My husband’s meat market binge…

…turned out delicious.  🙂

Okay, I know I haven’t blogged in…well…months.  Did I mention I’m a retail manager?  November/December/January are a little nuts for me at work. 

We’ve been cooking – you know, that’s how I blow off steam! – but not taking many pics and definitely not blogging about it. 

But yesterday…my dear hubby, meaning well, stopped at a local meat market on his way home from work.   He meant well.  He didn’t know I had already planned my Sunday off as a day full of lounging in my bathrobe and slippers, ordering pizza from that great place around the corner where everyone from the order-taker to the delivery guy is Asian and the pizza is totally awesome.  

He had the best intentions.  And then he experienced his first meat market.  And went a little nuts.

Fortunately, the ground elk was already frozen in one-pound chunks, so it went directly in the freezer with the 35+ pounds of roasted Hatch chile peppers that live there.  I’m sure at some point they’ll merge into something delish.

The venison sausage, all $27 of it?  (That’s a basketball-sized chunk of sausage links, by the way.)  He hasn’t yet been able to articulate his intentions toward the sausage, but it seems to involve grilling at some point.  The paper-wrapped monstrosity is squatting on the bottom shelf of the fridge for now.

Then…there were the ribs.  Beef AND pork ribs.  And he bought (this is a direct quote), “four of each”.  So we have four huge pork ribs of unknown specific cut, and a chunk of beef with bones that he can’t exactly identify, but ‘ribs’ was definitely in the name.

Pork on the left, beef on the right

And there goes the day in the robe and slippers, just like that.  Because we have to find stuff to do with the ribs.

It started, of course, with foodnetwork.com.  And then making up our own stuff because nothing really fit what we wanted to do.  So he made a wet marinade for the beef ribs, and I made a dry rub for the pork ribs.  And we left them in the fridge.

We drove through Arby’s for a snack on the way to the SPCA (I know, that’s a HUGE non-sequitur).  My birthday is in 2 weeks and all I’ve asked for is a kitten (to accompany the 4 cats we already have).  They’re SO cute when they’re little and fuzzy…

After failing to fall irrevocably in love with 3 kittens in a row (and feeling guilty about rejecting each one), we headed for the grocery store.  You know by now, hopefully, how much I adore my dear hubby.  But he DOES leave the shopping cart in the middle of the aisle.  Repeatedly. 

I don’t understand it.  But I love him still.

We survived the grocery store, and were still speaking while we unloaded the groceries.

German potato salad...it has BACON!!!

We had chosen four new recipes for tonight’s meal, without any dishes we’d ever made before.  The menu: grilled dry-rubbed pork ribs with spicy jalapeno-honey relish; beef ribs with grilled pineapple-habanero sauce and chile oil; German potato salad; and apple/poppy seed slaw.

I’ll post recipes later.  For now, I’ll just say…the food rocked.  And it was good to get back in the kitchen with the hubby. 

The new mandoline is awesome!

And I LOVE my new kitchen toys!  Santa brought me a mandoline, a chef’s knife, and an immersion blender.

Santa outdid himself this year.  You should really taste these ribs…

This is Not Health Food

The hubby says he wants me to cook healthier.

I’m against it.

We can eat healthy when we eat out.  I keep salad in the fridge for lunches.  We can cut our portion sizes and exercise more.  Whatever it takes.

I cook because I love it.  And if I can’t use butter and bacon and lard and tons of cheese, what’s the point?

This meal is a great example.  And while the hub was slurping the meaty, rich au jus off his wrist after it ran down his fingers, he wasn’t complaining about the calories.

The meal: Texas cheesesteak smothered in caramelized onions, mushrooms, and peppers topped with aged Provolone and a creamy horseradish sauce on a ciabatta roll, with homemade au jus for dipping.  Rosemary roasted red potatoes loaded with Oaxaca cheese, bacon, and green onions.  And a stirfry of snap peas, red bell pepper, and mushrooms with fresh herbs, because there has to be something green on the plate.  My veggies lay there, untouched and lonely, while I devoured the sandwich and potatoes. 

