FFwD: Salmon Rillettes

I stalled all week before making the Salmon Rillettes from Around My French Table. I was thrown off by how much I disliked the smoked salmon waffles that I caught up on last week. The idea of more smoked salmon, in any capacity, didn't sound appetizing. On the other hand, I'm glad I did two smoked salmon recipes were back to back, because I was able to use up the leftover fish that I still had in the fridge.

This was easy to make. Diced salmon is poached very quickly in a white wine and spice mixture, then mixed up with smoked salmon, spring onions, a hot red pepper, lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter. Let it sit in the fridge for a few hours, then smear on some bread.

I was suprised by how much I enjoyed this. The smoked salmon is diluted enough to be non-aggressive, and the overall effect is of a light, fresh spread. Very tasty, and I loved the fact that I could make it during the day, while Charlie was at school, and not have to do anything but make a little salad to get ready for dinner. I read for the hour I would normally be cooking. It was glorious. (Reading The Goldfinch, if you care. I'm having a hot and cold relationship with this massive book. I adore giant chunks, and then it sloooooooows down. For a hundred pages. I digress.)

Matt wasn't as smitten with this recipe as I was, but he also didn't enjoy the benefit of being able to prepare it completely in advance. That scored big points for me.

Pain in the Ass

Remember when I said that Charlie specifically requested that we make Cowboy Elmo's Fastest Mac' n' Cheese in the West? Meaningless, in terms of his willingness to actually try it.

The Commissary only had white American cheese, so that's what I bought. With that one decision, I sounded this meal's death knell. You see, our pasta turned out to be white instead of yellow. The picture in the book was yellow. Because ours was not yellow, Charlie refused to taste it. Not even one bite.

He has been banished to his bedroom, and I'm quite sure I'm in for a long night.

I'm certain he would like it if he tasted it. I actually thought this was good. It's more like out-of-the-box mac n cheese than any other version I've made. It's just a bit of milk, a bit of oil (I used olive instead of vegetable), add the cooked pasta and broken up American cheese, and mix it all together until it's saucy.

Had I realized that the color would be such a problem, I would have shredded some cheddar to add to the mix. More cheese never hurt anything.

As far as the cooking goes, Charlie counted out eight slices of cheese, broke up two of them, then said that I should do the rest. He scooped the pasta out of the box, and he added the oil, milk, and cheese to the pot. Seems like an okay level of involvement to me. There wasn't much else to it, except for the parts that involved boiling water.

Not really sure how to judge this. I think I need to make a Wouldn't Taste It category.

I was in a good mood before we started cooking. I'm currently seething. The joys of parenthood. Sha na na naaaaa!

Update: After an hour, he came out of his room and ate his cold, congealed pasta. Going to call it a "Liked it." 

Long Term Project: C is for Cooking

The Easter Bunny brought Charlie a Sesame Street cookbook: C is for Cooking. I've bought kid cookbooks before. They're usually pretty underwhelming, either because they're aimed at older kids, or because the food is flat-out lame. I'm sorry, but I can make all the raw vegetable smiley-faces I want. Charlie isn't going to eat it.

I ordered C is for Cooking without seeing it first, and it looks decent. Not that these will be award-winning meals or anything, but they are easy recipes with clear steps. I also like that they specify which steps are kid-appropriate and provide little counting games and such to do while you're cooking.

Charlie likes to look through his cookbook while I look through mine. Yesterday he pointed to the mac n cheese recipe and asked if we could make it. Heck yeah, we can make it! It's on tonight's menu. Figured that I should make this book a long-term project so that I don't forget to use it with him. My judgments for how successful a recipe was will be based on whether or not Charlie ate it, not if I liked it, and how much he can actually participate.

FFwD: Piperade Stir-Fry

This week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe features assorted colors of pepper, stir fried together with an onion (supposed to be red, but I had white), garlic, olive oil, piment d'Espelette (I just used chili powder) and red wine vinegar. It was straightforward enough, and became a good topping for a burger. It didn't really wow me, though. We learned to make a similar recipe in an Italian cooking class that I'm taking here in Napoli, and that one has a lot more pizzazz--the peppers are roasted, then mixed with lots of garlic and parsley, oil, and white wine vinegar. I'd go that route in the future.

My biggest complaint is that the recipe uses five peppers, which is supposed to serve four people. I cut the recipe in half, and this still made a ton of peppers. 

