I can’t shut up about this cake. First, I am no not a baker, nor am I a “chocolate cake guy”, especially not in the sense that our favorite Polish-American roommate is (let me stress the Polish here…the dude keeps a jar of nutella under his pillow). That said, take a Chinese-American who dedicated a childhood to obsessively studying cake decorating and let her go sick on a pound of chocolate and you start to understand my obsession.

About all I can say for my contribution here is the outstanding coffee ( Alegra Sumatra medium-roast), Uta takes the cake here. Enjoy the pictures, and remember I got to eat this beauty.

Pie filling:

• Simmer rhubarb stalks (remember to remove the leaves that shit will poison you) in a bit of butter and white wine (left over Pinot Grigio from the last party you hosted will be perfect).
• Add strawberries and simmer a bit more – until softish
• Add honey to taste

Pies are hard to get right – but this guy tasted delicious warm and later chilled for breakfast. Serve with some frsehly whipped cream.

It’s a pretty simple idea, really, just some chicken, sausage, and grilled peppers in a RFCS base.

The process that really takes it to the next level is brining the chicken. T. Keller specified the basics, and we went from there:

• Almost a cup of salt per gallon of water (a few)
• A half-dozen or so halved lemons (some oranges too, if you happen to have a tree)
• Parsley stems and leaves
• A dozen bay leaves
• Black peppercorns

Next-Level Chicken!

Bring these to a boil and let them cool before soaking the meat in them for 12-18 hours. Since then, we’ve experimented with it, and it’s a great idea to brine any white (as opposed to red) meat. So far, it’s worked wonders on chicken, goose, duck, and pig.

After brining the meat, fry it in some butter. Don’t cook it completely in this step, just give it a nice texture. Separately, fry up some chopped onions and celery. Once they’re golden, pour in some RFCS, lots of grilled red peppers (some crushed, some sliced), crushed artichoke hearts, and a few jalapeños (grilled, peeled, de-veined, and sliced). Let that come up to temperature, and simmer for a few minutes.

Toss in the chicken (or duck! yes!), and let this simmer for a while until you can’t stand to wait any longer, and serve with some poached eggs (another story altogether), grilled asparagus, and some crusty fresh-baked bread.

Oh, and invite some friends over! This is the meal that made us decide – never cook white meat without brining it.

I called up my dad for a refresher in his culinary vision, and hit Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients I was missing.  In true form, I did a few modifications (notably, RFCS instead of bullion), and whipped it up.

It truly blew me away, the richness of the sauce paired with the creamy texture and the complex, subtle flavor of the scallops was more than I could have hoped for.  My dad told me that when he first made this meal, he repeated it the night after, and the night after that.  If we didn’t have a whopping chicken brining for tomorrows dinner, we’d probably do the same.

A quick love note to RFCS (real freakin’ chicken stock):  I’ve spent a lot of my life really going for bullion.  It’s a great shortcut, and you can get far with it.  It is, however, a shortcut, and you miss out on two things.  The first one that you notice is the lack of the journey.  While more important to the cook than to the guests, this is key to me.  Watching everything I cook come together – from things I can imagine dangling from a tree or clucking merrily underneath one – is meaningful and satisfying.  I’m a ground-up kinda guy, so take it for what it’s worth.  The second thing is umami: proteiny-flavor.  There are two ways to get this flavor, MSG and actual protein.  Most bullion comes with MSG – which gives me the willies (and hives).  Even the ‘natural’ stuff comes with ‘yeast extract’, which is close to the same thing.  I have given up searching for a magic cube that gives a meal the same roundness and satisfying mouthfeel that comes from a well-prepared chicken stock.  Allright, allright, that’s enough.

Flat Leaf Parsley & Scallops

This meal is a composition of three parts.  The bottom is orzo (rice-shaped pasta).  Layered on top of that is a parsley-cream sauce.  Crown jewel: seared scallops.  Orzo is easy, follow directions (boil, drain, serve).  The parsley cream sauce goes as follows:

Take two big bunches of parsley (I did one flat-leaf and one curly-leaf), and chop them up finely.  While chopping, sizzle up some garlic in butter, being careful not to burn it.  Fry the parsley with the garlic for a while, and pour in a few cups of RFCS.  Let that simmer for a while, and add 3/4 cup cream to it.  Mix around and keep the heat going, and then thicken with a good mixture of flour and milk.  Mix the flour and milk together in a small jar, using a spring whisk or similar.  When adding to the sauce pass it through a sieve so that it doesn’t get clumpy.  Keep adding more until it’s the right consistency (I used around 1/2 cup of flour and 1 cup of milk).

