tasty meat

An Unbalanced Breakfast.

~ wellfedemily ~ 8 Comments

Meat pancake? Only justifiable in the dead of winter when there is no fruit and everything is grey and dark and you just want to eat a hug. Or when you’re going to be doing a lot of exercise anyway and you can pass this off as an acceptable morning repast. Actually, I can justify anything, so maybe you can just have this whenever.

This is actually Toad in the Hole, which is something I would look forward to as a child, and which we would have often, mostly when Dad would cook. I used to cry when he’d add onions. Meat pancake. It sounds like a thing a dad would make.

And to be fair, it’s not all THAT bad. I mean, it’s essentially a pancake with the sausage baked into it instead of served on the side. And onions and bacon, and served with sour cream. So, it could be worse. It could be deep fried.

Toad in the Hole

  • 2 bangers (or large sausages … if you’re going to use the little breakfast sausages, use more)
  • 4 strips of bacon
  • 1 small onion, cut in half and then sliced long-wise, into strips
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup flour
  • 2 eggs
  • salt and pepper, to taste (but because of the sausage and bacon, I don’t add salt. You can. No judgment)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Toss a greased pan into the oven as the oven heats.

Fry sausage, bacon, and onion (I like onion now – no tears!) in a pan on the stove until browned. You don’t need to add any oil. In fact, don’t, because you’re going to pour the entire contents of the pan into your batter (later), so don’t add more grease. Unless you’re into that. I’m not. Surprisingly.

Meat and onions in panIt doesn’t matter too much if your sausage isn’t fully cooked through at this point – it’s going to bake for a bit.

Mix together your milk, flour, and butter in a separate bowl. When the meat is done, empty the whole pan into the bowl, toss lightly to coat in batter. Pull the heated pan out of the oven and pour the contents of the bowl into the pan, making sure that the batter is evenly spread out. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until edges have pulled away from the sides and the top is golden.

Toad!Slice and serve. I like it with a dollop of sour cream and a breakfast cocktail.

Tasty!Eat. Resist the urge to nap. Maybe go for a bike ride, or to play frisbee golf. Meat pancake!

Ribs: Because meat sure is tasty!

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

This week at the market, they had ribs on special, in small quantities – just enough for dinner for two. Also this week, my Food & Wine magazine came, and the theme was barbecue. It seemed like Nick’s planets had aligned, and because sometimes I do nice things for him, I figured I’d get the ribs and make the meat. Because I am terrible at remembering anything, I ended up kind of combining and reinventing two recipes from this edition despite having the wrong kind of meat (the recipe calls for baby back ribs … I had a pork loin rib rack). So I will give you my version the Food & Wine recipe, because, quite honestly, my variations were awesome and I am awesome and meat is awesome and everything about these ribs is spectacular.

At the outset, I knew that if Nick said the ribs were “good,” I was going to murder him with a basting brush. IN THE HEART. For a creative writing major, he should have better adjectives, and lately, all the validation I get is, “it’s good.” Spent twelve hours to create a single loaf of bread? “It’s good.” Wriggled into a tight red dress that makes my boobs look like aggressive, smooth-skinned grapefruits? Barely looking up, “You look good.” WAS THE STAR TREK MOVIE NOT AMAZING AND HOLY CRAP WAS SULU HOT? “Yeah, I thought it was good.” Good. It’s his only word, and it’s driving me insane. And then I storm off and he’s all, “what do you want from me?!” And he should know better and probably should have been gay because it would have been easier, and maybe I should have been too. But I think the thing is, I shouldn’t bother with any of that stuff if I want a little attention. Slow-cooked meat is the way to go, and he’d better use an adjective that is adequate to describe the effort and the taste sensation. “Life-changing” would work, as would “epic,” “revelatory,” or “better than anything I’ve ever tasted in my life and this is why I married you, not just so that I’d have access to your grapefruit stash” which isn’t an adjective, more like hope that he will magically change and actually start uttering what I want to hear, at last.

