Archive for Meat/poultry Recipe

02 Feb 2012
locavore log • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

Roasted Rabbit

This recipe first appears in the Dec 2011-Jan 2012 Seasonal Table column I write for Flavor Magazine.

Roasted Rabbit, Braised Escarole, Cheesy Polenta & Roasted Carrots. Photo by Molly Peterson, mJm Photography, for Flavor Magazine.

Rabbit is intimidating for many people. Sure, it’s not as available as chicken but a growing number of farms (who often raise poultry) offer rabbits in our area. You can also find them through custom butcher shops. On a per pound basis, rabbit is more expensive  than chicken. But a 3-lb rabbit has more meat than a 3-lb chicken, or rather I should say, that a 3-lb rabbit has denser, more filling meat than a 3 lb-chicken.

Rabbit does not taste like chicken. Not even close. Sure it is a white meat with a lot of flavor, but it is dense and lean. Roast a young animal, braise an older one. Rabbit is both meaty and bony, muscle meat tightly attached to the bones. But if you like eating blue crab, you probably won’t mind all the bones in a rabbit.  When served in a restaurant, rabbit is often deboned and served as a pate, rolled, pulled, or in some other way where using a fork and a knife is breezy. In my home, we don’t mind using our fingers (mostly).

In this recipe, based on a classic French country dish, I use gin and juniper berries. But sometime I will use one of our  local whiskey or rye. Omit the juniper berries if you can’t find them. The mustard is used both for flavor and to help the meat keep moist.

And a bonus – it’s done in a hour: 5 minutes to prep, 50 to cook, 5 to cut up and plate. Cook the veggies while the rabbit is roasting. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: ,
22 May 2010
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

Fast Food My Way (Tongue it is!)

We eat plenty of fast food here – especially for lunch. Don’t believe me? well… take a look at the picture of one of our not unusual lunches.

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  • Green salad from the garden (Pick early in the morning, wash, dry, refrigerate, ready to go in seconds) with hard boiled eggs from the hen house (hard boil, refrigerate – they will keep several days and only take seconds to chop and add to the salad)
  • Various homemade pickles: curried zucchini pickles, dilly green beans, cornichons and green tomato relish. Made last summer. 3 seconds to open each jar.
  • Sliced Beef Tongue with really good mustard. Tasty (really! don’t knock it off until you try it), easy, inexpensive. What else do you want? Prepare the tongue up to days in advance, keep it in the fridge, ready to slice at a moment’s notice for sandwiches or just for a cold cut platter with pickled veggies.
  • Sun tea: steeped in the sun in 1/2 gallon jar and rebottled in recycled glass bottle for more convenience.

Voila – that is slow food, but it is also fast food. Better: it’s real food.

The how to on cooking beef tongue (or other tongues for that matter like lamb), you may find here at DC-based The Slow Cook. Ed Bruske gives very detailed instructions on how to cook tongue and brine it first – if you want.

But really, it’s easy to cook tongue; in a nutshell, this is what you do: Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: , ,
26 Apr 2010
Cookery • locavore log • Meat/poultry Recipe

Roasting a Spring Lamb

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Roasting a whole lamb in the spring is the epitome of the outdoor party (although a whole pig comes pretty close too).

We just did that this week-end for the benefit dinner organized by Flavor Magazine to benefit the Rappahannock Food Pantry.

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Read more

sylvie | 11 comments | Tags: ,
31 Mar 2010
food discovery • locavore log • Meat/poultry Recipe

Smoking Bacon

Bacon’s my friend (especially the kind that comes from a pastured pig).

A few weeks ago I read Brett Laidlaw’s post on Trout Caviar about smoking bacon. He wrote  it just about 2 years ago, but I only recently read it.

I knew we had to try it.

We did.

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It just so happened that I had two pork sides in the freezer Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags:
03 Feb 2010
locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes • Soups

Oxtail Soup

A dish of oxtail soup is a thing to share with those you love. Or not. (depends how much you love them)

What’s not to like about oxtail?

It’s traditional farm fare, a simple country dish with robust complex favors – many parts of the world have perfectly succulent ways to use oxtail as a matter of fact. It’s a slow simmered dish, perfect for cold days. It’s a dish that can be made in advance and in quantity. Reheating it makes it even better.

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Never had oxtail? If you like osso bocco, you are simply going to love oxtail. It might take a little looking to find them, although they are becoming more popular. It used to be a throwaway part of the animal – and used to be very inexpensive. But chefs in search of robust flavors obtained from slow traditional methods and the new-again emphasis on eating from nose-to-tail, is making oxtail almost trendy. So more expensive. It is one of the few cuts that I buy retail: there is after all only one tail in cattle, so when I buy a split beef half, I get – at most , if I am lucky – one tail. Hardly enough. The farmer I buy it from sells it for less than burger meat, typically the cheapest cut. So, still a pretty good deal.

