Arangini (Rice Balls) [The Cookbook]

I know it's been a while since I've presented a recipe straight from The Cookbook, which was the original purpose for this blog, but I hope to present quite a few of them soon. This week, I challenged myself to a classic bit of Roman street food, and it definitely was a challenge. Not that it was particularly difficult once I figured out how to put it all together, but simply because, unfortunately, many of Bisnonna's recipes are not written as clearly as I would like. Someone are only a list of ingredients. Others...a vague set of steps. It makes following them difficult.

This one falls into the vague set of steps category, but it was actually kind of fun trying to sort it out.

Why can't I ever make anything that looks half as good as it tastes?

Arangini (Rice Balls)

via The Cookbook

Bisnonna Writes: 1# rice, a little salt

cook and cool. Add 1/2 c. of Romano cheese. 4 T. melted oleo. 3 eggs well beaten, a little tomato sauce

Brown 1# hamburg, 1 clove garlic crushed, 1 onion chopped, 1/4 of tomato paste or 4 T. sauce, 1 c. water. cook 20 mins. dip in well beaten egg.

roll in bread crumbs and fry

Amy interprets and makes a few alterations:

[What You Need]

1 cup of cooked rice

1/2 cup of Romano cheese

1 lb hamburger

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 onion, chopped

tomato paste

1 cup water

Well beaten egg

Italian bread crumbs

[What to do]

1. Brown hamburger, add garlic and onion to mixture and sauté for a few minutes. Add 1/4 can (about 2 tablespoons) of tomato paste and a cup of water. Cover and simmer about 5 more minutes.
2. Combine rice and cheese, them add hamburger mixture.
3. Form balls, dip in well beaten egg and them roll in bread crumbs
4. At this point you can either fry them for a more authentic street food take or cook them for ~1/2 hour at 350, which is what I did

Soup Bones

One of my favorite Bisnonna stories passed down through the family is the Tale of the Soup Bone. It's not really a complex story, but for some reason it has always stuck with me. Maybe because it was something so outside of my own experience that I didn't really have the means to process it.

In the tale, Bisnonna's madre sends her to the store with ten cents. She is supposed to get a soup bone and pay a little extra to get one with some meat on it.

Of course, this threw me as a child. Even if my madre was making soup from scratch, there still weren't any bones involved. There was stock, and veggies, and maybe some meat, but never bones. Right?

Flash forward several years. One month a delivery of meat arrives from the CSA with a strange additional item.

"What are we supposed to do with that?" My boyfriend asks sounding a little confused and eyeing the trade-in bin.

The story of Bisnonna and her ten-cent mission comes rushing back to me as I read the words "soup bone". "We make soup!" I announce proudly. "Keep it. I'll make a batch of beef stock."

I think he was pretty skeptical, but went with it anyway.

This endeavor did not turn out to be anywhere -near- as simple as I had been imagining it. Stock is a more labor intensive process than I could have ever expected and it involved touching and dealing with a lot of beef fat, which, thanks to my madre, I am very squeamish about. I do not think I will be making beef stock again any time in the near future. I will consider this one of those nice modern conveniences, but at least I now -know- how to create the sort of beef stock my Bisnonna grew up and that's the important part.

To Make It:

1. Gather a soup bone, some kitchen scraps (I had some onion skins and tops left over from dinner), and various herbs (I used parsley).
2. Bake the bone for 1 hour. 
3. Put bone and ingredients in a crockpot and cover with water. 
4. Cook on low heat for at least 6-8 hours. (One recipe I looked at called for 24 hours in a stock pot on the stove. I suppose this would have been more authentic, but I would be far too afraid to leave a burner on that long.)
5. As it is cooking, occasionally strain the fat off the top of the liquid.
6. Strain out liquid using a cheesecloth

Comfort Food: Slow Cooker Beef Roast

I offer my apologies for the missed post last week and the lateness of this post. You see, I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, but I have forgotten to take pictures. That means we've missed out on some great stuff, but never fear. I will make them a second time, just for all of your benefit. Especially now that I've learned, thanks to Thanksgiving, that people are actually reading this. [I'm still trying to figure out the comments section. I'll let you know when I have that sorted out.]

So without further adieu, a childhood favorite and a good meal for very lazy days: The Slow Cook Beef Roast.

The best thing about this meal is not even the ease of it. It's the smell. Coming home to the smell of this delightful meal simmering away is heavenly. Even more so on freezing winter days like the past few have been.

All it takes is a few vegetables, beef stock, and a beef roast (Just about any cut will do. It will be cooking so long that it will be plenty tender. I assure you.)

Slow Cooker Beef Roast

via (to the best of my knowledge) mi madre

[What you need]

Cut of Beef

Salt

Pepper

Carrots

Potatoes

Onions

Beef Stock or Broth (enough to pretty much cover the roast)

A slow cooker

[What to do]

1. Season the Beef with salt and pepper then add to slow cooker

2. Chop up the various vegetables and add them around the roast.

3. Cover this in stock/broth

4. Cook on low for about 8 hours

5. (and don't forget this step, it's crucial) At some point in that 8 hour period, leave and then come home so you can enjoy that smell.

See? Wasn't that easy?

