Recipes: November 2008 Archives

We prefer to roll deep when it comes to Thanksgiving menus. Mash and roasted root vegetables? No problem. Two different batches of stuffing? Why not? Seitan meatloaf wrapped in seitan bacon... sure, we've considered it. In fact, it is rare to find an inch of empty space on our table. Which is cool of course, except that coming up with hot, new shit every year starts to get puzzling! We do, however, realize that some people are less obsessive and, yes, gluttonous, than us. And for those people, we give you one dish to rule them all - one that boasts the four cornerstones of an all-American Thanksgiving meal all on the same plate: mash, stuffing, root vegetables and cranberry sauce. We even threw beer in there for good measure.

Mashed potatoes, even done perfectly, is an admitted snoozer. We whipped parsnips with garlic oil and almond butter instead and folded a sage-kissed mirepoix into the mash for the crunch of stuffing. Finally, scoops of this two-headed comfort-food beast got dressed with thick drizzles of a cranberry coulis -- reduced with cherry beer. We used a cheap middle-of -the-road kriek: Kasteel Rouge. It's sweet and clean, and very cherry. If you're feeling spendy, any kriek-style beer would do: think Three Philosophers on the dark end, Rodenbach on the 'sour red' side.

All in all, not a bad substitution for the Hungry Man TV dinner!

2 cups kriek-style beer
1 cup water
1/2 cup agave nectar
2 cups fresh cranberries
1 tsp. sea salt

1. Empty your beer into a medium-sized pot. Add water and agave and stir. Put pot on medium heat until it reaches a rolling boil. Then drop in the cranberries and let cook for about 25 minutes, or until most of the berries have popped and liquid has reduced by an inch.

2. Remove cranberries from the heat and pulse with a blender so you have a thoroughly puréed mixture. Using a fine colander, strain the sauce into a mixing bowl to remove any bits and pieces of berries.

3. Add the salt; this will help eek out the flavor of both the beer and the cranberries. Return the mixture back to your pot and heat for another 5 minutes. Remove and cool for one hour before using.

1 head garlic, peeled
1/4 cup olive oil
5-6 parsnips
2 medium potatoes
2 medium carrots
1/2 white onion
2 stalks celery
1 tsp dried sage
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup soymilk "creamer" (or plain soy milk)
2 Tbs. almond butter

1. Make a garlic confit for garnish, and in the process garlic oil for sautéing. Place whole garlic cloves and olive oil in a small saucepot on low heat and let it cook for close to 20 minutes or until the cloves are browning at the edges, just short of being crisped. Remove the pan from heat and separate garlic from the oil and set both aside.

2. Chop your parsnips into rough 2-inch chunks. Chop the potato the same way. Fill a large pot with salted water, add the parsnips and potatoes and set to boil.

3. While your pot o'veg heats, prepare a mirepoix by finely chopping the carrot, onion, and celery. Toss that in a large pan on medium heat with one-fourth of the garlic oil. Add sage, salt and pepper. Saute for 8-10 minutes and keep warm until the last step.

4. In a small saucepan, heat your soymilk creamer only until it is warm. Add almond butter and whisk. Set aside.

5. Once the water boils in your parsnip-potato pot, continue to boil for another five minutes, then strain the vegetables in the sink.

6. In a large bowl, dump your strained veggies and set upon it with a masher. Mash by hand, adding garlic oil as you go. Once there are no awkward chunks or strands, add the soymilk-almond butter mix. Keep mashing. When you get a mostly smooth consistency add the mirepoix and stir well. Season to taste with salt if needed. Serve with an ice cream scoop and garnish with swirls of cranberry coulis and confited garlic clove on top.

Soundtrack: Thanksgiving's Welcome Nowhere
Beverage: Rodenbach Grand Cru

The cooling final months of this intense and triumphant 2008 necessitate warm and hearty sustenance. In these tired economic times, one cheap and awesome go-to is always the bean and for us vegetarians the myriad mini legumes that make up the bean family-tree work double time to keep us going. Thing is, cooking dry beans seems to be something that nobody really does. Unfortunately for both the human and the human bean, the time commitment required usually keeps dry beans in the dark, in your cupboard, neglected and forgotten.

This recipe is time consuming but really folks, there are few things more pleasurable than taking a few hours to make a bitchin' stew. Before your sweet drunken head hits your pillow on Friday, take 15 minutes to soak your beans, and you'll either have an awesome spread to share with your near and dear on Saturday night, or a bucket of lunch for all of next week.

Day 1:

1/4 cup of six types of beans, we used...
Anasazi
Black Calypso
Jacob's Cattle
Scarlet Runner
Rice Beans
Tongues of Fire

Day 2:

2 Tbs. XV olive oil
2 large white onions, diced
2 leeks, diced
2 medium sized red potatoes, diced
1 yam, diced
7 cloves of garlic, diced
7 white chilies, diced
1/4 cup cheap sherry
1 Tsp. ground white pepper
1 Tsp. ground black pepper
1 Tsp. ground coriander
1 Tsp. ground cumin
2 Tsp. Porcini powder
2 Tsp. Smoked salt
Additional salt to taste
1/4 large cabbage

1. In a large pot or bowl, combine all the beans and cover with at least twice as much water and let soak overnight. If you use Scarlet Runners or any other larger bean, soak them separately. You'll want to cook them for an additional 30 minutes before adding the rest of the beans; their size makes them have a longer cooking time.

