Tastefully Overcaramelized

Ann says

My roommate and her lovely boyfriend have recently decided to go raw for a little while.  Raw vegan, of course, because all raw foodists insist that meat and other animal products are evil-toxic-poison.  Well, Mara and Ricardo don’t think that, I’m pretty sure, but Juliano certainly does.  If done the right way, it’s actually a fantastically healthy diet; and I can’t imagine these people go more then three hours without a bowel movement.  Seriously.  It’s like, I think I will have a half cup of sprouted beans, three peaches, and an avocado for lunch and some rejuvelac!  How are these people able to travel?  My god.

Abe and I will probably give this diet a go at some point this summer, which I think will be pretty fun, and Juliano’s cookbook is full of very fun and delicious looking recipes.  But personally, I have a love for good meat.  Meat that has been raised the way my grandparents (who really did have a farm) would have raised it.  My grandmother would shake her head at the way Americans raise their animals when they went on road trips.  But to kill an animal so I can eat it I could easily do.  I don’t like to kill, but I love to eat, and I love to eat meat and dairy.  I am very careful about where my meat and dairy products come from and how they are processed.  It’s not a fad, and I’m not riding the wave of organics and no-antibiotics that has come about.  I have always been this way and the countries my family comes from have always eaten this way.

That said, I made some freakin’ delicious meatballs the other day.  It really does pay to add a little pork to your beef for meatballs if you have it on hand.  I don’t go out of my way to buy it if I don’t, but this time I had some pork sausage hanging out in the freezer along with some very nice looking lean ground beef.  I was already making the really delicious looking summer squash gratin that 101cookbooks posted, but I was craving that iron-laden protein punch that only beef can deliver (and a few other meats, granted).

Organic; no-antibiotic; locally grown beef and sausage meatballs!

serves 3 or 4 people

Ingredients:

3/4 lb organic grass fed beef
1/4 lb organic vegetarian fed pork sausage or pork (if you don’t have pork sausage, consider adding some herbs and spices that you like; I use Italian seasonings)
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (or store-bought, I won’t tell)
1 small shallot
1 Tblsp ketchup
1 teaspoon soy sauce (I know it’s kinda weird)
1 egg
salt and pepper

Begin warming a large heavy skillet to a little lower than medium high heat, but not quite medium.  Pour in about two tablespoons of your favorite cooking fat and let it get nice and warm while you mix the ingredients.  Throw all the ingredients into a large bowl and gently mix with your hands or a spoon.  You don’t want to smoosh everything to much, just lightly mix until it’s all very well incorporated.  Over squishing makes the balls too dense.  Shape the meat into 1 and 1/2 inch diameter balls and place inthe hot pan.  Turn the meat every minute or so until it is well browned on all sides.  To check for  doneness I just sacrifice one and cut it open to see.  Remove from the pan and you’re done!

These go very well, I think, with any large portion of veggies, be they a big salad, a summer squash gratin, a grated beet and carrot salad, or anything else really!  The meetballs and juicy and rich, so they go great with something lighter.  The summer squash gratin is not, actually, light, but it’s super tasty.  Wonderful for these random rainy, 60 degree days of summer…

Filed under: Main Courses, Recipes by Ann on June 19, 2009. Tagged with: beef, meatballs, pork, raw.
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Ann says

On my first turn in Abe’s and my dinner ring, I used David Tanis’s cookbook, “A platter of figs and other recipes” to make one of the three course meals presented in there.  It was a Moroccan style chicken thing with pumpkin and harissa and a carrot salad and walnut cigars with honey for dessert.  It was pretty tasty.  Last weekend when my time rolled around again I decided to do something that I could cook pretty fast and something that included bread.

So, fast bread means pizza, right?  Remember that pizza I posted about a couple of posts ago?  That’s the one, minus the sausage plus everything grilled instead of sauteed.  I did this with the AIR CONDITIONER that Abe and I bought running at full throttle, and just in time for when people arrived.  There were some bruscetta with fresh mozzarella and roasted red peppers.  We used the ghost chili oil as a condiment, which went over pretty well.  Sangria was delicious, and I made it my favorite way, with plenty of juice and a bottle of red wine.  The highlight of the evening, however, was eating on the roof with my friends.  That was great.  And I got to give Shaina her Christmas present, finally.  Oh yeah, I made almond paste, apricot and strawberry pastries for dessert. They were pretty good, but I need to work on the dough.

Additionally, the Broadway Farmer’s Market is open and going well.  It’s expanded this year!  I got some sorrel, and so soon will come some sorrel soup.  The tomato guy is back, and of course so is my intense desire to like the flavor of tomatoes.  I just tried a beautiful looking little orange cherry tomato a minute ago, and I just hate the flavor of tomato.  It’s that fresh tomato essence…it makes me gag.  Meh.

