Lettuce Cups with Pork and Lemongrass Meatballs

Reading the March issue of Bon Appétit on the plane home from Marco, I saw this recipe for Pork and Lemongrass Meatballs in Lettuce Cups. Hello! I love lettuce wraps and this looked like something fun which everyone, maybe, would like. Most of the ingredients I had on hand and the rest I remembered to get at DeCicco's...except cilantro. Dammit, it's always something. So wherever I list cilantro below, I substituted parsley.

This is a good Young Chef recipe because there are lots of little jobs for kids to do like grate carrots and slice cucumbers, whisk this and that, shape meatballs, arrange things on a platter, etc.

Just in case the short people in the house didn't care for it, I also made cappellini in a Thai peanut sauce. This turned out to be a brilliant move as you'll soon see.

Pork and Lemongrass Meatballs in Lettuce Cups (from Bon Appétit)

You can make the dipping sauce ahead of time and keep it in the fridge, then bring to room temperature while cooking everything else.

  • 1 3-inch lemongrass stalk, outermost leaf removed
  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 1/4 cup fish sauce
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
  • 2 tbsp coarsely grated carrot
  • 4 tsp packed brown sugar
  • 2 tsp minced green Thai chile, or serrano chile with seeds (I didn't use this)

Smash the lemongrass with a rolling pin, then mince fine, you should have 1 tablespoon. Place in small bowl and whisk in rest of ingredients until sugar dissolves. Set aside

The meatballs can also be made ahead of time and kept chilled. They are made just with ground pork and there's a lot of emphasis on keeping them cold during prep. It didn't say why. I just follow orders.

  • 1 pound ground pork
  • 1 5-inch stalk of lemongrass, outermost leaf removed, smashed with a rolling pin and minced.
  • 1/4 cup chopped shallots
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 2 garlic cloves, chopped
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp ground white pepper

Chill pork in freezer while making lemongrass paste. Pulse lemongrass, shallots, cilantro, fish sauce, garlic, oil, sugar and white pepper in food processor until a paste forms, scraping down sides with a spatula.

Add pork and pulse until combined. Shape into 24 balls (each about 1 tablespoon). Place on plate or baking sheet, cover and chill at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.

Start water boiling for the pasta.  In a small saucepan, combine the following for the peanut sauce:

  • 3 tbsp soy
  • 2 tbsp lime juice
  • 2 tsp minced garlic
  • 3/4 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup chicken stock
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • pinch of red pepper flakes

Whisk until smooth and keep on low heat while pasta cooks. Use cappellini or spaghetti.

Heat vegetable oil in skillet on medium heat, add meatballs and brown until cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Get a large platter, put the bowl of dipping sauce in the middle. Separate the leaves of either butter lettuce or iceberg for the cups. Slice thin 2 Persian or English cucumbers. Arrange on one side of platter, put cooked meatballs on the other.

Drain pasta, reserving a cup of pasta water. Return to pot and toss with peanut sauce and as much reserved water as needed.

So you put some meatballs into a lettuce cup, garnish with the cucumber and drizzle the sauce over it.

This was a hit! I sensed that the kids wouldn't like the dipping sauce and I was right—it was very intensely salty and lime-y (I'm going to fiddle with those two things next time). So I put the peanut noodles into lettuce cups with a meatball, the sliced cucumber and extra carrot that I'd grated. They each ate four!

Not bad for a Monday.  

Bartender, another Corona please...

Cream of Cholesterol Soup (Broccoli optional)

Well we're home from vacation. Within 15 minutes it was like we never left: every light on in the house, kitchen counters buried under clutter, socks strewn about, and people needing to be fed. So back to DeCicco's I went to shop for the week in general, and for dinner in particular.  

Jeeps requested cream of broccoli soup and I was game. I'd never made a true cream of broccoli soup before. My tried-and-true resource for new soups is Mary Gubser. My mom gave me her great book Mary's Bread Basket & Soup Kettle which, as the title suggests, contains nothing but soup and bread recipes. It's unquestionably one of my desert island books.

