Vietnamese Lettuce Wraps

Monday night. A pound of skirt steak from The Meat Hook has been thawing in the fridge for three days, since our original plan to grill it on Sunday fell through. It's a beautiful night, so we could definitely grill the steak tonight. But let's try for something a little more healthful, or at least something that seems a little more healthful. Maybe a salad, topped with grilled sliced skirt steak. That would be good. But it would be nice to do something with a little more flavor, something a bit more exotic…

A week prior, while babysitting for our friends Denis and Dana, we ordered Vietnamese sandwiches from Hanco's in Boerum Hill, our old neighborhood. It had been a while since we had them, and they really hit the spot.

The Vietnamese sandwich, or bánh mì, has been all the rage in New York lately, with shops popping up all around the city. The sandwich as I know it usually consists of pickled carrots and daikon radish, cucumbers, cilantro, chili peppers, pork pâté or ham, ground spiced pork, mayonnaise, and hot sauce (usually Huy Fong Sriracha sauce) on a baguette.

Though it probably only vaguely resembles traditional Vietnamese cooking, it captures that same interplay of spicy, sweet, tangy, salty, and savory flavors found so often in Asian cuisine, and it is delicious. And, I can attest, once you have one you tend to crave another one, and another one, and…

OK, back to the skirt steak. Our idea was to make a similar tasting dish using ingredients we had on hand. Even in NYC it's sometimes difficult to find that perfect baguette in the early evening on a weekday, so we decided to try and use lettuce as sort of a sandwich wrap to make what we've dubbed Vietnamese skirt steak lettuce wraps.

For the steak marinade, we just tried to throw together stuff from our fridge and pantry that seems to belong in Vietnamese food. We're no experts here, but it worked out pretty well. We would love to hear any suggestions as to how the marinade could be improved. Instead of steak for the filling, you could marinate thinly pounded chicken breasts or pork; or, you veggie heads could use tofu or mushrooms, and even fill it out with a little cooked rice.

Vietnamese skirt steak lettuce wraps

Ingredients:

1 lb. skirt steak

Marinade for steak (see below)

4-6 large leaves of Bibb or Boston lettuce

1 small carrot, julienned

½ cucumber, julienned

Handful of fresh mint, coarsely chopped

Crushed peanuts

Huy Fong Sriracha hot sauce

For marinade:

1 tsp. honey (or brown sugar)

1 tbsp. peanut butter (we used cashew butter)

½ shallot, roughly chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

½ inch fresh ginger root, peeled and roughly chopped

½ tsp. fish sauce

1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. rice vinegar

Chili paste or dried chili flakes to taste

Juice from ½ lime

¼ - ½ c. sesame oil (we ran out and used peanut oil instead. I think sesame would be better)

Place all marinade ingredients except oil in blender and puree. Put blender on low and slowly drizzle in oil until emulsified. Pour over skirt steak and let marinate for an hour or two at room temperature or, if you have the time, several hours or overnight in the fridge.

Heat grill to medium-high. If you don't have a grill, use a lightly oiled cast-iron skillet over the highest heat possible -- just be prepared for a lot of smoke! Grill skirt steak to desired doneness (medium rare please! Overcooked skirt steak is chewy and loses flavor). For medium rare, grill for about 4 minutes on each side. Remove from grill and let rest for 10 minutes.

Slice steak into pieces, cutting against the grain. To make wraps, put a piece of lettuce on your plate, toss on the steak, carrot, cucumber, mint, crushed peanuts, and as much hot sauce as you can bear. Pick the whole thing up like a taco and enjoy, making sure to dip into the accumulated steak juices/marinade on the plate.

The perfect food with which to try the first bottles of Ben's homebrewed pilsner!

Put the Biscuits in the Basket

OK, we promised you biscuits, so here are the biscuits.

Who doesn't love biscuits? Warm, buttery, flaky vehicles for butter or honey; jam; egg, bacon, and cheese; sausage (or mushroom) gravy… they're a fantastic treat on a weekend morning.

