Pancetta Carbonara

By now, it's probably pretty clear that I love pasta.  As I mentioned earlier, it is -- quite literally -- what I survived on when I first moved to Los Angeles years ago.  At that point, all I could afford was dry pasta, which with the appropriate sauce and add-ins, can be quite delicious.

As the years went by and I could afford better things, I eventually took the step up to what I thought of as the "fresh" pasta in the grocery store.  You know the stuff.  It's in the refrigerator section, usually near the cream cheese, eggs, or something like that, and I believe Buitoni pretty much has the corner on the market.  And sure enough, I started cooking with that more frequently and thought it was much better than the dried stuff.  I even began to look down at the dried stuff -- the cheap alternative to real pasta. 

And then last year, I learned how to actually make my own pasta dough.  This was taught to me at one of Southern Season's cooking classes.  For those of you who aren't in Chapel Hill, Southern Season is perhaps the greatest store of all time.  It's almost indescribable in all of its glory, but above the store, they actually have a little cooking school area where they hold classes.  This particular class was about making your own pasta and pizza dough and let me tell you, it was mind blowing.  Why?  Because there is really almost nothing simpler than making the dough!  Why have I been buying this stuff in the store all these years?!  All I need is oil, eggs, and flour!

So it was a great surprise this year when for Christmas, I got a pasta roller.  You see, as great as it was to know how to make the pasta dough, without a roller, you can't really do much with it.  I tried the roller out a couple of weeks ago and found it to be relatively easy to use and so I decided last night to make another Tyler Florence recipe (I'm almost through his cookbook, so don't worry, I'll be moving on soon): a pancetta carbonara.

The first step was to make the pasta dough because it needs to rest before being rolled.  Here is a basic recipe for pasta dough:

First, take two cups of flour, mix in a teaspoon of salt, and make a well in your mixture:

Into your well, add three eggs and a tablespoon of olive oil and gently mix that together inside the well:

Now comes the fun part.  With a fork, slowly mix flour from your well into the egg mixture.  While you do this, you are going to want to use one of your hands to shore up the wall of your well as it can start to crumble.  If it crumbles, you'll have a lava flow of egg going down the mountain, which can be rather messy.  Here's a picture of how I was doing about half way through.  You can see on the left a spot where some egg made a run for it:

After a few minutes, all the flour should get incorporated and you'll have a ball forming:

You then knead that for 10 minutes or so and you'll create a perfect pasta ball.  Here is mine, which is now wrapped in plastic to prevent it from getting dry while it rests for the next 30 minutes or so:

Unfortunately, the rest of the cooking took place quickly so I can't provide pictures, but I'll start with the pasta and move to the carbonara.

Once the dough had rested, I unwrapped it and cut it in two balls to make it easier to work with.  I then dusted it with a little flour and began the process of rolling it through the pasta maker.  To do this, you start it on the widest setting, roll it through, fold it in half, and continue for about 6 passes.  Next, you set the pasta roller to one setting narrower and repeat the process.  Eventually, you'll have a really thin sheet of pasta dough, which you can then feed through an accessory to cut it into shape.

Now, I have to admit, last night's pasta didn't turn out quite right.  The problem is that I was rolling the sheets too long so that they were breaking on me.  This caused me to have to start over at one point -- and I was getting hungry.  I decided I would try to save time by not getting the pasta to its thinnest setting and feed it through the cutter at about the half way point.  This was a mistake.  It ended up clogging the cutter, which meant that the pasta I fed through was clumped together.  I decided I was okay with this as I was too hungry to start over again, but in the picture you see below, you'll see some pasta is stuck together in a giant clump whereas some of it looks perfect (the perfect pasta being the next bit I made and actually rolled out all the way).  In any event, once the pasta was rolled and cut, it only takes about 2-3 minutes to cook in boiling water.