This is hands down one of my favorite meals that I’ve ever cooked.  And I’m not much of a sandwich girl.  It’s the au jus that does it for me, for sure…I could drink the stuff with a spoon!  I’ve always used the little packets for au jus, because making something like that from scratch was intimidating.  But I couldn’t write about carefully tearing off the top of the brightly-colored paper packet, whisking the contents into a saucepan of water, and simmering for two minutes!  A new culinary age has dawned and we don’t use those packets anymore. 

Well, not unless we’re in a hurry or desperate.

So I called up my old friend foodnetwork.com and started searching, and sure enough, Rachael Ray had a recipe for au jus that doesn’t involve roasting an entire side of beef just for a little stock.  I’m still not quite up to making my own stock yet, mostly because it involves planning ahead too much and I’m pretty spontaneous.

And for the horseradish sauce…I’ve always used the jarred, prepared horseradish, but remembered vaguely that there is such a thing as ‘fresh’ horseradish.  So I went looking for that in the produce section of my grocery store.  About ‘my’ grocery store – they’re ‘mine’ because I always go to the same one, I’m there at least 4 times a week, and they know me there.  I get hugs from the sweet old greeter guys at the front door and the produce guys always bring me fresh basil from the cooler without me asking.  I have an open invitation to work in the store’s demo kitchen if I ever need a second job.  It’s cool.

While I was there…I grabbed one of the little paper au jus packets…just in case.

So without further ado…the recipes.

Horseradish cream sauce:

Horseradish in its natural state - scary!

Sour cream
Grated fresh horseradish (it took a lot more than I expected…maybe 3 parts sour cream to 1 part horseradish?  Just keep adding a little at a time until you like it)
1 spoonful Dijon mustard
A couple splashes of white wine vinegar
Salt & pepper

To prepare the horseradish, use a vegetable peeler to take off the barky peel.  Trim off any brown spots, then cut a manageable chunk and grate as much as you need.

Combine all your ingredients, stir, and adjust to taste.  I kept adding more horseradish; it took a lot to get it spicy enough for us.

Au Jus: (courtesy of Rachael Ray)

2 tablespoons butter
1 shallot, chopped
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 jigger dry sherry, optional (I used a healthy splash of cooking sherry)
2 cans beef consomme, found on broth and soups aisle

In a large, shallow skillet over moderate heat, melt butter.  Add shallots to butter and saute 2 minutes.  Add flour and cook a minute longer.  Whisk in sherry and cook liquid out.  Whisk in consomme in a slow stream.  Bring sauce to a bubble and allow to simmer over low heat until ready to serve sandwiches.

That’s all there is to it!  And this stuff is a.ma.zing.  I can’t believe I ever used those nasty little packets of dried crap!!

Caramelized Veggies:

Thinly slice a sweet onion, some mushrooms, a seeded jalapeno, and a poblano pepper.  Heat a hunk of lard in a cast iron skillet (I told you this wasn’t a healthy meal!) to almost smoking.  Add your veggies carefully (this stuff pops!) and stir.  Cook for a couple of minutes, until they start wilting, and add a couple dashes of worchestershire sauce, salt & pepper, and a big pat of butter.  Keep cooking until soft and caramelized, 5 to 10 minutes.

Assembly:

I bought 3/4 pound of seasoned roast beef, sliced thin.  Toast your rolls lightly (I used ciabatta rolls, but you could do hoagie buns or french bread or whatever).  Dip your roast beef slices in the pan of au jus for a few seconds, then layer them onto the toasted rolls.  Top generously with caramelized veggies, then add a slice of aged Provolone cheese (or whatever kind you like).  Put in the oven at 350 degrees or so, open-faced, until cheese melts, just a couple of minutes.  Add creamy horseradish sauce to top buns and serve with au jus for dipping.

