oh lobel’s. how do i love thee? let me count the ways…

i’ve reached a point in my life where if i’m going to buy a slab of meat it’s going to have to be of serious quality. luckily in the nashville area we have some really good farmers raising the kind of meat i feel good about eating. i’ve felt this way for quite some time making it almost impossible for me to go to my local supermarket and just ‘pick up’ a chicken or a steak. michael pollan pretty much changed my thinking on all of this and now in the wake of ‘food, inc.’ – a movie that pretty much spells out the truth in undeniable facts about what has happened to our food supply and our nations declining health… well, in my home it’s either local meat from the farmers market where i can ask questions, or it’s ordered online from a trusted source.

i’m a full fledged omnivore, but given a choice, i’d take a bowl of pasta any day over a factory farmed piece of meat. and so i usually do. this way when i cook up a chop or roast a bird, it may cost more than one might be used to paying, but the usual meals of beans, grains and yes – my beloved pasta, seem to balance it all out. fyi – the above chop was about $1 an ounce. and my steaks can sometimes be as high as $4 an ounce, but this varies.

oh and just one more thing. a dear friend sent me this link and i am definitely making my next big thick steak using this method. this technique got my attention in a big way and quite frankly, i can’t stop thinking about it…

but before i hit you wth yet another bowl of linguini, i think the time is right to present to you this really beautiful and juicy 12 oz berkshire pork shop. it was simply seasoned and then pan grilled and served over some polenta that had been studded with italian sausage, mozzarella, roasted garlic and both red and green bell peppers. as a terrine it was lovely served beside some roast chicken, but there was quite a bit leftover so it was then frozen and now thawed and pan fried in the same pan as the pork had been while the chop was done and resting.

just now while i was writing this post i became a bit peckish and went outside and began to literally graze on my quasi-garden that resides in pots on my patio. some little ripe and very sweet cherry tomatoes were popped in my mouth accompanied with some basil and chive. i tasted the fennel fronds and the parsley and the french thyme too, just picking away as though i was a rabbit or a raccoon or a deer – or whatever usually ravages your garden…

some of the thyme was brought back in the house to go into tonights farro risotto, but on a whim i grabbed a few leftover water crackers, some fresh mozzarella and some calabrian fig molasses that i had just received as a gift and garnished it generously with the fresh thyme. when i took a bite i declared it absolutely wonderful.

the above picture is deceiving. i ate five of them…

i realize the name of this dish probably sounds a bit random and that the picture is not helping. but let me explain…

this past week there have been 2 cooking classes held in my home with 16 students in total. the topic was handmade pasta and well, it really was a lot of fun. we made 3 dishes – a sweet potato tortellini, batali’s fettuccine capricciose and the roman classic, amatraciana with an extruded bucatini.

next month we’re holding a bruschetta and biscotti class. we’ll make a few wonderful bruschettas, we’ll drink some chianti and we’ll bake and bake, everyone going home with a big bunch of cookies for the holidays. be there.

anyway, we had leftovers of the tortellini filling, so last night i invited a friend over with no real thoughts on what i might make for dinner, but somewhere between washing my face and putting on my fuzzy lined merrell’s, it came to me in a flash… i had somehow once again channeled my inner ‘gabrielle hamilton’ and came up with this dish.

i realize it doesn’t look like much. thank god for parsley. but here’s exactly what’s going on. ok. ready? the tortellini filling contained mashed sweet potatoes, egg, parmigiano, nutmeg, parsley and finely diced prosciutto. i formed it into 2 patties and rolled them in panko crumbs. i had bought a couple of king oyster mushrooms to use in my fettuccine dish, but the second night of class used only the regular oyster mushrooms. so i had this beauty sitting in my fridge. phallic? perhaps… i sliced the mushroom into long rectangular strips and grilled them until crisp. my friend had recently been to seattle and stopped into salumi, batali’s dad’s charcuterie shop and brought over some guanciale. we sliced 4 pieces thinly and grilled them as well.

