Author Archives: putneyfarm

Husband, Dad, Cook, Surfer

  • Cumin-Spiced Lamb Burgers

    December 20, 2012

    32 Comments

    lburger10

    Cumin Spiced Lamb Burger.

    This time of year, with the holidays swirling around us, we sometimes find it hard to make a regular weekday dinner. 5-course extravaganzas? No problem. Cocktail party? Sure thing. Cookie exchange? Bring it on. But we can, and do, plan for the big stuff. Daily dinner for the family with work, sports, parties, exams and constantly shifting schedules is often more tricky. But over the years we built up a few recipes that are very, very good, but don’t take up a lot of time and have a few easy ingredients (and usually don’t involve a ton of cleanup). Cumin-Spiced Lamb Burgers is one of these dishes. Just a few ingredients, one pan, a little time and a lot of flavor.

    lburger2lburger6And flavor really is the big benefit of using lamb. Lamb usually has more flavor than beef, and if you use the right cuts the flavor isn’t too “gamey”. Most lamb used to be imported from New Zealand and Australia, but these days there are many local grass-fed lamb suppliers (all over the USA) and the quality of the lamb is outstanding. With bright, clean flavor and juicy texture, lamb is worth a try. And this burger is a perfect introduction to lamb (our kids love all sorts of lamb, this was the “gateway” dish).

    lburger8lburger9Our recipe is based on the world-famous lamb burger from the Breslin gastropub in New York City. A veritable who’s-who of food writers and celebrity chefs have waxed poetic and “foodgasmed” on TV over April Bloomfield’s burger (clearly all Food Network auditions require the ability to foodgasm on command). But to be fair, this is one fine burger. And just to top it off, the Breslin sources their meat from famous butcher (and self-promoter) Pat LaFreida. Pat has a special blend just for the Breslin. Sadly, Pat doesn’t do California. Happily for us, our local butcher gets a lamb in every week or so, they break it down on site and then freshly grind the trimmings. And their blend will do just fine for us. (We also get great local beef and lamb from Stemple Creek Ranch, so good.)

    lburger12lburger7As for the recipe, it is incredibly easy to make these burgers. The Breslin’s recipe features a char-broiled rare-to-medium rare lamb patty, feta cheese, thinly sliced red onion, olive oil and seasoning on a warm Ciabatta roll. Good stuff. They also serve the lamb with cumin mayo, but we prefer to add salt and cumin directly to the meat. Cumin and lamb play very well together, but cumin is a strong flavor and you can omit if you like. We also use a cast iron skillet or grill pan on the stove (but boy would we like an indoor grill). The only real tricks in this recipe have to do with technique. You must rest the lamb burgers for 5-10 minutes after you cook them to let the juices settle in the meat, rather than running all over the plate. And if you put the slices of feta onto the patties while they rest, the cheese slightly melts on the burger. Yum. You really don’t need any sauce other than the olive oil and juices from the burger, but if you make a quick raita or cumin mayo, it will certainly taste good. And if you add a dash or two of Sriracha on top of the burger, we won’t tell…..

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  • Basler Laeckerli: Spiced Honey Cookies

    December 18, 2012

    18 Comments

    honeybar7If there is one constant in our kitchen during the “holidaze”, it’s sweets. We have a number of birthdays, Hanukkah and Christmas to celebrate, and somehow candy, cakes, cookies and donuts seem to pop up all over the place. As our designated baker, candy maker and kitchen chemist, Carolyn is very busy this time of year (I help clean up….and eat too much). But Carolyn isn’t too busy to try new things, and this year for a cookie exchange Carolyn made these Swiss spiced honey cookies. And they turned out to be a very tasty, and relatively easy, treat. So good that they will be a regular holiday item for us, and as we include Putney Farm honey in the recipe, something we can share with friends that includes a little of our “farm”.

    honeybarhoneybar8Basler Laeckerli cookies (really more like a bar or blondie, but whatever) include honey, sugar, spices, nuts and candied citrus peel with a dash of Kirsch, a clear cherry brandy. Most recipes include a glaze to add sweetness and for better presentation. We adapted a King Arthur Flour recipe, because their recipes rarely let us down. Recipes vary a bit in the spices, lemon vs. orange peel and hazelnuts vs. almonds, but if you follow the general recipe you can adapt the final ingredients to fit your tastes. And these cookies taste delicious. The dense bars feature a full blast of honey sweetness followed by spice and citrus notes, the nuts add just a little crunch. If you eat one of these, you are likely to eat three…or four…or five.

