spinach, sausage and caramelized onion quiche

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I had a pound of sweet Italian pork sausage that needed to be used up ASAP and a package of frozen chopped spinach. I've always got eggs in stock, and usually have an onion hanging around, so this was no sweat to make.

I didn't really measure much - I know I used 6 eggs, probably a cup of cream, just a pinch of nutmeg, a pound of sausage, a medium onion, salt and pepper, some Parmesan cheese and a package of frozen chopped spinach. The sausage was removed from the casings and browned in a pan, then I removed it to my pie plate while I cooked a sliced onion in the accumulated fat in the pan, letting it get nicely browned. The residual sugar from the sausage caramelized the onion well. Onion went into the pie plate with the sausage, then I added the spinach, (which I had cooked in the microwave according to directions on the package and then squeeeeeeezed all the moisture I could out of it). I beat 6 eggs with a little salt and pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and the cream. I grated about half a cup of Parmesan cheese into the eggs, beat well, then dumped it into the pie plate over the sausage, onions and spinach. It went into a 350 degree oven for...I'm not really sure how long, honestly. I just kept checking it to see if the middle was set, and when it was, I took it out and let it cool. It was very yummy!

green meatloaf

We are fans of meat in this house, as I'm sure you've noticed. I'm always interested in finding new and interesting flavor combinations for meatloaf, especially ones that don't require bread crumbs. I've often had good luck using minced mushrooms in place of bread crumbs in my meatloaf mix, and a recipe I recently found on NomNomPaleo incorporating spinach looked really tasty so I figured I'd give it a try.

The problem with me and recipes, however, is that I tend to find them and think "oh boy that looks good, I'll try that!" and then proceed to basically not follow said recipe at all. It kind of sits there off to the side, looking forlornly up at me and trying to catch my attention as I go totally off the rails, usually in the opposite direction. Fortunately, I tend to end up with things that taste good none the less.


So, having made that point, I will tell you the details of my loaf:

I finely chopped three ribs of celery. three smallish carrots, and about a dozen small button mushrooms, and sauteed them with three chopped slices of bacon until the veggies were soft and the mushrooms had released their liquid. Meanwhile, I microwaved a package of frozen spinach until it was thawed but not super hot. I dumped it into a strainer and let it drain, and put about a pound and a half of ground beef into a big bowl. I added onion powder (I didn't have any fresh onions on hand, which is crazy, I know) and garlic powder, some thyme, some chopped parsley, salt, black pepper, and ground mustard. I cracked in a couple eggs, then added the sauteed veg mix and the well-drained spinach that I had squeezed as much liquid as possible out of. I squished it all together with my hands (my favorite part!), formed it into a loaf, and set it on a rack fit inside a lipped cookie sheet. I took a few extra strips of bacon and carefully laid them across the loaf, smoothing them down to wrap the meatloaf. It went into a 350 degree oven for about an hour - I pulled it when the internal temp hit 150 and let it rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Loaf of meat wrapped in bacon? Don't mind if I do!

For a side-dish I did roasted butternut squash, which is super simple. I used to HATE squash of all descriptions because the only way my mom ever made it was pureed and the texture just gagged me (sorry, Mom). When I discovered that many winter squashes could be roasted and would get a little crispy on the outside but stay soft and fluffy on the inside, I was a happy camper. Butternut squash is a good candidate for this treatment - you just have to make sure that a) you toss it in plenty of oil before it goes in the oven and b) you cook it long enough at a hot enough temperature. I did mine on the bottom rack of the oven at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes, flipping all the chunks about halfway through, and it came out perfectly - nice and crisp on the outside, soft inside. I actually dusted the squash with cumin before roasting, which was good, but next time I think I might use garam masala or regular curry powder, even.

