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Stuffed Shells

One of the more pedestrian comfort foods. I was making this for a friend, and realized that even though this is not a dish I make frequently (maybe once every 8 years or so), I have strong opinions about it.

My strong opinion: Why so little flavor?

So let’s start with the filling.

Let’s start with the eggs in the filling. I never notice them, they don’t seem to provide much structural support, and they make your cooking/reheating slightly more complex than just – assemble and heat until hot enough you’d be happy serving it. So I don’t use them. Your mileage may vary.

But you should totally have other things in there. Other green (but not watery) things! For a pint of ricotta, there should be at least 2 scallions – sliced thinly all the way up including the green parts (but not any dried tips, let’s be real). There should be a huge amount of parsley (a fluffy pile of minced leaves that looks to be about the same volume as half your amount of ricotta). You have a mix of dried italian herbs? Throw a bunch of that in the filling. You have fresh basil? Mince and throw in maybe as much as a fluffy pile of 1/4 the volume of your container (I don’t know – it depends how flavorful your plant is – go by what smells good to you). Mix that together. Taste. Add salt. Maybe add pepper. Mix again.

Some people add spinach or chard to the recipe. Either have a delicate hand with the fresh leaves, OR cook the leaves first, press very dry, cut up finely, fluff with your hands, and stir in thoroughly making sure you don’t have clumps.

So now you have your filling.

Let’s fix the pasta – take any old box of dried pasta shells. Boil the water, pick out just the intact shells to throw in (a few more than you’ll actually need because a couple usually tear while cooking), and cook for the package directions. Most dried pasta has a range of times depending on how firm you want it, but jumbo shells boxes usually just have the time for ‘pretty darn firm’ because they know you aren’t eating them straight away – people only make them for stuffed shells. And then once they are cooked and drained, rinse them in cold water (so they stay firm – and in this case getting the surface starch off will benefit you by having them less likely to stick together and tear)

Now you get your casserole and your sauce. I just use jarred sauce. You can have your own sauce opinions.

Spoon a little bit of the sauce into the empty casserole dish and spread around.

Grab a shell, stuff it with the ricotta (you get to balance your ricotta/shell ratio based on your preferences and relative amounts of materials), and lay them out in a single layer on the pan. Again, you get to choose how orderly your layout might be.

Once you have all the shells in the casserole dish that you want to have (this works best if you have chosen a dish sized to have the shells fit fairly firmly together inside, but still all in a single layer). And pour more sauce over it. Because I am not a fan of crunchy pasta (I know people who are, so not judging), I make sure to spread the sauce to get all of the pasta surfaces at least a bit wet and red even if they aren’t buried fully in the pasta sauce.

If you have it on hand and are feeling the gooey cheese, sprinkle mozzarella on top.

(If you have a casserole dish with a lid, you can totally freeze this right now)

Bake at any temperature (250F-375F) until the dish is as hot as is aesthetically pleasing to you. I go until the cheese on top is bubbling and maybe browning in a couple spots. (If frozen, make sure it’s warm throughout before caring about the condition of the topping – that might mean thawing ahead or not using the highest heat you possibly can)

Serve and eat. Enjoy!

Laterculi: Poppy Seed Pop Tarts

Okay, so this is not an accurate redaction. Or, well, it’s about (slightly less) as likely to be accurate as anything else.

There’s a play by Plautus (Poenulus 325-6) there’s a reference to laterculi with the only description being that they are composed of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, (wheat) flour, and nuts.

Okay, so the name is also descriptive. It’s the word for bricks or tiles.

Some people take this description and match it with gastris, a food from Crete described by Athenaeus as walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds and poppy seeds, with fruit, honey, pepper and white sesame seeds. That will lead you to redactions both simple and amazing.

Now that last gastris redaction – which looks to me like a seedy fruitcake – would be perfect to make in an 8″ x 8″ x 2″ shape that was not unlike a common Roman brick shape.

On the other hand, Athanaeus’ gastris recipe has fruit and no flour. But Plautus was very clear that flour was involved in this project. Flour would be easy to add to the gastris because the nuts are working in a similar way. But it’s also leeway to go in a completely different direction.

One could make candies out of the honey and seeds with just a bit of flour.