Maybe oxtail is intimidating because people think of it as offal and are grossed out. Technically it is offal, but it is not an organ. Not that that would stop me from eating it if it were. Or maybe people are intimidated because they do not know how to cook it. It’s simple really, it should be cook slow. Very slow. A day in advance if possible so it has a chance to sit and mellow even more. Read more

sylvie | One comment | Tags: ,
30 Apr 2009
Appetizer • locavore log • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

Making Rillettes

It’s funny how some posts draw comments… and what for…Like my post on spring salads prompted requests for the recipe of the potted meat I served with it!

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Which, of course, one should rightly ask for the recipe, because it is simple, simply delicious, can be made well in advance, will keep in the fridge for quite a while and requires nothing more than a fresh green salad and a chunk of crusty bread to transport you to a little lunch nirvana. Yes, it will take several hours from start to finish, but most of it is not active time: the pork is slowly (slowly – I say) cooking while you go do something else. When it’s cooked, you let it cool enough to handle, and you use your hands to shred the meat (how fun is that?), pack in pots, cover with melted fat, refrigerate for a couple of days… et voila! Serve it and look like a genius!

(and since I can’t find my pictures of a pot rillettes, and it’s late, this post is without picture. You can always look here…) Update: not the picture I remember, but I found one…

So here’s my picture-free recipe for Pork Rillettes. Read more

sylvie | 7 comments | Tags: , ,
15 Mar 2009
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Vegetable recipe

He Likes Duck Fat

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Potatoes fried in duck fat, with garlic & parsley, a very fresh green salad (with not a leaf of lettuce in sight) topped with a little bit of duck breast – a perfect lunch for this blessedly rainy Sunday.

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Obviously, he thought so too (and had an intense lemon tart with coffee for dessert).

This meal is characteristic of improvised cooking; you know, cooking without a recipe based on what you’ve got. We had a breast of duck left from a roast and duck fat just rendered from that same roast, and potatoes, of course. That calls for potatoes in duck fat, reminiscent of Pommes de Terre à la Sarladaise, a dish named after the town of Sarlat in Southwest France. While one variations on this homey dish includes truffles, the poor woman’s version (mine) makes do with garlic. Don’t knock it off until you’ve tried it: duck fat makes the best fried potatoes. As far as the green salad, it was a mix of mache, sorrel, baby red Russian kale & Tuscan kale, and frisée endive, fresh from the garden. Any good-quality store bought mesclun will do; make sure it’s on the robust side so it can take the hot dressing, and with a hint of bitterness or tartness to stand up to the richness of the potatoes.

End of Winter Salad with Duck Breast & Potatoes in Duck Fat Read more

sylvie | 15 comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
08 Feb 2009
locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

Goodbye My Sweets!

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I love ginger. Is there anybody who does not? I grew it one year and got the most amazingly tender and delicate roots where the skin was so thin that it was nonexistent. I had incredible ginger shoots and pickled ginger that year (note to self: need to grow ginger again this year). Where was I? oh yes, so I cook quite a bit with ginger: curries, stir-fries, stews, candied ginger, tea, ice-cream, steamed pudding, you name it!

And sweet potatoes, full of bright vitamins and flavors, are also a favorite. Although they are not at all related to potatoes (they are related to morning glories, if you ask… you didn’t? too bad!), I often used them like potatoes. They bake, they steam, they roast, they fry, they mash, they gratine: is there anything the sweet potato can’t do in the kitchen?

I also love those one-pot dishes of which I can make a big batch that will keep for several days in the fridge and reheat well.

So… having on hand some stew beef from Joyce Harman, plenty of ginger, some tatsoi greens that survived the truly cold weather and the LAST of the sweet potatoes from the garden, I decided to make a dish that totally fits the bill (and that will be an appropriate good-bye to the sweet potatoes) : Red Cooked Beef With Sweet Potatoes.

Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: , , ,
19 Jan 2009
locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Soups

Chicken Soup With A Twist

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It’s been really cold here. We have seen the minuses (Fahrenheit, that is!). Oh, I know, there are areas of the country where winter is routinely at -20 F… but not here in the Northern Piedmont… and without snow cover at that! I don’t dare checking my poor greens in the gardens, huddled under layers of agricultural fabrics and straw…

Cold? Soup!

And an easy one too please. Using staples. And one that’s fast. And tasty! And not boring.

