Cooking

IT’S SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!! This is like the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and your first frat party all rolled into one. Throughout my whole life, this weekend has always been an epic party. When I was a kid my dad would take me to one of his friend’s houses out in the boonies and all the guys would stand around the deep fryer in the garage, watching crispy and golden delicious chunks of deep fried pheasant, grouse, walleye, and chicken-fried venison cutlets emerge from the bubbling witches cauldron of peanut oil while the game played on a projection TV. Side note: is there any better way to enjoy nature than deep frying critters?

But without a doubt, my favorite SB parties were in college. You get 15-20 guys together in a house, along with 15-20 cases of beer, and play beer pong and NFL Blitz for hours before the game even starts. And once the game does start, everyone picks a side and cheers for them as though they were your hometown team. Notice how I precluded the possibility of the actual home town team getting into the Superbowl, for we reside in the tundra – land of the Vikings.

So for this holiest of all weeks, we’re going with a trinity of appetizers: beer cheese dip, polpetini (tiny meatballs), and  a shrimp cocktail with honey chipotle cocktail sauce.

The beer cheese dip we’ve done before, here. Except this time I’m going to replace 25% of the cream cheese with sour cream.

The polpetini will be made roughly from:

• 1lb ground beef
• 1 lb ground pork, veal or mild italian sausage
• 4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 shallot, minced
• ½ cup breadcrumbs
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 3 tablespoons dry red wine (optional)
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano

This is a slightly modified version of the Joy of Cooking recipe which has been previously posted. This time we’re going to roll it into smaller meatballs, about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Then lightly coat them in either seasoned flour or breadcrumbs and fry them in a pan with just enough oil to coat the bottom. A minute or two each side should do, just long enough to get some good color. Then they go in the oven at 300 degrees, until a meat thermometer says they’re about 140 degrees inside. Take them out and let them cool a bit, then put them on a toothpick with a cherry tomato, small mozzarella ball and a leaf of basil. You can either roll the basil into a tight roll and skewer that, or kind of weave it over the meat, cheese and basil on the toothpick.

These are pretty good at this stage, but you can make them even better. Mix extra virgin olive with aged balsamic vinegar (which I happen to have laying around because my brother Danny knows EXACTLY what to get me for Christmas) at a ratio of about 3:2. Whisk this together and add it to a jar with a lid, then shake it up. Drizzle that over the tasty skewers, then top everything with kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Now its time for the brand new recipe which I found on one of my favorite foodblogs, The Food in My Beard. Now, I love shrimp cocktails but my undying hatred of horseradish prevents me from enjoying the typical condiment associated with them. That makes this recipe perfect for me.

• 1 7 oz can of chipotles in adobo
• ¼ cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 2 limes
• 1-2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• cilantro

Take the peppers out of the can, split them open and remove all of the seeds. Add the peppers to a food processor along with the adobo sauce left in the can, the juice of both limes, the honey and the garlic. Process that until smooth, then add a few tablespoons of the cilantro leaves, and pulse a few more times. Once you put it in the serving bowl, you can garnish with a few more cilantro leaves. Serve with delicious shrimps. I’ll be buying mine frozen from the grocery store, because boiling my own would be just a bit too much work combined with everything else.

These look amazing... except for that red crap in the bowl.

FOOTBALL SECTION

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Dedicated readers (or maybe just the authors) will remember that at the beginning of the football season, I made 6 predictions for the 2011-12 NFL season. Let’s see how hard this NFL commentary business is:

