Ginger Chicken with Broccoli

Francie and I are on Nantucket - out at the west end in Still Water, a cottage overlooking Madaket Harbor. Last night I cooked up the following to go with rice:

Marinate for a couple of hours 2 chicken breasts cut in to bite size pieces in:
- 2 in chunk of ginger cut into thin slices (I had only the Scimitar that comes with the cottage to cut with so the ginger was a bit more chunky than optimal.  If you cut it fine enough, it will cook and be yummy to eat)
- 2 - 3 big cloves of garlic, minced
- Lemon Juice (from one of those little plastic lemons, I recommend a real lemon, but I was unwilling to go to Stop & Shop just for that)
- 2-4 T of Rose's  (sweetened lemon lime juice, it was in the fridge, but added a nice something)
- Salt & Pepper
- Cumin
- Tabasco

Stir fry as follows:
- 1/2 large sweet onion, char it a bit
- then the chicken, marinade and all
- at about the time marinade has a minute or 2 before it is reduced away, add about the same amount of broccoli as chicken (I did not have enough broccoli)

Cover with a lid to steam the broccoli.

Finish with about 2T butter.

serve with steamed rice...

Ground beef comfort

Ground beef:
brown the ground beef in a skillet
season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, Worcestershire sauce (3 -4 good squirts)
when the juices start to evaporate its done!

Mashed potatoes:
cut 1 MamaFaye of potatoes (see the header on the blog) into 2" chunks
boil until fork tender in salted water
Mash with butter and milk  (for about 1/2 bag of potatoes, I use about 1cup milk and 1/2 stick butter)

nuke some peas

make a pile on your plate and enjoy!!

Rice Noodles and Veg

chop veggies:
- carrots (thin)
- broccoli (small pieces)
- garlic
- peppers ?

soak noodles:
- put the number of noodles you think you will need for the number of people you are going to serve into a bowl
- boil water
- cover noodles with very hot water
- soak about 5 minutes

Skillet on the stove to heat

- about 1:3 ratio of sesame to olive / canola oil in the pan
- when it is hot, add the carrots, followed shortly by the broccoli
- cook for a bit with salt and pepper
- add curry powder or other spices and garlic

when veggies are done, add noodles and "toss"

Tofu and Rice

Sautéed Tofu and Rice

Marinate the tofu:

1. Cut a 1lb block of tofu into about 8 slices each about 3/4 - 1 inch thick
2. Fold a CLEAN tea towel in half long ways and arrange the slices on the towel so that you can fold the towel into a "tofu sandwich"
3. Squeeze the water out of the slices
4. Arrange the tofu on a platter and slowly drizzle them with tamari so that it soaks in.  Turn the slices over and repeat.  Let them sit for a bit.

This is a good time to start the rice:

1. Bring 4 cups of *salted* water to a boil in the rice pot.
2. When the water is boiling add 2 cups of long grain rice
3. Bring the water back to a boil.
4. When it is boiling give the rice one good stir, turn down the heat to medium low (around 3 on the dial), and cover
5. Adjust the lid of the pot a bit if it oozes too much.
6. Cook until the rice is done - about 15-20 minutes.
7. When the rice is done; turn of the heat and leave it covered. 

Saute the tofu:

1. Now start a skillet heating on almost high.  Add a bit of sesame oil and a slug of olive oil to the pan.
2. When the oil is hot, arrange the tofu slices in the pan and let them cook until the are browned on the bottom (5 minutes?)
3. Turn the slices over and repeat the cooking
4. Remove the tofu from the pan.

Eat....

Of course there is nothing green here.  Steamed broccoli is good with this.  You can also nuke some frozen peas.

Things we cooked so far this weekend

Its been a rainy weekend so we been busy...

Chicken Stock
Baked Beans
Fried Noodles
Steaklettes
Scrambled Eggs with Veggies
Devil's Food Cake
Coffee Cake
Biscotti
Grass Fed Prime Rib
Apple Crisp (those apples were not going to be thrown away!)

Yet to come:
Roasted root veggies with potatoes
Green salad
Green Beans

One More Undercooked Bean & Another Slab of Flesh

Harvest is a fine dining restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin that prides itself on serving seasonal and local / sustainable food.  It is the only such establishment in Madison that is open on Monday, which is the day of the week that the Nelson Institute Board of Visitors typically meets.  Hence I have dinner there about twice a year.  Following the most recent of those dinners, two things have stuck in my mind.  


