This is one of the versions that the late Jeff Smith published; it appeared in his first book, The Frugal Gourmet. It's simple and basic, but it gets the job done. Every other recipe I've ever seen is either obviously bad in some way (one wants you to use canned pinto beans) or involves baroque ingredients like pickled pork that are difficult to obtain and/or prepare.
Note the presence of the "holy trinity" of Creole cooking, onion, green pepper, and celery. I've seen recipes using scallions instead, which can be OK (I had scallions in a fine version in New Orleans once), but don't make this without all three ingredients. Oh, and don't forget that this is traditionally a Monday dinner.
1/2 lb. small dried red beans
1/2 lb. ham hocks or smoked ham (have a bone in there if you can)
1 chopped yellow onion
3 stalks chopped celery
1/2 chopped green pepper
1 tbsp. parsley
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
4 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco, salt, and pepper to taste
3 cups cooked white rice (1 cup raw or a bit more)
Soak the beans overnight in water, covering them by at least an inch. (If you forget this, Julia Child has a method involving an extra hour of cooking instead. Either I did it wrong or it doesn't work.) Drain the beans, and put in a heavy cooking pot with the ham, onion, celery, parsley, bay leaves, and garlic. Add water to just cover, bring to a boil, and then turn down so that it simmers. Keep an eye on it, adding water as necessary to keep the beans covered.
Cook uncovered or just lightly covered for about two hours, and then add the green pepper, butter or margarine (I'm told it must be margarine for authentic New Orleans-ness, but I've never tried it, because we never have margarine), Worcestershire, and Tabasco. Simmer for an additional hour with the lid of the pot on.
If you used ham hocks, at some point in the last hour fish them out and pull the meat off the bone. Chop up the good meat (ham hocks usually have some rasty stuff you'll just want to discard) and return it to the pot with the bones.
Serve over the white rice.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Macaroni and Cheese
There are six trillion recipes for something like macaroni and cheese. The food writer John Thorne once condemned all versions that have a white sauce base. Well, fine, be that way, but his book's out of print. And I've tried his, and it's fine, but it sure won't reheat.
This recipe, scaled up from the one in Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer, is what we have always eaten.
12 oz. uncooked macaroni (3 cups), or 6 cups cooked pasta or noodles
Cheese sauce:
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
3 cups hot milk (whole milk best; nonfat is too grainy)
3/8 tsp. nutmeg
3/16 tsp. cayenne pepper (or 1/8 tsp. plus some Tabasco)
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups grated or cubedsharp cheddar cheese
3 tbsp. grated Parmesan or Asiago
Cook the macaroni and drain. Unless you have the cheese sauce ready, rinse with cold water, shaking or stirring to avoid clumps, and drain thoroughly when cold.
Make the cheese sauce: melt the butter, add the flour, and whisk for a couple of minutes. Add the hot milk (microwave works well to heat it up) bit by bit, and when it is hot and bubbly, add the nutmeg, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat and stir in all the cheese, switching from the whisk to a large spoon.
Grease a 3 qt. baking dish or two smaller ones. Put the macaroni in and pour the cheese sauce over it. If you use two small baking dishes, or a single very large flat one, this can go directly into the oven at 375° for about a half-hour, but if you use a large one with more cubical proportions, the top will burn before the middle is hot, so you need to heat it in the microwave for ten or fifteen minutes, stirring every few minutes to heat uniformly. Then put into the 375° oven. Or bake at 325° for an hour or so and then raise the heat to 375°.
Craig Claiborne wants you to put dots of butter all over the top of the casserole and then sprinkle the Parmesan (or Asiago) over it. I think this is supposed to avoid crustiness on the top. Why would you want to do that? In our family, the crusty part is prized. Just sprinkle the cheese over when you put it in the oven.
This recipe, scaled up from the one in Craig Claiborne's Kitchen Primer, is what we have always eaten.
12 oz. uncooked macaroni (3 cups), or 6 cups cooked pasta or noodles
Cheese sauce:
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
3 cups hot milk (whole milk best; nonfat is too grainy)
3/8 tsp. nutmeg
3/16 tsp. cayenne pepper (or 1/8 tsp. plus some Tabasco)
salt and pepper to taste
3 cups grated or cubedsharp cheddar cheese
3 tbsp. grated Parmesan or Asiago
Cook the macaroni and drain. Unless you have the cheese sauce ready, rinse with cold water, shaking or stirring to avoid clumps, and drain thoroughly when cold.
