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No, it’s not the casserole that’s gigantic, it’s the zucchini! I don’t grow zucchini or summer squash because my family just isn’t that wild about it. Plus, one plant would provide more squash than we could eat in a month! But we’re still not safe from the zucchini avalanche that happens this time of year. A retired couple with a garden up the street found a gigantic squash in their garden yesterday and brought it to us. The wife said she loves zucchini but her husband doesn’t, and she couldn’t bear to slice off a piece and throw the rest out. This thing was monstrous: imagine a zucchini the size of a mega roll of paper towels!
I managed to use half of it in a recipe in place of the called-for noodles. It was so simple that Kate made the casserole. Everyone raved about it, even the kids who wouldn’t touch zucchini with a pair of gardening gloves! I made some homemade cottage cheese, homemade yo-cheese and creme fraiche to go in it, so this was a very, very local, seasonal dish! (Please forgive the horrible photography. When I went back for a second shot, the dish was EMPTY!)
Gigantic Zucchini Casserole
Half of one three-pound zucchini (or three to four normal-sized ones), julienne cut
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 organic yellow onion
1 pound grassfed ground beef
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 ounces tomato sauce
1 cup homemade cottage cheese
1 cup homemade yo-cheese
3 tablespoons creme fraiche*
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper (any color)
2 green onions, green part chopped
Preheat the oven to 350°. Heat coconut oil in skillet and brown chopped onion and ground beef, stirring occasionally until the beef has browned. Add salt, pepper and tomato sauce, allow to simmer while preparing cheese.
Mix together cottage cheese, cream cheese, creme fraiche, bell pepper and green onion in a bowl. Lightly rub a 9×13 pan with coconut oil. Layer half the julienned zucchini in the dish, the cover with all the cheese mixture. Add the rest of the zucchini, then the meat mixture. Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes.
Note on ingredients: Creme fraiche is another easy-to-make ingredient. Add two tablespoons of cultured buttermilk to a pint of fresh (NOT ultrapasteurized) cream and mix it up. Leave it on the counter overnight, refrigerate in the morning. Use it instead of sour cream, especially when your food will not be heated to preserve the good bacteria it contains!
This post is part of Tuesday Twister, hosted by GNOWFLGINS.
When the budget is maxed out, I have three choices when it comes to serving meat: buy grocery store meat, go meatless or stretch my grassfed meat. I believe too strongly in the importance of the good fats, CLA and protein of grassfed meat to do without. We do have many meatless meals, but once a day, I think a small portion of meat is important. I can’t bring myself to buy meat from the grocery store anymore. The Food, Inc. quote has become fact for me: If people knew where their food came from, they wouldn’t eat it.
So, stretching our lovely, delicious, grassfed meat we buy is a high priority for me. Most cooks and cookbooks recommend a quarter pound of uncooked beef per person. In our house, we aim for half that amount several times a week. One of the ways I’ve found to stretch a piece of meat is the stir fry. Here’s a very basic guideline, a recipe and some options:
Stir Fry for Four
1/2 pound meat, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon each naturally fermented soy sauce and cooking sherry
1 large onion, cut in half from root to stem and sliced
1 pound raw vegetables, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 tablespoon each minced garlic and ginger
2 teaspoons arrowroot powder
3 tablespoons homemade stock
3 tablespoons coconut oil
Soaked or germinated brown rice, cooked
The basic procedure is very simple. Cut up all your veggies and meats and have them ready before beginning. Heat a large skillet on high heat. Toss the meat in a bowl with soy sauce and sherry. Mix the arrowroot with the stock in a small bowl. By now the pan is really hot, so add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and half the meat. You want to keep it moving in the pan for about 2 to 3 minutes, until it is just barely cooked through. Remove that batch of meat and add the other half. When that batch is done, remove it and add the last tablespoon of coconut oil to the pan with the onions. Stir around a minute, then toss in the ginger and the vegetable. Stir around for about two minutes and add the garlic. Return the meat to the pan. Stir the arrowroot mixture and add to the pan, stirring around until thickened and glossy. Serve immediately over hot cooked rice.
We like to use these meats:
- scallops
- shrimp
- pork tenderloin
- beef
- chicken
The vegetable choices are nearly endless, but some good ones are:
- asparagus – pencil thin to cook quickly and not be tough
- cabbage
- carrots – shredded or sliced very thinly
- celery
- green beans – those tiny skinny ones cook just right in a stir fry
- mushrooms – any kind. White ones go well with chicken, portobello with beef, etc. I add these with the arrowroot so they don’t lose too much consistency.
