Happy Anniversary! A Simple Italian Meal

This past Sunday was our wedding anniversary (six great years!). We held our wedding at a charming Italian restaurant in downtown Raleigh, NC, called Caffe Luna. The main reason we chose Caffe Luna was because we love their food. They feature simple but delicious Italian cuisine that changes according to the seasons. I’ve always had a great meal there.

For my challenge last weekend, my husband wanted me to make some food we might have had at our wedding. You see, we didn’t actually get to eat much of the lavish buffet Caffe Luna put on for us. We were too busy being bride and groom that we barely sat down. But we heard from everyone else how great the food was, and it certainly looked good.

The problem with this challenge was that I couldn’t recall any specific dishes that were on the buffet. I remembered vaguely a few things — mixed vegetables, smoked salmon, poached salmon — but nothing more specific came to mind. Unfortunately, Caffe Luna’s website is not a big help. While they do have a catering menu online, it’s pretty bare bones: cheese and crackers; marinated chicken; marinated flank steak. That’s as much description as you get. To tell you the truth, I don’t think the menu is set in stone, but is rather based on what’s in season and available, which is how it should be. I remember that the buffet table was groaning with food. There certainly was a lot more than seems to be listed on the website menu.

So I turned to my mainstay for Italian cooking, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. If you like Italian food and you don’t have this cookbook, you are not cooking the best Italian dishes you could be. Every recipe I have made out of this book has been molto squisito. These recipes are very simple, as good Italian cooking should be. They let the ingredients shine and highlight the flavors with restrained additions, such as olive oil, fresh herbs, wine, salt and pepper.

Unfortunately, because these dishes are so simple, my husband thought I cheated in last weekend’s challenge when I presented him chicken in white wine and lemon and a platter of baked vegetables. But even though the dishes weren’t a challenge to cook, they are a model of restraint, and the results were mouth-watering. They also reflected what I remember of Caffe Luna’s food at our wedding: good food and lots of it, simply prepared, wonderful to eat.

First up, the vegetables. Nothing could be easier. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Select an assortment of seasonal vegetables. I chose Yukon gold potatoes, red peppers, tomatoes and onions, but almost any vegetables will work. Peel the potatoes, peppers and onion. Cut everything into wedges (discarding the seeds and ribs from the peppers). Arrange on a large, oven-proof platter. Drizzle all over with very good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss gently to make sure everything is well coated. Roast for 25-30 minutes, until the potatoes are browned on the edges and tender. The oil and juices from the vegetables combine in the bottom of the platter to make a delicious sauce, so don’t forget to drizzle the juices over the vegetables before serving.

While the vegetables are cooking, prepare the chicken. You can use bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces or boneless chicken breasts for this recipe, although bone-in chicken will take longer to cook. In a large pan, heat some olive oil and butter over medium-high. Brown the chicken pieces on both sides, about 2-3 minutes per side. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add to the pan 3 peeled garlic cloves, the minced leaves from one rosemary stalk, salt and pepper. Pour in about ½ cup dry white wine. Partially cover and let cook, turning the chicken pieces once or twice, until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken to a serving pan. The juices remaining in the bottom of the pan should be thickened and browned. Add the juice and zest of 1 lemon. Stir and scrape up any browned bits. Spoon this sauce over the chicken to serve.

Nothing could be simpler. But serve with good, crusty Italian bread, and you’ll have a meal fit for an anniversary celebration.

Here Come the Wings

This week’s challenge was to make chicken wings, in honor of March Madness. (Apparently, chicken wings are a favorite for snacking while watching sports.)

Now, I am not a huge fan of wings. I usually find them too fatty and greasy for my tastes. So I think I’ve only cooked them once or twice before.

When I don’t know what to start, I turn to one of my reference cookbooks. First on my list is Mark Bittman‘s How to Cook Everything (Revised Edition), and sure enough, I found a recipe for chicken wings in the Appetizers section. Bittman’s recipe promised the tastiness and crust of deep-fried wings without the deep frying. It sounded like the perfect solution. (Since I didn’t modify the recipe, I won’t reprint it here, but if you don’t own a copy of Bittman’s cookbook, you really should.)

Bittman’s method is to first roast the chicken wings with a little olive oil, salt and pepper — turning and basting them halfway through with their own fat — for close to an hour. You then baste them with the flavorful sauce of your choice and turn the oven heat up high to achieve that brown, crusty skin.

