Salade de Champignons

A great many of the New England-Middle States vegetable recipes as yet uncooked are, as I have mentioned before, sort of regional misfits, like clam salad. I can imagine serving, and even eating, clam salad, as part of a summer potluck (where nobody has to be polite and eat it if the very idea appalls) but not at a dinner party where the food ought to in some way go together.
So Salade de Champignons, or mushroom salad for us Anglophones, was one of the few obvious choices. This is easy, and very good. I recommend making it the day before, which gives the dressing a chance to penetrate the mushrooms.
People seemed to like it.
The party was fun. We invited two sets of old friends from our kids' days in elementary school. One of the husbands couldn't come, but his wife did and kept up an entertaining flow of conversation. Unfortunately, either I was distracted by the serving, or I just can't remember stuff very well, but the actual facts eluded me. Her daughter had been a friend of our daughter, so when I related to our daughter that Marcella, her friend, was now living in London, our daughter wanted to know where.
I was able to tell her that Marcella had been living in Bethnal Green, which is in East London, but found it too expensive and moved to some neighborhood without a tube stop.
"Well. where'd she move to?" Daughter inquired impatiently.
"Ummm," I said.
My husband said he thought the neighborhood began with a k. I said I thought it was Stanford Something.
"Stanford Brook?" Daughter, who spent three years in London, asked incredulously. "That has a tube stop. It was right near me."
"You can't remember anything, Mom," she snarled.
Anyway, the food was good, and half way through dinner, I hissed at the husband who was able to come, and we sneaked off for a peek at the World Series, where the Rangers were actually winning Game 3.

Salade de Champignons

1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 pound mushrooms, sliced

1. Place the lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper in a bowl. With a wire whisk, gradually whisk in the oil. Mixture will become the consistency of mayonnaise.
2. Add the mushrooms, toss and chill.
Makes 3 servings.

Baked Striped Bass

On Saturday, after making the pie, and eating pancakes with the Boy Scouts from Troop 100, I went to the fish store to buy the striped bass. I do not have a lot of experience with cooking fish, so I was startled by the amount of blood and gore involved when one buys a whole fish. Thank God I said yes when the fish man asked me if he should clean it. It looked like Slaughter on Elm Street by the time he was finished.
The recipe called for not only a whole striped bass, but also a pound of shrimp, so there was Slaughter on Elm Street to my bank balance as well. They obligingly bagged up the carcass and the shrimp in ice and handed it to me. I didn't actually get to it until around 6:30 when I took out the shrimp and realized that it had to be peeled.
At that point, Son and his fiance came in, on their way to a Halloween party. I felt like saying, "Hey, pull up a chair and peel some shrimp." I desisted when I saw her in black with a 40s veil and long purple gloves and him in a Justin Beiber wig that made him look like he had a raccoon sitting on his head.
I was still cooking when our friends walked in the door.
This is a good recipe. Some observations. Get the fish boned too. I didn't. A larger fish does not require more stuffing, so don't get a pound and a half of shrimp for a six pound bass. If you can, get the shrimp peeled, or do it when you get home so you don't have to do it at 6:30. Also, make sure the fish is fully cooked.

Baked Striped Bass

1 four-pound striped bass
1/4 cup diced salt pork or butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1 pound shrimp, shelled, deveined and roughly chopped
1/2 cup fine soft bread crumbs
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1/4 teaspoon thyme
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Clean the fish, but leave the head on. (The fish store didn't. If you dislike your dinner looking at you, take it off.)
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
3. Cook the salt pork, if used, in a skillet until the bits are crisp. Remove salt pork bits and reserve. Add the shallots to the drippings and cook until tender but not browned.
4. Add the mushrooms and shrimp and cook quickly until shrimp turn pink and mushrooms wilt, about five minutes. Add the breadcrumbs, parsley, thyme, salt, pepper and reserved pork bits. Stuff the fish with the mixture and secure with skewers or sew to close. (I didn't sew or skewer, and there was a lot of stuffing left over. I just left it in the pan.)
5. Place the fish in a greased baking dish. Brush with the melted butter, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle the lemon juice over all.
6. Bake about thirty-five minutes, or until fish flakes easily.
Makes four servings.

