Archive for Recipe

Oven Braised Ribs with Homemade BBQ Sauce

February 25, 2011 · Filed under Recipe

Years ago, in preparation for a summer party at a friends house, I created this recipe for ribs. Since I don’t have a smoker, I needed a method to slow cook the ribs so they were nice and tender when we were ready to eat them. This recipe can be made in the middle of the summer or the dead of winter, like we did the other night when family was visiting. From start to finish it takes about 4-5 hours, but most of that is inactive cooking time. Since we have a “No Secret Recipe” policy here at the Long Island Foodie, I’m happy to share this rib recipe with you and yours. Enjoy!

BBQ/Oven braised spareribs

Ingredients
2-4 racks of ribs depending on how many servings necessary
S/P

1. Preheat oven to 250-275
2. Coat ribs with salt and pepper
3. Tent ribs in foil
4. Cook ribs for at least five hours
5. When ready to serve, throw the ribs on the grill to get an initial char, and then continue to cook while basting in BBQ sauce (recipe below).

BBQ Sauce

Ingredients
2 cups organic ketchup (sweetened with sugar, not agave)
2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup cider vinegar or rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon hot sauce (Frank’s or Hoy Fung siracha/sambal olek)
1 chopped chipotle with adobo sauce
1 tablespoon seasoned salt
1 teaspoon chipotle or chili powder
S&P
(if cooking pork spare ribs in the oven, wrapped in tin foil so that they confit in their own fat, add this rendered pork fat to the bbq sauce)

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Happy Belated Valentine’s Day

February 15, 2011 · Filed under Recipe

Ever since Dylan was born it has been hard for Stefani and I to find the time to sit down and enjoy a home cooked meal. So last night for dinner we made pan seared wild sea scallops in a classic beurre blanc sauce and strawberries with zabaglione for dessert. I’ll post the recipe for the entree at another time, but for now, please enjoy the following:

(on a quick aside, zabaglione is not only easy to make, but extremely inexpensive and you probably have all the ingredients in the house already)

Stawberries and Zabaglione

Ingredients

10-12 fresh strawberries, thinly sliced
2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons sweet Marsala wine

1. Divide sliced strawberries evenly among two glasses and set aside. Martini glasses work great here.

2. In a large metal or glass bowl, whisk 2 large egg yolks, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 2 tablespoons sweet Marsala wine until combined and place the bowl over a saucepan filled with 1-2 inches of simmering water as you would with a double boiler. Continue to whisk until doubled in volume and thick, about 4-5 minutes. Spoon over berries.

3. Enjoy!
Hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day.  If you cooked for your loved one, why don’t you tell us what you made?  Maybe your recipe can appear here on the Long Island Foodie.

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Roasted Chicken

October 16, 2009 · Filed under Poultry, Recipe

During the past six months, I’ve learned that red meat is difficult to digest. Now, I wouldn’t recommend lacerating your intestines and having an ostomy bag hooked up in order to test this theory, so you can just take my word for it. Beef (especially grain fed beef), lamb and veal are all red meat. Pork, for some reason isn’t as tough to digest, but I am sure that my rabbi would have a different opinion regarding. This leaves us with chicken and fish, and as many of you know, chicken gets a lot of face time here at Long Island Foodie.

So, during my six months recovering from the accident and subsequent surgeries, I’ve eaten a lot of chicken, but I was cheating on the preparation. We got our Showtime Rotisserie Oven as a wedding gift from my aunt and uncle, and since then we have relied on Ron Popeil’s device to handle most of our chicken roasting duties, which is totally cheating since everything that goes in the Showtime comes out effortlessly and flawless. After a while, I began to yearn for a little bit more of a challenge, since seasoning a whole bird, putting it in the rotisserie, “set it and forget it,” was all that I had grown accustomed to, I decided to leave the rotisserie in the pantry and do it old school.

I wanted to roast chicken like they do in France. There, it is called poulet roti and when it is cooked in a pot it is called poul au pot. After searching the Internet, I found a great recipe from America’s Test Kitchen at Cook’s Illustrated.

We start with your typical aromatics; onions, carrots, garlic (maybe some celery if you also have that on hand). Chop them up into manageable pieces and set aside. Take your roasting bird and dry it off using paper towels, then season liberally using salt and pepper. Preheat your oven to 250 degrees with the oven rack in it’s lowest position.

Heat some olive oil in a large Dutch Oven over medium heat until it is just about to smoke. Add the chicken, breast side down and spread the aromatics around the sides of the bird. Brown the breast side of the chicken for about 5 minutes, until nice and golden brown. Flip the chicken over, and cook it breast side up until the chicken and vegetables are nice and brown, about another 6-8 minutes.

