Hummus Pizza

Just a quickie here to tell you all about a revelation that J and I had recently: hummus? AWESOME on pizza.

This particular specimen was made with an appropriately Mediterranean spin, beginning with a generous layer of hummus (a very simple basic recipe flavored with lemon, olive and garlic) topped with chopped fresh broccoli, caramelized onions, pine nuts, and a modest finish of shredded sharp cheddar and grated parmigiano reggiano (the good stuff), all on homemade pizza dough.



This was utterly satisfying as a pizza dinner, despite being way light on the usual fatty toppings. The hummus itself was actually extremely low-fat, because I used some of the liquid from the can of chickpeas to thin it out rather than a whole crapload of olive oil, and made up for the lack of olive flavor by tossing a couple of chopped brined green olives into the food processor. It came out delicious and you'd never know there was virtually no fat added (just 1 tbsp of olive oil for a little richness on the tongue). We've made practically guilt-free pies before by using skim milk ricotta or part-skim mozzarella, but unsurprisingly those pies would never hold a candle to this one when it comes to flavor and all around tummy satisfaction. It was delicious.



Now, I'm wondering just how far we could take this variation to mimic a real NY Italian-America pizza. Chickpeas are pretty much a blank slate when it comes to flavor - I mean sure, they have a taste all their own but they mix well with almost anything. Could we season the hummus with Italian herbs and spices to make a better fake-out for ricotta on a white pie? Could we add fresh tomatoes and basil to the hummus to make sort of a thick marinara paste? I'm not sure, but I totally want to try. And I want to explore the Greek and Mediterranean angle as well - topped with black olives and crumbled feta and Greek-style braised or sauteed greens, man would this be tasty. Or perhaps chicken souvlaki and thin slices of haloumi, cooked under the broiler till golden brown and crispy, then topped with a light, crisp, fresh cucumber salad. Mmmm. Am I drooling? Sorry.

And who says this variation should be relegated to chickpeas? Why not white beans in one of those Italian-style applications, or black or pinto beans to make a Mexican pizza? (Because we all love those - go on, admit it.) It'd be easy to mimic refritos on a pizza this way, without the extra, well, frying. In lard. Which is delicious, but not something I can really allow onto our dinner plates very often.



And as an added bonus to those of you (read: all of us) who are trying to save money on everyday food, this was seriously cheap to make. Less than $1 for a can of chickpeas on sale, and pennies' worth of flavoring ingredients added to make the hummus; half an onion, a small head of broccoli, probably less than $2 worth of cheese; pizza dough is nothing bu flour, yeast, and water in its most basic form, all very inexpensive if you're like me and buy them in bulk; and the pine nuts, while very tasty here, are really an unnecessary indulgence and could be omitted in the interest of tightening the belt a bit more. All told, when you consider that most of what went into this pie were pantry items for us, this couldn't have cost more than $5 or so to make. Not bad, considering how filling and delicious it was.

At any rate, I'd encourage anyone who likes hummus to give this a shot - even if you're not aiming for low-cal or don't care about your fat intake, try it anyway. Its still an incredibly flavorful way to approach pizza in a new way.

"Dim Sum", sort of

In planning this meal, we referred to it as a "dim sum", despite the fact that it didn't really include any standard dim sum fare, and one of the dishes was really more Thai/Vietnamese than Chinese. (As a matter of fact, I've never even HAD dim sum. I love the idea of it, but my food allergies make me wary of any situation where I can't feel sure of what's actually in what I'm eating, and from what I've seen that has a lot to do with the dim sum experience.) Whatever you call it though, it was one of the most satisfying meals we've made in recent memory, not just because it tasted good (because it most certainly did) but because we learned how to make two new dishes that we were curious about, and finally succeeded at a dish we've been struggling with for ages.



And yes, this was totally vegetarian. We've been experimenting more with meatless meals, in an attempt to save our grocery money for the really GOOD cuts of meat, and also to cut back on the amount we eat. Although we are really good about our vegetable intake and try to severely limit the fat, sugar, and carb content of our meals, we do tend to eat more meat than is really necessary or healthy. Cutting back a bit will hardly be a challenge when we can throw together delicious vegetarian meals like this!



The first component of our dim sum was baozi, or Chinese filled steamed buns. I have never actually had baozi before, but have always thought that they sounded and looked delicious, so we finally bit the bullet and made them ourselves. Typically baozi seem to be filled with either bbq meat, soup, or sweet things like bean paste, but J made the filling for ours with shelled edamame, shiitakes, green onions, and carrots all chopped up and stir-fried in sesame oil and thin teriyaki sauce until softened and a little caramelized. The dough that I used for the wrappers was actually a naan dough from my current cookbook love, the Best-Ever Curry Cookbook by Mridula Baljekar. A typical baozi dough is much simpler, but as I was already making a batch of the dough to actually make naan later in the week I thought it would make a reasonable substitution. I added a bit of sugar and sesame oil to the portion of dough I was using for the baozi to enhance the flavor of the filling.

I had some trouble actually filling the buns - the tops didn't want to stay closed at first - but after two pseudo-failures (one of which looked fine when it went into the steamer but sort of exploded while cooking) I managed to put together two well-sealed buns. They went into the steamer for around 12 minutes and came out soft and fluffy with a lovely glossy skin. I loved the texture of these, the way the dough yields between the teeth and reveals the savory-sweet filling. I desperately want to make them with that ubiquitous char siu bbq pork filling now, though.



The second component were some vegetarian summer rolls, which couldn't be easier to make once you've had some practice rolling. I filled them with shredded carrot, bell pepper, and cabbage, cooked rice noodles tossed with soy and sesame oil, and fresh basil leaves. To make the rolls, each rice paper wrapper got a quick dunk in some warm water to soften it, then got laid out on a flat board. I laid a basil leaf flat on the wrapper, then topped it with a small pile of noodles and a tumble of shredded veggies. The actual rolling was a bit tricky, but after the first one I think I got the hang of it - its just like wrapping a burrito, except with a very flexible, sticky, and fragile wrapper. The key is definitely to roll it as tight as you can without tearing, and as long as you use a gentle touch that's fairly simple to do.

