Best Bratwurst

Now that the weather has turned warm again, we can all spend a little more time outside.  If you are like me, then you want to combine being outside with eating and drinking.  Joe and I have developed a pretty good system of doing just that.  But when we take it on the road – that’s when things really get good.

Please let me explain.  I don’t mean that Joe and I are good at getting drunk in public (although…), I mean that we enjoy a long afternoon of eating a little, drinking a little and repeating.  We developed this while living in California.  There was a street festival in a little beach town that offered tickets to various restaurants at a discounted price.  For instance the Thai restaurant would sell you a spring roll for 2 tickets, and tickets were a dollar each.  The point was to wander around and sample food.  Joe and I just took it to the next level.  We would try a dish of something, then head in to a bar to try a drink of something.  Usually there were one to two drinks for every dish.  The whole event was called a “Stroll and Savor” but when you outpace the eating with imbibing it quickly becomes a “Stagger and Savor” which is what we affectionately call it now.

We do this still on nice evenings; walk to our bustling one block main street, sample various appetizers and happy hour specials, then stagger our way home.  How, you may ask, does this tie into being outside – well I like to sit outside while we are at restaurants.  So there.  Some people like to get sporty in the sun, I like to get full.

The first time I ever did something like a stagger and savor was in Germany at a wine festival.  There were booths of vendors giving away samples of wine and other vendors selling food.  After hitting two or 3 wine vendors, my friends and I would go to a food vendor and share something like a crepe or pastry. 

Where we decided not to share was at the Brat tent.  The traditional way to eat German sausage, was one sausage on a piece of rye bread with lots of onions, sauerkraut and mustard.  If you are lucky, like we were on this occasion, you will sit with Germans who ask you disparaging questions about America and American culture.  “No, not all women marry for money in America. Yes, I understand that all of our reality-dating shows are based off of that premise. No I cannot offer you any high-profile examples of for love marriages.  Yes, I suppose you are right; we are a pretty greedy lot.” 

But really, I would like to focus back on the food here.  This is super easy to prepare.  The hardest part will be in procuring the best ingredients.  It is best to enjoy this meal outside with plenty of cold beer or white wine.  And if you want to stagger around afterwards, please be my guest.

Beer Brats
As with most things in life – local is always better.  If you are fortunate enough to find local sausage, local bread, local sauerkraut and local mustard – do it! If not, try to get the best quality of all of them.  For instance the kosher sauerkraut in the refrigerated section of the grocery store is far better than the canned version.

4-6 bratwursts, uncooked

2 large yellow onions
1 large keg can of beer, or 2 bottles of beer (dark or medium lager is good)
4-6 slices of 100% rye bread – or dark whole grain loaf
Fresh sauerkraut
Strong whole grain mustard

Poke the sausages with the tip of a sharp knife several times; this will help prevent the sausages from exploding while you cook them.  Place them in a large saucepan.  Cut one onion in half, and then into slices, add to the sauce pan.  Next, cut the remaining onion in half and cut off top, but leave the root end intact.  Peel off the skin, and add the onion halves to the pot.  Cover with beer.

Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer for about 10-12 minutes.  Check back frequently to make sure the beer doesn’t boil over. Meanwhile, prepare your grill for the sausages and the onion halves. 

Drain the sausages and onions from the beer.  Reserve the slice onion pieces for the sandwiches.  Grill over medium-high heat the sausages and onion halves until the sausages are golden.  Set out a platter with the rye bread, sauerkraut, boiled onions and mustard. 

To serve, each person makes and open-faced sandwich using the above ingredients; the more mustard and sauerkraut the better.

Fun in Foil

This post will not be about cookies.  I will admit to being weak-minded and buying cookies this week at the supermarket.  And when you already have some cookies in the cupboard, then you really oughtn’t make more cookies on top of that. 

Or at least that’s how I am dealing with my guilt about not producing another cookie recipe for you, and right before the Holidays too, sheesh.

Instead, I wanted to share with you some pictures from Thanksgiving and one of the recipes I have now made a few times which will be good all winter and into early spring.

As you know I grew some beets and leeks (I actually managed to get 3 leeks!) in my tiny little garden this year.  So I had a surplus of beets on hand come the end of harvest.  I love the idea of eating things that don’t necessarily seem to work together – and that is what this recipe is all about.  It is incredibly easy to prepare and is a very different way to get that side of vegetables onto your dinner plate.

I do recommend using Chioggia, golden or even white beets as standard beets will stain all of your pretty vegetables a bright pink.  And if you can find multi-colored carrots, use those too – it really ups the pretty factor.

