Category Archives: Meat Dishes

Baked Goods, Breakfast and Brunch, Cakes, Pies and Tarts, Cheese Dishes, Egg Dishes, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Quiche Lorraine

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Real men don’t eat quiche?  Garbage.  Since when do men not like bacon, eggs and cheese in portable form?  Quiche Lorraine is the ultimate symbol of breakfast majesty – it’s perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night trips to the fridge when you want a bite of a little something savory.  I’m all for serving this quiche with a plate of mixed greens (maybe in some Tarragon Lemon dressing?) but in actuality, I end up eating it still in the kitchen over the pan after it’s cooled to room temperature.  I’ll pass on standing on ceremony – if it’s good, I’m tucking in.

Quiche Lorraine © Spice or Die

This quiche recipe is incredibly versatile – if you’re so inclined, replace the 1 1/2 c. of ham with whatever filling you’d like.  For you vegetarian lovelies out there, try mushrooms, spinach, swiss chard, shallots – anything you put in an omlette can go in a quiche.  In fact, for a vegetarian delight, try my Green and Gold Quiche, a tasty blend of mushrooms, spinach, shallots and sharp white cheddar.  It’s not at all traditional, but equally grubworthy as this Quiche Lorraine. Continue reading Quiche Lorraine →

Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Baked Ham with Rosemary Hurricane Glaze

I’m Pretty Sure the Holiday Ham is Drunk Again

Easter is all about the celebration of Spring (new birth, resurrection, lilies and the like), which is why lamb is such a popular dish.  If you want to go old school, my money is on a classic smoked ham with a sweet, crackling crust.  In fact, I am going to play Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” as I type this post.  *singing* Bakin’ it sloooooow.

This is straight out of my memories of childhood – Dad would get the Smithfield smoked hams from the grocery for Easter or Christmas and bake them to perfection.  Occasionally, my mom would chuck a few oranges in the baking pan and stud the thing with cloves to keep it spicy and ever so juicy.  Then, after cooking and a good rest on the counter, my Dad would carve with an electric knife (that’s now been upgraded to a super sharp butcher’s knife that he sharpens right before slicing) and give my sister (then a meat eater) and I a slice before serving.  Now, the only ones around clamoring for an early slice of ham are their pug and puggle, Bentley and Chloe.

This ham is straight-forward, but the glaze is a little different.  It gets the name “hurricane” from the Creole-inspired ingredients – it’s the juice and booze that make up the traditional New Orleans drink of the same name.  I add brown mustard, bay leaves, cloves and rosemary and boil the concoction down to a thick syrup that bathes the ham in the last hour of cooking.  I gave you the ingredients for making the glaze as a standalone, but when I do it at home, I double the glaze ingredients and brine the ham in them overnight.  This sweetens the ham and desalts in a bit.  Then, I take the brining liquid and cook it down to make the glaze.  It’s very good this way, but if you don’t feel like wasting that much rum on glaze (as opposed to drinking) just follow the steps as I’ve listed them below.

I serve this ham with the accompaniments of my childhood as well (and this is via our neighbor who usually makes these sides) – scalloped potatoes and spinach salad with red onion and hard-boiled eggs.  Because I need a little more greenery on my plate, I like to roast some asparagus spears as well.  It doesn’t get any more spring-y than that.

Baked Ham with Rosemary Hurricane Glaze

1 smoked ham (around 8 lbs.)
1 c. of orange juice (blood orange or clementine work well)
1 c. of pineapple juice
1/2 c. of grenadine or hibiscus syrup
1/2 c. of brown sugar
1 c. of rum
2 bay leaves
1 tsp of ground cloves
2 tbs. of brown mustard
3 sprigs of rosemary
1 small bunch of sage
pinch of cayenne pepper

Preheat the oven to 325°.  Fit a v-shaped roasting rack over a roasting pan and line with sage and one sprig of rosemary.  Sit ham on top of herbs and put into the oven.  Plan to bake the ham for about 20-25 minutes per pound (my oven runs hot, so I cook mine closer to 20 minutes per lb. to keep it from drying out)

While the ham is cooking, make your glaze.  Pour the orange juice, pineapple juice, grenadine, sugar, rum, bay leaves, cloves, mustard, and the rest of the rosemary into a large saucepan (or if you are cooking down the brine that you used on the ham, use a large pot) and bring to a boil.  Continue to cook until the liquid reduces to a cup and a half.  Strain and set aside.

When the ham only has about 45 minutes left to cook, take it out of the oven.  Pour the glaze over the top.  Return the ham to the oven and continue to bake.  When the ham is done, let rest at least 10 minutes before carving so that the juices have time to redistribute.  Slice and serve.

