Polenta with Mushroom Meat Sauce

The school year has begun, and now instead of lazy impromptu meals at the end of a summer's day we are shifting to meals that inspire the family to gather at the table together, to feel the warmth and comfort of reconnecting while we share stories from our day. With this in mind I went searching for a new recipe that would evoke just that kind of sentiment: a comfort food with deep earthy notes, soft and warm textures... This Polenta con Tocco di Funghi alla Genovese (credit to Giuliano Bugialli, Bugialli's Italy) is one such meal.

Start with 1 oz of dried mushrooms (Bugialli calls for porcini only, but I used a mix including porcini as well as black trumpet and some other wild varieties). Soak the mushrooms in lukewarm water for 30 minutes, then strain the soaking liquid very well and reserve it for the sauce. Clean and chop the mushrooms.

While the mushrooms are soaking, you can begin your other prep. You will need 1 lb of canned imported Italian tomatoes. Cut them in half.

Finely chop 1 medium red onion, 1 medium carrot, and the leaves from 15 sprigs of fresh Italian parsley.

Next, tie 1 lb of boneless top sirloin in one piece into a cylinder, like a salami. Heat 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil along with 1/4 cup sweet butter in a deep pan or casserole over medium heat. Add the meat to the hot oil and butter, and lightly brown it all over.

Remove the meat and add the chopped onion, carrot and parsley to the pan along with 1 cup dry red wine. Cook about 10 minutes, or until the wine evaporates.

Next, sprinkle 1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour over the vegetables and mix very well.

Add the tomatoes.

Then add the mushrooms, and add the meat back to the pan. Pour in the strained soaking water from the mushrooms as well as enough chicken or meat broth to cover everything, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for 2 hours.

After 2 hours has passed, remove the meat and save it for another preparation. The meat in this dish is not actually consumed but lends its essence to the sauce. Pass the contents of the pan through a food mill.

Reduce the sauce in a pan over medium heat until it becomes rather thick.

The sauce will be served over a polenta, which you should begin to prepare anywhere from 20-60 minutes before the sauce is done, depending on which type of polenta you have purchased. The recipe calls for long-cooking coarse stone-ground polenta but I could only find instant polenta at the store.

To make the polenta, first finely chop 4 oz pancetta along with 2 fresh sage leaves. Also chop one more red onion (not shown).

Melt 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil and 1/4 cup sweet butter in a saucepan or a sautoir over medium heat.

When the butter is melted, add the onion, pancetta and sage. Saute for 3-4 minutes.

Add 3 cups chicken or meat broth or cold water to the mixture and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add your polenta, mix very well, and keep stirring until the polenta reaches a boil. The instant polenta will be done right away, but the long-cooking polenta will need to be stirred for up to 45 minutes until it is done. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the polenta topped with the sauce, some grated parmesan cheese and some chopped parsley.

Mmmm... so good!

Ravioli

About 8 years ago or so I started making a chicken ravioli recipe from a Williams-Sonoma cookbook on pasta. It became one of my standards, something I could usually throw together from the ingredients I had on hand if I didn't know what else to make for dinner, and a darn good way to use up all those chicken breasts that I don't really want but have left over from making stock! I never deviated much from the recipe until the other day; I had a little wave of inspiration and decided I wanted to make the chicken ravioli with a bit of an earthy twist, so I added some bacon and black summer truffles and a bit of gruyere cheese along with the usual parmesan. It was a nice little change. The point in all of this is that ravioli is a very flexible dish, perfect for experimentation, and limited only to a cook's imagination!

Below I will show you the steps I took when I made ravioli this past Monday, but I invite you to not just duplicate it, but use it as a springboard for making your own unique creations. Just a month ago I used the filling from the Alain Ducasse stuffed summer vegetables for making a ravioli. You can use anything you desire just as long as it's not too wet I guess!

So, for my most recent creation, I first made a mirepoix as I usually do for my chicken ravioli, mixing equal parts chopped onion, carrot and celery and sauteeing in butter. Once you get this going, fill a big pot with water to get it boiling so it will be all ready for the ravioli.

Then I fried up some bacon

and then drained it on some paper towels to take away the grease.

I mixed the bacon in with the mirepoix, adding some chopped black truffles and chopped leftover roasted chicken, as well as some gruyere and parmesan cheeses.

All of this was chopped even more finely before mixing in a little beaten egg to bind it together.

Then I moved on to making my dough. Three eggs to two cups of all-purpose flour will make roughly one pound of pasta. Make a well in the center of your flour and crack the eggs into the well.

