Braised oxtail with gnocchi

Braised oxtail is soooooo good, and it's pretty easy to make. Gnocchi, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult. There are a number of gnocchi recipes on the web, so I won't put anything specific here, although there are a couple of things worth noting when it comes to gnocchi making. One of the objectives of making gnocchi is to have it as light and "cloud like" as possible. This, I found, involves a trade off in structural integrity and appearance. Basically, the lighter the gnocchi, the more you have to coddle it as you prepare it.
The basic ingredients in gnocchi are potato, flour, and egg. Egg is a binder that helps all the ingredients stay together. More egg, along with kneading the dough more, will give the gnocchi more structural integrity. It will also make the gnocchi heavier. Less egg and less kneading will lead to lighter gnocchi. I tried adding a minimal amount of egg (real pros can get away with no egg) and kneading, and while the gnocchi was very light, the first batch basically fell apart or was squashed into flat little discs when I tossed it in the pan.

Here's the recipe for the rest of this dish.

INGREDIENTS:

-oxtail (~3 lbs)

-1/2 bottle red wine

-1-2 cup veal or beef stock

-1 carrots, diced

-1 stalk celery, diced

-1/2 onion, diced

-1 small can crushed tomatoes or 1/2 small can tomato paste

-1-2 bay leaves

-1 Tbs black pepper corns

-1 clove

-2 cloves garlic, smashed

-1 sprig rosemary

-2 sprigs thyme

-canola oil

-flour

-salt and pepper

Season the oxtail with salt and pepper and dredge in flour. Heat up 1 Tbsp of canola oil in a heavy pot or dutch oven large enough to hold all of the oxtail in a single layer. Sear the oxtail on all sides at medium high heat. Remove the oxtail and add the onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Cook the vegetables, over medium heat until soft. You don't want to brown them.

Add the wine, stock, tomato, rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, clove, and peppercorns and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and place a cheesecloth over the top of the braising mixture. Put the oxtail on top so that it is partially submerged in the liquid, but separated from the onions, etc.

Cover and place in a 250F oven for 3 hours. Remove, the oxtails, strain out the solids in the braising liquid, and then reduce the braising liquid until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. While the braising liquid is reducing, use a fork to remove the oxtail from the bone and break it into small chunks. Toss with the reduce braising liquid and let simmer.

While the oxtail is simmering, heat up a nonstick skillet, add butter, and the gnocchi. Brown the gnocchi, then add the oxtail. Toss everything together and let sit in the warm pan for a minute or so. Place in a serving bowl, garnished with grated parmesan cheese, parsley, and olive oil.

Last dinner in my Chicago kitchen

Here's the last dinner I made in my Chicago kitchen. Tomato salad, braised greens, grilled corn with chile and lime, and grilled steak. It was a bit of an eclectic mix. But it used up the last of the vegetables in the fridge.

The tomato salad was pretty straight forward. Just slice up the tomatos, mix with thinly sliced shallots, capers, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.

The greens (purple kale) were braised in some pork stock and a smoked ham hoc that had been sitting in my freezer. I also added some red pepper flakes and raisins. The raisins add a nice bit of sweetness and they soak up a lot of the savory flavors from the braising liquid. To make this dish, you want to start by sauting one bunch of sliced up kale along with a few cloves of sliced garlic. Add the stock, ham hoc, raisins, red pepper flakes, and maybe a tablespoon of cider vinegar. Let this simmer for a while (until the greens are very soft), remove the ham hoc, pick off the meat and toss this in with the greens.

I served the corn with a chile lime spread. I made the spread by mixing melted or softened butter with mayo in about a 1 to 3 ratio, and then adding lime juice and Mexican chile powder. Slathered over some grilled corn, this stuff is really, really good.

Salad with steak, soft cooked egg, and garlic croutons

We had a bit of steak left over from Tony's birthday lunch, so, rather than reheating it (I think that always ruins the texture) I sliced it thinly and used it in a salad. The salad was dressed with some olive oil from Liguria, and 15 year aged balsamic vinegar. In addition to the beef, it was topped with shaved parmesan, a soft cooked egg, and croutons made from a slightly stale baguette and some garlic oil.

Tony's birthday lunch

Sunday was Tony's birthday, so Abby and I had some family over for a birthday lunch. Since I've been experimenting with sous-vide lately, I was looking for any excuse to try something new out, and this provided the perfect opportunity. The menu included sous-vide New York strip steak, and I also made a great asparagus salad recipe from the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook. I just got this book, and absolutely love it, so I'll probably be posting a lot of creations from this book over the next few months.

