Food Blog

This was my most recent attempt at biscuits and gravy. I figure another few years and I might have it perfected. It took me years to figure out how to do the gravy without making paste, or some sort of congealed mess, and I can’t for the life of me, make a good batch of biscuits. These were ok, but not as flaky as they should be. I blame an inconsistent, too hot oven and my beating up on the flour with a few too many strokes and rolls.

You can do all the reading you want on how to make biscuits and gravy, but too many variables make it one of those trial and error dishes. This is the recipe I used. My only alteration was the addition of some bacon (and its grease) and about a half habanero, finely minced.

A few tips from Grandma’s Biscuits & Gravy – “Four things are necessary to assure a smooth, lump-free gravy. You must constantly whisk the roux and the gravy throughout the process.

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Cardamom pairs perfectly with apricots, and with a little Maderia and a bit of ginger, the sweet, bright flavor really shines.

2 cups orange juice
1 cup Maderia (the cheap california stuff will do just fine)
2 T apple cider vinegar
4 T apricot preserves (the ‘Simply Fruit‘ brand works best’)
4 apricots (2-3 for cooking, 1 or 2 for garnish)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 T green cardamom seeds, shelled
1 chicken
1-2 T heavy cream

I shelled some green cardamom seeds, (you can also use the smokier black ones) and put them in a small food processor with a bit of orange juice to help grind them and after the were ground coarsely, added two of the pitted apricots. I cut up a chicken, put it in a bowl and covered with orange juice, vinegar, Maderia and the ground up cardamom. The bowl sat in the fridge for an hour.

I pulled the chicken out of the marinade, reserving it, and browned the pieces in a very hot, big iron skillet. The marinade went into a 4-quart pot to boil. As the chicken browned, I added a few more ground up cardamom seeds and some ginger.

When the chicken was nicely browned, and the kitchen smelled fragrant enough, I dumped the chicken into to pot of juice with a couple more pitted, cut-up apricots and a bit more orange juice and Maderia to cover the pieces. I let it simmer for about a half hour, covered for about half that time.

The squash was just browned in a pan, and the Brussel sprouts were sauteed with some good diced-up bacon. This is my favorite way to do Brussel sprouts, browning the outside, but leaving the inside crunchy. The best way to do this is with pancetta, but all I had was some Kolozsvari, the intensely smoky, salty Hungarian bacon available in many of the local independent markets like Devon Market or Lincolnwood Produce that have eastern European products.

For the finished sauce I poured about 1/2 cup of the simmering juices into a saute pan, added a couple of tablespoons of cream and reduced it to a nice sauce. There was plenty of leftover juice/sauce I can use for another meal.

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This is actually a leftover meal from some orange and ginger braised country style pork ribs. (Here’s good visual explanation of pork cuts) The leftover meat was pulled off with a fork (traditonal pulled pork would be much more ripped up than appears in this shot) and sauteed in some carmelized onions, then some good barbeque sauce was added. In this case it was Country Bob’s. Then the meat was spooned into rolls and popped into a hot oven for 5 minutes. The rolls are homemade but that’s another post. Here’s the orange ginger recipe though-

3-4 lb package of country style pork ribs
3 oranges
1 can of pineapple bits, with juice
1/2 cup brandy
1/2 cup of mirin
1/2 cup of orange juice
4 dried chili peppers, thai if you can get them
3 garlic cloves, minced
5 cloves
6-7 black cardamom pods, cracked
1 T ginger, grated
1 tsp nutmeg
salt

The ribs could probably use some marinating time, but since these braise for so long, I don’t bother. I brown the pork, and put in a big broiling pan, just covering the meat with the liquid ingredients, including the pineapple and juice. Add some water is you need to. I microplaned the zest of the oranges, then peeled, pitted and adding them to the pan. All of the other ingredients were added and it went into a 325 F oven for around an hour and 15 minutes, then the pork was flipped over and cooked for another hour and 15 minutes. The pan liquid was skimmed of some fat, put in a pan and simmered with some cream for a finished sauce.

