Mushroom Pesto with Sausage over Fusilli

This one is a warm and hearty pasta sauce, great for a cold night. It’s also very low fat and full of healthy vegetables. This recipe can easily be made vegan or vegetarian by eliminating the turkey sausage or replacing it with a meat-substitute sausage.

Ingredients

• 8 oz whole wheat fusilli
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 3/4 lb of spicy turkey sausage, sliced into bite-sized pieces
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 8 oz crimini mushrooms
• handful of fresh basil
• 1 cup red onion
• 1 cup white wine
• salt
• pepper
• red pepper flakes
• 1 cup diced fresh tomato

Instructions

In the work bowl of your food processor, add the onion, garlic, mushrooms, basil, olive oil, white wine and a dash of salt. Grind into a thick paste. You may need to work in batches.

In a hot skillet, brown the sausage on all sides. Add the mixture from the food processor and simmer until the sausage is cooked through.

Serve over whole wheat fusilli

Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 15 min
Servings : 6

Braised Pork Belly

This delicious dish is a culinary commitment to make, but well worth it. It’s better than bacon. While you can’t enjoy this delicious camelized pork often—you’d have a heart attack—it’s quite a fabulous treat!

Day 1 – the cure

• 1 lb pork belly with skin – cut into two or three pieces.
• 1 cup course salt
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 2 tbsp whole pepper corns
• 1 tbsp whole cloves

Grind the pepper corns and cloves or place them in a zip top bag and crush them with a mallet. Mix it with the rest of the spices into a powder.

Pat the pork belly dry and then roll each piece in the spices. Place the pork into a small sealable container and pack the rest of the spices around it.

Refrigerate over night.

Day Two – the brine

• 6 cups of water
• 1 1/2 cups of salt
• 3/4 cup of sugar
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 pints of water

Heat the first six cups of water with the bay leaves and the salt and sugar until the powders are dissolved. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Add the other two cups of water to cool. Stir.

Pour the mixture into the container with the meat and spices. You may not need it all.

Refrigerate over night.

Day Three – the braise

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 yellow onion
• 6-8 cloves of garlic
• 3-4 whole cloves
• 1 tsp finely chopped italian parsley
• 1 stalk of chopped celery
• 1 cup home made soup stock –doesn’t matter what kind as long as it’s home made. (No fish stocks)
• 1 cup red wine
• 1/8 cup soy sauce
• 1 tsp fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 350.

Remove the meat from the brine. You can throw out the brine. Pat the meat dry with paper towels. This is important.

Place a heavy dutch oven over the fire and get it hot. Add the oil. Sear all sides of the meat on high heat. Pour in the wine and stand back. It will deglaze the pan and fizz all over the place. I recommend getting the soup stock in there as quickly as possible.

Add the rest of the ingredients. Cover and bake at 350 for 90 minutes. Reduce heat to 180 and cook for two hours.

Meat will be dark and caramelized on the outside and oh-so tender on the inside.

Lamb Ragout with Mushrooms

This was so delicious that my husband insisted that it become a blog post! Please take note: lamb requires a whole lot of salt. Don’t go lightly.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1/8 cup finely chopped garlic
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 small sliced carrot
• 1 lb ground lamb
• 2 cups sliced crimini mushrooms
• 4 oz canned tomato sauce
• 1 1/4 cup red wine
• 2 tbsp finely chopped basil
• 2 tbsp finely chopped Italian parsley
• 1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
• 8 oz rotelle pasta
• lots of salt
• fresh ground pepper
• shaved parmesan cheese

Instructions

Heat your skillet and add the olive oil. Sauteée the onions, garlic and celery with salt until the onions begin to soften. Add the carrot and ground lamb with salt and pepper and begin to brown the meat. Part way through, add the sliced mushrooms. Brown the meat and don’t let it form large clumps. Add the tomato sauce, red wine, rosemary, basil and parsley, and more salt if needed. Cover and keep a low simmer for 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Serve over pasta. Garnish with some finely minced fresh parsley and shaved parmesan.

