Saturday, May 29, 2010

I Don't Care About My Cholesterol...

Here's a super fast, super tasty and naughty yet light weekday meal. It's Scallops with Buerre Noisette and Hazelnuts over Arugula. We've had this meal three times, changed nothing and always enjoyed it. It's pretty cheap, even with the scallops, especially if you grow your own arugula, which is a snap anyway. Maybe about $12 for two people?

The arugula adds bulk and makes this dish "seem" "healthy". Also, in the words of Billy Dee Williams when speaking of Colt 45 Malt Liqour, "Works ev'ry time."

We usually brown a whole stick of butter and use only half. The rest Jim puts on his toast because apparently he doesn't fear an early grave.

Jim and Peta

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Korean Bul Gogi

We've had some homemade kim chi in the refrigerator for some time now and Peta wanted to take care of it and suggested a meal that we have cooked before: beef bul gogi. It's a simple sweet/salty dish with scallions served over rice. We used venison in place of beef, as usual and the results were good. It's actually the second time that we've used this recipe and, although it is good, we might try another. There is a comment on the recipe above that states that the recipe is un-Americanized and more "Korean" than others. So we're in the market for a different and perhaps Americanized version of bul gogi.

Drop us a line if you have one!

Jim and Peta

From France to... Greece?

Last night, Peta and Jim decided to make a few cocktails and then cook spanakopita, essentially a spinach and feta pie with thin phyllo dough.

We didn't have any ouzo to match up with the spanakopita and we're in need of a trip to BevMo to get other types of liquor. All we really had was some brandy. Hmm. What to do? We had read about the French 75 and had done a taste test two weeks before. There is agreement as to the meaning of the name: the "75" refers to a popular artillery used in the late 1800s - early 1900s. I like the story of the supposed creator, WWI ace Raoul Lufbery, liking champagne but needed more of a kick -- the kind of kick that you'd get from a Canon de 75 Modèle; however, there is a question as to whether gin or cognac is the liquor of choice. We like them both, but they are totally different drinks. We'll take the original French 75 to mean a cognac/champagne cocktail, although the gin drink is good as well.

For the spanakopita, we used Tyler Florence's recipe here.

Changes made:
  • We didn't use any coriander or chives and we didn't sprinkle the oregano in between the layers of phyllo but rather added it into the green mixture.
  • We used a mixture of butter and EVOO for spreading between phyllo layers.
  • We added wine instead of lemon since we ran out
  • We added some aging puréed kale to the green mixture.
  • Did not make triangle but went with the lasagna style
Observations:
We cooked the spanakopita for 25 minutes at 350, but had to add time and increase the temperature to 375 until the layers had separated (puffed up) and browned.

Pretty tasty in general, but it took way longer than we had anticipated. This is not a weekday meal! Making some fried rice today with leftover rice from the bul gogi we made yesterday.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

What to do with all this venison?

Peta was getting home late on Monday night, so Jim pulled out some ground venison and revved up an old stand-by: Sausage Risotto with Greens. This is the third time we've done the recipe and have changed it the same way every time as we recall.

Jim bagged a nice deer in Wyoming last Fall and it netted about 60 pounds of meat, most of which he had ground for versatility, not a great call in retrospect. You can break a glass, but it's much more difficult to un-break a glass. The meat is venison, as we said, cut with 10% pork fat. We added probably twice as much as the recipe calls for, added one chopped Portobello mushroom and threw in some dry vermouth, a usual suspect when we make risotto. We found mustard greens at the store this time but the dish does fine with the even more bitter dandelion greens.

We had a cup each last night because it was late and it made 10 cups total. Jim had two cups for lunch and that lasted until he got home.

We've gotten on the Livestrong website (even though Lance is a doper) and started to track the calories, etc. of the food we eat and prepare as well as our calories burned through exercise. Total calories of the Sausage Risotto with Greens per cup is 371.

