Grilled Pork Steaks with Lemon Butter

If you think Bill and I eat a lot of pork because I post so many recipes with pork as the main ingredient, you’re right. That’s because we still have some cuts from last fall in our freezer and our order for this year has already arrived. So I’m always looking for new ways to cook it.

We love grilling, and this recipe is so easy and flavorful that it’s become a favorite. Plus, since we learned Bill can eat butter if it’s made from raw milk, a plethora of recipes (and not just pork) await for us to try!

I found Grilled Pork Steaks with Lemon Butter at allrecipes.com. Instead of steaks, I used chops and cooked them as little as possible because our pastured pork is very lean.

For the butter sauce, you just melt the butter, add chopped garlic, and cook it until tender. Then add the lemon juice.

Since I make unsalted butter, I sprinkled salt and pepper on the chops before basting them with the sauce.

All you do is put the basted side down on a very hot grill to sear for one minute.

Then baste the other side, flip them over and sear for one minute.

Turn of the direct flame (center burner on our Weber grill) and cook each side for three minutes, basting again each time the meat is flipped. Remove from the grill and cover with foil to rest about three minutes.

We served them with a summer veggie medley: sautéed onions, carrots, and green beans fresh from the Holland Farmers Market!

Why Roast Pork When You Can Grill It?

I don’t know about where you live but in the Midwest it’s been one helluva hot summer. The last thing I want to think about is firing up the oven. But what if you have large cuts of meat in the freezer taking up the space you need for freezing this summer’s produce?

Some cuts don’t fare well cooked with dry heat, but let me tell you about the roast pork we had last night. I found this online recipe called Rubbed and Grilled Pork Loin. Bill and I are big fans of a rub when it comes to grilling because many barbecue sauces contain corn syrup. Besides, I think sauces are messy. We use similar rubs to the one in this recipe for our grilled pork steaks and ribeyes. What they all have in common is paprika, salt, and pepper. For pork, it’s nice to throw in some cumin, sugar, and spice, such as chili powder. But the main thing about all these recipes is that they’re easy.

Here’s our 4-pound pork loin that we got in our meat order from Lubbers Farm.

The recipe calls for a boneless roast but I couldn’t tell if there was a bone in this when I pulled it out of the freezer, so I just followed the standard rule to cook it longer with a bone in, and used my trusty digital meat thermometer to check the temperature.

The rub consists of sugar, paprika, onion salt, garlic salt, ground black pepper, chili powder, cumin, and coriander.

You just rub olive oil all over the meat, then rub in the spice mixture on all sides.

After preheating the gas grill to around 400 degrees F, we browned the meat on both sides for about 5 minutes each (shorter time than the recipe calls for since pastured pork is leaner and requires less cooking time than factory farmed meat).

Then we turned off the center burner and kept the temperature around 350F, grilling the meat for about 60 minutes.

In retrospect, I would probably lower the temperature to about 300 and cook it slightly longer so you don’t risk drying out the meat.

After taking the meat off the grill we let it rest (covered in foil) for about ten minutes.

Sticking with the easy theme, I sautéed some onions, carrots, and green beans from the Holland Farmers Market in olive oil to serve with the meat, along with what we call a “melange:” white rice cooked with chopped onion and celery.

As the meat cooked we enjoyed some wine on the patio—a fabulous way to spend a Sunday evening.

Local Fish Tacos

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is one of my favorite places in the world, and I’m lucky to live so close to it.

That’s why it’s become an annual camping destination for my friend Sandy and me. We don’t really “rough it” too much, although three days without a shower may be pushing it. Our focus is on eating–and drinking–well, which is why Day 1 of our camping excursion always includes stops at Good Harbor Vineyards, Stone House Bread, and now Good Harbor Farm.

We used to come up with a cooking theme for each camping trip but the last few years we decided to make it easy on ourselves and just focus on either bringing or procuring locally raised foods. This year, our first dinner was fish tacos with Lake Michigan whitefish from Carlson’s of Fishtown in Leland. (For our previous take on fish tacos, check out the blog post from our 2009 trip when we used shrimp.)

Although I have a one-burner camp stove, which works great for brewing coffee quickly in the morning or making popcorn at night, we generally cook our dinner over a fire.

For the tacos, we cut our one-pound-ish whitefish filet into big chunks so we could marinate them in lime juice, olive oil, onion, and cumin.

