Pork Barbacoa

I was recently at a farmer's market in Sonoma and got some pork neck. Neck meat is really great for stews, because of all the bones, and it is relatively inexpensive. I had some spicy barbacoa sauce that I had made previously and froze in an ice cube tray. This is a really simple and delicious dish in a slowcooker.







Ingredients
1/2 cup of spicy barbacoa sauce (about 4 cubes, if you freeze them)
1 cup of homemade lamb stock (you can use homemade rich dark chicken stock if you want to, about 8 cubes, if you freeze them)
Red wine, about 1 cup or so (day old wine works best, don't waste the good stuff)

1 or 2 lbs of Pork or Lamb neck (with bones)
1 tomato, chopped
5 cloves of garlic


Directions
Melt the barbacoa and lamb stock in a sauce pan.

Add the red wine to the sauce. Taste. If the barbacoa is too spicy and overpowering for you, add more lamb stock and red wine to get a flavor profile you like.

Once the stock and barbacoa has melted, transfer to the slowcooker.

Add the neck bones to the slowcooker. Add the tomatoes and garlic to the slowcooker.






























Cook for 4 hours on low heat. Check the meat after 4 hours. If should be falling off the bone. If not, let it cook for another hour.

Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with barley or farro and rustic bread.

Delicious!  

Green Lasagne with a tofu filling

We got a KitchenAid pasta attachment set and I was dying to try and make some fresh pasta sheets. The insipration for this recipe was David Tanis's Platter of Figs and Other Recipes. I saw his recipe and thought I would give it a try. His recipe calls for a pound of ricotta, which I replaced with tofu.  A pound of ricotta sounds fat, and two, I hate ricotta cheese! The tofu is much healthier, and I think tastier than the ricotta. (I had tried out a tofu lasagne before, and I really liked it)  I was curious what the addition of fresh lasagne noodles would be like to this dish, and I really got to say it makes a difference. Rolling out fresh lasagne noodles though is a big chore (unless you have a pasta roller, like the one I have from KitchenAid), so I think store bought noodles would work fine.

A grand success! It was delicious! Like the tofu lasagne I made before, I didn't boil the fresh noodles before assembling, the sauce was enough to cook them through.

Ingredients
For the Pasta Dough:
2 cups shredded raw greens (I used the leafy part of beet greens, sans stems)
2 small eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups all purpose flour

For the Veggie Filling:
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon pepper flakes
2 lbs chopped washed greens (chard & spinach)
Salt and pepper

For the Tofu Filling:
Tofu
Shredded Mozzarella cheese
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
Fresh herbs (optional)

Homemade tomato sauce

Making the pasta dough

Slice the leafy greens from the stems. Reserve the stems for vegetable stock or compost them. I used beet greens. Cut in half and add to a food processor.





























Add the eggs, salt and olive oil to the food processor. Puree until smooth.

Transfer the puree to a bowl add the flour. Kneed the flour with your hands into a soft dough. You can also use the Kitchenaid Dough Hook for this. If the dough seems sticky, add flour. The dough should have a nice deep green color with specks of leafy green in them. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap or cover with a cloth and set aside.












Make the Veggie Filling

Add olive oil to the wok. Heat and add the garlic. Stir fry for few seconds and let it sizzle, but don't let it brown or burn. Add the pepper flakes.  Add the leafy greens. Continue to stir fry the leafy greens until they begin to wilt. Season with salt and pepper and give them one last good stir. With a spatula, bring the greens to the side of the wok and give them a good squeeze to remove any excess juices. Set aside.

Make the Tofu Filling
 Cut up the tofu into chucks and add to the food processor. Add shredded mozzarella cheese and lemon zest.

Add any fresh herbs you want to (I used fresh oregano and basil). Puree in the food processor till very smooth.











Rolling the pasta dough
Take out the pasta roller from the box. Loosen the thumb screw and remove the cover on the stand mixer.

Attach the pasta roller to the socket where the cover was. Tighten the thumb screw to lock the pasta roller in place. Set the roller setting to 1. 

Roll the pasta dough into a log. 

Divide the log into even pieces. To do this, I usually will make a mark with a knife in the center of the log. I make another mark in the center of the left hand side of the log, and the right hand side of the log. You should get an even number of similar size dough pieces. Cut through all the way and you should have 4 or 6 rounds of dough, depending on how long your roll was. 

Take one of the rounds of dough and give it a good dunk in flour. Dust off any excess flour and flatten with the palms of your hands. 

Place the pasta roller on setting 1. Feed the pasta dough through the roller. Increase the setting to 2 and repeat. Continue to roll the dough through the pasta roller, increasing the setting by 1 unit each time until the dough reaches the width of the pasta roller. 

