Pancetta

Week: 4
Ingredient: Pancetta
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel and Herbs

Food Network is the main reason I have cable. It is not the only channel I watch, but it is the one I would miss the most if it were gone. I do not regret all those hours—mouth-watering, hunger-inducing, experiment-inspiring hours—spent watching Alton Brown, Rachael Ray, and the others. I have learned so much about cooking and about food from them. How else would I ever have been inspired to try pancetta? Sure, maybe I would have stumbled across a recipe calling for pancetta someday, and maybe I would have cared enough to find out what it was and where to find it. But even then, would I have been willing to fork up $12 a pound for “Italian bacon,” as it is frequently described?

I have made recipes calling for pancetta before, but bacon always seemed like a reasonable substitute. I was not even sure I would be able to find pancetta in Harrisonburg. After all, the first time I went looking for hazelnuts, I tried at least three different stores before finally finding them (at Sharp Shopper, of all places!). Since Martin’s came to town, certain ingredients have been easier to find, and I have known for a while now that they carry pancetta in the deli.

When I found a recipe recently that was (1) spicy and (2) called for fennel, I was immediately attracted. I love both those things! I did not even notice the recipe called for pancetta until a week or so later when I was making my grocery list. The Food Network chefs must finally have gotten through to me because this time I decided to go for it. I came home from Martin’s with a fatty little spiral of pork (and a little bit of sticker shock), and I set out to cook ...

The Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel and Herbs recipe started with sautéing the pancetta. It is hard to beat the smell and taste of sautéed bacon, but the renown of the Italian meat, the high price tag, and the fat that would soon render its succulent gift—they all told me that I was about to experience some gastronomic phenomenon. The aroma of the sautéing pancetta did not disappoint. Though not smoky like bacon, the pancetta filled my house with a lovely scent—meaty with hints of spice.

I could not wait for the dish to be complete before sampling the pancetta. Once sautéed, I stole a little tidbit from the pan. It tasted ... salty. So salty, in fact, that I could discern little other flavor. However, the pancetta was for flavoring, not for eating alone, so I was unperturbed, and I finished up the recipe more or less as written, changing the amount of hot peppers (more for more spiciness!) and substituting Parmigiano-Reggiano for the Romano cheese.

Now, a short digression about fennel ... If you have never cooked with it, you really should give it a try. It is an aromatic vegetable with a pleasant anise- or licorice-like flavor. Do not be dismayed, all you haters of black jellybeans! I am with you there. However, I find that fennel as a vegetable has a much more subtle flavor than the licorice candy I eschew. Also, I think that fennel or anise is much more appealing as a savory flavor than a sweet one. If variety is the spice of life, having fennel in the arsenal is a great way to spice up that thing we all need more of in our diets: vegetables. Well, that is my two cents. You will have to decide for yourself.

Now, back to the dish at hand ... First impression: it did not look as pretty as the picture from the recipe. It was a little too dark in color. Maybe I over-browned the pancetta. Maybe my homemade chicken stock was too dark to use as the broth. Maybe the dish in the picture was prepared by a food stylist and was completely inedible. In any case, it smelled delicious, and I was not serving it for company, so the appearance was merely disappointing, not a disaster.

And what of the taste? It is hard to say what the predominant flavor was. They all complemented each other so well. The pasta was a perfect backdrop for all the other strong flavors. The fennel lent its aromatic punch. The chiles gave it a spicy kick. The cheese gave it a nice tang. The lemon and parsley balanced it out with some freshness. Oh yeah, and the pancetta ... The pancetta gave it a meaty richness. I don’t even know how to describe it. Pancetta tastes like it smells—meaty with hints of spice. So rich ... and porky ... and delicious. Insert contented sigh here.

Conclusion: Pancetta is certainly delicious, but it is not more delicious than bacon. I will use pancetta again in the future, but considering the price tag, I will stick with bacon for everyday use.

