Creamy Pancetta-Sage Sauce over Farfalle

So, I’m horrible at posting, at taking pictures of what I make, talking about how I made it, and how it tasted.

So why stop now?

Here is the recipe I made up for something that really doesn’t have a name – maybe there is one in Italy somewhere.

Here it is: this would serve about 2-3 people if you cooked a pound of farfalle.

1 4-oz package of Pancetta
8 leaves of fresh sage
3 cloves of garlic
3-4 spoonfuls of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil
Parmesan thinly shredded. This will be added to help make the sauce
Heavy cream or whipping cream.
salt and fresh-cracked black pepper
1 pound of farfalle (Bow-tie pasta. I just like this shape. Small is good cause it holds the sauce best.)

The goal is to cook the pasta the last little bit in the sauce so it soaks up the sauce in each bite of pasta. You want to drain the pasta, throw it back into the pot, and add the sauce and let it cook juuuust a bit in the sauce so it soaks it all up. Go easy on the salt in the beginning because of the parmesan – it can be a bit salty.

Get a nice big stock pot of heavily salted water going for the farfalle. Rinse the sage leaves and roll them up into a little tube. Cut the leaves into thin ribbons. Slice the garlic thinly as well. While the water is heating up, brown the pancetta over low heat in a frying pan. Mine is about 10″. Move all the ingredients around a bit throughout the recipe.

When the pancetta is frying, it will smell amazing. That’s because it’s pancetta and it is amazing. Offer thanks. Then go back to the food.

Add a tiny bit of salt and a little black pepper to the pancetta, then add the sage leaves. They should sizzle just a bit. As that’s going the water should be boiling so you can add the pasta. When the sage is fragrant (oh, it will be) and frying but not burning or browning, add the garlic slices and stir around a bit, again, so that it is fragrant. Then add the sun-dried tomatoes. The last parts of the recipe are really about timing. Add the heavy cream: this is hard to get wrong, honestly. You can add as much or as little as you’d like. The cream will cut the sharpness of the tomatoes and it’s awesome. Anyway, add some and some more salt and black pepper. Cream should fill the bottom of the pan and sizzle and then get a little bubbly. You can add some parmesan to complete the sauce.

The pasta should be nearing completion. Take a coffee mug and reserve a cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta when it’s time and then add it back to the pot. Add the sauce from the pan with some more parmesan. This is going to be to taste, so if you like parmesan, cool – if not, keep it light. Well, light-ish.

Add the pasta water and move the pasta around in the pot over low heat so it cooks for a few minutes. Adjust salt and pepper.

Mange! Mange!

Food, food, and food

I love food, for the most part. It is good – cherries are sweet, green grapes leave a tart dryness on your tongue, a pleasing astringency filling your mouth. Chocolate – oh, chocolate! – from darkness slowly melting into the cracks and crevices of your teeth, to the firmness of a cold piece of chocolate, pulled from the fridge, snapped between hand and tooth, a guilty pleasure all it’s own. Then there are the varied and wonderful forms of meat: beef, chicken, duck, turkey, and the pig, God’s gift to man such that we needed a word spoken from heaven to the apostle Peter to tell us that it was good. And it is good. And we have tasted it’s goodness and seen the goodness of the Lord.

Amen. (Was that really blasphemous?)

Sigh – food. What I am not enjoying so much anymore is that I don’t have the time to really enjoy and take pleasure in food. I love food, I enjoy eating, but I hate just consuming massive quantities. That is not the purpose of food – I can’t imagine eating such massive quantities for an extended period of time, like a bear readying for the winter. Consume, move on. No, food is to be enjoyed!

To savor – slowly letting the little bits of flavor, the saltiness, the sweetness, that intangible goodness that reminds you of home, that savory reason for putting fork to food and food filled fork to mouth, drawing scent into the nose and taking a bite.

Enjoying. Thankful. Pleasure. Ah, the pleasure.

I ask you, fellow human, fellow man and woman, child and infant: whatever you eat today, think about it. Season it.

Be thankful for it.

Smile. And enjoy it.

Cheers

Past the half-way point.

After 19 days, I have used just under half-my budget. Not too bad. So how has it gone so far?

I did pretty good with my grocery list, except for a couple of, um, necessities. Anyway, that was a little bit pricey, but, I think, worth it. I did happen to find a duck at the grocery store – I have been looking for that for a while, and while not an impulse buy, something I wasn’t planning on purchasing but had to have.

