Deep Dish Pizza & Root Vegetable Pan Roast

The Food Nanny
October27 &28, 2009
Meal 1: Deep Dish Pizza with Spinach and Sun Dried Tomato, Lentil Soup, Apple & Fennel Salad
· Heat the soup on the stove top and add a little water to thin it if necessary.
· Heat the pizza at 350° until hot and the cheese on top has melted.
· Serve the salad chilled.

Meal 2: Baby Lima Bean and Root Vegetable Pan Roast with Kale, Portuguese Broa, Mixed Greens
· Warm the pan roast on the stove top. You will need to thin it to the consistency of a stew. Adjust the seasoning.
· Warm the broa ( Portuguese corn bread) in the oven.
· Dress the salad and serve.

What the hell is a Pan Roast?

So, this week's menu. Comfort food anyone? I'm telling you, 20 weeks of damp or freezing overcast days makes our university one productive research institution. Still, even if you do pass all day comfortably cloisterd in well insulated and flourescently illuminated confines, you can still feel the weathertone of the day. And it makes you want soup.

With bread too please.

Pan roasting is just a quick stove-top stew and it is an indespensible technique for whipping up hearty fare fast. The key lies in preparation and improvisation. Pan roasting best utilizes ingredients that are ready to use or cook through fast-ish. For example, one of me favorite ingredients for this purpose, as Meal Two implies is a large bean like a lima, or butter bean, or what have you. If you have some cooked off ( a great habit to get into on Sunday afternoons), or a can at the ready, or perhaps some leftover 15 bean soup, this can be the anchor around which you frame your pan roast.

On the contrary, avoid lamb shank for example, unless you happen to have some already cooked off, in which case, lucky you. Please call me over for dinner.

In any case, good anchor ingredient is a rich protien with its own hearty broth.

Next grab what ever you have for mire poix: carrots, potato, leek, turnip, celery root, kohlrabi, etc. and prepare it into sizes that will cook relatively quickly. Saute them in a hot pan, in stir-fry sized batches to quickly carmelize them nicely - this is the roasting part- Then recombine the pan roasted vegetables in the pan( if necessary) and add the feature ingredient and some brothy liquid to quickly simmmer the dish together. Add some garnish like fresh kale and there you go.

But again, the key is to prepare ahead and to improvise. Don't think on Sunday afternoon "Today I will make beans for 6 portions of Thursday's pan roast dinner..."

think instead:"I'll make a pot of black beans today because I love 'em and you can use 'em 100 ways, however you feel this week, and whatever comes up!" Then, on dreary Thursday evening, before your comittee meeting, and after picking up the kids from gympastics and play practice respectively, make some black bean and sweet corn pan roast with diced leftover chicken.

For the record the best f=ing panroast is: bacon (suprise), then onion and garlic, then, diced potato, then sweet corn, then cockles or cherrystone clams or mussels, and then heavy cream. Garnish with fresh herbs, chives if you have them. Eat it and weep.

Guanciale

This is one of the few recipes I will ever post. Not because I am a jerk, but because I believe most home cooking should be based on what you have and a technique that works, not upon a recipe from a book that looks great but requires running three errands to complete. Guanciale is in itself a great recipe replacer. If you have some on hand - an easy enough thing to do- then you can always start there when you get home from work and have hungry birds to feed. Just gently fry it in some olive oil, add onions and garlic and whatever else you have on hand for a great meal. With tomato product it becomes pasta or pizza sauce. With carrots, celery root and leftover Lima beans it becomes stew. With potatoes, kale, and eggs it becomes a great frittata. Guanciale, and pork fat in general is the great bridge between 'good' and totally satiating. Ok enough talk already.
SPICE RUB
1 pigs jowl - rinsed and patted dry.
2.5g juniper berries
5g fennel seed
2 bay leaves
5g black peppercorns
3-6 dried sage leaves
1/2 star anise
VERY gently toast the above except the sage. Cool, add the sage and grind. Contrary to popular belief spices should NOT SMOKE when toasting. Smoke is disappearing flavor compounds!
GARLIC PASTE
10g red chili or flakes
4 garlic cloves Crush the garlic.
Mix in the chili flakes or crush in the garlic, we love the mortar and pestle for this.
Now, rub the spices into the jowl, then smear the garlic paste over it smoothly. Layer a bed of sea or kosher salt in a non-reactive dish (stainless or glass is good) and place the seasoned jowl into it. Cover with more salt. It should look like it is buried in a good 3"-4" snow fall (not literally 3-4" of salt). Cover with plastic with a few vent holes and refrigerate for 20 days. Mark the finish date on the container so you know when to pull it from the salt. This, aside from the salt, is the only really critical direction I've given you so far. After 20 days, exhume and brush and/or lightly rinse off the excess salt, gently pat dry preserving as much of the spice coating as possible. Now you can either hang the jowl for a month in a cool dark place with a light parchment paper or cheesecloth shroud or transfer to a wire rack over a pan, lightly draped with vented parchment or plastic and back into the fridge for 30 days. An auxiliary fridge that runs at about 50 degrees F is great for this. Give it a try, there is so much salt involved that the process is fairly foolproof and jowls are small so if you do mess up your losses are minimal. It could be a whole ham right! To use just cut off a strip like bacon, dice or chop the strip into pieces, fry gently in a little oil and off you go.

