Tommy J's Kitchen

Recipe/Technique: New England Seafood Chowder

2010-12-26T12:29:00.001-05:00

As anyone who grew up in New England, especially near the coast, can tell you, a chowder is a milk soup. It’s thin. It becomes thicker as you cook it only by dint of potato starch and evaporation.

Somewhere along the line, some restaurateur figured out that flour was cheaper than milk and seafood, and thus was born the stand-your-spoon-up-in-it sludge that now passes for ‘chowdah.’ It isn’t. Please. Leave the flour, cornstarch, arrowroot, agar, or other thickening agents out. Chowder is a milk soup. It’s thin.

But just because chowdah is a milk soup doesn’t mean that milk has to be the only liquid in the pot! So, hey, ‘gear up’ as Jethro might say and let’s build a half gallon of not-quite-classic seafood chowdah.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 small to medium yellow onion
1 rib celery
1 carrot
2 (or so) potatoes
lean salt pork, cut into 1/8” dice (maybe ¼ to 1/3 cup, 3 or maybe 4 slices, err on the extra side – you can always store extras for use in other things)
2 cups chicken stock
1 – 2 cups vegetable stock
1/3 to ½ cup sherry (cream, dry, whatever’s cheap and on hand)
½ gallon milk
( ½ cup or more cream or half & half, optional)
butter and/or olive oil
seafood (what you got . . . clams, scallops, shrimp, white fish, red fish, crab, lobster, calamari – but only if you quick-cook it properly and then chop it before putting it into the chowdah!)
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley or 1 Tbsp. dried flakes (curly parsley, not cilantro)
salt and Tellicherry (maybe a few flakes of dried red pepper flakes – you know,
pizza pepper)

Here’s how you do it:

Start with the salt pork. Cut it up into tiny little cubes and toss it into your chowdah pot over medium heat. Put a teaspoon of olive oil in the pan if it’s prone to sticking add a few (1/3 tsp?) flakes of red pepper, and stir everything around to coat the pork.

As soon as the pork begins to sizzle and spit, turn the heat down to low and slow. You want to render the fat while you brown the ‘cracklins’ and you do not want to create any nitrosamines in the process.

While your cracklins become perfect, prepare a classic mirepoix – onions, carrot, and celery, chopped fine but not quite minced. Use about 1/3 of each vegetable for the mirepoix. Cut the rest of each into soup-sized chunks and save it to add later.

When the pork is rendered and browned, remove it to a plate and drain it on a paper towel (or brown bag or . . .). Crank the heat back up under the pot and cook the mirepoix. OK, OK, if your cardiologist is watching or your pork was particularly generous, you can drain out some of the pork fat before you cook the mirepoix. Or if you want to introduce some extra special flavor into your soup, drain some of the pork fat but replace it with an equal amount of butter. Whatever your fat choice(s), cook the mirepoix for at least 5 minutes over pretty good heat, stirring constantly. You want the heat to bring out the flavors of the veggies, but you don’t want anything to brown. So keep it movin’! After 5 minutes, add the parsley and then turn the heat back down to that low and slow spot. Continue to ‘stew’ the mirepoix for another 12-15 minutes. This stage is to thoroughly tenderize the veggies.

In this case, I had a ‘broken’ potato, so rather than keep it damp until later, I just tossed it in with the mirepoix here.

When the veggies are totally tender, crank the heat back up to medium, count to 23 (or wait for some indication that the heat is back) and pour in a goodly slug or two of sherry. You can use white wine if you prefer, but I like the woodsy richness that the sherry imparts. Let it bubble and sizzle until the volume of sherry is reduced by at least half; then pour in one cup of chicken stock.

Allow the pot to come up to a serious simmer and let it cook until the chicken stock is reduced by at least half.

Now in case you haven’t noticed, you’ve just created a wondrous, rich flavorful soup/sauce base that you can and should use whenever you make any kind of soup or sauce. The basic steps are the same: cook up a mirepoix (or something similar – replace the carrot with bell peppers and/or add some garlic and/or toss in some herbs and/or . . .), then simmer in liquid(s) to make your flavor base. It’s a classic technique you can use all the time.

Once the liquid in your pot has reduced by half, add the rest of the chicken stock and all of the veggie stock. Bring it up to a good simmer and let it cook for 10 minutes or so.

Then add in the rest of the chopped up vegetables. While they’re getting warm, cube up the potatoes. I always leave the skins on, but you can peel them if you must. Do trim away any nasty bits, and try to get your cube size small enough to allow a piece of potato to share the spoon with something else when you’re eating.

When the pot is bubbling again, toss in the potatoes. Let them cook for at least 15 minutes. Then, sample a bit of broth and half a piece of potato. If you need to add salt, now is the time. And even if no salt is required, now is the time to add a few (4 – 6) grinds of fresh Tellicherry.

At this point, it’s fish time. Whatever you’ve got, toss it in. In general, you can cook the fish in the stock. But for calamari, clams, crab and lobster, pre-cooking is best; that way, you can easily consol the tenderness of the seafood. Once cooked to perfection, all kinds of fish will survive quite nicely in a slow cooked soup. Shrimp, white fish and red fish seem quite happy cooking directly in the chowdah.

As soon as the fish are in, add the milk (and cream if you are using it). As always, if you think of it, get the milk and cream out long enough in advance to reach room temperature before you pour them in, or don’t. . . But whatever you do, pay attention to your pot! If the milk boils over, and you’re not right there, you’ll likely make friends with your local fire department.

Once the fish and milk are in the pot, add about half the cracklins back to the pot (save some to sprinkle on at the table). Then, it’s time to wait. The chowdah should come to a serious simmer, with some milk curd/crust/solids forming on top. Stir them all back in and lower the heat to a bare simmer and let your chowdah develop for at least an hour.

After that, well, simply enjoy . . .

Recipe: Cream of Potato Soup

2009-03-26T16:21:00.002-04:00

This is not Vichyssoise. This is a peasant soup - often my favorite kind of almost any dish. Vichyssoise is White (maybe even WHITE); this one is mottled gold with cracklin’s. Vichyssoise is a smooth texture (usually too smooth having had all its textural character processed out of it); this one is definitely lumpy, and you can choose the size of your lumps. Vichyssoise can be served hot or chilled; this one wants to be steaming hot on a cold winter’s day. Serve it with a sandwich for lunch or with a salad for dinner. To the leftovers, add broccoli or green beans or asparagus to create a whole new meal; add seafood - shrimp, crab, lobster, any whitefish - and call it a chowder. Add, well, you think of something, and let us all know how it works!

Here’s what you’ll need.

Potatoes, 2 or more depending on the size of your pot
onion, ½ large
carrot, 1 small
celery, 1 rib
garlic, 2 small cloves
lean salt pork
chicken stock, home made if you’ve got it, from a ‘chicken base’ if you don’t, canned if you have no ‘base,’ or if worst comes to worst, a couple of bullion cubes
milk
cream or Half & Half
crushed red pepper flakes
Tellicherry
coarse Kosher salt, but only if you are using home made (unsalted) chicken stock; the others all have plenty of salt for this entire dish
fresh ground nutmeg
crumbled tarragon leaf
patience

Here’s how you do it . . .

Pay special attention to that last ingredient. It’s the secret to all the best soups in the world. Yes, there are a lot of ways to make ‘quick soup.’ You can boil water, add spoon of Miso and make ‘soup’ in 5 minutes. You can heat a pot of chicken stock, toss in cooked leftover rice and chicken, and make ‘soup’ in 10 minutes. But if you really want Soup, you’ll need a goodly portion of patience.

You’ll need patience right from the beginning of this preparation, and that’s because you can’t rush salt pork cracklin’s. Oh, sure, you can crank the heat, add a little oil and fry your salt pork, but that ain’t cracklin’s. Cracklin’s come from slowly rendering the fat out of the lean salt pork and then slowly crisping the pork in its own fat. Allow at least 45 minutes. An hour is more likely.

So take a slice or two of your salt pork (you do always keep a hunk in the freezer, don’t you?) and cut it up into little cubelets. These are about ¼” cubes, which works well for this particular salt pork. Others may want to be a little larger, or a little smaller, depending on how they cook up. You want them to be crispy and crunchy, but not tooth-breaking boulders or BBs.

Toss the pork into a skillet, and set it over very low heat. Add patience. After 15 minutes, toss the pork around a bit. After 10 more minutes, toss some more. And every 5 minutes from now until your patience runs out, toss them some more. When they’re ‘done’ to your satisfaction, carefully scoop them onto a paper towel to drain, making sure to keep all the rendered fat in the skillet.

Now, while the pork renders, you can prep everything else, short of actually cutting the potatoes - you don’t want to have to keep them wet for an hour or two; that would make them end up mushy in the soup. So get your stock out. In this case, I used about enough chicken base to make two cups of rich stock.

Then, get your veggies out. You’ll use a little bit of each for the soup’s base and then the rest will go in after the base has developed for a while.

Here we have a classic mirepoix for the soup’s base - onion, carrot and celery, plus one of the garlic cloves chopped finely. The other veggies will go in later.

Before you start cooking the mirepoix, toss about ¼ tsp. of crushed red pepper flakes into the rendered pork fat and let them start to cook.

Then cook the mirepoix - hold the garlic. Crank the heat a bit when you first toss the mirepoix in so that it starts to cook immediately - not a hectic sauté, but maybe a jumpin’ simmer. Stir everything around from time to time and after about 5 minutes, toss in the garlic. Continue cooking for another 5 minutes or so.

When the mirepoix is soft and tender, carefully spatulate it into your soup pot, once again being careful to leave as much of the fat as possible in the skillet.

Now add about ½ cup of your chicken stock to the mirepoix in the soup pot and bring it to a serious simmer. This is your soup base. And, yes, more patience is required. Cook gently (a few bubbles, no froth) for at least 20 minutes; 30 would be better.

While that’s cooking, cut up a potato. I like little cubes, maybe 3/8” on a side. But whether you want them large or small, always take a thin slice off each side of the potato and mince it up to toss into your burgeoning soup base.

Toss your potato cubes into the skillet and sauté for about 8 - 10 minutes. Now, I used a baby skillet for my small batch of soup, so I did each potato separately. If you’re making a gallon or three, you can cook 2 or 3 potatoes at a time (though extend the cooking time to 15 minutes or so). When the (final) potato is about half done, toss in the minced-up second clove of garlic. You want the garlic to flavor the potato, but not to get browned. At the same time, add a dozen grinds or so of fresh Tellicherry black pepper.

While the potato sautés, cut up the rest of the veggies into soup-size bites. Please note that the ½ onion there did not go into the soup; it was saved for another day. Only the remainder of the ½ onion that was used for the mirepoix went into the soup.

When the potatoes are done, toss them in the soup pot and add the rest of the stock. Then toss the last of the veggies into the skillet and sauté them for 5 - 8 minutes or so, just to the point where they begin to get tender. Then, into the soup pot with ‘em.

Now add another portion of patience. Cook the soup covered for at least 30 minutes. While it’s cooking, you can add some crushed tarragon leaves - no more than 1/3 tsp, and a few grates of fresh nutmeg (8 - 10 scrapes). If all you have is ground nutmeg, I’d say skip it. The flavor the nutmeg adds is very subtle, but with the off-the-shelf ground type, you run the risk of the flavor being bitter rather than nutty sweet.

This is also the time to make a cracklin' choice. I like to add mine in at this point so they add to the overall flavor of the soup. Some prefer to wait until the dairy goes in and add them then. Others will wait until the soup is served and use the cracklin's as a garnish. The choice is yours . . .

Finally, it’s time to add the dairy. Start with 1 cup of milk (your choice as to whole or other, but please, not skim!). When that has warmed up in the pot, add a cup of cream or Half & Half. Stir that in and cook slowly, for another 30 minutes.

Be sure to keep an eye on the pot until the soup gets up to its cooking temperature. You do want it to come just to a boil, but not to boil at all after that - just to simmer, bubbly gentle.

And when those final 30 minutes of patience have expired, well, then it’s soup. Enjoy!

Tip/Technique: Vegetable Stock

2009-01-30T16:29:00.002-05:00

Vegetable stock is an incredibly versatile liquid that adds flavor, character and depth to almost anything. If you have to put liquid into something to cook it, consider using some veggie stock. Soups, stews, sauces of every sort, gravies, marinades, basting fluids, braising liquids, poaching liquids, let your imagination flow. Cook your rice in it, your pasta, even your potatoes; how about dumplings, spatzle, good grief, boil your home made bagels in it!

‘Course that means you’ll need gallons of the stuff. No worries. Here’s how you do it.

At least once a month, save up your fresh vegetable scraps for a week (or so). Use those thin little bags you put your produce in at the grocery store to hold the scraps and keep it in the produce drawer in your refrigerator. If you’re careful to squeeze all the air out, then hold it closed and give the bag a spin to twist it tight, you can pull the open end over the sealed end, give it a shake and, voila, airtight sealed storage.

Now a week works for me. The scraps stay ‘fresh,’ the filled bag still fits in the produce drawer (with room for some actual produce, as well), and I end up with just enough scrap to fill my 3qt. saucepan. If you’re cooking for a crowd or just for yourself, you’ll have to figure out whether to save up for a shorter period or to make a smaller quantity of stock. The important part of the equation is: don’t let the scraps spoil.

What to save? Whatever you’ve got. Keep the trimmed ends of carrots, squashes, green beans, celery; the stalks from asparagus, broccoli, leafy greens; trimmings from lettuces, cabbages, Brussels sprouts; the ends and peels from red onions, yellow onions, shallots, cucumbers. . . And so on . . .

It may be easier to list what not to keep. No potato parts. No tomato parts. No seeds or membranes from bell peppers parts (or other peppers, either). No peels from waxed vegetables such as rutabagas or cucumbers. No fruits, nuts or garlic parts. I’m sure I’m forgetting (or have never thought of) dozens of others, but hopefully, you get the idea.

When your bag is full, dump it all into your saucepan. Push it down if need be to make it all fit and then fill the pot with water. No salt. No pepper. No nothing. Just pure plain water. And, as mentioned in other posts from time to time, if you live in a ‘water challenged’ area where you can taste the ‘water treatments,’ consider using bottled water for your stock.

Then simply put it on to heat. Start on high, but keep an eye on the pot (if you don’t already know how long it takes your pot that size, full of water, to come to a boil, now’s a good time to learn; watch the clock!)

As the pot nears a boil, take the cover off. You want the pot to reach a pretty full boil, but don’t want to let it boil over.

After it’s reached as much of a boil as you can manage without spilling over, put the cover back on, but leave it ajar, and turn the heat down to a serious simmer. Come back and check in 5 – 10 minutes. Still simmering? Not spitting over? Then you can leave it alone for 30 – 45 minutes. When you check back then, add some more water to bring the level back up near the top of the pot. And let it cook for another hour. More water; another hour.

Now you’ve got a good stock going. So pull the pot lid back a ways and leave it to simmer for a while more. Let the volume of liquid reduce to at least ¾ of the pot, maybe a little more. You want the vegetable scraps to give up all their value, but don’t want to let them start to dry out. When the liquid is down to near the top of the veggies, it’s time to strain.

You can use a fairly coarse strainer here; the idea is to remove (most of) the solid matter. The strained liquid will be reduced further and then strained again before storage. So just dump it into a colander or such and collect the liquid. The solids can be thrown out (or onto your compost heap).

Now, back to the pot and onto the stove for the hardest part of this whole thing. Reduce the liquid over medium heat (a bubbly simmer) to about 2 cups or the amount it takes to fill one of your ice cube trays. Most of mine hold about 14 ounces.

When you’re ready, strain the stock through your finest strainer into a container from which you can pour easily. Then pour the liquid into your ice cube tray. If the tray will sit atop other ice cube trays, be sure to avoid spills and drips – then again, maybe vegiie flavored ice cubes will start a whole new trend . . . And into the freezer.

In the morning (or afternoon or evening or. . .), remove the veggie stock cubes from the tray and store them in a ziplock in your freezer. At the concentrations described here, one cube in one cup of water makes one cup of delicious vegetable stock.

Recipe: Chicken with Mustard Sauce

2008-03-01T16:00:00.000-05:00

Here’s a wonderful marriage of chicken and mustard. When I’m in a fancy mood, I call it Poulet de Moutarde en Croute, though the ‘in crust’ part is an exaggeration. But if you’re patient enough, you can certainly get a good crunch going! Sadly, this is one of those recipes that I can only cook while Cathy is away. Though I’ve managed to sneak mustard into loads of food that she’s eaten with delight, this one is still a little too up front mustardy for her tastes. But I’ll keep tryin’ . . .

The hardest part of this recipe is realizing at least 3 hours before dinner that this is what you want!

Here’s what you’ll need (per serving):

1 boneless, skinless breast of chicken
¼ - 1/3 tsp. sesame oil
1/3 – ½ tsp. liquid smoke
5 – 10 drops Tabasco Sauce
1/3 – ½ tsp. turmeric
1/3 – ½ tsp. cilantro
2 tsp. prepared mustard (brown or Dijon – not yellow, please . . .)
¼ - 1/3 cup White wine
2 – 3 Tbsp. flour
Tellicherry (fresh ground black pepper)
(veggie medley, whole ‘boiled’ potatoes, or other accompaniments of your choice)

Here’s how you do it:

Gather your ingredients, and start by building your chicken coating, which will also become your sauce.

I included quantities in the ingredients list, but as you may know if you’ve explored this blog, I seldom actually measure anything. So, it’s a pinch of this, a sploosh of that, a shake of the other, and there you go. I start this with the oil, liquid smoke and Tabasco. Give them a whirl with a fork or a whisk, and then add the turmeric and cilantro, and whisk them in, too.

Now add your mustard and whisk that in.

Now let this mixture rest for 30 minutes to allow all the flavors to blend and meld completely.

After the half hour rest, rinse your chicken and pat it dry.

Give it a goodly grind or five of Tellicherry.

And slather first one side and then the other with your mustard coating. Depending on how aggressive you like your mustard, you could lightly pierce the chicken with a fork before (or even after) coating, to allow the flavors to reach deeply into the meat. Me, I prefer the physical layers of flavor, with the mustard coat on the outside of the chicken, but hey, you do it your way, please . . .

Now, rest period again. At least another 30 minutes; an hour, if possible. No, you don’t have to put it in the refrigerator; there’s enough salt and vinegar in the mustard and Tabasco to at least inhibit, if not kill, any Salmonella lingering in your chicken. And since you rinsed it and patted it dry before coating, you got rid of any surface bacteria before you even started. But if you’re truly paranoid about food bugs, go ahead and put it in the fridge; just be sure to leave it for at least an hour; the cold really slows down the uptake of the flavors.

While your chicken rests (this time – there’s another rest hour coming later!), scrape any big piles of extra coating from the chicken plate back into the mixing bowl, and add the white wine. Whisk it all up and set it aside. This will become the base for the final mustard sauce.

Now is also the time to prep your veggies and starch for the meal. Tonight, I did up a medley of cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and onions, which I steamed in a little white wine. (I also put a tiny drizzle of olive oil in the bottom of the pan before I added the veggies.) Add a pinch of Kosher (or other coarse) salt and a few goodly grinds of Tellicherry, and then pour the splash of white wine on top. These will go on the heat about 30 minutes before serve time.

And when I can, I prefer to ‘boil’ my potatoes with the skin on (give them a good scrub under running water, first). Of course, as I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, boiled potatoes, in my book, should actually be intimidated potatoes. Put them in the pot of water; put the pot over high heat until you just begin to hear some ‘action’; turn the heat to low (salt if you must), and let the tubers evolve into perfectly tender, creamy textured spuds over the next hour or so.

But before you put heat to potatoes, you’ll need to ‘en croute’ the chicken. And let it rest again.

I always use a strainer to sift my flour onto the chicken for a dish like this. You don’t have to, but if you just shake the unsifted flour, the texture of the final cooked coating will be much ‘thicker’ and lumpier – not necessarily bad things, but not what I prefer for this dish.

So, strainer in one hand, flour in the other, dump a little flour into the strainer and shake (gently, gently) the strainer across the surface of the chicken until you’ve completely coated the surface of the mustard.

Then, gently (hmm, lotsa gentlies in here!), turn the chicken over and coat the other side the same way. Turn the chicken back over, and put another light coat of flour on the top.

Now let it rest for an hour. Over the hour, the flour will absorb moisture from the mustard coating and create a kind of delicate crust on the surface of the chicken. There will still be loose flour on the outer surface, but the interior will develop some ‘character’, which you’ll find when you eat the chicken.

When you’ve got your chicken resting, put some heat under those potatoes. You’ll be serving dinner in about 70-90 minutes.

So when the final chicken rest period is about done, get your skillet warmed up and put a Tbsp. or two of olive oil in the bottom. Swirl, twirl, shake and, when you’ve got heat, toss in the chicken. Oh, and put your veggies over medium high heat, too.

As soon as the chicken starts sizzling, turn down the heat and cook for about 10 – 12 minutes. You want the outside to turn a rich dark brown but stop well before burn or blacken. On my stove, that means the 8 o’clock spot on the heat dial; your mileage will be different.

A bit after you turn the heat down under the chicken, do the same under the veggies. You want to get a head of (wine) steam in the pot, but don’t want to let anything burn. After reducing the heat, the veggies will need about 10 – 15 minutes to reach perfection. Then they can come off the heat (still covered) and sit for up to 10 minutes more.

Turn the chicken after 12 minutes and cook the other side for another 10 or so. Once again, you are seeking dark, not burned.

When the chicken is done, take it out of the pan and let it rest,

while you get your sauce started. Toss the white wine-rinsed left over mustard coating into the hot skillet. Swirl, scrape, and stir to get all the crunchy bits from the pan dissolved into the liquid.

Drain in any lingering liquid from the steamed veggies and maybe a splash of two of water from the potatoes. Bring the pan sauce to a boil and let it reduce, reduce, reduce!

When the sauce is right, put potato and vegetables onto the plate, pour the sauce,

add the chicken, and enjoy!

Catching up . . .

2008-02-18T14:26:00.002-05:00

OK. I'm gonna stop making comments about how time flies. Today, I've cleaned up and added a bunch of posts that have been kicking around for almost a year now. They've been published using their original 'first draft' dates. There are more, and I'll get them up here as time permits.

Thanks for all your notes and comments. Please keep them coming, and for sure, keep on cookin!

Tip: Choke That Blade

2007-06-22T13:00:00.003-04:00

There are a million and three ‘knife work’ tips that should get written down. I’ll try to mention them as I think of them. The other day, I cut my finger. And that reminded me that I should take my own advice now and then . . .

You see, I had my index finger reaching out there along the top of the knife blade, and lo and behold, there was a new ingredient dribbling out into my onions.

Don’t. You cannot get a good grip on the handle of the knife, and you cannot control the motion or direction of the blade with that finger stuck out there like that.

‘Choke up’ on the blade. Get your thumb pointing toward the knife tip on one side of the steel,

and your index finger down toward the blade edge on the other side, and grip the handle with the rest of your fingers.

If you’re using one of those wimpy ‘little’ knives, where you don’t have room to keep your index finger down the side of the blade, well, then, tuck it under the handle, in that little nook that knife makers conveniently put right there, for just that purpose.

Now, you’re ready to cut. And you won’t be slipping and sliding and adding extra bits of this and that to your dish.

Yeah. I know. It feels really strange at first. But just keep at it. In a year or 12, you’ll only have to think about it when old habits rear their ugly heads and you cut your finger half off . . .

Recipe/Technique: Perfect No-Lump Gravy

2007-05-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

A while ago, someone left a comment on the Roast Beef page asking about gravy. I put up a quick 'how to' there, but decided that since good gravy makes a meal and is so simple to do 'right' (once you learn how), gravy should have its own post.

So, for perfect no-lump gravy every time you roast a chicken, duck, turkey, other kind of bird or a hunk of beef or any other kind of meat, just remember one word: roux (pronounced 'roo').

A roux is just flour cooked in the drippings of the roast pan until it is a nice lump of goop or paste. Once flour has been turned into a roux, it can’t cause lumps in the gravy. It’s as simple as that.

For any kind of gravy, the proportions are always the same. 1 Tbsp. of pan drippings (and yes, that means fat!) plus 1 Tbsp. flour makes enough roux for 1 cup of liquid (from potatoes, vegetables, stock, or even plain water). If you don’t have any pan drippings (shame on you!) or if you need to make gravy after the fact (for leftovers, for example), you can use butter or olive oil for the fat.

Let’s use a roast chicken for the example and walk through the whole process of making perfect gravy. The steps are the same for any kind of gravy.

here's what you'll need . . .
meat juices from cooking, or butter, and/or olive oil
flour
cooking water from veggies
(Gravy Master, optional)
fresh ground black pepper, Tellicherry, of course
optional additions include sliced mushrooms, chopped giblets (cooked!), crumbled bacon bits or other cracklin's, additional herbs and/or spices (thyme, oregano, caraway, fennel, . . .), zingy bits like jalapeños, or almost any other thing you can think of that would taste good to you!

Here's how you do it.

When the chicken (or other meat) is done, turn off the oven, remove the bird from the roasting pan, put it on a plate (or platter) and stick it back in the oven to keep warm.

Put the roasting pan on a burner on the stove. With a spatula, scrape all the browned goodies loose from the bottom of the pan. Guesstimate the quantity of drippings (or, if you’re eternally compulsive, pour them out into a measuring cup to see how much you’ve got. Then pour it all back into the pan).

Turn the stove burner on to a medium heat setting. Sprinkle an equal amount of flour over the surface of the drippings. (You could just dump it all into the middle, but you’ll have to spend much longer mashing it around to make sure all the flour gets coated.)

Stir, chop, mix, scrape, fold and otherwise manipulate the flour, over the heat, until all the fat/liquid has been absorbed coating every last granule of flour. You should end up with a fairly dryish, yet still smooth, lump of roux that holds together in the pan. If the roux seems gooey or wet, sprinkle a little bit more flour on it; if it seems dry and flaky, add a drip more fat (olive oil is the easiest to work with unless you reserved some of the original pan drippings.) Keep chopping, stirring, mixing etc. for a while until the roux cooks for a few minutes and begins to take on the rich brown color of the pan scrapings. (4 or 5 minutes is usually about right; if it takes longer, the stove burner isn’t hot enough.)

And keep in mind, you can always make a roux in a skillet or saucepan using butter or olive oil. Same routine; same proportions; cook it until you like the color.

When the roux is ready, pour in the liquid(s), and always include a good sized slug of white wine (or red wine, or Sherry or beer or . . .) For best results, the liquids should be hot, or at least room temperature, when added - cold water is not a good idea. Start small, adding just enough liquid to cover the bottom of the roasting pan for example. Mix it with the roux using the flat of the spatula to squish the roux into the liquid. When you’ve added enough liquid to make a smooth paste, pour in the rest. Turn the stove up to high (or medium high) and continue stirring, mashing and mixing until the gravy begins to boil gently.

If you have any chopped giblets or shredded neck meat or sliced mushrooms or other accoutrement you wish to add to your gravy, now is the time.

This is also the time to adjust the seasonings for the gravy. For us, that means giving a dozen or so grinds of Tellicherry black pepper to the mixture.

Don’t be concerned if the gravy seems too thin after you’ve added all the liquids. Let it boil gently for a few minutes (10?) and it will thicken up for you. (If it gets too thick, add some more liquid!) After a few minutes of bubbling, add a few drops of Gravy Master, if you wish, to give the gravy a nice color (what’s “nice” is up to you).

While the gravy is bubbling away (remember to stir occasionally), you should have plenty of time to mash the potatoes, serve the veggies, carve the beast and otherwise finish last minute chores before serving the feast with, of course, perfect gravy.

Tip: Paper Towel the Produce

2007-04-12T14:54:00.003-04:00

A while ago, we talked about getting the air out of your baggies to help your leftovers and in-progress foods last longer. This idea should probably have been mentioned then.

Certainly air is a crucial ingredient for spoiling food. The air is full of little buggers that love to eat your food and oxygen is a powerful contributor to chemical reactions. But if you really want to speed up the process, toss a little water into the mix. You’ll have slimy garbage to throw out in no time at all.

But lots of foods, particularly vegetables, need their moisture to stay fresh. So what to do, what to do. . . . Yup. Just toss a dry paper towel in the baggie with the half used veggie. It will absorb any loose liquid, but also help whatever air you’ve left in the baggie stay as humid as the veggie needs to keep fresh longer.

And veggies aren’t the only ones to benefit. If you have to keep breads in the refrigerator, that dry paper towel can save the day. Cold things can’t hold as much moisture as warm things. So if your bread is very fresh and ‘light’ – like hot dog and hamburger rolls, for instance, it probably has a lot of moisture in it. Put that in the fridge, and all that moisture gets ‘chilled out’ making a lovely puddle in the bread wrapper. In addition, every time you take the bread out of the fridge and open it in the warm air of your kitchen, moisture will condense on the bread wrapper. When you toss the bread back in the fridge, it sits in all that water and after a day or three, you have a bag of bread soup. So, toss in a dry paper towel and save your bread, too.

Recipe: Chicken Gismondo a la TJ

2007-03-10T14:30:00.000-05:00

This chicken dish is guaranteed to leave your palette humming mellow airs from Tuscany while you sip a strong nutty flavored coffee after dinner. It is not really difficult to prepare, but does take some practice to get the timing down (and of course, everything must come to the table in one fell swoop). These photos show a batch of three servings. I've never been able to master more than four servings at a time (though I've tried 6, 8 and 12). Perhaps if you've got 8 burners on the stove and 16" or 20" skillets, you might be able to do it. In any case . . .

here's what you'll need . . .

boneless, skinless breast of chicken, one per serving
seasoned flour (see below)
breadcrumbs (toasted if you make your own)
grated Parmesan cheese (fine grate if you make your own; if you don't, do so!)
eggs, 1 per two servings, 2 for up to six, room temperature!
FRESH spinach, 1 ten oz. package per person (this dish will not work with canned, frozen, or otherwise mutilated spinach)
FRESH mushrooms, ½ pound per 2 servings (as above re mutilation)
FRESH lemon juice, ½ lemon per 2 servings (as above re mutilation)
ground nutmeg (fresh would be fantastic, but ordinary off-the-shelf will suffice)
butter, 1½ sticks (if you can't handle that, you can use olive oil flavored with some butter - see below. Don't use margarine; it will taste terrible.)
pasta, wide egg noodles, or your choice

Here's how you do it.

Start with the spinach. Now a 10 oz. bag may claim to serve 3, but that's simply hooey. By the time it's cooked, a 10 oz. bag of spinach yields a couple/three tablespoons of vegetable. If you want to minimize something on your plate, cut your protein serving size by half or your starch; not the vegetables!

So, anyway, a couple hours before it's time to cook, soak the spinach in cold water. Even though the package may claim "washed," it's not. Drain and refill the water at least twice before it's time to cook.

And while the spinach is soaking, pick it over removing any scummy leaves, and all the thick stems. You want to serve this dish on a bed of spinach leaves.

Sometime before you're ready to cook, slice the mushrooms (relatively thinly, you want them to cook up quickly),

squeeze (and de-seed) the lemon juice (use a fork – a strainer eliminates all the good pulp),

and prepare the seasoned flour and the bread crumb mixture.

To make seasoned flour (about 1.5 Tbsp. needed per serving of chicken), spread the flour out in one pile about as big in area as all the chicken breasts. The idea is to get a level pile, not a peaked mountain. Sprinkle a little salt over the surface (think in terms of a layer of salt about 1 salt crystal deep covering the pile.)

Then pepper the surface of the flour until it is black - not occasional specks of black, but the whole surface is pretty black. (If you like an extra little bit of flavor in your foods, add a pinch of ground cayenne to the flour mixture – up to about 1/3 tsp. for this much flour.)