We started the meal with some home made rilletes, warm, marinated olives, and Societe roquefort (this cheese is awesome).

For the first salad course, I put together a salad of prosciutto, arugula, and shaved parmesan. This dish is so simple, yet so good. As long as you use good ingredients, you can't go wrong. Just cover a plate with very thinly sliced prosciutto, toss some arugula with some nice extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, and kosher salt and put this on top of the prosciutto. Cover with shaved parmesan, and finish with another drizzle of olive oil.

The second salad course was a grilled asparagus dish with poached eggs and prosciutto. The eggs are lightly poached, so the yolk is still runny, and when you break them, they make a nice sauce for the asparagus.
The main course was garlic mashed potatoes with sous-vide NY strip steak. I cooked the steaks in a water bath at 135F for about 3 hours. The steaks were seasoned with salt and then I include one sprig of thyme, one sprig of rosemary, and some canola oil in the vacuum pack with each steak. I seared the steaks over high heat on a cast iron griddle for about 1 minute on each side. By the time we finished the salad courses, the steaks had been sitting for quite some time, and they weren't nearly as good as they were immediately after being seared. Next time, I'll make sure to serve these immediately after searing.
For dessert, we had carrot cupcakes from Alliance Bakery.

Christmas Dinner

This year was the first time that I spent Christmas outside of Washington state. While my family has a tradition of getting together on Christmas Eve, this year, it was a bit quieter. Nothing was planned for Christmas Eve, so Abby and I decided to have her brother, Tony, and my brother-in-law, Mitch, and niece, Midori, over for dinner. We did a "surf-and-turf" menu with salt baked branzino and an herb-crusted rib roast served with brussels sprouts and bacon and roasted potatoes. None of this is really new. I've made each of these dishes before, so I won't go into detail about the preparation, but here are some pictures.

Above is the branzino, peaking out of the salt crust, and below is a picture of the finished product with some olive oil that we brought back from Tuscany.

Here's the rib roast.

And hear are the brussels sprouts. Usually, I half or quarter the brussels sprouts and roast them, but this time around, I just shelled (peeled off the leaves) and sauteed them.

The perfect burger (just use Kobe beef)

The hamburger has been getting a lot of attention lately. This common folk food is popping up in a lot of nice restaurants, and the gastro-pub craze has resulted in endless variations of this tried and true classic. A few days ago, the NYTimes had an article on "the prefect burger," for which it interviewed several well known chefs for their opinion on the perfect burger. I've made burgers several times at bbqs, and usually they are pretty low key events. Usually, I'll just season them with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. I have one previous blog entry about burgers, and I thought that one was pretty good until I tried this version. This hands down the best burger I've ever had. The secret? Kobe beef. When Abby and I went to Savenor's today, they had just ground up some Kobe ribeye. For burgers, you can't do better than that.

I topped the burgers with Grafton cheddar
and carmelized onions. I tossed the onions with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and olive oil, and slowly cooked them on a cast iron griddle. When they were done, I tossed in a little balsamic vinegar from Modena.
While the onions were cooking, I formed the Kobe beef into two half pound patties and seasoned with a generous amount of kosher salt and coarse ground pepper. When the onions were done, I turned the heat up to high and gave the griddle a couple minutes to heat up. I seared the burgers for 3 minutes on the first side and two minutes on the second side. After the second side was finished, I topped the burgers with cheese and finished in the oven at 375F for another 3 minutes. The burgers came a perfect medium rare (a little more to the rare side). While the burgers were resting, I toasted the buns on the griddle and tossed a little olive oil in with a handful of arugula. Once the burgers were done cooking and had a couple minutes to rest, they were ready to go. Just add ketchup, whole grain mustard, the onions and arugula and you have one great burger.

Locally raised steak, smoked blue cheese, and arugula and tomato salad

This is a pretty straight forward meal that relies on the ingredients more than anything else. The center of the dish was a ribeye steak from a farm in Vermont. The steak was seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked rare, and then garnished with Tuscan olive oil and smoked blue cheese. The salad was arugula dressed with the same olive oil, lemon juice, and kosher salt. The tomatoes were seasoned with salt and pepper and left to sit for about 15 minutes, then topped with olive oil, sweet balsamic vinegar, and chives. I find that letting the salt sit on tomatoes for a while really improves the flavor.