Beets, Carrots and Leeks in foil

2-3 medium beets (Chioggia, golden or white)

2-3 medium carrots
1 large leek
1 Tb olive oil
3Tb white wine
3 sprigs of fresh thyme
½ tsp dried tarragon (or 1 ½ tsp fresh)
Salt and pepper to taste
Aluminum foil

Preheat the oven to 375° or preheat the grill.  Peel and chop the beets and carrots.  Arrange two sheets of foil, overlapping each other, on the countertop or work surface.  Pile the chopped beets and carrots onto the center of the foil.  Thoroughly wash and dice the leeks, add to the top of the vegetable pile.  Gently fold up the sides of the foil to create a little wall, pour on oil and white wine.  Add the thyme sprigs, tarragon, salt and pepper and toss to coat vegetables.  Fold foil up over the vegetables creating a tight seal, so none of the liquid spills out.  Place foil packet onto grill for 20-30 minutes until it smells magnificent and the vegetables are softened.  Or, place foil packet on a cookie sheet and cook in the oven until the vegetables are softened.

Serves 4 as a side dish

A Proper Lobster Bake

It has taken me a long time to write about cooking lobsters. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment.

There have been quite a few; cooking lobsters at home while a friend visiting from China was with us, borrowing a lobster pot in Rockport Mass from a waitress’ dad, who told us ‘His name is Jim, you’ll know him when you see him’, Driving lobsters down to Philadelphia or driving lobsters to upstate New York, well, you get the picture. We cook a lot of lobsters for guests, as that is what everyone expects from people who reside in Maine. And Joe and I are happy to oblige.

But this time, this time was different. And it was blog-worthy.

The recipe itself is not difficult – get lobsters, steam them, serve with butter and lemon and other things, cover yourself with lobster juice, enjoy. But what really separates this from the other lobster feasts is the combo of when, where, and how that set it apart.

 The best way to steam lobsters is in ocean water.  I’ve tried plain water, seasoned water and wine; but the best lobsters were always cooked in boiling seawater.  This does ruin the inside of a pot, so be warned.  Sometimes you can find little pouches of “Sea Salt” for adding to tap water if you are in a store buying lobsters.  But if you happen to be near the ocean, by all means use some of that instead.   

So let me tell you a bit about the pictures that you see here.  A friend of mine from NJ came up to visit and we went camping in Acadia National Park.  He requested that we have a proper lobster bake.  I considered using driftwood, seaweed, stones and tarps to do this but wasn’t sure all those pieces would come together in protected wildlife areas.  So we opted for literally the next best thing.  A lobster bake over a campfire.   

 Yup, cliffs were scaled to retrieve aforementioned ocean water, a fire built and stoked and tended to boil that water.  Local potatoes, corn and butter were accompaniments and steamer clams and lobsters the main show.  A word of the wise for you though, boiling a large pot of water over an open fire takes a long time, so plan accordingly.  Thankfully we had brought good bread, cheese, tomatoes and plenty of wine to hold us over for dinner.   

 That is not to say the dinner didn’t have its share of challenges.  Besides sending my friend over a cliff in search of water to potentially his death, or the fact that washing a butter covered pot with cold water in another pot that is equally coated in food particles at your campsite could potentially lead to some interestingly flavored coffee the next morning, the meal was very good.  Oh yeah and cleaning the steamers prior to cooking was not something we were able to do, so they were a bit crunchy.  But other than that I would do this again in a moment, and if you are fortunate to have lobsters, ocean water and an open flame you should give it a try as well.   

At A Loss

Summer officially began yesterday at 1:16pm.  To be honest I was at a bit of a loss for what to write about this week.  You see in one and a half weeks, I will be going to Hawaii for a friend’s wedding.  I cannot think of anything else.  I try, but I can’t.  I’m actually having nightmares about not being able to go, or accidentally cancelling my plane tickets. |

So finding a recipe that I want to share with you has not been at the top of my list.  Sorry.  I did my standard grocery shopping trip, looking in the garden and reading all things food related that I can get my hands on, but nothing inspired me.  I am stuck in a food rut.  But only in the sense that sometimes it’s nice to go back to things you have had before.  I mean I am trying some new dishes this week.  But I never feel comfortable sharing them unless I know that they turn out well, especially when they come from another source. 

Also in preparation for Hawaii I have been watching my wallet a little more closely.  I am trying not to buy fifteen different ingredients for one dish (it’s hard, but I am trying).  So Monday night when I came home from work, I asked Joe what he wanted to do with the salmon I bought.  It was nice out, so grilling it seemed to be an option, but we don’t have a grill basket, so the thought of charred on bits of fish stuck to the grill wasn’t appetizing to anyone.

