The Hour of Gracious Living

Shrimp and Roasted Corn Salsa Arepas or Tostadas

2011-05-17T11:38:00.001-04:00

I made this quick dish with arepas—a Colombian/Venezuelan cornbread-type patty similar to a pupusa or a Central American tortilla. Arepas can be eaten plain or with a stuffing or topping. You can make them, or buy them in neighborhoods with large South American populations, but this dish would also be very good as tostadas. At the end, instead of putting everything on an arepa, pan-fry some tortillas in an inch of oil until crispy and let them cool on a paper towel.

Ingredients (makes food for 4):

· 1 lb. shrimp

· 1 ear of corn ,or 1 16-oz can of corn

· 1 red onion

· 1 bunch of cilantro

· Something for spice, preferably habanero-based hot sauce (do NOT fuck around with whole habanero peppers for this recipe). Cayenne powder will also do.

· 12 fl. oz. Greek yogurt

· 1 cucumber

· 3 limes

· 4-8 arepas (depending on size), or 8 small tortillas

· 2 Roma tomatoes

· ½ lb. Queso Blanco/Queso Fresco (fresh Mexican/Central American cheese)—if you can’t find this, Monterey Jack will do in a pinch

There are three parts to the dish. The shrimp are obviously the main event, but there’s also a corn salsa to give the dish some spice and roast flavor and a tzatziki-esque yogurt sauce to lube it a little. Each of the pieces are made like so (preferably in this order):

Corn Salsa

Cook the corn. Either cook corn on the cob until partially blackened (roasted on the grill or in the oven) and cut off kernels, or drain and sauté canned corn until partially blackened.
Chop and sauté tomatoes until well-cooked; when they start turning black, they are done.
Combine two ingredients after letting cool enough to handle. Add the juice of a lime, ¼ to ½ bunch chopped cilantro, and about a third of a raw, medium-sized red onion.
Add salt and hot sauce/cayenne powder. Not too much—you don’t want this dish to be overpowered with spice. But the corn salsa is the only spice in the dish, so it needs to have some kick.

Yogurt Sauce (food processor or blender needed)

Roughly chop about 2/3 of a medium cucumber and half of the bunch of cilantro (I love cilantro, so scale back if you need).
Put them in the food processor until the vegetables are a disgusting baby-food mush.
Stir the blended vegetables into the yogurt until it’s noticeably green and it more like cilantro and cucumbers than tangy yogurt.
Squeeze in the juice from 1 lime. Stir and set aside.

Shrimp

Coat the shrimp with lime juice (1-2 limes) and black pepper about 15 minutes before cooking.
Place the shrimp on a skewer and grill, or sauté over high heat in a pan, about 2-3 minutes per side. The shrimp are done when they turn orange and have some black marks on each side.
Salt and pepper to taste

When everything is cooked (and the shrimp are still hot, and ideally the corn salsa is still warm), stuff or top the arepas. First spread the sauce on the base, almost like a pizza. Then add the corn salsa and top with the shrimp. Finally, top with the cheese. If you are stuffing the arepas, gently mix the ingredients before you fill the arepas. If you are making tostadas, fry them before you start cooking the shrimp so they are ready to go once they are cooked.

Chicken Tinga Tacos

2011-04-17T21:56:00.002-04:00

While in South Philly last weekend, I was happy to walk by incendiary restauranteur Joseph Vento’s Geno’s Steaks, head a block or two north, and buy fresh tortillas from an awesome tortilleria in a neighborhood that is home to tens of thousands of Mexican-Americans. I was far happier to take those tortillas home and use them as a pulled-chicken delivery vehicle to my face.

Tinga is a stewed-meat dish, generally shredded/pulled chicken or pork in a chipotle and tomato based red sauce. Depending on how many chipotle peppers you put in, it can be anywhere from zero spice to ridiculously hot. It can be the main event for tacos, tostadas, gorditas, or really whatever you want.
Ingredients:

A blender (a food processor will work in a pinch)
3 to 4 lbs. chicken (white, dark or combo)
1 white onion—1/2 diced, 1/2 in big chunks
4 cloves garlic—1/2
1 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes (discard half the juice)
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce--can be found in any grocery store
1 lime
1 dozen corn tortillas
Bay leaves
Oregano
Cumin
Salt, pepper

Step one is to cook the chicken until SHREDDABLE!!! Heat a large pot of water and add a couple cloves of garlic (cut into halves), half an onion (cut into chunks), a couple bay leaves, and a modest amount of salt and pepper (whole or ground pepper). When the water is at a low boil, add the chicken and boil it for 20-30 minutes. Take the chicken out of the water and let it cool.

While the chicken is stewing, lightly salt and saute the onions. Cook them until they are translucent but not quite brown. Once the onions are done, put in the garlic and sauté for 30-40 more seconds. Then add the tomatoes to the saute pan and cook until the tomatoes soften up a bit, maybe 5 minutes. Take off the heat and add a couple handfuls of chopped cilantro, about a teaspoon of oregano, and about half a teaspoon of cumin, salt, and black pepper.

It’s pepper decision time. I like my food a little more spicy than average, and I put in about 3 chipotle peppers (deseeded) with most of the adobo sauce from the can. You can do anything from zero peppers and just sauce (not spicy at all) to a whole can, not deseeded (sweat-and-tears hot). I’d really recommend not trying to be a hero and deseeding the peppers, no matter what you do. Either way, put the peppers and adobo in the pan, pour everything into the blender, and blend until smooth.

Time to shred the chicken—I find this is easy to do in a baking tray, and to use 2 forks to pull the chicken apart. It should shred into strips after a little work.

Pour the sauce back into the pan and get it up to a high simmer. If it is extremely thin, cook it until it thickens. Think about putting the sauce in a taco—if it’s runny, you’re going to have a mess. Put the chicken in and cook it (lid off) for 10-15 minutes. By this time, the sauce should thicken up and be almost more of a coating than a sauce, like so:

Squeeze the juice of a lime in, stir, and take off the heat.

Scoop the tinga into corn tortillas (I prefer them doubled up). These REALLY should be fresh; if you can't get them from a tortilleria (which I usually can't), go to a Hispanic grocery. Buy these the day you make tacos. Once you've loaded the tortillas, top with cilantro and serve with a lime wedge (radish slices are also a classic taco pairing).

Beef Bourgignon: Like beef stew, but with wine and bacon

2011-03-28T15:43:00.006-04:00

French food gets a bad rap as snooty, but dishes like beef bourgignon (and coq au vin, which I also wrote about) are the tasty, tasty workhorses of French cuisine—workhorses which the French eat as voraciously as they do actual workhorses, incidentally. It is fundamentally beef stew except with the broth replaced largely by red wine and brandy. Wine is about as cheap in France as water, and is historically more sterile, so it makes a lot of sense as a liberally-used cooking ingredient. It also has the perk of being a much more delicious stew base than beef broth.

Beef bourgignon also soundly stomps beef stew as a rendered-pork-fat delivery vehicle, as virtually everything in the dish ends up browned in bacon fat. Finally, it has the beauty of being a one-pot dish, as the entire thing can be cooked in a big soup pot (preferably one that isn't non-stick).

Ingredients

1/2 lb bacon, lardons or strips cut into 1” wide chunks
3 lbs cheap beef (e.g. chuck roast), cut into 1-2” chunks. The more aggressive of you can marinate this overnight in the cooking wine along with salt and pepper. If you do this, save the wine when you take out the meat.
1 lb pearl onions (frozen or fresh—defrost if frozen)
3 sticks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb carrots, chopped
1 750ml bottle of red wine. Something mild (e.g. pinot noir, merlot). And cheap--don't go putting a pricy Burgundy wine in here just because it's in the dish's name.
1 cup beef broth
1 cup brandy or Cognac
3 to 4 bay leaves
1/4 cup flour
extra butter on hand in case
1 lb mushrooms—white, cremini, or button. If the mushrooms are big, quarter them.
2 sprigs fresh thyme
4 sprigs parsley
1 package egg noodles
salt
pepper

This dish is not hard. The steps are all very straightforward. With that said, if you don’t do the prepwork before you turn on the heat, you will pay the piper as you scramble to cut the 4th thing while the 3rd thing browns. Cut everything up as directed, lightly salt the veggies, and put everything in bowls, rammakins, or whatever. Also, have two bowls for the cooked food before it stews—a big one for the meat, garlic, and mirepoix (onions, celery, and carrots) and a medium one for the mushrooms. And lay out a plate with a paper towel on it for the bacon.

Start by browning the bacon in a big pot (or Dutch oven) over medium-high heat. Once it is crispy, fish it out with a slotted spoon and set it on the paper towels. You now have a pot of bacon fat to start browning everything else in.

A quick digression into a can’t-miss business plan, courtesy of my friend Adam.

Three known facts:

1. Bacon fat is good
2. White people love all-natural foods
3. White people throw out their bacon fat when they cook

What if I told you for a relatively modest capital investment, you could exploit these truths for profit while eating a lot of bacon? I’m talking about frying up a ton of bacon and then selling the bacon fat as handcrafted, artisan, organovoric-or-something bacon fat. A steal at $12.99 a jar. Tell me that wouldn’t fly off the shelves at Whole Foods. The only possible flaw in the business plan is the company’s skyrocketing health insurance premiums after every employee has quadruple-bypass surgery before we even get the phone lines hooked up. But this could work. It’s almost as foolproof as my plan to sell trendy (read: expensive) doughnuts, starting the new, stupid cupcake/frozen yogurt fad of 2012.

Anyways, back to the bacon fat. If you didn’t marinate the meat, liberally salt and pepper the meat and then dredge it in flour, giving it a healthy coat. If you marinated, skip the salt and pepper and go right to the flour. Brown the meat in the pot—just a few minutes, enough to brown it but not cook it. Take out the browned meat with the slotted spoon, put it in the big bowl, and start browning the mirepoix. Note: if at any point you run low on bacon fat (you really shouldn’t, though…), add a little butter to keep browning.

When the mirepoix is browned and slightly soft (but not cooked), take it out of the pot and put it in the big bowl with the meat. Then brown the mushrooms, put them in their own bowl, and put them in the fridge—you won’t use these for a few hours. Finally, brown the garlic (30-60 seconds) and put it in the big bowl.

By now, especially if your pot isn’t non-stick, you should have a nice coat of brown gunk on the bottom of it. Turn the heat down to medium-low and deglaze the pot with wine, meaning pour some wine in and use it to scrape off the brown junk on the bottom of the pot with a spatula. Then add the meat and veggies from the large bowl, add the bacon, pour the rest of the wine in, pour the brandy and beef broth in, and bring the pot up to a simmer.

While the pot is coming to a simmer, make a bouquet garni (a bundle of herbs) with the bay leaves, parsley, and thyme, tying all of them together with a piece of twine and dropping it in the pot (for easy fishing out at the end). Simmer for 3-4 hours with the lid half on—by the end, a little more than half of your liquid should reduce out and the stew should be slightly sludgy, about the consistency of motor oil (yum.). Once you get that thickness, you're done.

About 20 minutes before you pull the pot off the heat, boil the water for the egg noodles and cook them. At the same time, put the mushrooms in the stew—the reason we held them off so long was because we don’t want them to blow up and get soggy sitting in the stew for hours. Once the egg noodles are done, serve the beef bourgignon over individual plates of egg noodles.

Pasta Puttanesca: Eat your pasta, whore.

2010-07-03T13:12:00.007-04:00

Penne puttanesca, (literal translation “whore’s penne”) is an easy modern Italian pasta sauce, great for a weeknight or late dinner. The dish is southern Italian style, which is commonly meatless, tomato-based, and spicy. With Kalamata olives it gets a pan-Mediterranean flavor.