For the carbonara, I mixed a cup of heavy cream, a cup of milk, and six eggs together.  I put that into a double boiler that was already warmed up.  I then used an immersion blender for about 8 minutes on this mixture while it cooked.  It thickens up a bit and becomes very foamy.  Once it's thick and foamy, I stirred in one half cup of parmigiana cheese.

Meanwhile, I had cut up one third pound of pancetta into strips and put that in a heated pan with some olive oil.  After a few minutes of cooking the pancetta, I added 7 garlic gloves, which were thinly sliced, and cooked those in the pan with the pancetta.  This all took about 10 minutes before the pancetta was nice and crisp and the garlic cooked.

To put it all together, I put the pasta in a bowl, poured some carbonara sauce over it, and then topped it with the pancetta and garlic.  The final product looked like this:

I have to say, despite a few large clumps of pasta, this was really delicious.  For one, fresh pasta tastes so wonderful compared to anything you get at the grocery store.  I have now learned an important lesson with my pasta roller and so I look forward to using it again soon to try again.  The carbonara sauce was very light and creamy, which I enjoyed.  And with a pancetta topping, how could things really be that wrong?

Steamed salmon with green beans, caramelized shallots, and toasted pecans

On Top Chef last week, there was a discussion about the importance of keeping Italian food simple.  In other words, you shouldn't make things too complicated by including too many ingredients.  I think one of the greatest challenges people often face when wanting to get into cooking is trying to figure out how to make really delicious dishes that are also very simple.  If you flip through most cookbooks or cooking magazines, you'll generally find recipes whose ingredients lists are very long. 

Last night, I made one of those simple meals that sounds fancy but is actually incredibly easy.  A key to the success of these dishes, though, rests in the ingredients you do use.  Yesterday's chili recipe had a lot going on in it and cooked for a long time, so the reality is that I could use things like dried oregano rather than fresh.  When you are cooking with just a few ingredients, it is necessary to use really nice, fresh ingredients.

The salmon I used last night was wild caught from Alaska.  It is fairly easy to identify salmon that has been wild caught compared to farmed salmon.  Wild caught salmon has a much deeper color to it than farmed salmon, which tends to be a very light pink.  All I did to this particular cut of salmon was steam it for about 20 minutes then squeeze fresh lemon juice on top of it.  It was such a nice piece of fish that that is all it required.

For the green beans, which was based on a recipe by Tyler Florence (I told you I was working my way through that cookbook!), I started out by putting them in boiling water for 3 minutes then quickly drained them.  I cut two shallots into little rings and put them into hot olive oil I had going on the stove.  I cooked those for about 3 minutes, at which point they were starting to get some nice color.  I then added pecans to the dish and cooked them for about 3 more minutes.  At this point, the pecans were nicely toasted and the shallots were looking a nice caramel color.  I added the beans to this dish, tossed them for a moment, then squeezed half a lemon over it.

The end product:

I also had a grapefruit with this.  But this is literally all it took to make a really delicious meal: salmon, lemon, green beans, shallots, pecans, olive oil, and a grapefruit.  Seven items and just over 20 minutes of cooking time.  Sometimes, simplicity is best. 

Superbowl Chili & Corn Pudding

Yesterday was a big sports day, especially if you live in the state of North Carolina.  Sure, the Superbowl was last night and that's a big deal and all.  But really, in terms of the game I was more interested in watching, the Superbowl played second fiddle to the UNC-FSU basketball game.  Fortunately, they were timed perfectly so that I could watch the UNC game in the afternoon followed by the Superbowl at night.

When I was thinking about what was the most appropriate dinner for the Superbowl, I thought that a good ole fashioned chili seemed like the way to go.  I really, really love a good chili and am not too particular in terms of what style it is.  My understanding of chili is that it developed in the Texas prison system as a way to feed a lot of people using relatively cheap meat.  Different prisons developed their own special combination of spices to make what they considered to be the "best."  From this tradition, a style of chili developed that doesn't include beans and instead is almost all meat.  That is the style I made yesterday.

