In the KitchenwithBella

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 08/5/07 at 07:02 PM

This afternoon Dom was watching the premiere episode of the second season of Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt, set in New Orleans. (That episode, by the way, has one of the best titles ever: “Strong Brown God.” Quote my favorite T. S. Eliot poems and I melt.)  Alton was playing with crawfish and talking up gumbo. I went to lie down for a nap and dreamed about chasing crawfish around the kitchen and into a big tide pool. Naturally, I woke with a strong craving for seafood gumbo. (Of course, Karen Hall may have had something to do with it too.)

So Bella and I took a quick trip to the grocery store to load up on ingredients. Unfortunately, in my hurry I forgot to pick up stock. I was about to send Dom back to the store while I continued to chop vegetables and remove shrimp tails (why can’t they sell them without the tails?) when he recalled that we had some lobster stock in the freezer. Perfect.

Lobster stock, by the way, is really easy to make. Just save the water when you boil lobsters. Freeze it and it makes a great base for fish soups.

Even Bella enjoyed a sip of the gumbo broth. Dom was in heaven and I was able to satisfy my craving for spicy, fishy stew.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 06/30/07 at 07:25 PM

This week’s haul at the farmer’s market included some absolutely fresh spinach, just beautiful stuff. It was literally less than 24 hours out of the ground, which means that it doesn’t have the bitterness that mature spinach is sometimes notorious for having. These leaves were big and green and as tender as the baby spinach you find in the supermarkets.

Add in a little of the organic small-farm bacon we picked up as well as well as some onion and chickpeas and you have what some nutritionists might call a complete meal: plenty of protein, iron, vitamin C (from the onion), folic acid and more.

Serve over white rice.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 06/28/07 at 09:31 AM

It’s strawberry season again and my favorite berries are filling the tables at the Marblehead Farmer’s Market. Last week I bought some strawberry soup and loved it. The ingredients listed on the soup I bought were very simple: strawberries, cream, sugar, mint. I thought, I can do this. So this week I decided to see if I couldn’t make a fair version of it myself. I bought a bunch of fresh mint and a couple of quarts of berries, the small, dark-red, sweet, leaving-incredible-stains-all-over-the-baby kind. And then let them sit in the fridge for several days while I got distracted by other things.

But last night I pulled out the food processor and whipped this up in about five minutes. Not bad.

A great treat for a hot summer day. Not too sweet, not too filling.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 06/22/07 at 06:45 PM

A week or two ago I stumbled across an easy salmon cake recipe somewhere. I think it was on one of those frugal housewife blogs. It was a very simple recipe, canned salmon, cracker crumbs, eggs. Not much else. Boring. But it gave me an idea. It had never occurred to me that salmon cakes were within my culinary grasp. This recipe made them sound downright easy. Now all I had to do was tweak it a little to make it more interesting.

I picked up an can of salmon from the bargain aisle at the grocery store the next time I went shopping and waited for the right day, for the creative culinary mood to strike. Friday evening seemed like a good time to run out a new fish recipe.

For further inspiration I went to my favorite cooking sites, food.com and cooksillustrated.com. Food.com is,  of course, the site hosted by the Food Network. The latter site, companion to the television show America’s Test Kitchen and the magazine, Cook’s Illustrated, requires a subscription; but is well worth it for the awesome recipes and great articles. On Food.com I found an interesting recipe for salmon cakes made from canned salmon by Rachel Ray. Like all her stuff, it was quick and easy and looked tasty. Cook’s Illustrated offered a recipe for salmon cakes made from fresh salmon; but had a few interesting twists that looked like they could be applied to my purposes. I printed them both off and headed to the kitchen to experiment and create my own version of salmon cakes made from canned salmon but as tasty as anything I could get in a restaurant.

I had to make a few last-minute creative substitutions. I didn’t have enough of either bread crumbs or crackers, so I actually used a blend of saltines and whole wheat bread ground in the food processor. I added cilantro in place of Rachel Ray’s dill for a more southwestern feel. Hey, I’m a Texan and I’m in love with cilantro. It’s the one fresh herb I almost always have in the refrigerator. For the hot chili sauce I used a blend of Tabasco’s habanero flavor sauce and some extreme hot sauce that Dom swears you can only use a drop of or it will burn off your tongue; but any hot sauce you like should do the trick. Or leave it out if you’re a heat wimp like most of my New Englander friends and family.

