Simple Lamb Dinner March 17, 2011

For some reason, the word “Lamb” is evocative of some elaborate affair that takes hours to prepare.  It doesn’t have to be.  I have learned that I cannot plan my meals in advance down to the day, because plans change and sometimes I don’t want what I have pre-planned to cook.  This evening, I had at my disposal, thawed Lamb Chops from Smith and Smith Farms, and an almost thawed whole 5 pound chicken, also from Smith and Smith.  I got home at 6:00, so clearly it would be the lamb.

I fired up the grill, then came inside with some garden mint.  I chopped the mint with some coarse salt and local pecans and then poured in some local olive oil.  I marinated the lamb chops in that mixture.

 

Lam Chops in Mint Marinade

 

While the grill came up to temperature, and the lamb marinated, I sliced some of my not quite mature garden onions, and trimmed the leaves off of some Johnson’s Backyard Garden Broccoli.    I stuck the lamb on the hot grill, then sauteed the onions in some Texas Olive Ranch Olive Oil until tender.  When I turned the chops, I could tell they were cooking quickly, so I tossed the broccoli into the onions.

The lamb was ready in about 13 minutes on a hot grill, so I pulled it off.  I plated the broccoli and onions and topped them off with a dollop of Pure Luck Black Pepper Chevre and served that alongside the lamb.

 

Quick Lamb Dinner

Sometimes dinner feels like such a monumental chore.  It really doesn’t have to be with a bit of thought and planning.  I need to keep reminding myself of that!

 

 

No Grocery Store, Day 262 – Dai Due Seafood Dinner September 21, 2010

Sunday was day 262 of my No Grocery Store Challenge.  My birthday gift to myself was the Seafood Dai Due  Dinner at Hotel St. Cecilia with friends.  These dinners are held every few months at different venues and are spectacular.  Jesse Griffiths, the chef behind Dai Due Butcher Shop and these dinners, uses only locally sourced ingredients, so the dinners focus on what is in season.  I didn’t eat breakfast or dinner in preparation for this multi-course meal.

I had such a good time, I left my menu behind, so these descriptions are from my memory.  A couple of the courses were served family style, and I didn’t try everything offered, so this is what I had.

The passed appetizer which was paired with Prosecco was a  local potato bite, (a halved bite sized potato) with Full Quiver Neufchatel chopped egg, pepper, and caviar.  The caviar was from a locally sourced fish that I’d never heard of, and it was really good.   This dish was simple, and still the combination was stunning.

The First Course, which was paired with beer was served family style – a light and flavorful Fish Terrine with Neufchatel, Ceviche, a Seafood Escabeche, and pickled vegetables.  There were house made crackers provided for the Terrine, which was outstanding and my favorite dish in this course.

Second Course – Shrimp and Long Bean Pot Pie.  This dish had a light and lovely pastry crust on top, and was creamy, but not too thick, and very tasty.  This was another favorite dish of the evening.

Third Course – Red Snapper en papillote with cherry tomatoes and zucchini  This course arrived at the table still wrapped in the paper it was cooked in, which was cut as the dish was served.   The snapper was tender, flavorful and had been cooked with tiny cherry tomatoes and it sat on top of thinly sliced zucchini.

Fourth Course – Cheese plate, Pure Luck Hopelessly Blue, House made Farmer’s Cheese with lemon, fig preserves, house made bread.  There were several other cheeses provided, but I didn’t try them so I’m not sure what they were.  Again, keeping the menu is critical to providing accurate descriptions.  Pure Luck Hopelessly Blue, is one of my all time favorite cheeses, so I focused on it.

Fifth Course – Pear Tart with nut and crumb crust and homemade ice cream scoop.  This tasted fabulous with fresh market pears and the lightest ice cream I’ve ever had.

This perfect evening ended with coffee and pear liquor.

