Roasted Pears

This could be my favorite dessert. It's only about time and attention. Basically, you take pears, peel them, put them in a medium-sided, casserole-type dish, and roast at 400º until they're done (about 2 hours), basting every 15-30 minutes. It's just butter, sugar and/or honey, a little lemon juice and water. From there you can add anything you want—maybe a splash of bourbon or a vanilla bean. It all works out in the end, but make sure your caramel isn't reducing too fast. If so, add water. You may need to do this a few times.

We served with some salty caramel ice cream and a glass of cognac.

Late Week Ethiopian

This ended up taking a lot less time than I thought it might. Injera is a cinch if you've got a sourdough starter, teff flour, 2 days, and a seasoned cast steel pan. Our batch got super bubbly and sour—just what we were after. For the red lentils, collards, and lamb shoulder bits (or tibs I guess—when in Ethiopia in Ohio), the beginning was all the same—onions, garlic, and ginger sweating in grape seed oil and butter. We used a bit of turmeric with the lentils, a touch of tomato paste with the lamb and berbere in general.

The payoff was that strange alchemy of traditional dishes that become far more than the sum of their parts.

Sardines & Green Beans

Pretty standard Dunham fare.

Our green beans with garlic, dried red chili, sliced red onion, celery, capers, homemade tomato paste, white wine, and herbs (basil, mint, parsley) and finished with really good olive oil. ILBS sardines browned in olive oil, stuffed with thyme.

Half a bottle of leftover but still singing La Lune.

Happy Tuesdays.

Fresh Rolls & Southeast Asian Pumpkin Curry

The quest for authenticity in food is understandable, but often misguided. When we're in the mood for Southeast Asian flavors, that's what we cook — strictly "authentic" or no. My guess is that people in all cultures cook what they have around in a particular style and the attempt to codify them to publish cookbooks is what accounts for iconic dishes comprised of the same standard ingredients.

Well, what we had a around was beautiful sustainable gulf shrimp (which was mostly for the curry, but we saved out a few and grilled them), mixed greens, carrots, radishes, thin rice noodles, and rice paper. As it is winter here in the midwest, there are always clamshell herbs — basil and mint — plus fresh cilantro. Dipping sauce should be a simple and bright affair. Fish sauce, lime juice, cider vinegar, a splash of water, and sugar does nicely (maybe also chili and spring onions). Why sweet gloppy peanut butter sauce often gets to play here is beyond me.

We have tried supermarket red curry paste and it just doesn't seem to cut it. For one thing, I can rarely taste it and end up adding the whole jar. For another, it's flat and real curry is floral and aromatic. Since we don't eat these flavors every day and since it was Saturday night, we took the time to make it ourselves. Really, once you've got the paste made, you're home. We toasted coriander seed, cumin seed, star anise, garlic, ginger, and lemongrass in a dry pan. To that we added cilantro stems, lime zest and juice, and shrimp paste to buzz up in the food pro. Oh yeah, and tons of dried red chilis slightly reconstituted in warm water. 

It was a little fibrous coming out of the food processor so there was some furious chef knife rocking on the cutting board to get it to the right pastiness. We started with finely diced red onion sauteing in coconut oil, followed by the curry paste to mingle in the fat. Then in went (still frozen) chunks of pumpkin from our garden along with a can of coconut milk. We'd made a stock from the shells of our gulf shrimp, which also got poured in. Stick blenders do a great job taking care of the chunks and then it's simply a matter of throwing in your shrimp, adjusting seasoning, and lavishly garnishing.

Seems like people keep repeating that spice is for summer to make you sweat and cool down. I've question how much sense that makes because I especially love this level of intense heat when you're lane is covered in snow. You can't help but feel a sort of smugness with all of this heat, aroma, and exoticness in February.

Arctic Char, Sweet Potato Hash

It's hard to find a great piece of fish in the Midwest. I'm certainly not saying it can't be done, but your average supermarket variety in these parts is likely to be a recently thawed bog standard fillet with structural damage that cooks up mushy and slightly off. Sometimes that's how you have to roll and it's not always bad. Which is to say, sometimes you marvel that you're eating ocean fish at all.

But you could also try I love blue sea instead (ilovebluesea.com). Sustainable, usually wild-caught from the pacific, and incredibly fresh. We buy and freeze enough pounds at a time to make it worth the cost of shipping (if the supermarkets can do it, so can we), and this char was really perfect. It's got enough intramuscular fat to have a sort of custardy inside when cooked to "medium rare". The skin gets really crispy cooked over a moderate flame for most of the cooking time. Sometimes I don't even bother flipping it and then you get this gradient of doneness from well and crispy to nearly raw on top. When you have proteins you can eat raw, you've got a lot of leeway.

Underneath, we casty-ed some sweet potatoes and red onion in bacon grease and wilted in baby brassica greens at the last minute with a splash of sherry vinegar. It was perfect with a little light Rhys pinot and some piano jazz.

Summer Pork

We slow-roasted pre-salted pork shoulder at 250º for 7 hours on a bed of fennel. The pan had vermouth, chicken stock, and a splash of vinegar with a few cloves of garlic and a dried chili. Cooked collard greens in the reduced roasting liquid, and served on top of pinto beans.

We opened a bottle of 2006 RRV Kosta Browne that was singing.

This was crazy good. It's a take on Tacos Al Pastor, but we used ground cherries to make a salsa with a chile de arbol, roasted garlic oil, and cilantro. Then we used Ancho chiles and red onion to flavor the lard we cooked our leftover pulled pork in. Amanda made a fresh cheese and we also added some quick pickled carrots. Corn tortillas hot off the press. Wow.

Served with a glass of Mezcal + lime + a splash of Cointreau. Finished with a bottle of cold beer.

Simple Rhubarb Tart

I don't remember the best rhubarb I've ever tasted. It's not one of those "vegetables" where you say, "now this is a stalk of rhubarb". But give it a healthy dowsing of sugar and throw it into an all-butter tart shell and it finally feels like Spring.

My temptation is to hit it with vanilla, fresh ginger, Cointreau, and some orange blossom water. Or maybe I'd make a crumble with pistachios and cardamom and splash the rhubarb with rosé.

Well—I'm saving those ideas for another bunch. This first one's going to go soft in some crumbly pastry in a hot oven and drizzled with thick jersey cream.