The hub and I could only eat half our sandwiches during dinner…but by bedtime we had both polished off the other half (well, I just picked the meat & veggies out and dipped them in the jus) and were wishing there were leftovers.

Loaded Roasted Rosemary Red Potatoes:

Ready for the oven

Cut 8-10 small red potatoes into small, uniform pieces and put on a baking sheet.  Finely chop fresh rosemary and put in a small bowl.  Add salt, pepper, cayenne, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder, then pour in olive oil to make a thin paste.  Pour over the potatoes and toss to coat.  Bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes, tossing halfway through.

Grate your favorite melting cheese (we had Oaxaca in the fridge) and sprinkle liberally over the potatoes.  Add roughly chopped bacon and put back in the oven for about 5 minutes to melt the cheese.  Take out and add chopped green onions. 

Oooh, don’t forget to try dipping the potatoes in the au jus!  Foodgasm… 

Veggie Stir-Fry:

This is my old stand-by when I need a vegetable component to complete a meal; it takes no time and can use lots of different ingredients depending on what you have on hand.  This particular night it was:

1/2 a red bell pepper, cut into medium pieces
Stringless sugar snap peas
Mushrooms
Fresh garlic
Fresh rosemary & thyme, finely chopped

Heat olive oil in a skillet or wok, then add garlic.  After 30 seconds or so, add veggies and toss.  Cook for a couple of minutes and add a generous pat of butter and the herbs.  Cook until tender but crisp, 3 to 5 more minutes.

Though the meal wasn’t healthy by any stretch, it was darned tasty.  And we’re in Texas, after all.

Yee haw.

Some days

are better than others.

Gotcha!!

I was diagnosed in 1995 with Fibromyalgia.  Back then, it was a particularly controversial diagnosis, as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related illnesses were under intense scrutiny and evaluation from the FDA and related medical agencies.

By the year 2000, Fibro was a widely recognized, if still disputed, syndrome (a collection of symptoms with a predictable pattern, though the cause and medical specifics vary widely from patient to patient).

I have lived with constant, widespread (affecting many parts of the body) pain for literal decades (omg I’m OLD!!).  It is a part of who I am, one of the first three phrases I use to describe myself to someone who doesn’t know me:

I love life.
I cook.
I have fibromyalgia.

Given the choice, those would be the three phrases that define me…to myself, at least.  To others in ‘real life’, unless I know them well, it would change to:

I love life.
I cook.
I love fashion & personal style.

It’s funny, isn’t it, the parts of ourselves that we try to keep hidden?

Updating my Facebook status is always a challenge.  A large part of who I am on a given day, or how I am experiencing the world around me, is influenced, if not dictated by, my physical handicap.  Even when Life is going my way, I may be in so much pain that turning too suddenly to the side, or bending to pick up a scrap of paper on the floor, is enough to make me pale, wince, and turn away from any possible onlookers until the flood of painful sensation washes over me and recedes to a tolerable level.  But do my 304 Facebook friends really want to hear that?  Nah. 

My life is a rollercoaster of discomfort, and my dear hubby has adjusted admirably to its necessities and reality. 

I told him about the fibro on our first date, giving him just enough information that he understood something of its daily impact on my life without dwelling on the specific symptoms or discomfort it entails.  By our second date, he had not only remembered the name of my disability…but had googled it and asked me intelligent questions about my personal experience, diagnosis, and prognosis.

I am a lucky girl.  Luckier than I deserve.

Because I have my days.  Boy, do I.  And he loves me through them.

There are days we’ve planned for weeks in advance, to go to a museum or movie or party…and when the day arrives, all I can do is sit morosely in my bathrobe and offer a wan, fake smile when he asks me how I’m feeling.  We don’t make it to the planned event on those days.  I wince every time I shift my weight, he insists on bringing me drinks and food and pillows I don’t want, and he is so excruciatingly gentle when he touches me that it hurts.

