In-between days

Around here, spring tends to come in dribs and drabs--a splash of sunshine here, a smattering of blooms there. It takes a while for the season to gather momentum, to really come into its own. In some ways, these first few weeks are the ones I like best. The first shoots out of the ground, the first lacy blossoms on the trees--spotting these on walks around the neighbourhood makes me want to skip to the end of the block. Spring! It's here! It's here! There's something so good about the newness of it all. 

But like I said, the season's momentum is slow to gather. Like right now, it feels just about like spring. It's warm enough to throw open all the windows, and when passing through the yard, it's hard not to crush a few violets underfoot. They've got it carpeted. But most of the farmers' markets in town have yet to open, and even when they do in the coming days, it might be a while before there's much more filling the stands than asparagus and pea shoots (which is not to say that I have anything against either). So, yes, I'm being impatient. But after months and months of brassicas--roasted, braised, and pan-fried--how can you not be? There comes a point in the year, however short-lived, when it's hard to even look at another cabbage.

But, in these in-between days, cabbage is what you can count on. So here is something to help you wait out the days--Nigel Slater's chicken broth with pork and kale. Now, I can't go so far as to say that it tastes like spring--that would just be a bit of a stretch--but it doesn't quite recall the depths of winter either. An in-between kind of dish. For, though that ruffled kale afloat in broth has an unmistakable wintriness to it, the meatballs do not. These are rolled together with generous handfuls each of parsley, mint, and scallion, as well as a bit of fresh chile for kick, then seared golden in a hot pan and finished in the broth. The effect is something bright and fresh, something powerfully enlivening--enough to slough off the last of winter's drabness and make you forget (at least for a little while) that you are waiting.

Chicken Broth with Pork and Kale

Adapted from Nigel Slater's Tender

Note: As Slater says, you can substitute the kale leaves for savoy cabbage, and I get the feeling that I might have preferred it that way. I also bulked up the leftovers the next day with some cubes of boiled potato, which rounded things out rather nicely.

PORK BALLS

400 g / 14 oz ground pork

2 small, hot chiles

4 scallions

2 garlic cloves

6 bushy sprigs of parsley

6 bushy sprigs of mint

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

A little vegetable oil

SOUP

1 liter / 4 cups chicken stock

125 g / 4 1/2 oz kale leaves (from about half a bunch)

Remove any tough stalks from the kale leaves and tear into rough pieces. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil and blanch the kale for a minute or two, then drain and set aside. Give the pot a quick rinse.

Put the pork in a mixing bowl. Finely chop the chiles and add them with their seeds to the pork. Slice the scallions, discarding the roots and the very darkest tips of the leaves. Peel and mince the garlic, and add with the scallions to the pork. Pull the parsley and mint leaves from their stems and chop coarsely, then add them to the pork with the salt. Mix everything thoroughly with your hands and form into about sixteen balls, about 1 1/4 inches in diameter.

Warm a thin slick of oil in a cast-iron pan and cook the pork balls, in batches if needed, until toasty on all sides, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in the same pot the kale cooked in, bring the stock to a boil and season with salt and pepper. Lower in the pork balls and then decrease the heat and simmer for 5-7 minutes, until they are cooked through. Add the kale to the soup and serve immediately.

Serves 3-4.

Backwards arithmetic

Sometimes, I daydream about food, about flavours and colours that might well meet on a plate someday, that could just take a liking to each other. But most of the time, the sorts of thoughts about food that occupy me aren't so elevated. They are as practical as can be, driven by questions like `What to do with that neglected crust of bread?', `Is the parsley too far gone?', and `Can that cabbage be stretched to make a little lunch tomorrow?'. These, I take it, are just the sorts of day-to-day thoughts that occupy almost any home cook worth her salt. She does a sort of larder arithmetic to make as much as she can of what she has, especially of the odd scrap or two leftover from meals long cooked and eaten. It isn't glamorous, but there's an art to it (one that mothers and grandmothers seem to have down pat).

Well, that is the sort of arithmetic that I do most of the time. Every now and then, though, I get it a little backwards. I bake a loaf of bread, hoping for a few stale slices at the end of the week to blitz into crumbs. I devise ways of using up egg whites, thinking to add to my stash of yolks in the freezer. That sort of thing. Not terribly out there but still a little backwards. But my most recent round of such arithmetic--I don't think it can be described as anything but very backwards. Up until last weekend, you see, I'd been thinking a lot about whole chickens--about riding across town with them on the bus, about roasting them with garlic and paprika, about braising them with caramelized onion and cardamom rice--but all that, truth be told, was secondary. What I was really thinking about were their backs, necks, bones, and wing tips. I was in it for the stock, you see. I needed five pounds of such bits, and let me tell you, that's a lot of bird to collect, bird by bird. So there was a lot of scheming done on my part and a lot of chicken dinners from January on. (I have to confess--I eventually got impatient and bought some extra necks to supplement what I had.)

