So I knew I had to do this soup justice, which meant making the
stock.  I’ve never made vegetable stock (actually, the only stock I’ve
ever made is the “quick Turkey stock” for the Turkey Chowder, which, by
the way, I have made three times more since I cooked it for the blog,
best turkey leftover vehicle ever, better than sandwiches) and I was a
little worried about all the cleaning and chopping it would require. 
Allow me a tangent: Cleaning and chopping are the things I like least
about cooking.  I am sure I am not alone.  I also feel that this
reflects poorly on my character, that my aversion to prep work suggests
that I lack discipline or that I am just into things for the glory.

This soup is a vegetable extravaganza with a whole farm
stand-worth of produce tossed in. You’ll find cannellini beans, onion,
celery, carrot, potato, fennel, kale, chard, savoy cabbage, and
tomatoes in there (interestingly, only the tomatoes and celery are not
in season).

I ignore directions that tell me to cook beans first and then salt
them; I soak beans overnight in a saltwater solution so they draw in as
much flavor as possible, then drain them and proceed with the recipe
(omitting the salting step).

Want to work on your knife skills? You’ll get a workout with this
recipe: the actual cooking is a cinch, but the prep work is
unremitting. But once everything is chopped, and the onions have had an
initial softening, everything is added in just two stages. The celery,
carrot, potato, and fennel are sauteed for about 20 minutes to let them
brown, then the kale, chard, cabbage, water–basically everything
else–are tossed (or more correctly, stuffed) in, and simmered,
covered, for 90 minutes. Then add the beans and their liquid, and
you’re ready to serve.

As usual, I played with a few recipe details. I substituted a tied
bunch of fresh thyme for the dried (I like the flavor better) and added
chicken broth instead of vegetable stock because that’s what I had on
hand. Instead of simmering on the stovetop I cooked the soup in a
250-degree oven, a current habit (it’s a must for stews and rice-based
dishes).

I’ve made some bland, unfocused vegetable soups in my time, but this is
a solid recipe. The hearty, balanced flavor delighted my family (which
delighted me). Everyone had several bowls, and I still had the
ribollita to make later in the week. Luckily, this recipe makes a lot
of soup.

On Sunday it was time to turn the leftovers into ribollita. The
bread–a robust pain au levain from Acme in Berkeley–was practically
petrified: perfect!. I used my kitchen knife to (carefully) hack it
into manageable chunks and added it to the pot of simmering soup, where
it quickly cooked down into a sturdy mush. To tell the truth, the
hardest thing about this whole dish was trying to make it look pretty
for the final “presentation” photo above; it’s sort of gloppy-looking.

But once you’ve tasted it, you’ll know the beauty of ribollita is not
in looks. The thick, creamy texture of soaked bread turns this soothing
winter soup into the ultimate comfort food. The weather cooperated by
pouring down buckets of chilly rain, and we spooned up bowl after bowl
as we sat inside–warm, dry, and perfectly contented.

Bison is a trendy meat.  It’s low in fat and relatively sustainable.
Beacuse of its leanness, bison can be dry and kind of…meh. But not here. This
recipe calls for “3 1/2 pounds bison or beef short ribs or 2 1/2 pounds boneless chuck, cut into 2-inch cubes” I went for the bison chuck, which is affordable and the right kind of
lean-fatty.  I called my local Whole Foods to make sure they had bison
chuck, and they assured me that they did.  I don’t want to call anyone
a liar but…they didn’t.  They had bison steaks and ground chuck (I needed to cut my chuck into cubes).  I
handled it really well.  I had a long conversation with the butcher.
I’ve mentioned this before but butchers really are the most
accommodating of all market employees.  We decided I’d get 1.5 pounds
of the bison steaks (which was expensive) and a little over half a
pound of the ground chuck for extra meat flavor and unctuousness.  I
realize that Shepherd’s Pie is one of those “peasant” dishes, like many
frittatas and stews, that is supposed to be full of inexpensive scraps, but mine was a top shelf pie.

