Dgourmac's Blog

A Great Dinner at the Home of Friends

Posted on September 12, 2013 by dgourmac

Saturday night we had a special treat: a colleague and friend invited us to a marvelous dinner at her home. Even better was the opportunity to get to know the family for the first time — kindred spirits in food and many other dimensions as well.

We made a small contribution to the meal — the Tian de Courgettes et de Tomates — a zucchini gratin, partly to allay our host’s concerns about making a fine dinner for us foodie vegans. Her fears were without any basis. Here are her words about the meal:

My own personal theme for this dinner is to simply share with you a couple of vegan dishes that I have been making for years without thinking of them as ‘vegan’. They are staples is my kitchen our family is very familiar with them.

I am still thinking about the menu for Saturday (I’m also going to visit a farmers market). But here is what I intend to make:

Chickpeas stew with greens and spices

(mixture of greens- swiss chard, kale…, onion, green bell peppers, tomatoes, chickpeas, garlic, parsley, coriander, cumin, sweet paprika, turmeric, black pepper, salt, olive oil)

Afghani (Palau) rice

(basmati rice, carrot, onion, olive oil, cranberries, cumin, chili flakes, salt, pepper, pistachios)

Jamie Oliver’s stuffed peppers with roasted veggies [also stuffed tomatoes to give Barbara an alternative to peppers]

(bell peppers, roasted: eggplant, zucchini, red onion, tomato, garlic, thyme, ; stuffing: quinoa, kalamata olives, mint, parsley, lemon juice, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, goat Feta cheese (if you wish), black pepper, coriander, sea salt, balsamic vinegar)

I am going to bake a fish [it was salmon] and make a salad, and Lily will bring fruit salad and sorbet.

We had a great evening! As you can see from the above, this was a delicious and extraordinary meal without the gratin. But I was happy to bring it, and it turned out well — and not very different from the pictures in the cookbook (see my previous post).

Here is the dinner table with all those lovely dishes:

And these are the photos of the gratin going into and coming out of the oven.

Thank goodness for good friends and colleagues, warm summers, and farmers markets.

Posted in Almost-Vegan, Food | Tagged zucchini gratin | 1 Comment

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

Posted on September 5, 2013 by dgourmac

OK, sports fans, it’s time for something different tonight. I was flipping through one of my favorite old photo/cookbooks, A Taste of France by Robert Freson (printed 30 years ago). First, I found exactly what I wanted — a Tian de Courgettes et de Tomates from Provence — which I will make for a dinner contribution on Saturday night, with fresh produce from our farmers’ market that morning. This part is the “sublime”.

Then, since the book has so many beautiful, evocative photographs of food and the French countryside, I browsed a little longer. Now the the fun part: have you ever made a recipe that requires about 30 days to complete? Well, with fair warning to all of us vegans (this recipe is all about pig’s liver), I thought I would share it with you. The scary part is that there may have been a time in my distant past when I might actually have attempted to make this. For now, however, I am content to fantasize how it might taste, and what wine I would choose to accompany it. If any of you wish to rise to the challenge, be my guest. Please let me know how it turns out. It might not even be “ridiculous”. Buon appetite!

Posted in Food, Wine | Tagged Provence, Tian, zucchini gratin | 1 Comment

Cianfotta again

Posted on September 2, 2013 by dgourmac

“Cianfotta is a golden, glowing vegetable stew”, is the introduction to one of my favorite recipes from Viana LaPlace. And it is, indeed, just that.

Since today was Labor Day, relaxed and rainy, it was an opportunity to cook as I wished. I started with some tomatoes that needed attention — five lush San Marzanos, and a bowl full of orange/yellow cherry tomatoes. They each received similar treatment: sliced in half lengthwise, seeded when possible, sprinkled with chopped garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, and oven-roasted at 250º F. for about 3 hours, to achieve a rich, flavorful semidried status useful in so many ways.

Next I made the Cianfotta — A Country-Style Vegetable Stew — from Campania. Interestingly, it is exactly a year since I first made (and wrote about) this dish. It’s a pretty simple recipe, with relatively few ingredients and steps. I made only one addition, i.e. a dozen Gaeta olives, pitted, and cut in quarters, which I added to the dish with the other vegetables. One additional comment of note: the dish was greatly enhanced by some white beans I discovered in my stash of fine foods two days ago. These were not just any white beans. They were the magical Fagioli di Controne, also from Campania, near Salerno. I had bought a small package of the dried beans (unknowing their special qualities — just purchased by chance — last year at BuonItalia in NY). I gave 2/3 of the package to Barbara, who made an astonishingly good kale and bean soup yesterday with them, so I cooked the rest today to use in my stew, and I was very glad I did.

Since I had a bit more eggplant than I needed for the stew (and desiring to keep things in balance), I saved the last two slices of eggplant to sautée separately, as a side dish, topped with the oven-roasted tomatoes.

