Pasta Bolognese

I was watching Jamie Oliver one night and he was cooking this recipe. It looked absolutely fantastic so I decided to make it.

I copied the recipe exactly, no additions or omissions, and it turned out oh so good! You can see his recipe here.

I used some brisket which I got at Marin Sun Farms. I had never cooked with brisket before, but the salesman at Marin Sun Farms convinced me that it would be delicious in this dish. He was right!

This is a great pasta sauce, or use it as a basis for lasagna.




Ingredients
2 strips of bacon or pancetta
2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
olive oil
2 heaping teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 lbs beef brisket
2 cans of chopped tomatoes
Salt and Pepper
Fresh Basil
Parmesan Cheese
Spaghetti, Penne, tagliatelle or other pasta


Finely slice the bacon or pancetta in a large stock pot.

Peel and finely chop the onions, garlic, carrots and celery. I pulsed mine in a food processor, which was quick and dirty!

Heat some olive oil to a large stock pot and add the bacon or pancetta and oregano. Stirfry for a few minutes until the pancetta or bacon is cooked.

Add the vegetables to the pan and stir fry for 7 minutes, or until softened.

Stir in the brisket or meat and brown, breaking it up with you spoon as you cook it.





Add the canned tomatoes with their juices.

Fill one of the empty cans of tomatoes with water and add it to the pot.

Give it a good pinch of salt and pepper.

Add a swig of red wine.

Add chopped basil and continue to stir. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover with the lid slightly askew, stirring every now and then.

Remove the lid and continue to cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the sauce looks like it is drying out, add a little water.







































Remove from heat after 30 minutes. Grate the Parmesan cheese and add half into the pot.

Serve immediately or let cool and freeze.

Just before serving, add remainder of the grated Parmesan cheese.

Herb Stuffed Tomatoes

This Provecal style starter is quick to prepare and delicious! Serve it with a little salad of seasonal leaves and a few pieces of broken robust goat's cheese. I got this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty. My fiancee had mentioned the book, so I got it one year for her for Christmas. I didn't know that it was all veg food! But it is actually really tasty and he has a wonderful balance of flavor and texture. Serves 4 as a starter course.

Ingredients
4 medium tomatoes (ripe but firm)
1 large onion, finely chopped (easy to do this in a food processor)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped (easy to do this in a food processor)
12 wrinkly black olives, pitted and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
30 grams panko or homemade breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons chopped oregano
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped mint
1 1/2 tablespoons chopped capers
salt and pepper to taste


Preheat oven to 320 F/160 C.

Trim the top part of tomato and discard (or chop it up and make into a small salsa). Take a small spoon carve out the flesh and most of the seeds, leaving a clean shell. You can discard the scoped out flesh or add a little shrimp or chicken stock to the scooped out flesh and seeds to make a nice little broth as a side dish.

Lightly salt the inside of the tomatoes and place upside down in a colander, to drain some of the liquid out.

Meanwhile, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium pan. Add the onion, garlic and olives and stir fry for 5-6 minutes on low heat, until the onion softens and loses its raw aroma/taste.

Remove the onion/garlic/olive mixture from heat and place in a bowl. Add breadcrumbs, herbs, capers and some pepper and give it a good stir. Taste and add salt if you wish.








Fill the insides of the tomatoes with the herb stuffing, pressing down very gently as you go. You want to have  a nice little dome of stuffing on top.

Place on a greased pan. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the tomatoes soften.

Serve hot or warm!

Thanksgiving Turkey

Thanksgiving has come and gone...Too bad, its my favorite holiday. Food, Family and Friends, what is not to love?

Last year, I brined the turkey for the first time, and I must say, I was very impressed with it! So, I decided to continue the tradition this year. Brineing sounds complicated, but essentially, you just boil water, add some salt and other spices of your choosing, and then you soak the bird overnight.

The brine solution seeps deep into the muscles of the bird, allowing the flavor to fully penetrate all the way to the bone. The salt also massages the meat and makes it soft and succulent.

I still put a rub on the outer skin of the turkey, to make sure the skin was very crispy and delicious.

When we were younger, my mom would stuff the cavity of the bird with stuffing. But I find that the stuffing absorbs a lot of the liquid, and tends to dry the bird out, which is what I want to avoid. Instead, I stuff the cavity with cut of vegetables-Fennel, onion, carrots, celery, some fresh herbs like parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (like the Simon and Garfunkel song, "Scarborough Fair"). I also got a trick from Jamie Oliver. He takes a lemon, boils it whole in water for a few minutes, pokes it a few times with a knife and them stuffs it "straight up the jacksie" of the turkey. I found this was really crucial-as the turkey cooked, the heat forced all the lemon juice out. As it released, the steam helped cook the bird from the inside and released a delicious flavor to the inside of the bird.