Now, cover the Dutch Oven and put it in the oven to cook for a little over an hour and a half (if your oven has a probe thermometer, use it. We want the thickest part of the breast to read 160 and the thickest part of the thigh to read 175).

When the chicken is done cooking, transfer the bird to your carving board and place a piece of tin foil over it (not too tight, just tented over the bird). Let the chicken rest for about 20 minutes while you make the jus.

Strain the liquid in the Dutch Oven into a small saucepan and simmer over low heat until you are ready to carve the bird. Splash a little acid into the jus just before serving (lemon juice or vinegar works great).

Give it a shot and tell me what you think.  I’m going to be posting a few more chicken recipes over the next few days (now that I have WordPress on the iPhone, I can do all my blogging from my phone, which makes things so much easier. Thank you Apple), so give this a shot and next time we’ll try Grandma’s Chicken Fricassee (which recently made an appearance at the Five Couple Camparama over Labor Day Weekend).

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Happy Holidays from the Long Island Foodies

December 24, 2008 · Filed under Recipe

Happy Holidays all!  The Foodie kitchen has been extremely busy these past few weeks.  Delicious latkes, chicken noodle soup as well as gourmet mac and cheese.

But the thing we are most excited for is a dinner with one of our readers.  Macho Brendacho and K Scan invited the Long Island Foodies over to their place for the traditional family Christmas dinner and we got to provide Bren with the recipe for the main course.  After a crazy food shopping experience at Fairway on Tuesday, the day before Christmas Eve at like 3:00pm, we picked up all the supplies that we all needed for Thursday night’s meal.  So, good luck with the crown roast Bren. I will be bringing my appetite.

Macho Brendacho’s Traditional Christmas Crown Roast with SAC Stuffing

11 lb Roasted lean pork roast, center rib loin with bone
1 cup Fresh parsley, chopped
3/4 tsp Salt
3/4 tsp Black pepper
3 3/4 tsp Thyme, ground
3 3/4 tsp Sage leaves, ground
5-6 Granny smith apples, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 1/2 cup Canned chicken broth, low sodium
1 1/2 lb Precooked pork sausage
8 cup couscous
1/4 cup Salted light butter
2 Large Spanish Onions, chopped into a small dice, slightly smaller
than dice on apples

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Place foil covered rack in roasting pan with pork roast on top;
cook uncovered 1 hour.
3. Butter a square 8 x 8 x 2-inch deep baking dish; set aside.
4. In a large skillet over medium-high heat melt butter; add sausage and onion.
5. Cook until sausage is cooked through, about 10 minutes.  Add
apples, cook additional 2 minutes.
6. Remove from heat; mix in couscous, three-fourths of the broth,
parsley, sage and thyme.
7. Season stuffing with salt and pepper.
8. Remove pork from oven; loosely fill cavity with stuffing, mounding in center.
9. Place remaining stuffing in the baking dish and cover, after
moistening, with aluminum foil.
10. Moisten pork roast and stuffing in dish with remaining chicken
broth; cover rib ends and the stuffing in pork cavity with foil.
11. Return pork to oven and place stuffing in dish in oven.
12. Roast pork and stuffing in dish until thermometer inserted into
center of pork registers 155 degrees F., about 45 minutes for stuffing
in dish and 55 minutes for the roast.
13. Place pork on a platter and cover until ready to serve; carve pork
between bones into chops.

Update: I think it is important that I state that this year’s latke making experience has probably been the best in my life ever.  Now, obviously it couldn’t replace the years of cooking them next to my grandmother, being responsible for grating the potatoes on the small box grater that my mom had (always remember grating my knuckles whenever they were made).  This year, using the 14 cup Cuisinart Food Processor and Arthur Schwartz’s recipe, the latkes were made with such little fuss and mess that I think I might just make them all the time.  They were delicious and convenient.  All I did was peel the onion and peel the potatoes; the food processor did the rest of the work.  Plus, they came out great.  Here is a photo of some of them cooling on the rack before being eaten up with applesauce and sour cream.

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Clean out yer pantry Soup

November 16, 2008 · Filed under Recipe · Tagged

Along the lines of our last recipe, this is a hearty, warm soup that is easy to pull together and doesn’t require measurements or any special instructions. Plus, it uses up stuff that you’ve got lying around in your pantry which is always a good thing as we don’t believe in waste around here (renew, reuse, recycle).

