Scott's Kitchen

Another Approach to Tri-Tip - with Romesco Sauce

Our 'Lazy-S' Easy Oven-Roasted Tri-Tip recipe is among the most viewed recipes here in Scott's Kitchen. Tri-tip makes a great meal (and wonderful leftovers for use over salad, on sandwiches, etc.) Depending on the time of year, you can easily oven-roast them or, when it's BBQ season, cook them on the Weber. Either way, they turn out great!

Here's a different approach to tri-tip (with a romesco sauce addition) by Mark Bittman who writes The Minimalist column for the New York Times. Bittman's technique involves pan searing the tri-tip (along with the ingredients for the romesco sauce) in a cast-iron skillet followed by finishing the tri-tip in a 500 degree oven. Here's his column about tri-tips, his receipe, and a 5-minute video showing him preparing it.

Bittman says that it can be hard to find tri-tips in New York - a problem we certainly don't have out here in California - where the tri-tip is a very popular cut of beef!

New Year's Eve Pasta - 2009 Edition

My wife made a wonderful pasta dish for tonight's New Year's Eve supper. She made it up as she went along - something she likes to do and is very good at! I tried to capture the process in real-time!

Here's the gist:

• Bring 6 qts water to a boil over high heat, add 2 Tbsp salt, add 1 lb fettucine. Cook al dente and drain pasta.
  
• While waiting for the pasta water to boil, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat.
• Add 3 diced shallots and 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes and saute quickly.
• Add 8-10 oz sliced cremini mushrooms, season with salt and pepper. Saute the mushrooms until softened, about 5 min.
  
• Add 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth, 5 cut-up pieces of cooked bacon, 1/2 lb thin, sliced asparagus and 6 Roma sliced tomatoes (peeled or peel after cooking a bit).
  
• Cook stirring gently for 2 minutes. Stir in 3/4 cup heavy cream (or 1/2 cup cream and 1/4 cup red wine). Immediately reduce heat and cook until thickened.

That's it - a very tasty pasta dish for New Year's Eve. Serve with a special red wine (we served ours with a wonderful Copain Anderson Valley Pinot Noir that was a Christmas gift from good friends)

Happy New Year! Best wishes for a wonderful 2010!

A Dry-Brined and High-Heat Upside Down Turkey

Merry Christmas!

Today, for our Christmas dinner 2009, we'll be cooking a 14-lb Diestel turkey that we've dry-brined this week using this recipe from an article in the Los Angeles Times. Dry brining requires thinking ahead - like three days ahead when the turkey needs to be salted and tucked away in the back of the refrigerator.

We'll be cooking the bird today using our high-heat upside down roast turkey recipe, a family favorite that produces wonderful results.

Friends are bringing a couple of side dishes to have along with the stuffing we'll be making. Yum! - getting hungry already!

Update: Just a quick note to report that the Christmas turkey turned out to be excellent - moist white meat, great flavor! Our little experiment in dry-brining the holiday bird was a big success! Thanks to Russ Parsons for his article and recipe!

Some Tips on Pinot Noir for Thanksgiving Dinner

Last week, the Wall St. Journal's Tastings column by Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher features a list of pinot noirs they recommend for Thanksgiving dinner.

While they personally say they prefer a great aged Cabernet Sauvignon with their turkey, many folks prefer the lighter Pinot Noir. They note that "Pinot Noir, at its best, has elegant, sometimes earthy tastes that would pair well with Thanksgiving dinner without adding yet another big, challenging taste to the table."

What's on their list? (Click here for the complete article):

• Au Bon Climat 2007
  
• Domaine Serene 'Evenstad Reserve' 2006
  
• Robert Mondavi Winery 2007 (2008 shown)
  
• Erath Winery 2007
  
• La Crema 2007 Sonoma Coast
  
• WillaKenzie Estate 'Estate Cuvée' 2007

We're also partial to the Navarro Pinot Noir Méthode à l'Ancienne from the Anderson Valley in Mendocino county. Navarro is one of our favorite wineries and their Pinot is a delight! Enjoy!

Are you doing the cooking the turkey this Thanksgiving and looking for a great recipe? Be sure to checkout our all-time most popular recipe: Scott's High Heat Upside-Down Roast Turkey Recipe!

