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Asian slaw (without pears) recipe

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 tablespoon honey
• ¾ tablespoon Red Boat fish sauce
• Pinch salt
• Grind of black pepper
• 1 red jalapeno chile (remove seeds and ribs then diced fine)
• 4 ounces grated carrots
• 4 ounces packaged cole slaw mix
• 4 scallions, green parts only, sliced thinly

Combine olive oil, vinegar, lime juice, honey, fish sauce, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Whisk to combine. Add vegetables and toss to coat.

Asian Pear Slaw Recipe

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
•  1 ½ tablespoons rice vinegar
• ½ tablespoon sesame oil
• Pinch salt
• Grind of black pepper
• 1 ripe Asian pear, peeled, cored, julienned
• 5 ounces grated carrots
• 7 ounces packaged cole slaw mix
• 4 scallions, green parts only, sliced thinly

 

Combine olive oil, vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Whisk to combine. Add vegetables and toss to coat.

Served with duck breasts in hoisin sauce.

Duck Breasts with Hoisin Sauce Recipe

• 2 x duck breasts
• 4 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon rice wine
• 1-1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1-1/2 teaspoon crushed ginger
• 1 teaspoon 5-spice powder
• Salt and pepper

In a medium bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice wine, garlic, ginger, 5-spice powder.

Season duck breasts with salt and pepper. Put in bowl with sauce to marinate for at least 30 minutes at room temperature.

Heat a medium nonstick pan over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes.

Remove breasts from bowl, scraping off and reserving the marinade, pat dry with paper towels.

Add duck breasts to pan skin down. Reduce heat to medium. Cook 15 minutes (20 for large breasts), removing fat as it renders. Flip to meat side and cook another 5 minutes. Remove breasts to a plate.

Add reserved marinade to pan and bring to a simmer. Let it cook for a minute or two. Return duck to pan and turn it over several times to glaze the breasts.

Allow to rest 5 minutes before serving.

Serve with a good Central Coast Pinot Noir and Asian Pear slaw.

Long Life Noodles

INGREDIENTS

3 ounces shiitake mushrooms

6 green onions

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

1 cup frozen chopped spinach

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

3 tablespoons soy sauce (I prefer Kikkoman)

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon smooth peanut butter (I prefer Jif Natural)

1/2 tablespoon honey (I prefer Nature Nate’s raw and unfiltered)

Sriracha

1 tablespoon peanut oil

10 ounces lo mein noodles

Instructions

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add enough salt so the water tastes like dilute sea water (somebody once told me that Italians cook pasta in water that is as salty as the Bay of Naples).

Cut the stems off the mushrooms, give the caps a quick rinse, and pat dry with paper towels (or a clean tea towel, if you’re feeling environmental). Slice thinly.

Rinse green onions, peeling away any nasty parts, and pat dry as above. Cut off and discard the roots and the top inch of the green parts. Thinly slice crosswise. Separate white and light green parts from dark green parts.

Rinse spinach and squeeze dry.

Toast sesame seeds in a small nonstick pan over medium heat about 3 minutes. Do not let them burn. In a large bowl, combine honey, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, soy sauce, half of the dark green parts of the green onions, and 1 tablespoon hot water. Mix. Taste and add salt, if necessary, and sriracha to taste.

Place a large nonstick pan over medium heat. When heated (when tested with your infra-red non-contact thermometer, the pan should be about 300 degrees) add oil. (Remember the old aphorism: hot pan, cold oil, food won’t stick.)

Add white and light green parts of the green onions and sauté for 1 minute. Add garlic and sauté for 30 seconds. Add the mushrooms and a pinch of salt to the pan. Sauté until the mushrooms have given up all their liquid and softened, which will probably take about 6 to 7 minutes. Add spinach and cook 1 minute. Remove pan from heat.

Add noodles to the pot of boiling water and cook per package directions. Drain.

Add drained pasta and mushroom/spinach mix to the bowl holding the sauce and toss to combine.

Top with remaining green onion and serve.

Chicken Cacciatore with Farro and Foxen Winery Volpino 2015

Brine two each organic free-range air-chilled skin-on and bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks for 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Brine

• 4 cups filtered water
• 3 tablespoons pickling salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried Italian herbs

I find it’s helpful to mix the brine using my stick blender, as it ensures that the salt and sugar dissolves. I put the chicken in a zip-lock gallon bag and pour the brine over. I then put the bag in a large dish, making sure all of the chicken pieces are submerged, and put it in the refrigerator.  

