Retired Pastor Ruminates

Scott Carson at An Examined Life laments the return of the right to intellectual darkness in his insightful post The Rightward Turn.

Pastor John Castricum shares the recipe for his award-winning clam chowder  at Reflections of a Reformed Pastor.

Halden Doerge over at Inhabitatio Dei gets a lively discussion going on the question: Is there a postliberal theological project?

For those word nerds among you who actually know what a clerihew is, Kim Fabricius has a funny post at Faith and Theology called Poetic Graffiti: clerihews on ten modern Christian poets.

The quick-changing world of information technology is highlighted in a post at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab about how the magazine Foreign Policy is e-publishing (through Amazon) a book about Afganhistan by war journalist Anna Badkhen, comprised of her daily dispatches.

A thoughtful piece appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on the Pope Benedict XVI’s beatification of John Henry Newman. They quote my friend Gabe Fackre, “The heart of ecumenism [or interfaith work] is when each tradition brings its own gifts to the other.” Newman, Fackre argues, was known for the idea that theological ideas have a “trajectory” in which “you don’t abandon the teachings but let them flower – the ordination of women might be an example. It is a very supple concept of doctrine that is a long way from Benedict, who seems to rigidify doctrine.”

1 Tb. olive oil
1 3 lb. chuck roast, tied with twine ( I like Black Angus)
1 medium onion chopped
2 carrots chopped
1 celery stalk chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 sprigs of fresh parsley (optional)
1 cup hearty dry red wine
2 cups beef stock plus more if needed.
1 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 tsp dried sage leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
Kosher salt and pepper

This is basically a pot roast.  Eliminate the tomatoes and garlic, substitute dried thyme for the sage, add a bay leaf, and you have my basic pot roast recipe. That one I would serve over mashed potatoes, but this one I like over polenta. A straccato is a regional Italian pot roast, and this is my take on it. Let’s call it a North Jersey pot roast!

This is easy but takes a bit of time, which is what braising is all about.  I cook it all in my cast iron Dutch Oven, but you could do it in any fireproof pot that can go from the range to the oven. You can also cook the whole thing on the range top, but I like the even heat of the oven. I made this yesterday, put it in the oven at 4 p.m., went and had my daily nap, and it was all ready to eat by 6:45 (it needs to sit for a bit). Even better make it the day before, slice the cooled meat, heat up the sauce, and you are ready to go.

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F.  Heat the oil over medium high heat and swirl it around until it covers the bottom. Dry off your roast with paper towels (it won’t brown if it’s damp) and sprinkle it liberally with Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Then using tongs, or two wooden spoons, put it in the pot and brown it on all sides (don’t use a fork, because it will release the juices and you want them in there,). Depending on your heat this will take between ten and twenty minutes, but the trick is to get it a very dark brown without burning it, so pay attention (which is what good cooking is all about).

When the roast is nice and brown, take it out and put it aside on a plate, and reduce your heat to medium.  Put in your chopped onion, carrot and celery, and stir with a wooden spoon now and again until the veggies are also nice and brown (but not burnt!), about ten minutes.

Add the garlic cloves and cook for another minute or so, then add you wine, beef stock, herbs and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Then lower heat to a simmer and, stirring occasionally, let it cook for about ten minutes.

Then lower the meat on top of the veggies.  The braising liquid should come about half way up the meat.  If it doesn’t add more stock, but don’t put too much liquid in, because you want to braise it and not boil it.

Bring it back to a good boil, put the lid on it, and put it in the oven.  A 325 degree oven will typically keep a simmer just about right for braising, though you may need to adjust your heat according to variations in your oven temperature.

You want to cook this for about 2 and 1/2 hours total.  After about an hour, check the pot, lower or raise the oven temperature if needed and flip the meat over. If the liquid is low top it off with some more stock.

