Working Dad Cooks

Sunday Dinner: Braised short ribs with mashed potatoes and fresh English peas

Slow cooked Sunday is going strong. I saw that short ribs were on sale so that is what we are having. Decided to do a tomato beef broth liquid and then mashed potatoes are always a family favorite. Super weird that they had English peas already this year but not complaining as fresh peas are one of my favorite foods. For the braised short ribs;

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
5 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
3 celery stalks, roughly chopped
3-4 lbs of short ribs
1 quart beef broth
15 oz tomato puree
10 sprigs of thyme
3 bay leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper

Put the veg in a food processor and finely chop it. Bring a Dutch oven to temperature over medium-high flame and throw in a glug of olive oil. Season the short ribs with salt and pepper. Sear ribs on all sides to a decent brown (3-5 minutes per side). Remove ribs. Add veg mixture and cook out a bit of the water, about 7 minutes. Add tomato puree and let concentrate a bit. Add in the herbs and beef broth and then return the ribs to the Dutch oven and place in a 350 degree oven for about 3 hours taking the top off for the last 30 minutes. Remove ribs and herbs from sauce, placing ribs to rest. Concentrate sauce to desired consistency.

For the mashed potatoes:

About 7 Yukon gold potatoes, cut into about 1/2 inch cubes
1/4 C sour cream
1/2 stick butter
salt and pepper

Boil potatoes until soft. Using a whisk attachment, blend the potatoes and the rest of the ingredients together.

For the peas:

About 1 lb peas removed from pods
Zest of 1 lemon
salt

Quickly steam the peas in a bit of water (1.5 minutes). Add lemon zest, salt to taste. Done.

Appetizer dinner: Stuffed collard greens, clams, stuffed mushrooms, and duck prosciutto

My whole family likes to sit around the kitchen and slowly eat all evening. We call these appetizer dinners where we just pull up chairs around the counter and things come out every 15 minutes or so. Tonight, we made the duck prosciutto the highlight but my wife also said she wanted stuffed grape leaves. We pivoted to collard greens when we couldn’t find grape leaves but is basically the same recipe. I will go through each of the things we made: stuffed collard greens, stuffed mushrooms, and steamed clams. We also started with the duck prosciutto and if you want to learn about that see the previous post.

For the stuffed collard greens:

1 bunch collard greens, with middle rib removed
1 1/2 C arborio rice
1 onion, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, finely sliced
juice of a lemon
handful finely chopped dill
handful finely chopped Italian parsley
handful finely chopped mint
3 green onions, thinly sliced
olive oil
more lemon juice
2 Tbsp tomato paste

First, blanch and ice bath the collard greens for about 2 minutes. Mean while, saute the onions in a bit of olive oil until translucent but not brown. Add garlic and saute for another couple minutes. Add rice and saute another couple minutes. Turn off heat and squeeze lemon juice over. Add all the herbs and green onions and mix together. To make the rolls, put either a half collard green or whole with two sides (rib removed) overlapping on board and add a scoop of the rice and herb mix. Roll like you would a spring roll. We tried both and found the whole held together better. Put in a well oiled pan. Once all are rolled up, mix olive oil, juice of another lemon, tomato paste and some water to blend. Pour over the rolls then add enough water to cover rolls. Simmer slowly for an hour. Yes, its worth it.

For the stuffed mushrooms

20ish mushrooms with stems removed
chopped stems from mushrooms
1 link Tuscan pork sausage
handful Italian parsley, minced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
3 eggs
panko
Pecorino Romano

Put the mushrooms in a 9×13 oiled pan. Mix all the other ingredients together and change panko/eggs to get what you think is the right consistency and spoon into mushrooms. If you have leftover stuffing, make into balls and put in an oven proof pan. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes.

For the steamed clams:

12 little neck clams
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
olive oil
3 cloves garlic
squeeze of lemon juice

To make a broth saute onions and garlic in olive oil. Squeeze the lemon juice once the onions are transparent but not brown. And enough water to get about 1/2 inch in the pan. Add clams and cover and cook about 3-5 minutes or until most have opened. Cut your losses and throw away those that don’t open. We got lucky and they all opened.