Squash-Apple Pie

This is a picture of two halves of an acorn squash, being steamed in my patented handy-dandy steaming method. I put a metal colander upside down in my stew pot, add two inches of water, and put the squash on top. Cover, turn on the gas, and let things boil for 10 to 15 minutes until you can stick a fork through the squash. Once you have your cooked squash, you are ready to proceed to the pie. I made this pie at the beginning of a marathon day of cooking for a dinner party. I polished off four recipes and was still cooking at 7:15 when the guests came.

Since I bought the pie crust, and steamed the squash the night before, the pie was the easiest part. It went into the oven in less than 15 minutes and I moved on to cleaning the kitchen floor. The recipe does not specify what kind of squash you can use. Pumpkin would work as well as acorn squash, and probably you could use Hubbard squash as well. What you get has the signature taste of pumpkin pie, although it has different ingredients.

Squash-Apple Pie

1 cup cooked, mashed and sieved squash

1 cup thick, tart applesauce (I used unsweetened applesauce.)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 unbaked ten-inch pie shell with stand-up edge

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. Place the squash (which, by the way, you can just mash with a fork. Don't worry about sieving it.) and applesauce in a bowl. Stir in the salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, mace and cloves.

3. Combine the eggs and cream and add to the squash mixture. Pour into the pie shell. Bake twenty minutes. Reduce oven heat to 350 degrees and bake twenty to twenty five minutes longer. (a knife inserted into filling should come out clean. Cool and chill

Makes eight servings.

Tomato Sauce

Here is a picture of the completed ravioli with the tomato sauce over it. I was actually too frazzled by the time I got around to making the tomato sauce to remember to take a picture of the process. It is not easy to cook and photograph at the same time, since one has to stop and wipe one's hands, (and one's brow) each time the camera is used.

There is nothing special about making the tomato sauce. If you want to undertake this whole project, I would suggest making the tomato sauce ahead of time. We did not.

Tomato Sauce

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large onion finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped (If you like more, and who doesn't, go for it.)

1 two-pound-thirteen ounce can Italian plum tomatoes

1 six ounce can tomato paste

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon basil

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Sautee the onion and garlic in the oil until tender but not browned.

2. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and basil. Bring to a boil and simmer for twenty minutes.

3. Add the thyme and oregano and let simmer five minutes longer.

Makes about one quart, or plenty for all the ravioli you can churn out.

Pasta

The pasta went relatively easily because my husband took over. We hadn't made our own pasta for years, but when we had, back before we had kids, he did it. And he did it again, Tuesday night. This recipe uses the "make a well in the flour and break the eggs into the well" method.
Well, what we both have to say about the well method is, forget it. Olvidate, as they say in Spanish.
Use a food processor, and very little water. Put in a tablespoon at a time, and as soon as you can get it to hold together, stop. My husband says, think pie crust dough. And, if you are making the full recipe, make it in two batches. Luckily, I did that, because I ruined the first batch with too much water.
Here follows not Hewlett's recipe, but ours, adapted for a food processor. This is a picture of my husband rolling the dough through the pasta machine.

Pasta

6 cups flour

1 tablespoon salt

6 eggs

1. Place half the flour, salt and eggs into a food processor. Buzz the mixture until everything is mixed together. At this stage, it's kind of like oatmeal. Then add water a tablespoon at a time. As soon as the dough holds together, stop. If the dough is sticky, it will gum up the pasta machine, and you will have to throw the dough away.

2. Repeat for the second half of the ingrediants, if you need that much.

3. Pass one-sixth of the dough through the pasta machine at its widest setting several times, folding the dough in thirds as it lengthens for successive rollings. This is kind of like kneading the dough. Set the machine at number two or three for the final rolling to make the ravioli dough.

