Tonight's main course was a batch of Joe's Special made with leeks instead of onions. To go with that I braised some fennel with fennel seeds with a bit of veal essence and a splash of orange juice.
We had these two really nice things with a pile of buttered brown rice (cooked in vegetable bouillon) and a big green salad.
Quince are back in the market, so it was clear I needed to do something with them. I thought about doing the compote I made last year, but then I found a recipe for a quince and ginger soup in the Le Menu archive. That settled that.
Last night was a bit random: beans and greens served alongside potato croquettes.
For the beans and greens I used onion, carrots, dried salami, olive oil, lettuce, dill, and soisson beans. This I served topped with chives and parsley.
The croquettes were made from leftover mashed potatoes (I remembered to make enough for leftovers!) mixed with salt, black pepper, pimenton, and raclette spices. I formed this into cylinders, rolled them in bread crumbs, then fried them in olive oil.
The priority last night was using up vegetables, so I did a few vegetable dishes:
This Le Menu recipe seemed like a good "back from hiking, so it better be easy" meal, plus it used up the pears that were sitting around in the kitchen. Last time I did this I used tomato paste and cayenne instead of the called-for curry paste. This time I would have used curry paste, but we were out, so I added lemon zest, some chopped chili, a squirt of fish sauce, and some freshly ground coriander. The results were quite good.
Last night I did a couple of stir-fried vegetable dishes: sweet corn (on the cob) steamed and then stir fried with red chilis and hoisin sauce; broccoli stir fried with onions, long peppers, garlic, and black beans with a sauce from Xiao Xing wine, black vinegar, and soy sauce.
With this we had jasmine rice and a green salad.
Pretty quick, quite simple, quite good.
The protein was leftover meatloaf; to accompany it I tossed some baby potatoes with shallots and olive oil and baked them. I also did a gratin of sliced fennel, salt, and olive oil. This I topped with grated alp cheese for the last 30 minutes of cooking.
Since we had some pumpkin leftover from Saturday's meal, I tossed that into a pot of sauteed vegetables.
The vegetables were eggplant, fennel, pumpkin, onion, and garlic. To this I added diced ham, bay leaf, herbs de provence, and a bit of chicken stock.
We ate this with sourdough bread and a big green salad.
This was a recipe from Le Menu : a meatloaf (ground beef and veal brät, shredded pumpkin, onion, garlic, egg, bread crumbs, thyme, rosemary, parsley) served with a pumpkin-nut vinaigrette (diced pumpkin, chopped fresh walnuts, shallots, chives, rapeseed oil, white balsamico).
Between the braised pork and the pasta with cheese, we ended up eating leftovers all week. yowza.
Andrea requested something with pasta and cheese; I obliged.
I started by dicing some ham relatively small and browning it in a bit of olive oil. These got mixed with some partially cooked whole wheat penne, milk, grated alp cheeses, and some shredded sage leaves. I piled this goodness into a gratin dish, topped it with fried onions, and baked until the pasta was cooked through.
We ate this with spinach cooked with olive oil and garlic and a big green salad.
Another very successful recipe from AFK: pork shoulder braised in apple cider and served with caramelized apples.
Cut a pork shoulder roast (1kg) almost through. Open it and smear the inside with a paste made from fresh rosemary (5 or 6 needles), fresh sage (4 leaves), fennel seeds (a good pinch), and garlic (three cloves). Salt and pepper the inside well, then roll up the roast and tie it shut. Stick a couple sprigs of rosemary under the twine and brown the pork well on all sides in clarified butter. Add some hard cider (2 dl), a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper, cover, and braise until the pork is finished, about 2 hours. In the meantime, lightly caramelize 50g of raw sugar with 2Tbs lemon juice and add 500g firm, acidic apples (peeled, cored, cut into 8ths or 12ths). Cook, stirring occasionally until the apples soften. Salt and pepper and then set aside. When the pork is done, puree a third of the apples with some of the braising liquid and then stir this back into the braising liquid. If need be, thicken with a bit of potato starch. Adjust seasonings and then serve the pork sliced and topped with sauce and apples.
To go with this beauty we had some steamed potatoes and a big green salad.
This is a really good one to remember for company.
A quick toss-together lunch for a weekend : chickpeas, corn, artichoke hearts (rinsed and quartered), tomatoes, chives, parsley, dill, crushed garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.
I was travelling last week, so I didn't do any cooking.
Last night we finished off the pumpkin soup and had a big bowl of steamed vegetables : kohlrabi, carrots, and fennel, steamed individually and then tossed with olive oil, chives, salt, and pepper.
Of course there was also a big green salad.
The soup for this meal is an improv, the corn is from a new cookbook: Aus Frankreichs Küchen, by Marianne Kaltenbach.
The soup: cook diced onion and carrots (yellow and orange) in some neutral oil until the onions soften. Add diced pumpkin (potimarron) and cook, covered, until the pumpkin starts to break up. Add white wine, chicken stock, a bit of veggie boullion, a couple cloves, a pinch of cardamon, and a good grind of white pepper and let it simmer until the veggies are soft. Puree and then add diced smoked ham that has been browned in a separate pan and some heavy cream. Adjust seasonings and let simmer a bit longer.
The corn: steam a couple ears of corn. Make the sabayone by whipping two egg yolks with 6 tbs white wine and 1 tsp white balsamico (lemon juice in the recipe) in a double boiler until frothy. Add a pinch of salt, chopped parsley, chives, and dill (chervil in the recipe), and a couple Tbs of whipped cream. Let heat up, stirring constantly, then serve with the corn.
I'm sure my sabayone tasted pretty much nothing like the original recipe, but it was still a very good complement to the late-season corn. The basic sauce technique is something I will definitely have to keep in mind: it's quick and the results are nice.
We ate this with a green salad and some good bread.
This was a celebration of it being cooler in the evenings: beans cooked with ham.
It was a weeknight thing so I used canned borlotti beans that I cooked with cubed smoked ham, onions, garlic, some chopped chili, cumin, paprika, chicken stock, white wine, crushed tomato, rosemary, bay leaf, and thyme. Simple and delicious.
We also had a big green salad and a baguette.
It was my parents' last night in town and was pretty cool outside, so we made a fondue. For the four of us I used 700g of cheese, 350ml of white wine, a shot of kirsch, and one clove of garlic.
We also did peppermint tea and a big salad.
This was a bit of a random one I assembled after we got back from a hiking trip with my parents: Bernerrösti (from a bag), roast chicken (from the Migros), cottage cheese (with minced lemon verbena, halved cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper, and a bit of cayenne), and a big green salad.
This was an improv.