It’s easy to do, and cleanup is easy; like most pasta sauces, this is a one-pot sauce. Pasta puttanesca also has the added benefit of being a great dish to make for date night, if only because you can REALLY set the moment by artfully timing the reveal on the English translation of the dish’s name.

Ingredients (makes enough for 4 people):

1/2 onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup pitted olives (kalamata preferred)
2 tbsp capers
1 28-oz can diced or crushed tomatoes, depending on preference
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 can anchovies (you’ll want the oil and a couple filets)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp dried basil, or 4 tsp fresh
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp sugar (the key to pretty much any good red sauce)
0-1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
Pasta for 4—I think penne, spaghetti, and linguine are the best choices for this dish

First, brown the onions in a big pan in a little olive oil. They don’t have to be roasted to a crisp, but they should have a nice brown on them. Something like 10 minutes on medium-high heat should get you there. Once the onions are browned, put in the garlic and cook for another 30-60 seconds—as always with sauteing garlic, you are done right after you can smell the garlic. Dump in the tomato sauce and paste, stir, and turn the heat down to medium.

Now it’s time for the salt brigade. Almost everything that goes in this sauce is salted, and anchovies, capers, and olives can vary so much in salt that it’s good to get a feel for what you have saltwise before you start loading up on the table salt. This is one of the rare cases that you need to proceed with caution on salt—most of the time, the error is in undersalt dishes, leaving them flavorless.

Fake doctor note: processed food has far more salt than what you add to dishes, so if you are cooking for yourself you probably don’t need to worry about salting your red sauce to the point of hypertension. Processed food is the main cause of hypertension, according to the Internet and these guys. It’s science.

Chop the olives and 2-3 anchovy filets. Add them, everything else in the ingredient list (minus the salt), and about half a tablespoon of oil from the anchovies. Stir it up, put the heat on medium-low, and simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring from time to time. You’re done once the sauce has reduced from watery to…umm, saucy, I guess. You’re done when your sauce is saucy. At some point while the sauce is reducing, give it a taste and see if it needs that extra tablespoon of salt.

After about 10 minutes of cooking the sauce, you should start boiling your water and cooking your pasta. If you find the pasta is going to be done too early or too late, you can adjust the temperature on the sauce to make it reduce faster or slower. Toss with pasta and serve.

Mango Pepper-Pork Burritos

2010-04-15T21:14:00.005-04:00

Burritos are a perfect food for a night where you walk into the grocery store and have no idea what you want to make. You can go pretty much any direction: fish? cheese? potatoes? chicken + mashed potatoes + gravy + corn + cheese? I’m personally a big fan of rice in my burritos for a starch; it’s a nice change from beans and probably a little healthier.

This is a pretty easy burrito combo that is a nice mix of spice, sweetness, and saturated fat. Plus, everyone gets super fucking impressed when you make your own salsa. Even though all you did is chop some vegetables, you self-aggrandizing jerk.

There’s no “recipe” per se for this burrito. Some people like more of one thing or another, and some people like to load them up or keep them small. Just make some of everything and put it together at the end—nothing costs much money in the recipe, and everything has other uses to it.

Ingredients:

Tortillas
White long-grain rice—the regular stuff
Boneless pork ribs
Whole black peppercorns
Salt
Sour Cream

Mango salsa

Mangos
Tomatoes
Red Onion
Cilantro
Serrano peppers
Sugar
Salt

This meal has a couple steps that have to happen at kinda the same time. This ordering is probably ideal:

Cook the rice. Rice takes about 25-30 minutes to cook (20 minutes after the water comes to a boil), and it holds heat pretty well. If it’s done first, no big deal.

Make the salsa. I think the proper ratio is about 50 percent mangoes, 30 percent tomatoes, 10 percent onions, and 10 percent peppers. Then add cilantro to taste. You want just a little salt, and the sugar is only necessary if the mangoes aren’t at their peak of ripeness just to give it a little more fruity flavor. Note: you can use whatever peppers you want. I used Serrano—a little milder than Jalapeno and with a very nice flavor—but it’ll really change up your salsa to change peppers.

MEAT MEAT MEAT: pepper-crusted pork. The goal here is to crack the peppercorns just a little. You can do this with a REALLY coarse pepper grinder, but instead of wasting your money you can just smash it. Put the peppercorns on a plate, put a paper towel over them to prevent them flying everywhere, and SMASH 'em with something hard (no, Rafael Palmiero!). A wooden mallet, a rolling pin, or the bottom of a pint glass.

Once you have the peppercorns smashed, salt the pork. Then put each slice onto the pepper and push it down. Do this on all sides, coating it in pepper. Cook over medium high heat in a pan for 3-4 min a side, just until brown on the sides and pink in the middle.

When the pork is done, pull it and heat the tortillas. You can do this either in a microwave (just a few seconds) or by wiping out the pork pan and put them for 5-10 seconds on each side. All you’re trying to do is soften them up a tad and get them warm so they don’t cool down the burrito.

I mean, here's the thing. I’m not going to sit here and describe how to make a burrito out of finished product. Put the stuff you want in it until it looks good in a kinda rectangle, fold one side of the tortilla, and then roll perpendicular to that fold. The hotter you got the tortilla, the more gummy it will get and the more it’ll kinda glue together and hold your fillings in place.

Gender, Relationships and Cooking

2009-12-15T14:48:00.004-05:00

I was prompted by this article to write about the role cooking plays in relationships and gender. In it, Hanna Rosin references two must-read articles (one by the bitter and awful Sandra Tsing Loh where she trashes what she terms the Companionate Marriage; the other by the charming Elizabeth Weil who almost ruins her marriage by trying to improve it). Rosin uses both articles as a jumping off point to ~~bash the shit out of~~ playfully needle husband and co-worker David Plotz and further dive into the idea of the "kitchen bitch", or a man who's come to dominate the cooking in a relationship.

From Rosin:

I first heard this term in Sandra Tsing Loh's recent Atlantic story about her divorce. She used it to describe a friend’s husband who was anal and fussy and altogether too feminine—he belonged to an online fennel club, for God’s sake. Loh's bitch was wholly unsavory, a prop designed to justify universal divorce. Mine is not so easy to dismiss. My experience is more like Elizabeth Weil's, who, in her New York Times Magazine story this month, tells of a husband who lords over the kitchen in an all-too-manly way, with his scientific cookbooks and farmers' market snobbery and gadgets. My husband is less likely to freeze and label porcini-infused risotto—the Loh version—than to hover menacingly two inches away while I am chopping vegetables. "Shouldn’t they be smaller?" he asks, restraining himself so he won’t grab the knife. My mother would have been grateful. I am not. Instead, like Weil, I am often left seething with petty rage and self-pity.

There's a few things going on in this article I find interesting and relatable to, as someone who cooks in no small part to impress women (you know who you are, Cioppino Girl and Slider/Tater Tot Girl):

First, there's definitely a trend of more men being able to cook (and less women being able to). I know many excellent female cooks, but my friends in DC that can't cook are more likely to be female. Is Rosin right about the gender dynamic of cooking, though, that having two spouses that enjoy cooking is too many proverbial cooks in the kitchen? I have never been married, or lived with a girlfriend, but I have enjoyed dating women that cook; in fact, the best part about a previous relationship was our Sunday routine of going to the market, picking out fresh food, and cooking all afternoon ~~besides breaks for trashy TV and afternoon inappropriateness~~.

I guess the dynamic changes if you have kids, but why can't weekend dinners at least be a cooperative affair? My dad and stepmom split cooking duties almost 50/50, daily, when I was growing up. Maybe Rosin’s kids are very young, but I see the choice she sets up of cooking vs. hanging out with kids to be a false one. I spent a ton of time hanging out with my dad in the kitchen and around the grill as a kid--it's how I learned to cook--and I still find cooking most rewarding when it's a social activity.

Second, Rosin talks about the dominance of men on cooking shows and points to Anthony Bourdain as the new TV food show archetype--dickish, foul-mouthed, and manly. I think Rosin misses the mark on Bourdain a bit (I don't see him as a "rage-aholic" or a "testosterone-fueled asshole"). That being said, it's undeniable that besides what's her face with the sammies and that hot Italian woman, cooking shows are sausage-fests even when they aren’t cooking brats these days. I'm not sure if that was always the case or it's a trend, but Celebrity Superchefs like me, with my DOZENS of readers (hey Mom!), seem to be majority male.

I would argue these celebrities are more caused by increasing male presences in the kitchen than a driver of it, though. To me, men cook more now than in the 50’s for two reasons, even though cooking has gone down in society as a whole:

Division of chores. More families are two-income households now, so more men are doing more household chores.
Delaying of marriage. With more people waiting until their late 20’s or 30’s to get married, a lot of young men are spending up to 10 years out of college before moving in with a woman. That’s a LOT of crappy takeout and Campbell’s Soup if men don’t learn how to cook.

This isn’t rocket surgery, and I’m sure it has been covered by many others. I’m also sure if I wasn’t lazy and got my hands on some survey data, cooking and gender would correlate with age and income in ways that would back my point up. However, I do know that both of these things are MUCH larger societal forces than the Food Network.

Once men started doing a larger share of the cooking, I think it was inevitable that we’d start to dude it up in the kitchen and put more manly touches on cooking. Why are there more men on TV even though women still do the majority of home cooking in society? Maybe it’s sexist networks. Maybe it’s sexist male viewers who don’t want to learn from women cooking on TV while female viewers are fine with the other way around. I’m sure the shows do push more men into cooking, but they definitely a secondary role at most.

So, where do we go from here? Should cooking be a split chore for those who have the leisure time to make it one? Are men going to dominate the kitchen and be competitive assholes like we are everywhere else? Is everyone just going to forget how to cook in 20 years anyways once Taco Bell wins the restaurant wars and Dippin’ Dots become the ice cream of the PRESENT???? I don’t know, but I’m going to continue to use my mediocre cooking skills in tandem with my mediocre bedroom skills in pathetically awkward attempts at seduction (hey again, Mom!). Hopefully, I’ll end up with a wife that either likes to split the cooking duties or is happy with me running the show in the kitchen. And hopefully she’s, like, super hot and shit.

The Reuben: America's Greatest Sandwich

2009-12-10T18:09:00.004-05:00

The Reuben Sandwich, a (non-Kosher) Jewish Deli staple, is the epitome of getting it done in the sandwich world. A perfect combo of savory and tangy, with a certain cheesy, crunchy, chewy ~~cruncheweesy~~ quality, the Reuben unarguably sits on top of the sandwich throne, sidekicked ably by his right-hand Jewish deli brethren the hot pastrami. It's science.

As Bill Simmons puts it:

For some reason, there's a hesitation as you're making the order, but when you're eating it, you're thinking, "Man, why don't I order the Reuben more often?" and your friends are all looking over and wishing they had ordered it.

I think he's wrong about the hesitation--the Reuben should be ordered with reckless abandon--but he's right about the mental effects of eating one.

This recipe isn't anything special. This is less of a cooking explanation and more of a PSA reminding you to eat more Reubens, drink more Arnold Palmers, and watch Teen Wolf more often: you forget how great some things in life are until you consume them. But, here's the recipe anyways.

Ingredients:

2 slices rye bread
swiss cheese
corned beef
sauerkraut
Russian dressing:
mayonaise
ketchup
dill pickle relish*
some kind of neutral vinegar*

This sandwich is all about good ingredients. Crappy corned beef and rye bread won't do; spring for the nice thick-cut meat and a good fresh loaf of rye. The best corned beef--think Katz's in New York or Deli City in DC if you've been--will be fatty and tend to fall apart.

The Russian dressing is roughly 6:3:1 mayo:ketchup:pickle relish. You can adjust it to taste. You can also buy it or make it many different ways, but this is a pretty simple mix. *Note: A lot of times dill pickle relish is hard to find; if you can only find sweet pickle relish, you can add a splash of vinegar to bring the needed tartness to the dressing.

