Horses, Barns and Soups

During our stay at The Home Ranch, on a very cold, but relaxing morning, we bundled up, left the warmth of the lodge, and walked down the driveway to the pasture and barn. The youngsters were particularly curious, and willing to lose their space around the hay feeder to come say hello. This yearling followed me around like a puppy dog, and insisted on nibbling at my jacket every time I tried to take a picture.

John had his own little romance going on a few feet away...

We could have spent hours in the old barn, photographing the weathered wood, windows, rusty hardware, chaps and hats hanging on the walls, and tack.

These are two of my favorite necklaces, made by Jodi Rosano out of her home here in San Diego.  She uses tips from naturally shed antlers, shells, crystals from antique chandeliers, gemstones, pearls, and antique chains, to create her pieces.   Jodi's tag line is Glamour Comes to the Ranch, so I thought it would be fun to photograph my necklaces in the barn.

After having our gloves off for an hour, our hands were numb and it was time to gather in the dining room for a bowl of hot soup. At least two different homemade soups were offered for lunch every day, in addition to salads, hot entrees, and dessert.

Since we've back from the ranch, I've made a couple of big pots of soup for us and mom. Last weekend, I tried Dave Lieberman's Split Pea with Smoked Ham Hock Soup (with Whole Foods' Wellshire Smoked Ham Shank), and Azorean Kale, Sausage and Bean Soup, from David Leite's My New Portuguese Table. Both soups warm you right up, are ideal for a quick lunch or dinner this time of year, and freeze well. If you have enough freezer space, make double batches!

I made some slight changes to this soup, using cannellini beans instead of kidney beans, and chicken broth instead of beef. David adds an additional step to give the soup a little extra body. While the soup is simmering, he suggests spooning a third of the beans and a bit of the soup broth into a food processor, pulsing to make a loose paste, then, if desired, passing the paste through a sieve, and adding the paste back to the soup. I was lazy and omitted this step, but I'm sure it does add body and creaminess.  The original recipe is published here.

Azorean Kale, Chorizo and Cannellini Bean Soup
Adapted slightly from The New Portuguese Table, by David Leite
(8 servings)

Ingredients:

1 pound dried cannellini beans, picked over, rinsed, and soaked overnight in water to cover by 3 inches
2 tablespoons olive oil, or more if needed
8 ounces chouriço, linguiça, or dry-cured smoked Spanish chorizo, cut into 1/4-inch coins
2 large yellow onions, chopped
1 Turkish bay leaf
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
4 cups homemade chicken stock, or low-sodium store bought broth
1 1/2 pounds red potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 bunch kale (about 1/2 pound), thick center stems and fibrous veins removed, torn into pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Drain the beans, dump them into a medium saucepan, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender but still hold their shape, about 45 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat until it shimmers. Toss in the chorizo and saute until browned, 7 to 10 minutes. Remove the slices with a slotted spoon and transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the fat from the pot, or if the pot is dry, drizzle in more oil so you have 3 tablespoons. Add the onions and bay leaf and cook, stirring often, until the onions are deeply golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Adjust the heat as necessary to prevent the onions from burning.

Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for 1 minute. Pour in the chicken stock and 5 cups of water, add the potatoes, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the potatoes are just tender, 10 to 12 minutes.

When the potatoes are cooked, stir in the kale, chorizo, and beans. Turn off the heat and let the soup sit for 10 minutes to marry the flavors.

Remove the bay leaf, season the soup with salt and pepper to taste, and ladle into warm bowls.

Serve with crusty bread and a nice bottle of wine.

Clams and Chorizo in a Copper Cataplana

Although cooking has been a passion of mine for several years, food blogging is a relatively new hobby. I find it hard to believe what we've acquired in the past year and a half in order to support this latest devotion! I'm talking major purchases of furniture, cameras and lenses, photography equipment and lighting, serveware, glassware, cookware, and cookbooks. We often spend our Saturdays "junking" for interesting and unique plates, platters, utensils, and anything else that might enhance future blog posts. I used to buy shoes and clothes, now I buy onesies and twosies of plates and different colored napkins.

