Hey there beef cheeks

The weather the past two days has been unseasonably warm here in Seattle...it's been a nice respite from the crazy weather we've had this winter. Of course once the sun comes out everyone around here comes out of hibernation and are everywhere trying to soak every bit of sunshine they can get before the clouds move back in. Of course after three days of sun the forecast has cooler than normal temps and rain.

This weekend, more in line with what the weather typically is, we decided to braise some beef cheeks for tacos. At a taco truck you'll probably see it listed as tacos de cabeza, or tacos of head. It might sound a little strange but if someone didn't tell you what it was you would just think it's a neatly trimmed piece of meat that could be from anywhere on the cow.



Looking at them you can see some lines of fat and connective tissue running through the cheeks, making them ideal for braising. Before I get into the nitty gritty of what we did let me just say I love braising for a number of reasons. The first is it allows you to turn a cheap, and often tough, cut of meat into something luxurious and tender. Secondly, it's easy...really easy. You sear off your meat, sweat some aromatics, add your braising liquid, and then throw the whole thing into the oven for a few hours. And finally, you can use the braising liquid as an easy sauce to go with your meal. Since it's what you cooked your meat in you know it's going to go well with it and the meat has added a ton of flavor to it. Now, on to the details.

After trimming off the silver skin and any extra fat the cheeks were seared in a hot dutch oven until they were nice and golden brown.



After that some diced onions went into the pan to sweat, when they became translucent in went the spices. In this case we used chili powder, cumin, and oregano. Also going in were a couple of chipotle peppers with a bit of adobo. The spices and chipotles were allowed to cook a little bit to help develop their flavors. Next went in some chicken stock and beer to act as our braising liquid. This recipe uses less than a can (or bottle) and since you probably had to buy a six pack consider the rest of the beer as your reward for working so hard in the kitchen.



The cheeks were added back to the pot and the braising liquid was brought to a boil. If the liquid isn't covering the cheeks I usually add a bit of water until they are covered.



After the liquid came to a boil the pot was put into a 275 degree oven and braised until they were tender. In our case this happened to be a few hours, but it could be more or less depending on your cheeks. We then pulled them out of the liquid put them in the fridge to chill until the next day.

Before we were ready to eat them, I put the cheeks on a sheetpan and into a 300 degree oven to warm up and also to give us a nice crusty exterior to go with the moist meat inside. Since we were going to be making tacos out of them we shredded them once they came out of the oven and served them on tortillas with radish, cilantro, onion, and lime.



Like with any other braise this was super easy with most of the work being done in the oven. Not only were the cheeks tasty but it also provided endless hours of entertainment with us calling each other beef cheeks.

Pure and Simple

An inside look at Una Pizza Napoletana and Anthony Mangieri. Anthony serves only one thing at his restaurant in New York, and that's pizza in the Neopolitan tradition.

Two attempts at bread...one good, one not so good...plus pork

The good...


This was a loaf of white sandwich bread using a sponge to start the dough. The first proof was overnight in the fridge.

The bad...


These were the result of me trying to make baguettes but not using a sponge. These also proofed overnight in the fridge and they tasted fine...they just didn't turn out the way I expected a baguette to turn out. Next time I'm going to use a pate fermentee and a poolish and see if that helps out at all. Also, I'm going to bake it directly on my baking stone instead of on a sheet pan before moving it to the stone.

And the porky...


This is a pork shoulder roast that I seared off before braising pretty much all day. I wish I had a picture of the finished product but we were hosting our friends and were too hungry for a photo shoot. The braised pork shoulder roast was served with some polenta, kale, and a reduction of the braising liquid. The braising liquid consisted of mirepoix, tomato paste, red wine, chicken stock, and rosemary. The pork shoulder roast was seasoned with a thyme salt I made along with pepper.

Just another weeknight...

Handcut pasta with braised lamb shank ragu.

This is something I haven't made in over a year and it was long overdue. The ragu took about 5-6 hours of cooking time with about four of those hours braising the lamb shanks and another hour and a half reducing it the braising liquid which would become my sauce. The lamb was first seared to begin the process of building the flavors for the ragu thanks to the maillard effect.

If there is too much fat in your pan after the searing, feel free to pour some out leaving about a tablespoon or two left to saute your aromatics. After the lamb was removed from the dutch oven, onions and garlic went in with a healthy pinch of salt and pepper. As the onions cooked they also released some liquid which helped to deglaze the bottom of the dutch oven. After the onions have softened and are translucent I put in about a cup and a half of red wine. I let that reduce by about half. Next went in a couple of large cans of whole peeled tomatoes, my favorite being Muir Glen. As you bring that up to temperature start breaking up some of the tomatoes with your spoon. Then return the lamb shanks and if you need more liquid add some water until the lamb is just covered with liquid.

