Rustic French Pork and White Bean Stew (PCP)

• 3 pounds boneless pork butt roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons herbes de Provence
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 pound carrots, peeled and sliced 1 inch thick
• 1 fennel bulb, stalks discarded, bulb halved, cored, and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 8 ounces (1 1/4 cups) dried cannellini beans, picked over, rinsed, and salt-soaked
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice, plus extra as needed

Mise en place.

Brown half the pork.

Obligatory onion softening.

Followed by garlic and Herbes de Provence until fragrant.  Then flour for a minute or so to cook off raw taste.

Deglaze with wine.  Throw it all in (except for lemon juice and parsley) and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes.  Release pressure naturally.

Add lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

Verdict: a pretty good dish.  However, it's French so immediately it's at a disadvantage in my book; it strikes me as a little bit dull.

Stir-Fried Fennel and Pink Grapefruit with Shrimp (FM)

• 3 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil
• 1 bunch scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 fresh hot chile (like jalapeno or Thai), minced [Somehow flaked of this.  Use red chile flakes instead.]
• 2 large fennel bulbs, cored and thinly sliced
• 2 grapefruit, peeled, segmented, and chopped [Bittman says that if you know how to supreme citrus, you should go ahead and I did.  Don't typically have much practice at this.]
• 8 ounces shrimp, peeled
•  1 tablespoon soy sauce, or to taste
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint, cilantro, or a combination
• Salt and black pepper

Mise en place.

Heat oil over high heat.  Cook scallion, garlic, ginger, and chile for a couple of minutes.  Then add fennel and another couple of minutes.

Add grapefruit, shrimp, and soy sauce.  Cook until shrimp are uniformly pink.  Basically another couple of minutes.

A decent stir-fry.  My one objection:
Where the hell is the grapefruit?  Kept eating the damn thing and nothing about it ever screamed grapefruit to me.  If you're going to supreme the grapefruit, maybe doubling the amount might fix this.  As it is, it can't really stand up against 2 large fennel bulbs.

Pasta with Carmelized Fennel and Onion with Sausage (FM)

• Salt
• 3 large or 4 medium fennel bulbs, cored and sliced
• 1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
• Black pepper
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 8 ounces any pasta, preferably whole wheat
• 1/2 cup white wine, optional
• 8 ounces hot or sweet Italian sausage

Mise en place.

Cook sausage in 1 tablespoon of oil over medium-high heat until nicely browned.

Cook onion and fennel over medium-low heat, stirring every 5 minutes until the vegetables have given up their liquid and are almost sticking to the pan.  This should probably take you a good half hour.

Later you add two more tablespoons of olive oil, raise the heat to medium-high and try to brown this stuff.  Bittman suggests that you can do the last part in 5-10 minutes.  I'm sure I was at it for a bit longer but couldn't bring myself to try for "nicely browned."

Pretty satisfying dish with just a handful of ingredients.  Crazy how much the fennel reduced in volume after all that caramelizing makes sense.
The main recipe does not include sausage, but I don't think I would've had as positive an experience if I had left out the hot Italian sausage I used.  There's even a sidebar on the page about adding small amounts of meat to pasta sauces from the beginning.

Bouillabaise with Fennel over Grits (FM)

• 1 cup grits or coarse cornmeal
• Salt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 fennel bulbs, cored and thinly sliced, fronds roughly chopped and reserved
• 2 leeks, trimmed, well rinse, and cut into coins, white and tender green parts only [Frankly, I think that cutting the leeks into coins is counter-intuitive to the traditional means of washing leeks.  Bittman himself in HCE outlines the typical halving of the leeks almost through the root end and fanning out the layers while rinsing.  Oh well.]
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• Grated zest from 1 orange
• Big pinch of saffron, optional
• 1 dried hot chile, or pinch of cayenne, or to taste
• 2 cups chopped tomatoes (canned are fine; drain their juice)
• About 1 pound almost any seafood (like monkfish, cod, scallops, squid, or shrimp), peeled, skinned, boned, and cut into chunks as needed
• 1 carrots or parsnips, cut into coins
• 2 cups vegetable, shrimp, or fish stock; dry white wine; or water; plus more as needed
• Black pepper

Mise en place.  Full-on except for the carrots.

Slowly whisk the water into the grits with a large pinch of salt.  Set over medium-high heat until almost a boil then simmer until the consistency of oatmeal.

I think this happened way more quickly that the suggested 10 to 15 minutes.  Whisk in 1 tablespoon of oil and season aggressively with black pepper.

Heat oil over medium heat.  Add fennel, leeks, garlic, and orange zest and cook until softened.

Add saffron and chile and cook for another minute.

Add tomatoes, seafood, carrots, and stock to just cover fish and vegetables.  I started pouring more of that boxed pinot to cover but worried about being unable to cook off the taste of alcohol with at least three cups of wine going on.

I was fine!

Bring to a boil, cover, and turn off heat.  Supposedly you're supposed to let this sit for five more minutes to cook through the shrimp, but they were already pink once this finished boiling.

Serve stew over grits.  Drape with those frilly little fennel fronds.

I think I've largely considered bouillabaise, inaccessible since it's rather delicate, but if Bittman doesn't care too much if I use all shrimp I guess I'm fine.
Grits are stupid easy to make.

Altogether the dish was good but not exactly rave-worthy.

Stuck-Pot Rice with Potato Crust (HCEV)

• Salt
• 1 1/2 cup white or brown basmati rice
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter or 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• Large pinch saffron threads (optional)
• 1 large or 2 small waxy potatoes, like Yukon Gold or other thin-skinned variety
• 1 medium fennel bulb, trimmed and thinly sliced

Mise en place.

 
 I parboiled the brown basmati I used for 15 minutes.


Sauteing fennel until soft.


Above layer over half of the rice.


Potatoes layered over the rest of the rice.  Nicked my thumb with the mandoline slicing the potatoes since the guard I have for it must have gotten lost at some point.


I wrapped the lid in a towel while cooking the rice in order to prevent evaporated moisture to drip back down into my dish, enabling me to perhaps brown the potatoes.


Argh, potentially the heat was too low (Bittman suggests you cook it over "very low" heat).  I know he also says that when "potatoes start to smell toasty--you will know", but I was impatient and kept bending down sniffing the pot in search of subtle hints that perhaps this was happening.
Oh perhaps next time, if there is a next time.