I hope you had a safe and enjoyable 4th of July holiday! I’m glad neighbors have gotten over the novelty of shooting off fireworks so they ended at a decent hour and was also surprised that the cats were not all that affected by them.
I’m getting around better on my ankle so that, in general, I think I am okay but I still have some tenderness and I am careful going down stairs. You know what that means… yes, I’m back outside sitting on my bench, enjoying the hours when it is neither swelteringly hot nor the mosquitos are out in droves.
Those sad dry Oklahoma burgers from weeks past continued to haunt me. When I opened up Shorty, he had rusted right where those burgers had dried out so I spent a morning hunched over the hot griddle, reseasoning and oiling. Shorty is beautiful again.
I read an article once that said that the food you think of as your “holiday celebration” food is largely based on what you grew up with as a kid. And that this helps illustrate from where you grew up. I think of hot dogs for grilling out - Nathan’s are what I grew up with. I also think about skewers, which my mom called shish kebabs, although now of course I know hers were all veg and - sorry, mom - but I wouldn’t call that much of grilling. Mom never cared for grilled meats either, chiding us not to eat the crunchy burny parts.
So for this 4th of July, I wanted burgers and hot dogs. The burgers are real beef - I know, again! We placed a large Porter Road order to restock (we were out of pork chops!) and also I’m going to make that batch of sauce with meatballs and sausage next week. So this is Porter Road ground beef and their hot dogs, which I think are dry aged. The buns are all out of our farm box, TGM for hot dogs and The Daily Bread, I think for the burger buns, which I prefer to have sesame seeds.
Each burger is 1/4#, s+p’d on both sides, and then griddled until just shy of medium. I also griddled the buns. You can see I got a nice color on them without burning. The cheese and American. You know, I saw some chart on Instagram somewhere about cheese that they put on burgers and where I grew up in the tri-state (NY/CT/NJ for those of you not from there) is white American but elsewhere in the country, it’s all yellow American and then other cheeses. This now makes sense to me since for years, whenever Josh showed up with yellow American, I asked, didn’t they have white? I guess I have accepted this yellow cheese at this point. But you know if they offer a white one, I’m all over.
We call this the Julia burger, after the way Julia Child makes hers in Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. Lettuce, tomato, onions, mayo, mustard, ketchup.
For hot dogs, if you notice up above, I did try spiralizing the two we had. My spirals were a bit too wide and probably not deep enough to really stretch out. So I would not claim that as a success at all. I griddled the last of the sauerkraut on Shorty, plus yellow mustard, and that’s my ideal hot dog.
On other nights, we had pizza. I went back to a mixture of measured and weighed ingredients and was surprised at the rise I got on my measly measurement of yeast (was it 1/2 or 1 tsp?). Nevertheless, the dough was super stretchy, to the point that it was difficult to shape. Two pizzas were these peps with E 48th Street Market pepperonis and sliced banana peppers from the farm box
Every pizza stuck to the peel and then to the oven floor as I tried to turn them. This poor margherita was no exception. Still tasted great, but reminded me never to get too cocky about pizza making. I’m not up to my 10,000 hours yet.
Many moons ago, we went to 30A/Rosemary Beach for a vacation. We stayed in a small carriage house above a garage, where we were not in control of said garage and those with the remote arrived later than we would have liked. Anyway, we found a local fish shop, Goatfeathers, where we would buy our seafood for beach snackies and dinner. Lunches we would eat out at shrimp and fish shacks but dinner we threw open the French doors and prepared the freshest seafood.
It was there that I first made and fell in love with this Eric Ripert recipe from Avec Eric. We really enjoyed this show and its accompanying cookbook, although like so many of our books, we only make this one recipe. The recipe calls for a whole red snapper, though we have always ended up doing fillets and despite only calling for 3 tbsp of coconut milk, I am not wasting the rest of the can, so half of it goes in.
The store was out of red snapper so this is halibut. Any firm white fish will do. And the fish is basically poached, as the heat is set to low and you baste it with the coconut milk mixture.
It’s super easy and so delicious. A great way to use up half a can of coconut milk. Of course, I now have a half can of coconut milk in the fridge so perhaps we will make it again.
Since I was off all week, I offered to make lunch fresh each day. Josh knows me better than this, so he asked about having Israeli salads. And so lunch on Monday (and the rest of the week) were these three salads.
First, on the left, tzatziki, which I think Joy of Cooking (my 1995 edition, at least) refers to as a yogurt and cucumber salad. I grate the cucumber which I think provides a nice texture for the dip-slash-salad. I do eat it on its own, so I’m going to go with salad.
In the center is a charred eggplant salad. Mix in tehina, and Michael Solomonov calls it baba ganouj. It’s my favorite of all the Israeli salads we eat so I’m always sad when two big Italian eggplants don’t go as far as …
The red pepper salad on the right. Josh always gets to choose one random recipe and he tends to like things with red peppers. I think Solomonov just calls this one “red pepper salad”. It cooks down with onions and then is pureed in a food proc with grated carrots and lots of fresh herbs. I cooked the pepper/onion mixture more than usual (and certainly more than the recipe calls for) and was really pleased with the texture. Let’s see if I remember to do that next time.
I also raided all our mint, dill, parsley, and basil plants for these recipes. They are struggling a bit with the heat but hopefully our harvest will help spur them on.
