After a long summer without access to a kitchen (with a few disappointing exceptions), I have really spent a lot of time cooking since I got back to St Louis. One of the first things I did, literally the day after arriving, was to head to Dierberg's to stock up on big, juicy peaches while they're still in season. I bought nearly 6 pounds of delicious yellow-flesh peaches, supposedly from a farm just on the other side of the river. Although I ate a fair share of them raw, straight from the bag, I had been craving a cherry & peach cobbler since... well, probably since last fall. There's a small window in late summer and early fall when the peaches are just perfect, and for me that window is even smaller because I typically spend that part of the year in Guatemala (where there are also peaches, but... *sigh*). Since peaches are my favorite fruit, this cobbler was a pretty big deal for me.
Thanks to Gretchen, Kati's mom, I had a big ziplock bag full of recently-picked-and-frozen Michigan cherries to add to the pot. Now, normally I like my peaches just the way nature intended; I even cut the sugar in half on most cobbler recipes, because I like the natural tartness of a good peach. But cherries -- at least the ones they grow in Michigan -- have a very similar flavor profile. The best cherries, like the best peaches, are both sweet AND tart in equal measure. So I had a hunch that a combination of the two would make for an even better dish.
I ended up baking two batches of cobbler, because we don't have a single large-enough dish.
Mmmm, the memories. I present the final product: a delicious peach & cherry cobbler that was probably "lite" enough to count as health food, i.e. as a serving or two of fruit. I ran out of wheat flour and substituted oat flour for 2/3 of the recipe. It made the dough a bit chewier than I wanted, but it made the cobbler keep longer in the fridge.
Around the same time as the cobbler, I stocked up on lots of veggies (ok, starches too) that I'd been craving while in Guate, and filled our largest roasting pan with this brightly colored medley and a nice young roaster (which apparently didn't make it into my film roll; guess I was too busy de-boning her to notice).
Mmm.. organic sweet potatoes (which are HUGE at Dierberg's; sometimes I wonder if they've got the labels switched by mistake), the stalks from a bunch of rainbow chard (mostly red), some lovely new potatoes that were irresistable in their little net bag, and slices of one of Kati's first eggplants of the year -- all mixed together with some rosemary and olive oil, along with the drippings of the chicken fat. Can I get a hallelujah?
Get in close and look at those beauties. I ended up pureeing 2/3 of the "veggies" with stock, and making a gigantic batch of delicious chicken soup that kept me fed for a week w/o my getting tired of it. The flavor contributed by the sweet potatoes was especially remarkable.
This past week, I've been a bit more creative in the kitchen, starting with an impulse purchase of a pack of prosciutto from TJ's. I've only bought it before to eat with cantaloupe, as instructed by my friend Nora after her semester in Tuscany. My other prosciutto experiences have been in others' kitchens -- either in restaurants or at parties. Originally I thought I'd use it w/ chicken breasts and parmesan to finally make the 'authentic' version of Bittman & the Naked Chef's recipe -- the one I've posted on before, that involves pounding chicken breasts with an iron skillet until they're nice and thin, and then attaching a slice of proscuitto (I've used salami) to one side by using parmesan (I've used provolone) as the adhesive agent. My version of these KICKS ASS, but I wanted to give the original a shot. Unfortunately, I ended up eating all of my chicken in the soup; and anyway I'd need to use raw breast meat for the recipe. So the Bittman/Naked recipe will have to wait a while longer (perhaps until I have company to feed/impress). In the meantime, I made use of the prosciutto by having an Italian week. And by kicking it old school, with the prosciutto filling in for bacon and ham hocks in a big pot of collard greens (sooooo good):
I decided to try my hand at making pasta and pizza from scratch, a culinary odyssey that every kitchen bum should try. I've sorta kinda done this before, at Kati's, but in my own kitchen I (still) lack an upright mixer, pasta rollers, and even a sizeable food processor -- the one we have can only handle about 1/4 of an onion at a time. I usually turn to the blender when I need to puree something. So this was a pretty low-tech endeavour, but Bittman assured me that was the point.
So I got started on a 4.5-hour process of making both pizza and pasta doughs, doubling each recipe so I'd have enough leftover to toss into the freezer for later (and thus, hopefully, justifying the expense of time -- it's an investment in future meals!). Though I had so many things going at once, I can't remember the order I started anything, I know at one point there was both a squash & eggplant reduction and a little pot of tomato & pine nut marinara going on the stove. Meanwhile I made pizza dough, tossing in some dried rosemary, minced garlic, and black pepper to make a dough so tasty, it makes the toppings jealous.
The squash & eggplant reduction made it into my film roll:
As did the pasta workspace, before it got all messy:
And after. Here are the balls of pasta dough, rolled up into manageable portions and awaiting their repurposing as strips of fettucine or raviolis.
Found another use for the pizza cutter:
The squash reduction, mixed with a bit of parmesan and stuffed inside the fresh dough:
I ended up with about 2 dozen little raviolis, each one a bit unique. Not pictured, I also made four raviolis with just prosciutto inside -- a snack for the cook.
A little mountain of pasta that I tucked away in the freezer for a rainy day:
The workspace, post-dough-making-frenzy. Notice the rolling pen, which I had to run out and buy earlier that night to satisfy my impulse to cook.
The first success story: a delicious pizza featuring slices of white eggplant from local farmers (purchased at the new farmer's market at the medical campus!). Seriously, I think the crust was the best part.
And a second, partial success story: tonight's ravioli feast. I decided to finish off the prosciutto along with a pack of mushrooms, making a simple (yet decadent) sauce to go w/ the squash-stuffed raviolis.
Prepping the mushrooms...
Well, a stick of butter + prosciutto + mushrooms + wine = how could it go wrong, right? This was capital-T Tasty. And I'll have to ride an extra 10 miles tomorrow to make up for it.
But this will be as close a picture of the ravioli as you'll get. Our fridge has been moody all month because of the shifts in ambient temperature -- from the mid-50s to the high 80s, it just can't keep up on its own. I've turned the temperature up or down at least half a dozen times in the past week alone, depending on whether there's a puddle of water at the bottom of the fridge or if everything on the top shelf is covered in ice. Another consequence of these irregularities has been the build-up of condensation inside containers in the fridge, and unfortunately my raviolis were no exception. When I pulled them out to toss them into boiling water, I found that they had all sort of melted together into a big doughy mess, even though I had carefully placed them side-by-side into a big gallon ziplock bag. Doh! I probably should have put them in the freezer, though it remains to be seen whether my fettuccine will turn out any better.
Appearances aside, the pasta was scrumptious. How much of that success is due to the pasta itself (or the awesome sauce) is hard to say, though I'd pick unattractive homemade raviolis over the perfectly shaped, dried-and-boxed kind any day.
All in all, it's been a good return to the kitchen. And I've still got 3 more balls of pizza dough (and a container of squash/eggplant reduction) waiting for me in the freezer. Ah, the possibilities...
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