Fettuccine Alfredo (with bonus extras)

Another ToxicFrog post without pictures. Sorry about that. I'll try to remember next time.

Fettuccine Alfredo is a rich and delicious pasta dish, and very, very easy to make. It's a good choice when you don't mind eating something a bit heavy but do want something quick and easy to put together. It also takes very well to inclusions, such as pesto, chicken, or seafood.

This is the recipe from Hazan's Classic Pasta Cookbook; I think it's the first such recipe this blog has featured, but that book is in the "favourite cookbooks" list for a reason. The book recommends fettuccine for it, of course, but it's also good with other long pastas such as tagliatelle or linguine.

Ingredients
For pasta made with 3 eggs, or 1 pound dry, store-bought pasta

• 3 Tbs unsalted butter
• 1 cup heavy or table cream
• a pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• ½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

As always, the fresh parmesan is mandatory; don't use the dried pre-grated stuff.

Procedure

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
2. Put the butter and cream into a large skillet over medium-high heat and boil lightly, stirring frequently, until the cream has reduced almost by half. (I find it hard to judge the volume reduction and instead go by thickness; it should be a bit thinner than you want the final sauce to be, since the cheese will thicken it up some).
3. Add the nutmeg, a pinch of salt, and a generous amount of pepper to the sauce. Remove from the heat.
4. Add a spoonful of salt and the pasta to the boiling water. Cook al dente.
5. Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet containing the sauce. Add the cheese and toss until the pasta is well-coated with the sauce and cheese. Serve.

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I mentioned earlier that this recipe takes well to extras. If you're including some sort of meat -- boneless chicken breast sliced into thin strips or chunks is a good choice, as are shrimp -- it's best to sautee it in the butter before adding the cream and other ingredients; this way its flavour infuses the butter and, later, the whole sauce. If you're including another sauce (any sort of pesto is a good idea; symbol and I will often toss in half a jar of store-bought basil or sundried tomato pesto) you can pretty much do that any time after the butter is melted and cream added.

If you're adding mixed vegetables, this is basically a pasta primavera, pasta in a vegetable cream sauce.

Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Sorry we've been bad about keeping the blog updated; the baby has now gotten really, really interested in laptops and makes it difficult to actually write anything. But we're still cooking!

Highlights of this past week include "mexican lasagna" and spaghettini in a creamy sweet potato sauce, both of which will hopefully get a post sometime soon. Today, though, we made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch.

And we take our grilled cheese seriously.

No pictures, sadly, and this hardly counts as a recipe, but I like sharing it regardless.

1. Start with a of your preferred bread. Rye, multigrain, or sourdough work well.
2. Plane enough sharp (2yo or older) white cheddar to cover the bread.
3. Halve or quarter some small pickled onions and place them on the cheddar. If you want to add some greens, fried onions, Branston Pickle, or other inclusions, now is the time.
4. Add some freshly ground black pepper.
5. Top with more cheese. More cheddar is never wrong, but you can also use mozzarella, jarlsberg, emmentaler, or anything else that will melt nicely.
6. Seal with another slice of bread.
7. Spread one side with garlic butter (or butter-like garlic spread), then sprinkle some cumin over it.
8. Flip it into a hot pan, butter side down. Cook, pressing occasionally, until the bottom is turning a nice golden brown.
9. Spread the top with more garlic butter and cumin, then flip it over (carefully! it's probably not all melted together yet!). Grill further until both sides are golden brown, at which point the cumin should be nicely toasted and the melted cheese will be holding the whole thing together.
10. Remove from the pan, slice, and serve.

Caramelized Rice Pudding

This is basically a rich, custard-y, vanilla rice pudding with a caramelized sugar crust on top. Think of it as the illicit love child of crème brûlée and rice pudding.