Monday afternoon, I made the rest of what I had intended for lunch. We love these lamb meatballs, an old recipe of Nigella’s that we probably watched her make many years ago on Food Network. We had a 1/2# of ground lamb from Butcher Girls in the freezer and, though it seemed like plenty when planning, I was sad later that 1/2# is not as many as I wanted them to be. This is a keeper recipe and, while I usually heat the meatballs for Josh, they are good at room temp too.
And then, I had never made before but felt like trying grape leaves, or dolmades. Now we have a lot of Middle Eastern, Greek, Lebanese, etc cookbooks, but for some reason, the flavor I was looking for ended up being in my Joy of Cooking. This was a time when my Eat Your Books subscription was great, letting me quickly determine which of my cookbooks had recipes to look at!
In any case, I adjusted the recipe to another 1/2# ground lamb that Josh picked up and then spent a good long time debating if the rice in the recipe was raw or cooked. I finally decided it must be raw because the grape leaves cook in broth.
The mixture itself is ground lamb, raw rice, lots of herbs and spices. You are supposed to soak the grape leaves in boiling water with 3 water changes. I did close to this. Really.
Then I set to rolling my grape leaf cigars, which really is very similar to wrapping the tiniest spring rolls. Then I set them in a skillet with some chicken broth, covered, and let simmer for 20 mins.
Straight out of the pan and hot, they were a bit on the salty side but the next day, along with other salads, the grape leaves were fantastic. Definitely adding this one to the keeper list and I’m sure that we can sub in any other meat, maybe like turkey, and keep the lamb for … well, I did unearth a 7# lamb leg in the freezer.
Saturday night, we trotted off to Cherokee Rose BBQ Bar and Kitchen out in Stone Mountain… Village? Square? …whatever the sleepy little town is called. It was my first time out there and I’m happy to say when you head out there sans traffic, it is a pretty quick trip!
Did you know the Cherokee Rose is the state flower of Georgia? Me either. They are very pretty.
The place is cute and really filled up while we were there. There was live music, a great musician with a great voice. So often, live music is too loud, but it was perfect.
Since it was out first time, our little table of course had to order many things to try.
To start, the fried okra served with buttermilk dip. Fried well, not greasy. I’m not one who shies away from okra slime and I will say these were fried perfectly so if you don’t like the slime, I would skip the larger pieces. Next, the crawfish cake with remoulade. We were fresh off our crawfish etouffee so it was nice to have crawfish again. Not too spicy. And then the smoked whole wings. They were cooked well and the meat was fall-off-the-bone tender. It was a bit too much sauce for my taste, but the sauce itself was good and well-balanced.
As we get into mains, this one gets its own photo. Fried catfish which certainly has the look of deep fried, but it was the most tender, succulent catfish I have ever had. It practically broke apart as you tried to get it onto your plate. The one drawback was that the saucier was a little salty this night and so anything living in the sauce was too salty. But you could tell this is a mainstay and I look forward to getting it again. And again. And again…
And then we got the special, black cod. It was also beautifully cooked but same sad oversalting of the sauce. It kept me from going back to sopping it all up.
For sides, we got most of them! Here is the jalapeno corn pudding and the potato puree. First of all, this potato puree is SO delicious. I love mashed potatoes anyway, but these are just delicious. Great texture, great flavor. And the jalapeno corn pudding was good, but not amazing. Our friend Mike makes a corn pudding for Thanksgiving… and his is better.
We also got veal country-fried steak, which was prepared well, but as with all thinly cut deep fried things, it could have been anything. I think this was the least favorite of the table, being a baby cow notwithstanding.
And to round out the sides, there were creamed mustard greens, mac and cheese, roasted beets with whipped feta, and collards with oxtails. I’ll save the criticism and say that the beets are great with the feta and one can never go wrong with creamed greens of any kind. These were good.
Of course we saved room for dessert. Lemon cake with lemon curd and peanut butter pie. I always want to like peanut butter pie but it’s the consistency. I am just not a fan.
But now, this chocolate cake. I believe it is billed as a six layer chocolate cake for two. And it is perfect. Moist, not too sweet, so craveable and perfect with that whipped cream. This is the cake where I said I would stop trying to make chocolate cake and if Josh wants it, we will just come here for dinner. Hell, I might make us come here for this cake. A real winner. OMG, so good. Not a bite was left.
Overall, we had a really fun time and it was a great evening with great food and great company. I’m already looking forward to my next visit. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that their cocktail program is solid though the wine list is lackluster. I have been sticking with wine these days and it was fine… but I would recommend cocktails instead, at least if you have more self control than I do.
What I’m reading, watching, and listening to:
I’m working through my backlog of saved videos, articles, and such so there is some older content here.
After watching this (very long) feature about Zabar’s, I’m definitely lamenting I didn’t order any smoked fish and bagels for the holiday weekend! (Eater)
Like most food people, we’re watching season 3 of The Bear! Plenty of commentary about it including from Eater and NYT.
I don’t know that I will ever try my own baguettes but … it certainly seems attainable. I like Chef Bertinet’s style. (YouTube)
In the realm of Gozney videos, Chris Bianco does a nice margherita. Feng Chen does too, but what I like about her style is her nice explanations and I’m going to try that surface tension thing to keep my dough balls with a nice top. (YouTube)
Still haven’t secured my copy of the Judith Jones biography but had to read this nice article by Melissa Clark. (NYT)
A safari! In Madison, GA! (Garden & Gun)
LOL, work overreactions and reply all nightmares!. (Ask a Manager)