As I mentioned in last weeks newsletter, I’m taking a week off this week. So this isn’t a new menu. Instead, it’s another clips show. Yeah. I already used that joke. Yeah. I’m gonna use it again. This week, in lieu of a new menu, I’m sharing some recipes from past newsletters. It’s not a cohesive menu, it’s just food I liked. Well, I like all food, but these are recipes I … you know what I mean.
Remember, you can always check out past editions at the archives, and for some of you, even these oldies will be new.
So without further ado, and so I can get back to frying things (I call it research!), here’re a few of my favorites from past newsletters.
White Bean Soup with Kale
My memories of bean soup aren’t good. Let me explain. My alma mater’s hippie-packed cafeteria made some real horror-show attempts to provide vegetable protein to a student body with a large percentage of vegetarians. Most were downright awful. Some were worse than that, and don’t even ask me about the “Lentil Loaf” they served. There’s a reason I often ate three kinds of potatoes in one day. Now, both being older, fancier, and free of the constraints of tray based meal choices, I really enjoy bean soups. This dish, a simplified take on the classic Ribollita, has become a staple in our kitchen – sometimes spiked with sausage, sometimes with tomato added, sometimes made with leftover roast chicken. It’s satisfying, warming, and frozen and reheated ends up as a lot of fall/winter lunches.
Serves 4
3 hours plus overnight soak, 30 minutes active
1 cup dry small white beans
½ tsp baking soda
4 cups water
1 tsp Kosher salt
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 bunch Cavolo Nero (aka Dino Kale or Lacinato Kale)
¼ cup loosely packed celery leaves
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp red pepper flake
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 small bough fresh basil
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper to taste
Soak the beans overnight in 4 cups of water with ½ tsp of baking soda and 1 tsp salt. This will soften the skins and improve the texture of the soup.
Peel, trim, and mince the garlic.
Mince the celery leaves.
Add the olive oil to a heavy bottomed, lidded pot over medium heat.
Add the celery leaves, garlic, and 1 tsp red pepper flake.
Sauté until the leaves are dark, the oil is slightly red, and the garlic is soft, but do not brown the garlic.
Drain the beans and add to the pot along with the chicken stock.
Using a short length of string, tie the herbs and bay leaf into a bouquet garni. You can simply add them all to the pot but tying them up makes it much easier to fish out later. Add this to the pot.
Bring the pot to a low simmer and cook 1-2 hours, or until the beans are soft.
Separately, blanch the kale for 30 seconds in vigorously salted water, the shock in ice water. Drain he kale and squeeze out as much water as possible. Blanching is optional, but it will help keep the kale’s color and flavor.
Chop the kale into 1-inch pieces and stir into the soup.
Simmer for 30 minutes.
Serve with chili oil and a sprinkling of fresh parsley or celery leaves.
To make chili oil, add 1 tbsp red chili flake to ¼ cup of oil and gently heat for 15 minutes or until the oil is red and fragrant. Strain, and use as a garnish.
Shaved Fennel and Parmesan Salad
I lived on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. for nearly a decade, which aside from making the events of the last week feel particularly close to home, it also means that I really got to enjoy a lot of what the ever-changing neighborhood has to offer. When the restored Eastern Market re-opened after a devastating fire, the blocks around it added new restaurants – including an outpost of a Florentine restaurant called Aqua al 2 just a few steps from the market and a scant two blocks from the tiny townhouse I lived in for all those years. It has closed now, an avoidable victim of the pandemic, but over the years I ate a lot of great meals there and created a lot of great memories. One of the standout dishes there was also one of the simplest. A simple salad of lightly dressed shaved fennel bulb garnished with shaved cheese. This is my version – which while good will never be the same as the one that arrived at my table there – but it brings back some of those memories and … it’s just a delicious use of an often underutilized vegetable.
Serves 4
1 medium sized fennel bulb
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp good balsamic vinegar
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
2 oz Parmesan Reggiano cheese
Salt & Fresh ground pepper to taste
Remove the green stems and any fronds from the fennel bulb. Reserve some fronds for garnish.
Slice very thin (I use a mandolin slicer) and soak in water for 10-15 minutes or until just before serving.
Use a vegetable peeler to slice off thin shavings of parmesan.
Season the fennel with salt and pepper.
Drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar.
Toss to coat and combine.
Top with shaved parmesan, and garnish with fennel fronds.
Chicken Braised with Bacon, Apples, and Cider
I originally posted this recipe over at my other project, The Chicken Thigh Guy. If you follow me there, it’ll be familiar. I’m sharing it here because quite simply, it’s one of my favorite dishes and one I make over and over – particularly when I’m feeling a little low and I just want something really really good that doesn’t require a lot of thought.
This simple dish is essentially chicken à la Normande, a French-style braise made popular in the 1960s. I know it is something that showed up on my parents’ table as a dinner party dish in the ‘80s. It’s rich, produces a wonderful sauce, and is relatively easy to prepare. An easy extra step with green apple peels creates a stunning presentation. Add a simple salad, good bread and butter, and it is downright luxurious on a cool fall night.
This preparation uses an open braise to produce an evenly-browned, slightly crispy skin on top of a lusciously tender braised meat. The cider, apples, thyme, and shallots add layers of tangy aromatics, and the bacon adds a smoky depth. The final addition of cream smooths it all out and brings it together in a sauce that could almost be a dish on its own. Plus, it’s great with crusty bread to mop it up. As always.
You can use either a sparkling or flat hard cider in the dish but do not substitute fresh (unfermented) cider because the unfermented sugars will vastly alter the taste of the dish.
