One New Foodie Trick in the Bag -- Seeing the Signs of a Good Orange

I haven't been feeling terribly inspired in the kitchen lately, hence the drought of posts on my blog. I'm hoping with warmer weather and lots of beautiful produce coming from my garden and the farmers' market, I'll be feeling more excited. Only another month or so and we'll be really heading into spring.

Citrus is still in season and one little trick has been coming through for me every time I pick up oranges in the grocery store. I heard or read somewhere this year that an orange will tell you that it's sweet. Just look for little brown striations on the skin of the orange. This tells you that it is loaded with sugar. It seems counter intuitive, that you would want the orange to appear perfect to the eye, but instead these little imperfections mean a tastier orange.

Flying Without a Net: Potato and Leek Soup

I had been thinking about making potato soup for a few weeks and today seemed to be the perfect day for it. It's snowy and cold outside.

A lot of the time, I work from recipes with tweaks here and there. For instance, I take a basic chili recipe and add a little Cinnamon and a roasted Anaheim or Poblano pepper. Today, I cooked completely without a net -- no recipe.

I'm pretty happy with my results today, aside from wanting to crank down the salt a little bit. Jim ran out to get some chicken broth for me, as I didn't think I had enough homemade stock. So, he came back with "full salt" broth, but I made do.

Amanda's Potato and Leek Soup

Ingredients:
(measurements are approximate)
3 pieces of center cut bacon
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced leeks
1 1/2 cups diced celery

2 bay leaves
3 or 4 cups of low salt chicken broth or homemade stock
2 cups whole milk
2 cups cubed potatoes

1. Cook bacon until crispy in dutch oven over medium heat.
2. Remove bacon and pour off all but a tablespoon of drippings.
3. Add a tablespoon or so of butter
4. Saute leeks and celery over medium high heat for 3-5 minutes
5. Add bay leaves and chicken broth/stock and bring to a simmer
6. Add potatoes
7. When potatoes are almost cooked, add milk and simmer until slightly thickened

My Favorite Turkey Burgers

Yesterday, I made my favorite turkey burgers for Jim and I in an effort to do a little penance for eating one too many chocolates. I usually don't like ground turkey, finding it often turns out very dry. These burgers, however, are packed with flavor and usually stay pretty juicy.

Turkey Burgers with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Kalamata Olives
Ingredients:
1/2 lb ground turkey breast
1/2 lb ground dark turkey meat
10 or so Kalamata olives, chopped
2 tlbs chopped sun-dried tomatoes that were packed in oil
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl and form into patties. Try not to overwork the meat as you mix it together because it will result in a drier burger.

I usually cook these over medium to medium high heat on a grill pan indoors. I've never tried to grill them outside before, but I imagine as long as you didn't put them directly over the flame, they would be fine.

I usually serve these on whole wheat hamburger buns with arugula. The full recipe, which is available on Epicurious, suggests a mayonnaise with chopped basil in it, but I usually skip that part.

Two Days of Italian

The past two days have been largely centered around Italian food, one of my favorites.

Last night, I attended the farewell dinner in honor of my friend Victoria's upcoming departure from the United States. At 7:00, we all arrived at Martini's in the Short North, which had been remodeled last fall. I've dined at Martini's several times before. There used to be a location on Polaris parkway, so it had been a go-to restaurant for may business functions in the past. I've always been underwhelmed by Martini's, never really having anything that blew my socks off.

This time around, the experience at Martini's (apparently it's "Martini's Modern Italian") proved to be much improved, both in terms of the cuisine and the ambiance. The restaurant on High St is far more glamorous than the previous interior. There is a nice glow throughout the dining room that emanates from an under-lit bar and communal table, plus some beautiful chandeliers. The chandeliers are my favorite addition. They have a perfect little smattering of red crystals to take them out of the norm. My only complaint about the restaurant's new attitude is that they were playing what seemed to be loud electronica, which didn't really match the atmosphere.

Martini's reincarnated menu is much simpler that the previous one and sticks to basic Italian fare done with good ingredients. I had a roasted beet salad with pistachios, goat cheese and greens to start. Nothing mind blowing, but it was done well. For my main, I ordered the gnocchi bolongese. Ordering gnochhi is always a risk for me because I expect what I grew up with in my own home. Martini's gnocchi were a little more dense than my liking, but the bolognese was nice and incorporated the added twist of using boar. Still, I prefer my own. A few people at the table ordered the osso bucco. Martini's choose to use short ribs in the dish, which surprised me. Part of the real treat of osso bucco is getting to eat the marrow in the veal shank. I feel like the people who ordered that dish were robbed a little.

Find more information on Martini's Modern Italian here: http://www.martinimodernitalian.com/Menus.cfm


Today, the Italian experience continued into spending some time with Susan De Luca and her family, learning how to make their version of Italian Wedding Soup. It's a really interesting experience to see how two families make the same dish but in slightly different ways. The De Luca version used spinach, while the Del Gallo's use escarole. Susan's mother simmers her meatballs in water first, while mine browns them.

