Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce

Naga Jolokia or "Ghost Chili" is the hottest pepper in the world.

For a little perspective, Tabasco sauce rates at about 2500-5000 on the Scoville scale.

The Ghost Chili has a rating of

1,001,304 SHU.

For this sauce I start with some BRAGG apple cider vinegar. This vinegar is considered a health-food because it contains the 'mother' of vinegar. It is unfiltered, natural and the list of possible health benefits associated with consuming it is massive.

Next I add raw garlic and about 15 dry ghost chilies.

I put this mixture in a heavy pot and place it on my smoker where it cooks for about an hour over hardwood charcoal and hickory wood.

Finally, the mixture is cooled after salt and sugar are added. I run this through a vita-prep and bottle it. I will experiment with different lengths of aging time. Hot sauce like this has a tendency to mellow out and become more balanced with time. At first taste it was already very good. It has the consistency of Tabasco sauce but a much more complex flavor. The dry chilies themselves have a strong depth of flavor underneath their insane heat. The garlic and subtle smoke of the cooking process add even more complexity to the sauce. One thing is for sure: A little goes a long way.

If you are interested in some of this hot sauce let me know.

Bacon, Lamb, Skate....

Click on photos for a close-up.

So... I wanted to do some stuff with the maple/sriracha bacon that I just finished curing/smoking a couple of days ago. I had some different proteins on hand and decided on 2 dishes. The first is a tiny bacon-wrapped lamb tenderloin from a local farmer with some oil-poached tomatoes and asparagus. The tomatoes were also locally grown. (Thanks LOCO)

The next dish was very simple and very tasty. Skate wing fried in some of my bacon fat. Bacon lardons and some frisse dressed in a lemon-bacon-caper-pan sauce.

I know... It's a lot of bacon. This is R&D people.

Hard work.

I'm very busy.

Steak and Taters

How about a nice, prime, bone-in, dry-aged rib eye?

Seasoned with just a little Maldon sea salt and black pepper.

Grilled over hardwood charcoal and a tiny bit of the sycamore tree out front of my home.

With taters. Taters filled with charred sweet corn, cotija cheese, herbs and crispy salt-pork lardons.

Simple day off grilling dinner.

Special thanks to my steak purveyor for this one.

Braised and Grilled Lamb

This lamb shank was basically braised in it's marinade and then grilled until slightly charred on the Green Egg. The bok choy below it was also brushed lightly with olive oil, seasoned with Szechuan Peppercorns and grilled.

The braising liquid/marinade was a Vita-Prepped blend of garlic, ginger, fermented black beans, white miso, fish sauce, fresh turmeric, sugar and water. After about 3 hours in a 280 degree oven the shanks came out of the braise and the liquid was reduced, then mounted with butter to make a sauce.

Super simple... I spent very little time in the kitchen for this one. It was a good after-work dinner.

Aubrey's Birthday Dinner!

Here are some of the items I made last night for my wife's birthday.

Smoked, Then Deep-fried Sesame Chicken Wings.

Preserved Duck Eggs with Lime / Raddish Sauce.

Cold Soy-Sprout Salad.

Charred Sweet Peppers.

Braised, Glazed and Broiled Pork Belly with Raddish Sprouts.

Spicy-Sambal Corn Rounds. (Wok Fried)

We also had a few other items... Including long-beans stir-fried with duck liver sausage... And Pork/Kimchi Pot stickers... mmm...

Henry.

Simple After-Work Dinner

I was fortunate enough to work a day shift at the restaurant yesterday and was out of work by 3pm. I decided on a super-simple dinner for myself, my wife and my brother somewhere between work and the Whole Foods near work.

Pork tenderloin, Stuffed with Stilton Blue Cheese and dried cranberries. Wrapped (of course) in bacon and glazed with my favorite bacon glaze.. pomegranate molasses.

I know I wrap a lot of things in bacon. If you have a problem with that you should keep it to yourself... Or I may wrap your FACE in bacon!

mmm...

I also roasted some organic kale with whole garlic cloves and tiny tomatoes.

To stuff the tenderloin I just butterflied it, placed the cheese and cranberries inside and rolled it back up. I then wrapped it in plastic and partially froze it to make the bacon-wrapping part easy. After it was wrapped and placed on the rack I let it thaw back out and temper a little before roasting.