Capon

Week: 3
Ingredient: Capon
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Roast Capon (improvised)

Since I already described my failure to roast a capon, there is not much adventure left to relate. My actual capon roasting experience turned out to be just like roasting a hen, only bigger. So, here are my observations about roasting poultry in general …

1. I like my new roasting pan. It is heavy-duty and spacious enough for a big turkey. I especially like the sturdy handles; they make it easy to move the heavy pan + bird from the counter to oven and back. I can also use it on the stove—perfect for getting all the flavorful brown bits left in the pan into my gravy.
2. Rack ’em up. A roasting rack keeps the bird off the bottom of the pan and out of the juices. No more soggy bottom!
3. Rubbing a chicken with butter is weird. I know butter makes everything better, but how is rubbing a raw chicken with butter a good idea? Seriously! It never works right for me. I end up with as much butter on my hands as on the chicken, and the butter is spread over the chicken in randomly-placed lumps rather than an even coat. There are so many things that can go wrong: butter too cold, chicken too cold, hands too warm, chicken too wet, cook too impatient …. I do not want to stop buttering my chickens, but there must be a better way. Maybe brushing melted butter on the chicken is the way to go. Another option would be to make a lovely compound butter, chill it well, slice it thinly, and tuck it under the skin. I think I will try that next time.
4. Turkey basters are not just strange kitchen tools with no purpose. I do not have a baster. I tried to baste the capon by tilting the pan to pool the juices and spooning the juices over the meat. The rack got in the way, and it was hard to get much juice on the spoon. I also burnt my hand because I was using a short-handled spoon. Clearly a baster was designed to solve this problem. I am pretty sure I could still live without one, but now I am actually thinking about getting one. Crazy!
5. Meat thermometers are smarter than me. At least when it comes to knowing when poultry is done. When I roasted the capon, the meat was a beautiful brown color at least 30 minutes before the “thickest part of the thigh” reached the right temperature. So, appearance is not a good indicator for doneness. Maybe I am crazy, but I think finding the “thickest part of the thigh” is a bit tricky; it is hard to tell exactly where the end of the thermometer is. I have tried a few different thermometers, and now I have settled on the instant-read kind. With an instant-read thermometer, I can quickly check two different places in the thigh and hope that one of them is the thickest part. The only drawback I see with instant-read thermometers is that you have to guess at some of the timing. If your chicken needs to be 3 degrees warmer, how many minutes will that take? I ended up taking my capon out of the oven to check the temperature quite a few times near the end of cooking.
6. Turkey lifters are helpful. There have been many times when I tried to move a roasted chicken from the pan to a platter without lifters, and it has always been precarious. I inevitably end up burning myself, making a mess, and/or marring the chicken’s appearance in some way. Lifters make moving hot poultry stress-free.
7. I always have leftover chicken at the wrong time. You know how lots of recipes call for cooked, chopped or shredded chicken? Well, whenever I want to make one of those recipes, I never have cooked chicken on hand. Whenever I have cooked chicken on hand, I cannot find any of those recipes. Murphy’s Law, I guess.

Conclusion: The first thing that struck me when I took the capon out of its packaging was how much fat there was. All that fat led to great results! With no special treatment, the capon turned out beautifully. The skin was brown and crispy, and the meat was flavorful, tender, and moist. I highly recommend roast capon for the mouth-watering aroma that fills your kitchen while you are cooking, the succulent meal it provides, and the leftover bones which can be used to make delicious, homemade stock. I do not know how readily available capons are most of the time, but I would definitely opt for one over a roasting hen if I had the choice.

Turnips

Week: 2
Ingredient: Turnips
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Mashed Turnips

Last night was a disaster! No, not the turnips; they turned out fine (more on that later). I am more interested in sharing about the conflict and resolution that played out in my little dinner party drama last night.

If you have read a few of my previous posts, you know that I have been planning to cook a capon. My new roasting pan arrived a little over a week ago, so I started making real plans. I invited some friends over for dinner on Saturday night. All week, I made my preparations: picking recipes, cleaning house, grocery shopping, advance prep work, etc.

Saturday afternoon, everything was in order so that I could start cooking. I pulled my capon out of the refrigerator to sit at room temperature for thirty minutes before going into the oven. I softened a stick of butter in the microwave, peeled some garlic cloves, and washed my fresh herbs. I adjusted my oven racks to fit the shiny, new roasting pan. I put a clean tablecloth on the kitchen table. I spent some time reviewing recipes, and I turned on the oven to preheat. I took the capon out of its packaging, and removed the giblets ...

Well, the perfect dinner party ended right there because I did not actually remove the giblets. I tried to remove the giblets. After getting past the thick wire that bound the legs together, I found the giblets were frozen solid in the cavity of the fat, castrated rooster that was supposed to be my dinner. Blargh!

Apparently four days in my refrigerator was not enough time to thaw the frozen 9-pound bird. When I discovered my dilemma, it was too late even to think of trying the cold water method to thaw the capon quickly. There was really no wiggle room in my schedule. Besides, Cris was already at my house doing some electrical work. (Thanks, Cris!) I could not push dinner back to who knows when. I needed a plan B.

There are plenty of options when a dinner fails: go out, order in, make do with what you have ... Somehow, all those options were so unsatisfying when what I was looking forward to was a good, home-cooked meal shared with friends. In the end, I stuck with my original menu but with one substitution: pan-fried pork chops instead of roast capon. Not bad for plan B (although it did require a quick trip to Red Front). The pork chops were quick and easy, but very tasty. I served them with a bottle of wine that I bought because the label was pretty (Juan Gil Jumilla 2003—beautiful dark color, soft and smooth, deep, rich flavor, slightly sweet, with a little spice—delicious!). We also had a green salad with apples, walnuts and a maple vinaigrette. The cauliflower gratin was to-die-for (probably literally with all that butter, cream, and Gruyère). And Andrea’s desserts—eggnog cheesecake and butterscotch pudding with bananas—were outstanding served with French pressed coffee.

I really cannot complain about the meal. The only problem is that now I will have to cook the capon mid-week, and I have no dinner guests lined up. However, I am sure I will manage. Now on to the turnips ...

There is not much to say about the turnips. I consulted a few cookbooks, and they said you could prepare turnips in basically any way you would prepare potatoes. So, I boiled them, drained them, mashed them, and added a little butter, salt, and pepper. Voilà—mashed turnips, a simple preparation that allows the flavor of the turnips to shine through. The flavor was pleasantly pungent, and the texture was slightly stringy. Not bad, but I think I prefer mashed potatoes. I might experiment sometime with adding a few turnips to my mashed potatoes to give them a subtle pungency without losing the superior texture of the potatoes.

Conclusion: I probably did not give turnips a fair shot. So soon after the disappointment of the semi-frozen capon and the jubilation of the cauliflower gratin, mashed turnips were too mundane to excite more than passive acceptance. Sorry, turnips. Better luck next time.

Chipped Beef

Week: 1
Ingredient: Esskay Chipped Beef
From: Red Front Supermarket, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Creamed Chipped Beef (from the package)

I made a quick stop at Red Front this week to pick up a few ingredients for a salad I was supposed to take to a dinner the next evening. While I was there, I decided to see what unusual things Red Front carried. Certainly there would be something interesting in the small grocery store I have always thought was very ... Mennonite. The first thing that caught my eye was a small jar of “Dried Beef.” Immediately, I was reminded of my grandmother—not the Mennonite one, but the the Baptist one. I had seen such a jar in her kitchen many times. I always thought the little rounds of red-brown meat in an otherwise-empty jar were funny. Seriously, who buys meat that way?

Nonetheless, it seemed perfect. The weather was so cold outside, exactly the kind of weather that makes one want to sit down to a hot, fattening, oh-so-comforting meal. And chipped beef gravy, the only thing I knew to do with dried beef, was all of these things. I added the little jar to my cart and continued through the store.

