The joy of brown butter sauce

 

Ravioli with brown butter sauce
Salad of sliced pear, radish, and blue cheese
chardonnay
a menu fit for a fine restaurant

In my recent no-holds-barred cleanout of my refrigerator and freezer, I discovered a twelve-pack of frozen wild mushroom/truffle ravioli. No idea when or why I got them, though I think I expected them to be smaller, appetizer size, and they must have been on sale. I have blogged about this before, so if I’m repeating myself, please forgive me.

My dilemma was what do you put on mushroom/truffle pasta. Eating it without any sauce did not appeal. Both marinara and Alfredo would smother the ravioli, I thought. I took the problem to the Facebook page of “Not the New York Times Cooking Community” (it used to the “The New York Times Cooking Community” until the newspaper disowned us). A wide variety of voices contribute ideas, recipes, pictures, equipment recommendations, renovation suggestions. Some of the contributors are way above my grade level, especially in baking, and I suspect some professional chefs lurk. Occasionally someone will get testy, but generally it’s a good-natured group.

And they are willing to answer questions, so I posed my dilemma and was deluged with answers. I bet I got a hundred responses, everything from marinara lightened with cream to pasta water and butter. Cream sauce, either as is or reduced, was mentioned several times. Someone suggested butter and sherry vinegar, someone else, Hollandaise, which I love but think might also have overwhelmed, and someone said pesto. But the one sauce that showed up most often was brown butter with sage.

I knew about brown butter of course, have eaten dishes incorporating it in restaurants, but never worked with it at home. Truth: I was a bit intimidated. But I found a recipe that was specific for ravioli and adapted it, both in amount and ingredients. The recipe called for chopped walnuts, which I thought added the wrong texture (I don’t like to find nuts in my salads either). It also called for a tiny bit of fresh spinach, which I think would have been wonderful for taste and visual appeal, but I didn’t have any and wasn’t going to the store for a quarter pound of spinach. Fresh sage was specified—my neighbor offered hers, but I have rubbed sage in the fridge and thought it would be fine. So I set about my experiment.

Because in the cottage I can’t cook two things at once, I made the sauce first. It takes a long time to brown butter without burning it, slow and easy and lots of stirring. I wasn’t sure what shade brown I was looking for, but I kept stirring until the butter smelled nutty and looked fairly brown. Some time in the stirring I added minced garlic, but I think another time pressed would work better—if I didn’t want tiny pieces of nuts, I didn’t want to chomp down on a mince of garlic either. You want the garlic to turn golden without burning.

I pulled the sauce from the hot plate and made plated salads of sliced pear, fresh radish, and blue cheese, dressed with a light olive oil and lemon vinaigrette and garnished with watercress. And then it was time to cook the ravioli—a new procedure for me. The trick they say is to let them pop to the surface of the water, but they popped so quickly I knew they weren’t done. I guessed at the timing and ended up with them a bit too much on the al dente side.

Showtime: ravioli in soup plates, with the sauce over them. And oops, much later I realized I had forgotten the sage. I still have six ravioli in the freezer, so next time. It was a good learning lesson and a good dinner besides. Here’s what I recommend:

Ravioli with brown butter and sage

Three or four medium size ravioli per person (some will be ambitious and make their own, but in spite of having made pasta years ago, I’m going to buy frozen)

1 clove garlic, pressed

4 or 5 Tbsp. butter (no substitutes)

½ tsp. dried sage or a handful of fresh leaves

¼ lb. fresh spinach (frozen will not work)

Salt and pepper

Parmesan or pecorino

 

For the ravioli: bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook ravioli until tender. If you’re lucky, the package will give you a guide to time. Drain, reserving ¼ cup pasta water.

Put butter in a large skillet and melt over medium-low heat, stirring all the time. The butter will sizzle and them foam—add the pressed garlic at this point and keep stirring until it is a deep, golden-brown. At least five minutes, though it seemed a lot longer. Remove from heat and stir in sage. Add spinach and reserved pasta water and stir. Put cooked ravioli in the skillet. Toss to coat and briefly reheat at a low setting. To serve, sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Pecorino and optional cracked pepper.