I have to say I was extremely pleased with how well these came out. We had 11 salmon cakes, much more than the two of us could eat. I’d say two of these cakes served on a bed of young greens and drizzled with my tangy mayonnaise sauce would probably cost around $15 at a local fine restaurant. And I’d have gladly paid restaurant prices for these delicious cakes. They were lightly crunchy on the outside, moist on the inside.  The taste was delicate, complex, not at all canned or fishy. I’m usually not a big fan of mayonnaise; but the sauce complimented the cakes perfectly and the greens added a cool, crisp accent. This was a perfect summer meal that I wouldn’t be ashamed to serve to company. And it came together very quickly too!

Caveat: I didn’t keep notes as I mixed and I didn’t measure either, so all of the following is an approximation. Cook at your own risk.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 04/16/07 at 02:19 PM

I saw a post on another cooking blog (I forget the reference now) about some Hollywood director who put a cooking demonstration for his favorite breakfast tacos on his movie’s DVD and the idea must have stuck with me because on Saturday morning, I decided to try my own breakfast tacos and after Melanie and her mom saw how good they were, they wanted me to make some more on Sunday for breakfast.

These aren’t exactly Tex-Mex pure—you don’t find a whole lot of paprika in Mexican cooking, I think—but are my own concoction of some ideas from various places. The fried corn tortilla bits come from eggs migas, for example.

This makes a complex taco, filling the tortilla fairly well and rich too. Melanie tells me that it would be better if I substituted some breakfast sausage, or perhaps some chorizo, for the bacon, but I told her that she’s welcome to post a recipe for “Melanie’s” ultimate breakfast taco. You can’t trump bacon; it’s a pork fat thing.

This isn’t a quick recipe, and it uses a fair number of pans, relegating it to a weekend morning when you have time to clean up, but I liked it very much, so much that I plan to re-visit the recipe again. And again. And again.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 04/12/07 at 10:20 AM

Chicken enchiladas with green (verde) sauce are my absolute favorites. During a week-long visit in Texas, I’ll probably eat them at least three times! But, alas, they are just not readily available around Salem. So we decided to learn how to make them ourselves.

We posted about our first enchilada attempts using recipes from Cooks Illustrated previously . Of course, I’ve been fiddling with the recipe since then. The CI recipe for enchiladas verde had a filling mixture that was a bit dry and boring compared to the filling for the red enchiladas (the red enchiladas recipe called for you to add some of the sauce to the filling and for some reason the green did not.) and both filling and sauce were not quite tangy enough.

The other night I revisited the recipe, made a few changes (with Dom’s help pinch-hitting when I needed to feed and bathe the baby) and was very pleased with the results.  I substituted canned jalapenos for the fresh jalapenos in the sauce.  I think the brine added some of the needed tang (I suspect that if I used garlic the sauce might not have seemed as flat).  I substituted a Mexican 4 cheese mix for the sharp cheddar in the filling and thought it was a bit creamier and had a better flavor

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 04/8/07 at 09:57 AM

Baked ziti is an Itaian-American mainstay, but it’s hard to find a good version of it online, especially one that includes a little protein and green vegetable. So I had to make it up myself, using the pretty spare description on the back of the box as a skeleton.

My version uses four different cheeses, including Italian fontina, which is a good melting cheese, and creamy ricotta.

The biggest problem of “cooked-twice” pasta and chicken dishes is that they often come out overdone. The pasta is mushy, the chicken is dry. The answer, then, is to undercook them a little at first, taking a couple minutes off the pasta’s time and only browning the chicken, not cooking it through (which is also why the pieces are so large.) As an alternative, you could substitute breast meat for thighs, which are almost impossible to dry out. But if you follow my advice, you won’t have that problem.

This is comfort food at its best, warm and rich and filling. Whether it’s a Sunday family sit-down dinner, a Tuesday night quick dinner, or a potluck dinner, this will fill the bill.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 04/4/07 at 08:15 AM

Every mother worries about how to get her kids to eat their veggies, right?

Bella has actually done pretty well in this area. Following some advice from our pediatrician, I gave her veggies early, before fruits even. And she loved them. She’d actually eat pureed peas and spinach more readily than pureed peaches. But the challenge came when she started rejecting the purees. She wanted veggies she could pick up and eat; but so often when I cook veggies for us they are too crisp for her, lacking teeth still. And I was too lazy to cook up a separate batch of veggies just for her. So I tried to give her some of the frozen mixed veggies (you know, the corn, peas, carrots and green beans mix) thawed in the microwave. She ate one or two carrots and then spit out everything else. I tried pumpkin muffins, my sister-in-law’s stand-by. And she summarily spat out the first bite. Over the course of a week, I kept offering and eventually she began to eat some. An awful lot ended up crumbled in her lap, but when I gave her veggies from my own plate, when they were neither too hard or too spicy, she’d gobble them up.

