Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

There’s something about Asian noodle dishes that make them incredibly addictive. They’re great hot or cold, and easy to make at home. I store an arsenal of basic Asian ingredients in my pantry, so slapping this together is no effort at all. And if you don’t have Asian noodles around, chances are you’ve got a box of pasta, which works just as well.

Next time you’ve got a bunch of people coming over, cook a batch a few hours beforehand and let it come to room temperature. It’s great with anything, really. Grab a bag of frozen egg rolls or some potstickers, and you’ve got great munchies for your guests.

Adding boiled and chilled shrimp to these noodles makes it a cool meal. I usually double the sauce recipe when I do that.

If you need to go gluten-free, use GF pasta…and you can find gluten-free hoisin sauce in the Asian food section of most supermarkets.

Asian noodles

4 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon Chinese chili garlic sauce (more, if you like it spicy!)
16 oz. package Chinese noodles or pasta

Combine the peanut butter, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, and chili garlic sauce in a bowl. Set it aside. I keep my peanut butter in the fridge once the jar is open, so sometimes it’s a bit thick. So I just zap it in the microwave for about 10 seconds to soften it up.

Boil the noodles or pasta until al dente. Drain it and place it in a large bowl.

Mix the noodles with the sauce.

Devour!

Does anyone remember Art Ginsburg, also known as Mr. Food? His syndicated segments appeared on the news for almost 10 years. I met him back in 1993, and he was quite the self-promoter…but a really nice guy. Art passed away years ago, but I still have his old cookbooks, and his simple but perfect pesto recipe has been my guide for decades.
 
 
 
We eat a ton of pesto at home, and I’m amazed at how much my daughter loves the stuff. Most of the time, it’s simply mixed with pasta. But we stir it into tomato sauce and smear it on grilled chicken or beef as well.
 
 

The herb garden, with basil in the foreground. Happy cucumbers are growing on the trellis in the background.

 
Basil is the main ingredient in classic Italian pesto, and it’s growing rapidly under the summer sun in my garden right now. And that’s key to great pesto: when Mother Nature says the basil’s ready, be sure you have all the other ingredients and get to work!
 

Basil, ready to be picked.

 

 
Besides the fact that it simply tastes bad, the problem with store-bought pesto is that it’s expensive. Although homemade pesto isn’t cheap, you can still save a lot of money by making it yourself.
 
Some of my tips for saving money: buy good quality ingredients in bulk. My go-to olive oil is California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil. It gets high ratings, tastes amazing, and can be found in large bottles at most supermarkets and in quantity on Amazon.
 
There’s been a rash of articles about already-grated parmesan cheese that is 50% wood fiber. Stay away from that junk and buy yourself a nice chunk of the real deal: Parmigiano-Reggiano. Grate it yourself and taste the difference!
 
 
 
 
 
The most expensive (and questionable) ingredient in basic pesto is pine nuts. If you look on the back of the package (and you always should!) you’ll see that most pine nuts come from China. I don’t buy any food products from China…period. So sourcing “safe” pine nuts can be difficult. The Italian pine nuts can be extremely expensive, but recently I’ve found pine nuts from the USA that are more reasonable in price.
 
 
 

They say they’re grown in New Mexico…

 

 
One of the reasons you want real pine nuts and not some look-alike from China is something called “pine mouth” or “pine nut mouth.” A small percentage of people experience a reaction after eating pine nuts that makes their mouth taste like metal–imagine putting a handful of pennies in your mouth–and the taste stays in their mouths for a couple of weeks, ruining their taste buds for the foods they love. (Eventually, it wears off.) Some scientists say you get “pine mouth” by eating counterfeit pine nuts–varieties like those from China that are not the same species. Others say that you can get the reaction even from real pine nuts. Research on this continues, but all the more reason not to buy any foods from China and other questionable countries.
 
 
 
 
There are alternatives to pine nuts, and you’ll find many pesto recipes that substitute with almonds, pistachios or walnuts. I think those nuts change the taste of the pesto, plus they have a skin that leaves a gritty residue, which I don’t like. So I don’t use them. The one nut that I’ve found that does a pretty good job filling in for pine nuts is macadamia nuts, although they, too, are a bit gritty. They are less expensive and usually come from Hawaii. Just remember to buy raw, unsalted macadamias.
 