Mix it all together and you have seasoned flour appropriate for this recipe.

Mix the breadcrumbs

with the grated Parmesan cheese.

The mixture should be about half and half, though you can adjust to taste if you must. Less cheese and the flavor tends to fade; more cheese tends to melt and burn when you sauté. Do not use the typical green can combo of Parmesan and Romano. The Romano tends to turn bitter in this recipe.

By the way, if you’re like me, you’ll find it impossible not to end up with three times as much seasoned flour and/or breadcrumb mixture as you need. For years I cried each time I threw out an extra cup or two of either one. Then, one day, in flash of blinding insight unmatched since Galileo’s times, the solution appeared. Dump your mixtures into bowls! Pour, spoon, shimmer and shake from the bowl to the food and simply save the leftover mixtures! Only took me 30 years . . .

About 30 minutes before you want to serve, start the cooking. Put the spinach in a large covered saucepan. DO NOT add water. Just pick the spinach out of the soaking water by the handful, give it a good hard shake to remove excess water, and cram it into the pan.

You should be able to cram three or four 10 oz. pkgs. into a 4 qt. saucepan. Push it down hard enough so the lid fits tightly.

When it's time to cook the spinach, the water adhering to the leaves will provide plenty of moisture, and the tight fitting lid will keep the steam in the pan.

Start heating the pasta water.

Gently beat an egg or two with a Tbsp. or two of water till it's evenly lemon colored – no froth here, just mix it up. One egg will handle two servings, two eggs up to five, maybe six.

Dredge each chicken breast in seasoned flour. If you're doing a bunch, do them in groups of three or four. You don't want the chicken to sit around coated with flour for more than a few minutes. The flour will absorb moisture from the chicken and that will mess up the rest of the coating.

Dip the floured chicken in the beaten eggs. Don't wash the flour off, but try to get a good coating of egg all over the chicken.

Dredge the eggy chicken in the mixture of breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan cheese. Press, push, pound, whatever to get a good even complete coating of the crumbs on the chicken. Waxed paper makes an excellent working surface for this step because you can lift and flip (gently! gently!) to get the crumbs all over, and press with the paper, reducing the goo build-up on your hands.

Toss the chicken immediately into the hot butter. (As above, you don't want to let the coated chicken sit around long.) What hot butter you ask?

Somewhere around the time you're ready to dip the chicken in the eggs, start heating a large skillet. Cut about ¾ stick of butter into little pats (so they'll melt quickly when you toss them into the pan.) Just before you're ready to sauté the first load of chicken, toss the pats of butter into the pan. They should jump and sizzle and melt instantly, but stop just short of turning brown (burned butter tastes terrible.)

If you can't handle the butter, use olive oil. You'll need enough to cover the bottom of the skillet about 1/8" deep. Please add at least 1 Tbsp. of butter to the oil. The butter flavor is important to the overall effect of the dish. Again, be sure to get the pan good and hot before putting the oil in. Swirl the oil, then add the butter, and wait for the butter froth to subside a bit before adding the chicken.

Sauté the chicken in the butter over pretty high heat (just shy of burned butter) until golden brown. Golden brown is the color of a good pancake, or crunchy white toast. Don't worry if it tends toward brown. For this dish, it's better to err in the direction of over-browned than under-browned. Turn the chicken once. It should take about 5 minutes a side to brown it.

When you toss the chicken in, turn the spinach pan on high heat. The pasta water should be boiling, so toss in the pasta. Turn on a skillet for the mushrooms, toss another ½ stick of butter into the pan, swirl it till it melts and toss in the mushrooms. (Or use olive oil as above.)

By the time the chicken is done, everything else should be ready, too. But if not, you can keep the chicken warm in a 200° F oven for up to 10 minutes with no harm done.

To serve, drain the spinach,

toss in the remaining ¼ stick butter, the lemon juice and at least ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg. Or a little more if fresh.

More nutmeg is good to a point, but too much turns bitter. About ¼ tsp. per original 10 oz. pkg. of spinach is safe. Toss the spinach about to coat evenly with the lemon-butter-nutmeg sauce.

Drain the pasta. Make a ring of pasta around the edge of each plate. Fill the hole in the center with a serving of spinach. Top the spinach with a chicken breast. Slather mushrooms over it all.

And eat immediately.

Recipe: Bolices

2007-01-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

Bolices (bow-Lee-chase) is a chorizos stuffed Cuban pot roast kind of thing. We had dinner with Florida cousins at Gloria Estefan’s restaurant on South Beach one time, and I was introduced to this fabulous Cuban ‘special occasion’ meal. I’ve only tried to make it a few times since, so the recipe is still in a state of becoming, and the photos are limited. But that’s no reason you shouldn't start experimenting with your own version!

This is one of those 'marinate overnight and then cook for several hours' dishes, so plan ahead and leave plenty of time.

Here’s what you’ll need . . .

2 – 3 lb. eye of round
3 chorizos
3 – 6 cloves of garlic
oregano, about 1 Tbsp. dried or a couple Tbsp. fresh, or mix and match
paprika, a goodly sprinkle, maybe about ½ tsp. or so
lemon juice, at least 1 lemon, about 1/3 cup or a little more
lime juice, ½ lime should be fine
coarse (Kosher) salt
Tellicherry, of course
olive oil
onions, 1 or 2 sliced
jalapeños, pickled, 3 – 12 slices, to taste
red and green bell peppers, chopped, a couple of Tbsp., total
bay leaves, 2 or 3
beef broth, at least 2 cups or so, I use 3 – 4 Tbsp. demi glace in 3 cups of water
orange juice, about ½ cup
sherry, at least ½ cup

Here’s how you do it.

The hardest part of this dish is planning it a day ahead of time! You really want the meat to marinate overnight, if at all possible. But if not, at least get the meat into the marinade early in the morning; if you can’t let it sit for at least 4 hours, don’t bother with the dish.

I usually start by chopping the garlic and oregano together, so their flavors can meld for the time it takes to get the meat stuffed and the rest of the marinade made. You’re going to use the garlic/oregano mixture as a rub for the meat, so, chop it fairly finely, or you could mash it all together in a mortar and pestle, if you prefer. I’ve tried it both ways and am not sure I could tell a difference.

Next, I like to get the chorizos into the meat. Find your longest, skinny bladed, sharply pointed knife and use it to poke three holes through the length of the beef. The chorizos will go into these. Pick your locations so that the sausages will not bump into each other, and be careful with that knife! Remember that a knife cuts on the motion, so slice in and out a bit, don’t just try to press the knife all the way through the beef. After you get the knife through once, pull it out, rotate the blade 90 degrees and make a second cut through that same hole. I find that if I make three cuts for each hole, I can get the sausage in most easily.

After the beef is stuffed, use the tip of that knife to make shallow little slits all over the outside of the roast (don’t slit the end faces). Now, roll the roast in the garlic/oregano mixture, and rub it into the slits. When all the galic mixtures is attached to the meat, sprinkle the whole thing with paprika, a dozen grinds or so of Tellicherry, and a little bit of the coarse salt.

Now, put the seasoned meat into a zip lock bag and squeeze on the lemon and lime juices. Seal the bag, squeezing out all the air (so the marinade is in contact with the surface of the meat all the way around), and into the refrigerator overnight.

The day of the feast, remember to get the meat out of the refrigerator at least an hour, preferably two hours, before cooking time, so the meat can come up to room temperature.

While the meat is coming up to room temperature, cut up the veggies, prepare the beef broth, gather the rest of the ingredients, and dig out your Dutch oven.

Depending on the relative size of your baggie as compared to your roast, either drain the marinade into a bowl and then remove the meat, or remove the meat leaving the marinade in the baggie. You don't want to lose a drop of the marinade, nor do you want to scrape any of the coating off the meat while getting it out of the baggie.

Preheat the Dutch oven to searing and brown the meat quickly on all sides (including the end faces). Remember, if you're using a non-stick pan and an electric stove, preheat the burner before you put the pan on; when the burner is red(ish), put the pan on, turn the heat down to medium, count to no more than 22, add a splash of olive oil and toss in the meat. Non-stick coatings do not like high heat, particularly when the pan is empty!

When the meat is just seared/sealed on the outside, probably no more than 3 or 4 minutes, remove it from the pan and let it rest while you get the sauce started.

Toss the veggies, including the bay leaves, into the Dutch oven and turn the heat down a little more. If you need to, add some more olive oil. Saute the veggies for 4 or 5 minutes, just until the onion is translucent and beginning to soften.

Put the meat back in the pan, add in the reserved marinade and the rest of the liquids. Or at least most of the rest. You don't want to cover the meat; but about half way up the side is fine. If you have beef broth left, save it for later!

Crank the heat and bring the liquids just to a boil. As soon as you get to the boil, turn the heat way down, cover the Dutch oven, and let the meat slow-simmer for a couple of hours.

You can lift the lid once, after 1 hour has elapsed, just to make sure that there's still an hour's worth of liquid left in the pan. The level should still be about half way up the roast. If you need to, add some more broth, lid back on, don't touch for at least another hour.

At the end of the second hour, you know the meat is thoroughly cooked, so take it out and let it rest for at least 15 minutes, 30 would be better. While the meat relaxes, toss any remaining broth into the Dutch oven, turn the heat up to medium or so, and reduce the liquid by half to make a sauce for the meat. If you don't have any broth left, add half a cup of plain water, just to dilute the cooking liquid a bit before reducing.

To serve, cut the roast into big thick slices, at least ½ inch; ¾ or 1 inch thick slices are just fine. Pour the sauce over the meat and have a feast.

I have served this with rice and vegetables, rice and black beans, and one time, with potatoes. I put the peeled and halved potatoes into the Dutch oven after the first hour of cooking. They were great – firm, creamy texture, and delicious. But however you decide to accompany your meal, do try out bolices, and experiment, experiment, experiment!

Tip: Surviving the Season of (winter) Tomato Horribilus

2007-01-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

It’s upon us again. That season when the things in the tomato bin at the supermarket (at least up here in the Northeast) bear a greater resemblance to tennis balls than divine fruit. And, in the past couple of years, even the tennis balls are getting worse. Used to be, they were just pale, mealy, and hard as a rock. Now, about half of them are actually rotten on the inside when you get them home. So, please, join the crusade: complain to your grocer, to the produce manager and the store manager at your local supermarket, to the chairman and CEO of the megamarket mothership, to Congress critters and Federal agencies and, well, you get the idea . . .

In the meantime, here’s a trick to help. About an hour before you’re going to serve that tomato, cut it up, spread it out on a plate, and salt it. (And be sure to trim off any scummy bits when you cut up your tomato, as well as get rid of any seeds that are starting to turn greenish or get dark!)

Make sure you use a coarse (Kosher) salt. And sprinkle lightly. A few crystals per piece of tomato is all you need.

Wait about 30 minutes and drain off the water that will accumulate on the plate. Drain again in another 30 minutes, and what you end up with is as close to a tolerable winter tomato as you’re likely to get.

Remember that most fruits (yes, tomatoes are fruits) and vegetables have a lot of water in them, and the water is a major contributor to their firmness and/or stiffness. Salt, of course, has been used as a preservative for centuries because it ‘draws the water’ from foods. And that’s what you’re doing here; drawing the water from the tomato. And, in the process, tenderizing the flesh of the fruit.

You want to use coarse salt because it will dissolve much more slowly than the fine crystals of ordinary table salt, and therefore continue to draw the water, rather than season the tomato. In fact, by the end of the hour, most of the salt will have been rinsed off the tomato surface and carried away by the draining water. If what’s left is too salty for you, give the whole plate a good rinse under the cold water (and then drain it a few more times before using).

Good luck . . . Planting season is just around the corner . . . (he said with extreme optimism . . .) Until then, please check out Fiber's site, 28 Cooks.com. You've seen her comments from time to time; her food is gorgeous, and her photos even better!

Not gone . . .

2006-12-23T17:26:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, it’s been way too long. . . And, contrary to some rumors, no, I have not died, retired (well, I did try that, but now have graduated to the ranks of the unemployed) or left the country (Thank you, voters of America!). Nope. Just been very busy and very boring in the kitchen. But after the first of the year, keep an eye out for lots of new posts! Already in the works are, Surviving the Tomato Horribilus Season, Chicago Style Hot Dogs, Lentil Soup, Chili con Carne, Bolices, Pulled Pork Low Country Style, Fricassee of Chicken, and a slew of tips. So please check back . . .

In the meantime, I hope you and yours are having a wonderful holiday season.

Happy Holidays,

tommyj

Recipe: Grilled Tuna & Pasta

2006-07-18T11:30:00.000-04:00

The first few times I did this, I planned ahead. Well, except for the first time, which, of course, was an adventure on “what’ve we got? what’ll we do with it?” This time, I didn’t have any fresh spinach, only frozen. I didn’t have any fresh basil, only dried. And no pignolis at all. But you know what? It was still delicious

here's what you'll need . . .

tuna steaks (1/3 Lb. per serving)
1 medium lemon, juiced and zested
½ lime, juiced
sesame oil, 1 small sploosh per serving
red pepper flakes, ¼ to ½ tsp.
salt
freshly ground Tellicherry
garlic, 1 - 4 cloves (we use 1 per serving)
red onion, 1 small
tomatoes, 2 - 4 (we use 1 per serving plus 1 more)
olive oil, 1/3 cup plus some more
angel hair (or fettuccine or linguine or your favorite skinny noodle)
fresh basil, about 1/3 to ½ cup julienned
fresh spinach, one 10 oz. bag feeds 3
pignoli, a small handful
chicken stock, 1 cup or so
fresh grated Parmesan cheese

Here's how you do it.

Wash your tuna steaks thoroughly and pat them dry. Place in a glass or ceramic dish and make a marinade. Start with a small sploosh of sesame oil and rub it all over both sides of the steaks. Then add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes (just a few - you want a trace of flavor here, not a lot of hot) and a sprinkle of coarse salt (always after the oil, so it won't dissolve immediately). Next, add a goodly grind of black pepper and finally the juices (no seeds, please) from ½ lime and ½ the lemon. Rub everything all over, turning the tuna a few times to coat thoroughly and to distribute all the ingredients throughout the marinade. Refrigerate for at least one hour. Two is fine, maybe even three, but any more and the tuna will ‘cook’ in the citrus. Turn the steaks every 20 minutes or so.

While the tuna marinates, make some garlic oil. Mince 1- 4 cloves in an electric thingy (food processor - we use a little 2 cup Black & Decker model that works just fine). When the garlic is minced, add the olive oil (1/3 cup or so) and whirl it till it's emulsified. Let the garlic oil sit at room temperature for an hour for the flavors to blend, stirring every now and then. And if you don't have an electric thingy, just mince the garlic, toss it in a bowl and whisk it with the oil until your arm gets tired. Voila! Garlic oil!

While the oil rests, wash the spinach and the basil leaves (remove the stems from both), and dry thoroughly.

Cut the basil leaves into a thin julienne. Take a leaf and roll it up from bottom to top into a thin cylinder. Slice hair-thin rings off the cylinder, let them unfurl - or give them a gentle 'fluff' with your fingertips to encourage them to unfurl - and then cut the strips in half. You should end up with a nice pile of julienne basil strips, each about 2" long.

Since I didn’t have any fresh basil, I put a healthy tablespoon of dried basil in a little bowl, stirred it up with three Tbsp. of cold water and let it reconstitute for an hour. Then I drained off the water, squeezing out any extra, added a drizzle of olive oil, and forked it all into a ‘definitely not pesto’ kind of paste.

Slice the spinach leaves into ½" wide strips. (Stack a few leaves, roll them up from one side to the other, and slice off ½" strips.)

Since all I had was frozen spinach, rolling and slicing nice strips was not going to happen. But hey, just let the spinach thaw, drain off any liquid, and whack it up into whatever size bits you like. The spinach and basil substitutions affect the texture of the final dish more than the taste (though the fresh ingredients do have a ‘brighter,’ ‘greener’ flavor.)

Dice the red onion into ¼" dice or ½" or chunks or . . .

Chop your tomatoes into ½" chunks. The Italian Plum tomatoes work best for this dish, but use any kind of fresh tomato you can find - even if it does resemble a tennis ball more than a tomato! And you want to get rid of most of the seeds and extra sloppy bits. (After cutting the tomatoes in half before chopping them up, I usually just give them a gentle squeeze-roll in the hand. A quick flip of the wrist, and whatever flings out into the garbage disposal is gone. Tomato deseeded!)

Now, somewhere along the line here, you want to cook your angel hair pasta. Since angel hair takes only about 3 minutes to cook, the time constraint is bringing the water to a boil! So, whenever it's convenient (and when you can pay attention - 'cause angel hair turns to glue after the 4th minute!), cook up the pasta. And underdone is by far better than over done! You are going to 'cook' the pasta again, after all. So, cook it up, drain it as dry as you can, and oil it thoroughly. (And there's no way to achieve 'thoroughly' without getting your hands in the pot for at least 2 - 3 minutes! Use enough of your best olive oil to make every strand glisten and slip through your fingers with ease.)

Paint the tuna steaks with garlic oil and grill them about 2 - 3 minutes per side over a pretty high flame. You want some distinct and noticeable brown on the outside but you don't want to cook them all the way through. They'll finish on their own while waiting to take their place in the skillet.

Finally, get that skillet out and heat it up. You're about to put this all together and serve a feast of ambrosia!

If you’ve got some pignoli, toast them in the fry pan as it warms up. Be sure you keep them moving constantly so they don’t burn. After about 2 minutes, declare done and pour the nuts out onto a plate to wait.

In the rest of the garlic oil, sauté the onions until they are tender (don't let them brown, just get them translucent). Then toss in the tomatoes. Sauté for about 1 minute (it really does help if you have a clock in view for this one, but if not, just do the old counting trick!), and then add ½ the chicken stock. Stir it all up and let it cook for at least 2 - 3 minutes.

Next, add the pasta (for this batch, I used linguine)

and cook it up in the pan mixture, tossing continuously until it's completely coated. Add the remaining lemon juice and the lemon zest; toss and cook, toss and cook. Now, add the basil; toss and cook. Add the spinach and a few pignoli. Toss a few more times and add some more chicken stock if you like (I do!). Stir, toss, and serve to plates. Top each plate with a tuna steak; pour ring of parmesan cheese all around the edge of each plate and put it all on the table with crunchy French bread and big salad.

Recipe: Orange Beef and Rice with Sausteamed Vegetable Medley

2006-07-05T18:00:00.000-04:00

So here’s what I had last night. No photos – didn’t know it would be an instant classic. Next time, I’ll grab some pics and retrofit the post. (Tonight it’s hot dogs and baked beans!)

See, Cathy’s away, so what’s a good boy to do but try to eat down the freezer a bit. Seems we had this half a hunk of N.Y. Sirloin from a couple of months ago, and half a jug of orange juice from niece Jessica’s visit a couple of weeks ago; surely something good could come of it . . . And it did . . .

Here’s what you’ll need:

fresh thyme leaves ½ tsp. (if you don’t have fresh available, try a pinch of dried and a pinch of dried oregano – about ¼ tsp. total)
ground ginger ½ tsp. (if you have fresh, grate about 1 tsp.)
ground turmeric 1/3 tsp. (be careful with this stuff – it will dye the world indelibly yellow!)
anise seed ¼ tsp. (if you have fennel seed instead, use about 1/3 tsp. If you only have ground of either one, use half as much)
ground allspice 1/3 tsp.
Tellicherry (well, tons, of course and only freshly ground!)
Sriracha ½ tsp.
Worcestershire sauce 2 – 3 Tbsp.
soy sauce 2 – 3 Tbsp.
orange juice ½ cup (real, not from concentrate, squeeze your own if you can, pulpy or not as you like)
white wine 3 Tbsp.
sesame oil 1 tsp. for marinade, another for rice
N.Y. Sirloin steak (or your other favorite cut of grillable, ‘I can’t afford Filet Mignon anymore’ steak. This cut is also known as Shell Sirloin in some parts of the US.)
veggies for the medley – carrots, onions, baby bella mushrooms (or just the usual button ones), zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, tomato chunks (doused in Tiparos fish sauce) (and/or, whatever veggies you’ve got!)
white rice
Maggi sauce (it’s Italian, but you’ll find it at the Asian market near you)
corn starch 1 tsp. stirred into ½ cup water

Here’s how you do it.

Mix all that marinade stuff at the top of the list and let it sit for 15 or 20 minutes so all those tastes can get to know each other. You’ll have about 1 to 1 ¼ cups when you’re done

Now my steak was frozen, and I didn’t plan ahead, so I just poured the marinade right into the baggie with the frozen steak (about ½ lb.), zipped it up again and left the baggie in a bowl (in case it leaked) on the counter for about 2 ½ hours. If your steak is fresh, let it marinate for at least an hour at room temperature; more is better, overnight is probably a good idea – but for heaven’s sake, overnight it in the refrigerator!

Chop the veggies into bite sized chunks. Douse the tomatoes (on a separate plate, please) with Tiparos fish sauce. In fact, anytime you’re going to cook tomatoes to go with a tangy meal, give ‘em a good slug of Tiparos. Wonderful stuff. . .

And start the rice. Before you bring it to a boil, give the water about four or five shakes of Maggi sauce (through the bottle tip that you cleverly snipped off when you bought it) as well as a goodly squirt of sesame oil. Remember, 2 cups of water, 1 cup of rice, hey check out Recipe: Perfect Rice . . .

The rice will take 30 minutes (but will happily survive up to an hour). The veggies will need 10 minutes of ‘paying attention’ time and then another 7 – 10 minutes to finish. And the steak will take about 5 minutes on the ‘beauty side’ and another 4 or 5 on the other, and then it simply must sit for at least 5 minutes before you cut it – 10 would be better. To turn the marinade into table sauce will take about 10 minutes.

So here’s how I timed it.

Start the rice. When the water boils, dump in the rice.
Light the grill (for a 10 minute pre-heat).
When the grill is hot, put a saucepan on medium heat and add a tablespoon or four of olive oil.
Put the steak on the grill.
Add the carrots to the hot saucepan and cook, stirring often, for about 3 – 5 minutes. You’re looking for the beginnings of brown.
Pour the remaining marinade into a small skillet over medium low heat
Add the onions to the veggies, stir, toss reduce heat a bit.
After the steak has been on a total of 5 minutes, turn the steak.
After the onions have cooked for about 2 minutes (getting translucent), add the mushrooms, stir, toss frequently.
When the steak is done (about 4 minutes on second side), bring it in to rest.
Add remaining veggies to saucepan, splash with white wine if you wish, cover pan and reduce heat to low.
If marinade is not simmering seriously, raise heat. Reduce marinade by half.
Fluff rice into serving bowl.
Slice meat on an angle (to make your slices wider) into thin slices (across grain). If meat has cooled too much, or is not cooked quite enough, toss it into the sauce for 20 – 30 seconds (no more than a minute!!)
If meat is in sauce, remove it, then thicken sauce with cornstarch (1 tsp. at a time!)
Serve veggies to serving bowl.
Put it on the table, sit, eat. Go “Ahhhhhhh . . . “

Tip: The Antibacterial Soap Diatribe

2006-06-30T17:45:00.000-04:00

Hey! It's still June for another few hours, and I refuse to let an entire month go by without any posts! But this is the only thing I've got already written (lots of photos, no descriptions - next month!!) So, for what it's worth, the diatribe . . .

Look, if you want to waste/spend the money on antibacterial ‘soaps,’ well, it’s your money. But if you do, learn to use them properly. If you do not, you’re asking for trouble.

First, antibacterial ‘soap’ is not soap. Soap is a type of ‘detergent.’ It works by messing about with the surface tension of water and other fluids so as to lift dirt and grease and bacteria up from the surface of your skin so you can rinse it all away with rushing water. Soap works by physically removing bacteria from your skin and floating it down the drain.

An antibacterial agent works by remaining in direct contact with the cell wall of a bacterium until it can infiltrate the cell and kill it. That process takes time. At least three minutes, for the strength of antibacterials that can be bought over the counter.

Unfortunately, if you were to put antibacterial agents into soap, the surface tension-float-it-away trick serves to keep the antibacterial away from the bacterium, just the way it lifts the bacterium from your skin. No contact, no kill, and therefore, no proper use of the term “antibacterial.” So, ‘antibacterial soaps’ use a different base emulsion to suspend the antibacterial agent and keep it in contact with the bacteria on the surface of your skin.

But if you don’t keep the goop in contact with your skin for the full three minutes (or maybe more, depending on product), you won’t kill anything. And when you rinse the goop off your hands, because it does not perform the same sort of detergent action that soap does, you leave all the live bacteria on your skin. You’ve wasted your money, your time, and you have not cleaned your hands!

So you choose. Three minutes of continuous rubbing (preferably with a brush) to give the antibacterial stuff time to do its job. Or, a quick scrub with soap, a quick rinse with water, and your hands are clean.

Recipe: Half Sour Pickles

2006-05-04T15:00:00.000-04:00

So I became an addict sometime around 1970. In Miami, on Collins Avenue, at the coffee shop lunch counter of the Eden Roc. It was a glorious day.

You see, in those days, all the class hotels along Millionaire’s Row served up all the half sour pickles you could eat, for free, 24 hours a day. Bowl after bowl after bowl, the entire length of the counter, on every table, at every booth. These wondrous, pale green inside, brilliant green outside, incredibly crunchy, manna from heaven, half sour pickles.

I’d grown up with dill pickles, and had met many a sour pickle, and even some sweet pickles were actually pretty good under some circumstances. But I had never before met a half sour. And when I did, I knew I had found pickle perfection.

Unfortunately, since Goldi’s Deli closed about 10 years ago, there has been no source of half sour pickles in this part of the world. Occasionally, a jar of BaTampte half sours would show up at the grocery store, but then months would pass without another. I suffered as long as I could. Now I make my own.

These are not yet pickle perfection; I’m still ‘in search of,’ on that journey. But they are certainly Pretty Good Pickles . . .

Here’s what you’ll need:

1/3 tsp. whole coriander seeds
1/3 tsp. brown mustard seeds
1 or 2 whole allspice
1/3 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1/3 tsp. black pepper corns
¼ tsp. dill seeds
1 – 2 Tbsp. dill weed
2 or 3 pieces broken dried bay leaf
4 – 6 cloves garlic
¼ cup pickling salt
4 cups water
8 or 9 pickling cukes

Here’s how you do it.

First, buy some pickling salt. Look for salt that specifically says “pickling salt.” That’s because pickling salt is simply plain, pure salt. No iodine, no additives to ‘ensure free flow,’ no nothing. Just salt, sodium chloride, NaCl, that’s all. Even Kosher salt, these days, usually has additives (presumably Kosher additives, but still . . .) For a pickling brine of any kind, just plain salt is best.

Second, a word about the Pickle Police (with thanks, or apologies, to Emeril). This is a cold, fresh-pack approach to pickles. No heat, no boiling, no sterilization in the autoclave, or canning in a boiling water bath, no antisepsis of any kind other than normal kitchen cleanliness. In other words, against all the rules promulgated by the FDA and every other official food agency. So if you want to stay out of the hospital, be scrupulous in your cleaning.

The process itself is pretty simple. Dissolve the salt in the water. Grind up all the dry ingredients except the dill weed and the bay leaf in a mortar. Chop the garlic. Wash the cukes and pack them in the jar. Dump in all the dry stuff, all the garlic, and pour in the salt water to cover everything. Wait. Chill. Pickles.

Too quick? Ok. One more time . . .

While you’re gathering and measuring and grinding and chopping, let your cukes soak in a sinkful of ice cold water. And be sure to snip off any little stem parts that are still attached. The stems are very bitter and can ruin an otherwise great batch of pickles.

The amount of salt, and the other ingredients, will, of course, depend on the size of your pickle jar. Mine holds about 8 or 9 cucumbers and takes nearly 4 cups of salt water to cover the pickles. So all my measurements are based on my jar. You’ll need to adjust based on your jar. Also, remember that even though I’ve offered specific amounts for the ingredients, I measure them all in the palm of my hand – well, except for the water and the salt . . .

When you grind up the dry ingredients, don’t turn it to dust. You just want to release some of the flavors and let them blend for a minute or two. I usually watch the brown mustard seeds, and as soon as I see them becoming a yellow powder, I’ll stop. The allspice are usually still whole at that point, as are the peppercorns. (In fact, I’ll often just add the peppercorns at the end, without even putting them in the mortar.)

The salt and garlic will be providing most of the noticeable flavor for your pickles, so getting the garlic quantity right is a critical step. Since I didn’t understand that at first, I erred on the side of caution. I urge you to err on the other side. And keep in mind that smaller cloves are often more strongly flavored than large ones. If your garlic cloves are the size of your thumb, use 6 (or 8 or . . .)

When you pack your cukes into your jar, try to leave an inch or two of headroom above the pickles. If the pickles are not completely covered in the brine, they’ll just rot, and you’ll be calling those Pickle Police. So push and shove a little to get them in with some room to spare.

When the pickles are packed, pour in the contents of the mortar, the chopped garlic, the dill weed, the bay leaf, and anything else you decided not to grind earlier. Then fill the jar with the salt water, right up to the top.

Now they get to sit for a few days, somewhere cool and dry (and clean!) Do not tighten the lid while the pickles are sitting. You want the natural airborne beasties to get into the jar and help the pickles start to ferment. Leave them at room temperature for at least 48 hours – I usually wait 72 hours – and then screw that cap on tight and put them in the refrigerator. Oh, and that little ‘diaper dish’ under the jar is a really good idea. Some of the brine is guaranteed to spill out as the fermentation gets going; catching it in the bucket is better than wiping it off the table!

(And, no, that line around the upper part of the jar is not the fluid level – it’s just some gum from the original label on the jar. My pickles are most definitely completely submerged!)

As I said, these are not yet Pickle Perfection, so if, in your experiments, you stumble across the path to perfection (or already know it), please share. Half sour pickle lovers across the globe will thank you for it . . . In the meantime, enjoy these . .

Ingredient: Miso

2006-05-02T14:30:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I did not discover miso until I was in my 40s. Don’t wait! Run right out and buy a tub!

Miso is a fermented soybean paste that is a staple in Japanese kitchens, and ought to be one in yours as well. It is delicious, reputedly healthful and nutritious, lasts forever (well, a long time – keep it in the freezer), and can be used in soups, sauces, salad dressings, dips, as a flavoring, a condiment, and probably thousands of ways I’ve never dreamed of! Miso is, however, very salty, so if you are sodium restricted, be careful.

You can find miso in any Asian market, and maybe even in your local supermarket. I like the red (aka) miso best, but you’ll also see white and yellow misos. The white is sweeter and more delicately flavored, the yellow ones are richer but still mild, and the red are the strongest.

As we speak, I’m brewing up a cup of miso soup to cure my cold – you know, feed a cold . . . I boiled about 3 cups of water, tossed in about ½ - ¾ tsp. of miso, crumbled up a few pieces of dried seaweed and the cap of a dried shitake mushroom. I turned down the heat and will let it simmer slowly until about 1 cup of water evaporates. By that time (about 30 minutes) the seaweed and mushroom will have reconstituted and become tender, and I can call it soup!

(OK, soup’s on . . .)

If I’d had some vegetable stock kicking around, I could have used that instead of plain water, or some dashi (a soup stock made with dried bonita flakes), but water works just fine. Toss in other stuff as you see fit – a cube of tofu, a couple of shrimp, other vegetables, hey, make it up as you go along. It will be delicious.

Later when I feed my cold again (well . . .), I may mix up some miso vinaigrette for my salad dressing.

Fork a little miso into a bowl

add a dribble or three of oil (sesame, olive, whatever you have handy) and mash it all up.

Then stir in a tablespoon of three of vinegar and whisk it all up with your fork.