The good news is I've become much easier to buy for when it comes to birthdays and Christmas - just find me something blogalicious.

Mom did just that this past Christmas, with a stunning, hammered copper Cataplana. Cataplana is a Portuguese seafood dish, popular on the country's Algarve coast, but it is also the name of the special cookware used to prepare the dish, which is traditionally made of copper and shaped like two clam shells hinged at one end and able to be sealed using a clamp on either side of the assembly. Much like the word Tagine, Cataplana is the name for both the recipe and utensil in which you cook it.

I have enjoyed many recipes from David Leite's The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast, and knew I could count on his Clams in a Cataplana to break in my new treasure.

Clams in a Cataplana
From David Leite's The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast, with slight adaptations (Recipe also published on Leite's Culinaria, here

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 ounces dry-cured Spanish chorizo, cut into 1/4-inch coins
One 1/4-inch-thick slice prosciutto, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 medium yellow onion, cut lengthwise in half and sliced into thin half-moons
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 mild green chile, such as Anaheim, cut into thin strips
1 Turkish bay leaf
4 garlic cloves, minced
One 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, drained and chopped
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
3 pounds small clams, such as cockles, manila, butter or littlenecks, scrubbed and rinsed
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a large cataplana until it shimmers. Add the Spanish chorizo and prosciutto and cook, stirring occasionally, until a bit brown around the edges, 6 to 8 minutes.

2. Lower the heat to medium and add the onions, bell pepper, chile and bay leaf. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion and peppers are soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Stir in the tomatoes and any accumulated juice, the wine, and paprika. Add the cockles to the cataplana and turn the heat to high. Close and lock the cataplana and cook 10 to 12 minutes, shaking occasionally, until the cockles open.

3. David advises, "carry the cataplana triumphantly to the table, making sure everyone’s watching, then release the lid and bask in the applause."

4. Discard the bay leaf and toss out any cockles that refused to pop open. Season with a few grinds of pepper, shower with parsley, and ladle into wide shallow bowls. Serve with crusty bread to soak up all the juice.

 

I also served Orange Salad with Pine Nuts and a slice of Basque Potato Tortilla, to be revealed in a few weeks on a French Fridays with Dorie post. The clams and juices would also be fabulous served over linguine.

I love my new present - it's very blogalicious!

***

Our Portuguese Dessert Table

While sitting cross-legged on the floor at Borders, in the middle of the cookbook stacks, I came across David Leite's The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast, winner of the 2010 International Association of Culinary Professionals’ First Book, Julia Child Award. It's been on my to-buy list and, as promised, "takes you on a gastronomic journey through the country's eleven historical provinces plus the islands of Madeira and the Azores, sharing the details of their local foods as wells as the extraordinary diverse terrain in stunning photographs throughout."

I was first introduced to one of David's recipes, Pine Nut and Orange Cookies, in the latest issue of Fine Cooking. After making those cookies for our Concert in the Park Challenge Tacos, I received a surprise comment from David on my post.  I was so thrilled he took the time to visit There's a Newf in My Soup!  If you haven't already, drop by his amazing web site, Leite's Culinaria.

Hopefully, David will be pleased to know he was the inspiration for our latest Concert in the Park Culinary Challenge - Portuguese Cuisine. However, it was impossible to choose just one recipe from his cookbook. There are so many I can't wait to try. I knew I wanted the Grilled Shrimp with Piri-Piri Sauce for the park, but then I couldn't pass up the Baked Custard Tarts.  John chose Duck Risotto with Ham and Sausage for his park dish, but we also made the Sausage Tortilla for our Saturday night dinner. Tomorrow, I plan on making one of the salads. Can you tell I love my new cookbook??

At the Concert in the Park, we enjoyed three Portuguese desserts. This post is dedicated to the dessert table, and a second post will follow featuring some of our other Portuguese dishes.

Here are the Baked Custard Tarts. David says these are "the reigning monarch of desserts in Lisbon and, frankly, in all of Portugal." They're typically made in individual 1/3-cup forms, which gives them their characteristic size and shape, but mini muffin tins worked well for me.