Make the cheese sauce: melt the butter, add the flour, and whisk for a couple of minutes. Add the hot milk (microwave works well to heat it up) bit by bit, and when it is hot and bubbly, add the nutmeg, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat and stir in all the cheese, switching from the whisk to a large spoon.
Grease a 3 qt. baking dish or two smaller ones. Put the macaroni in and pour the cheese sauce over it. If you use two small baking dishes, or a single very large flat one, this can go directly into the oven at 375° for about a half-hour, but if you use a large one with more cubical proportions, the top will burn before the middle is hot, so you need to heat it in the microwave for ten or fifteen minutes, stirring every few minutes to heat uniformly. Then put into the 375° oven. Or bake at 325° for an hour or so and then raise the heat to 375°.
Craig Claiborne wants you to put dots of butter all over the top of the casserole and then sprinkle the Parmesan (or Asiago) over it. I think this is supposed to avoid crustiness on the top. Why would you want to do that? In our family, the crusty part is prized. Just sprinkle the cheese over when you put it in the oven.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Spaghetti Alla Carbonara
Almost all versions of this recipe are tarted up in some way that seems pretentious to me. Prosciutto, Cream, Mushrooms, separated egg yolks and whites... This basic recipe, using only ingredients that can be obtained just as well in Arnold, CA as in Berkeley, comes from the so-far-out-of-print-it's-not-funny Food Stamp Gourmet (1971, Bellerophon Books).
1 lb. spaghetti (vermicelli works better, but is hard to find; they have stopped selling it because I like it)
4 eggs
1/2 lb. bacon
5 cloves garlic
1/2-3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan or asiago cheese, with more to serve
Pepper to taste
Cut the uncooked bacon crosswise into thin slices and fry over low heat, stirring to separate the slices. Don't get it completely crispy, but it should be beyond the chewy-fatty stage. If you don't almost have the pasta done when this is done, put it on the lowest heat possible while you do the rest.
Beat the eggs with a whisk or fork. Finely chop the garlic. Boil water and cook the spaghetti. When the pasta is almost done, add the garlic to the bacon, raising the heat if necessary to cook the garlic.
Drain the pasta and dump it back into the cooking pot. Pour the bacon, grease and all, into the pasta. Immediately add the beaten eggs and stir like a wild man; the idea is to scramble the eggs in little bits with the bacon and grease.
Once this seems to have stabilized, sprinkle the cheese in and stir until it is incorporated. Add pepper to taste, and salt, if you somehow are so salt-deprived that the salt in the bacon is not enough.
Serve from the cooking vessel with extra cheese at the table.
1 lb. spaghetti (vermicelli works better, but is hard to find; they have stopped selling it because I like it)
4 eggs
1/2 lb. bacon
5 cloves garlic
1/2-3/4 cup freshly grated parmesan or asiago cheese, with more to serve
Pepper to taste
Cut the uncooked bacon crosswise into thin slices and fry over low heat, stirring to separate the slices. Don't get it completely crispy, but it should be beyond the chewy-fatty stage. If you don't almost have the pasta done when this is done, put it on the lowest heat possible while you do the rest.
Beat the eggs with a whisk or fork. Finely chop the garlic. Boil water and cook the spaghetti. When the pasta is almost done, add the garlic to the bacon, raising the heat if necessary to cook the garlic.
Drain the pasta and dump it back into the cooking pot. Pour the bacon, grease and all, into the pasta. Immediately add the beaten eggs and stir like a wild man; the idea is to scramble the eggs in little bits with the bacon and grease.
Once this seems to have stabilized, sprinkle the cheese in and stir until it is incorporated. Add pepper to taste, and salt, if you somehow are so salt-deprived that the salt in the bacon is not enough.
Serve from the cooking vessel with extra cheese at the table.
Tuna Noodle Casserole
This is pretty much Fanny Farmer's recipe. I changed it slightly to make it denser in tuna and bigger.
This recipe is more complicated than the usual dump-everything-together version, but the results reward the extra effort. The biggest pain is having to hard-boil the eggs beforehand, but hey, shouldn't you always have hard-boiled eggs around? (Warning: do not go to a dive bar and buy pickled hard-boiled eggs instead.)
3 cups cooked noodles (1-1/2 cups uncooked; about 3/8 lb.)
3 cups white sauce:
5 tbsp. butter
5 tbsp. flour
3 cups milk (nonfat OK, but 1% or higher works better)
4 tbsp. butter
3/4 lb. mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 small cans tuna (6-7 oz.)
