From simpicity to complexity and back again: saltimbocca

Ragazzi, we speak at times of "iconic" or "canonical" dishes here.  These are, of course, dishes that everyone has heard of, and that everyone who cooks has in his or her repertoire.    The sly and interesting part of these icons, however, is that while EVERYONE knows them, EVERYONE has a different way of cooking them.  You know this:  if you have an aunt, who makes a dish, and your mom makes or made the same dish, compare the recipes.  And so on: go from family to family, or person to person.  For example, Annalena gets asked, frequently, "how long do you fry your meatballs?"  The answer is, not at all:  Annalena doesn't fry them.  Some people smile and say "of course not," others think she's crazy.  And while she may be crazy,  give her parole on the meatballs:  they're good.

"Saltimbocca" is a dish of Rome.  And there are more variations then you can shake a stick at, probably because it is so easy and has so few ingredients.  Literally, the dish means  "to jump into your mouth," because it's so tasty, and so easy to make, it just jumps in there. 

Annalena suggests that unless you are willing to be very hungry, you use a knife and fork, but Italians are well known for their creative names of dishes, and this is one of them. 

Traditionally, veal serves as the protein for saltimbocca, but as Bob Dylan wrote ( a long time ago)  "the times they are a changing."  Annalena, in researching the dish, learned that for many Italians, chicken is now the way to go.  And Italians are ridiculously conservative about how to cook their dishes.  It is also made with pork, with turkey, and of course, with veal.  Anything that can form a cutlet, can be used.   Annalena has seen this with monk fish.

In further research, Annalena learned that ,years ago, there was a conference in Venice, to try to resolve variations in classic recipes.  Saltimbocca was the only dish where there was agreement.  And Annalena used the recipe so given, from the Italian version of "The Joy of Cooking," known , in English , as "The Silver Spoon."  Except she used chicken.   So, here we go, ragazzi:  a perfect dish for a quick meal.

Let's start with our chicken:  boneless, skinless chicken breasts or cutlets please:

Annalena prefers to use breast, rather than cutlet, because with cutlets, you are at the mercy of the thickness of the cut, and you CAN wind up with cutlets that are too thin.    The ones above, are too thick.  So, you get out some kind of meat pounder (NOT the one you dirty minded folks are thinking of).  Annalena hopes that the picture that follows, gives you a good idea of the thickness you want:

Now, you are going to need salt and pepper (which presumably you have put on the meat already:  the two tiny pieces above, are what are used for "chicken tenders." If you get them with your chicken, treasure the.    Next, you put sage, and prosciutto on the chicken.  Here is where Annalena will make a recommendation:  classically, you put the sage leaves down, and then the prosciutto on top, and secure everything with a toothpick.  Annalena worries about her friends, so she does not do this.  If you do the version where the sage leaves are put on top of the prosciutto, however,  you will HAVE to use toothpicks.  This is not reccomended.   Here are Annalena's prep, with and without the prosciutto:

You can see the sage leaves on one, and then the prosciutto on the other.  Now, we cook.  Melt two tablespoons of butter in a pan, and add the chicken , the ham side up:

Cook this for about 4-5 minutes.  If your chicken is thinner, use less time.  What you want is a color like this:

Annalena is now cooking the chicken, prosciutto side down, for 3-4 minutes.  Then, flip:

Looks good, does it not?  You finish this up by adding about a third to a half cup of white wine.  It will sizzle and  pick up all the brown bits.  After 3-4 minutes this way, you take the cutlets out, and reduce the sauce until the wine is gone.  That goes on top of  the meat, maybe with some more fresh, chopped sage if you like, or not.  Sage is strong. Know your audience:

From start to finish, this dish takes 30 minutes or so to make.  And doesn't it seem festive?  Annalena likes this with asparagus, or green peas, and some other veggie like carrots.  

Ragazzi, go get some good quality prosciutto, and get cooking.  Annalena's watching, and she'll know.

Learning new tricks: Broccoli rabb lasagna

Annalena, as her army knows, is a big fan of lasagna. She is also a big fan of the chef David Tanis, who cooks at Chez Panisse, and used to have a private supper club in Paris.  The table sat, she thinks, 12, and it was open 3-4 nights a week.  One meal, one sitting, with or without wine. Annalena's dream.

