christmac28:

Spring at Le Moulin Bregeon

Spring is the time for young broad beans, real wild asparagus, spring onions, small turnips and cauliflower, green peas, bitter oranges, green tomatoes, mixed salad, tender fennel, strawberries from Carpentras, artichokes, brousse (fresh cheese), and new olive oil. Basil is at its best, bringing its punchy flavor to soupe au pistou made with fresh spring vegetables. While the rest of France starts to despair of ever seeing the sun, the days here are already warm and summery. Everything at the market is small, juicy and sweet.

christmac28:

Heritage Radio: wild boar recipe courtesy of Jessie Riley — who learned to cook wild boar at Le Moulin Bregeon

http://ny.eater.com/archives/2013/03/five_things_you_missed_on_heritage_radio_this_week_5.php

Moulin Brégeon’s Curry Zucchini Soup

This recipe was graciously provided by Bernard at Moulin Bregeon (a man whose talents, incidentally, would put Martha Stewart to shame. It’s almost worth the trip just to sample his homemade elderflower syrup or cherry jam). 

After having tasted the cool soup, which was incredibly refreshing after a long, hot day of touring around the region, I expected the recipe to be a considerably more involved and nuanced affair than it turned out to be. The actual process is astonishingly simple, and really highlights the difference that locally-grown, fresh ingredients make from a flavor perspective. In our case, the zucchinis used for the soup were picked from the inn’s garden just 3 hours before dinner, and we watched Chef Pascal clip some chives and pansies for the garnish just moments before we were seated for dinner. 

Bernard emphasized the importance of using small, younger zucchini for this recipe–about 6 oz each– rather than the monster-sized zucchini we’re used to buying in the U.S. 

He also mentioned that the trick to the texture is really blending the soup until it is a very smooth and creamy with no chunks or visible pieces; this gives such a velvety and rich effect without using any cream whatsoever. For my vegan readers, I’m sure a vegetable broth would substitute just fine for the chicken broth. While I’ve never much been one for cold soups (or making soup in the summer), I must say that this dish won me over; it’s a lovely substitute for a salad to start off a summer meal, or would make a fine half of a light soup-and-salad lunch.


Serves 4


One large, peeled onion cut fine

2 tablespoons virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons curry powder

4 young zucchinis (~26 ounces total, or about 1.7 lbs), washed and cut in fine rounds

~4 cups (1 liter) of chicken broth

Pour the oil in a big pot, throw in the onion, the curry and a pinch of salt. Brown until the onion is tender (3 or 4 minutes).
Add broth and zucchinis, cover and reduce heat, cook for 20 minutes.

Blend until the soup is creamy.

You can eat this soup hot or cold; you can also add more curry if you like it spicier.

Garnish with fresh chives if desired

Approximate nutrition information per serving (this is so un-French to add, but I know many of you are watching your weight and counting carbs, so I hope I will not be considered too gauche for doing so): ~120 calories, 10g carbohydrate (of which ~2.5g is fiber), 6.5g protein and 8g fat (the healthy, unsaturated kind). This is a very diabetic friendly recipe (less than one carbohydrate exchange per serving), so long as you don’t go and start mopping up the leftover soup streaks in your empty bowl with lots of spongy bread! (You will surely be tempted to do so).

Bon apétit!

Yanko Design

 Yanko Design

The Porthole is a design created by Chicago-based designer Martin Kastner. The conception of the design was originated from a simple conversation between the designer and bar chefs prepare for a new restaurant opening called the Aviary. “We were discussing “fast infusions” — cocktails evolving during the course of the time it takes to serve them — and it occurred to me that what we’re really looking for is a window into another world, space, and time.”

dinnerwasdelicious:

Steak.

Learning to cook a perfect steak is as essential to becoming a Real Adult™ as learning how to do your laundry without turning your socks pink or calling in sick without over-doing it. The difference being, with steak, you’re doing something more important than, you know, not looking like a bonehead or getting fired. A good steak will charm people, win you influence. It lends you an illusion of being skillful, bearing good taste, and having an appreciation for pleasure.  In short; a perfect steak will get you laid.