After two and one half hours, check the meat. It should be nice and tender but still firm enough to cut.  Put it on a platter, tent it with foil, and let it sit for fifteen minutes. While the meat is cooling, put your braising liquid on the range top and simmer it to reduce the sauce a bit, stirring now and again. Remove the parsley sprigs, taste and season for salt and pepper.

Slice your meat against the grain and plate it over the polenta or mashed potatoes, then ladle the sauce generously and enjoy.  We had this with steamed brussel sprouts last night for a hearty winter meal, but a green salad would work fine.  A dry red wine will be just right. We drank a Masciarelli, a nice inexpensive Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, that is our current house red. This makes a nice, pretty easy, meal on a cold winter night that will be a crowd pleaser.

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)

We got our first blanket of snow the other day here in the Berkshires, so it was time to make some comfort food. Cold weather always gets me thinking about stews and braises, and one of my favorites is beef short ribs, which are the ends cut off the prime rib. They’re relatively cheap to buy and really easy to make. I don’t have the recipe my mother used to make them with, but I know it involved painting them with ketchup, and it may have had dried onion soup mix (remember that?) in the braising liquid. Whatever was in them they were a treat.

Here’s my version:

3 lbs meaty beef short ribs
2 tbs olive oil
1 good-sized yellow onion, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
1 stalk of celery, coarsely chopped
¼ tsp dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup beef stock
½ cup hearty dry red wine
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Salt and pepper the ribs.  In a Dutch oven or oven-proof pot with a cover heat the oil over medium high heat and brown the meat on all sides, being careful not to burn it. Do this in batches and don’t overcrowd the pot. Also, dry the ribs with paper towels so they will brown properly.
When they are nice and brown, remove the ribs to a plate, turn down the heat to medium and add the chopped vegetables, stirring until they take on some color.

Add the stock and wine and bring to a boil, stirring to get any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the thyme and bay leaves and return the ribs to the pot. Cover the pot and put it in the oven for two hours. The meat should be tender and almost falling off the bone. Remove the ribs to a plate and cover with foil to keep warm. Put the pot back on the top of the stove, and reduce liquid over medium high heat until it thickens a little bit to a syrupy consistency (you may not need to do this.)

I like to put a rib on each plate over mashed potatoes with a few spoonfuls of the rich braising liquid, but this is nice to over polenta or rice.  Some green beans (or a salad) and some crusty bread and you have a simple and comforting meal.

For a wine pairing I suggest any hearty dry red. This is humble dish and needs a sturdy humble wine. I served our current Italian house red with this, Masciarelli Motepulciano d’Abruzzu, which is also the wine in the braising liquid. Enjoy.

OK, so I’m showing off just a little here with the homemade pasta, but you really don’t have to serve this sauce over fresh pasta. It is equally delicious over dried pasta such as Rigitoni or Penne. But if you are going to work all day on the sauce, use good quality imported dried pasta like De Cecco.

But if you have the time, homemade pasta is a wonderful thing, and it’s not really hard to make, but, trust me on this, it does take time. When my children were little, and my wife, Martha, who is a nurse, had to work at night, I would muster my little force and the kids would “help” me make fresh pasta. It kept them busy for hours, and at the end of the process we had lovely Tagliatelle hanging from all kinds of drying racks and everybody (and the kitchen) was covered with flour, and Mom didn’t even have to see it.

I have made this pasta several ways: with just a rolling pin and a sharp chef's knife, with the pasta extruder on my Kitchen-Aid mixer, and with a stainless steel hand-cranked pasta machine. I like the latter best myself. I bought mine at the First Church tag sale many years ago, and it has made a lot of pasta at the Floyd household.

So if you have the better part of a day to hang out in the kitchen this can be a great project on a cold day. Your simmering sauce will fill the house with lovely aromas. And the ragu itself isn’t very hard to put together, although it takes a certain vigilance over many hours. But the nice thing about it is that during that time you can make the pasta, and at the end of the day you will have a lovely comfort food dinner that will delight everyone at the table.

