Drinking Flowers

Whether it's a Roselle, aqua de Jamaica, Sorrel, Red Sorrel, Bissap,  Arhul Ka phool, or Hibiscus Tea, the sweet tart drink infused with the sun dried magenta colored petals of hibiscus flowers is mystically refreshing. While hibiscus tea (served hot or cold) is common in most tropical climates worldwide, I'm most familiar with the perky chilled Caribbean versions. It's simple to make and even easier to drink. Sure, there are dozens of mass produced pre-processed instant powder products, cute packaged individual teabags, and concentrated extracts available to whip up  batches of hibiscus tea, but taking a few moments to steep the gnarled and strangely beautiful dried flower petals unleashes their pure seductive essence.

After dropping into Selby's Tropical Market to pick up a few pounds of bacalao (salted cod) for a riff on brandade, I was drawn to a small bag of dried hibiscus flowers. I was so taken aback by their absurd exotic oddity that I almost forgot about the salted cod. That's another tale.

Hibiscus Tea.
Simple.

Using a deep sauce pan, I brought 4 cups water, 3 whole allspice berries, a small peeled knob of ginger, and 1 cup sugar to a boil. When the sugar dissolved, I tumbled 1 cup of dried hibiscus flowers into bubbling water, let it rip for a couple of minutes, removed the pan from the heat, and covered the pan before letting the flowers re-hydrate and steep for 45 minutes.

When the concentrated purple tea cooled, I strained the solids, added 4 cups of water and 1/2  cup fresh lime juice. After pouring the tea into a large glass pitcher, I slid it into the refrigerator to chill.

With hints of spicy ginger and bright lime juice poking through the sassy cranberry-like undertones of the hibiscus, the tea was fantastic simply chilled over ice.

A shot of vodka made it happy.

A heavy handed splash of Veuve Clicquot made it sing.

Winter Ribs

Lazy days and winter short ribs. Braised for hours, the utterly tender rib meat falls from knobby bones and melts into obscene puddles of  succulent beef napped in unctous jus. Meat. Fat. Sauce. Oozing. Dripping. There are few things better than a pot of long braised beef short ribs. Period. After hours of intense aromatic foreplay, rustic short ribs are dirty, messy, and downright sexy. Shredded, pulled, piled, or plopped, there's nothing particular fancy about short ribs. They beg to be devoured, slurped, licked, and manhandled. That's typically how I roll. A raucous romp with juicy bone-in meat. Well, my game changed when I stumbled across a small (very small) package of dainty Marksbury Farm grass-fed boneless short ribs while browsing/grazing at Good Foods Co-op. Looking more like slab bacon than big beefy ribs, I took the ribs on a lighter tumble in the hay.

Slap on the lipstick and strap up the heels.
Dainty short ribs.
Game on.

Braised Short Rib Pinwheels.

After scoring the fat caps of each little rib to encourage the rolling process, I tied each rib with kitchen twine, smooshed  slivered garlic quarters into the center of each roll, seasoned them liberally with salt and pepper,  and browned them in a hot cast iron skillet over medium high heat. When the fat started to render and the flesh crusted over, I transferred the ribs to a side plate before tumbling 2 sliced carrots, 2 sliced celery ribs, 1 chopped onion, and 3 whole garlic cloves into the smoldering skillet. Just before the mirepoix caramelized, I added 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and let it brown before deglazing the skillet with 1 750ml bottle of cabernet sauvignon. After letting the wine reduce by half, I added 2 cups of beef stock, 3 bay leaves, and a handful of fresh thyme. When the stock came back to a boil, I slid the rolled ribs, along with the accumulated juices, back into the skillet and topped the skillet with a cartouche (a folded/vented parchment paper lid). After lightly patting the cartouche over the cast iron skillet, I slid the ribs into a preheated 350 degree oven to braise for 2 1/2 hours.

