Braised Lamb Shanks With Tomatoes And Olives

This is our second lamb recipe. We had never eaten lamb before, so on the first go around I made the lamb. We were glad to try it, but it wasn’t a favorite for us so, after talking with a friend/fellow baker Steph…she was going to sub chicken thighs and make the rest as called for…sounded perfect to me so I went a little rogue. 🤦‍♀️

Braising is a cooking technique that uses a combo of stewing and steaming. The meat can be lightly seared, and then immersed in liquid and cooked at a low temperature for a long time in a sealed container. In this recipe, we achieve this by sealing our pot with foil, and then covering with the top. This creates the steaming along with the stewing.

The liquid in this case is a mixture of chicken broth, white wine, and the juice leftover from the whole tomatoes.

The veggies are sautéed first: carrots, onion, some rosemary, and a head of garlic. Before those color, 4 anchovies are added stirring until they dissolve. Then rest is stirred in: whole tomatoes snipped, white wine, chicken broth, olives, and citrus peel. The chicken is added to the pot and submerged as best as possible and then sealed up with the foil and then the lid.

This cooks for 2 hours, until the meat is falling off the bone.

Our first impressions were that this smelled delicious while it was cooking, and the chicken was just so, so tender. I need to remember this method for cooking meat because it is so simple and so tender.

We really enjoyed this dinner. The flavors were really tasty together and the chicken just so good.

This one is a keeper.

Spinach-Mozzarella Pie with Parm Crumble

Oh, this was a tasty one!

Made up of three main components, this takes time to make but nothing is very difficult.

The parm crumble was the first I tackled…mostly because it needed 2+ hours of chill time. Really easy to throw together…flour, Parmesan, and butter get whipped up in the food processor until you reach the crumble state. It then goes in the fridge to chill.

Next step was to make the All-Butter Pie Dough we have made before. Also easy to mix together in the food processor. The flour, butter, sugar, salt, and ice water are whirled just until it comes together. The dough gets kneeded, rolled, and placed in the pie plate where it is docked and set aside to chill for at least an hour.

Once all the chilling takes place, the rest comes together nicely. The crust is partially baked while you sauté up the filling…consisting of onion, shallot, garlic, and spinach. The custard base is also mixed up…eggs, yolk, cream, milk, and scallions. Both are seasoned with salt and pepper.

We are now ready to assemble. 😅

Like I said, a little time consuming.

Everything is layered. Crust, then spinach mixture, custard topped with cubed mozzarella and finally finished off with the Parmesan crumble covering the top. This cooks until golden and puffed…mine took longer than the suggested time.

Interestingly, we are told this tastes best at room temperature so we are to let it cool down before eating.

We had this with some fish and veggies for dinner and we both loved it declaring it was just so flavorful. I wasn’t sure what to expect, or how heavy of a side this would be, but we both thought it was perfect. My other tasters concurred.

This was a winner all the way around…a little time consuming, but delicious!

This one is a keeper!

Chunky Lemon Cornmeal Cake

We are told we are going to enjoy the flavor and slight grittiness of this citrusy cake. We have the option to use oranges instead of lemons, which is what I did since the oranges on my tree are ripe right now. 🥰

This cake boasts of intense flavor using both the zest from two oranges, but also the segmented membranes…which is quite the tedious task!

The cake is made up from the usuals: flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, vanilla, butter, sugar, eggs, oil…but then also adds in yogurt and cornmeal…that giving the grittiness it promises.

The zest and also bits of two oranges are also mixed into the batter which is smoothed out into a loaf pan, and popped into the oven for 50-60 min.

I took mine out at 50 min because it looked done with the brown top and cracked crust, and also because it passed the toothpick test.

Unfortunately when I got to cutting slices, the very center was slightly undercooked which is always a bummer…ugh. I was able to salvage most all of it though, so thankfully just slight.

So, the cake can be served plain, toasted, topped with berries, or marmalade. I was expecting an explosion of orange flavor from my two homegrown oranges, so we ate it plain and were slightly underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, it did taste good…like a pound cake with some grit from the cornmeal, but as far as strong orange flavor, it was lacking.

Everyone liked it, but I feel like we have had better, similar loaf cakes…ones that didn’t require the tedious pealing of the orange segments, so for that I would have to say…tasted fine, but not really a keeper for us. 🤷‍♀️

Poke To Play Around With

We are told to have fun with this recipe…that the only “recipe” is for the marinade and the rest is up to us.

Poke at its most basic is just chunks of raw tuna briefly marinated with soy and sesame oil. There are many versions these days using different fish, tofu, or vegetables…not to mention all the add-in choices. My son is a huge fan of poke…and claims the best he has ever had was on the island of Kauai.

I am not a huge fan of raw fish, although I have eaten it….but eating it, and preparing it are two different things haha.

Dorie tells us she is a huge fan of beet poke so my version started there.

I made the marinade, which consists of soy sauce, olive oil, sesame oil, fresh ginger, sriracha, oyster sauce and finally rice vinegar…all very tasty things! I used this marinade on cut up beets…leaving them to sit while I prepared the rest of dinner.

I roasted those marinated beets, cooked some brown rice, and baked some salmon. Then, I put it all together for a rice bowl…adding in some cut avocado and seaweed salad. This honestly, is a pretty common bowl we have with just slight variations at times…I haven’t used these marinated beets before though.

We loved the dinner, no surprise there and on their own the beets were really tasty. They retained a bit of kick from the sriracha which I was surprised to taste. I don’t think they held up well in flavor, competing with everything else in the dish, but delicious nonetheless.

I don’t think I will be making traditional poke anytime soon, but I will remember this marinade to use as a sauce for sure!