Recipes – Page 3 – Tim's Kitchen Table

A Spicy Local Beef Burger for @SweetAmyRae

I was looking for a little culinary inspiration last week and tweeted out asking for suggestions about what I should cook. Amy Sears (@sweetamyrae) came back suggesting a hamburger that was spicy with something crunchy on it. That was just the ticket and I was off to the kitchen.

I am fortunate to have a great supply of Getaway Farm ground beef in my freezer. I gave up on factory food ground beef about a year ago when I requested a food safety inspector check out the use of frozen beef in Superstore ground beef. This beef packaging was not labeled as previously frozen and I thought the practice was inappropriate. A fellow foodie (Susie the Foodie – her link is to the left) recently tried to get clarification from Superstore about their ground beef and could not get a clear answer either. Unfortunately this has not as of yet lead to changes but I am still in discussions with meat inspectors to see if we can get labeling changes. Though I think their behavior is reprehensible I am thankful for them pointing me the way to local food. Had they produced a quality product I would have never found the bounty I enjoy today.

If you have great beef as your base you need to do very little to it to make a great burger. To a half pound of beef I add 1/2 tsp of salt, a half dozen turns of fresh ground black pepper and a tsp of worcestershire sauce. Mix the beef well with your hands and form into patties. Cook the beef in a very hot pan in a little grape seed oil. The sear adds flavor and locks in juices, brown well on both side. The patty should be cooked to a temperature of 160 degrees. Place a thin slice of medium cheddar on the burger. I used Fox Hill Cheese for this burger.

I placed this burger on a homemade bun which I made using a Fresh Crusty Sandwich Rolls – Mexican Inspired” href=”https://timskitchentable.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/fresh-crusty-sandwich-rolls-mexican-inspired/” target=”_blank”>bun recipe I blogged out earlier. The only change I made to it was I a did not use an egg wash and shaped the buns differently. To shape a hamburger bun roll a 2.5 oz ball flatten with the palm of your hand and then allow it to rise. The rest of the instructions are the same as in the original recipe.

To add a spicy element I wanted a sauce. I have seen a number of hot pepper mustard sauces so I wanted to make my own. I roasted off 2 habaneros 3 serranos and a hot cherry pepper. I put them into the blender with 1/2 cup of yellow mustard and 1/2 of a cup of apple cider vinegar, and 2/3 of a cup of sugar. Blend until smooth then strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove any skin and seeds. Bring this to a boil and add a Tbsp of honey. I then mixed together equal parts of oil and flour to a bowl and added 2 tsp of this mixture to the sauce to thick it, stir and then remove from heat and allow it to cool. This got spread on the top bun of the burger.

To add some brightness I tossed some fresh spinach with my fig and vanilla aged balsamic and put that on top of the cheese. You can make a vinaigrette with 1 part vinegar 2 parts oil, 1 part honey and a splash of vanilla. To finish the burger I made some fresh cut fries and crispy onion strings.

To make the fries cut potatoes into fries and then in 325 degrees blanch them until they just start to brown. Don’t over crowd the oil do in smaller batches. Drain the fries off and allow to completely cool. Heat the oil up to 390 degrees. Add the fries back into the oil and cook till golden brown. Drain on fresh paper towel and then salt right away with fine sea salt.

To make the onion strings peal the onion, cut in half and slice each half into thin slices. Break the strings apart and coat them in lightly salted flour. Drop them in the hot oil for a few seconds until browned, this does not take long at all but they are delightfully crisp and yummy and really add to the burger.

Thanks to My Local Providers

Beef : Getaway Farms

Potatoes and Veggies : Noggins and Taproot CSA

Cheddar Cheese: Fox Hill Cheese House

Home Cured Ham… All the flavour none of the chemicals

I have always loved the holiday meal. Matters not the holiday, the opportunity to dig deep and prepare a special meal the celebrate an occasion has always been something to look forward to. There have been some fantastic cooks in my family, meals at special occasions have always been memorable and I try to emulate the same honest home cooking that was found at my grandparents table.

Since I started my journey away from factory foods I challenge myself to use food that is as unprocessed as possible. With it being Easter I found myself looking at how I could get away for the highly processed ham that we find in our local factory food outlet. Pork is a great meat and I really enjoy it, and ham is right under bacon in the my pork pantheon. The problem with this is that the commercial version of these meats is loaded with sodium and even worst nitrate and other chemicals. As with anything else I figured there has to be a better way.

