White Beans with Tomatoes, Garlic, and Sage (NBR)

• 1 pound (about 2 1/2 cups) dried cannellini beans (or Great Northern or navy beans), rinsed and picked over
• 1 medium onion, unpeeled and halved through the root end
• 1 medium carrot, cut into 2-inch lengths [My carrots had gone bad]
• 1 garlic heads, top quarter cut off and loose papery skins removed
• Salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 cups water
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• 4 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped fresh sage leaves
• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves [What do you think I did?]
• Ground black pepper

This and my next blog entry involve a very similar start since they both involve white beans.  Bring beans, onion, carrot (if I had it), garlic head, salt, and bay leaves to a boil.  Partially cover and simmer until almost tender.  Then remove from heat, completely cover, and let stand for 30 to 60 minutes until completely tender.

The traditional manner for this dish in Tuscany:

"The dried beans are placed in a fiasco, the bulbous wine bottle used for Chianti, with some liquid, a sprig of sage, and a few garlic cloves, and then the bottle is sealed and nestled into the embers of the household fire to cook slowly through the night.  By the morning, the beans are plump and ready to eat."

The remaining mise en place.

The cooked beans.  Drain and reserve 1 cup of the cooking liquid.

Heat olive oil, garlic, and sage over medium heat until the garlic turns pale gold and the sage darkens.  Don't stir or the garlic will clump together.

Add tomatoes and salt.  Simmer until juices have evaporated and the tomatoes are shiny.  Whatever that means.

Stir in beans and reserved cooking liquid and simmer until the liquid has again evaporated.

Pretty decent dish for a vegetarian one.  Interesting enough.  I guess parsley would've been nice, but perhaps it always is when suggested.
Creamy even though it's vegan.

Mushroom and Pasta Frittata (FM)

• Salt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• About 1 1/2 pounds mushrooms, preferably an assortment, sliced
• Black Pepper
• 8 ounces any long pasta, preferably whole wheat or about 4 ounces (2 cups) cooked pasta
• 1 red onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage

Raw mushrooms.

Cooked down until they release their liquid.

Add onion and garlic and cook until the mushrooms are dry, shrunken, and fairly crisp.  Attempting to do this led me to the conclusion that this may have been counter-intuitive to attempt to do this after adding more raw ingredients.






Tossed together with the pasta.  The eggs and the sage are beaten together and the frittata is cooked until barely set.

















The dish was pretty good though barely a frittata with a quarter of the normal amount of eggs.
A frittata is much like a quiche without a crust.

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sage-Vermouth Sauce (CATKTV) and Mashed Potatoes (The Best Light Recipe)

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've broken out two cookbooks for one dinner. I'm kind of allergic to making side dishes, but I couldn't just call the chicken recipe a meal and leave it at that. Besides, I managed to finish both dishes at about the same time.
Yes, both cookbooks are America's Test Kitchen cookbooks.

Pan-Roasted Chicken Breasts with Sage-Vermouth Sauce

• 1/2 cup table salt
• 2 (1/2-pound) whole bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, split in half along breast bone and trimmed of rib sections
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 large shallot, minced (about 4 tablespoons)
• 3/4 cup low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/2 cup dry vermouth
• 4 medium sage leaves, each leaf torn in half
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 3 pieces
• Table salt and ground black pepper

Brining chicken for 30 minutes. I was supposed to do this in the fridge according to the recipe, but after a day of defrosting in the fridge, the breasts were still largely frozen so I did this at room temperature.
from Wikipedia:

Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation.^[1] The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes.^[1] This leads salt ions to diffuse into the cell, whilst the solutes in the cells cannot diffuse through the cell membranes into the brine. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis.^[1] The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins.^[1] The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix that traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from dehydrating.


Browning skin-side down on the stove top in my rarely used cast-iron skillet.


Flipping them over. It sort of looks golden brown.


After browning, the breasts go into a 450 degree Farenheit over for 15 to 18 minutes or however long it takes the thickest part of the breast to reach 160 to 165 degrees. Then you remove the chicken from the pan and begin to build the sauce.


Sauce mise en place. Completed at some point while juggling the chicken and mashed potatoes.


Brown the shallot until softened.


Finishing the sauce by whisking the butter in 3 tablespoons at a time after the sauce had reduced to about 3/4 cup.


The finished chicken with light mashed potatoes. I wish the sage had been a bit more forward.

