The london broil marinade was a bit east-meets-west, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and the salad was simple, fresh and delicious.

Crispy Arugula Salad
1 bunch of fresh, fairly mature arugula (baby arugula is great, but less peppery)
green pepper
radishes
green pepper
fresh white button mushrooms
fresh thyme

dressing:
lemon juice
champagne vinegar
olive oil
dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Make sure you wash and dry your arugula. Rip the largest leaves in half so the diner does not need a knife to eat the salad, and go with whatever ratios you like for the other ingredients. My salad had enough for two people: half a green pepper, 3 radishes, and 5 button mushrooms.

For the dressing, I used half a lemon, an equal amount of vinegar, a dab of mustard (like an eighth of a teaspoon), a pinch of salt and pepper, and olive oil to taste.

Addition: if you have time to mince up a shallot and let it sit in the lemon juice and vinegar for a few minutes before finishing the dressing, I highly recommend it.

London Broil

4 garlic cloves
2 tbsp of chopped fresh rosemary and winter savory
salt and pepper
soy sauce
cumin

I like to tenderize my london broil (usually a cut of Round) — which entails just putting the meat between two pieces of plastic wrap and giving it a few good bangs with a heavy pot.

For the marinade, wash and dry several sprigs of winter savory (use fresh oregano or thyme if you don’t have savory — I’m now addicted to it and plant it every year) and one big sprig of rosemary, and finely chop the herbs. Then smash the garlic cloves, remove the skin and mince. On both sides of the london broil, spread the herbs, a dusting of cumin, a drizzle of soy sauce, a healthy pinch of black pepper, and a small pinch of salt (given that the soy sauce is salty, I think it is better to go light at this point and taste for salt after grilling). If you have time, cover and put back in the fridge for a few hours. Otherwise you can let marinate at room temperate for 30 minutes or so.

Grill to preference (I like medium rare), let rest for a few minutes, then slice thin.

When it gets hot, I tend to go for whites and roses rather than red wine, so I paired this with a dry Riesling.

Now the only question is whether I let Lisl have any leftovers, or greedily keep it all for myself!

It is so nice to have grilling season back upon us. In many cases, our jobs as cooks is to get out of the way and let the food and fresh product do the talking.  Here are notes from Saturday’s dinner, when we had a few guests over for Lisl’s birthday.

Three Bean Salad

1 can of red kidney beans
1 can of garbonzo beans (chickpeas)
1 can of black beans
4 ears of corn
4 sweet peppers (multiple colors if possible), cut into bite sized pieces
1 red onion, diced
1 bunch of spring onion, diced
Large bunch of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
Large bunch of cilantro, washed well and chopped
limes
lemon
salt and pepper
olive oil
champagne vinegar

I make this salad slightly different every time, but my basic routine is the following.  Carefully wash the canned beans in a colander, drain and add to the bowl.  Cook each ear of corn, still in the husk, in the microwave for 2 and a half minutes, then remove husk and take kernels off with a knife once cool enough to touch.  Dice the spring onions, using all of the green part, and toss it in with the diced red onion, tomatoes, jalapeno and sweet peppers ( I like using a mix of red, green, orange and yellow).

Dress the salad by taste.  Stir in the cilantro, juice from 1 lemon, juice from 3 or 4 limes, a sprinkle of olive oil and champagne vinegar (but go light on the oil and vinegar — you want the citrus to stand out).  Add salt to taste, and add some freshly ground pepper. Depending on how juicy your limes are, the number of limes you want to use will vary.

I like dressing this ahead of time so everything absorbs some of the citrus flavor.  This is a great, hearty and bright salad for serving a large number of people.

Pork Tenderloin Marinade

Large handful of parsley, chopped
Several sprigs of fresh oregano, leaves removed and chopped
4 large cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
Pinch of fresh pepper

I made this marinade for use on three pork tenderloins — the amounts are ballpark but you can’t really go wrong here.  With a mortar and pestle, mash up the garlic and herbs.  Stir in the rest of the ingredients then rub all over the pork.  Cover and place in the fridge for several hours, then grill by searing the pork and then cooking on a cooler part of your grill until the meat hits the right point of firmness.