This recipe comes from Tyler Florence, though I adapted it a bit to suit my tastes a little more.  I am working my way through his most recent cookbook and this recipe stood out as a really delicious chili and he, like I, served it with a corn pudding.  The great thing about this recipe, in addition to the outstanding flavors, is that it (like all great chilis) cooks for a long time, meaning I was able to get it going, watch the UNC game, and then return to it a few hours later to finish the process.

All great chilis start out with a good base.  In this case, I had 2 onions, a ton of garlic, a jalapeno pepper, and some canned chipotle peppers that were in an adobo sauce.  Now, for those of you who have never had chipotle peppers, they are hotter than all get out, so be careful how many you use (they are, in fact, jalapeno peppers that have been dried).  Along with that nice selection of ingredients, I created a spice mix that consisted of a couple of different types of chili powders (I have a chocolate chili powder, for instance), some ground coriander seeds, cinnamon, salt, pepper, paprika, and oregano:

Of course, essential to this dish, is the meat.  Tyler Florence, in an attempt to bankrupt me, likes to use prime rib.  I went with one grade down, but still the meat looked good.  Here it is once I cubed it:

After browning the meat, I added everything from above to make this wonderful concoction:  

I then added a little tomato paste and a 28oz can of whole San Marzano tomatoes, which I crushed with a wooden spoon.  This left me with this pot, which I let simmer for the next few hours while I watched the game:

Finally, about 3 hours later, I used a potato masher to shred the beef.  I also added some unsweetened chocolate at this point.  From here on out, it's just a matter of letting it simmer until you're ready to eat:

While the chili was simmering for the final stretch, I started on the corn pudding.  Because it's not summer, corn isn't in season here so I went with frozen.  I can't wait to make this recipe again in the summer because I think it would be even more amazing with fresh corn.  In any event, I mixed a pint of milk with a pint of heavy whipping cream.  To that, I threw in some sprigs of thyme and more garlic.  I then put the corn in the bowl and turned the heat to low.  After about 15 minutes, it began to simmer, at which point I turned the heat off, covered the pot, and let the corn steep in the mixture.  Here it is before covering:

After 15 minutes, I took the corn out of the liquid and cut off the kernels.  With the kernels, I added chopped chives and a poblano pepper.  I then strained the liquid mixture, returned it to heat, added some butter, and then some corn meal.  I had both yellow and white cornmeal on hand, but my white cornmeal is higher quality, so I went with that.  The mixture quickly thickens and becomes like a porridge.  To that, I added the corn and other ingredients and you get this:

To that mixture, you mix in 3 egg yolks.  With the 3 egg whites, you use a blender and beat them until they are stiff.  You then fold the egg whites into the main mixture, which will make the dish very light and fluffy.  This gets baked for about a half an hour and eventually this is what you have:

I served that with the chili, which I put some cheese and sour cream on:

This meal, I have to say, was one of my favorites so far.  First, the corn pudding was awesome.  The other corn pudding I tend to make comes from Grandma Lil and it chiefly uses cans of creamed corn and sugar.  It is, to be sure, a really sweet dish, but there was something really light and fresh about this corn pudding.  It wasn't sweet at all, except for the natural sweetness of the corn.  That's why I think over the summer it would be even more amazing!  As for the chili, it was really fantastic, too.  For my tastes, it was the perfect level of spiciness.  When you first take a bite, it doesn't really hit you and you get to enjoy the full flavor of the meat and spices.  A few moments later, the heat comes on and it gives you a nice kick.  However, the kick isn't overpowering and doesn't last too long, so it's not something that ruins your taste and prevents you from enjoying the rest of the meal.

All in all, a great game day.  And while it was nice to have some good food, most importantly, the Tar Heels won.

Best Pizza in Town

One thing that many people know about me is that I love pizza.  Chances are, if you come over during the summer, one of things I might make for you is grilled pizza.  Grilled pizza is one of my favorite things to make... but we'll get back to that later this year once it's finally time to start cooking with gas.

