Jalapeno Mashed Potatoes

Obvi, gentle reader, there ain’t nothing wrong with straight-up meat and potatoes. But sometimes you just wanna switch things up a bit. Especially when you’re using a cheapo cut of beef, as I did the other night. I was grilling some none-too-tender, none-too-flavorful “steaks” (this is what I get for cheating on my Key Foods with a slightly closer, vastly inferior market) that had been halfheartedly rubbed in prepared churrasco seasoning, and figured that adding a spicy kick of jalapeno to the mashed potatoes would up the meal’s flavor profile—or simply sear our taste buds so that each gruelingly chewed bite of the meat would seem like a relief and not a letdown. Win-win, amirite?

I used 2 large new (purple) potatoes, peeling just enough to carve out any pockmarks and brown spots but leaving most of the skin on. For expediency and consistency’s sake, I roughly chopped them into cube-ish (not to be confused with Cubist) pieces and added them to a pot of salted water that I brought to a boil, then lowered to a vigorous simmer until the potatoes were fork-tender, maybe 15 minutes. (For mashed potatoes, I would always err on the side of cooking longer; it’s pretty hard to overcook them, but devastating if you undercook them.)

One-Pan Pork-Sausage-Cabbage Saute (a.k.a. Pseudo-Choucroute)

This dish, inspired by the fact that I had in the fridge half a cabbage, half a red onion, some Dijon mustard packets from the cafeteria at work (because, gentle reader, I am now gainfully employed!), and three sausages of different types left over from dinner at a German restaurant (where I could afford to eat, because I am now gainfully employed!), is kind of like an Ignorant American Fusion take on choucroute—except that uses sauerkraut, which is a bit much. It’s very easy and quick and takes only, as you may have gathered from the post title, one pan. Even factoring in the time it took to grocery-shop for the pork chops, I had everything ready within about an hour of returning from my place of gainful employment. (Did I mention I am now gainfully employed, gentle reader?)

This would serve 3 or 4 people, but of course I made it for 2. There were leftovers. Lots of leftovers. Sandwiches will be had.

Start by melting 2-3 Tbsp. butter and a splash of olive oil over medium heat in a large wide pan, then adding 3 packets of Dijon mustard, about 1 Tbsp kosher salt, pinches of cumin and paprika, and a very wee pinch of cinnamon (these spices are negotiable).

Drop in 2 to 2 ½ pounds of thin-cut bone in pork chops (about 4 big chops), turn the heat up to medium-high, and brown on both sides.

Turkey-Mozzarella Meatloaf

O hai, gentle reader ... I GOT A JOB!

Let’s forget all those things I said about the C train. I’m not saying they weren’t valid, because they were. But the important thing is that the C stands for Commuting, as in, TO A JOB. THAT I HAVE. I have had it for a few weeks now, which you may have noticed coincides with my abrupt dropoff in posting frequency. PRIORITIES, PEOPLE.

So, I'm still committed to home cooking as often as possible, but now when it comes to preparing meals, I just have to be a little more, well, prepared. My newfound obsession with the slow cooker should serve me well—as should my long-standing propensity for getting dishes ready the night before cooking them.

Please Enjoy Some Sandwich Porn

Feast your eyes on this pseudo-Cuban beauty: Ham, turkey, Swiss, mustard, mayo, and sliced zucchini pickles (post to come here).

(Kindly disregard the poor Photoshopping around the edges to conceal my messy kitchen in the background. It is still a thing of beauty, gentle reader, is it not?)

By the by, I have now perfected my technique of packing non-soggy sandwiches for the next day’s lunch: I drape a sheet (or two) of cheese on each cut-open side of the bread, then stack on the cold cuts, spreading condiments between the layers. Any wet ingredients such as tomatoes and lettuce also go between the meats, sealing in the moisture. Revolutionary and revelatory—I know, right?

You’re welcome.

The Silence of the Lamb Roast

Gentle readers, my rollercoaster love-hate relationship with the Key Foods (née Met Foods) continues. Today I fell in love with it all over again when I found bone-in leg of lamb for $2.99 a pound. I purchased a roast that was about 2 1/2 pounds—mind you, knowing that a fair bit of that weight was the bone itself, but still feeling psyched that it was a good value.