OK! Here is a recipe that fits all the requirements. And if you protest that ginger, fish sauce and chilies are not part of your pantry, you protest too much. They should. Ginger keeps for weeks when stored at room temperature; do not put this tropical root in the fridge: it will get chilly, sulk and start growing mold. Alternatively, if you insist on chilling ginger, then go ahead, and chill it all the way: peel, chop and process the roots in your food processor (or grate) until you have a rough puree, and then freeze it in small quantities (that’s what ice-cube trays are for!); when you need some, just take a cube out. If you really left ginger out so long that it sprouts new shoots, eat them, they are a delicacy. As far as fish sauce, it will often save the day, transforming a boring dish: a tablespoon or two will bring that elusive definition-escaping yet recognizable taste present in so many of the South-East Asia cuisines. Finally, fresh chilies can be frozen or turned very easily into fiery sauces ready to enliven a soup and warm you up from the inside on a frigid day. Got it? There, three more things for your pantry. And do yourself a favor: buy the fish sauce by the quart. It’ll cost just as much as those fancy little bottles in gourmet markets and it’ll keep forever.

The rest of the ingredients are quite plebeians, wouldn’t you say? Rice, chicken, carrots, celery… So here is one of the numerous versions of my Vietnamese-Inspired Rice & Chicken Soup. We made a version at the Simply Soups! cookery workshop this past week-end, and this is yet another. As with many soup recipes, exact ingredients and quantities vary based on what is actually in the pantry, the garden and your mood. Read more

sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: , , ,
22 Dec 2008
Cookery • locavore log • Main Dish • Meat/poultry Recipe • Recipes

True Coq au Vin

For those who don’t know, “coq” means “rooster” in French. Therefore, “Coq au Vin” means “Rooster cooked in wine”. The dish is a staple of French provincial cooking, a dish originally made by using extra roosters culled from the chicken yard or an old chicken (aka a stewing chicken), the local red wine and available aromatics. Of course, in those areas that produce only white wine (Alsace), they have versions using white wine or beer (excellent beer is made is Alsace). In Normandy and Brittany, which are too cold for wine but where hard apple cider or perry (pear cider) have been made for century, there are versions of the dish too.

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It’s like curry, or chili or Brunswick stew. Nobody has a monopole on it: many versions have evolved over time in different parts of the country. I am sure the Spaniard and the Italians have their own way to slow-cook chicken in wine, too. What those many dishes have in common is that they were born of necessity and ingenuity and that they use wine as a simmering base. Don’t kill the chicken as long as it’s laying eggs, but once that’s over, find a way to eat it. It’s the essence of peasant/country cooking: you use what you have, and make the best of it. So, no fryer, no tender little poussin for this dish: Save your fryer for frying or grilling, and your poussins for quick braising or spit-roasting! Your old chicken, however, will be perfect simmered for hours in an acidic (wine) sauce with aromatics. It will keep its shape and provide an incomparable aroma (something maybe even too strong for those palates who like their chicken really mild! Be warned).

With temperature dipping in the single digit (Fahrenheit/ -13 C) and with the holidays, long slow cooked hearty dishes that simmer for hours on the stove with tantalizing aromas are just about perfect now. mmm… coq au vin….I was recently reading a post (December 11, sorry I can’t seem to get the permalink!) from Matt of Matt’s Kitchen who relates his disappointment of making the Barefoot Contessa’s version of Coq au Vin, and how vapid and insipid it turned out. Now, I am a great admirer of Ina Garten… but that recipe – as reported and photographed on the few blogs I looked at – sure does not lood like Coq au Vin. Not even remotely. The chicken swims in broth! It’s pallid! It looks like soup …. Several posters and commenters complained of a strong unpleasant wine taste: well… no wonder, that wine did not simmer long enough to let the alcohol evaporate and it never had a chance – along with the mushrooms, onions & bacon – to meld into a gooey mess of thick and silky luscious succulence that is the essence of Coq au Vin – a dish made to savor slowly, sucking all the bones clean, and eating up all the last bits of that thick silky unctuous sauce.

On Barefoot Bloggers (a group of bloggers who cook and comment on Barefoot Contessa recipes) there are suggestions for replacing the wine and brandy for which the recipe calls. Proposed substitutions vary from grape juice, to verjus, to apple cider, to vinegar, to chicken broth etc. All fine and dandy: many of those substitutions might produce tasty chicken dishes (although looking at some of the associated post – it did not), but what they do not do is producing coq au vin. With vinegar, it’s Chicken with Vinegar (Poulet au Vinaigre is also a French country classic); with hard cider: it’s chicken with hard-cider (even Normandy Chicken, if one adds a little cream); with broth, it’s chicken stew… you get my drift. Those wineless versions may be called coq au vin by their authors, but they are no more coq-au-vin than Velveeta is cheese!

By the way, no offense to Matt, Karen & others who reported great disappointment with the recipe. They followed it. They did not fail. It’s just not a good coq au vin recipe.

Ok. Enough for the rant. Here is my recipe for Real Coq au Vin! Read more

sylvie | 11 comments | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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