So the recipe looks straightforward but a little... Well, let's say it's not for the faint of heart. In fact you might need permission from your cardiologist before consuming it, which guarantees it to be good.

Mary Gubser's Cream of Broccoli Soup

  • 1 quart fresh broccoli heads, packed (I really had no idea what she meant by this. A quart of broccoli? I used four big broccoli crowns)
  • 2/3 cup butter (2/3 cup butter?!? A stick is 1/2 cup!! I love butter from hell to breakfast and ten ways to Sunday, but I could not make a soup with more than a stick of butter in it. I used half a stick and a generous amount of olive oil)
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 3 cups whole milk (yes, whole, and the heavy cream is yet to come!)
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 2 tsps salt
  • 1/4 tsp white pepper (this happens to be one of the far-fetched things I keep in the house. I'm partial to a Christmas spice cookie that's made with white pepper, and in the course of making it I've become very partial to white pepper.)
  • 3 tbsps lemon juice
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed (One clove. Ha! I used three)
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire (Another of my faves, simply because I love to say woostercestershistershire sauce)
  • 1/4 tsp Tobasco (I didn't have this)
  • 2 cups heavy cream (Courage, my friends, courage!!)
  • 3 egg yolks (Stay with me!!)

Have you had your lipitor today? Good. Let's proceed.

Wash broccoli, trim and dry. Reserve a few florets for topping; blanch them separately in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain and set aside.

In a small sauce pan over medium-low heat, combine milk, chicken broth, salt, pepper, garlic clove(s), Worcestershire and tobasco. You're simply doing this so that you don't add cold liquids to your hot broccoli later.

In your soup pot, melt butter and olive oil over medium heat, add broccoli and cook until tender (meaning you can mash it easily with the side of your wooden spoon). Sprinkle flour over broccoli and stir well until coated. Add liquids from saucepan to soup pot, plus the lemon juice. Stir constantly until smooth and thick.

Remove from burner and either in batches in a blender, or with an immersion blender (that your darling seester gave you for Christmas) puree soup until smooth. Return soup to medium heat. Stir in the heavy cream and I admit, I balked again, and stirred in only 1 cup of it, not the given 2.

Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl. Slowly whisk about 1/2 cup of soup into the yolks to temper them. Then whisk egg mixture back into the soup.

Taste and adjust with salt if needed. Serve topped with the broccoli florets and pierogies on the side.

Oh, have I talked about pierogies yet? I haven't? Oh wow, put these babies in the same category as scrambled eggs. They are in my house at all times.  When the kids and I are eating alone, I'll make an entire box and serve them with a vegetable and that's dinner. Done and done. They are the bomb.

So the soup was also the bomb. Rich and creamy and decadent. Disturbingly decadent. I mean, something was really wrong about the soup but I couldn't put my finger on it. And then later, it came to me as I was thinking about the ingredients:

Egg yolks...

Olive oil...

Lemon juice...

Yes, my friends. We basically ate mayonnaise.

[Editor's Note: Immediately following Mary Gubser's recipe for cream of broccoli soup is her recipe for Boula Boula. One of the ingredients is, and I quote, "4 cups canned, clear turtle bouillon." I will make dinner of choice for anyone who can find me canned, clear turtle bouillon]

Brussels Sprouts (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here)

For those of you who hate Brussels sprouts with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, I am not going to try to sell you on them. I realize this is a loathing that is deep and instinctive and I thoroughly respect your right to eschew these small cabbages. Go in peace. (Wuss-bags)

Sorry. For those of you who love the Brussies, welcome. For those of you who are not crazy about them but suspect you could like them if prepared in some palatable way, I hope you'll stick around.

I have one surefire recipe for "Conversion Sprouts" that has won over many doubters but I'm not going to unveil that just yet. Instead let's talk about roasting sprouts. Brussels have a strong and bitter bite which I think is the reason most people are averse to them. Roasting, however, caramelizes them and gives a sweeter edge.

