Gute Essen

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Sunday, August 24, 2008 | 1 comment »

Beet Ravioli with Corn
No, Julie didn't have a whirlwind romance with Barak Obama. Although I hope Google now returns this blog as a result for "Obama cheating." That would be hilarious. Since, well, you know, Republicans HATE good food.

No, it was just my Dad. Conveniently he lives in the city so we have dinner on the occasion, but usually it's Julie and myself going over to his house for dinner, rather than the opposite. You know, the whole father/son relationship.

Anyway, my Dad is a fan/reader of my blog and wanted to come over and taste some of my delicious (at least Julie says they are) concoctions. Now, he's no slouch in the kitchen so I felt like I needed to really pull out all the stops and make something totally fucking on. Something that would be talked about for years upon years. Something to go down in the history books; if not his, at least mine.

So what's the easiest way to accomplish that? Spend about eight hours in the kitchen over two days to create a meal. That's about right.

Bruschetta
Seriously. The tomatoes this year? Fucking amazing. We eat about eight to ten pounds of them a week. I'm not shitting you. And neither are we.

So, you say, how can you spent eight hours in the kitchen? Easy I say.

  • Roast beets
  • Make tomato jam
  • Make pasta dough
  • Rice said beets and mix with various ingredients
  • Fill pasta
  • Blanch corn, chop vegetables
  • Disassemble chicken, grind tenders, butterfly and pound breasts
  • Make sausage filling and fill chicken
  • Blanch sausages, cool and then sear sausages

That's only a partial list of tasks that I accomplished this past weekend. But like. Um. Did you eat this shit? No. So, while, that may look like a lot of stuff to do, holy effin' christ it was worth it like a hang over the morning after a good friend from high school says "meet me at the whiskey ward at 11pm on a Wednesday night." Worth it like spending eight hours cooking for one meal that turns out nearly exactly as you envisioned it. Worth it like re-confirming your wife's decision to marry you based solely on your cooking prowess.

But this is where my over-estimating comes into play. As I was making the pasta I was all "oh, I'm gonna need at least 10 ravioli for each person since they're not going to be that big." Alas, I was greatly wrong. I ended up making enough dough for 40 ravioli for three people, but came to the terms, that for the most part, pasta dough can be made easily by going around 2/3 of a cup of flour for each egg, with each flour/egg portion being enough for one good sized serving. A pinch of salt never hurts either.

Also, this is when ice cube trays would have made a lot more sense. Instead I decided to cut out each round before filling. So, with a bunch of rolled sheets of pasta (thank you very much pasta roller attachment for my Kitchenaid birthday present Kris!), I cut out 80 round of dough, laying them in sheets with parchment paper to prevent sticking. Then I took said roasted beets and passed them through my ricer, adding fresh ricotta and Consider Bardwell farm's amazing goat cheese. Adding a good teaspoonful of this to the middle of a round, then tracing the edge with water and putting on a top. Believe it or not, from the start of the dough to the end of filling this was a good two hours.

Fennel Sage Chicken Sausage
I think the French call this a gallentine or a ballentine or some shit. Wait. Ballentine is a delicious whiskey. Scratch that. Anyway, this technically isn't a sausage because it involves no innards. And for that, well, for that I apologize.

So that was just the ravioli. For some reason I got in my mind that I would take some chicken breasts, butterfly and trim them and then pound them out. Then I would take the trimmings and the tenders and make a filling with a little garlic, fennel seed and sage, and then fill the butterflied breasts with the filling, poach and sear them. This too turned out to be a good time sink. After separating the breast meat from the bone of the breasts and butterflying them I trimmed them down to a more "square" type shape. (You only buy whole chickens right? And then freeze what you didn't use for later? And then keep all the backs and wing tips for stock making? Right? Right. We don't have to talk about that.) Then taking the trimmings and the tenders (which really separate when you're pulling off the bone) I toasted some fennel and got some sage leaves, garlic, salt, pepper and hot pepper and ran it through the food processor for a second. I then put the mixture in a zip top bag and trimmed off a corner so I could pipe it onto the lower 1/3 of each breast. Then I rolled them up, and then rolled them in parchment and tied them off with butchers twine so I could keep the shape. A quick 20 minute poach in some shallow water brought them to about 150°F. After letting them cool down I reheated them in a frying pan in some olive oil to get a good sear. Lessons? Use thighs. Breasts dry out way too quick. (Some of these were very tough.)

