Confessions of an Omnivore

Reason #3485 why I love my wife.

2009-11-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

It's a busy busy time of year Chez Dairyland. E and I have been very much like two ships passing in the night (on the way to P's bedroom). Lots of things are rushed, esp. during the week. But no rest for the weary...we're still trying to put good food on the table, and trying not to break the bank in the process. So, I put some cannellini beans on to soak as I was rushing out the door yesterday am, mumbling something over my shoulder about "can we do something with those for dinner tonight?"

And I came home to the best bean pie/cassoulet/stew-y braise a guy could want on a cold, rainy Friday night. Crispy, light puff pastry, and rich, sausage-y beans... yummmmers.

As pretty as THAT is, take a look at what's inside:

I mean, seriously. Who wins? This guy. Love you, E. Thanks for dinner!

i promise, i haven't died

2009-11-10T18:46:00.000-08:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks here at Chez Dairyland. I actually intended to blog E's birthday dinner this past weekend from a remote location (thanks, Dad)... but forgot to get the camera out until we were more than half-way through... and so that fell through. I promise, though-- there will be one coming this weekend. Poll on FB as to what it will be?

Happy wife, happy life.

2009-10-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

In case it hasn't become readily apparent already, I do a lot of the cooking for our family. Like probably 80-85%. In the 4+ years since I quit the restaurant business, I've probably cooked 5 out of 7 dinners a week on average. Do the math- that's a lot of meals. Some of them are blog-worthy, some of them are not... most of them end up tasting pretty good. I've had epic fails like anyone else, of course, and I've had a couple of home runs.

All that said-- what's the one meal that I have in my repertoire that E says is her fave? Lamb shanks with porcini risotto? Nope. Pan roasted king salmon with cumin roasted beets, charred corn and tequila lime beurre blanc? Meh. No, if you ask the love of my life what she'd have me make if I could never make another meal for her again (perish the thought), it's cream of mushroom soup.

Seriously? I mean, it's pretty good soup, if I say so myself. And it was kinda grey and cold on Monday, so soup was definitely in order in that regard. But was it blog-worthy? Maybe... maybe if I add the best grilled ham and cheese EVER to go with it? Yeah. OK. So, because I live to please my lovely bride (and because it's what my facebook peeps said they wanted), I give you Happy E Mushroom Soup.

I start by making mushroom stock. My good friend Ryan, who was the sous chef for awhile when I worked at Elaine's, taught me to do this when we had a dish involving mushroom consommé on the menu. It's really easy, and it works great for making the aforementioned risotto to go with lamb shanks, or really anything that you want made shroom-y.

Pulse 2 lbs white button mushrooms in batches in a food processor until finely chopped. Don't go too far- you don't want a paste.
Over medium high heat, sweat mushrooms, 2 leeks medium chop and 3 cups mirepoix medium chop in some EVOO and a couple tablespoons of butter.
Add 2 bay leaves and 3 quarts of cold water or chicken stock, and bring to a simmer. Lower heat to lowest setting and simmer for 3 hours or so.
Strain through fine mesh and set aside, and voila--
Now you're ready for the soup.

Start by doing a fine chop of 1 large vidalia onion and a leek, and sweating these in EVOO and butter until soft and translucent. Then comes the secret weapon--the thing that makes this the sine qua non of wife-pleasing soupness. Dried porcini mushrooms are your friends, people. Sure, they seem expensive, but when compared with the price and scarcity of fresh ones, they are pretty tough to beat. In this case, there's no messy reconstitution-- I grind them (about 4 oz. worth) to a fine powder in a spice grinder and add them to my onions, along with some ground fennel seed (about 2 tbsp). It looks kinda muddy, but again-- if you had Smell-O-Vision, you'd know that this smells really good:

Shortly after this picture was taken, I deglazed the pan with a little bit of fino sherry (bone dry). I've used cognac, madeira and bourbon, but dry sherry is what I've settled on in the last year or so-- adds some depth without any sugar. After I scraped the fond from the bottom of the pot, I added the stock-- about 7-8 cups, and then banged out seasoning for the broth--fresh thyme (I love how friendly thyme and mushrooms are...), salt and pepper.

Now you've got your base going-- where the rubber meets the road is your mushrooms. Usually, I just use some creminis and shiitakes, and that works just fine. But I had some friends over, and it's a blog post, so I went all soignée on it and got some really pretty French horn mushrooms to go with the usual mix. Gratuitious food porn mushroom shot in 3...2...1...

To get a little bit of textural variation and caramelization on these nice shroomies, I did a quick sauté in some butter and olive oil. The rule about mushrooms and sautéing, btw-- NO salt in the pan. Salt after. Otherwise they get soggy and gross. Later, it was agreed that I should have cut them smaller for soup, although I liked the meatiness that the size afforded. They were cut like this:

I have to accede to the wishes of my guests, of course-- but I want to say for the record that I cut them that way on purpose, and that purpose accomplished the flavor/texture profile that I was looking for. Basically, if I was gonna spend the money on French horn shrooms, I wanted to showcase their texture and richness. That said, it made for some big mouthfuls. Not a problem for yours truly, mind you...

