Pretty much the best thing

I am kind of into the grill. And the smoker.

I have a love for charcoal and smoke that borders on the unnatural.

The other day, when I was watching the "Chopped" grill masters tournament, I was filled with an appropriate measure of rage because each round only included one woman. That's four women, total, in the whole tournament. As if grilling is a man's domain. Please.

Then there was the party I went to recently where I bent a friend's ear about smoking (food, not cigarettes.) He was probably sorry that he asked me what model smoker I have. He will probably avoid me at future gatherings. However, he did inspire me to want to smoke strawberries to use in homemade ice cream. One of the most brilliant ideas I've heard of late.

Just today I chastised my brother-in-law because he fears char.

So the concept of rubbing a brisket with coffee grounds, ancho chile, and salt, grilling it until charred (hi, Steve!), braising it with cinnamon, black pepper, onions, tomato, and garlic, then shredding and serving it in tacos, well, that is pretty much the best thing.

 
Light your chimney starter! Behold the machaca!


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MACHACA
Adapted from Eric Williams of Cleveland's excellent Momocho restaurant

1/2 c. coffee, coarsely ground
4 T. ancho chile powder
1/2 c. kosher salt
5-lb. beef brisket, trimmed of most of the fat
2 c. red wine
20 oz. tomato juice
1/4 c. freshly-squeezed lime juice
1 c. red wine vinegar
1/2 c. garlic, chopped
2 T. freshly-cracked black pepper
1 T. cinnamon
2 bay leaves
1 onion, cut into a few large pieces

For serving:
Corn tortillas
Red onion, sliced
The guacamole of your choice

In a medium bowl, combine the coffee, ancho powder, and salt. Rub the mixture onto the brisket, coating as evenly as possible.

Build a hot charcoal fire, in an even layer, in the bottom of the grill. (You could always use a gas grill, of course, but I love charcoal with all of my heart.) Place the brisket on the grill and sear, charring the meat in places. Do not fear the char!

Remove from the grill. If your 5 pounds of brisket isn't already in pieces (i.e., you started with one big mammoth piece of meat instead of several smaller cuts), cut the meat into three pieces. 

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the meat into a large roasting pan. Add the remaining ingredients: red wine, tomato juice, lime juice, red wine vinegar, garlic, black pepper, cinnamon, bay, and onion. Add enough water to cover the brisket. Cover the pan with a lid or with a piece of aluminum foil.

Place in the oven and cook for 3-4 hours, until the meat is tender and falling apart. 

 
Remove the brisket from the braising liquid and allow to cool. Strain and reserve the braising liquid. When the meat is cool enough to handle, shred it into bite-size pieces. Place the reserved braising liquid in a saucepan and cook over a low heat until slightly reduced and thickened.

To serve: Char corn tortillas on the grill, or in a dry skillet on the stove. Place two tortillas together and fill with shredded beef, red onion, a dollop of guacamole, and a generous drizzle of the reduced braising liquid.

Makes enough machaca for several nights' worth of taco eating. Or, you could just shove the machaca in yo face, uncivilized-style, if nobody is looking. You're probably in your back yard, near your grill, so nobody is looking.


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Previously, on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: dilly scapes
Three years ago: banana bread with coconut and pecans
Four years ago: red rice and young garlic pilaf
Five years ago: Ligurian lemon cake

For those aforementioned people

I really, really like to throw things away. I am the anti-hoarder. The feeling I get from getting rid of things I don't need or use -- whether it means giving pants that don't fit me any longer to my skinny sister, or dropping off an old table to the Goodwill, or even the weekly pile that awaits our fabulous sanitation engineer -- is a real high.

Husband calls it my "trash stiffie." Used properly in a sentence: "Did you see the pile out at the curb today? You are totally gonna get a trash stiffie."

For the past few weeks I've had "ramps" scrawled hopefully on my grocery list. I didn't really expect to find them in any store -- ramps, for the uninitiated, are the wonderfully pungent wild leeks that enjoy a very short season and are most reliably sourced at the forest floor. People who love ramps, love ramps. They are a true sign of spring, peeking up through the detritus of last year's fallen leaves, green heralds of warmer days to come. Our neighbor city of Peninsula even hosts a ramp festival, for those aforementioned people who love ramps. If you want to find them, you best do a little foraging. Or you can get lucky at a local market. If you're lucky. But I wasn't expecting to be lucky this year.

Until last week, when I rounded the corner from the beer aisle at my local Heinen's and saw a pile of ramps, bundled together and arranged just so in a rustic, earthy heap.