Or! And here’s what came to my mind as being kinda fun – you could make pop tarts and call them tiles.

Okay, so pop tarts. First place to go is Smitten Kitchen‘s homemade pop tart recipe.

Next the filling. I liked how La Spelonca separated the poppy seeds and the sesame seeds. It both made them look more dramatic and kept the flavors clear and less like bagel toppings. So tentative working plan is to have two different flavors of pop tarts: Poppy Seeds and either almonds or walnuts or both; and Sesame Seeds and either hazelnuts or pistachios or both.

Okay, so poppy seed filling is a thing. But my first google search yielded only recipes that called for milk… but the Romans mostly ate their dairy in the form of cheese. It just didn’t feel right.

So I kept looking and loved this one that described the method and thought process beautifully and clearly – cook poppy seeds with a minimal amount of water, grind, cook again with honey and sugar.

Okay, so first I have to find the poppy seeds. So off I go to Amazon. And the first review right off the start informs me that real bakers look for unwashed poppy seeds for a richer, nuttier flavor and a better texture. Well, okay. So off I go looking at the unwashed poppy seeds and their reviews. And then things started to get weird. There was some division, but also some overlap, between the bakers and the people making poppy seed tea. And some of the people making the poppy seed tea seemed more interested in the color of their tea than the flavor, but others loved the flavor. Erm… And then I got to the ones talking about how ‘effective’ their tea and/or baked goods were. And there was the one who assured people that the reviewer really could tell that these poppy seeds were unwashed because there was plant material included as well. Ummm… I object! Because if I’m baking and there’s plant material, don’t I then need to wash the poppy seeds? But it wasn’t all double entendre and drug references, because there were still people staunchly championing the unwashed seeds while listing their preferred baked good and their baking credentials. But then I got to the one that was all, “I just made the best batch of muffins ever. Now I’m off to take a nap.” And I just. Now I have no idea whether kolaches is actually a baked good or just a wink and nod drug reference in the land of amazon reviews. So I still haven’t what to buy for making a large quantity, but I picked up half a pound of what are definitely washed seeds at a spice shop in the Italian Market.

So poppy seeds and water in a small saucepan. Check. Going well. The poppy seeds take on moisture, darken, and swell.

Grind the poppy seeds… doesn’t go so well. I put some in my mortal and grind it with the pestle… and it goes okay, but every time any utensil touches the poppy seeds there’s mess left behind. And so after a few desultry grinding attempts I figure I might as well see if I might like the consistency of it not ground all that much. So I put it all back in the saucepan and add the honey. And then add more honey because honey was more common that sugar back in the day. And then panic! Because the honey just liquifies and everything becomes sloshy. And cooking it more doesn’t make it any drier. And what if I really needed sugar to get a good paste because of how honey is like an invert sugar? Eh, whatever – let’s refrigerate what I have and see how it moves tomorrow. Plus I’m going to add nuts to it.

And the paste is fascinating! I used a fork to move it and it’s sort of a non-Newtonian liquid. Woo!

Okay, so crust. Filling. Assembly!

I got a friend with skills and a marble rolling pin to help with the first set of rolling out (I’m hoping I can use my pasta roller when I’m on my own). I rough guessed a size that’s smaller than pop tarts. My goal is to find a size that stretches my supplies while still being large enough to not get grabbed by the handful. One or two should be an intuitively obvious portion size. These ended up about 4″ x 3″ (and I think I could go a smidge smaller and have them about the size of poker cards).

I did one batch with just an egg white wash for sealing and one with a beaten egg. I think I’ll go with the beaten egg for future versions (because simpler to brush and more efficient use of stuff).

About 2 teaspoons of filling lumped in the center. And then I spread it out with my fingers because everything else seemed to just get coated in seeds more than helping to move them where I wanted. I left 1 cm margin. I can try getting a narrower margin, but too narrow might lead to disaster. And then I crimped the edges sealed with a fork and poked holes in the top.

I started the oven at 350F. And then after 10 minutes with no obvious cooking I popped it up to 425F. Total cooking time was 25 minutes, and that was a little too much (very brown, some corners just starting to burn, still entirely edible and hella tasty). Then I looked at the recipe, which was 350F for 30 minutes. So I just panicked too early.

