elsewhere in the blogosphere

My friend Andrew over at Very Good Taste came up with a fun little meme which I couldn’t resist. Want to play along? It’s simple:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (does Alligator count?)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (…what?)
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (not a cross-out, though I’m iffy on this one)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (no, but I’ve had lunch at Le Bernardin)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (see #42)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Last week I received an email from the lovely Sarah of The Brooklyn Nester inviting me to participate in her celebration of National Pie Day. I’m not such a big fan of the sweet stuff, so once I confirmed that a savory submission was okay, I readily agreed.

Generally I rely on good quality all-butter puff pastry or prepared piecrust when I make savory pies, but since the addition of Robo McGee to our family, Mike and I have both been anxious to give homemade pastry dough a spin. Since he’s a little more patient with things like measuring things precisely, we decided that Mike would be in charge of making the dough, while I’d handle the filling.

As it turns out, I had spent some time on Monday making a batch of chicken stock, so I used a pint of that along with a couple of cups of pulled roasted chicken (left over from our last roast bird, which I had frozen and then thawed). A quick inspection of our countertop baskets and refrigerator produce bins turned up a few small potatoes, a leek and a carrot which I needed to use up, so I chopped them and sautéed them in a few tablespoons of butter until soft. I sprinkled a couple of tablespoons of flour over the veggies, stirred it through and let it cook for a few moments to get rid of any raw flour taste, then I added the chicken, stock, a couple of hits of Tabasco and some freshly ground black pepper. When the sauce was thick and the chicken very shreddy, I tasted it to adjust the seasoning, then tossed in a good handful of chopped fresh dill, some chopped chives, and a cup of green peas I had shelled and frozen last summer. With the filling done, I stepped aside and let Mike get to the pastry-making.

I had bookmarked Deb’s “pie crust 101” post in November, and after comparing it with a few others we found online and elsewhere, he decided to give it a try. He substituted an equal amount of butter for the shortening the recipe called for, and omitted the sugar since we wanted a savory crust, but other than that he followed the recipe to the letter. The result: silky dough that was incredibly easy to work with, and which baked up brown and incredibly flaky. It had a rich buttery flavor, but wasn’t at all greasy as some crusts I’ve tried have been.

In a nutshell, this recipe is a winner – easy to prepare, and absolutely delicious. We spent the rest of the evening brainstorming other things we could put into pies or tarts or bake “en croute.” I guess you could say we’re smitten.

The food we eat and where it comes from have been hot topics for the last couple of years. The release of Michael Pollan’s latest book, as well as Wednesday’s piece in the New York Times about the lengths chefs are going to to raise awareness of how the meat we eat is raised and slaughtered, have stimulated a lot of discussion this week both online and in my own home. I feel strongly that the decision about what to feed yourself and your family is a complex and personal one. People need to decide for themselves what they’ll eat based on their income, ethics and lifestyle. I would never judge or lecture someone about their food choices, but I would like to discuss how we shop, cook and eat here at Chez Dietschyblossom, and what changes we hope to make going forward.

Over the last couple of years, Mike and I have tried to eat seasonal, locally grown or produced foods more often. I don’t expect that we’ll ever be true locavores – we like our citrus fruits, San Marzano tomatoes, wild Alaskan salmon and runny French cheeses too much – but we still try to buy the bulk of our fresh foods direct from the Greenmarkets or via FreshDirect’s local foods department. The fact that Mike works just blocks from Union Square makes it easy for us to shop this way – on market days, I’ll often send him off with a shopping list, or he’ll make a pass through the market on his way into the office, report back any interesting finds via email, and return at lunchtime to make his purchases.

