Slow Cooker - Veggie Chili

Here is another slow cooker chili recipe that worked for us. All veggie. All easy. All yum!

All we had to do was to throw the following into the pot, turn it on low and wait 8 hours: 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 stalks of celery, 2 bell peppers, 1 small can of diced tomatoes, the same can worth of water, 1 quart of vegetable broth, 1 cup of lentils, 1 cup of quinoa, 1 can of pinto beans, cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper.

To get all fancy we offered some Tabasco sauce and cheeses to serve. (This is about as easy at it gets, right?!)

Slow Cooker - Split Pea Soup

"If you say one more time - ohh, it tastes just like it would back in Germany - we'll skip right to the ice cream!!"

But for real for real; this thing was off the shizzle. We put real ham hocks into it. For taste. Beat that!

Okay. But first we chopped up a whole bunch of stuff: 4 carrots (they don't have to be that colorful), half a red pepper, 2 sticks of celery, 1 whole big onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves, and about 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme leaves. All that and 2 ham hocks (1 is plenty) we placed into a slow cooker. 

We added 1 pound of split peas, salt, and pepper. We covered it with 2 quarts of vegetable broth and turned the slow cooker on low for 8+ hours.

Before we left for bigger and better things we chopped up a few beef franks and tossed them into a scolding hot cast iron pan for a short while. (If we can get our hands on good quality Vienna sausages, we'll use those.) Discarding the greasy juices we popped them into the fridge to add them later upon our return.

Check it out! Everybody dug in and fought for the best pieces. Perfect fall fodder for the masses.

We did remove the hog's ham hocks prior to eating. We might try it sometime with big chunks of bacon instead. Just to see how it might turn out.

Chicken Stew

This must be the lazy cook's chicken stew. An easy 45 minutes of simmering. See for yourself:

We chopped up 1 large onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 celery stalks, 3 carrots, and  2 bell peppers.

All that we cooked in a bit of olive oil for about 5 minutes.

In the meantime we peeled and cut up 1.5 pounds of yellow potatoes and then added them to the veggies.

Then we added 2 quarts of chicken broth and a little salt, brought it to a boil and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

We cut up 1.5lb of assorted chicken parts and 1 zucchini and added them along with

1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard, a little dried basil, dried sage, and dried thyme leaves. We brought it back to boil again and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

At the end we removed a handful of potatoes, smashed them up with a fork, and added them back to thicken the soup. A little salt and pepper to taste.

Voila.

Bloody Mary Beef - Bam!

COMFORT FOOD indeed! This was one scrumptious forklicking eat'em-up dinner for the history books. You could drown all your sorrows in this dish. Not withstanding the fact that we had to open the bar early for it. A pot roast brisket in a Bloody Mary sauce. We kid you not.

This one came straight out of the hallowed pages of Jamie Oliver's new cookbook Comfortfood and - BAM! - right into our new Christmas-present Emeril Cookware casserole. A cook-off of Titans, if you will, right in our kitchen.

We started with seasoning a 2 lb piece of  brisket with salt and pepper from all sides.

Then we cranked up the heat on that casserole dish and added a few gluggs of olive oil.

We placed the chunk of meat into the heat for a good 10 minutes until it was seared all around.

In the meantime we cranked the oven to 250F and roughly chopped up one big red onion and two sticks of celery.

We reduced the heat and gently cooked the veggies for another 10 minutes.

That gave us time to get sauced. At 11 a.m. mind you. We mixed up 3 1/2 cups of smoothly crushed uncooked tomato sauce (our best description for a "passata" substitute), the juice of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce, a few drops of Tabasco sauce, 3 tablespoons vodka, and 1 tablespoon port.

All that we added to the meat and cranked up the heat to a boil.

We tied up a handful of rosemary sprigs with 2 fresh bay leaves.

The herbs got tossed into all that goodness and then ...

... we shoved it into the oven. For 5 1/2 hours. The aromas coming from the kitchen all day long made it, of course, hard to wait.

