Salted Yeast Rolls

These rolls are very easy to make and have many uses. After you make them the first time you will not want to buy pre-made dinner rolls again. This recipe makes a minimal mess and uses minimal cookware, but it does make use of a particular easy technique; that is, stretching the dough around from the top of the dough ball to the bottom. This is important to get a very smooth, shiny top to the rolls. If you don't do this, no big deal, the rolls will taste the same.

In a large resealable bag (e.g., Ziploc) put 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 package rapid rise yeast, 1 Tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp salt. Put 2 Tbsp butting in 1 cup hot tap water and stir until melted. Add to the bag, seal it up, and squeeze the bag with your hands until everything is mixed together. Add another 1 1/2 cups flour to the bag. Seal and repeat the squeezing until well mixed. If the dough sticks to the bag, add a little more flour and knead again until it falls away from the sides. Open the bag and let it sit for 20 minutes in a warm place to rise.

Punch the dough down and remove it from the bag. Place on a floured board and cut the dough into equal sized pieces, 8 or 12 depending on how large a roll you want. Shape each piece into a ball, hold it with both hands, and then using your thumbs, stretch the top of the dough around to the sides in both directions. Turn the ball 1/4 turn and repeat so that the top of the dough is stretched all the way around. Place the ball on a baking sheet on parchment, so that the bottoms are down and the newly stretched tops are up. Paint each top with a little beaten egg or egg white and sprinkle with your highest quality salt. Allow the dough balls to sit in a warm place for about a half hour or longer, until they have noticeably increased in size.

Bake on the parchment at 375 F for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are nicely browned.

Potato Salad

This is a classic summer salad, perfect for cookouts. It has complex flavors and a great mixture of textures as well. It can be eaten warm, as soon as it is prepared, or allowed to chill.

1 lb small potatoes, such as new potatoes or fingerlings, red or gold, skin on
3-4 eggs, hard boiled, shelled, medum dice
3 stalks celery, medium chopped
1/2 cucumber,small dice
1/2 bell pepper or several small sweet peppers, small dice
4 rashers of thick cut bacon, cooked until crispy, drained
1/2 large sweet onion, small dice
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tsp celery seed
2 Tbsp whole grain mustard
salt and pepper
paprika

Boil potatoes, with skin on, in salted water until done. Remove from water, quarter them and place in a large bowl. Add all other ingredients. Add salt and pepper as needed. Sprinkle paprika on top if you wish. Mix well and serve warm or chill.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Making biscuits from scratch is much easier than most cooks realize. This recipe has been in my family for generations and is modified here to update it; for instance, the original used vegetable shortening but I prefer butter. Also, I rarely buy buttermilk because I don't have much use for it, so I usually use whole milk curdled with a little vinegar.

1 cup buttermilk OR 1 Tbsp vinegar, brought up to one cup with milk, allowed to sit for 5 minutes
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter

Mix together the four dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add butter and cut into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter or other utensil. Add liquid and mix well until a dough forms. Turn out onto a floured board and knead 10-15 times, then flatten the dough to about 1/2 inch thick using a rolling pin. Cut into round biscuits using an inverted wine glass or a ring mold. Place each biscuit onto a greased cookie sheet and brush each top with a little milk. Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes or until tops are a bit browned.
The Southern thing to do is to eat these with butter and honey. My grandfather used to mix the two together to make a delicious butter-honey paste and put that on his biscuits. I usually make these for breakfast, but I remember having them often with honey as a dessert when I was little.

Huevos Rancheros

This is a simple breakfast that can be put together very quickly if the ranchero sauce is made in advance. The sauce itself is also called "salsa roja" or "red sauce" in New Mexico. It is versatile and is excellent for making red enchiladas. The sauce is so good that I often find myself eating toasted, rolled-up flour tortillas dipped in this sauce alone. The key here is to build a flavor base with the roasted spices. The choice of spices can be left up to what you can get locally; in the Northeastern US we can't get some of the spices that are more common in the Southwest, like epazote and Mexican oregano.

Sauce

~6 New Mexico dried chile pods, stems removed
1 Tbsp coriander seed
1 Tbsp cumin seed
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp black peppercorn
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp salt

Place chile pods in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to cover. Let sit, submerged, for 30 minutes. At the same time, roast the coriander in a dry pan over high heat until it browns slightly and begins to smoke. Transfer to a spice grinder. Add cumin to pan and roast until it also browns and beings to smoke. Transfer to grinder. Repeat with oregano. Repeat with peppercorns. Add a cinnamon stick to the grinder (or use ground cinnamon) and salt. Grind well. Dice up a large onion and saute in a large skillet with a little oil. Add ground spices and saute until onion is soft. Transfer to food processor or blender. Add the chile pods without liquid and puree. Slowly add liquid and puree well. Transfer to a saucepan. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer the sauce, uncovered, for about an hour or until sauce has thickened somewhat. Keep warm or transfer to container and preserve in refrigerator or freezer.

