Meat - 2/2 - Dog Island Farm

Curry Rice and Beef Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on March 6, 2011 · 2 Comments

Controversy! Intrigue! Catfights! Who knew that a simple question like “what recipe should I post on my blog this week?” would elicit such strong responses?

OK, I’m totally exaggerating. There were no catfights, nor was there really much intrigue. There was, however, controversy. Which is totally cool. It’s nice to know that people out there care about the recipes I post, and that the silly little foodstuffs I make in my totally-not-professional kitchen are actually inspiring people to get out there and cook! I promise that if you voted for baguettes, your time is coming very soon.

I’ll tell you, even I am conflicted about my post this week. I’ve been sitting on a whole oat and honey baguette recipe for about a month now that I KNOW is wonderful. I’ve made it successfully at least 10 times in a row (barring one incident involving benadryl and an uncanny ability to zone out the sound of the kitchen timer), and it is possibly the most reliable and tasty bread recipe I have tried thus far.

However, the pictures I took of the dough making/baguette shaping process need a little more editing before they are ready for public viewing. The stupid rain came and made my available “natural light” look all blue and icky. So…submitted for your viewing pleasure, I present the OTHER delicious thing we’ve had on the menu this week: curry stuffed bell peppers.

As a friend so astutely pointed out on facebook (thanks for your unwavering support, there, Hank), bell peppers and tomatoes are far from in-season, which I suppose makes this recipe post controversial for more than one reason. Still, I will back up my use of these tasty peppers by saying that they are not only semi-local (grown in the Sacramento area in a greenhouse set up), but are also organic. I got them, as well as the tomatoes and onions, at the farmer’s market by my house, and I feel totally OK with that. Once our greenhouse is up and running in the back yard, we’ll be trying to grow them in March, too!

A little back story on this recipe: I used to work at a travelers’ hostel in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco. One of the great perks was that the hostel was walking distance from the Civic Center farmer’s market. Another great perk was that we had a GIANT kitchen and cool dining area where our guests could cook their own dinners, or even work together for a big family-style potluck, with each guest preparing a dish. One such evening, a guest of ours came back from said farmer’s market with a big bag of beautiful red bell peppers, golden globe-like onions, and juicy tomatoes…and announced that he was going to make us (the staff) dinner.

Not one to say no to free food (particularly given that the produce was coming from the farmer’s market, which said something about the quality of ingredients, as well as the possible expertise of the chef), I gladly accepted his offer.

About an hour later we were sitting down to a beautiful pan of bell peppers stuffed with rice, beef, onions, and spices, all covered with a fresh tomato/cilantro sauce – heaven.

Years later, I found this recipe scribbled onto the back of a tour booking receipt, stuffed into a drawer (you know, for “safe keeping”). I had completely forgotten that delicious dish! The chef had been glad to give me his recipe, but neglected to give me his name, so I am sad to say I can’t give credit where credit is due. I shall have to show my appreciation by passing this simple, hearty, elegant recipe on to you.

**Note: I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet this would be AMAZING with ground lamb and couscous. Just sayin’.**

Curry Rice and Beef Stuffed Bell Peppers

serves 6-8

4-6 large red bell peppers

for the stuffing:

1 1/2 c long grain rice

1 lb organic, free-range ground beef

2 Tbsp olive (or sunflower) oil

1 medium yellow onion, peeled and diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp curry powder

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp coriander

salt and pepper, to taste

for the sauce:

4 large, ripe tomatoes, diced (alternately, 1 can of diced tomatoes)

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

cilantro, to taste (I used about 1 tbsp, roughly chopped)

Prepare the rice according to the cooking instructions (different kinds of rice will use different amounts of water, and will take different amounts of time to cook). You want the rice to be soft and not too wet, and ideally there should be about 3-4 cups of it when it’s cooked and fluffed.