Bittman offers six variations of sauces, and we tried three. Of those, we liked the traditional hot sauce (I used my leftover barbecue sauce from a previous challenge) and the ginger-soy glaze the best. Both of these darkened nicely and developed a crunchy skin, while soaking up lots of flavor. The beer-and-butter sauce was a bit too subtle, though, and those wings didn’t get nearly as brown.

My husband and I both enjoyed the end result very much. (The toddler refused to sample them.) The meat was falling off the bones and flavorful, without being too fatty or greasy, which is what usually turns me off about wings. During the long roasting time, most of the fat cooked away, but the meat did stay tender. Adding the sauce just at the end ensured it didn’t burn or get cooked away. I only wish I had made extra sauce for dipping.

I served these with crudites: celery sticks, cherry tomatoes and quartered mushrooms, plus a simple blue cheese dip, also from Bittman’s book, which I made by mixing blue cheese, lemon juice and plain yogurt. I would definitely prepare this yummy meal again for a party or sports-watching event. I think the wings would taste good at room temperature, and so also would make great picnic food.

All in all, a successful challenge! My husband hasn’t issued next week’s challenge yet, so stay tuned to see what it will be.

Hearty Asian-style Chicken Soup

This week’s challenge was to make a hearty-style soup, preferably with chicken in it. The twist was that it had to be a kind of soup I don’t normally make, since I make soup just about every week. My husband mentioned pho, as an example, which put me in mind of a hearty, Asian-style soup. That would be change of pace for us, since I don’t usually cook Asian-style dishes.

The result was an Asian-inspired soup featuring slivers of chicken, rice noodles and bok choy. This dish was a hit with everyone. My husband and I both drained our bowls, and even my toddler enjoyed the noodles. (He is not into soups these days.)

While this was a hearty soup, what really made it was the broth, which was packed with flavor. I didn’t have time to make chicken stock from scratch, as I would normally do, so I took some shortcuts. I think the result was just as delicious, and I may make this “shortcut” broth more often than not in the future. I began with Penzey’s chicken stock base, but you could also use store-bought chicken broth. To that I added vegetables, garlic, bay leaf, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. My house smelled terrific while it was simmering! But what really kicked up the flavor was the wine, soy sauce and tomato that went into the broth, which contributed an umami quotient. If you aren’t familiar with the term, umami is the taste of savoriness, found in such foods as tomatoes, soy sauce and Parmesan cheese. That’s why adding a little soy sauce or Parmesan can wake up the flavor of a dish.

The broth imparted its flavor to everything that went into it. Pho is usually made with beef, but we don’t eat beef at home, so I substituted thin slivers of chicken instead. I added rice noodles and bok choy to make the soup more hearty. One small, minced jalapeno contributed a background sensation of heat without being overwhelmingly spicy. A little lime squeezed over the top provided brightness.

This was a terrific soup. I should acknowledge Mark Bittman’s recipe for Hanoi Noodle Soup (in How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition) as the inspiration for the recipe, but I did make a lot of changes to it. I would definitely make this soup again, and the recipe is fast and easy enough to prepare on a weeknight.

For this weekend’s challenge, we are celebrating  March Madness with chicken wings — not something I cook very often. Come back next week for the results.

Hearty Asian-style Chicken Soup

Yields: 4 servings
Time: 1 hour or more, depending on how long you simmer the broth

To make the broth:

Begin with 8 cups water + 1½ teaspoons Penzey’s chicken soup base or 8 cups store-bought chicken broth in a large pot. Add:

• 1 carrot, unpeeled, roughly chopped
• 1 celery stalk with leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 onion, unpeeled, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 canned tomato
• ½ cup white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 inch fresh ginger, unpeeled
• 4 whole cloves
• 1-2 teaspoons five spice powder

Bring to a low boil. Lower the heat, partially cover and let simmer for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

In the meantime, soak 1 pound rice noodles in hot water to cover until softened, 15-30 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Strain the broth and return to the pot, or use a skimmer to scoop out the solids. Raise the heat a little to bring it to a steady bubble. Add:

• the soaked rice noodles
• ½ pound boneless chicken, cut into thin slices (You could substitute thinly sliced beef or pork, if you like.)
• 1 medium or 2 small heads bok choy, chopped
• 1 small jalapeno, seeds and ribs removed, cut into small dice
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• A lot of freshly ground black pepper

Cook until the chicken is no longer pink and the cabbage is tender, which should only take a few minutes. Taste and add more soy sauce, if needed. Serve with lime wedges.

