Okra!

I like okra, but whenever I suggest making it for dinner, Melanie has always said, "yuck! That slimey stuff" so I pass since I don't want to cook a dish just for one. Well, it has been building to a boiling point, and I decided to cook okra, even if I am the only one who is going to eat it. So, I bought a bag at the local farmers' market and fixed it up in a Cajun style, with some modifications. Melanie liked it so much she asked me to put some in her lunch today.

Finely dice an onion.
Dice a red bell pepper.
Coarsely chop a few tomatoes, reserving the juice.
Mince three cloves of garlic.
Slice your bag of okra into quarter inch rounds.
Fry up your onion and bell pepper in a mixture of bacon fat and olive oil.
Add the garlic and okra.
Fry to coat everything with oil.
Season with pimenton agridulce (or cayenne, if you want to be a purist).
Add the tomatoes, the juice from the tomatoes, a generous pinch of Mexican oregano, and a splash of dry white wine or dry white vermouth.
Cover and let simmer.
Serve with barbecue, sliced melon, grilled peaches, and a bold fruity red like a Sierra Nevada foothill zinfandel (we actually had an Amador County barbera, which was a good pairing).

Recipes for Moving Days

The title of this post is the Google search that led someone to this site.

Let me offer three:

1. Order out for Pizza (delivery of course)

2. Take out Chinese

3. Taqueria

Otherwise, look, your kitchen is in boxes. You don't want to create clutter nor anything that needs cleaning. Just get something fast, cheap and easy. Chances are there is a taqueria near you that sells good food cheaper than you can buy the raw ingredients. Take advantage of that. Be sure to get cold beer, too. You will want that.

Carne Asada

I made a simple carne asada the other day, which was really good and pretty easy.

You start with thinly sliced beef flank (your best bet is to go to a Mexican butcher and ask for carne ranchera). Rub it with pimenton ahumado (I used the Dulce, but the Agrodulce is fine, too. You should always have a tin of both around), allspice, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, cumin, and Mexican oregano. Scatter onion slices and cilantro sprigs over it and douse it in beer. Let it sit for at least two hours, although overnight is better.

Grill it over a hot charcoal fire (hardwood chunk charcoal is the best for this).

Serve with hot tortillas, salsa, guacamole, crema, chopped cilantro and onion, radishes, and cold beer.

Pork Chops

I made pork chops tonight. I use a paste rub (pimenton, garlic, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, allspice, clove, dried ginger, pepper, fennel seed, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, bay, whatever else strikes my fancy at the moment), browned them in olive oil with minced ginger, added some orange marmelade, vermouth and tamarind syrup, lowered the heat and simmered them till they were done.

I am not getting more specific, because you should experiment. The thing is: balance sweet, spice and tart. Finish with salt.

For sweet (sometimes it can be combined with tart) you can use orange juice, triple sec, Coca Cola, pineapple juice, pomegranite reduction, whatever. Try to keep it fruity: currant preserves are nice, as are prunes or apricot lekvar.

For tart you have myriad vinegars to choose from, dry table wine, sherry, lemon juice, lime juice, cranberry reduction, etc.

For spice, be sure to have ginger and allspice in there, but anything else is up to you and your nose.

If you want to have fun with salt, try rosemary or lavender salt.

Pork is a great food that can go both ways, wine-wise. Or should I say, all three ways, since beer often works too. For a red, I recommend something fruity and not too refined. A zinfandel or shiraz is perfect. For a white, try something crisp like a Gruner Veltliner or an Alsatian riesling or a Bonny Doon Malvasia Bianca. You can pick up the fruit of the dish, or you can pick something minerally to offer a counterpoint.

For a starch, go simple: plain rice, pilaf or oven roasted potatoes.

Serve a simple salad, and you have a meal.

Salsa Verde or The Formula for any Salsa de Molcajete

I am showing how to make a salsa with tomatillos, roasted garlic, and chipotles. You could use the same formula, and use roasted tomatoes for the tomatillos, haban~eros for the chipotles, just fresh garlic instead of roasted garlic, etc. Use your imagination, as the Purple Lizard says. Just keep in mind that if you use tomatoes, you may need to add some lime juice to boost the acidity.

Proportions are to taste, because the intensity of flavor varies so much depending on where the thing was grown, when it was grown, how much water it had, etc.

1. The first step is to roast the tomatillos. First peel off the papery husks, and wash the sticky goo off of them. Put them, along with the unpeeled garlic cloves, in a pan and stick it into a 375 degree oven. If you are using fresh chilies, roast them, too. If you are using dried chilis, toast them, then rehydrate them, but generally dried cilies go into fried salsas, so we will discuss their handling in the upcoming entry for enchilada sauce:

2. Grind up a couple of cloves of fresh garlic with some salt in your molcajete. Now, you might think that you can do this in any order, but any Mexican cook will tell you that you must do things in this order (if you are substituting ingredients, just substitute the ingredient in the proper place). If you have never used your molcajete, you will need to season it by grinding up some dry rice in it and throwing it out and repeating until there are no more little bits of rock and black sand in it:

3. As the tomatillos soften (you want them to be mushy), remove them from the oven:

4. Now, grind up your chilis, in this case chipotles (with a little splash of the adobo they were packed in):

5. Add the roasted tomatillos and grind them up with the rest:

6. Taste, correct for salt, fire, acidity (you will probably have no problems with enough acidity using tomatillos). Ready for chips!