What else? I have gone out to eat a bit, but I have tried not to do it often. I have done ok, but I would like to take some friends out to dinner – not cheap, but definitely worth it, cause I like ‘em.

Huh…apparently that is the last thing I wrote in July. Of 2010.

Aren’t blogs supposed to be about me writing things and such?

Guess we will try.

Well, if that was last year, let’s get it going again. I still love food. I still love to cook. I just have had less time to cook and to write since I started this whole thing a while back. I also need to figure out how to cook and take pictures at the same time. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?

Hmmm…if anyone can offer suggestions, that would be awesome.

Cheers.

I just thought of something right now!!!

I’m not that good at motivating myself to keep posting so I’ve just thought of a way to help me do that.

This is so cool.

No, really – I’m a cool guy. (Not said ironically, said straight, thus making it ironic. Take that ya PBR drinking hipsters!!!)

Anyway

So to keep me motivated I have some topics that I have decided to keep myself motivated.

Mucho Molto Mondays – many of the things we think of as being Italian/Mexican actually aren’t. I would like to add recipes that are classical dishes from the respective cultures. Also, there are aspects of each that favor quick meals using common pantry ingredients we have all grown up with. This will be my attempt to make good stuff from common items.

Two-Drink Tuesdays – drinks, drinks and more drinks. I like beer, wine, and cocktails and I would love to share (and hear about) drinks that make you feel like a cool guy.

Weighty Wednesdays – today is the day that we talk about food that will taste good, low on calories but good on taste. We need food that is good, makes us feel good, and won’t need a three-hour treadmill session.

Thrifty Thursday – Keeping it cheap, what are some ways you can keep your food budget down, and still be one of the coolest guys in the room.

Full-On Friday – Let’s make things sexy; you, me (the cool guy), appetizers, main course, dessert. We’ll see what happens, know what I mean. (I think you do – coolness ensues.)

Slammin’ Saturdays – when breakfast at any time of the days sounds wonderful.

Slow Sundays – for those all day cooking kind of days where you start it in the morning and get to have some left overs for the next day.

So there it is – if you have any ideas that you would like to share, I’d be more than happy to link you to my site so people can find you.

Cheers!

Something for Saturday #1 – How to keep it real

Why is cooking so complicated?

Have you ever looked at a menu at a restaurant lately? Seriously? (And did you know that if you rearrange the letters in “seriously” you can spell, “Yes, I r soul.”)

My boss was talking about music the other day, and he mentioned played a singer from the 70′s, I think. Her voice was great and he said, (as I paraphrase a great deal), “Why doesn’t anybody sing like this anymore?” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but then he continued on and said, “I want to hear a note – when it’s an ‘A’, I want to hear an ‘A’, not dancing all over the note. The problem is that people aren’t musical anymore. They can sing, but they don’t know how to hit the note.”

I think that applies to food. The singer wants to show off what they can do outside of the normal singing that everyone else does: the problem is that singers have forgotten how to do the simple things right. Like the hipster with a funny understanding of irony, I expect the Mariah Carey’s and the Christina Aguilera’s of the world to dance all around a note as I expect the hipster to drink PBR, have a beard wear many tattoos as if they don’t care. It has become like everything else.

When we hear things like, “classically trained”, there is an instinctual reference to “boring.” Don’t we think that? Amazingly good at things that are really old and not popular. Classical music, old French cuisine, classical Italian. That’s fine, but we want avant garde, the noveau, the fusion. Take the old and make it new. If you stay in the old, you must be lacking in imagination. You’re stuck.

What about the fact that it is hard to do the classics and do them well?

We bristle (at least I do) at the thought of the classics – that means old, constrained. You must follow the rules, don’t think outside the box, and this isn’t about imagination, it’s about doing something exactly as it has been done. Being able to read music, learning a piece by sight reading and not by ear, how to turn a julienne into a brunoise, steak frites – to be ignorant of the classics is forgivable, to be aware of one’s ignorance and do nothing about it is foolish.

How would you feel if your favorite restaurant took the dish you ate all the time and decided to change it up without telling you? You might like the new dish, but that isn’t what you ordered. You wanted the pasta e fagioli – not the chef’s version. Nothing against the old, but it means something if the chef can do a classic and do it with love and care.