Tomorrow I’ll go back to ignoring him and making what I like. And in case you’re all, “you constantly use the word ‘awesome’ like a half-assed coordinating conjunction so who are you to complain about Nick’s overuse of ‘good?'” And to that I say, I also overuse “fantastic,” “lovely,” and “ass,” so even if I am repetitive, at least I’ve got variety. I’m like dining off the KFC menu for seven days in a row – you think it’s all the same but there are actually subtleties that breed uniqueness with every experience. SUBTLETIES.

But, I digress.

Bourbon and Apple Pork Loin Rib Rack

  • 1 3 lb. pork loin rib rack

Rub:

  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 3 cloves garlic, grated with a microplane or other fine grater
  • 4 tsp. chili powder
  • 2 tsp. kosher salt
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp. celery seed
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. white pepper

Cooking liquid:

  • 1 tbsp. of the spice rub (above)
  • 1/4 cup apple cider (although, I used this, and it was excellent. I used this in place of cider in this and the barbecue sauce. If you can find an apple beer, use it)
  • 1/4 cup Wild Turkey (or bourbon of some other variety)
  • 1/4 cup apple jelly, melted
  • 1/4 cup honey

Early in the morning, but preferably the night before, apply the spice rub to the meat and let it get all tasty. Keep it in the fridge while this is happening. Take it out about an hour before it goes into the oven.

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place the spicy meat (uncovered) on a baking sheet, and bake for 2 1/2 hours.Raw meat with rubRemove the meat from the oven and place on a large sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle the liquid mixture over top, and seal the meat in its juice. Put it on the pan and back into the oven, and bake for another hour.

During this time, you’ll want to make your barbecue sauce. I guess you can use store-bought, but you’ve got the cider/beer and the bourbon anyway, and homemade is way better.

Barbecue Sauce:

  • 1 cup bourbon
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup apple cider
  • 1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Mix up the ingredients in a bowl. Save for when you toss that meat on the grill.

Barbecue sauceWhen the meat comes out of the oven, throw it onto the barbecue over medium heat. Cook for another 15 to 20 minutes, basting with the sauce.

Meat on grillSide dishes? I thought you’d never ask.

Toss some chopped vegetables in some olive oil with a little kosher salt and black pepper, and put them on the top rack – ten minutes should suffice. Oh! And do some corn! Same amount of time.

Vegetables in olive oil

Corn and butter with herbs

Pull back the corn husks (but don’t pull them off), and butter the corn with a bit of herb butter. I had some fresh lemon thyme from the pots on my deck, so I used that. Re-wrap the corn in its husks and set it on the top rack as well, 10 minutes.

Veggies on grill

Mmmm ... corn!

When the meat is done, pull it off the grill and let it rest, preferably for ten minutes. Serve with the vegetables (unpeel peel the corn).

Meal!So, Nick was all, “this is really good,” and at first I was content to take “really” as an improvement. But then he read the first part of this blog and was like, “it doesn’t taste like scabs!” So, we’re probably going to get a divorce. Oh! This whole meal went really well with this apple wine we bought last weekend. It would also be lovely with ice cold apple cider, or that apple white beer. But not with apple juice. NO.

And another thing? It’s time to clean the deck:

My gross feetSo, um. Friday! Also, sorry about this one. I started drinking at 2:00.

Got ketchup? Make udon.

~ wellfedemily ~ 3 Comments

I know. Sounds gross, right?

It’s not. I promise.

Sometimes it’s been a long week when you’re only a day into it, and your kitchen looks like this:

A hell of my own making.
A hell of my own making.

And you get home and your version of Nick is all, “Let’s rent Jesus Christ Superstar and get into that wine,” because he likes the hot, scantily clad ’70s chicks doing high kicks and because he knows I can’t say no to sexy Judas, and because we have a lot of really awesome wine right now. So dinner has to happen quickly.

I happened to have purchased some udon noodles and pork chops, inspired in part by The Wednesday Chef’s (hereafter TWC) recent post on egg noodles in soy broth. So I whipped up a batch of the noodles, and we drank an astonishingly good pink wine, and we watched a rock opera and then Robot Chicken, and it was good.

