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Lamburgers
We don’t do diets.
Not at the New Year. Not for the beach. Not if you call it a “lifestyle change.” Not if you fucking paid us.
Instead, we both take a nutritional approach called Normal Eating and it’s pretty radically changed our relationships with ourselves, our food, and our bodies. The TL;DR of it all is that we know our bodies are smarter than the marketing douchebags trying to make us feel bad about liking cake so they can sell more fat-free, sugar-free, cake flavored yogurt that doesn’t actually contain any food. Instead of preordaining some dietary lifestyle as the “right” way to eat, we just eat things that make us feel good (whatever good means for that day) and trust our bodies to make up for our mistakes.
Some days Normal Eating means giving ourselves explicit permission to eat comforting foods, stuff that’s more about letting ourselves relax and enjoy than it is about nutritional completeness. Other days we want stuff that is as much function as it is form, food that make us feel like a goddamned super hero.
Lamb makes us feel like we’re invincible. It satisfies our hunger in a way other proteins don’t and, more importantly, it tastes good. Really fucking good. It’s lean and mild, but just gamey enough to let you know you’re not eating beef. It’s also incredibly nutrient dense, loaded with B vitamins, Selenium, and fucktons of Omega-3 fatty acid.
Just like steak, it’s important to buy grass fed lamb. It tastes better, it contains infinitely more things your body can turn into uppercuts, and it almost always means a better life for the animals. Because it can be a little pricey, we like to buy ground lamb. It’s only a dollar more per pound than ground beef, and a little bit less intimidating than chops or a giant rack of lamb.
The best application for ground lamb is Lamburgers. They’re half burger, half succulent meatball. They come together really quickly, making them the perfect choice for a weeknight dinner on a shitty, cold day. Loaded with lemon, shallots, and rosemary, they’re great with a herbed mayo and arugula on baguette or with a pile of greens and crisp, roasted potatoes.
Lamburgers
- 1 lb Ground Grass Fed Lamb
- 1 Shallot, finely diced
- 1 Lemon, Zest and Juice
- 1 tsp Rosemary, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
- 4-6 cranks Black Pepper
- 2 tbsp Olive Oil
Serves: 4
Begin to heat a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.
In a medium sized bowl, combine the Lamb with diced Shallot, Lemon Zest, Lemon Juice, Rosemary, Soy, and Black Pepper. Working quickly, evenly portion into small-ish patties about an inch and a half tall. We use an icecream scoop and it always works out great.
Add Olive Oil to the skillet. Once the oil is shimmery, drop each Lamburger into the pan and leave them the fuck alone so they can develop a crispy, delicious crust.
After about a minute and a half, flip the burgers. Cook on the second side for another minute. Serve hot, or make the night before and have the most best brown bag lunch with couscous and greens.
Oatmeal Waffle Cookies with Mexican Chocolate
Sometimes you need a cookie right fucking now. No time to preheat the oven or scoop out 24 and arrange them on a tray. Just one perfect, warm, gooey, crunchy, chewy cookie in less than three minutes from batter to face.
This beautiful witchcraft is possible with the help of your waffle iron. It quickly browns the outside to crispy perfection, and sets the middle into molten cookie lava. You can use your George Foreman or a panini press or those awesome triangle pocket sandwich makers that turned slices of white bread into hotpockets. Anything that makes direct, nonstick contact with the entire surface of the cookie.
These are the type of snacks that are for eating alone, in your kitchen, in your underpants. It’s an ideal recipe for folks with not much space, not much time, living in dorms, or the, uh, inebriationally challenged. But they also work for company. We’ve totally served them for folks we hoped to impress as a base for ice cream and cajeta when we didn’t want to heat up the kitchen.
Oatmeal Waffle Cookies with Mexican Chocolate
adapted from Fine Cooking
- 1 stick Unsalted Butter
- 2/3 cup Dark Brown Sugar
- 2 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 3/4 cup All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp Ground Ginger
- 1 1/2 cups Old Fashioned Oats (not instant, y’all)
- 8 oz Mexican Chocolate, with cinnamon and chilies, roughly chopped
Cooking spray or a paper towel with canola oil is helpful, but not necessary.
Turn on your waffle iron or George Forman.
In a large bowl, cream the Butter and Sugar until fluffly. Add Eggs and Vanilla, mix to combine. Fold in All-Purpose Flour, Baking Soda, Salt, Spices, and Oats. Once the batter starts coming together, add the Mexican Chocolate and stir until just combined.
