Dgourmac's Blog

Back in May I discovered a marvelous, healthful legume — Chana Dal — and made a fine meal with it.  Tonight I made it again, with three new twists:

• served the dal on top of a mixture of brown rice and sprouted barley
• accompanied the dish with the remainder of an Alsatian wine from our wine event last week — a 1987 Zind Humbrecht Gewürztraminer
• preceded the meal with an appetizer of Herbed Butternut Squash Chips

Here’s the recipe for the Butternut Squash Chips from Food52, and the photo of mine:

A word of warning: I found that the chips needed a lot less time in the oven than called for in the recipe.  They were slightly overdone at 1 hour and 45 minutes, so be careful when you make it.  I used fresh Provencal thyme and sage from my garden, plus some Italian dried oregano for the herbs.

The Chana Dal followed the recipe in the video from Mark Bittman and Julie Sahni, and it worked beautifully.  I added more water than called for, so the dish was a little soupy, but that was no problem.  The silky texture of the cooked dal with the tarka added is evident in this closeup of the pot:

One other addition was some steamed baby spinach, which added rich color contrast and good vegetable flavors.  Here are the servings (Barbara chose to make a moat of the rice and barley).

The Gewürztraminer was a spicy, rich, unctuous partner to the meal — befitting its stature as a very fine 26-year old wine.  I have a few more in the cellar, and I believe they will last as least as long as I do.

One of my favorite food blogs is Italicious.  She has a nice touch of showing the blog post she did a year ago, and I always find it intriguing.

And so it was that almost exactly a year to the day, tonight we decided to have the same Ligurian vegetable soup we had a year ago.  Same deal: I picked the recipe, and Barbara executed it to perfection.  There were four minor variations: (1) she was too lazy to add the porcini mushrooms and soaking liquid for the extra depth of flavor, (2) we did not bother to make croutons, (3) we used Swiss chard instead of kale, and (4) I was in possession of two superb Ligurian wines to accompany the dish, thanks to my recent association with Social Wines of South Boston.  The net effect was still a very satisfying dinner, supplemented ever so slightly by a small quantity of Spaghetti with Onion Confit with Rosemary and Walnuts Sauce, from a New York Times recipe by Molly O’Neill in 1996.  I provide both recipes for you below for convenience.  The photo of the soup is last year’s version, with peas and croutons, but this year’s was almost as good, and featured Ligurian olive oil, too.

The first wine was the rose, Ciliegiolo, followed by the Bruna Rosso 2012, mostly Garnaccia, with some Rossesse, Cinsault and who knows?  Both were so well suited to the dish that I was transported to Genova, Portofino, and Recco in a brief moment.

No, that’s not the name of a Washington, DC, law firm, nor is it a new circus act in Vegas.  They are actually two new grapes to my tasting repertoire, components (70% and 30 % respectively) of a 2010 Faustino Ajaccio red wine from Corsica.  This wine, which I bought last Spring from Kermit Lynch in Berkeley, was the accompaniment to today’s lunch — Tagliarini with Sweet Onion, Leek, Fennel and Portobello — leftovers from lunch yesterday.  Just for fun, the pasta was topped with a simple Seared Maitake Mushroom, a new technique for me and a wonderful addition to my mushroom-making options.

How much did I like it?  The verdict is below:

The title could describe me tonight, or my dinner, or both.  My day started this morning inauspiciously, when I had to stop for the three traffic lights less than 1/4 mile apart, near my house — the only ones for 7 miles as I headed eastward.  Worst of all, there was no traffic on the cross streets, so it was a complete waste of time.  However, after that, everything went very well.  The drive to the city (just after rush hour) was fine, I managed to do my errand at the Apple store, then had a meeting with my teaching colleague and our two teaching assistants, to review and finalize the grades for 65 students in our class.  After lunch I met with a graduate student from another school — at his workplace — to provide some coaching on his major project for a Master’s thesis.  All the professional stuff went well.

At 4:20 PM I started the drive home.  It was awful  I haven’t seen so many cars on every road in every possible direction in a long time  What should have been a 50-minute trip took two hours because of the traffic.  En route home I picked up supper for Barbara as she had asked — an appetizer and Pad Thai from a local restaurant — so she could depart shortly after 7:00 for choir practice.  I was so tired and cranky by then, I poured myself a fresh glass of red wine and sat with her during her meal, but I had no desire to eat then — Thai food or anything else.

A couple of hours later I was ready to cook, and even though in some ways it was a repeat of recent meals, it was one of the most satisfying dinners in months — and was made mostly with roasted vegetables.  There were essentially four elements:

• roasted root vegetables with a horseradish-thyme vinaigrette (see this recent post)
• roasted eggplant with herbs and a bit of leftover pomegranate raspberry sauce
• roasted Portobello mushroom
• slice of yesterday’s whole grain Field Blend bread with Barbara’s hummus

Not fancy, but full of flavors, easy eating and perfectly suited to the rich French Banyuls wine I had started to drink.  Furthermore, since I was cooking just for me, I was unrestrained by the limits that I need to respect when cooking for Barbara, too.