I gasped. Audibly.

I believe this is what they call a "ramp stiffie." 

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RAMP AND SAUSAGE RISOTTO
Adapted from Bon Appetit


The original recipe calls for pork sausage, which I am certain would be mighty tasty in this recipe, indeed. However, as Husband eschews pork (and I rarely eat it), I subbed spicy chicken sausage and it was every bit as savory and fabulous.


2 T. unsalted butter
1/2 lb. hot Italian sausages (pork, turkey, or chicken), casings removed
16 ramps, trimmed; bulbs and stems sliced, green tops thinly sliced (chiffonade)
1 c. arborio rice
1/2 c. white wine
3 c. (or more) chicken or turkey stock
1/2 c. Pecorino, grated, plus more for serving
Kosher salt, to taste
Freshly-cracked black pepper, to taste

Place the butter in a Dutch oven, and melt it over moderate heat. Add the sausage, and cook until it begins to brown, breaking it up with the back of a spoon, 8-10 minutes. 

Add the sliced ramp bulbs and stems. Saute until almost tender, 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the rice and stir for 1 minute. Add the wine and simmer until the liquid is absorbed, about 2 minutes. 

Add 3 cups of the stock, one cup at a time, simmering until almost absorbed before the next addition and stirring often. After you've added the entire 3 cups of stock, cook the rice for an additional 18 minutes, stirring often, until the rice is just tender and the risotto is creamy. If, during this 18 minutes, the mixture begins to dry out, add more stock, a little at a time. (My mixture ended up taking about 4 1/2 cups of stock.)

Off the heat, mix in the green ramp tops and the Pecorino. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

Serves 4. Technically.


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Previously, on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: writing about Polish food for the Why CLE? blog
Three years ago: guacamole
Four years ago: honey biscuits
Five years ago: mole Poblano

Bread Baker's Apprentice: 22/43: pain de Campagne

Sometimes, playing catch-up after years of inactivity means you end up with two posts about The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge, back to back. Taking my last post, on pain à l'Ancienne, and today's entry together, it's like this blog's equivalent of two for Tuesday. 

Kind of. 

Only instead of two Steve Miller Band classics, it's Reinhart breads. Frankly, I don't know which is more freaking awesome.

So this pain de Campagne was the last of the Bread Baker's breads that I baked pre-hiatus. I recall that it was very delicious, as are the vast majority of Reinhart's breads. When one makes the pain de Campagne, one has many shaping options. One can form it into boule, bâtard, baguette, even a scissor-cut épi. I decided to select the lovely fendu, a technique in which the baker uses a rod of some sort to press a deep crease down the length of the loaf.

All was well and good as I began shaping the soft, pliable dough.

The loaf looked beautiful as it began its final proof. 

But when I returned to the kitchen an hour later to bake the bread, the rustic and charming crease had risen right out of my pain de Campagne.

So I ended up with a fat, featureless loaf.  

You know what, though?

Fat, featureless loaves taste just as fabulous as their artisan-crafted kin. Toasted up with a knob of Irish salted butter, the pain de Campagne spoke of the pompatus of love.

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The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge asks that we do not share Reinhart's recipes. Which is not a big deal to you, dear reader, because you already own the book. Turn to page 195 and let me know if your fendu is more successful than mine.


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Previously on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: sharing Babushka's homemade Polish fare over at Why CLE?
Three years ago: quinoa with caramelized onions
Four years ago: Jane Howard's phenomenal hot cross buns
Five years ago: ultimate soft and chewy chocolate chunk cookies

Bread Baker's Apprentice: 21/43: pain à l'Ancienne

The last time I wrote about The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (the seemingly never-ending quest to bake all 43 recipes, in order, from Peter Reinhart's most excellent The Bread Baker's Apprentice), it was May 14, 2011, and I was proclaiming the superior toast qualities of Reinhart's exuberantly-named multigrain bread extraordinaire.

A lot has changed since then.

On May 14, 2011, Australian singer Danii Minogue resigned as a judge on The X Factor. I mean, it's been almost two whole years since Dannii Minogue was a judge on The X Factor! Lady Gaga was a week away from releasing Born This Way. Captain Jack Sparrow was on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, in an issue that also included a preview of fall television pilots (Charlie's Angels, something called Good Christian Bitches). (Clearly, a Google search of the big arts and cultural news of May 2011 turns up, well, results that are anything but compelling.)

