I didn’t have hours to let something braise so I cut up a chicken. I dug through the fridge and found enough to make a meal.

Cut the chicken into 8 pieces. I left the bones in the breast pieces. Brown chicken in a large, heavy, (oven-ready and lidded pot, like a dutch or french oven). Remove and set aside.

Add 1/2 c. mirin and and onion sliced into 1/2 moons, scrape up brown bits from the chicken to get all the flavor.

Let onion soften.

Add:
2 c. chicken stock
1/4 c. mirin
1 c peanut butter
3 chopped garlic cloves
2T honey

Bring to boil.

Add chicken back to pot.

Cover and bake at 325 for 45 min.

Remove chicken and reduce the sauce by about half. Stir in arugula off the heat, the sauce is plenty hot to wilt the greens. Stir in juice of 2 limes.

Serve over rice.

I was in a huge hurry plating and eating this though so no pictures this time! I’ll have to photograph it next time I make it which I’ll have to do pretty soon since my son LOVED the peanut sauce.

Today I’m taking soup to friends who just had a baby last week and they’re vegan. I thought this would be good to take them since it’s packed with protein and it’s freezable. But when I came onto the site to find my recipe, I hadn’t ever posted it! Hopefully I got all the ingredients right and this will be just as tasty as last time.

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Soak 3 cups dried cranberry beans for at least 4 hours.

Sweat until soft:
1 onion, diced
1 fennel bulb, diced
2 medium leeks, chopped

Add:
3 cloves garlic, chopped

Cook on medium-low with the lid on for about 15 minutes (don’t let it brown, just soften)

Add 3 cups cranberry beans and 6 cups stock. I have used homemade veggie stock both times I’ve made this since it’s been for vegetarian or vegan friends but chicken stock would work just as well.

Bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for at least 2 hours or until the beans are soft.

Puree it all up into a lovely, creamy (without cream) soup.

Finish with a dollop of parsley-lemon puree and a drizzle of lemon oil and some crusty french bread.

Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More

We were in Bookshop Santa Cruz on Sunday … after coming back downtown to pick up our car we’d left overnight after St. Patrick’s Day celebrations … and I can’t not browse the cookbook section. My husband came up behind me and handed me Asian Dumplings by Andrea Nguyen and all I said was, “Of course!” I decided that cookbook would bring us dinner that night. Slightly bad planning on my part since we should have started the dough about 2 hours earlier and the marinade the night before. But we did it anyway.

My husband was in charge of dough…Dough and I aren’t very good friends. Especially if the dough involves yeast…or rolling…especially both. So I got started on the Char Siu Pork and the pork filling for the dumplings.

I highly recommend getting this cookbook if you have any desire to make anything dumpling-like. I don’t follow recipes often anymore but I needed to in this case and for having never made dumplings before, Andrea made this really easy!

They weren’t the prettiest and the dough was a little thicker than it should have been. Next time I’ll roll it one more pasta-roller setting down. I went down to a 5 on my KitchenAid roller but I think I’d go to 6 next time.

The pork buns turned out AMAZING!!!! I, regrettably, ate 3…then finished half of my son’s he didn’t eat. I could not move, I was so stuffed. The pork filling was so delicious though, I couldn’t stop. Anytime I stay in San Francisco, I wander over to the Ferry Building to get a pork bun (ok two pork buns) for breakfast at Out the Door. I crave them. Now I can make them!

I think I’ll need to practice these very often…you know, to get them perfect, not because I’m a dumpling addict. I’m not. I can quit any time. I don’t think about Din Tai Fung in Sydney daily. I swear. I won’t sleep with this cookbook under my pillow either. Really.

My CSA farm this year is Fogline Farm. We went there last year for an Outstanding in the Field dinner, had the honor of sitting with the farmers at dinner and decided we’d join their CSA next. I’ve been hopping from farm to farm each year, trying out all the variety in our county. One of the beautiful things about Fogline is they also raise Berkshire pigs. The CSA hasn’t started up yet but they are at the farmers’ market with beautiful cuts of pork. This week I picked up a nice 2lb-ish pork shoulder and tried cooking that for the first time. Man, did it work out. It was so amazingly good….and easy.

The only thing you need is time. This cooked for about 3 1/2 hours.

First, generously salt and brown the pork, on both sides over high heat, in a heavy bottomed pan that has a cover and can go in the oven.

Remove the pork and add a sliced onion, a good amount of herbs…I, of course, used marjoram and thyme…6 roughly chopped cloves of garlic. Stir that around a bit but it doesn’t need to soften or anything.

Put the pork back in atop the onion mixture.

Add 2 cups red wine (something good enough to drink, this will be your sauce too) and 2 cups chicken stock.

Cover and put in a 350° oven for 3 hours or more. I checked the meat at 2 1/2 hours, added a touch more wine and stock and turned the meat over. Then let it roast another hour.

After the pork is to a fall-apart tender stage, take it out of the pan and cover it with foil.

Carefully strain the liquid out of the pan into a saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce it to almost half. Stir in fresh parsley.

I put this over israeli couscous…I wanted orzo but didn’t have any…and I do think it’s disturbing to serve pork over israeli couscous–so sorry. It’s what I had!

Anyway, choose your grain or starch you prefer. Spoon some of the wine reduction over it. Shred the pork and put that on top.

Serve with either the wine you braised the pork in or another good, hearty, rustic wine.

• 2 – 2 1/2 lb pork shoulder
• 1 onion, sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• handful of herbs
• 2 cups red wine
• 2 cups chicken stock

Preparation time: 10 minute(s)

Cooking time: 3 hour(s) 30 minute(s)

After writing this up, I discovered I already put this recipe up but I’d used fish! Well, I changed it very slightly but I guess that means I really like this one!

