It’s good to be home. The garden is loving the cooler weather; late plantings of greens are freaking out and we can’t keep up. The salads are as good as they were in the spring, and now they get to play against creamy winter squash. On Sunday we went apple picking with the gang, and bought peaches and plums as well to preserve. Today saw the happy combination of peaches, red onions, lime basil, honey,…
Category: Standards
My Brother came by for the night, and it was still cool and rainy, so I made suitable food for the occasion- casual, but refined, and above all yummy. Local organic beef stew meat plus soaked kidney beans, mirepoix, smoked chicken broth, spices, and tomato paste became a first-rate chili after a couple of hours. Potatoes and zucchini with a sauce of milk, yogurt, leftover cream of garden soup, plus grated goat cheddar, pecorino, and…
A cold, rainy day and sick wife and son called for straight-up comfort food. I made this with almost no fancy flourishes- just plain and simple. Ground beef, pasta, tomato sauce, local fromage blanc- all organic- and mozzarella on top. The goat cheese added a nice touch, so next time I might use ground lamb in place of beef, and throw in some olives. But this time it was all about easy and quick. And…
We went to Providence for a night for a wedding, where we saw some family, met some great people, and ate very well; the wedding was catered by Smoke & Pickles, and they did a bang-up job with giant striped bass and copious smoked chicken, plus smoked bluefish, ahi tuna and beef tenderloin as appetizers. I LOVE a well-catered wedding. Food is the music of love, so play loud and often. So we returned tired…
Kind of a mannerist take on the original, with the eggplant slices baked in the oven on a cookie sheet with a bit of oil and salt, and alternating layers of caramelized shiitakes between, with sauce full of garden herbs and cheddar and mozzarella on top. It’s less work and a lot healthier to do it this way, and tastes fantastic. With a perfect salad to finish, it got us through the second day of…
I rubbed and roasted a whole chicken, and threw a bunch of sweet potatoes into the oven as well, with lots of garlic and thyme. Crimini mushrooms, sautéed with garlic and deglazed with white wine, went into the blender with the burdock from a couple of days before plus just enough water to spin into a thick purée. Once the bird came out, I made a roux with the fat in the roasting pan and…
Another cold, snowy day warranted some hearty food, so pasture-raised Veal shanks from the freezer got a good long braise in the dutch oven along with carrot, leek, onion, parsley, fennel seed, herbes de Provence, dried porcini, and red wine. Meanwhile, I steamed cubed turnip and daikon and whisked polenta with parmesan and pepper. I was trying to make two identical-looking creamy bases for the rich meat, but didn’t get the roots soft enough (even…
Back from the city, where we did some good eating (I’ll try to get to it in a future post,) and pretty tired, easy won out. Nice big burgers with shiitakes caramelized in smoked fat and spinach wilted with garlic on top, as well as just a bit of ketchup and mustard since I was too lazy to caramelize onions or make mayo. We finished the Pleiades that Christine opened while I was gone, and…
Pretty straightforward, but with a couple elements that I think made it more interesting: first, using dried kidney beans which required cooking it for 3 hours, and second, a good dollop of smoked duck fat at the beginning to get the aromatics going that worked as an excellent substitute for smoking the meat. A bit of goat cheddar, scallion, and lime juice on top, and a 2003 Faugères by H&B (since I didn’t make it…
In honor of my Grandfather, J. Howard Beck, on his 100th birthday, we made an updated but still honest version of borscht and blini (he was born in Poland, specifically in the shtetl of Rozvadof) that I think he would have enjoyed. Having beet salad and red cabbage already in the fridge, I added the last half pint of lamb demiglace from the freezer, as well as some broccoli stalks, and simmered it for an…