Kitchen3N

Recipes and food fun from Apt 3N

Lessons in Spatchcocking

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Don’t double check your calendar. It is in fact, March. I cooked a whole turkey in March.

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What else are you going to do when your buddies over at Honest Chops send you a 17 pound bird? Since we didn’t do the whole turkey day shebang last year, I got to try out the spatchcocking technique I read about over at Serious Eats. So you see, it isn’t a word I made up for my kids. It’s a cooking technique that requires removal of the backbone (seriously, this turkey has seen better days), then pushing the bird down flat to encourage even cooking. People go all kinds of crazy to ensure breast meat doesn’t dry out. In past years I’ve tried brining in a brining bag (thanksgifiasco 2011 – brining bag broke and peppercorns were still being found in corners of my apt six months later). I’ve flipped the bird half way through the cooking process – starting breast down, the finishing breast up.

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This time I really wanted to try dry brining. But ain’t nobody got room in their fridge for a 17 lb bird to do its thing for 3 days!! I couldn’t even defrost this thing the “proper” way, according to “US Department of Health guidelines”. I left it out on my counter for 24 hours and am living to see the light of day. Please don’t do the same, then sue me if you get sick. Just do what the Man says and defrost in your fridge for 08765336789 days.

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This is not a technique I’d recommend if you’re petite like me. Unless, of course, your even more petite desi mom is around to help and manages to whack that bird flat without breaking a sweat. I should’ve known – plenty of experience with that backhand.

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Key takeaways:

  • It’s hard removing the backbone with regular ol’ kitchen shears. If this is something you want to try, I’d recommend getting poultry shears.
  • Once I did get it out, I loved having the backbone available, along with the innards, to make turkey stock. It just bubbled away on the stove top while the bird cooked in the oven. Soups, pastas, quinoa and rice pilafs for dayssssssss.
  • The cooking temperature was wayyyy too high. I appreciated how fast the thigh meat cooked through, but at 450 degrees, things were smoking up and my smoke alarm kept ringing. I turned the heat down to 425 and carefully poured in some water into the baking sheet to keep the veggies and juices from scorching. Even then, at 1 hour and 10 minutes, the breast meat had dried out. Why oh why?!

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I have no idea where this beautiful gravy bowl came from. Does this happen to you? If you’re the beautiful soul who gifted this piece to me, please stand up. Thank you! I don’t even care for gravy – this is all beautiful, luxurious, reduced pan drippings. Happy Spatchcocking!

Technique from Serious Eats.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 2 tsp dried thyme
  • olive oil (not extra virgin)
  • 2 lemons, halved
  • 2 onions, halved
  • 2 heads garlic, halved

Directions

  1. Combine all the spices in a bowl and smear all over the spatchcocked turkey.
  2. Placed halved vegetables on an aluminum lined baking sheet. Place wire rack over the veggies. Drizzle the turkey liberally with oil and lay on the wire rack. Bake according to directions. I would go with a lower cooking temperature, say 350 degrees F, for 70-90 minutes depending on the size of your bird. The best way to tell is by sticking a meat thermometer into the deepest part of the thigh and getting a reading of 165 degrees.

Mini Turkey Pot Pies

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Confession: I’ve never made an actual pot pie. Like with the flaky crust and roux (butter and flour mixture) thickened meat and vegetable filling. It just wasn’t something that was a regular on our dinner table. And given my zabihah-halal dietary restriction, ordering chicken pot pie at any ol’ restaurant just wouldn’t do. But, one day last summer (or was it two summers ago?) I was taking my New York-obsessed-child-prodigy of a niece around the city. After an eventful day of Top of the Rock, TKOs at Bouchon Bakery, and bumping into Naomi Watts in Soho, we were making our way through Chelsea Market and (I) decided we would have a well deserved sit down lunch at the green table.

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Everything was so good. I couldn’t eat my salad fast enough. That’s right. The salad. But when my entree came out, it knocked me out of my seat it was so good. A mushroom pot pie. It was so earthy, so filling, so delicious. Not at all bland as I’d envisioned pot pies to be (I’m sorry! It’s just all the times I’ve watched it being made, there were few flavorings beyond chicken stock, salt, pepper and parsley.) This one, I could tell was made with the broth from reconstituting porcini mushrooms. That’s what gave it that special umami note.

