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Pork_Fail.zip (7.29 MB)

Beautiful spring day on Saturday and Lori had fixings for tacos, but we needed a base ingredient. Thought about Shrimp (old standby), Beef (too frozen), then thought maybe a pulled pork would be a nice switch. Ideally wanted to fire up the new smokey mountain smoker that had just arrived, but it was 4 o'clock by the time we got home and there just wasn't enough time. Then i remembered a boiled/pulled pork More Please had made for New Years Eve that i LOVED, and thought i'd try that. MP was good enough to post her recipe for me, and i got to work.  I'm not good at following recipes, but i thought i had the gist of it.... here's what i did:

• Cut up pork shoulder into 2 inch segments
• Boiled it in 4-ish quarts of water with 6 cloves garlic, half red onion, and a smallish poblano for 2.5 hours
• Removed the pork, and it shredded easily (though it was surprisingly dry... guess all the fat/oil was left in the broth)

So i had shredded pork with not a tremendous amount of flavor. Anticipating this, i thought I'd make a tomatillo dressing. To do this i:

• coated 4 tomatillos, half red onion, poblano, and jalapeno in some oil and roasted for 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven
• then blended in a food processor, and added the juice from one lime, salt, and pepper

I added about a quarter cup of this tomatillo dressing to the pork, and stirred around. 

Bummer. 

Total disappointment. I think my jalapeno was a dud, but still it was just totally lacking in flavor. I should have added a ton of cilantro. or maybe another lime. Or really, I should have smoked that pork shoulder. and this is where I realize I'm a pork snob. I need fire to enjoy pork. And now i have sooooo much pork leftover. The plan is to make Lori's Mexican Lasagna with it substituted for the beef... that should be good because there's a ton of seasoning to that dish so all will hopefully not be lost.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, i left the broth out for 24 hrs before i remembered to save it. So tossed that down the drain too. Arrrg! 

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Fish_Sandwich.zip (11.99 MB)

Inspired by an amazing display of Pacific Halibut at Foragers and my new How To Cook Everything iPhone app, i made some fish sandwiches tonight. The fish was amazing... in the end kinda disappointed i added so much stuff to it because it was so fresh and delicious totally on its own. Nonetheless, this is a decent fish sandwich. I think i've liked my take on Mary's Fish Camp Cod sandwich more than this, but this was mad easy.Here's what i did:

• Oiled a halibut filet and added salt and pepper.
• Grilled this over high heat for about 10 minutes (7 minutes skin side down, 3 minutes flesh side down)
• Grill-toasted ciabatta rolls for 2-3 minutes
• Made a mayo dressing consisting of Mayo, Lime Juice, Chili Powder, S&P (look for it in HTCE)
• Made some lime-pickeled red onion slices (juice of 1 lime and a bunch of thinly sliced red onion, soaked for an hour or more)
• Layered the sandwich first with a heavy tablespoon of the mayo mixture
• Then a hot-house heirloom tomato (totally delicious)
• Then the fish
• Then some lime-pickled red onions
• Then some spinach leaves (from Forager's farm up in Canaan, NY)
• and finally a little more of the mayo. 

This was tasty, but not totally amazing. Which is one of my issues with Bittman. I'm totally obsessed with his recipes, blogs, videos, etc... but so many times I'm wishing for a bit more complex flavor. That said, i love how he explains the "why" of it all, and encourages you to noodle with it. Oddly enough, in this instance the fish was so amazing with just salt and pepper, I was left wishing i just ate it solo with maybe a little spinach on the side. Come to think of it, I ate dinner about 2 hours ago and there's another half pound of cooked fish in the fridge. What time is second dinner time again? Mmmmmm....

This is a fun way to have an old classic baked potato, and made me realize that one person eating an entire baked potato is really way too much food.

I started by cutting a thin slice off of two (long) sides of one potato, in effort to remove some skin and make a good grilling surface. I then cut the potato in half lengthwise, parallel to the cuts I had just made. This yields two thick potato slices with exposed flesh on both sides, and a ring of skin around each slice. I then cooked these in about 2 inches of water in a soft boil (med high flame), for about 10minutes untill a bit soft, though not entirely cooked:

I carefully removed each slice and drained off any liquid. Coated each with a couple drips of olive oil and coated with salt and pepper:

I grilled these flesh side down over a medium to hot fire (scraped and oiled grate of course!) for about 10 minutes total, 5 minutes per side, with a 2-3 minute 45 degree rotation for some grill marks. Here they are coming off the grill:

I served them with some classic toppings of sour cream, bacon, and fresh chives from the garden. 

Tasted exactly like you'd think it would. I didn't do this, but as I write it down it would have been amazing with a drizzle of malt vinegar. Next time! 

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Poached_Kinderhook_Farm_Eggs.zip (9.08 MB)

When lori, the boys, and I went to Kinderhook Farm last week, we picked up a dozen eggs and i was very excited to make some poached eggs. They are so easy to make, but I struggled for years with all these contraptions from catalogs hawking useless crap. Then a couple years ago i watched a Jacque Pepin show on PBS which was dedicated to making eggs of just about every kind. And I've adopted his poached egg process for myself ever since. 

Bring 2 inches of water to a soft boil in a sauté pan (medium/medium high heat). Add a tablespoon white vinegar and mix around. Crack an egg over a bowl (but keep the egg in the shell), and softly open the shell over the boiling water to ease it in. I then make a note of the clock as I want to cook this for 3 minutes. When i'm cooking multiple eggs, I always start at "12 O'Clock" and move clockwise around so i remember in which order to take them out). At about 2.5 minutes i use a soup spoon to gently tip each egg over to seal in the yolk. I then remove each egg with a slotted spoon. Perfect, every time.

