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My Top Meals of 2009
This, in no particular order and chosen somewhat arbitrarily from memory, is my list of some of the best meals I made in 2009. Tellingly, perhaps, several of them are from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine, and none are from its putative replacement*, Bon Appetit
.
1. Salsa Verde Carnitas (Pork Tacos with Green Sauce)
This recipe, an adaptation by Accidental Hedonist, takes this one from Simply Recipes (which calls for a four-hour-plus braise in salsa verde) and gilds the lily, adding a rub made from cumin, brown sugar, and sweet and hot paprikas. Let the shoulder rest in that mixture overnight, cover it with a mixture of salsa verde (canned is fine) and pork stock (cheating with beef or even chicken is fine, but I tend to have some of each around) and braise hell out of it until it's soft enough to cut with a spoon. Toss in a handful of cilantro and a lime's worth of juice, and that's it.
The recipe I've linked calls for a brief crisping time in a low oven, but after trying that method three or four times, I recommend simply taking the pork out of the pot and reducing the sauce while the shoulder rests. Finally, shred the pork and serve it on warmed corn tortillas with radishes, crema, cotija cheese, red cabbage, and the reduced sauce alongside.
2. Turkey Meatballs (from Gourmet)
Yep, you read that right: Turkey meatballs . I was skeptical, too—repeatedly passing over the torn-out magazine page in my recipe pile for bolder, more exotic-sounding recipes—until I read this rave review on Smitten Kitchen, which declared these meatballs "impossibly good," "possibly my new favorite meatball recipe"; and "crazy good" (she also said her life had been "woefully deficient" before she discovered the recipe... which even I can admit is going a bit far.)
But every other superlative? Right on. They're that good: A deceptive simple mix of bread soaked in milk (standard, as far as I'm concerned, in any decent meatball recipe), ground meat, pancetta (that's probably the secret ingredient), onions, egg, garlic, tomato paste and herbs. Chicken works, too (in fact, it's what Gourmet recommends), but I find that turkey tends to have a higher fat content (and fat=flavor, as everyone knows). The peporanata included in the recipe are good, but not strictly necessary; feel free to skip this step if it's impeding you from making these.
3. Stir-Fried Pork With Long Beans (from Gourmet )
This recipe combines several of my favorite elements: The challenge of difficult-to-find ingredients (fresh curry leaves, shrimp powder, shrimp paste, cilantro root, galangal...), an unusual (for me) method, flavors that are truly foreign to my American palate, and impressiveness: Not one person I've ever served this to has failed to ask for seconds.
The basic premise is fairly simple: Combine a dozen exotic ingredients in a large mortar, pound with a pestle for six to eight minutes until you have a smooth paste (and no cheating with a food processor!), and stir-fry, adding beans, boneless pork ribs (frozen for a few minutes for easier slicing), and a few more basic ingredients near the end of cooking. But the result is beguiling: The sharp tang of lemongrass, lime zest, galangal and lime leaves hits you first, followed by gentle umami notes from the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce. If you can't come up with all the ingredients—even at Seattle's Asian markets, Kaffir lime leaves are often in short supply—don't abandon hope: just substitute more lime zest for the lime leaves, ginger for the galangal, and regular cilantro stems for the cilantro root. The only ingredients that are absolutely indispensible are the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce, for which there are no substitutes.
4. Chicken with Salsa Verde (Mark Bittman)
As FoodNerd readers and friends are well aware, my love for Mark Bittman (AKA my imaginary boyfriend) is well-documented. And the man has written the bible of basic cookbooks, post-Joy (How to Cook Everything, which you should buy now if you don't already own both editions). So it was hard to narrow the dozens and dozens of Bittman recipes I've made down to just one or two favorites.
However, this one is something special: It's simple, yes, but with enough exciting ingredients—poblanos! cilantro! lime juice! tomatillos!—you'd never know it only takes about half an hour from fridge to table. First, you brown the chicken in lard (What? You don't have lard on hand? Rendering it at home is easy ) or neutral oil. Then you brown some pumpkin seeds, add onions, garlic, and some peppers (I like serranos), stir in some tomatillos, and cook the whole thing down until it looks like a sauce. Add the chicken, cook until done, finish with some herbs and lime juice, and—this is my favorite part—"serve with whatever garnishes you like." That's my kind of food writer.
5. Best Roasted Chicken (my recipe)
As any serious amateur cook knows, there is but one best way to make a roasted chicken: Whichever way the person making the chicken thinks is best.
That said, how best to roast a chicken isn't a subject to broach lightly. There are those who brine and those who consider brining an unnecessary fillip; devotees and shunners of herb butters and rubs; dry-briners and air-dryers and bird-flippers and basters and everything else you can imagine. All methods have their acolytes; all acolytes are fanatics.
With that in mind, here is the single best way to roast a chicken, no rubs, flips, basting, or butter required—developed by me over years of painstaking experimentation.