Huevos Rancheros

Corn tortillas, small
Fresh eggs
1 Tbsp vinegar
Grated cheese (or crumbled Mexican cheese)
Diced avocado

Toast corn tortillas directly on the burner on each side until browned slightly. Bring a skillet of water to simmer and add vinegar. Poach eggs for three minutes each in the water. Remove with slotted spoon, drain for a few seconds, and place two eggs on top of two tortillas. Top with sauce, cheese, and avocado.

Waffles

We are lucky to have a couple of old-style waffle makers from Norway ("Jøtul Nr. 6"), the kind that go directly on the burners and flip over with the aid of a ball joint. This recipe is very easy and requires so special ingredients. It's important to make a test waffle at the beginning if you are new to it, because getting the right temperature and amount of batter takes some experience. Also, pre-heat an oven on low to keep waffles warm while you make more, and serve with real maple syrup.

1 cup flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
4 Tbsp (half stick) melted unsalted (sweet) butter

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix milk and eggs together separately and add the wet to the dry. Whisk everything together well but only enough to moisten the dry mixture--this will still be a bit lumpy. Whisk in the melted butter until everything is combined.
Heat the waffle iron and apply a thin coating of oil or cooking spray to the surface. Add about 1/2 cup of batter to the center of the iron and spread it out slightly. Too much batter and you will make a mess; too little and you will not get good edges on your waffles. Close the iron and cook on both sides until deep golden brown. Remove waffle and place in oven to keep warm while more are made.

Sauerbraten (Pressure Cooker)

Sauerbraten is a classic German pot roast dish, originally made with horse (!) but now usually with a low cut of beef such as chuck. Normally this is a roast that must braise in a Dutch oven for several hours, but in this case I used a pressure cooker, a programmable pressure cooker that was an unexpected present from my brother in law. This is a fabulous one-pot meal that can be made very quickly and has deeply infused flavors from the pressure cooking. The choice of stock is up to you; any flavorful stock will do. The meat has a perfectly wonderful sour-tangy character from the vinegar and the pickling spices, balanced out with the brown sugar.

3-4 lbs chuck roast
1 large onion, med dice
4 stalks celery, med dice
4 carrots, med dice
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup red wine (such as Zinfandel)
1/2 cup beef or other flavorful stock
2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp juniper berries
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 Tbsp pickling spice
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
handful of pitted prunes or large raisins
1 lb white fingerling potatoes
Butter and flour to finish sauce
fresh parsley leaves, chopped

Use the "saute" setting on the pressure cooker and brown the roast on all sides in a little oil. Remove and set aside. Add the onion, carrot, and celery mirepoix and saute until it softens. Add garlic and stir well. Add liquids and spices and sugar and salt. Add meat back into the pot, sprinkle prunes on top and add the fingerling potatoes. Cook at 15 lbs pressure for one hour. Remove meat and set aside. Remove potatoes and set aside. Strain liquid and set solids aside. Add liquid back to pot and add butter and flour in small quantities, whisking between each addition. whisk until sauce begins to thicken. Slice sauerbraten and arrange on serving platter. Surround with potatoes. Cover with the mirepoix-prune mixture. Sprinkle fresh parsley on top. Serve with a pot of the thickened sauce.

Yogurt!

If you like eating yogurt, you should certainly try making your own. You can make delicious and varied styles of yogurt for the cost of milk, and it can be used in many meals and recipes, either as a stand-alone (as for breakfast or dessert) or as a beautiful replacement for sour cream on tacos or in scones, for instance. Yogurt-making is rewarding and  not very difficult, but you need one thing that many people don't have readily available: the ability to incubate something at body temperature (99 F or 37 C) for 16 hours or so. I happen to have an oven with a pilot light in it, and it happens to stay very close to 99 F when it is turned off and I'm not using the range. Even if you have an electric oven or an electric ignition gas oven, you may be able to make it work. Some ovens have a "proof" setting but this is variable; it is generally around 100 F but can be 85-115 depending on the model. Too cold, and your yogurt culture won't thrive; too hot, and it will die. If your oven has a light, you can keep the light on and this will provide a very gentle heating. Test your oven by placing a glass of water in the oven in a particular location and let it sit overnight. Test the temperature the next morning. If it is more than 5 degrees off of 99, try something different. Place the glass closer to the light, or further away, or move the rack up or down. Once you find the perfect conditions in your oven, congratulations! You're ready.
This recipe calls for one quart of milk. You can not double the recipe unless you extend the incubation time or you have access to an automatic stirrer. This is biology at work! Yogurt develops as the culture thrives, the Lactobacillus sp. bacteria (yes they are bacteria), and the sixteen hours of incubation here is for one quart of milk. Doubling the milk will not necessarily double the incubation time, but if the culture is not continuously stirred the bacteria will not have enough time to convert all the milk to yogurt, and you will waste milk. You can tell if milk was wasted by looking at the "whey" in the bottom of the straining container. If it is relatively clear, you have strained out water and have not lost much milk protein. If it is milky, well, that's milk. By the way, you can use any milk for this, whether cow's, sheep's, or goat's, but I use cow's milk (as fresh as I can find, organic if possible) as it is the easiest to find and the least expensive. Also, this recipe calls for a 16 hour incubation and 12 hour straining time. I find that it's most convenient for me to start the whole process around 2 pm, incubating by 3 pm, straining by 7 am the next day, and finishing by 7 pm. The 12 hour straining produces yogurt that is very thick, like ice cream though it is not frozen. One of my favorite preparations is simply to drizzle a little honey on top. For something special, this can be combined with some fresh berries and freshly toasted seeds (such as sunflower, poppy, and sesame) on top. On to the recipe:

1 quart (1 L) milk
2 Tbsp yogurt culture (you can use any yogurt that you like and which contains live culture; after one batch of yogurt you can keep yours going forever. I like the culture in the Greek yogurt Fage)
Cheese cloth; at least one yard (1 m), double-thickness

Mix 2 Tbsp milk with your yogurt culture. Set aside. Place remaining milk in a saucepan and bring to boil, stirring occasionally in order to prevent burning. Once milk boils, remove from heat and allow to cool down until it reaches a temperature of 99 F (37 C). Monitor the milk temperature carefully, this is science. When the milk is at the correct temperature, make a hole in the skin that has formed on top and pour in your yogurt-milk mixture. Place the pan in the oven-incubator so that it stays at 99 F for 16 hours.
After the incubation, the milk should have a pleasant aroma, not like spoiled milk. Place a large strainer or pasta colander over a medium pot. Lay on cheesecloth until you have three layers and the colander is covered. Carefully pour in the warm milk mixture, scraping the saucepan clean. Place the colander and pot in a refrigerator; refrigerate for 12 hours for thick yogurt that is the consistency of ice cream. Strain for fewer hours for thinner yogurt.

Tenderloin Roast with Zinfandel Sauce

I was given a Bluetooth-enabled temperature monitor called the iGrill last year, and it is fabulous. It works like a meat thermometer, but it Bluetooths the temperature out to an app on your phone, and you see a plot of the rising temperature as it cooks. You can set a goal temperature (such as 120 F) and your phone will tell you when you're done. This is invaluable if you're distracted at a dinner party. For this recipe, use the highest quality beef tenderloin you can find, and use a decent Zinfandel (red!) wine, which should have some jammy notes of blackberry. I like "7 Deadly Zins" for this sauce. Also watch the salt that can come from the stocks. It's better to use unsalted stocks and adjust the salt yourself than have too much.

4 large shallots, peeled and sliced thin
a little peanut oil
dried Chanterelle mushrooms, soaked in hot water 30 minutes
2 Tbsp raspberry wine vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 Tbsp sugar
1 bottle good Zinfandel with black fruit notes
2 cups beef stock (low salt)
2 cups chicken stock (low salt)
Fresh thyme sprigs
Black peppercorns
Bay leaf
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp butter, softened
1 two-pound (1 kg) boneless beef tenderloin
salt and pepper
fat for searing the beef (pork fat, butter, peanut oil, etc.)

Reconstitute the dried Chanterelles with hot water, soaking for 30 minutes. Drain. Heat a large saucepan and add some oil. When the oil is hot, add the sliced shallots and the mushrooms. Cook until the shallots are tender and translucent. Add the vinegar and the sugar. Cook until the liquid disappears and the mixture is dark and fragrant. Add wine and boil until the volume is halved. Add both stocks, thyme, a dozen peppercorns, and a bay leaf. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Simmer uncovered for at least 30 minutes and up to an hour or more. Strain sauce through a fine sieve or cheesecloth into a small saucepan. Bring back to a slow simmer. Thicken by making a beurre manie: mix together the butter and flour using a fork, and add the mixture a piece at a time to the simmering sauce, whisking well after each addition. If the sauce is too thin, make a little more manie and whisk it in. Bring back to the simmer. To keep the sauce, either pour into a Thermos until service or keep it off the heat and reheat gently for service.
To make the beef, preheat the oven to 350 F. Season the beef well with pepper and especially salt on all surfaces. Heat a large oven-proof skillet over high heat and add fat or oil. When the fat is hot, add tenderloin and sear well on all sides. As you turn the meat onto the final side, insert a meat thermometer and place in the oven. Cook to an internal temperature of 120 F for medium-rare. Remove the beef and place on a cutting board, tenting with foil, to allow to rest. Rest for about 10 minutes. Carve the beef into thick slices and serve with the warm sauce over or on the side.