The wine choice was also relatively easy. I chose a Negroamaro from Puglia, a 2010 Amphora from Guttarolo. This was one of the wineries I almost visited in Puglia last year but could not work out the logistics, so I was delighted to have a chance to drink it now, another of the gems from Marc when he was at Thirst Wine Merchants in Brooklyn.

Posted in Food, Vegan, Wine | Tagged southern Italy, vegan, viana laplace | Leave a comment

Charbono with Slow-Cooked Delicacies

Posted on August 19, 2013 by dgourmac

This will be a short post, since the key two recipes involved are already on the Internet.

Yesterday, I was in the mood for meltingly-tender, slowly-cooked (but not in a slow cooker) vegetables, so I prepared two terrific dishes from recipes I came across recently. One was Roy Finamore’s Broccoli Cooked Forever recipe on Food52.com. The other was an Eggplant and Olive Stew from a food blog I follow, with the charming name of Easy Peasy Organic. I had a small quantity of each last night and was more than delighted, so tonight we built dinner around them, using the Eggplant-Olive Stew served on organic brown rice as the main dish, with a large side plate containing these vegetables:

haricots verts picked from my raised bed garden this afternoon
leftover corn
“broccoli cooked forever”
boiled and cooled red and golden beets from the farmers market
chopped cucumber, lightly marinated in rice wine vinegar, topped with sesame seeds
plus a small piece of my olive-walnut whole grain bread to recover every milliliter of the unctuous olive oil seeping from the slow-cooked broccoli

Who knew that vegetables could be so satisfying?

The final component was wine, of course. This was the third night with the 2011 Harrington Charbono. I had kept it in the refrigerator, and the cooler wine was perfect with the dinner, so much so that I called Michael at Thirst Wine and asked him to save the remaining 6 bottles in the store for me.

Posted in Food, Vegan, Wine | 2 Comments

Salade Composée and Petit Verdot

Posted on August 18, 2013 by dgourmac

Saturday was a good day, starting early with our two grandsons who slept over with us Friday night when their parents went to the football game. Recently, I bought some sprouted buckwheat grains because I love buckwheat. I got up at 7:15 (Barbara and the boys had already been awake for at least an hour) so I could fetch the grain and grind it in my flour mill. Then, as we agreed, she made buckwheat pancakes for all of us. Never content with just one variation, she embellished the pancakes with fresh blueberries for the boys, and for her, a peach puree she made from local white peaches the day before. Theirs were then doused with good amber Vermont maple syrup.

Being more of a traditionalist, who prefers savory to sweet in the morning (or almost anytime), I had everyone laughing hysterically (perhaps derisively) as I drizzled a little fine Spanish olive oil and Kosher salt on my pancakes.

After their parents came, ate some more pancakes, and left with the boys, I went to the farmers market in my town, which inexplicably does not begin until this weekend. We old guys rested and napped for a bit after grandparenting, then went to a matinée of the new movie, The Butler, which we found very moving.

I had bought some good vegetables at the market, and we came back thinking about a big salad for dinner. We already had excellent produce in the refrigerator to create a highly-varied set of great things to eat, plus some leftovers, so when dinner rolled around, we worked together to make a salad composée. In the meantime I roasted the caps of 8 good-sized shitake mushrooms and gathered a few olives, marinated portobello slices, and thinly-sliced red onion, mellowed in a delicious local red raspberry vinegar.

Among the ingredients were:

julienned carrots
cucumber and radish slices
cooked corn kernels
an avocado
leftover grilled lemon-pepper tofu
leftover slow-cooked green beans with purslane
portobello slices which had marinated for 3 days in Nama Shoyu, black vinegar and olive oil
chopped scallions
little cubes cut from a block of Greek Feta cheese

Here’s how the plates looked with everything laid out.

Barbara prepared the lettuce and a fine vinaigrette, and we filled up our plates to our own liking. But the biggest winner of the evening was the wine. Seven or eight years ago, I had been on the North Fork of Long Island, returning from one of my Wine 101 sessions I give annually at my alma mater, and I did some tasting at the Pellegrini Vineyard. Several wines were good, but the one I found most striking was the 2004 Petit Verdot. As many of you know, that is a red grape used often in Bordeaux as a blending agent in their Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot wines, usually in quantities less than 5% of the total. This wine was made as a demonstration of the winemaker’s artistry, and it was almost purely Petit Verdot (93%, plus 7% Cabernet Sauvignon).

Anyway, I had put it in the cellar and let it sit quietly all those years, aware of it but never finding the right occasion. Last night, figuring that my usual Italian choices would be heavy-handed for the salad, and not wishing to go to a Beaujolais, I decided to try it. Outstanding. Vivid flavors of blackberry and tobacco, but nuanced and possessing a long finish, it provided much pleasure and a good complement for the meal. Of course, now I wish I had bought a few more bottles, but c’est la vie.