Prepare the peppers: If the bell peppers are short and squat, you can roast them whole. Just cut off the caps (any viable pepper bits that you remove can be chopped and added to the tomato sauce), and scrape out all the seeds and white pithy stuff from the inside. If the peppers won’t stand on their own, cut a little bit off the bottom to even them out. If your peppers are long and thin, you can cut them into two shallow boats, or cut them down the middle (cross-section) making two little cups. You’ll have to remove the stem from one of the cups, which will make a hole in the bottom. this is OK, just be careful when serving that the filling doesn’t all come out the bottom!

Prepare the sauce: In a saucepan, sautee the onion and garlic until translucent, but not brown. Add the tomatoes and simmer until a thick sauce forms. If you need to, add some water to prevent burning. Once it has softened to your liking (it will be chunky), mix in the cilantro and turn off the heat. This should look like a thick marinara sauce or chunky salsa.

Prepare the stuffing: Brown 1 lb of ground beef in a large skillet (use oil if needed to prevent sticking). Add onions and garlic, as well as all the spices, and stir until the meat is cooked through, the onions are translucent, and everything is evenly coated (it’ll be yellow from the turmeric in the curry powder). Add in about 3-4 c rice, and again stir to combine. Taste for salt (I put in about 1/4 tsp, as well as some black pepper).

Place the peppers into a greased baking pan (we broke my favorite 9 x 9 pyrex last week, so I had to use two smaller pans), and stuff them with the rice/beef mixture. You can pack the rice in pretty heavy, but don’t compress it too much or it can get chewy and gelatinous when it cooks (you want enough room that the tomato sauce can drip down into it while it’s cooking).

Bake these pepper cups at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until the peppers are just beginning to soften. Ladle the tomato sauce over the tops of the peppers and bake for about another 10 minutes, or until everything is hot.

The man who passed down this recipe said that you can optionally add cheese (I think a cumin smoked gouda or an asiago would be tasty), but it really doesn’t need any cheese, or anything else. I did, however, quite enjoy the leftover stuffing last night at band rehearsal (I had extra – oh, bummer) tossed with a bit of parsley…along with some delicious potato pancakes made by Alanna of Bojon Gourmet.

Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Baking, Main Courses, Meat, Recipes Tagged With: main courses, meat, vegetables

Everything But the Quack: Roasted Wild Duck

Posted on January 30, 2011 · 1 Comment

I will preface this by saying that I am not a hunter. Maybe someday in the future I will learn to be more comfortable with guns, but it hasn’t happened yet (right now it makes me uncomfortable to even handle them when they are not loaded).

I’m not even an expert in hunting-and-meat theory: if you want information about hunting, or detailed directions on how to dispatch your livestock, or how to pluck wild game birds, or even how to cook them, I am really not the person to ask (I will, however, provide you with a few links I think are worth taking a look at – I’m pretty handy at research).

That said, I am fortunate enough to be dating a skilled hunter/fisher, who provides me with beautiful and delicious wild game to cook with. For now, this is good enough for me.

It is very important to me to know where the food that I eat comes from, and to know that if an animal is giving its life so that I can eat, it was a happy, healthy life and a humane death. In this way, hunting seems…right. To see the whole process, to know the work and emotion that goes into eating meat is something that resonates with me. Yes, sometimes it’s hard. Though it’s been a long time since my vegetarian years, it is still difficult for me to think that the meat I enjoy requires an animal to die. But I think it’s an important part of the process to feel something: I am a part of the food chain, and being conscious of my place in it can be liberating.

Last week, Rick went out duck hunting. This was an exciting trip out, as he was invited to go with Hank Shaw, whose blog posts about the glories of wild duck have been haunting us (read: causing us to drool on our keyboards) for some time now. I will admit that I know very little about cooking wild game – though I am skilled at cooking duck (this fried rice recipe is pretty awesome and I make a great Duck a L’orange), all my experience has been with the fatty, mild-tasting domestic muscovy.

Hence, most of what we did here was what Hank said to do. Then, one can really never go wrong listening to his food advice, so…I suppose this was a good course of action.

First, we cleaned the ducks. Or, I should say, Rick cleaned the ducks. I was stuck at work and he had to do it alone (when I got home, all the hard parts were done, and he’d already cleaned the kitchen! What a guy).