Now, back in college, I spent a couple of years working in a really great, local place in Winston-Salem.  They are known to make really high quality pizzas with locally grown organic ingredients.  Perhaps you've heard of this place.  It's called Pizza Hut.  What?  There's a Pizza Hut in your neighborhood, too?  Wait, and the pizzas sort of suck, are greasy, and you can actually feel your arteries clogging when you eat it?  Yeah, I guess we're talking about the same place.

So it's true.  For two years, I made pizzas at Pizza Hut.  Even worse, for two years, I ate an incredible amount of pizza, easily wolfing down a pizza per day when I was working.  Somehow, I didn't gain 50 pounds and more incredibly, I still love pizza.  True, the pizzas I make at home share about as much resemblance to a Pizza Hut pizza as a Ferrari resembles my Civic.

Which brings me to last night.  There are endless debates about what style of pizza is the best and I'm not going to venture into that debate today (though I like Chicago deep dish), but what I will say is that without any doubt, the best pizza in the Triangle can be found at Lilly's Pizza in Raleigh (http://www.lillyspizza.com/).  It's a wonderful little spot in Five Points.  Unpretentious, funky, and reasonably priced beer on tap. 

Here's what was ordered last night: The Sir Walter.  It was outstanding.  On it was porcini mushroom oil, prosciutto di parma, smoked gouda, fresh organic garlic, organic mushrooms, mozzarella, parmesan and oregano.  In other words, it was all the things that Pizza Hut is not.  And here you go:

It really was great and best of all, I've got some leftovers for lunch today.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I will still eat at Pizza Hut.  The memories alone are worth it.

Baby Food

So last night, I ate some baby food.

I suppose I should back up and explain how and why baby food was being served last night.  You see, it wasn't baby food from the store, although I did have a friend in L.A. who used to love eating just that.  Seriously, his whole thing was that you could buy a lot of baby food at the store, just throw them in your bag, and whenever you wanted a snack, open the jar and there you go.  There was a certain logic to his thinking, in the sense that it is hard to bring with you a "turkey dinner" and all the other varieties of baby food that exist; on the other hand, you get a lot of looks on the backlot of Warner Bros when you're sitting around eating baby food.

So last night's baby food began on Saturday when I purchased a nice butternut squash from the Durham Farmer's Market.  I didn't know what I specifically wanted to do with the squash when I purchased it, so when I got home, I started flipping through a few of my favorite cookbooks to get some inspiration.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to do some sort of soup, which is always nice, or do something like roast them.  And as I was flipping through one of my Tyler Florence cookbooks, I saw in the index that there was a recipe for roasted butternut squash with caramelized onions, ginger, and cinnamon.  Well, that sounded interesting so I thought I would go with that.  When I flipped to the recipe page, I immediately noticed it was one of his homemade baby food recipes!  Oh well, I guess I'll look for something else.

But then I thought about it for a moment.  I looked at the recipe again and thought, you know what?  This looks pretty damn good.  So what if the butternut squash gets turned into a puree?!  Harris Teeter sells pre-packaged butternut squash puree that's good, why not make my own?  And so that is exactly what I did.

The recipe is basically as follows.  You cut a butternut squash in half and place it face up on a baking sheet (removing the seeds first).  You throw some sliced onion rings on there with them, drizzle it all with olive oil, and roast in the oven until they are done (the onions are done first, so you have to take them out or else they'll burn).  In a food processor, you then puree the butternut squash, onions, a tablespoon of grated ginger, and a teaspoon of cinnamon.  That leads to something that looks like this:

With the baby food, I had some of the leftover risotto, baked salmon (which I just put in the oven with the squash), and a salad of the oak leaf lettuce, broccoli, and carrots (also from the market).  The final dinner looked like this:

A little closer view of the puree and all:

So there, I had baby food for dinner last night.  And you know what?  I liked it.  Maybe my friend was onto something after all.

