The Cynosural Blog

Il Panettone is a traditional Christmas bread. The best that I've found imported to the USA is La Loggia. Bauli is also good, but not as moist. Naturally leavened, it somehow survives months on a cargo ship and weeks in a refrigerator after opening, without preservatives. A tradition is to make French Toast out of the Panettone on the day after Christmas, or Boxing day. Here's my recipe. Preheat an oven, preferably with a baking stone in it, to 400ºF.

• One egg per person, separated
• One teaspoon of Gran Marnier, two drops of vanilla extract, a grind of sea salt and a grate or two of nutmeg
• One tablespoon of heavy cream per person
• Two Slices of Panettone per person

Note that there isn't any additional sugar. Whip the egg whites to soft peaks, beat the egg yolks with the remaining ingredients, excepting the Panettone slices. Fold the seasoned egg yolk mixture into the egg whites. Butter a glass baking dish that is sufficiently large enough to hold all of the Panettone slices in one layer. Pour half the batter into the bottom of the baking dish, arrange the panettone slices in one layer in the baking dish, cover with the remaining batter. If possible, let it sit overnight, or at least for two hours in the refrigerator. Place the baking dish in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes, then into another oven, or reduce the heat, at 225ºF for another 15 to 30 minutes. I also like to serve this dish with crisp bacon or pancetta. Cook thickly sliced bacon in a 225ºF oven for two hours. Drain the fat after the first half-hour and then arrange the bacon on paper towels and cover with more paper towels and cook for the remaining time. You might like powdered sugar over it or maple syrup. I like it plain.

The winter holidays are upon us, and it's time to cook and cook and cook. Of course, the holidays are all about people, but for me, only from the standpoint of them eating what I cook.

Solstice

For Solstice, I made one of my favorite dishes, Maccheroni alla Chitarra con Abruzzo Polpettine, though I made it more of a ragù with the meatballs as the recipe says, veal shanks and pork baby back ribs. I made over three pounds of meatballs, as I'll be using them for Christmas supper as well. I served the veal shanks on Solstice, as that's what I like, and since it's also the day I turned 53, I figured what I like mattered. Dad likes the pork ribs, so, that's what I'll serve on Christmas Day.

I hunt the solstice shrub on this day, traditionally, but this year I went the day before, as it rained on the Solstice. I brought it up to the living room on the Solstice and set it up to be decorated later.

Christmas Eve

Friends and relatives from around the Bay Area to Carmel decided not to brave the wet weather that we're having this year. Bunkey is still in Iraq, though this is his last year. Without the big appetites that I was expecting this year, we're not doing the traditional seven fishes this year, just four. For four people. This year, we'll be having a soup of anchovies and white beans, Dad's making his tuna in marinara over spaghetti and I'm make a putanesca sauce to go with it. We're also having Chilean Sea Bass, brushed with olive oil and lemon, roasted in the oven and Shrimp Scampi. I'll be serving a latke type of side with those last made of four potatoes and two zucchinis, stripped in a mandolin (or the big holes in a cheese grater), squeezed dry, and mixed with two leeks, sliced thin and sautéed, and two eggs, patted into cakes and fried, then served with sour cream.

Part of the fun of Christmas Eve is decorating the solstice shrub and watching Hogswatch (the movie based upon the Terry Pratchett book, and my favorite winter holiday movie).

Christmas Day

Four people again will be eating on Christmas Day, so nothing too elaborate. Dad is making Italian Wedding or Holiday soup (chicken stock, spinach, teeny-tiny meatballs and cubes of parsley frittata), and I'll be making spinach & cheese ravioli with the meatballs and pork rig ragù from the Solstice and a roast chicken basted with a rosemary twig dipped in olive oil & garlic, served with Brussels Sprouts & Chestnuts, as I make for Thanksgiving.

Boxing Day

This year we're going to friends for a ham dinner on Boxing Day. I'm looking forward to eating and not cooking.

New Year's and Epiphany

Three more winter holidays are coming, and don't forget that the 12 days start too. New Year's Eve is often crab cioppino, New Year's Day is often baby back ribs in sauerkraut, ham hocks and hopping john, and other fine stuff. I'll blog about these holidays later.

