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.

Roasted chicken, carrots, spring onions, and blue potatoes

A lot of times, you hear cooks say a key to good cooking is to buy good ingredients, and try your best not to mess them up. This was one of those dinners. The farmers markets here in Chicago are in full swing, and just about everything I used in this dish except for the olive oil, butter, and lemons, came from either the local farmers market or the community garden. What I love about the farmers market is that when you buy something like a carrot, you have a huge variety to choose from. The same goes for just about every other vegetable or fruit, including the onions and potatoes I used in this dish. While roasted chicken and root vegetables are typically thought of as a fall or winter dish, the way I look at it, anything I get at the farmer's market is, by definition, seasonal cooking, and it tasted just as good on a warm summer evening as it would on a cold winter night.

Here's the recipe. It could not be more simple.

Brine the chicken (look up your favorite brine recipe online).

Remove from brine, pat dry, and let come to room temperature.

Season with salt and pepper, put a lemon wedge, herbs, and some smashed garlic cloves in the cavity.

Truss the chicken.

Toss the vegetables with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

In a 12 inch skillet, arrange the vegetables and place the chicken on top. Add a few lemon wedges to the skillet.

Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the chicken or place a couple pieces of butter on top of the chicken.

Roast in a 450 to 475F oven for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 400F and continue to roast until the chicken breast is 160F.

Remove the chicken and let it rest on the cutting board for at least 15 minutes.

In the meantime, toss the vegetables in the pan to glaze them, and add any herbs. I used a bit of dill, chives, garlic scapes, and parsley.

Fish, Basque style

I think that making something "al Vasco" or "in the style of the Basque" just means that you use a lot of stewed peppers and onions. As this is a traditional dish, there are a million ways to make it. My version uses saffron, smoked paprika, thyme, and a little hot pepper to give the dish a really rich, warm taste. A lot of times, Basque style dishes include piquillo peppers. I didn't have any, but if you can get them, you might want to try adding them to the dish.

INGREDIENTS (for 2)

• 1 whole fish (branzino, trout, snapper, etc)
• 1 onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 tomato, seeded, and diced
• small potatos (enough for two servings)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/2 to 1 cup chicken or veggie broth/stock
• a pinch of red pepper flakes
• a pinch of saffron
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp dried thyme or 2 tsp fresh thyme
• 1 T tomato paste
• parsley
• lemon
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
  

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and preheat the oven to 400F. Cut the potatos in half or quarters, depending on the size, and boil for 5 minutes. Remove and let drain.

Cut the bell peppers in half and core them. Toss the potatos with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme and two cloves of minced garlic. Place the potatos and the bell peppers, separately, in the oven and roast for 30 minutes.

Slice up the onion and cook with olive oil over medium high heat. Once the onions begin to cook down, reduce the heat to medium or medium low and let cook, stirring occasionally for another 20 minutes or so. You don't want them to fry, so pay attention to the heat and keep it low. You want to really bring out the sweetness.

When the peppers and potatoes are done roasting, set the potatos aside and place the peppers in a paper bag or a bowl covered in plastic and let sit for a couple minutes. Once they are cool enough to handle, peel off the skins and slice into long thin strips. Add to the pan with the onions along with two cloves of minced garlic and the diced tomato and cook on medium heat for a couple minutes. Add the wine to this mixture and turn up the heat to reduce it. Add the red pepper flakes, paprika, and tomato paste and mix everything together. Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of stock along with the paprika and let simmer over low heat for about 5 minutes. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. You may also want to add a teaspoon of red wine vinegar.

While the stew is simmering, season the fish with salt and pepper and cut vertical slits along both sides of the fish. Once the stew is done, place it in a roasting pan or oven safe dish large enough to hold the fish and mix together with the potatos. Add more broth if this mixture looks too thick. Place the fish on top of the potatos, and cover with some of the pepper mixture. Roast at 400F for 30 minutes.

Carefully remove the fish to a cooking sheet. Again, be careful. It is really easy to break the fish here. Place the fish under the broiler for a couple minutes. Keep an eye on it. You want to crisp the skin, but it goes from crisp to burned really quickly. While the fish is broiling, mix 1 to 2 teaspoons chopped parsley into the peppers. Transfer everything to a serving dish (if you didn't just cook it in the serving dish), and place the fish back on top. Squeeze a bit of lemon over everything, garnish with some more parsley, and eat it while its hot.

Pork braised in milk with roasted red pepper potato puree

Here are the ingredients you'll need for this dish. It's really pretty simple.

• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 leek (white, light green parts only), finely chopped
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• bouquet garni
• 2-2.4 c whole milk
• 2-3 lb pork center cut roast

Start by seasoning the pork with salt and pepper and browning on all sides in a Dutch oven until it looks like this:
Remove and cook the onions, carrots, garlic, and leeks. After about 10 minutes, add 1/2 to 1 T flour. Stir and cook an additional minute or two. Add milk and bouquet garni. Bring to boil, stirring constantly.
Add the pork, reduce heat to low, and cover for one hour. Turn the pork occasionally and stir the content of the Dutch oven to avoid any scorching. After an hour, remove the pork and let it stand. Meanwhile, strain the solids out of the braising liquid and bring to a simmer in a separate pot. Season with salt and serve over thinly sliced pieces of pork. Here, the pork is served with blanched and sauteed green beans and potato puree with roasted red bell peppers.

Crispy Arctic Char with pan roasted potatoes and arugula

INGREDIENTS
Arctic char (1/3 lb per serving)
flour
salt and pepper
yukon gold potatoes (about 3 small potatoes per serving)
arugula
basil
orange-champagne vinegar
high quality olive oil

Bring a pot of water to boil.
Skin the potatoes and cut them in half.
When the water is boiling, add a lot of salt and then add the potatoes. Cook until nearly done.
When you can insert a knife into the potatoes with minimal resistance, drain the potatoes and let them dry.
Add a generous amount of olive oil to a non-stick pan and add the potatoes. Toss occassionally to avoid burning. The potatoes are done when they are golden brown on all sides.

To prepar the char, cut slits into the skin side of the char, cover both sides with salt and pepper, and dredge in flour. Cook in olive oil over high heat, starting with the skin side down. It should take about 2 minutes on each side to cook.

Top the fish with a quick basil vinaigrette. In a mini food processor, add a couple basil leaves, orange-champagne vinegar, and a pinch of salt. Blend everything together, add olive oil, and blend again until emulsified. The vinegar to oil ratio should be about 1 to 2. You don't need to make that much for this dish. Maybe a tablespoon per serving.

Serve with arugula dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, a pinch of kosher salt, and shaved Parmessan cheese.

Chicken and potatoes, two ways

This first one is really easy. It's a version of something Jamie Oliver did on his show a few weeks back. I just switched up ingredients according to what was in my fridge. Start by boiling a few new potatoes. While these are cooking, chop up an assortment of herbs - I just picked some oregano, rosemary, and thyme that I have growing on my back porch - and debone and cook the chicken legs. Cook the chicken skin side down with some olive oil and leave it alone for a few minutes. If you move the chicken too early, the skin will stick to the pan. As the chicken cooks, prep any other ingredients you want to throw into the mix. I used garlic, olives, capers, chorizo (cooked separately), and roasted red peppers.When the potatoes and chicken are done, toss together the potatoes, chicken, herbs, and additional ingredients with salt, pepper, olive oil and a touch of vinegar in a single dish. Cook at 350F for 20-30 min.
This next one is also pretty straight forward, but it requires a bit more attention since it isn't a one pot meal. Again, start by boiling potatoes, but you can peel them first this time. After starting the potatoes, preheat the oven to 350F, season the chicken with salt, pepper, and start cooking it skin side down over high heat with some olive oil. If the oil starts smoking, turn the flame down a little. After a few minutes, the skin will no longer stick to the pan and you can turn the chicken over. Once you turn the chicken, stick it in the oven, skin side up for 20 minutes. By this time, the potatoes should be done. When they are boiled through, drain them and cut them into halves or quarters depending on the size. Toss them in a pan over medium heat with olive oil and let them cook, turning occasionally so they brown on all sides. The potatoes and chicken don't need much attention during these last 20 minutes. So use this to make the collards. Just rinse them, cut them into strips, and saute over medium high heat with garlic and olive oil. Add a bit of salt and, if you have it on hand, let the collards simmer in a bit of chicken stock after they have cooked down. Add a little vinegar at the end to brighten up the flavors.

Roasted black bass and fingerling potato stacks

Abby is spending the summer in NYC doing to whole corporate law thing. I've hear mixed opinions about this type of work. Some people really like it; some people tolerate it because they have law school loans to pay off; and some people think it's the most horrible work imaginable. Say what you will about corporate law, but one thing is undeniable. The food is good. Last week, one of the partners at the law firm invited Abby out to lunch and, being a workaholic, said that he didn't really go out to lunch much. So, being a rare occasion, he wanted to go someplace really nice, like Jean Georges. This, by the way, is one of the few restaurants that has 4 New York Times stars. When Abby and I were researching restaurants - for now, I'll just have to live vicariously through her high-end eating experiences - we discovered two things of interest: 1) lunch at Masa costs $400 per person, and 2) Jean-Georges Vongerichten has a blog. The first piece of info was interesting insofar as it was a shockingly high price to pay for lunch. I wonder if this is the most expensive lunch in the world? The second piece of information will actually be useful because this guy is an amazing chef and he occasionally posts recipes, like this one. It looked good, so I decided to give it a try.
As with a lot of home cooking, you don't need to do a lot of technical work to make the dish a success. There are no reductions or emulsions here, just a few ingredients thrown in a pan. Probably the hardest thing to do is slicing the lemons really thin. If you have good knife skills, this isn't a problem. If not, use a mandoline.