Start by making a tomato sauce: toast whole cumin seeds in a dry pan; when they start to get aromatic, add some hot paprika and toast another few seconds. Add olive oil, some pureed tomatoes, ground coriander, a pinch of saffron threads, a sprig of thyme, a bay leaf, and some salt. Bring to a simmer and let cook, uncovered, while you make the meatballs.
Meatballs: mix ground meat (half and half in this case) with salt, pepper, and minced onion. Form into small meatballs. Push a almond into the center of each meatball and reform them. Sautee in olive oil to get the meatballs brown on all sides. A couple minutes before they're done, add a handful of almonds to the pan. Deglaze with vermouth and let that evaporate to half. Add the tomato sauce, cover, and let simmer another 10-15 minutes. Adjust seasonings on the sauce, then serve.
As an accompaniment I cooked some halved green beans in a pan with diced bacon, chopped sweet pepper, and savory.
We did spaetzle as a starch (sauteed in olive oil instead of boiled) and the required green salad.
A simple, but very good, stew: Soak 30g dried porcinis in warm water, brown 600g of bite-sized pieces of beef well in clarified butter, remove from the pan. Cook two diced red onions, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 stalk diced celery, one large diced carrot, and two diced sweet peppers in the same pan until the onions are soft. Sprinkle over a Tbs or so of flour, mix well, and let cook another couple minutes, stirring frequently. Add a couple bay leaves, a sprig or two of thyme, and a bottle of light red wine and bring to a simmer. Chop the mushrooms and add them along with their strained soaking water. Let simmer open until the beef is ready, 1-1.5 hours. Adjust seasonings and serve over rice.
To go along with the stew I chopped a couple summer squash in large dice and cooked them with a diced kohlrabi in olive oil until the vegetables were done. 5 minutes before serving I added some chopped basil and lemon thyme.
Naturally there was a green salad.
A dessert based on a recipe from Kaltenbach: bring 700ml of red wine (I used an Epesses Rouge which is a mixture of pinot noir and gamay, according to the recipe I should have used pure pinot... ah well) to a simmer with 100g sugar, three cloves, and a cinnamon stick. Let simmer for a 5-10 minutes until the sugar is dissolved and it has reduced a bit. Add four pears that have been peeled but that still have the stems attached. Simmer until the pears are soft. Remove the pears to a bowl, increase the heat, stir in a Tbs of rasperry jelly, and reduce the wine syrup by a factor of two. Strain the syrup over the pears and let them stand in it until serving time.
Really nice stuff.
Note for the future: this would be nicely complemented by a bit of black pepper added a minute or so before straining the syrup.
This is a recipe from the Le Menu archive.
Cook 600-700g starchy potatoes in their skins and then peel them and cut them into pieces lengthwise. Thinly slice (on the mandoline) two fennel bulbs. Put the fennel in a buttered baking dish, top with the potatoes, and pour over a mixture of 200ml of light cream and 50ml of veggie bouillon. Toss in a 200C oven. Season four chicken leg quarters with salt, pepper, and a Tbs of freshly crushed fennel seed, then brown them well in clarified butter. Top the gratin with the chicken, sprinkle over any remaining fennel seed, and return to the oven for another 20-30 minutes or until the chicken is done.
We ate this very nice dish with a big green salad.
I wanted to do stuffed zucchini but was concerned about the logistics since we didn't have four zucchini that were even close to equally sized. So I deconstructed it.
Brown some ground meat (I used half and half) well, and remove it to a bowl. Cook a diced red onion until it's soft and add it to the meat. Season the meat mixture with marjoram, orange peel, salt, and pepper. Oil a gratin dish with olive oil and layer in thinly sliced zucchini and the meat mixture. Top with grated Gruyere. Bake at 180C until the zucchini is cooked and the cheese is brown and bubbly.
We ate this with buttered ebli and a big green salad.
Saucisson vaudoise was on sale at the Coop, so I picked up one of those and prepared it following the Saucisson en papillote recipe from Kaltenbach : cook the sausage in a parchment wrapper with minced shallot, diced carrot, and a bit of red wine. I also made the suggested accompaniment: onion salad, though I modifed that pretty substantially : onion slices lightly caramelized and then mixed with a dressing of white wine vinegar, grainy mustard, dill, and rapeseed oil
To accompany I cooked a bunch of green beans with chopped peppers.
Of course we also had a green salad.
Another niedergaren recipe as the main dish: a piece of lamb shoulder topped with olive oil and a mixture of minced shallots, parsley, and rosemary then slow baked.
As a side I did a pumpkin recipe from Le Menu: "Smashed pumpkin". This is potimarron squash, cooked with butter, garlic, and a bit of veggie bouillon, then mashed and served topped with crispy diced bacon and a relish of cherry tomatoes, sage, and butter.
Really nice food.
If I had come up with this dessert I wouldn't have called it rösti, but that just shows my ignorance... it's a Kaltenbach recipe, so the naming must be correct. :-)
Despite the naming confusion, the dish itself is simple: cook halved plums in some clarified butter with a sprinkling of sugar for a couple of minutes, add a bit of water, bring to a simmer, cover and let stand a few minutes. Meanwhile roast some thin slices of stale bread in clarified butter. Cut these into strips (not a step from Kaltenbach, but things were impossible to handle otherwise) and add the plums and some more sugar. Toss well, then add the liquid from the plums in a couple of batches. Cook until the liquid has basically all evaporated. Serve sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.
very nice stuff
This month's Le Menu has a picture of a stuffed tomato on the cover (and some recipes for stuffed vegetables inside); that started the wheels turning. Then there was leftover brown rice in the fridge and some tomatoes from this week's box. From there everything else became obvious:
Cook minced celery, onion, and garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt until they are nicely softened. Meanwhile, hollow out a few tomatoes and add the chopped insides to the pan. Once the tomatoes have reduced away, add the cooked brown rice and a mixture of finely chopped rosemary, thyme, and lemon thyme. Mix well and adjust seasonings. Add a pinch of saffron and mix again. Gently stir in some small-diced feta cheese and then stuff the tomatoes. Put some olive oil in a baking dish, spread the extra rice mixture on the bottom of the dish, top with the stuffed tomatoes, then bake at 180C for 20-30 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and the rice on top of them starts to brown.
Another ingredient floating around the kitchen -- reduced OJ from a salad dressing earlier in the week -- suggested the accompaniment: glazed chickpeas:
Toast some whole cumin seeds in a dry pan until they are aromatic. Add to reduced orange juice and chickpeas in a pot. Add a bit of veggie bouillon and bring to a simmer. Add some finely chopped rosemary, thyme, and lemon thyme and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is basically evaporated. Adjust seasonings and serve drizzled with olive oil.
