Cooking

This was a very fall weekend, a corn maze, Coney Island fright night, apple cider, pumpkin picking, pumpkin carving, and roasting the seeds from those pumpkins.

This recipe showed-up on my Twitter feed last week, courtesy of Chow.com, and is in 140 characters or less: “Cinnamon-Sugar Pumpkin Seeds: Mix 2c pumpkinseeds/2t vegoil. Roast in single layer 375°F 10-15m. Toss w/2T sugar/¼t groundcinnamon.”

I was working with the seeds from four pumpkins, so I had more than the prescribed two cups.  It’s fine problem to have;  just toss all the seeds the with a reasonable amount of oil (just a light coating), place one  layer on a baking sheet, bake, and repeat until all the seeds are used.

A bonus of having a few batches was the chance to experiment with flavors.  The standard cinnamon sugar was good, but was also great kicked-up with just  a little nutmeg.  Going a little crazy, I tried making some curry pumpkins seeds.  The concept seemed solid, the flavor combination worked, but I went more than a little to over the top with the curry powder–next year I’ll get it right.

I have fond childhood memories of my parents baking the seeds when my family carved pumpkins.  This easy recipe was great way to  reach back to Halloweens past.

Our glimmer of hope

This has been a disappointing football season so far, as any Vikings fan will tell you. Not only are the Purple stinking it up, but they’re doing so in the most frustrating way possible. They have some pretty damn good players (Kevin Williams, Jared Allen, AP, Antoine Winfield, Percy Harvin) but they prove week after week to be entirely incapable of playing like professionals. What’s more, they aren’t even in full blown re-building mode, as evidenced by the fact that before they re-structured Adrian Peterson’s and Chad Greenway’s deal they were right at the salary cap. I can accept losing from a team that’s trying to get young or is trying to free up cap space to make some moves, but we’re doing neither and sucking royally. 

But at least we have something to look forward to now that Donovan “Chunky” McNabb has been benched for our first round pick, Christian Ponder. He may not be any better than McNabb… no, wait, I’m not going to go with that disclaimer. He will be better than McNabb. He showed a couple of things in his debut last week which are going to be huge upgrades. 1. He’s accurate, or at least far more so than D McB. He was putting passes right in front of people IN STRIDE, as opposed to 2 feet above a receivers head and 3 yards behind them. 2. He’s got some mobility and he’s able to throw on the run. Did you see that safety McNabb took last week? He saw a blitzer coming up the middle and just laid down in the end zone. Ponder looked pretty good at avoiding the rush. Finally, I think Ponder cares about winning. If the Vikes wanted McNabb last offseason they should have given him a contract so loaded with incentives that he would have earned slightly above minimum wage in that week 1 stinker where he piled up 39 yards over the course of the game, because you can absolutely tell he does not give a shit what happens in these games because he’s making $5 million in his last year in the NFL.

Enough football talk, time for football food. The other week Rick and I had another of our patented football ho-downs with 10.5 straight hours of food, beer, smoking and football. During this particular one, I got to try out a new Food Network recipe which turned out amazing. The only downside of it is that it’s pretty heavy and somewhat greasy, so if you’re not careful you will eventually have wished that you had a bit more self control as you nurse an over-full belly.

• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil*
• 1/2 pound Spanish or Mexican chorizo
• 1/2 pound mushroom caps, quartered
• 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 3 scallions, thinly sliced

*note: The olive oil is only neccesary if you are using the more solid  Spanish Chorizo which is a cured sausage like Andouille. All I was able to find was fresh ground Mexican Chorizo,

Spanish Chorizo

which has more than enough fat to render out without adding additional oil.

It’s been two weeks since I used the weekend to make a solid amount of food for lunches for the week, so I decided that this latest lazy football Sunday called for a big batch of chili.  Fortunately, on the Key Foods run, I was talked out of making the MEGA batch.  (Thanks Iggy!)  As it was, what I thought would be one large pot, grew to two when it came time to get my cook on.

