A New Year, A New Start

I've been writing about starting to cook for quite some time. So far, I'm just short of preaching. I don't mean to nag. But I believe there is value in preparing one's food at home. Food is communal. We create memories in the kitchen. A lot of our lives revolve around the kitchen. 

For me cooking is creating. I like knowing that I can make something. And I do enjoy it when people like something I cook. I cook for my enjoyment and for the enjoyment of those I feed. All my dishes are not masterpieces or works of art. Sometimes I just need to get dinner on the table. So I have a few things like eggs and pasta that I frequently fall back on.

Convenience ingredients are great for getting meals on the table. Try rotisserie chicken, bagged salads, frozen vegetables (without sauce), canned beans, fresh pasta, and pre-made pizza dough.

If you need a scientific reason to cook, here's one. According to a paper published in Public Health Nutrition, adults who cooked dinner 0 - 1 times per week consumed 2300 calories on an average day. Those cooking 6 - 7 times per week consumed 2163 calories on an average day. While that is only 136 calories, multiply 136 calories by 365 days. Get the picture?

Here is my recipe to help you get started. It is a Stromboli.   A Stromboli is an Italian-American sandwich of pizza dough wrapped various fillings. I chose spinach, onions, ham and cheese. 

Spinach and Ham Stromboli

Serves 4.


Ingredients:

½ medium onion, chopped
Olive or vegetable oil
4 ounces deli ham
1 package (16 ounce) frozen chopped spinach
6 ounces grated cheese, about 1½ cups
1 container (13.8 ounce) refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough
Pizza sauce

Directions:

1.  Heat about one tablespoon of oil in a medium skillet. Add onion and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes.

2.  Remove onion and set aside. Add ham to skillet. Cook until ham has dried out and begins to brown. Remove from skillet and set aside.
3. Add another tablespoon of oil to skillet. When oil is hot, add spinach. Cook until spinach until most of the water has evaporated. Set aside.
4.  Coat a work surface lightly with flour. Unroll dough onto floured surface.  Roll dough into a rectangle, about 11 X 14-inches.
5. Brush dough with oil. Top with cheese to within one inch of the edge.  Add onions, ham and spinach.
6. Roll dough up jellyroll fashion. Place bottom of dough on cookie sheet. Brush top of dough with oil. Bake at 400°F until crust browns, about 20 to 30 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes. Slice into 1-inch slices. Serve with pizza sauce.

Note: Onions, ham, and spinach can be cooked in advance (one to two days) and refrigerated until ready to use.

Eating Potatoes in Sicily

While in Sicily, we had the pleasure of attending the Cucina del Sole Cooking School.  The school is headed up by Eleonora Consoli, a gastronomy journalist. Needless to say, we had a good time.  Put 20+ foodies in the room together (with food, of course) and they have a good time.


It was really a lot of fun learning about Sicilian cuisine.  It's always fun to expand your cooking repertoire.  I came back with a few good recipes that could easily find their way into my own cooking. 

One of the first dishes we made in Sicily was a potato and pistachio casserole.  As it turns out, Sicily grows pistachios.  So they make good use of them in their cuisine.  Most pistachios are grown around the Mount Etna and Bronte areas.  Most pistachios grown in Sicily are consumed in Sicily.  Very little is exported.  Although widely viewed as a snack food, pistachios are well-suited for many recipes requiring nuts.  The next time you have a recipe calling for pine nuts, give pistachios a try and see how you like them.

Potato and Pistachio Casserole

Serves 4.

Ingredients:
1½ pounds baking potatoes, such as Russet or Yukon Gold
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tablespoons butter, plus additonal for coating the dish
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 large eggs

½ cup pistachios, finely chopped, divided

Directions:
1.  Peel  and coarsely chop the potatoes.  Place in a medium saucepan and cover with water.  Cook until potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork.  Drain.  Place on heat to dry potatoes.  There should be a film on the bottom of the pan. 

2.  Mash potatoes.  Add cheese and butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  Stir to combine.  Add eggs once potatoes are cool enough.

3.  Coat a casserole dish with butter.  Add pistachios and coat the dish.  Pour out extra pistachios and reserve for topping.

4.  Place potato mixture in casserole. Top with pistachios.  Bake at 350°F for about 30 to 40 minutes.

According to Ms. Consoli, one can put other ingredients in the middle of this casserole. Some of her suggestions were artichokes, spinach, asparagus, eggplant, zucchini, cheese, mushrooms, and hard boiled eggs.  For my version, I added grated zucchini in the middle of the casserole.

Cooking at the Library

I love the library. But this week (April 10 -16) I have an especially good reason to love the library. This is National (Public) Library Week. Libraries around the country are celebrating in various ways. We thought what better way to showcase our library (http://bit.ly/fMmaXM) than with a posting on cookbooks at the local library.

It’s actually fun to read through the library’s cookbook collection. I also like using the library to “test drive” a cookbook. If I don’t like a book, I don’t have to purchase it. I talked with our local librarian in charge of purchasing cookbooks. While people are purchasing electronic versions of other books, we still want a hard copy of cookbooks. The library has actually reduced the purchasing of cooking DVDs in favor of hard copies of cookbooks. During the recent economic downturn, the sales of cookbooks actually increased. People are also checking out more cookbooks from the library. When people cut back on dining out, they started to cook at home.

Our library purchases about ten to twelve cookbooks per month. If there is a book that you would like, the library welcomes your suggestions (http://bit.ly/fe0fvx).

When visiting my library, I picked up a copy of Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I decided to make one of the pasta dishes. I chose to make a spinach sauce with ricotta and ham. I chose this one because most Americans seem to think only of pasta with tomato sauce. Italian food is much more than pasta and tomato sauce.

Spinach Sauce with Ricotta and Ham

Serves 4 to 6.

Ingredients:
2 packages (10 ounce) frozen chopped spinach
¼ cup butter
2 ounces ham, chopped
Whole nutmeg
½ cup ricotta cheese
½ cup parmesan cheese, preferably freshly grated
1 pound pasta, preferably penne or rigatoni

Directions:
1. Preheat a large skillet. Add 1 tablespoon butter. Add spinach to skillet once the butter has melted. Cook until spinach is dry. Remove spinach and set aside.

2. Add ham to skillet. Cook until ham starts to brown. Add spinach back to skillet. Remove from heat and add the nutmeg, no more than ⅛ of a teaspoon.

3. Cook pasta as directed on the package. Toss pasta with spinach and ham. Add ricotta, remaining butter and Parmesan. Serve immediately, with additional cheese, if desired.

What We Thought of the Recipe: We liked it. We also felt that garlic and/or onions would have been nice additions to the recipe.