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I took a shortcut with these little guys since I had some puff pastry sheets in the freezer and 0.0000018394 minutes these days for anything. I didn’t even make a proper roux for the filling. I simply sauteed the awesome Honest Chops ground turkey with onions, carrots and garlic. Added some dried thyme, salt and pepper. Then vegetable stock for moisture and half a package of cream cheese for creaminess. At the end, some frozen peas and chopped parsley for color and pizazz.

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I’ve been dying to showcase this beautiful muffin pan from Anthropologie that my dear friend Jaf had gotten me for my birthday ages ago. Oh, Anthropologie, why can’t you have more stuff on sale?

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You can pretty much en robe anything in puff pastry and it will be delectable. It’s just the magical combination of butter, flour and salt. But you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you that at our house, these were topped with Sriracha, right? Don’t worry – you have my permission to do the same.

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Ingredients

  • 3 tbsp olive oil (not extra virgin)
  • 1 small yellow onion, diced small
  • 2 thin carrots (or 1 large), diced small
  • 1 lb ground turkey (white meat)
  • 2 large, fresh cloves of garlic, minced (garlic is fresh when the bulbs are held together quite tightly)
  • 3/4 tsp dried thyme
  • 3/4 tsp salt (more or less depending on your stock)
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock (can use water if needed – just check the seasoning at the end)
  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 4 oz cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
  • 2 puff pastry sheets, defrosted (leave it out on the counter for 2 hrs to defrost)
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray muffin pans with non stick cooking spray.
  2. Heat oil in a large skillet over pretty high heat. Add onions, carrots and meat, breaking up the chunks of meat. Cook until meat is no longer pink, 5-7 minutes. Next add the garlic, thyme, salt and pepper. Stir until thoroughly combined. Add stock and lower the heat to medium. Let cook 2-3 minutes until liquid reduces a bit. Add peas and cook for 1 more minutes. Turn off the heat and add the cream cheese and parsley. Stir until cream cheese has blended in and parsley is incorporated. Set aside.
  3. On a floured surface, roll out one sheet of the puff pastry until it’s slightly larger than the area of the muffin pan. Using a sharp knife, cut out 6 or 12 rectangles, according to the size of your muffin pan. You should get 12 pot pies out of a regular muffin pan, or 24 mini pot pies from a mini muffin pan. Fill each gap with a rectangle of puff pastry, with the corners hanging extending beyond the borders a bit. Add 1 to 2 tbsp of the meat mixture and fold over the corners to cover as much as possible. Do this for all the rectangles. Brush each one with the egg and bake in the preheated oven for about 18-22 minutes. Tops should be golden when done.

Lamb Chops with Spiced Pistachios and Yogurt Dipping Sauce

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I think I’m like most of you when it comes to lamb chops: straight up with a rosemary and garlic rub. But my copy of Smitten Kitchen’s cookbook had been sitting on the shelf long enough. Sure, I’ve looked through the pages MANY a time to drool at the beautiful, glossy pictures and so earnestly wish I were friends with Deb. But the execution just hadn’t happened. And though I’ve never had pistachio crusted anything before, I did have (almost) all the ingredients on hand for this recipe. Which is rare.

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I was lucky I had just enough pistachios left over. You can bet that I was shelling them there were two bodies hovering around me picking them out of the bowl. It worked because I was working with such a small batch (the recipe was written for 6, I had just two lamb chops). And contrary to the directions in the recipe, I crushed the pistachios with a rolling pin instead of a food processor. Does anyone else find it a huge pain in the butt to clean the food processor? Sure, some spices made its way out of the ziploc bag as I banged out the mix, but doing so over a cutting board helped rescue some escapees.

