One-pot pasta with mushrooms and leeks

Another NYT recipe, another one-pot recipe

Time saver: I saw that Trader Joe's has now sells peeled garlic cloves, so I got those.

The lemon juice did what it was supposed to do (deglaze the pan, or rather Dutch oven), but it also added a sour note I could have done without.

4 cups of liquid was just enough to cook the pasta. 

Here's the finished dish, it looked pretty, and the ricotta made it creamy and less sour.

Alas, for once, this was a recipe that looked better than it tasted. Perhaps it was the broth I used, perhaps it was the lemon juice, but I'm not sure I tasted 'umami,' rather, it tasted a little sour (but the ricotta, once mixed with the pasta, balanced it out nicely). 

7/10

Sheetpan feta with chickpeas, tomatoes, and mushrooms (NYT Cooking)

 Time for another sheetpan recipe. I picked one from the NYT again. I did my shopping at Trader Joe's. Simple ingredients, simple preparation. It all came together quickly.

In a spread of Greek appetizers, or meze, there’s often a warm feta dish like bouyiourdi (baked feta with tomato and hot peppers) or a saganaki (fried cheese). This recipe combines elements of these two classic appetizers into a sheet-pan meal. Softened feta provides a salty, creamy counterpoint to sweet, juicy tomatoes and chickpeas that are sticky from honey and spicy from dried chile. Try this version, then riff wildly: Switch out tomatoes for mini peppers, olives, dates or cauliflower. Swap the hot honey for anchovies, harissa, smoked paprika or turmeric. Eat with pita, grains, salad greens, hummus or yogurt.

 

First, the chickpeas. Roasting them made them less mealy, though not quite crispy. 

As for cheese, though the recipe advises against using feta made from cows' milk, that's what I did. I'm not a big fain of sheep feta. The cows' milk feta (from Trader Joe's) worked just fine. 

 Here's what I put into the oven. I added mushrooms in addition to the tomatoes and left out the tomatoes in one corner of the sheet (my daughter doesn't like tomatoes). It worked just fine. Here's the dish after the bake.

And everything arranged on a plate with some  yogurt and pita chips. It made for a lovely low-effort summer dinner. 8/10.

Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Mushrooms and Spinach (NYT Cooking)

I love this one-pot dish, where the pasta is just cooked right in the pan, together with the ingredients for the sauce. Can you do something similar with gnocchi? Let's try it out. Here's the link to the NYT Cooking recipe. 

"This sheet-pan dinner is inspired by classic steakhouse sides: roasted mushrooms, creamy horseradish-mustard sauce, wilted spinach and roasted potatoes. Well, kind of. Instead of whole potatoes, this recipe uses store-bought gnocchi, a superspeedy stand-in that takes on the fun combination of browned and chewy when roasted. This dish is hearty enough to be a full meal, though it’d also make a great side to braised beans, roast chicken, a seared pork chop and, of course, steak."

Ingredients arranged on a baking sheet. 

I left out the spinach (not a favorite with my daughter) as well as the horseradish in the sauce (not a big fan myself). We were almost running out of olive oil, so, to coat everything on the sheet, I used olive oil cooking spray. 

 

 And done!

 

Running joke in my family: Instead of eating dishes with a side of salad or greens, I put them on a 'spinach bed.' Worked like a charm for this dish. 

Feeds 3 not super hungry people. Verdict: 8/10, worthy to be repeated.

Ingredients:

1. 1pound mixed mushrooms, such as shiitake, oyster, maitake or cremini, trimmed and quartered (or cut into 1-inch pieces, if large)
2. 1(12- to 18-ounce) package shelf-stable or refrigerated potato gnocchi
3. 6tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
4. 4scallions, cut into 1-inch lengths
5. 1large shallot, thinly sliced
6. Kosher salt and black pepper
7. 5ounces baby spinach (about 5 packed cups)
8. 2tablespoons Dijon mustard
9. 2tablespoons prepared horseradish
10. 1teaspoon honey
11. 1tablespoon unsalted butter

PREPARATION

• Step 1Heat the oven to 425 degrees. On a sheet pan, toss together the mushrooms, gnocchi, 5 tablespoons olive oil, scallions and shallot. Season with salt and pepper, shake into an even layer, and roast without stirring until the gnocchi and mushrooms are golden and crisp, 20 to 25 minutes. Add the spinach and remaining tablespoon of oil, season with salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Spread in an even layer, then return to the oven to roast until the spinach is tender, another 5 to 7 minutes.
• Step 2 Meanwhile, in a small bowl, stir together the mustard, horseradish and honey until combined. Season with salt and pepper.
• Step 3Add the butter and half the sauce to the sheet pan, and stir until melted and glazy. Eat with the remaining sauce on the side.

Thanksgiving bread pudding with mushrooms (and shortcuts)

Hello! It's been a while. We joined a local food kit service a while ago and that has brought some interesting food into our lives without the need to cook. But here I am, same dilettante, same restricted skill set, same willingness to take shortcuts, same interest in delicious food, same intense dislike of broccoli.

