The Miracle That Is Bacon

Occasionally I make a white bean and sausage soup, mostly because the ingredients are on hand and it's a relatively easy and healthful dinner. My version originated with a recipe in a soup cookbook, though I've long since stopped referencing the recipe. The soup was never great, but I kept making it because I couldn't figure out why it wasn't better. It always seemed to taste flat, though I've improved it by sweating the vegetables and cutting down on the tomatoes.

One day last week I decided to throw in a strip of bacon, only because there was some left over in the fridge. Lo and behold, that was the ingredient the soup had been missing. It went from dull to umami-full. Bacon is surely a cook's godsend. Here's the recipe:

White Bean and Sausage Soup

1 cup white beans, soaked for several hours or overnight
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 strip bacon
1 stalk celery
1/2 carrot
1/2 medium onion
1/2 pound sweet Italian sausage
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large tomato, peeled and chopped, or 1/2 can chopped tomatoes

Drain the beans and add 4 cups water along with the bay leaf and thyme. Bring to low boil and cook until soft (1 to 2 hours).

While the beans are cooking, chop the bacon, celery, carrot, and onion. Heat a Dutch oven or other heavy pot and add the bacon and vegetables. Cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and stew for 20 minutes.

Add the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces, and stir in the garlic. When the meat is cooked through, add the tomatoes.

Add the beans, season with salt and pepper, and simmer for half an hour.

Leaves with Attitude

One Saturday morning in late February, several years ago, I was cruising the farmers market, looking for an interesting fruit or vegetable. I wanted a treat, but I wasn’t finding much. Late winter is not a good time for vendors of produce.

An elderly woman had occupied one of the stalls. She was selling only one vegetable, a green with sawtooth leaves that sprouted small broccoli-like flowerets. I asked what it was and she answered, “Chinese broccoli.”

 “Chinese broccoli,” I’ve noticed, is a catch-all name for any green that takes well to stir-frying, but as it was only 50 cents a bunch, I bought one. At home I searched through my cookbooks and found a drawing in the Chez Panisse Vegetables that matched my Chinese broccoli exactly. It was broccoli raab; a recipe with penne, garlic, and Romano cheese was included. 

I took one bite of the concoction and fell under the spell of broccoli raab. It’s bitter, spicy, pungent, and powerful. Nothing like its tame namesake, broccoli raab lets you know you’re alive.

Since that day, whenever I find broccoli raab at the market, I make the pasta dish. And whenever I see it on a restaurant menu—nearly always as a side to smoked pork or sausage—I order the entrée that includes it. I’ve grown it, too, with limited success. It’s very picky about timing, and the bugs love it as much as I do.

It’s probably not surprising that Italians, with their unabashed zest for eating, introduced broccoli raab to the United States. Brothers Stephen and Andrew D’Arrigo (of the Andy Boy dynasty) started cultivating it in the early 20th century. It now grows in California, Arizona, New Jersey, Ontario, and Quebec and is sold around the country under a host of names: rapini, cima di rapa, Italian turnip (broccoli raab is a distant cousin of the turnip).

Broccoli raab is sometimes available in a regular supermarket; if you can’t find it, try specialty markets or Italian grocers. It’s available year-round, but it’s best in late fall, winter, and early spring. The flowers should not have opened, and the cut end of the stalks should be green and smooth. If you like your vegetables to bite back, go for bunches with big leaves.

Like most people with a strong personality, broccoli raab won’t get along with just any other food. If it’s not the star, it must be accompanied by other brisk ingredients. Spicy Italian sausages and smoked meats will stand up to its assertiveness, as will potent seasonings such as extra-virgin olive oil, vinegar, pungent cheese, and hot pepper flakes.

It won’t take just any treatment, either. Boiling it is the culinary equivalent of a lobotomy—it loses all its punch, becoming insipid and gray. Broccoli raab is best when sautéed in oil.

My desire for other vegetables has waxed and waned over the seasons, but broccoli raab remains a delicacy. That day in the market I had hoped to find an agreeable fruit to toss into a gallette. Instead, I found a vegetable with a big attitude. Perhaps it was the serendipity of it all, but I fell in love.

Broccoli Raab with Penne

1 large onion

8 cloves garlic

2 bunches broccoli raab (1-1/2 pounds)

extra-virgin olive oil

red pepper flakes to taste

salt to taste

3/4 pound penne

red wine vinegar

Romano cheese

Put a large pot of water on to boil. Add the pasta and stir, drain when it’s done, then set aside.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the onion and garlic. Wash the broccoli raab, cut away the stems, and chop the leaves and sprouts coarsely.

Cover the bottom of a large sauté pan with the olive oil and sauté the onion over high heat. When the onion has begun to brown a little, add the garlic, pepper flakes, and salt. Toss, then add the broccoli raab and a splash of water. Lower the heat and cook until  tender, stirring or tossing frequently.

Taste the broccoli raab and add seasoning as needed. Splash on additional extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. Add the freshly cooked pasta to the pan and toss. Serve with grated cheese.