Scones

We don't do a ton of baking, but we sometimes bake on the weekends or when it's especially worthwhile to get something unique and amazing. These scones are well worth the small amount of effort they take to produce, and they are so buttery that we don't put more butter on them when eating. The recipe uses ingredients that by and large most of us have on hand, but substitutions can be and often are made. We find that whole-milk real yogurt gives a wonderful taste, with the added advantage that there is a layer of cream on top of the yogurt; this is about as close to real English cream as we can get in the USA without importing things pasteurized in jars.

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
6 Tbsp cold butter diced into small cubes
half a cup or so of dried fruit such as blueberries, cranberries, cherries, or currants
3/4 cup whole-milk plain yogurt
1 large fresh chicken or duck egg

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Mix together the dry ingredients. Add butter cubes and cut them in with a pastry cutter or use your fingers to mash them into the flour. Do this quickly so the butter stays cold. Add fruit and stir well. Beat the egg into the yogurt and add the liquid ingredients to the dry. Work quickly to make a loose dough incorporating all the flour. Turn out onto a pastry mat or board and, after kneading a few times, flatten the dough until the round is about a foot wide and even thickness. Shore up the edges a bit and cut like a pizza into triangles, 8 or 12. Place onto a well greased baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

BBQ Sauce (ketchup-free)

I worked for a long time to develop a good barbecue sauce that did not list ketchup as one of the ingredients. Ketchup is a cop-out. It's full of high-fructose corn syrup and FD&C Red #3, and it has no place in good food. The sauce recipe here is my own, and it does contain tomatoes, and it keeps to an even ratio of sugar to vinegar. I have made this many times, and I have given the recipe away almost as many times, but feel free to experiment. The only thing I would keep constant is the sugar to vinegar ratio. Also this sauce is quite chunky with tomatoes, and usually I love it just like that, but you can puree it with a food processor or stick blender just prior to the final cook-down.

1/2 large sweet onion or red onion, small dice
1/2 stick butter or 4 T clarified
28-oz can whole peeled Roma tomatoes in juice (pomodori pelati), seeded, large dice for chunky sauce or small dice for less chunky
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
1/4 c dark fruit-infused vinegar, blackberry or raspberry is best; I make my own
3/4 c dark brown sugar or white sugar mixed with molasses
finely minced chipotle pepper or 2 canned chipotles en adobo--important for smoky heat

Cook the onions in the butter with periodic stirring until well caramelized; this will take some time. Add diced tomatoes and stir for a minute. Add the vinegars and sugar and stir well. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Add the chipotles. At this point you can puree the mixture until smooth and return to the saucepan. Cook down to about 1/2 volume over low heat. You can let this go for quite a while and it will get very concentrated. If too thick, dilute with a little water and bring back to the boil.  Taste by dipping a freshly charred flour tortilla into the sauce; this will approximate the taste of the sauce on the meat.

Shepherd's Pie

I am not from the Northeast, and I first saw Shepherd's Pie at the Yankee Doodle Tap Room in the basement of the Nassau Inn in Princeton, where I would occasionally have dinner. I had known pot pies as a kid but these were far richer, more decadent, and far more delicious. Mette and I used to go to this Scottish pub in Pennsylvania called Braveheart and we enjoyed a passable Shepherd's Pie, but you can make one yourself that is damn near the perfect autumnal-winter's dinner. To be correct, as my friend Penn pointed out, a real Shepherd's Pie contains ground lamb. A similar pie containing ground beef or anything else is rightly called a Cottage Pie. However, being rebels, we will call this pie, made with ground beef, Shepherd's Pie, and we will love it.

1 1/2 lbs ground beef, pork, veal, or lamb
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced or sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 clove garlic, minced finely (I now buy jars of minced garlic in olive oil)
1 Tbsp flour
1 cup chicken stock, low sodium if possible
1/4 c. red wine from last night
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 bunch fresh thyme, leaves only
half a package of frozen peas (5 to 6 oz.; keep frozen)

2 lbs Russet potatoes (3 large), peeled and chopped into large dice (1/2 inch)
milk
butter
1 egg yolk

Season the ground beef with salt and pepper and brown gently in oil or fat. Remove and set aside. Add oil if needed to the pan and add onions and carrots plus a pinch of salt. Once the vegetables have softened, add the tomato paste and garlic and stir and cook for a minute or two. Add the flour, stir in well, and cook for another minute. Whisk in the liquids, the stock, wine, and Worcestershire, and mix everything together well, scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add the browned meat and the thyme and simmer for a half hour.
Meanwhile, boil the potatoes in salted water and drain. Mash potatoes (or use a food processor). Stir in milk and butter as desired to make a creamy consistency. Stir in an egg yolk quickly so that it doesn't make scrambled eggs.
Preheat the oven to 400 F. Add the frozen peas to the finished meat mixture and combine well. Spoon the meat mixture into a pie pan and top with dollops of mashed potatoes. Using a fork, rake the potatoes across the top until they completely cover the meat mixture. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the potatoes begin to brown on top. Let rest for a few minutes and then cut and serve, preferably with a good beer.