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A winter soup shouldn’t be wimpy, it should have body to warm and satisfy. This split pea-barley soup takes an afternoon, but is worth it. Ham hocks, potatoes and just the right amount of spicy heat is the key to an truly fulfilling soup.

1 lb green split peas
1 cup of barley
8 cups of water
2 lbs of ham hocks (preferably with as much meat as possible)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 onions, diced
2 cups of chopped celery, with tops
2 cups of carrots, chopped
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp cayenne pepper
four medium potatoes, quartered
salt and pepper
a big ass pot

Rinse and sort the peas and barley, add to the water, and bring to a boil. Then turn off the heat and let sit for 1/2 hour while you prep the other ingredients. You could add the ham hocks now if you want, but score them first. I would have preferred to use a ham bone, with lots of meat left on it for this soup, but smoked ham hocks are cheap, and add the flavor you’re looking for.

After the peas and barley have soaked for a bit, throw in everything but the potatoes and simmer for an hour, skimming off the foam once in awhile, then throw in the potatoes and simmer for another hour.

Pull out the ham hocks, putting whatever meat is on them back into the pot. With a piece of good bread, a bowl of this stuff is an entire meal.

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I did this some time ago after I made a ham. It’s really just mac and cheese, but with a fancy touch or two. The ‘mac’ is campanelle pasta, the cheese is goat cheese, and it’s herbed with some rosemary and a little tomato. The chunks of ham add the saltiness and meaty-ness it needs to make this a very fulfilling dish. It’s also very simple and fast.

6 ozs. goat cheese
3 T butter
1/2 cup cream
1-2 T fresh chopped rosemary
5-6 chopped cherry tomatoes
1 1/2 to 2 cups diced ham

Boil the pasta – I had the luxury of a leftover ham hock so I threw it in the boiling water. Saute the tomatoes in the butter, reduce the heat to low, add the cream and melt in the goat cheese. When the cheese is melted, add the rosemary. It should reduce quickly just to stick-to-the-back-of-the-spoon thickness. You should be fast enough to be there by the time the pasta is ready. Mix the cheesy sauce with the pasta.

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I had a little dinner party this weekend that went pretty well – leg of lamb, roast potatoes, squash, rutabagas and a great apple, pear, cranberry crumble a guest brought.

The entire meal was shopped for, prepared, and plated in just under three hours. Several bottles of wine were involved as well. A Mondavi, a Kenwood and Fetzer Sauvignon blancs (drinking downward on the quality scale), and a big bottle of Concha y Toro Shiraz.

The lamb had a rubdown of rosemary and ginger, and was served with a sauce made with pan drippings, rosemary, ginger, papaya and cream. The squash was roasted fairly naked with some olive oil. An Irish friend prepared the rutabagas, or Swedes as he calls them, traditionally by boiling them and mashing them with butter and plenty of pepper. Except instead of mashing them into a mushy bashed state, we ran them through a ricer, twice, and got a fluffy consistency. Learn more about rutabaga history in this article on Turnip and their offspring. “Much confusion surrounded the origins, even the identity, of turnips and rutabagas, or “Swedes,” for a long time. They are distinctly different species.”

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Cinnamon’s trilogy of articles on three meals on one chicken inspired me recently. I roast chickens fairly often, since they are usually cheap, and the chicken serves me a few meals, and some sandwiches. I thought I’d try Cinnamon’s advice and try for an extra meal and make soup. I’d love to try her risotto suggestion, but it’s just too much labor.

To make this soup, I set aside whatever meat was leftover from the bones, and roasted them and some leftover skin on broil for about 20 minutes (normally I’d go lower and slower for a full hour, but this was a rush job). I threw some portobellos in too. The roasted bones, an onion, a few cherry tomatoes, and some sage and tarragon (fresh, with the stems) went into a big pot with maybe 2 quarts of lightly salted water and simmered for 40 minutes or so. Also into the pot went a can of chicken stock (I told you this was a rush job).

