see you there!

Technology isn’t on my side tonight, so I’m not going to officially switch hosts until everything I need (themes, plugin, all that shit) is uploaded to the new host. But you are forwarned. We should be all settled in by Monday.

Here’s a picture of some hummus and half a falafel to tide you over:

Anyway, to forestall any gnashing of teeth or rending of garments, I’ll throw you a bone in the form of my favorite hummus recipe. I don’t remember where I learned the key component of this recipe, but I am forever grateful because it allows me to produce Middle Eastern restaurant-quality hummus in my very own home using canned chickpeas.

The key: getting the skins off the chickpeas.  Processing the peas avec le skin is why the texture of your homemade hummus is never as good as the stuff from the kabob shack (you know it’s true).  I have been known to individually pluck the skins off with my fingers, but you can just stir the peas around in a pot of boiling water.  The skins, loosely attached to begin with, will come off and float obligingly to the top so you can fish them out with a spoon.

For one 15 ounce can of flayed chickpeas (drained, but save the liquid), you’ll need 1/3 of a cup of tahini (I like Joyva the best), 3 cloves of garlic,  and salt, lemon juice and olive oil to taste.  First, whiz just the tahini, garlic and a few squirts of lemon juice and tablespoons of olive oil until they lighten in color and form a smooth paste.  Add the chickpeas and blend again until smooth and pale beige.  Taste, and adjust the lemon and salt to your liking.  If the hummus is too thick, which it probably will be, thin it with the reserved chickpea water.

Now you can save up the $1.50 you spend at Adnan’s Falafel House every week until you have enough to buy me a present.

First, let me tell you what the above is NOT. It is more definitely NOT a braised pork belly, which is what I had really, really wanted to make after having 2 excellent versions recently at new local fav Ox and Top Chef Season 1 Winner Harold Dieterle’s place, Perilla. The non-existent pork belly is not sitting atop a bed of braising lentils, nor is there a simply dressed salad of pea shoots alongside.

I tried to give you these things. I left my office (31st and 8th) early today to head to Whole Foods (24th and 7th) in search of the belly. There was none there, probably because there were no sufficiently virtuous pigs available this week, so I swung by the Garden of Eden (23rd and 7th) where I was similarly disappointed. It was only slightly frigid outside, so I walked down to Balducci’s (14th and 8th) where, despite the cavernous space, there was very little actual food available for purchase. So I tried the Gourmet Garage (7th Ave. South and 10th), failed, and then tried Citarella (6th and 9th). Where I gave up and decided to do a spice-crusted pork tenderloin with the blood orange gastrique I’d been planning instead.

By this point I was so tired and dehydrated – had I known it was going to be such an ordeal, I would have brought a Power Bar – that I bought a bunch of beets and 2 liters of incredibly overpriced imported iced tea for no apparent reason. On the way out, I barreled directly into Keifer Southerland, who also did not have any pork belly available but was very kind about the whole barreling-into-him thing. The beets, however, continue to mock me. Fucking beets.

You need to reduce the Robitussin to really bring out the nuances of flavor.

So, I present the judges for this month’s Royal Foodie Joust over at the Leftover Queen’s with my five spice-crusted pork tenderloin with blood orange-pink peppercorn gastrique, citrus-scented roasted butternut and carrot puree, and haricots verts bundles. I know it’s a mouthful, but that’s what we classy motherfuckers are like.

I got the gastrique going first, since I knew my tenderloins would be quick studies in the pan. A gastrique is a vinegar and sugar reduction, often flavored with something else. In this case, rice wine vinegar, blood orange juice, sugar and pink peppercorns slowly reduce over medium heat until they form a syrup that coats the back of a spoon. They also form a noxious vapor that will burn the protective membranes in your nose RIGHT OUT if you accidentally stick your face directly over the pot, like if you’re trying to take a picture. Consider yourselves warned.

Does not look like Robitussin.