These were so light and crisp and refreshing, the perfect counterpoint to the warm and hearty baozi, and totally delicious when dunked into a dipping sauce made from sweet chili sauce, ponzu, and rice wine vinegar. I think next time I'd use bean thread noodles rather than rice noodles, because the rice noodles were a bit too firm here, and I'd like to include shredded lettuce and bean sprouts next time, but even so these were a total winner. I think the basil is what sends this over the top - the heady aroma of fresh basil is just killer alongside fresh veggies and savory soy, adding a really complex note to an otherwise straightforward little roll. I can see myself making these a lot once the weather starts to get warmer - they're just to quick and easy, and the package of wrappers I bought has a TON. I may also experiment with meat or seafood fillings - I know that shrimp or even pork can be fairly traditional, but what about a miso-glazed seared salmon, or a ground chicken satay filling? I bet I could have an entire summer roll party!



But as good as these two dishes were, the real winner of the night was J's fried rice, because this time it really WAS fried rice. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't pay very close attention to how he made it, being preoccupied by my summer rolls, but this was exactly the kind of fried rice I've always hoped to be able to make at home and have always failed at before. Pre-cooked basmati rice (I know, you'd never expect it, but this worked incredibly well) stir fried with diced carrots and onions and a handful of frozen peas, simply seasoned with just a bit of soy and black pepper, and bulked up slightly with the addition of a scrambled egg, this was unspeakably perfect. The holy grail of fried rice. The kind of fried rice I could probably eat every day and never tire of. Which is bad because, lets face it, fried rice isn't healthy. It takes a fair amount of oil to keep it from sticking to the wok in a hopelessly coagulated mess, and instead get crisp and toasty and delicious. But once in awhile, man is it worth it.

And so, J is now Fried Rice Man, and we are one step closer to making our favorite Chinese takeout meals at home. I think our next challenges will be orange/sesame/General Tso's chicken (lets face it, they're all pretty similar) and boneless spare ribs, though they may have to wait until we feel deserving of a treat. Or, you know, tomorrow.

Barefoot Bloggers: Real Spaghetti and Meatballs

It seems ironic, in an admittedly Alanis-Morrisette-kind-of-way, that after having spent a week waxing poetic about the glories of non-traditional meatballs and straight-up dissing standard Italian-American spaghetti and meatballs, the first of this month's Barefoot Bloggers challenges would be just that. Touche, fate. You win this time.

Really, there is absolutely nothing wrong with basic spaghetti and meatballs, at least not when they are made right. I've certainly enjoyed quite a few plates in my time. There's just something homey and comforting about this dish that I think makes everyone feel just a little bit childlike at heart, no matter what their age. As Ina would say, how bad can that be?

And so, I will admit to approaching this recipe with quite a bit of excitement. Any excuse to eat pasta and red sauce is a-ok with me, and when you start throwing ground meat around too? Sign me up.

Super Meatball Scooping Action Shot! Just want to insert here that of all the invaluable tips and tricks I've picked up from the great Alton Brown, using an ice cream scoop (or disher, as he calls it) to evenly portion out things like meatballs, muffin batter, and really anything other than ice cream, is one of my favorites. Probably a close second to brining just about any meat that isn't beef before cooking. You're my hero AB!

As usual, I made a few small changes to Ina's recipe. For the meatballs, Ina calls for a 4-1 ratio of fresh white bread crumbs and dried seasoned breadcrumbs to be added to the meat mix; I didn't realize until the night I made this that I was out of dry bread crumbs, so I just used extra fresh crumbs and tossed in a bunch of dry italian spices (granulated garlic and onion, some parsley and oregano) to compensate for the missing seasoning. I also soaked my breadcrumbs in a bit of milk for 10 minutes, then pulsed them in the food processor with the egg to make sort of a paste which I then added to the meat mix. I can't remember where I picked up this trick, but it invariably creates a more moist, tender meatball with none of the mealiness that you sometimes get with just ground meat and dry breadcrumbs. I just really like the texture when they're made this way. It also saves me from having to remove the crust from my bread, which would have been particularly difficult considering I made my crumbs from a soft semolina roll rather than slices of white sandwich bread.

Mmm, golden brown deliciousness.

I also adjusted the basic meat proportions, using an even 1-1-1 ratio of beef, pork, and veal, where Ina called for twice as much beef as pork and veal. I'm pretty sure I had just under a pound of each, because that just happened to be the size of the pre-packed meatloaf mix they were selling at the grocery store. Don't worry, the finished meatballs were still sufficiently beefy.



The sauce recipe that Ina pairs with the meatballs seemed a little boring, so I amped it up a little with some fresh torn basil leaves and a handful of chopped sundried tomatoes for sweetness. I also pureed the sauce with my stick blender after cooking, because I prefer a smooth sauce with long noodles - chunky sauces, in my world, are relegated to short cuts of pasta like penne, gemelli, or rotini.

Finally, I used some fresh linguine in place of the usual dry spaghetti, mostly because I'd bought some on a whim at this great natural/organic market that we discovered on the weekend's trip to Huntington. I used the cooked pasta to create sort of a nest on each plate, perched three steaming hot meatballs on top, and finished with a ladle of sauce and a generous grating of parmesan.



All in all, I have to say that this was pretty much what I want and expect from a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. The flavors weren't terribly complex or exciting, but they WERE delicious. The bread-milk-egg slurry in the meatballs did its job well, as they were indeed moist and tender and not the least bit mealy. Next time I would make them a bit smaller, as Ina's 2" round specimens didn't quite cook all the way through in the time indicated. The sauce was certainly not the best I've ever had, but it served its purpose and paired quite well with the richly-flavored meatballs and salty parmesan. It was a bit too thick for my tastes, even after blending, and I wish I'd thinned it out with some beef stock and tomato juice or puree afterwards.