Of course, this is the salsa I use to simmer chicharrones in. Just heat up a small pan of this, add pork rinds and a little splash of chicken stock and cook until the rinds are soft. Serve on hot corn tortillas with freshly chopped onion and cilantro. Accompany with ice cold beer and some conjunto music!

Recipe update...

I did not cook anything last night, rather I heated leftovers. So. No recipe. No photos.

Tonight, however, we will be having enchiladas. I should document this.

More on Whale Cuisine.

I am going to devote this post to pointing you in the direction of other places where they know a thing or two about cooking whale.

First, this one from Norway.

Second, if you speak Norwegian: This looks like some tasty stuff. Or you can go to Anders Jacobsen's blog to see one of these recipes in Englisch"

Third, for those of you who just like liquid whales, is a recipe for a blue whale. Watch out, as anything that is one part vodka, and five parts sweet stuff is a recipe for a hangover.

Fourth, another from www.highnorth.no, featuring an interesting European game preparation.

And, finally, whale pie.

Now, I have never eaten whale, so I have no idea what it tastes like, and no idea what method of cooking is best. I have eaten manatee, and I would have cooked it differently than it was served in the tapas bar in Spain where I had it.

Therefore, I neither endorse nor warn you off of any of these recipes, should you find yourself with a whale steak in your icebox.

The Perfect Martini

I have probably talked about the perfect martini before. I probably said that some other proportion of gin and vermouth was ideal.

The thing is, it all depends on the gin.

Right now I am using Bombay, just plain Bombay, not Bombay Sapphire. So I am making it with these proportions:

2 shots gin.
1/2 shot vermouth.
splash of ice water.
Shaken, so ice crystals form.

In my chilled glass, after pouring out the ice water, I put a few drops of Scotch and swirl. If it is just a few drops I do not pour it out. If it is more than a few drops I pour it out. I strain my martini into the glass.

Perfection.

Now, if I were to use Bombay Sapphire, I would use just a quarter shot of vermouth. If I were using Rear Admiral Joseph's, I would use a full shot. If it were Tanquerey, I would probably use a half shot, depending on whether I were adding an olive or a twist (more if an olive, less for a twist).

If I were using vodka, well, forget it. I don't do that.

Beef and goat cheese lasagne

This came about because I had a lump of pasta dough that was not enough to make a pot of linguine or any straight pasta. I knew it was enough for a lasagne, since I used its other half for that purpose a couple of days ago (with mushrooms, gruyere, cream, and white truffle oil). I also had a few ounces of goat cheese, some Monterrey Jack, and two pounds of ground beef (alright! Dinner without having to go to the grocery store!).

So, the first item was to whip up a semi-ragu:

Fry a quarter of a pound of finely chopped pancetta in EVOO. Add a few crushed and peeled cloves of garlic as it nears completion.

Add a finely diced onion and fry for a minute or so.

Add a finely diced carrot and a finely diced stalk of celery. Fry.

Add your ground beef, a generous splash of dry marsala, a cup or two of brown chicken stock, a cup of milk, thyme, oregano, Worcestershire Sauce, a box of Pomi tomatoes, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, pepper, and bay and cook for about an hour. As it nears completion, adjust for salt and acidity.

Preheat your oven to 350.

Layer your lasagna (reading from base to top):

Bottom: thin layer of meat sauce
Fresh pasta
Sauce
Goat cheese in lumps. Grated jack and/or gruyere and a bit of grated reggiano parmiggiana
Fresh pasta
Sauce
Cheese blend. Freshly cracked pepper.

In oven. It is done when it smells right and the cheese on top is browning beautifully.

Remove from oven. Let sit for a couple of minutes (it is about the temperature of hot lava anyway, and it needs to reabsorb juices). Cut, top with freshly diced parsley, and serve with a hearty red wine.

Brussels Sprouts

So, the very first photo I posted on the blog was of a bowl of Brussels Sprouts. It was taken on Christmas Day of 2005 by either myself or Melanie. Now, I know that you have been lying awake at nights, wondering what I did with those brussels sprouts, and I have just been leaving you hanging.

OK. Some folks, who harbor irrational prejudices against brussels sprouts, are probably thinking by now, "who cares, so long as I don't have to eat them!"

Well, here is a picture of them finished:

Copyright 2005 by Erik and Melanie Keilholtz

The way they got there, from here:

Copyright 2005 by Erik and Melanie Keilholtz

is as follows:

1. First, you start with super fresh brussels sprouts. I buy mine off the whole stalk, and trim them right before cooking. You want the color to be very pale green. Dark green will be overpowering, but you can shred the dark green leaves and add them to soups.

2. Parcook the sprouts. I steam them. It is one of two times I ever steam a vegetable (a generally barbaric way of cooking, but for parcooking brussels sprouts and for cooking artichokes, it is good).