After brining the chicken pieces, remove them from the brine, rinse them very thoroughly, dry them with paper towels, and allow them to rest and come up to room temperature on a paper towel-lined plate. Dust the pieces with Wondra flour, coating throughly but shaking off any excess.

Sauce

• 1 tablespoon olive oil (I’m a big fan of the California Olive Ranch brand)
• ½ onion, diced fine
• ½ cup finely diced carrot
• 6 ounces cremini mushrooms, stemmed and chopped roughly (freeze and save the stems for future stock making)
• 3 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and chopped roughly (ditto)
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste (I only buy tomato paste in tubes, which is much less wasteful than cans; I like the Cento brand)
• 1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes, drained (as always, I strongly prefer the Muir Glen brand)
• pinch red pepper flakes (or two or three to your taste)
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian herbs
• ½ cup white wine (I buy packs of 187 ml bottles of Woodbridge Pinot Grigio to minimize waste)
• 1 cup chicken bone broth (I’ve become a big fan of using my Fagor multi-cooker to make homemade bone broths, but that’s another recipe, and Kettle & Fire brand broths are a very acceptable substitute)
• 1 tablespoon fresh basil chiffonade
• salt and pepper

I cooked the chicken and sauce in my Culina electric skillet. Set the skillet to 350° and, after allowing it to come to temperature, add the olive oil to the skillet. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, achieving a deep brown but not allowing the skin to burn. Transfer the chicken pieces to a plate. Reduce the heat to 275° and add the onions and carrots. Add a pinch of salt. Sweat the veggies until they are translucent and just starting to brown at the edges, stirring often. Add the mushrooms and crank the heat back up to 350°. Add a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper.  Sauté the mushrooms for about 6 minutes, or until they have softened and are beginning to brown, add the garlic and tomato paste and sauté for another minute. Add the tomatoes, pepper flakes, herbs, and wine. Allow the wine to reduce by half. Add the broth. Reduce heat to a low simmer. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. Return chicken pieces to the pan and nestle into the sauce, pour any accumulated juices from the chicken pieces’s resting plate into the sauce, cover the pan, and cook 25-30 minutes, stirring and flipping the chicken pieces occasionally. Adjust heat if necessary to maintain a simmer without either boiling the sauce or letting it just sit in the pan.  

Check chicken thighs with a meat thermometer to make sure they hit 175°. If so, transfer all pieces to service plates. Add basil to sauce. If sauce has gotten too dry, add some broth to loosen it to your taste. Taste and add salt or pepper if needed. Top chicken pieces with sauce.

I wanted something rustic and easy to serve with the chicken.  Alessi Farro Al Funghi was a great choice. It basically cooked itself while I kept an eye on the chicken. 

We drank a 2015 Foxen Vineyards Volpino, which is one of our favorite Cal-Ital wines. It’s a blend of predominately Sangiovese (>80%) and a dollop of Merlot, sourced from Central Coast vineyards in the Santa Ynez valley. On the nose and palate, it suggests rose petals, raspberries, strawberries, and plums, with undertones of earth and sage. Yum. Grade: A-

Rigatoni with beef bolognese sauce and a Foxen Vineyards Volpino (2015)

The sauce was something of an all day project. I started out grinding approximately 3 pounds of beef using the grinder attachment to my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. I had In the freezer 1 pound of chuck, a 12 ounce ribeye steak, a 12 ounce sirloin steak, and about 8 ounces of trimmings left over from butchering a tenderloin roast. I allowed them to partially defrost overnight. This morning I cut the meat into roughly 1-inch pieces and ran the whole batch (alternating cuts) through the coarse grinding plate. I then ran about half of the resulting ground meat through again, but this time using the medium grinding plate. I combined the two batches and then set aside 1 pound for future hamburger patties. 

When I was ready to start cooking, I asked Siri to crank up some Puccini on my HomePod and we were off to the races. (Yes, I copied that move from Alton Brown.)

Four rashers of thick-cut American bacon went into my Le Creuset 7-1/4 Quart Dutch Oven. (I usually use pancetta, but I was in a mood for a slightly smoky bolognese, so I went domestic.) When the bacon was done, I removed the rashers to a paper towel lined plate to drain. When they had cooled, I snipped three rashers into small pieces using kitchen shears (I ate the other one). Meanwhile, I poured off the bacon fat and reserved it.

I dusted the 2 pounds ground beef with a ½ teaspoon of baking soda, a couple of big pinches of salt, and about six grinds of black pepper from my brass pepper mill and lightly mixed it. The baking soda raises the pH of the meat’s surface, which promotes browning and slightly tenderizes it.