Next I bring it up to where it is just about to boil and then throw it into a 295 degree oven, uncovered. The reason I keep it uncovered is two-fold. First, I need to reduce the sauce anyway so if I keep the lid off then it will slowly reduce while the lamb braises. The second reason is because with the lid on it increases the pressure in the cooking vessel and as those of you who remember high school physics will recall an increase in pressure results in an increase in temperature. So putting the lid on could increase the temperature from your desired 295 to something higher which could result in dried out meat.

It stays in there until the lamb is tender and falling off the bone. This will probably take you a few hours. Typically what I do after I get to that point is I turn off the oven and let everything sit in there together until it cools. The meat will continue to braise as it slowly cools, plus at the end you will be able to pull the meat off the bones without burning off your fingers.



The marrow that was once inside those bones is now part of the sauce which will help to give it body and richness.

After the lamb has been removed and shredded, the braising liquid, which is really just a tomato sauce, is slowly reduced on the stovetop until it gets to the saucy consistency you desire. This can take about an hour and a half, more or less, depending on how much water you needed to add in the beginning.

While it's reducing we started making the pasta by using Thomas Keller's pasta dough recipe from the French Laundry cookbook. You'll have to tweak it depending on the conditions in your kitchen at the time. It was really dry in our kitchen so a little more liquid needed to be added to the dough to bring it all together.



After resting for a little while we portion out the dough and begin rolling it into sheets.



After the sheets are rolled out I divide them into long sections.



The sections are then rolled up like a scroll of paper and then cut into pappardelle, which happens to be my favorite pasta.





Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, salty like the sea, and throw these guys in. They won't take very long to cook so hopefully your sauce is ready. Oh yeah, about that sauce, after it gets to the saucy consistency you want fold, in your shredded lamb shanks and bring everything back up to simmer.



When your pasta is ready toss it with the sauce and use a little of the pasta water if necessary. Most of the time I'll do this in a large pan on the stove over a medium heat because as the pasta continues to cook with the sauce it'll absorb the sauce. If you're doing it family style throw it all into a big bowl (sorry I didn't wipe down the sides of the bowl before shooting the picture).



Or just plate it up.



I like to top mine with a little pecorino because a lamb ragu with a sheep's milk cheese just seems to make sense. Enjoy it with a nice glass of chianti or sangiovese or whatever other red wine you like.

Blue

This really rich blue is my favorite color for the spring. It might not really come across here in this little box but it's a color that reminds me of bright sunny days with clear blue skies. That's definitely something that you need to be reminded of when February rolls around in Seattle.



Since it's such a rich and bright color I think it'll be more evident as a complimentary accessory as opposed to the main show when it comes to clothing. A little flash of blue popping out between the cuffs of your pants and your shoes or a bright scarf to keep you warm during chilly spring evenings. You can see those being pulled off extremely well on the Sartorialist's site. For the bold I think it would make a great color for a light cashmere sweater or a short sleeve polo.

I already have some of the bright blue socks, now if only the sky will follow my lead.

Winter in New England

We just got back from a cold week in New England. Even though we complain about the rain here in Seattle, I'd definitely take that over the 9 degree temperatures and -6 degree windchill. But we knew what we were getting into when we booked our tickets on a whim. Thanks to JetBlue's 9 hour sale to celebrate their being named the official airline of the Boston Red Sox we got a super sweet deal. Our flight out was surprisingly empty and I'm sure a part of that had to do with the lack of vacationers heading out to Boston in February. But another contributing factor had to be the economy with fewer business and leisure travelers.

After landing in Boston we headed back to my sister's place in Somerville to take a quick nap and visit her cat Phoebe before heading over to Brookline to have brunch with the Gleckels. Missy and Jessie officiated our wedding this past September and their trips back home just happened to overlap with ours. We met up with them and their parents at Zaftigs in Brookline so Jessie could get one last whitefish salad before heading down to Ethiopia for 6 months. After brunch and saying our goodbyes we headed down to Rhode Island to visit my parents for a few days.

For some reason I was a little surprised at the amount of snow that was on the ground when we got to Lincoln. Living in Seattle the past ten years has conditioned me to thinking when the roads are clear then there will be no snow elsewhere and if there is snow on the ground it'll only be an inch or so. When we pulled up to the house I grew up in I was a little astonished that there was at least seven or eight inches on the ground.



The next day the weather was quite a bit warmer with the highs in the mid-40s. Because snow was in the forecast for upcoming couple of days we decided to get out of the house and try to take a walk along the Blackstone River. Since I've moved out of RI a new trail has been built along the river that people now use to walk and bike throughout the year. Unfortunately for us, the trail was covered with snow and slush and we spent most of the walk staring at the ground making sure not to slip instead of looking at the surroundings.