Breakfast and Brunch, Egg Dishes, Impressive Dishes, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Morel Mushroom Bacon, Egg and Cheese

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Rob From the Rich and Give Truffles to the Poor

I know what you are thinking.  Based on the fancy pants ingredients in this dish and the haute descriptions, this seems like something reserved for trust-fund babies and old money fat cats.  Not the case, plebian reader.  I like to think of this as superior breakfast for the adventurous palette.  Got a little time after a hard week and want to treat yourself to something lovely?  Snag the ingredients for truly THE best bacon, egg and cheese of all time.  I’m talkin’ eternity.

Morel Mushroom Bacon, Egg and Cheese © Spice or Die

This recipe is a lovely tower of creamy eggs, rich goat cheese bechamel, savory morel mushrooms, and prosciutto baked until crispy as bacon.  The whole mix is atop a toasted round of brioche (cut with a $1 ring mold – pick one up and start impressing folks with your presentation skills) and topped with seasonal violets and leaves of fresh thyme.  I usually tell people to make dishes for people that they love, but this is reserved for people in the upper echelons of your love contingency.  Like the top 5.

Truthfully, you can go into this very budget-mindedly without sacrificing on taste.  Brioche can be replaced with challah or another cheaper, eggy bread.  Goat’s milk cheese can be acquired for a reasonable price and at most grocery stores.  Same deal with the prosciutto.  There is no replacement for morels and truffle oil, but they are your only splurge and you won’t be using a lot of them.  If you want my opinion, although it won’t be nearly as luxe, you could get away with replacing the morels with a super fresh in-season mushroom and leave out the truffle oil.  Not the same dish, but still decadent as hell.  But really, get the truffle oil.  You use so little and if you’ve never had truffles before, you need to.  You really, really, really need to.  Like now.

This recipe was born from our attempts (and by our, I mean my friends Richard and Amy, whom I invited to help me cook and who brought the lovely violets that I think make the presentation) to create an award-winning entry into the Marx Foods Morel Mushroom Competition.  We were sent 1 oz. of morel mushrooms and asked to make something lovely.  Well, creative kids that we are, we ended up making two dishes, and this, my darlings, is the runner up.  Can you believe that we found something crazy enough to guild the proverbial lily? And it wasn’t truffled eggs?  Make this one first, and then if you want to up the decadence, read our entry in the competition.  By the way, I’d be remiss in not thanking Justin Marx for his inclusion of my humble site in the short list of competitors.  Talk about good people 🙂  Not to mention their products are ever-so-lovely – I spend hours just thinking how much damage I can do with their fabulous ingredients.  A cook’s dream.

But I digress, as it’s time for some decadence. This recipe is NOT hard to cook.  In fact, the hardest part is the grocery shopping.  It does, however, go in stages, with all of the components assembled at the last minute.  It’s forgiving, though, so take your time stirring and assembling, and maybe enlist those aforementioned people you love in putting the whole thing together. And then get them to wash the dishes.

Morel Bacon, Egg and Cheese (Truffled Eggs on Brioche with Morels, Goat Cheese and Prosciutto Chip)

1/4 oz. of dried morels
1 c. of chicken stock
2 tbs of butter

3 slices of brioche
2 tbs. of butter

2 prosciutto slices

2 tbs. of butter
2 tbs. of flour
2 c. of milk
1/3 c. of cream
1 c. of mild goats milk cheese, grated (we used Midnight Moon Goat from Whole Foods, but use whatever you like, to include 8 oz. of mild soft goat cheese)
pinch of black pepper
pinch of white pepper
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cayenne
1 tsp. of salt

6 eggs
2 tbs. of truffle oil
3 tbs. of butter
1 tsp. of salt
1 tsp. of white pepper
2 tbs. of cream

violet blossoms
fresh thyme leaves

Round one – prep your morels.  Bring your stock to a boil and plunk in your morels.  Cover and let sit for 30 minutes or until mushrooms are puffy and lovely.  Strain, making sure any grit is poured out with the chicken broth.  Slice morels in half and sauté in a pan with 2 tbs. of butter on medium love until soft – about 3-4 minutes.  Set aside.

Round two – begin by prepping your brioche.  Cut out slices from a loaf, or if you want to be ultra fancy, cut out rounds using a 3″ ring mold.  Cookie cutters also work well.  Plunk 2 tbs. of butter into a skillet and melt on low heat.  Turn up the heat to medium low and toast the bread on each side until golden.  Set aside.

Round three – make your prosciutto chips (and you can skip this step, my vegetarian darlings).  Line a baking pan with foil and crank your oven to 450°.  Lay prosciutto flat on the baking pan, making sure that the pieces aren’t touching.  Place in the oven and bake until crispy and dark rose, about 10-12 minutes.  Check once or twice to make sure that it doesn’t burn – there’s not much fat on the prosciutto so they can cook quickly depending on the thickness of the slices.  Set aside.

