Archive | February, 2013

Brunch in a Bowl: Spicy Bork Mince w/Scrambled Eggs

24 Feb

spicy bork mince - serve with eggs

We have a fantastic butcher here in Park Slope called Fleisher’s.  Fleisher’s carries fabulous quality meats free of hormones or antibiotics, which are locally sourced and raised on a primarily grass-fed diet.  We love everything from them.  Yesterday, we stopped by Fleisher’s and picked up some pork chops, steaks, and some “bork” — ground beef and pork mix.  For late brunch today, I used the bork to make some spicy “bork” mince with onions, capers and parsley, topped with scrambled eggs.  So easy to make and packed full of flavor!  The capers add a nice tangy flavor to the spicy mince meat, and the parsley gives the dish a lovely freshness.  Eat with some scrambled eggs, and you’ve got a great protein-packed brunch in a bowl!

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New ♥: Gefu Spirelli Spiral Slicer (and Super Simple Lamb+Olive “Bolognese” w/Zucchini “Pasta”)

17 Feb

13460-spirelli-spiral-cutter-gefu-detailA high school friend of mine and his girlfriend are on the raw food diet and are also vegetarian.  A while back over drinks, they told me about the wonders of the spiral slicer that can create beautiful spirals of vegetables — a perfect gadget for raw foodists, who, with it, could make raw vegetable “pastas” from carrots, zucchinis and the like.  The idea of the spiral slicer stayed on my mind, and so I finally purchased one recently.  There are a few types of spiral slicers out there, but I went with the Gefu Spirelli — and I LOVE it!

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Mustard-coated Rack of Lamb

17 Feb

mustard lamb - marinade

I recently bought a rack of lamb because it was on sale, without thinking deeply on how I wanted to cook it.  All I thought was that I could cook it on the weekend.  In the past, I’ve made  rosemary/garlic/lemon-crusted rack of lamb, but this time, since I had purchased the rack of lamb as an impulse purchase rather than for a concrete cooking plan, I forgot to buy along with the lamb rosemary, parsley, or any other kind of fresh herb.  When the weekend arrived, all I had on hand in way of a herb was some herbes de provence, and I was too lazy to go out shopping.  And so I just made up a simple mustard marinade with ingredients I had lying around in my kitchen.  The result was a very tangy and flavorful marinade that worked very nicely with the rich, gamey lamb.  The mustard and lemon cut the fattiness of the lamb, while the red onions added some texture as well as a faint sweetness.  I’m not so sure if the herbes de provence made much difference in terms of flavor, but it did add a kind of rustic quality to the appearance of the mustard crust.  David was a fan of this simple marinade, and so I think I might make it again in the future!

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Simple Veg: Guacamole

10 Feb

guacamole - ingredients

I first learned to make guacamole at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico, where one of the activities was a cooking demonstration.   Ever since, guacamole has been a regular party staple in our household.  Who doesn’t like guacamole?  Fresh and flavorful, guacamole is excellent all year round.

There’s room to play in making guacamole.  Normally, I use a habañero pepper (about 1/2, deseeded), but you can also use serrano or jalapeño peppers, depending on your preference.  Recently, we like using serrano peppers because they have a good balance of heat and flavor (David calls it “umami”).  A few of my friends don’t like cilantro, in which case I’ll swap out cilantro for basil and make what I call “Mediterranean” guacamole.  Although traditional guacamole uses yellow onions, sometimes I like to use red onions, which are sweeter.  You can use heirloom tomatoes or cherry tomatoes or beefsteak tomatoes, depending of what looks best at the market.  I like my guacamole crunchy, so you can definitely play with the ingredient ratios.

Here’s the basic mix as a guideline:

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Simple Dishes: Pan-Seared Wild Sockeye Salmon

10 Feb

sockeye salmon - plated

Sometimes, we just feel like eating a nice big piece of fish for dinner.  Wild sockeye salmon is one of our favorite weekday fish, because it is so quick and easy to cook.  It takes less then 10 minutes to pan-sear sockeye salmon filets to crispy-skin perfection.   Sockeye salmon is firmer than your regular salmon, with deep, orange-red color and rich, full, salmon-y flavor.  It is leaner than King Salmon, and less expensive.  I think sockeye salmon is best cooked simply — just make sure to not over cook it, as it will dry out.  Since David and I try to avoid eating farmed salmon as well as salmon with “added color” (usually goes hand in hand), sockeye salmon has become our favorite salmon variety to cook at home (along with coho salmon, which, when in season, is also delicious).  Currently, sockeye salmon found in super markets tend to be “previously frozen” (i.e. not in peak season), but we think they still taste delicious!