 
think 8 inches long at the very least…. (image swiped from wiki)

so, king oyster mushrooms. who knew? i’m now totally in love with this cultivated funghi. i saw them at the asian market and had to check them out. they only run about $5 a lb and are fleshy, dense and meaty – almost like abalone in texture. just slice them in long vertical strips and they grill up nice and crispy on the edges. huge surprise. which only goes to prove that i need to get out more…

so class, to review:

• pan fried sweet potato cakes filled with prosciutto and parmigiano
• king oyster mushrooms sliced and grilled
• guanciale sliced and grilled
• with a poached egg on top
• a drizzle of balsamic syrup
• and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

remarkable.

this post is dedicated to these 3 bloggers who inspire me to try and be a better cook: jennifer from last night’s dinner. peter from cookblog. and heather from gild the (voodoo)lily.

              

my rss feeder broke.  and i didn’t realize it for 3 months.  mostly because i (still) don’t even understand what exactly an rss feeder is, or what it does – talk about being oh so techno savvy… but my stat’s were dropping off and well, try as i might to just ignore the cold hard numbers, i started to take it personally.  was it something i said?  something i cooked?  where did so many of my bleaders go and why would they leave me after all we have meant to each other? 

but before i called my therapist, i called mark from simpler computing! and he quickly came to my rescue – again.  thank you mark.  you solved the mystery and now once again you are so totally my blero. 

so listen up – all you techno losers out there that just like to cook and write and take a little photo here and there, but do not want to bother your pretty little heads with html and templates and embedding and wordpress editors that suck and the like, call mark.  today.  he can tweak your blog into submission.  AND he likes to cook… (btw – ceF is still under construction as i type so please bear with…)

speaking of liking to cook… here’s the deal.  i cook a lot.  but sometimes it’s just dinner.  and sometimes it’s not my idea of a blog worthy post.  and usually it’s just that i’m too lazy to write.  but it’s totally me, not you.  you, i adore.  you make my life better, adding an entirely new fangled dimension that did not exist just 16 months ago. but still, i am often unmotivated, or perhaps even more often than that, i’m just reading OPB’s…

so what happens is that some of these dishes fall by the blogosphere’s wayside.  but i thought since we were dealing with feeds and feeding, i’d show you what gets fed around here to my immediate world.  so i’m going to hit you with a fair few of what i’ve not bothered to bother you with until now, along with some pictures. take a deep breath – here goes…

look familiar?  this one was made with the half and half, as per ripert’s recipe.  was it better?  yes.  did i LOVE it?  not so much.  it’s ok.  kinda brunchy, not desserty.  i like custard.  life is good.  and eric, you’re totally cool and sexy and hot and all those things.  but my tony still has you beat, big time. i hope you can understand…

ok so i realize i am blogger #4721 to make jim lahey’s no knead bread.  but i did it.  quietly.  and it was a good and crusty loaf of bread that if nothing else looked very, very impressive. 

i baked it in my romertopf that i dug out and dusted off.  although it stays unused and because it looks so beautiful – i keep it.  i’m sure you understand such things.  so, i soaked the terracotta in water and then baked the bread as per the direction for a dutch oven.  i felt my dutch oven was too big and i didn’t want a 2" high bread.  somehow, this worked out quite nicely.  so take a chance, dear readers – bake no knead bread.  oh, and have i made this again since?  nope.  will i?  maybe, probably not.

this was made quite awhile ago.  it was panko encrusted chicken livers served over what i think was swiss chard and finely sliced ‘delightful tiny purple potatoes’ and shallots sautéed with pimm’s and port.  what?  you think they may not have been tiny and delightful?  you are sooooo wrong….

i present to you… delightful. tiny. purple. potatoes.  i only wish i could have been in the room when the marketing team thought of that.  can you imagine what the discussion would have sounded like?  i only know they were republicans with bad haircuts.  after that, i know nothing.

