Weekend Project #1: Chowder

I was supposed to fiddle at a dance tonight, but ended up having a much-needed evening at home instead. Thank goodness for New England weather and the occasional snow emergency.

I got my laundry done (which means I can sleep in a little tomorrow morning), listened to a couple of episodes of a hilarious Swedish radio program whose podcast I just discovered and watched an episode of Law & Order: SVU, my new vice. (L&O and its various spin-offs are the British Empire of cable syndication: the sun never sets on them. I can almost always find at least one episode on some channel or other.)

What I really wanted to do, though, was cook soup. (I can’t really think of a better way to spend a snowy evening. Well, maybe curling up in bed with an escapist paperback novel and a cup of cocoa.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed, and I wasn’t going out in a nor’easter just to buy potatoes. So the chowder will just have to wait until tomorrow when it stops sleeting.

I’ll be cooking up my favorite chowder recipe, one I came up with when I decided that the bacon and codfish I usually use for fish chowder could be replaced with smoked haddock.

The version below is the slightly lower-fat version I usually cook. For a truly low-fat version, you could substitute margarine of some sort for butter and replace the half-and-half with another 1/2 cup of low-fat milk. For a damn-the-cholesterol-full-speed-ahead version, use whole milk and heavy cream. (Don’t replace all the milk with cream, though. Chowder should manage to be both creamy and light.)

Smoked Haddock Chowder

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium leek, white and light green parts only, well washed and finely chopped
• 1 medium large potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
• 1/4 pound smoked haddock, any skin and bones removed
• 1 cup water or mild stock (preferably fish stock)
• 1/2 cup low-fat milk
• 1/2 cup half-and-half
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large saucepan, heat the butter until it sizzles. Add the leeks and sauté until soft and shiny.
2. Add the potatoes, the haddock, the milk and the water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are tender.
3. Flake apart any large chunks of fish. Add the half-and-half and bring back to a simmer.
4. Season to taste and serve immediately.

Serves: 2 (or one with leftovers for another day)

Dish of the Day: Quick Pasta for One

When I don’t feel much like cooking, I tend to fall back on a handful of old favorite recipes. This pasta recipe is one of my standbys. I can prepare it in under thirty minutes.

3 ounces dried pasta*
1 Vegetarian Italian Sausage*
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 generous pinch chili pepper flakes
2 cups coarsely chopped fresh greens*
1 tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted until golden brown
Salt and pepper to taste

*Ingredient Notes:

• Pasta: I’ve prepared this recipe with all sorts of pasta from spaghetti (as in the picture) to penne. The best pasta shapes have been those with indentations to hold the topping: fusilli, orechiette, etc.
• Vegetarian Sausage: I’ve been using Boca brand Italian “sausage,” which have a nice fennel and sage flavor. If sausage is frozen, you’ll need to thaw it.
• Greens: When I first came up with this recipe, I always used spinach, but now I’ve started to try other greens. Lately I’ve been favoring broccoli rabe. I cut off the top part of the stalk, from the point where the leaves start, and discard the tougher bottom portion of the stem. Eight to twelve stalks yield around two cups of chopped greens.

1. Cook pasta according to directions on package.
2. While the water boils and the pasta cooks, prepare the “sausage” and greens.
3. Mash the sausage with a fork and chop lightly with a knife until the consistency of ground meat.
   Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over high heat until it shimmers.
4. Add the garlic and pepper flakes, and sauté until the garlic is just golden. This usually takes no more than 30 seconds. Be careful not to burn the garlic.
5. Reduce heat to medium high and add sausage. Sauté the sausage until crispy and lightly browned.
6. Add the greens and toss with the sausage. Sauté until just wilted.
7. Drain the pasta and add to the skillet with the sausage and greens. Sprinkle with grated cheese, and stir to blend.
8. Season to taste, and top with toasted pine nuts.

Serves: 1

A Fair d’État Encore

Why oh why didn’t I get my act together to go to Paris for the Salon d’Agriculture?

As if I weren’t envious enough before, now Kelly Sans Culotte and her friend Harriet have posted a video chronicling their visit to this year’s Salon.

You can find more photos and video at Kelly’s Salon blog.

Wasabi: Tasty Treat or Toxic Spill?

Once again Discovery News comes through with wacky science news.

Wasabi has been banned from the International Space Station after an astronaut spilled some of the horseradish-like, Japanese condiment. In the weightless environment of the station, the pungent,  green paste flew everywhere, creating quite the clean-up challenge for the crew.

A Fair D’État

My friend Kelly Sans Culotte is heading off to the Salon d’Agriculture (Agriculture Expo) in Paris this week, and I’m incredibly envious. I once organized an entire trip to Paris so I could attend this event, where farmers from all over France bring their livestock to the big Porte de Versailles convention center on the outskirts of the 15th Arrondissement.

