CSA Week #13

I think we're on week 13. But really, who knows. We've been spending a lot of time canning tomatoes and making sauce and drying tomatoes lately, so it feels like we've just been totally overwhelmed with food, but I think now that we're beyond that, we can do some regular cooking again. I'm looking forward to it. This week was a big haul:




Slicing tomatoes
Heirloom tomatoes
Carrots
Eggplants
White onions
Potatoes
Jalapenos
Radishes
Cilantro
Bok Choy

Eggplant parm, with potato wedges, chicken, and some sauteed greens and onions. Ed made a big batch of pico de gaillo style salsa this week, so I've basically been putting it on everything.



Eggs with bok choy, radish, radish greens, green pepper, and salsa.


It's a little tough to tell, but there are some eggplant/onion/corn meatballs under a pile of pico de gaillo on that plate, next to some roasted delicata squash, potato wedges, and an heirloom tomato salad. The potato wedges we've been making out of these little potatoes have just been heavenly.


We found a huge stash of chanterelle mushrooms while we were out orienteering at Pawtuckaway over the weekend. The real reason orienteers use plastic bags for our maps - so we can fill them with mushrooms when the season is right.

This may just look like a pan full of chicken, but actually it is a DELICIOUS pan full of chicken. I started with the chicken skin-side down for 5-10 minutes, to both start the skin rendering and also to put some grease on the pan for the potatoes/onions. I took it out, added a bunch of potato wedges and some onion wedges, tossed those around, and put the chicken back on top, skin side up this time. At the last minute, I hit it with the broiler, because that made it extra delicious. I recommend. Also, those potatoes, cooking in chicken juices... you really can't go wrong with that.


Served the chicken with a big pile of veggies - onion, carrots, bok choy, green pepper, hot pepper, and leftover cabbage. Not my most inspired veggie dish, as it was essentially just using up whatever was left in the fridge, but tasty enough. And some butter-fried chanterelles on top.

Cucumber salad, kale chips, and stuffed chicken

We're running out of vegetables already. Maybe we eat more veggies than most people? I can see that we probably won't have an issue using up our allotment. Anyway, this one took care of the entire head of kale, which was kind of small, honestly, and one of the cucumbers and a radish or two.

Kale Chips

Not so much recipes, here, as a concept. Eh, that's how we cook these days, for the most part. Kale chips are easy and delicious, unless of course you can't stand the taste of kale. That's ok too, I'll take your kale. It definitely has a taste, kind of earthy, a little charred, a little bitter. I like it. Anyway, rip the leaves off the stems, and break them into bite-size pieces. Toss with some olive oil and kosher salt and bake at 300 degrees F for 15-30 minutes, tossing after 10 minutes to make sure the leaves are dehydrating evenly. Ed likes his crispy kale a little less crisp, I like mine crispy enough that it'll shatter when you eat it. 

You can experiment with other flavors; garlic salt comes to mind. We never get that fancy, and have been known to go through well over a pound of kale in a sitting. Can too much vitamin A make you sick? Quintessential white suburban millennials, here. 

Cucumber Radish Salad

The cucumber salad was another quick one. Since we're basically out of greens, I chopped the cucumber, chopped a few radishes, chopped some mint and some chives (from the garden), and tossed with a lemony vinaigrette. This would have been really good with more parsley, but we were out. I also cooked up some barley to fill it out, and mixed that in once it was cooked.

Everything else

The chicken was all Ed. He de-boned the chicken thigh, then rolled it up around a mixture of feta (still have some after the spanakopita!), oil-cured olives, sundried tomatoes, and chives, before trussing it up. Seared it in a mix of olive oil and butter in a cast iron pan, then into the oven to finish. It was delicious, tender and piquant. 

Some other meals, that used up all our green things - a giant salad on Saturday night, that used some of everything. Both heads of lettuce (they were small), a leaf of napa cabbage, a leaf or two of kale, radishes, parsley, chives, scallion, green garlic, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, soft-boiled eggs, and a maple/miso/lemon dressing. 

Sunday we brought a fairly unremarkable slaw over to our friends' house for dinner. It was good, but kind of just a mixture of what veggies we had left. All the napa, parsley, cilantro, chives, grated carrot, lemon juice, salt. A few sad tomatillos from the bottom of the fridge. Sumac sprinkled on top. That would have been better with some garlicky aioli, but we were out of eggs by that point, too. 

