Put An Egg On It
I receive a couple of different food and recipe emails during the week - one of which comes from the New York Times. The latest email had a recipe for a Cocotte Burger - from a restaurant in Paris, of all places! The last thing I would probably be ordering in Paris - or anywhere in Europe, for that matter - would be a burger. I mean... really. A hamburger in Paris when you could be eating Jambon-beurre or Poulet Chasseur?!? I mean... really.
Yet... here I am having made a burger from a French bistro and I loved every bite of it! Never say never, ya know?!?
What interested me when I started reading the recipe - other than the egg on top - was that the burger had both pine nuts and thyme in it. Neither are traditional burger ingredients in my house, although that may be changing!
What also made it fun was I got to break in my new over-the-top bad-boy All Clad Egg Pan! I received a lot of really nice gifts from customers and coworkers on my retirement, but this was my Gold Watch from my Captain, Chris! It is awesome!
He knows me well, to say the least! I love it!
So... here I am making Boeuf haché avec des oeufs on Jour de la Bastille with a pan made a few hours drive away from me, right here in Pennsylvania. Cross-Culturalism is good!
And speaking of cross-culturalism... we had a Neighborhood Yard Sale, today, and we participated. One of the things we did was had a Register to Vote sign with Voter Registration forms - part of another over-the-top gift from my friend, Elizabeth - a Retired Political Activist Kit!
We received so many smiles, thumbs up, and positive comments, it made my heart swell. And more than a few takers! We had one conversation with a woman who was born in Mexico City, lived in LA for years, and then moved east after the LA riots. She was incensed at what was going on and when I called Trump a pinche pendejo, she let loose with a few expletives of her own. We started talking cultures and food, and when I was lamenting the lack of decent Mexican Restaurants, she said there was a place in Malvern that was really good - and offered to take us there! I have her name and number and will be getting in touch with her when we get back from Rochester!
It gives me hope.
But I digress...
The burger concept is sheer simplicity - it's merely adding some toasted pine nuts and thyme to ground beef - along with a bit of S&P - shaping into patties and cooking, topping with cheddar cheese - I used an English Double Gloucester with Onions and Chives for a true round of internationalism - setting it on a plank of toasted bread and topping the whole thing with a fried egg.
How could it possibly be bad?!?
In my book, it can't. It was absolutely delicious! The thyme was a new flavor in a burger and it really worked well. The pine nuts, on the other hand, were barely perceptible. I probably should have toasted them a bit more to bring out more flavor. But, they also worked.
I can see lots of variations on a theme, here...
Vive le hamburger!!
Dried Pepper Hot Sauce
When I was at Gentile's, yesterday, I saw a bunch of dried peppers hanging by the register. My impulse buys of the morning were Guajillo peppers, Pasilla peppers, and Chipotle peppers. I had also picked up a couple of fresh poblanos - with no firm plan as to what to do with them.
This morning, hot sauce came to mind...
The hot sauce I made from our garden peppers last October came out great - and we're down to the last bottle. There's no way I can replicate the last batch - we have different peppers growing this year - so it's time to make something new!
I started off by simmering the dried peppers for about 30 minutes.
I then fried up onions, garlic, and the poblano peppers...
As soon as the peppers cooled, I removed the stems to get ready for pureeing them in the blender with the poblanos and onions. I also added a couple of small cans of mild green peppers just for the hell of it. I had to do numerous batches - I made a lot more than I was planning to...
I was a good boy. I wore gloves! Seeds and all went into the blender, and then I strained everything into a pot, using the soaking water to thin.
I added about a cup of tequilla, 2 cups of vinegar, a cup of sugar, a hefty amount of oregano, and salt and pepper, and let it come to a boil and then boiled it for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, I had my bottles boiling away on another burner.
I filled the hot bottles, capped them, sealed them, and labelled them.
We're set until the summer peppers are ready!
More Salads
We've joined a gym, boys and girls. A real gym. With all sorts of wild machines and a pool and a sauna and racquetball and a basketball court and people to tell you what to do - or don't do, as the case may be. And it was free - a perk from our new medical insurance!
One of the benefits of getting old!
On Friday we will get fitness assessments and see what we need to be doing to stick around on this earth a bit longer. I plan on outliving this disgusting sham of an Administration and Congress and want to be around to dance with glee as their lives and reputations are ground into the dirt. I need to be in good shape to celebrate and dance that much! I'm already working on the food end of things so seeing what we need to do on the physical activity end of things shall be interesting. No radical changes. Slow and steady wins the race.