Most Saturdays begin with our “food safari,” where we hit the Greenmarket in Union Square or Fort Greene or Greenpoint, then make the rounds of our favorite little specialty shops for cheeses, butter, eggs, wine, bread and pantry items like Frankies olive oil or Carolina Gold rice or Rancho Gordo beans or those imported canned tomatoes we love so much. This is our big shopping day where we try to purchase the bulk of our grocery needs for the week, and it is a fairly large commitment of our time and energy, but it’s fun to be out and see what’s in season, to talk to the people who produced what we buy and to find out what’s particularly fresh or tasty that week. I realize that shopping and cooking this way isn’t a realistic thing for many of you, but it’s what we do and while it can be exhausting, it has been fun and very worthwhile.

Shopping this way often leads to me changing up our meal plan for the week. Sometimes we’ll find something unexpected that I’ll want to buy and use right away, so dinners I had planned for the week will get shifted around or put off to the following week to accommodate new ingredients. It’s because of this that I’ve cooked guinea hen and chicken liver ragu, and it’s why when I make a lamb stew I now use neck bones rather than the cubed stew meat I would have selected previously (Karen from 3-Corner Field suggested it to me once and I haven’t looked back since). With meats in particular, shopping this way has made Mike and I start to look beyond steaks and chops and begin to experiment with more interesting cuts of meat; we hope to stretch our boundaries even more this year. We are meat eaters, and though I don’t anticipate that will change any time soon, we have given a lot of thought to the kinds of meat and other animal products in our diet and where they’re sourced from.

Mike has been vegetarian at various times during his life. I was a vegetarian from age 14 to 21, for reasons of squeamishness and taste – I just physically couldn’t tolerate the smell or texture of meat. Thankfully, it was during that time of my life that my love of cooking was blossoming, and with the help of The Moosewood Cookbook and other books and magazines, I was able to make myself soups and salads, pasta and bean and grain dishes, and not depend on processed faux-meats or prepackaged vegetarian dinners. My taste buds changed over time and I eventually added meat back into my diet, though I wasn’t giving much thought to how it was raised. I was a city kid, after all; the closest I ever got to cows and sheep and chickens was at the petting zoo, and the meat I grew up on came wrapped in plastic on Styrofoam trays.

My husband had a different experience growing up in southern Indiana. Mike’s grandparents raised hogs when he was a kid; he has memories of the butchering, and of eating ultra-fresh pork afterward. The only pork I had ever tasted had little to no flavor, so aside from bacon, I avoided it. Things changed after our first meal at Marlow and Sons. (Yes, I know I like to wax poetic about that place, but it really has had a huge impact on how we cook and eat at home.) Our neighborhood doesn’t have much of a dining scene, so we head to neighboring areas when we eat out. We had read about the oyster happy hour at Marlow and shortly after we moved to Bushwick, we decided to check it out.

I don’t remember what I ordered that night, because the memory of Mike’s entrée is burned into my memory (and probably his as well). Braised pork belly. I will never forget when he took that first bite – he closed his eyes and said “Oh my God,” and just sat there for a minute, eyes closed, slowly chewing. “This is what pork tastes like – this is what I remember pork tasting like.” That bite of pork had taken him back to his childhood, to the flavor of that ultra-fresh pork he’d eat at his grandparents’ place. I had to try it, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it was a revelation.

The chef was standing near the exit that night when we left, and we profusely and rather embarrassingly thanked her for the meal, for the gift of that pork, and from that point on, we decided that we would seek out the good stuff, and as it turned out, the pork that we found that actually had that flavor that Mike remembered from his childhood is the pork that is being produced by people who sell at the Greenmarket. Not only does it taste the best, as it happens it’s also raised with respect for the animal and for the environment. Talk about a win-win situation.

We started with pork, but we have since arrived at a point where almost all the meat we buy is meat that was raised on pasture, our seafood is local or harvested in ways that don’t damage the environment, our eggs are from chickens who roam free and eat what they like, and our butter, cream and milk are from grass-fed cows. These foods do cost more than their factory-farmed equivalents purchased at a supermarket, but it’s a price we’re willing to pay, and we feel very lucky that we are able to do so – not everyone can afford to shop this way exclusively if at all.