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This was the first time I used chaat masala to actually cook something. Chaat masala, for all you non-masala eaters out there, is a South Asian spice mix. It’s bright. It’s funky. It’s spicy. It’s savory. It’s Heather from work. A combination of some usual (cumin, coriander, black pepper) and some unusual (dried mango powder, black salt, asfoetida) ingredients. It usually adorns pani puri, bhel phuri, chatpati, and other street foods that if consumed every day, from actual Dhaka street vendors, over the course of 2 weeks will give you the nastiest stomach bug known to man (truth). I usually put it over fruit and yogurt to make fruit chaat. It’s delightful.

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The spices, the cooking method, the superb meat – it’s like when all the pieces come together to make a beautiful work of art!

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I have nothing further to add to this glorious hunk of meat. It didn’t even need the yogurt sauce. But. If you do go down that road, make sure to add 1/4 cup of shredded cucumber to make a proper raita. I didn’t have cucumber on hand, but I did have some handy dandy black salt (it’s got a wonderful smokey/savoriness to it that’s hard to imitate).

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Recipe adapted from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. I used 1/3 of the recipe for the chops.

Ingredients

Raita

  • 1 cup full fat plain yogurt
  • a pinch of salt
  • a pinch of black salt (if you don’t have black salt, do a 1/4 tsp cumin)
  • 2 tbsp minced fresh mint or cilantro leaves
  • 1/4 cup grated cucumber
  • pinch of cayenne pepper

Chops

  • 1/2 cup shelled pistachios
  • 3 tsp chaat masala
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp paprika
  • pinch of cayenne pepper
  • 6 lamb chops, 3-4 ounces each
  • salt and pepper
  • olive oil

Directions

  1. For the raita: mix all the ingredients in a bowl and adjust the seasonings to taste.
  2. For the lamb chops: pulverize the nuts with the spices in a food processor or by putting them in a ziploc bag and beating with a rolling pin. Pour onto a plate and set aside.
  3. Season lamb chops with salt and pepper and let rest for 10-15 minutes. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Heat a cast iron or other heavy skillet over high heat. Add oil. When it’s hot but not smoking, add chops, two at a time. Cook for 2 minutes on each side then place directly onto nuts. Coat in nut mixture then place on baking sheet. Finish cooking the chops in the preheated oven for 5 minutes. Serve with yogurt sauce.

Valentine’s Surf and Turf: Rib Eye Steak & Jumbo Shrimp

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This Ribeye from Honest Chops was absurd…

Ly delicious. I’ve only had a handful of steaks in my life. Namely because halal steaks are so hard to come by. Most halal butchers don’t differentiate between all the wonderful cuts (I think we’ve discussed this before). Nowadays, you can find some halal steaks at select NYC restaurants by way of Creekstone Farms. However, the last steak I had at Marc Forgione, just wasn’t that great. Not so much a reflection of the meat, rather the preparation.

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When you cook up your own steak, you can season it to your heart’s content. My absolute favorite part of steak is the salty, peppery, crusty exterior you get when the seasoning’s just right and the caramelization’s just right. The last time I had the pleasure was when my brother in law owned a butcher shop and gifted me an entire tenderloin. You can bet I sliced off the tip and made myself a filet mignon that was to die for. It was my first proper steak. There was a party in my mouth.

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This gorgeous, bone-in Rib eye from Honest Chops is perfect for my surf and turf Valentine’s Day meal. I’m going to be transparent here: I’m usually not big on Valentine’s Day. I remember how much it sucked being single and watching every other girl get showered with balloons and chocolates and yadda yadda. But, now that I am married, who’s gonna say no to some good chocolates once a year. Amiright?! But for my good friends over at HC – I am pulling out the big guns (read: shrimp):

  • Perfect, just shy of Medium, Rib eye Steak
  • Skewered chili and garlic Jumbo Shrimp (hey, if both people have garlic, then it cancels out, right?)
  • Baby Spinach Salad with pears, blue cheese, dried cranberries and slivered almonds with a honey balsamic dressing

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Hear me out on the cooking time before people start going all Planet of the Apes on me for daring to go anything beyond medium rare. Pretty much any recipe I read on rib eyes advised on a cooking time of 3-4 minutes per side over a high heat (either grill or pan) for medium rare. However, after reading this article on Food52, I decided on 5 minutes per side to just venture beyond the medium rare stage (I’m not crazy about the metallic taste of blood, so sue me). They say rib eyes are best just shy of medium doneness. I personally just tried reaching for an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit. And though my meat thermometer never reached 145, I trusted the cooking temp and time and tented the meat with foil after the allotted 10 minutes. Oh My Goodness. Was it a perfectly cooked piece of meat. I could eat it for days. I could tout it as a body scrub, once the whole coffee scrub craze passes.