Round four – make your bechamel (cream sauce).  Melt 2 tbs. of butter in the same pot you sautéed your morels in on medium low.  Whisk in the flour and stir until smooth and all incorporated – about 1 minute or so.  Slowly add your milk in dribs and drabs, whisking to prevent lumps.  Keep on whisking and crank the heat to medium to coax the sauce into thickening.  When it gets lovely and creamy, pour in the heavy cream.  Whisk and add the black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, nutmeg and salt.  Turn off the heat and whisk in the grated cheese.  If you are using goat cheese instead of a hard goat’s milk cheese that can be grated, just toss spoonfuls of it into the sauce and stir.  Taste for salt and pepper and correct seasoning.  Set aside.

Round five – egg action.  Scramble together 6 eggs, truffle oil, salt and white pepper.  Melt 3 tbs. of butter in a skillet on low and then slowly pour in your eggs.  Keep your heat LOW the whole time and gently stir your eggs as small curds form delicately.  This is a slow process, but not complicated.  Just keep stirring until the eggs are creamy and shiny and still a little wet.  Pour in the cream and turn off the heat.

Now, for the big finish – grab some plates and put a piece of brioche on each.  If you are going for fancy presentation, put the ring mold over the brioche and gently put 1/3 of the eggs right into the ring mold.  Otherwise, just portion the eggs right over the toasted brioche however you’d like.  Split the morels amongst the three plates of eggs.  Drizzle a couple of tablespoons of goat cheese bechamel over the works.  Sprinkle the thyme leaves and the violets over the entire plate.  Spear the top of the eggs with a shard of prosciutto.

Tuck into some majesty.

Easy to Prepare, Lighten Up, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Grilled Lemongrass Beef

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A Sweet and Salty Affair

From chocolate covered pretzels to a salt-rimmed margarita, our palettes all crave the goodness that is sweet and salty.  This recipe tackles all the taste points, with a fair share of sweet, salty and tart.  I slather this simple marinade on beef and grill until charred on the outside and juicy pink on the inside, but you can certainly use it on pork or chicken as well.  It’s comprised of a simple kalbi sauce (a delicious combo of brown sugar, soy and mirin used in Korean BBQ), a splash of toasted sesame oil, and an aromatic bit of ground lemongrass (which can be found at Asian markets or online).  I’ve given you the lazy version below that uses a pack of Noh Korean Barbecue mix – I score the packets on Amazon along with orders of char su, the lovely crimson Chinese marinade used on roasted pork.  If you want to go homemade, though, you can certainly make it from scratch using some soy sauce, mirin, sesame oil, sugar and salt and pepper.  Garnish with white and black sesame seeds for an added bit of lovely. Continue reading Grilled Lemongrass Beef →

Friends Recipes and Hacks, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Soups and Stews

Irish Lamb Stew with Rosemary and Sage

Non-Stop Comfort with No Regrets

My good friend Adella, a fellow foodie and recipe crafter, is exacting with her perfection of a dish.  She believes in absolute measurements in the kitchen (“What’s a dash? What’s a pinch”) and as such, she turns out flawless dishes time in and time out.  How could I not love her to pieces?  When I first started Adesina’s Cook-a-long, I immediately knew that I had to hit her up for a recipe.  Adella and I worked next to each other for 2 years, and in those fleeting moments of free time amidst our crazy schedules, she and I would hash about our successes (and occasional flops) in the kitchen.  She, like I, had a collection of “tried and true” go-to recipes that we kept for friends and family – we don’t have cookbook aspirations so much as a need to document the goodness found behind a particular set of ingredients and methods.  When the stars align in the kitchen, the recipe becomes a mini celebration of the success.  Needless to say, Adella has had her fair share of successes, and her collection continues to grow and grow.  Maybe it is time for her to launch a cookbook 🙂 Continue reading Irish Lamb Stew with Rosemary and Sage →

Easy to Prepare, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Simple Hanger Steak

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Hanger? I Hardly Knew Her!

Face it, kids.  Filet mignon is overrated.  Yes, it’s tender.  Yes, it costs more than most other steaks.  But really, if you ask me for the cut that I turn to time and time again for an in-home, steakhouse experience, it’s all about the hanger steak.  Centered between the other popular cuts of brisket and flank.  It’s sometimes referred to as skirt, even though it’s actually a completely separate cut of meat (though close by).  If you see “onglet” on a French bistro menu, they are referring to hanger steak.  The steak itself is comprised of two long strips of meat, with an inedible white membrane running down the middle.  I’m usually too lazy to cut this out when I cook the steak at home, but if you want to be a fancy pants, trim this out before you cut portions of steak.

