Bog Heaven

Every turkey needs the perfect cranberry sauce, and this one did not disappoint.  If you're taking on the task of making the entire Thanksgiving meal, this is one dish you can make in advance.  In fact, it tastes better if you make it a couple days in advance because it allows all the flavors to really develop as they mix and meld together.

For each bag of cranberries, you'll want 1 cup of red wine and 1 cup of sugar.  We had 2 bags of cranberries, so we started with 2 cups of wine and 2 cups of sugar.  You can use any kind of wine you like.  If you want sweeter cranberries use a sweeter wine.  If you want to highlight the tartness, use something more tannic. We just happened to have some cranberry wine on hand, which really added a cranberry punch to our sauce.  Let it simmer and reduce on the stove until you end up with a thin syrup.

Once it's syrupy, add in your cranberries.  I like my cranberry sauce to still have some whole cranberries, while Justin likes them to really cook down, so we compromised.  We added about 3/4 of our cranberries to the sauce initially, and let them cook down.  Then we added the rest towards the end, just so they could soften, but still stay whole.  If you want them to all cook down, add them all at once.  If you want them to be more whole, just cook them less.

Give your berries a good toss in your syrup, and just let them sit on the stove and simmer away.  You'll start to hear them pop as they cook.  Then you'll want to add in a liberal amount of black pepper, and just a tiny dash of salt to help cut the sweetness, along with some chopped mint, and orange zest. Fresh herbs and a little citrus help balance the dish and make for a more complex flavor profile.

Once you have your desired consistency, you can pull it off the stove, and transfer it to your serving dish. Just remember to pull it out of the fridge about 30 minutes before you're ready to serve it, just to take the chill off it.  Garnish with a sprig of mint, and voila, a delicious side dish, fresh out of the bog.

Get In My [Pork] Belly!

Despite having shelves of cookbooks and cooking magazines, we rarely take the time to flip through them and try out a recipe.  But last night, we did just that.  This summer we've gotten a watermelon in every share and we were running out of ideas (watermelon is to summer as cabbage is to winter in the CSA world).  Justin had actually already spent an afternoon thumbing through Eat With Your Hands, flagging the recipes that piqued his interest, including a crispy pork belly and watermelon salad.  It's not the first combination that comes to mind when I think of watermelon or pork belly, but let me tell ya...it's ridiculously good.

You'll want to start by pickling your rinds since they need to sit in the pickling juice for at least an hour.  You can also do this up to 2 days in advance. Start by mixing your liquid:
2 c. rice vinegar (we only have about 1.5 c. rice vinegar, so we used white vinegar for the remainder)
3 shallots, thinly sliced (we only used 2, since ours were pretty big)
2 Thai bird chilies, thinly sliced (we used jalepenos instead)
2 fresh Kaffir lime leaves (we found ours at Whole Foods, but Asian markets have them too)
2 inches ginger, peeled and sliced
1.25 oz palm sugar or 1 round gula jawa or 2 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tbsp koser salt

Combine everything in a saucepan and bring it to a boil.  All the flavors of the lime leaves, ginger, shallots and peppers will steep into the vinegar and sugar as it cooks.  The sugar adds a much needed sweetness to help cut the tanginess of the vinegar.  While your liquid is warming up, you can start slicing your rind.  You'll want to cut the flesh of the watermelon away from the rind, and also remove the tougher, dark green skin, so that all your left with is the fleshy white part.  You'll cut the rinds into cubes, and once your pickling liquid has come to a boil, and the sugar has dissolved, strain the liquid over your rinds.  They can go into the fridge while you prepare everything else.  You'll also want to cut the flesh of the watermelon into cubes, which can also go into the fridge to stay chilled until you're ready to serve it.

Now for the pork belly.  The recipe tells you to fry your pork, but we decided to just render out the fat and braise it in my dutch oven.  Just cut it into 1-inch chunks, and drop 'em in the dutch oven.  We had about 1 1/3 pounds of pork belly, and it took 20-25 minutes for it all to render down and crisp up.

