There's still basil in olive oil in the freezer from last summer; that's an easy one to use: pesto!
To go with it I did a beet salad by tossing steamed diced beets with olive oil, feta cheese, white pepper, and piment d'espelette.
We also had thick slices of smoked ham that I quickly pan fried.
The usual "let's use up tons of root vegetables" gratin:
thinly sliced celery root, potato, leek, bodenkohlrabi (at least that's what we think it is) and smoked ham with a sauce made from cream, milk, garlic, bay leaf, clove, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a bit of cayenne. Topped with gruyere and then baked 40 minutes covered and 20 minutes open.
good stuff.
On Saturday we picked some corn tortillas up in Zurich, so tacos were a high priority.
The filling: brown some seasoned beef stew meat then set it aside and pour out most of the fat. Add diced onion and mashed garlic, freshly ground cumin and coriander, and some ripped up dried guajillo chiles; cook a few minutes until the onion softens. Add about a Tbs each of ketchup and tomato paste and cook another couple minutes. Return the beef to the pan and add just enough water to about cover it. Cover the pot and simmer for a few hours, until the beef is falling apart. Add a small amount of ground cloves and cinnamon, more cumin, and some freshly ground black pepper and serve.
The baked rice: cook diced onion and garlic with whole cumin until the onion is soft. Add a cup of rice and cook a couple more minutes. Add 2cups water and chopped canned tomatoes along with a tsp of sweet paprika and some chicken bouillon. Bring to a boil, cover, and bake at 175 for 15 minutes then let stand for another 10-15 minutes before serving.
The sides:
Toss some dried white beans, onion, garlic, bay leaf, clove, chicken bouillon, sweet and hot paprikas, black pepper, diced smoked ham, and water in the pressure cooker. Bring to pressure and cook 15 minutes. Serve topped with good olive oil, chives, and parsley.
It's great to have the pressure cooker and be able to do pea soup on a weeknight.
This was the usual: combine peas, onion, diced carrot, bay leaf, chicken bouillon, diced bacon, and herbes de provence in the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure, and cook for 12 minutes. Open the pot, add some wienerli, and cook another couple minutes until the sausage is heated through.
Serve with good bread and a green salad.
Definitely a garbage soup.
Cook diced onion, leek, celery root, carrot (yellow and orange), potato, and steckrueben in some neutral oil with salt for 10-12 minutes, until the vegetable soften. Add cooked rice, ras al hanout, and sufficient water, bring to a simmer, cover, and let simmer until everything is cooked through. Puree and adjust seasonings.
Not the first time we've done this one:
Combine sauerkraut with small-diced bacon, medium diced smoked pork shoulder, and white wine and bake until it's ready.
Serve with steamed potatoes, grainy mustard, cornichons, and a big green salad.
The burgers were totally basic: beef, salt, minced onion, black pepper.
The rice was derived from the baked rice recipe in La Cocina de Mama; my variation this time was to use ras al hanout.
To go with this we had a salad made from steamed diced beets tossed with sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, and white pepper.
A bit of a random one driven by the boskoop apples in the house along with leftover fondue.
Make the apple sauce: core the apples and slice them (could also peel them, but it's pretty easy to pick the peels out later if you don't mind a "rustic" dish) then toss them in a pot with a bit of butter, cover, and cook over low heat until it turns to apple sauce.
For the pork: season some pork steaks well, sear on both sides in the cast iron, then let rest a few minutes. Serve topped with the reheated fondue cheese.
Together with a big salad, this made for a nice meal.
It's been a while since we did a fondue...
Once again I did a standard recipe (no need to vary when we do this so rarely): cheese mixture from the place around the corner, garlic, corn starch, white wine, kirsch, black pepper, and nutmeg.
mmmm.
Been bad about posting lately and I'm never going to catch up, so just some highlights from the past month so I can get started posting again
I had a craving for biscuits and a stew seemed like a good accompaniment.
For the biscuits I used the usual recipe from Bittman.
For the stew I used pork shoulder, smoked bacon, some turkey (remainders from the pot pie makings), leek, yellow carrots, parsnips, fennel, white wine, tomato paste, fennel seed, yellow mustard seed, and some beef bouillon.
To go with the rest of the goodness I did a chopped salad with spitzkohl and granny smith apples.
A recipe from Alles Klar that needed to be made: beef filet in red curry with lemon-basmati rice. I pretty much followed the recipe aside from the cooking in jars part... I cooked everything normally. :-)
To accompany I made a salad of chopped napa cabbage, fresh mint, lime juice, fish sauce, and sesame oil.
Really nice food; moving the sour elements from the curry to the rice is an interesting shift.
A simple pot pie:
Brown some diced turkey breast in neutral oil, set aside. Saute sliced leek, chopped onion, diced carrot, celery, potato, and parsnip, and minced garlic in the same pan. After a few minutes add white wine, some chicken bouillon, pepper, rosemary, sage, a bit of oregano, mustard, carrot juice (leftover from last week), and some water. Bring to a simmer and then add corn starch to thicken. Add back the turkey and adjust seasonings. Transfer to serving-size oven-safe containers (I used our french onion soup bowls), top with puff pastry, and bake at 175C until the puff pastry is ready, about 30 minutes.
