In the Kitchen: Absurdly Simply Salad Giada

It's summer. So. Salads.

I've been making this one for some time. I got it from Giada on FoodTV (yes, I do sometimes watch FoodTV: Giada and Ina). (Yes, I am in the "Enough With Rachael Already!!" camp.")

This is one of those simple marvels of chemistry: the pasta water "cooks" the greens ever so slightly, just enough to enhance their flavor and that of the tomatoes. This is also a recipe in which you want to use the best sun-dried tomatoes you can find. I use Mediterranean Organic in olive oil. They're pricey, but worth every penny.

I didn't have any goat cheese so I left that out. I was going to put some proscuitto on, but discovered we were out. But I did find sliced smoked ham, so I cut some thin strips of that and added it at the last minute (so it wouldn't get all wet and wonky).

I put the salad on the table along with a big bowl of cherries (because life is just a) and a bottle of white wine and hopped on the stairway to heaven.

In the Kitchen: Minestrone

"Minestrone" being a fancy, furrin word for "vegetable soup."

Every year about this time I make up a large pot of it. I portion it into containers and freeze it and then it's ready to during the year-end rush when we usually have family around. (This year the family doesn't get any: I'm stocking the freezer in preparation for the kitchen remodeling that will start the second week in January. Although "stuffing the freezer" is more like it; I'm filling every inch with enough food to last the three months with no kitchen.)

I don't know where I got this recipe. I think it orginally came from Gourmet magazine, but I'm not sure. In any case, I've been making this for about twenty years and it never fails to satisfy.

As always with a dish like this, the quantities and components are up to the cook. For example, I can't find good cannellini, and am too lazy to cook dried ones, so I used canned navy beans. I rarely remember to add the pesto (although it's a marvelous addition if you can remember). Etc.

At our house, this makes 12 servings, but we're old and eat small portions.

• 1 c. chopped onion
• 1 c. chopped carrot
• 1 c. chopped celery
• 1/2 c. chopped leek
• 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 T. butter
• 3 T. olive oil
• 8 c. beef stock
• 35 oz. canned tomatoes, with juice
• 2 c. diced potato
• 2 cans navy or cannellini beans, drained
• 1/2 c. peas
• 2.5 c. zucchini, chopped
• 2.5 c. green beans cut into bite-size pieces
• 2.5 c. peeled, cubed eggplant
• 2 c. mushrooms, sliced thick
• 4 c. shredded cabbage
• 2 c. shredded spinach (frozen is fine)
• 1/2 c. small pasta (I usually use orzo)
• 3 T. chopped parsley
• 2 T. pesto
• a piece of parmesan rind

You need a large pot; I use my stock pot. Heat the butter and olive oil and add the onion, carrot, celery, leek, and garlic. Cover with a piece of wax paper and then cover the pot and sweat the vegetables for ten minutes.

Remove the wax paper (please!) and add the stock, tomatoes and their juice, potato, beans, peas, zucchini, eggplant, green beans, peas, and mushrooms, as well as salt and pepper. If you don't have any pesto, toss in a handful of basil. Bring to a boil and then simmer for two hours (or whatever).

Stir in the cabbage, spinach, pesto, pasta, and cheese rind. Simmer another 30 or 40 minutes. Add the pesto and taste for salt and pepper.

Slice the bread, pour the wine. Be happy!

In the Kitchen: Spinach-and-Pasta In A Hurry

Tonight I planned to make risotto with spinach and porcini mushrooms. But husband came home and announced he was going to an evening event and had to leave early. Okay. No problem. Had a crap day and wanted to relax with the risotto, but truly, no problem. (Because why make a bad day worse?)

Made this instead. Think of it as a fake pasta carbonara. (In this case inspired by a recipe from Lynn Rossetto Kaspar's Italian Country Table

• 1 box frozen spinach
• a bit of diced red onion
• a bit of chopped garlic
• a quarter cup or so of grated romano and parmesan cheeses
• 2 eggs
• pasta (I used fusilli) (or however that's spelled)

I put on a pot of water to boil. Thawed the spinach in the microwave (isn't modern life amazing?). (Am not sure what's more amazing: the convenience of frozen spinach or the microwave.)