Chef Tanis has been writing a column for the NY Times for a while now, and Annalena always takes time to check his contribution.  This week, she HAD to try it.  You see the result above.

Chef Tanis was discussing how this was a dish that is reminiscent of early Spring.  Yes, and no, ragazzi.  Perhaps in California,  although Annalena doubts it.  In New  York, yes, but that is NOT because broccoli rabb is a spring crop. Far from it.

Rabb, as Annalena will call it to save her fingers from hereonin,  is a vegetable that winters over very, very well.  Hence, farmers leave it in the ground, which then freezes.  When the thaw comes, they harvest the rabb,  The cold sweetens what is an inherent bitterness to the vegetable, which Annalena loves.

It is still too early here in NY to get that wintered over stuff, but this recipe was too good to not try.  Annalena made it last night.  It challenged her mode of making lasagna, in a lot of ways but it is really, really good.

Should you be thinking of making this, let Annalena tell you a few things:  you need to keep a thorough sense of organization about you, and you also need a lot of space.  You will be doing a lot of different things,  and putting many things aside, before you assemble everything.  It's worth it.

So, let's get started.

This lasagna has, at its base, a bechamel:  a white sauce.  Now, Annalena has used bechamels in lasagnas.  She uses them when the lasagna is a lighter one:  say a pure vegetable one, or one that has, at its base, fish, and she's not using cheese in it.  She would never use it in a "red" or "meat" lasagna, and her bechamels are always based on milk.  Not so this one. And it works.

For your bechamel,  you need two cups of half and half, a half stick of unsalted butter, and 1/4 cup of flour:

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Put the butter in a sauce pan, and melt it over low heat.  Don't let it brown.  When you've got it melted, add the flour and whisk it  for about a minute, no more.  You'll see it bubble up.  Next, start adding your half and half,  in half cup intervals (so you'll add four of them).  Keep whisking.

You'll need to keep whisking and heating this gently, for about five minutes.   Then, you'll add salt, pepper, nutmeg (ALWAYS put nutmeg in a bechamel, and always grate it fresh).  Finally, you'll want "something spicy."  Mr. Tanis calls for cayenne pepper.  Annalena could not find hers, so she used hot paprika.  Use what you got.  She hopes you can tell the difference between the bechamel when you start and finish, as per:

It's hard to tell, but there's a creaminess and thicknes at this point, that you'll see.  And by learning this, you have many sauces opened to you that all depend on this stuff.

Remember how Annalena said we were going to have to put things aside?  Well, here we go.  Take this pot of bechamel, cover it, and put it in a pot of hot water, bigger than the one you used.  We'll come back to it. 

Let's now turn to the noodles.  Annalena prefers fresh ones, but this recipe called for dry, and that's what she used.  A pound of them.  

Now, you will get TONS of different instruction, on what to do with lasagna noodles.  Some say you don't need to cook the noodles at all. Annalena has no patience for this.  Nor does she have patience for the disgusting "no boil" noodles you can buy.  She finds them gross.  Buy a good quality noodle (for this, Annalena used DeCecco), and before you cook them, count them.  You need this number for your layering.  Annalena counted 22 noodles in the box.  She changed this to 20 because "stuff happens" when you cook pasta, and it did here, too.   Anyway, get a large pot of water boiling, and add your noodles:

Cook these for five minutes.  Get them out, as best as you can, as individual noodles. This may not always be possible.  Have a BIG bowl of cold water ready and dump them in as you go.  You're doing this because they, too, are going to be put aside for a while, and you want them to not overcook.

You will see that Annalen has put hers out on a paper towel, and that some of them have broken.  Not a problem, as we will see.

We now turn to the broccoli rabb:

You will need about two pounds of this, more or less.  Take a look at it, and toss any yellow or gross looking stems. Then, cut about a quarter of an inch of the bottom stem off, and if you think that the stems look too tough to eat, peel the nasty stuff off.  Annalena had her doubts, but the baking process is going to solve all issues.  

You now put these greens directly into the water you used for the pasta, and steam them for 3-5 minutes (Mr. Tanis suggested one minute. Clearly, his rabb was younger and more tender than Annalena's):

You put this into some cold water and move it around.  Then, in small batches, pull it out, and chop it coarsely.  Then - guess what - put it aside. 

