Eat, DINK and Be Merry » cooking

Delicious weekend

Amber — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 03:00:48 +0000

You know what we had this weekend? Rain! A drop in the bucket of this year’s terrible drought, to be sure — but good, hard rain nonetheless. We took the car through the carwash today and were rewarded with another little sprinkle of rain for our effort.

Oh, we also had these beautiful ribeyes:

Our favorite butcher had tweeted about them on Thursday and although they sounded wonderful, I was awfully tired at the end of the day and figured they were probably gone anyway. When they were mentioned again on Friday morning, I started planning my day around them (following Revival’s tweets has made me hungry non-stop and may end up being very expensive). We didn’t have any sides, so while I was there I picked up some extremely long beans:

And of course, the most important part of any meal:

I needed some lunch anyway, so I also brought home one of these, which I immediately enjoyed with great gusto:

The dog is supposed to be served with relish, but I don’t like anything on my meat except cheese or more meat. Figured the house-made chicharrones were close enough to meat, so I allowed them. Oh, and if you’ve never have Zapp’s chips, you should rectify that.

How did your weekend taste?

Chocolate bacon lard bark

Amber — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 04:01:48 +0000

There’s something so appealing about candy bark. Maybe I just like the excuse to eat enormous pieces of candy. Yeah, that could be it.

Anyway, it’s really easy to make, but the version I’m sharing with you tonight is only for serious, serious bacon lovers. It is so smoky and rich that I can eat one little piece and I either have to stop or move on to something lighter.

You’ll need:

up to 4 small/medium pieces of good bacon
1 cup of the best lard you can get
4-6 oz of dark chocolate (a Ghirardelli 70% bakers bar from the baking aisle is exactly 4 oz)

First, fry your bacon and chop it somewhat finely. Keep the grease if you want your bark to be really out of control bacony (and you know you do!).

Melt your chocolate in a double boiler. When all of the chocolate is melted, stir in your lard and bacon grease, and keep stirring until uniform.

Pour the melted mixture into a lined 8″x8″ dish. You can use wax paper or parchment paper for this step. Sprinkle your bacon evenly throughout the chocolate (if you made too much, you get to eat it. Yay!) and put the pan into the freezer.

I’m not sure how long it takes to freeze because I went and did other stuff for a few hours, but I don’t think it’s long. When you’re pretty sure it has hardened, dump it onto a cutting board and gently peel the paper away:

You’ll have to work out your own method of dividing it up into chunks. I find pressing the blade evenly in (and, optionally, whacking it) gives a pretty good line all the way across the brick. In any case, you will have delicious, rich little chocolate bacon squares. You’ll have to store them in the freezer.

Enjoy!

Guanciale! (Part II)

Amber — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 03:00:15 +0000

The guanciale was delicious in eggs, but I wanted to see what else it could do. I already had plans and supplies for a bacon and scallop dish from Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals, so I decided to use the scallops. Close enough to what I had planned – hopefully better!

I had 14 pieces of guanciale left, and 24 scallops. A couple of the pieces were fairly small, so I set those aside and cut the others in half across the short axis (if I had cut them across the long axis, half of the pieces would have been all fat, and I wanted all of them to be similar in composition). The pieces were large enough to cover the scallops, but not wrap them, so I stuck a toothpick in each to prevent excessive curling:

We had some smoky scamorza left over from Heather’s visit (Revival Market impulse purchase! Can you tell we love that place?) and it seemed like it would make appropriately decadent chapeau for the scallops. I cut some little chunks and pressed one side of each into panko bread crumbs for a little crunch:

My advice: make sure you do this ahead of cooking the scallops, and set them on a plate. You’ll want them to be ready and next to the oven when you need them.

Broil the scallops for six minutes. At the end of six minutes, pull them out and quickly stick a piece of your panko-covered cheese on top of each one, then pop them back in for 2-3 minutes (you’ll want to watch them starting at two minutes, because the cheese melts and the guanciale crisps up very quickly at this point):

Et voilà! Guanciale-wrapped scallops with melty scamorza and toasty panko. Could that have been any easier?

Oh yes — you probably want to know how this tasted. Well, Mark ate the first couple and said, “Wow.” And then he kept saying it, louder and louder with each scallop. And he fist-bumped me. By the time we finished, I knew I’d be making these again.