But this is not a story about stock. It in fact is about dumplings--soft, pillowy, parsnip dumplings. I first made them back in January with their intended broth. And for a vegetable broth, it was pretty good. Ottolenghi promised depth, and there was some. But I am just not a vegetable-broth kind of girl. For me, vegetable broth just never has enough depth, enough savour, to really hold its own. The carrots, the onion--they add a lot of sweetness, and there's nothing to counterbalance that. But I loved the parsnip dumplings and wanted to make them again. All I needed was a broth to really carry them. So that's how I ended up riding the bus home with whole chickens, how I ended up amassing a freezer full of chicken odds and ends, how I ended up spending most of Sunday morning perched on a stool, peering over a giant, steaming stock pot packed with those odds and ends.

All I can do is hope that these efforts do as much to illustrate how very good these dumplings are as they do how crazy I sometimes get. I won't even try to encourage you to follow my lead as far as the stock goes. I'll just say that these dumplings deserve good broth (vegetable or chicken, whatever pleases you) and that they're worth a little extra effort.

But for those of you curious about the stock, I was following the recipe from The French Laundry cookbook, which makes about 5 quarts (Keller claims 6) from five pounds of bones, an optional pound of chicken feet (that's about 9), and a mirepoix of carrot, onion, and leek. I am not quite sure what the chicken feet added, and given that they weren't exactly a bargain (oddly enough), I might try the stock without them next time. As written, the recipe produces a beautiful, pale gold stock. It is a bit subtle, but that isn't too surprising, given that in the restaurant it's intended to play a supporting role in risottos and the like. You can, of course, reduce it to good effect. This definitely won't be the last you'll hear of stock around here. I have my eye on a couple of other interesting-looking recipes.

Parsnip Dumplings

Adapted, just a little, from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty

Note: You can get away with making the dough in advance, but it doesn't keep well past a day. It starts to lose its cohesion and won't hold its shape very well in simmering water. But if you want to get the prep out of the way and cook the dumplings a little later, make the dough as directed and chill but don't add the baking powder until you're just about ready to cook the dumplings. Otherwise, they won't float to the surface.

DUMPLINGS

225 g russet potato (one small one), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

180 g parsnips (about 3 modest ones), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

1 garlic clove, peeled

2 tablespoons butter

70 g / 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 rounded teaspoon baking powder

50 g / 1/3 cup semolina

1 egg

Salt and white pepper

TO SERVE

4 cups good-quality broth, preferably homemade

1 small carrot, cut into half-inch-wide batons and cooked until tender or reserved from homemade stock (optional)

Parsley, chopped

Cook the potato, parsnips, and garlic in plenty of boiling salted water until soft, 8-10 minutes. Drain well. Wipe dry the pan in which the vegetables were cooked and put them back inside. Add the butter and sauté on medium heat for a few minutes to get rid of the excess moisture. While hot mash them with a potato ricer or masher. Add the flour, semolina, egg, and some salt and pepper and mix until incorporated. Chill for 30-60 minutes, covered with plastic wrap.

Heat the broth and taste for seasoning. In another pan, bring some salted water to a light simmer. Dip a teaspoon or small scoop (something with a release mechanism will make things easier--the dough is on the tacky side) in water and use it to spoon out the dumpling mix into the water. Once the dumplings come to the surface, leave to simmer for 30 seconds, then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

Ladle the hot broth into bowls. Place the dumplings and carrot, if using, in the broth, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

Sumptuousness for the new year

If I'd had things my way, I'd have woken up late New Year's Day to a bowlful of this minestrone--warm, nourishing, vegetal, and earnest. I'm a firm believer in starting the year with a good soup. After all that splendid holiday fare--the roasts, the potatoes, the mounds of sweets--it's exactly what I need. 

And that was especially true of this past holiday in particular. Christmas was one thing, but New Year's Eve was really something else. My boyfriend and I were visiting with his parents, and they'd invited a few people over to celebrate. You have no idea how much we ate. We set the table no less than three times over the course of the evening. We had three dinners that night, each broken up with a few drinks, some cards, and a little pool. First came the meatball soup, the piles of smoked and cured meats, and a kale salad. Then there were cabbage rolls (glorious), sausages, and a luxurious cabbage gratin. Finally, as we rung in the New Year, there was a pork loin, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts on the table. (And of course there was dessert.) The Romanians know how to run a feast (but I should have known that already).

