(y)our food choices

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We cook a lot in our tiny kitchen and love it! Baked bread, simmering soups and homemade pizzas are just a few of the staples in our apartment. We are constantly experimenting with recipes and love a challenge. We’re not Iron Chefs but we do respect the men and women who are and their dedication to the craft. We’re just two men who are trying to get back into the simple ways of life. We’re all about farmer’s markets and grass fed beef. We believe that the food we eat is sacred, even if we are not of the religious state of mind, and that with every bite we take or every drink we consume we can all make a difference, for good or not so good. We hope you enjoy reading about what we are eating, peruse the pictures we take of our food, and tell us about what your eating and drinking. In the future we will be linking this blog to a new blog called Your Food Choices where we hope to get some lively discussions about food and how it affects us all. Cheers! Steve & Jason

Tell your kids that Shrek eats this for dinner, maybe then they’ll try it.

Steve’s very kind. He tells me almost every night that whatever I have cooked is the most delicious thing I’ve ever made. Rarely does he say anything negative, and even if he doesn’t like something, the worst thing he’ll say is, “It’s good.” The other night I could sense his displeasure in the soup I made for dinner. I got the, “It’s good” response and could see Steve was having problems choking it down. I wasn’t pleased with the outcome, either. The recipe, “Creamy Fennel and Greens soup” is on epicurious.com, with a 3 1/2 out of 4 star rating. I thought that, at the very least, I would be able to use up some of the veggies in our fridge by adding them to what looked like a delicious vegetable soup. It wasn’t!

With recipe in hand, I went to work chopping and sautéing the onion and fennel, cleaning the collard greens and spinach, adding water, cooking the collards, then the spinach, and finally blending everything together. I blended, and blended, and blended some more but it still wasn’t the smooth puree I was striving for. As I tasted the soup I realized it was missing something. It needed more salt, more spice, more pepper, and more fat. I added more salt, pepper, and whole milk to the mix (the recipe called for cream, which we didn’t have in the house) but it still wasn’t smooth or tasty. The consolation was that I knew it was healthy thanks to all those green veggies. A small consolation indeed.

Usually, the food we eat has to meet three criteria: it has to be healthy, it has to taste great and it has to look like something we’d want to eat.

The taste and looks were lacking with this one. The soup looked like something scooped out of a swamp and tasted like it looked too, very very green. One of the fibrous veggies simply would not break apart in the blender and we found ourselves chocking back fibers that were so fine they reminded us of one of our cat’s furballs. Not the best soup I’ve made, but not the worst (very close).

The next day I tried my best to doctor-up the swamp soup in an effort to turn it into something palatable. After straining the solids from the liquid I pureed the solids again. After 10 minutes of blending it still was not completely smooth. I then added more salt and reheated. I put half the soup back in the blender one more time and, with the blender running, added 4 tablespoons of cold butter to the warm soup. It helped enrich the soup but still didn’t help smooth it. Whoever gave this recipe a 3 or 4 star rating on epicurious.com seriously needs to reevaluate their culinary tastes. And the recipe writer needs to take a good, hard look at this one. We think it could use some work.

Alas, I think this batch will just have to be eaten as a “nutritious” soup and not anything that looks or tastes good. I’m freezing the rest of it for one of those rainy days (I hope summer comes soon) because I just can’t stand the thought of wasting all those nutritious greens. If you do make this recipe, try eating the soup along with a grilled cheese sandwich to make it more palatable. After all, everything tastes better with grilled cheese!

Creamy Fennel and Greens Soup AKA Swamp Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 fennel bulb, trimmed and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 pound mixed dark leafy greens such as collard and beet, coarse stems and center ribs discarded and leaves chopped
6 cups water
3 cups baby spinach (2 ounces)
4 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Garnish: fennel fronds or chopped dill

Preparation

Heat oil and butter in a 6-quart heavy pot over medium heat until foam subsides. Add fennel, onion, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly browned, 7 to 8 minutes.

Add leafy greens (but not spinach) and water to pot and simmer, covered, until greens are tender, about 30 minutes. Stir in spinach and cook, uncovered, just until wilted, about 1 minute.

Purée soup in batches in a blender (use caution when blending hot liquids) until smooth adding chunks of butter to the running blender, then return to pot. Stir in cream and lemon juice and reheat over low heat. Season with salt.

Cooks’ note: Look through your spice rack to add some flavor to this soup, maybe crumbled bacon or blue cheese on top would help. Also try adding a potato or two to the soup when cooking the collard greens. This will give the texture a more velvet feel.

Soup can be made 2 days ahead and chilled. Reheat or serve cold.

Pheasants are not the sort of thing most people keep in their freezers and we wouldn’t have them either if it weren’t for Steve’s Dad’s love of hunting and his generosity. He’s given us more game meat than we know what to do with and we may need to purchase a larger freezer next year when he retires. Of course, we also need to invite more of our friends to dinner so they can help us get through our frozen cave of meat. It sounds like it’s time to plan a dinner party!