2008 is going to be a year of big changes for us, and as such our food budget will need some tweaking. I’m already thinking of ways that we can continue to buy the types of animal products we want, but stretch them so that, for instance, one $30 pork shoulder can go into several meals. We’ve played with ingredient cycles a bit already, but I expect we’ll do so even more in the coming months. We have and will continue to try to use as much of every ingredient we bring into our kitchen as possible, to buy less and use more. We already save vegetable trimmings and bones to make stocks, turn old bread into croutons and crumbs, freeze parmesan rinds to toss into soups, but I want to reduce our food waste even more, and we would both like to make our meals a bit less meat-centric.

Last Night’s Dinner came about as a sort of progression from the photos I had been taking to catalogue our dinners on a day-to-day basis, and it’s interesting to me to look back and realize just how often we eat meat. While I’m very comfortable with the kinds of meat we eat and where it comes from, I do feel that we can reduce our footprint (not to mention improve our health) if we rely more on the great beans, grains and vegetables available to us, making meat a component part of a meal rather than the main focus more often than not.

I guess you could say this is the official Last Night’s Dinner position on the subject; I thank you for indulging me and I certainly encourage questions, comments and further discussion. On a completely unrelated note, Mike and I are celebrating our second wedding anniversary this weekend, and we’re kicking it off tonight with dinner at Hearth. I wish you all a wonderful weekend – regular posting will resume next week!

I like raw celery.

Specifically, now that I know what super-fresh celery that wasn’t trucked or flown over hundreds and thousands of miles to my local grocer tastes like, I like raw celery. It’s a revelation, really. I mean, I’ve always cooked with it – it’s one of the building blocks of so many dishes, after all – but the thought that I would actually see a recipe that features celery in its raw state and decide that I had to make that dish, immediately if not sooner, well, that’s something new.

It doesn’t hurt that the recipe also features pomegranate, one of the few fruits I truly love, and bulgur, an item I always have in my pantry but forget about unless I’m making tabboule, but the celery, those thin slices of crisp green goodness, the celery is what really made this dish sing for me.

I of course switched things up a bit from the original recipe, but the idea was the same, and the result was a beautiful mix of textures and flavors, earthy, bright, crunchy, sweet, tart – simply delicious and simple to make. The salad is substantial enough to stand alone, but I served it alongside lemony roast chicken breast. We loved the combination of flavors so much that we shredded some of the leftover chicken into the remaining salad for lunches this week.

Bulgur, Celery and Pomegranate Salad
Adapted from Heidi Swanson’s recipe on 101 Cookbooks

For the dressing:
1 garlic clove, mashed to a paste with coarse sea salt
1/4 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
1/4 cup best quality olive oil

For the salad:
1 cup medium or coarse bulgur
1 small bunch celery, leaves trimmed, stalks sliced thinly on the bias
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
1/2 cup walnuts, roughly chopped
1 cup picked flat-leaf parsley
1 cup picked fresh dill

For the dressing, whisk all the ingredients together until emulsified. Taste and add additional salt if desired, then set aside.

Put the bulgur in a large bowl and just cover with boiling water. Allow the bulgur to sit about 15 minutes – it will be soft but still have some bite to it. Add the celery, pomegranate seeds and walnuts, pour the dressing over and stir to blend. Add the parsley and dill and gently stir through. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

I’ve made my donation - have you?

Living as I do in an “up and coming” neighborhood, I am reminded every day that there are a lot of hungry people in the world. There are a lot of people who can’t rely on a fully stocked pantry to put a good meal together when Plan A fails, and who don’t have the luxury of paying more money for pastured this or sustainable that. I realize every day just how lucky I am to be able to cook and eat as I do, and every day I wish that people didn’t have to go to bed hungry, didn’t have to choose between putting food on their table or buying their medicine, between feeding their family or keeping a roof over their heads.