    honeybar9honeybar3Making the cookies is an easy process, but somewhat untraditional. After combining dry ingredients (flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda) you cook the sugar and honey until they dissolve and then add the Kirsch, candied citrus peel and nuts (we use orange peel and almonds). Then you stir in the dry ingredients and let the mixture cool into a firm dough. To bake the cookies, you press them into a parchment or foil-lined pan and then bake for about half an hour, and enjoy how your kitchen smells. After cooking and cooling the cookies you make a quick glaze to brush on the cookies. The one big trick here is to use very hot glaze and work rapidly, the glaze cools quickly and will not spread well if you dilly-dally (Carolyn’s words). Once you get the glaze on, just cut and serve.

    honeybar2honeybar5As for the history of Basler Laeckerli, the name tells you most of the story. The cookies originated in Basel, Switzerland and the name lecker means “delicious”, and the cookies are indeed delicious. The recipe dates back at least 700 years and supposedly was a way for spice merchants to promote their product. And if the streets of Basel were filled with the smell of these spiced cookies in the oven, we bet that it wasn’t a hard sell. When you make these cookies and their aroma fills the air, you may find your family lined up in the kitchen.

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    Basler Laeckerli: Spiced Honey Cookies:

    (Adapted from King Arthur Flour)

    Notes Before You Start:

    • The recipe suggests almonds and candied orange peel, but you can substitute hazelnuts and / or candied lemon peel.
    • The recipe suggests a 10 x 15 baking pan, but you can use a slightly larger or smaller pan, but adjust cooking time up / down with thickness.

    What You Get: A unique and very tasty honey and spice cookie / bar.

    What You Need: A 10 x 15 baking pan is recommended. No other special equipment is required.

    How Long? About 1 hour, with 20 – 25 minutes of active time. An “anytime” dish.

    Ingredients:

    (Makes about 40 cookies)

    Dough:

    • 3 cups (12 3/4 oz.) all-purpose flour
    • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
    • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
    • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
    • 1 teaspoon baking powder
    • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    • 1 cup (12 oz.) honey
    • 1 cup (7 oz.) granulated sugar
    • 2 tablespoons Kirsch
    • 1/2 cup candied orange peel, finely chopped
    • 1 1/2 cups almonds, chopped fine but not ground
    • Butter or cooking spray for buttering pan

    Glaze:

    • 1 tablespoon water
    • 1/4 cup (1 3/4 oz.) granulated sugar
    • 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

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  • Mixology Monday Cocktail: Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    December 17, 2012

    36 Comments

    Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    Alone, Bitter at the Beach

    mxmologo-2It’s time for Mixology Monday, and if you couldn’t guess already, this month’s theme is “Humbug”. Firstly we want to thank JFL at Rated R Cocktails for hosting this month and Fred Yarm at Cocktail Virgin Slut for reviving Mixology Monday. Now lets get to the theme:

    Lets face it the holidays suck, yeah I said it. You put yourself in debt buying crap people will have forgotten about in a month. You drive around like a jackass to see people you don’t even like, or worse they freeload in your house. Your subjected to annoying music, and utterly fake, forced kindness and joy. Plus if you work retail your pretty much in hell, so don’t we all deserve a good stiff drink? So for this Mixology Monday unleash your inner Grinch. Mix drinks in the spirit of Anti-Christmas. They can be really bitter and amaro filled. They filled with enough booze to make you pass out in a tinsel covered Scrooge heap. They could be a traditional holiday drink turned on it’s ear. Or they could be a tribute to your favorite holiday villain. If you celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa then you still suffer through the holidays, so feel free to join in with your Anti-Holiday drink as well. Whatever it is add a hearty “Humbug!” and make your drink personify everything annoying or fake about the holidays.

     humbug6While “some people” here at the farm have similar crabby feelings about the holidays, some of us don’t (ahem), but we both immediately said “tiki” when we thought of “anti-Christmas” cocktails. And when you are in a long holiday line at the store and the items won’t scan, and the kids are starting to squirm, and nobody can find the manager, and the next person in line is sneezing on you and yapping about their sex life on the phone, and and now you will be late for dinner, and you just can’t listen to one more fu…..umm, you need a trip to the beach. And, if anything, a tiki drink is a trip to a beach. Far, far away…maybe by yourself.

