Category: Food

Something or other a few months back prompted me to become interested in dishes that integrate an outer pastry layer. I tried wrapping a corned beef in a roll of those flakey layer biscuits (Biscuit layer tasted great but cooking a corned beef that far from water does not yeild optimal results). I tried approximating a Georgian Kachapuri (It was not a very close approximation). And I made various attempts at pot pies and pouring a cup of bisquick batter on top of hearty stews. Finally, I decided to think this problem through and come up with an actual plan. Also, something shifted in the freezer one morning and made it pop open again after Leah got an ice pack out one morning, so three pie crusts I had in there thawed out.
Here’s what I came up with…
Makes 2 13-inch pies…

The Vegetables
• ½ cup pine nuts
• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp butter (Yes of course I used White Truffle Butter, do you really need to ask?)
• 1 Tbsp crushed garlic
• 2 medium onions, diced fine
• ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
• 3 stalks of celery, chopped
• 10 oz Cremini mushrooms, quartered
• 6 oz shredded red cabbage
• Salt

The Meat

• 1 lb very lean (90/10) ground beef
• 1 lb reduced fat bulk pork sausage
• ½ cup water
• 3 Tbsp Skillet Chipotle Pumpkin Sauce
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ½ tsp paprika
• ½ cumin
• Salt

The Sauce

• 2 Tbsp butter (A little black truffle butter in the mix here is called for)
• 3 Tbsp unbleached whole wheat flour
• ½ cup red wine
• ¼ cup V-8 or comparable vegetable juice
• ¼ cup chicken broth
• 1 more Tbsp Skillet Chipotle Pumpkin Sauce, for good measure
• 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp brown sugar

Also

• 4 pie crusts, or 3 pie crusts and a cup of bisquick batter.
• 1 cup frozen peas and carrots

Heat up a large skillet over high heat (If you are doing this all at once, use a 4 quart pot instead. I did the first half the night before and let everything chill overnight first). Toast the pine nuts for a minute or so, stirring constantly. Add the oil, then remove from heat and add the butter and garlic. Once the butter’s melted and the garlic is aromatic, reduce the heat to medium and add the onions. Cook them for 3-4 minutes, then reduce the heat to low and add everthing else. Cover and simmer until everything’s tender, about 10 minutes or so. Drain the vegetables well, scrape out anything burned to the pan, and set aside.
Turn the heat back up to medium-high. Spray the pan with cooking spray and add the meat. Count to thirty, then add the water, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Stir the meat until thoroughly broken up (Adding the water is the trick here to
minimize clumping. Add everything else from that section. Reduce heat to low, cover, and let cook until the meat is completely cooked, about 20 minutes. Taste it and see if it needs more seasoning — this is going to be the dominant flavor of your dish. Drain the meat thoroughly. At this point, I stuck everything in the fridge and went to bed. If you’d prefer to soldier on, be my guest.
Preheat the oven to 400°. Put everything in a 4-quart pot on low heat and stir together. Add the peas and carrots. Take two 13″ pieplates and press crusts into them. Blind-bake the lower crusts for about 20 minutes to ½ an hour. Then freak out because despite your having done everything Emeril and Alton Brown said about blind-baking, your crusts still shrank, bubbled, and collapsed. S’okay, we’ll work around it. Meanwhile, in a small skillet, melt the butter then whisk in the flour and cook it for three minutes over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and add the wine, working in the roux, then return it to the heat and add the other liquids. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat to low and reduce by half. Taste it, and add brown sugar until it isn’t too tart (This will depend on how tart your red wine was).
Once your pie shells are ready, remove whatever you weighted down the inside with, and fill it with the meat and vegetable mixture. Fill both shells about as full as you think they ought to be, then pour the sauce over that (Do not add so much
sauce that the filling becomes soupy. You’re shooting here for something texturally more in the taco family than the chilli family), then add any filling you have left over on top. Press the top pie crust onto the top, crimping the edge as best you can — I assume you have at least a passing knowledge of what a pie is supposed to look like (or if, like me, you had an odd number of pie crusts due to a failed experiment in trying to invent the Irish Calzone, pour the batter over the top). Use a small, sharp knife to cut a few slits in the top crust, then into the oven with it (Put something under the pieplates. I didn’t have any trouble with them leaking, but I’m not taking the blame for you making a mess of the oven) for about half an hour (You can just follow the instructions on the pie crust package if you’re using prefabricated crusts. All you’re cooking at this point is the shell.). Let stand at least 10 minutes before cutting into it.
This is a pretty hearty and delicious pie. Leah and I ate one for dinner that night, and the other sustained me over the following weekend.

