Braise the Roof!

A recent snow day afforded us the opportunity to really put our slow cooker to the test, and braise some short ribs for over 8 hours.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect.  I've been a bit hesitant to leave the crock pot plugged in while Justin and I are both away at work, so being snowed in was the perfect time to let these babies braise.

I'd seen this recipe come through my email, and we merged it with a short rib recipe from Nom Nom Paleo.  Both recipes had similar ingredients in the braising liquids, so we thought it'd be easy to merge the two recipes.

We fired up the crock pot, and placed our seasoned short ribs inside.  To that, we added some roughly chopped carrots, celery, white onion, green onion, a handful of garlic cloves, and some ginger.  We also had some lemongrass on hand, so we added a bit of that to the crock pot too.  For some added sweetness, we tossed in some gula jawa, as well as a few cloves of fermented black garlic that we had on hand.

For the braising liquid, we combined about 1/2 cup soy sauce, a splash of fish sauce, a touch of apple cider vinegar, 1 cup beef broth, and enough water to cover the top of the ribs.  Then we just put the lid on, and let the ribs simmer the day away.

About halfway through, the aroma of the short ribs and braising liquid started to spread throughout the apartment, and it was hard to resist.  We let them cook for a solid 8 hours.  By the time we were ready to eat, the meat was so tender, it just fell off the bone and melted in your mouth.  Be sure to skim off as much fat from the braising liquid before spooning it over your short ribs.

To accompany our short ribs, we whipped up some rice, and snow pea greens sauteed with garlic.  The rice helped soak up some of the delicious braising liquid too, while the snow pea greens added a crisp, fresh component to the dish.  The short ribs were garnished with some toasted sesame seeds.  It was the perfect, hearty dinner for a wintery snow day.

Oui Love Soup!

In honor of it being National Soup Month, we rounded up a list of the soups that we've featured on the blog thus far.  So if you're experiencing some frigid weather like we are, you can opt for the warm soups.  And if you're lucky enough to be in a warmer climate, you can go for the cold soups.  Something for everyone!

Hot soups to warm you up...

* Butternut Squash Soup

* Tomato Soup

* Sizzling Rice Soup

Cold soups to cool you down...

* Chilled Pea Soup

* Gazpacho

And if those aren't enough, we're coming at ya with a hearty French onion soup to get through these winter months.  This recipe came from our friends at WellFed Hospitality Group when we attended their first Feastly dinner, a meal paying homage to Julia Child. (you can read about another Feastly meal here)

You'll want to start by thinly slicing 10 onions.  Our onions were quite large, so we only used 8.

While you're slicing your onions, you can crisp up about 1/4 cup of bacon.  Once they've crisped up, add your onions to the pot, along with about half a stick of butter.

As you can see, our stock pot was overflowing with onions.  From this stage, it will take a good 45 minutes for your onions to cook down and caramelize.  As best you can, try to toss your onions around so they all get coated in butter, and cook through.  As they cook down, they'll release a lot of water, which needs to evaporate before your onions can really caramelize.

As you can see, they cook down quite a bit, and turn a nice golden brown color.  At this point you can deglaze your pot.  The recipe calls for a splash of brandy and some white wine, but we didn't have any on hand.  Instead, we used some Boatswain Chocolate Stout that we had on hand.  The beauty of this beer is that for just $1.99, you get a 22oz. bottle of pretty decent beer.

Once you've deglazed your pot, add in 2 quarts of beef stock and some thyme.  To help give it a richer flavor, we also used some veal demi glace.  Let this simmer and reduce for about 20 minutes.

One of my favorite things about French onion soup is the bubbly covering of cheese that covers the bowl.  Since we don't own any of the little crocks like restaurants have, we had to improvise.  We picked up a nice loaf of French bread and toasted some slices, each topped with a little pile of gruyere cheese.  Once the cheese had melted, they were nice little croutons to float on top of our soups.  We also sprinkled some cheese directly into the soup and let it melt in.

Although caramelizing onions takes a while, the end product is well worth it.  You're entire house/apartment will end up smelling like caramelized onions (even my bath towel picked up the scent!), but it's a delicious, hearty soup that will get you through the cold winter months.

Braised & Enthused

Sorry for the brief hiatus!  Between work, and the upcoming holidays, it's been a bit crazy around these parts.  We've mostly been cooking easy, standby recipes, so there haven't been many new recipes to post here.  However, we did receive some nice looking short ribs in a recent share and put those to good use, cooking them low and slow.  This method of cooking leaves the meat nice and tender, practically falling off the bone.

We're big fans of Top Chef, and Edward Lee, a contestant from the season based in Texas, just put out a cookbook combining his Korean roots and southern tradition called, Smoke & Pickles.  We followed his recipe for the short ribs, and it was quite delicious.

If there's a lot of excess fat, you'll want to trim some of it off.  Then parboil the ribs in a dutch oven for about 8 minutes, in about 4 cups of water.  Once they start to cook, pull them out of the water, and set them aside.  You'll want to skim some of the fat out of the liquid, and then reserve 2 cups of the cooking water.  The rest of the water can be dumped out, and you'll want to dry out your pot.