Most people think that only the most skilled of bakers can churn out masterful buttermilk biscuits, and that there is some sort of mystical technique involved. But we can assure you that there is no baked good with a lower work-to-deliciousness ratio. They are very easy to make and what's more, are excellent palettes for all kinds of experimentation.

Anybody who says that there is only one tried and true Southern buttermilk biscuit recipe is wrong and just being overly protective of some misguided notion of regional authenticity. Yes, there is a basic blueprint, just as there is with a pie crust: flour; some sort of fat (usually butter, vegetable shortening, lard, or any combination thereof); a leavening agent, usually baking powder and/or soda; and something to moisten the mixture and bring it all together (buttermilk, if you're making buttermilk biscuits, but lots of other things will work).

The first thing we did when we set about trying to master home biscuit making was to find a reliable base recipe from which we could build all kinds of interesting variations. There are many out there, but we happen to be big fans of Alton Brown, and it's hard to go wrong with most of his basic recipes. You can see Alton's recipe here.

If you want to make basic, fantastic, buttermilk biscuits, just follow this. We've used it several times, and can say from experience that they're good, but not perfect to our tastes. There are a few things to keep in mind when using this recipe:

1. Chill everything.
2. Use a tbsp. or two extra of butter/shortening. You can always make up for it, if necessary, by incorporating a little extra flour while gathering or kneading the dough.
3. If you want a more buttery-tasting biscuit, use more butter and less shortening. If not, use more shortening. You can exclusively use one or the other if you'd like with good results.
4. We think 15 to 20 minutes of cooking time is on the high end. Keep an eye on them around 12 minutes. Your best bet to test doneness is to peek at the bottom--if it's deep golden brown, it's done.
5. Ain't no way in hell this makes 12 biscuits, especially if you want to use the biscuits for a breakfast sandwich or as a base for biscuits and gravy. We usually get six, maybe seven, nice big biscuits out of these proportions. It's not uncommon to end up with one little mutant biscuit at the end...

You don’t usually need to grease your baking sheet, but use one with as shiny a surface as possible, or use parchment paper.

OK, I lied, there is a bit of technique here. Some other small tips: Don't overmix or overknead the dough. Do just enough to bring the dough together and make a dough round from which to cut out the biscuits. It’s OK if you leave some bits of dough in the mixing bowl or on the work surface. The dough may feel crumbly and like it's not coming together – that's OK, too. Just gather it up best you can and patch the loose pieces in. The more small bits of butter/shortening you leave in the dough, the flakier the biscuits will be.

If you don't have a biscuit cutter, choose a glass or mug with the "sharpest" edge you can find. If you have a cocktail shaker, the shaker or the underside of the top removable piece also work really well.

Hopefully you can apply these tips to the Alton Brown recipe and achieve the same great results we did. However, if you want to go above and beyond – "a journey to delicious and beyond," if you will, here are some other variations:

Meaty biscuits:
Fold in diced up bits of ham or cooked bacon at the same time as the buttermilk.

Cheesy biscuits:
Same as above, but use bits of cheddar or gruyere cheese.

Meaty-cheesy biscuits:
Yup, you guessed it.

Sweet biscuits:
Add a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the dry ingredients, or drizzle in a couple teaspoons of honey when you add the wet ingredients.

"Yogurt" biscuits:
Instead of buttermilk, substitute about ¾ cup of thick Greek yogurt (we prefer Fage brand) and ¼ cup of milk/half and half/cream for the buttermilk. Greek yogurt is our secret weapon in a lot of baked goods. These come out really great.

Sour cream biscuits:
Same as above but use sour cream and milk instead of yogurt and milk.

