The Recession Kitchen

Deconstructed steak and eggs: Top Chef for Toddlers

Having a toddler means the kitchen is always a playground. I don't mean this in the McDonald's Playland sense. I have neither room nor patience for, say, a Hamburglar slide in my kitchen. But having a young child means food always has room for fun.

Anyone who has ever given a toddler a sandwich understands that the brain of a young eater is filled with curiosity. It won't take long before each slice of bread is thrown aside, the exploration having begun. Soon pieces of cold cuts and cheese will find themselves tossed afield. For the young eater, the deconstruction of a sandwich is as much about play as it is understanding what is hiding beneath those slices of bread. Dining and play are inseparable. And that is how it should it be. After all, food should be more than sustenance, it should be fun.

So, this morning, partly inspired by my son's playful palate, and partly by Episode 6 of this season's Top Chef, I sought to deconstruct a classic: Steak & Eggs. First, I beat an egg and poured it into a skillet, as if I was making an omelet. When it was cooked, I simply flipped it over, cooked the other side and removed the large, flat egg from the skillet. Then I sliced the egg into triangle pizza-like slices. I cut a slice of American cheese into strips. Finally, I cut up some left over sirloin that we'd grilled for last night's dinner.

I plated the dish by placing some egg slices like a sunrise, arranging the cheese like a flower, and the steak in a small pile. I then presented them with some ketchup and a little A-1 because, well, the kid likes to dip stuff.

"Is that mine?" he asked as he sat in his booster seat.

"It is," I told him. "Steak and eggs deconstructed."

"Mmmmm," he replied, as he dug in and devoured his breakfast. I played. He ate. Happiness in the kitchen on a Sunday morning.

Fried Green Tomatoes, a gift of autumn

Each year, the end of summer is announced with a breath of cold air, a warning of frost, a rush to harvest what can be saved and the sizzle of green tomatoes frying in an iron skillet.

Green tomatoes are no longer reserved for gardeners or dinners at bistros specializing in southern cuisine. Many grocery stores now carry the jade colored fruit much of the year. I've noticed they are particularly available around the holidays, which means this may be a good time for you to give them a try.

The appeal of the fried green tomato lies in the salty, tart crunch that can serve as a vessel for any number of sauces. I prefer to dredge mine in a mix of corn meal and flour, though how you treat yours is entirely up to you. The real trick to fried green tomatoes is the patience require to extract as much liquid as you can from the sliced fruit.

I prefer a method that reminds me of the apple drying that was once ubiquitous in northeast preschool classrooms at this time of year. I thinly slice the tomatoes, salt them liberally, then use a lobster poker to run a long length of trussing string through them. I then hang the slices over sink, an emerald necklace, for at least an hour, allowing them to drip.

When much of the juice has been extracted and the slices begin to wilt, I dredge them in a 50/50 mix of corn meal and flour. I then  refrigerate them for about an hour, on parchment paper, before frying them to a golden brown in olive oil. After removing them from the oil, let your treat drain on paper towels.

Then, enjoy.

It is important to use tomatoes that are hard, not soft, as they are the best. Also, play around with this recipe, as you would with any. Before I go, here's a simple dipping sauce I enjoy:

Spicy rouge dipping sauce

1/4 cup mayo

3 T ketchup

1 T Habanero hot sauce

Couple, few shakes of Old Bay seasoning.

Mix, enjoy.

An argument for Parboiling

OK, I understand the sneers people make when they think of boiled meats. It seems the height of unrefined cooking to rely on what is, perhaps, the most simple method one can employ in the kitchen. But with grilling season upon us, and the craving for barbecue sauce caramelized to the point of perfection atop a slab of ribs or a piece of chicken, it is time to reconsider that big pot of boiling water.
Parboiling, the act of pre-cooking meats so that you can finish them on the grill, has one attribute that makes it, to me, indispensable. It is a sure fire way to avoid that uncomfortableness you feel when the person across the table from you cuts into their chicken and asks, "does that look pink to you?" Few things will destroy a nice spring dinner like having to spring up, reboot the grill and cook into submission a piece of poultry that was plucked from the fire a little too soon. But there are other benefits to parboiling as well. While it may seen downright counter intuitive the fact is that things like chicken and ribs will remain more moist if the they are boiled for a short time, versus being grilled, flipped, flipped, flipped, poked, prodded, flipped, and then grilled some more. Parboiling can also be a tremendous time saver. What might take up to an hour on the grill, can be knocked out in about 40 minutes with the aid of parboiling. Finally, when it comes to barbecue sauces, you'll want to find that perfect temperature that cooks your glaze rather than burning it to nonexistence. So, parboiling allows a cook to focus on getting the glaze perfected rather than worrying about any salmonella that may be lurking near the bone.
But parboiling correctly requires a little bit more than a big pot and some clean H2O. It's important to take advantage of the process to add a little something to your dish. For me, when it comes to parboiling meats that I'll later be dressing with sauce, there are two things I always put into the water: celery salt and a couple of bay leaves. Essentially what this does is create a broth out of the water your're using to parboiling, so rather than boiling meat in water, you're letting it stew in it's own broth. This, for any skeptics, may help you get over that hump.
So, how exactly does one parboil using this method? It's simple. Take a large pot, like a pasta pot, and drop in your chicken or ribs. Add a couple bay leaves and a few shakes of celery salt. Fill the pot with cold water. Place on a stove on high heat. Wait until the pot comes to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20-25 minutes.
When you are done, remove the meat, place on a platter, glaze with you favorite barbecue sauce and heat out to the grill to finish it up.
If you're feeling inspired you can then use the broth you've created to boil some potatoes for mashed or potato salad, or you can use it to make some rice. Or you can pour it right down the drain. It's all up to you.
Now, I know, there will be some people who complain that boiling the meat will steal valuable fat or will introduce the risk of over-boiling, which can leave meat dry. But if you give me the option of simple, safe, and delicious versus difficult, time consuming, and potentially leaving me with pink poultry, well, I say, boil away!

