Swedish Meatballs

It's kind of funny how things work out sometimes. I've been thinking about making this dish for a while and then this week for the first time I see this commercial on ESPN:

The Swedish Chef might be might favorite Muppets character of all time, right up there with Statler and Waldorf.

So enough reminiscing about my childhood and on to the food.

Here's all the stuff you need, onion, beef broth, milk, salt, nutmeg, butter, bread, allspice, ground pork, ground beef, cream, pepper, flour and egg.

I sweated the onions in the butter until they started turn just a little big brown.

In a bowl I had mixed all the ingredients except the onions, beef broth and cream.  Once the onions were cooked I added them to the mixture and combined.

Now for the fun part, forming the meatballs.  Normally I wouldn't weigh them, but since Swedish Meatballs are supposed to be more of a party snack I felt like it was a good idea.  So I made sure the meatballs all weight in at about an ounce. 

Once the meatballs were formed I sauteed them off in a pan until they formed a crust.

Once all the meatballs had been seared they went into the oven to stay warm/finish cooking.

Now for the sauce, the beef broth and flour went into the pan with some of the grease from the meatballs.  Once that mixture had thickened a bit I added the cream and the picture above was the result.

The final plate.  It was a very solid dish.  Not something I would probably make again but easy to make if you're pressed for time.

Smoky Grits Souffle and Shrimp Creole

So only a week back in town and I'm already behind in my blogging.  So here we are rebooting a little bit.  The first dish up this week was a second version of a souffle.  This version was made from yellow cornmeal rather than flour and was actually really delicious.

This is the stuff for the souffle, smoked gouda, yellow cornmeal, milk, salt, water, cream of tartar, cayenne, white pepper, green onions, eggs and ham.

The first step was to bring the water and milk to a simmer and then whisk in the corn meal and let the whole mixture simmer until lit was thick.

 Once the girts had thickened, the green onions, ham, cheese, and seasonings were mixed in.

Once the base of the souffle was done I put the egg whites in a mixer and whipped them until the whites reached stiff peaks. 

I then folded in the egg whites gently and then put them into souffle dishes and baked them for about 30 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

While the souffle was baking I started in on the creole.  Here we have parsley, garlic, okra, shrimp, celery, sherry, coriander, cayenne, cumin, paprika, flour, onion, honey, chicken broth, green pepper, and worcestshire sauce.

The first step was to sautee off the onions, green pepper, and celery along with the seasonings.  Once the veggies were done I deglazed the pan with the sherry, and chicken broth.  and let the whole mixture reduce until it was thickened.

Once thick, I added the shrimp until they were cooked and then I put in the okra and parsley.

This is the completed creole.

This was the final plate.  I hate to admit it to you but there was supposed to be tomato paste and diced tomatoes in the creole and I forgot to buy both of them when I was at the store.  When I realized that I didn't have all the ingredients I freaked because I thought the dish was really going to miss them.  Thank God, but I didn't even notice there was no tomato in there.  This was an really fun meal to make. 

Gnocchi and Pork

Gnocchi oh Gnocchi.  You sound so delicious and easy to make on paper, oh so freaking difficult to make in practice.  Every time I've tried to make gnocchi up to this point its been EPICFAIL time, like why I do I even cook level of fail.  It's really quite embarrassing.  Needless to say this dish intimidated the hell out of me.  So let's see how it all worked out.

The stuff you need for the gnocchi.  Note to my father who wanted to argue with me that gnocchi is a pasta.  This picture proves it ain't a pasta, the primary ingredient is potato, not flour like pasta.  The sum total of the ingredients is flour, egg, Parmesan, potatoes, salt, and olive oil.

I first chopped up the potatoes and slid them into a pot of boiling water.  Normally, once the potatoes are cooked in the water you would throw them back into the pan over the heat to dry them out.  I decided to follow the recipe and throw them into the oven to dry them out.  It's a novel idea but I'll probably stick with the hot pan on the stove. 