Now, we take a digression.  You are going to make a very quick pesto.  You need either a cup of those rabb greens or, if you have extra cooked greens in your fridge, those.  Annalena had some left over kale, and used that.  You put that in a blender or food processor with four chopped cloves of garlic, and a half cup of olive oil.  You get pesto. Guess what?  You put it aside. 

We're ALMOST there, ragazzi.  Now, we make our cheese filling:  1 -1.5 pounds of GOOD  quality ricotta (remember:  no ricotta who's brand ends in an "o" is good ricotta).  Annalena used coach farm goat ricotta, and Bellwether Farms sheep ricotta,  for a total of 1.25 pounds of the stuff.  Grate the rind of a lemon into this, and add salt and pepper. 

Done yet?  Nope.  Now, we grate our cheese.  Annalena loves pecorino, and had a really good piece of it, but in the interest of complexity, mixed it with parmesan.  Three cups is good. Two cups, as called for originally, really is not.  

Guess what?  Now, we have everything we need, to make our lasagna.  So, let's turn up the oven to 375, and let's get our ingredients together:

Looks like total chaos, doesn't it? It is.  You have the noodles, the ricotta, the bechamel, the grated cheese, the pesto and the rabb, going in basically counter clockwise direction.  

Get a 9x13 inch pan (not metal.  Note that Chef Tanis suggests 8x10, which Annalena thinks is too small).  Grease the pan with two tablespoons of butter, and use it all.

Remember how she told you to count your noodles?  Well, you're going to make 4 layers, so... take a quarter of them, and lay them down in the pan.  Don't worry about coverage: this is going to bake up beautifully.  Now add 1/4 of the bechamel, and guestimate as best as you can,  by putting down 1/3 each of the ricotta, the greens, the pesto and  14 of the grated cheese:

Repeat this, until you've made three layers and then cover with the last noodles, the last bechamel, and the last cheese.  Take another two tablespoons of butter, and dot the thing:

Cover this all with tin foil, and bake it for twenty minutes.  After 20 minutes, you get this:

Don't be discouraged. This is, truly, a "work in progress."  Now, take the foil off, and bake for another twenty minutes, and:

You should let this sit for 20-30 minutes before you eat it.  You will love it.  There is a wonderful complexity about this dish.  The lemon is there, as is the softness of the rabb, with just a bit of the residual bitterness. The bechamel lets you forget there's no mozzarella or other cheese here, and good ricotta:  well, you can't go wrong.

Yes, it took some time, but you know what?  If you are planning to serve lasagna at Easter, you have your dish!

Thank you Chef Tanis.  Here is a case where, being an enabler, is a good thing.

Roasting redux: How Annalena roasts a chicken

Now, ragazzi, those of you who have been with Annalena from the first day (show of hands  ?) will be saying "she did this already. Did she lose her mind?"  Well, the latter may be true and it may have happened a long time ago.  Heaven knows that Annalena has had cause to lose her mind, more than once; however, with this in mind, situations change, and a couple of weeks ago, Annalena's amanuensis (look it up, carissimi), posted a picture of the dinner she and the Guyman were eating that day.  It was indeed the chicken above.  The response was, to be conservative, overwhelming.    It does go to show the old adage is true:  "never underestimate a roast chicken."

Did Annalena just make that up?  Well, it IS true.  If you want to see people happy, roast a chicken and serve it to them.  Period.

There are many roast chicken recipes out there, many of them very good.  To Annalena, this one is the best.  It is her version of the even better roast chicken you can get at Zuni Cafe' in San Francisco.  They roast it to order, so you wait for an hour, drinking superb martinis, eating glorious oysters on the half shell, and perhaps starting with an amazing Caesar salad (which is not Italian, by the way, but Mexican), and then the chicken, roasted in a wood oven, comes to the table, on a pile of amazing bread salad.  

You can come back after you book your tickets ragazzi. Seriously, when people have layovers in SF, Annalena tells them to get in a cab and go eat here.  You should too.

What is amazing about this chicken, is its simplicity.  Simplicity to the point that Annalena recalls a comment Julia Child once made, when confronted with cooking of this type.  She was NOT being complimentary when she said "that's not cooking, that's shopping!"  Well, yes, much of what we cook here on this blog is about shopping.  The cooking part isn't difficult, the learning to be discerning is.  So, be discerning.  Here's what you need.