Stir Fried Broccoli & Pumpkin Enchiladas

The Food Nanny
October21 &22, 2009
Meal 1: Pan Fried Noodles with Stirfried Broccoli and Tofu or Pork, Sesame Green Beans
· Serve the green beans at room temp, or sauté them quickly to warm.
· Rinse the noodles in a colander and drain VERY well. Heat some oil in a sauté pan. Non-stick is ok. When hot, carefully add the noodles. They will spatter and attempt to misbehave but don’t show them your fear. Stir for a minute or two. Add the vegetables and toss. Cook 2 more minutes and serve.

Meal 2: Pumpkin Enchiladas with Anaheim Chile Salsa Verde, Black Bean Soup, and Cumin Cole Slaw.
· Heat the enchiladas in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.
· Heat the soup on the stove top and serve the slaw chilled. Please salt the slaw as we omitted this to prevent wateriness.

El Calabasa - that is my bandito name. I just love to roast pumpkin and squash for use in Mexican cuisine. My trick is to carefully pan roast the pieces in batches to give them some carmelization and to then transfer them to a baking sheet and finishing them in the oven.

The sauce was a simple mixture or onions, garlic, herbs, and some green anaheims sauteed and then simmered with some water to soften and then pureed in batches. Really very good. To avoid too much heat simply cut the flesh away from the seeds and seed membrane. If you desire the fire, include it.

Vegetable Pot Pie & Carrot Fennel Soup

The Food Nanny
October 14&15, 2009
Meal 1: Vegetable Pot Pie, Mixed Greens, Grilled Broccoli
· Place the pt pie on a baking tray. Heat it at 350° for 20+ minutes or until a little more deeply browned and bubbly.
· Serve the broccoli at room temp or quickly heat it in a sauté pan with a little oil. Add a splash or water to steam everything through.
· Dress the salad and serve.


Meal 2: Carrot & Fennel Soup, Focaccia, Penne with Red Onion, Peppers, and Roasted Garlic
· Heat the soup to a simmer on the stovetop.
· Warm the focaccia in the oven for about 5 minutes
· Serve the penne at room temp or warm in the oven for 5-10 minutes.You can also warm it in a pan with a little oil and then a splash of water.

Hand Made Manicotti & White Bean Chili Verde

The Food Nanny
October 6&7,2009 Meal 1: Hand Made Manicotti with Roasted Eggplant, Red Pepper, Fennel & Chevre, Mini Peasant Boule, Mixed Greens
· Heat the manicotti in the oven at 350° until bubbly- 15-20 minutes.
· Warm the boule. Dress the salad and serve.
Meal 2: White Bean Chili Verde, Cornbread Squares, Roasted Acorn Squash
· Thin the chili with a little water and check the seasoning and heat in a sauce pan. If you like serve with yogurt or sour cream.
· Warm the squash in the oven for 10 -15 minutes at 350°. Dress it with butter and some maple syrup as a treat.
· Warm the cornbread for about 5 minutes.