First, mix about a cup of salt in with enough water to cover your chicken. (Most recipes, even in modern books, call for a 3-to-4-pound chicken, but I've found that even organic chickens these days tend to be 5-to-6-pound monsters). After the salt is dissolved, add the chicken and brine in the refrigerator for at least an hour and up to 24. When the chicken has had its rest, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Then dry the chicken—thoroughly!—with paper towels, sprinkle generously inside and out with salt and pepper, and lay it on a cutting board. Stuff the cavity with a wedged-up lemon, a sliced shallot or two, some whole (peeled) garlic cloves, a big handful of parsley, and several sprigs of an herb of your choice. (I like marjoram, but tarragon or rosemary—a little less of either—thyme or even oregano would do). Tie the legs together with kitchen twine if you're feeling fancy, place it, breast-down, in a Dutch oven (adding a few sliced potatoes, carrots, parsnips, etc. to the bottom of the pot first is nice), and cook it, uncovered, until the skin on top is nice and brown.
(This is when you can flip it, if you're a flipper. Personally, I think it's too much trouble).
Once you've achieved the desired brownness, lower the heat to 350 and cook until the leg can be easily pulled from the body and the juices from the thickest part of the thighs run clear, between 30 and 45 more minutes, depending on the size of your chicken. (You can always use a meat thermometer, if you're a stickler—in that case, the thick part of the thigh should be around 165 degrees, keeping in mind that the chicken will keep cooking outside the oven. Like Julia Child, I prefer to take my chicken out a little pink.) Let it rest a few minutes in the pot, and carve. That's it.
6. Goat Tacos (from Gourmet)
Did I mention I'm a sucker for exotic, hard-to-find ingredients? Procuring the goat shoulder for these tacos involved no fewer than three trips to Fero's Meat Market (in Pike Place Market, downstairs from the can-can place), during which I was told: We'll have to order that; the guy who cuts goat isn't here; and, oh, you're making tacos? You don't need it cut at all.
Other than its rather unusual main ingredient, the recipe itself is fairly straightforward: Make a sauce from chile puree, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices, pour over goat, braise forever. But the result is different than anything you've ever eaten: Slightly gamey, a little like lamb, tender from all the succulent fat, and fiery from the intense chile-spiked sauce. If you think you're "afraid" to eat goat, this is a great introduction, Goat 101. (102, for me, was goat rendang, a complex Indonesian recipe whose exact formula, sadly, is lost to time).
Runners-Up:
Baingain Aloo Charchari (Char-Cooked Eggplant and Potatoes), from Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, another exotic-tasting recipe that's actually very simple to prepare, once you've tracked down some of the more obscure ingredients; and, believe it or not, plain whole grains, tossed with sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, and roasted peanuts—another Bittman special that became my go-to breakfast for nearly six months this year.
1. Salsa Verde Carnitas (Pork Tacos with Green Sauce)
This recipe, an adaptation by Accidental Hedonist, takes this one from Simply Recipes (which calls for a four-hour-plus braise in salsa verde) and gilds the lily, adding a rub made from cumin, brown sugar, and sweet and hot paprikas. Let the shoulder rest in that mixture overnight, cover it with a mixture of salsa verde (canned is fine) and pork stock (cheating with beef or even chicken is fine, but I tend to have some of each around) and braise hell out of it until it's soft enough to cut with a spoon. Toss in a handful of cilantro and a lime's worth of juice, and that's it.
The recipe I've linked calls for a brief crisping time in a low oven, but after trying that method three or four times, I recommend simply taking the pork out of the pot and reducing the sauce while the shoulder rests. Finally, shred the pork and serve it on warmed corn tortillas with radishes, crema, cotija cheese, red cabbage, and the reduced sauce alongside.
2. Turkey Meatballs (from Gourmet)
Yep, you read that right: Turkey meatballs . I was skeptical, too—repeatedly passing over the torn-out magazine page in my recipe pile for bolder, more exotic-sounding recipes—until I read this rave review on Smitten Kitchen, which declared these meatballs "impossibly good," "possibly my new favorite meatball recipe"; and "crazy good" (she also said her life had been "woefully deficient" before she discovered the recipe... which even I can admit is going a bit far.)
But every other superlative? Right on. They're that good: A deceptive simple mix of bread soaked in milk (standard, as far as I'm concerned, in any decent meatball recipe), ground meat, pancetta (that's probably the secret ingredient), onions, egg, garlic, tomato paste and herbs. Chicken works, too (in fact, it's what Gourmet recommends), but I find that turkey tends to have a higher fat content (and fat=flavor, as everyone knows). The peporanata included in the recipe are good, but not strictly necessary; feel free to skip this step if it's impeding you from making these.
3. Stir-Fried Pork With Long Beans (from Gourmet )
This recipe combines several of my favorite elements: The challenge of difficult-to-find ingredients (fresh curry leaves, shrimp powder, shrimp paste, cilantro root, galangal...), an unusual (for me) method, flavors that are truly foreign to my American palate, and impressiveness: Not one person I've ever served this to has failed to ask for seconds.