so now you ask, what the hell is that?  that, my dear readers is a watermelon salad with mint leaves, chili oil and feta – topped with a very anti-locavore piece of barramundi from costco via australia.  in a previous life i lived down under (husband #1) and ate this fish regularly.  perhaps i didn’t need to sit the barramundi on top of the watermelon, but it seemed like a good idea at the time… and it was our dinner that night and we were happy enough.  so stop smirking.  thank you.

i made this last weekend and it was good and rich and saucy and chicken thighey – all that with trofie pasta thrown in for very good measure.  it’s what patricia wells eats when she’s at home in provence, a recipe that i picked up from feeding groom.  oh and it’s got sherry vinegar and garlic cloves and dijon mustard and lots of tarragon and minced sundried tomatoes… it’s more wintry than it is septembery in nashville, but i had 4 chicken thighs in the freezer and suddenly this just happened…

ok are you ready to hear what this was supposed to be?  what it almost was… what i wished it might have been and what it could be if i ever decide to take it on again?  salted butterscotch pudding with chocolate covered bacon.  thank you and goodnight.  the end.  by claudia. 

except it never really thickened properly.  and benton’s bacon is crazy salty.  so salty that i forgot just how salty it was therefore making it an out and out wrong bacon choice.  because it seems that is actually possible.  to make a wrong bacon choice.  you’d think not, but what this dessert needed was a thin cut good bacon that crisps up in a curly, artsy strip, and only then could it be dipped into lindt chocolate and put into a pudding recipe that WORKS.  because this recipe did not.  and another blogger tried it and it didn’t work for her either.  so. oh well,  we all drank our pudding and chucked the wayyy too salty pork.  seemed sinful but we got over it.  we lived and learned, moving onwards and upwards – with the comforting knowledge that bacon rarely ever lets you down…

so not even a little pretty.  AND the wrong color bowl.  but it was just a simple dinner of fresh crowder peas with bacon.  the bacon did just as it should, redeeming itself from the previous mishap.  there was something else served with this but really, i have no idea… i think it was grilled tilapia.  unexciting, quick and easy and not exactly memorable – but hey, not every night can be foie gras…

OK – EVERYBODY STAND UP AND STRETCH.  NO REALLY.  BECAUSE I AM NOT DONE.  BATHROOM BREAK?  GO ON.  I’LL WAIT….

oh, hi, you’re back.  wonderful, because i was worried… ok, just a few more…

this was lazzaroli’s sweet potato and ricotta ravioli.  i dressed it up with a side of kale, done in a sauce of olive oil, cream, honey and sage, and then dusted the pasta with nutmeg and parmegiano.  again – super fast and easy.  (tommy noodles, you are a nashville godsend… thank you for giving me an option that is first rate and still allows me to get creative.)

yes, i too jumped on the bandwagon thanks to michelle from thursday night smackdown and all the rest of you that grilled the hell outa a bunch of pizzas…  except michelle was the one who took my call on a saturday night so i could get very specific information about the whole pizza grilling process.  this particular pizza was taken from her post and it was damn fine.  i cooked down some swiss chard in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and used copious amounts of minced garlic and ricotta.  i also sliced up a big ripe yellow tomato with red stripes running through it (we will miss you beautiful heirloom tomatoes),

awesomeness, no?  well yes – but… from here on in i’ll stick to the pizza stone with my oven set to broil and 550f… because grilled pizza is too damn white on top.  and flipping it before the toppings go on doesn’t allow the cheese and sauce to bake into the dough and well, my grill runs hot (it’s infrared) so even on the lowest setting it never got the top brown and i kept having to turn the flame on and off so as not to scorch the bottom and was nervously moving it to the top rack and well, i like my pizza stone in my oven.  so if i had a real charcoal grill which i don’t and do not plan on getting because it’s too much work and i am not willing (go on – think of me what you will but there are extenuating circumstances… like a boyfriend who is also happy with oven baked pizza’s), maybe that would be better.  but as it stands, and i repeat – i am a pizza in the oven kinda gal – set to broil on super high heat with the stone on the very bottom rack.  but i made the obligatory grilled pizza.  yes i did.