When they were cooking, there was enough butter in the dough to lead to puddles of bubbling fat that were almost frying the pop tarts. So not okay for a toaster! But it was kind of sexy on a lined sheet pan.

When you bite in, the first taste is browned butter. And the second bite is also butter with a bit of pastry. When you get to the filling, it’s amazing. The nuts and poppy seeds are a lovely texture among the crispy pastry flakes and I’m not going to worry about grinding the poppy seeds at all for the future. And the honey is a great balance to the butter. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. They’re going to make the best breakfast.

So plans for the future:

* reduce butter per 2 cups of flour from 1 cup to 3/4 cup (12 tablespoons)

* try rolling out with pasta roller

* Cut to 3.5″ x 2.5″

* Poppy seed & almond is great. Also try sesame seed & hazelnut.

* Make 75 of each flavor; 150 total. Freeze before baking.

Sigara böreği

The last day I was in Istanbul, my host let me help her make Sigara böreği. Here’s my attempt to document what we did so I can remember for the future.

Filling

3 bunches of fresh spinach (with large leaves) from the farmers market were washed thoroughly in several changes of water. She had 2 salad spinners going at once.

In a skillet, 1 minced medium/large white onion was softened in a generous glug of olive oil. Once it was soft, she peeled and shredded in 2 smaller potatoes (all that she had on hand, perhaps more would have been used if she had it) (large holes on a box grater). Stir stir stir. Cook Cook Cook.

And then the cleaned and roughly chopped spinach went in. And we cooked it until is was a soft and homogeneous mixture.

Season with black pepper and salt.

Then the heat was turned off, and it was set aside to prepare the wrappers.

Wrapping

Was not made with phyllo dough! She hod bought freshly made circles of thin dough from the local market. Yufka! Which I just found at a market in this city, which is why I am now thinking about making them on my own.

So she spread out this 2″ round of dough in a single layer on the counter (and kept the rest covered lest it dry out).

And she mixed together yogurt, eggs, and olive oil until it had a soupy texture (and she added ingredients as needed to get the right consistency).

Spread a thin-ish layer of the egg mixture over the yukfa. Fold the yukfa in half, so you now have a semi-circle. Slice the semicircle into 6-8 (I forget which) long triangle wedges.

Assembly

Spoon 1-2 Tablespoons of the spinach filling on the wide part of the triangle. Tuck in the corners and roll the dough around the filling. If it seems dry, feel free to add more of the egg mixture to seal, but it shouldn’t be wet either.

Lay your finished cigars on a lined baking sheet. They can now sit overnight in the refrigerator (I don’t remember if this is just okay or preferred).

When ready, bake at 425F for 15-20 minutes.

Things that are missing from this recipe
She also had white cheese (like feta) that went into this dish. Was it mixed into the spinach once it had cooled? Or was it in the egg mixture? I don’t remember.

Were there any herbs in the spinach mixture? A bit of parsley wouldn’t hurt.

Other similar recipes online
http://www.deliciousistanbul.com/blog/2011/03/15/sigara-borek/
http://www.deliciousistanbul.com/blog/2012/02/14/swiss-chard-pastirma-borek-recipe/

Sigara Boregi – Crispy Cheese and Herb filled Filo Pastry Rolls


http://www.turkishcookbook.com/2006/08/cigarette-borek.php

slow bounce

Turkish Cigarette Börek (Sigara Böreği) with Roasted Tomato Sauce

vegan -> http://www.messyvegetariancook.com/2010/05/19/vegan-spinach-borek/

ETA: Okay – so I’ve made it now and can answer all the questions I had before!

First – this is not a crispy version. This dough looks terrifyingly designed to be crispy. I was sure that everything was ruined because I only had storebought Yufka instead of getting a fresh batch from a local market. Everything turned out fine.

Second – Yes, add the cheese to the filling once it has cooled. I ended up using a mixture of peccorino romano and sheep milk beyaz peynir. Whatever brined white cheese should be tasty. Also, I was worried about the saltiness of my cheese, so I was moderate about the salt in the filling. But, really, it could have used more salt.