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I cooked up some caramelized onions and peppers to serve alongside the steak – but it totally didn’t need them! So I’m not bothering including that here. The skewered jumbo shrimp is a luxurious compliment to the steak. Alongside, is one of my favorite salads. You don’t want to go heavy on the carbs for your Valentine’s day meal and risk passing out from a food coma! I had a Costco sized pack of jumbo shrimp, but you can easily halve the recipe for two. Finally – don’t pour all the dressing at once! Leftover dressed salad is no fun.

 Ingredients

For the steak

For the shrimp

  • about 2 lbs of jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
  • 3 tbsp olive oil

For the salad

  • 3 oz organic baby spinach
  • half an anjou pair, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries
  • 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (if blue cheese is too strong for you, substitute goat cheese)
  • 3 tbsp toasted slivered almonds (just add slivered almond to a warm pan and heat until lightly browned. Keep a close eye on them!)
  • 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp mustard
  • 1 tsp honey
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions

  1. Make the steak: leave the steak out at room temperature for 45 minutes. Heat a cast iron skillet (preferable but any heavy skillet will do the trick) over high heat for 5 minutes (for me that’s at heat level 5 out of 6 on my hottest burner. I actually toasted my almonds in the cast iron skillet as it was heating up. Clever girl, Naureen.) Rub your steak with the garlic clove (optional) and season it liberally with salt and pepper. Add some vegetable or olive oil (NOT extra virgin) to your pan and immediately add the meat. It should sizzle. Do. Not. Touch. It. For the next 5 minutes. When 5 minutes are up, flip it over and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Finally, remove from the pan and cover with aluminum. Let it rest for 10-15 minutes.
  2. While the steak rests, cook the shrimp. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine the shrimp with the garlic, chili, oil and salt and toss to combine. Add to skewers, 3 per skewer (TIP: soak your sewers in water for at least 30 minutes to keep them from burning). Arrange on a baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes.
  3. For the salad: combine spinach, pear, blue cheese, dried cranberries and almonds. Combine the next 6 ingredients in an empty jar, put the lid on, and shake! Use dressing as required.

Beef Tagine

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I have been bitten by the travel bug. Not recently. The bite’s been smoldering more or less my whole life with my actual escapades limited only by finances and well, youth. And now, in the absolute DEAD of winter. With over a foot of snow in NYC in the past two weeks and with even more snow on the way this weekend!!! This is usually about the time New Yorkers duck out for more tropical climates. My husband and I ran away from a devastating snow storm in March 2010 that brought down power lines and trees in upstate NY. So, we were jerks and literally left our friends in the dark while we frolicked around Montego Bay.

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That same winter I had gone to Fez, Morocco for a work retreat. Although I didn’t have a chance to see Casablanca or ride camels in the desert, it was a great bonding experience with my colleagues. We did this great exercise in negotiation where small groups of us ventured into the bazaar with trinkets we had brought with us from our respective countries and tried to barter for the best deal. Someone traded an NYC Taxi Magnet for a lamp. Someone else bartered a snow globe for, what was it…a tagine?!

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Segwayyyyy! A tagine is a Moroccan earthenware pot that’s meant for low and slow cooking. It’s got a flat bottom with low sides and a conical top that’s supposed to accumulate the condensation. That ends up basting the meat throughout the cooking time. Now, I didn’t make it back with a tagine, but I did score a Martha Stewart dutch oven when I got married. It’s got little bumps all along the inside of the lid that effectively does the same thing as the tagine top.

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With the bottom round roast from Honest Chops, you want something that cooks for a long time to break down and tenderize an otherwise tough cut of meat. I went through all my recipe books and as much as I would’ve loved to try beef bourguignon or a beef daube, or even a pot roast, I just don’t have a good substitute for wine! Do you?