The next day, there were leftovers galore, so I waited until I was back in Chicago to make this much-needed soup. Now, ordinarily, I wouldn't bother making my own vegetable stock. But I wanted this soup to be positively virtuous, so homemade stock it was. And after a string of lazy days, it felt right. All that scrubbing, peeling, and chopping was meditative, renewing--and well worth it, besides. The stock gives the minestrone its depth, sweetness, and complexity. It's the heart of this soup, really. It makes it just about as sumptuous as any humble vegetable soup can be. And at the start of the year, that's all the sumptuousness you might really need.
Happy 2012, friends.

January Minestrone

Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Note: Make ahead. As with many soups, this minestrone just gets better in a day or two. If you aren't serving it all at once, only blanch as much chard and cook as much pasta as you'll need immediately. You risk overcooking them otherwise. Umami. Don't overlook the parmesan. The vegetables can't do it all on their own. The parm gives the soup the satisfying kick of umami it needs. Vegans, you'll have to make up for it in good-quality soy sauce or tamari. Parmesan rind. You can also improve the depth and flavour of any vegetable broth by adding the rind from a wedge of Reggiano. Think of it as the vegetarian's ham knuckle.

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to finish
2 cups finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup chopped parsley
4 garlic cloves, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 cup diced celery
Salt and pepper
2 bay leaves
8 parsley branches
6 thyme sprigs
9 cups vegetable stock (recipe below)
Rind from a piece of Parmigiano Reggiano (optional)
3 cups cooked white beans (I used alubia blanca but cannellini would be just fine) 
Soy sauce, to taste
1 small bunch of Swiss chard or kale
2 1/2 cups cooked small pasta (I used ditalini, small and thimble-like)
Thin shavings of parmesan, preferably Parmigiano Reggiano

Heat the oil in a wide, heavy-bottomed pot with the onion. Saute over high heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.

Add the tomato paste, parsley, garlic, vegetables, and 2 teaspoons salt and cook 3 minutes more.

In the meantime, tie up the aromatics with kitchen twine or bundle them in cheesecloth. Add them to the pot along with the stock, and the rind, if using, and bring to a boil.

Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes. At the 15 minute mark, add the beans to the pot.

In the meantime, bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously. Blanch the greens until bright, just a minute or two. Drain them and run them under cold water. Remove their stems and chop the leaves finely. Set aside.

Taste the soup for salt and season with freshly ground black pepper. If it needs more depth, stir in some soy sauce, starting with 1 tablespoon. Remove the aromatics.

Just before serving, add the greens and the pasta to the soup and heat through. Serve with extra virgin olive oil drizzled into each bowl, a generous grind of pepper, and the parmesan.

Serves 6.

Basic Vegetable Stock

Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

Note: Volume. My 5.5-quart dutch oven just fits all of the liquid and vegetables. If you don't have something nearly as big, you might try simmering everything in 2 quarts of water to make a more concentrated stock and then diluting it with an additional 3 cups of water for the minestrone.

3 small onions
3 large carrots
3 celery ribs, including a few leaves
1 large bunch of scallions
1 1/2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
12 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
12 parsley branches
9 thyme sprigs
2 bay laves
Salt

Scrub the vegetables and chop them roughly into 1-inch chunks. Heat the oil in a wide, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the vegetables, garlic, and herbs and cook them over high heat for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently. The more colour they get, the richer the flavour of the stock. Add 3 teaspoons of salt and 3 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth.

Makes about 9 cups.

Weathering the storm

As you may have heard, a massive snowstorm hit the Midwest a few days ago. It got pretty wild in Chicago--people had to abandon their cars all along Lake Shore Drive, thousands lost power,  and parts of the city got buried in over two feet of snow. Fortunately, all that the storm meant for me was that classes were cancelled. Snow Day(s)!

Being a grad student, I really shouldn't have had too much to be excited about. Sure, I have classes, but I spend most of my time at home anyway, preparing for class--reading articles, making margin notes, pulling at my hair in frustration--and so, I really should have gone on just doing those things. Of course, I didn't quite manage that. The first of my two consecutive snow days, at  least, involved the couch, a lot of stove-top popcorn, and The Sopranos. I also made some soup/stew.