Lightly spray or wipe your now ripping hot waffle iron with oil. Place a large spoonful, about 3tbsp, half way in between the center and the hinge, and close the lid. In a few seconds steam will start coming out from the sides of the waffle iron. When the steam stops, your cookie is ready to eat, but we like to let it go 20 seconds to get extra crispy.
Repeat for as many cookies as you need. The dough keeps in the fridge for about 4 days.
Caramel Apple Skillet Pie
Yesterday was election day here in the States, and it was pretty fucking cool. Beyond the tremendous victory for our President: we have elected our first openly homosexual member of senate, our first Asian woman in the senate, and Elizabeth Warren (who we’re calling now for 2016). Two states legalized pot, four states recognized the right for love to be protected (no matter what you’ve got happening in your pants), and all of those rape-apologist douche bags beefed it really hard.
We’re proud of our country today, and that pride can only be expressed through one medium: Apple fucking Pie.
Nothing says “Yes We Can” quite like the sweet, spiced, fork-tender fruit, dotted with butter and sticky with syrup, wrapped in a flaky, tender crust. From its sordid English immigrant roots to the African and Latin American spices that turned the dish into the country’s favorite dessert; Apple Pie is the best things about America to its core.
Other than liberal use of spices, the key to a good Apple Pie is the apples. Some of the fruits have a harder texture that stands up to long baking times, but tend to fall a little flat in the flavor department. Conversely, the fruits that taste the appley-est tend to turn into mushed when you cook them long enough to brown the crust. To help combat these cruel laws of nature, we like to use a blend of the more intensely apple flavored fruits (like Pink Ladies and Honey Crisps) and hardy fruits that can stand up to a long cook time (like Granny Smiths)— and we always pick hard, slightly tart, blemish-free fruits.
Caramel Apple Skillet Pie
Crust
this recipe is the result of learning good shit from many different places, most notably Rachel’s Gramma Shaw and America’s Test Kitchen
- 1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 tbsp Sugar
- 3/4 cup (1 1/4 sticks) Unsalted Butter, chilled and cut into several pieces
- 2 tbsp Irish Whiskey
- 2 tbsp Cold Water
Filling
- 6 Pink Lady Apples
- 2 Granny Smith Apples
- 4 tbsp Butter
- 3/4 cup Dark Brown Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground Nutmeg
- 1 Vanilla Bean or a splash of Vanilla Extract
- Pinch of Salt
Preheat your oven to 400°. Peel, core, and chop the Apples. We like to use a melon baller to do our coring for us.
In thoroughly cleaned, well seasoned cast iron skillet, melt the Butter and sauté the Apples until they’ve shrunk down by about half and have released most of their juices— about 10 minutes. Remove the Apples from the pan, leaving behind a giant pool of buttery apple juice, and set them aside. Add Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Vanilla, and Salt to the pan of juice. Continue to cook until the mixture turns bubbly, sticky, and reduces by at least half.
Add the Apples back to the pan and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Apples should be soft but intact, you don’t want your apples to be mushy.
Roll out the dough for the Crust, and cut a few holes in the center for the steam to escape. Carefully lay the dough on top of the filling in the skillet. Use the back of a knife to cut off any excess dough.
Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
Resist the temptation to dig in immediately. The wonder of this dish comes from the sticky, gooey sauce that forms when the filling cools. Control yourself for at least a half an hour, and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Roasted Tomato Soup
We would be such assholes if we gave you instructions on the perfect Grilled Cheese, but didn’t talk about tomato soup.
The perfect tomato soup is velvety smooth, without being creamy or rich, and sweet-savory, without tasting like a bowl of marinara. It’s comforting, intensely tomato-y, and refreshing. The secret to turning fresh, late-harvest tomatoes into a fucking yummy lunch that makes you say ridiculous words like “yummy” and “tummy” and makes you feel like your stomach is wearing its favorite sweater is roasting the tomatoes before they go into the pot, adding a touch of dry vermouth, and using a pinch of baking soda to give you control over the acidity.
What’s special about this soup is that it doesn’t have any dairy, so it freezes, cans, and stores really well. We’re big on feeding friends, especially if they need a little extra help, and this is a great recipe to make for folks who don’t have the time, ability, or resources to make dinner in their own kitchen. It’s comforting, easy to heat up, and can be adapted to suit a wide range of dietary needs and restrictions.
Roasted Tomato Soup
- 8 Tomatoes
- 4 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 softball sized Sweet Onion
- 1 small can Tomato Paste
- 1 qt Low (or no!) Sodium Stock— chicken is how we roll because it makes the soup even more savory and satisfying, but vegetable stock is a great choice that tends to give things more body and an earthy richness.
