The vegetarian side of things

I know it seems like it's all meat all the time around here. It's not.

I get these fabulous whole chickens and ducks or a pound of ground pork or goat steaks or other meat once a week from our half share in a meat CSA, but that's pretty much it. With the exception of a bit of salami or bacon.

We choose to go for the high-quality meat—and happily pay extra for it—and eat less of it overall. Cheaper, healthier, faster.

But the meat gets a lot of play on the blog. It just seems more exciting. These are the meals I have to plan for, look up recipes for. The bean/tofu/veggie stuff? Easy. Comfortable. Delicious.

Boring?

Can anyone benefit from knowing that we ate cheese and crackers for dinner the other night? On the patio, without plates?

Even a salad seemed too labor intensive. I brought out the salad spinner and a bowl of olive oil, vinegar, and salt and we dipped our token greens. (This is actually a fantastic way to get a two year old to eat salad. Try it. You can thank me later.)

And a lot of our meals are based on a giant pot of beans. Mary Beth of Salt and Chocolate found making a pot of beans and mess of grain each weekend too labor intensive. I agree, if you're doing this for lunches only. Around here, work lunches are leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches. Period.

But I make this pot of beans for three meals and subsequent lunches. Streamlined indeed.

A chickpea week could look like this.

Sunday night: Dump a lot of beans in Crockpot with water to cover generously. Soak.

Monday morning: Drain beans. Rinse. Put back in Crockpot with bay leaf, dried red chile pepper, smashed garlic clove, a halved onion, plenty salt and pepper. (The picture above shows sliced onion. That's just because we had leftover sliced onion from making pizza the night before.) Turn on low and cook until someone gets home.

Monday night: Salad and bread dinner with lettuce and whatever CSA vegetables/cheese/nuts are in the fridge. This week was blue cheese, radishes, onion scapes, and edible flower mix. Past combos have included black beans, avocados, and Swiss cheese or white beans, marinated artichokes, boiled potatoes, canned tuna, and onion.

Tuesday lunch: Another salad with leftovers from Monday dinner. Olive oil and vinegar dressing carried separately in a small Mason jar to avoid sog.

Tuesday night: My fast, off-the-cuff pasta with chickpeas and greens.

Wednesday lunch: Leftover pasta.

Thursday night: Channa masala (chickpeas warmed again with onion, water, and a spice powder I get from our farmer's market). Bottled chutney and Trader Joe's naan. Raita made with yogurt, cucumber, salt, pepper, and a bit of crushed garlic.

If there are any beans left, they go into the freezer in plastic freezer bags. I don't overfill the bags, just put in enough beans for one meal and some cooking liquid. I tip the bags over slowly while still open to release any air and seal the zip locks when the bags are flat on the counter and empty of air. Then I put the bags on cookie sheets in the freezer to make flat, easy-to-stack rectangles. Does this make any sense? I don't have a photo, but it's such a great way to store liquids in the freezer...

Sausage carbonara

Homemade sausage from CSA ground pork. Braising greens. A dozen eggs fresh from the neighbors' hens. An insatiable craving for pasta. A drizzly spring evening. Perfect.

Sausage Carbonara

1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1 half large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 bay leaf
dried red pepper flakes to taste
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1 bundle mustard greens, sliced into ribbons (or braising mix or chard or any dark green leafy)
1/2 c. white wine
4 eggs, lightly beaten
a couple sprigs Italian parsley, chopped
1/4 c. grated Parmesean
1 pound pasta (we used farfalle)

Throw butter, olive oil, onion, garlic, bay leaves, and red pepper into large saute pan over medium-low heat. Cook until onion has softened, about 10 minutes.

Raise heat to medium and add sausage. Cook until no longer pink, breaking into pieces.

Add greens and cook until wilted.

Add wine and simmer until thickened a bit, about 15 minutes.

While the sauce thickens, stir eggs, cheese, and parsley together in a bowl with a bit of salt and pepper. Put pasta on to boil.

When pasta is done, drain and add to saute pan with onion mixture. Remove from heat and quickly add eggs, stirring to coat pasta with a creamy sauce. If it looks too raw, pop back over the flame for a second, but don't dry your meal out. Then you'll have scrambled eggs with pasta--ick!

Serve right away with more cheese on top.

Note: For this meal, I sauteed our mustard greens separately in a little olive oil and salt and used them to top the grownups' pasta. The bitter taste contrasts amazingly with the creamy carbonara, if you like that kind of thing. The two-year-old doesn't. She got to try a bit of bitter greens, but ate her pasta without them. Spinach, chard, or a braising mix is more kid-friendly.

