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!).

CSA Recap

Here is our bi-weekly recap of how we used our CSA.  Here's what we picked up...

And here's what we made...

• Umami Burgers & Kimchi Brussels Sprouts
• ground beef
• brussels sprouts
• creasy greens
• Pizza & Salad
• romaine
• creasy greens
• Chicken Involtini, Roasted Turnips, and Apple Crisp
• creasy greens
• turnips
• gold rush apples
• Jambalaya
• collards
• green onions
• Sausage Stuffed Fennel
• sausage
• Chinese New Year Feast
• trout

The one thing we didn't use was the butternut squash and the cilantro, but we'll find some uses for them in the coming weeks, I'm sure.

Umami So Fat!

Umami...that elusive 5th flavor...

You've likely heard all about it in those Kikkoman soy sauce commercials.  But tonight, we bring you umami burgers.  Just like the ones in LA.  And instead of fries, we went with kimchi brussels sprouts, ala Momofuku.

So let's start with the burgers.  To get the umami flavor, we finally got to use our bottarga, plus some pulverized dried straw mushrooms and nori.  With that, we mixed in a blend of white pepper, salt and wasabi that we picked up from the Asian market last week.  This gave us a salty, savory umami dust to work with.

We were fortunate enough to receive some ground beef from Polyface Farms.  If you've been following along, you'll remember me gushing about Polyface here.  We mixed the beef with our umami dust and a splash of fish sauce.  Then we just formed them into 2 patties and got them into the pan to start cookin'.

While the burgers cooked, we got to work on the kimchi brussels sprouts.  I should've kept the last beating stick...then we could've had a proper duel!

But alas...we started with some bacon...because every good dish starts with bacon.  Once it was nice and crispy, we threw the sprouts into the pan so they could roll around in the bacon fat.

Once they were seared, we slid them into the oven to roast.  After about 15min., they came out of the oven, and were bathed in some butter, salt and pepper.  We added the bacon back into the pan, along with some of our sliced kimchi.

We let all the flavors meld together for a few minutes, so each ingredient was coated in the butter, and spicy juices of the kimchi.  By the time the sprouts were done, so were the burgers.  We're getting much better with this whole timing thing!  The sprouts were garnished with a little raw carrot, and our burgers got some avocado and creasy greens.

The burgers had such a rich, salty, savory flavor, and creaminess of the avocado balanced it all out.  The sprouts were nicely roasted, with a sharp spiciness from the kimchi and a nice crunch from the raw carrots.  It was quite the delicious meal!

CSA Day!

Hooray!  Time for our bi-weekly show and tell.

We're really excited to be seeing less cabbage and squashes, and more variety in the produce.  This week we have anabundance of greens...kale, collards, creasy greens, romaine, brussels sprouts.  Tonight we had a choice between a butternut or spaghetti squash, so we opted for the butternut, since it's a bit more versatile.  We also had a choice between mild or maple pork sausage, and we went with the mild.  That way we can either use breakfast or dinner.  I think the maple sausage would've pigeon-holed us into using it for breakfast.  I'm also a fan of all the herbs we've been getting.  We've managed to stretch their shelf life by wrapping them in a paper towel, and storing them them in a plastic bag in the fridge.  The paper towel helps absorb the moisture and prevent the herbs from turning all slimy.  I think we had a bunch of cilantro or mint that lasted over a month stored like that.  So there's your helpful tip of the day...free of charge!

We haven't quite figured out what we're going to cook with this week's share, but you know we always come up with something good.  Stay tuned!

CSA Recap

I know its been a while since you've been inside our kitchen...we were out in California for the holidays...New Years happened...and then I had a friend visit this past weekend...we haven't been in our kitchens very much.  But we'll be picking up our next CSA share tomorrow, so you'll be seeing new meals from us before you know it!

So before we get to the new share, I wanted to give you a quick recap of how we used the food from our last share.  Here's a refresher of what we picked up:

And here's what we cooked up:

• Linguine with clam sauce and roasted brussels sprouts
• clams
• brussels sprouts
• Tortilla with kale
• kale
• green onion
• potatoes
• Oyster po' boys (we'd already posted about our 1st foray with them here, so we didn't post again)
• oysters
• Spaghetti squash with meatballs
• spaghetti squash
• Sauerkraut 
• cabbage

Justin and I split the apples to take for lunch during the week.  All that was left before the holidays were the butternut squash and sweet potatoes, so Justin took those with him down to NC for his family to use.  We figured by the time we got back from CA, they'd be mush, and I'm sure his family put them to good use.  The garlic was used for a few different meals since we love garlic on pretty much everything.  We were slightly disappointed that we missed a drop while we were in CA because it featured Jerusalem artichokes (and no cabbage either!), but we're looking forward to picking up tomorrow's goodies. We'll be back tomorrow to share our share with you!

Oh!  Before I forget.  For those of you that have been following along since the beginning, you may have remembered me referencing a picture of Justin with a giant bowl of cioppino from his dating profile.  It was one of the many things that initially caught my eye.  Well...here's the picture!

How delicious does that look?!?!

Mangia, Mangia!

That's "Eat, Eat!" for those of you out there that don't speak Italian.

Since we went with the obvious the first time around, cooking clam chowder, we went with the 2nd most obvious dish...linguine with clam sauce!  For some veggies, we cooked up the brussel sprouts with some bacon and almonds.  So let's get to it!

I started with the brussel sprouts, popping them off the stalk and placing them on a cookie sheet with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Those went into the oven to get all roasty toasty!  We also pulled off the greens at the top to toss in with the sprouts later on.  We were left with a bare stalk...

I think it'll make a good beating stick for when Justin steps outta line! Hehehe :)  The bacon was next, getting a quick little chop and then tossed into the pan to get nice and crispy.  The onions were also thrown in with the bacon to soften and soak up some of the bacon delicousness.  

Look how nice and charred and toasty those sprouts are!  Sadly, we overcooked them slightly and they were a tad bit mushy in the middle.  But the leaves were crisp, and once they rolled around with the bacon, it made up for the overcooked centers.  Bacon makes everything better, right?

Meanwhile, Justin was handling the other half of the meal.  Since he's part Italian, I figure its better to let him take care of the sauces.  In a giant pan, he melted some butter, and threw in a bunch of garlic and onions.  Once those sauteed for a while, in went the clams.  It didn't take long for them to pop open and impart a little oceany flavor into the pan.  We also threw in some white wine for an extra bit of flavor.

Once the linguine was al dente, we made sure to reserve a cup of the starchy cooking water.  Its always good to add a bit of the starchy water to whatever sauce you're making because it will help the sauce stick to the pasta.  Oh!  We also threw in some grated parm and pecorino for a little salty deliciousness, and to help thicken the sauce a bit.  I removed the clams from the pan, added a splash of the starchy water, and then threw in the pasta.  Removing the clams made it much easier to get the pasta coated in the garlicky, buttery, clammy sauce.  On the other side of the stove, the brussel sprouts were being coated in the bacon delicousness, and I threw in some chopped almonds for another little crunch.

And then we were ready to eat!  With a little slice of cheesy garlic bread, complete with roasted garlic, we were ready to dig in!

Until next time...buona notte!

CSA Day!

Woohoo!  CSA day!  I'll keep this one short and sweet since its so late already.  Here's what we picked up today.

We were excited to get oysters and clams again, especially since the other meat choice was a stewing hen.  Just from the name it doesn't sound nearly as appetizing.  I'm also excited about the brussels sprouts on the stalk.  Did you know that's how they grow?!?!  We have a few things in mind for some of the food, but most of it will be on the fly.  Stay tuned!