A bonus: I had leftover brown butter, so last night I used it to brown ground sirloin for Hamburger Stroganoff. Added a bit of new flavor! I think I’ll find lots of uses for brown butter now and may store some in the freezer.

What’s for dinner?

 

Lamb ragu
(Not my picture)

   “Scottish Memories: Recipes, Photos, Shared Memories” is a Facebook page that I feel I sort of snuck on to through the back door. I am fierce about my Scottish heritage, but I almost never cook anything that could be called Scottish, and while I have eaten haggis with neeps and tatties, I probably wouldn’t order it again. The moderator of the site, who I think lives in Central Europe and must do this for nostalgic reasons, asks each day, “What’s for dinner tonight?”

Sometimes it’s something clearly Scottish, but lots of other cuisines show up—fish and chips, mince, scones, chicken with naan wraps, pasta dishes, stews and soups. I like to see what people are cooking—pictures and text—and sometimes when I think whatever I’m cooking is appropriate, I chime in. Today, I’d probably answer that I’d like to fix a stew (not that I really will since I’m eating alone tonight). But stew sounds ordinary to me, no matter how good it is. Much classier to fix a ragu (see where I was headed with this all along?). So on my mind today for some reason is a good lamb ragu—hearty and warming on this bitter cold day.

In Italian cooking ragu is a sauce made with ground meat, onions, tomato puree, and red wine. What’s the difference between a ragu and a ragout? Language. The latter is French and doesn’t necessarily contain meat. You can do a fish ragout or vegetable. Ragu comes from ragout.

Back to Scotland for a moment: the Scots have always eaten more lamb than we Texans, or so I believed until I went to Scotland and never saw lamb on a menu. In Texas, I think we see more lamb offered today than we did twenty years ago, and I for one often cook it. So here’s my favorite quick and easy lamb ragu recipe (if you really do not like lamb, you could undoubtedly do this with ground beef).

Lamb ragu

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 medium onion, copped

4 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and pepper to taste

2 anchovy filets

¼ c. tomato paste

1 lb. ground lamb or beef

28 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 cup red wine

Pasta, cooked

Grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese

Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until translucent. Be careful not to scorch the garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the anchovies (Do not omit—your ragu will not taste fishy; in fact, you’ll not know they are there, but they add to the richness of the dish). Cook until anchovies fall apart.

Add tomato paste and stir so it doesn’t stick or scorch! Add the ground meat, using a wooden spoon to break it up, and cook until it browns—it will sizzle. Finally add the crushed tomatoes and a cup of red wine. Season again with salt and pepper and stir to mix and scrape up any browned bits.

Reduce heat and simmer until sauce thickens—30-45 minutes.

Serve in pasta bowls over pasta, sprinkled with grated cheese.

Up your chicken soup game

 

Chicken soup in a pot
(not my picture)

Much of the country has already seen fierce winter storms. Even in Texas, we’ve had frigid cold temperatures. But it’s only mid-January, and it’s a pretty sure bet winter isn’t done with us. In Fort Worth, we wait for “stock show weather” which usually brings ice, sleet, and snow in late January. It’s time to step up your chicken soup game.

Better than Best Chicken Soup

2 Tbsp. olive oil

½ yellow onion, sliced or diced

2 carrots, diced

2 stalks celery, sliced

Salt and pepper

1 packet dry ranch dressing seasoning

4 cups chicken broth, low sodium preferred

1 can cream of chicken soup

3 cups cooked chicken

8 oz. spaghetti, uncooked

8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1 cup half and half

Heat olive oil in large soup pot and sauté onion, carrots and celery until softened Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add dry ranch mix and stir to coat vegetables evenly. Cook one minute.

Add chicken broth and cream of chicken soup. Stir together, and then add spaghetti, bacon, and chicken. Cook over medium heat for fifteen minutes or until spaghetti is al dente and veggies tender.

Add cheddar and half-and-half and cook another five minutes. Serve.

