Tag: CSA

Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée

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This was one of the first desserts that I learned to make in Paris. It’s quick, easy, elegant, and tastes better than anything you have ever tried in a restaurant.

The recipe will fill four 4.5 ounce ramekins.

Ingredients:

1 cup of whole milk

1 cup of heavy cream

1 whole vanilla bean

4 egg yolks

1/4 of white sugar

Enough butter to butter the ramekins

1/4 cup of light brown sugar

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 325°.

2. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise. Using a paring knife, scrape the vanilla beans from each half of the pod. Here is a good video to show you how if you haven’t done this before.

2. Heat the milk, the cream, the vanilla beans, and the vanilla pod halves over medium-low heat in a medium saucepan until the mixture just begins to boil. Turn off the heat and let the vanilla bean infuse the milk and cream mixture for anywhere between 10-30 minutes.

3. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the white sugar together until the mixture is pale and creamy, about 30 seconds. Remove the vanilla bean pod halves from the milk and cream mixture. Now you need to temper the egg yolks. This is important because if you add all the hot liquid to the egg yolks at the same time, you will be on you way to making scrambled eggs.

To temper, add a spoonful of the warm milk-cream mixture to the eggs. Stir quickly to incorporate the liquid into the egg and sugar mixture. Continue to add the liquid a little bit at a time, whisking everything until the mixture has become pale yellow and slightly foamy.

5. Carefully divide and pour the mixture into the buttered ramekins. Gently set the filled ramekins in a baking dish. Fill the dish with water until the water level comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake the crèmes in the oven for about 45 minutes. The centers should be jiggly, but not watery.

6. Remove the crèmes from the oven and cool them on the countertop for about 10 minutes before chilling them the refrigerator for about 3 hours.

7. Before serving, heat your broiler element. Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the top of each crème. Broil the crèmes under the broiler until the brown sugar has become hard and crackly. Serve immediately.

Macaroni and Cheese with Sliced Hot Dogs

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Is it? Could it possible be?

Oh, yes. It’s macaroni and cheese. With hot dogs.

Don’t be a food snob. You know you want it.

Ingredients:

8 ounces of dry pasta

3 tablespoons of butter, plus 1 tablespoon

1/4 cup of flour

2 cups of milk

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

8 ounces of grated cheese (I used raw milk cheddar)

4 hot dogs, sliced into 1/4-inch wide coins (I used beef hot dogs from my meat CSA)

1/2 cup of breadcrumbs

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°.

2. Prepare the pasta according to directions, but drain the pasta just right before it’s al dente.

3. Now, while your pasta is boiling, prepare the béchamel. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat in a medium saucepan. Add the flour and stir them both together to make a roux. Continue to heat the roux until the flour starts to just brown. Add the milk a little bit at a time, stirring constantly as you add it. It will seize up when you add the first little bit of liquid, but will relax the more you stir it. Add the nutmeg after you have added all 2 cups of milk. Continue to stir and stir and stir. Don’t worry about adjusting the seasoning; the cheese and hot dogs should add enough sodium. Once the béchamel has thickened to a nice, smooth white sauce, turn off the heat and move the saucepan off of the burner.

4. Combine the pasta, the cheese, the sauce, and the hot dogs in a large bowl. Pour the mixture into a good-sized baking dish.

5. Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter and mix it with the breadcrumbs. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly over the top of the macaroni and cheese. Bake for 30-35 minutes until brown and bubbly. Serve with a good, heaping side of Midwestern nostalgia.

Cottage Pie (also known as Shepherd’s Pie with Beef)

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I like mashed potatoes on top of just about anything.

This dish is one of those great things that you can play around with, improvising with whatever you have around the house. Parsnips? Sure, throw them in. How about a turnip? Sounds good. Lamb? Change “cottage” to “shepherd” and you’re good to go. Beef? Beef is better than okay! Tomato paste? Some fresh chopped tomato. I say add whatever makes you feel warm and happy.

Just imagine whatever you would like to eat in your cottage if you had one (you might).

Ingredients:

3 medium Russet potatoes, cut into large dice

1 heaping tablespoon of kosher salt

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 to 1 cup of milk

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 large carrots or 3 medium carrots, diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 pound of grass-fed, lean ground beef

1 1/2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons of fresh rosemary, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of veal or beef stock (you could also use milk or chicken stock)

1/2 cup of frozen green peas

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°.