Mix together with a fork until the ingredients are well-blended.

Knead until smooth.

Roll long, thin sheets of dough through a pasta machine, taking the dough to the very last setting. I roll a quarter pound of dough at a time, so before I roll I cut my ball of dough into four equal pieces. Make sure your work surface is well-floured to prevent the dough from sticking. I do it all on a long sheet of parchment paper, which makes the eventual transfer to the pot of boiling water much easier!

Evenly space your filling, maybe a little over a tablespoon per "square", to begin forming your ravioli.

Next I dab a little water or egg white around the exposed dough, and then place a new sheet of dough on top, or sometimes I fill half the sheet and then fold the other half over. The water or egg white helps the top sheet of dough to adhere to the bottom sheet so that the ravioli will not separate during cooking.

Next the ravioli squares are cut using a pastry wheel.

Now they are ready to be boiled, which takes only a few minutes.

Serve topped with olive oil and grated parmesan cheese.

Buon appetito!

Enchiladas Suizas

When life hands you tomatillos, make...

Normally I'd have completed that sentence with the only answer obvious to me: mole verde. But I wasn't in the mood for mole verde. What to do?

I had received these small, firm, tart green tomatoes as part of a veggie co-op share, and was scratching my head for a few days about what to do with them. Finally I bit the bullet and got out my trusty book on "Authentic Mexican" cooking written by Rick Bayless, and he showed me the light. With his guidance I made enchiladas suizas for the very first time.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First gather up some tomatillos (about 1 lb), an onion, jalapeno peppers (the recipe calls for 2, but I went mercifully on my spice-averse 8-year-old and used only 1), and a clove of garlic. Cut the jalapenos lengthwise and remove the seeds, husk the tomatillos, and coarsely chop the onion and garlic.

In a saucepan, bring to a boil 5 cups of water along with another 1/2 onion, 1 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. marjoram, 1/2 tsp. thyme, and 2 bay leaves.

Add a small package of chicken breast meat (about 1.5 lbs) to the boiling mixture and reduce to a simmer to poach the chicken for about 13 minutes. Let the chicken cool in the broth.

Meanwhile, poach the husked but whole tomatillos along with the seeded jalapenos in boiling salted water until tender, about 10-15 minutes.

Drain the tomatillos and jalapenos and place in a blender or food processor along with the onion and garlic (and 5-6 sprigs cilantro, but we left it out for my cilantro-averse husband... um... we're not normally such a picky family, I swear!).

Process until smooth but still retaining a little texture.

Heat 1 tablespoon lard or vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and pour the sauce in all at once. Stir constantly for 4-5 minutes. Add 2 cups chicken broth, return to a boil, and simmer about 10 minutes or until thick enough to coat a spoon.

Meanwhile, shred the cooled chicken.

Add 1 cup whipping cream to the sauce once it has finished simmering, and keep on a very gentle heat until ready to use.

Prep 12 corn tortillas by quick-frying them in a pan or on a griddle in a little oil for 2-3 seconds on each side. Drain on paper towels.

Assemble the enchiladas by pouring a cup of the warm sauce onto a plate, then lay each tortilla in the sauce, flip it over, and lay 2 tablespoons of the filling across the center and roll it up. Transfer to a baking dish, and continue until all the tortillas are filled.

Next pour the sauce over the enchiladas, being careful to cover the ends, and top with 6 oz (1 1/2 cups) of Monterey Jack cheese.

Transfer the dish to the 350 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes. I broiled mine for a couple of minutes at the end to make the cheese nice and golden.

I served the enchiladas with refried beans and rice. To have everything done at the same time, start these while your tomatillos are poaching. I was a little lazy with the refried beans:

but I doctored them up by frying a bit of onion in some olive oil, then adding the beans to the pan along with a bit of chicken broth to heat gently until the other food was ready.

Here they are in the pan:

For the rice (also from Rick Bayless) I added 1 cup rice along with 1 chopped onion to a small bit of heated olive oil in a sauce pan, sauteeing til golden. Then I added a finely diced clove of garlic.

I parboiled some diced carrots, then drained them.

I added 1 ripe, chopped tomato along with 1 1/2 cups broth (stolen from the poached chicken above) and 1/2 tsp. salt. Bring to a boil, then cover and cook 15 minutes over low heat. Let rice stand, covered, for another 5-10 minutes after cooking. Then add the parboiled carrots, and peas and cilantro as well if you so choose.

Here's mine with the tomatoes and carrots only. Peas would have been a nice touch, only we didn't have any.

And, here's our yummy plate of enchiladas suizas, rice, and refried beans!