Burgers.

Last Christmas my grandparents bought me a food grinder attachment for my stand mixer, and this week I finally made plans to use it. I decided I wanted one after reading so much about the benefits of grinding your own meat, where you actually know what kind of meat is being ground up and ingested. Also "they" say the flavor difference is enormous.

So for the first try I used as a base this In-N-Out style recipe from Kenji Lopez-Alt, a former Cook's Illustrated cook. I think I may have erred in the fundamental matter of choosing a cut (or cuts) of meat to grind: he simply recommends a beef chuck cut with "lots of fat." Not knowing what exactly that meant, I chose a beef chuck (shoulder) roast that was reasonably well-marbled. The end result was a little bit too lean. Next time I'll try grinding in short ribs for about 1/3 of the meat. The flavor of the meat was fine, though when you're loading it with ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, and cheese, it's a little hard to pick out the nuances of fresh ground meat to compare it with storebought. Hey, at least our chances of getting E. coli are lower.

As for the whole grinding ordeal, it was a bit messy, but I expected that. I've got a couple issues to work out with the grinder---maybe I didn't freeze the meat long enough, because by the time I finished there was a fair amount of very slick meat stuck in the "chamber" or whatever the part before the die is called. That was a bit tedious to clean out.

Here is my Pulitzer Prize-winning cheeseburger photo. I like how it looks like I caught the mushroom in mid-air. Not the case.

Ah, a note about the buns: these were from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday, the soft sandwich bread recipe made into about a dozen 3 oz. buns. I loved the flavor and texture: not quite as fluffy as storebought buns, but not dense like recipes I've tried before, either. As usual, shaping will take some work; I guess I should have squashed the rolls a bit with my hand before baking them.

Various successes

Since it's generally no fun telling about mediocre or bad outcomes in the kitchen, I guess I'll be the kind of blogger that only publishes favorable accounts of daily life. Oh wait, that's every blogger.

Last night I was given permission to try making the skillet pizza from the Cooking for Two 2010 book. You might be wondering under what bizarre marital dynamic it is normal to seek permission from one's spouse to cook something. The thing is, M is a die-hard Yankee pizza snob. I will never make pizza up to his standards at home. And I'm okay with that, since I don't love making pizza or eating it all that often. But every now and then I'll ask to try, because I'm in the mood or I have all the ingredients on hand. Both were the case yesterday. I used CI's pizza dough recipe and their method but Marcella Hazan's instructions for making a margherita topping. If your tomatoes aren't essentially perfect, she has you cook them down a bit, and to spruce up "commercial supermarket mozzarella" (as she calls it in distinction from her precious mozzarella di bufala) you shred it and toss it with a little EVOO, letting it sit ideally for an hour. Mine only got about 15 minutes of that treatment, but then I think supermarket (at least Sorrento block) mozzarella is already good enough.

The pizza is started over high heat on the stovetop in a 12" skillet just until it begins to set and finished for 7-10 minutes in a 500 degree oven. I brushed the garlic oil I keep in the fridge for focaccia on the dough first, then topped it with tomatoes and mozzarella. After it came out of the oven I put whole fresh basil leaves on top. The verdict from M's side of the table was, "Not bad at all." I too judged it my best attempt yet at homemade pizza. It was plenty crispy, and the dough flavor was okay, though we've come to prefer the sourdough flavor of the crust at Varasano's. Of course you couldn't go wrong with the toppings; the deciding factor is always the crust: whether it got soggy at all, or whether it's nearly charred on the bottom (M's preference---this one wasn't, but it was well-browned). So I'd make this recipe any time for non-pizza snobs. It was quick and easy and perfectly passable pizza for most of us.

Tonight I decided to pretend like it's not the end of April and 85 degrees outside, and made a decidedly cool-weather meal: braised beef and polenta. On the other side of dinner I don't regret it at all. Several months ago someone on the CI forums was raving about this recipe from Michele Scicolone for an Italian slow-cooker roast, the "secret" ingredient being anchovies. She reassured us that they really do dissolve into the sauce and you don't have bits of fish showing up in the finished product. Another surprise to me was the use of a cup of white wine to deglaze the pan in which you brown the beef. I would have expected red wine, but as with the anchovies and everything else about this recipe, it worked. It cooks for 6 hours on low in the slow cooker, resulting in meltingly tender beef that is perfectly seasoned. The polenta (from CFT 2011) was very tasty and the perfect thing to sop up the juices from the meat. I only took one pathetic picture while cleaning up of the meat and juices leftover, which is not worth posting.