While I was considering my next move, I decided that the full name of my dish wasn’t quite as long as it could be. Also, there was a pot of oil still sitting on the stove from last night’s falafel that was still pretty clean. So I did what any sane person would do, and made onion rings. More like little frizzles, actually; sliced thinly, dredged quickly in flour and salted upon exiting the oil. There was, however, a massive problem with this part of the dish – namely, that I underestimated my own desire to nosh and did not make nearly enough onion rings. I’m sure many of you have suffered from the same problem at one time or another, and I accept your sympathies.

I also threw some squash and carrots into the oven to roast, but I have more important things to do than take pictures of a carrot.*

*Irony

Does look like a turd.

The tenderloin had been sitting in the fridge developing a nice crust of spices. I seared it on all sides on the stove and then finished it in a 425 degree oven. This picture was artfully taken so as to obscure the fact that I used a meat thermometer to cook the pork, like a total gumshoe dork. I really wanted to make sure that I took it off the heat right around 140 so that the internal temp could rise to 155 during its rest, leaving me with a perfectly medium piece of pig lovin’. Official sources tell us it’s now safe to cook pork to 160 instead of the 180 we were previously instructed to hit, which rendered pork grey and sawdust-y. I like to live dangerously, so I shave the extra 5 degrees off.

I take a lot of pictures inside the food processor. I don’t know what that says about me.

The squash and carrots were tender and had taken on some nice color in the oven, so they went into the whizzer with a little bit of butter and some blood orange zest – just enough to suggest a citrusy floralness, not enough to read as “orange.” Green beans were blanched to a bright verdancy.

I *will* build a lightbox. I *will* build a lightbox. I *will* build a lightbox.

Plating: Tenderloin cut in thirds and stood upright to show the perfectly pale-pink interiors, and drizzled with the gastrique and a few of the peppercorns. Haricots tied up in a little bundle with a strand of leek I’d blanched along with them. Squash-carrot puree tucked into an empty blood orange half and topped with frizzled onions. Why? Because I am FUCKING ADORABLE, that’s why.

And everything was really, really good. The pork was perfect at 155 – butter-knife tender but with a good crust on the outside – and the sweet and smoky five spice played well off the citrusy gastrique (which, admittedly, did end up with a frighteningly cough-syrup-like consistency and color, if not flavor). The carrots added an extra dimension to the squash puree, and the hint of zest tied the puree into the pork without making it matchy-matchy. Blanched haricots verts are what they are.

Consider yourselves jousted!

Five-Spice Pork Tenderloin with Blood Orange Gastrique and Citrus-Scented Carrot & Squash Puree

For the gastrique:
3 blood oranges, juiced
3/4 c. rice wine vinegar
3/4 c. granulated sugar
1 tbsp. pink peppercorns, lightly crushed

Mix all the ingredients together in a non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer, stirring occasionally and adjusting the heat if the mixture threatens to boil over, until it reaches a syrupy consistency and coats the back of a spoon, 20-30 minutes. Remove from the heat. If you like, you can strain out the peppercorns.

For the pork:
2 1/2 pound pork tenderloins
1 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. Chinese Five-Spice Powder
1 tbsp. canola oil

Rub the tenderloins with the salt and Five-Spice. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, but up to 24.

Preheat your oven to 425. Heat the canola oil in a large oven-safe skilled until shimmering and just starting to smoke. Sear the tenderloin on all sides, then transfer the pan to the oven and roast until the meat hits an internal temperature of 140. Remove the pork to a platter and let rest for 5-10 minutes; the temperature will continue rising to about 155. Serve with the gastrique on top or alongside.

For the puree:
1/2 butternut squash
2 medium carrots
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
2 tbsp. butter
zest of half a blood orange

Preheat the oven to 475. Peel the squash and carrots and slice into 1-2 inch chunks; toss the chunks with the oil and salt. Roast until the veggies are tender (easily pierced with a fork) and a bit browned.