Mustard pork chops

This kind of creamy, saucy meal seems like it belongs to late fall.

But a quickly fried pork chop in a rich pan sauce is perfect at the end of a cold spring day spent flying kites and picnicking in the thin sunshine.

Especially accompanied by a salad of thinly sliced fennel and tender greens dressed in olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

I used a recipe from Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express. It's a book I love to read but don't cook from that often. Although the recipes are fabulously quick, they are expensive to make--calling for things like garlic-infused oil and mixed bean salad and red current jelly and boneless cuts of meat.

This stuff always requires a special trip to the store.

But this recipe is totally worth the purchase of a bottle of hard cider.

It calls for whole-grain mustard. We only had a German yellow. Nigella says to bash boneless chops thinner. We used thick bone-in chops. It was still awesome.

Mustard Pork Chops (adapted from Nigella Lawson)

3 pork chops
2 teaspoons garlic oil
1/2 cup hard apple cider
1 T. Dijon, whole-grain, German, or other mustard (not American yellow)
1/3 cup heavy cream

Dry chops. Sprinkle on both sides with salt and pepper. Set your dinner plates on the stove to warm up next to you while you cook.

Heat oil in saute pan over medium high heat. Cook the pork chops until just done through, flipping once, about 6-7 minutes a side for thickish chops. Put on plate to rest.

Pour cider in pan and stir over heat, scraping up browned bits for a minute or two. Stir in mustard and cream. Add any juices that have leaked from your chops onto the plate.

Cook sauce a few minutes to thicken slightly. Plate chops and pour sauce over.

Serve with gnocchi or rice or something starchy to sop up sauce.

More fat, please: homemade sausage

I can't stop trying to jam more healthy goodness into everything we eat. It's becoming pathological--some primal desire to maintain the health of my offspring. Or a response to the "holy crap, an infant is no longer draining a zillion calories a day from my boobs so mainlining butter just not OK" belly.

Whichever the case, I'm becoming uncomfortably like my mother in this way, who is a fantastic cook but also regularly made these rock-like clusters she called "nutty nuggets." Pretty much muesli moistened with nonfat milk, formed into lumps, and baked until solid.

(My sister and I also got kefir as our "junk food" treat and swallowed fish oil nightly. My parents were decades ahead of the times on the the functional foods thing.*

Anyway, I made oatmeal carrot cookies with walnuts and dried blueberries the other day. And then tried to sell them to the toddler as COOKIES! FOR BREAKFAST! She didn't buy it. Then she asked for some plain yogurt with cinnamon, which I have managed to convince her is more awesome than sugar.

I am a mean, mean mother who destroys dreams and puts kale in the macaroni and cheese.

So I thought some breakfast sausage would cheer everyone up—and to be honest, decrease the glycemic index of our starchy breakfast.


They tasted great, but lacked that certain something that I've since discovered comes with the generous addition of pork fatback. They didn't have that greasy, crispy goodness, but a denser, herbal goodness. They were OK, not pork-ishly delicious. Our pork is especially lean because it's from healthy pigs who forage and eat mushrooms and tofu. Really.

What is pork-ishly delicious is this same mixture crumbled and fried in olive oil and sprinkled on top of pizza.

Homemade Sausage (adapted from Alice Waters)

1 pound ground pork
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 garlic clove, pressed
a sprig of fresh sage, chopped (enough to make a couple teaspoons)
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of cayenne
a generous grind fresh black pepper

Gently mix all the ingredients. Form into patties (don't press) for breakfast and fry in skillet with a bit of olive oil, turning once. I think it took us about four minutes a side in a medium-high skillet.

Alternatively, form into meatballs or fry loose in skillet for a pizza topping or to start a pasta sauce.

*Hi Mom! I still love kefir, really. And I wouldn't trade the taste of a sun-warmed tomato for all the Cocoa Puffs in the world, no matter what I said when I was 16.

Grilled lamb chops

After a day of this:




Then this:


Lamb loin chops on the grill. Fresh whole wheat penne from the farmer's market with pesto* made months ago and tossed in the freezer for safekeeping. Sweet lettuces with a sharp olive oil. Red wine.

The lamb chops were easy--our nearly-2-year-old made the marinade pretty much herself. It's not really a recipe, more like a method for letting good lamb showcase itself. This is how she did it.

