Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage

Fairly spectacular fried rice with Chinese sausage and other things., originally uploaded by umamitv.

I’m not proud to admit this, but this Chinese sausage stayed in the back of my freezer just a bit longer than might be considered ’safe’. Still, it resulted in tastiness, and I’m officially adding Chinese sausage to my list of ‘convenience meats.’

Braised Beans with Broccoli Rabe, Grilled Chicken and Other Things

rich, saucy, licorice-y fennel seed to accentuate the sweetness of the caramelized onions, creamy and buttery from the beans, slightly bitter from the broccoli rabe.

I’ve been taking photos of all the food I’ve been cooking lately, with some interesting results. I’ve come to realize, for example, that I use a lot of the same ingredients over and over again. Zucchini comes to mind… Not that there is anything wrong with that, but when I look at all the photos back to back, the colors are all the same, it compels me to try and come up with something different. Hence this dish.

I started out by slicing some older larger onions into fairly chunky pieces, crosswise, so they wouldn’t melt away while being caramelized, melted some butter and let it start to almost brown before tossing in the onions, and then I just let them sit and develop a nice color.

I keep my nose on things when I’m not looking because I’m too busy chopping up the rest of my ingredients, you can tell when the onions start to brown and it’s time to give them a toss, because the air in the kitchen starts to smell of caramel.

This is what it looked like after I tossed in the broccoli rabe, I didn’t blanch it first because I wanted it to stay really crisp, but I did separate the stems from the more delicate florets since the latter would cook much faster and should be added closer to the end of cooking.

Once the stems started to get that gorgeous green color, I tossed in some minced garlic, let that cook very briefly just enough for the aroma to come out, and followed it with some chopped tomatoes (canned, Muir Glen are the best).

I left them to simmer for a while on low heat, to break down while I ground up some whole fennel seeds and tossed those in, followed by a can of white beans, cannellini or northern will work. I also threw in the florets I’d set aside from the rabe at this point. I left that to simmer on low low heat for a good while, until the thickest stems were tender but still pretty crunchy.

I’d butterflied my chicken breasts and marinated them for a couple of hours in some balsamic vinegar, brown mustard, olive oil and salt and pepper so I just grilled them up on high heat while I was waiting for the rest of the meal to finish cooking.

The whole thing topped off beautifully with a bit of parmesan and a hunk of sourdough baguette (because the sauce is the best part). It worked out great: tasty and different colors from the rest of my album.

Fried Eggs over Salad

Pork Poetry

Just stumbled into this gorgeous recipe via twitter: Pork Ragu

The photos actually gave me goosebumps, though admittedly I’ve been known to have excessive reactions to food. I will have to try this soon before the warm weather hits.

Kitchen Sink Eggs

I was at a total loss for what to do for lunch since we were working all day Sunday. I wanted to make something quick that wouldn’t slow our brains down too much. Fortunately, I remembered at the last moment that I’d stowed away some chorizo in the freezer and was able to come up with a mini feast that kept us going until dinner.

I toasted some shallots and zucchini in a dry pan, and then tossed in the chopped chorizo with a little bit of butter and followed that up with the eggs and a handful of parsley, then topped it with a bit of salsa and some fresh thyme before serving with a hunk of baguette. Maybe not light, but very very yummy.

Saturday Breakfast

Forced creativity

It seems I always come up with better dishes when I force myself to work with what I’ve got lying around the house instead of running to the store. Limitations seem to sharpen my creativity. Inevitably potent ingredients that I bought months ago, like shrimp paste or fenugreek or anchovies are called upon. What comes out is more surprising and (usually) more pleasurable than the predictable patterns of cooking I tend to fall into when I have a blank slate. Both from the standpoint of eating, and preparing the food.

So I’ve been purposefully creating this situation for myself. Most recently it gave birth to some fairly tasty ravioli. I’d bought a large bag of semolina a while back for a bread recipe, it’s been taking up space on my counter ever since, and I’d just finished reading the ricotta article on Bittman’s blog and was looking for an excuse to make some.

For the filling, I ended up sauteing some onions and garlic and minced carrots along with some chicken breast, and finely diced some pepper-coated salami for extra punch, threw all of this in my food processor and then folded it into the fresh ricotta with a good helping of parmesan.

Sorry for the awful photo, messy hands.

The ravioli turned out very tasty, but a bit too thick (or ‘rustic’ as I prefer to call them). Next time I’ll use more regular flour and less semolina to make the dough a bit more delicate. I don’t have a fancy pasta attachment for my kitchenaid, and ended up rolling it out by hand which may have had something to do with the flawed texture as well.

I threw together what was supposed to be simplified tomato sauce, but ended up adding anchovies, as well as some breadcrumbs because it just tasted too watery. It turned out great, and worked pretty well with the ravioli, though butter, sage and parmesan would have been more appropriate perhaps.

There were 4-5 raviolis left over that I reheated in some beef broth the next day for lunch, and they turned out much better, less tough.