I started roasting with the oven preheated to 425º F, then dropped it down to 400º after 15 minutes, because it was cooking a bit too fast.  The root vegetables (radishes, turnips, carrot and a Peruvian sweet onion) were enhanced a bit with the addition of one leftover steamed beet, to which I added a touch of smoked Spanish olive oil (new ingredient, intriguing flavor) and one of my other indulgences — an obscure finishing salt.  This particular salt is Kala Namak, a coarse black volcanic salt mined in Darjeeling, India, and sold by The Meadow.  I know, that sounds truly strange, but I chose it when in their NYC shop two years ago, based on tasting samples of a variety of their gourmet sea salts.  What is so astonishing about this one is the strong sulfur taste, and the fact that I find it so appealing with many foods.  It does not hurt either that it is particularly low in sodium content.

While the root vegetables were caramelizing, I used another shelf on the oven to roast eggplant cut in cubes and one large Portobello cut in thick slices.  These were all treated with the other holy trinity — olive oil, salt and pepper — and cooked until richly flavored. When the eggplant was done, I added more olive oil, Italian dried oregano, and the leftover sauce Barbara had made on the day after Thanksgiving for her roasted vegetable dish with red onion and butternut squash.

As I looked at the plates of finished vegetables, I realized I needed protein.  Fortunately, yesterday I had baked two loaves of whole grain bread (including Einkorn this time), and Barbara had made hummus, so the protein sources were on hand quickly.

I had two helpings of everything.  The wine was a 2008 Grenache, Mourvedre, Carignan, Syrah blend — Domaine du Traginer, Cuvée d’Octobre.  This is the higher end version of the wine from the same producer which I so enjoyed two months earlier.  It comes from the southwest of France, near the border with Catalunya, and has the best qualities of each region.  My friends at Social Wines had saved a few more bottles for me.

Under the circumstances of these culinary delights, the traffic problems of that afternoon quickly faded into oblivion.

Along with my debt to Marcella, I owe Franco and Margaret Romagnoli my intense love for cooking Italian food.  Their cooking show in Boston on public television, their restaurant in the newly-refurbished Faneuil Market, and their cookbooks made simple, delicious Italian food accessible to me since the late 1970’s.

Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I found that they had a cookbook on soup that I did not know existed.  When I found the book, Zuppa!, I ordered it immediately on Amazon.  It’s not often that I can find a cookbook I want for only $0.14 (plus $3.99 shipping), so I was thrilled to add it to my collection recently.  Tonight I made the first of many recipes I want to try: lentil, celery, tomato soup:

I made a few small changes: use fewer lentils and more tomatoes; no need to skewer the garlic cloves, they are easy to find and remove; add a small carrot for color and flavor, cut into 1″ pieces; no basil on had, so I substituted a few chopped baby spinach leaves instead; and throw in a few of the remaining grilled brussels sprouts from lunch.  It was relatively quick, and quite satisfying.

The wine was a new discovery, both the wine itself, and the retailer who provided it.  Last week I found a place in the North End of Boston, the Wine Bottega.  I was researching some wine or other online and found their website.  Since I had an hour to kill after class last week, I wandered in and had a superb introduction and tour of the store by Matt Mollo, one of the principals.  One of the wines I bought was a Sangiovese from Umbria, a 2010 Le cese from Collecapretta.  It seemed appropriate for this dish, and even though the lentils were green and from France (not brown, from Umbria), it worked beautifully.

Yesterday morning I baked another two loaves of my variation of Ken Forkish’s Field Blend #2 whole grain bread.  This time it was 64% KAF white bread flour, 19% home-milled sprouted whole wheat, 15% sprouted rye, and 2% Durum wheat.

I also wanted more of the Mushroom Consommé we liked so much recently, so I cut up and roasted cremini, portobello, dried porcini, and oyster mushrooms, and then simmered them in 6 cups of water, 1 cup of porcini soaking liquid, and fine sea salt for nearly two hours.  The resulting 16 oz. of broth is dark, deeply concentrated and delicious.

Move ahead to today’s lunch.  There are several descriptions available, depending on your professional orientation.  Here are three:

• Manufacturing version: bread and leftovers
• Marketing: Grilled Homemade Artisan Organic Whole-Grain Bread Topped with Organic Fava Bean Pureé, Charred Brussels Sprouts and Tomato Essence
• Graphic Arts: see below

The wine was a small glass of the Burja Malvasia (see previous blog entry) to finish the bottle.  I will let the reader decide on his/her preferred description.  The preparations were straightforward, depending — of course — on leftover availability.

• light the gas grill, preheat to hot
• slice two thick pieces of bread (1/4″ to 3/8″ thick)
• grill bread on both sides, lightly charred
• rub bread with cut clove of garlic, top with a little olive oil and salt
• take a handful of baby brussels sprouts, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, and grill in a stainless grilling basket until charred moderately
• add some olive oil and salt to the organic fava bean purée you made last week
• chop or thinly slice some of the brussels sprouts and heat a little of the concentrated tomato sauce you made last night
• spread the purée on the toast, top with chopped sprouts, salt and pepper and tomato
• serve with a glass of wine