Edibletcetera – Fast & Fabulous Food

Adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe, this is a luxurious, comforting dish that stands alone as a vegetarian main course.

It’s delicious as an accompaniment to roast ham, meats or poultry. Potato lovers will love the combination of truffle, mushrooms sautéed in garlic and melted cheese. Truffles have a wonderful affinity for potatoes – maybe because they both live underground.

If you were lucky enough to find wild porcini mushrooms last year (see my blog; ‘It’s Hunting Season’ posted last August), hopefully you sliced and sautéed the smaller perfect specimens in butter and a little olive oil then froze them for a dish such as this. Likewise chanterelles but these can be purchased in season if you can’t find them yourself.

BTW, don’t worry if you’re nervous about picking wild ‘shrooms (I studied mycology before venturing into the woods with a basket, knife and insect repellant so I know what I’m doing) – this is spectacular when made with just *portabellas so there’s no risk of wildly tripping-out or perhaps worse, poisoning your dinner guests.

I don’t use shitake for this recipe. They’re great in other things but their musty-old-book taste doesn’t work here.

You can buy dried porcini in good supermarkets; they’re a bit expensive so obviously finding and drying your own is preferable and last season yielded enough for a whole year of mushroom-gluttony.

Reconstituted dried porcini have a wonderfully intense, almost meaty flavor and their soaking liquid should always be used somehow; even if to enrich some soup or sauce.

I’m suggesting alternative ingredients below and the end result is still delicious. Invest in some black or white truffle oil because you don’t need much to perfume any dish; keep it in the fridge to prevent it turning rancid.

You can assemble this 2- 3 days ahead of time and keep it covered in the fridge or freeze it. If freezing, wait until it’s fully defrosted before you scatter the grated cheese and truffle oil on top, prior to baking.

Notes at the end with fungi translations:

TRUFFLE-SCENTED MASHED POTATOES with GARLIC MUSHROOMS and GRUYERE

(Serves 4 as a main dish, 6-8 as a side dish – adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe)

Ingredients:

3 ½ lbs/1.5 kg of smallish red skinned potatoes

2 oz/50g of butter

¼ pt/100ml of hot milk

2 eggs, beaten

4 oz/100g of ‘Cacio di Bosco’ (a Tuscan Pecorino cheese laced with bits of black truffle) OR – the very best quality Parmesan, finely grated

Truffle oil

For the mushroom layer:

12 oz/350g of mixed fresh porcini, chanterelles and portabella/large-capped field mushrooms (use just portabella if you can’t find the other varieties)

Half a cup of dried porcini mushrooms; soaked in hot water for 20 mins

2 fat cloves of garlic, chopped

2 heaped tablespoons of Italian flat leaf parsley

Sea salt, freshly ground black pepper

8 oz/200g of best quality Gruyere cheese; cut into half-inch cubes

Action:

Butter an 8-9 inch wide, fairly deep baking dish

Cook the whole potatoes in boiling salted water until tender; drain, cool a bit and slip the skins off. Mash with the 2 oz butter and hot milk then stir in the beaten eggs and 2/3rds of the grated Parmesan or Pecorino with truffles. (If using Parmesan add ½ a teaspoon of truffle oil and mix well. You’ll know if you need more so keep adding a very little at a time until it’s gently fragrant with truffle)

While the potatoes are cooking, slice the mushrooms and sauté in the butter with garlic until the mushrooms are soft and the garlic golden. If like me you’re using previously frozen wild ‘shrooms cooked in butter, just cut back on the butter, heat them through then add the portabellas and garlic and cook together. Its hard to overcook a mushroom when there’s butter involved.

Chop the soaked porcini mushrooms and add with their soaking juice to the mushroom garlic mixture. Turn up the heat and reduce the soaking liquid, stirring until there’s not much left. Mix in the chopped parsley and season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Set aside.

Spread half of the potato mixture on the bottom of the dish then scatter the cubed Gruyere cheese over.

Cover this layer with all of the mushroom mixture then spread the rest of the potato mixture on top. If you’re going to cook this immediately or in the next couple of days, scatter the remaining 1/3 grated Parmesan/Pecorino on the top and drizzle a little truffle oil over.

To bake; preheat the oven to 375F/190C and cook 30-45 minutes or until golden on top and your kitchen smells wonderful.

