Roasted Green Beans, Mushrooms, and Onions with Parmesan Breadcrumbs

A while back, our family had a fruit and vegetable CSA allotment. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, which is a program where you purchase the produce directly from a local farm.   The CSA provided me with an opportunity cook more vegetables.  I created a "CSA Challenge," which pushed my culinary abilities by cooking dishes that included beets, turnips and sweet potatoes.

For this challenge, I had green beans.  My typical side dish for green beans is to blanche them for a couple of minutes to preserve their color, and then saute them with a little butter, salt, pepper and lemon juice.  Occasionally, I add some slivered almonds.  While this side dish does the trick, especially when you do not have a lot of time to cook a meal, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to prepare the beans with ingredients that I would not typically think of when I am pondering green bean recipes.

I came across a recipe that included, among other things, mushrooms and "parmesan breadcrumbs."  Neither ingredient is one that, at least for me, I would generally associate with green beans.  So, I decided to make this recipe.  The result is a rather colorful dish, with the different colored green beans, the red onions and the brownish mushrooms.  The parmesan breadcrumbs add a "crunchy-ish" kind of texture that gives a hint of parmesan cheese, which helps to make this dish work.  

ROASTED GREEN BEANS, MUSHROOMS AND ONIONS

WITH PARMESAN BREADCRUMBS

Recipe adapted from Delish

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds of green beans, trimmed

1 medium red or yellow onion, sliced into rings

8 ounces of cremini mushrooms, sliced

8 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, divided

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoons of dried oregano

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Juice from 1 lemon.

Directions:

1. Prepare the vegetables and mushrooms.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.  On two rimmed baked sheets, arrange green beans, onions and mushrooms.  Toss each with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Roast until deeply browned, about 30 to 35 minutes.  

2.  Toast the breadcrumbs.  In a medium skillet over medium heat, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Add breadcrumbs and oregano and cook, stirring constantly until breadcrumbs are golden brown, about 3 minutes.  Remove from heat, stir in Parmesan.

3.  Finish the dish.  Squeeze lemon juice over roasted vegetables and top with Parmesan breadcrumbs.

ENJOY!

Mobile Style Oysters

As the chronological archive on the right demonstrates, I have not posted as many recipes this year as I have in previous years.  This is due in part to a very busy schedule, both at work and at home.  It does not mean that I am not cooking or that I am not trying out new recipes.  It just means that those recipes sit in a queue, waiting for me to write a few pithy paragraphs about them.

This recipe -- Mobile Style Oysters -- was one that waited a long time in that queue.  A really long time.  The reason why it waited so long was not necessarily due to my schedule, but the fact that I wanted to make this dish for my very beautiful Angel, Clare.  However, I was unable to do so for days, weeks and months.  The reason is that Clare was pregnant with our little girl.  I was unsure about serving oysters, even when cooked, so I held off making this recipe.  This restraint was very difficult.  Many a night I wanted to buy a half-dozen oysters and make this dish.  I held off, and it was well worth it.

This dish, as its name suggests, heralds from Mobile, Alabama, where local restaurants have a ready supply of oysters from the Gulf of Mexico.  There are at least eight commercial oyster farms in Alabama.  In addition to these farmers, there are local fishermen who harvest the variety of oyster species in the bay, most notably the Eastern Oyster.  Once the harvests reach the shore or the store,  the oysters find their way to restaurants like Bluegill.  The chefs and cooks then grill or broil oysters in their shell filled with a bath of butter, garlic and parmesan cheese.  The end result is  Mobile Style Oysters.

There are two things that make this recipe work.  First, the combination of those three flavors -- garlic, butter, and parmesan -- always work together in a delicious harmony.  This is true no matter the dish.  Nevertheless, what makes the harmony work in this case is that it does not drown out the star ... the oysters.  The briny flavor of the oysters are still able to stand out, surrounded by the supporting elements.

The other thing that works with this recipe is that the oysters are cooked just enough.  Often times, oysters can be overcooked, which takes such a beautiful ingredient and turns it into trash.  The five minutes under the broiler (which I did) or on the grill provides just enough heat and cooking time to give the bivalves the opaqueness one expects from cooked seafood without turning them into a chewy mess.

It was definitely worth the wait.  Both Clare and I loved these oysters, almost as much as eating them raw.  

MOBILE STYLE OYSTERS

Recipe from Saveur

Serves 4

Ingredients:
12 tablespoons of unsalted butter, softened
6 tablespoons of finely grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons of fresh parsely, minced
1/4 teaspoon crushed red chile flakes
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2 lemon
Tabasco sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
24 medium oysters, shucked and left in bottom shell
Crusty bread, for serving.