For the Ragu

4 tbs butter

2 tbs extra virgin olive oil

¼ lb. pancetta, finely chopped

1 medium yellow onion chopped fine

1 carrot chopped fine

1 celery stalk chopped fine

½ cup dry white wine

½ cup whole milk

1/8 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

1 28 oz can good whole Italian tomatoes with liquid

2 pounds lean ground beef

1 oz. dried wild Porcini mushrooms

Salt and pepper to taste

The pancetta is hard to cut fine enough by hand, so I cut it into small chunks and finish it in the food processor with the onions, carrots, and celery, and that keeps it from sticking to the blade.

Cover the porcini mushrooms with hot water and let sit while you do the next stages.

Heat oil and butter in a large heavy-bottomed skillet or casserole, and when the butter foams add the pancetta, onion, carrot and celery and sauté over medium high heat until it takes on some color and is beginning to brown.

Turn the heat down to medium and add the beef. Cook, breaking up the pieces and stirring, until the pink goes out of the beef, but don’t brown it. Add the white wine, turn the heat back up a bit, and let all the wine evaporate, stirring now and again. Turn the heat back down to medium and add the milk and nutmeg, and cook until the milk evaporates, stirring from time to time.

Add the tomatoes, squeezing them between your fingers into the pan. Pour the mushrooms through a sieve lined with cheesecloth (or a coffee filter) into a bowl and retain the liquid. Chop the mushrooms coarsely and add to the pot along with their liquid.

Bring it all to a very gentle simmer, partially cover, and literally put it on a back burner for as many hours as you can, stirring from time to time and watching your heat so it doesn’t start boiling. If you are gentle with this sauce it will reward you. How long? The one I made yesterday had at least six hours, but I would say at least three. It should reduce into a thick rich sauce. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper.

When you are ready to serve it, toss your pasta with just enough of the sauce to moisten it (it’s really rich) and serve bowls of sauce along with it so people can add more if they choose. Top each plate with freshly grated Parmegianno-Reggiano cheese and you’ve got a little bit of heaven on a plate. A salad and some crusty bread will round out this meal.

For wine, a good Tuscan red or a Nebbiola-based wine will make you smile.

For the Tagliatelle

Do not be afraid to try this. The dough for this pasta has only two ingredients, flour and eggs. Some people are dogmatic about using pasta flour, but I just use King Arthur All-purpose Flour and extra-large eggs. For six servings I use three cups of flour and four eggs.

Put your flour on a clean counter or pastry board and make a well with it. Then break the eggs into the center of the well (see photo below) and with a fork beat them, while drawing small amounts of flour from the edge of the well. Don’t be impatient; you can do this! Just keep beating the eggs and drawing flour into them until you have a nice soft dough.

Put the dough aside and scrape off your board. Put flour on your hands and on the board and knead your dough for about 10 to 15 minutes. Add extra dough a little at a time until the dough is soft and pliable. When you stick a finger in the dough it shouldn’t be wet, but not too dry. You’ll know.

It is now ready for the pasta machine. The pasta machine has two parts, a set of rollers that rolls the dough, and the actual blades that cut the pasta into ribbons. Set the rollers on your machine for the widest width. Cut a piece about the size of a large egg, and put the rest under a towel so it won’t dry out. Run the piece through the rollers 6 or 8 times until the dough is smooth and isn’t sticky. Adjust the roller to the next smallest setting and repeat the process. Keep adjusting the rollers smaller until you get the dough to about 1/16 of an inch, then put it through the cutting blades and make your ribbons of Tagliatelle. You can put the pasta on a rack, or nest it into a small bundle (see photo below). Then start again with another piece and follow the above procedures until you have made pasta from all the dough. This takes some time, but is strangely calming.

When you are ready to cook the pasta, bring a good-sized pot of water to a boil and cook pasta for only about three minutes, then sauce with the ragu. Yum. This is why my kids call me the “Pasta Emeritus!” Enjoy.