I came home (singing “Kiiitty had a leg of lamb, leg of lamb, leg of lamb...”), preheated the oven to 350°, and slathered the meat with a paste of Dijon mustard, panko bread crumbs, garlic powder, shaved lemon zest, paprika, kosher salt, thyme, and parsley. (Tip: Mince your herbs/zest on a bed of the salt and other dry spices, it helps break them down. This works well for garlic too, but to my immense shame, I did not have any fresh garlic in the house.)

I put the meat in a foil-lined baking pan splashed with a bit of olive oil (photo below), and dropped it into the oven, followed shortly by another foil-lined baking pan containing unskinned Idaho potatoes, cut into wedges and tossed in salt and olive oil.

I also sliced and sautéed an 8-oz. package of white mushrooms in butter with a bit of thyme and salt and a splash of balsamic, to serve as a dressing for the lamb. Finally, I tossed some arugula in a mix of lemon juice and Dijon mustard—to echo the flavors of the lamb paste while creating an acidic counterpoint to the meat’s richness—and diced some mozzarella into it, because I didn’t want it tooooo counterpointy.

Leftovers Love: Beef-Vegetable Soup

Gentle reader, as I have previously expressed, I am very grateful for the fact that I met the man of my dreams in an otherwise dismal 2016. I am also grateful that my mother gladly welcomed him into our family Chrismukkah celebration and gifted him with much-needed cold-weather items such as warm socks, a sweater ... and a lovely metal thermos (below) whose surface proudly declares “The adventure begins!” (It appears from the graphic that the purveyors expect you to paddle a canoe through the thermos, but I'm not buying it.)

Anyhoo. Christmas morning. “For soup, Davy!” my mother crowed. “Katherine will make you soup for lunch! The soup will stay warm!” And my man was all like, “Great! I can dip the sandwiches she makes me into the soup!” And I was all like, uh, whuuut? I did not sign off on this.

Mind you, he gets up before 5 AM to go to work, God love him, and in January it is pitch-dark and damn cold. I am happy to make the effort to pack him a sandwich and chips the night before, then go to bed exhausted from the effort, eventually rising at the crack of noon.

But soup? Dude. Even if I make that the night before, I have to heat it up in real time. As far as I could tell on Christmas morning, that was the true adventure of which the thermos spoke. And it was now my conscripted duty to embark on it.

I mean, I do like a good adventure—as long as it involves food, and not getting up before noon...

Short Ribs With Kielbasa and Polenta: A Dish to Die For

I love short ribs over polenta. As previously noted, I like to slow-and-low-cook short ribs in the oven the night before and then reheat, for 3 reasons: (1) You can prep them while you make a quicker meal for that night; (2) You can skim off a congealed layer of grease when you take them out of the fridge so you don’t hate yourself as much; and (3) My kitchen does not have space for a slow cooker, are you kidding me. Barbie’s Dream House seriously has more kitchen square footage than mine, and I am not adjusting for scale here, people.

Anyway, the other week, I preheated the oven to 250° or so; dredged my short ribs in garlic powder, kosher salt, and paprika; and browned them in olive oil in my Creuset saucepot before adding an 8-oz. can of tomato sauce, some chicken stock prepared from the carcasses of recently documented roast chickens, and the remains of a bottle of red wine I had in the fridge. Then I put the covered pan in the oven for a few hours.

It was only later that it occurred to me that the fact that the wine bottle’s cork had a festive Santa hat topper meant that it had been sitting in the fridge for almost exactly one year, since my holiday party was scheduled for that coming Sunday. This concerned me. Actually, my immediate thought was OH MY GOD I’M NOT READY TO DIE OF FOOD POISONING, I HAVE SO MANY THINGS LEFT TO EAT, BUT IF MY DEMISE IS AT THE HANDS OF SHORT RIBS AT LEAST MY LOVED ONES CAN CONSOLE THEMSELVES BY REMINDING THEMSELVES THAT I DIED DOING WHAT I LOVED.

