Category: food

Maura, Alex, Brendan, Dan, April and I chowed down on some home-made smokey Baba Ganoush, an heirloom tomato salad (with cilantro, jalapeno, and blanched sweet corn on top of a bed of mixed greens with a lemon + olive oil dressing), and my tribute to the Pollo Asado I had on Troncones beach with Allie around Christmas 2005. I started with two Fulton Valley Range roasters from BiRite on 18th and marinaded them in a salsa made from 2 seeded red peppers, 3 chipotle peppers in adobo, half a head of roasted garlic (lasted a few days!), 1tbsp of sugar, 3 tbsps of salt, and some water (1/4 cup?).  Threw on the grill to char and then finished (for timeliness) in the kitchen over the stove after butchering.

Burnt 1 large egglplant over an open flame, all around, then wrapped it into a sheet of tin foil and threw into an oven at 375-ish. Let bake for 10m, then added to oven a small head of garlic. Five more minutes. Took the eggplant out, threw the bread in to heat, and peeled the eggplant’s skin off, cut the top off, and dropped it into a food processor. Added 1/3 cup of tahini, 2 tbsps of ground cumin, a pinch of zatar, a lemon’s worth of fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, and the squeezed-out cloves of roast garlic. Blended. Tasted. Added a touch more cumin & zatar. Served in a bowl with Sicilian olive oil drizzled on top. Tore Bennet Ridge Baking Company Garlic & Jack Bread  and sliced the Japanese cukes.

Prepared the marinade, starting with juicing a dozen oranges from our garden’s tree. Minced a head of garlic and threw into a stockpot with the juice. Salted lightly. Added four dried guajillo peppers, two bay leaves, ~2 tbsps of paprika and a pinch of cumin. Butchered a 4lb free range chicken from Drewes Brothers and let it sit in marinade for two hours in the fridge. Took out and covered with thinly sliced onions (quartered before slicing). Put onto the stove at lowest heat for 1hr. Then, with the meat pulling off the bone, threw in five cubed baby red potatoes. Then 1/4 cup of raisins. Cooked for 20m more. Then a minute or two before serving, a tbsp of capers, a 1/4 cup of olives. In future: start with a diced carrot, ground achiote, & oregano – and add sliced red peppers towards end. Maybe just use legs – or remove breast for 1/2 hr of cooking?

Tossed halved & trimmed brussel sprouts in olive oil and roasted quickly (<15m) in 425 oven. Once out, shaved parmesan on top & drizzled truffle oil on top.

Ground a dry rub (black pepper, coriander, chili pepper flakes, garlic salt) in the coffee grinder. Rubbed on a Prather Ranch Cross Rib beef roast (~2.7lbs) and left in fridge for two hours (should have removed from cold 1hr before – didn’t). Preheated the oven to 450F, and, after searing fatty side brown, threw roast into oven on a rack above a bed of thinly shaved onions (1 bulb). Cooked ~30m, took onions out, and set aside to cool. Tossed the roast back in at 250F, and threw the onions in a blender with a handful of walnuts, a bunch of purple basil (stemmed), olive oil (1 tbsp), a quarter cup of lemon-syrup (a rich bitter-sweet syrup made from lemon juice, salt, and sugar – keeps months), and a quarter cup of water. Blended into a chutney, set aside. Removed roast at 130F and set above the oven vent to rest. Halved 3 cloves of garlic and dropped into a pan with olive oil, browned, and then added a bunch of chopped red amaranth (callaloo). Wilted and added drippings from the roast. Served with tourneed fingerling potatoes, parboiled.

Sauteed 1 onion until translucent, add chicken (legs, thighs), smoked & regular paprika (50/50 – in good portions for full stew), salt, cooked slowly for 25m. I added a small roasted red pepper (sacrilege) peeled and thinly julienned, then almost 1.5 cups of sauerkraut (Rainbow Food Coop’s homemade kraut). Lowered temperature, added 3/4 cups of sour cream, salt to taste, and let heat up to serving temperature.

Threw a Prather Ranch pork shoulder onto an iron skillet with a touch of grapeseed oil & seared on all sides, salting as I rotated the meat. Added finely chopped young garlic (only the tender part of this leek-look-alike) & threw into a 225F oven with a perforated sheet of tin foil on top. Left for 3 hours. Cooled off & scraped the drippings & caremelized young garlic into a blender with ~1 tbsp of dijon mustard, three sprigs of rosemary (leaf-only), and a preserved lemon. Blended into an aoili-like spread. Meanwhile, threw a portion of the shoulder into the oven at broil to crisp, and thinly sliced a halved fennel (next time on a mandolin, and with a squeeze of lemon juice?). Heated up flour tortillas on another skillet, and layered on: aoili, chopped meat, fennel & zatar from Healthy Spirits. Wrapped like a burrito.