Date I made these recipes:
February 14, 2016 – Valentine's Day
Sunset Cooking for
Two...or Just for You
Published by: Lane Publishing Co.
© 1978
Purchased at Hennepin
County Library Used Book Sale
Recipe: Pork Chops with Rhubarb Dressing – p. 45
The Savory Way
Published by: Bantam
Books
© 1990; ISBN 0-553-05780-4
Purchased at Arc's Value Village
Recipe: Winter
Vegetable Puree – p. 197
Leo Buscaglia's Love
Cookbook with Biba Caggiano
Published by: SLACK
Incorporated
ISBN: 0-8050-3725-X
Purchased at: Barnes and Noble Used Books, Roseville , MN
Recipe: Honey Bread Pudding – p. 139
Well Valentine's Day has come and gone and although I barely
had my act together when it came to selecting a menu, I managed to pull this
meal out for the win! Valentine's Day
was saved, be still my heart! (Pun intended.)
Occasions like this often require a consultation with my
better half as to which recipe(s) to select.
Normally, I'd go through a couple of cookbooks, earmarking recipes for
him to consider, but this year I didn't and he was not at all happy: "What? You don't have anything marked for me to look
at?" [Insert look of horror here.] "No, I don't and that's because you
often look through the entire book anyway and select something that I didn't
mark."
Like tonight's entree, Pork
Chops with Rhubarb Dressing. I saw
the recipe but ignored it; he saw it and thought it had potential. And this is why we work so well together.
So he selected that recipe and I filled in the rest of the
dinner with the winter vegetable puree and also the bread pudding from Leo Buscaglia and Biba Caggiano's "Love" Cookbook. I
toyed with making something chocolate but that is just so expected and I hate
doing the expected so I switched it up and made honey bread pudding out of a
"Love" cookbook; honey + "love" = perfect for Valentine's
Day. And so with that, our menu was all
set and all that was left to do was to go shopping for the few ingredients I
needed to make our day complete.
One and a half days later...
...Okay, this dinner almost didn't get off the ground
because I couldn't find rhubarb.
Actually, I found it, I just didn't buy it when I found it (frozen) at
the Lunds & Byerlys grocery store nearest our house because that would have
been too easy. Instead, I intended to
purchase it at another Lunds & Byerlys in the city of Edina , where Andy and I were running some
errands on Valentine's Day.
Except, of course, that Lunds & Byerlys was out of the
frozen rhubarb. What? Let's review:
it's winter in Minnesota
and a grocery store is out of frozen rhubarb?
Because....why?
Well this was puzzling and irritating at the same time
because that meant we had to go all the way back to the other Lunds &
Byerlys just to get rhubarb. I was most
certainly not feeling the love at that point, "L&B." Not feeling the love. But we made the trip because once we had our
minds set on the dish, we had to have it which meant we had to have the rhubarb
which meant that we had to waste gas going right back to the original
source. I could have screamed.
Luckily, the dish turned out and was very tasty even though
I was skeptical that the spices – cinnamon and allspice - would overpower the
dish. They did not. And as crazy as this sounds, I like the fact
that a Cooking for Two cookbook
delivered just the right amount of food.
I know, right? Because folks,
I've made a few other dishes from alleged "two person" cookbooks and
either we both starved or we had way too many leftovers. This amount was perfect plus, there were many
other tasty-sounded recipes that will likely appeal if this one doesn't float
your heart-shaped boat.
Next up: the side
dish! And now it's true confession time
because I have to admit to you that I spent all of ten seconds leafing through The Savory Way before finding what I wanted – potatoes – and
calling it a day. Some cookbooks are
like that and I mean absolutely no disrespect to the author, Deborah Madison, because she writes
excellent cookbooks. I just needed to
get on with my meal planning already, and that meant time was of the essence. For those with plenty of time, this is a
great cookbook and you'll be hard pressed not to find several recipes to suit
your fancy.
For tonight's dinner, I made her dish pretty much to order
although I barely added any butter (you can add butter or cream as optional
ingredients) and I could have used a bit more salt because without it, the
vegetables were not as flavorful. I
think that any type of root vegetables will do in this dish but I chose to go
with potatoes, celery root, rutabaga and leeks.
Although the flavors were slightly more savory than the pork
chop dish, they worked pretty well together and we enjoyed eating them. I wish we could say the same about the bread
pudding which was not at all bad, it just wasn't the bread pudding we were used
to.
For one thing, this recipe called for Italian bread and I
don't know—I think it was the wrong flavor and consistency for the dish. And instead of breaking the bread into cubes
and baking it in a round casserole dish or soufflé dish, the bread was layered
like a lasagna. And....no. And then there was the rum and I want it
noted that while I am always a fan of using liquor in cooking, the recipe
called for 1/3 a cup and that's a lot of rum.