I like to use a mild rice wine vinegar for this dressing because the miso is such a strong flavor. But I’ve done it with cider vinegar, plain white vinegar, tarragon vinegar, balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, and various mixtures of all of the above. Play around, have fun with your food!

And experiment with miso . . .

The Missing Photos Return . . .

2006-05-02T10:50:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, the power of the squeaky wheel.

The Missing Photos

2006-05-02T09:38:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of photos. My friendly ISP has mucked up the server address, and I can't get them to tell me whether or when they might 'fix' it. Please bear with me for a bit longer before I have to resort to 'Plan B.'

Thanks . . .

Recipe/Technique: Veggie Fried Rice

2006-03-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

OK, so it’s not exactly culinary legerdemain, but it sure tastes good, and it’s a great way use up some of those baggies of leftover rice you’ve got lurking in the freezer!

Here’s what you need:

leftover rice
chopped up veggies
olive oil (or butter or both)
herbs & spices
maybe some liquid
Tellicherry

Here’s how you do it.

Gather up some leftover rice.

Chop up some veggies.

Heat a pan. Could be a skillet or a saucepan or a dutch oven or a wok or . . . Almost anything will work. Throw in the oil. Swirl. Throw in the veggies. Stir, cook for a while.

Add seasonings (no, not salt – try oregano, or cilantro, or rosemary, or thyme, or basil or . . .). Throw in the rice.

Stir. Cook for a while.

Eat.

Now that you’ve got the hard part down, perhaps a comment or two. You may have noticed that the chopped veggies included some zucchini and summer squash, but the final skillet-full didn’t. Yup. Put in too much rice. Couldn’t fit the rest of the veggies. No worries. Just did them up on the side, in their own pan.

Could’ve tossed everything together to serve, but didn’t that night. Still delicious!

Recently, I’ve done a couple of batches in a big saucepan and experimented with changing the order of cooking and adding the rice.

For example, start out with the pan over moderate heat, add the oil and quickly brown up some chopped onion. Turn the heat down at some point to keep the onion from burning, but do let it get crunchy brown.

Then toss in the rice and stir it all up. In all fried rice approaches, it is important to spend the time to get every kernel of rice coated with the hot oil. So take your time stirring around, turning over, moving from side to side, etc. When you’ve got a nice brown-flecked onion & rice mixture, turn the heat down a little more and let it cook for two or three minutes. You’re trying to let the rice give up the last of its trapped moisture, but to use that moisture as it escapes to tenderize the rice.

Now toss in some mushrooms and stir them around to coat with oil. Add in any long-cooking veggies, like carrots and/or green beans (fresh) and/or celery and/or bell peppers (not that bell peppers require a long time to cook, but they will hold up to it and that lets their flavors spread throughout the dish), and continue to stir around and cook until the mushrooms begin to take on some color.

When the mushrooms start to color, you know that they are about ready to ‘give up their water,’ as the saying goes. And they do contain quite a lot of liquid, which has now cooked enough to take on the delicious flavor of the mushrooms.

So before that liquid releases and evaporates, toss in the remaining quick cooking veggies you might be using – broccoli, summer squash, zucchini, snow peas, bean sprouts, etc. Stir around to coat, add a tiny splash of white wine, and put the lid on. In about five minutes, a 'head of steam’ will have risen under the lid, cooking the last few veggies to perfection and re-moisturizing the rice to tender delectability, and you’ll have created a masterpiece! (No, I don’t have any photos . . .)

Or . . . Start out on low heat, add your oil, and carmelize some carrots. Yup. Just like we did with the onions in the last post, only the carrots won’t take an hour – more like 15 or 20 minutes. But keep them low and slow and turn them over frequently so they don’t burn. Once they start to release their sugars, they become susceptible to burning.

About 10 minutes into the carrot time, toss in some chopped ( ½“ pieces) red and green bell peppers and let them start to carmelize also.

So, now you’re 20 – 25 minutes into the cooking, still low and slow. Toss in the rice and stir to coat with oil. Then add the remaining veggies (including some mushrooms, broccoli, and tomatoes!), hit the pot with a goodly splash or three of Tiparos fish sauce, a tiny splash of white wine, a goodly grind or five of Tellicherry, and slap the lid on.

Give it another 10 – 15 minutes to steam everything into submission, and, well, you’ve done it again!

Or . . .

Hey, you take it from here . . . and enjoy.

Recipe/Technique: Carmelized Onions

2006-03-20T16:00:00.000-05:00

Most of us don’t think of onions as ‘sweet.’ Oh, we buy Texas Sweets and Sweet Yellow onions, but sweet? Nahhh. Onions are sharp, pungent, biting, give you bad breath. Well, it all depends . . . On what you do with them. Like almost all other vegetables on the planet, onions are full of complex chemicals. And when you apply heat to those chemicals, you get reactions. Things change. Sugars are created, and we call that process carmelization. Onions become most definitely sweet.

Here’s what you need . . .

onion(s), sliced
butter
pinch of coarse (Kosher) salt, optional
Tellicherry, optional
time

Here’s how you do it.

The secret to carmelization is time, and low heat. There are no shortcuts. If you can’t wait at least an hour, maybe more, do something else with your onions. I’m usually working with one onion (or less if I’m cooking for just myself), and I plan on about 90 minutes from inspiration to plate. Depending on how many onions you’re dealing with and the size of your biggest skillet, you might need up to two hours.

Now only about 60 or 70 of those minutes are on the stove. The rest are consumed with deciding how the onions are to be incorporated into the meal (or maybe, what the rest of the meal is going to be in the first place!), getting out implements, peeling and slicing an onion, finding butter, warming the skillet, and generally futzing around.

So slice an onion (or 6). I like slices about ¼” wide, but anything from hair’s breadth to half an onion will work. Because you’ll be taking your own sweet time, the size of the slice doesn’t matter to the cooking time. So slice an onion (or 6 . . . )

And heat your skillet over moderate heat for a while (no more than a minute or two, if you’re using a nonstick skillet!), toss in a tablespoon or so of butter, and swirl once or twice.

Now dump in your onions

and turn the heat down.

Stir it all around to coat with butter. Then, add some more butter.

From here on in, it’s just a waiting game. After 3 more minutes, your butter is getting soft. After 8 minutes, it’s melted in

and you should turn the heat down again.

Now, just toss and stir every five or ten minutes for the rest of the hour. Here’s what you look like after 15 minutes . . .

If you’re going to add a pinch of salt and some pepper, somewhere around 20 minutes is a good time to do it. If you add the salt too early, you’ll alter the chemistry, and end up with crispy fried onions – tasty, but not carmelized. The salt draws the water out of the onion where it evaporates in the pan instead of helping to form sugars. But by 20 minutes into the process, most of the sugars have been formed and released by the onion, so your salt will have its flavor enhancing effect. And Tellicherry, well, hey I put it on ice cream . . . Here’s how your onions look after 35 minutes . . .

And after 60 . . .

I’d call ‘em done, but if you want to leave them on for a while longer, that’s fine – just turn the heat down again

Whenever you decide, serve ‘em up as a side dish on their own, or pour them on potatoes, or mix them up with green beans or your veggie of choice, or top a steak or piece of grilled fish with them, or serve ‘em on toast and call it dinner!

Recipe: Roast Chicken Leftovers

2006-03-19T14:30:00.000-05:00

So, remember that chicken we roasted a while back? The question is, what do you do with the leftovers? Sure, you can just warm everything up again in the oven, heat the leftover gravy on the stove and repeat the original. Or you can heat up the gravy, toss in the cut up meat and serve it over toast. Or you can take it one step (or three) beyond . . .

here’s what you’ll need . . .

leftover roast chicken parts
leftover gravy (or, in a pinch, you can make fresh)
wide egg noodles
peas (fresh, canned, frozen . . .)
thyme (dried or fresh)
olive oil
sesame oil
SriRacha
coarse (Kosher) salt
ground cayenne pepper
Tellicherry

Here’s how you do it.

Carefully peel all the skin from your leftover chicken parts and cut it up into little ¼” squares. Put a small skillet over very low heat, and just coat the bottom with a drop or three of olive oil. As soon as the oil “comes to fragrance” (a state which I’m sure you’ll remember from an earlier sermon - with apologies to David Steinberg), toss in the skin bits, reduce the heat to barely there. Let the skin bits slowly render all their fat for about 30 –45 minutes, until they are nice and crispy.

About 15 minutes into the rendering time, add a sprinkle of coarse salt, and a dash of ground cayenne pepper to the skin. Swirl, toss and otherwise mix it all up. Not exactly ‘cracklins’ but a tasty sprinkle for the finished dish.

After you get the skin going, get out a couple of saucepans - gravy in one, water in the other. Heat the gravy slowly and crank the water to a boil for the noodles. (And if you scooped all the mushrooms out of your gravy during your original roast chicken dinner, well, for heavens sake, slice up another dozen and toss them into the gravy to cook!)

While the heat does its thing, get all the remaining chicken meat off the bones and cut it up into bite size pieces.

When the water boils, toss in your noodles (all right, you can add a pinch of salt to the water if you must), and cook them just barely al dente. Usually, we cook these wide egg noodles for about 5 minutes, but for this meal, three minutes works out just right. The noodles are going to continue to tenderize over a warm burner while you get the rest of the meal together, and then cook for another minute or so at the very end. So, barely al dente to start . . .

When they’re done, drain the noodles, and toss them with a goodly squirt of sesame oil and a squeeze of SriRacha. I usually do the oil first and when the noodles are well coated, then add about an inch long ribbon of SriRacha and stir again. That way, the spicy flavor ‘rides’ the oil rather than forming little hot spots in the pasta. Finally, toss the peas on top, sprinkle with a pinch of thyme and a few goodly grinds of Tellicherry.

Now cover that pan and put it back on the still-warm burner (electric stove). If you’re working with a gas stove (or your electric cools off too quickly), you could save a little pasta water and toss it back in, or add a little water from the can of peas. Then you can leave the burner on barely there heat until it’s time to put everything together.

Next, twiddle your thumbs (or make a salad or set the table or brew the coffee or . . .) until the chicken skin crispies are done. When they’ve reached perfection, scoop them out of the skillet and onto some paper towel to drain.

Then, toss your cut up chicken meat into the skillet and heat it up for 5 minutes or so. You can put some heat under it, but you don’t really want it to cook or brown very much – that will just make it tougher.

Finally, put it all together. Put the noodle pan over the still going skillet burner, dump the chicken on top of the peas, and pour some gravy over all (wet but not swimming). Using your gentlest ‘folding-in’ action combine everything. Add some more gravy (sloppy but not swimming), and stir some more.

Put the cover back on the pan, turn the burner off, and finish whatever else you need to do before eating. When it’s time, divide your creation onto plates, add as much more gravy as you like,

and chow down!

Tip: Hone that blade . . .

2006-02-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

Every time you sharpen a knife, you remove some of the metal from the blade. Eventually, there’s nothing left. That’s why you only want to sharpen your blades a couple of times a year.

So how do you keep them sharp in between? Honing, m’dear, honing . . .

You see, each time you use a knife, you mangle the edge. It gets all bent and twisted out of shape. No. You can’t see it, not even with a magnifying glass. We’re talking microns here. But all it takes is one or two gentle strokes across your “sharpening steel” (which better be steel, but certainly is not sharpening) or ceramic rod to put your blade edge back into shape.

Those strokes straighten out all the bends and twists from the last time you used the knife, and put the edge of the blade back into ‘just sharpened’ shape, while removing little or no metal from the blade.

And you don’t need to spend a bundle on fancy pearl-studded, leather handled, diamond encrusted honers, either. There was probably a sharpening steel in that first knife set you ever bought, or one that someone gave you once. Go find it and bring it back to the kitchen. If not, check out the Internet. I found ceramic rods online for about $4.00 each a few years ago and bought three of them – probably last the rest of my life.

Now, the ceramic rods are usually harder than the steel of the blade you are honing, so you will remove a few molecules of metal each time, but it’s a tiny amount compared to grinding a new edge. Tiny amount or not, though, you’ll want to wet the rod before use (so the metal won’t ‘clog the pores’ of the ceramic as much) and give both the rod and the blade a quick rinse after honing. (When your ceramic rod gets too clogged, give it a good scrub in hot soapy water!) Since a steel rod is just about the same hardness as the blade, any metal loss is negligible.

And, if you can’t find a sharpening steel around the house, and you don’t want to spend any money at all, find an old dinner plate (Corelle if possible) or some broken piece of ceramic pottery and use that. It may be a little more awkward to hold than a ‘formal’ honer, but it will do the job just as well!

So make it a habit. Reach for a knife, reach for the honer at the same time. Since a dull knife is a dangerous knife, keep your kitchen safe and hone those blades . . .

Recipe: Simple Roast Chicken

2006-01-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

Want a really simple, inexpensive, quick and easy, delicious meal? Hey, roast a chicken!

For years, roast chicken was a relatively rare meal in our house because we always had to do stuffing and gravy and three vegetables and cranberry sauce (the jellied kind, out of a can, but still, one more must-have item . . .) and turn the thing into a major feast.

In fact, I once saw a show on the Food Network about Roast Chicken. Tyler Florence (I think) had to travel the world over to figure out how to roast a chicken. Now don’t get me wrong: all the chickens he met were wondrous creations, worthy of at least 30 minutes (or maybe it was an hour – I don’t know) of airtime. But, really . . .

Then one day, an aberration struck. Those little pre-cooked rotisserie chickens in the hot case at the supermarket. Hmmmm. If they can do it, why can't I?

Well, you can . . .

here's what you'll need . . .

1 cheap chicken (don't go for the 'oven stuffer' or even a 'roaster;' go for the cheapest whole chicken in the case! A 3 lb. chicken serves two with serious leftovers or serves 4 with the bones picked clean)
1 carrot
1 small onion
salt
Tellicherry
other stuff if you wish

Here's how you do it.

Pre-heat your oven to 400° F.

Whack the ends off the carrot and trim the stem and tail off the onion. You don’t have to peel either one - they're just going to be thrown out later – though I usually take the skin off the onion (and we never peel carrots!). Cut them both up into chunks (and inch or so).

Give your chicken a thorough wash, and yank out any extra fat or other nasty bits the butcher may have left behind. Pat the bird dry with a paper towel.

Dust the interior with some finely ground Tellicherry. And/or, some other stuff. Here, I decided to use some poultry seasoning and some rubbed sage. Other times, I’ve used cumin or cayenne pepper or rosemary and thyme or oregano and basil or . . . Avoid the urge to salt the interior, though. It just draws out all the juices and adds nothing to the flavor.

Toss the carrot and onion chunks into the cavity and push, fold, prod, or otherwise try to get any loose skin over the opening. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. Who cares if a piece of carrot or onion falls out during roasting, won’t hurt a thing.

Fold the wing tips under the bird,

and toss it into the roasting pan. You can use a rack if you wish, or not. The smaller birds have much less of that ‘pumped-up’ fat that cooks out of the larger birds, so you don’t need to worry about your dinner ‘boiling in oil’ as it were. If you absolutely cannot cook a bird without salt, now’s the time. Rub some olive oil all over the top of the bird and judiciously sprinkle a little coarse (Kosher) salt on the skin. The oil will prevent the salt from dissolving (immediately) in the juices from the chicken, and if you baste gently (see below), you can avoid washing it off. (And, yes, I always toss an extra hunk of onion into the roasting pan for gravy flavor later.)

Into the oven for an hour or two depending on your oven, the size of the bird, how 'dried out' you prefer your chicken, the phase of the moon . . . After the first 15 minutes, baste the bird every 10 or 15 minutes until it's done.

Here’s my beast after 1 hour.

And here, after two hours (and declared done),

If you’re nervous about raw poultry, or a stickler for detail, or an engineer (and do check out that Cooking for Engineers blog; there’s a lot of good stuff over there!), poke your bird with a thermometer. If it’s around 175° F, you can yank the bird. Its temperature will continue to rise another 5° or more while it rests, which will bring it to the final temperature of about 180° F.

When the bird is done to your liking, pull it out, throw away the onion and carrot, and have a wonderful meal.

(Yeah, ok, so I did two veggies and gravy; it's still a simple meal . . .)

Now there are, of course, 3497 variations on this theme, all of which are wonderful. Some of them are equally simple, some are not; it’s all up to you. Go play . . .

Tip: Cheese Graters

2006-01-10T17:30:00.000-05:00

Mouli. That’s really the only name to remember. Electric graters just ‘boil’ your cheese; the other (6) hand graters I’ve tried all suffered from various shortcomings - too small, too big, awkward to hold, dull blades, impossible to clean . . . So save yourself some time and trouble; get a Mouli.

They make metal ones and they make plastic ones. I find the plastic one much gentler on my hand. My daughter (who gave me my first metal one, I think) likes the metal ones. Buy some of both; use the one you like and give the rest as gifts!

But do look around. The first metal one I bought was from a ‘Kitchen’ store. It was a ‘discount’ Kitchen store, to be sure, but I still paid nearly twice what I would have had I thought to look in the cut-out bin at the local ‘dollar’ store. The first plastic one also came from a discount kitchen outlet – about $1 less than the metal one. Later, I found plastic ones on-line as a ‘discontinued’ item. I bought their last three for about half what I paid for the first metal one. That was four years ago and I just retired my first one!

If, however, you decide to like the plastic version, you will have to make a repair. The hinge pin that holds the handles together isn’t a pin at all – just two little nubs of plastic that are guaranteed to break off after about 8 uses. But the pin idea is the solution.

Just grab your electric drill. Zoom a tiny hole through the handle where the nubs used to be, and using metal washers on each side, slip a skinny machine screw through and tighten up with a nut. Like I said, four years of twice weekly service, and what finally broke was the arm, not the pivot.

Recipe: Split Pea Soup

2005-12-13T17:46:00.000-05:00

Dried legumes. Wonderful things. Do you remember Y2K? How many pounds of dried beans and peas and lentils and such did you store away, just in case . . .

Well, if you've got any split green peas left, this is the way to deal with them. First, cook a ham. Feed 23 people (friends, relatives, the local fireman's fund raisers, whatever). Save the ham bone (and all the little tidbits, or big tidbits, of ham meat that didn't get eaten). Freeze them. Wait a few months. Now you're ready to make split pea soup.

here's what you'll need . . .

1 lb (one bag) dried split green peas
1 leftover ham bone
leftover ham meat (or whatever you end up scraping off the bone, if that's all you have)
1 (or 2) smallish carrots, sliced or coarsely chopped
3 - 4 medium potatoes, peeled or not, cubed
1 medium onion, chopped
6 - 12 mushrooms, thick sliced or coarsely chopped (optional if you hate mushrooms)
Tellicherry
thyme
2, 4, 6 qts. water

Here's how you do it.

Get out that old huge Dutch oven, or your 12 (20?) qt. stockpot, or the biggest other bucket you can find to cook in. This is a soup that needs to be made in quantity. This recipe will make about 8 servings (or more, if you're not using it as a main dish!)

Like it says on the bag of peas - pick them over carefully. I've only found three pebbles in 30 years of soup making, but if I had bitten into any one of those three, my Dentist's children would all have gone to Harvard.

Used to be, I’d hang a strainer into a saucepan and slowly pour a few peas from the bag into my other hand. If I didn't see any rocks or other junk, dump into the strainer. Next few peas, and so on . . .

Recently, while picking over beans for a chili, it dawned on me that a white dinner plate would make the whole job a lot easier! So, pour out some legumes of whatever ilk onto the plate and take a good look. Sticks and stones really stand out (I didn’t find any in the peas, but I found several in the beans!)

When you’ve removed any detritus, into the strainer with the clean peas or beans or . . .

Then give the strainer a swirl or five under cold running water. Drain, and toss the peas into the soup pot.

Cover the peas with water to a depth of about two inches, or a little less. Cover the pot and turn the heat to high. As soon as the peas come steamily close to a boil, turn the heat off (on an electric stove, or to barely a flame on a gas stove). You basically want to warm the peas for the next 30 minutes or so.

If you peek, you’ll usually see a white froth on the surface of the water. Not to worry. It’s just loose, surface starch, ‘blooming’ in the hot water. Eventually, the peas will reabsorb some of it and the rest will dissolve in the water.

However, there is a choice to be made here. All starchy, dried legumes have one thing in common – gas, flatulence, the musical toots, you know . . . If you’re among good friends, well, hey, charge on. If someone’s boss is coming for dinner, might I suggest . . .

Add about ½ tsp. of baking soda to the water before it comes to a boil. When the 30 minute ‘warm time’ is done, discard the water and start with fresh water to make the rest of the soup. (Do the same thing with beans or lentils and nobody will be asking you to ‘pass the Beano’ at the dinner table.)

While the peas are tenderizing, whack up the onion, carrots, and mushrooms (if you're using them).

If you've got some separate ham meat leftovers, dice them up into ¼ bite size bits. In this case, you’ll notice that my ham bone is a tad on the tiny side. No matter. Whatever you’ve got is just what you need. This was leftover from a ham steak. I put it in frozen; took it out cooked, and then trimmed the fat off. Made a great soup!

When the peas have been threatened for 30 minutes, add in the ham bone, toss in whatever you chopped up,

and fill the pot with water (well, put in at least 2 quarts; I usually go with 4, or maybe more, because I'd rather cook the soup 'down' to a good texture than have to try to thin it 'up' to a good texture). Crank up the heat, cover the pot, and wait for it to get nearly to a boil.

While waiting, wash your potatoes, and peel them if you must. Slice them in half lengthwise (so you end up with the thinnest halves, not the thickest).

Slice each half lengthwise into three strips. Slice each strip crosswise into 4 or 5 bite sized cubes.

By now (if you've got a really good stove), your soup is bubbling nicely, nearly at the boil. So cool it down again! By tossing in the potatoes. Grind a goodly layer of Tellicherry onto the top, and throw in about 1/3 tsp. of dried thyme (which you, of course, will crumble into the palm of your hand before tossing in!). Cover again. Get bubbling again. Turn down the heat to a bare simmer.

Cook for at least an hour. After 30 minutes, crack the lid to let some steam escape. After an hour, check the texture of your soup. It should be thickening, but still on the thin-ish side. If it reminds you of the LaBrea tar pits, ADD MORE WATER! If it's not sludge yet, taste it. Adjust the seasonings - is it salty enough? Peppery enough? Just that hint of thyme behind the peas? Anything else that your tongue just screams out for? Well, now's the time to add it.

And while you're at it, dredge out that ham bone. Put it on a plate and let it cool for 10 minutes or so. Then scrape every last speck of edible meat off the bone and return the meat to the soup pot. Toss the bone in the garbage.

Cook that soup until it's done - might be another 10 minutes, might be another hour. You want this to be a thick soup - it kind of sloozes out of the ladle, neither splashing, nor requiring a spoon to push it off the ladle. Sloozing, splooshing, you know . . .

Hey, serve it into bowls and dig in. Eat it with corn muffins or rye toast or oyster crackers or Pilot Crackers if you can get them, maybe a salad. Keeps for a month (if you cook it every week!), freezes for a year. Never let a good ham get away . . .!

Recipe/Technique: Classic Brown Stock

2005-12-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

This one is such a pain in the, well, kitchen, that I only do it a few times a year. But sometimes, you just get a hankering for onion soup. And, I’m sorry but it’s true: you cannot make onion soup without home made brown stock. Oh, you can make a soup with onions, but it won’t be onion soup.

So herewith and forsooth and thusly, the classic brown stock.

Here’s what you’ll need:

bones, at least 5 lbs.
carrots
onions
celery
water
the patience of Job

Here’s how you do it.

Roast the bones. Well, get the bones first. And that can be tricky. You see, the supermarkets have seen us coming. What they used to give away, simply to avoid the cost of disposal, they have now discovered, we’ll pay for, and pay dearly. One local purveyor wants $1.50 a pound! And since they are still in business, I presume they get it.

Anyway. Shop around. Talk to small butcher shops. If any of your supermarkets are locally owned, talk to them as well. Cheap bones make stock just as good as expensive bones.

Since it takes as long to roast 2 lbs. of bones as it does to roast 5 or 10 lbs., you might as well go for the big bucket and make a few gallons of stock. Keep it in the freezer and use it over a few months until the next time you get crazed and decide to roast bones again.

I have not done this often enough to have any defensible advice on just what sort of bones you should roast. Oh, beef, for sure, but big ones, little ones, long ones, short ones, I don’t know. I’ve used them all and can’t tell the difference in the final stock. One time, I had just boned a chicken and threw those bones right in with the beef bones. Worked just fine. So I’d say, get whatever you can for as little cost as possible, and roast on . . .

Pre-heat your oven to around 400 - 425 ° F. Mine runs a little cool at those settings, so I use 425; if yours runs hot, go for 400 – you want to roast the bones, not char them.

Arrange the bones in one layer in a roasting pan and into the oven with them. Let ‘em cook for at least 1 ½ hours, two hours is ok, but no more at this point.

While the bones are in for the initial roasting, whack up some veggies. You don’t really need to trim them up, and be sure to leave the peel on the onions – it will add to the rich dark color of the final stock. Since celery has a very strong flavor, I use about 1 stalk of celery for every 4 carrots, and since my usual supply of onions are little ones, I use the same number of onions as carrots.

In this case, I gave the veggies a little rub with some olive oil and then a light sprinkle of Tellicherry and coarse salt. But you don’t have to (and in a classic kitchen, might get yelled at for doing so – this is supposed to be a ‘base’ stock, with no distinct flavor of its own.)

So, after the bones have had their first roast:

toss in the veggies and stick the pan back in the oven for another hour. When they’re ‘done,’ you can begin the long part of this process . . .

Transfer the roasted bones and veggies to your stockpot using a slotted spoon, so that any fat and drippings remain in the roasting pan.

Next, pour all the liquid in the roasting pan into a cup to cool for a while. When you can handle it, store this ‘glace de viand’ (ok, rendered beef fat; ok, ok, ok, lard) in a glass jar in the refrigerator. Add sparingly to anything in a skillet for wonderful rich flavor.

Get the roasting pan, with all its beautiful brown bits back over some heat on the stove

and pour in a cup or three of water to ‘deglaze’ the pan. Bring the liquid up to a boil, scraping all those goodies (‘gramins’ as Emeril would call them) off the bottom of the pan.

When you can ‘feel’ that the roasting pan is shiny clean under that pan sauce, add all that liquid gold to your stockpot, and then fill ‘er up with more water.

By the way, always use cold water for cooking, especially for something like this. The cold water rule has much less to do with temperature than it does with purity. Running the water until it’s cold flushes out any of the soluble ‘crud’ lining your water pipes or lurking in your hot water tank, assuring that the water you’re using is as clean and pure as it can be in your house. Of course, if your tap water smells like a swimming pool, even after you’ve run it cold, consider cooking only with bottled water. The flavor of chlorine just does not enhance the flavor of anything else . . .

Now, bring that stockpot to a barely there simmer, and let it cook for at least 8 hours; 24 hours if you possibly can. This is where all your work so far becomes kitchen magic that will last for months (unless you’re feeding an army on a strict diet of vegetable beef soup or something!)

You can use high heat and a lid for the first 30 minutes or so, to overcome all that cold water, but don’t bring this to a boil. You’re trying to entice all the flavor out of the bones and veggies, not to scare it out of them! When you get a bare simmer going, make sure the lid stays cracked so that steam can gently waft away, concentrating the flavors as they are extracted. And do remember to check every now and then to make sure all the water hasn’t evaporated!

At some point, you’re going to declare ‘done!’ and remove all the bones and veggie remains from the stockpot. I usually do this with a slotted spoon, rather than trying to dump a 4 gallon pot of hot liquid and heavy thumping bones into a colander, but then, that’s just my approach to non-scalded body parts in the kitchen. You can make your own choice.

Once solid has been separated from liquid, strain the liquid through the finest mesh strainer you have. And then clean the strainer and strain again, pouring more slowly this time. You may be surprised at how much additional stuff you get on the second, slow, strain.

Now I usually split my stock into two portions. One will go into the refrigerator to cool overnight and eventually become classic brown stock for use in the next day or two. The other portion goes back on the stove to be reduced in volume by at least half, maybe two thirds, over the same barely there heat as before. This portion will become ‘demi glace,’ and will get frozen in ice cube trays for long term storage and use over the next few months.

When the classic stock has been chilled overnight, you’ll find a large mass of fat solidified on top.

Use a thin knife or spreader or such to very gently cut around the edge of the fat and loosen it from the side of the pot. Then, slide a large spatula underneath, and using the knife or spreader to steady the top, lift the chilled fat out.

I discard this slab. I won’t tell you what to do. . . Once the demi glace is reduced, it, too, will need to cool in the refrigerator, and have the fat removed. Then you can freeze the thick, jelly-like glace.

Of course, if you have enough room in the refrigerator, you can cool the entire batch first, then remove the fat, and then separate the portions for various purposes.

When you’re done, you have a sizeable supply of wondrous basic stock to work with.

Recipe: Cream of Asparagus Soup with ham and potatoes

2005-11-01T17:00:00.000-05:00

No photos of this one, except of the stock. Didn’t expect it to be as entirely wonderful as it was. If I ever do it again, I’ll try to take some snaps. But there are no major mysteries, no arcane secrets that only a photo would reveal, so hey, give it a try . . .

Here’s what you’ll need:

asparagus stock
fresh asparagus (4 to 6 stalks per serving)
ham cubes (leftover frozen ham steak)
red onion, flaked, ¼ onion per serving
carrot, thin sliced, ¼ carrot per serving
potato, cubed, 1 per serving
1 can of peas (small can for two servings)
chorizo, chopped and sliced, ½ per serving
light cream, 3 oz. per serving
fresh thyme, chopped, (I don’t know, the leaves from one stem per serving?)
fresh oregano, chopped (as above, just go for it!)
olive oil
Tellicherry (of course!)

Here’s how you do it.

It started out with the need to clear some freezer space. I still don’t know what half the stuff in there is, but something had to make way for new chicken, and the 4 bags of frozen asparagus stems were taking up a lot of space!

So into the bucket with them! Cover with a gallon or so of water and bring to a boil uncovered. Yes, you could get them hotter quicker with a lid on, but the slower approach lets them defrost more gently as the water warms, and I think, preserves more flavor.

Besides, you need some time to roast some other stuff. So crank the oven to 425° F, whack up a couple of small onions (trim and toss the ends, but leave the peel on), a couple of carrots (again, trim and toss the ends) and a couple of stalks of celery. Grease ‘em up with a little olive oil, lay them out on a piece of foil, and into the oven for at least 30 minutes, an hour if you can. (And if you don’t care about being a stock purist, go ahead and sprinkle the oiled veggies with a little coarse salt, and maybe give ‘em a few good grinds of Tellicherry before you put them in the oven. I usually do . . .)

As soon as the asparagus water reaches a healthy bubble, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer. You want some bubbles, but not a raging sea. Ultimately, you’re looking to reduce the liquid by half, but you want the whole process to take at least a couple of hours. That way, if you manage to roast your ‘other stuff’ for an hour, everything will still have time to get friendly in the pot. If you’ve already reduced by half before you remember to toss in the roasties, well, just add water! Stock is really simple . . .

So, yeah. When you give up roasting, toss all the roasted stuff into the pot. Since it’s already hot, you shouldn’t have to adjust the heat to keep your perfect simmer going. And as above, if you’re already ‘reduced’ before the roasties have had at least an hour in the pot, well, just add water . . .

When it’s ‘done,’ drain, strain, scoop and/or otherwise separate all the solid stuff from the liquid. Dump the solids; save the liquid.

Now. While all that’s goin’ on, get the meal prep under way.

Cut your red onion into 1/3 inch wide slices; then cut the slices into ¼ inch wide wedges; and call it flaked. Heat your skillet and toss in some olive oil while you slice your carrot into paper thin half rounds. By now the pan and oil are hot, so cook up your onions.