I have much to learn in the way of food – one day, maybe I can explain how to cook a steak, how to roast a chicken, how to bake cookies, and not just tell you what to do, but why it’s done that way. Then I will truly be the master, I will no longer be ignorant, and I will be able to teach others what I know.

Cheers.

Crispy Duck – I’d never belong to a club that would have me as a member.

So, on my list of things to cook before I die, I would have to include roasting entire animals. A cow would be hard, a pig would be easier, but chickens, Cornish game-hens and fowl would be on the top of the list.

I have wanted to make a duck for a very long time, and finally found a frozen one at Von’s. I got really excited and placed it in my freezer a couple of weeks ago and placed it in the fridge on Saturday to thaw and then cook on Sunday.

Uh…so I placed it in the fridge on Saturday to cook on Tuesday.

So, let’s just say that before starting the process of dealing with the bird I made a little trip to the dentist. You know, just to say hi, see how he’s doing.

Davy at the Dentist

So I wasn’t feeling all that great, but got started…a little late. My roommate, Paul, had the audacity, the sheer presumption to use the oven when I had clearly thought about using it in my own mind way before he ever had that I am aware of. So I started late.

Around 7:30.

Did I mention it is four hours of roasting, plus glazing, resting and carving?

SIgh.

Anyway, the bird was missing the top half of one wing, was a bit on the bloody side, and still had some quill issues. I think I will try to get a fresh bird next time, one that has been probably drained.

Duck are very fatty birds – part of actually moving around and flying, so in order to drain some of the fat while cooking, you score the skin, just enough to get to the fatty layer under the skin, but on top of the meat.

I scored around the bird and also pricked it all over as well. Again, through the skin but not into the meat. As, far as seasoning, all I used during the roasting was kosher salt. I trussed the bird and threw it in the oven. I found a great recipe, with instructions and pictures from a blog called The Hungry Mouse that, for some reason, isn’t opening up when I link it. I had to Google “Roast Duck” and then use the cache feature to get at the recipe. I don’t know if she is getting wicked traffic or what, but she has some amazing recipes, is really enthusiastic about food and loves writing about. Please visit her site if you get a chance. Here is the link to the Google search I used.

I can has tied up duck

This, seriously, is the easiest recipe. Guess what you do after the first hour?

Flip the bird…

…and poke it some more, and then put it back in.

The first hour is breast side up, the second down, the third up, and the fourth down. So here is the bird as it is finishing up. In order to finish up the bird, you crank up the oven from 300 to 400, roast for another ten minutes and then glaze and return to the oven for another five minutes. The glaze is easy, too.

Spicy Duck Glaze

1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey
1 TBSP Pepper Sauce
3 TBSP Orange Juice
1 TBSP Soy Sauce

Simmer together until it coats the back of a spoon without running off. Paint the bird with it, all over and pop it back into the oven for 5 minutes.

I might have started hacking away before cooking, but here is the finished product. It was pretty good. I started off with a knife, but proceeded to use my fingers and pull of chunks. Most of the bird made it into a ziplock bag, but a decent amount made it into my belly, an awesome place for duck.

I didn’t finish until around one. I was so tired the next day, but happy, because I had finished my duck. Now I have to figure out what I am going to do with it. Crepes, maybe?

Anyway, I am starting to realize that roasting is a lot easier than I ever thought it would be, you just have to try. I would like to try doing some Cornish game hens, or a leg of lamb. Hmmm…next post?

Cheers.

Plans for the Summer

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Hey y’all,

I need to save money like it’s going out of style, so as the new month arrives, I am looking to save as much money as I can – most of my budget is not very flexible. Savings, investments, tithe, and auto insurance are fairly fixed. Things like shopping, personal care (haircuts, waxing) are somewhat more flexible, but what I have budgeted for food, is insanely expensive. My budget for food and dining is almost the same as for rent and utilities.

That’s too much money.

So, for the month of July, I’m going to try to cut back by at least half.

The easy part – I was feeding two, so to speak.

My girlfriend and I would eat out or I would cook, so that meant, either way, I was buying. The fact that there is one less person cuts down on the cost quite easily. But more than that, I want to try to do a good job of eating well and on the cheap.

What’s cheap? Relatively speaking, fruits and vegetables, especially dried or canned, although fresh or frozen are the best and better, respectively.

