Sirloin Steak and Mustard Greens - April 7, 2013

Dear mustard greens,

It's not you, it's me...

I wanted to like mustard greens. I tried. I researched recipes, I chopped shallots and garlic, I sautéed. And I even ate about half of what you see here on my plate before I dropped my fork and said, "These do not taste good." And so we broke up. Sorry, mustard greens. There must be someone out there for you, but it isn't me.

In happier news, this weekend I made grain free and refined sugar free doughnuts that are legal for my diet. And they were delicious!

This was the recipe. Definitely a keeper!

St. Patrick's Day Corned Beef - March 17, 2013

Inspired by Jess's home corned beef last year, I decided to try my hand at it this year. I earmarked and hoarded the brisket from our Polyface grassfed beef larder all winter, then mixed up a brine per Michael Ruhlman's directions, and stashed the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator for about a week. It was particularly nice that St. Patrick's Day fell on a weekend this year so I had plenty of time to do a slow stovetop braise.

I have never been much of a fan of cabbage, but I learned this year that it was just because I'd been cooking it the wrong way all my life! Boiled cabbage = putrid. Roasted cabbage = delicious! So delicious in fact, that I had to stop myself from eating it all (and suffering the consequences later... even roasted it still has some "magical, musical" properties). I also roasted a few carrots, since at that point I still wasn't sure I'd like the roasted cabbage and wanted to make sure I had something to eat.

Not pictured are the red potatoes I boiled for Richie, the horseradish sour cream I made from homemade yogurt and Penzey's horseradish powder, and the grain free Irish soda bread that rounded out the meal.

All together it was a delicious meal. I had vague intentions of making some kind of hash with the leftovers, but they didn't make it that long. Next year, maybe I'll order an extra brisket and make two!

Bolognese Sauce over Spaghetti Squash - March 7, 2013

I need to work on my food photography skills. My problem is that I am just so anxious to start eating the yummy food, that I don't want to take time to stage the shot and get it just so!

This was our dinner tonight and I assure it tasted much better than its pathetic photo. The bolognese sauce recipe was from Pure Beef: An Essential Guide to Artisan Meats with Recipes for Every Cut. I adore this book. It is a fabulous companion to the grass-fed beef larder we got from Polyface Farms last fall and have been steadily eating down all winter.

I made just a couple changes to the recipe. First, I used the food process to very finely chop the veggies so they would essentially disappear into the sauce and leave just their flavor. Second, I forgot to thaw out my frozen beef broth (and I'm currently down to just one pint anyway, so I'd prefer to hoard it for something where it would be more crucial to the flavor) so I just substituted water for that cup of broth. Finally, to make this SCD-legal and keep it lactose free, I subbed coconut milk for the regular milk.

Then I served it over spaghetti squash and topped with aged parmesan  Delish! Richie had his over regular noodles.

This was a tasty dish on a cold winter-ish sort of night. We were supposed to be celebrating the first day of our spring CSA with a fresh meal from that bounty, but unfortunately they had to postpone the first delivery due to a colder than anticipated late winter in the mid-Atlantic.

Spiced Beef Corn Bread Cobbler - Dec 5, 2012

I found this recipe while flipping through our "Sixty-Five Years of Gourmet" cookbook from Chip and Nan.  The book describes this as a "sloppy Joe with a corn bread and cheddar crust."

It was better than that. 

It came together quickly and all the ingredients are pantry staples at our house.  The spices are a mix of all those warm spices I crave this time of year: cinnamon; cayenne; allspice; and ginger.  Adding the cheesy biscuits on top is genius (and I think would be nearly as good with regular biscuits if corn must be avoided).  This also meets the "my Dad would eat this" criteria.

Kima Curry - Nov 14, 2012

This is another one of our treasured recipes from JJ, my sister-in-law, an amazing cook, and someone that always inspires me.  According to JJ, Kima Curry is a Kenyan ground beef curry.  According to me it is an amazingly flavorful dish to make with a pound of ground beef, a can of tomatoes, and some rice.  My Mom made countless meals with those same three mid-western kitchen staples when I was growing up.  I think they could be considered the busy mom's go-to ingredients for a quick weeknight dinner, able to be combined in a myriad of ways.  Well, this rendition is now firmly on my list.  I love that the addition of a few herbs and spices makes these familiar ingredients come together in a new and interesting way.   The recipe is from the cookbook, "Extending the Table," and can be found online here.  Nick and I both really enjoyed it, and this dinner also meets my "My Dad would eat this" criteria, meaning that I could make this for dinner on a night that he joins us and he (a notoriously picky eater) wouldn't go hungry.