This was something I dreamed up sometime over the holidays when my boyfriend and I were visiting each of our families together. Neither family has a very broad conception of what to feed us vegetarian kids, and there was an endless succession of cakes and pies (we'd polish off my mom's apple pie, and then my grandmother would be ready with a pie of her own). As a result, I started thinking about how nice it would be to be back at home with a simple soup--maybe something loaded with ribbons of kale, creamy beans, and chunks of potato--just something wintry, hearty, and nutritious.

I did in fact make a version of this soup the week I got home, but the both of us agreed that it was missing something. With the storm still howling outside on Wednesday morning, I decided to give it another try. This time, I started with slivers of onion slowly cooked to a rich, dark hue. In the same pot, I then simmered a half-pound of dried beans (a mix of cannellini and cranberry) in the oven, with two bulbs of garlic roasting alongside. Finally, when the beans were tender, in went the roasted garlic, some sauted kale, chunked potatoes, and the caramelized onions.

The soup was good that first day--just what we wanted as the cold set in. But two days later, served as a stew (I didn't add quite as much water and let it simmer on the stove for about 15 minutes) over a few lemon slices, it was just perfect. The onions and roasted garlic cooked together had made the broth thick and unctuous, and the beans and potatoes at that point had had a chance to soak it in. The kale was tender and had lost much of its bitter edge. And the added lemon made everything else sing.

Admittedly, there are a lot of steps to this soup/stew. But if you ever find yourself with a few spare hours, especially if you expect a storm to blow in, remember this stew as something to weather the storm and keep warm with.

White Bean and Roasted Garlic Soup with Kale and Potatoes

Note: As I said, we liked this best as a stew a couple of days later. You will have to add some water to the leftovers when you reheat them since the potatoes absorb liquid--just add a little less water and simmer for a little longer (10 minutes) to serve it as a stew. Cannellinis would be my bean of choice here, but any mild bean should do--I supplemented with some cranberry beans this time around. Finally, if you don't have an ovenproof pot, you can cook your beans over the stove. After they come to a boil, cover them, turn the heat down to low, and let them simmer gently. I used the oven since I had to roast the garlic anyway. If you're baking something at 350 or 375 degrees F the day before you make this, you can always roast the garlic then and then do your beans on the stove top. Pretty much any of the prep (beans, kale, potatoes) can be done a day in advance.

1/2 lb of dried beans (preferably cannellini), sorted and soaked overnight
2-3 medium onions, thinly sliced (from pole to pole)
olive oil
2 bulbs of garlic + 1 clove
1 large sprig of thyme
3/4 lb potatoes (preferably yellow-fleshed), peeled and chopped into 1-inch cubes
half a bunch of kale (7-10 medium leaves), stems discard and chopped into thin ribbons cross-wise
pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
half a lemon, cut into thin slices

Pre-heat over to 350 degrees F. Heat olive oil (about 2 tablespoons to begin with--add more if necessary) over medium-low heat in a 4-quart, ovenproof pot. Add onions to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until deeply caramelized (about 30 minutes). Don't worry if bits stick to the bottom of the pan--you'll be rescuing all that flavour later.

Meanwhile, cut about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch off the tops of the bulbs of garlic, just so that most of the cloves are exposed. Set the bulbs on a square of aluminum foil, drizzle them with olive oil, and then wrap them securely in the foil.

Remove onions from pot and set aside. Drain the beans. With the pot still over the flame, add the beans and enough water to cover by 1 inch. While the water goes in, put your wooden spoon to good work and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the sprig of thyme to the beans. Bring the beans to a boil, cover, and pop them into the oven along with the garlic. Cooking times vary between varieties of beans, check after the first hour and then every half-hour after that. 

The garlic should done in about an hour--the exposed tips should be a deep, golden brown, similar to that of the caramelized onions. Remove the garlic from the oven and unwrap it. When cool enough to handle, carefully squeeze the roasted pulp out from the exposed tips into a small bowl and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a medium pot, cover the potatoes in water, season with salt, and bring to a boil. Cover with the lid slightly askew and simmer until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside.

In the same pot, heat up a 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-low heat. Mince the remaining clove of garlic and add it to the oil along with the red pepper flakes. Saute for about a minute, turn up the flame to medium, and add the chopped kale. Wilt kale, season with salt, and continue to saute until somewhat tender, 7 to 10 minutes.

When the beans are ready, remove the thyme stem and return them to the stovetop. Combine the kale, potatoes, garlic, and onions with the beans. Add enough water to barely cover. Simmer for 10 minutes to allow flavours to meld.

Put one or two lemon slices into the bottom of each bowl and serve soup over top when ready.

Serves six.