Braised Ox Tails

And yet another combination of braised meat over polenta....but at least the weather is warming, which means that these hearty dishes will be shelved until the fall. This time I used oxtail, and slow cooked it.

Added button mushrooms and browned them before adding the wine and beef stock.

The finished product...

The Green Hit

After a long weekend of travel, we got home Sunday night and this salad hit the spot. Very simple and fresh flavors. Arugula topped with radish, walnut, peas and a medium boiled egg. I made a quick vinegrette with mustard, olive oil, shallot, ginger, rice wine vinegar; essentially putting it in a glass jar and shaking the shit out of it.

topical view - I let the salad sit for a minute, and you can see that it affected the dressing, which looks broken.

Lasagna, Garfield Style

Last Saturday I decided that I was going to make a serious Lasagna so I set off to Whole Foods early in the morning for ingredients and started on my sauce around 11ish. I used Muir Glen fire roasted tomatoes in the sauce, which were crushed. I added them to garlic and onion which I had sweated, along with a pinch of sugar and a touch of san marzano tomato paste. I then let it reduce all afternoon. I also sauteed up sausage and added it to the sauce in whole links.

I boiled the noodles and decided that I wanted eggplant in the lasagna, so I started sauteing up thin slices that I cut lengthwise to mimic the lasagna noodles.

To assemble, I splashed some sauce on the bottom of the pan and added my noodles. I topped the noodles with sauce, then a layer of fresh mozzarella and finally some eggplant. I repeated that three times and then shredded parmigiano reggiano on top along with additional mozzarella.  I baked it in the oven for about 45 minutes while we went on a family walk. After letting it sit for 20 minutes we finally dug into what turned out to be the best Lasagna I have made in years, if not ever.

Queso Fresca

So I decided that I was going to start making cheese...and then realized that it was a pretty messy process that took time even to make the quick stuff. I am sure that this is going to continue.

I first added 1 tablespoon of citric acid to a little water and stirred it in. I then added it to 1 gallon of whole milk which was on the burner. I started heating the milk on medium high until it reached 180 degrees. My mistake was that I should have warmed the milk on a different setting while continuously stirring, as it started to brown on the bottom of the pot while I was warming it.

After letting it sit for a little bit, the curds started to seperate from the whey and I was able to scoop them out onto a cheese cloth.

After I squeezed out the excess liquid, I molded the whey onto a plate and added fresh salt. It tasted really fresh and milky, but I could get a hint of the browned milk (which I love in puddings, but not my cheese it turns out).

Pork Chop (from the Butcher and Larder)

So I was very excited to go to a new butcher shop in my neighborhood called the Butcher and Larder, a name I love. When I got there the pickings were pretty slim and it seemed like they were waiting on a truck to arrive. Luckily, the two things that I was looking for were in stock. He hand cut two rib chops for me that I thought looked really good (they were) and he also had fresh pork lard that I had wanted to make some flour tortillas, so the trip was a success.

Although the fat looked pretty cool, I cooked them on medium which didn't allow it to render down at all and it ended up just getting cut off. I cooked them in my cast iron and added the chop to a bed of rapini that I sauteed with hot pepper flakes and reduced with balsamic.

Pi Lo Chun - Best Tea Ever?

I've always enjoyed tea, and drink my weight of it iced in the summer. About a 2.5 years ago Abby got me a nice cast iron tea kettle and some really good teas for my birthday. The one tea that she got me was not only memorable because of it's price, but because of how good it made me feel. It's hard to describe it, but a good start would be delicate, grassy and slightly floral. As I was reading up on it, apparently it can also be called Bi Lo Chun, which means "Green Snail Spring". It is named this because it is a green tea and rolled into a tight spiral, which resembles snail meat and is cropped in early spring. That makes it sound gross because of the snail, but it's legit. I typically just get it shipped from www.teavana.com. I've been on a big English black tea kick lately, but this is a nice treat to mix in.

Rib Roast

In going back through some pics, I realize there are some I haven't posted and want to recall. This was a killer piece of beef we had hand cut when a friend was in town. I don't want to show the final product out of respect to the demolishing we did to it, but it was solid.