You need a glorious, organic, free range, bird, that weighs from 3.5-4 pounds.  Much bigger than that, and the bird will not cook properly.  Much smaller than that, and the bird will burn.  Some have said that they can do this with bigger birds, cut in half.  Annalena does not recommend this.  She does insist, however, that you make sure  your bird is one that has been grown properly, so that you have a very good quality start.  You will also need salt, and a few sprigs of herbs.  Fresh ones.

That's your grocery list.  It's also your ingredient list.  Note what is absent:  oil, pepper, lemon, seasonings.  It's all about you and the bird, so again, GET A GOOD ONE. 

Now, what you do is first of all, get any bag of organs and innards out of the cavity.  Annalena is always surprised when she hears how many people forget this.  Then, if you see any obvious globs of fat, cut them away.  Then, wash your bird, dry it, and put it on a plate or tray which you have lined with paper.  

Get  a hefty teaspoon - just a teaspoon - of salt, and rub it all over the exterior of the bird.  No need to salt the interior.   Finally, get those herbs.  Look at your chicken and you  will see that there are two, obvious places, at the breast end, under which  you can slip herbs.  A bit harder to find, are the insert points near the thigh, but you'll find them.  Slip the herbs under these parts, and then put your bird in your refrigerator for overnight.  Go and wash your hands, your counter, your working utensils, everything. 

What you are now doing is, effectively, "brining" your bird without using water.  Those of you with a bit of chemistry will remember the principle of osmosis:  water at a lower salt concentration will pass to a source where the salt is at a higher concentration, in an attempt to create equilibrium  (yes, Annalena has just personified water molecules.  Deal with it).    And in the process, the salt will be pulled under the skin, and into the meat of the chicken.  You will have a well seasoned bird, and  you have just learned how little salt you need. 

Yes, you can certainly add other  spices here.  Do Annalena a favor and try salt only the first time.  You may never use another seasoning.  

When you are ready to make dinner,  preheat your oven, to 500 degrees.  No typo there, ragazzi, 500 degrees.    And - a very important step - choose your pan.  You must eliminate nonstick cookware, as the temperature is too high for the coating and will fill your kitchen with harmful gases (no joke, darlings).  The size of the pan matters too, because if it is too big, you will be creating a surface with a lot of liquid, which will burn and smoke up your house.  If your pan is too small, the liquids will overflow and fall to your oven floor, and you will have the same problem.  So, look for a pan that will be, as  Goldilocks once said , "just right."  If you don't have one, use a smaller one, and put everything on a baking sheet. 

But before you do this, put the pan on a burner, and heat it for about two-three minutes.  Take the bird, and pour any liquids that have accumulated in the cavity out.  Then, place it, breast side up, into the hot pan, and move it immediately to the oven.  Roast for thirty minutes. 

Now, protect your hands - because the pan is going to be VERY hot - and with a set of tongs, turn the chicken, breast side down.  Roast for another fifteen minutes.  Again, cover your hands,  and turn the bird breast side up.  If it is on the small side, roast for ten minutes, fifteen if it's a bit on the large size. 

Take out the pan (again, make sure you have something to protect your hands),  let it sit for 5-10 minutes, and then carve the bird into serving pieces.  Annalena uses poultry shears to cut the breast, and when you cut the legs away, if you are having trouble, let your knife "speak" to you.  If you run into a bone, move your knife.  It's not hard.  

When you are done, you may very well be astonished as to how much liquid you have in the pan.  Some of that is water, and other juices, but a lot of it, is chicken fat.  This will tell you how much fat there really is in a chicken.  Annalena pours this off, saves it, and discards it when she has a full jar.  IF you are so inclined, there will be brown bits in the pan.  Add a little wine or broth, off the heat, and keeping your hands protected(because the pan is still very hot), bring this to a boil, stirring to get the bits dissolved, and treat that as a pan sauce for your chicken.

Annalena has taught many of her acolytes how to make this chicken, and there has not been a one who did not say , at one point or another "are you sure this is going to work?" 200 or so of them later, Annalena is sure it will work.  Look at the picture. 

Annalena must also say that if you are cooking for a crowd, you can do two of these in  your oven at the same time.  More than that requires a professional oven, of the type we all wish for and do not have.  So, keep that in mind, ragazzi. 