On the food end of things I've been making various salads - most recently a Bean and Corn Salad with yellow beans we got from road stand in Lancaster on Monday. Today was a Caponata of sorts with a myriad of vegetables and our first zucchini from the garden. There's a lot more out there and I've been looking at various things to do with them.
The bean salad was pretty simple:
Bean and Corn Salad
- 1 can yellow corn
- 1 can white beans
- 1 can kidney beans
- 1/2 pint yellow string beans
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- basil
- oregano
- mint
- parsley
- salt & pepper
Cut fresh beans into small pieces. Blanche and then quickly cool in ice water. Drain.
Drain bean and corn and rinse well.
Chop the fresh herbs and mix everything together with the oil and vinegar. Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.
This is one of those recipes that you just make. Switch out the beans, omit the fresh beans, add a different fresh bean. Use corn, don't use corn. Add cherry tomatoes. It's just a simple, basic, throw-together salad.
The caponata I made is an agrodolce - sweet and sour - dish with a score of fresh ingredients. They usually won't call for quite as many vegetables as I used, but... what the hell.
No precise measurements, here. It's another just keep adding to the pot dish.
Caponata
- leek, diced
- white onion. diced
- red onion, diced
- carrot, diced
- celery, sliced
- red pepper, chopped
- eggplant, peeled and cubed
- zucchini, diced
- yellow string beans, cut into thirds
- assorted olives
- broccoli
- olive oil
- red wine
- passata
- golden raisins
- sherry vinegar
- assorted fresh herbs - basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, rosemary, mint
Saute the onions and leeks until wilted. Add the carrots and celery. Continue to slowly add the vegetables, stirring and cooking as you go. When all the vegetables are in the pot and have cooked down a bit, add some red wine - half-cup to a cup, depending upon the amount of veggies you have.
Simmer until the wine cooks down a bit. Add the passata - tomato sauce. A cup or two. Then add the raisins, vinegar, ad the chopped herbs.
Stir everything together and simmer until everything is tender and the sauce has thickened - easily 30 minutes.
Check for seasoning and add salt and pepper, if desired.
Traditionally, Caponata is a Sicilian dish of eggplant, celery, olives, and capers. There are many variations - and some call for pine nuts or chunks of cheese - but one of my favorites is Little Gram's Eggplant Appetizer - a dish we've made forever. I thought of adding pine nuts and pecorino to this batch, but decided the pot was full enough. I did make a goodly amount.
While this is absolutely wonderful cold as a salad, it also is fantastic as a pasta sauce, served over polenta, or used as a topping for bruschetta. It's pretty much only limited by your imagination.
Can't wait to order those dancing shoes!
Orecchiette
Fun stuff in the 'fridge can often elicit a fun dinner - and a fun dinner is what we had!
The goal is to eat a bit healthier which means there's more fresh vegetables in the 'fridge - which means use 'em or lose 'em. We all know my thoughts on wasting food, so... it's use 'em! The joys of cleaning out the refrigerator...
By Sunday, the vegetable bins are becoming bits of this and that. In the winter, it's the perfect recipe for soup - throw it in a pot and make it hot. Summer requires a different approach. Usually, it's a salad of sorts, but the weather wasn't horrible outside and we've been doing a lot of salads, lately. A Sunday Pasta idea crept into my mind...
One fennel bulb, one leek, a small bunch of baby broccolini, half of a yellow and half of an orange bell pepper, a bit of leftover pasta sauce, and a couple of hot Italian sausages from the freezer made the sauce. A bit of orecchiette, and dinner was served in the time it took to cook the pasta.
I love to cook and love being in the kitchen, but even I don't want to spend all-day-every-day in there. One of my best learning experiences was in my early days of demo cooking. I'd come up with grandiose ideas and my friend and partner, Ruth, would smack me upside the head and say "I have two screaming kids who are hungry and 20 minutes to get dinner on the table - simplify that!" It was pretty much the exact opposite of everything I had done before - toasting spices to bring out their flavor and then crushing them in a mortar and pestle... building layers of flavor in a slow-simmering sauce... and dirtying every pot and pan in the kitchen.
Translating professional kitchen to home kitchen.
