Star of wonder
Not quite a disco Christmas, but close.
We’re off to Louisiana bright and early this morning. Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and Happy Long Weekend to those of you who don’t!
For all Advent Calendar posts, click here.
recipe after the jump
What does a girl do for sustenance when an ice storm is raging outside and her kitchen counters and oven are laden with sweets? She turns to tried-and-true, low maintenance beef stew! And when her husband decides to make her baking duty even more pleasurable by playing ABBA’s Greatest Hits, well … you get the point of the post.
Opting for a simple approach to this stew given my already busy cooking schedule, I kept the ingredient list short — chuck roast, onions, salt and black pepper, chicken stock, baby portobello mushrooms, fresh thyme and sage. And instead of cooking this stew with copious amounts of red wine the way I usually do, I decided to use stout to give the stew an earthier, richer flavor; it paired nicely with the mushrooms and its richness held up to the buttered egg noodles we served them over.
If only I’d made enough for leftovers.
I’ve had tongue on the brain for about a month now, itching to try it out in my own kitchen/smoker, but have been deterred by travel or unkind weather every weekend. Can it be mere coincidence that just this very today the NY Times publishes an article singing tongue’s praises and even gives a shout-out to a Mennonite grandmother within?
If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.
Simple dinner last night, but it really hit the spot. I spread both sides of a fresh baguette with roasted red pepper and sun-dried tomato aioli, topped it with thinly sliced steak left over from Sunday’s kitchen adventure, and loaded it with arugula.
A good sandwich is hard to beat, even when it doesn’t rise to the level of bacon sarnie.
I’m always up for something new, especially when it comes to food — cooking or just eating it. So when Gil told me about a new gourmet food store that recently opened one town over, I could hardly contain my excitement and rushed there the very next day to see what it was about. Well! Zeytinia exceeded my expectations by a mile and we’ve already paid them three visits in one week. Their olive bar is a thing of beauty and sampling the varieties of honey could keep me busy for a year, easily. But where they really shine, IMHO, is in the produce section. The freshness of the fruits and vegetables alone would beat our local grocery, but they also have a variety I haven’t seen in this area.
As I was deciding between fava beans and cranberry beans (neither of which I’d cooked before), Gil made my decision for me: “Hey, those cranberry beans look like they were designed by Betsey Johnson!” (Reason 1, 375 why I adore this man so.) I only bought a small sampling just in case they turned out to be nothing special. I needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The test batch I made last night was so good, we found ourselves back at the store this morning for more, where I served as an ambassador for the beans, explaining how to cook them to a customer who stopped to ask. All I did was simmer the shelled beans in about 2 inches of water with a couple of whole garlic cloves, some peppercorns, and a few sage leaves. When they were soft but not mushy, I drained them, added salt and olive oil, and let them sit on the counter till they reached room temperature.
The beans had a very meaty, almost umami flavor and played well with a dandelion green salad and grilled skirt steak. I just used my regular old preparation of marinating the steak in oil (avocado, this time — another new purchase), garlic, and fresh herbs, then grilling over high heat.
The avocado oil had a beautiful green intensity you probably can’t see here, and a smoother flavor than the grassy olive oil I usually use. It was a good purchase, I’d say. It made a delicious dressing for the dandelion greens, as well, when mixed with sherry vinegar (to add sweetness to the bitter greens), roasted garlic, and a touch of Dijon mustard.
By the way, cranberry beans lose their beautiful pink swirly flair when cooked, but turn so delicious, the trade-off isn’t painful at all.
In summer, the song sings itself. — William Carlos Williams
Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. — Sam Keen
With such gorgeous food so abundant this time of year, it seems unappreciative to go overboard with complicated recipes or convoluted preparations. I prefer to let the song sing itself (and to let my laziness shine).
To that end, a grass-fed porterhouse got a sprinkling of salt and 10 minutes on the grill before having a little bath of olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper mixed with fresh thyme and rosemary from the garden. Even traditional garlic bread was too complicated for me today, so I sliced roasted garlic bread and grilled it lightly with a spritz of olive oil. Broccoli rabe drizzled with lemon juice, olive oil, and pine nuts rounded out the meal and didn’t tax me overmuch.
And those pluots? Also grilled, and topped with balsamic vinegar, honey, and slivered basil.
There are two ways to approach keeping cool (and keeping the electric bill down) while cooking in the summertime: Outdoor cooking and not “cooking” at all.
By far, my favorite of these two methods is taking it outdoors. We bought a Weber Q gas grill a couple of years ago and it’s served us very well. We don’t have the opportunity to do real barbecue on it, but for quick grilling, it can’t be beat. Over the weekend, I grilled our leftovers from the Ringwood Farmers’ Market a couple of weeks ago: Grass-fed bone-in ribeyes (or cowboy steaks, from Walnut Grove Farms) and garlic scapes. To keep things simple, I made a quick topping of rosemary, thyme, pepper, and olive oil for the steak. I didn’t have to stay outside for long and the flavors were fresh and delicious.
For a quick dessert, I stuffed a few fresh figs with blue cheese and wrapped them with prosciutto. A few minutes on the grill to melt the cheese and quick drizzle of balsamic vinegar turned them into one of my favorite desserts of all-time.
Not cooking at all is another option for really hot days. The weather’s been pretty agreeable here lately, but I was craving avocados and didn’t feel like making guacamole or using the avocado as anything other than the main ingredient. So I tried making my first avocado-cucumber soup. Despite the simple handful of ingredients, the flavor of the soup was very complex. This one is definitely going into my late-summer rotation.
recipe after the jump
For something I’d never even heard of before last weekend, I can’t imagine living without the garlic scape now. I picked up a huuuuuge bag of them at the farmers’ market yesterday, but after two days of cooking with them, I didn’t have enough left to pickle. Poor me. Maybe that’ll be a project for next weekend.