• Barring injury, Adrian Peterson will rush for 2,000 yards this year. While we don’t have the greatest O-line Minnesota has ever seen, the reports are that we have abandoned the zone-blocking crap which plagued us in the Childress era.
• Outcome: Well this one obviously failed to come true, and I won’t even hide behind the hideous knee injury which ended AP’season and maybe permanently dimmed the prospects of his career. He wasn’t really close to the pace of a 2,000 yard season. 0 for 1.
• As an aside, I am terrified about AP’s prospects for a comeback. He tore his ACL AND MCL. If you didn’t have a chance to see what happened in that game, check this out. Warning: you will feel his pain after watching that clip. Adrian is the most amazing running back I’ve ever watched. Pretty much half a dozen times every season I see him do something so amazing that I thank Odin that he somehow fell to the Vikings in the draft. And it seems like better than even odds that he won’t be anything special when he makes it back onto the football field.
• The Colts will be in contention for the first overall draft pick by the end of the season. This team is GARBAGE without Manning. He ran the whole offense and he elevated a team that has drafted crap the last several years. (Sub-prediction: this will create endless ESPN contaversy about whether Peyton will allow them to draft Andrew Luck)
• Outcome: NAILED IT ON BOTH COUNTS! Full disclosure – all of these predictions were written after the pre-season so there was already a hint of how god-awful the Colts were going to be, but that’s not going to stop me from claiming credit for this one. Seeing as how both prediction and sub-prediction came true, I’m 2 for 3.
• The Houston Texans will finally make the playoffs. I mean, they kind of have to. Jacksonville and Indianapolis will be terrible, and I just don’t think the Hasselbeck-led Titans will steal the division away from them.
• Outcome: Also correct. It’s intriguing to think about what would have become of this team if they hadn’t lost Mario Williams, Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson for most of the season. Think about that! That’s arguably your best player on both offense and defense plus your starting quarterback, and they still won a playoff game. If the injuries had shaken out a different way, the Texans probably could have made the Superbowl. 3 for 4.
• The Lions will still fail to hit the .500 mark. I know everyone is in love with them and they have certainly created a monster d-line, but Stafford is made of porceline and I still think they need another season to wipe out the stink of 0-16.
• Outcome: Ouch, and I fall to 3 for 5. The Lions exceeded the .500 mark, made the playoffs and Stafford made it through the season without missing any appreciable amount of time. This team has lots of potential with an improving Stafford, Megatron hitting his prime and a solid core of Suh and Fairley on the D-line. They just desperately need a running back to make it through the season.
• Lastly, the GB Packers will fail to make the Superbowl this year. Because they’re evil. Superbowl pick: New England over Philly.
• Outcome: Ahhhh this is the sweetest one to get right. A Rodge was getting just a bit too cocky, and I’m glad the Giants came along to serve some humble pie. And that makes me 4 for 6. OVER .500 THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Please... no more of this.

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One of the things I miss most about living in Minnesota is my regular dinners with Mike and Fayaz. Every two to four weeks, for about three years before I moved to New York, Mike, Fayaz, and I would spend a weekend night cooking and eating elaborate meals.  After eating, we’d often retire to Mike’s outdoor hot tub for scotch and cigars.

On my recent trip to Minnesota for my sister and her new husband’s open house I was finally able to get in another amazing dinner with Mike.

Being in a health conscious mind set, we abandoned our fatty four legged friends and we set out for a sea food meal.  Mike took charge of the entree planing.  Starting with the idea of seafood, Mike reached an amazing creation:  crab and shrimp stuffing wrapped in delicious walleye.  Mike cooked the the shrimp with a moderate amount of butter (okay, the healthy angle was more in thought than practice) mixed in some bread crumbs, some chicken stock, and the crab.  The oceanic stuffing was placed into mounds on a baking sheet and wrapped the in beautiful fillets of walleye.  While these baked I blanched a little bok choy, seasoned a little soy sauce which I cooked down for a little sauce for the veggies.  In the final minutes of baking, Mike knocked out a little quinoa.

The result?  Amazing and decadent–as almost every meal Mike and I have made together.  All with my favorite accompaniment of all: good conversation.  Conversation with an old friend and a new.  This–with Mike and a number of  others–is what I miss most from Minnesota.

——-

As you may have noticed, my prodigious posting of 2011 has faded.  The good news is, after passing the New York bar, I am gainfully employed.  Unfortunately, work manages to occupy nearly all my waking hours.  (Increasingly even those of the weekend.)  The job is great, but it leaves me with little time for culinary activities and even less for writing about it.  The flood may be receding slightly and I hope February will yield most posts.

I honestly can’t believe more people don’t make these things, aside from the fact that each one  adds an inch to your waist line. One website I saw had a nutritional breakdown and

each ball has ~250 calories. And you will not be able to eat just one. They are indulgently rich and addictive, as well as ridiculously easy to make. Ready? Crush a bag of oreos – use a blender or food processor if you can – until its nothing but small crumbs. Next, mix in a brick of softened cream cheese and use your hands to roll them into balls, placing them on a tray or baking sheet lined with wax paper as you go. . Chill them for an hour, then it’s time to decorate them. You’re halfway done!

First, melt a package of almond bark. I did this in a pan on low-ish heat on the oven, but it did scorch a bit toward the end. You might want to try a double boiler, or maybe it just needs close attention in the pan. Either way, once the bark is melted and you have your oreo balls out of the fridge, use a toothpick to skewer them and dip them in the white goo. After they’ve taken a dip, let them harden on the wax paper for about 15 minutes.

