Cheat's Pappardelle with Slow-Braised Leeks and Crispy Porcini Pangrattato

This is a great recipe from Jamie Oliver. The link from the Food Network is:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/jamie-at-home/cheats-pappardelle-with-slow-braised-leeks-and-crispy-porcini-pangrattato-recipe/index.html

Ingredients

5 big leeks, outer leaves trimmed back, washed

Olive oil

3 good knobs butter, divided

3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced

A few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked

A small wineglass white wine

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 pint good-quality vegetable or chicken stock

12 slices ham, preferably Parma

2 (8-ounce) packages fresh lasagne sheets

All-purpose flour, for dusting

2 handfuls freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra for serving

For the Pangrattato:

1 small handful dried porcini mushrooms

1/2 ciabatta bread, preferably stale, cut into chunks

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 sprig fresh rosemary

Directions

Halve the leeks lengthways and cut at an angle into 1/2-inch slices. Heat a wide saucepan, add a splash of oil and a knob of butter, and when you hear a gentle sizzling add the sliced garlic, thyme leaves and leeks. Move the leeks around so every piece gets coated. Pour in the wine, season with pepper and stir in the stock. Cover the leeks with the slices of Parma ham, place a lid on the pan and cook gently for 25 to 30 minutes. Once the leeks are tender, take the pan off the heat.

To make the pangrattato:

Whiz the mushrooms and bread with a pinch of salt and pepper in a food processor until the mixture looks like bread crumbs. Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a frying pan. Add the garlic cloves and the rosemary and cook for a minute, then fry the bread crumbs in the oil until golden and crisp. Keep shaking the pan - don't let the bread crumbs catch on the bottom. Drain on paper towels, discard the rosemary and garlic and allow the bread crumbs to cool.

Bring a big pan of salted water to the boil. Lay the lasagne sheets on a clean working surface and sprinkle with a little flour. Place the sheets on top of each other and slice into 1/2-inch strips. Toss through your fingers to shake out the pappardelle, then cook in the boiling water 2 minutes or until al dente.

Remove the Parma ham from the saucepan, slice up and stir back into the leeks. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then stir in the Parmesan and the rest of the butter. Drain the pasta, reserving a little of the cooking water, and add the pasta to the leeks. Add a little of the cooking water if need be, to give you a silky, smooth sauce. Serve quickly, sprinkled with some pangrattato, extra Parmesan and any leftover thyme tips. Serve the rest of the pangrattato in a bowl on the side.

Miss Albany Breakfast

I haven't been to the Miss Albany Diner in years. For whatever reason, I had a very light morning last week and decided to grab breakfast there to see what it is like. I was craving my old standby, the huevos rancheros.

The place is the same - same random smell, as if something burned an hour ago. Same random customers truly from all walks of life. Same random stuff hanging on the wall and the miles to other cities posted on the board in the rear.

Much to my dismay, the rancheros were not on the menu, but many of the old standbys were. I settled on two over easy, homemade corned beef hash and rye toast.

I was very happy when my breakfast arrived. The eggs were perfect - runny yolks, firm whites. Potatoes were nice and crispy. Rye bread toasted with butter. But the hash, it was, well, surprising - definitely different from anything I had. First bite was a big hit of sage, along with a nice chunk of corned beef and some potato. It took me a few bites to get used to it, but once I did I was in love. The best is breaking that yolk and you get creamy yolk and hash and potato and egg and toast.......oh yeah. Before I knew it it was all gone. And I mean all gone - I was a member of the clean plate club! Oh, and they bring jars of jam to the table - it could just be Smuckers, but its a great touch.

Definitely will be going there again now that we have been reunited.

The Best Thing I Ever Ate...

This is actually a pretty interesting show on the Food Network for any foodie. I find it insightful that most chefs prefer pretty simple food for the most part (Bourdain likes to mention that a chef's favorite dishes are typically simple, rustic stews).

It got me thinking - what are some of the best meals and dishes I have had over the years? So, the result is the list below, in no particular order. I'm sure I'll be adding to this over time in new entries.

