Spaghetti Carbonara

When I was in Italy, I didn't ever eat spaghetti carbonara. I don't know why, maybe it was the description - Spaghetti with bacon and eggs. That just didn't sound that appetizing. Besides, every version of spaghetti carbonara I'd had before was a heavy, creamy, cheesy, gut-bomb. So I didn't think I'd enjoy it.

And then for some reason something prompted me to look up spaghetti carbonara recipes on the google. They all sounded pretty good. I ended up deciding to use this one, except I realized that if I was just making this for me (Ed claimed to not want any, so I made it for lunch, since I desperately wanted it), I didn't need a full pound's-worth of spaghetti. So, I cut the recipe by a bunch. Which means that its no longer like the one I was going to use. Well, its still like it, but I was no longer following it.

The ingredients:

4oz (1/4 box) dry spaghetti
1 egg
2 slices bacon
2 cloves garlic
1/4C chopped parsley
1/4C frozen peas
3-4 tbs grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Put a big pot of water on to boil. Chop the bacon to a size you consider bite-size. Cook it until it looks about halfway done, then add the chopped garlic. Cook the garlic until its toasty-golden looking, it should smell divine. Set this aside if its done early.

Break the egg into a big bowl, and beat it for a bit. Add the cheese, some salt, and some pepper. Once the water is at a roiling boil, cook the spaghetti until it is al dente. Drain it, and immediately add it to the egg mixture. Do not let it just sit there or it will cook the egg into scrambled eggs, you don't want this. You do want it to cook the egg, though, but just not scramble it. As soon as you've added the spaghetti to the egg start stirring, and stir vigorously for a minute or so. Finally, when your arm is exhausted, stop stirring and add the bacon, garlic, peas, and parsley.

From my tastings, this was better while still fresh and warm, but it warmed up nicely for lunch, too. Hence the gorgeous picture of pasta in a tupperware...

Rabbit legs and tenderloin

Betcha didn't know you could get rabbit tenderloin, didja? I didn't either, I assumed that when you had a rabbit, you threw it in a big pot of stew and stewed it until it was tender enough to eat, because everyone says that rabbit is tough and gamey.

Well, everyone is wrong. This rabbit was tender and delicious. Since we had a whole rabbit, we chopped off the legs to eat pan-fried, and Ed extracted the tenderloin, which supposedly took lots of little cuts along the vertebrae to get it out. Totally worth it, thought, because it was a succulent, juicy piece o' meat. The forequarters we're going to stew.

After chopping off the legs, we put them in a marinade of dijon mustard, lemon juice, white wine, olive oil, tarragon, salt, and pepper, for ~30 minutes. Then we pan-fried the legs until the juices ran clear.

The tenderloin we just salted and peppered, and then wrapped in blanched bacon and pan-fried. While wrapping things in bacon is a well-known way to make them taste better, but this went beyond amazing. It was godly.

We served the rabbit with some [very overcooked] large white beans, couscous with caramelized onions, crunchy kale, and broiled eggplant. Too much stuff on the plate, really we could have done without the [very overcooked] white beans and kale, but, well, worse things have happened than having too much food on your plate.

The stuff on the plate before the rabbit hit.

To broil the eggplant, slice it into 3/4" pieces, and salt heavily with kosher salt. Let it sit for ~30 min, until it has given up a fair bit of its water. First you'll see little droplets on the surface, then a puddle of water underneath the collander. This helps it get crispy rather than mushy in the oven. After its given up most of its water, rinse off the salt and squeeze it to squeeze out any more water. Put the pieces down on a baking sheet, spray with oil on both sides, (or brush it on if you have a pastry brush), and broil for about 3-5 minutes on each side. Keep checking it, once the top is brown, you want to flip it over and brown the other side. Once the other side is golden brown, you're done. Take it out.

How could I have forgotten the morels! We also had about a cup of morels, which got cooked in about half a stick of butter, salted to taste, until they were crispy and delicious. The excess butter was poured over the rabbit legs as they finished cooking. Here we're looking at a picture of the tenderloin, wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with morels. Heaven.

More rabbit leg. The caramelized onion couscous was also pretty good, it was about two teaspoons of rendered duck fat and one big onion, cooked for ~30min until it tasted sweet and caramelized.


This was a very yummy meal. I'll take rabbit tenderloin and morels any day...

Duck legs

I did say that Ed got some duck, too. I think I prefer duck breast to duck legs, but these were still pretty tasty. We braised them in a red wine sauce, and the sauce was DELICIOUS. I don't know if it would taste as good if you hadn't simmered a duck in it for two hours, but it was way better than the duck itself (sorry, Ed).

Not a light meal, by any stretch of the imagination, since we roasted some root veggies tossed in duck fat to go along with the duck, and cooked the other endive from the endives we ate with the squab, but it was good. I didn't realize I like parsnips so much...

The sauce was loosely based off a recipe I found on epicurious. The first step was to render out most of the fat from the duck skin, since these are, after all, animals that spend all winter swimming around in cold water. They have a nice layer of blubber. So with a sharp knife Ed cut some cross-crossed shallow slices in the skin, and then stuck the duck legs skin-side-down into the dutch oven, heat on medium-low. The legs sat there for a while, 15-20min, oozing out fat, which Ed occasionally poured into a bowl. Eventually they looked crispy enough, so we took them out, poured off the rest of the fat, and created the sauce.