And, finally, the most amazing variation we've come across: sweet potato biscuits. I wish we could take credit for these, but we got the idea from The Bread Bible, an excellent cookbook from Beth Hensperger that would be worth buying for this recipe alone, except for the fact that we are going to reprint most of the recipe here, with a few variations:

Sweet Potato Biscuits (adapted from Beth Hensperger's The Bread Bible):

Ingredients:
1 large sweet potato (about 10 oz.)
1 ¾ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tbsp. light brown sugar
2 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
6 tbsp. (¾ stick) cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
¼ c. cold whole milk or heavy cream

1. Peel sweet potato, cut into chunks, and steam for approx. 15 minutes or until soft in steamer basket. Then puree the chunks with a mixer, blender, or handheld potato masher. Alternatively, you can bake the unpeeled potato until tender, then cool, peel, and puree, but this takes much longer. (You can do this a day or two ahead of time.)
2. Preheat oven to 425° F. In a bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
3. Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until you get coarse crumbs. Add the sweet potato pulp and milk/cream, stirring just to moisten all ingredients.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently about six times, or just until the dough holds together. Roll or pat out the dough into a round or rectangle, no more than an inch thick.
5. Cut biscuits with biscuit cutter, pushing straight down without twisting. Gather and re-roll the remaining scraps as gently as possible to form a couple more biscuits.
6. Place the biscuits ½ inch apart on the baking sheet, then place on center rack in oven and bake about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let rest a few minutes and serve hot.

Enjoy!

The Meat Hook

I've never had a regular "butcher." Hell, before I moved to NY, I don’t think I'd ever even been to a butcher. Like most Americans, I bought my meat in shrink-wrapped packages in the local mega-mart.

We rarely do this anymore. Instead, we've been trying to buy our meat from a local butcher, or at least from the butcher's counter at a reputable grocery store like Whole Foods or Fairway, where we have some confidence that the meat is of high quality and that the animals providing it have been raised responsibly.

And, in the past half-year, we've been taking nearly all of our business to a new butcher shop called The Meat Hook, which recently opened up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Meat Hook claims to deal only with trusted farmers and sustainably raised animals. I believe them, and the proof is in the pudding: One taste of their mighty fine products is all it takes. Their homemade sausages are inventive and incredibly delicious; their slab bacon is to die for; and their beef and poultry cuts are top-notch.

This past weekend we purchased a raw (not pre-cooked) ham steak, which we watched them cut straight off of a giant hock. Later that evening we slapped that approximately inch-thick slab o' porky goodness on the grill, about 6 minutes on each side, and it made us forget everything we thought we knew about ham. None of that insipid, overly salty, unnaturally pink stuff injected with tons of nitrates; no, the taste of this was somewhere in between the greatest pork chop I've ever had and a beef tenderloin.

We've also had a number of fantastic sausages from them, including a truly unique green chorizo, full of poblano, jalapeno, and Serrano peppers and cilantro. We used this sausage to make huevos rancheros one weekend morning and it really brought that simple dish to a new level. In fact, we've never had a sausage from them that failed to impress. Currently, we have a shop-smoked kielbasa and andouille sausage from The Meat Hook in our freezer. The former we'll probably just eat with some rye bread, sauerkraut, and mustard; the latter will become part of some Cajun-style rice and beans or jambalaya.

What really sets The Meat Hook apart, though, is its incredible customer service, which is always a surprise in NYC (and particularly a surprise in the cooler-than-thou hipster mecca that is Williamsburg). If you mosey up to the counter one of the butchers will greet you with a friendly hello and be chatting you up in no time, and will answer your questions (of which you'll probably have many) thoroughly and thoughtfully. What's more, the employees really seem to enjoy their work, and they perform it with an enthusiasm that is infectious. I particularly remember a recent visit where one of the butchers was busy making sausages when the shop's sound system (usually blaring classic rock) cued up "Black Betty" by Ram Jam, causing him to momentarily drop what he was doing to clap and stomp along and encourage anyone in the store to do the same. I must admit, it’s the first time I've ever though butchering could be a fun job. But don't take my word for it… watch this video to get an idea of The Meat Hook's atmosphere:



Is it expensive? Yeah, even for our out-of-whack NYC cost barometer, it's a bit pricey. But we've been of the mind lately that meat should be expensive because we should be eating it less frequently, and it should be of higher quality when we do eat it. More succinctly, eat less meat, eat better meat.

