Italian Pot Roast

This recipe comes from my mother's tattered, grease-stained copy, "Fifth Printing, 1971," of Sunset's Favorite Recipes. It's precious to me because it includes my mom's notes on recipes, as well as my own, and even Alicia's. To wit: Mom's handwriting on the "Forgotten Short Ribs": "The whole family enjoyed this." Alicia's handwriting (looks like she might be 10 or so), "Minus one". A vegetarian in training.

Oh, yeah, it also has some good recipes. This one did not have Mom's writing on it, but it was definitely worth making. I made a few minor changes.

This is easy but cooks for a long time: plan ahead.

Italian Pot Roast

2 T. olive oil

3-4 lb. chuck roast (my butcher gave me beef shank--at least I think he did, since he pointed to his forearm)

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1/4 t. ground ginger

2 large onions, sliced

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 c. white or red wine

1 oz. dried mushrooms (I used porcini, but a mix would be nice as well)

1 c. hot water

1 can tomato sauce

1 c. pitted olives (whatever kind you like)

Preheat the oven to 325. In a large oven-proof lidded skillet or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the roast with the salt, pepper, and ginger and brown it well on all sides in the oil. Remove the meat, turn down the heat a bit, and sauté the onions until they are starting to turn golden. Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds. Add the wine, scrape up the bottom, and let cook down just a bit. Put the roast in the pot, put some of the onions on top, and cover. Put in the oven and bake for 90 minutes.

While the roast is cooking, soak the mushrooms in the water. When the 90 minutes are about up, scoop the mushrooms out of the water (save that mushroom liquid!), squeeze them out a bit, and chop them roughly. Turn the roast over and add the mushrooms to the pot. Strain the mushroom liquid into the pot as well. Cover and put back in the oven for an hour. Add the tomato sauce and olives and cook yet another hour. Enjoy the way your kitchen smells. Take the meat from the sauce and slice it; check the seasoning of the sauce, and serve with pasta or potatoes or polenta. This probably serves at least 6.

Salmon with Fennel and Mint

This is an oldie from my recipe file, and I have no idea where it came from--Sunset? St. Louis Post-Dispatch? Who knows. I completely changed the recipe, making it simpler and cutting down the butter by 5 T. You're welcome. This was elegant with rice and broccoli. The recipe as I've written it served 3, but Claire and I can only handle small amounts of salmon. Adjust according to your needs and appetite.

Salmon with Fennel and Mint

1 bulb fennel, quartered and sliced

2 shallots, halved lengthwise and sliced somewhat thickly

2 t. olive oil

Salt and pepper

2 salmon filets

1/2 c. white wine

1/2 c. clam juice

2 T. butter, preferably cold

2 T. chopped fresh mint

Heat the oven to 400. Put the fennel and shallots in a small baking dish--an 8-inch square is about the right size--and toss with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for about 5 minutes. Put the salmon on top of the vegetables, season with a bit of salt and pepper, and return the dish to the oven for another 10-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salmon, whether it's completely thawed (mine wasn't), and whether you like your salmon cooked through. In other words, check frequently after 10 minutes. While the salmon is cooking, put the wine and clam juice in a small saucepan over high heat and reduce by a half--with luck, it should be there when the salmon is done. When it's reduced, take off the heat and whisk in the butter. Once the butter has melted and the sauce has thickened a bit, add the mint. Pour the sauce over the fish and vegetables and serve.

Lemon-Steamed Spinach

This is a really simple recipe, but I thought the technique was interesting and effective, and above all, this was really delicious spinach! Almost put the potato pancakes next to it to shame. Almost...

This recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table.

Lemon-Steamed Spinach

2 bags spinach

1 T. olive oil

Grated zest of one lemon

Salt and pepper

If your steamer is large enough, go ahead and put the spinach in it now. Otherwise, you'll want a big bowl. Put the spinach in it and drizzle over the olive oil and sprinkle with the lemon zest, salt and pepper. Toss it like you're making a salad. Check a leaf; if it's dry, add a bit more oil. Put the steamer basket over water, heat the water, and let steam 2-3 minutes. Wonder what happened to all that spinach and enjoy the simple deliciousness.

Moosewood Lentil Soup

..."gentle." I always love seeing that on the recipe page. Sami's off teaching in the French Alps, poor baby, so this is a good time for us to eat girl food like lentil soup. I began with the Moosewood recipe and took a couple of deviations. For one, Molly Katzen thinks you should cook your lentil soup all day, when lentils really only need about half an hour. I compromised and cooked it for about an hour. And I changed the order of the ingredients, though I didn't change much about the ingredients themselves. If you're an unreformed carnivore, smoked sausage is always nice in lentil soup.

