Wordless Snowday: Joanne's Chili with Homemade Cornbread

Meatless Monday: Tortilla Española

Amy's coworker Marcy has chickens and sells beautiful large fresh brown eggs. They are so different from store-bought that the $2.50/dozen is an excellent value. We bought some the other day and thought they'd make a great ingredient for Meatless Monday. But what to do? The answer was found in The Best of America's Test Kitchen: Best Recipes and Reviews 2011, on the page featuring Spanish Tortilla, or Tortilla Española.

At its very basic, this "tortilla" is an omelette with potatoes and onions. However, the potatoes are cooked in just the right amount of oil to be tender and melting in your mouth, and the omelet, made with eight fresh eggs, is velvety yet dense enough to cut into cubes or squares. That is what makes this popular at most tapas bars.

We followed many of the tips from ATK, such as, using Yukon Golds ("starchy enough to become tender but sturdy enough to stir and flip in shallow oil without crumbling"), using less oil than traditional recipes ("typical recipes call for simmering potatoes in 3 or 4 cups of extra-virgin olive oil"), making the tortilla in a 10-inch nonstick skillet, and notes on how to flip the tortilla. But, as always, we put our own spin on the recipe. Here's what we did.

Ingredients:

6 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

4 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cut into 1/8-inch slices

1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced

salt and pepper to taste

8 large eggs

Toss 4 tablespoons of the oil, with the potato, onion, salt and pepper in a large bowl until potatoes are well coated. Heat 2 additional tablespoons of the oil in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat until oil is shimmering. Add the potato mixture to the skillet. Cover and cook, stirring with a rubber spatula every 5 minutes, until potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with about a teaspoon of salt in a bowl until combined. Fold the potato mixture into the eggs, scraping the skillet clean. Add 1/2 tablespoon of oil to the skillet and return it to the heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the egg-potato mixture and cook, folding the mixture and shaking the pan for 15 seconds. Smooth the top, reduce heat to medium, cover and cook for two minutes, gently shaking the pan every 30 seconds. Using a rubber spatula, loosen the tortilla from the skillet, shaking the pan until it slides around freely. Slide the tortilla onto a large plate. Invert the tortilla onto a second large plate and slide it bak into the skillet, browned side up. Continue to cook for two minutes longer, gently shaking the pan every 30 seconds. Slide onto a cutting board and allow to cool. Serve at room temperature with a side salad for a light and simple dinner, or cut into smaller pieces and serve as tapas.

Wordless Weekender: Flan with Caramel Sauce

Slow-Cooker Pork with Apples and Onions

Another storm. Another snow day. (Not that we're complaining). A perfect day for a slow-cooked meal, so we give you pork with apples and onions. This recipe is almost too simple - layer the ingredients in the slow cooker and leave it alone for 3 hours. Then eat it. Amazing! And it made the house smell like apples! We served it with chunky mashed potatoes. Let it snow!

Ingredients:

1 Braeburn apple, peeled and sliced

2 pork sirloin chops, cut in half

salt and pepper to taste

1 Cortland apple, peeled and sliced

2 teaspoons Red Monkey Stone Ground Spicy Mustard (you could use plain ground mustard, but this one adds a nice kick)

6 pearl onions, peeled

4 cippolini onions, peeled

1 1/2 cups apple cider

1 sprig fresh rosemary

In a 3-quart slow-cooker, layer the ingredients in the order they are listed. Cook on high for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, allowing the slow-cooker to do all the work while you browse A Couple in the Kitchen. Enjoy!!!

Pieces of pork layered between apple slices then seasoned

Thrown in some onions

Apple cider adds extra apple flavor

Pork loves rosemary

Love Letter to My Grocery Store

Amy writes:

Dear Big Y,

I love you. It's true. Our affair started a long time ago, when I was born in your hometown of Chicopee, Massachusetts. For a long time, you were the only grocery store I knew. Sure, my mom sometimes visited other stores, tempted by promises of lower prices and coupon tripling. But she always came back, and I (almost always) stayed true, unless I was living in some area where you just wouldn't come.

Besides being from the same town, we have so much in common! I love grocery shopping, and you're a grocery store. I don't like big chain stores, and you're a local, family-owned company. I love being organized, and your aisles follow logical sense. I mean, at least you don't think pasta is an "International Food!" I like to be friendly, and your employees are very friendly. I especially like the guy who wears the newsboy cap at your Manchester branch, not to mention the fact that you have employed so many of my students over the years.  I like to do most of my shopping in one place, and you not only offer a pharmacy, but you even have a branch of my bank inside your store. That's my bank! See, it's destiny!

Then, about a year and a half ago, we broke up. I was upset about those bad clams you sold me, those green beans that were soggy the day after I bought them. Your prices seemed a lot higher all of a sudden. You never, not even once, gave me a gold coin. I had to leave. For six months or so, I was seeing another store. I was lured in by the promises of lower prices and discounts on gas. It was awful. I couldn't find anything! The butchers wouldn't give me any recipes! They didn't even sell Appian Way pizza kits! 

