pho ga
if you are intimidated by making pho, try making pho ga first, because it is quicker and the ingredients are cheaper. instead of buying oxtail, porkbones, tendon, sliced flank steak and tripe, you just need one chicken. the ingredients will be 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the beef version.

boil a whole chicken.

perfume the stock with

2 peeled onions
a large piece of peeled ginger, a stick of cinnamon, a couple of cloves, a couple of star anise seeds, loose or in a muslin bag.

after the stock is complete, add

rock sugar
salt, to taste.

meanwhile, you will have soaked in hot water

banh pho (rice stick noodles)

after the stock is finished, remove the chicken and shred the meat by hand. put it into a bowl. feed the bones to the children, who do not get any of the actual soup. the stock should continue to simmer.

arrange on a large plate:

bean sprouts
jalapeño slices
chopped cilantro
chopped scallions
basil leaves (a lot)
mint leaves
saw tooth leaf
sliced onion
lime wedges

drain your banh pho, then use a wire basket or strainer to immerse servings of it in boiling water for a few seconds, until it is cooked, then add to the large pho bowls that you see in a restaurant. now add pieces of chicken. pour boiling broth into your bowl. add herbs to your liking.

if it's your style, you can put

sriracha sauce
hoisin sauce

in your soup, to taste.
- posted by Jesse @ 1:23 PM 1 comments

 
pumpkins

this is what troubles me: this time of year supermarkets have huge piles of pumpkins on sale. people buy them, take them home, cut holes in them and then let them rot. if they want to cook something, they buy canned pumpkin. the pumpkin was made for something else!

you can salt the seeds and roast them. you can also steam or bake chunks of pumpkin and then use the cooked pulp to make cakes or pie.

the pumpkin can also make delicious, light, vegetarian sauces. this recipe i adapted from a butternut squash recipe from the new york times' mark bittman

fry in extra virgin olive oil, until onions are translucent:

a couple smashed garlic cloves
a diced onion, or diced shallots
red pepper flakes

add a pound each of:
diced tomatoes
puréed raw pumpkin pulp

cook until saucy. salt appropriately. eat with penne or shells

one average size pumpkin can make this dish and a few pies
- posted by Jesse @ 9:35 PM 0 comments

 
gnocchi

I prepared some potato gnocchi last night. This was to be a test run.

~2lbs potatoes, baked, peeeled, riced
~180g flour
1t salt

I kneaded the dough, rolled it into fat tubes, about one inch thick and a foot long, then cut of a gnoccho about an inch long, and indented them with the tines of a fork, and dropped them into salted simmering water.

these turned out to be dense and slimy. they were not appetizing served with barbecue sauce and shredded lemon-glazed picnic shoulder. the pork and the barbecue sauce, however, make a good sandwich on wheat toast.

this drawing, which I drew under commision for its inclusion in the tacuinum sanitatis, depicts your average charcutier's operation in the village where i would spend summers in my grandmother's cottage, watching her make gnocchi.

PROPER GNOCCHI

after some research on Youtube, i made these changes to my gnocchi recipe.

-add a quarter cup ricotta and an egg yolk
-do not knead the dough too intensely. get it to hold together with the minimum pressure.
-allow to rest for about ten minutes to make it accept more stretching
-roll the cylinders thinner and longer
-dust the counter with flour before rolling

these were much lighter, not sticky, and the egg gave them a "pasta" flavor, as when you eat egg noodles.

i served it with a more dignified sauce with expensive ingredients: a ragù simmered with red wine, including pork tenderloin meat balls and sliced italian sausage. it is a heavy meal.

when my family had an apartment in mendoza, argentina, my mother would hang laundry on the communal lines strung between floors of adjacent buildings, and gossiped with neighbors while making pasta every morning. my father had a deep, bushy, laugh and would come home from the shipyard smelling faintly of wine, with a bag of sweets for us kids. we always ate ñoquis towards the end of every month, a tradition i still keep today. my mother called them trompe-faim, because everyone was stuffed even when the livery stables were lean.
- posted by Jesse @ 9:05 PM 0 comments