Celebrating Spring...on the Calendar

So this week was the official beginning of Spring.  Days are finally starting to get longer and it's theoretically getting warming (especially if the Nor'easter headed our way doesn't bury us in a foot of snow later in the week).  And with that in mind, the Kitchen Ninja wanted to take his business out of the kitchen and on to the deck.

The only problem?  It's barely above freezing right now and there's still snow and ice piled up on the deck.  Too bad this ninja won't be deterred.  So it was out to the great white northeast outdoors for some summertime grilling in wintertime weather.

The reality is that last weekend had a day that was perfect for breaking out the grill and we missed it.  Someone else in the neighborhood didn't though - so the entire out of doors smelled magically.  Wes got that stuck in his mind and pretty much wouldn't consider anything else.

Grilling is a bit challenging in this family.  There's a general pyrophobia that Wes probably inherited from me.  Open flames are not the ninjas best friend.  In fact, Kitchen Mom is the normal Grillmaster, but it's better to face that and learn how to deal with an open cooking flame than to be scared and, ultimately, be dangerous.  And he should learn too ;)

Because of this general nervousness, we thought we'd start with the basics.  Simple grilled meat and vegetables.  First up the veggies.

Since it's too early for good local produce, we grabbed some simple Italian squash (or zucchini as I grew up calling it).  We looked it up and we're pretty sure they're the same thing.  Either way it's a summer squash so it made sense as a part of our un-seasonal feast.

Wes trimmed off the ends and split the squash.  They went into a large casserole dish where he drizzled over some basic olive oil (not extra virgin - we saved the good stuff for later).  On top went a heavy pinch of kosher salt and a health dash of garlic powder.  He also cut a yellow onion into rings, placed a metal skewer through them and followed the same oil/salt/garlic process.

He also put on a pot of white rice - I think he loves the fact he can make that all by himself without any help.  We've got the Zojirushi rice cooker - the Mercedes Benz of rice cookers.  One of my favorite kitchen splurges.

The veggies went on to the cranking hot grill (we never took it off the highest setting since it's only around 40 degrees outside).  The grill temp was around 550 degrees.  The veggies cooked for 4 minutes a side or roughly long enough for the temp to come back up.  Opening the lid on the grill cost us a good 200 degrees each time - so we were extra careful not to peek.

Side note - we wore twinner Crocs through this entire process - just like really chefs.  Take that Mario Batali!

While the veg was grilling happily away, Wes switch to salad prep.  Nothing fancy.  Just some dark leafy greens dressed in a simple vinaigrette.  Kitchen Mom jumped in to show him how to do it.  We used our favorite  white balsamic vinegar (it has a little lighter bite than normal balsamic but you can substitute).  Wes whisked in a heavy pinch of salt into 1 part vinegar and then added 3 parts oil (use the good stuff here) slowly while whisking briskly.  It was a good team effort.  We even used the opportunity to talk about emulsions and molecular bonds and the use of energy to trick the separate parts into combining.  Science!

Once the veggies were done (we could tell they were done because the were soft and the perfect starting-to-turn-black color on the outside), we let the grill heat back up all the way.  We placed the veggies on a cookie sheet and put it in a 250 degree oven to stay warm.  Next came the meat.

Obviously there's a lot of different choices for meat on the grill.  Personally, I love them all.  But Wes-man, he has a particular favorite - steak tips.  Steak tips can be a lot of different things.  They're the trimmings that are left over from a prime piece of meat, usually like a tenderloin.  Our local butcher shop has the best steak tips - they even have them pre-marinated so they're ready to go straight to the grill.  For tonight we bought the house marinade which is a slightly sweet barbeque flavor.

On to a ripping hot grill, the steak tips cooked for about 4 minutes a side.  This was a perfect medium (warm pink center) - shave off 30 seconds to a minute for medium rare.  And if you go for the cool center, you're out of luck around here.  We don't serve no purple beef!

Wes was a champ on the grill.  Even if he did use the full length of the tongs to his advantage!

Everything came together at the exact same time!  That's some times a rarity in these parts.  But tonight we shook off of grilling rust and had a bang up summer feast all while it still looks like Christmas outside.  Remember the Kitchen Ninjas number one rule for off-seasonal grilling:  stand close enough to the grill for warmth, but not so close as to actually catch on fire and burst into flames.  We're dealing with the pyrophobia, really we are...

Until next time!