The livers, gizzards, and hearts were set aside, and all the other inside-bits were discarded.

First, the organs: the gizzards needed to be cleaned, removing the hard “grinders” and the silverskin that surrounds the actual meat. These were then sliced thin, along with the hearts, and flash-fried in a cast-iron skillet with a bit of duck grease for only a few seconds per side. Served with some fresh wild watercress and a balsamic vinegar reduction, they were quite tasty! The crunchiness of the gizzards and the softer texture of the hearts (which were not rubbery at all) were a good combination.

We were lucky enough to have gotten one pintail whose liver had been over-fatted to the point where it was wild foie gras (read Hank’s post about wild foie here). The others were a variety of colors, ranging from somewhat fatty to very lean and dark. These were fried up (again only a very quick sear on each side) and eaten on whole-grain sourdough toast. It was fascinating to taste the differences in the livers of the different birds – all of them were exceptional!

The duck, after being meticulously plucked, was seared on all sides in the same cast-iron skillet on high heat until the skin was crunchy and browned. It was then (following Hank’s directions) placed on a bed of new, young celery (from the garden) in a baking dish, and cooked at 550 degrees for about 15 minutes (until it reached an internal temperature of 135 degrees).

The meat was succulent and moist and still a little on the rare side, which is just how we like it. The drumsticks did require a bit more cooking time, and we wound up finishing them in the skillet.

The cooking juices were thickened up with a bit of flour, some Worcestershire sauce, some lemon juice, some homemade vegetable broth, and fresh-chopped parsley to make a quick sauce.

Served with some simple baked sweet potatoes (400 degrees for about 20 minutes), this duck was exceptional. It reminded me how important it is to know where my food comes from, to see the process, to be involved in the food that I eat. I felt something, eating this meal, that I hadn’t really thought about in a while: I felt grateful.

It is a good thing to be grateful.

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Filed Under: Foraging & Hunting, Main Courses, Meat, Recipes Tagged With: hunting, main courses, meat

Hearty Winter Chili and Cornbread

Posted on January 16, 2011 · Leave a Comment

I have never made chili.

Well, I take that back. I have -now-. But before last week, I had never made chili. I’d eaten a lot of chili, sure – who hasn’t? And every time I tasted a chili that I particularly liked, I’d ask the person who made it what makes their recipe special. Then I’d go home and promptly forget that I ever planned on making a pot of my own. Every time.

Maybe this is because I grew up eating (and later cooking my own) habichuelas, a traditional Puerto Rican dish that is very much like chili. Perhaps I was filling the same niche in my food paradigm?

In my quest to use up more of the massive pile of stew and scrap meat in our freezer in interesting (and elevating) ways, I had thought about making some sort of slow-cooked meat dish (like a pulled pork or a hearty stew).While I still intend to do that, one thing made me change my mind:

We fixed the fireplace. Yup, now I can have fire inside my house without it being a bad thing. I took one look at those glowing embers the first night we lit it up, and I knew they were just calling out for a dutch oven to be set in them (I also vowed to track down a good fire-safe kettle for tea making)! And I don’t know about you, but when I think cast iron dutch oven, I think chili.

So there I was: I’d decided to finally try my hand at making my own chili. I recalled all those bits of advice over the years, thought about what I know about cooking times for grass-fed beef and dry beans (both notoriously easy to screw up if you’re not careful), donned my ridiculous cowboy hat, and got to work.

OK, so I only wore the hat for a minute. But later that day, the house was filled with the deep, spicy smell of meat and beans and cornbread, and I’ll be durned if’n I didn’t feel a *little* like a successful cowgirl.

Next time I will actually cook this in the fireplace (once we have a stable method of keeping the dutch oven upright and at a decent distance from the flames). At least now I know that I have a recipe that will produce a thick, rich chili with just the right amount of sweet and spice…what a great excuse for staying home and tending the fire all day!