While I waited for the water to boil, I put the eggs, most of the cheese, and some salt and pepper in a bowl and mixed it with a fork. I heated some olive oil in a saute pan and added the onion and garlic. After about two minutes, I added the spinach and some salt, pepper, and dried pepper flakes and cooked it over medium-low heat for five or six minutes.

When the pasta was done, I tossed a quarter cup or so of its water in with the spinach and cooked it a minute. Added the pasta and tossed. Then added the eggs and cheese mixture and tossed gently and cooked it for a couple of minutes, just enough to cook the eggs.

Dished it up in a couple of bowls, sprinkled the rest of the cheese over it, poured some Shiraz. And the day's woes vanished. As did my husband not long after. Leaving me with the dishes. Hey! Life's not perfect.

In the Kitchen: Chicken, Chard, and Barley Soup

It's November 1. (Or will be by the time you read this.) You're seriously overdosed on shitty candy. The antidote? Soup. No doubt there are bazillions of versions of this dish out there, because this is an obvious combination of foods. This particular version is what came out of my brain and cupboard one night.

Serve it with this: Slice a baguette lengthwise. Spread both pieces with salted butter. Set under the broiler for six minutes. Ohhhhhh.....

• 1/2 pound of boneless chicken
• 1 c. barley (the real stuff; not that boxed instant crap)
• 1 small onion
• a couple of carrots
• a couple of celery stalks
• one bunch of chard
• can of chopped tomatoes
• can of white beans (cannilini or navy) (or whatever) (No, I have no idea how to spell cannilini) (Canillini?)
• a half cup or so of grated parmesan

Fill a saucepan with four or five cups of water and heat to boil. Add the barley and cook until done to your preference. (I like mine a bit chewy, which takes about 25 minutes.) When it's finished, drain the barley, reserving the water.

Put the chicken in a soup pot, add water to cover, boil, and then turn heat to a simmer. Cook for, I dunno, twenty minutes or so? Until the chicken is done. Remove the chicken and reserve the water. (You're going to use the barley and chicken water as the soup base.)

While that's happening, remove the stems from the chard. Chop those and set aside. Roll the chard leaves into bundles and slice them. Chop the onion, celery, and carrots, setting the onion aside so you can cook it first. To the soup pot, add a quarter or so of olive oil and the onion. Cook on medium till onion is golden brown. Add the carrot, celery, and chard stems. Cook five or six minutes.

While that's underway, turn to the chicken, which should be cool by now. Cut it into spoon-sized bits. Add the can of tomatoes to the soup pot; cook another five or six minutes. Add the chard to the pot. Cover the pan, and cook seven, eight minutes; until the chard is cooked down. To the pot add the beans, barley, chicken, and some of the barley-chicken liquid. How much liquid? I don't know. Four cups? You want the soup to have some body, so don't get carried away.

Add some salt and pepper. Let it cook on medium-low heat for a half hour or so. Pour the wine. Sprinkle some of the cheese on your soup. Enjoy. Your brain will forget all that sugar.

In the Kitchen: End of the Month "Mexican" Mess

Tonight in the kitchen: It's the end of the month, so food's running low in our house. Translation: time to rummage through the cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer to see what I can find. 'Cause I'm sure as hell not going to the grocery store. Here's what I found tonight:

• can of black beans
• a lovely summer squash (a friend brought some over the other day)
• a half jar of salsa
• red onion
• a couple of slightly desiccated green peppers
• garlic
• some decobbed corn (out of the freezer)
• some corn tortillas (also in the freezer) and some flour tortillas

I cut quartered the squash horizontally and then sliced those pieces. Minced a quarter cup or so of the red onion. Minced a clove of garlic. Chopped the green pepper. Drained and rinsed the can of beans.

