Grazin' Angus Acres Beef Jerky

The other day, I made the embarrassing admission to Significant Eater that I had never eaten beef jerky.  Call me a snob, but I just never understood the appeal of eating packaged, dried beef.  When I spotted beef jerky sold at Grazin' Angus Acres, a grass-fed beef purveyor at the Union Square Greenmarket (that also happens to sell the best eggs at the Greenmarket), I knew that I finally had to give beef jerky a try.  A grass-fed, local, artisanal, $10 for a quarter pound beef jerky that needs to be refrigerated? Ok, well maybe I am a bit of a snob, but this beef jerky is pretty good stuff.  It's intensely spiced and the leathery texture that I assume is inherent to all beef jerky is not as off-putting as I expected it to be.  According to Significant Eater, Grazin' Angus' beef jerky tastes just like a Slim Jim.  I wouldn't know, but if that claim is accurate, I may just have to snap it to a Slim Jim one of these days.

Springtime "Carbonara" with Ramps and Asparagus

Spaghetti carbonara is one of those classic pasta recipes that you just don’t mess with. Pasta, eggs, Parmesan cheese, guanciale (or pancetta), salt and pepper: those are the only ingredients that should ever go into a carbonara. Don’t add parsley, don’t add peas, and please, please, please don’t add cream. So accept my sincere apologies for calling this dish a carbonara. I really wanted to avoid doing so; it contains heavy cream and smoked bacon—not to mention asparagus and ramps—but that’s what Andrew Carmellini calls it in Urban Italian, from which this recipe is liberally adapted (I substituted bacon for the speck that Carmellini calls for and asparagus for his sugar snap peas and English peas). I’m going to let Mr. Carmellini get away with calling it a carbonara because it is an excellent recipe; with a creamy sauce that clings to each strand of pasta and crispy pieces of cured beat, it has many of the characteristics that I love about carbonara, while the spring vegetables give the dish a more seasonal touch. Regardless of what you want to call it, it will please any carbonara lover out there.

Springtime “Carbonara” with Asparagus and Ramps
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• ½ cup heavy cream
• 1 egg
• 1 handful of asparagus, cleaned, trimmed, and cut into 1-inch pieces
• ½ lb. spaghetti
• 4 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped into ½-inch pieces
• 1 bunch of ramps, cleaned, roots removed, and cut into thirds
• ½ cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus more for serving
• black pepper, freshly ground
• salt, to taste

Directions:

1. Beat the cream and the egg together in a small bowl until they are well blended. Set aside.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. While waiting for the asparagus to boil, fill a medium bowl with ice water. Add the asparagus to the boiling water and cook until the asparagus turns bright green, 1 to 2 minutes, then use a slotted spoon to immediately plunge the asparagus in the ice water so that it stops cooking.
3. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for one minute less than the package directions indicate. Meanwhile, continue with the rest of the recipe.
4. Heat a deep-sided skillet or sauté pan over medium-high eat. Add the bacon to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until the bacon begins to crisp, about 3 minutes.
5. Add the ramps to the pan and continue to cook until the leaves are wilted and the bulbs begin to brown. Reduce the heat to low, and wait for the pasta to finish cooking, stirring the ramps periodically.
6. Once the pasta is al dente, drain it, reserving a ½ cup of the cooking water.
7. Add the asparagus and the reserved pasta water to the skillet. Stir in the pasta, then the cream and egg mixture. There should be just enough liquid in the skillet to coat the pasta, and the sauce should not be watery. If necessary, increase the heat and reduce the sauce to the desired consistency.
8. Remove the skillet from the heat. Stir in the cheese and a generous amount of ground pepper. Taste for salt. Serve the pasta immediately, with a small amount of Pecorino Romano cheese grated over the top.  

Ramp Pesto with Almonds

Ever since my week long bout with pine mouth, I have been hesitant about eating pine nuts. But being that we are in the midst of ramp season, I just had to make a batch of ramp pesto, one of my favorite preparations for the spring vegetable.  While I nearly took the plunge and used the traditional, innocuous-looking but potentially taste-bud-killing pine nuts, in the end I took the safe route and used almonds, my go-to nut when I need to add some crunch to a dish.  I served the pesto alongside roast chicken and sauteed asparagus and Shiitake mushrooms.  The almonds worked perfectly, adding just the right amount of texture to the pungent ramp pesto.  More importantly, I could still taste my dessert. 

Ramp Pesto

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of ramp leaves with two ramp bulbs, roots removed 
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp almonds, toasted
• 1/4 cup grated pecorino Romano cheese
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• salt, to taste

Directions:

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the ramp leaves and bulbs.  Run the food processor and slowly pour in the oil with the motor running.  Continue to process the ramp mixture until it has formed into a smooth paste.  Add the almonds and cheese and pulse until the pesto is well blended (the pesto should not be chunky, but should have some texture from the nuts).  Taste for salt and serve immediately or refrigerate for several days.

Shrimp Rolls from Luke's Lobster

 

With great excitement, I discovered that Luke's Lobster, a lobster roll shack in the East Village known for serving one of Manhattan's least expensive lobster rolls, is opening a larger restaurant just a short walk south of my apartment.  It is rare that a restaurant that is both newsworthy and wallet-friendly opens on the Upper East Side, so I am eagerly counting down the days until Luke's arrival.  Nonetheless, Significant Eater and I could not resist a recent craving for buttery seafood served in a toasted hot dog bun, so we decided to make Luke's shrimp rolls at home, thanks to this recipe from New York magazine.  All the credit for the shrimp rolls goes to Significant Eater, who briefly earned the slightly more functional but no more lovable name of Significant Cook for making these beauties.  She had the great idea to top each roll with a dash of Old Bay Seasoning, which we are pretty sure is done at the restaurant but is omitted from the recipe.  For one night only, my studio turned into a seafood shack... well maybe not quite that big.      