"A chicken in every pot."  Well, turn that pot to a pan, and Annalena agrees

Laying down the perfect bundt.... cake: citrus bundt cake, with or without syrup

You've seen the shape, ragazzi, yes?  The typical "bundt" cake, and  you may very well think that this is a very, VERY old, and traditional form of a cake:

Well, as Annalena learned very recently, (say in the last five minutes), we are ALL mistaken, unless we have a very interesting take on what is VERY old (and some of you probably do feel that way, as we go).

Bundt cakes, as we know them, only came into prominence, in the 50's-60's, thanks to a cookware company.  They are based on a much, MUCH older shape of cake and recipe, something called a gugelhopf.  These are German in origin, or Middle Europe.  You can buy gugelhopfen, and generally, they are rich cakes which are not too sweet.  

"Bundt" is a name that seems to have come out of the blue.  The cookware company which designed the pans,  gave it that name, and the best culinary linguists can come up with, is to analogize the word to "bund" which, as you may guess, is close to the word "to bundle," which apparently has to do with the notion that the cake "bundles" around the tube in the middle of the pan. 

As the kids say, "whatever."  For some reason, these shaped cakes catch our fancy. Annalena will tell you that, if she makes a cake in a bundt pan, and also makes the VERY SAME cake in the standard, loaf pan you see next to the bundt pan, people will INSIST that the bundt cake tastes better.  Perhaps it does, as we eat with our eyes. 

Bundt cakes are BIG cakes.  As you can see from above,  Annalena's bundt pan is much larger than her 8x4 bread loaf pan, which takes 3 cups of flour for a loaf.  You can get smaller ones, but generally, a bundt pan is going to take upwards of six cups of ingredients.  You need to keep this in mind when you make them.  You also need to keep in mind that a shape like that of a bundt cake requires some special care.  All those "nooks and crannies" have to be greased, and they have to be greased CAREFULLY.  Even so, as you will see from Annalena's finished product, getting one out is always a challenge.  Make sure you grease the tube of the pan REALLY well, and then get EVERY surface.  Some also flour the pans before they bake the cake. Annalena doesn't do that, because she feels that the combination of the butter and flour on the outside of the cake is gross.  She'd rather eat the more damaged one, than one that doesn't taste good.  Also, given the size of these monstrous cakes, you'd best be ready to have leftovers, or to serve it to a lot of people.

The recipe that follows is, at its core, a Northern Italian one, from Patricia Wells.  If you make it to her specs, you have a breakfast cake, or a tea cake.  If you add the syrup Annalena speaks of in this recipe, you have a dessert cake.  Go either way you like. And do not feel constrained to make only this recipe in these pans.  They are not inexpensive, and you should be ready to make more than one cake in them. Still, if you made only one cake, this would be a good one to make.

COMINCIAMO!    Let's start by greasing that pan really, really well.  You can start by using the paper from two sticks of unsalted butter, that has gone nice and soft.  You will probably need more than this, but start there, and get the baby well lubricated.  

Zest one orange, and one lemon, and then juice them.  Combine those juices, and also, in a separate cup (for now), measure out 3/4 of a cup of whole milk.  

Now, you're going to "clabber" the milk, by pouring the milk and juices together.  It doesn't matter which one you put in which, but you do need to mix them together.  Let them sit.  "Clabbering" is a process that is not unlike souring milk - in fact, it IS souring milk.  The product is not pretty:

Looks gross, yes?  (Annalena never uses that word, but she used it twice here.  Hmmm).    

Let's begin making our cake.  Get out your mixer, and put the two sticks of butter in  a mixing bowl, with a cup and a half of sugar.  If you happen to have vanilla sugar, use it.  If you don't, get ready to add vanilla, by putting a teaspoon or so into that clabbered milk. 

Let's stop for a minute, and think about this: we've already added two sticks of butter and a cup and a half of sugar.  if you look at other recipes for cakes, you will see that, we are essentially making two cakes at once. 

Begin beating these together,  and be prepared to take your time.  You want things to be very light, and very fluffy - 2-5 minutes.  Stop every  now and then, and scrape things down to make sure everything is in fact getting mixed.    After you've done this, add , one at a time, 5 large eggs.  You did read that correctly:  5, large eggs.  Wait until each one is incorporated, before you add the next one.  Again, keep stopping to scrape down the bowl if you need to, and you probably will.  

