I should have seen what was coming next.  My mom started talking to her mom, and around 4:45, I was all, “did you want to make that chicken ever?”  (She wanted to eat at six) And she was all “Oh yeah…How long is that gonna take? Should I just roast it?  Should we sear it in a pan first?  I don’t think we can fit both chickens in the cast iron pan at the same time…Bother…”  We went into the kitchen, and I attempted to get some beets in the oven while she preheated the oven and then went to get more wine and talk to my grandma.  Screw it, I was back on the schedule…After a fit of throwing random things on other random foods, we ended up with a decent dinner.  The beets, I just roasted and topped with a little honey and black pepper…The recipes for the chicken and zucchini follow, mostly because I was pleased with how that shit turned out, given our family’s mega disorganized kitchen life.

A few notes:

• My mom makes great food; I don’t know why she has been in the weeds lately.  :-) Don’t judge my mama
• I am not fancy enough to have access to kaffir lime leaves in real life; I just happened to find some at our Whole Foods.
• I seared my chicken in Crisco, mostly because I think I was a southern black lady in a previous life and Crisco was our way of life back then.  You can use oil unless you, like me, have soul and a large tub of Crisco and/or lard.

Enjoy these recipes; they really are simple.

Chicken Marinade:

3 T dijon mustard

1/2 white onion, chopped

3 scallions, sliced roughly

1/2 bunch parsley

6 sprigs of thyme, leaves only

2 T rice wine vinegar

3 T olive oil

1) Prep all the ingredients for the marinade; toss them in a blender.

2) Blend until mostly smooth.

For chicken:

1) Butterfly two small to medium chickens; rub both with marinade and refrigerate at least two hours.

2) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

3) Heat a cast iron skillet on high heat; remove chicken from marinade and pat dry.

4) Season chicken with salt on both sides.

5) Pour enough oil into the pan to cover the bottom.

6) Sear the chickens on both sides, starting with the skin side down and then transfer them to a lipped baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

7) Roast for one hour, or until a thermometer inserted into the thigh reads 165 degrees F.

8) Cut chicken into pieces and serve with kaffir lime beurre blanc (recipe follows)

Kaffir Lime Beurre Blanc:

1 and 1/2 c white wine

1/4 c rice wine vinegar

5 sprigs thyme

3 or 4 kaffir lime leaves, torn

1 c heavy cream

8 oz butter, cold

1) Simmer the wine, vinegar, thyme, and lime leaves until reduced by about half.

2) Add the cream and reduce down by about half again, or until the base is thick and coats a spoon

3) Reduce the heat to low.

4) Cut the butter into 16 pieces (1 T pieces), and add two pieces to the sauce at a time, whisking constantly, adding more only when the previous addition has dissolved.  Once you have added all the butter, the sauce should be thick, smooth, and shiny.

5) Remove the aromatics ( I used a slotted spoon because I was slothin it, but you can also strain the mixture before adding the butter).

6) Serve with the delicious chicken.

Roasted Actually Good Zucchini

4 small to medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and across, forming quarters

3 cloves garlic, minced to a paste with olive oil and salt

1/2 c finely grated parm regg cheese

5 large basil leaves, chiffonade.

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2) Arrange the zucchini on a baking sheet with parchment, cut side up.

3) Salt the zucchini liberally and let it sit there for 20 minutes; pat dry.

4) Rub the zucchini with your garlic mixture; top with cheese and sliced basil.

5) Roast about 20 minutes, or until cheese is brown and everything looks all delicious and you legit want to eat it stat.

Let’s keep the conversation foodie, yes?  After that crazy summer, I’ve continued to cook delicious food and brew delicious beer as much as possible.  Because it would take forever to cover the past five months, though, I’ll focus on the present.

Right now, I’m sitting on my couch after a weekend of delicious New York City eats.  Since all of my roommates were going to NYC for various Hotel School reasons, they coerced me into going along, and I convinced my boyfriend he simply couldn’t stay alone in Ithaca (read: it was extremely hard for them to convince me to drive to the city for some delicious food).  After eating out a lot and emptying my pockets for my love of food, I think now to the big day next week: Thanksgiving.  So how about a look back and then a look forward?