The first is a Harvest-specific complaint related to the first course; the second is an observation sparked by the lack-luster presentation of the main course.  Before I continue, I should be up front with respect to a couple of details.  As I noted above, I typically eat there on Monday night so maybe the chef is not present and the staff are not on their best game.  A more likely factor is that I am usually with a large party.


So, on with the tirade related to my recent visit...


I ordered yellow split pea soup for the first course.  It was advertised as being prepared with North African spices which sounded nice. When the soup finally came, it was not pureed as I had expected, but the real problem was that the peas were well on the crunchy side of perfection. Now I might have over looked this as my own naiveté; maybe that was what they were going for.  But on two other occasions (likely also Monday nights) I ordered minestrone soup and the beans in each bowl varied from crunch to mush.  


Now I have been cooking beans as an amateur for 25 years; it is not rocket science, but it does take some attention.  Soak the beans, then cook them carefully ("until they are sure of themselves" as John Thorne says. (If more authority is need, McGee addresses beans from a theoretical stance.))  Harvest prides itself on fine dining; it seems that "cooking beans nicely" should be high in the kitchen's priorities. 


While it is unacceptable for a resturaunt of Harvest's presumed caliber to fail to cook the beans properly, the larger issue I am concerned with was prompted by the main course.


The menu offered a variety of slabs of flesh for the main course.  Each was to be complemented by something from the garden and a sauce.  I ordered a fish dish; I do not remember what I ordered because the kitchen didn't have it and substituted sea bass.  It was complemented with a few pieces of spinach and a sauce which, nearly a week later, was quite forgettable.  What I do recall, was the size of the plate and the sense of "is that it?"  There was no joy or beauty on that plate - only a sense of "lets get these plates out".


That disappointment prompted the realization that we have come to focus on the meat (poultry, fish) at the expense of other elements of a dinner.  As we learn to appreciate the fineness of grass-fed, wild-caught, free-range etc, those flavors and textures should be appreciated fully.  Just as a cake can be too sweet, a fine slab of flesh on its own can be overpowering.  To fully appreciate these delicacies we will need to eat less of them and to fully appreciate them we will need to learn to complement them with other elements. (I am sure Bittman has something to say about this.)  


I am quite pleased that there is such growing attention to food and its quality and the impacts of its production.  I am pleased that fine dining is coming more and more to imply high quality ingredients that are organic and local or sustainably grown / raised.  Thus I hope that Harvest and others in Madison and around the globe will rethink their main course plates.  Let us think of the protein bit as flavor and texture that compliments other flavors and textures on the plate. Let us imagine bellies and palates satisfied by beautiful combinations of the full cornucopia of what is available.

how not to make meatballs

Don't put in too many corn chip crumbs (2/3 of a cup to about 1.7lbs of meat is too much - I think less than 1/4 cup for that much meat).

Do put in enough salt - nothing new here.

otherwise they were ok. Added a bit of bison that was nice before the corn flavor fully developed and completely overwhelmed everything.

Need to work on my tomato sauce as well - it was that sort of day in the kitchen.

Oh well - even in Australia...

Beef with ginger

Not much to it...

2 NY strips sliced about 1/4" marinated with about a thumb size bit of ginger grated fine, 5-6 cloves of garlic minced light soy sauce and a some sesame oil. Mix it up in a bowl, let it sit. Added the chopped white parts from a bunch of scallions.

Into a hot skillet for about 4-5 minutes. Err on the raw side - do not over cook!

Add the chopped green bits from the scallions after you put the cooked meat into a serving bowl.

Served it with stir-fried vegetables (I put carrots in hot oil to start, gives them a head start cooking and makes them sweet and yummy). In this one also had a bit of onion, zucchini, fresh green beans and more garlic. Timari and a splash of sesame oil.

It was a hit with the teenagers - even the mostly vegetarian tried the beef and had more.

Pork that doesn't pull

It is indeed a foggy morning - the sun is shining and the snow is sparkling, but my mind is lost somewhere in a deep swamp.

The pork that is liked is like the "first one you did" - saying that to me is the historical repetition of my asking Mom to recreate the amazing dish she had just constructed from leftovers. Maybe not exactly as I know where the first roast came from and I am pretty sure that everything was fresh (but I can't really remember if I poured a little Kent White magic in the first one...)