While your pork is cooking, you can make the dressing for your salad.  In a food processor, combine:
3 oz. palm sugar or 2 rounds gula jawa or 1/4 c. light brown sugar
1 c. rice vinegar (we used Chinese cooking wine since we were out of rice vinegar)
1/2 c. fresh lime juice
4 inches fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
24 cilantro stems (use both the leaves and stems)
2 garlic cloves
3/4 tsp Kosher salt

Mix equal parts watermelon and pickled rinds, along with 2 sliced scallions, and freshly torn mint and Thai basil leaves (we used lemon basil instead).  Pour enough dressing over the salad so it lightly coats everything.  When your pork is done, divide it amongst your plates, and top each with the watermelon salad.  Garnish with some sesame seeds, and in our case, some crumbled chicharrones (I couldn't pass them up in the market!).

We were slightly worried how this would come out.  As any good chefs, we try and taste the elements along the way; the rinds were bordering on too sour, the watermelon was cloyingly sweet, and the belly was very rich.  Fortunately, the sum was definitively greater than its parts--this was a delicious meal.  Calling it a salad doesn't do it justice.  The dressing, along with the mint and basil rounded it out with a clean, herbaceous taste.  There is a definite salty, sweet, and sour thing going on here that made you want to keep going back for another bite.  The chicharrones and sesame seeds gave it a nice crunchy textural component.   I strongly suggest getting a piece of pickled rind, the sweet watermelon, and the warm crispy pork all in one bite.  The flavors really pop in your mouth, and compliment each other nicely.  Take it from us, this is one summer dish that can't be missed!

Frisky [Agua] Fresca

With another watermelon in our share, we decided to do something a little different with it, and make a drink.  We wanted something refreshing, but not too sweet, so we settled on agua fresca.  This literally means "fresh water", and is a combination of fruit, water and sugar.  I found this simple recipe, and got to work.

I had half of a watermelon left from our compressed watermelon, which was the perfect amount for the two of us.  The easiest way to chop the watermelon was to cut off the rounded end, and then slice off the rind, as if you were supreming the watermelon.  Then you can easily slice it into cubes.  We got about 6 cups of cubed watermelon outta this guy

 I also chopped up a few sprigs of fresh mint, and let it infuse into the water while I prepared everything else.

Once all of your watermelon is cubed up, I put my immersion blender to work and pureed the whole bowl.  In a matter of minutes, the bowl of watermelon was liquified.

Next, we had to remove all of the pulp.  You'll need a fine mesh strainer or some cheesecloth.  We had a small mesh strainer, so this step took a while.  Make sure you squish the pulp down on the strainer to get all of that juice out.  You can discard the pulp.  What you'll be left with is a highly concentrated watermelon juice.

Then add in your lime juice, water, and mint, and you're ready to serve!  If you let it sit overnight, be sure to give it a good stir/shake before serving.  You'll see the water and watermelon juice separate.  To jazz ours up a bit, we filled our glasses about 3/4 of the way with agua fresca, and topped it off with some seltzer.  You could easily add liquor too.

It's a great summer drink.  Now, if only I had a hammock to lay in!

Everything's Betta' With Feta!

There aren't many things more refreshing than biting into a juicy, cold slice of sweet watermelon on a hot summer day.  But if you want something a little less messy, and even more tasty, try out this watermelon feta salad.

Start by chunking up your watermelon into whatever size cubes you'd like.  Ideally, you'd have a seedless watermelon, but in our case, try to take out as many seeds as possible while slicing and dicing.  A lot of the seeds came out as I diced it up, which made it a bit easier, but seedless is really the way to go.

Crumble up some feta cheese, and chop up some mint.  Toss with your watermelon, and you're pretty much good to go.

If your watermelon is really ripe and sweet, but you don't want a cloyingly sweet salad, you can cut some of the sweetness with some salt, pepper, and a few dashes of rice wine vinegar.  The feta adds a nice saltiness, while the mint adds a refreshing hint of flavor to the salad.