Tasty, veggie-laden meatloaf

The addition of the spinach to the meatloaf didn't really effect the taste at all, but it did add extra nutritional goodness. As you can see from the picture, I could have diced my carrots a bit more tidily and smaller, but it tasted good, chunky carrots and all.

project: pork rib roast

I stopped by the local mom-and-pop grocery store this morning for the same reason I always go there: to see if they had any thick-cut pork chops suitable for stuffing. I could probably just ask the meat counter guy to leave some chops cut really thick for me, but he's never around when I'm there. Anyway - I went in this morning looking for thick chops, and what I found instead was this beauty:

center-cut pork rib roast

That's a center-cut pork rib roast. That's where my favorite thick-cut chops come from. It was close to five pounds, and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. I thought very briefly about cutting it into chops and stuffing them, but then I decided that since I'd never done a standing rib roast before, I'd make a Sunday afternoon project out of it.

If you Google "standing rib roast", you'll get a lot of pictures that don't look like the piece of meat in the picture above - instead, they have bare bones sticking out the top. This is something that is usually done by the butcher, and it's called "frenching". I'm sure there's some other, more proper name for the procedure, but I don't know what it is, so I'm going to keep calling it "frenching". Also, it's kind of funny to keep saying stuff like "I was frenching my roast", because a) I've been drinking, and b) I'm a 12 year old boy at heart.

Anyway - moving on. Frenching (hee hee) a roast is very simple, but kind of tedious, especially if you haven't sharpened your knives in a really long time like someone writing this blog who shall remain nameless. Ahem. You make a cut along the top of the roast, like so:

About to french the roast. Hee hee. French the roast. 

You cut straight across, right down to the bone. Then, you cut straight down between the end of each rib, like so:

Cut down between each rib bone, then get ready to scrape.

 At this point, you've got a cube of meat on the end of each rib bone. Now comes the tedious part. You take your knife and, cutting and scraping, remove all the meat off the ends of the bones. The roast ends up eventually looking like this - note the little pile of trimmings off to the side there. Don't ditch those - they'll come into play shortly:

Roast: frenched. Hee.

At this point, I preheated my oven to 350, and preheated my cast iron pan at the same time. I scored the layer of fat across the top of the roast, rubbed it with salt and pepper, then began the task of searing the roast. I did each side for about 5 minutes, trying to hold the roast to make sure that all of the fat cap got nicely crisped:

Browning, browning...

Seared off and ready to roast.

The roast then went into my heavy-weight roasting pan. To the pan around the roast, I added some chopped leeks, carrot, celery, all the fat and meat trimmings from the frenching process, and I also dumped in the juices that had built up in the cast-iron pan when I was searing the roast:

Mmm, drippings!

The meat roasted uncovered in a 350 degree oven for about an hour. I took it out when the internal temperature read about 130 degrees. I removed the roast to a plate and tented it with foil, then took the roasting pan with the vegetables in it and set it on a burner over medium heat. I deglazed the pan with some white wine and a little apple cider vinegar:

The sauce cooked down for a few minutes, then I strained the liquid and veggies through a fine-mesh strainer, using a spoon to press the veggies down and really squeeze the flavors out of them.

To carve the roast, I just cut down between the ribs and then gave it kind of a twist at the end to break the bottom bone. I served them with a mix of roasted veggies (I did carrots, red potatoes, parsnips, radishes and Brussels sprouts tossed with some chopped bacon, olive oil, and salt), and spooned some of the pan sauce over the top:

pork dino-chop? Yes please!

The end-result was incredibly moist and tasty, and I was very happy with it. However, I did learn a few things: 1) frenching doesn't really add anything except a fancy-schmancy look, and I don't think I'd bother again unless I was serving to someone I wanted to impress, 2) I need a better way of straining the sauce in order to get more fat out of it. The sauce was tasty, but greasy. I'm sure there's some simple step there that I'm likely missing, and 3) roasted veggies aren't the best side-dish to have with this type of roast, because they need a totally different temperature oven to cook properly. Next time I think I might do greens - something like kale or broccoli raab, maybe. I also think the astringency of the greens would cut the fattiness of the pork nicely.

curry spiced pumpkin seeds

I bought two pie pumpkins yesterday with the intention of roasting them to make some pumpkin custard. That happened, don't get me wrong...but so did this:

curry-spiced pumpkin seeds

They. Are so. GOOD. I'm finding it impossible to stop eating them. Salty, kind of crunchy, kind of chewy, spicy...so yummy. Loaded with manganese, zinc, and all kinds of other good stuff as well!