Sometimes, on those days, it really gets to me.  What I think about most is how different his life would be if he’d married a woman without so many complications and restrictions, a woman who could reliably plan her days in advance and answer with ‘Why not?’ when asked ‘Do you want to?’

We go on a road trip, even a short one like this weekend, and after 85 miles it’s all I can do to unfold myself from his incredibly impractical, but very cute, sports car and walk like a woman in her early (okay, mid!) 30’s and not like my own grandmother with a broken hip.  Sitting still for too long kinks the muscles, you see, and I’ll have crazy, miniscule muscle spasms for the next several hours.  Just part of life with fibro.

When it gets to me…sometimes I lash out.  I want to rage, and scream, and sob at the injustice of it all.  I am a decent human being, I use my turn signal, I wash my hands after using a public restroom…I don’t deserve this shit.  And some days it pours out of me, the frustration and the anger and the confused tangle that is my heart that day. 

And he listens, and holds me, and loves me anyway.  He rubs my shoulders when I can stand it, and drops butterfly-light kisses on my face when that’s all my overwrought nerves can tolerate.

He does the major bulk of the housework, keeping the litterboxes clean and taking out the trash and loading and unloading the dishwasher like clockwork, without ever throwing it in my face or even allowing me to feel bad about my relative indolence.  When I feel like cooking (which I do as a release from the pain as much as anything else) he cheerfully chops and stirs and samples for me.  And when he sees the pain in my eyes grow too deep, he insists that I sit for a minute and take a break, and I am grateful, even while I resent the necessity.

I go to work at the luxury department store where I’m a manager, and I smile and wear heels (at least most of the way through a shift, most days!) and act like nothing is wrong.  And when I go home and show him what’s really going on for me, I feel bad, because if I could maintain a smile for a hundred anonymous customers I’ll never see again…shouldn’t he get at least that much from me?

But there are still the nights when, as soon as I make it through the door from the garage and a cat or three meets me, rubbing affectionately against my calves and purring like they haven’t seen me in weeks…I can’t help tearing up and showing how grateful I am to be home with the ones who love me, no matter what I’m feeling like.

I am a lucky girl.

And I have Fibromyalgia.

She's my favorite...don't tell the others!

Baby, Oh Baby!!

After my last, perhaps PETA-unfriendly, observation about the innate tastiness of the baby sheep…I decided it was time to give my husband what he’s been not-so-subtly hinting at for several months.

Not that, you naughty thing!!  😉 

The hubmeister has been asking me to cook veal for a while now and for some reason I’ve been resistant.  It’s a moral thing, I think…I mean, veal is a baby cow, right?  Cute and cuddly, and that’s just not…

Nah, it’s definitely not a moral thing.  I have no problem with a baby animal dying for me to enjoy its tender, delicate flesh…or to wear it.  I didn’t cry when Bambi’s mother died, either.  I only look like a softie; the hub is the one with the Kleenex box during Saving Private Ryan.

I’m not sure why I’d been putting off the veal for so long.  But after a particularly grueling Iron Chef: America session (and maybe some needling about being afraid of a baby herbivore) I agreed to try cooking veal.

Now, I don’t really know if I’ve ever eaten veal.  I’d guess I have, probably, at least once.  While working in the restaurant industry and traveling abroad, I’m pretty sure veal has crossed my lips multiple times.  I eat what’s available, and if it’s fried, that’s even better.  But I can’t call up a memory of a specific meal in which I consumed veal.

As usual, I started by reading as many veal recipes as I could find.  I discovered that it’s pretty much interchangable with pork in recipes.  You can do pretty much anything with it, and it (like the teensy baby critter it is) will just take the abuse, looking tender and delicious.

