Dateline: April 14, 2020 Turkey Saltimbocca

I just couldn't face lamb leftovers tonight.  So, I dug through the freezer and found turkey tenderloins.  Now, what to do with then.....Saltimbocca!  Had the prosciutto, Bill got some fresh sage leaves, and I had the pounding devices.... so easy peasy.

Turkey Saltimbocca

Turkey tenderloin or turkey breast  sliced into slabs and then cut in half if need be.  Ultimately you want the slab to be able to be pounded out to the approximately size of either a whole or half piece of prosciutto.

Prosciutto, at least 4 oz of thinly sliced ham

fresh sage leaves, you will place at least 2 or 3 leaves on each flattened turkey piece

Cut each tenderloin longways at the tendon, your slice should be as close to the tendon as possible so that you can remove it without losing too much meat.  After slicing the tenderloin, cut around the fat, exposed end of the tendon, and turn the slice so that it is now tendon next to the cutting board.  Waggle a bit of it loose and holding the knife at an angle so that you can cut/scrap the flesh off of the tendon.  Examine the piece.  Is it thick enough to cut longways into 2 slabs and cut into 4 pieces.  If not thick enough, then cut into 2 pieces and hold to the side.  The other half of the tenderloin can now be sliced in half longways and split into 4 pieces.  You should have from a single whole turkey tenderloin about 6-8 pieces.

Plastic Wrap

Get a clean cutting board and place a sheet of plastic wrap that is large enough to fold and cover the turkey piece with enough room to allow it to expand when it is being pounded.  Sprinkle a few drops of water on the plastic wrap and put a turkey piece on it.  Sprinkle the turkey piece with a few drops of water as well.  Cover with the other half of the plastic wrap.  Using either a meat pounder, rolling pin, straight sided wine bottle, any implement that can apply some pressure to the turkey piece.  Gently whack it until it is flattened some what.  (Ultimately, you want the piece of turkey to end up about 1/4 inch, but not in this first whacking.)

Lift up the top part of plastic and place 2 - 3 sages leaves on the raw turkey and cover with a piece of prosciutto.  Cover with plastic wrap again and pound to that 1/4 inch thickness.  This is to make sure that the prosciutto adheres to the meat without resorting to toothpicks.  I hate toothpicks in food.

Remove the turkey cutlet from the plastic wrap and put on a plate.  I used some parchment paper between cutlets to keep them from sticking to each other.

Continue on until all of the turkey pieces are pounded and on the plate.

The Cook

3-4 cloves of garlic, either halved or whole depending on their size and your taste for garlic

red pepper flakes

1 T chopped shallot

peeled and chopped rind of 1/2 lemon

white wine 

juice of 1/2 lemon.

1 T butter

Heat a large frying pan and add in some olive oil.  To the pan add several sage leaves and the halved cloves of garlic and some hot pepper flakes.  Saute these until the garlic is lightly browned and the sage leaves are crispy.  Remove from the pan and hold.

Add a couple of the turkey cutlets prosciutto side down into the hot pan.  Lightly salt and pepper the side of the turkey that is face up in the pan now.  Saute until lightly browned and flip over for a short amount of time.  Just enough to almost cook it through.  Remove from the pan and hold on a clean plate.  Continue with the balance of the cutlets.  

After all the cutlets have been cooked, add the shallots to the pan and cook until translucent.  Deglaze the pan with a slug of white wine, not too much, loosen up the browned bits.  Reduce the wine until there are just a slight glaze on the shallots.  Add the lemon juice and a another slug of wine.  Reduce slightly, taste.  Does it need anything?  Add salt, more juice, wine, chicken stock, whatever. Add butter to the pan and swirl to incorporate into the sauce.

Put the cutlets back into the pan and heat them through and baste with the sauce.  Serve.

I made absurdly addictive asparagus to go with the saltimbocca and a delightful French St. Emilion.  Delicious on all counts.

Dateline: April 12, 2020 Lamb bone's connected to the.... oops nothing else

I had a leg of lamb I managed to score from Wegman's.  What a boon to Brooklyn that store is.  Wide aisles, nice lighting and a BAR upstairs!  Someone was thinking when they were designing this store.

