Tastefully Overcaramelized

Ann says

Two weeks ago we had the first week in our new place that was somewhat…settled.  No more boxes everywhere, and no more building ikea furniture.  I was home for most of the day as I studied for the last test of school, and the weather had finally gotten cool.  Lovely and cool! So I made something slow-cooked.

This, my friends, is probably my favorite thing I’ve ever made.  Oxtails cooked low in reduced red wine for three hours and a rich, chewy farro cooked like a risotto.  Holy. Crap.

Did I eat vegetables with this meal?  Probably, but I can’t remember them.  They were ECLIPSED.

Yes, this meal takes a long time to make, but it’s so delicious and so satisfying.  Oh my.

Red Wine Braised Oxtails and Farro Risotto

Serves 2

Ingredients:
6 oxtails
1 leek
1 small onion
1 shallot
1/4 cup grapes
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon coriander
1 bottle red wine

Preheat oven to 325°F.

I made this with about 6 oxtail pieces for two people.  The original recipe called for two bottles of wine and I didn’t want to go to the store to get two  bottles of three buck chuck, so I reduced the majority of one bottle of wine, save for two glasses so Abe and I could drink some, and just reduced it in a pan on a simmer by 1/3.

While you’re doing this brown the oxtails in a big heavy pot, big enough for some veggies and the wine and extra liquid to cover.  You should be able to put this pot in the oven.  Brown the oxtails on all sides and remove them from the pot.  Now add some roughly chopped leek, shallot, onion, grapes, and crushed garlic as well as a big pinch of fennel seed and coriander.  The grapes are for a bit of sweetness to round everything off, and it doesn’t make anything taste like grapes. Use carrots if you don’t have grapes.  Salt and pepper the veggies and cook until soft.  Pop the oxtails back in, and by now your wine should be ready to go, so dump that in as well.  Cover and put the whole thing in the oven and let it go for about three hours.

During this time start working on the farro risotto.

When the oxtails are done remove them from the pot and set them aside in something that will keep them warm. Pour braising liquid through a fine sieve into a large saucepan and toss the leftovers cause they’re not really good anymore. Boil the liquid until thick and shiny and then whisk in about a tablespoon of butter.

For farro risotto:

1 cup dry farro
1/4 cup olive oil
splash of red wine
1 Tablespoon butter
either 1 shallot  or a couple Tablespoons onion or a combination
1 quart chicken broth
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Soak 1 cup farro in cold water 20 minutes and drain and rinse it. Bring 8 cups water to boil in medium saucepan. Add  few glugs (about 1/4 cup) olive oil and the farro and boil for 20 minutes. Drain in strainer. Melt 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots or onion and sauté until the onions are translucent or for about a minute. Add farro, another small splash of red wine and enough chicken broth to cover. Simmer until almost all liquid evaporates, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Continue to add the chicken broth 1 cup at a time and simmer until liquid is absorbed and farro is just tender, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes total. Stir in 1/4 cup parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper.

Scoop mounds of the farro in the middle of the low bowl and set the oxtails on top.  Pour the sauce over the top and serve.  Maybe you should have a salad too.

Filed under: Main Courses, Recipes, Side Dishes by Ann on August 24, 2009. Tagged with: beef, braising, farro, oxtails, parmesan, red wine, risoto.
1 Comment »

Abe says

Well it’s basically like Ann told it. I bought a place, a loft on the Hill, and we’ve moved in (goodbye, gorgeous roof); a multiweek undertaking whose epic scope was utterly lost on me until a week before closing. My job in the glamorous world of software has also alternated between busy and crushing. Ann graduated. The short of it is, in front of the sympathetic nerve firing squad food really wasn’t on my mind. Thankfully, I have found some pictures to show for all of it.

6/4: Pulled pork sandwich from Maximus Minimus, during a food blogger event hosted by Sugar Mountain, owners of Beecher’s and Pasta & Co. among others. (I didn’t know it was all the same people, did you?) We met some awesome fellow bloggers, of Sonja’s Kitchen, Loving Local Food, and Mary Eats, and saw Hungry Grrl again. The $5.50 sandwiches are pretty delicious, although I think I wish there was more pork fat in there.

6/7: Old School Frozen Custard. We badmouthed them but never posted our followup once we’d visited. They, too, have cones with cleverly folded tips, which I certainly approve of. It was tasty but didn’t knock our socks off. The vanilla flavor was basically a mass-market vanilla and not any trendier vanilla bean or somesuch, but I don’t consider that bad. There are times when that’s just what you feel like. Overall the focus on classic flavors and hot dogs could bring them wider appeal, but while I have seen the place busy I have yet to see long lines snaking out the door.

6/19: Our introduction to the R2 commercial food processor at Jani. We were impressed. My Cuisinart is jealous.

6/27: The aftermath of a sauces-themed dinner party, which included my first hollandaise (embarrassing, but delicious) and a truly good slow roasted pork shoulder. It was all very tasty but wasn’t cohesive. The variety of leftovers bits, though, was one for the ages.

7/10: Scallop seviche at Anchovies and Olives. The outdoor seating is beautiful, at least in July.

7/14: Bastille Day wine tasting at Licorous. Cotechino monster says, “Bonjour!” It is a fresh pork sausage that was made in-house, in this instance with currants for eyes. A week later we attended an invite-only “John and Wiley’s Counter” at the bar which was huge fun. About half the courses came with wine pairings — most excellently the other half with cocktail pairings. The word was that they’re thinking of opening the events to the public.

8/7: Sidewalk eggplant. 15th Ave. Does anyone pick and eat them? They’re totally ripe.