Third – resting time is important! The first batch I cooked was the last batch I made, and it ended up releasing a puddle of oil that made the rolls soggy. I was resigned to finding them tasty anyway. But the second batch, which had been sitting long enough for the dough to fully hydrate and the tops (brushed with more of the egg/yogurt/oil mixture) to get a little tacky, didn’t lose any liquid and came out fairly similar to the ones I’d had in Istanbul. And the tops turned lovely golden and brown.

Cooking time – 425F for 20 minutes.

Beans for Breakfast – Azuki Bean, Lemon, and Coconut Bread Pudding; Red Bean Paste Cinnamon Rolls; Kale and White Bean Quiche; Conchicla Commodiana; Marrow Bean Jook

Okay, so you’re going to have to forgive me on this one – I’m trying to take pictures of my food, and photography isn’t one of my interests. However, of all the people I invited to eat my beans, I didn’t manage to invite anyone else who wanted to take pictures, either, so it was all up to me and the camera in my phone.

That said, I can cook – and cook I did. I wasn’t expecting a particularly good success rate. In fact, I did run out and buy bagels just in case everything failed – that’s how little confidence I had. This was way out of my comfort zone, and yet I ended up liking everything!

So I cook with beans regularly – why was this out of my comfort zone? Well, for one – one of the dish was a baking project, and I’m still not fully pleased with my breadmaking skills and don’t consider myself a competent baker yet. And for another – when I make beans for just me, I really enjoy cooking them to mush, but for this I wanted to much more precisely control the textures of the beans and have a wide range of firmnesses… and if I were going to be playing with it, they might all end up crunchy after 3 hours cooking and what would I do? Oh, my!

So my two main weapons for playing with texture were baking soda (basic) and citric acid (acidic). Well, okay, I had many options for acidifying, but alkalizing has fewer options.

Marx Foods is a lovely company, and so far they’re the only people to ever offer me free things to experiment with, and some of my favorite experiments have come from working with exotic samples they have given to me. This time, they gave me three kinds of beans: Marrow, Mayacoba, and Azuki.

And I made at least one dish for each bean.

Azuki beans – intrinsically sweet, source of red bean paste (on language)

my opinion – I didn’t find them all that sweet… just not so savory that sweet things wouldn’t work with them. But I did end up adding sugar to both dishes.

I separated the 700g of red beans into two sets of 350g each, and I cooked one with baking soda to make paste, and the other batch with an added 1/4 tsp of citric acid as soon as they started to soften so that I could work with whole beans. With both batches, I ended up using less than the whole quantity (noted in the recipes)

Dish 1 –
Azuki Bean, Lemon, and Coconut Bread Pudding

(dairy free)

ingredients:
1 lemon peel (after having been used for something else)
1 cup water
1 cup sugar

350g 150g azuki beans
50g coconut sugar
1/4 tsp citric acid

1 loaf challah, day old
1 cup large flake unsweetened dried coconut, loosely filled
1/2 cup golden raisins
8 10 eggs
3/4 cup coconut sugar
(2) 15oz can coconut milk

Two days before:

Take the peel of 1 lemon (organic, since you’re using the peel) and boil it in plain water. After the peel is soft and the water has a yellow tinge (the longer you boil it, the less bitter – I aim for about an hour), drain. Boil (low boil, not rolling, because this is hot sugar!) it again in equal parts sugar and water. Again, for as long as you have patience – at least half an hour. This time, when you remove the peel, reserve the syrup as well.

Put red beans on to soak. (I put them in an empty quart yogurt container, add plenty of water, and let sit about 24 hours)

The evening ahead:

Drain red beans and simmer in plenty of water until they just start to soften. Add sugar and cook for another 10 minutes. Bite a bean and see if it has a pleasing texture. When the texture is firm but not crunchy, add the citric acid. Stir. And then drain the beans.

Oil large casserole dish and tear the challah loaf into chunky pieces so that they fill the casserole dish. Add drained beans, coconut, and raisins. Slice off the pith from the lemon peel, and cut the candied peel into thin slivers – add as many of these slivers as you like, I used half a lemon’s worth.

Beat together the eggs, sugar, and coconut milk (I did this in a couple batches so that I could use a bowl with a spout – having a container that pours well is more important than efficiency here). Pour the mixture over the bread and fillings. Cover and refrigerate overnight – to make your life easier in the morning when you’re hungry, and so that it has a creamier texture because everything has longer to soak the liquids in.