Oddly enough, the only real off note in the meal was the pasta - I just wasn't thrilled with it. This particular brand had a strange aftertaste that I found unpleasant, and I had to be sure to have a little bit of sauce and meat on every bite of pasta to cover it up. The texture was perfect, as is usually the case with fresh pasta, but I would never be able to eat this pasta with anything less than a robust sauce or ragu, so I don't think its worth the money. I'll just have to try another brand, or (gasp!) finally get around to making some myself.

Ooh, you saucy noodles you.

In the end, though, I really enjoyed this. On a cold and gray winter Monday, after a long day of work, a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs was more than welcome. The meal was warm and soothing and evoked more than a little bit of nostalgia for my childhood, and I know I was smiling a little on the inside as I ate.

The best part is that we now have a big tupperware container of meatballs and sauce in the freezer. (Even making the meatballs large, I must have gotten around 16 meatballs out of my mix, and since J and I only ate 3 apiece, that left a LOT of leftovers.) So someday soon, when we have another cold and dreary day, I can take them out and fix up the sauce to get it just right, and serve it over some better pasta, and we'll have yet another spaghetti and meatballs dinner that'll be even better than the first.

Thanks to BMK of Reservations Not Required for this great recipe selection!

In Photos: "Cutting Board Meals"

We originally made this meal last month as an entry for the Barefoot Bloggers' Bonus Recipe Challenge for January - Cheese Platters. However, I never got on the ball enough to post it in time to submit it to the group, so I've just been sitting on the photos ever since. However, I decided to share them with you as an example of one of our favorite types of meals to make on a weeknight. We call them "cutting board meals".

Similar to an Italian antipasto, our cutting board meals always involve a couple varieties of cheese, usually one or two types of cured meat, some bread, and a few types of veggies, occasionally with a dip or spread depending on what components we've chosen. These meals are fantastic because they're lightening fast to make (usually involving no more work than some slicing and possible blanching of veggies) and can be adapted to any culinary ethnicity you like (Asian, Italian, Indian, Mexican, and Spanish cuisines work especially well here). Plus, they're fun to eat. We'll sit for maybe an hour or so, leisurely picking a bite at a time, playing with combinations of ingredients, trying to find the best all around bite out of what we've assembled. It's interactive and relaxing, and a nice change from our usual modus operandi of spending over an hour in the kitchen for a meal that only takes 15 minutes to eat.



This meal was sort of an antipasto with an identity crisis, comprised of two cheeses (Jarlsburg swiss and Prima Donna), two sausages (sweet soppresetta and a really fantastic spicy salami with fennel), roasted red peppers, quickly blanched sugar snap peas, roasted garlic ciabatta, and for a fun twist, some baked brie in puff pastry with pecans and raspberry-champagne preserves. It was delicious.

How would you make a cutting board meal? Give it a try!

Why yes, I CAN, in fact, cook fish.

Being home for nearly two weeks straight while J had to work basically everyday but Christmas and New Year's Day, I pretty much took the reigns for dinner almost every evening. This tends to be the arrangement when one of us is home and the other is at work, and is rather a change from our usual well-established kitchen roles: J takes charge of the meat, seasoning, prepping and cooking whatever protein we happen to be eating that day to follow the concept of the meal we have planned, while I'm generally in charge of sides, usually vegetables and the occasional starch.

I rather enjoy shaking things up myself - it gives me the opportunity to flex my culinary muscles, cooking entire meals and preparing things that I normally wouldn't, with plenty of time to experiment and really do things right. I also get to enjoy the satisfaction of serving a hot, homemade meal to someone I love every day, which makes it a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. Of course, it also makes things more challenging, because no mater what I plan to make, I succeed or fail all on my own. And when it comes to cooking fish, I just don't have enough experience yet to be confident of success when I'm the one responsible for it.

That's why I was so proud of this salmon dish - I made it all on my own, and it came out just about perfect.



This meal combined two of my favorite things ever in the world of food - salmon and noodles - with something that is one of my least favorites, prepared in a new way - cucumbers - to create a surprising and satisfyingly successful dinner on a chilly post-holiday weeknight.

Early in the day I peeled a whole cucumber in stripes, then cut it into a pile of thin slices with my brand new mandoline (a Christmas gift from J - he certainly knows the way to my heart!) and tossed the slices in a marinade of soy, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and rice wine vinegar. The soon-to-be pickles went into the fridge for the rest of the day while I took care of some things on my to-do list.

Late in the afternoon, it was time to start dinner. The salmon came as a steak with the spine and pinbones still in-tact, which meant I had to figure out how to remove the bones and create two thin portions - not something I've ever done before. But with a little searching online and a lot of intuition, I was able to separate the flesh from the spine with a long thin paring knife, the closest thing we have to a proper boning knife, and then remove the remaining pinbones with a pair of tweezers. I used a paper towel to pat away excess moisture and create a slightly tacky surface, then pressed the top of each fish portion into a mix of ground wasabi-soy almonds and panko. Finished with a gentle brushing of olive oil over the top, they were ready for the broiler.



I knew that the fish would cook quickly, however, so I let it sit and come up to room temperature while I started work on some noodles. I sliced an entire green bell pepper into thin ribbons with my mandoline along with most of a package of white button mushrooms. These went into a hot skillet with some warmed safflower oil and a bit of minced garlic and were sauteed until softened and browned in places. I made a simple sauce from some soy, sesame oil, jarred minced ginger (don't really like buying that sort of thing, but we never use fresh ginger before it goes bad) black pepper and sugar, and tossed the veggies and sauce with some flat lo mein noodles that I'd boiled to al dente in salted water. When the fish went under the broiler, I tipped the whole mess back into the skillet and stir fried it until the sauce was absorbed and the noodles took on bit of crispness around the edges.

The fish was golden brown and crisp on top and just cooked through in the middle within 5 or 6 minutes, at which point I removed it from the oven and took my pickled cucumber salad out of the fridge. Onto each plate when a heap of the stir-fried noodles, then a portion of salmon, and finally a tumble of the thin cukes on the side. At this point I was pretty pleased, as everything LOOKED more-or-less how I'd hoped.