You can find Dai Due at the SFC Farmer’s Market downtown every Saturday.  If you are interested in attending a dinner, which I highly recommend, you’ll need to sign up for the weekly emails or watch the website.  We booked our seats at this dinner within half an hour of receiving the email, over a month ago, and it sold out shortly thereafter.

Dai Due – http://www.daidueaustin.net

No Grocery Store, Day 252 September 10, 2010

I missed breakfast.  For lunch, I went to Cafe Josie with the intention of ordering my new favorite salmon salad.  But I didn’t.  I ordered my old favorite Pepita Redfish.  It was extremely good, and just as I remembered.  I wasn’t very hungry for dinner, and with no exercise and lots of food things coming up, I opted for scrambled Vital Farms eggs for dinner.

What about all the leftover chili?  It is in the freezer, keeping along side two quarts of Dai Due gumbo, and several Kocurek rabbit pies, the pesto I’ve been making all summer, the tomato sauces, and other cold weather treats.  Now if it would ever get cooler, I could break all that hot comforting food out.

No Grocery Store – Day 248 – Black Beans! September 6, 2010

I’ve had lots of help along the way with this self imposed No Grocery Store challenge.  My friend Kristi visits farmer’s markets on her travels, and always brings me some local goodies from them.  Most recently, she visited Boulder and brought me some black beans, pinto beans, and Israeli Cous Cous.   I have missed beans, which were really the only canned item I ate before shopping only at farmer’s markets.  Beans, and the occasional canned tuna.  Progresso black beans, heated in a flour tortilla were my “fast food” for years.   I tried to grow my own black beans, but had no luck.

So, I missed breakfast.  For lunch, I had 2 Thunderheart Bison tacos from Taco Deli.  I also scored 16 ounces of the cherished dona crack salsa, which is twice the volume I can buy it at the farmer’s market.  My heart is full.

I had soaked a portion of my new black beans overnight and part of the day.  Around 4:00, I rinsed them well, put them on to simmer with chopped onions, chopped Salt and Time pickled jalapenos and the garlic that was with them, and the juice from the peppers, as well as some Dai Due tasso ham, and a couple of bay leaves.  I let the beans simmer for 2 hours until tender and had them with Lowell Farms Rice and some dona crack salsa for dinner.  Sometimes the most simple dinners are the best.  It was perfect.

Almost Fall in an Austin Urban Garden September 5, 2010

The garden is a little boring right now.  The only thing that I’m eating from the garden is serrano and jalapeno peppers.  The lettuce I sowed last week, didn’t survive the heat – it came up, but the sun baked it and it disappeared.  The broccoli is up and looking good.

Baby Broccoli

For comparison sake, I planted more corn a few days ago.  I’m trying to compare growing seasons and different varieties, since I have enough space to do it.  One of my friends makes fun of me for my corn garden, and says I need a Golf Cart combine to harvest my little 5′x5′ patch of corn.  I won’t be sharing.  But, the newly sowed corn is peeking out.

The tomatoes look great, especially those in the Earthbox.  Most are flowering but none have set fruit yet.  The peppers are going great guns.  The cucumber/butternut squash looks great.  Can’t wait to see which it is.  A few days ago I planted Royal Burgundy Bush beans.  They aren’t up yet.

Royal Burgundy Bush Beans

Something is coming up where I planted the potatoes.  I’m not sure it is potatoes yet. I’m fairly confident that many of the potatoes composted because the soil was so warm.  I’m on a wait and see still for the potatoes.  I’ll plant more lettuce and perhaps some chard today, and hope for the best!

No Grocery Store, Day 246

For breakfast, I had a little of my homemade egg salad.  It is just handy having egg salad around and it is so good.