Jani is coming up, and I really want to make some fresh Janu siers.  It has caraway seeds in it and is kind of an acquired taste, but I love it.  That, and a big batch of piragi.  So much food and so little time.  I mean, I have finals right now and here I am, sitting and writing this post.  Ah…here are some pictures…

Abe says

The evening, as far as I’m concerned, had two highlights. First was eating dinner with friends on the gloriously nice roof I am fortunate enough to have on my building. Second was that the dinner included Ann’s supremely good pizza. It  was just as good without the sausage.

Also worth mentioning is Mara’s salad, which, while not on bread was very tasty. It had sunflower seeds, beets, carrots, greens, and dill. The dill was great.

We’ve eaten a lot of other good food over the past week, as well, that we haven’t been able to write about yet. A picture post will follow.

Filed under: Miscellaneous by Ann on June 7, 2009. Tagged with: dinner group, pizza.
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Abe says

Usually I get myself thinking I am comfortable cooking everything I enjoy eating. When it comes down to it, you take some good ingredients, add just enough, and cook until done — all familiar territory, whether or not I’ve made it before. Really. Right? Like many of the things I tell myself, patently, this is false.

Shellfish in particular are somewhat baffling, at least for me. They aren’t anonymous chunks of meat which I can straightforwardly sauté, in part, because they all oddly enough have shells. I remember as a child sitting in the kitchen while my parents peeled and deveined shrimp, and the huge hassle that seemed to be. I’ve never dealt with raw shrimp. Lobster has that issue of being alive and then dead, and I’ve never made lobster either. Bivalves — clams, mussels, and so forth — also start off alive, until you cook them, but for some reason no one worries about sea-rocks as much as sea-bugs. (Ann points out that Death Star trooper helmets also bear a striking resemblance to clams.)

I received a bit of impetus from the chef’s tables at work, where Chef Jaime has made a few variations on clams and chorizo. As these preparations all cooked both seafood and sausage in front of me in just a few minutes, I had enough reason to believe it was something I could do without much trouble. Clams are also cheap, which all else considered is good impetus on its own.

The consensus: fast, easy, inexpensive, and delicious. There was some ambiguity about whether or not these clams were sandy, however as tends to happen this didn’t occur to me until already in the middle of cooking, and very hungry. I made do with an uneducated 10 minute soak in cold water, for my reputable-store-bought mollusks. For the better-prepared the intertron is full of both good ideas and less-than-good ideas — guys, I am not a physicist but running water over a spoon will not electrically charge your water and draw out more sand, magically, scientifically, or otherwise. Trust me, I am a master of science. My unelectrified soaking water got the slightest bit cloudy, and the finished product was just fine.

Ann says

Seriously, guys, he is a master of science, and those helmets look just like twisted clams.  This food was really tasty even though it aggravated my GERD.  But on a better day it would not do such  thing and I would enjoy mounds of this stuff, because really, so yummy.

I think the trouble with sea bugs vs. sea rocks is that sea bugs have eyes and legs and hands, and so they remind us of ourselves a bit. Sea rocks remind me of rocks, and so I do not worry about it.  Additionally, sea rocks seem to die faster because they are smaller.

Think about it.  You are an early homo erectus who has made his or her home near the ocean. A good choice.  You are very hungry.  You are trying to survive. I, as a late homo sapiens, also become very hungry, and I am always in the business of survival.  I, too, don’t give a crap if a bunch of sea rocks get really hot for a moment before they die.  I am over-heated in Abe’s steam-cooker of an apartment every day!  I think I will soon have to graduate to chilling and knifing lobsters in the head in order to restore balance to my small, small universe.  Just for clarification, it’s called Ann Land. In Ann Land, we eat clams.

Clams and Chorizo

Adapted from Gourmet

serves 2

1/3 lb bulk fresh chorizo sausage (such as from 1 sausage in casing from the Whole Foods meat counter)
1 bell pepper, preferably orange or yellow, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 cup dry white wine
2 lb littleneck clams
3 Tbsp chopped parsley
2 Tbsp butter

Accompaniment:
baguette or other crusty bread

Scrub clams clean and soak in a bowl of cool water for about 20 minutes. Discard open clams that don’t close when you tap them.

In a wide, coverable sauté pan over medium heat, brown and break up chorizo, about 5 minutes. After some fat has rendered out, remove the meat, either draining the fat or adding olive oil to bring the amount to 2 Tbsp. Add pepper, onion, and garlic, and cook until softened, 7-9 minutes.

Add wine, bring to a boil, and add drained clams and cooked chorizo. Cover and boil until clams open, about 10 minutes. Stir in butter and garnish with parsley. Discard clams that are shut tight. Slightly opened clams can usually be tapped against other clams to open them up. Serve in low bowls with the liquid, and bread.

Filed under: Main Courses, Recipes by Abe on May 25, 2009. Tagged with: chorizo, clams, parsley, peppers, wine.
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