I daydream a lot about cooking during the week, especially when I’m on the train. Its rhythmic click-clack, the morning fog, and a warm cup of coffee are just the right combination for daydreaming about things I want to cook. During the week not so many of those dreams become reality, but during the weekend I break out of my daydreams and actually head into the kitchen.

Last week Elizabeth David’s book Italian Cooking kept me company on my train rides to and from work. Ms. David is one of my favorite food writers of all time. Eloquent, elegant, humble, and humorous are all words I would use to describe her writings. Her recipes are less like instructions and more like suggestions. I’ve made quite a few things from her various cookbooks over the years, and I find they turn out best not when you follow her words and ingredient lists exactly, but rather when you use it as a starting point and utilize your own knowledge and creativity to complete the dish.

Her Polpettone recipe (Italian meatloaf stuffed with hard boiled eggs and cheese) is no different. I have an odd love of loaves of meat, and typically turn to Paul Prudhomme’s cajun meatloaf whenever the craving strikes. Moist, spicy, and with a wonderful texture, I am not sure it can be improved upon (except by using rolled oats rather than breadcrumbs — a personal preference that results in a more tender meatloaf). So, when I decided to make Ms. David’s Italian meatloaf, I fused her suggestions with Prudhomme’s technique, and added spices and other ingredients as I saw fit. The result? Fantastic! Don’t get me wrong, I am not abandoning my beloved cajun meatloaf, but this Italian version is different enough that I can definitely make space for both in my repertoire.

Polpettone: Italian Stuffed Meatloaf
Inspired by Elizabeth David

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 t. salt
1 t. black pepper
1/2 t. white pepper
1 t. dried sage
1 t. dried marjoram
1 t. dried oregano
1/4 c. catsup
1/2 c. milk
1/3 c. chopped parsley

4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 c. rolled oats
2/3 c. bread crumbs or stuffing mix
1 1/2 lbs ground beef (15% fat or higher is best)
1/2 lb ground pork

2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
2 oz. ham, minced
3 oz. grated provolone

Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare vegetable mixture:
Heat about 2 T. olive oil in a large saute pan.  Add onions and saute until softened.  Add the carrot, saute for another minute, then add the garlic and red bell pepper.  Saute the mixture until vegetables are softened, about 3 minutes longer.  Add salt, black pepper, white pepper, sage, marjoram, and oregano, mix well, and saute another minute or two.  Add catsup and milk, mix well, and cook for about 3-4 minutes until mixture starts sticking to the pan.  Remove from heat, fold in the chopped parsley, and set aside to cool.

Prepare meat mixture:
Mix the raw eggs, oats, bread crumbs, beef, and pork in a large bowl.  Using your hands, mix until everything is well amalgamated.  Add the cooled vegetable mixture, and combine well with your hands.  Divide the mixture into two roughly equal parts.

Shape the loaf:
In a 9×13 glass pan shape half the meat mixture into a flat loaf about 6 inches wide, 12 inches long, and about an inch high.  Sprinkle the hard boiled eggs, ham, and provolone evenly over the meatloaf, leaving about a 1/2 -1 inch border at the sides.  Now working with the other half of the meat mixture, take small handfuls, flatten it between your hands, and place atop egg mixture, creating ‘patches’  of meat to enclose the filling.  Take care to enclose the sides with meat mixture so no eggs or cheese will leak out.  Once you’ve used up all the meat mixture, smooth with your hands to make a compact, neat loaf.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, then raise heat to 425 and continue to bake until meatloaf is done, about 35 minutes longer.  Allow to stand for 10 minutes after removing from oven.  Slice into 1-2 inch pieces, and enjoy!  Serve on its own or with some spicy tomato sauce alongside.