Marinade

1 large preserved lemon, peel, pulp, seeds and some of the brine

7 cloves of garlic peeled

3 small twigs of rosemary, stripped from stem

handful of fresh parsley

hot pepper flakes

olive oil

Blend all together until it makes a loose dressing.  Taste, if not what you want, doctor it up to your liking.

Choose a large covered pan that can fit the lamb comfortably in it without too much left over space.  Cut deep slits all over the lamb and slather on the marinade and poking it down into all the slits and nooks and crannies.  My leg came with a nice fat cap and was semi-boned and tied.  I didn't want to have to tie it up again, so I cut the slits around the strings and put it into the cavity where the femur used to be.  Sprinkle with ground pepper, no salt at this point, the lemons and brine will take care of that.

Let marinate for a couple of hours, or over night.

The Cook

Preheat oven to 300° F and put the covered lamb into the pot.  Add some white wine.  If you want, you can raise the lamb up on a rack or a bed of thickly sliced onions.  Check on it in about 1.5 hours.  I like my lamb leg well done, but lamb chops medium rare.  Don't be a hater.

white wine and/or chicken stock

2 large onions cut into 1/2" slices
2 twigs of rosemary

Add onions and rosemary to the pot now

Add more liquid if necessary.  Taste to see if you need any salt or other seasonings.  Cover again, and let ride for another hour or so.  Timing is until the leg is easily pierced with a fork without resistance.  

Check liquid level and remove lid, increase temp to 500° F to crisp up outside fat.  Alternately, you could blow torch it as well if you didn't want to worry about the oven.  You could also brown the top of the lamb at the outset of the cooking process.  Whatever floats your boat.

Remove the lamb when it is done and set aside tented with foil.  De-fat the liquid that is in the pan.  A fat separator works great here.  Leave the onions in the pan and ladle out the liquid.  After defatting return clarified liquid to the onions and blitz with an immersion blender until smooth.  This sauce will not be a typical brown color, it is kind of a riff on a soubise, but instead of a bechamel you are using the onions as a thickening agent.

I made brussel sprouts that I braised with pancetta cubes and onions before deglazing with chicken stock and a dash of white wine.

Then there were the mashed potatoes.  OMG, I steamed the potato chunks in the instant pot, then riced the cooked potatoes back into the cleaned instant pot and added butter, cream, and some water.  These were excellent mashers, if I say so myself.  Very rich, but really had a potato flavor that was not all watered down.

Nota Bene:

This is not my usual lamb recipe.  It is just something I thought about trying and improvised.  The meat had really good flavor, but as Bill pointed out it was a tad dry and he is not a big fan of lemon flavor.  I, on the other hand, really like lemon and thought that it might end up being too lemony.  Thankfully, that was not the case.  The sauce helped with the dryness and was not overly lemon flavored.  Bill even liked the brussel sprouts!

What would I do differently next time?  I would probably use less brine and less rosemary.

Dateline: April 7, 2020 Fridge inspection

I do like stir fry dishes, they are quick, very flavorful and damn tasty.

In the fridge I had

1 sweet pepper
1/2 head of cabbage
a bunch of collard greens
cauliflower
broccoli
celery
green beans

In pantry I had

wood ear mushrooms
onions
pixian paste
dark soy
light soy
chinese black vinegar
shaoxing cooking wine
ginger
garlic
chili crisp, optional

Chopped all the veggies into bitesize pieces, soaked and chop the mushrooms and prepped, in little bowls,

1 inch peeled ginger piece, julienned
2 thinly sliced garlic cloves
1-2 T pixian paste
1 C chicken stock or water

Heat that wok or big fry pan with 1-2 T of oil up until it is hot.  Add ginger shreds then all chopped veggies including onions and mushrooms.  Stir fry for a few minutes to wilt veggies and give off their water.  Add the sliced garlic, stir into veggies.