While there is nothing wrong with a big slice of watermelon and spitting out the seeds, hopefully you try this simple salad for a quick, refined take on this summer classic!

It's the Greatest of all Time (G.O.A.T)

I've only eaten goat once before, at my graduation dinner last year at Komi.  It was a slow-roasted goat shoulder, served with pita, tzatziki, and a few other condiments.  So when we got ground goat in last week's share, we drew inspiration from that meal to make Greek-style goat meatballs with tzatziki.

For the meatballs, we found this recipe by one of our Food Network favorites, Michael Symon.  As always,we took a few liberties with the recipe, and made our own tweaks.  To start, we chopped (rather than grated) half an onion and a couple cloves of garlic, and tossed them into a pan to sweat down.  After 8-10 minutes, the onions will be translucent.  You'll want to set them aside and let them cool before you add them.

While the onions and garlic are cooking, you can start mixing up your meatball mixture.  Cumin, coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg went into a bowl with our goat.

To that we added an egg to help bind the meatballs, the zest of a lemon, some oregano and mint.  Once your onions and garlic have cooled, toss them in with the meat mixture, and combine everything thoroughly.  Just be careful not to overwork the meat.  Form the meat into balls, roll them through some flour, and toss them into a hot pan to cook.  We got a nice sear on the outside of the meatballs, and then tossed them into the oven to cook through.

To accompany our meatballs, we cooked up some romanesco.  It is a variant of cauliflower, and almost looks like some kind of medieval torture device.  We decided to treat it as we would cauliflower, and roast it with brown butter, mint, red onion and lemon juice.  Since we didn't have any cheese, and we still wanted a salty, umami component, we shaved a little bottarga on top.

To finish off our meatballs, we whipped up some tzatziki, sliced up some red onions and tomatoes, and toasted up some pita.  Slather your pita with some of your tzatziki, line with red onion and tomato, and then toss in your meatballs.  We used some extra mint as garnish.  To help your meatballs fit into your pita, give them a little smash with a fork.  I learned this trick from eating lots of falafel!  And there you have it...Greek-style, goat meatballs!

Don't Worry -- We Got Chimichurri!

We found ourselves with quite a bit of cilantro in the fridge, some from the last couple shares, and also from the grocery store, and we needed to figure out how to use it all.  We decided to put a spin on chimichurri, and rather than use parsley as the primary herb, we used cilantro.  Chimichurri is a traditional Argentinian condiment, much like pesto, used to top steaks.

So here we go...we started with the chimichurri, using this recipe as a base.  So cilantro was the star, but we balanced it out with some mint we'd picked up for the rutabaga, and some parsley we trimmed off our plant.

All of these guys went into the food processor with some garlic, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt & pepper, and a touch of lemon zest.  It initially came out a bit acidic, so we added a little more cilantro and mint to balance things out.  Oh, and we threw in a dried red chili pepper for a touch of heat (Sorry there aren't more pictures!)

Next came the rutabaga.  It kind of looks like a giant turnip, but it has a slightly sweet taste to it.  We decided to roast the rutabaga, much like we roast our cauliflower, with a little red onion, mint, and pecorino (except the pecorino was at Justin's place...womp, womp!).  The rutabaga was peeled and diced.  Then we simply seasoned it with salt, pepper, grated red onion, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a drizzle of olive oil.  Into the oven they went to roast up.

While the rutabaga was roasting, we also threw the steak in.  We went with a London broil for our cut of meat.  With just a little salt, pepper, and olive oil, it went into the oven for about 5 minutes on each side.

 

Then we transfered the meat to a pan on the stove top to get a nice sear on each side.  The meat sat in the pan for about 90 seconds on each side, and then we let it rest before slicing into.  The meat came out perfectly medium rare.

Once the meat was sliced up, we topped it with the chimichurri.  By the time the steak had finished cooking, the rutabaga was ready to go too.  We just tossed the mint with the rutabaga and plated it up!