Once the potatoes were done, they went into a bowl with ONLY A SMALL AMOUNT OF FLOUR DAD  (I'm not bitter or anything) the egg, cheese and oil to form a dough. 

I then portioned out about half of the dough and then rolled out small logs and then chopped them up to form the little pillows (gnocchi means pillow in italian) and then was the result.

With the gnocchi portion of the evening complete time for the topping.  Here we have pork, flour, garlic, butter, rosemary, red chilli flakes, broccoli, salt, chicken broth, pepper and marsala.

The first step was to cook off the pork.  The pork chop was seasoned and then coated in flour and sauteed.

The broccoli was steamed/sauteed in the sherry and chicken broth mixture until they were cooked all the way through. 

I then sliced the pork thin and added it to the sauce until everything was heated through.

 The first step to cooking the gnocchi is the boil it like you would pasta (yes the cooking method is similar but it still ain't pasta dad).  You cook it until it floats, and this is where I'd messed up before because my versions had never floated.  This one actually did (I may have done a little dance around the kitchen when I saw that it was working, or not).  Now that the gnocchi had been cooked through it was time to crisp them up in some butter.

The gnocchis now have a bit of browning on them.

The final plate, initially I was disappointed with the plating but the more I see this picture the more I actually like it.  This was a really fun dish to make and I"m so glad I finally successfully made gnocchi.  Thankfully there are three more gnocchi dishes coming over the next month, and I can't wait to dive in.

 

Alinea at Home: Skate Traditional Flavors Powdered

So we continue on through the Alinea cookbook.  Probably the hardest part of this dish was procuring the skate.  Skate is a pacific ray fish that is not in the common food lexicon of most americans.  I did find a company out of Washington state that sells it so I ordered it up and off I went.

 The first step was to make the powders that make up the garnishes for the plate.  The first one I made was caper powder.  Two jars of capers.

 I washed off the brine and got them ready to go into the oven.  The recipe calls for the use of a dehydrator for these steps but I ain't buying a dehydrator (my kitchen is simply too small), so I used my oven.  Of course my oven doesn't go down to the recommended 150 degress so I dried these suckers out at 170 and just kept my eye on them.  All told it took about 3 hours to dry them out completely.

 It's amazing how much shrinkage happens when you dehydrate something.

Once the caperes were dried I took them for a spin in my spice grinder and this was the result.  The powder went into a plastic bag until I was ready to use it.

Lemon powder was next.  All told I took the rind off of 9  lemons (that task is no freaking fun at all) and trimmed them down to make sure I got as much of the pith (the white stuff) off as I could.  Once I had the requisite amount of lemon peel I simmered them in the simple syrup three separate times.  I didn't get any pictures of the rest but once the lemon peel was candied they went into another 170 degree oven and dried for another three hours.  The dried peels also went into a spice grinder and had the hell beat out of it.

 Parsley powder was the third and thankfully final powder to be made.  I took two bunches of parsley and pulled off the leaves (also a horrifying task).  Once I had the leaves these also went into a 170 degree oven for a couple of hours.  The dried parsley also went into the spice grinder.

 Ok, closing on the finish, time to make the crust for the fish.  Dried bananas and spray dried cream powder.  The cream powder I put into the oven until it was golden brown.  While the banana chips went into a spice grinder.  Once the powder was brown the two powders were mixed together.

 Green beans.  These got sliced really thinly.

 Once the beans were prepped I prepared the beurre monte which is just an emulsion of two, yes two sticks of butter and a bit of water.

Once the beurre monte was ready I cooked off the beans in a little bit of the beurre monte until they were tender.

The final components for the home stretch.  The green beans, banana, cream crust, skate, beurre monte, and caper, parsley and lemon powders.

I portioned out the skate and then poached it in the beurre monte until it was cooked.

And the final plate.  The powders were sprinkled on the plate and I swirled them around the plate.  The banana was sliced and put in the corner and then topped with the green beans and the fish. 

This was a fun dish that I'm glad I made.  There was a lot of work and I'm sure the taste would warrant another go around, though salting the fish before crusting it probably would have helped.