That's all of that. Enjoy your holidays, whatever your beliefs, and may Peace be upon the land.

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This year we've decided not to go to The Sardine Factory in Monterey, with me cooking on the weekend. I'll just be cooking tonight and tomorrow. At the request of @IdaRose and @TiffanyAnderson via Twitter, where I'm @JAdP, here's my menu and recipes. Nothing new really. I'm following my traditions of the past few years.

As always... Don't forget to preheat your oven(s) and simmering bricks.

Colonial Virginia Peanut & Chestnut Soup

• Parboil raw peanuts in the shell for about 10 minutes, then roast them for another 10 in a medium oven.
• Cut an X in the shells of raw chestnuts and roast in the medium oven for about 20 minutes.
• Allow the peanuts to cool, and then put the chestnuts in a brown paper bag, just until they're cool enough to handle, and then shell them.
• Cook a rich vegetable stock that includes the normal onion, parsnip, carrot, celery, bouquet garni and garlic, but also has a diced turnip in it.
• When the stock has been simmering on the bricks for most of the day, add the peanuts, still in the shell, as well as the shelled and skinned chestnuts into the stock.
• After about 10 minutes, remove the peanuts and allow to cool, and then shell.
• Using a stick blender or a food mill, purée the stock, leaving all the vegetables and chestnuts.
• If too thick, add more stock or hot water to thin.
• Shave a raw turnip with a mandolin or slice it thinly with your favorite, sharpest knife, and add the cooked, shelled peanuts and slices of turnip to the soup, and cook for another half hour - salt to taste.

Pumpkin Soup

• Take the "lid" off two sugar pumpkins, scrape out the seeds and fibers, and roast for two hours at 325°F
• Scrape out the meat of the pumpkin, and allow to cool
• Toast the pumpkin seeds in the oven - they make great garnish later
• Bring 8 cups of fire roasted vegetable stock to a boil, add the roasted pumpkin meat, fresh thyme, fresh ginger grated, a bouquet garni of bay leaf, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, dry sherry and sautéed onions
• Cook for two hours, then purée in the pot or by passing it through a food mill
• bring back to a boil and tip in a cup of heavy cream right before serving

Spiked Spiced Cranberry Orange Sauce

Here's a "per bag" recipe.

• 12 ounces fresh, whole cranberries, washed and picked over for stems or wrinkly, bursting, rotting rejects
• 1 glass [~6 oz.] of sherry, port or mistral
• 2 or 3 Satsuma mandarin oranges - remove the rind, cut in half along the torus cross-section and remove any seeds
• one cup turbinado [raw] sugar
• a bouquet garni consisting of a cinnamon stick and 5 cloves
• Put it all in a heavy pan [I use porcelain coated cast iron] and over a high heat, stirring often during the cooking, until the cranberries start to pop, about five minutes, than remove to a lower heat [I use simmering bricks over a gas flame] to simmer until the oranges release their juices [get mushy], remove the spices and cool overnight in a heavy crock or non-metallic bowl - may be served whole or passed through a food mill or processor

Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding

A vegetarian version in a pan is what I'm making, as well as using it as the stuffing by mixing with mild sausage and stuffed into the bird. I use a mix of dried and fresh mushrooms, so the first step is to soak the dried ones [this year porcini and mixed wilds] for an half-hour in a 50/50 mix of white wine and warm water [never use stale water from the hot water tap for cooking]. The only fresh mushrooms I'm using this year are cremini and portabello.

