Monthly Archives: February 2009

Dried Morel Cream Sauce

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EVERY YEAR AROUND this time I start to get restless in anticipation of spring. One of my favorite rites of the season is the morel hunt, but for now all I can do is stare at the dried mushrooms from previous seasons in their glass mason jars—and then grab a handful to rehydrate for Steak and Morel Sauce…

Steak with Morel Sauce

After making this sauce a couple times you’ll realize all it takes is a little improvisation in the kitchen to whip together an elegant and very tasty sauce every time, no matter what ingredients you have lying around.

For this one I used dried morels reconstituted in water, a splash of red wine not exceeding half a cup, beef stock, and just a touch of cream, but you could use white wine instead, or sherry, chicken or veggie stock, and other herbs (fresh tarragon pairs well with morels). Soy sauce is a nice touch. Always make sure to keep the liquid used to rehydrate morels as it’s a flavorful stock in its own right.

Most recipes will have you sauté the onion or garlic before adding the mushrooms, but this often leads to scorching the aromatics to an unpleasant bitterness. Mushrooms—and morels especially—take time to properly brown, so I add the shallots (or onions , garlic, etc.) after the morels have had some time in the pan.

2 steaks
2 oz dried morels (about 2 dozen)
1 shallot, finely diced
2-3 tbsp butter
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup beef stock
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
2 oz heavy cream
salt and pepper

1. Rehydrate morels in warm water, just enough to cover, and set aside for 20 minutes. Salt and pepper steaks and allow to come to room temperature.

2. Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in skillet over medium-high eat and cook steaks, a few minutes per side according to preference. Remove to a plate and keep warm in oven. Strain rehydrated morels, reserving liquid. Pat mushrooms dry on paper towel.

3. In same skillet over medium heat, add morels and another tablespoon of butter if necessary. Sauté a few minutes until morels begin to brown lightly on edges, then add diced shallots and cook together for another minute or two. De-glaze with red wine. 

4. When wine is mostly evaporated, add some of both the beef stock and the mushroom stock, the fresh herbs, and a little heavy cream. Sauce should remain dark. Reduce and add more of both stocks and cream if necessary. When sauce reaches desired consistency, remove plate with steaks from oven and pour off accumulated juices into sauce, stirring. Spoon sauce and morels over steaks.

Pork Loin with Huckleberry Sauce

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HUCKLEBERRY SAUCE is a good thing to keep around. I have containers of it in various sizes in my freezer. A small 4-ouncer is easily enough to feed two, and once defrosted it can be spiced up however you want. Click here for the huckleberry sauce recipe (you can substitute store-bought blueberries if necessary).

You’ll find versions of this pork loin recipe online, but there are a couple extra steps that I follow to make it extra delicious. For one thing, I like to add a tablespoon or more of orange zest to my standard huckleberry sauce. Also, I use the usual woodsy herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme) as well as oregano, parsley, and basil. The fresh basil, in particular, works with the orange zest to brighten the huckleberry sauce with a slightly more tropical zing. If you don’t have all these fresh herbs on hand, make do with what you’ve got (but the more the better, in my opinion). Finally, a quick de-glaze of the skillet with red wine will extract every last bit of the herbal flavor.

1 lb pork loin
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp fresh sage, chopped
1 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
1 tsp ground pepper
2 tsp salt
red wine
orange for zest and garnish
huckleberry sauce

1. Combine fresh chopped herbs with salt and pepper on a plate.

2. Slather pork loin with 1 tbsp oil and roll in herb mixture until fully coated. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

3. Pre-heat oven to 400 degree. Heat remaining oil in skillet and brown pork loin. Turn meat carefully. Move pork loin to roasting pan and de-glaze skillet with a splash of red wine; pour over meat. Put in oven for 15 to 20 minutes, depending on taste.

4. Remove from oven and allow to rest 10 minutes. Slice and arrange over bed of grain (rice pilaf in this case). Drizzle generously with huckleberry sauce and garnish with sliced oranges.

A Pinot Noir will drink nicely with the herb-pork-huckleberry trifecta. Now do your best Yogi Bear impression. “Hey Boo Boo!” Accept Oscar. Serves 2.

Truant Ice Fishing & Bourbon Trout

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WHO CARES ABOUT the cold—or school—when you can go ice fishing? 

And then have a lunch of Bourbon and Pecan-Encrusted Trout.

Yes, I’m a bad parent.

Bourbon & Pecan-Encrusted Trout

1 lb trout fillets
6 oz pecans, chopped
2 tbsp butter
1/4 cup bourbon
1/2 cup coffee
6 tbsp brown sugar

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Spread chopped pecans on baking tin and roast for 10 minutes, shaking pan every couple minutes.

2. Combine butter, bourbon, coffee, and brown sugar in sauce pan and bring to boil, stirring. Reduce heat to simmer and whisk for 10 minutes until syrupy.

3. Lay trout fillets skin-side down on greased baking pan. Brush on sauce, then cover with pecans. Drizzle more sauce over pecan-encrusted fish to taste.