Butter the bread on one side. Heat a skillet on medium high heat, and place the bread in it, butter side down. After the bread has just started toasting (a couple minutes), start building the sandwich on one slice.

You're The Decider when it comes to meating your sandwich: I don't tend to heap it on, but if you want a half pound of beef on there, get after it. I also like to heat the meat a little before putting it on the bread by giving it about 10-15 seconds on the hot skillet; this will help melt the cheese and heat the sauerkraut.

Put the other piece of bread on top, butter side up. Give the sandwich a couple minutes on each side until it's toasted. Cut it, eat it, love it.

"Holy Crap, Good Easy Dessert" Alert: Sabayon

2009-12-02T17:55:00.005-05:00

I don't believe in baking. It's too much exact measuring, waiting, and failure. You also can't make any changes as you go, and you don't get the satisfying experiences of poking, charring, and sizzling that are involved with most cooking. I don't hate baked goods; I just don't like them enough to spend the time learning to bake.

As such, I am all about dessert recipes that are delicious but simple. Like this one. Wait, did I mention it can get you drunk too? I'll continue...

Sabayon (French) or Zabaglione (Italian) is a creamy dish that's kinda like pudding/custard. It's got three things that separate it from those dishes:

It's easier to make
It's thin enough to pour over fruit but thick enough to hold it up, so you have suspended fruit pieces to complement the taste
Since you don't get it over 170 degrees (the boiling point of alcohol), it's still boozy, unlike those Jack Daniels' Extreme Fajita Whisky Popper Flingers you got for $7.99 at TGI Chili's

Ingredients (2 servings)

Some sort of fruit--I prefer tart fruit, like berries and kiwis
4 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup fortified wine (Port, Madeira, Marsala, or Night Train preferred)

Note: This is quick (25 minutes total) but requires constant attention, lest you make sweet scrambled eggs.

Steps:

Separate the yolks from the whites--you are only keeping the yolks. You can save the whites for a shitty fake omelet that no one likes, because they're the worst excuse for breakfast food ever. Or, you know, toss em.

Beat the egg yolks until they start thickening. If you are using an electric mixer (ideal), the mixer will start leaving ribbons behind it after a minute or two. If you are using a hand whisk, it will start leaving streaks behind the whisk strokes and you will feel it getting slightly thicker after 3-5 minutes or so, depending on how hard you whisk.

Mix in the sugar (you can add it all at once), and then the wine (same). It will be soupy, thin, and gross now. Don't stress.

OK, so if you own a double boiler, which is basically a steaming pot with no holes in the top pot, get excited about the fact that you are using it for one of the first times ever! Place an inch of water in the bottom pot and bring it to a simmer before putting on the egg mixture in the top pot.

If like me you don't own a double boiler, just take a glass mixing bowl--if you read recipes before you start them, then you've already been mixing in it--and put it on top of a pot with an inch of simmering water. The pot should be small enough that it holds the mixing bowl without it touching the water.

This is the only part where you can really screw this recipe up. DO NOT STOP WHISKING while the mixture is over heat. This needs to be done over low heat and with constant movement so you don't a) turn the egg into scrambled eggs and b) boil off the Irish in it. It will take about 15 minutes for the mixture to come up to temperature--over 140 degrees, but thermometer not needed. You'll know it's done when it's thickening up again to about the consistency the original whipped eggs were at before you added the wine.

**Note for jerry-rigged double boiler operators: The bowl will hold in place fine, but it'll get hot. You'll need potholders to pick it up if you need to check on your water. Release the steam away from your hands if you do so to avoid steam burns.

Pour in a glass while layering in the fruit. I think a wine glass looks classy for presentation. However, I have also poured a plastic pint of whiskey into a 32-ounce fountain Coke at a Monster Truck rally in the last 12 months, so, I'm not judging no matter how you go.

Cheesy Blasters!!!

2009-10-23T00:39:00.011-04:00

Since The Hour targets the same effete liberal audience as 30 Rock, we’re also reaching out and attempting to broaden our appeal across what the PC thought police call the "stupider" demographics. So while watching 30 Rock this week, we got Heartland all over some Cheesy Blasters, the preferred food of real ‘Mrrica as seen on week 1 of the show his season.

A couple ingredient subs of note. First, what with it only being 36 days after Mexican Independence Day, Tostitos SCQ seemed like the smart cheese* choice. Second, we went with the light Oscar Mayer dogs to keep the calories down.

Ingredients:

1-2 hot dogs
1 can Tostitos Salsa Con Queso
1 Tony’s small frozen pepperoni pizza

So, umm, the recipe is pretty straightforward…just watch the clip. Only a couple pointers here:

The more processed, the better. Originally I had the idea of making personal pizzas from scratch for the meal, but I was talked out of that. Wise decision.
When you think you have enough cheese, you don’t.
Keep the pizza on the undercooked side so you can roll it up. More burrito, less hard taco.

Other than that, not a lot of there there. Cook the pizza in the oven according to the directions on the package. Microwave a hot dog and drop it in the middle—ideally, like your mother on a Tuesday, you’re looking for 2 hotdogs or a footlong.

Drown the dog in cheese…

Roll it up…

And drown the blaster in cheese again.

So, here’s the thing about the taste. Think about any two of those three ingredients combined.

Pizza and cheese? Delicious.
Hot dogs and SCQ? Amazing.
Pizza and processed beef? Love this country or leave it, asshole.

Put three instead of two of these complimentary ingredients together, and you’ve got a veritable Real World: Cancun in your mouth, minus the antibiotics prescription. Way better than you might think, and you probably think it sounds really, really good.

Thanks, Meatcat!!!

Coq au vin

2009-10-13T01:33:00.009-04:00

Football season has made me lazy. It’s been months since I’ve put anything up here, especially anything not about the shocking rumors surrounding Glenn Beck. But for Sunday football this week, I made coq au vin and watched the Seahawks get all touchdowny on the Jaguars.

Coq au vin is a classic dish invented by French farmers, invented during a simpler time when reading was for suckers and the masses killed Jews for sport every time the plague rolled through town. It translates as rooster in wine; coq de vin is an entirely different matter. The dish comes from poor people (I know, gross) that can’t afford to throw any food out cooking a tough old rooster. They make it edible--well, tender and delicious actually--by slow-cooking it in wine.

Most modern American recipes will use a normal supermarket roasting hen that is already tender. This is inferior but doable; you will just cook it for an hour and change rather than 4-6 hours, and it won't get quite as soft. This is because the rooster's connective tissue tends to break down and make it more tasty, just like the best meat for BBQ is tough muscle such as pork shoulder.

Ingredients:

1.5L red wine (two normal bottles). Get a Pinot Noir or a Merlot, because a big wine (e.g. Cabernet, Shiraz) will be overpowering once you reduce it and stew in it for hours. As always with cooking wine, go ~~fortified~~ cheap.
Mirepoix: 1 carrot, 1 medium white onion and 1 celery rib, chopped
1 tbsp black peppercorns
8 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 whole rooster/stewing fowl. I get mine at the Eastern Market poultry counter. Make sure the gizzards and other nasty bits are removed.
Salt, pepper
Olive oil
Butter
Flour
¼ lb bacon (about 4 strips)
½ lb small white mushrooms, stems removed and quartered
2 dozen pearl onions. I have really never seen these in any form but frozen in a grocery store.
1 bag egg noodles

Optional step, depending on your level of motivation/drunkenness the night before: overnight marinade. Place the bird in a deep bowl, entirely cover with red wine, and add carrot, peppercorns, thyme, and bay leaves. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

**NOTE: you will need an extra cup of wine for cooking the second day as well, and probably a little more reserved just to be on the safe side. It’s critical that the wine entirely submerges the rooster in your eventual cooking pot. If you don’t have enough, go buy more before you start cooking tomorrow. Second thought, audible time. Just go buy some more wine. This process isn't a quick one, but it's one with a lot of down time and monitoring. You're going to want to have a glass in your hand at all times.

Day two: start by taking the rooster out of the wine and patting it dry. Strain out the vegetables from the wine, and set both aside. Put a couple tbsp of oil and butter into a Dutch oven or large pot, turn to medium-high heat, and brown the rooster. This step is only the first time this dish leans on a couple principles, repeated over and over:

Browning a bunch of different things and using the fond (burned little bits) as flavor. For this reason, a pan that is NOT non-stick is preferred, so you can scrape the bits into your dish.

Cooking in gallons of fat. For this reason, arteries that ARE non-stick are preferred, so you can’t later scrape the bits into your left ventricle.

Once the rooster is browned on all sides—you may need to hold it with tongs while cooking to accomplish this—pull it out and set it aside. Scrape up the brown bits on the bottom of the pot and cook the vegetables in the same pot for roughly 10 min, until soft and browned.

Next up comes a roux, the classic flour + fat thickener for French and Louisiana Creole food. You’ll make it with the vegetables still in the pot. Add about 2 tbsp of flour to the 2-3 tbsp of oil, butter, and chicken fat still sitting in the pan. Stir until the vegetables are coated and cook for another 60 seconds. Once done, pour the wine marinade back into the pot and re-add the rooster. Turn the heat to low, cover and simmer for 4-6 hours, until the rooster is soft and tender.

Now, a couple of the support pieces:

Bacon and mushrooms. At some point while the chicken stews, pan-fry the bacon. After the bacon is cooked, sauté the mushrooms in the bacon fat (you’ll probably only need half of it). Put the bacon and mushrooms aside.

Pearl onions. Put the onions, a pinch of salt and sugar, and 2 tbsp of butter in just enough water to cover the (thawed) onions in a small saucepan. Put the lid on ajar and simmer until the water evaporates. Continue cooking the onions in the water-less pot until brown and then set aside with the bacon and mushrooms.

Wine reduction. Add the cup of red wine you were supposed to have reserved to the pot where you cooked the pearl onions—not the marinade but fresh wine—to the pot and scrape the browned onions into it. Add salt and pepper, and simmer until the wine reduces into a sauce slightly thicker than a syrup. Set aside by itself.

Yeah, I know this has kinda taken a while, there have been a lot of steps, and the cleanup looks daunting. But nothing was difficult, you're almost done, and you should definitely have polished off some wine while you've been working (still wearing pants? You're probably doing something wrong). When the chicken is done, pull it out, let it cool slightly, and carve it into its individual 8 pieces. You should probably cook the egg noodles now if you are intending to serve right away.

Strain the rooster cooking liquid into the red wine reduction, add 2 tbsp of butter, and stir. Throw out the mirepoix vegetables—that was only for flavor, sucker! Add the bacon, pearl onions, and mushrooms to the chicken pieces on a platter, pour the cooking sauce over the chicken, and serve over the egg noodles.

JambaLAYA!!!!

2009-09-01T00:48:00.007-04:00

This is a favorite classic New Orleans rice-based dish which generally involves 1 to 3 of the following three meats: chicken, andouille (a smoky, spicy sausage), and shrimp. There are a couple great factors with this dish:

1. It's a one-pot recipe, so there's very little clean-up
2. It's extremely cheap, especially if you forgo the shrimp
3. It makes amazing leftovers

Ingredients:

2 bay leaves
1 cup onion, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 cup green bell pepper, chopped
1 lb andouille
1 lb chicken
1/2 lb shrimp
8 oz canned chopped tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
2 cups rice
4 cups chicken broth/water
2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp thyme

You can scale this (this is enough food for 6-8), but I've always found it hard to make a dish like this for any less than 4. The stuff only gets better as it sits in the fridge and the flavors mix together more overnight, so you could do worse than be eating jambalaya for three straight days after you make it.