An Easy Chicken Saltimbocca

This week’s challenge was to make an interesting chicken dish — maybe stuff it with something. I have learned from experience that I don’t like stuffing foods, particularly chicken. Stuffing has always seemed like an overly fussy task to me, and boneless chicken breasts are just not that easy to stuff or roll or otherwise manipulate.

So while I knew I didn’t want to stuff the chicken breasts, I did want to get a lot of different flavors in there. The first dish I thought of when my husband told me the challenge was chicken saltimbocca, which usually combines prosciutto, sage and chicken. I checked my cookbooks and the Internet for saltimbocca recipes and was inspired by a recipe from Outstanding in the Field, which wraps the prosciutto around the chicken. I could slip something flavorful underneath — in this case, mozzarella cheese — and saute the whole bundle.

I used chicken tenders instead of full breasts, because I figured this dish would be rich and we would want smaller portions, and it would be quicker and easier to cook the smaller bundles. (If you use full-sized breasts, you may want to cut them in half and pound them thinner so they will cook faster.) One piece of prosciutto wrapped neatly around the tender, and I secured it and a sage leaf on top with a toothpick, removed before serving. The prosciutto contained the cheese nicely and kept it from oozing all over the saute pan.

Both my husband and I loved these. The prosciutto was crispy and infused with sage. The mozzarella was oozy but not messy. And the chicken wasn’t at all boring. I would definitely make this again, and it was so easy that it could be a weeknight dish. We discussed stuffing different things under the prosciutto, such as roasted peppers or spinach. This would be a fun dish to experiment with.

I served this with a hearty Italian-style salad of chopped greens, cabbage, carrots, red pepper, celery and croutons, topped with a mustard vinaigrette.

Chicken Saltimbocca

Prepare 2-3 chicken tenders per person. Salt and pepper each piece of chicken (go easy on the salt, because the prosciutto will also add saltiness). Lay 1 slice of fresh mozzarella on top of each tender. Wrap each tender in 1 slice of prosciutto. Place 1 sage leaf on top and secure with a toothpick.

In a saute pan, heat a generous amount of olive oil over medium-high until shimmering. Lay the chicken pieces in the pan, toothpick side down, and cook until the prosciutto has crisped and the chicken has cooked halfway through, about 5 minutes. Turn over and cook the other side until the chicken is down and the prosciutto is nicely browned.

Remove from the pan to a plate lined with paper towels. Gently remove the toothpicks. The sage leaves should adhere to the prosciutto. Serve immediately.

A Challenge to Make Chicken Interesting

This week’s challenge is to make plain-Jane chicken breasts a little more interesting. In the words of my husband (paraphrasing), I should stuff them with something. This of course led me to thoughts of the padre of all stuffed chicken dishes: Chicken Saltimbocca. I’m thinking prosciutto, mozzarella and sage. I’ll post the results and the recipe later this week.

Sunday Morning Scrambled Eggs

I had the idea that last weekend’s cooking challenge was going to be an easy one. It was for a Country Scramble, a scrambled egg dish that contains a lot of other good stuff besides, most importantly, pan-fried potatoes. I make scrambled eggs with stuff almost every weekend, so I thought this one would be a breeze. I even planned to make biscuits to go with it.

What I ended up with was a “plate of fail.” That’s what I call the plate where food goes before burial in the trash can. In this case, it was 3 pieces of charred bacon — I’m blaming their demise on my toddler, who distracted me during the frying process — and an entire batch of biscuits. More on that later.

The eggs themselves didn’t go on the plate of fail, and my husband said he really enjoyed them, but they were not my favorite dish. I think there was too much stuff in them. When I researched Country Scramble recipes online, most of them contained similar ingredients: diced potatoes (cooked like hash browns), bell pepper, onion, cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon. I planned to add all of these, plus some scallions for freshness and color. I diced the potatoes, onion and pepper pretty small and added them to a hot pan with some of the liquid bacon grease. (By the way, 2 slices of bacon were rescued and made it into the final dish.) I mostly let them alone, turning them with a big spatula now and again until they were browned on all sides and the potatoes were tender. If I had stopped at this point, I would have had some pretty darn good hash browns.

I pressed the hash browns into a flat layer and poured over 5 eggs beaten with some salt and pepper. I sprinkled over some grated cheddar, the 2 crumbled rashers of bacon and some sliced scallions. After letting it set for a few minutes, I began to scramble. Well, the finished result tasted good, but it wasn’t really eggy enough for me. I think I could have doubled the number of eggs used and it would have been much better, but I already had made way too much for the two of us to eat.