Hunger is a pervasive problem, and at this time of year, as those of us who are able to do so gather around the table with loved ones to dine and celebrate, we should also remember those who must go without, and strive to help them in any way possible.

Food is about sharing, about a sense of community, and one great way you can get a helping of both of those things is by participating in Menu for Hope. The campaign kicks off on December 10th, and will benefit the UN World Food Programme. I encourage you all to take a moment and read more about Menu for Hope over at Chez Pim, and to give whatever support you can to this great cause.

It’s no secret that we are big fans of the pork products here at Chez Dietschyblossom, so when we saw Melissa’s absolutely mouthwatering photo of Derrick’s take on Craft’s bacon and egg risotto, there was no doubt in my mind I’d try my own spin soon.

I used pancetta instead of bacon because that was what we had on hand. I diced up six thick slices, rendered them down, set the crispy bits aside on a paper towel and used the fat (mixed with a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano butter) to saute my diced onion and to begin to cook the rice. I used 1/2 cup of white vermouth and some of our homemade chicken stock for the liquid components, and stirred in the cooked pancetta with the last addition of stock. I finished the risotto with a little bit of grated parm, a dollop of crème fraiche and a bit more butter, then spooned it into our bowls and topped each serving with a poached egg yolk and some chopped chives.

Though I over-poached the yolks just a bit, I will say that this was a pretty darned awesome dish - rich, creamy, and luxurious, with a nice bit of sweetness from the pancetta. Mike brought home a bottle of Schloss Koblenz Trittenheimer Altarchen Kabinett Riesling to drink with dinner, and while the it was a bit sweet for my taste on its own, it was a wonderful match with the risotto, the richness of the dish bringing out the bright citrusy notes in the wine.

Until this weekend, I had never cooked meatloaf for my husband. He just wasn’t a fan, he said, having had too many experiences with dense, greasy versions. I love the stuff, but it’s hard to make a proper meatloaf for one person, so I went without. I satisfied my comfort food cravings in other ways, but I still pined for meatloaf, and especially for that most perfect use of leftover meatloaf ever, the cold meatloaf sandwich. From time to time I would suggest meatloaf for dinner, but my suggestions were always met with a less than enthusiastic response. But then came the meatballs, and things changed.

Meatballs aren’t exactly summer fare, but I found myself making big batches of them over the summer, tinkering with my recipe until I found a mix of meats and seasonings I was happy with. And Mike loved them. And then one day a couple of weeks ago, completely out of the blue, he told me he might be ready to try my meatloaf whenever I wanted to make it, because really, isn’t meatloaf just meatballs on a larger scale? I giddily agreed, and planned to work it into our menu for the coming week. But then we had that ridiculous spell of near-90 degree weather. And then came Mike’s birthday week, and special dinners to prepare, so the meatloaf was put off yet again.

But then, just when I was wondering if I would ever get to make my meatloaf, came the announcement: National Meatloaf Appreciation Day was coming, and the folks at Serious Eats were looking for people to share the love. No more excuses, I now had a reason to go forward and a date by which to do it. Saturday was the day – it was meatloaf or bust.

I took our remaining package of ground pastured veal from Bobolink out of the freezer to thaw on Friday night. I had picked up a package of grass-fed ground chuck after our dinner at Marlow and Sons on Friday, and I planned to pick up a package of ground pork from Flying Pigs during my Saturday morning Greenmarket trip, but they were sold out. I really wanted to do a beef/pork/veal mixture, and we don’t have anything resembling a meat grinder at home, so I had to come up with a Plan B. I perused their selection of sausages and grabbed a package of their herbed pork variety - seasoned with mustard, thyme, rosemary, sage and bay leaves, I thought it would work well. I picked up some potatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts for sides and some mushrooms for my gravy and headed home to start cooking.