Anyway, I added them to the soup in batches as they finished, and turned the heat off when all the mushrooms had been added. Now's when the cream hits-- I only use about a 1/2 cup for this much soup-- not enough to make it overly rich and heavy, but enough to round it out and give it a really nice silky texture. This was another point of contention among our dinner guests-- some were hoping for a little more richness (read--more cream), although all agreed it might have muted some of the mushroom flavor. I say it's my soup, dammit, and I've thought about how much cream I want and that's it (no offense, Will...). When all was said and done, I garnished with some fresh tarragon like so:

Anywho, the coup de grace was yet to come--one sandwich to rule them all, one sandwich to find them / one sandwich to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them (if you don't know the author that I'm riffing on, shame on you... and congratulations for not being as big a dork as I am).

This is fairly simple. Find Sottocenere, which is a truffled cow's milk cheese from Venice. Marvel at how good this smells, even through butcher paper. Find prosciutto di Parma. Find a Gala/Granny Smith/Honeycrisp apple. Find a sturdy, crusty bread sliced a little more thickly than you might for regular sandwich bread. Grate cheese, slice ham paper thin, slice apple not quite as thin... and combine on sammy in layers so that there's cheese on both sides of the other two ingredients:

Then get some evoo and butter nice and hot in a pan. While that's happening, fill a tea kettle with water. Put sandwich in pan, place tea kettle on top-- voilà, a sandwich press! Who needs to spend a zillion dollars on this when you could have this?

Ingenuity, people. It's why someone should pay me the big bucks.

At any rate, if you play your cards right, you'll end up with a really nice pressed sammy--the Platonic form of ham and cheese. And with the mushroom soup... holy mackerel. Truffle cheese meets mushroom, salty ham meets cream, the acid of the apple to cut through the earthy richness of it all... this is how to make wives happy. And the soup-- the hint of fennel underneath all the umami-ness of the mushrooms, the slightly briny tang lent by the sherry, and the vaguely anise-y freshness of the tarragon... no need to go away, rain. You can stay another day if you want.

I'm not going to go into the process on dessert (apple pie)- but there was one useful hint gleaned from Cook's Illustrated-- instead of all water for the crust, cut the water with 1/2 vodka. Know why? Gluten can't form in the presence of ethanol. What does that mean? Flaky, crisp crust that's easy to roll. Pretty cool, I thought. Anyway--- dessert looked like this:

and then it looked like this (Will made pretty quenelles of the cinnamon whipped cream):

It was rockin. Not bad for my first pie from scratch in many moons, at any rate.

WHAT TO DRINK WITH THIS:

I couldn't decide (and we had company), so I opened two bottles. One was a Pommard 1er Cru "Fremiets" from Pommard, 1998. This was really surprisingly youthful in its fruit profile, with nice soft tannins, raspberry and bing cherry fruit, and pretty acidity. The other was Fanetti Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2001, which was also nice and soft, with a little riper fruit than the Pinot-- more on the plum and black cherry end of the spectrum--and a healthy dose of smoke and dried herbs on the finish. I think ultimately the Pinot would've gone better with the soup alone, but with the soup and sammy, the Montepulciano was the winner.

I know you're all expecting mushroom soup.

2009-10-27T17:23:00.001-07:00

And it's coming. But I got a little more drunk than I intended to last night while enjoying mushroom soup, and so I didn't write the post afterwards or this morning like I might otherwise have done. To tide you over till I get to it tonight, check this out. As I've said, I'm a little OCD about doing things the long way on purpose to make them taste better. But this is effing ridiculous. I love Hector Blumenthal, but seriously.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/05/the-blumenburger-the-most-laborintensive-hamburger-in-the-world.html

Post 5: Pot Roast-- or how to make your house smell ridiculously good in a few easy steps.

2009-10-19T11:48:00.000-07:00

You know those weeks where you wake up and it's Monday, and by the time you catch your breath, it's Friday? Well, it's been one of those weeks Chez Dairyland. Which means that when I woke up this morning, I was really hoping for a relaxing day hanging out with E and P. And after making a nice breakfast of waffles and Neese's sausage and reading the Sunday Times while P was napping, we were well on our way to reaching that happy place. After my Pats laid an epic beatdown on the hapless Titans this evening, I was damn near ebullient.

Another step in the right direction came today, too... here in NC it's one of those autumn weekends where the first chill is in the air, the clouds are a little grayer than they get in July, and I've just begun to notice the leaves changing. I love this time of year. It makes me crave the kind of food that makes the whole house smell delicious and warm and comforting, and because it takes so long to cook, it allows for time to decompress and enjoy Sunday (read: watch football, work out, and hang out with my wife and daughter). Double bonus!