In the fall I purchased a side of pork from my friends at Active Life Farm. I got the belly cured into bacon for me as I don’t have a smoker …. YET … but I took the legs uncured. I thawed a leg out and started researching how I could cure a ham, and the results were spectacular. Thanks to Active Life for making this amazing Berkshire pork available to me, it was the highlight of my Easter Sunday meal.

When curing meats you will need salt and flavor. The salt is used not only to add salty yumminess to the meat but to also allow osmosis to draw in the other flavors and moisture from the liquid. You can be as creative as you want with the curing liquids as long as you remember the salt and sugar are required. Without the salt and sugar to draw the flavor deep inside the meat you will just flavour the outside and that is what the glaze is for.

Here is how I cured my Easter Ham:

Brine:

6 Liters of Water

4 Cups of course salt

2 Cups of demerara sugar

1 Cup of maple sugar (optional – can replace with 1 cup demerara sugar)

1 Stick of cinnamon

6 Whole cloves

5 sage leaves

6 black pepper corns

1.5 tsp red chili flakes

Glaze:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup maple syrup

2 Tbsp of Whole Grain Mustard

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp sage

Combine all ingredients in a large stock pot, bring to a simmer and stir until all of the salt and sugar is done. A number of brine recipes will say you are done at this point but I cover and allow it to steep on low heat for 30 to 40 minutes. I want all of the flavor in the herbs and spices to infuse the liquid. A note on my sugar selections. I wanted to impart subtle flavors to the ham so I chose demerara sugar (a very rich dark brown sugar) and maple sugar. I wanted the various subtle notes from those sugars in the meat. I would use the demerara sugar which is readily available every time, the maple sugar I was able to get a good deal on but if you don’t have an affordable local provider don’t spend a fortune on it, it can be very expensive.

Allow the brine to cool then refrigerate until it is cold. Do NOT put the meat in the brine until it is cold (under 4 degrees C or 40 degrees F). You do not want to have the meat in a warm water, that will encourage bacteria growth and cook the meat. Always brine in cold water.

To prepare the ham for brining, score the skin and fat in a diamond pattern on all sides. Do not cut into the meat but cut through the fat and the skin, this will allow brine penetration.
When the brine is cold, place the meat in it and completely submerge. you can put a couple plates on it to weigh it down. Brine for about 16 hours, no more than 24 hours it will be over salty.

When the ham has been brined remove from the water, discard the brine and rinse the ham off removing the excess salt from the surface of the ham. If you bake it without rinsing you will have a salt crust, the purpose of the salted brine was to draw moisture and flavor into the meat, we will flavor the outside with a glaze.

Place the ham on a roasting rack in a pan and place into a 500 degree oven for 20 minutes. This will sear the outside of the ham locking in the juices and adding flavor. This is done unglazed which is important, if you try to glaze the ham at a high temperature or to early you will burn the sugar.

After 20 minutes reduce the oven to 350 until the internal temperature reaches 145 degrees. This will take about 2 – 3 hours depending on the ham. Temperature is the only true indicator of meat being done. Time is only the roughest of estimates, if you want juicy meats that are safe to eat, use temperature.

After 20 minutes at 350 spread a layer of glaze over the ham, reglaze every 20 minutes until the ham reaches the desired temperature. When you get to 145 remove the ham from the oven and tent in aluminum foil for 30 minutes. The ham will go up about another 10 degrees in temperature, it is still cooking after it come out.

After the meat is rested slice and serve with the remaining glaze to be used as a sauce.

I accompanies the ham with a walnut dressing (walnuts, olive oil, sage, honey and balsalmic with salt and pepper), mashed skin on red potatoes, honey glazed carrots and a gratin of Jerusalem artichokes.

Thanks to all my local suppliers:

Berkshire Pork Leg : Active Life Farms

All vegetables : Tap Root and Noggins Corner

Honey: Cosman and Whidden Honey

Milk: Fox Hill Cheese House

Eggs Florentine with Tomato Basil Salad

I got a beautiful bag of spinach in my first week’s CSA share and decided to use some of it for my breakfast today. There is no chance that if I bought spinach from my local factory food outlet it would be fresh and beautiful a week later, but with farm fresh food you get a lot more time to use it up. I steamed off the spinach in 1/2 a cup of boiling water covered until it just wilted. I then drained it and squeezed out as much liquid as I could returned it to the pot added a punch of salt and 1/4 tsp of balsamic and set it aside.

