guacamole all the things

Sometimes the rest of your dinner has nothing to do with guacamole, but you just have to say fuck it, and make the guacamole, because it's delicious.

This was that dinner.

Look at that guacamole, hiding in the background. Sneaky.

Pretty simple - seared chuck steak, sweet potato mash, sauteed baby kale with mushrooms, and the aforementioned random guacamole.

the squash chronicles: Acorn

I've been on kind of a squash kick lately, partially because it's in season right now and partially because every time I come up with a better way of cooking / flavoring it than just the old stand-by "bake and then mash with sweet spices and butter", it makes me happy. To that end, today I decided to try something I HATED as a kid - acorn squash. There was just something about the texture of mashed acorn squash and the strange shade of tan it always ended up. Blech.

What I wanted was a way to make acorn squash likable again. I decided to try roasting it and see how it turned out. The results were quite tasty, and I think the texture would have been better had I roasted it on a larger pan so I had less overlap (less overlap means more squash touching the pan and getting all roasty-toasty. That's a legit technical term, BTW. Look it up). Acorn squash is super bland on its own - it doesn't even really have much inherent sweetness, at least not compared to something like butternut or kabocha. I jazzed it up with a little fresh rosemary and some shallots and the caramelizing there-of brought out some really nice nutty flavors.

I can safely say that I did NOT hate this acorn squash, and I'm looking forward to eating the leftovers tomorrow.

Squash! Not mashed!

The kale was quick-braised by rendering some chopped bacon in a pan, then pouring off all but about half a tablespoon of the fat, adding the chopped kale and about a quarter cup of chicken stock. I turned the heat to low, covered the pan tightly and let it cook for about 10 minutes, stirring a couple times in the middle. Crispy bacon was sprinkled over top at the very end so it wouldn't get soggy.

The pork was on sale last week at the grocery store and I got sucked in because it was a deal. I should have known better. It's a loin. See that ridge of fat across the top of the slices? That's all the fat there is on the entire roast. Some people may be into super-lean meat, but I am not one of those people. I'm pretty sure the only reason this didn't turn into a 5lb log of shoe leather is because a) it was one of the vacuum-packed ones from Smithfield and I think they inject salt solution into the meat as well as packing it in a kind of weak brine solution, and b) I cooked the meat at quite a low temperature (325 degrees). It wasn't terrible in the end - like I said, it stayed quite moist, and the dusting of thyme, garlic powder, salt and pepper I gave it before roasting gave it decent flavor. I wish I had thought to marinate it for a while, though. Loin is just so bland. Oh, well. A cheap chunk of protein for lunches for the week isn't a bad thing!

gluten-free thanksgiving feast

Look, I don't like turkey. I know, it's un-'Murrican, it's the whole point of Thanksgiving dinner, blah blah. Judge me how you want, I don't care. I don't like turkey, and I don't eat it unless I have to. Since I was hosting Thanksgiving this year, I didn't HAVE to make turkey...so I didn't. I made a pork rib roast instead, rubbed with sage and garlic. It was epic, visually stunning, and REALLY damn tasty:

sage and garlic rubbed pork rib roast

My only (trivial) complaint was that it was somewhat hard to carve even with the rib bones pre-cut by the butcher, but it was so juicy and flavorful that it kind of cancelled out all the flailing around with the knife that I had to do to get it onto the plates.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of my pictures of the feast came out really blurry (apparently a combination of low light and quaking with anticipation is not conducive to good photography), but I can still regale you with descriptions of what I made!

With the pork roast, I served my much-asked-for-in-my-family roasted veggie mix, which consists of carrot, potato, radish, and Brussels sprouts. I tossed the prepped veggies with sea salt and black pepper and some fresh thyme and rosemary, then spread them evenly over two parchment-lined baking sheets. I cooked them for about 20 minutes at 475 degrees (because that's what my roast was cooking at, at the time) and then another 20 minutes or so at 350 degrees. Cooking them at high heat first gives the surface a nice crisp crust, then cooking them at a lower heat for longer allows them to cook through without losing the crust or getting burnt.