Perfect antidote to winter’s worst blast.

 

Experimenting by accident

 

One of the things that makes this isolation old is that Jordan and I are used to cooking together. So in an effort to share, I offered to make a new chicken salad recipe I found. It called for green onion, celery, and dill along with the chicken, and a dressing made mostly of plain yogurt with a small portion of mayonnaise. Maybe a squish of lemon too. I thought it would make a nice lunch for us. I’d just put her portion out on my doorstep, and she’d come get it. I had chicken in the freezer—label torn so I couldn’t get the weight, but I judged it, frozen, to be one breast or two halves.

Wrong! Defrosted it turned out to be five very thin chicken cutlets, like you would use for scallopini or piccata—the latter may be why I bought them. I decided to persevere with the chicken salad but rather than poach the chicken in a skillet (I keep getting it tough), I would cook it like I used to when feeding teenagers--in the oven with some broth. The five pieces laid out neatly in the small jellyroll pan that fits my toaster oven, so I seasoned liberally with salt and pepper and covered them with a little over a cup of chicken broth (Better Than Bouillon). I had intended to cover the pan with foil but figured with that much liquid the chicken would not dry out. Baked them at 350^o for 30 minutes. When they came out they smelled so good! And a taste of that broth, now infused with chicken, was tempting.

I called Jordan and suggested I make them for supper with a lemony sauce, and she, who always wants piccata, jumped on the idea. So last night I made a roux, then gradually stirred in the broth the chicken had cooked in, a good glug of white wine, and juice of half a lemon. What I ended up with was sort of a cheater’s piccata. The sauce was delicious, but the dish lacked eye appeal. I reserved a portion for myself and sent the rest into the house, along with a suggestion that a sprinkle of dried parlsey would liven up the appearance. Capers would have worked too, but I omitted them because Jacob doesn’t like them.

To me, piccata is a bit of a pain because of all that pounding to get the chicken thin enough. The beauty of this was that it was already thin. One cutlet was enough for me, but I suspect most adults would want two pieces.

So here’s what I did:

Almost chicken piccata

5 chicken cutlets

Salt and pepper

1 cup chicken broth

2 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. flour, scant

Reserved broth

1/3 cup white wine

Juice of one half lemon

1 tsp. capers, drained (optional)

Dried parsley (optional)

           Gently poach seasoned cutlets in broth in oven, 30 minutes, 350^o. This may be done ahead of time; refrigerate cutlets in the broth.

At serving time, remove cutlets from broth. Melt butter in skillet and stir in flour; stir in reserved broth slowly, a bit at a time, until mixture thickens. Add wine and lemon juice. Add cutlets to pan and heat gently. To serve, sprinkle with parsley and add capers if desired.

Tonight’s solitary menu intrigues me—a fried egg, chopped bacon, chopped tomato (if we have any), and sliced avocado, all on a bed of chees-y grits. Breakfast for dinner, or as we used to call it, brinner. I’ll report later. I think by the weekend, my family and I can mingle, masked. I’ll be so glad.

What will you cook in 2022?

 

2022 is the Chinese Year of the Tiger

Christmas is behind us, with its turkey or prime rib or tamales or whatever else you chose to fix. But there’s still New Year’s with it set menu, at least for us Texans—black-eyed peas and ham. When I was a child in Chicago, my parents always had oyster stew, a sort of milk soup that was way beyond my taste buds, but they loved. I’d never eaten black-eyed peas until I moved to Texas, and even then, I was slow to try them. Finally, I made Hoppin’ John one night for my children (we called Hoppin Uncle John after my brother), figuring that I could disguise the peas with rice, tomatoes, and seasoning. Today I like black-eyed peas with their pot likker, no disguising them. My Mississippi daughter-in-law has also taught me to like them mixed into mashed potatoes.

Tomorrow, I will make a big pot of peas with ham. We’ll have it for New Year’s and for Twelfth Night—January 6. And thereafter in the freezer so we can pull them out on a cold night and warm our bellies.