The spanakopita made about 4 servings for us, so I've been finishing that off for lunch. At this point all we have left are some carrots and radishes, plus a couple potatoes and a sunchoke that have been languishing in the fridge for too long, so tonight's dinner may be interesting, definitely going to be spelunking through the various condiments and pickles in the fridge. Tomorrow more veggies though! 

Steak and potatoes

About as "normal" as food gets around here. I wanted creamed spinach, and I had this idea in my head of the creamed spinach we'd made many years ago with bacon and gruyere and a poached egg on top, but I couldn't remember where that recipe was (turns out, it's on my blog. Should have searched here first, duh. That's why I keep this stupid thing! Click here for recipe). So anyway, I remembered the part about the gruyere, and thought that it had been blended, but I was wrong, and we ended up with a pile of green goo. It was a pretty tasty green goo, but kind of disappointing considering what it could have been.

Coming soon: recipe of how to use up your green goo.

Anyway, green goo acquired, and when I was in Russos picking up spinach I got a tenderloin steak, because they often have small half-pound steaks, which is just fine for us, especially when sliced. We may not eat that much steak, but I do love it. Some fingerling potatoes on the side (toss with olive oil, chopped fresh rosemary and salt, and roast for 20-30 minutes at 400F), and a couple roasted carrots just because. Dinner is served! Tasty, arguably healthy, but not so cheap.

Served with a pretty amazing oak-aged stout by Founders. And pink Himalayan salt, because according to the lady at the store that gives good energies. (Kook alarm going off). But the salt bowl is pretty!

Gail's salmon

Gail makes this amazing salmon on the grill, this mix of sweet and sour and spicy and savory, and the other day I called her up to actually get the recipe. Of course, then I lost it, so I had to call her again to post it here. 

This is totally worth making, even if you don't have a grill. Though, the grill makes it all crispy and delicious, so obviously that's the better approach. 

Brown sugar

Chili powder

Lemon zest

Coriander

Salt

Guessing at quantities:

2 tbs brown sugar

1 tbs chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1/8tsp salt

1/8tsp black pepper

Make this! You won't regret it, I promise. 

Lamb shanks

We bought a lamb this spring, from Woodcock Farm. Part of it was for Steve and Jess as a wedding present, but the other half was for us. Before you start thinking that we bought some cute little fluffy thing, it came to us in packaged frozen chunks, nicely labeled. We also bought a ton of cheese, and had some friends over to each cheese and lamb, and it was everything we'd hoped. Anyway, the fun part about buying an entire animal is that you end up with cuts of meat you're not used to cooking. We all love lamb chops, but we don't love the $25/lb price tag, amiright? I think this may have been the first time I cooked a lamb shank, and holy moly, this will not be the last time. That was a DELICIOUS piece of meat after a few hours of braising. And braising is like the easiest cooking method out there, since you just get it simmering and then leave it for 2-3 hours. 

There are a lot of recipes out there for lamb shanks. It's pretty free-form, since you don't have to measure anything. I'll list out some bullets of the things I did that are either important or maybe different than the rest of the internet. Also, I don't really remember exactly what we did here, because this was like a month ago, and my memory doesn't stretch that far back.



Things to do when cooking a lamb shank: 

• Trim off the icky skin stuff beforehand, but don't be OCD about it
• Sear the heck out of the meat before starting the braise!
• I put in about a cup of beans (post-soaking). Beans love fatty stews.
• Sweat an onion and some garlic and add that
• Don't be afraid of heavy flavors
• Alcohol makes things delicious. I think I used some whiskey, since we didn't have any red wine
• Braise (slow bubbles) for 2-3 hours, minimum. The meat should fall off the bones

Enjoy!

Lemony shrimp and pasta

A few years ago, Ali was living in Amherst, and I would stay with her every week or two when I'd show up to talk with my adviser and do some actual work for grad school, sort of alternating between Ali's house and Peter and Gail's house. Anyway, Ali had a stack of Cooking Light magazines, I think they'd been gifted to her when Ross and Sam moved out of the country. This was a recipe, roughly, from one of those magazines, and it was quite good. Not just with the qualifier "for a Cooking Light recipe", but on its own! The bright and tangy lemon-mustard sauce brightened the pasta, and the capers provided bright little salty notes. I wanted to make it again, and amazingly, I actually found the original recipe online! This is a good one - quick, easy, and relatively cheap, depending on how many shrimp you use. Below is how I remade this recipe, since I'm incapable of following an actual recipe.