While the short ribs braised, I peeled a large rutabaga and diced it into cubes before carefully dropping them into boiling salted water. When they were fork tender, about 45 minutes, I scooped them into a bowl and showered the steaming pieces with freshly grated meyer lemon zest. I spooned the pieces into a blender, added 3 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter,1 cup warmed heavy cream, 1 cup beef broth, the juice of the zested lemon, salt, and ground white pepper. After blitzing the mix into a smooth puree, I scooped it out of the blender and set it aside.



When the ribs relaxed and tenderized in the braising stock.  I carefully removed the cartouche, snipped off the kitchen twine securing the pinwheels,  slid the ribs onto a  side plate, placed the hot skillet over a medium flame, and reduced the red wine-infused beef stock by 3/4 before adding a couple pats of butter for a little silky kiss.

After warming the pinwheels in the thickened sauce, I nestled them onto the rutabaga puree and tumbled steamed baby golden beets to the side before finishing with shaved Elmwood Stock watermelon radishes, slivered shallots, julienned red pepper, and kale micro greens.

Packing a bold meaty punch, the tender ribs almost collapsed under the insanely reduced sauce. While the meyer lemon-flecked rutabaga puree countered the inherent richness of the meat with earthy sweet acidity, the crisp jeweled radishes provided biting fresh crunch.

Refined.
Delicate.
Decadent.

The perfect romp.

Winter Citrus

No sooner had I drop-kicked the last of the ham and turkey into the back of the freezer than our annual crate of citrus bombs arrived on the front stoop. Individually wrapped, the grapefruits and oranges were a welcome respite to the relentless weeks of holiday fare.

While most of them get squeezed into perky pulpy mimosas, greyhounds, or salty dogs, I always have great fun gussying up the stragglers.



Broiled Grapefruit.
I grew up on broiled grapefruit. You know, the standard halved grapefruit sprinkled with sugar and scorched under the broiler? Although fantastic and familiar, I took a different route with this years citrus bounty.

I sliced the thick skin off of each end of two pink grapefruits, stood them on end, and trimmed the skin from top to bottom (making sure to remove all the bitter pith). After slicing them into 1/2 " discs, I sprinkled them with sugar and slid them under the broiler. As they started to char and caramelize, I pulled the slices from the oven and stacked them into individual bowls. While they were still warm, I drizzled them with local honey and freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.

To give the jeweled grapefruit slices a savory bent, I finished with coarsely chopped pistachio nuts, flaked sea salt, and fresh young parsley shoots from my garden. Juicy. Tart. Sweet. Salty.

A refreshing take on an old school standard.

______________________________

______________________________

Hello oranges!
Bye bye bourbon balls.
See you next year chocolate bark.


Gluten free Orange Almond Cake.
Honestly, I didn't intend to go all gluten free. It just happened. An accidental win. Aside from a wee bit of advanced planning, it came together like a piece of cake. Because I'm not much of a baker, the simple ingredients made it very forgiving and almost fool proof.

Orange prep.
I filled a stock pot with cold water, plopped two large navel oranges into the pot, and cranked the heat to high.  When the water came to a boil, I reduced it to a simmer, covered the pot, and let the oranges steep at gentle ripple for 2 hours before scooping them out to cool. After slicing the oranges in half, I tumbled them into a food processor (skin, pith,  pulp, and flesh) and blitzed the hell out of them before sliding the pure orange puree into the refrigerator to chill.

Using a hand-held mixer, I blended 3 whole eggs with 1 cup of sugar. When the mix formed pale sugary ribbons, I added 3 cups almond meal/flour (ground almonds), 1 teaspoon of gluten free baking powder, a pinch of salt, and the reserved orange puree.

After buttering the bottom and sides of a spring form pan, I scooped the batter into the pan, leveled the top, tapped it a few times to settle the batter, and slid it into a 350 degree preheated oven to bake for 1 hour, give or take a few minutes. When the top was golden brown and the center cleared the tooth pick check, I pulled the cake from the oven, released it from the spring form pan, and settled it onto a wire rack.