Directions:
1.  Prepare the grill or stove.  Build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill or heat a gas grill to medium high.  Alternatively arrange an oven rack 6 inches from the heating element and heat the oven to broil.

2.  Prepare the topping.  Combine the butter, Parmesan, parsley, chile flakes, garlic, shallots, lemon zest and lemon juice in a medium bowl. Season with Tabasco, Worcestershire, salt and pepper.  Spoon about 1 tablespoon of the mixture over each oyster.

3.  Grill or broil the oysters.  Grill or broil the oysters until the edges of the oysters begin to curl, about 5 minutes.  Serve with the bread.

ENJOY!

Mushroom Bolognese

When one thinks of a Bolognese, it is a sauce made with onions, celery, tomatoes and cheese, with meat.  Beef, pork or lamb.  One never thinks of a vegetarian Bolognese and a vegan Bolognese gives me the shivers.  A true Bolognese has been on my short list of dishes to make.  However, because Clare does not eat beef, pork or lamb, that dish has to wait for a night when I am only cooking for myself.  

In the meantime, I decided that I would make a Bolognese recipe that Clare would eat.  I found a recipe by Sarah Grueneberg, a Top Chef contestant, which provided a good starting point.  The one thing that caught my attention was the use of a variety of ingredients at the outset ... not just onions, carrots and celery (which are usually found in Bolognese sauces), but also parsnips and turnips.   Grueneberg's recipe also calls for the use of dried porcini mushrooms and king oyster mushrooms.  The latter mushrooms are chopped with the vegetable mixture, while the former provide the "meat" in the dish.

I decided to alter the dish in a few ways.  First, there was the mushrooms.  Rather than use porcini and king oyster mushrooms, I used a combination of portobello, oyster and shiitake mushrooms.  I decided to use half with the vegetable mixture and keep half sliced to serve with the pasta.  The substitution of these mushrooms for the porcini created another issue.  This led to the second substitution.  Grueneberg relied upon the water from rehydrating the porcini for the sauce.  I needed something in place of that liquid.  This was not really a problem at all.  I used about 1 cup of vegetable stock in place of the porcini water.

The third substitution involves the pasta.  Grueneberg uses spaghetti in her recipe.  When it comes to a Bolognese, I think that a flat pasta is better, because it shows off all of the elements in the sauce.   Fettuccine would work well with this recipe; however, if you can find pappardelle, that is the pasta of choice.  Its wide flat noodles provide the most space for the Bolognese sauce to cling to the pasta. 

Finally, the recipe calls for the use of 1/2 cup of wine.  Given that I was making a Bolognese sauce, a wine from Emilia-Romagna -- the region where Bologna is located -- would have been the ideal choice.  I could not put my hands on a non-sparking wine from the region, such as a Sangiovese di Romagna.  So, I went with a Sangiovese wine that is a lot easier to find ... a Chianti Classico from Tuscany.

MUSHROOM BOLOGNESE

Adapted from a recipe by Sarah Grueneberg 

and available at Food & Wine
and some other recipes

Ingredients:
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
1 celery rib, coarsely chopped
1 medium parsnip, chopped
1/2 small turnip, chopped
3 ounces of shiitake mushrooms, sliced
4 ounces of portobello mushrooms, sliced
3 ounces of oyster mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry red wine (preferably Sangiovese)
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Pinch of crushed red pepper
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon minced rosemary
1 1/2 pounds of pappardelle (or fettuccine)
4 tablespoons of unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Prepare the vegetable base.  Pulse the onion, carrot, celery, parsnip, turnip and one-half of the mushrooms in a food processor until finely chopped  In a large pot, heat the oil.  Add the vegetables, season with salt and pepper and cook over moderate heat until softened, about 20 minutes. 

2. Make the Bolognese sauce.  Add the sliced mushrooms and cook until fragrant, about 5 to 10 minutes.  Add the wine and red pepper, and cook until the wine evaporates.  Add the vegetable stock, cover partially and cook over low heat, stirring until thick, about another 25 minutes.  Add the cream, rosemary and 1/4 cup of grated cheese and simmer for 5 minutes. 

3. Cook the pasta.  Heat a pot with salted water until it boils.  Add the pasta and cook according to the directions on the package.  (Generally, dried pasta takes several minutes while fresh pasta only takes about 1 to 2 minutes.)

4.  Finish the dish.  Add the warm pasta, butter and 1 cup of water to the sauce and toss, stirring until the pasta is well coated.  Serve immediately.