Selections from the Studio: Week of April 18

I have discovered a bunch of new blogs this week, and with so much great content in my Google Reader now, it has been a challenge to come up with just five recipes for this week's Selections from the Studio.  It never seizes to amaze me just how much quality content is out there in the food blog world, but without further ado, here is my recipe roundup for this week:

First on my list is Roasted Hen-of-the-Woods with Corn Pudding from Leite's Culinaria.  I have made a fine corn pudding, but I'm sure adding in some hen-of-the-woods mushrooms would not hurt one bit.  I have been to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, from which this recipe comes, and I can attest to the amazing food that is served there, so I have little doubt that the recipe is a winner.    

Moving across the globe, I would also like to add this recipe for Bombay Chicken Curry from Amateur Gourmet to my repertoire.  The thought of curry can be intimidating as curry dishes often require a long list of ingredients and a lot of time to cook and develop those robust flavors, but this recipe requires neither and could probably be a relatively easy weeknight meal. 

It would be nearly blasphemous of me not to include a spring pasta in a late-April edition of Selections from the Studio, a Food52 post for Pasta with Prosciutto, Snap Peas, Mint and Cream made it easy for me to meet that quota.  It's hard to go wrong with those five ingredients. 

I end this edition of Selections from the Studio with two fruit pastries that are simple enough for this baking-challenged blogger to try.  New Yorkers have at least another week before rhubarb will be prevalent in the Farmer's markets (unless you arrive at the crack of dawn right now, the limited supply will be sold out), but I will make sure I have all of the ingredients for Straight from the Farm's Rhubarb Napoleons so that I can make them immediately when rhubarb becomes readily available; the tarts seem like the perfect showcase for my favorite spring fruit.

My second dessert pick of the week is The Wandering Eater's Fruit Tart recipe.  There are just five ingredients in these beauties; five ingredients is definitely my kind of dessert.

And with that, you have five delicious recipes to keep you full for the rest of the week.  Happy spring!

Two Little Red Hens Bakery: The Best Cupcakes in Manhattan

With few good restaurants, a bunch of fratty bars, and a mile-long disaster zone of cranes and dump trucks that is the start of the 12-year dig to build the Second Avenue subway line, the Yorkville neighborhood in which I live is one of the least charming neighborhoods in Manhattan right now.  When I want to do anything more interesting than a couple of pints at the local bars, I find myself venturing over to the more hip neighborhoods of Manhattan.

But there is one area where Yorkville does beat all other neighborhoods.  The Upper East Side lays claim to one of the most sought after prizes in all the isle, and that is the award for having best cupcake in all of Manhattan.  Yes, the best cupcake in Manhattan is well north of 14th street-- 72 blocks, to be exact-- and is right smack in the middle of the Second Avenue Subway construction at Two Little Red Hens bakery.  The sidewalk outside the storefront is fenced in--this ain't your quaint little West Village street-- but walk in and I promise you will be able to forget the eyesore that lies all around.  Country in feel, Two Little Red Hens makes you forget that you're in Manhattan, much less the destruction that has become of my neighborhood. 

As for the baked goods, just about everything I have tried at Two Little Red Hens, from the chocolate chunk cookies to the chocolate pudding pie is excellent, but you must try the cupcakes.  They are everything that I dream of in a cupcake and hit all the notes that most other Manhattan bakeries miss.  They fit comfortably in the palm of the hand and are not so big that I feel sick after eating one.  The cake part is wonderfully moist and has tons of flavor whether you go for the chocolate or yellow (I'm a yellow man).  The cream icing does exactly what icing should do; it complements the cake and is not cloyingly sweet.

Best of all, my neighborhood bakery is free of gimmicks; a sinfully rich Brooklyn Blackout cupcake filled with chocolate pudding is as far as the bakery strays from the standard-issue yellow cake with chocolate icing.  Two Little Red Hens needs no trendy address, funky toppings, Carrie Bradshaw touts, or teenybopper shouts.  It gets the job done in boring old Yorkville.  Kind of fitting that the best cupcake comes from the least trendy of bakeries, isn't it?

Two Little Red Hens
1652 Second Ave. (at 86th St.)
New York, NY 10028
212.452.0476

Lamb Burger with Goat Cheese, Pickled Ramp Leaves and Aioli

Feeling some self-pity for staying in my prison cell apartment last Saturday night, I decided to cheer myself up with a gussied up lamb burger.  Aside from the ground lamb which I had purchased earlier in the day, I had all of the components to make the fancy burger  that I call comfort food (I swear I'm not a snob): pickled ramps that I made the other day, some goat cheese in the fridge, and a brioche roll in the freezer.  I began with the ramps, cutting off three ramp bulbs and used them in place of garlic in a basic aioli recipe.  I toasted the brioche bun and smeared a generous knife full of the aioli on one side.  Preparing the lamb patty, I inserted a small round of goat cheese into the middle of it, then cooked the burger to medium-rare.  I topped the patty with a small handful of the tangy pickled ramp leaves and wedged everything between the bun.  The onion rings I made to serve alongside the burger were a disaster, but the burger was enough to make me forget their soggy mediocrity. It was absolute perfection, especially when washed down with a couple Sixpoint beers and a few episodes of The Wire.  Not bad work for a Saturday night.