Lastly, we started the meal with some thinly slice baguette with goat Gouda and homemade duck prosciutto. Best charcuterie I have ever had, totally biased.

Duck Prosciutto

Today marks a turning point in this year’s experiments. We opened up the duck prosciutto today and holy cow was it good. We have a couple changes to the recipe but over all, curing meats may become my new past time. Our process was twofold. First, we let the duck breast sit in kosher salt completely covered for about 2 days. Then we rubbed them down with a mixture of garlic powder, ground fennel and crushed peppercorns. Wrapped them in cheesecloth and hung them in the back of the fridge making sure nothing ever touched them. After about 2 1/2 weeks, we have to beautifully cured duck breasts.

Here are them hanging:

And here is what they looked like uncut:

Here’s what I would change. Reduce the time on the salt to 1 day. They are a bit salty in my opinion. Talk to the butcher up the street about learning to tie. I wanted to make sure they were roughly even so the cured evenly but it made it look a bit wonky. Also, I think I will try them flat instead of rolled next time.

National Margarita Day: Carnitas tacos with Palomas

Today is National Margarita Day but my wife likes Palomas better so we had carnitas tacos and Palomas. Came home a bit early from work so was able to do a quick carnitas while finishing up emails and going and getting the kid. Only 3 hours but still turned out pretty well. The spread was the usual homemade tortillas following Serious Eats, carnitas, quick sauteed peppers and onions, and some cold sides with chips and salsa.

For the carnitas:

2 lbs pork butt, cut into about 2 in cubes
salt and pepper
garlic powder
1/4 C mirin
1/4 C soy sauce

We cut up the pork butt to try to get it to cook faster given the limit time constraint. Dusted the pieces with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Heat up a Dutch oven so that it is scorching hot. Brown pork on each side. Add the mirin and soy sauce and put into a preheated 300 degree oven for about 3 hours. Once done use tongs to break apart into strings

While the pork is cooking, pick up your kid(s) and make tortillas. Once the pork is done cooking, saute 1 red pepper, 1 green pepper, and half a sweet onion in some olive oil for about 3 minutes, just heat up and sear don’t make soggy. After the veg are done, sear the pork to put a nice crisp on it.

To serve:

diced tomato
cilantro
avocado
limes for juice
homemade fermented hot sauce

We broke out the fermented hot sauce for the first time and it was tasty. Not too hot and some nice fermented funk. Everyone in the family has a different way to make a taco. Mine is up top, my wife’s is down below.

In case you want to make our paloma:

Juice of 1 lime
2 jiggers silver tequila
8 oz grapefruit juice
soda water

Mix the first three ingredient in a glass and add a few ice cubes. Using a cocktail shaker or another glass, pour back and forth a couple times to mix. Put in glass and top with soda water. If you want, you can salt the rim as well.

Birthday dinner for me: Trout, garlic noodles, and broccoli slaw

It’s my birthday and my wife is cooking tonight. I really like simple foods as was given the choice for dinner so baked fish, garlic noodles, and broccoli slaw. Nothing too fancy just simple, well cooked food. For the dressing for broccoli slaw:

1 1/2 C refrigerated coconut milk
salt and pepper
1/8 C white wine vinegar
1/8 C Mirin rice wine
1/8 C olive oil
1/2 lemon, juiced

Mix the dressing into:

1 bag broccoli slaw mix
5 green onions, thinly sliced
handful cilantro

Let sit in fridge for a few hours, stirring occasionally.

For the garlic noodles

1 bag egg noodles
1 Tbsp canola oil
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 C goat milk
2 eggs
salt
nutmeg
big handful pecorino romano

Boil noodles with canola oil. Drain. In same pot add butter and garlic and saute quickly. In separate bowl mix milk, eggs, salt, nutmeg, and cheese. Add noodles to butter and garlic. Mix in milk and egg mixture and put in a loaf pan in 300 oven for about 40 minutes

For the trout:

2 whole trout, filleted
olive oil
salt
squeeze lemon juice

Put trout in 9×13 pan and pour over olive oil, salt and lemon juice. Bake at 300 for about 30 minutes. And I got an apple tart with ice cream for desert.