Hearty Winter Chili and Cornbread:

for the chili:

2 lbs ground beef (I used stew meat that I pulsed in the food processor as shown here)

2 c dry beans (I used a mixture of kidney and pinto)

1 large yellow onion, diced

1 can/jar of stewed tomatoes ( I stew my own heirlooms, but any would be fine. About 1-2 cups)

4 c beef or vegetable stock

2 Tbsp olive oil or rendered fat (I used duck fat, but bacon fat would be OK too)

1/4 c blackstrap molasses (you can use brown sugar here f you’d rather)

1 bottle of beer (I used a fairly light-tasting Mexican beer)

1 tsp mustard powder

1 bay leaf

1 tsp paprika (I use organic smoked paprika, which is a deeper, smoky flavor)

1/2 tsp cayenne (or more, if you like it hot)

salt and pepper to taste

for the cornbread:

1 c whole wheat flour (I’ve used both bread flour and pastry flour successfully)

1 c coarse corn meal

up to 1 c milk

1/3 c oil (I use sunflower oil)

1 large egg

1 Tbsp baking powder

2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

Planning ahead: you’ll need to soak the beans for at least a couple of hours before you put them into the chili. I have a half gallon mason jar that I use for this, so that I can put the lid on and shake the beans around a few times (so they don’t expand and get stuck in the jar, or get any dust or other food bits into them while soaking). Pour in a couple of cups of picked-through beans (no rocks in this chili, thanks), and fill nearly to the top with hot water. Put the lid on loosely at first so steam can escape, than tighten it down once it has cooled a bit. Soak these for a good several hours, or up to overnight.

To make the chili: melt the grease (2 Tbsp oil or fat) and brown the ground meat in a large cast iron dutch oven or other suitably heavy, deep pan with a lid. Add onions and cook until barely translucent.

Pour in the beer and allow it to foam up, then stir it down, adding the stewed tomatoes (if using fresh tomatoes, dice them and add them in with the onions in the previous step so they can break down a little). Toss in one bay leaf (I use local CA bay laurel which is much more pungent than the dried bay you can buy at the store – once I feel the leaf has given enough flavor/aroma to the chili, I pull it out and discard it) and the dry spices. Allow this to simmer over low heat for about an hour, adding more stock when the moisture level is low.

Next step is to add in the beans and the molasses. I strained the water out of the beans before adding them, but I suppose you could add the soaking water and cut back on the stock a bit. Add stock to cover all the solids by about an inch and set it back on the stove to simmer for at least another hour (preferably two or three), until beans are soft and the stock has reduced down. Depending on how long this takes and how low you’ve set your burner, you may have to add more stock to keep the chili from drying out.

Cornbread: yeah, this is everyone’s cornbread recipe. It’s pretty hard to beat considering that you can leave out the egg or the oil and still have something fairly tasty on your hands. It’s a perfect baseline. If you want to spice it up a bit, throw in some cooked corn, some cheddar cheese, some cooked and chopped spinach, or some diced tomatoes (using less milk if you add wet ingredients). It’s also fabulous made with yogurt in place of some of the milk. If you have the ability and interest, grind your own corn for the meal!

About a half hour before it’s time to eat, mix all the cornbread ingredients in a bowl to make a thick batter, reserving some of the milk if it seems too thin (this will depend on the type of flour you’re using). Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until it is golden and puffy, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. DO NOT OVER-BAKE THIS or it will become terribly dry. Allow the bread to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

I like to serve this cornbread cut in squares with a drizzle of honey butter (I heat the honey in the microwave for about 20 seconds, then melt a cold pat of butter into it). I like more honey than butter in my mix, but you can make yours however you like!

With a heaping bowl of the fresh slow-cooked chili (add a sprinkle of cheese if you’re into that sort of thing), this cornbread is the perfect thing on a cold or rainy day, especially eaten on the hearth of your very own fireplace.

Now…where’s my hot chocolate?

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Filed Under: Main Courses, Meat, Recipes Tagged With: baking, main courses, meat

Rustic Hamburgers

Posted on January 9, 2011 · 1 Comment

It occurred to me recently that though I am an omnivore and am very proud of my choices regarding where the meat we have in the house comes from, I very rarely post recipes that involve it. Perhaps this is because I’m a bit of a purist: most of the meat we eat is consumed in the form of steaks, chops, or some other cut that has a “preparation” rather than a “recipe”.

