The Second, Second Try

These are the kitchen items that I have lacked the past three days and had to make do with typical megan-ghetto-style inventions: a mortar, a food processer, a meat mallet, and a rolling pin.

Last night I made pork chops and zucchini with cilantro & cream. And scotch-er-oos. What? They were in my fancy cookbook. We'll not discuss the chops at this time. Remember, this blog is a happy place.

Christmas Eve was oven-roasted ribs with homemade dry rub and homemade barbecue sauce with fennel-roasted vegetables (the fennel was not homemade—God made the fennel. Credit where credit’s due.). I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking EWW Megan! Fennel!? Yucky little seeds! But those little seeds didn’t yuck it up at all. BTW, if you lack a mortar, do NOT try to crush these by putting them on a cutting board and whacking them with a hammer. This simply results in fennel seed bullets flying all over the kitchen. Instead, take your husband’s nice, heavy hammer, put the seeds in a Ziploc baggie, take them out onto your cement patio, place them on the concrete next to the cooler you forgot to put away from the late part of the summer when you had people over for a neighborhood cookout, and whack them with almost all your might. In order to turn fennel seeds into fennel seed dust without a mortar, you’ve gotta put some stank on it.

Fennel, in the raw, looks like this:

Pretty unimpressive, huh? Like celery that just couldn't cut it in show biz. But I didn't even use the leafy part, just the bulb at the bottom.

The recipe for the ribs, bbq sauce and rub are below. If you’re one of “those people” who thinks that a grill is the only legitimate way to cook ribs, you’re missing out. Big time.
 

Quickly, I have more observations:

1.       You have to reserve a nice sized block of mental fortitude just to push through the kitchen clean-up process after a long afternoon of cooking.

2.      A garbage bowl is sort of a necessity, so you don’t have to keep opening the garbage can. Just dump your junk in the bowl as you go, grinds, rinds, peels, seeds, skins, stalks and the like, and dump it all at the end. Mental note—compost this junk in the spring.

3.      Baked goods making sizzling sounds is almost never a good thing.

4.      Rise of the Planet of the Apes stunk. We watched it after dinner. No bueno.

My ribs before. In they go...weeeeee....

My ribs after:

My ribs after, after:

These are the fennel-roasted veggies. Pretty, huh?

Oven Roasted Ribs
The Rub:
6 tablespoons light or dark brown sugar
6 tablespoons paprika
3 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ teaspoons salt, plus more to sprinkle on the ribs
2 teaspoons liquid smoke (optional and I didn’t use it)
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon Dijon or yellow mustard. I used yellow.
4 slabs baby back ribs or 3 slabs spareribs
Barbecue sauce (recipe to follow)


The method:
Adjust one oven rack to the low position and remove the other rack. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Mix a dry rub of brown sugar, paprika, garlic powder, pepper and 1 ½ teaspoons salt in a bowl. If you’re using liquid smoke, mix it with the mustard.

Lay the ribs directly on the removed oven rack and lightly sprinkle them with the salt. Brush both sides of each slab with mustard, then sprinkle them with the dry rub.

Line a large rectangular cookie sheet or jelly roll pan with a large sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil, extending the foil out to make sure you catch all the drippings from the ribs. Put the rack with the ribs into the upper-middle position and place the foil-lined pan on the lower oven rack. Roast the ribs until fork-tender, 1 ½ to 2 hours for baby back ribs (which is what I made) or 2-3 hours or longer for spareribs.

Remove the ribs from the oven and gently brush on the barbecue sauce. Put the ribs back in the oven and turn on the broiler. Broil for 5 minutes per side.  Enjoy!

Homemade BBQ Sauce:
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
¼ c. red wine vinegar
¼ c. ketchup
¼ c. fresh lemon juice
¼ c. Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoonTabasco sauce to taste (while I consider our family chile heads, I cut the heat in half so my sons could eat it without guzzling water, so ½ tablespoon Tabasco)
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

The method:
Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Serve warm.

NOTEWORTHY:
1. Baby back slabs weigh about 1 1/2 lbs.
2. When you're seasoning the ribs, you can save yourself a big mess by putting a layer of newspaper under the rack they're sitting on. That way you can just roll it up and dump it. 
3. Don't worry that the oven rack will be hard to clean. Because the heat stays so low in the oven, nothing gets baked on tenaciously. The rack just needs warm, soapy water to loosen the clinging pieces.