Then we sprinkled them with cayenne pepper and put them on foil on the fire grate to cook, flipping them once, for a total cook time of about ten minutes. (You know fish is done when it starts to flake.)

For the vegetables, we used chopped cabbage (which we brought with us from the Holland Farmers Market) and a garnish of fresh cilantro from my garden.

And we made a sauce from my homemade yogurt by mixing it with fresh-squeezed lime juice and a dash of cayenne.

While the fish was cooking we wrapped flour tortillas in foil to heat them on the fire. We made a simple pico de gallo garnish with tomatoes, onion, and jalapeno pepper. And we made a side of organic bok choy (from CJ Veggies at the Holland Farmers Market) steamed with olive oil, salt, and pepper in foil over the fire.

For assembly, you just pull the fish apart with a fork, place it in the middle of the warm tortilla, then top with cabbage, yogurt sauce, pico de gallo, and cilantro.

It’s a quick and easy meal for camping. And it goes great with local wine!

Eating Local Over a Fire

Last week I went camping with my friend Sandy in Northern Lower Michigan. One of our favorite things to do on these annual meccas to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is cook over a fire. And I don’t mean hot dogs. Even while camping, we aim to follow the locavore philosophy as much as possible.

Here’s an easy meal we made with vegetables in season: Grilled Steak with Chimichurri Sauce, Asparagus, Garlic Scapes and Potatoes. The produce came from our local farmers market or the garden, and the meat came from my mixed quarter of beef in the freezer. We even found the prosciutto at the Cedar City Market, known for natural foods.

Lots of people who camp know that one of the best ways to cook potatoes is to wrap them up in foil and let them roast over coals. That’s exactly what Sandy and I did. You just have to get them going first because they need at least half an hour to be tender (for 1-2-inch pieces).

Meanwhile, we made the Chimichurri sauce, which also needs to sit for about 30 minutes, and marinated the grassfed t-bone steak from Lubbers Farm in olive oil, salt and pepper. I brought fresh parsley and oregano from my garden for the Chimichurri!

Then we roasted asparagus and garlic scapes–fresh from the Holland Farmers Market–over the coals. This is easiest to do with a vegetable grate. (The National Park Service provides fire pits with standard grill grates at their campgrounds. Our tax dollars at work, and worth every penny!)

After wrapping the asparagus and garlic in prosciutto, we put it back on the grill to get crispy.

Then we grilled the steak about three minutes per side (it was only 3/4 of a pound and–yes–Sandy and I shared one steak) and let it rest a couple minutes under foil after cooking. As with other grassfed meat grilling recipes, it’s important not to overcook the meat because it is so lean.

This is how the potatoes turned out after roasting.

The whole meal from preparation to serving took about an hour. One of our favorite things to do during the process? Drink local wine. Just like at home.

Herb Frittata Inspired by My Winter Herb Garden

One winter night in February I was flying solo for dinner. I was also short on food. So I decided to make a frittata because we almost always have happy eggs in the fridge.

Then I remembered my Winter Herb Garden, which seems to be holding on through the dead of winter, even when temps got to -4 degrees F outside.

So I started snipping the greens, some of which I think might be arugula, as well as spinach, oregano, and parsley.

I sautéed some slices of red onion, mixed three eggs together (salt and pepper to taste), poured them in a skillet with hot olive oil, and cooked the eggs like I’d do for any frittata. When the eggs were almost set, I sprinkled the chopped greens and herbs on top.

Then I added the onion and some grated Pecorino cheese.

Under the broiler it went for about 2 1/2 minutes, with me checking every 30-60 seconds to make sure it didn’t burn.

With a garnish of grape tomatoes, black cured olives, and a sprig of parsley from the garden, I was ready to eat.

Doesn’t it look like summer has arrived in Michigan?

Happy Spatchcock Chicken with Basil Marinade

When you buy whole happy chickens from local farmers like Bill and I do and your kitchen temperature stays in the 80-degree range most of the summer, roasting a chicken in the oven is not an option. And, I’m a bit lazy about cutting a chicken up into pieces to cook in other ways.

Instead, I do a spatchcock (splayed) whole chicken on the grill, which keeps the cooking heat outside the house.

This recipe was inspired by Stephen Raichlen’s Spatchcocked Game Hens Under a Brick with Basil Marinade. (For other recipes by the man who “reinvented the barbeque,” check out The Barbecue Bible.)