For other sides, I made a wild and brown rice dressing with lots of fresh thyme, dried cranberries and chopped pecans, some whole-berry cranberry sauce made with maple syrup and orange zest, kale sauteed with shallots and bacon, and I also did a twice-baked winter squash. For the squash, I used buttercup squash which I hadn't used before. I cut it in half and cleaned the seeds out, then cooked it on a foil-lined baking sheet at 375 for about an hour. I then scooped the flesh out into a bowl and added several (I, uhhh...lost count...hehe) tablespoons of butter, a splash of maple syrup, a pinch each of ground clove and ground nutmeg, and a couple pinches of sea salt. I used a stick blender to combine the ingredients and smooth the consistency of the squash out. The squash puree went into a baking dish and was topped with chopped walnuts, a sprinkle of brown sugar and dots of butter. It was then baked again at 350 for about an hour. All the sides except for the kale were actually made ahead last night and just reheated / baked in the oven while the roast finished cooking, and it worked out really well and saved me a lot of stress today!

We had two desserts today - crustless pumpkin pie and a flourless chocolate cake. The pumpkin pie is super easy - I just mix up normal pumpkin pie filling and dump it straight into a glass pie plate - no greasing, no crust, nada. I bake it at 350 for about 45 minutes, and it always comes out great. I've never had a problem with it sticking in the pan, and I honestly don't miss the pie crust one bit.

The flourless chocolate cake, on the other hand...that was a bit of a project. I actually used this recipe from Epicurious - the name of the cake is "La Bete Noire", which means "The Black Beast". I mean, how could I find a a recipe called The Black Beast and NOT make it, right?! So. The recipe is pretty straight-forward: melt chocolate and butter, beat in some eggs, make a sugar syrup, beat that in, dump into a springform pan and bake in a water bath. Can you see where things might go wrong? Yeah. Springform pan + water bath. I know, I know, people do it all the time and it works just fine....good for them. I followed the directions to a T - wrapped the bottom of the pan in layers and layers of foil, carefully poured the hot water into the roasting pan around the springform pan, etc. I thought it was slightly weird when the springform pan started to float in the water bath, but I saw no leakage / seepage, so I threw the whole thing in the oven for an hour. When I took it out, it was entirely apparent that shit had gone awry. There was a layer of water all over the top of the cake! I let it cool enough that I could pull it out and open the latch on the pan, and all the chocolatey goodness came sliding out in a giant placental sploooosh. Thankfully I had had the presence of mind to open the pan over the sink, or I would likely still be scraping chocolate sludge out from between my floorboards. Anyway - so the first try was a miserable fail. The store was already closed at that point and I didn't have enough chocolate to re-do the cake last night, so I had to wait until this morning to re-stock and try. For the re-try, rather than use a traditional bain marie, I instead took the roasting pan half-full of water and put it on the bottom rack of the oven, then put the springform pan full of cake batter on the TOP rack. An hour later, it was done and beautiful. It did develop a rather large crack across the top as it cooled, but the ganache that I poured over the top filled the crack quite nicely!After the ganache set, the finished product looked like this:

La Bete Noire. La Bete, indeed! 

I got a little over-zealous while mixing the ganache, which is why it ended up with a lot of bubbles, but you know what? Bubbles made of chocolate still taste like chocolate!

This cake is truly ridiculous. It's so incredibly dense and rich. It's like a truffle in cake form. Look at this.

Redonku-chocolate.

 I just followed the recipe and made it plain chocolate (I did add a pinch of salt to both the cake and the ganache because they needed them), but my mom and I spent the whole of dessert talking about different ways you could flavor this thing, and they ALL sounded good. I can't wait to make this again and play with flavorings. I want to get some smaller pans and make mini-cakes though. It's just so dense and rich that there's no way anybody would want to eat more than about a 1/16th wedge of it. My family are hearty eaters and we can put away some serious cake...and we only slayed a quarter of this beast. Whew!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I know we did, and with not a trace of wheat gluten in sight.

breakfast of champions

One of my favorite things to have for breakfast is sauteed kale with runny-yolked eggs on top and a drizzle of Sriracha.

Mmmm, buddy.

kale and seafood soup

The funny thing about this is that I did everything completely wrong and backwards, but in the end it tasted pretty good. I actually started by steaming some mussels in white wine and butter with onion and garlic. When they were done, I removed them from the liquid and then used the cooking liquid as the base for the soup. I chopped up some linguica sausage and added it, along with some chicken stock. I chopped up some kale pretty finely and added that, then let it cook for 5-7 minutes. In went some shrimp and some chopped-up cod, a splash of sherry and a little salt and pepper. I let it cook for about 5 more minutes, until the fish was cooked through.