The inspiration for this post comes from our friend Deb at Smitten Kitchen who posted her Beef, Leek and Barley soup back in the beginning of October. Since that post, we’ve made this soup two or three times, so we’re pretty sure we can vouch for its awesomeness. You’ll need a package of short ribs (you know how much we love them, so don’t be shocked that we’ve got a package of them lying around), a couple of leeks, some onions, garlic, barley, mushrooms (we’ve used dried, fresh and a combination of the two).

Beef, Leek and Barley Soup
Adapted from Deb Perelman’s Beef, Leek and Barley Soup

1. Trim the fat off of a couple of meaty short ribs and put them on the bottom of your soup pot.

2. Sear the short ribs so that they have some nice color on both sides.

2. Add 1/2 cup of barley, four cloves of garlic chopped up, two chopped onions, and three leeks cut lengthwise and then into segments–use both the white and the green parts. Add some fresh mushrooms now, or if you have any other vegetables that you’d like in this soup, add them as well. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Cover the ingredients with beef stock and let it simmer on the back burner for at least three hours. Now is when we like to add dried porcini mushrooms (because we usually have them in the pantry at all times). Deb says that we can also add lima beans, cube potatoes, peas, corn, string beans and chopped tomatoes now or even on the second day, should you have any leftover.

4. Before serving, skim off the fat–there will be a bit, as short ribs are quite fatty–take the meat off the bones, chop it and put it back in the soup.

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Gotta love soup

November 12, 2008 · Filed under Recipe · Tagged

For today’s lesson, boys and girls, we’re going to be making soup. The perfect, home cooked dish that will keep you warm all winter long. A great thing about soup is that they usually freeze well, which means you can break it out later on and serve it up when you’re not looking to do too much cooking.

On an aside, you’ll notice less and less photos on this website, especially of food. This is because we have finally learned our lesson in that in order to take great food shots, one needs a real camera, not one of these point and click doo-hickies. So, until Hannuakah Harry brings me a new digital SLR, don’t be upset if I can’t show you photos of the fabulous stuff we’re making in the Foodie kitchen these days.

Ok, on to soup. The first recipe we’re making comes from the City Mama blog which we came across when searching for a split pea soup recipe. The fact that this recipe calls for smoked ham hocks (readily available at Forest Pork Store) didn’t hurt in making it to the top of the pile.

SPLIT PEA SOUP

The most flavorful split pea soup you will ever eat. Start it well ahead of dinner time. I didn’t add any salt to this soup. I found the hocks and sausage made it plenty salty enough.

  • olive oil
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 whole onion, chopped
  • 2 ribs celery, chopped
  • 3 carrots cut into 1/2 in thick coins or large chunks (I like lots of carrots)
  • 4 bay leaves
  • 3 (yes 3!) smoked ham hocks
  • 2 quarts of water
  • 1 quart of low sodium chicken broth (or just 3 quarts of water)
  • 1 bag of green split peas, rinsed
  • 2 sausages such as Aidell’s chicken or even a polska kielbasa will do (or you can omit entirely)
  • pepper to taste
  • plain yogurt, creme fraiche, or sour cream to garnish (optional)

In a large soup pot over medium heat, cook the garlic, onion, celery, carrot and bay leaves in about 3 glugs (tbsps) of olive oil until onions start to turn golden brown (about 7-10 minutes). Add hocks, water and broth. Bring to a boil, skim any foam, then reduce heat to low and simmer partially covered for no less than 2.5 hours. At this point the ham hocks should be falling-apart tender so remove them and set them aside to cool, then shred the meat. Add peas, bring to a boil then reduce heat to low, cooking uncovered for about 45 minutes to an hour or until peas are melty and soup is thickened. During last 15 minutes of cooking time, add sliced sausages and the shredded ham meat (not the skin, cartillage etc.) from the ham hocks. Remove bay leaves before serving and pass the pepper. Makes 8 servings. (And is even more delicious for breakfast!)

Couple of points -

1. This is a stand-your-spoon-in-the-soup kind of recipe. Think spackle or mortar and not consumme.

2. We added the kielbasa to the soup, but it got a little bit “meaty” when we added the ham. I would forgoe the kielbasa and stick with the ham only, as it was delicious.

3. If for some reason you have extra ham left over, it is delicious on a salad with ranch dressing. I’m just saying.

We have a large container of this in the freezer, perfect for that night when we don’t feel like cooking. Next up will be a beef, leek, mushroom and barley soup that is to die for.