However, I would like to begin to remedy this situation.

Rick and I have recently stocked the freezer in the basement with all the year’s essentials: we bought a quarter of a free-range grass-fed cow from a local rancher in Petaluma, went in on some humanely/organically raised pork (also local) and have some wild turkey, venison, jackrabbit, and boar from recent(ish) hunting excursions. I have a lead on some free-range chickens (we do not eat our backyard chickens, but I applaud folks that DO raise their own for meat). We hope to add some ducks and geese to the freezer soon as well (before the season’s up)!

One thing I am very interested in is making sure we are using ALL of the animal. Sure, when we get our beef it has already been butchered and frozen (hence we do not have use of the blood, intestines, stomach, etc), but there are many cuts and bits of meat that are generally considered “inferior” that I think need to be given a new look.

This week I decided to take some stew meat out and see if I could make something a little more interesting than a basic stew (we have many, MANY pounds of it to go through). Grass-fed beef can be pretty chewy and the “stew” cuts are very tough if they are not cooked long enough and kept moist, but with a little tweaking, I think I found a recipe that I like.

Nothing too fancy, just a rustic burger meat (which would translate easily to a meatloaf or meatballs) that can be made with scrap cuts, a few things you probably have lying around the house, and not too much time. Plus, very little clean-up is required as it is made in a food processor.

One thing to know when cooking with lean meats is how to keep them moist. Here, the fresh onions and the egg stand in for the fat that is in a standard ground beef, keeping the patties moist and working with the bread crumbs to hold everything together.

Rustic Hamburgers

2 lbs scrap meat (cubed stew meat, tougher roast-cuts, and bits removed from other “choice” cuts are great here, especially if you do your own butchering and have odds and ends left over)

1 medium-sized yellow onion

1 clove garlic

1-2 large sprigs parsley (feel free to throw in other herbs, too – oregano/marjoram are fantastic!)

1 large egg

1-2 c stale bread, cubed

salt and pepper, to taste

Stew meat and other non-tender cuts and also many wild/game meats are often very lean and have a lot of connective tissue (“silver skin”) and gristle. It’s important to cut out these chewy bits before you start. Personally, if they are chopped fine enough, they don’t bother me at all, but I’d recommend going without if you’re cooking for company.

Once these pieces are removed, pulse the meat in a food processor until it just barely holds together. The meat should be in smaller-than-centimeter chunks for the most part, but should not be a paste. Remove the meat from the bowl of the processor and set it aside. Pulse the cubed bread, garlic, onion, and parsley together until a wet bread crumb forms.

Pour this in with the meat and the egg, and knead the mixture together. Let it sit for at least 5 minutes to combine (the bread crumbs will soak up the onion juice and egg and swell a bit). Season with salt and pepper.

This mixture will feel more moist than a regular burger meat, but should easily hold together to make patties or meatballs. If it is too dry, add another egg. Too moist? Toss in a bit more bread.

I like to cook these on medium-to-high heat with just a bit of oil in the pan until the outer bits get dark and crunchy (I put a lid on the pan both to prevent oil splattering and to steam the burger to a nice medium-rare in the center).

Serve these burgers on a challah bun (or an oat/wheat baguette – recipe forthcoming) with some wedge-cut steak fries, some home-made ketchup, and maybe a side of dilly beans - delicious.

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Filed Under: Main Courses, Meat, Recipes Tagged With: frugal, main courses, meat

Duck Fried Wild Rice

Posted on December 19, 2010 · 1 Comment

For the past four weekends, I have been working the Charles Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. It is a beautiful reenactment of Victorian London at Christmas time, and a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday season.

It’s great fun. It is also at times stressful, dramatic, and completely exhausting, like any job.

