Beef Jerky @ Home

Beef jerky is one of those things that when it's good, it's great.  But it can also be pretty expensive for such an addictive snack.  With a little bit of work though, you can make a tasty treat that is great to have around the house.

Here you'll find our dearly held family, er, Alton Brown recipe - we get our flank steak from the Eaton Farm (here on FB)...

Ingredients:

1.        Flank Steak

2.        2/3 cup Soy Sauce

3.        2/3 cup Worcestershire

4.        1 TB Honey

5.       2 TSP Black Pepper

6.       2 TSP Onion Powder

7.       2 TSP Red Pepper Flakes

8.       1 TSP Liquid Smoke (optional)

Thinly slice steak along the grain of the meat.  Place sliced steak and all marinade ingredients in a zip lock bag.  Refrigerate at least 3-6 hours.  Drain and pat dry and place in dehydrator (a great item to find on Craigslist by the way).  The time always varies, so just check in periodically to see when you have the texture you would expect for jerky!

Check out some pictures in the slideshow below.

The Secret Ingredient? Mint!

The only edible thing that was near abundance in our garden became the clear choice for the secret ingredient (a la Iron Chef) to revolve our meal around earlier this week when we had a couple good friends over for dinner.

We introduced the ingredient with a simple soda water with sprigs of mint as our guests arrived.  Soon afterward, our appetizers came out of the oven - potato skins with feta, kalamata olives, and of course, mint!

Thankfully, everyone was willing to work for their dinner, because we were making homemade pasta - one of our favorite new cooking pastimes.  It's so simple and so good, and now that we've gotten into fresh pasta, it's hard to go back.

Specifically, ravioli was the dish of choice, and we'd made the potato skins because the ravioli filling called for baked potato and we didn't want to just throw out the skins.  We used pecorino-romano, lemon zest, butter, and, yes, mint in the filling for the ravioli.  This recipe was from Jamie Oliver's book Cook with Jamie.  When you're done cooking the ravioli (which he sometimes calls "cushions"), you simply have to saute the pasta for a second in butter :).

For the finale, a big shout out goes to Sierra at ForkHeartKnife, because when she posted about this delicious looking blueberry lavendar sorbet I asked about making sorbet without an ice cream maker, and she generously offered hers (PS - ForkHeartKnife is moving into a physical space - the old Take the Cake spot on the corner of Main and Liberty - and if you look through the gorgeous photos of what they've been cooking up, you'll see that you want to try it out soon.  They're also doing catering, and you can catch them at What's for Dinner? on April 24-25.)!  With her help, we made a lemon/lime mint sorbet.  You may notice on the photo that we got a bit lazy at the end and didn't let it freeze all the way.  But it was mmm mmm good.

A great dinner, with a great (not so) secret ingredient - right from our backyard!  Check out some more photos below...

Bibimbap @ Home

It's been a little too long since we've found a new, simple, taste explosion meal.  After sharing our enjoyment of  the bibimbap at Suzie Wong's on Madison, Sarah found a recipe in our most recent (free from Sur la Table) Bon Appetit that did not disappoint.

The ingredients:  eggs, ribeye and T-bone steak from the Eaton Farm, asparagus from Trader Joe's, scallions and sesame seeds from Kroger, Hawaiian black salt and chili powder from Herbs & Spice & Everything Nice, and fleur de sel from a shop in Normandy, France.  Everything was organic (or better) except the HSEN items.  In addition, the marinade for the meat had sake (not sure of its origin), more scallions, sesame oil (again, can't remember from where anymore), garlic (TJ's, organic) and sugar (Kroger, organic).

We cooked the brown rice in the rice cooker before crisping it up in the cast iron.  This really was not very complicated, and was super flavorful.  I think this is going in the staple category.

See more pictures below in the slideshow.  And again, the recipe is here.

Bread @ Home (!!!)

If you couldn't tell from the title, I'm pretty excited about the fact that I made bread!  At home!  Not in a breadmaker appliance!

Now, the secret: it's really, really easy.  I did it using the "Lahey Method." If he named the method himself, does that put Lahey into the same boat as superstar athletes who talk of themselves in the 3rd person?  Gavin thinks so.  Here are some photos before the recipe and story...