Lentil Soup

1 T. butter

1 large onion, minced

2 large carrots, peeled and diced

2 stalks celery, diced (I used a hunk of celery root)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 t. dried thyme

2 t. salt

Freshly ground pepper

2-3 T. sherry (or red wine or white wine or vermouth)

3 c. lentils (the brown kind will make a smoother soup; the green kind will have more texture)

7 c. water or stock

1 16-oz. can diced tomatoes

Juice of 1/2 large lemon

1 T. molasses or brown sugar

1 T. red wine vinegar

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. When it has melted, add the onion, carrots, and celery and sauté for about 10 minutes, or until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper, and sauté for another minute. Add the sherry or other booze and use it to scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Let it cook down to almost nothing, then add the lentils. Stir them until coated and then pour in the water/stock. Bring that to a boil, cover, turn down the heat to low, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the tomatoes, lemon juice, molasses/brown sugar, and vinegar and cook another 30 minutes. Serve with home-baked whole wheat bread and some 70s folk-rock.

Carrot-Walnut Muffins

This recipe comes from a German baking book I have, Backen Macht Freude (I guess that could be roughly translated as the Joy of Baking). It's from the German equivalent of Betty Crocker, Dr. Oetker. It says a lot about German culture that the baking icon has to be a doctor. Who's going to trust a recipe from just some person without a title?

Anyway, these are really good muffins. They are from the "Oh, a few carrots will definitely balance out all this butter" school of thought, so they're tender and not too dense.

If you have a scale that does grams, it might be in order here. My calculations may be off.

Carrot-Walnut Muffins

300 g./10.6 oz. (2 cups + 1 T.) flour--I used about 1/3 whole wheat

2 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1 t. ginger

150 g./5.3 oz. (10 T.) melted butter or salad oil

200 g./7 oz. (14 T.) sour cream

2 eggs

2 T. lemon juice (about 1/2 a large lemon)

100 g./3.5 oz. carrot (1 large carrot), peeled and grated

100 g./3.5 oz. (about 1 c.) walnuts, chopped fine

Heat the oven to 350 and butter 12 large muffin cups (I actually got 14 muffins). In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and ginger. Dump in the butter, sour cream, eggs, lemon juice, carrots, and walnuts, and mix well but not too well--some lumps are OK. Scoop into the prepared muffin pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Tell yourself that a doctor wrote this recipe, so it must be healthy.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Yeah, yeah, heart attack on a plate. But hey, a little goes a long way. And it's easy. And really good.

Since there are only about 4 ingredients here, use the best you can find. And serve some plain steamed vegetables or a big green salad on the side to assuage your conscience. And a nice white wine to cut through the cream :-)

This recipe is adapted from the Joy of Cooking. I cut down the butter and cream just a bit.

Fettuccine Alfredo

1-1/4 lb fresh or 1 lb. dried fettuccine

6 T. (3 oz.) butter

3/4 c. heavy cream (I used crème fraîche)

1 cup (about 3 oz.) grated Parmesan

Salt, pepper, and perhaps some freshly grated nutmeg

Cook the pasta according to package directions in well-salted water. While it's cooking, melt the butter in a large skillet. When the pasta is done, scoop it out into the pan with the butter and stir it around. Add the cream and Parmesan and salt, pepper (I like a lot), and nutmeg if you want. Taste before you season--if you salted the pasta water enough, you probably won't need much salt. Serve quickly with something green and healthy on the side.

Pasta "Risotto"

I served this as a side dish with some fish, and it turned out to be the star of the meal. My crew doesn't especially care for real risotto, but this was popular. I happened to have some tiny pasta lying around, so I used that, which gave me a much shorter cooking time. But I bet this would be good with small elbow macaroni as written.

This recipe is from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table; since she suggests playing with her recipes, I added the wine and the peas. Cooked bacon and/or mushrooms are other suggested additions that I bet would be great.

Dressy Pasta "Risotto"

2 T. butter

1 small onion, chopped

Salt and pepper

1-1/3 c. elbow macaroni

1/4 c. white wine

3-1/2 c. chicken (or vegetable) broth

1/2 c. cream

1 c. frozen baby peas

1/2 c. grated Parmesan

3-4 T. mascarpone (I think cream cheese or something similar would work here--about 2 oz.)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onion, salt and pepper it, and sauté it until translucent and just starting to turn color. Add the macaroni and white wine and stir; let the wine boil down to almost nothing. Then add the chicken broth, stir that, and let it cook uncovered at a steady simmer until the broth is almost absorbed (there will still be a bit of liquid at the bottom of the pan): this should take 20-25 minutes. Add the cream and the peas and cook for 3-5 minutes until some of the cream has been absorbed as well. Gently stir in the Parmesan and mascarpone and cook for another minute. Take off the heat, cover, and let sit for 3 minutes (I forgot to do this, and mine turned out fine...). Serve and enjoy.