Thursday, July 29, 2010

Nom...Sister Addition

So I am house/cat-sitting and lonely as I am between these empty walls, without my loving boyfriend and food tester who is enjoying among other things, the culinary smorgasbord that is Europe. To quell this loneliness, Peanut, food blogger and little sister to the stars (namely me) agreed to come over and hang out for the night. Actually she wanted to gossip (I feel used) and as she always says, you can’t gossip on an empty stomach. This is why it never pays to be on a diet and over involved in your peers affairs. Trust me on this

So after enjoying the film Inception (which is AMAZING) we came back to Chris’s abode and whipped up a delicious meal of Chicken Burgers, and Sweet Potato Salad. My sister covered the salad in her blog so I figured I would walk you through the burgers.
To start I took regular chicken breasts and split them in half (making two thinner halves). They were then lightly dusted in a Mediterranean rub (Chris got it and put it on steak…fab) then salt and pepper. Then I grilled them (med-high on the gas grill for about 3 mins flipping half way) after I flipped them, I added a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese. Once cooked they were served on a bun with some tomato sauce. It was Jarred (I know) but good nonetheless.

We also had a lemon Shandie which I thought was made with half a beer and half lemonade but apparently there is a trade-usage error here as apparently the countries that actually serve such a drink use a “lemonade” that is more akin to a ginger-ale. I promise to further investigate this.
As to our audience, the kitties are both doing well, in fact they are hovering by as we speak being a nuisance (the season premier of Project Runway has them all excited). Can’t wait to get my food tester back but I’d imagine this got a solid 7.5 on the Chris scale.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

The Way to a Man's Heart is Through His Wine Sauce



Now not to toot my own horn (ok I’m tooting) but I am the most awesome girlfriend ever, ever, EVER! Last night Chris joined me for “date night”, something we have sadly not had in a little too long. And while my plans for a light dinner and rented movie (the home version of the date classic only more suitable to our financial times) was modest to start, it evolved into a pretty amazing date.

First of all, I wasn’t even going to be a “romantic date” in that I was just making diner for him and Marilou. But then at the last minute, Marilou got a date offer she could not refuse (damn party animal) and left us alone. So already we were a notch higher on the romance scale. Then, as the charcoal grill heated up I decided my previous menu could use a little extra something something. So I decided to make a Bordelaise sauce. This involved opening a bottle of red wine, which of course also involved finishing the rest of it afterwards. Here was the net result:

1 roast size piece of tenderloin became two filets and 1 large filet, wrapped in the last piece of thick sliced bacon I got in New Britain. All three had a grey salt and fresh cracked pepper rub on it. to this I added the bordelaise, which is basically a red wine, shallot reduction sauce. Classic and MFing good. My only comment was that it could have reduced more and was a little watery. Next time

fresh peas (Guido’s purchase)

grilled peach salad: we had one peach left in the house and it was almost out in terms of ripeness, so inspired by a segment of Jamie Oliver at Home I watched recently I decided to throw it on the grill with the steak and throw it in a salad. I don’t remember what was in Mr. Olivers salad but mine was Boston lettuce with radishes (sliced on the mandolin) and a lime vinaigrette. OMFG it was delicious.

And finally, we had a bottle of B.R. Cohn Silver Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 which was AMAZING!!! This may be Chris and my new favorite bottle. It was a gift from my friend Kate and it has upped the ante on beverage drinks between us from now on.

Suffice to say, I am the best girl friend ever as together this meal was pretty much awesome. A big shout out to my souse chef Christopher who manned the grill like a damn professional. (That’s so hot!)

Chris rating:
Overall: 9.75 (not a prefect 10 to avoid girlfriend complacency…what a diva)
Steak: 9 (and all him PS, regardless of what he says)
Sauce: 9 (all but the thickness again, taste however was spot on)
Peas: 7 (too al dente)
Salad: 8 or 9 (not that he couldn’t decide, but I didn’t write it down and have forgotten)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Captain Alexandra’s Mandolin



So today I’m trying something interesting: beet chips. One of the many fab things I found at Guidos, I had these delicious looking beets, and since I honestly have done very little with beets in the past (being a Pollack I pretty much grew up thinking pickled beets is the only way they can be prepared …and for good reason….DEEEEEElicious). so I found this recipe on Martha (where else) and thought, what the hey.

