Dgourmac's Blog

Yesterday I stopped at the fish market for my semi-weekly B-12 dosage.  Last night I prepared one of my favorite tapas dishes: mejillones a la vinagreta, from Penelope Casas’ Tapas cookbook.

Since it requires marinating the mussels overnight, it was an opportunity to invite friends over for dinner tonight.  See my email message below.

“Mejillones a la Vinegreta…or in Spanish, Mussels in a Vinaigrette.

Tomorrow night for supper, I am planning a culinary injection of B-12 into my diet.  I’ve already prepared one of my favorite tapas, the dish listed above.  It requires the steamed mussels to sit overnight in the savory vinaigrette, so it will ready to go in an instant tomorrow.  If either or both of you can figure out a way to come over and share it with me (there are almost two dozen mussels, and Barbara won’t touch them), you are most welcome.  Naturally, I have several other ideas of how to complete the meal, and the wine choices will be up to the standards to which you have become accustomed.”

Only Michael was available, so he came over (bringing a bag of freshly-picked stinging nettles, I might add), and joined us for the full repast:

If you’ve been reading this blog lately, you will have already seen much of this meal — Leftovers ‘R Us.

I did do a little cooking and inventing.  For lunch I made a soup of Turkish red lentils with garlic, crushed coriander seed, and spinach, finished with cumin and Maras pepper.  I decide it would also be a fitting intro to this meal.

Second, was a way to use 6 large white button mushrooms I had purchased earlier in the week — Mushroom Stuffed Mushrooms.  An Italian antipasto, it is made with a mixture of the mushroom stems finely chopped, along with diced shallot and chopped dried and rehydrated porcini.  The filling is cooked with the porcini liquid and white wine, then topped with fine homemade bread crumbs and baked until tender and browned.

Finally, was the pasta course.  In previous summers I had made some homemade pasta with haricots verts and tapenade from an Alice Waters pasta cookbook.  Today’s riff on that theme took advantage of a new ingredient: sprouted rye berries.  Where the f…k do you get those?  Well, I sometimes make a homemade Rejuvelac to add to my morning smoothie and to use in making cashew cheese.  A fresh batch was completed this morning, so rather than put the sprouted rye berries in the refrigerator, only to discard them 10 days hence (after putting a few on peanut butter sandwiches), I decided to use them in cooking.  I sautéed half an onion in 1/4 cup of olive oil, then added the rye berries and salt and pepper.  They tasted good, so I decided to use them in the pasta dish.

When mixed with the steamed haricots verts and Kalamata olive paste, along with the spaghetti made from chestnut flour, I had an unusual and successful pasta dish.  As you can see from the menu, we had two wines: a 2005 Herri Mina — a Basque white from Petit and Gros Manseng grapes from the French side of the Pyrenees, and a 2008 Aglianico from Polvanera in Puglia, of which I’ve written in glowing terms before.

Not bad for mostly leftovers.

It’s June, and it’s hot.  Only 88° F. today, down from 95° yesterday.  But it’s Sunday, and as always, lunch is a favorite meal.  This time, it was inspired again by dinner at Cava in Portsmouth last night, an excellent tapas and wine bar.

Here is the short and sweet summary.  I took out my two favorite grill pans and proceeded to use them for an assortment of vegetables, some fresh, some leftover.  In succession I made a tapas plate with:

• a few grilled asparagus
• a couple of eggplant slices, grilled
• three pieces of plump red Greek roasted peppers
• baby golden beets (steamed yesterday, finished on the grill with oil, salt and lemon )
• freshly picked arugula from my raised-bed garden
• reheated broccoli rabe, crisped slightly in the pan
• a leftover block of tofu, marinated in olive oil and hoisin sauce, then grilled

I also toasted a half of a pita bread, to scoop up some of the hummus I made a couple of days ago, and served it all with a 2012 Villa Creek Rose (70% Grenache, 30% Mourvèdre).  A few small cubes of Greek feta cheese completed the plate, part of the almost-vegan ethic.

Serendipity works in strange and circuitous ways.  A few days ago I was out doing errands and was getting prepared to make an eggplant-chickpea curry from an Isa Chandra Moskowitz cookbook that I like.  En route to the Trader Joe’s for organic OJ, I was passing my network chiropractor’s office, so I stopped in to get a couple of supplements.  Since they are next door to an Indian grocery market, I went there to get a bunch of fresh cilantro.  Browsing the shelves as I always do, I bought some red lentils (a current favorite of mine) and a can of Indian chickpeas (to compare to the Trader Joe’s organic ones I also intended to get).  Further down the legume shelf — and fascinated with the variety there — I came across a package of dried organic Chana Dal.  I asked they owner about it, and he told me they were split chickpeas and very good, so for $2.99 I decided to try the 2 lb. package.  Here is what I discovered.

