Hearty Tuscan Bean Stew with Sausage and Cabbage

Cook’s Illustrated has never steered me wrong and this time was no different. I love to cook beans. I dunno why, but I find something extremely satisfying in the whole soaking and slow cooking process so when I saw this recipe in the magazine I knew it was being made the next weekend. So, last Friday night I head up to the grocery store to get everything I need…except that Sweetbay is out of cabbage…yeah, seriously. So, I get pissed, abandon my shopping cart and head off to Publix (I really think the 4th Street Publix is the only descent grocery store in St. Pete and that’s why it’s always busy).

Finally, I get home and get the beans to soaking. Saturday comes and I get started…fry up the sausage…set aside…start cutting up the onion…glance down at the dog and slice…by the time I could look back there was a pool of blood on the cutting board and the rings in the onion were growing crimson…SON OF A BITCH, I yell as the dog cowers thinking she’s in trouble.

Trying not to panic I run upstairs to fix my finger up. 10 minutes and two band-aids later I’m off to the grocery store…again…to get another onion. Meanwhile, back home the wife has decided I will not be chopping anymore and runs through all the chopping requirements in less time than it takes for me to chop a single onion and we’re cooking with fire.

The beans are nearing the end of their first phase and I’m reading the recipe for, what’s probably the 20th time and I read “stir in greens and tomatoes” and I think; tomatoes? How in the hell did I miss tomatoes? Reread the ingredients list and there it is: 1 can diced tomatoes drained and rinsed. SON OF A BITCH, I yell as the dog cowers thinking she’s in trouble.

Off to the grocery store…again.

Finally, after a severed finger and 4 different trips to the grocery store one of the best dishes I’ve ever prepared is complete. When I say one of the best dishes I’ve ever prepared I do not lie. The wife even said she was telling her clients about it the next day and over the course of the next week we ate every drop of this dish. I suggest every single one of you prepare this in the coming week.

(I apologize now for my inability to take pictures that make food look pretty)

Serves 8

Note from Cook’s: We prefer the creamier texture of beans soaked overnight for this recipe. If you’re short on time, quick-soak them: Place the rinsed beans in a large heat-resistant bowl. Bring 2 quarts of water and 3 tablespoons of salt to a boil. Pour the water over the beans and let them sit for 1 hour. Drain and rinse the beans well before proceeding with step 2. For a more substantial dish, serve the stew over toasted bread.

INGREDIENTS

Table salt
1 pound dried cannellini beans (2 cups) rinsed and picked over
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (plus extra for drizzling)
1 1/2 pounds sweet Italian sausage (casings removed)
1/2 medium head Savoy cabbage, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 spring fresh oregano
1 large onion, chopped medium (1 1/2 cups)
2 medium celery ribs, cut ingo 1/2 inch pieces (3/4 cup)
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces (1 cup)
8 medium garlic cloves peeled and crushed
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes drained and rinsed
Ground black pepper
8 slices country white bread, each 1 1/4 inches thick, broiled until golden brown on both sides and rubbed with garlic clove (optional)

1. Dissolve 3 tablespoons salt in 4 quarts cold water in large bowl or container. Add beans and soak at room temperature for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours. Drain and rinse well.
2. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 250 degrees. Cook sausage, in olive oil, breaking meat into small pieces with wooden spoon until it loses its raw color, about 8 minutes. Transfer sausage to paper towel-lined plate and place in refrigerator. Add onion, celery, and carrots to pot. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened and lightly browned, 10 to 16 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in broth, water, bay leaves, and soaked beans. Increase heat to high and bring to simmer. Cover pot, transfer to oven, and cook until beans are almost tender (very center of beans will still be firm), 45 minutes to 1 hour.
3. Remove pot from oven and stir in sausage, cabbage and tomatoes. Return pot to oven and continue to cook until beans and greens are fully tender, 30 to 40 minutes longer.
4. Remove pot from oven and submerge oregano sprig in stew. Cover and let stand 15 minutes. Discard bay leaves and oregano sprig and season stew with salt and pepper to taste.

Sweet Potato Fries:

My wife got me a deep fryer for Valentines day. Now I know how silly that might seem to some people but
for myself, it was a great gift. I immediately fried up some catfish and hush puppies and in the 2 months I’ve owned it we’ve fried shrimp, pork chops, twinkies, snickers, rolos and even gave lettuce a try one night but I’m not here to talk about any of those. I wanna tell you about sweet potato fries and how to kick out a kick ass plate of ‘em.

All of this can be accomplished sans a deep fryer…it just isn’t quite as cool.

• Cut your sweet potatoes to the size and thickness you like and put them into a large bowl of ice cold water.

• Start heating your oil to 325 degrees.

• Once your oil is up to temp, pat dry the fries and put them in for approx. 8 minutes and remove them. They won’t look done but it’s okay, they aren’t supposed to be. Place them on a paper towel lined baking sheet and set aside.

• Increase your oil temp to 375 degrees

• Once the oil is up to temp put the fries back in for about 5 minutes but pay attention to them after 3…Once they look done get them out of there and back onto a paper towel lined baking sheet.

Season and enjoy. We dust ours with a little red pepper and salt. This isn’t exactly the most healthy thing you can eat but who cares. It tastes great. The pictures below are from dinner the other night. I gotta say, it’s really hard to make fried food look good but it’s really easy to make it taste good.

Got a little carried away:

whew….got a little carried away.