This recipe isn’t authentically Asian. Any kind of Asian. It involves ketchup. It’s essentially white trash fat noodles, but don’t let that turn you off. It’s kind of awesome. I only made it because it sounded weird, and it involved ingredients I had on hand already. Except for the noodles. And because I wanted to make a full meal out of it, I added vegetables, and I grilled some pork and scallops. I had the scallops in the freezer – five of them – and this was a good way to use up such an awkward number.

Noodles in Soy Broth via The Wednesday Chef (via Mark Bittman) but With Other Stuff so It’s Not Exactly the Same.

The pork and the scallops aren’t in TWC’s original recipe.

  • Two small pork chops marinated in 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
  • Five large scallops (optional) marinated in:
    • The juice of half a lime (reserve the other half and serve with finished soup)
    • 1 tbsp. mirin
    • 1 tbsp. soy sauce
    • 1 tsp. dark brown sugar
    • 1 tsp. sriracha

Throw these all on the barbecue. Or put them in the oven. Or fry them in a pan. Cook them.

The broth (adapted from TWC):

  • 1/3 cup ketchup
  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp. rice vinegar, or to taste
  • 1 tsp. sesame oil
  • 1 tsp. sriracha
  • 1 tsp. finely minced ginger
  • 1 tsp. finely minced garlic
  • 2 cups fresh udon noodles
  • vegetables (use what you’ve got. I used a carrot, a cup of broccoli, two large bok choy stalks, and about a cup of mushrooms)
  • 1 bunch of scallions and a handful of cilantro to garnish

Over medium heat, heat a large pot. Add the oil, carrot, and noodles. Then add the ketchup, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sriracha, ginger, and garlic. When the noodles are coated and saucy, add six cups of water.

Flip your meat and scallops. Four to five minutes will have passed.

Bring the water to a boil, and then reduce heat. Toss in the broccoli and the hard part of the bok choy. Take the meat and scallops off the barbecue.

Add the bok choy leaves, mushrooms, and half of the scallions and stir to soften the leaves. Slice the meat into strips – it’s easier to eat with chopsticks, especially if you have no clean forks. Serve the soup in bowls, with the scallops and meat on top, garnished with the cilantro, the rest of the scallions, and a slice of lime. Enjoy. Serve with pink wine, and if you manage to get a slice of sun at the end of the day, enjoy outdoors. If not, eat in front of the TV.

The recipe makes enough for two and leftovers. There won't be any left over.
The recipe makes enough for two and leftovers. There won't be any left over.

The next time I make this, I am going to use less ketchup and more soy sauce, because it was a little on the tangy side. Which might not be a bad thing. You decide.

Soupy.
Soupy.

Porcupines.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

I am Kung Fu Panda. Never seen it? Well, you should. But in case you haven’t, the main thing is that he’s a legendary dragon ninja stuck in the body of a super awesome roly-poly Jack Black panda bear. And his ninja skills only come out when lured by the promise of food. Got dumplings? I will kick. That. Hill’s. ASS. No dumplings? Screw you, I’m sleeping in.

And so Bike to Work Week comes to an end. That this event coincided with the start of boot camp was unfortunate – I went from sedentary to super-active, biking a total of 150 kilometers (just over 93 miles) and doing no fewer than 400 crunches this week. Know what I learned? Exercise is for chumps. Eating is the best thing ever, followed very closely by sitting. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

My reward? After weeks of waiting for the arrival of the day of my glorious reservation at Les Faux Bourgeois, my deep desire for fattening, fancypants (but inexpensive, because as you know, I am flat broke) French food will finally be sated tonight. For a review that’s not (inevitably) tainted with a string of OMG!s, check out Sherman’s Food Adventures. If you’re content to wait until tomorrow, I’ll tell you all about it in my extra-special way.