Skirt steak a la plancha, creamy sunchoke and turnip puree, cumin roasted carrots with thyme

INGREDIENTS

• skirt steak
• sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes)
  
• turnips
  
• cream
  
• salt
  
• pepper
• carrots
  
• cumin
  
• thyme
  

Peel sunchokes and turnips, cut into 1/2 inch cubes. You want a sunchoke to turnip ratio of about 3:2 or 3:1. Add to a pan with enough cream to braise/poach the sunchokes and turnips. You don't need to completely submerge them. Bring the cream to a boil, then reduce to medium-low heat. Simmer for about 30 minutes. Remove the root vegetables, reserving the cream. Puree the vegetables and add as much cream as you need to get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper.

Peel and chop the carrots, toss with olive oil, thyme, salt, pepper, and cumin to taste. Roast at 350F for about 45 minutes.

Season the skirt steak with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Sear for 1 to 2 minutes on each side on a griddle over high heat.

Curry noodles with beef

Over a year into the life of this blog, we finally have an entry from Abby. I didn't feel like cooking the other night, so Abby decided to try out a recipe for grilled beef with noodles in a Thai curry broth. Here are some pictures.

Blue Burger

Good ingredients can take a simple meal to new heights. Here, I made a burger with ground beef and a brioche roll from Savenor's, a good strong roquefort cheese from the Wine & Cheese Cask, arugula from the farmer's market, and caramelized onions. The brioche was toasted with a little butter and the ground beef was seasoned with alder smoked salt and fresh ground pepper and cooked to medium rare.

Prune NYC

Roasted bone marrow is one of those things that I had seen a couple of times on TV shows - Tony Bourdain's show, to be specific - that I really wanted to try. The first time it made an appearance was on his London show when he went to Fergus Henderson's restaurant, St. John. A few weeks later, the same dish of roasted bone marrow with parsley salad made an appearance on the New York episode when he went to Prune. There was no way I was going to find myself in London anytime soon, but Prune happens to be just down the street from Abby's place, so we decided to give it a shot. The place is tiny, and it may not be the easiest seat to get on a Saturday night, but a rain storm the left us dripping wet must have chased away a few customers. We were able to walk in and a table was sitting there waiting for us.

This meal was worlds away from the highly refined seafood we had the night before. It wasn't uniformly spectacular, but it was good, comfort food that tasted like it could have come out of someone's home kitchen....if that someone was a really good, creative cook with hookups for good ingredients. The first thing we got when we set down was a little bowl of fried chickpeas with another bowl of salt for dipping. I've made fried chickpeas as an element for a dish a couple of times here and here. I must say, its a great little bar snack, and one of the many little quirks that makes this place worth going to.

For the appetizer we ordered the roasted bone marrow dish. The serve it with grilled pieces of bread, sea salt, and a salad of parsley, shallots, capers, and cornichons. The bitterness and brininess of the salad cuts through the rich marrow. It's a great combination. This seems pretty easy to make, so I'll have go give it a try at a dinner party sometime.
We ordered grilled lamb shoulder chop with braised dandelion greens and skordalia; braised rabbit leg with vinegar sauce; wax beans with grated beets, citrus, and honeycomb; and braised leeks and celery hearts with collard greens and a dijon mustard sauce. Abby and I both thought the beets with honeycomb were really interesting. I think we both thought the main courses were good, but not quite as good as the sides that we ordered.

We were still a little hungry after the main courses, so we ordered these enormous "shrimp" that everyone in the restaurant seemed to be getting. The menu said that they were grilled head on shrimp with anchovy butter, but they must be langoustines, which are somewhere between a shrimp and a lobster. This was awesome. (So awesome that every time I look at this photo I instinctively start drooling. I have yet to try a tastier shrimp! -abby)
This dish and the bone marrow are reason enough to come to this restaurant. When you're all done, they give you cherries, instead of chocolates or mints. I thought this was another nice quirky little touch.
I enjoyed my meal here and would recommend it to anyone who isn't a vegetarian. The place is small, but if the weather is crappy or you walk in right at opening, you might be able to get a table for two without reservations. Its probably better to play it safe, though, and call ahead. Given that the side dishes and appetizers were great and the main courses were just ok, I think I'll treat this like a tapas bar next time I come here and just order small plates.