While the cake cooled, I made a simple syrup by simmering 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice and 3 tablespoons sugar. When the orange simple syrup reduced to a glaze, I poked several holes into the cake with a skewer and spooned the glaze over the top before finishing with delicate strips of fresh orange zest.

Flecked with bits of peel and pulp, the cake was surprisingly light and incredibly moist. Without being cloyingly sweet, it packed intense orange flavor grounded by the subtle nuttiness of almonds.

Fabulous.

Winter citrus.
Bombs away.

Christkind

Before my family moved back to the States, our Christmases in Vienna, Austria were filled with a hodgepodge of American, German, and Austrian traditions. Tucked away in our five story duplex apartment, we absorbed the mixed Bavarian traditions in our own American way.  It was all that I knew, so I went with the flow. Santa Claus didn't exist. We lived in a snowy world filled with St. Nickolas, Krampus (the anti-St. Nickolas), and the Christkind (the Christ Child gift-bringer).

In mid November, the Austrian Christmas Markets took center stage. Almost every main public square housed a market. While Frau Olga and I shopped the regular markets daily for the basic stuff we needed, the Christmas Markets were different. The glorious music, greenery, and religious icons were mere backdrops for the endless displays of ornaments, chocolates, marzipan, and cookies. Vienna bloomed during the Christmas season. Hand in hand, mitten in mitten, Frau Olga and I would make our way through the frantic streets and crowded trolleys of Vienna in search of the markets. Occasionally, when the aromas were too much to bear, we'd pause for hot roasted chestnuts sold by curbside vendors. Served straight from glowing hot grills and tossed into small paper bags, the heavenly warm chestnut steam soothed the bitter winter air. As a kid, I never had much time to take it all in. As a mitten-tied extension of Frau Olga's arm, I spent most of my time being pulled and yanked out of harms way. Still, there were stolen moments for chocolates and chestnuts.

As strange as it might seem, our home didn't reflect the spirit of the public celebrations wafting throughout the city. Whether my father followed his interpretation of tradition or used it as an excuse, we didn't decorate for Christmas. No tree. No stockings. Nothing. There were hints and nibbles along the way. On St. Nickolas Eve (December 5th), my brother and I would put our largest pairs of shoes or boots outside our apartment door hoping they'd be filled with really good stuff. Of course, that all depended on Krampus, the mean evil-horned-red-tongued beastly sidekick of St Nickolas. Following tradition, on December 6th, he and St Nickolas visited towns and villages throughout Austria to ask all the children if they'd been good or bad during the previous year. If they answered incorrectly, Krampus chased them down with his big crooked stick to beat the hell out of them. Merry Christmas. Thankfully, he never darkened our doorstep. That said, we still had to fess up to our goodness or badness. My brother's boots were usually filled with a mixed bag of good and evil. Sticks. Rocks. Coal. Candy. I fared a little better. Because my boots were too small to hold much of anything, they were always filled with liquor-filled chocolate figurines wrapped in brightly colored crinkled foil. Chomp the head and drink the booze. Yep. Bliss.

When Christmas Eve finally rolled around, it was like any other night. Frau Olga prepared supper and we'd help clean up the mess before going about our business of being boys. When I took to my bed on Christmas Eve, I knew the drill. Cold room. Cold bed. Closed door. Shuttered window. Darkness. Christmas Eve. In my anxious pretend sleep, I could hear things happening. Every year, the clatter eventually faded into white noise before giving way to the gentle smell of Frau Olga's Christmas Linzer cookies seeping through the cracks of my tall bedroom door.

The next morning, like magic, a fully decorated Christmas tree sat smack dab in the middle of the living room. Beneath the molten hot multicolored bulbs and dangling wrinkled tinsel, unwrapped gifts and toys spilled from the base of the glowing tree. Amid the Christmas litter, when the dust cleared, Frau Olga's Linzer cookies left for the Christkind were always left untouched.

I guess my dad never cared for Christmas cookies.
Our win. Wrapped in early morning glee, we laughed and played under poofs of powdered sugar.

