Salami croissant panini

Do you really need a cookbook for making panini? Probably not. But some of the ideas in this cookbook are for combinations of toppings and ingredients that might not occur to you. This is far from the inventive category, but it works for a quick weeknight supper or a weekend lunch.

Salami and Fontina croissants
Adapted from "200 Best Panini Recipes" by Tiffany Collins

Ingredients
2 croissants, split
Dijon mustard
2 ounces fontina, sliced
2 ounces thinly sliced salami
1/2 cup arugula
1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Method
Spread insides of croissants with Dijon mustard. Top with fontina, salami, arugula and Parmesan. Grill in panini press until golden and cheese is melty. (Or grill in a grill pan about 4 minutes a side if you don't have a panini press.)

Chicken breasts with currant jelly sauce

Chicken breasts with currant jelly sauce

Adapted from “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry,” by Cathy Barrow. While this book is mostly concerned with food preservation, she also includes some bonus recipes to use the items you preserve. In this recipe, it’s the red currant jelly, which I happened to have a partial jar of on hand.

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

½ cup flour, mixed liberally with pepper and some salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons butter, divided

1 shallot, minced

½ cup white wine

½ cup red currant jelly

2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Method

Pat chicken breasts dry with paper towels. Dredge in flour mixture. Heat oil and 2 tablespoons butter in a deep saute pan over medium high heat. Add breasts, top side down (skin-side, if it still had it on). Let come to a deep brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Flip over and brown the other side, cooking until done, another 6 minutes or so.

Remove from pan and tent to keep warm. Lower heat to medium. Add shallots to pan and cook until softened. Add wine, deglazing the pan. Whisk in jelly, thyme and mustard and cook until slightly thickened. Add remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve sauce over chicken.

Rating: Nice flavors and a fairly speedy way to make a quite presentable supper. If I found myself with these ingredients on hand and unexpected guests on my doorstep, this could measure up while still being essentially a fast weeknight meal. 

And it's one less bottle of little bits of jelly eating up room in my refrigerator. Speaking of refrigerator space, Samsung has come out with a counter-depth version of its T9000. It's a four-door model with one portion that can flex between a freezer or a refrigerator depending on what kind of storage space you need most at that moment. Genius idea, if it works.

Black bean soup

I should devise a point system for recipes, with X points for a company-worthy rating, X points for taste and X points for utility. This recipe does quite well in the utility department, because it lets me use up lots of things in need of use: one of those limes I didn’t use for the cocktail party, some ham lurking in the freezer from a long-ago family gathering, and it makes a dent in the dried bean supply.

Until I did a bit of reorganization of my lazy susan corner pantry last fall, my dried goods had gotten a bit out of control. Since I couldn’t tell at a quick glance what I had, or if I didn’t remember to look before I went to the store, I’d just buy another package of beans for a recipe just in case. Then end result, once rationalized, was a ridiculous quantity of a wide variety of dried beans.

I prefer to cook my own beans if I have the time, because they’re so much more flavorful, and I can control the consistency and salt factor better. I can’t claim to do it all the time, but if I do, here’s my strategy: Thursday night I set the package of beans out on the counter so I’ll see it when I get home the next day. Friday I soak the beans overnight. Saturday I either drain them and store them in the frig until I’m ready to cook them or start them right away in the slow cooker: Put the drained beans in the slow cooker. Stir in a teaspoon of salt per pound of beans. Add a bay leaf and place a quartered onion on the top. Add enough water to coat by 2 inches. Cover and cook on low for 5 to 8 hours, depending on how mushy you want them. If you want more salt, add it at the end of the cooking time.

I generally try to cook 2 pounds of beans at a time, partly because you get more beans for the same amount of effort and partly because I find they cook much faster if I have enough beans to do them in the larger oval crockpot rather than a 1-pound bag in the old-school upright slow cooker. Beans freeze really well. I divide them into containers of 1¾ cups of beans, since that’s about how much is in a can and many recipes call for that.