Wedding tasting, round 2

Our first trip to the Food for Thought Kitchens was tasty, but none of the dishes they came up with were quite what we were looking for, so last week when Abby and I were in Chicago for a whirlwind week of wedding planing, we went back to the caterer's for another tasting. We had already picked out our salads and appetizers, so it was just main courses this time. Of the four we tried, three were fantastic candidates. Now we just have to narrow it down to the one or two dishes that we want to serve at the wedding, which will be hard since they were all so good.


First, we tried a seafood dish: Sweet Sake Roasted Wild Striped Bass with Dashi Soaked Soba Noodles, Wok Fried Vegetables, Tempura Fried Shiitake Mushrooms, and a Soy Miso Broth. This one is probably a keeper since (aside from tasting really good) we know so many pescaterians or vegaquariums or whatever you call people that make seafood the one exception to an otherwise vegetarian diet.

The next two dishes out were both chicken. As I've blogged about before, ordering the chicken dish is a good way to see how good a kitchen is. You can go to a lot of reputable restaurants and get a somewhat dry pan roasted chicken. This place, it turns out, does chicken better than most restaurants I have been to. The truffled chicken breast is outstanding.

Here's dish one:

1) Frenched Chicken Breast with Summer Truffle with Garlic-Braised Baby Bok Choy, Black Beauty Eggplant, Tri-Color Carrot, Basil Glace

2) Pan-Roasted Chicken Breast Grilled Fingerling Potato, Asparagus, Marconi Pepper Chutney, Enoki Mushrooms, Sherry-Ginger "Reduction"

Of the two chicken dishes, the first one was a better match with the flavors we were looking for.

Finally, we tried another take on braised shortrib, a dish we had tried at the initial tasting. This dish was a bit on the heavy side for a summer meal, but it was damn good and may be hard to pass up on.

Star Anise Braised Beef Short Rib with Scallion Potato Puree, Cippolini Onion, Sugar Snap Peas, Shitake Mushrooms.

Braised short ribs with root vegetable puree

This is a great winter meal that, while time consuming, isn't all that technical.

INGREDIENTS
-short ribs (~2-2.5 lbs)
-chicken broth/stock (~1 cup)
-red wine (~2 cups)
-2-3 carrots
-1 onion
-2-3 sticks celery
-2-3 parsnips
-1 potato
-1 celeriac
-1 large turnip
-garlic
-salt/pepper
-butter
-thyme/parsley

To make the short ribs, season them with salt and pepper and sear on high heat for a few minutes in a dutch oven or some other really heavy pot. Once a nice crust is formed on the surface, remove them, drain most of the fat, and in the same pot cook a mirepoix (carrots, onions, celery). I also add garlic and parsnips. Cook this for a few minutes (5-10) over medium heat. Add about two tablespoons of flour and, if available, toss in a few scoops of tomato paste. Return the short ribs to the pot, add some chicken broth and red wine in about a 1 to 2 ratio. Add enough liquid so that it comes about half way up the short ribs. It's a braise, not a stew, so you don't want it completely covered. Throw in a bay leaf, cover the pot and turn the heat to low or place it in a 200-250F oven. Let it braise for about 2-3 hours.

For the root vegetable puree, throw in whatever you like. I used a combination of potato, carrot, parsnip, turnip, and celeriac. Peel and quarter everything and place in a large pot of water. Bring the pot to a boil over high heat. A few minutes after the water boils, begin checking the root vegetables. When a knife slides in easily, it's done. You will be able to mash the potatoes, but you'll need a blender or food processor for the other less starchy roots. Mix everything together and add butter, salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. You can keep this warm in the oven if you finish ahead of time.

Once the short ribs are done cooking, set them aside in a separate bowl, strain out all of the braising vegetables, and reduce the braising liquid over high heat. Eventually, the liquid will reduce to a nice thick consistency. At this point, return the short ribs to the pot and turn until covered. Serve over the root vegetable puree with the remaining sauce.

Christmas dinner

This year's Christmas gathering was a little smaller than usual with Laura, Mitch, and Midori all back in Chicago. Normally, Laura and I do most of the kitchen work on holidays, but this year I put my mom to work as sous chef. On Christmas day, my parents had their friends, the Mike and Liza Morell over for dinner. I don't remember my parents being big wine connoisseurs when I was back home, but I suspect those to may have something to do with the increasing quality of the wine that they consumer. One of their sons is a vintner and the other a chef, so its a real foodie family.