Bon Appetit Basically: Chicken, Rice, and Kale Soup

Another of those, let’s just randomly choose a recipe from someplace we trust and see what happens. Of course we tweaked as we made to make it a bit better. Overall, it just needed a bit more flavor then we were thinking it would deliver. Our recipe is based on the Bon Appetit’s Chicken and Rice Soup with Garlicky Chili Oil. We recreate it here and offer some suggestions if we were to make it again and show where we changed it. Ingredient List:

1 small yellow, sweet onion finely diced
12 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
1 C. arborio rice, rinsed
1/2 C. canola oil
2 pinches smoked, flaked Chipotle
6 C. water
2 C. chicken broth
1 bouillon cube
1 lb chicken thighs
1 bunch kale, cleaned from rib and finely sliced
lemon
dill
salt and pepper

To make the chili oil, we roughly doubled the recipe because we really like garlic, chili, and oil.

Add canola oil and garlic to a cold dutch oven. Swirl and cook until just starts to turn golden. Remove from heat to a bowl leaving a bit of oil in the pot. Add chilies to the oil and let set while the rest of dinner cooks.

With the leftover oil in the pan, add the onions and cook until translucent (5ish minutes). Add the rice and saute like you would for a risotto. Add the chicken thighs to get a slight sear on it. Add the liquid and bouillon cube and simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove chicken shred with a couple forks. Add shredded chicken and kale and simmer for about 5 minutes.

Allocate soup to the bowls and top with lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with the chili, garlic oil

Here’s what we changed:

Saute rice
Substitute stock for some of water
Double oil
Add bouillon

Here what we would change going forward:

Don’t rinse rice
Substitute a ton of stock for water instead of partial and bouillon (it just needs more body)

Thanks Basically for publishing your recipes. Lemon juice and oil provide nice complements. I know its a quick soup but needs a bit more body somewhere.

Coconut rice with grilled skirt steak: WaPo inspired

My wife and I were doing what middle aged liberals do on a Sunday morning, reading the Washington Post on our phones and tablets. Sitting across the room I received an email about what we should make sometime this week. We used a Wapo recipe as a starting point for dinner tonight.

There are really 4 components to the recipe, some pickled red onion, a dressing, rice, and steak. We will take them one by one and combine in the end.

First, let’s marinade some skirt steak (about 1-1.5 lbs):

soy sauce
sweet soy sauce
fish sauce
garlic powder
olive oil
mirin

Put in a ziploc with the steak and marinade for as long as you can. Grill until desired doneness. Slice thinly against the grain.

For the rice:

1 C long grain rice
2 C. coconut milk drink not fatty can
pinch salt
Handful of basil, thinly sliced
Handful of cilantro, thinly sliced
3 green onions, thinly sliced

Mix rice, coconut milk and salt and put over medium flame until simmering. Turn to low and simmer like you would any other rice. When ready to serve add the rest and fluff it up.

For the pickled onions:

white wine vinegar
mirin
salt
sugar
lime juice
1/2 red onion thinly sliced

It all should make about a cup. Let sit while you cook everything else

For the dressing:

1/2 inch ginger, grated
1/2 jalapeno, finely diced
fish sauce
water
mirin
lime juice

Mix is all up and let sit and just serve the liquid and not the chunks.

Serve rice with steak and onions and allow other to regulate dressing. Use a little of the pickling liquid together with the dressing to get some nice flavors going.

Meh Monday: Honey-ginger pork tenderloin, baked sweet potato and green beans

Tonight we serve a traditional 1980’s midwestern dinner, meat, starch, and vegetable. Nothing fancy but filling and maybe even a little healthy. To start, we first made a simple marinade that we probably should have made the night before but wasn’t thinking about it. Then while the meat was marinating made the sweet potatoes. While the meat was resting, we did the green beans.

