Moroccan Spice Lamb Riblets and Other Super Spiced Stuff

I had lamb riblets from our CSA - and I asked myself, what the heck do I do with a lamb riblet?  It doesn't even seem like a real cut of meat, it sounds like a mini rib from a mini hobbit-type lamb.  But they exist.  Riblets are cut from the breast and look like ribs but are layered with both fat and meat.  Because of this layering, you cannot cook these quickly - braising is pretty much the only option.  I did mine with a morroccan spice alongside some acorn squash rings with a apple curry filling.  In retrospect, this was probably too much spice on one plate, but Elaine didn't mind so that's all that matters - you can do as you like.

Moroccan Spiced Braised Lamb Riblets
*adapted from this Cook's Illustrated Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbs ground nutmeg
1 tbs ground ginger
2 lb lamb riblets (about 6, or 6 lamb shanks would work as well)
Kosher salt
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 large or 2 small jalepenos, minced
2 tbs tomato paste
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup red wine (the recipe calls for 3 cups stock and 2 cups wine, but I wanted to save my wine for drinking)
1 1/2 cups quinoa

To do:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix spices together and set aside.

Sprinkle riblets with salt. Add oil to a large pot (one that has a lid and can go in the oven) and sear riblets until brown on all sides. Remove from pan.  Add onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic, jalepenos, tomato paste and spice mixture to pot and saute 3-4 minutes, until veggies are soft.  Add liquid and stir to make sure all of the brown bits off the bottom of the pan are scraped up (that's flavor country).  Bring liquid to a simmer, add riblets back to the pot, cover and put in preheated oven for about an hour.  When 15 minutes remain, add 1 1/2 cups quinoa to pot and cook until quinoa is done.  The riblets should be falling off the bone and super tender by the time you are done. 

Apple Filled Acorn Squash Rings with Curry Butter
*apparently from Bon Appetit but it was in our CSA newletter - how did they KNOW I would have a glut of acorn squash and apples??

Ingredients:
6 tbs butter
1 onion, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
2 apples, peeled, cored and diced
2/3 cup apple juice (I used 2 tbs apple juice concentrate and a splash of water)
1/2 cup dried cranberries, chopped (original recipe calls for currants, yuck)
2 acorn squash, cut into 1 inch rings and seeded

To do:
Melt 1 tbs butter in a skillet, add onion and sautee until tender about 2 minutes.  Add 1 tbs curry powder and stir, then add apples, apple juice and cranberries.  Cook until liquid evaporates about 6-8 minutes.  Season filling to taste with salt and pepper.

Melt 5 tbs butter in a small skillet over medium heat.  Add 1/2 tablespoon curry powder and stir until fragrant about 1 minute. 

Brush a large baking sheet with curry butter and lay your squash rounds down on the baking sheet.  Scoop filling into the center of the rings and drizzle the remaining curry butter over the squash.  Bake until squash is tender about 30 minutes.  Use a spatula to transfer rings to plates when serving, so filling isn't left behind.

JP HAS FOOD TRUCKS

Thursdays on the Loring Greenough house lawn, my neighborhood has its very own food trucks!!  There's a cupcake truck, a BBQ truck (which I'm hoping to try tomorrow) and one called Bon Me which... serves bahn mi, obviously.  My friend Elena and I went last month (I went again with Henry K aka Axel F a couple weeks ago).  Here are pictures of my first time there - I got the bbq pork bahn mi, and Elena got the tofu soba noodle salad (many choices of sauce, several protein choices (chicken, pork, tofu and shiitake mushroom), and I think they also have rice bowls with those same options.

 

They have some other little treats, and yummy drinks - hibiscus tea, thai basil limeade, spicy-ginger lemonade, thai iced tea, etc.  Here's the menu!

You should go.

thai red curry

This is so easy, it's shocking. You just have to buy a couple of things you might not have in your pantry right now, but then you'll have them in your pantry, and you'll be psyched because it means that you can make this kind of thing any time. And somehow curry (thai or otherwise) always feels special and delicious to me, even if I'm making it to use up some CSA vegetables...

things you need that you might not have:
thai red curry paste (or green if you want!)
fish sauce (nam pla)
coconut milk (canned, unsweetened, 14 oz)*

Other things you need:
brown sugar
oil (canola or similar)
some kind of protein, cut into small pieces if necessary (chicken or tofu, I used shrimp, Jenean has done sea scallops)
some vegetables (I had eggplant, red bell pepper, and green beans I cut up small and par boiled; you could use tomatoes, carrots, peas, onions, potatoes, bean sprouts, whatever you have and want to use up; you should probably pre-cook harder vegetables)
garlic, minced
ginger, peeled and grated
white or brown rice (ideally jasmine or basmati, all cooked up the way you like it)
basil and cilantro, if you've got it

In a bowl, mix 2 tbsp thai red curry paste, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tsp brown sugar and 2 tbsp water.

In a large frying pan, heat some neutral oil like canola, a couple of tablespoons. Toss in your meat or tofu or seafood. When it has got a little color, remove it to a plate (err on the side of undercooking the seafood, because it goes back in the simmering sauce later; in fact, with shrimp you could probably just wait till the end and skip the first frying step).