Black-bean soup

Adapted from Everyday Food, Jan./Feb. 2004

Ingredients

8-ounce slab of ham

1 tablespoon light olive oil

1 small red onion, finely chopped

1 jalapeno chile, finely chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

½ teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon dried oregano

6 cups cooked black beans, or 3 cans drained and rinsed

4 cups water

Juice of 1 lime

½ cup chopped cilantro, divided

Method

In a large saucepan, brown ham on both sides. Remove from skillet. Add olive oil to pan and add onion. Cook until softened. Add jalapeno and garlic, cumin and oregano. Stir for 1 minute. Add beans and water. Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop ham into ½-inch pieces. Remove soup from heat, and with a stick blender, puree soup. Or transfer to a blender in batches. (I left a few solid beans for color and texture, because otherwise it's kind of unattractive.) Return to heat and stir in ham, lime juice and most of cilantro, reserving some for garnish. Cook for another 10 minutes, then dish into bowls and garnish with remaining cilantro. Serves 4 realistically.

Rating: Fine enough flavors; the lime juice and cilantro help brighten it, and the ham makes it hearty. Not the lookiest of soups; pureed black beans result in a sort of pasty, purplish gray that’s not the most appetizing color, so it might not be my first choice of company food. But it made a good weekend lunch soup. If you’d like a vegetarian version, I think it would be a perfectly fine recipe without it.

Followup: This is one of those soups that definitely benefits from being made ahead. The leftovers greatly raised my opinion of this soup.

Spinach, potato, bacon and goat cheese frittata

Sometimes I guess about right on the number of eggs I buy for holiday baking. Sometimes I find myself in mid-January in need of polishing off some eggs. This time I tried a frittata that promised to use up nearly a dozen. Besides, well, there's bacon.

Spinach, potato and bacon frittata

Adapted from Cook’s Country

Ingredients

10 eggs

3 tablespoons half and half

½ cup crumbled goat cheese, divided

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¾ pound Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces

½ teaspoon olive oil

5 ounces baby spinach

6 slices bacon, cut crosswise into ¼-inch slices

Method

Whisk together eggs, half and half, half the goat cheese, salt and pepper. Set aside.

Microwave potatoes for 5 minutes on high in a covered casserole. Meanwhile, adjust an oven rack so it’s 5 inches from the broiler.

In an oven-safe skillet just big enough to hold all the ingredients, heat olive oil over medium heat. (My 10-inch Le Creuset pan worked, but it's fairly deep, so use a larger diameter if you've got a shallow pan.) Stir in spinach, in batches if needed, until wilted. Remove from pan and set aside. Add bacon slices to pan and cook until crisp. (Meanwhile, start preheating your broiler.) Remove from pan to drain on paper towels.

In 1 tablespoon remaining drippings (add butter if you need more, or drain off fat if you need less), cook potatoes until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add spinach, bacon and egg mixture to pan, stirring with a heat-proof rubber spatula until eggs start to form large congealed chunks. (This happens pretty quickly.) Spread the mixture evenly in the pan, and then let the mixture cook until the bottom is set, about half a minute.

Top with remaining goat cheese. Broil until top starts to turn golden about 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes to finish cooking. Slice into four wedges. Serves 4 heartily.

 

Rating:  Tasty, hearty. The goat cheese gives it a nice tang and the potatoes give it a lot of heft. And well, there's bacon.

Grilled cheese panini and chili

Cooking can get you what you need in life. That’s more or less the underlying message of a couple of cookbooks I’ve been reading lately, starting with Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year.” Unlike most cookbooks where you skip the forward and skim through the recipes, this is a book you read, almost as much as it is a cookbook. It follows the longtime Gourmet magazine editor’s journey of recovery in the kitchen after Condé Nast abruptly pulled the plug on that bastion of all things food-related.

It’s one of those books that make me pause frequently while reading because it resonates perhaps a bit too much. Any journalist who has been herded en masse into a cold dark conference room to hear the latest grim news that presages mass job losses can relate. But it’s also a very hopeful book, with the power of cooking pulling her out of the darkest hours. She’s saved by the rhythmic comfort of cooking, the rituals of gathering the best of the season and translating it into simply good food. It makes me want to play hooky and go on a shopping tour of all the food purveyors of the city.

Reichl’s cookbook is filled with lush photography of the country and food. My only nit: the gimmick of tweets quoted at the beginning of each entry gets old about half way through her “year,” but it’s a small gripe about an otherwise great book. If you try this cookbook and want to learn more about how Reichl turned into the kind of cook she is, her memoir “Tender at the Bone” is an entertaining read as well. 