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And since I’ve posted many a curry on this site, I thought I’d try something different. So I went with Jamie Oliver’s recipe for beef tagine. Spices, beef, chickpeas, vegetables, broth. Right up my alley, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t. I felt like there was a spice overload. A whole tablespoon of cinnamon – not bad. But then a tablespoon of cumin. A tablespoon of ground ginger. Paprika. Ras el hanout. I don’t even have ras el hanout (literally – top of the shop) spice mix. So I just did a quarter tsp of spices typically found in it – ground cardamom, coriander, chili powder, turmeric, nutmeg and all spice.

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You rub the spices into the meat and let it sit overnight (or at least 2 hours). They look and smell great at this point. Like fragrant truffles (is that redundant?). And when you brown it in the oil, it gives off the slightest golden hue from the turmeric. But that’s where my love affair ends. I tasted it 1 hour, 1.5 hours, and 2 hours into the cooking time. And I thought it was perfect at 1.5 (which is half the cooking time he suggests). I just wanted to avoid the fate of a certain boneless short ribs. But it was good at 2 hours as well. The prunes were a good additional as well. All in all – worth trying, just not my favorite.

Recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver.

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp cinnamon, cumin, paprika, ground ginger
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric, nutmeg, coriander, chili powder, cardamom and all spice
  • 2 tsp salt (more to taste)
  • 1/2 tsp pepper (more to taste)
  • 1 to 1.5 lbs organic, grass fed, bottom round roast, cut into cubes
  • 2-3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion, diced
  • 1 bunch cilantro stems, chopped
  • 1 can chickpeas (14 oz)
  • 1 can crushed tomatoes (14 oz)
  • 3 1/2 cups vegetable stock
  • 2 summer squash, sliced (I don’t know if this is the type of squash he had in mind, but he didn’t specify so I went with the easiest one)
  • 6-7 prunes, chopped
  • cilantro, for garnish
  • cooked couscous, quinoa or rice for serving

Directions

  1. Rub all the spices with the meat and let sit in the fridge overnight or two hours at a minimum.
  2. Heat oil in a tagine, dutch oven, cast iron casserole, or large pot over high heat. Add the meat, spices and all, and let brown for 5-7 minutes. Add onions and cilantro stems and stir, scraping up browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Cook for an additional 5 minutes. Add chickpeas, tomato and broth and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom.
  3. After an hour and a half, add squash and prunes. Cover and cook over low heat until squash cooks through (about 30 minutes).
  4. Taste for seasoning. Garnish with cilantro and serve with preferably quinoa and a hit of lemon or lime juice.

Sloppy Joes

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I recall an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations when he was schooling his viewers on some things every home cook should know. Among them:

  1. How to slice and onion. Key take away: don’t leave your fingers sprawled all over the onion. You are asking for it. Tuck your finger tips under like you’re tossing a knuckleball. Life-saver.
  2. Beef bourguignon. It’s just a pot of unattractive, purple-hued beef cubes simmering in an even less attractive liquid base UNTIL the magic time is up. For the first two, two and a half hours, that’s all it is. But when the time is right, it all comes together to become the legendary French stew. That’s a lesson I’ve carried with me for all my stews and curries. The key factor is time. Time for the meat to flavor the broth and for the broth to cook/tenderize the meat. You have to learn what that time is for each dish to have truly delicious stews and curries.
  3. There were a few other lessons. Since I’ve forgotten them, they clearly weren’t as life changing.

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I’ve made sloppy joes the traditional American way before, loaded with ketchup, brown sugar, sometimes Worcestshire sauce and/or vinegar. It’s just too sweet for me. In my version, I add some warming spices, paprika to complement the bell pepper, a tiny bit of sugar to bring out the sweetness in the crushed tomatoes, and peas (hey food groups!). Both version wayyy surpass the school lunch version I had as a NYC public school student.  IMG_3588

I have my usual brioche buns as the delivery vehicle for this hot mess. You can use kaiser rolls, hamburger buns –  so long as it’s nice and porous and soaks up all the juices.

