That's What I'm Talkin' 'Kraut

You've seen us mention our homemade sauerkraut here and here, so I guess its about time we tell you how we made it.  Its actually a really easy process that takes little to no time at all.  We consulted our good friend, Alton Brown, for a recipe and he didn't lead us astray.

We've received a lot of cabbage lately, and sauerkraut is a great way to use it since it just gets better over time.  You really just need 3 ingredients: cabbage, Kosher salt, carraway seeds.

Step 1: Slice, dice, chop your cabbage however you like it.
Step 2: Mix in the Kosher salt and carraway seeds.  We didn't have juniper berries, so we omitted them, and it still came out tasting great.

Step 3: Toss the cabbage around so the salt and carraway are thoroughly mixed in.
Step 4: Pack the cabbage into air tight containers.  Since Mason jars are now being hoarded by hipsters, we had to come up with an alternative for storing and fermenting our cabbage.  The first time we made it, we packed it all into a plastic container.  Since the cabbage didn't fill the space, and you need everything packed air tight, we filled a ziploc bag with water and placed that on top of the cabbage to keep it packed down.  This time around, I'd picked up some jars from Ikea that we packed the cabbage in.

Step 5: Place your cabbage in a cool place to ferment.  I stored mine in the pantry where it will sit and ferment in peace and quiet.  The salt will draw the water out of the cabbage, and after a week or two, the cabbage will be submerged in the water where it will just hang out and get sour.  As the water is drawn out of the cabbage, make sure its still packed tightly in your container.  After about a week, we were able to combine our 2 jars of cabbage into just 1, to make sure things stayed nice and tight.Now you can put it in the fridge and use as needed.  The longer you let it sit, the more sour and delicious it will get.

Our first batch is pretty perfect right now, and we've had it for almost 2 months.  The cabbage still has some bite to it, along with the sour tang from fermenting.  Now that we've mastered sauerkraut, I want to try experimenting with pickling other veggies.  Stay tuned!

Cleaning Out the Fridge

With the holidays approaching and both of us heading out of town soon, we need to clear out the fridge and try to eat our remaining CSA goodies.  We haven't been cooking as much this past week between holiday parties, pop-up tacos (more to come on this soon), and birthday celebrations, so we have quite a bit of food to get through.  So I turned to my trusty friend, Gojee, to see what kinds of recipes he had to offer.

If you haven't heard me say it before, you'll hear it now...I LOVE this website.  You can type in what ingredients you have, things you don't like, things you crave, etc., and it will spit out a slideshow of recipes that meet your criteria.  The main veggies we need to use up are the kale and potatoes.  In those ingredients went into the "I Have" field, and out came 100 recipes.  Since we also have onion (white and green) from the CSA, and some eggs in the fridge, we settled on the Spansh tortilla with kale.

First things first...slice the potatoes.  Here's where I realized having a mandoline would really come in handy. But the box grater worked fine enough.  Once sliced, we layered them into the pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper, to get nice and crispy and brown.

While those were cooking, I sliced half of the white onion, and a few green onions.  We also deribbed the kale.  Is deribbed a word?  If not, it should be.  Once the potatoes were golden brown, we tossed in the onions to sweat them out a bit.  The kale followed shortly thereafter.

While that was all cooking, I beat the eggs...all 3 of them.  Yeah...here's where I should've checked how many eggs we had left before we started cooking.  Lesson learned.  Once the kale was wilted down, we dumped in our eggs, trying to distribute them throughout the big pan.  It only took a few minutes for them to cook up, and we were ready to eat.

To top it off, we threw a dollop of chipotle sour cream on top.  This was leftover from last week's sweet potato latkes.

And since I had a couple oranges, we decided to make a little orange crush cocktail.  I flexed my muscles a bit and squeezed the juice from the 2 oranges.

To that, we added some Aperol, vodka, and fresh mint.

If you like cocktails, and don't have stainless steel straws, you need to get some.  Thank you, Tiffany, for sending me some.  They get so icy cold in your drink, and just enhance your cocktail sipping experience.  Although we were lacking about 4 eggs, it was still a tasty, filling meal.

Taylor Charles Steak & Ice

Despite DC long being home to transplants from all over this great nation, it has been lacking legit options when it comes to regional cuisines until recently.  In a city that has an abundance of gastronomical delights from Ethiopia, there has been lament that until recently there was no where to go for a "real" slice of NY pie or a passable pastrami on rye.  Well, I think it is time to scratch another revered regional treat off the list.  I'm talking about the Philly Cheesesteak!

