Vegetable Pot Pie and a Changed City

It's been crazy living in New York City for the past week since Hurricane Sandy hit.

Our sense of normalcy has been upended.

I weathered the storm at a friend's house, with full power, incredible food, and lots of crafting. I took a cab home from their house on Tuesday afternoon, and we drove by downed trees, crushed cars and signs warning us to keep out of the parks.

I returned home to a neighborhood that was relatively untouched, other than branches and leaves littering the streets. Restaurants, bars and coffee shops were all open and flooded with people who were unable to get to their jobs in Manhattan.

We ate, laughed, went for long walks and cooked. It felt almost normal at first, almost like a vacation.

But then we turned on the news and saw such wide-spread devastation that didn't fit at all with the reality we were living. We received emails about coworkers who had lost their homes overnight. We volunteered at local high schools housing hundreds of displaced citizens, some of us serving breakfast or working overnight shifts and others providing entertainment to people who so badly needed a break from reality. We saw low-wage workers desperately in need of their paychecks walk across the boroughs to their early morning jobs.

It's days like these when all I want is comfort food.

Like this pot pie. We made a huge batch of pot pie filling and pie crusts on our fourth day off of work because of Hurricane Sandy. We cooked with the TV off, with our phones that had been constantly feeding us updates on the state of our city tucked far away. 

These pot pies are loaded with potatoes, carrots, peas, lima beans, corn and onions, smothered in a homemade gravy, and topped with a savory pie crust. We made eight, baked them until they were almost done in the oven, and then froze them.

The recovery from Hurricane Sandy will not be quick. I worry that when most of us have our lives back to normal, when gas stations once again have gas and subway lines connect us through the boroughs, our efforts to help those who will remain in need for a long time will decrease.

As a school, as a community, as a city, we must keep asking, "How can we help?" 

If you're interested in donating to a local organization doing fantastic work supporting rebuilding  Red Hook, Brooklyn, consider the Red Hook Initiative: rhicenter.org. 

Swiss Chard Cannelloni

Every once in a while, I start something and just want to give up. You know that feeling where absolutely nothing is going right. Maybe it's the day when you get home from graduate school, which you went to after work, and all you have the energy to do is microwave the last bit of leftovers from a previous dinner. Then, when you're carrying the hot bowl across the floor because, really, you can't be expected to wait two minutes for it to cool down, you drop it, sending your dinner flying across the floor. And you think, maybe I wasn't meant to eat dinner tonight after all.

That's how I felt with these cannelloni.

It all started with the swiss chard filling. I put my onions on to caramelize in my hot July kitchen, and an hour later, they weren't even close to the color or taste I desired. I sauteed down the swiss chard, which disappeared into almost nothingness in the pan, nowhere near enough to fill pans of cannelloni. Then, I added the mascarpone and parmesan. They seemed like such a good addition as I was measuring them out, but once mixed in, they gave the whole mixture this unusual pinkish color. I threw in an egg to bind the mixture together, and immediately regretted it. The whole mixture looked a little slimy.

I responded by hurriedly pouring the filling into a jar before it had cooled and putting it in the fridge. Then I deleted almost every picture of the swiss chard filling from my camera because I just knew it wasn't going to work. I almost threw the filling in the trash.

But when I woke up the next morning, my pasta maker was calling to me from the top of our kitchen cabinets. It's been so long since you've made homemade pasta, the little voice echoed.

So, forgetting everything that had transpired the day before, I climbed up on a stool and got it down. And, somehow, my luck began to change. The pasta dough came together beautifully. It rolled out in somewhat even sheets that were easy to cut. The cannelloni squares boiled up in less than two minutes and became even easier to work with as they sat and dried a bit. My tomato sauce benefited from the simple addition of onion and butter. And making the cannelloni was much easier than making the shrimp tortellini I had attempted for my first homemade pasta recipe.

I prepared three fillings for the cannelloni, out of necessity, really. My swiss chard filling didn't fill as many cannelloni as I originally intended, so I whipped up a quick tomato, onion and mascarpone filling. When they ran out, I mixed some boiled peas with mascarpone so that I could use up the leftover noodles. By the time I finished, I had three pans of cannelloni: one for dinner that night and two to freeze up for future consumption.

The real test came at dinner that night.

I pulled the cannelloni out of the oven after a 20-minute cook. The sauce bubbled. The parmesan grated on top was browned. I slid the cannelloni out of the pan and onto my plate, being sure to scrape up all the extra sauce. I sliced into the cannelloni with my knife and took my first bite.

Perhaps they weren't such a disaster after all.

bialys (or the incredibly relaxing day that took a sudden turn when I exploded a glass pan in my oven)

I didn't wake up this morning intending to bake bialys.

I planned on making bagels. But when I pulled out my computer to check how much flour I needed for smittenkitchen's homemade bagels, the bialys just caught my eye. A lighter version of the bagel, chewy and soft, topped with carmelized onions. YUM.

