Pistachio-crusted rack of lamb and mashed root vegetables with bourbon

For some reason lost over time, it's a tradition that we have lamb on New Year's Day. It's also a tradition that we try at least one new recipe, so if the lamb recipe is new, that covers both bases. So each fall I make sure to buy lamb from Sleepy Hollow at the farmers market, and then dig it out in time for New Year's. This year we sprang for rack of lamb, which is super pricey, but has the advantage that it's much more easy to cook well than other cuts.

Pistachio-crusted rack of lamb

Adapted from Bon Appetit, Dec.  2008

Ingredients

1 large rack of lamb (2½ pounds or so)

1 cup pomegranate juice

¼ cup dried currants

1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped

3 tablespoons butter

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

¼ cup chopped pistachios

¼ cup panko breadcrumbs

Method

In a small skillet, bring pomegranate juice, currants and garlic to a boil. Cook until liquid is reduced and syrupy. Transfer mixture to a food processor. Add butter, cut into chunks, and cinnamon and cumin. Puree mixture. Put mixture in a small bowl and put in the freezer briefly to slightly firm (or in the refrigerator if you’re not using it right away).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil. Place rack of lamb on sheet. Season with salt and pepper. Spread butter mixture over lamb. Sprinkle with pistachios and panko, pressing mixture into butter.

Bake about 30 minutes until done (when it registers 135 on a thermometer). Yes, you want it that pink. Let rest about 10 minutes before slicing.

Rating: Very nice. That pomegranate butter is amazing stuff. And that same treatment could work well on chicken thighs, I suspect, for a much less dire price point. 

Root vegetable mash with bourbon and butter

From Surdyk’s Drinks magazine

Ingredients

2 pounds rutabagas, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 pound carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 pound potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

4 ounces butter

1 ½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons bourbon

½ cup grated Fontina cheese

Method

Cook rutabagas, carrots and potatoes in separate pots with enough salted water to nearly cover. (They’ll take differing amounts of time to get done, so unfortunately, yes, you’re stuck with that many dishes.) Cook until tender, which might take a good 45 minutes. Drain vegetables and mash well with an electric mixer, or if you want a more pureed effect, use a ricer or food processor.

Melt butter in a small pan with salt, pepper and bourbon. Yes, you need that much bourbon or you won’t taste it over the rest of the ingredients. Pour liquid into mashed vegetables, stir well and serve.

Rating: Not bad. Butter, bourbon and cheese pretty much cover the vital flavor food groups. 

That let me use up a lot of veggies I bought at the last farmers market of the season. Next up I'll have to try this slow cooker recipe that uses up parsnips, turnips and mentions "herb beer butter." How bad can it be?

Wholegrain Wheat Bread, aka Real Bread

I was probably doomed to become a baker and cook. One of my earliest memories involves food preparation and the magic it can bring.

I was making mudpies in the sandbox, mixing the sand with water in those little aluminum pie tins that pot pies come in. I set three of them on one of the railroad ties that bounded the sandbox and trudged off with the watering can to the pump to get more water to make more pies. (Apparently I never did know when to stop.)

When I returned, there in place of the three mudpies were three cookies, spaced just so, as the mudpies had been. I still remember that sensation of wonder and disbelief. I knew it couldn’t be, but yet there they were, and the mudpies were gone. I was frozen in that moment, staring at them, until I glanced over to where Mother was peeking out the dining room window, relishing every moment. I don’t know what she did with the mudpies. But those cookies were oatmeal raisin, and they were still warm from the oven.

Is it any wonder that one of my earliest souvenirs from a family vacation was a cookie jar I named Ruff? It had a dog on it. Eventually I broke it. But I did make cookies to go in it, and no doubt an enormous mess in the kitchen.

I went on to make a great many more cookies in that kitchen, eventually graduating to making bread.  In the ‘70s, my mother got into yoga, the Whole Earth Catalog, Adelle Davis’ “Diet for a Small Planet,” and natural foods. She made copious quantities of a very sturdy whole wheat bread. We once each made a batch, stirring and kneading side-by-side on the counter because we needed four loaves instead of the usual two. It’s that bread, fresh from the oven and slathered with butter, that is the ultimate comfort food that I associate with my mother. Dave refers to it as Real Bread. All others are pretenders.

