Classic Corned Beef Reuben with seeded rye bread, Thousand Island dressing, sauerkraut, and Gruyere cheese.
Well as I indicated in my last post, I have this last little recipe to use up the rest of the corned beef from last week. This can be as simple or as complex as you’d care to make it. The Reuben is one of Tara’s favorite sandwiches so I decided to go all out. I made a loaf of seeded rye, made Thousand Island dressing using homemade mayonnaise and homemade spicy ketchup with harissa, homemade sauerkraut, and we used gruyere cheese. If you want to go to some or all of those lengths to tackle this classic sandwich, I can assure you that it definitely tasted great. The good news is that you don’t really have to in order to produce a good quality Reuben using your own corned beef. Recipes for homemade ketchup are readily available on-line and each one has slight differences in flavor, heat, and sweetness. So, look around and see if you can find one that suits your taste. The sauerkraut that I made came from the Kitchn.com and involved only cabbage, salt, and time…super easy and super good, though your arms will get a workout when you massage the water out of the cabbage for 10-15 minutes. Otherwise, that’s all it takes.
If you don’t want to make your own bread (something I find really rewarding), try to find the best quality seeded rye that you can. Even if you don’t feel like making your own mayonnaise or ketchup for the Thousand Island dressing, it definitely is worth it to make your own using good quality store bought versions. As I said, this can be as simple or as complicated as you wish to make it! And with this, we conclude the corned beef recipes until next year around St. Patrick’s Day 2016! Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →
Lighten up a traditional corned beef hash by adding greens, different types of potatoes, herbs, and other vegetables.
Use a heavy bottomed pan or cast iron pan to cook the hash.
If you are like Tara and I, then you celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in some way. For us, that meant homemade corned beef and cabbage last week. If you ended up making or buying corned beef, you likely had at least a bit of corned beef left over. I love left over corned beef as it makes great Reuben sandwiches as well as awesome hash. Often we have breakfast for dinner and this is a dish we would definitely make for dinner. However, it certainly could be used for brunch or a hearty breakfast.
Traditionally, corned beef hash consists of shredded corned beef with cubed or hash brown potatoes and some onion and served alongside a fried or poached egg. This dish definitely has all of that, but I tend to take a kitchen sink approach to it in terms of adding additional vegetables. I like to add greens, peppers, a mix of potatoes, and any other vegetable that I might have on hand that needs to be used. By preserving the crispy potatoes and corned beef as a base, adding additional vegetables simple adds complexity, color, and more nutrition to the mix. It also lightens it up. Make no mistake, this is still a hearty dish. However, it just is not quite so meat and potatoes focused.
In order to make the potatoes crispy, there are really a number of ways to go. One, you can cube the potatoes and cut them very small, thus shortening the cooking time in the pan (so that the potatoes brown and crisp at the same time they cook through…otherwise you can end up with browned potatoes that are not cooked through or black potatoes that spent too long in the pan, so they burned). Another way you can go is to shred or grate the potatoes and then wring out the excess water, which allows for improved browning. I decided to go a different route and keep the potatoes in relatively larger pieces. You can do that while at the same time avoid burning them by parboiling them. That is, cooking them in boiling water for 10 minutes or so (depending on the size of the potatoes) until they are half cooked. I then dunk them in ice water, which stops the cooking. From there, you simply dry them off and cut them in larger sized pieces. This allows the potatoes to finish cooking in the hash pan, browning them as they finish, without risking burning them (or at least reducing that risk).
If you don’t have corned beef or if you don’t care for it, you can certainly use sausage, bacon, ham, or any meat you’d prefer. If you want to make this a vegetarian meal, skip the meat completely and stick with the vegetables or add cooked beans or lentils at the very end for additional protein, fiber, and flavor. At any rate, you can’t go wrong with hash and you can certainly make it your own based on your personal tastes while using ingredients you have on hand.
In programming notes, a Reuben recipe using the leftover corned beef is coming tomorrow. That will be the last of the corned beef for a while and I don’t know about you, but I am definitely glad (though it was good). Also, later this week a veggie hash with fresh cranberry beans, a Croque Madame recipe, and not too far on the horizon, a double veal chop coupled with spring vegetables in a white veal stock and cognac sauce. So, stay tuned! The recipe and more pictures follow after the jump… Continue reading →
Plated leg of lamb with polenta, roasted sweet potatoes and carrots, veal demi-glace, and tomato reduction. Garnished with watercress. Notice the three different pieces and their varying levels of doneness.