After a trip out to my favorite store, Callahan’s, part of my “do something fun every day of Birthday month”, I did something else fun – lunch at Whip In.  Whip In is so amazingly cool, part  specialty store, part restaurant, part beer and wine bar.  Dipak, the owner has made a point of selling and serving local products.   You can build your own six pack of beer, and the selection is something else.  I think there are beers that can likely be found no where else in town.  The wine selection is great and prices are highly competitive.  So, for lunch, we split the Naan and an order of the highly recommended Lamb Meatballs, which were well seasoned with 12 Indian spices and served over rice.  The Indian spice blend intrigues me because what the balance of flavor with heat is perfect.  And the lamb was from Loncito’s Lamb.  And had a glass of 512 Brewing One which he has on tap along with the Independence Brewing selection.  And, you can buy a growler of any of them to go.  So cool.

Dinner with my family was a New York strip at Corazon at Castle Hill.  It was fine, but certainly not the best meal I’ve ever had there.  Whip In saved the day.

September 1, Austin Urban Garden – Stress and Success September 2, 2010

With this lingering heat, parts of the garden are struggling to get through each day.  The Corn in the Three Sisters Garden, has been looking pale and tired, although most of the stalks are making corn.  Setting cobs?  Since the other two sisters flew the coop, the beans and pumpkins, the garden isn’t getting nitrogen from the beans.  And corn needs nitrogen.  So I picked up some fish emulsion and hand watered the corn with a diluted mixture.  I also threw some worm castings on top of the soil, because I have an irrational belief that worm poo fixes everything.  We’ll see.  But for now:

Heat stressed corn

corn cobs growing

The peppers are doing fine, but do look a bit stressed in the heat of the day.

Peppers hanging in

The tomatoes in the garden are waiting for less heat to fully thrive.

Garden Tomatoes look puny

Butternut Squash or Cucumber?

This is either butternut squash or lemon cucumber.  I planted both and can’t tell the difference.  Whatever it is, it is happy.  Hoping for the butternut, but if life hands me lemon cucumbers, I’ll make lemon cucumber pickles again.

The broccoli seeds are up.  I need to thin them a bit every day.  I never know how they all show up in one end of the garden.  Watering, maybe.

Broccoli seedlings

The Black Seeded Simpson lettuce has sprouted as well.  I really hope it cools off, or it will be too hot for this lettuce.

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

There are some strange things sprouting in the potato bed, although I’m not sure any of them are potatoes.  Still waiting.   They might be compost.

On the Herb Patio, the Bay Laurel, which sat as a barron stick for a year, has sprouted a friend!  This will be fabulous for winter soups and stews.  I love Bay.

Bay for Winter

The garden winners of the day, strangely, are the tomatoes in the Earthbox.  They are the healthiest and heartiest of the whole lot.

Tomatoes in an Earthbox Surviving the Heat

So, it’s still hot, but I’m ever hopeful for Fall weather, and a more and more productive Fall and Winter garden.  The Fall and Winter garden are my favorites.  So abundant and with such good food.

No Grocery Store, Day 243 – Big Green Egg August 31, 2010

I have been struggling with the Big Green Egg lately.  When I first got it, I was making too hot of a fire, (and setting myself on fire far too often).  Then, I got distracted by the smoker, and didn’t use the Egg for several months.  Now, it has been a while, since I’ve been able to get it really hot.  So, I watched a YouTube video, which indicated I probably should clean out the ashes in the Egg.   So I did, and there were lots.

Not in the mood for breakfast, despite having a 2 second breakfast prepared and at my disposal.  Business lunch at Cover 3, and I had the Allendale Salad which rocked.  That place makes seriously good food, especially for a sports bar.  Not sports barlike food at all.

I had been thawing a Smith and Smith Farm’s chicken, with the intention of cooking it on the Big Green Egg, hence the cleanout.

Smith and Smith Farms Chicken

What I love about these chickens is that they are amazingly fresh, really plump, and have no frozen innerd package to deal with.  One major difference in these farm fresh chickens is that they aren’t yellow, like grocery store chickens, and their skins aren’t hardened by hanging in a factory.  The taste is phenomenal and I’ll never buy a factory chicken again.  These chickens eat better quality of food, are handled better, and are waaay more fresh, that those in the grocery store from who knows where that have been sitting for who knows how long.