Austrian Christmas Linzer Cookies.
Linzer cookies or Linzer "Eyes" are a derivative of the iconic Linzertore, one of the oldest known tortes created in the 17th century. Using the same dough recipe as the torte ( flour, butter, egg, toasted almonds or hazelnuts), the cookies are small sandwich cookies filled with jam peeking through cutouts. Traditionally, the cutouts were small round holes (Linzer eyes). Nowadays, Linzer cookies and their cutouts can be any shape possible.

After toasting 2 cups of raw whole almonds and letting them cool to room temperature, I ground them in a food processor until they resembled finely crumbled flour. In a small bowl I combined 2 cups flour, 2/3 cups ground almond flour, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, a pinch of allspice, freshly ground nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. In a separate bowl, I beat 2/3 cups sugar with 2 sticks of softened unsalted butter until the mixture was light and fluffy before adding 1 egg,
lemon zest, and 1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.


Adding 1/2 cup of the flour at time, I incorporated the flour mixture with the buttered sugar, kneaded it a few times to pull it together into a soft pliable dough, and divided it into two  1 1/2 inch thick discs, After wrapping each disc in plastic wrap, I slid them into the refrigerator to chill overnight.

The next morning, I let the dough relax on the counter for 30 minutes before rolling out  the dough about 1/8 inch thick. So, I had a fancy Linzer cookie cutter with a bottom cutter and a top cutter for the cutouts. The little things. After cutting  half of the dough into stars for the bottoms, I used the same cookie cutter with the star-shaped cutout insert to cut the other half of the dough into toppers.

I transferred the tops and bottoms to parchment-lined baking sheets and slid them into a preheated oven to bake for 10-12 minutes. When they were lightly golden brown, I pulled them from the oven and carefully placed them onto racks to cool.  When they were completely cooled, I inverted the bottom cookies and spread them with 1 teaspoon of seedless raspberry jam.  After dusting the tops with confectioners sugar, I carefully sandwiched the cookies together and allowed the glistening jam to gently squirt through the small star-shaped cutouts. Spiced crunchy Christmas cookies with sweet sticky jam topped with soft powdered snow.

A Linzer  lullaby.

Pig In A Blanket

I only know one way to prepare and cook a Christmas country ham.

Marge and Dad married when I was 14 years old.  After they married, we moved from my grandparent's house to the other side of the farm into a home that my father built by himself from the ground up. Shaded under a patch of maple trees alongside Barren River Lake, the house was a fantastic base camp for an adventurous kid hell-bent on summertime shenanigans. Our house was special. It seemed to change and breathe with the seasons as if it were part of the landscape.  In the fall, multicolored maple leaves burned brilliant silhouettes into the crisp blue sky. Come winter, the bare branches danced over the house like floating sticks while casting flickering thin shadows across  the frozen ground. In an unassuming way, holidays in our home were low key and wonderfully magical.

Year after year, sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend, we'd pile into my father's orange GMC pickup truck to scour the farm for the perfect cedar Christmas tree. After hauling the tree home, we'd rearrange the furniture and gently secure the tree into its corner before decorating it with handmade wooden ornaments and fresh cranberry garlands. During the days and weeks leading up to Christmas, banisters were magnolia-ed and and wreaths were hung until the house was bedecked. Christmas in Port Oliver. Even so, it wasn't quite Christmas until the country ham arrived. Now, the ham didn't just appear on the Christmas table in the blink of an eye. It took days to prepare, relegating it to the status of house guest. Working in tandem, Marge and dad prepped, scrubbed, soaked, simmered, wrapped, and baked the beloved ham for Christmas Eve dinner. For years, I watched closely and learned how to prepare country ham the old fashioned way. While there are countless methods for cooking a whole uncooked cured country ham, I only know of one way to capture the taste of my Christmases past.

With my family's early Christmas gathering looming on the horizon, I journeyed home.

Christmas Ham.
A good Christmas ham starts with a great ham. Browning's Country Ham, from Dry Ridge, cures and ages their hams for 12 months. Both mild and robust, it's one of the go-to hams around these parts. When I had a hard time locating a retail source for their hams, I simply called them. Boom. In three days, a 14 pound whole uncooked country ham arrived on our front stoop bundled up to keep the varmints at bay.

