Just like somebody’s grandma used to make: Braised Lamb with Juniper Berries, Fennel, Sage

Adapted from an Italian grandmother’s recipe, slow oven braising allows many flavors—onions, garlic, celery, wine, sage, juniper berries, fennel seed, bay leaves—to melt together in this soul-satisfying, fork tender lamb dish. Recipe below.

One of the perks of doing Blue Kitchen is that we’re occasionally asked to review cookbooks. It’s also one of the drawbacks. Writing, thinking, reading and talking about food on a daily basis means that we’re almost always at least a little bit hungry—kind of a low grade infection that never clears up unless you are actually actively engaged in consuming a substantial meal at the moment. And when a gorgeous cookbook like Jessica Theroux’s Cooking with Italian Grandmothers: Recipes and Stories from Tuscany to Sicily comes along, whole hams can’t quite stay your hunger.

To write Cooking with Italian Grandmothers, Theroux spent a year in Italy talking, cooking and often staying with a dozen Continue reading “Just like somebody’s grandma used to make: Braised Lamb with Juniper Berries, Fennel, Sage” →

Easing into autumn: Simple, flavorful Pork Tenderloin with Sage and Roasted Grapes

Quick-cooking roast pork tenderloin gets a flavor boost from sage, shallots, garlic and roasted grapes. Recipe below.

There’s more than a hint of autumn in the air lately, and I say bring it on. The no-cook dinner salads and quick-grilled everythings of summer are all well and good, but I like heartier fare. Roasts, stews, serious soups… These are the foods that excite me on a primal, lizard brain level, both in the kitchen and at the dinner table.

Pork tenderloin is the perfect way to transition back into serious cooking season. It’s leaner and lighter than a lot of roasting fare. It also requires as little as 15 to 20 minutes in the oven, so you’re not overheating the kitchen in the cool-but-not-yet-cold fall weather. Continue reading “Easing into autumn: Simple, flavorful Pork Tenderloin with Sage and Roasted Grapes” →

East meets cornfields: Grilled steak, exotic flavors and honest food in an Iowa cafe

Chinese noodles, flavored with sesame oil, sesame seeds and cilantro and fired up with crushed red pepper, are topped with tender strips of grilled flank steak seasoned with cumin, chili powder and garlic. Recipe below.

When people speak of the exotic flavors of the East, they aren’t generally referring to Eastern Iowa. But when we made a recent road trip there, we found just that.

Not exotic in an over-the-top-trend-of-the-moment sort of way (no Kobe beef sliders topped with shaved truffles, for instance). The approach we found more than once—and appreciated thoroughly each time we did—was starting with quality (and often local) ingredients and doing something fresh and unexpected with them.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the Lincoln Cafe. Located on the main drag of the tiny one-stoplight town of Mount Vernon, Continue reading “East meets cornfields: Grilled steak, exotic flavors and honest food in an Iowa cafe” →

Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”

Pasture raising the animals we count on for meat and dairy products is healthier for everyone. A website that helps you find grass-fed food locally is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

The picture above, of cattle grazing in an open pasture, used to be how all farming was done. Livestock fed in pastures—or in the case of ranches, out on the range. No feedlots, no penning animals in and fattening them with corn. It’s not that farmers and ranchers were more humane back then. They just had a lot of common sense. Cattle (and goats and sheep) ate readily available grasses and supplied the, um, fertilizer that helped more grasses grow. There was no need for chemical fertilizers or the fossil fuel to make them and spread them. And there were no truckloads of manure to be gotten rid of.

Jo Robinson thinks we need to be doing more farming that way again. To help consumers find farmers who are raising grass-fed animals, she writes a website called Eatwild. The name comes from studies Continue reading “Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”” →

Vietnamese beef stew blends flavors of multiple spices and cultures

Flavors from all over Asia (ginger, lemongrass, five-spice powder, garam masala, fish sauce…) spice up this delicious, aromatic, meaty stew that draws its inspiration from when Vietnam was called French Indochina. Recipe below.

vietnamese-beef-stew2 — Bò Kho: Vietnamese Beef Stew

OKAY, SO, YES, IT’S HOT. BUT SOMETIMES I GET THESE CRAVINGS. The other day the taste I wanted was a particular combination of beef and lemongrass and spice. And I wanted sauce, and plenty of it. I know it is insane, in the middle of the hottest summer in recorded history, to want stew. Nevertheless. Continue reading “Vietnamese beef stew blends flavors of multiple spices and cultures” →

Rosemary, garlic and onions make grilled steaks healthier—and really, really tasty

The rosemary, garlic and onions in a red wine marinade make grilled New York strip steaks very flavorful—and healthier for you too. Recipe below.