So I decided to do something with it like I would do with lamb, picturing in my (admittedly over-fertile) imagination a duel of sorts.  In one corner, the bleating, trembling lamb, its sparse smattering of  wool barely curling and still a little damp…and in the other, the spindly-legged, staggering baby cow, downy, light-red sides heaving while it butts tentatively at the oncoming lamb. 

But that’s just in my mind.  We were going to cook veal.  Sorry, rabbit-chasing again.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Now.

I chopped up some fresh rosemary and garlic, put them in a bowl with some olive oil and salt & pepper, and rubbed those beautiful, 1″ thick boneless veal chops down liberally with the resulting paste.  Both sides and sides.

I let this sit on the counter on a plate for about 15 minutes – long enough to let the flavors sink in, not long enough for bacteria to take hold.

Preheated my grandmother’s cast iron skillet to medium-high/high with a little more olive oil.  Not quite smoking…but almost.

Sizzle sizzle!  Veal certainly SMELLS like heaven!  I am a happy kittie.  Brown, brown, both sides, baby cow!!

Chops, nicely browned on both sides, go into a baking dish and into a 375 degree oven.  (I TOLD you to preheat it!!)  Depending on thickness, they could take 5 to 10 minutes.  It’s a weird whitish meat, mostly like pork, that gets that pale red liquid if you poke it and let it sit.  That’s always grossed me out.

In the meantime…you didn’t turn off the burner with the cast iron skillet, did you?

Add about a cup of white wine and half a cup of chicken stock.  Scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the skillet and simmer until reduced by about 1/2.  Squeeze the juice of half a lemon in there at some point.  It may need salt.  You can handle the seasoning part – I believe in you!!  🙂

Take the veal chops out of the oven at some point and hope they’re cooked properly.  The fat isn’t like beef or lamb fat (yummmm!); it’s more like pork fat (ewwww!) so trim it off.  Spoon the pan sauce over the chops on the plate and serve with…

Chiles Rellenos

We’ve (okay, I’ve) made these a few times before, based loosely on the amalgamation of several recipes I found online.  The difference tonight is that all of the Mexican cheese in the house (a combination of Asadero, Cotija, and Panera) has been shredded (during the prep for last night’s shrimp enchiladas), and previously I have only used little domino-sized chunks of cheese to stuff my incredibly fragile, tenuously fibrous chile peppers.

If you’re not familiar with Hatch green chiles…they are a New Mexico pepper and are only widely available fresh for about a month in August.  Major grocery stores and Tex-Mex chains in Houston will have a Hatch Chile Festival and it’s awesome.  They’re like the love child of a jalapeno and a poblano and they’re sold as Mild and Hot varieties, though within those classifications is a pretty wide range of heat.

The hubster and I adore Hatch chiles and we always stock up when they’re in town.  For the first time, this year we went ahead and got a case each of Hot and Mild peppers, already roasted.  That’s almost 60 pounds of roasted peppers.  We portioned them into freezer bags and wrote the number and variety on the outside with a Sharpie (for example, 4M2H is, of course, 4 Mild and 2 Hot peppers).  Our freezer is a land filled with stacks and rows and mounds of pepper-baggies.  There’s one small shelf left at the bottom for the emergency pasta bag, pizza rolls, and pound of ground pork.

Weren’t we talking about Chiles Rellenos?  You keep letting me get distracted!  Chiles Rellenos are the most wonderful invention since…well…tortillas.  The basic idea can be (and has been) dressed up a million different ways; you take a pepper, you put something in it, you cook it, you top it with sauce and eat it.  The classic way, of course, is very simple: cheese inside, egg batter, fry, red sauce, yum.  Of course, left to my own devices I would be getting creative…’I wonder how many different things I can dice and mix with the cheese filling?  Let’s see, shallots and mushrooms and crab meat and cilantro and roasted piquillo peppers and definitely some bacon and…’

But (perhaps fortunately) when it comes to certain dishes, the hub is a purist.  Anything called a chile relleno that has anything except cheese inside is blasphemy.  So it’s given me a chance to actually cook the same thing, pretty much the same way, multiple times, tweaking a bit but not getting too creative.