At the moment, I’m working up a bit of anxiety over taking pictures of my food – usually I hate doing that, because I like to pretend I’m cool and in restaurants all the servers and the other people know of you is the groomed and polished version of yourself you present for the two hours you’re there, and I like to think that they’ve all given me the once-over “Wow, there’s a snazzy gal,” so I can dine comfortably without the sticky awkwardness that usually follows me around. But I want to tell you everything about the food. So the battle continues: Be cool and enjoy the food? Or dork out and photograph everything and then wax ecstatic on the Internet about duck confit and tarte flambée Alsacienne? Why am I pretending I’ve ever been able to pass for cool? Fine. Expect some blurry photos of French bistro fare tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am compelled to share with you a recipe for porcupine meatballs, because it rained several days this week during my gruelling ride home, and because when meatballs roll into my mind, it’s quite impossible to roll them back out without indulging. So on Wednesday night, damp and shivering, I arrived home to prepare myself a large pot of comfort food with little nutritional value.

Porcupine Meatballs

Meatballs:

  • 1 1/2 lbs. lean ground beef
  • 1 carrot, grated
  • 1/2 cup uncooked long-grain or basmati rice
  • 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 2 tsp. oil (I used bacon fat. You can too! Or butter? You can do whatever you like.)
  • 2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. black pepper

Sauce:

  • 3 cups tomato sauce (I used canned crushed tomatoes because I like them best)
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat that oven of yours to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients for your meatballs. Once everything’s in the bowl, mash it all together using your hands. There is no better way to ensure that the mixture is combined thoroughly without overmixing and destroying the texture. If you’re squeamish, you could wear gloves, I guess. HANDS.

Mix the sauce ingredients together in a separate bowl. You don’t have to use your hands for that.

Form the mixture into balls about an inch and a half in diameter. Place the balls in an ungreased casserole dish (preferably one you can cover with a lid). When the bottom of the pan is covered in balls (hee hee), pour about a third of the sauce over top. Keep balling and saucing until the pan is full.

Cover, and bake for 45 minutes. When the buzzer goes, take the lid off and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes.

Hot meat in pot

If I were feeling kindly disposed to my housemate, I might have grated some cheese over top and slid it back into the oven for another few minutes. But my cheese grater is dirty. So I didn’t. Serve on rice.

porcupines!

Anyway, the time has come for me to tame my bangs, put on a dress, and go for French food. It has been too long in the coming!

Saucy meat makes romance.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

The thing about being flat broke most of the time is you have to plan. And you have to be able to make your own fun, usually on $20 or less.

For Nick, fun is cleaning and purging three garbage bags full of all the awesome clothes I don’t wear but still love and will someday lose enough weight to fit into again. Jerk. My idea of fun is anything but that. So Nick cleaned, and I cried, and then we had dinner, which was fantastic.

By the way, as of this evening, I have called a ban on all sesame oil-soy sauce-delicious-but-played-around-here standbys. I thought I’d done it last night – Other Emily came over to spend the night pre-move to Portland, so I made Jerk chicken and a sweet potato, tomato, and okra curry on rice fried with peas and parsley, and it was delicious and filling and then we had pudding. So, good night, and then I thought tonight I’d really give’r and we’d have something awesome and I’d bake bread, and then Nick turned the afternoon into a suckfest and made me listen to Metric, and the kitchen was disgusting, and we were hungry but too lazy to do dishes, and everything was dirty, so I had to get creative. Kind of. I did the sesame oil soy sauce thing again. But it works, so whatever. This is a variation.

Oh! About planning. We always have a freezer full of things we can use, and a bijillion things we can use for seasoning, marinades, and crap like that. And canned goods, and a few vegetables left over. Today, we had two potatoes, half a yam, and a bag of baby bok choy. And some pork tenderloin. So I barbecued the pork and the bok choy, because everything I could have used to cook either of these inside was dirty.

Grace, who is awesome, and who I’ve mentioned before, said once that anything tastes good when it’s marinated in a bit of soy sauce and ginger: this is correct. I tossed the bok choy in a bit of each, then a bit of sesame oil, and set the veg aside. For the pork, I mixed up:

  • 1 tbsp. dark brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. mirin
  • 1 tsp. sesame oil
  • 2 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 1 tsp. finely minced fresh ginger
  • 2 cloves finely minced garlic

I rubbed a bit of this onto the pork tenderloin before I threw it on the barbecue, and reserved the rest for later.