Yesterday, I started my online research to learn more about this.  The first reference I found was a goldmine: http://www.mendosa.com/chanadal.html

It turns out that this legume is a high-fiber source of protein with an extremely low glycemic index, which is very welcome news for vegans and anyone with blood sugar level concerns.  While it is indeed a form of chickpea, apparently it is much better for you than ordinary chickpeas.  The next issue to explore was, so what?  Do they taste good?  How does one prepare them?  The findings were equally exciting there too.

Increasingly, these days, I find Mark Bittman and the New York Times to be a source of valuable information about healthy eating.  This article online provided good background information about dals, and it has an excellent video clip featuring Indian cook Julie Sahni, who showed Mark how to properly prepare a dal dish.  Furthermore, it offered several dal recipes, including Chana Dal, New Delhi-Style.

So, last night I washed a cup of the Chana Dal and then placed in a bowl with cold water to soak overnight.  It takes a lot longer for these to become tender than typical lentils.  In fact, in retrospect, you can treat them just as you would well-dried ceci beans from Italy.  Today, I followed the recipe above, simmering them slowly for an hour instead of 40 minutes, then added the Tadka as shown in the video, including some chopped tomato (which is not in the recipe above).

Not being in possession of a mathani (yet) to semi-puree the legume, I used a potato masher for similar results, and it seemed to work fine.  After two satisfying bowls for lunch, accompanied by a pan-toasted whole wheat flatbread and a glass of St. Joseph blanc (100% Rousanne — smelling of peaches and apricots), I was very content.  And well-informed on the glories of Chana Dal.

Oh, yes — and the Eggplant-Chickpea Curry two nights before (remember that was my original target), was very good too, served atop organic brown basmati rice alongside a Paso Robles Grenache.

I took a quick trip to New York City this week, just one night and a couple of dinners.  One of my explicit goals was to visit the Union Square Greenmarket again.  Even though it was a Monday, with fewer vendors and a bit of drizzle, my efforts were rewarded.  I was able to come home that evening with some of the special treats of Spring, all from farmers near the city.  The featured items in my haul were:

• a bunch of Stinging Nettles
• a beautiful, large Maitake mushroom
• two bunches of the freshest, prettiest Ramps I’d ever seen
• a Chinese green vegetable, related to Bok Choy, but lighter, thinner and more appealing
• and a loaf of organic peasant bread, purchased at the Whole Foods across the street

The next day I ate the Ramps, simply sautéed in olive oil, with some grilled bread and a glass of Gruner Veltliner for lunch.  Two nights later I made a Spring Vegetables dinner:

The meal consisted of the NYC goodies, plus ingredients obtained locally over the past week.  No recipe, but you can tell how it came together from the picture above and the list below:

• freshly-made polenta, cooled, cut into strips, and sautéed in olive oil until crisp on both sides
• cauliflower cut into thick steaks, drizzled with olive oil, oven roasted at 375° F. until tender, then topped with organic tomato puree from Catalonia, plus some chopped Kalamata olives, roasted another 20 minutes while the flavors concentrated
• 1/3 head of cabbage, thinly-sliced, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted on the same pan with the cauliflower
• stinging nettles, leaves picked off the stem using rubber gloves, boiled, then quickly sautéed with garlic and oil
• fresh fava beans, tossed with sautéed green tops from the second bunch of ramps
• and 8-10 fingerling potatoes, braised with onions, garlic, more cabbage, and white wine, then roasted in the small copper pot with the lid on — these sturdy little gems do best when cooked for a relatively long time, something like 45 minutes braising and another 20-25 in the oven.  In fact, the next day I took the remaining leftover fingerlings, cut them in half lengthwise, and then grilled them (a la plancha) cut-side-down for 10 minutes more, alongside the maitake.

The combination was quite salubrious, as my friend Ron would say.  The wine was an excellent match: a 2010 Natalino del Prete “Torre Nova”, a rustic Salice Salentino alive with so many fresh flavors.  It’s made with a blend of Negroamaro and some other grapes to soften it.  A Louis Dressner import, I had obtained it recently from ThirstWine in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, and it’s an excellent value — organic and only $13.

I have since seen some unfavorable reviews of this wine online, but they don’t match my experience with it at all.  In contrast to those reports, you might read this one from a very knowledgeable reviewer whose opinions I trust (Tom Ciocco).  To quote his words (perhaps a few too many descriptors) about a bottle of the 2009 Torre Nova :

Azienda Agricola Natalino del Prete Salice Salentino “Torre Nova” 2009

Deep, opaque, cloudy and sultry blackish garnet color. Very complex and “pulpy” aromas of  minerals, dried flowers, blackberry, barnyard, licorice, chimney, motor oil, country air, cucumber, mocha, and pine tar. The wine in the mouth is big, full-bodied, dense and chewy in texture, with a powerful, fine, deep, and polished tannic structure on which are hung rich, vivid, three-dimensional flavors of juniper, black cherry,  black currant, prune juice, sap, and woody herbs. The finish is very long, intense, warm and dry, with clear flavors of blood orange juice and raisins. A wine of powerful, expressive, and profound rustic elegance.