Emmer “Polenta”

A couple weeks ago we got in a some organic emmer (the Italians call it Farro) and spelt products from Lentz Farms in Eastern Washington. We got whole emmer and spelt berries and rolled emmer and spelt. We also got a nice cracked emmer cereal that I immediately knew I wanted to play with. I was also on orders from the boss to start creating recipes using Castelmagno (a fairly rare cheese from the north of Italy).

What I did was to make polenta with the emmer cereal and it turned out beautifully.

First, I made a porcini mushroom broth (yes, we carry dried porcini at PFI). I made it simply by simmering the porcini with garlic, chopped onion and salt to make a dark, coffee-colored broth. You could add typical stock vegetables to this and you could roast those vegetables first. I didnt and was happy with the results for my use.

Once I had my broth, I slowly cooked the cereal with it (3 cups of broth to each cup of cereal) until the mixture was quite thick, even stiff. At that point I grated some of the Castelmagno (about 2 ounces of the grated cheesefor each cup of cereal) into the cooked cereal and stirred it well. I also added a few dried oregano leaves to the mixture. At this point you would salt and (white) pepper the polenta to taste.

You could, at this point, just serve it hot as a side dish for ragouts or meats. Or you could move onto the next step in our game. The choice is yours.

The next step:

Spread the mixture into a sort of cake about 1 thick onto a plate or cookie sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Cool in the refrigerator until cold.

When the mixture is cold, remove it from the refrigerator and cut it into squares or diamonds or whatever shapes make you happy. Its easiest if the shapes fit comfortably on your food-turner (spatula). Chill the shapes again briefly.

Remove them once again from the refrigerator and brush them with a good, grassy extra virgin olive oil. Grill them over a quick hot fire, until nicely marked and heated through. About 4 minutes per side should do the trick. We like to grill over rosemary wood (its plentiful in our yard).

You may serve these hot as side dishes or you may let them cool (on a rack and not in the refrigerator or youll lose your nice crispy bits) and use them as bases for canapé-style appetizers. Again, the choice is yours.

Black Chick Pea Salad

From Daniel: My measurements here are approximate and the recipe generally is intended to be a template rather than an exact guide.

This is the base of the salad

1 14 ounce Timeless Natural Food Black Kabuli ^TM Chick Peas
2 1/2 cups medium bulgar wheat
Lemon Juice
Extra virgin olive oil
Garlic, peeled and minced very fine
Salt
Pepper
1 cup well-chopped fresh mint leaves

Rinse and pick through the chick peas there might be the occasional bit of grit or even a pebble. Relax. Thats how you know they were grown someplace. Combine the chick peas in a pan large enough to hold them and 4 ½cups of water. Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat and simmer the beans for about 2 hours, or until tender, but not yet soft. Drain and cool in the refrigerator.

In a large bowl , combine the bulgar wheat with 4 -5 cups (depending upon how chewy you want it) of salty hot water. Set aside. The bulgar will absorb all the liquid in a fairly short time and it wont get at all pasty. Perfect for salad.

Once the bulgar has absorbed all the water, add the chick peas to the bowl.

Make a dressing with lemon juice, a goodbuttery olive oil (my current pick for this recipe would be Kouras), minced garlic to taste, salt & pepper to taste. The proportions I use for the dressing is about 1:1 juice/oil, but your tastes may very. If you want less oil but dont want a more intense lemon flavor you could add a little water to the dressing.

Add your dressing to the salad. Its okay if this makes our ingredients pretty wet. The bulgar will absorb any excess and will only be improved in this way. Adjust seasonings again. Add the mint leaves now.

Additions:

This is where the fun starts. You can add pretty much anything to this salad and it will be more fun. I added pitted calamata olives, sliced cucumber, diced sweet red pepper, chopped scallions and sliced yellow crookneck squash to my salad and it was lovely. Heres a list of suggested additions:

· Pitted olives
· Cucumber
· Peppers (sweet or hot, pickled or roasted)
· Yellow crookneck or zucchini squash
· Scallions
· Fresh figs
· Dried cranberries
· Crumbled Feta Cheese
· Fresh peas
· Pine nuts or almonds
· Persimmons
· Roughly cut spinach
· Pickled shallots
· Capers
· Cherry tomatoes
· Shaved Kefalotyri
· Grilled beets
· Grilled fennel
· Flat-leaf parsley
· Fresh oregano or basil leaves
· Dill weed

Dont let that be a limiting list. Use your imagination here. It would be hard to fail this salad.