Looking for something other than turkey? Here's another all-time favorite: Scott's 'Lazy-S' Easy Oven-Roasted Tri-Tips!

Scott's Perfect Charcoal BBQ Thick Cut Pork Chops

We love our Weber - an early model of the Performa. A while back we had this fancy indirect heating gas grill - but it just didn't provide much flavor for BBQing so we gave it away and bought the Weber over 10 years ago. It's been our regular fire ever since - IMHO nothing beats a hot charcoal fire for the best flavor.

On one of our morning walks last week, Chris Gulker started talking about his new Weber Performa BBQ and how he had cooked a pair of very tasty thick cut pork chops on it last weekend. Naturally, my ears perked up - pork chops are an old favorite but mostly pan fried with some sauerkraut, not BBQed.

Taking Chris' excellent results to heart, we tried our own version on the Weber tonight. The result was superb - just great - and simple. I was cooking two thick cut chops - about 1.7 lbs of meat that we had picked up at a local butcher yesterday (priced at $5.99-$6.29 a pound in our neighborhood).

Scott's Ultra Lazy Baby Back Ribs

We've got a wonderful local Penzey's Spices store here in Menlo Park that opened about six months ago. Yesterday afternoon, while the rest of the family was shopping nearby, I browsed Penzey's - with nothing particular in mind.

While looking around, I picked up one of their Early Summer 2009 catalogs and noticed the rib recipe inside the back cover. While I love to eat ribs, I've never really made them - for some unknown reason! I guess my perception was that they took a long time to cook and, in particular, on a BBQ you always had to worry about overcooking them, etc. Too much hassle.

Grilling Tri-Tip on the Weber Charcoal BBQ

Yesterday, we had a big family get together at our house - and grilled three tri-tip roasts on our Weber BBQ as one of the main courses. Roasting tri-tip in the oven is super easy - see my Lazy-S Oven Roasted Tri-Tip recipe) but it was a beautiful late Spring day and just called out for firing up the Weber and grilling instead.

For the meat, I picked up two plain tri-tips from our local meat market (Bianchini's Market in Portola Valley) along with one of their dark, marinated versions (they sell four different tri-tip marinated versions - tough choice!) In total there was about 6 lbs of tri-tip.

Strawberry Season!

Prompted by a post earlier this week on the Oliveto Community Journal titled "Lucero Strawberries Have Hit Their Peak", I headed out to the Menlo Park Farmers Market this morning to pick up 6 pints of Seascape strawberries from Ben Lucero - 3 pints for $9 today.

We're having a bit of a celebration at home today - and these very flavorful strawberries are on the menu. Yum!

Scott's Saturday Ground Turkey and Veggies Supper

A couple of weeks ago, I came across Elise Bauer's recipe for "Mom's Ground Turkey and Peppers" on her outstanding Simply Recipes web site. We made the recipe and enjoyed it very much.

This afternoon, with family company coming, we needed to put something quick together for Saturday supper - and, as it turned out, we had a package of ground turkey in the fridge.

We also had a package of Trader Joe's "Fire Roasted Vegetables with Balsamic Butter Sauce" in the freezer. (These veggies are also our favorite as a base for a quick chicken and rice stir-fry!)

So, we tried a new variation on Elise's Mom's ground turkey recipe - using these ingredients we had on hand - along with an 8 oz can of Muir Glen Tomato Sauce that was in our pantry. The result was great - in about 20 mins - with a bit more liquid/sauce than in Elise's original recipe. We served it over a package of Trader Joe's brown rice - so easy to cook in 3 mins in the microwave. Very tasty indeed!

Barley Soup With Mushrooms and Microgreens

Out of a can, a couple of my favorite soups are barley-based - either chicken or beef with barley, I'm not picky! Good flavor, good fiber - and there's something about barley that "beefs" up a soup in terms of chunkiness and flavor.

Recently, I came across this recipe in the New York Times for Barley Soup With Mushrooms and Kale - which I made in a modified form for dinner Monday evening last week - it was delicious!

Kale wasn't easy to find - and being a regular Trader Joe's shopper I had noticed they carry a small box of "microgreens" - so I substituted those for the kale.

Trader Joe's also sells a dried mushroom medley (which includes some porcini mushrooms) which I used to replace the dried porchini's ($1.99 for the medley vs $5.99 for the pure dried porcinis!) I also had a cup of beef broth left over so it went into the soup along with a quart of chicken broth instead of just chicken broth. Otherwise, I pretty much followed the rest of the recipe.