8/11: Ground cherries and a new camera. I know we haven’t been hiding our point-and-shoot photos very well, but I at least have been trying. The new one is an Olympus E-P1 and so far it’s great, although we’re still figuring it out (please forgive the depth of field in the mean time). Our trusty compact PowerShots will continue to prevail in many places, but I’m excited at the mere prospect of setting the aperture and using an actual macro lens. ALSO. Ground cherries are not real cherries, but are related to tomatoes and tomatillos and taste of tropical fruit. Pretty clever if I say so myself. We got them from the Broadway farmer’s market but for the life of me I can’t remember which farmer.

8/12: “Jaime’s Speakeasy”, another invitation event (no Ann this time), this time at work. The chef was previously sous chef at Restaurant Zoë, but these she days does “chef’s tables” and now “speakeasies” for lunch on Wednesdays, pretty much putting the Googleplex cafeteria to shame. Here they’re plating really, really good duck confit and cauliflower tortellini with sage brown butter and chevre.

Also you know, come to think of it I think we ordered wine at the Bastille Day event and never picked it up. Ahem.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Abe on August 23, 2009. Tagged with: appliances, ceviche, cotechino, eggplant, ground cherries, jaime mullins, licorous, maximus minimus, old school frozen custard, prosciutto, Sauces, scallop.
2 Comments »

Ann says

What happened to the last two months, I really could not accurately tell you. However I will, at this time, try.

Abe would tell me, “don’t explain why we haven’t posted.  Just post a recipe.”  But I feel too guilty; I feel too tired to just jump back in with the vim and vigor that some other, more sane person, might have.

Abe says

Pfff. The internet deserves to know. It is the will of the people.

Also I’ll get to talking more in our next post; for now Ann has made us delicious mixed drinks.

Ann says

I am 9 days away from graduating from nursing school.  Projects, research papers, clinical hours, volunteer hours, and ridiculous tests plus job searching and studying for the nursing boards has left me dazed.  On top of that, Abe and I just moved in together.  YES!  It is glorious.  I get home, he gets home, we are both home.  No packing up a change of clothes and work out shoes and remembering my hair brush anymore!  No driving/walking/bike riding back and forth!  But oh, the move.  I moved the day before the hottest Seattle day ever recorded (103 degrees) and the day after a 5 day stretch of 12 hour work days.  What the crack was I thinking.

Then, the next day, when it was 103 degrees in Seattle, I got to be here…

That’s my friend Peter, me, and Lyndsay from school. and I was on his big-ass boat in puget sound.  DAMN.  I actually got chilly.

It is my suspicion that a few people out there would like to see a recipe from us.  Perhaps some of you were thinking, “those two are flaky, inconsistent blog posters.”  You would be correct.  That is exactly what I am.  I am a nursing student, people!  What. the. crack.

Remember the last post from oh-so-long ago?  My now ex-roommate, Mara, and her boy, Ricardo, were being raw vegan.  Well, they’re not anymore, but while they were, Mara’s birthday rolled around.  And I offered to make her a birthday cake.  o_O

Abe and I sampled some raw deserts from our local market, Madison Market, aka Mad Market.  We enjoyed it thoroughly, but it was much more of a mousse than a cake and therefore needed a mold.  I toyed with the idea of pureeing a bunch of stuff and holding it together with nut flours and whatnot….but I imaged thick, dense, gooey crap.

There was the option of dehydrating.  But folks, it was like 80 degrees outside.  Hells no.  So I decided to make an ice cream layer cake with some sort of chocolaty sweet gooey crumble between the layers…something reminiscent of the Dairy Queen ice cream cake of my childhood birthday parties.

Coconut-Pineapple-Strawberry Layers.  Woo! It came out cool, sweet, very fruity, but also rich from the coconut and crumble layers.  Clean plates must mean success!

Raw-Food Sorbet Layer Cake

Ingredients:

2 lbs fresh strawberries
18 oz of the flesh and juice of coconuts
1 pineapple
1 cup honey (1/3 cup for each batch)
1/2 cup rice milk
a pinch of xanthan gun or splash of vodka for texture (if you’re being loose about it)
2 cups raw cashews
1 1/2 cups pitted dates
2/3 cup cocoa nibs
1/2 cup cocoa butter
3 Tbs honey

Start one or two days ahead to allow enough time to make the ice cream layers and keep the ice cream maker cold.

Crumble layer: 2 cups raw cashews, 1 1/2 cups pitted dates, 2/3 cup cocoa nibs, 1/2 cup cocoa butter, 3 Tbs honey.  Chop in a food processor until crumbly and sticks together when pressed.

In a 9 inch spring form pan place a piece of parchment paper on the bottom.  Oil the sides with a flavorless vegetable oil.  Press 1/3 of the crumble mixture as a crust into the bottom of the pan.

Cocount layer- puree the coconut and 1/3 cup of honey. Taste and adjust for sweetness if desired.  If using, puree in the xanthan gum, vodka, or both. Follow the directions on your ice cream maker.Spread on top of the crust and freeze until firm.

Pineapple Layer- Cut up pineapple and place chunks in a food processor.  Puree the pineapple and add the honey; adjust as above and add xanthan gum or vodka as before.  Do this with the next one too. Ice cream it.  Evenly coat the coconut layer with the second batch of crumble and the spread the pinapple sorbet on top. Freeze.

Strawberry layer- Puree the strawberries and put them through a siev to get the seeds out.  Add the honey and rice milk etc.  Ice cream it.  Spread the last bit of crumble on the pineapple layer.  Spread the strawberry sorbet on top of that.  Freeze.

Serves 8-10 people.

Filed under: Desserts, Recipes by Ann on August 7, 2009. Tagged with: cashews, coconut, honey, pineapple, raw, sorbet, strawberries, vegan.
3 Comments »