Kitchen Eclectic

Somehow, my parents have managed to turn a one story, suburban Orange County home into a beach town mini-farm. Citrus trees, apple trees, a garden of herbs and veggies, a bay leaf tree bigger than my stupid city apartment, flowers, homemade sausage, vinegars and beautiful handcraftedfurniture that my dad makes in the garage. Whenever I visit, I spend a lot of time sitting the back patio, staring at their small pond and sighing to myself about my dirty white carpet, electric stove and monthly rent that is higher than their mortgage. I do, however, also get to reap a few benefits from their luscious harvests, including a few pounds of these beautiful apples:
Look at the varied colors and stripes. So pretty!

Last weekend, they sent me home with a couple pounds of these ladies. I was undecided about what I wanted to do – first I was going to make a jalapeno-mint-apple jelly, but I don’t really use jelly. I could make one or two pieces of toast, use it to experiment with an apple glaze for pork, can it and use it for x-mas gifts and thanksgiving din-din (uh, now that I think about it, actually, I have more uses than I though. Dammit!) I also thought of pies and crisps and having a pie party, or giving apple butter a try. In the end though, I decided on apple sauce. I’m not big into eating apple sauce, but I’d never made it before and I’m always up for something new. My parents have so many apples they don’t know what to do with them, so my dad makes apple sauce a couple times a month (seriously, they have that many) and gave me his recipe; I don’t know what they do with it all. I followed his instructions, but added vanilla and butter and used lemon zest instead of orange juice. I think the orange juice would be super yummy, but I didn’t have any oranges on hand. If you want to do it with orange, leave out the lemon zest and substitute with the juice of half a large orange just toward the end of cooking (no seeds, please). Another option for adding orange is to zest a bit on top of the finished dessert. The crumbled cookies are meant to replace the crust, so treat them as such, distributing it so you get a little bit in every bite and by all means, don’t be afraid to put some under the sauce and ice cream itself.

The absolute worst part of this recipe is that you most definitely have to peel and core the apples. I know it sucks, but just turn on an episode of Real Housewives or some other bullshit garbage and you’ll be done before the drunken bitch slapping turns into Teresa cutting her children with shards of broken martini glasses for the life insurance money. If you don’t have an apple corer, just cut the meat of it off the core into cubed chunks.

Deconstructed Apple Pie

For the sauce, you will need:

this many apples



(that’s about two lbs, peeled, cored and diced large)

a little water in the bottom of the pot
2.5 sticks of cinnamon, broken in half
1/3 cup brown sugar
bout a heaping T of butter
cap full o f vanilla
heavy handed pinch of salt
zest of one limon

1. Put about 1/3 cup of water in the bottom of a decent sized pot and add all the peeled, cored, and diced apples; place over medium-high heat, cover tightly.

2. When the apples start to soften (5-7 minutes) add broken cinnamon sticks, vanilla, salt and butter, stir often to keep the bottom from burning, keeping covered when you’re not stirring.

3. Toward the end of cooking (15 minutes) when the apples are really soft, add lemon zest and start smashing with a potato masher.

4. Take it off heat and continue smashing til it reaches the desired consistency (I recommend fairly lumpy).

For the rest of the dessert, you will need:

Delicious vanilla ice cream                                                                                                                                                                                                          Cinnamon graham crackers or some other kind of thin, crunchy, crispy wafer-like cookie

Serve the sauce warm off the stove with a scoop of cold ice cream, crumble some cookie over top, and one or two whole cookie/cracker.

*note: you can easily substitute butter for earth balance (not margarine!) to make the apple sauce vegan, and substitute the ice cream for vegan ice cream.

A month and a half or so ago, fiddlehead ferns were in season. They’re awesome. I have to be honest though, their “awesomeness” is more in their novelty than their flavor. They’re OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive, as well as a bit hard to find. I read another blog claiming that they were available for $6/lb in Boston this past season – but I don’t believe it. I paid $20/lb for them (albeit at Bi-Rite – a store that I love, but is admittedly super expensive).

Regardless, however, the season is over so it doesn’t much matter their cost, does it? The season is two – maaaaaybe three – weeks long in the middle of May; they’re the unfurled fronds of the Ostrich Fern, which – once furled – is supposedly a supercarcinogen to the point of being almost poisonous. There’s another edible fern, as well, called the Bracken Fern that’s supposedly a lot more dangerous. You get mixed information depending on what you read. I’m not a botanist, so I don’t know the whole truth behind the “poisonous” Ostrich Fern, but I do know two things.