ENJOY!

Fettuccine with Asparagus Puree

This dish represents a first for me, a recipe made from something I found on Pinterest.  I started using Pinterest several months ago, primarily as another source of recipes.  However, I did not find much that interested me and, as often happens, I stopped going to Pinterest for ideas.  Recently, however, I decided to give it another shot.  I set up Pinterest Boards for Chef Bolek and started to look for recipes again.  

Fortunately, I found some recipes that I wanted to try to make.  One of those recipes is Fettuccine with Asparagus Puree, which I found on a board set up by Chef Marcus Samuelsson.  Chef Samuelsson is one of the few chefs who I follow on various social media (like Pinterest).  Chef Samuelsson has a very interesting back story.  He and his sisters were born in Ethiopia, adopted by a Swedish couple and raised in Sweden.  Now, Chef Samuellson is a very successful chef with restaurants that I hope to visit someday, like Red Rooster in Harlem and the American Table Brasserie and Bar in Stockholm.

Although I was never a fan of asparagus when I was a kid, I have recently began eating more of the vegetable.  My preferred way of making asparagus is to grill it, but, this recipe provides an interesting twist to using those spears.  This recipe places the asparagus at the center of a sauce.  The other ingredients -- spinach, garlic and pine nuts -- makes this sauce into a sort of a pesto.  The recipe calls for the sauce to be served with spinach fettuccine.  While I would ordinarily make my own pasta, I was very happy to use some fresh, store-bought pasta.  This made the recipe very quick and easy to make. 

FETTUCCINE WITH ASPARAGUS PUREE RECIPE

Recipe adapted from one by Joanne Bruno, 

available at Marcus Samuelsson

Ingredients:

1 bunch of asparagus, trimmed and halved crosswise

3 handfuls of baby spinach

2 cloves of garlic

1 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup toasted pine nuts

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 lemon, juiced

1/2 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

12 ounces fresh spinach fettuccine

Directions:

1.  Bring water to boil.  Bring two pots of salted water to a boil.  Use a larger pot to cook the pasta and a smaller pot to blanch the asparagus. 

2.  Blanch the asparagus.  Drop the asparagus into the pot of salted water.  Cook for 2-3 minutes or until the spears are bright green.  Transfer to a bowl of iced water.  Let sit for a minute or two and drain.  

3.  Make the asparagus puree.  Add the asparagus to the blender, along with the spinach, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and 3/4 cup of the pine nuts to the processor.  Puree the ingredients.  With the motor still on, drizzle in the 1/4 cup of olive oil until a paste forms.  It should be the consistency of a pesto.  Add in the lemon juice and salt, to taste.

4.  Cook the pasta.  Cook the pasta until al dente.  Drain and toss with the asparagus puree.  Sprinkle with the remaining pine nuts. 

One final note.  If you want to "Chef Bolek" this recipe, then you should add some torn prosciutto (about 1/8 of a pound per serving) over the pasta, with a healthy serving of Parmesan cheese.  The addition of the prosciutto makes this very delicious vegetarian dish into an equally delicious carnivore dish.   

ENJOY!

Gordon Ramsay's Tomato Risotto

There are many tomato risotto recipes out there on the Internet and I am sure that they are all very delicious.  There is only one tomato risotto recipe that I have ever wanted to make.  It is a recipe by Gordon Ramsay, the award-winning chef.  He has dozens of restaurants around the world and a total of nine Michelin stars (hence my description of Chef Ramsay as an "award-winning Chef"). 

Many people may not know about Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, such as the Fat Cow in Los Angeles, or Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea.  Instead, they may have learned about Chef Ramsay through television shows like Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares.  I must admit that I am an avid fan of both shows and, it is through hours of watching these shows that I began to learn about the Chef.  While the shows are enjoyable and informative (as these shows teach viewers what not to do if you own a restaurant or are trying to cook a dish), I really did not learn much about Chef Ramsay's own cooking.  For example, if you watch Hell's Kitchen, you can see a bunch of highly motivated people try to reproduce Chef Ramsay's recipes for Beef Wellington, but you don't get to see how the recipe is made.  You only see a brief glimpse of someone trying to prepare the dish and the end product: a dish that often times elicits a profane response such as "its fucking raw" from the Chef.