At some point during the making of this meal I realized I was in the process of creating something that would be exceptionally good. That thought was completely correct. Wow was this good food.
Of course we also had a green salad.
Another niedergaren recipe. This one is adapted from the cookbook I picked up a while ago.
Very simple: Tie up a thick steak (I used Hohrücken which is, basically, ribeye) so that it holds its shape. Brown well on both sides. Transfer to a prewarmed plate, season and top with a sauce made from 2Tbs peanuts, 2Tbs peanut oil, 1 Tbs ketchup, and a pinch of cayenne. Put in a preheated 80C oven and cook until the internal temperature is 55C, 45-60 minutes.
Wow was this good.
To go with the steak I did some brown rice.
Also a green salad.
Random improvised fish dish: season some cod chunks and coat them lightly with flour. Saute in butter with a handful of cashews and some sliced hot (but not overly hot) chilis. Remove the solids from the pan and add a bit more butter. Let this start to brown, add some flavorful honey and let that bubble for a couple of minutes. Add lime juice and black pepper and adjust seasonings. Add back the solids, turn a few times, then serve the fish topped with sauce, cashews, and chili slices.
Really, really good stuff. That lime-butter combination with a bit of sweet to balance it and a hint of hot is just fantastic.
I also did some bratkartoffeln to go with this.
oh yes, and a green salad.
This was a recipe from this month's Le Menu: Pork steaks cut into strips, marinated with apple juice, rosemary, thyme, white balsamico, mustard, black pepper, and honey, then threaded onto skewers and sauteed in clarified butter. Served with a salad made from steamed green beans, minced onion, halved cherry tomatoes, and soisson beans with a dressing of white balsamico, mustard, rapeseed oil, and parsley. I reduced the remaining marinade until it lightly caramelized and drizzled that over the pork.
We also had basmati rice and a big green salad; it was great summer food.
Another quick meal since we got back from hiking pretty late. We did a wurstsalat and a bean salad, served on a bed of lettuce.
Wurstsalat: thinly sliced cervelas, diced gruyere, a small amount of minced celery, chopped cornichons, chives, and a sauce from mayo, mustard, yogurt, rape-seed oil, red wine vinegar, a dash of Maggi, a small pinch of cayenne, and a bit of salt.
Bean salad: soisson beans, minced celery, rosemary, olive oil, sherry vinegar, pimenton.
We got back from Geneva and Lausanne around 7:30, so dinner needed to be pretty quick. This was Andrea's idea, and it was a good one.
I made a quick batch of pesto with toasted almonds and then mixed that with pasta and halved cherry tomatoes, and topped it with diced mozarella. Simple, quick, and quite nice.
We also had a green salad, of course.
Last night's curry was a standard red curry with coconut milk, eggplant, and pork.
I also did a green mango salad by mixing grated green mango with lime juice, fish sauce, chopped dried shrimp, cilantro, and a pinch of sugar.
Note to self: the small yellow eggplants that we got because the asian market was out of the small green ones are not a good substitute. They were so bitter that we had to fish them out while eating.
To accompany the leftover mushroom ragout, I did a batch of sauteed vegetables. The mix was: onions, garlic, zucchini, and long peppers. They were cooked together with olive oil, herbs de provence, salt and pepper. Just before serving I stirred in some chopped fresh basil and then served the vegetables sprinkled with almonds I had cut in half then toasted in olive oil.
very nice!
I picked up some nice looking local chantarelles at the market on Saturday. Last night I converted them into a fantastic ragout based on a recipe from Le Menu.
Clean 500g of chantarelles. Cook them over medium-high heat in butter in batches until they brown a bit and start to soften. Remove from the pan and add some more butter, a thinly sliced leek, and a minced shallot. Cook until they leek softens. Remove from the pan. Add 1 dl each of white wine and vegetable bouillon and reduce to 1/2. Add 1.5 dl bouillon and 1.8 dl light cream (saucen halbrahm), bring to a simmer. Add 1Tbs fresh marjoram leaves and the mushrooms and leeks. Simmer 5-10 minutes. Adjust seasonings and either add more water or thicken as necessary. Serve over pappardelle topped with a bit more fresh marjoram.
Every time I have to clean wild mushrooms, particularly chantarelles, I think to myself: "this is too much trouble, I'm not doing it again." Then I eat them and that silly thought is blown from my head.
For this meal with Andrea's parents I followed a recipe from Kaltenbach for Rindsvoressen (beef stew). The stew is pretty simple: beef, carrots, onion, leek, potato, marjoram, but quite good. Rather than make rice or another starch, we served the stew with some nice bread.
I also did another batch of beans with tomatoes and onions, this time using a mixture of yellow and green beans.
Of course there was also a green salad.
Andrea's parents were over last night, so I was (self) driven to do something with a nice sauce. This is what I came up with.
Spalensauce*
Cook some diced bacon in a bit of olive oil until it's nicely rendered and browned. Add finely diced celery, carrot, and onion and a pinch of salt and let the vegetables lightly brown. Add some veal essence, a bit of water, a small pinch of cayenne, and a small sprig of thyme and let things cook for about five minutes. Add some light cream (I used Halbrahm) and simmer a couple minutes more. Thicken with potato starch if needed and adjust seasonings.
We served the sauce with thinly sliced pork loin chops (nierstuck plaetzli) that I seasoned and cooked in the grill pan.
To accompany the pork and sauce we had pasta (whole wheat pipe rigate) and some fennel that I sliced and then cooked in olive oil with some fresh basil. Of course there was also a green salad.
* Yes, I just made that up. In fact, google tells me that this word does not exist on the interweb, so I have truly invented something new. Fame and fortune will soon be mine!
Last time we tried Zum Isaak the summary was: "The Kornhaus does this better". Now that we've tried it again and our experience of Basel restaurants is broader, I'd expand this to: "The Kornhaus and the Goldenes Fass do this better."
The idea for this particularly improv came to me in the tram on the way to work the other day.
Cook a medium diced onion and a few cloves of chopped garlic in some olive oil over medium heat. After the onion softens add some chopped celery stalk and long green chilis (pepperoncini here) and cook until they soften a bit. Add some whole cumin and a mixture of sweet and hot paprika and let toast a couple of minutes. Add some crushed tomatoes, a splash of white wine, fresh thyme and rosemary, a bay leaf, and some salt and let simmer a while, uncovered.
While the sauce is simmering, start a batch of small-green lentils cooking.
Once the lentils are started, brown some chopped chicken (I used a mixture of legs/thighs and breast) in olive oil and add the browned pieces to the sauce. Hold the breast pieces out for a while if you want so that they don't overcook.