A lot of rum. We could smell it
in the living room, that's how much rum there was. So if we made this recipe again and it's
unlikely, we would not layer the dish, use different bread and – I cannot
believe I am saying this – cut way down on the dark rum.
The nice thing about Leo and Biba's cookbook is that they've
created menus to help you with your menu planning - Loving
Dinners for Two; Loving Dinners for Friends; Loving Dinners for Family which can be a great thing if you're trying
to design a special dinner for Valentine's Day.
So I was just sitting here contemplating the bread pudding
recipe and Valentine's Day and how disappointing this dish was when it sounded
so promising, when out of the blue, this scene from the movie, The Godfather, played in my head: "I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart." This recipe broke my heart but if you tweak
it just a little, I think you could have a winner (and then Fredo won't die and
then Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) won't be mad and it'll all be good).
Until next Valentine's Day....
Pork Chops with
Rhubarb Dressing – serves 2- From Sunset
Cooking for Two...or Just for You
1/8 teaspoon dry rosemary, crumbled
½ teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
2 pork loin or shoulder chops, cut ¾ inch thick
1 tablespoon salad oil
2 slices firm-textured bread, cut into ½-inch cubes (about 1
¾ cups)
1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2 –inch pieces (about 3 cups)
1 ½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
Mix together rosemary, salt, and pepper. Sprinkle evenly over chops. Heat oil in a wide frying pan over
medium-high heat; add chops and brown on both sides; set aside with drippings.
Stir together bread cubes, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice,
rhubarb, and flour; spread half the mixture in a greased shallow 1 ½ to 2-quart
baking dish. Arrange chops on top; spoon
over 2 tablespoons drippings (add water if necessary, to make this amount); top
with remaining rhubarb mixture. (Cover
and refrigerate if made ahead.)
Bake, covered, in a 350 oven for 45 minutes; then uncover
and bake for 15 minutes longer or until pork is fork tender.
Winter Vegetable Puree
– makes about 2 ½ cups, serving 4 to 6 – From The Savory Way
2 cups White Rose or red potatoes, scrubbed and diced into
½-inch pieces
3 cups mixed winter vegetables such as turnips, rutabagas,
leeks, celery root, and fennel, diced into ½-inch pieces
3 sprigs chopped parsley
1 pinch of dried thyme
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
Salt
Butter or cream (optional)
Champagne vinegar
Freshly ground white pepper
Put the vegetables in a saucepan with the parsley, thyme,
garlic, salt, and enough water to cover.
(Ann's Note: just saying the word
"salt" is not a good indication of how much. I did not use enough. You've been warned.) Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer
until the vegetables are completely soft, about 20 minutes. Pour them into a colander set over a bowl;
reserve the liquid.
Pass the vegetables through a food mill or mash by
hand. (The food processor will tend to
make them too gummy and glutinous.) Use
the cooking water to thin the puree to the proper consistency. Stir in additional butter or cream to taste
and season with salt, a dash of vinegar and pepper.
Ann's Note: I didn't
use the vinegar and used just a scant amount of butter. The resulting flavor was okay but a little
bland so I added more salt. If I made
this again, I might use some chicken broth in place of some of the vegetable liquid;
vegetarians, ignore that note!
Honey Bread Pudding – makes 6 servings – From Leo Buscalia's
Love Cookbook with Biba Caggiano
Ann's Note: As stated
above, I think I would have liked this recipe a lot better had I used different
bread, torn it into cubes instead of slicing and layering it, baked it in a
round casserole and used less rum.
"But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln..."
8 to 10 (1/2-inch thick slices crusty Italian bread,
preferably one to two days old, with crust removed
¼ pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
½ cup honey
1/3 cup dark rum
½ cup golden raisins, soaked in lukewarm water for 20
minutes, then drained
4 large eggs
½ cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream
3 cups milk
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Generously butter a 9 x 12-inch baking dish. Arrange the bread slices in a single layer in
the dish, slightly overlapping each other.
Set aside.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low
heat. Add the honey and rum, and raise
the heat to high. Cook, stirring, until
sauce begins to thicken and is foamy and bubbling, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the raisins, remove from heat, and
pour over the bread evenly.
In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with 1/3 cup of the
sugar. Add the cream and milk, and beat
well to combine. Pour over the bread and
sprinkle with remaining sugar.
Bake 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 325F and bake an
additional 20 to 25 minutes, or until pudding is set and the bread has a nice
golden color. Remove pudding from oven,
and let it stand. Cool to room
temperature and serve.
Prepare ahead:
Complete steps one through four a day or two ahead. Cover and refrigerate. If pudding is refrigerated, allow it to come
to room temperature before serving.
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