Makes enough for six dozen ravioli.

Ravioli a la Romana

Tonight I made ravioli, something I have never done before, and I polished off three recipes out of the book. This is a picture of my husband crimping the edges of the filled raviolis with a fork so the filling stays inside.
Ravioli is a challenging dish. It is not technical and fussy like Julia Childs' throw away and start over French sauces, but it does have many steps. Two pairs of hands and a lot of time are recommended if you want to take this on. I did it after school one evening, and was so wiped out by the time we had ravioli and sauce that I couldn't even get it together to make salad. Also strongly recommended is a food processor. In fact, I would say, don't try this unless you have a food processor and probably a pasta machine too.
Since there are so many steps, I'm going to try to include more pictures. Two weeks ago, my daughter and I went to Pennsylvania to visit a friend of hers. We came back with a basket of apples, and the next night made apple caramel jam from a blog she reads called The Simple Dollar. (http://www.thesimpledollar.com/) This is mainly a personal finance blog, but the author is interested in cooking. The recipe was a revelation. He had pictures for every step of the jam making process, which, if you have followed my explanations of making jam, can be tortured.
Ravioli is a "Day before," kind of recipe. In fact, one wonders if Hewlett actually edited this recipe. However, the recipe does not clearly state that one does need to start the process the day before. It just presents a beef pot roast braised in red wine as something everyone has in their refrigerator.
However, last weekend, when I was making Down East Haddock Chowder, I braised the pot roast, having read through the recipe ahead of time !!!
Wikipedia, my all purpose source for random information, says that braising is a combination of using dry heat and moist heat to cook things, usually meat. Since we weren't going to eat the meat as a pot roast, I skipped the step one and went straight to step two, and simmered the meat in an airline sized bottle of red wine in a crockpot. I didn't want to open a bottle of drinking wine unless I had to, but the airline size was fine.

The next step is to grind up the meat. The instructions say to use the finest blade of a meat grinder. Now, a meat grinder used to be a staple of the 40s, 50s and 60s kitchen. I had one when I set up housekeeping in 1970. It was made out of cast iron or cast aluminum, had a funnel shaped top, and sort of a screw thing that forced the meat against the blades when you turned the handle. It lived in its box in the depths of the kitchen cabinets, and you took it out when you needed to grind meat. I remember we had it in our old house on 12th Street.

Somewhere in the depths of time between 12th Street and now, it got replaced by that marvel of kitchen technology, the food processor. So don't worry about the meat grinder.

It appears that one cannot add multiple pictures to one post. And since I don't want to confuse the issue further by creating multiple posts for one recipe, you won't see more pictures until I learn how to do it. Sigh.

Having braised your pot roast and ground it up in the food processor, you are in a position to move to the actual recipe.

What I found was, this recipe makes an insane amount of ravioli. We had enough for five hungry people, with three servings of ravioli and a ton of ground meat left over. I would cut the amount of meat in half, and possibly the pasta too.

Ravioli a la Romana

1 large Bermuda onion, finely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 pounds fresh spinach, chopped or two packages frozen chopped spinach

1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)

1/2 pound ricotta cheese

1 egg

freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 three pound beef pot roast, braised with onion and red wine, put through the finest blade of a meat grinder (See beginning of blog.)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 recipe pasta

4 cups home made tomato sauce

1. Saute the onion in the oil until tender and golden. Add the spinach and cook until spinach is cooked and mixture is dry. Pass through the finest blade of the meat grinder (food processor) with the pine nuts.

2. Mix together the ricotta, egg and one-quarter cup Parmesan. In a large bowl, combine the meat, spinach mixture and cheese mixture and mix well. Season with salt and pepper. Form into two inch balls.

3. Line a ravioli tin with pasta dough. (You don't need a ravioli tin. You can lay your dough out on a piece of wax paper and cut it with a knife.)

