Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Revise yourself!

October 22, 2011 by Mary Frances 5 Comments

I have been oven-roasting cauliflower with olive oil, salt, pepper and cumin for some time now and it is delicious. But sometimes you need a change. So I am always on the lookout for quick cooking, delicious vegetables to get on the table fast for a weeknight meal. I look at weeknight meals as it’s okay to spend a little time on the main dish but then the vegetable and carbohydrate should be simple and easy. Like rice in a rice cooker while oven roasting asparagus with olive oil and finishing with lemon juice and lemon zest, plus a little more olive oil. So this week, I had a prospective client dinner meeting on Wednesday and my husband cooked for himself and Zach. I had asked him to please use up the plum tomatoes as they were getting too ripe. He forgot. So I’m looking at these soon overripe tomatoes as I’m preparing my cauliflower and say why not? It was great, adding an additional flavor along with some juiciness and color – so important!

ROASTED CAULIFLOWER WITH CUMIN & TOMATOES
Serves 4

1 head of cauliflower
2 – 3 tbs. olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 tbs. ground cumin
3 plum tomatoes, quartered lengthwise, then cut into 4 or 5 chunks.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Wash, dry and separate or cut flowerets of the cauliflower to be approximately the same uniform size. Pile in the middle of a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle on 2 – 3 tbs. olive oil, sprinkle with salt, fresh pepper and cumin. Pile on chopped tomatoes and toss the whole thing well with a spatula/flipper/pancake turner.

Roast on a top shelf for 20 minutes or more until cauliflower is fork tender. Toss again when testing.

Enjoy!

Food Alert! Pesticide-Ridden Canned or Frozen Corn

October 17, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

I just received this email today and wanted to share it with you. My upstate farmer friends, Ethel and Tom, have told us that even the deer won’t eat GMO corn. For every dozen GMO plants, you must plant a non-GMO one and the deer will only eat that 13th plant. They know!

Here’s the email:

Surveys over the past decade have consistently shown that Americans don’t want to eat genetically engineered (GE or GMO) food. Despite the overwhelming opposition to this risky new food technology, the biotech giant Monsanto continues to impose its unlabeled GMO’s onto our dinner plates.

The latest: Monsanto’s new GMO corn, intended for the frozen and/or canned corn market. This experimental corn will not be labeled, so consumers cannot know when they may be eating a GMO food that contains a toxic pesticide in every bite. Monsanto’s corn is a new GMO variety that has been genetically modified for three different traits, to resist two different insects and to withstand heavy spraying with Monsanto’s toxic Roundup herbicide. Because there are already untested varieties of other insect-resistant and Roundup-Ready varieties on the market, federal regulators are not requiring ANY approval process—which means NO public comment on its introduction into our food supply.

CFS has teamed up with the Center for Environmental Health to urge major companies that make frozen and/or canned corn to take action to avoid Monsanto’s new crop. We need tell Del Monte, Bird’s Eye and other major food makers to reject this new GMO corn. General Mills (Green Giant, Cascadian Farms) and Trader Joe’s have already said they will not use Monsanto’s new GMO sweet corn in their products—so can the other top companies!

Take action today! Send food makers a message that we don’t want Monsanto’s food experiments!

One dish meals

October 15, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

I was just thinking how much I love one dish meals for weeknights. What could be simpler? You’ve got your carbohydrates, vegetables and proteins all in one. You can serve it in a lovely flat soup bowl and hopefully the recipe will only cause one or two pots to be dirtied, so clean up is a breeze as well. The Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Chicken Sausage recipe in my last entry is a good example but there are so many. Gnocchi with Shrimp and Snowpeas, Veal Stew with Rosemary and Lemon on Polenta, Orecchiette with Shrimp and Broccoli Rabe, all listed earlier here are other great ones. Think of the many combinations you can make – use your imagination. Combine things you love and you won’t go wrong. Remember to relax, have fun, and pour love into it!

Farfalle with lamb sausage and escarole.

Dinner in 30 minutes – REALLY!

October 12, 2011 by Mary Frances 3 Comments

This is no Rachel Ray joke!

We arrive home very late on Columbus Day, having had business meetings upstate in Hudson.

I know I have broccoli rabe at home in Manhattan. I grab a pack of frozen sausage from the country house and do not put in it in a cool pack for the ride home so it will thaw. I will make pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage. However it is a mild Italian chicken sausage, BUT I have just picked a very hot serrano pepper from my garden!

Everyone is starved as we walk in the door at 8:30. I put all the other groceries away and get to work a little before nine. How can I get dinner on the table quick? I ask for help from Zach’s girlfriend, Agata, and she does a beautiful job peeling and slicing the 6 large garlic cloves. And I continue with the neatest thing being using the broccoli rabe near boiling water to bring to a rolling boil to cook the pasta. It also flavored the pasta as well. Dinner was on the table at 9:23, served with a lovely bottle of red wine for the four of us and it was a feast! I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. My husband said this was the very best version of this dish I have ever made! And, it has the magical pancetta in it to give it the big full flavor. Here goes.

Pasta with broccoli rabe and chicken sausage in a bowl.