But as usual, the proof was in the taste, and I think I won this battle. The fish was just right, flaky and tender with a lovely crunch from the nut and panko crust. The noodles were slightly sweet and savory, with soft sweet peppers and tender earthy mushrooms in every bite. But the cucumber salad was the real revelation for me - normally I pretty strongly dislike cucumbers in their natural form, and I was suspicious of any pickling recipe that required less than a couple of weeks in boiling-water-processed jars to transform their flavor. But this method made a shocking transformation in very little time, yielding still-crisp cucumber slices with a salty, tangy flavor that was damn-near addictive. I honestly think I could eat cucumbers every day if they were prepared like this.

Aside from being a tasty meal, this dinner proved to me that if I trust my intuition and remember everything I've learned by watching J in the kitchen, I can probably manage just about any meat or fish preparation. I just have to put my mind to it and stay confident in my skills.

Maybe one day I'll even have the guts to tackle that roast beef that J's already mastered. But then again, sometimes its not worth messing with perfection. ;)

An Unplanned Holiday Meal

I know this is really late enough to be embarrassing, but I really wanted to share our Christmas Eve dinner with all of you, mostly because I pulled this one out of my hat all by myself and with basically no advanced preparation. Believe it or not, it is entirely possible to make a delicious and impressive holiday meal more or less on the fly.



See, when we did our meal planning for Christmas week, we did so with Christmas Day's shenanigans in mind but completely forgot about Christmas Eve until AFTER we'd done all of our grocery shopping. I think that J would have been fine with just eating one of our planned meals that evening, but I simply could not allow Christmas Eve to go by without something special on the menu. Luckily, my job gives me a lot of time off around the holidays and I knew that I would be home all day Christmas Eve, giving me plenty of time to plan the meal, make a grocery store run, and cook.

I spent most of my free time on Monday and Tuesday thinking about it. I knew I wanted ham, because that just screams Christmas to me, but I also knew that I didn't want to just buy a ham and bake it. Baked, glazed, spiral-sliced ham is probably one of the most delicious food inventions I can think of, but I wanted to do something different. Something creative. Something a bit more sophisticated. I had the time, I thought, so why not use it to my advantage and experiment a bit? Of course, I also didn't want an entire spiral-sliced ham sitting in the freezer afterwards, because after all, there's only two of us.

I knew I had some puff pastry shells sitting in the freezer, and for some reason that stuck in my mind. I suspect it was partly because I'd seen Ina Garten make a simple appetizer of deli ham and swiss folded up in a sheet of puff pastry on her show over the previous weekend, and I just couldn't stop thinking about how deliciously easy that would be. I wasn't quite satisfied with repeating that idea, though the pastry component kept knocking around my head.

Similarly, I got myself latched onto the ham and pineapple combination, which is nothing new for sure but is definitely always delicious. I had several thoughts on that - ham and pineapple skewers, perhaps, brushed with a sweet chili glaze and broiled until caramelized and crunchy on the outside. Or ham steaks dusted with cinnamon and ancho and pan-seared, topped with sweet and sour pineapple chutney. Or maybe a riff on Ina's dish, adding thin-sliced pineapple rings to the ham and cheese puff pastry filling, somewhat reminiscent of Hawaiian pizza. Nah, none of that really rang true either.

At the same time I was considering sides. I still had some kale leftover from the farro salad a few days before, and some prima donna cheese, and thought that the addition of a potato would make a pretty fantastic gratin. And of course, once potatoes came onto the playing field, there were ideas for her-roasted potatoes and mashers and croquettes to contend with. Even sweet potatoes starting kicking around in my head, vying for attention, crying about how a chipotle-lime sweet potato mash would be a killer pairing with that ham steak idea, or how some sweet potato steak fries would be easy to make if I already had the oven/broiler on for those skewers. And then there were green veggies options - sauteed spinach, salads, green beans, broccoli. About the only side I was sure of from the get-go was my mom's orange and maple glazed carrots, because I love them dearly and feel no Christmas season is complete if I haven't had them at least once.

So, Christmas Eve arrived, and there I was with two days-worth ideas for mains and sides and not a single, satisfying, cohesive menu among them.

That morning I sat down with some paper and a pencil and wrote out all of the ideas that I'd narrowed down from the masses, and started drawing lines and sketching permutations, exploring the potential of each possibility. And an hour or so later, after a bit of brainstorming and a new main dish on the menu, I was off to the store with shopping list in hand and a meal planned that was simple, festive, creative, and (I hoped) delicious.

And so it was.

Sauteed Ham and Pineapple w/Black Pepper-Brown Sugar Glaze
in Puff Pastry

Maple-Orange Glazed Carrots

Simply-Dressed Arugula Salad
(red wine vinegar, good extra virgin olive oil, dijon, minced chives, salt and pepper)

Potato and Young Kale Gratin
with Prima Donna and Fresh Chive

The meal may have tasted fantastic, but the most rewarding part was sitting down on Christmas Eve with the man that I love, and enjoying a meal that I'd put together from the ground up with all the love and joy of the season as the secret ingredient.

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season, and I have nothing but high hopes and good wishes for all of us in the year to come.

Goodness, gracious, great balls o' meat! (Part 2)

I have to admit to being mildly skeptical about this recipe, which is part of the reason that we didn't make it in the same week that we made all of our other meatball-centric meals. I'm a little wishy-washy when it comes to game meats; I like a little gaminess, but I've even had lamb that's been too strong for my tastes, and venison that has been hunted in the wild is much stronger than any farm-raised lamb. I was afraid that this dish, which used up the remainder of a windfall of free deer meat given to us by our old butcher last year, would be exceptionally gamey and unpleasant.

I am pleased to report that I could not have been more wrong.

This was, hands down, the best meal we'd made in weeks, and we are now mourning the fact that don't have access to more venison so that we could make this again.



I'm sorry to say that this was not our original recipe - J did some searching on the internet for meatball recipes using venison and came up with this one, which blended the venison with beef and had them served in a dried cherry and red wine sauce. I thought that sounded pretty good, though in addition to being concerned about the gaminess, I was worried that the sauce would be exceptionally sweet. I needn't have worried about that either - the sauce was a perfect balance of sweet and savory with just a hint of tang, the sort of flavor that just makes you salivate and crave another bite. And when paired with the ultimately mild but distinctive flavor of the venison, these were just about perfect.