Grilled Lamb Loin Chops

fresh or dried rosemary
fresh sage
olive oil
salt
pepper

lamb loin chops

In the morning, break up a couple springs of each herb in a container big enough for your chops. We think a wide bowl works well. Smoosh around with chubby baby fingers to bruise the flavor out of the leaves. Add a large splash of olive oil, a couple grinds of black pepper, and a generous couple pinches of salt.

Add your chops. Use tongs to turn lamb and coat with marinade. Let sit in fridge all day (or as long as you have before dinner).

Grill over hot coals to desired doneness, about three minutes a side, depending on thickness of chops. We like them medium rare-ish, and honestly, we always butcher the poor things checking for the perfect level of doneness. They still taste good.

*FYI frozen pesto: I freeze my pesto both in ice cube trays (then remove the cubes and store in freezer bags) and in small mason jars (freeze with lid off, then screw on later and store in freezer door). The smaller amounts are good dropped in vegetable soups; the larger amounts defrost on the counter for pasta dinners.

Cojones

Nope, we don't eat them.

A friend emailed me the following: "...I have to admit that I am very impressed at your courage to cook entire animals such as lambs and goats. Do you try to use everything, or do you draw the line at, for example: brains? Does it come with its pelt? Do you try to tan it? Does the dog get to chew the feet and ears? These are pressing issues about whole-animal preparation!"

And I realized, I have been misrepresenting the size of my balls. In a parallel universe in which I am totally hard core, when faced with brains, fur, and feet, I'm all "bring it ON!" In reality, our "whole" lamb goes from the farm straight to a local butcher, who packages it up neatly and without offal. Our freezer is less random bits and more $7/pound rack of lamb.

Poor dog.

Slow cooking Sunday: lamb neck bones

I skipped the requisite holiday blogging, I know. Travel to Internet-free zone, sleeping on floors, catching up with family, demanding in-laws, 9-hour drive, virulent stomach flu, blah, blah, blah... I have excuses in spades.

But it was lovely, when I wasn't being puked on: home-candied lemon peel, a stollen fail, thoughtful presents, a trip to the aquarium, baby's first cookie decorating, our traditional Christmas Eve mac and cheese (made proper-like, with béchamel, and then utterly desecrated by ketchup), running in the sand, croissants and Vietnamese coffee in Little Saigon.

And now we're back home, sorting and discarding and organizing and improving like crazy after two weeks of suitcase living. It feels good.

So does my weekly (if I feel like it) ritual of Sunday cooking: slow-cooked meat dinner, prep for meals throughout the week, a batch of bread dough to refrigerate and pull out in chunks for fresh bread all week, the transformation my farmers' market picks into deliciousness. Well, often something resembling good, at least.

But this Sunday's beans and lamb were delicious, even if the picture looks like sludge.

This may be the best use for lamb neck bones, if you hesitate to use the little suckers for broth and waste those tiny, tiny pockets of meat. If you don't happen to have a whole lamb in the freezer (did I mention we bought a lamb?), this is a great economical use for kabob or stew meat or other cuts because it uses meat as a condiment more than anything, a way to make your beans taste fantastic. This is based on a Turkish recipe from The Sultan's Kitchen, by Ozcan Ozan, but reminded me of the ribollita W. and I ate in Italy ages and ages ago.

This is an easy recipe, but don't forget to soak your beans the night before.

Lamb with white beans

2 c. great northern beans, soaked overnight & drained

2 T. butter

1-1/2 pounds lamb neck bones (or meat in 1-inch cubes)

1/2 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, peeled

1 T. tomato paste

1 can plum tomatoes, drained and chopped

1/2 t. dried red pepper flakes (add more if you don't have a toddler joining you for dinner)

2 c. water

salt & pepper

a small handful of dried mushrooms, optional

1 red bell pepper, chopped

Melt the butter, over med-high heat, in a Dutch oven or cast-iron casserole or other dish with a lid that can go in the oven. Brown lamb in the butter--don't worry about it foaming. Getting it brown on all sides will take 5-10 minutes. Add onion and garlic and cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the next chunk of ingredients--tomato paste through salt and pepper--plus the beans.

(Note: I tossed in a couple dried oyster mushrooms here because we get them from our CSA. They made dish even better, although I'll admit to pulling them out of my serving at dinner because the texture of mushrooms is one of my residual childhood hatreds. I'll bet some chopped kale added at this point would be good too.)

Cover, turn heat to maintain a simmer, and cook 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add bell peppers to the lamb and beans and stir. Cover and cook in oven 1 hour, or until tender. Check beans, adding a bit more water if they look dried out. The final dish will be like a thick stew, with some beans falling apart to make a creamy sauce.

