Lentil and Rice Soup

It’s comforting to know there’s a pot of soup simmering on the stove along with a loaf of fresh bread. This is especially true when it’s your reward for yet another day of shoveling snow.

While this is lentil and rice soup, the pancetta is what makes the diner sit up and say “Ooo Mommy” (food science humor). And by happy coincidence, pancetta fits into this month’s Charcutepalooza challenge.

To be fair, I should mention that my pancetta predates Charcutepalooza – I made it last December after the previous batch ran out. I started with two pork bellies (about 20 pounds) and dry-cured them following a recipe similar to the one given by Ruhlman adding juniper berries and lots of coriander. This batch was thicker than usual and took nearly two weeks to cure. Once cured, I hung the meat to dry on the elegant rack over the closet door in my office where it currently shares space with a country ham.  Once the weather starts to warm up I’ll wrap the pancetta in freezer paper and move it to the basement.

The remaining ingredients for the soup are less esoteric – carrots, onions, lentils and rice. Brown rice works best because it holds its shape and doesn’t turn mushy. Start the soup by cooking half a cup of diced pancetta in your soup pot over low heat. Once it starts to brown, turn up the heat to medium and add a cup each of diced onion and sliced carrots. Cook stirring occasionally until they start to brown. Next add a pound of lentils and a half cup of rice along with two quarts of water. This is also the time to add additional spices – I added a teaspoon of cracked black pepper, half a teaspoon of dried thyme and some chopped up fennel tops I found hiding in the crisper. Turn the heat down low and simmer until the lentils are tender.

And there you have it – bread and soup for winter’s day.

Snowpocalypse 2011

This gallery contains 4 photos.

Some pictures from last weeks snow storm and the aftermath. Click for a larger image.  

Chicken proscuitto and Pasta alla carbonara

In our last episode, the evil insane cook had wrapped our heros in cheesecloth and hung them up in the basement to dry. Listen now as the cook’s wife says, “And you’re positive that eating this won’t kill us?”

The transformation from fresh meat to proscuitto is pretty remarkable. Fresh chicken is pale and squishy while the salted and dried version has a deeper color and is firm enough to thinly slice. The latter also has a more concentrated flavor than fresh chicken. It’s also very salty probably because the pieces are so thin. I think when I make this again, I’ll cut the salting time down.

The dish I choose to make with my proscuitto was Pasta alla Carbonara which apparently translates to pasta made in the style of the charcoal makers. If true, charcoal makers eat pretty well. The dish consists of mixing hot pasta with eggs and cheese — the heat from the pasta soft cooks the eggs and melts the cheese. Extras for the dish can include pancetta, olives or in this case proscuitto.

Considering I’d made proscuitto from scratch, it didn’t seem right to use pasta from a box so I took a slight detour to make the pasta. The first step is grinding wheat into flour (did I mention this detour is in the spirit of Carl Sagan’s recipe for apple pie from scratch?) The grain is hard white wheat which I think tastes better than hard red wheat. Going from wheat berries to flours takes three passes though the mill, with the burrs set closer together for each pass.

The general rule for making pasta dough is to allow 225 grams (about a cup) of flour and one egg per person. It also tastes better with a fat pinch of salt. To make the dough, the flour is piled on a board and a well hollowed out in the center. Break an egg into the well and mix flour into it with a fork. The pile will want to flatten out so the free hand is used to push flour into the center. As each egg is incorporated, add another until all the eggs and flour are combined into a stiff dough. If the dough is sticky, add flour; add water if the dough is too dry. Then the dough ball goes in the fridge for an hour or two wrapped in plastic. This gives the flour time to hydrate and form a protein network.

I probably should have added more water to the dough but a bit of kneading made if pliable enough to work. The dough was divided in two and each half rolled out to about the thickness of a dime and then cut into rectangles. From there the pasta went in a big pot of salty boiling water. Unlike dry pasta which takes ten to fifteen minutes to cook, this is done in about five — it would have been even faster if I’d used AP flour. One other thing about cooking fresh pasta — drop the pieces into the water separately or they turn into a wad on the bottom of the pot.