We thought of foil packets, our trusty method for grilling anything that won’t ordinarily grill well.  We have been tossing stuff in foil packets for years now, and usually the results are always a hit. So we had foil packets, we had salmon and we had some “spicy greens” from our farm share to toss in.  Initially I was thinking of an Asian inspired flavor, but Joe isn’t as crazy for fish sauce on fish as I might be.   I let my mind work on it for an hour or two while I was at the gym (again Hawaii in a week and a half).  And you would be amazed at what watching the Food Network while sweating it out on a treadmill will do to your creative juices. 

We decided to try something, and I am going to share it with you even though we have only ever made it once.  But it was so simple, and used ingredients you might already have on hand, I thought it would be worth it to send your way.  Plus sometimes it’s nice to have something new on the grill in the summer.

Marsala Salmon Packets
Never mind the color of the greens under the salmon, it will happen when they cook too long.  And feel free to toss in mushrooms or other ingredients to your liking.  We served this with some buttered pasta, but anything would go well here.  Makes 2 packets.

½ pound sockeye salmon, cut into portions

4 cups ‘spicy’ greens such as mustard greens or broccoli rabe

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 large clove of garlic, minced

2 sprigs of rosemary

3 Tb. Marsala, divided

2 Tb. Olive oil, divided

Salt and Pepper

Prepare your grill.

Place two overlapping sheets of foil onto the counter, they should be about a foot long.  In the center of this, place 2 cups of the greens, it will seem like a lot, but they will cook down.  Next, sprinkle with half of the onion and garlic, then top with salmon portion, skin side down.

Season salmon with salt and pepper, and place the rosemary on top.  Curl the foil slightly upwards to prevent any liquid from leaking out and pour Marsala and olive oil around fish. 

Fold two sides in towards the middle, then bring the other two sides up over the fish and fold them down (or roll them down) together towards the fish.  I prefer to keep the packets a bit loose, but Joe likes them rolled more tightly for ease of moving them around the grill.

Place on the grill over direct heat and cook for about 10 minutes.  You can always open a packet to see if the fish is cooked.  Remove from grill and serve.

Ants and Artichokes

Somehow it went from 48° and rainy to 80° and humid seemingly overnight.  I refuse to complain about this, as it is June 1^st and we were due for spring to finally arrive.  Things are popping up in the garden, and we have even managed to harvest some radishes, albeit with bite marks from the thousands of ants helping themselves first.  I have resorted to an organic arsenal of chemical weapons to be used without restraint to combat these little moochers.  Gallons of vinegar and a bottle of ground cinnamon later, I hope to be able to eat the products of my little garden – even if they do taste like a deranged salad.

Mostly I am trying to keep the fava beans and kale I planted intact.  I’ve already told you about my love for these two items and I am willing to go to great lengths to prevent the destruction of them.  Yesterday as I poured a gallon of vinegar over the tiny brown ants while laughing maniacally I briefly worried about some sort of retaliation, but hopefully it won’t amount to that. I guess time will tell.

In the meantime, we have been grilling a lot.  Not just because of the heat, but because the light in our kitchen is burnt out and we can’t figure out how to remove the fixture to (1) see what kind of light bulbs need replacing and (2) to actually do the replacing.  So rather than try to cook in the dark, we moved the main portion of our dinner prep outside.  This gives me an opportunity to monitor the ants and to enjoy the cooling evenings at the same time.
Joe and I have done a lot of grilling in the time we have been together, and not all of it results in perfectly charred dinners.  When we were still living in D.C. we tried to grill whole baby artichokes.  I was told they were very good and that you could eat the whole thing.  I was sold.  But when we tried to eat them, they were fibrous and prickly; I was determined to try them again. 

This past weekend I finally saw a package of baby artichokes at the grocery store and begged Joe to let us try them again.  I was confident I had read enough about them to correct the flaw in our original preparation.  I scoured the cookbooks I had and realized with horror that apparently everyone but me knows how to properly cook artichokes.  How do I know this?  Because there are literally no comprehensive instructions for preparing them for the grill.  Most of the recipes I found said to “prepare artichokes for the grill.” That’s it!  Arg!  How am I to know how to prepare them, yes they are technically “entirely edible” but I have experience the error in that logic. 

Further research and some trial and error later, we did manage to make (and eat) some grilled artichokes.  They are quite good, especially when dunked into a garlic aioli.  So if you are feeling adventurous this weekend and have access to baby artichokes, give this a try.

Grilled Baby Artichokes with Faux Aioli
12 – 15 baby artichokes
4 lemonsOlive oil, for brushing artichokes
Salt and Pepper
3 Tb mayonnaise
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ tsp. salt

First, place a large pot of water on the stove.  Juice 2 lemons into it and set aside (do not turn on water yet). 

To prepare the artichokes  - cut off the top 1/3 of the artichoke, then peel off all of the lower outer leaves and trim the stem to about ½ inch long.  Place the artichokes into the pot of water with lemon juice and repeat with the remaining artichokes.  The acidified water will help prevent the artichokes from turning brown on the cut portions. 
Then, place the pot over medium high heat and boil artichokes for about 7-10 minutes.  They should be soft enough to pierce with a fork.  Meanwhile, prepare an ice water bath, once the artichokes are softened, drain and place them in the ice water to stop the cooking. 