The first step towards steak perfection is picking the right meat— and that starts at going to reputable butcher. If you live in Chicago, the Butcher and Larder is the best choice for all of your meat needs. The staff is kind and knowledgeable, prices are appropriate, and their stock is delicious and ethically sourced. For folks outside of the area, Whole Foods and Costco (yes, that Costco) are great options outside of your local, reputable butcher for properly handled meat that came from humanely handled cattle.

There are a lot of important sounding titles in the meat department—but the only one we really want you to pay attention to is Grass Fed. Buy grass fed everything, whenever possible. It is infinitely more nutrient-dense, and can sometimes indicate a better quality of life for the animals. More important than either of those factors: Grass Fed Beef Tastes Really Fucking Good. Meatier, savory-er, better-er; the way that beef should taste. Grass fed beef is leaner, with about the same fat-content as a boneless chicken breast, and has a better distribution of higher quality fat. The smaller fat deposits are more consistently spread through the meat and that gives you a better tasting bite of beef with a finer texture, with more actual meat per ounce. What fat that is present is lower in cholesterol and generally better for you, loaded with Omega-3 and vitamin E.

The cut of steak matters, but not that much, and is largely a matter of budget and preference. Because they have a fat distribution we’re into, a lot of flavor, and a relatively low price point, we’re going to suggest you go with a New York Strip. They also, conveniently, serve two people and since we’re trying to get you laid, that’s probably a good idea.

Beef should be a healthy deep pink (not neon red) with evenly distributed flecks and wiggles of pure white fat. A brown or purple hazed meat or pinkish fat, are not good signs and should be avoided. Whenever possible, buy your steak the same day that you plan to prepare it. While beef can be stored for really long periods of time, your fridge isn’t the ideal environment and can introduce some funky flavors to the meat.  Steak shouldn’t smell like much of anything and it should look fairly dry. While juicy meat is your goal in a cooked steak, if you see liquid at this stage it can mean a couple of not so tasty things. It can be a sign that the meat is old, improperly cut, or otherwise mishandled. Perhaps worse, slick coatings and pools of juice can indicate that the meat has been treated with weird plumping chemicals that artificially inflate the weight (and the price) and make everything taste like butts.

Steak.

• One Steak. Preferably New York Strip. Ideally about an inch and a half thick. Grass Fed.
• One well-seasoned Cast Iron Skillet. Non-Negotiable.
• Oil of Your Choice, with a High Smoke Point (Peanut, Canola, Vegetable. NOT Olive. Not Butter).
• Paper Towels.
• Salt.
• Tin Foil.

Serves: 2

Before you’re ready to cook, place your Steak in a cool place on your counter to bring it up to room temperature. This will shorten your cooking time and lessen the thermal shock once it hits the hot pan, creating a more tender steak that holds onto its juices better. Obviously be careful when you’re leaving raw meat out of refrigeration. Use the parts of your brain not decayed by collegiate alcohol consumption and make good decisions; keep it in its original packaging, put it on a deep plate to catch any leaks, keep it away from animals, and stay around to make sure things don’t go horribly awry.

Once you’re ready to get cooking, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Place your Cast Iron Skillet on your range, over a high flame. Add the Oil, continue heating until it is decidedly Hot and just starting to smoke. Thoroughly dry your Steak with a Paper Towel. This will help us get a better crust on the outside of the steak.  Liberally Salt one side of the Steak and immediately place it into your very hot skillet, salted side down.

Cook the Steak on that first side for two minutes without even thinking about touching anything. No pressing, no turning, no peaking. Just as your two minutes are coming to a close, carefully use a Paper Towel to dry off the top of the Steak. Once dried, liberally Salt and immediately flip into a new, un-Steaked, area of the pan. Continue to cook on the stove top for about 30 seconds, and move things into the oven.

Continue cooking the Steak in the oven for 7-10 minutes. 7 minutes, for most steaks, will be a rare to medium-rare, 10 minutes will give you a juicy well-done. We went with eight minutes for the steak pictured and got a perfect medium—solid pink all the way through and juicy as a motherfucker. Lots of snobs will say the perfect steak is medium-rare. We think that the perfect steak is however the fuck you want to eat it.

