well this crow has been MIA for far too long! the past few months have been quite the roller coaster!  the boxes are almost gone and i FINALLY made my first meal in our new nest in Oakland, CA.  after a successful trip to COSTCO, our freezer is packed w/affordable organic chicken and turkey and the other night, i decided to give this recipe a whirl.

Turkey Meatloaf with feta and sun-dried tomatoes

ingredients:

• 1/2 C dried bread crumbs
• 1/3 C fresh flat leaf parsley leaves
• 1/4 C chopped oil packed sun dried tomatoes
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 1/4 C olive oil
• 1/2 C crumbled feta
• S&P
• 1 lb ground turkey

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients, adding the turkey last and stirring gently so as not to over work the meat.  Carefully pack the meat mixture into a loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes.  I used a meat thermometer to test the internal temp and it took my loaf more like 55 minutes to finish.

from Giada De Laurentiis’s Giada At Home

c/o Real Simple

I love eating sandwiches on the beach.  When I’m in Maine I have to go for the Amatos Italian, but when I stick around the Boston area I need to come up with some sandwich alternatives.  Flipping through the most recent issue of Real Simple I laid my eyes on this beauty pictured above: Salami Sandwich w/ Goat Cheese and Fennel.  I rediscovered my love for salami after the delicious antipasto platter we had at VBar & Mark’s engagement party, and who can deny fennel, goat cheese and arugula!?

Even though this recipe only has about 5 ingredients I tweaked them to make it real simple for me, aka using up the items i had on hand rather than making another trip to the grocery store.  My version was a pita pocket, with grainy dijon mustard, genoa salami, provolone, thinly sliced fennel and green leaf lettuce.  Emily and I enjoyed these bad boys on the beach yesterday along with a whole slew of other tasty treats we had prepared all day Saturday.  Stay tuned for some more beach friendly recipes!

In true Crow fashion, there was way to much food. It is always better to have too many with leftovers, than not enough to feed everyone. Although, one day it will be nice to figure out exactly how much food 20 people will eat over the course of a night of casual munching, being left with loads’o'leftovers at the end of the evening is still okay in my book.

For Holly’s & my contribution, we decided to honor our great Sicilian lady friend with an antipasto platter, and a grilled fennel & herb salad.

Here is the lovely spread! Below you can see the close-ups of our veggie & meat platters

On the platters:

Olives
Marinated Mushrooms- store bought and jazzed up with fresh herbs
Fresh summer Tomatoes
Balsamic Marinated Onions
Roasted Garlic
Roasted Peppers
Pickled Peperoncini w/parsley

Hard Salami
Genoa Salami
Provolone
Prosciutto
Holly’s mega-homemade mustard

I think we are getting the hang of this cooking thing!

I have a quick technique to share with you that I tried out last night after being inspired by the latest Bon Appetit Magazine: Grilled Pork Chops, Yucatan Style.  The recipe was shared by my favorite BBQ hero: Stephen Raichlen.  Bobby Flay’s got nothing on this grill master.  His website may look a little corny but this guy knows how to grill and his expertise is shown in the latest BA issue and through his two entertaining shows BBQ University and Primal Grill.

He stated that the major problem with grilling pork chops is having them dry out, i followed his two easy steps of buying bone in chops and brining them prior to grill time and they came out juicy and delicious!

Grilled Pork Chop Brine:
2 cups water
3 TBS kosher salt
2-3 bay leaves
5 pepper corns
1 tsp all spice

Stir all ingredients together in a bowl until salt is dissolved.  Place chops in a baking dish and cover them with the brine.  Cover and refrigerate for one to two hours.  Pat chops dry and throw them on the grill, 4-6 minutes per side depending on thickness and let set for 10 minutes before eating.  Mine were tasty but Stephen would have been disappointed in my lack of cross-hatch grill marks, definitely something I have the rest of the summer to work on!

After a long journey across the country with my man crow, my cat, and in a strangers car, I’ve arrived in New England. More importantly, I will soon be reunited with the JP crows!

I immediately started missing Oakland, and Oakland taco trucks, the second we left California. The thought of entering a taco-free world, and worse yet, a hard shell taco world (and what I thought would be a ceviche free world, until the crows retreated!), was eating away at my soul with each passing day. I knew that I had to share the glory of a good taco with my parents, who were so graciously allowing me to stay at their house while I got my proverbial “shit together.”

The results? Joyous, wonderful, & delicious.

for proper assembly smear black bean goo on the bottom of the shell. add meat. add cream, pile on cilantro, cabbage, and salsa. drizzle with hot sauce, squeeze 1/4 lime. enjoy!

Now, of course, my taco was not “authentic” either. I used no lard or deep frying, and chose to fill my taco with more than meat + onions + cilantro. Nonetheless, it filled a void in my tummy. My favorite animal meat is pig. I love me some pig, especially when it is cooked by several men in a taco truck. I, of course, could not replicate this on a New England grill, so I had to think fast! I went with some extremely thin sliced-bone in- somewhat fatty-pork. Marinaded in Lime zest, oil, hot peppers, cilantro, salt and pepper, then grilled to a tender but done perfection, I sliced it as thin as possible to form the base of our tacos.

