As promised I am kicking off my summer food and cooking series this week using old Cook’s Illustrated Magazines for inspiration. I have decided on three categories to peak your interest as follows:
Paul’s New Dish of the Week
Paella has its origins in the Spanish culture when women in agricultural areas needed to feed a crowd and wanted to use large quantities of rice along with anything they had on hand and their husbands couldn’t sell at the daily meat and/or fish markets. It was cooked in flat bottomed pans over an open wood fire and was anything but fancy in those days. Today, when served in restaurants, it is a complicated time consuming dish using lots of ingredients. In an effort to appeal to the home cook, Cook’s Illustrated pared down the recipe in complexity and ingredients so Paul decided to try it out on Saturday night’s dinner guests. The recipe required some additional substitutions based on local ingredient availability; we used Arborio rice instead of Valencia, hot Italian sausages and pepperoni sticks instead of Spanish chorizo and turmeric instead of saffron for spice and color. To reduce cooking time, the recipe called for cut up chicken thighs instead of large chicken breasts. To reduce cost and address product availability, it used shrimp instead of shell fish. After sautéing all ingredients separately, including lots of vegetables, partially cooking the rice in broth and adding all the ingredients together it went in the oven and was finished off on the stove to get a crispy crust on the bottom of the pan. It is brought to the table in the wide shallow cooking pan which made for a great epicurean table visual which our guest took a picture of. It was delicious, albeit a bit spicy from the choice of sausages. There are many Paella recipes out there that can be modified for personal preference so be brave and get creative.
After collecting dust in our Flagstaff garage for the past several years, Paul cleaned and fired up his bread machine this past week making a lovely Italian Herb Bread and a Whole Wheat/Rye/Corn Meal Bread to which he added flax meal raising both flavor and fiber. Stay tuned for more new bread experiments ahead.
Ann’s Experiments
To accompany grilled pork Paul made one evening, I roasted a whole cauliflower in a little olive oil, sesame oil, hoisin sauce and other Asian spices. It turned out great and guests who don’t like cauliflower raved about it. Check out Pinterest for variations on this easy recipe.
I have also been working with rhubarb the past several weeks. So far my products included rhubarb cake, rhubarb scones, rhubarb muffins, rhubarb sauce & rhubarb jam. All turned out fine but the nature of rhubarb make the baked items come out a bit mushy. In the baked goods, I replaced some of the white flour with whole wheat flour and almond flour, the later of which leads to spongier products. I used natural pectin sources (apple peel & orange rind) in the jam but also added powdered pectin as I often have set troubles because I try to get away with less sugar and large batches, both of which I know are verboten. Stay tuned for the results of rhubarb bbq sauce and rhubarb ice cream, both of which are a little outside the box for use of rhubarb.
Finally, I made a lovely asparagus soup, using asparagus from our patch, and I am going to add a little goat cheese to a roast asparagus recipe this evening. Yum! In closing per Cook’s Illustrated:
Did You Know?
-You can make toast for a crowd in the oven by sliding slices of bread between the rack slots using a cookie sheet to hold them up.
-Plain yogurt makes a healthy substitute for sour cream.
-Add a little molasses to regular sugar to replace brown sugar.
-Slice and freeze ripe bananas for late night sweet treats which will cut down on the volume of black bananas in your freezer waiting for you to make banana bread.
-Oil your hands before working with beets to avoid staining.
-Before tossing the whole roll out in frustration, try using an old toothbrush to loosen the end of plastic wrap. 2019