Serve the thickened tomato sauce and chicken next to the lentils, top both with a drizzle of olive oil.
As a vegetable side I steamed some corn on the cob.
Of course we had a green salad as well.
Last night I put together a Rösti for no good reason other than we had potatoes and I could.
I did my usual: grate the potatoes, then wring them out really well in a towel before mixing with the other ingredients. In this case the other ingredients were a couple of apples, salt, and pepper. I cooked the Rösti in peanut oil and then added a topping of grated cheese (a half-hard raw-milk Alp cheese) just before serving. We ate this lovely thing with some thinly sliced coppa (leftover from the weekend) and some zucchini that I sliced and then cooked in olive oil with a tomato and some peperonicini from the balcony.
Nice eatings.
oh yes, green salad.
Yesterday in the interest of science I made another batch of daiquiris with the Havana Club 7. This time I used proportions 4:1:1 rum:lime:triple sec and the results were definitely more pleasing: you could taste the rum a lot more clearly. It's getting there.
Next time I'll try completely replacing the triple sec with a bit of simple syrup to see what that yields.
Yesterday we had a quantity of dark cherries in the fridge that I had pitted and sugared earlier in the week; we just needed to figure out what to do with them. At the Coop on Saturday we found some small pre-made pie crusts that looked acceptable, so we took those as a base.
I put a layer of sour cream (actually "dessert extrafin") in the bottom of a crust, sprinkled it with a bit of brown sugar, then topped it with the cherries. Voila: instant cold cherry pie. :-)
The degree of effort was about nil and the payoff was pretty high. Going to have to keep those crusts in mind in the future.
After some batches of margaritas our bottle of tequila was empty, and one needs something on long sunny weekend afternoons when one is at home instead of in the mountains because the weather forecast has been questionable, so we picked up a bottle of rum yesterday and I made a round of daiquiris.
Since our old bottle of rum wasn't up to the job, we wanted to get something good this time. Unfortunately the guy we normally talk to wasn't at Ullrich's yesterday and the guy we asked for advice wasn't particularly helpful ("This is great for sitting outside with a cigar."; Andrea's response later : "What was that? Do we look like cigar smokers?"), so we went with something recommended by friends: Havana Club 7 year.
I used the same recipe as for the margaritas: 4:2:2 rum:lime:triple sec. The results were quite good, but not sublime like the margaritas; the rum doesn't come through as cleanly as the tequila did. I think next time I'll try reducing the lime and triple sec and see what that produces.
There's a cooking technique that is used pretty often here that I don't exactly know how to translate: niedergaren. The idea is to cook meat in a very low oven (typically 80C) until the internal temperature is correct, it's a method that would make Harold McGee happy. For want of a better term, let's call it slow baking. I've been wanting to try this for a while, so yesterday when I saw some nice pork loin roasts on sale at Coop I knew what had to be done.
My preparation of the pork was utter simplicity: brown it all around in clarified butter, season well, put in a meat thermometer, then put it in a preheated dish with some zucchini planks and toss in a preheated 80C oven. Let it sit there, undisturbed until the internal temperature is 62C. Yesterday's roast took a bit more than 3 hours. The result is incredibly tender, juicy, and, since it was good pork, flavorful. We will be using this method more often, particularly since yesterday I bought a cookbook devoted to it.
As a sauce for the pork, I made a vinaigrette by mixing thinly sliced celery, diced artichoke hearts, crushed garlic, minced red onion, and finely chopped parsley with a pre-emulsified mixture of seedy mustard, cider vinegar, molasses, and rapeseed oil. This was then allowed to stand for a couple of hours before serving (we had nothing but time yesterday!).
We ate the pork and zucchini with rice and a big green salad and there were no complaints at the table. Well, none except: "I ate too much", but that came later. :-)
On the way home from work I stopped at the Italian butcher and picked up some sausage (hot, with fennel; not exactly my plan for the evening, but when you get there at 5:30 on a nice Friday night you are happy to get anything. I consoled myself by also getting some of the fantastic mortadella he imports). The rest went according to plan: I cooked the sausage in the grill pan, made some bratkartoffeln, and did a batch of green beans cooked with tomato and onion more or less based on Melissa Clark's column this week.
Excellent food.
The leftovers from Wednesday's stir frying included rice and the stir-fried corn, but that wasn't going to make a full meal. In order to fill it out a bit I did fried rice (with egg) with the rice and stir fried some lettuce (chili-bean paste, ginger, soy sauce).
Born of necessity and coincidence: we had sweet corn left on the night before we get the next veggie box, so it's got to be used. Then there's a very interesting corn post on Bitten. The asian flavors planned for the corn shaped how the broccoli was used.
The dishes:
Stir fried corn pieces with a Southeast Asian touch: Cut corn on the cob crosswise into 1cm thick pieces. Stir fry them until they're almost done, then remove from the wok. Stir fry some chopped garlic and chilis until they're aromatic. Add a some sugar and stir fry until it starts to caramelize. Add fish sauce and cook a bit. Add some lime juice and adjust the other ingredients. Stir back in the corn pieces and let sit a couple minutes. Just before serving, splash on a bit more lime juice. Great stuff.
Broccoli stir fried with black beans and chili-bean paste: Stir fry some broccoli until it's almost done. Remove from the pan. Stir fry some rinsed fermented black beans and chili-bean paste until aromatic. Add thinly sliced ginger and cook a bit longer. Add some Xiao Xing wine and water and let the alcohol cook off for a bit. Taste and add an appropriate amount of black Chinese vinegar. Thicken with a bit of potato starch and then stir back in the broccoli. Let sit for a couple minutes and then serve.
We had these two delights with rice and, amazingly enough, no green salad.
Another improv to use the big bag of chard greens in the fridge:
Brown some seasoned ground beef, then remove it from the pan. Add some olive oil if needed, then cook a diced onion and some finely chopped garlic until they start to soften. Add chard greens (torn into pieces) and a pinch of salt and cook until they start to wilt. Add a bit of savory and marjoram and cook a bit longer. A couple of minutes before serving, add back the ground beef.
To go along with the greens and meat we had some pan browned cauliflower and a big green salad.
As a "use up the basel from the balcony!" measure I made a batch of pesto. We ate that with spaghetti last night. As an accompaniment, I mixed some soft cheese (Tessiner robbiola) with finely chopped lemon verbena and black pepper and then stuffed that in some hollowed out tomatoes. Delicious.
Yes, and then there was the green salad.
