Vegan Burgers!

These are actually pretty simple, and would be even easier if we could actually fry something.* Mix together: grated potatoes, we used small yellow potatoes white beans, we used small navy beans some dried potato flakes cumin chile powder diced red onion minced garlic ground coriander salt then some more salt and a little more, these are potatoes after all pepper stir it all up then let it meld together for a few minutes, 10-30, then shape into desired sizes and refrigerate to set for at least half of an hour. After they're sufficiently chilled heat some oil in a pan, we used coconut oil because it has such a high smoke point and therefore I could do more with less. (I still don't recommend it - more oil is a good thing for this!) Anyway, heat up some oil and fry the things. Garnish with salsa and avocado, then enjoy! Salsa Like with most foods, including the vegetable burgers, salsa is easily thrown together with whatever you have in the kitchen. In this case we diced tomatoes, some small mystery spicy peppers from the garden, a red bell pepper, red onion, garlic, then added chopped cilantro and freshly squeezed lime juice. *rules forbid frying with more than one teaspoon of grease per serving.

Seared Tuna with a Ginger Soy Sauce

As with all meat, the quality of fish really determines the dish. That's not to say you can't still ruin a good piece of fish, but you can only elevate a bad piece of fish so far.

To begin this dish heat two pans on the stove with a small amount of oil in each and heat to medium high.

What you see above is a piece of yellowtail tuna. I took one steak, rubbed it in olive oil and some lime juice, added a smidge of salt and cracked pepper and let it sit for fifteen minutes.

While the fish was getting acquainted with the lime, I prepped the rest of the food, which meant I thinly sliced ginger, red onions, red peppers, garlic, and snapped green beans. Place the green beans in a bowl and set aside. As I set the fish to sear on medium high I started the red onions in another pan to melt down, after about five minutes I flipped the fish and in pan #2 added the red pepper. At this point I started a pot of water on the back eye to boil. You should have a few extra minutes here, take this time to make a small cornstarch slurry. You'll need it later.

When the second side of the fish was seared, I took that out and threw the ginger in the pan to begin to crisp up. The water should be boiling at this point, pour the boiling water over the green beans to give them a nice blanch. Throw the garlic into pan #1, and begin to add your flavors of choice to the pan sauce. I went with a touch of white wine and soy. Drain the green beans and add them to pan #2, give it all a good stir, and turn it down to low.

Back to your soy ginger sauce, turn it down to low and add in the slurry. Mix it all in very well. While that is cooking down you can begin plating your food. The cornstarch should be absorbing and bringing a nice consistency to the sauce. Ideally you want some viscoscitiy but not that much thickness. It's a potent flavor and you don't want it to overwhelm everything else on the plate. When you deem the sauce perfect, add and serve! I dressed with a touch of fresh cilantro to round out the flavors.

Ribeye with a Pepper Tomatillo Sauce

Pretty isn't it!

Tomatillo Pepper Sauce

Roast in the oven (the grill is preferred but sometimes you can't do anything about the rain) until the exterior begins to blacken and char. Roast whatever you have on hand, in this case I did:
5 tomatillos
2 long sweet peppers
1 spicy pepper
2 little green peppers (yes I know it'd be easier if I knew what anything was)
1 yellow bell pepper
2 tomatoes

Turn when they've begun to blacken to get a nice rounded char all over. Then place into sealed plastic containers to cool and hopefully sweat off their skins. After enough time has passed and they're cool enough to touch (15 minutes is enough) peel it off. After peeling, throw everything into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth, then put into a pot on the stove to cook down into a thick sauce. Meanwhile, blend some cilantro and lime juice, I did maybe a quarter cup of cilantro and the juice from two limes, and set aside.

After the sauce has cooked down to a nice consistency, remove from the stove and stir in the lime and cilantro. I don't like to cook these two ingredients with it because I find it loses a lot of the fresh zing they add to the flavor.

The rice is basic basmati, cooked in a homemade chicken stock, with no additional butter and salt, and it absolutely did not need it. Light, fluffy and flavorful. The ribeye was leftover from an earlier meal, thinly sliced and voila! You have a meal!

Give him a fish!

Eating for a day is just fine with us. We're not ready to learn how to fish, since we're not quite ready to eat fish every day. Yet. One day!