Saturday morning, I drove a car of fatigued friends into Manhattan for the New York Hotel Show trip.  Chase and I went to my house in New Jersey to de-car-ride before going back into Manhattan for dinner.  Standing room only was worth it on that bus, I tell you.  By the time we got into the city, it was dark from the damn daylight savings time, but the night had just begun (I mean really–if we could convert all the daylight hours we’re putting in savings to money, here, we’d be out of the national red by now). The dark night slipped off with our coats as we stepped into Bar Jamón for a pre-dinner drink and snack.  Although it is a small place, it was full and sexy as hell with its list of tasty Spanish tapas on the wall and extensive wine list.  It’s tough not to be smitten holding a glass of seductive Spanish white (Godello, here), nomming on a funky octopus appetizer, and sitting across from the man of your dreams at once.  Fuckin’ A, It was gonna be a good night.

After our amazing start to a night of good eats, we met up with the rest of the droogs at April Bloomfield’s The Breslin Bar and Dining Room for a wee feast.  We sat down after chilling in the bar with some drinks; I got the “Back in Black”–a concoction of Guiness, Irish whisky,  Amaro, and bitters.  It was smooth and malty with some spicy bitter nuances, also known as my cup of tea.

We sat down in the dim dining area and perused the menu.  It was all so enticing, but I had to wonder where the meat was.  Besides a chicken dish and the famed lamb burger, the entrees were predominantly fish.  I broke out in nervous sweats searching for more entree meatiness, to find that the specials board had my beloved stuffed pig’s foot!  Yay!  But no, because they were sold out of it. Wah.  It was OK, though; I made up for lack of meat with snacks and appetizers.  Between the chicken liver pate with madeira gelee, scrumpets (braised lamb that it breaded and fried, what!), beef and stilton pie, and the scotch egg, I barely needed more meet, let alone more food at all.  For the whole week.  But that is not how I play, so we all kept eating.  Yeah, yeah I lubed up the old intestine with the Breslin’s cask ale, and I was good to go.  Chase and I split a yummy bluefish entree, and then I could truly fit no more.  Besides.  If I had, I may not have had room for the next night’s epic feast at Momofuku Ssam Bar.

Let’s cut to the chase.  Sunday night was all about Momofuku.  I hadn’t been back since my internship and wanted to visit, and besides, the food is bad ass.  Chase and I got there a little early and had some pork buns and Troegenator Double Bock while we waited for our table.  Once my friend Juli arrived, we sat down to a meal whose epicness we did not anticipate.  We ordered a few appetizers and one entree to share among the three of us and ended up receiving a mad onslaught of thirteen dishes.  It was nuts.

Two platters of delicious country ham with red eye mayo.  Sexy pieces of raw corvina with tart plum.  Uni with chawan mushi.  Chanterelles with pickled quail eggs and bone marrow.  Thinly sliced sirloin with edamame and delicious herbal lemon verbena broth poured tableside!  Spicy tripe!  Mussels with kale, apple, and pork jowl.  NOMNOMNOM.  Catfish in kabocha squash curry.  Braised goat!  Chocolate parfait with dulce de leche and delicious green tea whipped cream business.  BAHH.  This was the never ending culinary orgasm, and the pleasure on the palate trumped the pains of a full stomach right to the last bite.  Not to mention the delicious drinks we enjoyed–Leitz Riesling for Chase and Juli and the ramp brine martini for myself.  That would be the equivalent to a dirty martini with ramp brine in lieu of olive juice.  And the pan am clipper with apple brandy, lemon, absinthe, and pomegranate juice.  Refreshing.

I think the mussels stood out the most as the dish with the most interesting flavor combo, but everything was great.  How can I say no to ham?  The Edward’s ham is my favorite, but it’s hard to say that after cleaning up all four kinds.  They all rock.  The pork buns are always right, the corvina has the perfect balance of subtle clean flavor and hint of fattiness.  Who doesn’t like chanterelle shrooms?  The curry was bright.  The sirloin was tender and herbal.  The goat was funky and yummy.  Nothing came out wrong.  Although I’m still nursing a bowling ball style post-showdown gut, I’m OK for sure.

To the Momofuku team, I say thank you for a beautiful food adventure.  It was great.  I will work for you any time if it means I can cook that delicious food.  If it also means I get some extras going there, hell yes.