2. Put the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover them with water. Add the salt. Bring the water to a boil and cook the potatoes until they are tender. You will know that they are ready when you can crush a potato piece easily against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Drain the potatoes. In the same pan, mash the potatoes with the butter. Add the milk a 1/4 cup at a time until you get the right consistency. You don’t want the potatoes to be dry, but you don’t want them soupy either. Aim for a texture that is loose enough to spoon on top of your beef filling, but not so loose that the potatoes add a lot of excess water to your pie.

3. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and carrots. You want to cook the onions until they are translucent and are just beginning to brown. At that point, add the minced garlic to the carrots and onion. Cook the garlic for about a minute until it is fragrant but not burning. Add the ground beef to the pan. Breaking up bigger chunks of ground beef with your wooden spoon, cook the beef until there is no longer any visible pink. Sprinkle the beef with the Worcestershire sauce and the rosemary. Cook everything for another minute or two. Sprinkle the beef with flour. Stir again and cook for a few more minutes to brown the flour. Add the stock to the pan and stir to combine everything. The sauce should begin to thicken. When the sauce has gotten to the point that you think it is ready (the mixture should be held together by a nice, thick sauce) , distribute the peas over the top of the beef and continue to cook everything together for about another minute before turning off the heat.

4. Spread the meat mixture over the bottom of a casserole dish. Spoon the mashed potatoes on top of the meat. You can even use a fork to rough up the surface if you like. Bake the casserole uncovered in the oven for 25 minutes. The potatoes will have just started to brown. Wait at least 15 minutes before serving.

NY Strip Steak, ATK-Style

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How do you cook a nice, thick steak in a pan? You sear it, right? On high heat to get that nice browned crust. Then you move it to a hot, hot oven to finish. “Sear and blast,” goes the standard mantra.

But what if you did the reverse? In pursuit of the perfectly cooked, medium-rare steak without that darned grayish band of overcooked protein ringing the outer edge of the meat, those pesky perfectionists at Cook’s Illustrated did precisely that: they started the steaks in a reasonably cool oven, and then moved them to a hot pan to sear.

The result? Very. Evenly. Cooked. Steak.

Of course, under the weight of all their test kitchen trials, you might be persuaded that this is the right way, nay the only way to cook your meat.

But it’s not.

It is fun to try it, though.

Ingredients:

2 New York strip steaks, at least 1-inch thick

Kosher salt

1 teaspoon olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon

Freshly ground black pepper

2 nice pats of butter

Special equipment:

1 half-size heavy-duty sheet pan

1 wire rack to fit the half-size, heavy-duty sheet pan

1 leave-in meat thermometer

How to prepare:

1. In order for this method to work, your steaks should be about room temperature before cooking. Be sure to take your steaks out of the fridge, or from wherever you are storing them, ahead of time.

2. Preheat the oven to 275°.

3. Using paper towels, thoroughly pat your room-temperature steaks dry. Season both sides liberally with kosher salt and rub the olive oil all over them.

4. Position the steaks on the wire rack that you have set in the sheet pan. Insert the meat thermometer probe into the center of one of the steaks. You will want the tip of the probe to be parallel to the steak, so the probe should go in the side of the steak instead of sticking straight up. Make sure not to position the probe tip too close to the wire rack or to the top of the steak. Set the timer to go off at 100°.

5. When the timer goes off, remove the steaks from the oven. Remove the probe. Heat the remaining olive oil over medium-high heat until the pan is nice and hot, and oil is not quite smoking. Sear the steaks on both sides. You should remove them from the pan when they reach an internal temperature of 125° for rare, or 130° for medium rare. While the steaks are resting, the internal temperature should continue to rise about 5 degrees.

If you feel like this is a bit fussy (those America’s Test Kitchen folks are really fussy!), you can just sear your steaks for about a minute or two per side and call it a night.

6. Place a nice pat of butter and a good grind of black pepper on each steak before serving. Serve and smile.

Hamburger, Grape Tomato, and Red Onion Pizza

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I got this idea from Martha Stewart and it has become one of my favorite things to make with ground beef from our CSA. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s delicious. On the table in less than 20 minutes too.

Now that’s what I call good fast food!

Ingredients:

Pizza dough, about 1 pound of dough will make two 12-inch pizzas, or one really big pizza

Marinara sauce

Low-moisture mozzarella cheese or sliced provolone

1/2 pound of grass-fed, very lean ground beef

12-14 grape tomatoes, halved

1/2 a small red onion, thinly sliced into rings

Maldon salt

Special equipment:

A large baking sheet

Parchment paper

How to prepare:

1. Preheat the oven to 450°.

2. You can easily make your own pizza dough, but I rarely ever do it anymore since I can buy reasonably good, organic frozen dough at the market. In a hurry, I have also been known to run down to the nearest slice joint and buy their dough. Most pizzerias will sell it to you, you just have to ask.