Marrow Bones, Blue Ribbon Bakery, NYC - I was there with friends, and ordered the marrow bones to an "ewwww" from my table mates. I told them they could skip it - I'll have it myself. By the time the fresh bread hit the table, those yummy marrow bones showed up and I ended up having to defend my turf for a short while, finally acquiescing and then ordering a second round. Being an aficionado of all things marrow, these were excellent, as was the ox tail marmalade that accompanied them.

Pigs in a Blanket, Brooklyn Diner, NYC - This diner is in mid-town, and has overall good food. BUT, no matter if I am there for breakfast, lunch or dinner, I have to get me an order of the pigs in a blanket. The kielbasa-style sausage, delicate pastry and spicy mustard are all just perfect.

Beef Wellington, Plumbush, Cold Spring, NY - This is a restaurant that has changed hands over the years, and did again as recently as a few years ago. Though I have not been there under the new owners, my memories still drift to the Beef Wellington, which was a Saturday-only special. Perfectly tender beef, crispy pastry dough and a killer liver pate ring around the meat - I can almost taste it now.

Warm Mushroom Salad, Cella Bistro, Niskayuna, NY - Warm Mushroom Salad + Loaf of Bread = A VERY happy John. This is just plain killer. Some portobello, wild mushrooms, shallots, garlic, a touch of chilis, roasted tomatoes and cheese. Holy cow. A seriously good dish that I could eat every day of the week.

Eggs and Corned Beef Hash, Justin's on Lark St., Albany, NY - Justin's does Sunday brunch, and the only dish to get is the Casted Hash and Eggs. Order the eggs over easy and skip the hollandaise (its good, just unnecessary in my opinion). Served in a hot cast iron skillet, there are huge chunks of corned beef, crispy potatoes and then the gooey yolk from the eggs.....heaven on a plate.

Eggs and Pastrami, Eisenberg's, NYC - Eisenberg's has become the adopted home for board meetings for one of my companies. To me it is the quintessential NYC deli - surly servers, small crowded dining room, a lot of quirks and some really fatty, really good pastrami. Combine that with two over medium and some rye toast or a bialy and, well, it just can't be beat. I look forward to these board meetings...

Ca Chien (Whole pan-fried flounder), My Linh, Albany, NY - This is a restaurant that is special to me and Libbie. Our first date. A famously great Valentine's dinner. Where we ate the night we got engaged. So, you can argue that I may be biased, but this dish is just fantastic. Whole fish, eyes staring at you and all, super crispy skin, nuoc mam, vegetables and rice. This is one of those dishes you just can't recreate at home. My mouth literally waters every time I think of it.

Burrito Espinaca, El Loco, Albany, NY - Another local restaurant, and another that Libbie really likes (as do I). Whenever we go, I just have to get the burrito espinaca. A perfect soft burrito topped with melted cheese and stuffed with this perfect combo of sauteed spinach, mushrooms and artichokes. Its just great.

Porterhouse, Keene's Steakhouse, NYC - Keene's, of all the great steakhouses, is one of my favorites, not only for the meat, but for the ambiance. The steak is just great - tender, juicy and flavorful. With a side of creamed spinach and mushrooms, you just can't go wrong. There are a lot of great steaks in NYC, but this is just one of the most memorable.

Calamari Appetizer, Cornell's, Schenectady, NY

This is one of those incredibly simple dishes that just plain works, and which you wish you could replicate at home! The calamari is always cooked perfectly, it has mushrooms, onions and a light red sauce that probably includes a lot of cream and a pound of butter! The sauce accepts the delicate calamari flavor just right, and I have been known to down nearly a loaf of Italian bread with the dish!

NY Times Article on Bread Baking

This is a great article on baking bread.

The original link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/dining/24curious.html?sudsredirect=true

Better Bread With Less Kneading

By HAROLD McGEE

WHEN I started making bread back in the 1970s, whether an establishment loaf from James Beard’s “Beard on Bread” or a countercultural one from “The Tassajara Bread Book,” it was a hands-on workout, kneading a stiff, elastic dough for what felt like a very long 10 to 15 minutes.

In the 1990s, I kneaded many hours away getting the hang of the tangy, crusty breads from the Acme Bread Company in the Bay Area, starting with the recipe that Steve Sullivan, Acme’s founder, had supplied for “Chez Panisse Cooking.”