Whole Foods

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about Whole Foods.  On the one hand, there are so many positive things to say about the company.  They have been instrumental in highlighting certain negative aspects of farming that have developed over the past few decades; their focus has traditionally been on healthy food (and they're refocusing again on that with their recent launch of the Health Starts Here program); they have a huge selection of ready-to-eat foods that are generally good, healthy and certainly better for you than most typical restaurants; their stores are always immaculate; and the quality of the products they have is always top-notch.

But I also have some negative feelings about Whole Foods.  For one, they represent what is often a huge criticism of things like the slow-food movement, which is that they are elitist.  Now, obviously their PR folks would disagree with that statement, but when was the last time you saw a Whole Foods in an area that wasn't wealthy?  Certainly they are not paving the way into the "food deserts" where large segments of the population (who are typically poor) don't have ready and easy access to fresh foods.  And it's understandable why Whole Foods isn't there -- it's expensive.  There's a reason that the Whole Foods in Durham can be found literally adjacent to the Duke campus.

My other negative feeling toward Whole Foods is that I think customers are sold an ideal that isn't necessarily true.  This is mostly through the use of terms like "Organic" and "Free Range."  Research into what "free range" means will quickly lead you to the discovery that it means almost nothing.  Similarly deceptive is the term organic.  Although the use of the term organic is a really complex issue and I won't go into a diatribe about how the food industry has successfully co-opted that term to profit (hello?  Wal-mart sells organic products), needless to say, when you start doing things on large scale, which any national market like Whole Foods is forced to do, then organic farming can be just as destructive -- especially to the environment and soil -- as traditional farming.  And so I think people often are lured into Whole Foods thinking they are doing their part to save the planet and buy chickens that led happy lives outdoors, when that's really not the whole story.  But there are plenty of books out there where you can read more about this.

This all brings me to last night.  I had dinner at... you guessed it!  Whole Foods.  Choosing what to eat in their giant food area is sort of like Sophie's choice -- there are so many good options, whatever I don't choose, I'll always think fondly back on and wonder what my meal would have been like if I'd eaten that instead.  But last night, I went with BBQ.  I have to say, I'm a sucker for any sort of BBQ and so I fell to temptation and got some of that, along with sweet potatoes, greens, and a cajun corn something or other.

All of it was quite good.  Of course, we're in North Carolina so I certainly can't make the statement that this is as good as some of my favorite local BBQ joints.  But if I remove that comparison, it was enjoyable.  The sweet potatoes had a good amount of skin left in, which is something I typically enjoy, and they had dried cranberries.  That was an interesting choice and made them unique and gave an interesting texture and flavor to them.  I don't know if I'd ever do that myself, but I could see how some would really go for it.   The greens were good, though not quite as tender as I like, and the corn was delicious.  Similarly delicious was the BBQ.  I think a lot of people mind find it a little too sweet, but I will almost never make that complaint about something!

And so, like many things in life, perhaps the ideal choice doesn't exist.  Perhaps it's a fantasy to think that we could all go to local markets, buy food that is delicious, fresh, and sustainable, and still have money left in our pockets.  Perhaps the challenges we face in our country related to food are too great to overcome.  But I have faith we can figure this out.  Whole Foods may not be the final answer we're looking for, but they certainly are pushing us toward the solution.

Channeling my inner Anthony Bourdain

One thing I love about Anthony (or as I call him, Tony) Bourdain is that on his show No Reservations, he invariably visits the major farmer's market of wherever he has traveled.  For him and the show, it makes good television as you really get to see what a culture is all about when you visit a market -- this is especially true in many of the third world countries he visits where people don't have the luxury of having a grocery store stocked with every imaginable item at the end of their subdivision.

I, like Tony, really enjoy a farmer's market and have seen my share of them around the country and world.  In Los Angeles, there was a fabulous place in downtown where a large Hispanic population would shop and where I got introduced to things like horchata and what a chalupa is supposed to look like when you don't purchase them at Taco Bell (slogan: "We're pretty sure there's at least some beef in our tacos").  In Tokyo, I got to walk around what is one of the world's largest fish markets, a place where all of the chefs come to get their fish for sushi restaurants across the city.  In Syracuse, they had over 20 different varieties of snow on display.