- 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
- 2-4 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
- 2 tbps Dry Vermouth
- Salt and Pepper, to taste
- Fresh Basil, like a handful
Serves: 4-6
Preheat your oven to 500°. Wash and quarter the Tomatoes, and arrange them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or foil, cut side facing up/skins down. Roast the Tomatoes until the start to collapse, about 20 minutes.
Thinly slice the Onion. Sauté over medium-low heat with Olive Oil, in your biggest, heaviest pot. We think a dutch oven does a particularly nice job. Cook the onions on low until translucent, about 10 minutes, and then turn up the heat to medium high. Continue to cook for another 10 minutes (20 if you can stand it), stirring frequently, until the Onions caramelize.
Add the Tomato Paste, Stock, and roasted Tomatoes to your Onions. Puree using a stick blender, or whatever you have handy, until smooth. Stir in your 1/2 tsp of Baking Soda. You will see bubbles and it will be cool. Add Vermouth and Balsamic, to taste.
Season with salt and pepper and simmer until everything is warm and tastes like soup. We found that simmering the basil in the soup made for a muddier, murky flavor, so use basil like a garnish to keep stuff fresh and bright
Grilled Cheese
We are really into Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. They’re unapologetic, unpretentious carb and cheese parties that are wholesome and comforting. They’re as much sandwich as they are delivery mechanisms for soup into your face, and eating them is like having your stomach hugged with bacon and caramelized onions.
Grilled Cheese is one of those things that is less of a recipe and more of a formula, sort of like vinaigrettes. There are basic structural components essential to the form and some steps you can take in the cooking process to ensure it’s perfectly crisp-on-the-outside-gooey-in-the-middle. However, for the most part, you can do whatever the hell you want.
The foundation of a grilled cheese is, shockingly, not the cheese; the right bread is the real key to this perfect sandwich. Commercially prepared sandwich loafs (think pre-sliced and plastic bagged) will certainly facilitate cramming melted cheese into your mouth, but they won’t deliver the best texture or flavor. Part of what makes a grilled cheese SO good is a chemical process called the Malliard Reaction. It’s how fancy bitches say “getting brown and toasty” and is what makes carbohydrates the most delicious stuff on the planet. In the Malliard Reaction, amino acids (which are the building blocks of proteins) sort of… melt when exposed to heat, and this gives them the opportunity to combine in new ways. The byproducts of these changes are malty, sweet, nutty flavors, and the strong aromas we associate with stuff that’s toasty. Because commercially produced breads lack a properly formed gluten (aka: wheat protein) and are often made with inexpensive, over-processed, low-protein starches, they can never get brown, crispy, and toasty like an artisan loaf. So start with something from the bakery section, or a local bakery (Chicago locals: head to Logan Square’s La Boulangerie) and pick a loaf with a well-developed crust. Sourdoughs, French Bread, and Ciabatta, are all great foundations for your sandwich.
As fundamental as bread is to this sandwich, cheese selection is obviously not something to take lightly. The perfect grilled cheese is gooey and stringy, and has plenty of assertive, cheesy tang. We like to use two different cheeses in our Grilled Cheese, because there aren’t many that both melt into pools of goopy wonder and can keep their flavor profiles together while being heated. Try using one soft, squishy cheese (Brie, Chevre, Merkts and Alouette cheese spreads) that makes everything melty and wonderful, and another with an assertive flavor (Cheddar, Blue, Aged Gruyere) that makes it taste more memorable.
Cooking a Grilled Cheese can be hard. Like, seriously, actually hard to do. Bread toasts a lot faster than cheese melts when you’re cooking over a direct heat source; if you cook until your cheese is optimally melted on the stove top, you will, without a doubt, have a burnt crust. So we like to treat our sandwiches like steaks. Sear them quickly (after a good coat in unsalted butter) in a heavy bottomed pan, until nicely browned and transfer to a 375 degree oven, on a cookie sheet, until the cheese is oozy and perfect. You will have a flawlessly crispy, evenly browned, heart-breakingly-melty Grilled Cheese every time, with no sad, sweaty, unmelted slices of cheese in the middle.
With those three central tenants of Grilled Cheese in mind (good bread, two cheeses, cooked like a steak), you can do pretty much whatever you want. We love stuffing them with our favorite flavors (tomatoes, avocados, bacon, ham, the list goes on) being careful to not overload the toppings and preventing the cheeses from fusing the bread together. We’ve got our two all-time favorite formulas for you below and are really excited to hear about what combinations y’all can come up with on your own!