In sum, to make bread this way you:
1) mix flour, yeast, table salt, and water for 30 seconds
2) cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 12-18 hours
3) remove from bowl and shape into ball, set on cornmeal in a towel
4) let rise for 1-2 hours
5) cook in a dutch oven for 35 minutes - the 1st 25 with the lid on, the last 10 with it off.

That's right, the most complicated thing is waiting/timing.  My sister is in South Africa right now, and 2 good friends have spent much of the year in India - figuring out what time it is where they are is somehow very hard for me.  So, figuring out when to make this bread can be complicated.  Making the bread - not complicated.

So, how did I decide to make bread?  A while back we tried making homemade pasta for the first time - its a blast and scrumptious too.  I liked the tactile process of kneading dough.  So, I wanted to try making bread.  I started looking at some bread cookbooks and found that the process was fairly intimidating - there are concepts and words that are not used in any other cooking that I've tried yet.  I stumbled upon this Lahey book at the bookstore, and I was pleasantly surprised by all the other authors/chefs who endorsed his method - Mark Bittman, Martha Stewart, etc.  Like when I'm looking for good non-fiction, and trust the endorsers on the back, I have been finding the same with cookbooks.  Best example: every single cookbook mentions On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee and indeed, it is fantastic.

Anyhow, it was the only bread book that I'd picked up that didn't seem to be promising a challenging and frustrating process.  I am all for mastering difficult arts, but at this point, I wanted the easy version as an entry point and the "Lahey Method" was just that.  In fact, it requires no kneading at all.

I've now baked the bread 5 or 6 times, and I'd say it comes out quite good.  Is it baguette in Paris good - no.  Is it as good as what you'd find in the "artisan" section at Kroger's - yes.  We'll keep tweaking it and make it even better, and I'm confident that people will be impressed with it at our next dinner party or holiday.

Finally, I've now been bitten by the bread making bug a bit, buddy boy (threw the last 2 in for fun).  I'm 30 pages in to Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I've taken a break the last 2 days from reading, because frankly, it's overwhelming.  Lots of science, and that's not my strong suit.  With the Lahey recipe I made one loaf that was about 45% whole wheat and another at 25%.  The 45% version was not so good, and my sense from the research I've done is that Lahey is nice, but if I want to really have some bread game, it's Reinhart I need to learn from.

If and when I bake a loaf the old-fashioned way, I'll post about it.  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy this simple bread making and I encourage you to try it too.

Hot Dogs @ Home

The Ingredients & Story: We're soon to start the 2nd round of the "Local Meat CSA" with Jerry and Elizabeth Eaton (the next time around it'll be called the "Good Eaton Club" - but I digress). We posted info on the Cincinnati Locavore list, and Cedar Lane Farm reached out to offer themselves as a backup meat provider. They shared that they had hot dogs for sale - that piqued our interest! Hot dogs are a guilty pleasure that has certainly become en vogue (i.e. Senate in OTR, Mayday in Northside, many more), and since the Eaton's don't offer them, we thought we'd give them a try. They've got regular dogs, dogs with cheese and chili seasoning, and smoked sausages with cheese.

They're not the bastion of local/healthy/additive-free that we'd like in a perfect world - but I feel better about a hand off in person from a local producer and processor than buying from Oscar Mayer (even though that was my first elementary school).

Oh, and we added some sweet potato fries (organic, Trader Joe's) with sweet chili sauce (conventional, Kroger) on the side.

The Process: We did some quick googling (that's beyond capitalization, right?), and decided upon the steam then saute with butter method. It was about that simple - boil just a bit of water in a pan, put the dogs in until the water evaporates, then add a bit of butter to finish with a char.
And yes, even though I am originally from Chicago, I do add ketchup (organic, Trader Joe's). What.

For the sweet potatoes - we mandolined into 1/4" slices, then hand tossed them in a bowl with brown sugar (organic, Kroger), cayenne (organic, Herbs & Spice & Everything Nice), and kosher salt (conventional, HSEN). They went on a cookie sheet into the oven at 400 for about 30 minutes, flipping about halfway when they were browning.

The Results:   The hot dogs were great!  They were juicy on the inside, with a nice snap/crackle/crunch through the casing.  By the time we got to the cheese and chili seasoned dogs, the cheese wasn't oozing out the way we would have liked - but that's our fault!  Sweet potatoes are hard to get crispy, and these were about halfway there on most bites, but the ones that were damn near burnt were perfect!