I don’t absolutely love lamb so I don’t make it very often. However, Tara really loves it and when my parents visited last weekend, they requested that I make a lamb dish. So, I opted for roasting a leg of lamb. It feeds a crowd and is pretty forgiving. The other bonus is that it produces slices of meat with varying levels of doneness so if you enjoy rare meat, it’s there. Likewise, if you prefer your lamb on the medium or medium rare side, the leg provides slices at that temperature too. I think a lot of people might get a bit intimidated with the leg of lamb because of both the size of the meat as well as the perceived time it takes to cook. The good news here is that it really doesn’t take longer than a traditional roast pork or beef. I started it at a very high oven temperature and allowed it to cook for about 20 minutes and then lowered the temperature, removed it from the oven, and rubbed it all over with the garlic and herbs before returning it to the oven at a much lower temperature to finish cooking for about an hour. As it turns out, everyone (myself included) really liked the lamb so I will definitely make it again at some point in the near future.
I paired the lamb with roasted vegetables and polenta and accented that with a veal reduction and tomato reduction and a touch of watercress. It was very good that way but if you don’t want to make the veal reduction or the tomato reduction, you can certainly skip one or both. The dish would be delicious without it as well. Recipe and more pictures after the jump… Continue reading →
Sorry it has taken me until now to post the end result pictures from yesterday. We didn’t eat until late. Everything turned out really well though. There’s a ton of corned beef left so we will have enough to freeze (to enjoy another time later) and to make a sandwich or two! I also plan to make some corned beef hash at some point next week. So, all in all, we will get a good number of meals out of this holiday meal. Hope you had as nice a day and meal too!
To start, we dove right into this Irish pub salad. I used the basic recipe outlined in my previous post but added pickled onions, soft boiled eggs instead of hard boiled, and used a homemade mayonnaise for part of the dressing. I used an aged Irish Stout cheese as well.
This is a great little salad that can be used as either a starter or a main dish. Pioppino mushrooms have a mild flavor with a long stem and small button on top and are light to dark brown in appearance. They can be found in farmer’s markets and at specialty food stores. If you have difficulty finding them, simply substitute your favorite mushroom. The watercress with its pepper flavor and almost vine like appearance provides a nice balance in color and flavor to the mushrooms. The pickled red onion simply adds a bit of color and a touch of acidity. If you don’t like pickled onions or simply do not feel like making them, chives or green onions would work well too. Finally, the soft boiled egg adds color and protein and brings a creaminess to the salad. It also adds another level of heartiness to the meaty mushrooms. If you prefer, hard boiled eggs would work as well, though I think the creaminess of a soft boiled egg or even a poached egg adds a nice touch that would be missed if you go that route. .
All of this produce (except the onion) came from Just Farmed…I believe they are accepting new participants for this year (which starts in May. Do yourself a favor and inquire as the service is very good! If you live locally in New Jersey, it’s a great way to bring farm fresh produce right to your door every week. Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →
First, let me apologize for not having pictures yet for this particular post, but like a lot of you, I haven’t actually cooked our meal for St. Patrick’s Day yet. I’ll post pictures tomorrow so you can see the end result. As you may remember, I posted a recipe for homemade corned beef a while back and said that I had started the process of corning the beef about ten days ago. Tomorrow, the corned beef will be cooked in a traditional Irish boil complete with red potatoes and green cabbage.
In addition to the salad and Irish meal, I plan to make an Irish soda bread to go alongside our mint cacao ice cream. Again, I used this recipe last year and whole-heartedly recommend it this year. I plan to make this again as well.
There will probably be an Irish beer or two consumed as well. As I said, I apologize for not having pictures…I’ll rectify that situation tomorrow. Until then, take a look at the recipes and try one, two, or all of them…you won’t be let down. If you don’t have time or you don’t prefer corned beef, something like a nice shepherd’s pie using ground lamb would be a nice hearty Irish inspired meal as well.
Speaking of lamb…up next, a whole roasted leg of lamb recipe using roasted garlic, rosemary, and sage. Stay tuned for that tomorrow. Until then, time to get going on St. Patrick’s Day!