In that time, you can melt some dark chocolate chips –  and this time you definitely do need a double boiler. Once that’s melted, just take a whisk and dip it into the chocolate and then twirl it above the oreo balls to create chocolate stripes. Don’t go nuts on the chocolate flinging, you’ll either burn yourself or piss off your roommate by covering the fridge, floors, walls and ceiling with chocolate stripes.

Voila, You have some hell damn ass awesome dessert treats! And there are lots of variations to be done here – you could add sprinkles instead of or in addition to the chocolate. What I’d really like to try is adding some flavoring extracts like peppermint or rum flavoring to the oreos or the almond bark. You can also add food coloring to make them holiday themed, using red and green for xmas, pastel colors for easter, black and orange for halloween, red white and blue for the 4th. The possibilities are endless. I shall experiment further and report my results!

Or you could use green food coloring and whiskey extract to make St. Patty's Balls. HA!

The Apostles of America's Test Kitchen

Once you try this vinaigrette recipe you may never spend another dollar on supermarket salad dressings. This is another recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, whose endless testing of seemingly infinite variations of recipes will usually produce a complete gem – this one is no different. The real beauty of this recipe is that the basic structure allows you to vary the outcome to make a wide variety of vinaigrettes to compliment any number of other flavors in the meal you are serving. Because you people are so special to me, I’m going to share the master recipe and the three suggested variations from ATK.

• ¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons minced shallot or red onion
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (optional, but not really)
• 1.5 teaspoons minced fresh tarragon, dill, basil, or oregano, or ½ teaspoon dried
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon pepper
  

  The Word according to Jesus... I mean Christopher Kimball

Shake all of the ingredients together in a jar with a tight fitting lid. This will last up to one week in the fridge, but bring it back to room temp before you re-mix it. Now, the recipe says you can substitute dried herbs, and to be fair I have never tried this, but I don’t think it would be nearly as good without the fresh herbs.  Substitute at your own peril.

The last time I made this was on Christmas day when I had the pleasure of cooking for my brother Allen, his wonderful wife Heather, my mother, my aunt Pat and our family friend Annette. I went with white wine vinegar, 2 teaspoons of fresh tarragon, and 2 cloves of garlic and it was fantastic. Don’t shy away from the Dijon mustard either. I don’t like it on almost anything, but I love it in vinaigrettes. There is always a bottle of it in my fridge, and it never gets used unless I’m making one of these recipes. Now the 3 variations:

Balsamic Vinaigrette

Subsitute balsamic vinegar for the wine vinegar, and use oregano as the herb of choice. Reduce the amount of garlic to 1/2 clove. Note: Because of my respect for the testing methods of ATK’s recipes, I included that bit about the garlic. Obviously, I disregard all steps which require actually reducing the amount of garlic.

Raspberry Vinaigrette

Substitute raspberry vinegar for the wine vinegar. Increase the amount of minced shallots to 1 tablespoon and the fresh tarragon to 2 teaspoons. Omit the Mustard.

Honey-Dijon Vinaigrette

Substitute vegetable oil for the extra virgin olive oil and cider vinegar for the wine vinegar. Increase the mustard to two tablspoons. Omit the shallot and herbs, add 2 tablespoons honey and one tablespoon poppy seeds.

My first go at sea food gumbo was back around 2006 as a night of culinary excess with Mike and Fayaz. In 2011, as the hurricane threatened New York, I broke out the BIG pot, grabed several pounds of ingredient, and made up some gumbo for the apartment turned storm shelter. Before the water, I started with over 8 pounds of chicken, sausage okra, seafood, mushrooms, and whatever else I found around the house. After hours of cooking it was ready to be served over rice with a generous amount of hot sauce. Thinking about this mix of savory and seafood has me almost drooling onto my key board.

Fortunately there are a couple servings of the gumbo left in the freezer for the New Year.  All I need to do is make up another batch of extra moist cornbread.

For the start of the 2011 countdown we reach all the way back to February to recall Angry (Devil) Mussels.  These spicy crustaceans were great the first time around, but they made their way into the top ten because I couldn’t help making them a few more times throughout the year.

Before these guys showed-up at a roomate dinner, Fayaz swore he would never eat mussels; but after being tempted by spice and just a few he was taking them down just as fast as he could get ’em out their shell.  As cheap as they are easy to make, I can’t wait to cook-up some more in 2012.

I seem to only write about cooking successes here, filing the failures away as improvement projects to be blogged about when I figure out how to do things right.  In my defense I don’t have many out right failures.  That is to say it’s rare that I’ll cook something my roomies are unwilling to eat or that I’m unwilling to eat for lunch in the following days.  My Sunday pasta making endeavor falls into this minor failure category.