The De Luca version of Italian Wedding Soup is simple and tasty. It's great comfort food for a cold winter day like today. Below is the recipe:

De Luca Italian Wedding Soup

Ingredients:
chicken broth (4 14 oz cans)
chopped spinach
Acini de Pepe pasta (33)
1lb ground turkey (could use any other ground meat)
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 tlbs Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tlbs dried parsley
1/2 tsp ground thyme
2 eggs beaten
1/2 cup water, broth, or milk

Preparation:
1. Mix turkey through milk in a large bowl and blend together using hands.
2. Using a teaspoon, roll meat mixture into small balls
3. Simmer meatballs in batches in water until meatballs rise to the top
4. Simmer meatballs in chicken broth with spinach
5. While soup is simmering, cook pasta per the package directions. Make enough that is appropriate for the amount of soup you have made.
6. Add cooked pasta to simmering soup and serve with more Parmigiano Reggiano.

History on Italian Wedding soup can be found here:
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html

The Good and the Bad

In the description for my blog, I mention that I'm going to write about my cooking experiences, both good and bad. Tonight, the bad experiences out-number the good.

This morning, while sipping my coffee and watching "Tyler's Ultimate," I noticed the show featured what looked to be a pretty interesting salmon en papillotte dish.

Here is the recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-salmon-in-parchment-recipe/index.html

I'm usually pretty adept at cooking fish and have cooked it in parchment successfully a number of times, but tonight it was just not meant to be. I was under a time-crunch and things just didn't go well.

I ended up with:

• half-cooked couscous because there wasn't enough liquid in the "envelope" or it wasn't sealed completely. That's what I get for trying a new method of folding.
• stinging skin after I chopped the chili and then absent-mindedly touched face and I swear my fingers still have chili oil in them.
• perfectly cooked salmon

So, while it wasn't what I planned, dinner ended up being one piece of salmon and an apple. I'm sure my figure will thank me for it but the foodie in me is so disappointed.

A Six-Dollar Cup of Coffee

Apparently, I like to live large. So large, that in the worst economic times I have ever seen in my lifetime, I was willing to spend $6 on a cup of coffee just for the thrill of it.

After grabbing a bite to eat at Alladin's in Grandview, Jill and I went to Stauf's coffee house to kill some time before our movie. We walked in and there it was in all its glory -- the $11,000 machine that is supposed to brew the best possible cup of coffee-- the Clover.

The Clover is a precise little coffee making robot. It keeps the temperature of the water at the most optimal point for brewing. The barista explained to me that it works similarly to a French Press, but it is able to filter out the oils, leaving a "cleaner" taste that enables the complexity of the bean to come through.

The cup costs $6 because I chose Jamaican Blue Mountain beans, which I've had in the past and they are fabulous. The beans themselves are quite expensive. With any other roast, coffee from The Clover will cost you $3.

The Clover also seems to be a finicky little robot. It took a few attempts to get the coffee to brew correctly, but my barista came through for me and presented to me the "perfect" cup of coffee. (For my wait, the fine people at Stauf's gave me my JBM coffee at a discount.)

So, is it worth the money? The coffee's flavor certainly came through much "cleaner," and that's the best word I can come up with to describe it. There was still the natural acidity of the coffee, but it was much milder and not as overwhelming as with other brewing methods. Coffee sometimes upsets my stomach and this coffee didn't produce that effect, which I assume was due to the filtering.

Has my life been changed? No. I don't think I'm enough of a coffee lover to see myself purchasing more beverages from The Clover, but it was fun to try.

Want to taste and see for yourself? Location information on Stauf's provided below:

http://www.cupojoe.com/content.aspx?page=grandviewstore

For more information on The Clover, there was a great write up in Slate from early 2008.

http://www.slate.com/id/2185655/pagenum/all/

New Year's Pork and Sauerkraut

In our family, there has been a long-standing tradition that on New Year's Day, you eat pork and sauerkraut. If pig and fermented cabbage don't pass your lips on this day, you are doomed to a year of bad luck!

According to what I've read, a family that owns a fat pig is a family that will be eating well. Additionally, pigs root forward and thus it is a symbol of moving forward into the New Year. The cabbage part of the dish may be a sign of wealth, as the folded green leaves resemble money.

Many sources point to this particular tradition originating from the Pennsylvania Dutch. Given that our family is of mostly Italian and Irish descent, I asked my mother how we ended up with this tradition. It sounds like it may come from two places. My mother's family lived next door to a German woman when they were young and each year, their neighbor made big pots full of pigs' feet and sauerkraut on New Year's Eve. My father's mother, Ruth, was from Pittsburgh and also made the dish every New Years.

Here is the recipe:
Salt and pepper the particular cut of pork you prefer. My mother made a bone-in pork loin roast this year.

• Brown the pork.



• Saute about 1/4 cup of chopped onion in the drippings from the pork, along with some chopped apple



• Put both the pork and the onion/apple mixture in a casserole dish. Pour sauerkraut over pork
  
  
• Bake covered at 325 degrees until done.
  
  

Epicurious has some great information on New Year's Day traditions from around the world, plus information on what not to eat. Stay away from backward crawling lobsters!

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/newyearsday/luckyfoods