It's a real challenge cooking for a little girl who has food allergies out the wazoo. We can't have corn (that's a biggie), green beans, oats, peaches, milk, wheat, eggs,.... well, it's shorter to list what we can have, which happens to include chicken, rice, and peas. There are only so many ways you can prepare chicken, and nuggets seem to be a hit, so we gave it a try. We also had to buy organic chicken breasts to eliminate the possibility of arsenic (go figure - the pesticides and other junk they put on chicken feed ends up in the chicken meat, and Katherine ended up showing high levels of arsenic on her tests). I have been geeking out about our new meat grinder, so it was great to get a chance to run the chicken through and see how well it would work. Of course, it did fantastic. One nice thing about the chicken we bought is that they don't add water during processing - the first time we tried grinding chicken it came out to a smooshy mess. We mixed in peas and a tad of salt, made patties, dredged them in rice bread crumbs, and pan-fried in some olive oil. I happen to think they were quite tasty, and fortunately, so did Katherine.
Hopefully we'll be putting together more recipes of gluten-free and casein-free foods. We'll share the ones that end up being good.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Ribeye 101
We had steak for Father's day. Friday we were at the local grocery store and found a whole ribeye that looked quite tasty. Of course it was way more beef than we needed, but that just means more steak later. So, on to the preparation...
My father has grilled (no pun intended) into my psyche that it is an abomination to put anything more than salt and pepper on a fine steak. So, sorry Dad, but I had to make a slight tweak. I mixed together salt, fresh cracked pepper, some dried thyme leaves, and a bit of olive oil into a thick sludge and slathered it on both sides of the steaks. I heard somewhere that the thyme leaves will add just a smidge of flavor that blends well with red wine, so I had to give it a try. I grilled them just perfect, a bit past medium rare. The thyme doesn't hide the beef like a spice rub; it just helps the meat work that much better with the other food. We served the steak with salad and steamed broccoli.
For the wine, we decided to have a Cabernet Franc from Keswick Vineyards, which is a local winery less than an hour drive from here. Most Virginia red wines are pretty mediocre, so I have to say I'm quite pleased at how well this worked. Tons of coffee and chocolate, and it stood up quite well to the strong flavor of the steak. Quite delicious.
My father has grilled (no pun intended) into my psyche that it is an abomination to put anything more than salt and pepper on a fine steak. So, sorry Dad, but I had to make a slight tweak. I mixed together salt, fresh cracked pepper, some dried thyme leaves, and a bit of olive oil into a thick sludge and slathered it on both sides of the steaks. I heard somewhere that the thyme leaves will add just a smidge of flavor that blends well with red wine, so I had to give it a try. I grilled them just perfect, a bit past medium rare. The thyme doesn't hide the beef like a spice rub; it just helps the meat work that much better with the other food. We served the steak with salad and steamed broccoli.
For the wine, we decided to have a Cabernet Franc from Keswick Vineyards, which is a local winery less than an hour drive from here. Most Virginia red wines are pretty mediocre, so I have to say I'm quite pleased at how well this worked. Tons of coffee and chocolate, and it stood up quite well to the strong flavor of the steak. Quite delicious.
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