1. There was a series of accounts of wacky food poisoning in New York and Quebec because of “unidentified toxins” in the plant – these plants, though, are late harvest.

2. I have eaten them more than once and had no problem, and so have a grip of friends.

As far as I can tell, most of the toxins come out as they start to open. So get them while their hot, and forget the ones that are three weeks into the season. Unless you like blowing chunks and getting stomach cancer – in which case, I say go hunt some ferns down now, in July, and feast near strong and proper plumbing.

And now, back to the important part – the eating part. Like I said, I think their fame is for their novelty and less for their actual flavor. Raw (and even a little cooked) they’re bitter, funky and stringy. I hear people compare them to asparagus, and that’s a lie. Obviously I wouldn’t eat raw asparagus because that’s gross, but cooked it’s meaty, earthy and perfect. Ferns, when cooked, are still a little stringy, a little bitter but have a nice juicy crunchy bite – a little like biting into a crispy succulent. There is some spice, a little earthiness, but you end up getting most of your desired flavor from what you cook it in; and to do so, follow these quick and simple instructions and you’ll be on your way to a delicious fiddlehead fern salad:

1. Trim off any brown part at the end and rinse them off in a colander.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil and blanch the ferns for 2 or so minutes (til bright green) then shock ‘em in an ice bath.

3. In a deep saute pan, heat up equal parts butter, duck fat and bacon fat. It’s ready when it’s bubbly, melted and starting to brown (but not yet brown).

4. Add the cleaned ferns (careful, you don’t wanna get burned by greasy fat popping on you!) to the fat, add a super tiny pinch of salt (the bacon fat is gonna salt it up) a couple twists of fresh ground pepper, a clove or two of finely minced garlic, and a hefty pinch of heat – meaning cayenne, red pepper flakes, ground chili, or (my choice) korean red chili flakes and the juice of half a lemon. The heat from the cayenne/pepper flakes/chili whatever and the acid in the lemon will act to cut through the thickness of all the fats (which add some complexity to the bitterness) and balance out the bitterness even more.

5. Fry it like this for a hot minute, till just a little browned (but don’t let the butter and fats burn!), then drain it like you would bacon – in paper towels or a fine colander. (save the left over renderings for another dish)

6. Toss the still warm ferns with raw squash blossoms. While they’re cooling, fry up a couple of pieces of bacon, nice and crispy and dice ‘em into bite sized bits; separately whisk together equal parts champagne vinegar and extra virgin olive oil with a little salt and pepper. While the bacon is still warm, toss it all together (ferns, blossoms and bacon) with some mixed greens, goat cheese with a teeny tiny bit of the vinaigrette (really light). Some delish additions could be some shaved pickled onions or diced calabrian chilis.

7. Now eat it!

And just for fun, a fiddlehead wine recipe! (I can’t wait til next season to give it a shot!)

I’ll tell you now, this post isn’t for the faint at heart; if you don’t like looking at meat the way it was before it got to your plate, this might not be the right “photo essay” for you. And if you want my opinion (and since you’re reading this, you do), if you don’t want to know what and where your lamb chops were before your plate, you shouldn’t be eating them in the first place – and I say that as a former long time (10ish years) vegan who now eats anything and everything. I also say that, however, as an eater and cooker who clearly cares more about food than any single individual ever should. Thusly, I’ve been working on my butchery skills! A little bit ago, I did so with Chef Jake Des Voignes at Local Mission Eatery, where he walked us through breaking down a whole lamb and took us from this: to this: to this: I’ll try to give you an ultra-brief photographic run down the best I can…

Start at the neck, going right to left on the animal (if you’re right handed). A couple breaks, snaps, cuts and you get to these:

Sweetbreads are the various small glands throughout the body – lamb, veal, goat, whatever. These ones are under the shoulder, right where you start disconnecting the tissue to break it all down. Since they’re usually so small that they don’t have a whole lot of flavor to begin with, I really like them fried. If you cook with them, though, you can soak them in milk to pull out the excess blood that gets stored up in them, and it’ll help tenderize them a bit too. One my favorite new(ish) places, The Corner has a great veal sweetbread plate – deep friend and served with hot sauce and bacon aioli. The aioli can tend to overtake the small sweetbreads, but if you dip just right it’s delish. I definitely recommend the place.

Then you gotta break the neck off and separate the collar bone from the ribs: I call it “de-necking”, but I’m sure it’s actually just separating the collar bone from the ribs.