The Very First Try

Thursday night’s cooking adventure was more than successful. Lemon posset is three simple ingredients. That’s all. And it tastes GOOD. I almost fell off my stool.

Remember my pledge to not skip ingredients because I don’t know what they are or they sound weird? That majorly came into play the very first night of cooking, because I had to drive into Lexington to go to Whole Foods for weird ingredients. Overall, my two days of cooking have been Uh. May. Zing. Happy second anniversary oven! Humbling things about learning to cook so far have included:

1.       Having to ask grocery clerks (out loud) where food items are that I don’t know how to pronounce

2.       Being told by a kindly grocer lady that green onions and scallions are the same thing

3.       Having to look up what “mince” means, precisely, on the internet. Apparently even Google is a better cook than me.

General observations include:

1.       It’s easy to spend a lot of money on cheese.

2.       It’s super easy to spend a lot of money on old cheese.

3.       There are a lot of varieties of parsley.

4.       A goodly many things can be cooked using olive oil.

First trip ever to Whole Foods. I asked the man behind the cheese counter (they have one) where the parmigiano-reggiano cheese was, and he didn’t even correct my sad pronunciation. That’s how nice the Whole Foods people are. I asked him for white cheddar and he told me they carry several aged, sharp, white cheeses, and I didn’t have to go with cheddar if I didn’t want to. While I don’t feel any particular loyalty to cheddar, it’s what The Best American Recipes 2003-2004 called for, so I was compelled. Then he asked me if I wanted a sample before I made up my mind. I was pretty certain I was going to buy it, but why turn down free cheese? He cut me a few cubes and told me that what was great about this particular cheese was that although it was aged, it was still very creamy and a little smoky. I nodded and chewed and tried to maintain an expression that suggested I knew what he was talking about. He was kind of staring at me and I realized that he wanted me to give him the go-ahead to cut the cheese. I kind of nodded and he in turn nodded to a shifty looking man that I hadn’t noticed was standing there and I swear he stepped out of the shadows of the deli at that exact moment. He lobbed me off 8 ounces of their finest extra sharp, white cheddar, and we are now the proud owners of cheese that is as old as two of our sons. This is what cheese that isn't dyed orange or come in plastic-wrapped single servings looks like...

It's not even symmetrical! Fabulous!

I got scallions and arugula and I actually saw a man cut my pork chops and then he wrapped them up in bona fide butcher paper! I am telling you that Rachel Ray in her finest hour did not feel half the chef I felt when I saw a huge man wielding a cleaver cut pork chops that were going to be cooked in MY KITCHEN! Check out my chops:

Below is the recipe for Olive Mill Pasta. The expression on my husband’s face when he ate the first bite made me want to dance and cry. His taste buds were shocked, I’m sure, and frankly I’m a little surprised they hadn’t already self destructed to avoid almost certain torture.

½ c. extra virgin olive oil

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

¼ lb. fingerling potatoes, peeled and cut into ¼ inch slices

2 medium-small onions, minced

About 5 ½ c. vegetable or chicken stock

14 oz. artisanal short-cut dried pasta, such as strozzapreit, gemelli, or penne (I used penne)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, peeled, squeezed of seeds & juice

8 fresh basil or arugula sprigs, leaves removed and slivered with stems slightly crushed

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 bunch scallions, trimmed, slant-cut into 1 inch lengths

3 oz freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (about 1 cup)

The method.

Heat ¼ cup of the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add the butter. When it melts, add the potatoes and onions. Cook, stirring gently, until they begin to turn golden. (How can you tell if a food that starts out golden in the first place has begun to turn golden in the pan? Beats me. I'm just learning. I just cooked them until they were a little smushy.)

Bring stock to a slow simmer in a medium saucepan.

Add the pasta to the sauté pan and stir gently. Lightly season with salt and pepper, tomatoes, arugula & garlic. Add 1 ½ cups of the stock. Cook, stirring gently, until nearly all the stock has been absorbed or evaporated. Add the scallions and another cup of stock and cook, stirring, adding additional stock from time to time so there is always some liquid in the pan, until the pasta is al dente, about 18 minutes. Remove any herb stems.

Fold in the cheese and 3 tablespoons of the remaining oil. Season with additional salt and pepper as needed. Transfer to warm soup or pasta bowls, taking care that the ingredients are well distributed. Drizzle the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over each bowl and serve.

