Shelter Island 10K Weekend BBQ

Dollarhide style fire roasted fennel and red cabbage. Apply generous amounts of butter and salt and fresh herbs, wrap in tinfoil and bury in hot coals for about an hour. The fennel was seasoned with tarragon; the cabbage with sage.


Pork loin with basil orange tapenade from the Seven Fires cookbook, grilled green chili peppers and squash, Alice Waters style beet salad, and grilled pineapple seasoned with cayenne, chili powder, cinamon and lime juice. We cut the pineapple into longitudinal slabs and then trimmed the skin and spines. After grilling the core was completely tender and edible. I filled an old spice jar with the spice mixture and used it to sprinkle seasoning onto the slabs of pineapple on the grill.

Oven roasted new potatoes with whole shallots and cloves of garlic, olive oil, sea salt and rosemary from the garden. About 1 hour at 425. Grilled fennel, cut into 1/6th and lightly cooked in water then skewered, marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, and fresh tarragon and grilled over direct heat. Tuna marinated in lime juice, olive oil, rosemary, hot pepper flakes and grilled for 5 over 3. Grill could have been a little hotter for a better sear, but the inside was great. Not pictured, green beans blanched in a brown butter sage sauce with crispy sage leaves.

Sweedish style potato salad sandwich

Potato salad sandwiched between two Finn Crisp crackers. Brady insisted that he be photographed incognito while eating such a strange creation; although it is actually rather good.

Noel's Argentinian style pork ribs

Just learned this rib recipe last wednesday, and we made it again on friday. First trim fat from pork short ribs. 2 racks is about 8lb of ribs and serves six people with leftovers ( there was also beet, arugula and goat cheese salad and black asparagus ) Cut off the skirt flap ( aka. "the dividend" ) and peel off the silver membrane ( pleura ) on the back of the bones. It feels like a slippery meat balloon and is a pain to remove, but it is not good to eat, and doing so allows the bones to pull away from the meat as it contracts, giving you a nice handle to hold and really nice rib meat to eat.

Marinate the pork in the juice of 8 limes and a few cloves of pressed garlic for 2-3 hours until the outside of the meat starts to chemically cook in the acid, much like ceviche. Throw them on a direct charcoal fire, bone side up and covered with a generous amount of kosher salt. After 20-30 minutes, turn them over and salt the meat side. About 10 minutes before they are finished, cover the top with grated parmesigan cheese.

Spring!

Lots of gardening this weekend. These are the self irrigating tomato planters. Just transplanted 4 different varieties of tomato plants I started from seeds into their new home.

My first baby radish. Yummy. Ate the whole thing ( after I washed it off ).

86 Proof cake

This is Maida Heatter's 86 Proof cake ( a chocolate, bourbon and espresso bundt cake ) I baked for Kara's birthday. Recipe from the New York Times Note, where they call for 1/4c espresso, it should 1/4c of be instant espresso powder. Also, the additional bourbon is not optional, it is mandatory.

Pulled pork bbq! Beans cooked with home made bacon. Kara's cole slaw. Quick picked onions. Corn bread with hot peppers and whole corn kernels. Miles's amazing pork rendering bbq sauce.

Sticky buns!

Rigatoni with vegetable ragout

Sunday was a busy day with a simple dinner. This sauce started out just like minestrone, slow cooked in olive oil, adding each ingredient as I finished chopping them: onions, carrots, green pepper, celery, white mushrooms, garlic, zuchini. Then two cans of italian plum tomatoes chopped up, some pureed Kalamata olives, capers, basil, marjoram, white pepper, bay leaves, and a dried chipotle pepper. I left it simmering for a while while I made bread and dough for sweet potato ravioli and ate it later with some rigatoni and grated parmigano.