The bread in the photo below is not actually toasted as dark as it looks in this pic. I roasted the pork on a rack over a Silpat. When I took it out of the oven the silpat had a large pool of bacon fat, pomegranate molasses and some Stilton which had oozed out of the pork. I placed this bread 'cut-side-down' in that stuff and threw it back in the oven while the pork was resting.

Much of that color comes from the fact that the bread soaked up some molasses... it was delicious.

BiteBoX!

It's not painted yet... The Wolf-Range/Oven is still having issues with gas flow and the license-plates are still out of state. Nevertheless, the BiteBox Super-Awesome-Food truck kicked some ass at the Sox game today.

Congrats to Abe and Adrienne for starting something totally loco. This is going to get out of hand.

Above: Abe and Adrienne having a "Holy shit, this worked!" moment.

I'm sure there will be many more of those to follow.

Above/Below: Abe and I serving up the noodle/rib dish. A good chance for me to test my barbecue on some unsuspecting Sox fans.

A happy customer.

I have a lot more to say about all of this but I'm tired right now and I'm still waiting for some more pics from the event. I will go into more detail soon.

Seriously though... It rules.

It's late.

Wings and Baby Octopus

In an effort to achieve the ultimate balance between smoky, crispy and glazed I decided to cook some wings slow and low on the Egg and then later deep-fry them before tossing them with a sticky, spicy Asian sauce.

I used my Vita-Prep to make a marinade that was heavily flavored with ginger and garlic. The wings spent about 3 hours in this marinade before being smoke-roasted at 225 Degrees for about 3 hours. I then cooled them fully in the fridge before tossing them in corn-starch and flour.

From there, I deep fried them at about 380 degrees until crispy and pretty dark. After a short time on a cooling rack the went right into a bowl full of the final glazing sauce. It was a mixture of bottled sweet-chili sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, garlic, ginger, and sugar. Normally I would have added sesame oil to this sauce but I just didn't have any.

I garnished these with some radish sprouts.

Next we have some simple baby octopus and broccoli stir fry. I braised these octos for about 20 minutes the day before then cooled them before charring them a little on the grill.

For the stir fry, I used the bottom of my Weber smoker as a wok station on my grilling balcony. I just loaded the base of the smoker with hardwood charcoal and once it was super hot I put the wok down inside it. I stir fried the broccoli with basic Asian aromatics and then tossed it with the octopus and a dressing made from lime, rice wine vin, garlic, ginger, soy, and some rainbow-chard stems I had diced the night before.

This dish was bright and acidic in flavor and very simple.

And last but not least... The view from my new grilling and barbecue station at the new casa...

Nice...

Comcast VS My Sanity

If you read this blog you may have found yourself wondering why I haven't posted anything in a month. The answer is simple. I moved and had to transfer my Comcast cable internet service to the new place. This process took 6 visits from Comcast to my home before they finally got it hooked up.

My kitchen on the other hand, was up and running by the second night in our new casa as well as the rooftop-balcony smoker and grilling station I have set up. Cooking here is going to be fun so keep your eye out for some summer naughtiness.

Asian Barbecued Chicken Noodle Soup

I made this soup a couple days ago when some friends came over to discuss some food ideas. The pic is a little blurry because I got grease on my lens a few nights prior after making those pizzas in the former post. I did not realize this until taking the soup pics. Oh well.

For this soup I made a stock from chicken leg/thigh quarters, ginger, garlic, onion, carrot, lime leaves and eventually the carcass of a whole chicken which I smoked on the BGE after rubbing heavily with kimchi paste. The meat from that chicken was eventually shredded into this soup and the crispy skin was used as a garnish. So the soup is pretty much that stock, thinly sliced jalapenos, scallions, some flat rice noodles, shredded chicken and a fried egg topped with perilla leaves and chicken skin. Originally i was going to swirl the raw egg into the hot broth like egg-drop soup but my company suggested just putting it fried on top. I know I put fried eggs all over everything but it's good so.. why not?

This was eaten with chopsticks and slurping. Lots of textures going on here so it was pretty fun to eat.

A couple of 'rainy- day' pizzas!

Soooo.... the other day I was talking to Aubrey and I suggested that maybe I should take a day off from cooking and we should just chill out and order pizza. It was raining outside and for a couple of seconds I was just not feeling an 'all-day'cooking'project'. Somewhere in the middle of trying to justify that I decided that I wanted to make it instead. I decided to make 2 pizzas.