Add pixian paste, a splash of dark soy, for color, a splash of light soy, for salt, a glug of shaoxing wine and a glug of the vinegar.

Taste for balance.  If veggies are still too crunchy, add a bit of the chicken stock and cover until veggies are a texture you like.

Add chili crisp, if wanted and serve over rice.  Depending on your veggie load, you may need to adjust the amount of liquids added so as not to braise the veggies.

Dateline: April 6, 2020 Achari Chicken

This is one of my very favorite Indian dishes.  It is also known as chicken with pickling spices.

There are 3 distinct steps in this recipe, but each is simple once you have set out all of your various spices.

Marinade

1 lb or so chicken parts.  (I think dark meat works better)

1/2 t salt

1/2 t tumeric

1 t Kashmiri chili powder

1 t ginger/garlic paste  (equal parts finely minced garlic and ginger)

1/2 c yogurt, whipped with a fork

Combine all ingredients after chicken until well blended. Add chicken parts and mix well and marinate for at least 1 hour.

Spice Paste

1 t coriander seeds

1 t cumin seeds

1/2 t mustard seeds

1/2 fenegreek seeds

1/4 t nigella or black onion seeds

Toast in a dry skillet until fragrant, let cook and grind into a powder and set aside

Cooking

3 T neutral oil or ghee

1 large onion sliced

Cook in a pan (arge enough to hold onions AND chicken with room to spare) until brown and beginning to crisp up.  Go longer than you think, it is the brown-ness that gives depth to the finished product.

Add to browned onions

handful of curry leaves

1 T garlic/ginger paste

1/2 t tumeric

Now add chicken and stir in a small can of diced tomatoes (14 oz, max for 1 lb chicken).  Cover and cook on lower heat until chicken is semi-tender.  Uncover cook until the oil separates.

Add to chicken

1/2 t salt

the reserved spice powder

2.5 t Kashmiri chili powder

handful of chopped cilantro

handful of chopped mint leaves

about 2 c of water or chicken stock

Simmer until the chicken is tender and soft.  Add in either 1 t amchur powder or juice of 1 lemon

Serve with rice and a side vegetable.  

This will quickly become your go to Indian dish.  Once you have all the spices, it is very easy to make and doubles nicely as well.  Only caution is to taste your Kashmiri chili powder first, sometimes it is quite mild, other times very spicy.  If yours happens to be spice, cut back on it to your spice level, if you are a chili head, hey, go for it, just don't overwhelm the other spices.  This should have a kick, but also a well rounded undertone of sour and savory flavors.

Dateline: April 5, 2020 Salmon with onions and mushrooms

I adore salmon, almost in any way it's prepared.  Lately, I have been pan searing it with either cajun spices, blackening spice, lemon pepper, or just plain salt and pepper.

The key to getting luscious silky salmon is to not over cook it.  I have it down by now, and if I am unsure, I use an instant thermometer into the thickest part of the flesh and look for about 122-125 deg F.  It will carry over and get up to about 128-130 which is perfectly medium rare.  Taking the salmon out at about 122 ensures that the proteins in the flesh don't weep out and turn milky and chunky.  Yeech.

I prepped the onions and sauteed them after cooking the mushrooms.  I deglazed with some white wine and chicken stock and declared dinner ready.

I opened a nice bottle of carignane, and enjoyed the meal

Dateline: April 3, 2020 Chicken Pot no Pie

I had made some chicken stock the other day and was looking to give some of it to neighbors, when it became clear that they had all left for places outside of NYC!  So sad, with so many containers of stock too!

I took some of the lemon chicken from the other night along with the usual veggies for a stew: carrots, celery, onions, some collard greens, potatoes and the veggies from the roasted chicken.  I sweated the onions a bit, added garlic, salt, dried shallots, and lemon pepper.  Into the pot went the rest of the veggies and after they had wilted a bit, I deglazed with some white wine.  I reduced that and added chicken stock and chopped chicken. Put the lid on and let it bubble away.  I realized I didn't add any flour to the pan in order to thicken the liquid, it is a pot pie after all.  I took about 2 t of soft butter and 2 t of flour and mashed them together to create beurre manie.  I added bits of it to the pot and, voila, beautiful creamy surroundings for the veggies and meat.

