Brown Butter Would Taste Good on Garden Sheers

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There’s a lot going around on the foodie interwebs right now about brown butter and toasted heavy cream, for plenty of dang good reasons. Like my pasty, somewhat chunky sun-tanning sister-in-law says, “Brown fat is better than white fat.”

So I thought I’d create a brown butter almond cookie. Before you go zooming off to see if I’m stealing this idea from someone, I’ll tell you a little story.

One day my good friend Chef Krystyna Livingston and I were planning a Syrian dinner for Chefs Collective, our little gig at Ruby June Inn.

We were going to make pickles from some watermelon rind, a much loved thing in Syria, and I said, “Hey, we’ve got all this watermelon fruit. Instead of using pomegranate molasses, why don’t we make watermelon molasses?” We both felt like total creative geniuses. Until the next day, when just out of curiosity, and because my friend and fellow chef John Helleberg had just told me that everything you can think of is already on the web, I googled “watermelon molasses.” Not one, but three recipes popped up. So, genius: another moniker I can’t claim.

Anyway, you are correct. Probably are some cookies out there with brown butter, but I ain’t even gonna look. Besides, mine have a cute little trick. Instead of roasting my almonds (or walnuts – both are good) in a saute or in the oven before I bake the cookies, I grind them fine, and roast them in the melted brown butter. Then I put the melted butter and nuts in the fridge, and let them cool to almost firm, and make the cookies. Now I feel like a genius.

Brown Butter Almond Cookies

4 ounces (1 cube) salted butter
68 grams finely ground whole raw unsalted almonds
¼ cup maple sugar (not syrup … sugar)
¼ light brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla (or half a teaspoon vanilla and half a teaspoon almond extract)
47 grams, blended whole grain oats (blend them fine like flour)
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt

Start the butter in a small saute pan or saucepan on medium heat. When the butter is melted, and is bubbling and golden brown, with lots of browning bits on the bottom, stir in the almonds, and stir and continue browning on medium heat for about 3 minutes. Pour into a bowl, scraping in all the brown bits, and place in the fridge for 30 minutes until soft-firm, about the consistency you would like butter to be when you are planning to blend sugar and butter together for cookies, which you are!

Place the semi-cold butter and almonds in the bowl of a kitchen aid, add the sugars, and cut them together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined. Dump in the flour, soda, baking powder, salt and oat flour. If you are extremely anal, you can mix your dry ingredients together first, but frankly, I can tell no difference one way or the other. Heretic? Sure thang.

As soon as the cookie dough comes together, stop mixing. Place the dough in the fridge and let it cool about 30 minutes.

Using a small scoop, scoop out a ball, place it on a cookie sheet, and flatten it with the bottom of a greased glass. You want them pretty thin.

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes until golden brown.

When Carrots Survive, Get out the Peeler

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I thought about the carrots as we were driving away in December for two weeks in Mexico. I thought about the carrots as we were driving home, but then it was Christmas. I thought about the carrots as we were driving away in January for two weeks in Florida. I thought about the carrots as we drove back into the driveway, which was now covered in two feet of ice and snow. C’est la vie, carrots.

But oh how wrong I was. In March, when I lamented the carrots molding away in the ground since summer, my friend and master gardener Sandy said,, “Oh, they’re fine. Go dig them up. They’ll be really sweet.”

Boy, was she right. As I washed off all the mud from a colander full of surplus survivor carrots, I thought they needed to be the star of something. I remembered the cafeteria ladies plopping spoonfuls of carrot and raisin salad onto our trays, the Miracle Whip oozing out. Surely I could do better by these lively tri-color carrots.

And I did.

Survivor Carrot Salad

Six carrots of any and all colors
⅔ cup golden raisins
½ cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sesame tahini
1 teaspoon garam masala
½ teaspoon salt
Juice and zest of one lemon or 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar

Peal and grate the carrots. Toss in the raisins. Mix all other ingredients and whisk with a fork and pour over raisins and carrots. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Great side with burgers or sandwiches.

Not Exactly a Chop, But Who Cares?

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Most ranchers and farmers know how to inseminate a sheep or plow a furrow, respectively, but often don’t know what to do with their progeny: pigs feet, beef tongue, kohlrabi, cabbage, or in this case, lamb neck chops, are ciphers.

The adorable lamb rancher Merrit Monnat of M&P Ranch gave me a quizzical look, a slight tip of her head, like a sheep dog waiting for a command.

“How do you prepare these lamb neck chops?” she asked at the farmers market, her sheep tallow soap and wool yarn laid out on her table. The lamb, in various cuts listed on a chalk board, were hiding out, frozen, in coolers.

“Well first off, I would have to say, they aren’t chops, not in the traditional sense. You have to cook them low and slow, like oxtail or short ribs,” I said.

Merrit rolled her eyes. “I know! But we couldn’t come up with a better name.”