When I passed through the refrigerated meat section, I noticed a small, plastic package labeled “Chipped Beef.” But if that was chipped beef, what was this dried beef I had found amongst the SPAM and Vienna sausages? I was anxious to get home, out of the cold, so I added the similar-looking, but sooner-expiring, thinly-sliced beef to my cart, and hurried through the rest of my shopping trip.

Back at home, with the groceries unloaded, I set out to find out the difference between dried beef and chipped beef. Food Lover's Companion did not let me down: “Chipped beef is also referred to simply as dried beef.”¹ It was not surprising that the two dried beef products I purchased varied only in packaging. “Dried Beef” had a longer shelf life because it was sealed in a jar; “Chipped Beef” was packaged more like a fresh lunch meat and would spoil without refrigeration. Oh well. One can never have too much dried meat, right? (Yeah ... right.)

On Saturday I made chipped beef gravy. Butter + dried beef + flour + milk + pepper. That is really all there is to it—so easy! And just as comforting as I expected it would be. I had no bread at home, so I made biscuits to go with it. Unnecessary richness! In the future, I will serve it on toast. Also, chipped beef is quite salty, so next time I may start by parboiling the meat and draining the water. I can always add salt, if needed.

Conclusion: Chipped beef is pretty much what I expected: dry, salty meat. But not so very long ago dry, salty meat was a staple, right? I should probably branch out and try something else with chipped beef sometime. But I will always know that a classic like chipped beef gravy—with toast—is an excellent comfort food for a cold, winter morning.

¹Sharon Tyler Herbst, Food Lover's Companion, 3rd ed. (Hauppauge, NY: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 2001), 133.

Buckwheat

Week: 0
Ingredient: Wolff's Kasha (buckwheat groats)
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Creamy Kasha (Buckwheat) Cereal¹

My best friend recently discovered she has a gluten allergy. I bought her The Gluten-free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods for Christmas, but she already had it. So, I kept it for myself, and I will have a reference for cooking gluten-free when she comes to visit in the future. I browsed through the cookbook, and that's where I found “Creamy Kasha Cereal.”

The recipe was perfect for a blog post because (1) I have never cooked buckwheat, and (2) I had all the ingredients on hand. So, why did I have buckwheat on hand if I never use it? I had actually had a box of buckwheat sitting in my pantry, untouched, for quite a long time. I bought it after a trip to Ukraine, where I first ate this form of buckwheat. The plan was to try to recreate some of the Ukrainian food I ate, but I never got around to it. Fortunately, buckwheat has a long shelf life!

The buckwheat I ate in Ukraine was served with vegetables and a little meat, quite unlike this sweet breakfast dish. I prepared the recipe as written with one substitution: dried cherries instead of dried cranberries. While it was cooking, I was a little skeptical. The chocolaty aroma was nice enough, but it just did not look appealing. It was brown, lumpy, and watery. Despite cooking it longer than the recipe indicated, the wateriness did not go away. (Maybe I measured wrong?) Adding the cream at the end improved the appearance, but it was still a rather homely dish.

But, all's well that ends well. It was actually very tasty, like oatmeal but with a slightly different taste (buckwheat-y!) and texture (groat-y!). In fact, the texture was quite pleasant—not at all pasty like oatmeal can sometimes be. It was quick and easy too.

Conclusion: Buckwheat is an ingredient worth using. I won't be serving “Creamy Kasha” for company any time soon, but it is certainly good enough for a family breakfast. The recipe leaves plenty of room for variation—change up the fruit, add some nuts, use honey instead of brown sugar, etc. Next time I cook buckwheat, I'll probably try it in something savory—a pilaf, perhaps. If nothing else, buckwheat is a nice alternative to oatmeal once in a while.

If you are wondering why this post is not about capon, it is because I decided I wanted a proper roasting pan before cooking my Capon. I ordered one, and it should arrive soon. The capon was frozen when I bought it, so it won't hurt to keep it in the freezer another week or two. :)

¹Bette Hagman, The Gluten-free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), 127.