They are simple to prepare: slice the end off, halve the sprouts, toss with olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper. Spread on a baking sheet and roastez-vous.

Brussies cozy up nicely to other vegetables. Tonight I paired them up with small yellow potatoes and onions to go alongside the skirt steak.

I roasted them at 400 for about 25 minutes, shaking the tray a few times. All the little loose leaves that fell off the the sprouts got all crisped up like chips and they were great together with the roasted onions. A terrific addition to this dish would be red grapes. Roasting vegetables with red grapes is something Stacey turned me on to and I highly recommend trying it, click here for details.

Smoke Up Your Skirt Steak

I am still blown away by the fact that I can grill a steak inside my house. I do love me some steak. Lately I love me some skirt steak, which is stupid cheap and even more stupid delicious when marinaded thusly, according to Alton Brown (who tends to say "thusly" a lot). And I love me some Alton Brown.

Skirt Steak Marinade à la Alton Brown (Thusly)

  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1/3 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 2 minced garlic cloves
  • 1/2 tsp cumin
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 3 tbsp brown sugar

Combine all ingredients in a ziplock bag. Cut skirt steak(s) into 6-8" pieces, place in bag and seal, pressing out as much air as possible. Check to make sure it's sealed. Check again.  

Marinade for an hour at room temperature, or as many hours as you like in the fridge but bring to room temperature before grilling.

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Skirt steak does not take long: I did these 3 minutes on a side and let them rest another 5 minutes under foil and they were perfect. 

I always, always reserve a section of steak. I hide it, actually. Because I like it for breakfast. And I am the mommy so I get it.

Thusly.

Panic Pasta

Panic meaning the pre-vacation panic to use up as much as possible in the fridge. In this case, use 1 zucchini, 3/4 box of cherry tomatoes, 1/2 an onion, and 1/2 a bag of mixed salad greens.

Go.

This will look very much like my previous post on pasta primavera (holy alliteration) so I'm not going to get too detailed.

I used rigatoni for pasta. While that was going on the stove, I sauteed the diced onion and zucchini with a few cloves of minced garlic and 1 can of drained and rinsed cannellini beans. Then I halved the cherry tomatoes and had them ready in the serving bowl.

I added the mixed greens to the pasta for the last 5 minutes of cooking. Before draining the pasta, I scooped out 2 cups of pasta water.

I put a tablespoon of butter back into the pasta pot, added 1 cup of the reserved pasta water, then the zucchini-bean mixture, then the rigatoni. Tossed all, then dumped into the serving bowl. I added the other cup of pasta water, some chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and tossed all again.

This used more reserved pasta water than I normally would, but the beauty was that the extra starchiness from the beans turned it into this really yummy rich broth at the bottom of the bowl. Not enough to qualify as soup, but enough to be wow, really yum. I wish I'd had bread to mop that stuff up.  I thought we'd have leftovers but we ate it all.

Black Bean Soup

“Soup has come to symbolize the ultimate in comfort and safety. Many years ago, when I was about fifteen, I saw someone served a cup of soup, and this vision, which had all the sentimental charm of a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer, is indelibly imprinted on my mind.It was a cold, rainy autumn night and some grubby teenagers had gathered at a friend’s rather splendid house. We heard the crunch of a car on gravel. A taxi pulled up and into the wet night stepped the friend’s older sister, who was coming home from college for the weekend. She was probably nineteen but she looked liked the picture of sophistication. She wore brown pumps, a green tweed suit, pearl earrings and her hair was pulled back in a French twist.

She took off her wet coat, sat down in front of the fire and her mother brought her a large, ornamental bone china cup of soup. She warmed her hands on the cup and then she set it on its saucer, balanced it on her lap and ate the soup with a bouillon spoon. The dog, a weimaraner, lay dozing at her feet. Outside the rain clattered. Inside that pretty living room, all was safe

Of course you need not have a weimaraner or a fire or anyone coming home from college. To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.”
— "Soup," from Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin.

It wasn't wet tonight but damn, it was cold. I cannot deal with with the extreme months of the year, the brutally cold and the beastly hot. During February and August I become something of a lunatic.

