Labor of Love

Food and love are inextricably knotted together. Think of a favorite childhood memory and it’s probably tied to food: baking cookies with your Grandmother, your mom making your favorite meal for your birthday. As a child, I had the most fabulous birthday cakes because my Aunt Sally was a supreme cake decorator. The one I can picture most vividly right now was a four-part choo-choo train. It was frosted in pale orange with the wheels and windows outlined in flourishes of a darker pumpkin-colored frosting. The cars of the train held mounds of candy “cargo” – licorice pieces, and I think those chewy candies in the shape of peanuts. Somewhere in my parents house is a picture of me with cheeks puffed out trying to blow out the candles on this fantastic cake train. What an ultimate display of love to take the time to create such a detailed and artistic cake.

Bechamel Sauce

Making and serving food to your loved ones says, “I love you so I want to nourish your body and give you pleasure.” In a microwave-fast, out-of-a-box, drive-through food society it’s something that’s easily forgotten. Food isn’t just calories and fuel, it’s love.

This Valentine’s Day, Trevor and I celebrated at home. Sometimes when we’re flush we’ll take a weekend trip or try a fancy restaurant we’ve heard good things about. This was not one of those years. But it wasn’t any less special. I said I’d make Meat and Spinach Cannelloni from Lidia Bastianich’s Italian-American Kitchen. And Trevor was in charge of picking up some dessert.

Lidia’s cannelloni is truly a labor of love. It takes about four hours to make, even for someone who is quick in the kitchen. But it’s a meal that just can’t be rushed. Chunks of pork butt, carrots, celery, onion (there’s the trinity again) and refreshed dried mushrooms are slowly braised in the oven with chicken stock and wine. And the liquid that remains in the pan is reserved. Then fresh pasta squares are needed. And creamy béchamel sauce has to be made. And once the meat and vegetables have roasted and cooled, they are ground up with spinach to make the delectable filling. I actually roasted the meat and veggies the day before to speed up the process a little. And as I was grinding up the filling, I couldn’t help but eat a few spoonfuls before rolling it up in the cooked pasta squares. OK, several spoonfuls.

From all that, I probably don’t even need to go into how good it tastes. It’s probably the best-tasting meal we make. And the homemade pasta elevates it even higher.

I also made Trevor’s Valentine’s Day card. What I should have put on it was, “Valentine, our love isn’t an out-of-the-box-into-the-microwave love, it’s is a four-hour plus cannelloni love.”

Rolling up the cannelloni

Ready to be topped with more Bechamel

Vegan, really?

OK, I love to eat meat. While I’ve flirted with the idea of vegetarianism, I’ve never been able to go fully meat free. Mainly, because I love cheeseburgers. But since reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, I have cut the amount of meat I consume and make the effort to buy grass-fed beef or free-range chicken whenever possible.  (And by the way, homemade burgers made with grass-fed beef and a pinch of chopped sage are really, really good.)

Trevor recently read Omnivore’s Dilemma by Pollan, and made horrified gasps and exclamations as he was flipping the pages. And now he’s really determined to know exactly how the meat that makes it to his plate is being raised.

So to fit the more expensive (and humanely raised) meat into our budget, we eat less of it and more meals that are meat-free.  And now that Persephone Farm has more produce at the Saturday PSU Farmers’ Market, and Trevor is working the stand again, we’ve got a lot of ingredients to make fabulous vegetarian meals.

Last night we tried a new recipe from Cooking Light magazine’s July 2010 issue: Chickpea Bajane. We used Persephone garlic and spinach, and thyme from our own garden. Trevor insisted he didn’t really like quinoa, a slightly nutty grain, but once we started eating this meal, he decided he like this quinoa. The recipe is time-consuming, but not too hard. And it was so tasty it was hard to believe it was vegetarian, let alone vegan.

Links:

Chickpea Bajane 

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dynaction=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1995734

Napkin by Rustbelt Fiberwerks   http://www.etsy.com/shop/rustbeltfiberwerks

Pork with Pork

If, like Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction, you don’t “dig on swine,” I feel sorry for you. I’m with John Travolta’s character, “Pork chops are gooood. Bacon is goooood.”

The only better thing than pork, is pork with pork. As in pork scallopine Saltimbocca. It’s a boneless pork loin chop pounded good and thin, then topped with sage leaves and prosciutto. Yum. This is another Lidia Bastianch recipe. And one of our all-time favorites.  It’s the kind of meal that makes you want to clean off all the crap on the kitchen table, light some candles and use your good cloth napkins.

Lidia recommends pairing the scallopine with polenta, but I first made it with Parmesan mashed potatoes instead and have never looked back. We also sauté some spinach and garlic with olive oil as she recommends.

And it’s not too hard to prepare. The pork sautés quickly, and the tantalizing wine sauce just takes a few more minutes. For this meal, the potatoes take the longest. I do have one tip, though. If you are using frozen pork chops, made sure they are completely thawed before trying to pound them out. If they are still frozen in parts, you won’t be able to pound them evenly. You’ll have big hunks and then holes in other spots. Also, use the bumpy side of the tenderizer just for a few whacks, then switch to the smooth side to avoid getting holes in the meat.  But really this is a relatively easy meal that is fancy enough for company. But it’s great anywhere, anytime. We even made this on a camping trip once.

Links:

Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen

http://shopping.lidiasitaly.com/books.aspx