American Cheez

There is one day a year when you get to eat — are required to eat — the most low-brow of low-brow cuisine. While the Superbowl Sunday menu includes some strong suggestions (Buffalo wings, chips and dip), what it essentially calls for is cheesy, all-American food.

So this year I constructed a baking dish of that all-time winner, layered Mexican dip. Unable to find a recipe that worked for me, I devised my own, and for the first time ever, bought a jar of cheese.

In developing the recipe, the only real questions were what the layers should consist of, and in which order they should lie in the baking dish. Sour cream was out, as I find it obliterates all the other flavors. Refried beans, cheese, guacamole, and salsa were the obvious participants. As for order, I went with specific gravity, figuring the beans were the heaviest, followed by the Cheez Whiz, Cuisinart guacamole, then Safeway's fresh salsa.

It was a great hit. Be sure to serve it with hearty chips (Casa Sanchez thick and crispy worked great) as it's dense.

Layered Mexican Superbowl Dip

Two cans refried beans
I jar Cheez Whiz
About 2 cups guacamole
2 cups salsa

Shmush the beans into the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Microwave the Cheez Whiz until it's melted and spread over the beans. Let it cool a little, then spread the guacamole over the Cheez Whiz. Pour salsa on top.

Turnip Gratin Soup

The Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook failed me last night. I had turned to it when faced with a plethora of turnips, planted more because I had an available half-barrel and the timing was right than because I wanted a pile of turnips.

The cookbook includes a simple recipe of sliced turnips and potatoes baked in cream and chicken stock. I thought the dish would complete my dinner of grilled pork chops and a simple green salad, at the same time exhausting the turnip supply.

The problem is one of geometry. The recipe calls for slicing the roots a quarter-inch thick, then layering them in a baking dish. But because potatoes and turnips don't fit together like Tetris pieces, big gaps lie between them, so I had to double the amount of liquid to fill those gaps and cover the slices, which led to a soupy mess.

If I were to do it again, I'd slice the roots thinly so they'd form a nearly solid layer. But I'm not about to go out and buy more turnips.

Tools of Dessert

For Christmas Alex received a crème brûlée kit: a butane torch and six ramekins. So on Boxing Day, when family members dropped by for the third day of present opening, he decided to put his tools to use. Unfortunately, the traditional method of making crème brûlée — stirring cream and eggs over a double boiler while it slowly thickens — required too much patience for a 14-year-old, and the result was sugary soup.

Last weekend he wanted to re-try, and I found a better recipe on the inner tubes. This one requires baking the custard in a slow oven: no stirring required. (Thanks to Walter S. Burton's aunt Carol for the recipe.) However, the butane torch also requires some restraint: to get a golden, crisp sugar crust, you need to hold it at a distance and slowly move the flame over the sugar. Our crème brûlée was set on fire and well blackened. But I've always liked my marshmallows well burnt, so I was happy with it.

No-Stir Crème Brûlée

2 cups cream
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Light brown sugar for topping

Heat oven to 275°. Whisk together the first four ingredients and pour into four 7-ounce ramekins. Place in a baking pan in the oven and pour hot water in the pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cook for about an hour — it's done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Let cool, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Sieve an even, 1/4-inch layer of brown sugar over the top of the custard and torch until it forms a crust.

Season of Spices

During the dead week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, we joined friends for lunch in Menlo Park, and afterward, because we all had the time, they suggested visiting Penzeys to check out their larder.

Penzeys, a longtime mail-order spice purveyor, opened the shop on Santa Cruz Avenue two years ago, and I’ve been meaning to visit all this time. Had I made the trip sooner, I would have known years ago about black cardamom, no relation to real cardamom, which adds a smoky element to slow-cooked meats and curries across Asia.

I also would have known about ajwain or ajowan, a seed with a scent reminiscent of celery that’s used on Afghan bread. And I would have realized that bratwurst’s distinctive flavor comes from a mixture of nutmeg and mustard.

I learned these things because at the shop, unlike with the catalog, everything Penzeys sells is available for smelling. It was thus that I chose my favorite black peppercorns — Tellicherry — which have covered nearly everything on my plate since our visit.

Photo: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Seven Kinds of Cookies

In the 1800s, when cookie baking reached its peak in Scandinavia, there ensued a competition among households in which the host of a gathering would try to produce more types of cookies than that served at the previous party. The competition grew so extreme that eventually everyone tired of it and settled on a reasonable number: seven.

To this day, a coffee table must include seven kinds of cookies or small cakes. And so, my contribution to the Christmas smörgåsbord this year were those seven batches of cookies. Running clockwise, starting with the hazelnut biscotti, are jam cookies (made with ground almonds, egg whites and cloudberry jam), pepparkakor (gingersnaps), spritz (almond-flavored butter cookies), sesame cookies (made with tahini and whole-wheat flour), flourless chocolate cookies, and pretzel-shaped cardamom butter cookies.