I think I prefer my normal Sunday morning scramble, which has more egg and less stuff. I’ll put the recipe — such as it is — at the bottom of this post. By the way, my husband did take pictures, but I’m not going to post any of them, as this was not the most appetizing-looking of dishes. Judging on looks alone, the picture probably better belongs here.

As for those biscuits… I have made a lot of biscuits, from a lot of different recipes, and they usually turn out great. Biscuits are the easiest and tastiest breads you can make, after all. But I tried a new recipe called, ironically enough, “The Best Biscuits Ever.” These biscuits were a lot of work, and I think that was their downfall. I’ve never made a biscuit where the dough was worked so much. The first batch came out looking very much like hockey pucks: hard and flat and black on the bottom. To rescue the second batch, I had to pile three biscuits on top of each other for a layered effect. They were certainly flakey, but they did not rise at all. Lesson learned. I will return to my tried-and-true buttermilk biscuit recipe next time.

Here is how I usually make Sunday-morning eggs. This recipe is designed to use up little bits of leftover food before going grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon.

Sunday-Morning Scrambled Eggs

1. Go through the refrigerator and find 1, 2 or 3 things to put in the eggs. Leftover cooked veggies or potatoes are good, or a stray tomato. Onions, mushrooms or peppers will all work. Also, that last bit of cheese. If you have a little smoked salmon, prosciutto or bacon, even better. Cut up everything into bite-sized bits.

2. Beat together 2 eggs per diner, plus 1 egg for the bowl, until just combined. Stir in a dollop of cream (or half-and-half) and some salt and pepper.

3. Heat some butter in a nonstick pan over medium. Heat through or cook, if necessary, the filling ingredients you chose (except for the cheese).

4. When the filling is ready, spread it out in a single layer and pour the eggs over. Sprinkle with crumbled or grated cheese and some herbs, if you have any. Let the eggs sit for a minute or two, until they start to set.

5. Using a rubber spatula, scoop and fold the eggs to create big, fluffy curds. Keep scooping until the eggs are cooked the way you like them. I like mine a little wet, but some people prefer them to be entirely dry. Serve immediately with toast of some sort or biscuits.

Chocolate-Espresso Cake

For this week’s challenge, I wanted to make a chocolate cake for Valentine’s Day. It was a challenge for me because I don’t make a lot of desserts and sometimes my baking efforts wind up as miserable failures. I definitely need more practice, but on the other hand, I don’t really need to be eating more sweets. So it’s kind of a double-edged sword.

Anyway, here’s how the cake turned out:

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? It tasted good too, like an ooey-gooey gigantic brownie.

I chose a recipe from Nigella Lawson‘s Feast for a cake that was almost flourless (only ½ cup) because I really like dense, chocolatey cakes and because I wanted to use some instant espresso powder I already had in the pantry. A good cook always tries to make use of what she already has on hand. However, I did have to go shopping for one thing: a springform pan. That’s right, I’ve gone this long without owning one, and there are plenty of times when I could have used it. So now I’ve got one.

One thing I didn’t have to buy was a double boiler to melt the chocolate. Instead, I placed a small pot on top of a larger one of simmering water. The chocolate melted perfectly. (I don’t have a microwave anymore, which is handy for melting chocolate, I will admit.)

The cake did not rise up as high as the one pictured in Nigella’s book, probably because I didn’t beat the eggs enough at the beginning. I don’t own a stand mixer, and I tend to get tired of beating and quit before I ought to. It didn’t make much difference to the flavor, though, which was dense, chocolatey and a big hit with everyone. I topped it simply, with a dollop of whipped cream to cut the richness. I didn’t pour coffee liqueur over the top, as Nigella does, since one of my tasters is a toddler, but I don’t think its absence detracted from the cake at all.

I’m not going to post the recipe, since I didn’t change it very much and I don’t want to violate copyright. But the wonders of the Internet always provide, so here is the exact recipe from Food Network’s website. Enjoy.

For this week’s challenge, I am doing a brunch dish: an old-fashioned country scramble. I’ll probably also make biscuits, because what’s a country breakfast without biscuits?

Pickled Red Onions + a Valentine’s Challenge

For topping the sliders I served on Super Bowl Sunday, I made a quick red onion pickle. I used Thomas Keller’s recipe from Ad Hoc at Home, which is super-simple but very good, and I think it’s really all you need to do to end up with a tasty pickle. The recipe says to let the onions pickle at least 24 hours, but you can certainly eat them the same day if you don’t mind them still being somewhat onion-y. Scroll down for the recipe, which makes a lot of pickles! I usually halve it or even quarter it, because we can’t go through that many pickles in a month.