This  Thanksgiving, I made Ina Garten's Thanksgiving bread pudding with mushrooms, which I picked because I was intrigued by the shortcut ingredient of cubed stuffing, which I had never purchased before in my life. 

The link goes to the New York Times cooking section and should not be restricted, I used the new "gift recipe" feature. So, no need to copy the recipe here, just some pictures and impressions.

First things first, the bread pudding was delicious -- cheesy and mushroomy.

The whole recipe was about making things easier for oneself by buying premade ingredients, and I'm a big fan of buying onions already chopped (available at Trader Joe's). We didn't have sherry, so I just left that out. There was no overnight soaking and the whole thing came together in 1.5 hours, including 50 minutes of baking, slicing the mushrooms, and grating the cheese myself. (We ate it with salmon and a deviled eggs appetizer not prepared by me.)

Would I make it again? Absolutely, although there is quite a bit of shopping required and it is a dish much richer than what I normally eat. One thing that was not ideal was that the stuffing I got at Wholefoods (purchased on Thanksgiving, so not much of a selection left) wasn't actually cubed, so the pudding was perhaps a tad softer than I would have liked. But it was nice and firm and sliceable for a late breakfast on Friday, so there's that.

As a bonus, here's a picture of a cookie I glazed at a cookie glazing workshop, not something I'm good at at all, but, unlike the winner of the most recent British Bakeoff show, I know what 'feathering' means.

This is the recipe:

Rolled Sugar Cookies

Total Time: 15 minutes to assemble dough + 1 - 24 hours, including chilling time

Makes about 2 dozen 4-inch cookies

Source: Marthastewart.com

 

INGREDIENTS

4 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for surface and more if needed

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

 

METHOD

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat butter and sugar with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Gradually mix in flour mixture. Turn out the dough, and divide in half. Flatten each half into a disk, and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour or overnight.

 

Preheat oven to 325℉, with racks in upper and lower thirds of oven. Let one disk of dough stand at room temperature just until soft enough to roll, about 10 minutes. Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to just under 1/4-inch thick, adding more flour as needed to keep dough from sticking. Chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 30 minutes. Cut out cookies using desired cutters or templates. Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets as you work. Roll out scraps, and repeat once. Repeat with the remaining disk of dough. Chill cookies in the freezer until very firm, about 15 minutes.

 

 

Bake cookies, switching positions of sheets and rotating halfway through, until edges turn golden, 15 to 18 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Decorate with Royal Icing.

 

Glossy Royal Icing

Total Time: 20 mins

Makes 2 -1/2 cups

Source: Allrecipes.com

 

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup warm water

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

¼ teaspoon almond extract, or your favorite extract or flavoring [we used almond in the workshop and it was very nice]

3 cups confectioners' sugar, or more as needed

METHOD

Stir warm water, corn syrup, and almond extract together in a small bowl until corn syrup and extract have dissolved. Place confectioners' sugar into a separate bowl and add liquid ingredients. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until royal icing is smooth. Store in a lidded container for up to a week; stir thoroughly before using.

Notes:

For thick icing, which you will need for outlining and details, add more sugar until the icing is quite thick. Icing can be thinned with a few drops of water to make a glaze for filling in outlines or dipping cookies.

Icing hardens into a shiny glaze quickly. Keep stirring your bowl of icing as you work with it.

Mushroom Lasagna

I made this and it was great. Perhaps even better the next day. Served 2 people on two consecutive days. Easy! Even the bechamel turned out fine. Dilettante cooking at its best.

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen. To make things easier, I used no-cooking lasagna sheets. They seem lighter than the regular ones, I didn't use a full 225g box (I used 12 sheets).

Mushroom Lasagna
Adapted, only a little, from Ina Garten

Last time I posted, I joked about the number of changes I make to the average recipe. However, Ina Garten doesn’t write average recipes. Her recipes never fail to produce dishes that require no tweaking to receive rave reviews, and this one was no different. The only things I messed with were adding a clove of minced garlic to the sauce, because it’s so wonderful against the creaminess and swapping out portobellos with cremini, or brown mushrooms as portobellos are more expensive, harder to find, break easily and are nothing but overgrown brown mushrooms.

My only gripe with this recipe is the number of pots it uses; I counted 4 in the original (not including the colander, cutting board and knife, ugh) and managed to trim it to 3 in my version, below. However, I did forget all about the inconvenience of dishes once I tasted the final dish — completely and totally worth it.