Thus my inspiration: give her frozen veggies cooked with adult flavors. My first attempt was a saute of the mixed veggies. I heated a little olive oil and then sauteed a couple of tablespoons of chopped onion. I added the frozen veggies and sprinkled in some herbs de Provence. I put a small bowl of this concoction in the freezer to cool for a minute and then sprinkled the cooled veggies onto her tray. And watched her shovel them in with both hands. She especially targeted the peas and green beans, saving the carrots and corn until the green stuff was gone.

My next experiment was spinach. I sauteed onions, mushrooms and apple chunks and then added spinach and more herbs de Provence. Again she loved it. The spinach went first, and then the mushrooms. The apples were last to go and she only ate a couple before the spitting began.

I don’t know how well this would work for other babies, but for Bella the trick seems to be avoiding the bland. She doesn’t want to be babied, she wants real food with real, complex flavors and lots of texture.

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 03/30/07 at 05:32 PM

A hearty Italian-style soup with some of my own embellishments, of course. This is a perfect dish for Lenten Fridays. Or any other day of the year.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 03/27/07 at 10:16 AM

On sale at Amazon.com this week, they have some great deals on kitchen gear. If you click on these links and buy anything, you’re giving financial support to In the Kitchen with Bella, which we greatly appreciate.

First up is Simply Calphalon 20% off This is good quality non-stick cookware at a reasonable price. They are on sale until April 17.

Also available is Farberware at up to 40% off. This is a better discount, but only for a non-defined limited time, probably until stock runs out. This is a good chance to fill out your stock of pots and pans.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 03/26/07 at 04:09 PM

A few months ago, I mentioned that I was looking to buy a nice, big cast-iron enameled Dutch oven. Every kitchen should have one because of its versatility, from soups to stews to braises to spaghetti sauces and more. It goes from stovetop to oven and it cleans up almost as easily as a Teflon pan.

The problem is that good Dutch ovens are expensive. As I said at the time, I really wanted a Le Creuset or a Staub, but the models around 6 or 7 quarts were almost $200. (I think 6 quarts is the sweet spot for most home kitchens, if you’re going to have just one Dutch oven.) I had tried cheap Dutch ovens before, but the one I had immediately began flaking off its enamel coating.

But with the help of Cooks Illustrated, I found that Lodge made a decent enameled Dutch oven for only about $120. Score! I ordered it right up, undeterred by the notice that it was on back order. How long could it take?

by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | Posted: 03/3/07 at 09:57 AM

Bella’s first finger food was bread. And she took to it like a fish to water. But this past week Bella has been having a hard time at meals. She eats a few bites and then starts whining. She throws her food and her cup to the floor, she swats the spoon out of my hand or tries to grab it and flings the food all over the place. Even her favorite standby, bread, has been shredded and tossed without a single bite passing her lips.

Today Dom baked a fresh loaf of my favorite, honey whole wheat. At dinner, not expecting more than the usual bread flinging, I cut a small slice and handed a bit of it to Bella. And she ate it. And then she ate the next bit and the next. It wasn’t until a good way into the meal, once her belly was full, I suspect, that she began the flinging.

Yes, not only can our discriminating little girl tell the difference between Daddy’s homemade loaf and the bagels mom got from the grocery store, she can even tell the difference between bread made fresh today and bread that is a few days old. Only the best, freshest bread for our little girl. Yeesh, we’ve created a monster!

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 02/13/07 at 02:24 PM

When the folks at Epicurious.com call this fast white bean stew they aren’t kidding. I got a late start on dinner last night. Melanie was already feeding Isabella and I thought we wouldn’t be eating until after she’d been put to bed. Instead, the stew was ready for eating while Bella was still working on her dinner!

This is one we’ll be having whenever time is of the essence. The only caveat is that the one item we’re likely not to have on hand in the pantry is the baby romaine or arugula. We’re going to have make a trip to the market for that. Everything else should be in the fridge or cabinet. As usual, we skipped the garlic in this recipe, but we added some hot sauce at the table. Also note that there is no added salt. The ham is plenty salty so let each individual add more at the table if they want.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 02/8/07 at 07:13 PM

One of the most difficult skills to pick up In the Kitchen is timing dishes, at least difficult for me. When I’m preparing a handful of different dishes for a meal, I often find myself trying to figure out how to get all the dishes to finish at the same time so that they’re still hot at the table. Unfortunately, I’m often limited by having to use the same pan for more than one dish or just not having enough burners on the stove.

by Domenico Bettinelli | Posted: 01/30/07 at 02:50 PM

Nutritionists and food scientists are finally realizing what my grandparents already knew. Instead of concentrating on one kind of food or nutritional element—carbs, fat, sugar, calories, etc.—eat a little of everything and you’ll be just fine. All things in moderation. Oh, and avoid pre-packaged foods.