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)

At the farmers’ market the green things have all been replaced by root vegetables. The other day Martha came home with five lovely beets, and some beautiful carrots. So it was time to make borscht.

There are innumerable recipes for borscht and endless debates about whether it should have meat in it, and whether it should be served hot or cold. There is no right answer to these questions, and I think it depends on the season, but when it gets cold outside I want my borscht hot and with meat.

So here’s my take on a hot, meaty borscht. Our moms would have used a shin bone or a short rib, let it cool, and skimmed the fat off it, but I just use lean chuck. You could buy it already cut up for stew, but I prefer to buy a small roast and cut my own.

5 beets

1 lb. beef chuck, trimmed of fat, and cut in 1and 1/2 inch cubes

All-purpose flour for dredging meat

3 Tbs vegetable oil

1 32 oz. container of good beef broth or your own stock

1 28 oz. can of whole plum tomatoes

1 medium carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds

1 stalk celery, sliced

1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped

½ small head of cabbage (I used green but red is nice, too) shredded.

1 bay leaf

3 Tbs red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream for garnish

Snipped fresh dill for garnish

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Trim and scrub (but don’t peel) the beets. Wrap them each in aluminum foil, place them on a cookie sheet (they’ll leak), and cook in the oven for 70 minutes.

While the beets are roasting prepare the rest of the soup. I make this in my big cast-iron Dutch oven, but any heavy-bottomed pot big enough to hold the soup will do. Heat the pot over medium high heat. Add the oil. Dredge the beef cubes in flour and add and stir, watching the heat so you don't burn the flour, until the cubes are all nice and brown. Add the stock or broth and the tomatoes and bring to a boil, stirring and scraping up the brown bits on the bottom. Break up the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to gentle simmer and cover. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in carrots, celery, onion, cabbage and bay leaf to the pot, cover and cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

When the beets are done, remove them from the oven and let them cool. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them, slice them, and quarter the slices, saving a few whole slices to put on the top of each serving bowl. I should warn you to wear an apron, and do this over the sink, since these beets will give off a lot of juice and you’ll be having a Lady Macbeth caught “red-handed” kind of experience.

Stir the beets into the pot with the vinegar and cook for 30 minutes or until the beets are tender, but still have some firmness to them. You may have to add some more stock or water to thin it out.

When the beets are tender, remove bay leaf, taste for salt and pepper, then put the borscht into bowls, add a generous dollop of sour cream, and garnish with snipped fresh dill. My friend Bev Langeveld, who with her husband Martin, once years ago ran a country inn here in the Berkshires told me that they made borscht once there and stirred in the sour cream and nobody would eat it because it came out the color of Pepto Bismol. So with that cautionary tale in mind let each diner stir in his or her own. Serve with crusty bread, and enjoy!

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)

This an old Super Bowl favorite of ours. I made it last night. I know, it wasn’t the Super Bowl, but both the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers played like it was, and the Minnesota fans cheered and carried on like it was. All it was was Bret Favre playing against his old team on Monday Night Football. My son had invited some of his teacher friends over, so I figured I needed to pile on (notice the football metaphor) the food.

This is a good dish for a crowd. You can make it ahead and let it get happy on a back burner, so if your guests are arriving at indeterminate intervals, it’s perfect.

You will need a very large heavy cast iron casserole or Dutch oven for this one. It makes a lot of chili.

3 tbs vegetable oil

4 yellow onions, peeled and sliced

1 bell papper, sliced (I used red but green is OK and cheaper)

2 or 3 small hot peppers, deseeded and chopped (I used long red hots, but jalapenos are fine. Just don’t use habeneros or the heat will overwhelm the subtlety of the other nice flavors)

3 lbs ground beef (I used Black Angus 80-20, but you can go leaner if fat freaks you out, but you will lose some flavor. If you use turkey, just don't tell me.)