After you toss them around to get them coated with oil, cube up your (fresh, frozen, last night’s leftovers, whatever . . .) ham. Small. ¼ to 1/3 inch cubes.

When the onions have been on for a couple of minutes, toss in the carrots. Keep ‘em moving; keep cutting ham, if need be.

After the carrots have been sizzling for about two minutes, turn down the heat to a bare sauté and wait for the first touch of color, as in browning, to appear on the onions. Probably take about 7 or 10 more minutes.

While the onions and carrots seek brown, take your favorite vegetable peeler and peel the skin off the bottom 3 to 4 inches of your fresh asparagus stalks. Then trim off the last ¼ inch or so of each stalk. Now, slice off thin 1/8 inch slices from the stalks until you’re left with about 3 inches of the asparagus tips. Toss all the little slices into the skillet as soon as you get them done, and cook, cook, cook.

As soon as there’s a little color on the onion, toss the ham into the skillet. Now, if your ham was frozen, it probably still is. No worries, just takes some time. As the ham thaws, it will releases water. Your skillet of goodies will get wet. And then it will steam. And then dry out. And that’s all just fine. Just keep the heat under it; stir it around from time to time; and get on with the rest . . .

Which includes getting your potatoes peeled (or not, your choice; Cathy likes peeled, and this is white on white, so what the heck, I peeled ‘em this time), and cubed, and tossed into the final soup pot. Cover them with water, toss in a spoonful of ‘chicken base’ (or cover them with your own very special, homemade chicken stock, instead of water and the base), and put a little heat under that pot.

Next, toss your chorizo into a(nother little) skillet with some olive oil and start cooking it.

And while that happens, chop up your fresh herbs.

PaPhew! Really. It’s easy. I promise . . .

OK. Remember that skillet of ham and onion and such? Well, dump your asparagus broth into that pan and bring it all up to a serious bubble. After it cooks together for about 10 minutes, toss the skillet contents into that final soup pot with the potatoes in it. Toss in the chopped herbs, pour in whatever quantity of cream you think you can sneak past your cardiologist, and adjust the heat to a barely there simmer. Let ‘er cook for 30 minutes or so.

And as soon as the chorizo is done, slit it lengthwise; slice one half into thin half-rounds and chop the other into little bits; and toss it into the pot.

Make some rye toast, and an arugula-romaine-tomato vinaigrette, and serve the soup!

Whaddaya mean 6 weeks . . .!?!?!

2005-10-30T16:00:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it . . .

Yes, October is traditionally filled with houseguests and family celebrations, and this year we can add hurricanes and memorials and floods and, good grief, the trick or treaters are about to pound on the door! But six weeks? . . . Sheesh . . .

Tomorrow there will be more!

In the meantime, a heartfelt thanks to those of you who have started to leave comments on the blog, and continued thanks to all who have sent emails. Your thoughts, reactions, suggestions, and requests are greatly appreciated. Please keep them coming . . .

And just so I can say, "I told you so!" here's the snap of the western after the last one . . .

Recipe: The (venerable) Western Omelet

2005-09-14T12:10:00.000-04:00

A western omelet for two requires 5 eggs (you can use 6 if they're small or your skillet is more than 12"), about 1 or 2 tsp. each of fine chopped onion and green pepper, and a couple of Tbsp. of diced ham. Or more. Or less. Or . . . I like to notice the ham and green pepper while I'm chewing, but have the onion play only a flavorful supporting role. Others like to 'chaw' on everything. As long as you've included onion, green pepper and ham, you've got a Western.

(‘Course, this time, I didn’t have enough ham. But there was some thin sliced roast beef kicking around, so what the heck. And as long as we’re taking liberties with the purity of the form, how about dicing up some ‘shrooms, and one of Woody’s home grown jalapenos. . . Look. It’s food. It’s supposed to be fun. So play with it!)

Ok, toss all your chopped up stuff into a mixing bowl and get ready to crack your eggs (which you did take out to warm up to room temperature, didn’t you . . .)

But instead of cracking the eggs straight into the bowl, where one rotten egg ruins everything, consider the plate method. Grab a bread plate or flat saucer and crack your egg onto it. If it’s OK, slide it into the bowl. Cracking the egg on a flat surface, rather then the edge of a bowl is much less likely to contribute eggshell to your recipe, and you won’t lose half the egg down the outside of the bowl!

When the eggs are in, grind on a frightening layer of Tellicherry, add a splash of milk, and whisk that mess into a froth. Now let it sit for 10 minutes or so while you warm your skillet, load up the toaster, flip the home fries, set the table, you get the idea . . .

Coat the bottom of the hot skillet with a light sheen of olive oil (or a little butter if you wish). You don’t want any puddle of oil in the pan, just a thin coat to keep that first contact of egg mixture from sticking.

Give your western a final whisk or three and pour it into the pan.

Now turn the heat down, rinse out your bowl and whisk, and do whatever other cleanup chores will take about 2 - 3 minutes.

By now, the edges of your western should have started to begin to show a little character. If the pan is still mainly soup, give it a very gentle tilt/roll/swirl to flow some of the egg a little farther up on the skillet wall.

You want to develop a sturdy enough outer edge that you can run a spatula all the way around the omelet without tearing or breaking any of it away. And you want to do this as soon as possible (after the first couple of minutes, that is).

When you can lift the edge of the omelet away from the edge of the pan, all the way around, check the clock. In about 15 minutes, you're going to flip your western. But every 5 minutes between now and then, you're going to slide that spatula all the way around the edge, slipping it closer to the center of the pan each time. On your final slide, the entire omelet should release easily from the surface of the skillet.

Five minutes later, it should be time to flip. If you're worried, you can lift the edges and peer underneath. The top of the omelet should be pretty well set, with little or no loose liquid. The bottom of the western should be a beautiful mottled brown, some parts dark, some light and some still a little yellow. If so, it's time to flip; if not, wait (but not too long . . .)

To flip the beast, make use of the back of a dinner plate (until you get the hang of flipping the entire thing in the pan, that is!) Just slide the omelet, cooked side down, out of the pan and onto the bottom side of a dinner plate.

Then, tilt the pan up as far as you dare, and in as close to one motion as you can manage, rotate that plate toward the skillet, slide the skillet under the plate, and dump the uncooked side of your western down onto the pan.

In about 2 minutes, start the edge separating again to make sure the bottom side doesn't stick to the pan (it's not likely to, but always worth checking!). In about 10 minutes, your dinner is ready!

Cut it in half, put it on plates, douse it heavily with ketchup (or not) and dive in!

(Okayokayokay, so I cooked this one a little too long on side one. Last one was a little pale; next one will be perfect; all are good!)

Tip: Get the air out – of your ziplock baggies, that is . . .

2005-09-08T17:00:00.000-04:00

If you’re like me, you have dozens of ziplock baggies lurking about the refrigerator, filled with bits of this and parts of that and pieces in progress and, well, heaven knows what all else! And if you cook for less than a horde, there will always be an endless supply of such odds and ends, not to mention the sale items that go in the freezer. To help them all stay fresh long enough for you to use them up, get the air out!

It doesn’t take any special skill or effort, just an attitude. Squeeze, press (lightly), fold over, and squish while you slide your fingers across that zip lock top. The less air you leave in, the longer your food will last!

Recipe: Perfect Roast Beef

2005-09-01T18:45:00.001-04:00

It couldn't be easier . . .

For years, I watched my mother fret and worry over roast beef. It was expensive, so we only had it a few times a year, and therefore each time was fraught with emotional turmoil - or so it seemed to me at the time. It couldn't be overcooked - no gray beef in our household! - but it couldn't be purple in the center either, and of course, half the time it was overdone and half the time it was underdone.

Well, there's at least one way to cook a perfect roast every time (there may be other ways, too, but this has been 100% consistent for 30 years, so . . .) The secret? Cook it for one hour. Period. Don't care if it's a 1 lb. eye of round or a 10 lb. rolled rump. One hour. That's it.

here's what you'll need . . .

roast beef (we like the lean eye of round, but have also done tenderloin, sirloin, round and rump. ~~Now, I've never done a bone-in prime rib . . . but that's no reason you shouldn't!~~ See the comments below. This technique is best suited to boneless roasts.)
onion slices (optional)
gravy makings

Here's how you do it.

First, remember never to salt your raw meat, especially beef. You'll just dry it out. So season your roast with a generous portion of freshly ground Tellicherry. If you wish, use some toothpicks to secure an onion slice or three across the top of the roast, or onto either or both end faces. Or, as I’ve been doing lately, just toss two or three thick slices into the roasting pan.

Pre-heat your oven to 500 °F. Yup. 500 °F. And give it 10 minutes or so at that temperature before you put the roast in. Don't stick it in as soon as the pre-heated light goes on. But when the oven is hot, put the roast in (center rack), and let it cook at that temperature for at least 15 minutes. The length of time at 500 °F will determine which side of medium rare your roast will be when it's done. 15 minutes will give you a nice warm red center; 20 minutes will give you hot light pink center; 17 minutes yields a perfect medium rare.

After the 15-20 minutes, turn the oven down to 325 °F and let the roast cook for the remainder of the one hour total cooking time. Don't let the total time exceed one hour if you want your roast to be perfect.

At the end of the hour, remove the roast from the oven and let it stand before carving. It must sit for at least 5 minutes, but 15 is much better.

Besides, it will take you at least 15 minutes to make the gravy anyway. So let the meat rest. You can take some of the charred onion and toss it in the gravy if you like - I always do. But, if you used toothpicks, leave them in place until you're ready to carve. If you pull them out, you'll be leaving holes in the meat where flavor, heat and juices will escape.

When the gravy is ready, carve and enjoy. This was a 1.5 lb. bottom round (or actually, ½ of a 3 lb. piece), left at 500 ° F for 16 minutes, and then finished at 325 ° F. Once I found the right direction for slicing, it was delicious. And Ma KoTo, the red-eared slider who’s staying with us for a while thought so too!

Tip: De String Da Celery

2005-08-27T16:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes these tips seem so simple that I hesitate to put them up at all. And then I hear from somebody who may have been cooking for years, but just never thought of it. So, what the hey, here’s another . . .

To remove the strings from celery ribs, just give ‘em a gentle swipe with your vegetable peeler. I usually start in the middle of the rib and go to the bottom; then turn the rib around and complete the task toward the top. Whatever way you decide to do it, there'll be no more pulling long strands of green stuff from between your teeth at the table!

If you’re going to slice your celery ribs into little rounds, say less than ½” long, don’t bother with this. The strings, like the grain in properly carved tougher cuts of beef, will be so short you’ll never notice them. And, certainly, as you get farther in toward the heart(s) of your celery bunch, peeling becomes unnecessary. But for those dark, outer ribs, a stroke or three from the peeler can do wonders.

Technique: Hard Cooked Eggs

2005-08-19T14:00:00.000-04:00

It doesn't sound like a tough job, but I've been served far too many ruined rubber things called 'hard-boiled eggs' to leave this one out. So, for those of you who may be egg-challenged, here's the simple secret (actually, secrets – all 5 of them!) . . .

here's what you'll need . . .

eggs
poultry skewer or finishing nail

Here's how you do it.

First, remember always to let your eggs come up to room temperature before you cook them! Even if you're going to scramble them! For hard-cooked eggs, the combination of cold egg and hot water guarantees a rubberized final product. Don't do it!

For hard-cooked eggs, I like to let the eggs sit out at room temperature for at least 6 hours before cooking, but I've been known to wait as little as three hours. Less than that, and your egg will still be too cold in the center of the yolk.

Second, always poke a little hole in the shell at the top (wider) end of the egg. There's a little air pocket (between the shell and the membrane sac that holds the egg), which is guaranteed to expand in hot water and crack the shell, leaking egg white into the cooking water and generally ruining the egg.

So use the sharp tip of a poultry skewer or a finishing nail to 'drill' through the surface of the shell. Don't try to 'punch' through - you'll end up with raw egg on your hands; just rotate that point back and forth until you drill through the shell. And be prepared - as soon as you get through the shell, you'll have a tendency to push your skewer right on into the egg sac. So be ready to release all pressure as soon as you've penetrated the shell.

(If you goof, but only a little, your egg will look like this.

You’ll also note that the yolk settled to the side of the egg. That’s partly because of the puncture, but also because this happened to be an old egg. As eggs age, the egg white becomes less viscous and no longer supports the yolk as well as when they are fresh. Still tasted great, though!)

Third, do not salt the cooking water! Your egg will be granular like canvas. Yes adding salt will lower the boiling temperature of the water, but it will also ruin your egg, and mess up the timing of the perfect hard-cooked egg. So don't. And don't use vinegar either! You've got a hole in the shell; whatever's in the water will be in the egg!

Fourth, start with cold water. Gently place your egg into the pan with plenty of water - there should be at least 2" of water above the egg. And don't try to do too many at one time - more than 4 eggs in one pan, no matter how big the pan, won't work. If you need to cook a dozen, do 3 batches or use three pans. Put the tightly covered pan on the stove, turn the heat to high, and watch carefully. The instant the water starts to boil (you can tell by the sound or by the first wisp of steam to escape from under the lid), turn off the heat and start a 10 minute timer.

Fifth, as soon as the timer goes off, drain the hot water from the pan and run ice cold water over the egg. Fill the pan, count to 3, drain. Fill again, count to 10, drain. Fill again, count to 30, and by now you should be able to handle the egg without risk of burning your hand. Continue to run cold water over the egg for another full minute or two.

Now you can crack the shell and peel the (still slightly warm) egg. Refrigerate the peeled egg for an hour, and then it's ready for use. Or, if you want the eggs for tomorrow, don’t peel them. Just put them in the fridge – the little hole in the top insures you won’t get them mixed up with the uncooked eggs!

If you prefer your egg yolk to have a creamier texture (rather than crumbly), bring the water to a boil before you put the egg in. Place the egg gently into the boiling water, cover, and bring the pan back to a full boil (about a minute or so). Then turn off the heat and start the 10 minute timer.

Either way, creamy or crumbly, treat your eggs with care and you'll be rewarded!

Recipe: Simple Meatloaf

2005-07-19T15:00:00.000-04:00

Usually when we eat ground beef, it's in the form of Cathy's World Famous Burgers, which are always made from ground sirloin. And when we do burgers just for ourselves, we always have some meat left over. Well, while Cathy was away on one of her trips to Chicago, I felt the need to use up some of the little lumps of leftover ground beef that were clogging up the freezer. I surely did not want to try to emulate her burgers, so I decided to try a meatloaf. The first one was a resounding success, and subsequent attempts have been pretty close, so it appears this recipe is repeatable.

Like most things, you can make this as complex as you'd like. The original concept, and this recipe, are based on the keep it simple philosophy.

here's what you'll need . . .
ground sirloin - at least 1/3rd to 1/2 lb. (serves two, 1 small loaf pan)
1 egg
1 slice interesting bread (we use our favorite Oat Nut bread)
milk to soak bread
diced red bell pepper
diced green bell pepper
sliced black olives
sliced mushrooms
minced sliced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
Worcestershire sauce
freshly ground black pepper
SriRacha or cayenne or Tabasco or. . . (optional)

Here's how you do it.
About an hour or so before you're going to make your meatloaf, get the egg out of the refrigerator and let it warm up to room temperature. If you want your eggs to combine well with other ingredients in almost any recipe, the egg cannot be cold, right out of the refrigerator. So always try to remember (or plan far enough in advance) to allow your egg(s) to warm up.

And if your ground beef is frozen, well, you're going to need to thaw it out before you'll be able to shape it into a loaf. Use the microwave, if you've got one; or just put the meat on a plate in the refrigerator for a few hours before you start. (The safest way to slow-thaw meats is in the refrigerator. The cold helps keep down the growth of bacteria .)

When you're ready to get started, preheat the oven to about 450° F. Put the bread slice in a shallow bowl and cover it with milk. Spread a drip or five of olive oil around the inside of a small loaf pan (8x3x3").

For a little loaf like this one, you'll only need a little bit of onion and peppers and such. We use a couple of thin slices of a small onion, which amounts to about ½ Tsp. or less when minced up. Similar amounts of diced green and/or red peppers are plenty. Though once proved wrong, our general approach is that there is no such thing as too much garlic, so a full clove tastes fine in our house. If you're garlic shy, try to find a smallish clove, or go ahead and waste a little excess if you must. And two mushrooms are probably enough for this sized loaf. Slice them thickly (3-4 slices per 'shroom) if you'd like noticeable nuggets of mushroom in your loaf; slice thinly, or even chop them up, if you just want the flavor. Add olives as you wish.

Toss all these chopped and diced and minced ingredients into the bottom of a mixing bowl. Add the meat. Give it a quick slug of Worcestershire sauce (¼ to ½ Tsp., depending on your tastes). I usually squeeze a little SriRacha in just for some extra zing, but it's certainly not necessary.

Add 6-8 grinds of black pepper, and, if you must, a pinch of salt. (Since salt tends to draw the juices out of foods, we try to reserve salt for the table; but sometimes a tiny bit during the cooking can 'improve' the flavor of the cooked food. In this case, the other flavors in the loaf are strong enough that we don't find any 'improvement' with the use of salt. But try it both ways for yourself, and go with whatever tastes best to you!)

Next, gently squeeze all the milk out of the bread slice (reserve the milk - you can use it in the gravy you'll make later!), and then crumble the bread lump onto the meat. Crack the egg on top of the pile. And have fun!

The only way to get the 'proper' texture to your final meatloaf is to get into that bowl with both hands. Squeeze, and roll, and squish, and turn and churn and otherwise mix everything up. You don't want to homogenize the mixture, so a minute or two will be plenty; but you do want to thoroughly combine everything, distributing all the ingredients throughout the loaf. When you're done, roll it all up into a ball (it will probably end up about the size of a fat baseball), and toss it into the loaf pan. Pat, push, press, and pamper the ball into a nice loaf shape, leaving at least a little room between the loaf and the sides of the pan. (If you want to be totally decadent, hide a few small chunks of cheddar cheese in the middle of your loaf!)

Put the pan in the preheated oven for about 5 - 6 minutes. Then turn the temperature down to about 325 - 350° F (don't forget or you'll just create a charcoal briquette!) and cook for 35-45 minutes. If you're paranoid, use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature before you call the loaf done.

When the loaf is done, remove it from the pan and make some gravy. If you used ground sirloin, there won't be much fat in the pan, but you can always add a pat of butter or a Tbsp. of olive oil to give you enough fat to make a roux. And be sure to remember to use the milk you reserved earlier (along with vegetable and potato cooking water) as part of the liquid for your gravy. (And if gravy making is terra incognito for you, check out the instructions in the Maryland Fried Chicken recipe of Feb. 2005.)

Then slice it up and enjoy!

Site Index

2005-07-10T15:44:00.003-04:00

This thing has gotten big enough that searching through to find something in particular is a chore. So, herewith and henceforth, The Index (sort of alphabetically for now . . .):

Ingredients:

Ingredient: Chorizos

Ingredient: Louisiana Hot Sauce

Ingredient: Miso

Recipe/Ingredient: Poached Shrimp(s)

Recipes:

Recipe: 11 secret herbs and spices

Recipe: Barbecued Potatoes

Recipe: Beef Stew

Recipe: Bolices

Recipe: Butternut Squash

Recipe: Cajun Asian Chicken stir-fry

Recipe/Technique: Carmelized Onions

Recipe: Cathy's World Famous Garlic Bread

Recipe: Chicken Cacciatore

Recipe: Chicken Gismondo a la TJ

Recipe: Chicken Jambalaya

Recipe: Chicken with Mustard Sauce

Recipe: Chicken wrapped Chorizos

Recipe/Technique: Classic Brown Stock

Recipe: Corn O'Catherine

Recipe: Cream of Asparagus Soup with ham and potatoes

Recipe: Cream of Potato Soup

Recipe: Cream of Broccoli Soup Etc.

Recipe: Georges's Greek Green Beans

Recipe: Green Beans and Tomatoes

Recipe: Half Sour Pickles

Recipe: Maryland Fried Chicken

Recipe: Simple Meatloaf

Recipe: Mediterranean Style Seafood Soup

Recipe: Mostaccioli

Recipe: Orange Beef and Rice with Sausteamed Vegetable Medley

Recipe: Oven baked simple subs

Recipe: Paprika fried potatoes

Recipe: Split Pea Soup

Recipe/Technique: Perfect No-Lump Gravy

Recipe: Perfect Rice . . .

Recipe: Perfect Roast Beef

Recipe: Pork with Onions & Apples

Recipe: Simple Roast Chicken

Recipe: Roast Chicken Leftovers

Recipe: Rubbed pork with parsley potatoes & Brussels Sprouts

Recipe: Sautéed Filet of Sole

Recipe: Smashed Rutabagas (Turnips)

Recipe: That Shrimpy thing you do . . .

Recipe: The Maine Lobster Dinner

Recipe: The (venerable) Western Omelet

Recipe: Tommy J’s definitely not Hungarian Chicken Goulash

Recipe: Grilled Tuna & Pasta

Recipe/Technique: Veggie Fried Rice

Techniques:

Technique: Chicken on the Grill

Technique: Chopping Onions

Technique: Coring Iceberg Lettuce

Technique: Dismantling the Maine Lobster

Technique: Hard Cooked Eggs

Technique: Perfect Stovetop Popcorn

Tip/Technique: Vegetable Stock

Tips:

Tip: Tip: The Antibacterial Soap Diatribe

Tip: Cheese Graters

Tip: Choke That Blade

Tip: De String Da Celery

Tip: Frozen foods

Tip: Get the air out – of your ziplock baggies, that is . . .

Tip: Hone That Blade

Tip: Paper Towel the Produce

Tip: Pay Attention

Tip: Save the salt until the water is hot!

Tip: Surviving the Season of (winter) Tomato Horribilus...

Tip: Upend your peeler

Tip: Use Wood Cutting Boards!

Just messages:

A Short break . . .

And on some days . . .

And the outcome was . . .

Apologies . . .

Catching up . . .

Cookin' again!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

It's The Holiday Hiatus

Not gone . . .

The first post . . .

The Missing Photos

The Missing Photos Return . . .

the pace of change . . .

the vagaries of online life . . .

Whaddaya mean 6 weeks . . .!?!?!

Recipe: George’s Greek Green Beans

2005-07-10T15:30:00.000-04:00

There once was a little hole in the wall restaurant in the western suburbs of Boston where a Greek named George (Constanopolous, I think) served the best (and, for all I know, in the mid 1970s, the only) Gyros in the area. George also served the most amazing green beans I’ve ever tasted. After frequenting his establishment several times a week for almost a year, and (during the LightCraft Photo/Graphics epoch) designing his new menu and tablemats (he declined our offer to do the mural for his walls), George finally let out his secret. I don’t understand the magic involved, but the process is repeatable, and the beans are divine.

The secret is time; these beans require at least 4, and preferably 8 hours to prepare. Not that you have to do anything after you get them started, but they must cook for a long time.

here's what you'll need . . .

fresh green beans (preferably just picked)
fresh tomatoes (preferably just picked)
olive oil (the best you can afford)
salt and freshly ground black pepper (Tellicherry, of course!)

That’s it! Like I said, magic happens, but it doesn’t reside in any secret ingredients. The first time I cooked George’s beans, I didn’t believe in magic, so I tried a very small batch. The second time I cooked them and every time since, I do a week’s worth. The cooked product does not freeze well (believe me I’ve tried!), but they will last a week (or so) in the refrigerator, so plan your menus in advance to go well with these beans. That way, you can do a huge batch!

Here's how you do it.
All you need to do is wash all the veggies. Drain them and let them sit on a towel (paper if you must) till they are dry. Then, trim the stem ends off and ‘kitchen cut’ the green beans.

Now find a pot, for which you still have the cover, and pour some olive oil in the bottom. You want the olive oil to be about ¼ inch deep in the bottom of the pot. Toss in the beans.

Next, core and wedge the tomatoes and toss them in on top of the beans. Finally, grind about twice as much pepper as you think is appropriate over the top of the veggies and add a pinch or 3 of kosher salt.

Cover and cook over very low heat for at least 4 hours (6 is better, 8 is about perfect. George used to start them at about 8am to serve with his 6pm dinners.)

Now, a word or 3 about quantities. We find that about a pound of green beans and 4 smallish tomatoes fit comfortably in a 2 Qt saucepan, and will create 2 - 4 servings. This size needs about ¼ cup (3+ Tbsp) of olive oil, about 1/3 tsp. salt, and enough pepper to darken the surface of the pile of ingredients in the pot.

To create a week’s worth, triple all quantities (except the salt - use about ½ tsp.) and cook in a 3 Qt saucepan. If you want to make enough for the block party or the football team, get out your 18 Qt stock pot, pour about ½ inch of olive oil into it, then pour most of it it back out into a cup (now that you’ve measured it); then layer the beans and tomatoes in ‘week’s worth’ quantities into the pot. Salt and pepper each layer (you’re on your own regarding the quantities - but be careful with the salt; the acidity of the tomatoes multiplies the saltiness dramatically). Then pour the rest of the olive oil back in on top of everything; cover and cook as usual.

Very low heat means just that. If you can see steam escaping from under the cover of the pot or hear any serious bubbling with your ear close to the pot, it’s too hot; turn it down a notch. (Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, once made a comment about cooking fish - he said instead of cooking it, you should “threaten” it. The same is true of these beans. Unlike fish, the beans cook for a very long time, such that anything slightly over room temperature will work!)

On your first attempt (and any try thereafter where you have an anxiety attack), you can lift the lid of the pot after an hour to see what’s happening. Very little. Your tomatoes should be looking slightly warmish.

After 2 hours, steam should rise gently from the barely bubbling beans.

And after 3 hours, well, cookin' is goin' on . . .

After that, leave 'em alone (and leave the cover on the pot) until the beans are done! But when they are, be prepared to dine on Mt. Olympus.

Recipe: Barbecued Potatoes

2005-07-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

I never would have believed it! I figured that if you tried to ‘barbecue’ a baked potato, you’d either get a lump of charcoal, or a tooth breaking cold center, or you’d have to steam them in foil. But Nooooo . . . oh grill-breath; another possibility exists . . .

This came about because my daughter wanted steak and baked potato and the temperature was about 90 and the humidity even higher. And I was not about to run the oven (at Any temperature!) for an hour or two for Anybody. But daughters are, well, you know . . . So, what to do, what to do . . .

Duh. Parboil the suckers! But wait. That will only get the outside started; the center will still be rock hard. Hmmmmm.

Anyway, this is what evolved, and has since been repeated repeatedly!

You’ll need:
1 potato per serving
onion powder
garlic powder
paprika
Tellicherry
coarse salt
olive oil
ice

Here’s how you do it . . .

Put your favorite teakettle on to boil, and set out a saucepan large enough to hold all your potatoes (which will be cut in half in a minute).

Scrub your potatoes clean and then slice them in half lengthwise to make the flattest pieces rather than the thickest pieces.

Toss them cut side down into your saucepan and ‘parblanch’ them. That means pour the boiling water over the potatoes and cover the pot. Let them sit for 5 – 7 minutes. (Oh, and this would be a good time to pre-heat your grill.)

For two skinny little spuds, 5 minutes will be fine; for a bucket full of ½ lb. Russets, at least 7. But 7 is about the limit because by then, the water will have cooled down too much to do the ‘parblanching’ thing, and you’ll just be stewing your potatoes. If you really need to grill potatoes for a few hundred, try making two shallow slices (with your thinnest blade knife) just down either side of the center line of the cut face of each potato half. Start and stop your slit about 1” from each end. The idea is to let the boiling water get into the center of the potato as well as on its surface.

When the potatoes have had their bath, drain off the hot water and dump them into an ice bath. Just like with other vegetables, the ‘shocking’ by the ice bath stops the cooking, firms up the texture and improves the ‘look’ of your potatoes. Leave them in the ice just long enough so that when you pick one up and hold it for 30 seconds, it no longer feels ‘hot;’ vaguely warm is OK, but not ‘hot.’

Dry the potatoes (air, paper towels, kitchen towel . . .) and set them cut side up on a plate or three. You want plenty of space around each piece so you can get you fingers in between them without rubbing against their neighbors.

Sprinkle the cut sides lightly with the onion powder (1st), the garlic powder (2nd), then the paprika and then a few grinds of Tellicherry. Now, drizzle a tiny streamlet of olive oil down the length of each potato. Try to do a serpentine pattern rather than a straight line, but in any case, make it a very thin line. You don’t want to ‘wash off’ any of the spices.

When the oil is on, prepare to get messy (like set out a paper towel or two within easy reach, move stuff out of the way so you can get to the sink to wash your hands without spattering soap all over your food, things like that . . .)

Now ‘pat out’ the oil on the surface of each piece. You want oil to cover the entire cut surface, but you can’t rub because that will just rub off all the spices. So try to do little light ‘patty cake patty cake’ taps to spread out the oil over the spices. Don’t get obsessive, you’re about to turn the potatoes over onto the cut sides anyway; but try to leave as much of the seasoning evenly distributed under the oil as possible.

So. Turn ‘em over. Don’t slide ‘em around, just turn ‘em over and give each piece a little ‘pat down’ over its surface. Then turn ‘em face up again. The whole point of this exercise is just to get some oil and spice (the ‘excess’ from the surfaces) onto the plate so you can spread it around the skin side(s) of the potatoes.

So do it. Get your fingertips down there into the oil-spice mixture on the plate; squeeze up a pinch and spread it around. You want a nice oily coating all over the outsides of the potatoes.

Now wash your hands.

And after they’re dry (your hands, that is), sprinkle precisely 23 ¼ (or whatever your magic number of the moment might be) grains of coarse (Kosher) salt evenly across the surface of each potato. You don’t want to ‘salt’ the potatoes, you just want to add one more zingy component to the flavor. And, you have to wait until the potatoes are oiled to add the salt, otherwise the salt will just dissolve in the moisture of the potato and you will have simply salted your potatoes instead of making them Sing! (The coarse salt will not dissolve in the oil.)

When the grill is pre-heated, turn the heat down to medium or medium-low and put the potatoes, cut side up, on the (lower) warming rack(s) of the grill. Close the cover and twiddle your thumbs for about 20 minutes. Then, turn the potatoes over, cut side down, close the cover, and keep on twiddling for another 5 – 10 minutes. Now turn the taters cut side up again, and finish the cooking – probably another 15 or 20 or 30 minutes.

Serve ‘em up and enjoy! We’ve now done them, with steaks, ribs, chicken, and salmon, and they’ve worked well with each. But do keep the spice/oil/salt stages separate. I’ve tried 23 variations of mixing one, some, all of the spice(s) with oil and then just rubbing, rolling, soaking, dipping, the potatoes in the mixture(s) to try to simplify the process. And while some of those experiments have resulted in edible outcomes, none have matched the glory of the ‘proper’ barbecued potato. So do it ‘right,’ have some fun, and then enjoy!

Technique: Chicken on the Grill

2005-06-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

Chicken on the grill is about as All-American as you can get - not that other cultures around the planet haven't got eons of history cooking poultry over fire. But somehow, whenever we feel the need to put on a 'typical Amurricun feast,' like for example, when niece Jessica was about to head off for a year in Japan, well, chicken on the grill with corn on the cob and potato salad or boiled potatoes and a big green salad, that was it. What else can ya say?

here's what you'll need . . .

chicken parts, I like breasts, Cathy likes legs, works out just right . . .
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup coarse kosher salt
1 gal. water
stuff to put on the chicken, see below . . .

Here's how you do it.
The first trick is a gift from my Uncle Chuck in Florida. An ex- IRS agent, gone legit in his retirement helping out victims of IRS intimidation, well into his 80s, and he's still giving me gourmet-cooking tips! Go figure . . . I think he came upon this one in Cooks Illustrated, but I'm not entirely sure. I am sure, however, that it works.