We pondered that a bit. She handed me a package of four “neck chops.” I promised her, if not a name for the cut, then at least, a recipe.

Mediterranean Lamb Neck Bowl
Why should ahi, salmon and rice get all the “bowl” treatments? This dish looks lovely plated in a pasta bowl, the lamb braise nestled in with a garbanzo bean and tahini saute, a big spoon of cucumber tzatziki marrying the two.
Serve 4
Lamb braise
4 lamb neck pieces
1 large turnip
1-2 carrots
¼ celeriac (celery root) or 1 parsnip
1 large shallot or small yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
12 dried apricots
¼ cup golden raisins
1 cup white wine
3 cups chicken stock
3 tablespoons Aleppo spice mix (see recipe below)
3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper the lamb neck pieces; set aside. Peel the carrot and celeriac. Dice the carrot, celeriac and turnip into ¾ inch dice. Mince the onion or shallot. Peel and slice the garlic.

In a cast iron or stainless steel skillet, heat the olive oil until shimmering, add the lamb neck pieces, and sear on medium heat until they are brown on one side, then turn them over. After you’ve turned the lamb neck, add the onion and garlic to the pan. After the other side browns, remove the lamb to a 2-3 quart covered dutch oven. In the skillet, sprinkle the Aleppo spice mix over the onions and garlic, stirring, for about 30 seconds. Add the wine and chicken stock, scraping up any browned bits. Dump in the carrot, celeriac, turnip, apricots and raisins, toss in a teaspoon of salt, and bring to a simmer. Pour over the lamb in the dutch oven. Cover and braise in a 325 oven until the lamb is very tender, 90-120 minutes. Remove from the oven and fish out the four lamb neck pieces. Place on a plate and allow to come to room temperature. Remove the meat from the bones and add back into the Dutch oven. Stir all together.

Garbanzo Bean Saute

3 cups cooked garbanzo beans (no shame if you use canned)
¼ cup minced Italian parsley
3 scallions
2 tablespoons sesame tahini
Juice of one lemon
1/2 teaspoon smokey hot paprika or pimenton d’esplette
½ cup chicken stock
¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

When the lamb is done and out of the oven, prepare the garbanzo beans. Thinly slice the scallions. In a 2-quart sauce pan, heat the olive oil until shimmering, and add the garbanzo beans, parsley and scallions, and saute for about 1 minute. Add the tahini, lemon juice, chicken stock and salt, and stir together. Turn off and set aside.

Cucumber Tzatziki

1 small Persian cucumber
1 cup whole milk plain yogurt or Green yogurt
2 tablespoons minced parsley

1 small shallot

Dice the skin-on cucumber into very small pieces. Mince the shallot. Mix the cucumber, shallot and parsley with the yogurt, and salt and pepper to taste.

To serve:  Into a pasta bowl or wide shallow bowl, ladle a spoon of garbanzo beans. Next to the beans, add a generous spoon of lamb braise. Add a dolop of cucumber tzatziki between them.
Aleppo Spice Mix

Adapted from The Aleppo Cookbook by Marlene Matar

Ms. Matar’s The Aleppo Cookbook is an excellent exploration of Syria’s lovely cuisine. I always have this spice mix in my pantry now, and it is perfect for lamb. This is most delicious if you use whole spices and grind them in a spice grinder, but pre-ground is not going to get you any demerits.

2 tablespoons ground allspice
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
¾ teaspoon ground cloves
¾ teaspoon mahlepi (a spice made from the dried seeds of a shrub called the St. Lucie Cherry) or ground ginger
Stir together and store in a sealed container.

A Weeknight Spatchcock

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A good stock is a force of nature. It can stand up to a studio executive or a Supreme Court nominee. It is made of flesh and bones, herbs, onions, whole peppercorns, perhaps a few whole allspice, carrots, celery and time. Hours of untended time, and at a temperature that moves things just below the surface of the stock pot with a quiet menace.

A broth is another thing entirely. A broth is an idyl: a simple, small idea made on the back of the stove in the hour or two before it’s needed, with whatever happens to call to me, for the sole purpose of bolstering up some pan drippings or finishing a pan sauce along with some sherry or cider and dijon mustard and a slug of very good vinegar.

A broth is just what is called for tonight. Recently, I brought home some local chickens from Hood Hill Farm. These small birds, just under three pounds, are meaty, lean and petite. They are more like gymnasts than those fatty four-pound grocery store chickens who were butchered shortly after sitting in recliners watching Kardashian reruns and drinking cheap bourbon before noon.