Now when I think of spinach for breakfast I think eggs florentine. This is a poached egg, served over steamed spinach on a crispy english muffin topped with hollandaise sauce. Now don’t be afraid of hollandaise, it is a great mother sauce that can be the base for many delicious toppings, and if you pay attention you will get it right.

Hollandaise Sauce

Hollandaise is an emulsified sauce, and one of the French mother sauces. An emulsified sauce is just a sauce that combines fat based flavor with water based flavor (usually something acidic). In this case it is butter and lemon juice and the emulsifier (the thing that binds them together) is egg yolk. To make a Hollandaise you need the following:

Ingredients

3 egg yolks

1/2 cup clarified butter

1 Tbsp water

1 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

salt and pepper

Tabasco sauce

Melt about 3/4 cups of unsalted butter, being careful not to burn it, let it bubble for about 3 minutes and then skip off all of the foam, pour into a bowl slowly leaving all the white bits in the pot. Wash and dry the pot, return the clarified butter to it and put it on your warming element to keep it warm. You will not use all of this butter,

Take a small pot and fill half full with water and bring it to a light simmer. in a small metal bowl add in 3 egg yolks, the lemon juice and water, whisk until it is lemon yellow in color. Now we need to incorporate the butter.

Place the bowl over the heat and stir the egg yolks, until you start to see trails left i the bowl. Remove from the heat and drizzle about a tbsp of clarified butter into the bowl and whisk until the the butter is combined over the the simmering water. Drissle in another tbsp of the butter. Keep doing this until the sauce is shiny and smooth, it will start to slide around the bowl. At that point stop. If you add to much butter it will break.

If it does break do not panic, you can save it. Take another egg yolk, put it in a clean bowl, add a little water and whisk until yellow, heat it for a minute over the hot water then whisk in the broken sauce, it will come together. Finish with a little salt and pepper to taste and a few drops of Tabasco sauce. This sauce is beautiful over eggs, or veggies like asparagus.

You will need to make a couple poached eggs. A couple quick tips for making poached eggs. Bring the water to a simmer in a fry pan, add in some salt (about 2 tsp) and a tsp of vinegar. Add in the eggs (don’t over crowd the pan) and allow to cook until the whites are set. Remove from the pan and let drain on a plate.

To assemble your eggs florentine you will need to toast off a couple english muffins and poach some eggs. Place the english muffin on the plate top with some spinach, a soft poached egg and the spoon over some hollandaise sauce.

Cherry Tomato Basil Salid

Ingredients

2 cups of chopped cherry tomato

3 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

2 leafs of fresh basil chopped

salt and pepper to taste

I served this with a tomato basil salad using fresh cherry tomatoes from the greenhouse of Riverview Herbs. I chopped up the tomatoes, made a vinnagrette using 3 tsp of very extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar, and a half a tsp of the hollandaise to emulsify the dressing. Whisk the dressing and toss in with the tomatos then add a couple leafs of chopped basil. It goes great with any egg dish.

Thanks to my Local Suppliers:

Eggs: Elmridge Farm

Spinach: Taproot CSA

Tomatoes and Basil: River view Herbs at the Halifax Market

Berkshire Pork Chops with Apple Chutney, Roasted Potatoes and Beet Salad

I had a great trip to California and while I was there ate amazing local California food. Now that I am back I am rededicated to eating our great Nova Scotia local food. I received my first CSA boxes last week and it was waiting for me when I got home. I have had a few great meal out of it and will be getting another box today to add to it.

In my first box there were some baby red potatoes and baby beets. I boiled these both so they would be ready to use for preparing a quick meal. For those who are not familiar with cooking beets here are a couple quick tips. First of all you want to boil them while, do not trim them (well trim the greens of course) and boil them until fork tender. Adding a little vinegar to the water will help the beets hold their color. When done let them cool, trim them and then peal them with the edge of a paring knife. You may want to wear gloves to keep your hands from turning purple :). These beets can then be used in a number of dishes.

I also like to boil up the potatoes until just fork tender, maybe a little hard in the middle. I will then use these to make roasted potatoes, potato salad or breakfast hash. By doing this prep work it makes it very easy and fast to add vegetables to your meals.

I used the beets and potatoes for supper that night. I thawed a couple of Berkshire pork chops and had those with an apple chutney, roasted potatoes and a beet salad.