Transfer the veggies to a food processor; add the butter and zest. Process until smooth (you can also do this by hand, or run the veggies through a ricer or food mill). Serve immediately.

130 meters under a frozen mountain on an island near the Arctic Sea, Norway is opening a Doomsday Seed Vault that will protect 4.5 million different types of seeds from destruction in case of agricultural mismanagement, nuclear winter, alien invasion or all of the above.

I think this is a great idea. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that one of the things I fear most about nuclear holocaust is the possibility that if I survive I’ll no longer have access to the heirloom pole beans* I enjoy today. However, I am concerned that America is allowing a Doomsday Vault gap to open, and would like to suggest that we consider our own Doomsday Vaults to protect those elements critical to the American Way of Life:

• Doomsday Gourmet Bottled Water Vault

• Doomsday Suri Cruise Vault

• Doomsday Doritos CoolRanch (TM) Vault

• Doomsday Pornography Vault

If you could only save one food in your corner of the Doomsday Vault, what would it be?

*I love heirloom veggies and think the vault is a great idea, so don’t get all up in my grill.

Does one need an excuse to make delicious, delicious soup? I aver that one does not. Especially in grey, late-February, frozen-slushy, cold and shitty weather. (I don’t like February.) There’s something about wielding the stick blender that just chases the clouds away. Oh, the power.

I do love the rich nutty taste of roasted cauliflower and wanted to translate that into a creamy soup appropriate for the dunking of grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches. My favorite soups are the ones you can eat entirely with a sandwich or hunk of crusty bread, with nary a spoon in sight. A combination of roasted and caramelized veg along with prodigious use of the immersion blender to puree, blend and otherwise maul them was just the thing. Layering multiple sweet nutty elements – roasted cauliflower, roasted parsnips, caramelized onions, a medium roux, hazelnut oil – creates a soup that is deeply flavored and comforting.

If you have the patience for multiple rounds of blending and straining (personally, I find it kinda soothing in a monotonous way, although I can become a little hostile toward my spatula near the end), you will be rewarded with an incredibly rich soup that tastes as though it must be full of cream but is not.

In addition to being a fine sandwich-dipping medium, this soup would not be out of place as the first course of a wintry dinner menu. I’ve topped mine with an additional drizzle of hazelnut oil – once you start keeping that shit around, you’ll wonder why you never did before – and some smoked grey salt. If you wanted to up the ante you could replace the hazelnut oil with white truffle oil, but I think it’s plenty decadent as is. Thinking to sprinkle some salt on top was fancy-pants enough for me. You can also play around with the veg you use; I use the same method for a killer milk- and cream-less broccoli and cheese soup.

Roasted Cauliflower & Parsnip Soup
1 head cauliflower
2 large or 3/4 medium parsnips
2 tbsp. olive oil
3 tbsp. butter
1 large onion
3 tbsp. flour
1 quart stock (chicken or veg)
1/4 c. cream (okay, you don’t need it, but a little cream never hurts)
2 tbsp. hazelnut oil
s&p
juice of one lemon
additional hazelnut oil for drizzling

Preheat your oven to 475; place a foil-lined sheet plan inside to heat as well. Meanwhile, peel and cut the parsnips into rounds and cut the cauliflower into florets; toss them together with the olive oil and some salt and pepper. When the oven comes to temperature, pour the veg into the prepared sheet plan. Roast for 25-30 minutes, until veggies and tender and browned.

Peel and dice the onion. Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat and add the onion; cook until golden, about 10 minutes. Mix in the flour to make a roux. Cook the roux for another 5-6 minutes, until it’s golden brown and nutty smelling.

When the cauliflower and parsnips are done, puree them with the stock; you can do this in a food processor; I did it in a stock pot with a stick blender. Transfer the puree to a large pot and bring to a simmer. Whisk in the onion roux, which will thicken the soup further. Taste and adjust the salt and pepper.