Tomato-Basil Chicken with Spices:

Like most of America my life is 7.5 lbs of stuff crammed into a 5 pound bag. Work, Gym, Dog Park, Write for ninebullets.net, dishes, straighten up house, grocery store, cooking…Gah…I couldn’t imagine having to do all of that and adding a kid into the mix. Mad props to all of you that pull that one off. Usually, it’s dinner that gets the short end of the stick here in the Childs household. Instead of planning meals I am usually looking for something that can be done quickly and w/o much oversight. One of the reasons I started CWM was the hope that it would aid me in moving the task of cooking from an afterthought to a planned part of my night…We’ll see how that works out over time. Moving on.

While I don’t have a subscription to Food and Wine Magazine I do find their recipe archives to be an invaluable resource. It was in those very archives that I found this gem of a recipe. It meets every piece of my criteria checklist for a really busy night: minimal ingredients so I can use express lane (check), cooks with minimal oversight (check), minimal chopping (check), healthy (check), tastes good (check). I make this dish 3 times a month on average and neither I nor the wife have tired of it yet and as an added bonus it makes your house smell great as it’s cooking. Give it a try this week and tell me what you think of it.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced lengthwise
• 2 large tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 3 star anise pods (I omit this because Anise tastes like liquorish…YUK.)
• 2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (2 pounds)
• 1 1/2 cups basil leaves, coarsely chopped
• Couscous or orzo, for serving

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil until shimmering. Add the onion and cook over high heat, stirring, until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, star anise and ginger and season with salt and pepper. Add the chicken breasts and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook over moderate heat, turning the chicken once, until cooked through, about 15 minutes.
2. Transfer the chicken to plates. Stir the basil into the sauce. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve with couscous.

New Cooking Light *and* Cooks Illustrated arrived!

These are exciting times for myself. New stuff to try, new articles to read. I haven’t gotten a chance to look at the Cooks Illustrated yet but I gotta say, this months Cooking Light looks to be a massive disappointment. On my initial glance I only saw (2) dishes I wanted to make. Hopefully a slower trip through the rag will reveal a few more. I have a personal favorite recipe to share with y’all this weekend so be on the lookout….matter a fact, I gotta go take some pictures for it now.

Post Recipes…

The lady who runs the Steamy Kitchen blog said to post pictures with your posts. I hope to start doing that in the future but I made this dish before I started the blog so I’m gonna lean on that as an excuse…

One of the main features in this months Cooking Light is recipes featuring syrup. Earlier this week I decided to try my hand at the Spiced Pork Tenderloin with Maple Chipotle Sauce (Cooking Light, March 08, Page 116). The part I really liked about this recipe was that lack of chopping and mincing required to make it. I made some Mashed Potatoes with chives to go with it (I learned these from last month’s Cooking Light) while the wife prepared a sauteed Carrot & Onion dish that was great but I have no idea how she did it since I was busy measuring broths, syrup & vinegar while she talked on the phone did some dishes and cooked.

The dish turned out to be painfully awesome. I was afraid the Chipotle would make it to hot for me since I am hyper-sensitive to spicy foods but I soldiered through. However, it did leave my mouth real tingly for about 30 minutes after seconds. If anyone has any tips on how to condition yourself to spicy foods I would love to hear them.

Recipe (also available on the web here) is after the cut:

Why “Cooking With Magazines”?

The wife and I have been living under 1 roof for 7 years now. Up until, say, 2 years ago, I let the bulk of the cooking duties fall onto her shoulders…and by bulk I mean almost all. Well. A year or two ago we had a talk and became evident that more effort in the kitchen would maybe possibly equate to more nookie in the sense that would definitely equate to less stress on her. So I picked up a knife and a frying pan.

Flash forward to today…

I have a few cast iron frying pans, a cast iron dutch oven, a crock pot and a deep fryer. In order to use these tools I have my DVR set to record all episodes of Alton Brown and subscriptions to Cooks Illustrated and Cooking Light from which 90% of my meals come from. Hence, Cooking With Magazines.

Please allow me to introduce myself…

Hi. My name is Bryan Childs. I also go by Autopsy IV. Bryan in the real world. Autopsy in the digital world. I am 34, married and we have a dog named Mildred. This is my second blog. My first is a music blog called ninebullets.net. This (Cooking With Magazines) will not be about music. It will be about my trails and tribulations in and about the kitchen. So I’ll set the scene:

My wife can cook. She can walk into the kitchen, look at what’s in the pantry and fridge and make something awesome. I can pick a recipe and she’ll just glance at it an then go make it…no measuring cups, no measuring spoons and replacing, adding or subtracting ingredients as she goes….and 95% of the time it works.

I cook only in the strictest definition of the term…I apply heat to assembled ingredients for a designated period of time and then I eat them. I measure everything to a tee. I have to read a recipe a minimum of 10 times before I have completed a dish. If we are missing and ingredient I go and buy it. If I can’t find it, I don’t make that dish….and 95% of the time, cooking dinner stresses me the fuck out.

So why do I do it?

For the nookie.

Just kidding (kinda). I do it cause these are the cards we have been dealt. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the wife works till around 9:00 so if we are gonna eat a descent meal…I’m gonna have to make it….so now, I’ve decided to chronicle my failures and successes here on the internets for you.

With any luck, it’ll be fun. I hope to post a minimum of twice a week. Perhaps more, probably less.