Dateline: April 2, 2020 Lemon Chicken

I love roasting a chicken.  Especially now with a convection oven.  The skin comes out cracking and the flavor is divine.

I stumbled on a way to make chicken using preserved lemons, courtesy of Rich.  The pulp is scraped out and saved and the rind is cut up into 8 pieces.  Each piece goes under the skin of the chicken.  2 on each side of the breast, one each on the thigh and leg.  Oil the skin and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  (Don't neglect to salt and pepper the cavity.)   I usually don't truss a bird that isn't going to be on a rotisserie, so this babe is splayed out in the photo.

I took the preserved lemon pulp, along with 2 cloves of honey fermented garlic, olive oil, and some hot honey and blitzed it in a processor.  I tasted it, added some more salt and pepper and olive oil and
rubbed it all over a bunch of veggies that were going to be the rack that the chicken roasted on.

Here is the final product

You can see the triangles of the preserved lemon under the skin.  It was perfect in all ways possible!  So sorry to see that finished.

Here are the finished bed of veggies, you can pick out the potatoes, cauliflower, and peppers.  Perfectly tender, slightly lemony, and just what the doctor order in this dire times.

Dateline: March 30, 2020 Instant pot lasagna

In these strange, strange times of pandemic and other weird stuff, I have re-found my blog and am going to try to get back into this.

With home self-isolation, I now have time to post things up with photos and commentary.

Let's start with March 30, 2020.

We were going to have a zoom lunch with Anna and Andy and their posse.  They live in England, so it was the only way to see them and get to talk to them and their friends.  The proposed menu was italian.

I have a couple of new toys, 2 instant pots, which I really like.  I decided to make lasagna in the 8 qt pot so I could use the air-fryer lid to brown the top after it cooked.

I used Ivy Manning's instant pot lasagna recipe and it worked out perfectly.  The recipe is available on line or in the cookbook, Instant Pot Italian.

The recipe is a good one.  I did have a bit of leakage of the tomato sauce that was easily stopped by a double layer of paper towels under a layer of foil on the bottom.  The top was layered with foil as well.  Pressure cooked for the recommended time, actually, a bit longer as it was a bigger spring form pan.

The texture was excellent and it held together really well.  It made a tremendous amount for 2 people, but we managed to eat it all over a couple of days.  

Dateline: March 28, 2020 Marinara and Turkish Pizza

I can't recall why I made marinara, perhaps it was in anticipation of a Wegman's order that was scheduled to arrive this day!  I was browsing through the fridge and decided to use the half onions, shredded carrots, dying celery and canned tomatoes and make a marinara sauce that could stand up to pizza or pasta.  I followed up this by making Turkish pizza, lahmacun.  A new taste treat for me.

                                               

Lahmacun is easy and very tasty.  The dough was very forgiving and crisped up nicely on a pizza stone.  The dough was rolled very thin, perhaps too thin as it made it very difficult to manipulate on a peel and on the stone.  Had to resort to parchment paper and a giant spatula.

I made these with lamb as I had ordered 2 lbs of ground lamb earlier and needed to use it up. I didn't have any onions so I cut some chives from the 2 bunches that survived the winter on the terrace.  It was worthy of additional attempts at making the dough behave better.

Dateline: March 25, 2020. Let them eat bread and soup

I had prepped my sourdough starter 2 days ago, mixed my autolysed flour and followed the wonderful New York Times Cooking How to Make Sourdough

If you follow the guide exactly, you will made absolutely dynamite bread.  Yes, it will take 3+ days to get a loaf, but, oh, what a loaf it will be.  Tangy, moist, fabulous crumb and lots of big air holes throughout the loaf.

Guess who made this loaf?

Dinner this night was not so inspired.  I blitzed the bean on bean with an immersion blender and turned it into soup and made "broccoli" croutons by roasting the broccoli until very crispy and dark.  It really made the soup a bit more upscale!