Parmesan broth

When we think of broth, many of us grew up conditioned to think of things that came in cans, in cubes, or if we were lucky, in a pot with a chicken. At any rate, chickens were nearly always either involved or implied.

We were aware, of course, of the concept of beef broth, generally that highly salted stuff from a can that my mother used for onion soup topped with rusks, a food I had in no other context. And at a stretch, there was vegetable broth, chicken soup’s less attractive cousin, which out of the standard can, is borderline nasty.

These days food snobs are all about their marrow broth and other beef concoctions. And the rise of vegetarianism has elevated vegetable broth from its bitter roots, if you’ll pardon the expression.

But beyond the big three broths lie another world worth exploring. Basically, if it’s edible, you can consider the broth possibilities: Pea broth, for instance, makes use of the often-tossed half of shelling peas; corn stock coaxes the most out of shorn corn cobs.

The urge to press leftover bits into use is part parsimony, part alchemy. Often you’ll find the end result transcends the original material, now distilled to its best self.

That’s never truer than with Parmesan broth, made with those hard ends and rinds that dry up into inedibility at the back of the cheese drawer. I’d toss them into a bag in the freezer, occasionally bringing them out to play as background flavor in soups. But by the time I’d collected two big bags of them, clearly it was time to look for further uses.

Enter Parmesan broth, a wonderful elixir that will make you pine for more random ends of cheese. It’s simple to make, and simply divine. I eke it out in smaller amounts; no need to waste it all on one dish, as just a bit will add tremendous flavor. A few tablespoons added to pasta instead of extra cooking water boosts the flavor exponentially. Ditto with soups. And risotto? To die for. So even if you’re ready to stash the soup pot for another year, this broth isn’t bound by any season.

Parmesan broth

From Bon Appetit, December 2014

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 head of garlic, halved crosswise
1 bunch of thyme
1 bay leaf
3-4 parsley sprigs
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 cup dry white wine
1 pound Parmesan rinds (this is a lot, it mostly filled the bowl that came with my scale)
8 cups water

Method
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cook onion, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, parsley and peppercorns for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until garlic picks up color.

Add wine, deglazing the bottom of the pan, and bring to a simmer. Cook until wine is reduced by about half.

Add Parmesan and water. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 2 hours until broth is reduced by about half.

Rating: If the gushing above wasn't enough, I don't know what will convince you to make this.

Alas, it will be many moons before I have enough rinds to make this again. My days of blithely buying what Mario Batali calls the undisputed king of cheeses ended during the economic unpleasantry. But it was great good fun while it lasted.

But in a sign of more welcome tidings, Surdyk's says it's open today. It's Sunday. In Minnesota. And at long last, you can buy booze, or at least they sent out an e-mail to that effect. What will they think of next?

Kale week begins

Officially, National Kale Day is the first Wednesday in October. But I was on vacation then, and also, I have enough kale to use up that I can't confine it to just one day. So expect a week of my favorite fall kale soups and such ahead.

Every year I have good intentions of just planting one kale plant. But seemingly every year this plan goes awry. Interlopers creep in via a multi-pack of greens. Someone offered me a Dinosaur kale (lacintino) at the plant swap in exchange for something I was just trying to get rid of, so I said sure. And surely enough, I now am facing impending frost dates with four very large kale plants in need of use. So here goes.

First, I start picking the biggest leaves at the base of the stem and go back after more once I've cooked my way through that lot. Wash all the leaves carefully, because falling tree debris tends to nestle in their ruffles. When dealing with the biggest leaves, you'll need to cut out the tough center stem up to the point where the rest of the plant is tender. (If you're starting with small kale greens from the grocery store, skip ahead to the chopping bit.)

If you're going to be using the kale within a week, go ahead and chop it up. If you're hoping to freeze it for later, blanch it in boiling water for a few minutes first to stop the growing process and then proceed with the chopping.

Unless you're making kale chips, you'll want to chop up the leaves. (Just google kale chips if you haven't tried it, it does actually work and is definitely worth making at least once -- just watch them very carefully because the window between raw leaves and incinerated chips is very, very small.)

Place your leaves in a pile several leaves high. Roll up like a jelly roll and chiffonade the leaves into wide ribbons.