PASTA WITH BROCCOLI RABE AND CHICKEN SAUSAGE
1/4 cup olive oil
6 large garlic cloves, pealed and sliced
1 serrano chili pepper minced, with seeds (remove seeds if you do not like things hot)
1 3/8” thick slice pf pancetta, cut into small dice
1 bunch broccoli rabe, washed and cut into 2” pieces
1 -11/4 lb. mild Italian chicken sausage, removed from casing and broken up into small chunks
1 lb linguini – No. 6
3 tbs. pasta water
2 oz. grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

Peel and slice the garlic cloves. Mince the pepper. Warm the olive oil with the garlic, hot pepper and pancetta on low heat for 10 – 12 minutes in a large skillet while you’re cleaning the broccoli rabe. Trim the ends of the broccoli rabe and cut into 2” pieces, Wash thoroughly, twice. Put in a large pot, cover with at least 2” of cold water. Salt with coarse sea salt. Put on very high heat. When bubbles start to form on the edges of the pot, lift the broccoli rabe out with a hand mesh strainer or slotted spoon and drain in a colander. This partially cooks the rabe and removes the bitterness. You are saving the water to cook your pasta in. Raise heat on garlic mixture to medium, add your sausage and sauté until all pink is gone. Taste for salt and pepper but remember, the Pecorino is salty and that gets put in at the end. Meanwhile, bring the broccolli rabe water to a rolling boil and cook your pasta. Add drained broccolli rabe to sausage mixture and toss the combination. Save some pasta water and drain the pasta when done. I find it best to combine all in layers. Put 1/3 pasta in a bowl with 1/3 sausage rabe mixture and 1/3 cheese and 1 TBS. pasta water, toss to combine and continue with thirds and toss. Serve with more cheese if you like at the table, but it really isn’t necessary.

This dish is so creamy and delicious – even for people who say they don’t like broccoli rabe! It almost tastes like it has butter in it but it doesn’t. You will love it!

Friday night

October 10, 2011 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

My oldest son wanted to come out to the country house with 3 friends this past Friday afternoon, to spend the night, on their way to a farm in Massachusetts for a cider pressing event. Now I was already expecting 4 guests on Saturday for the weekend. After initially being taken aback, what’s a little more laundry? These kids are fun. And I have to tell you, it is so nice to drive up to your own house with the lights all on and all warm inside and have someone greet you to offer their help in bringing things in, martini glasses on the coffee table and laughter and music. What could be a better greeting on a Friday night – or any night for that matter?

He said he would make dinner. Great!! See – they all cook! He made the most spectacular chili – with tender pork cubes and no beans, served over polenta that his good friend Martha made.

I’m telling you, it was so, so good. I have to get the recipe and I was so very glad he did not take the leftovers which I cleaned up completely today – and I didn’t want to share. Not with anyone.

Later yesterday, I received this photo of his bounty from the farm. Beautiful!!

Beef brisket

October 9, 2011 by Mary Frances 4 Comments

I always think of my good friend Susan who on 9/11, after the towers collapsed, was told to go home from work and was so distraught and didn’t know what to do, she chose to go to her butcher and bought a beef brisket; hoping to find solace in an enormous slab of beef. The very idea of brisket is comforting; it is a homey dish in my mind. However, every Jewish holiday I have attended, with accompanying brisket, has almost always fallen short of my juicy, tender beef idealization.

My husband was raised Jewish and brisket is a Rosh Hashanah staple. He did not want a New Year’s family dinner this year but I insisted we try to pull it together at the last minute, At 6:30 the night before, we decide to plunge in and purchase the meat – a six and a half pound brisket – for 5 of us! Yikes! Now we had to convince Zach to be home by 3:30 to put this baby in. After dinner on Tuesday night, I got to work on a marinade. Not liking the sound of any one recipe online, I proceeded to make up my own. So here we go. This was so delicious; I will make this again and again, even if it’s not a Jewish holiday. I wanted to drink the gravy and then put it on everything afterwards, it was that good.

MARINATED BEEF BRISKET

1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and minced
3 cups of chopped onions
1 1/2 cups red wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
3/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 can tomato paste
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tsp. Kosher salt
6 1/2 lb. beef brisket
3 – 4 plum tomatoes, cored and diced
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1 1/4” pieces
3 medium red-skinned potatoes, cut in 1 1/4” chunks

Whisk together the garlic, onions, vinegar, red wine, mustard, tomato paste, brown sugar, soy sauce and salt in a very large bowl. Wash and dry the meat and submerge it in the marinade. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Turn it over in the morning.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Take meat out 45 minutes before putting in the oven. Place meat and 3/4 of the marinade in a covered pot or Dutch oven (Le Creuset is best). Discard the rest of the marinade. Roast for 3 hours Add carrots and potatoes. Cover again and at 3 1/2 hours, add tomatoes and cook for 45 minutes more. It should be fork tender.

Remove the meat to a platter. Take the vegetables out with a slotted spoon and surround the meat with them on the platter. Boil the marinade, skimming off all the grease that will form at the top as you rapidly boil for 20 minutes or so, until greaseless and slightly thickened.

Generously drizzle gravy over the meat and vegetables, garnish with parsley. Carve in 1/4” slices on an angle and serve. Pass extra gravy at the table.

You will be amazed.