This week, I also caught up on the recipe for Roasted Rhubarb. I saw some rhubarb at the Commissary for the first time ever, so I snagged it, ran home, and made this. Fortunately, the only other ingredients are sugar and lemon zest, because I didn't really know what the recipe entailed when I bought the rhubarb, I just knew I had a rhubarb recipe to do. I threw in some strawberries, too, because I was alarmed by how sulfuric the rhubarb smelled when I was cutting it up. Does it always smell like farts? I've never used it before. I thought strawberries could only help.

This was delicious, and I really enjoyed the texture of the roasted rhubarb. Yum.

I made Smoked Salmon Waffles for dinner tonight. I'm really not a huge smoked salmon fan, and this was a bit much for me. I put a poached egg on top of the waffle, because poached eggs improve everything they touch. Still, I couldn't finish the whole waffle. The fishiness just got to be too much.

This one gets a big thumbs down from me. I suspect, from the lack of enthusiasm in his voice, that Matt may be picking up a pizza for himself on the way home from work.

My Calabria: Polenta con Fagioli e Salsiccia

I had to modify Costantino's recipe for Polenta with Beans and Sausage (Polenta con Fagioli e Salsiccia) a bit. By, "a bit," I really mean that I altered every single element.

First of all, I completely forgot to soak dried cranberry beans, and subbed a can of cannelini beans instead. I'm sure that the dried beans would have maintained more structural integrity than my canned ones did, but whatever. It was good enough with canned beans.

The recipe requires fine cornmeal, which it says is typical in Calabria, versus the coarse cornmeal found in other parts of Italy. I was only able to find coarse cornmeal, so that is what I used. Mine did not have a "smooth, soft, almost custard-like texture," but again--whatever. It was good enough with coarse.

Lastly, I used sweet Italian sausage, rather than hot. Charlie isn't fond of spicy food. There was no chance I'd use hot sausage, when I know he'll eat the sweet kind.

This recipe was surprisingly easy to make, and the crusty slices of browned sausage were a hit with all of us. The polenta is cooked in tomato puree and water, so I'm going to pretend that's a valid vegetable serving. Once the polenta is thick, the beans and cooked sausage are dumped back into the pot, cooked for a few more minutes, and voila! Dinner.

How do they make food looks so good in cookbooks?

Charlie did taste the polenta, but he said he didn't like it. That's all I ask. He did eat a heap of sausage, so it wasn't a total bust.

I thought this was very tasty right off of the stove. It's not as great after it cools and congeals. That holds for all polenta dishes, though. This was especially easy and quick because there was no chopping involved. I'd make this one again.

Conclusion: Liked it.

Pasta, Pasta, Pasta

One element of Italian cooking that I absolutely love, and never knew about before moving to Napoli, is their affinity for carb on carb action. Beans with pasta? Bene! Potatoes with pasta? Even better. The beans/potato get all starchy and creamy and coat the pasta in the most satisfying (gut-busting) sort of way.

Pasta e Patate "Santo Janni" (pg 66 of My Calabria) turned out exactly how I hoped it would. Cook up some pancetta. Add potatoes to the pan and stir around to coat them in all that good fat. Add water and boil until the potatoes are mashable. Mash 'em, then add cooked spaghetti with some of the pasta water. Finish with some shredded ricotta salata (salty), and dig in. Easy and hearty. I loved it. Charlie loved it. High score, all around.  I mean, pancetta, potatoes, and pasta. How can it go wrong?

Conclusion: Loved it.

Scorze di Fagiolini con Ragu d'Agnello (pg 82) is unlike any sauce I've had before. It's supposed to use diced lamb, but I had ground, so that's what I went with. Cook the lamb for an hour in an onion/carrot/celery/garlic/rosemary-fortified tomato and white wine sauce. This took a while to cook, but that time was predominantly hands-off. It packed a lot of flavor for the amount of work put in, and was a new lovely way to eat lamb.

Matt thought it tasted like the Bolognese sauce we had in Bologna, which was very different from the Bolognese sauce we've had anywhere else (ahem, in the States). Did you know that Bolognese sauce is not tomato based? I didn't, until I had the real deal in Bologna. For that reason, I don't really see the Bolognese comparison, as it is a) not made with lamb and b) not made with tomato. Matt stands by it, though. Whatever it tasted like, it was good. Charlie picked the lamb off of his pasta. Shocker.

