Author Archives: Sarah

Party Favors: Venison Hunter’s Pie

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The SAVEUR team had a big event with Telluride Ski Resort on Thursday night in the SAVEUR kitchen, featuring the cooking talents of the Telluride Executive Chef Stephen Roth.

Photo courtesy of Courtney Henley-Anderson

One of the featured dishes was a rack of venison with spiced huckleberry Port sauce. It was delicious, but a little tough to eat at a cocktail party without knife and fork…so there was plenty leftover, and I went home with about 25 pieces of venison. However, unlike last time when I brought home the lamb, the meat was already cooked; I needed to figure out how to incorporate it into other dishes that I could eat or freeze to make sure the meat didn’t go to waste.

 
Photo courtesy of Courtney Henley-Anderson 

For the first attempt, I decided I wanted to riff off of the traditional Shepherd’s Pie — a hearty dish of lamb, vegetables, and mashed potatoes — by making a sort of “Hunter’s Pie” with venison as the base meat. I began by cutting the meat off of the bones, throwing the latter into a pot of salted water with other vegetable remnants to make stock. Meanwhile, I cut the venison into cubes and quickly browned them; after removing the meat from the heat, I added finely chopped carrots and leeks to the pan juices to soften them. 
 
Primary ingredients coming together on the stovetop. 

I added the meat back to the pan, along with the stock, some Worcestershire sauce, flour, and some herbs, then let everything simmer in the pan for about an hour and a half. In another pan, I covered some russet potatoes with salted water and brought it to a boil. Twenty minutes later, once strained, I added a splash of cream, a tablespoon of butter, and some salt & pepper, then set the mashed potatoes aside. When everything was ready, I assembled the crust-less “pie,” topping the meat with the mashed potatoes.

“Hunter’s Pie” fresh from the oven. 

Once the potatoes turned a light golden brown number and the venison roux began to bubble, I removed the pie from the oven and let it cool briefly. Digging into the meal, we discovered that the nutmeg in the spice blend complemented the gaminess of the meat — and I even think I preferred this dish with venison rather than lamb. I served it with a side of spinach and a cheese biscuit to sop up the jus, and we sipped on the Clos de la Roilette 2009 Beaujolais from Fleurie, the same wine that had been paired with chef Roth’s rack of venison. Its complexity, with a bit of earthiness as well as bright fruit, was a refreshing contrast to the weight of the meal.

First round of leftovers = success!

Hunter‘s Pie
  • 8 venison chops, cut into ½-inch cubes
  • 2 leeks, white parts only, finely chopped 
  • 2 medium carrots, chopped
  • 2 tbsp. flour
  • 1 1⁄2 cups venison stock 
  • 1 tbsp. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tbsp. finely chopped rosemary leaves
  • 1 tbsp. finely chopped thyme leaves
  • 1⁄8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 3 medium russet potatoes, peeled and quartered
  • Splash of Organic Valley half-and-half
1. Melt 2 tbsp. of the butter in a large pot over high heat. Add one-third of the venison and brown on all sides, then transfer to a plate, leaving fat in pot. Repeat process 2 more times, using 2 tbsp. of the butter and one-third of the venison for each batch. Add leeks and carrots to pot, reduce heat to medium, and cook until softened, scraping up any browned bits. Return venison and its juices to pot along with flour and cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute. Whisk in stock, Worcestershire, rosemary, thyme, nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste. Increase heat to medium-high; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, until venison is tender, about 40 minutes. Uncover pot and simmer, stirring often, until thickened, 35–40 minutes more. Remove from heat and set aside.
2. Meanwhile, put potatoes into a large pot and cover with salted water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until tender, 20–25 minutes. Drain and transfer potatoes to a bowl. Add 1 tbsp. of the butter, half-and-half, and salt and pepper to taste; mash until smooth.
3. Preheat oven to 375°. Transfer venison to a pie dish. Top evenly with mashed potatoes, and top with small cubes of butter, scattered over potatoes. Bake until golden brown and bubbling, about 20 minutes.
Recipe adapted from SAVEUR.

