Leek and Maine Potato Soup

serves 4

Steph grew the most beautiful, perfectly textured potatoes in the garden this year. This recipe, that I made tonight using stuff we had in the fridge, totally shows off their subtle, deep, comforting flavors.

• 4 cups chicken or turkey stock, preferably homemade
• 1 -2 cups cold water
• 3 small, fresh, best-quality local Kennebec potatoes, peeled and cut into evenly sized dice
• 1 large leek
• 1/2 cup fresh fennel bulb, white portion, chopped
• 1 slice bacon
• 2 tsp white flour
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Tb minced mild fresh herbs, for garnish (parsley, dill, chives, and/or chervil)

Put the potatoes, stock, and water into a large saucepan and bring to a simmer, covered.

Cut the bacon crosswise into 5mm strips (scissors work well for this) and begin to try out over low heat in a medium saucepan, until it begins to brown.

While the bacon starts to cook, remove the root and dark green portion of the leek. Cut down into the light green portion, spread the layers, and rinse out any grit. Chop the leek finely by cutting into eighths lengthwise and then into 5mm crosswise slices.

Stir the leek and fennel into the bacon and its fat. Cover and sweat over low heat until soft and translucent, stirring occasionally - about 10 min. Do not brown.

Stir the flour into the leek / fennel / bacon mixture. Cook uncovered over low heat, stirring occasionally, for a couple of minutes. Pour several ladlefuls of the hot stock into the leeks and stir, scraping all the vegetables from the corners of the pan. Pour the resulting mixture back into the large saucepan with the potatoes and the rest of the stock. Add the wine. Cover and simmer over very low heat until potatoes are very soft and flavors have melded - about 20 more minutes.

Optionally use a stick blender to make the soup into a very thin puree. (I like doing this because I like the resulting texture and I think it brings out the flavors. Other people don't like the homogenization and want to see and taste the individual pieces of stuff. Whatever.)

Stir a couple ladlefuls of the soup into the cream. (Doing it this way discourages curdling.) Add the thinned cream back to the main body of soup. Taste carefully and add salt as needed. Warm over lowest heat. Do not boil.

Stir in herbs and black pepper to taste. Serve immediately in hot soup plates with good bread and a salad.

Creamy Loves Crunchy!

sophisticated chicken fingers ...

slightly fussy to make, but totally fabulous ...

we ate this so fast there was nothing left for a photo :)

serves 2 - 4


for the risotto (the creamy):

1 cup Arborio rice
1 Tb olive oil 
fresh chicken stock (see below), simmering
1/4 cub dry white wine
3oz. unsalted butter, at room temperature
coarse sea salt (e.g., Maldon)

 for the chicken fingers (the crunchy):
1 large chicken breast (or 2 small), bone in
1 cup stone ground corn meal
3 Tb olive oil

 for the marinade:
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tb chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 clove garlic, sliced thinly
scant 1/4 cup olive oil
pinch salt
generous pinch freshly ground black pepper

for the stock:
bone from chicken breast
4 cups cold water
1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
1 medium onion, coarsley chopped
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 stalk fresh Italian parsley

for the veg:
garden haricots verts or other very fresh local green beans
water


Remove the skin and fat from the chicken breasts and discard. Bone the chicken breasts.Pound the breast meat between two sheets of wax paper to an even 3/8" thick. Slice into strips 1" wide. Set aside.

Put the bone in a large saucepan with the cold water. Bring to a simmer. Skim off any gray foam. Add the vegetables (under "for the stock"). Bring back to a bare simmer and cover askew. Simmer on very lowest heat for at least one hour. Do NOT add any other ingredients - salt, pepper, etc. This stock should be beautifully flavored but very gentle, pale, and subtle.

In a tightly covered container, shake all the marinade ingredients. Add the chicken pieces and shake again. Allow to marinate, refrigerated, for 1 - 4 hours.

********** time goes by ********************************


Strain the stock and discard the vegetables. Keep at a bare simmer.

Place the green beans in a covered skillet with 1/2 cup cold water and set aside.

Remove the chicken pieces from the marinade and place on paper towels. Blot fairly dry. Set aside. Discard marinade (germs).

Put the dinner plates in a 170 degree oven to heat.

Heat the oil from the risotto ingredients in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Add the rice and stir to coat all the grains. Cook for 3 - 5 minutes or until fragrant and translucent. Add 2 ladles full of the hot stock and stir. Reduce to a bare simmer. Add another ladle of stock each time the liquid is absorbed. In other words, do the basic risotto thing.

When rice is starting to swell and outer kernel is soft while interior is still crunchy (probably 10 - 15 minutes into a 20 - 30 minute total cook time), start cooking the chicken:

Pre-heat a large (12 - 14"), heavy non-stick skillet over a high flame. While it is heating, toss the chicken pieces in the cornmeal. Add the olive oil to the pan. It should be very hot - almost smoking. Lay the chicken pieces carefully in the pan. Cook 4 - 5 minutes per side, or until firm and dark golden brown.

While the chicken is cooking, place the skillet with the beans over high heat and cook until still bright green - 5 - 8 minutes. Don't forget to keep checking the risotto and adding stock if needed.

When everything is miraculously done at the same moment ;), add a ladle of stock and the butter to the risotto and stir. It is key that the risotto be very loose and creamy, not thick and sludgy. If it looks too  wet and runny, it is exactly right. Otherwise you end up with wodgy instead of creamy.

Serve on the warmed plates. Season with the sea salt and grind some pepper over all.

NOTE: Do not gussy up the beans with butter or other mud. (There is butter in the rice.) Do not put cheese or other adulterations in the risotto. The essence of this plate is texture, color, and subtle chickeny flavors.