And now, the good times are in the past, but with some good ones coming up.  Thanksgiving weekend has grown and grown in the past couple years at my house.  This year, we’re doing a “First Thanksgiving” theme and we’ll be about 24 people with my friends and family.  AHHH!  The madness is coming.  We plan to cook a huge red snapper, venison, and turkey; tons of root vegetables, sweet potato concoctions, collards, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, and other delicious things.  I for one cannot wait.  Cooking all day, going outside in the afternoon to nom on some cheese and drink a Marzen beer, an amber ale, a roggenbier, or maybe a tripel will be heavenly, especially after another week of Cornell shenanigans.

Well, it’s the end of a long day.  If I can leave you with one thing, I beg you to make your own pie crusts for Thanksgiving.  It is so easy compared to how much people bitch about it.  Flour, butter and/or lard, cold water.  That’s it!  The ratio is 3 parts flour: 2 parts fat: 1 part water.  3 cups flour, 2 cups butter, 1 cup water.  Do it.  Cut the butter into the flour, add water, mix in. done.  Chill 30 minutes, roll out, cut, fill, bake!

The only decision you have to make is whether you want to use lard or butter or both.  Lard=flaky crust with good crunch and maybe a subtly piggy flavor.  Butter=tender and flaky crust with buttery flavor.  Do half and half for a good time.  Why not?  Just don’t go buying those frozen pies or pie crusts, damn it!  If you do, you may as well unsubscribe to this blog now, because I believe in you too much to have pie-faker readers.

DO it!  Happy Thanksgiving!  It’s good to be back.

Bear Naked Chocolate cookies

Although my mom was afraid they tasted “too healthy” for my younger siblings’ taste, I liked the whole-grain, naturally sweet vibe from these cookies.  Even though they were “healthy tasting,” they were also very chocolaty and also had many decent sized chocolate chunks.  In my opinion, these cookies were a quasi-hippie-fantasy junk food.  And they are not bad as a breakfast replacement.

Bear Naked Fruit cookies

These cookies, which were very similar to the chocolate cookies in texture, were like eating a chewy, compacted disk of trail mix—in a good way.  I liked the variety of dried fruits and nuts in them, and they were definitely sweet enough without being overly sugary or cloying.

Bear Naked Chocolate Cherry trail mix

This trail mix was a good play on the classic chocolate-cherry flavor scheme, even though I felt it was a bit lacking in complexity.  You got a plain kind of earthy cocoa flavor and super-tart cherry.  Maybe it was a bit boring, but it decent enough.  Although not my first choice for a snack, that trail mix may be the chocoholic’s trail mix dream.

Bear Naked Pecan Apple Flax trail mix

This trail mix was very troubling.  Although I liked the idea behind it, the granola clusters in it tasted exactly like Play Doh.  Did I eat Play Doh as a child?  Probably.  Did I smell it a lot?  Definitely.  And it smells a lot like this Pecan Apple Flax business.  Perhaps this is a fun starter solid food for kids transitioning from a Play Doh phase, but that is about it.

Bear Naked Cranberry protein trail mix

This mix was probably my favorite.  Simple, nutty, fruity, sour, sweet—everything anyone could ask for in a good, solid trail mix.  I would take it hiking any day.

Stretch Island Fruti Co. Fruit leather

I am not normally a fruit leather person.  As a kid, I though fruit leather was the snack of children whose insane parents wouldn’t allow them fruit by the foot.  But now, in retrospect, I see I may have been wrong.  These more naturally sweet fruit leathers, ranging in flavors from apricot to apple, grape, strawberry, and raspberry, offer a lower calorie fruit snack that doesn’t turn one’s mouth blue and is still satisfying and sweet.

Annie Chun Ramen

I’m a college student.  I know ramen.  Even though I don’t really buy it myself, I have friends who live off only ramen.  And because of that, after trying the Annie Chun Ramen, I was somewhat disappointed.  Most familiar with the MSG laden Top Ramen, I felt Annie Chun’s lacked seasoning and that satisfying umami we college students grow to enjoy when we look forward to ramen.  Unfortunately, Annie Chun’s was not my favorite.