Liver Pate (Leverpostej)

Leverpostej is an all-around Danish favorite on sandwiches. If you can get pork livers, they are worth the extra trouble, but you can make a very fine pate with lowly chicken livers. The finished pate can be packed into a ceramic container and covered with cracked black peppercorns, strips of cooked bacon, or even a layer of aspic. In our house it is used as a spread on toasted baguette rounds or thinly sliced rye bread (rugbrod) and topped with some coarse salt and a balsamic onion relish, canned fried onions, crumbled bacon, or sliced cornichons. The preparation is very simple and consists of a flavor base followed by searing off the livers and then cooking them further in white wine. The flavor base makes use of an interesting property of anchovies: they will dissolve in a hot oiled pan and deeply flavor a dish, but people won't be able to guess what the flavor is. Delicious!

olive oil
2-3 anchovies
2 Tbsp. capers
1 pound of chicken livers (rinse them well)
1 cup of white wine or champagne
kosher (pure) salt
pepper and cracked black peppercorns, if desired

Heat a large skillet or saute pan to medium high and add some olive oil to coat the pan. Add anchovies and capers and stir occasionally until the anchovies have dissolved. If the anchovies are very high quality or very fresh they will sometimes not dissolve completely but will break up into small pieces. After a few minutes, add the chicken livers and cook them for about six minutes, turning them halfway through, so that they are nicely browned on the outside and quite firm. Add the wine or champagne and cook for another 20 minutes or until the liquid has been reduced somewhat and seems thicker. Transfer to a food processor and puree until very smooth. If the mixture seems too thick, add a drizzle of olive oil to help thin it out and puree again. Taste and add salt or pepper as needed.
Pack the pate into a ceramic container, smooth out the top, and cover with a thin layer of cracked peppercorns.

Sometimes I make a balsamic onion relish to top the leverpostej sandwiches. It's well worth the time. Take a couple of onions, slice them very thinly on a mandoline, sweat them in butter in a covered skillet for about 20 minutes, then uncover, add a cup of balsamic vinegar, and cook down until the mixture is syrupy. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Pico de Gallo

Often called "salsa" in the Northeast USA where we live, Pico de Gallo is not just a "sauce" but more like the Italian tomato mixture that tops bruschetta. To make a perfect Pico, you need only a few ingredients, but they must be top quality. If you can get them from your own garden, you will never leave the kitchen until you've eaten it all. A basic Pico is onion and tomato with smaller amounts of fresh chile and lime, all bound together with some fresh cilantro and salt. Many people will add more ingredients, and we invite you to do just that, but please make this perfect six-ingredient Pico first, chill it a bit, and taste it on some warm salted corn tortilla chips. It should taste exceedingly fresh, hot like summer itself, cool like a summer's evening, sweet like a summer's morning, and acerbically bright like the Orion star Rigel. It is something, once mastered, that will never be forgotten. Remember, the best dishes we make in our lives are also the simplest, with the freshest and finest ingredients.
A note on fresh hot peppers: it is generally acknowledged that the smaller the pepper, the hotter, and the greener, the hotter, and that the seeds contain much of the heat. As a pepper ripens on the plant it becomes deep red (or purple) throughout and also becomes sweeter. Peppers are well worth growing yourself if you have sufficient sunshine to get them to ripen. My favorites are Serrano peppers that have ripened very well, and I leave the seeds in, but you can remove them easily.

One onion, small dice
Two tomatoes, small-to-medium dice
One lime, room temperature, juiced well with a reamer
One or two Jalapeno or Serrano peppers, tiny diced (as a brunoise)
Two Tbsp (20 mL) minced cilantro
Fine Sea Salt to taste, or other non-iodized salt

Mix all ingredients in a colorful bowl. Serve with toasted slices of bread or warmed crispy salted corn totilla chips. Think about how you would change this recipe to add (not subtract!) ingredients you love. Post a reply.