One thing I notice is that after a long day of serving (and then a few hours of dancing, singing, drinking, etc) is that when I get home, all I want is salt. And specifically, all I want is soy sauce. Not quite sure why this is…maybe because it is so remarkably non-English? But all I know is when I drunkenly whipped up a batch of half-assed fried rice (nothing in it, just rice, eggs, soy, ginger, garlic) last weekend when I got home, it was AMAZING.

One of the great things about working in food service at this season is the leftovers. Because we only operate on the weekends, come Sunday night there is always extra produce, thawed proteins that can’t be re-frozen, and various cooked items that will not keep for a week. These things get bagged up, and (if we are very lucky) can sometimes come home with us.

This last weekend, I was the grateful recipient of a gallon of steamed wild rice, and a couple of lovely muscovy duck breasts. What better thing to do with them than to upscale that fried rice a little bit, turning it from a midnight munchy-snack to something I would be proud to serve as a meal?

Thus, this recipe was born. I wouldn’t even really call it a recipe, more of a method. Change out the ingredients as much as you want. Make it your own. Use it as a way to clean veggies out of your fridge. Dice up some leftover cooked pork chops or chicken, some carrots and mushrooms, maybe some leeks you’ve been neglecting in the back of the fridge for almost a month now (not that I would ever do that *ahem*). Fry ‘em up.

And after a long day of being on your feet, if it doesn’t make your little cells feel like they are being rehydrated with pure liquid joy, then…well, I dunno. It will, is what I’m saying.

Duck Fried Wild Rice

6-8 c prepared (al dente) wild rice – about 2 c dry rice before cooking

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 large muscovy duck breast, scored through the fat in a one-inch grid

1″ knob of ginger (1 Tbsp, minced)

1-3 cloves garlic (1 Tbsp minced)

2-3 scallions (green onions), whites and greens chopped

1-2 c chopped napa cabbage, bok choy, or other wiltable green (chard or mustard would be nice, but use more greens, as they cook down considerably)

1/4 c mirin (sweet cooking wine – sherry would do in a pinch)

2 large eggs

1/4 c soy sauce

In a large pot with a fitting lid, prepare your wild rice. I do this by feel, but it’s roughly two to three times as much water as rice, steamed in the pan with the lid on until the water is all absorbed or steamed out. You want your rice to still be al dente and not too sticky. Fluff the rice and allow it to cool to room temp.

Meanwhile, in a large-capacity pan or wok, heat the oil and lay the duck breast fat-side down over medium heat to render out the fat. If it is cooking too quickly, turn the heat to low – the point here is to cook out the layer of fat on the breast, not to actually cook the meat very much. The skin should brown, but not burn. When most of the fat has rendered out, add half the ginger and garlic to the pan, and turn the breast over to brown the other side.

There should be a considerable amount of grease in the pan, but if you need to add more olive oil or butter (or more duck fat!) to prevent sticking, do so. Add the chopped cabbage or bok choy, and let the greens begin to wilt a bit while the duck cooks (about 3 minutes). Then add the mirin to the pan, and cover it so that everything steams together.

After a few minutes (the duck breast should still be pretty rare – do not overcook it), remove the duck to rest on a plate and cook off the remaining liquid in the pan until nearly dry. Toss in the rice and the scallions and stir until warmed through. At this point you can add more ginger or garlic, if you like a lot of those flavors – I do, personally.

Break up any rice clumps, and move the contents to the edges, making a well in the center where you can see the bottom of the pan. If it looks very dry, add a bit of oil or butter (or duck fat) to prevent sticking.

Crack two eggs into this well and scramble them, trying to avoid mixing in too much rice until the eggs are about 3/4 solid. Then mix the egg into the rice until everything is incorporated fully. Finally, pour in the soy sauce, mix, and allow it to steam out until the rice is fairly dry again.

Serve this fried rice with slices of the steamed duck breast over the top, and a sprinkling of chopped scallions (bean sprouts or shredded daikon would be tasty, too).

This fried rice recipe can be adapted to any sort of non-sticky rice, and can accept LOTS of substitutions. Had I my druthers, I would have also added sliced water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and fresh sugar snap peas, had they been available.