We haven't done barbecue in a long time; that just changed. When I saw big pieces of pork shoulder for half price at the Coop, I knew it was time to give it a try. It was clear that the stars had really aligned when Bittman did a barbecue post, referencing the Thrill of the Grill no less, on the day I was trying to decide what to do for a spice rub. The final problem - where to find appropriate wood - was solved by our dinner guests, who brought over a basket of mixed hardwood in the early afternoon. The rest was easy : set up the fire (hardwood charcoal for heat, a piece of fruitwood for smoke), put a container of beer in the bottom of the grill, cover the pork with the rub and put it on the grill, cover, and wait. After two hours I started basting with beer to keep the crust from drying out too much. After about four hours we had something amazing.
I did a sauce, just in case, from thinly sliced onions, vinegar, whiskey, water, salt, pepper, a dash of tobasco, and a small amount of ketchup. The onions were a nice complement, but the sauce itself was pretty superfluous.
We also did a potato salad with basil and tarragon (also long and low cooking for the potatoes) and a big green salad.
As starters, I did: quick pickles with cornichon cucumbers, salt, and thinly sliced young ginger; a couple different kinds of olives; and cashews toasted in the pan and then tossed with raclette spices.
Due to some logistics problems a couple of weeks ago, we got a double vegetable box yesterday. Holy crap is there a lot of stuff in a double vegetable box in August! To make matters worse, there were still two heads of lettuce left from last week's box... ai yai yai!
For the protein component I tossed some pork steaks ("Stotzen", so from the hams) in the grill pan, seasoned them, and served them on top of basil vinaigrette leftover from Wednesday.
The lettuce surplus drove the improvisation of a new (for us at least) dish: rice and lettuce. Toast a cup of parboiled rice (I used a rice/wildrice mix) in olive oil. Add a head of chopped lettuce (in stages, stirring after each stage and giving it some time to shrink). Add a chicken bouillon cube and a bit less than a cup of water (the lettuce brings a lot of water with it). Cover and simmer until the rice is done; add more water if necessary. This actually turned out quite nicely. It would also be good to add some garlic and perhaps some tomato pieces at the last minute.
We also had zucchini that I cut into thick slices, quartered, then cooked slowly with butter and salt. Simple and wonderful.
I guess I forgot to post about it, but the weekend before last we found pickling cucmbers at the market. So we got a couple kilos and started a batch of fermented pickles starting from the recipe in Quick Pickles. Last week we tried a couple and were quite happy with the results. Last night I opened up the pickle pot to get pickles to accompany our dinner and discovered that they were moldy.
MOLDY!
My beautiful pickles!
I don't know what kind of super mold was able to grow in that brine, but if we manage to find the cucumbers again (unlikely?) this year, I'll be sure to use a higher concentration of salt.
Last night's grilling was nothing fancy: some sausage, a variety of vegetables (squash, zucchini, peppers, red onions), and a cheater's hobo pack of potatoes.
I made a vinaigrette (basil, grainy mustard, grapeseed oil, red wine vinegar, molasses, salt, pepper) for the vegetables.
Of course we had a green salad.
Yesterday I pulled the first ripe tomatoes off the plants we have on the balcony. We ate them plain, sprinkled with a bit of sea salt. mmmmmmmm
Next year I might have to do more than two tomato plants.
The idea for this came from a Bittman column, but the recipe was an improv.
Mince some onion and garlic and start them cooking in olive oil. Add some chopped chard leaves and a pinch of salt and let cook until they are tender but not mushy, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and mix in some chopped lemon verbena and rosemary. Lay a whole, skin on, chicken breast skin-side down on three pieces of string. Season with salt and pepper, then cover with a layer of the greens mixture. Fold up into a roll and tie shut with the string. Brown this well on all sides and then let it cook long enough until the inside of the chicken breast is done.
This was a bit of work but it was quite an attractive preparation and tasted fantastic.
To go along with this, I coarsely diced the chard stems and cooked them in olive oil with pine nuts. Just before serving I added some diced dried apricot.
As a starch we had spaghetti tossed with salt and olive oil.
Oh, and a green salad.
After a few days eating in huts in the mountains, I was craving vegetables in a major way, but I also didn't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I did a very simple vegetables and pasta dish: boil some cut green beans in salted water until tender-crisp, refresh in cold water. Cook a chopped head of broccoli in olive oil with garlic and onion until the broccoli is cooked sufficiently. A couple minutes before the broccoli is done, stir in some strips of thinly sliced salt-cured ham (e.g. something like prosciutto di parma). Toss in the green beans, some cooked pasta (less pasta than vegetables, it's "vegetables with pasta", not "pasta with vegetables"!), and some more olive oil. Serve topped with chives and grated Sbrinz.
This, combined with a salad, was a nice return to eating normalcy. :-)
This was a convenient way to use the zucchini and eggplant waiting in the fridge as well as some of the great lime-yogurt sauce from Wednesday night. The preparation was simple: I cut an eggplant and a couple zucchini into planks, brushed them with olive oil, and then broiled them until they were the right color. After they came out of the broiler I tossed the planks with a bit of salt and then served them with the yogurt sauce and leftover chicken pieces.
To accompany the leftover greens from Sunday, I made some sauteed chicken chunks: breast meat tossed with fine flour and then shallow fried in olive oil. These I served with a lime-yogurt sauce (yogurt, garlic paste, lime juice, salt, black pepper, hot paprika).
Quick and quite good.
Yesterday was a bit too warm for normal cooking, and we had a friend visiting, so I fired up the grill. We kept it simple though and just did burgers and sausages with grilled onion.
oh, and a green salad. Of course.
To accompany the leftover grilled pork, I did a batch of "cumin scented greens" from La Cocina de Mama.
This is pretty simple and quite good: brown some garlic and bread cubes in olive oil then mash with cumin seeds and red-wine vinegar in a mortar; slowly cook some minced onion in the remaining oil; add diced tomato and salt and cook a couple of minutes; add the garlic/bread paste and cook a bit longer; add some pre-cooked and chopped chard greens and let heat through.
We also had leftover barley and a green salad.
After seeing the Minimalist recipe this week and then seeing it mentioned on Bittman's blog, I pretty much had no choice when I saw blueberries at the market yesterday.
We assumed graham crackers would be difficult, so we didn't really do much looking and just used McVities digestives for the crust. These were good, but I think a bit more sweet in the crust would have helped.
Otherwise, this was a really nice dessert.
The weather permitted, so the grill was employed yesterday. They had some really beautiful T-bone steaks at the Coop that I almost succumbed to, but then we found a nice-looking pork tenderloin that was half price; it's hard to pass that up.
