The War on Waste.

Hello all!

This past week has been an experiment for me. I decided I would, with the groceries I had and the few I bought, waste absolutely nothing within a 7 day span. While I dumbassedly forgot to document this time with photos, I will take this week's entry to cover some of the more important concepts I implemented, learned, or tried.

First- is it rotten?

For starters, I love scallions. If my entry on ginger scallion sauce wasn't enough to convey this fact, just know I always have some on hand. Unfortunately, this sometimes means I have a little too many scallions on hand, and some get pushed to the bottom of the veggie drawer or the back of the fridge. When I go to look for them 3-4 days later, I find them wilted and covered in a layer of slimy evil. This week was no exception. However, there's a funny thing with onions and their relatives- they're made in layers. After cutting/peeling away the outer layer or two of the scallion and a quick rinse, we have perfectly useable and tasty scallions again! In addition, for those of you lucky enough to have a window box or garden, here's a handy tip. Take the white root end of your scallions (the bottom inch or so) and plant them. In a couple weeks, you'll have fresh new homegrown scallions!

Okay, enough about my scallion love affair. This peel and wash method works with all members of the onion and leek family.

What about meat?

We all know how it goes- you pull something out of the freezer, set it in the fridge, and then we forget about it or just don't have time to get around to cooking it. The bad news is once meat is gone to the dark side, there's no saving it. the good news is you have an excellent litmus for detecting when something's actually gone funky. Whenever you're in doubt, stick your nose close to the meat in question and take a good whiff. If it smells sour or, well, rotten then you know your course. Now technically with some meats you can cut off the outer parts and still have good meat in the center... However, unless you're really willing to deal with the consequences, I say avoid it. You're playing with fire. Methods like dry-aging or controlled fermentation have just that- control. Your fridge, while it stays generally cold, has a much greater variable than the facilities used to handle meat in that way.

What about fruit and non-onion veggies?

This section is easy to explain. Wrinkles, light wilting, or a little bit of brown spots or edges does NOT mean your veggie/fruit is rotten. Again, use your nose. If you honestly can't stomach eating a peach with a brown spot (cut out the brown spot, but the rest of the peach is perfectly good) or a lightly wrinkled tomato, then use your friend the blender to turn them into a puree or liquid for a sauce, smoothie, or even as an ingredient for some baked goods. A soft orange, for example, does not mean the juice is bad. Mold, on the other hand, is a better indication of rot, but even then the moldy sections can be cut off and tossed, leaving a perfectly good half or so of your ingredient. Too many people just throw away the whole thing because they aren't willing to do a little knifework.

That covers what we waste by rot. How about what we waste by prep?

This is something we're all guilty of. How often do we throw away bones from chickens, pork shoulders, or the like? how many times have we cut off the ends of onions, the tops of tomatoes, or the leaves of celery and thrown them straight in the trash? Next time you have a veggie scrap or a bit of meat, don't think about it as something you'd just open up and chomp into, but think about if there's any bit of goodness you can coax out of this little nub or peel or what have you. Most veggie bits can be added to stock, bones and meat scraps as well. The only thing I don't add to my stock are chicken giblets, since some of the parts can give off a weird taste when stewed. They are fine roasted for a gravy, or as part of a salad! For containment, keep two bags in your freezer- one for veggie scraps, one for meat scraps. Whenever you have scraps, load them in. On stock day, empty your bags into the pot and go to town!

The list goes on. Stale bread? make croutons. Little bit of leftover pork loin or beef? Pair with some instant ramen, chicken stock and chopped scallions or greens for a quick Asian-styled lunch. Bacon fat left over from cooking your breakfast? reserve it and cook just about anything in it to add a nice smoky flavor to your ingredient.

Some things do get away from us, and have to be tossed. That is a tragedy, but with just a little use of a knife, plastic bag, window box, or oven, we can save money and waste less food. Good for you, good for the environment, and good for cooking.

Until next time, the nose knows.

The kabob caper.

With warmer weather arriving here in B-more, I decided to whip out the grill. Why? Because it isn't spring until I grill something.  Looking through my fridge and freezer for grillables, however, I dug to the bottom and found an econo-pack of London Broil that I'd completely forgotten, or pretended to forget, about. I may have been avoiding using this cut- London Broil gets a bad rap which isn't entirely undeserved. It usually cooks tough, doesn't have great beefy flavor, has almost no tasty fat, and what it does have is the one kind of connective tissue that doesn't break down with slow cooking.