The bagels would have been the practical choice. The recipe yields 16 bagels, which keeps me fed for breakfast for a few weeks. The bialys, on the other hand, yield six, and I knew going in one would disappear the moment they were removed from the oven.

But, I had only ever had bialys once in my life, and they somehow seemed more fitting, more exciting, for a Saturday. Also, the bagels required an overnight stay in the fridge, and ours is just overflowing with fresh produce. Not that we're complaining.

Bialys are not particularly quick to make. You're looking at about 5 hours, when you include rising time. However, the process will take longer if you decide to bake a batch of oatmeal pecan chocolate chip cookies in the middle.

The process will take even longer if, upon placing the bialys onto the baking stone, you go to add ice cubes to the glass baking pan you placed on the floor of the oven (to release steam which would simulate a real bread oven), and the moment you add those ice cubes, the glass pan explodes. Suddenly, my relaxing Saturday vanished.

Imagine the scene. There I was, oven door hanging open, degrees of heat escaping each second, staring at the exploded glass all around me. My major concern: could I still cook my bialys with all the glass in the oven? After consulting with my roommate, I shut the oven door, glass grating as I closed it, and proceeded to bake the bialys.

They were deliciously and miraculously glass free.

My oven is cooling and covered with glass I need to clean up.

Bialys
Recipe adapted slightly for the chef without a stand mixer from smittenkitchen and The Bread Bible

This recipe yields six bialys. They store on the counter for about a day, but they also freeze well. I wrapped most of mine up in plastic wrap and put them in a container in the fridge. I'll defrost them one by one when I need them, thawing them right in the plastic wrap. If you have a stand mixer, make sure to read the smittenkitchen version of the recipe, which will save you a little time and a lot of energy.

Ingredients
2 cups bread flour (I like King Arthur's)
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water, at room temperature

Onion-Poppy Seed Filling
Ingredients
2 1/4 teaspoons olive oil
6 tablespoons onion, chopped
3/4 teaspoon poppy seeds
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper to taste

Mix the dough. Whisk the flour and yeast together in a bowl, and then whisk in the salt (Deb's note was that yeast is killed when it comes in direct contact with salt, so it's crucial for the salt to be whisked in second). Add water, and stir until just combined. Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured counter, and kneed constantly for at least 10 minutes, until the dough is soft and easy to work with. Add a little flour or water if necessary.

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl. Press the dough down and lightly spray or oil the top. Cover the container with plastic wrap. Mark the side of the container with a rubber band at approximately where double the height of the dough would be. Place the dough in a warm spot, ideally between 75 to 80 degrees, for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until it is doubled.

Press down on the dough firmly to deflate it, and transfer it to a floured counter. Cut the dough into 6 equal pieces. Cover 5 of the pieces with a moist towel. Round each piece by pulling the dough ends together to form a pouch (trying to keep as much air as possible inside the dough), and then pinch the edges together. Put them on a floured baking sheet, pinched side down. Flour the tops and cover with plastic wrap.

Let the bialys rise for 2 hours at 75 to 80 degrees until almost doubled. When pressed lightly in the center, they should keep the impression. If you don't think the dough has risen enough, you can cut a make a small hole in the center before adding the filling.

While the bialys are rising, making the onion-poppy seed filling. Heat the oil in a small saute pan. Add the onions. I sauteed mine over low heat for about 45 minutes to caramelize them, but you could also do a quick five minute cook over medium heat until translucent. Remove the onions from the heat, and add the poppy seeds, salt and pepper to taste. Let the mixture cool.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees about 30 minutes before baking. Place a baking stone or baking sheet on an oven shelf at the lowest level. Place a sheet pan on the floor of the oven before preheating it (use a metal pan, use a metal pan, use a metal pan. DO NOT use a glass pan).

Holding each piece of dough with both hands, with your thumbs in the middle and almost touching, pinch the center of the dough tightly between your thumbs and first two fingers and stretch the dough to 4 1/2 to 5 inches in diameter, creating a crater in the center. Place it on a lined baking sheet (I put mine on a sheet of parchment paper on the baking sheet so I could slide it right off onto my baking stone), and spoon 1 teaspoon of onion-poppy seed filling into the center.

Use a peel or cookie sheet to slide the parchment with the bialys on it onto the baking stone or sheet that has been pre-heating in the oven. Toss a handful of ice cubes in the sheet pan on the oven floor (I tried this, for the first time even, which is supposed to help make your oven closer to a professional bread oven by releasing steam which helps form a crust. Immediately shut the door.

Bake for 6 to 10 minutes, or until pale golden and mottled with brown spots.

Remove the parchment from the oven and, with a pancake turner, transfer the bialys to a wire rack to cool until just warm.

Enjoy!