Dissolve the sugar and salt in cold water. Don't, as is my wont, start with a little bit of hot water and then cool it down after everything is dissolved. Start with cold water. Stir. A lot. Plan on 25 minutes to get it all dissolved. And do get it all dissolved. No little flakes or clouds or even the slightest murkiness. All dissolved. No heat.

Wash your chicken parts and put a few in a Baggie, pour in the sugar/salt liquid to cover, and seal it up. Use however many Baggies of whatever size you need to soak all your chicken in this miraculous broth. Seal them up, and let 'em sit in the 'fridge for at least an hour; 6 is fine.

When the time is up, take 'em out, wash 'em thoroughly, and get ready to grill! (The soaking insures that your chicken will come out tender and juicy, whether you cook it quickly over high heat, or leave it on the grill for a week over barely a flame. No, I have no idea why - though I can take a few guesses about what salt and sugar do to the cell membranes and osmotic pressure of the chicken meat, but, guesses they'd be, so let's just say, it works!)

So how do you get some soaked chicken ready to grill? I have about 97 favorite ways; I suspect that the more times you cook chicken on the grill, the more favorites you'll come up with too.

The simplest is, do nothing. Maybe grind some Tellicherry all over, and then just put it on the fire.

Another great idea is to take a bottle of your favorite Italian salad dressing and douse your chicken with it. (Be sure to rub it all over, not just puddle it on top.) Let it sit at room temperature for 10 - 30 minutes, and toss it on the fire.

Or maybe you've got a favorite olive oil and/or balsamic vinegar and/or herb or spice? Well, you've got the idea already. Oil it, rub it, vinegar it, rub it, herb it, rub it, spice it, rub it - in any order that strikes your fancy of the day! Let it sit, and put it on the fire.

I've been known to do no more than rub the chicken with some of my favorite Louisiana Hot Sauce; or maybe just a light dose of Worcestershire; or maybe a thickly coat of A-1; or maybe a layer of Tabasco Sauce rubbed with a sploosh of sesame oil; or . . .

And, there are any number of home-makeable and/or store bought 'rubs' that you can try. I'm particularly fond of Penzey's Galena Street Rub, as well as their Bavarian Rub. And I've been know to just mix a little ground cayenne, rosemary and thyme and scrub it into my chicken parts. If you're at a complete loss, just wander around your kitchen sniffing things. Anything that smells good, set the bottle out on the counter. When you've piled a bunch of bottles on the counter, do the same sniffing thing amongst them. Narrow it down to 3 or 5 or 7 or the magic 11, and go for it!

So. Either give your chicken parts some flavor. Or don't. Chicken does have a wonderful flavor all by itself. A little salt and pepper, and hey, eat hearty!

Of course, before you eat it, you should probably warm it up, at least a little! So put it on the grill. I prefer to use very low heat and let the beast cook for a long time - 45 minutes to maybe as much as a hour and a half, depending on how many pieces of chicken I'm trying to cook at once. The more meat, the longer the time. But others like to take the quick approach - turn the flame up high, leave the cover open, call it done in 30 minutes. Since grilling is a book unto itself, I'll leave the fine points to you. Just remember, the bird is definitely NOT cooked until the juices run clear (when you poke near a bone). So practice on your grill until you have a good idea how long various meats take. But since you have to practice anyway, why not practice with 27 different approaches to one of America's All Stars - grilled chicken!

Tip: Upend your peeler

2005-06-25T14:40:00.000-04:00

I always put carrots in a salad. Sometimes half-moon slices, sometimes chunks, sometimes julienned . . . But I noticed after a while that Cathy was leaving them behind. So I tried curls.

Well, all the curls got eaten, but slicing them off the carrot with a vegetable peeler resulted in carrot curl décor for the entire kitchen! One day, in frustration, I just dropped the peeler on the counter to reach for a glass of wine. The peeler landed upside down, half-on and half off the cutting board, and when I looked back down, well, duhhhh . . .

So, if you don’t have a mandolin or a magical mechanical carrot curler, just prop the old veggie peeler upside down on the edge of your cutting board and stroke away! (Just remember to stop before you curl your fingerprints off! Really makes a mess, that . . .)

Apologies . . .

2005-06-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it's been an entire month since the last post!

Let's start small . . . and get rolling again!

Recipe: Mostaccioli

2005-05-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

I had never heard of “mahstacholee” until I spent a few years in the Chicago area where it was a time honored (and competitive!) traditional meal amongst all my new found Irish relatives. Years later, I tried my hand, and it turned out to be so tasty, it has become an oft-requested favorite back here in New England as well.

I didn’t find out until I started writing up my recipes that Mostaccioli is actually the name of a pasta (“little mustaches”) rather than a dish, but, hey, who am I to stand on principle . . . Besides, I’d never found a pasta named Mostaccioli on my store shelves (until last week), so I’ve made this dish with Ziti, Penne, elbow Macaroni, Rigatoni and a few other shapes I’ve never heard of before or since! So I say, call this meal “mahstacholee” and dig in!

Here’s what you’ll need . . .

beef (ground beef, chopped beef, sliced beef, shredded beef, cubed beef, roast beef, stew beef, steak or . . .)
hot Italian sausage
onion
garlic
red pepper
green pepper
mushrooms (optional)
celery (optional)
tomatoes
white wine
bay leaf
oregano, basil,
salt
Tellicherry
sriracha
olive oil
pasta

Brown some sausage and beef in a little oil in a skillet, or a Dutch Oven big enough to hold the entire mess. You can use ground beef, or shredded beef or chopped up beef or left over steak or roast beef or, hey, if you want, make the dish with chicken or with pork or with veal (if you’re a mean heartless carnivore) or . . .

But I like beef. One time, I found an old cube steak in the freezer and an old burger. Chopped ‘em up, thawed ‘em while they browned, and the whole thing turned out great. This time, I used some frozen ground beef, a couple of sausage links and some leftover deli roast beef cut into pieces.

I like to have some chunks in the finished dish, so I usually slice up the sausage. If you’d prefer a texture more like a traditional meat sauce, slit the sausage casing and squeeze the meat out before cooking it. Same with leftovers or other cuts of meat – leave ‘em chunky for character, or shred them small for a smoother sauce.

After the meat browns (not burned – just take the red off and let the first of the fat render out), remove the meat to a plate, preserving every last drip of juice in the pan.

Also, along about here somewhere, put the pasta water on to boil.

Throw in a mess of chopped onion and let it get tender, probably 2 – 3 minutes. Then add your chopped celery, if you’re using it (I like a little bit, just for the extra flavor it adds), and cook for another minute or two. Then add the red and green peppers and cook gently for another 5 minutes or so. You want the peppers to give up the first sweetness of their flavor and that takes about 5 minutes of heat.

About 1 minute into the pepper-time, add the mushrooms, if you’re using them. And, about 3 minutes into the pepper-time, toss in a clove (or 12) of chopped garlic. (This is going to cook for at least another hour, so you can leave the garlic fairly chunky – it will get tender,)

By now the water should be boiling, so toss the pasta in and stir it around. I usually use Ziti, but any hollow tubular shaped pasta will do fine. This batch was Rigatoni because that’s what I had on hand. Cook it al dente, with a definite ‘bite’ to it. It’s going to cook into creaminess in the sauce – you just want to start it here in the water.

While the pasta cooks, add a can of whole tomatoes to the Dutch oven (or whatever pot you’re using), and break them up with the edge of your spatula.

For this batch I used a 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes (yes, Pastene), and a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes (also Pastene).

Add a good slug of white wine, a healthy grind or 12 of black pepper, a goodly squeeze of sriracha (about an inch long), a bay leaf or two, and maybe a handful or two of oregano, basil, and parsley (not cilantro – it’s too strong at this point – save that for serving time!)

Now stir it all around and add the meat back into your burgeoning sauce.

When the pasta is done, drain most of the water but save a ½ cup or so and toss it into the sauce with along with the pasta.

Stir it all around, put a lid on it and leave it over barely there heat for an hour or three. Yes, you can check on it from time to time, give it another stir, add some more water (or wine or beer or . . .) if it starts to dry out (but unless you keep popping the lid every five minutes, or have the heat way too hot, you shouldn’t need more liquid).

When you can’t stand the wait any longer, serve it up with tossed salad and crunchy bread.

(And if you would like a quick primer on pasta shapes and names, be sure to check out http://www.ilovepasta.org/shapes.html)

Recipe: Cream of Broccoli Soup Etc.

2005-05-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

It started out as “I refuse to throw out this pint of cream!” Which led to: “This broccoli is getting kinda old.” Which led to: “What’s for dinner?” Which led to this concoction . . .

I have no photos of this one. Since it sort of created itself as it went along, and since I had no idea whether it would be edible, the camera didn’t join me in the kitchen. But we just finished the leftovers for lunch, and they were every bit as good as the batch we had for dinner a couple of nights ago. So, hey, give it a try and see what you think.

Here’s what you’ll need . . .

bacon
1/3 lb. thin sliced ham
3 – 4 small broccoli heads
3 - 4 small potatoes
1 medium onion
2 – 3 cloves garlic
12 oz. light cream
2 – 4 cups chicken stock
6 oz. extra sharp cheddar cheese
Tellicherry
parsley flakes

Here’s how you do it . . .

Since it started out to be just a plain old cream of broccoli soup, and I couldn’t find any salt pork to make some ‘cracklins’ for a little crunch and flavor, I decided to use bacon instead. We don’t use bacon very often, so there’s usually a slab in the freezer, which makes slicing ¼” strips from the end of the slab pretty easy.

I used three strips. One I left ‘whole’ so that the pieces, when thawed, would be as ‘long’ as a normal slice of bacon is wide. The other two strips got turned on their side and cut into ¼” ‘confetti.’ Then into the skillet over low heat to thaw, render the fat, and slowly brown.

While that was going on, I chopped the onion (a small tennis ball size), minced the garlic cloves, and washed and trimmed the broccoli into little floret pieces. And even though my aging broccoli was picked young, with skinny stalks, I still trimmed the stalks down to their white center parts, which are tender and full of flavor, and chopped them up.

For chicken stock, I dissolved a heaping teaspoon of ‘chicken base’ in two cups of hot water. If I’d used a measuring spoon, it would have been a tablespoon, for sure, so the ‘stock’ I created was pretty rich. But that’s OK ‘cause we’ll be adding more liquid later.

And by that time, the bacon was all nicely browned. So, carefully out of the skillet and onto some paper towel to dry. Into the skillet goes the onion. Turn the heat up a little, just until you get some slight sizzle going on. Stir it around from time to time while you peel the potatoes.

When the potatoes are peeled, toss the garlic into the onions, and stir, stir, stir. As the garlic aroma pervades the kitchen, dice up the potatoes into little cubes – you should be able to fit 3 or 4 of them into a soupspoon.

When the potatoes are all cut up, carefully spatulate the onion/garlic mixture into the bottom of your soup pot, trying to leave all the bacon fat behind in the skillet. Turn up the heat under the skillet a little more and toss in the potatoes. Yup. Stir, stir, stir . . .

While the potatoes cook, add the chicken stock to the soup pot and get a little heat under it. Add a pinch (or six) of ground cayenne if you like, and grind a goodly sprinkle of Tellicherry all over the surface of the soup. Oh, and toss in your bacon bits.

While the soup warms and the potatoes cook, cut your brick of cheddar up into little cubes.

When the potatoes show just a hint of color, into the soup pot with ‘em, and into the skillet with your broccoli florets (and stalk bits). Stir, stir . . . But just for a couple of minutes – warm the broccoli (and let it get coated with all the great flavors now lurking in the last sheen of bacon fat left in the skillet), don’t cook it. Then into the soup!

Now, decision time. How much more liquid to add? Since my cheater stock was pretty strong, I decided another two cups of water would be about right – plenty of room in the pot, plenty of flavor to start, and more to come, and with some evaporation during the rest of the cooking, yup, two cups.

So pour it in, stir it through, and raise the heat to get a bare bubble going. And while that’s going on, get out that deli ham that would have gone bad in the next few days, and start frizzling it.

Frizzle? Sure. Skillet on low heat, lay out two or three slices of ham, leaving room to flip them easily. When they start to sizzle, look for a touch of color around their edges, and for them to ‘bubble-up’ in the middle. When they do, flip them over, cook a bit, and maybe even one more cycle of flips until they reach whatever state of cookedness pleases you. I like char; Cathy likes none; so I compromised – half the slices my way, half hers. As the slices get done, move them to a plate.

By now the soup should be bubbling gently, so toss in the cheese and just keep stirring slowly until it all melts. Cook for another minute or two and then add in the cream, stirring all the while. Then cut, shred, tear, or otherwise rend the ham slices into edible sized pieces and throw them into the pot. Give a goodly sprinkle of parsley flakes across the top, and now just let it cook slowly, stirring now and then, until you declare done. I waited until the level of soup in the pot had gone down about an inch, and then served it up with some crunchy rye toast. Next time, I’ll take pictures . . .

Recipe: Smashed Rutabagas (Turnips)

2005-04-25T16:30:00.000-04:00

Before you begin, understand that what you find at the supermarket, in the bin marked turnip, are usually rutabaga(s), not turnips. Rutabagas are those big, well-waxed, roundish things, with a yellowy-purplish skin. They are indeed wonderful, and should be enjoyed on all occasions. But they ain't turnips. Turnips are typically smaller (maybe softball sized), with a distinctly purple skin. When cut, a turnip is white fleshed; a rutabaga is yellow fleshed. A turnip has a sharper, more distinct flavor; a rutabaga has a duller, flatter, more subdued flavor. Both are delicious. This is about rutabagas.

Also, remember that rutabagas always take twice as long to cook as you think they should! I’m not sure why - maybe it's because I hated them as a child and they're now exacting revenge. More likely, the starches in the rutabaga just take a lot longer to break down into sugars than other starches. Who knows . . . But we love rutabagas - with roast poultry especially, and in soups and stews as well. Yes, they're a strong flavor, edging towards the bitter. But cooked just long enough, and smashed with some butter, oh, they're as sweet and rich as your heart could wish.

here's what you'll need . . .

rutabaga
salt
Tellicherry
butter

Here's how you do it.

When doing rutabaga, I always try to cut the thing in half before I try to peel it. Get your sharpest, heaviest, longest knife, or your cleaver or Chinese knife, if you have one. Set the rutabaga on your cutting board in whatever position it will sit quietly. That may be on end, if the ends are flat enough, or it may be on one side - whichever side it rolls to naturally. If you have the cleaver or Chinese knife, and are fearless using it, give the ‘baga a good whack. You might get halfway through it or so.

But head start or not, just lean down on the knife and rock it back and forth, a little bit at a time. (Remember that a knife blade cuts on motion, not on pressure; so keep the blade moving.) Sometime within the next week or so, you will succeed in cutting the thing in half. If you're using the basic chef's knife, well, try to thunk it into the 'baga at least a little way before leaning and rocking.

Whichever knife you use, do try to keep an eye on the direction of your cut - it will be nicer if you get a reasonably straight line through the veggie. With a flat side and the sharp edge of your cut, you have half a chance of something to grip while you take your peeler and remove the skin. Do peel deep enough to get all the skin off.

You can use your peeler to whittle off the stem ends, or wait until you've cut the half into pieces, and then trim off the tougher, darker bits at the stem ends. Once peeled, whack the hunks up into 2" pieces (or so, but bigger tends to be better than smaller, just because you're going to cook them forever). Toss 'em in a pot, cover with water, and cook 'em slowly forever. (Yes, you can add some salt, if you must.)

The ones below have been on for about 20 minutes. They’re not boiling. They’re just barely bubbling. Notice the pale yellow color.

An hour and 20 minutes later, and they’re starting to get done. See the change in color from before?

And here they are after about 2 ½ hours of cooking. These are just about done. They’ve gone from light yellow to dark yellow to an almost orange color (similar to a yam). That’s when you know they’re ready. ‘Course, you could always just, well, taste one!

Just remember, the longer they cook, the sweeter they get, and the easier they will be on your digestion, too!

When they're cooked, drain 'em, and dry 'em out for a minute or three. Throw in a hunk of butter, and smash them up with your potato masher. We like ours pretty lumpy, so it only takes a minute to smash them; if you're wimpy, you can try to get them to whipped potato consistency - but you'll never quite succeed because the texture of the basic vegetable is different from a potato. When you're done beating on them, toss 'em in a bowl, grind a little pepper on top, and chow down.

Tip: Save the salt until the water is hot!

2005-04-07T15:00:00.000-04:00

Look in the bottom of your saucepans. See all those little pits, particularly in the aluminum and non-stick pots? To avoid them in the future, don’t add salt to your potatoes, or vegetables, or whatever until the water comes to a boil.

Salt is sodium chloride (NaCl) and in the presence of water, the salt ‘dissociates’ into sodium and chlorine ions. When you toss a spoonful of salt into cold water, the crystals settle to the bottom of your pan and slowly begin to dissociate. Some of the chlorine latches onto passing hydrogen ions in the water, and, voila, you’ve got little tiny concentrations of hydrochloric acid around each salt crystal to etch away at the bottom of your cookware.

When the water is hot, the salt goes into solution almost immediately, all the ions are evenly distributed throughout the liquid, and you never get a concentration of acid in one spot to dig any little pits.

If you absolutely cannot remember to add the salt after the water boils, just dissolve the crystals thoroughly in little water in a glass dish or measuring cup and then throw it in the pan. But of course, the best solution of all is: don’t salt your food until after it’s cooked. Most of us get way too much salt in our diets anyway, so if you can learn to leave it out in the cooking, you’ll use a lot less and who knows, maybe even live longer!

Recipe: Mediterranean Style Seafood Soup

2005-04-04T16:24:00.000-04:00

It's been way too long! But again, lot's of repeat meals recently. But for something different, give this one a try . . .

This dish is named Mediterranean Style Seafood Soup primarily because it's got some tomatoes in it and because it was first created the day after some Spanish rice experiments - not because it uses any inherently Mediterranean ingredients. In fact, the seafood all came out of my freezer!

See, even though we live in New England, and have a wondrous selection of fresh local seafood available almost all year, sometimes you end up with extra. A guest cancels at the last minute; an emergency takes you out of the house; the newcomer to the table turns out to be allergic to seafood . . .

For one reason or another, you've got some fresh fish that you can't use. So into the freezer it goes.

Well, a month or four later, you're sick to death of chicken and pork, and looking for something different, and there it is, as you rummage through the depths of the freezer - that leftover hunk of haddock or salmon or cod or whatever. Well, into the soup pot with it! Marvelous things can happen . . .

here's what you'll need . . .

fish, whatever's at hand; mix and match if you wish; this is a hearty soup, so 1/8 to ¼ lb. per serving will be plenty.
shrimp - you do always keep a bag in the freezer for emergencies . . .Toss in two or three per serving
scallops - but only leftovers - fresh should never be boiled!
vegetables - carrots, celery, peppers of any and every color, zucchini, summer squash, green beans, wax beans, almost anything will work, though strong flavors like broccoli, asparagus, turnip and such will very quickly dominate the soup.
tomatoes - a can or three, and add in those scummy fresh ones that aren't quite garbage, but certainly can't be put in a salad
potatoes - about ½ potato per serving
onions - about ½ for two servings and 1/8 per serving thereafter
garlic - 2 cloves for two servings, about ½ per serving thereafter
noodles - a small handful for two servings, wide egg noodles, spaghetti, ziti, penne, whatever is on hand - you just want a few floating around.
rice - a Tbsp. or two for two servings, ½ tsp. per serving thereafter - like the noodles, you just want a little bit floating around
stock - fish if you've got it (check out your local Asian market for dried Bonita flake fish stock starters!), or chicken or vegetable stock, or if all else fails use water and some chicken bullion cubes
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Tabasco or other 'controllable' hot sauce, and/or a few slices of 'pickled' jalapeno
black olives

Here's how you do it.

Cut the fish into spoon-bite sized pieces - and remember, when you eat this soup, you'll want to get more than just a piece of fish in your spoon! But also remember, if you're using flounder or sole or some other more delicate fish, you can't cut the pieces too small or they will simply dissolve.

Take a similar attitude toward all the vegetables and the potatoes; make them spoon size pieces that will let you get a piece of fish, a piece of shrimp, a noodle, a vegetable, a potato and a tomato all on your spoon!! Ahhhh, what a mouthfull. But you get the idea.

Put it all in a soup pot. Bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes to 20 hours, and serve.

Or . . . Take some time with it. Sauté each of the veggies in some olive oil for a minute or two, starting with the onion, then peppers, then squashes, then etc. When each of the flavors has had a chance to build on what came before, then add in the tomatoes and simmer for a few minutes.

And don’t hesitate to use up the odds and ends in your pantry. I have no idea where this pasta came from, but it sure looked like the right size for some soup!

So, toss it in, along with the rice and potatoes (in this case, some old boiled ones that were in the freezer!). And again, let it simmer for a while. If you’re a ‘taster,’ now’s a good time to check for seasonings – need some more Tellicherry? How about salt? Got enough ‘zip’ from the Tabasco and/or jalapenos? Maybe add the juice from half a lemon (or even a lime, if that’s what you’ve got!) Make any adjustments and then toss in the fish.

Now give it the ’20 minutes to 20 hours’ barely there simmer and serve it up. Goes great with warm tortilla chips, and maybe some fresh tomato slices with Bleu cheese dressing or . . .

Recipe: Tommy J’s definitely not Hungarian Chicken Goulash

2005-03-21T14:15:00.000-05:00

So I opened a can of peas by mistake. Couldn’t use them that night, so they sat in the fridge and stared at me every time I opened the door. Until they ended up sitting next to a tub of soured cream, and well, one thing led to another . . .

here's what you'll need for two big servings. . .

1 large boneless, skinless chicken breast or 4 to 6 chicken ‘tenders’
1 can peas
onion
red bell pepper
garlic
mushrooms
Louisiana Hot Sauce
dried thyme
dried rosemary
paprika
fresh ground Tellicherry
soured cream
wide egg noodles
butter
olive oil

Here's how you do it.

Cube the chicken and massage it with the hot sauce. As I was making this up, I first planned on using SriRacha for the ‘heat’, but maybe that would have been a little too much or too ‘hard’ a heat. Then I thought about Tabasco, but that seemed too ‘pointy.’ sort of a needle-like heat. But then the old stand-by came to mind – Louisiana Hot Sauce – and it just seemed to work perfectly with the piquant pungency of the paprika. So rub it in and let the chicken sit until you get everything else ready (30 minutes or so).

Don’t drain the peas! Instead, season them with some dried thyme and rosemary. Crush about 1/3 tsp. of each in the palm of your hand and toss it into the liquid. Let the seasoned peas, like the chicken, sit for 30 minutes.

Put a pot of water on the stove and crank up the heat. By the time you get the rest of this stuff prepped, the water will be ready to cook your pasta.

I had some little bits of red onion leftover, so I chopped them up. But that didn’t look like enough, so I added about 2/3 of a yellow onion, sliced paper thin. Yeah, that’s about right . . Chop up the red bell pepper; I used about 1/3 of a large one. Chop the garlic. That’s two good-sized cloves, coarsely chopped. And, hey, mushrooms go with everything!

And to provide a cool, crunchy contrast to the goulash, toss together some iceberg lettuce and tomatoes to go with your favorite Ranch dressing.

Now that you can pay attention to the timing, your pot of water should be boiling, so cook up some wide egg noodles. Don’t let them cook for more than 5 minutes! Then drain them, give them a quick rinse under cold water, and back into the still warm pot. Add a Tbsp. or so of butter, stir to coat the noodles and then cover the pot to keep them warm.

Next, remove your skillet from its burner and turn the burner up to medium high (about 3 o’clock on my stove knobs). You don’t want to heat empty non-stick pans that hot – the heat will break down the coating and food will stick forevermore. But you will want to seal the chicken quickly so it will stay tender on the inside while you get it nicely browned on the outside.

So, when the burner is nice and hot, put the skillet on, count to 3, add a couple Tbsp. of olive oil, turn on the exhaust fan, and toss in the chicken. Swirl, toss, flip, and otherwise keep your chicken moving until it’s all nicely sealed. If the heat is right, it should take less than 2 minutes.

As soon as the chicken is sealed, lift the pan off the burner, reduce the heat to medium low (about 7 o’clock), count to 17, put the skillet back on the burner and cook the chicken until it’s brown. Probably another 4 to 6 minutes.

When the chicken is browned, remove it from the pan and set it aside until you get the sauce prepared. Try to leave all the oil in the skillet.

Now, put the skillet back on the burner, crank the heat up again (to about 4 o’clock this time), count to 5 and add the onions. Sauté for exactly one minute.

Add the peppers; sauté 1 minute.

Add the mushrooms; sauté 2 or 3 minutes, just until they begin to change color.

Add the garlic; sauté 1 minute.

Grind fresh Tellicherry all over everything. Stir it all around. Deglaze with white wine (that just means pour a goodly slug of wine into the hot skillet). Let it sizzle until half the wine is gone.

Add the peas and all the seasoned liquid, and swirl it all around until it comes back to a lively simmer.

Add about 3 Tbps. of soured cream and stir to mix thoroughly.

Return the sauce to a gentle simmer, reducing the heat to about 8 or even 9 o’clock on the knob. When the simmering has started, add the first dose of paprika. I just sprinkle my paprika on until it ‘looks right.’ In this case, I’d say I used about 2 Tbsp. It’s a pretty hefty dose.

And speaking of paprika, there are lots of different paprikas out there. Sweet, sour, half-sharp, and probably 27 others I’ve never heard of. I find I really like the flavor of the garden variety McCormick’s brand. Not too sharp, not too sweet, works well with other flavors but holds its own taste when cooked. So I buy it by the barrel and sprinkle it on everything. Your mileage may vary . . . But if you don’t like one brand, do try another and keep trying until you find the one(s) that work(s) for your taste.

OK. Keep that gentle simmer going until the volume of your sauce has been reduced by half. That may take from 5 to 7 or 8 minutes, so stir everything around every minute or two to help the sauce ‘become one.’ Don’t let it boil or your sauce will at least separate, maybe burn.

When the volume is down and the sauce is ‘one,’ add the chicken and more paprika. This time, I used less, maybe a couple of tsps. Once again, I just sprinkle until it looks right.

Cook a while. I don’t know. Until it’s ‘done.’ You want the chicken to get heated all the way through. You want the paprika flavors to have time to permeate the sauce. You want some of the ‘hot’ from the Louisiana Hot Sauce to wander through the dish. Give it 10 to 15 minutes or so; more than 20 or 25 would probably be a bad idea – too much liquid would evaporate.

When it’s ‘done,’ make noodle ring,

fill it with goulash,

and enjoy! Serve it up with your lettuce and tomato salad and maybe some crispy rye toast or crunchy French bread . . .

Recipe: Chicken Jambalaya

2005-03-13T15:00:00.000-05:00

The secret to this dish is our old favorite, Louisiana Hot Sauce (manufactured by Bruce Foods Corporation, New Iberia, LA.) In fact, we discovered this hot sauce during my first experiments with jambalaya, many years ago. As I’ve said before, there are other hot sauces of this type on the market, but this is the only one with the 'right' flavor, and the only one you can use in large enough quantities to 'do' the dish without destroying the palette.

Jambalayas are just nice mixtures of rice, tomatoes, meat(s), and anything else you'd like to throw in to make it interesting. The traditional recipes call for chicken, ham, rice, onion, tomato and spices. I like to add some mushrooms, garlic, red and green sweet peppers, carrots, ripe olives, and, of course, anything else that's hanging around in the refrigerator that needs to be used up. My problem used to be finding a skillet large enough to hold it all, but now, thanks again to Eric, that’s no trouble at all!

Serve it with crunchy French bread and a tossed green salad with a cool, mild dressing.

To build a batch big enough to serve 4 (or to serve two twice),

here's what you'll need . . .

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 medium onion (bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball)
1 cup uncooked long grain white rice
2 or 3 cans tomatoes
2 - 4 cups 'liquid' (water, chicken stock, juice from tomatoes, white wine, whatever you like)
¼ cup (or more or less) Louisiana Hot Sauce
olive oil
fresh, coarsely ground black pepper (Tellicherry, of course!)

Optional ingredients include:
cooked ham (about ½ cup cubed)
red and/or green peppers (about ½ cup total, chunked or chopped)
fresh mushrooms (about 6 medium sized, chunked or thick sliced or chopped or any combination of the above)
1 medium sized fresh carrot (thin sliced half-rounds or chopped any way you like)
1 stalk celery (chopped or sliced)
1 or 2 medium sized cloves of garlic (minced)
12 ripe olives (halved or quartered)
6 to 12 strands of spaghetti (broken into 1" pieces)
1 or 2 bay leaves
pinches of thyme, oregano, basil (today’s batch uses oregano and cilantro)
1 small jalapeno pepper (skinned and de-seeded, or canned), diced, sliced, or chopped

Here's how you do it.

Cube the chicken into pretty good-sized hunks. We usually get about 25 - 30 pieces out of two breasts. (If you're adding ham, get it cut up now as well). Set aside on a plate (and grind some black pepper on the chicken cubes, if you like).

Chop the onion and any of the other vegetables you're planning to include. Set aside (in neat little piles, of course) on a plate. Mince the garlic, break the spaghetti, and set out the bay leaves and spices, if you're planning on using them.

(If you're stuck with an electric stove, as I am, now is a good time to start heating your skillet.)

Open the tomatoes and drain the liquid into a measuring cup. Add a slug of white wine or any of the other liquids you want to use to the measuring cup. Then fill it up to two or three cups (or so, different batches of rice require a little more or a little less liquid) with water.

You'll need a large deep skillet - at least 12" (14" or 16" would be better, but they don't seem to sell them at WalMart), or a fancy Le Creuset like the one Eric gave me, or a Dutch oven or a . . . Get the pan hot (about ‘4 o’clock’ on my stove's dial), add about 2 Tbsp. olive oil, swirl a couple of times till you can smell the oil's aroma and toss in the chicken. Shake, toss, flip, turn or otherwise keep the chicken in motion until it is sealed on all sides. You can either keep it moving until it's lightly browned or turn the heat down a notch so you can leave it for a minute or three to clean up the mess you've made so far. (Since the ham is already cooked, you can add it later.)

Now, if you want your chicken 'hot' rather than only having the dish 'hot', this is the time to add the first slugs of Louisiana Hot Sauce. I don't usually measure out the hot sauce before cooking the dish. I just give the bottle a few judicious shakes from time to time. At this stage, add about 3 or 4 good solid shakes to make the chicken ‘hot’; otherwise, you can wait and add all the hot sauce later, after you get the liquid in.

When the chicken is about half way to lightly browned, toss in the vegetables (and if you turned the heat down above, turn it back up now - you'll need it.) Start with carrots, if you're using them; then onions; then mushrooms and peppers; then garlic, jalapenos, olives (and anything else you might have found lying around). The idea is to have all this stuff 'cooked' by the time the chicken is nicely browned.

There should be plenty of oil/chicken grease left in the pan for the next part, but if not, you can add another Tbsp. of olive oil and you probably want to push the chicken and vegetable mix over to the sides of the pan to give yourself some room. If you're using spaghetti, it goes in next. You want to brown the pasta in the hot oil.

Then toss in the rice and stir it around for a minute or four until every last grain is thoroughly coated with oil. You don't want the rice to start browning, but you do want it to start cooking, so keep it moving. If you're a time-control freak, the rice should be stirred around continuously for at least 5 minutes, but no more than 8 minutes.

When you're sick of coating/cooking the rice, stir everything together until is is nicely mixed. Add the tomatoes and kind of chop them up with the edge of your spatula (you want chunks, not mush). When everything's nicely mixed, swirl, shake, jiggle, flip and/or stir the whole mess for about 3 or 4 minutes. On the last swirl, jiggle, or flip, add the bay leaf and move it around enough to get it moist.