And so, with the sun shining, I made a trip to the Durham Farmer's Market Saturday morning to check out what they had going on this weekend.  The Durham Farmer's Market is but one of many reasons that I love Durham and this entire area.  Set in downtown, it is a fantastic collection of everything that makes this region great.  For one thing, how many markets out there have a local brewery (Fullsteam, http://www.fullsteam.ag/) giving away beer?  While some may question the need to have a beer at 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning, I would remind those people what my grandmother used to say: beer isn't just for breakfast.  In this case, it's a nice mid-morning refresher.

In any event, I came home with some fantastic goodies from the market, some of which I had last night.  The first thing I'll mention was a delicious beef shank.  I purchased the beef from Meadow Lane Farms (http://www.meadowlanebeef.com/), a family I'm beginning to know better and better since they are who I try to buy our meat from when at the market.  There are many advantages to buying grass-fed, all natural beef that I won't go into here.  The benefit of buying the beef shank is that it include the bone marrow, one of Tony's favorite dishes that he's always raving about.

The other item I'll highlight below is the blue sweet potato.  I, for one, never knew they came in a blue (or really purple) color, but sure enough, they do.  And they are delicious.  A little bit of internet searching tells me they are popular in Japan and Hawaii.  Who knew?

So to take advantage of the marrow, I was told to slow cook the beef shank in order to let it create a really nice broth.  So that is exactly what I did.  First, I chopped up some carrots, onion, celery, and garlic to form the base of the broth:

Next, I seared the meat:

I then put the meat in the slow cooker and cooked the onions and garlic in the pan that had the meat in it for a few minutes.  I added some port wine (see?  I told you yesterday there was a reason I had it out), and then poured that with the other veggies over the meat.  Add a few spices, and here is what I have so far:

Cut to: 10 hours later, and the meat is looking good so it's time to make the rest of the meal.  I read a few different recipes for the blue sweet potatoes and so I'm sort of going off a few different ones.  Apparently, one popular thing is to make a butter sauce with lime zest and lime juice, so that's what I will do.  I decided I'd also make a nice risotto to serve the beef on because I thought it would do well with the broth.  So here I've got the potatoes boiling and the risotto starting (the broth is on the back burner staying warm to be added to the risotto, for those who have never made it before):

Here I am midway through the risotto.  I decided to add some mushrooms because I think that will go with the other flavors nicely.

Here's the cheese on standby, ready to be thrown into the risotto.  With this much fresh parm, you know it's going to be good:

At this point, the risotto is about done and so I'm starting the butter sauce.  I've sliced the potatoes into little rings and they are in the oven staying warm.

Here I have added the lime zest:

And here we have the final product.  On top is a small salad I made to go with this meal.  It's essentially just lettuce, but it's "oak leaf lettuce," a variety I have never had before that I got while at the market.  I thought I would try it on its own the first time.  At the bottom, you can see the blue/purple sweet potatoes.  Their taste was similar to regular sweet potatoes, but by virtue of being fresh and locally grown, they tasted better.  The lime-butter sauce was really good, too, and worked well with the flavor of the potatoes.  Finally, we have the risotto topped with beef shank and its broth.  Wow, that's all I can say.  This was so darn good.  The broth from the beef was amazing and mixed in nicely with the risotto.  The beef was also good, though I think I ultimately cooked it a little too long. 

Not seen here is the bone with the marrow, which I also tasted.  I don't know how many of you have had marrow before, but it's a really intense and interesting flavor.  I think it's an acquired taste, because there's certainly nothing else like it, but I think it takes some getting used to.

All in all, a meal that I think not only does Tony proud, but I think does this area proud as well.  Almost every ingredient was from the market, meaning it was locally grown and harvested.  Best of all... it was damn good.