I seasoned the pork with salt, pepper, coriander, and prepared mustard and then let it stand for about an hour while I got the fire started and grilled some red onions and heirloom tomatoes (a Pro Specie Rara type: Gezahnte). I grilled the pork over a medium-hot fire and then served it with the grilled vegetables, some cooked barley, and a simple vinaigrette (basil, rapeseed oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, prepared mustard).
Of course we also had a green salad.
I usually end up forgetting to record weekend lunches where I cook; ha ha... not this time.
Start some olive oil in a pan. Add minced garlic and a couple dried chilis and let those cook until they're aromatic. Add some spaetzle (pre-made; I used "vegetable spaetzle") and let cook, tossing every few minutes, until the noodles are starting to brown and crisp up in places. Toss in some diced fresh tomato, coarsely chopped basil, and crumbled feta cheese. Serve immediately.
Yesterday I had a craving for something made with Chinese black beans. To solve this, I followed a BittmanWorld recipe for pork ribs with black bean sauce. Instead of ribs I used schweinshaxe (like osso bucco), which is a nice substitution.
As a side I did lettuce stir fried with sesame oil, ginger, and garlic, served with Sichuan hot oil and soy sauce.
Of course we also had rice and a salad.
Yesterday was one of those "let's clear vegetables out of the fridge" cooking days. The basil on the balcony also needed to be pruned, so that had to go into the meal as well. Given the situation at hand, the obvious thing to do was a garbage gratin.
Put a gratin dish in a 175C oven and let it preheat. Make some pasta (broken spaghetti and elbow macaroni). Brown some diced bacon in olive oil. Microwave some vegetables (green beans, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant) until half cooked. Make pesto (basil, olive oil, almonds, parmesan). Mix everything along with some salt and a few good grinds of black pepper. Add to the heated gratin dish. Top with breadcrumbs mixed with olive oil. Bake until browned up top, about 30 minutes.
We ate this delight with a big green salad.
This quick meal was inspired by an app we had at the Kornhaus a couple of weeks ago; it's a nice way to use up stuff from the fridge. :-)
Brown some bacon in a bit of olive oil; add a sliced onion and cook until the onion starts to soften; add some zucchini sticks and some piquillo pepper strips; cook a bit longer. Toast some slices of bread (we used whole wheat toast bread) pretty well, then put on a baking sheet and top with the cooked vegetables, fresh basil, sliced tomatoes, and a good amount of cheese (mixture from the fridge: val poschiava, mariage des trois laits, sbrinz), then toss in the broiler and cook until the cheese is nicely browned.
We ate this with a big green salad.
We still had a lot of salsa leftover, so we suffered through another salsa-driven meal.
I developed a strong craving for chipotle salsa; so I planned a meal around the salsa.
For the salsa: combine good canned tomatoes, chipotles, some garlic, some onion, lime juice, and some cilantro and food-process until smooth.
Other things to have with the salsa:
We had a large quantity of vegetables in the fridge from last week's biokiste. This was an expedient to use up a bunch of those.
For the vegetables: Saute some chopped garlic in olive oil. Add green beans, cauliflower, dill, marjoram, oregano, black pepper, and a bit of water our bouillon. Cover and cook for a few minutes. Stir in some zucchini. Cover and simmer until the vegetables are cooked. Adjust seasoning.
For the meatballs: mix ground pork with some minced smoked bacon, an egg, some breadcrumbs, and a good grind of black pepper. Form small meatballs and brown in a bit of olive oil.
For the sauce: combined yogurt, lemon juice, salt, black pepper, hot paprika, and chopped fresh basil.
Serve the vegetables and meatballs with some rice and the sauce for a quite nice meal.
We also had, of course, a green salad.
Chickpeas need no justificatory text.
Cook some chickpeas in water with a couple bay leaves. Drain them. In a separate pan, cook a couple diced onions, some chopped garlic, and whole cumin seeds in olive oil until the onion softens a bit. Add the chickpeas and toast a bit longer. Add some paprika, white wine, piri piri chilis, black pepper, stock (chicken bouillon), tomato paste, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, chopped parsley, and a couple more bay leaves and stir well. Add some merguez chopped into 1-2cm pieces, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for 20-30 minutes until the merguez is done.
loooooovely
of course we also had a green salad
It seems like it's been forever since I made risotto (ok, actually only since February).
I did a straightforward mushroom risotto using dried porcinis and black chantarelles. I tossed in a couple of thyme sprigs for good measure. Since we had no proper stock in the house, I used porcini bouillon that I enhanced by using it as the soaking liquid for the mushrooms. I finished the risotto with some butter.
Since the rice was super rich, the protein bit was simple: beef Saftplätzli (minute steaks, I guess) cooked in the grill pan, then served on a bed of mixed bell peppers cooked in olive oil.
Great food.
After the great success of the margaritas, we decided to try another application of the basic Bittman recipe and substitute rum for the tequila in order to get something like a daiquiri.
I started with more or less the same proportions as before: 4oz rum, 2oz lime, 1.5oz triple sec, but that was too sweet. To cut the perceived sweet a bit, I added a slick of Meyers; that helped some.
All in all, this has potential, but we need to get some better rum. This is a formula where you really taste the alcohol you use, so a big part of the reason the margaritas were so good was the high-quality tequila. Comparing a drink made with some generic (not bad, but not particularly distinguished) rum just isn't fair.
To go with the leftover lentils this week I sauteed some green beans in olive oil with savory and bacon.
To go with the leftover chicken I cooked a head of lettuce with olive oil and dill.
The original plan was to do a Bittman recipe for grilled chicken with lemon, accompanied by chipotle-peach salsa. Unfortunately the peaches were moldy, so we just did the chicken.
This was super simple: toss chicken leg quarters on the slow part of the grill; cook until they're basically done; move to the hot part to get a nice surface; season with salt and pepper and serve with lemon slices. With good chicken it was excellent food. I wanted fruit salsa, so I made do with what was in the house: halved gooseberries and cassis tossed with minced chili (habanero family) and lime.
I also did some potatoes in a sort of cheaters hobo pack on the grill: cut new potatoes into chunks; microwave for a couple minutes until they're about half cooked (this is the cheating part). Transfer to a sheet of foil; add olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, and fresh thyme. Wrap up the packets and toss on a slow part of the grill until they're done. very very good.
As a vegetable side, we had pan-browned cauliflower.
and a big green salad.
I've been craving lentils for a while, but it's been too hot to cook them. "Fortunately" yesterday was cool and rainy.
Cook some finely diced onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil until they start to soften. Add small green lentils, diced smoked ham, some white wine, some chicken bouillon, a pinch of herbs de provence, a few bay leaves, and a good grind of pepper and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook until the lentils are soft, about an hour. Serve topped with a drizzle of olive oil and some chopped parsley (if you have it, we didn't).