Together with a big green salad, this made for a really nice winter meal.
There were a bunch of small potatoes from the biokiste that needed to be used...
Cut some new potatoes in half lengthwise and put them in a single layer in a hot pan with some olive oil. Cook ~5 minutes. Add a good quantity of sherry, salt, cumin, chopped garlic, chopped red onion, cover, and let simmer until the potatoes are done. Serve topped with parsley and chives.
For the pork: season pork loin chops well and pan-fry them. Drizzle with sherry vinegar and olive oil and top with parsley and chives before serving.
Serve with a big green salad.
I'm not really sure where this idea to use up the beef that didn't end up in the hotpot came from, but I'm definitely glad it came.
Make a vinaigrette from sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, ras al hanout, black pepper, a bit of mashed garlic, and a pinch of of brown sugar.
For the beef: cut some steak into 2-4mm slices, sear the slices in a very hot pan, toss them with some vinaigrette and set aside.
For the beets: peel and slice them (1cm thick) and steam until tender.
Layer the sliced beets with, strips of beef, sliced goat cheese (we used a soft cheese with a rind for this), and vinaigrette.
As an accompaniment I made some basmati rice and served it topped with ras al hanout and chopped pistachios. That was a magical combination.
Great food.
When I was growing up we always used to do black-eyed peas on New Years day. I don't always succeed, but I do try to keep doing this.
This year's version was really simple: into the pressure cooker went black-eyed peas, diced onion, diced bacon, chicken bouillon, bay leaf, clove, thyme. After 15 minutes at pressure I served the soup with thinly sliced red onions that I killed with red-wine vinegar, salt, and a bit of brown sugar.
This seemed like a good one for New Years Eve. As with last time, I stuck reasonably close to the stock recipe in Land of Plenty. This time I strained the stock before putting it on the table - definitely a nice refinement.
Things we had on the table to toss in the hot pot: thinly sliced beef, smoked bacon, strips of chicken breast, spring onions, sliced mushroom, broccoli, carrots.
For dipping sauce(s): soy sauce, sesame oil, black vinegar, garlic.
I also did a salad of very thinly sliced red cabbage, lime juice, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt, and a bit of sugar.
Really good eating.
The veal breast that I used to make stock on Wednesday couldn't just be tossed out, so I used it to make a quick hash.
Dice some potatoes and cook them over medium-high heat in some peanut oil until they start to get a bit crispy. Add sliced leek, diced red onion, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, and both sweet and hot paprika, reduce the heat, cover, and cook until the onion is soft. Meanwhile lightly brown some diced cooked veal breast in peanut oil, then add some madeira and let reduce by half. Add some veal stock, cover, and simmer 5-10 minutes. Pour the veal + liquid over the potatoes, mix well, and serve topped with chopped parsley.
[well, comparatively big at least...]
I started the day by making a big pot of veal stock for later use and then, for dinner, moved on to two recipes from Alles Klar, neither served in glass, but that's just eye candy. :-)
The orange-fennel-avocado salad:
Slice a small red onion very thinly. Filet a couple of oranges. "Kill" the onions in the juice collected from orange prep along with a bit of white balsamico if needed (this is a deviation from the recipe; I prefer onions that have been tamed a bit in my salads). Very thinly slice some fennel. Dice a ripe avocado. Rip some Thai basil leaves into pieces. Juice and zest another orange (I used lemon zest since we didn't find an untreated orange). Make a vinaigrette from orange juice, some white balsamico, walnut oil (recipe calls for pistachio oil), and the zest. Layer together individual salads from the fennel, oranges, thai basil, avocado, and onion, seasoning and dressing the salad as you build it. Top with a bit more dressing and some chopped pistachios and serve.
For the braised veal with cous cous:
Slice a 500g piece of veal shoulder into 1-1.5cm thick slices (recipe calls for veal cheeks, but I didn't even bother looking for those without having ordered them in advance). Brown well on both sides and set aside. In the same pan cook a mixture of leek, carrot, and celery root (all cut into thick matchsticks) with some minced garlic for 5-10 minutes. Add a Tbs of tomato paste, a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick (broken in half), and a good Tbs of ras al hanout and cook another couple of minutes. Add 100ml of madiera and 125ml of white wine and let bubble a minute or so. Add 200-300ml of veal stock and let bubble another couple of minutes. Put the veal in a coverable casserole, pour over the vegetables and sauce, cover, and bake at 160C for about 1.5 hours. 10 minutes before serving prepare the cous cous: bring 180ml of carrot juice to a boil, remove from the heat, add 100g cous cous, mix well, cover, and let stand 10 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil and mix well. Serve the veal+vegetables+sauce over the cous cous.
Both of these dishes were really, really good.
Some notes:
