Alton Brown inspired me yet again and this time it was with polenta/grits.
What I love about making this is that on the first night you have a nice porridge-like dish but you can let the leftovers set up overnight in a parchment lined pan and then slice them, brush them with olive oil and toss them on the grill or pan-fry them.
Gena and I had the first night's dish with a little fresh grated Parmesan on top.
Alton's full recipe can be found here
I see no reason that vegetable broth couldn't be subbed in here to make vegetarian dish.
Polenta recipe
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for grilling or sauteing if desired
3/4 cup finely chopped red onion
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 quart chicken stock or broth
1 cup coarse ground cornmeal
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 ounces Parmesan, gratedPreheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large, oven-safe saucepan heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the red onion and salt and sweat until the onions begin to turn translucent, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add the garlic, and saute for 1 to 2 minutes, making sure the garlic does not burn.
Turn the heat up to high, add the chicken stock, bring to a
boil. Gradually add the cornmeal while continually whisking. Once you
have added all of the cornmeal, cover the pot and place it in the oven.
Cook for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring every
10 minutes to prevent lumps. Once the mixture is creamy, remove
from the oven and add the butter, salt, and pepper. Once they are
incorporated, gradually add the Parmesan.
Serve as is, or pour the polenta into 9 by 13-inch cake pan lined with parchment paper. Place in the refrigerator to cool completely.
Once set, turn the polenta out onto a cutting board and cut into squares, rounds, or triangles. Brush each side with olive oil and saute in a nonstick skillet over medium heat, or grill.
So I wanted to try my own. But from my research I determined that the first step in real barbecue would be making some North Carolina style pulled pork. I did a dry rub and left it overnight. I saw about a million recipes for rub but just decided to alter it to my own without really paying much attention to specific measurements. I know mine had some smoked paprika, garlic powder, dry mustard, cumin and my homemade chili powder... maybe a few others too.
The idea with pulled pork is to keep the temp low, I aimed to go between 225 and 250, real pit masters might go a bit lower but the end goal is 195 degrees. At first regulating the temp proved to be a challenge. The trick is to know how many coals (hardwood coals of course) were needed to get a 250 temp and then while those were coasting down to 225 (takes about 30 minutes if you regulate the air correctly) to keep a fresh supply of hot coals in the chimney starter. I measured the temperature with my probe thermometer which made it easy to monitor the temperature without extracting myself from my chair. The second trick is to keep a good amount of smoke during this time. I put soaked hickory chips on the coals while I cooked and while they sure smoked a lot in the end the smoke flavor and smoke ring in the pork were a bit disappointing.
I'll do another one of these out camping some time soon, but my next pork roast at home will be in the crock pot or my dutch oven, perhaps I'll document that as well.
http://brianandgenasbaby.vox.com/
Might explain the continued lack of new content on this one!
I like to make home made Christmas gifts as much as possible. This year some people are getting a jar of homemade chili powder.
I use Alton Brown's recipe.
I made 8 batches this year and as you can imagine my hands were burning, my sinuses were clear and my eyes were watering by the time I was done. Good fun though.
Fortunately our cat Lowell helps with the wrapping of the finished product.
Of all the things I cook gnocchi is probably my wife's favorite. When her parents came down to spend the weekend with us recently I decided to make up a batch.
I used this recpie.
I have used others before and I don't find any major difference between them. It's basically just about putting in the effort. It takes some time and some patience but it's worth it.
It starts with boiling the potatoes. The recipe says to boil but not to break the skin. In my experience if you don't break the skin the potatoes haven't cooked all the way. I boil until the skin breaks. Following that I quickly peel and rice the potatoes while they're hot and then lay out in a thin layer to cool.
Next I mix all of the wet ingredients and then pool them in to the middle of the potatotes. I use a rubber spatula to draw the wet ingredients evenly in the potatoes and gradually add in the cheese to form a sticky dough ball.
From here you could warm them up and serve as is but I prefer to either saute them in olive oil or deep fry them. I've also served them like pasta with tomato sauce and parmesan.
Just a quick plug for a service I like.
A couple of times in the past I have made reservations at a restaurant through Open Table, that's how we got our Frontera reservations in fact.
