Couscous

About a year ago, a reader suggested that I check out a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty for something he calls Ultimate Winter Couscous (also available on his blog on the Guardian). Well, it took a while for me to get around to it, but I finally made it for dinner a few weeks ago. It should come as no surprise at all that it’s another winner. I admit, the ingredient list is a bit long. But if you are someone who cooks a lot, chances are most of these things are in your pantry anyway. And if they’re not, then this is an excellent excuse to go out and buy some saffron and preserved lemons, and to make up a batch of harissa. 

Start with a roasting pan, with chopped carrots and parsnips, peeled shallots, cinnamon sticks, star anise, bay leaves, ginger, turmeric, paprika, and chili flakes. Toss with olive oil and salt, and roast in a moderately hot oven for 15 minutes.

Add some cubed winter squash, and stick it back in the oven for another half hour or so, until the veggies are tender.

While that’s doing its thing, get the couscous ready. Mix the dry couscous with a pinch of saffron, salt, and olive oil in a big bowl. Pour boiling water (or veggie stock, if you’ve got it) over it, stir it up, and stick a plate on top of the bowl until the water is absorbed, about 10 minutes. Stir in a little butter and put the plate back on top until you’re ready to serve.

Add some chopped dried apricots, cooked (or canned) chickpeas, and some water (or the chickpea cooking liquid) to the roasting pan and cook another 10 minutes. 

Just before serving, stir in some harissa paste and chopped preserved lemon skin into the veggies. 

Serve a couple of big spoonfuls of the vegetables over a plate of the couscous, and top with a lot of fresh cilantro.

It’s a very flavorful dish without being overwhelming, and filling without being too rich. It may no longer be winter, technically, but the pickings are still pretty slim at my greenmarket, so a dinner based on root vegetables and legumes isn’t out of the question just yet.

Fancy Pants

I have this ridiculous cookbook that is a vanity publication from Relais & Châteaux, highlighting all the wonderful things that come out of their North American-based celebrity chefs’ kitchens. Chefs with last names like Keller, Vongerichten, and Boulud. Each glossy spread includes multiple recipes–for example, a 3-step pork brine, a sauce, lentils, and cauliflower 2 ways. You know, you’re typical Tuesday night dinner. It’s a really enormous, beautiful, & useless book. Or so I thought until I was looking for something to do with these short ribs I bought from Lewis Waite Farm a few months ago. They’d been taking up space in my freezer for too long, so I decided that the menu for dinner the other night was going to include some beef. 

The plan was not to make anything especially fancy, but my cookbooks tend to lean vegetarian, so I pulled this massive thing off my shelf and, naturally (given current trends in high-end restaurants), discovered multiple options. And one, even, from the Rancho Valencia in Rancho Santa Fe, California, that looked like my little galley kitchen could handle it. So I ran to the greenmarket, picked up a few missing ingredients, and got to work. 

First, an acorn squash, split, seeded, and roasted:

And then pureed with butter, cream, brown sugar, and star anise. 

Then a pile of shallots, peeled and simmered in red wine, with a sachet (or teabag) of black peppercorns, a bay leaf, and thyme.

Peeling shallots is definitely a job for your kitchen bitch. Or sous chef. 

But then we get to move onto the meat. After seasoning it with salt and letting it sit in the fridge overnight, it gets browned on both sides in a hot pan. 

Cook some onions, carrots, and celery over medium-high heat until they are more or less caramelized. 

Add tomato paste, crushed garlic cloves, black pepper, cinnamon, star anise, and bay leaf. 

Then in go some thyme, parsley, and red wine, followed by the ribs. Cover with water and veal demiglace (or stock, if you’re me), bring to a boil, and then simmer in the oven for about 3 hours. 

The very specific plating instructions involve something called a siphon, which requires an N2O charge. Alternately, spoon a little of the squash puree onto a plate, place a rib on top. Place a few shallots around the outside, and pour some of the wine reduction on top. 

There’s also something called a cocoa bordelaise (not pictured), with which you “nape” (?) the meat, but this was kind of a disaster for me, possibly because of the stock/demiglace switch. Hence the lack of picture.

On the whole, though, this was a big success. Even S., a notoriously finicky eater, asked for seconds.