Putting dinner on the table every night can be a pain in the ass, sometimes - especially when there's a picky eater in the house. But cooking from scratch doesn't mean you have to spend all day in the kitchen or have special ingredients or tools - and it can be faster than thawing a store-bought entree or opening a box. Granted, there are tools out there to make preparation and cooking easier - I love my mandoline, for instance - but a good knife will also suffice. It's more about getting organized and learning a bit of technique.
I think too many people have been sold the idea that they don't have time to cook or that whatever they cook won't be as good as that frozen whatever. It's balderdash, of course. Yes, it is very difficult to replicate foods you get at restaurants - they have access to ingredients and cooking equipment and methods not readily available to the home cook - but that doesn't mean you can't cook a restaurant-worthy meal at home.
I read cookbooks like other people read novels. I look at recipes constantly - but I don't necessarily follow them. I use them for ideas, to learn technique. I think that may be one of the reasons I like Jacques Pépin so much - at least three of his cookbooks are all about technique. He takes the everyday and elevates it.
I took a bit of the sausage and sauce and set it aside for Nonna. I then sauteed the sausage, fennel, leeks, and peppers. I added some red wine, along with some fresh herbs from the garden, and made a more complex sauce for us. One dinner cooked two different ways - 30 minutes start-to-finish - and everyone was happy.
And... it was enough for two meals. Even better.
Salads and Fig Bruschetta
Ya remember those over-priced figs I bought on Friday? They became Fig Bruschetta on Saturday! And they were really good!
And really easy to put together. First, I sliced my crusty bread, lightly brushed it with olive oil, and then toasted it in the oven under the broiler. Next, I mixed up some ricotta cheese with some Boursin cheese.
I spread that liberally upon the toasted bread and then topped it with slices of fresh fig. That, in turn, was topped with a bit of shredded asiago. Under the broiler until hot and melty.
Totally outrageously good! One of those things one could eat quite a few of. We were, however, good boys. We saved some for Sunday Lunch!
To go along with the bruschetta, were simple salads with homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing.
Another fun meal...
Chicken Wings and The Farmer's Market
Call me disappointed.
One of the things I've been looking forward to is being able to shop at the Lancaster County Farmer's Market down the road from us. They're only open three days a week and - I was always working those three days. Years ago, with a different work schedule, I could get down there on Wednesdays - but that really was years ago.
Today, I decided it was time to see what they had to offer!
They open at 8, I got there about 9, and there were more people eating at the cafe and drinking coffee than shopping. I was able to see the offerings really easily - and the incredible prices. Now... I always remember them as being a bit pricier than the local Acme, but nothing extreme. They are now extreme. $30.00/lb for a strip steak? Be serious. $8.99/lb for bacon? Ouch. And there's no pedigree with that, either. There was nothing there that couldn't be found elsewhere for a whole lot less.
Their website states:
In the early thirties, a group of farmers from the Ephrata, PA area discussed the possibilities of opening a farmers market on the Mainline of Philadelphia. They perceived that this area was willing to pay for the value added in quality Lancaster dressed poultry. These "fully drawn" birds were cleaned much as they are today, but far superior to the standard of that time.
They definitely knew their market.
Okay... they're expensive. I did find a few things to get, however. Rittenhouse Farms Poultry is where I have bought a few 33 pound turkeys for Thanksgiving in the past. Never an issue with the quality or the service. I bought 2 lbs of hot wings - not hot, at all, mind you - for $2.99/lb. and then bought 2 full bone-in breasts and a 4lb broiler - for $45.00. 7 old-fashioned skin-on hot dogs and a pound of breakfast sausage links was $18.00 at S. Clyde Weaver's. A loaf of bread, 6 hot dog buns, and two bagels was $14.00. A pint of figs and a pint of blackberries - $14.00. Yeah... I paid $6.99 for a pint of blackberries.
I spent a hundred dollars.
My Gentile's trips run about $35.00 - for bags and bags of produce. My Reading Terminal trips can easily hit $100.00 but I have so much cheese, sausage, meat, poultry, and fish that I struggle getting back to the train. I wasn't struggling with this.
So... I don't see me running down there often. While I can be ridiculously extravagant in my food shopping, there has to be a perceived value to something. I didn't feel that, today. Perhaps the reality of now living on a fixed income is starting to set in. Or, more likely, my unexplainable cheap streak decided to shine through, this morning, and kept me from spending more.
Whatever the reason, it's not going to be a regular part of the weekly shopping, although I'm sure I'll be down there, again, at some point.