We looked at this recipe, and basically used it, except we didn't bother measuring things. Basically, we poured half a bottle of red wine into the dutch oven, a can of chicken broth, a couple handfuls of prunes and dried cherries and dried apples, some mustard seeds, a bay leaf, and then added the duck legs back in, skin-side up. Cover and simmer for 2 hours or so. Probably longer would be better. But we were hungry.

As the duck cooked, we made some roasted vegetables to go with it. I chopped up about half a pound of carrots, half a pound of parsnips, and two shallots. I took about a tablespoon of the duck fat that we'd just rendered out of the duck, tossed the veggies with it, and sprinkled on some kosher salt. Then those went into the oven for 40 minutes, give or take, until they were browned on the bottom. Flip 'em over and brown the other side.

Yum.

Squab, with accompaniments

Ed went to Savenor's today. They're a meat shop, and can apparently order you anything you want, with enough warning. I want wooly mammoth! Lets see how easily they get that, muahahaha. Anyway, he walked away much lighter in his pockets with some frozen rabbit, duck legs (not eggs), and a squab. We're having the duck tomorrow, but tonight we had the squab. A squab is a pigeon. Its not very big. really, two squabs would have been more appropriate, but apparently they only had one at the time. We decided to make a pretty substantial meal to go along with it, since really the squab was only there for looks. I mean, two bites and it'd be gone. We ended up with a pretty eclectic pile o' stuff on our plates, it all sort of worked together, but not quite perfectly. Alas, another weeknight dinner that is... awesome.



The squab was cooked using the oven, first Ed cut it in half (he is in charge of the meat 'round here), then rubbed some butter on the skin, and stuck it under the broiler for 5 minutes. Once the skin was nice and crispy, he basted it with some blood orange glaze he'd cooked up, and cooked it for another 10 minutes, ish. The recipe for the glaze is below.



The bird cooked up pretty tasty, sort of like a gamey chicken. After an abortive attempt at using knives and forks we settled for picking it up and gnawing, things were much more enjoyable after that. The sides (or main course, if you like, by size or weight the squab was definitely one of the sides...) were cooked endive, fresh fava beans and an Asian-inspired risotto. The risotto stole the show, in my opinion, although the endives were a close second. I could have done with just the risotto and you can keep your pricey pigeon thank you very much. So, here is my recipe for the Asian-inspired risotto.



Ginger-cilantro-pea risotto.
Serves 3-4 as a side dish

3/4C short-grain rice (sushi rice or arborio)
1 tbs olive oil (peanut oil or sesame oil would be good in this case, though)
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 shallot, diced finely
2" cube of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 scallion
1C peas (frozen is fine)
1/4-1/2C chopped cilantro
zest of a quarter of a lemon
salt and pepper to taste
1C white wine
4C chicken stock, broth, or water

Have everything ready to go. Although risotto requires a lot of stirring, its pretty easy. Chop all your veggies and stuff, and heat the wine and the chicken broth (separately). You need to add warm liquid to the rice, otherwise it shocks the kernels and it doesn't absorb water properly.

Mise en place.

Heat the oil in a wok or big frying pan, over medium-high heat. Add the shallot and cook until sweated through. Add the garlic and cook until just golden. Add the rice, and stir it around for about 1-2 minutes, making sure to get all the grains coated. Add the wine, and stir the rice. (I might be repeating this instruction a lot...). Keep stirring and cooking until most of the liquid has been absorbed, and then start add the chicken broth one cup at a time. Wait for the liquid to get absorbed before adding more. Add the ginger and lemon after 1-2 additions of chicken broth. Once the grains taste about done, add the cilantro and stir it around. You have to keep adding liquid and stirring until the rice tastes done. The cilantro should cook for about 3-4 minutes, then take the rice off the heat and add the peas. Garnish with the scallion.



Cooked endives
~2 tsp olive oil
~1 tsp salt
2 endives

Cut the endives in half lengthwise. Heat a frying pan over medium to low heat. Add some olive oil, then add the endives flat size down and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or so, and when the bottoms look nice and toasty, flip them over and cook them uncovered on their backs for a minute or so. Serve warm.



Blood orange maple glaze
juice of one blood orange
water
brown sugar
maple syrup
coriander
lemon juice
red chili flakes

Put all these things in a pot in a ratio that tastes good to you (taste it). Cook it until it reduces to something sweet and sticky, and then strain it to get out all the chili flakes. Can you tell this is an Ed-recipe? There aren't any measurements...

Scallion Pancakes

The other day I was struck by a craving for the Taiwan Cafe's scallion pancakes. Unfortunately, I wasn't near the Taiwan Cafe, so I figured I'd try making them. I was scared it would be a very long, arduous process, but it actually wasn't too bad. I found a recipe here, and it looked doable. I did not let the dough rest at all, which may have made them easier to roll out, but it worked. They ended up delicious, although they could have used more of a deep-fried method rather than pan-fried, I thought they were lacking in oil.

Use Real Butter has much nicer looking step-by-step instructions than me, and since I didn't change the recipe, go get it there. Basically, you make the dough, knead it, let it rest (oops), divide it up and roll it out into a circle. I put about a quarter teaspoon of oil on each pancake, then sprinkled on the scallions and some salt.

Roll it up like a cigar, and then roll it horizontally like a snail.


Once its rolled up again, roll it out flat. This is what gives those pancakes their awesome flakiness and layers.


Fry them up in about a tablespoon of oil per pancake.


Slice them up and enjoy!!


A dipping sauce would be nice, I don't know what the proper dipping sauce is but I mixed some soy sauce with rice wine vinegar and that tasted pretty good. I highly recommend making these things, they were easy and pretty quick, and most importantly - delicious.