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Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
  • 1 medium yellow onion or 1/2 large yellow onion, diced
  • 1 red/orange/yellow pepper, seeds and ribs removed, diced
  • about 1 pound Honest Chops organic ground beef
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp paprika
  • 1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne/chili pepper
  • 1 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 can of crushed tomatoes (about 1 1/2 lbs)
  • 1/2 cup frozen peas
  • 1/4 cup chopped cilantro or parsley

Directions

  1. Heat oil in a pot and add onion, pepper and beef. Brown over high heat for 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and spices and mix well. Add bay leaf, crushed tomatoes and stir to combine. Reduce the heat to medium low, cover and simmer for 20 min, stirring occasionally.
  2. Add peas and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. Off the heat, add cilantro and stir to combine. Serve on hamburger buns, kaiser rolls, brioche buns – something that’s going to absorb all the juices!

Samboosa

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Samboosa, samosa. Tomato, tomahto. Either way – savory pastry stuffed with meaty goodness. A fellow homeschooling mom made this for a multicultural fair we had a few months back and it was so good I just had to recreate it. It is a traditional Omani recipe: ground beef infused with deep tomato flavor, spices, herbs and vegetables, enrobed in crispy fried pastry dough. Better than any of the samosas you’d find in Jackson Heights or any other South Asian enclave.

IMG_3524 IMG_3526 IMG_3529 A long time ago, I was downright terrible at frying things. I would add things to the oil before it heated up properly. Or I wouldn’t regulate the heat carefully so after the first batch or two things would just go BAM – overly browned and out of commission. But then – then I got a candy thermometer. A wonderful little kitchen tool that helps with my caramels as much as my samosas (truth be told – this is the first time I’ve made them!).

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I kind of winged it with the wrapping. I recalled some filo wrapping directions for Spanakopita ages ago and tried to apply it here. I tried cutting a single sheet in half and folding – the results were way too big. I tried thirds – still too big. Folding a sheet in half, and cutting it down the middle made the perfect size and thickness.

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You will have some leftover filo left after making these. Not to fret. I am already dreaming up things to do with them. Baklava tassies? Or perhaps fill them with coconut (or nutella?!) and deep fry? I’ll keep you posted 😉

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 pound ground beef
  • 1 yellow onion, diced
  • 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
  • 1/4 cup minced cilantro or parsley
  • 2 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon (not a heaping tbsp, not even a full tbsp, rather a scant tbsp)
  • 1/2 tsp each turmeric, cumin, black pepper and cayenne/chili pepper
  • 1 tsp kosher salt, or to taste (I needed 1 1/4tsp, just taste it to make sure it tastes really good)
  • 2 cups water
  • 3/4 cup grated carrot
  • 1/2 cup frozen green peas
  • filo sheets for wrapping
  • oil for frying
  • 2 tbsp flour
  • 1/4 cup water

Directions

  1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Add beef, onion and garlic. Cook until meat browns, 7-8 minutes, breaking up the beef with a wooden spoon. Keep scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add carrots, parsley/cilantro, tomato paste, spices and salt. Saute for 2 minutes. Add water and cover with a lid. Cook until liquid evaporates and carrots are tender.
  2. In a large pot, heat oil to 350 to 375 degrees fahrenheit. Take one sheet of filo, fold it in half lengthwise and cut down the middle, so you end up with two strips, two layers each. Place one tablespoon of filling on one end. Fold up into a triangle as shown above. In a bowl, mix flour and water. Brush on the final edge of the pastry to seal shut. Fry 3-4 minutes until golden.

Sausages with Peppers and Onions

IMG_3461 This past Sunday, my daughter turned 4. There was a time, a dark time, deep in the winter of 2011, when I thought I wouldn’t live to see that day. In my zombie-like state, trying to comfort my colicky baby between bouncing on an exercise ball with white noise machines running and skin to skin contact – her infancy seemed like an eternity. Days kind of melted into each other, with nothing more signaling a new day then the slight shift of the hour hand on our clock.  IMG_3441 But, thankfully, I did survive those first few months, and apparently first 4 years. And despite all my attempts to outsource the party by hosting it at a charming local art studio – I still had quite a bit to do in the kitchen! From making waffles (with homemade blueberry compote), to the fruit platter, to my homemade Bengali milk tea, and the birthday cake, of course.