In this setting I detected a richer quality to the guanciale, versus regular bacon — especially considering how very thin the pieces were! The cheese and bread crumbs provided a really nice touch, though I might press more crumbs into the cheese next time.

Overall, it was one of the best things I’ve made in recent history! You could serve these as appetizers — the toothpicks will be handy for guests to pick them up – but I’d recommend keeping them for yourself. Of course you can use American-style premium bacon (which I will probably have to do most of the time since guanciale is not a daily item at Revival), but this was so filling that you will probably want to be judicious in your bacon use, especially if you buy the thick kind like we do.

Mangia!

Guanciale! (Part I)

Amber — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 02:24:07 +0000

I don’t remember how I stumbled onto it, but about a year ago I first heard of guanciale via this article. I was immediately intrigued – a better bacon? Is that even possible?

Thus began a fixation. I was desperate to experience it for myself, but chances seemed slim unless I could finagle a trip to Italy. I even begged Mark’s parents to send some back from their Italy vacation — they sent me a tiny photo instead:

Then, a few months ago here in Houston, Revival Market opened in the Heights. Their philosophy is to offer organic local meat, raised humanely and sustainably. Their meat case would make any carnivore salivate. We have had their Mangalitsa bacon and sausage, and it is incredible.

We happened to be buying some bacon there in April when I noticed that the pig diagram on the chalkboard included guanciale. “Do you cure your own guanciale?” I asked. The man behind the counter said “We have some curing now; it will be ready next month.” I could hardly believe my luck. Christmas was coming to Houston!

Finally the day arrived that guanciale and I were in the same place. I knew it would be coming home with me! Since we had never cooked it and it was priced the same per pound as the beef tenderloin we buy from Whole Foods, we decided half a pound of paper-thin slices would make a good test run. Look at this beautiful meat:

It wasn’t in the fridge for even 12 hours before we dug in. Our first experiment was to slowly fry it up like regular bacon, cook some eggs in the grease, and add the guanciale back to the eggs.

It was rich and delicious, but I wasn’t entirely sure I could have distinguished it from Revival’s standard amazing bacon. I wanted to try something different for the second half of our stash.

Come back Thursday to find out how we got our $25/lb worth!

French onion soup

Heather — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:10:53 +0000

Blogmistress note: Tonight’s post is by my sister Heather. She is one of the best cooks I know, so you should definitely make this. She doesn’t have a blog — yet. Thanks for filling in, Heather!

I love soup. I love vehicles for melted cheese. I love wine. I love Amber. Not in that order of course. So when she asked that I make french onion soup as an accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner, I was psyched. Now normally I make this for two, so when I adjusted the ingredient list to serve all of us and Amber and Mark left the grocery store with 23 pounds of ingredients, they questioned me. Oops. Here is what I made/watched Mark make while I directed from the couch while drinking wine.

Mark and I checking out our handiwork

Heat 1/2 cup olive oil and 1/2 stick butter over medium low heat. Once the butter melt, add 8 cloves minced garlic, 4 large sliced onions, 6 sprigs of thyme and 2 bay leaves. Cover and sweat about 30 minutes. Turn the heat up and carmelize for 15-20 minutes until colored. Briskly stir in 1/2 cup of flour and deglaze with 1/2 cup sherry, 1/2 cup red and 1/2 cup white wines. Add 32 ounces of chicken broth and 48 ounces of beef froth. Heat to boiling and simmer for 30-45 minutes until reduced by about 25%, season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour soup into 4-6 bowls, top with cubed baguettes and shredded swiss cheese. Broil 1-2 minutes until the cheese is melty and browned.

Melty, cheesey goodness. Who doesn’t love a good vehicle for cheese?

Balsamic beef stew

Amber — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 03:48:14 +0000

I’m SO full right now, because of this:

Ms. Childfree Chic highlighted the recipe on her own blog recently, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before Mark and I were eating it! The recipe itself is here. As usual, I made a few modifications.

One thing I really like about this soup a the lack of vegetables that I have to work around. I actually like carrots, even though I blended them in the lentil & sausage soup. The only ingredient that gave me pause in this recipe was the onion. So I blended it! Problem solved. And even though I don’t like to see vegetables floating around in my soup, I do like to see herbs floating around, so I added about half a teaspoon each of dried marjoram, basil, and parsley. I could have added more and it still would have been good.

