Food

There are three ways of making pasta shapes. You can extrude the dough through shaped holes, cutting the forms off as needed. You can roll the dough thin, then hand cut the dough to be shaped. The same can be done using a “pasta machine” which rules the dough to a known thickness. Or you can use cutters to cut sheets of pasta.

I’ve been making pasta dough for a couple of years. I stepped up my game recently by deciding to roll my dough instead of squeezing it in the pasta machine.

Since I was going to roll out the dough, I decided to get rid of my mixing bowl and do it on my board with the well method.

This is a step forward. One of the lessons I’m still learning is how small a batch can be made this way. If the batch is not large enough, there isn’t enough floor on the board to create a well with deep enough walls.

I was lucky, there were only two eggs in play, so the eggs didn’t go everywhere, just a slight panic.

Which brings us back to dough. Normal pasta dough is an egg and floor mixture. My recipe is 3/4 of flour to 1 large egg. Occasionally, it is two eggs plus a yolk. It really depends on how the dough feels.

Today, the dough was too wet. I should have added more flour, but I didn’t.

The eggs are mixed into the flour until it comes together. At that point, I switch to kneading. I knead for 10 minutes, by the clock. The sad thing is that I always check the time remaining at 2:30. I don’t know how I get there, but I do.

This egg pasta works well for rolling out or squeezing. This was turned into rigatoni.

I didn’t know I could make this by hand, I thought I would need to use an extruder for rigatoni. I am happy with my results.

It does not look like machine made pasta. The dough was a little wet. I also had some issues cutting it. Next time I will use the bicycle cutter to get nice squares.

Ally took the other half of the egg pasta and made beautiful bow tie pasta.

The other type of pasta dough is made with water and semolina flour. Bluntly? I just guessed at the amount of warm water to add. It came out nearly perfect.

This pasta dough doesn’t roll out as flat as the egg pasta, but it is used for other pasta shapes. We started with Orecchiette. Those were easy to make, but I didn’t like them. Ally loved making them, so I let her do it.

This is made by cutting a 1/2 diameter rope of dough into 1/2 long chunks. Then you roll the under your thumb.

Malloreddus is made the same way, but the pasta is pressed on a grooved board to make a wonderful pattern. This was my favorite shape to make. They go fast, they look nice, and they have a good bite to them. Plus they hold the sauce.

The Busiate was another fun shape. It uses a 1/4 in rope of dough cut into 3 inch long sections. These are twisted around a skewer and the rolled flat.

I think they look delightful, I want to practice them some more.

I’m hoping that Ally will do an article about the sauce she made for our homemade pasta. I will say it is the best I’ve had in years.

Stew is the bedrock of my winter meal plan. Part of my family dislikes soup, but is okay with something thicker. Stew is the way to go! Stew is basically a protein (chicken, beef, lamb, etc), a fat (bacon grease, olive oil, veg oil, etc), vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc), and a starch (rice, beans, potatoes, etc). In whatever combination you like, mix together, and you have stew. Of course there’s a bit more to it, but that’s the basic “stew recipe.”

Because stew was usually made with leftovers or scraps, the little bits that weren’t enough for another full meal, we don’t really have written stew recipes.  A good stew is different every time you  make it, because the ingredients will never be exactly the same. That is the right way to do it! So let’s make a nice, hearty chicken stew.

Ingredients

• a cut up chicken, or several thighs, bone in and skin on
• 1 or 2 onions or leeks, rough chopped
• 3 large carrots, coined
• 2 ribs of celery, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, rough chopped
• white wine (optional)
• 1 purple top turnip, diced
• 2 parsnips, coined
• 2 to 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup barley, well rinsed
• spices (salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, dill, sage, rosemary, etc.)
• oil for searing
• water to fill the pot

In a large soup or stock pot, add a drizzle of oil (olive, safflower, or vegetable) and bring up to a medium heat. Add the chicken and brown it all over, then remove it from the pot (set it aside on a plate). Add the carrots, onions, and celery, and cook until the onions soften and begin to brown very slightly. While they’re cooking, you may need to add more oil. This mixture of carrots, onions, and celery is called a mire poix, and it’s the basis of most good quality soups and stews. You want to scrape any of the browned chicken off the bottom of the pan (that’s the fond and it’s part of what makes for a rich flavor later). Add in the garlic and saute until they are fragrant, usually less than a minute.