I know. Gasp! I don’t make it from scratch? No. On special occasions, maybe. But if I’m tired and hungry, no. And that’s okay!

Once your dough ball is made, defrosted, or acquired, you need to stretch it out. Start by flattening your dough ball into a disk. By flouring both sides, you avoid having to flour your countertop. Any hard surface will do to stretch out the dough as long as it is flat, clean, and dry. Using your fingertips, start pushing down on the dough, roughly making the border that will become your crust. Now begin using the palm of your hand to pull the dough away from you and away from its center while turning it. At this point, you can try tossing it up in the air. But every time I try doing that, I end up looking like a fool with dough on the floor. Instead, you can position your knuckles under the dough and start stretching it out off of your flat surface. This super helpful video will give you a better idea what to do (contrary to the video, you don’t actually need a marble or stainless steel surface. And just flour is okay if you have no semolina lying around).

2. Now that your dough is nice and stretched out, position it on your parchment paper- lined baking sheet. Egads! No pizza stone? No tiles or bricks wrapped in aluminum foil lining your oven to achieve optimal heat?

No. When I can afford a real, wood-burning Neapolitan oven outside my villa then I will do things like they do in the old country.

3. Spread your marinara sauce around your stretched out dough. I buy this too. I really like the sauces from Sauces n’ Love. They’re wonderful. The pizza sauce is good. Very good.

4. Top the pizza with either the mozzarella or the provolone. I like the flavor of the provolone better with the ground beef, but I love the melty creaminess of mozzarella. Try one, or the other, or both. Maybe at the same time.

5. Scatter the onion rings, halved tomatoes, and RAW ground beef over the pizza.

6. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, longer if you want a more browned crust. I kind of prioritize though: absent the hardware and capability to get a really excellent crust, I aim for just really excellently cooked beef. Shower your finished pie with Maldon salt, slice, and serve.

Juicy Skillet Pork Chops

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I’m on the fence about Cook’s Illustrated, the cooking magazine published by America’s Test Kitchen. On the one hand, their recipes work. They really work. Chris Kimball and his team of test cooks try just about every technique in and out of the book to achieve perfection.

Which they do . . . but on the other hand, they can also saddle the average home cook with a severe case of insecurity if he or she decides to cook something a different way.

However, they do come up with really ingenious ideas about how to get consistent and reliable results: flaky pastry? use vodka not water! perfectly cooked steaks with no gray ring of over-cooked protein? start them in the oven and then sear them in a hot pan!

Despite my reluctance to say that there is one and only one way to cook something and make it delicious, sometimes by doing it their way, you really learn and eat something wonderful.

When we got some nice thick-cut pork chops in our CSA share, I immediately thought that the best way to make their super-porky flavor shine would be to do it the Cook’s Illustrated way.

This is not really a recipe, but technique:

Start with your chops. You want wonderful, natural pork chops — not enhanced chops, which are pre-brined. You want them thick and meaty too, between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch thick. Bone-in, of course. You want to make two perpendicular slits in the fatty edge of each chop. This will prevent your pork chops from curling up as they cook. Rub them on both sides with some nice olive oil. Cook’s Illustrated recommends you sprinkle some sugar on both sides along with your seasoning, but I’ve forgotten sometimes and had it still turn out fine.

If you have an electric hob, turn it on now to medium heat, but don’t put the pan on the burner just yet. You don’t need to do this if you have a gas range.

You want to start them in a cold pan. That’s right. A cold pan. Press the chops down in the pan to make sure that the whole underside of the chop is in contact with its surface.

Now, put the pan on the burner. Turn the heat on to medium. Leave them alone and cook them until they are lightly browned, about 4-9 minutes depending on the thickness of your pork chops. Doing it this way doesn’t get the nice brown crust that starting pork chops off in a hot pan does, but you do get amazingly juicy and evenly-cooked meat. Be sure to listen for gentle sizzling. If your pork chops aren’t gently sizzling, your heat is too low.

Flip your chops over. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. The second side will not be as brown as the first. You want to cook your chop until the internal temperature registers 140° — perfectly safe, and perfectly pinkish. Start checking the temperature after 2 minutes, or if you have one of those leave-in thermometers, insert it into the center of the chop and set the timer to go off at 140°.

Remove the pork chops from the pan and let rest for 5 minutes, just enough time to make a quick pan sauce.

Oven-Roasted Baby Back Ribs

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Finger-lickin' good.
It is official: my mother is a kitchen saboteur.