What you see there is a fresh sea bass that soaked in salt, pepper and a little olive oil, then was thoroughly seared with shallots and topped with a tarragon pear vineagar butter. Let's not speak about the side dish. It photographed well.

I got it in my head to try smoked pulled pork on the grill. Of course we don't have a smoker, and we didn't have the right kind of pork, but gosh darn it, I was going to try!

I read bunches of recipes and decided to go with Alton's recommendation of soaking the meat in a molasses brine first. I wound up soaking it for 24 hours. And uh, I made a huge mistake. Which I totally rectified the next time I made it. (you have to reduce the salt if it's going to brine for that long, Alton's called for a 4 hour brine)

Anyway, while so salty it might as well have been bacon, luckily I like bacon. After the brine I stuffed it full of garlic and then coated it in a mix of spices (mostly chili powder) then we tried to cook it at a low'ish temperature. The grill was full of hardwood, some mequite chips, and then cooked on a cedar plank. While it didn't get to 'smoke' long enough, it did absorb some good smokiness.












































And then I made cole slaw! (So maybe I made it six weeks ago. You can actually see it in one of the pictures in the last posting) But I love all these prep pictures. Bobby Flay gets credit for this slaw. It's a combination of about 4 of his recipes. The beach crew also got to taste this concoction.


Sadly I didn't get a picture of the final slaw or the total pork product. I'm slow getting into this food blogging thing though, have patience on me!

One thing that was extra fun is I found a good use for the mandolin. I adore the mandolin, but it's not really that practical and there's few things that the food processor just doesn't do better. But since we only have a 3 cup food processor it can't handle this kind of cabbage shredding. But it was fun, and red cabbage is pretty.

More food

Grilling out is so much fun when the weather is nice

The Follow Up

After a meal like yesterday's, where the meat is so good I want to suck the marrow out from the bones, I try to cook down the leftovers, extract whatever flavor might be left. I did it last week with some pork chops we didn't document. And I'm doing it with the rib remnants of last night. I chopped up an onion, threw in a bay leaf, cut a few springs of rosemary and thyme (growing on the deck) and salt and pepper. I did make the mistake of adding garlic. I personally find it makes the broth too bitter when I add raw garlic this early in a long simmer, but Jake thinks it tastes fine. Because of the extra bitter I compensated with some shallot salt today, which seems to balance it tolerably.

One item has facilitated this semi regularly stock cooking. And that's the crock pot. This crock pot particularly, with it's multiple inserts is great. I deliberated between this or a timed pot, the ideal device would be both. For two people we rarely need anything that's five or more quarts, but having the option is great. I've regretted it a few times in the last eight months, but not as many times as I've told myself I'm a genius.

The stock from last Saturday's pork chops, after about 15 hours of simmering with an onion and sage, rosemary, and thyme. After simmering I made a fantastic soup out of it. In leftover bacon grease (from Sunday's breakfast) I cooked some turkey meatballs*. cut some fresh corn, shelled some fresh peas, uh, some dried peppers, tomato puree, more generic 'italian' seasonings (pasta sprinkle). It all melded together beautifully. The total amount of extra work might have totaled ten minutes, counting putting it in single serving tupperware and not counting the multiple tastings and marveling at my own awesomeness.

From a few bones, and a minor amount of work, I got four additional meals!

Even more, after the soup, since I only used half of the ground turkey, and a third of the can of tomatoes, I made a tomato sauce of delectable which turned into a dinner a few days later.

I'm not sure yet what to do with the stock I'm making tonight. I'm rather leaning towards a rice or orzo dish, we'll see. Regardless, I'm sure it'll be delicious.



*turkey meatballs
ground turkey
pork chop seasoning
minced garlic & onion
shallot salt (which is ungodly amazing and probably deserves a post devoted just to it's awesomeness)
pepper
splash of red wine

Catch up on old dinner

Lets see, ribeye with greens, bbq chicken, awesome ashley salmon with rice of delicious and raw sugar snap peas.

Short ribs and greens

Short ribs with mexican beer and chipotle bbq sauce with fresh greens from csa.

Old Pictures of Food~

Dinner

Sirloin with fresh greens and parsnips. Greens have sate seasoning and shallot salt from our favorite spice shop Penzys. Fresh rosemary on top of the sirloin on a mesquite grill.

FRIST PSOT!!1

Now that we got the cliche out of the way...

< 10 minutes, farm fresh eggs, mozzarella, basil, prosciutto, happiness.