Drizzle in some of the wine (or chicken broth if you don’t do wine), and deglaze the pan entirely. Once that’s done, add the rest of the vegetables and allow them to cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, and enough water to cover everything, plus 3 cups (this is to allow for the barley to absorb some of the water – you may want to try a bit more or less, to make it the thickness you prefer). Add in some salt, pepper, and other herbs to taste, and bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for a minimum of an hour.

Check for flavor, then add more spices as necessary. The above are only suggestions, and you’re welcome to try whichever spices you like! Simmer for another hour or more, until the chicken is falling off the bone and shreds easily. You may wish to pick out the skin and bones at this point, or serve it as is. Serve this up with fresh baked bread for a hearty and healthy meal.

Notes:

You can make this recipe with diced chicken breast if you prefer. I like the added flavor and the moistness of the meat when I use bone-in, but not everyone likes bones. I almost always make this recipe with either a full cut up chicken, or with chicken legs with thighs attached. It comes out meaty and delicious!

Recipe by M. Allyson Szabo, author of The Re-Enactor’s Cookbook (available on Amazon).

For me, the flavors in a good soup are the taste of autumn. I adore soup weather, and with the nights getting colder, I’m looking up my soup recipes. Last week, I made a small pot of beef barley soup, and I impressed even myself. It’s easy to do, and you can even pop it in the crock pot if you want.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs beef shin bone (with bone and marrow)
• 1/4 cup red wine (for deglazing the pan)
• olive oil (for cooking)
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 ribs celery, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 6 cups beef broth
• 1-1/2 cups pearl barley, rinsed
• 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
• bay leaf
• spices to taste (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage)

In a soup pot, add a bit of the olive oil and bring to a medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add in the beef shin bones. If you have more than one, you may need to do them one at a time. Don’t crowd the bottom of the pot. You want to sear the meat for about 2 minutes per side, then set the meat aside.

Add a bit more olive oil if necessary, then toss in the onion, celery, and carrot (this is called a mirepoix, and it’s the base of many soups and stews), and saute until the vegetables are softened but not yet brown. Use the red wine, a little at a time, to deglaze the pan. Add in a drizzle of wine, and then use a wooden spoon or spatula (it should be wooden, NOT plastic or rubber) to scrape up all the stuff off the bottom of the pot. That “stuff” is called fond, and it’s delicious.

Once the pan is deglazed, put the meat back in (still on the bone), along with the broth, bay leaf, and tomato paste. Stir to combine the ingredients. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the soup to simmer for about an hour. Taste the broth, and then adjust for flavor by adding the spices of your choice.

Rinse your barley well, and pick out any stones you may find. Add the barley to your soup, and raise the temperature enough to keep the liquid at a steady strong simmer. Check on your soup every 15 minutes or so, to ensure nothing is burning. Add more beef broth if necessary. Continue to simmer until the barley is completely cooked and is chewy.

Lower the heat to its lowest setting, and remove the meat from the soup. Carefully trim the meat from the bone and put it back into the soup. Get rid of any gristle or fat, but make sure that the marrow from the shin bone goes back into the soup. The marrow makes your broth rich and tasty. Taste and adjust the spices as necessary, and then serve.

I like to serve this soup with fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven. If you’re not a baker, pick up a nice ciabatta at the grocery store, drizzle olive oil over it and toss on some salt and pepper, then heat in the oven at 350F for five to ten minutes.

This soup freezes very well. If you have a pressure canner, you may can it, as well. I find I never have enough left over to can up, though! A note on the tomato paste: I find it adds a nice zing to the broth, but it isn’t necessary. Some people like to put crushed tomato or stewed tomato into their beef barley soup, but I’m a purist.

BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

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Some of you may have guessed that I like to collect cookbooks, in addition to writing them. I have, for a very long time, been interested in historical cookbooks. In particular, I like original recipes, even if the physical book I have is a reprint. One of the cookbooks I treasure most in my collection is The Original White House Cookbook. The first edition came out in 1887, but there have been several editions since then. You can buy many of the new volumes, but it’s hard to find originals (ie printed in 1887) of that first one. I have a reprint of the original edition, printed in the early 1900s, and I love it.

I’m preparing myself for going to the Fort again this weekend. I’m hosting a “show and tell” event over the Labor Day weekend, and I want to have some yummy recipes. As I was cooking breakfast this morning, I was thinking about what I’d like to make. My eyes strayed over to the cookbook shelf (actually a whole bookcase, but whatever), and I noticed that the White House one was on its side and out of its usual place. Likely one of the kids had it out and didn’t put it back right. When I had a moment, I went to straighten it, and then stopped, because an incredibly profound thought hit me.

That cookbook, that original one from 1887, was written for the American people. We were, at that time, barely a hundred years old as a country. We were essentially a toddler, in the grand scheme of things. And here we were, offering our entire people the opportunity to cook like the leaders of that country.

Our people were (and are) eating the same food, prepared in much the same way, as our leaders.

Do you get how very insane that sounds? To have a populace who eats what the elite are eating? In 1887, Queen Victoria was munching on oranges, locally sourced salmon, and an early version of the turducken (12 Tomatoes). Kaiser Wilhelm II was eating ice cream and “Fresh goose-liver medallions that have been seared and cooled before being coated with chaud-froid sauce, garnishes, and then sealed in a layer of Port jelly. (Royal Menus)” Napoleon wasn’t eating a lot of rich foods, but only because he suffered from gastritis and insisted on plain and even bland foods. The rich of Europe were eating well, and the poor and middle class citizenry were eating simple foods, and sometimes not much of them.

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Cassoulet Vert is one of those fancy French dishes that has the look and feel of a delicacy. Fortunately, it’s not difficult to make, and it’s incredibly tasty as well. If you make this one, cook it in a big pot but serve it in individual bowls. The presentation makes it look like you’ve worked for hours in a kitchen, and you’ll impress your friends and family. This recipe doesn’t just look good, by the way. It is both tasty and rather filling!

Ingredients (soup):

• 1 can (29 oz) little white beans
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion diced
• 4 garlic cloves, rough chopped
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoon herbs de Provence

Ingredients (pesto):

• 2 cups fresh kale, packed
• 1 cup cilantro, packed
• 3 cloves garlic
• zest and juice from one small lemon
• ¼ cup pine nuts
• ¼ cup olive oil
• ¼ cup water
• 1 teaspoon salt

In a soup pot, add olive oil and onions, and saute for four to five minutes, stirring. When the onions are soft, add garlic, and saute another 2 minutes.

Rinse the canned beans well. Add beans, stock, salt, pepper, bay leaves, and other herbs, and stir gently. The broth should just barely cover the beans. Simmer for 30 minutes to an hour.

While the cassoulet is cooking, make the pesto.

Put the kale, cilantro, and garlic into a food processor. Pulse until it is chopped but not soupy. Add the rest of the ingredients: lemon zest, lemon juice, oil, water, salt, and the pine nuts. Pulse until it’s well combined but not too smooth. You want pesto, not soup. Use a spatula to scrape off the sides, and pulse briefly one more time. Set aside.

When the cassoulet is ready, you should remove some of the broth if there’s too much. The soup part should be mostly beans, with only a bit of broth. Stir in the pesto, gently turning it until it’s well mixed. The cassoulet should have the consistency of stew, rather than soup. Continue to simmer on your lowest heat setting for another 10 minutes to let the flavors blend together.

Add salt and pepper as needed for flavor. This dish should be quite lemony, and salty as well. Top with croutons, sprouts, sliced avocado, a poached egg, or some cheese, depending on your tastes. It pairs well with a white wine, and a hearty, crusty bread.

Notes:

You can use traditional basil pesto in this recipe, but you may want to use a bit less. The jolt of flavor from the basil will overpower the mild taste of the beans if you use too much. Add other types of pesto slowly, until the flavor seems right to you. That said, I recommend making the kale pesto above. It’s so delicious!