In my adaptation, I used one chicken and adjusted the time accordingly. Since our chicken was just under four pounds, the rest of the ingredient quantities stayed about the same because, in total, it’s about four pounds of meat.

Spatchcock Chicken

One 4-lb. chicken

1 bunch basil

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1/3 cup olive oil

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup water

I don’t have the prettiest basil in my garden but at least it’s organic.

For the recipe, I snipped the top leaves off several of the plants. Is this “a bunch” like the recipe calls for? Hard to know. I just went with what I had. Believe me, the flavor was excellent.

If you don’t have that much basil, you can combine basil with fresh thyme and rosemary for a delicious herb-infused marinade. I’ve tried that before when my basil yield was low.

Combine all the ingredients except the chicken in a food processor to make the marinade.

Here’s the blended marinade.

This is one of the last chickens we got from Tom Cary, who raised them in the pastures of Lubbers Farm last year. It’s been in our freezer since last summer. Once the chicken was thawed, I put it in the sink to perform surgery.

Poultry shears are a must for this operation, and a handy tool to have in the kitchen. Ever since I took a cooking class in Tuscany, Italy a few years ago, I learned how empowering it is to know how to cut up poultry (something I never learned before because of the convenient factory farm chicken I used to buy in the grocery store). But you’ve got to have the right tools. I love my Oxo Good Grips poultry shears. (It’s important to wash these in very hot soapy water, or run them through the dishwasher after use on poultry.)

The first step in the operation is to remove the backbone (and neck if it’s still intact). It’s so easy with shears. Just cut along both sides of the bone and remove. (Remember to save the backbone for stock!)

The next step is more difficult and I’m not sure if I even did it right. First you open up the bird, like opening a book, and gently pull the halves apart. Then, use a sharp paring knife to score the top of the breastbone. Run your thumbs along and under the sides of the breastbone and attached cartilage and pop them out. (I usually end up using a knife.) Then spread the bird out flat.

Flip the bird over and cut slits in the skin between the lower end of the breastbone and the leg so you can tuck the drumstick in.

Then put the chicken in a glass or ceramic dish and pour the marinade over the meat, covering both sides.

After marinading in the fridge for four hours or more, it’s time to preheat the grill to medium heat. Meanwhile, locate a brick. Yes, just a regular household brick. Or anything heavy and fireproof.

Cover it well with foil.

When the grill is around 350 degrees, put the chicken on, skin side down and place the brick on the chicken.

For a 4-lb. chicken, grill on each side about 20-25 minutes on medium heat. You can see we probably did this side a little too long (25 minutes with both burners on).

So when we did the other side, we turned the center burner off and only grilled it for 20 minutes. At this point, we put some steamed Butterball Potatoes from Visser Farms on the grill. I got this recipe from Lauri Sisson of Pereddies’ Restaurant at the Holland Farmers Market Chef Series demo in June.

She baked them in the oven but they are really good on the grill, too.

Once the chicken is done, it’s important to let it rest a few minutes under foil.

Serve with potatoes and salad.

Don’t forget to boil the carcass for stock. This chicken dish renders a delicious rich stock infused with herbs.

Frittata Over a Fire

Last winter I posted a frittata recipe as a suggestion for a quick, vegetarian meal–either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Ever since, Bill and I have been making them at least every couple of weeks for dinner. They’re easy, nutritious, and yummy!

But my frittata fetish really began a long time ago during camping vacations because it’s an easy meal to make over a campfire.

If you have veggies to use up after a couple days of camping, just saute them with olive oil and salt in an iron skillet on the fire grate. My friend Sandy and I made this frittata a few weeks ago while camping in Northern Lower Michigan. We started with chopped zucchini and onion.

Mix up some happy eggs, such as the ones we got from Grassfields.

Pour the egg mixture right on top of the vegetables and add some grated parmesan cheese. Then cover with foil.

The frittata is ready to eat when the egg is set. To keep it from burning, remove the skillet from the fire and leave the foil on. The hot iron pan will continue to cook the egg.

Cut into serving pieces.

Enjoy with toast, plus potatoes cooked over the fire the night before. And don’t forget a little Sunset Peach cider from Good Neighbor Organic Vineyard & Winery, or try a Bellini like Bill and I enjoy with our oat cakes!

