Hill country

We arrived in Hill Country Texas yesterday and have been having the most wonderful time. We went hiking yesterday and this morning. This afternoon we spent our rainy time at a winery and then had all you can eat catfish for dinner at the Chevron station here in Stonewall. Apparently President Johnson was a philanderer of the first order. Time to hit Luckenbach for a night of dancing y'all.

Mango Smoothie Breakfast

I love a smoothie for breakfast and the one's I make only take about 3 minutes to make in the morning before work.

I buy frozen mango chunks from Trader Joes. I usually put in about 10-14 chunks depending on the size. The banana goes in first, then the mango, after that about a cup of yogurt. In the summer I throw in a couple of ice cubes.

This is what turns it from a mango smoothie to an Indian style mango lassi style drink. Put in between 1/4 and 1/4 tsp ground ginger and about 1/8 tsp cardamom seeds. Blend this all up and voila BREAKFAST. Pour it into a hot/cold cup and you have a portable one to boot.

Authentic Thai Massaman Curry - in 20 minutes or less

Have you ever made authentic Thai curry? I have and it takes forever. Last night I had a meeting so I decided to skip the homemade and go for some authentic Masaman curry that the Thai's had prepared for me.

Now it still has to be made as this is a small can. But by following the directions on the can and adding fresh vegetables, you can have a fantastic curry in the time it takes to steam the rice.

First off, open a can of curry paste and a can of coconut milk (not the light stuff). scrape the curry paste and the fatty portion of the coconut into a large saucepan. Boil this for about 5-7 minutes. It will smell fantastic.

While that is bubbling away, chop up your vegetables. You can use whatever veggies you want. I love to put in zucchini. In this case I had onions, carrots, potatoes and sunchokes. Yes sunchokes, because we had made the Moroccan food a few weeks ago.

Add all of your veggies to the pot with a second can of coconut milk and let simmer until the potatoes are cooked through but not falling apart. Note: if you decide to use a summer squash or little Thai eggplants (I didn't have either of these and wasn't going to the grocery store) you want to add them about 5 minutes after you've added the root vegetables.


Here you can see the veggies bubbling away. Taste the sauce while it cooks, you may want to add a bit of lime juice or some fish sauce. I ended up adding a half of a lime.

I also added a chicken breast. I always cut it across the wide side. I make slices about 1/4 inch thick and then cut them into about 1-1.5 inch pieces. You could also use shrimp or fish here. I think pork and beef don't go so well with this curry.  Don't add the meat until about 3 minutes before you want to serve. It doesn't take long to cook.

Chop up cilantro and peanuts for garnish. It's going to be tasty!!!

The jasmine rice has finished cooking in the rice cooker. You know what that means, time to add the meat to the curry. Let that simmer for a few minutes and presto-voila you have a 20 minute curry.

Dish up your rice, add the curry and sauce, garnish with cilantro and chopped peanuts and put the siracha on the side for those that like it hot. MMMMMM tasty. Want a recipe? Look at the can.....

Moroccan Week

Last week we decided that Moroccan cooking would be our theme.  We made a number of meals based on the same sauces and dips. The first thing I did was make some cool cucumber salad. I know, I know it's February, but I figured, since we were eating spicy foods we would have something to cool us down. I combine 1/2 cup of white vinegar with 3/4 cup water, 1 tsp of sugar and 1/4 tsp of salt and then I put in the cucumbers and white onion to marinate. You can easily add more cucumbers and onions if you finish the first batch too soon. Let this sit for at least 45 minutes.

First up we made pizza.

I had made Ottolenghi's Harissa for a cookbook club a few years back and I thought it would make a fantastic base for a Moroccan pizza. Paired with one of my sweetie's frozen pizza dough, I knew it would be fantastic. I roll out my pizza dough very thin on a silpat mat, pricking it all over, and slide it in for about 4 minutes without any toppings into a 450 degree oven. Then I take it out of the oven and off the silpat and dress it with my toppings.

Back it goes into the oven, this time straight onto the pizza stone with the harissa on the bottom, lamb and feta and some mozzarella (or in this case manchego as that's what I had in the house), some olives and roasted red peppers.

Bake it until it is crispy on the bottom and make sure you let it cool before you pop your beer and sit in front of the television with this beautiful pizza. YUM.

Next up was my sweetie's birthday dinner. We played with lamb belly ribs, coating them with ras al hanout and smoking them in the camerons smoker. We also made a lovely squid salad and finally used our argan oil to make a toasted almond dip, both from Paula Wolfert's Cuisine of Morocco.