1. Pepperoni, Jalapeno, egg yoke, 3 cheese.

2. Charred- Tomatillo , Achiote Barbecued Chicken, Queso Fresco, Cilantro.

The pic above shows the first pizza of the night. I fired up the green egg to make the sauce for the second pizza and decided to use to char the onions for both sauces. The sauce on the red pizza was pretty much a combo of San Marzano tomatoes, Charred yellow onion, Garlic, Vinegar, Sugar and oregano. All this stuff was simmered for about 1 hour and then went into the Vita-Prep. It then went back to the stove-top for some further reduction.

The dough for these pizzas had been slowly doing it's thing in my fridge since about 10am. It was a basic pizza dough with only minor augmentation.

Flour, yeast, Sriracha, sugar, olive oil, water, salt. I don't measure ingredients for pizza dough anymore. It's all about the way it feels. Even yeast is added to water by the pinch. I admit that I often get different results by throwing measurement aside but I enjoy observing such events.

I removed this dough from the fridge about 1 hour before rolling it out. I like to par bake my dough on a stone for about 2 minutes before pulling it out and then adding the toppings. This firms the crust up slightly and makes it much easier to slide the composed pizza onto the oven without spilling toppings all over your stone.

To assemble this pizza I smeared a reasonable amount of sauce over the whole thing, Then added shredded Mozz, Asiago and Parm. Atop that I placed thin slices of very large pepperoni and some jalapeno slices which I pickled earlier in the day with a warm mixture of lime juice and salt. Then I spotted the whole pizza with egg yokes before firing it.

In retrospect, I would have pulled this thing out of the oven 2 minutes before it was done and added those yokes. This way they would have been bleeding all over the place when I cut the pie. Still, they were awesome. A sprinkle of Truffle-Salt on each one made them a moment of bliss each time one was encountered on a slice.

For the Chicken/Tomatillo pizza my Green Egg was a big player. I started with a direct, high-heat fire to put a nice char on the tomatillos and onions. After those were done they came off the grill and went right into the Vita Prep where they were liquefied and then reduced on the stove-top while other ingredients such as lime, sugar, salt and garlic were added to taste.

The chicken was marinated for about 2 hours in a mixture of raw garlic, achiote-paste and beer. I salted it heavily and added some dried citrus zest before putting it on the BGE for about 3 hours at 225 degrees. I decided to turn the leftover marinade into a baste for the chicken so I simmered it for about 20 minutes on the stove-top and added sugar and lime juice to it for balance and "glazability".

The above pic is how the chicken looked as it was resting, just after being removed from the BGE. While the meat was juicy, the real flavor was in the skin. For a shredded chicken pizza I really didn't think the skin had a place on the crust and this made me sad.. So i decided to peel the skin off, place it on a Silpat and crisp it in it's own fat in my oven until it could be crumbled on to the finished product in place of parm or some other aged hard cheese.

I hereby admit to eating most of this skin before it had a chance to reach the pizza.

The final pic: One ugly pizza.

Between the steam fogging my lens and the absolute look of clutter on this cutting board, this pizza was perhaps, the best thing we ate that night. It's ugly as hell but the flavor profiles which were represented within it were awesome.

In the future i may try to turn this concept into some kind of Mexican calzone-type thing. Something deep fried and almost in "Stick" form. I will of course refine and revise until those words ring true. Until then..

Order a pizza and just chill.

Trying to catch summer on a big green lure...

There is plenty of time during the year for fancy refined food. It was a long winter and right now all I want is to have all the windows and doors open. The cross-breeze blowing through my casa carrying the scent of apple-wood smoke along with it. I have been very busy with work and some big changes to both my job and living situation but still I find time between acts to pull together some summer comfort foods.

Below are some pics and details of stuff we have had over the last couple of weeks around here. These things happened on different days of course but were all very fun and tasty!

This was a prime rib-eye which I split with Aubrey over a bottle of Nagual Del Judith. This is a very special wine made by Maynard Keenan of the Caduceus wine company. Apart from having a deep personal meaning to the maker, this wine is not only delicious but somewhat groundbreaking in that these vineyards are in Arizona of all places. This was my first bottle of wine by this maker but I am sure it will not be my last. We will get more into that later.

A little grilled bread and red chard were served along with this steak. Simple, and perfect.