Today I wonder what else I might have done with all those hours. Labor-saving bread books are nothing new, but the current crop includes several by respected professional bakers, and a consensus that kneading just isn’t necessary for good homemade bread. Most proclaim the virtues of doughs that are too wet and sticky to knead, nothing like the resilient doughs of the past. What happened to the idea that prolonged kneading works a dough’s gluten proteins into alignment, making it more elastic and capable of rising higher into a lighter loaf? Is it really true that less work can make better bread?

To find out, I baked variations on the same loaves daily for a few weeks — firm and wet, kneaded and not. Then I got a professional’s perspective from Michel Suas, founder of the San Francisco Baking Institute, a school nearby.

Mr. Suas was a pastry chef in a restaurant with three Michelin stars when he visited the United States in 1986, tasted the beginnings of an artisanal approach to bread that had gone moribund in his own country, and stayed on to work with the likes of Mr. Sullivan and Nancy Silverton of La Brea Bakery.

Several things became clear from my experiments. Wet, unkneaded doughs can make very good bread. Manipulating them for 10 to 15 minutes usually didn’t affect the results. Firm doughs do benefit from a few minutes of kneading, but only because it helps mix the flour evenly with the smaller proportion of water. Prolonged kneading didn’t make much difference in the finished loaves.

So why did we ever bother to knead? Mr. Suas explained that like supermarket breads today, homemade bread in the 1970s was modeled on English pan loaves, with a tight, even, fine-grained interior ideal for tidy sandwiches.

A firm, well-kneaded dough makes good sandwich bread, but not the open, irregular interiors of “rustic” loaves now in vogue. These are best made, Mr. Suas said, with a looser, wetter dough and gentler handling to preserve the pockets of gas from the yeast fermentation. The elastic gluten network develops slowly as the dough rises, and the baker helps out by occasionally lifting the dough edges and folding them over.

Some wet doughs can still benefit from kneading. One is the whole wheat dough from the latest version of “Amy’s Bread” by Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree, published this month by John Wiley & Sons.

Whole grains tend to absorb more water and produce weaker gluten networks, and I found that kneading, as the recipe directs, gave a lighter, loftier loaf. This book has recipes that more closely approximate the wet, gently handled doughs Ms. Scherber uses in her bakery. When “Amy’s Bread” was first published in 1996, Ms. Scherber deemed such recipes too challenging for the home baker.

I wasn’t happy with all the wet doughs I tried. While some held their shape and baked into beautiful loaves, others would flatten out and turn themselves into something like a focaccia, with a thin crust and a coarse interior that seemed more gummy than bready.

Mr. Suas said that these disappointing recipes were too wet. “Water doesn’t give you any flavor or structure, so enough to hold the flour together is enough,” he told me. “Any more and you don’t get bread, you get thick blini. Or bread pudding without the eggs.”

He recommended choosing recipes under 75 percent hydration: a weight of water that is 75 percent or less the weight of the flour. (A calculator is handy for understanding baking.) His favorite hydration for a workable dough that produces a well-aerated, crusty loaf is 68 percent. Some recipes that I tested exceeded 90 percent. James Beard’s basic loaf was 60 percent.

So doughs of a certain wetness and little or no kneading can make delicious bread. But beware of other “revolutionary” ideas that are little more than industrial shortcuts on a small scale. This is true above all for methods that save time and effort with large doses of yeast. The doughs rise in a couple of hours, but the breads are harsh and acrid with instant-yeast flavor. Whole-grain flours or other flavorful ingredients can mask it, but only partly.

“Increasing the yeast to speed the fermentation, that’s a big no-no for quality,” said Mr. Suas, who likened it to trying to imitate sourdough flavor by adding vinegar or beer. “Why even bother to make bread like this? It’s bad!”

Among the recent books whose recipes I tried, Jim Lahey’s justly celebrated “My Bread,” written with Rick Flaste, puts together a brilliant technique trifecta: a wet dough that can be stirred together without kneading; a long, slow fermentation with just a gram of yeast, so that its flavor doesn’t dominate; and tipping the risen dough into a heated pot and lid, which heat the dough quickly and trap its steam to boost its “oven spring.” “Artisan Breads Every Day,” by the baker and teacher Peter Reinhart, is a lucid compendium of modern approaches.