Pork on BBQ

I let it cook for about 12 minutes, because this was a small piece of meat, and I turned it once. The bok choy cooked for about seven minutes on the top rack.

Bok choy on BBQThe pork smelled amazing while it cooked.

Grilled meatToward the end of the pork’s cooking, I painted both sides with the rest of the marinade, because Nick was all, “I want saucy meat.” And I was like, “Of course you do, muffin.”

Here’s dinner:

Tasty!After that, we took our $20 and bought two bottles of terrible wine and biked down to Kits beach because Nick said we’d make out on the beach and be all romantic and shit, which is better than eating the rest of a five-pound bag of Mini Eggs on the couch while he watches another three hours of hockey. It was nice. The whole ride there, the air was fragrant with wood smoke and pink flowers, and I kept exclaiming, “seriously, why doesn’t everyone live here? It’s amazing!”And then when we got there, the beach was lovely and empty, except for the couple of geeks with guitars. We totally made out. Nick and I. Not me and the guitar people.

Now we’re back at home, surrounded once again by dishes, and Nick is trying to make me watch a Mastodon music video while I Internet it up and we finish the last of the wine, the one in with the sweet zebra-print label. So, romance is alive and well, kids. Don’t give up hope.

Vegetabletarian? We serve your kind here.

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Wow. Been a real keener with this blog stuff lately. Been cooking a lot too, motivated in large part by this non-pink camera and my desire to learn how to take non-blurry pictures. Also, would be okay with someone coming over to take pictures for me. So I invited Chris Gerber, Nick’s friend with the good camera, over to eat. I like Chris Gerber.

A lot of kids aren’t eating meat these days. Weird, right? Some of them came over for dinner tonight. I’ve found that the challenge with vegetarian cooking is that people don’t really “get” vegetables. They get meat though. Meat is the main course, and that’s that. So vegetables are kind of an afterthought – just dump some hollandaise sauce on them, and they’ll be good to go. Much as I love a good litre of hollandaise, one cannot coat everything they eat in egg yolk butter sauce. Bad idea. Pretty sure that’d kill you.

The challenge tonight was to approach vegetables in a way that allowed vegetables to behave like a main course without everyone feeling like the vegetables were either imitating meat or that the whole dish was suffering for the lack of meat. For someone that keeps a jar of bacon fat in the fridge and dreams of the many uses for schmaltz, this is no small thing. But not impossible. No. Not impossible.

The solution? A little pea and asparagus risotto with bulgur and a rustic onion and fennel tart, adapted (and improved upon) from this month’s issue of Food & Wine magazine. Also, a side salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, and basil, all drizzled with delicious olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I got the basil from the plant on my balcony. It was real good.

It’s quite late and I don’t actually have a recipe for the risotto … it’s all in my head and I don’t feel like trying to remember it now. I am going to try and remember it later, and tell it to you again – I may have to re-do it and take notes throughout the process so I can report back. If you know risotto, it’s made the usual way, only with vegetable stock and peas and asparagus thrown in. I added the bulgur for nuttiness, and because I have a freaking ton of it, because I was on a total bulgur kick a few months back. So you get the onion-fennel tart thing, and some lovely pictures, a few of which were provided by the talented and artistic Chris Gerber. The crappy blurry ones are from me.

Rustic Onion and Fennel Tart

(Adapted from Food & Wine Magazine)

Dough

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 6 tbsp. unsalted butter, frozen
  • 5 tbsp. ice water

Filling

  • 4 tbsp. butter
  • 1 large sweet onion
  • 1 bulb fennel
  • 6 thyme sprigs
  • 2 tbsp. sour cream of crème fraîche
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp. milk

To make the dough, measure the flour and salt into a bowl. Using a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the bowl, and toss together lightly. Using a fork or a finger, pour the water gradually into the mix. You want the dough to form a ball, and to be relatively firm. You may not need all of the water. When a dough-ball is formed, wrap it in a sheet of plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge.