Well, shit.

Today, though, I decided to take up the challenge, following the logic that a hot sear on the grill may be just what the meat needs to stay tender- cooking only to rare or medium rare. What to do about the lack of flavor... If only there was some way to infuse flavor into the meat, while keeping it moist and tasty. Maybe a liquid...

IT'S MARINADE TIME.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a marinade is some mixture of liquid and aromatic ingredients (herbs, garlic, ginger, peppers, etc) which you soak your meat or veggies in to infuse their flavors. This is also a good option if you need to tenderize the meat (by adding an acid) or add fat (by adding oil). Techniques vary here- some say the meat needs to be "tenderized" (read- hit with a hammer), others that the meat needs to be punctured, and so on and so on. We're not going to worry about that, and outside of very specific recipes, I wouldn't do any hammering or puncturing as standard practice.

What we will do is cut the meat into cubes for kabobs. This allows for more surface area in contact with our marinade, thus more of our marinade gets into the meat. Make sense? good. Another nice thing about marinades, is they make for incredibly easy recipes. combine stuff, let it sit, then cook it. Amazing.

So, in our marinade, we want vinegar to try and tenderize the meat a bit, and olive oil to make it a little richer. Mediterranean cuisine integrates these two ingredients rather nicely, so let's stick with that. Some pepper flakes, fresh herbs, a touch of garlic... yeah, good times. 

However, it turns out this was to be a learning experience for me too. 

After building a nice hot fire on my grill, searing the meat after a full night of marinating, I bit into one of my kabobs (though the technical term for these particular morsels is Spiedies) and... still couldn't chew through the tough fibrous meat. for a moment, I was at a loss. I couldn't figure out what happened, or why. More importantly, I had 4 lbs of cooked London Broil that, as is, I physically couldn't eat. I'd solved the flavor conundrum, but not the toughness. Time to put my nose back to the grindstone- there was no way in hell I ccould let that much effort and food go to waste. Thankfully, this leads to point number two of the day- slicing on the bias.

Now slicing meat has one cardinal rule- Cut across the grain. This means that the "lines" of muscle that make up your meat generally run one way, and your knife should cut across them, not with them. However, one tip that can make your slicing results even better for flat cuts of meat (not long round pieces, like tenderloins or rib roasts) is called cutting on the bias. It's a little hard to accurately convey this in text, so take a look here-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKgGlpe45T0&feature=related

(4:40 is the demo of cutting on the bias. I strongly recommend you check out the whole video, though. Don't get too caught up on how many knives he has, a chef's knife cuts on the bias perfectly well.)

What isn't explicitly said here is slicing across the grain on the bias helps to make tough pieces of meat easier to chew. So, what began as kabobs (which would still work plenty well with pork, lamb, or plenty other cuts of beef) we now convert into thin slices for a salad. 

Here's the marinade and grill recipe. All that changes is how you cut the meat. If you want to make a London Broil for salad, don't bother cubing the meat beforehand. Just cut the whole steak after it's cooked.


Spiedies-

1 1/2 lb trimmed pork loin or lamb
3/4 C olive oil

1/4 C White wine vinegar
3 tbsp mint, chopped
3 tbsp oregano, chopped
3 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp chili flakes
2-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

After chopping your aromatics and cubing your meat, combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Cover, refrigerate and allow to sit 3 hours to overnight.

In the meantime, if you are using wooden/bamboo skewers, SOAK THEM IN WATER.

Remove your meat from the marinade, and skewer. 4-5 pieces per skewer is usually enough to ensure even cooking.

Prepare a fire on your grill.

Grill for 5-6 minutes, then flip and cook for another 4-5 minutes, depending on the size of your cubes.

Enjoy as is, or on some nice crusty bread!

For the salad alternative, slice meat thinly on the bias after allowing the meat to sit and rest for 10 minutes. Place over spinach, cannelini beans, and fresh red bell pepper. The nicest part- the juices from the meat make an excellent dressing all on their own!

Until next time, stick it to 'em.

BURGER TIME FUN TIME!

Howdy all! Sorry for the late update, this has been quite the hectic time.

I am on a quest. I seek to right a wrong unleashed upon humanity, one that is rife with injustice. I quest... to show people that turkey burgers can, in fact, be tasty and exciting! Too long has this noble creation been subject to bland preparation and trite toppings. It has been packed with bread crumbs, doused in hot sauce, and had more and more stuff thrown on and in it with no thought to what this meat actually is.