Carnivore? Yea this was another warm evening last week. Grilled green onions, Country style pork ribs, giant sausages and skirt steak.
Bold, meaty goodness.

Burger?

Above: Bacon, avocado, cilantro, sharp provolone, burger with fried egg and Sriracha.

Above: Slow smoked chicken halves with mustard slather and lime-zest-buffalo-sauce glaze. These were later charred under the broiler before serving with grilled zucchini.

Not sure if it's obvious that when I shop super-locally, It's much easier to get meat and poultry than it is to get high quality seasonal veggies. It's true that I have to go out of my way in most cases to find good produce within walking distance of my home but it is out there and I promise to start buying more of it.

I really am quite carnivorous though... Especially when it comes to red wine.

Ribs, Ramps and Taters!

A day off you say?

• 6 hour spare ribs on the Big Green Egg
• Roasted, then twice-fried red potato salad with grilled ramps, bacon, hard boiled egg and blue cheese
• Grilled ramp soup
  

These ribs get dry rubbed with one of my secret spice blends before a 6 hour session at 225 Degrees on the BGE. Normally I baste them with a spray bottle of apple juice but I forgot to pick some up yesterday. Instead I made a mixture of beer, sugar and a little bit of soy sauce which was diluted with water and sprayed onto the ribs every hour or so.

A thinned out version of my barbecue sauce is basted on during the last 45 minutes of cooking. These ribs were so glazed that they did not need any additional sauce when they were eaten.

This is a nice cross section showing the smoke line as well as the very juicy interior of the meat.

For my ramp soup, I cleaned up about a pound of ramps. Cut the leaves off and grilled the white part of the onion. Then I simmered these grilled stalks in some very rich chicken stock that I made a couple of days ago. Eventually I ran this through the Vita-Prep until it was smooth and then finished it with cream and the raw ramp leaves. Once they were nicely wilted I adjusted seasoning and served the soup with crusty bread.

The soup had a beautiful, light, garlicly taste which really only comes from ramps.

I love ramps.

I intend to pickle a ton of them before the season is over. I also intend to make a large batch of ramp kimchi which I think will be very nice during off season!

Deep Fried Pork Rilettes Sammy?

Lengthy marination, pickling and deep frying all played key roles in this Sunday's culinary-triple-stack of yumminess!

• Hoisin marinated grouper. Oyster Mushrooms. Soy butter.
  

• Sandwich: Pork rilettes, pressed, sliced, breaded, fried. Pickled carrot and radish. Cucumber, cilantro-lime mayo. Mint, Basil, cilantro. Toasted bread with paprika butter.

• "Sesame Chicken"
  

The above photo is the grouper. Small pieces of this fish were marinated overnight in hoisin. This had a mild curing affect on the fish but did not dry it out. The fish was pan seared in the same pan as the oyster mushrooms. A dash of soy sauce a ladle of rich, reduced chicken stock were then added to the pan. This had a slight braising affect on both the mushrooms and the fish. Once the stock reduced to almost nothing (about 1 minute) I added dash of soy sauce and a large pad of butter to the pan. The butter rounded out the sharp flavors of the hoisin and soy and just sort of brought the whole thing together. This was a small 3 bite starter.

These sammys were inspired by Vietnamese style sandwiches and after eating them I decided that I could have dropped the other 2 courses from this dinner and just made bigger sammys. They were really good. I want one right now actually.

Aubrey was playing with her camera last night.
:)

Click on any of these pics to see larger versions!

It seems like every time I make this chicken dish the glaze is different. This time it was May Ploy sweet chili sauce, garlic, ginger, chicken stock, hoisin, soy, fish sauce, lime juice, sriracha and sugar. Overall it was bright and spicy. To balance that I like to drizzle the finished plate with good honey before garnishing with carrot and scallion.

The Chicken And The Egg

This was a fun, inexpensive Sunday dinner. These are half chickens which were partially grilled and smoked on the Big Green Egg, then finished under the broiler. These guys were marinated for 48 hours in a fiery paste that I made in the Vita-Prep. It was garlic, ginger, sambal, tom-yum paste and water... A long marination like that, followed by some time in a smoky GREEN EGG resulted in extremely flavorful meat. The red sauce you see on the plate was pretty much a mixture of garlic, sriracha, fish sauce, lime juice, water and sugar. (also made in the vita-prep). The chicken is rested on a bed of grilled green onions and topped with a runny egg yoke. The egg yoke happens to be topped with sweet fish roe which was lightly cured in soy sauce.
Cilantro and scallion garnish the whole bird.

