February 1, 2010
So we finally bit the bullet and ordered from the good folks at Rancho Gordo. (Thanks for letting us tag along, Jane). These heirloom Borlotti beauties showed up and begged to be cooked. And since we had picked up some grassfed beef at Local Roots for a pot roast, I decided to pull a bit of a switcharoo: instead of pairing the roast beef with its usual pot roast partners of carrots and potatoes, I leaned on some bean starch. Simply after fully cooking the beans, I flavored them by adding them to the pot roast sauce (as one would typically do with potatoes/carrots.)
So it’s as simple as this:
• Make your pot roast as your grandma would or as Alice Waters tells you to. Long slow cooking.
• Cook your beans in a lot of water. To soak or not soak is up to you. Just know that not soaking will mean at least a few hours simmering the beans and adding water/stock but it may also mean your bean skins won’t split. And hey, since you’re making the pot roast, you have a few hours, don’t you?
• Once the beans are fully cooked, stir in a bit of salt and allow them to cool in their liquid. Then drain and stir into your pot roast liquid (after you’ve strained it).
• Yum.
Be warm and well.
.:Nathan
January 29, 2010
Confession: I am blustery.
And if ever I deny it simply return my attention to any one of a handful of tasting notes I’ve written on wines that have truly excited me. I’ll wilt under the pressure. What you’re about to find here proves the point.
2006 Rhys Alpine Hillside Pinot Noir: At first pop, first whif, the scents are immediately apparent and intoxicating – black cherry, a perfumy/floral note, an earthy forest-like component – very pleasing and inviting. Yet initially the palate is hard as nails, wound up, tucked away. So into the decanter it goes… A few hours later and it’s only beginning to emerge. Still sharp, hard, standing up straight but unable to hide tart cherries (the pleasant kind, not too uncomfortably tart, just right), an herb like thyme or even oregano, the flavor of the scents I get when morel hunting, and all propped up by an expansive layer of minerals and this intriguing stemmy, stalky character that must reveal some amount of whole cluster fermentation. The finish is of more cherries, a floral note, and a laser of acidity – all swallowed up by the tannins that serve as a reminder that this is too young, too structured to be drinking now. It’s true. But this is heady stuff. And eminently affable, pleasurable, worthwhile, gratifying – even in this portent state.
For more info on Rhys Vineyards, visit their website.
And please forgive my loquaciousness. It’s a family affliction.
.:Nathan
January 26, 2010
This post is for those of you who have discovered the bloody bag in your whole bird, but might be squeamish about cooking offal. Since you only have one, maybe try throwing some big flavors at it and serving it as an appetizer.
—Identify and wash your chicken liver. Trim any bloody bits, stringy bits, or white bits.
—Start with medium hot pan and a good wodge of butter. Salt and sear your liver on each side for about 2-4 minutes per side until it’s got some good color, but is still pink in the middle. If it’s cooked solid all the way through, it will be gray and rubbery and you’ll risk not eating it again (which is a shame because it’s really delicious).
—Remove your liver to rest and toss in another pat of butter and rosemary sprigs over medium high heat. Sauté some minced shallots and add capers, then balsamic to quickly reduce.
—Pour over your liver and eat straight away.
Voilà. Simple and bright, but indulgent—definitely a good enough reason to spare the liver.
_Matt
January 21, 2010
I’m a sucker for the marriage of savory and sweet. Cookies are always better with an extra pinch of salt. Ice cream is best with a salty caramel. Pork or fish dishes always excite me if they are dancing with a sweet puree or sauce. Or say a savory curry dish paired with a delicate, slightly sweet Riesling. And on and on.
What you see above fits that formula to a T. And is remarkably quick and easy. Comes together in 45 minutes a portion of which you can spend on Facebook stalking high school classmates while waiting for the dish to finish.
And it needs to be mentioned: the combination of apples, shallots, and sage ranks high in the world order.
• Pat dry 4 chicken thighs (skin on, bone in, fresh from a farm), season with salt. Brown them over fairly high heat in a Tb of oil, skin side down first then flip them, about 12 minutes total (but mostly until you have good color).
• Remove chicken to a plate, pour off all but about a Tb of the chicken drippings, and lower heat to med. In the same skillet, sautee 2-3 chopped shallots, 3-4 wedged apples (something crisp and sweet), with a Tb of butter, a few big spoonfuls of honey, and a pinch of salt, five or so minutes until soft and gaining a bit of color.