The Christmas menu included flank steak stuffed with olives, pine nuts, and currants, braised escarole with fried garbanzos and garlic chips, mustard crusted, roasted fingerling potatoes, and a beet salad with arugula and goat cheese. The first two dishes come from a Tom Douglas cookbook that I got for Christmas a couple years ago. An online recipe can be found here. A couple notes about the recipe: unless you like things very rare, cook for a couple of extra minutes. As you can see from the picture above, it's pretty much black and blue in the middle. I like it this way, but I suspect most people don't. Also, frying the garbanzo beans is a bit of a pain in the ass if you don't have deep fryer. One approach might be to toss the garbanzos in olive oil and salt and than place on a cookie sheet under a broiler, shaking frequently, until they crisp up. I'll try this if I ever make the dish again. The potato recipe was pretty good, but the crust burns easily and it is a bit heavy on the mustard, so you probably need a bit less mustard and you need to toss the potatoes around more than the recipe recommends. The beet salad was the one orginal thing that I made for this meal. Or, at least, I wasn't going off of someone else's recipe. Its really simple, and quite tasty. Here's the recipe if you want to try it at home.

red beets (I think I used two large beets above)
orange (juice and zest...remember to zest before you juice)
taragon (optional)
good quality olive oil
red wine vinegar
kosher salt
coarsely ground pepper
arugula
goat cheese

Cut the tops off of the beets, clean them off, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and wrap them in foil. Cook in the oven at 375F until soft. This should take an hour or so. After an hour, you can unwrap the foil a bit and poke the beets with a pairing knife. When its done, the knife will slide in with minimal resistance. It could take as long as two hours....I really can't remember.

When the beets are done, let them cool a bit, then rub off the skin and dice to the desired size. To rub off the skin, just use a big wad of paper towels. This will allow you to get going while the beets are still hot and will keep you from staining your hands red.

In a bowl, toss together the beets with about two tablespoons of roughly chopped tarragon, the juice from half of an orange, a teaspoon of orange zest, and a dash or red wine vinegar and olive oil. In a separate bowl, whisk together about one tablespoon of the juice from the other half of the orange, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar and a bit of olive oil (start with one or two tablespoons and adjust to taste), and salt and pepper. Toss this vinaigrette with the arugula (only use a little bit, you don't want to drench the salad) and arrange it on a serving plate with the beets and goat cheese.

You can make the beets well ahead of time, and at the last minute, dress the greens and combine the ingredients.

Lake Luzerne

A few weeks ago, Adam and Natalie invited Jon, Katrina, Abby, and me up to the Pollets' cabin on Lake Luzern. When camping...or cabining...or whatever it is we were doing, cooking out is imperative. We spent most of the day playing tennis, vollyball, or swimming and then the guys were sent out to get food for dinner. Being guys, we chose burgers. Cheddar jalapeno burgers, to be precise. Jon and I had made them a week or so earlier and they were good enough to merit a second go-round.

By the time we got around to cooking, it was pretty dark, and the charcoal was really smoky. Good thing Jon never leaves the house without his trusty headlamp.

Clearly, Jon and Adam were psyched about the burgers, although if I were a betting man, I would bet the Jon was slightly more enthusiastic...not sure what would give me that idea.
Natalie and Katrina preferred the corn and grilled vegetables. They were kind enough to share some of the corn with Jon.
The next morning, Katrina made an excellent batch of French toast that was enjoyed by all.

Wedding planning

In early September, Abby and I went to Chicago to go to a friends wedding and get some of our own wedding planning underway. We spent a day running around the city to meet with the photographer, check out a church, a bakery, the venue, and, finally, at the end of the day we went to the caterer's main kitchen for a tasting.

We tried out three salads. Here are two of them. I forgot to take a picture of the third one. We also tried a number of hors d'oeuvres, some good, some not so great. We think we'll go with the last salad pictured. Everyone liked the fresh berries in it, and the flower petals were a nice touch.
The salads were followed by three sample main courses. Fish, chicken, and beef. Surprisingly, the chicken was the best of the three. The fact that they used truffle butter in the chicken probably didn't hurt. I also liked the beef dish, the brussels sprouts in particular, but everyone else seemed to think that a lot of guests would not be as excited about them.




We finished off with a desert plate, which probably won't make an appearance at the wedding.

I don't think any of the dishes will show up on the wedding day menu in their current form, but that gives us a good excuse to go back for another tasting.