I also braised the turkey with a little garlic butter and homemade chicken stock. I basted the bird about once every hour,

The brine and the rub mixture I got from Michael Chiarello, who I think is a genius! You can find his recipe here.

You need to let the brine come down to room temperature before you pour it on the turkey. You can chuck a bag of ice in it, or make it in advance and let it cool to room temperature naturally. I let it cool naturally.

Timing is key on this. You want to brine the turkey for about 12 hours, no more or less. If you brine less than 12 hours, the flavor won't work itself into the meat. If you brine for more than 12 hours, the meat will get too salty and dry and won't taste good.

Have a nice big ice chest to put the turkey into. The turkey also needs to brine in a cool place, so I will put it into the garage, or leave it out on the porch overnight.

Make sure to remove it from the brine 1 hour before you begin to roast it. This way, the meat will come up to temperature and you will have a more even cooking process.

For the brine:
6 quarts water
2 cups kosher salt 
½ cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns 
8 bay leaves 
4 tbsp juniper berries (optional)
1 quart ice

2 pieces dried mikan (tangerine) peel (optional)

For the turkey:
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided 
½ cup spice rub (recipe below)
8 sprigs fresh rosemary 
1 lemons, whole
4 large carrots, halved lengthwise

2 carrots, chopped rough
8 celery stalks, chopped rough

1 fennel plant, bulb and stalks, chopped rough

2 onions, quartered

For the Fennel Spice Rub:

1 cup fennel seeds

3 tablespoons coriander seeds

2 tablespoons white peppercorns

3 tablespoons kosher salt

For the Garlic Butter
A few cloves of garlic
1/2 stick of butter

For the Braising Stock
Homemade chicken stock

For Sage Gravy
Freshly cut Sage
Cornstarch


For the brine
The day before Thanksgiving:
Combine all brine ingredients (except for ice) in a stockpot, and bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve solids, then remove from heat. Cool till room temperature.  Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Alternatively, if you want to make the temperature come down quickly, chuck a bag of ice in it. 

Remove giblets from turkey. You can either save them for making stock or discard. Wash the whole bird with fresh water, inside and out. Pat dry with a few paper towels. Place the bird in a large cooler. 

Next, add the cooled brine to the cooler, as to the right. 

Place the cooler outside in your garage overnight for 12 hours. I usually put the turkey in the brine around 10pm on Wednesday. 

Thanksgiving Morning:

Remove the turkey from the brine after 12 hours (10am for me). Place in a sink and let the turkey come to room temperature for 2 hours (12pm). Discard the brine and make sure to clean out the cooler!

In the meantime, chop your vegetables prepare your and spice rub.

For the vegetables: 
Cut and prep the vegetables.

Boil a small pan of water and place the lemon inside of it. Boil the lemon for several minutes. Take a knife and make several incisions in the lemon (the knife should easily penetrate the lemon). Stick the lemon in the jacksie (backend) of the turkey.

Take the carrots that have been cut in half and arrange on the tray you are going to cook the bird in. This will serve as the rack for the turkey. I prefer a deeper tray, and there will be much liquid you add.

For the Spice Rub:

Take a heavy cast iron skillet and heat. Over medium heat, add the fennel seeds, coriander seeds and white peppercorns. Toast them for a few minutes, until their flavor and aroma is released. Toss frequently, so that the seeds don't burn. Remove from heat and let cool.

Once cool, grind in a spice grinder. If you grind them when they are still warm, they will stick to the blades.

Prep the Turkey
At 11:30, preheat the oven.

Place the turkey on the rack. With one hand, pull the skin of the turkey back around the breast. With your other hand, take a chopstick and separate the skin from the breast. The skin will now look flappy. Take some of the fennel spice rub, stick you hand between the skin and the breast and rub it into both breasts of the turkey with the rub.

Next, take some good quality olive oil and generously pour it all over the turkey. With your hands, massage the oil into all the folds of the turkey, making sure to get the wings, the drumsticks and the bottom of the turkey.

Take the remainder of the fennel rub and rub it all over the turkey.
















Once the over comes up to temperature, place the bird in the oven (around 12:00).
Continue cooking the turkey, basting every hour with the garlic butter and braising stock (see below), until done. (around 5-6 hours for my bird). If you find the top of the bird is getting overcooked, place some aluminum foil on it.

In the meantime, prepare Garlic Butter and Braising stock

For the Garlic Butter

Slice several gloves of garlic with a razor blade, so they are paper thin.

Take a small saucepan and add half a stick of butter. Melt the butter and add the garlic. Simmer for a few minutes on low heat to let the flavor develop. Remove from heat.




For the Braising Stock
Take a cup of homemade chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for a few minutes to help the flavor release. Remove from heat.


