My boss April is a new mom, trying to keep up with breastfeeding her three-month-old twin boys. When she told me that her lactation specialist told her to eat more almonds and oats, I immediately thought of granola! It is a win win for April who likes oats but not oatmeal and finds that grabbing just yogurt in the morning leaves her hungry for something to actually chew. Speaking of breast milk, did anyone notice it is all over the headlines? First one woman assaults a police officer with her milk, and now a chef in New York City has made cheese from his wife’s breast milk. This morning on LIVE with Regis and Kelly (Andy Richter was guest hosting) they actually ate the cheese!! April has assured me that she will do nothing of the sort.

Continuing on, Kristin and I only have one issue with most granola recipes out there, they contain oil. Some recipes over 1/3 cup! In our minds, the best part of granola is the high nutritional content, why would we go and put all that canola oil on it? There had to be a better way. We used some guidelines in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian as a starting point and off we went!

We have been eating this granola all week with fruit and yogurt, and sprinkled on top of our smoothies. We hope you enjoy our delicious, crunchy and oil free granola!

Crunchy Granola

6 cups of rolled oats

1 1/2 cups almonds

1 1/2 cups walnuts

1/2 cup flax seeds (ground)

2 ripe bananas, mashed

1/2 cup honey

1  tablespoon vanilla

2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

1 tablespoon molasses

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a small saucepan over low heat, mash together bananas, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Stir until combined.

2. Add all remaining ingredients to a large bowl and mix these together. Little by little add your wet mixture to your dry, stirring to combine.

3. Place entire mixture on large jelly roll pan lined with a Sil Pat or parchment paper. Every ten to fifteen minutes, remove from oven and stir the mix. You want to remove the moisture, so constant attention is necessary!

4. After about an hour, your granola should be lightly brown and dry. Remove from oven and stir one last time. Then bring to room temperature before storing in an airtight container.

** We actually meant to add raisins to this, but forgot to mix them in at the end. Now on second thought we think this might be better with some sort of tropical dried fruit added or perhaps a combination of dried fruits like mango, pineapple and bananas.

Kristin and I share a culinary bond. Our best weekends are ones when we get to cook something exciting and delicious for people we love. As winter slips away from us here in Texas, we felt the need for one last decadent winter dish. (Did I say winter? I meant a couple weeks of cold disguised as winter to give us a break from our shorts and flip flops.) Deep in the shelves of Kristin’s bookcase is Sunday Suppers at Lucques and within those pages lies a gem of a recipe. Braised short ribs with potato purée, swiss chard and horseradish cream would be our Sunday, err Saturday Supper.

This recipe is simple to make, and will make your friends think you slaved all day over a hot stove when, in reality, the stove does all the work.

We began early that afternoon by searing off the ribs to brown perfection.

Then you add your Mirepoix to the pan to caramelize in the rendered juices.

Then add your ribs back to the pan, add the liquid, put it all in the oven and forget about it for 3 hours.

(Well, in reality you can’t  forget. The smells will fill your home and make you so hungry, you send your husband and Shawn back to the store for snacks, and they will come home with your requests and 10 boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Queso, jalapeno hummus and one too many cookies later, those ribs will be finished!)

Braised Short Ribs

Adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table by Suzanne Goin

6 beef short ribs * we used about 12, we were feeding two country boys okay?

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon thyme leaves, and 4 whole sprigs thyme *we used dried only

1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper

3 dozen small pearl onions *if you are not thrilled by the thought of peeling 3 dozen small onions, a bag of frozen will do

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1/3 cup diced carrot

1/3 cup diced celery

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 cups port *

2 1/2 cups hearty red wine *

6 cups beef or veal stock *

4 sprigs flat-leaf parsley

2 bunches Swiss chard, cleaned, center ribs removed

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

*Ladies and Gentlemen, Kristin and I believe that there is no reason one should waste a whole bottle of wine in this recipe. We used just over a cup of red wine, a little sugar, an extra glug of balsamic vinegar and only about 4 cups of veal broth. Even with 12 ribs we had plenty of cooking liquid to cover our ribs.

Horseradish Cream (recipe follows)

Potato Purée/Mashed Potatoes (recipe follows)

Season the short ribs with 1 tablespoon thyme and the cracked black pepper. use your hands to coat the meat well. Cover, and refrigerate overnight. (Whoops, we bought the meat the day of, and well didn’t read the directions before then either. It was still delicious)

Take the short ribs out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking, to come to room temperature. After 30 minutes, season them generously on all sides with salt.