Soup is out of the question in August. In February, it is essential.

Tonight I had black bean soup on my mind, and cans of black beans in the pantry. Some die-hards will insist that dried beans make the best soup, and I can appreciate that but usually I am thinking up what to make for dinner an hour before we eat. You can't soak beans in an hour.  

Someday I will try dried beans but for tonight the canned was fine, along with my trusty recipe that I wrote down a thousand years ago from the back of a can of Goya black beans.

This recipe did not contain a diced onion or celery, both of which I added myself because it seemed logical to have them. Some black bean soup recipes have carrots but I feel they make the soup a really weird color. It's all preference.

Preferential Black Bean Soup

  • 1 small onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 ribs celery, diced
  • Pinch red pepper flakes
  • 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 bouillon cube
  • 3 tablespoons sherry
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2 tsp brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
  • 1 1/2 cup water
  • 3 cans black beans, not drained.

Heat olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat.  Add onion and celery, saute 5 minutes.  Add garlic, cumin, oregano, pepper flakes and bay leaves, and bouillon cube.  Saute another 5 minutes until bouillon is dissolved.  Add water, sherry, brown sugar, and vinegar.  Stir to combine.

Add beans, stir well.  Lower heat, cover and simmer at least 15 minutes to let flavors meld, but you can keep it on a low flame as long as you need.

You can serve as is, or puree in a blender or with an immersion blender.

I like mine with a dollop of sour cream or greek yogurt, some quartered cherry tomatoes, and chopped fresh parsley or cilantro.

And a baked potato (Jeep's idea).

The Blood of Oranges

The mere act of buying blood oranges makes you feel ridiculously gourmand. Even if they just sit in the colander and rot, the fact remains that you have them in the house. "What, blood oranges, of course I have some, who doesn't?" 

I am a sucker for this kind of exotic staple. I was making parmesan chicken tonight and found I was in the mood to have a salad on the side. Stacey is always putting blood oranges into interesting salads so I thought I'd make up something without consulting anything.

Unconsulted Salad

  • 1/2 bag of salad mix (mine was a blend of spinach, arugula and other greens)
  • 3-4 blood oranges
  • 1/4 cup chopped pecans
  • 1/4 cup orange-flavored dried cranberries
  • olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper

I love the idea of oranges in any kind of dish but honestly, peeling and pithing and segmenting them is a pain. I did these sort of grapefruit-style to get little half-segments. At least the color was a novelty, they really are pretty. You get a lot of juice doing this, I just let it all go into the bowl and after I was done I strained the juice into another small bowl.

Toast the pecans in a small skillet over medium-low heat. And babysit them. I once watched an episode of Iron Chef where the challengers scorched the pine nuts not once, not twice, but three times. They lost.

Now, what to do with the juice. I can't give any precise measurements, I just sort of fiddled around whisking it with olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper and at the last minute, a sprinkle of dried basil.

Toss greens, orange segments, cranberries and pecans with the dressing and serve. 

Jeeps was not in a salad mood, so I ate all of it with the parmesan chicken. Yum.

Parmesan Chicken

This is another Ina Garten miracle which takes basic breaded chicken cutlets and gives them that extra somethin-somethin'. I've made these with seasoned bread crumbs, and also with panko breadcrumbs. I've used the fresh breadcrumbs as well but it's a different texture. For these, I actually prefer the dried.

Parmesan Chicken

  • Chicken breast cutlets, pounded to 1/4" thickness (you can use whole cutlets, or cut into fingers, or even into nuggets)
  • 1 1/4 cup seasoned breadcrumbs or seasoned panko breadcrumbs
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (I buy what's called "homestyle" parmesan which is very fine shreds, and it works fine)
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 2 eggs, beaten

Set up one shallow dish with the flour, another with the eggs, another with the breadcrumbs mixed with the parmesan.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat.

Dredge the chicken in the flour, shaking off the excess. Dredge in the eggs, then in the breadcrumbs, patting them gently to make them stick.