This weekend it was time to go for the therapeutic process of kneading real bread. I will think of my mother always when I make it, and when I glance around at my home filled with pretties she gave me along with the ability to appreciate them. And while enjoying a proper cup of tea in a beautiful cup. She once gave me a magnet adorned with a beautiful tea cup and the Barbara Pym-esque phrase that we could appreciate and truly understand: “In the autumn, the leaves on her tea cup were particularly vibrant.”

I realized that even several years ago I'd started to write about her in the past tense:

http://www.startribune.com/hi-mom/121464859/ 

http://www.startribune.com/the-holiday-treasure-chest/136012338/

 R.I.P., Mom. 

As my brother often said in a vaguely blasphemous phrase while passing food around the family dinner table, “This do in remembrance of Ma.” 

 

Wholegrain wheat bread

I'm not sure of the name of the cookbook this came from. It was a very slim volume of wholegrainish recipes with a brown cover that came out in the 1970s. 

Ingredients

7-plus cups whole wheat flour, divided

1 cup powdered milk

1/2 cup brown sugar, plus 1 tablespoon, divided

2 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 packages yeast

3 cups warm water (about 105 to 110 F, or bottle warm on your wrist)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Method

Blend 6 cups of whole wheat flour, powdered milk, 1/2 cup brown sugar and salt in a large bowl and set aside. 

In a large bowl, add 3 cups warm water to 1 tablespoon brown sugar and the yeast. Let proof about 10 minutes or so until the yeast has activated and the surface looks frothy.

Stir in half of the flour mixture into the yeast mixture, adding 1 cup or so at a time and stirring after each addition. Stir in the oil. Then add the remaining flour mixture 1 cup at a time. Add remaining 1 cup flour, and enough additional flour as needed to make a dough stiff enough to knead. Knead on a lightly floured board for 8 to 10 minutes, sprinkling in more flour if needed to keep it from being too sticky to handle. You're aiming for it to start to gain some elasticity and smoothness, although this bread is never going to reach the baby's bottom smoothness stage.

Put dough into a greased bowl and cover, turning once to grease it. Let rise 1 hour in a warm, draft-free spot. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a loaf and put into 2 buttered bread pans. Cover with a cloth and let rise 1/2 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake bread for 15 minutes at 400. Then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 20 to 25 minutes more. 

Makes two very dense loaves. It actually keeps fairly well, something I never knew growing up because it was never around that long before it was time to make more.

The Last Word, cocktail style

If you run across a drink recipe called the Last Word, I'm pretty sure you have to try it on New Year's Eve.  It's made with Chartreuse, a ridiculously expensive substance made by Carthusian monks that involves 130 kinds of herbs and flowers. As Tarantino said in "Death Proof ": "Chartreuse, the only liquor so good they named a color after it." And at that price, it should be. There's a yellow label and a green, and the green is even more dear and more alcohol-laden.

So as we usher out this dumpster fire of a year, here's

The Last Word
From Saveur

Ingredients

¾ ounce Chartreuse

¾ ounce maraschino liqueur (I used Luxardo)

¾ ounce gin

¾ ounce fresh lime juice

Method

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and serve. (Obviously this is easily scaled up for a pitcher for guests, since it's just equal parts.)

Rating: Dave's take: This could be dangerous. My initial take, this is pleasant. And then somewhere along the way you're cranking really, really, really super old ZZ. You know, before the stupid car.

And as we recap the year, I'm humored by the different takes on the best dishes of the year among these two publications.

Rick Nelson, Star Tribune

 http://www.startribune.com/the-top-10-twin-cities-restaurant-dishes-of-2016/408658755/

City Pages

http://www.citypages.com/restaurants/the-6-top-dishes-of-2016/408662035

And as we close out the year, here are 5 random food-related things I enjoyed:

 

Fwuffy! As fun to say as it is to eat. It's my favorite bread from the Brake Bread people. I got mine at the Midtown Farmers Market, but they also have a bicycle-based subscription delivery service.

The Italian Eatery (ie). Nice to have another dining option within walking distance, and especially one that's cozy comfortable.