• 1 medium red onion, Italian torpedo if you can find it, sliced
• two cloves of garlic, two carrots and two stalks of celery, sliced
• 1 tablespoon each of unsalted butter and olive oil
• sautée until the vegies are soft
• About 1-1/2 pounds of fresh mushrooms and four ounces [dry weight] of the dried mushrooms are used; remove the dried mushrooms from the soaking liquor and pass the liquor through cheese cloth or coffee filter or white paper towel; rinse and squeeze the soaked dried mushrooms and then mince them; clean and slice the fresh mushrooms, and sautée the mushrooms
• Add fresh sage, chiffonade, and fresh thyme leaves, salt and freshly ground peppercorns, finish the sautée, and add a glass of white wine - whatever you'll be serving with the meal is always best and at least a cup of the reserved mushroom soaking liquor
• Set aside the vegies and start on the bread pudding
• Cube some bread - less than 1/2-inch on a side; you can use heavy bread, light bread, even brioche; I prefer a potato rosemary batard and use about two loaves
• Make the "custard" from 1-1/2 cups of heavy [not sweetened] cream, 2 cups of milk, 6 eggs, salt and pepper to taste
• Pour the liquid custard over the bread cubes and squeeze the custard into the bread cubes until they are saturated; lightly toss in the sautéed vegies, and place in a heavily buttered casserole dish or lasagna or roasting dish [glass or ceramic, not metallic]
• Bake at 350°F for about an hour, until the top is brown and a knife stuck in slight to the left of center comes out clean
• If your going to use this to stuff the bird, reserve the amount that you'll need later in the day, or, if you cooked the bread pudding more than 24 hours in advance of stuffing the bird, reserve the vegies and bread that you need, and make up custard to use the day you'll be dressing the bird; add two-to-four links of broken up, cooked mild sausage to the vegie mixture before tossing

Mashed Roots with Garlic and Brown Butter Sage

Ok, ok, basically mashed potatoes with added rutabaga and turnip goodness, boiled with garlic and using a brown butter sage sauce as well as cream to get to the finished product.

• 1/2 potato per person, 1 rutabaga and 1 turnip for every 4 potatoes [potatoes of choice are yukon gold or red creamers], 1 clove of garlic per potato.
• Leave the potatoes whole, skin on or not as you like, cube the rutabagas and turnips, add the root vegetables, including the garlic, to salted boiling water and boil until a fork easily pierces a potato [15 minutes maybe],
• drain,
• [if you left the skins on the potatoes, cool and remove now if you want].
• Put 1 teaspoon of unsalted butter per potato into the hot pan, leave the butter to melt and then wait until the edges of the melted butter turns brown, add chiffonade sage [1 leaf per potato or to taste], let it sizzle for a minute,
• add 2 tablespoons of cream per person and stir until the cream bubbles,
• add the root vegetables back and mash 'em with a potato masher, keep stirring until heated through. One alternative is to stir in a consistent direction until the mash is like taffy - about three hours.

Squash and Potato Casserole

Roasted and mashed, or sliced thin with a mandolin and layered with the custard, this is a must for Thanksgiving.

You could be roasting the sweet potatoes whilst the bread pudding is baking. You need three cups of mashed roasted sweet potato, so start with two 8-inchers.

• 2 each sweet potatoes yams and carnival squash, roasty, toasty and mashed
• 1/2 cup of turbinado [raw] sugar added to the mash
• salt as you like it and you might like paprika, cayenne or black pepper, or not
• this custard is 2 large eggs, 1/2-cup of milk, a tablespoon of cream and you can even add pure bourbon vanilla [I have about a gallon left from my Montara Magic days] or maple syrup; add the custard to the potato mixture
• top with a mixture of 1/2-cup brown sugar, 1/2-cup flour, 4 tablespoons melted butter and a 1/2-cup of toasted whole pecan halves
• bake at 350°F for 30 to 45 minutes

Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts

Maybe not that traditional, but the best way to prepare those little green balls that I've ever found. I really do like this dish, though I can't remember where I found it. It's not a family tradition.

• Clean the outer leaves, and any loose, damaged or brown leaves from around the brussels sprout, slice off the woody stem, cut an X in the bottom and let sit in salt water for about 15 minutes - oh, and use about 10 sprouts and 4 chestnuts per person
• Cut an X in the shell of each chestnut and roast at a low temperature up to an hour or at a high temperature for 10 or 15 minutes, or buy vacuum packed or jarred cooked, shelled chestnuts, for as much as I like old fashioned cooking, in this case it is a real pain in the nicta and very time consuming
• Heat a pint of vegetable cooking stock, and add the sprouts and chestnuts, cook until tender which I've seen take as little as 15 minutes and as long as 45

Wild Mushroom and Giblet Gravy

Or leave out the giblets if you're going for Tofurkey instead.