We had a hunk of whole wheat pane integrale left from earlier in the week that I decided to turn into fresh breadcrumbs for the meatloaf. I cubed it and put it into the mini chopper, then pulsed it. And pulsed it. And pulsed it some more. Little was happening to the bread, and I could smell the chopper’s little motor beginning to burn, so I gave up, tipped the bread cubes out into a bowl and began tearing them into tiny pieces with my fingertips. It would have to do.

I moistened the breadcrumbs with a bit of water, then squeezed them dry and placed them into a large bowl. I peeled a smallish red onion, chunked it up and pulsed it in the mini chopper, then added that to the bowl. I added a tablespoon of Worcestershire, two teaspoons of tamari, a teaspoon each of dried marjoram and garlic powder, a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper, and an egg, which I beat lightly with a fork before blending it with the rest of the ingredients in the bowl.

I added the beef, pork sausage and veal to the wet ingredients, washed my hands well, then dug in and mixed it all up. I turned the mixture out onto a foil-lined sheet pan and formed it into a loaf, spreading a generous amount of Annie’s organic ketchup on top, then I placed it into a 400 degree oven. I’m not sure of the exact cooking time, but I would estimate it took about an hour and 15 minutes (I checked it periodically after 45 minutes in the oven, and let it continue cooking until its internal temperature was 160 degrees).

I worked on my sides while the meatloaf baked – German butterball potatoes, boiled with their skins on and smashed with a generous amount of butter, milk and cream; sliced carrots and halved Brussels sprouts, tossed with salt and olive oil and roasted until tender; and a mushroom gravy made with criminis sautéed in butter, a bit of flour, and our rich homemade brown chicken stock. When everything was ready I plated it up and served it, holding my breath while Mike took his first bite.

The verdict? It was good. “Really good,” in fact. So good that he said he’d eat it again. My days of pining for meatloaf are over, though wouldn’t you know it – we ran out of bread, so that most perfect of leftovers, the cold meatloaf sandwich, will have to wait.

Hillary of Chew on That tagged me in a meme last week, the question being “What five foods are you ashamed to love?” I’m a little embarrassed that it has taken me this long to answer, but better late than never, I suppose. Time to reveal my dirty little food secrets to all of you!

1. Packaged ramen noodles. I don’t eat them often, and I don’t keep them around the house because if I did I would probably be hospitalized of an MSG overdose. There’s just something about them that is completely irresistible! My favorite is the Sapporo Ichiban miso flavor variety, but I’ll eat any kind.

2. French fries with stuff. Cheese fries? Yes, please. Chili-cheese fries? Even better. Disco fries? Oh yes. Poutine? Sign me up. Again, I don’t indulge often, but when I do, I’m in heaven.

3. Chipotle. It’s the only fast food I allow myself to eat, but I pretty much have to have it once a week. True story: I usually pre-order online so I can bypass the ridiculous lines at the one near my office, but today their website was down, and I was so desperate for my chicken fajita burrito that I actually went and waited. And it was so worth it.

4. Cream of chicken soup on bread. I blame my maternal grandmother for this one, as well as my Aunt Barbara. It’s just what it sounds like – Campbell’s cream of chicken soup, heated and spooned over slices of soft (usually white) bread, then eaten with a fork. It’s total comfort food that even a kid can prepare. I haven’t had it in ages, but my mouth is watering as I type this… I might need to work on a less, uh, shameful version.

5. Canned soup casseroles. You know those recipes that start with a can of this and a can of that and a pile of cheese and some frozen vegetables? I adore them. I think it’s hard-wired in my Midwestern genes or something - when a bubbling baking dish of unrecognizable vegetables blanketed in a creamy, cheesy sauce is set in front of me, I’m powerless to resist.

As Hillary said, it’s tough to truly be ashamed of any of these dishes – I indulge in them so rarely, and I firmly believe there is room in a healthy diet for all sorts of things. It’s all about variety and moderation, right?

Now for the tagging bit: ann, Terry B, claudia, amy, anita - wanna play?