Prep work:

Chop the onions, celery, and bell pepper. This 1:1:1 mix is called the holy trinity (a variation of the French Mirepoix) and serves as the base for much of the Creole and Cajun cuisines
Mince the garlic
Slice the sausage into 1/4 inch thick slices
Cut the chicken into 3/4 inch pieces
Peel and de-vein (Latin for "de-poop") the shrimp

This dish will all happen in a big pot. Ideally it is NOT non-stick, so you can keep scraping up burned bits of meat and veggies and combining them back into the dish.

Start by heating a little oil in the pot on medium and browning the chicken and sausages. The goal isn't to cook them, just to get the outside browned--the chicken will finish cooking while the rice is going, and the sausage doesn't need to be cooked. Take them out and set them aside when they're done.

Put the three vegetables in the empty pot, which should have some fat from the meats in it (pour some of it out if it's an obscene amount--you don't want the vegetables swimming in it). These are going to cook for a 15 min or so--the onions should be brown with almost black spots on them. At that point, put the garlic in and continue to cook for 1-2 minutes.

Re-add the chicken and sausage, put the rice in, and stir it around to coat it with all the oils and juices from everything (by now you're probably getting the "covering shit in fat" theme of Creole cooking). Add the thyme, bay leaves, salt, pepper, cayenne, and tomatoes. Pour in the chicken stock, stir to mix evenly, put on the lid, and cover the dish and simmer for about 30 minutes.

This will require a little more patience than Newman ever had with the dish:

You'll know the dish is done when all of the chicken stock is absorbed or evaporated; sucks to you if you don't have a clear lid, but don't be opening it all the time and letting the steam out once you get a simmer going. Don't bother checking until 20 minutes.

About 2-3 minutes before this point, put in the raw shrimp. Shrimp cooks so fast that you should be pretty sure your food is almost done before you put it in. Once the shrimp is done, turn off the heat and let stand for 10 minutes (it will be hot as hell). Serve.

Quick and Simple Garlic Vinaigrette

2009-08-25T00:21:00.007-04:00

The man's got you down, filing papers all day or writing pointless ad copy for far too little money. So why do you insist on giving him $5 for some middling bottle of salad dressing when you can make your own for 1/3 of the price, only yours will be fresh and better?

This is a simple vinaigrette you can put together in 90 seconds, toss on a salad, and put in a jar for a week or two in the fridge (nothing in here really goes bad that fast).

Basic ingredients:

1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vinegar (I prefer red wine. Any vinegar will do, but if you use balsamic, scale it back to about 1/3 cup)
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste. Be generous

There's really nothing to this. The only key is to mix it for some time until the mustard and liquids form an emulsion. This is when two liquids that don't mix (oil and water, milk and cream, the saliva of a Montague and Capulet) are whipped together long enough until the molecules of one substance entirely coat droplets of the other, forming a sort of mix that will hang together for about twice as long as this decade's only true power couple:

In this dressing, the mustard is acting as an emulsifier; particles of oil and vinegar cling to it, helping the dressing stay together for longer.

Mince the garlic very finely and smash it with the broad side of a chef's knife (or run it through a garlic press). Put all the ingredients together and whisk; you can also put them in a jar and just shake em up.

Other things to try:

Sub the Dijon mustard out for something a little spicier; Zatarain's Creole Mustard and Inglehoffer Sweet Hot are both good options, for example.
Add minced shallots
Add some fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, fresh basil, or, well, something else.)
Honey mustard dressing: Double the Dijon, halve the oil and vinegar, leave out the garlic, and put in 2 tbsp of honey.

It's hard to go wrong, and if you do, you're out a couple bucks of olive oil and a couple minutes. As long as you keep the base of roughly 2:1 oil:vinegar--you can stray from this to taste within reason--you're probably going to come out all right. You'll also make your salad tastier and your life easier if you toss it all before you serve it--anyone who asks for dressing on the side can go suck an egg and eat at their own house. Why should you not get an evenly dressed salad just because they're a jackass?

Sandwich Battle Royale Number 2: Sliders (part III)

2009-08-19T01:36:00.009-04:00

Continuing the 2nd installment of the continuing sesquibimonthly sandwich-off feature, where I cooked three different type of sliders and compared them to each other:

Candidate C: Fish Sliders

Ingredients

12 potato buns
1 lb cod filet (any white fish will do)
tartar sauce
1 tbsp dill
2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 lemon
½ cup bread crumbs

This recipe is the simplest of the three. You could go crazy and make your own tartar (or even make your own mayonnaise for your own tartar, you showoff jackass). It takes the most cook time but has very little prep work. I like cod here because it’s a neutral fish with a good thickness to its filets, but knock yourself out with some haddock, grouper, mahi mahi, even salmon. Don’t waste your time with tilapia, but other than that, you’re in charge.

Spread 1 tbsp oil or melted butter on a baking pan. Lay down the filet. Flip it over; the filet will now be coated in oil on both sides. Spread some of your other tbsp of oil/butter on the fish, and then sprinkle on half of your breadcrumbs and dill. Rub the breadcrumbs on, but don’t overly work them in and massacre your filet. Flip and repeat.

Put the fish in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. Note: this is a cod bake time, so some fish may vary depending on thickness and density. Generally with fish you want it to be flaky but not dry. Seafood is easy to fuck up—most of it seems to go from raw to done in about 10 seconds—and the only tip I have is to get some practice cooking seafood.

Cut the fish into chunks and spread tartar sauce on top of it. Put on buns and serve.

Verdict:
My favorite. The simplest but the tastiest, and the lightest on a summer day.

Rating:

Ease: 6/10
Speed: 7/10
Cheap: 5/10
Flavor: 17/20
Overall: 34/50

Sandwich Battle Royale Number 2: Sliders (part II)

2009-08-19T01:24:00.008-04:00

2 half smokes
8 King’s Hawaiian Rolls
1 small onion
2 oz cream cheese

For those of you who haven’t spent time in DC, the half-smoke is the only real signature food of the city (and Bill Cosby). The crab cake is big in the region—particularly in Maryland to the northeast—but the half-smoke is pretty much what DC’s got besides awesome Ethiopian food. If you’re not in DC, this would be good with any salty, spicy sausage; kielbasa or andouille would be my first thoughts.

Disclaimer: this recipe is pilfered from Adam. There’s not a lot of extra complexity going on here; it’s the same combo of flavors you can find in Seattle from late-night street vendors in the cream cheese hotdog, and it takes the same difficulty to make as something served up to drunk assholes in Pioneer Square whose just walked out of Tiki Bob’s in designer jeans and the latest date-rape shirt to hit the rack at the ‘Crombie, brah. Cream cheese hotdogs are fucking awesome though, and so are these.

Cut up a small onion into disks, and cut each ring into a semi-circle. Sautee them with light oil over medium heat for about 20 minutes; cook them down until they are caramelized and have only the slightest crunch left in them.

Cut the half-smoke into quarters across its diameter. Take the pieces and butterfly them. Put them in a pan over medium-high heat (no oil needed) and brown them. This will take just over 5 minutes.

This is a timing operation—you need enough heat to melt the cheese, so you want hot onions and hot half-smoke. Hopefully you’ve pulled the onions and sausage off the heat at the same time. Order, from top to bottom: bun, sausage, cheese, onion, bun.

Verdict:

Classic, and reminds me of home. A little heavy for the summer, but very delicious. These also hold up well over a couple days in the fridge.

Rating:

Ease: 6/10
Speed: 5/10
Cheap 6/10
Flavor: 15/20
Overall: 32/50

Sandwich Battle Royale Number 2: Sliders (part I)

2009-08-19T01:06:00.007-04:00

As noted in this blog, this summer seems to be the summer of sliders for whatever reason. I’m more of a sucker for trends than lead fish wrapper decorator Monica Hesse at the Washington Post, so for the 2nd installment of the continuing sesquibimonthly sandwich-off feature I cooked three different type of sliders.

Each sandwich was rated on four categories: ease of cooking, total time of cooking, cost of ingredients, and flavor (worth double points). Think of it like a WWE Battle Royale, except the meat injections aren't on a cycle.

Candidate A: Green Chili Turkey Burgers

Ingredients

1 lb turkey
12 potato buns
1 egg
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 oz canned green chilis
2 fresh jalapenos or poblano peppers
1 oz onion
1 bunch cilantro
1 clove garlic
Cheese (optional)
salt
pepper

When cooking a meal that requires accurate timing like this one, with three types of sliders at once, I like to do all the prep work WELL in advance. Don’t be fucking around with your knife while you have three things on the stove—you are almost guaranteed to ruin something. There’s two things to get out of the way early here: the sauce and the ground turkey.

For the turkey, put the meat into a bowl and crack an egg into it.. Add the 2 oz of green chilis, 1 tsp of salt or so, and do a first-draft mix by hand.

We’ve covered this before, but burgers with breadcrumbs are objectively better than those without (Margaret Havemann doesn’t know this and should be scorned for doing so). This is especially true for turkey burgers, which can tend to dry out. Breadcrumbs hold in the juices that would otherwise sizzle all pretty-like in the pan but not end up in your mouth. In that case, I don’t know what ends up drier, your turkey burgers or my wit.

Mix the crumbs in a bit at a time; the goal is to push the meat up to the point where it feels almost like it’s losing its glue from the egg.

Take the jalapenos/poblanos (jalapenos are hotter), cilantro, garlic, onion and very finely mince them. If you have a blender, that’s ideal. If not, chop them almost to their liquid state. Big chunks just don’t work right on a slider. If you are blending, you may need a little water to create more of a sauce. I used a ratio of roughly 4:4:2:1, where the 4 parts are the jalapenos and onions, the 2 part is garlic, and the 1 part is cilantro. Salt and pepper to taste—get after the salt in particular here.

Form the burgers into thinner patties and cook them in a pan over medium heat. They won’t take long—they’ll be ready to flip in 3-4 min. Put them on buns, top with cheese and pepper spread, and serve. I went with a Havarti cheese—I like the way it asymmetrically breaks apart and I like its mild but distinct flavor—but really any mild, soft cheese will do. You could even go nuts with a Camembert or mild brie.

Verdict:

Solid, but a couple caveats:

This takes a lot of effort without a blender or mortar and pestle, and the sauce will never get as smooth as you want.
Make sure you really get liberal with the chilis and salt in the burger—turkey can really taste bland without proper seasoning.

Rating:

Ease: 5/10
Speed: 5/10
Cheap 6/10
Flavor: 14/20
Overall: 30/50

Pop off!!! Pop off!!! Pop off!!!

2009-08-03T16:04:00.007-04:00

For appetizers for Sausage Fest 2009, a now-annual (I’m hoping) party where Adam buys 25 pounds of intestine-encased meat from the Southeastern US, I figured some light fare was in order. Meaning, vegetables. Meaning, jalapenos. Stuffed with cheese. And sausage. And wrapped in bacon.

The food porn didn't come out great (cell phone camera on a dark grill), but you get the idea:

What you need:

6 jalapenos
¼ lb cream cheese (I didn't use Philadelphia brand, but you can)
1 Mexican chorizo (or ¼ loose Mexican chorizo sausage)
3 strips of bacon
6 toothpicks

Obviously, this recipe scales pretty easily. I would not recommend getting any more ambitious than 24 or so with one person--without an assembly line, cutting up the peppers is kind of a bitch.

Peppers are hot because of capsaicin, a chemical that reacts by what chemists call “burning the shit out of you” if you get enough of it on you. Mucus membranes and open cuts are places where it loves to get into your body—this includes your mouth, that “sunburn” on your lip, your eyes, and any nicks you have on your hand. Most of the capsaicin in peppers is contained in its seeds and the fleshy membranes inside it, so you’ll want to get rid of those.

If you have multiple nicks and cuts on your hands, you will hate yourself by the end of working the jalapenos. Just sally up and get some gloves. Take the gloves OFF while taking a leak; capsaicin will also find its way into some uncomfortable spots in the bathroom—NOT the back of a Volkswagen—and fuck with your universe for a good couple hours. Not that I’ve ever had that happen to me like a year ago, or anyone else on this blog has either.

