Barley with Winter Greens Pesto

5 stars!  I was feeling like a big fatty so decided I needed to do another “cleanse” really a diet with a fancy name since I don’t really buy into the “you are bad at life because you sometimes eat and drink like a glutton” now cleanse!!  I gave up drinking for three weeks once with no discernible effect, wtf!  

Actually it’s more of a kick in the pants towards more healthy eating, blah, blah.  Enough about my eating habits on to the food….

I really got into barley in soups, cooking either vegetable soup with barley or beef barley soup.  So delicious and creamy and healthy and inexpensive and even trendy oh barley you are cooler than kale.  I saw this recipe when I was wasting time on Chow one day at work and saved it and it is awesome.  Ridiculously easy to make, delicious, filling.  I ate this stuff every day for at least a week and only got a tiny bit bored of it at the end.  Next time I will halve it.

I didn’t have walnut oil or sherry vinegar so replaced them with canola oil and what I thought was white wine vinegar but turned out to be rice wine vinegar.  Next time I will get the recommended oil and vinegar but in the meantime don’t let your lack of them stop you even with my substitutions it was delicious. 

Also, I had no idea how much my greens weighed so I used half a head each of mustard greens and swiss chard.

But, holy god, leave out that salt.  As I was dumping in those 2 whole teaspoons it just seemed like a lot and my barley ended up very salty. 

Here’s the link, make some tonight.

Greens with short rib sauce

Round two of short rib sauce:

After my short ribs cooking marathon I was left with gallons of sauce (exaggeration, maybe 3 pints) and some polenta.  I used up the rest of the polenta and some of the sauce by sautéing greens and adding that to the mix.  I froze the remainder of the sauce for the next time I am feeling like a red sauce dinner.

Here’s what I did:

1-2 cloves garlic

1 head mustard greens (or kale or swiss chard or spinach)

1 pint short rib sauce

Polenta (fresh or leftover)

Warm up the leftover sauce either on the stove or in the microwave.

While the sauce is heating up:

Swirl some olive oil in a sauté pan on medium heat, when the oil is warm add the garlic.  Allow the garlic to cook for no more than 30 seconds then add your favorite greens, chopped into bite sized pieces.  Give that a stir and cover until the greens are wilted.  Once the greens are wilted add the sauce to suate pan and allow everything to meld together for a few minutes over medium heat.

Ladle warm polenta into a bowl and top with a generous amount of saucy greens.  Finish it off with some fresh grated parmagiano and dig in. 

To reconstitute polenta I boil a small amount of water and broth and add that to the hardened polenta.  Stir until the polenta liquefies again.  Don’t use so much water that you have to “cook “ the polenta again.  You want just enough to soften the polenta and heat it through.  I find it easiest to boil the water in the teakettle and then add slowly to the polenta until I have enough to soften it up.   

 

Beef and Polenta Round 2 (I go down in the 3rd (day of cooking)

Tomato-Braised Short Ribs with Polenta and Escarole from the Washington Post

Well, on a second review of the ingredient list and processes for this dinner no wonder it was a bust.  I had high hopes since the success of the beef stew over polenta, and because short ribs are just delicious.   

I started this recipe off by not knowing how much poundage I had in meat.  I had 4 short ribs if that means anything, but ended up guessing on actual weight and decided to halve the recipe.  I ended up with TONS of sauce, not necessarily a bad thing but might have influenced the final flavor, not very meaty.  I easily had double the amount of sauce I needed. 

This recipe again called for lots of wine and no beef broth and again I used half the amount of wine and made up the difference in beef broth.  I’m eating beef, I want to taste it.

It also called for San Marzano tomatoes (rolls eyes at your name brand tomatoes) and arbol peppers, whatever they are.  After I made the recipe I finally looked up arbol peppers on the internet, they are small, long, skinny red peppers.  I replaced them with cherry peppers (hey, they were both red!) but if I did it again would replace with jalapenos for more bite. 