Taylor Charles Steak & Ice is a welcome addition to the thriving H Street/Atlas District from the same guys who brought us one of my personal favorites, Taylor Gourmet.  So does this new spot do for the cheesesteak what the original did for the Italian Style Hoagie?  The answer is a resounding yes--this is the  biggest endorsement of the cheesesteak since Boyz II Men.  I was really pleased with the balance they offered with traditional basic cheesesteaks and delicious new specialty takes on the classic.  For those of you individualists, you can also build yourself a custom sandwich (which is nice if you are like me and you opt for provolone instead of whiz).

While I usually try a new place out for the first time I try and stick with the original, however in this case I went with a specialty sandwich.  I had the Spinach, featuring thinly sliced Rib-eye (a la Pat's), garlicky spinach, grilled onions, provolone.  To top it off, I added some banana peppers from the condiment bar. It was absolutely the genuine article.  The steak was delicious, seasoned perfectly, and the bread was nice and gooey on the inside, but retained it's crusty texture.  My only issue is it could've used a little more cheese.  Kara had the Broccoli Rabe cheesesteak with rib-eye steak, grilled onions, provolone, and of course the broccoli rabe.  It doesn't end with the namesake steaks.  The other options on the menu looked delicious too.  We also split an order of Charles' Balls which are zucchini fritters spiced up, deep fried and paired with a house-made lemon aioli.  They had big taste and an awesome texture and I'm sure I won't be alone in craving them like I already do the risotto balls at Taylor Gourmet.  

The best part is they are open late night on the weekends.  Honestly, what more could you want to soak up a night out on H Street than some fresh, hot, cheesy, meaty, goodness? 

*Pictures were taken from The Washington Post and Yelp, respectively

The Pig

What more can be said about this awesome magical creature?  But I'm not here to talk about the animal itself.  Instead, I'm going to talk about the restaurant, The Pig.

We finally made it there last Saturday for dinner, and it was everything a pork lover could ask for.  Every dish, minus a select few, contain some form of pig.  Neither of us are the best decision makers when it comes to food, so it took us a while to pick and choose our plates. But while we mulled over the menu and debated our options, we partook in some drink selections.  The pig has a small but very good beer selection, and some pretty creative and tasty mixed drinks.  I opted for, The Squealer, a lively mix of green mountain vodka, meyer lemon cordial, mint, and topped off with a little seltzer.

What better way to start a meal then with charcuterie?  Since it was just the 2 of us, we opted for the Little Pig...a selection of 3 cured meats, house-made pickles, condiments, and grilled breads.  The meats were soppressatta, smoked ham, and capicola.  I'm not a huge fan of ham, but this one was nice and smoky.  There were 2 condiments on the board; a spicy mustard and an herb based sauce.  The herb sauce was so basil-y and fresh tasting...I almost starting eating it by the spoonful.  The pickles and olives were nice, tangy compliments to the meats.  I really liked the pickled beets because they weren't overly pickled.  They still had a lot of crunch, and their sweet beet flavor.

Next were the crispy pig ears atop arugula and caramelized onions.

The marrow vinaigrette was really tasty, but I think the ears were sliced a little thick, so they weren't as crispy as I would've liked.  Some of them were a but tough to cut threw and chew.  If you want some crispy pig ears, I'd recommend trekking out to Frederick for the crispy pig ear salad at Family Meal.  Its certainly worth the drive.

Anyway...back to The Pig.  The wild boar ragu was delicious, and the boar spoonbread with mushrooms and truffles...I don't even have the words for it.

     

The spoonbread was my favorite dish of the night.  It was perfectly crusty and savory and salty, and so rich.  I'm salivating just thinking about it.  Justin's favorite was the porchetta.

And this was my first foray into eating brains.  Yep...there were brains rolled into that porchetta.  It was pretty tasty, and the hazelnuts gave it a nice crunch.  Plus, how can you go wrong with a dish covered in hog gravy?  And because we needed a few more veggies, we went with the special of the night: roasted brussels sprouts in a spicy peanut sauce.  The brussel sprouts were perfectly charred, and still had some bite to them.  And the peanut sauce with Thai chilis was a nice contrast to the rest of our meal.

Our bellies were way too full to try any of the desserts, though it was very tempting.  I'm anxious to go back and try some of the other plates.  Its a great, rustic and casual place for everything swine, and we will certainly go back for more of that magical creature!

*Pictures were taken from Yelp.  

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!