Fry both sides until golden brown, about 4 minutes a side. Keep warm on a platter while you fry the rest.

Redman refers to this as chicken-in-the-pan and always must have applesauce or stewed apples on the side.

Easy. Peasy. Lemon squeezy.

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Minestrone Soup

Minestrone is one of my very favorite soups and I have two very vivid memories that involve it.

The first was when I was around 11 or 12 and playing at my friend Julia's house. Her mother made us Progresso minestrone soup and Stouffer's french bread pizzas for lunch. It was the most perfectly perfect lunch for that particular day, and a meal Julia and I frequently re-lived as we munched our boring peanut butter sandwiches in the dismal, windowless cafeteria of PVC Middle School (architecturally speaking, that school was one of the most bleak places on earth).

The second memory is a couple decades later, in fact I remember the date:  Sunday, January 18, 2004. Redman was a mere 4 days old. Our dear, dear friends Justin and Cindy came over to the house with a giant gift basket. Among other lovely things, the basket held an enormous tupperware of minestrone soup that Cindy had made just for us. Did I mention they are dear friends? Despite our encouraging, they didn't stay long, just enough to drop off the basket, give hugs, coo over the baby and get out of our hair. 

"Oh, will you look at him?!" Cindy said. "I'm sorry, I'm getting my days all mixed up—what is he, two weeks now?"

"Hardly," Jeeps laughed, "he was born on Wednesday."

Cindy spun around and looked at me and said the only thing a post-partum woman wants to hear: "Oh bull-shit, you did not have a baby four days ago!!"

Did I mention they are dear friends?

Anyway, minestrone soup recipes seem to come in two categories: expert and the rest of us. The expert ones—and I've tried two, one from Martha Stewart, another from Cooks Illustrated—involve dried beans and a soffrito and parmesan rinds and lots of cooking time. They are wonderful if you have the time. For the rest of us insane people trying to get dinner on the table before the Witching Hour, I found this one in that old recipe book of mine so the provenance is unknown. I'm going to guess either Redbook or Better Homes & Gardens.

Minestrone for the Common Man

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 potatoes, peeled and diced (I used 2 white and 1 sweet)
  • 3 medium-size carrots, peeled and diced (I used 5 because...I like to)
  • 3 medium-size ribs of celery, diced
  • 1 medium zucchini, diced (this wasn't actually in the original recipe which I found quite odd)
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 medium red bell pepper, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed (I used 4 because...I like to)
  • 1 32-oz box chicken broth (I used one whole box plus the odd dregs of 2 nearly-empty boxes in the fridge)
  • 1 bay leaf (I also used a sprig of fresh thyme and some chopped fresh sage leaves because in my opinion, minestrone is nothing without sage)
  • 2 16-oz cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed (I only had 1 can of these so I used a 16-oz can of chick peas)
  • 1 28-oz can whole tomatoes
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 - 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 1/2 cups cooked pasta (optional, but I like pasta in minestrone. Usually I put shells or elbows but I happened to have some leftover orzo in the fridge so I used that)

Heat olive oil over medium heat; add all the diced vegetables and stir well to coat. Cook, covered, for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add chicken broth and herbs. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low; cover and simmer about 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes to soup, dumping in the juice from the can as well and breaking up the tomatoes with the side of a wooden spoon. Add beans, grated parmesan, vinegar, crushed red pepper, and salt to taste. Cook at least another 5 minutes to allow flavors to combine. Or turn heat to very low and keep on the back burner until ready to serve, it won't hurt it.

I made herbed garlic toasts to go with this. The soup was great. The balsamic vinegar pulled all the flavors together, but still, there seemed to be elusive base note missing to the broth. It just needed one last bit of "umph," and I wondered if a couple teaspoons of tomato paste in the diced veggies would have provided it. This could also be, simply, what you get when you go for the quick-and-easy, rest-of-us minestrone recipe. It's delicious, but lacks the soul and wisdom of the expert, slow-cooked version.

I can live with that.