A review of my Facebook timeline from May 2011 shows that at that time I was busy drinking beers, taking care of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, visiting zoos with a small child, watching Roxette videos on YouTube, and discussing the Lisa Marie Presley cover of "Dirty Laundry" with anyone who would listen.

Eh, maybe that much hasn't changed.

  
So, it's been awhile since I've checked in with The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge. It's also been awhile since I've checked in with Reinhart, for that matter, though I do make his light wheat bread relatively frequently. Though the months and years have escaped me, I have always wanted to finish the challenge. It's been nagging at me, a yeasty voice calling out of the dark recesses of my pantry's flour bin, beckoning me to finish what I started. Truth be told: I did bake a few more of the breads before my excessively long hiatus, but I never wrote about them. One of those breads was the pain à l'Ancienne. I didn't mean not to share it...

...but then I found myself up against the recipes in the book that utilize a wild yeast starter, which I did attempt. But my wild yeast starter failed spectacularly. I researched a few additional methods for getting such a starter going, but before I could get around to it...well, here I am. Older. Wiser. Wider. The mother of two children, not just one. And still wild yeast-less. 

I now vow to restart the challenge. Even if all of the other original bloggers who originally picked up the challenge back in May 2009 either finished long ago or similarly gave up, shipwrecked on the rocky shore of a failed wild yeast starter, well, I persevere. 

I am going to finish this, and I am going to eat some more awesome bread while doing so.

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The Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge asks that we do not share Peter Reinhart's recipes. Do you have the book? You really should; I'm just saying. The pain à l'Ancienne recipe begins on page 191.

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Previously, on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: writing about delicious Polish food over at the Why CLE? blog
Three years ago: quinoa with caramelized onions
Four years ago: fregula Sarda with roasted zucchini, ricotta salata, and olives
Five years ago: pasta e ceci alla Romana

Spooning

I am smitten by the sight of this crispy little chickpea, cradled in a singular al dente orecchiette.

Know what else is beguiling? A wee round of fresh mozzarella, cradled similarly.

Just about anything that ends up in a tiny pasta cup has me at hello. (Something else that has me at hello, apparently: references from movies that were released in 1996.)

Orecchiette with kale, mozzarella, and chickpeas just might be perfect, at least for me, at least for this moment. It fires on all available cylinders: it tastes amazing, it includes cheese, it is healthy (kale!), it involves my very favorite foodstuff, it has ingredients that spoon each other like I spoon our 10-month-old puppy late at night when I need to feel cozy.

I love this dish, Husband loves this dish, even my two-year-old cannot refrain from snacking upon the crunchy chickpea bits. Regardless of how you feel about spooning -- culinary, canine, or otherwise -- I urge you to make this dish as soon as humanly possible. You will be smitten, too...putty in its bewitching pasta and legume embrace.

More spooning

 

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ORECCHIETTE WITH KALE, MOZZARELLA, AND CHICKPEAS
Adapted from "Food and Wine"


You could absolutely use Swiss chard in place of the kale, if you wish, or any dark leafy green, really.


1/4 t. cumin
1/4 t. coriander
Kosher salt
Freshly-cracked black pepper
Vegetable oil, for frying
1 c. canned chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and patted dry
1/2 lb. orecchiette
1/4 c. olive oil
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
1/2 lb. kale, stemmed and leaves coarsely chopped
1 c. grape tomatoes, halved
6 oz. fresh mozzarella, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes (or you can use the teeny tiny fresh mozzarella balls, which I can find from time to time in my grocery store)
8 large basil leaves, torn


In a small bowl, mix together the cumin, coriander, and salt and pepper to taste. 

In a large skillet, heat 1/4-inch of vegetable oil until shimmering. Add the chickpeas and cook over high heat until crisp, about 4 minutes. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels and sprinkle the chickpeas with the cumin mixture. Discard the oil and wipe out the skillet. Try not to eat all the chickpeas while you prepare the rest of the dish.

In a large pot of salted water, cook the orecchiette according to package directions until al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/4 c. of the cooking water.

While the orecchiette cooks, add the olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes to the skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the kale and cook, stirring, until wilted, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Add the pasta and the reserved cooking water to the kale mixture in the skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring until incorporated. Add the tomatoes and cook until they're just warmed through, about 2 minutes. Add the mozzarella and basil and toss to combine.

Spoon the pasta into bowls, sprinkle with the crispy chickpeas, and serve. 

Serves 2 hungry people; 4 rational, moderate people, though I wouldn't know anything about that.