I browned the meat in the Dutch oven over medium heat in three batches, adding a ½ tablespoon of the reserved bacon fat before each batch. I transferred the meat to a paper towel lined platter to drain. 

I diced one medium yellow onion, three stalks of celery, and 1 large carrot. I added a big splash of olive oil to the Dutch oven, which was over medium heat, and then the veggies. I added a heavy pinch of salt (I apologize for having eyeballed a lot of the measurements), three grinds of pepper, and a ½ teaspoon of smoked hot paprika. I reduced the heat to medium-low, and sweated the veggies for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they were soft and beginning to show signs of carmelization. I then added a couple of grinds of pepper, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, and 6 crushed cloves of garlic, turned the heat up to medium and stirred for 1 minute. 

One cup of a cheap (but not undrinkable) Pinot Grigio went into the pot with the veggies. (A couple of glasses of the Pinot Grigio went into your chef as the cooking process continued.)  I cranked the heat to high and allowed the wine to cook down to a glaze. One can of evaporated milk went into the Dutch oven and was allowed to reduce by half. I lowered the heat to medium.

Then one 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes and one 28 ounce can of whole plum tomatoes, along with their juices in both cases, went into the pot. (I prefer the Muir Glen brand.) As I added the whole tomatoes, I grabbed the tomatoes and squeezed them to break them up before dropping them one by one into the pot. I then added to the pot a 14.5 ounce can of low sodium beef broth, the beef and bacon, 2 tablespoons ketchup, a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, a big pinch of red pepper flakes, 2 teaspoons of dried Italian herbs, a teaspoon of dried basil, and a teaspoon of dried oregano.

I then thoroughly rinsed 1 ounce of Mycological dried porcini mushrooms and, using kitchen shears, snipped them into small pieces that I let fall into the pot.

I reduced the heat to low, covered the Dutch oven, and let the sauce cook for three and a half hours, stirring every 30 minutes. At the end of the cooking time I tasted the sauce and thought it needed a pinch of salt, two grinds of pepper, two pinches of dried Italian herbs, a squirt of tomato paste, and small dashes of Tabasco and sherry vinegar to brighten it a bit. 

I cooked a pound of rigatoni (I like the Barilla brand) for 11 of the recommended 13 minutes, drained the pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking water, returned the pasta to the cooking pot, added the reserved cooking water and about a third of the sauce, and let the sauced pasta cook over medium for 2 more minutes. 

We had leftover sauced pasta, which will make a nice dinner after late Mass tomorrow, and leftover sauce to freeze for future dinners. 

We drank a delightful 2015 Foxen Vineyards Volpino. 

Dinner tonight was rigatoni w/ beef bolognese. We drank a @foxenwinery 2015 Volpino. Raspberry, cranberry, and plum notes above an earthy undertone. Well balanced. Consistently my favorite California Sangiovese (83% w/ 17% Merlot). Grade: 91 https://t.co/c4yMgFoGQK

— Professor Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) February 17, 2019

Professor Bainbridge's Favorite Cookbooks of 2018

Professor Bainbridge's Top Recommendations in Kitchen Gadgets

Regular readers know that cooking is my main hobby. Here are four items I use all the time and recommend very highly for the cook in your life:

Thanksgiving Dinner: Blood orange glazed duck with Ridge 1996 Monte Bello

The Duck

• 5½ pound Rohan duck
• ½ onion, roughly chopped
• 1 stalk celery, roughly chopped
• 2 oranges, quartered
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• ½ teaspoon 5 spice powder

Preheat oven to 475°.

Trim excess skin from front and tail of duck. Remove and discard giblets etc. from the interior of the duck. Cut off and remove duck neck (which comes tucked into the cavity), reserve for future stock making. Rub duck inside and out with half of spice mix. Combine onion, celery, and orange pieces in a bowl and toss with the remaining spice mix. Stuff into duck and tie legs.

Put a rack into a roasting pan that has a lid. Set duck breast side up on rack.

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil (I like to use my electric kettle). Pour boiling water into pan until it almost touches the duck. Cover. Put roasting pan into oven and drop oven temperature to 325°. Roast for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and transfer duck to a cutting board or platter. Pour water and duck fat from pan into a fat separator. Be sure to save the fat to use for roasting potatoes or some similarly yummy purpose.

Return duck to pan breast side down, cover, and return to oven. Roast 40 minutes.