Lentils are goooooood.
As a veggie side, I cooked some thickly sliced zucchini in butter until it was soft and then mixed in some shredded basil leaves and a good grind of white pepper.
Of course we also had a green salad.
The berries are now really starting to show up at the market. Last night, to celebrate, we did a berry gratin with blueberries, raspberries, cassis, and cherries (pitted), mixed with a bit of sugar, cornstarch, and lime juice; topped with crumbled cookies and baked.
simple and delicious
A while ago we bought a bottle of Savagnin that's been sitting there waiting to be tried. Yesterday we went to a good local cheese shop to organize a cheese plate and last night we broke open the bottle.
The cheese plate consisted of an assortment of raw-milk cheeses:
I took advantage of the fact that it cooled down yesterday to do some "real" cooking and improv a pan of baked eggplant.
Put some olive oil in a baking dish. Top with a layer of sliced eggplant, sprinkle with salt, top with a layer of sliced tomatoes, a layer of basil leaves, thinly sliced onions, a sprinkling of finely diced bacon, and a grind of pepper. Add another layer of everything. Cover and bake at 190C for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, grate over some sbrinz and let bake another 15 minutes.
Great stuff.
I also steamed a head of cauliflower and then tossed it with salt and olive oil.
Oh yes, and the green salad.
It's still to hot to do real cooking in the kitchen, but I wanted to do something other than salads, so last night I fired up the grill and did:
It's too hot for real cooking, so I did some assorted salads and things that cook quickly:
Inspired by this week's Minimalist column, I had to make cocktails. To go along with the planned grilling it didn't take much thinking for me to settle on margaritas as the drink of choice. I did a bit of small-scale playing around to get proportions I liked and ended up with the following (for two drinks):
4 oz good tequila (I used Herradura anejo)
2 oz lime juice (freshly squeezed, of course)
1-1.5 oz triple sec (actually curacao triple sec, which is nice stuff, too sweet to drink pure of course, but it has a nice flavor)
Shake with ice cubes and then serve over an ice cube, garnished with a bit of lemon zest.
Very nice stuff to sit in the sun and sip.
Update, 27 July:
After some more experimenting, the final proportions we settled on for this drink were 4 : 2 : 2. The triple sec brings a nice roundness and some bitter notes, so we increased the proportions a bit.
Last night we had friends over for cocktails and a night at the grill. I'll do the cocktails in the separate post. The food is here.
As starters I did : almonds sauteed in olive oil and then tossed with toasted cumin and salt; olives (bought "natural", i.e. without adornment, and then stored for a couple of weeks in olive oil with a crushed garlic clove, some lemon zest, and a chili. This was inspired by a Bittman post and has become a regular snack for me); and piquillos stuffed with leftover verbena-ricotta and then drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chives.
I made a batch of quick pickles by tossing relatively thickly sliced cucumber with salt and dill fronds and then putting them in the pickle press for a couple of hours. After rinsing and wringing them out by hand I added a bit of lemon zest, a splash of cider vinegar, and some black pepper.
Of course we did a green salad.
For a second salad I shredded some white cabbage, salted it, let it stand for a few hours under pressure, rinsed it and wrung it out, and then tossed it with lemon juice, neutral oil, and some caraway seeds.
On the grill I did "leave it all out" hamburgers: good ground beef mixed with salt and then grilled. We ate these on toasted buns with grilled red onion slices and chipotle mayo.
Our dessert plan was grilled fruit with ice cream. Unfortunately by the time we came up with a plan, the only reasonable fruit left at the Coop were peaches; and they were rock hard. So instead of grilling them, I cut them in half and then poached them in sugar syrup. We ate these, drizzled with the syrup and a splash of armagnac over vanilla ice cream.
It was all very nice food, except for the cabbage salad which we forgot to take out the fridge and serve. Ah well, extra leftovers for tonight!
Last night's meal was driven by my desire to make with the lemon verbena we've got growing on the balcony. The solution to that "problem" was to finely chop some verbena, mix it with good ricotta cheese, a bit of salt, and some black pepper, and then use this to stuff tomatoes. In a way it's inspired by the dish that inspired one of the things from my first post on this blog.
These were quite good. There's loads of the filling left over, so I get to come up with some other good use for it... not an unhappy challenge to have.
To go along with the tomatoes I pan-roasted a duck breast and did bratkartoffeln with new potatoes and rosemary (cooked in clarified butter instead of oil because that's a gooood combination).
We also had a big green salad.
After enjoying the pre-game (Germany vs Turkey, Eur02008 semifinal) chaos around town last night we didn't have time to make it to the store, so dinner was a garbage salad made from stuff in the fridge and pantry: lettuce, carrots, olives, kidney beans, shredded ham, basil leaves, sbrinz chunks, and piquillo pepper shreds, all dressed with a basil vinaigrette. With that we had a baguette.
No supplemental green salad was required. ;-)
A couple of random things tossed together based on what was in the fridge/pantry:
Chickpeas with toasted cumin seeds, garlic, piquillo pepper strips, a mixture of sweet and hot paprika, olive oil, and a splash of sherry.
Chunks of pork tenderloin browned in olive oil. I deglazed the pan with some sherry and then added some spinach. Once the spinach was cooked I added some minced garlic and tossed the pork back in the pan to warm up.
We also had some baguette and a big green salad.
hmm, I see this isn't my first use of this title.
Our main dish was a salad of potatoes, pork tenderloin, and peas (mange-tout) taken from this month's Le Menu. It's pretty simple: make a dressing from neutral oil, balsamic, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme and put it in a big bowl; quarter some new potatoes and brown them in clarified butter then put them in the bowl; brown some bite-sized pieces of pork tenderloin in the same pan and put them in the bowl; cook the peas in the same pan until just about tender, then place them in the bowl. Toss everything together, adjust seasoning, and then let stand, tossing occasionally, for an hour or so.
I also steamed some white asparagus and served that at room temperature topped with a basil vinaigrette and some herbed streusel leftover from Saturday.
Of course we had a big green salad to go with these other really nice salads.
We have a mountain of lettuce in the fridge, so last night's main course needed to involved cooked lettuce. I decided something inspired by a Bittman recipe I remember (but can't find) for fish fillets cooked on top of lettuce. The fish I used was Pintado, which I've seen in the Coop before but hadn't gotten around to trying. The fillets were really attractive and promising. At the time I bought them I didn't know that pintado is a type of farmed catfish.