Down South: Chicken-Fried Steak, Collard Greens, & Cornbread

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Where did September go? This whole month flew by in a whirl of busyness, work activities, and birthdays. I feel like I hardly cooked anything exciting at all! To make up for this, I threw a little dinner party last night, Southern-style, for my friend Dado who will soon be returning to China. After an ingredient fiasco (I wanted to make fried catfish… turns out, the guest-of-honor is allergic), I decided to make an easy but delicious meal of chicken-fried steak, collards, and cornbread.

I went down to Marlow & Daughters to pick up some top round after work, but since they were out, I went with the cheapest alternative: ground beef. Chicken-fried steak is essentially cucina povera anyway. I whisked an egg and add the meat and some salt and pepper to the same bowl, patting it into flat disks of meat. I then coated each with egg and dredged in flour, then placed each piece into a hot pan full of butter. Each side cooked for about a minute and a half, then I removed them to make the roux, adding a bit of flour, more butter, and water to create a sauce.

I served each person with their fried meat and buttery sauce alongside slow-cooked collard greens, which had stewed for a half hour in salted water and apple cider vinegar, and buttermilk cornbread. Dado had brought a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from Oyster Bay, which paired surprisingly well with the food due to its more robust fruit. The sharp, bracing acidity also cut through the rather fatty meal, refreshing our palettes as we ate through it all.

To finish off the meal, I had prepared a roasted banana gelato with a nutella swirl — as decadent and down-home good as everything else we’d eaten. Bon Voyage, Dado!

Dinner ideas adapted from Virginia Willis’ Bon Appétit, Y’all, David Leibovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, and my mother.

Homecoming: Coconut Gelato for Toni

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Toni went to Italy and Croatia to visit his family for two long weeks. Over the course of these last six months, I’ve never known him to be so happy as he was while there, surrounded by his family and friends, in the place he considers home. I wanted to do something for him so that coming back to New York would be less bitter and more sweet. When I asked him what that might be, he said quite simply that he wanted gelato al cocco, coconut gelato. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that.

Coconut Gelato for Toni

  • 1 cup unsweetened coconut
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 2 cups milk (I used 1 1/2 cup whole milk, 1/2 cup skim milk, and a splash of heavy cream)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean

In a bowl, combine sugar and yolks, stirring until incorporated. Heat milk and vanilla bean over medium heat, then add a ladle of the heated milk to the sugar and egg mixture to temper it. Add the sugar and egg mixture to the pot, stirring constantly. Add the coconut.

When mixture is thick and coats the back of a wooden spoon, remove from heat and cool. Keep, covered, in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight. Don’t forget to put the body of your ice cream maker in the freezer to chill.

When you are ready to freeze the gelato, remove the vanilla bean and discard. Pour into the ice cream maker and let it churn for about 20 minutes, scraping down the sides every now and then. Put into a container and freeze until ready to eat.

Recipe adapted from Nicole Lang.

Celebrations: Being Together with Good Wine

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The last time I was together with both of my parents was in February, so I was excited that we were all able to be down at the beach for a few days. My little brother Scott was too busy turning 21 to join us, and what did he miss?

 Dad in a kayak.

Aside from sea and marsh kayaking, fly-fishing on a motor boat that took us out to Cumberland Island, sea turtles, dolphins, and “The American,” he missed the opportunity to drink a wine as old as his big sister. And not just any 24-year-old wine. He missed a Latour.

Yes, that is a Premier Grand Cru Classé from 1986.

Most likely, Scott does not realize what a momentous occasion this was, at least for me. This wine, along with a few others, had been sitting at my grandmother’s beach house for who knows how long, cooking in the south Georgia sun when no one was on the premises to turn on the air-conditioning. So opening the bottle was as much of a gamble as anything. There were, however, a few factors in our favor: the ullage was high (the level of wine was above the neck) and the bottle itself seemed to be in pretty good condition. And I’d texted Stevie to know if the ’86 was drinking. Her one-word response? “Drink.”

