2008? February? Really?

I realize that I've become really really bad at posting with any regularity. I feel mildly guilty about this. Once I would have felt really guilty about this. Now, though, the dizzying swirl of constant obligation and the perpetual feelings of inadequacy, the life that is graduate school, has dulled any such torment of conscience into a mild nagging feeling. And besides, I've found that the last thing I want to do after a long day of working is to spend any more time on the computer.

The absence of photos/recipes of wonderful food on this page does not mean that Ken has stopped cooking... quite the opposite. He is happily working for a small start-up bistro that specializes in high-end catering and he is able to spend most evenings at home. He frequently makes us beautiful and scrumptious meals and has stoically accepted his role as guardian of my sanity- for which I am eternally grateful.

I've attached images of a recent meal/s--
The first is an image of cream of asparagus soup. This soup was delicate, fresh, and made me long for spring.

The second is tuna (half seed-encrusted, half-jerked), mushrooms, and spinach with ginger. Every part of this meal was just amazing. The mushrooms were rich and musky. (Ken has taken to finishing most of his vegetables with chicken stock-- I highly recommend this.) The spinach and ginger was bright and just perfectly wilted... and the tuna was... well, yum

Sorry the photos aren't better. I've gotten a little lazy about taking them since they so rarely go anywhere anymore.

I'll try to post again soon but no promises.

Hearty Beef Stew

I grew up in rural Minnesota and no matter how far I travel or how different my life becomes, Minnesota will always hold a rather sizable chunk of my heart. I have no doubt that with little effort I could overwhelm you with memories, theories, and plenty of poetic sense and nonsense about my home state. However, I believe I have the restraint to keep my musings brief... at least for the moment. You may be wondering what any of this has to do with beef stew. While this is a reasonable question, the answer seems rather obvious to me. Being a Minnesotan, I cannot in good conscious ever discuss beef stew without first offering a brief nod to the land of 10,000 lakes. In Minnesota we know and love our stews, hotdishes, casseroles, pot pies, pasties... basically, we specialize in any hearty meal that involves a bunch of meat, potatoes, vegetables, and other miscellaneous items jumbled together in a large vessel. I can imagine nothing more welcome on a frosty afternoon than a steaming bowl of beef stew, and nothing more wholesome than a spread of 20 hotdishes and a sea of friendly faces at a potluck. It would seem like a terrible betrayal to write about this one beef stew and its rather charming chef without also acknowledging the lifetime of amazing food shared with me by the community that first shaped my life. Thank you all.

So. Ken made this stew as part of the meal planning/organizational extravaganza that I mentioned in the previous post. In the end, the stew was really quite remarkable. I probably shouldn't give away the big secret that made this stew so fantastic- but, eh, what the heck. The secret ingredient was the leftover reduced beef gravy from the roast dinner. It was extremely rich and flavorful and was just the right addition to transform this stew from a good meal into a succulent mouth watering experience.

The recipe follows. As autumn sets in and cold weather starts to arrive, I highly recommend making a nice stew. Really, there's nothing quite like it.

1 lb cubed raw beef
3 carrots coarsely chopped
1 onion, chopped
4 potatoes in chunks
green beans, cleaned and cut into sections
2 tomatoes, coarsely chopped
4 C beef stock
1 T tomato paste
1 bay leaf
dried thyme, salt & pepper to taste

Cook the carrots and onions in a heavy saucepan over med-low heat until they are just starting to caramelize. Next add the tomato paste and fry it for about 1 min. Then add the stock. In a regular frying pan, brown the beef chunks. Once the meat is browned, dump it and everything else into the saucepan and cook for 4 hours.

We ate the stew with toasted and buttered sourdough bread. Yum.

Cooking while Camping: Hunter's Stew

This past week, I brought Ken along on a family camping trip. It was the first time he met several members of my rather large family and I think he was intent on impressing them with his cooking prowess. The trip went very well and my relatives became fond of both Ken and his cooking. Phew.

I plan to post pictures of a few of our different meals and thought I would begin with his Hunter's Stew. This is a dish that he first learned to make as a boy scout and has been making while camping ever since. It is simple and an easy dish for any camper to make. Ken was also able to tantalize the taste buds of my sometimes picky nieces by having them watch as he assembled the food, and then allowing them to pick what went into their own foil packets.

This Hunter's Stew was made with lamb purchased from Nea-Agora Packing Co in Chicago. Ironically, when I went to search for a link to their web page (they don't have one), this review came up. It was written by a friend of ours about a previous outing to Wisconsin when we pit-roasted a lamb. Small world.

In any case, Ken seasoned the meat with a bit of salt and pepper and then browned it on a stove (which is not a necessary step if you're really roughing it).


We then cut up some potatoes, carrots, and onions and put them in a tin foil packet with some rosemary and thyme. Ken added a little flour (corn starch would also work), sealed the packets up, and threw them on the fire.


Over a wood fire, the packets should cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. We cooked our food over a charcoal fire and it took about 50 minutes.



After we pulled the packets from the fire we let them cool for a minute, poured them out on plates, and ate them. It was a very satisfying meal and the kids loved it.

Chicken Noodle Soup for the Sick

I think one of my favorite perks of dating a chef is getting homemade chicken noodle soup when you've got the sniffles. The warm rich aroma of this chicken soup was the first thing I remembered being able to smell in days. Mmmm.

Ken first roasted a chicken to make this soup as I don't care for the taste of boiled chicken. He made homemade noodles, which was a bit of a trick as we don't currently have a pasta roller. In the end, the soup was just fantastic. As you might notice in the picture, I didn't even think of taking a picture until after I had eaten most of it (including all the noodles). I always enjoyed store bought chicken soup as a kid, but homemade soup is an entirely different experience. Well done, Ken. It was very sweet of you to make me soup.