When the bird comes out, there will be a great deal of liquid in the pan (partially from the chicken stock, but also the bird will sweat out a lot of water). Mine came out like this:

Scoop out most of the liquid from the pan and place in a small saucepan. You can use this as the base for your gravy.

For the Sage Gravy

Heat the saucepan with the turkey and chicken stock in it (see above). Whisk in cornstarch, a little bit at a time, until the stock thickens to a gravy. Once the gravy has the thickness you desire, continue whisking (but not adding more cornstarch), until all the cornstarch is dissolved and it looses its raw taste. You really don't need to add any salt, because alot of the salt sweated out of the brine mixture and the fennel rub.  Add freshly cut sage (or even rosemary) to give it some flavor. Strain the gravy into a gravy boat.

Apple Pie

I had been craving Apple Pie for a while. I don't have cable, so I only get to watch tv once a year, when I go home to visit my family for Thanksgiving. While there, I watched the Food Network, and they had a special on Thanksgiving food (surprise surprise). Alton Brown had an episode about an apple pie, and it looked absolutely delicious! You can find his recipe here. The only thing was that the recipe called for one special cooking instrument (a pie bird) and two special ingredients, which I could not seem to find anywhere: Grains of Paradise (not to be confused with the plant, Bird of Paradise) and Apple Jack.

Pie Birds, I have learned, are fantastic ingenious devices. All that extra liquid can really destroy the inside of your pie. The pie bird is a small, hallow ceramic device. It prevents the liquid pie filling from boiling up and  leaking through the crust by allowing steam to escape from inside the pie.  Place it down on your bottom pie crust. You can then place your apples or fruit in circles going outward from the pie bird in the center. If you have a cover on your pie, like in this recipe, just place the second crust on top. The pie bird will poke its way through the dough and you can remove any extra dough that is clogging the pie bird.

I looked high and low for Grains of Paradise. I thought that living in the Bay Area, surely there would be a store that had the spice. Alas, no dice. I went to Seattle with my fiancee to visit some friends, and I happened upon an excellent spice shop, Market Spice, and they had Grains of Paradise. Market Spice is a fantastic store! If you are ever in Seattle, I highly recommend checking it out! It is really cool! You can also order online, and they will ship you the spices!

Apple Jack is similar to Apple Brandy, but much more closer to Apple Whiskey. Its very potent stuff! I was able to secure some at a local store in Berkeley called Ledgers Liquors

This is the first Alton Brown recipe I made, but I must say I am tempted to try more of his stuff....Especially his Fried Chicken.

I made a few alterations to the recipe, but those were by mistake. For example, I forgot to crush the grains of paradise and left them whole instead. I also forgot to add the Apple Jack when I was mixing the dough, so I added it to the glaze instead. I also used my own recipe (a la Alice Waters) for the pie dough (I used butter instead of vegetable shortening, and I didn't put any sugar in the dough). Needless to say, it was still delicious!

Cardamon Sugar

This is a delicious spice to have on hand to spruce up pastries, pies and the like.

When I was growing up, my mom would make me cinnamon toast for breakfast....sliced bread with butter and cinnamon sugar. Its nice to replace the cinnamon with cardamon sugar.

I also like to sprinkle some on top of a piece of pie before I dig in.

There really isn't a recipe for this...just mix white sugar with cardamon powder. You can as as little or as much as your want, depending on how you want to flavor the sugar.

Persimmon and Fennel Salad

Persimmon are in season and are delicious.

Growing up in Cleveland, I never had persimmon.

The first time I had persimmon was when I was living in Nagano, Japan.

Come fall, Nagano is full of persimmon. Its delicious and delectable. I remember I saw a strange fruit in the fruit stand, that looked like a tangerine, but much harder. I asked the store keeper what it was and he said "Kaki", which didn't mean to much to me. I had him right the kanji down, and then bought a handful of the fruits.

They are delicious--just skin and eat as is.

I made some into a chutney, which was quite tasty. In Nagano, a delicacy was Hoshikaki, or persimmon which has been dried out....It's one of my favorite fall treats and always brings back good memories of food and friends.

This is a simple salad of Persimmon and Fennel.

Persimmon thinly sliced
Slice a few pieces of fresh fennel
Fresh pomegranate seeds
1 or 2 sprigs of fresh mint, chopped fine
Fresh goat cheese
Good olive oil
Fresh black pepper

Mix the persimmon, fennel, pomegranate seeds together with your fingers. Sprinkle with black pepper, mint and goat cheese. Drizzle with fresh olive oil.

Fennel Rub

Coriander Seeds 1 tablespoon

Fennel Seed   1 tablespoon

Anise Seed    ¾ tablespoon

Roasted Sichuan peppercorns   1 tablespoon

Salt   ½ teaspoon             

Roast the coriander, fennel and anise seed in a heavy iron skillet or a wok for a few minutes. 

Cool. 

Grind in a spice grinder and add salt.