i present to you… voodoo mac and cheese

do you read gild the (voodoo)lily?  if not, you need to read gild the (voodoo)lily…  heather is very smart and very funny and this bitch can cook.  and i mean that in a good way.  heather is another one of those foodcentric people that seriously knows how to put ingredients together.  like if you turned your pantry over to her, she’d blow your mind.  and you’d be thinking all, why didn’t i think of that?… and the answer is because she KNOWS MORE THAN YOU DO.  plus she’s a botanist.  a freakin’ botanist... so she’s always growing and foraging and well, it’s a little bit intimidating.  heather could totally kick your ass and never even touch you…

anyway, back in july she made something called garden mac.  for her it was merely a ‘clean your fridge out’ kinda dinner, and i’m thinking – mac and cheese with roasted tomatoes in a bechamel base?  sign me the hell up. 

the ingredients i used were as follows; mostaccioli pasta, the 4 cheeses were – asiago, parmigiano reggiano, st jerome and fontal.  and for the garden part – fresh thyme and heirloom tomatoes, kale, onion, squash and zucchini.  i drove all the ingredients about an hour south, down to my friend shannon’s house and we spent the day cooking and drinking wine and talking and laughing and then we sat out on the porch overlooking her farm and had a late lunch…

and for the grand finale i give to you an extremely abbreviated version of my veal stock mission…

bones arrive from snook’s.  i tried for weeks to find a local source.  nada.

20 lbs.

because i am awesome…

i made brown and white stock.  i followed the ruhlman way.  it is the only way. (great version here)

otherwise when you die, you go to culinary hell where you are forced to live on nothing but shoney’s buffets. (please click on the shoney’s link.  there are no words…)

and hey, thanks so much for reading.  i realize this post was a commitment. 

you can go now…

make fries… but please note that if you were heston blumenthal* – world renowned, 3 michelin starred chef of ‘the fat duck‘ you would do this:

Heston Blumenthal’s Triple Cooked Chips

• put a pot of water on to a bare boil
• cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch strips
• simmer until just cooked through – you don’t want them to fall apart
• remove with a slotted spoon – place them where they can drain and dry in the refrigerator
• when they’re cool place them in�peanut oil�that’s heated to about�250 f
• fry but don’t let them color – remove from oil, drain�and place back into the fridge
• when cooled, fry them again at about 375 f until browned
• drain, season and serve

(*i am not heston blumenthal – not even a little)

and wouldn’t you think that a guy with a restaurant called "the fat duck" would fry his potatoes in duck fat? go figure.

and on another much more bizarre note, harold mcgee* – molecular gastronomist extraordinaire says that horse fat is the way to go for the #1 best fries.

(*i am not harold mcgee – not even a very little)

we love scallops.  and i love truffled anything.  so i was wondering if the two could hang together in the same way that ‘fennel pollen and pork‘ seem to do so well.  the answer, i am happy to say is a big, luscious mouthful of yesssss.

‘whole foods‘ had the most beautiful scallops i’d seen in awhile.  huge as in 8 to a lb., and fresh to boot.  all in all, my kind of scallops as due to the sheer size it’s nearly impossible to overcook them while trying to get that somewhat evasive carmelization thing going on.  5 months ago my quest for browning scallops led me to google this culinary challenge which brought me to this post – which was the first blog i ever saw.  ever.  in my life.  i think.  but i do know for certain that it was definitely the moment that the whole blogging concept got through to me.  somehow the blogosphere had escaped me and just how this was even remotely possible with all the time i spend online, well how this happened i will truly never understand.