Conclusion: Liked it. 

FFwD: Food Revolution Day

This week, French Fridays with Dorie is participating in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day. The goal is to "get kids excited about food" by cooking a meal together. For the Doristas, the challenge was to select a recipe from Around My French Table that every child should know how to make, then have a little chef help to cook it.

At first, I was tempted to have Charlie help me prepare one of his tried-and-true AMFT favorites: gougeres (aka "cheesy poofs"), Dressy Pasta Risotto, or Almond Flounder Meuniere. None of these are especially healthy options, though, and even though it wasn't specified in our challenge, healthy eating is part of Jamie's whole mission (right?). So, I decided to choose a healthier option, despite the fact that Charlie is the most stubborn eater I've ever met in my life, and has only recently been willing to even nibble a vegetable. Any vegetable. He wouldn't even eat them as an infant. Frustrating.

I love soup. Especially Dorie's soups. They're a delicious, effortless way to eat loads of veg. I believe in soup's potential to get vegetables into my 4-year-old, and I believe that Charlie would like it, if he would taste it. I never imagined so much of my parenting energy would be spent trying to get this child to eat something--anything. I've tried the soup trick many times, and have never succeeded, but I still believe that he will eat them. Eventually.

Our dinner rule is that he doesn't have to eat it, but he does have to taste everything on his plate. If he won't taste it, he'll go to bed hungry. Charlie goes to bed hungry a lot, though we've been having a bit more success in the past two weeks. Chipping away at his resolve, I guess.

Charlie's been excited to help me cook lately. At his school, they started having the kids prepare lunch on Wednesdays. Now he wants to chop things all the time. Unfortunately, this has not translated into an excitement for trying what he's made. I hoped that if he helped me cook Dorie's Celery-Celery Soup, he'd taste it. Just one bite. It's a simple recipe, mostly involving peeling and chopping of vegetables. Perfect for a four-year-old.

I was thwarted before I even started. In the car on the way home from his preschool, I told him we were going to do a cooking project and make some soup when we got home. He pitched a tantrum the entire 20 minute drive home because we were making soup instead of pasta. Maybe we've lived in Italy too long. Charlie is adopting the Italian "must eat pasta at dinner" rule. My brain has yet to wrap itself around the argument that pasta has so many preparations that one could never tire of it, but Charlie agrees fully (as long as I contain my preparations to pomodoro, pesto, or carbonara.)

He refused to help cook. He's helped me make dinner every day this week, but the day I specifically asked him to? Not interested. Sorry, Jamie. Four year olds. What can I say?

My dog ate the loaf of homemade bread that I planned to serve with the soup (she's lucky she's cute), so I heated up some of Dorie's Swiss Chard Pancakes that were in the freezer. Charlie helped me make those, even if it was a month ago, so he did, technically, eat something he helped prepare. Does that count?

We had a bit of a dinner stand-off. He gobbled one of his two swiss chard pancakes. I held the second hostage until he tasted his soup. Fortunately, he loves those pancakes. There was a lot of grumbling, nose-wrinkling, and exclamations of how he didn't like the soup (prior to tasting it), but he did bring spoon to mouth.

Look at him, bracing to be disgusted.

And then you know what happened? He thought about it for a minute.

hmmm...if I admit that I like you, Mom wins.

Then he took another bite. Uncoerced!

If I make a sour face while eating, she won't catch on.

Before I knew it, I could see the bottom of his bowl, and he was chattering away as if he hadn't been a giant nudge all afternoon.

VICTORYYYYYY!!!!

At least he's an equal opportunity discriminator. It's not like he'll only eat junk food and sweets. He won't eat those either. It takes work to be in the "zeroeth percentile" for weight! (His doctor actually said "zeroeth" at his 4 year checkup.) Earlier this week, he was excited to help me bake the Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake from Dorie's book, Baking, for my birthday.

I encouraged him to taste the caramel after it was ready, because, I mean: CARAMEL. I wanted to stick my face in the bowl. He wouldn't do it. Whose child is this??? He's so crazy. I gave him a piece of cake after dinner, but he didn't touch it. Oh well.

"Cheeeeeese!"

I don't get it.

I need to keep pureed soup in the rotation so he doesn't forget he likes it.