Weed Consumption on the Rise

This weekend it happened. The dandelion explosion.

Every spring it comes, and every year the shock remains the same. The yellow carpet engulfing the newly greened grass. The promises that this time, yes, this time, you won't stop until every last one has been pulled from the jaw of your yard like decayed tooth. This time you'll have 'em licked.

Or at least chewed.

I'm going to eat my dandelions. They sell dandelions at several area grocery stores alongside more well respected greens like collards and chards and spinach. But why waste the coin? If I had cattle roaming my yard, I'd slay one and grill it. If it keeps raining like it has, I'll welcome back the catfish. Then I'll hook 'em and fry 'em. The first wild turkey to alight in this suburban lawn is getting plucked and stuffed.  Why should it be any different for the dandelions, which, each spring, stampede my domain, taunting me with their nutrient rich foliage and fluffy seed-riddled heads?

The nutritional value of raw dandelions was easy to find Online. Go ahead, take a look, you'll be blown away by the amount of Vitamin A, Vitamin K. A few bowls of dandelions greens and I'll coagulate like a champ. (No? Vitamin K humor not your thing?)

OK, I can't lie. The idea of walking out into my yard, yanking some dandelions out of the turf and chomping them down didn't seem so appealing. Were these dandelions the same as the ones I'd spied at the grocery?

According to Rory Klick, horticultural chair at the College of Lake County outside of Chicago, "Yes, your dandelions are just the same as those trendy ones you see in the fancy markets."

In fact, Klick assured, the fact that my lawn is unfertilized and week-killer free means that I should have plenty of edible dandelions in my midst.

And, why stop there?

"As for other weeds you could eat, many cultures also eat purslane, which may well be growing in your flower beds.  And there is always garlic mustard, a dreaded invasive species that requires thousands of hours of labor to pull each year from our forest preserves and natural areas.  However, it makes a darn good pesto – simply use the garlic mustard leaves instead of basil," she suggested.

Comforted that I wouldn't be risking health by eating the weeds, I asked Klick one more question. What should I do with 'em?

"The young greens of dandelion are tender enough to use directly in salads, but the stems are kind of bitter.  I also have had the flowers deep fried with just a sprinkle of sea salt to serve, and they were pretty good -- maybe it was just the batter.  And I also have eaten the greens cooked like spinach in a big pot with sausages and potatoes to make a one-pot-meal.  My great uncle Nils used to make dandelion wine, but unfortunately I do not have the family recipe for that."

I was ready. I grabbed my dandelion weeder and zeroed in on a patch of grass by my back flower bed, an area about as far as one can get from my terrier's preferred pooping grounds. There, I selected two of the most vigorous clumps of dandelions, pronged the weeder into the ground, and tore them out. I gave them a quick rinse under the outside spigot and headed into my kitchen to prepare my snack.

A strange thing happened in my kitchen. I became possessed with the feeling that I had to scrub the greens like no greens before them. Sure, they grew in my out yard. Sure, I knew exactly what they'd been exposed to, and I'd pulled them myself, and they'd been out of the ground for about three minutes. But I felt they were dirty. Dirtier, than, say a bundle of Swiss Chard grown in California, picked by a migrant worker, packed, shipped to a distributor, trucked to Midwest, redistributed to a retailer, unpacked by apathetic teen, and tossed beneath the cold florescence of a Super Market lamp.

So I decided to soak them for a while in cold water. Then, I picked through them, one-by-one, breaking off stems and throwing them into a colander to be washed one last time. Then, I ate one.

Now, I'm not going to say it was bad. But it was bitter. In fact, it was bitter enough that I went to my favorite homebrewing board and posted a question. (Yes, I will be making a dandelion IPA this summer.) After eating a few more of the leaves, I came to a decision. I would need some dressing.
I soaked my fresh greens in some Italian dressing and sat down to dine.

Was it as good as, say, a nice baby spinach salad? No way.

But I'll tell you what. I haven't spent hours clawing spinach out of my lawn. And knowing that right now I'm digesting some of those suckers into the builidng blocks that will let me weed out some of their cousins and send them to an equally bitter fate, well, that's kind of empowering.

(And it's way, way less expensive than lunch and a bottle of Round-Up)