cooking

Pork Roll

February 6, 2013

Hai, I made a pork roll, and get this, the insides were tastier than the skin! I know, if I hadn’t made it, I would also have thought I were crazypants, too.
I bought a whole pork belly and decided to try a stuffed pork roll. Stuffed it with some shallots and a carrot, I think.

Here’s what my slicing skeelz gave:

A 6-story pork high rise. The piece I used for the pork was just a smidge under a pound. So close.

Cracked open one of my noble Trappist ale home brews (you could use any Belgian beer), sliced the meat side up a bit, and poured the beer into a dish so it marinated the meat-side of the pork.

After a few hours, I trussed it up with the stuffing ingredients and roasted it for a few more hours.

Done! Now enjoy fatty-licious pork. Belgian-beer marinades go really, REALLY well with pork. So doing that again in the future.

Giovanni Rana Pastas & Sauces – Review & Giveaway

February 3, 2013

cooking, free stuff, Italian, pasta, pizza, review, supermarket

17 Comments

Giovanni Rana sent me some pastas and sauces to try that they are selling in local supermarkets. You can find them at ShopRite in the Albany/Capitol Region area. I’ve tucked into a few of these products, and so far, I’m digging them. Giovanni Rana is also going to give one reader 4 pastas and one sauce to try! See the many ways I’ve eaten their products below, or skip to the end to see how to enter. The artichoke ravioli go for $4.99 for 12 oz, which is a pretty fair deal for them. The ravioli skins were pliable, and fairly thin, although they still had a decent tooth to the texture. If you roll your own pasta, imagine this on the 2nd or 3rd from thinnest setting. There was also a noticeable semolina flavor from the pasta, too.

Albany John had made some of his own marinara sauce, so that’s the sauce you see above. The artichoke flavors came out quite well – the filling itself didn’t disintegrate into the sauce when I cut into them with a fork, but it wasn’t super firm or dry, either. They also were easy to boil and none of them broke while cooking.

The next ravioli I tried were the Cheese Forte, which was a sharp cheese blend of cheeses (including parm reg). It went well with Albany John’s smoked salmon cream sauce (cream sauce cheat: he dissolves a bit of cream cheese with chicken broth so it’s a little tangy, but not too rich as a sauce base).

The cheese was pretty pronounced and sharp, held up well to the strong flavors of Albany John’s sauce. I’m really digging the ravioli as an alternative to homemade ravioli. I like this Giovanni Rana ravioli over other refrigerated pastas like Buitoni (which is thicker/tougher-skinned and the fillings are dryer in comparison). It’s not the same as my homemade ravioli, but I’d probably pick up a baggie if it were late and I was in OMG-need-ravioli-now mode, because it’s pretty close.

The pesto sauce has been my favorite so far! What is not to love about pesto in the winter? It’s rich, but also bright! Albany John mixed some sweet onions and garlic with the pesto and tossed it with their Fettuccine, which, okay, I was really jealous about because this is the thickness and width that I want my homemade pasta to be, but for some reason I just can’t get it like this.

The pesto sauce is going to be the sauce one lucky reader gets to try! (And you have to tell me what you thought ) For some reason I kept thinking that this would make an awesome/impressive kind of Valentine’s day dinner if you didn’t want to go out to eat, weren’t the most confident in your kitchen skills, but wanted something satisfying for you and your dinner date. Wow, that is kind of oddly specific. Or maybe pesto just makes me all sorts of mushy and romantic.

Okay, so you know what the marinara sauce is good for? Can you guess? It’s another one of my loves.

Yes, pizza! Haha! Shape this baby into a heart and now you’ve got my Valentine’s day attention. I made Kenji’s Foolproof Pan Pizza dough from the Pizza Lab at Serious Eats, and I totally forgot to make a pizza sauce! Ahhh! And Albany John is not as much a fan of white pizzas as I am. I was scouring my pantries and fridge to see what I could come up with in a pinch, and… sweet! I was gonna repurpose this marinara sauce! It’s got sun-dried tomatoes in the sauce, so there’s a little sweetness in there, and since it’s in a plastic container there’s no tinniness to it. It’s a bit on the thick side, so if I were going to use it with pasta, I’d probably reserve some of the cooking water to thin it out a bit.

The dough above is in a 10″ cast iron pan, and I used about 2 tablespoons of marinara sauce.