The next morning:

Cook in a slow oven. (In this case, the cooking temperature and time were determined by another dish, but on it’s own I would guess that it would do well at 325F for 45minutes, but definitely check to make sure it’s cooked through)

Heat up a quarter cup of the reserved lemon syrup, and pour overtop the pudding.

Verdict:
I ended up with the beans a little harder than what I had pictured when I devised the dish, but it really worked well that way – they were almost like nuts. But my guest who abhors nuts in bread pudding (or almost anything sweet), still loved the dish. The beans and the coconut really play well together, and I’m thinking of taking the beans I ended up not using and simmer them with coconut milk to have with sweet sticky rice. I’ve adjusted the recipe also to include more liquid because mine ended up near the dry side, but I was limited by my coconut milk and didn’t want to switch to adding dairy to the amazingly dairy free bread pudding.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 6 out of 10
I found things with similar names on some restaurant menus (Ozumo’s execution in very different; Bamboo Sushi’s is also a bread pudding and has a citrus note, but the execution is darker and it does not have coconut), but I did not find any recipes or blog posts with a similar recipe. The closest I came there was a rice pudding.


Dish 2 – Azuki Bean Paste Cinnamon Rolls
(note: dough is only slightly adapted from King Arthur Flour’s guaranteed recipe)


ingredients:
(dough)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
198 to 255g lukewarm water
361g all-purpose flour
85g unsalted butter, at room temperature
35g vanilla sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
30g dry milk
21g oat flour
20 cardamom seeds, ground

(filling – enough for 2 batches of the dough above)
350g azuki beans, having soaked overnight
42g coconut sugar
1-2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp korintje cinnamon

2 tsp milk
oil for pans

(icing)
3oz cream cheese
1/3 cup powdered (vanilla) sugar
milk to thin for consistency

The evening ahead:

Make the dough – proof the yeast, mix everything together in a mixer with a dough hook for, “about 7 minutes at second speed, and the dough should barely clean the sides of the bowl, perhaps sticking a bit at the bottom,” put in a greased container to rise in the refrigerator overnight. (more complete directions here)

Make the paste:

Only use about an equal quantity of water to beans because you aren’t going to be pouring any off – add more as needed. Simmer. beans and water until soft.

Oh, what, they aren’t getting soft? Add 1 tsp of baking soda and stir that in. There’s no reason not to add the first teaspoon right at the beginning, but you get a fun foaming action if you wait until the beans have started to cook.

If they still take a while to soften, add up to another teaspoon of baking soda, but increase slowly.

Often with sweet things you add a pinch of salt for balance – do not do that here because baking soda has a salty taste of its own.

Once the beans are soft, add the sugar to taste. I like the coconut sugar because it’s not as sweet as regular sugar, and it has a bit of a toasty dark undertone. I was aiming for the low end of sweetness, so you might want more sugar.

Add the cinnamon. If you are using a milder cinnamon, feel free to increase the amount to taste.

Note that I don’t have any mushing directions. I found that just stirring broke down the beans to the point where there was a lumpy paste, and I liked the additional texture enough that I didn’t see a benefit to breaking it down further.

Refrigerate overnight.

That morning:

Roll out the dough to 16″ x 12″ (possibly just those dimensions because it fits well on the KAF cookie mat or because everything happens in half sheet pan measures – I was rolling it on the mat to measure). If the dough starts to resist and pull back in, cover it in plastic and come back in a few minutes to keep going.

Brush dough lightly with milk.

Spread a thin layer of the bean paste on top.

Roll dough the long way as tightly as will keep everything tight but not distort the dough too much. It will stretch some as you roll. Pinch the end to the roll to create a smooth seal (it seals especially well if you roll the seam to the bottom as you slice the cylinder).

Slice into 1″ pieces and set in your tins (I had 1 8″ round, which held 7, and 1 9″ square, which held 9). Cover and let rise for an hour.

Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes.

Whip together the cream cheese and powdered sugar, and then drizzle in the milk until it’s loose and runny. Drizzle lightly on top of the hot rolls.

Serve!