Side note: I was cooking on my brother-in-law’s grill the other weekend and I was reminded how difficult it is to work with unfamiliar equipment. I totally overcooked the chicken.  On my own grill, where I know how and where heat distributes, I was really pleased with getting these tenderloins perfect.  Lisl laughed and said it shows just how tough those Top Chef challenges are when they get thrown into crazy circumstances.

Shallot & Lemon Salad Dressing

There’s nothing rocket science here, but I’m addicted to the following salad and dressing and figured I would make a note of it:

Mince up a big shallot (or more than one shallot) and let the shallots sit for 20 to 30 minutes in the juice from 1 lemon and a couple splashes of champagne wine vinegar.  Then wisk in some olive oil, a dab of dijon mustard, and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Toss over a bunch of baby arugula (rocket), with some nice tomatoes and maybe some sliced mushrooms or red pepper. Can’t beat it.

Addendum

I’ve had Disqus installed on my tech blog forever and I *finally* have it installed here.  I much prefer the threaded comment system and after a few goes, it looks like it has imported all the old comments.

Here’s a very simple something to start off a meal, or to act as a palette cleanser part way through — best served with a crisp white wine.

I have not been a happy CSA customer this summer (I’ll just say, it’s not *just* the fault of the weather), but I’ll spare you the detail on that. One nice thing they have given us is fava beans, and I was able to pick up some arugula from the farmer’s market this weekend. They paired very nicely here.

Fava Bean, Arugula and Shaved Parmesan Salad
Serves 4
4 large handfuls of fava bean pods, shelled
2 handfuls of arugula leaves, washed with bottom stems removed
1 lemon
olive oil
salt and pepper
dijon mustard
parmesan cheese

After shelling the fava beans, boil them in water for 3-4 minutes then drain and quickly plunge into ice water to stop the cooking. Once cool, you want to remove the outer layer of the fava beans. I find it easiest to pinch at the edge of the skin at the dimple of the bean, and then squeeze the bean out — it should slip out quite easily.

Make the dressing by combining the juice of 1 lemon, an equal amount of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a small amount of dijon mustard, and a teaspoon of finely grated parmesan cheese.  Wisk it up well with a fork, then combine with the fava beans in a bowl for about 15 – 20 minutes.

Right before serving, gently mix in the arugula leaves and plate with some fresh pepper and some parmesan shavings on top.

I learned to cook from two women: my mother, and Julia Child.  The latter was from a book, but nothing beat looking over my mother’s shoulder and pestering her with questions.  This occurred shortly after I graduated from college, moved to Austin, and quickly realized that the only way I could afford decent food was to make it myself. It did not take many canned soup evenings to tenderize my brain into an eager state to learn.

When we traveled down to Washington D.C. this past weekend, I had a chance to cook in my mother’s kitchen and tried to make the most of it as time permitted.  The dinner was not complex, but the results were successful: this salad followed by a ramp and mushroom risotto (posting next).  This post is about the salad: simmering dried turkish figs with thyme, wrapping them with prosciutto, and serving on a bed of arugula, walnuts and goat cheese with a lemon/olive oil dressing. At the bottom of the post, I’ve also included some photographs taken while walking around Georgetown.

Prosciutto-wrapped figs, arugula and goat cheese salad
Serves 4

Baby arugula
8 dried turkish figs
1/3 lb of prosciutto
Handful of walnuts, broken up or roughly chopped
Good goat cheese
1 lemon
Fresh thyme
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Figs are not in season right now, but we can still get dried figs. For the salad, I simmered the figs for about 15 t0 20 minutes, just covered with water and with some sprigs of thyme. The figs were then removed from the water and patted dry.

Measure out enough baby arugula (rocket) for 4 small plates.  Wash and dry by gently rolling in a kitchen towel.  Create your dressing to taste by combining the juice of 1 lemon with olive oil (add the olive oil slowly, whisking with a fork, and taste as you go), salt, pepper and a bunch of thyme leaves.  Place the arugula and walnuts in a bowl and toss with the dressing. Let sit for a few minutes while you finish the rest of the salad.

Cut the prosciutto slices into long strips about 1.5 inches thick.  Halve the figs with a sharp knife and roll each half in a length of prosciutto (1/3 of a pound, thinly sliced, should provide enough).

