Winner, Winner...

...Salmon Dinner!

Cold weather and the over abundance of noise that passes for news nowadays has lately opened my world to a welcome retreat to the kitchen.

After group and the running of Friday errands I fed my sourdough starter children and made a third batch for a possible experimental bake over the weekend.

There was a dozen of my signature blueberry muffins to bake followed by our weekly imported salmon; pan-seared with rice pilaf and sautéed spinach.  Remind me to extol sometime about the virtues of browned butter sauté. 

A word about the muffins.

Growing-up, blueberries were a rare seasonal item and rarer still in our household. Likely a consequence of scarcity-induced pricing. 

In case you missed it, blueberries nowadays are available year-round as a result of advances in Peruvian agriculture. And these blueberries grown at altitude in the Andes are mutant things of fruity deliciousness..

Anyway, raising a toast to global supply chains and 2-3 extra minutes of daylight delivered with every sunrise. 

 

Gentlemen - Start Your Ovens

When the going gets tough;

The tough bake stuff.

During the recent cold snap we had the wood stove operating most of the day every day.  It actually does a reasonably good job of heating the west half of the house and sending heat up the stairwell to take the chill out of the second floor.  Nevertheless, as a consequence of thermostat placement the east side of the house (laundry, powder room and kitchen) remains moderately cooler.

When that happens more often than not we wear fleece and ignore it.  Otherwise, a partial solution is either to do laundry on that day and/or come-up with an excuse to use the kitchen gas range as the operation of the appliances serve to impart some additional heat to the space they occupy.

It's not a huge deal and even though in its 22nd year the house is becoming slightly more "leaky" in keeping the cold out and the heat in; the natural passive solar advantages of old-school farmhouse architecture including lots of tall windows to capture sunny winter daylight when Old Sol is low on the horizon really does work.  Don't let anybody tell you that settlers hundreds of years ago were witless about maximizing solar power in the winter and shade in the summer.  But I digress.

About the baking, I located the last of the Irish soda bread mix (imported from the land of my forebears) in the pantry and decided to bake a loaf.  Mainly for breakfast with a steaming cuppa joe on a cold winter morning.  I amped-it-up with some added cane sugar and a double fistful of dried cranberries (reconstituted).  This was the last of the Irish bread mixes and the last of the cranberries from the pantry imparting a satisfying feeling of inventory turnover.

Anyway,  a good use of a cold and sunny winter day.  And the results were pretty tasty.

Didn't last to the end of the week....

 

   

Winner, Winner...

....Christmas Chicken Dinner!  

One of our all-time fave repasts.

Scored a five pound Amish chicken, humanely-raised and hormone-free.  

Stuffed with homemade dressing made last evening.  Popped it into the oven on the Convection Roast setting at 12:30 PM.  Another bonus crock of additional dressing and a humongous yam anointed in bacon drippings went in 45 minutes later.

Finished everything by 3 PM, including pan dripping gravy and whole kernel sweet corn from the garden.   

Dished-up by 3:30 PM.

Pretty good chow if you can get it.

Merry Christmas! 

Game Day Pizza

 

After feeding my sourdough starters a couple days ago it occurred to me to me to make pizza dough - four 320g balls.

Froze two (an experiment) and proofed the other two for a halftime pie and one more for snacking this week.

At 15F and falling the outdoor brick oven is a non starter.  Nevertheless, the bottom convection oven on the new GE range will get up to 550F and bake a pie on the pizza stone in 10 minutes, give or take.

From bottom up: homemade hand-tossed sourdough crust, Rao’s imported Italian pizza sauce, locally-sourced whole milk mozz, topped with Becco’s Italian sausage, fresh shrooms, black olives, fresh basil from Columbia and a drizzle of EVO.

Behold the CSMO - aka the Milwaukee Special.

Nixon for the DAGGER.

The Bears still suck...
 

Stir Fry

Sometimes you just have to make stir fry.  It takes a wee bit of prep work but comes-together in its final form in a matter of minutes.  Serve with rice or udon noodles and top with crispy Asian noodles.  Low fat, lots of veggies and generally healthy if you skip an egg roll course.

We like shrimp but tonight it's boneless, skinless chicken breast.

Get your wok on the stove top with some oil heating and assemble all of your ingredients. 

Mise en place; starting a nine o'clock, stock, crispy noodles, chicken (sliced in thin strips), rice, diced green scallions, onions, carrots, bok choy (coarsely chopped), sugar snap pea pods, broccoli, water chestnuts (sliced) and oyster mushrooms....

Start your onions and garlic - soften, don't burn.  Add carrots....

Then your chicken.

Give it a stir and toss in the mushrooms and veggies.

Add chicken stock followed by a slurry of corn starch to thicken.

Serve on white, basmati rice topped with crispy noodles and chopped green scallions.

Enjoy!

Leftovers make for a quick lunch.  Pretty good chow if you can get it...  

 

Cartoon Of The Day

When you know; you know...

  

You Are What You Eat - Part 2

Slammin' Salmon!

Pan-seared medium rare, side salad, crusty baguette.