That said, for those of you still living in fear, jalapenos aren't really that hot in the scheme of things. Especially when you de-seed, de-stem, and de-vein them, they aren't so bad. Here is where the average jalapeno ranks on the Scoville scale of common peppers (keep in mind that each individual pepper can vary greatly):

Pure capsaicin: 16 million
Pepper spray: ~5 million
Habanero pepper: ~250,000
Esteban Colberto: 100,000
Cayenne pepper: 30,000
Serrano pepper: 10,000
Jalapeno pepper: 3,000
Poblano pepper: 1,000
Anaheim pepper: 500
Mild salsa from the grocery store: Like 6 or something. Kill yourself if you buy this.
Bell peppers: 0

Point being that jalapenos aren't that hot, so suck it up and deal with them. If you really can't, though, poblano peppers are a good substitution. Anaheim peppers will work too.

Cut the stems off the peppers, leaving a wide opening to get everything else out. Then go in and fish out the seeds. The middle section of the pepper that holds the seeds will pull out on its own if you give it a twist; remove the seeds and cut out the white membranes. Give the inside of the hollowed-out pepper a rinse to further remove any excess spicy business.

If your chorizo came whole, cut open the sausage, throw away the casing, and empty out the loose meat into a bowl. Place it with the cream cheese and combine them (hands work best). Stuff the raw sausage and cheese into the peppers. You will have to work it in pretty good and get out the air bubbles, which makes a kinda disgusting sound. Get after it though—the key is getting more cheese and sausage into the pepper and less not-cheese-and-sausage. Wrap each popper with a half slice of bacon and put a toothpick in it to hold it together.

I grilled these by putting them on the top rack of the grill, where one would normally put buns or something. They need to cook for quite some time (15-20 minutes) until the jalapenos get soft and the pork fully cooks. It's also a good idea to put some foil down under them to keep a ton of cheese and sausage dripping down to the grill. For the last 2-3 minutes, move them down to the main portion of the grill so the bacon crisps and the poppers get a nice char to them. You can also do this in the oven (My sense is I’d try them at about 300-325 degrees).

When they are done, let them SIT before you eat them--the cheese will be molten chorizo lava, which Mexican culture holds only second in sheer terror-producing ability to the Chupacabra. After about 5-10 minutes they should be good.

RSS feeds

2009-07-15T18:14:00.003-04:00

Apparently you can RSS feed all blogspot blogs.

If you do that sort of stuff, it's at http://thehourofgraciousliving.blogspot.com/rss.xml.

Trashy 4th of July cookout

2009-07-10T15:21:00.011-04:00

Every once in a while, it's nice to bring a little class to your life. Appreciating the finer things is what separates us from our medieval ancestors and marks the progress of civilization.

The 4th of July is not that time. Having low-rent cookouts is what makes us fucking Americans. To celebrate 4th at the Maxwell, we pulled out the portable grill, set it up in the alley right next to an abandoned lot in Columbia Heights, and went to town. Broken 40's on the ground aren't required to replicate the meal, but they don't hurt.

On the menu:

Cheeseburgers
Bacon-wrapped shrimp
Bacon-wrapped scallops
Corn on the cob [ed: ran out of bacon before we could wrap these]

The grill was a portable Weber-style charcoal deal. While the coals heated and the box of chardonnay (Black Box, getting it done again) chilled in the freezer, we went to work on prep.

Hamburgers

We’ve already posted a treatise on burgers, but I’d add one main point to that. People take a lot of time and put in a lot of effort trying to season beef in steak form—injecting, marinating, putting on a rub, whatever. But with a burger, you can just mix the seasoning in. Seasoning burgers is so easy that there’s NO good reason not to do it, and try some different things.

Patty recipe (makes 2-3 patties):

1 lb ground beef
1 egg
4 tbsp of bread crumbs
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp paprika
Ground pepper (liberal)

These amounts are all approximations—nothing was measured, just eyeballed—but it should give an idea of the ratios. The egg/bread crumb ratio is important, and has to be done by feel. This was 7% fat content beef (way too lean, but what the Teeter had), so the egg is crucial to bind the patties together. The bread crumbs absorb the burger’s juices while it cooks instead of letting them drip out onto the grill. This keeps them moist, but using too many bread crumbs will counteract the egg and make the patty fall apart. For this reason, mix in the bread crumbs a little at a time and stop when the beef is starting to lose its gumminess.

We made these into 1/3 pound patties, got some buns, cheddar, and provolone, threw them on the charcoal grill and called it a day.

Bacon-wrapped shrimp, bacon-wrapped scallops

Nothing complex here. However, shrimp and scallops cook real fast, so your bacon will cook slower than your seafood. With our crackerjack setup, it was easier to fry up the bacon until it was soft but mostly cooked in a pan and then wrap the seafood. Also, despite how much Nick wished it happened, the ant colonies that find your white wine-soaked shrimp shells won't carry them away, and they won't have an ant orgy on its carcass. They'll just, in biological terms, "swarm the crap out of the thing" and pick at it for a while.

Corn on the cob

Wrap it in foil, put some butter in the foil, and put it on the grill. Really too easy. Takes some time though--this should go on way before your burgers unless you hate warm meat.

Dude, She Was ALL OVER Your Tri-Tip

2009-07-09T18:53:00.009-04:00

To the Spaniards, she is the punta de triangulo. The Germans call her Bürgermeisterstück. In the central valley of California, where this bigger steak roast first gained popularity in the 1950s, it is named for the small town of Santa Maria. Appropriately for a steak that is so confidently, regularly and globally co-opted by deviants, the Tri-tip is not the most handsome cut of meat:
However, that doesn't mean that a little S&M (Searing and Marinating, pervert) won't make her delicious.

The directions for this Tri-Tip (purchased at and marinated by Trader Joe's, god bless them) suggested roasting at 425 until the requisite core temperature had been met (125 for Medium Rare - probably would have taken about 20 minutes). However, the only meat that I've successfully roasted like this is beef and pork tenderloin. Tenderloin, tri-tip is not:
(Acknowledged: it would have been a lot easier for you to find Tri-Tip in the visual aid if I had, oh...I don't know, used a chart that actually included Tri-Tip. In my defense, the COW IS WEARING SUNGLASSES. Also, it's instructive to the Tri-Tip's checkered past. Never served as a traditional steak, it can be found at the awkward pointed corner at the bottom of the Sirloin, above the Flank and Shank and just inside of the Round.)

The general rule is that the further from the head and hoof, the better/more tender the meat. Thus, as evidenced in the chart above, Tri-Tip is basically a pair of bovine British Knights. (Thank you, Mikey). Here's how you make it Dymacel:

Marinate It. The Trader Joe's spicy southwest marinade was great, and such flavors are the traditional way to cook a Santa Maria Steak. I see no reason to mess around with it. If you want to make your own, make it acidic so it can start to break down the meat a bit before it cooks. Lime juice works great for this, and tastes great when combined with a simple mixture of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin, and chili powder. This is a mixture that should be done to taste and encourages the active participation of other invitees.
Slow Cook It. We started with a sear under a high-heat broiler - about 5 minutes on each side. Considering minimal remnant chewiness in the final product, I think that was too long. Think of this cut as a brisket cooked with dry heat: the longer and lower, the better. It should be seared for a moment or two on each side; just enough to put a little finish on it. Then move it to the bottom rack if in an oven, so it's away from the hot broiler elements, or away from the coals/active gas elements if it's on a grill. Take the temperature down to 300-350 range, and then...
Know When It's Done. Such slow cooking lends itself well to either of my two favorite ways to gauge a steak's doneness. The first is lazy. My favorite kitchen gadget is my probe thermometer (business end inserted into the steak above). The thing beeps when it hits the target temp! I'm still amazed at how much I use this thing for cooking just about every cut of meat. Set it for 120, allow carryover to get you up to 125-130 while it rests, slice and serve.
But not everyone has a probe (sad, really - remember, Tri-Tip is for perverts), so I'll pass along a surprisingly effective trick. Touch your forefinger to your thumb. The fleshy ball below your thumb will have the firmness of a Tri-Tip whose interior is rare.
Middle finger = medium rare.
Ring finger = medium.
Pinky finger = you use it for this, you lose it.

The finished product was served with a fresh salsa garnish, corn on the cob, broccoli and a multigrain summer salad.

Roast Chicken Sandwich Battle Royale

2009-07-02T19:06:00.004-04:00

Turns out when you have five days off in a row and decide not to travel anywhere, you have some time on your hands. Thursday’s plan: roast a chicken and make some different sandwiches. All of these have roast chicken and are on a baguette. These would all be great with leftover roast chicken or a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.

Candidate 1: Bacon, Manchego cheese, lettuce, mayo
Candidate 2: Sweet hot mustard, caramelized onions, lettuce
Candidate 3: Sriracha mayo, fresh onions, carrots, cucumber, cilantro, lettuce

Overall note: A good roast chicken is not a dry meat. However, it’s not horribly moist like some other meat. A roast chicken sandwich made of breast meat will therefore need some significant sauce (mayo, cranberry, whatever) if it's going on a thick bread like baguette.

Candidate 1: Bacon chicken sandwich

Not a lot of tricks to this one. Pan-fry the bacon, slice up the cheese, put a lettuce leaf on the bread, and spread a THIN layer of mayo on one slice of bread. For those of you not familiar with Manchego, it’s a sheep’s milk cheese that is mild and soft. Great for a sandwich, particularly one with white meat.

So, here’s the deal. Bacon is delicious. Cheese is delicious. Is there any way this sandwich wasn’t going to be awesome? 9/10.

Candidate 2: Simple chicken sandwich

The simplest sandwich on the list. The caramelized onions and sweet hot mustard give it a nice sweetness. This one can get a little dryer, so I put a little dark meat on it (the other two were solely breasts). 6/10.

Candidate 3: Southeast Asian chicken sandwich

This is a more complicated sandwich that has a Southeast Asian flavor to it. I like to make Sriracha mayo at about a 3:1 mayo:Sriracha ratio. For this recipe I wanted some sweetness, so I added sugar to taste (just a touch).

I finely julienned the carrots and cucumber and brined and finely chopped the onions (see Dill Potato Salad recipe for instructions on brining). I then chopped up the cilantro and mixed it in. These four ingredients (cilantro, cucumber, onions, and carrots) are to me like the Cajun Trinity (celery, onion, and bell pepper) or the French Mirepoix (carrots, onions, and celery) of fake Southeast Asian cooking—they form the base of a lot of really solid fake Thai food or fake Vietnamese food. I mixed them all together and put them on the chicken, then put some lettuce on and spread the Sriracha mayo on the top piece of bread.

The vegetable mix gives the sandwich a great freshness, and this is a better summer sandwich than the others. It'd also be great with a peanut sauce instead. Still, I really can't rank it above a bacon sandwich 8/10.

Roast Chicken: A Beginner's Best Friend

2009-07-02T17:17:00.005-04:00

This is one of the easiest, most delicious, and cheapest meals I know how to make. Besides carving the chicken, there's maybe five minutes of work involved, and it costs about $2 per person (plus whatever you spend on sides). If you are someone who doesn't love cooking or isn't great at it, this is a good meal to perfect and impress with--it can be served alongside some green beans, red potatoes, and/or a salad and it makes a real nice dinner.

Get a whole chicken. DC residents, if you can make it down to Eastern Market, pick one up at Market Poultry. There's two poultry stands, and it's the one run by black men-it has all the customers for a reason. Get about 3/4 to 1 lb of chicken per person. You'll be able to eat about half that, or 6-8 oz of meat per person.

Side note: I am not a big fan of organic farming, because it’s inefficient and wasteful. However, organic and humane animal treatment I am all about. Agribusiness puts fucked-up things into animals, treats them inhumanely, and just generally does things to them you wouldn't want done to your food. Doesn't make you a hippie to use an organic chicken.