Pot roast, in my experience, is like the OG of those all-day dishes--simple, satisfying, and just rustic enough that it can never be fancified like lamb shanks and short ribs have become on restaurant menus in recent years. It exemplifies what's beautiful about braising, though-- take a tough, unattractive hunk of meat, and with enough love and care, you can create something that is much greater than the sum of its parts. And it's effin' cheap to boot. Even at Whole Foods (hey, I got a gift certificate for my birthday... thanks Mom and Dad!).

Okay, enough preamble. Onward and inward. Or something like that. So, you're gonna start with what's called a chuck blade roast. It comes from this part of the cow. This one was about 4 lbs--which is pretty typical. I like to start by bringing it to room temp, tying it, and rubbing with kosher salt and coarsely cracked black pepper. It'll look like this:

Preheat the oven to 250F. Then, you're gonna heat a couple of tbsp of EVOO in a Dutch oven over high heat. Remember the smoking pork fat from my birthday dinner? This is another time where if you are me, you're glad you have that high-powered hood fan. It might even be why you insisted on its inclusion in the kitchen renovation. If you are me, that is. My good friend Bret Jennings, who owns this restaurant and taught me a great deal of what I know about good food and cooking, was the one who taught me that the secret to a good braise is getting a really good sear on the meat you are braising. That means smoke. And hood fans.

At any rate, when you're done getting the sear on it, it'll look like this....

... and you'll have a nice little puddle of EVOO and rendered beef fat. Remove the beef from the heat and set aside, and throw in rough chop mirepoix, comprised of 4 carrots, 2 ribs of celery, and a medium sized onion. Add a head of garlic, halved, 4-5 sprigs of thyme, 2 fingers of rosemary, and a couple of bay leaves. Side note: This seems like a good time to clarify a point that one of my readers mentioned to me earlier this weekend-- unless otherwise noted, all herbs are fresh. I almost never use dry herbs.

Sweat the mirepoix and marvel at the aromatics that come from those simple vegetables cooking in animal fat. Those Frenchies were on to something, I tell you what. Then, I like to sing my braise of choice a little lullaby as I nestle it in its bed of vegetables for a long winter's nap, like so:

On top of this, for pot roast, I add 1/2 a bottle of dry unoaked red wine, 1/2 c. San Marzano chopped tomatoes, and stock to cover. In this case, I had kept my braising liquid from lamb shanks last Monday, so I had a nicely herb-infused, collagen rich stock to use to braise this bad boy. What's the lesson here? Always save braising liquid. It makes great stock for soup, braising stuff again, etc.

Bring to a simmer on the stovetop, cover with tight-fitting lid, and put in 250F oven for 4 hours. Easy peasy. In about 1.5-2 hours, your house will begin to smell AWESOME. When it's done, take it out of the oven and let it rest in its liquid with the lid on (key point being 'in its liquid.' Braised stuff will dry out and get stringy unless you let it hang out in its vegetable/juice bed while it's resting). If you have to sneak a look, you'll see that it looks like this:

While you are slowly infusing your house with the smell of awesomeness, it's a good time to figure out what you're gonna serve with it. I chose two things-- acorn squash with cumin, cayenne, and maple syrup, and because I wanted the meal to be really heart-healthy, twice-baked buttermilk-cheddar mashed potatoes. That's right, people. Because to quote the great American philosopher Samuel Clemens, moderation is best practiced...wait for it... in moderation.

Squash is pretty easy. Preheat oven to 400F (if you're making this with the pot roast, wait until you've taken the pot roast out to rest).

Halve lengthwise and seed an acorn squash. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together 2 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp cayenne (to taste really), 1.5 tbsp salt. Add 1/2 cup maple syrup, whisking to combine.

In the well left by the seeds in each half of the squash, put a sizeable pat of butter (depends on how frisky you're feeling, I guess). Split the syrup/spice mix between the two halves.

Put in oven and set timer for 20 minutes. When 20 mins are up, take a pastry brush and baste the rim of the squash with the buttery-syrupy goodness.

Add 20-25 more minutes. Squash is done when it's fork tender and well caramelized on top. It'll look like this:

Note the well of sweet/spicy/buttery nectar in the middle. This is the added bonus of acorn squash-- it acts as a font for its own dipping sauce. Which is, needless to say, awesome.

Ok. On to potatoes. Like the squash, most of this can happen during the last 40 minutes of cooking the pot roast if you want-- that way when you take out the roast to rest, the oven is ready for the squash and potatoes' higher heat needs. I like Yukon golds for this and most other potato-related enterprises, save french fries (Russets are unsurpassed for this). Anywho, for E and me, we used half a dozen large-ish Yukon golds, cut into eighths. Boil in salted water until fork tender. Remove from water, and run through a food mill with the coarse plate in. If you don't have a food mill, go buy one. I can't live without mine. And besides, it's pretty!