So anyway, the polenta recipe...

It's fall, let's roast!

Dearest Readers,

Today starts the most beautiful of seasons. Yes, I know it's still summer, and the glorious "Autumn in New York" season hasn't really started yet as we're all crossing our fingers for more indian summer. What I'm talking about, my cooking gurus, is football season.

Just like you, friends, as the end of August rolls up, I get sad, melancholy that the number of immediate beach days is dwindling... Ok, I'm being melodramatic, all I'm trying to say is that generally, my end-of-summer angst is easily cast aside when the first official Sunday of Football Season comes around! And that's today! I am excited!

Taco Night!

As countless NYC food carts have proved, there are an infinite ways to make tacos—with a matrix of practically every meat/fish/veggie/legume you can think of, tons of topping combos, and of course, soft vs. hard/corn vs. flour tortilla. I grew up with Taco Night starring the classic American incarnation of ground beef/hard corn shell, but I have no use for the hard shells, which invariably shatter as soon as you take a bite if they haven’t already shattered in the box (plus they’re overpriced and a huge waste of packaging). So, this is my alternate take on the ground beef taco using soft tortillas.

When I made this recently, I heated some bacon fat—but you could use a couple tablespoons of olive oil—to brown 1.5 pounds ground beef over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (you could use a cast iron skillet or a non-nonstick frying pan; nonstick doesn’t brown the meat properly).

Sprinkle kosher salt, ground cumin, chili powder, and paprika over the meat before using a wooden spoon to break it up so it crumbles as it cooks.

Lamb Shank Stew With Tomato and Butter Beans

It is an all too rare occurrence that my co-blogger and I cook and eat a meal together. But a few days before New Year’s, we found ourselves free of plans. Serendipitously, I had a pot full of lamb shank stew that I had planned to serve over rice, and Alyce was…making rice. It was totally like I was a crocodile and she was that bird that picks food out of its teeth, or something. So, Alyce jumped in her car to come pick me up, I threw my pot into a canvas shopping bag (have lamb, will travel!), and we proceeded to have the best impromptu dinner party ever.

How, gentle reader, did I come to have said pot of stew in my possession? Well, the previous night, I had made tomato soup (recipe to come, sooner or later) and grilled cheese sandwiches (with fancy artisanal bread from Brooklyn Victory Garden and Kraft singles from Met Foods) for myself and The Rob, and prepped this lamb stew for later in the week. See, on weeknights, I like to throw together something quick for that night’s dinner (say, pasta) while simultaneously pre-cooking something that can be reheated another night. Cheap cuts of meat like lamb shank and beef short ribs take a long time to slow-cook but require zero maintenance while doing so, and serving them on the next night or two is actually preferable because (a) the flavors develop that much longer and (b) during overnight refrigeration, a layer of fat congeals at the top of the liquid and can be easily skimmed off before reheating.

So, here’s how to put this dish together. It takes time management (you want it to cook 4 hours on night 1) but very little hands-on time.

Christmas Dinner 2011: Beef Tenderloin and Nostalgia

Christmas Day, we drove up to my grandmother’s house in Western Massachusetts—where she always cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family when I was growing up—and my mom, the Beez, and I cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family. Though I have fond childhood memories of making E-Z-Bake Oven mini-cakes and baking cookies with my grandmother (I was particularly excited by her pizzelle press), this was the first time I’ve ever actually prepared a meal in her kitchen.

Our mission was to update some family Christmas classics, which include a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern influences (we’re of Assyrian descent—look it up) and 1950s Americana. So, on the appetizer table was pre-cooked shrimp with cocktail sauce straight from the jar, alongside stuffed grape leaves and spinach-feta-phyllo triangles. However, we skipped the canned-peas-with-meatballs-in-tomato sauce that was a vile annual staple of the holiday dinner table, and the Kool-Whip-and-God-knows-what-else-based frozen green pie for dessert. And since Aunty Olga was out of town, there were no Tollhouse cookies for the first time in my memory.