    humbug3So now that we had a direction, we started in on our “anti-Christmas” cocktail. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach combines, light rum, golden rum, aged Jamaican rum and Lemon Hart 151 rum with lime juice, pineapple juice, passion fruit syrup, a dash of absinthe and a big dose of Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit bitters over crushed ice. Garnish with a lime wheel and the most cutesy, annoying holiday-themed item you can find. The Alone, Bitter at the Beach starts with pleasant notes of rum and citrus then you get the sweet / tart kick of the passion fruit and some heat from the booze. Standard tiki. But on the finish you get the herbal and anise flavors of the absinthe and a dry, almost tannic note of the hopped grapefruit bitters. We think the Alone, Bitter at the Beach fits the holiday season perfectly- too much good stuff that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth (literally and figuratively) and a bit of a headache.

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    Our kind of reindeer.

    How did we get here? We stared with the Zombie as a template and then made sure to tune it to match the theme. Boozy? Oh yes. We took one of the booziest cocktails and added another ounce of aged Jamaican rum. Is that too much? Probably, but it is the holiday season, after all. Bitter? Medicinal? Well the absinthe and grapefruit bitters took care of that (and many tiki drinks do include grapefruit and absinthe, so we aren’t too far off the reservation). And we made sure to keep Falernum and allspice liqueur out of the drink- no pleasant holiday spices allowed. The garnish and cocktail napkin were our own special touches. Now if we only had a Grinch mug……

    humbugAlone, Bitter at the Beach:

    Ingredients:

    • 1 oz. light rum (El Dorado)
    • 1 oz. gold rum (El Dorado)
    • 1 oz. aged Jamaican rum (Appleton 12 yr.)
    • 1 oz. Lemon Hart 151
    • 1 oz. lime juice
    • 1 oz. pineapple juice
    • 1 oz. passion fruit syrup
    • 2 dashes absinthe
    • 6 dashes grapefruit bitters (Bittermens Hopped Grapefruit)
    • Lime wheel, for garnish
    • Christmas ornament, for garnish (optional)

    Assemble:

    1. Place all the liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake thoroughly and strain into a large glass or tiki mug filled with crushed ice. Top with more ice if needed. Garnish with a lime wheel and something holiday-themed and overly cheerful. Serve with a loud “harumph!” or “humbug!”.
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  • Warm Napa Cabbage Salad

    December 15, 2012

    24 Comments

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    Warm Napa Cabbage Salad.

    This is one of our all-time favorite salads, probably because it is almost an “anti-salad”. It does have lots of Napa cabbage, but it’s bathed a warm vinaigrette along with a good dose of bacon, sautéed mushrooms and blue cheese. Unlike most salads that feature light flavors, this dish is a full-on umami-bomb. But we aren’t complaining, this is the good stuff. The still crisp, and slightly bitter cabbage holds up against the strong, salty flavors of the bacon and blue cheese, the vinaigrette adds acidity and the sweet mushrooms round out the flavors and textures. What you get is a complete bite with a full spectrum of flavors and textures. And the last taste is as good as the first. This is a restaurant-quality dish.

    napa1napa2napa3And that isn’t surprising, as warm Napa cabbage salads are a bit of a specialty in some of our local restaurants. In fact, one local restaurant has changed owners and themes several times over the years, but the one constant is the warm Napa cabbage salad. It pretty much keeps the place in business. And as cooks move from job to job they take this recipe with them. So we are never surprised to see this dish on new menus. A good dish is a good dish, and there are only so many ways to make Napa cabbage appeal to the masses.

    napa4napa5napa6If you are unfamiliar with Napa cabbage, it is also called Chinese cabbage, Nappa cabbage or Celery cabbage. The Napa cabbage is large, usually the size and shape of a football or rugby ball, and has light green feathery leaves. Most consider the Napa’s flavor slightly sweeter and more delicate than green or red cabbage. But this is still cabbage, and the Napa has the bright, slightly bitter flavor you would expect. Napa cabbage needs mild weather to thrive, so it does well all year in the Bay Area, otherwise look for Napa cabbage in fall, early winter and spring. It’s hard to miss at the market. Just look for the big green oblong cabbage.

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