Here is the recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/beet-chips

Some notes about my beets.
1. I looked like I stabbed someone when I prepared this masterpiece. This was made even better by the fact that some random Eastern European man choose then to walk up to our back porch and measure it. I’m not kidding, you can’t make up something that random. I mean we are talking like David Lynch random here.
2. These chips were delicious, though I defiantly will make them thinner next time and they didn’t all crisp up the way I wanted.
3. in the recipe “lighten in color” really means “turns a orangeish color”
4. it didn’t say add salt but I did. This is a good idea trust me
5. and finally and most importantly: the mandolin is the best cooking tool ever. I would like to thank Martha who provided the one I used in the recipe when I attended a tapping of her show. While I think it’s a miracle I haven’t caused myself grievous bodily harm with one (they are very sharp) it really is one of my favorite tools.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Hot Tuna

So today I made an awesome Tuna sandwich. This adventure was driven by the near-Clive-Owen pretty piece of Sushi Grade Tuna that I found at Guido’s yesterday.


I decided this piece was a great excuse to try something different since usually I like to serve something like this with a light sear and nice Asian sauce. It was also a good excuse to make something I’ve never tried before: aioli.

The recipe for aioli is Martha’s:
Blend 1 egg with 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor until foamy. With the machine running slowly add ½ cup safflower oil and then ¼ cup extra-virgin Olive Oil in a slow steady stream. Add juice of half a lemon and the zest of 1 lemon. Blend briefly. Season with salt and pepper. (P.S. it tastes very heavily of the safflower oil until you add salt and pepper so don’t panic like I did)

Then I lightly toasted halved French bread with a sprinkle of Olive Oil to give it a little bit of crunch. Heated a pan on high, then added about a tablespoon of Olive Oil (ps, you should always add your oil after the pan has had a little time to heat. This keeps things from sticking. See note below). Pat dry the Tuna, and rub on pepper, salt and lemon zest. Sear in the pan for about a minute each side. Remove from the heat and cut on the diagonal.

To assemble: take lightly toasted bread and add a fairly generous amount of the aioli (I used about two tablespoons). Then I put some washed Boston Lettuce (I like the more buttery, less crunchy texture of this kind versus a romaine but that’s a question of taste) and topped with the tuna. Finally, I squeezed just a touch of lemon juice on top so my sandwich wouldn’t want for acid.



Marilou tried this with me and gave it a Marilou rating of 10 out of 10. I am basically a seafood Jesus.

This was an overall success, though I will note that our $8 piece of fish makes this a less then affordable choice for company. The only way I would do it as maybe an appetizer, or a special date dinner with a nice side (maybe something sweeter like similar to the salad I made the other day with warm roasted sweet potatoes)



Note about when to add oil to a pan:
From the New York Times writer Harold McGee:
“It is indeed better to heat the pan first, then add the oil or butter. The longer the oil spends in contact with the hot surface, especially metal, the more time it has to be broken down by the extreme conditions and exposure to oxygen. Broken-down oil gets viscous and gummy, and even a slight degree of this can contribute to sticking and residues on the food. This happens more slowly with saturated fats like butter, but unclarified butter has milk solids that can scorch with excessive heat.”

