Porterhouse steak to perfection

More Ogden beef!  This time, a most delicious porterhouse steak.  I was surprised that this was grass-fed beef, it was that tender.  And well cooked.  Lately, we've discovered that pan frying the steak to get a sear, then finishing it in the oven, produces a perfectly even medium-rare steak.  And boy was this one delicious!  We had it at 300F, for I think 15min... check it after 10, and keep checking it.

We served this steak with a maple cabbage and apple slaw (with beets!) and some cauliflower and cheese.  More on those in another post - the cabbage slaw was definitely worth making again!  Those are some fried oyster mushrooms on top of the steak.  I highly recommend trying to cook a steak this way!  Use a cast iron frying pan, because then you can get it nice and hot for the sear, and stick the whole thing in the oven.  

Ed, I'm going to take a picture of you eating steak.  Go rawrrr.  *slurp*

Beet-beef burgers

I've been reading Nigel Slater's book, Tender, that Virginia gave to Ed for Christmas, and while sometimes Nigel's writing is a bit over the top flowery, I think it's a really interesting look at vegetables one by one, and what base flavors marry best with each veggie.  I've gotten as far as beets as of yesterday, and since we had some Westminster ground beef in the fridge (yay Ogden beef!), and a giant beet, this seemed like the perfect combo.  While Nigel Slater may have used ground lamb instead of beef, I'm all for improvisation, and basically ignored his entire recipe after getting the spark of an idea from it.  Because that's how I roll around here...

I put in what I thought were a lot of spices, but it wasn't quite enough, and in the end, the burgers were a bit bland for my tastes.  I'd double all the spices, next time.  As for the Ed-rating, at first he was all critical of putting beets in a burger, but later admitted that these were "delicious".  So, they get a good Ed-rating, if a reluctant one.  He tends to prefer his burgers just beef.  That post is coming...





Beet-beef burgers
Made lots and lots, probably enough for 4-5 people

~1lb ground beef
3/4C dry Bulgar wheat (also known as cracked wheat)
1 medium to large beet, raw
3 large cloves of garlic, diced
1 onion, diced very fine

Spices:
(I already doubled them compared to what we'd done)
4 cardamom pods
4 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp pepper seeds
4 cloves
4 tsp kosher salt

Boil 1.5C water, and pour it over the bulgar wheat.  Cover and let it sit for 5-10min, to absorb the liquid.  Peel the beet, and grate it, with the big holes on a cheese grater.  Preheat your oven to 400F.

Put everything into a big bowl.  Use your hands to thoroughly mix it together and distribute all the spices.  Let the mixture sit for 10 minutes to meld the flavors, then heat some oil in a frying pan, and form the meat mixture into golfball-sized balls.  Flatten them to burger shapes, then fry, about 3min to a side, to get a crust on each side.  Transfer to a baking sheet and bake for 15-20min, continuing to fry the patties in batches and add to the baking sheet.  You can't tell if they're done just by looking, since the beets turn everything pink, but 15min yielded medium-rare-ish meat, and 20min was well done.

We ate these with some broccoli in an anchovy/lemon/butter sauce, which gets a whole post of its own.  Very delicious!

Broccoli with anchovy-lemon sauce

You may think that you don't like anchovies, but you do, at least in small enough quantities.  An anchovy mixed into tomato sauce will add a delicious kick of umami.  Anchovies were in the original caesar salad dressing, and still are in the good ones and the home made ones.  Moving more toward the "this is definitely an anchovy" camp, anchovies and avocados with a drizzle of lemon are an excellent topping for toasts or open-faced sandwiches.  And once you've been fully convinced that you do indeed love anchovies, try this anchovy-lemon butter sauce for drizzling on top of broccoli.  Or any green thing, really, but broccoli was the vessel tonight.


The taste is amazing - very strong flavors, and the lemon zest totally picks it up to another level.  The anchovy part mostly just tastes salty, but it's a delicious salty.  We were eating broccoli with this sauce at the same time as the beet-beef meatballs, and Ed thought that this dish was the better of the two.  That's pretty high praise, when meat is involved.

~10 canned anchovy fillets
2tbs butter
1 tbs olive oil
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon

In a small frying pan, melt the butter, and put the anchovies in the pan.  Stir occasionally.  Eventually, the fish will fall apart.  Once it's done that, stir in the lemon juice, then remove from heat.  Stir in the zest.  Pour over whatever green thing you've decided will be your vessel for this sauce, and enjoy!

Cilantro-walnut pesto

This recipe is mega out of date, but I was attempting to clean up some of the drafts that never got written, and came across this pesto.  I remember it being delicious enough that it's totally worth posting now, but it may be hard to find fresh cilantro right now.  Anyway, this pesto was delicious on pizza, pasta, and as some sort of underlayer for stuff on little crostini.  I don't remember the original reason we made it, but I do remember eating it on pasta later in the week.  Enjoy!