Anyway, whatever you do, don't use a mixer-- this will turn your mashers to glue. Starch to gluten, chemical composition changes, blah blah blah. Just don't do it. I promise.

After you've run the potatoes through the mill, it's time to make the really healthy part of the dish.

For this many potatoes, I use 3/4 c. buttermilk and 1/4 stick of butter. Slowly melt the butter into the buttermilk over low heat, and using your microplane, grate 2 cloves of garlic into the mix. Stir to combine.

Pour the buttermilk into the milled potatoes, and stir to uniform consistency... which should be feather light and pillowy... and marvel at the wonder of the food mill, and how you ever survived without one.

Spoon all this into a glass/ceramic baking dish and grate sharp cheddar cheese over it to cover. Salt and coarse grind black pepper, and you're ready to rock. Throw it in that same 400F oven that you're using for the squash, and when you're done, it'll look like this:

At which point your mouth will begin to water uncontrollably, because if you had Smell-O-Vision, you'd agree that smells REALLY good.

This whole time, while the squash and potatoes were finishing, I was letting the pot roast rest in its braising liquid. Take it out and it'll dry up. Trust me. The other thing I did as soon as the pot roast was done was take a couple of ladle-fuls of braising liquid, run it through a fine sieve, and put it in a saucepan over medium-high heat to reduce. This helps to concentrate the flavors, and gives you something to salt that's not the big pot of stuff-- that way you can save the stuff that's in the big pot more easily and adjust salt upon reheating. This time I had one of those moments of clarity/laziness, where I saw that there was a thin sheen of maple syrup left in the small saucepan from that morning's aforementioned waffles. I ladled that sauce right on top and stirred it in... and I'm glad I did. More on that later.

And then it was time to make one of these: And for some reason,

Now, there's not a lot of textural variation in this dish. It's all pretty much spoon-tender. But the meat is so silky and beautiful, and totally imbued with all the herbs and garlic and mirepoix and wine... and the potatoes have that tang of buttermilk and sharp cheese, and that low hum of garlic underneath that just warms you to the core. And the squash- the squash is like dessert, only better. Sweet, salty, earthy from the cumin, and an undercurrent of heat from the cayenne. And the sauce got a deep earthy sweetness from the maple that wasn't cloying-- it just helped to accentuate the herby, beefy loveliness. Take a bite of all three together and it's like Twizzlers... it makes mouths happy.

WHAT WE DRANK WITH IT:

Note that I usually say "what to drink," but I'm guessing that you may not have access to a bottle like this. See, the wine shop where I work has a regular customer that has an extensive cellar, to say the least. When we make deliveries to his house, he's nice enough to tip us all in wine. In the case of the latest delivery, it was Diamond Creek Cabernet "Gravelly Meadow" 1991. I'm not generally a California Cabernet kind of guy, but in the early 90s they were still making wine with some balance and finesse. In the autumn of its life, this was really pretty-- all the primary fruit had turned to smoke and leather and dried flowers and currants... and the texture was flannel-soft and totally integrated.

Bo Ssäm... My Day of Porkening Hath Arrived.

2009-10-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

So, dear reader, if you have been tuning in, you know that I cooked Momofuku's Bo Ssäm for dinner last night in honor of my birthday (I'm turning this guy's number). What is Bo Ssäm, you might ask? Apparently it's Korean for "really big piece of pork shoulder cooked for a long time. With assorted Asian condiments."

Ah yes... proof yet again that every culture whose food is worth eating has figured out a way to make this:

into this:

or in this case, this:

Still with me? It's ok, I drooled a little on my keyboard too. This is going to be a bit of a different post for a couple of reasons. First, I am cooking from a recipe that is copyrighted, so in order to maintain my conscience (because I'm not under any illusions that David Chang is going to sue me for writing about his recipe), I'm going to provide somewhat more vague instructions than I did for the lasagne.
Second, because this is my birthday weekend, I may end up 2.5, if not 3 sheets to the wind by the time publishing time comes around... so I reserve the right to edit the finished product between its original post time and tomorrow am when I wake up.

Ok, moving on. What you'll need is a 9-12 lb Boston butt (heehee), which is the fat end of a shoulder. Ideally it'd be bone-in, but if you're like me, sometimes your local butcher doesn't want to listen to the very carefully printed instructions that you gave your wife to give to him... and he removes the bone. So be it... it'll just lessen your cooking time a bit without it.
The night before, you'll want to do one of two things. Either a) combine a couple of cups of sugar and kosher salt with about 5-6 cups of water, heat until the salt and sugar are dissolved, wait until that cools, and put your butt (heehee) in it, weighted so as to submerge it, in the fridge overnight. This is what I did.
I wish I'd b) combined a couple of cups of sugar with a couple of cups of salt, and rub the meat all over with it, wrap the meat, and put it in my fridge overnight. It accomplishes the same thing-- a short cure on the butt (heehee).