If you're using the spices, they can be tossed in now. And, if you did not grind black pepper all over the chicken while it was sitting on the plate earlier, grind it all over everything now.

Now, pour in the liquid and stir everything all around until it's thoroughly mixed. If you've kept the pan hot enough, the whole mess should be bubbling by the time you've got everything mixed up.

Now add the remaining hot sauce (or all of it if you didn't put any in earlier) and stir it in a couple of times. I usually add between 12 and 20 good 'splooshes' at this point (in addition to the 3 or 5 or 6 I added earlier). You'll have to experiment to find the right amount for your own taste. (If you like Old El Paso Thick and Chunky Salsa in the mild version, go for 12. If you like the medium version, go for 20. If you like the hot version, you're on your own!) When I started, this 12 oz. bottle of hot sauce was unopened . . .

Now reduce the heat to low and cook the mess for at least an hour. You want it to be bubbling gently, not frothing all over the stove and not just sitting there with a little steam rising. Depending on atmospheric pressure, barometric readings, humidity, the month of the year in which your rice was harvested and the phase of the moon, the cooking time in the skillet can range from 1 to 2 hours.

When all the free liquid has been absorbed and the rice is tender (yes, you'll have to try a spoonful to tell), then it's time to preheat the oven to about 375° F or so, set the table, put out the salad and dressing and get ready to eat. You're about 10 minutes away (depending on how fast your oven preheats!)

Stick the pan full of Jambalaya into the oven (uncovered) to 'dry out' for a few minutes. (Or, if your pan isn’t oven safe, put a little olive oil in the bottom of a baking dish to keep the Jambalaya from sticking, and transfer the contents of the skillet to the baking dish.) Stick the French bread in the oven at the same time. In about 5 to 10 minutes the Jambalaya should be ready for the table, the French bread should be crunchy, the salad and dressing should be at perfect serving temperature, and it's time to PIG OUT!

Technique: Coring Iceberg Lettuce

2005-03-08T15:25:00.001-05:00

Yeah, yeah, I know. Like chopping onions. Everybody already knows how to do this. Unless, of course, you don’t . . .

First, open the plastic wrapper. For years, I tried to figure out how to unwrap one of these things. But every time I got close to the secret, the lettuce barons changed their approach. So, don’t pull, or twist, or slide your fingers underneath. Just grab a pair of scissors, and whack off the top (bottom?) of that plastic. Remove the head of lettuce.

Save the wrapper!! If it’s dirty (on the inside), give it a rinse and a rub to get the dirt off, then let it drain. Then, line it with a paper towel.

Now give that lettuce a good long rinse under cold running water. Maybe even gently rub your hands around the outer surface and let any loosely wrapped leaves just fall off. When your head is pristine, set it, core side down, in the sink or on the counter, to drain for five minutes or so.

While the head drains, seek out ‘the sturdy spot’ near your sink, or along your countertop. You want the place that is supported by an upright 2x4.

Got it?

OK. Pick up the lettuce, and smash it, core side down, onto that sturdy point.

Voila. The core has popped loose. Give it a twist, and yank it out.

Place your head (lettuce, that is) into the paper towel lined plastic wrapper and toss it in the fridge. You’re done!

Cookin' again!

2005-03-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

No, you haven't been abandoned! But between winter, some traveling, and eating a lot of our old favorites (which are already posted!), February managed to evaporate. Hopefully, the rate of new postings will increase with the approach of Spring!

Recipe: Maryland Fried Chicken

2005-02-07T15:00:00.000-05:00

This is one of those marvelous dishes that you can't tell your cardiologist about. But if you only serve it once in a while, you'll probably outlive your cardiologist anyway! So cook it up and enjoy.

Because you need to let the chicken 'rest' for an hour after coating it, you'll need to plan this meal in advance. All told, from taking the chicken out of the package to serving the meal you'll need something over 3 hours. Most of that time will be spent hanging around, conversing with friends, setting the table, petting the cat and so on. But don't expect to whip this one onto the table for unexpected guests. And the number of people you can serve depends on the size of your skillet(s) and/or the number of burners on your stove and/or doing two 'batches' part way and then finishing up all at once.

here's what you'll need . . .
1 or 2 chicken leg and thigh pieces per person (if your guests include a couple of 'hearty eaters', figure on one extra for every two 'hearty eaters.')
seasoned flour (about 2 - 3 Tbsp. per chicken piece; the 'seasoned' part is explained below)
ground black pepper (from that red and white can – use the Tellicherry at the table)
salt
milk (at least 2 cups, depending on how many you're trying to serve)
bacon grease (I know, it's not PC, but if you like to cook, you keep a can of drippings hidden in the back of the refrigerator somewhere. For each 12" skillet - which can handle a maximum of 4 pieces of chicken - you'll need at least 3 heaping Tbsp. of bacon grease. If you must, you can dilute the bacon drippings with olive oil; but the bacon flavor is a critical part of the taste of the final product - don't skimp.)
sliced mushrooms, about ½ lb per two servings (if you're going to serve a crowd, the idea is to have the gravy 'thick with mushrooms'. You'll have to figure out for yourself just how many that means.)
normal gravy accoutrements, namely potato water, vegetable water, white wine, Gravy Master, the unused flour and milk from coating the chicken, and, of course, etc.

Here's how you do it.

Get the chicken out, wash it, trim off all the 43 pounds of excess fat the store carefully packaged with your purchase, pat the chicken dry and set it aside.

Prepare the seasoned flour. As in some other recipes in this collection, don't let anyone see you do this or they'll never eat the finished product. For each chicken piece, toss about 2 or 3 Tbsp. of flour on a piece of waxed paper (you really do need to use waxed paper for this - paper bags, plastic wrap, or any old flat surface just won’t do). Spread the final amount of flour out into a thin layer (about 1/8 to ¼" deep).

Take your refill-can of ground black pepper and make the entire top surface of the flour black - not just "oh, there's some pepper on it" - BLACK.

Then take your refill-box of table salt and make the black surface white - not just "oh there's some salt on it" - WHITE.

Then take a fork and mix it all up. At this point, you can allow observers back into the kitchen if necessary; once it's all mixed up, nobody will be able to tell how much salt and pepper you put in.

Pour the milk into a shallow bowl (or two, depending on how many chicken pieces you're going to do.) Toss the chicken pieces in to soak. If you've got four pieces and one small bowl, put the chicken in two pieces at a time. Count to at least 60 to measure the minimum soaking time. Longer is OK, but less than a minute is really a ‘dip’ rather than a ‘soak’ and Maryland Fried requires a soak. I usually give it 10 minutes or so while I’m making the seasoned flour.

Lift a chicken piece up carefully by the tip of the leg and let the excess milk drain off. Toss the piece, top or skin side down, onto your seasoned flour and use the edges of the waxed paper to toss seasoned flour all over it. Turn the chicken piece over and again use the waxed paper to toss flour all over it. Use the waxed paper to pat even more flour onto all sides of the chicken until it is thoroughly and thickly coated with flour. Remove the chicken piece to a plate, and repeat the process with the remaining pieces of chicken. Use as many plates as you need so that the chicken pieces do not touch each other.

Save the remaining milk in a cup (or two) in the refrigerator; save the remaining flour in a dish until gravy time; let the chicken stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

In the meantime, peel (or don't, as you see fit) potatoes for mashing; prepare green beans & tomatoes (or other vegetables as you see fit); make the coffee; set the table; get out the gravy boat and serving dishes; and slice up all the mushrooms.

About 10 minutes before the hour is up, warm your skillet(s) over medium to medium-high heat. When they are beginning to get warm, scoop out the bacon grease into your skillet(s).

When it has melted and is hot enough (sprinkle a tiny pinch of flour onto the grease - if it sizzles and cooks vigorously, it's hot enough), carefully arrange 3 or 4 chicken pieces, skin (or top) side down into the pan. Don't crowd the pan!

Fry the chicken for about 12 - 18 minutes (depending on stove, amount of chicken, phase of the moon, or whatever) until the down side is a rich dark golden brown. (Adjust the heat up or down as necessary; dark is important; burned black is to be avoided.) Then turn the chicken over and do the same to the other side.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400° F.

When the chicken is thoroughly browned on all sides, remove each piece with a pair of tongs, letting most of any clinging bacon grease drain back into the skillet, and deposit the chicken in the bottom of a baking dish (one for which you still have a cover!) We find that a two-quart Corning Ware dish can handle up to four pieces of chicken (yes, you can stack them, but no more than two layers!). Or, if you’re lucky enough to have an Eric among your friends, who gifts you with incredible cookware like this, feel free to use it . . . (Just drain off all the bacon fat before putting in the oven.)

When all the chicken has been transferred to baking dishes, cover them and put them in the oven. Close the oven door and immediately turn the temperature down to 375° F. Do something else (like cooking potatoes and vegetables) for 35 minutes.

After 35 minutes in the oven, the chicken is done and it's time to start making gravy. Carefully tong the chicken out of the baking dish(es), letting any juices drain back into the baking dish(es), and put the chicken on a plate. Turn the oven to off and put the chicken plate(s) back into the oven to keep warm.

Use the leftover flour to make a roux in the baking dish(es). Just stir the flour, a little at a time, into the pan juices until you get a nice clump of goop. Keep the dish over medium heat and continue to stir the goop around. (If you use the Corning Ware and have an electric stove, remember to put the little wire grid on the burner before putting the baking dish on the burner, or you'll ruin the meal and have a hell of a time picking up all the little bits of exploded baking dish from the kitchen floor!).

When the roux starts to take on some color, add the potato water and the vegetable water and bring the incipient gravy to a boil.

As soon as it boils, add the mushrooms and return to a boil. Cook for a bit until the mushrooms start to show signs of coloring.

Now add the leftover milk, and stirring constantly, return to a gentle rolling boil. Add a drop or two (OK, a good sluice!) of Gravy Master (stirring) until the color of the gravy is pleasing to your eye, and let the whole mess simmer vigorously until it thickens or until everything else is ready to serve and you're not willing to wait any longer. (A thinnish gravy works quite well with this meal, so fear not...)

Toss, serve, fling, and/or pour everything into its appropriate table container and PIG OUT.

Recipe: Cajun Asian Chicken stir-fry

2005-01-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

This is an oft-requested, semi-weird variation on a basic chicken stir-fry, using our old favorite Louisiana Hot Sauce as a major ingredient. (Yes, that’s the same brand-name stuff you’ll remember from other postings.) Since you can stir-fry anything, creating any kind of flavor you wish, this is just a starting point. And, truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever done this exactly the same way twice. So have fun! Add, subtract, alter, adjust, and then eat very, very well . . .

here's what you'll need . . .
boneless skinless chicken breast, about 1 per person (2 big ones will serve three people, 3 big ones for four or five people . . . )
‘cheap’ peanut oil to cook with
sesame oil
soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Maggi seasoning sauce
fish sauce (Tiparos is great)
black bean paste (if you’ve got any)
Louisiana Hot Sauce
½ of a fresh lemon and/or lime
white wine
fresh coarse ground black pepper (Tellicherry, of course)
1 or 2 peeled garlic cloves
cornstarch
veggies et. al. (any combination of at least 5; 10 is even better).
We like carrots, yellow onions or green onions or vidalia onions or even red Spanish onions, red bell peppers, green bell peppers, yellow bell peppers, hot peppers of any ilk, snow peas, sweet peas, green beans, wax beans, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower, black olives, ordinary tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, plum tomatoes, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, ordinary mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, straw mushrooms, bok choy, cabbage, lettuce, previously cooked potatoes, and/or anything else you have hanging around that you’d like to get rid of . . . !

Here's how you do it.

The first secret of a successful stir-fry lies in the contrast and combination of the various ingredients in terms of color, flavor and texture. The meat or fish part of the meal is but an accent; artistry lives in the rest of the choices. I’m not sure where I heard it, but somebody once said a classic Chinese stir fry had to include at least 5 colors. Certainly sounds like a good idea to me . . .

The second secret is to chop, slice, and dice all the ingredients so they are bite sized. I’ve been told that in Chinese households, it is considered a great insult to serve food that cannot be picked up with chopsticks and eaten without any further cutting.

But there’s a practical side to the size of the whacked up tidbits too; cooking time can be controlled.

I happen to be a proponent of the ‘layered flavors’ approach to cooking most everything. I like to add one ingredient, then ‘layer on’ the flavor of the next and so on. But if circumstance (or just plain curiosity) requires, you can toss everything in at once – as long as you’ve sized your bits appropriately. Cut them up so the longer cooking items are the smaller pieces and the quicker cooking items are the larger pieces, and everything will finish in the same amount of time.

To prepare this meal my way, you need to have all the veggies cut up and distributed on a variety of plates (by cooking time) before you start. The chicken needs to sit in its marinade for at least 20 minutes (up to an hour or so is even better) before you cook it. And rice takes 30 minutes (after the water boils) to achieve perfection. If you’re cooking for two and you’re Zorro’s cousin with a blade, you can start the rice, cut the chicken, get the marinade built, cut all the veggies and be ready to cook before the rice is done. If you’re cooking for a crowd or you’re a little hesitant about whirling Chinese knife blades, take the slow road; do the marinade first, then chop the veggies, then start the rice.

The marinade is very simple. Whack up the chicken and distribute it, one layer deep only, on as many plates as required.

Pour a Tbsp. or so (per chicken breast or two) of sesame oil on the chicken and massage it in so that all sides of every piece get well coated (your hands are going to stay messy throughout this procedure, so remember to uncap all the bottles before you start!) You’ll have to adjust the quantity of oil so that all the chicken gets a coating without leaving (much of) a puddle in the bottom of the plate.

Then sluice the coated chicken with the soy. Once again, massage it in. Then spritz the chicken with the Worcestershire suace and massage it in. If you’re going to add some citrus, squirt it on now and stir everything around. Same with the black bean paste – now’s the time. I like about ½ a lemon or lime and about ½ tsp. of bean paste.

Next, douse the plate with Louisiana Hot Sauce. For the first blast, coat the entire top surface of the chicken until it’s red. Massage it in. Then put another coat of hot sauce on, and just leave it sitting on the surface. Finally, grind some fresh black pepper on top and let the chicken stand - up to an hour at room temperature. If you want to prepare the chicken and marinade far in advance, let the chicken sit in the marinade for 30 minutes at room temperature, then refrigerate. Take it out and let it warm up to room temperature when you start the rice (about 30 minutes before cooking time).

For this meal, it’s generally better to cook the veggies first, then the chicken. The chicken marinade tends to burn and over-flavor the veggies if you do the chicken first. Depending on the quantity, it takes 5-15 minutes to cook the veggies; about the same for the chicken; and another 3 - 5 minutes to complete and thicken up the sauce.

Before you start wokking things, uncork the white wine (you’ll need it for the final sauce) and stir 1 tsp. of cornstarch into 3 or 4 ounces of cold water.

Now if you’re really paying attention, you may be wondering, “But what about that Maggi stuff and the Tiparos?” Good catch. Now why an Italian product, Maggi sauce, has become a staple in Asian cooking is beyond my ken. But it has. And the flavor is wonderful. But it is salty, just like the Tiparos is salty. So adding even more salt to the already salty (soy sauce) marinade doesn’t seem like the best idea.

Instead, I like to put about ½ tsp. of the Maggi sauce in the rice water. And I like to squirt the Tiparos all over the tomatoes on the veggies plate. And as long as we’re spritzing things, how about a blast of sesame oil on top of the mushrooms! There. Now we’re ready . . .

Here’s our routine. About 15 minutes into the rice cook time, put the wok over high heat. Count to 37.5 and pour 1-2 Tbsp. cheap peanut oil into the bottom of the wok and swirl it around. Toss in one peeled garlic clove and wok it around with your cooking spatula for about 60 seconds and then remove it (if it starts to burn, take it out sooner - all you want to do is flavor the oil.) Start tossing in veggies. If you use carrots, begin with them. Wok them around till they’re half done, and toss in the next veggies.

My usual sequence is carrots, onions, peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, water chestnuts, squash & zucchini, bean sprouts, tomatoes & black olives (I think I’ve got 5 colors in there . . .) When the veggies are done, scoop them out to a serving bowl and keep warm in a 150 - 200° F oven.

Replenish the cheap peanut oil in the wok; toss in another garlic clove and do the same thing to it that you did to the last one. As soon as you get the garlic clove out, start putting chicken in the hot oil (yes, your hands will get messy again!) Stir the chicken around as you slide each load in, and try to get it all into the wok within about 30-60 seconds (if you have three hands, the whole process works more smoothly; if you have only two hands, don’t worry about it, just do the best you can.)

Wok the chicken around until it’s done. We like our chicken pretty well done, so we keep wokking it until it begins to get ‘grainy’ (when you can see striations like wood grain on the surface of the cubes).

When the chicken is nearly done, scrape the rest of the marinade liquid into the wok, pour in a good sploosh of the white wine, wok it around for 30 seconds or so until you can smell the white wine and then start adding the cornstarch/water mixture.

Start small! 1 or 2 tsp. at a time. The idea is to get a nice shiny glaze to the chicken and the sauce, not to turn the sauce into dumplings. Wok the sauce around for at least 30 seconds between each addition of the cornstarch/water mixture, to see how thick it’s going to get. (If it starts getting too thick, thin it down with some more white wine or plain water or even more Hot Sauce.) When the sauce reaches your preferred thickness, turn the heat under the wok off; serve the rice; stir the sauce once more; scoop it all out into another serving bowl; get everything to the table as fast as you can. And eat. Very, very well.

Recipe: Chicken Cacciatore

2005-01-12T16:00:00.000-05:00

An Italian classic, Chicken Cacciatore is great for weekends when you can devote the time to cooking it slowly and gently. But if the urge strikes for a Tuesday, what the heck, crank up the temperature and eat in about 90 minutes.

As you may note if you continue reading this site, we always have a good supply of Italian gravy in the refrigerator, but this is a dish that needs to create its own sauce. We've tried a couple of times to make it with the gravy ("It'll be quicker that way!"), but you end up with a tasty 'chicken legs in tomato sauce' dish, not with cacciatore. To make dinner for two . . .

here's what you'll need . . .
2 or 3 chicken leg and thigh pieces (often called leg quarters)
2 28 oz. (or 3 16 oz.) cans tomatoes (the Italian plum type works best, and Pastene are the best of the best!)
1 carrot (thinly sliced)
1 stalk celery (if Cathy isn't looking) chopped (1/8” pieces)
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
fresh mushrooms (anywhere from 8 to a pound, depending on taste)
8 - 16 ripe olives, thickly sliced (about 3 slices per olive)
1/3 cup each diced red and green peppers
1 or 2 (or 12 . . .) garlic cloves, minced
1 or 2 Tsp. dried oregano (if you have fresh, chop it coarsely and use 2 tsp.)
½ tsp. basil
(optional pinch thyme)
(optional pinch rosemary)
(optional 1/8 tsp. marjoram)
1/8 tsp. ground cayenne
1 or 2 bay leaves
freshly ground (big chunks) black pepper (Tellicherry, of course)
pinch of coarse (kosher) salt
white wine
olive oil
maybe some dried cilantro to garnish (fresh, if you’ve got it!)

(Okay, okay, so I hadn't sliced the mushrooms yet . . .)

Here's how you do it.

Wash the chicken legs and rip off all the excess fat. Heat a large skillet over high heat. (If you cram them in, you may be able to get 3 or even 4 leg quarters into a 12" pan; if you need to cook more than that, you'll need two skillets.)

When the pan is hot, pour in 1 Tbsp. per leg of olive oil, swirl, and toss in the legs, skin side down. Now slap a spatter shield over that sucker. Swirl, jiggle and otherwise agitate the pan until things calm down a bit. Turn the heat down to medium, or maybe even lower, and cook the chicken until the skin turns a rich golden brown (about 10 minutes?). Turn the chicken over and give it another 5 - 7 minutes. (If the pan smokes, turn down the heat! You want to crisp up the outside of the chicken to seal in the juices if you can, but not to let any of it burn or blacken.)

When you declare the chicken ‘browned,’ do what you can to rearrange the legs so the center area (or some area) of the skillet is open - you'll need the room for all the veggies that are about to come.

Next, toss in the carrots. Swirl, shake, toss and etc. until the carrots begin to turn that lighter, almost translucent color. Then toss in the onions. When they start to turn translucent and pick up some of the carrot color, toss in the celery. Stir, swirl, shake, etc. until the celery just begins to soften, then add the peppers and mushrooms. Again, swirl, stir, toss etc. until the mushrooms begin to darken. The idea is to get all these items started cooking, so you'll need to keep everything moving during this period. You don't want anything to "cook" thoroughly at this point.

As soon as the mushrooms show some color, toss in the garlic. As soon as you can smell the garlic aroma, toss in the olives. Count to about 30 (keeping everything moving as best you can) and pour in a good slug of white wine. The spitting should calm down quickly and the wine should start to bubble and froth.

Now add the tomatoes. And, yes, if you can get them in your area, use Pastene http://www.pastene.com . They are by far the best tasting, most consistently wonderful canned tomatoes available. In fact, check out all their products; I’ve yet to be disappointed in anything I’ve tried. Use the edge of your spatula to chop and dice and slice the tomatoes into chunks and pieces, and mix them up with all the other veggies in the pan.

Now, add all the herbs and spices (except the bay leaves) and mix everything up. Or don’t.

I keep going back and forth with this dish. If you want, try adding just the Tellicherry and the bay leaves. The salt is optional, too. Usually, canned tomatoes bring plenty of salt to any dish. But the Pastene seem pretty restrained, and this is a dish that wants a touch of an edge, so generally, I add a little salt. And sometimes, I put the whole spice rack in. Try it. All ways. It’s good no matter what . . .

OK. Whatever the state of your spicedness, rearrange the pan so the sauce-in-a-state-of-becoming mixture surrounds the chicken. Adjust the heat to a gentle simmer (if you were on medium, go to low or even less until everything settles down - you can always crank it up a bit later if you need to get it bubbling again.)

When you've got a gentle simmer going, spoon the sauce over, atop, and around everything, stick the bay leaves in, and go relax. Every 15 - 20 minutes, spoon fresh sauce over everything and generally stir things up.

Continue to simmer the dish until "done," which could mean anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours from this point. The chicken should be nearly falling off the bone when done. Serve over wide egg noodles with a salad and some bread (and a ton of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, of course).

Recipe: Paprika fried potatoes

2005-01-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

Hi again and welcome to 2005. Here's one that was referenced last year, but didn't make it in . . .

These were first created to accompany grilled salmon (back when we thought farm raised salmon was safe to eat!) Now, however, they find their way into many meals, with or without ‘extras,’ cubed small or cut into large chunks as in this version. They are utterly simple and simply delicious.

here's what you'll need . . .
1 potato per person
coarse (Kosher) salt
freshly ground Tellicherry
your favorite paprika(s) (I like to use a mixture of Hungarian half-sharp and ordinary supermarket which tends to be a sweetish paprika)
olive oil
extras – onions, sliced mushrooms, red or green bell peppers, . . .

Here’s how you do it.

Peel the potatoes, if you must. Cathy prefers peeled; I prefer skin on: so we compromise. I peel the potatoes (most of the time). Put a skillet on to heat up. Pick a ‘bite size,’ anything from ½ a potato to a ½” cube, and cut your potatoes. Put 2 – 3 Tbsps. olive oil into the hot pan, swirl to fragrance, and toss in the potatoes.

As with most things skillet, on my stove the pan gets heated with the dial set at about 4 o’clock; when the food goes in the temperature gets turned down to about 8 o’clock. And that’s the way we do the potatoes. It takes about 20 – 30 minutes to cook a skillet-full to tenderness, and to allow the flavors to develop.

When the potatoes first go in, roll them around to make sure every surface gets coating of oil. Then let them sit and sizzle for 5 minutes or so before moving them around again. You don’t want to completely brown one side before turning to the next, but you do want to end up with at least a couple of sides nicely browned when you’re through. So give them a few minutes on each side before you star turning them frequently to ensure that they cook evenly.

If adding ‘extras,’ toss them in after the fist side begins to show some color. Just push the potatoes around the edge, and pile the goodies in the center. Stir them round and turn them over in the center a few times until they start to cook. Then you can mix everything up for the rest of the cooking.

After those first 5 minutes or so, and usually just before the extras go in, give the potatoes a goodly grinding or 12 of Tellicherry, and a very light sprinkle of the coarse salt. When you get ready to turn the potatoes the next time, add a hefty sprinkle of paprika. Then turn, pepper and paprika the next side. (If you’re a saltaholic, go ahead and add a little more – I prefer to finish the salting at the table, but hey . . .) And then just keep turning and cooking until you declare done!

If you want, put a layer of paper towel on a plate and turn the finished potatoes out onto that before you put them in a serving bowl. We like the olive oil, so usually just dump them directly into the serving bowl and head for the table!

Simple and delicious.

It's The Holiday Hiatus

2004-12-27T14:51:00.000-05:00

Hope you're all having a Happy and a Merry and a Ho Ho Ho!

See you soon in 2005 . . .

Recipe: Chicken wrapped Chorizos

2004-12-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

The first few times I tried this, I had no idea what to expect, so I didn’t take any pictures. Having decided that it’s a keeper, this time I had to go and do it with Chistorra instead of Chorizos, but hey, it’s all in the family . . .

The Chistorra is a “breakfast sausage” (as it says on the package) that is slightly milder (to my taste), and slightly softer than the Chorizos. But the flavor is clearly similar, and both have worked well in this dish – a kind of ‘pigs in poultry blankets’ idea. We served it with green beans and tomatoes (see posting) and paprika fried potatoes (see posting) and a balsamic veggie vinaigrette.

here's what you'll need . . .
1 bonless skinless chicken breast per serving
1 Chorizos (or relative) per serving
flour
breadcrumbs, plain, lightly toasted
ground cumin
tarragon leaf, dried
coarse (Kosher) salt
fresh ground Tellicherry pepper
olive oil
butcher’s twine, poultry skewers, or toothpicks (sorry, duct tape will not work!)

The first step is to cook up your Chorizos, or in this case Chistorras. Get your pan hot, pour in a couple Tbsps. of olive oil, swirl til fragrance, and toss in the sausage. Turn Down The Heat. On my stove, ‘8 o’clock’ is about the right setting. You want to get the outside brown and crispy without turning the sausage into leather on the inside. I cook ‘em for about 10 minutes or so, just enough time to deal with the ‘hard part.’

The only ‘hard’ part of this dish is flattening out the chicken breasts. Well, actually, the hard part is getting an actual boneless, skinless chicken breast from your local supermarket (or at least, my local supermarket, where they generally get most of the skin off but that’s about it. But that’s another rant for another day . . .) So, back to breast beating.

I don’t have one of those neat little round, flat, hockey-puck-like pounders, but if you do, use it! Otherwise, try the flat side of your Chinese knife, the bottom of a heavy skillet, or just your bare hand. Do not use one of those pointy little hammer-like ‘tenderizer’ gizmos – you’ll just end up with chicken sludge.

Whatever the weapon of choice, flatten out your chicken breasts a bit. You’re not making paper here, but an even thickness is important so that the chicken will cook evenly. I usually try to get the thick end of the breast down to about the same thickness as the thin end – maybe about ¼” or so? And do work carefully so you can avoid tearing the chicken. I’d rather have my chicken roll not quite all the way around the sausage than have to wrap it three times around to cover the holes I tore while flattening it out!

By now, the sausage should be done, so pull it out and leave it on a plate to cool down for a while. Save the oil in the pan – you’ll be using that to cook the chicken in a few minutes!

In a small bowl or big measuring cup, or, hey whatever you can find, add about 1 Tbsp. each of flour and of breadcrumbs per serving (chicken breast). Toss in some ground cumin, some hand crushed dried tarragon leaf and some coarse salt. I’d guess about 1/3 to ½ tsp. of cumin, about ½ to 1 tsp. of tarragon, and enough salt so you can see a sprinkle of white on top of the other stuff. Then give 6 or 8 good grinds of Tellicherry over the top.

OK. Mix it up thoroughly and dump it out onto a plate or a piece of waxed paper.

Lay one now-cooled sausage, atop one chicken breast, well wait a minute. Let’s see, how to say this. Turn the chicken breasts ‘beauty side’ down. Beauty side? Well, that’s the side you’d have facing up on the plate, staring the diner in the face when you serve your creation – whatever it is. And, by the way, remember to always cook the beauty side first! Especially if you’re grilling or searing something, but even if you’re sautéing, beauty side first makes the best presentation.

So. Roll up a sausage in the middle of a chicken breast. Usually a slight angle works better than straight across or straight down the length. Use your string to tie your little package, or skewer the meeting edges of the chicken together.

Now, crank the heat back up on your stove burner, about 4 o’clock or so – but don’t put the pan on just yet.

Give each of your chicken wrapped chorizos and generous rub of olive oil and then roll them in your breading mixture. Get a good thick coating on them.

Now put the pan back on the burner. And go give your chickens another roll in the, uh, breading, and then right into the pan. If the timing was ‘right’ they should be sizzling nicely. Keep the heat up for maybe another 30 seconds, no more than 1 minute, and then turn it down – once again, about 8 o’clock on my stove.

Leave ‘em alone. One of the hardest ‘lessons’ to learn in the kitchen – don’t mess with the food, give it time. After about 4 or 5 minutes, give the pan a gentle, sliding shake, just to make sure that the chicken has ‘released’ from the pan. Food will, you know. With practice, and patience, and yeah, the right temperatures, that slab of whatever sizzling and smoking and burning up on that hot pan will just suddenly, let go. If you’re there to give the pan a shake, it will stay released. Miss the shake and you’ll be needing Brillo (and a Pizza parlor nearby).

So. If the chicken released, give it another 2 or 3 minutes to develop a rich golden brown color and then roll it over. The second side will take another 10 - 15 minutes or so, and after a couple of minutes, turn the heat down a little more (half way to 9 o’clock). After a couple more, roll the chicken this way and that to get the ‘edges’ cooking also.

When they’re done, which means they’ve been on the second side at least 8 minutes to make sure the chicken is at least mostly cooked (I prefer the 'overcooked' of 12 - 15 minutes), and they’re a nice brownish color to your liking, turn ‘em out onto plates and serve up a wonderful meal!

Recipe: Green Beans and Tomatoes

2004-12-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

Here’s another in the crusade to make canned veggies a delicious and exciting addition to every meal. This is not George’s Greek Green Beans. That’s another story entirely, and one we’ll tell the next time I make a bucket of those incredible beans (so I can take some photos of the process). But for the rest of the time, this simple combination should show up on your table frequently. And with more holiday meals coming up . . .

here's what you'll need . . .
1 can kitchen cut green beans (they used to be 16 oz. cans; now they’re 14; next year 12?)
1 can whole peeled tomatoes (same story, ah well . . .)
6 whole fennel seeds
healthy pinch dried oregano
fresh ground Tellicherry pepper
splash of white wine

Here’s how you do it.

Dump the tomatoes into a saucepan. Use the blade of a spatula (or your favorite implement of destruction) to slice the whole tomatoes into pieces – at least quarters, more if you wish.

Add precisely 6 fennel seeds. (Well, that’s what I told Cathy the first time I did these, and it was probably pretty close. Now that she’s comfortable with the flavor, a little more than 6 is common!) A touch of fennel will enhance the flavor of the tomato; but if your beans taste like licorice, you used way too much.

Add the oregano. As almost always with dried herbs, crush the oregano by rolling and rubbing it between thumb and forefinger before tossing it into the pan. Once again, the idea is to enhance, not to flavor, so be judicious with your pinch. I’d guess I typically use ½ tsp. for a single-can batch like we’re describing here.

