It Tastes Like Winter

I think chestnuts are an underutilized nut in the American diet. Previous to this fall, it had been at least two decades since I'd had anything featuring chestnut. Last month, while Donna and I were celebrating our Anniversary down in Williamsburg, we were served a chestnut icecream with our dinner. Tonight, Donna made a brusselsprout (another under-used food) hash for dinner that featured a heavy use of chestnuts.

There's just something nifty about chestnuts. They've got this lovely, delicate, earthy-sweet flavor. It lends itself well to both sweets and to savory food-stuffs.

Tonight's hash was something that Donna just winged. Basically, she took her usual brusselsprout hash, and enhanced it with white wine and chestnuts:


Ingredients:
• 10 chestnuts
• 2 pints fresth brussel sprouts (trim, cut in half, then slice thin)
• 6-8oz crimini mushrooms (sliced)
• Penzeys Fox Point seasoning
• dry white wine (recommend a sauvignon blanc)
• extra virgin olive oil
• butter (a good, rich, European-style is best)


Chestnut prep:

1. Slice an X into the flat side of each chestnut
2. Scatter nuts onto flat baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 15-25 minutes
3. Let cool enough to handle, then peel.
4. Chop chestnut meat into crumbles and set aside

Mushroom prep:

1. Sauté sliced mushrooms in large skillet in a mixture of olive oil and butter
2. Season with fresh-ground black pepper and liberal dash of Fox Point seasoning as they cook
3. Cook till browned
4. Remove mushrooms to bowl and set aside

Cook:

1. In same skillet, heat and melt 1Tbsp. of butter and 1 Tbsp. of olive oil
2. Add brussel sprouts and saute till they edges begin to brown (about 8 minutes)
3. Add half cup of white wine and let cook till wine is mostly gone.
4. Season to taste with more Fox Point.
5. Add in chestnuts and mushrooms, stir well and heat through
6. Serve

The hash worked very well with a nice, rare sirloin (in our household, we generally use bison, but standard beef would likely do, as well. Garnished with some locally-sourced dark cherry tomatoes. Served the meal with red wine (the Vicious Petit Sirah's cranberry notes were a very nice complement both to the hash and to the sirloin).

Brusselsprout/Chestnut Hash with Bison Sirloin

Wasted Weekend Redeemed?

Ok, so, this weekend has been an utter waste. I mean, two days into a three day weekend and all I've accomplished is sawing a lotta wood (figurative). At least Donna was able to do something constructive in the form of tonight's dinner: a pan-seared pork tenderloin that was then liberally sprinkled with Penzies Bavarian seasoning and then slow-roasted and served with a nice pan-sauce of white wine, shallots, chicken broth and dijon mustard. On the side, she served-up a nice mix of roasted julienned carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, italian seasoning, bosari salt, and garlic/pepper mix.

Right now, she's in the process of making pastry to house the moca/dark-chocolate custard she made, earlier. Gonna be eclairs for for desert and breakfast.

 

What to do With Extra Ground Meat?

Friday, we went to the Springfield farmers market and bought a 3½lb. buffalo shoulder. I trimmed it and chopped it into 1" cubes and Donna ground it up into fresh buffalo burger with the meat-grinding attachment on the KitchenAide. Last night was to be burger-night with the fresh-ground meat.

Donna baked up a batch of hamburger buns and chopped up a fresh-picked yellow onion.

I took the beef and the chopped onion, and mixed them together with some capers, the remains of a block of blue cheese and some wocestershire sauce and made up some nice, flavorful, hand-formed patties. Tossed them on the grill. I thinly sliced a couple of green zebra tomatoes Donna'd picked from the garden, that day, and topped the burgers with them and a little more blue cheese. I slathered the buns with some Löwensenf mustard and homemade ketchup and tossed on a leaf of hydroponic lettuce.

The results were rather good. However, 3½lb.of ground buffalo shoulder minus two servings of hamburger patties meant we had still had  2lbs of unused meat to sort out. So, tonight, Donna's mixing in some ground pork and making a bacon-draped meatloaf. House is already smelling pretty damned good. Still... Gotta figure out what to do with the remaining pound of meat.

Savoring the Future

As I sit here, digesting a nice meal of beer-boiled grilled bratwurst, Bratkartoffeln and finished with homemade applesauce, I look forward to the coming spring. We'll be ablt to both repeat and improve upon tonight's dinner.