Kefta with Ginger-Miso-Apple Salad - April 14, 2012

Nick and I made this last weekend, inspired by an episode of 'No Reservations' we had just watched on our DVR.  I am not so much into mainstream cable "food TV," choosing instead to look to PBS for my fix, but I make an exception for Tony Bourdain.  He consistently provides great inspiration from the cuisine of his exotic locales.

We made our kefta with ground beef because I sadly have an aversion to ground lamb.  The ground beef was delicious, amazing really, with the addition of the spices.  Certainly much more flavorful than traditional grilled burgers (which I love) and a really fun choice for upcoming summer grill outs.  Nick found the recipe online, and I'm not sure which one it was, but this one closely approximates it.  Just a little advice: when the directions say to soak the skewers, it's probably a good idea to do it, as you can see from the pictures what happens when you don't.

We served our kefta on a bed of spinach dressed in a lovely ginger-miso-apple dressing.  JJ sent me the recipe and it's delicious.  She stated that she modified several different recipes to come up with something that approximated a ginger-miso dressing she'd had somewhere.  If you want to make your own, just combine roughly equal portions of olive oil, sweet white miso and finely shredded apple, and season with sesame oil, rice vinegar and grated ginger to taste.  Add a little sugar if you'd like and then add apple cider vinegar, apple juice, or a combination of the two until the consistency is to your liking.  It's really good, and worked great with the kefta.  Thanks for the recipe JJ!

Plaid Flannel Hash - March 21, 2012

This is the last meal made with our home cured corned beef.  Traditionally this dish is referred to as red flannel hash due to the use of beets which lend their deep coloring to the dish.  It turns out that the only beets I had left from our CSA were golden and chioggia varieties.  Just as delicious, but 'red' no longer seemed appropriate.  Plaid flannel hash was born.



The recipe I used is from the May 1993 issue of Gourmet magazine.  Nick's parents received their Gourmet subscription faithfully starting sometime in the early 80's all the way up until publication stopped a few years back.  Over the years they kept every issue, neatly organized by month and year, creating a well stocked pantry library.  Just recently they decided it was time to send them on to new homes.  Nick received two issues, coordinated with some personal life milestones, for his recent birthday.  It was really fun to look through both of them.  Food publications have changed drastically over the past couple decades in style and format.  Perhaps the biggest change I noticed was the complete lack of web addresses in the 1993 issue.  "Need more information?  Call this phone number and we will be happy to assist you." Ah, how times have changed.  I am happy to report, however, that the recipes are still delicious, and retroactively now found online.

Reubens - March 19, 2012

As promised, Monday's dinner consisted of Reuben sandwiches made from some of our remaining corned beef.  Since I corned my own beef brisket, I didn't feel too guilty using store bought marble rye and sauerkraut.  Although, homemade sauerkraut is definitely on my to do list.

Our Reubens consisted of thinly sliced corned beef, sauerkraut, and baby Swiss on toasted marble rye.  Nick and I omitted the thousand island dressing mostly because we're not huge fans, and I didn't want to buy a whole bottle for the little we would have used on our sandwiches.  I suppose I could have looked into making a small batch of my own, but really, the sandwiches were delicious even without it.  Sacrilegious?  I'm sure to some, but Nick and I are rarely purists.

I have just enough corned beef left to do up a batch of red flannel hash tonight.  And with our overcast, rainy day, it will be a perfect dinner.  Looking back, I do wish I would have made more corned beef.  Jaime was right, the best part is the leftovers!

Corned Beef - March 17, 2012

In the true spirit of this blog, Jaime's post last year about corned beef inspired me to try my hand at it for St. Patrick's Day this year.  In her post, Jaime mentioned that she purchased her beef already corned, but that she wanted to try a DIY the next time she made it.  Honestly, I'd never thought about corning my own beef.  Truth be told, despite my partially Irish heritage, I'd never even tried corned beef.  I blame it on the name, which invokes images of the deli classic, olive loaf, in my head.  You know the one...a bologna type concoction with green olives buried sporadically within it.  Anytime I heard "corned beef" I thought of this, except in my mental image, I replaced the bologna with beef, and the olives with corn kernels.  I did not find this to be very appetizing.

But, as you all already know, it turns out that corned beef is actually nothing like what I had pictured.  According to Harold McGee, my trusty food science resource, the "corn" in corned beef comes from the English word for grains and in this case is referring to the "grains" of salt used in the curing process.  So, corned beef is simply beef brisket cured in a salt brine for a period of several days and then boiled.  This sounds much better, doesn't it?



