Ribeye Madness (Round 2)

The ribeye that I'd removed from our freezer the other day required multiple days to be fully consumed. Tonight we began round two of our battle with the enormous ribeye.



But first we had two weeks worth of salad greens from the farm that I combined with grape tomatoes, croutons, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and shredded Córdoba. The salad greens were getting slightly elderly but overall it was a pretty tasty salad.



The ribeye preparation was a touch unorthodox. I started by browning some garlic, onion, and fennel (all from the farm) then hitting it with some steamed baby beets (also from the farm) at the very end. I seared the ribeye with the sauteed vegetables and hit it all with some red wine.

I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend this preparation but it was interesting. What it excelled at was in utilizing many neglected vegetables from weeks past.



After all this I pored through all of my available wine literature to find the perfect accompaniment to ribeye that would also incorporate a suitable pairing with fennel and beet. What I found in The Critical Sommelier by Nicholas Racharian^* was that a 2007 Di Majo Norante Sangiovese would be the best suited match for this meal. Wouldn't you know that I happened to have a 2007 Di Majo Norante Sangiovese in my wine cellar^**? Fortune had indeed smiled upon me.<sup>***

*</sup> This is not an actual book.
^** My "cellar" is actually a rack from Crate & Barrel.
^*** None of this actually happened ^****.
^**** Except that we did actually have this wine. In fact it was the first red wine that I found.

Beginning The Purge

As some of you may, or may not, know: Jen and I are moving in the next few weeks. Given this we have been in a race to eliminate as much from our freezer and pantry as humanly possible.



Last night we used up some nice salmon steaks with corn, peppers, onion, parsley, and tomato. This was all for the farm, except for the salmon, which was from a farm but not in the Hudson valley.



Tonight we went through some of the backed up salad greens, grape tomatoes, mozzarella, red onions, and half of a huge Ribeye from the freezer.

I made a Caesar salad, a quick mix of mozzarella, balsamic, and tomato, then seared the half ribeye finishing it by killing the remainder of a bottle of Worchester sauce.

In total dinner took about 12 minutes to make if you don't count the 15 minutes of doing dishes beforehand. It also utilized many ingredients that we need to burn through before our move.

The coming weeks should present themselves with progressively unimpressive meals as we burn through our inventory until we find ourselves having a meal made from some miscellaneous dry pasta, canned tuna fish, and hoisin sauce.



Oh, and we got The Beatles Rock Band in the mail today.

Gotta go!

The Great Vegetable Takeover

While I toiled away until the wee hours of the morning, Jen was busy assuming pickup, chef, and photography responsibilities. This meant she was lucky enough to pick up all the vegetables, lug them home, and make dinner!



This week we got: tomatoes, celery, lettuce, onions, fennel, kale, parsley, corn, beans, assorted squashes, and peppers.



Jen used all of this to make one of the most delicious pastas I've had in a long time -- and that was at 12:30 AM, cold, and out of the fridge. She used fettuccine, scallops, shrimp, zucchini, corn, heirloom tomato, and some type of green (kale?).

It appears that the next few weeks may involve us moving, thus leaving the farm share and New York City behind for the greener pastures of right outside New York City. That will also involve the blog being updated at its current level of approximately once a week. However, we will be even closer to the vegetables that must enter New York City through one of our many bridges and tunnels. That means yet another exciting chapter of vegetal excitement to follow!

Moussakagna

I had a special request (from a special lady) to make moussaka tonight. I haven't made moussaka in a while but the eggplant from this past week's farm share needed to go into something. Why not moussaka?

While I know it would not please my Greek grandmother I decided to lean a little west of Greece since I had so much tomato and basil from the farm as well.



I made a concassée of tomatoes which I added to some of the sauteed garlic, onion, and chili from the farm. I also added some ground beef and red wine to make a thich hearty meat sauce.

Separately I made a white sauce with ricotta, milk, Parmigiano Reggiano, and eggs.

I layered strips of roasted eggplant with the meat sauce, slices of baked potato, chunks of fresh mozzarella, torn basil leaves, and drizzles of the white sauce. I topped with mozzarella, white sauce, and basil leaves then baked it in the oven. It ended up being kind of like a noodle-free eggplant and potato lasagna.

It's like fusion cuisine for mental midgets!

Rising From The Ashes . . . of SOUP!

After a busy streak at work, a bout with illness, and an unpleasant internet service outage we're back, baby!

If you're wondering what you missed during the break the lion's share was done by Jen with very little input from me other than eating it before falling asleep. Here's what went down:



We had weird Italian-style fish tacos with pesto halibut and pine nuts!



There was week 11 of the farm share which I picked up promptly before eating take out Indian food!



There was this dish which I think is shrimp cous cous which I never actually saw until I downloaded the images from my camera!



There was this great braised lamb shank with cauliflower puree, celery soup, and tempranillo!



. . . and there was a great vegetable soup which made excellent use of much of the neglected vegetables in our fridge!



Today it was time to pick up the twelfth week of the farm share. This week we got: more celery, kale, lettuce, Italian eggplants, red onions, beets, cucumbers, basil, a pink or Cherokee tomato (it looks like I selected the pink variety), Sungold tomatoes, small red tomatoes, chiles, plums, and nectarines.

This was our best share so far this season. While I'm glad the reprieve from the rains has improved the quantity and quality of the produce I could do with this being my last head of celery for a long time. Possibly for the rest of my life. No offense to celery of course. I would hate to pick favorites in the vegetable world. It's like telling your children that you love one of them more than you love the others. While I'm not saying that let's just say that if there was a fire and there was only one vegetable in the fridge that I could not save it would be the celery.

But I'm not playing favorites!



It shows a lack of inspiration but finally getting all these nice tomatoes there is seldom anything I can think of that is nicer than simply slicing them up, tossing them with basil, and serving on top of salad greens. In this case I added a little goat cheese with the pink heirloom and Sungold tomatoes. I drizzeld a touch of balsamic vinegar over the top. Often when we make these great vegetables we do not do well to score culinary creativity points.



Jen's recent love of making soup is great for me but not so great for her. Unfortunately the quantity necessary for her style of soup making is incompatible with her dread of eating the same meal more than once. Fortunately I have become quite handy at rolling around on day two and turning the soup into something else. For tonight I transferred yesterday's vegetable soup into veal stew and served it over cooked noodles. As per normal I did not tell Jen what I was doing beforehand because she hates my ideas 100% of the time but somehow likes the end result about 98% of the time. Apparently that 2% margin of error must be so terrible that she has a Pavlovian disgust reaction every single time I do this.



I was definitely not well enough to have a beer tonight but sometimes you just have to break the rules. Still, I've been dying to try this beer from what just might be the closest brewery to our house (less than fifty blocks away) so wellness be damned.

The sad part is that I really couldn't taste much of anything from this cold I had. I could tell that it was carbonated though. That's a positive point in any beer.

Tomorrow I might just have a second try. Dare to dream, friends.