Once the sauce is where you want it, get some butter hot in a pan and sear your scallops in it.  I used really nice scallops and so I let ‘em be a bit rare.  It doesn’t take much time to get these suckers done… better a bit underdone than a bit overdone.

Then, layer, serve, and enjoy.  Garnish with a sprig of parsley!

We had some chicken limbs left over from a chicken stock endeavor from last week. Tonight was the last night to cook ‘em, and we had been dreaming of hot wings. We poked around the web looking for recipes, and the resounding theme was surprising: Coke, as in Coca Cola. Neither of us is really into soda, but we decided, tonight is the night to go crazy. We simmered and grilled almost 5 lbs of meat over the course of an hour, cleaning up the kitchen from the weeks’ messes along the way. It turned out so juicy, delicious, and caveman-satisfying that we barely managed to save two legs for lunch!

This is a meal that anyone can cook, and it’s pretty near impossible to screw up. Here’s the basics, adapted from allrecipes.com (we didn’t have two cups of Louisiana-style hot sauce!):

Grab a cast-iron skillet that will fit most/all of your meat (we had ~5 lbs of wings, legs, thighs, etc.), and pour in enough coke to half-submerge everything (about 4 cups for us). Then pour in about half that amount of mixed hot sauces, orange juice, apple cider vinegar, a touch of orange zest, and some lemon juice. We had more hot sauces, and juices, less vinegar, but cooking isn’t exactly scientific in this household. We’ve got plenty of science and precision going on outside of the kitchen, no reason to bring it in!

Bring the slurry&meat to a gentle simmer on your stove, and move it out onto a warm gril (yes, put the skillet on the grill!). Keep the side the pan is on a bit hotter, and swap meat from the skillet onto the grill, rotating about every 10 minutes for a bit more than an hour. All of our meat didn’t quite fit into the skillet, so we had half on the grill, half in the pan, which worked out great.

Serving and eating was the other half of the fun: Erik and I ate off of newspaper, with a bowl of ’slop’ (the sauce) each. Don’t put out forks like we did, you won’t need them. Dive in, and never look back. Cleanup was a breeze!

I like to serve the eggs “fluffy scrambled” (that means I add whole milk or even heavy cream mmmm.) accompanied by a crustee french baguette, and let’s be honest the eggs are really a vehicle for delivering your favorite hot sauce (ours being The Blue Sky Cafe’s very own blend of peppers) so enjoy your Sunday with what Uta has proclaimed as her Best Western Breakee.

yum!

Left: just pan 2 Right: total mixture

Pan 1:

onions

garlic

mushrooms

eggplant

spices (pepper…. allspice…)

RFTS

milk

Cook these in this order (waiting after the garlic, spices, RFTS for timing).

Pan 2:

chicken

spinach

spices (nutmeg…)

Cook for 15 minutes with only the water of the spinach.

Place contents of pan 2 in pie crust, cover with contents of pan 1, and close crust.

Bake at 425 for 30 minutes.

]]> http://letsgetfat.net/2010/01/pot-pie/feed/ 0 http://letsgetfat.net/2010/01/happy-birthday-month/ http://letsgetfat.net/2010/01/happy-birthday-month/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:43:37 +0000 erik http://letsgetfat.net/?p=169 In celebration of a great man turning 60 years young, I would like to acknowledge the idea of what he calls his “Birthday Month”.

As part of Tony’s HBM, he has already been to Females On Fire, his daughter’s 5 course, 5 wines, and 5 chefs, event to support Women in the culinary arts and in this Foodie-spirit of Birthday-month I am posting 3 Tony Lucero original recipes that have been a serious thread in my life and that I think my dad would be happy to share with you all.  These recipes have helped me survive grueling Colorado winters and Sunny Santa Barbara ones as well. So everyone lift a shot of Tequila and help me wish my dad a Happy Birthday Month. Cheers!

Number 1: Green Chile

Fall is the season for scoring your Green Chiles, and if you are anything like me it can be hard to ration your Green Chile supply so it lasts through the winter, but stay strong my friends and tuck those chiles in the back of the freezer so you can rediscover them later in the year. This year I need to make a special shout out to Dan’s Uncle for shipping us a bushel of the Green magic all the way from New Mexico. Thanks man!