Here is the finished dish
I paired the fish with a stack of fingerling potatoes and some lemon-garlic aioli. This dish was inspired by the patatas bravas they make at Casa Mono.

To make the aioli, just whisk together an egg yolk, lemon zest, and two cloves of garlic. You want to mince the garlic and then crush it to a paste by repeatedly dragging the edge of your knife over the mound of minced garlic. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, and then begin whisking in olive oil. Add the oil very slowly. The taste from the olive oil can be overpowering, so you may want to cut it with a flavorless oil like canola. When the mixture gets too thick, thin it out with lemon juice. You want to add about 1/2 cup of oil per egg yolk.

For the potatoes, begin by boiling the fingerling potatoes in a pot of heavily salted water until they are done. They are done when a knife pokes through them with little resistance. Let the potatoes cool and then slice them in half lengthwise. Finish them off on the stove top over high heat with some olive oil, garlic, herbs (I just used thyme), salt and pepper. Spoon out a base of aioli on which to stack the potatoes. Top with another dollop of the aioli.

Cooking With Craisins

A few weeks ago Frank Bruni, the NYTimes food critic, posted an entry about chicken on his food blog. One of the opening statements of this entry was that you could really tell a the quality of a restaurant by trying it's chicken dishes, sort of like testing a pizza place by ordering the plain cheese pizza. He then went on to describe some of the better places to get chicken in NYC. Chicken is by far the most common source of protein in the American diet (average annual chicken consumption is about 86 lbs/person) and, due to its low fat content, it is really tough to cook correctly. When done right, though, chicken is really really good. In fact, the best meal I've ever had was a roasted chicken with fries that I had in Porto seven years ago. Anyway, after reading Bruni's blog, I had a craving for a good roast chicken.

I dropped by Savenor's when I got home from work to pick up a chicken, and then got that started while trying to figure out what else to make. We ended up going with potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Turns out, the brussels sprouts were the highlight of the meal, with Craisins as the ingredient that really pushed them over the top. Who'd have thought? The final menu was a simple roasted chicken, garlic and thyme fried smashed potatoes, and roasted brussels sprouts with craisins and lardons. Here are the recipes. The execution of these dishes is pretty non-technical and it comes together fairly quickly. Try it. Its really good....probably one of the best meals I've made in quite some time.
Start by roasting the chicken. If you plan way ahead, you can brine the chicken, but you want to do that a full day ahead. One way to time things would be to brine over night and in the morning dry the chicken off with paper towels and let it air dry in the fridge all day. To get good, crispy skin - and that, after all, is the best part of roast chicken - you need it to be nice and dry. If you have a good quality free range chicken, you don't need to brine it. You should probably always go free range anyway. It doesn't cost that much more and there is really no comparison in taste. Before prepping the chicken, preheat the oven to 450F and take some potatoes (preferably smaller ones, like new potatoes), put them in a pot of cold water and place on high heat. Rinse the chicken off quickly and pat it dry with a paper towel. Truss the chicken (tuck the wings back and tie the legs together, as pictured) and generously sprinkle it with kosher salt and coarsely ground pepper. If you have a temperature probe, stick it in the chicken breast and set the alarm to go off when the internal temperature is 150F. Once the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken in and get to work on the other dishes. Make sure to turn the fan on, since 450F is well above the smoking point for the chicken fat that will render during cooking.

By the time the pot with the potatoes comes to a boil, they should be nearly done. Test by seeing if a knife slides into them easily. Once done, take them out of the water and let them cool. While the potatoes are cooling, begin prepping the sprouts. You just want to rinse them off, cut them in half lengthwise, and cut off the very ends of the stalks to clean them up. Place in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then roast them in the oven for about 20-30 minutes.
In the mean time, prep all the other ingredients. For the potatoes, you'll need to chop a few cloves of garlic and mince some thyme. For the sprouts, you'll need craisins and salt pork or pancetta (salt pork is preferable, but probably harder to find). Cut the pork or pancetta into cubes and saute in a large frying pan for about a minute. Add the craisins along with about 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup of water. As this cooks down, it will rehydrate the cranberrys and meld all of the flavors. Craisins are really sweet, so this step allows the saltiness of the pork to cut the sweetness from the craisins. Cook this at med-hi until the liquid is reduced to a thick syrup. When the sprouts are done roasting, just toss them in the pan with this mixture.