Make a few more cuts, breaks and trims and you get: The front legs, and:

Some more cuts: trim off the silver skin (lamb has a lot of it), et voila: now you’ve got this eerie serial killer-esque legless carcas: (creepy)

Again, more cuts and you start getting to the good stuff… and feel your way along the spine to find the sweet spot where the spine and ribs meet: and start cuttin’: Clean up the ribs…Debone the legs….

and there it is: all your lamb, ready to cook and eat….

I have found proof of God’s existence, as well as the meaning of life:

I’m sorry I can’t offer you a better visual aid, but I think you can picture it in your dirty little mind just fine. A Spanish meat shop has installed meat vending machines out front one of their stores, as well as around the city.

“With three stores in Northern Spain, Izarzugaza has been operating for four generations in more or less the traditional way. Not long ago the store began selling online, however, and delivering to customers as far-flung as Segovia and Madrid. Even more interesting, though, is that it has installed a vending machine outside its Mundaka shop that sells a variety of meats, sausages, sandwiches and other goods around the clock. Products sold within the machine vary with the season, so that summer offerings might include pasta salads while the emphasis is more on meatballs and sausages in the wintertime.”

Sweet!

Argentina has a specialty they call “parilla” [par-ee-sh-a]. I just call it “Mmmmmm”. Generally, most people would describe it as barbeque, but it’s not really. It’s meat (sometimes veggies, but really – these people dig on their meat like middle America digs on their soda). All kinds of meat – chorizo (pork sausage), pork chops, steak, chicken thighs, chicken sausage, blood sausage*, ribs – grilled on open air grills, sometimes tiered three and four grills high, and you can get it everywhere from street food to 5 star restaurants. Its pretty much all fantastic, even the worst of it. The best that I’ve had, however, is below:

My first trip, four years ago, on a road trip somewhere around a town called Las Flores (I think). My Spanish was so bad at the time all I could do was point on my own body to the part I wanted and wait to see if my non-verbal communication class did its job. Lucky for me, I got the ribs I had motioned for, and they came from this beautifully janky grill: A lot of us here in America would look at that and worry about the state of it – the ash piling up on the bottom, the uncleaned grill, the crookedness of it – but that, my hungry friend, is all integral to the delicate deliciousness that is the parilla.

Fast forward to 2009, to another great open air parilla, back in Buenos Aires, in San Telmo. This nameless wonder is wallpapered with testimonial notes and drawings from patrons from all over the world: This grill (note the ash on the bottom) is a little smaller than at most places, but oh that “choripan” (chorizo sausage in a roll, top it with chimichurri) was soooooo goood:

This, from an indoor restaurant parilla – where I’ve been twice, both times stumbling upon it, both times blowing my mind AMAZING (best pork chops I’ve ever had, no questions.):

From L to R, that’s pork chops, a deliciously rare steak, and morcilla (blood sausage). Look at the grill marks on those meats…..mmmmm. It’s good to note and nice to know, too, that these meats aren’t drowned in butter or extra grease to make them good, they’re just good quality meat cooked with love and skill as is.

Ohhhhhhh mama mmmmm. Just the way I like it.

And for our last meal of the trip, we went to Parilla La Rosaria, a neighborhood restaurant that a store owner recommended (also in San Telmo). Now I have to say, I love offal, and one of the best things about Argentina is how much they love it, too:

That’s blood sausage, intestine, kidney, chorizo, tripe, and a bit of pork chop. See, look how happy I am, sitting in a lovely enclosed patio, eating delicious insides, drinking delicious Torrontes (an acidic, fruity white wine from Salta):

And Judah’s grilled pork shoulder with perfectly grilled apples (makes me want a grill of my own to grill fruit!):

Here, have some chorizo. I promise it’ll make your life:

And for dessert, a Don Pedro: a scoop of ice cream in a shot of whiskey with some walnuts. Simple and delicious:

If you’re on your way to Buenos Aires anytime soon, I’ll let you know where these places are. They’re all in San Telmo. (except for the first one, which I couldn’t help you out with, really. I don’t remember other than that it’s in Los Flores. I think….).

In the meantime, though, transport yourself to La Rosaria and try out this recipe for a Dressed Up Don Pedro:

For Toated Walnuts:

1T walnuts
1/2t butter
pinch salt
pinch brown sugar

Heat butter until melted, add walnuts, salt and sugar and toast until nuts are browned.

Whiskey Whipped Cream

1c. heavy cream
1/4c. powdered sugar
1 egg white
1t. vanilla
1 shot (1.5oz) suberb quality whiskey (a sweet aged bourbon is a good choice)

1. Beat on high until peaks form.

Serve over shot of espresso, shot of whiskey and scoop of vanilla ice cream, top with toasted walnuts, and orange zest.