Soft Shell Taco Essentials (the players)

small taco shells- I prefer a yellow corn tortilla, but white corn or flour will do, I suppose
cilantro
red onion
hot sauce
red cabbage
sour cream
salsa
karen’s magic bean goo creation (recipe below)
limes- juice and zest
meat product of your choosing!

So, one could just use these ingredients as is, and have a delicious taco. I made a few small, simple, and fast additions to really make it delicious.

Sour cream: Zest a lime and add 1/2 the juice to a 1/2 of sour cream
Salsa: A pico de gallo style salsa would work, this time I cheated and bought some. If you feel like being 100% home made you: take 3 large tomatoes & dice them finely. Zest 2 limes, add all juice. Dice 1/2 a red onion. chop a full bunch of cilantro. dice very finely at least 1 jalapeno, more if you like heat. Finely grate 2 garlic cloves. Mix everything together with a heafty dose of S & P.
Karen’s Bean Goo: The first time I made tacos at home was with our Oakland friend Karen. She made a black bean “hummus” earlier in the day that went SO WELL with our dinner tacos. Drain & rinse a can of black beans. In a blender combine, black beans, a tomato, a green pepper, cilantro, S & P, and some onion. Blend until smooth.
Cilantro & onions: In a bowl, mix a bunch of cilantro with 1/2 a diced onion. Juice a lime over it and add a good amount of salt. It should taste salty.

Recipe for delicious cornmeal poundcake to come!

Also- a thought. Let’s combine our ceviche with a tostada shell, these taco toppings, cucumber and have a ball!

First he cooked the pork  on low for about 17 hours with some water, onions and spices, then shredded it and cooked it with some BBQ sauce and a bottle of beer for another 7. We topped each sandwich with coleslaw and slapped the hole thing on some challah bread.

The results were heavenly. I’m so impressed (and full) I can barely speak.

So, what’s the next best thing to a burger fresh off the grill? Well, that would be a burger sizzling in the cast iron.  If you recall, Emily posted a great article about cast iron burgers.  Now check out this baby!

We made the burgers with ground turkey, shallot, garlic, rosemary and a splash of steak sauce. We used Ciabatta rolls and topped them off with a slice of havarti and some avocado slices. Finished up with a fresh side salad and a bottle of Smuttynose and I was in heaven.

Mo slicing up the avocado

Kielbasa: sliced into medallions and grilled on each side; dip them in mustard and they taste just like a delicious meat chip
Burgers: Variety of veggie and beef (hardwick farms yum) topped with either sliced jack or asiago, tomatoes, onions and avocado.
Veggies: Garden salad and a zucchini, mushroom and onion pouch with fresh thyme, olive oil and a couple pads of butter for extra richness.

BEER

Drinking bottled beer out of a coozy isn’t nearly as fun as a can but how do you find a decent beer packaged in aluminum?  It just so happens that Mo and I have discovered the answer to this dilemma: Dales Pale Ale and Pork Slap.  Both pack a hoppy taste which is often missing from their other canned counterparts.  For our BBQ we had the Dales, brooklyn pilsner, miller high life, and an assortment of other misfits.  I was surprised to see how many summer brews are already available at the liquor store but I’m trying to refrain from them until May since I have a long season ahead of me.  Unfortunately the Geary’s Summer is not out yet, the one beer I would break my rule for!

Me Vbar & Mo

What’s Next?  I’m thinking about combining the two items in the title and grilling a beer can chicken…stay tuned…

Corned Beef and cabbage is thought to be a poor man’s meal, but that is not the case if you’re buying your cut of meat at whole foods.  Luckily we had all the other ingredients on hand so it wasn’t too bad splurging on a nice cut of beef.  At the meat counter Mo and I were somehow coerced into buying the biggest slab of corned beef they had to offer.  We had to hurry home to start cooking the 6 pounds of beef so we wouldn’t be eating our meal at midnight.

The weather in the Boston area was beautiful on St Patty’s day so we all took advantage of the much needed sunshine by drinking beers and listening to tunes  on the back porch while the corned beef boiled away.  The hardest part to this meal was peeling the pearl onions, besides that this was one of the easiest dinners I’ve made to feed a crowd of about 10.  We followed this recipe and used cabbage, carrots, pearl onions and potatoes as our vegetables.  As if 6 pounds of beef and a mountain of root vegetables weren’t enough food, we made a side of braised turnips and a giant green salad.

Mo Taking out the Beef

The corned beef came out delicious- i was excited to see that it was a normal beef color and not that bright pink shade common among the cuts that are pre-packaged and jacked up with preservatives.

Matt loading up on veggies

After polishing off all the beef and root veggies we found ourselves entering a food coma.  To fight off our feelings of lethargy, we mixed up some whiskey and baileys shooters which gave us much needed energy and filled the void of not making a dessert.

I’m not up for getting the charcoal ready, though, so I’ll be attempting the cast-iron indoor burger.

Some green garlic + cheese stuffed burgers, are just around the corner!

This is a fun article to get you in the mood!