May 12
2011

No pictures. I know, I know. I ATE IT ALL, okay? ^_^

This is a great thing to do with leftover ricotta, which I often have, and then dither on what I should do with it. No dithering here! If you want to be luxurious, add a slice of prosciutto to each sandwich, or leftover sliced cooked sausage.

By the way, since I have your rapt attention: it’s one PANINO, two or more PANINI. Not that any of the fast-food places seem to know this or care. (;

Roasted Tomato Panini

Serves 4

  • 1 sourdough baguette, sliced into four sections, then sliced in half horizontally (so you get four long sandwich rolls)
  • ricotta (a couple tablespoons per sandwich, or more, if you don’t mind your sandwich being gooshy)
  • 8 Roma tomatoes, stems removed and each sliced lengthwise in half
  • mixed lettuces
  • olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, basil, oregano

Preheat the oven to 400°. Place the Roma tomato slices on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, basil, and oregano, and pop in the oven to roast until wrinkled, slightly chewy, and smelling wonderful, somewhere between 40-50 minutes. You can do this step ahead and just pull the tomatoes out of the fridge whenever you need to make sandwiches. They’ll keep for a few days.

Pull out some of the soft inside of the bread. You can save that for making breadcrumbs or croutons or just eat it (which I will admit that I do, sometimes). Toast the bread if you want, or not. It’s good either way. Spread the bread thickly with ricotta, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and top with roasted tomatoes.

Toss the mixed lettuces with a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil and place on top of the tomatoes, top with the other half of the bread, and serve immediately.

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Aug 12
2010

I promised the beet rösti recipe when I got around to making it. Well, I got around to making it. (:

What is rösti, you wonder? It’s a Swiss version of what we’d consider hash browns, more or less. My chef-instructor taught us to make it in culinary school. Thank you, Chef Kurt! ‘Cause you really have to be shown the technique in order to do it right, or at least get some really really good step-by-step instructions.

Aside from potatoes, you can make rösti with pretty much any root vegetable, and that includes beets. To be honest, it’s one of the few ways that I like beets. To be really honest, I didn’t even eat beets until they started showing up in my CSA box, and I had to figure out something to do with them. Usually they’re just too heavy and cloying for me, but spending the time to caramelize them makes some of the earthy, overpowering sweetness turn toasty and crunchy and much, much more tasty.

Speaking of beets — when you purchase or receive your beets, they may come with their greens on. That’s fine. Beet greens taste much like a sturdy spinach when cooked, and you can use them for pretty much any cooked spinach or Swiss chard recipe you’d like. (I like ‘em sauteed with pine nuts and raisins and a little parmesan.) But if you are not going to use your beets the day you buy them, chop the greens off and store them separately from the beets, otherwise the greens will suck the nutrients and flavor out of your beets while they are sitting in your fridge.

I’m going to try to give really thorough instructions for the rösti, because this is one of those recipes where messing up will mess it up, and it’ll turn into a soggy gloopy mess. Ever had underdone hashbrowns? Yick. Now think about that with beets. Double-yick. So without further ado — the overly detailed instructions!

Beet Rösti

Serves 2-3

  • 3-4 medium-sized beets, tops and tails removed
  • 2-3 cloves garlic
  • half a small onion
  • 3-4 sprigs of fresh rosemary
  • 1/4 c. flour
  • 3 Tbsp. butter, divided
  • salt and pepper to taste

Mince the garlic. You’re looking for about a tablespoon’s worth. Set aside in a medium-large bowl.

Minced garlic for rosti

Mince the onion, too. These pieces can be a little bigger than the garlic, but you don’t want them super-huge. I used about half of a Borretana onion from our yard. You’re looking for about a quarter-cup. Add it to the garlic.

Minced onions for rosti

Mince the rosemary. A couple teaspoons to a tablespoon’s worth should be enough. Don’t add too much rosemary — it’s a powerful taste and too much of it will make your dish taste soapy. Err on the side of caution if you’re not sure how much to use. Add this to the onions and garlic.

Minced rosemary for rosti

Finally, shred the beets. You do not need to peel them, just make sure they’re well-cleaned and the beet greens and tails of the beets are removed. I strongly recommend shredding the beets in a food processor. Beets are wonderfully juicy vegetables and they will get bright red juice all over your counter, your floor, your hands, your clothes … yeah. So to save on cleanup, use the shredder disc of your food processor.

Shredded beets for roesti

Add the beets to the onions, garlic, and rosemary. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss to combine. Then sprinkle on 2 Tbsp. of the flour, and toss again. Most of the flour will be absorbed by the beet juices. Sprinkle on the rest of the flour, and toss a third time. I do it in stages because otherwise you can end up with flour lumps in your rösti.

Add the flour in stages and toss to combine

Melt 2 Tbsp. of butter in a nonstick pan or a cast-iron skillet. I love my cast-iron skillet. Let it cook just a bit so that it starts to turn light brown. Turn the heat to medium.