Since the size of this batch was crazy, I’m just going to talk about the ingredients at a high level. You first start with onion and celery at a 4:1 ratio.  Be generous with this mix, it adds great flavor, but cooks down a lot so start with maybe 1/8 pot worth.  Pour a little olive oil into a pot and cook (stiring regularly) the onions and celery until the onions are translucent and just starting to brown.  Then add some ground meat.  You can really use whatever suits you (beef, turkey, pork, etc.).  I usually just get what’s on sale.  Today I got a big pack of beef and normal pack of pork, again at a about a 4:1 ratio.  As the meat finishes browning, throw in chopped fresh garlic to taste.  Then you need to add tomatoes, you can just use canned stuff–some tomato sauce, some stewed tomatoes, some diced.  Again, whatever is on sale works, but a mix is a good bet.   Next are beans.  Red kidney beans are a must.  You can just stick with these or expand a little into white kidney beans (which add a bit of color) or other similar beans.  For spices, go with some chili power and red pepper flakes.  If you want to experiment with spices, just add them in small amounts.  Chili is a perfect taste and modify as you go dish.

My fun addition to this batch was roasted jalapenos.  You skewer em’ and roast them over an open flame on the stove until they’re blackened.  Let them cool, chop, and add to the pot.  It adds a little smokey flavor, a little sweetness, and a little more spice.

Then you just need to let the pot simmer for an hour and a half or so.  And BOOM.  You have enough chili to feed a hungry crowd for the night game and for lunch through the week.

(Tragically, the Vikings did what they do best against the Bears (aka lose), at least this chili was there to soften the pain.)

Finally.  Only a modest amount of weekend work.  No trips to Atlantic City.  No out of town visitors to lure me off to adventures through the city.  And, best of all, the Vikings play the night game.  On a normal Sunday, the only way for me to watch the Vikes is to head into the city to Bar None (MN Vikings bar here in the Big Apple).  Don’t get me wrong.  I love taking down $9 pitchers of beer with fellow fans, but it’s a full day investment.  Today  is different.  Today I get football–at home–and some great fall cooking.

Today was chicken stock and some chili action which is to be shared with a few Bear friends as they watch Chicago fall to the mighty land of ice and snow.

Chicken Stock

Chicken stock is just a good thing to have around.  It pops up in more recipes than you might think.  And while you can buy it at the super market it just doesn’t have the depth of flavor of the homemade stuff.

The first step: cook a whole chicken.  I like to roast it with some veggies.  But it doesn’t matter much how you cook it; you’re after the picked-over bones.  If you’re not going to make the stock for a few days you can just freeze the remainder of the bird until you’e ready for stock time.

When you are ready to start, there isn’t a “right way” to make chicken stock.  Basically, you take whatever is left of the chicken and  put it in a pot with a bunch of water, some chopped celery (and/or celeriac), chopped carrots, and a few herbs.  Then you let it all cook for a 7-9 hours, run it through a fine mesh strainer to get a nice pure liquid that is free of all of the small chicken bones.  But for those of you looking for an actual recipe, below is an ingredient list courtesy of  Alton Brown:

• 4 pounds chicken carcasses, including necks and backs
• 1 large onion, quartered
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut in 1/2
• 4 ribs celery, cut in 1/2
• 1 leek, white part only, cut in 1/2 lengthwise
• 10 sprigs fresh thyme
• 10 sprigs fresh parsley with stems
• 2 bay leaves
• 8 to 10 peppercorns
• 2 whole cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 gallons cold water

In terms of classic tried and true cookbooks, the Joy of Cooking is right up there with the best. It’s the size of an unabridged encyclopedia and carries about the same amount of information. Recipe’s from scallop ceviche to saltwater taffy and everything in between, culinary techniques, chemistry lessons, cocktail notes, conversion tables, and cooking temperatures are just a small sampling of what you can find in this 1130 page tome. Whenever I have a particular idea in mind of something I want to try making, I can rely on two things: 1) The Joy of Cooking will have some version of that recipe I’m looking for and 2) That recipe will be a solid interpretation of the dish at hand, with good reasoning as to why certain steps are taken or ingredients used. The JOC recipe might not always be identical to the final version I decide that I like, but it’s always a good start.