Sniffing and tasting the newly decanted wine.

Boy were we well-rewarded. The liquid inside the bottle, a tawny color, neither smelt nor tasted of vinegar. Instead, it possessed the effect of tart, underripe blackberries — tight as the wine was first exposed to air in the decanter and in my glass — as well as notes of walnut dust, leather, and raisins. And it was immediately balanced, surprisingly so, as I’d read that many Bordeaux of that year were highly tannic. Then, the magic that I love about wine began to show itself. As we prepared dinner and let the wine breathe, it was suddenly rejuvenated: full of bright, ripe berry notes, and so incredibly smooth on the palate. No element of this wine overpowered another. I was utterly happy.

Taste-testing corn-fed beef (below) and grass-fed (above),
seasoned with smoky salt from Washington State.

The Latour proved an excellent complement for my first taste of my aunt Emily’s grass-finished beef. Life is really good sometimes.

Down South: The Best BLT

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It’s September, and I can finally say it: summer has arrived. For me at least.

I’m not talking about the heat. That’s come and is hopefully going away soon. I’m talking about tomatoes, peaches, corn, and more… from south Georgia. Nothing tastes like summer to me like the produce I grew up eating during the summers down at my family’s house in Sea Island, Georgia. The peaches up north just aren’t as sweet, the tomatoes not as juicy. And now I am finally down south for a few days, eating the things that make me happiest. So what makes the perfect BLT? A Georgia tomato, on toasted bread with Hellmann’s mayo.

Mamma’s BLT, with Ruffles potato chips.

How-To: Putting Up Tomatoes

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Yesterday, I woke up early, trucked it over to Stevie’s, then together we headed up to the McCarren Park farmers market to pick up 25 pounds of not-quite-ripe Roma tomatoes. Because we were buying so many, the farmer even gave us a discount: $1/lb., rather than the advertised $2. With trembling arms, we carried these home, then went back out to Brooklyn Kitchen to get quart and pint jars, as well as a wide-mouthed funnel.

25 pounds of tomatoes.

We began by sterilizing the jars. We filled Stevie’s extra large pot with water and placed the jars and their lids inside, then set it over high heat to come to a boil.

Floating jars.

Then, we began to scrub the tomatoes to get all of the dirt off. Stevie put another pot of water on to boil. In the meantime, she scored the bottom of each tomato with an “x” to facilitate peeling later on.

Scoring the tomatoes.

Once the water was hot, she put in one batch of tomatoes at a time, removing them once their skin cracked.

Washed and ready to go in the water.

As she removed the tomatoes, she brought them over to me to peel, core, and quarter. With one hand gloved to protect it from the heat, I began the arduous process of peeling, using the edge of a paring knife to literally get under the tomatoes’ skin.

Peeling back the skin.

We removed the large pot of jars from the stove to make room for the batches of tomatoes that needed to cook but left everything covered in the hot water. Stevie explained that the jars need to be hot when we put the tomatoes into them in order for them to seal properly. In separate pots, she cooked the tomatoes with a bit of salt and sugar, accenting the natural sweetness of the tomatoes while adding salt (a preservative) to the mix. When they were ready, she removed them from the heat and brought over a few jars to begin the canning process.

 Placing the hot tomatoes and their juice into the hotter jars.

The funnel is important because it keeps the lip of the jar clean – necessary in order to seal them properly. If anything gets between the jar and its lid, it will not close up and make the much-anticipated “popping” sound that signals that all air is out of the jar and its contents are sealed for later use. Stevie had read that an acidifier was recommended in order to help preserve the tomatoes, bringing out their natural acidity, so I placed a tablespoon of lemon juice per pint on top of the tomatoes before we closed the jars. Then, we sat and waited, making sure that each and everyone popped, sometimes for an agonizing thirty minutes! At the end of the day, however, we succeeded, with about 10 and a half quarts put up.

Our beautiful jars of canned tomatoes!

Can’t wait to try these this winter!