Start cutting the onion – thin slices. Do the same thing with the fennel bulb. Thin. Get your butter melting in a pan. Once melted, dump your onions and fennel into the pan, with four of the sprigs of thyme, and sprinkle lightly with salt. Start the pan on high, cooking until softened, eight to ten minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until onions are golden and caramelized. The recipe says 20 minutes, but it lies. It’ll take half and hour. Once the onion-fennel combo is complete, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sour cream/crème fraîche, and season with whatever salt and pepper you feel it needs.

Preheat the oven to 375°F, and butter a cookie sheet.

Grab your dough ball out of the fridge. Lightly flour your rolling surface. Make sure it’s clean. Dough doesn’t hide the crusties you let harden on your countertop. Pat the dough ball down, and roll the thing out. Once it’s thin and rolled, fold it back into a ball-like shape, and start again. You want the flour and the butter to be all inter-mingled and stuff so that when you bake it, the pastry gets all flaky and luscious, not hard like shingles. When it’s all rolled out, move it over to your buttered cookie sheet.

Pour your cooled onion-fennel mixture onto your pastry. You want there to be about an inch and a half border around the mixture, because you’ll be folding the edges of the tart in, making it look all rustic and homemade, which is totally in right now. It looks like you tried hard that way, even though this was super easy and monkeys could do it.

Lay the remaining two sprigs of thyme over top your crust, and brush with your egg-milk mixture.

Your pre-baked tart should look like this:

Pre-baked tart.Bake for 40 minutes. I thought I had a really good picture of the tart, but I get really distracted really easily, so I guess I forgot to take it. Your finished tart will look like the thing at the top right of this photo:Tart with other food.The other stuff there is the risotto and the salad, which were also good. At least, I thought they were good. The thing about these food blogs is that it’s kind of my word against anyone else’s. But, to be fair, no one gagged or was all, “Ew, WTF? Why are you feeding me poison?” So, awesome show. Great job. IT ALL TASTED GOOD.

There was also dessert. I made mango upside-down cake, but it got a little botched when I tried to take it out of the pan. Solution? Cover that shit in caramel sauce. Caramel hides flaws. And helps the broken parts of cake get stuck back together.

Cake!Oh! I used my last vanilla bean in the whipped cream. Well, not my last, but the last in that open container. Glad that story line is now all wrapped up.

I’ve included some of Chris Gerber’s actual attractive images below. He didn’t give me all the photos he took, which leads me to believe that the others were way too good to share, so instead he’s taken them home to paint them for me in watercolours, so that I can get all Cook’s Illustrated on this blog.

Chris Gerber interprets salad.
Chris Gerber interprets salad.
Chris Gerber takes sexier pictures of dessert than most people could.
Chris Gerber takes sexier pictures of dessert than most people could.
Chris Gerber photographs yesterday's shrimp recipe. My penmanship is really nice, so I take half-credit fot the artistry of this one.
Chris Gerber photographs yesterday's shrimp recipe. My penmanship is really nice, so I take half-credit fot the artistry of this one.

Conclusion? Vegetables are tasty. People should eat more of them. Unfortunately, they do not possess the sedative-qualities of large hunks of meat, so it’s 1:04 am and I am still wide-awake. Thankfully, there was wine left over. Good night.

Cooking without Borders

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Panna cotta in potAs it turns out, I’m quite a terrible photographer. I’m pretty sure with the pink camera, all my pictures would have been number-one Annie Liebowitz-esque, but it’s probably best not to dwell on that for too long. I made a lot to eat last night, and I tried to take pictures that would show how much fun it all was to make and how sumptuous it all was to eat, but everything turned out kind of blurry and sad. Apparently I have the shaky hands. Excellent for whisking, terrible for photo snapping.