Thursday, July 8, 2010

veggies

So there isn't going to be much of a entry today, but I thought I'd let you know, I spent this afternoon at Guido's, quite possibly the best place to buy produce in our general area. I purchased a many tasty things, including beets, peas, cucumbers, and Boston lettuce, to name a few.
I have a bunch of fun recipe ideas as a result as well. but I thought I'd give a shout out to my favorite food stuffs emporium and the Robert-Pattisson-tween-frenzy-feelings it inspires.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

My Salsa Makes All the Pretty Girls Want to Dance and Take Off Their Underpants


So kind folks, I have another entry into my weekend holiday cooking extravaganza. To start with, I put together an adorably festive grilled pineapple salsa (served in a hollowed out pineapple) for my aunts work party.
Recipe:
Red onion
Fresh pineapple
Jalapeno
Lime (this past time I used 2)
Cilantro

I cut the pineapple into large chucks. Initially when I tried this recipe, it told me to cut the pineapple into rings, but I found this to be a pain in the butt and got a better result by, after removing the rind (or peel or whatever you call it) cutting the pineapple around the core into long wedges. I encountered a similar problem with the onion initially when I tried cutting it into 1” rings and they would fall apart on the grill, so this time around I cut then in half and put a small cut into the round side of the onion so it would stand up and I could grill both sides. Grill both the onion and pineapple until you get a nice char on them.
Give the pineapple and onion time to cool enough to handle. Chop them up with the jalapeƱo, and cilantro. Top with enough lime juice to coat all the ingredients. And salt and pepper.

The hollowed pineapple half is really a very Martha-esc flourish but it was for my aunts work BBQ and I thought why not (plus it looks pretty in the picture). In addition, while I normally leave the salsa a little chunkier for things like steak and the like, I decided to chop it up a little more for eating with chips. In a related note, I tried to chop it up with one of those AS SEEN ON TV chopping devices. When it failed miserably, I attempted to spread it out on the cutting board and try again only to take to it with a knife in frustration. This just goes to show that while the world of culinary gadgets is fun and excited 9 times out of 10 you’re better off just learning your knife skills.

I also endeavored to make an ice cream cake for my mother and sisters birthday. Two big things came out of this:
1. I made my first angel food cake from scratch. My aunt begged and pleaded for me not to as in her mind it’s more trouble then its worth and your better off just buying a mix or already prepared cake. I tried to set her straight. I was determined to make it from scratch. Prove my culinary talents. And….she’s totally right. What a pain in the ass. As with all things I figure you should try everything once just to prove to yourself that you can, but after that….Pilsbury my friend.

2. Those minimum freezing times they suggest are kindof important. You see, the cake was in layers (angel food, then a layer of vanilla ice cream, then raspberry sorbet, then peach sorbet then more angel food cake…nom) and to assemble you had to put on a layer, then let it freeze for an hour (or two hours for the sorbets). Now this is more important then I thought for achieving that crisp line when you cut and serve it. So mine ended up looking a lot like a sand sculpture you made when you were in school.
As for the family of critics, I played this off as an artistic decision with a note for next time

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Yeast Infection!!!!!!

So blog, that I have so sadly neglected…While I have nothing to say in my defense, I will say that in my absence I have been doing a lot of experimenting. And of the food variety (not the college variety…sadly).

To begin what I hope will be a dedication to more regular postings, I have a whole holiday weekend worth of culinary excitement planned. To start (Saturday) I am making cinnamon swirl while wheat bread, followed by grilled pineapple salsa and bacon wrapped filet minion. Delicious. Tomorrow (Sunday) before I take in the sights and sounds of the Cirque De Sole, I will take the morning (allll of it) to make my sister and mothers birthday cake [sorbet, Angel food ice-cream cake curtsey of Martha]. The last day will be our birthday/4th of July extravaganza.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Bread
I have been trying out a lot of bread recipes of late. I started with plain white bread, then dinner rolls, both of which turned out quite good if I do say so. Next, I attempted French bread, following a recipe in ReadyMade magazine. It came out OK (oh and took 15 years to complete) and I am resolved to try again and again until I achieve near artisan quality.

This recipe is an attempt to give myself something sweet to snack on that is not detrimental to the rather thick waist I am attempting to whittle. I figured it was sweet, but not overly so, the amount of sugar in minimal, the whole grains are good for me, and the cinnamon apparently helps you to lose weight (time will tell on that one).