Soup Stock from Would-be Compost

Before you go tossing out your kitchen scraps, why not get some use out of them by making soup stock? It’s SO easy and is a great way to put kitchen scraps to use before you compost them.  Use onion skins, orange peels, meat bones, cartilage, fibrous bits, seeds, stems and even not-so-fresh fruits and veggies as long as they aren’t rotten or moldy. Soft or brown spots? No problem!

You need one large stock pot, water, salt and whatever scraps you have lying around. Place it on the back burner and add a very generous amount of salt. Cover and simmer on med or low. Cooking a big feast? Keep it on the stove all day if you want.

When you’re sure you have nothing left to add, and everything in the pot is soft and lost most of it’s color, pour the mixture through a kitchen strainer and into a bowl. Allow it to cool thoroughly. Then divide it into smaller containers and freeze for as long as you like. Next time you have a recipe that calls for stock, you’ve got your own home made batch.

Grilled Olive Oil and Rosemary Flatbread

Today, I decided to experiment with grilled flatbread. I’ve never done it before. I read several recipes and then came up with what I thought would be the best combination of ingredients. I had no idea whether it would turn out.

OMG this flatbread was SOOO good. The outside came out crispy and the inside was chewy!! I’m blogging it today so I don’t forget what I did. It went with dry-aged BBQ’d steak like heaven!

Ingredients

• 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 1/3 cup of flour + a little more as needed
• 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp kosher salt + a little more
• 1 1/2 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh garlic

Instructions

Pour warm water and yeast into a small bowl, stir and ignore it for about five minutes until the mixture gets a little foamy.

In a mixing bowl, combine 1 1/3 cup of flour, olive oil, 1 tbsp salt, rosemary and water/yeast mixture. Kneed until it forms a nice ball. You can sprinkle in more water as needed.

Make a ball of dough and cover with a kitchen towel. Leave alone for 30-50 minutes.

Spread a little flour on a wooden cutting board. Roll the dough out until it makes an even disk, about 1/4″ thick.

Scrape the mixture up from the wood, keeping the shape. Re-flour the board and lay it back down. The point is to keep the bottom floured and non-sticky.

Sprinkle chopped garlic and kosher salt evenly on the top.

Toss on the BBQ grill for a few minutes. Flip if necessary. Cook until the bread looks done. Slice into strips and serve with your steak dinner.

NetDiva’s Awesome Hot Sauce

I needed a sauce to put over the fresh tamales we made the other night. I whipped this together with veggies that I had lying around. It was delicious and perfectly spicy.

Ingredients

• 1 cup chopped red onion (about 1/2 large onion)
• 5 garlic cloves
• 1 pasilla pepper (with seeds)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 jalapeño (with seeds)
• 4 tomatoes
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar, (Bragg’s or other natural vinegar is recommended.)
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Instructions

Finely chop all vegetables and place in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add all other ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer over medium-low, covered, for 15-20 minutes or until all vegetables are very soft and stewed.

Using a stick blender, purée the mixture until it’s a thick, even sauce. If you don’t have a stick blender, a regular blender or food processor will work, too.

Add more salt, sugar or red pepper flakes to taste.

Can be served warm or cold.

Seafood Paella

My grandmother taught me that Spanish cooking tends to include whatever is fresh and available. In otherwords, to make a good paella, you need to go to the market and see what looks good. Some ingredients, like the sofrito, should not be substituted. But the meats and seafoods really need to come from local stock.

I made this paella last night for a house full of hungry guests who gave it rave reviews.

Ingredients

• About a cup of olive oil
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 6 cups of chicken broth

Sofrito

• 1 chopped red bell pepper
• 1 chopped green bell pepper
• 1 chopped red onion
• salt

Everything Else

• 4 large fresh Spanish Chorizos, chopped into 1/2″ slices
• 5 cups of Bomba Rice
• 4 roma tomatoes
• 1 cup peas
• 1 lb live clams
• 1 lb live mussels
• 1 lb whole shrimp with heads on
• 1 lb whole langostine with heads on
• 2 tsp saffron, crumbled
• 2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika

Instructions

Pour the chicken stock into a pot and heat to not quite boiling. Cover and leave over medium-low.