3. Finish them by sauteeing them in EVOO with finely chopped goose pancetta (take extra skin from your goose, rinse it in hot water, dry it, rub it with sea salt, freshly cracked pepper, ground allspice, and soak it in grappa overnight to two days), and garlic.

4. When they are just starting to brown, take them off heat, squeeze a Meyer lemon over them, and sprinkle with crushed, toasted hazelnuts.

5. Serve with duck, goose, beef, venison, or wild boar.

Terrine de porc et champignons Chopin

If you read a few days ago, you know that I made a tasty attempt (and, I believe, a successful attempt, although I did not have any actual Poles test it) at Polish schnitzel. I did, however, make way too much for the four of us who were eating it that night (and there are only so many lunches a week in which one can eat fried pork balls). So, confronted with a rather large tub of ground pork, mushrooms, dill, etc, I decided to take Melanie's advice to make a meatloaf. Sort of. I don't detest meatloaf. I just don't like it very much. So the idea of taking my pork filling and turning it into meatloaf just didn't excite.

Until I remembered reading Julia Child's suggestion that any meatloaf recipe, cooked in the manner of a French pate, will yield superior results than simply baking it would. And, one thing leads to another, and the next thing you know, I am making a pate.

So, I took the remaining mixture, added the three leftover baby Yukon potatoes that had previously been cooked in brown stock, a large mound of goose fat, a generous (and I mean generous) splash of cognac, and the handful of breadcrumbs I had saved in case I did end up frying the lot. I mixed it all together, pressed it into a loaf pan, put a couple of bay leaves on top, covered it with foil and set it in a pan of boiling water in a 350 degree oven (see Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 for details on the method). When it had cooked for about an hour and a half, I removed it, and let it cool to room temperature, overnight, with weight on the foil. This morning I chilled it.

Tonight we ate it with Taylor's Honey Truffle Mustard on bagels. I liked it, but Melanie thought the dill overpowered. She is right, but it did not overpower in a way that bugged me that much. But, next time, I will cut back on the dill. And I will finish it with an aspic coating, because it looks cool and I like aspic.

No photo, because it is not much to look at.

Pork Fest! Schnitzel

I think this is right. It is right. It tastes good. I think that it is how our Polish priest had me making them, but if it isn't, well, it still tastes good.

I am not Polish. Schnitzel is cutlet in my book. But in Poland, something different.

I had a bunch of mushrooms that were a little past their sellby date. They were edible, but not pretty. I had a bunch of fresh dill. What do I use dill for? Well, next to nothing. I like it and all, but it isn't really a big player in Italian cuisine.

So, thinking back to cooking a big Polish dinner (my one and only time cooking this stuff), I decide to get some ground pork and try it out.

I started with a pound and a half of ground pork and a produce bag of mixed mushrooms. I think you must have at least a quarter of them shiitake or some other powerfully flavored ones. I chopped the mushrooms finely in the food processor.

I chopped an onion by hand into fine dice and ran three large cloves of garlic through a garlic press. I sauted the onions, garlic and mushrooms in goose fat and olive oil. I transferred them to a work bowl, added the bunch of dill (finely chopped), the pork, two eggs, salt, pepper, and caraway seeds(I don't think Father used caraway, but it seems so Polish to do so, that I couldn't resist), and mixed it all up.

I formed little patties, dipped them in breadcrumbs and fried them in oil, letting them drain on paper towels. I served them with potatoes boiled in stock and short braised silver beet. And a red wine. Very good winter meal.

I did this a couple of days ago. In order to balance things out, I had a good bowl of Austrian ox-tail soup for lunch yesterday. I am far too much of a Teuton to just go about eating Polish food and not restoring balance.

I promised you a recipe, and I will give you a recipe

However, I am not sure what I have posted and what I haven't. I am not always so good at carefully labelling things, and it would take forever (well, not all that long, but longer than I am willing to put into it) to read everything and figure out where the recipes have been hidden inside longer posts (like this one, for instance).

Oh well, it makes it quite the adventure.

For our soup on Christmas, I cut a butternut squash in half, reserved the seeds and stringy pulp (for later frying in butter with Worcester Sauce and freshly cracked pepper), brushed each half with olive oil, inserted a few cloves of garlic (unpeeled) and a couple of sprigs of time in the cavities, placed face down on a cooking sheet, and baked until soft. I let it cool, then scooped the flesh (along with the garlic mush from inside the skins of the roasted garlic) into a bowl and covered with freshly made hot brown poultry stock. I mashed it up, added a touch of butter, salt and pepper, and white wine vinegar (adjust to taste, because sugar levels very in the squashes, acidity varies depending on the vinegar, etc.).

I served it with a dollop of avocado cream (avocado, heavy cream, salt in blender or food processor) and a drizzle of red pepper coulis (fire red peppers, skin (leaving a few little black bits), core, discard seeds, pulverize in machine with olive oil and a spot of vinegar.

By the way, as an amuse bouche, I seared the goose liver and served it on a crostini with a dab of quince paste (homemade, of course). Very good. It was not foie gras, but it was a tasty morsel.