Verdict:
Wow! These came out perfect. And they were never frustrating, even though I’d been told that this sweet roll dough could be hard to work with. And I was going to put all of the credit on the King Arthur Flour recipe, but no – I have also gained skills, too! The giving up and letting the dough rest when it starts to fight back is definitely a new skill. There was no frustration rolling it out at all. And I now want to use my mixer for my bread doughs instead of all of this kneading by hand craftsmanship. Though the reason I went with mechanical help was that in the reviews and comments on the King Arthur site there were a couple people who had troubles, and the answer was almost always insufficient kneading time.

To prep for this recipe, I also checked Cooks Illustrated‘s techniques for making the dough. And while the dough wasn’t so useful there, they spent a lot of time discussing the problems of filling leaking and burning. And you know what – I think bean paste cinnamon rolls might be superior to cinnamon sugar ones. One – it stays where you put it and doesn’t leak. Two – instead of using the sugar for texture and quantity of filling as well as sweetness, you don’t have nearly as much flexibility with the sweetness level of the roll and they often end up too sweet.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 2 out of 10
This was hard to search as there are many permutations of rolls and buns, which might include or just be on the same page as cinnamon, using azuki beans or red bean paste. So it’s hard to be sure I wasn’t missing a lot. That said, I didn’t find many exact matches, which is actually a shame since I think it’s a superior result. The first match I found that was close was a cinnamon roll that used the beans in the dough, instead of the filling, but then I found someone with the exact same idea (in fact, that search was where I got the idea to include cardamom in the dough), only she did not enjoy the results as much as I did – partly because she processed her red bean paste more than I.

Mayacoba beansdescribed as mild beans that are thin skinned and also good at keeping their shape in cooking.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these! You know those kale and white bean soups that are so delicious? Imagine that – as a quiche!

Dish 3 – Kale and Mayacoba Bean Quiche

ingredients:
400g Mayacoba (Canary) beans, soaked overnight
1 sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
1 Tablespoon dried oregano

1 Pie crust (sorry, I used up all my baking mojo on the rolls – this was purchased)
egg white

1/3 lb pancetta, in 3 thick slices, then diced (bought at Milk & Honey Market)
1 medium purple onion, diced
3 large curly kale leaves, cut off the stem and sliced into thin shreds

4 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbsp spicy mustard (obtained mine at the Philly Food Swap

Put the beans and herbs together in a pot with plenty of water and simmer for an hour – but keep a close eye on them. We want them completely soft, but not at all mushy or broken down. And, yes, these beans were amazing for that – the skin might break, but the beans kept their shapes nicely. When they’re cooked to your satisfaction, drain them and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking. Pick out the rosemary stem and the bay leaf.

Cook the diced pancetta all the way until at least half of it is looking crispy. Pull out the pieces and drain on paper towels.

Take 2 Tablespoons of the pancetta fat, and cook the diced onion down in that over medium high heat. Once the onion is soft and starting to brown at the edges, add the kale. Just dump it over top, and then start turning it as the bottom wilts. Stop cooking it when the kale is a bright, vibrant green, soft all through, and glistening with an even coating of fat. (note: pancetta fat can be exceptionally salty, so wait until you can taste the kale before deciding whether to add more salt to accommodate the beans.

If you’re going to make the pie crust, do so. Lay the pie crust into the pan and ease it into the base. Prick all over with a fork and then brush with some egg white. (in the land of not being wasteful, I just go ahead and crack the first egg for the filling and aim the brush for whites – thus having one fewer dish to wash). Bake for 10 minutes at 350F

So now you have ready to go in: beans, cooked pancetta cubes, and a kale/onion mixture.

Take your pre-cooked pie crust and layer those fillings in. (I considered also adding a hard cheese, but that idea was abandoned when I saw how rich my other ingredients were already going to be). If you can, end with the kale on the top, but that doesn’t matter much.

Thoroughly scramble your eggs and beat in the dairy (yes, you can use half and half, instead) and the mustard. Pour the eggs over the filling, and then stir them together a bit (which will break up your layers – no worries.

Bake at 350F for about 45 minutes.

