Popkoff's Palmeni

Popkoff's is a California-based company that has been making Russian-inspired pelmeni and vareniki for over 50 years. Vareniki are like pierogies that are stuffed with a variety of meats and vegetables. Pelmeni are similar, but smaller and round, reminding me a bit of tortellini. Popkoff's recently sent us a selection of their pelmeni to see what kinds of recipes we could come up with using them. I chose to start with the beef pelmeni and decided that a rich mushroom sauce would work nicely.

Popkoff's pelmeni come in freezer packs and cook up quickly. Add the contents of the packet to boiling water and they are fully cooked in about five minutes. As soon as they are rolling about on the surface of the water, they are done. The sauce recipe below is also quick and easy to put together. The most difficult part is making the roux, and that's not very hard at all.

Mushroom Sauce

1 medium onion chopped
1/2 pound mushrooms chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup half-and-half
2 tbsp. flour
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp. fresh thyme
1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the flour and olive oil in a pan over high heat. Stir constantly until the mixture becomes liquid and takes on a tan hue, about 5 minutes.

Reduce heat to medium high and add onions, garlic, and mushrooms to roux. Saute until onions are translucent. Slowly add the heavy cream and half-and-half, stirring constantly until everything is incorporated. Add thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Gluten-free, Sugar-free, and Dairy-free Mexican Pasta and Meatballs

One of the drawbacks to being food writers is that it is all too easy to overindulge and put on weight. It's especially bad when we are working on projects where we have to go to a lot of restaurants in a short period of time and sample all manner of food and drink which is so delicious but so detrimental to our physiques. The Minx decided that she was overdue for a curtailing of her naughty foods intake and put herself on a month-long boycott of wheat, sugar, and dairy. I was not willing to go quite that extreme, but I certainly wanted to help by creating dinners that would suit her dietary restrictions.

The biggest challenge for me was to find a way to work my favorite food, pasta, into a meal that we could both eat. We remembered that, several month ago, we tried gluten-free pasta made from corn. It was tasty enough, but for me it didn't quite work with an Italian red sauce, my mind being too conditioned to the taste of semolina in relation to Italian cooking. I tend to associate the flavor of corn with Mexican food. That's where the idea came to me to create a red sauce with Mexican flavors.

I was going to make a meat sauce, but Kathy really had a craving for meatballs, so I had to not only bring Mexican flavors to the meatballs, but also find a way to avoid bread crumbs. Kathy suggested oatmeal, which worked perfectly. The recipe that follows is a low-and-slow, all-afternoon, labor-of-love kind of affair, but everyone should make a meal like that now and again. There's a real sense of accomplishment when you take the time to create something really flavorful and satisfying.

Mexican Pasta and Meatballs

For the sauce:

28 oz. can tomato puree
14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 medium onion chopped
2 cloves garlic crushed
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ancho chili powder
1/4 cup cilantro chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste

For the meatballs:

1.5 pounds of ground beef
1 chipotle chopped
2 cloves garlic smashed
1/4 cup cilantro chopped
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

For the pasta:

1 pound corn pasta
4 teaspoons kosher salt

Start your sauce by sauteing the onions in a large sauce pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Once the onions have sweated and are slightly caramelized, pour in your tomato puree and diced tomatoes, Add the garlic and tomato pasta and stir to combine. Then stir in the chili powder, cumin, salt, and ancho chili powder. Bring to a simmer, then turn down the heat and cover. Let it continue to simmer with the cover on for two hours, stirring occasionally. Add cilantro.

After two hours, you can create your meatballs. Combine all the ingredients for the meatballs in a large bowl and mush it all together with your hands until everything is thoroughly integrated. Form the mixture into golf-ball-sized meatballs. Heat a frying pan until a drop of water will sizzle in it and add the meatballs. Regularly turn the meatballs with tongs until all sides of the meatballs are nicely browned. Then add the meatballs to your sauce and allow them to simmer in the sauce for at least another half hour.

To cook your pasta, bring five quarts of water to a boil and add four teaspoons of kosher salt. Pour in your pasta and stir. Use the instructions on the package as a guide, but use your own judgement. I find that the instructions for cooking corn pasta tend to overstate the cooking time. After about ten minutes, check a piece for doneness.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, put some in a bowl, set two or three meatballs on top, and then ladle sauce over the whole dish. The flavors will remind you of a Mexican restaurant while the textures and the visual with make you think of an Italian red sauce joint. There's also the added comfort of knowing that you're not eating wheat, dairy, or added sugar.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Mushroom Bolognese

I feel like we ate really poorly during the holidays and well into 2016. Far too much meat and pastry, not nearly enough vegetables and whole grains. So I succumbed to the lure of a box of produce from Washington's Green Grocer, which was delivered on the same day that we happened to go grocery shopping. We ended up with a pound and a half of crimini mushrooms as a result (a bunch of other stuff, too).

Mushroom soup was almost an option, but I felt Mr Minx would be more satisfied by a pasta dish. Why not mince the mushrooms and use them as a meat substitute? So I put together a pretty delicious (if I do say so myself) vegetarian bolognese, using up a pound of the mushrooms in the process. I wanted to really up the umami factor, so we wouldn't miss the meat. Adding soy sauce and black garlic helped with that, and a bit of leftover ricotta (from our Christmas day lasagna) added a bit more richness to the sauce. One could leave out the ricotta and the Parm garnish and have a really nice vegan sauce, but I liked the cheesy additions.

Mushroom Bolognese

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, finely chopped
Salt
1 lb crimini mushrooms, washed, wiped, and finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 cloves black garlic, minced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 can tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
1 32-oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 cup part skim ricotta cheese
Pinch dried thyme
Pinch dried oregano
Pinch dried rosemary
Pinch red pepper flakes
Pinch smoked paprika
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
Parm for serving

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook for 2-3 minutes over medium high heat, until softened. Add the mushrooms, carrots, and celery. Cover the pan and sweat the mushrooms until they release all their liquid. After about 5 minutes, uncover the pan and turn the heat up to high to burn off any additional liquid.

