Local Lamb with a Foreign Flavor

In the last 18 months, eight thousand, four hundred, and ninety nine people have viewed my yelp profile, during which time I have failed to write a single review. Despite the fact that people seem to like what I have to say, I've grown tirelessly bored of writing reviews and have sadly morphed into what can only be described as a disenchanted foodie. This isn't to say that I don't like dining out, because I've had some amazing meals recently, but Michelin star chefs aside, when it comes down to it, "the great thing about foie gras, is that it's foie gras."

Yet, like every junkie, I simply can't put the needle down, best I can hope for is to change up the cocktail, maybe step it up a notch. And in the process of working on that recipe, I've come across some do it yourselfers with PHDs, survivalists with crazy ideas on the rapture, and some back to the earth farmers raising some of the best product I've ever seen. Grass finished beef and lamb isn't just better for you, but it has a flavor that can't even be compared to the mass produced factory style protein coming out of our nations CAFOs. The below recipe is Israeli, and used lamb shoulder from Spring Lake Farms, which I was able to obtain as a member of meatshare.com. While I can't say enough nice things about Spring Lake farm, or the animals that they raise, it's probably best that you read about them here or for the illiterate, watch this great short film about them here.

Ingredients (Serves 4-6)
2 lbs 4 oz fresh lamb, chopped or ground
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 hot green pepper, chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tablespoon baharat spice mix (below)
4-5 large ripe tomatoes
2 onions, quartered
Pita dough, below

Mix the lamb, hot pepper, garlic, salt, and baharat seasoning into oval kebabs and grill along with the quartered onions. Roast the tomatoes and chop coarsely.

Transfer even assortments of lamb, onion, and tomatoes into oven safe dishes and entirely wrap in pita dough, rolled out to roughly a 1/4 inch thickness. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and place in a 400 degree oven for roughly ten minutes or until the pita is evenly browned.

Baharat Spice Mix
1 tbsp ground cardamom
1 tbsp black pepper
1/2 tbsp ground allspice
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tbsp ground nutmeg

Pita Dough
1 3/4 c bread flour
1/2 oz yeast
3/4 c water
1/2 tbsp honey
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Combine in a mixer and knead with a bread hook for roughly 10 minutes, transfer to a large bowl and allow to rise for 30+ minutes before rolling it out.


****Making goat cheese and "Milk and Honey" soap today.....we'll see how that goes.

Roast Pepper, Garlic, and Pumpkin Soup

My Halloween experience has morphed into a series of half-assed costumes, morally questionable decisions, and inappropriate quantities of alcohol, often ingested through the coarse whiskers of a fake mustache. But it wasn’t always like that, I used to be passionate about All Hallows’ Eve, and it’s not that I have something against adult women wearing lewd summer outfits on 30 degree October nights, it’s just that some of the magic of childhood seems to have faded.

As a child, both my parents, and in this case probably doubly so my father, truly celebrated Halloween; although in retrospect, I think my father was probably more attached to mischief night, but was having a hard time sharing that with his eight year old. Unlike school concerts, swim meets, and little league games, Halloween was almost as much about them as it was me; uncommitted parents rarely dress in full costume to take their 18 month old trick or treating. And while Christmas lights were usually hung on the coldest night of the year, after my father came home from work, Halloween decorations were an all day affair.

Faux gravestones lined our long driveway, with some of the creepiest sounds you can imagine reverberating from hidden outdoor speakers, as jack o lanterns and candles lined the walkways. And once the mood was set, ghosts and goblins were strung on elaborate pulley systems rigged to pop out and scare unsuspecting candy fiends. Yet in my neighborhood, rather than being the exception, our house was the rule, with competition growing yearly, so much so that my most successful of neighbors had several years where some of the youngest children refused to visit his house. It was good times, with a strange mixture of excitement and fear, creating the perfect cocktail to get a young boys adrenaline pumping. I suppose the only challenge now is to somehow recapture those feelings of yesteryear;….although admittedly, that fear driven rush is a little harder to capture after a healthy dose of moonshine.

Roast Pepper, Garlic, and Pumpkin Soup

Serves: 8

Ingredients:
3 Red Bell Peppers
2 Cherry Bomb Peppers
1/8 c Mustard
1 Whole Garlic Bulb
Olive Oil
2/3 C Chooped Shallot
1/2 tbsp anise
2 tbsp butter
1 3/4 lbs edible pumpkin or squash
4 c chicken stock
2 c water
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c cream

Preheat the oven to 375°. Cut the top off of the garlic bulb, drizzle with olive oil and salt and wrap in tin foil before placing in the oven for 30-40 minutes. When cool squeeze out the garlic and set aside.

