Month: February 2004

I find it oddly coincidental that yesterday the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Chronicle both decided to feature recipes for baked beans. I do not normally think of February as being baked bean season. On the other hand, I have been looking for an excuse to get one of these bean pots, so maybe I should give these two recipes a try.

Boston Baked Beans

Makes 8 servings

• 16 ounces (2 cups) dry navy beans
• 2 quarts cold water
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup molasses
• ⅓ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 4 ounces salt pork
• 1 medium onion, chopped

Rinse beans; add to water in saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 minutes; remove from heat. Cover and let stand 1 hour. (Or, add beans to cold water; soak overnight.) Do not drain. Add salt to beans.

Cover and simmer till tender, about 1 hour, then drain, reserving liquid. Measure 2 cups liquid, adding water if needed; mix with molasses, brown sugar and mustard.

Cut salt pork in half; score one half. Grind or thinly slice remainder. In 2-quart bean pot or casserole, combine beans, onions and ground salt pork. Pour molasses mixture over. Top with scored pork.

Cover; bake in 300-degree oven for 5 to 7 hours. Add more liquid if needed.

Per serving: 394 calories; 12 grams protein; 12 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 60 grams carbohydrate; 12 milligrams cholesterol; 365 milligrams sodium

Nana Laurette’s Baked Beans

This dish is a time commitment that is worth the effort. The beans taste even better the next day.

• 1½ pounds navy beans
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• ¼ cup molasses
• ½ teaspoon dry mustard
• ½ yellow onion
• ¼ pound salt pork

Wash and pick over beans, discarding any stones or debris. Place in a 6-quart pot (not cast iron), cover with water and let soak overnight. The next morning, drain beans and add fresh water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until the skins of the beans break, about 30 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Preheat the oven to 250°.

Combine the salt, brown sugar, molasses and mustard in a Dutch oven, stir to combine. Then add the beans and stir to evenly coat with the mixture.

Press the onion half and salt pork into the middle of the beans. Pour in boiling water to cover.

Cover the pot and bake for 5 hours without stirring. Add hot water as necessary to keep beans covered with water at all times. Uncover the pot for the last half hour of cooking so the beans will brown.

Serves 8

Per serving: 425 calories, 18 g protein, 61 g carbohydrate, 13 g fat (4 g saturated), 12 mg cholesterol, 792 mg sodium, 20 g fiber

Breakfast started with half of a white grapefruit and a glass of orange juice. The grapefruit arrived by mail yesterday. I ordered them from Sun Harvest Citrus. Later Gretchen made mushroom and cheddar omelets and toast from her oatmeal honey bread with strawberry jam. I weighed 155 pounds.

Rosemary Hignett, the Head of Food Labelling and Standards at the [Food Standards Agency], said: “We know that consumers often place particular value on terms like fresh, pure and natural when buying food.

“They rightly expect foods labelled with these terms to be different in some way from products that don’t carry these descriptions.

“For instance, they don’t expect items labelled ‘fresh’ to have a four-week shelf life, they don’t expect items labelled as pure to have added ingredients and they don’t expect products with ingredients described as natural to have used artificial preservatives and additives.” [BBC]

Breakfast was a half of a glass of orange juice and two sausage and scrambled egg wraps. I weighed 154 pounds.

I had a morning meeting at the Nittany Lion Inn with another networking vendor. The Inn provided food. I had two servings of yogurt with granola. I walked there and back — about three miles total.

Dinner was vegetable lo mien, I had two servings and then had a couple hands full of peanuts for dessert.

I was reading Leah’s latest post over at Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen. She is talking about an article in Newsweek called “Takeout Nation”:

I definitely do not live in Take-Out Nation.� In fact, I laugh to think that I have pretty much cooked myself right into a corner; we almost never want to go out anymore because the food available in this town’s restaurants, fast food or otherwise, is simply not as good as what we can eat at home. [Leah Adams]

Gretchen and I have noticed the same thing. After my parents retired and moved to Florida, we used to really look forward to going down, not only because we would get to visit with them, but because we also got to eat out at so many good restaurants. For various health reasons, they can no longer go out to eat, but we have no complaints when we visit them. My Mother is an excellent cook and they both have excellent taste in wines.

Also, we used to budget eating out once a week. As we learned to make more things better, we cut that back to once a month. Now we almost never go out to eat. We feel that we can make better tasting food, with higher quality ingredients, for much less money, at home than we can find in any restaurant, and we have a great time doing it.

Breakfast this morning was a glass of orange juice. I weighed 154 pounds.

We had a meeting with a networking vendor this morning and they brought in Krispy Kremes. I had two — I think I’ll call that lunch.

I was reading : : mum-mum : : eat-eat : : this morning and saw that Wena has the hots for the new Canon PowerShot S1 IS. I have to admit it is a sweet camera. Unfortunately, I just bought a Minolta DiMAGE Xt. The Canon has a log going for it over the Minolta, but what I was going for was size. The Xt is tiny! It easily fits into my shirt pocket so I can take it with me everywhere. For instance, today when I was out walking over lunch — maybe three miles round trip — I walked by the Nittany Lion Shrine.

Of course, that was planned and since I knew I wanted a picture of it, I could have carried along any camera. Where you need an omnipresent camera is when you are walking along and discover the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile™.

Here is the conversation going on behind me as I took this picture:

“What the…”

“Who would park the Wienermobile next to Thomas building?”

“Are they giving out free hot dogs?”

“My life is complete.”

Literally seconds after I took this picture, it drove away. That is why you need a pocket camera.