Red meat lovers, rejoice! A pair of recent reports are giving it a cleaner bill of health than it has been enjoying lately.

The first was an article in the Wall Street Journal that opens with this bit of encouragement: “Maybe that juicy steak you ordered isn’t a heart-attack-on-a-plate after all.” In his article “A Guilt-Free Hamburger,” Ron Winslow reports on a new study by the Harvard School of Public Health that suggests that the heart risk long associated with eating red meat comes mostly from processed meats. So while bacon, hot dogs, sausages and cold cuts are unfortunately still bad for you, burgers and steaks may not be. Continue reading “Rosemary, garlic and onions make grilled steaks healthier—and really, really tasty” →

Hold the mayo, not the flavor: Grilled Lamb Feta Burgers get boost from Light Rémoulade Sauce

Grilled Lamb Feta Burgers are made even more flavorful with a lightened rémoulade sauce that substitutes Greek yogurt and olive oil for mayonnaise. Recipes below.

I remember feeling all grown up and adventurous the first time I ate feta cheese. Of course, I was in college at the time, and just about everything that didn’t make me feel idiotic, overwhelmed and scared made me feel grown up and adventurous.

If anything, my first experience with feta made me feel all of those things at once. This cheese didn’t come wrapped in individual slices, and it was decidedly not what was, to my then culinarily naive ears, comfortingly called ‘American.’ Most daunting of all, you couldn’t find it in the supermarket (at least not the ones of my college days). When a friend announced she was going to try a recipe that required the exotic substance, I was assigned the challenge of finding some. Continue reading “Hold the mayo, not the flavor: Grilled Lamb Feta Burgers get boost from Light Rémoulade Sauce” →

Five great grilling recipes kick off summer

Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer here in the United States. And as it so happens, last weekend marked a wonderful long weekend in New York City for Marion and me. We returned to Chicago Sunday evening to 90º temperatures, broken air-conditioning and little desire to cook. So this week, I’m raiding the Blue Kitchen archives for five recipes for the grill to get the season rolling.

1. Moroccan-influenced Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards

Cumin and paprika add plenty of flavor to these quick-cooking chicken breasts, but not much heat. The sauce gets the same treatment from orange juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon and red pepper flakes. The dish originated in Paris and is just one of many French dishes that borrows flavors from Moroccan kitchens. Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards is a great spur-of-the-moment dish, Continue reading “Five great grilling recipes kick off summer” →

Watercress. It’s not just for tea time anymore: Flank Steak with Watercress Salad

Peppery watercress, tossed with a Dijon vinaigrette, serves as a lively bed for quickly pan-grilled flank steak topped with sautéed shallots. Recipe below.

Somehow watercress has picked up a genteel reputation, the stuff of crustless, triangular sandwiches nibbled on by ladies who lunch, preferably with tea. But this lively green has a peppery kick that probably made it the most exciting thing about those polite sandwiches; these days, it’s often used to spice up salads of more mild-mannered greens. And when tossed with a mustardy vinaigrette, it can even stand up to pan-grilled steak. Continue reading “Watercress. It’s not just for tea time anymore: Flank Steak with Watercress Salad” →

Moroccan Spice Rub brings big flavor to spring leg of lamb—or chicken, or beef, or pork…

A rub of fragrant spices and herbs—including cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and saffron—creates a crust of exotic Moroccan flavor on a roast leg of American lamb. The versatile Moroccan spice rub can be used with other meats and cooking methods too. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]L[/su_dropcap]et’s do a little word association. If I say “leg of lamb,” you say… “What, lamb again?” Okay, fair enough—I have been cooking a lot of lamb here lately. But the answer I was looking for was “garlic and rosemary.” When we came into possession of the handsome, hefty [over seven pounds] leg of lamb above, my first thought was the nearly universal default cooking approach: Jam lots of garlic slivers into it, cover it with rosemary and roast it. There’s a good reason that’s a popular go-to recipe—it’s absolutely delicious.

But then I thought it was time to try something different. And for no reason I can explain, a Moroccan spice rub occurred to me.

Traditional Moroccan cuisine is one of the most diverse in the world. Morocco sits on the northern edge of the African continent, a mere eight miles across the Straits of Gibraltar from Europe at its closest point. So its cooking is flavored by Berber, Spanish, Corsican, Portuguese, Moorish, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and African cuisines. Continue reading “Moroccan Spice Rub brings big flavor to spring leg of lamb—or chicken, or beef, or pork…” →