Add a little more oil to the pan if it looks dry, and stir fry your vegetables. Add the garlic and ginger and let them fry with the vegetables till you can smell them. Add the curry paste mixture and the coconut milk. Stir to combine and bring the sauce to a simmer. Toss in the meat, scallops or tofu; if you're using shrimp, add it now. Let it all simmer together for about 5 minutes, or until the shrimp are pink, or your meat is cooked and heated through.

Serve over rice, with chopped fresh basil and/or cilantro. A squeeze of lime might be nice, if you like that kind of thing.
*Mark Bittman has a recipe for homemade coconut milk! It's also absurdly easy! You put a cup of unsweetened shredded coconut in a blender with 2 cups of hot water and let it sit for 20 minutes. Blend on high (working up gradually from low so the force doesn't bust the lid of the blender off) for 30 seconds or so. Strain into a bowl through cheesecloth (I use a flour-sack dishtowel) set in a strainer, squeezing on the solids - that's your coconut milk. You can return the solids to the blender and do it again with the same coconut and another 2 cups of hot water, letting it sit a little longer this time, and squeezing a little harder. Combine both batches to get a relatively thin coconut milk ideal for making curry, or skip the second pressing to have 2 cups of thicker coconut milk, more like canned. Keeps in the fridge for a couple of days. It separates as it cools, so you have to shake it up before using.

the best way to eat tomatoes for breakfast

Sorry for the blurry photo, I was just so excited to hurry up and eat it.

Our dad has always grown tomatoes in his garden, every year whether in California or Massachusetts, and during the height of tomato season (when you have tomatoes coming out your ears) our folks would have this for breakfast. As a little kid (whose ideal breakfast was pancakes with log cabin syrup) I was a little baffled by this. But now I know it's probably the best breakfast in the whole world.

Toast bread, spread with good mayo (hellman's/best foods in my house), top with sliced super ripe tomatoes, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

The better the bread you use, the better this breakfast will be, but it's still incredibly good on regular old sandwich bread like we had today.

strawberry gelato

So, I made this great lemon gelato, I took pictures of every step along the way to freezing it, wrote up the post right away so I wouldn't forget what I did... and then we somehow ate it all before I took a picture of a bowl of the finished gelato. So of course the only way forward is to make lemon gelato a second time, in order to get a picture, right? In the meanwhile, here is the strawberry gelato I made more recently.
I used bits from 3 recipes for this - Mario Batali's from Molto Gusto, which intriguingly uses powdered milk to counteract the water in the strawberries to keep them from turning the gelato icy; this one from Bon Appetit that I found on Epicurious, which unlike Mario's doesn't use any egg yolks, but rather thickens the base with cornstarch (skipping egg altogether lets the flavor of the fruit really stand out, and makes the gelato more refreshing, but still creamy); and Mark Bittman's general recipe for "soft fruit ice milk" in How to Cook Everything, (I got it as an app on my iphone, best 5 bucks I ever spent!) which like many recipes in there makes one feel free to experiment, armed with a general guideline for proportions.

Strawberry Gelato
makes about a quart

2 cups hulled and chopped strawberries (preferably organic)
3/4 cup sugar, divided (I used turbinado, any kind is fine)
a pinch of salt
1/3 cup dry milk powder
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 tbsp alcohol of some kind (I used creme de cacao, you could use a slightly smaller amount of vodka)
2 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl or large (4 cup or greater) measuring cup, combine the chopped strawberries and their juices with 1/4 cup of the sugar and the pinch of salt. Cover and let sit in the fridge for a while to macerate.

Add the dry milk powder to the macerated strawberries along with the cup of cream, cover and return to the fridge.

In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and the tablespoon of cornstarch. Add 1/4 cup of milk to start, whisking to get rid of any lumps. Add the remaining cup of milk, and over medium heat, bring to a boil, and once bubbling, let it simmer over medium low heat for 1 minute (stir pretty constantly throughout this process).

Remove the milk/cornstarch mixture from the heat and cool it down (either put the bottom of the pan in an ice bath, or if you don't mind getting another bowl dirty, scrape it into a metal bowl, and put that in an ice bath (it will cool down really quickly that way). When it's no longer hot, stir it into the strawberry/cream mixture, along with the vodka (or whatever you decide to use) and the vanilla extract.

Chill the base, ideally for several hours, or overnight if you can spare the time (it should be pretty thick, like the texture of yogurt, actually). Freeze in your ice cream maker, then transfer it to a chilled container for storing. The first day (after about 2 hours chilling in the container) the gelato is soft; the next day it's scoopable (thanks to the addition of the alcohol) but firm, so leaving it out for ten minutes before you try to scoop it makes life a bit easier.

Awesome on a sugar cone.