The basic premise is fairly simple: Combine a dozen exotic ingredients in a large mortar, pound with a pestle for six to eight minutes until you have a smooth paste (and no cheating with a food processor!), and stir-fry, adding beans, boneless pork ribs (frozen for a few minutes for easier slicing), and a few more basic ingredients near the end of cooking. But the result is beguiling: The sharp tang of lemongrass, lime zest, galangal and lime leaves hits you first, followed by gentle umami notes from the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce. If you can't come up with all the ingredients—even at Seattle's Asian markets, Kaffir lime leaves are often in short supply—don't abandon hope: just substitute more lime zest for the lime leaves, ginger for the galangal, and regular cilantro stems for the cilantro root. The only ingredients that are absolutely indispensible are the shrimp paste, shrimp powder, and fish sauce, for which there are no substitutes.
4. Chicken with Salsa Verde (Mark Bittman)
As FoodNerd readers and friends are well aware, my love for Mark Bittman (AKA my imaginary boyfriend) is well-documented. And the man has written the bible of basic cookbooks, post-Joy (How to Cook Everything, which you should buy now if you don't already own both editions). So it was hard to narrow the dozens and dozens of Bittman recipes I've made down to just one or two favorites.
However, this one is something special: It's simple, yes, but with enough exciting ingredients—poblanos! cilantro! lime juice! tomatillos!—you'd never know it only takes about half an hour from fridge to table. First, you brown the chicken in lard (What? You don't have lard on hand? Rendering it at home is easy ) or neutral oil. Then you brown some pumpkin seeds, add onions, garlic, and some peppers (I like serranos), stir in some tomatillos, and cook the whole thing down until it looks like a sauce. Add the chicken, cook until done, finish with some herbs and lime juice, and—this is my favorite part—"serve with whatever garnishes you like." That's my kind of food writer.
5. Best Roasted Chicken (my recipe)
As any serious amateur cook knows, there is but one best way to make a roasted chicken: Whichever way the person making the chicken thinks is best.
That said, how best to roast a chicken isn't a subject to broach lightly. There are those who brine and those who consider brining an unnecessary fillip; devotees and shunners of herb butters and rubs; dry-briners and air-dryers and bird-flippers and basters and everything else you can imagine. All methods have their acolytes; all acolytes are fanatics.
With that in mind, here is the single best way to roast a chicken, no rubs, flips, basting, or butter required—developed by me over years of painstaking experimentation.
First, mix about a cup of salt in with enough water to cover your chicken. (Most recipes, even in modern books, call for a 3-to-4-pound chicken, but I've found that even organic chickens these days tend to be 5-to-6-pound monsters). After the salt is dissolved, add the chicken and brine in the refrigerator for at least an hour and up to 24. When the chicken has had its rest, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Then dry the chicken—thoroughly!—with paper towels, sprinkle generously inside and out with salt and pepper, and lay it on a cutting board. Stuff the cavity with a wedged-up lemon, a sliced shallot or two, some whole (peeled) garlic cloves, a big handful of parsley, and several sprigs of an herb of your choice. (I like marjoram, but tarragon or rosemary—a little less of either—thyme or even oregano would do). Tie the legs together with kitchen twine if you're feeling fancy, place it, breast-down, in a Dutch oven (adding a few sliced potatoes, carrots, parsnips, etc. to the bottom of the pot first is nice), and cook it, uncovered, until the skin on top is nice and brown.
(This is when you can flip it, if you're a flipper. Personally, I think it's too much trouble).
Once you've achieved the desired brownness, lower the heat to 350 and cook until the leg can be easily pulled from the body and the juices from the thickest part of the thighs run clear, between 30 and 45 more minutes, depending on the size of your chicken. (You can always use a meat thermometer, if you're a stickler—in that case, the thick part of the thigh should be around 165 degrees, keeping in mind that the chicken will keep cooking outside the oven. Like Julia Child, I prefer to take my chicken out a little pink.) Let it rest a few minutes in the pot, and carve. That's it.
6. Goat Tacos (from Gourmet)
Did I mention I'm a sucker for exotic, hard-to-find ingredients? Procuring the goat shoulder for these tacos involved no fewer than three trips to Fero's Meat Market (in Pike Place Market, downstairs from the can-can place), during which I was told: We'll have to order that; the guy who cuts goat isn't here; and, oh, you're making tacos? You don't need it cut at all.
Other than its rather unusual main ingredient, the recipe itself is fairly straightforward: Make a sauce from chile puree, tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices, pour over goat, braise forever. But the result is different than anything you've ever eaten: Slightly gamey, a little like lamb, tender from all the succulent fat, and fiery from the intense chile-spiked sauce. If you think you're "afraid" to eat goat, this is a great introduction, Goat 101. (102, for me, was goat rendang, a complex Indonesian recipe whose exact formula, sadly, is lost to time).
Runners-Up:
Baingain Aloo Charchari (Char-Cooked Eggplant and Potatoes), from Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, another exotic-tasting recipe that's actually very simple to prepare, once you've tracked down some of the more obscure ingredients; and, believe it or not, plain whole grains, tossed with sesame oil, soy sauce, scallions, and roasted peanuts—another Bittman special that became my go-to breakfast for nearly six months this year.
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