Pasta Dough

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 large chicken eggs
  • Pinch of salt

  1. In the middle of a wooden board, pile the flour and salt and mix. Make a well out of this and drop in your three eggs. Working from the middle, incorporate ever increasing amounts of flour until you have a dough that is smooth and not too sticky.
  2. You may not incorporate all the flour, you may need a little more. If there is flour left over, sweep it away; if the dough is too sticky add flour by the teaspoon until it is smooth.
  3. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for about 4-6 minutes.
  4. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
    5. Roll the dough out to the desired thickness (I used a 4 for my ravioli) and have at it!

Chicken Sausage

  • 4 bone-in full breasts (2 "whole" breasts)
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 2 tbls toasted fennel
  • 4 tbls fresh sage, cut into ribbons
  • salt, pepper and olive oil

  1. Remove the breasts from the bone, taking care to preserve the tender separate from the breast meat.
  2. Butterfly the breast from the "short" end (the end with the smallest straight line) and lay open the breast like a book.
  3. Trim up the breat to make a semi-rectangle.
  4. Put the trimmings in the freezer for 10-15 minutes and place the well-wrapped fillets in the fridge.
  5. In the food processor, put the fennel, sage and garlic and pulse twice. Add the frozen meat, a punch of salt and pepper about 2-3 tbls olive oil. Pulse four to six times to create a chunky-style paste.
  6. Put the paste in a pastry bag or a zip top bag and cut off the corner.
  7. Lay downe a bead of the filling on the edge third of the butterflied breast. Roll the breast, folding the sides in like a burrito.
  8. Wrap the rolled breasts in parchment paper and secure at both ends with butchers twine.
  9. BRing a shallow pot of water to a boil and place the sausages in it for 15-20 minutes, until the internal temp is at least 150°F. Let rest (the carry over will occur to about 160/165 at the this point -- the government may say 170 at this point, but eh. I love living on the edge.)
  10. Let cool, butterfly and sear in olive oil over medium heat until warm and delicious.

Bruchetta

  • Sliced italian bread. If you use any bread that has anything in the ingredients that isn't flour, water, salt and yeast, so help you god.
  • 2 ripe tomatoes, diced
  • Fresh oregano
  • 1 head of garlic, the top sliced off to expose the cloves
  • olive oil, salt and pepper

  1. Toast the bread. Don't burn it.
  2. While toast is hot rub garlic on it.
  3. Toss tomatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil.
  4. Put on top of bread.
  5. Sprinkle with fresh chopped oregano.
  6. Consume.

Beet Ravioli with a Corn, Pepper and Beet Green Succotash

For the ravioli:

  • 1 batch 'o pasta dough
  • 3 medium beets
  • 1/2 cup fresh ricotta cheese
  • 8 ounces creamy goat cheese
  • Fresh grated nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste

For the succotash:

  • 1 medium red onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
  • 2 peppers (red, orange, yellow, purple, no green!) seeded and diced
  • Greens from beets, washed and cut into ribbons
  • 4 tbls butter
  • 2 tbls olive oil
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 3 ears corn, blanched, shocked and kernels separated.

  1. Wrap the beets in a foil pouch with a little salt, pepper and olive oil and roast in a 400°F oven until soft and tender, 1 1/2 - 2 hours.
  2. Let beets cool to the touch and peel, then run through either the fine set of holes on a ricer or a food mill.
  3. Mix the beet mixture with the two cheeses and season with the nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Fill the ravioli with 1 1/2 tsp of the filling, wetting the edges with water and pressing the top down to get the air out.
  5. Set them in a single layer covered with parchment paper.
  6. Set a large pot of water to boil (probably about a gallon — you're going to want a lot of room for them to float)
  7. Meanwhile, in a large sauce pan, bring the olive oil to a shimmer over medium-high heat.
  8. Sweat the onions and garlic in the oil with a pinch of salt until they're soft.
  9. Add the peppers and cook for a few more minutes.
  10. Add the stock and let reduce a a little.
  11. Meanwhile, cook the ravioli in the boiling water until they just float.
  12. Add the ravioli to the succotash, finishing off with the butter.

categories: chicken ravioli corn

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