Here is the recipe:
4 -4.5 cups whole wheat flour
2 packages active dry yeast
1 ¾ cup milk
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons shortening
2 teaspoons salt

yeast and 2 cups of flour go into my trusty kitchen aid, while the salt, milk, shortening and brown sugar go into a small saucepan and are heated to roughly 115°-120° (or unitl shortening is almost melted). Add this to the flour/yeast in mixture (this is what “activates” your yeast). The mix is combines on low (1/2 a minute) then beaten on high (3 mins). Next you add as much flour as you can stir in before turning it out on a floured surface, kneed in enough flour to make a moderately stiff dough and kneed for about 6-8 mins. Shape into a ball, then place in a greased bowl (I grease my bowls with Pam), flip, then cover and let rise for 1-1.5 hours. Punch down, turn out onto a lightly floured surface and let rest (covered) for 10 mins.

-Here I made the cinnamon swirl. If you don’t want to just skip this part: Mix sugar and cinnamon (about ½ a cup sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon according to the recipe, though I used a mix of sugar and truvia with more cinnamon). Roll out dough to a rectangle 15x7. brush with water and sprinkle cinnamon sugar mix. Roll the dough like a jelly roll (a reference in my mid-century cook book that wasn’t as clear as some alternatives I though of: burrito, joint, shamWOW) seal the end with the water, pinch the outer edges and place, seam side down into a loaf pan

cover and let rise until doubled (about 30 mins) then bake at 375° for 35-40 mins. Remove and cool on rake. Attack with knife and butter. Makes 1 loaf (though I followed the same recipe and made two small ones….a good idea if you need to give one away as you, like me, cannot be trusted with too much bread alone)

some notes about bread making:

1. in my adventures with bread I have picked up a few things that I will now share. The first is pre-measure flour. Bread may be the godfather of all “it’s just right when it is” food items. Similar to my aunts stuffed cabbage, which has no recipe because “it’s just right when it is” and therefore there are no quantifiable measurements for anything, bread requires a different amount of flour every time you make it. But what I have found is helpful with any recipe like this is to measure out the flour recommended in the ingredients into a bowl before starting the recipe, place the measuring spoon in it, and take it as you need it.
outside of this being good Mise en place (which FYI is defined by the Culinary Institute of America as "everything in place" or basically “getting your shit together before you cook to avoid messy disaster kitchens and panicked pantry rummages mid-recipe) it is also easier to just take the flour from the bowl then attempt to remember how much you used as your going. I imagine my preference to pre-measure comes from my distain for the tedium of measuring in the first place, so it’s better just to get it out of the way and focus on your recipe. Most importantly, doing this insures that you never use too much flour by accident

2. Kirsten’s mom was a bitch not to be messed with. When I was a kid, of all the American Girls in the book series, Kirsten, the Swedish immigrant who lived in a cabin, was my favorite. And I remember in one of the books she is making bread with her mom. There was even an illustration on the page of the both of them gently punching down bread with their fingers.

Despite the fact that I haven’t read the book in years and years the image must have stuck with me because I somehow imagined bread making like so many other aspects of cooking to involve gingerly hands and delicate punching. Yeah not really. Kneading is hard ass work. In addition, it also seems to stop time, which while great for women who fear wrinkles (forget retinol, the next breakthrough in wrinkle repair is kneading bread….forever) is bad for your dough as it’s hard to tell when 5 mins has elapsed since it will likely feel like 7 years. This leads to my second suggestion: Time your kneading. For instance this recipe says you should kneed for 6-8 mins, so I set a timer for 6 mins to make sure I do not under-kneed. Julia Child also recommends counting your individual kneeds and aiming for about 50. Oh and avoid kindly Swedish immigrants who frequent young adult fiction cause they are probably strong enough to fuck you up

3. I had to use shorting for this recipe which I have not for other bread recipes, and it looks like Elmer’s Paste that I used in kindergarten. I then thought, well Paste was the height of cuisine in kindergarten. Not related to cooking really, just thought I’d share.

Official Chris rating: 8