So here’s my sure-fire pesto recipe. I make massive amounts of it, store it in plastic storage containers with a tightly sealing screw-top lid, and put them in the deep freeze. They last all year, and thaw out easily.
 
 
 
 
 
2 cups fresh basil, packed down a little
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (preferably Parmigiano-Reggiano)
1/2 cup pine nuts
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
 
When measuring the basil, I pick dry leaves from the garden and place them in a measuring cup, lightly packing them until I get 2 cups. Then I remove them from the measuring cup and wash them, tossing them in a salad spinner to dry. Then they go into the food processor.
 
Add the other ingredients in the food processor with the basil and let it rip!
 
 
 
 
The color and fragrance of freshly-made pesto is hard to beat! For me, a bowl of pasta with pesto is real comfort food.
 

Sometimes, a refreshing cocktail is just what you need after a long day of yard work. Whether you’ve got cucumbers growing in your garden to not, this one fits the bill!

4 fresh cucumbers, peeled and seeded
Small ice cubes
1 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
2 teaspoons granulated organic cane sugar
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4 oz. vodka (I like Tito’s)
1 oz. orange liqueur (I like Cointreau)

Peel and seed the cucumbers. Coarsely chop them and then purée them in a food processor until smooth. Strain them through a fine sieve, pressing the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Or, if you have one, use a juicer. Set the extracted cucumber juice aside.

To a large glass pitcher, add the mint leaves, sugar and lime juice. Muddle the ingredients so that the mint leaves release their oils. Add 3/4 cup (at least) of the cucumber juice. Add the vodka and Cointreau. Muddle again briefly.

Fill tall drinking glasses with ice cubes. Strain the cocktail into the glasses. Garnish with a cucumber spear or peel…or mint.

 Over the years, I’ve tweaked this Asian marinade recipe, adding more ingredients. Feel free to use more or less according to your own taste. After all, that’s how any recipe becomes truly your own.
You’ll notice I have two bottles of soy sauce below. I sometimes mix half regular soy sauce with half lite soy to cut the sodium.
And, of course, with the chicken wing shortage we’re experiencing, chicken thighs make an excellent substitute.

10 lbs. chicken wings, the larger the better (or skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs)
1 cup soy sauce
1 small can (6 oz.) pineapple juice
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon Chinese five spice
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon peanut satay sauce (optional)

Place the chicken pieces in a large  Ziploc bag. Whisk all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl. Add the marinade to the bag, seal it well, then squish the bag around so that the marinade makes contact with all of the chicken pieces.
To prevent accidental spills, place the bag in a clean bowl. Marinate the chicken for several hours at room temperature or overnight in the fridge, turning the bag once in a while to make sure everything gets even exposure to the marinade.
The next day, pour off the marinade and discard it, removing the chicken from the bag. Place the wings (or thighs) on a baking sheet lined with foil (I use Reynold’s non-stick) and bake at 325 degrees for about 30–45 minutes for wings…longer for thighs.

I know many people like to dry the herbs they grow in their garden. It’s easy enough to do: you snip ’em, wash ’em, and then dry ’em, usually in a food dehydrator or on a sheet pan placed in a low-heat oven.

I prefer to freeze my herbs. Every year, I grow a wide variety: several types of basil, parsley, oregano, tarragon, thyme, rosemary, lavender, and massive quantities of sage. I snip the herbs, wash them and dry them in a salad spinner, and then place them in plastic freezer bags, squeezing all the air out before sealing. I place all those smaller bags in one larger bag, for extra protection. I like the color and flavor of the herbs better this way. I learned this method years ago, in my younger days, when preserving the potency of particular herbs was essential. (That’s all I’ll say about that!)

Freshly washed and dried sage.

The reason I grow a lot of sage is because I usually make a very large quantity of stuffies (the New England stuffed clam) in the wintertime and the recipe calls for several cups of fresh sage…really expensive if you decide to buy it at the supermarket in the dead of winter.

I snip the sage leaves, and before washing, I pre-measure them, usually a cup or two at a time, packing them somewhat tightly in a glass measuring cup. Once I have my measurement, I wash them, dry them in the salad spinner, and place them in plastic bags, marking the quantity on the bag. Then, when my stuffies recipe calls for 4 cups of sage, I simply grab the amount of bags I need and I’m ready to go.

Pre-measured sage, ready to go in the freezer.