Serves 6 to 8 (more as a first course) [or, in our case, serves 2 hungry people twice for dinner]

• Salt
• Olive oil
• 3/4 pound dried lasagna noodles
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 4 cups whole milk
• 3/4 cup (12 tablespoons or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (I used less, because this seemed like a lot)
• 1 1/2 pounds cremini or portobello mushrooms
• 1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Bring a large, wide (if you use a wide one, you can save a dish later and saute your mushrooms in the bottom of it) of water to boil with salt and a splash of oil, that will help keep your noodles from sticking together as they drain. Add the lasagna noodles and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Make béchamel: Bring the milk and garlic to simmer in a saucepan, or heat it in your microwave, and set it aside. Melt 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons or 1 stick) butter in a large saucepan. If your name is Deb, you will probably brown this butter, too. Add the flour and cook for one minute over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon. Pour in the hot milk, a little at a time at first and stirring until combined. Once you’ve added half of it, you can add the second half all at once, along with 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt, the pepper, and nutmeg. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring or whisking frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until thick. Set aside.

Prepare mushrooms: Discard portobello mushroom stems and/or trim the ends of the cremini stems. Slice mushrooms 1/4-inch thick. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter over medium in the bottom of the large, wide pot you used to cook the noodles earlier, or in a large sauté pan. Cook half the mushrooms with a couple pinches of salt for about 5 minutes, or until they are tender and release some of their juices, tossing to make sure they cook evenly. Repeat with additional oil and butter, and remaining mushrooms.

Assemble lasagna: Spread some of the sauce in the bottom of an 8 x 12 or 9 x 13 baking dish. (Ina recommends the former, I only had the latter; if you’d like to freeze or give this dish as a gift, remember to use a foil pan). Arrange a layer of noodles on top*, then more sauce (about 1/4 of what remains), 1/3 of the mushrooms and 1/4 cup grated parmesan. Repeat two more times then top with a final layer of noodles, your remaning sauce and last 1/4 cup of parmesan.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until top is browned and the sauce is bubbly. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. To freeze for future use, allow it to cool completely and wrap two to three times in plastic wrap before freezing. I baked it for 30 minutes covered with aluminum foil and then 15 minutes uncovered. It browned very nicely.

* Burning question: Do you overlap your lasagna noodles on each layer? I think that’s the way it is usually done, but it has been so long since I made lasagna, I couldn’t remember. I decided to line mine up, and ended up with three neat rows down my 9 x 13 pan (I trimmed the ends of the noodles, because I can occasionally be a neat freak) and found it exceptionally neat and pretty to serve, as each piece could have two ruffly edges. This meant I only used 12 noodles total, or about 2/3 of a one-pound box.

The NYT Cooking Site

...is great. A couple of things I've made over the past couple of weeks:

Pasta with chicken and mushrooms, risotto-style

It was fine, but I thought the somewhat cumbersome risotto method didn't add all that much to the flavor.

Fettuccine with asparagus and smoked salmon

Very good and I liked the fact that I didn't have to cook the salmon.

(Deconstructed) Lasagna with asparagus and chives

Fine. Not sure I got the lasagna part right -- other pasta would have worked as well. I did like the use of ricotta!

Mushroom risotto with peas

Fine. Not six servings, though. The parsley matters!

Onwards!

Week 15: Simple Potato Gratin

I had a request for "more potatoes, please." So I checked out several potato gratin recipes. I settled on this one: Simple potato gratin.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces, plus an additional pat for buttering gratin dish
• 4 large yellow potatoes* (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled [I used 5 potatoes]
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup milk, half-and-half or cream (if using something richer than milk, you can skip the butter)
• 2 ounces cheese, grated or crumbled (Parmesan or Gruyere are the classics, but that doesn’t mean that goat cheese, blue cheese or any of your favorites won’t work as well) [optional]
• I also included 1/2 lb mushrooms (sliced and sauteed) and about 3 table spoons of chives (getting adventurous, alright!)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a 9- by 12-inch gratin dish with the pat of butter. Slice the potatoes as thinly as you can (a mandoline works great for this) and arrange them in a layer, overlapping the edges slightly like shingles. Sprinkle the potatoes with salt and freshly ground pepper and don’t be stingy — this is where the bulk of your flavor comes from and a third of the cheese before before repeating this process with your remaining potato slices. (If you are using a sauteed vegetable filling, this is where you’d want to add half of it.) Depending on how thinly sliced your potatoes are, you should end up with approximately three layers, with a third of the cheese between each layer. [This kind of worked out for me. I used the mushrooms between the 2nd and the 3rd layer.] Reserve the last third of your cheese for later.Carefully pour the milk over the potatoes. It should come up to the bottom of the top layer of potatoes; add more if this was not enough. Dot the top of the gratin with the three tablespoons of butter and bake it for about an hour. Halfway through the baking time, take the gratin dish out of the oven and gental press the potatoes flat with a spatula to keep the top moist. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the gratin for the last 15 minutes of baking. The gratin is done when the potatoes are soft and the top is golden brown.

 

Verdict: 9/10


Very satisfying. We both went for seconds and there wasn't much left afterwards. Another dish one could easily prepare in advance. Definitely better with chives!