I don’t have that many clothes or shoes or knick knacks, but I do have a lot of cookbooks and kitchen stuff.  A lot of that stuff I use at least once a week, if not more often.  The thought of parting with it all for 8 weeks makes my stomach do little flip flops, and not in the good way like being excited or in love or just very hungry…

I kept a few kitchen things out for the “fast box”, a box we sent by air mail late last week that will probably arrive in about 2 weeks rather than 8 — a 2 qt. dutch oven, a spatula, a wooden spoon, salt and pepper grinders, and a set of measuring spoons.  A few other things I kept out to go in my suitcase, things I would have a really hard time doing without for even a couple weeks — my favorite 8 inch chef’s knife, a small paring knife, a pair of tongs, a tiny plastic cutting board, my onion goggles (sort of questioning whether these were actually a necessity), and a wine opener.

We sent the “fast box” off on Wednesday, and our 8-week “slow” boxes were picked up this past Friday.  This means that I have exactly two knives, one pair of tongs, a tiny cutting board, and a pair of oh-so-important onion googles :) — no pots, no pans, no spices — not exactly the tools for a feast.  But, as any cliche connoisseur will tell you, where there is a will, there is a way.

I am firm believer that you don’t have to eat crap even if the world and everyone around you tells you that you are too busy to cook.  Takeout and frozen pizza be damned, I want real food.  Not only do I feel better and eat more healthfully, but I also think that by deciding to make and eat something real, even if very quick and simple, it makes me a little more sane.  During a time of uprooting major change, it’s odd how a simple tupperware container full of homemade roasted vegetables topped with a plain roasted chicken thigh can make everything seem ok (tupperware because all of my dishes are gone…)

Well, tonight is the last night in our German apartment.  We move into a hotel tomorrow for our last three days in Hannover, and then we fly out early Thursday morning (cat and all). Wish me luck on these last few days of my Great German Adventure!

Desperado Roasted Vegetables and Chicken Thighs
*tastes best when eaten out of tupperware since you have packed up and shipped all of your real dishes across the Atlantic…

1 beet, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1 small (fist sized) celery root, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1 large carrot, scrubbed and cut into chunks
2 parsnips, scrubbed and cut into chunks
1 white potato, scrubbed and cut into chunks
1 red potato, scrubbed and cut into chunks
5 small onions (about 2-inch diameter), peeled and quartered
6-8 brussels sprouts, trimmed
8-10 cloves of garlic, un-peeled
2 skin-on chicken legs
olive oil
salt
pepper
~ 1-2 T. prepared pesto

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Rinse chicken and pat dry.  Rub with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Mix all vegetables in a bowl (or if you’re moving like me and have packed all of your bowls, a big piece of tupperware will do), and drizzle with about 2 T. of olive oil.  Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and stir until evenly coated.  Spread vegetables onto a rimmed baking sheet covered with parchment paper.  Place chicken thighs on top, and place in the oven.  Roast for about 1 hr, stirring every 20 minutes, until chicken skin is brown and crisp, and vegetables have reached the desired tenderness.  If the chicken skin isn’t crisping up, broil for about 3-4 minutes at the end of the cooking time.

Remove garlic cloves, and squeeze out of skins into a small bowl.  Mash garlic, add pesto, and mix until combined.  Transfer vegetables from baking sheet to some sort of bowl, add garlic pesto mixture, and stir until evenly coated.  Serve vegetables topped with a chicken thigh.  Enjoy!

There is a serious lack of Mexican food here in Hannover, Germany.  Not just good Mexican food (like the lack of good sushi), but simply a lack of Mexican food in general.  After 10 months of being gone from the Bay Area (where Mexican food is plentiful and delicious), at this point I would settle for some average or ho-hum Mexican food.  Or even Tex-Mex.  I miss it that much.  Alas, the closest thing is Dolores Mission Style Burritos in Berlin, which though tasty, is a very far cry from authentic mexican food.

One of the cookbooks I lugged over here with me is Dianne Kennedy’s The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.  At 526 pages, it is immense.  I don’t make things out of it all that often, since the recipes usually have a long list of ingredients, many of which I can’t find here, and typically take a full afternoon of toasting, soaking, grinding, pureeing, frying etc.  But when I do decide to crack open this cookbook, I am never disappointed.  The recipes tend to have deep, complex flavors, and strike a balance between homey comfort food and gourmet cuisine.  This lazy weekend I decided on a version of her Legumbres en Pipian Oaxaqueño, Vegetables in Oaxacan Pumpkin Seed Sauce.  The original recipe calls for nopales and peas, which I am sure would be delicious, but I think that any combination of sturdy vegetables would work just fine.