When you take the ribs out of the refrigerator, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. (If you cheated and bought frozen already peeled pearl onions like we did, you can skip the 425 and go right to 325 degrees. Hey, if Ina Garten uses them, we will too!)

Toss the pearl onions with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon thyme, 3/4 teaspoons salt, and a pinch of pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them about 15 minutes, until tender. When they have cooled, slip off the skins with your fingers and set aside. Turn the oven down to 325 degrees F.

When it’s time to cook the short ribs, heat a large Dutch oven over high heat for 3 minutes. Pour in 3 tablespoons olive oil, and wait a minute or two, until the pan is very hot and almost smoking. Place the short ribs in the pan, and sear until they are nicely browned on all three meaty sides. Depending on the size of your pan, you might have to sear the meat in batches. Do not crowd the meat or get lazy or rushed at this step; it will take at least 15 minutes. When the ribs are nicely browned, transfer them to a plate to rest.

Turn the heat down to medium, and add the onion, carrot, celery, thyme springs, and bay leaves. Stir with a wooden spoon, scraping up all the crusty bits in the pan. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, until the vegetables just begin to caramelize. Add the balsamic vinegar, port, and red wine. Turn the heat up to high, and reduce the liquid by half.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Arrange ribs in the pot, lying flat, bones standing up, in one layer. Scrape any vegetables that have fallen on the ribs back into the liquid. The stock mixture should almost cover the ribs. Tuck the parsley sprigs in and around the meat. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and a tight-fitting lid if you have one. Braise in the oven for about 3 hours.

To check the meat for doneness, remove the lid and foil, being careful of the escaping steam, and piece a short rib with a paring knife. When the meat is done, it will yield easily to a knife. If it falls off the bone, don’t worry, that is a good thing!

We were so hungry, we skipped the following meat steps, and the dish was still a thing of perfection!

Let the ribs rest 10 minutes in their juices, and then transfer them to a baking sheet.

Turn the oven up to 400 degrees F.

Place the short ribs in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes to brown.

Strain the broth into a saucepan, pressing down on the vegetables with a ladle to extract all the juices. Skim the fat from the sauce (if you made these the day before, you will have already skimmed them) and, if the broth seems thin, reduce it over medium-high heat to thicken slightly. Taste for seasoning.

Heat a large saute pan over high heat for 2 minutes. Tear the Swiss chard into large pieces. Add 3 tablespoons olive oil to the pan, and stir in the cooked pearl onions. Add half the Swiss chard, and cook a minute or two, stirring the greens in the oil to help them wilt. Add a splash of water and the second half of the greens. Season with a heaping 1/4 teaspoon salt and a pinch of ground black pepper. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently, until the greens are tender.

Horseradish Cream

3/4 cup créme fraîche

1 tablespoon prepared horseradish

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine the créme fraîche and horseradish in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Mashed Potatoes

2 pounds potatoes, scrubbed (We used Yukon Golds)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick, 4 ounces), melted  (We used about half that amount)

1 cup half-and-half , warmed (We used mostly 2% milk with a splash of half and half)

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

Ground black pepper

Chives for garnish (optional)

1. Place potatoes in large saucepan and cover with 1 inch water. Bring to boil over high heat; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until potatoes are tender (a paring knife can be slipped into and out of center of potatoes with very little resistance), 20 to 30 minutes. Drain.

2. Set food mill or ricer over now empty but still warm saucepan. Spear potato with dinner fork, then peel back skin with paring knife. Repeat with remaining potatoes. Working in batches, cut peeled potatoes into rough chunks and drop into hopper of food mill or ricer. Process or rice potatoes into saucepan.

3. Stir in butter with wooden spoon until incorporated; gently whisk in half-and-half, salt, and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

If you have been reading for a while, you might remember this post about my friend Kelly. Recently, Kelly, Jeff and their dogs Cash and Bella moved back to Austin. When I heard the news I was so excited, imagining all of the things we could cook together.

After a fun day out at Bella Vista Ranch in Wimberley with Jeff and Kelly, sampling wine and olive oil, we started to think about recipes we wanted to try. Just a few days prior, I had a conversation with Shawn that went approximately like this:

Me: If I cooked a cow tongue would you eat it?

Shawn: No.

Me: Why not? It’s just like stewed meat. You wouldn’t even try it?

Shawn: I’m not eating tongue.

Me: Not even in a taco?

Shawn: I detest organ meat.

Me: *sulking silently*

So you can only imagine my excitement when Kelly and Jeff mentioned that they had seen the recipe for Beef Tacos de Lengua on Simply Recipes and wanted to try it.