Raise oven temperature to 375°. Remove lid. Flip duck breast side up. Roast 15 minutes. Smear glaze all over duck. Roast 15 more minutes. Check temperature by inserting an instant read thermometer into the inner thigh near the breast. I like my duck at 160°.

Let duck rest 15 minutes, carve, and serve with orange sauce on the side.

Orange glaze and sauce

• ½ teaspoon 5 spice powder
• 3 tablespoons Grand Mariner
• 8 tablespoons Sarabeth's Blood Orange Marmalade

Combine spice, liquor, and marmalade in your All-Clad 1-Quart sauce pan and bring to a simmer over medium heat. When mixture has thickened set half aside to use as a glaze.

Add the following to the remaining mixture in the sauce pan:

• 1 tablespoon Grand Mariner
• 1 tablespoon Sarabeth's Blood Orange Marmalade
• 1 8 ounce can mandarin oranges with their juice
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
• salt to taste

Bring to a simmer and let thicken slightly.

@RidgeVineyards 1996 Monte Bello. Like an old claret. Earth. Tobacco. Leather. Cedar. Prunes. Currants. One of the best aged California Cabernets I’ve ever had. Grade: 99 pic.twitter.com/jdY2ey1Hx7

— Professor Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) November 23, 2018

Butternut Squash Ravioli in a Butternut Squash Cream Sauce with Jayson Chardonnay (Napa Valley) 2013

This turned out really well:

• 3 ounces diced pancetta
• 1 shallot, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• heavy pinch salt
• three or four grinds of black pepper
• 6 ounces diced butternut squash (I used Stahlbush Islands Farm frozen)
• 1 teaspoon dried sage
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian parsley
• 1 cup heavy cream
• pinch nutmeg
• Parmesan cheese to taste
• 1 10-ounce package Rana Butternut Squash Ravioli

Bring 8 quarts of heavily salted water (it should taste like sea water) to a boil in your Cuisinart 12-Quart Pasta/Steamer Pot.

Meanwhile, sauté the pancetta over medium heat in your All-Clad 10-inch D3 skillet. (You’ll notice that, as always, I am crediting you with great taste in your cookware selections.)

Add the squash to the boiling water and cook 3 minutes.

After the pancetta is cooked, transfer it to a paper towel lined plate to drain, and remove all but a tablespoon of the drippings from the pan.

Return the pan to the heat add the shallot and cook for 1 minute. Add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds. Add the squash, salt, pepper, sage, and parsley, and cook for 1 minute. Add the cream and the nutmeg. Once the cream comes to a simmer, reduce the heat to low and mash the squash using a potato masher (I prefer that to a blender so as to retain some teaxture in the sauce). Grate in Parmesan cheese to taste.  

Cook the ravioli in the pasta water for 3 and a half minutes. Transfer the ravioli to the sauce pan using a spider or slotted spoon, but do try to get some pasta water in the sauce. 

Plate and top with more freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

We drank a 2013 Jayson Chardonnay (Jayson is Pahlmeyer’s second label). I was expecting a big, buttery, oaky Napa Chardonnay. What I got was a delicious, well balanced, lightly oaked wine with good acidity that made a stellar match for our meal. Stone fruits (peaches and nectarines), green apple, honey, and vanilla. Grade: 91

Sous vide cookbooks I recommend

As you may know, I have become a convert to sous vide. I'm using four cookbooks, all of which I recommend:

Sous vide duck breast with Multicooker butternut squash risotto and Paraduxx (Napa Valley) 2015

I broke out my new Joule Sous Vide machine and made duck breast using a recipe from America Test Kitchen's Sous Vide for Everybody cookbook. Worked great.

I also adapted a butternut squash risotto recipe from Cook's Illustrated so I could make it in my Fagor LUX 4 quart Multi-Cooker. Also worked great.

The sous vide machine:

The duck breasts being sealed in my new Weston vacuum sealer:

The duck breasts in the sous vide machine:

The risotto rice sautéing in the multi-cooker:

The duck breasts after cooking sous vide for two hours:

The duck breast plated after being seared in a blazing hot All-Clad 12-inch pan:

Closeup:

That's a currant port wine sauce on the duck.

The Paraduxx is a blend of 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, 16% Zinfandel, and 11% Petit Verdot. Raspberry and blackberry fruit aromas and flavors, with a touch of spice. Grade: 90

 

Sous vide New York strip steak and port sauce with roasted potatoes and 2015 Frog's Leap Merlot

The fall royalty check arrived from Foundation and I bought a new toy: a Joule Sous Vide machine. Last night I made NY strip steaks with it.