This would probably be good on rice or pasta, but I felt the need to lay off the carbs that day, so I served it with spinach. If I’d had the time, I’d have sauteed the spinach, maybe with some diced onion and crushed red pepper, but Leah was already looking pretty appaled by the mess I’d made with the frying, so I just microwaved the spinach with a bit of white truffle butter. Whatever you do, the important thing about spinach is to press all the water out of it before you serve it. If I’d had any on hand, turnip greens or swiss chard might have been nice instead.

• 1 lb beef cube steaks, cut into 4 small steaks.
• ¼ cup unbleached whole wheat flour
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp salt (Here, I used Applewood Bacon Salt)
• ~3 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 Tbsp butter — I used 1 Tbsp white truffle butter and 3 Tbsp black truffle butter
• ~2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp crushed garlic
• 1 cup marsala wine
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 12 oz cremini (baby portabella) mushrooms, sliced
• 1 cup chicken broth
• ½ tsp dried rosemary, crushed

In a large skillet, heat up enough vegetable oil to completely cover the bottom of the pan. In a flat dish, mix together the flour, pepper and salt. Dredge the steaks in the flour mixture, covering completely. Set the remaining flour aside (Yes, really. Bet you didn’t think I’d say that, did you?). When the oil comes to temperature, take it off the heat and add a tablespoon of butter (Use the black if you’ve got it), melt the butter, then put it back on medium-high heat. Cook the steaks for somewhere between a minute and ninety seconds, turning over about 2/3 of the way through. Transfer the cooked steaks to a plate covered with a couple of paper towels. You can put another paper towel on top if you like. Add just enough of the marsala wine to deglaze the pan and sort of push the resulting sludge to one side. Turn the heat back up and add enough olive oil to sautee in. When it comes up to temperature, again take it off, and add another tablespoon of butter (white this time) and the garlic. Sautee the garlic quickly while the pan is still hot, then put it back on medium heat and add the onions. Sautee the onions for about 3 minutes, then add the mushrooms and keep on sauteeing for another minute. Add the rest of the marsala and the chicken broth. Turn the heat up and bring it to a boil. Once it’s boiling, add in the rosemary and the rest of the butter, then slowly whisk up to 2½ tablespoons of the leftover flour mixture. The stirring will have stopped it boiling, so let it boil again, then reduce to a low simmer. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until it’s reduced in volume by half (I stuck a toothpick in it and marked the level, then used that to check for how much reducing it had done), which took me about 20 minutes. Turn the heat up to medium-high and put the steaks back into the pan as they’ll be ice cold by now. Cover and cook another 3 minutes or so, then remove from heat and serve.

Leah really liked this, though we both agreed that there was something missing. Not sure what.

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into cubes
• ½ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup balsamic-flavored vinegar
• ½ tsp whole coriander seeds
• ¼ tsp white pepper
• ½ tsp fajiat seasoning (Note: Whatever google tells you, this is not a misspelling of “fajita”)
• 1 medium onion, sliced thin
• 1 cup pine seeds
• 1 bunch asparagus (about 2 cups), bias-cut
• ¼ tsp ground coriander
• 1 cup finely chopped parsley
• ¼ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp tandoori spice
• ¼ tsp garam masala
• ½ tsp garlic, minced
• 1 can garbanzo beans (ie chickpeas), drained
• 1 3/4 cup yogurt
• Salt
• 1 tbsp heavy cream

Mix balsamic and olive oil with coriander, pepper and fajiat and marinade for 2 hours.

Put the pine seeds in a large skillet over high heat. Once they start to get toasty, add the chicken complete with the marinade, then add the onions. Sautee for 3-5 minutes, then reduce heat to medium. Add asparagus, spices and parsley, then chickpeas. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes, then stir in 1 cup of the yogurt. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. Add remaining yogurt and salt to taste. Remove from heat and stir in cream.

I completely overlooked the fact that you’re supposed to run the corn through the food processor at some point. But it all worked out in the end. I also tossed in a few pinches of xanthan gum when it became clear that it wasn’t thickening up the way I wanted.

• 4 pieces of bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 2-4 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 oz Baby Portabello mushrooms, diced
• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces
• 3 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 6 oz queso dip
• ½ cup milk
• 2 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
• 2 cans whole kernel corn, with liquid
• 2 cups chicken broth
• ½ diced hot cherry peppers
• ¼ tsp dill weed
• ¼ tsp celery seed
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• ½ paprika
• 2 Tbsp heavy cream

In oil, sautee, separately but in no particular order, the onion, mushroom, and chicken pieces, removing each and setting aside with the bacon. Retain any liquid that cooks out of anything.

