Chorizo & Mussels

Lisl had a work dinner tonight so, eating solo, I wanted something fast and simple. We had a few leftover mussels from the weekend, and of course mussels fit that bill. I have been wanting to cook mussels with chorizo for some time, so checked out foodblogsearch and decided to play with MattBites' Clams & Chorizo recipe (which he picked up from Epicurious).

I followed the recipe pretty closely, so will not duplicate here. It was delicious. Obviously I switched from clams to mussels, but you don't need to change anything other than shortening the cooking by a couple minutes (mussels cooks faster). Speaking of Epicurious and mussels, I want to try this one too (a carrot ginger broth)!

The best part was sopping up the leftover broth with hunks of cuban bread, which Lisl made this weekend from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible. Lisl has been experimenting with starting loafs with the bread maker, then moving to the oven, and will probably write up some thoughts as she progresses.



It was amusing to check into twitter before heading back to work and see that bitchin camero, a food blog I like a lot, had also made chorizo mussels for dinner. Now I'm curious to see what her version looked like. Ah social media and the shrinking world...

Shepherd's Pie (my favorite comfort food dish)

::: Constables Larder has moved to http://constableslarder.com :::

Back in June, when we first started this site, I posted a number of old, favorite recipes including shepherd's pie. When the air gets cool, Lisl and I find no comfort food more satisfying than this dish. My version was originally inspired by the Dean & Deluca cookbook, and I make it slightly differently almost every time. Tonight was no exception, so I'll post tonight's approach here and note the differences to the old recipe at the end.

Shepherd's Pie

Mashed Potatoes (the top layer)
6 to 8 medium red or gold potatoes, peeled
1/2 cup milk (but be prepared to use more)
2 tbsp butter, cut into smaller pieces
salt
pepper
handful of parsely, finely chopped

Boil the potatoes in lightly salted water until cooked all the way through. You can cut them into smaller pieces to speed cooking. Drain the potatoes, return to the pot, add the butter and mash. Add 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, the parsley and milk. Taste for salt. Add milk - your exact amount of milk will depend on size and number of potatoes. You want the mashed potatoes to be quite moist without crossing over into being liquid. (Frankly, I would say make the mashed potatoes the way you really love to make them; just don't make it too dry as this all is going to bake before being served).

The Base
1 to 1.5 lb of ground beef
5 slices of bacon
2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 large onion, chopped
5 or 6 carrots, finely chopped
3/4 cup dry white wine
1 tsp tomato paste
1/4 tsp dried oregano
salt
pinch of red pepper flakes (spicy)

Cook the bacon in a large cast iron pan to the point where they are almost crispy, then remove and chop. Cook the ground beef in the bacon fat until browned, adding in 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce, and the dried oregano. Once browned, remove to a bowl.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Add a splash of olive oil to the cast iron pan and saute the onions on medium-low heat until they start to turn translucent, then add the carrots. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, then turn up the heat slightly and add the wine and tomato paste. Continue to cook, stirring regularly, for another 5 to 10 minutes, then add in the ground beef, chopped bacon, another tbsp of worcestershire sauce, another pinch of salt, and the pinch of red pepper flakes. Let this cook together for 5 or 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, and taste for salt and oregano. You'll note that I'm writing flexible cooking times, but I prefer more time when possible in order to let the carrots soften. If it starts to dry out, add a little more wine (or water or beef stock).



Forming the Pie
Turn off the heat and flatten the mixture out. With a large ladel, place your mash potatoes on top carefully in dollops, trying not to allow the potatoes and meat base to mix. Take a fork, hold it mostly horizontal with the curve of the tines pointing down (like the bottom of a boat) and use this to spread the mashed potatoes around until it evenly covers the dish. I find that this allows you to spread the potatoes more delicately and thus prevents everything from mushing together. For aesthetics, I also like to use the tines of the fork to decorate the top with various patterns.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then turn on the broiler for a few minutes to brown the top, keeping an eye on it so it doesn't burn. Let cool for 5 or 10 minutes, then serve.

A couple years ago, Lisl discovered that this goes really well with a side-sauce of ketchup and sriracha sauce mixed together evenly. If you don't have Thai chili sauce, try Tabasco (if you like things spicy). This goes really well with a red shiraz or zinfandel, or a good beer.

