Archive for the Category ◊ braised vegetables ◊

14 Apr 2009 POM Pomegranate Lamb Shank
Author: petermarcus |  Category: POM Wonderful, Photography, Recipes, braised, braised lamb, braised vegetables, dinners, food, garlic, lamb, mushrooms, pomegranate, stew, stock  | 3 Comments

Lamb is one of those traditional ingredients of spring. These days, world-wide distribution and modern farming methods allow lamb to be available year round (for better or worse), but for many years, lamb was only available in the springtime.

Lamb is a great meat to use with pomegranate juice — it’s often paired with sweet condiments like mint jelly, and the complex pomegranate flavors go well with the earthiness of the meat. For this month’s POM blogger entry, I wanted to use a part of lamb that isn’t as familiar as chops. Lamb shank is economical, and is very tasty. Served pulled over linguine, with vegetables and fresh herbs, and this meal delivers a lot of flavor, but is very easy to cook.

spring on in

16 Dec 2008 Braised Lamb Shank Tortelloni
Author: petermarcus |  Category: Photography, Recipes, braised, braised lamb, braised vegetables, dinners, food, lamb, mushrooms, pasta, tortelloni  | 7 Comments

This wasn’t exactly a normal dish for us. First of all, I took inspiration from Olive Garden’s Braised Beef & Tortelloni dinner. I don’t normally get inspired by chain restaurants, but this dish is actually pretty interesting. Secondly, unlike Olive Garden’s pre-prepared supply chain, I took pretty much an afternoon and early evening making this. I like doing this from time to time, though. Even though six hours of prep and cooking can be devoured in 15 minutes, it’s fun to build flavors and layer ingredients, basically practicing and expanding techniques. I usually have to do this on a weekend, though, and this was last Sunday’s dinner.

So, I made braised lamb shanks with root vegetables in veal stock and red wine, took a shank and minced it with Parmesan Reggiano, roasted garlic, and fresh oregano, stuffed it in tortelloni, and served it with sliced braised lamb shank meat and crimini mushrooms in a gravy made from the braising liquid.

You know this was good…

07 Dec 2008 Flat Iron Bordelaise with Braised Roots
Author: petermarcus |  Category: Photography, Recipes, beef, bordelaise, braised, braised vegetables, dinners, flat iron steak, food  | 7 Comments

I got my December Saveur magazine in the mail the other day, and the cover trumpeted both filet mignon, and “The Secrets of French Sauces”. Sauces are my favorite culinary field. I thought to myself: “Self: check out the sauces article. Maybe it’ll add some info to that book by Peterson you keep reading.” Lo and behold, the article was written by James Peterson himself.

I urge everyone interested in sauces to check out this issue. He’s a modest fellow — he refers to his highly acclaimed book (and one of my top-3 cooking must-have books) Sauces as “A book I wrote in 1991″. That “book” is an amazing history, from the salty/fish garum sauces of Rome, to the basic mother sauces of French cuisine, to instructions to develop an almost infinite variety of flavor based on those mother sauces, and beyond. In short, Peterson is one of my culinary idols, and I was pleased to see Saveur conned him into writing the centerpiece of the December issue, without once referring to the holiday season.

The thick, rich, very red sauce on the cover is a bordelaise, so named for the Bordeaux region of France, which is probably the most well known red wine producing region in the world. Peterson provides a classic recipe for bordelaise, over filet mignon. I had to make it, of course. Peterson has always been a tinkerer, however, and I’ve jazzed up his recipe by using flat iron instead of fillet, for some extra beefy flavor, with a few bordelaise substitutions as well. I served the steak and sauce over a braised root vegetable foundation, as a nod to the season.


Winter sizzle