For the dish itself, I started some minced garlic and shallots in a pan with olive oil, added some diced red onion and let it all cook for a bit. Then I added the lettuce, some finely chopped lemon thyme, a splash of white wine, a pinch of salt, and stirred. After topping the lettuce with the fish I covered the pan and let it steam until the fish was done.
The lettuce was nice. The fish was not: it had the usual flabby texture and somewhat muddy flavor of farmed catfish combined with a thick layer of fat underneath the skin that I just found revolting. Ah well, live and learn.
In addition to our obligatory green salad, I made a tomato and fennel salad from a recipe in this month's Le Menu: Arrange very thinly sliced tomato and fennel on a plate. Drizzle with a dressing made from cider vinegar, rapeseed oil, mustard, and fresh basil. Top with a fine streusel made by roasting flour, butter, salt, and minced basil in a pan until light brown. The use of basil was a substitution: the recipe called for peppermint, but we don't have a couple of beautiful peppermint plants on the terrace. :-)
The salad was really good. It's also easy and somewhat elegant looking, so worth keeping in mind for entertaining.
Last night to take advantage of the fantastic weather I fired up the grill.
The major component was lemongrass patties (from a BittmanWorld recipe): Mix 300g ground pork with a minced stalk of lemon grass, two minced garlic cloves, a finely chopped shallot, some minced chilli, a good splash of fish sauce[1], and a pinch of sugar. Form 3 patties and let them stand for a while so the flavors can meld. Grill over a medium hot fire and serve with a toasted bun, mayo, sriracha, and some lime.
I also grilled a couple of tomatoes as a side.
We have loads of spinach from the biokiste, so I also made a bowl of spinach by lightly browning some finely chopped bacon in a bit of olive oil, adding chopped garlic and red onion, and cooking until the onion softens. To this I added the washed and stemmed spinach and let it cook until the spinach was done. After draining off the extra liquid, I added some soy sauce and rice vinegar.
Really nice food eaten outside on a really nice evening.
I remember having made the patties before, but I can't find it on the blog... weird.
[1] not such a pleasant thought!
We tried this relatively new restaurant downtown on Thursday in order to be close to the EM2008 chaos.
One smiley face.
A spontaneous dessert derived from a recipe in JPFF. I used knopflimehl for the semolina, and substituted milk and yogurt for the half-and-half and sour cream, respectively.
This version is not nearly as rich as the real thing, but it's still quite nice.
Andrea's parents stopped by for dinner last night and we did geschnetzeltes. I followed the recipe from Kaltenbach without much change other than using pork instead of veal (hahah, minor change that!).
To go with the meat, I made some rice/wildrice mix and some mushrooms that I browned in olive oil and splashed with sherry just before serving.
We've got a large amount of "proto-pesto" in the fridge that needs to be eaten. Last night's meal was a reaction to this and the large quantity of vegetables in the fridge. :-)
I cut up three medium-sized fennel bulbs, two small heads of cauliflower, and four large new potatoes and tossed those in a bowl with some veal essence, thawed basil, olive oil, chopped pine nuts, and black pepper. These went into a buttered baking dish and were topped with grated Gruyere and then baked until the vegetables were done and the cheese was brown and bubbly.
We ate this wonderful mess with a big green salad.
After getting back from our glacier course, there wasn't a lot of energy left to do a particularly elaborate dinner, so I made macaroni and cheese. I did the sauce with milk, Gruyere, Appenzeller, some thin strips of bacon, and "raclette spice". For pasta we had whole-wheat spirals.
Simple, and very good.
We're getting tomatoes in the biokiste now (it's hard to believe we've made it to tomato season again); this somehow inspired Friday's dinner, where I more or less followed a recipe for chicken breasts cooked in foil from FStoS. I used the tomatoes, thyme, olives, and cheese variation (sbrinz instead of parmesan) and we ended up with a really nice meal.
To go along with this, I stewed some eggplant with olive oil, garlic, and a few dried chilis.
We need to remember how nice it is to have bread with dinner.
For want of a better word, we'll call this improvisation : Meatballs wrapped in lettuce.
Brown about 100g bacon (diced small) and drain off the fat. In a big bowl mix together 300g ground beef, 4 cloves minced garlic, 1/2 of a minced red onion, an egg, salt, pepper, and marjoram. Mix in the bacon and then form into 3-4 cm balls. Wrap the meatballs with lettuce leaves and put them in an oiled baking dish. Pour in some white wine and a bit of beef bouillon. Grate some Sbrinz over the top. Bake at 180c for about 30 minutes.
We ate these lovely things with some basmati rice and a big green salad.
Last night I did a variety of salads to use up some veggies and keep the kitchen at least somewhat cool.
This improv came about because I happened to find some nice looking rainbow trout fillets (farmed, organic) at the Coop.
The fish I did really simply: seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, and crushed fennel and then breaded with the usual flour-egg-bread crumbs process. Shallow fried in neutral oil, served with lime wedges.
As accompaniments I braised some fennel with olive oil and beef bouillon and sauteed some new potatoes in clarified butter.
The food was all good, but the big winner was the potatoes. These were from our biokiste and were just fantastically flavorful. The fish had decent texture and some flavor, which is more than I normally expect from farmed trout.
We also had a green salad.
First the context:
On Sunday I read a section in Kamman where she has a bit of a rant about the use of the term saute. The rant was amusing and was connected with a description of a technique that she refers to as true sauteeing. The technique, somewhere between pan roasting and braising, sounded interesting.
We still have a couple jars of cherries from last year in the house. Since cherry season will be upon us in not too long, it's time to start using those up.
Then there was my chicken craving.
All of these bits of context combined to give rise to last night's improvisation: Chicken sauteed with cherries.
Brown some chicken leg quarters well in neutral oil. Drain off the oil and add some sour cherries along with their liquid, a splash of wine, and a good pinch of salt. Simmer almost completely covered until the chicken is mostly done. Add some sliced red onion and freshly-squeezed lime juice and finish cooking. Remove the chicken from the pot and add a bit of essence to the sauce along with a pinch of cayenne and some white pepper. Reduce a bit and then adjust seasonings. Thicken with some potato starch if needed, then add the chicken back and let it heat through. Serve topped with a couple of "raw" cherries.
We ate this with jasmine rice and some cauliflower browned in butter (yay! it's cauliflower time again!).
and a big green salad.
It's been quite a while since I last made pho, but the pot of secondary stock (from last weekend's essence making) that we had sitting in the fridge was just screaming for it.
I used the BittmanWorld recipe as a guide but had some variations. Obviously I started with secondary veal stock instead of water and bones. For the beef for the stock I used siedfleisch. Instead of cilantro, I garnished with "europagras". As noodles I used thick rice sticks.
This was a great meal.
