Food Blog

At the Evanston farmer’s market last week, Heartland Meats was selling some of their product. Normally I don’t pay a buck an ounce for meat, but I couldn’t resist trying a few of their sirloin steaks, cut from a Piedmontese cattle breed raised in Illinois. This meat is very tender, very lean, with good flavor, but it better be at $7.50 for an 8 oz. sirloin steak. With some chanterelle mushrooms and some bean thread cellophane noodles, this meat made an awesome meal.

I marinated the meat for only a half hour or so in some soup stock I had bought awhile ago from Mitsuwa. It’s a Hichifuku brand, made with white soy sauce, dried bonito, shitake and sweet sake. It’s salty, malty and mushroomy. While the steaks swam in the “Tokusen Ryotei Shirodashi Shiki-no Irodori”, I sauteed the chanterelles in some butter, and then made a quick sauce using the Hichifuku, some rice flour, more butter and some cream.

The steaks went into a very hot iron skillet to sear, and finished in a 350F oven for five minutes. These steaks cook in a third of the time because they’re so lean.

Plated over some bean thread cellophane noodles with some chives.

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Yet another pork recipe. I got some chanterelle mushrooms from River Valley Ranch, at the Evanston Farmer’s Market, and really wanted a meal that focused on them. While there are big hunks of flavorful pork loin on the plate, the mushrooms were the stand out. Not as earthy as some shrooms, chanterelles have a slight flowery-fruity fragrance. Paired with a baby leek and chive sauce, and plated with some mizuna, this was a very good, but quick meal.

I cut a 3.5 lb. boneless pork loin in half, seasoned with cracked pepper and coarse sea salt and seared on all sides, tossed 2-3 cleaned and sliced-up baby leeks and green onions into the pan with enough water to just come up to about 1/4 of the sides of the loins. The pan went into a 350°F oven and took about 25-30 minutes for the interior to reach about 160°F. They came out and rested for a few minutes, and the internal tmep got to 170°F.

While the pork cooked I cleaned the chanterelles. These and morels are the only mushrooms I wash, although I hate to do it, they are gritty otherwise. I dried them off as best I could to help them brown properly in a pan coated with butter and olive oil. When they were almost done browning, I threw in 2-3 sliced leeks, and some chopped fresh chives. After the leeks went translucent, everything but the butter came out of the pan, and a T of rice flour, and a T of regular flour got whisked in with some more butter. Then the braising liquid from the pork went in and got reduced to a very nice sauce.

I plated everything with some rice and some mizuna greens and ate it promptly.

Note: while looking for the descriptive link to the chanterelles above, I found I good looking recipe on an author’s site that be worth trying: Pasta With Chanterelles, Cream and Grand Marnier. One of the author’s characters “thinks the sauce from this pasta would taste good even served over her Birkenstocks”

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I went camping with 4 friends last weekend, and in addition to drinking large quantities, we also ate large quantities. On these trips I always imagine spit roasting some fowl over specially gathered hardwood. 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.

While we know how to cook on the fire, my 2-burner propane coleman stove gives us the ability to cook just about anything, ash-free. We don’t usually plan one big communal meal, but several courses, cooked by each of us. The first night in, we just want to eat without a lot of fuss, so some burgers were made whle I cut up a chicken, and put it into a pot with some beer, an onion, salt and tarragon and let it stew for an hour. At one point I did pull the pieces out and brown them in a separate pan to speed things up, but they were browning nicely in the big pot. I have to recommend a non-stick camping cook kit like my MSR kit. While you do have to be careful of the non-stick surface, these things are worth the price, since in camp it’s way too easy to burn things and usually impossible to scrub properly.

The next morning, breakfast was a combination of eggs, sausage and an almost successful biscuits and gravy attempt. Garry did a fairly decent try at it, I can’t say I would have been able to pull it off either, although cooking the gravy longer (and in a non-stick pot) may have saved it. We all ate it though.

It wasn’t too long before we prepared lunch. Garry, being the fire master, engineered a hot-coal producing blaze by arranging some wrist-sized wood parallel, which as he instructed, is the best set-up for producing long-burning coals, which is really the only type of open fire you can cook on. We put a grill over these coals and Garry roasted some Portobellos, while I prepared a cornish game hen. I butterflied it (removed the backbone) and seasoned it with some lemon, tarragon, salt and pepper. It went on the grill with some tin foil on top for about 10 minutes a side.

