i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Now that things have settled down a little in my life for this moment in time (including the terrifying ordeal of getting the dojo inspected for NYS COVID compliance), my creative juices are flowing so I decided to make a simple, but elegant pasta dish …
I know I’m known for generally extravagant meals, so a simple egg fried rice dish seems to be a bit out of character for me. Even more so because as a child, I hated fried rice in any way, shape, or form. This is actually …
If you walk along the streets of Flushing or NYC’s Chinatown, carts located on the corners waft the heavenly spiced scent of Xinjiang style kebabs to passerby’s. Lamb, beef, chicken are available, but delectable organ meats such as kidney, liver, heart, intestine, and tendon jockey for position on the grill. For someone like me who loathes to waste any part of an animal and adore organs, it’s right up my alley… and my childhood.
When we were little and my parents would take us in to Flushing to run errands, I could often be found munching on a kebab or two. My favorite has always been the uncommon flavors and textures that organ meats bring to the table. Having picked up half a lamb from R & K Homestead, I was provided with the kidneys and livers which I ferreted home in excitement—recreating childhood dishes that I can’t easily get on the east side of Long Island brings me a lot of nostalgia and a lot of joy and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the kidneys.
You can use regular beef or lamb meat for this as well, the spice mixture is the same. Choose a fatty piece for it to stay juicy and decadent, with some bread to soak up the flavors. Traditionally, a piece of fat would be placed between each piece of meat!
If you ask me what kidney tastes like, I may not be able to describe it to you—it is similar to liver but still different, with a unique flavor that I am quite fond of. I made a marinated pork kidney dish (which I will actually do again with the pork kidneys I was also given in my order) a while ago which is milder in flavor than lamb (although this particular set of kidneys were not at all gamey to begin with.)
Make sure you pull the outside membrane off the kidneys, and while mine were tender and mild enough that it didn’t matter, most people cut the white renal pelvis out so it doesn’t negatively affect the texture or flavor. I added a little of my salt preserved lemon puree, for a slight hint of citrus and acidity, but you can leave it out.
I would recommend you cook it over a coal grill, but in the absence of, the air fryer or oven does it’s job—or you can sauté it in a pan.
One of the things I am thankful for after starting to grow my own food is also being friends with other homesteaders, big and small, who also focus on being mindful in terms of where our food comes from and the care it takes into …
Every year, during the course of my crabbing adventures I catch a few soft shelled crabs. When that happens, I start thinking about what deliciousness I can make with them. Soft shelled crabs are crabs that have just molted from their shells and their new …
Every year, inevitably, all sorts of plants emerge from my compost pile from the seeds of the stuff I throw into it. Squash and pumpkin most commonly, especially since much of the Halloween decorations get tossed in at the end of the season. This year an explosion of a variety of volunteer squash have shown up, which for me means lots and lots of blossoms.
While I do appreciate a nice zucchini blossom fritter, I decided to make a nice and refreshing pasta, since the tomatoes and the basil in my garden have also been bountiful. This simple pasta is a breeze to put together, and since it isn’t cream based, I don’t feel too heavy (or guilty) at the last bite. Be aware that pumpkin blossoms will be slightly bitter, compared to zucchini blossoms that are mild.
When I boil the pasta, I use less water so that I could use the leftover pasta water to thicken the sauce and allow it to cling to the pasta better. Today, I did a half-half mix of olive oil and butter, but either or works.
A cascade of blue claws this year has me cleaning and freezing them around the clock (I remove the stomach before freezing and scrub, so that they don’t have a fishy flavor due to crabs being scavengers.) Nanbanzuke is an easy Japanese side dish most …
I can be very extra with my food, and this is one such case. This morning me and the family went down to the docks, expecting to come away with maybe a couple crabs and some fish. Instead, we ended up pulling up two and …
As we get further into blue claw season in Long Island, I am busy making tasty things with them. This lemon crab pasta is really easy to make, and the splash of cream at the end gives this a delicious richness that is difficult to describe. You can, of course, use store bought crab meat when you don’t have fresh, but my blog wouldn‘t be what it is if I wasn’t at least producing some of the ingredients from foraging, fishing, crabbing, or growing.
If you have access to the local docks, July and August is when a net, some chicken legs or wings can have you hauling them up by the bucketful. You can freeze them and keep them in a non-thaw cycled deep chest freezer and then steam them as needed so you can have blue claws all year long.
I imagine king crab or snow crab would be equally acceptable and delicious. I always keep a jar of salt preserved lemon puree on hand in the event I need lemon juice and lemon zest. The cream goes in at the end to prevent it from curdling due to the acidity from the lemon.
I was recommended tomato chutney as a possible recipe when my tomatoes started ripening in earnest. I have never had any before, to my knowledge, which is a pity because after this week, I’ll be canning as much as I could of this delicious condiment. …