You will start getting these long beautiful sheet of pasta that looks somewhat oblique. If the sheet is getting to long to handle, cut the sheet in half and continue rolling it out until the width of the pasta reaches the width of the pasta roller. If you need to cut a sheet in half, be sure to give it a good dusting of flour so it wont stick. 

Assembly

Preheat the oven to 375 F. 

Take a large baking dish, around 8 x 12 inches. Pour a thin layer of olive oil on the pan and smear around with your fingers. Pour a thin layer of the tomato sauce in the pan and spread it around the whole pan with a spatula.

Gently place the lasagne noodles ontop of the tomato sauce. Arrange them so there is a minimal amount of gaps. 

Next, take the spatula and smear a thin layer of the tofu mixture on the lasagne noodles. Take the shredded mozzarella cheese and sprinkle a layer over the tofu. 

Place a layer of the greens onto the mozzarella cheese and spread it around. 

Sprinkle another layer of mozzarella cheese onto the greens. Continue the same pattern until you run out of ingredients! 

Make sure your last layer is a layer of cheese!

Cover with aluminum foil and pop it into the oven. Cook at 375 F for 30 minutes. 

Enjoy!

Homemade Tomato Sauce with the KitchenAid

Tomatoes are in season and cheap!

Look at these beautiful tomatoes we found at the farmers market!



















We got the KitchenAid Food Grinder Attachment, KitchenAid Fruit And Vegetable Strainer and the KitchenAid Food Tray Attachment as a gift for our wedding! They are really incredible!

The fruit and vegetable strainer attaches to the food grinder to make applesauce, tomato sauce, baby food or mash pretty much any fruit or vegetable. The tray attachment is very handy to place all your vegetables on when making sauce.

This sauce is a really simple recipe-Set up all the parts of the KitchenAid, wash your tomatoes, and push them into the strainer, can or store your sauce. The hardest part of this recipe was setting up the KitchenAid, which, I have to admit, was a little daunting. But it is nothing you can't handle!

Ingredients
Tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, preferably roma tomatoes ( I used about 3/4 of a regular plastic grocery bag, mostly romas, and a few other varieties mixed in)
Garlic (no need to peel)
Fresh herbs (I used fresh rosemary and thyme)
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil


Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Pour a generous amount of olive oil on a cookie tray. Remove the little stem on the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in half. Place them on cookie tray. Flip them around a few time to make sure they are covered in oil. Add the garlic, fresh herbs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook the tomatoes for about 10-15 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and start to pop. Once the tomatoes start to break down, turn off the oven and turn on the broiler. Broil under open flame for a few minutes until the tomatoes are lightly charred. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.














Setting up the Fruit and Vegetable Strainer
Take the Food grinder out of the box. It should come 5 objects: a metal spring shaft, a white plastic worm corkscrew, a straining cone, a white plastic housing box and a clear plastic cover.



Attach the KitchenAid Fruit and Vegetable Strainer to the food grinder
Remove the cover nut and metal driving plates, cross blade and worm from the box.



Add the shaft to the food grinder. Push it in
firmly.

Place the worm over the shaft.


















Place the straining cone over the whole worm shaft.

















Secure the whole device by screwing in the cover nut. Dont twist too tightly-you will strip the screw.





































Attach the grinder to the KitchenAid Mixer

Now,  add the grinder device to the stand mixer. Loosen the thumb screw and remove the cover on the stand mixer. Pop on the attachment, moving it back and forward as needed for it to be secure. Tighten the screw again.










Place the straining cover over the straining cone (this will ensure your kitchen doesn't turn into a tomato explosion when you are making the sauce). Last, place the plastic clear splash guard on the top of the straining cover.















Set up your food tray

Add the food tray to the top of the whole device.




































Your setup should look something like this:


















Place two bowls under the strainer: one will be to collect the tomato puree as it comes out, and the other will be to catch the tomato skins and seeds as they come out.












By this time, the tomatoes should have cooled off enough to touch them. Carefully add the tomatoes to the food tray, making sure not to spill any liquid that collected in the pan.
















Once all the tomatoes are on the food tray, turn on the mixer. Turn to speed 1 to start, and then move it up to speed 4.

With the food pusher, gently push the tomatoes down the shaft. The tomato juice should come out of the strainer, with no seeds or skin. It should then fall into the straining cover and drip down into the bowl below it.










You should be left with beautiful fresh tomato sauce.

The skin, seeds and pulp of the tomato should start popping out of the other end (have a smaller bowl there to collect the skin, seeds and pulp and use to make tomato pickle). You can either discard them or use to make something else. I was thinking either sun dried tomatoes, tomato bread or South Indian Tomato Pickle. I opted for the South Indian Tomato pickle!

Place your tomato sauce in a glass jar to refrigerate. Or can immediately using a pressure cooker! Eat this Classico!