Reheat any leftovers in a warm oven.

Buon appetito!

Notes:

Everyone in the US knows what a Portabella mushroom is. The equivalent in the UK would be those large, flat, open field mushrooms with dark pink to black gills. Or use the smaller brown chestnut mushrooms which are more interesting than the ubiquitous white ‘champignon’ variety.

Eggs have an equal affinity for truffle so whether they’re baked, omelet-ed or scrambled, the addition of truffle oil, truffle salt, or if you’re really lucky and can afford the real thing, a few shavings of fresh truffle will take eggs to another level.

Likewise, truffles love a baked potato. And pasta with a simple Alfredo type of sauce. Truffle-scented plain mashed potato is great with steak, roast game, broiled lobster – or eat it on its own, mashed with lots of butter and a grating of your favorite cheese.

It’s time to distance myself from overly rich and calorific ‘holiday’ recipes after stuffing my face with abandon during the past week, so here’s a light and delicious start to the New Year.

I’ve converted anchovy haters to anchovy lovers with this incredibly easy and impressive appetizer. I didn’t tell them there were anchovies in the dish until after they’d finished licking their plates.

I believe that anchovy haters (like brussels sprouts haters) may have had a traumatic experience by inadvertently biting into a whole one that was lurking under some cheese on a pizza. That’s enough to turn anyone off, even though I and a few odd people I know love them that way.

But when used judiciously they dissolve and add an indefinable richness to many dishes, such as braised lamb shank.

I’m referring to the salty, oily little fillets that you find in jars or flat cans – pure anchovy paste also does the trick in a pinch. The fresh white anchovy fillets you find in upscale food stores are a good deal different – they’re meant to be eaten whole and haven’t been preserved in salt. They aren’t suitable for this recipe.

Having said all that, the anchovy content is pretty small but the combination here of roasted peppers, tomatoes, garlic and anchovy is lusciously robust. You’ll want to serve this with a warm ciabatta-type bread to mop up the wonderful juices. Usual notes and suggestions at the end…..

OVEN ROASTED MEDITERRANEAN PEPPERS with TOMATOES, GARLIC & anchovies  (A Delia Smith recipe)

(Serves 8 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

4 large red peppers of equal size

4 medium tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced very thinly

8 anchovy fillets, drained of oil

Freshly milled black pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

Fresh shredded basil leaves to serve

Action:

Pre-heat oven to 350F / 180C

Line a shallow roasting pan with foil (high sided pans will prevent the edges from browning)

Skin the tomatoes by cutting a small X in one end and pouring boiling water over them to cover. After a minute, drain and slip the skins off. Quarter the tomatoes.

Cut each pepper in half including through the stalk for appearances sake. Carefully cut out the white membrane and seeds. Arrange cut side up in the roasting pan.

Divide the skinned tomatoes cut sides down between each pepper half. Scatter each with very thinly sliced garlic and snip one anchovy fillet per pepper half into little pieces over the tomatoes and garlic. Give a good grind of black pepper and drizzle one very generous teaspoon of olive oil into each.

Place on a high shelf and roast for approx 1 hour or until the edges have started to blacken slightly and the peppers are tender.

The foil will have captured the delicious oozing juices. Once they’ve cooled and you’ve arranged the peppers on serving plates, drizzle the juices all over them then scatter with some shredded basil leaves.

They’re best eaten at room temperature and can be made ahead and kept covered in the fridge for a couple of days. Bring them back to room temp before serving and make sure you have some really good bread as an accompaniment.

Notes:

You’ll notice there’s no salt in this recipe – the anchovies take care of that.

Got one or two left over? Remove the stalk, pulverize to a chunky sauce; add some pitted black olives (or not); warm through and serve over pasta with freshly grated parmesan and more shredded basil leaves.

Or…throw one with its juices (minus stalk) into a food processor with 8 oz softened cream cheese for a wonderful spread/dip.

Green peppers are totally unsuitable for this recipe as they’re under-ripe yellow peppers. You could use yellow or orange peppers but I prefer red.

Happy New Year!