But even though I do all this, I’ve still got a herb overload in my garden, and it seems like such a waste to let them simply turn into compost. Recently, I read an article in Christopher Kimball’s “Milk Street Magazine,” featuring New Orleans chef Alon Shaya. When he faces massive herb leftovers, he takes all of them–and here’s the key–it doesn’t matter what herbs they are–and tosses them in a food processor with an equal amount of kosher salt. A few seconds of processing, and he’s got a fantastic herb salt that he then uses in all kinds of dishes. (To keep the herb salt fresh, it’s a good idea to put it in a tightly sealed container in the freezer.)

My mix of garden herbs. Really: you can mix and match anything.

I thought that was a brilliant way to use up the leftover herbs I had in my garden, so I gave it a try: a tightly packed cup’s worth of fresh herbs, plus a cup of Kosher salt in the processor.

The beautiful color of herbed salt.

I went one step further. If having herbed salt is a great idea, then having herbed butter at the ready has to be even better! I simply took a stick of unsalted butter out of the fridge and let it soften. (Use unsalted butter or the result will be way too salty.) I added one tablespoon of the herbed salt to the butter and mixed it in well. Then I placed the butter on a sheet of wax paper, and rolled it into a small log, twisting the ends of the paper to seal it, placing it in a plastic bag and into the freezer.

Herb butter.

Now, when I want to amp-up the flavor of a freshly grilled steak or piece of fish (or a plate of freshly cooked  boiled or baked potatoes,) I just take the log of herbed butter out of the freezer, slice a piece off, and let it melt over the top, placing the log back for future use.

When it comes to grilling, lamb is often overlooked. Some folks think it tastes too gamey, which can be true with grass-fed lamb that comes from New Zealand or Australia. Although you can’t beat their strict quality standards, the flavor can be intense.

I don’t mind that intense lamb flavor in a chop, but when I make lamburgers, I like to mix ground beef with ground
lamb to give it a milder flavor. And when I cook them over hardwood charcoal, the flavor is outstanding! Even seared in a cast iron skillet and finished in the oven, these burgers are awesome.

1 lb. ground lamb
1 lb. ground beef
2 tablespoons
1/2 onion, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon each fresh parsley, mint, and dill, finely chopped
1 teaspoon dried Greek oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 large clove garlic, squeezed through a garlic press
1 scallion, finely chopped, green part only
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Fresh herbs make the difference!

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion. Cook it until it’s translucent, about 6 minutes. Transfer the onion to a plate to cool.

In a bowl, mix the cooled onion, mustard, parsley, mint, dill, oregano, cumin, garlic, scallion, and salt and pepper.

In another bowl, combine the lamb with the beef, so they are mixed well. Then add the onion mix bowl to the meat and make sure all the ingredients are combined. Add the breadcrumbs and mix again. Then add the egg and mix one more time.

Form the meat into patties. Place them on a baking sheet covered with non-stick foil, and place the baking sheet in the fridge.

The indentation in the center of the patty keeps it from swelling up while cooking.

Don’t let the lamburgers get too cold in the fridge…just enough to firm the meat up a bit. If it gets too cold, give it a few minutes at room temp to warm up again.  Grill the burgers over hardwood charcoal until they are cooked to medium.

If you’re cooking indoors, heat some avocado oil in an oven-proof pan, preferably cast iron. Sear the burgers well on both sides, then place the pan in a 350-degree oven to finish cooking.

Extra meat is great for meatballs! Just freeze them for another time.

Place the burgers on buns, and smear the bun with the feta cheese dressing.

If the food is good, someone’s always watching!

My recipe for feta cheese dressing works really well with lamburgers. But it’s also great on a salad.

3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1  cup mayo
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper sauce, like Franks Red Hot
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
4–5 oz. crumbled feta cheese

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate. If you can wait a day, it’s even better.

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Every Rhode Island home needs to have a box of corn meal in case of Johnny Cake emergencies. If you’ve never had a Johnny Cake before, you’re missing out on a simple, delicious Rhode Island treat. But that’s a topic of another blog. The point is, I always keep a box of white corn meal in my pantry, and I used it to make the coating for my chicken.

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Corn meal is great, because it adds a wonderful crunch while keeping this recipe gluten-free, which may be an important factor for some. But even if you don’t have to be on a GF diet, corn meal adds great flavor.

To keep the batter light, I add flour to the corn meal.