Mashed Potatoes

• 2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 medium), scrubbed, peeled, and cup into 1-inch cubes
• Salt
• 3/4 cup 2 percent milk, warmed
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 cup low-fat sour cream
• Ground black pepper
  

The potatoes I peeled.


Boiling the potatoes until tender enough for a knife to easily slip through... Took longer than I thought.


Apparently my roommate must have packed her potato masher already. I swear that I must've bought one when I lived in Sunset Park in Brooklyn about 2 years ago, but couldn't locate it. (It'll be a different story tonight [I own up to the fact that it can sometimes take me a rather long time to finish a blog entry]) when I mash sweet potatoes for another dish tonight.
I was somehow supposed to fold the sour cream into the potatoes. Perhaps that would actually have seemed to have happened if the potatoes has been processed finer (BTW, apparently the way to make the smoothest representations of this dish to use use a ricer or a food mill. the latter is totally on my Amazon wish list.). The potatoes were perfectly edible if far from perfect and I could see how the recipe would be a success low-fat version of the dish with the right equipment in hand.

In any case, I feel I should say a little bit about the book the mashed potatoes came from The Best Light Recipe from America's Test Kitchen. ATK usually doesn't give a damn about fat and calorie content while perfecting their recipes; the bottom like is flavor. But the staff begged founder Chris Kimball to do a light cookbook and he set out a challenge for them: to make a great low-fat cheesecake. I'm sure you can figure out the rest.
Anyway, after reading enough Michael Pollan and getting freaked out by the artificiality of low-fat food (even basic dairy), I come from the same position as ATK stands for in general. However, I'm game if they are. Never hurts to cut back on unnecessary richness every now and then and I'll own up to ordering Starbucks drinks made with skim. They're so damn sweet.

White Bean and Sage Tart with Quinoa Crust (HCEV)

• 1 tablespoon neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, plus more for greasing the pan [Decided that the particular cuisine of the variation I selected could certainly stand up to a bit of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. And it's just less messy to grease a pan with a wrapped stick of butter.]
• 1/2 cup quinoa
• salt
• 2 cups cooked or drained canned white beans [Cannellini struck me as a good choice. Even the name of the beans are Italian.]
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• 1 small red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped [Mom gave me an orange one so who needs buying a slightly different pepper. It really doesn't matter THAT much unless you're attempting to substitute a significantly more bitter green bell pepper for the sweeter varieties. Or of course, vice versa.]
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary or thyme, or about 1/2 teaspoon dried [I was just about to vent about the fact that I forgot I somehow don't own dried rosemary and went "DOH" when I read the thyme part. I wound up using some Herbes de Provence. Decidedly not Italian, but at least it contains both of those herbs.]
• 3/4 cup cream, vegetable stock, bean-cooking liquid, or water [Used some chicken stock I had open in the fridge. I'm not a vegetarian; so, sue me.]
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup corn kernels (frozen are fine; don't bother to thaw)
• 3 egg yolks

Oh, quinoa, clearly it doesn't take much more than me trying to open the glass jar my roommate Staci Z keeps you in to propel you ALL OVER my work space.


Mise en place at this stage in the game.


The quinoa blackened long before I noted any golden-browning going on.


After reading Bittman's intro to the recipe again, I guess it would've been faster to drag out my food processor for the first time since moving at the end of January. Probably would've been easier to gauge consistency as well, but blenders are easier to clean.
Oh, while separating the yolks out for the dish, I unthinkingly cracked a whole egg into the blender. Managed to scoop most of the white out with my hands eventually. Thankfully this isn't a dish that is broken by traces of egg white (I think a recent MMB recipe I read stressed the importance of this but I forget which one by now).


First attempt at a tart. Cooked quinoa pressed into some odd tart pan I found in the cupboards. Isn't it supposed to be fluted from top to bottom?


Not much to be said about my presentation at this juncture.


My first bain-marie. Taking my definition from Epicurious.com this time because the Wiki just confused me:

The French call this cooking technique bain marie . It consists of placing a container (pan, bowl, soufflé dish, etc.) of food in a large, shallow pan of warm water, which surrounds the food with gentle heat. The food may be cooked in this manner either in an oven or on top of a range. This technique is designed to cook delicate dishes such as custards, sauces and savory mousses without breaking or curdling them. It can also be used to keep cooked foods warm.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com:80/tools/fooddictionary/entry/#ixzz1pubMMhTr

Looks more like a blob than a tart on the plate. Tastes pretty good. Maybe it'll firm up in the fridge a bit more.