Blend the soup again, preferably with a blender to get the smoothest texture. If you want to take the texture even further, run the blended soup through a mesh strainer. Return to the pot, stir in the cream and hazelnut oil, and adjust seasoning again. My soup was tasty but needed some perking up, and additional salt and some lemon juice did the trick.

*For broccoli cheese soup, don’t roast the broccoli; simply simmer it in the stock until done and continue with the rest of the instructions, whisking grated cheese in at the end.

SPECIAL FEATURE FOR DEDICATED READERS!
Please close your eyes and scroll past this image if you are not a dedicated reader. Thank you.

BONUS DOG!

Not impressed by soup.

I’ve always wanted to try the Nigella clementine cake, the flourless one with the whole boiled and pureed clementines. Nigella is sometimes too precious for me; she uses phrases like “give a blitz” and “ferrous tang” while I’m more likely to give instructions like “fry that shit up in a pan,” or “fuck you.” Still, there’s no denying the comforting yumminess of many of her recipes (she also looks like she would give a good hug, if you were the huggy type), or the fact that clementines are all over the place right now, or the fact that I really like some frigging cake and I’ve been kinda cranky this week. So: clementine cake.

*You’ll* be lost and gone forever, clementines… IN MY BELLY!

Clementines don’t just flavor this cake, they are the cake. Namely, 1 1/3 pounds of clementines, which you boil the shit out of for TWO HOURS. 1 1/3 pounds is usually around 5 or 6 fruits unless you have the mutant runts that I bought, in which case it’s more like 11 or 12.

Depending on how thick the clementines’ skins are, some or all of them may self destruct during their forced bath. I chalk it up to citric Darwinism, you gotta weed out the clunkers if you want good cake. But don’t worry, the weaklings still have a higher purpose.

The 4 stages of “blitz”: Whiz, Szuszh, Pulp, and Jonestown Massacre

Once the citrus’ spirit is thoroughly broken, it’s time to whir. First, the almonds, which replace flour in this cake. Second, the fruits, broken down into a chunky, pulpy mass. Finally, the nuts and fruit together with sugar, eggs and some baking powder, pureed until smooth. At this point, the batter completely obscured the processor’s blade. It was a fairly smooth mix flecked with bits of toothsome almond, and with a gorgeous fragrance. Into the oven for an hour it went.

Technical term for the photo above: “Boiling the fuck outta that shit.” Be sure to use the contraction “outta” instead of the common but incorrect “out of.”

I’d boiled a few more clementines than I really needed for the cake so in addition to the pot of citrus-flavored water left over from the boil, which it seemed a shame to waste, I had some mangled clementine corpses. I crushed them with my fingers, returned them to the pot with some sugar, and turned the heat back down to dissolve the sugar and reduce the mixture to a syrup.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

After about 10 minutes I cut the heat and strained out the clementine guts. I’d considered letting the whole thing steep for a while before straining, but judging from the strength of flavor in the syrup I ended up with, that would have been clementine overkill.

So from your de-selected, mauled fruits, you’ll have a sweet and fragrant syrup to do with what you will. It would be great to soak a sponge cake or add some punch to a fruit salad. As I can personally attest, it’s also great when mixed with some good tequila and lime juice and topped off with a splash of club soda. Because the only thing better than cake? Is cake and cocktails.

Whipped Cream = Not Optional

The cake took about an hour and 5 minutes, with a foil tent for the last half-hour to keep the top from getting too brown; I then did as instructed and let it cool (mostly) in the “tin” (in American English: “motherfucking pan”). When I deemed it ready to eat – I think my American understanding of “cooled” is a bit different than Nigella’s – I whipped up some cream with a bit of sugar and “tucked in” (“sucked that shit down”).