How do they do it over and over again, plate after plate, night after night, turning out consistent food that pleases the full range of the senses... ?

anyway today my senses are overwhelmed and my operating system is completely bogged down...

Secret ingredient: Chili

In preparation for the Nelson Institute Chili Cook-off tomorrow and in response to some ground meat that really needed to be cooked, we decided to make some chili. The prep was rushed and lots was going on, but it came out ok.

I stubbed my toe on the cayenne and was undisciplined with the cumin and coriander. It was a bit too spicy for Francie and Zora, but the flavor was pretty good. I added another cube of the secret ingredient toward the end. A good daub of sour cream and some scallions improved the taste further.

(p.s. there is another secret ingredient, but it is a secret)

Review: Harvest

food: 7/10 - service: 8/10 - ambiance 8/10

On Monday, one of our lecture series entertained the speaker at Harvest. We were a decent crowd and we had a set menu to choose from. The variety was reasonable if a bit staid. Actually I was a bit disappointed with the variety on the first course, but did find the slow roasted beets,toasted hazelnuts, buttermilk blue cheese, hazelnut vinaigrette to be an interesting possibility and started to build from there. The main courses included two beef choices along with a vegetarian pumpkin ravioli and a striped bass dish. I opted for the porcini salt rubbed angus tenderloin served with spinach and fingerling potatoes. For dessert I ordered the almond cake with bourbon ice cream.

The beets were not quite what I had hoped. I would have liked the vinaigrette to be a bit more present than it was; a bit more bite would have helped the beets and would have made me happy. The tenderloin was very nice and the almond cake was ok. The best dessert was one that I didn't order and whose name I can't remember. It was a gelled vanilla cream with a simple blood orange sauce - that was really good.

The service was pretty good. It can be spotty at Harvest, but this night our waitress was attentive and gracious.

All in all it was a good meal, but I felt that it was not particularly inspired. I found myself longing for a bit less fine-food aspiration and for more excitement in the dishes that come to the table. Looking forward to dinner at Levain up in the Twin Cities soon (I may review it, but I will definitely have a bias as my nephew is a cook there).

Review: The Great Dane

food: 5/10 - service: 4/10 - ambiance 5/10

I have been on a minor quest here in Madison for a really good burger. My standard is Big Nick's (see the photo) just below 77th on Broadway in NYC. I say minor quest, because I haven't really tried very hard, but tonight I went to the Great Dane at Hilldale to give the burgers and beer a shot. It seemed like a good shot and Francie recently gave them a cautious thumbs up.

It was Friday in a serious college town, but Zora was at D&D and Francie was on a boat race trip so I was solo and found a seat at the bar without too much difficulty and a bit of luck. Point number one - the bar staff are easy on the eyes, but not too interested in a single stranger at the bar.

I ordered an IPA and a basic burger with fries. The burger promised to come with the basics plus bermuda onion. It was delivered promptly, but the onion (two rings) was disappointing. The pickle chips were good, and like the onion, I could have used more. Point number two - the burger itself was good, but the bun killed it. After a bite or two with the top and bottom bread, I discarded the bottom of the bun and ate the rest with only 1/2 of the bread. (There is another post coming that will address the sorry state of bread here in the Midwest. (Seriously, how hard is it to make a good hard roll?))

The beer was good. I wanted something a bit more bitter, but they were out of the ESB.

The Great Dane itself is new construction in the expansion of the Hilldale Mall. Across the intersection is the Sundance Cinema. It has that ordered-out-of-a-bar-decor catalog feel. It is clean if somewhat sterile. Plenty of TVs showing sports. Kind of noisy, but not too bad. Plenty of drinking, but this is Wisconsin and it is a bar.

All in all it was a burger in a bar on a Friday evening. Nothing to write home about, but the beer was decent and the burger was about what you would expect.

Some thoughts on Chili

I have been invited to judge the Nelson Institute chili cook off again this year. My credentials as a chili cook are presented in the photo...

Last year there were some interesting interpretations of chili, so I think that it is only fair that I lay out some of my fairly strongly felt ideas about chili. I must admit to being on the conservative end of the spectrum and I definitely am not from the SouthWest on this issue.