Jim and Peta

Monday, May 24, 2010

Old-Fashioned Whiskey Cocktail

Jim's Recipe
  • Put a slice of orange, one cube of sugar (or equivalent), three shakes bitters (Angostura, Peychaud, Regan's Orange Bitters NO.6, Blood Orange Bitters, you get the picture), and a splash of water, soda water or bourbon in a cocktail (double Old-Fashioned).
  • Muddle with a non-lacquered hardwood muddler to dissolve. Do not pulverise the orange. You are just trying to get the oils out of the peel.
  • Add ice.
  • Fill glass with whiskey to taste. I use bourbon or rye and fill the whole thing up, but I don't like sweets to much, and I like booze. Eagle Rare punches above its price point, but it was stating to increase as I was leaving DC. Haven't had it/seen it out here. 'Tis a pity.
  • Skewer one Luxardo candied cherry on a stirrer and stir.
  • Drink.
  • Have a glass of water. Have one more OF.
  • Do not have another before really thinking about how you want the rest of the evening to progress.

The "original" 1860s OFWC used a lemon in place of an orange and I can do it in a pinch, but I prefer the orange.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Something just right in the morning...


Peta has fond memories of having a quite, shared moment with her dad back in Perth each morning. Breakfast of the working man started with a bowl of muesli, milk and a read of the newspaper. After nearly 5 years of being in the US, Peta decided enough was enough and had to make her own. We are not talking about Granola here - this is more "honest" and better for you. Making our own muesli fits with the idea of knowing where our food comes from, knowing what is in it and how to make it taste just right...


This is delicious served with milk, but Jim is more partial the the thickness of yoghurt with his (see Peta's homemade yoghurt).


Batch for ~ 2 weeks

4 cups of rolled oats

15 dried apricots - chopped up

cup of raisins

3/4 cup of slivered almonds

sunflower seeds

sesame seeds

shaved coconut (optional)


Toast the oats, almonds and sesame seeds in a shallow pan tossing frequently. Note: toasting seperately is best, as they do heat differently. Mix all ingredients and store ready for eating!


Peta is on a bit of health kick right now.. so if you are interested in knowing what the average calorie intake will be, check out the above breakdown. Please note that this does not include a batch with sesame seeds (as we ran out!) Peta will update when she makes the next batch. This serving size is about 2/3 cup.
Jim & Peta

Jerk and Beets

Jim forgot that he already has a pretty good Jerk Sauce recipe on here on the blog, so he reinvented the wheel with this recipe. It was not as good, didn't include garlic, not spicy enough and too green rather than the brownish color we are used to. Perhaps it was the fact that we ground up the amount of whole allspice rather than grinding then measuring. But it was OK.

The beets, however, were like CANDY. We used the Roasted Beets with Horseradish recipe from Epicurious. In addition to the beets greens, which are great, we cooked the chopped stems in the microwave along with chicken stock for 5 minutes or so to soften them and reduce total cooking time. It comes out with this cool pink-purple creamy texture. You won't be disappointed by this quick and easy meal!

Jim and Peta

Chicken Piccata

Dinner on Saturday May 22, 2010

These next few posts probably will be out of order, but what can you do? We wanted a simple dish for the chicken breasts that Jim had carved from the whole chicken that we picked up earlier in the week . We had done Jamaican Jerk legs and wings with Roasted Beets in a Horseradish Cream Sauce on Wednesday and had put the rest of the carcass in the freezer for stock making on Sunday.

We found the Chicken Piccata recipe in the The New Best Recipe (the closest thing we have to a bible). Not much to say here. Flavors were excellent even though Jim dropped the chicken on the floor after putting it in the oven to continue cooking (he pulled it out of the pan a bit too early). We served it with sauteed zucchini and a bit of farfalle pasta. Easy and fast enough to join anyone's weekday rotation.

Jim And Peta

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Building Even Better Bread

Back in December, we posted a great recipe for making bread. We have not looked back since this posting. We have made the art of bread making a part of our 'routine' life! We ventured out and purchased a 50lb sack of flour and now have "quick containers" full of the weighed out amount of flour (15 1/4 oz bread flour), in order to make this task even easier. Note sometimes we have substituted some of the bread flour for wheat flour for healthier bread.