Lisl did the plating and I liked her approach: plate the salad by mounding the arugula, accumulate some walnuts on the top, crumble some thinly sliced goat cheese around (we used a Boucheron), and place the wrapped figs.  Take the lemon dressing that has accumulated on the bottom of the bowl and, with a small spoon, drip on each of the wrapped figs.  Top with some fresh pepper.

This was paired with a full-bodied Verdicchio white from Italy.

- – -

While walking the dog, I had a chance to stroll around Georgetown on a perfect spring day — the kind we are dying for up north (as I write this, back home in NY, it is cold and pouring rain outside).  Like many, I love to take pictures of doors.  What is it about portals that captivates our imaginations?  A door combines color, geometric line, and ornamentation.  It spells passage, curiosity, and stories. In any case, here are a few snaps that caught my eye.

Part 3 concludes my posts on Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lovely meal with family, and while we fought with our oven (I think the thermostat has gone a little haywire), the results were really quite good. I did not take many pictures. My family enjoys this blog, but I had a feeling I didn’t want to let my camera get between them and the food.

The last dish I wanted to highlight was one of my favorites: a very refreshing pomegranate and arugula salad Lisl put together, inspired by a salad recently posted by Sass & Veracity. The pomegranate seeds were gorgeous little festive jewels on the plate, and their tart sweetness complemented the arugula and vinegar really well.

2 bunches arugula leaves, carefully washed
seeds from 1 pomegranate
3 slices of good bacon, cooked then chopped
handful of cremini mushrooms, finely sliced
1/3 red onion, finely sliced (optional)
white wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Wisk vinegar and oil together (start with a 1/3, 2/3 split) with a pinch of salt and pepper and add vinegar or oil until you reach the desired flavor. Add some dressing and toss — add just enough dressing so that everything is lightly coated but not drenched.

We served this with a Lucien Albrecht 2001 Gewurztraminer, from Alsace, courtesy of my father. I don’t usually like sweeter wines at the start of a meal but this paired really well.

Other Thanksgiving Notes
One of the great highlights of the meal was the wine. My father was ridiculously generous and brought three amazing bottles up from his collection: two 1994 Cain Five reds, which we decanted for an hour before dinner and were just sublime, and a 1975 Chateau Suduiraut sauternes which was absolutely delicious (I am sipping it as I write this!).

I should note that we had opened a 1967 sauternes, also given to me by my father, at the 24-24-24 dinner we put on in September, but the wine had really lost most of its body. Not so with the Suduiraut, which I suppose should be expected given the fame of that vineyard. I really should follow in my dad’s footsteps, buy some young sauternes, and save them for 30 years for future special occasions.

My sister and brother-in-law also brought some wonderful wine, but we didn’t actually make it to those bottles. Luckily for me, they are still sitting on our shelf. To the cooks go the spoils!

More on food…
The stuffing came out really well. We had a really big bird, so decided to cook it with onion and lemon inside and do the stuffing on the stovetop. The recipe is here. In past I have used ground pork and my own spices, but since this was a gathering of my parents and sisters (along with husbands and kids), I decided to use Bob Evans breakfast sausage for the meat in the stuffing since that was the way my mother often makes it.

The element that made all the difference in the quality of the gravy and the stuffing was a really good turkey stock we made the day before. We had bought a turkey leg and thigh from the butcher, browned them really well in our dutch oven (such an important step!), and then simmered together with a large onion, several carrots and celery stalks, a couple bay leaves, a tsp of salt and water.

Lisl also made the cranberry-orange-ginger relish posted by Stacey Snacks, and she loved it. She also made a sweet potato concoction which was supposedly amazing, but the poor thing — all my siblings and I have inherited the “no yams” gene from my father, and my daughter has inherited it from me! So it was a dish only for those who married into the family!

What I *did* really appreciate was Lisl’s pumpkin pie, which we served with the sauternes and two delicious fruit tarts brought by my parents. All in all, it was a wonderful day of good food, good conversation, and the wonderful re-affirming of family.

I hope all of you had a marvelous Thanksgiving day as well!

I’ll count my blessings that up here the weather has been quite civilized. I think I’ve commented before how Fall is my favorite season. It’s like baby bear’s porridge: not too hot, not too cold… it’s just right! We ate lunch outside today after whipping up the following salad that was simple, hearty and delicious.