Mark and I were talking last night about people who think they can’t cook. I think a lot of people are under the impression they will ruin a recipe if they don’t follow it exactly, but that’s not necessarily true, especially for a soup. I used a little more beef than the recipe called for. It also called for three carrots, which I find silly, so I bought a bag of petite carrots, chopped them down to smaller pieces, and used all of them. I added potato chunks until they seemed about equal with the carrots. The last thing I did was double the broth so it would cover the ingredients — that was important because of the most substantial modification I made.

I just wasn’t up for all the steps in the recipe, so I reduced it to two: chop the things that need chopping, then dump everything into a crockpot. I let it cook on low for about 6.5 hours, and the beef was so tender it was falling apart. You just can’t mess up crockpot cooking.

Actually, you can, and I did once — but I’ll tell you about that another time!

Lentil and sausage soup

Amber — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:00:42 +0000

Even though it’s been in the upper 80s here in Houston, I am DYING to start wearing my fall clothes. It’s just not cool enough, so instead I’m starting my celebration of fall with homemade soup!

I have been craving the lentil and sausage soup that they serve at Carraba’s. That soup is amazing, and there are tons of recipes to be found online so you can make your own version at home. But the thing is that they all have chunks of vegetables in them. I really hate the texture of most cooked-down veggies. So I picked a recipe and fixed it.

Any cook can tell you how essential mirepoix is, but what if you hate chunks? Or chopping? I’d have carpal tunnel before I got everything chopped to an acceptable size where it wouldn’t squick me. The answer: blend it! I threw the zucchini in there because I knew I wouldn’t want to eat that, either.

I ran out of room for the onions on the first pass:

So I added them for the second:

Worst smoothie ever.

That’s a double batch of mirepoix, because the recipe only called for two stalks of celery and I didn’t want a bunch of celery rotting in the fridge. The bag of carrots had a little more than I needed for two batches, so I used them all. I really don’t think you could mess this up, since it’s just the base.

I put half in a freezable storage container for the next time I want to make soup:

I don’t think it will be in the freezer for long, though, because Mark went wild over this soup. It really is delicious! As for recipe tweaks, there are no measurements given for the spices, so I used a teaspoon of each and added rosemary. I think it worked great. You’ll want a lot more than a teaspoon of the red pepper if you want it to be spicy, though. I bought a 1.2-lb package of sausage, which is more than the recipe calls for, but if you love sausage like we do, go for two packages. You won’t be sorry!

The best part is that I made the mirepoix a day ahead, so making the soup was super-easy. Another tip: brown the sausage in the soup pot (before you add the other ingredients) so you don’t lose any fat. Fat = flavor!

In other news, I brought this home tonight from Toastmasters:

My question was about my biggest challenge. I talked about trying to fit into my current work environment, which values quite different things than my previous place of employment. Guess a few people could relate!

My chorizo obsession

Amber — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:00:30 +0000

One of the best things since moving to Texas is discovering chorizo. Actually, oddly enough, I first tried chorizo in Montana, so let me rephrase that — one of the best things since moving to Texas is the wide availability of chorizo. I would happily eat it at least three times a week.

What I don’t understand is how chorizo has never risen beyond the breakfast menu. It’s good at ALL times of day! My hope is that one day it will enjoy the kind of renaissance that bacon has seen for the last few years. Until then, I’ve got two preferred sources. The lazy source — that is, the nights we don’t want to cook — is La Mexicana, a great family-run restaurant that has served Houston for almost 30 years. They’re open late, the prices are a steal, and you can get desayuno all the time. I order chorizo scrambled with eggs, and refried beans. We always start with an appetizer of refried beans, melted cheese, and chorizo — so it’s kind of like having the same thing twice, which is awesome.