A week before St. Pat's, I got started on the process.  I consulted several sources, both online and in person, and decided to follow Michael Ruhlman's recipe.  I purchased a two pound beef brisket, made up my pickling spice, and prepared my brine.  Now, all of the brine recipes I looked at, including the one I chose to use, called for something called pink curing salt (or saltpeter, as in Alton Brown's recipe).  This was an unfamiliar ingredient to me, so I did a little research. 

Saltpeter is potassium nitrate, while pink curing salt is sodium nitrite.  Both of these chemicals help prevent rancidity; cause the bright pink color associated with corned beef; provide specific flavor; and suppress bacterial growth, including botulism.  While all of this is good, they can also react with food components to form potential carcinogens, and the same chemical process that causes the bright pink color in the beef (binding to the iron atom in myoglobin) can also occur inside us, binding to our hemoglobin and preventing oxygen uptake, if ingested directly.* While the cancer risk is extremely low and the risk of accidental ingestion is almost non-existent if one is conscientious in the kitchen, it is important to be informed.  Armed with the facts, I decided that, while it's possible to brine brisket using just kosher salt, and I'm sure the results would be delicious, it just wouldn't be corned beef.  What the hell, Nick and I sometimes like to live dangerously, so I dropped by Clancey's and they sold me about two teaspoons worth of pink curing salt...the perfect amount for my recipe, complete with all the necessary safety advice.    





I couldn't be happier with the results.  The beef is the perfect shade of bright pink and tastes delicious.  Nick and I served it with boiled cabbage and potatoes, plus some Irish soda bread for our St. Pat's dinner.  We also broke out the Jameson in celebration.  Tonight, we feast on Reubens, and I also want to save enough to make some red flannel hash.

*Sources:

http://ruhlman.com/2011/02/meat-curing-safety-issues/

McGee, Harold; On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen.  pp.173-4

Mushroom Beef Risotto - March 2, 2012

I debated not posting this, because the picture really does look like a can of dog food. Sorry about that! It smelled and tasted divine, but this dish isn't going to win any beauty contests.

I think I've posted elsewhere that Richie really liked Buddy Valastro, a.k.a. "The Cake Boss" of the cable channel TLC's show of the same name. I don't know if it is the Italian in my husband that finds Buddy so appealing, but even I find the guy kind of endearing, especially when he yells out "It's GO time!" and "Hoboken style, baby!" He has a new show called "The Kitchen Boss" which showcases his family recipes ("mia famiglia," he says). We have then taped on our DVR and often watch an episode or two while I'm getting our own dinner ready in the evenings. It is kind of fun to have Buddy in the kitchen with us!

I have to admit that none of his recipes have been blockbusters, though his lasagna recipe is my current go-to when I need to bring a dish somewhere or feed a crowd whose dietary tastes I don't know. The most recent one we wanted to try was his "Mushroom Beef Risotto," from the episode charmingly titled "It's All in the Wrist." Richie doesn't like mushrooms much, but if they are chopped small and he can't notice their texture he's OK. I apparently didn't get these chopped up small enough because he still picked out most of them. More for me!

Hoisin-Glazed Meatloaf - March 2, 2012

This recipe is from the March 2012 issue of Bon Appetit that Nick and I have been perusing for dinner inspiration.  I don't remember the last time I made meatloaf, but this recipe, with it's mildly Asian flavors, seemed like a great reintroduction to the classic comfort food.  Actually, the recipe was supposed to be put together as a sandwich, cleverly billed as a 'bahn meatloaf' by the magazine.  We skipped the sandwich part, but did make the accompanying salad to serve alongside.


Things got a little messy in the oven, but I remembered to put this on a cookie sheet, which contained things nicely.  In another clever move, I made my own hoisin sauce for this, because I didn't have any on hand.  It worked out perfectly and I will make my own from now on rather than buy those big bottles that I can never seem to get through before the expiration date.

This was delicious and made quite a bit, so we've been working on finishing up the leftovers.

Coffee-Rubbed Skirt Steak with Blue Cheese and Polenta - March 1, 2012

Nick and I were able to get a third meal (see the first and second) out of our Clancey's skirt steak.  This one was very simple and involved reheating the already cooked steak strips and cooking a little polenta.  We added some interest by garnishing with blue cheese, fresh rosemary, and a drizzle of olive oil.  This dinner was delicious, although my favorite of the bunch is still the skirt steak taco.

Coffee-Rubbed Skirt Steak Tacos - Feb 22, 2012

This is meal number two utilizing our Clancey's coffee, cumin, chili, and cinnamon rubbed skirt steak. The flavors of the rub were made for this type of meal. Again, I lightly seared the steak on my trusty cast iron skillet and, after letting the meat rest for five to ten minutes on the cutting board, sliced it thinly across the grain of the fibers. Nick and I piled this onto corn tortillas and topped with cheater's Mexican rice, sliced cabbage, shredded cheddar, and Salsa Lisa. Delicious.