I approach the new cooking year with three specific goals: I want to roast a duck, do a prime rib (maybe for my youngest son’s fiftieth birthday), and present a Beef Wellington. Each one poses problems. Although I received a wonderful new toaster oven—bigger, with an air fryer—for Christmas, I think I’ll still have to use the oven inside for these projects. Duck, because I hear lots of raves about it, and I want to do duck fries with the grease; prime rib because it’s so expensive it intimidates me; and Beef Wellington just because it’s a challenge—a luxury dish I’ve never attempted.

Meantime I worried about a seasonal recipe to give you all this week. Everyone knows how to cook black-eyed peas and Hoppin’ John too. If you don’t, email me at j.alter@tcu.edu. Cranberries are pretty much out of season or I'd share the chutney recipe I like or the delicious cranberry cake recipe my neighbor gave me. I guess you can still get frozen, but fresh seem to have disappeared as Christmas left.

Do you still have turkey left over, either in the fridge or the freezer? How about this casserole? I’ve read that casseroles—hotdishes, they call them in the Midwest—are passé, like Jell-O salads, but I don’t for a minute believe it. I love a good casserole. This one isn’t a celebratory dish for New Year’s Eve, but it’s a good, easy supper some weekday night.

Confession: I’ve been making this casserole for years, but as I keyed in the actual directions tonight (from some long-forgotten cooking magazine), I realized I’ve strayed from the recipe a lot. Instead of the thyme and parsley, I just throw in a handful of dried herbs—basil, oregano, thyme, etc. And for topping I often use French’s fried onion rings. The point is that this recipe is forgiving—you can use it as a base and go where you want. Don’t like cooked carrots? Leave them out. Or substitute. But don’t skip the wine infusion—it gives the dish its distinctive taste.

Turkey casserole (or chicken or tuna)

1 cup white wine

¼ cup chopped parsley

½ tsp each dried thyme, salt and pepper

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 cup cooked rice

1 10-oz. pkg frozen green peas, thawed

1 can baby carrots and 1 can tiny onions, both drained

Topping:

½ cup dry breadcrumbs

¼ cup grated Parmesan

¼ cup minced fresh parsley

2 Tbsp butter

Directions:

Combine wine and herbs in oven-proof 3-quart casserole. Boil hard for three minutes to get the “ash”—the herbs will blacken. Remove from heat and stir in canned soups. Add rice and vegetables and cook on medium, stirring frequently, until vegetables are cooked and ingredients are thoroughly warmed.

Mix topping ingredients and sprinkle over the casserole.  Broil one or two minutes, until cheese melts and topping turns golden. Watch carefully that it doesn’t burn.

Serves six.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

 

Tradition . . .and Christmas Eve supper

My family talks a lot about tradition—year after year, they want Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner just have they have always been:  turkey, gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole—yes, that with French’s onion rings. No to the enchiladas and tamales some Texans enjoy, no to prime rib, no to any experimentation. But somehow we never settled on a traditional menu for Christmas Eve.

If you are like we were, looking for a special dish without a lot of fuss, let me suggest this terrific salmon recipe that neighbor Mary Dulle recently gave me. Easy and delicious.

 Sheet Pan Mediterranean Salmon with Artichokes and Spinach

Ingredients:

11 oz. fresh organic baby spinach, cooked and drained

2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

12 oz. frozen artichoke hearts, halved or quartered (I prefer canned)

1 box small cherry tomatoes 

Lemon Butter Sauce (double the recipe)

1 oz. Capers

4 6 oz. wild-caught salmon fillets (you may use cod if you prefer) 

Lemon slices for garnish

 

Directions:

 

Preheat oven to 350^o degrees.

Add raw spinach, washed and drained, to parchment paper or foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. (The first time I made this I pre-cooked the spinach—made a whole different dish.) Drizzle evenly with oil; season with salt and pepper. Top evenly with artichokes, tomatoes, and capers. Pour lemon butter sauce over vegetable mixture. (Save about 1/3 of the sauce & pour it on the fish before roasting.) Top with fish; season with salt and pepper.