It was a kalamata olive pizza kind of night in our house.

Baked! The sauce was a nice supporting character in the pizza play that went into my mouth. Overall, I think I’m not so much a pan-pizza kind of gal, preferring thin crusts over thick and poofy ones, although this one was not the least bit dense, even though I subbed in about a half cup of whole wheat flour.
Interior shot of the pizza – the hole structure in the dough made for a soft and pliable crust. The bottom of the crust crisped up nicely. Cooked in a cast iron, this was like a grown up Pizza Hut pie. I think it would be even better rolled out thinly and tossed on a stone, though, if you’re more into thin crusts like I am.

So, would you like to try some of Giovanni Rana’s pastas and a pesto sauce? If so, why don’t you leave a comment and tell me what your plans are for Valentine’s day.
I’ll start: Going to an anti-Valentine’s day celebration of some sort: show your love every day, not just one day a year!

(US entries only, comments close Wednesday, February 6th)

Stuffed Grape Leaves

January 27, 2013

beef, cooking, crock pot, frugal, recipe

1 Comment

Roma smells amazing. Every time I’m in there I want to order one of every deli meat, all of the cheeses, and tons of olives. They have a bunch of Middle Eastern groceries, and I picked up 2 lbs of grape leaves for $5.25! Not too bad! This was about 75 or more leaves, some were bigger than others, but overall this was a great price. The supermarkets charge about the same for less grape leaves.

This time I decided I wanted to try making stuffed grape leaves in my crock pot. I put slices of lemon in between the layers, which added a different sort of bitterness to the grape leaves that made them interesting in addition to the tartness of the lemon juice. I shared a bunch of these with some friends (well, those that I managed to wrangle out of Albany John’s clutches – hot damn, that man loves stuffed grape leaves, especially these), and the overall verdict was that they were quite tasty and more would be welcome at any time.

I added a bit of mint to the mix, too, which Roma also sells.

Make these vegetarian by leaving the meat out. I think I will do that the next time.

Crock Pot Stuffed Grape Leaves Recipe:
1 C brown rice
3/4 lb ground meat (I used a combo of veal & beef)
2 onions, minced
Olive oil
2 T dried mint leaves
3-4 lemons
50 Grape leaves

Sautee minced onions in olive oil until firm but translucent. Remove & let cool in a bowl.

Once cooled, add rice, ground meat, and mint leaves.

Rinse the grape leaves well (until water runs clear). Put about 1-2 teaspoons of filling in each leaf and roll up like a little burrito.

Snugly fill a layer in your crock pot. Once full, cover that layer with grape leaves & lemon slices and juice of 1/2 lemon. Repeat until you are out of grape leaves! Pack them tightly – put a plate in the crock pot and weigh it down, then add another weight on top of the crock pot lid, otherwise the rice may expand and break the grape leaf skin. Cook 3-4 hours on low heat.

Hungarian Night

January 17, 2013

club, cooking

Homemade Orecchiette

October 12, 2012

cooking, frugal, pasta

4 Comments

I love shaped pastas. They’re usually on the thicker side, and … oh, I don’t know. There’s just something so fun about them! I like making my own pasta, but I wanted to try making something shaped, something you don’t need a pasta roller for. Folks, say hello to orecchiette, the ear shaped pasta! Although I think they look more like little seashells.

I got the recipe from The Blender. It rocks. SO much semolina flavor, and a really pleasantly thick & chewy (but not tough!) texture.

They also weren’t kidding when they said the dough needs to be stiff and not too moist. This first batch I made had a bit too much water in it, so they took a while to dry & were a bit more pliable than they should have been (some got indentations from the drying racks). The next batch I made with less water came out fantastically. But even the first batch yielded some happy results.

I was curious about how shaped fresh pasta would hold up when boiling it. Would it lose shape & just turn into dough plops? Turns out they keep their shape pretty well. And they really only needed about 2 minutes of cooking time! So fast!

After a few batted eye lashes, Albany John made me a stellar sauce for the pasta. Bacon, blue cheese, onion, and some greenery. So savory-licious! Toss in some cream & left over pasta water for a sauce.

This sauce was great with orecchiette. Albany John thought it was a little too saucy & wanted to cook it down more, but I thought it was a great way to use the orecchiette to pick up extra flavor.