To start what I hope becomes another recurring series on this foodiest of blogs, I’m sharing the Italian Meatball recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Ingredients are as follows:

• 1lb ground beef
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• ½ cup chopped parsley
• ½ cup grated Parmesan
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• ½ cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 3 tablespoons dry red wine (optional)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano (I substituted 1/2 tsp of minced fresh oregano and 1/2 tsp of minced fresh sage. In hindsight, I probably should have doubled those amounts)

As I mentioned earlier, my roomie Tyler is something of a gardener. This year he grew two kinds of tomatoes, several kinds of cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut squash, cabbage, broccoli, kale, chard, lettuce, eggplant, 4 kinds of peppers, brussel sprouts, and watermelon, plus the herb garden. Well, seeing as how we live in the tundra, we had to pick pretty much everything we could last Wednesday because it was forecasted to freeze overnight. Lemme

Minneapolis, round about the start of November

just run that one by you one more time. Last Wednesday was September 14. The last day of summer is September 22nd. And it was supposed to freeze. [Editors note: Please ignore the dating issue above resulting from the delay in posting this.]

Anyways, we suddenly had a massive amount of veggies to do something with. Tyler will be stewing the heirloom tomatoes, and he made some pickled pumpkin which I think will turn out to be pretty good. I took all the cherry tomatoes to make this quick and easy tomato sauce. My favorite part about this recipe is how fast you get a rich, full flavored sauce compared to the normal methods which require an hour or more of stewing.

Combine 4 cups of halved cherry tomatoes with 2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil, 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar, 5 cloves of minced garlic, 1 pinch of red pepper flakes, 1 tbsp of minced fresh oregano and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Mix that all together and then spread it out on a sheet pan lined with tin foil, bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, until the tomatoes start to get a bit of browning. Once the tomatoes are done, throw them in a food processor along with some fresh basil leaves, 1/4-1/2 cup of shredded parmesean, 2 tbsp of EVOO, and 1/2 tsp of red wine vinegar. Process that all together until it’s smooth, and you’re done. Although you don’t have to be done, you could add the sauce back to a pan full of spicy italian sausage. Nothing wrong with that.

Now a word about the tomatoes you use: I don’t think you would need to use cherry tomatoes for this recipe to be good, we just happened to have a bucket of cherry tomatoes which needed to be used up. But I do think that, in general, the cherry tomatoes you find in grocery stores tend to be more flavorful than the full size tomatoes, unless your grocery store is selling heirloom tomatoes. In a perfect world, you would grow your own tomatoes. I was listening to The Splendid Table the other week and the guest of the week spent about 10 minutes convincing me that Florida tomatoes (aka the vast majority of tomatoes you find in North America all winter long) are just about the most evil fruit to ever exist. Because of the humid environment and soil which is almost solely composed of sand, it takes 7-8 times the amount of fertilizer, fungicide, herbicide and pesticide to grow tomatoes in Florida as compared to someplace like California. There is also a long history of using slave labor to harvest tomatoes in Florida. If you want more information (and really, you should check out this stuff) you can download that episode of The Splendid Table (August 20th episode), or go check out the writings of Barry Estabrook in his book Tomatoland.

Yes, yes, as Loren so eloquently pointed out in his last post: it’s football season once gain.  Like Loren, I slowly developed a serious interest in the Vikings and was lured in to the game all together by my first fantasy team last year.  This year, without homework to fill my Saturdays, I’m hoping to develop a casual following of college ball.  It’s not the NFL and, having gone to Macalester College, I never experienced seriously cheering for my alma mater’s team–but I’m always up for a chance to watch a good game with a good beer and some great food.

For this weekend’s NFL opener it was time to fire up the grill for some burgers.  Lately Nick has been mixing some BBQ sauce (among other undisclosed ingredients) into the burger meat before forming the patties.  The result is a flavorful moist burger with little caramelization.  But there is a problem:  the patty become too moist and falls apart easily during grilling.