I also started this recipe off by not reading the instructions.  So, when I went to cook it the first thing I come across is marinate overnight.  Sunday afternoon and I am already behind.  I did that and massaged the meat as instructed.  Monday night, I get home from work and begin cooking.  I towel off the meat, season with salt and pepper, heat oil, brown on all sides, remove the meat from the pot, strain the marinade, add vegetables to the pot, sauté, add the meat back.  Add the marinade, cook for some time, add everything else, cook for 3-4 HOURS.  Remove short ribs, bay leaves and thyme and puree the sauce.  Add meat back to the pot.  Yea, 3-4 hours straight on to Tuesday night.  I arrive home, cook the polenta and heat up the short ribs in sauce.  By this point I said F the escarole.

It was tasty as beef, polenta and sauciness is, but the three day cooking was a giant negative.  It just wasn’t so great that I would attempt it again even though I could easily prep the meat on Sat and cook on Sunday for my dinner.

On the positive side, I had boatloads of leftover sauce.  Check back tomorrow for version two and three of this dinner. 

Success and Failures - Tuscan Beef stew vs Short Ribs with Polenta

Two recipes for beef with polenta, one uses short ribs and the other beef stew meat.  Tender beef and creamy polenta, sounds dreamy doesn’t it?   It is. 

I roughly followed this epicurious version of Tuscan Beef Stew with Polenta.  The original recipe did not call for beef broth, but I thought braising with only red wine sounded too winey, and if there is anything I hate it is whiners.  I do like wine though. 

Here’s what you need:

Olive oil

½ yellow onion

2 carrots

2 stalks celery

1 lb of beef “stew meat”
1 cup red wine
1 cup beef broth, this was my own addition I wanted more beef flavor. 
3 whole tomatoes , I used canned (about half of the 29.5oz can)

Thyme, I only had dried and chopped so used a pinch of that.

Salt & Pepper

Here's what I did:

I used my big Le Crueset that I do not get to use very often because it is massive. Start by swirling a couple glugs of olive oil in there, enough to coat the bottom.

While that is warming on med heat, dice half a yellow onion and add that to your pot. 

Let the onions cook for a few minutes while you chop up the carrots and celery.  Add them and allow all the vegetables to cook together for about 10 minutes.

Add the beef and brown it on each side, should take about 5 minutes.

Add the wine, beef broth, tomatoes and thyme, bring to a boil.

Hit it with salt and pepper, cover and reduce heat to medium low.

 Let the whole thing simmer, stirring occasionally for about two hours.  I set my alarm for an hour and half and check every ten minutes after that. 

The meat should fall apart when you push on it with a spoon.

Polenta: I use this method and it works like a champ.  Basically 4 cups of water to 1 cup of polenta, stream polenta into simmering water on low heat, stir consistently for five minutes, reduce heat to low, cover the pot with foil and leave it for 25 minutes.

When you return stir the whole mixture together, viola delicious, non-clumped, corn gruel or porridge.  Not a solid chunk of corn cement.  (heh, I like the solid clump but for this dinner I want the liquidy polenta)

Next toss in some butter and some grated parmesan.  Now look away while your other hand adds some more butter. Done!

I made the stew on Sunday and cooked the polenta on Monday after work while the stew was re-heating.  I also melted 1 tablespoon of butter in pan and added about a tablespoon of flour.  I stirred that until it was a goldy brown color and had no flour clumps and then added that to the stew to thicken it up a bit.  Yum, you can also make a little thickening paste with about a tablespoon of stew juice and a tablespoon of flour.  You are going for a liquid consistency. with no lumps of flour.  Stir that together so all the bits of flour are incorporated and then add that to the stew. 

Ladle some polenta into a bowl, top with stew and dig it, it’s delicious.  Success!

Tomorrow the same dish and yet, less delightful 

Sausage, Beans & Greens - Redux

Spicy Black Beans with Chorizo and Greens

Ok, it’s been awhile.  I got a job (yay) and blogging got away from me. 

I was invited to a potluck tapas party awhile back.  I brought a shrimp and chorizo dish; which of course required Spanish chorizo.  In my quest for chorizo with the correct nationality I picked up some Mexican chorizo in case I never found any Spanish.  I did find the Spanish chorizo, at World Market and tossed my Mexican chorizo in the freezer for a later date. 