Now comes the hard part. Decision time. Do you include the packing liquid from the green beans? Or not.

Here’s the secret decoder ring: Are you making gravy?

If you’re serving these beans with anything that uses gravy (roast beef, roast fowl, roast pork, hey, Pizza if you like gravy on your pie!), then be sure to dump the entire can of beans, liquid and all into the pot! Your gravy will thank you when you drain the cooking liquid from your beans and tomatoes into your gravy-making pan!

If no gravy, then drain the liquid from the beans before tossing them in on top of the tomatoes.

But either way, toss in the beans. And grind some Tellicherry all over the top of them. (No, you don’t need to add any salt – there’s plenty in the tomatoes, and even more if you added the bean liquid!) Now spritz a small splash or two of white wine across the top to wash some of the pepper into the tomato layer (the alcohol releases some flavors in the tomatoes that would otherwise remain hidden). Finally, cover your creation and put it over barely-there-heat for at least an hour. Two is fine.

Check on the pot after 30 minutes or so. You should find a good head of steam under the lid, but no serious bubbling on the surface. This is a dish you want to warm into submission. If you’re working with a gas stove where low temperatures are hard to maintain, try a double boiler. I mean, as long as you don’t actually burn (char) the tomatoes, you’ll be fine (so if you have to do a hurry-up-batch, go for it!) But sneaking up on the beans will leave them as ‘crunchy’ as a canned bean can get. Your goal here is to meld the flavors not to ‘cook’ the vegetables.

And there you have it; magic from a couple of cans.

If you need to serve more than two or three, use two cans of beans and one of tomatoes, and maybe 12 fennel seeds . . .

It’s endlessly scalable, so just cook ‘em up and enjoy!

Ingredient: Chorizos

2004-12-04T15:30:00.000-05:00

This stuff is spectacular, at least to my taste buds. A cousin in South Florida, who happens to be Cuban, introduced us to it. He made us a Cuban breakfast one time, and I’ve been trying to find the same brand of Chorizos up here in the Northeast ever since. I have found one other brand, but it just doesn’t measure up.

One day, inspiration struck. Duh! The Quijote brand is all over South Florida; we know people in South Florida; the product requires no refrigeration (until opened); and USPS parcel post is still pretty cheap . . . Hmmmmm.

Now we have Quijote brand Chorizos all the time!

I have no idea how widely this brand is available, but if you can find it, buy it. You can get it on the Net, but the shipping charges are pretty stiff. Of course, if you’ve got friends and/or relatives in Florida . . .

Cook it up in a little olive oil and use it in everything!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

2004-12-01T14:30:00.000-05:00

We did . . .

More later . . .

Recipe: Pork with Onions & Apples

2004-11-19T15:00:00.000-05:00

This began as another of those "What'll we have for dinner?" creations. The old, when in doubt go scrounge around in the refrigerator and make something up out of what you find. It was October, so we found some apples; we always have onions on hand; and the late September weather had been so lousy, we had some frozen 'country style' pork ribs that hadn't gotten barbecued. Hmmm... Dinner for two.

Since then, the basic approach has become a staple on the menu, and has been done with pork roasts, chops and cutlets, as well as ribs. They all work fine. It’s simple, quick, and just plain good.

here's what you'll need . . .
pork, chops, ribs ('country style', thick, with or without bones, cheap), cutlets, roast, . . .
Tabasco Sauce
Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins, of course)
1 medium yellow onion
1 nice red, medium sized Macintosh apple (or your favorite type)
fresh ground Tellicherry
olive oil
white wine

Here's how you do it.
Though the original creation was done with some frozen ribs, this dish works much better with fresh meat – mainly because marinating will let the meat develop a layer of flavor independent of the liquid in which it’s cooked.

Start by giving both sides of the (in this case) chops a thorough rubbing with a liberal dose of Tabasco. Not so much that you end up with a pool on the plate, but enough to give a goodly reddish coat to both sides of the meat. Then take a fork and make three or four stabs into each side of the meat. Finally, douse the chops with Worcestershire sauce. You want a complete coat on the top of each chop (spread it around if you need to), and a good-sized puddle underneath. Let the meat marinate at room temperature for at least 30 minutes (but no more than an hour), turning every 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, do all the other stuff (set the table, make the coffee, feed the cat, prepare potatoes and vegetables, ...). And, chop the onion and the apple. The onion, you know how (or if not, check the earlier post).

As for the apple, well, yank the stem. Then cut it in half and cut each half in half and maybe in half again (all vertically, along the stem line). Carve out the core and the seeds from each piece and then chop them up into ½ inch or so chunks.

Coat the bottom of a baking dish with a generous layer of olive oil, and toss in the meat. Pour the marinade all over, sprinkle the onions around; sprinkle the apples on top; splash a little white wine over everything; and season with copious quantities of freshly ground (coarse, of course) Tellicherry black pepper.

Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil (crimp the edges to seal), and bake at around 350 ºF for at least 45 minutes. If you want to, you can let it go for up to 2 hours; after that you’ll have pork jerky – very tasty pork jerky, but . . .

We like to serve these chops (in fact, most pork dishes) with boiled potatoes and Corn O’Catherine, Apple Sauce and probably a salad. If you want, you can turn the cooking liquid into a sauce - just cook it down to half its volume and serve it on the side.

Recipe: Corn O'Catherine

2004-11-18T15:30:00.000-05:00

I guess we're on a keep it simple roll for the moment. So how about canned veggies? (We'll get into the whole frozen vs. canned another day.) Just because veggies start in a can is no reason they have to be dull and boring. Cathy invented this one to go with her baked pork chops, and it couldn't be simpler. But what a wonderful way to dress up a can of corn, and the plate to which it is served.

here's what you'll need . . .
1 can corn
2 -3 Tbsp. diced green bell pepper
2 -3 Tbsp. diced red bell pepper
(optional items, any or all: diced onion, sliced mushrooms, sliced black olives, chopped tomato)
fresh ground black pepper
(optional, a goodly sprinkle of ground turmeric amd/or ground cumin)
butter (a dab, a slab, whatever you dare)

Here's how you do it.
Dump the corn into a saucepan.

Whack up the other stuff.

Put it in the pot.

Cover. Warm gently for at least 20 minutes, or until done to your liking.

And they said cooking was tough . . .

Tip: Frozen foods

2004-11-14T11:30:00.000-05:00

Cook frozen or cook fresh; DON'T THAW.

The reason is simple physical chemistry. At 32º F, when water changes from liquid to solid (or solid to liquid), it expands. Since all animal and plant cells are mostly water, a gradual change in temperature allows the water to expand, breaking down the cellular structure. The result is your food turns to mush. Most commercial ("flash") freezing processes work so quickly that the expansion is minimized, and the cell damage is also minimized. But if you then thaw that frozen item before cooking, you'll allow the expansion to rupture all the cell walls, and the cooked result will be mushy.

For home freezing, the best hope is that your freezer temperature is cold enough to freeze the food quickly. Most stand-alone freezers will do the job OK. But if your freezer, like mine, is the bottom (or top) of your refrigerator, and it's packed full to begin with, chances are your 'fresh frozen' food will be suitable for soups and stews, but not for elegant entree service.

If you must thaw before cooking, use your microwave. The more quickly the water can get through the state change, the less damage will be done.

Recipe: Beef Stew

2004-11-09T10:00:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, beef stew always meant fat and gristle; I hated it. By the time I was in High school, Dinty Moore's had come along, and that I learned to like, though probably just because, like most prepared foods, it had enough salt in it to pickle an entire steer. In any case, I didn't experiment with beef stew again until well into my cooking experience. I think it was one of those 'mother of invention' deals - a camping trip with about 18 mouths to feed, including large adults and a horde of hungry kids. A bucket of stew sitting on the campfire seemed the way to go.

This is one of those 'couldn't possibly be easier' meals where the success of the dish is a function of attitude rather than culinary legerdemain. So, with only a couple of photos for reference, set your mind to 'plain, simple, natural,' and dive in . . .

here's what you'll need . . .
steak or a roast, not stew beef, about 1/3 lb per serving
carrots, at least one per serving
onion, about ½ per serving
celery, about ½ rib per serving
potatoes, at least one per serving, peeled if you must
tomatoes, one 14 oz. can per two servings or one fresh tomato per serving
turnip (or more typically, rutabaga), depends on size, two or three chunks per serving
red & green bell peppers, same as turnip two or three chunks of each per serving
mushrooms, 4 per serving
garlic (optional), one clove per lb. to flavor the meat, and/or a skewer-full to flavor the stew
green beans, wax beans, zucchini, summer squash, and/or other favorites
maybe a handful of ripe olives
white wine
water
1 or 2 bay leaves
salt
Tellicherry

Here's how you do it.
Buy a good quality roast or a steak, or three for your meat. Any cut of round will do nicely. Chuck steak will work, but only if you can find a really lean piece. Sirloins are OK, but tend to toughen up with the prolonged cooking of a stew. Tenderloins and filets will work, but it does seem a tad criminal to serve them in a stew.

Stay away from the prepackaged stew beef at your market, unless you know the butcher personally. Mostly, you'll never know what cut(s) of meat you're getting; you'll only be getting the scraps that were trimmed from something salable; it's always cut in chunks too large; and it may be several days old by the time they've got enough to shrink-wrap and put it out as stew beef. It only takes an extra few minutes for you to cut your own chunks. Invest the time.

Cut your steak into bite size chunks. Beef stew should be like Japanese food - no knife required (if a guest must cut a piece of food, the chef must commit seppuku!)

When your meat is all chunked, season it liberally with fresh ground Tellicherry. Use your fingers or the back of a spoon to gently tap the pepper into the surface of the meat, and then let it sit for 15 minutes or so before starting the cooking. Do not flour the meat!

While the meat is resting, whack up your other vegetables (except the turnip and potato, unless you want to keep them covered with cold water until it's time to toss them in - otherwise, they'll turn black and ugly!) Use the same bite-sized mindset that you held for your steak for everything in your stew, and you will be praised at the table (or log, if you're doing this over a campfire in the woods!)

So, dig out the stewpot, and get it hot. Pour a Tbsp. or two of olive oil into the hot pot (you want enough to roll around the bottom of the pan, but not enough for any 'depth'). If you wish, smash a clove of garlic with the side of your knife, remove the peel and toss the garlic into the hot oil. Move it around for a minute or so, just until it starts to brown, and then discard it. Toss in the meat. Watch out for the spits, and shake, swirl, stir, push to quickly sear the meat on all sides. You don't want to cook it, just to seal in the juices.

At this point, I like to add the mushroom chunks to the pot and cook them just long enough that they're about ready to give up their juices, about a minute - no more than two. You don't want them to actually start to give up the juices because the pan is hot enough that most of the juice will evaporate, and I like to incorporate it into the 'wholeness of the stew.' But I also like the way the mushrooms pick up some flavor from the hot pan. Or, you can just toss the mushrooms in later - you're choice, both good.

Now you need some liquid. Start with the white wine - a goodly slug into the bottom of the pan to deglaze it and cool it down a little. Give the bottom of the pan a scrape or two to loosen anything that's stuck, and swirl it all around. Let it bubble for a minute or three to cook off the alcohol.

If you're going to use fresh tomatoes, add some water now and put your tomatoes in later. But if you're using canned tomatoes, toss them in next, along with all their packing juices - liquid, you know - and stir everything around.

If you didn't do it before, cut up your potatoes and turnip. Always peel the turnip; only peel the potatoes if you must (for some unknowable aesthetic purpose). And, remember, bite size pieces . . .

Now toss everything in. If you're using any other canned vegetables (beans for example), be sure to add their packing juices as well. Add enough water to cover the contents of the pot to a depth of at least an inch - three would be better. Give a goodly grind of Tellicherry over the top surface, and add a little salt. If you've used any canned vegetables, make that a very little salt - there's already tons of it in those packing juices. Assuming you've got 4 - 6 servings of stew going, think in terms of maybe 1 tsp. of salt. Start with that in the palm of your hand and add a pinch to the pot for each potato and one pinch for all the turnip, and maybe one more pinch for the rest of the pot. If you've got any salt left, set it aside - you can add it later after you taste-test your creation.

If you wish, stick a skewer-full of garlic into the liquid to flavor the pot while it cooks. How many cloves depends on your tastes (and do peel them!). And keep in mind that if you already used garlic to flavor the meat, this will amplify that flavor. Usually, I'll do one or the other but not both. And if I do the skewer thing, I'll use one clove per serving, up to six - that's plenty for any sized batch. Don't break the bay leaves, just toss them in whole - they'll be easier to find and remove when you serve your stew.

So, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer, cover and cook for about 45 minutes. Get out your spoon, scoop up a piece of potato and some broth, let it cool way down, and taste it! If need be, add some more salt and/or pepper, and remove the garlic skewer if you used it (after all, enough is enough). Cover the pot and cook some more. It should be good in another 45 minutes or so, and it will continue to be good for the next three or four hours. If you need to wait longer than four hours, turn it off now and turn it back on an hour before serving.

Recipe: Sautéed Filet of Sole

2004-11-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

Whether for a traditional Friday night supper, or a light meal anytime, sautéed filet of sole (or whatever kind of fish your local fishmonger calls 'sole') is simple and delicious.

In the U.S. true 'Dover sole' is very hard to come by and very expensive, so most of the time, you'll end up with Flounder. But don't knock flounder. It's a wonderful, delicate white fish that lends itself to poaching, baking, or, as here, sautéing. We like to serve it with Cathy's mashed potatoes, sexy peas, and a salad.

The serving size here is limited by the diameter of your skillet. The filets must fit easily, without crowding or touching each other in the pan. Otherwise, they'll fall apart when you try to turn them. And like most fish dishes, these need to be eaten as soon as they come out of the pan. Yes, it's possible to keep one batch warm in the oven while you do a second batch; but only if you're fast. After even 10 minutes in the oven (at 200º F), well, you might as well have gone out for McSea burgers.

here's what you'll need . . .

filet of sole (1/4 to 1/3 lb. per person)
lemon(s)
milk
egg(s)
flour
bread crumbs
olive oil

Here's how you do it.
If you keep your eggs in the refrigerator, get one or two out at least two hours before preparing dinner. Eggs need to be at room temperature to make a good dipping mixture (or for almost any other use, as well).

About 20 -30 minutes before you want to start cooking, get the fish out of the refrigerator and wash it gently under cold running water. Drain the water off each piece and place them all in a shallow bowl. Pour some milk over the filets (just enough to barely cover them - the milk will be discarded, so there's no point in wasting any). Let the fish soak while you get everything else ready – about 10 - 15 minutes.

Spread out a couple of pieces of wax paper. Put flour on one piece, breadcrumbs on the other.

Gently blend an egg with a Tbsp. of cold water until you've got a nice golden egg wash (no froth, please).

Now grab a filet from the milk, very gently 'squeegee' off any extra milk (hold the filet at one end and wipe it down between your index and middle fingers.)

Dredge the filet in the flour, coating thoroughly on both sides. (Use the wax paper - lift one side, then the other to shake flour onto the filet. Pat gently, turn over and do the same on the other side.) Set aside each filet until you have them all floured. Try to not let them touch each other.

Now, put a large skillet on to heat up (somewhere just above medium).

Next, dip a floured filet into the egg wash (again, holding at one end, kind of drag it through on one side, then the other) until thoroughly coated.

Drain the excess egg off for a few seconds (no squeegee here),

and then dredge the filet in the breadcrumbs (use the wax paper, as before). Set aside (separated, as before) until you have them all breaded.

Pour a couple Tbsp. of olive oil into the hot skillet, swirl till it reaches fragrance, and gently place the filets in the pan (separated, as always). Immediately reduce the heat to something just under medium, count to 87 and then give the skillet a gentle shake or three to make sure the filets are not sticking to the bottom. Cook for about 2 minutes (or maybe 4, depends on your stove, pan, and preferences). The idea is to get the bottom side a 'crispy' light golden brown (the color of a perfect pancake).

Using a long bladed spatula (long enough to hold at least ¾ the length of a filet) underneath, and another spatula (long if you've got it, but 'normal' is ok for the top one), gently turn each filet.

When you've got them all turned over, squeeze the juice from ½ a lemon all over the tops of the filets. Don't 'squirt' it, you'll just dig holes in the breading; instead, dribble it, moving your arm in a circular motion around and around over the skillet. If you wish, grind some black pepper over the now slightly dampened filets. Cook till done, probably another 2 to 4 minutes.

Serve and eat immediately.

Technique: Perfect Stovetop Popcorn

2004-10-27T15:30:00.000-04:00

Winter’s coming on. Curled up, in front of the fire, (your favorite sport/movie/show) on TV, and a big bowl of popcorn to share.

But stovetop? Yup. You ever read the ingredients on that microwave stuff?

Look, for nearly a decade while doing the 80 hour workweek thing, we used (pick your favorite brand) microwave popcorn. Toss it in, push a few buttons; 5 minutes later dump it in a bowl and back to the entertainment. What could be more bettah?

Well, how about something that doesn’t involve any of those multi-syllabic chemical names, that costs $0.99 lb. (about 273 servings!), that takes no longer to prepare, that allows you to control the amount and type of oil/fat you use, that allows you to control the amount of salt you use (if any . . .), and that's (almost) always (nearly) perfect. It’s called popcorn. You can do it!

Here’s the trick.

Put a layer of olive oil in the bottom of a saucepan. It doesn’t really matter how big your saucepan is – though 1 qt. Pans don’t really work very well – too little surface area; but if that’s all you’ve got, hey, give it a try! The idea is to coat the bottom of the pan. No more than 1/3 the height of a popcorn kernel (on its side), but more than just a glistening wipe.

If you must measure things, generally about 2 Tbsp. Of oil will pop about 1/3 cup of popcorn – just enough for one or two snackers, barely enough for one fiend.

But if you get in the habit of using the pan as your guide, you won’t need to drag out any of those measuring implements, much less clean them up afterwards!

So. A layer of oil. Now, if you want to make it ultima-perfect, toss in a scoop of Smart Balance (or your favorite butter substitute). If you want to use real butter, you probably should use clarified butter. Clarified butter has just enough higher a smoke point to work in this scheme. Regular butter lurks on the edge of burned yukko. (Clarified? See Lobster . . .)

So. Oil and butter substitute in the pan. Turn the burner on to warm and wait for the butter to melt. When it has, swirl the pan to mix it all up. Now cover the bottom of the pan with popcorn, a layer 1 kernel thick, no more.

You see, this is part of the self-measuring thing. One layer of oil, just to cover the bottom of the pan; one layer of popcorn, just to cover the bottom of the pan. No higher math, no arithmetic, no measuring implements; just pour some in, pour some more, cook . . .

OK. Cover the pot, and crank the heat to medium plus the next notch – about 4 O’clock on the dial, or whatever is the right spot on your stove. And, yes, you may have to experiment a bit to find that spot. But at about $0.05 per batch, don’t worry if you have to ruin a couple to perfect this process!

Now listen carefully! No, not to me, to your pan! As soon as the first kernel goes Pop! (not sizzle, not pluhhh, not pfffssssd, but Pop), take the pan off the burner and time exactly 1 minute. Leave the heat up on the burner you came from; you’ll be going back. And Do Not open the lid of the pan. Just time off exactly 60 seconds.

Now put the pot back on the heat. Shake, rattle and roll! Or shake, swirl and jiggle, at least. Doesn’t have to be fast, just steadily. Keep the stuff in your pan in gentle motion over the heat.

In another minute or so, you’ll hear the popping begin. And it will continue, increasing in fervor for a bit and then slowing, and then nearly stopping, and then, count to 7, no more.

Pop the lid, swirl the pan,

and dump the perfect popcorn into your popcorn bucket. Salt if you wish (I usually do – just table salt, the coarse stuff is too big for popcorn); a little on top, swirl and flip the bucket to distribute that shake, and then do another quick shake over ‘the new top.’

Shake, Eat, Enjoy . . .

Technique: Dismantling the Maine Lobster

2004-10-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

OK. You got it cooked, the lobster that is, poached, not boiled, right?! And there it is, on the plate. Now what coach? Well, you gotta take it apart. (As you do, give a moment’s thought to the first person on the planet who ever did the deed. What do you suppose inspired someone to dive to the ocean bottom, in freezing cold water, grab one of these monstrous looking creatures, cook it and tear it apart to eat? I do wonder . . .)

One item often missing from the lobster table, but a real necessity, is the ‘detritus bowl.’ That’s the elegant blue plastic bucket you’ll notice in the background of the photo. Be sure to have one available . . .

If your plate has hot water all over the bottom, tip it into the detritus bowl. And then hold your lobster head down over the bowl for a minute. When the water (if any) stops draining, you’re ready to take this thing apart.

I like to start with the large claws. Turn your beast on its back.

Hold the body, grab the large claw leg joint closest to the body and give it a twist.

If it doesn’t come right off, give it a twist in the other direction, or twist back and forth a couple of times. It will come off.

Hold it horizontally until you’re over the bowl and then hold it claw up for a bit to drain water. Do the same with the other one.

After the large claws are off, twist off each of the little claws. Again, just grab the joint closest to the body and give a twist (or three).

The little ones seldom have much water in them, so you don’t need to take the time to drain them. Just pile the little guys next to the big ones.

Now at this point, you have a difficult decision to make. Right now, all your lobster parts are still hot. If you dismantle the rest of the beast and remove all the meat before you start eating, everything will be cold when you get it in your mouth.

But if you remove meat and eat as you go along, you’ll be constantly switching gears between wrecking crew, surgeon and gastronome, your hands will be a mess throughout the entire meal, and by the time you get to the tail, it will probably still be cold.

Me, I always get all the meat on my plate first (and as fast as I am able) so I can concentrate on the eating part for the rest of the meal. You can make your own choice.

OK. All claws are off and the big ones have been partially drained. Some argue that since the tail will stay warm as long as it’s attached to the body, but the claws are already cooling off, that you should take the claws apart and get that meat soaking in the butter before tackling the tail. I prefer to take it all apart first.

So, over the bowl, grab the tail in one hand, the body in the other, do the old bend and twist a time or three.

When the tail comes off, tip it to drain, and drop the body into the bowl.

OK, OK, no hate mail, please. I know. There’s enough meat in the body to feed a family of four, or fourteen, depending on which old Yankee you listen to. I’m sure there is. I’ve never had the patience to dig it all out. If you do, feel free. But I’d recommend you save that task until you’ve finished eating the easy parts!

Now. Depending on the time of the year, the phase of the moon, the gender of your lobster, and probably nine other factors I know nothing about, you may, or may not, see some green ‘tamale’ and/or red ‘coral’ sticking out from the tail of your beast.

Yes, they are both edible. And many people consider them great delicacies. I don’t like the way either one tastes, so I scrape them both off into the bowl.

Next, split the tail. Just grab it on both sides, hooking your thumbs on the fins, and bend outwards.

Keep applying pressure until you feel the shell start to split. If the whole tail spilts, then you’re done. Otherwise, move your grip down a little toward the tail fins and bend again. By that time, the tail meat should be easily visible.

Then, just grab on and tug. Boit. Out comes the entire lobster tail.

But you’re not done with that tail shell yet! See those little flipper fins at the end? Each one has a delicious little morsel of wondrously tender and tasty meat hidden inside. So bend off each one, drain it over the bowl, and put it on your plate.

Now. To ‘undo’ a claw, hold it over the detritus bowl, claw down, and bend up the ‘thumb’ part – that’s the smaller of the two pincers. If necessary, give it a nudge side to side as well as up and down.

When it snaps off, expect a gush of water to drain out of the leg and claw. Set the little one on your plate, and still over the detritus bowl, bend the rest of the claw free of the leg. Give both the claw and the leg a shake or two to get the last of the water out

At this point you may or may not need a claw cracker. Lobsters shed their shells when they outgrow them. The new shells are soft; the old shells are hard. If the shell is hard, you’ll hurt your hand and probably cut yourself trying to break the shell without a cracker. If the shell is soft, just grab the large claw and snap the pincer end off.

Because the lobster hasn’t had time to ‘grow into’ its new shell, the shell will separate easily from the meat. Drop the shell, tug the meat, and onto the plate.

To get the meat out of the leg joints, you may want to use a ‘lobster pick.’ But if you don’t have one handy, fingers, fork tines, knife points, toothpicks, or . . . will do just as well. Dig in, one end then the other. Pull (gently, gently . . .), push, wiggle and jiggle.

The meat will plop onto your plate.

Do the other claw the same way, and you’re ready to eat.

Cut the meat and toss it into the butter bowl. Or cut it and leave it on your plate for individual bite dunking. Salt it (very, very lightly), douse it with lemon juice, dip it or drown it in butter, or olive oil, or flavored oil, or simply eat it as it is. You will enjoy . . .

Recipe: The Maine Lobster Dinner

2004-10-20T15:09:00.000-04:00

This one is dedicated to Charlie and Mariann who were supposed to be here last month for personal instruction. It seems Mother Nature and Frances had other ideas. But for all of you who may have missed out, here's the simplest of New England meals, and, in the next post, my approach to dismantling the beasts at the table.

First, we should all understand that in most part of the US, when you order lobster at a restaurant, you don't get lobster. Instead, you get some form of crayfish. Yes, it may have lobster in its real local name (not the one on the menu: that will probably just say lobster and be followed by an obscene price), but Florida Lobster, Rock Lobster, Spiny Lobster, Southern Lobster, even (most of the time) Lobster Tail, they're all crawfish. (Check out: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=crayfish&r=67
for some definitions . . .)

This is a lobster.

Everything else is not. (Which does not mean that any and/or all of those other creatures are not great eating. They are each wonderful in their own right! But please, do not call them lobsters . . .)

So here's what you need . . .
some crunchy French Bread (or your favorite 'bread with some character')
a big garden salad - lots of fresh grown tomatoes, greens and everything else
2 ears of fresh corn per person
1 lobster each
lemon wedges
and lots of butter (or your favorite butter substitute)

Here’s how you do it.
The usual phrase is ‘boiled Maine lobster.’ Please don’t boil your lobster! Like most seafood, lobster is a delicate meat. When cooked too hot or too long, it gets tough and loses flavor.

The ideal cooking method is steaming over hot rocks covered with seaweed on a sandy beach somewhere. But that’s a tad inconvenient in my kitchen . . . So we use a big bucket and poach the beasts. Get out your favorite big bucket (we use a 12 qt. stockpot or a canning pot), fill it about half full of water, toss in some seaweed if you have any, and bring the water to a full boil.

While the water is heating up, toss a stick or three of butter, or an appropriate quantity of your favorite butter substitute (as I’ve said before, we use Smart Balance), into a small skillet and put it over low heat. At the very least you want to melt the butter. At the most, you can do a full cheesecloth-strained clarification. What’s the difference? About 2 minutes and a piece of cheesecloth . . .

In either case, heat the butter gently until the milk solids settle out onto the bottom of the skillet, and whatever froth forms on the surface. Carefully (slowly) skim the frothy stuff off and throw it out. Let the milk solids ‘cook’ for a few more minutes in the butter and then just pour off the clear butter, leaving the solids in the pan. Or strain the butter through the cheesecloth.

At that point, I usually give the skillet a quick wipe, pour the butter back in and add a goodly slug of olive oil. I shoot for about 1/3 oil, 2/3 butter, but you can use whatever proportions you like, or skip the oil altogether, or hey, skip the butter altogether and just use olive oil! If you want, you can squeeze a fresh lemon or two into the butter/oil, but I prefer the sharp zing of lemon juice at the table, one bite at a time. You can leave the skillet on barely-there heat until it’s time to serve.

When your bucket of water is boiling, get your lobsters out of the fridge, gently roll them into the sink and snip the rubber bands on their claws. (I don’t know about you, but I prefer the flavor of lobster over that of boiled rubber . . .)

When they’re all snipped, pick up the lobster body from behind the big claws and plunge the lobster head first into the boiling water. Get all the lobsters into the pot as quickly as you can so they’ll all be done at the same time.

Put the lid on the pot, turn the heat to medium low, and check the clock. In 18 minutes, you’ll be ready to eat.

Why 18? ‘Cause it works for me . . . Look, when you plunge the cold lobsters into that half pot of boiling water, you reduce the water temperature dramatically. It’s going to take a good 7 minutes to get back to a comfortable poaching temperature. And 10 – 11 minutes after that to poach a 1 – 3 lb. lobster is just about right. You could leave the heat on high to try to reduce the time a little, but then you’d ‘boil’ your lobster and ruin it. So be patient, cook slowly, and you’ll reap the reward.

Besides you’ve still got corn to cook! So put about 2 inches of water in the bottom of your corn pot. You want to steam your corn, not boil it. Cover the pot and put it over high heat to bring it to a boil. When you’re about 6 or 7 minutes away from taking the lobsters out, put the corn in, cover the pan, and again, turn the heat down to medium low. Fresh corn on the cob is very delicate. Five minutes in the steam is plenty to cook it. When the time is up, turn off the heat, uncover the pan and just let the corn sit there while you get the lobsters out.

Then haul everything to the table and dine in glory!

A Short break . . .

2004-10-14T10:06:00.000-04:00

Yup. It’s been way too long since the last post. And it looks like it will be a little longer still. Houseguests are here until next week . . . See you then!

Tip: Use Wood Cutting Boards!

2004-10-01T14:45:00.000-04:00

Your knives will love you for it, and last longer, too. Even inexpensive wood cutting boards can last a lifetime (well, a long time, anyway), and they may be more sanitary than the plastic ones anyway!

Ok, Ok, I know. All the photos so far show an acrylic board. What can I say? I hadn’t been following my own advice for the past few months, and my wooden boards were in a state of benign neglect when I started this adventure. I’m fixin’ it, I’m fixin’ it . . .

To insure that your wooden board will last a lifetime (or two), you'll need to prepare it properly, and care for it - but that's not hard to do. When you buy a new board, stop at your local pharmacy and pick up a pint of mineral oil.

Then, remember the old Yankee adage:

Oil your board
once a day for the first week
once a week for the first month
once a month for the first year
once a year forever after.

Personally, I try to oil my boards every few months, but if you do the first year properly, even just once a year will be enough thereafter. I have one small cutting board that I paid $3.95 for in a discount store about 25 years ago. It's got some dings and scratches, but I'd call it 'good as new.'

As for cleaning your cutting boards, the arguments continue. Do a google on ‘salmonella cutting board clean’ or the like and you’ll see what I mean. Or, for a pretty good summary, check out: Cutting through the cutting board brouhaha

I give my wood boards a thorough rinse under hot water after each use (particularly after mincing garlic or onion or chopping jalapenos or the like), and then scrub them dry with a paper towel or clean dishtowel. Every few uses, I’ll give them a good soaping scrub. And, I never cut meat on my wooden boards - for that job, I use plastic and run them through the dishwasher to clean up.

But if you can't resist the urge to soak your wooden boards in industrial strength disinfectant, regardless of the scientific data, then by all means, buy your mineral oil by the gallon and oil your boards at least weekly. You'll be amazed at the abuse a wooden board can survive with even just a little care.

Recipe: Butternut Squash

2004-09-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

I hated squash growing up. But I was forced to eat it, at least at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was always mashed to a fare-thee-well, and served without any seasoning (which, in part, explains my early penchant for over salting everything!) Somewhere in the mid-1970s, a butternut squash got left behind in my kitchen; I couldn't just throw it out, or let it rot, so . . .

here's what you'll need . . .
1 butternut squash
½ Tbsp. Butter (or more)
pinch of ground nutmeg
sprinkle of ground cinnamon
salt & freshly ground pepper

Here's how you do it.
Pre-heat your oven to 350° F.

Whack the bulbous end off the squash using your Chinese knife (or your Chef's knife, or a hatchet, or whatever . . .) If you aim properly, you'll end up with a solid stem-end of the squash, and the bulb end with all the seeds and pulp in it.