After a short hike, some model rocketry, and a nap, it was dinner time. There was an array of food, but I made browned some ground beef, that I marinated and froze in some canned chiplotles at home. The ground beef was mixed with some mushrooms and onions, and served on tortillas.

When tend to enjoy shopping in the unfamiliar stores, close to where we camp, but I always try to bring something frozen from home. Frozen foods like a couple of pounds of ground beef or a cornish game hen, helps keep the cooler cold as it defrosts, which usually takes a night and a day in a cooler full of ice and beer.

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I thought I’d do a little shopping at Whole Foods to see if it would be possible to shop cheaply there. Great produce, great seafood and meat, but shopping for a meal under $5 is close to impossible. I looked around first, trying to decide on dinner, and found one of their cheapest cuts of meat was a pork shoulder roast at 2.99 a lb. So I got a $7 roast, 3 pears, some brussel sprouts, 3 yukon potatoes, some bean thread noodles, and a package of fresh tarragon. Total – a little over $19. I tried to buy the cheapest things in the store – for example – I really wanted asian pears for this dish, but at 2.99 each, they weren’t going to help my goal of eating well cheaply.

While the $19 did cover 2 meals, it proved my theory that you just can’t shop cheaply there.

If I had time, I would have brined the roast, But I just browned it in a big skillet, covered it with pear slices, some of the fresh tarragon and some ginger, then threw it in a 350F oven until my thermometer read 155 inside the roast – about an hour.

While the roast cooked, I boiled the potatoes, then riced them in a ricer (with the skin on) into some muffin tin cups, and put them into the oven during the last 20 minutes. When the roast came out to rest for 5 minutes, I steamed a few brussel sprouts. The muffin tin came out, and was flipped over on a plate so the potatoes looked nice, and topped with sliced sprouts and goat cheese. The roast got sliced, and plated with the pear slices, now nicely carmelized after roasting. I had also roasted some cayote squash slices, but I didn’t really make them fit in with this dish.

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Deb over at Murrayhill5, is doing a great job reviewing some of the many great Food Blogs out there. See tells us she has time for this because she’s “in one of those ‘I don’t know what to eat don’t know what to cook’ funks.”

From reading some Food Blogs I can see the tendency to feel like your cooking for an audience when you post what you cook and eat. I certainly feel like I do sometimes. I don’t usually post the sort of simple meals I eat every day. When talking to some of my friends who don’t cook, I’m always surprised to hear that they’ve never attempted to make their own pasta sauce, or have never roasted a chicken. A nice juicy roast chicken, with its skin bristling with browned herbs, isn’t an instant meal, but it takes less time to prep then it does to write about.
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Fairly fancy looking, but easy. These are just pan grilled tenderloin medallions, seasoned with rosemary, and topped with a sauce of goat cheese and pureed mushrooms. The sides are burghul, or cracked wheat, which makes a good departure from rice, and some spinach and yellow squash, wilted in bacon fat.

1 pork tenderloin cut into medallions

rosemary

oregano

butter

2-3 ozs goat cheese

1 can of mushrooms

3 shallots

1 cup burghul

boullion cube (lamb or pork)

1 yellow squash, julienned

baby spinach

smoked bacon

I rinsed the burghul, like the instructions said, and threw it in a pot with half a stick of butter, and cooked it until it just had some color, then put in 2 cups of water and a chopped shallot. I happened to have a lamb boullion cube, which thrown in, was perfect. I covered and simmered it for 20 minutes. In the meantime I tossed the medallions in salt pepper, lots of dried rosemary, and some oregano. I pan grilled them, browning both sides, with the another chopped shallot, added a little water, and put the pan in a 400 F oven to finish.

Then I went on to the sauce – browning the can of mushrooms in some butter, with a chopped shallot and 3-4 diced cherry tomatoes. I pureed this mixture, but not going past the point where it didn’t have a little texture left. It went back into 2 T of melted butter and 2-3 ozs of goat cheese. I had some french feta left from another meal, so I threw in 2 T or so. I think that gave the right amount of saltiness. I whisked this all up until it was melted and mixed well. The pork came out to rest for a minute, and some of the liquid from the grill pan got whisked in and reduced in the sauce

I few strips of my favorite kolozsvari bacon went into a pan and had its fat rendered out. The bacon was removed and I poured some of the fat from the pan, saving it. I didn’t want to fry the spinach, just wilt it. The squash went in first, then I did two or three small batches of spinach, just throwing them into a pan wet with the hot fat, tossing it, and removing them after 10 seconds or so, adding a bit of the reserved grease for each batch.