Before this weekend I had never gone straight to Open Table to make a reservation, I had always done it through the restaurant's web site.
Saturday night my sister was visiting and we wanted to go out uptown for dinner. I checked out Open Table on a whim and found I could select a neighborhood and an approximate reservation time and it would give me a list of places that could seat us. We got reservations at Figlio and had a great dinner.
I'm sure everybody has the experience of trying to figure out where to go for a meal and how tedious that can be. If Open Table operates in your city I recommend giving it a shot.
My photographer and her nice camera had the weekend off but I was pretty busy in the kitchen.
Friday I made some catfish mojo (and really, if you haven't tried it yet just do it, it's delicious). I also attempted to recreate Frontera's wonderful margaritas these came out very nice but they're not quite the same as what we had at Frontera. I'll keep trying (it's hard work drinking all that tequila).
Saturday I attempted to recreate the frushi that Chicago's Orange restaurant makes. This tasted pretty close to what Orange makes but it I am not a skilled sushi roller so it didn't look very good. The recipe just says to place the fruit on top but that's not what the restaurant did. Try this Flickr search to see what the real deal looks like. I'll keep practicing and if I get a good looking batch done I'll post it.
Sunday I made home-made mozzarella using this recipe. This was easy to do and quite tasty on my favorite easy-to-make pizza crust. For Twin Cities residents who would like to try this, I found the milk and the rennet at Whole Foods and the citric acid came from my local home-brew store (I'm sure you could find it somewhere else though). If I can find a cheaper source of non-homogenized milk I'll probably start making mozzarella more frequently.
Long time no blog. I think once the weather turned nice I lost interest a little bit and maybe lost a bit of inspiration too. But frankly I just haven't cooked much that would be worth showing anyone.
A lot of what I've already posted has been Rick Bayless recipes. Well, last night we ate at his restaurant and met him.
Here are some of the recipes of his that I have made:
Soft pretzels
Cottage cheese
Dulce de Leche
Tres Leche Cake
I've also been experimenting with some of his methods for brining chicken which are quite good.
I'm not betting I'm going to get in the habit of doing this regularly any time soon but perhaps in the fall I'll be posting more.
I flattened chicken breasts with a tenderizing hammer and then topped them with cheese, onions and parsley. I then rolled them up and held it together with toothpicks and then wrapped that with two strips of bacon.
From there I grilled it and basted it with an ancho chile marinade during the last two minutes. The marinade was 4 minced cloves of garlic, 1/3 cup ancho chile powder, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1/2 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt and then add water until the desired consistency is reached.
No need for a recipe here, you just baste a chicken with your favorite marinade. This one had 1 1/2 tablespoons ground ancho chile, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, a pinch of ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinammon, 2 minced garlic cloves, 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup orange juice and 1 teaspoon salt. (Bayless marinade... I should just change the name of this blog to "Bloggin' Bayless")
A couple of cooking tips:
-I cut out the back bone and then crushed the breast bones to flatten the chicken out and help it cook more quickly.
-pile the coals in the middle while lighting and when they get good and hot move them to the sides so that the chicken won't be under direct heat.
-I use hardwood charcoal. It's not really any more expensive but it is a bit harder to work with since it's oddly shaped and burns out more quickly. But it burns hotter and smells better. I get mine from Whole Foods.
-if you have a propane grill rather than charcoal... you have failed in life.
-brush the veggies with olive oil and sprinkle with salt before putting on the grill.
-drink good beer while you sit at the grill. I had a Summit Maibock and a Victory Prima Pils.
Finally an admission - I brought this in under-cooked and had to throw it in the oven since I was out of charcoal (Whole Foods hasn't started selling it again yet so I was just burning out last year's supply). Oh well, grilling is all about mistakes.
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canarygirl said:
Gawd, yum. I need to give these a try. I bet A would like them with Red Hot...The kids would... read more
on Gnocchi -
canarygirl said:
[this is good]Hey you! I totally missed this post! You need to give a head's up when you post, it's been so... read more
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canarygirl said:
And how is it that I didn't know that Gena had a Flickr account? Hmmm? This is good stuff! I... read more
on Open Table
Yum. I want a jarrrrrrrr! :) I may have to try that recipe, since I can't get decent chili powder... read more
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