Not Your Brother’s Campfire Food

I’ve already opined how much I dislike hot dogs, so why would I bring them on a camping trip?

Thankfully, my friend Sandy feels the same way. That’s why–whenever we camp in Northern Lower Michigan–we cook over a fire for most of our meals.

On a recent trip to D.H. Day Campground in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, we brought along a pork steak from Creswick Farms and grilled it similarly to the recipe I make at home. The only difference is we partially cover the meat with foil on a campfire grate because there’s no lid to cover it like on a gas grill. And, because heat control is trickier with coals, it becomes an exercise in trial-and-error. So I’d recommend cutting into the meat to check for doneness before serving, which you might already do with a gas grill anyway.

Along with our pork, we roasted some red-skinned potatoes in a skillet with a little water, olive oil, and salt (covered in foil until tender).

The key with camping is to mix and match your recipes so that you can use several ingredients for other meals. For example, with the potatoes, we cooked more than what we needed for dinner and saved the rest to have for breakfast with a frittata.

We also brought along the last of the local fresh asparagus and cooked it in foil with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, then drizzled it with fresh-squeezed lemon juice before serving. (These latter ingredients are key staples for camping!)

And the bread? It’s baguette from Stone House Bread in Leland, Michigan. We brushed it with some olive oil and grilled that over the fire, too.

We also had a fresh salad to use up some of the vegetables leftover from our Roadtrip Tortas.

With a bottle of Harbor Red wine from Good Harbor Vineyards–one of our favorites in the Leelanau Peninsula–we had a delicious meal that didn’t take much more time than it would at home. And if you use a charcoal grill, it’s probably about the same amount of time: The key to cooking over a fire is to build a good fire and use hot coals.

It just takes a little planning and time. What do you do while you wait for the fire to turn into coals? Open a bottle of wine!

Who Needs Jiffy Pop?

I remember in the 70s my family always made popcorn the old-fashioned way: either in a saucepan on the stove or in a popcorn popper over a fire. Eventually, I took over the stove-top process, likely because I’m addicted to popcorn. Just the smell of it makes me want to eat it, even if I’m not hungry!

For many of the years I’ve gone tent camping, I’d bring along a package of Jiffy Pop, stick it on the fire grate and let it go, shaking occasionally. But the last few times I’ve camped–likely since I’ve become more particular about what I eat and how I prepare it–I’ve enjoyed the old saucepan method.

All you need is a good iron pot. Add some olive oil, or other cooking oil to just coat the bottom of the pot, and put in a layer of popcorn (as in the photo above). If the pot has a lid, put it on and set the whole thing on a grate over a very hot fire–or even right in red-hot to white coals. (I used aluminum foil since my pot doesn’t have a lid.) Then, wait for the first kernel to pop.

Once it starts popping, it’s important to tend to the corn by shaking the pan, or it will burn. In a matter of minutes, the whole pot of corn will be popped.

After the kernels have stopped popping, take the pot off the fire and let the corn “roast” with the lid or foil on top. Then, simply salt to taste and enjoy!

From My Mother’s Recipe Box: Potato Pancakes

Stashed in the bookcase that holds all my cookbooks is my mother’s recipe box. It’s one of the keepsakes I’ve had since she died when I was young. And, it’s a treasure trove of recipes on index cards from the 1950s and ’60s.

What I like about this little collection is that the recipes are made from real food. While processed food was making its debut after World War II, apparently my mother was still following recipes she collected from her family and friends.

Or from a guy named Jim Bower at Cornell University, whose name appears on this Potato Pancakes recipe card. Don’t you love the simplicity of this recipe, all typed up neatly on a 3×5 card?

I thought I’d share some recipes from my mother’s collection with you occasionally to remind us all that, once upon a time, people cooked from scratch. And maybe to inspire you to dig up some recipes from your mother or aunt or grandmother. Are they hidden in a box somewhere? These recipes that get passed down from generation to generation are the fabric of our culture–or, let’s say the bread and butter of our culture. The way processed food has infiltrated our food system over the last several decades, it’s important that we not only remember how to cook but also celebrate our heritage through real food.

I’d love to hear from you: What are your favorite recipes that have been in the family for generations? Send them to me (with a photo if you have one) and I’ll post them on my blog.

Watch for more recipes from my mother’s recipe box over the next several months!