You'll have what looks like buttercream, and this is in fact the base of your cake.    

Separately, mix together 3 cups of all purpose, unbleached flour,  1.5 teaspoons (or, half a tablespoon) of baking powder, and half a teaspoon of each of baking soda and salt.  You add both leavens here, ragazzi, because you have acid, from the citrus, and alkalinity, from the milk.    Add the grated citrus peel to that. 

Now, we're ready to do something that puzzles most people,  and is really a simple step.  You are going to add portions of the flour mixture, and then the milk mixture, and each time, you will wait until the added material is totally incorporated:

and

This last picture is what you get at the end.  Think flour/milk/flour/milk/flour/milk/flour.   Four adds of flour, and 3 of milk.  So you have a hefty three cups of flour, and probably about a cup and a quarter of milk mixture.  Do the math, and you'll be fine. And if you're not, don't much matter.  

When that's done, pour everything into the bundt pan.  This takes a bit of attention, because you have a LOT of batter, and you have a big whole in the center of your pan.  Annalena finds it easier to do this with a spatula.  Use whatever means necessary. 

A big cake like this needs at least an  hour at 350.  Baking hotter is not helpful, nor is it a good idea.  What happens with a large cake like this, at a high, hot temperature, is that the outside cooks so fast that the heat cannot get into the center, and you get a raw cake.  Bundt cakes are a place where the old "stick a straw in the center" is a good test, because you won't see the hole in the finished product. For those who don't know the straw test:  you stick a straw into the center most part of the cake, and pull it out. Look at what, if anything, is stuck to it: if it's wet, your cake isn't done.  If it's not, it is.   When it's done, take it out. 

Let the cake sit for ten minutes, and now, say a prayer.   Seriously, this is where luck comes into play.  Annalena tries to make things work better, by running a soft knife around the edges, and the center of the cake, before the inevitable"turn it over and knock it out. " Indeed, that's what you're going to do here.  Get a plate large enough to cover the bottom of the pan, put on your oven mits, and turn it over. Shake it if you have to.  Shake it a bit more.  Keep praying.  If you get nowhere, try the knife trick some more, and if that doesn't work, here's a trick professional bakers taught Annalena: put the whole cake pan on a burner, turn the heat to low, and heat up the pan.  When cakes stick, it's because the sugar has carmelized, and you're melting it.  The problem with this technique, is that your pan is getting very hot, and you still have to turn it over. 

Well, here's what Annalena's looked like.  It did not turn out perfectly, but one patches when this happens: 

At this point, you can serve the cake as a slightly sweet, simple tea or coffee cake.  But if you want to do something fancier - and you can do this with any cake - have a syrup ready.  You can use purchased syrups - like the kind they use in espresso and cappuccino - or  you can make your own.  That way you can control the sweet.  Annalena uses half cups of sugar, water, and lemon juice (or key lime juice) on her cake.  You can brush the syrup on the cake, or pour it.  Do it while the cake is hot, and you will be surprised at how quickly, and how easily  the cake absorbs that liquid.  This, by the way, is the secret behind baba au rhum, where the batter is VERY light, and the cake takes a ton of syrup.    It is also the secret behind that wonderful Greek semolina cake ,ravani', and many of the cakes of the Middle East and southern Greece.

So there you have it, ragazzi.  A nice, big cake, designed to impress.  You will find, literally, HUNDREDS of bund cake recipes out there.  Let this one be a start for you, and then, have some fun.  Make a cake.  People will love you.  They really will. and with a cake this large, a LOT of people will love you.

Going vegan and improvising: grain and bean cakes

Ciao, ragazzi. Annalena apologizses for her absence.  She has not been well, has been busy, travelling, and dealing with the ravages of a pet who is in his senior years, and not well. So she has not been up to sharing her culinary adventures with you.  She will try to catch up here.  In this post, we are going to explore how and when you can substitute. Annalena did this, and so can you.

What you see above, are amaranth and white bean cakes, with various seasonings and additives. They were supposed to be quinoa cakes, but when Annalena went to her cupboard, she found that she was out of quinoa.  She was, however, loaded with amaranth. She read the recipe, and ultimately, this is a recipe about the beans, and all else is there for binding and adding flavor.  The beans , she had.  And we'll get to that as well.