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Blueberry cobbler

August 1, 2008 · Filed under Recipe · Tagged , ,

I had picked up two pints of blueberries at the Huntington Farmers Market last Sunday, in a failed effort to make some blueberry freezer jam.  Something frugal and domestic about fresh local jam made on a rainy day was appealing to me, and this is the year that we’ve resolved to not only making jam, but can tomatoes and pickle cucumbers.  So I figured I would start with the jam as tomato season is still another week or two away and I’m just not ready yet for pickling.

Funny how things don’t always work out as planned.  The weekend got busy and then so did the first few days of the week, and next thing you know, it’s Thursday, which was also the first night of the week that Stefani and I would get to eat dinner together.  So the blueberries sat in the fridge, hidden away from prying berry fingers.  But I wanted to do something with some of them and last night was the best night to play around since we were both home and had the time.  What was needed was a simple, fast and easy blueberry recipe (preferably for dessert) that was satisfying and didn’t mess up a lot of dishes.

Blueberry Cobbler

1 cup King Arthur Organic Flour
1 cup organic sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 farm fresh egg
1 pint blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Butter up a small baking dish that can hold a quart of blueberries yet still has a little room on top for the crust.

Wash, clean and destem the blueberries.  Dry them and put them in the baking dish.

Combine the flour, sugar, butter and egg into a dough.  Form small patties (about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick) out of the dough and put on top of the blueberries.  By overlapping the patties we create sections of crust that brown well, while leaving open portions of the blueberry to steam and ooze up.

Pop it into the oven until the crust is golden brown and the blueberries have started to ooze up through the cracks.

The genesis of this recipe came from The Kitchn and specifically their article on Easy, Foolproof Cobbler (for Any Fruit).  As you can see, this cobbler didn’t stand a chance.

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Greatest salad ever?

July 17, 2008 · Filed under Local, Produce, Recipe · Tagged ,

I couldn’t wait a second longer to post about last night’s salad.

I really wanted to make something that Stefani would enjoy, using some of the farm fresh produce from our CSA.  She was going to be playing volleyball until dinner so I had some time to figure out what I was going to do.  A trip downstairs to the backup fridge found some assorted chard (swiss and rainbow) and a really delicious looking beet.  Now, I’m not a beet kind of guy, but my wife’s family is Russian and beets are big in their book, so she grew up with a certain level of comfort with them.

Although when I told her on the phone that I was serving the beet raw, she expressed some reservations.  “I’ve never had beets raw before, I’ve always cooked them.”

Well, raw beets here we go, as we make a super fast and super healthy salad that did wonders next to a piece of steak from the grill.

(The recipe comes from one of my favorite food sites, The Kitchn and I adjusted the quantities based on what I had on hand)

Sautéed Rainbow Chard with Raw Beets and Goat Cheese
serves 4 to 6

3 or 4 medium-sized beets (we had one big and 4 or 5 inch-wide ones)
4 large handfuls of rainbow chard
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4 ounces of goat cheese, crumbled

For the dressing:
2 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Peel the beets and either grate them on a box grater or in a food processor. You should have about two cups of shredded beets.

Separate and chop the thick stems of the chard. Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot on medium heat and cook the stems for about 5 minutes, until they are softened. Add the leaves of the chard, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, turning with tongs, until the leaves have wilted and cooked down. Transfer the chard to a large bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.

Make the dressing. Whisk together the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. Season with salt and pepper, then stream in the olive oil while whisking vigorously.

Combine the chard and the beets and toss with the vinaigrette (depending on how much chard you have and how saturated you want your greens, you may have some vinaigrette left over). Top with goat cheese.

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Pimiento Cheese

June 25, 2008 · Filed under Recipe · Tagged

Mmm, pimiento cheese

I was so happy to read Sylvia Carter’s recent article in Newsday about Pimiento Cheese.  Ms. Carter, a fellow Hamlet Organic Garden member, discusses her childhood growing up down south and how pimiento cheese is pretty unfamiliar to us Northerners.

I must admit that it wasn’t until about a year ago that I had learned about pimiento cheese and that was from an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with Guy Fieri on the Food Network.  Guy had traveled down to North Carolina to The Penguin where owner Greg Auten showed him how to make a really great Pimiento Cheese spread.  Ever since watching the episode I have had a hankerin for some pimiento cheese.  So, when Stefani and I picked up a new food processor the other day, pimiento cheese was the first thing on my list to make.

I searched the web for pimiento cheese recipes and stumbled upon a recipe attributed to The Penguin, so I figured that would be a great starting point.

Now, I made mine with Monterey Jack cheese and not Pepper Jack, but that’s only because Pepper Jack wasn’t available at the time (I’d probably use Pepper Jack next time although one wouldn’t have missed it had they only tried the Monterey).  Also, instead of the green chile sauce, I used Frank’s Red Hot.  Ultimately, in the end, I was very happy with my pimiento cheese and wait till you hear what I did with it.

