Grilled pork tenderloin with apple cider reduction, grilled sweet potato with rosemary, and wilted escarole with garlic chips

Here's another dish from back in Chicago. It's been a while, so I don't remember all the details, for the escarole, tenderloin and sauce. The sweet potatoes couldn't be easier though. Just chop up some rosemary, mix it in with olive oil, and toss this mixture together with some sliced rounds of sweet potato. Grill until finished. This is one of my favorite side dishes for summer grilling.

Catching up

It's been more than three months since I moved from Chicago to DC, but I still have a few photos from Chicago. Most of the dinners I cooked last summer were pretty straight forward preparations of ingredients I would pick up at the Wicker Park farmer's market (btw, I am shocked at how much more expensive the farmer's markets are here in DC). Here is one of those meals: a grilled lamb shoulder chop and roasted carrots with dill. I had made roasted carrots from one of the stands at the Wicker Park market earlier and they were soooo good. Here, I just tossed them with a little dill, olive oil, and salt.

Cold weather food

We're in the dead of winter here in Chicago, and while it hasn't been that bad, it's still cold enough to warrant some good, cold weather comfort food. So, last week, a few friends came over and we all put together a nice winter meal of leg of lamb, polenta with broccoli raab, pine nuts, and sundried tomatoes, roasted root vegetables, cahldo verde, some berries with balsamic vinegar and mascarpone whipped cream for dessert, and plenty of wine. This dinner party also gave Abby a chance to test out a camera lens that she's borrowing from our friend, Archie.

We started with a some of Mike's cahldo verde, a Portuguese soup with potatoes, kale, and chorizo or linguica. Here's the chorizo, served on the side.

and here's the soup.

I was thinking of just roasting the leg of lamb, but the butcher I got it from butchered the leg so poorly that I decided to go for a braise instead. Here's the braising vessel, our dutch oven, sealed off to keep everything inside during the cooking process.

And here's what the lamb looked like after a good sear (~8 minutes on medium high heat) and 7 to 8 hours in the oven at 275.

You can strain and degrease the braising liquids, reduce it a bit, and serve it with the lamb. Polenta is a great accompaniment for braised dishes since it soaks up all of the braising liquid.

Mike also whipped up a little brocolli raab dish to serve on top of the polenta,
and we also made some roasted root vegetables (celeriac, turnips, carrots, and parsnips).
Finally, here's a couple pics of the berry dessert that another one of our guests put together.

Pork loin chop, swiss chard, celeriac and turnip gratin

The major components of this meal were all local. The veggies were from the Boston Organics local delivery box and the pork comes from a farm in Vermont that Savenor's has recently started sourcing from. Here's the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 pork chops
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  
• fennel pollen
  
• white wine
  
• 1 T butter
  
• 1 bunch swiss chard
  
• 5 cloves garlic
  
• red pepper flakes
• red wine vinegar
• 1 celery root
  
• 1 turnip
  
• 1-1.5 cups cream
  
• gruyere
  

Slice the celery root and turnip into 1/8" rounds (use a mandoline if you have one). Add to a pot with the cream and 3 cloves of smashed garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for 10 minutes. Butter a gratin pan and add the celery root, turnip and cream mixture. Grate enough gruyere cheese on top to cover. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes. Let stand at least 15 minutes before serving.

Rinse the chard, cut off thick stems, cut into 1" strips. Heat up 1 T olive oil in a saute pan, add 2 cloves of minced garlic and a dash of red pepper flakes and cook over medium high heat until the garlic begins to take some color. Add the chard. Season with salt and pepper. Let the chard cook down a little then add a splash of white wine. Let this cook down some more. Add about 2 tsp to 1 Tbsp of vinegar. 

Season the pork chops with salt, pepper, and fennel pollen. Add to cold pan and turn heat to high. Cook for about 2-3 minutes on the first side, flip, and cook another 2-3 minutes on the other side. Cooking times will vary depending on how thick the cut is. Remove the pork chops and let rest. Add 1/2 cup of white wine to the pan and scrape up anything stock to the pan. Mount with 1 Tbsp butter. Serve the pan sauce with the pork.

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.

Seared duck breast, braised cabbage, and parsnip puree

(abby's note: click on the photo to really appreciate the duck - this stuff is beyond words!)

I'm not sure why I have never cooked duck before. It's so good, but it always seemed like the sort of thing that I should just leave to restaurants. Maybe I thought it would be hard to cook? I don't know. I mean, I cook chicken all the time and that's quite possibly the hardest thing to cook properly. Duck, on the other hand, turns out to be really, really easy. Unlike chicken, you actually want this stuff undercooked. If its still a bit raw in the middle, than you're in good shape. If chicken is a bit raw in the middle, you're probably going to get sick.

Anyway, this was one of the things on my list of stuff I still needed to try cooking, so we gave it a try on Friday night. I served the duck with a red wine and pomegranate reduction, braised red cabbage, and parsnip puree. Here are the directions for two servings
INGREDIENTS
Duck

• 2 duck breast
• salt, pepper

Parsnip puree

• 4-6 parsnips
• truffle oil
• 2 T butter
• 2 T cream
• salt, white pepper

Cabbage

• 1/4 head red cabbage
• 1/2 apple
• 1/2 red onion
• 1" ginger
• 1/2 stick cinnamon
• 2 cloves
  
• 1 c red wine
• 1/4 c orange juice
• Salt, pepper
• 1 T butter
  

Sauce

• 1 c red wine
• 1 shallot
  
• 1 T pomegranate molasses
• 2 T sugar
  
• 1 clove
• 1/2 stick cinnamon
  
• 1 bay leaf
• pinch salt
  

Start with the cabbage, since this takes the longest. Quarter and core the cabbage. Cut into strips about 1/4" wide. Grate the apple, mince the ginger, and slice the onion into thin, half-rounds.
Cook the ginger and onions with 1 T butter over medium heat until soft. Add the cabbage and apples and continue cooking for another 5 minutes or so. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook for an hour. Season with salt and pepper.
Once the cabbage is underway, get started on the sauce. Start by mincing a shallot and sweating it in a sauce pan over medium-low heat with a bit of butter. After about 5-8 minutes, add the remaining ingredients and let simmer. Let everything simmer while you make the parsnip puree and the duck. After you finish cooking the duck, let it rest and use that time to finish the sauce. Strain out the solids, then, crank up the heat and reduce the sauce down until it coats the back of a spoon. Once it gets to this point, mix in any of the liquids that have accumulate from the resting duck and mount the sauce by whisking in a spoon full of reserved duck fat from the frying pan.

To make the parsnip puree, peel the parsnips and chop them into equal sized pieces (~2" chunks). Boil in a pot of salted water for about 15 minutes. Remove the parsnips and let them drain for a couple minutes. Transfer to a food processor and mix in butter, cream. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Then add truffle oil to taste. Be careful with this stuff. A little bit goes a looooong way.
You can keep this warm in the oven at about 200F while you finish everything else off. For the duck, start by scoring the fatty side and seasoning with salt and pepper.
Turn the heat up to medium high and melt 1 T butter. Once the foam subsides, place the duck into the frying pan, skin side down. Cook for three minute, flip, and cook for another 2.5 to 3 minutes (depending on how raw you want the middle).
Remove the duck and let it rest while you finish off the rest for about 5 minutes.
To plate, spoon a little sauce on the bottom of the plate, slice the duck and fan it out on top of the sauce. Drizzle another spoonful of sauce on top of the duck. The pomegranate molasses makes this sauce very tart, so you only want to use a little bit.