Scott's Sunday Afternoon Braised Short Ribs with Pasta

This is a perfect recipe for a lazy Sunday afternoon! The short ribs need about 3 hours to cook - so start around 2 PM and you'll be ready for a great dinner about 5:30 or 6 PM. Have a bottle of good Zinfandel handy - it's a perfect match to this dish!

The inspiration for this recipe came from Giada De Laurentiis - but I made a bunch of modifications - basically to make it simpler and easier. I really don't like recipes that use amounts that result in wasting portions of ingredients you buy in standard size packages. So, I adjusted - and simplified using some Trader Joe's items - and the result was great!

2009 Recession-Era Slow-Roasted Roast Beef

For some weird reason, earlier this week I happened across an old Cooks Illustrated article about Slow-Roasted Beef (link works for those with subscriptions to their online edition).

Perhaps because of the current state of the economy or who knows why, I found the recipe particularly interesting - as it described a cooking technique for cheap beef roast cuts (eye-round, etc.) that made these normally tough roast cuts of beef turn out tender and delicious.

Adjusting the Williams Sonoma Cooking Probe Thermometer

This post goes in the "notes to self" category. We have a Williams-Sonoma Cooking Probe Digital Thermometer - and lost the manual eons ago. This thermometer was apparently actually made by Polder and private labelled to Williams-Sonoma.

Anyway, it's the one with the 3 foot long cord to a probe that goes in the oven and into the meat. The problem I have with it is the somewhat arcane user interface it has for setting a different alarm temperature than the various defaults it comes pre-programmed with for the various types of meat. So, here's how you do it!

Using the Meat button, scroll to the UI page. Hold down the Memory button until the Alert temperature starts blinking. Then, using the up/down (+/-) keys, set the temperature you want for the alert. Hit the Memory button again to store the new value, turn on the Alert switch, and you're now set.

Happy cooking! ;-)

Saturday Supper: Roast Beef & Balsamic Vegetables

Earlier today we picked up a copy of one of those "Best of Fine Cooking" issues at the local market that included a recipe that caught our eye: Roast Beef with Balsamic Vegetables.

This is one of those super easy Saturday or Sunday afternoon dinner dishes. Basically, you slice a red onion, cut small red potatoes in half, mix them in some olive oil, rosemay, kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and balsamic vinegar and combine with a well seasoned (kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, rosemary) beef roast in the same 9x13 Pyrex dish.

I went shopping early this afternoon for the "beef rump roast or top round roast" that the recipe called for. The butcher at our favorite local market (Bianchini's Market in Ladera/Portola Valley) said he'd be happy to cut one of either of those for us but instead recommended their sirloin tip roast. Never one to turn down a professional's recommendation, I bought a 3 lb sirloin tip roast and it turned out to be a great choice.

The original recipe called for fennel - but we don't particularly like the fennel taste so we just left it out. We agreed that the next time we make it we'd either add more red onion or add shallots instead of the fennel. Not that it needed either - it was delicious the way we made it without the fennel! [Update: a friend suggests throwing in a few beets to roast as well - great idea!]

Update: Baked Penne using Whole Wheat Penne

I made the Baked Penne with Sausage, Beef and Red Wine Sauce recipe that I posted last weekend again today - this time substituting whole wheat penne pasta for the traditional penne.

While whole wheat pasta is undoubtedly healthier, we all seemed to agree that the original version of this particular recipe was preferable from a taste standpoint.

If you're into the "nuttiness" of whole wheat pasta, you'll probably find the substitution works just fine - otherwise, stick to the original recipe!

At the local market I also noticed that DeCecco makes a spinach penne - called "penne rigate con spinaci" - we might try that next time! Note that DeCecco doesn't make a whole wheat penne.

Baked Penne with Sausage, Beef and Red Wine Sauce

This baked penne dish has quickly become a favorite in our household - we first made it last weekend - and, in this modified version, again today.

It's a great comfort food dish. Takes me about an hour to prepare it from start to serving. The inspiration for this recipe came from Lynne Char Bennett's column in the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Dry Creek Zinfandel makes a penne-wise partner" - January 23, 2009.