The next day, about 7 hours before you plan to eat, preheat your oven to 300F. Put the butt (heehee) on a rack in a roasting pan with some sliced onions and some liquid-- some people say beer, some white wine, I used sake, cause I had some leftover that I wasn't going to drink and hey, it's Asian-y, right? Because I forgot to take pictures of this process (hey, I'm new at this), I'll show you the picture from about 4 hours in:

I took that picture when I took it out to baste it, which I did every hour until it was done. After 7 hours, you're gonna take it out and let it rest for a bit, and while your wife is baking you triple chocolate death brownies, you're going to combine 3/4c. brown sugar with 1/2c. kosher salt (yes... more sugar and salt-- because when David Chang tells you to do something to pork, you DO it, goddammit) and rub it all over the butt (heehee). Careful, it's hot. It'll look like this, esp. if your friends have already taken a chunk of pork fat off the top...

Then, if you're smart, you'll put the roasting rack in a clean pan when you put the butt (heehee) back in the oven under the broiler to caramelize the sugar. If you're a moron like me, you're really glad you have a high-powered hood fan in your kitchen, because the pool of pork fat under the butt (heehee) will smoke you out of said kitchen when it goes under the broiler. Genius. No pictures of that, sadly. But your butt (heehee) will look like this, which will make up for the smoke:

Now, if you remember, I was kind of unhappy with my butcher for having given me a deboned butt (heehee). What I didn't know at the time is that because it necessitated tying the roast to keep it cooking uniformly, there was an unexpected ancillary benefit to the boneless roast...

I give you, ladies and gentlemen... PORK FLAVORED ROCK CANDY!!!! Everyone was like a little kid at the fair eating the candy off the string... salty, sweet, crunchy-- and nutritious! (not sure about that last part, actually)

While the pork rested some more (about 30 minutes or so-- there is some SERIOUS thermal mass there), we got all the condiments together. While the butt was cooking, lest I be accused of sitting around all day letting the oven do the work, I had made some quick pickles of chilies, radishes and red onion. You can do this by:

1. Heating 1 c. rice vinegar, 1/2 c. water, to a simmer and adding 1/2 c. sugar and a couple pinches of salt and stirring to dissolve.

2. Pouring over the vegetables you are pickling (if you slice them, they will be pickled more quickly) and refrigerating the mix. I use take-out soup containers-- in the restaurant business we call them crabbos, because they're also what lump crab meat comes in. They are exactly 1 pint, made of sturdy plastic, and are perfect for this and various other storage needs. I only got a picture of the onions (remember my disclaimer about birthday/inebriation):

I also got my friend SJ to stop by the Korean Market on the way to pick up some kim chee-- and she got two different kinds. One was straight up cabbage kim chee, and the other said this on the label:

The picture's a little blurry, so I'll translate-- Oyster Kim Chee. This stuff did not fake the funk-- daikon, scallions, cabbage, and, you guessed it... oysters. Hotness.

We also got some bibb lettuce and some rice noodles together, chopped the pork (that was fun in and of itself), and the table looked like this:

And then, the moment of clarity/porkening/awesomeness arrived... and we made these:

This... was... AMAZING. Salty/sweet/meaty/unctuous/spoon-tender pork and crispy, pork-candy sugar coated pork fat cracklins, with the sour/salty/spicy funk of the kimchee, the sweet/sour crunch of the pickles, some added funk from the fish sauce, and the clean, crisp, tender lettuce. 8 people polished off just under 9 lbs of pork in under 30 minutes. I say again... Happy Birthday to me.

For dessert, btw, my wife made me brownies (at my request-- what can I say, I'm not really a cake guy, I guess). She made Ruth Reichl's brownie recipe--long live the doyenne of American cuisine-- and they were unbelievable. Death by chocolate... and a happy death it would be. Rich beyond belief, let light in texture. Really amazing. Reason 9348 why I won the wife lottery: my wife can bake (and cook, btw) her ass off.

Oh, and thanks to Webster for taking some awesome photos (most of the non-blurry ones were hers), Charlie and Jason and Blaine for bringing really cool beer to try before dinner, and again to SJ for hitting the Korean market. This post would not be what it is without you guys. xoxoxo.

WHAT TO DRINK WITH IT:

That, friends, is Morlet Proportion d'Orée. A white Bordeaux blend from Sonoma, California, that is the best white wine from California I have ever tasted. Period. It is mostly Semillon (65%), with the balance made of Sauv Blanc and Muscadelle. Broad, fleshy stone fruit with hints of honeysuckle and baking spice. A 30 second-plus finish. Unbelievable concentration. This was a gorgeous match with the richness of the pork and all the other flavors going on... and bold enough to stand up to all of it. Once final time... Happy Birthday to me.

