What's cooking? part 4

A typical muffuletta consists of one muffuletta loaf, split horizontally. The loaf is then covered with a marinated olive salad, then layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, emmentaler, and provolone. The sandwich is sometimes heated through to soften the provolone.

Wow.

oh they are so so so good!

I should have mentioned that the mushroom thing might work, but I don't like mushrooms, personally.

It was a modified muffaletta -- wheat hoagie roll, smoked turkey, ham, salami, olive salad, provolone. Nobody here knows what the hell capicola, mortadella or emmentaler are.

just some pasta with baby spinach and a ton of garlic and olive oil. i'm trying to be frugal.

rock if you are going to venture into olivedom, i would like to recommend black or calamata olives in a tomato sauce because lately i can not get enough of this. puttanesca, baby.

emmentaler? really? that's the first recipe i've seen that calls for it. mr lauren brought back olive salad from central grocery earlier this year, so we had a few great muffalettas.. we used a mild smoked ham instead of the mortadella (neither of us are fans), but did everything else pretty traditionally. for me, a really spicy cappicola is key.

Listening party tonight, the first one I've been able to attend in over a year of being invited! So I baked a batch of Ruth Reichl's artpark brownies,with my standard variation of 1 c butter and 1 scant cup dutch process cocoa instead of 5 oz of bakers chocolate.

I was so enraged by the shoddy Italian restaurant we went to for an office lunch on Friday that last night I cancelled it out with an It-fest dinner.

- Big plate of bresaola, salami, mozzarella, prosciutto, artichokes and sunblush tomatoes (cheat's starter)
- Meatballs and spaghetti
- Whipped thing of double cream, lemon curd and crushed amaretti
- Bottle of really good chianti

It was appreciated by the other half :)

Washing up took an hour this morning though :(

I must have had the same impulse, because I made a giant pan of ragu/bolognese sauce yesterday, adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recp intended for the meat sauce in a lasagna. Involved beef/veal/pork ground meat mix, and also several rounds of simmering liquids out at 30 minutes each = sauce took about two hours, all told (1 round of whole milk, 1 round of dry white wine, then add all the tomatoes & tomato juice, which then simmers down AGAIN).

Delicious but will have to make it more tomato-y next time as sauce is not sticking to meat super well.

Also the really genius part was rough-chopping all my mirepoix (+ garlic) and then shoving the entire lot into the food processor together to get a really fine chop with almost no work. NO MORE ONION MINCING, I AM SO GLAD.

i went on a cooking binge yesterday: black bean hummus; yellow split pea soup with cumin, coconut, ginger, and curry; and tofu provencale with quinoa and cauliflower (roasted with meyer lemon wedges). it wouldn't have occurred to me to cook tofu in that style, but it was great. following mark bittman's instructions, i cubed and fried a brick of extra firm then mixed it into a basic tomato/onion/garlic/red pepper/saffron sauce along with a generous handful of purple olives.

I had a lot of leftover basmati rice yesterday and made a nice rice salad (blanched carrots, corn, green onions, ham, chopped roma tomato, a handful of roasted mixed nuts, vinaigrette).

cooks illustrated recipes are like science experiments!

ok, need some creative menu planning/recipe help from you guys:

a couple "light" appetizers at my house on saturday evening. nothing too heavy , preferably pairable with champagne, and hopefully foolproof recipes since I'm not very skilled.

Get some puff pastry at Trader Joe's (it's frozen), cut into shapes, drop something delicious in the very center of each (tiny piece of brie+apricot jam, proscuitto+aged gruyere, dark chocolate drop, etc), bake at 425 for 10-15 min until all is puffy and crispy goodness. Keep whatever you put in the center small, I got overzealous with the St. Agur+fig spread and it ran all over the place.

Also, a big wheel of nice brie always goes well with champagne.

dates wrapped in bacon, baked @ 350 for half-hour or so, nice savory/sweet morsel. went well w/prosecco

it's worth springing for niman ranch or some other fancy/artisinal bacon on these

<3 u guys. :-D

i'll try to dig up my mother's famous miniature cheese toastie recipe for you. it turns pepperidge farm party white bread, processed cheese spread, butter, and dill into one of the most delicious things you'll ever taste.

If you can stuff some blue cheese into those bacon-wrapped dates, even better.

I had some blue-cheese-stuffed-guanciale-wrapped-dates at a pub a few weeks ago and they were, indeed, nom nom nom.

oops forgot the stuffing on those bacon/dates -- we used almonds but cheese would be nice too.

Buttered wholemeal or granary bread or toast, cut into little squares and topped with smoked salmon, ground black pepper and a squeeze of lemon is a great, quick canape to go with champagne.

not cooking (although I did just make a pretty decent lasagne) - had some apple cider doughnuts from Stew Leonards in Norwalk - absolutely fantastic - what a doughnut should be - cakey, and not tasting like KFC - I'm looking at you here Krispy Kreme.

Stew Leonards was a really really great supermarket, loads of great stuff..... but like, 3 different pastas, and no lasagne sheets????

Okay, y'all.... thanks mucho for all the advice.

I went experimental and I'll spare you the details of the failures, but the clear winner was the puff pastry in the following construction:

paper thin coppa (neck/shoulder pork meat)
cubed (chopped?) cooked prawn
cocktail sauce
puff pastry

we must have eaten about 50 of these before dinner.

thanks for the ideas. you guys are my puff pastry mistrixes.