Put the bulb end cut-side down and cut it in half. Use a teaspoon or tablespoon to scoop out all the pulp and seeds, scraping the surface until it's smooth. (If you're into making your own stock, toss the pulp and seeds into the stockpot, or you can bake the seeds for a crunchy snack, or you can just chuck 'em.) And, no, don't peel the squash!

Now cube the squash (and trim off the hard brown root connection from the bottom of the bulb halves and the stem round from the top of the stem part). We like smallish cubes about ½ to 1" on a side, but feel free to make them larger if you like. They're going to be covered while they cook, so they'll steam thoroughly no matter what size you make them.

Find a shallow baking dish that will hold the squash cubes in 1 or 2 layers (no more!) without peaking up over the edge of the dish (much). Depending on the level of your 'butter fear', either grease the baking dish with butter, or spread a few drops of olive oil in the bottom. Like most vegetables, the squash contains enough water to float an ark, but just in case, a little grease to keep anything from sticking to the dish is always a good idea.

Toss the squash cubes into the dish. Grind some Tellicherry across the top (add a pinch of salt, if you must). Sprinkle enough ground nutmeg over the surface so you can barely see it (nutmeg can become bitter when it cooks, so you want enough to flavor the dish, but not so much that you end up with a bitter taste), and then sprinkle a goodly dusting of cinnamon over everything. Dot the top of the dish with pats or daubs of butter or a goodly blob of butter substitute. Cover the baking dish or seal it with a tent of aluminum foil (just a little space above the squash), and put it in the oven for 25 - 35 minutes (longer for mushier, shorter for sturdier texture).

Serve with beef, chicken, turkey, pork, swordfish, or . . .

Recipe: That Shrimpy thing you do . . .

2004-09-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

The idea was to do shrimp on pasta, some kind of garlicky lemony scampi like dish. But scampis tend to overpower the shrimp – you get shrimp texture but not much shrimp flavor. Shrimp cocktail gives you shrimp flavor, which you then enhance with a glob of cocktail sauce. So how to get the lemony garlicky thing with the full flavor of just poached shrimp?

The secret, of course, is: the sauce.

Sure. Poach the shrimp. Make a sauce. Toss pasta with sauce, add shrimp to top and serve. Simple, right? Not in my kitchen! . . .

Here’s what you’ll need . . .

1 lb. Poached shrimp
2, 4, 6, 23 . . . garlic cloves
½ to 1 onion
½ green bell pepper
½ red bell pepper
¼ italian pepper (they look like pepperoncini on steroids)
2 – 4 mushrooms
1 – 2 tomatoes
8 – 12 black olives
zucchini (at least ½ of one, more if you like)
summer squash (as above with the zuke)
juice from ½ lemon
juice from ½ limes
½ tsp. sriracha (SE Asian chile sauce)
1 – 3 tsp. fish sauce (Tiparos)
sesame oil
olive oil
White wine
½ tsp. ground cumin
freshly ground Tellicherry (black pepper)
‘italian seasonings’
cilantro
linguine, fettuccini, vermicelli, and/or angel hair

Gather all the ingredients before you start. Poach the shrimp as described in the Poached Shrimp(s) post from last week.

While your shrimp shells are cooking, chop up the veggies for the sauce (garlic, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and black olives).

When it comes time to poach the shrimp, stop whatever else you’re doing. Pay attention to the shrimp!

Ok. Set them aside and get some water going to boil your pasta.

While your water is heating up, chop up the rest of the veggies. I like to use pretty big chunks so they sit in the sauce instead of becoming part of it. The mushrooms can go either way. Some times I’ll whack them up into little bits and let them be sauce; sometimes, big chunks and they’re vegetables; and sometimes I can’t decide so they just get sliced!

Cook your pasta. Leave it a little more al dente than you usually like it. It’s going to cook some more in the sauce – not much, but some, and you want the pasta in this dish to have some character, not to be all mushy.

So, while your pasta is cooking, mix up a marinade for your shrimp. I go back and forth about how much flavor to put on the shrimp while they sit and how much to put into the sauce as it cooks. At a minimum, give your shrimp a light coat of sesame oil and let ‘em sit in the lemon and lime juice. Next time you do this meal, try adding another ingredient (or 12) and see what happens.

By now, your pasta is certainly cooked. Before you dump it into the colander, though, pour off a couple of cups of the pasta water into a bowl or measuring cup. Like the shrimp broth, you’ll be adding (at least some of) this liquid to the sauce. Then, drain the pasta thoroughly, dump it back in the pot, give it a goodly squirt of sesame oil, and dig your hands in there! The idea is to coat every strand with oil.

On to the sauce! Crank up the skillet, pour in some olive oil (at least a couple of tablespoons – it’s an ingredient as well as the cooking oil), swirl once or twice until, as they say, the oil comes to fragrance. Turns out, ‘they’re’ right. It actually does give off a beautiful fresh fragrance when it gets to just the right temperature.

And that’s just the moment to toss in the onions. Swirl them around, turn the heat back down to something civilized (about where you’d put the stove for a hearty simmer), and sauté the onions for about 2 minutes. (Sautee is a French verb, to jump. Don’t take it literally here. If your onion is jumping out of the pan, the stove is too hot!)

Add in some of the peppers, and give them about two minutes also. Now the garlic and the rest of the peppers. About a minute and toss in the mushrooms. Another minute or three and finally, the tomatoes and black olives. As soon as the temperature comes back up, but before any jumping starts, pour in a goodly slug of white wine. There are flavors in those tomatoes that will only come out in the presence of alcohol. So give ‘em a little (if you can – if you can’t, Don’t! Your dish will still taste great!)

So Ok. After about 5 more minutes, the mushrooms will have given up their juices, the tomatoes will be breaking down, the garlic will be filling your nostrils, it’s time to add some liquid. Start with every last drop of your shrimp broth. Then add pasta water to bring the liquid level to within about ½ inch of the top of the skillet. And stir it all around.

If you don’t have enough pasta water to get it that high, just add some plain water and or some more white wine. The measurements here are not critical. You just want a goodly bucketful so you can cook it down to about half that much. Should take about 10 minutes to reduce the volume by half.

And during that time, add in whatever you haven’t added to the shrimp marinade. Start with the sriracha. That way, the heat will get gently distributed throughout the sauce as it reduces.

Then add the herbs and spices. Use whatever proportions you like, but some oregano and basil for sure, maybe some savory if you’ve got it, or even a tiny amount of rosemary and/or thyme if you don’t have any savory. As always, if you’ve got fresh herbs, use them; if not, the dried versions will be fine. And remember to crush dried herbs in the palm of your hand before tossing them in – it really does release a lot more flavor.

As you near the ‘right’ amount of sauce (about half the height of the pan), add the fish sauce (it’s salty and you don’t want to concentrate the salt – you want to season with it).

Finally, pour in the pasta and turn, stir, roll, separate, and otherwise mix it all about. As you did with the oil, try to get every strand individually coated with your incredible sauce. By the time you get this accomplished, at least 5 minutes will have passed, and it’s time to add the shrimp and every last drop of whatever marinade you’ve had them sitting in!

Stir them in gently, turning things over and under for about another 2 or 3 minutes. By then, the marinade flavors will have blended, the shrimp will have warmed, the sauce will have perfected, and it’s time to serve. Sprinkle some (more?) cilantro over the top of each plate, and . . .

Eat!!

phew . . .

Recipe/Ingredient: Poached Shrimp(s)

2004-09-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

Around here, ‘fresh shrimp’ means the little Maine ‘popcorn’ shrimp that show up for a couple of weeks each year. The rest of the time, our shrimp come frozen, mostly from SE Asia. Even when you buy them out of the fresh fish case, they arrived frozen. And you know what? They’re still great. Especially since somebody figured out how to de-vein the little buggers before freezing them!

But shrimp have such a delicate flavor, and they cook so quickly that their taste often just disappears if they’re cooked with anything else. So when we do a shrimp dish, I’ll almost always poach the shrimp separately and add them to the rest of the dish at the last minute.

Now you could just boil some water and toss the shrimp in, but as long as you’re in the kitchen anyway . . .

Collect 1 lb. of uncooked shrimp, shell on.

Peel your shrimp

and put all the peels in a saucepan. Add a few cups of water. And, hmmmm, how about a few whole black peppercorns? Yeah, that’s a good idea. Say, what about that coriander seed and . . .

Well, mix up your own favorites – just please stay away from all those pre-packaged ‘shrimp boil’ or ‘crab boil’ kinda things you find in the store. Make your own. It’s easy, and you get to control just how it tastes.

Last night, mine consisted of:

8 black peppercorns
1/3 tsp. whole coriander seed
¼ tsp. whole mustard seed
¼ tsp. dried dill weed
¼ tsp. dried savory leaves (or a little thyme and a couple of rosemary leaves if you don’t have savory)
1/3 tsp. coarse kosher salt
4 small bay leaves, broken into pieces
stalks from 4 sprigs of fresh parsley
1 fresh basil leaf

and a quart of water in a covered 3 qt. saucepan.

Bring it all up to a boil. Now be careful. It will froth up and boil over. I guarantee it . . . So be ready. Don’t go wandering off to check the score of the ballgame. Stand there. Wait. On my stove, over high heat, it takes a pot of liquid about 7 minutes to come to a boil. For this stuff, I start lifting the lid after about 5 minutes. And keep checking every 15 – 30 seconds. ‘Cause when it starts to go, it will overflow in about 3 seconds. As soon as you get a good head of froth, get it off the heat, stir the pot, turn the heat to low, stir again, re-cover, and put it back on the burner.

Let it bubble gently for a half hour or so. Now you can go check the score of that game . . .

When you come back, strain the liquid. Don’t spill a drop! Those shrimp shells and the herbs and spices have given their all for your poaching liquid. Don’t waste it!

Put the liquid back in the saucepan and put it back over medium high heat to reduce. Leave the lid cracked, or half on or something. You don’t want this to be a frothy boil, but a good rolling simmer will be perfect. You do want about half the liquid to evaporate. So get an eyeball on the pot when you start. Guesstimate half that height. And do whatever it is you do while you wait for things to get cooked . . .

OK. Ya got two cups left? Now’s the time. Crank the heat to high. Cover the pan. Count to 32 (or whatever your favorite magic number might be today). Uncover, dump the peeled shrimp in, swirl with a spoon, cover, and turn off the heat. Check the time! In exactly 5 minutes your shrimp will be ready. Not 4, not 6, 5. Exactly.

So, at the end of 5 minutes, strain the liquid into a bowl, measuring cup, bucket, whatever, and dump the perfectly poached shrimp onto a plate. SAVE that liquid! If you can’t use it tonight, put it in a glass jar, seal it tight (while it’s still hot!) and park it in the fridge. That’s shrimp broth. It’s worth millions! Save it. Use it for soup(s), sauce(s), gravy(ies), ice cream topping, skin conditioner, I don’t know. But it’s good!

As for the shrimp, let them sit for at least 5 minutes. Then do something fun with them . . .

And on some days . . .

2004-09-17T13:46:00.000-04:00

The next right thing is simply to pay the pieman!

Recipe: Rubbed pork with parsley potatoes & Brussels Sprouts

2004-09-13T14:04:00.000-04:00

Hey! Remember the 11 secret herbs & spices? Well, it happened again . . .

Go ahead. Count ‘em . . . Yup. 11. And I didn’t even try this time. Just pulled ‘em out of the pantry and the spice rack, and there they were. 11. Turned out pretty good again, too.

Here’s how it went . . . Wandering about the kitchen, as usual, “what have we got, what do we need to use up, what would taste good, what do I feel like playing with, . . .? Hmmmm, there’s that fresh parsley that Kim brought, what can I put parsley on? Haven’t done any potatoes in a while, how about boiled parsley potatoes and . . .

So we had a slab of pork sirloin, and Cathy had just bought a pile of Brussels sprouts and it wasn’t raining too hard too hard for grilling. Dinner is under way . . .

The rub: (and as always, quantities were by eye)

1 tsp. Ground cumin
1 tsp. Ground dry mustard
½ tsp. Ground cinnamon
½ tsp. Onion powder
½ tsp. Granulated garlic
½ tsp. Coarse (kosher) salt
½ tsp. Coarsely ground fresh Tellicherry pepper
¼ tsp. Paprika
¼ tsp. Ground cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp. Dried cilantro
1 – 2 Tbsp. Sesame oil

Yes. The brown stuff in the Sriracha bottle is sesame oil. I buy it by the quart and use the old Sriracha squirt bottles to ‘serve’ it. No drips, no mess, no extra cost for fancy cruets or cans that always dribble and splash.

And even though the garlic bottle says ‘powder,’ it’s really granulated – still dried, but a nice coarse texture, not that cornstarch consistency stuff that you get when you buy ‘powder.’ Once again, I buy a big tub of granulated and refill the smaller bottle for daily use.

Put all the dry stuff in a little bowl (that you can shake from with one hand!) and mix it all up. Pour a little oil on each side of the pork slab and rub it in a bit with one hand. Sprinkle a little (no more than 1/3rd) of the dry mixture onto the meat and rub it in, all over. Try to pick up any extra oil that puddled in the bottom of the plate and get a nice even ‘smear’ of coating all over the meat.

Then go back and sprinkle the rest of the dry mixture, a little at a time, patting it down and around to coat as evenly as you can. You do not want to rub this second coat in; you want it to sit as a dry seasoning on the outside of the meat. This way, the first batch that you did rub in will flavor the meat all the way through, and the second coat will give you a nice crusty outside.

Put the coated meat in the fridge and go do something useful for at least two hours. Then take it out and let it come up to room temperature for another hour (or less if you live in the tropics!). Warm up the grill, toss the meat way up on a warming rack, turn the flame as low as it will go, close the cover, and go fix the rest of the meal . . .

Depending on your grill, figure a minimum of about 40 – 45 minutes, even for a piece that’s only a little over a pound. It takes a while to get started cooking, even if you do preheat the grill. For slabs bigger than 2 lbs., plan on around 20 – 30 minutes per pound for boneless pork, depending, of course, on the heat of your grill.

When it’s done, slice it into nice thick medallions, and serve it with . . .

Parsley potatoes. Peel ‘em. Cut ‘em into thirds (unevenly! More surface area, more evenly cooked.) Cover with cold water (1/2 tsp. salt, if you like). Put the covered pot over high heat until the water just begins to boil, then turn the heat to low and let them sit for at least 45 minutes. If lots of steam is still escaping from under the cover after 15 minutes, turn the heat down! Or off! You want to threaten your potatoes into submission, not turn them to gruel.

In the meantime, chop some fresh parsley.

When the spuds are done (about the same time that you bring the meat in to ‘rest’ for 5 minutes before cutting it!), drain the potatoes in a colander, put the pot back on the stove over medium heat, toss in a slab or three of butter and about half your chopped parsley. Stir it around while the butter melts, turn down the heat, grind a little Tellicherry into the pot, let it bubble for about 2 minutes, turn off the heat. Now dump the potatoes back in and coat with the butter.

And by now, your Brussels sprouts should be just about cooked. What Brussels sprouts, you ask? Well the ones you got started just after you chopped your parsley, of course . . .

Whack off the root end. Make a shallow cross cut and toss them in a pot of water. When you’ve got them all trimmed and cut, rinse them 4 or 5 times in cold water. And get your hands in there – roll ‘em around, give ‘em a squeeze. That way all the loose outer leaves will fall off. Throw the loose leaves away, dump out all but an inch or so of water (about ½ way up the tallest sprout), and add a little salt if you wish.

About 20 minutes before serve time, turn a stove burner on high, wait for it to get hot (if your using an electric stove, as I am), and put the covered pot of sprouts on the heat. Check the time! In 5 minutes (or less!), you should have a good head of steam going in that pot, so turn the heat way down. All you need to do is keep the steam. You want to steam the sprouts (in a gentle bubble), not boil them.

So hey. Dump the potatoes in a bowl, add some more butter (or butter substitute) and sprinkle the rest of your parsley over the top. Drain the sprouts and serve them in separate little bowls (so the cognoscenti amongst the diners can use vinegar without getting it all over the meat and potatoes). Slice up your grilled rubbed pork, and pig out!

Recipe: Perfect Rice . . .

2004-09-12T15:48:00.000-04:00

Plain White Rice

Nothing could be simpler than cooking plain white rice from scratch. It takes 30 minutes.

Please throw away your Uncle Ben's, your Minute Rice, your Rice A Roni, and all other such stuff. Buy your local supermarket's store brand in 1, 2, or 5 pound bags (if you use more rice than that, what are you reading this for? Go to your local Asian purveyor, haul home a 50 Lb. bag and enjoy!) Long grain, medium grain, and short grain all cook to the same basic instructions. The variations are due more to the weather the rice was grown in, harvested in, how long its been stored, and the humidity when you cook it rather than the length of the grain.

here's what you'll need . . .
rice
water

Here's how you do it.

The secret is simple. Always use twice as much water as rice, and simply add the quantities to determine how much you'll end up with. 1 cup rice + 2 cups water = 3 cups cooked rice (just the right amount for a couple of rice lovers like Cathy and me - with some left over for tomorrow).

Use a thick walled, heavy pan with a tight fitting lid (we use one of those enameled cast iron saucepans that you can get at a local discount store for about $5. I’ve had this one for 30 years.) Put the water in the pan, cover it and put it over high heat - no salt, no butter, no nothin'! Just the water. (If you want to get fancy, we'll talk about variations later . . .) Bring the water to a screaming boil. Toss in the rice, turn the heat to low, and cover the pan.

DO NOT UNCOVER THE PAN until you serve the rice.

Cook the rice over low heat for 20 minutes; then turn the heat off and let the pan sit on the burner for another 10 minutes (more is OK but less is not). Your rice is now done to perfection. Serve and enjoy.

If you like rice, buy as much as you can store conveniently. Each harvest is slightly different in the amount of natural moisture retained in the grain. You may find that one batch cooks best with a few tablespoons more or less water, or with a few minutes more or less time on the heat. The first batch you cook will seldom (if ever) be awful; but your second batch will almost always be better. If you have several more batches from the same bag of rice, you won't have to 'fine tune' as often.

Technique: Chopping Onions

2004-09-04T16:00:00.000-04:00

OK, OK. If you’ve graduated from your “How to boil water” course, then this is old hat to you. But hey, everybody’s got to learn it somewhere for the first time . . . Might as well be here!

Besides, I’m going to make a couple of suggestions that all the experts will argue with (including ending my sentence with a preposition, well, if you ignore the parenthetical anyway).

Two ways to avoid crying over your cut onions: First, keep them in your refrigerator. Or at least keep a week’s worth in your refrigerator (if you grow them by the acre or buy them 50 lbs. at a time). Second, cut the root end off first (that’s the one with all the little tendrils attached.).

Onions make you cry by turning your eye moisture into sulfuric acid. (It’s the same principle used by the brilliant engineers who ‘fixed’ automotive air pollution by making sulfuric acid instead of nitric acid out of our exhaust fumes.) Most soils where onions are grown have some sulfur in them, and as the onions grow, they concentrate the sulfur compounds that form down at the root end of the bulb, the part that sticks downward into the ground. When you cut open an onion those sulfur compounds mix with the air and form sulfur dioxide gas. And when that gas hits water, we get sulfuric acid. Which makes you tear. And now there’s even more water for the sulfur dioxide to turn to acid. And then you go and wipe your eyes with the back of your hand, and, well, you get the idea . . .

By keeping you onions cold, you reduce the rate at which the sulfur dioxide forms, and therefore have more time to chop before you start to cry.

Now all the experts say (just google ‘onion’ and you’ll see!) to cut the stem end off first thereby trying to avoid all that noxious sulfur in the root end. ‘Course, soon as you cut off the stem end, all those sulfur compounds start to permeate through the onion, so that every slice you make produces more and more sulfur dioxide, and you end up crying.

By cutting the root end off first, you get the outgassing all over with at once; all the sulfur dioxide (well, most of it anyway) leaves the onion instead of flavoring it, and since the gas is cold, it doesn’t rise as fast, giving it more time to mix with more air before reaching head height, and voila, you never know it’s there. If you’re really sensitive, as soon as you slice off the root end, cut out the little core piece there and chuck it down the disposal. Then rinse your knife and your hands and proceed to slice and dice tear free!

The chopping process is really pretty simple. Slice off the root end.

Slice off the stem end.

Cut your onion in half.

Grab a corner and peel each half.

Slap each piece face down on your cutting board and make a series of vertical slices almost to the back end of your onion piece. If one end of your onion is wider than the other, slice from the pointy end toward the wider end. That way, your slices won’t all converge on the same point and the onion won’t fall apart.

When you get to the last slice, be sure to remember to bring your thumb up above the knife edge. Onions are slippery devils, and I’ve chopped off many a finger part when the blade slid off the surface and right through my thumb!

Then, turn the onion 90 degrees, and slice across your cuts.

When you get to the end part, where the vertical slices stopped short of the back end of the onion, just turn it around (so you can hang onto the bigger, wider part), cut one more slice, and then cut those last two pieces into wedges.

And there you have it: chopped onions, no tears, about 1 minute total elapsed time.

You can control the ‘fineness’ of the chop by how many vertical slices you make and how wide you make your cross cuts. And if you want even finer control than that, before you make the vertical slices, put a slice parallel to the cutting surface about halfway up the onion, almost all the way through. Be careful! Put your hand on top of the onion to hold it! No fingers in line with the blade! And go slowly! If you goof and slice all the way through, you’ll have to finish the old fashioned way!

(Yes, it’s a big knife. Yes, it says Martin Yan. Yes, we’ll talk about knives one of these days . . . For now, go chop some onions!)

Ingredient: Louisiana Hot Sauce

2004-08-28T17:30:00.000-04:00

Go out and buy some of this. No, I won't get a cut (unless it shows up in the sidebar), but it is, in my estimation, an important seasoning in any well stocked kitchen.

There are certainly 1000s of hot sauces out there, and tastes vary widely. I've experimented with at least dozens of different brands and styles. Now, I keep 3 in my house. Tabasco, SriRacha, and this one.

This particular brand is not for raising a sweat or establishing bragging rights; it's for flavor. You can pour quarts of this stuff into, under, over, and on almost anything, and the result will be at least delicious, perhaps, sublime.

If you come back and keep reading this blog, you'll find it mentioned in a number of dishes.

Tonight, for example, summer returned to New England with a vengeance. Dinner needed to be quick and simple and cooked outside. What to do? Douse a couple of bony breasts of chicken with Louisiana Hot Sauce, let 'em sit in the fridge for an hour or two, and onto the grill. A quick salad, maybe some sliced Italian bread, and voila, a feast!

Try it . . .

the vagaries of online life . . .

2004-08-28T17:02:00.000-04:00

Hi all. Would have had food yesterday. But my cable company cum ISP decided to play with the big kids and host their own service. The network cutover was, well let me put this as delicately as possible, a disaster. It was supposed to be completed overnight on Wednesday. I'm semi-functional today. In between, I can only give thanks to all the poor beleagured support folks who had to deal with the likes of me. I hope a suit or two joins the unemployed!

So how about a quickie . . .

Recipe: Cathy's World Famous Garlic Bread

2004-08-24T13:27:00.000-04:00

Sheesh. Ya blink and a week goes by . . . To reward you for your patience, how about some food!

I have no idea how it happened, but Cathy became the garlic bread Queen, and is now world famous for her incredible bread. It is, of course, a required accoutrement to the Saturday night Chicken Parm feast, as well as the common Wednesday night Hot Italian Sausage meal, and is often requested by guests no matter what else might be on the menu (oatmeal, bologna sandwiches . . .!) I think the secret must lie in the loving, for there surely seems no magic in the ingredients . . .

here's what you'll need . . .

fresh garlic
sub rolls
butter (and maybe some of that ‘fake butter’ stuff too)

Here's how you do it.
About an hour before the bread will go under the broiler, get your butter out to warm up. Cathy claims the bread will be ugly if the butter is cold!

While the butter is warming, peel and trim the garlic. How much garlic, you ask? Well, once, long ago, we both said, "Hey, no such thing as too much garlic!" Then Cathy proved us wrong. Oh, that was a batch . . .

So now, we just frighten everyone by using 1 clove of garlic per serving of bread! And a serving of bread is defined as ½ of a 6" sub roll. A typical diner will eat two servings of bread. So, count your diners; count one sub roll each; multiply by two; and count out that many cloves of garlic.

Now, a 'clove' is a seriously variable quantity, ranging from a niblet to a golf ball! When doing garlic bread, a clove should be about the size of the end joint of your thumb. If all you've got are little things, then set two or three of them together until they look about the size of a 'proper' clove, and then just call that 'one.'

And, yes, there's some grunge on a couple of these cloves. But if you just trim it off until you get down to nice clean garlic, all will be well, 'Course, you may have to peel another clove or two . . .

Speaking of peeling . . . If you have to do more than two or three cloves, get yourself one of these things . . .

This happens to be a "Ben Omessi's Original e-z-roll Garlic Peeler" by Selandia of Spokane Washington. A Google search will turn up plenty of hits, or, if you're a card carrying cheap yankee, head down to your local hardware store and check out their supply of rubber hoses . . . Whether you get one of the originals, an imitator, or make your own, peeling garlic will become so simple you'll start putting it on your breakfast cereal!

Once you have the garlic properly measured, peeled and trimmed (slice off the hard little stem end, and maybe the tip at the other end if it it's starting to sprout a new hand of garlic!), whack each clove up into a few pieces and toss them into your handy-dandy little chopper gizmo. Unless you're doing this for about 200 people, a full sized food processor is just too big. We use a little Black & Decker 2-cup chopper that does a marvelous job for up to about 6 servings. If we ever need to do more, we'll just do two batches!

Now whirl up the garlic. Pulse it at first until little bits start to stick to the top of the chopper, then whiz away until the blade spins freely. Next, add the butter. How much butter, you ask? Well . . . Ok, no, I won't tell any more stories. Use a pat of butter about ½" thick for each serving of bread, and then maybe one or two extra 'for the batch.' Toss it into the chopper, and whirl some more. Don't turn it into soup! Just a nice creamy mixture.

And since I've reached the 'lower your cholesterol!' age, we've started doing half butter and half 'other stuff.' In our case, we find 'Smart Balance' a pretty good choice for the other stuff, but your mileage may vary . . .

Now, if you don't have an electric thingy to mince and mix in, you can do the whole process by hand. Just mince half the garlic almost to juice, and leave the other half noticeably chunky, maybe a tad finer than coarse kosher salt. And you may want to let the butter sit out for two hours. Again, you don't want soup, but whisking by hand is a lot easier if the butter is definitely Soft. So put the seriously minced garlic in the bottom of a bowl, add the butter and then put the rest of the garlic on top. Get out the whisk, and beat until your arm hurts (or until it's done - you know, the 'nice creamy mixture' mentioned above).

When the garlic butter is perfect, spread it on the bread, which you have sliced in half lengthwise (being very careful to get each half exactly the same height!). Try to get about the same amount of garlic butter on each piece, though that is a trick that probably only comes with practice. So when you first start, skimp on each piece - you can always add more, but it's a real pain to try to scrape it off to redistribute.

Spread the loaves out on heavy duty foil and stick 'em under a red hot broiler,

turning the entire batch every 30 seconds or so (once they start to cook at all)

until they are a perfect golden brown all over. (And, yes, you can yank them out one at a time as they get to that perfect stage!)

When they're done to your liking, pile 'em on a plate, tent the plate with the foil, haul it off to the table, and prepare for world fame!

(No, I did not take a photo of the finished bread - it was time to eat!!!)

And the outcome was . . .

2004-08-18T15:00:00.000-04:00

Extra special goodly wondrous! Give it a try . . .

We had a bunch of aging broccoli, so that became the main veggie, and we always have carrots, peppers and onions on hand.

The chicken sat up on the warming rack of the gas grill (oh, how I miss my Webber kettle, but then that’s another story . . .) over very low heat for about 90 minutes (cover closed – no flare ups, no smoke). About ½ of the remains of the marinade was drizzled over the top after about 35 minutes and the rest after about an hour.

And then we ate! (A little share-a-salad in the center with crumbled feta to make it fun!)

Mmmmmmm . . .

Recipe: 11 secret herbs and spices

2004-08-17T15:21:00.000-04:00

So how did he know? Harlan, that is. The erstwhile Colonel. That 11 was the magic number. 'Cause it is, you know.

A couple of years ago, after the Food Network finally made it to our cable system and I learned who this Emeril person was, I started experimenting with dry spice rubs for beef, pork and chicken. And without pre-planning anything, I just started pulling stuff off the spice rack (well, shelf; well, ok, shelves, in the pantry - hey! Cathy has 37 pairs of shoes; I can have a few strange spices!) to try my hand. I ended up with 11 ingredients. A few months later, I tried another one. Yup. 11 ingredients. And the third time it came out that way, I noticed.

Self, I said (Thank you, Emeril, for that and your Essence recipe – even though it is only 8 ingredients! - and for a lot of fun also), there seems to be a theme here. And since then, whenever I put together some complex brew or mixture, I start counting. If I get to 8 or 9, I step back and ask, Hmmm, can I find a couple more? Usually I can . . .

Now that's not to say that 'Keep it simple, Souschef' isn't a good way to go. Probably 70 - 80% of the time, choosing a 'signature' flavor and using other ingredients to support, highlight or enhance that one main theme is the best approach. But now and then, go crazy; count to 11!

Today, we're going to throw a couple of bony chicken breasts on the grill for dinner (with some rice and a sautéed vegetable medley of some sort - whatever needs using up in the fridge). And since I have a terrible time leaving well enough alone, I decided to concoct a marinade for the chicken. Yup. 11 (if you count lemon and lime as separate ingredients). Don't know how it will turn out, but here's what ended up in it.

1/3 tsp. cumin, ground
1/3 tsp. galangal powder (ok, weird one; adds nice heat without a lot of its own flavor)
¼ tsp. cinnamon, ground (Try it! You'll like it! . . .)
12 -14 grinds black pepper, fresh coarse ground Tellicherry, of course! (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll talk about pepper one day!)
½ tsp. garlic, granulated or powder if that's all you've got
1/3 tsp. cilantro, dried flakes
2 - 3 tbsp. fish sauce, Tiparos, of course (if you don’t have any, get some; but for now, just add some salt – ½ tsp. or so)
3 - 4 tbsp. white wine, dry, cheap, Chablis, Chardonnay, . . .
1 - 2 tbsp. lemon juice, about 1/3 of a lemon
2 - 3 tbsp. lime juice, about ½ of a lime
2 - 3 tbsp. sesame oil
(All measurements are fictional; I judge by eye, and pinch, and palm, pure guess; you’re on your own!)

Put all the dry stuff in a glass pie plate (or something similar) and flip, swirl, twirl together with a fork. Add the fish sauce, wine, and citrus (toss the rinds in, too if you have room - and if you remembered to wash the fruit before you squeezed), and, again, fork it into a frenzy. Squirt the sesame oil onto the chicken (both sides, now!), rub it in, and dredge, dip, slosh, and otherwise thoroughly coat the chicken with the marinade.

Put the pie plate in the fridge for a couple of hours and then grill the chicken. Or, at least, that's what I'm planning at the moment. Use the rest of the marinade to drizzle on the chicken from time to time, and hey, I'll let you know tomorrow how it all turns out!

the pace of change . . .

2004-08-13T15:12:00.000-04:00

So.

It looks like this is going to grow at a 'measured' pace. Sometimes life intervenes.

This week has been spent crawling around on hands and knees in 'the computer room' trying to replace a hard drive and salvage all the data and applications from the old one. Task complete, but there's no energy left for culinary creations (of the blog sort - we're still eating well!).

More anon . . .