• Stir in 3/4 Cup of chicken broth, a splash of of apple cider vinegar, and a healthy handful of chopped fresh sage. Bring to a boil and lower heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Return the chicken to the skillet, cover loosely with foil, and cook for 20+ minutes until chicken is cooked through and liquid has reduced a little.
• Serve chicken over the apple mixture, drizzle the extra sauce over it all, and season the chicken to taste.
Alright then. Be well.
.:Nathan
January 20, 2010
On some random frigid night in the near future you may find yourself with dried white beans, leftover kale, onions, stale bread, a can of tomatoes, and access to water and heat. If so, you’ve got the trappings of a world class ribollita. It’s a bonus if you’ve got carrots, celery, garlic, and a few dried spices, but it’s not worth worrying about if not.
This soup manages to be rustic, but dignified and I really like the idea of stretching, scrimping, and managing food, as opposed to letting it die in the refrigerator as an excuse to throw it out. You know who you are. We all are. Ribollita is the way out:
—Soak dried beans overnight and cook them until tender, retaining the cooking liquid.
—Sautée mirepoix (onions, celery, carrots) + garlic in olive oil with a teaspoon of ground fennel seeds and a teaspoon of red chili flakes in a heavy-bottomed casserole or high-sided pan.
—Add one can of whole peeled tomatoes and their juice, the beans and their liquid, and a little water as needed. You may have to add some here or there if the liquid levels get a little bit low.
—Add chopped kale and stale bread roughly torn apart.
—Cook out for about 20-30 minutes and season to taste.
Feel free to splash a little olive oil in when you’re serving for a little richness as the soup can be a little lean otherwise. Then enjoy getting all of your Tupperware back.
_Matt
January 18, 2010
I hate mac ‘n cheese. Then again my notion of the stuff is from the Kraft blue box and a “cheese” of powder origins that somehow comes to life with a splash of milk. Truth is I was the only kid around town that wouldn’t touch the stuff. There was an unfortunate incident around my kindergarten days involving Kraft mac ‘n cheese, a mouthful of milk, and an unpleasant ending. Since then no more.
Until now. This aint that. It’s the business, the real deal. We were oooohing and aaaaahing. Over mac ‘n cheese. What the?
There’s a few keys to keep in mind: 1) Use really good cheese. We chose a 4 yr aged cheddar. Its flavor was incredible and well worth the extra $3 over the bagged fake stuff. Also, be sure to shred your cheese prior to adding it to the liquid. 2) Make a topping for your mac ‘n cheese (50% bread crumbs, 50% shredded cheese (use the same quality stuff), a few Tb of melted butter). 3) Make individual servings in ramekins. It gives you lots more texture (instead of just one big gloppy serving.) 3) Use bacon. We crisped up several strips of bacon, let them cool, crumbled them up, and added them to the cheesy mixture before drowning the macaronis in the lovely cheesy, bacony sauce.
As far as recipes go, any basic one will do. Even Betty Crocker. Just be sure to use way better ingredients wherever possible. You really just need to get the proportions right and the good ingredients take care of the rest. Based on the linked recipe, we skipped the Worcestshire sauce and instead added a dash of cayenne. And the bacon. And the bread crumb cheese topping prior to baking in the oven. But the proportions are right. And that’s most important.
So there it is. Delicious dinner, sexy in its efficiency – humble and modest, voluptuous and savory.
.:Nathan
January 11, 2010
This soup is a bit of a fall remnant. I saw these little beauties at an Amish natural food store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania over the holidays. Turns out, black walnuts are very much unlike English walnuts. They have a smokey, blue-cheesy, unique flavor and aroma that pretty much takes over anything they come in contact with. Apparently, you either love black walnuts or you hate them, but I would say I’m in a 3rd category, which is “learning to love”. This soup is rich and should be served almost as a novelty or amuse bouche. It’s really quick and simple-like and this formula can be used for lots of different types of soup:
—Sautée mirepoix + garlic in a few tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat without coloring.
—Sprinkle a tablespoon + of flour over the vegetables and cook for a minute.
—Add cream and and house-made vegetable stock with a bay leaf, salt, and a few sprigs of thyme, along with a cup of black walnuts.
—After bringing to the boil and reducing to a simmer, allow the soup to do its thing for 10 minutes.