J took charge of this recipe, and made a few small changes - his altered version is below. The recipe for my side dish, a warm farro salad with young kale and white beans that turned out to be the perfect earthy counterpoint to the sweet and savory meatballs, follows as well.



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Venison Meatballs in Dried Cherry Sauce
Adapted from this recipe on MyRecipes.com, originally from Christmas with Southern Living, 2000

The original recipe was supposed to make about 4 dozen 1" meatballs. J halved the recipe and made them slightly larger, and we probably got about a dozen or so (which was far too much for dinner but meant we had leftovers that tasted even better the next day). You can make them any size you like - simply adjust your cooking time accordingly.

Meatballs:
1/2 lb ground venison
1/2 lb ground pork
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
3/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 cup minced onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 beaten egg
olive oil

Sauce:
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped celery
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4-5 oz dried cherries (about 3/4 cup)
1 bay leaf
3 whole black peppercorns
1 sprig fresh thyme
1/2 cup Merlot
1 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 cups beef stock

Place ground venison and pork in a large bowl with salt, pepper, allspice, onion, garlic, thyme, and egg. Mix with your hands, being careful not to overwork the meat to ensure a good texture once the meatballs are cooked. Shape mixture into 1.5-2" meatballs.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until just shy of smoking, then add the meatballs and sear well on all sides by occasionally shaking the pan to roll them around. Use tongs or a slotted spoon (tongs work better with larger meatballs) to remove the meatballs when they are nice and browned and reasonably firm - you don't need to worry too much about cooking them all the way through here, as they'll finish cooking in the sauce later. Place on a plate or in a bowl and cover with foil to trap them in their own radiant heat, as this will also help them to finish cooking.

Add chopped onion, celery and garlic to the pan and sautee them in the remaining oil and pan drippings until softened and barely colored - keep the veg moving to avoid burning the garlic. Add chopped garlic; cook 30 seconds. Turn the heat down a bit and add the cherries, bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme, wine, and balsamic vinegar, using a wooden spoon to scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Bring mixture to a boil and reduce by half, then add the stock and reduce by half again. Remove from heat and discard bay leaf and thyme.

You want to blend this sauce to a smooth consistency, so use whatever method works best for you. We used our regular blender but if you have a stick blender you could also pour the sauce into a tall container and use that (next time, that's what we'll do - I hate using the regular blender for this stuff). Just a few tips if you use an electric blender: When you put the to on, make sure that one of the openings is fcing the pour spout so that there is a place for steam to escape, and place a towel over the top while you blend. Blending hot liquids can be an explosive ffair if you aren't careful, and once you've had searing hot half-pureed fod go flying around your kitchen once, you never want it to happen again.

Once the sauce is blended, you can push it through a wire mesh strainer if you like, but we didn't bother. Return the sauce to the pan and add the meatballs back in. Roll them around to coat in the sauce and let everything simmer together for a few minutes to ensure even heating and thorough cooking of the meatballs. If serving individual portions, these can be skewered on bamboo skewers or simply placed on a plate with n extra spoonful of sauce. If serving as a group appetizer or a party dish, pour all the meatballs and sauce into a chafing dish or large fondue pot to keep warm and provide toothpicks for self-service. They'll be the best sweet and-sour cocktail meatballs you've ever eaten.



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Warm Farro Salad with White Beans and Young Kale

Young kale is paler green and has smaller leaves than the full-grown kind, and has a milder, slightly less bitter flavor. Use only the curly leaves, discarding the stems. If you can't find young kale, regular will work just fine.

I actually think that this would be equally good at room temperature or even cold, especially if dressed with a simple lemon vinaigrette after chilling, but as I haven't tried that yet myself you'll have to let me know how it turns out.

1/2 cup farro, rinsed and soaked in cold water for 30 minutes
1 1/2 - 2 cups chicken stock (standard ratio for cooking farro is 1 part farro to 3 parts liquid, but I always find I need slightly more, so I start with a cup and a half and add more later if necessary)
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup minced white onion
2 minced garlic cloves
2/3 cup canned white beans such as navy or cannelini, drained and rinsed
1 cup roughly chopped young kale, well rinsed
salt & black pepper
freshly grated romano, parmesan, prima donna (our choice, as usual), or other hard, salty cheese, optional

Place 1 1/2 cups of the chicken stock in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat, then drain the farro and add to the pan. Reduce the heat to medium, cover the pan, and simmer until the farro has absorbed all the water and is tender but still slightly chewy, usually about 20 minutes. You may want to stir it around every so often to keep it from sticking. If you find that the farro absorbs all of the stock but is still a little hard, just add more stock a little bit at a time and continue to simmer uncovered until it is properly cooked. This may take some nitpicking, but you'll get it.

While the farro cooks, heat a bit of olive oil in a small sautee pan over medium heat and add the onions and garlic. Cook together, stirring frequently, until well softened and golden brown - we're going for some slight caramelization here. Add in the kale and white beans along with a tablespoon or so of water, reduce the heat to low, and sautee until the kale has wilted and softened and the beans are exceedingly tender. Set aside.

When the farro is cooked, drain any excess liquid that there may be in the pan (I never have any, but you never know) and gently stir in the kale and beans mixture along with the red wine vinegar, good EVOO, and salt and pepper to taste. Add some grated cheese if you like. We did like, and even added a few extra slices of prima donna to our plates to nibble between bites of meatball and farro - it worked. Really well. Cover the pan and remove from heat to keep warm, but not hot, until ready to serve.

Homemade Membrillo, Pork Roulade

I love membrillo (quince paste) and have seen other bloggers make their own, but assumed I'd never have access to the fresh fruits to try it myself. As such, I'm not sure I can adequately communicate my excitement when I discovered fresh quinces at Iavarone on our last shopping trip. I think I considered it for all of 5 seconds before picking out three firm, unblemished fruits and dropping them into our cart. Homemade membrillo would be mine, after all!