Grilled Cheddar with Bacon and Tomato Jam
- 4 1/4in thick slices of Sourdough or Italian Bread, the kind with a nice crust that you have to slice yourself
- 2 tbsp Unsalted Butter, Softened
- 4 slices Sharp Cheddar Cheese
- 4 tbsp Cheddar Cheese Spread, like Merkts or Trader Joe’s Pub Cheese
- 4 slices Thick Cut Bacon, cooked until crisp and well drained
- 4 tbsp Tomato Jam
Makes 2 Sandwiches
Grilled Gryuere with Goat Cheese, Caramelized Onions, and Dijon
- 4 1/4in thick slices of Sourdough or Italian Bread, the kind with a nice crust that you have to slice yourself
- 2 tbsp Unsalted Butter, Softened
- 2 tbsp Dijon Mustard, we like the grainy stuff
- 4 oz Gruyere, shredded or in thin slices
- 4 oz soft, spreadable Goat Cheese
- 1 Sweet Onion, caramelized
Makes 2 Sandwiches
Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, and Garlic Oil
Tomatoes are everywhere and we can’t stop cooking with them. Chicago’s weird, shitty summer created the ideal environment for the fruit, generating a bumper crop of particularly kick-ass quality. We’ve been putting them in everything, mostly directly into our mouths, but we’re really infatuated with fresh summer tomato pastas.
Perfectly cooked pasta, made slippery with good olive oil, and loaded juicy tomatoes, aromatics, and our favorite cheeses are the perfect no-brainer dinner. They aren’t the rich, hearty, long-simmered sauces of fall; these simple dishes can be thrown together in about 15 minutes and are substantially satisfying without losing the delicacy of tomatoes. They stick to your ribs without making your head get sweaty.
We’ve preached on the importance of seasonal, local tomatoes before, so we’ll spare you another lecture there. Other than star produce, the backbone of these dishes are a correctly cooked noodle. Food Network morons have coached us well enough to know that you need to use plenty of water when cooking pasta, but few people talk about how effing important it is to use cold water and why salt is important.
Boiling cold water may take a couple extra minutes, but it is well worth the wait. Hot water, in most homes, has been sitting in the hot water heater for several hours— maybe even days. It can take on funky metallic flavor that passes on to the pasta. Cold water from the tap (or, even better, filtered!) will make your pasta taste better, letting the pasta’s wheaty sweetness come through with hints of nutty malt.
No matter how much of what type of water you use, one thing you cannot skimp when cooking pasta is salt. First— when you’re cooking food that is already bland, like pasta which is not known for its particularly robust flavor profile, omitting salt makes it taste like wallpaper paste. Second— adding salt to water increases the temperature at which it boils by almost 40 °F/~3°C. That changes how quickly it penetrates and cooks the pasta, giving it a lighter, springier, all around better texture.
Harold McGee, who is our Oprah, says to use two teaspoon of salt and two quarts of water for every pound of pasta. We have to with roll a little bit more flexibility than that in our cramped Chicago kitchens. We suggest filling your biggest pot of water as full as you can safely, and put in enough salt to make it taste like the ocean.
Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, and Garlic Oil
- 1 pound of Spaghetti or Thin Spaghetti
- 4 tablespoons of Olive Oil
- 3 Cloves Garlic, sliced impossibly thin
- 1 pint Cherry Tomatoes
- 4-6 oz Ciliegine Fresh Mozzarella
- A bunch of Fresh Basil
- Black Pepper
Serves: 4-6
In a small skillet over low heat, add Olive Oil and your finely sliced Garlic. Cook until the garlic is translucent and just about to turn golden on the edges, remove from the heat and set aside. Doing this first, and giving the Garlic Oil time to cool, will bring a headier, richer garlic flavor to your pasta.
Fill your largest pot with cold water, salt liberally. Bring the water to a boil and cook the Spaghetti to al dente while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Thoroughly wash the Cherry Tomatoes and slice them in half. Drain the Ciliegine and cut them in half as well. We like the basil to be left whole so we can get giant fragrant mouthfuls, but you can slice it into thin ribbons if you’re into that. Either way, wash it well and rub it together in your palms to bruise the leaves and help coax out even more bright flavor.
Drain the pasta, but not too well. You’ll want to leave a little bit of that pasta water on the noodles. It turns the garlic oil into a rich sauce that evenly coats each noodle. Toss the Spaghetti with the Tomatoes, Basil, and Ciliegine. Add the Garlic Oil, with garlic slices and everything. Season with Black Pepper to taste; if you used enough salt in your pasta water, you won’t need any in the finished dish.