but here we are…

so i decided to base our dinner on this recipe from the italian culinary center in nyc.  i pinched a few potatoes from a friend, grabbed a couple of my csa zucchinis, substituted shallots for the red onion and found the shredder attachment to my food processor.  gone are the days of scraping knuckles - 1 minute and your potatoes, zucchini and shallots are perfectly grated.  so allow me right here and now to send a shout-out to electricity and small kitchen appliances!  woo-hooo and god bless ‘em.  seriously.  i live more grateful everyday…

all i added to the three vegetables was some flour, salt and pepper and then i pan fried the cakes in olive oil until they were golden.  then they were baked until done – about 10 minutes on 400.

the scallops got dropped into a very hot saute pan with some olive oil for about 2 minutes per side.  i removed the scallops from the pan and added a cup of white wine to deglaze along with a knob of vermont butter and cheese cultured butter.  i cooked the wine down to a bit less than half and then we were ready to plate. 

first, a couple of the cakes, then a few scallops, next some sauce got poured on top – and finally that drizzle of white truffle oil.

i wish i’d have remembered that there was parsley in the fridge - if only for your sake.

eating down the house.  continued…

i read a fair few blogs and am constantly inspired by these people who understand food so well.  it certainly makes cooking easier on me.  tonight i riffed off one of my all-time fave blogs, smitten kitchen and enlisted a touch of help from minimally invasive (orange zest/pimenton = wow).

i bought one large yellow onion along with 3 organic valencia oranges for zest.  everything else was in the house.

i sauteed the one big onion and the last of my small ones in some olive oil.  when they were about to brown i added the chopped sweet potatoes, the last of my fresh sage, the zest of 3 oranges, niman ranch chorizo sausage, and a mixture of turnip, red russian kale and collard greens along with a litre of chicken broth – in no particular order.  i salt and peppered to taste and then added some (magic) sweet smoked pimenton.

the sweet potatoes and greens were all from my csa.  i used quite a bit of both.  but somehow, i still have more…  they are reproducing overnight.  like rabbits.

it was a one pot meal.  and really, this was so good.  but so very, very good.  in fact, surprisingly excellent.  a bonafide winner!

i’d love to go on about it some more but i am tired and have to wake up early…

(yawn)

ps – i can’t say it was a stoup.  i just can’t…  way too rachel ray on the lingo for me.

here was sunday night’s dinner which was actually quite wonderful despite the photo. 

the potatoes were  csa yukons – small one’s – boiled and then flattened and then put in a hot pan with some olive oil for about 3 minutes a side as recently seen in the ny times mag ‘potato tostones’ recipe.  i sprinkled them with some truffle salt.  i don’t seek out potatoes especially in the summer – but delvin, my csa is growing them and yukon’s are my all time favorite potato – hands down.  last saturday i received a bag of red potatoes and i gave them away.  along with the second white cabbage.  along with the green bell peppers.  along with some of my pride.  but hey, i forgave myself.  (one of the things i am working hardest on at this late stage in my life.)

the rib eye steaks were local grassfed beef from ‘west winds farm’.  i am fortunate to be the proud owner of a TEC infra-red grill and this baby goes to the proper 900 degrees needed to achieve that steakhouse crust.  i just hit them with some grey salt and then we threw them on the heat along with some shucked corn.  the meat was very good albeit not lobel’s…  

but the salad – it was amazing.  somehow it was just perfectly and simply great.  romaine with some heirlooms, fresh garlic off the press, olive oil and balsamic with smoked salt and some black pepper.

so not overly pretty – not fancy or complicated.  but a dinner that just wants to make you say ‘god bless america’.

and while we’re being thankful, i would like to also say, god bless all you food crazed people out there like me who UNDERSTAND that using 3 different salts in three different components of one dinner is not a silly thing to do. in fact, au contraire.

but i get snickered at by my friends.