These are very easy to make - the hardest part is separating the seeds from the pumpkin guts. Once you get that done, you're home-free! Just toss the seeds with a little olive oil, some sea salt and some curry powder, then spread in a single layer (or as close to it as you can get) on a cookie sheet and roast at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes, stirring a couple times during the roasting so that the seeds get nicely toasty all over and don't stick to the pan. Once they're done, let them cool a little bit and then go to town. Pumpkin town. Aw yeah.

clam chowder...sorta

Your basic New England clam chowder is typically made with clams (obviously) and clam juice, salt pork or bacon, celery and potato, some milk, and a roux to thicken it. Since we're gluten-free, thickening with a roux wasn't going to work, and since we try to eat low-carb, loading the chowder up with potatoes wasn't going to work either. I wondered to myself if I could somehow thicken the soup with cauliflower, since it's fairly bland on its own. I've had good luck subbing cauliflower for potatoes, rice, sometimes even pasta ( in the case of my not-mac and cheese). Maybe if I roasted it and then used a stick blender to puree it, I could add it to the soup to give it some body.

I started with chopping a head and a half of cauliflower roughly and then tossing it in olive oil. I added a couple cloves of garlic sliced up, and it went into the oven at 450 for about 30 minutes. In a big pot, I browned some chopped-up bacon, then added some shallots, celery and leeks. I let this all cook down until the vegetables were soft, then added the cauliflower, and some low-sodium chicken stock. I used the stick blender to whiz it all up in the pot, and to my delight, the cauliflower did just what I had hoped it would. It turned into a silky puree that added a wonderful thickness to the soup. With that sorted, I added my seafood.

Now...don't flip out on me, here. I used canned clams. I KNOW. Deep breaths, it's going to be ok. I know that fresh clams would have tasted better and had better texture, but given that I wasn't sure if the cauliflower part was going to work the way I wanted to or not, you can hopefully understand why I didn't want to invest the time and money into getting and prepping fresh clams.

So - into the pot went three cans of clams and their juice, plus some more bottled clam juice. I added a splash of sherry (because, as my ever-wise mother-in-law would say, sherry makes everything better), a couple pinches of sea salt, and about 3/4 of a cup of cream. Because I now subscribe to the "one can never eat too much fish" school of thought, I also added in a pound of cod, cut into bite-sized pieces. I let the whole thing simmer for 10 minutes until the cod was cooked through, then scooped it into some bowls and added a little chopped bacon to the top for crunchy goodness.

Chowdah!

This could have easily gone without the cream, I think. The cream was basically just gilding the lily. Next time I might use half-and-half instead, or even just milk. The cream certainly didn't make it taste bad at all, but it was pretty rich, and we don't really need all that dairy. All in all, though...I was quite happy with how this turned out (aside from the fact that the bacon sunk down into it before I could take a picture).

how to get your husband to eat seaweed

I've had a bag of dried wakame (seaweed) sitting on my counter for a couple weeks. I bought it because I wanted to start incorporating it into our diet, but I wasn't really sure how. Tonight, as I was roasting some cod and sweet potatoes, I decided to reconstitute a little of the wakame in water to see what it tasted like. When it rehydrated, I realized that it was quite similar in look and texture to kale. It mostly just tasted a little salty. I wondered if I could combine it with kale, saute it with some bacon and onions, and get my husband to eat it. Lo and behold, bacon conquers all and my semi-evil plan worked! Mark didn't say a word about the seaweed as he was eating it, and when I pointed it out afterward, he said that hiding it with bacon was definitely a good idea.

Can YOU spot the seaweed in this picture?!

I know the sweet potatoes look burnt, but they weren't, actually...they were nicely caramelized. I could have done with shaking the pan with a little more frequency for more even browning, though.

The green stuff atop the cod is from this recipe on Nom Nom Paleo (who I love with the firey passion of a thousand suns. Was that weird? Who cares, it's true). It's olive oil infused with anchovies, capers, crushed red pepper, lemon juice and parsley. It was good, but I wish I'd have thought to halve the recipe before I started making it, because it made a lot more than I needed.

So, that's ONE way I can get my husband to eat seaweed, at least!

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.