Start with your peppers: roast them (or be lazy like me and buy ’em roasted).  Let them cool and rinse the skin off.  The peppers are pretty fragile and will tear easily, so be careful; you want them whole.  You’ll need to make a slit from the stem about 1/3 of the way down to take out the seeds.  

This is a good time to start your oil: heat a large pan with about 1.5″ of  your fav cooking oil (I use Canola) to medium-high heat.  You can test it by dropping in a bit of the egg batter; if it floats to the top and sizzles your oil is ready; if it sinks it’s not hot enough.

Stuffing is much easier with cheese that's not shredded.

Stuff ’em: get a good Mexican melting cheese (Chihuahua, Asadero, Oaxaca) and cut into sticks.  The size & shape depends on your particular peppers; you want it to fit inside, with a little space to melt but still going most of the way to the top & bottom of the pepper.  Get it inside with a minimum of additional pepper ripping.  Close the opening as much as possible (you can use toothpicks to hold them closed).

Since you rinsed the skins off the peppers, they’re a little damp.  Good.  Sprinkle them lightly with some all-purpose flour, all over.  Not too much, don’t want it cakey.  Just a dusting.

For the egg batter, separate your eggs, 1 egg for every 2 peppers, into separate bowls.  Beat the whites until they firm up, then fold in the yolks slowly with a little salt & pepper.

One at a time, dip the peppers in the egg mixture, then drop them into your hot oil.  Fry until they’re golden brown and floating, turning them over once.  Drain on paper towels.

For the sauce, I use canned Hatch Green Chile Enchilada Sauce (the red kind, not the green kind) – you can see the yellow label in the pic with the hubby.  I doctor it up different every time (this is where I CAN be a little creative!) – this time I added 3 tomatillos, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 large shallot, 1 large jalapeno, and a bunch of fresh cilantro.  Whip it all up in the blender, then simmer until the chiles are ready to be topped.

Put your fried, drained chiles in a baking dish, spoon your sauce over the top, sprinkle some shredded cheese on top, and put them in the oven for just a couple of minutes. 

The chiles, on this particular evening, are counting as our green veggie.  Shut up.  They’re green.  We’re eating them with the leftover potato salad from the lamb burgers…and the veal chops, of course.

Chiles rellenos just aren't photogenic...

I don’t think I like veal.  The hub does, though not as much as lamb, he says.  To me it’s like pork, only bland and a little mushy (‘they’ may call it tender, but I like some chew to my meat).  I eat a couple bites of the veal and start thinking about baby animals.

Apparently age doesn’t have as much to do with deliciousness as I thought.  I like grown-up cows much better than baby ones.  I wonder what a grown-up sheep would taste like?  I hear it’s called mutton…I wonder if there are any mutton recipes on foodnetwork.com – and if Central Market carries it.

So the score is…baby cow – 0, lamb – 1.  The lamb in my mind is standing with his little foot (hoof? do lambs have hooves?) on the conquered veal’s neck, head thrown back, bleating because now it’s not sure what do with its prey and it really wants some nice clover or something. 

And I’m thinking ice cream.  Yum.

Lambs: cute, fluffy…and delicious.

The done deal.

Every time I cook lamb, I can’t stop thinking about…how good it’s going to taste.

Sure, when they’re baby animals, and whole and alive, with their fur (or wool or whatever) intact, they’re snuggly and cute and I just want to pet their soft black noses.

But when it comes to cooking…there’s not much I like better.  You can do so much with lamb, and there are so many choices of cuts, and they all seem to turn out delicious and juicy and I love it.

This was a total collaborative effort with the hub.  We’ve done lamb chops on the grill a dozen times, and he keeps wanting to try lamb burgers.  So today was his day. 