Pasta with shrimp and chickpeas

1 box Pasta

Shrimp (vary the amount based on how many shrimp you want - we went with a half pound for two of us)

1 can chickpeas

several handfuls of fresh arugula

1 red onion

several spoonfuls of capers

1 clove garlic

olive oil

Sauce: 

1 lemon

1 spoonful dijon mustard

A splash of olive oil

a pinch or three of salt

a pinch or three of freshly ground pepper

Get your water boiling. Lots of it. Salt it.

Dice the onion, sweet on high heat in olive oil until there's some browned bits. Dice the garlic, add that to the pan and cook until it's starting to get fragrant. Cook the shrimp, a few minutes (2?) on each side, until they're just pink. When they're nearly done, throw in the capers, chickpeas, and arugula/spinach/swiss chard/baby lettuce of any sort to wilt, and once the greens are wilted, take off the heat.

Meanwhile, make the sauce - juice the lemon, mix with mustard and oil and salt and pepper, taste and adjust. 

Once the pasta is done (cook to your preferred cookedness), mix it all together. We got a solid four servings out of this, two for dinner and two for lunch.

Enjoy! 

Chicken korma

I loooove Indian food, but in general, it is cheaper, tastier, and a lot quicker to just pay Bombay Palace to deliver some tasty tubs of sauces and braised meats. But, I wanted to try my hand at actually making chicken korma the other day, and figured I'd follow a recipe. Roughly, anyway. The gist of it is that you marinate the chicken a bit, you toast your spices, you create a sauce base, and then you add more stuff and simmer for a while.  Total success, except that when I doubled the amount of red pepper flakes (because that makes sense when you haven't tried a recipe, right?), Ed found it barely edible. This is interesting, because usually he's the one who doesn't notice spice; I found the dish to be hot, but delicious, while he mostly just found it hot, and was sweating.  I may have just won in a spice battle. Anyway, unless you like your food really hot, I recommend that you stick to 1 tsp of red pepper flakes, not the 2 that I used.  

This is a dish with a lot of ingredients, but mostly it's just spices.  And if you already have most of those spices (doesn't everyone keep a large tub of cumin seeds at ready use?), that part is easy.  The other special tool for this dish is a spice grinder - we have a coffee grinder that we use specifically for spices, and that works really well.  You can toast ground spices, but you have to be super duper careful not to burn them. Whatever you do, don't skip the spice-toasting step.  Totally adds the depth of flavor that I expect in good Indian cuisine. The other thing I tend to keep on hand is a jar of almond flour, mostly because I use it in pesto, but also sometimes for baking things. If you don't have this, you can buy some, or just use a half cup of ground cashews instead, since you're already buying cashews to put in the dish.  

Marinate:

2" piece of ginger

8 cloves garlic

2 Tbs olive oil

2 Tbs lemon juice

1/2C yogurt

4 chicken thighs, skinned and deboned (or, any other form of chicken that you happen to have on hand)

Spices:

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp coriander seeds

2 tsp black peppercorns

1 tsp fennel seeds

6 cardamom pods

~1/2 stick of cinnamon, ground

~1/2 tsp nutmeg, ground

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp red pepper flakes (this is too much for a normal person)

1 bay leaf

(You could just use ~4tsp of a good garam masala instead of the first 7 spices, if you have that on hand. I'd still toast it)

Sauce base:

1/2C almond flour

3 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs honey

1C chicken stock

The actual stuff in the dish:

1 onion

3 Tbs tomato paste

1/2C half & half

1-1/2C yogurt

1C golden raisins

1/2C cilantro, chopped

1/2C cashews

More salt, to taste

First things first: if using chicken thighs, take off the skin and the icky fatty bits. Debone, and throw those bones in a pot with some water to get some stock boiling.  Then chop the chicken into bite-size pieces, and put in a bowl to marinate. To make the marine, use a food processor to combine the ginger, garlic, lemon, and olive oil, and dump that over the chicken with a hefty spoonful or two of yogurt. Mix it around with your hands, and then set it aside while you prep other stuff.  

