Patatas Riojanas: Potatoes and sausage with a spicy Spanish accent

Spanish chorizo—dense, flavorful sausage—paprika, red bell peppers, onion and garlic turn potatoes into a colorful, satisfyingly hearty meal, perfect for chilly nights. Recipe below.

Before I get started, I’d just like to say that this post marks Blue Kitchen’s fourth anniversary. As Anonymous once said, “Time flies when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

MY, WE’VE BEEN BOOKISH LATELY. Today’s second post below mentions two books, one the memoir of a chef who forever changed food and professional cooking, the other, a resource for anyone interested in a career in the kitchen. A recent USA Character Approved Blog post reviews Amanda Hesser’s The Essential New York Times Cookbook, which many home cooks will find essential indeed. And this recipe was inspired by José Andrés’s lively, inventive Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America.

Andrés comes by his inventiveness honestly; he is a protege of Ferran Adrià, chef of El Bulli, Spain’s temple of molecular gastronomy Continue reading “Patatas Riojanas: Potatoes and sausage with a spicy Spanish accent” →

Real food, real quick: Wine-braised Chops and Potatoes are weeknight fast, comfort food good

Dijon mustard, tarragon and garlic add flavor, complexity to quick and easy Wine-braised Pork Chops and Potatoes. Recipe below.

I like to think I’m a fairly nonjudgmental person. Live and let live, celebrate our differences, walk a mile in another person’s shoes… Until I’m in the grocery store check-out line.

As you watch fellow shoppers unload their carts, piling box after bag after frozen package of processed “edible foodlike substances” (as Michael Pollan calls them) on the conveyor belt, it’s hard not to ask how they made it through the produce department without picking up a single fruit or vegetable. Or where are the eggs? The milk? Even the fresh meat, for that matter? And it’s easy to see why obesity, childhood diabetes and heart disease are reaching epidemic proportions in our country.

So it was particularly refreshing to visit the kitchen of four recent college graduates this weekend and see real food. Continue reading “Real food, real quick: Wine-braised Chops and Potatoes are weeknight fast, comfort food good” →

For Mario Batali’s dad, retirement is a delicious sausage-making adventure

Forget bologna and cotto salami. Cured meats have returned to their artisanal beginnings. The delicious fare of a famous Seattle cured meats master is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

Sometimes a place just starts showing up on your radar. We started hearing about Salumi long before we started planning our recent trip to Seattle and Portland. About its delectable handmade salamis, prosciuttos, pancettas, lardos and guanciales—and about the famous owner with the even more famous son. Then when our trip started taking shape, we asked mado chef/owner Rob Levitt what places we should hit. Top of his list was Salumi. Continue reading “For Mario Batali’s dad, retirement is a delicious sausage-making adventure” →

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” →