• Beans do have a place, although I have, on occasion, encountered good chili where they were absent
• Meat is optional; if it is present, it should probably come from something with 4 feet
• Collards don't belong, but did manage an award last year (see below)
  
• Heat does not equate with good; well developed, and preferably complex, flavor matters a lot
• It is hard to make good chili without cumin

There was some good chili last year. The one with the collards won an award for Best Use of an Ingredient not Usually Found in Chili; it was ok. There was one that was sweet; it won for Best Dessert Chili. I didn't like that one so much; chili should not be sweet.

Tune in after 27 April for tales of this year's cook off...

Waiting for stock

One of my favorite things to cook these days is stock. There isn't much to do, but that is part of what I like about it.

I collect chicken carcasses in the freezer until I have enough to fill my 3 quart pot (I am going to get a bigger one soon, but start with what you have). In this method, the bones have been roasted; I will soon try with necks and backs from the butcher - those will have to be roasted first, but I might just toss them in the pan and see what happens.

Cover the bones with cold water water and add some other flavors - yesterday I added some leek greens, bay leaves, a stalk of celery, about 10 pepper corns and a few grains of salt.

Now here comes the waiting part - put the pot on the stove over the smallest burner and turn it to darn near the lowest it will go (if it won't go very low, turn it all the way down). The objective is to get the temperature in the pot to a very low simmer. You want the bubbles to just barely be coming up. Do not boil! You want to hold it at that barely a simmer temperature for a long time. You can watch it, you can adjust the heat a bit, you can run some errands and come back to a great smell in the house. The key is patience.

Once the liquid is a nice color and has a good flavor although perhaps a bit weak, the first part is done and it is time to strain the liquid. I use about 4 thicknesses of cheese-cloth in a strainer and pour from the pot into a bowl through the strainer. Toss the leftovers. Now if you would like a bit more kick in the stock return it to a cleaned pot and to the stove at the same very low heat and reduce, reduce, reduce...

qwishee

It is a sunny Easter morning here in the midwest. The snow from last week is still with us, but will diminish as the temperature soars into the mid-30s later today.

The light is beautiful in Francie's south-facing, farm-style kitchen and we have a big lot of folks here for brunch. My suggestion of leg of lamb was over-ruled by Francie's dislike of said meat and then by the timing of the need to serve her Mom at mid-day rather than late in the afternoon. We have settled on quiche and at mid-morning we added Anna had her 3 kids to the mix and so the group has expanded and we added a 3rd pie to the mix.

We have 3 out of the oven now - one with bacon, leeks and marjaram; one with asparagus, brocolli, bacon, and shallots; and one simply with asparagus. They are beautiful and have been replaced in the oven with scones of Anna's construction. We also have fruit salad with strawberrys (probably from Florida), lovely pears, apples, blueberrys and bananas.

The scones will come out shortly and then we will eat. (Camryn will need to be awoken (perhaps) and Andy will be fetched)

We ate them and they were good. So were the fruit salad and the scones

A couple of tips -

• Use less milk than Moosewood or Joy of Cooking calls for in the custard.
  
• Careful with the nutmeg!
• Trust your instincts with the salt
• Build the quiche from the bottom up: cheese, stuff, more cheese, then pour in the custard
  

Pork - not bbq

It is sometimes hard for me to think about a pork butt and not think about bbq and smoke, but I live in Wisconsin now and it is *cold* outside. Besides the oven does such a nice job of temperature control...

So I was in Knoche's looking for lamb shanks (which are much harder to find than I would expect) and they had some nice pork loin roasts, bone in. They weren't very expensive and I had seen Jamie Oliver do a nice stew with a boned butt. So I bought one thinking about the 1/3 bottle of old red wine sitting on the counter and the bag of peppers in the fridge.

When the time came I salted the roast and browned in my enameled steel casserole and removed it from the pan. In the oil in the pan I sauteed 2 medium onion roughly chopped, a mess of peeled whole garlic and an apple in the oil. To that I added thyme, bay, pepper and salt and a pinch of cinnamon. Back goes the pork, in goes the wine, on goes the top and the whole mess goes into the oven at 300˚F. (note that I changed my mind wrt the peppers - such is Life)

4 hours later I took the thing out and it was falling off the bone - actually it was a little dry. Next time either lower heat (maybe 275 and a bit more patience for the liquid to come to a simmer inside the pan) or start paying closer attention at about 3 hours.