You could gild the lily with some sausages and toasted bread crumbs, but we just had a green salad on the side and called it good.

Bahn mi

Again with the winter evening photos, I know...

I chopped all our herbs down a couple weeks ago, anticipating the first frost. I cut everything but a couple small leaves clinging to the thick stumps of basil, sage, oregano, marjoram. I froze pesto and hung the rest to dry. And since then it's been freakishly warm in Northern California. No frost, no rain. My plants burst into green again. To celebrate, we made improvised bahn mi sandwiches with our herbal bounty.

The traditional has some sort of pate and is stuffed into a French-style baguette. Ours had mayo, hot Italian sausages, and were stuffed into ciabatta rolls. But it's a sandwich--you are practically required to mess with the formula. These are versatile and easily made vegetarian, but for me, nuoc cham, shredded carrots, daikon radish, cilantro, and mint are non-negotiable.

Sort of bahn mi

rolls or small baguettes
protein (sausages, roast pork, baked tofu, or whatever)
mayonnaise
shredded carrots
shredded daikon radish
sprigs of cilantro, mint, and/or basil
other additions: thinly sliced cucumber, pate, pickled jalepenos, etc. etc.

Toast rolls lightly, split in half, and spread sides with a bit of mayo. Pile bottom piece of roll with ingredients, spoon nuoc cham over everything, clamp down the top, and eat.

Nuoc cham

juice of one big lime or two small limes
1/2 t. crushed red pepper
2 T. fish sauce
1 1/2 T. sugar (preferable a darker "natural" sugar)
1 minced garlic clove

Soak the red pepper in lime juice for a couple minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients. This is usually made with shreds of carrots floating in the sauce, but since I use shredded carrots in my bahn mi, I don't bother. Nuoc cham keeps about a week in the fridge.

Leftover shredded veggies, herbs, protein, and nuoc cham can be tossed with rice noodles and lettuce for a fresh tasting salad the next day.

Goat leg steaks, unexpectedly yummy

Portrait of a Taco in a Dark Room

Can I gush more about our CSA? Cute farmer, sure, but even more importantly, fantastic meat and real enthusiasm for sustainable, local, and healthy ways of eating.

We got a packet of goat leg steaks a couple months ago. I'll admit to some trepidation. I thought I'd have to dress them up with some elaborate preparation involving dried chiles and long roasting or showcase them with a flash grilling.

But finals are looming and energy is short. And to make things even more fun, our up-all-night baby is being subjected to a last-ditch survival attempt at night weaning and really, really pissed about it. Easy meals to soothe our frantic selves this week.

So, a weeknight evening, while we had cocktails and I finished "Wuthering Heights" for my book club, goat leg steaks went into a pan with a freezer bag of green salsa* and cooked a couple hours. The next night, the meat was shredded and served in corn tortillas with pinto beans (Crockpot-ed while we were at work) and local brown rice (the frozen brown rice at Tr. Joes is awesome in a pinch--three minutes in the microwave), crumbled cotija and Turkeytail salad greens.

W. had six. The baby's mantra was "more...try more...try...more."

Goat? Nothing to be afraid of.

*I should have written about this over the summer, when we could still get fresh tomatillos at the farmers' market, but it seemed too facile, too shortcut-y, too not a recipe. But husked and rinsed tomatillos, pieces of white onion, garlic cloves, jalepeno chiles, cilantro (stems and all), and salt, blitzed in the food processor or blender and packed into freezer bags or containers. No sauteeing, no fuss. We pull out bags all winter to make chile verde meats--chicken, pork, now goat--for tacos and burritos. The meat cooks into shreds, the sauce thickens enough to hold it all together. Easy peasy and saves you tons of money all winter long.

If you haven't stocked the freezer ahead, you could use a good-quality jarred green salsa and a little broth to braise your meat and be nearly as happy.

Coq au vin

So, I did it. I cut up a whole chicken--or at least deciphered the instructions from How to Cook Everything while W. wielded the knife. Then I fussed in the kitchen for hours making Julia's coq au vin, which I've heard is the gold standard. I cut little Xs in the bottom of countless baby onions. I sauteed the mushrooms separately. I deglazed and flambed and braised. I even boiled the bacon, which just sounds wrong, and looks even wronger.


Gross, huh? But I had faith--in me, in Julia, in the power of a cold fall afternoon and hours to while away in the kitchen, pretending to be productive.

And?

Eh.