In Memoriam: The Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg, for Ian

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Today I learned that a friend from college passed away in a car crash over the weekend. Ian was one of those guys that I always just knew: we were placed in the same small freshman dorm and I can’t remember a day of college that I did not consider Ian Burgin a friend. He and I were cut from very different trees. I liked to play the part of the Southern belle, walking around the Vermont campus in my heels, and if there was snow, I most likely fell into it (while wearing snow boots, lest you think I’m too crazy). Ian, on the other hand, was from northwestern Massachusetts, not too far down the road from Middlebury. He was fond of the outdoors and plaid, studied Environmental sciences, and, I was convinced, was going to have some fabulous impact within the realm of sustainability. Where I spent many months holding my breath when the smell of manure began to waft its way through the state, Ian inhaled deeply, saying it reminded him of home.

Despite our differences, I loved the person Ian was and I always enjoyed his company. He was a wonderful person, so genuinely good, and good to talk to. One of my favorite memories of him is a recurring one: breakfast in Atwater dining hall. Always mindful of health and fitness, he started every day with a balanced meal, which included hard-boiled eggs. He would carefully peel the shell, separate the white from the yolk, and, leaving the latter on his plate, eat the protein-rich and cholesterol-free egg white, without seasoning. I was appalled. How can you eat that without the yummy goodness of the fatty yolk…and no salt?, I asked him throughout our first year. It just didn’t seem worth it to me. Ian, however, was more concerned with the healthful benefits of the egg over its flavor.

Over the years, our conversations often turned to food, sustainable eating, and farming, and the egg became less of an issue. His mother, he once told me, was involved in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” a book about one family’s decision to eat only food produced in the place where they live. I assumed this was his community in Massachusetts, but I never asked. Ian was someone who grew up with the ethos of local eating, something that I am only just discovering.

Ian and I did not stay in touch after college, our lives shaped more by our divergent interests than the ones we shared. All the more reason I was so deeply affected today by the news of his death. Ian, you are in my prayers.

The Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg, for Ian

  • Place the egg in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Do not salt the water.
  • Over high heat, bring the water to a boil.
  • Once a rolling boil is achieved, set timer for 3 minutes and let the egg cook.
  • After 3 minutes have passed, remove from heat. Let the egg sit in the water for another 8 minutes. Then, remove from the hot water and run under cold water, about a minute.
  • Let sit in the refrigerator for a half hour to an hour for best peeling results.

I LOVERMONT: Ice Cream and Whoopie Pies

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I spent this past weekend in Greensboro, Vermont in a beautiful turn-of-the-century wood cabin on the lake, in the middle of the woods, blissfully disconnected from civilization (otherwise known as out of cell and internet range). What did I do to celebrate these facts? I indulged my sweet tooth.

A few highlights:

 Craving inspired by SAVEUR: a delicious Whoopie Pie

As discerning connoisseurs of sweet, Anna and I selected the whoopie pie from Connie’s Kitchen, instead of one of the other options, since Connie’s had about 10 ingredients rather than 35. We also picked up some of her delectable traditional doughnuts and ginger cookies, all on sale at the Willey’s General Store in town.

Sweet Cream and Cookies, only available the Ben & Jerry’s Factory Scoop Shop.

This bit of deliciousness was a cookie-heavy twist on one of my all-time favorite flavors. Even though I went to college in Middlebury, I never once made it up to the factory for a visit. So, on our way to a concert in Burlington, Anna and I stopped in for a treat. Although there was no time for a tour, there was plenty of time for a snack. And yes, this was a single scoop.

Really happy.

Dinner Party: Italian Night! Carbonara and a Twist

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Stevie has mentioned a few times that she was interested in learning Italian (she comes from Italian stock), so we finally decided to do our first cena italiana this past week. The idea was simple: cook an Italian meal, drink Italian wine, and speak as much Italian as we could, pointing and miming our way through it. I enlisted Toni to join us to keep the conversation going and to be an additional teacher in the room. Lesson #1 went well, with Stevie learning and recording a few key terms and present tense verbs in a little notebook I gave her, while assuming her usual duties of chef/sous-chef combo when we cook together.