Check out the beautifully smoked ribs.

Here my sweetie pounds toasted blanched almonds in the mortar before adding the argan oil. This sauce is soooo tasty.

Below you can see the masaman pancake breads we made, the three sauces and squid and lamb. Our beautiful valentine/birthday dinner, followed by CAKE of course.

 

Roasted Fennel Pasta Sauce

Yesterday I was sitting at work and got this huge craving for spaghetti with meat sauce. Now if you know me, I'm a bit inclined to change my mind depending on what pops into my head in the next five minutes. So I started thinking about what we had in the fridge and realized that we had 1/2 of a fennel bulb that needed to be eaten.

I've been on a fennel kick lately, making shaved fennel and arugula salads with orange dressing, fennel chicken soup, the list goes on. I Googled fennel spaghetti sauce and ended up at a "Serious Eats" post on   Roasted Fennel Tomato Sauce.  The recipe was from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper. It looked fast and FANTASTIC but as a major meat eater, I called  my sweetie and had him take Italian sausages out of the freezer.

The recipe starts by slicing fennel and onion and 8 yes 8 cloves of garlic. You don't have to slice thin, you don't have to be careful about slicing, it doesn't have to be even, just fast thick slices of veggies. I popped this all in a bowl with the hot pepper flakes, the salt and pepper and 1.5 tbsp of fennel seeds as the 2 tbsp they called for seemed like too many. This got mixed with 1/3 cup olive oil and put on a rimmed cookie sheet. It went under the broiler (note, the Splendid Table recipe recommends roasting, I broiled). You have to watch pretty carefully and stir every 5 minutes or so but once you get some browning, add the diced tomatoes.

 

I dont' know why the splendid table recipe wanted you to crush your whole tomatoes by hand, but I find that messy and annoying, besides, diced tomatoes were what I had. I also doubled the amount of tomatoes they called for as I was in the mood for a tomatoey dish. I popped them in and roasted for another 10-15 minutes until they looked a bit blackened. The kitchen was starting to smell wonderful. 

In the meantime, I was boiling fusilli and browning sausages. I always brown them, then add liquid and cover to cook them through. Usually I add water (or beer if it's brats) but I had the drained tomato juice from my diced tomatoes. I thinned it with about 1/4 cup of water (about 1/2-3/4 cup liquid total) and added that to the pan. Covered, they took about 10 minutes to cook almost through. When the pasta finished cooking, I drained it, quickly moving the pot back under the colander to save about 1/2 cup of pasta water. 

The veggies were pretty much done at this time so I sliced up the Italians, popping them into the pot to let them finish cooking with the steam from the noodles. I added the roasted veggies and poured on the leftover tomato sauce from cooking the sausages. I checked for consistency and only added about 2 tbsp of the pasta water. Here is where they say to dump in the cheese but I just topped off each bowl with some. Served with some warm bread that my sweetie made it was spicy, hot and perfect for a February night. Enjoy!

This is a BIG recipe, would probably serve 6-8 people and would be a great crowd pleaser as it's spicy and cheesy and has that beautiful mild licorice taste from the roasted fennel.

Ingredients (adapted from Serious Eats)

• 2 fennel bulbs, cored and sliced (I used 1.5 as I had a big one)
• 2 large onions, peeled and sliced
• 8 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
• 2 tablespoons whole fennel seeds (I went with 1.5)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, drained juice reserved
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
• 1 pound fusilli 
• 1 pound Italian sausage

Procedures

1. Set the oven on broil. Combine the fennel, onion, garlic, oil, chili flakes, fennel seeds, salt, and pepper in a roasting dish and roast, tossing once or twice during cooking, for 15 minutes.
2. In the meantime, bring a pot of salty water to boil and cook the pasta until al dente. Reserve some pasta cooking water. Brown Italian sausages and add the drained tomato juice and 1/2 cup water. Cover and let cook until cooked through.
3. After 15 minutes of roasting, stir in the crushed tomatoes, combining well. Roast 5 to 10 minutes more, until the fennel is tender and starting to brown.
4. Drain the pasta and toss with the roasted vegetables. Slice Italian sausages into rounds and add to dish. Add tomato sauce that the Italian sausages have cooked in. If you need to, add some pasta cooking water if necessary until the sauce is loosened and coats the pasta. Serve immediately with Parmesan on the side.