Prized for it’s beefy flavor and chewy goodness (read: chewy but not at all tough), it’s referred to as “the butcher’s cut” because it was the steak that the butcher kept for his fam.  I’m not so sure that this is the case these days, but because of its caché, it’s been marked up in price from time to time.  Funny how the cheaper cuts (short ribs, skirt steak) have suddenly gone up in price once people collectively “discover” how good they are. Continue reading Simple Hanger Steak →

Meat Dishes, Recipes, Rice Dishes, Soups and Stews

Italian Chicken Soup

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Sippin’ Once, Sippin’ Twice

When I think of chicken and rice soup, I always think of the Maurice Sendak books from my childhood, and the ever famous line, “Sippin’ once, sippin’ twice, sippin’ chicken soup with rice.”  Carole King actually made an animated video of a bunch of Maurice Sendak stories called “Really Rosie” which included the “Chicken Soup with Rice” song.  It included dance moves that certainly rival the recent jammie “Chicken Noodle Soup” (with a soda on the side) which is so bad it’s good.  Well, not so much good as hilarious.  I think I only reason that I like the Chicken Noodle Soup video because a) it takes place in my hood and b) features kids with sweet dance moves.

Back to Maurice Sendak, this soup makes me about as happy as the sweet lyrics to “Alligators All Around” – I could only find this sh!t copy with the lyrics over the video, but it’s still good.  And for the record, my best friend Kate loves “P – Pushing People” the best.  Makes me laugh every time, and yes, I know I’m a child for life.

So about this soup – there’s something about the tender rice and chicken, salty parmasean and delicate bits of egg that make this a go-to for me whenever I need a bit of comfort.  Making the stock from scratch is important, but in a pinch, you could make this with broth – just make sure you don’t leave out the egg and cheese.  They are essential to balancing out the flavor of this soup, and a little bit of really good cheese (I always use locatelli) just seals the deal. Continue reading Italian Chicken Soup →

Meat Dishes, Recipes, Soups and Stews

Cabbage Borscht with Beef Short Ribs

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Stick To Your Ribs…Short Ribs, That Is

I have so many happy memories of this cabbage borscht with beef short ribs – it’s one that my Dad has been making for years, probably back when the parents had a subscription to Bon Apetit and Gourmet mag.  Every edition had sweet 70s fashions and folks curled up on shag rugs dipping wisps of beef tenderloin into the smoking oil fondue pots.  You can’t really find this soup recipe by its original name (which I use here), but recently my Dad did a search and found out that it now goes under the guise of Czech Flanken and Cabbage Soup.  Both titles are accurate, but the recipe below is truly the best I’ve come across.  The soup is hearty and rich, but cut with a zip of lemon and sweet red wine. Continue reading Cabbage Borscht with Beef Short Ribs →

Low Brow Treats, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Pasta Dishes, Recipes, Soups and Stews

Cincinnati Style Chili Mac

aka The Championship Chili

The zesty cousin of red-hot Texas chili, this Cincinnati style chili mac has a whole lot of soul in the form of a long line of herbs and spices.  Originally perfected by Greek immigrants, this slow-cooked, saucy treat is known for its long list of seemingly unusual ingredients.  In addition, the chili is traditionally served without beans and over spaghetti – you’ll see when you make this chili that it actually cooks up like a bolognese.

I first became familiar with it via the DC restaurant, Hard Times Cafe, where the chili is served in “ways”.  Starting with your basic chili, each additional topping is considered a way – so two-way is spaghetti and chili, three-way is spaghetti, chili and cheese, four-way is spaghetti, chili, cheese and onions, and five-way is all of the above plus pink beans. Continue reading Cincinnati Style Chili Mac →

Appetizers and Small Plates, Impressive Dishes, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Seafood Dishes

Cha Gio (Vietnamese Crispy Spring Rolls)

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Greatest Wrapper of All Time

Cha gio, the Vietnamese answer to the Chinese spring roll, are a heck of a lot more than a crispy wrapper around a bit of filling.  The complex mix of tender pork, delicate shrimp and crab, and savory vegetables and spices form an addictive amalgamation that trumps the few shreds of cabbage and roast pork in a traditional spring roll.  Combine this roll with the delicious crunch of herbs and lettuce, and finish the whole thing off with a dunk into some sweet and salty nuoc mam, and you are in for a treat.

I always order cha gio with all the fixings at Vietnamese restaurants, and feel that the presentation lends an air of luxury to the dish.  And yet, when I was young, our Vietnamese friends would make the rolls in large quantities and share with anyone deserving of a little treat – cha gio were unpretentious and meant to be shared.  I feel the same way about feijoada completa (the Brazilian national dish of black beans, rice, and assorted condiments) – in a restaurant, the many dishes of food that make up the meal add an element of grandeur to the meal, when in actuality, feijoada is the people’s food at its best.  Just good, honest cooking meant to be shared with friends and family. Continue reading Cha Gio (Vietnamese Crispy Spring Rolls) →