What about meat? Poultry probably reigns king. Buy a whole chicken and use the roast chicken recipe from Making Roma-Roma, an amazing blog I wish I could match. If you are careful on the spices, sticking to salt, pepper, maybe a little paprika, you can use the meat for burritos, enchiladas, taquitos, pasta dishes, sandwiches, tacos, even soup. For beef, and for the money, I really like London Broil, or Top Round, though I have heard via Ask the Meat Man that it isn’t a cut as much as a method for lean cuts of meat. Grilling or pan frying is fine, but only to medium or medium rare, as lean cuts will crap out on you.

My other problem is not thinking ahead on what to make and when to make it, so I think I will really have to start doing that. My week starts tomorrow, but I am going grocery shopping on Friday.

What kind of things will I need?

1. Beer – Taurino at Fresh & Easy, especially the canned, is a great, refreshing beer, and pretty cheap.

2. Wine – Trader Joe’s or Fresh & Easy; TJ’s Sauvignon Blanc or the L’Tablique is really good. You can find some great buys at BevMo, especially J. Lohr’s Valdique – it is the same grape as Beaujolais but from California.

Sound pretentious yet? I don’t mean to – I like those wines, I like that beer, and if it comes to it, I’ll cut them out to save cash. There is no irony in it – I’m not a poser hipster, for goodness sake.

3. Whole roasting chicken – Von’s or TJ’s. TJ’s often has one on sale; free-range and organic would be good, but tougher, because it moves around more. Probably worth it, though.

4. Dried mushrooms – fresh go bad to easily for me, and they would be great in soups, polenta or risotto. These sound like fancy things, but polenta is stock, butter, parmesan, and corn meal. Adding some other cheese or mushrooms would be awesome.

5. Fish – for health reasons. Salmon, trout, and probably whatever is fresh. I don’t know where to get the best stuff. Probably Fresh & Easy, maybe TJ’s or Little Fisherman in Redlands might be good as well.

6. 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes – makes for a great sauce, also from Making Roma Roma.

7. Tomato paste – need it for other sauce or ribs.

8. Coffee – how could I forget this? The best part of my day starts with this. I usually am not willing to skimp on this and always buy a pound of recently roasted coffee at Stell’s Coffe & Tea in Redlands.

I’m not sure what else…oh yeah!!!

9. Onions, Bell Peppers, chiles, bananas, apples – fruits and veggies!!!

10. Pancetta – wondrous, wondrous pancetta. Good for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

11. Chicken breasts or thighs – wrap them around garlic, rosemary, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and a little citrus or balsamic vinegar – awesome!!!

12. Spaghetti – useful for stir fry, pasta dishes – could be a great money stretcher.

I think that’s it. I can probably go pretty far with this. Anyway, I’m betting I can get most of my groceries for the month and not spend more than a hundred bucks, but still eat for the whole month. That could mean some serious savings, good eating, and the chance to save for a trip to, oh, I don’t know, maybe Yamaguchi, Japan?

Cheers

Just in case you ever wanted to try it for yourself…

Hi everyone!

It’s good to see you again. What have you been up to? What have you been cooking? I would really like to know.

I don’t know if you have ever thought about making your own barbeque sauce, but I tried it this Memorial Day on ribs and was pretty happy with it. A friend said, “I haven’t had ribs in a long time, but that is one of the best I can remember.”

So, the recipe I found was from Michael Symon, owner of Lola in Cleveland. I have never heard of his other restaurant, Lolita before, but take a look at the starters page: bone marrow, roasted dates, crispy chicken livers – and the main menu stuff, roast chicken and hangar steak. So good it makes me smile when I read about it.

Anyway, I digress. I’d say I hate when that happens if it didn’t happen so often.

So here is the recipe, and please visit Michael Symon’s website, and if you are ever in the area, visit his restaurants, his bar, and hopefully you will hear that maniacal laugh of the evil genius that is Mr. Symon.

Barbeque Sauce:

You will need -
1 Tablespoon (TBSP) of butter
1 Cup chopped red onion (about half a medium size onion)
2 TBSP minced garlic
2 TBSP minced jalapeño (I removed the seeds)
1/2 Cup Espresso beans (You can leave them whole or just break em up a bit – definitely don’t grind them!)
4 ounces (oz) Worcestershire
4 oz Tomato Paste
1 oz apple cider vinegar
1 oz balsamic vinegar
1/2 Cup packed brown sugar (I had dark)
2 oz Apple Cider (I had ginger ale, so I used that)
4 oz veal stock (used beef cause, let’s face it, who the hell has veal stock?)
1 Teaspoon (TSP) Cumin
1 TSP coriander

How to cook it:
Melt the butter in a sauce pot and sweat the veggies (onion, garlic, and jalapeño). Add the remaining ingredients, cover and cook on very low hear for 1 hour. Strain.