IMG_3305 IMG_3339 So, it was a relief, to be able to whip these Honest Chops sausages up the next day. It’s as easy and popping them on a hot skillet for 3-4  minutes on each side, then DONEZO. Butter up some warm rolls. Make the pepper and onion mixture if you’d like. If not, opt for the usual ketchup & mustard. IMG_3446 But I must say, the sweetness of the peppers and onions perfectly complements the savoriness of the sausages. Plus – they’re veggies so this constitutes a complete meal, right?IMG_3449  I remember throughout the course of my Italian language education, at San Gennaro festivals or cultural events, sausages with peppers and onions always being a popular, yet out of my reach option (recall I keep halal). But thanks to Honest Chops, I can enjoy and customize the dish to my liking!IMG_3468 I topped mine with a cheese sauce but then decided it was better without it. Enjoy!

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
  • 1 green pepper, core and seeds discarded, thinly sliced
  • 1 red pepper, core and seeds discarded, thinly slice
  • a pinch dried oregano
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • Honest Chops sausages
  • hot dog buns/rolls
  • butter

Directions

  1. In a large skillet or fry pan, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion, peppers, oregano, salt and pepper (about 1/2 tsp each) until softened – about 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and let caramelize for about 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
  2. In a cast iron skillet or non stick skillet, butter the surface and heat over medium heat. Add the buns. Warm through until browned on one side, then flip. When both sides are browned and bun is warmed through, remove from heat. Set aside on a (preferably) warmed plate.
  3. In the same skillet, lightly grease with oil or non stick cooking spray. Add the sausages and do not move for 3-4 minutes (3 minutes for a thinner sausage, 4 for a thicker one). After the allotted time, flip and cook for an additional 3-4 minutes.
  4. Assemble hot dogs: place hot dogs in the buns and top with peppers and onions.

Boneless Short Ribs with Asian BBQ Sauce

IMG_3132 How can I explain to you how good these are? Do the pictures do justice to them? Are you drooling on your keyboard? If so, then I’ve done my job. IMG_3149Though I have a confession to make: I’ve never made short ribs before. I’ve never even had them before, you know, as a separate entity. Sure, I’ve eaten them as part of a larger curry, but not like this. IMG_3099 But hooray for internet, right? I checked my cookbooks and could not find anything for boneless ribs. They all had recipes for bone-in ribs, the type that you braise in a casserole. Balsamic braised. Beer braised. Red wine braised. But then, I found this recipe for easy bbq boneless ribs! And though I was grateful for Sunny Anderson’s (easy) cooking technique, I knew I wanted an Asian BBQ type thing, something rich in soy sauce and garlic with a hint of sesame flavor, but not one that was so authentic I needed to make an extra trip to my local Asian grocery. Na’m sayin? IMG_3103 In keeping with halal guidelines, I’ve never had korean or japanese bbq (I doubt any halal establishments exist in NY). But I knew I really wanted to try Korean BBQ short ribs, or Kalbi. The problem is, you need a special cut of short ribs to prepare in that way – called the flanken cut. And if I had thought a little bit in advance, I could have convinced my friends at Honest Chops to hook it up. But I didn’t. And here we are. IMG_3106 For this post, I took a page out of my research days, when, clueless about coding, I’d have to piece together bits from existing code, tweak it according to my data, and try to make some science! So I took a little from a recipe here, a recipe there, and badda bing badda boom. Definitely feel free to swap out the regular soy sauce for low-sodium. I served it here with rice, but I actually liked it better when it was shredded and wrapped in lettuce leaves. The cool, crisp texture and flavor of the lettuce worked perfectly with the slow cooked, soy sauce spiked flavor of the ribs. IMG_3124  I used Sunny’s cooking technique with an adapted version of the Kalbi recipe below (I didn’t have an asian pear, and I wasn’t about to venture out into this torrential rainfall to get some). And I had to add chili flakes. Had to. IMG_3147 I found by the end of the recommended 3 hours, the meat dried out a bit (that didn’t stop me from inhaling them). I did taste it at 2 hours, and it was tender enough. I would recommend for this amount of meat, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. And there is more than enough sauce. I actually used some of the leftover sauce to season some salmon. You can easily do 4 lbs of ribs in it.