Teaser for post 4... The Porkening

2009-10-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I stole "The Porkening" from Thursday Night Smackdown. That's not relevant. What is relevant is that I have a bit of a man-crush on David Chang. As my wife would say, I want him to be my friend. He's the hot NY chef of the last 2 years, famous for his oink-ocentric cuisine (ha... get it? oink-ocentric? I kill me). He does wondrous things with pork and offal in his Korean-Chinese-inflected restaurants, most famously at Momofuku. He is all about no nonsense, punk rock cooking, and is a complete badass. Hence my man-crush.

So, this weekend, in honor of my birthday on ~~Wednesday~~ Tuesday (what a freakin moron I am), I'm making this:

That is one hell of a big piece of pork. and assorted asian condiments. I will detail my labors on Sunday. So read. Happy Birthday to me.

Lasagne-- or another reason why I love my deep freezer.

2009-10-08T18:43:00.000-07:00

So one of the best wedding presents that E and I got was from our friend Andrea. She called it "Fire and Ice." Interestingly enough, the music that we walked down the aisle to was called Not Fire, Not Ice. More on that another time. Anywho, the present itself was comprised of two pieces of kitchen equipment that I now can't live without-- a pizza stone, and her deep freezer, which we had committed to buy earlier in the summer and she just gave to us as a present. The stone will get some love in a near future post... and the freezer has already gotten some love.

This thing lets you say 'yes' a lot. Dad says "hey Mike-- want some Jamison Farms leg of lamb?" I can say "Sure thing! We'll just freeeeze it until we need it!" I spend all day last winter making bolognese from scratch, and have some extra? No worries! We'll just freeeeeeze it until, well, today-- when I remembered that I had a quart of bolognese sitting downstairs and said to myself "Self-- you've had a long day, and so has E. Autumn has announced itself with the first Red Sox playoff game of the year...how bout some lasagne?"

Which brings us to this post-- Lasagne on a Thursday. Now, as you read more of these morsels of post-y goodness, you'll discover that I'm a little OCD about doing shit from scratch. Which means that meat sauce isn't ground beef and tomato thrown in a pan for awhile. It's all-day bolognese. With meat that I ground myself, braised with mirepoix and milk until it's velvety soft and rich. Which doesn't lend itself well to the idea of lasagne on a Thursday. Which is, again, why I'm glad that I had some frozen from last time. That said, here's my recipe, sans pictures.

1 lb. lamb shoulder, ground
1 lb. veal, ground
1 lb. pork shoulder, ground
1/4 lb pancetta, ground (I like the brand from Iowa called La Quercia)
2 c. mirepoix, chopped fine
5 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
4 oz. good tomato paste
1-1.5 c. whole milk
5-6 tbsp minced fresh oregano
1/4 bottle dry white wine
2 x 2 in. piece of rind from Reggiano
2 fresh bay leaves
s and p to taste

1. In heavy bottomed saucepan/dutch oven, heat some EVOO and brown meat in batches-- don't over crowd the meat-- should be a single layer at a time. Remove meat and set aside, reserving rendered fat.
2. Add mirepoix, garlic, and bay leaf, and sweat until onions are soft and translucent.
3. add tomato paste, and cook until browned and further thickened.
4. Reduce heat, and deglaze pan with white wine, scraping up any browned bits.
5. Add meat back to pan, with rest of ingredients (not s and p).
6. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to lowest setting, cover, and simmer for 2.5-3 hours. Skim fat periodically. When finished, salt and pepper to taste. Sauce should be of a melt in your mouth consistency. Like most braises, it will improve overnight, so if you can make it a day ahead of time, so much the better. But when it's done (or thawed... heehee), it'll look like this:

Ok. Back to lasagne. Now, if you are doing this on a weekend, you can do all of the following in the last 45 mins or so of cooking the bolognese.

First get a pot of salted water going so you can cook your pasta, and cook it. A lb. box'll do you. I like to leave mine a bit more al dente than I normally would, since it'll cook a bit more in the oven. Don't forget to run some cold water over it to stop cooking, and drizzle some EVOO so it doesn't stick to itself.

Next, the bechamel. No ricotta here-- there are some conflicts about this, but I've always been taught that true lasagne bolognese has bechamel, not ricotta.
You'll need:
1 stick of butter, quartered, a couple tbsp. EVOO
1 clove garlic, sliced thinly
1 c. or so all purpose flour
1-1.5 c. milk
Nutmeg (I prefer grating it fresh... remember the OCD?)
1/3 c. freshly grated Reggiano.

1. Melt butter to point of foaming in EVOO. Gratuitous picture of melting butter in 3...2...1...

2. Add slivered garlic and sweat (this is an actual culinary term, btw-- I promise I'm not telling you to sweat into your food).