Now, when I say pasta making, I don’t mean making a pasta sauce and boiling some boxed pasta.  I mean making the pasta myself from flour, eggs, and salt.  All without the benefit of a pasta maker.

All around this project was a bit of a disaster.   The first step involves making a mound of flour, with a hole in the middle that you fill with eggs into which you slowly incorporate the flour.  In theory.  My eggs overflowed their flour bowl; making the mixing process messy and awkward.  Next, I learned the value of a pasta maker.  Or, more accurately, I learned the pain of not having a pasta maker.  The pasta dough was elastic and fought against my efforts with the rolling pin.  I rolled the dough to what seemed like an adequate thinness and then cut the dough (using a pizza cutter) to what seemed like an adequate width. After dropping the raw pasta in its pot of boiling water and watching it expand, I realized I had made the pasta broth overly thick and wide.

Served with a Bolognese sauce, the flavor of the pasta seemed right.  But there was just too much of it. This stuff is dense.  Eating it required cutting a small piece and dredging it through the sauce.  Not a complete failure, but the stuff from the box would have been better.

Rather than sweeping this minor disappointment under the rug, I’m throwing it out as my first step in pasta making.   A pasta machine isn’t in my budget at the moment, so it will be more adventures in rolling pins for the foreseeable future.

Update:  I re-heated this pasta for dinner 24 hours after storing it in the fridge covered in the Bolognese sauce.  The pasta seemed less dense and more approachable.  Actually pretty awesome.  I think I’m track here.   Once I figure out how to make a thinner noodle, I see some good eating in my future.

For the first time in my 29 Thanksgivings, I took the lead for this year’s day of culinary excess.  Over the years, I’ve cooked a variety of T-day dishes.  A sweet potato dish for the big day here, a Turkey for a work party there.  But, before this November 24th, I never had to worry about the timing of it all at once and I’d never made real stuffing.

In order to ensure a moist turkey, I took the only path I know that doesn’t involve a deep fryer: brining.  It seems counterintuitive, but soaking a Turkey (or any meat for that matter) in a salt bath actual makes for a more moist bird.  I’m not a chemist, but the process allegedly involves osmosis–where the cells in the bird take on more water.  For a 13-15 pound turkey, use one and a half gallons of water and one and a half cups of kosher salt.  Combine the water and salt in a large pot, heat (to below a simmer), and stir until the salt is dissolved.  Then cool the pot in an ice bath or outside as Loren recently suggested.   The cooling is critical, otherwise you’ll be holding the turkey at a temperature idle for bacterial growth.  Once the brine has cooled immerse the turkey fully and set in the fridge for 24 to 36 hours.  You can immerse the turkey in either a large pot or in a large trash bag (it’s a good idea to triple layer if you go the bag route).   Prior to cooking, remove the turkey from the brine and put an herb butter mixture under the skin.  The herb butter will add some flavor and further moistness.   The end result?  An amazingly moist turkey.  Even days later the left overs are still moist.  I honestly don’t understand why everyone doesn’t brine their Thanksgiving turkey!

While the Turkey is the corner stone of thanksgiving dinner, everyone knows that the day is really about the sides.  So I pulled together some stuffing, a sweet potato dish, creamy garlic mashed potatoes, some fresh baked bread, and cranberry sauce.  Stu (the vegetarian) brought a nice big pan of mac’n cheese and Matt, in classic MN style, brought a pan of green bean casserole.  Iggy and her sister Heidi made a cucumber and sour cream salad.

The Stuffing

Since Stu is a vegetarian, I made both a meat and vegetarian version.  Both start the same way, with a few cups of celery and a few cups of yellow onion.  In a heavy bottom pot, cook the finely chopped celery and onion for approximately 15 minutes until soft and translucent.  For the meat version, I added in a few chopped chicken and apricot sausages.  Next I added about a cup of golden raisins that had soaked in warm water for about 20 minutes.   Next throw in a bunch bread crumbs and slowly mix in a few cups chicken stock (Stu let me do this for the “veggie” version as well) until the bread crumbs become soft, but not soaked.  At this point you can either stuff the turkey or bake in a baking dish.  Because oven space was at a high premium, I cooked the veggie batch on the stove in a dutch oven to create that crispy outside.