Smoky, Spicy, Tangy, Salty, Sweet, Creamy, Charred, Juicy, Aromatic.

mmm....

QUACK!!!


Perhaps you have heard of Martin Picard. If not I would ask you to look him up and check out his book and restaurant... both of which go by the name 'Au Pied de Cochon'.

This man is a dirty, sexy glutton.
The lamb shanks I made last night were based on his "Shank Confit" recipe. Basically these local, organic lamb shanks are cooked sous-vide in duck fat for 6 hours before being deep fried to crispy perfection. The deep frying part was a slight detour from Picard's original recipe. He reheats the shanks in an oven while basting with the sauce. I decided to dust them with flour and deep fry them.. Then apply sauce to them on the plate. The tomato-based sauce was made from lamb stock, tomatoes and the lamb-jelly which accumulated in the sous-vide bags during the confir process. Overall the tomato sauce was rich with lamb flavor and reduced down until tangy and dark red.

The confit/fried shank went down atop some warm lentils which were dressed with olive oil and sherry vinegar. After the tomato sauce was applied to the shank, a heavy drizzle of garlic cream sauce was also added. To finish: a small pile of marinated tomato tops the whole dish off.
With the exception of my 'deep frying' I think this dish was executed exactly as it would be at Picard's restaurant and it was very tasty. I will certainly do something like this again... Something about the cream sauce playing with the tomato sauce was just so damn good. It went very nicely with the 1995 Bordeaux we drank with it.

Duck Eggs

This was actually our first course for the evening. Duck eggs 2 ways on the same plate. The tomato sauce you see in these pics is the same sauce I used with the lamb. It was only slightly modified by adding some red chili flake to it. One of the eggs was cooked 'Purgatory style' in the sauce itself. The other was par-boiled, breaded with rye breadcrumbs and deep fried. The center of both eggs was still runny and delicious once broken. Underneath the eggs and sauce was a simple potato latke which was also fried to crispy perfection.

I decided to include some photo-evidence of how this food is actually enjoyed. Messy, cluttered counter top and all. Notice the can of PBR sitting next to the glass of $160 wine. Both went very well with the food...

I spend my whole work week preparing food... Is it weird that this is how I spend my only day off?

What I would rather be doing...

This was another one of those nights.

Some friends stop by with some serious, premium-quality ingredients and a whole lot of beer.

They know I cannot resist the ingredients. I will drink, they will drink, and I will stand in the kitchen for 6 hours strait pumping out one dish after another until we are all fat and retarded.

Here is a brief photo tour of the food I threw down last night.

This is a simple seared scallop with a warm bacon/lemon dressing. The scallop is being lifted off of a pool of bacon fat by a platform of crispy bacon. Then it's topped with more bacon, lemon zest and parsley. This was basically a starter.

FOOD PORN PASTA

Perhaps you saw Eric Ripert make this pasta dish on Bourdain's "FOOD PORN" special recently. I basically tried to re-create this dish. Actually I did... I just didn't have quite as much Osetra Caviar... But we did have SOME.. and we did have uni... So this is how it went.

I started by pushing the urchin through a fine mesh strainer along with a stick of room-temp butter.

Scraping this mixture off the bottom of the strainer, I lumped it together into a bowl and put it in the fridge to cool down just a little. Meanwhile I heated a couple of tablespoons of water in a sauce pan until it was boiling. I turned the heat down and a few tablespoons at a time, whisked in the uni/butter mixture until I had a smooth emulsified sauce.

This was tossed with some noodles and parm. Seasoned with salt and pepper and plated. A portion of Osetra was placed on top of each pasta nest and the dish was done. It was not quite as saucy as Ripert's version but we called this the "economy version"... even though we agreed that this small portion could easily go for $30 in a restaurant.

Clams n' Pork

These were a couple of different kinds of clams. I know there were littlenecks but I do not remember the name of the larger brown/yellow shelled clams we had here. I did eat one of them raw and it was salty, fresh and delicious.

This was a fatty, naughty dish made from a ton of Genoa salami and sausage which were rendered until crispy and then tossed with clams which were cooked in garlic, butter and beer. This was a simple, flavorful bounty to be picked at and mopped up with a lot of crusty bread.

Much beer was consumed during the eating of this course.