Wait, you're saying...what happened to the mussels? Funny thing about that, actually. I kept picking at them as I was cooking everything else, because they were sitting right there in front of me and I was hungry. By the time I got to the end of the soup-making, they were gone. It's ok, though...they gave the stock plenty of their tasty goodness, and they made an excellent snack!

soup night

Tonight I made kale and chorizo soup for dinner. It was very simple - just carrot, celery, chorizo, kale, chicken stock, water, a splash of sherry vinegar and a couple of bay leaves. It has to cook for about an hour to make the kale tender, but it's totally worth the wait.

I roasted up some kabocha squash tonight as well. The sweetness of the squash actually went really well with the soup.

stuffed portobello mushrooms

Stuffed mushrooms are infinitely variable and they're great for using up odds and ends of everything you don't really have enough to do anything with in the fridge. Eg: I had kale and shredded cheddar leftover from last night's colcannon, half a red onion I needed to use up, and about half a cup of panko bread crumbs and some bulk pork sausage hanging around. I browned the sausage in a small pan, drained it, and tossed it in a bowl. I squeezed the excess water out of the kale and chopped it, and added it along with a handful of cheese to the bowl. In went the chopped half a red onion and the bread crumbs, I gave it all a couple tosses with my hands to combine, and then smooshed it all into / onto two big portobello mushroom caps (I pulled the stems out and scraped the black gills out with a spoon - this keeps them from getting really watery and mushy and gross). I set them on a foil-lined cookie sheet lightly rubbed with olive oil, and baked them in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Results:

The panko bread crumbs combined with the cheese made for a really nice crunchy crust but the filling underneath stayed moist. The sausage gave a nice little fatty, salty kick to the greens and the onions softened and mellowed nicely. All in all, not bad for just throwing everything in the fridge into a bowl and seeing what happened.

colcannon

Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish made of mashed potatoes and kale or cabbage. Often onion and some cheese is added, as well. I decided that I'd make mine extra fancy and add some linguica sausage. It became sort of a crazy Irish / Portuguese fusion thing...like much of the state of Massachusetts! :D

This was a great use of leftover mashed potatoes and kale. It was fast and tasty and while probably not terribly healthy, it definitely did give us a couple servings of kale apiece, which (as fervently as my husband may try to deny it) is never a bad thing. It also made stellar leftovers for lunch.

Note: Measurements on the recipe are very approximate, as I was totally making it up as I went along. As usual. ;)

Colcannon with Linguica

1 lb mashed potatoes
3/4 lb kale
1/2 lb linguica sausage, diced
two big handfuls shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 bunch of green onions, finely chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten

Rinse kale, trim off stems, roughly chop. Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil and submerge kale (you'll have to use a spoon to really push it down because it likes to float) in boiling water for 2 minutes. Dump kale in a colander and let drain while you ready the rest of the ingredients.

In a large bowl, combine mashed potatoes, cheese, chopped green onions, diced sausage, and egg. Mix this to a uniform consistency.

When kale has cooled enough to handle, pick it up out of the colander and squeeze as much of the moisture out of it as you can...and there will be a LOT, so keep squeezing. When you can't squeeze much more water out of it, add it to the potato mixture and stir to combine.

Heat a cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pan on medium heat. Add potato mixture and cook, stirring frequently, until hot through. Serve!

herbed chicken breast and sauteed kale

Pretty simple, really. I took boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, rubbed them with a little olive oil and sprinkled them with black pepper, dried rosemary, and dried thyme. They went into a 425 degree oven for about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, I washed a big bunch of kale, trimmed the stems off and cut into bite-sized pieces. In a large pot, I browned a little bit of chopped bacon. Once it was crisp, I removed it and added a chopped Vidalia onion. The onion cooked until it was softened somewhat, then I removed it and set it aside, and added the kale, tossing well to coat. I added about a half cup of low-sodium chicken stock, covered the pot and let the kale cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. When the kale was almost tender, I added the onion and bacon back in and cooked for another couple of minutes, then removed from heat and tossed with a splash of apple cider vinegar before serving.

kale and bean soup

I used to call this kale and kielbasa soup, but I'm trying to work more beans into our diets, so the kielbasa kind of took a back seat in this batch of soup. It's still in there, don't get me wrong...but there's also a ton of kale, a can of white beans, a can of chickpeas, carrots, celery, onion, and a big can of diced tomato along with chicken stock and some oregano and thyme.

It was a good batch. I actually didn't mean to put chickpeas in the soup - I had planned on using just white beans, but one of the cans I opened was chickpeas so I figured what the hell and dumped 'em in. They gave a nice difference in texture, but I don't think I'll put them in next time (assuming I read the cans before I open them next time...derp). I just like white beans better.