For the marinade:

2 in ginger, grated
4 garlic cloves, grated
1/4 C honey
2 Tbsp mirin
2 Tbsp soy sauce

Mix it all up and reserve a little bit to glazed after its done cooking. Put in a ziploc with the pork tenderloin and but it in the fridge while you do everything else.

For the sweet potatoes, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Scrub the sweet potatoes and jab it with a fork all over so they don’t explode. We put all three in the microwave for 5 minutes. Then put in the oven to finish for about 30 minutes. We think they are done when a paring nice slides easily in.

To cook the pork, put in a 5×9 pan lined with parchment paper (honey is sticky). And put in the oven with the sweet potatoes. Cook until internal temperature of 150. Pull and let rest for about 10 minutes while you get the beans ready.

For the beans, we use the recipe my son developed a couple of Thanksgivings ago. Take a handful of green beans (if you are feeling fancy, use haricot vert) and put in a pyrex loaf pan. Add about 1/2 inch water. Sprinkle with salt and garlic powder. Cover with plastic wrap and cook in microwave for 5 minutes.

Again, nothing fancy but dinner was on the table within an hour of coming home. Sorry about the half eaten plate of food but I was hungry and forgot to take a picture.

Sunday Funday: Homemade rag pasta with bolognese. Life is good.

My trusty assistant wanted to join me in the kitchen this afternoon because it was supposed to snow. My son really likes making pasta and we should do it more often. We teamed up some rag pasta with a long cook bolognese.

For the bolognese we did:

1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
3 celery sticks, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic
1 lb ground beef
4 oz pancetta, diced
1 C Vermouth
1/2 C. red wine
1 small can tomato paste
2 C chicken stock
1 C milk

Put onion, carrot, garlic, and celery in food processor and whiz until almost puree but not really. Make small meatballs out of the beef and put into a Dutch oven. Brown on all sides but don’t worry about cooking through. Remove beef. Add pancetta and cook until nice and crispy. Add in vegetable mix. Cook until nicely wilted about 5-8 minutes. Add beef back in as well as Vermouth and red wine and cook until evaporated, about 15 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook until a deep red color develops, 5 minutes. Add stock and milk, turn down to low and cook for as long as your child can handle it but at least a couple hours.

For the pasta:

2 C flour
bit of salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 eggs
bit of water

Mix flour, salt, olive oil, and eggs together in stand mixer until it almost comes together. Add in water until it comes together. Let stand mixer knead for a few minutes and then knead by hand for a bit more. Let rest for at least 15 minutes. Using pasta maker, roll out to level 6 and then cut in about 1 inch wide strips. Cook in boiling water for about 2 minutes. Reserving 1 C. of pasta water.

When ready to serve, add pasta water to sauce and mix a bit. Add cooked pasta to sauce and coat before serving.

Cheeseburger and tater tots

Lazy Saturday and we didn’t really want to do anything after family yoga. The plan was to pick up some ground meat, buns, lettuce, tomatoes, and some frozen tater tots and just have some simple cheeseburgers. 4pm and I realized that I forgot to grab a bag of frozen tater tots. I had some leftover potatoes and tried to whip up some tater tots without thinking about how to do it. Don’t do that. I made the worst tater tots ever. My wife described them as chicken bouillon and I thought they tasted like ranch in fried disaster. Until I can spend some time figuring out how to do it, I will not do that experiment again. But we made some good burgers.

Our burgers were simply some 1/6 lb smash burgers with sheep Gouda and smoked mozzarella with the fixings we like:

Butter lettuce
Heirloom tomatoes thinly sliced
cucumber
carrots

We made a couple extra condiments that were fun. Quick pickle of carrots and cucumber where we simple combined:

rice wine vinegar
miron
dash of salt

Pretty much equal parts vinegar miron with a bit of salt enough to cover what we cut up in terms of some julianned carrots and thinly sliced cucumbers.

We also unveiled the fermented hot sauce that we have been working on. Mixed it with a little sour cream to create a spread. That was pretty awesome. So far my fermentation experiments are working out. Happy experimenting and getting your family into food styling.