Somewhere early on I found some baby carrots that wouldn't get eaten in a school lunch - so those went in the pan.

I degreased the sauce, removed the bay leaves and pureed the heck out of it in the food processor. This made an amazing rich sauce, which I then mixed with the pulled meat and the dryness was not such an issue any more.

I served it with mashed potatoes and chopped spinach. Zora commented that there was a lot going on with the meat - and she liked it.

Tomorrow we are having tacos with the left over, unsauced meat - stay tuned.

Squeeze a Lemon in it!

Sometimes when I am making soup I just can't get it right. It is at this point when I am thinking that all is lost and the soup is just going to be disappointing that I think maybe something acid will help and I consider either vinegar or lemon. Now in the context of this post I am of course suggesting that lemon is the way to go.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.

So the next time you are standing at the stove stumped by a pot of soup:

The Pork

So the meat went in the oven at about 830 this morning at 250. I put it on a rack in a roasting pan, closed the door and went away. At about 1030, I basted the top of the roast with apple juice using a pastry brush. It would have been better if I had some dipping sauce (keep reading) to baste with, but hadn't yet made it.

At that point Z and I went to run some errands - Home Depot and Woodmans. We got home around 2, more apple juice. Then I some dipping sauce - (melt butter in a small sauce pan, about 1/2 as much mustard and a similar amount of molasses, a good dose of rub, a lot but not too much salt and then about 4 times the volume of apple cider vinegar (there is a better way that I will write down in another post). Bring to a boil (careful not to boil over).

From here on baste with the sauce. I went out again or I would have basted more. It also would have been good to turn the meat over around this time, but I had inserted a meat thermometer already...

By about 430p the internal temp of the meat was above 185 and I took it out of the oven to cool a bit. At about 5 I used two forks to shred the roast. It pulled pretty well and the bone came out pretty easily. Probably could have stayed in a bit longer. Maybe next time I will do it at about 225 degrees...

I poured out the grease from the pan and deglazed mostly with apple juice. I also used a bit of the dipping sauce (kind of a mistake as the vinegar was a bit much). I also added a bit of bbq sauce I had in the fridge that was based on the dipping sauce (I really couldn't write down how to do it again).

It was good.

Dry Rub - 1 Dec 2007

Here in Wisconsin, it is sleeting on top of about 2 inches of snow outside, but I am thinking about pulled pork. Even without the weather, my patience for tending a fire for the time necessary to smoke a pork-butt-roast is lacking. So my plan is to stick the thing in the oven at about 250 early tomorrow and forget about it for a significant number of hours.

But before I do that I need to marinate it (and thaw it, but that is another story) and to do that I needed to prepare another batch of dry rub. Now the rub with this post is that my intention is to not give recipes in this project; perhaps this post will be the exception that proves the rule...

My rubs thus far have had many many ingredients. I decided this time to try to simplify. So here is a decent rub that is pretty simple, albeit not quite perfect:

1/2 cup each, salt, brown sugar, paprika
2T each, garlic powder, onion powder
1.5T cumin
1T each, black and white peper
1.5 t oregano
1t cinnamon

be sure to get the lumps out of the brown sugar (a sifter or strainer works well for that) and grind the whole spices up really well (I use a coffee grinder (that I don't use for coffee)).

Stay tuned for a report on the pork, but don't hold your breath lest I not actually get to reporting about it.

Thanksgiving on the Farm

Zora and I had Thanksgiving on Peter and Bernadette's farm. Peter is Zora's uncle; Zora's Aunt Anne and her family were there as well. Springdale Farm is a CSA (community supported agriculture) and their season is just about done.

The food and the company were all wonderful. We had a very fresh turkey that had been raised on the farm. I carved, bolstered by a nice little video from the NYTimes featuring the head butcher at my beloved Fairway.

Zora and I contributed 2 pies: 1 apple, 1 pumpkin. The significance of that is that I seem to have finally shaken my pie curse. Zora and have cranked out 3 pies with nary an incident. The breakthrough seems to have been the purchase of Pie a massive tome with patient and clear instructions regarding crust.

Zora's comment as we left for our drive home was that it was nice to visit the farm because the people there seem content with their life. (I have a very cool daughter!)

Maybe next year we will host at our place - who knows...