Once your pot is back on the stove, heat a couple tablespoons each of sesame oil and vegetable oil.  When it's nice and hot, drop in a few short ribs at a time.  You want to get a nice sear on all sides of each short rib, so you'll want to do them in batches.

Once all of the short ribs are seared, place all of them back in the pot, add your chopped onions, ginger and garlic, and let it cook for a few minutes.

Next, add your soy sauce, chicken stock, mirin, and the 2 cups of reserved cooking liquid and bring to a slow simmer.  To balance out the saltiness of the liquid, stir in some sugar and honey.

Then just let it simmer away, giving your short ribs a turn every now and then.  After an hour, add in your carrots, parsnips, and pine nuts.  The recipe also calls for raisins, but I'm not a huge fan, so we left them out.  There was enough sweetness already from the sugar and honey.

Let everything simmer until the short ribs are tender, and the liquid has thickened.  This will be about another hour or so.

While we were in the final stages of braising, we whipped up a side dish of roasted Brussels sprouts.  We halved the brussels sprouts and tossed them in a marinade of miso paste, ponzu, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil.  We also stumbled upon some black garlic at Trader Joe's, so we sliced up a couple cloves and added them to the sprouts.

Black garlic gets it's color from being fermented for weeks.  It develops a nice sweet flavor, with hints of balsamic vinegar.  It may look a bit unappetizing, but it's quite delicious.  Once your sprouts are evenly coated, place them on a baking sheet and let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes.  We topped them with some sesame seeds and bonito flakes, for a punch of umami.

Rice would be the traditional accompaniment for this dish, but Edward Lee pairs his short-ribs with edamame hummus. We went in a similar, but different direction, and  whipped up some roasted garlic mashed potatoes with some spuds we got in our share. They were a great way to soak up the delicious gravy.

The meat was super tender, and fell right off the bone.  The Asian flavors in the braising liquid really soaked into the meat, and was a nice balance of salty and sweet.  We will be making this recipe again if we get more short ribs, or if they're on sale at the market (if Justin gets his way!).

Fun With Buns!

We're both big fans of burgers, and we thought it was about time we try our hand at making some brioche buns to go with our summer cook-out favorites.  You know by now that we're not into baking as much as we are cooking, but if we're ever going to improve so we have a shot at winning MasterChef, we need to practice!  You can't discount the importance of the bun to a good burger.  While some opt for potato, kaiser, or Portuguese rolls, nothing really makes a burger like a light, airy, malty, perfectly browned brioche bun.

We found this recipe online, and since we'd had some success with Smitten Kitchen recipes in the past, we knew she wouldn't steer us wrong.  Start by mixing together warm water, milk, yeast and sugar, and let it stand for about 5 minutes.  The warm water helps activate the yeast, while the sugar acts as food for it.  After about 5 minutes, this mixture will be foamy, and ready to mix into your dough.

While your yeast is standing, you can start to mix your dough.  For the dry ingredients, whisk together your bread flour, all-purpose flour, and salt.  Rub the butter between your fingers, and mix with the flour mixture, forming crumbs.  Ours didn't really form crumbs, per se, but once the butter was incorporated as much as it could be, we added the yeast mixture and a beaten egg.

We don't have a dough scraper, so we just used a rubber spatula to mix the wet and dry ingredients together.  Within minutes, we had a nice ball of dough.

Here's where some of the manual labor comes into play.  On a floured surface, you'll have to knead your dough.  We followed the recipe, which suggested using a scooping/slapping method.  You scoop your dough up from the counter and then slap it down.  In 8-10 minutes, it should be smooth and elastic.  Be careful not to add too much flour to the dough, as this will leave you with tougher buns.  Our dough was a bit tackier than it probably should've been, but we didn't want tough buns.  Once you've kneaded your dough, place it back in the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise until it doubles in size.  This took about an hour for us.

Once your dough has risen, divide it into 8 sections.  We only made half the recipe, so we ended up with 4 buns.  Roll them into balls, and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Spray some plastic wrap with some nonstick spray and loosely cover your buns to let them rise again.  We didn't have any nonstick spray on hand, so I just brushed a little vegetable oil on it.

Like I mentioned earlier, our dough was still fairly tacky, so it was a bit difficult to roll them into balls.  Instead we shaped them as best we could, and let them rise again.  When you're ready to bake, place a dish of water in the bottom of your oven, and heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Beat another egg and brush it on top of each bun, and if you want to add sesame seeds, do that now.  Pop 'em in the oven, and let them cook for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown, turning the pan about halfway through.

And voila!  Golden brown buns!  Let them cool completely before you cut into them.  At first, they seemed kind of tough on the outside, but once they cooled, and we cut into them, they were pretty light and fluffy on the inside.

For our burgers, we used Polyface Farms ground beef from our share, and simply seasoned them with salt and pepper.  We had some humboldt fog leftover from our grilled cheeses, that got nice and melty on the warm, grilled burgers.  We also caramelized some onions with port wine that topped the patties, along with some fresh arugula.  Add one of our dill pickles, and we had the perfect burger.