4. Cover with foil and bake for 10 minutes. Remove foil and bake a few minutes longer, careful not to overcook and dry out fillets. Serve with wild rice and a good Chardonnay, or just continue working on that open bottle of bourbon.

The Gnostic Nuances of Oxtail Gnocchi

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THE DEEP, EARTHY flavors of dried porcini are what take this oxtail ragu up a notch.

For best results make this at least a day in advance before serving. Overnight refrigeration intensifies and marries the flavors.

 

 

Oxtail Ragu with Porcini

2 lbs oxtails
2-3 oz dried porcini, pulverized
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 bottle white wine
2 tbsp tomato paste
several sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 dried bay leaves
olive oil
basil for garnish

1. Using a food processor, pulverize a handful of dried porcini (2-3 oz) into dust. Cover with warm water, about 2 cups. Let sit for 30 minutes.

2. Season oxtails with salt and pepper and dredge in flour. With a large pan over medium-high heat, brown in olive oil and then set aside.

3. Pre-heat oven to 320 degrees. Reduce burner heat to moderate and add more oil if necessary before sauteing onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. When soft and translucent, deglaze with wine. Stir in tomato paste.

4. Arrange oxtails in a dutch oven or other heavy, lidded cooking vessel. Tuck sprigs of thyme and bay leaves between and around meat. Add contents of saute pan and rehydrated mushrooms with their liquid. The oxtails should be immersed to halfway mark; if not, add water or stock. Cover and put in oven for four hours, turning occasionally.

5. Maintain braising level by adding water or stock. Meat is done when it’s fall-off-the-bone. Carefully remove meat and let cool. Also remove thyme stems and bay leaves. Next separate meat and discard bones and any large pieces of gristle. Use immersion blender to blend and thicken sauce. Return meat to pot and bring to simmer on stovetop for a half-hour or so until reaching desired consistency.

For the gnocchi I used 101 Cookbook’s How to Make Gnocchi Like an Italian Grandmother Recipe. 

A couple points about this recipe. I used organic Yukon Gold potatoes. Some have wondered why you peel the potatoes after boiling; while mine is not to reason why, I found the peeling easier at this stage than before boiling. The taters undressed without the slightest hint of coyness, dropping their gowns sometimes in a single peel. Also, the fork method of deconstructing the halves works perfectly well, and the difference between mashing (don’t) and simply grating without any lumps (do) will become obvious even to the newbie.

When it came time to mix in the egg and flour, I used slightly less beaten egg than called for in the recipe and slightly more flour. Also, I built a volcano out of the potato and poured the egg and flour into the crater. Keeping the chopping block well-sprinkled with flour from this point on is essential.

The gnocchi were light and scrumptious. I drizzled some olive oil on a plate, carefully arranged a dozen gnocchi, and ladled the oxtail ragu over the whole enterprise. The ragu juices mixed with the olive oil to form an appetizing orangish gravy on the bottom. I garnished the dish with chopped basil.

Dept. of Horn Tooting

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I’m happy to announce inclusion in the March issue of Bon Appétit (Expert Advice Q&A column, page 28). Many thanks to contributing editor Eric Steinman for making it happen (and Emily!).

If you’re a Bon Appétit reader and just found your way here, thanks for dropping by and please take a look around. You’ll find info on:

And plenty more. Use the menu of labels at right to find specific topics.

I also post recipes and cover topics related to tools and food storage.

There are lots of reasons to forage. For one thing, the taste of wild foods can’t be duplicated in domesticity—and for another, they’re good for you. But mostly I like to forage because it’s fun, and I’ll use any excuse to be outside interacting with nature, whether combing woods and beaches, bushwhacking through mountains, or free-diving in Puget Sound. Finding a gourmet meal is a pretty good excuse, too.

Spicy Black Bean Clams

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ONE OF THE MANY great things about Manila clams is that they’re often available high in the intertidal zone. And while they can be smaller in these spots, this is the size preferred by many Chinese restaurants.

The reason for the small clams is readily apparent if you make a black bean sauce. The minced garlic and ginger, along with the mashed bits of fermented black beans, balance perfectly with a sweet, tender clam that isn’t chewy in the least, and the shell holds just the right amount of sauce for…dignified slurping.

The black beans in a Chinese Black Bean Sauce are actually soybeans. The jarred variety are convenient but the dried fermented kind are more traditional. 

3 dozen littleneck clams, washed and scrubbed 
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
2 tbsp garlic, chopped
2 scallions, thinly sliced and divided between green top and whitish bulb
1 red chili pepper, cut into thin strips
2 tbsp fermented black beans
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp aji-mirin (or 1 tsp sugar)
1/2 tsp chili paste

1. Combine in a bowl the stock, wine, soy, aji-mirin, and chili paste.

2. Heat wok or deep frying pan on high until near smoking, then add both oils. Stir-fry ginger, garlic, scallion bulb, and chili pepper for 30 seconds.

3. Add clams and continue stirring until they begin to open. Pour in stock, add black beans, stir and cover. When clams are all open, remove to serving bowls and ladle over juices. Garnish with remaining green onion.

Serves 1 for dinner or 2 as an appetizer.