Cleaning, Soaking. Simmering. Wrapping. Finishing.
Although I was forewarned to expect mold, it got the best of me. When I ripped open the butcher paper surrounding the ham, plumes of green-ashen powdered mold exploded from the package. Caught by the rays of the morning sun, the dust cloud dangled in the light for what seemed like an eternity. When the ash finally settled, I was covered in pungent funk. It was hysterical.  After a quick wipe down and clean up, I scrubbed the ham under warm water with a sturdy brush to remove the mold. Luckily, I had an enormous canning pot large enough to accommodate the ham. After plopping it into the pot, I filled it enough water to cover the ham, maneuvered the lid over the protruding bone (most folks remove the hock), and scooted the ham into a corner of the kitchen to soak for 2 days, changing the water
every 12 hours.

On the third day, I drained off the water and lifted the pot containing the plumped ham onto the stove top. After filling it with cold water, I topped it off with 6 bottles of Ale-8-One soda and a cup of pure maple syrup before cranking the heat to high. When the sweet gingery water came to a boil, I reduced it to a gentle simmer, covered the pot, and let it rip for 5 1/2 hours, about 25 minutes per pound.

When the internal temperature reached 160 degrees, Michael and I carefully removed the pot from the heat before wrapping the entire pot with several old quilts to let the ham slowly steep in its own juices overnight. Yep. Overnight. Pig in a blanket. When I was a kid, I knew it was coming on Christmas when the quilted ham blob made its way out to the enclosed back deck for its overnight rest.

The next morning, I carefully removed the ham to a roasting pan and discarded the cooking liquid along a fence row in our backyard. Still hot from the quilted insulation, I removed the skin from the ham and trimmed some off some of  the fat.

I lightly scored the soft fat cap on top of the ham, splashed the meat with bourbon, slathered the entire surface with good dijon mustard, and encrusted it with a thin layer of light brown sugar before sliding it into a preheated 400 degree oven.

When the brown sugar dissolved into the mustard and started to caramelize, I pulled the ham from the over to rest. At that stage, it could have been wrapped and chilled. Didn't happen.  After letting it rest for 30 minutes, I transferred the ham to a serving platter, scattered a few quartered Red Bartlett pears to the side, and finished with fresh lovage from my garden.

Down and dirty Christmas ham.
A pure labor of love.

A tender trip to Bountiful.

Persimmons

As Michael and I packed up the gorgeous array of wrapped gifts and gifts bags from our reception, he handed me a small bag and said, "June brought some kind of fruit." I peeked into the bag and instead of tapping into my inner squeal, I actually screeched like an untamed tenor, "Persimmons! I love persimmons!" Yep, I did. It must have ricocheted off of every old plaster wall throughout the building, echoing, --immons, --immons, --immons. It's true, I adore persimmons. They're just so beautiful and odd.

Teetering on the edge of utter simplicity, persimmons are a very versatile autumn fruit. Technically, because of some sort of genus or something or other, they're actually classified as a berry, much like tomatoes. Although there are several varieties of persimmons, hachiya and fuyu are the most common. Oval shaped hachiya persimmons are very astringent and are best eaten when extremely ripe.  Their sweet mushy flesh is ideal for baked goods, cakes, tarts, pies, and various other desserts. Squatty tomato-shaped fuyu persimmons, on the other hand, are best eaten when firm and almost under ripe. Simply sliced or diced, fuyu persimmons are great tossed into salads or eaten as snacks.  That said, fuyus can also be cooked and treated like any other traditional autumn fruit.  With mango, banana, and apricot undertones, fuyu persimmons are fantastic sidekicks when paired alongside succulent roasted meats like duck, goose, turkey, or ham.


Wrapped in tissue and tucked into a gift bag, our dear friend had given us a mother load of fuyu persimmons. Total win. Sure, I could have tossed them into a kale salad and called it a day. Nope. With visions of holiday turkeys and hams dancing in my head, I roasted them.