Currently, The Meat Hook shares a large warehouse space with The Brooklyn Kitchen, a fine, if not also a bit pricey purveyor of kitchenware and provisions such as locally sourced, seasonal veggies; homemade stock; dried beans and grains; dairy, etc.; as well as homebrewing supplies and ingredients. A visit to the entire complex is a must for any local foodie… and trust me when I say "Get the ham steak."

Smoky Lentil Soup

One of the best ways to add depth of flavor to any dish is to give it a hint of smokiness, whether by grilling it over charcoal or wood, or adding a pre-smoked ingredient such as smoked paprika or bacon.

We've become pretty regular customers of a relatively new butcher called the Meat Hook, in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. They sell two kinds of slab bacon – regular and smoked. The smoked is really smoky, so much so that we usually just get a quarter or half pound, thickly sliced, and dice it up as needed to add flavor to our dishes. I understand that not everyone has access to a reliable butcher… in that case, regular packaged bacon will work just fine for this recipe, although I recommend seeking out slab bacon (pretty much every good supermarket carries it) and having the butcher cut you a few thick slices.

One of the recurring themes of our blog will be bacon. It's such a magical ingredient. But if you want to make a lentil soup with another meat besides bacon, you could certainly use ham (try the leftovers from a baked ham, bones and all, just make sure to remove before blending), pancetta, or even turkey. If you still want to make it smoky, you should try to find Spanish smoked paprika, or pimenton, which pretty much blows regular paprika out of the water. And of course, you can also add only the smoked paprika and make a pretty great vegetarian lentil soup.

But as I said, we prefer smoked slab bacon, and we adapted our recipe from The Best of Craig Claiborne, a highly recommended cookbook that my sister bought for me as a gift some years ago. Here's our version of the recipe, which has a few more ingredients in it than Mr. Claiborne's version:

Smoky Lentil Soup

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. butter
¼ lb. smoked bacon or ham, fat left on, diced
¼ c. coarsely chopped onions
½ c. coarsely chopped carrot
½ lb. dried lentils
5 c. fresh or canned chicken or vegetable stock
2 c. water
1 bay leaf
1 sprig fresh thyme or ¼ tsp. dried
½ tsp. of ground cumin
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Smoked paprika to taste (if you don't use smoked meat)
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat 1 tbsp. of the butter in a small kettle or deep saucepan and add the bacon/ham (bacon will take a bit longer to render and crisp) and onion. Cook briefly until the onion wilts. Add the carrots, lentils, 4 c. of the broth, smoked paprika (if using), cumin, and cayenne. Add the remaining ingredients, bring just to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 to 40 min.

Remove about a cup of the soup with lentils/carrots (or more if you prefer a thicker soup) and set aside to cool briefly, then blend (careful that it's not too hot!) until smooth. Add blended soup back to kettle along with remaining 1 c. of broth, bring to boil, turn off heat, and swirl in remaining tbsp. of butter.

Serve with warm crusty bread (or biscuits) and butter.







We paired this with a 2007 Terre Di Corzano Chianti and it was a nice match. Beer would also pair well: a saison, or something lightly smoky, like Aecht Schlenkerla Helles Lagerbier.

Biscuits and gravy

I love breakfast.

I usually don't get to have a great breakfast during the work week, so when the weekend arrives I often go nuts. And one of my all-time favorite breakfasts (especially when hungover) is the Southern staple of biscuits and gravy. Generally this means sage-y, spicy pork breakfast sausage in a heavy cream-laden sauce poured over freshly baked buttermilk biscuits. It's delicious, but it will probably shave a few weeks off of your life.

Recently, Beth and I had a more healthful (though certainly not as healthful as, say, oatmeal and fresh fruit) version of this dish at a bistro called Ortine, in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. It featured whole wheat biscuits with rich, creamy mushroom gravy and a side of breakfast sausage which, while delicious, was actually superfluous. Given our recent mastery of biscuit making, we vowed at the time that we'd have to recreate this dish at home.