Caramelized Rice Pudding
From Martha Stewart
1 c. Arborio rice
6 c. milk
1 vanilla bean
1 1/2 c. table cream
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt
4 large egg yolks
pinch of cinnamon
1/2 c. turbinado sugar

1. Combine the rice and milk in a pot over medium-low heat.
2. Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean and add both the seeds and the bean to the pot.
3. Simmer until the rice is cooked and most of the liquid is absorbed. The mixture left in the pot should be thick and creamy. Remove the vanilla bean.
4. Combine the cream, granulated sugar, salt, egg yolks, and cinnamon. Whisk together to form a uniform, rich, yellow mixture.
5. Pour the egg mixture into the rice mixture. Stir to combine.
6. If you have flameware ramekins, pour the pudding into those. Otherwise, a 9x13 pan can be used to bake one large pudding.
7. Place your ramekins or baking pan into a roasting pan and pour boiling water into the roasting pan until it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins/pan.
8. Bake at 300F for 15 minutes for ramekins or 30-40 minutes for a 9x13 pan.
9. Once pudding is set, remove it from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
10. Sprinkle the turbinado sugar on top and caramelize with a kitchen torch or under the broiler in the oven.

Saag Paneer Pizza

I thought it would be fun to adapt my favourite saag paneer recipe into a pizza. I'll just jot down the recipe for now, but I'll ask TF to stop by and add his notes on the process later.

Saag Paneer Pizza
8 oz. frozen chopped spinach
1 small tin pizza sauce
1-2 Tbsp. garlic paste
1-2 Tbsp. ginger paste
1-2 tsp. bin bhuna hua garam masala
1/2 tsp. turmeric
fresh mozzarella
red onion, thinly sliced
garlic, thinly sliced
paneer, cubed and fried
red Thai chiles, sliced
Punjabi garam masala

1. Thaw the spinach and combine with the pizza sauce, garlic paste, ginger paste, bin bhuna hua garam masala, and turmeric.
2. Spread some of the spinach sauce over a piece of naan. (You will have enough sauce to make more than one.)
3. Scatter some torn mozzarella over the sauce.
4. Add onion, garlic, paneer, and chiles to taste.
5. Sprinkle on some Punjabi garam masala.
6. Bake at 500F for 5-7 minutes.

Bin Bhuna Hua Garam Masala
2 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. black peppercorns
1/2 tsp. whole cloves
1/2 tsp. cardamom seeds from green pods
2 bay leaves
3-4 dried chiles de arbol

1. Combine all the spices and grind. (This is an un-toasted blend.)

Punjabi Garam Masala
1 Tbsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. whole cloves
1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
1/4 tsp. cardamom seeds from black pods
3 cinnamon sticks
3 bay leaves

1. Toast the spices over medium-high heat for 1-2 minutes.
2. Immediately transfer to a plate to cool. Grind once completely cooled.

Ginger Bark

TF is a big fan of ginger: pickled ginger, candied ginger, ginger tea, etc. He's also quite fond of dark chocolate. So... why not combine them?

Ginger Bark (with a Hint of Orange)
8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
1 c. crystalized/candied ginger
6 oz. dark chocolate, chopped
2 tsp. orange extract

1. In the top of a double-boiler or in a small pot set over a heat diffuser, melt the semi-sweet chocolate.
2. Chop half the ginger into small pieces and stir into the melted chocolate.
3. Pour the chocolate out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Spread to make a ~5mm-thick slab. Allow to cool.
4. Melt the dark chocolate (over a heat diffuser or a double-boiler).
5. Stir in 2 tsp. of orange extract. (I only used 1 tsp. and it wasn't enough.)
6. Pour the dark chocolate on top of the semi-sweet and spread out so that it completely covers the slab.
7. Chop the remaining ginger into large chunks and sprinkle on top of the dark chocolate. Press the ginger into the surface lightly and allow to cool.

Kare-Kare (Peanut Butter Stew)

Visiting my parents over the holidays means that I was able to get some more oxtail. Last time I made some sumptuous oxtail soup, but I wanted to try something different this time, so I turned to the Goons with Spoons wiki and decided that kare-kare sounded like an excellent choice.