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Previously, on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: guest-blogging over at Why CLE?
Three years ago: quinoa with caramelized onions
Four years ago: fregula Sarda with roasted zucchini, ricotta salata, and olives
Five years ago: pasta e ceci alla Romana

Admiring this brisket

Aside from having to explain to a hapless young employee of my local grocery store what exactly matzo is -- and aside from having to respond to the butcher's questions re: shank bone (Butcher hands me little bone, wrapped in plastic; asks, "When is this? Should I get more bones ready?") -- I am no Jewish cooking expert. Within Hudson Heinen's I'm a Goy Joan Nathan. Outside Hudson Heinen's I'm a lady who happens to have married a Jew, who knows just enough about Jewish holiday fare to make a Joan Nathan reference.

But please don't let my lack of Ashkenzi pedigree stop you from admiring this brisket. It is delicious, and you should make it. It might be too late to make it for a seder tonight (Passover begins this evening at sundown), but if you're hosting a second night seder, by all means, have at it. 

The recipe comes from Paula, the mother of one of my best friends in this life. Paula and her charming husband Walter, along with their sons Zachary and Aaron and their fabulous extended family (hi, Cissy!), invite me and Husband to their home for many Jewish holidays. Even when my best friend won't be in attendance, they often still invite us. I think they feel bad for Husband, languishing down here in this gentile town with no matzo at its Heinen's, but they make us feel like family and I love them even more, I think, than my best friend does. 

Several years ago I was all, "Paula, I am going to marry your brisket." And Paula was all, "Here's the recipe," as she whipped out an ancient tattered stained cookbook to display a recipe for brisket of beef with limas that's part of a menu for a "Campaign Rally Dinner." I snapped a few photos with my phone, and I've been making her brisket ever since. In my house, we call it "Paula's brisket," and nary a Jewish holiday passes without it.

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PAULA'S BRISKET
Adapted from Paula Schwartz


This is a fantabulous recipe to make in advance. I do, in fact, recommend that you make it a day or more in advance. I like to make it a day ahead, keep it in the refrigerator, then slice and warm it before dinner. Paula tells me she often makes it far in advance, freezing it, then bringing it to room temperature the day of her seder, slicing then warming it as her guests arrive. Either way, it's a dream, because your main course is done.

A note: Husband tells me that, according to some corners of the Diaspora, mustard is not kosher for Passover. We include it in the recipe because Paula does, but feel free to omit if you are of a stricter variety.


5 lbs. brisket of beef, trimmed of most of the fat
2 T. Dijon mustard, divided
1 1/2 c. chili sauce, divided
1/2 c. red wine, divided
2/3 c. light brown sugar, divided
Juice of 1 lemon, divided
2 t. kosher salt, divided

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the brisket in a roasting pan.

In a medium bowl, combine 1 T. Dijon mustard, 3/4 c. chili sauce, 1/4 c. red wine, 1/3 c. light brown sugar, juice of half a lemon, and 1 t. kosher salt. Whisk to combine.

Pour the chili sauce mixture over the brisket. Roast the meat, covered, for approximately 2 hours. Remove from the oven, uncover, transfer to a baking sheet and let cool to room temperature. Reserve the juices.

(Once the meat has cooled to room temperature, you can refrigerate or freeze the brisket. Remember, if you choose to freeze it, move it to the refrigerator the night before you wish to serve it to allow it to defrost safely. Cissy's, Paula's mother, tells me that she slices the brisket before she freezes it, rather than freezing the brisket whole to slice later, so you can certainly do that instead. In fact, I would do what Cissy says. She knows. Whenever you choose to slice it, be sure to do so against the grain.)

On the night you will serve the brisket, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a medium bowl, make another batch of the chili sauce by combining the remaining 1 T. Dijon mustard, 3/4 c. chili sauce, 1/4 c. red wine, 1/3 c. light brown sugar, juice of half a lemon, and 1 t. kosher salt. Add the reserved juices from the original roasting of the brisket, and whisk to combine.

Slice the brisket against the grain and place the slices in a 13" x 9" casserole. 

Cover the brisket with the second batch of the chili sauce mixture, then cook, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. 

Baste the meat with the sauce a few times while it cooks. The goal is to reheat the meat, reduce the sauce, and develop those wonderful almost-burned crispy edges.

Serve, ask four questions, devour.

Serves 8-10.


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Previously, on A Stove With A House Around It:

One year ago: tomato-water spaghetti
Two years ago: chickpea salad with cumin vinaigrette
Three years ago: chicken souvlaki
Four years ago: chard and ricotta won tons with sage and brown butter
Five years ago: tsoureki