After cooking in the oven, immediately move your Steak from the pan to a cutting board or plate. Cover it with Tin Foil to keep it warm, and let the Steak rest for at least 5 minutes to let the fibers relax and redistribute the juices. Once rested, slice it against the grain and serve. We like it with super Mid-Western fixins, like giant baked potatoes and green beans, but this perfectly seasoned piece of meat is the kind of luxurious ingredient that makes a brownbag lunch feel more special. It’s great on a salad and is really good cold.

Burgers, Oscar Style

Burger night gets a surf & turf make-over with Oscar-style burgers.

Ingredients

• For the Bearnaise sauce:
• 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1/4 cup shallot or white onion, finely chopped
• 3 eggs yolks
• 1 stick butter, cut into 8 pieces
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• For the burger:
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• Salt
• Pepper
• Worcestershire sauce
• To assemble:
• 1 lb asparagus
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Meat from 1 snow crab cluster
• 3 burger buns

Instructions

Notes

Yields: 3 servings

If Shrimp & Grits and good southern food strikes your fancy, be sure to check out this Healthy Travel article on CookingLight.com. I’m thrilled to finally be living so close to Charleston & hope to make it over soon to check out some of these spots! 

***

by Regan @ The Professional Palate

DIY Ketchup

Making your own organic ketchup is amazingly delicious and saves a lot of money. You can control how sweet, spicy or savory you make it. I made this ketchup using garden tomatoes, onions, brown sugar and spices. I usually try to buy organic ketchup, or ketchup with “sugar” in the ingredients list, to avoid eating high fructose corn syrup derived form GMO corn. But making your own from home grown tomatoes is even better! Yum!

Here’s how I made this:

In a saucepan, 2 tblsp olive oil, 1 large sweet onion chopped, 3-4 garlic cloves, chopped, 1/2 inch grated ginger, salt and pepper and sauté a few minutes. Add 5 or 6 large, chopped garden tomatoes, (or 1 can whole peeled tomatoes) 2 tblsp organic brown sugar, 2 tblsp cider vinegar, 2 allspice berries, 1 clove, fresh ground pepper, celery salt, a sprinkle of cinnamon, 1 tblsp worcestershire sauce, 2 tblsp tomato paste.

Simmer until it thickens, about 45 to 1 hour. Taste. Is it sweet enough? If not, add more brown sugar or honey.  

Strain through a food mill, or smoosh through a strainer with the back of a spoon. A food mill is much easier, I don’t use mine often, but when I do, I’m glad I have it.

Place in jars and refrigerate. Lasts up to a couple months, I think, not positive.

If you make a big batch, and want to keep it for up to a year or more, sterilize some canning jars, pour the hot ketchup into the sterilized jars, cover with sterilized lids and rings, process in a hot water bath for 25 minutes. Cool and store.

(alternate mild ketchup tip: If you are making this for kids, or if you don’t want it so spicy, leave out the ginger, allspice and clove.)

Vinaigrettes are essential to making summer dishes more delicious. Obviously they make lettuces and veggies taste great, but they are capable of way, way more. Vinaigrettes serve as ideal marinades for proteins, turn room temperature grains into satisfying meals, and transform a bowl of chopped up fruit into a luscious dessert. Best of all: they’re dead fucking simple to put together.

Every vinaigrette recipe is a variation on a single template: three parts oil carefully whisked into one part acid. From there, you simply plug and play your favorite tangy liquids with your favorite fats, adding in bits of spices and sweeteners to best suit your fancy and/or your dish. 

To improve on the formula, we like to add an emulsifying agent, like mustard, to help keep the dressing stable. That means no more bites of greasy lettuce because your vinaigrette broke and no more careful whisking— you can just throw that shit into a jar and shake it. Laziness-enabling aside, using emulsifiers changes the texture and that makes it taste better. It brings ingredients to your tongue at the same time and lets each of their contrasting qualities simultaneously enhance and restrain the others. The result is consistently unctuous and savory and bold vinaigrettes— instead of dressing that’s occasionally, and unpleasantly, greasy, salty, or astringent.