The eggs from Kinderhook were very good. Much bigger yolks than I'm used to, which is the best part of eating a poached egg over some toast. We had ours with some salt and pepper and fresh chives. And of course bacon... i've gone meat-free for breakfast during the week for a few months now and am loving it, but on the weekends I want some good old country bacon. You can't take bacon out of the man. Or something like that. Anyway, great breakfast!

I bought this the other day because I had a recipe that said to "break out the good stuff" and I'd never actually tried anything beyond a decent quality olive oil. I've always heard of people raving about olive oil, and I've never really thought it was much more than a vehicle for cooking. I prefer it to most other oils which have too much of a canned or processed taste to me, but I rarely do anything with it aside from sauteeing or coating something to roast or grill. The taste is fine, but I've never really liked just dipping into it solo.

That has now changed. This olive oil from France was really amazing. Almost minty, or somehow extra fresh in some way. Really delicious. It would be amazing drizzled on just about anything, from brocolli, to pizza, to fresh tomato, to my finger. It kind of explodes in your mouth. It was expensive which is it's single bummer quality, but i figure I'll use it only periodically. Or maybe every night. That's some damn fine olive oil.

We stopped by Kinderhook Farm last weekend to see what they were about, and had a leisurely personal tour from Lee and Georgia (see pic). Charlie loved the baby lambs who were jumping all over him and "Oriole" the junk food cat in the barn; Jack enjoyed giving high fives to everyone (see same pic); Lori thought the whole place was beautiful (me too); and I walked away eager to grill the porterhouse steak we picked up.

First thing Lee asked me was if I'd cooked grass-fed beef before. Now I knew that I had, and after staring at him blankly for a minute, I recalled some specifically from last summer... But usually it's been roasts, briskets, ribs, that type of slow cooked meat and not a beautiful porterhouse. We did get a few from Sun "something" farm at our local Windsor Terrace farmers market... but honestly i couldn't remember how well they turned out. Anyway, Lee's point was to not overcook, and pay close attention to it on the grill. 

Which got me researching online for methods. First thing I learned: everyone has their thoughts on this. The consistant thread was it's leaner and therefore requires a slight adjustment to grilling approach. People mostly pointed to there being less/different fat involved, with solutions ranging from adding more moisture through a marinade or cooking over lower heat, etc.

Lower heat was not appealing to me because I love that crisp sear I can only get from high heat. And marinating such a beautiful cut like this seemed sacrilegious. I mean look at this:  

So, i opted for a very simple preparation. Above you'll see a 1.4lb porterhouse, about an inch and a half thick, coated in a tablespoon of incredible olive oil, half a tablespoon of barely-cracked sea salt, and half a tablespoon of coarsely cracked black pepper. I heated the gas grill (in brooklyn for this meal) as hot hot hot as possible and included a foil tin mixed full of Miller High Life (the champagne of beers) for moisture, and a shot or so of Sherry mixed in for flavor on the grill. I left this to get all steamy and hot, then scraped the grates clean, oiled 'em up, and tossed on the porterhouse. Here it is on the fire... (it got late... why don't iphone's have flashes yet?) 

I kept one side of the grill as hot as possible, and cooked the steak there for 6 minutes per side, rotating it 45 degrees after 3 minutes to get those nice grill marks (funny because i'm ultimately going to slice this steak, so I'm doing this purely for my own cooking satisfaction when i take it off the grill). I watched this thing like a hawk making sure there were no significant flare-ups, and kept testing the firmness to confirm i wasn't overcooking. After that 12 minutes passed, i tested quickly with a thermometer and we were at 120, but I wanted to get to 140/145. I generally hate using a thermometer because i feel like a cooking geek ala Cooks Illustrated, but in this case i really didn't want to overcook. So i moved to the low heat side of the grill, and kept it there for another 6 minutes or so. Having done this now, I think i get it and can continue my cowboy admiration of testing doneness by touch. Here it is just coming of the grill:

After letting it rest under some foil for 5-10 minutes, i separated the meat from the bone: 

And sliced it up for serving; "strip" on the right, "tenderloin" on the left: 

While the steak was resting, I grilled up an oiled and salted portobello for about 5 mintes. Here it is after grilled, sliced up: 

I chopped up the portobello into bite size pieces, and tossed it with 1 tablespoon each of Sherry, melted butter, and parsley, with salt and pepper to taste. Here is that mixture in a bowl:

I then plated the steak, and tossed on the portobello mixture on top with a little of the juice from the butter/sherry mix... but not a lot. I really wanted to taste the beef and sherry can be a bit overpowering. I served with a grilled "baked" potato (complete with chives from the garden, a little crumbled bacon and some sour cream), and simple steamed broccoli with parmesan. Here are a couple shots of our plates: 

The steak was delicious. Meaty, tender, crispy exterior. I usually prefer a strip to a tenderloin, but this tenderloin was really phenmomoal. Strip was great as well, but the tenderloin had a really significant flavor that I feel is usually completely missing in the beef we typically purchase. I loved the mushrooms as well, though next time would maybe try oyster mushrooms for a little more contrast. The portobello is so "meaty" in itself, that it was maybe a bit too close to the actual meat on the plate. 

I was very pleased overall. I think a lot of the pleasure came from knowing exactly where the meat came from, meeting the people who raised the cow, and the experience of touring Kinderhook Farm. Though it was a really really great tasting meal, so that couldn't have been the only reason. Indeed it was a great piece of beef, and I was happy with my choice in preparation. Also good to see Lori and I sharing this steak compared to my typical 1+ pound strip or rib steak per person. That's just too much food... this was perfect.