Luckily, my mom told me you were starting to come around, to change to the way you once were, so I decided to give you another chance. You know what? You are the best you've ever been! Since I've been back, your produce has been consistently fresh and crisp. Your seafood always tastes just-caught, like you say in your commercials. Your butchers are so nice and helpful. You carry all my favorite products and bring in new things all the time. Lately, you've been offering D'Artagnan meats in the meat aisle, things like buffalo, duck, andouille sausage, and wild boar, exotic treats that for so long I could only find online or at places like Whole Paycheck Foods. Speaking of paychecks, both your sales and your everyday prices have been so much better lately. And, in the last couple of months, I've gotten, like, six gold coins!!!

So, I just want to say thank you. Thanks for getting back to your old self. It means so much to me that you could reflect on the error of your ways and bring us back together, the way it's meant to be. Keep it up, and I promise never to cheat again. From my family to yours...

Love (always?),

Amy

P.S. Happy 75th Anniversary.

Meatless Monday: Cheesy Polenta Pie

(Note: updated recipe to include the forgotton sundried tomatoes!) Let's start by saying that we've both under some stress lately. That means we wanted needed some comfort food. For Amy, that usually means meat, but it's Meatless Monday, and we're stickin' to that resolution (since it's still January...)! So, we turned to cheese as a key ingredient in tonight's meatless meal.

Cheese definitely falls under the "comfort food" category in our world, and since Amy spent some fun years in New Orleans, so do grits. (For a great explanation of the difference between polenta and grits, go HERE). In this cooked-on-the-stovetop-then-baked dish, we use parmesan and mozzarella to give our polenta a boost of flavor and extra gooey creaminess. A handful of chopped sundried tomatoes not only offer the dish some color and nice concentrated tomato taste, but enhance the saltiness of the parmesan. Next time, we'd put in more parmesan and add some chopped fresh herbs to the mix, perhaps basil or rosemary. We enjoyed this hot out of the cast iron pan with a side salad for dinner, yet we also grabbed a wedge out of the fridge and loved it at room temperature as a just-before-school-starts morning snack.

Ingredients:

4 cups cold water

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 1/2 cups coarsely ground yellow corn meal (polenta)

2 tablespoons butter, divided

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Pour the water into a medium pot and add salt to it. Whisk the polenta into the cold water, then turn the heat on to medium. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until the polenta has absorbed most of the water and has the consistency of grits. Lower heat and continue to cook, stirring still, for another 3-5 minutes. Turn off the heat, then add 1 tablespoon of butter and all of the parmesan cheese, as well as the sundried tomatoes, stirring until the butter melts and tomatoes are evenly distributed. Grease a cast-iron skillet with the other tablespoon of butter and spread the polenta into it evenly. Top the polenta with the mozzarella cheese. Place in the oven and bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Allow to cool five minutes before slicing and serving.

Wordless Weekender: Leftover-Pizza Frittata

French 7-Onion Soup

Who doesn't love French Onion Soup? Sweet caramelized onions swimming in hearty beef broth topped with bread and gooey melted cheese that is browned on top? As Anne Burrell says, "Brown food is gooooood!" The cheese alone makes us crave it! And so we bring you our version, which involved not one, not two...but seven different types of onions because that's how we do things around here. And we caramelized them for not one, not two, but three hours. Yes, you read that right. To coax as much delicious sweetness out of those onions, we kept them covered and cooking over low heat for three whole hours, stirring often, but otherwise patiently waiting as the house filled with a mouth-watering oniony scent. This is the perfect process for a snowy Sunday afternoon, btw. The major debate during preparation was what type of wine to use? White, red, and sherry all were put on the table. We ended up choosing red because we love red with beef, and we were using beef broth. But we encourage experimentation...always!

Note: Our onion variety included one large each of the following: red, yellow, white, and sweet, plus four shallots, 8 pearl and 8 cippollini.

Start with 8 cups of sliced onions

Cooked for one hour

Cooked for two hours

Cooked for three hours

Just the soup

Topped with garlicky croutons

Topped with plenty of cheese, please!

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup olive oil

3 pounds onions, thinly sliced to about 8 cups' worth

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup flour

1 cup red wine

4 cups beef broth

1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme

2 bay leaves

salt and pepper to taste

4 1/2-inch-thick pieces of baguette

1 clove garlic

1/2 cup shredded gruyere cheese

1/2 cup shredded swiss cheese

In a large pot over medium heat, heat the oil and butter together until the butter is melted. Add the sliced onions and stir until all onions are coated. Cover the pot and turn the heat to low. Cook for three hours, stirring every fifteen minutes or so, until the onions are golden brown. Sprinkle the onions with the flour, stir until coated, and cook another five minutes. Slowly pour in the red wine and cook, stirring, until about half the wine is evaporated. Add the broth, thyme, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Simmer uncovered for 30-45 minutes. When ready to serve, mix the cheeses together in a bowl. Rub the baguette slices with garlic, toast them, then cut them into crouton-size bites. Ladle the soup into oven-proof bowls and top with the croutons. Heat broiler on high. Top the entire bowl generously with the cheese mixture and place on a baking sheet under the broiler for 4-5 minutes to melt and brown the cheese. Enjoy carefully! Bowls will be hot!  