I've modified the recipe to a) reduce the mushrooms, b) add red wine to the sauce, and c) simmering the sauce longer to reduce the extra liquid (from the wine addition) and concentrate its richness - along with some other minor tweaks. But the core of the recipe remains Bennett's.

Recipes on FriendFeed

I've been playing quite a bit recently with FriendFeed - and find that FriendFeed's Rooms feature is very interesting and useful. With Rooms, you can create a place where you can share things of common interest among Room members - including being able to comment on them, etc. Rooms on Friendfeed can be either public or private - and they have their own RSS feeds.

I've setup a public room on FriendFeed called Scott's Kitchen Recipes as a trial. I'll be posting interesting recipes there that I find across the web. If you're interested, join the room and then add you own links and comments! Or follow the activity in the room's RSS feed.

Food, Wine in Oakland's Rockridge District

If you're ever in Oakland's Rockridge district looking for some great food and wine, be sure to read this post on my personal blog about Market Hall and Oliveto's! Wonderful places.

Comfort Food: Baked Penne with Meat, Mushrooms and Cheese

This Friday's San Francisco Chronicle's Wine section carried the latest "Pairings" column by Lynne Char Bennett titled "Dry Creek Zinfandel makes a penne-wise partner". Zinfandel is among our favorite red wines (along with Syrah and Shiraz from Australia's Barossa appellation) - so the article caught my eye.

Included in Bennett's column was a recipe for "Baked Penne with Meat & Mushroom Sauce" which we made - with minor variations - tonight.

Her recipe minimizes some of the fat that might otherwise be present - we used 97% lean ground beef, for example, when we cooked it and the mushrooms help extend the flavor along with the herbs that simmer into such a flavorful sauce.

Turns out this recipe was a real family crowd pleaser - we all really liked it, helped ourselves to a couple of servings, etc. We served it along with a simple Caesar salad - yummy! We paired a Ridge 2006 Dusi Ranch Zinfandel with the penne - a great combination!

We'll certainly be making the baked penne again - and are already looking forward to some left overs tomorrow night!

Apple Cider Braised Chicken

A friend said he was making braised chicken for a family get together tonight - which naturally got me interested in exploring recipes for braised chicken!

I came across one - a modified Food & Wine recipe - at The Kitchen Sink. I've always loved apple cider - and this one looked interesting. So, we made our own version earlier this evening and really loved all of its flavors. We paired the chicken with some sauteed vegetables with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh lime juice - yum!

Restaurant Review: Red Lotus (Portola Valley)

Tonight we headed over to Portola Valley's Red Lotus restaurant - about 5 minutes from home. We got there early (5:30 PM) when the place was empty but by the time we left (6:45 PM) there were already a few folks waiting for tables. Red Lotus is a small restaurant - seating perhaps 35-40 people. It apparently also does a robust takeout business as well. Here's their Yelp listing.

A Different Take on Hamersley's Roast Chicken Recipe

Yesterday, for our New Year's Day dinner, we tried a different take on Hamersley's Roast Chicken recipe - one of our all time winter favorites. If you're ever in Boston, you just have to go get the real thing at Hamersley's Bistro!

Restaurant Review: Red Lantern (Redwood City)

With some friends, we went to a late afternoon movie yesterday and followed that with dinner at the Red Lantern - our first time but a multiple repeat for our friends who recommended it calling the cuisine "Asian fusion". The room is striking - very high ceiling, red lanterns hanging, and tables with reasonable separation between them.

Aunt Maxine's Strawberry-Blueberry Spinach Salad

We had this special - and delicious - Strawberry-Blueberry Spinach Salad with our ham and tri-tips on Christmas Eve this year. The combination of flavors is just amazing! This is a delicious and easy to make spinach salad that everyone will enjoy.

Christmas Day Roast Pork Loin with Apples/Shallots

For years, we've enjoyed a roast pork loin recipe titled "Roast pork loin with roasted apple compote" that was originally published in Barbara Kafka's cookbook "Roasting-A Simple Art".

Much of Kafka's book involves roasting at high heat - typically 500 degrees - and her recipe of coating the pork loin in mustard, salt and pepper at the start and then roasting with apples at that high temperature has always worked out well for us. Sometimes (depending upon how clean your oven is), roasting at that high a temperature can result in some smoking - so it takes some care.

On this Christmas Day, though, we're trying some variations - something a bit different.