If you plan to use the leaves in a saute or pasta sauce, you can store them at this point until you're ready to use. For most other uses, you want the leaves much smaller. In soups, you'll want the leaf pieces no bigger than a soup spoon size at most, and most leaves should be much smaller. Otherwise it's like restaurants that don't rip their salad greens, leaving diners to face a logistical challenge hard to accomplish with any degree of grace. Long ribbons of kale in soup just assert themselves too much and are hard to eat.

Once all the leaves are cut in ribbons, then start chopping until most of the kale is fairly fine and nothing is bigger than a big parsley leaf. I use a chopping bowl and mezzaluna chopper for this. It's one of those tools I probably wouldn't have bought myself since it seems like a uni-tasker, but it's a gift I use frequently in kale season. (Thanks, Mom, even though you really never saw the point of kale.) The chopping bowl is a nice big bowl that gets used for everything from its intended purpose to a Halloween candy holder. It's certainly not necessary to have one, but it really helps keep all those little green kale flecks from flying around the kitchen.

Redbor and green kale leaves make for a more colorful combo in soup.

A big vat of chopped kale will keep at least a week in the refrigerator. Up first, a big vat of roasted veggie and kale soup that's simmering away even now. Too bad I can't even tell by looking at my plants that I've even picked anything. Maybe it's Kale Month.

Eight farmers market strategies

As much as I savor the fresh food at the farmers market, I enjoy the vendors almost as much. Watching generations grow up at the Midtown market has been a blast, and really, what kind of week is it when you don't get to have Julie from Pflaum Farms wish you a great week?

While the produce is tempting enough on its own, I'm an easy upsell. Two for five? Sure. One vendor is clearly getting into the marketing angle, with fancier appellations like "legendary beans." While buying some of his "heirloom beets," he offered a deal where he'd take a dollar off if anyone also bought beans or flowers. Since I'd already been eyeing his lisianthus, I was an easy sucker. "Take your time," he told the woman there picking out a bouquet from a wide array of choices. "The record is 29 minutes. Her husband left."

Lisianthus are long-lasting beauties. Those tight buds open up to soft lavender rose-looking blooms.

Between the weekend market and the new monthly midweek Nokomis market, I succumbed to way too much temptation. So expect this week to be filled with blog posts about how to use up green beans, peas and zucchini.

My main tactics for making sure all those goodies don't go to waste:

1. First off, get everything out of those plastic bags you might have gotten things in; the produce will spoil less rapidly if it's not trapped in plastic and you'll be more likely to use it if you can see what it is you have on hand.

2. Transfer berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries to a glass container, trying to make sure they're in as shallow a layer as possible to avoid promoting mold growth.

3. Wash and spin dry any greens immediately so they're ready to use just like those store-bought boxes.  That includes beet greens, which otherwise wilt very quickly. I chiffonade the beet greens and store them to toss into risotto, into pasta, or just sauteed with garlic and olive oil on the side. (If you're using a plastic box, putting a paper towel in the bottom helps soak up moisture that would encourage spoilage.)

4. If you've got beets, wash those in the leftover lettuce-washing water. The sooner after picking that you roast them, the more tender they'll be and less time they'll take to cook. Put them in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and add at least a 1/4 inch of water to the bottom of the pan. Cover with foil and roast at 400 for 50 minutes or until tender, adding more water as needed. When cool, peel and store for a salad of lettuce, sliced beets, goat cheese crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette.

5. Put on some tunes and shell those peas. No way will I ever get around to that on a weeknight. Store in a glass container. Ditto with green beans: snap the ends off and store.

6. Peel back husks of corn and silk the ears, if you plan to grill them, or husk and silk them if you plan to blanch them. (A great topping for corn: soften a stick of butter, mix in 1 tablespoon thyme leaves, the zest of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a sprinkling of paprika.)

7. If you don't have a plan for how to plan to use the largesse, chances increase that it becomes compost fodder. Haul out the cookbooks, fire up the Epicurious app, or if you've got magazine back issues like me, just grab a couple of July issues from past years. Since I'm me and can't help that, I create a chart of what all I've got to use up and note which recipes I want to try. I also try to keep up my tickler file in the computer slugged "Ways to use up ...." Otherwise I can never find back that really great-looking recipe that I saw in November that called for oodles of fresh tomatoes or fresh cucumbers.

8. If you wind up with too many greens like arugula, kale or collard greens and are running out of new recipes, remember that you can always just blanch them in hot water (or broth if you want to add more flavor) and toss them in the food processor with garlic, pine nuts, a sprinkling of salt and as much olive oil as you need to make a pesto. Any pesto freezes well, so you can add it to pasta or vegetables mid-winter.