And what did we eat? We decided a simple carbonara dish would be fun and easy, allowing us to focus on the language without having to worry about too much prep work. Since her butcher didn’t have any pancetta available, Stevie picked up some thickly-sliced coppa, the muscle of the pork right behind the back of the head, at the top of the shoulder. It was an interesting, meaty alternative to the usual fatty taste of the pancetta (whose closest cousin in American is bacon).

Stevie diced the meat into little cubes and threw it in a pan with a bit of butter. In the meantime, we put some spaghetti on to boil. I had previously bought some elegant pasta from Marlow & Daughters for a dinner party a few months back but never ended up using it — this seemed like the perfect time for it. I opened up the package to find that each spaghetto was slightly curled at one end: a handmade pasta that had been hung to dry and later cut. I was ecstatic… life really is in the details. While the sea salted water boiled, I began to separate the eggs. We’d consulted several carbonara recipes and ultimately decided we only wanted to use the yolks (no worries, I saved the whites for a yummy omelette).

We put Toni to work, grating the parmigiano. Everything had to be ready for the moment when the pasta came out of the water, since the heat of the noodles is what would cook the egg and create the cheesy “sauce.”

Everything came together in the pot, lightly coating each and every spaghetto. We noshed happily on way too much pasta with a bottle of Orvieto, a white wine from the eponymous town made from Trebbiano and Grechetto grapes. A slightly fruity and weighty white that is balanced with the acidity from the Trebbiano juice, it was an excellent complement to the eggy, meaty pasta we were consuming.

At this point, you might be wondering what the twist was. Toni buys melons almost by the dozen, and since one was reaching a high level of ripeness, I figured it was best to try something new with it, a change from fruit salad. Summertime screams prosciutto e melone to me — the perfect, light combination of salty and sweet — but as a result of the hot days we’ve been having, I’ve been eating it all the time. So why not take the traditional antipasto dish and make it into a dessert? In preparation for the meal, I made a canteloupe sorbetto a few days before:

I had Stevie pick up a few of the thinnest slices of prosciutto she could get. I proceeded to dry the meat in the oven to give it a harder consistency:

Then, once we’d begun to digest the pasta, I served the sorbet with pieces of prosciutto sprinkled on top. The same salty-sweetness that I love in the antipasto shone through in the dessert version. Ta da! A meal in reverse!

Sorbetto di Melone

  • 1 medium-sized canteloupe, diced
  • The juice of one lemon, freshly-squeezes
  • 2 tablespoons vodka
  • 1/2 cup sugar (shouldn’t need more if the melon is in season!)

Place the melon in the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Add the lemon juice, vodka, and sugar and process briefly, until blended. Place the mixture into the refrigerator until the mixture cools. Pour the chilled mixture into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn for 20 minutes. Transfer the sorbet to an airtight container and place in the freezer for 3 to 4 hours before serving.

Adapted from Alton Brown.

Morning Report: The Gulf Dead Zone

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I was appalled when I heard the report this morning on NPR about the expanding “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s an area of deep water in the Gulf where little, if anything, can live because of a steady stream of chemical run-off from industrial farming in the Midwest (the American “bread basket”) that runs down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico

Yes, it is frightening to hear about this dead zone expanding. Yes, I am happy that this issue is getting some national attention. I especially appreciated the analysis of government spending: even though there is some money to put toward “fixing” this problem, much more is spent in subsidies to keep agribusiness and industrial farming going… did you know your tax dollars are polluting the environment?

However, the part of the report that most irked me was the reference to this sort of industrial farming as “traditional.” What a joke, since industrial farming has only been around for the last 50 years, give or take. Traditional farming is what your local farmer does — raise animals and vegetables in a single, sustainable farm where all elements of the ecosystem benefit one another and do more good than harm to the environment.

I understand that producing food on the massive scale required to feed our population may not be able to be sustained entirely by this kind of farming (especially since farmers are decreasing steadily in number), but it is an insult to the institution to perpetuate the belief that our current, dominant food system is “traditional.”