That kind of weekend

Cara sposa
Adapted from "New York Bartender's Guide" by Sally Ann Berk. This guide has a much better index than most I've run across, making it possible to find something to make with what you've got on hand.

Ingredients:
3 parts coffee liqueur
2 parts orange liqueur such as Cointreau
2 parts half and half

Method:
Combine liqueurs, half and half and ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a cocktail glass.

Yes, it was that kind of weekend. The kind where parental health situations spiral from not great to holy crap, and when you do the math and realize that by the end of the week, you will have had one day not at work out of the last 20. When the wind rips off part of the precariously perched structure formerly known as a porch and deposits it farther out in the yard. Yes, that kind of weekend.

So out come the holiday liqueurs that I blogged about here, some dairy badness and the crystal martini glass in an attempt to salvage the tail end of the weekend.

Rating: I'm not much into cream drinks, but this was pretty tasty, thanks especially to that Caribou-bean laced liqueur. Don't think the caffeine will keep me up tonight.

Top 5 reasons to love a slow cooker

Good Woman's Chicken Pot Roast from "Ready and Waiting" by Rick Rodgers

I’m a late-in-life convert to slow cookers. I was given one as a bridal shower present decades ago, but was too snobbish to consider using it for anything other than mulled cider at Christmas time. I associated it with the types of casseroles that showed up at community events, glued together by cream of mushroom soup and topped with the world’s greasiest potato chips.

Then I stumbled across Lora Brody’s "Slow Cooker Cooking," and was intrigued enough to give some of the recipes a whirl. Beef bourguignon and cassoulet in a crockpot sounded almost too good to be true, but worth a try. Definitely worth a try, and worth repeating, and buying that all-important larger second crockpot with the countdown timer.

Here are my top reasons I now love my slow cooker:

1. Homemade broth with less fuss. I’ve blogged about this one before, so I’ll send you to that post here for the full recipe, but suffice to say, mastering this has been transformative.

2. Cooked beans so easy and so tasty that make you wonder why on earth you buy the canned versions. I got the recipe from Kitchn.com here. In my experience, the beans are done much earlier than this recipe would indicate; I would check them after four hours, especially if you want to use the beans in a salad.

3. Caramelized onions. This ridiculously simple and tasty version comes from Lora Brody’s book. Slice up as many onions as your slow cooker will hold. Cut up a stick of butter in to chunks. Cook on low for at least 12 hours. Unbelievably, they turn a caramel brown, and taste like heaven on pasta, pizza, burgers or sandwiches.

 I use a mix of whatever color onions I have on hand.

After 12 hours, the onions have cooked down and browned.

4. Make ahead and hold mashed potatoes. Cooking, ricing and larding your potatoes up with dairy goodness in advance makes any holiday event so much less hassle. Just make sure to get your potatoes a little on the runnier side than you would ordinarily serve them so when they dry up a bit in the slow cooker, they’ll wind up the right consistency.

5. Good woman's chicken pot roast from “Ready and Waiting” by Rick Rodgers will definitely make you feel like a good woman when you leave this meal waiting. One browned cut-up chicken placed over top a bed of potatoes and browned carrots and onions, flavored with French herbs and topped with a cup or so of good chicken broth, and cooked for 5 to 6 hours on low and you’re almost there. Put the chicken and veggies on a platter and reduce the sauce on the stove top and you’ve got weekend-style comfort food on a weeknight.

Honorable mention: Beef bourguignon from Lora Brody’s “Slow Cooker Cooking.” Not quite as good as my favorite version from Saveur November 1998, but definitely less trouble and still tasty.

Guilty pleasure: Sausages and kraut slathered in honey mustard and cooked in beer. Judge if you must.

Favorite slow cooker cookbooks:

1. “Ready and Waiting” by Rick Rodgers. I thank former co-worker Jarrett for clueing me in to this gem. Good enough to convert the creamed canned soup crowd.

2. “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone. French-style slow-cooked dishes translate perfectly to the slow cooker treatment. She’s also written an Italian version I’m considering.

3. “Slow CookerCooking” by Lora Brody. Not every recipe in here is a winner, but the caramelized onions alone are worth it.

Favorite accessories:

Slow cooker liners: Especially for those old-school models that don’t have a removable crock, these greatly speed cleanup. Plus, I can just lift out the leftovers in the bag and transfer them to a container to store.

A crockpot carrier: For those of us who find ourselves having to frequently transport these for family meals, this is a big winner. It certainly beats having to listen to the lid rattle in the back of the Outback for four and a half hours.

Provencal slow cooker beef stew

Provencal beef stew with black olives

Adapted from “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone, a collection of tasty recipes you can check out here.

Ingredients:

4 pounds beef chuck, cut into 2-inch chunks

Flour for dredging

4 slices of bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces

½ cup dry white wine

5 peeled garlic cloves

2 medium onions, chopped

1 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes

A handful of fresh thyme sprigs

Zest of half an orange, cut in thick strips

1 bay leaf

½ cup beef broth

1 cup black olives, pitted and sliced

¼ parsley, chopped (optional)

Method:

Cook the bacon in a large skillet until browned and crisp. Transfer to slow cooker.

Pat beef dry. Season with salt and pepper and toss with flour. Brown beef in batches in the same skillet, adding oil for later batches if needed. Allow some time for this, it’s likely to take four batches worth even in your largest skillet. Transfer meat to slow cooker as it gets browned.

Add wine to skillet to deglaze the pan; add to slow cooker along with all remaining ingredients but olives and parsley. Cook for 8 to 10 hours on low. Stir in olives at the end. Garnish with parsley if desired.