I think it was Yann-Arthus Bertrand’s photographs of larger-than-life cattle, sheep and pigs with their proud owners that convinced me I needed to attend. Well, that and finding out that the Salon was like a big state fair with wine and cheese contests instead of giant pumpkin and pie-eating contests. After you’ve visited the livestock, you can stroll through the two hangar-sized buildings filled with booths selling representative foods from all the different regions of France and treat yourself to the Salon’s answer to funnel cakes and corn dogs: crepes and foie gras. 

When I was studying cooking in Paris, I dragged some school chums to the fair to ogle the Blonds — the Blonds D’Aquitaine, that is. This breed of beef cattle comes from the Southwest part of France originally. I could swear that some of the blond cows we saw were larger than most of the Renaults and Smart Cars I saw driving around Paris.

Tasting in Color

I can’t remember when I first heard about synesthesia. Maybe it was in an art history class or a book about music. I’ve always been curious about it, though. And just a little envious of people who can hear in colors or see in music.

Finally, I got a taste, literally, of what synesthsia might be like thanks to the dry bean curd and celery salad at Chilli Garden, the Sichuan restaurant in the next town over. I know that Chinese cooking is supposed to rank right up there with French and Italian as one of the world’s great cuisines, but until I ate at Chilli Garden, I don’t think I was ever entirely convinced. (Of course, this is less a statement about Chinese food than about Chinese restaurants in the U.S.)

The salad blends pleasantly chewy matchsticks of tofu with thin stalks of green onion and faintly anise-flavored Chinese celery in a dressing with finely chopped scallion greens and a bracing dose of ground Sichuan pepper. Along with the wontons in chilli sauce and vinegar and the minced chicken with Sichuan pickles, this salad is one of the Chilli Garden dishes that I could happily eat everyday.

The past few times, I’ve eaten this salad, I’ve been absolutely certain that it tastes silver. I don’t know that I can explain quite why, but I think it has something to do with the Sichuan pepper and the way it manages to be both bright and cool at the same time. It makes my mouth tingle, almost like chillis, but at the same time, the merest breath of air makes my lips feel icy, like menthol.

Behind Door #15: Never Too Much Pork

I hadn’t meant to get quite so carried away with the whole pork thing on this blog, but I couldn’t resist these two links (via food writer Michael Ruhlman’s blog):

• Peace Through Pork: I’m not sure if I’m convinced by these folks’ political ambitions, but, hey, you can buy bacon wristbands.
• Chicken Fried Bacon: If anyone can think of something more delicious than batter-dipped, deep-fried bacon, I wish they’d tell me about it.

Behind Door #13: There Oughta Be a Word…

I came home from work (and class) tonight, and couldn’t think of a single thing appealing to eat, so I fell back on my favorite stand-by food: scrambled eggs. They’re quick. They’re easy. They’re not starchy. They’re great for using up leftovers: in tonight’s case, some pesto I had made, let’s just say a while ago, and some feta cheese that was trying to become Roquefort. (I know, I know. I don’t want to hear anything from those of you who know I’m a Cordon Bleu graduate.)

Anyhow, tonight’s culinary ennui seems to be part of a larger trend. I’m just not inspired by cooking these days. I only seem to enjoy meals I eat out—like last Saturday’s dinner at the Medford Szechuan joint that’s renewed my faith in Chinese food.

As I sat down to right tonight’s virtual Advent Calendar installment, I finally figured out that there’s a name for my problem: mealaise.

Behind Door #3: You Can Never Have Enough Pig…

From the Porchetta restaurant in Brooklyn, via the New York Times: the pork margarita.

That’s right. You rim the glass with crushed pork cracklings.

Behind Door #2: I Want the Pig

For some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about how delicious pork is. Maybe it was the bacon I bought a few weeks ago. I was going to make Brussels sprouts with bacon and caramelized onions, but I never got around to it. The Brussels sprouts sat yellowing in my vegetable crisper with some limp carrots, liquifying lettuce and several bags of unidentifiable sludge until I finally deemed the whole lot inedible and tossed it to make way for Thanksgiving leftovers.

So anyway, I had a hermetically sealed package of bacon that was still usable, even though I had no sprouts. Now I can’t even remember what I used half the pack for. There was slicing into lardons and rendering of fat, but by now I’ve totally forgotten what the recipe was. (This is now going to nag at me until I go insane or remember what the recipe was.) I do remember it was delicious though. How could it be anything but?

Everywhere I look, people seem to be eating pork — from my formerly vegetarian friend Kelly to Mandydale, whose photos documenting her 30 Days of Pork prove her to be a woman after my own heart.

So, I guess I’ll leave you with my favorite pork-related anecdote. Shortly after my friend Emma’s fiancé moved from Morocco to New York, the two of them went to dinner. After they’d studied the menu for a few minutes, Emma asked him what he wanted to eat. Nice Muslim boy that he was, he answered, “I want the pig.”