2. The next day, pick through your beans for any floaters (they may be duds) and small rocks (they can be a bummer). Rinse them of their day-old water and put them in a large pot with, again, at least twice as much water as beans. Salt the water and bring to a boil.

3. Hold the boil for ten minutes, and then reduce to a bubbling simmer. Set a timer for 30 minutes and go drink a beer.

4. Reset the timer for another half hour and give the beans a stiff stir to make sure nobody is sticking to the bottom.

5. After a full hour give one of the biggest beans a try; if they're still sandy and dry in the center give 'em another 30, if not reduce the heat to low and start the soup base.

6. Heat 1 Tbs. of the oil, and sauté the onions and leeks for about 8 minutes until they start to wilt. Add the yam and potato and the second Tbs. of oil and sauté for another 8 minutes. Add the garlic and chilies and sauté for 5. Then add the sherry and count to ten.

7. After ten, dump all of the beans and as much of the boiling liquid into the pot with the veggies as will fit. The bean juice is where most of the nutrients have gone during the boil, and it will make a hearty and tasty broth.

8. Add your spices, and simmer for another 30 minutes. Taste the broth and adjust with salt as needed, and taste the largest of the beans you are using. If it's real easy and pleasing to chew, then add your cabbage. Cook until the cabbage is transparent and fragrant.

9. Serve with crusty bread, hearty ale, a swirl of Greek yogurt if you're not vegan, and love.

Beverage: Guinness Extra Stout (not the crap with the widget)
Soundtrack: Bright Black Morning Light's "Motion to Rejoin"

Hip, hip! Mornay! Getting new gigs is always nice. And for at least the next few months, until we cuss ourselves out of a job, we'll be acting as recipe columnists for L.A.-based Swindle Magazine. Our first comes out this month in their 'Icons' issue, where our French Onion Sammy will sit alongside Peewee Herman and Ice Cube.

Our next assignment was a winter mac & cheese, so we played with cream and pasta shells this weekend to find a suitable replica of the 'blue box' original. That meant a classic oozy coating of off-white cheese on tiny morsels, with no chunky secret ingredients to obstruct or confuse. After recent success with porcini powder, our new culinary cocaine, we realized that the nearly invisible flavor was just what we needed to give normal mac-and' a woodsy, deep and effervescently funky kick. The trick here is to make a near classic Mornay sauce, subbing melty Fontal and smoked goat cheese for the gruyere, and going heavy with it. (Heed our warning, normal roux proportions don't apply to heavy whipping cream.) We glopped the stuff in small ramequins for cute baked cups. And instead of breadcrumbs and parsley, we coated the tops with Salt and Pepper Kettle Chips and fresh tarragon curls.

Of course, no magazine assignment is complete without a professional photog stopping by to snap the food pics and slurp a sample. Much obliged to Greg B. for granting us the best compliment there is. Video footage of that below...

3 cups small shell pasta
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 stick butter
3 cloves garlic
1/2 white onion, minced
4 Tbs. all-purpose flour
4 tsp. porcini mushroom powder
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
1 # Fontal cheese, shredded
8 oz. Smoked Chevre
8 oz. Parmesan Reggiano, grated
salt and pepper
1/2 cup Kettle chips
1 whole nutmeg
1/4 cup fresh tarragon
1 tsp. paprika

1. Bring a medium pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil and drop pasta shells. Let return to a boil, turn down to medium heat and let cook for 5-6 minutes, or until shells are cooked al dente. Remove, drain and rinse with cool water. In a large bowl, toss with olive oil and let sit.

2. Start your sauce in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Toss in butter and let melt while peeling and mincing garlic and onions. Add both to the pot and cook until onions are see-through, about 5 minutes. Bring heat down to low and roux-ify your sauce by adding flour to the mix, one tablespoon at a time, whisking vigorously until all the flour is incorporated into the butter. Now stir in your porcini powder, still whisking. Cook for an additional minute or two before whisking in the half and half slowly and steadily. When all the half and half is incorporated, add the cream. Don't let the mixture boil.

3. Now cheese your sauce. Add your Fontal first, small handfuls at a time while stirring until fully mixed in. Next, break off 1-inch chunks of smoked chevre and stir in. Finally, add one-fourth of your grated Parmesan, saving most of it for your mac tops. Let bubble and thicken for a minute or two before removing from heat.

4. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

5. In a large mixing bowl, toss your shells with sauce in small increments until slightly goopier than you think proper. Then season with salt and pepper to taste. Fetch your ramequins and fill nearly to the top with sauced pasta.

6. Prepare your garnishes: Pulse your potato chips in a food processor and chop your tarragon. First top each pasta dish with a dusting of Parmesan. You'll want to save half for garnish. Next dust the cheese with potato chip crumbs, add tarragon and paprika. Finally sprinkle a last kiss of cheese on top and a quick grate of fresh nutmeg. Put your mac and cheese in the oven and bake for 10 minutes or until tops are browning and crisped.

7. While you're waiting, complete your garnish arsenal by baking off a Parmesan tuille (shown above). If you have a silpat pan mat, use it. Otherwise, just use baking parchment, or in a pinch, aluminum foil. Each parmesan-cookie will require about 4 Tbs. of parm. Bake alongside mac for about 5 minutes or until sizzly and light tan. Let the tuilles sit for about a minute to firm up and gently remove by carefully running a knife around the edge of the each "cookie." Remove pasta and eat as is out of the hot ramequin, or dump out and mix for the mushy bowl mac.

Beverage: Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes' Saint Bon-Chien
Soundtrack: Billy Joel's Piano Man