For Valentine’s Day this year, I decided to toss some ribs in the oven and save my boyfriend and myself from a night out. I was thinking something fun to eat. Finger food. Something fast and easy.

I thought of my mom’s fantastic oven-roasted baby back ribs.

When I asked her for the recipe, she casually tossed out something more like a manner than a method with what I realize now to be a completely non-realistic cooking time.

“35 minutes? For real?”

I hooted with joy. Thirty five minutes of roasting meant that I could leave off dinner until the last minute! I could dawdle around the supermarket playing with squeeze bottles of agave syrup and Dijonnaise without feeling the pressure to get going and get home!

So I went about my day, happy and relaxed. Then my mother called somewhere around the dairy section to say that it was actually about 35 minutes . . . after the first hour.

First hour? What first hour! Am I hard of hearing? Does my cellular service suck?

No, I can hear fine. The service is not terrific, but the call was crystal.

My mother had lied. Again!

And again, it turns out, as she had to call back a second time to say that it was actually more like 35 minutes to an hour after the first hour.

Well, mine ended up taking about one hour and 40 minutes. I imagine that that can be a little less or more depending on thick your racks of ribs are.

So here is a great, super easy recipe for juicy, falling-off-the-bone ribs done in your oven.

Seriously, no lie.

Ingredients:

1 or 2 racks of baby back pork ribs

1/3 of a cup of dark brown sugar per rack of ribs

1 heaping tablespoon of steak seasoning or rib rub (I like one with some smoke) per rack of ribs

Special equipment:

One half-size sheet pan

One wire rack to fit the sheet pan

How to prepare:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 375°.

2. The secret to melt-in-your mouth tender ribs? You have to remove the membrane on the back of the pork ribs. It’s super easy to do and allows your ribs to cook nice and flat, without curling up. It also makes them much nicer to eat. Flip the ribs bone-side up. Using the flat handle of a spoon or a butter knife, loosen the membrane on one end of the rack of ribs. Grasp the loosened end with a paper towel and pull the membrane slowly in the direction of the opposite end. It will probably come off in one piece but if not, you can just grab the torn end and continue. To help visualize, here is a pretty great Youtube how-to clip from BBQTalk.

3. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and seasoning with your fingers. After you have dried off your rack of ribs with paper towels, rub the brown sugar-seasoning mix into both sides of the rack. Lay the rib(s) out on the wire rack.

4. Set the racks of ribs in the oven. Carefully pour about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of water into the bottom of the sheet pan. The water should not touch the bottom of the wire rack. Roast the ribs in the oven at 375° for one hour. Lower the temperature to 350° and continue to roast until the ribs are tender and buttery, about 40 minutes to an hour longer depending on the thickness of your rack of ribs. Remove carefully from the oven. Let the ribs rest for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Minute Steak Sandwiches with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Mozzerella

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Minute steak (also known as cube steak) is a thin cut of steak that has been pounded or scored by either a mallet or an electric tenderizer. It cooks pretty quickly (hence the name), and only requires about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes per side to be medium rare.

This sandwich is another terrific suggestion from Tina at High Point Farms! It’s very tasty, very yummy, and very satisfying.

Ingredients:

4 submarine or hoagie rolls

2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons of butter, plus one tablespoon

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 minute steaks

Salt and pepper

8 ounces of smoked mozzerella, thinly sliced

Dijon mustard

How to prepare:

1. Pat the minute steaks dry with paper towels and generously season both sides with salt and pepper.

2. In a large cast-iron pan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter with the olive oil over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, add the onions. Sauté the onions until they are soft and caramelized, about 10 minutes. Adjust the seasoning. Remove the onions from the pan and set them aside.

3. Add the steaks to the same pan. There should be enough oil/butter left in the pan, but if not, add a little bit more and wait for it come up to temperature before cooking the steaks. Cook the steaks for about 1 1/2 – 2 minutes per side for medium-rare. Remove the steaks to a plate and let them rest while you toast the bread.

4. Split the submarine rolls and butter each half with the remaining tablespoon of butter. Toast them butter-side up under the broiler until they are golden brown.

5. Slice the minute steaks against the grain into 1/2 inch-wide strips. Divide the onions, steak, and sliced mozzerella into 4 even portions. To assemble, smear the cut-side of each half with Dijon mustard. Arrange the bottom halves of each roll in a single layer on a cookie-sheet. Mound the steak on top of the caramelized onions, and cover everything with slices of smoked mozzerella. Slide the bottom halves under the broiler and cook until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Top with the top-half of the roll and serve immediately.

Oven-Roasted Rabbit with Mustard Sauce

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2011.