This is a yummy cake for those times when you want some cake (e.g., all the time) but don’t want the full-on sugar fest. The nuts give it some texture that cake – even cake made with almond flour – doesn’t usually have. Almond and clementine get along very well, and the cake actually gets better and better the longer you let it sit and/or the more tequila you’re drinking. (I assume there’s a point of diminishing returns, but I haven’t hit it yet.) It’s great as an afternoon treat with a cup of tea, or even as a simple breakfast.

Cheerie-fucking-o.

Clementine Cake
adapted from nigella.com

1 1/3 pounds clementines (+ 2 fruits if you plan to make the syrup)
3 c. almonds
1 1/3 c. sugar
7 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder

Put the clementines into a pot of cold water. Bring it to a boil and cook for 2 hours. Remove the fruit and set aside to cool. If you plan to make the syrup, leave the cooking liquid in the pot; if not, get rid of it.

Preheat your oven to 375.

While the fruit is cooling, grind the almonds in a food processor. Keep an eye on them – you want them pretty finely ground, but need to stop short before you end up with almond butter. Set the ground almond aside.

Cut the cooled fruit in half and pick out the seeds. Put the food in the processor, peel and pith and all. Pulse a few times; the fruit will immediately break down into a choppy puree.

Add the ground almond back to the processor along with all the remaining ingredients. Blend into a smooth puree. Pour the batter into a 9-inch springform pan that’s been buttered, lined with parchment, and buttered again. Bake for about 1 hour, until a toothpick stuck into the middle comes out clean. If your cake starts getting too brown, cover it with foil for the last 20-30 minutes of baking.

Cool the cake fully in the pan before chowing down. Tastes good with some sweetened whipped cream or creme fraiche, especially the next day.

Clementine Syrup
Leftover clementine boiling water
2-3 cooked clementines
1 1/2 sugar

Return the cooking water to a boil; add the sugar and cooked, crushed clementines. Boil until reduced to your desired level of sweetness. Strain out solids.

For a tasty cocktail, mix 2 parts tequila, 1 part syrup, and a squirt of lime in a shaker with ice. Shake, strain and top off with a splash of club soda. Yum.

This week, from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen: Pasilla Chile-Black Bean Casserole (aka budan de pasilla) with Jicama and Cucumber Salad. Rick Bayless may have taken a wrong turn on the journey to celebrity chef-dom when he lent his name to both Applebee’s* and a line of frozen pizzas**, but his cookbooks are wonderfully educational and full of great flavor. I’d been considered one of his moles, but I’m irresistibly drawn to lasanga-like layered dishes; pasilla is also a common base chile for mole, so it seemed like the best of both worlds.

* Rule # 4 to becoming a celebrity chef: Whatever Tyler Florence does, do the opposite.

** The fact that the pizzas are sold at Whole Foods does not in any way mitigate their troublesome existence.

Nobody drinks from my girl!

In Mexican Kitchen, Bayless lays out his 16 essential sauces, salsas and seasoning pastes, all of which are delicious, versatile and easy to make in bulk. The flavor base of the casserole is his Essential Pasilla Chile Paste, which may not photograph well but man does it make the kitchen smell good. The paste starts with toasted and re-hydrated chiles blended with roasted garlic, Mexican oregano and cumin until thoroughly sludgy and unattractive.

Pasilla chiles are dark brownish-purple with long, thin pods. They’re rich, earthy and complex, with a lilting, noticeable fruitiness; my specimens had a distinct raisin-y fragrance (the word pasilla actually means “little raisin”). Along with ancho and mulatto chiles, they form part of the traditional base of mole sauce.

I’m sorry: America does not think we can make you a supermodel.

Forcing the resulting sludge through a fine mesh strainer = painstaking.

The straining produces a thick, smooth sauce. To deepen the flavor further, the sauce is seared in a hot pan and cooked down until it’s so concentrated that the trail left when you drag a spatula across the bottom of the pan stays put. At which point I stirred in some chicken stock, and the whole mixture reduced again for about half an hour. I’m still not entirely sure why I had to reduce the sauce, re-hydrate and reduce it again, but I do what I’m told.