We’ve shared a few of our favorite recipes below— give them a try and certainly keep your eyes peeled this week for some pretty pictures of what we like to do with them— but don’t be afraid try this out on your own. Vinaigrette is a relatively low-cost, low volume investment for fucking around in the kitchen that yields high-impact flavors and can change a meal for the better. Mess with your favorite flavors and make something all your own.

Classic Balsamic Vinaigrette

Great for green side salads but possibly better as a marinade for grilled chicken.

• (the oil) 3/4 cup Olive Oil
• (the acid) 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar
• (the emulsifier) 1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
• 2 tsp of bruised Thyme leaves
• A pinch of Salt and plenty of Black Pepper

Lemon Poppy Seed Vinaigrette

Particularly rad on melons.

• (the oil) 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
• (the acid) Juice from 1 Lemon
• (the emulsifier) 1 tbsp Greek Yogurt
• 1-2 tbsp Honey
• 1 tsp Poppy Seed
• A pinch of ground Cinnamon (optional)
• A pinch of Salt

Sesame Miso Vinaigrette
On cold noodles, rice pilaf, or a nice thick piece of fish before it hits the pan.

• (the oil)1/3 cup Peanut Oil
• (also the oil)1 tbsp Sesame Oil
• (the acid) 3 tbsp Rice Wine Vinegar
• (also the acid) 1 Lime, juice only
• (the emulsifier) 2 tbsp Miso Paste
• 1 thinly sliced Scallion
• 1 tsp Sesame Seeds

Shrimp Pasta with Tomatoes, Lemon and Spinach:

What it took for 2:

* 1/2 pound extra large shrimp, thawed, peeled and deveined
* 2 tsp lemon zest, divided
* 1 pinch crushed red pepper
* 1 sprig fresh thyme, leaves removed and chopped
* 1 sprig fresh oregano, leaves removed and chopped
* 2 basil leaves, torn
* 2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
* 4 cups baby spinach
* 2 Tbs. lemon juice (or more!)
* 1/2 pound angel hair pasta
* coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

On a plate, toss the shrimp with the crushed red pepper, half the lemon zest, chopped herbs and a pinch of salt and pepper. Let it sit while you start the rest.

Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium-high. Add the garlic and bloom 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes along the remaining lemon zest. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and saute for 2 minutes.

Add the shrimp in a single layer and sear on one side for 2 minutes. Flip and sear another minute, or until shrimp is cooked through. Keep tossing the tomatoes just a little bit.

In the meantime, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the angel hair until al dente, maybe 5 minutes. Drain all but about 1/2 cup of the pasta water and toss with the shrimp and tomato mixture, along with the spinach. Squeeze a lot of lemon juice right in. Season with coarse salt and pepper. Add as much pasta water as you want to create a thin, glorious sauce.

Serve it with more lemon juice, crusty bread and for heaven’s sake, fresh parmesan cheese.

Summer Salad - Shredded Romaine, Orange and Scallop

A light summer salad dressed with orange vinaigrette!

INGREDIENTS:

1 orange - segmented

4-5 romaine lettuce leaves - shredded

1/2 cup orange juice

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar or white vinegar

2 tsp olive oil

2 tsp butter

1 tbsp paprika

1/2 cup small scallops

2 tbsp orange zest

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a sauce pan, heat orange juice then mix in sugar and vinegar.

2. Add in olive oil and cook for 3-5 minutes.

3. In a pan, melt the butter.

4. Add in the scallops into the pan and sprinkle paprika throughout.

5. Add salt and pepper to the scallops.

6. Toss vinaigrette with lettuce and segmented orange.

7. Add on scallops and top with orange zest.

Chilled Summer Sweet Pea Soup

Minted Hewitt’s Dairy buttermilk & Dungeness crab

A delightfully sweet and silky puree that can be likened to distilled summer in a bowl. Brightened by minted Hewitt’s Dairy buttermilk, the vibrant starter surrounds an island of loose, shredded Dungeness crab meat, candy-like sweet peas and nori threads that’s crowned with wildflower crème fraiche.

photo by sifu renka