Black Chick Pea Hummous

14 ounce package of Black Kabuli Chick Peas, from Timeless Natural Foods
1/2 to 1 ounce of raw, peeled garlic
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest
2 – 3 teaspoons salt (to taste)
1 tablespoon Aleppo pepper
3/4 cup Moomtax Koura Extra Virgin Olive Oil
juice of two lemons, freshly squeezed
1 cup Al-Wadi tahina

Wash the chick peas thoroughly. Place them in a pan with at least 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil and then lower the flame. Simmer for at least 2 hours. We found that three and a half hours was about right for hummous. Drain the chick peas, reserving about a cup of the bean liquor (the water the beans were cooked in – just in case).

Cool the chick peas completely.

In the bowl of a food processor, using the metal blade, pulse the chick peas, the garlic, the lemon zest, the salt and the Aleppo pepper until they resemble the texture of coarse corn meal. With the food processor running, add the olive oil and the lemon juice. Then, with the food processor still running, add the tahina. At this point, if the hummous is too thick, you may add, tablespoon at a time, the bean liquor until the hummous acheives the desired consistency.

Serve at room temperature, garnished with olive oil and sliced cucumber, with warm pita bread, feta cheese and olives.

The yield is approximately 5 cups, depending upon how much liquid you add to acheive the consistency you desire.

Recipe by Daniel C. Mcglothlen

Hot Dish Macaroni and Cheese – from Daniel

Hot Dish Macaroni and Cheese

-for Margaret

1 pound De Cecco penne pasta
½ cup Meadowbrook unsalted butter
½ cup flour
2 cups whole milk
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Allepo Pepper (available in our bulk section)
1 pound Tickler extra sharp cheddar cheese, freshly shredded
½ cup beer (pale ale)
½ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup parmesan cheese, freshly shredded
½ teaspoon Allepo Pepper (available in our bulk section)
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook pasta in plenty of rapidly boiling, salted water until al dente. Set aside.

Melt butter over low-to-medium heat. Add flour. Cook flour and butter to make a blond roux. I like to cook roux for 5 – 8 minutes, so this is done slowly. It shouldn’t get brown, only tan. It’s important to cook the roux thoroughly, though, so as to minimize the flour taste in the sauce.

Whisk the salt and allepo pepper in a little bit of the milk until the seasonings are well-dissolved. Stir this into the rest of the milk and add this resulting mixture to the cooked roux. Raise the flame to medium heat and cook as for a very thick, smooth béchamel (white sauce, n’est-ce pas?).

Add the cheese in small portions, whisking thoroughly after each addition. Add the beer.

Combine the cheese sauce and pasta. Smooth this mixture into a greased casserole dish.

Combine the final four ingredients. I like to use home made bread crumbs for this now, but at Hot Dish we used store bought (yes, the stuff in the big cardboard tube). Sprinkle this mixture over the macaroni and cheese.

Bake for about half an hour or until golden brown on top. Don’t over-bake it. It’s possible that the cheese sauce will break if you do that. A cheese sauce is said to break when the fats and solids in the sauce separate and leave a gloppy mess.

Recipe by Daniel C. McGlothlen

Homemade Mayonnaise

This is Daniel’s recipe. He’s a PFI employee. He says that once you’ve tried homemade mayonnaise, you’ll never go back.

1 each large egg yolk
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice and 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Salt to taste (at least a half teaspoon, usually a teaspoon or more – and I find I do need more when I make this in the food processor)
1 cup Maestri Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tablespoon mustard (optional)

You can make this in a food processor (with a metal blade), a blender, or in a bowl with a whisk – but my preference is in my stand mixer with the whisk attachment. The key to mayonnaise made in a food processor or blender is not to overprocess to the point that the mayonnaise heats up. If that happens, the sauce will separate. Not good. This doesn’t happen in the stand mixer scenario or when you make it by hand. I find I also get a much lighter mayonnaise when I make it in the stand mixer than when I make it in the food processor.

Whether by hand or machine, combine the first three ingredients in the bowl or blender jar just until thoroughly mixed.

With the machine running or while whisking vigorously, begin to stream the oil by drops (fairly slowly at first) into the egg/lemon mixture. As the mayonnaise begins to take shape you can add oil a little more quickly, but never much faster than a very thin stream. I find, again, that the stand mixer is the most forgiving on these points. And, remember, you don’t want the mixture to get hot or it will break.

At last, when you’ve added all your oil, taste the sauce and adjust the salt as needed. This is also the stage at which you can add flavorings – such as the mustard I mention.