To make this dish you really only need 4 ingredients, but spicy Anaheims are the most important one. I am talking about New Mexico green chiles that pack some serious heat. Cuidado! Tony makes a pilgrimage every fall to the South-West corner of Colorado to score enough chiles for some 10 families. Then he regales us of stories of freshly roasted green chiles on a drive-thru burger with “a cold one”, (that should be an underground order at “In and Out” call it “Tony & Matt” style). Here is to the green chile pusher man.

• 3 Quarts of Roasted Green Chile (chopped)
• 8 Tomatoes
• 1 Whole Globe of Garlic
• Pork. 2lbs of Pork Loin (diced)

OK, so there are a few more ingredients…

• 2 Tablespoons of Bacon Grease (Pork part 2)
• 3 Tbl of flour
• 8 cups H2O (Variation can use RFCS)
• Salt to taste

Fry the pork in a pan until brown. In a big stock pot, brown the flour in bacon grease (use your favorite whisk and don’t burn the flour!) keep stirring it. Add water  and stir until thoroughly mixed. Add chile, tomatoes, pork, garlic, and salt. Bring it all to a boil and then back off the heat to a slow simmer for about an hour. I like to rock a bag of tortilla chips nearby so I can sample the chile throughout its transformation. This makes a shit-ton of Green Chile, so be prepared with all of your tupperware on hand (with matching lids).

Number 2: Enchiladas

We here at the Mesa house have come up with a really nice pipeline dedicated to Real Fucking Chicken Stock and Chicken enchiladas are the corner stone to that pipeline. We like to buy an entire chicken and process every part of it. If you aren’t in the RFCS spirit then just score some Chicken breasts for this recipe.

• 1 whole Chicken
• Lots (~1 cup) of Red New Mexico Chile powder
• Couple Tbl of flour
• Couple Tbl of Bacon Grease
• Granulated Garlic or Garlic Powder
• Bundle of Green Onions (diced. including the green section)
• 4 cups Sharp Chedder cheese (shredded)
• 2-4 cups of H2O (Variation: use RFCS or RFDS!)
• Bag of MASECA or ~15 pre-made corn tortillas

After walking down the street in Isla Mujeres to the “tortilla kitchen” in our barrio it is hard to shake the craving for fresh handmade corn tortillas. If you are an addict like me, then earn  your “yellow belt” by finishing your first bag of MASECA. Otherwise pay the $1 for a stack of corn tortillas at your local Mexi-Grocer.

Boil the chicken as you would to make RFCS (lots of carrots, lots of celery, etc.). Set the chicken aside to cool. I like to do this step early on a Saturday, or a day in advance. ‘Splinter’ the chicken. This is a laborious step, so convince your roommate to help you out.

Make up a “dry-rub”. It should include (but is not limited to) New Mexico Red Chile Powder, Garlic Powder, Salt, Pepper, Cayenne, and a touch of Cumin.

Throw the shredded chicken a big ziplock bag with the dry-rub and shake it up. Set aside.

Make your corn tortillas. We like to fry ours in Coconut Oil, makes a mean-seasoned cast-iron. Make enough to cover your casserole pan. My favorite variation on this recipe is the Enchiada (Enchilada-meets-Tostada), where I make a crispy corn tortilla-seasoned shredded chicken-cheese-onion-crisy corn tortilla stack up with lost of sauce and more cheese on top.Killer!

Or take the corn tortillas you bought and fry them to soften’em up a bit.

For the sauce:

Brown the flour (just like you learned to do above). Add water (or RFCS) to obtain a gravy consistency. Keep Stirring. Add chile powder & garlic powder (to taste). Keep Stirring. Once you have your sauce tasting mmmmm…then set the burner to low and keep some water around in case you need to thin the sauce a bit.

Here we come to a crossroads, you can choose to make individual enchiladas by laying the ingredients in individual corn tortillas and rolling them up, or if you are down with left overs (nod your head)and want to help keep the workplace microwave smelling like enchiladas go for the casserole style…Here is the stack up. Line the bottom of your casserole dish with corn tortillas. Add chicken, cheese, onions, and pour some of that delicious sauce all over shit. Cheese will melt mmmm. Cover that layer with another set of corn tortillas and repeat stack up. Set the oven to 325 and bake for ~15 minutes or until cheese is all melty.