Above? That’s a pot of milk and sugar and gelatin and vanilla bean, simmering until the sugar and gelatin was melted. We had panna cotta last night, because strawberries were on special and I had to use two more vanilla beans up before they dry out, standing in their lidless container. I used one, so anticipate one more vanilla bean recipe before too long. I’m starting with dessert this time, because panna cotta is among my favourite things to eat, and because I’m sure once you try it, it’ll be one of your favourite things too.

The recipe is adapted from The Williams-Sonoma Cookbook, an invaluable resource as I’ve come to find.

Panna Cotta

  • Butter (for greasing six ramekins)
  • 1 1/2 cups whole milk
  • 2 packages, or four teaspoons, unflavoured powdered gelatin
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream (whipping cream)

Lightly grease six ramekins with butter. Set the cups on a small baking sheet.

Pour one third, or 1/2 cup of the milk into a small pot. Sprinkle the gelatin over top, and let sit for about three minutes. This is about where I stopped reading the recipe, and also where I began to do everything wrong … but it didn’t matter, because it turned out well anyway.

The deal is you’re supposed to add the rest of the milk and the sugar and heat it until the sugar and gelatin is dissolved, then take the pot off the stove and stir in the cream and vanilla. I added the cream as well, and the vanilla bean, which I’ve found needs a good whisking to make it less frog’s-eggs-goopy and stuck together. The recipe says that the panna cotta needs at least six hours to set, and that’s if the recipe is followed, so I got a little worried. When everything that needed to dissolve dissolved, I poured the mixture into six ramekins. I filled the baking sheet between the ramekins with ice cubes, and then added about a cup of ice-cold water, to speed up the cooling-down process.

Panna cotta, pre-set, in ramekinsIt worked, and the whole thing set in under four hours. Awesome. If I’d read through the rest of the recipe, which I usually think I’m too cool for, I would have found a very helpful hint about releasing these from their ramekins … apparently if you remove these from the fridge once set, you can place these on a towel warmed with hot water for up to two hours – this should loosen the bottoms and make them easier to get out. I didn’t have any trouble though – I ran a knife around the outsides and tipped them onto a plate. It worked just fine.

I topped these with a warm sauce of strawberries and blood orange juice, whipped cream, and sliced fresh strawberries.

Panna Cotta with StrawberriesThere were other things to eat last night, things like gomae, pork fried rice, firecracker shrimp tossed with avocados and cucumbers, edamame, sushi, and chicken wings marinaded in a delicious Sooin-inspired marinade. I couldn’t find a recipe that pleased me for the shrimp, so I made one up – I wrote it down as it developed.

Firecracker Shrimp with Avocado and Cucumber

  • 1 tbsp. butter, melted
  • 1 tsp. fresh finely minced ginger
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 4 tsp. honey
  • 1 tbsp. soy sauce
  • 1 tsp. sesame oil
  • 1 lime, zested and juiced (half juice reserved)
  • 1 tsp. sambal oelek or hot sauce
  • 70 to 90 uncooked, peeled, and deveined shrimp
  • 1 avocado
  • 1/2 long English cucumber
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh scallions

Firecracker shrimp marinadeMix butter, ginger, garlic, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, lime zest and juice of one half of the lime, and sambal oelek (or hot sauce). Add shrimp, and skewer – we ended up needing five skewers for these. If you’re using bamboo skewers, make sure to soak them in water for an hour or so before using.

Shrimp on skewersI threw these on the top rack of the barbecue on a sheet of tin foil and cooked them until they turned pink, turning them once to be sure they were cooked on both sides. It didn’t take long … eight minutes? That sounds about right.

When they come off the barbecue, toss them with the avocado and cucumber, the rest of the lime juice, and the cilantro and scallions.

Firecracker Shrimp with Avocado and CucumberI took some fairly inadequate pictures of the rest of the feast … I’ve included them here with captions!