If you’d like an easy way to make pasta at home, orecchiette is the way to go. All you need is all purpose flour, semolina flour, a little salt, and some water – that’s it! No eggs, dairy, or fat needed, and you just pinch off a bit and roll it over one of your fingers to shape it. And seriously, that semolina flavor is awesome. I picked up my semolina flour from the Co-Op for something like $0.65/lb.

Granola Bars

April 30, 2012

cooking, frugal

1 Comment

Hey Kids, let’s make some granola bars! It is super freaking easy! Just toss a few handfuls of things you like together, bind with some melted coconut oil & a smidge of honey, and you’re all set! I’ve been off my cookies lately, but still craving some sweet & fatty things. Enter, the granola bar.

This iteration was: pepitas & cacao nibs tossed in a pan to toast up for a minute. Probably about 3 handfuls of pepitas and one small handful of cacao nibs.

Then toss them with some rolled oats and ground flax seeds, and some chopped up cranberries.

I had some cashew & almond flours, so I tossed in a handful of them, too. Use maybe 1/4 C of coconut oil for all of this. Press it in a pan and let it sit in the frige.

Let it sit in the fridge for at least half an hour before cutting up.

Enjoy with some yogurt. Mmm! I wrapped the rest of mine up to snack on throughout the week. Do you have any favorite granola combinations?

Easter

April 10, 2012

beef, Chicken, cooking, fried, holiday, potatoes

2 Comments

ShopRite had beef rib roasts on sale for Easter – $4.88/lb with the card (so this 5+ lb roast was <$30)! I got a bunch of groceries delivered to my door using their Shop at Home program, oh man do I love it. I'd ordered a 3 lb roast, but got a 5.5 pounder, so I decided to volunteer it for Easter dinner. And dry roast it. (Thanks for the advice, tweeps!)
Rib roast pre-fridge. I came into ownership of a small humidity controlled wine fridge. I’ve mostly got it stocked with lychee juice & coconut water, so I used the bottom half of it to dry out the roast. Yay, no funky flavors getting picked up! It sat for about 1.5 days before…
Salting. The exterior was dry, so I had to use a touch of oil to coat it was kosher salt. Then I tried using the prime rib recipe from Serious Eats. Low and slow for a few hours until it reaches 120F, rest, then blast at 500F for 15 minutes.

I got it to about 115/120 on my non-instant thermometer. Wrapped it up, then headed to my Mom’s for Easter.
We blasted it in her oven. The exterior looks mighty nice.
BUT EPIC FAIL. IT’S A MEDIUM-WELL (at best) ROASTED BEAST. :< Not the medium rare I was shooting for. So much sadness. Le sigh.

So much room for error:
Too much resting time.
Too much time being blasted in the oven before carving.

Not using an instant thermometer
English heritage coming through for cooking meat

Slightly less grey in the center. Sigh. My Mom was way too nice and kept telling me I did a good job with it, and that it looked very good. Man, talk about a Mother’s love, hunh? The only good aspect of this roast were the crispy bits of fat on the outside. You can never go wrong with crispy fat.

Interestingly enough, most of my mom’s guests were Hindi or vegan/vegetarian, so not too many people other than Albany John & my mom had to suffer through the roast. Although some griping about the grossness of meat was had. And I got to eat some awesome tandoori chicken & egg masala curry. It was a ridiculous amount of food for our group, and so tasty.

My mom made super fluffy mashed potatoes, and some tasty fried chicken wings. Nom! For dessert she made lemon meringue pie – reminded me of what Nana would have made.

Sausage Making

March 5, 2012

charcute, cooking, local, pork, recommendations, sausage

6 Comments

Last Monday I went to take Christian Noe’s (of Nighthawks Kitchen) class on sausage making that the Arts Center in downtown Troy, NY. The next class is May 23rd, 2012, and you should totally sign up. It’s a really informative session for only $38! They’re in the evening, so if you’re a bit on the later side of things like me, it’s perfect!

We made three kinds of sausage – Italian, chorizo, and bratwurst.