Notes:
In the original recipe, the exact quantities of several things were slightly different. The other version also added 2 tsp of flour to the beef while cooking, used rosemary rather than oregano, and vermouth rather than white wine (I love cooking with vermouth), and included some beef stock. I started cooking this dish back in 2001 while we lived in London, and where "bacon" is more like what American's call Canadian bacon; I'll often use that instead of typical American bacon.


Yum.

Variations:
Shepherd's Pie with a more middle eastern spice combination
Original Shepherd's Pie recipe

Chickpea Chorizo & Spinach Soup

Several weeks ago, the food portions of my brain were tickled by Bitchin Camero's chickpea and chorizo casseroles, and 80 Breakfasts' cabbage, chickpea and chorizo soup. I decided that the chorizo and chickpea combination was a necessity for my tastebuds, and this soup was born. It was perfect for a crisp fall Saturday, and could take its time cooking while we buzzed around the house.

Chickpea Chorizo and Spinach Soup

1/2 lb dried chickpeas
2 oz chorizo, sliced into bite-sized pieces*
1 sweet onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth
Pinch of smoked paprika*
1 jalapeno pepper (in this case, red), de-seeded and finely chopped
1 bay leaf
4 oz baby spinach, washed and loosely chopped
Zest of 1/2 lemon
1 1/2 tbsp tomato paste
Salt and pepper

Put your chickpeas in a large soup pot with enough water to cover 2 inches above the top of the chickpeas. Bring to a boil and then simmer until tender. Place a colander atop a bowl and strain the chickpeas, reserving 3 or 4 cups of the cooking water. Set both chickpeas and reserved liquid aside.

Heat up a dash of olive oil in the soup pot over medium heat and then cook the chorizo, stirring regularly, or a couple of minutes. Lower the heat, add the onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Add the wine, chicken broth, reserved cooking liquid, smoked paprika, bay leaf, jalapeno, and about 1/4 tbsp of salt. Bring the soup to a boil and then reduce to a gentle simmer. Loosely cover and cook for about 20 to 30 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf, and add the spinach, lemon zest, tomato paste, and a few grindings of black pepper. Once again, bring to a boil then reduce to a gentle simmer. Loosely cover and cook for another 30 minutes.

Before serving, taste for lemon zest, salt and pepper.

* Notes
You can get very different types of chorizo, and this will definitely affect the soup. The 2 ounces I mention is probably equivalent to 3 inches or so of a normal chorizo sausage. If the sausage is potent, you probably don't need to add much smoked paprika, but if it is on the milder side, you might want to add another pinch than recommended above.

O Foods roundup for Ovarian Cancer

We were sadly unable to participate in the "O" Foods blog event for Ovarian Cancer, but I did want to do a shout out to Jenn at The Left Over Queen, Michelle at Bleeding Expresso, and Sara at Ms. Adventures in Italy for organizing the successful event. You can see links to participants and recipes on their blogs. It's an important cause that has touched our family, so we're glad to see it highlighted. Well done all!

Low and Slow reminder; potting the pie

First off I want to remind folks about the Low and Slow blog event between now and October 15th. It's all about slow cooking at low heat, and we're giving away a choice of a braise cookbook to the winner (see post for more info). I'm greedy for more slow-cooking recipes so hoping folks have time to participate.

As the weather cools down, I've been cooking more and more like this, with low, slow dishes like a pork braise, cuban black beans, a short ribs braise, and even a version of my vegetarian chili for 30 people.

Tonight I went in the comfort food direction again, with a chicken pot pie, although I tried to shortcut the process quite a bit given time limits. I had promised a pot pie to Lisl, but got home from work and realized we barely had any flour or salt! Aren't emergency market runs a pain?!

For the pot pie mixture, I experimented with combining leeks, carrots, and turnip, as well as reducing the butter and milk and adding a little more white wine. The turnips added an earthiness that was nice, but which I probably won't repeat. The combination of white wine and thyme also made the dish a little less heavy, but just not as wonderfully "comfort foodish".

I did not have Lisl to lean on for the pastry, as I usually do, and had be self-sufficient in that department. This might have been the first time I ever used a rolling pin (I'm not completely sure, but we're talking reasonable odds). Baker, I am not. "You don't say," you mutter, "why do I read this blog again?"

Amazingly, while I made the noob mistake of too-thick pastry, it tasted right. Granted that there are only so many ways to destroy flour, butter, salt and baking powder, but I was half expecting to walk headfirst into one of those ways.