While the sauce reduced, I cooked up a pot of the musical fruit with onion and more cumin. I tried to find epazote, a traditional Mexican herb often used in beans, but I’m lucky to find a decent head of iceberg lettuce at my nearby Pathmark and didn’t feel like venturing farther afield, so I let it go.

I work hard for the money, so you better treat me right.

The sauce, beans and some Mexican crema (sour cream) and Oaxacan cheese are layered in a baking dish with corn tortillas and stashed in the oven.

Mmmm. Cheese.

My hips don’t lie.

Time to make the donuts salad, which is built around jicama, a crisp, mildly sweet veggie with the texture of an Asian pear. This salad is actually in the appetizer section of the book; jicama with lime and chili powder is a popular Mexican bar munchie. For this salad, I julienned jicama, cucumber and radish and segmented an orange. The fruits and veggies get doused with lime juice and sprinkled with salt and chili powder before they go into the fridge to chill and mingle.

This salad looked so light, crunchy and refreshing, I felt healthier just looking at it. I’d purposely chosen a veggie smackdown to try to reclaim the estimated 8 years the cheese-stuffed beef took off my life, so I was excited that my plan seemed to be working.

Casserole, or photo of the African savannah taken from outer space?

Lest we veer too far in the direction of good health and moderation, it was time to crank the broiler a little to get the casserole’s cheese topping nice and brown and gooey

If you bake it, they will come.

Pasilla and black bean casserole with jicama salad: 2 great tastes that taste great together!

This casserole must be the Mexican equivalent of macaroni and cheese or good ol’ baked ziti; it’s creamy, filling comfort food. The pasilla sauce is earthy and warming. The chiles don’t have any heat, but what they lack in zing they make up for in depth of flavor – slighly smoky, a little fruity, and with an herby note that cuts their deep darkness. The crema adds a tart note that lifts the chiles and black beans, and a little sprinkle of raw onion and salty queso fresco ups the ante even more; the little salty and tangy notes are a great foil to the casserole while still allowing the wonderful flavor of the pasilla to be the star of the show.

The salad is a cripsy, multi-layered delight. The coolness of cucumber, the bite from the radish, the juicy crisp jicama, the sweet orange, the gentle kiss of chile powder: this salad is the ultimate palate cleanser and lightener. It was nice to have the textural contrast of this salad with the casserole, but I’m especially excited to make it in the summertime and sit out in the hammock with a beer and some spicy wings.

The whole thing was washed down with some Sidral Mundet, the ever-tasty Mexican apple soda. Yum!

Final Score: Us 1, Food 0. Suck on that, food!

NOTE: You can get dried pasilla at Latin markets and some upscale shops, or at online spice purveyors; I like World Spice Merchants.

Last night I baked a dark chocolate-espresso layer cake for a co-worker’s 80th (!) birthday party today.  She’s a completely amazing – she still rides her bike around New York City, and is constantly flying around the world speaking at fancy-pants conferences – so she gets a completely amazing cake.   We tried to surreptitiously find out what her favorite flavors are, but she immediately saw through our pathetic ruse (did I mention she’s a genius?) and cornered me in the office kitchenette to announce that her favorite flavors are coffee, chocolate and lemon, and that she would be bringing something lemon-flavored herself.  I like her non-nonsense demeanor and the fact that she looks adorable in a bike helmet, so I made her a dark chocolate-espresso cake with vanilla buttercream and raspberry preserves.

I’m not posting pictures of the finished product, because I somehow thought it would be a good idea to try and write something on the cake when I was totally done frosting it – which was after midnight.  The result was very happy-hands-at-home (which I am, but I try to keep up public appearances, y’know?) and no one really needs to see that.