This particular recipe isn’t actually all that time consuming or difficult, and the results are fantastic.  The pumpkin seeds lend a unique, nutty, earthy, and almost sweet flavor to the sauce, and the dried chiles plus the chili powder give it a bit of a kick.  It makes a large batch, and the sauce continues to develop in flavor as it sits.

Look for the dried chiles at your local hispanic market, or if that fails, try Whole Foods or your regular grocery store.  The hispanic market will probably be about 20-30% of the cost of Whole Foods, so I recommend checking there first.  I picked mine up on a recent trip to the USA (chiles like ancho, mulato, guajillo etc. are pretty much impossible to find here) — my friend Laurie drove with me all over downtown Washington DC looking for a good hispanic market where I could buy an assortment of dried chiles, chipotles in adobo, and a couple other “staples”.  I was a little worried that going through customs in Frankfurt that I might get stopped for the sheer quantity of dried chiles and chile products in my suitcase.  Ah, what one must do to cook in a foreign country… Did I mention I am coming back to San Francisco for good in 3 1/2 weeks?!

Oaxacan Pipian served over mixed grains

Oaxacan Pipian with Zucchini and Onions
Adapted from The Essential Cuisines of Mexico

8 oz. green pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1 large ancho chile (dried), stem, seeds, and veins removed
2 guajillo chiles (dried), stem and seeds removed
4 c. cold water
4 garlic cloves
1/2 t. cumin seeds
3 T. vegetable oil
1-2 t. salt
a large pinch of oregano (mexican if possible)
1/2 – 1 t. chipotle chili powder, to taste (or substitute regular chili powder)

2 T. butter
3 medium zucchini, cut into large (1-2 inch) chunks
3 medium onions, cut into thick rings, then cut in half
1/2 – 3/4 lb. cooked turkey or chicken in bite size pieces (optional)

Toast the pumpkin seeds in a large dry skillet over medium high heat until they puff, about 5-7 minutes.  Set aside to cool.

Cover the chiles with the 4 c. water in a saucepan, and bring to a boil.  Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove from heat, cover, and let stand for an additional 5-10 minutes.  Place chiles in a blender along with garlic and 1 c. of the chile soaking water.  Puree until you have a smooth paste.

In batches, grind the pumpkin seeds along with the cumin in a clean spice/coffee grinder until they are a fine powder, but with a little bit of texture remaining.  Place into a medium sized bowl, and add the remaining 3 c. of chile soaking liquid.  Mix until smooth.

Heat vegetable oil in a large chef’s pan or sauce pan over medium high heat, and add the chile puree.  Fry for about 3 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan often to prevent sticking and scorching.  Add the pumpkin seed/water mixture and stir until well blended.  Add salt, oregano, and chili powder.  Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for about 20 minutes until thickened.  Stir occasionally and scrape the bottom of the pan to prevent scorching.

Meanwhile, heat butter in a frying pan over medium high heat.  Place zucchini chunks in the butter with the largest cut side facing down.  Fry, undisturbed, for about 3-4 minutes until the zucchini has a golden crust.  Remove from pan and set aside.  Add onions to pan, and saute until just softened, about 3-4 minutes.

Once sauce has thickened, add zucchini, onions, and cooked turkey or chicken (if using), and stir until evenly distributed.  Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes.  Serve over rice or with corn tortillas.  Enjoy!

Oven Baked French Onion Soup
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated January/February 2008

Soup
3 T. unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
6 large yellow onions (about 4 lbs), halved and cut pole to pole into 1/4 inch thick slices
2 cups water, plus extra for deglazing
1/2 c. madeira
6 cups mixed beef and chicken stock (I used 4 c. beef stock plus 2 c. chicken, though the original recipe calls for 4 c. chicken stock plus 2 c. beef stock)
6 sprigs fresh time, tied with kitchen twine
1 bay leaf
Ground black pepper

Cheese Croutons
1 small baguette, cut on bias into 1/2 inch slices
8 oz Comte or Gruyere, shredded (about 2 1/2 cups)

1.  For the Soup:  Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.  Generously oil the inside of a large dutch oven (5 qts or larger).  Place butter in pot and add onion and 1 teaspoon salt.  Cook, covered, 1 hour.  Remove pot from oven and stir onions, scraping bottom and sides of pot.  Return pot to oven with lid slightly ajar and continue to cook until onions are very soft and golden brown, 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 hours longer, stirring after 1 hour.