5 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1-1/2 tbsp. minced onion or shallot
You can cook the noodles beforehand, drain them, and rinse them in cold water. Or, if you are good at it, you can time the cooking so that you drain them just before putting them into the casserole. (I am not good at it.)
Melt the butter for the white sauce in a large saucepan. Whisk in the flour to form a roux and cook a couple minutes at least. Don't brown the roux unless you're headed off into some weird New Orleans version. Add the milk; the sauce will thicken better if you've heated the milk in a microwave first. If you add the milk little by little, it seems to take less time to thicken, but maybe that's just because you're doing more than just standing there whisking. Which is what you do until the white sauce is thick and bubbling. Remove from heat.
Simultaneously, with your other pair of hands, saute the mushrooms in a couple of the 4 tbsp. of butter. When they're done, fish them out with something like a slotted spoon, leaving as much behind as possible. (If you overcook them and have a lot of juices in the pan, just remove everything and use more butter.) Then saute the bread crumbs in the rest of the butter, getting them toasty but not dark brown.
Butter or Pam a baking dish or casserole (2 quarts or so). Put the noodles, tuna, eggs, onions, and mushrooms in and pour the white sauce over. Stir gently to mix. Cover with the bread crumbs and bake about a half-hour in a 350° oven. Or, before adding the crumbs, microwave for ten minutes or so, stirring once, and then top with the crumbs and bake about ten more minutes.
If the casserole is hot but the crumbs aren't brown, you can put it under the broiler for a couple minutes, but some baking dishes aren't broiler-friendly and may explode, putting out your ferret's remaining eye.
This recipe is more complicated than the usual dump-everything-together version, but the results reward the extra effort. The biggest pain is having to hard-boil the eggs beforehand, but hey, shouldn't you always have hard-boiled eggs around? (Warning: do not go to a dive bar and buy pickled hard-boiled eggs instead.)
3 cups cooked noodles (1-1/2 cups uncooked; about 3/8 lb.)
3 cups white sauce:
5 tbsp. butter
5 tbsp. flour
3 cups milk (nonfat OK, but 1% or higher works better)
4 tbsp. butter
3/4 lb. mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 small cans tuna (6-7 oz.)
5 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1-1/2 tbsp. minced onion or shallot
You can cook the noodles beforehand, drain them, and rinse them in cold water. Or, if you are good at it, you can time the cooking so that you drain them just before putting them into the casserole. (I am not good at it.)
Melt the butter for the white sauce in a large saucepan. Whisk in the flour to form a roux and cook a couple minutes at least. Don't brown the roux unless you're headed off into some weird New Orleans version. Add the milk; the sauce will thicken better if you've heated the milk in a microwave first. If you add the milk little by little, it seems to take less time to thicken, but maybe that's just because you're doing more than just standing there whisking. Which is what you do until the white sauce is thick and bubbling. Remove from heat.
Simultaneously, with your other pair of hands, saute the mushrooms in a couple of the 4 tbsp. of butter. When they're done, fish them out with something like a slotted spoon, leaving as much behind as possible. (If you overcook them and have a lot of juices in the pan, just remove everything and use more butter.) Then saute the bread crumbs in the rest of the butter, getting them toasty but not dark brown.
Butter or Pam a baking dish or casserole (2 quarts or so). Put the noodles, tuna, eggs, onions, and mushrooms in and pour the white sauce over. Stir gently to mix. Cover with the bread crumbs and bake about a half-hour in a 350° oven. Or, before adding the crumbs, microwave for ten minutes or so, stirring once, and then top with the crumbs and bake about ten more minutes.
If the casserole is hot but the crumbs aren't brown, you can put it under the broiler for a couple minutes, but some baking dishes aren't broiler-friendly and may explode, putting out your ferret's remaining eye.
List of Recipes
This really should be something like a Table of Contents. Request others, I'll edit.
- Tuna Noodle Casserole
- Macaroni and Cheese
- Red Beans and Rice
- Boeuf Bourgignon
- Clam Shaush Pashta
- Cuban Black Beans
- Paul's Favorite (Pasta w/ Salami & Summer Squash)
- Genevieve's Fravorite (Ground Beef Stroganoff)
- Spaghetti alla Carbonara
- Maman's Red Sauce with Meat
- Simple Chili
- Simple Vegetarian Red Sauce
- Big Batch Vegetarian Red Sauce
- Pasta with Feta Cheese and Cherry Tomatoes
- Pasta with Chicken, Broccoli, and Gorgonzola Cheese
- Meatloaf
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