It was ugly purple chicken, which was fine, but it also tasted, well, eh. Flabby bacon still doesn't get me going, neither does flabby chicken skin. Honestly, I'd rather have a crispy roast over crispy potatoes and served with a crispy salad and crisp-crusted bread.

What went wrong? Why did I fail at making the gold standard of homey French chicken dishes? Are we just not coq au vin people?

Is it because I went around mispronouncing the name of the dish for the last 10 years? Vahn. Oops.

Is it because I used this 10-cent garage sale book instead of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, like any good Juliaophile would have?


Did I fail to sufficiently brown my onions? My mushrooms?

Was it the Charles Shaw? Are we too poor to make a proper wine-braised chicken? (It worked just fine with the lamb.)

On the upside, this was pretty cool:


And now we can do this:

Sunday (lamb) shanks

The baby slept in this weekend, until 7:30, and the grownups in the house felt like new people. We could walk without running into doorways, talk without sniping at each other, contemplate new projects. W. put up and painted crown molding in the kitchen. I spent the day braising meats and finally screwing up the courage to cut a chicken into pieces, a process long in my recipe deal breaker category. (More on that later.)

For Sunday dinner, I turned to The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook again and made braised lamb shanks with Pennsylvania red cabbage and Bavarian bread dumplings. The shanks were from the whole lamb we picked up last week, cooked a good part of the day with wine and onions in the Crockpot. The red cabbage was a mound soft maroon shreds flavored with bacon and cloves and apples and vinegar. The dumplings I made a little too carelessly with bread that was a little too fresh and onions chopped a little too large, and they fell apart in the simmering water. But the pieces we scooped out of the pan? Rich and bread-y and perfect with the lamb’s hearty sauce.

This meal was the kind that makes W. swoon and declare his love anew. The taste of a German childhood on a crisp fall day.

Braised Lamb Shanks (for 2) (based on a recipe from The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook)

2 T. olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced (about 1/2 pound)
1 T. chopped fresh rosemary
about 2 T. flour mixed with salt and pepper
2 lamb shanks
1 1/2 c. red wine
1 1/2 c. chicken or beef broth
1 bay leaf

Put 1 c. wine, broth, and bay leaves into your slow cooker. Turn to high to heat liquids.

Cook the onion in half the olive oil over medium-high heat until browned, about 10 minutes. Stir often, but take the time while the onions are cooking to coat the shanks in the flour mixture. Add the rosemary to the onions and scoop them onto a plate.

Add the rest of the olive oil to your pan and turn heat to high. (Honestly, I never measure olive oil for sautéing, just splash a bit into the hot pan.) Brown the lamb shanks on both sides, about 5 minutes a side. Transfer your shanks to the plate with the onions.

Pour 1/2 c. wine into the hot pan, stirring and simmering a couple minutes, scraping brown bits up off the bottom of the pan. Pour into your slow cooker (with other liquids already in it). Add lamb and onions.

Leave on high for 30 minutes, then reduce to low and cook about 5 hours, until the meat is starting to fall off the bone.

You can let cool, cover, and refrigerate at this point if you are cooking ahead.

Transfer shanks to a plate and liquid to a pan on the stove. Boil liquid until it reduces to a sauce-y consistency. Add shanks to pan, reduce heat, and cook until the meat is hot through.

Easy yum!

Sunday dinner

Have you ever seen turnips like these? I didn't know they came in shades of red other than the slightest blush of pink. They were so beautiful I took about a zillion photos of them: radish on cutting board, radish in hand, radish outside, radish on rock... I'll spare you the visual evidence, but I will add that I don't know what I'd do without Al at the Saturday farmer's market.

He's a retired biology teacher turned to farming, and he grows for people who cook. Fava beans, dried chiles for making enchilada sauce, a sweet and mild summer squash as long as my arm, escarole, figs, every herb you can imagine. (Not all at once.)

And these gorgeous turnips. They were less beautiful but very tasty in a gratin with cream and butter and Parmesan cheese. I used sage instead of the called-for savory because that's what I have in my herb beds. I also cooked it half the time called for on the stove early in the afternoon and let it just sit around until our roast chicken came out of the oven. Then I popped the gratin in to brown while the chicken rested.

W., who has a love-hate relationship with bitter vegetables (mostly hate) decided he loves turnips after trying this. I didn't tell him it's likely that it is butter, cream, and cheese he likes. The baby—who is a little weird, I'll admit—gobbled up the crispy, slightly sweet, spicy bits, in spite of the turnip tang.

Here's the chaos of our roast chicken Sunday dinner, guest starring turnip gratin, green beans with tomatoes, and a tiny baby hand waving through my wine glass.