2.  Carefully remove pot from oven and place over medium-high heat.  Using oven mitts to handle pot,  cook onions, stirring frequently and scraping bottom and sides of pot, until liquid evaporates and onions brown, 15-20 minutes, reducing heat to medium if onions are browning too quickly.  Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until pot bottom is coated with dark crust, 6-8 minutes, adjusting heat as necessary.  Watch the pan closely, as a golden crust can turn into a blackened charred mess easier than one might think!  Stir in 1/4 c. water, scraping pot bottom to loosen crust, and cook until water evaporates and pot bottom has formed another dark crust, 6-8 minutes.  Repeat process of deglazing 2 or 3 more times until onions are very dark brown.  Stir in madeira and cook, stirring frequently, until madeira evaporates, about 5 minutes.

3.  Stir in broths, 2 cups water, thyme, bay leaf, and 1/2 t. salt, scraping up any final bits of browned crust on bottom and sides of pot.  increase heat to high and bring to simmer.  Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for at least 30 more minutes, and up to an hour.  Remove and discard herbs, then season with salt and pepper.

4.  For the Croutons:  While soup simmers, arrange baguette slices in single layer on baking sheet, and bake in a 400 degree oven until bread is dry, crisp, and golden at edges, about 10 minutes.  Set aside.

5. To Serve:  Adjust oven rack 6 inches from broiler element and heat broiler.  Set individual crocks or ramekins on a baking sheet and fill with hot soup.  Top each bowl with 1 or 2 baguette slices (do not overlap slices) and sprinkle evenly with cheese.  Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly around edges, about 3-4 minutes.  Let cool 5 minutes before serving.  Enjoy!

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A few weeks ago on the same France trip that introduced me to Feves au Lard Fume, Steven and I met up with his Aunt and Uncle in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees.  After not having seen each other for almost a year, we first covered the basic “what have you been up to?” questions on both sides.  The conversation soon turned to food, as it often does when food lovers are involved, and Jane started telling me about the most delicious french onion soup she had ever tasted.  ‘It’s baked in the oven’, she said, ‘it takes four or five hours’, she said, ‘it’s the best french onion soup you’ll ever taste’, she said…  I was absolutely intrigued.

Soon after returning home, Jane sent me the recipe she had been talking about.  I made it the following weekend (how could I not, with all of the build-up?)…

The onions cook ever so slowly in the oven until tender and sweet, then are subjected to not one, not two, but three deglazes!  A little madeira and the stock is added, then the whole thing is simmered slowly for another hour or so to blend the flavors further.  The rich flavorful soup, topped with homemade croutons and gooey melted cheese, is gastronomically stunning.

Granted, like nearly all soups, this one improves in flavor if aged for a day or so.  But, unlike many soups, this one is fantastic straight out of the pot as soon as it’s made.  The long, slow cooking creates something delicate, complex, round, and toothsome.  I officially agree with Jane — it’s the best onion soup I’ve ever tasted.

Wintertime Tomato Sauce

2 T. olive oil
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
1 t. salt
1 t. red pepper flakes
28 oz. can diced tomatoes

Heat olive oil in a 2 qt pot over medium heat.  Add onions and garlic, and saute until the onions start to relax and the garlic takes on a little bit of color, about 7 minutes.  Add salt and red pepper flakes and mix well.  Add tomatoes, still well, and bring mixture to a gentle boil.  Reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Enjoy!

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Let’s face it — fresh tomatoes you buy in the grocery store during the wintertime are awful.  They’re usually shipped in from factory farms in far off lands, and more often than not have a mushy, mealy texture, and a color closer to salmon than the glorious deep red of summer tomatoes from the farmer’s market (or if you’re one of the lucky ones, from your garden).  I am going to go ahead and say it — yuck.