And just for effect, here it is on my plate with my fancy arugula salad. You can clearly see that I didn't remember to take this picture until I'd already eaten half of my noodles, but you get the idea.

Voila! Oven-roasted ribs are on the menu for tomorrow night, along with fennel roasted vegetables. Buen provecho friends!

My Super-Important Goals

This will be a long post because it’s the first and I think it’s necessary to explain fully the long list of my cooking failures. We begin. I had two goals for last summer: to get a really, really good garden going, and to learn to be an exceptional cook. The latter was much more interesting to my husband. Bear in mind that he has to eat all of my sad cooking. I could put my hand to a lot of things that I want to be good at (embroidery, sewing, classical guitar, piano, oil painting, crafts in general), but I’ve decided to wait for glory to get started on those projects. On this side of eternity, it’s a showdown between me and the kitchen. And If I’m going to expend energy on something I want to master, my family should at least benefit from it (I use the word ‘benefit’ very loosely).

My goal can be divided into several categories, and includes several sub-goals, as exhibited below (lucky you, I’ve already mastered outlines).

I.  Cooking (meals)

            A.  Cooktop and oven

            B. Grilling

            C. Crockpot

                    1. Gourmet crockpot (we’ll see if this exists)

                    2. Throw-it-in-and-see-what-comes-out crockpot (this has traditionally been my m.o., but I don’t really know what things taste good together and blend well, so what has come out in the past has been pretty unsavory)

II. Baking
            A. Milling-this is so secondary to desserts
            B. Breads & desserts—this is massively important
III. Canning

A.      Salsa

B.      Vegetables I need in order to make salsa

C.      Herb mixes I need to make salsa better

D.      Canning really boils down to making salsa, better salsa, and lots of salsa

E.       Fruits, jellies & jams

IV. Gardening

A.      Vegetables required to make salsa

B.      Herbs required to make salsa better

C.      Herbs that are going to make cooking better, in general

D.      Stuff for salads. And salsa.

That’s it. That’s everything. Included in my arsenal of cooking weapons are two dinky knives that won’t really cut a tomato, a bread maker, an “oven”, a stovetop, a refrigerator (I’m scraping for weapons here), assorted forks and spoons, a slew of cookbooks that I’ve never opened and several Pampered Chef items I’m not sure how to use. I’ll stop now because I want to protect you from the sin of coveting.

Good cooking, as if I know, includes meal planning (I already do a limited version of this), spending more of my husband’s hard-earned money on fresh produce and  unprocessed food, carving out time to really, really cook and finally, convincing my family to eat it. That’s easy enough. I have an infant that doesn’t care what my cooking tastes like, two five-year-olds that don’t get choices, and a husband that has been mostly starved of decent food for a dozen years. Half the battle: check.  Also, I’m going for a methodical approach, mostly because I don’t know where to get started. So, page 1 of a random cookbook and I’ll work my way through. I pledge not to skip ingredients simply because I don’t know what they are or because they just seem weird. If I knew how to cook, this blog wouldn’t exist. Secondly, I pledge that my meals will include at least one side, which is an area where I’ve been extremely weak, unless you count canned corn. I don’t. I pledge to at least TRY to include a starter/appetizer a minimum of twice a week, or at least a fancy salad, and a dessert. These are high expectations I’m placing on myself.

Here’s a good time to mention one amazing weapon that my cooking arsenal includes, which is a set of Wolfgang Puck pots and pans that my husband purchased for me several years ago. My WP pots and pans are probably sooo tired of heating up canned Ragu. No more. You’ll reach your full potential, WP. Just you wait.

This blog is dedicated to chronicling my cooking successes. My cooking failures will live under the banner of "what happens in the kitchen, stays in the kitchen." This blog will be a happy place.

Page 1 of a random cookbook, which actually begins on page 3 of a cookbook that Doesn’t. Include. Pictures. (who would do that?) The Best American Recipes 2003-2004. Starter: Cheese Snips. Main Course: Olive Mill Pasta.  Side: Arugula Salad with Cherries. Dessert: Lemon Posset.

Holy. Cow. I mean it.

Pictures will be posted. You’ll be jealous. Are you ready? Here we go!

P.S. Because I know you’re curious, my goal of developing a fantastic garden didn’t happen this year, but come spring, salsa will be sprouting from every bud.