Put all the whole spices (cumin, cardamom, coriander, pepper, fennel seeds) into a pan, dry, and toast on medium-ish heat until you can smell them. Keep them moving around, and definitely keep an eye on these - you don't want to burn your spices! Once the spices are toasted, grind them in a spice grinder, and puree the almond flour, oil, honey, and stock with the spices to make your sauce base. This will taste pretty strong, remember that it's getting diluted with cream and yogurt.

Next up, start the actual dish - dice your onion, and sauté the heck out of it, til you've got some caramelization. At that point, add the tomato paste, and let that start to brown a little on the edges. Mush it up with the onions, and let things continue to meld. After about 10 minutes, add the chicken, and cook that on high heat for a while, before adding the sauce, the bay leaf, half and half, yogurt, raisins, cashews, and cilantro.  Let that simmer for a minimum of a half hour; if you're using chicken breast instead of thighs you probably want an hour.  I think it could probably go for up to 2 hours, if you had the time... I was hungry, so waited it out to 30 minutes and then dove in.  The sauce will reduce a little; if it's too thick, you can use more of that chicken stock you've been boiling to thin it out.  

Here's the final consistency, before we ate it.  We cooked it in a big pan, starting with an aluminum pan and transferring to a bigger nonstick once we realized how over-full the aluminum pan was.  I think a dutch oven may actually be the preferred vessel here.  Next time!

Serve with rice, and/or naan if you've thought that far ahead.  This is totally worth the ginungus ingredient list.  And, it got me over my fear of making Indian food, though I still think it's a better deal to just call up Bombay Palace for delivery...

Thanksgiving

Oh man, am I ever behind in posting pictures and recipes of yummy things.  Since I don't know where to start, I figure Thanksgiving is probably a good place.  Possibly overwhelming; you may not get many recipes with this.  Zan and Becky came to eat and drink with us, which made for excellent company and a really fun day.  

We started with appetizers. Ed really wanted to make a vegetable terrine, so he spent a long time roasting vegetables and getting everything *just so*.  It was a very pretty terrine, unfortunately, it sort of just tasted like cold vegetables, with too much aspic on top.  I don't really know how to improve on the fact that the terrine just tasted like cold roasted vegetables. I like roasted veggies, but the other appetizers were far more interesting.  

Other appetizers included a smoked salmon plate, some chicken liver pate that Ed made that we served with shallot jam, that he also made (and this was delicious), some turkey pate that was made with some unknown parts of the bird that maybe should not have gone into the pate (this was not quite as delicious; much more gamy and not really all that delicate), and some hummus and veggies.  All my favorite things!  

We made this immediately after going for a long-ish run in the snow, so were all quite chilled by the snow and quite excited by the appetizers.  Ed managed the perfect photobomb... 

The ladies showing their excitement without the photobomb...

So, after a few more hours of eating and drinking and talking and laughing, eventually dinner was done.  Mashed potatoes, delicata squash with sage and thyme and oregano, pull-apart garlic bread, two kinds of cranberry sauce/chutney, roasted Brussels sprouts with ham and gruyere, sausage and apple stuffing and roasted turkey thighs.



No idea what's going on in this photo, but it makes me smile.


Here's a photo of my plate, which may have been overloaded. And I may have gone back for seconds, and felt quite uncomfortable after that.  But I just loooove stuffing! And you only get it once a year! It took me days to be hungry again.



No photos of dessert, but we had a slightly-more-caramelized-than-ideal tarte tatin, with vanilla ice cream, and I was so stuffed that I barely had any of it.  I should also mention that Zan arrived armed with a beer or three for each course, that we paired pretty darn successfully!

Here's the cranberry chutney recipe, at least:
2C apple cider vinegar
1 onion, diced
1/4C fresh ginger
2 tbs orange peel
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp ground clove
12oz cranberries
1.25C brown sugar
2 bosc pears

Cook the spices and the cider until it's reduced to ~1.5C (10min).  Add everything else, and simmer for 30 minutes, then mash coarsely.

And the stuffing, which was so delicious - I used Pioneer Woman's recipe.  Highly, HIGHLY recommend this one.  We cooked it underneath the turkey thighs, so all the drippings went right into the stuffing.  Win!

Oh, and here's the shallot jam. This one's a little estimated, since Ed made the shallot jam...