Here’s how I pan sear my sockeye salmon filets:

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Crispy + Spicy Oven-baked Chicken Wings

9 Feb

chicken wings - plated

Last weekend for Superbowl Sunday, I made oven-baked chicken wings… and they were DELICIOUS!!  I took an excellent hint from the Preppy Paleo to boil the chicken wings first — boiling the wings before baking them results in the crispiest oven-baked wings you’ve ever tasted.  Seriously.  The wings were so crispy, you would’ve thunk they were fried!  I am a big fan of chicken wings, and these oven-baked ones were the best I’ve made so far.  Boiling the wings first renders off some fat, and then baking them on a rack over a roasting pan helps crisp up the wings even further.  These wings are easy to make and are sure to impress at any kind of chicken-wings appropriate party.

For my version of the chicken wings, I boiled the wings first and then marinated them for about 30 minutes before putting them in the oven to infuse them with a punch of flavor.

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I ♥: (new + improved) Blender Bottle Sportmixer

9 Feb
Mixing up green drinks or protein shakes, it’s important to have a good, BPA-free shaker bottle.  (And now that I drink protein shakes in the morning, I use a shaker bottle on a daily basis.)  We used to have the classic version of the Blender Bottle, which worked fine but had little nooks and crannies around the spout that made it difficult to clean thoroughly.  The bottle always began to smell weird, no matter how you washed it, and I really hated drinking from it.  The new and improved Blender Bottle Sportmixer, however, is great!  The spout is designed in such a way that cleaning is easy; you can just rinse it after most drinks, not put it through the dishwasher.  It also comes in a variety of colors, and, as with the classic style, it is BPA-free.  I still never use the “Blenderball” that comes with the bottle, but I am very happy with my new shaker bottle.  (Bottles come in 20-oz and 28-oz sizes.)  If you are looking to purchase a shaker bottle, and are considering the Blender Bottle brand, definitely go with the Sportmixer style over the classic!

Tera’s Whey Protein Shake

9 Feb

3D_ORG_Choc_Can1000I am not a morning person, and so I tend to skip breakfast during the work week.  David frowns upon this habit, especially as he has read somewhere that one should eat within 45-minutes of waking up to kick start one’s metabolism.  And so I have started to drink a protein shake in the morning.  Initially, I tried a protein shake that was plant/veg-based with pea protein, but I didn’t react to it very well (my stomach felt funny).   Wanting a protein shake that’s low in sugar but still tasty, I tried Tera’s Whey — and their shakes are good!  I don’t do anything fancy with the shakes (e.g. blend them with anything), but the shakes are tasty enough and definitely makes for a quick “breakfast.”  For every serving, the shake contains 20-21g of protein and 5g of carbohydrates (3g sugars).  I have the chocolate flavor as well as the pomegranate cranberry — the cool thing about the pomegranate cranberry is that it is made of goat whey (you don’t see that often), while the chocolate one is organic and fair trade.  It’s nothing fancy, but it’s simple, tastes great, and now David is happy.  If you’re looking for high-protein, low-sugar, gluten-free protein shakes, do check out Tera’s Whey (they sell single serving packets, too, so you can try a flavor before committing to it in the full-size version).

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Superbowl Sunday Menu

2 Feb

David and I are not football people.  There, I said it.  We hardly know what’s going on, exactly, when we watch a game.  Most years, we only vaguely know which teams are in the Superbowl until we watch it (except for last year, Patriots v. Jets — my home town v. adoptive home town).  But we do love to participate in the spirit and the event-ness of Superbowl Sunday, and, in our household, it’s become a kind of a food tradition.  Mainly, we enjoy eating Superbowl festive food while drinking cider and wine.  No rowdy party or anything, just the two of us eating and trying to figure out what’s happening.

This Sunday, my plan is to make the following:

(We will definitely have leftovers, which is just fine, since all of the above will keep for a couple of days.)

What will you make for your Superbowl Sunday?

xoxo

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Fennel + Shiitake Turkey Chili, w/Sunchoke “Croutons” + Avocado Relish

2 Feb

turkey chili - in bowl 2

Chili is the perfect “dinner-in-a-bowl” for cold winter nights.  The great thing about chili is that it’s a make-a-lot-of dish that will feed my very hungry husband for at least a couple of meals, and it tastes even better the next day.   Also, chili is great for a casual party like, say, Superbowl Sunday.  Sadly, chili disappeared for a while from our dinner repertoire when we began eating paleo, because my old recipe involved beans, corn, and maple syrup, none of which we eat anymore.  This winter, I thought I would conceive a new, paleo-friendly chili — and so I experimented with fennel, hoping fennel would add a nice texture as well as some sweetness to the chili.  I also cooked up sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) to make some “crouton-like” garnish for texture and an avocado relish to cut the heat.  The result is our new paleo chili, which we are sure to enjoy throughout the winter!  We loved the fennel in the chili, and the sunchokes added a lovely earthiness.

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