The Sweet Potatoes

This one requires a little planning.  The night before cooking  these you’ll need bake a couple sweet potatoes in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, until they can be easily pierced with a knife.  Store in the fridge over night.   When it’s time to actually make the rest of the dish, skin the sweet potatoes and cut them into 1 inch slices.  Layer the slices sweet of potatoes with some crushed walnuts and canned sliced pineapple rings.  On the top, layer mini-marshmallows.  Bake covered for 15 to 20 minutes and then bake uncovered until the marshmallow begin to brown.

Cranberry Sauce

I had never made cranberry sauce before, but I was excited to try something new.  For some reason I had  visions of ginger cranberry sauce dancing in my head.  After finding a few recipes, I put a couple in to the following:

• One 16 ounce pack of cranberries
• One cup of water
• One cup of sugar (1/2 recommended for the future)
• One table spoon of ginger
• Zest of one orange

Also, while making my own cranberry sauce was fun, I still had to follow tradition and break out the canned stuff, served on a plate with can rings and all.

The Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Nick has made this dish a few times before and when it came time to select a mashed potato dish I knew that this one had to be it:

• 2 pounds russet potatoes
• 5 table spoons of butter
• 2/3 cups heavy cream
• One bulb of roasted garlic

Slice off the very top of the garlic head. Drizzle the head with olive oil and wrap in foil and bake at 400 for roughly 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Cut the potatoes into large pieces, making sure all are relatively the same size. Place the potatoes in a large pot, add the salt, and cover with water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and then reduce heat to maintain a rolling boil. Cook until potatoes are easily pierced with a fork. Meanwhile heat butter and cream until butter melts. Add the roasted garlic to the potatoes, mash all together, add the butter-cream mixture, and continue to mash until combined.  Serve immediately.

Warning: this dish is delicious AND incredibly filling.

The Meal

True to Thanksgiving tradition, after hours of prep and a day of cooking, everyone at the table was full beyond the ability to move in about 25 minutes.  After a movie break,ThanksKilling (a little known gem of a movie that was robbed at the Oscars), and picking at our plates as the first round of food settled, it was time for a little coffee and some great homemade apple and pumpkin pie.

All-in-all, I would say my first Thanksgiving cooking was a success.

Danny, Craig and I (With Emmy, Eddie and Gus in front)

Unlike many of my fellow Tundra inhabitants, I happen to enjoy living in Minnesota. I’ve got a 4×4 Jeep Cherokee (and a nice layer of insulation) to get me through the winter, fishing and swimming to get me through the summer, and hunting of all kinds to entertain me during the fall. Pheasant hunting is one of my favorite ways to spend a weekend. What could be better than a weekend with family, dogs and guns? Not to mention that because we spend all day walking the fields, we can justify having huge breakfasts with eggs, bacon and cornbread!

The weekend before Thanksgiving, I hit the fields with my brother Dan, my uncle Craig and my cousin’s husband, Ben. We had ourselves a grand old time and possibly our most bountiful harvest yet. There was one point where we let two pheasants get away because most of us were out of shells in our guns. But after the fun of actually hunting, you’re left with a lot of pheasant meat which can be very tricky to do well. I find that most of the time I have pheasant it turns out pretty dry, almost without regard to the manner in which it was cooked. So you can either serve it in stew, serve it with a rich gravy, or brine it. Having never tried that last option with a pheasant, that’s the way I decided to go and I may never go back again. The recipe for the brine is:

• 8 cups water
• 1/2 cup kosher salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup real maple syrup
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 tsp black pepper corns, whole
• 1-2 dashes of worcestershire sauce
• 1 pinch ground cloves (I used whole because that’s what I had)
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

Hello food fans,

It’s been about 5-6 weeks since my last post. I would apologize for the delay but at this point it seems to be becoming a pattern that I post in bunches and then dissapear for a while, so maybe you should just expect that at this point. Anyways, I’ve got some great ideas and recipes which are coming your way over the next month or two, including: Oreo cake balls, the best stuffing recipe EVAR, White Chicken Chili, grilled pheasant breasts, and some homemade eggnog when we get close to Christmas!

Today’s recipe comes from… nowheres in particular. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work one night and got a hankering for some kind of garlicky-creamy goodness which I could spread on crackers. Since this particular grocery store happened to sell roasted garlic cloves in their olive bar, I went for those. A week later I re-made the recipe with a few tweaks which really brought everything together.

• 1 brick of cream cheese, room temp
• 1 cup roasted garlic cloves
• 1 raw garlic clove, roughly chopped
• 1 package basil leaves (15  big leaves or so?)
• 4 scallions, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup shredded/grated Parmesan
• 1 pinch of red pepper flakes
• Salt & pepper
• Sprinkle of red wine vinegar
• a big dollop of  sour cream (optional)

om nom nom