That afternoon I took myself away to the kitchen to deal with my quinces. A quick search online taught me that quince were similar in texture to apples, but harder and drier, and had a tough core and skin that must be removed. This was an accurate description, and the fruit was easy to peel but difficult to cut. With a little elbow grease I managed to get all three fruit cored, sliced, and diced, and into a large saucepan they went along with some cold water, a squeeze of fresh lemon, and about a cup and a half of white sugar. From here it was easy - I just cooked the fruit over medium heat until it softened and turned a dull red, which I must say took a lot longer than I expected, close to an hour and a half. The fruit never really broke down, so when it was done I took my stick blender to it to create a smooth, slightly grainy paste. The flavor was lovely, sweet and floral and aromatic, but subtle. I poured it into a tupperware container, and after sitting in the fridge overnight it had stiffened properly into a firm, sliceable block of membrillo.



There's something really beautiful about this stuff, isn't there? Shiny and jewel-like with that lovely knobby texture on the surface, it spreads like a jam but can be cut into cubes or slices with ease. Its sticky, mind you, but I don't mind getting a little messy for something this tasty.



Now, the obvious thing to do with membrillo is to eat it with a good manchego cheese, perhaps some marcona almonds, a few water crackers. But, J and I being who we are, we had to come up with something more interesting. We had a bit of prima donna cheese in the fridge (because when do we not?) and a small pork tenderloin, and after a bit of thought came up with the idea for a quince-glazed pork roulade filled with grated prima donna and herbs.



I took a knife to the tenderloin and used a lengthwise accordion cut to create a large, thin, flat surface with the meat. A 1/2 cup or so of the membrillo was warmed up on the stove with an equal amount of water and a sprig of fresh rosemary, and kept on the heat long enough to infuse the glaze with a subtle evergreen aroma. I seasoned the pork with salt, freshly ground black pepper, a sprinkle of garlic powder, and some chopped fresh rosemary, then spread a thin layer of the glaze all over the meat. I grated some prima donna, about half a cup, and piled it near the middle of the meat, leaving an inch or so around all the edges to try and prevent leakage during cooking. Then a quick roll and tie with some butcher's twine, and it was ready for some heat.

The roulade was seared on the stovetop first, then placed in the oven at about 450 degrees to roast. I brushed it with the glaze 3 or 4 times as it cooked, creating a golden brown sticky-sweet crust.

Meanwhile, J made some simple panko-crusted zucchini slices but cutting two small zucchini into 1/2" slices, seasoning with salt, pepper, and paprika, and dredging with egg and light, crisp panko crumbs. They were lightly panfried in some vegetable oil and then left to drain briefly on some paper towels as I removed the pork from the oven and set it aside to rest and let the juices redistribute and the filling firm up a bit.

Once untied and sliced, the pork retained its shape to yield lovely spiral slices with a thin layer of sweet and savory cheese filling. To plate. we dolloped each serving with a bit of the remaining membrillo glaze and a bit more freshly grated cheese, with the fried zucchini alongside.




My goodness, this was good. The combination of flavors - salty, tangy, sweet, herbaceous - was just fantastic on the mild tender pork. The meat itself could have used a brining period prior to cooking, and next time that's what we'll do, but the concept behind the dish was definitely sound. The slightly sweet, crisp zucchini slices made a nice fresh-tasting foil to the richness of the meat, and all together it made for a fantastic meal.

And the best part is, I have plenty of membrillo leftover to enjoy. I wonder what else we can make with it?

Goodness, gracious, great balls o' meat!

Sorry. I couldn't resist.

The meatball is, I think, a vastly underrated thing. Most people think of meatballs as only those things you have with spaghetti and red sauce to make a meal more substantial, or perhaps as the little bite-sized morsels served with sweet-and-sour sauce at new year's eve, or in gloopy brown gravy over egg noodles that somehow get away with calling themselves "swedish". Usually made of beef and with far too few seasonings, quite often lacking pleasing texture or moisture, we're all familiar with the mediocrity of the standard meatball. But does that mean they can't be really, truly GOOD? I don't think so.

I also don't believe that meatballs should be relegated to the dishes above. Ground meat (or chop meat if you're from on Long Island or New Jersey, apparently... I haven't been a New Yorker long enough to hear that phrase without a certain confused tilt of the head) is endlessly versatile, refreshingly inexpensive, and usually quite tasty when its of high quality. When you start with a pound of ground meat - be it beef, pork, chicken, turkey, some sort of game, or a mix of two or three - the possibilities are practically infinite.

That's why last week we decided to devote an entire week of dinners to the humble, forgotten, oftimes-abused meatball. And 4 meals later, we've barely scratched the surface.

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Meal #1: Chicken Koftas Avgolemono

I know, I know, here we go again. But hear me out. This was my brainchild, being still enamoured with the Avgolemono Soup from a month or so back and craving those flavors again, but wanting to mix it up a bit. I knew when we decided on this meatball week experiment that I'd want to do something Greek, and this dish sort of just tumbled out on a whim. Apparently the idea had merit, because J declared it a definite addition to our future dream restaurant menu.



From Wikipedia:

"Kofta ... is a Southeastern European, Middle Eastern and South Asian meatball or dumpling.

In the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat — usually beef or lamb — mixed with spices and/or onions. The vegetarian varieties like lauki kofta, shahi aloo kofta, and malai kofta are popular in India, as is kofta made of minced goat meat." More...

Traditional beef or lamb koftas (often made in cigar shapes rather than spherical ones) are delicious in their own right, and deserve a post of their own later this year when the weather gets warmer and we can grill them properly. But for this meal, to remain faithful to the original Avgolemono that was my inspiration, I knew that chicken would be the proper choice.

Each of the components of this dish are simple, but as there are several the prep was a bit time-consuming. First, the meatballs were made with ground chicken that was seasoned with oregano, garlic, lemon zest, crumbed feta, a tiny drizzle of honey and a goodly amount of salt and black pepper. We use the Alton Brown method for cooking, and a pound of chicken yielded a dozen two- or three-bite koftas. While those baked away, I boiled some orzo in chicken stock fortified with a bay leaf and extra black pepper, prepped some baby spinach, carrots, garlic and onions for the sautee pan, and whisked the juice of a lemon into an egg in preparation for the sauce.

