Kumquat Riesling Sauce

I don’t have much to say about this recipe. Not because it’s not an interesting recipe. It is. It’s delicious and not hard to make. I don’t have much to say because I’m tired. I like to pretend I’m not tired because you can’t see me dozing off from where you are, but sometimes I just have to give in.

So here is this recipe, which I adapted from Fine Cooking magazine. I scaled it down a bit because the original called for 12 ounces of kumquats and the package I bought contained 8 ounces. I also used vanilla extract and ground cinnamon where the original called for vanilla bean and cinnamon stick. The substitution seem okay to me, but I suppose a vanilla bean would make it even more delicious.

The ingredient list may make you think this sauce would be excessively sweet, but don’t be too afraid. The tartness and touch of bitterness in the kumquats balances the sugar nicely. In fact, I’d argue that you might just need that much sweetness to make the kumquats into dessert.

And this sauce is great with dessert. I loved it on this simple yogurt cake and it was fabulous on vanilla ice cream as well. It lasts a couple weeks in the refrigerator, so I say, as soon as you can get your hands on the ingredients and as soon as you have the time and energy to slice up a couple handfuls of kumquats, make this sauce. It’ll be waiting to reward you by jazzing up simple desserts on those days when you just get too tired. Good night and good luck!

Kumquat Riesling Sauce

Adapted from Fine Cooking magazine (Feb/Mar 2011)

Serve this sauce on simple vanilla or citrus cakes or on vanilla ice cream.

1 ½ cups Riesling

½ cup honey

1/3 cup sugar

2 ¼ inch slices peeled fresh ginger

¼ cup water

8 ounces kumquats, thinly sliced and seeded

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. In a medium-size saucepan, combine the Riesling, honey, sugar, ginger and water. Cook and stir over medium-high heat until the mixture comes to a boil.

2. Stir in the sliced kumquats and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cook about 30 minutes or until the kumquat slices are tender and appear translucent.

3. Cool to room temperature. Serve at room temperature or cold.

Makes about 2 ½ cups.

Other recipes like this one: Cranberry Sauce with Persimmons and Spice, Blackberry sauce with Lime and Vanilla

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Parsley Hazelnut Pesto

I don’t write very much about the parts of my life outside of what I just cooked or baked. Trust me, it would be extremely boring. But allow me to say just this one thing about the work-week that just ended: it was 11 days long. And a second thing: this is not the first time this has happened to me. And just one thing more: I’m a leeeeetle bit tired!

 

 

 

I regret that the above statements are true and contribute to the paucity of posts in the last fourteen months or so. Luckily, it’s not really that big of a deal to throw some herbs and some toasted nuts in my food processor. This means something fresh and delicious and new can still happen at supper time. This week I got my stuff together enough to toss a parsley and toasted hazelnut pesto with pasta along with some fresh local green beans and scallions and a few cherry tomatoes from my lackluster backyard garden.

 

The parsley-hazelnut pesto here has a greater proportion of nuts than in other pestos I’ve made. I love hazelnuts and had plenty in the freezer (the rest of a bulk bag I got to make this cake), and, since I didn’t even plant basil this year, I was happy to try this slightly different, slightly nuttier take on pesto.

 

This thick sauce is fresh and herbal with just a bit of toasty nuttiness from the hazelnuts, which I prepared as described in this post. It’s also got a bright burst from lemon juice and zest that livens it up. There’s not much to do but plug in the processor and go, and then decide what to toss with the results. Really you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand, but I described how I made my simple supper (which also left plenty of leftovers to provide a few lunches this week) below.

 

I may not be able to post to these pages as much as I would like, and I may not be able try as many new dishes as I’d like, but I still love to do this. I still have a stack of cookbooks and recipe clippings and ideas a mile high and the hopes and dreams of getting to try all of them keep me excited. I’ll keep making messes, and I hope you’ll keep coming along for the ride!!

 

Parsley Hazelnut Pesto

Adapted from Bon Appetit

2 cups parsley leaves and tender stems (preferably flat-leaf parsley)

2/3 cup hazelnuts, toasted and skinned and allowed to cool
finely grated zest of one lemon
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 garlic cloves
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1/3 cup olive oil, preferably extra-virgin

1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, combine the parsley, hazelnuts, lemon zest and juice, and garlic. Process to form a coarse paste. Stop to scrape the sides once or twice to incorporate everything.

2. With the machine running, gradually add the olive oil through the opening at the top of the machine. Process until smooth, scraping the bowl occasionally. Taste for seasoning and add salt or lemon juice as desired. Serve as you would any pesto sauce. (See recipe suggestion below.)

Makes about 1 cup pesto. Refrigerate leftovers. This pesto will not brown when stored as a basil pesto does.

 

 

Pasta with Parsley Hazelnut Pesto, Green Beans and Cherry Tomatoes

Also adapted from Bon Appetit

This is a recipe only by the most casual definition. Substitutions and adaptations can be made at will.

 

8-10 ounces whole wheat or multigrain short pasta (I used whole wheat rotini)

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped scallions
2 cups coarsely chopped green beans, steamed or blanched
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
About 1 recipe Parsley-Hazelnut Pesto (see above)
grated Parmesan cheese to taste
additional salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook pasta in boiling salted water until it’s done the way you like it. How do you know? Taste it! Drain the pasta and reserve about a cup of the cooking water.

2. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the scallions and sauté 3-4 minutes or until just softened. Add the green beans and cook about 1 minute more. Add the cooked pasta and about 2/3 of the pesto and toss to coat. Add some of the reserved pasta water to thin out the pesto. Add more pesto if needed. (It’ll probably depend on how much pasta you cooked.)

3. Stir in the cherry tomatoes and Parmesan cheese to taste. Taste for seasoning and adjust as needed. Serve with more Parmesan.

Makes 4-6 servings.

 

Other recipes like these: Basic Basil Pesto, Radish Leaf and Peanut Pesto, Spinach-Chive Pesto, Pasta with White Beans and Pesto, Pasta with Herbs and Optional Vegetables (method)

One year ago: Turkey Tomatillo Chili, Potato and SauerkrautCakes

Blueberry Rhubarb Sauce

 

This fruity sauce is simple and versatile and another nice and easy and delicious use of rhubarb. It’s inspired by this sauce and this sauce and a fabulous blueberry rhubarb jam recipe in The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving by Margaret Howard. Oh, and I made it long enough ago that an additional inspiration was last year’s rhubarb and some very fine blueberries languishing in the freezer.

Now, I’ve got plenty of rhubarb growing next to the backyard shed, so I plan to use the fresh stuff to make some more. I used most of the first batch on slices of this yogurt cake, and it was a great combination. I also think it would be perfectly wonderful on vanilla ice cream.

This sauce is a good balance of the berries and the rhubarb with neither flavor taking over the final product completely. We usually think of strawberries with rhubarb but I think just about any berry would work well with those tart and fruity stems. Since rhubarb is often available most of the summer, I see no reason why we shouldn’t keep the fruit sauces coming. Whatever berry is in season might benefit from a tart and saucy rhubarb boost.

I can certainly vouch for the deliciousness of the blueberry-rhubarb combo! And since this works well with frozen fruit as well as fresh, it’s not just something we could be making all summer, but all year long.

 

Blueberry Rhubarb Sauce

You can use fresh or frozen berries and rhubarb to make this sauce.

2 cups blueberries

2 cups chopped rhubarb
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water

1. Combine the blueberries, rhubarb, sugar and lemon juice in a medium-size saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often until the berries and rhubarb begin to give off some liquid and the sugar has dissolved.

2. Coarsely mash the fruit and continue to cook, bringing the mixture to a boil.

3. In a small bowl, combine the cornstarch and water, stirring to combine well. Stir into the blueberry mixture and return to a boil. Boil for 30 seconds to 1 minute or until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat. Serve slightly warm, at room temperature or even cold.

 

Other recipes like this one: Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce, Rhubarb Compote with Brown Sugar and Vanilla Bean, Blackberry Sauce with Lime and Vanilla

One Year Ago: Pasta with Asparagus, Snap Peas and Lemon; Rhubarb Custard Pie; Sugar Snap Pea and Radish Salad with Feta and Dill

The Way I Make "Spaghetti Sauce"

There was a time, way (way) back when I was living more or less on my own and was in graduate school, that I felt that one should know how to make “spaghetti sauce.” You know, something tomato-y and garlicky, perhaps meaty and peppery. Something to put on spaghetti. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how my mom made hers. Yes, I was in graduate school and my education had such a lack. I have a vague memory of turning to my red-and-white-checked Better Homes and Gardens cookbook as a source of self-improvement.

So this isn’t my Italian grandmother’s secret recipe, the biggest reason being that I don’t have an Italian grandmother. It is, however, plainly and simply, the way I make sauce for pasta. My ingredient list has evolved over the years, but I can’t really say I can trace my logic except in a few simple places: I remember chopping up a whole green pepper and putting it in and I really liked the results, so it stayed; and, in order to remember what size cans of tomato products to use, I settled on three that would stack into a pyramidal tower. The large (28-ounce) can of tomatoes on the bottom, the 15-ounce can of sauce on top of that, and at the spire the little (6-ounce) can of tomato paste.

 

 

This sauce takes a long time to make, but most of that is stewing time in which the cook mostly waits for things to happen. There’s not even that much chopping, and there’s very little measuring involved. It’s so versatile, however, and it freezes well, so I really should make it more regularly to keep on hand. I not only top pasta with it just as it is, but I’ll also add seasoned ground beef or meatballs; use it to make lasagna; and mash up some of the chunkier bits, add some crushed fennel seed and a little honey or sugar and use it as a pizza sauce.

No, this is not an Italian-American grandmother’s secret recipe, but, like any Italian grandmother worth her sale, it’s the way I make it and the way I like it, and I get no complaints when I serve it to guests (or my husband). It’s a basic sauce and it’s a good sauce…and it can really mess up an apron!

 

Basic Tomato Pasta Sauce

Additional salt, seasonings, and a little sugar may be needed depending on the brand of canned tomato products you use and your personal preferences.

If available, substitute fresh herbs to taste if you prefer. Since I made this in the winter, I stuck with more convenient dried herbs.

 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium green bell pepper, seeds, ribs and stems removed, finely chopped
1 medium sweet yellow onion, skin and root removed, finely chopped
1 teaspoon coarse (kosher) salt
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
6 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon dried basil

a small amount of sugar, additional salt or additional seasonings, to taste if needed

 

1. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large kettle or Dutch oven.  Add the bell pepper, onion and salt. Cook over medium heat stirring occasionally about 10 minutes or until the peppers and onions are soft and just beginning to brown.

2. Stir in the red pepper flakes and garlic. Cook about 1 minute more. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat, and cook about 2 hours at a very gentle boil, stirring occasionally. The sauce should be very thick and the peppers and onions very tender.

3. Remove the bay leaf. Taste the sauce and add some sugar if it is too sour. Add additional salt or other seasonings to taste as well.

 

Makes a big pot of sauce that can be used to top pasta, in lasagna and other casseroles, or even on pizza. Keep refrigerated for a few days or frozen for a few months.

  

Other recipes like this one: Simple Tomato-Garlic Sauce, Pizza Sauce, Tomato Sauce with Root Vegetables

One year ago: Ricotta Tart with Peppers and Onions, Grandmama’s Buttermilk Biscuits

Homemade Hot Pepper Sauce

My chili pepper plants may have overachieved. Like some kind of tiger mother, I encourage such behavior, especially since Bon Appetit magazine published a simple recipe for homemade hot sauce with nothing more than fresh chiles, salt and vinegar. I made half of the original recipe. Even though my pepper plants produced plenty I’d planted just a pair. The 8 ounces of fresh red chiles I used made about a cup of sauce, which will be plenty for us to use in the months to come.

This recipe is simple and its deliciousness is entirely dependent upon the flavor of the chile peppers. Fresh chiles with their stems removed are processed to a rough paste with coarse salt and then mixed with white distilled vinegar and allowed to stand for a few days. The mixture is processed again to form a puree and strained. That strained liquid is your hot sauce.

My chiles are pretty spicy, so my sauce is quite fiery. It’s mostly pure liquid hot chile essence, which is what hot sauce is all about.  I was surprised that it didn’t taste more vinegary, like a buffalo sauce, since there’s quite a bit of vinegar in the recipe. It must be that the pure hot hot hotness takes over completely. I don’t have a problem with that.

While I had lots of small, red chile peppers, you could use whatever chiles you like. If you’re a hot sauce or chile pepper enthusiast, you could try a variety of peppers or combinations. I’m thinking of making some jalapeno sauce from the other pepper plants I’ve got. (They’re doing well in my garden, too.) I’m also thinking of trying other varieties in the garden next year, just to expand my hot sauce experimentation.

I recommend some pretty serious caution when working with chiles in this recipe. Every time I touch a cut chile, the spicy oils get on my hands and don’t come off for hours, even with serious scrubbing. Sometimes my hands start burning after supper. Actually, it’s really weird. But seriously, the pepper paste and puree created in this recipe are even more potent when it comes to chile power. It’s also fairly volatile, so be careful where you breathe, too. And for the love of all that is good and decent, don’t touch your eyes until you’re absolutely certain there’s no more hot stuff on your hands!

 

You probably don’t need me to tell you how to use this stuff. It goes with everything, depending on your personal taste. Since there’s now plenty of it in the refrigerator, I’m going to have to start using it in more places. I’ve put it on my eggs so far and, as all you enthusiasts know, that’s a delicious application for hot sauce. It looks like things are going to be a bit spicier around here!

Homemade Hot Pepper Sauce

Adapted from Bon Appetit magazine

Be very careful when handling chiles, chile paste, and the resulting hot sauce in this recipe.

8 ounces fresh chile peppers, any variety
1 tablespoon kosher salt
3/4 cup distilled white vinegar

1. Remove the stems from the chiles and place them in the bowl of a food processor. Add the salt and process to a coarse paste.

2. Transfer to a glass jar. Loosely cover the jar with a lid and let stand at room temperature for at least a day and up to seven days. (I let mine stand about 5 days or so.) You can taste the mixture regularly and decide when to move on to the next step. The longer the mixture stands, the more chile flavor you will have.

3. Pour the mixture into a blender. (You could also use a food processor for this step.) Process for about 1 minute or until smooth.

4. Strain the pureed mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a funnel placed in a jar or bottle. Press the thick mixture through the sieve with a rubber spatula or spoon to extract as much of the liquid as possible. Store in the refrigerator for up to four months. The hot sauce is likely to separate upon standing, so shake before using.

Makes about 1 cup.

One year ago: Zucchini Wheat Bread

Why Not Broccoli?

I collect about seven million recipes every year. (I’m exaggerating…a little.) And so when I finally get around to going through them, I’ve often missed the season for some of the more interesting ones. Take, for instance, a recipe for Spicy-Sweet Green Beans from Food Matters by Mark Bittman. This summer, I had plenty of green beans with which to try this treatment, but, of course, the notes I took on the recipe were buried in a notebook that was buried in some other papers, which were in turn buried in the ubiquitous clutter when we moved.

So now I have this recipe, but no beans, except, perhaps, for those that would have been grown a thousand miles away in the Emerald City or somewhere else perpetually green. What I was really interested in was the sauce anyway, so I looked at the last few CSA boxes of the season and said, “Why not broccoli?”

Broccoli is always a good vehicle for sauces, since its bushy, bushy green hairdo is lovely for trapping flavors like a mop. This sauce, which is quite thick, didn’t so much ooze into the broccoli florets as coat the whole piece with its rich spicy, sweet, salty, tangy goodness. You kind of have to scoop up the sauce with the broccoli rather than soak it up, but the result is just as good.

Actually, this isn’t really about the broccoli. It’s about the sauce. I don’t care whether it gets scooped by or soaked into my vegetables, or even what vegetables they are (I think it would be good with steamed cauliflower or sautéed cabbage as well as the green beans in the original recipe). It’s about the sauce, I tell you. This sauce is fabulously delicious. This sauce is one of my new favorite foods. I’m trying to think of a way to slather it on every meal. I’m thinking of giving it out to trick-or-treaters.

Okay, that might be going too far, but this is maddeningly good stuff with a sharp, strong, wake-you-up flavor from lots of garlic, plenty of dried chiles, honey and soy sauce. The sweet and the spicy are beautifully balance and the salty-tangy (some would say umami-filled) soy sauce and sturdy ground almonds fill in all the flavor spaces. The only thing I might consider adding is a bit of sesame oil. That, however, might totally blow my mind. If so, I’ll take full responsibility. I doubt I’ll be able to blame it on the broccoli anyway.


Broccoli with Sweet and Spicy Almond Sauce
Adapted from Food Matters by Mark Bittman

1 pound broccoli florets
½ cup whole almonds
2 large (or 3 medium) garlic cloves
2 dried hot chiles
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons soy sauce

1. Place the broccoli in a microwave-safe dish. Add about 2 tablespoons water and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Poke several holes in the plastic wrap with a knife (this will allow steam to escape).

2. Microwave the broccoli for 3 minutes on high. Carefully remove the plastic wrap, avoiding any escaping steam. The broccoli should be tender-crisp, but you can steam it longer if you like. Drain the broccoli. Set aside.

3. Combine the almonds, garlic, dried chiles and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a food processor. Process until a coarse paste is formed. If the mixture is too dry to form a paste, add a little more olive oil. Set aside.

4. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes or until the onion is soft and beginning to brown. Add the almond mixture from the food processor and cook about 2 minutes more. This mixture is fairly sticky in the pan, so you’ll want to stir and scrape it up frequently.

5. Stir in the honey and soy sauce. Add the cooked broccoli and toss to coat with the sauce mixture. Cook just until heated through.

Makes about 4 side-dish servings.

Other recipes like this one: Sesame-Soy Asparagus with Ginger and Garlic, Spicy Sesame Cabbage and Zucchini, Szechuan Broccoli and Water Chestnut Stir Fry

One year ago: Chard Soup with Cilantro and Lime

Two years ago: Homemade Pizza