Happy Earth week! I’d like to share a classic Filipino dish with you called nilaga. It is a term used for any type of meat braised with whatever vegetables is available. Don’t let its simplicity deceive you, this dish is full flavored and so satisfying on a cool day. Here at Driftless Appetite, we try to cook food made with as many local ingredients as possible. I can say that everything on this plate is from around here. The oxtail was from Christy (who bought a whole cow last year). The cabbage and the gorgeous purple potatoes were from my friend Kelly at King’s Hill Farm. The leeks, carrots, and celery were purchased at Willy St., and the garlic and chives were from the garden.
Continue reading Beef Oxtail Nilaga
Good morning everyone, I know it has been awhile since our last post. Keith and I turned the big 3-0 this spring. We celebrated by traveling to London, the English countryside (where we got to visit with some of Keith’s family), New York City (with some favorite people) and the colorful patchwork that is Brooklyn. On our return, I was surprised with a 50′s food themed birthday party by our SW Wisconsin friends. There was something called “Beanie Weenies”, some kind of Cool-Whip dessert, Betty Crocker meatloaf, and other casseroles. It feels great to be back home, take time for tea, and to bake in my cozy kitchen. A bit of snow fell last night but that didn’t stop me from going to the garden. Several garlic plants have come up, the chives are slowly pushing up the leaves that covered it last fall, and the fists of rhubarb have started to uncurl.
The Scent of Lemon and Vanilla
Continue reading Lemon Poppyseed Cake
Yum, right?
Until recently, the only member of our household who had eaten squirrel was Oliver, our dog. And, despite his best efforts, the only one he ever managed to catch had already been dead for a while. But one day, Leslie found one of those “100 things you have to eat before you die” lists online (this one, I believe) and filled it out. She had eaten almost all of them, only coming up 5 or 6 things short. One of those things was squirrel. A few days later I was telling a coworker, Dave, about this list and he mentioned if we wanted some squirrel, his son Casey would be glad to hunt some for us. And so, before we knew it, we had squirrels in the freezer. Continue reading Squirrel
I’ve been on a fermented food kick lately. I’ve made some sourdough baguette, bagels, and boule with starter, flavored liqueurs, and kimchi. Kimchi is a kicked up pickled cabbage and happens to be the national dish of Korea. It is made mostly with napa cabbage (sometimes with other vegetables like radishes, leeks, and carrots) along with a very generous amount of garlic, Korean chilis, ginger, and fish sauce. It is unapologetically bold, to say the least. In fact, many Korean households have a special fridge for the stuff. I usually triple bag my jars and rinse the outside of the jar each time I open it. A single droplet can flavor everything in your fridge. Kimchi can easily be found outside of Asian grocery stores. I’ve seen jars of the stuff at Metcalfe’s , Whole Foods, and Willy Street but you just can’t beat the home-made stuff. I guarantee you will be hooked.
I had been planning on making kimchi ever since I found Korean pepper (gochugaru) seeds from Dr. Dave of Midwest Chili Peppers based in Madison (who I first learned about from my friend Denise of Digging in the Driftless). I started the seeds indoors then planted them in my summer garden but only got a dozen of peppers from 4 plants that survived. I’ve also got my one Korean friend, Jikyung, who has eaten so much kimchi that it probably runs through her veins. That would make her an expert. She has also watched her mom make a lot of kimchi. The weekend before the new year Jikyung brought some dried and roasted Korean peppers from her mom, some fish sauce, and something called saeujeot (salt fermented young shrimp). Hard core kimchi makers use sauejeot or even fresh oysters but you can stick with just the fish sauce.
Can You Smell It?
Continue reading Kimchi
Here is another dish that is guaranteed to warm you up this winter, Nigella Lawson’s Slut’s Spaghetti. Spaghetti alla puttanesca originated from the island of Ischia in Southern Italy, made with a combination of cooked tomatoes, anchovies, garlic, black olives, chilies, and olive oil. Puttanesca is derived from the word puttana, a colloquialism for “prostitute”. Might I add, it is a very easy and a fairly cheap dish to make!