The Chinese Lunar Calendar has this year marked at The Year of the Rabbit. I do love rabbits (cute and delicious) and like the idea of marking the occasion with a very Burgundian kind of dish, a nice marriage of my French culinary inclinations and my family heritage.

If you have never butchered a rabbit before, I urge you to get yourself a whole one and give it a go. You can watch a good how-to video featuring Marlow and Sons‘s Sean Rembold, or you can follow this pretty good step-by-step from Saveur here.

Or you can have your butcher do it. That’s probably the easiest thing.

Or, you can substitute a nice chicken for the rabbit. Chicken goes marvelously well with this sauce too.

The sauce is amazing. Really, really great. Especially if you get yourself some very excellent pancetta, sliced very thinly (I love La Quercia). If you roast or boil some potatoes to sop up the extra creaminess, you won’t regret it.

This recipe I think originally came from Chez Panisse. You have a little flexibility with the proportions depending on how mustardy you want it.

Ingredients:

One whole rabbit or chicken cut into pieces

Between 3/4 to 1 cup of crème fraîche

Between 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of good quality Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme

1 tablespoon of chopped fresh sage

3 ounces of thinly sliced pancetta, cut into thin strips

4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

About a cup of chicken stock or white wine

About 1/2 cup of heavy cream

Salt and pepper

How to prepare:

1. In a large bowl, cover the rabbit or chicken with all of the ingredients except for the chicken stock or white wine, and the heavy cream. Using your hands, mix everything together, making sure that all of the rabbit or chicken pieces are evenly coated. Cover the bowl and let everything sit at room temperature for about an hour, or overnight in the refrigerator.

2. Preheat your oven to 350°. After the rabbit or chicken has marinated for about an hour, spread the pieces out in a single layer on the bottom of a large cast-iron pan. Top the pieces with any remaining marinade. Roast the rabbit or chicken in the oven until they are cooked through, about 45 minutes.* If your rabbit or chicken is small, you might want to check it a little earlier.

3. Transfer the cooked rabbit or chicken pieces to a serving dish while you finish the sauce. Put the cast-iron pan on the stove over medium to medium-high heat. Add the chicken stock or white wine. Using a wooden spoon or a flat whisk, incorporate the added liquid to the sauce and pan juices. Add the heavy cream. Lower the heat so that the sauce is at a good simmer and reduce the sauce until it is thick and creamy. Adjust the seasoning* and pour it over the rabbit and chicken pieces. Serve immediately.

Notes:

If the rabbit or chicken appears to be drying out in the cooking, add some stock or white wine to the pan.

As the mustard and pancetta add a good amount of salt themselves, adjust the seasoning at the end so that the dish doesn’t end up over-salted.

British-Style Roast Potatoes for Roast Chicken Dinner

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I’ve already expounded at length on this blog about how to roast a chicken, but some time must be devoted to that other crucial element to a roast chicken dinner: the potatoes.

Again, this is not a recipe per se, but more like a technique. Just like there are more ways to roast a chicken than I can shake a stick at — and I can shake one at a whole lot of them — there are also an almost infinite number of ways to roast a potato.

This is a very British way of roasting potatoes. I encountered many a spud like this on the other side of the pond, but never actually mastered the technique until returning to the States for good. In fact, I probably would have gone on roasting potatoes the good ol’ French way if not for Gwyneth Paltrow.

There! I said it! I admit it! I love like Gwyneth! Even her often-times derided e-newsletter GOOP! True, sometimes I must roll my eyes when I get emails from her about her latest colonic cleanse, or her holiday gift picks which include links for an $825 bag, but she sends along some really exquisite little gems of advice too.

Like that fantastic local haunt in Barcelona recommended to my boyfriend and me by a fellow food-lover in a crowded bar. Never saw it nor heard about it in any guidebook, until after I got home and read about it in Goop.

Her roast chicken and potatoes recipe is one of these great tips too.

Roast chicken aside, the trick to the potatoes? Peel them. If they are large, cut them into big chunks. Parboil them in salted water for exactly 8 minutes, any longer and they will fall apart. Drain the water from the pot. Once the water is drained, put the lid on and shake the pot around really well. You want to bash those taters up. When you remove the lid, you should see that the surface texture of the potatoes is rough and fluffy. Spoon them evenly around your chicken and drizzle them with olive oil. Sprinkle sea salt over them.

Pop the whole thing in the oven and roast until the chicken has an internal temperature of 165°, about 1 hour give or take 15 minutes if your oven is at 425°.

Now you have some seriously delicious potatoes to go with your excellent CSA chicken.

And as requested, here are some step-by-step photos of the prep.