Even after two meals, we still haven't used up all the skirt steak. Unless inspiration strikes, my guess is that we'll repeat this exact meal once more since it was so good.

Coffee-Rubbed Skirt Steak with Turnip Mash - Feb 21, 2012

This was my Clancey's purchase last week. Nick and I don't prepare much beef at home, but this skirt steak had an amazing rub on it including Jim's 5-star roasted coffee (another incredible Linden Hills gem), cumin, cinnamon, and chili among others, and I could not resist. I bought a pound of it, so I knew we would get multiple meals out of it.

For the first, I decided on a very simple preparation so that we could get a good sense of the flavor. I simply seared the steak on a hot cast iron skillet for a couple of minutes per side. Skirt steak is usually so thin that cooking time is quite minimal. I found no need to add any oil to the pan, as the rub prevented any sticking and my skillet is perfectly seasoned (for which I take very little credit as it's an old Le Crueset snagged at the thrift store that came 'pre-seasoned' by years of use from it's previous owner).

Alongside I made a literal mash-up of Yukon Gold potatoes and a CSA turnip, seasoned generously with grated Pecorino-Romano cheese. This was a simple meal that was perfect for gauging how to best use the remaining skirt steak. With the cumin, chili and cinnamon it became clear quite quickly that it needed to be something with a Mexican bend. Stay tuned.

New Year's Day Dinner - January 1, 2012

It has become a Hartman tradition to have a prime rib roast for some holiday each year. The first time was for Thanksgiving, but then we started going up to New York to spend the holiday with family. A couple years we did it on Christmas Eve Eve, before leaving for Florida the next morning... but that meant that the delicious leftovers languished in the fridge for a week and that was a serious shame! So this year it finally occurred to me that it would be appropriate to usher in the new year with a lavish prime rib dinner. Nothing like setting the right tone for the year to come!

This year I went all out, following the full set of directions in the Cook's Illustrated New Best Recipe (recipe here reprinted on Robert Mondavi Wines website) for making a prime rib roast with au jus and Yorkshire puddings. I failed to take my own picture, but here is the one from that site. Mine looked pretty much exactly like that... right down to the brussel sprouts that I roasted while the puddings were baking.

The only variation I had to make was that I couldn't find oxtails at either of the grocery stores I visited on New Year's Day morning (nothing like a last minute!) and ended up substituting neck bones, based on a suggestion I found via a quick Google on my smartphone.

For dessert I took the bag of frozen peaches from our tree I'd forgotten about and a bag of frozen raspberries I also found languishing in the freezer and turned to one of the cookbooks I asked for this Christmas after seeing it referenced in so many of my favorite cooking blogs, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion Cookbook. A quick perusal of the index and I located a recipe for a Peach-Raspberry Cobbler. Substitute arrowroot starch for the corn starch it called for, and it was perfect!

I also used one of my new toys to make some absolutely delicious corn-free homemade vanilla ice cream. I did remember to snap a very quick picture before it melted into a puddle.

Roast Beef & Gravy - December 17, 2011

Yet another hearty, comfort food post from Jaime! The weather has finally turned wintry here in the DC area and this felt like the right kind of meal to warm us inside and out.

I seared the beef in my dutch oven, then transferred it to a roasting pan and slow roasted it for about 2 hours at 275 degrees, until it was medium rare. Meanwhile I utilized the fond and drippings in the dutch oven to make a gravy. I browned a "mirepoix" (love using fancy French cooking words!) of onions, carrots, and celery. Then tossed in some chopped garlic and flour and cooked for about a minute, then deglazed the pan with some red wine and added a full carton of beef broth. I let it all simmer for a good 20 minutes, until the gravy was thick, and strained out the solids. This was based roughly on a recipe I saw that included mushrooms before the mirepoix, but didn't have any on hand. Next time I'll try to include them. This was delicious but could definitely have been improved with an earthy counterbalance to the acidity of the wine.

If you have gravy, you must also have mashed potatoes which were prepared the standard way using lots of butter and milk.

During the last 30 minutes of roasting, I threw together some brussel sprouts tossed with olive oil and some of the sage and rosemary herb rub I made earlier this fall. I can't believe I used to turn my nose up at brussel sprouts! I adore them now, especially roasted so the outer edges get dark brown and crispy. I need to pick up a few more bags before the holiday season ends and they disappear from the stores.