- bell peppers – these add color to the finished dish
- fresh pineapple – adds a lot of sweetness, so I’ll add a pinch of red pepper to the dish for balance
- sugar snap peas
- summer squash
- broccoli
I like to match the stock for the sauce with the meat I’m using. This is one great reason to store at least some of your frozen homemade stock in ice cube form!
I also like to make flavoring sauces to add to the stir fry. I add these with the cornstarch and stock near the end to add a little more flavor to the dish. For example:
Sweet and Sour Sauce
1/4 cup homemade stock
2 tablespoons naturally fermented soy sauce
2 tablespoons vinegar (cider, balsamic or wine vinegar is nice, my new favorite is coconut vinegar)
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Citrus Sauce
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest (or preserved lemon rind)
1/4 cup homemade stock
1 tablespoon naturally fermented soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
Putting together different combinations of meat, vegetable and sauce make for an incredible amount of variety.
This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
One complaint I hear often when I recommend grassfed meats is how expensive they are. Now, it’s true that compared to CAFO-produced, GMO grain-fed, mass produced beef, $26 for two New York Strip Steaks might seem expensive. But, when those two steaks feed seven people with leftovers, the overall cost drops considerably. As part of a meal that costs only $3.75 per person, they become a bargain! And, in the meantime, we are supporting a local farmer, encouraging carbon sequestration, and eating some pretty fine meat.
Steak Salad for Eight
6 cups lettuce leaves, washed and torn
1 organic red bell pepper, washed and chopped
1 bunch organic asparagus, washed and tough ends trimmed
2 New York Strip Steaks (about 1-1/2 inches thick, just less than two pounds total)
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
bowl of ice water
1 organic lemon, juiced and rind grated
1/3 cup organic extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon flax oil
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup créme fraiche
Put an inch of water in a pan large enough to hold the asparagus in a single layer. Add a pinch of salt and bring the water to a boil. Put the oven rack on the lowest level and turn the oven on very high, 550° is the setting I used. Rub a tiny bit of lard on an oven-safe pan and put the pan in the oven while it preheats.
Add the asparagus to the boiling water and cook three minutes, then remove it from the boiling water and plunge into ice water to stop cooking immediately. Drain and pat the asparagus dry.
Add the steaks to the pan and sprinkle the tops with salt and pepper. Cook five minutes, then flip, reseason and return to the oven for another four minutes.
Let the steaks rest at room temperature for two to three minutes while you assemble the salad on the plates and make the salad dressing. Whisk together the juiced lemon with its grated peel, oils and honey. Stir in créme fraiche. Slice the steaks thinly against the grain and serve atop the salad.
Hey, while you’re here…Now that you’ve seen one beautiful dish made with local grassfed beef from a small-scale farm, won’t you drop by this post and read about how local beef is in danger of being regulated out of existence? It’s a very important post, and will only take a minute of your time. Thanks!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.
O God, sir, here’s a dish I love not. I cannot endure my lady Tongue.
Clearly, Benedick from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is referring to the acerbic wit of Beatrice and not the tender delicacy we ate tonight! We’ve been branching out a bit in recent days, and tonight’s experiment was beef tongue.
Okay, it was a little unnerving to pick up the tongue from its package and see how much it looked like…a tongue! Tastebuds and all. I called Rose, my little scientist, to come examine it with me. She was enthralled!
I cooked it slowly for about two and a half hours with onion, celery and carrot. The skin turned a very unappealing gray, but peeled off easily. Under the skin was meat that separated into strings, rather like a skirt steak that’s been pulled apart with a fork. I took this meat and diced it and put it in a skillet with a cup of water, a half cup of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of Rapadura. The liquid boiled off and left the meat so incredibly delicious. Biting into the meat was like biting into a forty-dollar filet. I served it over noodles and the sweet/sour of the meat was a wonderful foil to the bitterness of Brussels sprouts cooked with cream and shallots.
And lest you think I’ve lost my mind, tongue is a fatty part of the meat, and a traditional food. Tongue sandwiches were popular during the Great Depression, when muscle meats were hard to come by and expensive. I paid about $8 for a grassfed beef tongue that weighed in at just less than two pounds.