Other notes from my baking bout:

Look for recipes that give ingredient weights, and avoid measuring in cups and spoons, which include variable amounts of empty space. This will also let you calculate dough hydrations and avoid overly wet recipes. Just divide the total liquid weight by the total flour weight, and if the answer is much above 0.75, expect a relatively flat loaf.

If your bread comes out bland, as a number of mine were, check the salt, which is essential for good aroma as well as taste. Mr. Suas said wet doughs need more salt than firm ones, around 2 percent of the flour weight. If you measure by spoonfuls, remember that it will take more kosher salt than granulated salt to get the same weight, because kosher salt does not pack as densely.

It’s easier to get a good oven rise and an open, airy interior with elongated loaves or small rolls instead of a large round loaf. These shapes also give you more surface area for a flavorful crust.

And there’s nothing like cutting into a loaf of bread you’ve just made and seeing the signs of its exuberant rise captured in every slice.

Beef Stroganoff

This is one of Libbie's favorites. It came from her Mom, but the original origin is currently unknown.

Ingredients:

1 pound of beef cut into 1/4" strips

4 tablespoons butter

1/2 pound fresh sliced mushrooms

1 small onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 1/4 cup beef stock

1 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons white wine

Flour

Directions:

Coat beef strips with 1 tablespoon flour and two large pinches of salt.

Heat large pan over high heat and add 2 tablespoons of butter. When melted and stopped bubbling, add the beef and brown quickly on all sides. Add mushrooms, onions and garlic and cook a few minutes more. Remove everything from the pan and set aside.

Add another 2 tablespoons butter to the pan and add 3 tablespoons of flour and combine to make a roux. Cook for 3-4 minutes. Add tomato paste and beef stock and bring to a boil and cook until thickened.

Return meat mixture to stock and heat through then turn heat to low. Stir in sour cream and wine and cook until heated - do not boil.

Serve over buttered egg noodles.

Vegetable Soup

This soup reminds me of cool, crisp days growing up. We would play outside until we couldn't feel our fingers and then come in to a warm bowl of this soup with some fresh, warm rolls. I'm getting a bit nostalgic...

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon paprika

6 cups chicken stock

2 potatoes, cut into 1/2" cubes

1 1/2 cup cauliflower florets, chopped

2 carrots peeled and sliced

1 cup frozen peas

1 1/2 cup wax beans, cut into 1-2" pieces

5 peppercorns and 4 cloves in a tea steeper

1/4 cup rice

Salt and pepper

Olive oil

Directions:

Heat 2-3 tablespoons oil in large pot. Saute onions until soft, then add parsley and garlic and saute for just a couple of minutes. Add paprika and saute 1 minute more, being careful not to burn the paprika.

Add the chicken stock, all the veggies and the tea steeper and bring to a boil. Cook for 20 minutes then add rice and cook another 20 minutes until the rice is cooked through. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Chicken Goulash

This is the BEST - definitely the #1 comfort food from my childhood. It is fairly simple, but is a terrific dish. The recipe for the homemade noodles is on this site as well, or you can substitute egg noodles too.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cut into parts

2 medium onions, chopped

2 carrots, chopped plus 2 carrots halved

2 tablespoons paprika

2 potatoes, quartered

1 cup chicken stock

1 tablespoon tomato paste

Olive oil

Directions:

Pat chicken dry and lightly salt and pepper.

Heat 4-5 tablespoons oil in large pan over medium high heat. Brown chicken on all sides and remove from the pan.

If necessary, add a little extra olive oil and add onion and chopped carrots. Saute until soft and onions are translucent. Put chicken back into pan.

Add paprika to coat chicken, mix and let saute for a couple of minutes, taking care not to burn the paprika.

Add chicken stock and tomato paste, mix, bring to boil, cover and cook over low heat for 45 minutes. Add potatoes and carrot halves after 30 minutes.

Serve with homemade noodles or egg noodles.