White bread with semolina

Last night I made this basic white bread from The Tassajara Bread Book. I've been making a lot of pasta lately, so I thought I would try a semolina flour bread. Semolina has a lot of glutens in it and this was a very sticky dough that took a lot of flour while kneading. There is milk, honey and eggs in it and about 2 cups of semolina to 7 cups of unbleached white flour. I let it rise for extra long ( 7 hours ) while I went bowling and to kung fu class, but my friend nyssa punched it down for me. It really took off on the oven and puffed up a little lopsided, but it is super light and chewy and made for some great breakfast toast with blackcurrant jelly.

Bacon Part I

I have always loved bacon, and although I haven't gotten into pig butchery (yet), it seems time to learn how to make some charcutterie. Where better to start than bacon? First stop was mario's for some pork belly. Mario was in the basement looking for some deer meat when I took this photo. He's a real deal old school neighborhood butcher at 622 Metropolitan who has rabbits and osso buco for sale and a cadre of old italian men hanging out in his shop.

I picked up 6 pounds of meat, which is 1/2 of a pork belly. I don't know what the pig's name was or who raised it. I doubt it spent the last weeks of its life dining on hazelnuts and heavy cream, but it still looks pretty yummy and this is my first attempt, so I'm going to keep it cheap and simple. I mixed up a rub consisting of 1 cup of coarse sea salt and 1 cup of light brown sugar. I cut the pork into 2 pieces to fit into 2 large ziplock bags; massaged them with the rub and put them in the fridge.

I decided to forgo the saltpeter; I can save it to make black powder for the flintlock rifle i'll use to stun my pigs before I bleed them. Plus I don't care how pink it looks and if this bacon works out, it's not going to be around for very long anyway. For now, it needs to cure for a week and then i'll smoke it!

Sunday night italian dinner

I doubled the recipe for minestrone which doubled the chopping as well and led me to finally understand the concept of using your knuckles to position the knife. I learned about the not so secret measurements of the tang and the rivets of a chef's knife and made a lot of fine dice of zucchini, carrots, onions, celery, and potato. I made the beef stock yesterday and soaked the tiny white beans over night.


Mom and dad helped me make these mezzaluna; stuffed with a filling of hen of the woods mushrooms in a soffritto of onions, slab bacon and rosemary mixed with whole milk ricotta, parmigiano-reggiano, egg yolk, crushed pepper and salt. They were boiled for a few minutes and then served in a simple butter and sage sauce.

Pork loin braised in red wine, vinegar, bay leaves and crushed black pepper with finnochio braised in water, olive oil and salt.



The backup plan was fettucini, so we had two pasta courses. This one in olive oil, hot red pepper and garlic. Next time I want to add some sichuan pepper.

Sweedish anise carroway rye bread

1/2 rye and 1/2 unbleached white from the Tassalhara bread book, page 40. It's got some powered milk in it and an egg glaze, so it's not vegan, but super yummy. I made a sponge first and then let it rise twice after kneading. I baked it in a convection gas oven at 300° for 50 minutes which was colder and faster than indicated. I'm still getting the hang of my new oven. I think the best way to tell if it is ready is by thumping on it with your thumb to see what sound it makes. The bread was very good toasted with some homemade butter and raw local crystalized honey. The loaves really puff up fast in the oven, and they always seem to tear the fibers all around the top of the loaf. I would like to figure that out.

Homemade butter

Take 1 pint of local organic heavy whipping cream, this batch came from whole foods on 14th street, and put it into the Kitchenaid mixer with the whisk on speed 8. First it will turn into whipped cream, then stiff whipped cream, then it goes a little bit past whipped cream and begins to get sandy / grainy. A little while later some of the buttermilk will start to come out and it gets a little wet. Watch out, when it breaks, buttermilk is going to try to fly all over your kitchen, so keep the mixing bowl covered. Soon a number of little butter clusters appear and they quickly clump up into a ball that will stick to the whisk, leaving a pool of buttermilk in the bowl. The whole process should take about 10 minutes. You can rinse off the butter in a strainer; washing away excess buttermilk will make it last longer. Reserve the leftover buttermilk for the next time you bake bread, pancakes or waffles. I add some sel de mer and shape it into a stick using some waxed paper. It is very good on homemade bread.