Getting Ready for Texas

Almost ready to tackle Texas in March. We're heading to Hill Country for a couple of days, then San Antonio for a night. After that a week with R&R hiking, biking and canoeing in Big Bend. I'm getting ready by dehydrating muchacha for couscous and boning up on my BBQ rib eating.

Went to Taco Fiesta and had some Tex Mex chips and salsa, and a couple too many margaritas to put me in the mood as as well.

 

Texas here I come, Yeee Haw!

50 Shades....

Excellent.......

Graffiato - DC

We went to DC to meet a cousin for dinner this week and my coworker suggested Top Chef Mike Isabella's Graffiato. We could only get a reservation for 8:30 on a Thursday night (you'd think the 5th of July DC would be cleared out) but we got there early, got a drink at the bar and got seated upstairs by 8.













We started with glasses of the draft prosecco just for the novelty of it. I mean, who has prosecco on draft, right? The decor a mix of farm and modern upstairs with modern art and little pots of herbs on the tables and cold hard steel chairs. They offered us a choice of still or sparkling water on the house. I got the sparkling which tasted a bit mineraly, but was just as flat as the still water.

This is the second restaurant in a week where there's been no ice in the glass. Is this a new trend?







We started out with a pizza and the sweet corn agnoletti which I had read were a MUST on this menu. The pizza was chosen by the cousins and they chose the Jersey Shore: a pizza with tomato sauce, provolone, and calamari with a cherry pepper aioli drizzled over it. The calamari were crunchy, the spiciness of the aioli offset the fried bits. It was tasty.











The Agnolotti were very tasty, creamy and buttery. The sweetness of the corn popped with the toasted pine nuts. Chanterelles, which were supposed to be on the dish were woefully lacking, as there was maybe 1/4 of one chanterelle chopped up on top, but the agnolotti itself made up for it. The agnolotti were swimming in a butter sauce that could have used a bit more of the chanterelle flavor, but all in all, pretty good.

We also got a crispy lamb dish with favas and a cucumber yogurt relish that was delicious. The denseness of the lamb and the cucumber yoghurt went well together.








Next up were the gnocci, which were another MUST HAVE by the reviewers. I have to say that I found the plate of gnocci to be very small for the $18 price tag, the paper thin truffles on top were tasteless but the wild mushrooms this time were copious and deliciously sauteed. Not something I'd get again for that pricepoint, but not bad.











Finally the crowning glory came.  We got the countryman pizza with black truffle, fontina and a soft cooked egg that was broken over the pizza at the table to finish cooking. Here you can see the server breaking the egg and spreading it into an unattractive gloopy mass but it sure was tasty. The crust was perfectly cooked, the pan piping hot and the truffle taste really came through on this pizza.

 

 All in all I would have to say that Graffiato had some delicious dishes and some that were just good, but it was not worth the hefty price tag for teeny tiny plates.

Kibbe Lunch

I have been working nights quite a bit this week so we've been making big lunches instead of dinners. I had some ground lamb and remembered Melissa Clark's Lamb Kibbe Recipe. This is a cookbook that Maria picked for Cookbook club last April. It's sooo good and really easy when you can talk your sweetie into making homemade pita bread to go with it.

So first you soak the bulgur wheat for 20 minutes in warm water. While that's going on you make the yogurt sauce with cucumber, garlic, cilantro and some greek yogurt and let that sit in the fridge. Then drain the bulgur and mix with the lamb with spices and onion. Roll all that into little balls as seen below, and shove it under the broiler for 6-8 minutes. So yum.

My sweetie has taken to keeping pizza/pita dough in the freezer so we just pulled it out before we went to the gym, he rolled it when we got back and baked it up really quickly.

See the yummy results, warm from the oven pita, yogurt sauce, Israeli feta, lettuce, onions, tomatoes and yummy kibbe. I was too lazy to make it into a pita pocket, just rolled it up, delish!

Stromboli!

My sweetie is on a pizza kick. We've been eating a lot of pizza in the last few weeks and I decided to change it up a bit and make Stromboli. Note that some stromboli's are made with ham, but I love me some Italian sausage so we decided to go that route.

Since he was home and I was not, he made the sauce, playing with the Rhulman's 20 book (yes we've still got the book) and he also made the dough, using the whey from a ricotta that he had made instead of water. It was a very fragrant and elastic dough.

I asked for advice from my coworkers and they said I should add spinach, so here you see the sauce and mozzarella/parmesan mixture with some spinach sauteed in garlic and some raw sweet onion over it.