Preheat the grill.  Once the grill is ready, slice the artichokes in half and rub with half of a cut lemon, again to prevent browning.  Then brush the cut sides of the artichokes with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Grill until browned and softened.

For the aioli, mix the chopped garlic and salt together to form a paste.  Add to the mayonnaise with the juice and zest from one lemon.  Stir to combine and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serve the artichokes with slices of lemon from the remaining ½ of lemon and prepared aioli. 

P.S. Apparently pouring vinegar on your garden is not a good idea.  I managed to destroy all of the lettuce and most of the radishes I planted and only slightly damaged the fava beans and beets…and the ants are still there. 

 

Summer Sweatin'

If you live in the north east, you will know what I mean by this post’s title. Just when I was getting used to the idea of fall, and all the lovely fall flavored things I could start making – Wham! 95°+ with unbearable humidity hits us once again. And after nice cool breezes and earlier sunsets I was dreaming of cinnamon, apples, stews and braises. But all of those dreams were dashed away with this stifling close to summer.

So I changed my thought patterns and picked back up where I left off with summer grilling. I realized Joe and I had not made a lot of the staples we have in summers past. There has been no eggplant for instance this year. Maybe I was waiting for the perfect specimen from the farmer’s market, or maybe I simply overlooked it. There has also been no peach, plum or other stone fruit desserts which makes me feel like I have missed out on something this year.

I have neither a stone fruit dessert nor a grilled eggplant recipe for you today, instead I have lamb. And tzatziki. I love the combination of those two. I did make lamb skewers with yogurt sauce a few weeks ago, but didn’t share the recipe because I didn’t think much of it. In hind sight, however, the yogurt sauce went over well, and these lamb skewers are a bit different.

I had also made these for a friendly food competition last winter while sharing a small kitchen with three other competitors. Although no clear winner was ever determined (at least not to my knowledge) I like some of the reactions I got to this dish. Plus, tzatziki always seems so exotic that it can be a real treat to make at home. I have been hitting the yogurt sauce hard this year - if I could put tzatziki on breakfast cereal I would.

This recipe seems long, but it is really very simple and not too time consuming. They can look a bit phallic if you let them, but if you can overlook that, or reshape the meat to something that is more rated G, then I think you will really enjoy this recipe. Plus, you can get everything ready, then hand it to your grill master and stand in the slightly air conditioned comfort of your kitchen and watch as someone else sweats and cooks for you.

Lamb Koftas
As adapted from Jamie Oliver “Jamie at Home”

This recipe is easily adaptable to what you have on hand. It is important to let the meat rest after you have shaped it onto the skewers, and then to oil them prior to grilling. If you do not want to skewer them, simply shape them into long sausage shapes sans the skewer.

Serve this with pita or other flat bread, or as the topping to a salad as Jamie Oliver suggests in his recipe.

For the koftas
1 ½ lbs. ground lamb (or half lamb and half pork)
½ c. breadcrumbs
¼ c. whole milk
1 egg
½ c. shelled, and crushed pistachios
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. coriander seeds, crushed
½ tsp. fennel seeds
1 Tb fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1 Tb garlic, finely chopped (about one large clove)
2 Tb red onion, finely chopped
¼ tsp. red pepper flakes
Zest of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Yogurt Sauce
½ c. plain greek style yogurt
2 tsp. garlic, finely chopped
1 Tb. Red onion, finely chopped
3 Tb. Cucumber, cored, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tb. Fresh mint, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Red Onion garnish (optional)
½ red onion, sliced very thinly
Juice of 1 lemon
1 Tb white wine vinegar
Salt to taste

For the Tzatziki
Combine all the ingredients, and let rest in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

For the Red Onions
These make an interesting addition and since you are already chopping onion, I like to throw this is as well. Combine all the ingredients and toss thoroughly. Let stand at room temperature until ready to serve.

For the Koftas
Combine the breadcrumbs with the milk, adding more milk if necessary. You want the consistency to be that of a thick baby cereal. Then add ground lamb, egg, garlic, onion, spices, parsley and lemon zest and work together until everything is mixed well.

Shape the lamb mixture onto skewers into oblong shapes that are roughly equal in size. Once skewered, place into refrigerator to keep cool until ready to cook.

Prepare grill, and oil the rack. Just before cooking the skewers, oil each kofta to keep from sticking. Grill the skewers for about 4 minutes on each side, or until the meat is cooked all the way through.

Serve with warmed pita, fresh parsley, tzatziki, and red onions. Serves about 4.