Metromint water

I have tried Metromint water before, and I have enjoyed the regular mint water and the chocolate mint water.  After trying the berry mint water, I was a little disappointed.  Rather than being refreshing and cooling, it was really just medicinal and strange.  On the bright side, that’s really only one flavor I don’t enjoy from Metromint.

All in all, I enjoyed most of my samples and would recommend them to others interested in trying these products.  Especially the cookies!  I would definitely buy those again.

The first thing I made–before study week came around–was a rhubarb upside-down-muffin-bread pudding.  It sounds random, but the thing was a product of ingredients I had on hand.  I am admittedly a person who eats just the top of the muffin (not only because I prefer it, but also because a whole muffin is too much), and therefore, I found myself with a squirrel-like collection of muffin butts in my freezer.  Why did I save them?  I really don’t know.  Don’t judge.  It sounds quite sick, especially because I didn’t even wrap them but rather left them open to stale and burn.  Grody.  But perfect for bread pudding application.

After making a batter with eggs, brown sugar, and cream, I dumped in my diced muffin butts.  Then, I poured honey in the bottom of a cake pan and arranged sliced rhubarb over it.  After pouring over my bread pudding mixture, I baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes.  While it was still warm, I turned it out and found a beautiful result:

tart rhubarb plus too-sweet cupcakes from dining hall=balance. namaste.

Later, during the actual study week, I decided to bake a pie.  I had a bunch of extra pie crust from a cooking contest I participated in over the weekend, and since it baked so well before, I couldn’t let it go to waste.  Made with delicious Plugra butter, the crust was rich and flaky.  Since I was not in the mood for a hearty apple pie, I decided to make a banana cream one, since our dining hall had plenty of bananas available for my pie making fun.  While baking the pie crust, I whipped up a cinnamon-brown sugar custard for the filling.  I usually don’t make pudding with flour, but since I had no cornstarch, I went for it and got dazzling results.  After both crust and custard cooled, I assembled my pie, topping it with bananas and toasted coconut.  Delicious.

perfect creamy to crunchy ratio.

I made my last study week baked good this morning…at five AM…I guess my brain was not used to sleep after I only got three hours the night before.  However, all good things came of it: I decided to make cookies since I had been doing more cake/pie things recently, and they came out beautifully.  A little cake-ier than a usual chocolate chip cookie (I used a quasi-chocolate chip cookie approach, minus the chocolate chips), the cookies came out screaming to be sandwiched with some kind of sexy filling.

Caramel seemed appropriate, since I had added a pinch each of cinnamon and smoked paprika to the cookie batter.  Unfortunately, I went a few seconds too dark on the caramel, so I had to add a few things to make it more palatable. Some salt, peanut butter, cream cheese, and butter later, the caramel was a tasty, satiny spread.  My suite mates and I were very happy with the results.

tower of cookie porn.

I urge you to follow suit: when you find yourself adrift in a sea of work, surrounded by people who would rather lose sanity studying enough to get an A+, bake something.  It’s therapeutic, it doesn’t take much time out of your own study efforts, and you get awesome eats for your study session out of it!  All good things, my people.

pork belly with all the glorious fixins

This morning, I decided to throw down some hash!  I chopped up white asparagus spears and diced up the extra sunchokes.  After frying them in some leftover pork fat, I added my leftover pork belly (cubed), and the roasted potatoes I crushed to achieve some max crispiness factor.  With a little salt and pepper and a broken fried egg on top, this was a delicious winner.

just glorious and fatty.

I highly encourage you to use your leftovers to the best of your hash-y ability.  It is so damn worth it!

Last night, I had a bunch of friends over for Passover dinner.  Typically, I have a Passover seder with my Jewish family during the eight-day holiday.  A seder is an ordered dinner involving readings from the Passover guidebook, the Hagada.  It includes information about the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt and the oppressive pharaoh.  In the Hagada, we read about the 10 plagues that G-d sent upon the Egyptians to encourage them to allow the Jews to leave Egypt, and the Passover seder traditions are rooted in those plagues and the Exodus story.  Since my friends are mostly not Jewish, and we’re all just college students looking for a good time, I decided to eschew the traditional seder and stick with a more basic dinner party format.  To lure everyone into spending Passover dinner with me (haha), I promoted the tradition of drinking 4 glasses of wine with Passover dinner.  Then everyone wanted in!