Here are the specs:

Posted in Almost-Vegan, Family, Food, Wine | Leave a comment

Ken Forkish Pizza dough

Posted on August 16, 2013 by dgourmac

Last Sunday Sarah and the boys came for pizza. Since I already had two successful rounds of bread making with Ken Forkish’s methods, I decided to try his pizza dough made with levain (including 20% wholewheat flour instead of 100% white flour), but otherwise similar to the yeast version that Pat introduced me to last month. To play it safe we decided that Barbara should also make a batch of her traditional pizza dough as well.

Usually, each person prepares his or her own pizza for me to fire in the oven, then I do mine at the end. This time, because we wanted quick feedback on the new dough, I did mine first. My toppings were relatively simple:

a little tomato sauce as a base
chanterelle mushrooms, sautéed in advance
a bit of stracchino cheese
some chopped arugula
just a few borlotti beans from a batch I cooked earlier

The oven was super-hot and ready. The results looked ideal, lots of leopard-spotting on the crust, toppings cooked perfectly. I ate half and saved the rest.

The dough had lots of flavor from developing in the refrigerator for two days. My only complaint was that the crust was not as thin and crisp as I had hoped. Since Barbara is better at dough handling than I am, she did the next pizza featuring mushrooms, onion and garlic. Again the looks were near-perfect, but the dough still not crisp enough.

We proceeded with more pizzas, this time with our normal dough, with very good results. Barbara made lemon squares for dessert, and everyone was happy.

After the family departed, the oven was still reasonably warm (~650º F), so I decided to make a mini-focaccia with one of the Forkish dough balls. I pressed it into a ovalish rectangle, kneaded in some olive oil and sea salt with my knuckles, sprinkled on some fresh rosemary from the garden, and slipped it into the oven. Five to six minutes later it was ready. This had the same rich whole grain flavor, thickness was a value — not a detriment here — and the chewiness was just right. I ate a little that night and saved the rest for the next couple of days, when a refresh in the toaster made it delectable on its own.

Conclusions:

His pizza dough is good, but for pizza, it may work better with yeast (vs. levain) and more white flour vs. whole-wheat.
It does make a very good focaccia.
And pizza in any form is still a treat.

Posted in Almost-Vegan, Family, Food | Leave a comment

Lots to Tell You About…

Posted on August 15, 2013 by dgourmac

More than two weeks without a posting, but not two weeks without some interesting food and wine. I present these in no particular order, since chronology is irrelevant here.

Schav

Let’s begin with a short trip to Eastern Europe — in particular the Jewish shtetls in Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia — for a peasant soup that can be used as a delightful cold vegan soup for the summer. I’m talking about Schav, a simple soup made with sorrel, onions and potatoes, plus some broth. My grandma used to make it, which is why I know and love it. The trigger for this occasion was my finding a beautiful large, fresh bunch of sorrel at the local farmers market. Sorrel is an herb, quite acidic, with a strong sour flavor not to everyone’s taste. It’s also called sour grass, and for good reason.

Most of the best-known uses for this require large amounts of butter or cream, especially in classic French cooking. However, I found out with this effort that it also makes a very fine vegan dish as well. Color is not its most appealing characteristic, varying from pea soup green to various shades of khaki, but it tastes great.

Naturally, I used our own vegetable broth, and I decided the egg used to enrich the soup was totally unnecessary. Tofutti sour cream substituted for the dairy version, and cucumbers and radishes were just another part of the haul from that farmers market.

It was best when chilled overnight. Even Barbara (who does not like sour or bitter flavors) really liked it, as did my older grandson. Any medium-bodied white wine is a good accompaniment. My choice was a 2013 Colle dei Bardellini Pigato. Superb!

Paella Once Again

This has been a good summer for Paella. So many good vegetables, and I am getting more comfortable designing and making my own combinations. Last week, Michael and Laura joined us for dinner, and we had an Eggplant – Vegetable Paella, followed by a fresh Peach Cobbler Barbara made from peaches she picked around the corner.

Here’s my recipe:

The other big pleasure in this meal was the wine, a 2004 Monsant “La Universal” from Dido. I had first enjoyed this wine in Barcelona in 2006. After several years of searching here in the states, I was able to score a case, and have been drinking it since then. It’s primarily a Garnacha, but the bottles have been a bit inconsistent — some great, so a little funky. The one we had that night was wonderful, rich, fruity, deep in color and flavor, a more mature version of the one I discovered initially.

Lots of Vegetables – Pickup Dinner

Earlier in the month Michael and Laura agreed to come over since I was making a few vegetables dishes, and they didn’t mind joining me for a bite or two. Fortunately, I was inspired by that day’s farmers market, so I put out an array of vegetable dishes that captured the essence of each one.