We'll have restocked our supply of applesauce - made from the bounty of the fall farmers' markets (mostly, from Westmooreland Farms and their awesome apples). We'll hopefully still have wintered-over potatoes from the front garden (supplemented with potatoes from the Falls Church Farmers' Market). We'll definitely have onions - both the extremely assertive ones form our garden and from the local farmers markets. We'll be able to spice it up with mushroom accents from the guy that sells the Mother Earth mushrooms (at the Falls Church market). And, we'll, hopefully, be supplementing with our own asparagus. Toss in brats from Cibola (or even the one sausage maker), and it will be another gastronomic return to Heidelberg, Germany.

I think what I'm most looking forward to is the asparagus that Donna planted, this year. Even though, at first - particularly during the hot, dry part of the early summer - out in the front bed are five, thriving asparagus crowns. It won't be quite the Heidelberg (white) Spargel experience as, at least this coming first harvesting season, it will be grüner spargel. However, it's still something to look forward to. And, as the years go by, and the asparagus becomes more hardy, we can experiment with trying to get some of it to come up white.

Gotta Get a Real Pasta-maker

Another fine "Dinner by Donna":

• A main dish of spaghetti with meatballs and marinara sauce
  • Marinara was from the tomato sauce she canned last year, spiced up with fresh onions, mushrooms and herbs
  • Meatballs made from ground buffalo, veal and pork, seasoned and seared
  • Alas, the pasta was store-bought
• Fresh, made from scratch garlic bread
• A nice salad of fresh field greens (hydroponically-grown, but any ways), tomatoes, onions and cucumbers from the garden and homemade salad dressing
• Served with a nice glass of "Zen of Zin" red wine

Can you tell I'm married to a gawth? What with the black tablecloth and the pirate-themed, black linen napkins?

Adapt and Overcome

Dinner was a "make do" affair, this evening. Was expecting to make a nice steak salad. Had even pulled a fresh cherokee purple tomato from the garden for the purpose. Alas, after FOOM-starting the grill, I discovered that the steak was not a "salad steak" (typically a lean and/or tougher cut of meat). No, what I found, waiting for me in the fridge, was a buffalo ribeye steak.

Don't get me wrong, a ribeye is a fine cut of meat. Even one made from bison is still a nicely marbled, buttery piece of meat. But, it's not a salad steak. No. All that lovely marbling and lovely, buttery texture makes it a feature steak. It's a steak that you center a meal around. It's not a steak that you slice up thin and scatter through a larger, overall dish.

So, salad plans dashed, I had to make do. The grill was already starting to warm up, so, I couldn't make a proper baked potato. Didn't matter, we didn't have proper baking potatoes in the house, at any rate. However, we did have some mid-sized white potatoes. So, I took out a paring knife, stabbed it a few (dozen) times and tossed it into the microwave to "bake". The garden had just yielded up a big crop of serranos and other peppers, so, I grabbed a handful of those. I took the just-picked cherokee red and cut into thin slices and salted them. Donna had a bunch of mushrooms from this weekend's market, so, she chopped those up and sauteed them.

In all, for a "make do" meal, it was rather good. And, for being, essentially a "meat and potatoes" meal, it was nicely accented with various shades of reds and greens. I slathered the "baked" potato with butter and sour cream, topped the steak with the mushrooms, cut up some of the peppers and sat down to eat. Donna even snagged me a nice malbec to go with it.

A Dinner of Lobster Rolls

In the summer time, we like to make a dinner of the occasional, fresh made lobster rolls on homemade rolls. It's truly a combined effort: Donna or I dunk the live lobsters into the pot; I divest them of their shells; she makes the meat into lobster salad to be put onto the rolls.

Alive and kicking

Just out of the pot

First one's shell

First one's meat

Two lobsters' worth of shells and meat

The finished product

All in all, it's a rather tasty treat. We only do it once or twice a summer. Some years we do shrimp rolls, instead, but shrimp's prices are rather higher than normal, this year. It's a nice, light meal that goes well with the summer weather. Would have had (yet another) caprese salad, but, I forgot to do one up. Oh well, "tomorrow". Besides: we still have more lobster salad to kill, tomorrow. So, looks like leftovers for lunch.