Note: omit the lemon juice and add a fair amount of garlic and you’ve made a simple aioli.

Hummous bi Tahini, PFI-style

From Daniel, PFI employee

1 15. 5 ounce can Goya Chick Peas
2/3 cup Al Wadi Ground Tahini
juice of 2-3 lemons
2 tablespoons Olive Oil (use a middle eastern oil, such as Alphonso’s, for this)
4 -5 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
salt

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the desired consistency is reached. I prefer my hummous to be coarse, so this takes very little time in my kitchen.

Garnish with a little olive oil (enough to keep the hummous from forming a dark skin), smoked paprika and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley.

Spinach and Feta Tart

From Kelly, a wonderful PFI employee:

This recipe is open to variation and flexibility in ingredients.

1 med onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 c. olive oil
1 1/2 lbs frozen spinach, (you could use fresh, but frozen is easier)
1/2 t. salt
1 t. oregano
1 t. basil
1 T. bread crumbs
1 c. feta
3/4 c. ricotta or cottage cheese, whole or low fat
black pepper
2 eggs (can use just the whites)
5 to 7 phyllo sheets
5 T. olive oil or melted butter
1/2 c. (more or less) grated romano or parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375 – 400 (heat of oven will determine baking time)

Finely chop onion and mince garlic, cook in 1 T. olive oil in large skillet over moderately low heat until softened. Squeeze spinach to remove as much liquid as possible and add to onion with salt, oregano and basil. Cook mixture over moderate heat, stirring occasionally until liquid is evaporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

In a bowl, whisk eggs until combined. Add eggs, bread crumbs, feta, ricotta and pepper to spinach and combine well. Adjust seasonings as necessary. Bring filling to room temperature.

Unwrap phyllo and lay on a sheet of plastic wrap or waxed paper, and then cover the stack completely with a dampened kitchen towel. Melt butter if using, and brush cookie sheet or tart pan with butter or olive oil.

On a work surface (or directly on the pan) lay first sheet of phyllo and brush with olive oil or butter and then sprinkle with romano/parmesan cheese. Lay next sheet on top of first and repeat procedure of brushing with oil and then sprinkling with cheese. Continue layering with the rest of sheets. Transfer to pan (if you were working on a different surface).

Spoon filling onto center of phyllo spreading out evenly, leaving 3-4 inches on each side. Roll up sides of phyllo towards the center and tuck to form rolled edge barrier. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until phyllo is golden brown. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Asado De Bodas, Vegan Version (Wedding Stew)

From Daniel (PFI Employee):

1 1/2 cups Vegetable broth
1/8 teaspoon cumin seed — crushed
1 ounce mexican drinking chocolate — broken
bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1 each orange zest
Peanut oil — enough to saute
1/2 each medium onion — roughly chopped
4 each chiles anchos — slit open, seeded and veined
6 ounces tomatillo — washed and peeled
4 each garlic
1 each bread slice — dry
1/2 each tostada
2 pounds sweet potato
sea salt — to taste

Peel and dice sweet potatoes. Fluff with olive oil and roast in 500 degree oven until tender, but still firm. About 25 minutes. Place in refrigerator until cool.

Combine first 6 ingredients in a pot large enough to contain all the ingredients except the sweet potatoes. Bring to simmer.

In a large saute pan (or brazier) add enough peanut oil to cover bottom of pan by about an eighth of an inch.
Saute onions in oil. Remove and add to broth.

MAKE SURE THERE’S PLENTY OF VENTILATION. Saute anchos in oil. They turn a kind of tobacco brown inside when they’re done. It only takes a couple of seconds. Remove and add to broth.

Saute tomatillos and garlic in oil until golden brown. Remove and add to broth.

Saute bread and tostados in oil just until golden. Remove and add to broth. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Remove bay leaves from broth just before blending.

In the large blender, add the above mixture in less than half-jar batches at a time. Pulse/blend until pureed. Salt to taste. If you intend to use this right away, pour it into a sauce pan as you go. If you intend to refridgerate it, pour it into a shallow pan as you go and once you’re done place this into the refridgerator to cool. Then cover.

To heat and serve; place pureed sauce in a large pot with a bit more broth to make it all stirrable. Make sure sauce is hot before sweet potatoes are added. Add sweet potatoes. Heat mixture to 165 degrees on an instant read thermometer and serve with rice, beans and tortillas.

Copyright 2002, Daniel C. McGlothlen