6 tbs chili powder

2 tbs ground cumin (comino)

2 tbs paprika (use smoked if you have it, but only use 1 tbs)

1 tbs fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp ground white pepper (if you have it)

2 tps salt (I used Kosher, but it doesn’t matter)

1 beer (not dark, whatever you have in the fridge. I used Corona)

1 35 oz. can of good tomatoes, whole or pureed

2 tbs chopped canned chipotle peppers in adobo

1 14.5 oz. can beef broth or your own beef stock

1 15.5 oz. can red kidney beans

1 15.5 oz. can dark red kidney beans

1 15.5 oz can pinto beans

1 15.5 oz. can small red beans

1 15.5 oz can black beans.

The kernels from an ear of cooked fresh corn, or its frozen equivilent.

Chopped fresh cilantro, chopped white onion, sour cream and grated Mexican or Cheddar cheese for garnishes. Serve with tortilla chips.

Heat the oil in your big pot or in heavy-bottomed big skillet over medium heat. Cook the onion and peppers for about ten minutes stirring occasionally. Turn up the heat to medium high and add the ground beef, stirring until it is brown and there is no pink at all. This is a lot of meat so it will take a while.

Turn the heat back to medium, add the chili powder, cumin, paprika, black and white pepper and salt and stir to mix. Pour the beer over it (it will foam impressively) and stir to mix. Let that simmer for ten minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, chipotles, and beef broth, breaking the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon if you use whole ones.

Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a gentle simmer. Let this cook for one hour, stirring occasionally. Then stir in all five kinds of beans (undrained with their juices), and bring to a boil, then reduce to a very gentle simmer for one hour, stirring occasionally to keep the bottom from sticking. Stir in the corn and cook for ten more minutes.

I put out bowls and let people ladle themselves what they want, and I put the garnishes in small bowls and let people doctor their own. Serve with tortilla chips.

The natural accompaniment is cold beer, but red wine works fine, too. I drank an inexpensive tempranillo from Spain with it last night and it was a nice match. Enjoy.

(Photo: R.L. FLoyd)

I write in defense of mussels, the stepchild of the shellfish world. I am not talking about the dreaded freshwater zebra mussels that are threatening our lakes here in the Berkshires, but the delectable marine blue mussel.

The French love them. You can’t walk a block in Paris without seeing a bistro with a “Moules” sign. For some reason though, Americans, who will happily pound down their weight in steamers and Littlenecks have been slow to warm to these succulent little morsels.

Many years ago I had a wonderful congregant, Gladys Brigham, whose father had been a Congregationalist missionary to the Middle East in the nineteenth century. He had gone to Bangor Theological Seminary, and the family still had a summer cottage on Isleboro, one of Maine’s most charming islands. When my children were still children Gladys invited us all to spend a few days there and she joined us for a couple of them. At low tide there were more mussels than you could shake a stick at, so I harvested a batch, cleaned and de-bearded them, and steamed them with a little garlic and white wine. “These are delicious,” opined Gladys, who was close to ninety, and had been coming to this very spot for the better part of the Twentieth Century. “I’ve never had a mussel before.” I was dumbfounded: “Why not?” “People here don’t eat them.”

I have a theory about this. First, mussels are subject to Red Tide (dinoflagellates), which is harmless to the mussel but contains toxins that can harm humans with paralytic shellfish poisoning. If back in the day Uncle Wendell got wicked sick from eating a mussel it might have put everybody off their feed for awhile. Today governments strictly monitor for toxins at fishing sites, so that is no longer a problem. And besides, clams are subject to Red Tide, too, so I don’t get it.

The other bad rap mussels get is that they are hard to clean, and it is true that if you harvest them yourself it is a bit of a chore to scrub them up, de-beard them, and scrape the barnacles off them. And if you are not careful, there will always be a closed one that is, in fact, just a shell full of mud and it will muddy your broth.