Serve with a sturdy white wine, such as a St. Innocent Pinot Gris from Oregon (purchased at Rayr in Rockport), or light red like the Chermette Beaujolais I bought at Rosemont's Yarmouth store recently.

Eat each crunchy bite of chicken with a bit of the saucy, evocative risotto. Heaven.

Hoppy Christmas Cheese Fondue

If you have written cheese fondue off as a '60s fad of interest only to skiers, you've made a mistake and owe it to yourself and your family to give it a try. Kids love both the taste and the informal "play" involved with this meal.

Part of my take on this dish is that most versions are not much more than melted cheese. Such renditions are too salty, too rich, and too hard to eat. Stringiness is a flaw, not a feature, in my view. It all works better if you think of the fondue as a rather thick cheese sauce. I like beer better than wine as the fat-cutting agent; the bitterness of the hops adds something small but wonderful. A huge bonus here is that the leftover fondue makes a wicked macaroni and cheese for a subsequent meal.

Serves 4

• 2 cups milk, in a Pyrex cup
• 4 cups coarsely grated mixed hard cheeses*
• 1/2 to 1 bottle full-flavored beer - pale ale is good (American-style lager is too meek; stout is too dark and sweet) 
• 1 clove garlic
• 3 Tb butter
• 5 Tb flour
• 1 tsp hot sauce, more or less, to taste
• 1 large loaf best quality crusty artisan sourdough bread
• 1 heavily pre-heated serving dish, for the bread.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

While the oven is heating, grate the cheese. Toss it with 1Tb of the flour in a large bowl.

Put the bread in the oven.

In a medium-sized heavy-bottomed sauce pan, make a roux with the butter and the remaining flour. While the roux is cooking over low heat, press the garlic clove into the milk. Microwave the milk for 2 minutes on high to give things a head start.

After the roux develops a froth and has cooked for a few minutes without coloring, remove it from heat and let it cool briefly. Whisk in the hot milk and garlic and return to a medium burner. Bring to a simmer, whisking constantly. Whisk in at least half the bottle of beer. Bring back to a simmer and allow several minutes for the foam to subside. Whisk in the cheese by handfuls. Heat, stirring occasionally, until steam rises from the fondue and it begins to bubble. At this point, it should be the consistency of a very thick sauce. (If it is too thick, whisk in the rest of the beer. Allow foam to subside and fondue to return to temperature.) Stir in the hot sauce.

Put the whole pot on an insulating pad (like a pot holder) in the center of the table. Remove the bread from the oven and slice roughly into 1.5" cubes. Line the hot serving dish with a clean towel and put the bread cubes in it. Place next to the fondue pot on another pot holder.


Accompany with any clean, dry white wine, such as a Chignin from the Savoie, currently available at Rosemont. (Steer clear of big, rich wines here.) For kids, serve water, not milk - plenty of dairy in the fondue. I usually steam some Broccoli and serve it along with the bread; it's great dipped in the fondue, whether you're big or little. Or you can just serve a salad with some dark and/or bitter greens, such as spinach, frisee, or raddichio.

* You have a lot of flexibility with the cheese. I like about 2 cups Emmentaler, 1 cup Gruyere or Fontina val d'Aosta, 1 cup sharp cheddar, plus a few tablespoons of hard Romano as an accent. But I vary this very widely based on what I happen to have in my fridge at the moment.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is really not my favorite holiday. I won't tell you why, or I'll just be inviting more invidious comparisons with Andy Rooney. But this year, I am really looking forward to it. I'm even okay with the part where people who are only in my living room once every two years turn my TV on in the middle of the day and try to teach it how to display football. Why? Because - and you work colleagues will understand this well - I am just totally ready for a day that comprises sitting around drinking tea in the early morning, sitting around drinking Pinot Blanc and eating the odd Nicoise olive around midday, making gravy and Zuni mashed potatoes in the early afternoon, sitting around eating poultry in the mid afternoon, walking in the late afternoon, and circling back to sitting around and drinking tea in the early evening. That is JUST EXACTLY my level of ambition right now.

Fresh Figs Are Here

Saw fresh figs in the market for the first time this season. So, so good. Don't do too much to them. I like them with a little bit of the mildest, freshest mozzarella you can find (like the little balls in water, from Maple Brook Farm), and some cracked pepper. It's easy to overdo the treatment. In my opinion, olive oil, bacon, etc., is too much. Just let them be their sweet selves.

Favorite Kitchen Tool #7

My confidence in the kitchen would be shot without a serious heat-proof quart size fat separator. The other techniques for de-fatting liquids are totally for the birds in my humble opinion. Skimming off with a ladle, skimming off with an equally non-functional special ladle (sheesh), paper towels on the surface, etc. All more or less useless. The only other technique that really works is to chill the liquid first and then peel off the solid layer of lard, but that does you no good when you have just deglazed a big roasting pan and the chicken is sitting on the cutting board. No, you need one of these items.

Summer Wine Bargain

Every summer I look forward to the previous fall's vintage appearing on local store shelves. The kinds of inexpensive, lightweight whites and rosés that are refreshing in warm weather are precisely the ones that I want to drink as young as possible.

The first serious bargain to cross our table this season is a ten dollar Sicilian white made from Cantaratto and Pinot Grigio grapes - the 2010 Purato from Feudo di Santa Treso. I got mine at Rosemont Market. Floral and almond-y above the glass, with a refreshing and crisp palate of yellow fruits, it doesn't get much better than this with a piece of grilled fish and a hunk of bruschetta. I am not always a big fan of southern Italian whites, as the hot climate can sometimes make them dull and overly alcoholic. Fear not; this one is a winner.