Breakfast the next day, lightly toasted Asiago bagel, cream cheese and leftover fish to start the morning right.

You are what you eat….

 

Leftover Pork Chop

Cooking with flame. 

 

Pork fried rice tonight.

 

Out of fresh scallions? Sub toasted onion.

 

Finish with a couple splashes of Thai fish sauce for umami and a couple of locally-sourced eggs.

 

Pretty good chow if you can get it…

 

Just Ducky

I’m not raising expectations; but visitors can expect pretty good chow if they’re hanging their hat here for a spell. 

 

Just the other day there was Duck Confit; including duck fat fried taters and pickled red cabbage. 

 

Remarkably, the spuds were imported from Alberta, Canada. 

 

 

Raising a toast to good friends and our friendly neighbors to the north….

 

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Easy Duck Confit Recipe

Duck confit (con-fee) is one of the most luxurious of foods in French cuisine. This means seasoned and cured duck legs bathed in their own fat and slowly cooked to falling-off-the-bone perfection. This is followed by crisping the skin in a pan or oven – resulting in a sinful combination of juicy meat and crackling skin.

Authentic confit takes several days to make but this recipe is a mash-up, work-around, hack of the NYT’s Melissa Clark recipe that you can cook in an afternoon. It is really good and super easy.

Get yourself some duck legs. They’re not easy to find unless attached to the entire duck but Bunzel’s in Milwaukee has them in pairs from the freezer case. A specialty grocer may be the place to source them fresh or frozen.

Prep time: 20 minutes

Rest the fridge: 1 to 4 days

Cook time: 3 hours

Ingredients

1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

½ teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf, crumbled

4 duck leg quarters (about 4 pounds total), rinsed and patted dry but not trimmed

Duck fat-fried or smashed garden potatoes, noodles, spaetzle and lightly-dressed bitter salad greens such as arugula, chicory and/or radicchio, for serving

Preparation

Pat the duck legs dry with paper towels. Using a needle or a very sharp knife and prick the skin all over. Focus on the skin that covers fat. Do your best to avoid piercing the meat itself by pricking the skin at an angle over the drumstick and the center of the thigh. You are doing this to give the fat that lies under the skin a place to seep out – if you don’t do this, it will be far more difficult to get crispy skin.

In a pestle combine salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaf pieces.  Crush thoroughly.  Sprinkle duck generously with mixture. Do not skimp on the coarse salt. Place duck legs in a pan in one layer. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of 24 hours. Your legs can fester for up to four days.

The next day, heat oven to 275 degrees. Place duck legs, skin side down, in a large ovenproof skillet, with legs fitting snugly in a single layer (you may have to use two skillets or cook them in batches). Roast uncovered until fat starts to render – about one hour.

If you are making duck fat-fried taters this is a good time to ladle rendered fat into your fry pan.

Reduce heat to 250 F, flip duck legs (skin side up), cover pan with foil or a lid and place it in oven and continue to roast for an additional hour.

After one hour shut the oven off and use this interval prep your salad and other sides. The legs will hold just fine for up to an hour if they are covered and undisturbed.

After the sides have been prepped raise the oven to 375 F and remove the foil/lids. Bake an additional 30 minutes – checking periodically to make sure the skin is browning nicely.  My new GE Profile convection oven is perfect for this task.

Immediately prior to plating your meal open the wine allowing time for it to breathe. If needed, finish your legs under a low broiler setting for a few minutes.

Remove from the oven and let rest for 10-15 minutes.

Use the fat for cooking vegetables or frying eggs or potatoes. Strain the fat through cheesecloth if you intend to keep it in your fridge for an extended period. Tightly-covered it should keep for up to six months.

Stirring the Pot

Wok, not pot.

Shrimp stir fry this evening.

One more reason America has been Great for about as long as I can remember.

mise en place

 Raising a toast to the Calphalon wok,

An embarrassment of vegetables,

And a Big Ass gas flame on the new GE Profile cook top!

Indoor Pizza

Most of you readers know that we use our wood-fired brick oven to cook outdoors during the more pleasant months of the year.  This time of year we'll fire it up if we score a day above freezing and especially during daylight hours.  Baking or roasting in the dark at 20F is not appealing at all.

Recently we hosted guests for the weekend and one of the requests was for homemade pizzas.

So I prepared a batch of sourdough crust balls to undergo a cold fermentation in the garage fridge and prepped everything else with the exception of the firing the forno.  Too dang cold and I was disinclined to be traipsing from oven to house and back in the dark while balancing a pizza peel. 

So I used the new GE Profile range that I've been becoming accustomed-to .  

The bottom oven has a pizza stone and I can preheat it to 550F which will bake a fresh pizza in about 10 minutes - give or take.

And I never had to leave the comfort of my own kitchen.

Pizza!  Pizza!

Stormy Eats

 

When the wind howls from the north, you light a fire in the wood stove, retreat to the kitchen and scratch your itch français.

Canard poêlé, pommes de terre sautées et épinards sautés.

Pretty good chow if you can get it.......