But just because it’s winter doesn’t mean that I don’t want homemade tomato sauce… During the summer it’s easy to make homemade tomato sauce — a few fresh tomatoes, some roasted onions and garlic, salt, pepper… chop, mix, heat, simmer — and you have delicious and simple tomato sauce.  But what to do in winter?  My first instinct is to say, ‘preserve in summer, eat in winter’… but my life is such that making huge batches of tomato sauce during the summer and using it throughout the year isn’t really feasible.  For one, I just made a trans-atlantic move, and shipping quarts of homemade tomato sauce (though a tempting idea) didn’t make a lot of sense.  Also, before that, my apartment was approximately 520 square feet (shared with Steven and our cat Fluppha), so storage for more than a few jars of my favorite homemade lemon marmalade or elderberry preserves was non-existent.

So what to do?  For my answer I turn to canned tomatoes.  Surprisingly better than you would expect, with canned tomatoes you can make a homemade sauce coming in somewhere around 7 – 7.5, where store-bought sauce is typically a 3 – 4, and homemade summertime sauce is in the 9 – 10 range.  If you start with high quality canned tomatoes, you will end up with a tasty, nearly from scratch sauce that is great for a lot of things — spaghetti, lasagne, pizza topping, base for tomato soup, etc — with only about 10 minutes of work.

Tonight we finished up the last of the latest batch (one batch is about four servings, or two meals for two people).  Tonight it was a topping for plain spaghetti, served with garlic bread (knoblauch brot) on the side.  Delicious and simple.  And a little spicy!

Desperado Onion Soup

4-6 T. butter
2.5 lbs yellow onions, thinly sliced
1/4 t. black pepper
2 t. fresh thyme, chopped
5 c. beef broth
2-4 oz gruyere, finely shredded
1-2 handfuls croutons (optional)

Melt butter over medium-low heat in a large soup pot.  Add onions and stir to coat evenly with butter.  Cook over medium-low heat until brown, tender, and caramelized, about 40-50 minutes.  Stir in black pepper and thyme.  Add beef broth and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.  Sprinkle cheese over the top and add croutons (if using).  Enjoy!

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Long time no see!  The recent Modern Beet silence has been due to the fact that I made an international move and have been adjusting to life in Germany.  What a change it has been!

All in all, it’s been a fairly smooth process, minus a case of home sickness here and there over the past 6 weeks.  There was one major hiccup with our arrival here though — the kitchen in our apartment was not installed before we got here!

Renting an apartment in Germany is quite different than renting an apartment in Anytown, USA.  For instance, in German apartments, there are no closets — instead one keeps one’s clothes in a ‘kleidershrank’ (basically an armoire).  Also, overhead lights are not included with an apartment; had it not been for our quick thinking colleague who picked us up from the airport (and brought some lights with him) we would have been in total darkness the first night we were here .

The biggest difference though in renting an apartment in Germany versus in the USA is that in Germany, apartments don’t come with kitchens!  It is customary to bring your own kitchen (sink, oven, cabinets, refrigerator, etc) with you and install them yourself!  For me and Steven, this was a foreign concept indeed…  Luckily, we were aware of this when looking for an apartment last fall, and made it clear that we would need to have a kitchen supplied by the landlord.  They obliged, but seemed to forget our arrival date!  We had to go the first couple weeks without a kitchen!

I made this onion soup on the second or third day we were here when we had no kitchen, only a hot plate and one pot — hence ‘Desperado’….  But I suppose this goes to show that one can make an incredibly delicious from-scratch meal even with minimal ingredients and equipment.

The plan is to spend the next year here, then head back to San Francisco.  I imagine my cooking efforts are going to fall off a bit while I am over here for a few reasons — I want to spend a lot of time traveling, I want to spend time learning German, I want to spend time on musical endeavors (did you know in my ‘previous’ life I spent a year traveling around the world making field recordings and composing music? — but I am also quite sure my love of cooking will never fade!