Melted butter

Spread the rösti mixture in the pan, pat it down into a circle with a spatula, and then — and this is the most important thing — LEAVE IT ALONE. Do not touch it, do not mess with it, DO NOT peek under it to see how it’s cooking. You need to let it cook for about eight minutes, undisturbed, or you will end up with soggy uncaramelized beety goop. If you absolutely must mess with it, you can mash it down further with your spatula, but DO NOT dig under it until it is caramelized on the bottom. (I recommend a nice flexible silicone spatula for this job, by the way. The beets won’t stick to it as much when you’ve got to move them around.)

Once the beets have cooked for about 8 minutes, you’ll want to take your spatula, dig under them, chop them up, and mix up the caramelized bits with the uncooked bits. This gets you crispy bits all throughout your rösti, and this is what makes a big difference from normal hash browns if you do this with potatoes. (If you do try this with potatoes, render down a little chopped up bacon instead of the butter … mmm.)

Mashed up roesti

Pat it down into a circle again, and let it cook about four or five minutes (and leave it alone!), until you’ve got a nice caramelized crust on the bottom again. Poke under it with your spatula and loosen the entire cake as one piece, because now you’re going to flip it over.

Halfway done with the roesti

I’ll be honest. I know how to flip things without a spatula and a plate, but cast-iron skillets are HEAVY. I don’t do the wrist-flip thing with the big skillet. If you’ve got a nice light nonstick pan that you’re doing this in, or you’re sufficiently beefy to wrist-flip a large cast-iron skillet, go ahead and do the wrist-flip, and I’ll be jealous of you. (; But for the rest of us, this is how you do it.

Loosen the entire cake, and shake it down towards the edge of the pan, and slide it out onto a plate. Alternatively, you can slide it to the edge of the pan and then flip it out onto the plate. That’s what I did.

See the nice caramelization? Those are the tasty crunchy toasty bits. MMMM. Don’t worry if you don’t get it out of the pan perfectly. You can mash it back down when you get it back in the pan.

Melt the last Tbsp. of butter in the skillet. If you slid the rösti out of the pan, you’ll need to flip it into the skillet. If you flipped it out of the pan, just slide it into the skillet like so:

Either way, you want the previously-caramelized side up, and the non-caramelized side down. Reshape it if you need to. Cook it for about three to four minutes (and leave it alone!), until the other side is caramelized as well.

Scoop it out of the pan, slice it into wedges, and enjoy! I use this as the starch part of a meal when I make it, ’cause beets are pretty heavy on the sugar front. We had this tonight with leftover BBQ ribs and sauteed pattypan squash. So good!

Dinner time!

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Jun 29
2010

One of the downsides to taking a three-day vacation when you’ve got a CSA … OMG, what do you do with all the food when you get back?

I’m glad it’s been June-Gloomy today, because this would NOT have been made in hot weather. But it successfully used up a whole pile of veggies I had sitting from both this week’s and last week’s CSA. It’s easy to throw together and takes well to substitutions. I’m suspecting it’ll freeze well too, which is a good thing. I still have leftover veggie-and-sausage-pseudo-lasagne-casserole thing from last week that needs eating, too.

This is not really a fucha ryori recipe (traditional Japanese Buddhist cuisine), because I used regular dashi instead of vegetarian dashi. It can easily be made vegetarian by substituting vegetarian dashi or vegetable broth. Purists might frown on the use of onion and garlic, but I like them. (:

Temple Garden Chowder: Summer Garden

  • 1 large red onion, chopped
  • 3 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 thumb’s worth of ginger, peeled and minced
  • 3 carrots, peeled and cut in half-circles
  • 3 small zucchini, cut in half-circles
  • 4 c. dashi, preferably homemade (you can use vegetarian dashi, vegetable stock, or chicken stock if desired. Maki has a simple recipe for dashi over on Just Hungry.)
  • 2 1/2 c. pinto beans (canned is fine, I had homemade in the freezer. Any type of beans would do.)
  • miso, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar, and pepper (sansho or regular) to taste
  • 1 package abura-age (fried tofu puffs), halved and thinly sliced
  • 1/2 bunch kale, stemmed and torn into bite-sized pieces

Sauté the onion in a bit of olive or vegetable oil. Add the garlic and ginger. Add the carrots, and while they’re cooking, slice and add the zucchini. Add the dashi, pinto beans, and whatever seasonings you prefer to taste. For the seasonings, I didn’t really measure. I used about a Tbsp. of white miso, a tsp. of red miso, a splash each of soy sauce, sake, and mirin, a large pinch of sugar, and a generous sprinkle of sansho pepper. Simmer until the flavors meld and the vegetables are the consistency you like them.

Just before serving, stir in the abura-age and the kale. Allow the kale to just wilt and turn bright green, and serve immediately.

Temple Garden Chowder

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