Last week I picked up little bit after work and the two of us went and picked out some pumpkins at Jone's Orchard, a farm out near Millington. Now, all of my life I've been buying pumpkins in the city off of crates or the back of some guy's truck. But not this year, and I never again. I bought 4 decent sized pumpkins for $20! It would have easily cost me $50 had I bought them in the city. The wife and I have already carved 2 of them. Here's a picture:
Saturday night the wife cooked and I took care of the baby, and Sunday night we switched roles. So Saturday night the wife made a Ribollita, a Tuscan vegetable soup, and Rachel Allen's poppy seed cake. Ribollita essentially means to "reboil". According to Wikipedia, it comes from peasant origins and was originally made by reheating the leftover minestrone or vegetable soup. It's a pretty simple soup to make, and although I didn't make it and don't have the exact recipe in front of me, here's essentially what it is:
Ribollita
Olive Oil
2 medium red onions, roughly chopped
4 or 5 decent sized carrots, chopped
3 or 4 celery stalks, chopped
X cloves garlic, minced
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 can cannelloni beans
4 cups vegetable stock (or chicken stock)
1 lb. of spinach (fresh or frozen)
Thyme
Parsley
Salt and Pepper
Coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil. When the oil is hot add your onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. Saute until onions are translucent. Add tomatoes, cannelloni beans, herbs, and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil. Add in your spinach. If you're using fresh, just pile it all in your pot. It will wilt down to a fraction of it's original size. Let it cook for... oh, 15 minutes or so. Just enough to get the spinach nice and cooked. Add salt and pepper. This sucker is delicious, simple, and VEGAN! It was a good detox from eating fried chicken and doughnuts the night before.
Now, to this recipe you can add just about anything. Pancetta, parmesan, tomato paste for a little extra richness. I personally would have added every kind of bean I could get my hands on. Red kidneys, white kidneys, garbanzos, black eyed peas... maybe not pinto or black beans, but you know... I suggested to Meagan that she sub spinach for something more exciting like endive or escarole, but she got mad at me and asked why I hated spinach so much. Let me just state for the record, I do NOT hate spinach. I just think it's boring.
After dinner I went outside to carve my pumpkin (see above... mine is the one on the left...) and Meagan made Rachel Allen's poppy seed cake. I'm going to post a link to it, but watch out... it's all metric! It just proves what a baking genius my wife is.
So last night I made mussels and creme brulee. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention. I bought a new toy this weekend. Behold:
And it was cheap!! $20 for the burner, $1.87 for the butane!!! But after I bought him I had to justify my purchase, so I decided to make creme brulee. My mussels are super simple, and so tasty. Here's what I did:
Mussels
3 tablespoons butter
2 lb. mussels, cleaned and debearded
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
Handful of celery leaves, roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
A bushel of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 fennel bulb (yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaah....), chopped
2/3 cup dry white wine
Melt your butter in the biggest pot you own. Big pot. Big big pot. When your butter is hot, add your onion, celery, garlic, cherry tomatoes, and fennel. Cook for 7 to 8 minutes until your onion is translucent. Add your wine and bring it up to a light boil. Drop in your mussels and sprinkle the celery leaves on them. Cook them for 10-15 minutes until the mussels are open and well cooked.
When you're ready to plate, spoon out your mussels into a large bowl and put it right in the middle of the table. With a slotted spoon, spoon out your veggies into a soup bowl. Eat with some crusty Italian bread. Yum yum yum!
You can plate it anyway you want, but I found the best way to serve mussels is family style. So, next is the creme brulee.
Creme Brulee
6 egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
Half a vanilla bean
4 oven safe ramekins
Preheat your oven to 325. Put your ramekins on a baking pan.
Slice your vanilla bean in half and scrape down the sides to get all the vanilla. Add your cream, sugar, and vanilla to a saucepan and bring to a scald. A scald is just below the boiling point. Make sure to heat it slowly, stirring it often, and keep a close eye on it. It can burn very easily and essentially ruin the flavor. Don't burn it! You can tell you've reached a scald when your getting bubbles around the edges of the pot and some wispy steam.
Whip your yolks and add a little bit of your cream. Stir it in slowly, so as not to scramble the egg. Add it to your ramekins. Put the baking pan with the ramekins in the oven, and then add hot water to the pan about halfway up the ramekins. Bake for 30 minutes. Take them out and let them come to room temperature and then pop them in the fridge for 2 to 3 hours. They should look like this:
When you're ready to serve, sprinkle with granulated sugar and torch those suckers. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures when I was torching them. I'm sure I'll probably be doing this again sometime soon though.
Tonight, my lovely wife is making a pot roast. She called me just a minute ago to yell at me for throwing out the thyme. It was brown and mushy and gross. I didn't want it in my fridge. Yes, we love to cook. Someone called us the next Neely family the other day. While I'm not a big fan of the Neelys, I took that as a compliment.
-CJ
oh my god i have a name!!! at least you called me "the lovely wife" once.....
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