When I was planning my menu for the dinner, I wanted to use a lot of the Passover symbolism in the food so that I could at least speak the seder traditions through my food. Torn between my desire to be creative and my love for the traditional Passover foods, I wasn’t sure if I should make a traditional dinner or an intensely symbolic feast of modern cuisine.  In the end, I chose both.  I would base my appetizers on the 10 plagues and my main dinner on the seder plate.

To give you a jump start, here are the 10 plagues and a picture of the traditional seder plate:

10 plagues:

1. Blood
2. Frogs
3. Flies
4. Wild beasts
5. Pestilence
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Death of the First Born

After some free-writing and serious thought about how I could make appetizers inspired by locusts and death, I came up with a list of ideas, which I then whittled down, realizing ten appetizers would be quite a lot, especially if my Passover guests were primarily gentiles…

The best part, however, was about ten minutes before everyone arrived, and I realized we forgot to put the chicken in the oven.  Balls!  At least it wouldn’t take that long.  We impromptu slathered it with duck fat and stuffed a lemon up its butt before putting it into the oven.  By that time, our friends had arrived, and we had all our mise en place ready.  Because of some minor fails and some improvised add-ins, we served the following appetizers and then sat down to have some wine with our friends:

Darkness: Roasted Oyster Mushrooms on Cheese Crisps with Pimentón

As you can see, we came out 2 for 6 on our appetizers.  Although it seems we were the plagued ones in this situation, we really just forgot the “blood” cocktails, scratched the “flies” and “boils” courses, and combined the “pestilence” and “hail” courses.  And the dark roasted oyster mushroom on the cheese crisp looked just like a solar eclipse, so “darkness” was a great success!  As for the cheese, my friends Brian and Isys brought it, and they and my friend Juli also brought some delicious wines.  Juli brought Loosen Bros Riesling; Brisys (excuse the celeb combination) brought Sheldrake Point Chardonnay, and Chase and I bought an Albariño, Borsao Crianza, Monte Garnacha, and Lameraux Landing Riesling.

All the wines were excellent, especially with the food, and I’m fairly certain we did not need that cocktail anyway.  Even though we went on another wine run, averaging about one bottle of wine per person.

As for the main meal, it all came out very well.  We loved the farm-fresh chicken, perfumed with lemon and crisp from the duck fat.  Speaking of duck fat, I made my matzo balls with duck fat as well, and they were yummy, floating in that dashi!  And the dashi was good!  Full of umami flavor, it was bomb-digs with the matzo balls.  Also, we made all those hard boiled eggs, and they were great!  The goose and duck eggs were gamier, and they were great on matzo.  The Sephardic charoset, made with bananas, dates, cloves, and walnuts (instead of almonds or pistachios) was very good, and the Ashkenazi apples, wine, walnut, and cinnamon charoset was so reminiscent of my childhood.

dinner aftermath: I could probably fit those 4 glasses of wine in that big glass...

duck, hen, goose!

By the end of the night, after drinking lots of wine, eating matzo ball soup out of Solo cups, improvising the shit out of our cooking, forgetting a few things, and enjoying each other’s company, I chalked up Passover to a great success.  At risk of sounding corny, it is really about the people you spend a holiday with and the good times you share with them.  I’ve never had so much fun watching my kitchen experiments flop, for one thing.  I guess it was OK because we came out with enough great food, but still…

Furthermore, even though we all soon realized I was in fact the token Jew of the Passover dinner, it was all good.  There’s this song we always sing at the seder called “Dayenu,” which means, “it would have been enough.”  The song exalts all the blessings the Israelites received from G-d after getting out of Egypt, acknowledging that the Exodus alone would have been blessing enough.

For me, my “Shaider” as I dubbed it, a marriage of my name, Shaina, and seder, was the best example of Dayenu.  Had I had one friend to celebrate Passover with and not ten, it would have been enough.  If I had ten friends to celebrate Passover with and I managed to burn all the food, somehow, with all that wine, it still would have been enough (probably, with modern day take-out).  Had I come out with a good spread and not been able to stay awake for long after all that wine, it would have been enough (enough already for my liver!)  Had I stayed awake until everyone left and then not woken up for work, it would…actually have sucked.  I did make it to work.  And it was a-ok!