Served 2
1 cup mayacoba beans
2 italian sausages, medium spicy
1/2 green pepper
1/2 red pepper
1/2 jalapeno pepper
large handful of red and/or orange cherry tomatoes
2 large handfuls of flat-leaf parsley
2 lemons
olive oil
salt and pepper

I used mayacoba beans from Rancho Gordo, but any favorite salad bean can be swapped in here. Mayacoba beans take on flavor well and are nicely meaty. I cooked the beans without soaking until tender (about an hour) before making the salad. To cook, cover the beans with about an inch of water in a saucepan, bring to a boil for a couple of minutes, and then lower to a light simmer and cover. Cooking time will depend on bean type and age, so you can check for tenderness by biting into a bean periodically.

Grill or saute the italian sausage, then cut into 1/3 to 1/2 inch slices at an angle.

Slice the green and red peppers into thin strips, and cut any long strips in half so they are not unmanageable on the fork. Halve the cherry tomatoes, and chop up the parsley. De-seed the jalapeno and finely chop.

Combine it all in a bowl. Grind a bit of salt and pepper on top, add some lemon juice (I used the juice of 2 small lemons) and a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil. Mix gently and let it sit for about 10 minutes before mixing again and serving.

Another small dish we served this weekend was a super-simple green bean salad with a shallot-vinegrette. I should title this “porcupine salad” in honor of our dog Ellie, who you saw last post, discovering said creature for the first and hopefully last time. I saw it at the end of our driveway a split second after Ellie did, but it was a split-second too late (insert slow motion “NNNNNnnnnooooooooo!!!”)

The ensuing debacle included a bizarre 3-way dance with Ellie (mouth and nose at this point already covered in spines) circling the porcupine while shaking her head in pain, me in pursuit of the dog yelling and trying not to get spiked myself, and the porcupine making slow but steady progress towards the woods while spinning around and around waving its pointy business end at both of us.

Believe it or not, this was actually repeated twice, as our dog (normally so well behaved) squirmed free of my grasp as Lisl tried to remove a few spines, and went *back* after the porcupine. Four hours and a big emergency vet bill later, Ellie was fine, if a bit woozy from the anesthetic.

It really was a glorious weekend if we just pretend The Porcupine Affair was a Ludlum book rather than our afternoon.

Green Bean, Tomato & Shallot Salad
Amounts serve 2

Two handfuls of fresh green beans
1 large handful of red and orange cherry tomatoes
1 small/medium shallot
extra virgin olive oil
white wine vinegar
dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Mince your shallot and place in a small bowl or mug with a dash of olive oil and two dashes of white wine vinegar. Let this marinate while you do the rest.

Wash and top and tail the green beans. Place in boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes then immediately drain and cool by running cold water over the beans in the colander. Cut them in half (or bite sized pieces) and place in a salad bowl.

Wash, dry and halve your cherry tomatoes, and add to salad bowl.

Finish your vinegrette by adding a small amount of dijon mustard (say, 1/8 of a tsp), a dash or two more of olive oil, a small amount of sea salt and ground pepper. Taste and add more olive oil, vinegar, salt and/or pepper as needed. Mix into the salad bowl and let it all sit together for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Now onto other pics from the weekend:

Snack time

Habanero peppers at Gill’s farm stand

Hot cherry peppers

I spotted this lone pinecone hanging onto the spruce tree.

Huge amounts of natural peppermint grow by a little creek at the front of our property, and the bees work away.

Peppermint plant flower

Not an unusual photo of watermelon, but I bet come February, I’ll be happy to see this pic again!

This was just sliced tomatoes with oregano, basil, salt, pepper, olive oil, and a touch of balsamic vinegar. Nothing fancy, just happiness. We served it with some bread, the pesto from yesterday, and homemade hummus (ever since reading I Found Happy’s recipe I’ve been making my own hummus… don’t know why it never occurred to me to do before!) .

Biting into Bitten
For dinner, we decided to try a recent recipe from the NYTimes Bitten blog: Pasta with Eggplant, Tomato and Breadcrumbs (click on that link for the recipe). We made it without the pancetta, but felt that it was missing something in the end result (still quite satisfying however). My own notes/changes for next time: make sure that the breadcrumbs are well browned; throw the chopped tomatoes in at the very end so that are barely cooked; experiment with lemon or cumin to punch up the flavor a bit, or drop the vegetarian angle and add the pancetta.