We made our standby easy, foolproof roast chicken this week because we got a fresh little one in our CSA box. No turning, no basting, no adjustments of the oven temp, no fuss.

Easy Roast Chicken

Remove chicken from fridge an hour in advance of cooking. Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Pat your chicken dry and trim of extra fat. I don't need to do this with the local free-range birds we get here (worth every cent), but for a store chicken, it is essential. Stuff the fatty bits, with a generous amount of salt and pepper, under the skin of the bird and inside the cavity. If you have a lemon, stick it with a knife a couple times and stuff it into the chicken. If your lemon isn't organic, scrub well with a coarse sponge or brush and soap.

Put chicken, breast side up, in a roasting pan. For an easy side, set the chicken on a layer of chunks of potatoes and onions and unpeeled garlic cloves tossed with a little salt, pepper, and chopped rosemary. Roast for about 1 hour for a 3.5-pound bird.

(Until 170ºF in thigh supposedly, but we don't have a meat thermometer that works. We just stick a knife into the hip joint area and make sure the juices run clear and the meat is cooked.)

Let rest 10 minutes before carving.

Lamb rib chops with potatoes

I used to make, occasionally, lamb loin chops in a red wine sauce thickened with the meaty umami of a demiglace and the sweetness of butter and shallots. I’d roll long strings of potato dough and cut them into gnocchi, to toss with roasted butternut squash and a brown butter, to soak up the dark sauce pooling under the lamb. It was good on cold nights, on special occasions like birthdays and Valentine’s Day, when the plate served only as a prelude to another more naked intimacy by candlelight.

But that was in the era BC, before child.

Now my lamb chops are quicker, less romantic, less rich, but equally satisfying in their own way—a prelude to a fall walk, bath time, flannel PJs, some serious face time with a book, some Scotch, and an insistent cat. The chops dash into the broiler studded with garlic, the potatoes are roasted wedges, and everything is liberally topped with the Mediterranean standbys of salty olives, sweet tomatoes, and sharp cheese.

And later, if the planets are aligned, if the baby stays asleep, if the candles are still burning on the dinner table long into the evening…

This recipe is a mashup of one from an ancient (1998) Bon Appétit magazine and my Grassfed Gourmet cookbook. I made it this week with lamb rib chops. But lamb loin chops would be just as good. I broiled them, but a turn on the grill over hardwood charcoal or real wood would be even better.

(Have I mentioned how much I love my CSA? It’s getting serious. Honestly, when I opened my packet of lamb chops, it smelled fresh, herbal, almost cooked. I can be squeamish about meat, after nearly a decade as a 99%-of-the-time vegetarian, but this? This is just straight-up lovely.)

Lamb Chops with Potatoes, Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta (for 2, easily doubled)

The Potatoes

potatoes, as many as as you think you can eat, cut into wedges (2 large russet, a bag of fingerling or Yukon Gold, whatever you like)
olive oil, a couple tablespoons
chopped fresh rosemary
salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 450°F. Toss potatoes on a sheet tray with olive oil, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Roast in the oven until tender and browned, 30–40 minutes. Ten minutes before the potatoes are done, start broiling the lamb.


The Lamb

4 thick lamb chops
2 cloves garlic, cut into slivers or tiny matchsticks
olive oil, salt, and pepper

Use a paring knife to cut a couple narrow, deep incisions into each side of your chops, stuffing them with garlic slivers as you go. Rub the chops on all sides with olive oil and season liberally with salt and pepper. Cook under a hot broiler, about 5 minutes a side for medium rare. (Less for rare—well done is NOT an option here.)

The Rest

scant 1/2 c. halved cherry tomatoes (or chopped tomatoes)
1/3 c. feta cheese, broken into large-ish chunks
1/4 c. chopped black olives (not the Libby kind--Kalamata or other brine-cured. I used our home–salt-cured black olives that mellow in olive oil for months.)

Pile potatoes onto serving platter. Top with broiled lamb chops. Scatter the rest on top.

Moroccan lamb koftas

Another easy meal, this one served with store-bought flatbread, simply dressed arugula, and a sauce made with yogurt, salt, pepper, and a little crushed garlic. My mom made a Turkish version occasionally when I was growing up--kofte.

I made the meat mixture the night before, so all that was left to do when we came home on a busy weekday was to throw the kofta under the broiler, heating the flatbread in the oven in foil with a little garlic olive oil and making the sauce while the meatballs browned.