The pork chops were just seasoned with salt and pepper and fried off. Berkshire pork is so flavorful it does not need much. However to make it great you need to get a good sear on it. This caramelizes the outside creating flavor and locks in the juices. To do this heat the pan on high heat, use grape seed oil because of the high smoke point. When you lay the chops in do not keep lifting them, let them sit undisturbed until golden brown, look under every couple minutes to check, then flip once. The pork then should be allowed to rest for 5 to 10 minutes to allow the proteins to relax and draw the moisture back inside.

I served this with the following sides (Serves 2 you can scale it up):

Cinnamon Apple Chutney

Ingredients

2 Apples – Diced

2 Tbsp – Dried Currents

1 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp Apple Brandy

2 Tbsp Apple Cider

pinch of salt

While the pork is resting take the hot pan with the drippings in it and add in chopped apples, dried currents, cinnamon and brown sugar. Saute these off until browned then add in apple brandy and apple cider. Allow this to cook down until tender and use this to top the pork chops.

Roasted Baby Potatoes

Ingredients

6 baby red potatoes

2 tsp Olive Oil

pinch of sea salt

2 turns of pepper

1 tsp minced sage leaf (fresh is best)

To roast the potatoes I just heat the oven to 425, in a bowl toss the potatoes with olive oil, sea salt and black pepper and a little bit of snipped sage leaf. Roast the potatoes for about 15 minutes or until they start to brown.

Baby Beet Salad

Ingredients

10 baby beets boiled, pealed and diced

3 tbsp Olive Oil

1 tsp nut oil (walnut, sesame seed or Argan)

1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp mustard (whole grain is best)

salt and pepper to taste

2 Tbsp sesame seeds (toasted)

Dice the beets and place into a mixing bowl. In a small bowl whisk together the olive oil, nut oil, vinegar honey and mustard. This makes a nice dressing. A note here, you can use any oils and vinegars you like, the ration is 3 to 1 oil to vinegar. The mustard helps to bring the oil and vinegar together (emulsification) and after that just flavor away. It is very simple, just use good products and fresh herbs.

I then added the dressing to the beets until it was dressed to my liking, I had some left over that will be destine for a spinach salad. I then toasted the seseme seeds over medium heat in a small no stick pan until they just started to brown. Keep them moving while doing this, they do burn fast. Add these to the salad and serve.

The great thing with local food is with a little creativity you can make great tasting healthy meal in a very short time. With the potatoes and beets boiled ahead of time this whole thing took 30 minutes.

Thanks to my local suppliers:

Pork Chops : Active Life Farm

Beets, Potatoes, Sage, Apples, Apple Cider: Taproot and Noggins CSA

Here’s to @baconandbaileys Happy Blogiversary

One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the sense of community that exists among bloggers and twitter friends. The honest exchange of ideas, passions and talents has a great appeal. I have really enjoyed the flood of ideas, creative inspiration and humor that comes across my twitter timelines and is amplified in the blogs of my online friends.

Kelly Neil,@baconandbaileys on twitter, and creator of http://www.kellyneil.com has contributed amazing photography and shared her passion for food and enjoyment of life with us for a year now. In celebration of that I created a dessert in honor of her contributions.

Renee Lavallee, @FeistyChef on twitter, and author of a Tuesday column in the Arts & Life section of the Chronicle Herald shared her pizza dough recipe with us last Tuesday. After reading the article honouring pizza and discovering a simple recipe that promised to deliver and amazing crust I just had to it it out. Renee invited me to try using this dough with some local meats and cheese. I did just that and the crust, as promised, was fantastic, I will blog the results in a day or so. First I want to share the results of my @baconandbaileys and @FeistyChef inspired dessert. The pizza dough recipe I used for the base is provided in the following Chronicle Herald column. http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1235545.html . If you like this pizza dough recipe check out Renne’s blog http://feistychef.ca/ .

This Bacon and Baileys pizza has 3 components, the crust, the cheesecake inspired ‘sauce’ and the toppings.

Toppings:

3 Strips of thin sliced Smoked Bacon

2 Tbsp Maple Sugar

1 Cup of Water

1 Cup of Sugar

3/4 Cup of Whole Pecans

2 tbsp Milk Chocolate chips or wafers, very cold

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the bacon on a cooling rack over a foil lined cookie sheet Place in the oven for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle half the sugar on the bacon. Return to the oven until the sugar has melted. Remove for the oven and flip the bacon. Sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the bacon. Cook until the sugar is melted and the bacon is cooked. Watch it carefully bacon burns fast.