NO MORE, I SAY!

So, with ground turkey finding its way into my fridge this week, I decided to build a better burger. 

Now I won't lie- lean ground turkey is not exactly bursting with flavor in its own right. With the right touches of stuff, though, that flavor gets brightened, lifted, and allowed to shine. We need- some fat, some heat, and some zing.

Fat- comes in one of two forms here- bacon fat, or (for those who can't or won't eat bacon) a touch of olive oil.

Heat- for those of you unfamiliar with the sriracha family (sriracha, sriracha chili garlic sauce, and sriracha sambal), I strongly suggest you pick up a bottle or three. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it. In this case, I used sriracha sambal, but any of the three will do just fine.

Zing- Garlic and Worcestershire sauce. 'Nuff said. (note- if you're using the chili garlic sauce (comes in a jar, not a squeeze bottle), go light on the garlic here. Unless lots of garlic is your thing. Which is perfectly cool.)

Okay, so now we've got some tasty patties, but that's only half the battle. What do we put on these little pillows of meaty heaven?

Step back for a second.

Let's think about flavor. What makes something tasty? It's not any one thing, but a combo of things. Sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami. (umami is a flavor that kinda defies a single word description. Think... hearty. The satisfying flavor you get from a piece of meat, or a sauteed mushroom, for example. Fulfilling. Something that has body.) Other things help too (e.g. smoky flavor can add a sense of umami, spicy things can make the taste buds more receptive to flavors) and of course, think about how what you're adding meshes with the big picture (aka- just because you can put pears and sea bass together, doesn't mean you should).

So we have some good umami from our meat and fat. We have a portion of our salty as well, and we'll get a touch of bitter from the sear the meat will develop as it cooks. 

So first, let's just add some bacon to the tops of our sliders. It'll up that smokiness and umami from the burger, and if you're adding bacon fat to your burgers, you probably fried some bacon for that end anyway. Apple goes with bacon quite well, so we'll saute some apple to bring out its sweetness. Sour... nothing like a good smear of dijon mustard. Last but absolutely not least, a slice of cheddar style cheese (in this case, Beecher's flagship cheese) helps to tie everything together. (turkey, apple, bacon, and mustard all go well with cheddar cheese, so adding it will help to tie all these flavors together).

My one hiccup? No burger buns. Luckily, I had some baguette on hand. cut that into little round slices, and now our burgers will be sliders!

With that, it's burger time.

Turkey Burger Sliders-

1 lb lean ground turkey

1 1/2 tsp sriracha

2 medium sized cloves garlic, Finely diced.

2 strips bacon (or 2 tbsp olive oil)

1 apple (anything but red delicious), chopped

1 tsp worchestershire

dijon mustard

8 round slices baguette

8 small slices cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350.

In a pan (anything but nonstick), fry your bacon over medium heat, flipping when brown. When bacon is done, take pan off heat. Remove bacon from pan and reserve. let fat in pan cool slightly.

In a medium bowl, combine turkey, sriracha, garlic, 1 tbsp bacon fat or oil, and Worcestershire. Mix together thoroughly. form 8 small patties (or do like I did, form 2 large patties and then quarter them). Season generously with salt and pepper.

place pan with remaining fat (or remaining 1 tbsp oil) on medium heat. When hot, place burgers in pan. (if they don't sizzle, the pan isn't hot enough. remove the burgers and wait until it is). Do not move or twist the burgers for 3-4 minutes. Then flip burgers (you'll know you did it right if the burgers lift off the pan easily. if they come apart, they weren't done searing on that side). Let sear for another 2-3 minutes, place cheese on burgers then transfer to oven. Burgers are done when juice runs clear and center is no longer pink. Set aside to let rest for 5 minutes.

Place pan back on medium low heat, add apples, stirring frequently until soft and lightly browned. Don't bother cleaning the pan beforehand, you want the apples to pick up some of the burnt crusty bits left over from your burgers

Cut bacon to size, and assemble your burgers! Smear a little mustard on the bottom, and enjoy!

Until next time, you got nothin' on me, turkeys.

PS- Here's a technique to make life a lot easier. Peeling garlic is a pain. Instead, take your cloves, place them under the flat of a knife, or a pan (or in this case, a bench scraper), and then give your flat surface a good downward whack!

Don't aim to crush the clove, but no need to be gentle.

Voila! the cloves separate nicely from the skin. They may crack or crush a little, but not enough to be a problem. Chop away!