Bake 20-25 min. until internal temp of fish reaches 130^o degrees (check temp by inserting thermometer halfway into thickest part of fish). 

Garnish with lemon slices.

 

Lemon Butter Sauce: (double this if you like a lot of lemon)

 

4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Salt and finely ground pepper

 Melt butter in a small saucepan or skillet over medium heat. Leave on the stove, whisking / stirring every now and then. When the butter turns golden brown and smells nutty, remove from stove immediately and pour into small bowl.

Add lemon juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir, then taste when it has cooled slightly. Adjust lemon/salt to taste. Set aside - it will stay pourable for 20 - 30 minutes. 

Top it off after dinner with a cup of eggnog, and you’re all set to watch for Santa to come down the chimney. Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

 

 

 

Here’s an easy, bright holiday menu

 

Spatch-cocked chicken

Sometimes as the holidays approach we’re so focused on the “big” meals—Christmas dinner, Christmas Eve for some—that we forget the family has to eat on “ordinary” nights. So here’s my suggestions for combining several dishes I’ve made recently: spatch-cocked herbed chicken, Brussel sprouts and artichoke hearts in a casserole, rice or noodles if you want a carb, and the best cranberry cake you’ve ever eaten for an easy dessert.

Spatch-cocked chicken

For those who don’t know, this is a chicken cut apart along the backbone and spread out—cooks faster, has less tendency to dry out. You can buy a spatch-cocked chicken at the market, or you can do it yourself. Intimidating at first, but fairly easy. Turn the chicken on its breast, use your kitchen shears to cut through the flesh as close to the backbone as possible. Flip the chicken, put both hands on the breastbone, and press hard—you’ll hear it pop. (If you’re strong enough, you can do this with turkey, and it cooks so much faster.)

Please note you should let the seasoned chicken sit in the refrigerator overnight before cooking.

½ stick soft butter

3 garlic cloves, minced or use your micro plane

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. dried oregano

½ tsp. dried basil leaves

1-1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. herbes de Provence

½ tsp grated lemon jest—use your micro plane

½ tsp. ground pepper

1 5 lb. chicken

           Spread the chicken out in a roasting pan. Mix butter, garlic, parsley, herbs, salt, lemon zest and pepper. Rub ¾ of the mix all over the chicken, sticking some under the skin if you can. Refrigerate four hours or overnight, uncovered.

Roast the chicken at 450^o for about an hour until juices run clear. A thermometer in the thigh should read 165^o. Let sit ten minutes before carving. Serve with reserved butter and pan drippings.

Jordan said this was maybe the best chicken she’d ever had. I adapted it from a NYTimes recipe.

Spatch-cocked chicken
ready for the oven

Brussel sprouts/artichoke hearts casserole

           Thanks to Cathy Lyon of Ottawa, Ontario for this.

1 bunch Brussel sprouts (recipe calls for a 10 oz. box frozen, but I prefer fresh)

1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, drained

½ cup mayonnaise

½ tsp. celery salt

¼ cup Parmesan, fresh grated

¼ cup butter

2 tsp. lemon juice

Cook Brussel sprouts until just tender. Drain and arrange with artichoke hearts in a greased casserole dish. Combine everything else and spoon over vegetables. Mix. Bake uncovered at 425^o for eight to ten minutes. Cook it while the chicken is “collecting itself.”

Cranberry cake

Thanks to neighbor Nina Hyre for this recipe, which was a huge but wonderful surprise to me. No, it’s not at all like fruitcake.

1 cup flour

1 cup white sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 cups cranberries

½ cup chopped walnuts (I call these optional)

½ cup butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. almond extract

Pre-heat oven to 350^o. Grease a 9-inch pie plate.

Combine sugar, flour, and salt. Stir in cranberries and nuts, if using. Toss to coat. Stir in butter, beaten eggs, and almond extract. Mixture may be thick if you use frozen cranberries—this time of year fresh are so available in the markets. Spread batter in pan.

Bake for 40 minutes. Test with wooden toothpick inserted near center.

I like this plain, but you can serve it with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Happy holiday eating!