Rat-eh-2-E

It's been a while, but here's some Ratatouille I made back in late spring. 90% of the dish was sourced from within a quarter mile of our apartment in Red Hook.

I built a garden in my courtyard in the waning of winter and transplanted some germinating seeds when it was warm enough for those little weaklings. For this dish, I plucked several eggplants that were the size of a 12-year-old boy's you know what. They were firm, but oh so sweet with a bitterness that just hits the back of the tongue.

The eggplants were sliced into quarter-half inch rounds and then quartered.

The same was done for this beautiful squash grown by Added Value here in Red Hook.

Into a pan with some hot, but not too hot, olive oil, garlic and onion. It's important to get these guys going early on in the process, as they need a bit more time to get tender.

Once the squash and the eggplant have had a few minutes in the pan, toss in some chopped capers and anchovy along with a bit of tomato paste. As much as you may think you hate these fuzzy little fish filets, you don't. In my mind, they are the key to some real complexities and depth found in many great tomato sauces. Don't question the fish, just throw 'em in there.

Radishes and peppers are at the door... let 'em in.

In the case of this Ratatouille, the guests at hand are homegrown watermelon radishes, Jalapenos gone red (in other words they just sat on the vine longer and ripened a bit more), and some of these weird hot peppers my friend gave me.

These peppers are half purple, half white/yellow/green, and only an inch long. On top of that, some are fiery hot while others are sweet and mellow.

Just give all the peppers a good mince and toss them in the mix.

Dealing with watermelon radishes is a bit different in that I didn't just chop the daylights out of them. Radishes, aside from being delicious, are pretty damn sexy, but these watermelon radishes are on a whole different level of visual stimulation. Just look for yourself.

That's why I didn't chop them. Instead, I opted for a clean slice to show off their beauty. Into the pan they go.

Thanks again to Added Value for providing this dish with the sweetest heirloom plum tomatoes. These tomatoes are best for cooking or canning, not eating raw like I did with the rest of the tomatoes I received from my CSA this year. This Ratatouille was the perfect vehicle for these little guys.

Chop the tomatoes and layer them in the pan. All of their juices will heat up and coat the layers beneath. Ratatouille is like a savory, Italian, vegetable layer-cake and as for the final layers, add a couple handfuls of sliced Cremini mushrooms and a good dose of fresh herbs (rosemary, mint, basil, oregano, chives)

Once all of your layers are stacked up, simply place a cover over that beast and let it cook away. Once you think everything is cooked to your liking of tenderness, give it all a big stir and let it cook for just a few minutes more and....presto..... Ratatouille.

Egg, Kale & Mustard Greens with Bacon Lardons & Arugula Flowers

Kale and Mustard Greens, that's the name of the game. Grab yourself an sharp knife...the bigger the better. Bunch the greens into a dense pile and start slicing. I cut them into thing strips, but do whatever the hell you want, I don't have to eat what your mistakes.

Toss the chopped/sliced greens into a large bowl. Now it's time to make it rain...olive oil that is. Drizzle the greens with some good olive oil, toss on a little bit of sea salt and black pepper, maybe a little minced garlic. Go nuts. I think i put some red pepper flakes in there, but thats because I'm crazy. All that nuclear drinking water as kid.

Get a huge saute pan or wok or pot and a big wooden spoon. Drop in the greens and start cooking. How long should you cook them...you figure it out. I'm not one of those people who wants to eat soggy mush that once was a vegetable. I like my greens to still have a bit of bite to them. Pick off a couple of pieces while you cook it and stop when you see fit.

Radish time.

There are several ways you could tackle this.

a) simply slice and throw them in at the end.

b) eat them immediately.

c) cook in butter

d) saute with greens

I chose to slice them thin and saute them in butter. Radishes and butter go hand and hand.

Now it's time for the bacon. Take a slap of it and cut off a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch thick slice. Now cube it. There you have it...bacon lardons.

It's a thing of beauty, but quit drooling over it and throw it on some cast iron.

Once you've successfully cooked your lardons, sauteed the kale, mustard greens & radishes, and poached an egg, you have my permission to throw it all together on a plate. Seeing as my arugula had sprouted some flowers, I decided to pick a few and throw 'em on top. They taste pretty radical. Like a spicier, floral (duh) arugula and they look cool.

Behold!

Kale From Red Hook

Kale!

It's good and it's even better when you fry it!

After you saute the leafy part of the kale, and you notice that you still have those hard stalks sitting on your counter that you forgot to throw away...DON'T!

Take those stalks and cut 'em down to a few inches long. Into a bowl goes some buttermilk, salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. Throw the stalks in. Toss them around for a minute and let them sit.

Now mix some flower with some salt and pepper and smoked paprika. Take each Kale stalk and coat them in the flower mixture. Once that's done, let them sit for a minute or two or until a pot of oil is ready for frying. Yea you heard me...FRYING. These little puppies are gonna be Buttermilk-Fried-Kale Stems. I know, I know...I'm a genius. I've turned your would-be compost into gold. You're welcome.

That's the fried stems paired with a jalapeno-cheddar-biscuit (thanks Quinn), toasted fennel and garlic sausage (thanks butchers), sauteed kale (RHCSA), and pasta salad (thanks Quinn's Mom).

