Joe Yonan

Friday, May 4, 2012

Let's Lunch: Grilled Kimcheese Sandwich

Grilled Kimcheese Sandwich.
(Recipe at the end of this post.)

We're all purists about some things. I think so, anyway. Perhaps I should speak for myself: I am definitely a purist about some things. Some food things. Particularly -- and I don't think I'm alone here -- some food things with which I grew up.

Case in point: chili. I've been vocal about this before, but to reiterate, I'm a Texan, and in Texas, chili doesn't have beans, it doesn't even have tomatoes. It has chile peppers, beef, and seasonings. Its full name is chile con carne for a reason, people.

I've always felt the same way about chicken-fried steak, honestly.

Then I took part in the fantastic UNH Gourmet Dinner recently, along with guest chef Ben Hasty of When Pigs Fly Pizzeria. While he was busy teaching the students how to make their own charcuterie and the like, I was mostly tasting and advising. The theme was regional American food, and so I suggested that CFS be part of the dinner. Ben suggested that they do a twist on it, chicken-fried short rib. The short rib was cured beforehand, so it stayed super moist, something that worked really well when it came to 200-person banquet service. And I had suggested incorporating miso into the gravy.

On night two of the dinner (they repeat the event on Friday and Saturday, to give the students a chance to improve from one to the next), more than one guest at my table confessed to never having had CFS before. I had just read an essay from my cookbook on the subject, and I couldn't help but say, "I love this dish and everything, absolutely, but dare I say that, sir, you still have not really had chicken-fried steak."

The New Homesteading: Turning Vague-an

Rebekah says goodbye to one
of the chickens, a Barred Rock.

When I arrived at the homestead in January, I was surprised by how much milk my sister and brother-in-law were going through: a gallon a week of the delicious raw stuff, half of it from cows and half from goats. Rebekah was making a couple quarts of yogurt a week, and the rest was going onto Peter's oatmeal, in their coffee, and into various breads and other baked goods. (Among other things, my sister happens to make the best English muffins I've ever had.)

Rebekah hasn't typically been a huge milk lover. In fact, many years after her long run of vegetarianism ended decades ago, I remember her being fairly horrified by the fact that I would sometimes drink an entire glass, with or without a cookie. But in the dozen years of living with Peter here in southern Maine, she has adapted to a diet that includes plenty of animal products -- and animals themselves, of course. They've raised chickens and turkeys for meat, and have traded for, bought and otherwise been the recipients of various cuts of pork, lamb and venison, too.

Meanwhile, I've been wondering how I'd manage to reconcile my own diet, which has become vegetable-focused at home (partly to make up for the heavy meat eating I sometimes do at restaurants), with the more than 200 pounds of meat (more than 160 pounds of it chicken) that was packed into the freezers when I arrived. And then there's the fact that I'm testing recipes for my next cookbook, which I plan to make a celebration of vegetables: not vegetarian per se, and with dairy, eggs and even fish and meat accents here and there. But certainly not enough chicken to make a dent in that freezer stash. It's a good thing it's another cooking-for-one book, I thought, because I might need to eat drastically differently from the other two members of the household, especially once we slaughtered the two pigs we had ordered up and were expecting to get this spring.

Then things started to shift.

Let's Lunch: Kimchi Deviled Eggs

Kimchi Deviled Eggs.
See the recipe at the end of this post.

When we put this month's topic up for a Twitter vote by the Let's Lunch crowd, our informal assortment of bloggers who get together for a virtual meal, I shot my hand up in the air and practically shouted: Eggs!

Why wouldn't I? My love for them is boundless. I've often extolled the beauty of eggs as the perfect single-serving food: They're portion-controlled, long-lasting in the fridge, and outright delicious, especially if you've got any hens laying around. (There's a sly little joke in there for the grammatically obsessed.)

Which we do here on the Maine homestead. In fact, when the other two-thirds of the house told me a few weeks ago they had decided to go -- brace yourself -- vegan, the first thing I thought was, "What about the chickens? Don't give up the chickens. Let me have the chickens." I'm writing more about this soon, but suffice it to say, they let me have a few of the chickens and gave away the rest, so I'm able to have my supply.

Each one of the chicks lays an egg a day at her peak, and they're peaking now, so you can see that even for an egg-loving guy like me, that's a lot of eggs: 21 a week. We give them away here and there, though we don't have enough to trade to our friend Dave Plante anymore -- the man's family vacuums them up, and in return he was bringing us exquisite goat milk. But since I promised that I'd keep eating them, that's what I've been doing.

In a couple of weeks, my column in the Washington Post Food section will be devoted to my love of eggs for single-serving purposes, and will include recipes for two dinnertime favorites: Egg in Puttanesca With Kale and Mushrooms, and Spaghetti With Fried Egg and Sardines, the latter brightened with preserved lemon, walnuts and spinach. But today, for Let's Lunch, I thought I'd offer something a little more communal -- and appropriate for a springtime lunch.

Related searches:
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Friday, May 4, 2012

Let's Lunch: Grilled Kimcheese Sandwich

Friday, April 20, 2012

The New Homesteading: Turning Vague-an

Friday, April 6, 2012

Let's Lunch: Kimchi Deviled Eggs