I cut the steaks into chunks and tossed them with the flour and
seasoning mix.  I thought I had bought a slab of bacon–as the recipe required–but I’d actually
purchased sliced bacon that looked like a slab of bacon.  I was tricked
by Whole Foods for a second time! I weighed the slices to make sure I
had exactly 1/3 of a pound.  I love using my food scale.  Also, you
will note, the bacon looked a lot like candy stacked on that scale.
(Maybe this observation is just all the “bacon as dessert” trends infiltrating my
subconscious.)  I cooked the bacon in my 5.5 quart Le Crueset.  After
the bacon had been browned, I removed it and cooked the ground chuck,
then removed that and browned the steak pieces.  Onions, carrots,
celery, and garlic are cooked until softened, then I poured in the
wine.  I bought the least expensive Syrah Whole Foods had. It was great
in the pie, awful in the glass.  But, you know, when buying $6 wines,
one takes that risk. Just ask college seniors everywhere.

The broth, tomatoes, bay leaves, thyme, sage, reserved bacon, and bison
all went in next. I took the liberty of cutting the bacon into smaller
pieces. The recipe says that the bison may take 1.5 hours to cook, but
mine was done in about 45 minutes. I think this was due to the smaller
amount of bison and the fact that I was working with a more tender cut
of meat–the catch all “steak” cut.  While the ingredients were
simmering, I cooked the pearl onions and boiled the potatoes.
Multi-tasking at its finest.  After the meat was tender I removed all
the large pieces and cut them into smaller squares.  The recipe calls
for this step.  I think this step might only be for the chef that is
using short ribs, but I decided to do it anyway because the original cuts were
very large.  Giant shepherd’s pie.  After everything was normal human
sized, I added the pearl onions, turnips, and parnsips to the pot
followed by the bison. A word about the turnips: Whole Foods did not
have any baby turnips.  I know … right?  So I bought regular sized
turnips and cut them into small pieces.  The pie was a little turnip
forward, no joke.  I could taste turnips very definitely.  However, it
was still delicious, I like turnips.

I was hoping to bake the pie in the Le Creuset because it’s so
handsome.  However, I realized that it would decrease the potato crust
surface area, and that is a very key part of the pie.  I poured the
filling into the suggested 13x9x2 dish and ran into a problem: there
was too much filling. I had to fill another baking dish with crust-less
leftovers.

The potato crust is a delicious buttery, creamy mashed potatoes that get
spread (with some difficulty, if you’re me) over the filling.  After the
pie is iced with mashed potatoes, it gets topped off by an egg wash and
Parmesan cheese.  At this point my shephed’s pie went in the fridge
for the night to be eaten the next day.

I took it out about 30 minutes before I was going to bake it, just to
take the chill off a little bit.  The pie (and the extra filling) baked
for 55 minutes and then rested for 10.  While it was resting, I sauteed
some kale with the leftover pearl onions and garlic.  It was the
perfect side for such a rich main, if I do say so myself.  The shepherd’s pie was a hit.  It was the perfect February night dish: full
of hearty but slightly unexpected flavors.  I know what I’m bringing to
my next potluck.

Bon Appétit, January 2010

Total time: 1 hours, 20 minutes (yogurt/tahini sauce: 5 minutes; boning and grinding lamb: 20 minutes; meatballs and onions: 35 minutes; muhammara sauce: 20 minutes)

Would you make it again? Is Hagia Sophia big and old and in Instanbul? YES!

The East Bay, where I live, offers a dizzying plateful of ethnic food choices, but Turkish food is pretty hard to come by. All the more reason to make my own köfte kebabs at home.

Kofte (or kofta, or kefta, depending on the language you’re using–and every country East of Zagreb has a name for it) is basically a spiced meatball (usually ground lamb or chicken), and the starting point for practically endless variations. Wikipedia says that there are 291 types in Turkey alone.

This is an easy recipe: Onions and garlic are sauteed then wine is
added, followed by clam juice, canned tomatoes, water, bay leaves,
parsley, and crushed red pepper. After that simmers for 15 or 20
minutes, crab pieces are nestled into the broth.

I have to
make a disclaimer. I chose to use crab meat that was already out of
the shell (and compacted into strange crab bricks). I know that
crustaceans’ shells add a lot of flavor to things so maybe I shouldn’t
go around saying things aren’t as good as I thought they would be when
I’ve made adjustments. But. I just did. Here’s why I chose fresh, out
of the shell, crab meat: the price.  I don’t mind removing shellfish
from its shell. As a matter of fact I find it satisfying and I like to
pretend I’m a hungry mermaid (that’s not really true, I just wanted to
write it).  But, the king crab legs were almost twice the price of the
blocks of fresh crab meat and the whole crabs were…intimidating. I’ll admit it.

After the broth had simmered I added the crab meat and
put the whole pot in the oven. After 15 more minutes I did a little
tasting and salting and served our soup.

It tastes good. I don’t want to sound like it doesn’t. But it isn’t the pork banh mi or the tenderloin or the tilapia with balsamic and butter sauce
that I just made again. It’s an easy dish that tastes pretty good.
I’m being honest here (and my editor at Bon Appetit said I could).  We ate it with crusty bread and started with
the Parmesan Toasts with Prosciutto and Fig Jam–again perfectly tasty but no appetizer fireworks.

Should
you make this? Sure. Will you want to tell everyone about it and link
to it on your social networking sites?  Probably not. But sometimes a
Cioppino-Style Roasted Crab is just a Cioppino-Style Roasted Crab.

PS.
A thought: Maybe Project Recipe has ruined me, maybe my experience has
a home-cook has grown so much that easy, tasty dishes are not enough. I
am prepared now to make more complicated dishes that unite flavors and
require hours of post-dinner dish washing. But probably not. Try this
recipe and let me know what you think.

The meatballs come together easily–basically you just mix together pork, garlic, Sriracha, basil, fish sauce, pepper, green onions,
sugar, cornstarch, and salt. I rolled the mixture into balls and let them spend an hour
or so in the fridge before cooking them. You can do that as much as one day ahead.

You can also make the chili mayo a day ahead. As I’ve mentioned in the past I
absolutely detest mayonnaise, but a banh mi requires it, so I gritted my teeth and mixed some mayo
with Sriracha,
green onions and salt. I find spicy mayonnaise far more tolerable than
plain mayonnaise.  Actually, I find any kind of “flavored” mayo better,
and if you call it aioli I’ll like it even more.  I ate this spicy mayo
with pleasure.

Before you put the sandwiches together, you also have a make a quick mixture of pickled carrot and daikon.  My Cuisinart made quick work of grating two cups of
each.  I would like to take a moment here and let you know about the
smell of pickling daikon.  I am a daikon radish fan.  I enjoy eating
daikon and have never had a problem with how it smells.  However,
something about this particular batch of grated daikon relaxing in a
bowl with sugar, vinegar, and salt smelled truly terrible.  It smelled
so terrible that my husband had to compulsively mention it every time
he walked in or out of the kitchen.  I asked him to please stop.  And I
lit a candle.  The taste was great but the smell…pretty, pretty bad.

I
looked for a skinny baguette that banh mi are usually served on but
couldn’t find them.  I settled for demi-baguettes from Whole Foods.   I
pulled out the insides of each baguette (to leave a 1/2 inch shell) and
then reserved the baguette guts to make croutons for soup.  I felt very
resourceful.

The meatballs are pan fried in sesame oil.  They
smelled great while they cooked, which thankfully overpowered the stinky
daikon.  I cooked them in two batches and they browned quickly, I’d say
about 12 minutes a batch. Then I slathered the bread with the spicy
mayonnaise, laid sprigs of cilantro and rounds of jalapeno on the
bottom piece of bread, followed that with the meatballs, then pressed
the drained pickled veggies on top and closed the sandwich with another mayo-ed
piece of bread.

As far as sandwiches go, it may be more work
than PB&J, but it was fairly simple and restaurant-quality tasty.
For such simple ingredients the taste is sophisticated and addictive.
I ate one and a half. Nomnom indeed.

A tagine is a two-piece, North African ceramic cooking vessel,
recognizable by its conical lid. But in the manner of the French
casserole, it has also become shorthand for the dishes cooked in it.
It’s impeccably authentic, but not strictly necessary, so unless Paula
Wolfert drops in for a kitchen inspection you can use a plain old
skillet with a lid.

A tagine (and I’m talking about the stew
now) has a broad range of possibilities, but it usually involves some
kind of meat–lamb is a classic–with North African spices (some
combination of cinnamon, coriander, cumin, pepper, paprika, or saffron)
cooked slowly alongside vegetables.

This recipe starts off with
boneless, skinless chicken thighs (the harried weeknight cook’s best
friend), cut into chunks and tossed with cumin, paprika, salt, black
pepper, and cayenne, then quickly browned in olive oil. As the spices
toast in the oil the skillet emits a bewitching perfume.

After
just a few minutes per side (although I went a little longer than the
stated time) the chicken is removed and slices of fresh fennel bulb are
sautéed in the same skillet until spotty brown. Now, I’m not sure how
authentic fennel is to a tagine (you’ll have to ask Paula when you see
her), but it’s in the markets right now, and it adds a light, fresh,
and very welcome element.

After a few minutes you toss the
chicken and its accumulated juices back into the pan, add some chicken
broth spiked with lemon juice, stir up the browned bits and let it
simmer, covered, for about fifteen minutes. That gives you time to
prepare the excellent turmeric-lemon couscous, also from the January issue.

Once the chicken is cooked
through, all it takes is a half a cup of quartered green olives and
handful of chopped cilantro, and you’re done. Seriously. I was standing
there going, “Wait, that’s it?”  But that’s really all there is to it.

The
sauce was a little thinner than I preferred (a tagine usually cooks for
hours), so I was thinking of a way to thicken it in the minutes before
serving (my couscous was almost ready). Cornstarch? No, that would make
it too gloppy. Arrowroot? Maybe, but I don’t have any. Then I got the
idea to sprinkle a little gumbo filé–New Orleans sassafras powder–on
the standing tagine, and it worked perfectly. The sauce became just a
bit less watery and more substantial.

Spooned over steaming
couscous, this quick-cooking stew was delicious and light but
satisfying (a welcome change after the cumulative heaviness of holiday
cooking), and an enormous hit with my family.

So here’s my
resolution: I resolve to try all sorts of variations on this simple
meat-spice-vegetable equation as a great source of simple, quick,
healthful braises in the coming months. After all, the best resolutions
are the ones you’re able to keep.

I love chili and I love stews.  This dish is a hybrid.  There are no beans and no ground chuck, so some eaters might classify
this as more of a stew. For those of you desiring a more classic chili, you might want to keep
looking. But this recipe is hearty, delicious, and
sophisticated.  That’s right, sophisticated.  The flavors are much more
interesting than a standard chili and it has brisket and squash in
it–elevating it to a seasonal celebration!

A
fair amount of prep has to be done.  Ancho chiles are torn into pieces
and soaked (reserve the soaking liquid for blending later).  Onions and
bacon are chopped, brisket is cubed, cilantro is chopped, and
butternut squash is broken down and cubed. It might not sound like a
lot, but it’s a (worthy) time investment.

Then you start to cook.  There’s a hearty “mirepoix” of sorts–if
you can consider onions and bacon a mirepoix. I don’t know. But after those soften, the
brisket cubes are added and stirred in.  Meanwhile (imagine a
crossfade) the soaked chiles, 1 cup of soaking liquid, garlic, chili
powder, cumin seeds, oregano, coriander, and 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse
salt are blended to a puree that’s added to the pot.  Next goes in
tomatoes with juices, beer, green chiles, and cilantro stems.  Then the
cooking begins.  The chili is brought to a simmer on the stove top and
then placed, covered, in the oven for two hours.  May I suggest
catching up on your DVR, playing Wii, or dust mopping the floor in
this time?  You could also catch up on work or do some mindful
meditation.

After two hours have passed the chili is uncovered
and cooked another hour.  Again, this is a good time to do the things
you may have been putting off–like working on your “Modern Love” submission or making phone calls to people in other states.

You
might remember that I broke down and cubed that squash, well, it’s time
to use it!  After the chili cooks uncovered for an hour in the oven,
the squash gets added to the pot, stirred in, and then it cooked for
another 45 minutes.  It’s worth it.  You have to trust me.

After
the squash is tender, the pot is liberated from the oven and cools down
for about an hour.  It can then safely hang out in the fridge until
it’s time to be reheated for your family or guests or whomever.

When it was time to reheat and eat the chili, I spooned more fat off of it
when it came out of the fridge.  (I refer to this as the “Momofuku-to-go phenomenon”.  Momofuku Noodle Bar, a very popular ramen spot in New York, has delicious pork ramen that I often ordered as carry out.  The thing
is, if you don’t finish it and then you put it in the fridge for later, you will
be greeted by a serious layer of fat that has congealed on the top of
the soup.  It’s delicious, but that fat layer can be off-putting.  So, my solution is, “Do
not refrigerate the ramen, eat it all while it’s hot.”)

I spooned some more fat off of the chili and heated it up.

The
apartment smelled great, my guests’ eyes lit up.  A friend had brought
over Texas Toast so we served that alongside the cilantro, onion, cheese, and sour
cream (I wanted crema Mexicana, but the four-dollar price difference
stopped me).  We ate in silence.  That’s how good this
was.  The squash could have been yams, I’ll be honest, it doesn’t
retain all that much squash-ness, but it adds heft and beauty to the
chili. A Colombian friend said it reminded her of sancocho–a Colombian
beef stew.   As the day went on, the chili just got better and better as
it broke down and kept cooking.  I was thrilled to eat it for dinner
and lunch the next day, which means I spent almost as much time eating
it as I did cooking it.

Worth it.

There is much here to appease the chili purist: the chunks of beef, the
whole dried chiles ground to a puree, the beer-as-liquid, the absence
of beans. Still, this is an idiosyncratic production, with canned
tomatoes (which have long been a matter of debate in chili circles),
canned green chilis, and butternut squash tossed into the mix.

To get this recipe started, diced bacon (I used slab bacon for hearty
chunks) is browned in the pot. Chopped onion is then softened in the
bacon fat. Large pieces of brisket are mixed in, but not browned (I
found this curious, as it seemed a missed opportunity to develop
flavor).

Dried ancho chiles (which add a toasty, sweet flavor with only a small
amount of heat) are seeded, shredded, soaked, then pureed with dried
spices and added to the meat in the pot, at which point you’re almost
done with the active part of the cooking. The tomatoes, green peppers,
beer, and cilantro are mixed in; the mixture is brought to a simmer;
and the whole thing goes into the oven for several hours (the butternut
squash goes in a bit later).

The covered cooking phase is very forgiving. To be honest, were I to
make this again, I would add a few hours of covered cooking time and
eliminate the uncovered cooking entirely, which–in my case at
least–had an unfortunate dehydrating effect (I had to add more beer
and canned tomato to moisten it up again).

Then it’s time to add the butternut squash, which at first seems a
little like an oddball ingredient, but ends up cooking down to a rich
background sweetness that makes it a natural.

The Angry Young Chili of my youth–with its aggressive mix of fiery
chiles and assertive flavors battling for the tongue–was like a Vision
Quest in a bowl. This is a refined, well-balanced chili to serve to
civilized company. It has heat, but not an obtrusive amount, thanks to
the mild ancho base, and a pleasing acid sharpness from the tomatoes.
My tasters all raved over it, and asked for seconds.

However, I was curious about the use of the brisket, which turned out
drier and chewier than I am used to (I have always sworn by chuck).
Because Berkeley is such a small town, if you have a question for one
of our food people, you go ahead and ask it.

ME: (Casually glancing out the window) Oh look, it’s Bruce Aidells! Hi Bruce. How come you used brisket in this chili?

BRUCE AIDELLS*: (Walking down the street with a large covered pot) I like the way it turns out when cooked long and slow.

ME: Yes, but what about chuck? My brisket was way dry.

BRUCE AIDELLS: Chuck works well too, especially the more gnarly areas.
As for your less than tender results with brisket it sounds like maybe
it wasn’t cooked long enough. I know that when brisket has sufficient
cooking time it turns out wonderfully tender.

ME: Hmm, maybe that was the problem. Shoulda kept that lid on. What’s the best chili you ever made?

BRUCE AIDELLS: One of the best chilies I have made was with bison
tails. They are very tough and loaded with gristle which after about 6
hours of cooking turned beautifully soft and silky. I always think it’s
lots of fun to try various cuts.

So there you go.

*All genuine responses from Bon Appétit contributor Bruce Aidells.