4 rehydrated ancho chiles (save the liquid)
1 small yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
2 T white wine vinegar
salt

Blend everything in the list together in the blender along with some of the rehydrating liquid to thin it out and make it into a saucy marinade.

Cut chicken breasts up into 1-2″ pieces and put them into the ancho paste. Leave it in there as long as you have. I had about an hour.

In the meantime, make some rice, heat up some black beans, make some guacamole (avocado, grated onion, lots of lemon juice, a dash of cayenne and salt).

Cook the chicken in a pan over medium heat until the chicken is cooked through.

To serve, warm some tortillas, and put the chicken, guacamole, some salsa and a bit of cilantro in them. Beans and rice on the side.

Don’t forget the margaritas!!

Today I got Ono (aka Wahoo) from my Seafood CSA and immediately wanted to make something that would take me back to the Caymans. This dish was the first to my mind. I didn’t really remember what went into it though so, as usual, I improvised and it really worked!

Preparation time: 10 minutes

I served this with some thinly sliced, toasted pugliese and sake. It wasn’t Laurent Gras’ but I will sure make this again!

For some reason, I followed an online recipe for my first attempt rather than going with my inspiration for this whole project, Eric Ripert. I know, I seem to be obsessed at this point, but he really cooks how I want to cook and the recipes work!

So, I didn’t make the sauce or any of the accompaniments. I just wanted the duck preparation from him. It was like making a steak: pan sear then finish in the oven. So simple. So perfectly cooked.

I cut the wings and legs off the duck and put them in the freezer for another time. I cut the breast off, leaving the bones attached. I seared the breasts skin-side down in a hot pan, on high heat, for about 6 minutes. I drained off the fat, turned the breasts over and put it in a 400° oven for 9 minutes. Took it out, let it rest for 8 minutes. Carved it off the bone, sliced it and served it over israeli couscous with pine nuts and parsley.

Now, full disclosure here…I have a cold. I can’t taste a damn thing. This is killing me. However, texture is everything right now. The texture of the duck was *PERFECT*. I will do this again when my sense of taste and smell returns (god, I hope that’s soon!). I do need to figure out how to render out the fat though, there was too much between the perfectly crispy skin and the meat. This duck challenge is fun.

I simmered lemongrass, ginger, shallots, garlic, lime rind and chicken (I didn’t have any chicken stock made but I had a couple of drumsticks in the freezer so I tossed those in). I let that simmer for about an hour. It would have been better if I had much longer but I didn’t and it was quite flavorful even after such a short time.

Next I skinned the salmon and put it in a dish with garlic, cilantro, a little oil and a splash of white wine. I turned it a few times while I was working on everything else.

I didn’t have any vermicelli but I did have spaghetti so I broke a handful of that into thirds and boiled it up. When it was done I tossed it with cilantro, shallots, lime juice and a little olive oil.

I removed the salmon from the marinade and dried it off. I wanted the flavor but since I was going to be searing it on high heat, I need to get the garlic off as much as I could so it wouldn’t burn. I heated canola oil until it was almost smoking and added the fish. I let it cook on the first side for 3-4 minutes, until it had a nice brown crust starting to happen. Then I flipped it an only kept it about another minute on that side.

To serve I put a small pile of sugar snap peas, cut into 1/2 inch pieces. I placed the pasta on top of that. Scattered some sunflower sprouts from our wonderful microgreen and mushroom folks at the farmer’s market around the pasta. Topped that with the salmon.

I strained the simmering broth and ladeled that over the pasta. To add some crunch I added a few more sprouts to the top, not in the broth. Then a generous squeeze of lime juice over the whole thing.

1/2 lb italian sausage
1 chicken cut into 8 pieces

1/2 a yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2 1/2 cups white wine

8 oz orzo

I used my oval dutch oven for this…you need something big enough to nestle the chicken down in in one layer and it’s all done on the stovetop.

First, brown your sausage. Let it leave the fatty, cruchy bits in the pan. Remove the sausage w/ a slotted spoon. Then brown your chicken in the sausage fat. See, it’s good already! Once the chicken is browned, remove that too.

Add your onions, celery and fennel and leave it the heck alone for as long as you can stand it on medium heat. Don’t let them burn, per se, but get all that flavor toasting in the pan. Once the bottom of the pan is so browned you can’t stand it, add just enough wine to deglaze (abot 1/2 a cup). Let that simmer just a few minutes.

Nestle your chicken pieces down into the fennel-onion-celery goodness, add your sausage back in, add your garlic then pour the rest of the white wine into the pan. Depending on the size of the chicken and the pot, you may need more than 2 cups. You want it to come about 1/2 way up the chicken pieces. Cover and let it simmer on low or medium-low for about 30-40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Serve over orzo tossed with some butter and olive oil.

It’s warming, filling, delicious and perfect for a cold night.

Frying up the Crab Cakes

This is a variation on crab cakes I’ve done in the past. This time I only sauteed up shallots and garlic and threw a little chopped arugula in at the last few seconds. Added salt, pepper and chopped thyme. The hardest part of the crab cakes is getting the crab meat out of the shells, the rest is a cinch! The key is to not touch the cakes in the pan until the are crispy brown on the bottom or else they’ll completely fall apart. Put the patties in and walk away. I also used semolina flour to dredge them in instead of white flour. I like the texture better.

Crab Cakes on Arugula

I just drizzled a quick dressing of shallots, lemon, salt and olive oil over the cakes and salad.

Yummy!