My Martini
Ah, the Martini – the seeming height of cocktail sophistication. This once wet cocktail has gotten drier and drier as the years pass. Part of this is surely due to the improvement of gin post-prohibition when the botanical notes added interest, rather than covering up poisonous higher alcohols. However, I believe it has nearly as much to do with the crapification of vermouth!
Yet as much as gin has improved since the days of prohibition, when preparing a martini, many so-called “recipes” result in a gross and pointless beverage. These instructions would have you put your bottle of gin in the freezer until it is ice cold, then pour the straight spirit into a chilled glass, add the slightest splash of vermouth (or not), and drop an olive in. So basically, drink straight gin at ~5F… how, um, sophisticated? This is palatable only because the spirit is so cold, but one could drink just about anything so cold and it would seem OK because it just numbs the tongue. What a waste. [Of course, if you have some crappy multi-national gin you're getting what you deserve!]
On the other hand, there are many exciting craft gins (my favorite are Anchor Junipero and Death’s Door Gin, though i regularly have 3 or 4 other gins in the bar) out there right now and a dry vermouth from California that is worth searching (Vya extra dry vermouth) that result in a martini you can sip and savor at a temperature that does not numb your taste-buds. To really enjoy the gin it needs a bit of dilution, both from ice and the vermouth. Moreover, if you are using a fine vermouth like Vya (though Noily Prat is not awful, and there is a place of Martini-Rossi if you are making a truly dry martni) it adds to the complexity of the drink.
My Martini is decidedly wet! There are those out there who champion the 50/50 Martini, but I prefer a 2:1 ratio. The resulting cocktail has all the flavor and punch of gin, but a subtle soft vermouth background, and a sufficiently diluted proof it doesn’t burn at a flavor-friendly temperature.
2:1 Martini
2 oz Gin
1 oz Vermouth
olive
Pour gin, then vermouth into mixing glass with 3-4 ice cubes. Stir. Strain into martini glass. Drop olive in. Actually enjoy!
Drive-in Burgers
I can’t remember the last time I craved a steak. However, every now and then the idea of a juicy hamburger is so irresistible. Moreover, the pile of ripe-peak-of-the-season tomatoes and cucumbers that just appeared on the counter this evening are begging to top it! Now, a burger from the grill is one of the quintessential summer treats, but we found ourselves with beef, potential toppings, but no wood to cook them over; how sad. But, as it turns out, most of the burgers consumed in this country never see a grill. Rather, the burgers most Americans scarf down are seared on a super hot steel griddle. And while the bulk of burgers prepared and served in this manor are… well, I won’t go there… it can make a delectable sandwich. Here’s our take on the drive-in burger.
Buns:
100 grams whole wheat flour
90 grams white bread flour
10 grams vital wheat gluten (helps ensure a stiff dough that will hold its shape without a mold)
120 grams warm water
salt
yeast
Mix the dry stuff, add the water, mix till all the flour is moistened. Knead briefly and let it rest for 20-30 minutes. Later, knead the dough until it is firm, divide into three and shape into circles, place on greased baking sheet, cover and let rise. Bake at 425F for ten minutes. Remove to cooling rack. Slice when needed (it’s OK if they are still warm).
Quick Pickles:
3 med-small pickling cucumbers
cider vinegar (4-5 oz.)
water (2-3 ox)
salt
allspice berries
coriander seed
dill seed
celery seed
cumin seed
a bit of ancho chili powder
Slice cucumbers (3 mm) and place in heat proof bowl. Heat liquid and spices (I left them whole) to boil, turn down heat, let simmer a few minutes, return to boil, pour over cucumber slices. Leave on counter to cool slowly. Remove from brine with slotted spoon (as you’ll need the brine for leftovers).
[Quick pickles are a great chance to experiment with different flavorings for pickles as one does not need to worry about the ph of the final product.]
Fries:
2 fist-sized potatoes
oil
salt
Julienne potatoes, soak in salted ice water for 30ish minutes. Drain, toss with a drizzle of canola oil and a couple pinches of salt. Bake for 20 minutes at 425F, stir, bake another 10 minutes. Remove from oven just before serving. (It was hard to believe they weren’t deep-fried given how crispy they were.)
Burgers:
1 lbs grass fed 80/20 beef
~2 scant tablespoons hoisin sauce
1-2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
~1 teaspoon fresh ground yellow mustard seed
pinch of salt
Mix it all together until seasoning is evenly distributed. Form into three loose* patties 2/3 inch thick. Heat an extremely lightly oiled skillet over med-high heat. When oil shimmers, add patties, cover and let cook about 3 minutes (until slightly firm and juice is coming out of the top). Flip (DO NOT PRESS ON THEM!**), cover and cook another minute or two. Remove from pan and place on bottom half of sliced bun to catch all the yummy juice!