Kare-Kare
1/4 c. oil (or bacon grease)
1 oxtail (~1 1/2 lbs.)
1 lb. stewing beef
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. annatto seeds
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
2 small yellow onions, sliced
generous 1/4 c. short-grain white rice (or sticky rice), toasted and ground
scant 1 c. crunchy peanut butter (preferably a "natural" peanut butter)

2 Tbsp. fish sauce
2 Chinese eggplants, peeled and cubed
1/4 c. garlic oil
1 bundle yard-long beans, trimmed and cut into 2cm lengths
4 heads Shanghai bok choy, cut into bit-sized pieces
lime (optional)
shrimp paste (optional)

1. Season the meat with salt and pepper and brown in batches in the oil.
2. Remove the meat from the pot, reduce heat to medium-low, and add the annatto seeds. Simmer in the hot oil until it turns a deep, rich reddish-orange. Remove and discard the seeds, retaining the coloured oil.
3. Turn the heat back up to medium and add the garlic. Cook until the garlic is browned, but not burnt. Immediately add the onion.
4. Once the onion has softened, return the meat to the pot and add 5 c. water.
5. Combine the toasted rice flour with 1 c. water to make a slurry and stir that into the pot as well.
6. Stir in the peanut butter and the fish sauce.
7. Reduce heat to low and simmer for at least three hours. (Mine simmered for a little over four hours.)
8. Remove the oxtail and discard the bones. Return the meat to the pot.
9. Fry the eggplant in the garlic oil until it begins to brown and add to the pot.
10. If there's any oil left in the wok after frying the eggplant, the beans can be given a quick fry. If not, they're perfectly fine to go in raw.
11. Add the bok choy to the pot. Stir to combine and cook over medium heat until the bok choy has just wilted.
12. Serve over rice with lime and shrimp paste.

We had lemons on hand, so I actually squeezed a bit of lemon juice into my stew. However, I think lime would be even better. If you want to do it properly, you should actually mix equal parts lime (or calamansi) juice and shrimp paste and take a little bit on the tip of your spoon with each bite of stew. I wasn't feeling the shrimp paste when we made this, so I just used a bit of lime juice, but I might try some with the leftovers tonight.

I deviated from the Goons with Spoons recipe in a few places, but I'm still pleased with the results. I didn't have enough oxtail on hand to do an all tail version, so I threw in a package of stew meat to make up the difference. It came out meltingly tender and wonderful!

The original also doesn't call for frying the eggplant, but I sometimes have texture issues with eggplant and find that frying goes a long way to alleviating this, so I figured it was worth adding a step. If you're a great lover of eggplant and aren't worried about textural weirdness then, by all means, skip the frying and let it do all its cooking in the stew!

Cherry-Asparagus Panini

Yet another find from Spache's fabulous blog! I made a few modifications based on my own preferences and what I had on hand, but it's still her recipe at the core. It's somewhat involved for a sandwich, but very tasty if you're willing to put the effort in.

Balsamic Cherry-Asparagus Panini
1 c. pitted sweet cherries, chopped
3 Tbsp. pomegranate balsamic vinegar
zest of 1 large lemon
6 asparagus spears, shaved (with vegetable peeler)
2 Tbsp. fresh mint, chopped
2 Tbsp. fresh basil, chopped
2 Tbsp. almond oil
2 long multigrain buns (or 1 baguette, cut in half)
Brie
fresh mozzarella
salt and pepper
~1 Tbsp. melted butter

1. Combine cherries, vinegar, and lemon zest. Add salt and pepper to taste.
2. Toss asparagus, mint, and basil with almond oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Cover the bottom half of each bun with pieces of Brie. (Make sure to leave the rind on for maximum delicious!)
4. Cover the top half of each bun with thick slices of mozzarella.
5. Slather the mozzarella with the cherry mixture and top the Brie with the herbed and oiled shaved asparagus.
6. Now, very carefully, combine the sandwich halves.
7. Brush the outside of the buns with the melted butter and grill/press until the inside gets deliciously melt-y and the outside gets deliciously toast-y. (If you have an electric panini press, use that, set to 350F. If you're doing this stovetop, I recommend cooking on medium-low.)

So much tasty!