Reichl’s approach to cooking doesn’t begrudge effort, but it isn’t exacting about detail or ingredients. The recipes enable flexibility to cook with what’s at hand to achieve the food you want to eat. That’s appropriate for these two recipes I tried first, chosen because I had the ingredients more or less on hand on one of those no-way-in-hell-am-I-going-outside recent weekends.

The diva of grilled cheese

Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year”

Ingredients

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 garlic cloves, minced

4 green onions chopped fine, or the white parts of a small leek

2 large shallots, chopped fine

1½ cups grated cheddar, divided (use the tastiest you can find)

4 slices sourdough bread

Butter and mayonnaise

Method

Mix together the chopped onion, shallots and garlic. (Basically she suggests chopping up whatever oniony items you’ve got handy.) Add all but 2 tablespoons of the cheese and toss mixture together.

Spread one side of each piece of bread with butter. (OK, so there was no softened butter in my stone-cold house, so I used aioli. I know how to cheat.) Spread mayonnaise thinly on the outside of the bread to help keep it from sticking to the grill. Divide the cheese mixture in half and put on two slices of bread. Top with remaining bread slices. Press a tablespoon of grated cheese firmly onto the tops of the sandwiches. Place on heated griddle (or in a panini press, as I did) and grill about four minutes a side until the cheese is “softly melted,” as she so wonderfully puts it.

Rating: Makes two ooey-gooey cheese sandwiches. Much as I loved the combination of Campbell’s tomato soup and Velveeta grilled cheese sammies as a child, this is a version worth growing up for. The best touch is what happens to that layer of cheese on the outside, which turns into a golden brown layer that's become part of the bread. Dave’s take: “I guess unemployment is good for something.” 

 

Basic chili

Adapted from “My Kitchen Year,” by Ruth Reichl. She includes a recipe for making your own chili powder, but I didn’t have those ingredients on hand so I can’t vouch for the element she feels is key. I was just congratulating myself on having fresh oregano growing in the basement and some of the summer’s tomatoes in the freezer since I was out of canned.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 medium onions, diced

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves, chopped if they’re large

1 tablespoon chili powder, divided

1 teaspoon cumin

1 pound ground beef (she used bison; I used some nice lean meat from Hilltop)

3 chipotle chiles in adobe sauce

28 ounces of canned tomatoes

1 12-ounce bottle of dark beer

1 cup chicken stock

1½ cup cooked black beans

2 ounces dark chocolate, optional

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, optional

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook until tender. Add garlic and cook another minute. Add oregano, 2 teaspoons chili powder, cumin and salt and pepper. Add ground beef and cook until no longer pink, stirring to break up the chunks. Puree the chipotle chiles. Add to pot along with tomatoes and remaining chili powder. Add beer and broth. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add beans, and chocolate and balsamic vinegar, if using, and simmer for another 10 minutes to let flavors meld.

Rating: It’s a decent chili, which I’d say serves about 6. Perhaps not the best I’ve ever made, but it was reasonably tasty. The original recipe calls for even more chipotles, but that was all I had in the house, and I think any more adobe would have overwhelmed the flavor. If I try it again, I think I’d opt for more chili powder and slightly less chipotle.

If you want to see her chili powder recipe, click here.

German braised red cabbage

We all have our own definitions of comfort food, and one I came to later in life is braised red cabbage. I first tried this, somewhat skeptically, at Black Forest Inn. I became an instant convert, and have made it multiple times since. This is probably the fourth version I've tried, and it's definitely right up there. A good thing to have simmering away late on a very cold Sunday afternoon.

German braised red cabbage

From “New Classics Cookbook” by Saveur magazine

Ingredients

6 slices bacon, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon sugar

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped

1/3 cup port

¼ cup red wine vinegar

8 cups grated red cabbage

2 cups broth

¼ cup red currant jelly

Method

Cook bacon in large pot over medium-high heat until crisp. Add sugar and cook, stirring for 30 seconds. Reduce heat to medium. Add onions. Season with salt and pepper (you’ll be adding more later). Cook until onions are golden and soft. Add apples. Cover and cook until tender, about 8 minutes.

Add port, vinegar and cabbage. Cover and cook until cabbage wilts slightly, about 7 minutes. Add stock. Season with more salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then cover and simmer until cabbage is tender, about 1¼ hours. Stir in red currant jelly and raise heat to medium high. Cook uncovered until mixture thickens slightly. Season to taste with salt and pepper.