Pile o’ basil

Making the sauce did make for this amazing orange (orange tomatoes) and purple combination. The lighting in the kitchen wasn’t ideal for a picture, but there was some serious color going on.

Photoshop Grrrrr
So I tried once again to edit my digital pictures on my Mac laptop (which I use for work), but continue to face this irritating problem where Photoshop CS3 screws up the color profile and washes out all the color when saving as a jpeg. I’ve tried one workaround I found googling, but that has not worked. I was able to salvage yesterday’s lamb pictures somewhat, but who wants to look at a picture of a greyish tomato? Newwwpp! So I had to wait until I got home to my personal Windoze machine tonight to redo the pictures and post this. Adobe, I love your products, but you messed up on this one. More net research required methinks.

P.S. I meant to do a shout out to my former work colleague Allison Hemler for kicking off her internship at Serious Eats and getting her first post up. We miss you AH, but good to see you taking on such cool new projects!

The resulting salad was a satisfying meal unto itself (the black-eyed peas were critical to making it hearty), and an interesting new flavor which we enjoyed.

The following amounts served two

Dressing
2 tbsp cup lime juice
1 to 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
Several drops of dark soy sauce

1/2 cup of black eyed peas
2 ripe medium or large tomatoes
Handful of cherry tomatoes
1 red pepper
Red onion
Handful of basil leaves
Several leaves of lemon basil

Cooking the black-eyed peas: I put the black-eyed peas in a bowl to soak in the morning before heading to work, but that is optional. In any case, put the beans in a pot of cold water about 1 inch over the top, bring to a boil, then lower to a gentle simmer and cook until tender (about 25-30 minutes if soaked, and another 15 minutes or so if not). I made a larger batch, but used roughly half a cup in the salad.

In a small bowl, combine the dressing together, finalizing amounts to taste (start with minimal soy sauce and add drops to taste — like you experience with salt, if you go overboard with soy sauce by accident, you are better off starting over than trying to fix).

Cut a few thin slices of red onion, break into smaller pieces, and soak in the bowl with the dressing while you finish the rest of the salad.

Slice your large tomatoes into thin crescents. Halve your cherry tomatoes. Remove the stem, seeds and inside of the red pepper and chop into bite-sized pieces. Do a loose chiffonade of the basil leaves, i.e. cut into very thin strips (note: I didn’t bother rolling up the leaves before cutting, which is a common chiffonade approach).

Combine everything into a bowl, toss, let sit for just a few minutes, toss again and serve. We paired this with a nice rose.

This started because I had about a pound of chuck (cut into two large strips), and decided to try marinating it with several tablespoons of soy sauce, a light sprinkling of sesame oil, the juice from two limes, some salt and pepper, and a dusting of red curry powder. Thinking more, I thought it would best served slow-cooked and flaky, so I cut the marinade short. I seared the beef in a cast iron pan very briefly, then poured the juice from the marinade into the pan with a little water (say a third of a cup). This was then cooked in the oven at 300F for 3 hours. I had it covered for the first two hours, flipped the meat halfway through, and added some more water when the liquid in the pan started to dry out.

The result was a flaky beef with an highly flavored crust (where the soy sauce concentrated from the cooking process and really stood out). Once tasted, I knew the beef needed to be directly complemented with some other flavors to balance out that crust. Using two forks I shredded the beef into small pieces. The other components of the simple dish just presented themselves in my head.

I cooked up 3/4 cup of basmati rice, quickly pickled a thinly-sliced red onion (see recipe here, which I very loosely followed and let sit for about 40 minutes), added several dollops of natural greek yogurt (critical to the dish), and chopped up some mint (optional but I liked the addition).

In all got mixed together in a bowl, then served warm. If you feel like trying this exploration yourself (I wouldn’t be posting here if I didn’t like the result), I recommend pairing it with a strong red wine like an Aussie shiraz or a hefty California zin.

So there you have it. I haven’t posted in a typical recipe format, because it was really just an ad hoc experimentation that used some flavors I’ve been playing with lately. The results, however, were satisfying and different (which, since I’ve spent so long cooking French-inspired food — yes, I learned how to cook from Julia Child’s Essentials of French Cooking — qA what I was shooting for). Now I’m going to sit back and see if you all think I’m nuts.