Pimiento Cheese

1 pound grated Cheddar
1/2 pound grated Monterey Jack
1 (4-ounce) can diced pimentos
1/3 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/3 teaspoons granulated onion
About 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch cayenne
About 1/2 tablespoon Frank’s Red Hot
2/3 cup organic mayonnaise

In a food processor, combine ingredients well and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Now, as a quick snack, I like to take a piece of pancetta and fry that up in a nonstick pan.  I put the crispy pancetta onto a sandwich of whitebread and pimiento cheese and then fry that sandwich up in the pancetta fat in the nonstick pan, making a Pimiento and Pancetta Grilled Cheese Sandwich.  Or even better, as I recently discovered, slather some ‘memto cheese onto a burger to make a Pimiento Cheeseburger (easy for us as we keep Coleman Organic burgers in the freezer).

Enjoy!

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Braised Short Ribs

June 17, 2008 · Filed under Recipe · Tagged , , ,

I know that it’s like 80 degrees out there, and braising beef for hours on end makes more sense in the winter than it does in the summer…but I wanted them, and now they are mine, all mine.  Well, I obviously have to share with my better half, but mine is hers anyway, so it looks like we’ll be eating good tonight.

I picked up two packages of short ribs from Forest Pork Store the other day, along with some bacon and a bottle of Hefewisen.  The game plan was that I would get home yesterday at around 6:00pm and start searing off the short ribs in bacon fat, giving me enough time to pop them in the oven for a three hour braise.  That way I could pull them out of the oven and let them cool before packing them into the fridge until dinner on Tuesday.

Bacon

So we start off chopping up the bacon and rendering out the fat into a dutch oven.  As you can see, we’re using our new Jenn Air cooktop along with the dutch oven Mr. and Mrs. Nelkin bought us (owners of the Garden City Hotel) for our wedding.

Once the bacon fat is rendered into the pan, remove the crispy bacon bits and reserve for later use in a salad, or as a snack for the chef while cooking (which is what I did).

Mmmm...bacon

Once the bacon bits have been removed, sear the crap out of your short ribs on all sides (don’t forget to season).  This is the most important step in making brasised short ribs and if you skimp on the sear, you’ll pay in the end with less than spectacular short ribs.

Once the ribs have been fulled seared, remove them to a plate and add your mirepoix to the pan, sweat it in bacon fat and short rib drippings.  Add some salt and pepper and cook until translucent.  I then added four crushed garlic cloves.  I didn’t want to add these too early because I was afraid it would burn and add a burnt flavor to the short ribs which would be tragic.  Also into the pot went some tomato paste which I stirred in until carmelized.

Mirepoix

Once the tomato paste was carmelized and the veggies looked good to go, I deglazed the pan using the hefeweizen.

Hefeweizen

Deglazing

To this I added beef stock, worchester sauce and the short ribs.  Once it came up to a simmer, I popped it into a preheated 300 degree oven for three hours.

Everybody in the pool

In the oven

And after three hours, I had this lovely creation to show for it all:

Braised short ribs

Now, short ribs are always better the next day, so I packed these guys up for a day in the fridge so that when I get home tonight I can peel off the layer of fat that will have coagulated on the surface, bring the entire product up to a simmer and will be ready to serve with a side of polenta.

I’ll keep you posted as to how this meal worked out.  The recipe I’m including below is an approximation of what I did, because we don’t need no stinkin recipes ’round these parts (did you notice that beautiful GE Profile double oven setup?  Don’t hate the player, hate the game).

Braised Short Ribs

1/4 pound of bacon, chopped
8 small short ribs
1 medium onion, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 pint of hefeweizen
1 32 oz. box of organic beef broth
5 dashes of worchester sauce
salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
2. Sweat bacon in dutch oven over medium heat.
3. Sear all sides of short ribs in bacon fat. Remove short ribs to plate.
4. Sweat celery, onion and carrots in pan until translucent.
5. Add crushed garlic cloves and tomato paste.
6. Stir in tomato paste and carmelize.
7. Deglaze pan with hefeweizen.
8. Place short ribs back in pan and cover with beef broth. Shake in worchester sauce.
9. Place in preheated oven for three hours.
10. Remove short ribs and separate ribs from sauce to cool (better to cool overnight in the fridge).
11. When ready to serve, remove layer of fat from sauce and combine with short ribs in a saucepan over medium low heat, just enough to heat up sauce and meet to a simmer.
12. Serve and enjoy!

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