Ah, but this weekend … this weekend there was fresh garlic (below, left) and scapes (below, right),
not to mention lovely sugar snap peas
and radishes
and grass-fed beef!
Wow. Did we eat well. Gil was out on a hike yesterday and didn’t share in the stir-fried sugar snaps, scapes, and radishes with grilled shrimp,
but I didn’t hear any complaints when he had the grilled combo today — steak, corn, and scapes.
recipes after the jump
Clockwise, from left: si gum chi na mul, shredded carrots, ho bak na mul, sook ju na mul, gal bee
There’s no greater treat (or easier meal) than grilled food when company comes calling. Slap some meat over a fire, serve it with a few simple side dishes and copious amounts of alcohol, and you’re guaranteed a good time and satisfaction all around.
But sometimes the burger/hot dog/steak axis wears thin, even early in the grilling season. I’ve had great great burgers/dogs/steaks, but only rarely are they memorable on their own. A kosher dog at Yankee stadium, when Gil and I were dating and he surprised me with a ticket to a Sunday game … totally memorable, but for the company. Steak cooked to perfection by R, my longtime boyfriend in St. Louis … again memorable, but for the secret family marinade I weaseled out of him (and which you won’t get here, dear reader — I made a promise and intend to keep it.).
But I did learn a lot of other things with R during our years together. Apart from the many cautionary lessons (which I choose not to dwell on), he taught me to shoot, something I still love to do whenever I make it out to the sporting clays range. I learned the most basic lessons of fly fishing, but haven’t gone back for years. And I learned a lot about Korean food.
See, R was a Korean cowboy-type from Tulsa, a good ol’ boy and gourmand in equal measure. His family loved entertaining with amazing home-cooked meals, so he learned quite a bit from them. Over the years after we parted ways, I cooked the few dishes I remembered and added my own spin to them, but I wanted more. Sure, I could live the rest of my life without eating the same version of Ja Jang Myun (noodles with soybean paste sauce) ever again, but did I really want to? Nuh-uh.
A few months ago, I finally managed to track down the out-of-print cookbook R had — Korean Cooking for You by Moon Ja Yoon — and have made old favorites many times since. But I can also turn to this cookbook for magnificent grilling recipes and produce something other than the typical cookout fare with minimal effort. So that’s what I did Saturday afternoon.
With the gal bee (short ribs), we had si gum chi na mul (spinach), ho bak na mul (zucchini), sook ju na mul (mung bean sprouts), and some awesomely pungent and fresh kim chi Gil picked up at the market Friday. And to make things super-simple, all of the na muls used the same seasoning ingredients, so it’s easy enough to mix up a big batch and just douse the different dishes at once.
Our weekend guest (Deb, Gil’s ex from college) is a smart girl who knows you can pick up wine anywhere, but a chocolate mousse cake from S&S Cheesecake … I … just … there are no words:
So that was dessert. And yes, we made short work of it:
recipes after the jump
We welcomed the return of our prodigal Spring last weekend with open windows and grilled meats and vegetables. Winter stamped around a bit throwing a tantrum that it had NEVER left and why don’t we appreciate it the same WAY, but you can’t encourage a hissy fit, so we ignored it.
In a burst of spring cleaning energy and optimism, I thought it was time to do something about the state of the guest bedroom, where the dingy walls and half-finished look have been depressing me for so long I could not stand it one more minute. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am? Ahem, not being completely batshit crazy, we didn’t make it there quite so early, but at around 7:30am (does that make us partially batshit?) we hit the local Despot for a window consultation (new windows! less dust!) and paint supplies. After our brief foray into the world, we went home and got busy with the redecorating.
Moving furniture and cleaning and taping and edging really take it out of a person, so between coats we thought it better to watch sports and grill instead of cleaning the rest of the house or watching paint dry. (The less said about the Yankees, the better, but gooooo Weber Q!) Having the windows open during the games felt like such a luxury after the past few weeks of grayishly brooding about better weather to come. Aaaaahhh…
The only non-grilled dinner we had all weekend involved testing a new recipe for Chinese Chicken and Mushroom Lettuce Cups from Cooking Light for dinner Saturday; it was such a success it’s already moved into the go-to pile for weeknight dinners. (It was really very simple to make, though mincing the mushrooms took longer than expected. I’ll use our trusty food processor in the future when I’m more pressed for time. I only changed the recipe a little — increasing the amount of mushrooms to use the whole container, using regular soy sauce instead of low-sodium, and adding a handful of slivered almonds because we had them.) The dish is light but has an earthy mushroom flavor and tastes remarkably like the wraps we get at Baumgart’s, a New Jersey diner/pan-Asian restaurant institution.
For dessert, we moved over to Thailand for bananas stewed with coconut milk (or Gluay Buat Chee) from Real Thai by Nancie McDermott. As the recipe notes,
When women in Thailand become Buddhist nuns, they wear white robes. This sweet dish of bananas in coconut milk is white as well, giving rise to its charming Thai name, “bananas ordained as nuns.”
Sunday, I grilled instead of heating up the house after painting. Marinated skirt steak (a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, hot smoky paprika, garlic, cumin, chile powder, salt, and pepper) got a quick turn on the grill and paired well with caramelized onions spritzed with lime juice and a dollop of fresh guacamole. Inspired by the abundant sunshine and cool breeze, we even broke out our patio set and ate overlooking the woods behind our house.
God, I’m so ready for summer.