Christian starts off with a quick intro into sausage making, and soon starts into chopping some lightly frozen bits of pork shoulder.
Then it’s placed into a grinder – two grinders are used. The big, sexy one; and the Kitchenaid attachment.
Everyone in the class jumps in to grind meat! Unsurprisingly, the Kitchenaid is a little slower than the big pro grinder, but gets the job done just as nicely.
However, now I want a big pro grinder for sausage. I wanted to take this class partially to see if I wanted to sink the dough into buying sausage making equipment, since I’ve also got a love of curing meats as well. And now it seems Christian’s class has given me a newfound sausage-making lust, too.
Christian’s class is really low-key and easy to understand. Very conversational, and you get a packet of the recipes you make and some handy tips & pointers, plus local shops to buy your sausage-making apparati.
The spices were already portioned out on plates, and easily mixed in with the meats.
I think this was the bratwurst.
And then the sausage-stuffing attachment goes on the Kitchenaid.
Meats are put into stuffers – there’s also a pro stuffer Nighthawks uses for their sausages that handles 5 lbs at a time. Want. WANT.
But you know what you need to stuff sausages?

Casings, my friend. You need lots of casings to stuff sausages with! These are quite hardy and easy to rinse out. Don’t fear tearing them.

You see that plate in the foreground?
This one here? It’s sausage patties! You can grill up some sausage meat to see how the flavors are and modify accordingly, if you so choose. You you can just make patties, but come on… who doesn’t love the snap of a naturally cased sausage?

Sausage stuffing is quite a breeze with the big pro stuffer. Tip: Watering your equipment and tables is a good idea. It helps keep everything lubricated and moving quickly.
You can poke holes with a pin or small poker to get air pockets out. Don’t use a fork – too big.
Don’t twist yet – just make one bit roll of sausage before you make links.
The Kitchenaid stuffer was more finicky than the pro-stuffer. It took a lot more force and time, but if you’ve already got a Kitchenaid at home, this will probably do you just fine. I don’t have a Kitchenaid at home, and don’t see myself buying it purely for sausage-making needs. Check out those beautiful chorizo & Italian links! It’s really easy to form links – just twist every other portion of them. The casings hold very quickly, so even when they’re cut, they hold their shape.
He’s got a knife!! Hehe, that’s just a part of the air pricker contraption.
Then it was time for… sampling! These bratwursts were simmered with lots of onions and beer. Loooove.
Linky love.
This might be some of the best chorizo I’ve ever had. Crazy to know it was made within 2 hours! So fresh, so good. I don’t know if I can go back to store-bought. Also, not crazy-greasy like a lot of other chorizo I’ve had in my day.
The night ends with us sampling all of the sausages, and taking some home as well. Albany John was quite a happy dude that night!

I’m also a happy gal – sausage making is easy and relatively frugal. I can’t wait to get my hands on hands on some gear and start making sausages!

HAM! (or maybe Canadian bacon)

January 22, 2012

cooking, pork, smoked

4 Comments

Every time I cure some meat, I think of Jon in Albany. Because he gave me 8 oz of curing pink death salt. When you only use 1/4 tsp at a time, that is a LOT of curing salt.

I cured some pork loin I picked up at Roma Importing in Latham. Let it go for at least 5 days in a brine from Ruhlman, and it’s good to go! The gist of it is 1 gallon of water, 1/4 tsp pink curing salt, 1 1/2 c kosher salt, 1/2 c sugar (uh, don’t quote me on those salt & sugar measurements… it’s probably wrong). And then you can toss in whatever seasonings you want. I tossed in a half a head of garlic cloves and that was about it. Maybe some onion powder. Next time I’ll add in more… stuff.

But smoked over some maple wood chip bits and you get yourself a fine piece of cured, meaty goodness. This was a pork loin, so it was a fairly lean cut of meat to begin with. And I may have over smoked it a tad in the heat, so it’s drier than I’d like it to be, but Albany John keeps telling me that it’s really not as dry as I think it is.

Either way, great way to use up some meat (I picked this up for $3.99/lb on sale at Roma’s – their sale meats are still better quality than the grocery store any day of the week). For some reason I find cured meats more satisfying in smaller quantities, so it’s a good way to keep meat consumption down. I had some bread leftover and made a pretty bangin’ grilled cheese and ham sandwich (it takes me, like, 30 minutes because I keep the pan over low heat, otherwise I burn the bread, but it is so golden and delicious it is worth the wait). And Albany John’s been using some bits in omelettes.

Oh, I’ve also been back on a dessert kick at nights lately. Toasted pecans and cacao nibs were the dessert de nuit.

AlbanyJohnsgiving

January 17, 2012

baking, cooking, dessert, holiday, turkey

—Albany Eats!

Documenting the foodings of a local. With a grain of salt.

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