Continue reading Nigella’s “Slut’s Spaghetti”
Here’s another easy winter dish for you. All you need are some leftovers (mine were from the Serendipity Lamb Tagine), a bit of cheese, and herbs. Of course you can easily use pre-made pastry but I think making your own pie crust would be more delicious and satisfying. I have not been very lucky with pie crust in the past but it finally clicked this year. Just check out this rhubarb pie I made in 2009. How awful, right? I’ve learned that I must follow the recipe (harder for me than most to do), not to handle the dough too much, dive into it with positive energy, and give it time to rest. It also doesn’t hurt to turn to Julia.
Julia Child’s Galette Dough
RECIPE
Ingredients
- 3 T. buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream
- 1/3 c. ice water
- 1 c. all purpose flour
- 1/4 c. yellow cornmeal
- 1 t. sugar
- 1/2 t. salt
- 7 T. cold, unsalted butter cut into 6 to 8 pieces
Mix the buttermilk and ice water in a small bowl. In a bigger bowl mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Incorporate the butter using your hands, letting the flour and butter mixture fall through your fingers. You will get different size lumps (the size of corn kernels, rice, and breadcrumbs). Add the buttermilk and water mixture into the dough and handle until you can form a large ball. It should only take a couple of minutes. Wrap it in plastic and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Flour your counter and dough generously and roll it out. I used a 6 inch cast iron pan but you can make a free form pie if you wish. Preheat the oven to 400 °F.
Now I leave you with a bit of food porn. Happy Monday!
Filling: lamb, potatoes, carrots, caramelized onions, ricotta and parmigiano cheeses, and thyme
Continue reading Meet My Meat Pie
I read a few days ago that this is supposed to be the most depressing week of the year with the upcoming Monday being the worst day, “Blue Monday”. In addition, it will be a frigid 2 °F with wind chills getting to negative 20. A leftover from our holiday celebrations was a bottle of Serendipity from New Glarus. Because of the low yield of cherries in the past season the company was not able to make a lot of the cherry ale ( Belgian Red). With a little improvisation they mixed what amount of cherries they could get along with Wisconsin apples and cranberries. The result is a delightful drink and my new favorite. One of the most satisfying ways to warm-up on a cold winter’s night is to prepare a hearty meat and potato dish. Add a few glugs of booze for a little cheer.
Continue reading Serendipity Lamb Tagine
Leslie has been on a tagine cooking kick recently. Lots of meat, lots of vegetables, not so many carbs. It’s not really working for me though. Keith without carbs is not someone you want to know. At work yesterday the deprivation finally became too much and I was hit with a craving for bagels. Bad. But I couldn’t convince Leslie to go into Madison that night, so we had to make them ourselves. A quick search turned up a nice recipe on Serious Eats (originally from Jo Goldenberg’s by way of Bernard Clayton). We didn’t follow the recipe precisely (that’s not an option when Leslie is involved) but we stuck pretty closely. The biggest differences were that we used molasses instead of malt syrup to boil the bagels, and we boiled them a bit longer and baked a bit less then the recipe calls for. We gave them a minute and a half in the water and 20 minutes in the oven. Next time I would add 5 minutes to our bake time though, as the recipe suggests.
Continue reading Everything Bagel
One of the best things to get as a gift in the winter is a box of citrus fruits. It is even better when it is picked by a wonderful friend right from their family’s backyard. “She Who Must Not Be Named” must remain so because apparently you cannot mail fruit out of Florida except when you order from those big companies with the shiny catalogs. Thank goodness it went through!
“The Box of Shoes”
Continue reading Orange & Dunbarton Blue Salad
A couple of years ago, I talked about The Pink Cookies. Keith’s family has been baking it up for Christmas for a few generations. Anyway, I’ve gotten pretty good at making them so I’m now going to contribute a variation. I hope the family approves! It is the same recipe for the dough, miniaturized, dipped in green tea white chocolate, with colorful sprinkles. These would make great treats to celebrate Chinese New Year on February 10th!
Continue reading Green Tea White Chocolate Kisses
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