* Fast forward to Super Bowl weekend. *

Never did I imagine that I would be standing face to … uh … face with an actual cow tongue, about to plunge it into boiling water, so that I could cut it up and serve it to my guests at a Super Bowl party.

Granted, when you serve tongue at your Super Bowl party, the only people who will actually show up are blood relatives, people who live at your house anyway, and the friends who helped you plan the party (Just kidding y’all. If you’re reading this and you didn’t come, I know your reasons were all valid and I completely understand).

But really, you should have seen the look on this woman’s face when I put this baby in my cart at our friendly neighborhood HEB. When you tell people you are cooking a cow tongue—and they go “eeewwww” and you laugh hysterically at their squeamishness and your ability to gross them out (or maybe that’s just me)—you don’t think about what it will actually be like to cook a cow tongue.

So Kelly and I pressure cooked the tongue following Elise’s instructions, cooking it for 1 hour in the pressure cooker instead of cooking it normally for 3 hours. About 20 minutes into cooking it started to smell pretty amazing.

An hour later, Kelly removed the tongue from the pot and I peeled it. Yes, I just said I peeled the tongue. Sounds gross, I know, but trust me, you have to get the little taste bud looking thingies off it. The skin was Buster’s favorite part. As I was dangling a piece in the air he snapped onto one end and we played tug of war for a minute until I realized the ridiculousness of fighting with the dog over tongue skin. Needless to say I let him have it.

After peeling the tongue, I sliced it. And at that point we put everything away until the next day. The final step was to brown the meat in oil, and that needed to be done at the last minute. When we went to clean the pots and pans and dispose of the, uh, tongue juice, the broth from cooking the tongue smelled so rich and delicious, we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw it away. Jeff suggested we make it into pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). So, into the pot went some star anise, cloves, a little cinnamon, a handful of coriander seeds and some charred ginger which simmered away while we had a cocktail … or two …

The next morning I warmed up the broth and added some fish sauce. Then I ladled it over bowls of cooked rice noodles, sliced sirloin, sliced onion, green onion and cilantro. YUM! I never would have guessed that a boneless piece of meat would make such a delicious broth.

Later that evening we got out the lengua and Kelly browned it in some oil so it looked like this:

Then, we waited anxiously for the guests to arrive. Bella could hardly contain her excitement.

Neither could Cash. Because he knows a thing or two about tongues.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a good shot of the final tacos. We cubed the meat and cooked it with a few cans of Herdez salsa verde. You could use whatever salsa verde you like, or even make your own out of charred onions, garlic, jalapenos and tomatillos. The finished product was served inside of warm corn tortillas with a little chopped onion, cilantro, avocado and sliced radishes.

My mother even ate one, despite my dad trying to gross her out by describing the texture as “boingy.” But she was a really good sport. My mother won’t eat a hot dog, but she ate a tongue taco. And she only did it because her baby made it. Of course, Shawn stuck to his word and didn’t eat any. He smoked a pork shoulder roast instead. It was also delicious.

I don’t know that I would want to make beef tongue very often, but it’s really a very flavorful cut of meat and it’s one that is often overlooked. If you’ve never cooked lengua and you’re not squeamish about the idea of it, I encourage you to try it.

STOP! Stop right there! You are one step away from turning a possibly award winning burger into a mediocre one and I just can’t let you do it. Now think of the restaurants where you love to get a burger. How are the buns? They’re probably really good right? They’re probably shiny, golden and toasted with some butter. They’re probably rich with eggs or milk and maybe they’re flecked with sesame seeds. They are anything but bland. Now think about the buns you’ve got in your hand. Why would you put your ingredients that you selected so carefully in between two texture-less, tasteless, chemically-fortified so-called pieces of “bread”? Because it’s easy! Don’t be easy! This may come as a surprise, but you don’t have to use those buns.

Free yourself from the confines of tasteless supermarket buns and try making your own for a change. It’s not that hard, it takes very little active preparation time and the result is well worth it. I recently made some very good buns with this recipe from Annie’s Eats. The process was really simple.

You dissolve some sugar, instant yeast and warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and then you add milk and oil. You gradually add some flour and knead it to the right consistency. Then you let it rise. You form the risen dough into discs like this:

If you like soft-sided buns (I do) you put them closer together on the pan for the second rise. After the second rise you paint them with an egg wash and sprinkle some poppy seeds or sesame seeds on top if you want. They look something like this:

Then you just pop them into a nice hot oven and when they are done they might look like this:

If they don’t look like this, well, sorry. But try again! And now that you’ve got some nice soft buns, all you have to do is figure out what to put between them (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Making your own hamburger buns is probably not feasible if you decide you want hamburgers like, right now. I won’t say that I will only use made-from-scratch buns from now on, but I will make them more often when I have the time. And when I have to buy them at the store, I’ll be thinking the whole time about how much better my burger would be with one of these babies.