There was an appetizer plate with roasted beets, seaweed salad, hummus, Matiz Piparras pickled peppers, Piquillo Peppers, two kinds of olives, and kimchee. This was accompanied by pan-grilled zucchini slices with aged balsamic vinegar, and a few pieces of pan-grilled Haloumi chess from Cyprus. Another dish has pan-roasted cauliflower with capers and olive oil, and a fourth contained carrots, green beans, diced kohlrabi, and purslane from Laura’s garden. Finally, we had a small dish of stuffed fresh tomatoes baked Provencal style.

Now for the surprise: Molly’s friend Trevor had caught a striped bass over the weekend, so Laura brought over a small piece to add to the meal. Most fortunately, I had some leftover Fermented Black Bean and Garlic sauce I had made a few days earlier, and it turned out to be the ideal medium for braising the striped bass. It was luscious, but I restrained myself and ate only a small quantity. Here is Ming Tsai’s recipe for the sauce (which is also perfect for clams).

The wines were both Italian and red: a 2011 Tuscan Rosa from Sangiovese grapes (Pacina), and an obscure but delicious red from Friuli, a 2011 Esperienze by Gaspare Buscemi. Both were terrific and matched the meal very well.

Posted in Almost-Vegan, Food, Vegan, Wine | 1 Comment

Artisan Bread — new Featured Gallery

Posted on July 28, 2013 by dgourmac

I just posted a new feature gallery here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Red or White?

Posted on July 26, 2013 by dgourmac

That’s not a metaphysical question. Nor is it (tonight) a question about wine. Rather, it is the second part to the question: which clam sauce do you prefer?

I’ve always been a white clam sauce guy. It’s something about the clean, briny flavors of clams, garlic, olive oil, and a little white wine. So, naturally, when I made the dish tonight, I chose red. I had a little leftover tomatoes in the refrigerator, and it just felt right this time.

An easy dish:

chop finely a fat clove of garlic
finely dice 1/2 jalapeño pepper
scrub a dozen of the smallest fresh littleneck or manilla clams you can find
sauté the garlic and clams in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over a medium high flame, with a cover on the pan
add the diced pepper after a minute or two
if the pan gets too hot (i.e. garlic starts to burn), add a little white wine (less than 1/4 cup), and turn the heat down slightly
cook until the clams begin to open fully; remove the open clams to a bowl
when all the clams are open and removed, there should be some of the clam juice in the pan; if not enough, add a bit of white wine
add top quality Italian canned tomatoes (about 6-7 oz. or a quarter of a large can)
cook uncovered until the tomatoes have concentrated into a thick sauce
meanwhile boil about 1/4 lb. of best Italian dried spaghetti in salted water
reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water, and drain the spaghetti
add pasta to the sauté pan with the sauce, and put in enough of the pasta water to make the sauce about the right consistency
remove the clam meat from the shells, and put them in the pan, mixing into the sauce
place in large pasta bowls, grind some fresh black pepper generously on top — serve

Now, Red or White….wine. Either will work. I had a glass of white (a Lugana), followed by a red (the rest of the Nebbiolo d’Alba). Mangia!!

Posted in Food, Wine | Leave a comment

Not Your Grandmother’s Salad

Posted on July 25, 2013 by dgourmac

I don’t often have a salad as my dinner. Tonight was an exception, and a notable one.

It’s all about ingredients. I already had steamed beets in the fridge, as well as a single organic Portobello mushroom, thinly-sliced, marinating in Nama Shoyu, a little balsamic vinegar, and olive oil (plus a bit of garlic) for 24 hours. Mushrooms were dried on paper towels, so as not to overwhelm the dish with the Shoyu flavor.

So I cut up a head of organic romaine, a handful of organic arugula (both from Trader Joe’s), cubed the beets, and added julienned daikon radish, a few Matiz Piparras peppers (from La Tienda), and some chopped organic black pitted Italian olives from Russo’s.

Now the dressing: red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, whole grain French mustard, a bit of Gold’s horseradish (from a jar!), plus a few drops of cold water — all whisked together. I added the dressing, and tossed the salad. and added a vegan alternative to Parmesan — Almesan, from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Veganomicon (page 207). That recipe is very simple:

1/4 cup of slivered or sliced almonds
1 tbs. toasted sesame seeds
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. lemon zest

Put everything in a blender or food processor. Pulse until everything turns to tiny crumbs. It works! And it keeps in the refrigerator a long time.

Serve with a Trader Joe’s Corn Tortilla cracker with sesame seeds, topped with tapenade and some homemade roasted red peppers.

The wine was a stunning white Rioja, a 2002 Lopez de Heredia Gravonia, made from 100% Viura grapes. Perfect match.

Posted in Food, Vegan, Wine | Leave a comment