And the wings?!? They were okay. We brushed them with lots of our homemade hot sauce when we reheated them for dinner.
And there's more for lunch, tomorrow...
Mexican-Inspired Potato Salad
I love it when recipes create themselves... No thought on my part - the ingredients just make it into the bowl on their own.
That's what happened today with my Mexican-Inspired Potato Salad. I knew I was going to make a potato salad - and I almost always just go for my standby - Mom's.
Today, though, I broke out the mandoline. I sliced the raw potatoes instead of cubing them, and as they went on to cook, I started slicing even more things on the mandoline. I had 4 radishes - pink, red, purple, and white - and I sliced them so thin you could literally see through them. Then it was a carrot - sliced just a tad thicker. Paper-thin red onion moons... And then I saw an avocado on the counter. That began my Mexican Inspiration!
With everything sliced instead of cubed, it wasn't going to be Mom's, no matter what, so into the cupboard I went and grabbed a can of diced green chiles. And the blender.
The chiles went into the salad along with celery and chopped pickles, and the avocado went into the blender - along with some mayonnaise, sour cream, heavy cream, Guajillo Pepper Adobo, and some homemade Hot Sauce. It all got mixed together and dinner was served.
The paper-thin vegetables played well with the thicker-sliced potatoes, and there was juuuuust enough heat to make it interesting. I now envision a few other ethnic makeovers...
Summertime produce and goodies from the yard!
The bacon-wrapped petit filet mignon came from Aldi. They're the perfect size - and inexpensive.
I think we may be back to salads, tomorrow...
We shall see...
Polpette and Pistachios
The Second Civil War rages on around us, but we're holding our own. We're two miles from Valley Forge and would be joining the encampment, there, except the cabins and tents aren't air conditioned. Valley Forge in the winter is one thing, but in the summer?!? The heat and humidity is frizzing hair everywhere. We saw a supply party heading down the road to CVS to try and get some hair conditioner. Hopefully they will have Philip B Oud Royal Conditioner at minimum. I'm sure they won't have any Frederek Fekkai. If the hair gods are willing they won't have to cross the street to the Rite Aid and get Suave or VO5.
So, as we waited, I made dinner...It's July 4th. We're supposed to be eating All-American foods, like German Frankfurts and Hamburgs... Mexican Chips and Salsa... and then setting off Chinese Fireworks... We're bucking tradition and going Italian in honor of the Italians who fought in the first Civil War, as well as remembering Pasquale Paoli. We live just a couple of miles from the town of Paoli that is named for him - and the huge battle that was fought there in 1777.
Lots of history around here.
I had seen a recipe for meatballs - polpette - on La Cucina Italiana and decided I need to try something new. It called for pistachios as well as rolling the meatballs in pistachios before cooking. I like pistachios, so...
I started to play. It was a chicken meatball recipe, so I switched things out a bit. It was a pretty simple recipe to begin with.
Polpette with Pistachios
- 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
- 1 1/4 cup breadcrumbs, divided
- 4 oz pistachios
- 1/2 cup onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup grated cheese
- salt and pepper
Finely chop pistachios in food processor. Set aside. Finely chop onion, garlic, and cheese in food processor. Add eggs and mix well.
Add half the pistachios, 3/4 cup breadcrumbs, and the onion/egg mixture to the ground beef. Mix well, adding salt and pepper, as desired. Use a small scoop and form into balls,
Mix reserved breadcrumbs with reserved pistachios and roll the balls in the mixture.
Brown in a skillet over medium-high heat and then finish in a hot oven - about 400°F - for about 15 minutes.
Serve with your favorite sauce over your favorite pasta. We used mafaldine, tonight, topped with lots of pecorino romano.
These are really good. They're just nutty enough without being overpowering. There are really no other herbs or spices going into them, so you get to taste all of the flavors.
I froze a bunch of them for another day.
Hopefully the Second Civil War will be over quickly and we won't lose electricity. There's nothing worse than losing the freezer and losing cable. Fortunately, we're on unlimited data plans so we'll survive as long as the batteries hold out. And we have propane for cooking. We can feed the neighborhood.
War is hell.
Pork Chops, Apples, and Onions
The joys of retirement and planning little projects...
Up towards the top of the list is cleaning out the freezer. We've been reasonably good about rotating things in and out, but there are a few things that really do need to be used sooner rather than later.