Start with several pounds of shallots. Slice thinly.
Cook on low with plenty of duck fat and salt, for 20-45min until you're starting to get some good caramelization.  Add some cider vinegar and some sugar. How much? Only Ed knows. Some. Also good are some raisins, preferably golden raisins.  Add more duck fat as needed.  Keep cooking. If things start to stick, you can add some water.  Keep cooking. Taste occasionally and keep cooking. After about an hour, it's probably ready.

This was really good with the chicken liver pate. I have no idea what the recipe for the pate was, sorry!

Burgers, with flavor!

We wanted burgers the other day, and may have gotten a little carried away with all the stuff we put into them.  I don't remember exactly everything, but I do remember that these were quite tasty, juicy and flavorful.  I don't know if we had a theme for our flavors, but  remember grinding up some cumin, coriander, cardamom, pepper, and fennel, along with a couple good pinches of sumac and even more pinches of salt.  Then most of a head of parsley, a clove or two of garlic, and a handful of pitted green olives (not the canned kind; the tasty kind that are small and olive-y tasting).  

I mixed that up with my hands, because what better way is there than that? Threw a small piece in the pan to test the flavors (yum), and formed two burgers.  The meat was way too finely-ground, which may have been the inspiration behind putting all the stuff in the burger in the first place, and it was also way too lean, but the olives helped keep things moist.  I think it was buffalo meat, since that had been the same price as cow meat for some reason, and I like trying new things. Tasted similar to cow.  

I cooked these just in a pan - got a good sear on both sides and after maybe 10 minutes they were cooked through.  We were lacking any burger buns (fail), but did have some fresh whole wheat bread, that we cut in half, slathered with hummus on one side and garlic aioli on the other, and that was totally acceptable.

An American dinner

We had a very American dinner the other day. Steak and potatoes, and salad eaten on the same plate at the same time.  Whoaaa.  We made this salad again, because it was delicious, only without the avocado because we didn't have any.  Anyway, I wanted to talk about mashed potatoes. Because they're easy and quick and these ones were quite delicious.

I used to think I hated mashed potatoes, because they were always sort of gooey and the same consistency and pale and just gross.  But, it turns out that it's just boxed mash potatoes that I don't like.  Chunky "rustic" mashed potatoes are actually delicious!  

In this case, we chopped up two potatoes into quarters, and boiled for 15-20min or so until they were soft. Then, into a bowl with them, and maybe 2tbs of butter. Salt, pepper. A scallion, chopped finely. Mash with a fork. Eat. So simple, so delicious. You should make some, next time you want something fast and simple and delicious.  

Also, that yellow blob - that's an extra beet. Cooked, sliced thin, and drizzled with some really good vinegar. This one. You may ask why someone would spend $27 on a bottle of vinegar, and I would answer, because this one is totally worth it. You don't waste it in salad dressing, you drizzle it on things like beets where you can really taste it and appreciate it. Yum. Oh, and a pinch of salt and pepper, just to top things off.  

Chicken and rice (delicious version)

I got the opportunity to spend a night out in Sunderland last week, and this of course meant that what was left of the Gang of 5 needed to get together for dinner, because yum! Gail had her eye on this chicken and cardamom rice dish from the Jerusalem cookbook by Ottolenghi, and because I love his take on food, I was all for it.

I'll repeat the recipe here, because we changed the amount of water required - the original 1C of water was not going to cook any rice.  The end result was really delicious, especially all the crunchy bits of rice stuck to the pan.  Gail actually cooks by the recipe, we'll see how poorly this dish degrades when I take my usual approach to it next time.  (quantities? eh, close enough...).  Anyway, a very tasty version of chicken and rice, and I'll definitely make this again.


Ingredients:
2.5 tbs currants (or barberries, if you can get them, in which case you're supposed to soak them in sugar and water first)
3 onions
4 tbs olive oil
8 chicken thighs
salt and pepper
10 cardamom pods
1/4 tsp whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
1-2/3C basmati rice
3C boiling water
1.5 tbs chopped parsley
1/2C chopped dill leaves
1/4C chopped cilantro
(I imagine you could get away without the parsley, dill, and cilantro)

  

First, caramelize the onions in ~2tbs oil.  I think this should be done in a separate pot, though it defeats the whole one-pot part of this meal, because then you could parallel process the chicken.

Put 1.5 tsp of each salt and pepper all over the chicken along with another tbs of olive oil and all the whole spices, rub that in with your hands so it's really in there.  Brown the chicken in some olive oil.  We cooked the chicken skin-side down for probably 10min first, rendering out a lot of the fat and cooking the meat most of the way through. Since the chicken may need to cook longer than the rice, and you don't want to overcook the rice, it's worth browning the chicken for longer than you might for a chicken stew.