Pull out the insides (usually in a bag). Wash the bird, and then dry it thoroughly. The more you dry it, the more it roasts and the less it steams in the oven. That's a win.

Put the chicken on its back in a roasting pan if you've got one. If you don't want to shell out $100 for a pan, you can make do with a baking sheet. Just make sure it has sides and will catch the grease that will pour out of the chicken during cooking.

Liberally salt and pepper the inside cavity of the bird. Salt the outside as well; sprinkle about a tablespoon on to the chicken.

Throw it in a preheated 450 degree oven for 50-60 minutes. You'll know it's done when the skin browns and the tips of the wings start to darken significantly. Or you can probably use a meat thermometer or something; get it to 165 degrees throughout. Chicken's the one meat you really want to make sure is done, unless you hate your GI tract.

Let it sit 15-20 minutes after cooking (until it cools to the point where you can handle it). This is to keep you from burning the shit out of yourself, and also to let the meat rest, which lets the juices start to congeal and soak back in to the meat, making it far jucier. This should be done with all meats before carving.

Carving it up like these guys do. A sharp knife is key here. I own a Wustof 8" chef's knife, which I love. If you spend money on one thing in your kitchen, make it a good chef's knife. The most important tool in a kitchen.

Southeast Asian Boat People: "I'm On a Boat", The Sandwich

2009-07-02T12:41:00.010-04:00

As per my previous post, I've been recently obsessed with broccoli slaw. At the end of the post, I suggest using the slaw as an accoutrement for sandwiches. After multiple tinkerings, I believe I have perfected a great sandwich/slaw-vehicle. I call it "Southeast Asian Boat People: 'I'm on a Boat', The Sandwich". Ingredients after the jump:

In order of appearance in the sandwich, starting with the bottom piece of bread:

Fresh French Bread - one of the great colonial legacies of the 20th century is the fusion of french cuisine, techniques, and ingredients with indochinese flavors. Ok, maybe the only toloerable colonial legacy of the 20th century.
Cream Cheese - Wasn't in the original, but adds a nice neutral richness without which the sandwich would be a little dry
Sriracha - for heat, to taste
Cilantro - all that is necessary is a light sprinkling of leaves. Don't overdo it; cilantro has a tendency to dominate when overapplied
Broccoli Slaw - I just can't emphasize it's nutritional and textural heft enough. I'll let ya'll know when this obsession has run its course, but it probably won't be for a while.
Salted Yellow Onions - salting vegetables, especially onions, is a great way of mellowing/enhancing flavors. Onions on sandwiches and salads should always be salted.
Thai Sweet Chili Sauce - An early favorite for a high-ranking in the upcoming Saucemonaut's Comprehensive and Arbitrary Ranking of the World's Sauces. A friend refers to this stuff as 'crack sauce', which I think understates its addictiveness. This really is the great binding flavor of this sandwich. If substitions are necessary, make sure that it isn't this.
Meat - I've now used skirt steak (flank steak would also be good - just make sure on both that you cut across the grain, otherwise efforts to bite through this sinewy meat will leave your sandwich looking like Khe Sanh) and pork tenderloin (pictured above). Marinating the meat is good, just make sure that it's compatable with the Sweet Chili Sauce. Something sweet, garlicky, or spicy will work best.
More bread - I've done this recipe in both open- and closed-face incarnations, both are good. Just depends on how filling you want your sandwich to be.

Temporary Culinary Obsession: Broccoli Slaw

2009-06-29T15:34:00.008-04:00

Growing up, my favorite thing about eating broccoli was the florets' resemblance to tiny little Miyagi-do style bonsai trees. In fact, my parents prompted my brother and I to eat our broccoli by bugging us to 'eat your trees.' Little did they know that my blossomingly imaginative megalomania would never pass up the opportunity to pretend to be a massive, landscape-hating omnivore of a giant. Of course, my tastes have changed. Now my megalomania is fed by contributing to a blog that has OVER 400 visits, at least one of which was likely just Mike Bobis googling himself.

Amazingly, my taste in broccoli has evolved as well. Recently, I've been having a lot of fun with store-bought Broccoli slaw. Though homemade slaw is possible as well, I've found that shoving raw broccoli stalks through the cheese grater or the food processor results in a slaw that lacks the structural integrity of the store-bought julienned matchsticks. However, if you have a mandolin, go to town.

In addition to dressing broccoli slaw and joining it with whatever choice ingredients you prefer to make its eponymous salad, I've been more interested in the textural and nutritional power that this stuff can bring to any of a number of dishes. I recently bought a bag, transfered its contents to a tupperware, and have had great success adding it to a whole range of things:

Trader Joe's Kung-Pao Chicken bowl. Really, this would work for any type of Asian stir-fry rice/noodle dish. I liked to add it at the end so that it could provide a little crunch, but really it can be added at any point
Pasta Sauce - Here I liked to add it while on the stove to soften it up a bit. Its neutral flavor eventually blends in and its presence becomes pretty innocuous.
Salads - Kind of speaks for itself
Sandwiches. The sandwich I made was skirt steak with a simple ginger/asian marinade, thin-sliced on the bias, served open-faced on half a french roll and a foundation of broccoli slaw, then drizzled with sweet chili sauce. Sweet, savory, crunch, delicious. Just make sure you use fresh bread.

Box Wine Social

2009-06-23T14:43:00.007-04:00

Nick, Will, Brian, Dave

Box wines have gotten a little more respectable in the last few years; they're not just boxing up that same Franzia Rose that your Aunt always brought a little TOO exuberantly to family picnics and then threw back with the same said excitement and with hilarious results. Nowadays box wine runs the gamut from extremely cheap to moderately priced. Some of the top-end stuff is downright drinkable for a pretty reasonable price, all while giving you the Hapsburg-like grace and class immediately conferred on all box wine drinkers.

With that in mind, we decided to drink some box wines and rate them. A couple notes:

We rated all the wines on a 0 to 5 winos scale. 0 is urine of Lucifer after sitting in an attic in Houston for a month of summer; 5 is a very good box wine (note: not a good wine).
We poured all the wines, including the French Rabbit, into tumblers
We served an Amuse Bouche of Bagel Bites to bring out the tannins** in the wine
This has been done by Slate with a little more class, if you want to go that route.

**Note: All subsequent misguided attempts to sound sophisticated about wine-tasting will refer to the wine's tannins in this post.

9:05 pm - Nick: "The black box has never done anyone wrong. Except for Air France 447." 0 drinks in and Rick Rowalski's already making a showing--tonight's gonna go some places.

9:15 pm - First wine. French Rabbit, a merlot/cab-sav blend, gets an "A" for the "Drinkable in the Shower" category - it's packaged in 250 ml individual-serving boxes. It's basically the "juice box" of wine. Recommendation - any situation that requires mobility and versatility. You know, like conference calls.

9:18 pm - Just discovered you can play catch with the French Rabbit.

9:31 pm - Early review on the French Rabbit - "I mean, it's wine that comes in a juice box." We are pouring some out into a glass to see if the flavor can evolve a little better.

9:32 pm - Brian: "Salinger still probably got ass even as a recluse, though." Will: "Yeah, but Salinger was probably getting that Bryn Mawr student union crap ass."

9:32:10 pm - Nick: "CRAP ASS!"

9:40 pm - The scorecard on French Rabbit:

Will: 1.5 Winos
Kowalski: 1.5 winos
Iozzi: 1.5 Winos
Stryker: 1.5 Winos
Aggregate: 1.5 Winos

9:57 pm - Up next, Yellow + Blue Malbec San Juan from Argentina. High hopes for this one, though we'll see if this breaks out of Nick's version of the Pythagorean Theorem, "Organic = Bad." We're confident Argentina will make a better showing tonight than during the Falklands War.

10:04 pm - Nick, resident wine expert: "It tastes like it has less crappy grapes than the less one."

10:10 pm - Here's the thing. This wine is $10.99 for a 1-liter box. This brings two things into play:

It doesn't have a bladder; it's basically a wine in a cardboard bottle. So it wouldn't really seal and keep.
This is about $8 per bottle (a normal bottle is 750ml), so it really doesn't have the Mad Dog 20/20-esque charm of a regular box wine, in that it gets you drunk cheap.

That being said, it's a pretty tasty bottle of wine.

Recommendation -- A decent wine that you can bring to a dinner party if you want to surprise them; "this is a box wine? Hmmm...not bad."

10:29 pm - Nick: "Oh, that girl's chest hair is like that patch of grass on the PGA commercials." (Note: this post has officially turned from a wine-tasting post into a wine-soaked conversation post)

10:33 pm - The scorecard on the Yellow + Blue:

Will: 3.5 Winos
Kowalski: 3 Winos
Iozzi: 4 Winos
Stryker: 3.5 Winos
Aggregate: 3.5 Winos

10:38 pm- Turning Leaf Merlot is up next. Not really much doing here. Fairly crap-ass; how you'd expect box wine to be.

11:20 pm - This got a bit better. WILDCARD!!!! Part of it may be the fact that wine starts to get better as it breathes. Another more accurate part of it may be that we've gone through quite a few boxes of wine at this point. Not bad though after it sits for a while (which is not exactly COMMON for a box wine, but...)

11:28 pm - The scorecard on the Turning Leaf:

Will: 3 Winos
Kowalski: 2.5 Winos
Iozzi: 2 Winos
Stryker: 2.5 Winos
Aggregate: 2.5 Winos

Recommendation -- If you are hosting a dinner party, this wine is good, especially at its price point. It would be best to break out to your guests after you've had the good stuff and you need a little more "encouragement" to hit on someone and follow through with curious flirting, indiscretion and poor judgment (See Brian, Wonderland, roughly two hours later)

11:45 pm- Black Box cabernet sauvignon was the winner. Just a real solid wine for $20 at 3 liters, or $5/bottle. Will is convinced bars could make a killing off of this stuff—it’s very drinkable and real cheap. It also makes for a great night for 2-3 people. The scorecard:

Will: 4.5 Winos
Kowalski: 4 Winos
Iozzi: 4 Winos
Stryker: 4.5 Winos
Aggregate: 4.25 Winos

Recommendation -- Black Box is a solid wine to get anytime. It's the same price as the Turning Leaf ($19.99 for the Cabernet Sauvignon, $27.99 for the Merlot). If you were saving the Turning Leaf to close a dinner party, Black Box is definitely your opening play. Your guests will be impressed and will be anxious to emulate your sophisticated taste.

Summary

There are two key takeaways. One, you now have a juried synopsis from sophisticated wine experts--kind of--and a guide to make future box-wine purchases. Second, and more importantly, this is an excellent social event. A Box Wine Tasting Party is a great way to have fun for a lot less money than going to a wine bar or a restaurant, or even buying real line. Everyone we spoke to about this ahead of time got excited and thought it was a great idea.

A few more cautions. First, obviously no Box Wine party can be official without an Amuse Bouche of Bagel Bites. Second, if you don't use the word "tannins" in your conversation during your Box Wine party, you should be slapped with an empty wine bladder.

8 Simple Rules For Making My Cheeseburger

2009-06-16T15:59:00.005-04:00

We are apparently living in the summer of the slider. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love those little bastards and all their brethren (but that's another post). HOWEVUH, this is the summer, and the summer is always cheeseburger season. This cannot realistically be debated. There are just certain things that are more easily accomplished with a big ass cheeseburger that a slider can never do. However, not all burgers are created equal. As anyone who has ever been to a cookout can attest, burgers are shockingly easy to fuck up. The following are a few simple guidelines, a cheeseburger manifesto if you will. Because knowing is half the battle:

1. Meat should be 80/20 meat/fat and formed into the loosest patties you can make. The more you shape, pat, and re-enact the clay scene in Ghost, the more likely your burger is going to have the consistency of meatloaf. If you're really feeling friendly (and a little more spendy) find a few nice cuts of steak and ask the butcher to grind them for you. Tell him you're making burgers. Ask him not to wrap it too tight in plastic.