We were also loaned a very good book by Blair (Peta's coworker) and we have since learned so much more about building a better bread. Check out 'Crust and Crumb' if you ever get the chance.

NOTE: Ingredients are listed after the improvements that we made to the "No-Knead" bread that was featured in the NYT. It is a hearth bread with only four (4) ingredients: Yeast, Water, Salt and Flour. DO NOT FORGET THE SALT. It retards yeast growth and gives flavor.

So after many months of building our own bread, we wish to share with you some improvements on this recipe. The ingredients and amounts are still the same (see below), but now follow these steps to be even more successful and efficient.

  • With the flour all weighed out - it is much simpler that scooping out 6.5 cups
  • Using a mason jar, with 3 cups of water in it, place in a microwave for 2 minutes to get the water to 100 degrees. Our microwave is rated at 1.3KW (so you might want to test your microwave the first time, but once you know what to set it to - it really makes life easier).
  • EDIT -- add the yeast to the water.
  • EDIT -- add the salt to the flour.
  • EDIT -- turn on the mixer at a low speed.
  • EDIT -- add the wet to the dry ingredients.
  • Mix with dough hook for about 6 minutes (so it is climbing up the hook)
  • Let rise for the 3 hours (as usual)
  • We don't recommend splitting into quarters (as the loaves are too small for normal sandwich eating). We recommend splitting the dough (after the 3 hours) in two (keeping one in an airtight container in the fridge - for up to two weeks).
  • NOTE: For a really tall sandwich loaf don't split the dough at all - though just remember that once baked it really only stays "fresh" for about 5 days in a Ziploc bag.
  • Once the dough has been split, place in a greased loaf tin and allow it to proof for 45 minutes to an hour. This allows the dough time to rise again in the tin giving the finished bread a more consistent crumb.
  • Score the loaf (with a razor or really sharp knife) right before placing in the oven
  • Cook at 455F for 37 minutes
Ingredients:
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast - re hydrated in 3 cups of 100F warm water
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

Make bread making a part of your life too....
With the large sack of flour we have got the cost of this bread down to $0.70/loaf or $1.40 when the dough is not split into two loaves.
It takes 10 minutes to assemble all the ingredients and make the dough - need to allow 4 hours (plus cooking time) the first night and just 2 hours for the second loaf, so planning ahead is a good idea.
Enjoy!

Peta's b-day at Restaurant Picco

It was May 6th and we're a little behind and out of order, but we'll do our best. While working at the Free Farm last week, we started talking to Stephanie about restaurants in our new area. She used to be a food critic and mentioned Picco in downtown Larkspur as being hyper-local.

We had a cocktail before heading to the restaurant and were seated immediately. Peta went with a French 75 (this link shows the "original" which we'll actually have today and blog about in a taste test, but hers was a modern version with cognac replacing the gin) and Jim went with a Dark and Stormy. With dinner we shared an Aviation, our first, which was great, but did not go with any of the food. A strictly drinking cocktail. The cocktails were great, but over-priced.

We ordered the following:
  • Chilled lambs quarters (a spinach-like green), pickled wild ramps, radish, crispy shallots, soy-olive oil vinaigrette
  • Roasted baby artichokes, la quercia prosciutto, capers, tarragon aioli
  • Cauliflower gratin, cheddar cheese, caramelized onion, breadcrumbs
  • Pan roasted Alaskan halibut, sweet corn, bacon, fava beans, aleppo pepper butter
  • Creekstone new york steak “tuscan style“, arugula, grana, fiordolio olive oil
Our waitress was friendly enough but made the mistake of refering to the lambs quarters as "spinach". Big red flag. Either she didn't respect us, didn't respect the clientele in general or didn't know the difference. That said, the salad was good and refreshing and something that we'll make when we learn to id and forage for lamb's quarters and ramps. Radishes, we grow.

The artichokes were, in our opinion, fried and not roasted and were a bit greasy. It's mean to treat a tasty, delicate artichoke in this rough manner. Meh.