I’m here to tell you about the buttercream anyway.  I don’t like the straight-up confectioners sugar blended with butter-type frostings, and I don’t like the drama of making real buttercream – the egg yolks, the sugar syrup, the candy thermometer, the technical precision , the final beige-ish color – and because it always seems too greasy to me.

This buttercream is like the kinda slow cousin of Italian buttercream and seven-minute icing: cute and friendly but not complex.  It’s incredibly easy to make and can take a good amount of whatever flavoring you like.  If you opt to go plain or flavor with extracts, it’s a gorgeous creamy white.  It’s easy to work with and holds its shape beautifully.  It is, I believe, the perfect buttercream.  Try it the next time you’re about to dump a zillion pounds of confectioners’ sugar in the mixer and I’m sure you’ll agree that this is an A++, will do business with again buttercream.

Best Buttercream
4 egg whites
1 c. granulated sugar
4 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces each
Flavoring of your choice (melted chocolate, liquor, fruit purees or curds, cream of coconut, etc)

Put the egg white and sugar in the bowl of a standing mixer and place over a double-boiler.  Heat, whisking often, until sugar is combined and mixture is quite hot to the touch.  Transfer bowl to mixer and mix on a medium-high speed until the mixture is fluffy and glossy and the mixing bowl is barely warm to the touch.  At this point start adding the butter one chunk at a time, waiting until each chunk is incorporated before adding the next.  Near the end, it will probably start to look a bit curdle-y.  Keep beating, and in less than a minute this will disappear.

Flavor the buttercream however you want.  Extracts and oils are fine.  The cream can also take up to 1/3  of a cup of melted chocolate, cream of coconut or fruit purees, and up to 1/4 of liquid flavorings.  A few tablespoons of powdered espresso dissolved in a small amount of water + 2 tablespoons of kaluha make an excellent coffee frosting, which I often use with the cake linked above instead of ganache.  Extra frosting can be stored in the freezer for up to 6 months; thaw and re-beat before using.

I’ve always been attracted to mixes of sweet and savory, both combinations of the two or flipping recipes around – making sweet versions of things that are usually savory, and vice-versa. Not everything lends itself to this treatment – there have been some attempts whose names shall not be mentioned – but it can be a great way to get yourself out of a cooking rut. One of my all-time favorite flips is savory bread pudding.

*I* drink *your* milkshake. I drink it up!

Of course, I *love* sweet bread pudding; plain, with chocolate, with fruit, with sauce, without sauce – anything except raisins, because cooked raisins irrationally creep me out. I make a killer (if I do say so) flan-inspired bread pudding with a caramel layer in the bottom of the baking dish that makes a spectacular sauce as the pudding bakes. Good times. Remind me to tell you about it one day.

But savory bread pudding has become one of my new comfort foods, nipping at the heels of mac and cheese. It’s warming and creamy, simple to make and endlessly variable. With basic custard proportions in hand, you can vary every other element of the pudding, from the bread to the seasoning to the mix-ins. It can be mild or spicy; meat-filled or vegetarian. You can make it and have a week’s worth of lunches, or serve it at a weekend brunch for a crowd. It can be breakfast or lunch or dinner. It is omniscient and omnipresent. Okay, maybe not the last part, but the rest is totally true.

For this edition, meant to be paired with a simple green salad for lunches, I decided to go with a Spanish-style pudding of chorizo, manchego cheese and mushrooms caramelized with sherry, with a simple hearty white bread as the base.

(Halfway through, and I haven’t said anything about this so-called “faux-mesco sauce.”)

(Or have I?)

Picture that is perhaps more appropriate for a quote about a milkshake, as it actually depicts a liquid.

No, I haven’t. Pairing the bread pudding with a simple salad helps lighten things up, but I wanted to do something else to cut the richness of the custard and cheese. I thought that some Romesco sauce – a classic Spanish sauce made with roasted peppers and ground nuts, usually with a mayo-style base – would be an interesting addition, but I wanted something simpler and lighter. Ergo: Faux-mesco.