Place an 18″ paella pan over two burners on high to get the pan hot. Add about 3 tbsp of olive oil and heat. It’s hot enough when you drizzle a few drops of water into the oil and its sputters. Turn the heat down a little and throw in the garlic cloves. Toast until golden brown and remove them from the oil. Put the garlic in a bowl and save for later.

Make the Sofrito

You may need to add another splash of olive oil. Toss the chopped bell peppers an onion into the hot olive oil and heat on medium-high with a pinch of kosher salt until the vegetables are soft. Remove the mixture from the pan leaving as much oil in the pan as possible. Place mixture in a bowl and set aside.

Make Everything Else

Toss the chorizo into the pan and brown on both sides. Remove from heat and set aside in a bowl. (Are you starting to sense a theme here?)

Leave enough oil in the pan to cover the surface, but not more than about 1/16 of an inch deep. Drain the rest and pour it over your dog’s kibble. She’ll love you forever!

Cut each tomato in half and grate the soft part on a box grater. Throw out the skins. Set aside.

Pour the rice into the pan of hot oil and stir. Heat until the rice is evenly coated with oil for a minute or two. You want the rice to get a little bit clear, so you can see a white dot in the middle of each grain.

Now add in the hot chicken broth, the tomatoes, the garlic, the sofrito, saffron, paprika, plenty of salt and the chorizo. Stir and simmer on med-low for about five minutes.

Stir in the peas.

Add the shellfish to the the mixture. Don’t stir it in but layer it evenly on top. Simmer on medium-low without stirring. Rotate pan 1/4 turn about every ten minutes so that it cooks evenly. Paella is done when the rice is tender, the clams and mussels have opened and the shrimp and langoustine are red. There should be a slightly burnt, brown not black, crust on the bottom, called the soccarat.

Serve with french bread and red wine.

Barcelona Mercat Boqueria – the Ultimate Super Market

Wild Mushrooms at La Boqueria, Barcelona

You already know how much I detest the American Supermarket. If you ask me, local merchants are the way to go. While I love San Francisco farmers markets, I’d never seen anything like the Mercat de la Boqueria in Barcelona, Spain.

I just returned from a vacation on Barcelona; a place where food is serious business. We rented a little flat which was just across from the Boqueria, an open air market which has been running daily since the mid-nineteenth century. (Read more about the history of the Boqueria.) Here you can find every manner of delicacy from whole pigs, to wild mushrooms, spices, foie gras, game, every manner of vegetable, shepherd-made cheeses, cured meats and even snails— and I’m not even scratching the surface.

I will admit, that the amount offered, is a bit mind boggling. Add that to the winding aisles of vendors and it’s quite easy to get lost here. We seemed to get lost every time we visited. Thankfully, there are a few places to sit down and have a drink or a snack.

Like everything in Barcelona, it’s open late. They officially close 8:30pm, although, if you wander in at eight, don’t be surprised to see merchants who are more interested in cleaning up than answering your questions.

If you’re visiting this glorious market and curious about what you can bring back to the states, I found this guide, Bring It on Home very helpful. In a nutshell, no produce, no meats (cured or otherwise), and no cheese runnier than brie. The good news is that you can bring home most of those wonderful stinky cheeses, as well as candies and spices!

For my photos of Barcelona’s Boqueria see my flickr set.

Spicy Sausage and Roasted Red Pepper Bolognese

This pasta sauce is somewhere between a bolognese and an arrabiata. It doesn’t matter what you call it, though, this is an absolutely delicious and spicy dinner. The sauce gets stuck i the twists of the fusilli pasta. You can adjust the spiciness by reducing the amount of crushed red pepper flakes –but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Ingredients

• 2 red bell peppers
• 4 tomatoes
• red wine vinegar
• 1 red onion
• olive oil
• 4 italian sausages —I like these.
• 1 lb fusilli pasta
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 cup fresh basil
• 2 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes (or to taste)
• 1/2 cup fresh parmesan cheese, grated or shreaded
• salt
• 6 chopped mushrooms
• 1 14-oz can of tomato sauce

Instructions

Preheat your broiler and then stick both bell peppers into the broiler. Thoroughly blacken all sides.