Pour off the excess chicken fat, then put all the rice, onions, currants, and spices into the pan.  Add 1tsp salt and more pepper.  Pour the boiling water over the top, put the chicken back into the rice, cover, and simmer for 30-45 minutes.  The chicken should be tender and the rice should be done...

We then took the chicken out of the rice and broiled it for 5min or so, until it was good and crispy.  Stir all the herbs into the rice, put the chicken back on the rice, and serve!




Gail in her new kitchen! I have kitchen envy.

Roast lamb with pomegranate molasses and ras el hanout

Not too long ago, Ed and I (well, mostly Ed) cooked a leg of lamb for his family.  It was delicious. I love me some lamb, but this was better than anything I had ever thought of before.  It was a boneless leg of lamb, from the folks in Vermont that make that yummy sheep cheese. Since the boy sheep don't make cheese, they turn into food.  

We did some looking around on the internet, and settled on a 130F internal temperature to pull out the meat.  It rose another 10ish degrees once we'd taken it out.  Ended up medium, mostly, with the ends more cooked than the middle, and that worked well so that everyone can choose how cooked they wanted their meat.  Yum!  

Ed marinated the lamb overnight with pomegranate molasses on the outside, and some ras el hanout spice on top of that, which is a spice mixture that just made me drool as I dreamed about roasting meats.   We got it from one of the Armenian shops on Mt. Auburn street.  I recommend.  Anyway, after marinating all night, we brought the lamb to room temperature, filled the rolled-up part with caramelized shallots, and then we roasted at 400 for 20min, and 325 for the remainder of the time (an hour, maybe? kept checking the thermometer and removed at 130F).

The lamb was scrumptious.  I recommend it!

Snaussages and root veggies

Sorry for the dearth of posting - life went and got busy, somehow.  

Ed went to Carl's Sausage Kitchen the other day, and came home armed with a lot of sausages.  These ones were some Hungarian variety, possibly debrecener?  Anyway, they were quite tasty, just spicy enough that they left your mouth warm, not burning, with delicious flavor to them.  Yum!

We had meant to make a soup, of parsnips, celery root, and a potato or two, but it turned into more of a mash than a soup.  A good chunk of frozen chicken stock helped with the flavor of the soup.  Bacon bits on top also help with flavor!  We roasted up some yellow carnival cauliflower too, just the florets, and sprinkled them on top all pretty-like, and fried some sage leaves in butter.  Pretty darn tasty meal!

Bluefish

I wanted to cook something delicious, and I vaguely remembered that it is bluefish season 'round these parts, so I went by Whole Foods to see if they had any sitting in their fish counter. Whole Foods, because it happens to be next to Marty's, which is where I dropped off Ed to acquire beer. Successful mission, and I walked out with a hunk o' fish and a tub of pistachio gelato. Yum!

The last time I made bluefish, I followed a recipe of sorts from Beyond Salmon.  As always, she does a great job describing how to cook fish, and it was quite delicious, though it's hard to go wrong when you're also involving crunchy potatoes.  I also made popovers, because I felt really bad that I had gone to work (via the T) with both car keys in my purse, and so Ed had also had to take the T, when otherwise he would have taken my car... anyway, he likes popovers, so I made him popovers. They were pretty darn tasty, as usual, and opening the oven to stick in the fish did not mess with their popping ability, thankfully!

We also had an endive languishing in the fridge, so I figured I'd better cook that up, as substitute for a green thing with our dinner.  Cut in half lengthwise, and cooked low and slow in a frying pan with some oil and salt.  The leaves just melt into deliciousness! Some cheese sprinkled on top never hurts, either.

The fish was perfect - flaky but moist, and very meaty-feeling, while the taste is kind of mild and not fishy at all.  Bright flavors from lemon and parsley complement it well. 

This was a tasty beer - some sort of Belgian from the clearance rack.  It's probably a 50-50 chance of getting a winner vs undrinkable shit from that shelf, and this Belgian was solidly in the middle of that range.  Totally drinkable.

Unfortunately, in a complete failure of the day, I fell asleep before remembering that I'd bought gelato! 