Heated some oil (canola in this case) in a deepish pan. Added the squash and cooked it for six or seven minutes. Added the green pepper; cooked that a few minutes. Ditto the onion. Ditto the garlic. Added the beans, salsa, and corn. Cooked it over medium-low heat for about fifteen  minutes.

Turned the heat off. Covered it; let it sit. In another pan, I heated more oil (maybe a half inch or so in the ten-inch pan). Let it get hot.

While it heated, I cut the tortillas into wedges. When the oil was hot, I added three or four of the wedges at a time. It only takes a few seconds to cook them, so pay heed. T

hat's it. We had dinner tonight; we'll eat the rest of it Friday night. NOTE: Frying tortillas is no big deal, and certainly cheaper (and better tasting) than buying them.

There's only one "trick" to it: the oil must be hot. By hot, I mean turn the heat up high and let the pan sit on the heat for six to seven minutes. Yes, six to seven minutes. That's using gas. Electric might be faster. But test a wedge before you start loading the pan. The wedge should sizzle instantly and it should only take about fifteen seconds to cook. Then use your tongs to flip it to the other side. Cook for about five seconds.

The oil is HOT. You don't want small kids or babies anywhere near it. Okay?

Enjoy!

In the Kitchen: Zucchini and Friends Risotto

More from life in my kitchen.

Risotto has a bad rap here in the U.S.: The Foodies treat it like it's some exotic gourmet trip, hard to make, requires Ultra-Foodie skills, etc.

Folks, it's peasant food, for fuck's sake. And I mean that in the best sense of the word. It's a way to cook inexpensive starch with whatever else happens to be at hand.

The only "trick" to risotto is that yes, it works best with certain kinds of rice. Conventional "white" Asian rice doesn't cut it.

The only other advice I'd give is: One, don't rush it. It should take about 20 minutes. And two, take it off the heat before you think you should.

Anyway, we had risotto tonight, and here's what I had and did: I cut a zucchini in half and then quartered one of the two pieces and then chopped that sort of fine. (I planned to cook it only in the risotto itself, so I didn't want huge pieces.)

Then I used a vegetable peeler to create some fine, narrow ribbons with the other half. (I wanted a mixture of textures.) I had some tiny "cherry" tomatoes on hand, so I quartered those. I chopped up a few sprigs of basil. Minced a bit of onion and a tiny bit of garlic. (Go easy on the garlic or it WILL take over the dish.)

Grated a bit of parmesan.

I heated about three cups of chicken stock. Put some olive oil in a ten-inch saute pan. When the oil was medium hot, I added the onion and cooked it a few minutes. I added a generous cup of arborio rice and the garlic and stirred that over the heat a few minutes.

I added a cup or so of stock and began cooking the rice.

This, I think, is where people lose track of what's going on. All you're doing is using the stock to cook the rice. This is not rocket science or brain surgery or Wall Street bailouts. You're cooking rice. Slowly. Over medium heat. Stirring it once in awhile.

When the rice has absorbed most of the liquid, add some more hot stock. Repeat the cook/stir process. Throw in some salt and pepper. When you're down to your last two hits of stock, add the zucchini. Cook and stir.

Again, you're allowing the heat of the stock to cook the zuke. Not rocket science. Although I will say that at this point, you should use a large fork to "stir" the rice, so that you can separate the grains and the zuke.

No large forks, you say? Whatsamatterwit you? Okay, use two or three chopsticks as stirring tools.

When you're down to the last hit of stock (you're tasting a few grains once in awhile, right? To check for doneness?), add the basil and the tomatoes and toss. Gently.

Add the parmesan and a couple of tablespoons of butter and toss gently.

While there's still plenty of liquid, turn off the flame or move the pan off the burner. The accumulated heat in the pan will keep things cooking. You want a creamy consistency at the end.

Then I put the rice into two bowls, set a large bowl of cherries on the table (finally! The cherries have arrived!!) and poured some white wine. And proceeded to stuff myself with rice and cherries. Oy. Life does not get much better than this.