Blog Saving Dal

One big update that I should probably start with is the fact that as a family we're trying to embrace a partial vegetarian diet.  There's a couple of reasons for that:  my dad passed away a little over a year ago from a heart attack at just short of his of 65th birthday and Erin and I started reading books and watching documentaries about meat production in the U.S.  It's scary and a bit shameful how we treat our food in this country.  When I came across Mark Bittman's new book Vegan Before 6:00 I knew I'd found the perfect compromise.  (Read all about it here:  http://markbittman.com/tag/vb6/).  I highly encourage you to check out Mr. Bittman's blog and to read all his books, but his thesis is that if you eat really healthy twice a day you can indulge yourself a bit once a day.  It's the perfect compromise - at least for us.

So, that means that we needed to find a whole new set of recipes as a family.  Since Wes wanted to splurge on Taco Bell today for lunch (Doritos Locos Tacos all the way!), we needed a meat-free healthy dinner.  That's where dal comes in!

I was lucky enough to travel to India a few years back and the one food I truly fell in love with was dal.  Super simple and amazingly flavorful, dal is a super food.  And a few weeks back, I was listening to Alton Brown's amazing podcast where I heard the recipe for Simon Majumdar's "Life Saving Dal".  You can read the story about it here:  http://www.simonmajumdar.com/recipes/life-saving-dahl/.

The recipe sounded easy enough, so I tried it out.  It turned out amazing and so I started tweaking and changing because, well, that's fun.  Here's our recipe.

First decide on your vegetables.  For tonight, we picked eggplant and mushrooms but you can use literally anything.  There's a million ways that you can read on how to prepare eggplant but I don't follow any of them.  We peeled it because the skin can get chewy.  Then Wes cut it into bit-sized pieces by planking it and then dicing.  The mushrooms we washed and quartered.  One big eggplant and 2 cartons of brown mushrooms are plenty for this dish.  These went on separate cookie sheets and into the oven on convection bake at 350 degrees.  Roast them until they start to brown and get delicious.


Next we took an onion and Wes cut it into slices and threw those in a dutch oven with some olive oil and a heavy pinch of salt.  We let those cook down until they caramelized - about 20 minutes.

Once the onions are nice and brown, we started throwing in spices.  One palm-full each of garam masala, red curry powder, garlic powder, dried parsley, and cumin.  Wes also added in some hot Hungarian paprika that we had in the pantry because it looked cool.  It's a good time to add salt too.  Stir that all up and enjoy how amazing it makes to kitchen smell.






Next Wes added in 2 cups of dried red lentils.  He stirred them into the onion and spice mix and let them toast up a bit.  Then he poured in a carton of chicken stock (which could have been vegetable stock or water if you wanted to go true vegan).  We let that come to a low boil and put on the lid.  After about 10 minutes add a can of chickpeas (optional but not really).  That needs to cook for about 20 minutes or until the lentils start to get soft.


Everything should come together about the same time.  If you planned ahead you can add a box of fresh baby spinach - or if you're like us now is when you added frozen spinach that you quickly thawed in the sink and squeezed out as much water as you can without a lot of effort.  Also throw in the roasted vegetables.  Let that all cook down until the liquid is at a stew-like consistency and the lentils start to break down a bit.  Some recipes advocate puree of half the lentils, but that's just another thing to clean so I just keep them cooking.

And that's it.  Serve this on brown rice and you've got an amazingly filling and healthy meat-free dinner.  This can also be a side dish for those of you more meat-ly inclined.

And what did Wes think?  You be the judge.

Hopefully we'll be back next week.

Cooking with Wes 2.0?

So it's been a few years since we've done this.  Does the fact that we're doing it today mean that we're back?  Probably not...

Why did we stop?  Well, there were a few reasons.  First of all, we learned about peer pressure and 7 year-old boys through this experiment.  Nothing bad actually happened, but Wes lost interest when he started to worry that kids in his class would find out what we were doing.  That made me sad, but I understood.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where we still can't celebrate how we are different but where it's easiest to be the same - at least outwardly.  When you're a shy, introverted kid things that make you stand out also make you uncomfortable.

Secondly, Wes just got tired of being committed to doing something every week.  9 weeks is about the attention span of a 7 year-old.  We were starting to cut into his t.v. and video game time.  While that disappointed me, this couldn't become something that was a chore or something that we fought about.

So I did my best to hide my disappointment and we moved on.  Then a funny thing happened.  Wes started to ask about doing this again.  A friend poked at me on Facebook and it got us talking about it.  As a 9 year-old now, Wes can do a lot more than 2 years ago.  So, we'll see where it takes us.  Maybe it will take another 10 years to finish our way through all of our family recipes, and maybe that's just okay.