The burgers themselves were his work, as well as all the grilling, and I did the tzatziki sauce, prepped the onions & mushrooms, and made the potato salad.

Grilled Spicy Lamb Burgers

Original recipe is Alan Hollister’s via foodnetwork.com; slightly altered to taste.

Ingredients:

1.25 pounds ground lamb
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sherry
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon molasses
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1.5 teaspoons red pepper flakes
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 rolls of your choice; pita rounds, onion rolls, sesame seed buns…whatever
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat grill for medium heat.

Chopped bits of yummy things

Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl.  Shape into 4 patties.

Brush patties lightly with olive oil.  Grill for about 4 minutes on each side, or until mediumish.  Top with crumbled feta immediately after removing from grill and cover patties loosely with aluminum foil to retain heat.  Rest for 5 minutes.

Brush bread lightly with olive oil and heat briefly on the grill.

Grilled Sliced Mushrooms & Onions

This one is all my own, crafted over literally dozens of attempts.  We love these things and put them on any meat that’s even close to red when there’s a hot grill available.

Ingredients

1 medium red onion, cut in half vertically, then cored and sliced thin
8 ounces white mushrooms, sliced thin
Olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Red chili flakes
Healthy splash of Worcestershire sauce

Place sliced mushrooms & onions in a medium bowl, then drizzle generously with olive oil.  Add salt, black pepper, & red chili flakes.  Add some more.  Splash liberally with Worcestershire sauce (don’t make them swim, just a healthy dousing).  Make sure they’re glistening with oil but not soggy.

Preheat grill pan or wok on grill for 5 minutes.  Add mushrooms & onions and grill for 3-5 minutes on a side or until caramelized, flipping once or twice.

Tzatziki sauce

Ingredients

8 ounces of plain Greek yogurt
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and chunked
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh dill
1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh mint
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 teaspoon(ish) cayenne
1/2 teaspoon(ish) red chili flakes
Salt & pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor or blender.  Process until well-combined, taste, and adjust seasoning as needed.

Line a medium strainer with 2 layers of coffee filters.  Place strainer over a deep bowl and pour sauce into strainer.  Strain for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  (The straining idea was completely the hubmeister’s; I was fine with it being watery, but he wanted to try this, and by golly, it was amazing!!  Thickened the sauce right up.  He does okay sometimes.)

Pour into sealable bowl, discarding drained liquid, cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 2 hours before serving.

This is the potato salad sauce waiting to happen.

Southwestern Potato Salad

Original recipe from Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, modified…well…generously.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups prepared mayonnaise
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
Juice of 2 key limes
2 tablespoons chipotle pepper puree
1 large ripe tomato, seeded and diced
1/4 cup chopped cilantro leaves
3 green onions, chopped (green and white parts)
1/2 medium red onion, diced
1 fresh jalapeno, seeded and diced
1 teaspoon cayenne
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 slices of crisped bacon (I use the pre-cooked microwaveable kind), chopped
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste (be generous)
2 to 3 pounds red potatoes, chunked, boiled until tender, then drained and cut into smallish pieces

Potato Salad Extraordinaire!!

Combine all the ingredients except the potatoes in a medium bowl and season to taste.  Place warm potatoes in a large bowl, pour the mixture over the potatoes, and mix well.  Season again with salt & pepper to taste. 

Serve warm…and enjoy cold as leftovers.

Assembly:

Place lamb patty on bottom bun (or in pita pocket, or wherever it feels cozy and warm).  Top with grilled mushrooms & onions and find a way to get the tzatziki sauce on or in there.  Add sliced tomato if you feel the need (we left it off at the last minute as unnecessary).   Devour with potato salad and wine.

To Recipe or Not To Recipe??

Pasta sauce waiting to happen.

or…My Life as a Copycat Chef.

I started cooking when I was about 8 years old.  I remember it well; my mother patiently walked me through the steps of making baked tuna noodle casserole.