The carrots, garlic, and onions were sauteed until just softened, then the spinach was added and cooked until it just started to wilt. By this time the orzo was done, and I drained off the remaining stock in the pan into a bowl to use for the sauce. Finally, when the meatballs were done and resting out of the oven for a few minutes, I made the sauce by adding the hot stock to the lemon-egg mixture slowly, whisking constantly to temper the egg, then heating the mix gently on the stove to allow it to thicken.

To serve, a bed of orzo was laid down on each plate, topped by a generous helping of sauteed spinach, a trio of keftedes, and a few spoonfuls of sauce drizzled all over. Finish with a sprinkle of crumbled feta and some chopped fresh parsley, and you've got yourself a meal.



The flavor of this dish was outstanding, and the meal felt quite healthy with the lean chicken and good green spinach. I know that the sauce needs some work, as it never got to quite the consistency I wanted, and a few bits of egg curdled while it was cooking and needed to be strained out before serving. I think with some tweaks here and there and a good reliable recipe (next time, I'll write it down), J is right - this just might have a place on the menu if we are ever able to open the little cafe we dream about.

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Meal #2 - Almond-crusted Asian Meatballs with Vegetable Stir Fry

Think of these as dumplings without the wrappers and a with a bit more attitude. We've made similar things before with sesame seeds that have come out terrific, but I'm a bit of an almond fanatic so when J suggested the almond crust as something different, I was hardly going to argue.



The meatballs were made with a mix of pork and beef and seasoned with soy garlic, onion, ginger, dry mustard, sesame oil, and a bit of sugar. Before dropping them into their individual muffin cups to bake, each ball got rolled around in some finely-chopped toasted slivered almonds to make a crust. Word to the wise - although the meatballs might seem rather fragile when you're working with them, you really want to press the almonds in there so that they stick. J made these and found that when he tried to be more gentle on the meatballs, the almonds all fell off as they cooked - where they'd been pressed more firmly into the meat, they seemed to adhere and get nice and crunchy as we'd imagined they would.



We ate these with a simple stir fry of sugar snap peas, carrots, green bell peppers, and onions in a basic sweet-and-salty brown sauce, which is hard to screw up and always tasty. The meatballs themselves were tasty but seemed a bit on the bland side - next time we'll up the seasonings by at least half. And my previous comments about the almond-crust aside, the bites were the almonds really got attached to the meat and got super golden-brown and crunchy were absolutely delicious and had great textural contrast. If we can get the crusting technique down next time, I think they'd be insanely good. I'd hate to suggest that they could replace J's current signature Asian meatballs for a party appetizer but, well, I think they could.

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Meal #3: Curried Turkey Meatballs with Chana Masala

I've been looking for an excuse to make my new favorite chana masala recipe recently, so when J suggested an Indian-style meatball I jumped at the chance. Turkey may seem like an odd match for curry seasoning, but really, it works. Its distinctive earthy flavor was a really good base for all those aromatic spices.



J made these as well, using his own homemade curry powder blend as the main seasoning base and adding a bit of garam masala, sugar, and extra salt and pepper to round out the flavor. Nothing fancy in the cooking step here, just form and drop into the muffin tin to bake, so they were especially easy. I made the chana masala almost exactly the same way as last time, but upped the veggie quotient with some cubed zucchini in place of the potatoes, and it was just as good as I remembered.

This was definitely another winner. The best part was scooping up a bite of chana masala with my fork and spearing a piece of meatball on the end and eating it all together - the meatballs may have tended a bit toward the dry side, so the moisture from the tomatoes and onions and squash really improved the texture, and all of those great Indian spices blending together made for an intense explosion of flavor unlike anything in Western cooking. Quite exciting, really, for a weeknight dinner.

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Meal #4: Italian Sausage Ball Pizza

I don't actually have any photos of this one, which is a shame because it was really, really good. Like, almost I-can't-believe-I-made-this good. But, well, because it was so good, we ate it before it even occurred to me to take pictures.

I decided that if we were making meatballs all week, we really ought to do something Italian. But I wasn't about to make spaghetti and meatballs - as a matter of fact, I didn't want regular meatballs at all. But SAUSAGE balls, now that I could get behind. But we didn't just buy sausage - we made it, fresh, from just some ground pork and spices.

Bet you didn't know it was that easy, did you? Well, it is.

A pound of ground pork mixed up with a generous amount of garlic, onion, black pepper, salt, and most importantly, fennel (we used fennel pollen because we didn't have any whole seed, and since we were making the sausage mix the day of rather than ahead of time, it would ensure a more pervasive fennel flavor) created a pretty authentic-tasting Italian-style sweet sausage. The mix was formed into slightly flattened balls and seared in a pan this time around, then sliced to make a more easily distributed pizza topping.

The pizza itself was built on some whole wheat dough I'd been saving in the freezer, starting with a thin layer of J's homemade marinara, a sprinkle of shredded mozzarella, some pieces of brie, and the sliced sausage. Into the oven on the pizza stone at the highest heat we could get for maybe 5-10 minutes, and we had a bubbly, melty pizza with a golden brown crust.

The sausage was perfect here, with just the right amount of savory spice. The creamy brie and mozz complimented it really well, and although the crust was more chewy than crispy, the whole wheat flour gave it a pleasing texture. And with the dough made ahead of time, we were able to make the whole meal in about 25 minutes. Can't really beat that!

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We have one more meal planned that we never got around to making, which we have high hopes for - venison meatballs in cherry sauce. If it comes out as good as I expect it will, I'll be sure to share it with you. But in the meantime, I highly recommend that you give the lowly meatball a bit of thought, and a chance to elevate itself beyond that boring plate of pasta. Its a blank slate upon which fantastic meals can be built, and deserves a second chance at your table.

Barefoot Bloggers: Coq au Vin

I've been gone for awhile. I know. I'm terribly sorry. Did you miss me? Because I've certainly missed this little blog of mine.

