WINTER COOKING

Dinners served aboard the Floating Empire in the depths of winter tend heavily toward comfort food: warm, hearty one dish meals that are intended to feed and warm the soul as much as nourish the body.

Mungo's birthday meal in the making

If you have been following (hint, hint) Onboard Cooking you will likely remember that we only have a cooktop; no oven yet, and really only have one burner. Well, now that its gotten cold enough to have our kerosene heater running full time i will admit to 'cheating' a bit by utilizing the heater top to heat and cook things like potatoes, pasta, and with care, rice. Still and all most meals are made with one pot, one cook top. This does present a challenge: not just the practical physical aspects of getting it all done, but the ingenuity required to come up with interesting variations on the themes of soup and stew.

Chicken and Dumplings, oh so yummy!

From Mungo's birthday dinner of beef bourguignon, to cassoulet, to chicken and dumplings, the lovely stuffed peppers i made for dinner last night and all the beautiful Malaysian curries, soups and stews, we have been eating very well and, i need to point out, very affordably as well.

Without a doubt the best Chicken Curry soup, ever!

Mungo's birthday meal on the table!

I have heard the arguments repeatedly that people living on a fixed income or gasp, 'assistance' should only be eating pink slime, spam and nasty surplus canned vegetables and other packaged an over processed food; people kibble if you will. Nothing's further from the truth. Over-processed factory food has little nutritional value, leaves the eater undernourished, hungry and unhappy. Cooking and eating is about more than filling your belly and satisfying your cravings for sweet, salt or fat. It is about nourishing and sustaining life: about love and comfort. A well set table with beautiful, lovingly made food should be one of the most important centers of the home. It is here.

I think he liked it!

Bon appetite!

More later,
Morgainne

Comfort Food, Italian Style

I imagine that most of you immediately think of a pasta dish(carbonara anyone?) when confronted with a title like this; but i was really thinking of risotto, specifically my favorite, mushroom and spinach risotto. I know more than a few people who find this dish challenging and or too time consuming for the home cook, but this is simply not so! Yes, there is a fair amount of stove top diligence required to produce a really yummy, creamy risotto, but its not rocket science and only takes as long to make as any simple pasta dish with the added advantage of being a one pot meal.

So what does it take to make a great risotto? 1. The right rice! Arborio is the most common risotto rice.

Short Grain Arborio Rice

A risotto rice must be a short/medium grain, the typical long grain rice found in the supermarket will not do. It will break down, losing its shape and consistency in the face of all the liquid used, usually twice the amount used for a typical rice dish. The short grain rices will retain their ‘toothiness’, while exuding a lovely, creamy starchy sauce. 2. Excellent home made broth is best, but i will admit to many times reaching for the container of store bought chicken stock. Make sure that you use a low sodium! 3. Whatever ingredients you’ve chosen to highlight. Keep it simple, showcase one or two prime, seasonal ingredients. To make the risotto pictured here you will need the following. Please be aware that almost all of the ingredient measurements are approximate. I’m pretty sure that the only thing i actually measured was the rice.

4-6 CUPS BROTH, HOT **

1 CUP ARBORIO RICE

2TB OLIVE OIL

3-4 DRY SHITAKE MUSHROOMS, sliced

1 LARGE PIECE DRIED BLACK FUNGUS, sliced

4-6 MEDIUM WHITE OR PORTABELLA MUSHROOMS, sliced

1/2 MEDIUM RED ONION, SLIVERED

1 MEDIUM SHALLOT, DICED

1-2 CLOVES GARLICE, MINCED

1# FROZEN, CHOPPED SPINACH

1/2TSP EACH, FRESH GROUND BLACK PEPPER, RED PEPPER FLAKES, THYME

1 TSP OREGANO

FRESH GRATED NUTMEG, TO TASTE, BUT AT LEAST 1/2 TSP

1-2 OUNCES BLUE CHEESE CRUMBLES

1-2 OUNCES SHREDDED SWISS OR MOZZARELLA CHEESE

**The amount of broth you will use depends on the age of your rice and of course your own personal taste, how juicy do you like your risotto? I usually use about four cups.

Start by soaking the dried  mushrooms in two cups hot water for at least twenty minutes.

Soaking dried mushrooms and some homemade chicken stock

While the mushrooms are soaking prep all the rest of your ingredients. Drain the mushrooms, squeeze out the excess moisture, making sure to save the mushroom water which you can use for part of your broth. Heat the olive oil and gently saute the onion, shallot and garlic, do not allow to brown.

Three Fungi, no waiting

Add the fresh mushrooms and cook until they start to wilt and give off moisture. Add the rest of the mushrooms, stir to coat with the oil. Add the rice, stirring to coat evenly with the oil and saute for a few minutes.

Raise the heat to medium high and pour in one cup of the broth, it should be bubbling merrily, stir until almost all of the broth is absorbed. Usually this only takes a few minutes. Turn the heat down a little now and add more broth a half a cup or so at a time, stirring gently to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan. At this point you should add all of the seasoning except the nutmeg.

Developing its wonderful, creamy texture

At this time you can pour yourself a glass of wine, go to the bathroom, set the table, etc. Just make sure that you come back and continue the stirring and broth addition every few minutes. The entire process, once you start adding the broth will take about twenty minutes. How will you know when its done? The rice should be tender, but retain its shape and have a little tooth (a la dente, like a good pasta). There should be a good robing of a creamy ‘sauce’ still visible. Add the spinach, and cook until its hot all the way through, add the cheeses and stir until they are almost melted.