Half an hour before we were ready for dinner  we got a pot of water to a boil and tossed in a few handfuls of green beans, trimmed and halved, for just about 6 minutes. We drained them to serve.

We also boiled a pot worth of yellow potatoes, peeled and cut, until they were soft. We drained them as well and then mashed them up with about one cup of heavy cream, a few chunks of butter, salt, and freshly grated nutmeg. Oooooh, goodie.

When we brought the brisket back to daylight, we removed the herbs and pulled the meat apart with a fork.

This will be, no doubt, a holiday classic for years to come. Let's just say: New Years with all the good attentions can wait for a few days. This dinner was not for timid souls. It was made for eating.

Pasta Bolognese - All Homemade

Our first homemade Fettucini Pasta, Bolognese style. What a blast. We made this our Christmas Dinner. Not a four course affair for a change, but super-delicious. It was hard to stop eating.

We got 3 cups of super fine flour (We are still looking for Tipo 00 flour) and 1/2 cup of fine semolina flour in a bowl and cracked 12 egg yolks into the center together with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 5 tablespoons of cold water.

We mixed up the runny part, slowly adding more and more of the flour.

Eventually we used our hands and then

kneaded the dough for about five minutes.

We formed it into a ball, wrapped it into clear foil, and tossed it into the fridge for just half an hour.

Next we divided the dough into 8 equal chunks and put them into a moist kitchen towel.

Now we gave each pice the following treatment:  We rolled it out with a rolling pin.

Then we guided it through a pasta machine to create a long sheet. We did so several times, reducing the setting, folding the dough back over in half, and repeating the process. It seemed to us like the forging of Japanese steel. Thinning, folding, thinning, folding, thinning.

When it seemed that we had the perfect strip we took it through the Fettucini extension, cutting the dough into long pasta.

The more hands the better.

Then we hung the pasta up to rest and let it dry slightly while we turned our attention to the sauce.

For that we browned 1 lb of ground beef in a little olive oil and salt and pepper.

For 20 minutes.

In the meantime we chopped up 1 big onion, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, and 2 cloves of garlic.

We added all that to the meat for another 15 minutes.

Then we added one 28 oz can of plum tomatoes and one 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes, as well as 1 cup of red wine and 1 cup of water.

We brought all that yummy to a boil and let it simmer on the heavy side for one full hour.

When the sauce was done we shredded 2 handfuls of Parmesan (plus some more for the table) and

added it to the sauce and checked on the seasoning, salt and pepper at hand.

20 minutes before the Bolognese sauce was done, we started a huge pot of water and added 3 tablespoons of salt. When it was boiling we tossed in the pasta for just about 4 minutes, stirring, and checking until they seemed al dente. We sent them through a strainer, set the table, and ATE. Yum!

Merry Christmas. (Oh yes, while we were bored, waiting for the sauce to finish, we fixed a simple salad. We also had ice cream for dessert. So that technically was a three course meal after all.)

Ravioli Bolognese Home Made

Jamie Oliver's latest cookbook, Comfort Food, came in the mail with the suggestion for us to try out a few recipes.

 

While the recipes and descriptions gave us goosebumps ("... it's about smells, sounds, and tastes. It's about recipes that really hit the spot at a certain time and have the capacity to pull out explicit feelings and old memories, as well as creating new ones and passing that joy on to the next generation."), the introduction was rather discomforting: "Most of the recipes aren't super-fast, nor are they for everyday cooking ..."! Great. "I want to bring you to the next level now, to the nth degree." Jeez. It looked like we were in for a steep learning curve and a bumpy ride - but at the very least for some yummy food.

To ease ourselves into this madness we chose to start with homemade ravioli. At least we had an idea of what we were shooting for and we’ve always wanted to learn how to make our own pasta. So this is how it went:

We went to the butcher to get the real deal no-antibiotics grass-fed happy meat for this one. 1 lb of ground beef and 1 lb of ground pork.