At first reading, this recipe seems somewhat involved, with an interesting method of forming the tart shells. However, they turned out to be quite a breeze. My only problem was that I didn't blind bake the tart shells long enough, and ended up putting them back in the oven after removing the dried beans. The recipe says to put the muffin pan on a baking sheet in the oven, and maybe that prevented the heat from circulating under the pan. All turned out well in the end, and these babies disappeared like hot cakes!

Baked Custard Tarts (Pasteis de nata)
Makes 24 pastries
Slightly adapted from David Leite's The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast

Ingredients:

One 17 ¼ ounce package Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, thawed
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
Grated zest of ½ lemon
1 ¾ cup heavy cream
1 large egg
8 large egg yolks
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling
Ground cinnamon, for sprinkling

Preparation:

Place one still-folded sheet of pastry on a lightly floured work surface so that a short end is facing you and the thicker fold is to your left. Open the two panels of dough, lightly brush the right panel on both sides with water, and then fold it back into position. Cover with the left panel and press down to seal. Lightly brush the top of the pastry with water, then curl up the short edge and tightly roll up the pastry away from you, as if making a jelly roll. You should have a 3-inch-wide log. Roll it back and forth on the work surface to extend it to 3 ½ inches. Repeat with the second sheet of pastry. Wrap each roll in plastic and place in the refrigerator.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, lemon zest, and ½ cup of the cream until all the lumps are dissolved. Set aside.

In another bowl, whisk the egg and yolks together, and set aside.

In a small saucepan, bring the sugar and 2/3 cup of water to a boil over high heat. Do not stir. Let it bubble until a candy thermometer registers 230 degrees F.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat the remaining 1 ¼ cups of cream over medium high heat, until it steams slightly and bubbles appear around the edges, about 5 minutes.

Whisk the hot cream into the flour mixture until smooth, and then pour in the hot sugar syrup. Slowly add the egg mixture, whisking continuously, then pour the custard back into the medium saucepan and cook over low heat, whisking slowly, until the mixture lightly coats the back of a spoon and registers 170 degrees F on the thermometer, about 4 minutes. Pour into a bowl, add the vanilla, and let cool completely.

About 15 minutes before you are ready to prepare the dough for the muffin tins, transfer the wrapped dough logs to the freezer (the cut will be easier to cut into slices).

Have a mini muffin pan (24 capacity) nearby.  Using a serrated knife, trim off the uneven ends of one dough log, and discard. Cut twelve ¼-inch slices from the log, and place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Repeat with the second log. Place the baking sheet with the dough slices in the refrigerator.

Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. (NOTE: The recipe says to put a baking sheet in the oven also, and then put the muffin pan on top of the baking sheet when blind baking the tart shells. However, as stated above, I found that my pastry shells did not cook enough on the sides and bottoms. Next time, I might try omitting the baking sheet from this step and just using it when the filled custard tarts are returned to the oven for the final baking).

Fill the tart shells to the top with rice or dried beans. Bake the tart shells until the edges are puffed and golden brown, about 16 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, leaving the oven on.

Carefully remove each tart shell, one at a time, and dump out the rice or beans. Some will stick, and gently remove with the tip of a knife. Place the tart shells back in the muffin tin. Fill each tart shell three-quarters full with the cooled custard (a pastry bag, with a large round tip, works well for this task). Bake until the custards barely jiggle in the middle, about 12 minutes.

Transfer the muffin tin to the rack and let cool for a few minutes. Gently remove the pastries (I used a small offset spatula to lift them out) and let cool until warm. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Orange Cake (Bolo de Laranja) is another Portuguese dessert featured in David's cookbook. Mom prepared a similar version, Orange-Scented Olive Oil Cake, from Saveur (recipe here). The cake is dense, but moist, and has a light orange glaze and sprinkling of sea salt on the top. This would also taste wonderful with morning tea or coffee.

Geoff and Mary made a surprise appearance, making amends for their Chocolate and Red Wine Cake tragedy, with these Dried Figs Stuffed with Almonds and Chocolate (Figos Recheados). You can find the recipe here. Fabulous flavor combination!

Stay tuned for a second post of sensational Portuguese cuisine!