*Just tight enough to keep their shape, otherwise burgers may be dense and chewy.
**Pressed burgers loose their juices and end up dry and chewy.
Onions:
Onion
salt
Chop onion. Once patties are removed from pan, add the onion, season with a pinch of salt and saute for a couple minutes. Remove pan from heat, transfer browned onions to serving dish, drain grease from pan. Add a splash of red wine (or any kind) vinegar to de-glaze the pan. Add those tasty bits to the onions and toss.
Tomato:
Tomato
knife
Slice an in-season tomato. Serve.
[If tomatoes aren't in season, do yourself a favor and eat your burger without tomato on it!]
Mustard:
Freshly ground mustard seed
enough liquid (water, wine, beer, or vinegar) to make a paste
Mix it all up.
Pizza for Lunch
Pizza might be the perfect food. Homemade pizza is quick, easy, delicious, filling and likely the most frequently consumed meal in the Jones household.
We have perfected (in my opinion) the quick thin crust:
100 g flour (any combination of wheat flours works!)
2-ish g salt
3-5 (or so) g yeast
~7-10 g olive oil
60 g warm water
Mix it all together, knead it for a couple minutes, and let it rise for 40 minutes (or less if you’re impatient) and you will have enough crust to go on your pizza stone. Make sure you preheat your pizza stone in your oven for an hour at it’s hottest temperature; 500 degrees F is great.
I like to roll out my crust on a pizza peel dusted with a bit of corn meal. Pre-bake the crust on its own for 2-3 minutes to ensure you get a nice, crispy-brown crust. Sometimes, especially if I have a lot of high-moisture toppings, I flip the crust to crisp and brown it on both sides.
Once the crust is pre-baked, you can top it however you like! Sauce can be straight tomato paste, pesto, olive oil or anything you like.
Monday’s lunch pizza was filled with fresh, sweet, peak-of-the-season summer veggies. We ran out of whole wheat flour, so I used half white bread flour and half semolina flour in the crust. I kneaded the crust on my counter-top dusted with cornmeal.
While the crust was rising and the oven (with pizza stone inside) was preheating, I prepared my toppings and sauce:
1 shredded carrot
1 shredded beet
2 ripe tomatoes
Shredded cheeses: mozzarella, smoked baby Swiss, pecorino romano
I marinated the carrot and beet in a little brown rice vinegar, canola oil and homemade mustard for a little extra flavor!
Sauce:
2 cubes frozen pesto
2 cubes frozen Roma tomato puree
(Thawed and mixed together.)
After pre-baking the crust, I brushed the sauce on, followed by a layer using half my tomato slices. I then added the mozzarella and Swiss, followed by the remaining toppings and topped it all off with the pecorino romano. We usually bake our pizza for 6-8 minutes until the cheese is melted, browned and bubbling…yum.
The resulting pizza was like candy – full of the sweet tastes of summer!
Manhattan
I used to be somewhat ambivalent about Manhattans. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t dislike this classic cocktail, it just never seemed to sparkle. Of course, I used to buy crap booze. Mind you I never dwelt on the bottom shelf and some would consider my former choices near the top, but they are fools!
Following on the heels of the craft beer movement great spirits and liqueurs are showing up all over the place. My favorite ingredients for a Manhattan are not these. Rather they are fine ingredients produced by houses that never gave in to the corporate bastardization of beverages.
I love Rip Van Winkle bourbons. Their base product is 10 years old! As compared with the leading multi-national whose top of the line is only 8.
However, the real star here is the vermouth; yes the vermouth! Antica Formula is worth every penny. Its herbal, bitter, plummy and has a faint hint of burnt sugar. A far cry from those $3 bottles you may have. Great vermouth makes amazing cocktails. If you’re only going to splurge on one item, make it the vermouth!
Fee Brothers Old Fashion Bitter uses actual angostura bark, unlike another product named after this ingredient. It makes a huge difference. Try it, you won’t be sorry.
And then there’s the garnish. If anyone ever serves you a cocktail with a glowing red sphere, politely call them a jerk and ask for another. Luxardo Maraschino Cherries are marasca cherries from Italy that are candied in sugar and marasca cherry juice. Yeah, candied in their own juice. Such decadence is something worth paying for (plus the price per cherry is slight). Garnishes should enhance a drink, and getting to eat one or two of these at the end of a beverage is sometimes the reason I choose to make it.
Made with great ingredients, a Manhattan is a go-to thrill ride of a cocktail.
Manhattan (cocktails should be measured!)
2 oz bourbon or rye
1 oz sweet (red) vermouth
1 dash aromatic bitters
Stir with ice, strain into cocktail glass, garnish with a cherry.