The moral of the story, readers, is that sometimes things just work out alright, even despite the odds or the ostensible.  So I leave you with my Shaider four questions, a take on the classics:

All in all, the dinner was great…we cooked in a tiny kitchen with few serving vessels and utensils.  So throw us a shank bone!  It was delicious!

Oh, kugel, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways…Well, for starters, I just put a piece in my friend’s school mailbox.  That’s how good it is–I will make a point to wrap up a piece, throw it in my backpack, and then get it to its final destination, whereupon the recipient can go for it, right in the mailroom, so to speak.

This kugel recipe is an old one my mom has been using for the past 20-something years since she’s taken on Jewish cooking.  My Dad’s family is Jewish, and when she married in, my mom did not convert; however, she did adopt a new repertoire of recipes for our Jewish occasions.  And she’s a damn good Jew food cook, even by Jew standards.  Although my cousin used to occasionally express dissatisfaction when my mom used more modern approaches to dishes, I think her food was always the bomb-digitiest at the seder table.  Matzoh ball soup?  Make it with a rotisserie chicken to add depth of flavor.  Brisket?  Braise it to silky submission in an oven bag with ketchup, brown sugar, carrots, and a handful of other ingredients.  But the kugel?  It’s a classic.  And it’s addicting.

When I wanted to make this sweet, eggy, matzo bread pudding of sorts at school, I asked my mom to send me the recipe.  Instead of typing it, she uploaded the scanned recipe to Facebook.  I was glad to see it, familiar and faded, even if it was hard to read:

kugel recipe

If you can’t read it, I’ve re-written it here:

4 c matzo farfel

2 16-oz cans sliced peaches, drained and cut into 3 pieces each

5 oz pitted dates, chopped

1/2 c plus 2 T butter

8 eggs

1/2 t nutmeg

1/2 c sugar plus 2T

1 8-oz container plain yogurt

1 8-oz container pineapple cottage cheese

1/2 c chopped walnuts

1/2 t cinnamon

1. Soak 3 1/2 c farfel in 1 1/2 c warm water
2. Whisk together eggs, 1/2 c melted butter, sugar, and nutmeg.
3. Add in cottage cheese and yogurt
4. Mix in soaked farfel and then 3/4 of the fruit
5. Combine the remaining 1/2 c farfel and walnuts with 2 T sugar and cinnamon and 3 T melted butter.
6. Pour wet mixture into a rectangular baking dish and sprinkle with dry farfel mixture.
7. Arrange some peach and date slices on top.
8. Bake for 40 minutes.
9. ENJOY!

Dumb hotel development

Passover food soon.

See, I’ve been busy, tired, and uninspired.  But Spring celebrations bring the promise of new food.  So wait for it…patience, young, salted and chocolate-covered grasshoppers.  I will write an awe-inspiring blog entry soon.

It was a relaxing break for me and the short ribs, in a way.  After dropping them in their therapeutic bath, I spent two days hanging out, getting a massage, shopping, and, finally, getting ingredients for the dinner in which I would feature the ribs.  Both the ribs and I thoroughly benefited from our two days of relaxation, rest assured.

At Whole Foods, the day I would prepare the ribs, I bought a pretzel baguette on a whim–could I make it into a cool side dish?  Maybe.  I also picked up some mustard greens, a vegetable I often pass up for no good reason.  That day, it looked vibrant and crisp, and I was pumped about buying it.

When I started getting dinner ready, I decided to make a bread pudding with the pretzel baguette.  As I cut the bread, I thought of a great idea for the custard–what goes with pretzels better than mustard?  Not many things.  So I shamelessly went for the brown mustard over Dijon in search of a classic taste.  A little pinch of (gasp!) dry rosemary gave a subtle herbal touch to the bread puddings, and I baked them in muffin tins to facilitate individual service.

Now, I would be serving deep fried, meaty goodness with a rich, dense bread pudding…so  I figured I should probably offset the heaviness with something lighter and punchier.  Salad!  Normally, few people get very excited about salads.  But the salad I put together was nothing short of fantastic and interesting, culinarily analogous to falling in love with a surprisingly exciting suitor.  Or rather, to having an affair–after all the time I spent on the short ribs, I was shocked to fall so hard for a last minute salad.  But here’s how it went down: remember those mustard greens?