Ground lamb releases a lot of fat when cooked and spatters like nobody's business, so don't put these on a rimless sheet tray super close to the broiler element. Because that might start a fire in your oven. Fun for toddlers, but not so much so for adults in a hurry to get dinner on the table. Not that we would know anything about that. Ahem.

I based this recipe on one from The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook. I'd recommend this to anyone new to cooking grassfed--the cooking times and temperatures can be different enough to make traditional recipes a total failure, especially beef. But everything we've made from this book has been really good.

Moroccan Lamb Koftas (for 4—or 2 and a baby, with leftovers for lunch)

1 T. water
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 T. cilantro, finely chopped
1 T. paprika
1 t. ground cumin
3/4 t. ground coriander
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
3/4 t. salt
1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
1 pound lamb, or about that

Preheat broiler. Mix all the ingredients and shape into 8 oval patties. Put on a rimmed sheet pan and broil about six inches from the element until browned and cooked through, about 3–4 minutes a side.

Meat and mushrooms

I think I'm in love. We got our first week's half share from the CSA we joined: dried oyster mushrooms, arugula, blossoming basil, flowers, a pound of ground lamb, and over a pound of pork chops. In the future, squash, dark leafys, more lamb and pork, chicken, duck, turkey, and goat. The animals eat the byproducts of local tofu and biodynamic bread, and the mushrooms growing on the farm.

The farmer? Young, cute (not that that matters, of course), and completely passionate about food, especially, our favorite, lamb. Recipes in the first newsletter include lamb and spinach meatballs baked in cream of mushroom soup made from the dried mushrooms above. It sounds good, but I'm thinking kofte. We'll see.

The pork chops, however, are destined for the garlic lemongrass marinade we have in the freezer and a quick turn on the grill. The picture below is the same, eaten last weekend, made with some Niman Ranch pork from Trader Joe's and served with udon noodles, carrots, and red peppers with peanut sauce. (Did you know you can get fresh udon from Costco? I didn't. We refreshed it in boiling water for a couple seconds and had nearly instant udon.) We cut thick chops in half horizontally to make thinner cuts--it was easy to do after popping the chops in the freezer about a half hour.

The peanut sauce and marinade for this meal were made ahead, so it came together in about 10 minutes, not counting the family time in the backyard around the grill. And that doesn't count really--just an excuse to be outside drinking gin and tonics and eating watermelon just one more time before the rain descends on Northern California and our thoughts turn towards stews and braises and next week's meats...

Flatiron steaks smack of summer

It's that time of year when we suddenly realize, "Crap, summer is almost over and we've hardly grilled!"

So we are making the most of the still warm evenings by breaking out the charcoal. W. and I are tiresomely opinionated about our grilling—no lighter fluid, no gas, mesquite charcoal or real wood only. Quick and dirty, herbs and olive oil and lots of salt.

We are fortunate enough to live where you can pick up two very big flatiron steaks--grass fed, organic, and still marbled--for $12 at the farmer's market. W. sliced tomatoes from the garden and made dinner rolls from scratch, so this truly was the poor man's barbecue, done oh so well.

W. rubbed the steaks with salt, pepper, and fresh marjoram, thyme, and rosemary, then set them out to come to room temperature. The baby played in the sprinkler while the steaks grilled over hot coals, about three minutes a side, then were sprinkled with olive oil. I came home from work ravenous and devoured the last of summer.

B...B...BLTs

Ugh, this photo could be prettier, sharper--look at this. I made Orangette's basil mayo, and it was awesome. But the photo of green mess sloshed in a Tupperware? Smeared all over the baby's high chair tray? On this roll, reflecting the low summer sun outside? Not such a pretty picture--and without the Photoshop skills to polish out the imperfection.

But it was pretty, in a visceral messy way, in real life, where these kinds of these matter more. Basil mayo mingling with smooshed first-of-the-season tomato, juice running down wrists, the crisp of bacon and slight grainy creaminess of blue cheese:

Basil Mayo, Blue Cheese, Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato

No recipe--this is exactly what it sounds like, ya'll. If you can pick your basil and tomatoes from your summer garden, so much the better. (Yes, I have a summer garden, and an herb garden—it's how us financially disadvantaged people afford piles and piles of heirloom tomatoes and summer savory on tap.)

If you can get some Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon and cheap-ish but good blue cheese from a nearby Trader Joe's, you'll be ruined for those diner-style, three-layered, desiccated bacon mayo bombs forever.

