My Plate or Yours?

Adventures in Braising II (Carnitas)

The other night we were having dinner with friends, talking about their old dog Fred, our old dog Zoë, and the 16 year old dog of a fellow food blogger who wandered through a door left accidentally opened and never came home. We exchanged sorrowful exclamations and some rueful grins over the bittersweet aging process which is afflicting us all.

Our friends left the room to get dinner on the table and I was lost in melancholy thoughts until my husband, lost in his own, heaved a sigh and said “So much loss!” Now he is not a sentimental guy and I was pleased to find us on the same wave-length for once. “What are you thinking about in particular?” I asked gently.

“The Ryder Cup and the football game, all in one day!” he expostulated, having abandoned Venus for Mars in a single bound.

I laughed myself silly. No wonder I love this guy. His inability to recognize the emotional currents that swirl through my life keeps me grounded and sane. In gratitude I decided to make him pork carnitas for dinner, something I had been promising, intending that I would do as soon as all the emotional currents subsided. The heck with waiting for that! The time was now.

Carnitas, of course, are nuggets of pork, simmered long and slow in bubbling lard til they are rich and browned and crispy and succulent. They are really delicious and very high on the heart-attack scale. I have actually been obsessed with carnitas recently ever since fellow food blogger Lisa aka the Homesick Texan responded to my post about braising pork in milk by mentioning a recipe for simmering carnitas in milk instead of fat. Boy that sounded good.

Capriole Farms Chevre Aperitifs

I am a fiend for cheeses, in general the stinkier the better. That barnyardy funk that some cheeses acquire after being washed with brandy or wine and stored away in a cave? It draws me like the aroma of truffles or baking bread, a powerful harbinger of good tastes to come.

But recently I’ve been revisiting an old cheese friend that is not at all stinky and I’m finding it mighty good too. At our Farmers Market, Judy Schad of Capriole Farms (who does sell an amazing cheese called Mont St. Francis  for those moments when only funk will do) has had bags of the adorable little cheeses that she calls chevre aperitifs. No bigger than thimbles, the aperitifs are perfect little mouthfuls of goaty tang. Judy taught me a long time ago that the best way to enjoy them is to marinate them in fruity olive oil and herbs with a little garlic, and when they’ve soaked up all the good flavor, to serve them with some crusty bread.

Never one to ignore a master’s advice, that’s what I’ve done. If you can’t get chevre aperitifs, any small goat cheeses will do for this recipe. Be sure to save the oil when the cheese is gone and use it for salad dressing. Fantastic.

(I originally wrote about Capriole Farms here, and about my near-religious experience this summer with their Old Kentucky Tomme and a wedge of sweet watermelon here. Feed Me Drink Me Girl up in Indy has also had Capriole cheese on her mind this summer.)

Judy Schad's Herbed Marinated Goat Cheese

Chevre apéritifs or other small fresh goat cheeses

Several roasted garlic cloves

½ teaspoon dried basil

½ teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon dried rosemary

good olive oil, or olive oil/canola oil mix

Place cheese in a sterile jar with garlic, basil, thyme, and rosemary. 

Cover with oil. Put top on jar and refrigerate. Allow to marinate for at least a week for cheese to absorb oil and flavor from herbs and garlic. 

Refrigerated, the cheese should be fine for several months. Allow to come to room temperature before use and serve as an appetizer or light lunch with crusty baguette and olives on the side, or on a salad.

Good Grapes

I think the world must be divided into two types of people – those who taste their grapes at the grocery store before they buy them, and those who glare at the grape-tasters as if they have caught a robbery in progress.

I am an unapologetic member of the first group and believe me, it’s not because I have criminal tendencies or because I just can’t stop myself from having a tempting little snack at some corporate giant’s expense. I taste my grapes before I buy because all too often I have arrived home with a gorgeous, expensive bunch of grapes imported from God-knows where that turn out to be insufferably sour or have no taste at all.

Man that makes me mad. Even with in-store tasting it’s hard to guarantee a delicious bunch of grapes anymore here in Indiana, so  mostly I have stopped trying.

But as I was about to leave the Farmers Market last Saturday, so weighted down with heavy end-of-summer vegetables that I could hardly haul the basket one more step, I stopped at one of my favorite stands to buy some of the sweetest, cutest, tiniest eggplants you have ever seen. Adding a couple of pints of those to my bulging woven basket, I caught sight of a display of table grapes.

Grapes in Indiana?  With the proprietor of the stand looking right at me, I was reluctant to subject them to my usual test so I just asked: these any good? Oh yes, she assured me, showing me the Simmons Winery logo on her tee shirt. Since local market rules don’t let them sell their wine, I had never realized that they were a winery, but maybe they knew what they were doing in the grape-department. I bought a bunch, and once they were legally mine, promptly popped one in my mouth.

Oh. My. God.

Adventures in Braising I

 

In general, I’m not a meat eater. I am not really a strict vegetarian either, but I don’t care for most meat and I adore vegetables, so that’s what I eat, and mostly, that’s what I cook.

Still, given that I won’t eat them, I’m really having trouble accounting for my current obsession with braising huge hunks of meat. I braise vegetables too, of course, but they are not transformed by slow moist heat in quite the same dramatic fashion that meat is. I love the idea that you can season a leg of lamb, sizzle it to a crusty brown in some butter, throw it in a heavy pot with a little broth and wine, shove the whole thing in the oven, and several hours later, voila. The meat is tender and falling off the bone, the sauce is rich and thickened, and the whole house smells fabulous all the while. Magic.

I’ve gotten fairly proficient at braising lamb since the obsession took hold. My favorite recipe, from Joanne Weir’s More Cooking in the Wine Country, involves 18 small artichokes and 40 cloves of garlic, as well as lemon juice, chicken broth, some Sauvignon Blanc and fresh thyme. I am totally addicted to the sauce that emerges from this braise. While meat doesn’t do it for me, I am a sauce and gravy junky, (I know, I know, you can’t have one without the other. I’m just explaining, not justifying) and this is one spectacular sauce with the garlic just melted into the winy juices and the artichoke hearts caramelized and sweet.