While the craisin mix is boiling down, start heating a heavy skillet and smash the potatoes on a cutting boared with a big pot or pan. As soon as the chicken is done, start frying up the smashed potatoes. The chicken will need about 10 minutes to rest (during this time the internal temp should rise another 10 degress to 160F), and this is about all the time you need to finish the potatoes. Place them in the skillet with a bunch of chopped garlic and thyme and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until they are nice and crispy on each side.

This meal should take a little over an hour to make.

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.

Family reunion dinner 2

Pretty much everyone had a hand in preparing the next family reunion dinner. The menu included grilled vegetables (zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, and portabella mushrooms), teriyaki chicken, tri-tips with a korean style marinade, sushi and musubi, and potato patties made from roasted potatoes that were left over from the previous night.

Here are my aunties Susan and Pauline and my sister Laura showing off the key ingredient for musubi, Spam. Most people outside of Hawaii think this stuff is pretty gross, but I like it.
Below, Auntie Susan expertly assembles the musubi.
Here's a picture of the potato patties that I whipped up. This was an improvised dish that made use of a bunch of left over ingredients that we had sitting around. I diced up the roasted potatoes from the night before and combined them with left over roasted corn, minced onion, garlic, scallion, mayo, egg, and flour. I would have liked to grill them. The mixture probably would have fallen through the grates, though, so Auntie Nora fried them up.
Here are a few pictures of the final spread.

Sharlene's first cooking lesson

Sharlene is getting cooking lessons this summer. Thursday was our first session, and we made roast chicken, potato salad, and green beans. Here's Sharlene working on her knife skills.
Here's the potato salad that we made. We dressed it with homemade mayo, vinegar, saffron, honey, and a healthy dose of truffle oil. Next time I'll cut the saffron and honey and just use the truffle oil. One decadent ingredient is really enough. After all, its just potato salad.
I forgot to take pictures of the chicken. By that time the chicken was done, the table was littered with empty beer bottles, we were on the second bottle of wine, and everyone was hungry. Taking pictures was the last thing on my mind.

Brined pork

Abby left for Guatemala at the beginning of May, but before she took off, we had a couple of friends over for a little send off dinner party. The menu was a brined rack of pork with apple chutney and a bourbon reduction, a puree of sweet and russet potatoes, and braised brussels sprouts with pancetta. I the rack came from Savenor's so I knew that, if I prepared it well, it would taste great. The recipe for the pork, chutney, and sauce was from a Bobby Flay show, and since I like the kind of food he makes, I knew that if I didn't mess things up, it would probably taste pretty good. Brussles sprouts are something I've been making a lot lately and the potatoes are a dish that I've been experimenting with lately.

There were a lot of components to this dish, so everyone pitched in on the preparation. Here's Kathleen, Sharlene, and Gustavo trying to make sense of the food blog. Gustavo, by the way, has an amazing food blog that is really one of the major inspirations for this blog. I highly recommend it. I'm very impressed by his pictures, the range of dishes that he creates, his great use of seasonal ingredients, and his eye for economy in cooking, a must for any grad student/cooking enthusiast. His cooking is something to aspire to.
Here, Abby and Kathleen work on the chutney. I think that I might be secretly related to Kathleen. She really looks a lot like a Kina. Any relatives reading this might want to look into that and let me know if you find anything.
Here are the ingredients for the potatoes, simmering away.
The potatoes that I made were a half and half mix of sweet and regular potatoes. Sweet potatoes alone, I think, would be overpowering, hence the mixture. I'm essentially thinning out, or diluting, the sweet potato with the regular russets. The sweet potatoes are a lot denser, so I start boiling those a few minutes before adding the other potatoes. On the right is a mixture of cream and butter with thyme and dried sage. Heating it over low heat infuses the flavor of the herbs into the cream, but I probably needed to add more herbs and steeped it for a longer to get the effect I was going for. Once the potatoes are boiled, I pass them through a ricer, fold in the creme mixture and a couple cloves of roasted garlic, and season with salt and pepper. If you have a ricer, I would advise always using it to make mashed potatoes. If you have a potato masher, throw it out and get a ricer. Potatoes are, of course, a starch, and working it too much makes them heavy and sticky, like paste. I think its more or less the same reaction that you get when you knead dough. By using a ricer and gently folding in the ingredients, the mixture stays light and fluffy.

The most fun part was preparing the bourbon reduction. I've always liked playing with fire.
And, here is the final product all finished and plated before heading out to the dining room. The brussels sprouts were braised a little too long, so the color isn't as vivid as I would like, but it tasted good, and other than that, I have no complaints.
Here's Gustavo, Gary, and Abby. Notice how Abby has three glasses of wine in front of her.
She really loves her wine.