So, I also had some Dai Due Green Tomato BBQ sauce, I’d been dying to try.

Dai Due Local BBQ Sauce

I tasted it in a spoon, and it was sweeter than I wanted my chicken to be, so I  grilled the chicken for a bit, then brushed on the sauce, hoping the sugars would cook off and leave the flavor behind.

Grilling the chicken, and basting early

With such a hot fire, the sugars burned a bit, but I like that, so I didn’t discourage it.  The end result, was very tender, and flavorful, but not sweet chicken.

Dai Due BBQ local Chicken

Lessons learned: The Big Green Egg functions best when it isn’t full of ashes.  Local chickens are amazing.  Jessie from Dai Due, knows how to make some incredible BBQ sauce.

Food Gardening is Easy August 27, 2010

Many of our clients are brand new to vegetable gardening.  Many have thought about it for years, and just never got around to it.  Some, have felt they didn’t have the skills, or had a “black thumb.”  There really is no such thing and growing food is much simpler than one might thing.  Gardening is more about hope, and faith that nature will do what nature does.  Good soil, water and sunshine are also important.  Timing is also an element, when to plant what.  With a little basic knowledge I think anyone can grow food.  And with every failure, there is a lesson learned.

A friend of mine, has always told me that she cannot grow food, that she has a black thumb, and kills plants.  After a few weeks of eating cantaloupe on her back patio, and spitting the seeds in the yard, low and behold cantaloupe started growing and at last count, she had several ripening on the vine.  Shortly after hearing of this triumph, I saw her tweet that she was off to go by fruit trees.  Growing food is infectious.

For now, I am ever hopeful and have faith that this fully planted garden, will soon be alive and abundantly populated with the potatoes and broccoli that are planted there now.  I’m keeping it moist, but not too wet and I’m hoping the soil and sun will do the rest.  I’ll keep you posted.

Potatoes and Broccoli?

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. – May Sarton

No Grocery Store, Day 237 August 25, 2010

This was really not my favorite food day.  I’m still attempting to eat my way through my early “no grocery store” days of hoarding.  So I pulled from the freezer, a grass fed beef filet  from J-5 Farms.  I think that is right.  I got it from the now defunct Truck Farm Farmer’s Market.  I also pulled out some Kocurek Spanish Chorizo which I had frozen.

Breakfast, was 1 scrambled Vital Farm egg.

Lunch was really a couple of small snacks throughout the afternoon, of bites of the Kocurek Chorizo and Full Quiver raw cheddar.

I went to Boggy Creek Farm, specifically to pick up some of their end of season tomatoes.  All they had left were some very smallish Sungold Cherry Tomatoes.  As the season winds to the end, all tomatoes get smaller.  These were pretty tiny, so I bought 2 tubs.  My master plan, came from a conversation with Lee Ann Kocurek, about roasting tomatoes with olive oil, for salad dressing.  So, I commenced that process:

Roasting Sungolds

I fired up the Big Green Egg, and then quartered an onion which I drenched in olive oil.  Then I seasoned the steak and put that on.  Before dinner was even cooked, I’d lost interest in it, not sure why.

The final plate, would make Gordon Ramsay throw something.  The steak looks fine, the emulsified sungolds with olive oil look like baby food, (carrots, perhaps?) and weren’t the revelation I’d imagined.   The salad, was from gifted Bella Verdi lettuce, a farmer’s market tomato and Texas Olive Ranch olive oil and fig balsamic.  Bah.  This meal seems to be a direct reflection of my mood today.  Things (like people) just don’t seem to turn out as I’d hoped.  Oh well, there is always tomorrow.

Tasted slightly better than it looks

Oh yeah.  I now know that I don’t like the flavor of Sungold Tomatoes.  Not their fault.