This pasta is delicious hot, but it doesn’t suck at room temperature and is really, really good cold. If you do the whole brown bag lunch thing, it’s a great candidate for a giant batch on Sunday night to feed you for a week. We like to serve it with a little side of balsamic vinegar for dipping and drizzling to bring out the sweetness of the Tomatoes and give it a Caprese feel.
Shandies are our favorite beverage for summer drinking. They’re sweet without being syrupy and boozy without impeding your ability to have a normal day after knocking two back at brunch. Even though here in Chicago you usually find a shandy made with beer and lemonade, we’re loyal to the traditional UK recipes that call for citrus sodas. Any light-colored beer will do, as will any citrus soda, but we recommend a wheat beer and pretty much anything but Sprite. To make your own, mix and match your favorites in equal parts directly in a glass, beer first. Garnish with orange and lemon slices, if that’s your thing. We used Hoegaarden with a carbonated lemonade we found at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods brand blood orange Italian soda. It was fucking delicious.
We love dinner parties.
Opening your home to friends and feeding them is a powerful, loving gesture. To be completely cheesy— and completely honest— they’ve led to some of the best memories of our 20’s. The crappy apartments, everyone cramped around a coffee table because no one has a dining room table (or dining room for that matter), chain smoking on the porch with too many cups of coffee and rhubarb crisp, ridiculous after-dinner cocktails fueling ridiculous after-dinner board games, and the weird, wonderful, conversations that happen when you pump your friends full of booze and other carbohydrates.
The only problem is that dinner parties are usually cost prohibitive and labor intensive. You can pass off some duties— there’s always someone that wants to bring hooch, and everyone has a friend who’s all “omg cupcakes are tooootally my thing.” But responsibility deferred only does so much, and some things are hard to make cheaper or easier. Six portions of meat is always going to cost six portions worth of money and three side dishes for six people divided by the square root of something minus your will to live times standing in your kitchen for probably ever plus remembering to put out little bowls of snacks because nothing is going to be ready when people arrive.
It’s hard for everyone to have fun when their host has been in the kitchen for eight hours and feels financially tapped. Over the years, Rachel has made it a priority to develop recipes she can easily throw together on the cheap, because, when you do it in a way that’s right for you, we think that feeding your friends is the most fun you can have with your pants on. We felt it fitting to share our favorite, cheapest, most delicious recipe with you for our first real post since the re-launch.
Mussels are basically free and are available basically everywhere. We have a Chicago fish monger that we love, but, when they’re out, we go to Whole Foods or even Costco for perfectly delicious $4/lb bivalves. Add a few baguettes and wilted greens or pick up some frites with mayonnaise, and you will have a fucking feast on your (coffee) table in less than 20 minutes for about $5 per person.
Mussels with Shallots and Beer
- 2lbs of mussels, cleaned and sorted
- 2 shallots, sliced fine
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 tbsp of butter
- 2 beers
- About 6 turns of a pepper grinder
- 1 handful of roughly chopped parsley
Serves: 4 very hungry people, 6 if you have a bunch of sides, and the recipe easily doubles (and triples).
It’s worth noting that most stores sell cleaned, debearded mussels that are ready to cook, but it’s best to double check. The BBC does a pretty good job describing the process, and we really love this video because it goes into detail on identifying dead shellfish, which are basically a one way ticket to the emergency room toilets.
In your biggest, heaviest pot, melt 4 table spoons of butter. Add 2 thinly sliced shallots and just enough salt to help draw out some moisture, sautee over medium heat. Once the shallots become translucent and tender, toss in one bay leaf and the mussels, making sure that any dead, cracked, damaged, smelly, or weird ones have been thrown away or were never purchased in the first place. Crank up the heat to high and add your two beers. The pot should be about 1/3 of the way full if it’s a dutch oven like ours; about half of the mussels should be submerged in beer. Close the lid and let the mussels cook.
About 3 minutes into the cooking, it’s a very good idea to stir the mussels. You’ll see shells starting to open and an amazing sauce coming together from the butter, mussel juice, and beer.
3-5 minutes after you first stirred, for a total cooking time of 6-8 minutes, all of the mussels should be open and ready to eat. Congratulations on murdering 35-50 bivalves.
Taste the broth and add salt, as needed. Now is also the time to add pepper, and parsley. Discard any mussels that did not completely open during cooking. Serve immediately, in bowls, with plenty of good bread to soak up the delicious juice.
It feels like a no-brainer, but mussels do not keep well. If the meal is over and there are leftover mussels and juice, do your household a favor and throw them away that night.