As is customary, we overdid appetizers—but this year we were shockingly conservative on desserts, with only two for seven people (compare with Thanksgiving). For the main course, we eschewed my grandmother’s usual entrée excess (we’re talking a roast turkey, a ham, roast beef, and maybe a lasagna thrown in for good measure) for a single beef tenderloin.

The tenderloin was cooked to perfection (we cut it with butter knives) but a little overwhelmed by the flavor of the smoked paprika I had carelessly overused in the dry rub. Everyone assured me it was good, but I imagine Tom and Padma might have sent me packing for that paprika-palooza.

In any case, here is our Christmas Day menu:

Smoking Is Good for You: Smoked Pork Shoulder, Part 2

Gentle reader, as you may already have surmised from the fact that you’re reading this post, the smoked pork shoulder was a success! Mind you, much of the credit must go to The Rob, who got up at 7 AM to go set up the smoker in our friends’ backyard, and spent the next several hours peering at the temperature gauge, twiddling the vents, and replenishing the water. Since I am constitutionally incapable of getting up before the crack of noon on a Sunday, I really appreciate him shouldering this huge responsibility. Get it? See what I did there? SHOULDERing! BWAAAAHAAahhahaaaaahaaa...

Ahem. Anyhoo. I arrived at my friends’ BBQ around 6 PM to man the smoker for the last few hours, before pulling the meat and serving it on soft corn tortillas with a chipotle slaw. So here’s a little post-pork analysis of the lessons I learned.

Smoking Is Good for You: Smoked Pork Shoulder, Part 1

Ah, Memorial Day weekend. A time for honoring America’s war heroes, and for cooking large quantities of meat. Alyce got a jump on the official start of grill season with a fab rooftop cookout Thursday, and today, I am marinating a pork shoulder to be smoked for a backyard gathering tomorrow evening. And by “marinating,” I mean I am sitting outside with my laptop drinking a beer while the pork sits in the fridge inside.

A pork shoulder is a great cookout option: The meat is cheap (about $1.50 a pound), it requires very little hands-on time, and a whole one will feed a crowd. (The one I bought was about 7 pounds.) The reason it’s cheap, however, is that it is a very tough cut that takes a long time to cook. You want to cook it at an extremely slow temperature so that the meat breaks down and all the fat gets nicely rendered into it; when it’s finished cooking, you should be able to pull strands of meat apart with your fingers. Again, you don’t really have to tend to it at all while it’s cooking, you just have to plan to get it cooking several hours before serving. One good way to cook a pork shoulder is by braising it in the oven at, like, 250° to 300°. And another is to put it in a smoker.

Curry-Rubbed Lamb Ribs

Two years ago this time, gentle reader, you could not get through a restaurant review in a New York–based publication without encountering the R-word: “recession.” And we're still feeling the culinary repercussions of that market meltdown.

See, back in the '09, with the economy a bigger hot mess than a school-cafeteria Sloppy Joe, the sanctimonious contingent of the Brooklyn restaurant scene (think seasonal/local/sustainable/blah-blah-blah) eagerly embraced the frugal, down-home aesthetic of “upscale comfort food”—often, a euphemism for “We buy cheap cuts of meat and cook them for a long-ass time, and for that we will charge you in the vicinity of $20 for a small but beautifully plated portion of some obscure, newly acceptable part of the animal.”

The economy has theoretically picked up, but this credo of Brooklyn restaurant cooking remains rampant. And while I love rich, slow-cooked, meat-based dining—and respect the bargain-hunter impetus behind it—I resent the massive markup. So I was excited when I saw a 4-pound breast of lamb ribs—a cut I had tried only twice, each time at trendy Brooklyn restaurants that shall remain nameless, since I genuinely enjoyed and do not want to badmouth them—for $4 at a market on Washington Ave.

Lifelong lover of lamb though I am, I was utterly unfamiliar with preparation methods for this cut, and hence worried about my ability to cook down the significant layer of fat without drying out the meat. But for $4, I decided to go for it. I'd say this should serve one or two people.

Pork Loin On the Go

Gentle reader, I recently got a real job. Yes, after years of freelancing, I took a staff position, which has brought such magical developments as visits from the money fairy (a.k.a. direct deposit) and the prospect of finally getting my teeth cleaned.