Reduce the temperature to medium. Add the other tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and stir the vegetables well to coat. Fry for about 2 minutes, then add the garlics and fry an additional minute. Stir in the soy and the tomato paste. Continue to cook the tomato paste veg mixture until the paste darkens, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and stir well. Cook until the liquid is mostly evaporated, stirring regularly; it should take only a minute or so.

Chop the tomatoes into smaller pieces by running a knife through them while still in the can. Dump the tomatoes and their juice into the frying pan and stir well. Turn heat down to low and simmer sauce for 1 hour. Check periodically to see if there's enough liquid in the pan; if not, add a bit of water. The sauce should be thick, but not dry.

Stir in the ricotta cheese. Season with the herbs. I don't like a particularly herby sauce, unless it's fresh basil, and our garden is pretty dead right now. Add more than a pinch of the herbs, if you'd like. The smoked paprika just makes it taste a little more meaty, and the parsley adds a bit of brightness.

Serve with pasta of your choice, sprinkled with Parm to finish.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce

For the second issue in a row, I found a recipe in Martha Stewart Living that I simply had to make. It seemed pretty easy: toss tiny tomatoes with some oil, vinegar, and seasonings, and roast in a moderate oven for an hour. I planned to make it one Saturday afternoon, but then I got called away on...fun.

At about 4pm, realizing I wouldn't make it home in time I put the sauce together before our usual early dinnertime, I called Mr Minx. I was at an animal rescue, you see, petting fuzzy puppies, and couldn't drag myself away. I eventually did, and Mr Minx had the sauce in the oven when I got home. All I needed to do was start the pasta.

Super easy. And the taste? Delicious. The tomatoes were soft but not mushy and had an intensified flavor from being in the oven. The olive oil, vinegar, and brown sugar combo was the perfect sauce. And there were leftovers, which were combined with anchovies, capers, and olives to make an equally delicious puttanesca sauce.

Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce (adapted from Martha Stewart Living)

1 pound cherry or grape tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Put tomatoes and garlic in a glass 9" square baking dish. Combine oil, vinegar, brown sugar, and salt in a bowl and drizzle over tomatoes.

Bake until tomatoes are softened and caramelized, about 1 hour. Toss with your favorite pasta.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Ragu Bolognese

A comment made by a friend on Facebook, something along the lines of "bechamel has no place in a lasagna" encouraged me to do a quick Google search for lasagna recipes. It seemed to me that lasagna Bolognese did indeed have a place for bechamel, but I wanted to make sure before I said something. During my search, I stumbled upon J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe for Bolognese sauce on Serious Eats; he had me at "fish sauce," which he added to boost the umami factor. Always on the look-out for the perfect recipe for this particular sauce, I had to make it. Now.

I've seen so many recipes called "Bolognese" that were essentially tomato sauce with ground beef. That's just a garden-variety meat sauce. Proper Bolognese is primarily meat with a bit of tomato and cream to bind it together. The best bolognese sauce I've ever eaten was, believe it or not, served at a small café in Paris, a couple blocks off the Champs-Élysées. From my recollection, it was full of tender meat and unlike any other tomato-based pasta sauce I have ever eaten. By today, more than 25 years have passed and I should no longer rely on my taste memory, however I stubbornly contend that I'll recognize it when I taste it again.

Sauce before long-simmering. Looks kinda barfy, doesn't it?

As with most traditional dishes prepared by many different people over long periods of time, there's no one, ultimate, recipe for ragu Bolognese. I've seen variations with lemon peel, nutmeg, and pancetta; with the milk added early on to the browned meat and cooked until au sec, and with it added later; and tomato-heavy versions. Lopez-Alt's rendition had relatively little tomato, a ton of dairy, and no lemon, nutmeg, or bacon. But still, it called out to me to make it.

Sauce three hours later. Still a bit barfy.

The store in which we shopped for ingredients didn't carry ground lamb or veal, so I used a mixture of half ground beef and half ground pork. I also added 4 or 5 ounces of pancetta, for flavor. And apart from not skimming the sauce--which Lopez-Alt says should be emulsified back into the sauce during its final simmer--I followed the recipe exactly.

Dinner is served.

Traditionally, ragu Bolognese (when not used in lasagna) should be served over a wide flat noodle like tagliatelle. While I personally favor that type of pasta, it's not easy to find at the Safeway, so I chose farfalle, which are predominately flat, but also have a bit of texture to hold on to the chunky sauce.

The sauce smelled great and looked about perfect. Unfortunately, it didn't taste like very much at all, despite the tons of sage, vegetables, and a late addition of basil. It could have used several more cloves of garlic, and possibly some tomato paste for body and sweetness.

Several days later, we supped on the Bolognese again, expecting that after that much time in the fridge the sauce would have improved in time. But no. It was still basically a big pile of very soft meat in a flavorless gravy. Some might argue that skimming off the fat might be the problem, since fat carries flavor. However, I skim fat off of everything - short ribs, chili, beef stew, other tomato sauces - without adversely affecting the taste. And this stuff put out well over a cup of unappealing, floating fat - no way would a boiling after adding still more fat in the form of heavy cream have made it disappear into the sauce. Even if it did, I can imagine the mouthfeel would be unpleasantly unctuous.

There's still more than a full quart of sauce left. Most of it went into the freezer for later experimentation. About a cup of it will become hot dog sauce with the addition of ketchup, mustard, and chili powder (it's the perfect texture to top a dog). And I'm still on the hunt for the perfect Bolognese recipe.