Rating: I have to take Dave’s word for this one, since I left it for his supper, but he seemed enthusiastic, as he is about anything that involves bacon. I'm always on the lookout for slow cooker recipes that take up to 10 hours to cook, since I'm likely to be gone at least that long, but this isn't one you could readily pull together before work unless you do all the prep in advance and just refrigerate the insert overnight.

Followup: Just had a spoonful of the leftovers. Tender beef with a really nice orange flavor throughout, with a smoky background of bacon.

Sausage mushroom pizza

This is my version of an antidote to a weekend OT shift that left me cranky. It didn't entirely cure the crankiness, but it did cure the hunger factor.

Pizza with sausage, shiitakes and fire-roasted tomato sauce

Ingredients:
1 pizza crust dough (or I suppose you could use a Boboli in a pinch if you don't have packets of pizza crust dough lurking in your freezer courtesy of your sourdough starter)
1/2 pound sausage, sliced 3/8-inch thick
1 package sliced shiitake mushrooms
1 15-ounce can fire-roasted tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
shredded pizza cheese

Method:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Sprinkle pizza baking stone with cornmeal. Shape dough into rough rectangle about a 1/4-inch thick.

Brown sausage in large skillet. Remove from pan. Add a drizzle of olive oil and saute mushrooms. Remove from pan. Add garlic to pan and cook about one minute. Add tomatoes and cook until liquid has nearly evaporated. If your sausage isn't salty, you might want to salt the sauce, but I found cooking the sauce in the same pot made it pick up the flavors so it wasn't necessary.

Spread tomato-garlic sauce over crust. Top with sausages, then mushrooms, and as much shredded pizza cheese as suits your fancy. Bake about 15 minutes.

Salmon in parchment

Salmon and leeks baked in parchment

Adapted from “The Best of Martha Stewart Living: What to Have for Dinner”

Ingredients:

2 salmon fillets

1 small leek, washed and thinly sliced, about 1 cup (use white and light green parts)

2 tablespoons white wine

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ cup chopped fresh herbs

Note: the original recipe called for chervil, which I couldn’t find at this time of year, so I used a mixture of parsley, lemon thyme and some of the tarragon which miraculously volunteered in the same pot as last year

1 teaspoon or more of melted butter for brushing parchment

Method:

Cut two generous sheets of parchment. Make them bigger than you think you need, maybe 18 inches or so. Fold each sheet in half and cut out a heart shape. Place a salmon fillet near the fold and put half the leeks next to it. Drizzle the fillets with the white wine and olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Top each fillet with half the herbs.

Brush the edges of the parchment paper with the butter, which will help them stick together. Fold along the fold and seal up edges, starting at one end and crimping well as you go to avoid creating places for steam to escape. Brush the outsides with the remaining melted butter. Place on a baking sheet and bake in a 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, depending on salmon thickness.

Rating: Just a step above OK as is. The leeks were nicely flavored by the herbs. The lemon thyme was a bright note; if I didn’t have lemon thyme I think adding lemon zest might be worth a try. In fairness to the recipe, I suspect this is one of those cases in which the quality of the salmon is key. I used Target house brand frozen fillets I had in the freezer in need of using up, and now I’m remembering why they have been lingering down there to begin with. I think this treatment certainly elevated the salmon as much as it could be, but there’s only so much you can do with otherwise lifeless salmon. 

The house brand frozen tilapia and cod are serviceable in recipes, but I’ll skip the salmon from now on even though the fresh kind is a budget buster. It's worth trying the recipe again with good quality salmon, because it's super fast and probably ridiculously healthful.

Saffron couscous

Saffron couscous

Adapted from “The Best of Martha Stewart Living: What to Have for Dinner,” now available new for 94 cents in hardcover on Amazon closeout. Beats the $20 I shelled out for in paperback back when I was in the habit of buying every new book that Martha produced.

Ingredients:

1½ cups couscous

1½ cups chicken stock

Pinch of saffron

2 teaspoons butter, optional

½ cup currants

3 green onions, chopped

½ cup oil-cured black olives, pitted and chopped

Note: If you can’t find oil-cured olives, omit them. Brine-cured olives are no substitute for the oil-cured versions that almost seem more like dried fruit in consistency.

Method:

Bring stock and saffron to a boil. Place couscous in a large, heat-tolerant bowl and pour boiling mixture over the top. Cover with a plate or foil and let sit for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork, adding butter if desired. (I had some melted butter leftover from another dish, so it seemed like a sign, even though it didn’t seem entirely called for. Since it was salted butter, I didn’t add salt and that worked out about right, flavor-wise.) Stir in currants, green onions and olives. Salt and pepper to taste.

Rating: A very fast, very tasty side dish. Out of three new dishes that were part of Sunday night supper, this stood out. And the leftovers with some added chicken are working for Dave lunches. (I get yogurt, he gets savories. If only I too was willing to work out like a maniac.)

Spinach-apple salad with goat cheese

Winter spinach salad

From the “Best of Martha Stewart Living: What to Have for Dinner,” a collection of recipes from the magazine. The rest of the menu said spring, but the weather and this salad reflect the fact that it’s still not really time to break out the spring recipes or put away the coats.

Ingredients:

6 cups baby spinach

1/3 cup dried sour cherries

3 green onions, sliced

1 Granny Smith apple, cored and very thinly sliced

½ cup seedless red grapes, halved

¼ cup chopped walnuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons cider vinegar

2 ounces crumbled goat cheese

Method:

Combine spinach, cherries, green onions, apple, grapes and walnuts. Mix oil and vinegar; season to taste with salt and pepper. Toss vinaigrette with salad, top with goat cheese.

Rating: Quite nice. It’s especially nice to have a clear-cut winner after some recent busts in the salad category. This one doesn’t need any help, despite its super-simple dressing.