3. Reduce heat to low, and whisk in flour slowly, until you have the consistency and appearance of something like custard. it'll look kinda like this:

4. Add milk, whisking constantly over low heat to achieve uniform consistency.
5. Add Reggiano, and continue to whisk until you have the consistency of a thick milkshake.
6. Remove from heat, and add nutmeg, salt and pepper-- if nutmeg is fresh, grate with a microplane. 3/4 of a berry (is that what they're called?) should suffice. They look kinda cool on the inside, like this:

Ok, now you have some tasty bechamel. It's OK to have a spoonful-- I did.

Next, you should grate your cheese (I like a mix of fontina and whole milk mozzarella--not the fresh kind). If you have nice parents who gave you a Cuisinart for a wedding present, use that. If not, use a box grater. A little elbow grease never killed anybody, right? For both the Cuis and box grater-- if you chill the cheese for a bit beforehand in the freezer, it'll help.You should end up with 2-3 cups of grated cheese.

Preheat your oven to 375F.

OK-- now you're ready for assembly! I use a 9x13 glass or ceramic casserole pan, the kind everyone has.

Put some of the meat sauce on the bottom to serve as the non-stick, then layer pasta on top. I go three lengthwise and one across. Then you layer meat and bechamel, and kinda swirl the two together with the ladle-- make sure the top of the pasta gets coated, and grind some fresh pepper over the top. Just make sure you switch the direction of the pasta every other layer. Add cheese every two-- I like to grate some Reggiano when I add cheese. Here's a cheesy layer:

Keep going until you a) run out of meat sauce (like I did tonight) or b) run out of pasta (which is the usual order of things). On the top layer, it should be a little bit of meat and more bechamel, and lots of cheese, like this:

Cover with aluminum foil and bake in the oven for 30 mins. After 30 mins, uncover and raise heat to 425, bake for another 5-7, or until it comes out looking like this:

It's going to be hard, but now is when you let it hang out for 15-20 mins. First of all, it is roughly 35,000 degrees in that pan, and I don't know about you, but in my world, molten cheese and bechamel on the inside of your cheek HAS to be a part of whatever Hell ends up being like. Second, it needs a chance to set and get to know itself, so to speak. That way, it'll hold together when you cut yourself a piece, take that first bite, and revel in the alchemy of cooking that is good lasagne. The creamy of the bechamel with the meaty of the sauce, the silky texture of the sauces and middle-pasta with the crunch of crusty outside-pasta and cheese, the hint of sweet spice that the nutmeg breathes over the whole thing... NOW it's fall.

WHAT TO DRINK WITH IT: Caldora Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2006

This is one of those nights where though it's comfort food, the food is the star, so one has to be kinda careful. I wanted something fairly robust to stand up to all the big flavors, but not so huge that it overwhelmed the nuance. And because I'm a dork, I wanted Italian to go with my Italian-esque food. Time for Montepulciano. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo comes from right outside Siena in the heart of Tuscany. At the entry level (this is about $10-12 retail), it's a wine that's full of bing cherry and plum fruit, a touch of earth, and good structure. Fresh and juicy, this is what you'd get if you ordered house red at a trattoria in Tuscany. It's not trying to knock your socks off, but it both elevates and is elevated by food--just the way that the Italians like it.

Eff Condé Nast.

2009-10-06T05:45:00.000-07:00

So, when I started doing this thing yesterday, I was going to have some witty reference to Gourmet's imminent demise and how this would end up being the new standard for culinary journalism. And then I said to myself "self... let's not get ahead of ourselves here." My next thought was to have my opening post be a table-banging tirade against the dying of the light, and how sad it is that a venerable institution like Gourmet, headed by someone as brilliant as Ruth Reichl, could meet its end because of a decline in ad sales... and I realized that in all likelihood, that wasn't the best way to make a first impression on my nascent readership. So I'm going to let it be my second post.

I mean seriously, Condé Nast-- You're going to deep-six a magazine like Gourmet, a publication with a history that goes back over half a century (1941)? On the advice of McKinsey and Co, a consulting firm that touted Enron as a 'gem of modern management?' In FAVOR of Bon Appetit, which on its best day was never half the publication that Gourmet was?

Never mind the fact that Gourmet, in the last 10 years, became one of the leading proponents of sustainable eating, fairly pushing the once-niche idea of "farm-to-fork" into the mainstream of American culinary conscience. Never mind the idea that a cooking magazine could assume a certain amount of kitchen acumen to execute its (relatively simple) recipes, instead of spoon feeding Rachel Ray-esque drivel to the masses (like Bon Appetit). Never mind the fact that another CN magazine--Vogue, under Anna Wintour's leadership-- has turned out 800+ page tomes, with photo-shoot budgets in excess of $150,000.