Add the Spinach, Nutmeg, and Cheeses

Grate in the nutmeg and check the seasoning. Serve immediately, preferably on hot plates. This will serve four people.

Hot, Rich, and Steamy

So what makes comfort food? Certainly one factor is childhood tastes; although, since so many of us were picky eaters as children; it might be better to characterize comfort food as a taste of home, the aroma of love, the result of care, an act of magic that takes simple, everyday ingredients and transforms them into a culinary delight.

Trail Pizza (No, not that kind)

This was a wonderful culinary side trip, and we thought we’d share it with you.  Near where we are moored on Middle River, just a bit north of Baltimore Md, is the lovely little nature center at Marshy Point.  We’ve come to love Marshy Point. It has some great hiking trails, wonderful views of the water, and an astonishingly active nature center full of exhibits, a whole range of programs and workshops, a great staff, and an entertaining host of rescued critters including ducks, chickens, and a turkey, that live at the center.

One of the coolest programs we hit there recently involved foraging for, making, and wood firing pizzas using wild found toppings.  

No one said getting Cattail tuber was easy

Not even for John, who is presumably used to this.  Mucky stuff.

John, one of the excellent staff there, first took us on a walking tour of the trails and cultivation sites to collect ingredients.  Some of the stuff local to here included cattail root (which grows near you.  No, seriously, I don’t think there’s anywhere on the planet where it DOESN’T grow that isn’t permafrost or outright desert), wild carrot (also known as Queen Ann’s Lace), dandelion leaf and root, wild onion, and the star of the show this afternoon, Jerusalem Artichoke (also called Sunchoke. . . .actually the name is a total misnomer.  It’s not an artichoke and has nothing whatsoever to do with Jerusalem.  The plant is a sunflower relative, and early Italian settlers to the New World called it girasole, Italian for sunflower.  The English, typically, mispronounced it. ). 

Jerusalem Artichoke and a bit of wild carrot

We brought our booty back to the center and constructed a couple of pizzas from provided pizza dough and tomato sauce and cheese, then off to the Center’s outdoor earthen oven—made from locally dug clay— to fire them up.

Ready to go

If you’re not familiar with wood fired earthen ovens, these things are HOT. 

Eat your heart out, Surface of Venus

Temperatures nearing 900F are possible, and they retain heat for hours.  There’s no chimney, no grate, no nothing.  You build the fire in the center of the oven, and when it’s hot, you rake the coals to the side, use a wet mop of strips of cloth to swab out the ashes, hit the center with a bit of corn meal (which prevents sticking and lets you know if the oven is hot enough/too hot. 

Move the coals

swab the oven floor

In they go.

If it burns immediately, you need to cool things off a bit), and then slide the pizzas off of the peel and onto the floor of the oven.  At those temperatures, it only takes a couple of minutes.

All done

Yeah, I know it's too hot, I'm slicing it anyway.

The results were surprisingly delicious (The turkey and a couple of the chickens hung out just to see if maybe we dropped something.  They were not disappointed.).

Drop something, dammit!

  The Jerusalem Artichoke lends a wonderful, mellow, nutty flavor to things. 

Oh, yum!

Really, this was better than a lot of restaurant pizzas I’ve had.

Yeah, we killed two of these in about three minutes.

Nice job, guys.  Marshy Point Nature Center is a local treasure.

Now we just have to talk our marina into letting us build one of these clay ovens.

Hey check out our other blogs, Floating Empire and Life, Art, Water.  You'll be glad you did.

Mungo

Cheap Chicken and Dumplings and other things

CHEAP CHICKEN

You cannot beat a store roasted chicken in terms of meals for your dollar. I mean really you can’t even buy a roasting chicken to cook as cheaply as the chickens that are offered at your local market; plus you don’t have to cook it! Okay that can be a down side as well as a benefit. If you live and shop where there are Giant Supermarkets they have a couple of different seasoning styles; ranging from honey, Chesapeake, plain or my own personal favorite, Bourbon. Not to mention they do cheap chicken Fridays, where the bird is only $5. Our local market, Gersbecks, does a good plain chicken that sells every day for $5.99. Granted that all of these chickens are on the small side, still Mungo and I can always get three meals, at least out of one these birds, do the math people!

Meal one is almost always chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, or stuffing. I’ve just started to play with stove top dressing and am not happy with the result to date. Next time i will try making it in the dutch oven. Meal two this time around was chicken and dumplings.

 It was a cold rainy day and a yummy chicken stew with lots of veggies really hit the spot. You should note that the best dumpling recipes call for buttermilk, something that most of us do not keep in the fridge on a regular basis. Certainly living aboard there’s not really room for an extra quart sized container our 3.1 cubic foot refrigerator Not to mention after using the 1/2 cup or so of buttermilk the rest of it usually sits in the fridge until it goes really bad. Buttermilk, however, is really easy to make. Just measure out your regular milk, 1 cup, in a glass container and add between 3 - 4 tablespoons of lemon juice or white vinegar, stir it up and thirty minutes later you have buttermilk. Mungo and i can never eat all the dumplings you can make from a normal recipe, leftover dumplings just don’t cut it with me. However leftover dumpling batter will keep overnight with refrigeration and it is really easy to make awesome fruit dumplings for breakfast the next day. Try them with blueberries and maple syrup!  Yum yum, but i digress.

Meal three is almost always a chicken salad or some sort. There are as many variations on chicken salad as there are cooks; but in my humble opinion there should always be chicken (well, duh!), celery, some sort of onion, mayo and of course in summer served on or in a perfect vine ripened tomato!

Bon appetite!

More later,

Morgainne