Zucchini and Summer Squash White Pizza

Summer CSA frenzy is ON...before I could even eat up one week's offerings (head of lettuce, what seemed like 8 cucumbers, a bunch of radishes, blueberries, raspberries, zucchini, squash) another week was upon me with the more of the same plus corn on the cob, potatoes, arugula and basil. I relish the bounty but stress out over using it all up. That's when I start throwing weird stuff on pizza dough. This particular pizza was inspired by smitten kitchen's zucchini galette which is more of a tart made with pie dough. But it works just as well on as a pizza.

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup olive oil

Pizza dough (store bought is totally fine)

1 zucchini

1 summer squash

15 oz ricotta

1 cup mozzarella (or more if you want)

1/2 cup grated parmesan

zest of 1 lemon

s&p

Preheat oven to 475.

Mince garlic and add to olive oil and let marinate to infuse the oil with garlicky goodness. In the meantime, slice your squash into 1/4 inch rounds and spread on a paper towel lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 30 minutes. The squash will release a lot of moisture so you'll need to dry them with paper towels before putting them on your pizza.

Mix ricotta, half the mozzarella and all of the parmesan in a bowl and add a few tablespoons of the garlic/oil mixture and the lemon zest. Season with s&p to taste.

Roll out your pizza dough to fit whatever pan you're using and place dough in the oiled pan. Brush a few tablespoons of the garlic oil over the dough and then spread your cheese mixture over the whole thing, leaving about a 1/4 inch border. Lay your zucchini and squash slices over the cheese then top with the remaining mozzarella. Bake until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown, 15-20 minutes.

Steak Salad with soy, sesame and shallots

This meal came together really quickly on a super hot day.

I had two 1/4 pound eye round steaks from the csa. If you know anything about the eye round cut, it's usually a roast, which you have to braise for a long time to get tender. It's not a good cut for a nice grilled steak, frankly, but I really didn't want to have to braise it for a long time in the 90 degree weather we've been having, so I decided to marinate it in soy (which tenderizes and kind of brines it), broil it super quickly, and slice it thin to go on a salad.

Summer Soy Steak Salad: Super Simple, Satisfying
serves 2

ingredients:
-2 steaks, 1/4 lb. each (or one 1/2 lb steak), of any type (would be awesome with a better cut like strip steak or flank steak, but it worked surprisingly well with the cheap/untender eye round cut we had from the csa) (I truly think this would be delicious with seitan, tempeh or tofu as well, and really any other kind of meat, come to think of it)
-2 shallots, sliced
-1/4 cup soy sauce
-2 tbsp fish sauce
-2 splashes worcestershire sauce
-freshly ground black pepper, to taste
-garlic powder, to taste (I usually prefer real garlic, but in this case powdered is better)
-1 tbsp sugar (brown or white)
-1/4 c olive oil (plain, not extra virgin, or any other neutral tasting oil)
-1/4 c sesame seeds
-1 large or 2 small cucumbers, sliced in rounds
-mixed greens, torn up into bite size pieces (I had a little head of boston lettuce and some arugula from the csa)

If you have a cheap/tough cut of steak like I had, take a fork and stab the steaks all over a bunch of times. This helps tenderize it, and it's fun. (If you're using tofu, I'd press it for a while to get as much of the water out as possible.)

In a dish with high sides big enough to fit the steaks in one layer, combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, worcestershire sauce, shallots, pepper and garlic powder. Add the steaks, nestling them down into the sauce, and piling the shallots on top of them. Cover and put them in the fridge for at least an hour, turning once, if you can remember to (no big deal if not).

Dry toast your sesame seeds in a small heavy bottomed non-stick frying pan until brown and fragrant, set aside in a small bowl or dish.

Meanwhile get the steaks and shallots out of the marinade and dry them as thoroughly as possible with paper towels, reserving the marinade.

To make the dressing, pour the steak marinade into the pan in which you toasted your sesame seeds. Add the sugar to the marinade, and bring to a boil, shaking the pan occasionally, and reduce by about half. Pour into a bowl to cool briefly, then slowly whisk in the olive oil (a hit of toasted sesame oil would be great here, I just didn't have any). Set the dressing aside to cool (you can put it in the fridge to help this along, but don't leave it in there too long or the oil will solidify).

Preheat your broiler to high, and put your rack as close to the heat source as possible (my oven is kind of lame at this, I hope yours is better). Place some kind of cooling rack on a foil lined baking sheet, and line the rack with foil, poking holes in the foil to allow for drainage (an actual broiler pan would do the same job, come to think of it... I just don't have one, so the foil covered rack on a sheet pan is my work-around).

Place the steaks on the rack, with the shallots spread out around them. Put them under the broiler for 5 minutes. Flip the steaks, stir the shallots (moving them to the edges of the rack if they're getting too dark), and put back under the broiler for another 2-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of your steaks).

Pull them out and put both the steaks and shallots on a cutting board, and allow the steaks to rest for about 5 minutes (the shallots will soak up any juices that escape from the steaks).

Arrange the mixed greens on two plates, with the cucumbers on top (lots of em!), then slice the steaks and divide them and the shallots evenly between the two. Sprinkle on the toasted sesame seeds and drizzle on the dressing. I served it with some sticky white rice, also topped with sesame seeds and the dressing.