As Fortune recommended the other day, Gretchen made a boule on our stone. We used a recipe for Oatmeal Honey Bread. I thought it was a little heavy, but tasty. Gretchen liked it (and gave me dirty looks for saying I thought it was heavy). Dinner was the last slice of that turkey pie with a small green salad and a slice of the oatmeal honey bread.

Breakfast this morning was a glass of orange juice. I weighed 154 pounds.

I walked over to the new IST Building — maybe three miles round trip — and grabbed a Penn State Creamery low-fat cherry yogurt.

Dinner was another slice of that turkey pie with a Waldorf salad and a hand full of peanuts for dessert.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of steel-cut oats with brown sugar and milk with a glass of orange juice.

Gretchen and I split one of our little turkey pies for lunch with a glass of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon.

Gretchen and I worked on perfecting our pizza technique tonight. This one is sautéed onions and peppers. We split it with two glasses of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon and had a handful of peanuts afterwards.

The cheese on this pizza is mozzarella. We find it a little bland. If anyone could suggest an appropriate cheese that was slightly sharper and perhaps a little saltier, please leave a comment. Thanks!

I would like to start with an apology. I am not cooking soup today. Gretchen and I already decided to have another go at our new pizza technique. However, I do have a soup recipe that I’ll gladly present in lieu.

Gretchen and I are developing a menu of our dishes. As we make each dish, we make a value judgment about whether that dish will go on the menu. That is, if it is good enough to keep in our bag of tricks. Since we only came up with this idea a few months ago, the menu does not yet contain all of the dishes we know we love and we have a long list of recipes we already know we want to try again to get them onto the menu. I have already talked about the Soy Braised Chicken recipe that Gretchen and I adapted from Terry Tan’s recipe in his Little Chinese Cookbook. This recipe is from the same cookbook and is another of our favorites.

As presented in the cookbook, this is Crab and Corn Soup, though Terry does suggest that diced chicken or shrimp can by substituted for variety. Gretchen and I have decided that we like the shrimp the best. You have to remember that we live in central Pennsylvania — essentially land locked. So when it comes to seafood, it comes down to frozen shrimp or canned crab. Those of you who have access to fresh seafood may decide differently.

This is one of the easiest, quickest soups you will ever make. It is a rich, tasty, aromatic, comforting soup. Perfect for a cold February evening.

Shrimp and Corn Soup

• 1½ cups Creamed Sweetcorn
• ½ cup Popcorn Shrimp
• 1½ cups Water
• 3 tablespoons Sesame Oil
• 2 tablespoons Light Soy Sauce
• ½ teaspoon Pepper
• 2 Eggs

Beat the eggs lightly and then combine all of the ingredients in a soup pot. Bring to a boil and adjust seasoning to taste. Terry recommends topping it with fresh chopped coriander and croutons, though I recommend a piece of crusty French or Italian bread.

What could be easier or quicker than that? Beat an egg and bring the soup to a boil. You couldn’t make canned soup in less time — and it wouldn’t be near as good.

Good pasta is made with durum wheat, semolina, and water (often spring water). Pastas are graded in small increments of thickness; they are smooth or ridged, tubular or flat. They come boxed in nests or packaged in elongated parcels. Specialty cuts are contorted in twists, shaped like little ears, made with squid ink or spinach. Different manufacturers call the same pasta shapes by different names. Neighboring Italian villages might not even agree on the same name.

But that’s just half the confusion. What about the sauce? Like shapes, the types of sauces familiar to Americans have expanded in recent years. Pairing pasta and sauces takes into consideration the heft of the sauce and size and texture of the pasta, along with regional preferences.

Tubular pastas such as ziti, rigatoni, and penne, which hold sauces in their cavities, are often paired with long-cooked red sauces, as well as savory mixtures simmered with chunks of meat and vegetables. The ribbed (rigati) tubes are more roughly cut, and the sauce seeps into the ridges. They are sturdy enough to hold up in a baked dish. The smooth (lisci) ones work well with oil and cream-based sauces that cling to the surface.

Long, flat linguine, fettuccine, and tagliatelle have enough surface area to hold thick tomato sauces, as well as pesto, cream, and oil-based seafood mixtures. Because long, round shapes — from spaghetti to angel hair — vary in thickness, toss thinner pastas with light sauces, perhaps made from fresh tomatoes; thicker ones stand up well with red or creamy carbonara sauces.

Known as soup pasta, tubettini, mini shells, ditalini, pastina, and rice shapes cook quickly. Any starch emitted during simmering thickens the pot. Some, such as pastina and stellina, are suited to simple broths, while thicker shapes such as ditalini and little shells go well in minestrone and pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans).

Stuffed pastas, like the folded tortellini and tortelloni from the Emilia Romagna region, which are filled with cheese and meat or vegetables, can also be served in broth with a sprinkling of cheese. Their more robust southern cousin, ravioli, is often bathed in tomato sauce.

The only thing more important than matching shape to sauce is cooking the pasta correctly. Use the cooking times on packages as a guide. Many Italians cook it for one to two minutes less than the instructions, then they finish cooking the pasta in the sauce. That way, you get “al dente” pasta — or strands that are tender “to the tooth.” The pasta absorbs the liquid as well as its flavors. Another tip is to save about half a cup of the pasta cooking liquid before draining. Add it to the pasta after draining it. If you stir over low heat, the sauce will give the pasta a shiny coating. Finally, never rinse pasta; you wash away flavor. [Boston Globe]