4. Cut the dough into rectangles 4 inches long and two inches square. Put a tablespoon of the filling near one end. Then fold the dough over the filling and crimp the edges with a fork, as is shown in the picture.

5. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

6. Cook the ravioli in small batches, in large kettle of boiling salted water, about ten minutes. Drain. (As far as I'm concerned, you can skip the next step of baking it. Just pour on the sauce and take it to the table.If you do that, skip steps 5 and 6)

6. Arrange the ravioli in a shallow casserole. Spoon the sauce over. If desired, sprinkle with three-quarters of a cup of Parmesan cheese. Bake about 15 minutes.

Yield, six dozen ravioli, nine to ten servings.

Down-East Haddock Chowder

Down-East Haddock Chowder is like Rhode Island Fish Chowder. It calls for pilot crackers. Now, I learned something from the Rhode Island Fish Chowder experience. I learned that these things are not a garnish, they are an integral part of the recipe, whatever they are. Now R.I.F.C. gives the bewildered, and non down east cook (What's the opposite of Down East? Up West?) options. It mentions cream crackers. I know what cream crackers are. And because of this useful piece of knowledge, I was able to substitute oyster crackers for the mysterious pilot cracker.
This time, no substitutes were offered but I figured oyster crackers would do okay, and remembered to buy them when I went to the market on Saturday afternoon. Another obstacle presented itself at the fish market, where I went first. They had no haddock.
"We don't have it," said the Saturday guy behind the counter.
"Well, do you ever get it?" I inquired, having learned from the smoked haddock experience that what the Saturday guy behind the counter says isn't necessarily the final word on the issue.
"Only sometimes."
Then I decided what the hell, cod could substitute for haddock, so I bought cod. The store did not have anything remotely resembling oyster crackers, or the mysterious pilot cracker. What it does have is a whole aisle of Thai condiments, but, why not, since the owners seem to be from Thailand, or somewhere else in Southeast Asia. I got the oyster crackers at Safeway along with everything else.
I decided to start the chowder after I got home from the grocery store, even though we were going to a play (The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan) that night. I got it done and even had time to walk the dog, also named Haddock, so we could eat before we left. Now, the recipe calls for 3 cups of milk and three large pilot crackers crumbled. Since I had no idea what that was, or how much, I went with two cups of milk and two cups of oyster crackers. The crackers absorb liquid and make a sort of glutinous, but tasty, mass in the chowder.
Today, as I sat down at the computer, I consulted Wikipedia on the subject of pilot crackers and found out some interesting stuff. Crown Pilot Crackers were the oldest crackers produced by Nabisco, originally dating to 1792. They were used in "historical recipes" for stuffing and chowder. Nabisco discontinued the production of pilot crackers in 1996, sparking massive protests in New England, and eventually an episode on CBS Sunday Morning News. This prompted Nabisco to gear up for more cracker production. Unfortunately, the interest in pilot crackers dwindled over time, and Nabisco dropped them again in 2008.
They continue to be produced other places, such as Hawaii, and seem to be popular with backpackers and survivalists. Mountain House, a place that makes backpacker meals, sells them by mail. Again, according to Wikipedia, the Australian military refers to them as ANZAC wafers. So, now we know what pilot crackers are, and why you can't buy them in stores.

Down-East Haddock (or cod) Chowder

1/3 cup diced salt pork
1 onion, finely chopped
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 pounds haddock fillets, cut into strips or cubes
1 quart water
1 rib celery with leaves, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/8 teaspoon mace
3 cups milk
3 large pilot crackers, crumbled (See blog text for info on the pilot cracker.)

1. Cook the salt pork in a kettle until crisp. Remove the pieces and reserve.
2. In the fat remaining in the kettle, saute the onion until tender but not browned. Add the potatoes, fish, water, celery, salt, pepper and mace. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer gently until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.
3. Stir in the milk, crackers and reserved pork pieces and heat to boiling.
Makes about six servings.