Verdict:
Yum! OMG Yum! This was exactly what I’d hoped. Everyone loved it. You really can’t go wrong with quiche. It didn’t even seem heavy at all, even with the full measure of beans. I’ve even frozen some pieces to reheat as breakfasts over the next few weeks. I tried microwaving one this morning, and it even reheats well. ♥


How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 8 out of 10
I have no idea why I didn’t find anyone else making this recipe – it’s delightful. Possibly because there are just so many white bean options that I didn’t search the right one. Here are the ones vaguely in the same family of delicious: white bean quiche with fennel and corn; spinach olive bean quiche; parsnip and kale quiche avec bacon; spinach and white bean quiche; vegan cannellini bean & kale quiche)

Erm… so I ran out of original ideas, and this next one is from a recipe. That said, it’s a recipe from ancient Rome that’s very different from a lot of food going on these days.

Dish 4 – Conchiclam Commodiana (Dried Beans in Commodus’ Style)

Conchicla Commodiana: pisam coques. cum despumaverit, teres piper, ligusticum, anethum, cepam siccam, suffundis liquamen, vino et liquamine temperabis. mittis in caccabum ut combibat. deinde ova IV solves, in sextarium pisae mittis, agitas, mittis in cumanam, ad ignem ponis, ut ducat, et inferes. (Apicius book 5, section 4, number 4) (I mostly used this site’s redaction, except for where I corrected their translation or substituted based on what I had available – and I didn’t look up the measurement equivalences… so only a little bit, but I did use it as a source)

ingredients:
400g Mayacoba (Canary) beans, soaked overnight
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp dill seeds (anethum is dill, not anise)
1 tsp epazote (because I wanted more green herbs, and it might be helpful with beans)
1 tsp fat or oil
1 small-medium yellow onion, finely diced (dried in recipe)
half a dozen healthy sprigs of parsley, leaves and stems divided, both chopped finely
1 tsp Phu Quoc fish sauce
2 Tbsp red wine
4 extra large eggs

Boil the beans, skimming off the froth.

With a mortar and pestle, grind the pepper, dill seed, and epazote.

In a skillet, fry the onion and parsley stems in a little oil (I used a teaspoon of the pancetta fat from the previous dish). Add the cooked beans, ground herbs, and fresh parsley – stir that together. Add the fish sauce and the wine, and it should be easy to stir, but not liquidy.

Take the beans off the fire and let cool.

Beat together the 4 eggs, and then stir into the cooled bean mixture.

Put it in the oven and cook very slowly. You could use a water bath, but I was already using the pan I usually use for that with the bread pudding, so instead I slowly raised the oven heat – letting it settle a bit at 180F, 220F, 275F, 325F, and 350F. And I think it was almost 2 hours before it looked cooked through.

Surprisingly, it was a souffle! I made ancient Roman bean souffle!

Verdict:
Fascinating. The (other) classicist among us said that it tasted like spring time – with the bright dill, green herbs, and earthy loamy beans. It was simultaneously heavy and light. It wasn’t a dinner dish, and I’m not sure it’s a breakfast dish. This was solidly in the land of brunch food.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 2 out of 10
You won’t find it anywhere else, but I certainly didn’t make it up.

Ohhh… this next one might be my favorite. This is the only one that could actually be a workday breakfast.

Marrow beans – described as having a creamy texture with either a meaty or a bacon-y flavor.

Okay, so this past year I finally started to enjoy congee or jook – by making it at home. I was inspired by both Tea and Cookies and David Lebovitz to make it at home with rich and flavorful little tidbits.

And I thought to myself – why not cook a very thin bean soup full of tastiness like you do with rice? I was so confident of this recipe, that I used the whole measure instead of dividing it into two potential recipes.

So I have no idea how incredibly inappropriate the name of this dish is – probably a bit, since it’s not rice – but I also have no better word to describe to you what is going on in this dish.

Marrow Bean Jook

ingredients:
1 tsp bacon fat (or pancetta fat, or any oil, really)
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 inches of ginger, cut into thin 1″ matchsticks
750g marrow beans, soaked overnight

duck stock

1 cup dried chanterelle mushrooms, steeped in hot water for half an hour

3 scallions, sliced into thin rounds
2 garlic cloves, sliced into thin rounds
2 mild peppers, sliced into thin rounds with no seeds

Stock:
Right, so I made special duck stock for this dish. I picked up a container of duck heads and feet from Siu Kee Duck House in Chinatown, and I cooked it overnight at 200F with my allium ends and carrot peelings, seasoned with 2 dried chilies (one of the few remaining things from the first sampler of free things Marx Foods sent me), black peppercorns, 3 whole cloves, 1 star anise, some fennel fronds, and a sprig of rosemary.