We got distracted while it was in the oven and it burned beyond saving.  But I loved doing it!!  And after that I started following her around in the kitchen, always underfoot, handing her the milk jug or butter dish before she could ask for it and asking interminable questions. 

My mom, like me, is not a measurer.  She adds what she wants to the mix until it looks like enough.  Growing up, I always wanted to know, ‘How do you know how much oil to put in the cornbread?’ And her answer was always the same: ‘Experience.’  I hated, hated HATED that answer!!

Now, trying to write recipes…I’m looking at the bowl after I add the milk, thinking…uh, that looks like about two tablespoons.  Right?  I hope. Yeah, that’s about it.’  How do I know?  Uh, experience, I guess.  Dangit, I am turning into my mother.

Between the ages of 8 and 17, I cooked dinner for my parents and me every chance I got.  Often it was Hamburger Helper or something of that nature, but I always added something and tried to make it better. 

In my early 20’s I dated a chef for a couple of years and it changed my life.  Suddenly herbs didn’t just come in a jar.  Asparagus wasn’t just something in a can.  It was possible to create a sauce from scratch, without starting with something out of a bottle or packet.

I learned the basics of chopping, and blending, and sauteeing from him.  Of course, he did the vast majority of the cooking when we were together.  Just like with my mother, I would hand him things and ask questions and help as I could, chopping and peeling happily to his directions.  It seemed miraculous, the way he could take the contents of the fridge, including a hunk of whole fish that just looked scary to me, and turn it into something fragrant and delicious.

And once he wasn’t there to cook anymore…I started doing it myself.  Trial and error, baby, that’s how we did it back in the good old days.  I had twelve favorite ingredients and I would put them in anything.  To this day, I have ‘default’ flavors that wind up in almost everything I cook: some kind of pepper (jalapeno, serrano, habanero, poblano, or Hatch), cilantro, lime juice, cayenne, worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar…these are the things I love.  Not all at once, necessarily…but you know, it does make a great steak marinade, come to think of it.

My friends learned that my home was a good place to look for food, because I would cook at the drop of a hat, hungry or not.  Sometimes the results were shockingly good…and other times we went to the Wendy’s around the corner and they teased me for a few days…until the next time the culinary gods smiled on me and their mouths were too full to tease.

Guys I dated loved it that I cooked.  It seems not a lot of single girls do, at least not in Houston.  And lots of times I cooked just for myself when nobody else was there to feed.

But after that…how do you learn?  How do you grow?  I’ve taken a couple of classes from a local adult education organization, but…I need more!  So I watch Food Network obsessively, DVRing cooking and baking shows until the DVR recorder thing’s memory is full and suddenly The History of Styrofoam Peanuts doesn’t record and the hub is mad at me.  But then I learn to make key lime pie, so it’s okay again.

And I surf recipe sites and print out dozens – no, hundreds – of recipes, and they drift in white stacks all over the house wherever I got distracted while leafing through them, trying to decide what to cook next.  They have condensation rings from being absently used as coasters.  I can tell the recipes of dishes I have already made; their clean white surfaces have spatters of sauce and drips of chocolate and splashes of red wine. 

A wide stance is important for balance while creating...

Cooking is a messy sport.

I seem to be constitutionally incapable of actually following a recipe, however.  I always think of something else it needs, or something it needs more of, or a way to work in butter instead of olive oil, or cayenne instead of tarragon (because I loathe licorice).  I know, Bobby Flay wrote that recipe, it is culinary gospel, and there is no way in hell I can improve on it.  But I try.  Like with the Hamburger Helper…I just can’t help myself.

So when I post recipes…chances are, I didn’t make them up.  Not entirely, and sometimes, not mostly.   I learned to cook tuna noodle casserole from my mom, and grilled lobster from Emeril…but I don’t do it quite like they do.  So I post my version, and hope you use it to make your own.

Happy cooking.