I had to add some other meat to stretch the meal in the photo for guests, so you’ll see in the photo two distinct types of meat. The tongue meat is the lighter brown with fewer “lines.” By the way, for those of you who cook for the very young, very old or otherwise dentally challenged, tongue meat is very easily chewed.
So, try some tongue, as Psychic Lunch said in a recent Twitter post, “It’s the meat that licks you back!”
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.
In a previous post, I mentioned that I had NO idea how to combine flavors. Marcy suggested The Flavor Bible which I was able to find at the library. I was amazed. This is exactly the part of my culinary education that has been missing.
The first part of the book covers the language of food, from aroma, mouth feel, taste and what they call the “X Factor”: what is going on in your other senses including memory, heart and spirit. Of course, we all have those foods that taste like home or vacation, and this is part of that equation.
I learned, for the first time, about balancing flavors. Of course I knew that some dishes are just too salty, but never knew that adding sourness would help bring that saltiness down. I’ve never learned why creamy guacamole is so good with crunchy chips, it just is. Now I know that it is because crunchy and creamy are complementary in the same way that in painting, placing complementary colors next to each other brightens both (think of a red apple on a green tree.)
The chefs interviewed for the book are unanimous in their insistence on seeking local, seasonal food for the best results. This, too, is something I’m growing into for the first time in my life. Of course, in a home kitchen, I don’t have access to a nearly unlimited variety of seasonings and oils to bring out this flavor or that, but having a reference to tell me that a seasoning I do have will accomplish a similar result to the one I don’t have is very valuable.
Reading through the affinities listings woke something up in me. As I read the list of foods that pair well with apples, for instance, I dreamed up combinations that would have never come to me otherwise. So, our breakfast custard this week will have a touch of apple cider, fresh apples and cheddar cheese instead of just apples in cream and egg. I know, it’s a common pairing and not anything earth-shattering, but for someone who has relied on written recipes for each and every meal for decades, imagining a food pairing well enough to taste it in my mind is revelatory.
The affinities listings in The Flavor Bible contain other information as well, like a listing of foods associated with a certain regional and international cuisines, seasons of the year, foods that are warming or cooling, etc. Some ingredients have menu items in which they are used from the interviewed chefs’ restaurants. It is from one of those that I put together tonight’s dinner: Braised Short Ribs on Mashed Potatoes with Green Beans. You will need to adjust to your size family and meat-eating preferences, of course. We don’t eat a lot of meat in one sitting, so one rib per person was enough for us.
Braised Short Ribs
8 short ribs
2 tablespoons tallow
12 ounces double chocolate stout beer
4 ounces chopped onion
2 ounces each chopped carrot and celery
2 tablespoons butter
Start by making the mirepoix: saute the chopped onion, carrots and celery in butter in oven-proof roasting pan. Remove from pan, add tallow and turn up heat. Sear ribs on all sides. Add beer and mirepoix back to pan, cover and cook in a slow oven (300°) for three and a half hours. You really want the meat falling off the bones.
While the meat was in the oven, I also baked some potatoes until they were soft. I added whole cream and butter, salt and white pepper to the potatoes and whipped them to a fare-thee-well. I used the potatoes as a “base” to hold a rib with a little of the braised veggies and juice on top. I tend to use olive oil only in salad dressings, but it was a strongly suggested pairing with green beans. So, when it came time to make the green beans, I steamed them until just tender, then sprinkled them with some roasted onion and drizzled olive oil over the top.
The depth of the flavors was a surprise to me. The potatoes were more potato-y than those I’ve made from boiled potatoes. The green beans were much more savory drizzled with olive oil and onion than tossed with butter, which makes them sweeter. The amazing thing was in the combining. The ribs alone were good, the potatoes were good, the beans were good. But piled on a fork together created something new and amazing, savory, rich and wonderful.
You’ll have to forgive me, not only am I only learning to cook, but learning to write about food as well! The Flavor Bible just moved to the top of my Christmas list. But until December 25, don’t bother looking for a copy in the Nashville Public Library system because I’ve renewed my loan!
I was called out to work again yesterday afternoon. I’m so glad I started dinner right after breakfast. I juiced two oranges and tossed a pound and a half of stew beef in it to marinate while scrambling the eggs and making toast. One of the kids warmed up leftovers for lunch while I got ready for work.