—Blitz in a blender (if you’re serving to guests as specialty fare, you can pass the soup through a strainer or chinois and serve in something dainty and pretty)
It’s amazing how pungent and complex these black walnuts were. If you can get your hands on some, see whether it’s love at first sight or a relationship you’re going to have to work at. Either way, the novelty of cooking with a new ingredient is always worth the effort—
_Matt
January 4, 2010
So I’m going a little Betty Crocker on your ass to start the New Year. I mean, it’s quiche and Betty knows quiche. Which to me means yum. And, really, this was made from a recipe straight out of a Betty Crocker cookbook my mother gave me years ago.
Get out your leftover pie or savory tart crust from that thing you made over the weekend. It’s just sitting there in the fridge and going to go to waste if you don’t get on it. Also, you have plenty of extra eggs, right? Good. Oh and some leftover aged cheddar from the New Year’s Eve party. So there.
- Gently place your pie/tart dough in a 9 inch pie pan. Press it down firmly.
- Sprinkle some crumbled bacon (say 6-8 crispy slices), a little more than a cup of cheese of your choice, and a half a cup (or more or less) of sauteed onions onto the crust.
- Whisk together four eggs. Then whisk in 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, and a tiny bit of cayenne. Stir in 2 cups of heavy cream, half and half, or whole milk. Pour mixture over the bacon, cheese, and onions.
- Bake at 425º for 15 minutes. Turn down the heat to 300º and bake for another 30 minutes until fully set and a knife escapes cleanly.
Happy New Year you hungry monsters.
.:Nathan
December 17, 2009
This is one indulgent little dish, but you deserve it if you’ve roasted a goose and have leftovers. So by the loose definition of “confit” this qualifies—it’s goose legs cooked in their own fat. To be a true confit, I would put the legs and fat in a jar and store it in a cool place for a couple of months to “mature”. As with many traditional delights that gain culinary prominence, confit was originally primarily a preservative method before the days of refrigeration. The fat going slightly rancid and gamy is part of the true confit experience.
The main reason why this dish makes so much sense with goose and duck, is when you roast them they exude an enormous amount of fat. This is highly monounsaturated fat that is exceptionally stable and close to a liquid at room temperature. It’s absolutely perfect for preservation. It’s also perfect for roasting potatoes. Our goose literally gave us an entire quart of goose fat. I’m not kidding (that’s just what we have left):
Dare I say it, I think it’s good for you as well. Not even necessarily in moderation. It’s high in monounsaturated oleic acid, which means it shares many of the good effects of olive oil. But enough about that. The flavor of goose fat roasted potatoes is special. They are deep, crispy, and rich. It’s worth roasting a small goose just to experience the potatoes.
So basically all you have to do is coat some parboiled potatoes with goose fat, a few thyme sprigs, salt and pepper, and shove them in an oven for a little while. To confit your goose legs, submerge them in goose fat and cook them until they’re tender and falling off the bone (like this). Since these were leftovers, we simply tossed shredded goose legs with goose fat and let them crackle alongside the potatoes.
It’s not clear to me after roasting a goose why this particular bird gets snubbed by mainstream America—(a fear of all of the rich subcutaneous fat perhaps?)—but it is definitely worth springing for a goose if you can get your hands on one, especially this time of year.
_Matt
December 16, 2009
When I read through old cookbooks that suggest crudité or bagna càuda as warm-up party/guest fare, it always strikes me that it’s only a good idea when you’ve got great produce to work with. We’ve all had those supermarket plastic “vegetable platters” with some manner of ranch dipping sauce situated in the center of some sad, out-of-season vegetables—the kind where you have to use your molars to get through the drying broccoli or decide whether it’s worth bothering to finish the watery, tasteless, cucumber slices you picked up for some reason.
Don’t fret. Turns out, the farmer’s market has some delicious and exciting opportunities for raw veg this time of year. We asked some of the farmers, which of their produce was best eaten raw. Pictured above are white Japanese turnips, baby carrots, shaved fennel, watermelon radishes, and radish sprouts. Some of these winter veg have an astounding amount of sugar. We very lightly dressed ours with a little lemon juice, high quality white wine vinegar, and sea salt.
As for the dipping sauce, we simply whipped up some mayo and bashed it up in the m&p with a clove of raw garlic, anchovies, capers, fennel tops, orange zest and juice, and a splash of cointreau (to get the party started). Aside from being the perfect informal, “picking at”, sort of standing app, these were beautiful to look at and special for their novelty. They had perky acidity and crunch, and when served with a little sparkling wine, set a great tone for the evening.
_Matt