This morning we had the chance. Last night we hosted some friends for dinner, and one of the dishes we made was fancy macaroni and cheese with morel mushrooms and crispy leeks. We used dried morel mushrooms, which have to be reconstituted. This process yields a couple of cups of morel liquid that is simply too delicious to be discarded. So we saved it.

When brainstorming breakfast this morning, Beth mentioned making buttermilk biscuits and I immediately thought of making a mushroom gravy to go with them. To make Southern pork sausage gravy, you fry up your breakfast sausage (which is usually already spiced with lots of sage), remove it from the pan, and make a roux with whatever fat is left in the pan. Then you add lots of black pepper and some heavy cream.

With mushrooms and mushroom broth, the process is fairly similar. I sliced and sautéed some cremini mushrooms in butter with lots of chopped sage and thyme, removed them from the pan, then added a little extra leftover bacon fat to the pan (more butter would be fine, but you need some fat in the pan, otherwise you really can't make a proper gravy). Then I whisked in some flour to make a roux; added some warmed mushroom broth, more sage and thyme, and lots of black pepper, brought to a boil, then turned down the heat and reduced it a little bit. Finally, I returned the mushrooms to the pan, added a little half and half to make the sauce a little creamier, let it thicken, and voilá: a rich, creamy, spicy, herb-y mushroom gravy as good as any sausage gravy I've had.

Meantime, Beth made her buttermilk biscuits with some whole-wheat flour (which I hemmed and hawed about until she reminded me how good Ortine's were), and they turned out great.

More on biscuit making in another post, but I'll just post the mushroom gravy recipe here. I imagine this would also be delicious over some steak, or rice, or whatever, and you can definitely vary the ingredients as such (for instance, some red wine instead of mushroom liquid would work very well). Please note that, as with much of our cooking, we improvise, so many of these measurements are estimated after the fact.

Creamy Mushroom Gravy (enough for two servings of biscuits and gravy)

2 c. sliced mushrooms

1 ½ c. mushroom stock, warmed

5 tbsp. butter/bacon fat

2 tbsp. flour

¼ c. (or more to taste) heavy cream, half and half, or whole milk (yogurt would also work well here)

Fresh thyme, sage; minced

Black pepper and salt to taste

Handful of chopped scallions

In medium-sized pan, sauté mushrooms with thyme and sage in 2 tbsp. butter/bacon fat. Remove mushrooms from pan, reduce heat to medium-low, add 3 remaining tbsp. butter/bacon fat and melt. Whisk in flour until smooth. Whisk in mushroom stock; bring to boil; add mushrooms back to pan, along with black pepper, salt, sage, and thyme; reduce heat, and simmer until it begins to thicken. Whisk in cream, simmer a little longer until gravy is desired consistency. Pour over biscuits and top with chopped scallions.

Then dig in!

About Brooklyn Bon Vivant

Welcome to Brooklyn Bon Vivant! We love eating and drinking. That's the basic premise of our blog. It's more than that, though. When we first moved to NYC, we dined out... a lot. It's one of the best things about living in NY. But it ain't cheap. Over the years we started to realize that we could make food and drink at home that was nearly as good, if not better (and cheaper), than many of the restaurants we enjoyed. And we think that anyone willing to do a little research and work can also make really great food and drink at home.

So that's what the cooking and brewing sections are about. These entries are not recipes, per se. We want them to serve as a window into our process, from when we first ask each other "What's for dinner?"; to buying ingredients; researching and modifying the many recipes that are already out there; and eventually using the knowledge that we've gathered to start creating recipes of our own.

If that was all our blog was about, it would probably be enough. But we also love the culture of food and drink, and how it brings people together and creates conversation, friendships, and memories, so we want to capture that. And we love Brooklyn and NYC, and all that they have to offer. We love to travel, though we don't do it nearly as much as we would like to. And yes, we still love dining and drinking out. So we hope to sprinkle in a little of all these things. In the end, it's about enjoying life.

"You guys should really start a blog." That's what many of our friends kept telling us when we'd wax poetic about our latest meal or night out. We're a bit lazy, so it took some time, but here it is. Honestly, we probably would have done it a long time ago if we knew it was this easy.