While the pasta cooked I made up the rest of the dish. Sliced proscuitto went in a pan to crisp up and brown. The chicken proscuitto was fairly lean so it was accompanied by a good splash of olive oil. Once it was pretty nearly done, I added a few cloves worth of sliced garlic and let them cook long enough to be fragrant. At this point the pasta was drained and mixed with the proscuitto followed by the eggs and cheese — one egg and an ounce or two of grated cheese per person seems about right. The easiest way to get an even coating is to the beat the eggs, add the cheese and stir the mixture into the pasta. Serve with more grated cheese on top.

The final dish had a good combination of flavors (salty, chickeny against the bland sweetness of pasta and tangy cheese) and textures (firm pasta against the creamy egg and cheese sauce). Like I said, charcoal makers eat pretty well.

Charcutepalooza and Chicken Chili

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Charcutepalooza, it’s the brain-child of Mrs. Wheelbarrow and Yummy Mummy. The idea is a distributed group learning experience about the craft of curing meat. Each month a new challenge is posted. The challenge for January is duck proscuitto.

This should have been a simple task. Cover duck breasts with salt for a day then wash off the excess, season with pepper and hang for a week to dry. Just one problem – no duck. Maybe it’s not duck season or they all flew south but there weren’t any in the store.

Well then – chicken proscuitto it is.

The process starts with boning out two chickens and then salting and hanging the breasts. That left me with quite a bit of chicken. The bones will go in the stock pot for soup and the rest went into chili.

Cube up the chicken (or beef if you’re a traditionalist) and brown in a dutch oven. Then add the spices and enough liquid to half cover the meat.

The spices used in this chili included 3 or 4 dried chile anchos, a tablespoon each of chile pequins, cumin and oregano and six or eight garlic cloves. Dry-roast the cumin then grind it with the chiles and oregano. I use a coffee/spice grinder or a blender. As for the garlic, throw it in whole or smash it — doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Simmer over low heat until the cubes fall apart (about 4 hours). adding liquid as needed. Once cooked, the sauce can be thickened with a tablespoon or two of corn flour (masa harina) or toasted ground pumpkin seeds. Serve over rice or cornbread with cheese and sour cream.

Meanwhile, the proscuitto is downstairs drying and should be ready for its starring role in dinner early next week.

New Year’s Dinner

Having lived in Florida for a time, dinner on New Year’s day includes some form of pork (ham usually), black-eyed peas (hoppin’ john) and greens (collards, mustard, turnip greens and or kale). This year I thought I’d try something slightly different and cooked a pork roast on top of the black-eyed peas.

General Tso Potato Chips

Until fairly recently, potato chips in the US came in a short list of familiar flavors — plain, BBQ, ranch…. Take a trip to the local tienda and you might find chili-lime chips (it’s well worth the trip). Or visit China for cucumber-flavored or blueberry-flavored chips (also worth the trip though you’ll want to do some sightseeing while you’re there).

A more recent addition to our choice of chips is supposed to taste like General Tso’s chicken. Readers who love those battered and fried chicken nuggets drenched in a sweet syrup will be disappointed. Happily for the rest of us, the folks at Archer Farms  chose to use a savory flavoring. The dominate notes are soy sauce and ginger backed by garlic and a hint of sweetness. Pretty tasty.

The chips themselves are thick and ripple-cut and provide a satisfying crunch. They would probably stand up to dipping if you can find a suitable flavor — blue cheese or bacon horseradish are both out.

The bag is equipped with a recloseable ziplock insert which doesn’t seem worthwhile. At our house, a bag of chips doesn’t last long enough for us to see a difference between the fancy closure and just folding down the top.

Other than my objection to the packaging, the chips are pretty  good and I’ll probably buy more. If you like the idea of ginger-soy sauce flavored chips, give them a try for yourself.

Life after grad school

We all heard the tales. Late at night, waiting for the autoclave to

cycle, the post-docs wove fantastic tales of a land with jobs and

paychecks. A place where loved ones are more than shades half

noticed between journal articles.

It’s been about a week since I finished and most of my time has

been spent cleaning up messes in the lab and at home, polishing

my resume and starting this blog. But this is only an intermission

between acts. Soon the lights will dim and the play will continue.