It's Smooooookin'!

4th of July wouldn't be complete without throwing something on the grill or in the smoker, so we did just that.    We fired up the smoker with cherry and hickory wood chips, and got it nice and warm for our brisket.  For our smoking liquid, we filled the pan with a mixture of water and beer.  While the smoker heated up, we prepped our brisket.  We started with a dry rub, consisting of all these tasty spices:

R to L: black pepper, thyme, red chili flake, garlic powder, brown sugar, paprika, mustard powder,  chili powder, salt, white pepper, cumin

We really just poured and mixed until it tasted great.  We ended up with about 1.5 cups of the spice rub, which was plenty to rub on the brisket and add to the sauce, while still having extra for next time.  Our rub had a subtle heat that came at you from the back.

We poured a bit of vegetable oil on the brisket, and rubbed him down with our spice mixture.  Be sure to massage it in to help tenderize the meat too.

Then you're ready to throw it on the smoker.  As it cooks, make sure to periodically check on it.  We didn't have a sauce mop, but we did have a squirt bottle with some apple cider vinegar, Worcestershire, and a dash of soy sauce and liquid smoke,  which we used to keep the meat moist and give it a bit of added tang.  We put our meat on fat-side up.  Conventional wisdom from the pit dictates that by smoking fat side up, the delicious beefy drippings permeate the meat and wash over it as you baste it.

Now with good BBQ, the meat should be the hero (aka Michael Jordan), but a winning sauce is like your Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman; they provide some flavor and allow the star to shine.  If you've been following along, you'll know we're huge fans of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.  They make the most amazing brisket I've ever had.  It just melts in your mouth!  So we turned to them for inspiration on the sauce, and found a recipe online for a variation on their wango tango sauce.  We started by mincing up the onion, peppers and garlic.  You could use a food processor to get tiny pieces, but I like chopping by hand.  In this step, we substituted an anaheim pepper for the green pepper, and we used 2 habaneros so as not to overpower the sauce with spice.  We also toasted up some mustard seeds before adding in the peppers and onions to saute.

Once the peppers and onions had cooked for about 15 minutes, and really softened, we added in the garlic. While that's all cooking down, we mixed together the remaining ingredients.  We stuck pretty close to the recipe, but used slightly less ketchup, added a couple shots of bourbon, and a few tablespoons of our dry rub.

Just pour the wet ingredients into your onion/pepper/garlic mixture and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Bring it to a boil, add in your liquid smoke, and let the sauce do its thing. The flavors really developed the longer the sauce simmered.  It has a nice heat and sweetness to it, without being overpowering.

Now, for the hard part...the waiting! A general rule of thumb for smoking time is about 1.5 - 2 hours per pound of meat.  We had a nice 3 pound brisket so we had it cooking for about 5 and a half hours.  You'll often hear about people smoking meat for 18 hours, and there is much debate in the BBQ community about this, but they use hunks of meat the size of a chevy suburban.  The important part is to get a nice piece of meat with a uniform fat cap on it.  If your smoker has a thermometer, try to keep your temperature at about 220-250 degrees.  You'll know it's done when the meat is firm and has a nice smoky crust on it.  Then just let it rest for at least 5 minutes, and slice it up.

Then toast up some buns and start piling on the meat!  For sauce, we used some of our wango tango-inspired sauce, and also mixed some in to our vinegar basting liquid to have a vinegar-based sauce as well, to keep things NC-style.  To round out the meal, we baked up some sweet potato fries, grilled up some asparagus and corn, and make some jicama slaw.  We'll be back later this week with details on the slaw and corn.

CSA Recap

I know we're a week early, but last week's share was to make up for the one we missed while on vacation.  Tomorrow we'll pick up our next share and get back on the 2 week rotation.  So, here's what we picked up...

And here's what we made...

• Balsamic Chicken with Prosciutto-Wrapped Asparagus
• asparagus
• Pecan-Crusted Salmon with Sorrel Sauce & Salad
• sorrel
• basil
• mixed greens
• celery tops
• golden delicious apple
• Garlic Scape Pesto
• garlic scapes
• basil
• Umami Burgers (like these) & Sweet Potato Fries
• ground beef
• bibb lettuce
• sweet potatoes
• Sausage & Spinach Frittata w/ Home Fries
• pork sausgae
• spinach
• garlic scapes
• potatoes

We still have some sorrel, celery tops, and the actual garlic bulbs left, but I'm sure we'll find a good use for them with the goodies we pick up tomorrow.

CSA Day!

Between the end of the winter share and being on vacation, it feels like forever since we picked up a share.  But we're back on track to bring you more delicious meals.  We're really excited to get fewer potatoes and squashes, and a wider variety of fruits and veggies as the weather warms up.

I'm really excited about the sorrel, an ingredient I've never cooked with before, and to have garlic scapes to work with.  Stay tuned to see how we use them!

CSA Day!

It's that time again!  Woohoo!  Here's what we hauled home today:

Lots of good stuff to come as we jump back on the Paleo train.  Stay tuned!