Sweet potato, corn, and jalapeno soup

I must confess, this is a soup I first read about in Bon Appetit in 1991, I can't quite remember the month but it said "City Style" on the cover. It was in my (at the time) favorite section, which was recipes from restaurant menus around the country. Restaurant chefs would serve some delicious dish, and people would write into Bon Appetit begging them to inquire about the recipe, and Bon Appetit would sometimes oblige, and the chef would (I'm quite sure) begrudgingly give them a simplified, blandified recipe with a key ingredient omitted. Nevertheless, I was captivated by a recipe for "sweet potato, corn, and jalapeno soup" and have been making this soup for twenty years. This soup changed the way I make soup. Especially potages and veloutes. It has been carried in my head ever since 1991, which translates to: it probably bears little resemblance to the original. That said, it has been a consistent hit at home and at dinner parties, with the notable exception of a few years when teenage Erika was on a diet rich in chicken fingers. With honey mustard dipping sauce. Recipe follows, which suggests but does not require another must-have kitchen gadget, the stick blender:
Saute half a chopped onion in butter until translucent. Add two cups of low-sodium chicken stock (or make your own!!) and a peeled sweet potato (or yam), or peeled butternut squash, chopped into pieces of maybe 3/4 inch on a side. BTB RTS (bring to boil, reduce to simmer) for 20 minutes until the squash is well cooked through. Now, using a stick blender or using a food processor in batches, puree the soup until it is very smooth. Add a small-diced jalapeno, or even better, a minced chipotle. This gives the soup a nice kick. Dump in a can of whole-kernel sweet corn. Bring this whole mixture back to the boil, then remove from the heat. Stir in a quarter cup (about 60 mL) of heavy cream just until heated through. The cream will dissolve and form velvety "veloute" vesicles on the surface of the soup. Plate immediately and serve.
When I was in New Orleans before Katrina I remember being served a version of this soup at Mr. B's (Brennan's) Bistro that contained pumpkin pie spice and ginger.  This is a recipe that, if executed correctly, may form the basis of many other rich soups in your repertoire. I have modified it countless times over the years and have always been satisfied with the results. Good luck!

Danish flounder

Apologies for the last week or two, we had an amazing convergence of misfortunes. Mette was all set to cook a fantastic Valentine's Day meal for me on the 14th when we ran out of liquid propane for cooking (!). The propane company came out ro refill the tank at the farm only to inform us that the line had a leak, and they locked the tank (!). The leak was due to a bad weld, which was repaired, but it took 7 days before the line was pressure tested again and the gas was restored. In the meantime we were relegated to what we could get out of the microwave and the rice cooker. Which, mind you, wasn't bad, but wouldn't quite be bloggable.
When we got the range back we cooked some glorious steaks, but that's another subject. Tonight we're talking about breaded, fried flounder, Danish style. We buy frozen, wild-caught flounder filets, bread them in FEC, fry them in butter, and serve them with lemon slices. Tonight we made a couple of sides of bacon-fortified Brussels sprouts and some Texmati Royal Blend rice out of the Zojirushi. Recipes follow:

Fresh or frozen wild-caught flounder filets
flour
egg
bread crumbs, panko, or equivalent
unsalted butter
lemon for garnish

1 lb Burssels sprouts, cut in half
4 rashers good thick bacon
3 Tbsp parmesan cheese, finely grated
3 Tbsp unsalted butter
salt and pepper to taste

Thaw the filets if frozen, rinse and dry well in paper towels. Dip in flour, then egg wash (beaten egg plus a Tbsp water), then crumbs. Let filets sit on a plate until ready to fry.
Heat 3 Tbsp butter in a large skillet until melted. Add cut Brussels sprouts and cook until browned slightly, about 4 minutes. Add bacon and cook until bacon is cooked through and beginning to crisp up. Add cheese and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Heat butter in a large skillet until the foam subsides. Place breaded filets carefully in the skillet and fry until golden on one side. Flip over carefully and fry. When they are golden on both sides, remove from the heat and plate. Slice a lemon very thinly and place a whole lemon slice on each filet. Add a side of Brussels sprouts and a good scoop of brown rice.

This meal is an instant classic and one of the best recipes in Danish cuisine. A sauce is not needed, but if you happen upon an excellent sauce for this combination, please let us know.

Cheese Crisps

When I was a kid, I mean really little, I must have been 6, I visited my cousins in Arizona. They were (and still are) much older. One afternoon they set out to make something they called "cheese crisps." My six-year-old brain saw them take a corn tortilla and melt some cheese on it, then they cut it up and ate it.
That was the first time I had seen this food. Now, all my life I had remembered that vignette and thought it was strange my cousins didn't know the word "nacho" which is a pretty common word in the Southwest. Now flash forward several decades. I live in the Northeast USA, New Jersey to be more precise, and good Tex-Mex or Mexican food is more rare than a piebald deer. We hear about a "good" Mexican place in High Bridge, NJ and we decide to check it out. One of their signature apps is something called a "crispy cheese tortilla" and so I have to order that. I'm thinking, was that some kind of authentic Mexican food all these years ago? What comes to our table, and I must say I was very impressed with the restaurant, was a deep-fried flour tortilla topped with Mexican cheeses, jalapenos, and sesame seeds. Absolutely delicious. Mette was hooked on this from bite one and she has begged me to approximate the recipe at home. After many iterations on this one I am proud to post it here:

2-3 cups (500-750 mL) oil for deep frying, canola or peanut
1 large (burrito-size) flour tortilla
shredded Mexican cheese
fresh or pickled sliced jalapenos
sesame seeds

Heat the oil in a large straight-sided skillet that will accommodate your tortilla. When the oil is hot, fry the tortilla until well browned on one side and flip it over to finish. Drain on a stack of paper towels.
Sprinkle the tortilla like a pizza all over with the shredded cheese. Place jalapeno slices all around the tortilla on top of the cheese and finish with a sprinkle of sesame seeds.
Broil briefly under a high broiler or Salamander, just to melt the cheese. I have a commercial Salamander and I find that these tend to burn after about 30-45 seconds, so watch it very carefully. Remove from the heat and cut into eighths with a pizza cutter. Serve at once.
I am not ashamed to say that we have occasionally eaten nothing but these for dinner. They are that good. And I think my cousins in and around Arizona would approve, though I very much doubt they rememember my visit in the early 70's.

Sunday morning. Bloody Marys.

Superbowl Sunday in the USA is really not all about football; it is more about having a reason to throw a party and to make some very un-healthful but delicious food. To kickoff the day, it's only fitting that we start with a Bloody Mary. The original recipe was devised by our dear friend Cheri and, mixed with care, it is the best one we've ever found. One fine Sunday morning, after a long walk in a nearby park, we all came back to my kitchen and made these Bloody Marys. Later that day, Mette and I were due for a potluck dinner party, and we needed something to make. What was forged in the hot kitchen that morning was unforgettable: Bloody Mary Salad. I'm a bit hazy on the specifics of the salad but it entailed diced tomato, lemon and lime juice, horseradish, worcestershire, some onion and black pepper, also a little vodka! I can't say it was a huge hit at the party but we all sure loved it.

The spicyness of this drink can be ramped up using more hot sauce, but my friend Quentin swears by a hot pepper-infused vinegar. If you go this route, use slightly less lemon and lime to moderate the acid. Recipe:

32 oz (quart; about a liter) of tomato juice or V8 (Campbell's is good)
3 Tbsp finely ground horseradish
4 Tbsp worcestershire sauce
16 shakes Cholula or other red pepper sauce
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Juice of 1/2 lime
salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
celery stalks for garnish and stirring
Vodka to taste
Mix tomato juice, horseradish, worcestershire, hot sauce, lemon, and lime together well, add about a cup (250 mL) vodka and stir. It's less important to use a really good vodka in a Bloody Mary since it's so highly flavored. Adjust for salt and pepper; you may not need to add any salt at all, but some black pepper adds a nice dimension. Fill glasses with ice and serve with celery stalks.

Wings!

We played around with some chicken wings on the day before the Super Bowl, and I think we've got a winner. In our opinions, you want wings that are very crispy and flavorful while coated in a rich and spicy wing sauce. Here's our secret for that.
Buy a package of wings and go through them, using a very sharp cook's knife to cut them at each of the two joints per wing. Take the wing tips and toss them into a stock for later with some of the Trinity (carrot, onion, celery) and some relevant spices. Now your wing pieces are ready for breading and deep frying, which is the best way to get them super-flavorful and super-crispy. Now, I don't generally counsel cooking all your food in a deep fryer, but for some things it seems essential, and this is one of them. So fill your deep fryer with peanut oil and set it on 375 F (170 C).
While the oil is heating, bread the wings. The key to successful breading is a mnemonic I think of as "FEC;" as in, "I know what the FEC I'm doing." FEC stands for flour, egg, crumbs. Dust each wing with flour, dip it in beaten egg, and roll it in bread crumbs. You can get creative with the crumbs, use crumbs from your own sourdough, from garlic bread, from graham crakers, corn flakes, whatever you have. Place them in the fryer basket until it is full in one layer.
Drop the basket and fry the breaded wings for about 10 minutes. While they are frying, prepare the wing sauce, using equal parts butter, honey, and red pepper sauce. In the Northeast and in Buffalo they use Frank's Red Hot sauce, but you can use anything. I love a Mexican hot sauce called Cholula. Heat this mixture until liquid, and toss the freshly fried and drained wings in it. After the wings are coated, remove them from the sauce with tongs and place on a serving platter. Serve immediately, and continue processing additional batches. If you make enough sauce at the beginning you can re-heat it to coat each batch of wings as they come out of the fryer and are drained for a minute or two.
This recipe is quite simple when you read it through and it is delicious. Mette is no fan of chicken wings, having grown up in a non-Superbowl-loving country, but she pronounced these the best she has ever eaten, and she loves them. Our friend Sharon, who has not missed a Super Bowl since she was four, and is a huge fan of wings, pronounced these "killer" and said I have to post them. So good luck and enjoy.