Gourmet was not a brand-driven magazine like Martha Stewart Living or Food Network Magazine. Ruth Reichl actually devoted some space to real food writing, instead of puff pieces on Bobby Flay's latest endeavor. Over the last few years, we've heard the death knell sounded over and over again for print journalism (the irony of writing about it on the internet is not lost on me), but it hadn't hit home for me until now. What happened yesterday is a sad commentary on the changing of the guard in journalism and the overwhelming evidence that after the dust settles, it all comes down to money.

La reine est morte, vive la reine.

The first post is the deepest...

2009-10-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

Or something like that. I've tried to do these things before. You know-- stuff like journals, composition notebooks, etc etc. Really Facebook is the only thing that I've ever spent any time on. And that's just because it's a colossal time suck and I like that weird little voyeuristic thing that FB indulges.

But I've had a lot going on in my life of late. Had a baby girl about 6 months ago, renovated our house about 6 months before that, changed jobs somewhere in there, and various and sundry happenings and goings-on in between. Through all of this, cooking and eating food has been my therapy, my "om," my recharge. Not in a hiding candy bars in the pantry kind of way-- more in a "it's the first weekend in October and it's raining, so I'm going to spend all day braising some lamb" kind of way.

So, I figured I'd try to use the internet for something constructive; ie, not FB, bit-torrent music pirating, and, well, you know what else. For most of my adult life, I've liked reading food writing and blogs about food, and I've always said to myself "Man, I should do that." Well, here goes nothing. I'm not as funny as this lady, but I can cook, drink, take pictures, and brain-vomit on the page with the best of them.

On the nights I write about food, I'm going to try from now on to get step-by-step pics up with the posts, but because I sorta just got up the courage to do this, I only have the mostly finished product, before plating:

This is Gigot au Sept Heures, or 7 Hour Lamb. I got this in my head mostly because I've been on a 'mammal fast' for the month of September (as you continue to read this blog, you'll discover that that is very much outside the norm for yours truly), and also because I didn't feel like going to the grocery store and this was in my freezer (all hail Costco and deep freezers). And also because it's pretty much fire and forget... and I had my daughter to myself today. In case you're not a parent, that means any complicated cooking was out the door.

I read about this method of cooking lamb slow and low in one of the many food magazines to which I subscribe, and perhaps it was a moment of vegetable-addled longing, but it has stuck in my head ever since. Course, I couldn't find the issue in question, so I was left to my own devices on this one. The idea is to half-braise, half-roast the leg so that it's cooked all the way through, but juicy and tender as a mother's love. I usually do this with shanks, but this was the first time with a leg. I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this again.

INGREDIENTS:
Mirepoix, rough chop
1 head garlic, peeled and left whole
1/2 bottle dry, unoaked white wine (yes, white)
bay leaf
thyme
rosemary
leg of lamb (the recipe, as i recall, called for bone-in, but boneless is what i had. suck it.)
1 1/2 c. cannellini beans, soaked overnight (this was my own tweak-- i had some soaked beans left over from a chicken braise this weekend, so i figured i'd use 'em. They liked their lamb bath, cause now they're all lamby and delicious.

COOKING:
1. Preheat oven to 200. Tie lamb roast if boneless, don't bother if not. Pat lamb dry, rub with EVOO, salt, and pepper.
2. In a heavy bottomed, lidded pan (Dutch oven works the best), brown lamb well on all sides over high heat. This will mean using your hood if you have one and opening some windows if you don't.
3. Remove lamb and set aside, and sweat mirepoix and garlic in the rendered lamb fat (mmm... lamb fat).
4. Add beans, stir to cover beans with fat and mix ingredients.
5. Add herbs, bay, and lamb, nestling lamb in the veggies/beans.
6. Add wine, and bring to simmer.
7. Cover and put in oven. Cook at 200 for 3.5 hours, remove, baste, and put back in oven for another 2-2.5 hours. Lamb should be fork tender and juicy.
8. Remove pan from oven, and rest on stovetop (no heat) for at least 40 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with some reserved pan juices, beans, and mirepoix. Add a green if you're feeling unhealthy. Remember how nice autumn is.

WHAT TO DRINK WITH IT:
We drank the Laurona Montsant 2003 (not that I give a shit, but it was WS Top 100 in 2006... a sample left over from my TCV days). Montsant's a great little Spanish appellation situated right around Barcelona; it almost forms a ring around its better known cousin Priorat. They use a mix of Rhone and Bordeaux varietals, and the wines are generally pretty powerful and aromatic. This one is mostly Grenache and Syrah, with the balance made up of Cab, Merlot, and Carignane. The first time I tasted this, a couple of years ago, it was a little out of balance and the wood was all you could really taste (it spends a year in barrique). Now, this has gotten to know itself a little-- and the aromatics are gorgeous--cherry, vanilla, cedar, herbs, and smoke. Surprisingly elegant and soft in the mouth, with really pretty acidity and beautiful texture, and killer minerality on the finish.