Jook:
In a bit of fat, cook down the onions. When they are creamy, add the garlic and ginger. After a minute, add the drained beans. Stir a few times, and then in goes the stock. Don’t worry if the stock is gelled solid, it will melt as it gets warm.

And then cook it for hours as you make everything else.

After the first hour, take the rehydrated mushrooms and cut them into centimeter pieces. And go ahead and add both the mushrooms and their water to the jook – it’ll only make it tastier.

Stir it every 15-30 minutes to encourage it to break down. I found that the marrow beans did not need any baking soda to turn smooth.

Near when it was time to serve, I took the three condiments above (scallions, garlic, and hot pepper) and toasted them separately in a barely-oiled skillet and put them out for toppings.

Also, go ahead and taste the soup. Mine was plenty salty, but if it had not been, I would have added a teaspoon of fish sauce.

Would also be excellent with a poached egg on top – but this particular meal had used plenty of eggs already.


Verdict:
YUM! Totally breakfast-y. Rich flavors, mellow intensity. Felt like a big hug.

How original is this recipe? Let’s say it’s a 7 out of 10
There’s millions of years of history of thin bean soups. Gruel, porridge, pottage, pulse – there’s really very little possibility this is a unique innovation. But as far as I can tell, it’s the only one on the internet.

Here’s a small selection of other things vaguely like it that I found while searching: lima bean potato gruel (wow – least exciting name for food ever); mung bean millet gruel; Pat jook (made with azuki beans, so that wouldn’t have been original); fruited green bean congee; congee with mung bean; 1889 bean porridge; Tutu – dutch Antilles bean porridge; mung bean porridge in coconut milk; Molly Katzen’s Bean Porridge; Ful

Kale for breakfast with a poached egg on top

I love having greens for breakfast, and I’m glad any morning I have the time to cook and fresh greens in the fridge.

This was actually almost dinner, but I’d gotten everything cut up and then decided I was too tired to actually eat it – so everything was prepped and ready in the morning.

Oh, and I have a rant about poached eggs. You know how they’re pretty difficult for many cooks, with the whites all turning whispy and unruly? And you know how some authors are tempted to try to sell you gadgets that promise to make everything simpler? And other authors just whip up delicious poached egg dishes?

Well, that’s making things too hard and getting all of your dishes dirty. Just make food with a little liquid to it, crack the egg into the food, and then cover it so that the egg poaches in steam and/or the liquid in your dish. Not only is this easier, requires fewer dishes, and gorgeous, but also the end result is more delicious because your egg whites get to absorb the flavor of your dish.

I clean out and keep those takeaway containers made out of foil for this, but you can use any kind of bowl or lid (that is high enough not to touch the egg while it’s steaming), if you don’t compulsively reuse containers or if you’re worried about cooking with aluminum.

Kale for Breakfast with a Poached Egg on Top

I melted 2 teaspoons of butter into the bottom of my skillet and tossed in a sliced (young enough that it hadn’t developed a bulb) vidalia onion, a cubed red bell pepper, and the flesh (only) of 1 habanero pepper, having been sliced into tiny slivers.

While that sauteed, I washed 4 young curly kale leaves. I just shook them dry, leaving a decent amount of moisture still in the leaves as I cut the leaf off of the tough rib and then sliced the pile of leaves across into short ribbons.

I got my egg ready.

Once the cooking vegetables were decently wilted, I added the kale and stirred it all up just until the kale turned bright.

But on tasting it, I realized I needed a bit more saltiness, so I went back to my Roman kale recipe for methodology and tipped in 1 teaspoon each of fish sauce and sweet red wine.

A quick stir to distribute the liquids, and I piled the greens into a nest.

Cracking the egg into the center, I covered the egg nest of greens with another container.

And it took about as long to poach as it took me to toast a frozen bagel.

You can peek under the lid – you are looking for no visible liquid white and an amazing rosy blush to the top of the yolk (which you don’t get from regular poaching).

Then eat!