Just in time for Christmas; here are two of my favorite vegetable dishes to serve with roast turkey, goose, pork or glazed ham. The spiced red cabbage can be made ahead and kept in the fridge for a few days or frozen, giving you time to fiddle around with all the other stuff on the day. It just needs to be warmed through very slowly on the stove top. It’s so good that I’ll eat it on its own or with buttery mashed spuds.

Brussels sprouts are one of those vegetables than can shift from utterly sublime to stinking in a minute if overcooked, so I’m offering a sublime version here. I know lots of people won’t eat them because they were traumatized as a child by being fed yellow, mushy, overcooked and smelly sprouts. Someone I know snuck ‘em off their plate and into their pocket for disposal later and I don’t blame them. I was fortunate; I grew up in a home where vegetables were treated with respect.

This recipe for Brussels sprouts is delicious and simpler than others out there so please give it a try and I hope it will forever change your thinking. Carnivores might prefer the bacon/pancetta option but I think they’re perfect without. I’ll eat this on it’s own as well. If you have a steamer, steam them.

Please read the usual notes at the end first.

SPICED RED CABBAGE WITH APPLES

(Serves 6-8-10 and takes 60-90-120 mins)

Ingredients:

One large head of red cabbage

3 Golden Delicious apples

3 whole cloves

Juice of 2 large oranges

½ cup of redcurrant jelly

Sea salt

To finish:

2-3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar

2 ounces of butter

Action:

Peel, core and chop the apples and put in a heavy pan with the cloves.

Remove any tired looking outer leaves from the cabbage and cut in half from top to bottom. Cut out the white ‘V’ core and discard. Halve again then slice the cabbage finely. Pile on top if the apples.

Season with salt and add the redcurrant jelly. Pour over the orange juice. Bring to a boil then cover with a lid and turn the heat down to a simmer.

Give a good stir after 30 minutes then cover again and simmer another 30 minutes. If you think it needs more liquid, add a small amount of water (unlikely).

After an hour, test the cabbage with a sharp knife to make sure its completely tender and the apples have become very soft and the same color as the cabbage. You can keep it cooking on very low for another 30-60 minutes or so if you think it needs it. It’s better cooked longer than not long enough and should be completely tender.

Once it’s tender, add the butter and balsamic vinegar, stirring until the butter is melted. Any excess of liquid can be evaporated by turning up the heat a bit and removing the lid, but keep an eye on it as you don’t want to lose all the liquid, just most of it.

Check for seasoning; add more balsamic vinegar and redcurrant jelly or sugar to taste.

It will keep covered in the fridge for several days and it freezes well.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH CHESTNUTS (and Pancetta, or not)

(Serves eight)

Ingredients:

2lbs of Brussels sprouts

8 oz peeled chestnuts, coarsely chopped (‘Marron’, not water chestnuts; available in jars or canned)

8 oz pancetta or bacon, chopped (optional)

2 oz butter

Tiny pinch of nutmeg

Sea salt

Action:

Trim the ends off the sprouts and discard any dark outer leaves. If some sprouts are bigger, cut a small ‘X’ in the stalk end so they cook evenly.

Place in a steamer and steam for 4-5 minutes or until crisp-tender. Alternatively, drop into boiling water and cook for 4 minutes; drain thoroughly. You can do either ahead of time but quickly rinse the cooked sprouts under cold running water to stop them from over-cooking themselves.

In a separate pan, heat the butter and add the pancetta or bacon if using (I don’t) and sauté until crispy then add the chestnuts, brussels sprouts and a small grind or pinch of nutmeg and sea salt to taste; gently warm through.

Notes:

For the red cabbage – if you can’t get redcurrant jelly, use soft brown sugar (or white sugar as a last resort) – it’s equally good and I’ve used both. I’ve also cooked it on very low for 2 + hours so it depends whether you prefer it meltingly tender or slightly al dente. The amounts of vinegar and sugar are a guide as some people prefer it sweeter/tangier. You can also make it with red wine vinegar or apple juice instead of orange juice. If using apple juice, cut back on the sugar a bit.

Sprouts are best in winter after the first frost has caused them to really tighten up. Avoid buying them when they feel loose and spongy. Don’t cheat and use the frozen ones; unlike peas, they aren’t great.

If you cook the sprouts ahead, you can also cut them in half before adding to the warmed chestnuts and butter.

Happy Holidays, America! Merry Christmas, Europe!