The mayo does take some fussy time and requires the use, and wash, of the blender. You'll have to destem basil, press garlic, juice a bit of lemon. But then you're set—deliciousness for the week. We had leftovers for dipping steamed green beans and carrots from Saturday's farmers' market. The baby dipped her beloved broccoli florets. I'm resisting the urge to scoop it directly from the Tupperware with a spoon.

Evacuation eats

This isn't exactly what to eat while you are evacuated from your home due to a raging wildfire, but what to eat when you return. When the town is hot and smoky and subdued, and "thank you firefighters" signs line the main streets, and you are thankful to do those mundane house things like mow your own lawn and sleep in your own bed. And guilty too, for that thankfulness, because you know that just down the hill, your neighbors are sorting through ash for their possessions and still grabbing food on the run in hotels and in friend's guest rooms. For a while, life's edges are sharp again.

When we came home this Sunday, from a sweaty weekend away—two adults, one baby, two cats, one dog on the run—we were ready for something simple, something soothing and cooling at once. We were hungry after days spent obsessively refreshing our browser. (Are we evacuated now? Are we evacuated now?) So while the baby napped, I made us all a completely bastardized version of Thai noodles based on a John Thorne recipe I found in an Organic Style magazine recipe booklet.

Ground Meat with Basil & Rice Noodles

12 oz. rice noodles, soaked in cool water until pliable, but not soft
peanut or grapeseed oil for stir-frying
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1/2 red onion, sliced thin
1 t. Thai red curry paste
1 pound protein in small pieces (I like tofu and chicken combined, both cut in small cubes)
2 T. fish sauce
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 T. natural sugar (or regular, if that's all you've got)
1 overflowing cup of packed basil leaves, torn into big pieces

Heat 2 T. oil in wok or saute pan at medium heat. Cook garlic and onions until they start to turn golden. Add curry paste and stir in.
Turn up heat and add chicken. When it starts to brown, add in the tofu and stir it around a bit, until tofu warms through.
Add fish sauce, stock, and sugar. Bring to a simmer and add noodles. Cook until noodles are soft, adding more stock as necessary.
Add basil and stir until wilted.

Serve with sliced cucumbers toss and chilled with a little seasoned rice wine vinegar.

Cross rib roast

Operation freezer cleanout is in effect. We've got 3 spring chickens on order from the farm down the hill, and a half a pig and a lamb on the way later in the year. And a freezer full of odds and ends: leftover pound cake from the baby's first birthday, saved for the fancy trifle that I'll never get around to making; a few cubes of enchilada sauce, not enough to use for anything much; bread ends; smoothie fruit...

And a cross rib roast, the final piece of meat of a grass-fed, organic beef sampler pack from one of our local heroes. I loved the idea of a selection of roasts and marinating and grilling steaks, but the actual cooking was painful and protracted.

I used to be a vegetarian, until one day the smell of bacon-y goodness lured me back to meat. I'm still picky--and we save up for meat in bulk from farms we've visited. And beef still tastes a little too "beefy" to me most of the time. So I stewed, making amazing winter dishes with onions and red wine and served with thick noodles, until I came to the roasting cuts. What the hell do I do with London broil? Bottom round? Cross rib?

There was some greyness, some toughness, some regrettable stringiness. I started to wonder whether beef was worth it. Whether grass fed was at fault. Until I Googled "cross rib" and found Jim H. and the simplest recipe ever.

I put the roast in a bowl with a generous amount of soy, sesame oil, mustard powder, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, salt, and pepper. We stuck it in the fridge for two days, turning when we remembered. Then into pan for browning and a 200-degree oven. It did take about 2 hours--through bathtime and the grownups' cocktail hour--and we took it out when the meat thermometer read 130 degrees.

I let it rest about 30 minutes while I roasted chunks of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions with rosemary and olive oil, and boiled some red wine and a chunk of butter down in the pan for a sauce. The meat was ruby red inside, rich and soft and minerally. The way beef is supposed to cook up, I imagine.
W., who has happily and enthusiastically eaten countless veggies and pasta for the past 10 years, said it was the best thing we'd ever made. (I vigorously defended lamb loin chops and homemade gnocchi, a pre-child special-occasion thing. But 15 minutes of actually work for "the best"? I'll take it.)

We cooked a 5-pound roast, which sounded like too much. But the baby loved the well-done edge pieces the next day, and W. ate thin slices in sandwiches with mustard and horseradish sauce. I cut the rest into strips and warmed it with sliced onion and red bell peppers that had been slightly blackened in a dry cast iron. A little squeeze of lime and into a warm tortilla with salsa, cilantro, and sour cream--fajitas. Really good. So simple.