Asparagus for sushi: On the grill.
Asparagus for sushi: On the grill.
Barbecued chicken for sushi. Weird? Yeah, I know. Nick really likes it.
Barbecued chicken for sushi. Weird? Yeah, I know. Nick really likes it.
Cheelful sushi! Loose and kind of crappy-looking sushi rolls on my favourite platter ever.
Cheelful sushi! Loose and kind of crappy-looking sushi rolls on my favourite platter ever.
Gomae up front, edamame in the back. Which sounds kind of ... awesome, like a terrible sexy euphemism.
Gomae up front, edamame in the back. Which sounds kind of … awesome, like a terrible sexy euphemism.
A blurry photo of some saucy wings.
A blurry photo of some saucy wings.
Pork fried rice, and evidence that it may be time for a new wooden spoon.
Pork fried rice, and evidence that it may be time for a new wooden spoon.
The Help: Nick loves dinner parties. LOVES THEM. See how happy he is?
The Help: Nick loves dinner parties. LOVES THEM. See how happy he is?

Meatload?

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

Meatload is not a typo. It’s a real thing, I swear. Well, it’s a real thing at my house, where I periodically have to unload the fridge and hide its contents in a meal that is tasty and that, itself, will make leftovers suitable for lunches at least two days into the future. It’s usually just meat, filler, and flavourings – I’ve used leftover mashed potatoes, stale bread soaked in milk, limp carrots and half a squishy zucchini grated. It’s always juicy, and it always makes excellent sandwiches. Wondering how to pass off the remnants of your fridge as quality food? Oh, so simple!

Meatload (an approximate recipe)

  • 1 lb. ground beef
  • 1 lb. ground pork
  • 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese (if it’s all dried out and crappy because your Nick left it out on the counter overnight, all the better … you’re not going to use it for anything else anyway!)
  • 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
  • 1/2 cup grated carrot (about three carrots, or, whatever you have left over in the bag)
  • 1/2 cup grated zucchini (or however much you have – I’ve found that more never hurts)
  • 1 small finely chopped onion (if you’re using a food processor to grate the other things, use it here too)
  • 3 cloves finely minced garlic
  • 1 tbsp. barbecue sauce (plus 1/4 cup if barbecuing)
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 tsp. cumin
  • 1 tsbp. chili powder

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Dump all your ingredients into a single bowl. Mash together with your hands until it’s thoroughly mixed together. Form a loaf that’s of equal thickness the whole way around. Place on a baking sheet and bake it, covered, for 30 to 40 minutes. 3o minutes? Oh, yes. The thing about meatload is that you finish it on the barbecue. Don’t have a barbecue? Sucks to be you. Cook it for 60 minutes then, but leave it uncovered, and periodically baste it with the pan juices.

Have a barbecue? Yay! Your life has meaning. Once the oven buzzer screeches, pull the ‘load out and let it rest for a few minutes. Light the barbecue, and transfer the whole meatload to the barbecue rack. I like to do this slightly away from the heat, because I don’t want to burn it before the inside is totally cooked. Give it another ten minutes on the barbecue, with the lid on.

Go back inside and get some sliced bread or buns. Bring them outside and set them up on the top rack of the barbecue so that they can toast and get all smokey while your meat cooks. At this point, before the meatload is completely done, paint it lightly on all sides with barbecue sauce. Give it another few minutes per side with the sauce.

Serve the meatload sliced on your delicious toasty bread with a little mayonnaise, grainy mustard, sliced tomatoes, lettuce, or whatever you’ve got in your crisper. Voilà! Easy tasty dinner, and lunch for the next day, in about an hour and using stuff you already have on hand.

Last night …

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Steve and Sooin are two awesome kids who come over sometimes to play boardgames and eat food and drink too much wine. Last night, we went to Nick’s sister’s house for the same sort of thing, except that Sooin cooked, and it was AWESOME. Perhaps if I had known Sooin before Nick, I would have married her. And I would weigh 800 pounds and eat Korean BBQ EVERY DAY. Come to think of it, I sort of think Nick came between us. Steve too. Why is “Unbreak my Heart” suddenly playing in the background of my thoughts?

The meat was the reason I will never be a vegetarian, and itself was a perfect synthesis of flavour. The gomae was revelatory. And I have spent today marinating chicken wings with a concoction I hope comes close to what Sooin used to marinade yesterday’s beef short ribs. Updates to come.