But the last few years I have been able to buy beautiful mussels from Prince Edward Island in the grocery store. These are fresh, clean, scrubbed and de-bearded, and need minimal handling. Just make sure that they are alive, discarding any whose shells have opened or are cracked. Give them a good rinse in cold water. I put them in a bowl and leave them in the sink with the water gently running for a while.

So get yourself some mussels. This is the best time of year for them, as the claim is that the best months to eat them end in “–ber,” and here we are in September with two more “–ber” months to go. And the best thing of all is that, although their flavor resembles that of the treasured lobster, they are cheap. My PEI mussels come in two pound mesh bags, and are often available for $2.49 a pound. I got some last week for $1.99 on sale. The lobsters in that tank nearby were $11.99. Tough decision? No.

There are many ways to treat a mussel, but I like them done with as little fanfare as possible (except when I make them Chinese style with garlic and fermented black beans, but that is another post for another day). Mussels contain a lot of water, so you don’t need to drown them when you cook them. Here’s a simple recipe similar to what the French call Moules Marinieres (they would use butter, reduce the broth, and add more butter at the end, but I like it this way):

2 lbs mussels, cleaned and de-bearded

4 tbs extra virgin olive oil

½ yellow onion, chopped

2 tbs garlic, peeled and finely chopped

½ tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

½ cup dry white wine.

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Drain the rinsed mussels in a colander. You’ll want a wide pan with a tight lid. Heat the oil over medium heat, and cook the onion until soft. Toss in the garlic, crushed red pepper, and parsley. Then gently add the mussels (the shells will break if you’re hard on them.) Gently stir to mix, add the white wine and cover. Give the pan a gentle shake from time to time and start checking the mussels after about five minutes. If they are not opening turn the heat up a bit and cover again. They should all be open after ten minutes. You can serve them now, but I prefer to remove the mussels to a platter with a slotted spoon, and strain the broth through a sieve covered with cheesecloth to catch any sand. You can pour the broth over the mussels or serve it on the side (as I do). Enjoy.

Wine pairings: The French might drink Muscadet with them, and they wouldn't be wrong. A crisp Sauvignon Blanc is always nice. When we were with our daughter in Provence I ordered mussels (albeit Provencal style with tomato) and she said “Try the Rose.” I did, and it was very good, so a dry Rose from the South of France works just fine. But don't break the bank on cheap eats, any good dry white will do.

(Photo by R.L. FLoyd)

I use frozen easy-peel shrimp that come in 2 lb bags. You will need a heavy-bottomed skillet, and an ovenproof serving dish (I use a Le Crueset enameled one, but you could do it any shallow casserole or baking dish.)

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 yellow onion chopped

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

½ tsp crushed red pepper (or to taste)

2 lbs jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined

2 large fresh tomatoes in season, coarsely chopped (or use a 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes)

1 cup of crumbled feta cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup flat-leaf parsley, rinsed and chopped

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat the oil in the skillet over medium heat and cook the onion, stirring occasionally until it is soft, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then add the red pepper flakes and tomatoes, and let it cook for another ten minutes or so until some of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce begins to thicken. Add the shrimp and cook for a few minutes, stirring now and then, until they turn pink and begin to firm up (don't overcook them).

Turn the mixture into the baking dish, sprinkle the feta over the top, and put it in the oven for 10 minutes until everything is bubbling nicely. Salt and pepper to taste (the feta should be all the salt you need), and sprinkle with the parsley.

Although in Greece this is typically a starter, it will easily feed four people as dinner with some crusty bread and a Greek salad. In the best of all worlds your kids will bring you a white wine back from Santorini to have with it (as mine did), but any sturdy crisp white will go just fine (feta is a tough flavor match for wine.) White Retsina works if you’ve acquired a taste for it, which most people who aren’t Greek haven’t. Enjoy.

(Photos: R.L. Floyd)