2. Anyone who tells you there are certain kinds of cheeses not fit for a burger is an asshole. There is a time for a burger with Rogue Creamery Smoked Blue. There is also a time for Kraft American singles. Both have their moments. Just remember that unless you know of a Flakey Jakes still in business, there is something as too much cheese on your burger. Two slices is enough. If you DO know of a Flakey Jakes, make like 8-year-old me and pour a moat of jalapeno cheese sauce in your basket. Your burger exists solely as a jalapeno cheese delivery device.

3. Similarly, shoot for eight ounce patties of beef. More than that and you're going to fuck up your meat-cheese-topping-bun ratios. Less and you might as well just have a grilled cheese.

4. Salt your tomatoes. It makes a difference.

5. Think of your bread as the bass line to the sandwich. Brioche buns are too distracting and determined to steal the show (think Primus). Ciabatta is all flash but nowhere near the substance its supporters think it has (think The Killers). I like potato rolls myself, as they're sturdy enough to hold it all together but have enough give to provide texture while fading to the background. They're The Smiths of bass lines. Morrissey is your burger.

6. (In Order Of Awesomeness) Charcoal Grill, Gas Grill, Griddle, Skillet, Broiler, Sidewalk, Steamed In My Pants, George Foreman Grill.

7. The more you flip the more you fuck it up. Flip it once. Learn to tell temp by touch. No one likes the guy with the meat thermometer.

8. When beef juice and sundry condiments inevitably drip down my arm, don't judge me.

Dill Potato Salad

2009-06-13T23:26:00.006-04:00

3 lb red potatoes, sliced into ¾” disks
½ cup chopped red onion
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp cumin
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
1 ½ tsp grated lemon peel
2 eggs
1 tsp sugar
3 tbsp chopped fresh dill
4 tbsp pickle juice
3 tbsp vinegar (white wine, rice, or red wine—white wine preferable)
Salt and pepper

This was an attempt to recreate what Momma So Horny does with their redskin potato salad. The goal wasn’t to get it spot on—it’s so delicious, by trying to recreate it I’d be flying too close to the sun on wings of mayonnaise—but rather to get a good potato salad with a little more tang and a little less mayo than what they do.

But before that, a quick PSA on a theme of this blog, which is STOP LIVING IN FEAR. Stop overcooking your pork, stop moving here, and stop fearing mayonnaise at a picnic. Mayonnaise has vinegar in it, which is an acid, which kills things. Therefore, mayo makes dishes safer from food poisoning. What’s actually going bad in your tuna salad, potato salad, and whatever else you make for picnics is the other ingredients—in potato salad, it’s the potatoes you have to watch out for. Really.

To start, cut the potatoes into little discs. You can cut them some other way, but, this is my fucking recipe and I like discs, so, that’s what I did. Some other things you can try to change this up:

• Cook like a Southerner and sweeten it up with a little more sugar
• Switch out some of the mayo (about a third) with some sour cream
• Add some celery—I don’t like it, but always a good addition to a salad

If you have big red potatoes, you might want to cut those discs in to semicircles just for manageability. Then cook potatoes in simmering water for about 10 minutes (change time depending on thickness.)

One the potatoes are done, pull them out and arrange them on a baking sheet. Pour 3-4 tbsp of pickle juice—enough to coat the potatoes—all over them. Mix them around so they all get covered. This will flavor the potatoes as they rest and prevent them from drying out—it’s a bit like brining the onions, which you’re also about to do. Put them in the fridge for 30-40 minutes until they are cool.

Chop the onion, and then put it in a saltwater bath for 30 minutes. The onions should be completely covered in water, and the water should be about as salty as the ocean (a couple tbsp of salt per cup of water or so). The salt breaks down the onions in a way that takes a TON of the bite out of red onions but still leaves them with that nice red onion flavor and color.

Hard boil the eggs. You know how when you hard boil an egg, it gets that nasty green-brown color around the yolk? Mine don’t. Trick is to put them in cold water, bring the water up to the boil, and then pull the pot off the burner. Let the eggs sit in the hot water for 15 minutes and then drain them and put them in cold (preferably icy) water to stop the cooking. Chop once cooled.

Once the potatoes are cool, make the dressing. I used about a cup of mayo. I started with ¾ cup and it just wasn’t enough, and you ALWAYS need more of this sort of stuff than you think, even though it looks disgusting when you mix it up. This amount ends up being a pretty light potato salad. Mix in the herbs, spices, lemon, sugar, remaining pickle juice, and vinegar. Pour it over the potatoes, add the onions and eggs, and mix everything up. Salt and pepper to taste--it needs quite a bit of salt in particular, even with the pickle juice. You’ll probably get enough salad for a side for 6-8 people out of this recipe. Enjoy.

The Urban Alienation of Modern Man: BBQing in the Broiler

2009-06-10T20:06:00.011-04:00

A great frustration at the Maxwell is our inability to grill (or even have a grill on the premises), even with two totally satisfactory patio locations. Of course Nick and I are actively engaged in a mental battle against such residential fascism, but our foes are determined, and rarely do renters take on condominium boards and live to tell about it. (Well, live in their current digs, at least) In fact, when we first encountered the condo board brownshirts they accused us of grilling, during a February snowstorm, while we had 60 people in our apartment. Totally fabricated. In fact, we were pan-frying in cast-iron while we had 60 people in our apartment.

(Note: this is NOT a safety blog.)

Anyways, they take this pretty seriously. Thus, the necessity of compromise.

One of my favorite summer grill staples is slow-cooked chicken drumsticks prepared in Billy Stu’s Bubb Rubb. Horace introduced me to the grill technique for such chicken the day after we drank 26.2 beers in celebration of the 2005 Boston Marathon. It was a technique passed along to him from Mike Bobis and…actually…I’ve already said too much about where it comes from. Never speak of this again.

Without getting into the details of the ingredients (don’t worry, a post on bbq rubs is soon forthcoming), there are three key components to this technique (in the meantime, feel free to use any store bought or homemade rub, or any bbq sauce – though cooking with such sugar-laden sauces is a delicate business with grills, which were born to burn that pussy-ass sucrose):

1) Drumsticks – C’mon, who doesn’t like eating drumsticks more than any other piece of chicken? Well, besides my friend Yitz, who refuses to eat any meat that has a bone in it? (Don't worry, I've already had that conversation with him...) Plus they’re DIRT CHEAP. Usually a half dozen of them can be had for $2-3. It is dark meat, but removing the skin before the seasoning process will address any caloric concerns. Additionally, don’t be lame.

If need be, other cuts can be substituted. But please, out of respect to me and those that have come before me – do NOT use boneless, skinless breasts. Just don’t.

2) 1 Gallon Plastic Freezer Bags – These are a GREAT tool for applying marinades, rubs, etc. to all sorts of meats and veggies. Simply drop in the meat (in this case, 6-7 skinned chicken drumsticks), add the seasoning/sauce (when using a rub or seasoning mixture, it can be helpful to add a teaspoon or two of water to distribute the goodness), and then pass the bag of uncooked deliciosity to the most squeamish in your group, encouraging them to really grind the flavors into the uncooked recipients.

3) Indirect Heat and Patience – This is the toughest of the three factors to apply. Too many people char chicken on the grill, mistaking ‘burnt’ for ‘palatable’. The great mistake is cooking on too high of a heat too directly, which dries out the exterior layers while waiting for the inside to become, frankly, safe for consumption. Such a problem doesn’t exist for steaks, in which an undercooked (read: properly cooked) center is desired by the discriminating. Unfortunately, the little dinosaur-descendants that we call ‘birds’ are by most accounts disgusting creatures, and the little bacterial cocktail that they walk around with must be fully cooked before we can chow. Making them delicious is the burden that we must bear. Cooking this chicken will likely take 45-50 minutes. If it takes less, you’re not doing it right.

With a charcoal grill, distribute the burning coals only on one side of the coal-bearing surface. Place the chicken on the other. Close the lid. The uneven allocation of the heat source will create a great convection action when the lid is closed, and interference (opening the lid) should be kept to a minimum. This will take a long time – the chicken should be checked on every 15-20 minutes. Every time you check on the chicken, use your tongs to rotate the least-cooked side so that it's facing downward.
With a small Hibachi-style charcoal grill, place the coals in the center, and ring the grill with the drumsticks, skinny-end-in. The drumsticks should be arranged as closely to parallel to the rim of the grill as possible. The small size of the grill is our enemy here, so we want to use geometry to keep the bulk of the drumstick as far away from the coals as possible. If possible, close the lid, but this is less necessary as with a full-size charcoal grill, as a little heat dissipation is preferred in the interest of lowering the temperature and lengthening the cooking time. Rotate the chicken on 10-15 minute intervals (shorter than above because of the higher heat). Remember to put the least-done portion down.
With a gas grill, use the propane elements (maybe one of three, or two of four) to create a convection effect similar to the one sought for with a full-size charcoal grill. Keep the elements on medium low, and remember that patience is the name of this game.

Now, for the challenge of the evening – recreating the same effect without a grilling venue. I enjoyed this challenge because it gives me a chance to rep the broiler, which is too often disregarded. Essentially, the broiler is a grill – a very high, directional heat. The oomph that the broiler packs can be mitigated with distance from the top element. The lower the rack, the less heat you get. Simple.

For recreating Billy Stu’s Bubb Rubb Slow-Cooked Chicken, the initial two components are the same. The wild card was dealing with the broiler.

It really worked out pretty well. Though the chicken lacked the smoked signature of a char-broiled dish, the broiler replicated the directional heat of the grill as advertised and provided a slow-cooked, fall-off-the-bone drumstick.

If you’re interested in recreating this Dr. Moreau-esque experiment, a couple of very simple tips:

If your broiler has a “Broil-Low” setting, for the love of god, use it.
If your oven has a convection fan that you can turn on while still keeping the oven on a “broil” setting (as opposed to “Bake” or “Roast”), for the love of god, use it.
The spacing on the bars of the oven racks are not going to be designed for directly supporting smaller pieces of food. Be cognizant of this as you place the drumsticks
Put a drip pan underneath the rack to avoid the inevitable meat-type-juices that will pour off of this slow-cooking chicken. They would normally just fall harmlessly onto the heating elements and burn. But since we’re not cooking in an Escher painting, under the broiler they’ll just drop, congeal, and piss off your roommate.
I found success with a rack about 10” below the broiler element (with a “Broil-Low” setting.). The best way to figure out the right setting/distance combination for your broiler is to experiment.
I rotated the chicken for the first time about 18 minutes in, and then 3 more times before I finally pulled it after 58. Delicious

(Related Note: if you ever want to re-heat chicken wings, use the broiler on your toaster oven instead of your microwave. Trust me.)

Pasta Meat Sauce

2009-06-07T23:40:00.007-04:00

1 1/2 pound pork—not ground (see below)
1 pound beef—not ground (see below)
Olive oil
3/4 cup chopped onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 bay leaf
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 28-ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Pasta (choose your own)
Grated Parmesan
Salt
Pepper

My favorite things to cook are dishes that take forever. Pasta sauce, gumbo, coq au vin—there’s nothing like the anticipation of tasting a pot of something stewing, knowing that it is nothing special now, but in a few hours the flavors are going to come out of everything, blend together, and make something delicious. This sort of recipe is best as a two or more person affair with a bottle of wine and a movie (or a couple episodes of This American Life) to pass the afternoon—it takes hours, but most of that time you don’t have to pay much attention, so sit back and enjoy your Cabernet and Point Break.