For leftovers: shred the beef, mix with some mayo/lemon juice, and fill a pita or other flatbread with it and some lettuce. So good.

Recipe adapted from Food Network: Kalbi, Easy BBQ Short Ribs.

Ingredients

  • About 2 lbs Honest Chops  GRASS FED boneless short ribs
  • 1/2 cup soy sauce
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 tbsps garlic and ginger paste
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • a pinch of red chili flakes
  • 1 small red onion, quartered
  • 4 scallions, chopped at a diagonal in half in slices

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. Measure out the first 4 ingredients in a large glass measuring cup. Add garlic and ginger paste, sesame oil, black pepper and chili flakes. Stir to combine.
  3. Add quartered onion into food processor. Process for a few seconds, then slowly drizzle in soy sauce mixture.
  4. Cut the short ribs into 1 1/12 to 2 in thick strips. Lay across a baking dish and drizzle the sauce over all the pieces.
  5. Cover with aluminum and bake for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, turning once half way, then once again 15 minutes before removing from the oven. Garnish with chopped scallions.

Brisket Burgers

IMG_3038For our third installment of HCxK3N (what? you don’t think it’s catchy?), we’re serving up some brisket burgers. Notorious for being overcooked, I’m sharing my experience in cooking these delicious burgers up. Don’t judge the placement of the cheese slice. It’s adjusted below.IMG_3062Just look at that caramelization!

And to give you some background, burgers are to Naureen as hunny is to ____. IMG_3036Pooh. The answer is Winnie the Pooh. Don’t judge my TV selections as of late. I LOVE burgers. But sometimes I wonder if I’m more about the burger fixins than the actual burger. For me the patty is more of a vehicle for the most wonderful combination of sauce, cheese, veggies and bread. I’m probably not supposed to be saying that but regardless I’m going to share with you the secret to keeping your burgers nice and juicy.    IMG_3092The secret’s in the sauce. No it isn’t. I’ll be sharing my not-so-secret sauce recipe below.

It’s in the cooking method. You want to cook it over pretty high heat so you sear the outside and you don’t want to overcook it. The longer it sits over the pan, the more juices that come pouring out. So I found 7 minutes on each side, on a hot cast iron skillet does the trick. This gets the burger to a medium doneness. If you can stomach a rare burger, 4 minutes on each side should do. Well done, 9-10 on each side. If your burger loses some of its juiciness at that point, compensate with sauce (that’s what I do…don’t hate!).

Ingredients

  • 4 1/4 lb Honest Chops Brisket Burgers
  • 4 brioche buns
  • 4 slices swiss or american cheese
  • a few slices of tomato
  • a few slices of red onion
  • a few slivers of pickles
  • some iceberg lettuce leaves
  • 2 tbsp mayo
  • 1 tbsp ketchup
  • a dash of hot sauce or chipotle adobo sauce
  • 1 tsp chopped pickle
  • pinch of salt and pepper

Directions

  1. Preheat a cast iron skillet or a non stick skillet over medium high heat. Season both sides of the burgers with salt and pepper. Add a little grease (veg or olive oil) to the pan. Add 1 or 2 burgers at a time depending on the size of your pan and don’t move until ready to flip (4 min each side for rare, 7 for medium, 9-10 for well done).
  2. When the burgers are done, top with cheese (you can add the cheese in its final stages of cooking, but I hate dealing with the mess of melted cheese) and set aside while assembling the rest of the ingredients.
  3. Warm the brioche buns in the same pan the burgers were cooked in or in your toaster oven.
  4. Make the sauce: combine mayo, ketchup, hot sauce, chopped pickle, salt & pepper in a small bowl. Smear sauce on both sides of the bun. Add burger and layer with whatever ingredients you like, I listed the classic toppers above but feel free to substitute caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms or avocado and cilantro. The choices are endless!