Although they are too tough to enjoy raw in a salad, the mustard greens are delightful after a super-quick blanch in well salted water.  After a few seconds in boiling water and then a dunk in a bowl of ice water, the mustard greens were perfect.  I dried them off and then got to work on the salad condiments.  First, I rendered some lardons of homemade bacon.  Next, I poached some carrots in maple syrup and butter.  Yep, you heard me.  It was sexy.  After that, I blanched and peeled those fava beans everyone loves to prep out so dearly.  But shelling them was not so bad, and it was worth it!

In the end, I had a beautiful melange of colors–the bright greens of the favas and mustard greens and orange of the carrots, made heartier with crisp, brown pieces of my bacon.  I dressed the salad with a thick vinaigrette my mom had in the fridge, made with vinegar, lemon, dijon, oil, and a touch of brown sugar.  Perhaps more vibrant than the colors were the flavors–sweet, spicy, tangy, and meaty.  All in one sexy salad.  Boom!

The ribs also came out beautifully, as did the bread puddings.  What a meal!  Be jealous, as you salivate to the pictures below.  Or recreate the dishes and get some yumminess!

short ribs, salad, bread pudding. up close and personal...we had already started eating...

One of the most exciting things about being home is having access to more proteins.  After a good shop at the grocery store, I came home with a whole red snapper, some pork belly, a rabbit, and a pork shoulder.  Our freezer is currently stocked with beef short ribs, oxtail, and chicken thighs.  So far, I have prepared the meats I picked up at the store, in dishes that are keeping us warm against the more wintry “Spring” we are…enjoying.

First, I made seared red snapper with a Thai fish broth and toasts with lardons.  After filleting the whole red snapper, I made a fumet with the body, a pork rib I cut from the belly I bought, green peppers, onion, carrots, some lime, parsley, and a puree of ancho peppers.  After I made the stock, I reduced it by about half and added some cream for richness.  After making lardons to go with the fish, I brushed some sliced baguette with the pork fat and toasted them to crispy goodness.  A perfect sear on the red snapper left it crisp on the outside and flaky-tender on the inside.  It was an aromatic, tasty, and balanced dish.

red snapper with Thai fish broth

The next night, I continued the cooking fest with a rabbit stew.  I was afraid my sometimes picky/sometimes surprisingly adventurous siblings would balk at the idea of eating a lil’ bunny, but no one really gave me any shit about it.  I braised the rabbit with chunks of pig foot (to provide body for the braise), onion, mushrooms, carrots, thyme, and cinnamon sticks.  The result was fragrant, sumptuous, and light enough to enjoy on a Spring day.  Served over homemade pasta with a side of sliced zuchini and spinach salad with anchovies, the rabbit was damn good!

Finally, yesterday, I made a slow roasted pork shoulder with polenta and dandelion greens.  After scoring the pork shoulder, I seasoned it and rubbed it with pureed ancho peppers.  After about five hours in the oven at 300 degrees F, the small pork shoulder was tender and delicious.  Over some stone ground polenta I picked up in Ithaca a while ago, how could anyone say “no?”  I stirred sauteed Chanterelles into the polenta, adding another layer of meatiness to the mix.

pork shoulder, in all its glory, exuding lovely marrow deliciousness

served over polenta and dandelion greens!

Last but not least, after a huge movie-watching fail (I tried hard  to sit through Public Enemies but really, really couldn’t), I wandered into my kitchen and dumped some stuff in a bowl and gave it a good whisking.  Remnants of a black IPA I recently tried and loved, eggs, Greek yogurt, melted butter, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, salt.  Twenty-two minutes later, I had some pretty badass looking (and smelling) cupcakes emerge from the oven.  What goes well with a yeasty, slightly hoppy cake???  I looked aroung my kitchen.  Orange?  why not?  Fruity, delicious.  After beating together some butter, cream cheese, and confectioners sugar, I squeezed in a half an orange and grated the zest of two blood oranges into the mix.  Result: yum.  Result on top of the beer cake?  Some would say I’m “winning.”

CUPCAKE