While the bacon is cooking combine the sugar and water in a sauce pot, attach a candy thermometer. Bring the water to a boil over medium high heat, and heat until the temperature reaches 310 degrees and the color turns golden. This will take a while but watch it carefully, once it gets to around 300 degrees the temperature will spike fast. While the water is boiling spread a layer of nuts on a silicon mat on a cookie sheet. When the syrup has reached temperature and color pour it evenly over the nuts. Allow them to cool completely. They will look cool before they are, be very careful, nothing you cook with can burn you like hot sugar.

Put half the brittle into a food processor and chop till it is the size of fine gravel. Rough chop the candied bacon.

In a spice grinder or coffee grinder grind the cold chocolate chips into course sand

Baileys Pizza “Sauce”

Ingredients

1/4 cup of Ricotta Cheese (Prior Recipe)

2 Tbsp Quark or Creamed Cheese

1 Tbsp Baileys

2 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Maple Sugar

1 Egg Yolk

Combine all of the ingredients except the yolk. Taste and adjust to your personal taste, the alcohol flavor will cook off.

Crust

I made the crust according to Renee’s directions, but halved the salt. I preheated my oven to 525 degrees with the stone in the oven. I rolled out the dough to 12 inches and very thin. Then I put fork holes all over the skin to help reduce it puffing up. I baked the skin for 4 minutes then removed it.

A couple tips for baking pizza.

Make sure your pizza stone is hot when you put the skin on it. It helps crisp the skin.
Use a pizza peal to transfer the pizza to the stone and pick it up. Put a bit of corn meal on the peal to allow the pizza to side easily

Assembly

Ingredients

1 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp maple sugar

Take the pizza skin and spread a thick layer of the Baileys pizza sauce on it. Then sprinkle on the crushed candied brittle, chocolate, and chopped candied bacon. Break the remaining candied pecans and lay them on the pizza. Brush the edges of the pizza with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar. Slide the skin back on the hot pizza stone and bake until the crust starts to brown and the topping is bubbly, about 5 minutes. Allow the pizza to cool and serve with a shot of Baileys.

Thanks to my local providers:

Bacon : Sweet Williams Country Sausage

Maple Sugar: Neil R Ripply Maple

Milk and Quark : Fox Hill Cheese House

Creative Local Lunch in 10 Minutes – Yum!!

Sometimes you just need a quick bite to eat and you dont want to make a fuss. These are the times when we can slip into eating high salt, high fat poor quality processed foods. My secret in combating this is to not have it in my house. Does that mean I am stuck taking a lot of time and effort to make a quick meal? Of course not. People have been making quick delicious meals at home long before Kraft or Campbell’s came into being and they will be doing so long after our addiction to this stuff has passed.

I wanted a quick lunch yesterday and I looked to my refrigerator. I make it a habit to have some boiled potatoes around when ever possible. I had thawed a half a pound of grass fed ground beef and decided a burger would be nice. When you have amazing beef all you need is a little salt and pepper in the burger to bring out the natural flavors. I added about 1/4 tsp of salt and a few turns of pepper.

I had some rolls I made the day before and so I made the patty in the shape of those rolls and heated up a fry pan. I took one of the potatoes I had in the fridge and cut it into steak fry pieces, added a little oil to another pan on medium high heat and added in some spices (garam masala, chili powder and garlic). You can use what ever you have on hand that tastes good. I put the potatoes into the hot oil, and the patty into the hot no stick pan. I flipped them when required and focused on the rest of my meal.

While those were cooking I toasted off a bun and then pulled out a jar of Sesame Ginger Sauce for littlered kitsch’n. Now if your are a regular at the Halifax Market you have probably met Jenna, the owner of this wonderful little business. She make ready to eat meals, amazing desserts and sauces for your convenience. If you need a quick meal I would defiantly talk to Jenna. She uses local ingredients and her food is honest and delicious. I keep a jar of her sauce around for times like this when I don’t want to make my own. It is really very good. I also had some pickled sweet carrots from Shani’s Farm on hand to round out my lunch.

Finally I decided some cheese was required and had a little Fox Hill Cheese Fenugreek cheese on hand. I melted under the broiler and my lunch was finished. It was all local, very flavorful and was ready in ten minutes. One you get used to it you wont want to trade this for a bowl of instant microwave food or a burger from a fast food joint. There is really no going back.

As Always Thanks to my Local Providers :

Sesame Ginger Sauce : littlered kitsch’n

Ground Beef: Getaway Farm

Pickled Carrots: Shani’s Farm

Potatoes: Noggins Corner Farm Market