My plan for this soup was not a thin, oily broth, but a creamy, stick-to-the-spoon type, with a bit more depth. To do this I just happened to have the perfect ingredient – half an acorn squash I had roasted with the chicken the other night. I pureed the squash meat with the roasted mushrooms, 3 tablespoons of cream and some fresh sage, setting it aside while I strained the bones and used veggies from the stock. The stock went back into the pot, with the leftover chicken meat and simmered to heat through and reduce a bit – maybe ten minutes. The soup was strained again – saving and setting aside the meat while the squash and mushroom puree, and about three tablespoons of butter was blended in to the soup with a stick blender. Some more fresh sage and tarragon, this time chopped, was added and the meat was dumped back in.

The high fat content and the squash gave this soup a great silkiness, and the huge chunks of chicken made it very satisfying.

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I know I promised you restaurant reviews from the east coast – I just need to mess with a few more pictures and find some explanatory links, and I’ll have them up. But before I forget, I need to post this pork chop recipe I made while camping this weekend. Some browned chops, simmered in a goat cheese, sage, and bourbon sauce, was about the best camp meal I’ve fed myself in awhile. Next time I’ll look for the thick cut ‘chop-on-a-stick’ pork cut, with the frenched bone as a handle or I’ll cut them myself. Camp food should be easy to eat without a fork, mainly since you don’t have a much better eating surface than your lap.

I’ve mentioned my two burner coleman stove and other camp cooking gear before, actually twice. As I mentioned then, it would be nice to use the fire to cook on, giving the food that wonderful natural smoke flavor – “But of course the reality is I’d have to build some sort of rotiserrie contraption, find and cut only the best wood, and keep everybody else from throwing beer cans, Christmas tree-sized pines and other things on the fire for an hour. Too much work, especially when the time is better spent drinking.” So we depend on our Coleman stove to prepare the sort of meals you really can’t pull off on a fire without a lot of work.

pork chops, I used a 2.5 lb package of center and end cut chops
sage, fresh, minced
mushrooms, sliced
a large onion, diced
goat cheese, one small package (2.5 oz.?)
1/2 cup of water
a shot of Knob Creek bourbon

The chops, onion and mushsrooms were browned in a pan then simmered in a covered pot with the water and sage, until they were cooked through, low heat, about 20 minutes. Then the whole package of goat cheese gets melted in. The a shot or two of bourbon was thrown in, and the heat was increased, to burn off the alcoholy taste a bit. More sage was thrown in, about a minute before it was served.

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This one is simple, but pretty. Some chicken thighs were pan browned, then seasoned with raz el hanout, then some water was added to the pan, and it simmered for about 20 minutes. The thumb-sized purple potatoes that I got at the farmer’s market were sliced and fried in the chicken grease, in a separate pan. The couscous is from a box. When the chicken was done, the pan drippings were skimmed of some of the grease, pulsed with a stick blender and drizzled over the plating.

I like chicken thighs for this sort of dish, juciy and flavorful and besides the package of 12 of them was $5. You could do this fancier by boning the thighs, but just slicing them up with the skin on makes a nice presentation.

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This one may not look, nor sound so good to most people, but I’m going to make this a lot more often.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the sirloins I bought from Heartland Meats, at the Evanston farmer’s market. This weekend I was trying to save a little money so instead of paying a buck an ounce for meat, I thought I’d try their liver, at $1.75 for a 1/2 lb. I’m not a big beef liver fan, but I’ve always believed there’s a way to make anything taste good.

This liver is fried, with a light batter, and served with a curry sauce over rice and chives. The quality of the liver was excellent, without the overwhelming iron taste we all associate with the typical liver you wouldn’t touch as a kid.

I cut up the liver into nugget-sized pieces and battered them in a 1 T rice flour, 1 T corn starch, 2 egg mixture and fried them until brown in some peanut oil (and a drop or two of sesame oil). The rice was cooked with a few ounces Hichifuku brand soup stock I mentioned in the steak post and the curry sauce was left over from a cocunut milk curry I had made with some chicken the other night. Its just some thai peppers, onions, red curry paste, saffron, butter and coconut milk.

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