Like many towns in Rhode Island, Lincoln has a history of mills and the mill towns that were built to house the workers. My town is made up of a number of smaller villages with mine, Albion, built up around the old mill on the Blackstone River.





At one point this mill made American Tourister luggage before closing down. If you happened to own an American Tourister suitcase in the 80s, chances are it was made here. It was then resurrected as condos in the mid-90s and was the first mill to do so in Rhode Island. In addition to old mill houses and a very small New England post office that closes every day for lunch we have a traffic dummy (aka buoy aka light) that was erected in 1932 over the old well that was once used by the residents of Albion.



After our aborted walk we then headed down to Providence to putter around the Brown area where Kristen picked up the book "You Know You're in Rhode Island When...: 101 Quintessential Places, People, Events, Customs, Lingo, and Eats of the Ocean State." This is when we decided that we would need to introduce her to some quintessential Rhode Island experiences such as a coffee cabinet, a wiener, Papa Gino's pizza, duckpin bowling, and Del's lemonade. Since she had already tried coffee milk before there wasn't a need for her to sample it again, even though the Autocrat factory is situated in my town. Kristen also got to learn the difference between a milkshake, a frappe, and a cabinet. If you aren't from Rhode Island and order a milkshake don't be surprised if you don't get what you were expecting.

Unfortunately the weather didn't hold out and the only thing she got to try was some Papa Gino's pizza. We weren't able to venture out for a wiener, cabinet, or duckpin bowling and it just wasn't the right season for Del's. We also had planned on visiting the Culinary Archives and Museum at Johnson and Wales, but we'll have to save that for our next trip out.

We then made our way back up to Boston to hang out with my sister for the last couple of days. Luckily the roads were clear and dry so the drive up was no problem at all after getting 3-4 inches of snow the day before. If this was Seattle the roads would be covered with packed snow and ice for days afterward. After getting into Boston we grabbed a bowl of ramen in Porter square before jumping on the T to Davis square where we stopped for some coffee and hot chocolate at our favorite cafe in Somerville, The Diesel Cafe.

Following that brief respite to warm up we putzed around Davis Square a little bit more before heading over to Sacco's Bowl Haven for a little candlepin bowling. Sacco's is an old school candlepin bowling alley that was pretty empty when we got there with some folks in the back playing pool.





It was probably for the best that there weren't other people around because it was the first time I had been candlepin bowling in probably a decade and a half and the first time Kristen had ever candlepin bowled. I'm not sure if my sister had been candlepin bowling before, but if she had it was probably a long time ago. For those who have never experienced candlepin before, it is a much different game than ten pin bowling that most people are familiar with. For one thing the balls are much smaller, 4.5" in diameter, and usually 2lbs 5oz to 2lbs 7oz. You also get three balls per frame instead of the two you get in ten pin. The pins are tapered at the ends and just under 3" wide at the middle. Now if you think it sounds like it's easier than ten pin because the ball and pins are smaller and you get three balls per frame you're wrong.



Evidence of this is the fact that there has never been a 300 game in candlepin and we weren't even close to challenging that with our attempts. Over the course of the 6 games we did show steady improvement with everyone getting at least one spare in each of our last couple of games. Our final game we decided to switch over to bowling lefthanded just so our right arms wouldn't be super sore the next day. Kristen was actually quite good lefty without much drop off between throwing righty and left.

In addition to all the fun of bowling, Sacco's was also decked out with a lot of old candlepin memorabilia including old candlepins, posters, and newspaper articles.





After a little debate we headed over to Kendall Square to catch a movie. When we got there we realized we had about an hour to kill so we down the street for a quick bite and drink at Hungry Mother, a tiny little restaurant that serves local and seasonal food. We only had some small bites since we didn't have a whole lot of time but we definitely wished we could have stayed longer and had a whole meal. It's on our list of places we need to go eat next time we're back in Boston. We concluded our day by watching Slumdog Millionaire, which I highly recommend.

The next day was freezing cold so we just took it easy. I was feeling a little under the weather so Kristen and my sister headed over to Harvard Square where they made the requisite stop at L.A. Burdick for hot chocolate and chocolate mice. They needed the hot chocolate since that morning it was only 9 degrees. They did come back with burgers from Mr Bartley's for lunch which did a good job of stuffing us before we had to head out for the airport.

It was great to be back in New England, even if it was only for a short time, but it was also really nice to come back to Seattle. It felt downright tropical when we stepped out of the airport and made a stop at the taco truck on the way home for late night dinner. I've been getting over my jet lag for the past couple of days and I'm not ready to head back to work on Monday.

A New Year and a Fresh Start

I know I've said before how it's been too long since I've blogged and how I will try to pick it up again, but this time I mean it. It's a new year so it's time to turn over a new leaf. But before I start posting new stuff I might as well recap the past year with photos.