The other source I like is Whole Foods. They make it fresh, and it is outstanding. We have made chorizo-based breakfast tacos several times for company, letting everyone fill their own at an assembly line, and they’re always a hit. Despite the number of components, they are very easy and we usually have leftovers. We cook up the following:

a quarter to half a pound of chorizo per person (half is totally overkill, but did I mention that I REALLY like chorizo?)
two eggs per person
a couple pieces of thick-cut bacon (cut into several smaller pieces) per person
a family-size can of either black or refried beans
tons of grated cheese

Sometimes we oven-roast one or two small red potatoes per person, diced and tossed in oil and assorted Mexican-type spices. Our grocery store makes fresh tortillas, so we’ll warm a stack of them in the oven while everything else is cooking on the stovetop.

Mark is the official breakfast chef at our house, so I beg him to cook this meal whenever we plan to have a lazy Saturday (Sunday, as you know by now, is spoken for). Sometimes I beg for it for dinner. :)

What meal can’t you live without?

Muffin pan mini-frittatas

Amber — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:00:45 +0000

I recently came across this recipe and decided to give it a shot with what I had on hand. My first attempt was much less fancy, but it tasted spectacular. The two things I like best about this concept are 1) how easily you can customize it to your tastes or a guest’s tastes, and 2) how little you need in the way of ingredients. If you wanted to get really gourmet, you would need hardly any of each ingredient that you used — this is a great way to get rid of the little bits of this and that in your fridge. This is all I used to make four frittatas for Mark and me to share:

As you can see, I used silicone muffin cups instead of a muffin pan, because I wanted to make sure everything fit. I think it would have been a challenge in a standard muffin pan. For each frittata I used one piece of thick-cut hickory bacon, one egg, one half of a thick slice of cheese (chopped), and one half of a sausage patty (also chopped). (Confession: those aren’t real sausage patties, they’re Morningstar Farms breakfast patties. They are so awesome that they can be forgiven for not being real meat.)

I curled the bacon around the inside of the cups and filled in with my cheese and sausage pieces:

I beat the eggs individually and poured one over each cup of ingredients, then baked the cups at 350F for 30 minutes. If you end up with a little egg white at the top, the whites will look shiny and you may think they’re not done, but if you see the surrounding ingredients start to brown up, take them out.

They puff up beautifully as they bake. Just give them a minute to rest and gently loosen the bacon from the sides with a fork, then pop them onto a plate. You may lose a little bit of fat from the bacon if you don’t spray the cups, but it won’t be much.

These little protein bombs were a lot more filling than they looked. After two I don’t think I could have eaten anything else (except dessert — I always have room for dessert). Try it your way!

For the love of brown butter

Amber — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:00:11 +0000

Our love affair with brown butter began with the brown butter ice cream at Beaver’s. Where had brown butter been all my life?

So I made financiers. Delicious! I need more brown butter in my life. I think about this often (I really do!). I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to master brown butter ice cream. One of our favorite waiters at Beaver’s assured us that they make it by ‘just pouring the brown butter in.’ Though I would love to believe it is that easy, this sounded unlikely, so I looked at recipes and they were all a little daunting. I delayed until one day I could no longer not try to make brown butter ice cream.

When I make something, it’s usually because I want to eat it as soon as possible, ice cream being the sort-of exception since it needs to harden, though you could eat it right away if you wanted to. So when I look at a recipe and see that I have to do this:

and this:

and then I STILL have to refrigerate it before I can get to this:

…well, that typically I don’t even read that far before I’m on to the next recipe. But did I mention how much we love brown butter? I was expecting big things. I was going to be a hero in my house! No longer would we be denied brown butter ice cream on Mondays when Beaver’s is closed!

Now, the ice cream was delicious. Possibly one of the most delicious I have made, and the texture was perfect. But it did not taste like brown butter, not even a little. It didn’t even taste like unbrown butter, just sugar and cream. I’m not sure what happened. I browned the butter very cautiously and pushed it as far as I was comfortable doing without burning it. I immediately tasted a little and it tasted correct, so what gives? The recipe said something about straining, which I didn’t do because most of the flavor in brown butter comes from the solids. I would say, “Oh, I’ll just double the butter next time,” but I have read too many tales of brown butter ice cream gone awry because someone didn’t account correctly for the extra fat the butter was adding.

I am not giving up, however. This obsession demands no less than persistence (unless the ice cream shop up the street starts offering brown butter, in which case I will declare victory and keep a dozen pints in the freezer at all times). Next time I’ll probably take a page from this and attempt to get browned solids from heavy cream. Anyone have any other ideas about what I might do differently?