Friday night. Bone marrow. Bourbon.

Ahh another fantastic Friday night, the best night of the week. I almost got destroyed by a criminal on the New York Thruway this morning (http://www.lohud.com/article/20120203/NEWS03/302030055/UPDATED-Rockland-hit-run-chase-suspect-distraught-after-girlfriend-dumped-him-cops-say) but the drive home was smooth. Now for one of my favorite drinks and one of my favorite appetizers.
Bourbon is basically the American version of Cognac. It is distilled in a very specific way with at least 50% American corn mash, and it is aged in toasted oak barrels. One of the most American of all the Bourbon drinks is the Julep. The simplest Julep, also the most delicious, involves cooking up a simple 1:1 syrup of 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water. Once the sugar is dissolved, remove from the heat and add a couple of large sprigs of mint. Allow to sit for at least a half hour, preferably overnight, and you will have a wonderfully mint-infused, pale green syrup. Fill a tall glass with ice. Add a jigger of Bourbon and an equal quantity of your green syrup. Fill the balance with soda water or "seltzer" as they call it here. No need to garnish if you're at home. Be careful, these are dangerously good.
Now for a nice appetizer. In many supermarkets they sell beef marrow bones as (Egads!) dog food. These can make amazing, and amazingly cheap, appetizers. Take the cut beef bones and spread them out into a single layer in an oven-proof skillet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with your best salt (no iodized salt please). Bake in a 325 F (150 C) oven for about 30 minutes or until the smell is too wonderful to resist. Remove from the oven, allow to cool for exactly five minutes, and, using a very small spoon, spread some roasted salted marrow onto a toasted, buttered slice of baguette and enjoy. Repeat until you are no longer hungry for the real dinner.
When I first made this (based on a wonderful experience at Craigie's on Main, Cambridge, Mass.) our daughter rushed into the kitchen and said, "No! Those were for the dogs!"

Chorizo

Chorizo is a Mexican sausage that is beloved in Texas for its versatility. It is a fabulous base meat for chili, and it is excellent when mixed with eggs in an omelet or burrito, and it is fantastic as a fortifier for chili con queso. I remember Mexican chorizo to be a very cheap sausage in Texas. In fact, I remember that the first three ingredients were, "pork lymph nodes, salivary glands, and fat." That's not very nutritious. Now Mark Miller of the famous Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe published a chorizo recipe that you can make at home, and I have always remembered it, if not verbatim at least in spirit.
Use a mixture of ground meats, pork of course, plus maybe some beef and veal, called "meat loaf" here in the Northeast. About a pound and a half. But before you do anything, gather your spices. Salt and pepper, cumin seed, coriander seed, cinnamon, Mexican oregano, and lots and lots of red chile powder. Chile from Chimayo, New Mexico is incredible, but any red pepper powder will do, even Hungarian paprika. N.B. this is not the so-called "chili powder" that you find in the McCormick rack, which contains salt and garlic and other adulterants. If you don't have some of these spices, leave them out, no problem, as long as you have some chile. Start with a dry skillet, preferably cast iron, heated over a medium to high flame. Add some whole coriander seed and shake occasionally until it begins to smoke, a wonderful spiced smoke. Roll the coriander around to brown it slightly. Throw in some black peppercorns. Throw in some cumin and watch it dance. Throw in some Mexican oregano and/or epazote and be careful not to burn it. Now get a very clean spice grinder (I have an electric coffee grinder set aside for spices only) and dump all the roasted spices into it. Add a cinnamon stick and some kosher salt. Grind everything up well and you're ready.
Cook the ground meat until just cooked through, not browned, as it will become tough. Add all the wonderful roasted spices and about 4 Tablespoons of red chile. Stir well and add a cup of water. Stir again and BTBRTS, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Simmer until the meat has dried out a little, you can hardly see the liquid. Add another cup of water. Repeat. Add a third cup and repeat, this time allowing the water to cook out until your chorizo is of the right consistency for its downstream application.
The keys here are in building layers of flavor by cooking gently and roasting many of the ingredients to bring out their best flavors. Your finished chorizo is ready for tacos, chili, breakfast with eggs, many things. It is truly wonderful stuff and, once made at home, much healthier. Done properly, I realize this is not a quick preparation. If time is a problem you can add 1 1/2 cups of water and cook it down one time, but I suppose this recipe is best executed lovingly on a lazy Sunday, and it will make a couple of weekday meals extra-special.