All things considered, I don't think I am going to post tonight's recipe since the dish was rushed and enjoyable but very improvable. Shocker of shockers, perhaps the classic is the classic for a reason. I've done it better in past, even while employing short-cuts, so next time I'll hopefully have a version that is shareable in detail.

On Legumes, and a Strikeout

Work travel makes food blogging pretty impossible. However, when I got back yesterday, I found that our copy of the Rancho Gordo cookbook had arrived from Amazon.com. I've been cooking a lot of legumes (i.e. beans) this year, but that's a fairly new thing for me. I've always ordered bean dishes at restaurants, finding such things as cassoulet or "white bean crostini" to be irresistible words on a menu, but for the longest time felt uncomfortable making them myself.

When it comes to legumes, too many cookbooks stop short, writing things like: "serve on a bed of cooked lentils". Well, what kind of lentils? cooked for how long? on what heat? soaked? no soak? soaked with what? soak with hot or cold liquid? do you keep soaking liquid? etc ... you get the point.

It's like there was this body of assumed knowledge that I somehow never acquired. I felt amiss because I didn't know the fundamentals and I dislike blindly following a recipe.

This all changed when I received a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything earlier this year. All it took was a few coherent paragraphs and the veil was lifted. I've been having fun cooking with dried beans since. I certainly don't feel the archaic stigma that beans were "the poor man's meat", and I have to question if that stigma even exists anymore with any generation that came after the Baby Boomers. I will also note that the whole "gas" issue does indeed go away if you eat them on a slightly more regular basis -- something confirmed by vegetarian friends.

Looping back to tonight, I finally had a chance to look through the Rancho Gordo cookbook (for those who don't know, Rancho Gordo is a neat Californian business that grows and sells heirloom beans). First reaction: unlike my instant love affair with A Platter of Figs, I must say that I'm a little unsure of the Gordo book. For starters, there aren't nearly enough photos, which I'm sure had to do with their publishing budget constraints but it is what it is. An honest photo can tell you a lot about a dish and how it was cooked.

I have to familiarize myself with more of the recipes before I can pass verdict, but I did try the Chili Con Carne recipe tonight and came away puzzled by the cookbook's approach. I tried to follow the recipe pretty faithfully save for using fresh chiles rather than chile powder (the book stresses using pure chile powder rather than chili powder, which is a mix... but I couldn't easily find pure chile powder). The result -- a too-thin soup that was edible but not worth making again.

I'm willing to entertain the notion that I completely messed up, but suspect that more likely the authors and I just have different ideas on what a good chile is. All this said, I remain optimistic that the cookbook will give me good ideas to work from, and I certainly continue to be a customer of Gordo beans.

But, for tonight, my picture of cumin seeds was more interesting than the dish itself...

Notes from the road; 24, 24, 24 links

I don't know what it is about Wordle that satisfies my inner geek, but periodically I love popping over there, entering the blog URL, and capturing a snapshot from the main URL at the time. The above wordle is from the 24/24/24 set of posts.

This has been a light blogging week since both of us are tied up with work and/or travel. I happen to be at an offsite with my colleagues (we're a startup of about 30 people), and for fun I took on the challenge of making dinner one night. I've never cooked for more than 8 at one point in time, so it was definitely an interesting experience. Because we have a lot of vegetarians and vegans in this crew (about half!), we decided to make a huge version of the vegetarian chili I blogged many weeks ago, with a ton of different garnishes (it seems to have been a hit). Cooking in bulk really has its own set of lessons and requirements.

Most of my time is spent in meetings here, but there's the occasional chance to duck into the kitchen (some people like to go for a walk to clear their head, I like to cook). While we were making hummus the other morning, my colleague Nicole taught me that you can better juice lemons by rolling them around under your palm first. I'm not entirely convinced it works wonders, but I suppose I should listen to the spirit of the Italian grandmothers she has known! Since no lemon is alike, it is impossible to do empirical testing, however if nothing else, this will be a fun task for me to give to munchkin to keep her occupied while I cook!

I've also been meaning to link to all the other 24, 24, 24 participants from this great event, and I'm hoping Palachinka, who had a fascinating post on medieval Serbian cuisine, doesn't mind that I pilfered her table of pics and links, since it was so nicely done! (the order is pretty random, and I had to move some things around to fit the narrower format of this blog)

24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs - The Roundup: