Curried Cauliflower with Chickpeas and Tomatoes

Every week I got to my local farmer's market, and pick up food for the week.  Greens, eggs, bread, apples, whatever.  But there are plenty of things I stroll on past, like the homemade dips, mini pies, and piles of cauliflower.

You know how if you see the same thing hundreds of times, even if you don't really like it, you start to think about it?  Well, that must have been what happened, because last week I suddenly thought "we need to buy one of these heads of cauliflower and see if we can make something with it."  Naturally, I didn't go for the white cauliflower, I had to get the purple kind (which is apparently high in anthocyanins and their cancer-fighting powers) because it looked more weird.  I found an old recipe I have kept in reserve until I found myself with a head of the stuff for whatever reason, and filled in the rest of the ingredients.

This dish was delicious, and had us coming back for more.  I think it was from one of Tyler Florence's cookbooks since I found the identical recipe on one of his pages, but I couldn't identify the scanned page.  Slightly spicy, filling, nice mixture of texture, and velvety from the reduced tomato sauce melding with the ghee - an Indian clarified butter.

Once again, I implore you to use dried chickpeas with this dish as opposed to canned.  Cheaper, better, and more healthy, these are far superior and only require minimal extra effort and probably an extra hour (or 13 if you pre-soak) of prep time.

The dish comes together quickly, and only requires a single pot - I reused the one from boiling the soaked chickpeas.  We are new converts to cauliflower, so expect more recipes using it soon.

Oxtails Braised in Red Wine

When I was in college, my friend and I took a trip to Atlantic City for the evening.  We didn't have much of a plan, we just went there and figured we'd do some gambling and drinking, and then head back.  Before we went off to lose our shirts, we looked around for a decent restaurant, and found a Cuban place called Cuba Libre.  It's still there, by the way.  So we sit down to eat, and we each decide to order some kind of oxtail stew they have on special, figuring that it would be interesting.  I hadn't had oxtail before, and thought it might be a great place to check it out, having fondly remembered a number of other Cuban beef stews.  But it wasn't just interesting - it was delicious.  So much so that we cleaned our plates from this massive feast, which included not only a healthy quantity of meat but also rice, plantains, and a variety of other things that have since disappeared into a haze of pan drippings and caramelized vegetables.

We never gambled that night - we stumbled into the casino, half-drunk on meat, and played slots for 5 minutes before we decided to turn back.  On a whim, I put $40 on red at a roulette table which hit and, having recovered the cost of my dinner, realized that we had won that night, big time.

This recipe is the first of two oxtail dishes that I will make - this being the more simple, more American version, cooked down slowly with red wine and root vegetables, and a future recipe being the Cuban oxtail stew, or rabo encendido.  I just found this version on the New York Times recipe page and gave it a shot, replacing a non-latin variant on this recipe I made years back because this had more wine in it, and let's face it, that's going to make it much better.  Turned out to be a winner, although it doesn't hold a candle to our Cuban feast that night.

Every bit as delicious as a chuck roast or short rib stew, if not more so.

Thai Pumpkin in Red Curry (Kaeng Phet Fak Thong)

This is a great dish to make in the fall, which is actually when I made this, despite taking forever to post it.  I had always wanted to try making a pumpkin curry after I tried one at the very excellent Thai X-ing, an off the beaten path restaurant literally in someone's living room in Washington, D.C.  The pumpkin curry dish surprised me with how much flavor it packed in - the standard pungency of a curry sauce, but with the smoothness and slightly sweet and nutty overtones from the stewed pumpkin (in that case, acorn squash).  So the first fall that came around, when fresh squash reared their heads, I made it a point to try this out.

I highly recommend kabocha squash to make this dish instead of other squash or pumpkins.  It holds up well, is fairly easy to work with, and seems to be the traditional gourd preferred by many Thais, in addition to being one of the mystery orange vegetables in an order of Japanese tempura.

Don't be misled by the name, this dish is non-vegetarian given the addition of some boneless pork to round out the protein content of the dish.  After all, squash and pork chops seem to go together, so why not pork with squash curry?

Nikujaga (Japanese Beef and Potato Stew)

I don't remember where I found the book on slow cooker dishes that contained this recipe - it was collecting dust in someone's house, and I was bored and flipping through to pass the time.  While looking at soggy chicken stews, and "stir-fries" that you cooked 8 hours, I was despondent.  But somewhere in the back, buried way beyond the potato soups and the poached fish with mustard dishes, and just before the wine-soaked pears, I found this gem, which is most definitely authentic, and which does very nicely in the slow cooker.

Nikujaga is an interesting dish if you know Japanese food, mostly because it's got a lot of western influence.  I can't name too many Japanese dishes that have whole potato chunks - possibly golden curry, and some kind of croquette called a korokke, which I may now have to make after having looked it up.  But I assure you, mention Japanese beef and potato stew to someone from Japan and they will say "NIKUJAGA!!", which I have tried a couple of times with great results.

I really like the flavors in this dish, which is slightly sweet, very rich, and incredibly filling and warming.  And there's very little to this process - you chop everything, throw it in the slow cooker for the day, and come back later to eat a delicious meal.  I first tried this in the pressure cooker, which took an hour, and then tried it in the slow cooker, which took 6-8 hours, and which I thought tasted nearly identical but was ready when I walked in the door.  Your call.  Also, if you really want to get fancy, brown the meat first in a bit of olive oil, and then continue.  It will be notably better, although totally non-essential.

Saffron Chard Potato Omelette

Another winner from Yotam Ottolenghi's book Plenty, we made this at a cooking class and then were able to reliably duplicate it at home.  A delicious herbed omelette loaded with a filling of potatoes and swiss chard cooked in saffron, which is so good that you could eat it for just about any meal, and you could even eat the filling on its own.  Make sure you have a good non-stick pan to make your life easier, and don't skimp on the herbs or the saffron, both of which are essential to the dish.

Chickpea, Sausage, and Kale Pasta

I was skeptical of this dish at first - it seemed like it might be chalky or dry given the chickpeas mixed with pasta.  But using dried chickpeas instead of canned gives this a wealth of surprisingly fresh flavor, and the mixture of cheese and a snap of lemon juice really gives this dish a lot of energy to complement the inherent deliciousness that is spicy Italian sausage.  I felt like I had done something productive with my night after eating this, and didn't slip into the usual food coma.

Digging around online, I found a very similar recipe to this one from Martha Stewart by Mark Bittman, who instead of Italian sausage uses chorizo, and instead of pasta uses bread crumbs.  He cooks the chickpeas for a more significant amount of time, more like 10 minutes instead of 3.  I might try this variant next time, plus this dish would probably be equally delicious just substituting chorizo for Italian sausage.

Let me implore you to use dried chickpeas in this dish.  Canned chickpeas taste like a whole lot of nothing now that we've tried both fresh and dried, which are staggeringly close to each other in flavor after the dried peas have been soaked overnight.  They're cheaper than canned, they're easy to find almost anywhere (check the latin or Indian section of your store), they have less salt, and they're generally superior.  At the very least, buy a test bag and soak a few overnight, then eat them raw.  If you don't switch over after eating one, I will be amazed.

Savory Rosemary Gruyere Bread Pudding

Back when the Food Channel still had cooking shows, I remember watching an episode of Emeril Live where he made savory cheesecakes.  And I thought, "we need to tell the Cheesecake Factory, they're sitting on a gold mine".  While I have still never seen one in person, I started questioning all of my dessert beliefs: can I eat this earlier in the meal, before I hate myself?  Can't I find a way to avoid a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar and still have a delicious baked good?  And, most importantly, can I find a way to put more bacon in this?

And now, you can.  As I was staring down about $5 of unused, questionable rosemary bread from the farmer's market, The idea struck me like a stale loaf of bread to the dome.  This was not to be another farmer's market total loss.  So I sliced the bread up into large cubes in anticipation of my further pleasure.

What ensued was, quite possibly, one of the most delicious things I have ever made.  Crispy, rich, smoky, and with that pine forest smell from the rosemary both baked into the bread and freshly added to the dish, you could easily get lost in this "pudding", which I would describe as either the best stuffing you've ever had, or a meal that combines the best of breakfast, dinner, and dessert.

I will confess that I lifted a few components of this recipe from a fellow blogger here, but then went and updated with a better process and a few ingredients, not the least of which is bacon.  I highly recommend you do two things - use stale bread (slice it up one day before it's too hard to slice, then cube it and leave it in a bowl to dry), and let the custard mixture soak into the bread for at least 8 hours.


Rosemary-Gruyere Bread Pudding

• 5 cups of cubed, stale Rosemary or French bread, crusts removed
• 1 tablespoon butter, plus more for greasing pan
• 3/4 cup chopped sweet yellow onion such as Vidalia
• 1/4 cup of chopped shallots, or 1 large
• 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, about 2 cloves
• 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 healthy pinch of black pepper
• 2 thick-cut slices bacon, preferably applewood smoked
• 1.5 cups of milk (I used 2%)
• 1 cup of heavy cream
• 4 eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 cup of coarsely grated Gruyere cheese, separated in half

A few days to a few hours before, cube the bread into 1" cubes and place in a bowl to dry.  Toast bread cubes just before using to remove remaining moisture and brown slightly, and place in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, beat eggs and add in milk and cream.

Toasted bread cubes, next to the egg custard soak.  Treat this as you would a delicious pan perdu, or French toast

In a large saute pan, melt butter and cook onion and shallots over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 3-5 minutes.  Add some of the salt partway through to pull out some moisture.  Now add rosemary and garlic and stir in for 1 minute.  Remove all from pan, and cook bacon until slightly crispy.  Drain on paper towels, then chop bacon into 1/4" pieces.

Into a large bowl, place toasted bread cubes, vegetable mixture, bacon pieces, egg - milk custard mixture, and half of the cheese.  Toss well to combine but don't stir so aggressively that you break up the bread cubes.  Cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge for 1-8 hours.

Before the long rest and soak

After an 8 hour rest in the fridge.  Totally soaked up the egg mixture, fat and happy and ready for the oven

When ready to cook, grease an appropriate casserole with butter, and heat oven to 350 F.  Lightly spoon in bread pudding mixture into the dish (do not pack this in tightly, it will get mushy), and place in oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes.  After 40 minutes, top with remaining grated cheese, and return to oven for 10-15 minutes longer, until browned and melted.  Allow to cool for 15 minutes and serve.

Served simply, where the bread pudding can be the star