Melt butter and whisk in the flour. Cook for about 3 minutes. I like to use an unbleached whole-wheat flour and a white truffle butter for this. The downside of unbleached flour is that it’s harder to gauge the right amount of cooking for the roux.

Stir in the queso, milk, and any liquids you got while cooking the other ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and add cheese, a little at a time. You’re going to reach your maximum thickness after this backs down from a boil, so keep that in mind as you add liquid later.

At this stage, I chucked everything in the fridge and waited until the next afternoon. I assume you can just push on. Add the corn, complete with the liquid, and stir it together. If, unlike me, you remember it, run one or both cans of corn through a food processor first. At this point, you can add all the ingredients I’ve been having you set aside (Bacon, chicken, mushrooms and onions). Add chicken broth until you reach the desired thickness. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently.

Add the peppers, dill, celery seed, paprika, and cayenne and cook on low for at least an hour. Finish with some cream

A few weeks ago, I read about The Original Bacon Explosion. Now, the impediments to me wanting to make one of these myself are threefold:

1. It’s the dead of winter, and not good barbecue weather
2. I don’t own a smoker
3. Despite enjoying the magical texture of meats cooked low and slow, I do not especially like the sweet and smoky flavors of barbecue

But as I may or may not have mentioned, I’ve been on a quest to find a low-carb alternative that met my occasional desire for lasagna. And so, I decided to come up with a new application of this bacon-weaving and meat-rolling technology. I decided to create the world’s first rolled meatloaf-lasagna hybrid. And I call it Loafsagna (Okay. Actually I just call it “Lasagna Meat Roll”, but I thought I’d try to make it sound all dramatic.)

• 2 lb bacon
• 1 lb Lean Ground Beef
• 2 cups bread crumbs (For a healthier choice, we used Original Flavor Fiber One cereal, pulverized in a food processor)
• 12 oz spaghetti sauce
• 1 Onion, minced
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 3 cups Ricotta Cheese
• 2 cups Mozzarella Cheese, shredded
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 lb bulk pork sausage
• 1/4 tsp basil
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/2 cup milk or cream
• 1 cup Cremini (“Baby Portabello”) mushrooms, sliced

Weave about a pound of uncooked bacon into a sheet. Depending on how your bacon is cut, this should be something on the order of 6-8 slices by 5-6 slices, making a bacon checkerboard pattern. A tight weave is best, but having done this, I can assure you that’s not going to happen. If your bacon is cut like mine was, this will use up one pound of bacon plus two slices from the second pound. Fry the remaining bacon and set aside. Based on the cut of your bacon, it is probably safe for you to eat approximately 3 slices of the bacon while you are working, provided you wash your damned hands every time you touch raw meat.

Mix the beef, half the onion, 2 tbsp of the spaghetti sauce, the garlic powder, and 2 eggs, kneading thoroughly. Press the beef into a thin patty over top of the bacon. You should end up with a contiguous layer of beef that almost-but-not-quite covers the bacon. Keep it thin, but you need something with structural integrity.

Mix the 2 cups of the ricotta, mozzarella, 3/4 cup Parmesan, garlic, basil and oregano. Take 1/2 cup of the mixture and add milk or cream until it forms a thin, spreadable paste. Spread this thin onto the beef layer. Lay four strips of cooked bacon across this, oriented along the longer dimension. Set the rest of the cheese mixture aside for now.

Mix the sausage with the remaining bread crumbs and form a second patty atop the last layer. The sausage will have somewhat less mass than the beef, so keep that in mind when forming this layer. This one can be a bit smaller than the one below it and should be thin. Spread the remaining spaghetti sauce over the sausage, like saucing a pizza. Break up the remaining bacon and sprinkle the pieces over the top.

Add 1 egg, the remaining onions, and the mushrooms to the remaining cheese mixture. Spoon that onto the top layer toward the middle along the long dimension. Think “burrito filling”.

Now comes the part that is going to blow your mind. VERY carefully, roll the whole thing up as if that beef and pork and bacon was all just a tortilla. If you can pull it off, leave the woven bacon behind as you roll the meat layers, then go back and roll the bacon weave in the opposite direction so that the seams aren’t in the same place. But if your layer thicknesses came out like mine did, you’re going to have a hard enough time just keeping the insides from falling out.