Pheasants are not the easiest birds to cook with. In fact, wild pheasant is a pain in the ass to prepare well. They’re wild birds with very lean meat, lots of bones and leg meat that is virtually impossible to separate from the dozens of tiny tendons holding the bird’s drumstick together. Steve took most of the meat he could get off the bones and put it in the food processor along with a variety of herbs and spices. He chopped the mixture into a course, fresh sausage and browned it in olive oil. The large cooked crumbles of “sausage” dotted the pizza crust accompanied by thin slices of fennel, chopped kale and a generous scattering of goat cheese.

The next day, Jason took what was left of the pheasant meat and bones and made a nice pressure-cooked stock. We read the Cook’s Illustrated suggestion of finely chopping the vegetables in a food processor, and also grinding the meat, before making stock. Modernist Cuisine, the new six-volume cookbook by Nathan Myhrvold, suggests using a similar method of pressure-cooking stock. It was time to give it a try. So, after chopping the vegetables and then grinding up the pheasant meat, Jason browned the bones in the pressure cooker with a little olive oil, tossed in the meat to cook a little, then added the vegetables and enough water to cover everything. He sealed the lid and for the next 45 minutes, that familiar little ssssss from the pressure cooker was music to his ears. After cooking was complete, he turned it off and let the whole thing cool down before unsealing it. The stock was clear and beautiful. A very nice consommé.

Preparing to make the stock.

He also tried this method with the left over veggie clippings we keep in the freezer, and the carcass of a rotisserie chicken from a recent dinner out. We had the pleasure of dinning with our good friend Kathy the other night while she was in town and took her to Limon Rotisserie, one of our favorite restaurants in the city. Not only is the restaurant’s food excellent, the staff of hot guys serving would make any gay man, or straight woman, blush and flirt, but we digress. Anyway, asking to keep the bones from the chicken carcass isn’t a common request at the restaurant. We usually only keep them when we get take out. The owner, who was waiting on us, looked a little perplexed by our request to box up the bones until Jason mentioned that we make a great chicken stock with them. With all the herbs and spices rubbed on the chicken before roasting, it would be a waste to just throw the bones away without getting all that flavor from them.
The Limon chicken stock turned out very nicely in the pressure cooker too, and it took a lot less time than boiling everything for hours. The stock was a little cloudy though and we think the vegetable clippings absorbed a lot of the water. We didn’t finely chop the veggies before adding them to the pot. No matter, the stock has a lot of great flavor and we have a rich stock for the next great soup or sauce.

Pizza Dough

Pheasant Sausage

Leftovers are just as good.

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp dried oregano
½ tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 lb pheasant meat
3 tbsp olive oil

Heat a small sauté pan over medium flame, add dry spices and carefully toast until fragrant. Do not let them brown. Remove from heat and pour into a mortar. Add salt and grind mixture into a fine powder.

Add pheasant and spice mixture to the bowl of a food processor and process with the chopping blade until ground into a fine mince.

Heat a skillet over medium flame and add olive oil. Once oil has heated, add pheasant “sausage” to the pan and cook while breaking the mixture into small pieces. Cook, stirring frequently, until pieces begin to brown. Remove from heat and set aside to use or to cool before refrigerating.

Assemble Pizza

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, rough chop
1 small fennel bulb, thinly sliced with a mandolin
1 small bunch kale, any variety
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled into large pieces

In a small sauté pan gently heat the olive oil and garlic until starting to sizzle. Remove from the heat to cool.

After stretching the dough to fit onto a baking sheet, brush with the garlic infused olive oil. Equally distribute the fennel slices, topped by the kale, then the pheasant sausage and goat cheese. Bake in a 450-degree oven for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned on top and bottom.

Pheasant stock

2 pheasants, bones and leg meat
1 medium onion
1 large carrot
1 large celery rib
1 bay leaf
½ tablespoon whole black pepper corns
¼ teaspoon salt

Remove as much meat from the bones and pulse in a food processor until the consistency of ground meat. In a pressure cooker add the oil and heat the pan. Add the bones and brown. Add the ground meat and cook stirring constantly, until browned. In the food processor add the onion, carrot and celery. Pulse until finely chopped. Add to the pan along with the bay leaf, pepper corns, salt, and enough water to cover. Place the lid on the pressure cooker and under low pressure cook for 45 minutes. Allow the to cool before removing the lid. Strain the stock and refrigerate for up to 1 week, or freeze for two months.

Chicken & Veggie Carcass Stock

4-6 cups chicken bones and/or veggie scraps
water
salt
bay leaves
whole peppercorns

We’ll collect chicken carcasses and veggie clippings in the freezer until the container is overflowing. Once the container is full, about four-six cups of whatever items you have, add to the pressure cooker and cover with water. Add a large pinch of salt, a small palm full of black peppercorns, and a few dried bay leaves. Cook with low pressure for 45 minutes and than let cool without releasing the pressure. Strain the stock and refrigerate for up to 1 week, or freeze for two months.