Whiskey, Pork & CSA

It's been a while, but we haven't slowed down. We've been baking, curing meats, grilling and then some, but now we are blessed with a CSA share from a not so distant farm located in the outskirts of....what....Brooklyn. Yes sir. Our farm share comes from a farm only a few blocks away from our little place in Red Hook. It's the Red Hook Community Farm.

Our first meal was a great one and it went a little something like this...

Pork Steaks (cross section of a shoulder), kudos to the butchers over at the Meat Hook, smothered in a serious Garlic Scape marinade. The garlic scapes came straight from the farm and were all squirly.

I gave those wiry stalks a quick chop, added some olive oil, salt, pepper, honey, and Jameson, bitches.

The whiskey baby. Just add a shot or two. Trust me it's good. Pigs are alcoholics anyway, didn't anyone ever tell you that, so why not give them some whiskey in death?

Now put it in a blender or a food processor or a mortar and pestle and beat the shit out of it.

Once you've blended it to smithereens, smother those pig parts in the green slime and let it sit for a few hours or overnight.

Doesn't that look good? Almost like it's covered in nuclear snot. Yummy.

So you've let it sit in the slime for a while now, huh? Fire up that grill to high, or get a blazing charcoal hell-fire going and slap those pig puppies on. Don't worry, you won't burn them. They'll cook up in only a few minutes per side.

Let 'em rest for a minute or two and then go to town...thank me later.

I Left My Heart In Bushwick

Tonight was a good night. It was filled with pork, beer, bones, and pizza. Can you top that? As a matter of fact, you can.

Tony Bennett was the icing on the cake. I didn't want to take a photo of him because it would have required the flash on my shitty little camera phone, but trust me it was him. There was some early speculation to the situation as we sat at the bar in Roberta's, but as we schemed about the whole thing, we heard the owners being introduced to him as Tony.

Could it be? Was this really the Tony Bennett? Was he in an amazing shit hole looking pizza place in the middle of Bushwick!?

Oh it was baby and I don't mean to make Roberta's sound like a dump. It's just, when you see the tiny, cinderblock-built building from the street, it doesn't look like much, but trust me, it is much... way much! Their pizza is worth the travel alone, even if you live in the Bronx. I would kill a bum, or more preferably a Wall Street whore for a margherita pie with some speck (that's delicious cured ham-porky goodness). I mean fuck. Pizza and pig, why not. I'm gonna die from a heart attack or some sort of cancer, why not cram salty pig into everything and while you're at it, throw Tony Bennett into the mix. He can sing I left my heart in that salt cure, or better yet, in the pizza oven along with some fucking amazing pig love.

So take my advice, and not lightly, take it heavily... GO TO ROBERTA'S! Maybe you'll see Tony Bennett.

Coffee

So the house-roasted coffee came out pretty damn good. It was smooth, with a nice deep chocolate taste. I'm giving myself a pat on the back right now.

Thanks Stumptown

Living in Red Hook, Brooklyn is awesome, but one of the many cherries on top of it all is that it is home to the new Stumptown coffee roastery. You'd think that there would be the most wonderful scents of coffee floating through the air at all times, but there just so happens to be some sort of weird food packing warehouse around the block, which equals shit smell. Well, too bad I guess.

So, today I ran out of coffee, Stumptown of course, and I was in a state of panic. If you came by, you would have found me curled up in the fetal position in the corner of my kitchen hugging my coffee grinder with the last remnants of my precious drug stash. You would have gotten bitten if you came near me, trust me. Due to my love of free shit, I went over to Stumptown's Red Hook roastery to inquire about some burlap sacks in the trash and just as I imagined, they were there. In all their burlappy greatness, there they were, just chillin' in the trash. What does a good ol' nature loving whore do... he takes a few, to do what with, I don't know. I took them nonetheless.

So the Quince and I get home and I freak out at the rattling noise coming from a couple of the burlap coffee sacks. HOLY SHIT, it must be coffee! What do you know, it's a handful o' coffee beans. They were green, unroasted, raw berries. Awesome. Another experiment to be done.

I've now become some sort of super-urban coffee farmer. I'm not picking the beautiful berries off a tree. Instead, I'm dumping what little crop I can harvest from a trashed burlap sack, then digging through it to get every last forgotten morsel, and finally picking the dropped berries from the ground. Look mom, I'm a farmer!

From there, it was cleaning the berries of any dirt and dust, most likely gathered from our apartment's floor and not the trashed burlap sacks.

Into the cast iron they go!

Make sure you stir every so often. They might burn if you don't. I just picked up the cast iron pot, with pot holders of course (don't be stupid), and gave it a few tosses. That was done every ten minutes or so.

After an hour or two, the berries were transformed into something very recognizable... coffee beans of course. What were you expecting? It's not like they were going to just turn into a pot roast or even worse, Carrot Top.

Remember when he looked like that. Still kinda freakish, but in a non-horrific way.

The coffee went through various colors, from green to your average dark roasted beans. Take a look.

Ain't thems purdy.

Check back tomorrow for how the cup of coffee from these beauties comes out.