, a neighbor of ours, freshly immigrated from Moscow, served me a warm version of that same purple concoction. This time, however, the soup was rich and velvety, brimming with melt in your mouth beef and bright, fragrant herbs. And so began my love affair with beets and borscht.

The recipe I finally have settled on starts with short ribs. I used boneless - that's all they had at the store, but on the bone would add more flavor. I browned the ribs and then simmered them in beef stock with cloved onions and dill for an hour and then with beets, tomatoes, potato, carrots, leek, caraway seeds, chicken stock and water for another hour. This time I added beer to deglaze the skillet after browning the ribs - I'm happy to report the beer added a yeasty flavor that complimented the caraway nicely. I finished the soup with lemon juice, fresh dill, salt and pepper and topped each bowlful with a dollop of sour cream.

And now for the beyond. What to do with the leftovers. The easy answer is - eat them. But when you have leftover horseradish mashed potatoes too, you start to get creative. My solution - pull the solids out of the soup and place in a casserole dish. Cook down the soup liquid to a syrup and pour over the solids. Mix in fresh chopped dill and top with the horseradish mashed potatoes. Voila - Psychedelic Shepherd's Pie.

Ancho Chili Turkey Soup

After eating turkey for the last four days, I have to say I was less than excited about the prospect of turkey soup. However, the remaining turkey parts, leftover gravy and the need to reclaim my refrigerator from said leftovers, beckoned. So, I embarked on a painstaking search for an acceptable turkey soup recipe (ok, I used my Epicurious app on my Iphone). I settled on one that that suggested to me that with enough chili and cumin our beleaguered mouths and stomachs might not immediately recognize the same main ingredient they had been subjected to repeatedly since Thursday.

First let me say, that recipe was an extremely loosely defined term with this particurlar soup. More of an idea really - I liked the idea of spicy, smoky flavors. That is where we parted company. I already had made stock from the carcass, so I was way ahead of the game recipe wise. By way of preparation, I soaked a couple of dried anchos in a cup of boiling stock, then pureed it. To thicken the stock I made a roux with a butter/oil combination and flour, added in the onions, then when softened, the garlic and red chilis. A little white wine deglazed the pan (beer may have been better, but I was in the mood for a glass of wine), and in went the stock (mixed with the ancho liquid). I added in the leftover gravy too (no real need for it since I threw in most of the leftover turkey meat). After a good bit of simmering and tasting, I threw in frozen succotash (a dish served on the first Thanksgiving I believe) and seasoned with smoked salt. The spicy paprika I had planned to finish the soup with was unnecessary - the chilis spiced things up just fine. Tortillas served on the side added crunch and a bit more salt.

As hoped for, the turkey provided texture and some reminiscence of flavor, without just being more of the same. I would say four days of turkey is enough for awhile, but by next November we will certainly be ready to trod down the turkey path.

Turkey stock

This year, our Thanksgiving meal began and ended with soup. Before, a lot of preparation, between, family, friends, lots of laughter and plenty of turkey, and after, exhaustion.

We started with chestnut soup. Roasted chestnuts pureed with veggies and herbs in homemade chicken broth and swirled with thyme cream. It's a rich soup, so I served it in a teacup, set on a saucer. And then we waited.

For the last ten years our turkey has perched on our grill rather than in our oven. While the results are juicy and delicious, the timing is less than predictable, with outside temps playing a part in the overall cooking time. To make life easier this year, I spent a bit more on an organic turkey - not for it's organicness, but for it's pop up timer. Hah. Guess what didn't work. Money well spent. A push or two on the bird and a thermometer in the thigh are a better tell anyway. Smartest move this year - buying a disposable roasting pan, putting a cutting board in it and carving the turkey. No lost juices and no mess. Ok, one out of two on the money well spent thing.

Dinner and cleanup was a group effort. I played no part in the creation of the desserts this year - a time saving relief for me, and a culinary relief for our guests. "mans got to know his limitations" - mine is pie crusts. Unless they are actually supposed to have the consistency of rubber, I fail miserably at pie crusts. Pumpkin whoopee pies were also a hit with the kids, and some of the not kids.

Last year, as we were enjoying our meal, our dog Ginger decided the trash can was not the best place for the turkey carcass - it was much better dragged out of the trash and gnawed on the kitchen floor. This year, I made stock. By the time the carcass was done simmering even Ginger wouldn't have wanted it. All the flavor from the meat was transferred to the liquid, fresh herbs and a bit of onion and lemon made for a really flavorful broth. Sorry Ginger. One meal done, and the promise of another already begun. More to be thankful for.

Cioppino (Fisherman's Stew)

Cioppino

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cioppino-106263

I love San Francisco. I love everything about it - the amazing hills, the barking of the sea lions at the wharf, Irish Coffee, fabulous hot chocolate at Giardelli's, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, MOMA, I could go on forever. Ok, maybe one more thing. Cioppino. Invented in San francisco by local fisherman, using their catch of the day. Cioppino comes from the dialect used in Genoa, Italy and means to chop. Italian fishermen settling in San Francisco in the late 1800s developed this wonderful stew as a means to use what was left of their catch.

Any assortment of seafood is fine here - as long as there is plenty! I used halibut, clams, shrimp and scallops. I love crab, and were there company coming it would have been in the pot, but for the three of us I saw no point in dealing with extra utensils to get the crab out of the shell, or the extra cost.

As for the red components of the stew; my mantra - if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it - a good, dry red wine should be used here. I also like to err on the side of too much when it comes to anything tomato - it is hard to find highly flavored tomatoes, so a little extra never hurts!

This particular recipe also calls for a combination of chicken broth and clam juice for cooking liquid. I have still never seen a chicken swimming in the ocean, so there will still be no chicken broth in my seafood stew. Last week I had made seafood broth from clam shells, parsley, garlic etc - it took about 45 minutes, made more than enough for last weeks recipe and the cioppino, so that's what I used.

Finally, I would suggest, wherever possible, to finish this stew with fresh herbs, not dried. There is so much flavor and acid in here that the brightness of fresh parsley and basil will really make a difference.

Oh, and as we sat eating our stew, there was an empty bowl placed in the middle of the table. For what you ask? Why to save the clam shells and shimp shells for the next batch of seafood broth, of course.