I have always wanted to prepare a recipe written by Chef Ramsay and, recently, I decided to make his recipe for Tomato Risotto.  It was part of a special dinner that I had planned for my beautiful Angel and wife, Clare. Although I had prepared risotto in the past, this recipe differed in significant respects.  First, it did not call for the use of wine.  Many risotto recipes call for a use of a cup of white wine after you cover the rice in the hot oil.  That is the first liquid that gets absorbed into the rice.  Second, this recipe called for the use of mascarpone cheese.  I really liked the use of the cheese because it added to the creaminess and richness of the dish.   Finally, I liked the incorporation of sauteed tomatoes, because the skins offered a little crunch (note: I used the potato masher rather than the sieve).  It is definitely better to have the crunch come from the skins than the risotto.
 

GORDON RAMSAY'S TOMATO RISOTTO

Recipe by Gordon Ramsay

Serves 4

Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons of olive oil
200 grams of arborio rice
500 mililiters of chicken or vegetable stock
50 grams of unsalted butter
250 grams of cherry tomatoes
100 grams of marscapone cheese
25 grams of parmesan cheese

Directions:

1.  Prepare the rice.  Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the rice and stir well to coat the grains in the oil.  Bring the stock to a boil and add 1 ladleful of it at a time to the rice, stirring well after each addition, until the liquid has been cooked but still al dente.  This will take about 15 to 18 minutes.

2.  Prepare the tomatoes.  As you prepare the risotto, heat the butter in a small saucepan, add the tomatoes and gently cook for about 10 minutes until soft.  Pass through a mouli or coarse sieve; alternatively mash with a potato masher.

3.  Finish the dish.  When the rice is cooked, fold in the mascarpone, Parmesan and the tomato mixtures, adjust the seasoning and serve.

In the end, this risotto dish may be a "go-to" dish when entertaining guests.  It is a very delicious dish and relatively simple to make.  For those reasons, I will definitely be making it again, although I am not sure I would make it for Chef Ramsay even if given the opportunity.  After watching all of those hours of Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, I would fear what Chef Ramsay would have to say about my cooking.

ENJOY!

Mushroom Quinoa Risotto

This recipe caught my attention ... it blends an ancient "grain" with a traditional Italian preparation for rice.  Quinoa or, in Quechua, kinwa, is a grain-like crop that originated in the Andean mountains from modern day Ecuador to Peru and Bolivia.   South America.  Far from modern, quinoa dates back thousands of years.  The Incans referred to it as chisaya mama or "the mother of all grains."  The name is apt, as quinoa is a very healthy ingredient.  The grains pack a lot of protein, calcium, iron, and all eight essential amino acids.  

When it came to getting the ingredients, the recipe calls for the use of trumpet mushrooms and shiitake or white mushrooms.  Trumpet mushrooms can be hard to find, while most stores carry shiitake or button mushrooms.  However, I decided to use a mixed mushroom pack, which had at least four of five different mushrooms.   The variety of mushrooms definitely added to the plating of the dish.

This dish represents my first attempt at making quinoa.  The use of the risotto preparation provided some comfort, because I have made several risottos in my time. The quinoa definitely presents a different texture than the arborio rice, but I think it  still worked very well with this dish.  I would have to say that I would make it again.

MUSHROOM QUINOA RISOTTO

Recipe adapted from Healthy Eating During Pregnancy at page 88

Serves 4

Ingredients:

3 cups of mushroom or chicken stock

1 tablespoon of extra virgin oil, plus 2 teaspoons

2 tablespoons of shallots, diced

1 teaspoon of garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups of white quinoa, rinsed

1/2 cup white wine

8 ounces mixed mushrooms, sliced

1/3 cups of grated Parmesan

Salt, to taste

Ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

1.  Heat the stock.  In a medium pot, heat the broth over low heat and simmer while you prepare the rest of of the dish.

2.  Prepare the risotto.  In another medium pot, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat.  Add the shallot and garlic and saute until soft and translucent, stirring often to prevent browning.  Add the quinoa and cook for a few minutes, stirring, until the grains are coated in oil and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add the wine and cook, stirring occasionally, until evaporated.  Ladle 1/2 cup of hot stock, stir and simmer until the liquid has evaporated, about 3 minutes.  Continue the process, adding 1/2 cup of broth at a time, until the quinoa is fully cooked and there is no more broth, about 25 minutes.

3.  Prepare the mushrooms.  Heat the remaining two teaspoons oil in a small saute pan and cook the mushrooms until browned.  Season with salt and pepper, transfer to a bowl and set aside.  

4.  Plate the dish.  Stir some of the mushrooms and Parmesan into the risotto.  Spoon into 4 serving bowls and top with mushrooms.  Serve immediately, with additional Parmesan cheese for sprinkling.

ENJOY!