Menu planning tips

My new not-so-secret weapon in menu planning: a peel-and-stick chalkboard on the side of the refrigerator.

Next to eating the actual food, planning menus is my next favorite part of cooking. (Certainly beats doing the dishes.) There are so many possibilities, from new recipes to try to old favorites to savor, and figuring out how to combine them is something I really enjoy. But I’ve learned that not everyone shares my love of menu planning, so I thought I’d share my approach to see if it sparks ideas. It’s all pretty much no-brainers, but a few tools help, along with suggestions for ways to make it easier to follow through on your grand plans. Otherwise if you’re like me, you reach meal-prep time exhausted and looking for Plan B (Pizza Luce?) instead of making that recipe that looked so good in this month’s magazine.

Start with what you’ve got: This could mean recipes you’ve wanted to try, leftover bits of something you want to use up, or whatever’s overflowing your garden/CSA share basket at the moment. In summer, I never plan my menus and grocery shopping list until I’ve made a farmers market run and a trip through the back-yard garden, which acts as an agenda setter all its own.

I usually pick the main dish first, but in the case of summer produce season, I’ll upend the drill and figure out what goes with the vegetable side dish. Sometimes I just browse my cookbooks for ideas or pull out old magazines from past years for that month to keep it seasonal. I also keep a tickler file in the computer divided into categories of dishes, from mains to veggies to appetizers and desserts (both the take-to-the-office treats and fancy-dinner finishes). I further divide them into recipes I’m likely to make on a weeknight, Saturday night, Sunday evening or a weekend lunch. I note the source and page number of each recipe, and any special considerations (like good way to use up thus-and-so, or could be made on a weeknight with advance prep).

Within each meal, I try to balance out the flavors, textures and colors, because my mother’s Iowa State food fascist drill still follows me (although I draw the line at turning meat gray). Pairing up your sides with main courses in advance lets you consider whether you’ll need something neutral to soak up a sauce.

Within each week, I try to balance out types of dishes so it’s not chicken every night (although honestly, there are so many different flavor outcomes that wouldn’t be the end of the world), and so I balance out the workload. Back-to-back weeknight meals that involve intensive recipe-following are more likely to make me bail out of a plan.

Take note of what’s on your schedule for the week. No point in planning a meal for a night no one’s going to be there to eat it, and you’ll know when you need to figure on an early pre-theater supper.

Pick a manageable time frame: I usually stick to one week out, or 10 days at most. I’ve sometimes tried a full-month’s approach, but I find that results in more misses than hits; too many things come up that make the plan unworkable, and it’s hard to factor in leftovers.

Find a place to organize your plans: I bought this peel-and-stick chalkboard for the side of my refrigerator to help me keep track of events and menus. I note the source of the recipe and what page it’s on. I used to scribble notes on paper, but then when something came up and I didn’t make a planned meal, all the details about which recipe I bought some specific ingredient for were on the previous week’s scribbled, and often lost, piece of paper, and too often that special ingredient ended up spoiled before I figured out what I bought it for. Now those details are all in one findable spot, and my husband doesn’t have to ask me what’s for dinner. (Although it’s cute that he does, since he’s always happy to find out whatever it is. It’s a thing.)

Put any recipes you’ll need in a findable spot: If there are printouts of Internet recipes I’ll use that week, they go in a folder on top of my refrigerator so they’ll be close at hand. If there are recipes from cookbooks, I stack the pertinent cookbooks on a shelf close to the kitchen so I can take a quick look the night before to refresh my memory about procedure.

Plan your attack: Once I’ve settled on my menus, I create a shopping list, a prep list and a timetable. I list when I need to thaw something for a recipe so my plans aren’t derailed by a frozen chunk of meat when I’m ready to cook. I note which recipes have items that could be prepared ahead, from simple chopping to partial cooking. Anything to make a weeknight easier. I usually spend part of Sunday chopping things ahead for the week, parsing ingredients out into labeled containers.

Do I sometimes still bail on a plan? Absolutely. Sometimes you’re just not in the mood for what’s on the list, and some of my best recipes have come from just deciding to wing it with what’s on hand that I do feel like cooking and eating. I think planning is the incubator of spontaneity.