Take the pan drippings from cooking the turkey and separate off the fat. While that is settling, in a pat of butter and a splash of olive oil, sauté the minced shallots, diced up giblets, and sliced mushrooms [maybe reserved from the bread pudding, maybe not]. I reserved some of my minced wild mushrooms that I had soaked earlier - add those now. Remove from the pan. Add [per cup of finished gravy desired] a tablespoon of butter and allow to brown slightly, then add a tablespoon of flour, mixing into the butter until all the butter is absorbed. Keep scraping from rue from the bottom of the pan, until the flour is cooked - about 3 minutes. Add a glass of your white wine, slowly, mixing it into the flour, and then add a glass of the dried mushroom soaking liquor that you reserved, stirring it in. Cook down to the desired thickness - there should be a cup of gravy. Add a chiffonade of sage, and some thyme leaves.

Stuffed Turkey

Here's the basics: remove the fresh turkey from the brine that its been soaking in overnight, take enough of the Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding recipe [don't mix this more than an hour in advance of stuffing the bird] with added, broken up and cooked mild sausage, to fill the body and neck cavities of the bird, put peeled garlic cloves under the skin of the bird [usually takes at least one head of garlic], brush bird with a rosemary twig dipped in olive oil and herbs de Provence before putting in the oven and as the basting method, cook it as you normally would. Add white wine and maybe stock [vegie stock, white stock - chicken and veal - or turkey stock made from the neck] to the bottom of the pan. Get the skin nice and brown, and cover with aluminum foil to keep if from burning if it's browned before the turkey is done. If you do that, uncover the bird for the last 15 minutes of cooking.

Update: I've been using the term chiffonade. Let me explain. One can only chiffonade larger leaves: think basil, sage, mint. Wash and dry about eight leaves, and make a "cigar" out of them. That is, layer them by overlapping them about half-way along the long axis, and roll them up so they look something like stogies. Sharpen your knife, the sharper the better. Slice along the "cigar" cross-section, so that your getting very thin slices of herb.

Dessert

Dad made an apple cake from the four types of apples growing in the back yard. I bought, yes, bought, a pumpkin pie. Earl is bringing Black Sambuca to serve with coffee. Stilton and crackers will also be served.

Have a great Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

I'll update as things change while I'm cooking.

Every once in awhile, we all need comfort food. There's no one recipe, or one meal, even for each person. Comfort food is whatever makes you feel secure, protected, comforted. Tonight, I needed some comfort food, and here's what I made.

Creamed Corn

1. Why am I starting with creamed corn? Because of the items on this menu, it takes the longest to make. "WTF?" you ask. "You open a can and heat it. How long can it take?" To which I say "Yuck!". Here's how I make creamed corn. Preheat an oven to 400ºF and get some ears of corn, one per person, plus some more, as fresh off the stalk as you can: grow it, get to a local farmer, whatever it takes, but every minute the corn is off the stalk, it's losing sugar and taste. Gently peel back the leaves on the corn, removing only the toughest outer leaves. Rub off the strings. Pull the leaves back over the kernels, and place each ear in a bowl of salted water. Once all the ears of corn are prepared, wrap each in heavy duty aluminum foil and place in the hot oven for 45 minutes.
2. At the end of 45 minutes, heat a heavy sauce pan (I use porcelain coated cast iron) over low heat, preferably on simmering bricks. For each ear of corn, add 1 pat of butter, a bit of turbinado sugar, a grind of white pepper, and an half-cup of heavy cream to the heating pan. While the mixture is heating, unwrap the corn and return to the oven to brown for 15 minutes. About the sugar: if the corn is from your back yard, you should need very little, if picked that day, perhaps a quarter of a teaspoon, if from some warehouse and a chain supermarket, maybe a whole teaspoon per ear.
3. Once the cream mixture has heated and the corn has browned, remove from the oven, and peel back the leaves. Using the leaves as an handle, which should be cool enough to hold, use a sharp knife and remove the kernels from the cob. Add the kernels to the heated cream. If need be, add cream until the kernels are covered, or better floating in the cream.
4. Increase the temperature and allow the cream to boil for 3 minutes, return the heat to low or the pan to the simmering bricks and keep warm, stirring, until the meal is ready to serve.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