I had cooked the Italian Sausages already and sliced them very thin. Many many rounds of Italian sausage went on the stromboli. Then I topped that with more Parmesan/mozzarella mixture.


Flipped up the sauce side, pressing it down and folding the bottom edge over the top. I debated putting in a steam vent but left it alone.



It cooked in a lovely 425 degree oven for 15 minutes and came out golden brown perfection. Notice Elizabeth, I put the sprig of cilantro on it to add some green ;-)

The finished product, gooey, rich deliciousness. Perfect with a beer on a weeknight .

Mexican Night

We were in the mood for Mexican last night and didn't feel like going out. We love the Coyoacan market style fried quesadillas made at Fiesta Mexicana in Rosedale and I was in the mood for fresh veggies and since I had the day off on MLK Monday, I decided to play.
We love the smoky taste of chipotle peppers and I had a huge flank steak in the fridge that we were never going to eat in one meal, so I took some of that, seared it in olive oil, added some onions and sauteed them for a bit, then added garlic and a hot pepper, sauteed for a bit longer and added mexican oregano, a chipotle in adobo and some tomato sauce. I let this simmer for about 2.5 hours, shredded it and put it back in it's sauce, YUM! Deep, rich chile and tomato flavors. This would be stuffed into the quesadillas and fried.




At H-mart on Friday I saw some nopales which are paddle cactus. I've eaten them before at cookbook club but decided I'd try and use them again. I have the Elote Café Cookbook which I got when we were in Sedona and it has a wonderful recipe for a zucchini and tomato dish. I also found this recipe and decided to combine the two and take it a step further, adding a smoky depth by roasting a poblano and adding it.












My sweetie was nice enough to do the prickly work of scraping off all the spines and slicing and dicing the nopales, the zucchini, the garlic, onions, jalepeno, tomatoes and roasted poblano. I'll follow with the recipe below.

Here it is simmering away.

Then it was on to the quesadillas. I like playing with corn masa flour. I mixed it up, let it sit, then decided I'd make some fried tortilla chips as well as the yummy quesadillas.


I really need a tortilla press. I rolled the masa into balls then pressed them between plastic with the bottom of a heavy pot. I rolled them a bit thinner with the rolling pin and plopped the tortillas onto the hot tortilla pan. 50-60 seconds a side, and then you take them off. I'm not a fan of soft tortillas (gasp) so I fried them up, playing with shapes. I made one large tostada, then cut some into triangles for chips and some into strips. I like the chips best, they were great for scooping up the veggie dish.









Next I played with the Quesadillas. I took a ball, pressed it out again, then, leaving it on the plastic, put some fresh caseara cheese and some of the chipotle meat mixture and folded the plastic over it. I wanted to fry a few at a time so I made all 5 (believe me, five was plenty) and then fried them up. The picture isn't great, but here's what they looked like before I fried them. They were tasty and golden brown and delicious as you can see from the first photo.

Braised Mexican Vegetables

1/2 cup chopped onion 1/2 inch dice
2 nopales or cactus paddles stripped of spines, cleaned, and chopped in 1/2 inch dice
2 zucchini chopped in 1/2 inch dice
1 medium poblano pepper, roasted, seeded and cut into 1/2 inch dice.
Olive oil
Salt
2 garlic cloves minced
1/2 jalepeno minced
3 whole canned tomatoes
1/2 tsp mexican oregano
1/4 c chicken broth
2-3 tbsp heavy whipping cream
Cholula hot sauce to taste

Saute the chopped onion in 1-2 tbsp olive oil until golden. Add a pinch of salt and garlic and jalepeno. Saute 1 more minute. Add oregano and saute 30 seconds. Add nopales, zucchini, poblano and tomatoes and 1/2 tsp salt. Saute 2 min and add chicken broth. Let simmer until zucchini becomes translucent. Add whipping cream and bring back to a simmer for 1-2 min. Taste for salt and heat, adding cholula hot sauce and salt if necessary.

Bread and Soup

We have had colds for the last few weeks. First it was my turn, while he took care of me, then his turn. Since I gave it to him my guilt level was high so I decided to make a big batch of chicken noodle soup. While i was not quite enough up to snuff to remember to take pictures, we did enjoy the soup.


Yesterday, since we had the long weekend I decided to make beer bread from the Bread Bible. I made it in the Cuisinart in about 3 min. I baked it this morning, giving it the extra overnight refrigerator proofing. Tasty with the last of the soup after a chilly walk in Stony Run park.