Pork spinach meatballs

I was wandering through Shaws, looking for things to inspire me to cook dinner, and found myself in the meat aisle, looking for deals.  Often you can find cheap deals on meat there, and while I find that pretty darn sketchy, I figure as long as you cook the manager's special stuff that night, you'll probably be fine.  I lucked out twice - thanks to those sketchy manager's special deals, I got a pound of ground pork for $1.10, and four beef bones for $0.60.  Cook that stuff til it's good and dead, eep.  What is wrong with our agricultural system that meat can be that cheap?

Anyway, the ground pork put me in mind of the meatball subs we'd had at the end of a long adventure race in Canada last fall; one of the flavor options had been something about pork, and then I got the idea that I wanted to put spinach in my meatballs.  So, a head of garlic and a pound of frozen spinach later, I was ready to go.

First things first: flavor.  Toasted spices are where it's at.  I think just about anything that imparts flavor is a good start, but I went with fennel seeds, cumin, mustard seeds, and red pepper flakes.

Salt, spices, meat, one egg, one small yellow beet (grated), 10oz of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed, a few cloves of garlic, some bread crumbs... 

Smoosh it all together, with a utensil or your hands.

Make balls.  Heat oven to 350F.

Bake for 15min on an ungreased pan, then flip and bake another 10min.  Eat, or freeze.

Actual quantities: 

1lb ground pork 80% lean

10oz frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

4 cloves garlic

1 yellow beet, peeled and grated (raw)

1/4C bread crumbs

2 tsp kosher salt (you could get away with 1tsp, if you're scared of sodium)

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp mustard seeds

Toast spices in a dry pan.  Grind.  Put everything in a bowl, mix together, make balls, bake for 25min.

Roasted duck breast

I love duck.  I think I always have - I have memories of eating duck even as a little kid, and enjoying it. So when Tiffany came by Boston and we had a dinner date at home, I was pretty sold when I saw the duck breast in Savenor's.  I believe that the trick to perfect duck is that you need to render out most of the fat from under the skin, first, so that you can actually eat the skin, and it's delicious and crispy.  The meat is pretty damn good even if you don't eat the skin, but crispy duck skin without any of the gross fat is my idea of heaven.  *drool*

But first things first - we needed appetizers.  And that's where Formaggio's comes in.  The fact that we only walked out of these with one hunk of goat cheese, some sopressata, rabbit pate, and sourdough bread showed amazing self restraint, on the part of all of us.  The three of us managed to eat nearly this entire board of deliciousness before dinner, and still have room for dinner - that's what Eating Buddies are about, I guess!  The sopressata wrapped around a pear slice with a bit of hard aged gouda was pretty awesome, fyi.

We also had some pickles - carrots, turnips, garlic, ginger, and spicy kohlrabi.

The eating buddy thing - Tiffany, Ed, Chris and I were eating buddies in highschool.  I don't even know what this means, except that we really liked to eat good food.  Some things don't change...

Back to the duck.  First I salted the meat and skin.  Then (not pictured), I scored the skin in a cross-hatch pattern, with a very sharp knife.  You want to cut through nearly all the fat, but not into the meat. That lets the fat render out better.

Next comes the rendering part.  In a cast iron skillet, I put the duck skin-side down on low heat, and left it there for the next hour.  Meanwhile, we devoured cheese, meat, and fruit.  mmmmm.

Also, we had an interesting foamy rhubarb rosemary cocktail.  Not my favorite, but an interesting drink.

Anyway, after the fat has rendered almost completely out (you may have to pour it off a few times - save that fat, it's delicious for cooking potatoes), you can think about cooking the meat.  I hit the oven at 350F, and toasted up some spices: cumin, cardamom, sumac, pepper, and fennel seeds, in a dry pan.  Grind those up, add a pinch of salt, then rub both the meat and skin with generous amounts of toasted ground spices.  Flip the duck over so that it's now meat-side down, and transfer to the oven for ~10min.  15min yields medium cooked duck, which is overdone in my opinion.  

Take it out, let it rest for 5min or so, then cut across the grain into slices.  Serve on top of something that'll soak up any juices.  In this case, we had a moroccan flavored salad of orzo, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, parsley, cilantro, and pomegranate seeds.  

This was delicious.  I really want to go cook a duck breast now.  The spices don't matter, because most of the flavor comes from that perfect, crispy, drool-inducing skin.  mmmm.