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
1 cup light chicken stock
1 cup dry hard cider
1 oz brandy or apple brandy (opt)
¼ cup heavy cream
2 pieces smoked bacon
1 Granny Smith apple
1 medium shallot
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper to taste
Preheat your oven to 300° F.
Peel and mince the shallot.
Peel the apple, reserving large pieces of the peel in water for garnish.
Cup the apple into ¼ or smaller diced pieces. Discard the core.
Cut the bacon crosswise into ¼-inch strips.
Place the bacon pieces and 1 tbsp of water in a cold, lidded, shallow pan with sufficient space for the chicken pieces.
Over medium heat, render the fat from the bacon and cook until crisp, stirring frequently to reduce pan browning.
Once well-browned, remove the bacon pieces and set aside.
Season and brown the chicken on both sides. When well-browned, set aside. Drain the fat and drippings from the pan, reserving 2 tbsp of fat.
Return the reserved fat to the pan, along with the shallot and apples. Sauté until the apples are slightly softened, and then deglaze the pan with brandy(if using) – flambéing to burn off the alcohol.
Return the bacon and chicken pieces to the pan.
Add stock and cider before tucking the thyme and bay leaf into the pan. The chicken should not be fully covered.
Braise uncovered in a 300° F oven for 1 hour or until chicken is very tender (up to 90 minutes depending on the size of the thighs).
When fully cooked, remove the chicken pieces to a plate, add the cream, and reduce the liquid by half over medium heat.
While braising, use a very sharp knife to cut long, very thin strips of peel. Place these in a cup of ice water. They will curl up like small ribbons.
Return the chicken to the pan to warm through and garnish with fresh thyme sprigs and julienned pieces of bright green peel.
Serve with a good crusty bread.
An American Cassoulet
I already ranted at length above about this dish, so I’ll keep it short here. This stuff is great. The leftovers are great. It makes your house smell really good. Oh, and it’s really rich. A small portion is perfectly satisfying.
Smaller chicken thighs are good here, as they both fit in the pot better and are better for portion size. For the smoked sausage, look for something a little less processed than the mainstream brands, and go more on the garlic-ey side than the red-pepper side - though almost anything will be tasty. You probably want to avoid the beer cheese brats, but I’ve even made it with very good locally made natural casing hot dogs.
Serves 4
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
4 cups water
2 cup dry navy beans
4 pieces dinner-cut bacon or equivalent amount of pork belly
12-14 oz garlic-ey smoked sausage
4 cups chicken stock
1 rib celery
1 medium onion
1 medium carrot
2 cloves garlic
4 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
½ cup white wine
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
Soak the beans in 4 cups of water for at least 8 hours and up to overnight.
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Wash, peel, trim, and dice the carrot into ⅛-inch pieces.
Peel, trim, and cut the onion into a ⅛-inch dice.
Wash, trim, and finely dice the celery.
Peel and mince the garlic.
Cut the sausage into 4 pieces, each 3 to 4 inches long (these will decorate the top), and cut the remaining sausage into bite sized pieces.
Season the chicken well with salt and pepper on both sides.
Heat a Dutch oven or other large oven-proof pot over medium heat.
Add the bacon or pork belly to the pan and cook until it begins to brown and has released a good bit of fat.
Add the finely diced onions, carrots, and celery and garlic to the rendered fat.
Cook over medium high heat until the vegetable mirepoix (aka onion, carrot and celery) begins to brown and caramelizes slightly.
Deglaze the pan with white wine, stirring well to get all the deeply flavored brown bits into the liquid.
Reduce the heat.
Add the beans, garlic, and chicken stock.
Season with salt and black pepper.
Sink the pork, and small sausage pieces in the beans and arrange the chicken and larger sausage pieces on top.
Tuck the thyme and bay leaves in between sausages and chicken pieces.
Transfer to a 350°F oven and cook until the beans are softened and most of the liquid is absorbed. The time may vary based on humidity, and the beans, but up to 4 hours.
Crème Brule
Crème Brule is the Tiramisu of French food. It’s the go to, the expected, the … yeah. It’s almost tired out and done, but not quite. It’s still the driving force behind the sale of those twee little kitchen torches. People will get Crème Brule sets as wedding and housewarming presents for years to come. Promise. It’s a desert we’ve all been taught to think of as fussy and fancy. And, I’m sure it can be, but it’s also delicious. And, as someone who apparently doesn’t have the coordination to make fancy, well-decorated cakes – it’s a lifesaver “fancy” desert.
Oh, and did I mention it’s delicious?
You’ll see a lot of recipes that call for more steps than this – cooking the initial custard in a double boiler, scraping and infusing vanilla bean into the cream, etc. Will they improve the quality of your result? Probably. But it’s like the difference between an A and an A+. Something over the top was probably done to impress the grader. This is a fairly quick, fairly easy way to get really good results.
Serves 4
1 hour, 25 minutes active, plus 2 hours refrigeration
4 cups heavy cream
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar plus 8 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (or ½ vanilla bean)
Preheat your oven to 325° F.
In a thick-bottomed pan, bring cream to a low simmer.
Separately, whisk together egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar, beating just until the yolks begin to lighten.
While continuing to whisk, slowly pour the hot cream into the egg yolk and sugar mixture.
Add the vanilla to the custard.
Pour mixture through a strainer into four ramekins or gratins.
Place the ramekins in a larger pan, and add water until it reaches 2/3rds of the way up the sides of the ramekins.
Move the whole contraption to the oven and bake until the center of the custard is just barely wobbly - 35 to 45 minutes.
Remove, allow to cool, and refrigerate uncovered for at least two hours and up to overnight.
Generously sprinkle granulated sugar over the top of each custard, and broil or use a torch to melt the sugar into a crust.
Allow to cool completely before serving.