I've had a few not-very-successful or delicious recipe experiments lately so I am VERY GRATIFIED to say that last night's turned out SWIMMINGLY. It was shrimp in "fiery" tomato sauce, ie sauce w/ orange bell peppers, anchovies, tomatoes canned and fresh, crushed red pepper and capers and thyme and lime-drenched shrimp, over linguine.

I really cannot stop eating it. I had a plateful, waited about two hours, then had some more.

Boston butt pork roast, which, next to spare ribs and belly, is the best tasting cut (and easiest to cook) imo. Coated with cracked black pepper and thyme, started at 425 F for 10 min, then heat soaked at 320 F for 3 hours (5 lb roast).

I dusted off our steamcooker and been trying out things. YUM YUM Man, how could I have neglected it? (Cue: massive amount of cleaning after dinner duh)

i am making meatloaf but i don't really know what i'm doing! how long do i cook? hah! it is a veal/pork/beef mix, ~ 2 lbs. at this point i can't even remember how long it's been in, but it still seems plenty moist.

Rigatoni bolognese AGAIN, with no skimping on the recipe this time (trans: I actually bought wine for the reduction and didn't drink it all first). SUBLIME.

tehresa - rule of thumb: 30 min/lb @ 350 F for something solid like meatloaf; 20 min/lb for something hollow like a chicken.

it ended up a bit overdone but not too much, but also a bit greasy. i think next time i might stick to just a leaner beef instead of the blend.

Theresa, I think meatloaf is supposed to have other things in it to keep the texture even and not too "meaty". Bread crubs, or bread chunks soaked in milk, or oatmeal, or whatever. And all your onions, garlic, parsley, etc for seasoning. I've never made it, though -- twenty years of home-style has ruined meatloaf for me.

i did have bread crumbs and egg, though i did not have any milk on hand (i was trying to remember ingredients in the store and spaced on the milk).

I don't do the soak-in-milk business, just meat (beef and pork generally), egg, onion, and bread bits. You really want some fat, otherwise it will end up a gray, dry loaf of bleh.

Taco night for eight the other night. Fillings:

Pork, simmered forever in just salted water, then shredded and simmered some more in a tomato-chipotle-garlic sauce.

Shredded chicken, simmered in homemade tomatillo sauce.

Gringo ground beef w cumin, chili, chipotle powder, tomatoes.

A ton of black beans cooked forever and mashed when refried.

It was goooooooood.

For my meatloaf, I saute onions, garlic and a little bit of tiny-diced carrots and let them cool. I don't like raw-onion flavor in my meatloaf, and the baking alone doesn't seem to be enough. The loaf: 1.75 lbs. ground chuck, 1 cup bread crumbs, 4 oz. tomato sauce, 2 eggs, sauteed aromatics, salt/pepper.

The sauce: 12 oz. tomato sauce, a little bit of water, and then the condiment cabinet: ketchup, yellow mustard, cider vinegar, worcestershire sauce, sriracha or tabasco, salt/pepper, a handful of brown sugar. I think that's everything. Pour the sauce over the meatloaf, 350 degrees for about 85-90 minutes. The sauce thickens up to a nice gravy for the mashed potatoes.

I've juiced and peeled and segmented and now I have the peels from six grapefruits and four big lemons for candying. They're off my aunt's trees in Arizona and have never been touched by food grade wax, so I wanted to eat more than just the insides.

genius!

There's a lot of exceedingly tasty sounding food on here, tacos and meatloaf and pork oh my...

last thursday I did bouillabaisse and poulet au pot for forty-five people, that was fun. More organising than actually cooking.

Holy crap, for reals? My friend used to freelance cater box lunches and prepared meals for 60-80 people, I have no idea how she did it.

Okay so today I cleaned and re-organized my kitchen, then I went on the most organized grocery trip I've done in a long time. The menu for the next week includes: oyster stew, hummus (always have a batch of that ready to go though), bourbon fried rice (unless I drink all the bourbon LOL), spinach & sundried tomato quiche, cornmeal skillet flatbread, whatever goofy shit happens in between. Also grilling steak, asparagus, potatoes, flatbread tomorrow before band practice*.

WHY THE REJUVINATED COOKING INTEREST? My roommate is all woe-is-me because our oven door shattered and hence we have no oven. He only ever eats frozen eazy-make foods, and out of one of those ridiculous kind of arguments only bros can have I was challenged to keep us well-fed sans oven. Which I don't think is much of a challenge but here we go nonetheless.

ALSO: I guess it's worth mentioning that, even before the oven broke, I have been making flatbreads in the skillet; experimenting with mixes of maize flour, cornmeal, wheat flour, regular American white flour (almost always only flour + water for dough), also patting the dough with garam marsala or old bay or some other ridiculous spice blend depending on what I'm serving it with. Sometimes it's not so great but sometimes it is GREAT great. I feel like, having been gifted a 6-generations seasoned cast iron skillet it is my DUTY to work it to it's fullest.

Wait...mom, grandma, great-grandma, great-great...okay I guess that's only 4 + me = 5 generations. D'OH!

I support you in this endeavor, and salute your intrepid spirit.

Damn straight, and that sounds like an awesome skillet.

Laurel, yep. I seem to have diversified into outside catering without actually meaning to. It just sort of happened. The trick is to make something which you just need to lash in a giant pan

wow nicka pls to come cook me flatbreads - i can provide you with oven!