My Sicilian great-grandmother used to make a phenomenal pasta sauce. I wish I could say this is that old family recipe from the old country, but I pilfered the basics from my Italian roommate in DC and the New York Times, and did some adapting to make it my own. A meat sauce recipe is fairly straightforward, though, and there’s a lot of places you can adapt this recipe to your own tastes. Love the soft, delicious meat of helpless baby cows? Turn some of that pork to veal. Like a smoother, creamier sauce? Sub out the diced tomatoes for crushed ones and put a little cream or evaporated milk in.

This makes enough pasta sauce for 6-8 servings, but I always end up making about twice this much and freezing it—you can pull this out of the freezer 6 months later, heat it up in a sauce pan, and it’s 95 percent as good as it was the day after you made it. The recipe also leaves you with a lot of beef and pork that was stewing in a tomato sauce for 3 hours and is some of the most tender, delicious meat you’ll ever eat for $2/pound.

You need to make two decisions to start this off.

What kind of noodles do you want? The sauce ends up pretty thick, so a noodle like spaghetti is not the best—it just can’t hold the sauce you need. Look for something wider—linguine, fettuccine, or tagliatelle will all do. Something ribbed (giggity) like penne will work too.
What kind of meat do you want? I’ve been tending for more pork than beef lately in this recipe; I like the flavor it brings better, and the pork chops are fucking awesome after they have been stewing. But get 2-3 pounds of cheap meat, whatever you want. The ratio isn’t exact; use less if you get fattier meats (advised) or more if you get leaner meats, because they just don’t seep into the sauce quite like a pork chop or a cheap, fatty cut of beef. For beef I’ve generally go with a blade steak or brisket.

Start out by liberally salting and peppering the meat. Get a large pot—big enough to hold all the sauce. Bring it to medium-high, put some olive oil in, and brown the meat in it—a couple minutes per side, just enough to brown the skin. You’ll cook the meat in the sauce later; right now it’s about bringing out flavor. If I’m feeling really ambitious I’ll brown the meat in the same pan I just used to make homemade meatballs, but, tonight it’s Sunday night and I’m feeling lazy so I’m just cooking the sauce.

Put the meat on a separate plate when it’s browned, and turn the heat down a little (more a medium level). Don’t put them on paper towels or something absorbent—you’re going to want to keep all the juices that drain from the resting meat for later. Also, don’t clean out the pan—you want that meat juice for the next phase.

Put the onions in and cook them for 3-4 minutes (just enough for them to start breaking down and turning clear) before throwing in the garlic. Give it another 2 minutes and add the tomato paste. Stir it around until all the meat fat is absorbed—you’ll basically have a clumpy ball of fatty, garlicky tomato paste and onions. It will look real unappetizing at this point.. Add the oregano, red pepper, salt, and bay leaf. Beginner’s note: remember to fish that bay leaf out at the end. Bay leaves are vile, bitter weeds that are great for seasoning but you don’t ever want to eat—in no recipe, ever, do you want someone chomping down on a bay leaf you forgot to pull out of the final product.

Time to add the tomatoes and 4 ½ cups of water. Put in the sugar and parsley, and re-add the meat and the meat juices to the pot. Bring the pot up to a simmer. Keep it there for 3 hours or so; the beauty of a slow-cooking recipe is that done is all about your definition. 2 hours is about the minimum, but it will just keep mellowing and blending together with more time. At some point you hit diminishing returns and the sauce starts reducing too much—I generally take it off when it is just short of how thick I want it (a sauce like this will thicken up as it cools).

If you’re making meatballs too, cook them to about ¾ done in a pan and then finish them by putting them in the sauce for the final 20 minutes and letting them stew. If the sauce isn’t quite coming together after 2-3 hours, there are a couple things you can do. If it’s too acidic, you can add a pinch more sugar. If it’s bland, a little more red pepper and garlic. Generally I stay away from tinkering at this point, though.

Once the sauce is done, pull out the meat, set it aside, and cook the pasta. I like to take the pasta out of the water 1-2 minutes before it’s done—still slightly crunchy—and cook it in the still-simmering sauce for 2-3 minutes, letting it soak in the sauce’s flavors. Some prefer the presentation of sauce poured over noodles. Same thing with the grated parmesan--you can add it now, which ups the flavor, or add it on the table, which makes for a prettier dish.

Some eating notes:

1) The best part will be the pork chops—guard those with your life. Those are the chef’s reward, just like that tender triangle of meat right at the back of a chicken. They are also by far at their best right after cooking, so make sure you get some pieces of that initially.
You might not be able to pull all the meat—particularly any pork—out of the pot whole. Some of it will crumble and disappear. There are worse things than having chunks of delicious meat in your sauce, so, don’t sweat it.
The sauce gets better in the fridge after a day as it keeps coming together and mellowing. It also gets worse after a week—if you’re going to keep it for longer, put it in the freezer (up to 9 months, no problem).

The Significance of a Date

2009-06-04T00:18:00.004-04:00

June 3rd is a day that seems to creep up on a number of my friends and I every year. Seven years ago, we all experienced the passing of a great friend, Brett Storie. Anyone who was lucky enough to know him would attest to the myriad admirable qualities he possessed, one of the most visible being his ability to truly enjoy the simple pleasures life affords us all.

During the summer months, this usually meant lounging in a hammock on the shores of Lake Washington. At such times, Brett could often be found with his signature Piña Colada in hand.

One summer day before Brett and I headed off to college, I asked him teach me how to make this drink that he had until that time portrayed as a sort of ‘secret’ recipe. He decided to let me in on in and to this day I am impressed with its simplicity, taste, and ability to turn any good afternoon great.

You will need:

One 15 oz. can of Coco Lopez Cream of Coconut
15 oz. Pineapple Juice
15 oz. Light Rum
One Banana
Ice

I watched and attempted to remember every detail as Brett began by emptying the Coco Lopez can into a blender. He used the empty can as a measuring cup for the rum and then the pineapple juice, both of which were also added. At this point I was beginning to feel that this ‘secret’ recipe wasn’t much of secret at all and I decided to ask.

“What is it? Where’s the special touch?” I asked. Brett looked around the room and with a grin grabbed a banana.

“This should work,” was his response. In classic Brett fashion, he made the most of what happened to be surrounding him. At that point, it happened to be a banana for his piña colada.

After blending the four ingredients, Brett poured them into a pitcher and filled the blender with ice. Returning just enough of the mix to the blender to make the concoction perfectly smooth, the remainder was set aside in the fridge for round two.

To this day this is the only colada recipe I have ever made on my own. Though I know there are others, the ease of this one keeps me coming back.

Whether you knew or did not know Brett, take the time sometime this summer to try this great recipe. You might end up like me, a convert for life. Or you may try it just once. Whatever the case, chances are with this drink in hand you’re going to feel quite a bit better while sampling the simpler things.

Ode to the rooster

2009-06-01T14:14:00.005-04:00

The half-smoke truck by my office upped their game today and got a bottle of Sriracha. For the uninitiated, a half-smoke is a DC version of a sausage/hot dog that's slightly spicy and is the only truly uniquely DC food. Sriracha nicely capped off my half smoke, as it does pho, ramen, and a ton of other things.

It reminded me of this fascinating article about the stuff in the New York Times a while back. A couple notes:

1) The sauce is very American and an example of LA at its best, which it rarely is. A city that has so many ethnic groups lends itself to great polycultural dishes and cuisines such as awesome Korean taco trucks.
2) For a sauce with such mass appeal, I've always thought Sriracha was shockingly hot. Way hotter than Tabasco, for example. I didn't think the average American palette liked that kind of heat.
3) It's amazing that Sriracha has made it to Applebee's--now I can finally celebrate after the big game with some hot sauce to go on my extreme fajita flingers!

Summer Dinner, Pork and Salads

2009-06-01T00:26:00.005-04:00

Brian and Will

On the menu:
-Kasha salad
-Pork tenderloin
-Chopped salad
-Bread and cheese
-6-pack Sol, 12-pack Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager

“Kasha salad—only for hippies and Mennonites. Wait, type something funny about hippies and Mennonites and attribute it to me.” –Will

“Did you know I once hooked up with a Mennonite?” –Brian

Kasha salad ingredients:
-1 cup kasha
-2 cups chicken broth
-1 egg
-olive oil
-1 medium broccoli crown
-7 roma tomatoes
-1 medium Vidalia sweet onion
-1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley

Cold pasta and/or grain salads, like greyhounds (and Brian’s favorite summer drink, the caipirinha), mean the beginning of summer. While there are a lot of bad, oily pasta salads out there, a good non-lettuce salad is a great hot-day side. This one was Will and Brian walking down the crunchy-people aisle after we couldn’t find faro at the Teeter; you could certainly could get a similar result with other grains (quinoa, Israeli couscous, etc).

First thing: get the onions chopped. Fill a container with enough water to cover the onions and enough salt to make the water taste saltier than the ocean but not so much to make it cloudy. Pour in the onions and leave sitting for up to an hour. You might as well chop the broccoli into 1” diameter florettes, chop the tomatoes, and mince the parsley now too—that knife’s only getting more terrifying as you run through those Sols. Reserve those vegetables for now.

Combine the kasha and the egg, then toast the kasha for 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat. Bring the chicken broth to the rolling boil at the same time. Put the kasha into the chicken broth; reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. If you’ve already spent a couple hours drinking $2 Miller Lites on a patio and you accidentally turn the heat off in the middle (Will), don’t sweat it. Just crank it back up and take a guess at how long ago you ran your sweet, perfectly round ass (as judged by yourself) into the burner knob. Remove from heat.

Pan-fry broccoli for 3-4 minutes in a couple tablespoons of olive oil (just enough to keep it from burning). Put the broccoli, tomatoes, onions, and parsley into the still-hot Kasha—it’ll hold it’s heat for a solid half an hour. Cool (throw it in the fridge if you’re impatient) and serve after dressing to taste. You can use any vinaigrette – equal parts oil and vinegar, with enough mustard to emulsify, and then salt, sugar, pepper and garlic to taste, works really well. Remember to keep the dressing LIGHT – this is a summer salad. Let the vegetables do the work. There’s plenty of flavor and texture to take care of it. You’re more than welcome to go with a simple acidic dressing too of just lemon and olive oil. If people are really worried about flavor, have them salt and pepper it more aggressively. Or pour them a little more wine.

“We’re pretty much done at this point. All we need to do is pull the pork?” – Brian

The pork is simple. Mostly because it was storebought, but it need not be (storebought, that is. Pork Tenderloin should never be difficult). You can season these bad boys with just about anything. This particular one came with the garlic-peppercorn crusting, but teriyaki is good, so is sweet and sour…honestly, the options are limited only by creativity.

Pre-heat the oven on Bake/Roast to 425. Stop living in fear and take it out of the oven at 142-145 degrees—there are now barely any trichinosis cases a year (12) because of, as Wikipedia says, “legislation prohibiting the feeding of raw meat garbage to hogs.” While it’s shocking that Congress finally stood up to Big Raw Meat Trash, it means you don’t have to cook your pork to 165 degrees and make it a tasteless, dry, chewy (and just plain inferior) piece of meat.

Chopped salad was a simple corn, bean, tomato, cucumber, onion salad. Bread was a whole wheat round with some smoked mozzarella cheese spread (both from the Teeter).

Greyhounds: A Short Appreciation

2009-05-29T16:26:00.002-04:00

Horace's dad was the first to introduce me to a proper greyhound. It has since taken on a semi-mythical place in my libationary calendar - I am adamant about not partaking during the winter months, simply so the first one that I have come spring-time can mark an unofficial beginning of summer. While enjoying a spectacular Seattle weekend, I had an excellent one at Sun Liquors, a charming neighborhood bar in lower Capital Hill. It was an appropriate marker for a beautiful weekend, and a nice reminder of the simple code for making an excellent one: Freshly Squeezed Grapefruit Juice.