mis en possible

This post has absolutely no substance, it’s simply to show off my wife’s baking. The above are the result of a new sourdough culture (named ‘Fred’) she’s been tending to and I’ve enjoyed the living daylights out of it. Sourdough, rosemary sourdough, sourdough raisin… and it’s all as good as it looks.

I don’t bake unless I absolutely have to so I often just stand in awe of some of the things she produces.

We’ve fallen in love with Perle pasta. It has all of the warmth and comforting depth of gnocchi but it cooks faster which is a wonderful trait when managing the timely demands of a 2-year old. It takes a mere minute and thirty seconds to cook and you can actually cheat and do it in a fairly small pan. They don’t turn out perfect but they’re perfectly edible in just a few minutes.

I’ve been toying around with some really good canned chopped tomatoes we’ve started picking up at Costco of all places. I’m usually not a fan of canned chopped tomatoes, preferring to use whole peeled instead, but this stuff is great for making a quick sauce. I don’t have a recipe, but here’s the basic formula:

Half an onion, small dice. 4 Cloves of garlic, small dice. 1 Shallot, small dice. Saute the onion in bit of olive oil over medium heat until translucent. Add shallot and garlic and saute for about 2 more minutes. Add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and saute for another minute or two. Add in 1/4 cup dry white wine and let it reduce a bit (3-5 minutes). Drain the tomatoes and add only the solids. Let it simmer for 10 minutes or so. Add in 1 tablespoon dried parsley, 1 tablespoon dried oregano, and 2 tablespoons of dried basil. Let it simmer for another minute or two. Transfer to a blender and blend like crazy. While blending, carefully remove the top and add cream until desired flavor is reached. Naturally, season and re-season at just about every step.

The smoked gouda adds something to this combination of flavors that you just couldn’t get with Parmigiano-Reggiano (which would be my normal go-to flavor addition).

The grocery store had these little gems the other day: beta sweet carrots. I wasn’t sure what to make of them or what to do with them. When I’ve picked out odd looking carrots before, I’ve always been disappointed that once you peel them, they look just like normal carrots.

These, though, are not. Before I read a few pages about them, I’d already cooked them so I’d half figured they were part carrot part beet (yes, my hands are still blue). The purple exterior penetrated the carrot around an eighth of an inch or so. They were visually stunning, a quality that, unfortunately due to my negligence, didn’t make it into the final dish (I blanched them about 90 seconds too long, I think).

The result? They’re sweet, a bit earthy, and very carrot-y. I blanched them, shocked them, then used a light champagne and raspberry vinaigrette and garnished with chopped parsley and chive. Simple, good, and very interesting looking. What more could you want from a carrot?

In the previous entry, which now seems so long ago (work busy, etc, etc, excuses excuses), I had experimented with trying to make a sauce out of carrots for Gnocchi (yes, store bought, sue me). The sauce was pretty rich and I didn’t much like it’s light color and the dish was good but not really good.

Tonight I finally got around to trying this dish again and went a few different ways with it. First, the sauce now has a base of onion and tomato paste, and the carrots are simmered in vegetable stock rather than poached in cream. A bit of cream was added after the sauce had been through the blender.

To that I added a saute of black trumpet mushrooms (in butter with a bit of onion) and some crisped pancetta and chiffonade of parsley.

Nothing terribly fancy or complex, just a number of components. The recipe is pretty close to being something I’d feed to someone else, but still needs a few tweaks. So probably a while before I post a recipe for this.

I have to admit it… I totally Sandra-Lee our gnocchi. Why? It’s certainly not hard to make and not very time consuming either. But with a 3 minute cooking tim and a hungry 2-year-old, having this pre-packaged can be a blessing. Also, our grocery store carries a few “dried” organic brands and a couple brands that are made fresh every day. From my limited sampling, the quality is about 95% of what I can make at home and some of the ‘made fresh’ is actually better. Also, way expensive, but better.

So on to the carrot, one of the staple work-horses of the kitchen in place firmly behind the onion and the tomato. I’m constantly looking for new things to do with carrots because I love them so — raw, blanched, braised, roasted, mashed, marinated, stewed, you name it — and I thought that instead of making them play a background or foreground role, I’d try and feature them in a sauce.

As with all new recipes, however, I’m not quite done with this dish yet. It’s just not all ‘there’.

But the 4,000 foot view is pretty simple: Saute a diced shallot in a little butter in a small pot until translucent. Add 2 sliced garlic cloves and saute for another minute or so. Add 2 very large carrots, peeled, with a medium dice. Just cover the carrots with a mixture of 50% milk and 50% heavy cream. A bit of salt and white pepper, a bay leaf, about 4 sprigs of parsley (stems and leaves) and let it poach for 15 minutes or so or until the carrots are tender. Do not boil and, because it’s cream and milk, do watch it constantly.

After the carrots are tender, remove and discard the bay leaf. Put the whole mess through a blender and blend thoroughly. As with all hot things to be blended, do not fill the blender more than half full and hold a towel firmly over the lid when running, lest the walls be repainted with molten carrots. After it’s done blending, season to taste and add about 2 tablespoons of butter. The sauce should be very smooth and might, if the blender doesn’t do its job too well, need a bit of straining before being used.

The first results (pictured above) were pretty tasty. I liked them; the daughter loved them. I think the final dish will add black trumpet mushrooms and bacon as this was missing that ’something’ that makes it a whole dish rather than an experiment.