I made a 2-minute blender sauce using some of the traditional Romesco ingredients: nuts, roasted peppers, capers, red pepper flakes, olive oil and sherry vinegar; boosted the flavor a little with some lemon juice and smoked paprika; and thinned the sauce out a little with some chicken stock. The flavor wasn’t quite as robust as I’d been shooting for, so I took a page from Mexican and Indian cooking and seared the sauce in a scorching hot pan.

While it was searing, I devoted some serious mental energy to coming up with “faux-mesco,” and I hope you appreciate it. Catchy, isn’t it? No, it’s not, and Rachael Ray irritates me more than people who stop at the tops of escalators (the giggling…dear god, always the infernal giggling). In any case, the searing worked perfectly.

Rachael Ray says: “Yum-O!”

Although this is meant to be lunches for Brian and I, I couldn’t not taste and photograph, could I? You’re special to me, and I wouldn’t do that to you.

The bread pudding is like getting a bear hug from an old friend. Soaking the bread in the custard before baking produces a truly pudding-like texture, but the crustier pieces from the hearty white loaf I used provided texture. The cheese contributed to the creaminess, and the sausage and mushrooms added punches of smoke and salt. The blender Romesco had a vegetal sweetness from the roasted peppers that melded nicely with the custard, but an edge from the capers and sherry vinegar that cut through the richness kept the pudding from being totally overwhelming. A simple green salad lighly dressed with EVOO olive oil and sherry vinegar rounded out the plate.

I could just have easily used Italian sausage, mozzarella and spinach in the pudding and topped it with tomato sauce, or made a totally veggie version. The only limit is YOUR IMAGINATION!! (cue inspirational music)

Savory Bread Pudding with Quick Blender Romesco

For the pudding:
8-12 oz. chorizo, crumbled (fresh, not dried)
8 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/3 c. sherry
6 oz. manchego cheese, grated
1 loaf good Italian, sourdough, or other crusty white bread
3 c. whole milk
2 c. heavy cream
4 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk
pinch nutmeg
s&p

Mix the milk, cream, eggs, s&p and nutmeg in a large bowl. Cut the bread into 1 1/2 inch cubes and add it to the milk mixture. Toss to combine and let soak for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pre-heat the oven to 325.

Meanwhile, saute the chorizo over medium-high heat until browned, about 8 minutes. Remove the chorizo from the pan; if there’s more than 2 tablespoons of fat, remove the excess. Add the mushrooms to the pan and saute until brown, about 10 minutes. In the last few minutes of cooking, add the sherry, scrape up any mushroom/chorizo bits stuck to the pan, and reduce to a glaze for the shrooms.

Stir the chorizo, mushrooms and 4 ounces of the cheese into the bread and milk mixture, and scrape into a baking dish; sprinkle the other 2 ounces of cheese on top. Bake for 45-50 minutes, turning on the broiler for the last 2 minutes to brown the cheese. Let rest for 5-10 minutes to set before eating, if you can.

For the Blender Romesco:
2 slices white sandwich bread, toasted
3 cloves garlic
1/4 c. toasted almonds
2 tbsp. toasted hazelnuts
1 16oz. jar roasted red peppers, drained (or 6 freshly-roasted and peeled peppers)
1 tbsp. capers
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. smoked paprika
1/3 c. chicken stock
1/4 c. olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. sherry vinegar
juice of 1 lemon
s&p to taste

Put all the ingredients in a blender. Whiz until smooth, about 1-2 full minutes. Taste and adjust salt and pepper; add more lemon if the sauce needs brightness.

Heat a large saute pan over very high heat. Pour the sauce into the pan; stand back, because it will spatter. Sear the sauce, stirring with a heat-proof spatula to make sure all the sauce contacts the bottom of the pan, for 2-3 minutes until slightly thickened.