The recipe also called for rolled oats,  which Annalena did not have in the house (the Guyman and she eat steel cut oats for breakfast.  The oats were intended for binding, clearly, and steel cut oats will not "cut it" for that).  Further, the recipe called for pignoli nuts.  Now, Annalena has these in the house:  SOMEWHERE.  She was not going to run around looking for them, especially since there was a container of roasted walnuts (and one of pecans), in her cupboard, where the quinoa should have been.  And, finaly, the recipe called for Worcestershire sauce, which again, Annalena has... SOMEWHERE.   But in reading the recipe, it was again, also clear, that the Worcestershire was there to add "umani," that mystical sixth taste.  Tamari, or soy sauce , will do that as well.  

So here is what the original recipe called for:  1/2 cup of quinoa,  one 15 ounce can of white beans, drained, 1/3 cup rolled oats,  1/4 cup pine nuts,  1 tablespoon of dijon mustard,  1 tablespoon of w

Worcestershire sauce, 2 teaspoons of fresh thyme , a teaspoon of fennel seeds, a teaspoon of grated lemon zest, and salt and pepper.  

You will see what Annalena changed.  And she gives you permission to make other changes. She is also going to address the issue of "canned" beans herein.  Pay heed.  

Okay, so if you use quinoa, you will cook it in lots of salted water.  Annalena's recipe called for 3 quarts of boiling salted for the half cup of grain.  This is a waste of water.  A quart and a half will do fine.  You will probably be buying this stuff in a package, so follow the directions.  If you don't, then cook it for twenty minutes, and drain it.  

It is somewhat important to get excess water out, especially if you are using canned beans.  If you are not,  it is not such a big deal.

To the beans:  you can use any bean you like in this recipe.  Ragazzi, you know how Annalena feels about canned beans. She had cooked up a batch and had them.  Essentially, you need two cups of the cooked guys.  The canned ones will stay very moist and soft, even after you drain them.  As cooked ones will have a texture dependent on YOU,   pay heed, because you will want to puree this stuff.  Here are Annalena's cooked  beans:

Now, put the beans, and the grains into your food processor, and add the oats, or, as Annalena did, an equivalent amount of panko bread crumbs  (you can use regular ones too.  Probably, you could also use cooked rice), and then your nuts (Annalena did use walnuts).   Let's look at the mustard now.  There are various types of dijon mustard, and they vary in strength.  If you LIKE strong tasting mustards, then get an authentic French type, and use the whole tablespoon.  If you have a milder one, do the same.  And if the taste and zing of mustard is not to your liking, cut it back.  Also add your Worcestershire,  soy or tamari sauce.  If you do not have thyme, use something else.  Annalena made a second batch lately, and used rosemary.    If you don't have the fennel seeds,  think about what flavor profile you like, because the rest of the ingredients are not that strong, and the spice will come out in the final flavor profile.    The lemon adds the zing.  Annalena will not mind if you add the juice too. 

Now, this is what happened when Annalena did her pureeing:

This is NOT quite what you want.  The beans were too dry,  because Annalena cooks her beans dry.  She added quarter cups of water until she got a smooth puree, and all was fine.  If you use canned beans, you won't have the problem. 

When you have a good texture, wet your hands.  This is important.  This is sticky, and it will be hard to form the cakes without some moisture on your paws.  If you take the stuff right out of the processor, make sure you take the sharp blade out.     You can do things like measure equivalent quantities, or , like Annalena, guestimate. 

Annalena likes to refrigerate these overnight to make them firmer, but you don't have to. What you DO need to do is use a non-stick pan to cook them, and make sure not to worry as they soak up the oil - which they will.  You may use up to three tablespoons of oil to get these guys cooked.  Use a medium heat level, and cook them for 3-4 minutes on each side until you get some color. 

 Serve these forth with a little sauce or salsa or something, to make them taste really good.  They are good on their own (Annalena had some for breakfast today),  but they are better with that little kick.  The picture above, is some jarred, pumpkin salsa that Annalena had.  This was good.  Pick your flavor for the babies, and do em good.  

This isn't very hard, ragazzi.  If , like Annalena you try to have beans in the house at all times, you're ready.  Go for it.  A nice, satisfying vegan meal, that will delight you.  Annalena promises that.