1. I use yukon gold, and either one small or one-half medium potato per person. Peel and halve the potatoes, add to salted, cold water in a heavy pan. Peel one garlic clove per person, and add to the pan. Heat over high heat until boiling, lower heat to maintain a simmer, check after 10 minutes and keep heating until the potatoes can be easily pierced to their center with a fork. Remove the potatoes and garlic cloves from the boiling water, and allow to drain.
2. Pour out the water, and return the pan to the stove over low heat. Add an half-tablespoon of butter to the pan, with the garlic cloves and a grind per potato of white pepper and another grind of nutmeg. Allow the butter to brown at the edge, and the garlic to lightly brown. Add a tablespoon of heavy cream per person to the butter and bring to a boil. Put the potatoes back into the pan, and mash with a potato masher; alternately, you can pass the potatoes and browned garlic through a coarse-disk food mill into the pan.
3. Whisk it all together, and stir over heat until you're ready to serve

The Beef

I generally like Niman Ranch Ground Round for the meat. You can use any ground beef, or thin steak, pounded or not, or dry-aged New York Strip. For comfort food, the ground, for fancier meals the strip. You can dress up the ground with sautéed onion, Worcester Sauce, mustard powder, egg, whatever. You can rub the steak with a crushed garlic clove. With good quality meat, I don't like anything hiding the flavor. Use anywhere from 4 ounces to half-a-pound per person. Six ounces is a standard restaurant portion. Heat a pan over medium heat, add extra-virgin olive oil. Brown the meat for at least five minutes on a side, until nicely dark brown (lots of esters generated from browning, making for richer flavor). Cook the meat to the desired degree of doneness, rare to well-done.

The Sauce

While the corn is roasting, do the prep work. That includes the potatoes above, but also the prep work for the sauce or gravy. What's the difference? Flour. If you want a gravy, make a roux from butter and flour, a tablespoon of each per cup of liquid, cooking the flour in the butter for three minutes. Whisk the hot liquid into the the roux, until thick. What liquid? Keep reading.

1. Use about an half-inch of a red torpedo onion per person, thinly sliced.
2. Use four to six cremini mushrooms per person. Clean and slice.
3. Remove the meat, when done, from the pan, and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
4. Add oil if the pan is dry.
5. Add the onionslices to the pan, lower the heat, and sauté until translucent, add the mushroom slices and cook until tender.
6. Deglaze the pan with red wine or stock, working loose all the nice browned bits.
7. Add 4 ounces per person of vegetable, mushroom or beef stock
8. Here's the part where you can work the roux if you want a gravy.
9. For a sauce, cook the liquid, stirring often, over high heat until the liquid thickens - 10 to 15 minutes.
10. If the meat has cooled too far, return to the pan for the last five minutes.
11. If added, remove the meat, turn off the heat, and work a pat of butter into the sauce.

The Finish

Plate it up, with the sauce on the plate, or the gravy on the potatoes and beef. Put two to four heaping tablespoons of creamed corn in a small bowl for each serving. Maybe add some crusty bread and a salad, maybe not. Serve with the red wine used to make the sauce. Enjoy.

For her birthday, Mom asked for lasagna and cheesecake, as she's somewhat fanatical about both. I had a meeting in Palo Alto on Friday, so picking up a tiramisu cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory was a no brainer, as I knew I wouldn't have time to shop and prepare both things.

The Americanized lasagna with which I grew up, and that will make my Mom the happiest is cooked from dried, curly-edged pasta layered with a ricotta and cheese mixture and tomato-meat sauce. I would prefer a more traditional lasagne, as made by Gianugo Rabellino. But, I also want to make a vegetarian lasagne. So, I'm combining the Italian tradition with the Italo-American tradition, and I'll make two lasagne, one meat with a ragù and one vegie with eggplant and portobello mushrooms.

On a recent visit, Gianugo told me that portobello isn't a mushroom's name in Italy, but that there is a portobello orange. Here's the mushroom:

Click to view original size

I'm also using so-called Italian Eggplants, which are smaller, more slender, less bitter and with fewer seeds than the large, globular Eggplants more commonly sold in the USA.