After setting up the Joule's smartphone app, which was quite easy, I added the sous vide machine to my All-Clad 12-quart stock pot, and let the water come up to the temperature recommended by the app.

I took two NY strip steaks and trimmed off the fat. I seasoned both sides with salt and pepper and popped them into heavy duty vacuum sealer bags with a squirt of Pam, a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme, and a clove of garlic. Next I broke out my other new toy, a Weston vacuum sealer, and sealed both bags using the pulse setting. I added the bags to the pot, attaching them with sous vide cooking clips. I told the app to start the cooking process and it took off. The app recommended a 90 minute cook time, but I actually ended up letting it cook for over two hours to no ill effect, which is one of the beauties of sous vide cooking.

To make the sauce I sautéed about half a tablespoon of finely diced shallot and a minced garlic clove in a large pat of butter. When they were ready I added ¾ cup of tawny port and ¼ cup low sodium chicken broth to the pot, along with a teaspoon of green peppercorns. After the sauce reduced to about a quarter of a cup, I added a tablespoon of Dijon mustard and kept it warm.

For the potatoes I started off by cooking four rashers of thick-cut bacon in my All-Clad 12-inch pan. While they were cooking, I sliced 10 ounces of pee wee Yukon gold potatoes in half and put them in a medium mixing bowl. When the bacon was done, I transferred them to a paper towel-lined plate, and later chopped them into small pieces. I put about 3 tablespoons of bacon drippings in with the potatoes, along with salt, pepper, and chopped up leaves from about 5 sprigs of fresh thyme. The mixture went into a roasting pan and roasted at 400° for about 35 minutes. When they were done, I added the chopped up bacon bits and about half a cup of creme fraiche.

I combined a half tablespoon of bacon drippings with a teaspoon of sherry vinegar and used it to dress some baby arugula.

When everything was ready, I took the steaks out of the water bath. I patted the steaks dry. I put my All-Clad 12-inch pan over high heat. When it was blazing hot, I added the steaks and seared them for one minute per side.

The steaks before searing:

One of the steaks after searing:

Service:

The interior of the steak:

Close-up:

Notice how the meat is perfectly cooked throughout. As Cook's Illustrated explains:

With sous vide, steaks are cooked to the same temperature, and thus same doneness (of your choosing!), all the way through. This eliminates the gray band of overcooked meat around the exterior of steaks, which often occurs with traditional pan-roasted methods. Once your sous vide steaks are taken out of the water bath, all that's left to do is to give them a quick sear in a screaming hot pan to create the Maillard browning and flavorful crust.

The 2015 Frog's Leap Merlot (Napa Valley) was a pleasant match for the meal. Plums, prunes, and oak. Grade: 88

Grilled pork chops with spicy peach glaze

Yes. Grilled pork chops with spicy peach glaze, red potatoes, and spinach salad. Brine the chops. Grill 5 minutes per side. @RidgeVineyards Three Valleys Zinfandel 2015 was a lovely match. pic.twitter.com/4R84QaIJYo

— Professor Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) July 22, 2018

Here’s the recipe for the glaze:
1 cup peach preserves
1/2 cup sherry vinegar
1 tbl bourbon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1/8 tsp each cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper
Combine and reduce by 1/3 over med heat
Set aside 1/4 cup to glaze pork chops
Add 3 diced peaches. Med heat 10 minutes. pic.twitter.com/qWD5ys86Ss

— Professor Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) July 22, 2018

Beef Medallions with Caramelized Tomato Mushroom Pan Sauce, Broken Spaghetti Risotto, Chopped Caprese Salad, and Fattoria di Fèlsina Berardenga Fontalloro 2011

For dinner last night, I made two recipes from Chef John of the Food Wishes You Tube channel: Beef Medallions with Caramelized Tomato Mushroom Pan Sauce (like Chef John I used an All-Clad skillet without a nonstick coating; it develops great fond) and Broken Spaghetti Risotto. I also made a chopped Caprese salad from a Food Network recipe. I couldn't get the cut spaghetti locally and although I could have just cut up some regular spaghetti, I bought some Barilla Cut Spaghetti from Amazon. All three were delicious.

I poured a 2011 Fattoria di Fèlsina Berardenga Fontalloro. Still very young with firm tannins, but it's well balanced with deep raspberry, cherry, and plum flavors and aromas. For near term consumption I recommend double decanting. Or cellaring for another 5 years. Grade: 91