Sadly, it will probably be several months before I make either polenta or braised beef again, as roast doesn't exactly call to me in the sweltering, humid summer months. *sigh* In an effort to overcome my aversion to being in the kitchen when said weather hits, I've made a list of no- or low-cook recipes, mostly ones I've made before and loved, but a few that are high priority to-try. So I'm a little more prepared for summer this year.

week(s) in review

Beef stroganoff

Saturday I made sort of a Russian-French fusion dinner that came out very well. The stroganoff, which I mixed two CI recipes to get, did not look great color-wise but tasted just fine with the egg noodles (and, by the way, now I realize there is a huge difference between real egg noodles and the No Yolks brand...). Probably the star of that meal was the braised leeks, recipe in my ATK 2009 cookbook: I had no idea what to expect besides a vaguely onion-ish flavor, but it was so much more. And so very easy and quick. We loved them. The cheese blintzes for dessert (CI Best International Recipe) were nice, even if I decided after a few bites that I just cannot do sweet cheese made with farmer's cheese (and I'm definitely glad I didn't substitute ricotta as the recipe suggested—it's like the texture of farmer's cheese times 10). The cherry sauce worked pretty well, and I'm just glad I have a good crepe recipe I can fit to any occasion or filling. Also make-ahead by definition.

Leeks to be braised---didn't get a during or after photo because they were so quick, and covered half the time.

 Sweet cheese blinchiki with cherry sauce

One night I pulled some split chicken breasts out of the freezer and pan-roasted them with a sauce. I love the concept of roasting a small amount of chicken and then making a pan sauce while it rests, even if my chicken seems always to take much longer than the original recipe indicated. I made a white wine and parsley sauce that night, then served with arugula salad and mashed potatoes. And bread. I do believe I am close to perfecting my ciabatta. Except for like every sixth time when the dough does that weird seize-up and becomes more like bagel dough, which it did this last batch. I just can't figure it out. I weigh both flour and water now (and realized that both my main liquid measuring cups are off by like an ounce or two if you go by the volume measurement!). But at least I don't do anything so stupid as throw the dough out in frustration...now I know that it still makes beyond decent bread, just not that light and airy delight that comes out when the dough is properly wet.

I made a lemon chess pie complete with a rolled out crust using 3 Tbsp shortening and 4 Tbsp butter, from an ATK cookbook I had out from the library. The filling was pretty good, if guilt-inducing even for me with another full stick of butter, tons of sugar and 5 eggs and blah blah blah. But the crust was not even remotely worth the calories. Don't know what the deal was there. Rachel gave me some lard that I will have to try in lieu of shortening the next time I'm up for pie...which may not be far off.

I made some delectable butter with the expensive but totally-worth-it pasteurized cream from Dekalb Farmers Market last week; put about 2/3 of it in the freezer as salted parsley butter for dishes, and we're about to finish the little roll I salted and put in the fridge for bread. Delicious.

One one class night, I made fried eggs and put them on toasted and buttered English muffins, serving with the warm spinach salad with bacon I've made so many times. It was good, though M does insist on having his yolks runny, which is not the safest...tsk tsk.

Last weekend I made Latin chicken and rice with roasted red peppers. It was okay. The rice was a tad crunchy, as it usually is with that dish when I make it—you'd think I could figure out how to fix that already! Probably should add a little more water and remove the chicken and let the rice cook longer. Duh. I also don't like using dark meat per the recipe because then you have to remove it from the bone, and with the dark red sauce you can't see exactly what you're doing, so inevitably some bits of nasty fat or bone get in and you have to spit them out and ahh, gross. But I used my birthday gift of piment d'espelette instead of paprika and it tasted pretty good in there. I sound like such an unrefined hick, yep. Avocados as garnish were indispensable; probably saved the dish, really.

I had to reheat the leftovers Sunday night but with them made a terrific corn chipotle soup, the only downside of which was having to throw out all the solids after I pureed it with my immersion blender, which maybe didn't get it finely pureed enough? I'll try the regular blender next time. But the strained liquid (i.e. the soup, hah) was extremely good, and went well with the chicken and rice. Recipe here.

Friday afternoon I cooked up beef shepherd's pie from CI's Best Make-Ahead Recipe for a family with a new baby. I thought it came out pretty well. I omitted the small amount of red wine that went in with the broth, because I wasn't sure about the rules on alcohol while nursing. I also used mostly Pacific beef broth, which I had just opened a couple days earlier, rather than chicken broth, since how could beef broth not work with a beef stew sort of dish? While making this I finally learned my lesson about making great mashed potatoes, and it goes like this: 1. Add cream. I never really knew what I was doing when I made mashed potatoes, messing around with sour cream which seeems to make them dry-ish, or adding sissy amounts of milk or maybe half-and-half. Forget it, you only live once. I'm making mine like this from now on. Also they had me mash them over low heat in the saucepan in which I had boiled them (3/4” slices of russets)---maybe that helped the texture be much smoother than mine normally are?  The best part was that I had a little bit leftover of everything the next day so I made it again for us for lunch. M was impressed, said it wasn't what he remembered shepherd's pie to be growing up, however he had it then. I'll definitely try it again following the recipe exactly with wine and chicken broth, though.

Monday after lunch at Emily's I went to the legendary Patak. It was pretty cool. We already polished off the smoked turkey breast for sandwiches, which I think was laced with some sort of green herb and just meltingly tender and tasty. We had half the smoked salmon tonight, which sadly has gone up in price to $10 from $4/lb (which was what their website says), but it was so delicious. With that I made creamed spinach, and it was fine though the last couple times I've made it the sauce has seized up on me before I add the spinach, so it never really blends right...I don't know what that's about.