 

The advent of city composting. I've got my own backyard compost bin where I zealously stow my peels and cores so they turn into gorgeous soil supplement for my garden. But it's great to have someplace to take the scraps I don't want to put back there, and best of all, they take food-soiled paper, like the parchment sheet above. Since I start nearly every recipe with the phrase, line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment, this makes me very happy and feel slightly less guilty.

 

The cranberry liqueur from Tattersall Distilling. I recommend it in a cosmo.

The fact that I work for a metro daily that still lists lutefisk dinners. That doesn’t mean I want to go to one, but it’s nice to see food traditions continue.

Looking ahead to next year, random things I might have to try:

Smoked gin. Saveur has the story, with the quote: “Just think what bacon does to a cheeseburger.”

http://www.saveur.com/esp-smoked-gin?src=SOC&dom=tw

Making my own bloody mary dip. Deena's Gourmet in St. Paul makes an addictive concoction I need to try to replicate.

Cinnamon roll pie crust. Do I need a reason?

Sum Dem Korean barbecue. This just opened nearby. Gotta love people who give it a try in the little hole in the wall places down the hill.

Happy New Year. May better things be ahead for us all.

 

Delicata squash pasta with sage and brown butter

 

As I was cooking this, Dave commented that it was cheating because it had nearly every yummy ingredient imaginable. I said, just wait until we add the cream. He said, there's really cream? Yep. Is there tasty cured pork meat product? No, but every tasty thing short of that goes into this dish.

Delicata squash pasta with sage and brown butter

Adapted from Rachael Ray EveryDay,Oct. 2016

Ingredients

1 delicata squash

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

1 pound bucatini

½ cup butter

20 fresh sage leaves, plus 1 tablespoon chopped leaves

2 tablespoons chopped rosemary leaves, divided

2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves, divided

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup grated Parmesan, plus shaved Parmesan for garnish

Method

Cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente.

Cut ends off of squash. Slice in half lengthwise. Scour out the seeds. Slice each half crosswise into ¼-inch slices. Toss squash with olive oil and five-spice powder.

Preheat oven to 425. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Put squash on sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes until very tender. (There’s no need to peel delicata squash as the skin will get tender.) 

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add sage leaves, half of rosemary and half of the thyme. Cook until sage leaves are crispy and butter is browned, about 5 minutes. Remove crispy sage leaves (bigger leaves will make this easier, otherwise, good luck) and set aside for garnish. Add cream and put on a low simmer until pasta is ready.

Drain pasta, reserving some liquid, and add to skillet along with remaining rosemary and thyme. Toss well and add  roasted squash and grated Parmesan, adding reserved pasta water as needed to make desired sauce consistency. Serve topped with reserved crispy sage leaves and Parmesan shavings.

Rating: Wow. Superb. Not what I usually say of a Rachael Ray recipe, many of which seem too shortcutty. But this was phenomenal. The original recipe called for three squash. I can't imagine why. And it used pumpkin spice, and I give five-spice powder the edge. But if that's what you've got on hand, I'm sure it would be fine. Very filling; serves 4.

Bonus points: It used up most of the sage from the window box planter we brought in for the winter. Sage does not like my basement hospitality. Can't say as I blame it.

Linguine with carrot ribbons, peppers and lemon ginger butter

 

Linguine with carrot ribbons and lemon-ginger butter

Adapted from Bon Appetit, August 2007

Ingredients

8 ounces linguine, fettucine or other long ribbon pasta

4 long thin carrots, peeled

¼ cup butter

Zest of 1 large lemon

1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger, or 1½ teaspoons powdered ginger

2 yellow, orange and/or red bell peppers, sliced into ¼-inch strips

2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Juice of half a lemon

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Method

Cook pasta until al dente according to package directions. Reserve some cooking liquid after draining.

Meanwhile, use a long peeler to shave carrots into ribbons. Heat butter in a large skillet. Add lemon zest and ginger; heat until fragrant. Add carrots and peppers, cooking until just tender.

Add most of the Parmesan cheese, lemon juice. Add drained pasta and toss, adding enough reserved pasta to make a sauce.  Serve garnished with remaining Parmesan and the parsley.

Rating: Fine, but fairly subtle flavorwise. Pretty, though. An excuse to use the Zyliss peeler I got to make zoodles before I broke down an bought a spiralizer. Having two tones of carrot colors helped with the looks.