Mint Ice Cream with Cacao Nibs provides a nice substitution for a traditional mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Add the cacao nibs half way through your ice cream making cycle.
Ice Cream! First one of the year and very excited about it. My wife loves mint chocolate chip ice cream and my parents visited last weekend love ice cream as well. So, I decided to multi-task by making ice cream that would please my wife and parents as well as serve as a springboard for the St. Patrick’s Day festivities this week. This recipe turned out great. The recipe I used can be found here. I really like the technique used to extract the mint flavor in this recipe. The good news is that this particular recipe uses low fat milk and half and half in lieu of whole milk and cream, so you can certainly use it as written for a nice, lighter ice cream. The bad news is that I used whole milk and cream in exact increments as indicated for the milk and half n half in the recipe. I mean I don’t make desserts very often so I decided not to skimp. So, use the lighter version or my version…your choice.
Cacao nibs is a nutrient rich super food when eaten in its raw, natural state. It has a slight cocoa flavor but really imparts a nice woody bitterness. This may not appeal to you but it really helped to balance the sweetness of the ice cream while still maintaining that characteristic crunch found in traditional mint chocolate chip recipes. To add them to the original mint ice cream recipe referenced above, simply take 1 cup of cacao nibs and slowly add them to the ice cream about mid way through the cycle of your ice cream maker.
I am very ready for spring and all the produce that goes along with it. This hearty side dish really serves as a transitional dish using vegetables and preparations usually associated with colder months tossed in a sauce and served cold as you would any hearty salad during the warmer months. Hopefully you will find this dish refreshing yet filling with hints of warmer weather food that will be upon us very soon. Recipe follows after the jump… Continue reading →
Combine all the spices with water and heat until all are dissolved and the liquid becomes less cloudy. Pour over ice to cool and then pour the whole thing over the brisket, which is then refrigerated for 10 days. Cook after that.
The brisket
Last year for St. Patrick’s Day, I made my first corned beef and used this recipe from Alton Brown and the Food Network. It worked extremely well and everyone, including me, was very happy with it. I created a whole traditional meal, which I’ll talk more about in the coming days. Last year, I only brined the beef for 8 days (instead of the prescribed 10), and it worked just great. However, and I apologize for just posting this now, I decided to give it the full 10 days this year. I followed the recipe exactly as directed. All of the spices are pretty easily found, though I purchased both the juniper berries and the pink salt at William Sonoma at Short Hills Mall. So, if you are so inclined and have time today, go get the ingredients and go for it!
St. Patrick’s Day is more fun with a big Irish meal and a Guinness! If you don’t have time today or tomorrow but still want to do the recipe, you certainly can but give it at least 7 days or so. As I said, last year, I did the same and it was really good.
Next up…roasted potato salad with shaved fennel bound with a homemade spiced mayonnaise with two types of mustard. It’s really good and should be great for now and for Spring! Being in the Jerz lately, I cannot wait for Spring…
Roasted chicken rubbed with roasted garlic and sage
Carving a roasted chicken is easy. Follow the joints of the chicken, carefully inserting your knife between the joints to separate the various parts. Then remove the breasts.
If I were to ask my wife which dish I make or have made that she likes best I guarantee it would either be roasted chicken or a ribeye steak. That response usually drives me nuts because they are so basic and given all the other things I cook around here, I would think there would be other things she prefers. However, despite the very basic nature of a simple roasted chicken, I love it too. It’s really hard to beat a really well executed roasted chicken. I define well executed being a roasted chicken that is nicely browned with crispy skin while remaining juicy, succulent, and tender. That, my friends, is not so simple to pull off. So, despite the basic nature of such a simple cooking method, it really is not that easy to perfect. That said, it is possible to create an approximation to the ideal of a well executed roasted chicken with practice and doing some basic things to help it along.
In culinary school, we were given a five step method for preparing and roasting a chicken. Some of those steps are designed to help with cooking the chicken properly and some of those things are designed to improve the overall appearance of the chicken once it’s carved. Personally, I don’t think all five steps are necessary for home cooking purposes. I really don’t follow all the steps but I do follow a couple. I also add in a couple of steps that I feel make a big difference. More thoughts and basic recipe follow after the jump… Continue reading →
culinary flights of fancy 