Note: This foodstyle is tough on refrigerator space. I need to look into buying a second-hand fridge for the garage in which to store jars of stuff!
When I got back from work, I stirred together a sauce of beef stock, soy sauce, fresh shredded ginger and garlic, a quick drizzle of sorghum, and some rice vinegar. I put more rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey, ginger and garlic in a small jar with some toasted sesame oil and flax oil to shake up for salad dressing. I broke up a pound of rice noodles into one-inch lengths (I couldn’t find buckwheat noodles at the store, how strange!) and put water on for them to cook. Then I raided the fridge for veggies. I chopped up a head of Napa cabbage and a bunch of green onions and put them in a salad bowl. I sliced two carrots on the diagonal, and made bite-sized pieces of red bell pepper, green onions and asparagus. I stirred three tablespoons each of arrowroot and water together in a small dish and heated up my deep skillet. The noodles were done now, so I drained them and put them in a hot skillet with some coconut oil to get crispy. When they were done, I drained them and tossed them with the salad. I started the noodle cooking water back up for more rice noodles, these to be served under the stir fry.
When the skillet got screaming hot, I added some coconut oil and a small bit of olive oil. First in was the meat. I patted it dry from the marinade first so it would brown and not just stew. After it was browned on all sides, I added the carrots. I continued tossing and cooking those, and in about three minutes, added the green onions and bell pepper. More tossing and stirring. I turned the fire down a tad and added a little more oil before adding the asparagus. Then I remembered the leftover cooked broccoli in the fridge and tossed that in as well. It was just a couple minutes before the veggies were soft and the meat was done, so I added the soy sauce/beef stock sauce and let it cook down for just a minute or two before adding the arrowroot mixture to thicken it all up. The pot went right on the table with cooked noodles, salad and dressing.
We aren’t eating a lot of spaghetti anymore. A pot of spaghetti and a jar of sauce used to be a meal for us. It was homemade fast food that I’d make at least one meal a week. I became concerned when I saw how much pasta it took to fill a kid up, and the short time it kept them filled. More research into the effect of carb loading on blood sugar levels was very instructive!
Breakfast today was muffins with dried cherries and crispy pecans. I’ve always considered muffins to be “fast food” because they can be started the night before. I used to mix dry ingredients in one bowl, and leave that on the counter overnight, then mix wet ingredients in another bowl left in the fridge. In the morning I’d mix the two bowls together and bake. It was a little different soaking the flour on the counter for 24 hours, but the rest of the ingredients went together rather quickly. The hour of baking time pushed us back, though. I think perhaps next time I’ll make these at night when I have an oven meal planned and they will be ready for my early-risers in the morning.
Hubby and kids had leftovers for lunch while I trekked downtown to the nearest health food store. I picked up some pine nuts, organic fruits and veggies, coconut oil and peppermint flavoring for toothsoap. Dinner simmered along all day in the slow cooker. When I got home, I sliced up some potatoes, boiled them for 15 minutes and mashed them with some clarified butter. I left the milk out so my milk-allergic daughter could enjoy them. We like our mashed potatoes on the chunky side, so the milk wasn’t missed. I also washed, trimmed and put some broccoli in the steamer for a few minutes. Dinner was based on the Beef Bourguignon recipe from NT, but I changed it up a little. I like my mushrooms and onions firm, not mushy like they get all day in the cooker.
Beef Cabernet
3 pounds beef stew meat, cut down to ladylike bite-size
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons coconut oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup flour
2 cups beef stock
2 pounds pearl onions
1 pound baby crimini mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup drinking-quality Cabernet Sauvignon
Marinate the stew meat in vinegar overnight, for at least 8 and up to 24 hours. Pour off marinade and pat meat dry well. Brown beef in dutch oven in melted coconut oil and butter, in batches (don’t crowd or they’ll steam instead of brown). Remove meat to slow cooker with slotted spoon. Add flour to pot, stirring with a whisk until it absorbs the fat. Add beef stock gradually, and allow to come to a boil briefly before adding to slow cooker. Start slow cooker on low for 6 hours. One hour before meat is done, trim and wash onions and mushrooms. Saute in skillet with melted butter in batches, then remove with a slotted spoon to slow cooker. Add wine to pan and deglaze, allowing to boil off the alcohol for 5 minutes or until reduced by about half. Add wine to slow cooker and allow to finish cooking.