We fried it all up in some olive oil and salt, and pepper and gave it about 20 minutes.

In the meantime we cut up 2 sticks of celery, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 huge onion, and 2 carrots.

Lily figured out how to get some see-saw action going with her knife to get all the veggies into tiny pieces and was so excited that she exclaimed in German "I am a real cook! (Ich bin eine echte Köchin)"

We added the veggies to the meat for another ten minutes.

Next we added a 3/4 cup of Chianti , 24 oz of canned plum tomatoes, and a quarter of a big tomato can worth of water,

brought it to a boil, and let it simmer for a whole hour.

To round it off, when sauce had turned super-thick and had cooled down, we added 3 3/4 oz of Parmesan.

While the sauce was simmering and not needing our attention we turned to the pasta dough: 3 cups of  Tipo 00 flour (we couldn't find any and used super fine flour instead; in the meantime we heard that we might find the real deal at Whole Foods), 1/2 cup of fine semolina,

12 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and 4 tablespoons of cold water.

With a fork Lily mixed up all the goodies, slowly adding flour from the sides.

When the fork finally got stuck she went in with her bare hands.

And when that got to hard Papa had to finish it up, kneading the dough for about four minutes. We added just about another tablespoon of water to get a consistency that felt right - not too wet, nor too dry.

We were so proud of the final product that we decided to recreate Jamie's picture in the book. We wrapped the dough in plastic wrap for half an hour. Somewhere else it said that those 30 minutes allows the flour to fully absorb all the moisture.

When the wait was over we separated the dough into four balls and

placed them into a damp kitchen towel, concentrating on one at a time.

For ease we halved each ball as we retrieved it from the towel and rolled it out with a rolling pin.

Then we guided the dough through a pasta machine, starting at the thickest setting and repeating the process going thinner a couple of notches.

Then we folded the strip over and started from the beginning, getting down to about 1/16th of an inch.

After a couple of times of re-folding and thinning the strip down, it had filled out the width of the machine, creating a nice and straight band that we thinned at the final step to about a 1/32nd thickness.

Next we placed heaping teaspoons worth of our our thick Bolognse sauce on the strip, about 2 1/2 inch on center.

Then we folded the strip length-wise and pushed it down around the dollops of meat, wetting our fingers in a glass of water.

We cut the strip into 2 1/2 inch pieces,

pressing down the edges. In the book you can see Jamie using this cool jaggedy rolling knife to create  postage-stamp-type edges.

 

We kept repeating this until all the pasta dough was used up. Getting the pasta machine to spit out picture perfect strips took some trial and error. Another thing we learned was not to stack the raviolis on a pile as we are showing in the picture. Instead we should have kept them apart and lightly floured with the semolina. We ended up having a bunch of them stick together. 

Now came the easiest, most light-hearted part. The sauce.

 

We cut up 4 cloves of garlic and just a little of a chili pepper, so as not to upset the girls' developing palettes.
 

We gently fried them up for a few minutes in olive oil and then

 

added  42 oz of canned plum tomatoes. All this we brought to a boil and let it simmer for ten minutes before we whizzed it up with an immersion blender.

In the meantime we started a big pot of salted water and got it to boil.

We cooked our raviolis for only three minutes. A couple of them were left in the water for too long and decide to fall apart. A few minutes is all they needed.

We transferred the raviolis to the sauce and then served them with fresh basil leaves and freshly grated Parmesan. Voila! Not bad, huh? We learned a few new swear words along the way but came out super proud. Our first home made pasta and real Raviolis at that.

While we couldn't quite match the good looks from the master chef's creation, we were absolutely stunned at the taste. We all decided that it was the best pasta we ever ate. Both dough and sauce. The book says it serves 8 - 10, but we got quite close to licking the pot clean. Nobody knew how to stop.

 

Needless to say, promises were not broken. Memories were made and some real comfort food enjoyed.