Summer in Seattle

Sorry I've been so negligent in posting over the past few months. Things have been crazy as the wedding quickly approaches. In addition to that, the summer was been an odd one. We planted a ton of veggies this year and even built a new raised bed to house the lettuces, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and various asian cabbages. The lettuces did a little too well and we had a hard time keeping up with them before they got too large and bitter. We're definitely going to do some more playing around with the soil next year to figure out what the right ph is, especially since the broccoli ended up being a bit bitter.

The plants relegated to pots and other containers included various peppers, basil, chard, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, and strawberries that supplemented the remaining strawberry plants from last year. Of everything we planted the only things that did well were the lettuces and the strawberries. The tomatoes have just come in the past few weeks, about two months late. The peppers have pretty much done nothing but taunt us and chard was the biggest disappointment because last year we feasted on it all summer and this year we haven't eaten any. Despite those lackluster performers we did enjoy some really great strawberries. The new strawberry plants we put in delivered a few crops and we have eaten freshly picked strawberries as recently as last week. The plants leftover from last year were just as productive and both sets of plants produced much larger and sweeter fruit compared to previous years.

Our plants weren't the only ones behaving weirdly thanks to the weather. Much of the crops were producing much later than usual thanks to a cold summer. Some things came out as late as two months after they should. But that didn't stop us from feasting on some great locally produced food. We really got to know a lot of the local farmers a lot better this year, many of whom we've been buying from for the past couple of years. The folks at Alvarez farms have been wonderful, often sneaking a free head of lettuce or giving us a big discount on their produce. Not only is their food amazing, but they are definitely genuinely nice people who love what they're doing. Skagit River Ranch again has been a major supplier of our meat and eggs. George and Eiko are always quick with a smile and a greeting whenever they see us. Thanks to them we were able to get a couple slabs of amazing pork belly so we could make bacon. Also, their spareribs are just amazing and great for smoking. We did a comparison of theirs with another farm and their ribs were head and shoulders above the other one.

Sea Breeze Farms has been supplying me with raw milk which has allowed me to drink milk again. I've been pretty lactose intolerant since my junior year of college and the only way I could drink milk was with Lactaid. Well, raw milk is amazing because I'm able to drink it with no ill effects. There are many arguments over whether or not raw milk really is more easily digestible thanks to the bacteria that are still alive in it. They can argue all they want but I know it works for me. Pete's Butter Toffee has continued to supply us with our sugar fix and we get to talk about the Red Sox when we visit them.

I mentioned Foraged and Found Edibles about a year ago when I posted about our harvest dinner. Well, since then we've gone to them regularly and feasted on lovely truffles, morels, sea beans, chanterelles, miner's lettuce, watercress, and much more. They even remembered my large order of chanterelles last year and called me a few weeks ago asking if I'd like any and offering me a special deal. Trust me, if we didn't have a wedding so close I would have happily invested in many pounds of them. And no discussion about our favorite farmers and purveyors would be complete without mentioning Wilson Fish. They have the most amazing halibut and salmon during the summer. Honestly, the first time I tasted their fish it was a revelation. You really can't compare the taste of fish that had been swimming, literally, the day before with anything else. Plus, they're amazing people who are always happy to joke around with you and sneak you some extra samples of smoked salmon.

Even though the weather has been weird, it has been a really wonderful summer. The picture earlier in the post is of the sky as I was crossing the 520 bridge on my way home from work. Don't worry, I was on the bus and not driving at the time. I really just love the sky here, it is filled with so much drama and many layers of textures. I know most people hope for sunny blue skies for their wedding, but I'm hoping for some clouds because they make life just a little more interesting and fun and that's exactly what I think my life with K will be like. Look for a post in the next week or so where I'll share all the foods we are going to get to eat along with some pictures from the big day.

And we're done...

We just finished our last games here at Sunset. We're contemplating coming back at 4am but that might be a little crazy. Now we're scheming to figure out how to keep our shoes. I think the strategy right now is bartering. They're charging $20 a pair, but we're going to try to get all 4 pairs for $20. After all, they're pretty old and somewhat disgusting. But they say "Sunset Bowl" on the bottom! That's a piece of Ballard history right there. And so our 4 hour bowl-a-thon comes to an end. RIP Sunset Bowl - it was good to know you.

Bowling left-handed

After Crushmonster left, we decided to keep the bumpers up in his lane and bowl left-handed. So far it's going better than we thought it would - I've bowled a spare (thanks to geometry and the bumpers) and Sally bowled a strike. I think I'm doing better left-handed than right-handed this game...

This may be our last game. Sadly, Sally and I have work to do and Polly is going to see the Dalai Lama. I suppose it's for the best - we're starting to lose momentum. Bowling doesn't seem like real exercise, but your arm definitely gets tired after a while. I still don't understand how we managed to work up a sweat bowling.

--TT