The pork went onto the burghul, topped with the sauce, and sided with the greens and squash which got sprinkled with a bit of the diced bacon. I really liked the burghul, and will use this a lot from now on. The squash was a nice touch to tone down the wilted spinach, which may have been a touch too bitter from picking up too much of the smoky fat.

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If it looks like I’m eating a lot of pork lately, it’s because it’s cheap.

I bought a great big package of pork loin chops for around 5 bucks and got around 8-9 big chops. Mangos are also cheap at the moment, being in season, and I had a few ancho peppers left over from the chili. I though I’d combine the sweetness of the mango with the earthy, and almost raisiny flavor of the chili peppers to glaze the chops. When I do this again, I’ll perfect it by brining the chops first, and use more anchos and maybe one or two hotter peppers like a jalapeno or thai chili to add just an undertone of heat.
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Paul, over at playing with my food comments about Deb’s fine photography. Deb’s planning to shoot every new dish she creates, which I admit is an endeavour for me. After cooking I want to eat, and setting up the food and shooting sometimes is an excercise in restraint.

Not all food turns out looking good enough for photography either. For instance, last night’s meal consisted of several braised pork loins. After they brined overnight (see this if you don’t now why), I dusted them with raz el hanout, and some extra ginger, browned them in an iron skillet, then added some water, a splash of sherry and a bit (half cup or so) of my new favorite soda, Sobe’s Mr Green. I just wanted a touch of this soda’s sweetness and ginseng to come through. What did i get after an hour and a half of braising it all in a 350 degree oven? Beautifully done, tender, very tasty green meat. The name Green in Mr. Green is there for a reason (yellow 5 and blue 1).

Otherwise, it was delicious.

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I didn’t win

I don’t usually expect to win these things, since the winner is usually the most unique tasting chili more than anything else. All three winners were extremely sweet versions.

I asked one of the judges, a friend who is a chef at another restaurant, if there was any entry that really stood out. He answered ” Honestly? My professional opinion? None of them.” I asked him what he looked for in a chili and he said sirloin, and proper use of salt and pepper. At least I had the sirlion.

I’ll post my pic of my chili, and the recipe soon. I think my entry wasn’t very unique, and I kind of went conservative when I should made a batch of a very thick mole based chili that I thought succeeded when I made it earlier in the week. I had made it with anchos and chiplotles, like my entry, but with a heavier hand on the mole and Raz el Hanout, and much more of a smokier background provided by some Kolozsvari Hungarian bacon drippings.

When making 2 gallons of chili it’s quite hard to judge just how much stuff you need to change its taste without going overboard. I think I stopped short with some of the ingredients that would have made it unique.

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I’m training for a chili contest on Super Bowl Sunday. I’ve been trying out a few variations on what I want to do.

I should mention that this contest at Nevin’s Pub benefits the North Shore Ulster Project and is a good opportunity for pub patrons to try a few dozen free chilis. While I’m giving them a plug, I might as well mention the $25 all you can eat & drink game package deal

I’ve only been involved in one of these before, and if it had been judged by whose chafing dish of chili was finshed first I would have won. The winner that year was a variation of Cincinnatti Chili. The Cincinnati style has a ton of ingredients, and the winner also used peanut butter is his recipe. I’m not giving awy my recipe just yet, due to the highly competitive nature of these things, but mine will have quite a few ingredients, with my own grind of ancho and chipolte peppers, and a better cut of meat. Unlike some very strict Chili competitions, I have a feeling that a unique chili, that can stand out among 15 or more entries, has a better chance. In a competition, you have to make the chili keeping in mind the judges only get a few ounces of it, so it has to be very bold (not necessarily hot), thick and maybe a bit over-seasoned. When you cook 2 gallons of the stuff I tend to prepare it for the way I like to eat it – with lots of different veggies, meat and beans floating around in a sauce thats going to flow over rice or macaroni and will get sopped up by bread, and coated with cheese, sour cream, etc. I’ll have to keep in mind the difference between Competition Chili vs. Eatin’ Chili

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