On a Friday night in mid December, the light is already dimming at 4:00 when I enter the kitchen to start dinner prep, I look at that cute little chicken on the sideboard and decide to spatchcock it and roast it with winter orange slices under its skin. I rub it with salt, pepper, and smokey paprika, and lob a knuckle of butter on top. Because it is a local bird, the farmer was kind enough to place the chicken neck in the cavity. Armed with nothing but the spine snipped off when I spatchcock the bird, the neck, and that fat little butt we called the Pope’s Nose when I was a kid, I start a broth: those meager bones, the green tops of two leeks, several cloves of garlic, some parsley leaves and stems, and just enough water to cover. The broth will simmer slowly for at least an hour, then sit and cogitate until I run it through a chinoix.

My bird is laying flat and placid on a rack on a sheet pan. It’ll roast at 375 until a thermometer reads 160 in the fat part of the thigh, which will take 75-90 minutes. And I’ll be rewarded with mahogany brown drippings on the sheet pan. All those drippings will be prodded and scraped from the sheet pan into the strained stock.

And what now? Since hunger will be afoot by then, I will make a beurre manie, simply rubbing equal parts cold butter and flour together with my fingers, and whisking it into the lightly bubbling stock and drippings. It will not confuse anyone into thinking it’s a much reduced rich sauce built over hours, but on a cold December Friday, it is light and simple enough to moisten my little bird, and pool nicely over some potatoes and butternut squash mashed together with minced sage leaves, butter, buttermilk and parmesan cheese.

Authenticity in a Pair of Socks

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Authentic. We bash that work around a lot, and like great sex and a Tesla, it’s what what everyone wants.

Stu was telling me about some tourism ads he heard about the other day for Pendleton, Oregon, targeted at hipsters who want a handmade, authentic experience: real cowboy stuff, handmade saddles and blankets, which you might really want if you had a horse, but I haven’t seen too many hipsters riding them in downtown Portland. This seems to me to be people thinking too hard about authenticity, rather than just being authentic.

Stu and I took a hike today. We’d been working in the yard all morning, and were still in our hauling-rocks-in-the-rain attire, which for Stu, included wearing these socks. He keeps all his old socks in a drawer in his night stand. I don’t know why he puts them there, but it’s as if he knows they would be shunned by his decent socks, across the room in the tallboy dresser. I don’t know why he keeps them at all, but there they are. This is authentically Stu. No artifice, no worry that the people at Solera Brewery, where we decamped after the hike, but might wonder about a guy in homeless-person socks, a threadbare sweatshirt, $5 Walmart basketball shorts and a 25-year-old gimme cap from a pharmaceutical firm, was doing filling a bowl from the popcorn machine. He didn’t need to think about it, because that’s just who he is. And because Solera is a real place (read: authentic) no one gave him the slightest of inspection.

What is authentic food? I have wondered about this a lot, in a world where it is possible to buy fish sauce, epazote, dried grasshoppers, Argentine wine, Israeli feta cheese, reindeer sausage and kalamansi limes, all within a few miles of home, or closer still, from Amazon.

If you crack the code of another culture’s most famous dish … Spanish paella, say, or Brazilian feijoada or Chinese scallion cakes, and you make them in your own kitchen, as close to the original as you can with what you have at hand, trying hard to honor that dish, what is it that you have in the end? Is it authentic? Or is it, “buzz … thanks for playing! better luck next time!”

I have never been to India. At Nora’s Table, we worshiped Indian food. We gave it our all. We ground our own spices, we toasted them in a pan. We browned our onions for curries until the edges were deep brown. We made paneer from whole milk and a little vinegar. We brought in chick pea flour and kari leaves and nigella seeds. And then we passionately threw in what grows here. No New Dehlian has ever had pear chutney. But we honored the idea of chutney, slavishly, with Gorge pears. And when I saw Indians in our dining room, I would often go out to say hello. And here’s what they often said to me. “I have never had a dish like that in India, but it was so perfect, so real, so amazing. Thank you.” Authentic.

And that is what authentic means to me now. It is making food as honest as you can, with what you have. And if you do that well, the real owners of that cuisine will recognize what you have created. It will be real to them, as if their aunt had made their favorite dish, but maybe just got creative one night and took it in another direction.

If we have trouble defining what authentic is, it is surely much easier to say what it’s not. It ain’t “Limited Edition” carrots from Andrew & Williamson Fresh Produce of San Diego, grown in Mexico and distributed in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. The shipping cost a pretty penny, but the salmonella was free last month. The carrots sickened 285 people and killed one. Not sure what makes this a limited edition, but perhaps it’s because the carrots didn’t sicken or kill people in the other 24 states.

If we want authenticity, the real deal, then we need to stop buying carrots that qualify for frequent flier miles. Yes, you are correct, a kari leaf will never grow in the Columbia River Gorge. And in my passion for Indian food, I will find a way to keep a package, grown somewhere in Florida, in my freezer. And there will likely always be a lime in my refrigerator. But there is a line to be drawn, a way to know that those holey socks are authentic. If we stand back and look, we can see where that line is. In a world that craves the real, the honest, the enduring life, we have to draw the line.