My husband has neglected to provide me with a challenge for this weekend, so I came up with one for myself. I am going to make my husband and son a chocolate cake for Valentine’s Day. This may not sound like much of a challenge, but I have never made a chocolate cake before and I do not have a great track record with baked goods. We’ll see how I do.

Pickled Red Onions

Makes about 4 cups.

2 large red onions (about 1¼ pounds each)

1½ cups red wine vinegar

¾ cup granulated sugar

Cut off the top and bottom of each onion and cut lengthwise in half. Remove and discard the outer layer. Cut a V-shaped wedge from the bottom of each half to remove the roots and the very center pieces of onion. Put the onions cut side down on the cutting board and slice lengthwise into ⅛-inch-thick slices, following the nature lines on the outside of the onion. Pack the onions into a 1-quart canning jar; reserve any slices that don’t fit.

Combine the vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the onions. Once the onions begin to wilt, add any remaining onion slices to the jar, gently pushing them down into the liquid to submerge them. Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, or for up to 1 month.

Super Bowl Challenge: Sliders

This week, I had a challenge for our mini Super Bowl party, which was to make sliders. This was a real challenge for me because (a) I’d never made them before, and (b) I don’t eat beef. My husband requested both a beef and turkey version, so I did get to eat some of them.

Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? I’d say this challenge was an unqualified success. Everyone enjoyed them, and my toddler even ate half of one. I may have been designated the official burger maker of our family, which is funny because, again, I don’t eat beef.

The first issue for me was what kind of beef to use. Many of my cookbooks advise grinding your own meat for burgers, but I wasn’t prepared to go quite that far. I decided on ground chuck because of the higher fat content. Burgers need fat to be delicious.

I also needed a good recipe. After some Internet searching, I settled on this one by Alton Brown (I’m not going to re-type it; just follow the link). This recipe has an interesting technique. You roll out the beef on a large cooking sheet into a very thin layer. You then season the top part and fold it over. Cut that into squares to get the White Castle-style burgers. My only quibble was that the instructions were to cut 8 squares, which seemed to make very large burgers for something that is called “mini man burgers.” I ended up cutting them into 16 burgers, which was just the right size for our tiny hamburger buns.

Speaking of buns, I did attempt to make my own, but my attempt failed gloriously. My dough did not rise. I don’t know if the yeast was kaput, or if I did something wrong in the initial step when I combined the yeast with warm milk. At any rate, I intend to try again sometime in the future, as the pictures of the finished bread in Peter Rinehart’s Artisan Breads Every Day are just way too yummy to resist. Still, for this challenge, we ended up using the backup, which was mini Martin’s potato rolls. Nothing wrong with that.

As for the turkey version, I do have a turkey burger recipe that I have been working on for a while now, and that I think it is pretty good. (Scroll down for it). You do have to add some fat and other flavors to the mix, because turkey burgers will turn into hockey pucks if you don’t. I ended up using the same technique of rolling the ground turkey mix out thinly. Then I added a layer of cheddar to the middle before folding and cutting. The cheddar adds much-needed fat while cooking the burgers, and the little pocket of cheese in the middle is a nice surprise when you’re eating it.

As for toppings, I decided to go traditional. I provided mustard, ketchup, iceberg lettuce, cheddar cheese, pickle slices and pickled red onions (recipe to be posted tomorrow). Next time we make them, my husband wants to try a barbecue version using the barbecue sauce I made for a previous challenge. But for a football game, these little burgers couldn’t be more appropriate. We also had potato skins, cheese bread, guacamole and salsa for dipping — we feasted.

Turkey Burgers

This recipe was adapted from Sara Foster’s Casual Cooking. Makes 4 large burgers or 16 sliders.

In a bowl combine:

• 1 pound ground turkey,
• ⅓ cup fresh bread crumbs
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce
• salt and pepper
• cheddar cheese, cubed or sliced (optional)

Mix well and form into 4 patties or 16 sliders. Optional: insert a cube or slice of cheese in the center of each burger. Either grill or pan-fry in a little oil for 5 minutes each side, until there is no pink at the center and an instant-reading thermometer measures at least 150 degrees. Serve them hot on buns, topping with your favorite condiments.

Challenge #4: Super Bowl

I’m on hiatus this weekend, as my husband is attending some sports-related event. So he’s already set my Super Bowl challenge for the following weekend. I am supposed to make sliders: a beef and a turkey version. This should be challenging as I don’t eat hamburgers, and I’ve never made a slider before. If I’m feeling particularly ambitious, I will attempt homemade buns.