Then in my recipe wanderings I came across this recipe in the Washington Post food section.  Spicy Black Beans with Chorizo and Greens.  It sounded tasty and I had all the ingredients so let’s go.  As anticipated it was super easy and used up half a tube of chorizo.  I halved the recipe for my own purposes in case I did not like it but roughly followed the recipe:

Here is what I did:

Splash of olive oil

Half a yellow onion, diced

Half a tube of Mexican chorizo

Half of a 15.5 oz can of diced tomatoes

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 bunch greens; I used kale because I it's the green I usually buy

I warmed up a swirl of olive oil on med heat in my sauté pan and then added some diced onion.

Cook the onion until soft, about 10 minutes

Add your Mexican chorizo (hola!) and break it up as it cooks, another 5 minutes

Add tomatoes, black beans and broth and stir to incorporate

Add the greens and cover the mixture for another 2 minutes to allow the greens to wilt

After 2 minutes stir the now wilted greens into your mixture; you might need to cover and let your greens wilt for another 2 minutes.

Cover again and reduce the heat to medium-low, cook for 8-10 minutes.

Then I sat down to eat it and realized this is the Mexican version of my Italian sausage with white beans.  I soften add spinach to the Italian version, I will have to try it with some kale next time.  I loved the Mexican version, but I think I prefer my Italian dish.  I am not sure I will buy chorizo again for this dish.  But, I will try it with soy-rizo; which against my preconceived judgments is some pretty tasty stuff. 

Lots of corn but not alot of flavor

What a disappointment.  I ate a lot of corn, cut the kernels off and saved the cobs for a tasty corn stock with which to cook up an even tastier corn risotto but what I ended up with was a bland risotto that needed more to get any flavor out of it.  More cheese, more olive oil, more salt. 

I adapted from this recipe using my own (boring, bland) corn stock in place of chicken stock.  I also halved the onion, leading to more blandness?  My intent was to halve the recipe but when I realized how much onion the recipe included I decided to use the full amount for everything else but stick with my already sauteed onion. 

I attempted to eat all of it, but the flavor was just too boring and bland and in no way justified the amounts of oil, cheese and salt I had included to make up for the lack in corn flavor.  A bust, maybe I'll try again next summer.

Corn, Corn, Corn

hmm looks like over a month has gone by since I have been posting.  I started a new job and was doing some travelling so got busy and lazy but hopefully can get back to posting with regularity again.  I wrote the below post ages ago but somehow never got around to posting it.  Here goes..

Corn Stock.  It sounds like a festival of some sort, maybe a harvest festival?  But, I am talking about a stock made from corn cobs to make corn risotto.  It’s mid August and even though it has been cold and grey in San Francisco (still?!) there are fresh summer vegetables to be had.  It feels like winter but the produce says summer.  So, I have been eating corn non-stop.  Usually I boil it, cut the cobs off and stir in some butter and salt for a perfect side dish.  I also combine it with fresh cherry tomatoes and some basil and onion into a nice summer salad.  The one thing I have been doing with all my corn is saving the cobs.  My goal is to make corn stock and then…corn risotto.  I had a corn risotto once at the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, back when they let you choose your dinner instead of serving you what they wanted to serve you (ugh, pet peeve if I am paying for dinner I get to choose the menu) anyway back to the corn risotto, it was amazing!!  Then somewhere along the way I read about corn stock and now finally summer corn is here and it’s time for some corn stock and then the risotto.  I looked online for a recipe and many of the recipes had other ingredients, onion or carrot or jalapeño.  All good things but I was looking for the purest corn flavor possible, and I really felt that all those other ingredients would take away from the corn flavor.  I want a corn stock.  Not a vegetable corn stock.  I settled on the version from Saveur that included parsley and peppercorns and then I found Martha Stewart’s recipe which called for water and corn cobs only. Ding, ding, ding.  That’s what I wanted.  I guess I could have figured that out for myself but it’s nice to get the assurance from Martha that using only water and corn cobs is ok. 

 The instructions said to bring to a boil and simmer for 45 minutes.  I may have had the temperature too low, I’m not certain it was really simmering.  The stock tastes corny but doesn’t look as yellow as some of the pictures I saw online.  I will make corn risotto in the next day or so and update, here’s hoping for an explosion of corn flavor.  

Here's where I found the recipe, such as it is.