Roll this monstrosity into a large oven-safe pan. I was going to use the broiler pan, but that proved far too small, and I ended up using the lasagna pan instead.

Finally, take what’s left of the ricotta, Parmesan and egg and mix them together. Add cream and milk until you have something of a sort of spackle consistency — thicker than what we did for the inter-meat layer. Press this over the outside of the bacon log. Now, this step I’m not quite committed to. I think it was good in general, but it stopped the outer bacon layer from getting crispy. If it’s not too much work, I’d try putting the log in the broiler for a while first, maybe turning it over after a few minutes. That would let the outer bacon crisp up before we sealed in all the meaty goodness with a layer of cheese.

Bake at 350°F until it reaches an internal temperature of 160°F. This took me somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. You may or may not want to baste the log as fat liquefies and drains out. Leah thought the meat was too dry, but on the other hand, I thought the the outer cheese coat browned up and gave it a nice texture. In any case, it’s best to find some way to avoid letting it sit in a bath of its own fat for the entire cooking time. I doubt it would have held up if I’d put a rack underneath it, but maybe I could have devised something.

Extrapolating from our current usage rates, this should make somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-12 servings. Do not attempt to eat the whole thing in one sitting. Or you will die. Oh, this thing is like 4 pounds of meat and another two pounds of cheese, so for the love of God have some green vegetables with it.

We have, it being one of the few vegetables Leah and I both like which aren’t counterindicated for breastfeeding mothers whose babies are prone to bad gas.
Two nights in a row last week, I made a simple casserole by layering left-over baked Macaroni and Cheese with chicken patties, spaghetti sauce, and shredded mozzarella (On night 1, I added meat balls and sun-dried tomatoes. Neither of us cared for the flavor of the tomatoes, though I liked the mouthfeel, and the meat balls didn’t really mesh with the other ingredients). On the second night, I decided we needed a green vegetable dish as well, so I made this. Leah loved it, requesting all the leftovers over the next couple of days.
I started on this while giving my son a tour of the kitchen (“This is where food comes from. It’s basically like a breast for grownups.”), as you only need one hand for the first few steps if you’ve got the onion diced ahead of time (“If you’re ever cooking, son, and you don’t know what to make, start by dicing up an onion and sauteeing it in a skillet with some butter. Doesn’t really matter what you end up making, some sauteed onions never go amiss.”)

• 1 tbsp butter (I used a white truffle butter, but anything’s fine)
• 1 onion, diced
• 8 oz sliced green and red bell peppers (Half a bag frozen)
• 2 oz balsamic vinegar (Use the cheap stuff, or mix a teaspoon of the good stuff with red wine vinegar)
• 1 lb spinach, drained (I used half a bag of frozen plus a can because it was what I had on hand)

4 oz artichoke hearts (As per usual, I got a jar of marinated ones from Costco and rinsed them)

• 3 oz goat cheese (This came in 300g packages and I used a bit less than a third)
• 3 tbsp heavy cream
• 1 tbsp hummus (Optional. I happened to have a little bit of leftover hummus that I wanted to use before it went bad)
• 2 oz sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
• 3 tbsp milk

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Cook onions to translucency then add peppers. Deglaze the pan with vinegar. Mix in the spinach and artichokes. In a separate vessel, mix the cream and goat cheese — your goal here is just to keep the goat cheese from all staying together in a big lump. Add this to the skillet and stir in. Add the hummus and cheese. At this point, between the cheese and the hummus and the solids, you’ll be close to having a solid unworkable mess in the skillet. Add milk (and maybe a bit more cream if you like) until you get a thick and creamy but workable consistency. If you taste it now, it will be pretty sour. Cover and cook on low heat for 20-30 minutes. The peppers will release a lot of sweetness that should balance out the flavors. If it’s still too sour, stir in some (real) balsamic or madiera.

Made this to use the leftover mushrooms from the previous night. Served over the leftover rice from the previous night.