We returned from our trip out west almost two weeks ago now, and since then I just haven't had much worth talking about in here. I failed you utterly by neglecting to take pictures of the small Thanksgiving feast that J and I made on the eve of our departure, and then added insult to injury by completely forgetting to pull out the camera on Thanksgiving Day. Its really a shame, too, because where our little feast for two was slightly sophisticated, creative, and involved a bit of experimentation, Thanksgiving dinner with J's parents was unfussy, down-to-earth, and simply delicious in a very classically American way. Both were great, but sadly, a Thanksgiving post will have to wait until next year.

Aside from that, we've cooked very little recently that's been interesting. The holidays are rather kicking our rears, in terms of money, energy, and creativity, so we've sort of just been plugging along for the time being. But, the Barefoot Bloggers march on, unhindered by the coming of Christmas craziness, and I have a new recipe assignment to share with you today.



Bethany of this little piggy went to market chose Ina's recipe for Coq au Vin for the first December challenge, and I was very excited to see it. Coq au Vin is, as the name suggests, a braised dish of chicken and red wine, and is one of those classic dishes that I feel like every cook worth their himalayan pink sea salt ought to be able to make, and I don't know if I've ever even eaten it before. Its been on my "to try" list for quite awhile, and I love it when the BBs give me an excuse to knock something off of that list.

That being said, I suspect I may have screwed this recipe up with my typical substitutions and omissions, because the end-product was entirely underwhelming. Tasty, to be sure, but nothing special. I feel guilty saying that we probably wouldn't make this again since I didn't really follow the recipe, so maybe someday I'll give it another shot and actually follow the directions letter by letter, but I suspect I may just revisit the Coq au Vin thing with another recipe.

But, I digress. Lets start at the beginning, shall we?

Ina's recipe begins with chopped bacon sizzling away in a dutch oven. We didn't do this, which may have been our first mistake - I tend to discount the flavor of bacon as nothing but salt and smoke when cooked in a dish rather than on its own, but obviously its more than that, and the liquid smoke I added to the braising liquid in an attempt to compensate really didn't do the trick.

Instead we went right ahead to searing the salt-and-peppered chicken pieces in some oil instead of the leftover bacon fat we would've had if we'd followed the recipe. We used chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken broken-down, and here I think was another mistake in judgement. A) We didn't make it to Iavarone this week and couldn't get those great Bell & Evans thighs, so we had to use some sub-par supermarket chicken instead, and B) I didn't get the chicken out of the freezer early enough and did not have time to brine it, which is not called for in the recipe but which always, ALWAYS improves chicken's flavor. That aside, J got quite a nice sear on the skin, and it was all I could do not to tear the skin off of the thighs, finish cooking it in the pan, and then scarf it down, because lord do I love crispy, salty poultry skin.



After the chicken had been properly browned, it was removed from the pan and the vegetable flavor base was added - thinly sliced onions, carrots cut on the bias, and a few minced cloves of garlic. These got slowly sauteed to soften them and bring out the natural sugars to caramelize a bit.



Now here comes mistake number three: Ina calls for brandy or cognac to be used to deglaze the pan. We drink neither, and so we have neither, and I was not about to buy a whole bottle for one recipe. So, I substituted sherry. And its not that it tasted wrong in the finished dish, but I just can't help but wonder how different it might have been with the brandy/cognac instead.

I scraped up what bits of brown had collected in the pan with the sherry and let it cook off almost entirely before adding back the chicken pieces. Then, in went a heavy cup of red wine and chicken stock, and since I had to use a cabernet sauvignon in place of the requisite burgundy - it is shockingly hard to find around here - well, that was probably mistake number four. A couple of sprigs of thyme and a sprig of rosemary for extra herbal flavor went in on top, the cover went on, and the whole thing went into the oven at 250 degrees for about half an hour.



While the oven did its thing, I sliced up a whole package of baby bella mushrooms and sauteed them in some melted, unsalted butter with just a bit of salt, pepper, and worcestershire sauce, and somehow I even managed to screw this up. I salted them too early, and ended up with a whole crapload of liquid in the pan. Normally I know better than that. I think my cooking mojo must've phoned it in that day or something, because really, this more than anything else was just pathetic. I should never be draining half a cup of liquid from a pan of sliced mushrooms at this point in my cooking life.



When the mushrooms were cooked, all that was left was to mash some flour into some butter to create an instant clump-free thickener for the stew when it came out of the oven, and then all we could do was wait.

After 30 minutes in the oven, the chicken was still very pink in the thickest parts.

Truthfully, I wasn't surprised. Half an hour at 250 for chicken on the bone just didn't seem like it could possibly be right, even if you are intended to finish the cooking on the stovetop. If it wasn't enough for me with only three pieces of chicken in the oven, how in the world could it work for an entire bird's worth?

So, I turned the temp up to 300 and put it back in for 15 minutes, and this time it looked like it was cooked correctly. Out of the oven and back on the stovetop, where the herbs got removed and the mushrooms and a handful of semi-thawed frozen pearl onions got added to the pan. Let that bubble away for a few to heat up the onions, and then in went the butter/flour mash. Stir stir stir to help melt the butter and thicken the sauce evenly, cook a few minutes more to eliminate any potential for floury flavor, and dinner is served.



Not very pretty is it? Its hard to make any sort of stew really look attractive... thick brown gravy makes even the tastiest dish look like dog food. And honestly, it was tasty. Could've used a bed of egg noodles or a heel of crusty bread to sop up the gravy, but that's neither here nor there. What it wasn't, was exciting. It wasn't revelatory. It wasn't anything I didn't feel like I'd eaten a hundred times before. Would any of that had changed if I'd actually followed the recipe? Well, maybe, but who's to know. All I know is that next time I feel the hankering for a stew with red wine and mushrooms (and, well, bacon), I'm making beef burgundy. Because that's basically what this was, sans beef. And I think the beef is better.



Its ok Ina, I still love you. I'll blame this one on my insatiable need to tinker. We're still cool.