You know what is delicious? Fresh, homemade bratwurst! Also, lasagna.
However, lacking animal muscles at 8:45 pm in Orfordville were either in my future? Absolutely! Dinner this evening was a bratwurst-inspired-cabbage-lasagna. WTF,right? Sometimes you just have to run with inspiration and be willing to eat what may turn out to be brilliant or merely serve as sustenance. Luckily I have a taste-bud in my brain and things are usually closer to the former. Yet, I kept this one to myself until I was getting ready to assemble.
It all started with a small head of cabbage that met the small julienne blades of my mandoline (resulting in 3-4 cups I’d guess), that got a sprinkling of salt, and was left to rest a moment.
Next the fresh pasta (for sheets) was mixed. Pasta is 2 parts egg and 3 parts flour by weight; buy a scale. I always use semolina flour for my pasta as it results in a superior product. A one egg pasta dough is plenty for a 8×8 lasagna. I often need to add a bit of extra flour as a straight 2:3 dough is too moist for my kitchen-aid rollers.
A couple tablespoons of canola oil were heated, then the cabbage hit the pan to be browned; yes, browned cabbage. Some minutes later, off with the heat and on came the spices I’d normally use for making brats! Half dozen allspice berries, a bit of anise seed, a few teaspoons fennel seed, a good bit of white pepper, a teaspoon-ish of brown mustard seed and some rosemary. A splash of cider vinegar and homemade sauerkraut were stirred in to deglaze the pan and add some tang.
The cabbage took a temporary home in a bowl to make room for 3-4 cups of chopped fresh tomatoes to be cooked down a bit with some garlic, ancho chile powder, black pepper, salt and fresh parsley.
Roll the pasta, shred some mozzarella and aged muenster (for a bit of flavor), and I was ready to go. Oh, one last idea: mix some okara left over from tofu making with a bit of yogurt! OK, now it’s go time!
A layer of tomato sauce, then pasta. The cabbage! Then pasta followed by the yogurt/okara and what almost seemed like too much white pepper and half the cheese. Then pasta, tomato sauce and the rest of the cheese. To the oven at 350F for 45 minutes, plus a couple under the broiler to brown the top.
A few minutes rest and it was on the plates awaiting judgement. It was just delicious! The spiced cabbage mixture was toothsome and walked the flavor line between Italian sausage and a brat with sauerkraut. The brat/kraut flavors blended seamlessly as the other elements were kept simple.
Worth making again and proof bizarre experiments are worth it.
Warm Summer Rolls
We have lettuce!
After the blazing heat of July, lettuce is coming back and what better way to celebrate than spring rolls? Yet, since it is no longer spring I decided to make some warm summer rolls by sauteing a finger of ginger, a green pepper, 4 medium sized beets, and two varieties of zucchini in coconut oil; a couple table spoons of roasted szechuan peppercorns were added after the heat was off.
Rice vermicelli (soaked in hot water 10ish minutes) was tossed in a quick peanut sauce (homemade peanut butter, hoisin sauce, lime juice, chilli paste and a bit of Chinese soy sauce and toasted sesame oil). Tore up the lettuce and washed the basil. Ready to roll!
Two rounds work best, dipped in a pan of water quickly a few times, then laid-out like a snowperson. Pile filling on close to yourself and roll tucking in filling and folding edges to create a tight sealed role.
Summer’s Bounty
At last, the true bounty of summer has arrived! What excitement! We subscribed to two CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) this season. This means that each week (since June) we have gotten two boxes of vegetables/fruits from two local farms.
I should mention that we recently moved to Orfordville, WI (35 miles South of Madison) – July 1 actually. The two farms we are “members” of are Tipi Produce (Evansville, WI) and Scotch Hill Farm (Brodhead, WI). Since both farms are nearby, we pick-up on farm.
Now, starting last week, we began to find delicious tomatoes, melons, sweet corn, peppers, basil and other tasty treats in our CSA boxes. Well, since we purchased copious amounts of vegetables, we have plenty to preserve (either by canning, drying or freezing) as well as eat.
Inspired by a Gourmet magazine recipe (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Corn-and-Tomato-Scramble-354230) from a few years back that suggested the best way to enjoy summer’s bounty is the simplest way, I cooked up some corn and tomato saute for dinner the other night.
First, tomatoes were cubed and marinated in apple cider vinegar and a little olive oil. Then simply saute onions and garlic in butter. Add salt and pepper to taste, then lightly saute the sweet corn, freshly cut off the cob. At the last minute add some fresh thyme and a bit of lemon zest. Add the corn mixture to the marinating tomatoes for a quick, tasty, light, summery dish!