Budget Recipe Info

You could argue that you won’t save any money by making your own buns at home. You can go to the store and pick up a bag of buns for like 99 cents. If you already have the ingredients on hand it costs very little to make hamburger buns, but it takes time (albeit very little active time). But if your hamburger buns come out really good, you could argue that to buy buns of equal quality you would have to go to a bakery where the buns would be more expensive, or you might have to drive further to get them. So it may or may not save you money, but I do know I have paid $3.99 for some organic hamburger buns before that weren’t even that good. The choice is yours, but I encourage you to try it once.

I was super excited when Lisa of Homesick Texan decided to put up her recipe for carne guisada. Even when I think I have a great recipe for something Tex-Mex, it seems as though the Homesick Texan can always inspire me to take it a step further.

Lisa has a couple of rules when it comes to her carne guisada. The first rule is that no potatoes go into the pot. It is my opinion that potatoes ruin carne guisada. This is very serious and if you choose to ignore this rule, well, there is probably no hope for you or your carne guisada so you should just give up right now. The second rule is that sweet bell peppers are for wussies and old ladies (my words, not Lisa’s). I know, I know, I love them too, but no matter how much you may love delicious sweet bell peppers roasted on a sandwich or in your hummus, please keep them far away from your carne guisada pot. Instead choose spicy green chilies like serranos and jalapeños. I took this a step further and added some roasted poblano peppers because, well, I like poblano peppers in my carne guisada and I think they give it extra depth of flavor. The last rule is that the meat should not look like the contents of a can of Prime Cuts in Gravy—it should be cooked until it’s tender enough to string and fall apart. Enough said. I was able to make this happen very quickly on a Friday evening in my pressure cooker. If you have one I recommend using it.

So I followed Lisa’s rules and when I took that first bite of rich, spicy goodness nestled inside of a warm corn tortilla, my eyes got wide. I had found carne guisada perfection and I knew I would never go back to my old ways. I also knew I had to share this with everyone I know. So here it is: my version of the Homesick Texan’s carne guisada.

Carne Guisada

I don’t make beef stew more than about once a year. It’s one of those things that I just don’t really get excited about. Don’t get me wrong, I like beef stew, but there are beefy things I like better, like delicious, melt-in-your-mouth braised short ribs or oxtails. It just seems like with most beef stews, the initial browning of the meat is very exciting, but then in goes the liquid and the vegetables which eventually turn to mush and, well, it’s all downhill from there.

Despite my feelings about beef stew, I bought beef chuck on sale so when the cold weather came and the baby carrots arrived in my Greenling box I knew I had to make it. Most beef stews (the french ones anyway.. i.e. beef bourguignon) are flavored with red wine and I actually have a recipe that uses an entire bottle of red wine. I refuse to pour an entire bottle of perfectly good wine into a pot of meat. I like the flavor of red wine and beef, but I tend to prefer the flavor of Guinness and beef—more hearty, less sweet and less acidic (and also less expensive). So I used a cup of red wine and a bottle of Guinness Stout. And as far as beef stews go, this one came out pretty darn good. I might even make it again before this time next year.

Guinness Beef Stew

3 lbs beef chuck, cut into 2 inch pieces

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

3 tablespoons of flour

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup red wine that you would drink

1 bottle Guinness Stout

2 carrots, sliced

1 onion, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, smashed

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, or 4 whole cloves

1 teaspoon peppercorns

1 lemon, juice and zest

3 medium turnips, peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces

10 ounces crimini mushrooms, cut in quarters

1 bunch baby carrots

1/2 cup green peas

parsley, chopped

1. Salt and pepper the meat and dust with flour. Heat the oil in a large dutch oven until it shimmers. Brown the meat in batches until sufficiently caramelized and then add water to cover scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen the bits of browned meat and flour.

2. Add the onion, sliced carrots, garlic, lemon juice and zest and seasonings, red wine and beer and bring to a simmer. Cook slowly over low heat for about two hours or until the meat can be easily shredded with a fork.

3. Add the turnips and mushrooms and cook for another half hour adding the baby carrots and peas in the last 15 minutes of cooking. Sprinkle with fresh parsley. Serve with a side of garlic mashed potatoes.