Cabbage Soup

I'll chalk the invention of this soup up to Nonno. He's the one who deciphered the ingredients, at least. This fact partially explains how this recipe got passed down to me the way it did: as a list of ingredients and nothing more.

This is not an uncommon problem with the recipes I've acquired from my family. Plenty of recipes in The Cookbook have an annotation that essentially tells you to call someone else who might have an idea of the baking temperature or how to combine things, etc. Unfortunately, many of the people referred are also no longer with us.

Luckily in this case, I still had people around who could make heads or tails of things.

We start with a simple head of cabbage and shred it.

Then add the rest of the ingredients to the pot. Seriously. That's all you need to do. Well, that and simmer for about 4 hours until the cabbage cooks down.

Cabbage Soup

[Ingredients]

1 head cabbage

onions, chopped

meatballs

tomato sauce

1 cube beef bouillon (or one cup beef stock)

salt

pepper

oregano

rosemary

basil

Stuffed Pepper Soup

It’s getting cold. Can you feel it? Soon it will be Autumn and my favorite time of year: Soup season!

I could wax rhapsodic about my love for soup for many an age. I love soup of all kinds (so long as the amount of celery that ends up floating in the stock is limited -- but that’s an argument for another day). The one I'm about to present to you is one of my all time favorites.

I have a special relationship with stuffed pepper soup (and definitely more memories surrounding this little number than actual stuffed peppers). Many a chilly fall / winter day has been warmed by this soup, but there is one fall day in particular:

It was my junior year of college and having lived in a dorm on a meal plan for the past two years, my cooking skills left something to be desired. Not to mention the fact that college was a rough one emotionally. So, one fall day when things had been particularly rough (though this was still before the time of the bats), my mother showed up with several bags full of ingredients and we got down to making stuffed pepper soup.

Since then, stuffed pepper soup has been on of "our things". Whenever I come home during the fall or winter holidays, we tend to make it at least once. Just last week, she came up to attend a Michigan football game and we made yet another batch.

[ignore the beans; we also made chili]

And so, since this is one of my most requested recipes (especially by my dear friend Jill), I've decided to share its wonderment with you.

Stuffed Pepper Soup

[via mi madre]

[Ingredients]

2 lb ground beef

1 green bell pepper

1 can tomato sauce

1 diced tomato

2 cubes beef bouillon

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 T soy sauce

2 cups cooked rice

[What to do]

1. Brown beef over medium heat
2. Add peppers and saute for 3 minutes
3. Stir in rest of ingredients (sans rice). Reduce heat to love, cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes
4. Stir in rice and heat through
5. Be sure to add some Parmesan  and romano cheese to the top when you serve.

Bisnonna's Stuffed Green Peppers [The Cookbook]

My own memories of the illustrious stuffed pepper are fuzzy at best. I remember my mother making them and I remember them being wrapped, trayed, and put into the freezer. I think they were a cookout, party, or large gathering food of some kind because I recall nothing about them making an appearance at our dinner table. Honestly, I’m not sure if that makes this a great place to start or an awful one. Nevertheless...




It all starts with the bell pepper (also referred to as peperoni in Italian and mango in certain parts of rural Ohio), the least spicy variety of Capsicum annuum. Don’t get me wrong, I love my spicy chiles, but there is something subtle and lovely about a simple green pepper. Then there’s the way they smell...

It’s one of my favorite smells: a fresh bell pepper. When we would go to the farm market or some other produce stand, my father would always smell the bell peppers. That’s how he would choose which ones were right for our purposes. I don’t know if my mother believes him, but I do. Bell peppers smell crisp with a light bitterness that just makes me happy for some reason. Maybe that’s why I like Cabernet Sauvignon.



Despite prepping for a lengthy endeavor, my Bisnonna's Stuffed Peppers turned out to be much simpler than anticipated. I modified her recipe a little: a sin, I know, but I suspected this will happen a lot as many of the recipes do not include exact amounts or really any instructions at all. My modifications here are mainly an issue of experimentation.

And of course there's that rebellious streak. Bisnonna's first instruction is to cut the peppers in half and clean them out. I also remember my mother cutting them in half so that they looked like little boats. I instead cut the tops off because I am not very good at following instructions.

The experimentation carried over into the rice (brown and made in a rice cooker) and to the stuffing mix, to which I added bread crumbs, basil, and red pepper flakes.

The one rule I did not dare to flaut, however, was topping with a little more sauce and some Romano cheese. Madre told me this was incredibly important and I agree.

Stuffed Green Peppers 

Via The Cookbook

Bisnonna writes: 

Cut in half and clean out your green peppers, set them aside. Make your rice according to the box's directions. Brown an onion and a little bit of garlic in some oil, add some ground beef and simmer. Mix this with the rice and add a little bit of sauce. Put this into your green peppers, top with some more sauce and a little bit of Romano cheese. Put them on cookie sheets and bake in a 350 degrees over for about 45 mins. or until tender.

Madre adds:

Remember when you eat these, EAT THE PEPPERS TOO. Grandma used to yell at us kids because we'd eat only the stuffing. One time she had left over stuffing and she told us to eat that. Well, it didn't taste the same.

[I'm not sure what she was on about honestly. It makes a pretty good tortilla dip.]