The cauliflower gratin was super slutty with cheese and cream, very tasty and the only thing on the menu that was priced fairly.

The halibut and everything in the dish must have been cooked in the rendered fat of the bacon which made it one-dimensional but slutty (which is good) and, after having cooked fava beans last week (LINK), we were dismayed to see and taste so few of them in this dish.

The rare steak that we ordered came out rare but PRE-CUT. Jim has had Tuscan style steak before. Jim has seen Lidia cook it on TV (Lidia's Itlay) with her son. He understand this dish and he and Peta were appalled when it came out tiny and, again, PRE-CUT. We don't really want to write about this dish anymore. Hiding six thin slices of OK steak under argula and cheese and charging $31 is insulting. Then again, we walked out with a guy who got into a Maserati. Clearly, more money than brains or taste. But isn't that always the way?

Our server brought out what appeared to be soft served ice cream with a candle. Luckily, we were full.

So it turns out that Marin Mondays is the hyper local day and the rest appears to be a semi-seasonal, semi-local smorgasbord. Maybe, but doubtfully, we'll check it out. We thanked the barman on the way out personally.

Rating:
Cocktails
  • Flavor 9/10
  • Price $$$
Food
  • Flavor 6/10
  • Price $$$

Is it my destiny...

to be the King of Snake?? OK, it's The King of Pain, but the King of Snake can put a bite on you, if you're not careful. This post will help you to make a wonderful summer cocktail that is well-balanced and powerful without being too boozy.

Here's the Epicurious recipe, but we've modded it a bit and taste tested. When we found the recipe, we had everything except the pepper vodka so we chucked some black peppercorns and red pepper flakes into a 375 ml wine flask full of vodka, shook it up and let it steep for an hour. How could we wait that long for a cocktail. Well, we're not gonna lie and say that we didn't have a pre-cocktail cocktail. Sort of like a "shower beer" back in college?

The results as listed were good, but because we like it spicy, we flipped the ratio of the pepper vodka and the regular vodka. We use Smirnoff vodka; it's cheap and consistently wins or places high in the New York Times taste test. The vodka now has been steeping for days since our dinner party where we featured it as a signature cocktail along with Sidecars (2 part brandy or Cognac, 1 parts Triple Sec of Cointreau, 1 part lemon juice, served "up on the stem" with a sugared rim) and Manhattans (2 parts bourbon, 1 part sweet vermouth, 3 shakes Angostura bitters stirred 30 secs in ice and served up on the stem with a cherry) and the vodka has taken on a reddish-brown hue.

Now, the taste test with Peta's friend Charlotte was not totally fair because it pitted Absolut Peppar and Smirnoff's against home-made Smirnoff's pepper and regular Smirnoff's. Charlotte could tell the difference immediately because of the ginger bite and heat. This drink is clearly NOT mass-produced to appeal to the average boozer. Jim's father's friend Warren use to refer to Scotch as "an acquired taste" which always sound like so much malarkey. Now, we kind of get it.

Peta thought that the store bought had a menthol like finish, which was not unpleasant, merely unanticipated and unnecessary. The home-made version version won out because each of us enjoyed the spice without it being too "clean". We kept a full glass away from Charlotte so that she could make it home. Three of these is a lot.

Cheers,
Jim and Peta

PS: Peta got Jim Luxardo candied cherries for his Manhattans for his b-day and life got a bit sweeter.

Dark and Lonely on a Summer Night...

Ok, not really. We're trying this recipe for home-made non-fermented ginger beer concentrate to put into Dark and Stormies and the King of Snake (terrible name, great drink) cocktails. We'll do a separate blog about the KoS, because we've been infusing our own vodka and it was a big hit at our dinner party. We also did a taste test with Peta's friend Charlotte where we pitted our vodka against Absolut Peppar, our adaptations and results of which can be found at the link above. Both drinks are super tasty in the summer. We like the idea of the brown sugar for the molasses flavor because Jim has always made ginger beer with white sugar.

Many posts to write to fill in the temporal/gustatory gaps in our blog, so caio for now.

Jim and Peta