2C cilantro
1C basil
1/2C parsley
4tsp dried tarragon
1C toasted walnuts
2tsp salt
1tbs sesame oil
1/3C balsamic vinegar
2/3C olive oil

Take all the herbs off their leaves, rinse and dry. Toast the walnuts in a 350F oven for 5min, until they taste toasty. Put everything in a food processor and chop it up.

Roasted butternut squash with tahini sauce

So, browsing the internets, we came across Amateur Gourmet making this. It looked delicious, so, we made it, too. The tahini sauce was a little different than what he'd made, since we didn't have any fresh lemons - we mixed tahini with greek yogurt, ground cumin, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, grains of paradise, and red pepper flakes (we also didn't have any za'atar - we'd had some, but it's long since gone, and we haven't gotten more). The end result was a truly delicious way to eat squash. So good, in fact, that we did it again a few days later.

Here's the original recipe, from Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook, Jerusalem. This is "the caterer's" that my grandfather goes to in London. I have his book called Ottolenghi, but haven't gotten around to acquiring the other books, yet.

Roasted butternut squash with tahini sauce
Made enough for 5-6 side servings, 4 main servings
1 butternut squash, cut into 3/4 by 2 1/2-inch wedges
1 red onion cut into 1 1/4-inch wedges
olive oil
~1/4C light tahini paste
~1-1/2 tbs lemon juice
~2 tbs water
1 clove garlic, crushed
~1/4C pine nuts
1 tbs za’atar (or mix of cardamom, cumin, pepper, and other middle-eastern-y flavors)
~1/4C coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
Kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 450F.
Toss the squash and onions with some olive oil and kosher salt. Arrange on a baking sheet, and cook for 30-40min, maybe flipping at the halfway mark if the bottoms are getting too browned. Keep an eye on the onions as they might cook faster than the squash and need to be removed earlier.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry small frying pan, no oil needed. This'll take 5 minutes max, make sure you don't burn the nuts!

Mix all the sauce ingredients together, drizzle over the squash and onions on a nice platter. Sprinkle za'atar, nuts and parsley on top. Eat!

chocolate covered strawberries

So, Ed's not a huge fan of my chocolate covered strawberries, because apparently I need to temper the chocolate more. I, however, think they're delicious and amazing, and given that I make chocolate covered strawberries on MY birthday, I'll make them how I want them. This whole chocolate covered strawberries thing is quickly becoming a tradition for my birthday, I like it. Anyway, it's dead simple, and quite delicious.

Melt ~4oz of chocolate in a double boiler. Make sure it's tasty chocolate that you'd like to eat, because you're not sweetening it or anything, let's not get complicated. I think I used 70% dark ghiradelli, and it was delicious. Rinse and dry your strawberries. Stir the chocolate occasionally as it melts, you don't want to overcook it. Once the chocolate is melted, turn the heat down to a level that will just maintain the runny-ness of the chocolate, and start dipping your strawberries. Once they're chocolate covered, put them on a wax-paper-covered plate. If you run out of strawberries but have leftover chocolate, you can pour it onto the wax paper in a little puddle, and stud with any available nuts or dried fruit. Makes an instant chocolate bar.

Put the strawberries in the fridge for ~20min, and the chocolate will harden up nicely. Enjoy! Don't eat them all at once, because you'll get a stomach ache. Not like I'd know this from experience.

Beer bread

Beer bread is one of those amazing foods that doesn't take long to make, but tastes delicious. These photos are from January, I think, when Ross and Sam appeared in our kitchen and we ate food and laughed together. Ed had made some sort of delicious beef stew, which was good, but we needed something for mopping up the juices, and had no bread, so Sam and I threw together some beer bread while waiting for Ross to show up from the track workout. Because we wanted the bread to cook quickly, we put it into two 9" diameter cake pans, rather than your typical loaf pan, and holy cow, that is an improvement! Because the best part about beer bread is the crunchy crusty butter-soaked topping, and with two flatter loaves, you get even more crust! So delicious. Next time you make beer bread, definitely put it into two flatter pans, or even one wide flat pan (and don't forget the butter on top!). I've put a basic recipe for beer bread, below.







Beer Bread
3C flour
1tbs baking powder
1/4C sugar
1 tsp salt
12oz beer (I think we used a fairly basic brown beer)
1/2 stick butter, melted, for topping.

Mix everything except the butter in a big bowl. Grease two 9" round cake pans. Pour the batter evenly into the pans, maybe shake it around to spread it out. Pour the melted butter on top, maybe sprinkle with some kosher salt if you really want. Bake at 350 until done. (start with 15min and keep checking every 5-10 min). Cool ever so briefly, slice it up, and enjoy!