Top Chef Stuffed Cabbage

January 10, 2012 | by Ben 3

Sarah from Top Chef recently won one episode with her sausage stuffed cabbage. It looked really good to me, so I decided to make it.

Sarah (from this blog, not Top Chef) typically dislikes stuffed cabbage, which is usually filled with a tomato beef sauce. This recipe has no tomatoes but lots of vegetables. In addition to the big cabbage leaves, the meat mixture also contains more cabbage and onions and is stuffed into kale. Sarah really liked it, and even Jonathan enjoyed it.

The recipe we made is modified in a number of ways from the Top Chef recipe published here. It uses less butter and less olive oil. And, instead of two small heads of cabbage (green and Napa), we used the one large head we got from City Fresh. It might be very good with Napa, though. I wouldn’t suggest following the original recipe to the letter. Bravo tends to be pretty sloppy with these, including not mentioning when … continue reading

Pumpkin Goat Cheese Lasagna

December 21, 2011 | by Sarah 1

I was listening to NPR lately and heard Steve Inskeep interviewing Nigella Lawson about holiday recipes (which can be found here). She discussed pumpkin goat cheese lasagna as a good, inexpensive main dish. I had a City Fresh pumpkin around (and fresh sage out back still doing well despite the snow), so I thought I’d give it a try.

Because this was a Sunday dinner rather than a family gathering, I halved the recipe. I also made homemade tomato sauce: sautee an onion in 3 TB olive oil for a few minutes; add a 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes, chopped, and some dried basil; cook for 10–15 minutes. Lawson’s sauce recipe calls for a lot of salt, probably to add flavor to the unsalted noodles. I didn’t measure it, but just added enough so that the sauce / water mixture tasted overseasoned but palatable.

I also made homemade lasagna noodles using about 7 oz. of flour and 4 oz. of eggs. I tend to find Ruhlman’s 3:2 ratio (which would be 6 oz. flour to 4 oz. eggs) … continue reading

Family Traditions: a recipe from the old country

December 19, 2011 | by Sarah 1

With the holiday season fast approaching, I tend to recall family traditions from holidays past. In this spirit, I am going to share with you a family recipe that my mom learned from her mom. My mom was born in Germany in the mid 50’s and imigrated to the US when she was a baby.

(Mom’s passport pic)

I can remember my mom telling me that she would make this recipe for her family when she was 12. I couldn’t imagine making this when I was 12. At that age I could barely make toast.

The recipe is for rouladens. When I was growing up my mom would make this on special occasions, and it was a favorite of mine. I was brave and invited my parents over to share my preparation of this dish. The final verdict among my family was that it was not as good as mom’s, but there were hardly any left overs so it was pretty good. Even Jonathan enjoyed it — … continue reading

Late Fall Recipes

December 4, 2011 | by Ben 0

Typically late November isn’t considered a great time to eat local produce. We’ve really been enjoying the vegetables, though.

For Thanksgiving we brought Rachel Ray’s Brussels Sprouts with Bacon with the addition of walnuts. These were the best Brussels Sprouts I’d ever had. The bacon and braising seemed to cover up any bitterness, and they were pretty popular.

Our cranberry apple relish was also good, but we were left with quite a bit. We used all of it in muffins, though, which turned out really well, hearty from the whole grains and sweet / sour from the cranberries.

Roasted acorn and buttercup squash (from City Fresh) was another story. Sarah and I really liked it, but pretty much no one else touched it, leaving us with a lot of leftovers. However, I used it as a substitute for the carrots in Smoove B’s carrot chocolate chip muffins (adapted recipe below) and Jonathan I loved them. (Sarah doesn’t like anything resembling pumpkin pie).… continue reading

Homemade Hot Dogs

October 31, 2011 | by Ben 5

Inspired by the Cage Free Tomato’s post, I finally decided to make homemade hot dogs using the recipe from Charcuterie.

These took a fair amount of time with a number of steps including grinding, a 24 hour (or so) chill, spicing, regrinding, chilling, pureeing, stuffing into casings and smoking.

I used boneless short ribs ($5.99/lb) and sheep casings (70 cents/10ft) from Whole Foods. The grinding (with a Kitchenaid grinding attachment) was easy–Jonathan was happy to do it–and so was the spicing (mustard powder, coriander, paprika, garlic, white pepper). Pureeing was not hard, but seeing meat mush flying around the food processor was a bit icky. I started humming “meat emulsion” to the tune of Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” and the song association will likely permanently stick in my brain.

The trickiest step by far was stuffing due to the Kitchenaid’s lackluster abilities, the texture of the meat and the narrowness of the casings. The process was really slow, and hot dog mush … continue reading

Chocolate Brown Sugar and Bourbon Cake

October 25, 2011 | by Ben 1

Sarah’s mom gave me Marcel Desaulnier’s Celebrate With Chocolate eons ago, and it has become my all-time favorite dessert cookbook. I’ve wanted to make “Bob’s Big-Ass Chocolate Brown Sugar and Bourbon Birthday Cake” since shortly after getting the book and finally got around to making a half-portion, as it was my birthday a little while ago.

There’s bourbon in both the cake (which largely cooks out) and in the frosting. The cake is a fairly light with distinct notes of molasses, maple syrup and bourbon. The buttercream frosting is rich and caramely with plenty of bourbon coming through: Sarah complained about a “burn” in her mouth after eating some.

The design is also innovative, essentially a giant “slice” of cake 10 inches tall and eight inches wide. It’s supposedly for Leos, who like things big. The rendition pictured above is only about 4 inches tall due to the halving and an overly large pan used in the baking.

This is definitely a cake for those who … continue reading

Four Years of Ice Cream

August 27, 2011 | by Ben 0

We’ve been a bit low on new content lately, so we’re posting a compendium of ice cream and sorbet recipes we’ve come up with over the years. Just click on an image for the recipe:

In case you don’t own an ice cream maker, David Lebovitz has an easy method for making it without a machine. They’re not expensive, though and definitely worth the investment.

We recently traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and will be posting on restaurants there in the near future, after Jonathan finally starts school.

… continue reading