This is what I served up to our volunteer historical interpreters this weekend. On Saturday, it was served up as a stew, and on Sunday I turned it into a lovely chicken soup. This is one of those early fall recipes that sticks to your ribs, is simple enough to throw together anytime, and delicious enough to make once a week. You can also vary the flavorings easily enough, to make it a slightly different meal each time! This recipe serves five people, with enough leftovers the following day to make soup.

Ingredients:

• bone in, skin on chicken thighs (8 pack)
• 2 large onions, diced
• 1/4 cup butter, margarine, or olive oil
• whole wheat flour
• salt and pepper to taste
• fresh herbs (whatever you have on hand)
• dried thyme, garlic, and nutmeg to taste
• 3 to 4 cups of seasonal vegetables, cut into chunks
• 2 to 4 cups of water

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Americans know pasta. We eat tons of it every day. Of course, most of that is pretty boring or down right nasty stuff that comes from a box.

I know that my childhood was replete with box after box of Kraft’s Mac and Cheese. Bring your water to a boil, dump in the box of elbows. Cook until “right”. Drain the water, add butter and milk. Then add the powdered cheese.

The American “Alfredo”. Yes, it is as cheap and nasty as it sounds. And American’s seem to love it.

As a cheese wanna-be snob, I order Parmigiano Reggiano DOP every few months. Much better than the powdered stuff in a can.

So why and article on Pasta? Because I like to make my pasta by hand. Well, I call it that, but it wasn’t really “by hand” per the definitions that the real snobs use.

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Wait, don’t leave! They are REALLY good! And not as odd as they sound.

I really love burgers, but I also am trying to lose weight. Those buns are not great for me, but a plain hamburger patty on a plate is boring. I went looking for something new, and found this recipe, and we tried it out recently. It was delicious! The fat from the ground beef infuses the cabbage with a lot of flavor, but doesn’t leave it feeling overly greasy. I walked away from the table quite pleased with myself!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 egg, whisked
• 2 to 3 tbsp panko or breadcrumbs
• green onions and parsley, minced
• 1 head cabbage, cut into thick “steak” slices
• olive oil, drizzles
• spices – oregano, thyme, salt, pepper to taste
• cheese slices (optional)
• 1/4 cup tomato or pizza sauce (optional)

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There is nothing I love more than gazpacho soup on a hot day. It’s refreshing and cool, flavorful and filling. This is a recipe that I adore, and I hope you’ll enjoy trying it out over the hot August nights. I like to serve this with fresh salad shrimp just popped in, right before serving. Bonus points if they’re just shy of frozen, keeping the soup chilled as it hits the table!

Ingredients:

▢ 1½ lbs red heirloom or beefsteak tomatoes OR 1½ lbs canned whole tomatoes
▢ 1 cucumber, peeled, plus more diced for garnish
▢ 1 orange bell pepper, seeded and cored
▢ juice of half a lemon
▢ ½ shallot
▢ 2 cloves garlic
▢ 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
▢ 1½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
▢ 1 tablespoon kosher salt
▢ fresh cracked pepper, garlic salt, dried onion, Worcestershire sauce, to taste
▢ fresh basil, parsley, cilantro, jalapeno peppers, and lemon slices (optional)

If you prefer skinless tomatoes, you can blanch them in a pot of boiling water for about 40 seconds, or until the skin begins to peel off. Remove the skin. If you like the skin on, simply skip this step (this is my preference).

Dice tomatoes, bell pepper and cucumber into similar sized pieces. Place half of them in the blender with the shallot, garlic, olive oil, vinegar and salt. Liquefy until smooth. Pour the liquid into a glass container, and stir in the remaining diced vegetables. If you want to use the fresh herbs and jalapeno pepper, they can either be minced and added into the blender, or put directly into the soup, depending on your preference. If you find that the soup is not “soupy” enough, you can add some plain tomato juice until it is a good consistency. Refrigerate the soup for at least 3 hours, or overnight if you can. This allows the flavors to blend.

Serve in chilled bowls, topped with fresh minced herbs, lemon slices, jalapeno pepper rounds, and/or croutons. A splash of high quality virgin olive oil in each bowl will add a depth of flavor as well.