2 cups buttermilk (whole milk is fine, too)
1 tablespoon hot sauce (I use Frank’s Red Hot)
4 lbs. chicken wings
1 cup white corn meal
1 cup flour (or use Cup4Cup, a gluten-free flour, to keep it GF)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
1/2 teaspoon paprika
oil, lard or a combination of the 2 for frying

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Pour the buttermilk or whole milk into a large Ziploc bag. Add the hot sauce. Drop in the chicken wings, seal the bag,  and let them soak in the mixture in the fridge for at least several hours…overnight is better. Place the bag in a bowl to prevent bag leakage accidents.

In a separate bowl, combine the corn meal, flour, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and paprika. Mix well.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

I like to use a combination of grapeseed oil and pork fat (if I have it) when frying. Heat the oil to about 325 degrees.

Take the wings out of the bag one by one, and drop them in the bowl with the cornmeal mix, coating the chicken well on all sides, then shaking off the excess. Place the chicken wings in the hot oil carefully to avoid splashing hot oil on yourself.

Cook the chicken in the oil on both sides for just a few minutes, until golden. You’re not trying to cook them all the way through.

Place the chicken pieces on a foil-lined baking sheet. when you’ve fried all the chicken, place the baking sheet in the oven and cook until the wings are done, about 25 minutes.

Stuffies, or stuffed clams, are a very personal matter here in Southern New England. There are as many stuffies recipes as there are chowder recipes, and everyone thinks they’ve got the best one. Most stuffies that I’ve had in restaurants, like most meatballs I’ve had, have too much bread and not enough of the good stuff.

I use medium-sized clams for this recipe and not the traditional quahog, a large clam often used in chowders that I find to be too chewy. Dropping the clams in hot water in the beginning helps make opening the clams a lot easier.

Just 30 seconds in boiling water is all it takes.

This recipe requires quite a bit of fresh sage, which can be expensive at the supermarket. So I grow sage in my garden, using throughout the season, then snipping as much as I can at the end of the growing season to store it in freezer bags for winter use. I’ll even measure out 1 1/4 cups of fresh sage leaves (what I need for each batch of stuffies), then place that amount in the freezer bag, so I don’t need to measure later.

Freezing the sage makes it easier to chop finely later on.

I use Portuguese chourico (since I live near Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, the Portuguese capitals of America), and I think their flavor is best.

This recipe makes a lot of stuffies, but they freeze well so you can have them when you want.

This recipe is gluten-free…and you’ll never be able to tell the difference! But if that doesn’t matter to you, use toasted Portuguese bread instead of gluten-free bread.

I don’t like peppers in my stuffies (or my crab cakes), so I leave them out. But if you do, feel free to add them to the recipe.

stuffies

4 dozen medium neck clams
1.5 pounds chopped chourico, skin removed (I use Mello’s from Fall River, Mass.)
3 onions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons garlic, finely chopped
3 cups frozen or fresh corn kernels
3 cups toasted and coarsely ground bread (I use Udi’s Soft & Hearty Whole Grain bread to keep it gluten-free)
3/4 cup chopped fresh oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried)
1 1/4 cups chopped fresh sage (don’t use dried)
Salt and pepper
Butter
Sambal chili paste
Mayonnaise

In a large pot of boiling water, drop the clams in, about a dozen at a time. Remove them after about 30 seconds, before they open. Place them in a bowl to cool. Do this with all the clams.

Open the clams with a clam knife over a bowl with a strainer, making sure you save all the liquid from the clams. Put the clam shells to the side. Throw away any broken shells, and wash the empty shell halves thoroughly, making sure there are no broken pieces.

I use a strainer to keep the sediment away from the clam meats.

Take the clam meat pieces out of the strainer, leaving the clam juice behind in the bowl. Move the clam meat to a cutting board or food processor and chop them to medium-fine. Set them aside.

I pour the clam juices carefully from the bowl to tall drinking glasses, being careful not to let the sediment get in. Then, after some time, I pour off the clam juice from the glasses, leaving even more of the sediments behind. I find that the tall glasses make it easier to see the sediments, and maximize the amount of clam juice I get.

I let the clam juices sit in their tall glasses for a while, so that even more sediments get left behind.