Skillet Roasted Persimmons.

After coring the crackled flower ends from the persimmons, I sliced them half and nestled them into a large cast iron skillet. Feeling a bit dandy, I drizzled them with dark rum, covered them with heavy aluminum foil, and slid the skillet into a pre-heated 350 degree oven to bake/roast/steam for an hour. When they were fork tender, I drizzled them with local honey, fresh squeezed lime juice, and a sprinkling of turbinado sugar before sliding them under the broiler. When they started to blister and char, I pulled the persimmons from the broiler to cool.

To dial back the sweet factor, I finished with a heavy-handed dusting of flaky sea salt, additional fresh lime juice, and lime zest.

While the caramelized honey and sugar added a smoky deep sweetness to the subtly sweet flesh, the aggressive salt and lime zest provided a bright tangy crunch. A perfect combo.

Simple.
Fresh.
Fabulous.

Sprouts

We all have our favorite side dishes that  absolutely must accompany roasted turkey on our Thanksgiving tables. For many of us, those familiar flavors are steeped in deep-rooted family traditions. For the past few years, Michael and I have spent Thanksgiving day alone in our house clad in pajamas drinking Beaujolais Nouveau while sliding holiday dishes in and out the of the oven like a choreographed ballet. Glorious organized chaos. That said, we've always had two very different notions and traditions that surround the side dishes that grace our Thanksgiving table. Because they're so deep-rooted, we can't eliminate anything and wind up having everything. Thanksgiving. One enormous brined, stuffed, roasted, basted, and glazed 15 pound  turkey  for two with 13 side dishes. Bliss.

Last year, Michael's sister invited us over for a family Thanksgiving meal. As any dutiful invited guest should do, I asked what we could bring to the feast. She requested brussels sprouts. Specifically, creamy blue cheese brussels sprouts with bacon, a dish she'd fallen head over heels for at an area restaurant. Interesting prospect. Unusual, yet interesting. While we love brussels sprouts, I'd never thought about serving them at Thanksgiving. That changed when we took our little show on the road over the hills and through the woods toting a restaurant riff on those beloved brussels sprouts. Everyone loved them, even the skeptical self-proclaimed brussels sprouts haters. With sweet sherry undertones tempering the soft pungency of the melted blue cheese, the earthy sprouts didn't compete or overpower the traditional food on the table. Their eccentric oddity actually complimented the familiar tastes of Thanksgiving. An accidental win.

It's funny, while I love brussels sprouts prepared just about any way possible, that particular method(with some tweaks and variations) has been my go-to preparation for them since that Thanksgiving day.

Pan-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Gorgonzola Cream and Prosciutto.
Seriously, they were so simple and quick to throw together.  Perfect for a busy food day. Or even a lazy late night snack.

I clipped the root ends off of a pound of fresh brussels sprouts and sliced them in half. After heating vegetable oil in a large skillet over a medium high flame until it started to smoke, I carefully placed the brussels sprouts, cut sides down, into the sizzling oil. When they started to caramelize, I showered them salt and cracked black pepper before flipping them over in the skillet to sear on the other side. After adding a scant tablespoon of minced shallots, I deglazed the pan with 1/4 cup sherry combined with 1/4 cup chicken stock, covered the skillet, and let the sprouts steam for 3 minutes before removing the lid to reduce the stock. When the last drop of sherry-infused stock evaporated into an airy wisp, I added 1 cup heavy cream and 4 ounces of sliced gorgonzola cheese.  Within minutes, the pungent thickened cream enveloped the pan-roasted sprouts. Although that could have been enough, I took it one step further. I spooned the creamy sprouts into buttered gratin dishes, crumbled additional gorgonzola cheese over the sprouts, and slid them under a flaming broiler.

I pulled the gratins from the oven to calm the bubbling charred cheese before finishing with snipped chives and oven-crisped prosciutto crumbles.



Unconventional.
Unexpected.

A perfect Thanksgiving
party crasher.