Put a gallon of water on to boil in one pot.

Put a quart of water on to boil in another pot.

Core tomatoes and slice crosses only through the skin on two sides. Prepare a bowl of ice water large enough to fit the tomatoes. When the smaller pot of water boils, drop the tomatoes in for thirty seconds. Remove them with tongs and drop them into the ice water and set aside.

In a large skillet, brown the red onion, some salt and the sausage (remove sausage casings).

Peel the tomatoes. The skin should come right off, easily. If these directions aren’t clear, check out this site on peeling tomatoes.

Next cut each tomato into eight wedges. Place in a large flat pan (like a pie pan). Drizzle with red wine vinegar and sprinkle with salt. Roast in a 500°F for ten minutes.

When all sides of the bell peppers are black, remove from heat. Using tongs and a fork, remove the skin. It should come right up. Chop off the stem and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. This should be very easy. If the skin isn’t coming off, you didn’t roast the peppers long enough.

When the large pot of water is boiling, add your fusilli. Cook until al dente.

Add sausage mixture, basil, garlic, cheese, about 1/4 cup of olive oil and tomatoes to your food processor. Pulse a few times to make a thick mixture which is slightly coarser than a paste.

In the same skillet, sauté the chopped mushrooms for a few minutes. Add the mixture from the food processor, the red pepper flakes and the tomato sauce. Simmer for fifteen minutes.

In pasta bowls, add the pasta and spoon generous amounts of sauce over the top. Add a few more shreds of cheese to the top and sliced mushroom for garnish. I suggest serving with garlic bread.

Serves: 6-8
Cook + Prep time: 45 min – 1 hour

Diva’s Chili

Chili

I don’t have a long story to tell with this recipe. It doesn’t have any kind of generational history. Admittedly, I originally learned to cook chili from my mom’s recipe, which I’m pretty sure is based on this. But mom got me started cooking her recipe when I was a child. I’ve never been one to stick to a recipe. I like to get creative. And so, my version has changed and evolved, and now, it’s most definitely my own creation.

I’ve won two chili cook-offs with this recipe. Although they were small contests, I don’t think there’s anyone who is going to deny that this is some damned amazing chili. By publishing the recipe, in some way, I feel like I’m giving away the family jewels. However, I believe in sharing the source and so, I will….

• 1 splash olive oil
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 large onion (white, yellow or red are all fine)
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 jalapeño
• 1 habañero
• 1 handful crimini mushrooms
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 16 oz kidney beans
• 24 oz tomato sauce
• 3 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbsp freshly chopped oregano
• 1 large tomato
• salt
• pepper

Method

Chop an onion and heat up a very large skillet. Add olive oil to skillet. Add onion and a pinch of salt. Stir and sweat until onion is translucent.

Chop bell peppers and toss into skillet. Chop garlic, jalapeño and habañero very finely and add to pan. Stir. Then add chopped mushrooms.

Stir in ground beef and add salt, pepper, garlic and 1 tbsp of chili powder. Brown mixture.

Drain kidney beans and add beans, tomato sauce, red wine and other ingredients except for tomato. Taste and add more spices if needed. Simmer for ten minutes and add chopped tomato. Simmer another fifteen minutes or so.

Cool and serve with a few strands of grated cheddar and maybe a dollop of sour cream. Buttered french bread is great with this too!

Cook + Prep Time: 45-60 min
Feeds: 6-8
Notes: This is really spicy. For those of you that like things milder, cut out the jalapeño, habañero and cut the chili powder down to about 2 tbsp. For those of you that like it hot, try adding in chipotles.