Number 3: Pulled Pork

This recipe debuted at the Mesa for the Best Fucking Thanksgiving Ever (BFTE)  with both a vinegar sauce and a persimmon chutney. Pulled P has become a real crowd pleaser for large get togethers.

• ~5+ lbs Pork Shoulder or Butt (makes like 10-12 servings)

The Rub: Apply a day in advance

• Paprika
• Brown sugar
• Chili Powder
• Cumin
• Sugar
• S & P

Center the Butt on the grill, NO DIRECT FLAME! Grill on medium heat for 4-5 hours (~an hour per pound) Or until the inner heat regiters T=180 deg F. Serve on Kaiser Bun. Check back later if you need a chutney recipe…

I recently returned from an adventure race in Abu Dhabi,  which was a blast.  Not only was the scenery and experience out-there and wild, they wined and dined us (well, at least dined) like royalty.  In fact, I believe some royalty may have been present at some of these events!  They did a lot of things right in the cooking department and it’ll take me a few more weeks of thinking to sort out some of the more elaborate dishes they had!

One that really struck me was a grilled lamb cutlet dish that was served with a bizarre mint sauce.  Checking my surroundings (terraformed desert in the middle-east) a few times just to be sure, there was definitely avocado in with the mint!  The little chunks of avocado probably came from a few block away from my house in Santa Barbara.  It was an inspired combination, one that I had to repeat.

So we did!

We started with about a one and a quarter pounds of lamb cutlets ($17.99/lb, really?).  I was certain I had to make this dish, so cost exited the picture rapidly.  Since Erik had such a great time braising meat for his Day-Off Stroganoff, I decided to try my hand at it.  First I rubbed salt and ground pepper onto the meat.  Then, I sauteed a shallot, some garlic, and a few bay leaves in bacon grease, and covered that with enough chicken stock to cover most of the meat (eyeball it, don’t add the meat yet!), we used 4 cups.  Then add a spash of red wine and bring it to a boil.  Remove from heat, and add in the meat.  Put it in an oven at about 250°F for 20-30 minutes.  We’re not trying to cook anything through, here, just trying to infuse some good flavors in the meat.

Braising in RFCS and Red Wine

While the meat is braising in the oven, get started on the avocado/mint sauce.  Erik (the Guaco-man of the house) used 3 large (unfortunately not-quite-ripe) avocados, a big bunch of mint, some green onions, and 2 jalapeños the juice of a lemon and a half.  Kinda like a minty guacamole.  Then I made it gooier with olive oil and extra lemon juice, the texture is pretty important here.  It should be more like a sauce, and less like a guacamole.

Caramelizing Onions

With the leftover braising juices, I made about two cups of quinoa, which I topped with caramelized onions.

More Seasoning!

Then we simply sliced the cutlets into singlets, and brushed on a mixture of olive oil, minced rosemary, salt, and pepper.  We grilled the singlets hard and fast.  We liked them pretty rare, and enjoyed the incredible quality of the meat.

Grilling the Cutlets

Yes, the $17.99/lb was worth every penny.

Yes! We got to eat that!

I think we did the grand cooks at the Park Rotana Hotel one better.

Funky Fungi

These funky fungi remind me of home; their earthy (Erik jokingly says manure-y) aromas fill the house and help to warm the frigid confines of our poorly insulated abode.  I bought 3 pounds, not really knowing what I was going to do with most of them (they’re great for breakfast with eggs, but I had to have them that night).  Rummaging around the house, I decided on polenta and bread as a double-hitter starch, because that’s what we had.  Also, because it’s delicious.

Frying Polenta

Polenta’s no problem, just slice and fry.  Chanterelles can be a bit tricksy.  Don’t get them wet; just blot them with a paper towel or brush to get the chunks of forest off of them.  I’ve never bought ones that were so contaminated that they had to be washed and meticulously dried, but you may have to go there.

I like to slice them length-wise, preserving their awesome shapes, but also allowing them to be a bit more bite-sized.

Slice 'em length-wise

Simmer the cleaned, sliced chanterelles slowly with some garlic, and serve with your choice of red wine and some kind of starch.  The polenta was amazing.

This one’s a simple one, but it’s just too good to leave it unwritten!

Chanterelles with Polenta and Fresh Bread