In a large frying pan, add the olive oil, onions, and chourico and cook them on medium heat for a few minutes. Add the oregano and sage and cook a few more minutes. Add the corn and cook a few more minutes, a little more if the corn was frozen. Add the chopped clams and stir, cooking for a few more minutes. Add the breadcrumbs a little at a time until you have a nice balance of bread and other ingredients. Add the clam juice a little at a time as well, so that you can add all the breadcrumbs, but the mix isn’t runny. There’s lots of flavor in the clam juice, so use as much as you can! Season it all with salt and pepper.

Remove the pan from the heat and fill the empty clam shells with the stuffing.

At this point, you can freeze the clams. I put them on small sheet pans in the freezer until they harden, then I wrap them 6 at a time, and put them in freezer bags. Keep them frozen!

Ready for the freezer!

To make the aioli, mix the mayonnaise and Sambal in a bowl, to taste. Sambal is hot, so a little goes a long way. Keep it covered and refrigerated.

When you’re ready to bake, remove the clams from the freezer and place them on a sheet pan in a pre-heated 350 degree oven. Top each clam with a small ¼” square piece of butter. Bake them about 15 minutes, until the clams are sizzling and light brown. Top each with a small dab of aioli.

This dish was a huge hit when I brought it to a neighborhood party a while ago. Imagine the best of a deviled egg and a BBQ chicken sandwich, and you’ve got this appetizer that rocks in more ways than one….and you can make it ahead of time.

I boil the eggs and make the cole slaw the day before, then keep them in the fridge. Even the chicken can be cooked the day before and then warmed through before assembling right before your guests arrive. Be sure to make a lot of them…they’ll go faster than the hard-boiled eggs in “Cool Hand Luke!”

This recipe is gluten-free, as long as you use GF soy sauce.

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For the chicken and BBQ sauce:
3 cups ketchup
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon hot sauce (I use Frank’s Red Hot)
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts
For the cole slaw:
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 cups finely shredded cabbage
For the deviled eggs:
6 hard-boiled eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon mustard (I use Gulden’s)

Pre-heat the oven to 250 degrees.

Combine the ketchup, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, hot sauce, and brown sugar in a oven-proof pot with a lid. Mix well, then add the chicken breasts, making sure they’re immersed in the sauce. Cook low and slow in the oven for about 2 hours.

When the chicken is cooked through, shred the meat with 2 forks. Set it aside, but keep it warm.

Combine all the cole slaw ingredients in a bowl, mixing well, and place them in the fridge.

For perfectly hard-boiled eggs, place the eggs in a pot of cold water, and turn the heat on high. Just before the water starts to boil, put a lid on the pot and turn the heat off. Let the eggs sit in the hot water for 15 minutes. Once cooked, keep the eggs in the fridge.

Slice the eggs in half and place the yolks in a bowl with the mayonnaise and mustard. Mix well and keep in the fridge.

To assemble, take a teaspoon of the mayo/mustard/yolk mixture and place it in the cavity of one of the egg halves. Place another teaspoon of the shredded chicken on top (I like it warm, to counter the cold of the mayo and cole slaw), drizzling a little of the BBQ sauce that you cooked the chicken with on the meat. Then place a teaspoon of the cole slaw on top of the chicken.

Serve immediately!

Chourico is as important to the Portuguese as bacon is to us Lithuanians. Here in Southern New England, they pronounce it “sha-rees,” not “chaw-reezo,” like you hear on the Food Network.

I was joking with a friend the other day that if I won the lottery, I could buy a lifetime supply of chourico at my favorite store: Mello’s, in Fall River, Mass. His response was: “Is there such a thing as a lifetime supply of chourico?!”

Good point!

If you’ve had really great chourico, you’re always looking for new ways to include it in your cooking. Inspired by chef Chuck Hughe’s recipe, this is a great chourico appetizer that’s really easy to make. Whip up the arugula pesto ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. Then when guests come, just slice the chourico, sauté it in a pan until brown, and serve.

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3 cups fresh baby arugula
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 cup + one tablespoon grated Parmigiano Reggiano or other good quality parmesan cheese
2 lbs. chourico, sliced into 1/2″ pieces

Combine the arugula, walnuts, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and the 1/2 cup of cheese in a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Set the tablespoon of cheese aside for garnishing later.

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Remove the casing from the chourico and slice it into 1/2″ thick pieces. Sauté the chourico slices in a pan until both sides are caramelized and golden.

Place the chourico on a plate, topping with some of the pesto. Sprinkle a touch of the grated cheese to garnish. Serve immediately, while the chourico is still hot!

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