Very Fresh Mackerel

We had a single whole mackerel with which I was not sure what to do at first. It was a pretty small fish and I was feeding 8 people so I decided to do a little 1-bite amuse kind of thing with it. I just portioned it into pieces like the one seen above and cooked them skin side down in grape seed oil until they were very crispy. I then added butter to the pan and basted only a little over the 'still raw' topside until it was just barely cooked. I plated these crispy little bites crispy-side up on top of a lemon and then sprinkled the entire plate with Szechuan peppercorns.

It was just one lemony bite of sexy, rare, crispy fish.

Tandoori Paste Braised Chicken

Here we have some chicken which was rubbed with tandoori paste and allowed to marinate for several hours. I then pan seared the individual pieces until the skin was crispy and the paste was charred onto the outside. I allowed this to simmer in a broth of more tandoori paste, San Marzano tomatoes and water for a couple of hours and then finished it with some cream. Simple, but good flavor combo for sure. This was yet another dish that went well with bread.

EAT THESE EYEBALLS
(we did anyway)

These guys were stuffed with garlic, ginger, lemon and lime leaves, rubbed with Tom Yum Paste and set into this very hot pan... Then thrown under the broiler and ignored until they were done.
When they came out, their little fins were standing strait up as if to say "Over here!!!.. We are done!!!... Pop our eyeballs out and eat them!!!"

So I sprinkled them with black vinegar and Sriracha and we all just stood around them pulling off pieces of the skin and meat for consumption...

The eyeball I got had a crunchy center. Not sure if I liked it. But that was a small disappointment given the glorious nature of the rest of this evening.

Let's do it again next week shall we?

Pastrami Reuben!

Pastrami Reuben with imported Swiss, Sharp Provolone, Sauerkraut and Horseradish Thousand Island.

I like to broil this open-faced until the cheese is bubbling and then add the Sauerkraut and press the two halves together for about 10 minutes between sheet pans before cutting and eating. It's hard to explain why... It's just so yummy that way.

Short Ribs 2 Ways, 2 Nights.

I recently picked up some super-large, thick cut beef short ribs from my local butcher. I knew when he was putting them on the scale that I had ordered too much but there is never a time when I can't be inspired to cook these things so I decided to split them up over 2 evenings for dinner.

This first pic is just meat and taters. I did my usual "reverse braise" for these ribs. They cooked, unseared in red wine, with mirepoix, tomatoes, anchovy paste, tomato paste, garlic and thyme for about 6 hours at 225 degrees. I typically start my braises on the stove top and put them in a low oven for the majority of the cook time. I find that oven braising is the most balanced and delicate way to get the job done.
After the meat is VERY tender and the rib bones slip effortlessly off of them, I place them in a terrine and cover them with some of the braising liquid. I let this cool in the fridge until the meat is cold all the way through. While the short ribs are cooling I strain and reduce the braising liquid. I let it cool in the fridge as well so that all of the fat in it can be easily skimmed off the top. This makes a clean, non-greasy kind of sauce that is super flavorful and thickened only by reduction.
When I am ready to serve this, I pull the cold, firm chunks of short rib from their terrine and sear the crap out of them on all 6 sides in a HOT cast iron skillet. By the time they are seared on all sides, they are warmed through, beautifully dark and crispy on the outside and tender enough to eat with a spoon. (Not that I would serve them with a spoon)... Some truffle and Pecorino mashed potatoes on the side, and I finished this plate with a generous drizzle of the reduction sauce.

(and in case you were wondering... that's a picture of Burt Reynolds on the wall in the background. A sense of humor is required to appreciate that one)

These are short rib raviolis! Easy and very tasty. I did a traditional braise for these ribs that was done almost exactly like I described above, except I seared the meat at the beginning rather than the end. I was going to shred this to make a filling for the ravs so I was not concerned with getting a nice sear on the outside just before serving. My filling was basically, shredded short rib meat, a little of the braising liquid, some satueed, chopped mushroom and a little parsnip which I allowed to cook along with the meat and then passed through a food mill. I mixed all this with a bunch of parm, fresh thyme and parsley and 1 egg. After this mixture cooled, I made raviolis out of it, and fished them in brown butter. A little arugula and grape tomato went down on the plate, then the ravs.. then the extra brown butter. The butter wilted the arugula and really tied the dish together.

Not unlike a rug.. which really ties a room together...

If ya know what I mean.