Another plus: I can pick up groceries in the neighborhood where I work, which was not an option at my previous gig in Times Square—an area so devoid of grocery stores, I frequently saw people in line at the Duane Reade with baskets full of staples like milk and cereal. Kind of depressing that in the greatest food city in the world, people are grocery-shopping at a chain pharmacy.

Anyhoo. I have spoken before of how my matrilineal heritage of old-fashioned home cooking involves the use of condiment packets. So last Friday, I took it into my head to marinate a pork loin using ingredients found in my office kitchen, while I enjoyed happy hour with a friend.

(Mind you, if you're not into eating dinner late, you might want to save this recipe for a weekend, since it does take a while. You could also marinate the pork the night before and refrigerate it overnight, but it will still need time to come to room temperature and to roast.)

Here’s how it went down:

Consider the Lamb Chop

A lot of people do not like lamb, or at least they believe they don't. Being a girl of Middle Eastern descent, I find this extremely difficult to wrap my mind around, as I know my Armenian-sistah-from-anothah-mothah Alyce would agree. Dude, lamb is delicious.

My theory is that reg'lur 'Merickan folks have all too often been burned by the experience of having lamb over- or undercooked, in both of which cases it is really gross. (I have this exact same theory about another Middle Eastern staple, eggplant; luckily Alyce is on the case with a forthcoming baba ghanoush recipe that should hopefully serve as an eggplant gateway drug.) Overcooked lamb is tough and unpleasantly chewy and loses its flavor; undercooked lamb is just, well, bloody and gross.

But well-cooked lamb is deeply flavorful and exquisitely rich and earthy -- so much so that you can make it with some really simple accompaniments, such as a green veggie and potatoes, and you immediately have a sophisticated and well-balanced meal. (I made steamed asparagus tossed in lemon juice and a splash of olive oil, mashed potatoes with roasted garlic, and a cucumber-feta-tomato salad tossed with balsamic vinegar.) Lamb was also made to pair with a full, likewise earthy red wine. Have I sold you yet? Okay, so here's the way to make the super-simple lamb chops I prepared recently.

Experiment: Pork Dumplings

Chinese-style fried pork dumplings have been an idée fixe of mine lately, thanks in part to the unbelievable ($4.75 for eight) ones from Eagle City, my much-beloved (especially when hung over) Chinese-Mexican restaurant on Fulton St. I made my own variation on these dumplings--using purchased square wonton wrappers, I’m not THAT ambitious--and was pretty thrilled with the results. (Read: I ate about 17 in a sitting.) Here's what to do...

Mush together in a big bowl (use your hands, don’t be afraid) about a pound of ground pork or ground chicken (this is a total non-exact-measurements-required recipe) and some chopped garlic, chopped ginger, a little soy or teriyaki sauce, a handful of chopped chives (or chopped scallions), kosher or sea salt, and a scattering of red pepper flakes.

Brining and Dining

Above: Brined and roasted pork loin with fennel.

Brining is one of my most favoritest foodie techniques. It is super-easy, impresses people, and makes cheap supermarket meat taste like grass-fed-free-range-Niman-Ranch-whatever. It only takes a few minutes to put the brine together, cool it, and throw the brining meat into the fridge, but you can let the flavors develop anywhere from overnight to a week.

The fundamental of brine is not even a recipe, just a ratio: You want 8 cups of water to each half cup of salt. (For a Thanksgiving turkey, you'd want about 32 cups of water.) To this, add something sweet (honey, molasses, or maple syrup), probably about as much as the salt. Heat the water in a pot on the stove until the salt and sweetener dissolve. Then add a bunch of stuff. Here are some suggestions regarding said stuff; I tend to use some or all of the following, depending on what I have in the house:

• Garlic cloves
  
• Peppercorns
  
• Dried chili peppers (add while the water is hot so they will reconstitute, or un-dehydrate)
  
• Chili pepper flakes
  
• Thyme sprigs
  
• Bay leaves
  
• Cumin seeds
  
• Mustard seeds
  
• Cilantro sprigs