Just as a heads up, when you strain it, you will not get a huge amount of liquid, so it is important to cook on low heat. When you strain it, it is helpful to use a spatula to push the ingredients against the sides of your strainer, or chinois if you’re posh.

How does it taste? The first hit on your tongue is sweet, then the smokiness provided by the chile and espresso beans hits you, and finally a bit of heat when you swallow. It is pretty good. Hope you have fun cooking – I really enjoyed adding this to some ribs.

Cheers!

Frustrated at the lack of hands…

So let me think through the last few meals I have eaten and made.

1. Sunday night was pancetta, sage, sun-dried tomatoes, and garlic in a cream sauce over bow-tie pasta, and datiles con bacon (bacon-wrapped dates) inspired by a trip to a Spanish restaurant…

2. Visited Viva Madrid on Friday night – Red Sangria, bacon-wrapped dates, mussels Madrid style, shrimp in garlic-parsley-butter broth, tosta con cabales queso y peras (toasted bread topped with cabales cheese and wine-poached pears), chorizo stuffed mushrooms, broiled lamb chops, halibut in a curry or middle-eastern inspired sauce, chicken croquettes, and a basket of bread. It was so, so, so good. Dear Lord, it was so good.

3. Bean, Rice, and Cheese burritto from Cuca’s Mexican Food in Redlands. With fresh salsa.

4. Breakfast yesterday – homemade oatmeal with mangoes, blueberries, cream and butter.

So, do I have any of those pictures up? No – because I didn’t take any. I feel like such a dork. I really have to start thinking about what I am making. I keep forgetting my camera – I keep forgetting that I have a kind of camera on my phone. I need a better phone – a camera with at least 3 megapixels would work. Right?

It isn’t really a big deal – just the whole purpose for the blog.

Ugh.

(cheers)

What the food represents

Hi there.

I just finished reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman, a guy from Cleveland. Yes, that Cleveland, a land so devoid of things to do, the Browns took flight by becoming the Ravens and going to Baltimore. Just kidding. I am from California, and I think back east is Utah.

Anyway, I thought his book was amazing. Slow in the beginning, but it makes sense when you see what he is trying to accomplish in his book.

I am in awe of Thomas Keller. I don’t know if there is anyone in America who is doing what he is doing with food. And this brings me to the saddest part of this post: I won’t be able to go to his restaurant, the French Laundry, on my 30th birthday.

I know I was a fool for not calling a month ago. I had been checking online to see if anything would open up, and was told my reservation date was too far in advance, and to try again closer to the date of my birthday, May 23rd. So I waited.

Not a good idea. Nothing is available – not even the following week. Or the week after that.

What to do?

I don’t know. But I do know that I have to eat this man’s food. I believe in craftsmanship, and I used to believe that food really is just that. Skills and love honed towards perfection. It isn’t art but can be a wonderful experience.

Then there is Thomas Keller: what do you do when people use words like irony or humor to describe someones food? Isn’t the goal of art to use a sensory medium to express the emotional pallet of the artist? Sights, sounds, why not flavors? What else do you call it when the man uses scallops and foie gras and calls it Surf & Turf?

I must admit, I was sad. I think I may keep trying to get in, but I may have to settle for Bouchon, a French-style bistro. This doesn’t take away from the exacting image of Thomas Keller, at all. He hasn’t compromised his standards – this is like a great artist changing mediums, taking up water colors when he used to use oil paint exclusively – you are excited to see what he will do with them.

I love a story I heard about Eric Clapton that reminds me what to expect when a true artist changes mediums. A guitar tech was told that Eric Clapton was going to sit in with the current band. Frantic, he looks around for a guitar and an amp. All he has is a beat up Stratocaster, and a small combo tube amp. He sets this up and hands the guitar to Eric. Eric plays a couple of notes and runs, fiddles with the knobs a bit, turns up. Amazingly, the tech didn’t hear the limitations of the medium, he heard Clapton.

I expect Bouchon to be amazing. I expect that I shall also want to eat at the French Laundry that much more at the end of it.

Cheers.