Increase the oven temp to 500°. Place all five peppers well coated in olive oil and salt on a cookie sheet and place in the oven. Rotating until the peppers are completely charred, at which point they can be removed and placed in a glass bowl covered with saran wrap to cool. This will help to loosen the skins which can be removed once cool.

Cook the shallot, garlic, and anise in butter over medium heat until the shallots are soft. Add the pumpkin, stock, and water and simmer for about 20 minutes or until tender. Add the roast garlic and peppers and continue to simmer for an additional five minutes.

Puree the soup in a blender or food processor in 2-3 batches until very smooth and return to a clean pan. Return the soup to a simmer and add the cream. season with salt & pepper. Serve.

Reason #43 to Live in Brooklyn

#43. Spicy Homemade Garlic Pickles waiting on my doorstep courtesy of my Landlord.

I constantly laugh at the predictable facial reactions that result when I tell non NYC dwellers (and some newly minted Manhattanites) that I live in Brooklyn. Their eyes either fill with pity as they imagine my grave financial woes or conversely they become very inquisitive about the one room crack den that I must have inhabited with Biggie Smalls and Jay Z circa 1986. Clearly they are not from around here, can’t differentiate Brownsville from Boerum Hill, and haven’t seen my rent. There are a lot of reasons to live in Brooklyn, the majority of which for me are food centric, yet none of which involve saving money.

Brooklyn is without question the home of the East Coast DIY movement, with such a large array of small batch, locally sourced, artisanal products created within the borough that it would take months of concentrated effort to sample them all. And while Williamsburg may be the NYC craft foods Mecca with its rooftop farms, buzzing apiaries, and the ever expanding Brooklyn Flea, there isn’t a neighborhood to be found that isn’t incubating a newly minted business or housing some of the most back to the earth home kitchens in the country.

I live within walking distance of three farmer’s markets, two butchers, two fish mongers, two cheese shops, a brewery, two Michelin star recognized eateries, an artisanal chocolate shop, and a bakery….and that’s without getting on the subway, let alone getting in my car and leaving the boroughs. Within a block I can dine on the cuisine of roughly a dozen nations, sip on a glass of wine crushed and fermented mere miles away or slam back half a dozen pints, from Sixpoint brewery, who uses their expended grains to feed their flock of rooftop contained chickens on the Southern Coast.

Yet the streets are not inhabited with the latte drinking, guitar carrying, misanthropes you would imagine, but instead a new breed of hippy, disguised as cutthroat business tycoons, who applied for MBAs shortly after abandoning flannel in favor of foie gras. A group that bakes their own bread, searches out heirloom vegetables and meats, spends their weekends volunteering on local farms and not so reluctantly counts me as a member. See, aside from the two privately owned rooftop farms, and the cooperative in Red Hook, one needs to leave the city in order to get their hands dirty, and between my family’s house in the Catskill mountains, and a number of local u-pick farms, this summer was filled with just that.

I jarred tomatoes, roasted peppers, and made French fries just hours after I had ripped the potatoes from the ground. Spread homemade bread with homemade blueberry jam. Macerated freshly picked berries and mixed them with home churned butter, while I braised pork ribs and ground my own burgers. I picked lettuce greens by the handful, smoked chickens with hand cut apple wood, and ate more than one meal that I personally plucked from the sea. And right now I have pizza dough in the freezer, a marinating hangar steak in my fridge, pickles fermenting on the window sill, and grandiose plans to make an herbed goat cheese in the following weeks. Clearly it was a busy summer, and while the highlight was certainly my newly acquired sister in law, I am pretty sure that even she would agree the below pickle recipe is a close second. (Recipe by Mark Bittman, and any and all quality pictures were taken by my sister in law, the crappy ones I took myself.)

Mark Bittman’s Kosher Pickles
1/3 c kosher salt
1 c boiling water
2 lbs Kirby Cucumbers, washed and quartered
5+ cloves of crushed garlic
1 bunch fresh dill or 2 tbs dried dill

1. Coming the salt and boiling water in a large bowl and stir to dissolve. Add a handful of ice cubes to cool the mixture and then add the remaining ingredients.
2. Add cold water, or preferably vinegar to cover. I like to do this in canning jars, or old pasta sauce jars, but any container will do. Set aside at room temperature.
3. Begin sampling the pickles at 4 hours, although it will most probably take between 24 and 48 before they suit your taste.
4. Refrigerate for up to one week.