• 8 strips of bacon
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 celery stalks, diced
• 12 oz baby portabello mushrooms, halved
• Optional: 3 slices of ham, diced
• 8 oz hummus
• 4 tbsp Salsa Con Queso
• 1 tbsp-¼ cup heavy cream or milk
• ½ tsp worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbsp cream cheese

In a large skillet, fry up the bacon until crispy. Take it aside and crumble. Saute onions and celery in bacon grease until tender, then reduce heat to medium-low and add mushrooms. Cook the mushrooms about 5 minutes — you’re not trying to fry the mushrooms all the way through yet. Reduce heat to low. If you want a bit more protein and have some spare ham laying around, toss it in now. Add hummus and queso to the pan and stir. Add cream or milk to thin the sauce to a medium or medium-thick consistency. Add a dash of worcesterchire sauce for flavor and then incorporate the cream cheese. Return the bacon to the pan. If you’ve got a bit of balsamic vinegar left over, go ahead and drizzle some over the top.
Simmer, covered, over low heat for about 15-20 minutes. Serve over rice.
This makes a very delicately-flavored but savory sauce. I gave some thought to adding some curry powder to kick it up a notch, but it’s occurred to us that our son might appreciate it if Leah avoided spicy foods until his stomach gets used to this thing we call “digestion”.

A chicken dish based on chicken marsala, but using balsamic vinegar instead of marsala wine. I served this over brown rice and spinach, with a side of butternut squash, and used a white truffle butter too cook the rice and squash.
Also, this came out a bit oily, so I’d suggest draining off some of the oil before making the roux.

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into large pieces
• 1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp paprika (I used a hot Hungarian paprika. The spiciness was a bit of an issue. If you like the spiciness, maybe try using a cajun seasoning instead of paprika)
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 tbsp butter (optional. I used a black truffle butter here)
• 1½ cups chicken broth
• ¼ to ½ cup balsamic vinegar (The real deal. You probably already know that most of the stuff sold as “balsamic vinegar” is just red wine vinegar with molasses. I managed to snag a couple of bottles of Cavedoni Botte Piccola at a substantial mark-down, though it was hard to persuade myself to commit so much of it)
• 3 tbsp spaghetti sauce
• 12 oz baby portabella mushrooms, sliced thick
• 1 tbsp heavy cream

Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. In a shallow bowl, mix the flour and paprika. Dredge the chicken pieces and then fry in the skillet until golden brown. Do not overcook. Remove chicken and put aside. Fry onions until nearly translucent. Remove onions and put aside. Add remaining flour (Don’t add more than 3 tbsp yet) to pan and stir with a wooden or silicone spoon to form a roux. You can hold back some of the flour if it looks like the roux is thick enough. Melt in the butter if the roux becomes too thick. You should end up with a ball about the size of a small egg.
Deglaze the pan with the chicken broth, incorporating the roux. Whisk in a quarter-cup of balsamic vinegar and the spaghetti sauce. Bring to a boil. Add the mushrooms. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for about half an hour, until the sauce has reduced by about 30-50%. Add the chicken and onions back in about 15 minutes before cooking is finished. Add additional balsamic vinegar to achieve a nice balance of flavors. Finish by stirring in a tablespoon of cream.

• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 bag (16 oz) frozen spinach
• 1/2 lb cream cheese, cut into thin slices
• 1 cup artichoke hearts. (I buy them marinated in oil and vinegar and give them a quick rinse)
• 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 strips of bacon
• 1 oz cheddar cheese, torn into penny-sized chunks
• 2 tbsp ricotta cheese
• 1 tsp grated parmesan cheese

Cook the bacon. In a large bowl, combine two cans of soup, curry powder, and all but 1 tsp of the cream. In a casserole dish, layer, in order, vegetables, spinach, cream cheese, artichokes. Pour the soup mixture over this. Tear the bacon into pieces and layer over the soup. Dot the top with cheddar and ricotta. Drizzle remaining cream over and sprinkle with parmesan.
Cook at 350°F for 1 hour.

Good for resolving digestive issues resulting from living off of vending machine food for a week.

• 1 14-oz can (Don’t judge me) chopped spinach, drained
• 8 oz Cream of Mushroom Soup (Prepare from 1 can condensed, following directions. Use half)
• 2 oz Jarlsberg cheese, minced
• 2 Tbsp heavy cream
• 1/4 of a large onion, diced
• 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
• Pinch curry (I used Mohini Indian Fusion Vegetable Blend)
• Salt to taste

Spray a small skillet with non-stick cooking spray. Cook onions for a few minutes. Add spinach, soup, stir. Add Jarlsberg. Cook until spinach starts to stick to the pan, stirring often. Add cream, Parmesan. Sprinkle with curry. Stir. Reduce heat to low and cover.
Go pick up the baby and sit in the recliner with him on your chest. Try not to fall asleep as you comfort the baby. Right before nodding off, ask your wife to turn off the burner and stir. Put the baby to bed.