So what’s on my menus for this next week? For sure something with that last, lone squash I bought at the last farmers market of the year. I’ll pair it with caramelized onions to use up the last of the onions I bought the same day. And I’ve got some leftover Stilton begging to be used. That and some broth to make a sauce, toss in some rosemary and pecans and put it over whole wheat pasta and I’ve got the beginnings of a plan. A spinach-pear salad on the side to use up those pears that were on sale, and we’re pretty much there.

Slow cooker chicken broth

In the height of soup season, I give thanks for finally figuring out the broth equation. For years I was only a sporadic maker of broth. I knew it was a higher and better thing than the anemic contents you find in the cans and cartons on the supermarket shelves, but it took forever, smelled kind of bad while cooking and made a big mess, so I only tended to do it when I wanted to make chicken soup.

I had basically been following the same method my mother used, cooking a whole bird for two hours with some chopped up onions and salt, only I added of lots of garlic in an attempt to make it a tastier base for soup. The results were only so-so; better than store-bought, but nothing to make me go out of my way to make it.

Once when faced with enough time on my hands after deboning a turkey carcass, I decided to do some research online and in cookbooks to see if I could make a broth with the bones. That led me down a road of continually improving broth. My main failings before: not cooking the broth nearly long enough to result in a concentrated stock, and not including enough flavorants besides chicken.  My broth got better and better with each refinement.

But it didn’t really get easier.

The broth doesn't reach the gelatinous stage until it's been refrigerated.

Then I decided to try it in the slow cooker. I had been worried about how it would turn out, since there would be limited opportunity for the liquids to boil down and become concentrated. But the results were fabulous, and so much easier than the standard stove-top method. No more having to stay close to home for four hours, and the result is wonderfully gelatinous stock with handy packets of cooked chicken to boot.This is now a nearly every-winter-weekend ritual:

Ingredients

This is my starting point:

6 chicken drumsticks or thighs

2 large yellow onions, quartered, with peels left on (this also helps color the broth)

2 celery stalks, cut into two-inch pieces

2 large carrots, cut into two-inch pieces

A handful of herbs: parsley, thyme and/or marjoram are frequent choices, keep the stems on

2 bay leaves

10 peppercorns

8 cups of water or so, enough to cover most of the ingredients but still leave enough room at the top so it doesn’t boil over, about a half-inch

Pretty much the only three givens are enough chicken of some kind to cover the bottom of the pot, the onions and the peppercorns.  From here I branch out to whatever is on hand and otherwise might go to waste: carrot tops, fennel stalks, Swiss chard stems, leek tops (well washed), cauliflower cores. I make sure to add something from each of the basic groups:

1. Chicken parts or leftovers; if I’ve got leftover carcass parts, I add those in, any random pieces leftover that  I didn’t need for a recipe. If I've got time, I roast raw chicken parts first to deepen the flavor.
2. Onion/leeks/scallions
3. Carrots/parsnips/sweet potatoes
4.  Celery/Swiss chard/kale or fennel stems
5.  Herbs. Basically anything of a savory sort; I'd stay away from mint or cilantro or anything that powerful, but most of the other garden variety herbs are fair game. Use a big handful.
6. Spices. Whole cloves or star anise are also worth experimenting with.

What’s not in it: Salt or garlic, both of which used to figure prominently in my broth. I find I don’t miss either. The no-salt choice isn’t health-driven. I just didn’t add it the first time I tried this in the crock pot and found out the broth was flavorful enough on its own, so that lets me control salt more directly at the recipe level.

Method

If you’re using a slow-cooker liner (and I do), line the crock. Put the chicken in the bottom of the pot, enough to cover most of the bottom. Then add onions, carrots, celery, herbs and peppercorns. Tuck things in as best you can, and pour on enough water to cover, at least 6 cups. (Don’t worry if some stray herbs or onion skins peep above the water level; they’ll cook down and get submerged.) Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. I usually opt for the 10-hour range.

Remove the herbs and vegetable chunks to a bowl. Remove the chicken pieces to another bowl, removing the skin and bones when cool enough to handle.  Strain broth through a fine sieve, or line a larger sieve with cheesecloth to get a clear broth. I then put the herbs and vegetable chunks back into the lined crock pot along with the skin and bones and seal it up for the trash. (Since the herbs and vegetables have been cooked with meat, they aren’t good back-yard compost fodder.) Strain any liquid that remains in the bowls in on top of the broth. I store the cooked chicken in freezer packs for future use. Cover and refrigerate broth overnight. Skim off fat and enjoy. Risotto will never be the same again.