Click to view original size

The cap of the mushroom is about 4-inches (~10 cm) across. I'll make a sauce from these, similar to a ragù, but using the eggplants and mushrooms without any meat.

I'll also be serving some extra sauce on the side, the same as in my post on Abruzzo Polpettine, but with a rack of baby-back pork ribs rather than the veal shank, as my father prefers the ribs.

I'll be using sheets of fresh egg pasta, cut to fit the pans that I'll be using. These sheets don't have curly edges After cutting to fit the pans, blanch in salted, boiling water for two minutes and set aside, laying flat or draped over a drying rack.

In addition to the ragù and eggplant-mushroom-tomato sauce, I need enough besciamella sauce for both lasagne.

The tomatoes are cooking down in the wine with a red onion studded with bay leaf and cloves. I've cleaned, sliced and sautéed the mushrooms with garlic, in olive oil, and simmered in red wine. The eggplant was sliced, salted, set aside to drain (necessary with larger eggplants, and a matter of caution with these, to remove the bitter, soapy oil that eggplants have in their seeds) and sautéed in more olive oil and garlic slices. So, while the tomatoes, are cooking, I made the besciamella, and started blogging

Béchamel or Besciamella

Fill a greater-than-2-quart crockery bowl with hot water and set aside. I started with 2 sticks (16 tablespoons) of unsalted butter. Melt them over low heat in a large, porcelain coated pain. When the butter is melted and just starting to foam, grind in 16 turns of white peppercorns, and slowly whisk in a cup of unbleached, white wheat flour. Allow the flour to cook for at least three minutes, but don't let it brown. While the flower is cooking, heat in the microwave (or start this earlier if in a pan on the stove) 6 cups of whole milk mixed with one cup of heavy cream. When the flour is cooked, slowly whisk in the warm milk & cream. Cook for five more minutes over medium heat, whisking frequently. Grate a quarter-pound of locatelli romano hard, sharp cheese and whisk into the sauce. Salt to taste. Drain and dry the crockery bowl. Transfer the besciamella into the bowl, cover with a square of buttered parchment paper, and allow to cool for three hours.

Ricotta & Cheese

Now to make the cheese mixture. Start with ricotta. By the way, ricotta isn't a cheese, more of the anti-cheese, as it's made from the whey that is left-over when the curds are made into cheese. For my two lasagne, I'll need four pounds of fresh ricotta, with one egg per pound plus one egg per tray of lasagne, making for six eggs total. Mix in grated cheeses: one-half pound of parmigiano-reggiano, one-half pound of pecerino-toscano, and one-quarter pound of locatelli-romano and a hand-full of chopped Italian (flat-leaf) parsley.

Assemble the Lasagne

1. In the bottom of two large roasting or lasagna pans, put a ladle of the appropriate tomato sauce (ragù or vegie) and a tablespoon of olive oil. Make sure the bottom and sides of the pans are coated.
2. Lay a cooked sheet of pasta in the bottom of the pan
3. Imagine the squares each portion of lasagne will be; in each square put a rounded teaspoon each of
   • basil-garlic-pignoli pesto (note that the pesto for the vegie version also has blanched baby spinach leaves),
   • besciamella,
   • ragù or vegie sauce and
   • ricotta mixture
4. top with a pasta sheet, squeeze flat, do it again until the pan is full or you're out of materials
5. top with remaining besciamella

Place the lasagna pans into an oven preheated to 350ºF, and cook for 45 minutes. Check every 15 minutes to makes sure that the besciamella doesn't burn. If it gets very brown, cover with aluminum foil.

Sever with a salad, and the same type of red wine that you used in the sauce. I used Thalia Sangiovese from Viansa.

I've got to get back to cooking. If I have a chance, I'll update with pictures of the finished products.

Update: Finished eating the salad and entrée; here's a picture of the meat lasagne:

Click to view original size

And here's the vegie lasagne.

Click to view original size

I have to go back and get ready for cake, and I already feel like I'm about to explode.

Another Update: Here's Mom blowing out her candles.

Click to view original size

I'm going to go die now. I couldn't even finish my piece of cake.

Enjoy. Happy birthday, Mom.

Updated to correct the spelling to besciamella in all instances - thanks to Gianugo Rabellino