The top basket is dedicated to Nonna-stuff... her apple strudel bites, corn muffins, frozen meals, a loaf of potato bread... things only she eats placed where we can quickly find them.
Then there is pork and beef, chicken and seafood, and finally, vegetables and assorted stuff. It sounds organized - and in a sense, it is - but then there's all the stuff that gets tossed in wherever it will fit. Ice cream, for instance. It doesn't have a home and a half gallon of ice cream can block lots of things. Phyllo dough, or puff pastry sheets... they go wherever - and usually block things, too.
Yes, I realize just how fortunate I am to have such problems...
Tonight, it was the pork shelf - bone-in pork chops. I know there are plenty of studies out there that claim the bone does not add flavor to a piece of meat. I tend to disagree. While the bone itself may not be imparting additional flavor, it is definitely is enhancing the cooking process. It changes the way a piece of meat cooks - in a good way.
Tonight's pork chops went on the grill with a simple dusting of Baharat Seasoning from The Spice House. It is hand mixed from: Tellicherry black pepper, coriander, cumin, Ceylon select cloves, Saigon cinnamon, cardamom, Spanish paprika and Chinese Tien Tsin chile peppers.
And it's good stuff! It was part of a going away gift my friend, Jeff, gave me at work. There were lots of things in the basket. I'll be writing about the others as they're used...
The apples were peeled and sliced, and cooked with sliced red onions in a pat of butter - and a really small dusting of the Baharat. When they were almost done, I liberally doused them with Calvados. The potatoes were fingerlings that I boiled and then lightly mashed and then fried.
We did good - we didn't lick our plates clean. There's pork chop leftovers for Blanche. I did eat all my apples.
Summer Salads
It's summertime. It's noon and 95°F - that's 35°C for the civilized world. With the heat index and all the stuff they calculate to make it look even hotter, it's 104°F - or, 40°C. But Fahrenheit or Celsius, it's hot, humid, and miserable. And only July 2nd. I can't wait for August.
One of my retirement dreams is to drop a couple of pounds - and Victor feels the same way. If I only learned one thing in all the years I worked in Nutrition and Dietetics, it is that dramatic diets and diet changes do not work. They're unsustainable and make everyone around you want to avoid you because they don't want to hear about your eating habits. Again.
They're only great for the guy selling the book.
We eat well - real food, cooked from scratch - but we eat too much. Portions are too big. At any given moment, the neighborhood could drop by unannounced for dinner - and there would be plenty of food to feed them. The goal, then, is to cook a bit less so we eat a bit less - as well as make sure the foods we're eating are filling us up and not merely empty calories.
I started it with the little cakes. I'm not cutting out dessert - I LIKE dessert - I'm just going to be making a small cobbler instead of a 10" deep-dish pie. I'm also going to work on my bread baking. I'll make the same doughs as before, but start portioning them into much smaller loaves - and freezing the dough for another day. Little changes.
It's still really early in Retirement Mode and since Monday morning has been the shopping day for quite a while, I did my shopping. First, to Wegmans to pick up the basics and then down to Gentile's for produce.
I see at least a weekly trek down there, if not a couple treks a week. I finally figured out how to get there by avoiding all of the major roads - and it's now less than 15 minutes to produce not wrapped in plastic or portioned in plastic containers. And they're busy - they turn their produce over. Always fresh and seasonally local.
My eating habits are such that I'm much more likely to eat a peach in a fruit salad than to eat one out of hand, so we always have a big fruit salad or a mixed melon salad in the 'fridge during the summer. And bean salads, grain salads...
They're easy to prepare, last a long time, and are a great way to utilize leftovers. There are no real recipes for these things - it's merely what's in the 'fridge or pantry and brought together with a dressing.
I use fresh herbs from the garden, olive oil, and whatever vinegar I happen to grab - there are many different ones on the shelf. S&P...
The bean salad was fresh green beans that I blanched, a can of pinto beans, a can of black beans, green onions, and a bit of orange bell pepper. I used aronia berry vinegar and olive oil.
And it tastes great!
The second salad is made with hard white wheat berries from Palouse. You could use any wheat berry, farro, spelt... even barley or a good whole grain rice. Any of them will work.
I added a diced yellow zucchini, orange bell pepper, pimentos, red onion, fresh herbs from the garden, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Plus a bit of salt & pepper. Another salad that could stay in the 'fridge for days... not that we'll let it, however.
You can build upon these in as many ways as you can think - and then a dozen more.
Have fun!