Duo of Duck

Amy really loves duck, like, it's her favorite meal! So when she found out about Ott A's Iron Chef Challenge: Duck, she was totally into it and started thinking up ideas. The final decision? A duo of duck, served with Israeli couscous.

The first duck preparation was simply a duck confit leg which we purchased from a butcher. This involved no recipe on our part, just heating up the deliciously tender, falling-off-the-bone duck meat. So very yummy, with its unctious meat and super-crispy skin!

The second preparation was our own recipe and was certainly more involved. It centered upon one gorgeous "Moulard Duck Magret" duck breast from D'Artagnan that we carefully and respectfully seasoned, cooked and served with a sweet-tart Pinot-Cherry sauce. Here's our recipe for that fabulously rich, wonderful duck with the sauce, as well as the couscous that paired so nicely with it.

For the duck breast:

Ingredients:

1 duck breast, skin on

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 pound fresh cherries

3/4 cup Pinot Noir wine

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 ounce Kirsch (cherry liquer)

the juice and pulp of one clementine

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Allow the duck breast to come to room temperature and then score the fat in a cross-hatch pattern. Season the duck breast well with salt and pepper. Place fat-side down in a cold cast iron skillet. Place the pan over high heat and sear the duck until the fat is rendered out and the skin releases easily from the pan, 8-10 minutes. Flip the breast and cook on the other side for 2-3 minutes. Then place the entire skillet in the oven and cook until the internal temperature is 155 degrees, about 20 minutes. Allow to rest at least five minutes before slicing and serving with the Pinot-Cherry sauce (recipes below) and couscous.

In the meantime, place the cherries, wine, thyme and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat and allow to reduce to about 1/2 the amount of liquid. Stir in the Kirsch and the clementine juice and pulp and continue to cook another minute or so. Allow to cool and serve over the duck breast.

For the couscous:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup water

1 cup Israeli pearl couscous

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon Bella Cucina Aromatic Savory Salts (Wild Oregano and Sage flavor), or a teaspoon of kosher salt with a pinch of dried sage

1 tablespoon salted butter

Bring water to a boil. Add the couscous, walnuts and savory salts. Cover, lower heat and simmer for 8-10 minutes, until couscous reaches desired tenderness. Stir in the butter and serve alongside the duck.

Review: CW's Chops 'n Catch, Manchester, CT

It was payday Friday, and thus, Date Night! We chose to stay local and try one of Manchester's newest places, CW's Chops 'n Catch. Corey Wry (CW) was raised here in the "Silk City" and has two popular restaurants, Pastrami on Wry (breakfast, soups, sandwiches) and Corey's Catsup and Mustard (a burger bar). He opened Chops 'n Catch last month with the tagline "a local place for steak 'n fish 'n comfort."

Awkward name aside, the menu is inviting, and certainly the type of thing we could use "this side of the river," where breakfast and lunch joints abound and one has to go to a chain restaurant by the mall to get a decent steak. On his menu, Corey claims his goal is "to use locally produced and seasonal food from regional farms and fisheries as much a (sic) possible." Local items are marked with a green icon in the shape of the state of CT, but they are few and far between, and we hope to see more of them as the restaurant comes into its own.

Lobster Cakes

There are plenty of "chops" (steaks, kabobs, pork, veal, chicken, lamb) and "catches" (oysters, shrimp, haddock, mahi, salmon, cod, tuna) from which to choose. We started with the lobster cakes, which had plenty of chunks lobster meat and very little filler. They were served with a sweet corn salsa, a scoop of red potato salad and a zippy remoulade sauce. They were seasoned well and very tasty, but could have been a tad hotter. 

Dr. Pepper Braised Short Rib



For the main course, we both chose to try one of the "signature entrees." The Dr. Pepper Braised Short Rib had a lot of flavor but had some gristly parts and was a bit dry for a braised meat, with the cilantro-breadcrumb topping only making it drier. The grits over which it was served were perfectly cooked, however, and we loved the Dr. Pepper reduction. Chris got the Steak 'n Eggs, an ancho-coffee rubbed filet served over scalloped potatoes and bacon, and topped with a poached egg. The steak, while very tender, could have used more seasoning, but the remaining components were well cooked, well seasoned and made for a great plate we could have enjoyed anytime of day.

We love the fact that the wine list included some local stars from CT and Long Island, and ordered the Cabernet Franc from Jonathan Edwards in North Stonington, which paired nicely with the meats. We were too full to try dessert, but a couple of them sounded tempting indeed.

The service was good; our server was friendly and attentive without hovering, but things happened very slowly. The manager stopped by to check on things, which is always a nice touch. We liked the decor, with its dim lighting and typical shades of brown one finds at a steakhouse, accented here with bright blue ocean-themed watercolors. The floor, a somewhat dingy black and white checkered linoleum, could use an update from the location's Nulli's days. Also, there was a lingering scent of frying oil, as one usually finds in bad Chinese take-out joints, that was strong enough to stay on our clothes after we left - not good. 

Overall, it was a decent meal with more ups than downs. And since they've been open only three weeks, we're going to give them some time to work out the kinks and then try another visit.