My thought on Sunday was to use a little honey, some onion, and some dry spices to get a similar flavor without the structural problems.  But when I went to the spices I got distracted and decided to try something crazy and went the curry route.  That’s right, curry hamburgers.  The result was a mean tasting burger.  I just kind of threw stuff together, but here is an approximation of a recipe:

• 1 lbs ground beef
• 3 table spoons of honey
• 1/2 a small onion finely chopped/diced on the large side
• 1-2 table spoons of red pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup of curry powder

The NFL won't be the same without you, Randy.

Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends! Well, actually it ends every spring. And this offseason it almost ended for a full year thanks to greedy owners. BUT IT’S BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER! I think every year I become more of a football fan. Back in the mid-90’s I followed the vikings very casually. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s I became a rabid Vikings fan (even after the gut wrenching 98 NFC championship and the 41-doughnut debacle against the giants just 3 years later). In the mid to late 2000’s I started to get interested in the other NFL games not featuring the Vikes and now that I started fantasy football last year I am an unabashed football addict. Between the months of September and January, nothing can get me down because I always have Sunday and Monday to look forward to. And in a couple of years, when the NFL starts selling Thursday night games to non-premium channels, we’ll have that too. And there will be much rejoicing.

And now that football is back, we’re going to resurrect the on-again-off-again Football Food series. This week: Beer Cheese Dip. I tried this for the first time at a work potluck (love my job), and it was incredibly addictive. It’s a nice combination of tangy beer, sharp cheddar and onion flavor, and creamy cheesy goodness.

Combine in a bowl: 2 bricks of cream cheese, softened; 2 cups of shredded cheddar; 3/4 cup of beer, I used Summit EPA because a) it’s my Minnesota beer of choice and b) I wanted something with enough flavor to shine through all the cheesyness; 1 packet of ranch seasoning; 1 bunch of green onions, chopped. Reserve a bit of cheddar and green onions to sprinkle over the top when you’re done mixing.

Eventually I would like to work out a version of this dip that uses fresh garlic and herbs in place of the ranch seasoning packet, but in the meantime this is a tasty addition to your sunday football buffet. As for your dipping item, I think this would taste pretty good with plain ol’ potato chips but the dip is probably too thick to maintain chip integrity. Stick with pretzels or veggies. Also, this makes enough dip for 6-7 people. If it’s only you and Brundage watching football, you might want to cut the recipe in half.

Football Predictions:

I don’t know that we’re going to keep up the Vikings weekly football prediction segment we  had going last year, but here are some general predictions for the NFL season which we’ll re-visit at the end of the season.

• 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.
• 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) UPDATE: Houston leads Indy 34-0 at halftime. I like this prediction.
• 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.
• 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.
• Lastly, the GB Packers will fail to make the Superbowl this year. Because they’re evil. Superbowl pick: New England over Philly.

One of my favorite dishes at asian restaurants is always fresh spring rolls. The beauty of the thing comes from it’s simplicity and contrasts. The perfect spring roll has fresh, crisp vegetables wrapped in smooth and silky rice paper wrapper and a dipping sauce that’s subtle enough to not overpower those less pronounced flavors.  There is also a certain challenge to the aesthetic of the spring roll (read: it’s a stone cold bitch to roll them and make them look good) which adds to your enjoyment when you finally get to chow down.

You can make these with almost any variation of ingredients but I find it generally boils down to these groups:

• Protein

You can use shrimp, pork, chicken or beef pretty much.  And it doesn’t really matter how you cook it either. I’ve had my best successes by marinating one of the above and grilling it as the grill flavor really comes through in the end.

• Leafy greens

Usually lettuce or cabbage of some kind, cut into strips.

•  Herb

Typically Thai basil or mint leaves, but normal basil and cilantro are also good choices.

• Crispy veggie

Take your pick: carrots, cucumbers, celerey, bean sprouts, bell peppers, eggplant maybe. Anything along those lines, julienned.

• Sometimes noodles

You can omit these if you want a more veggie filled spring roll, otherwise get some thin asian noodles like mai fun/cellophane noodles/glass noodles.

You’ll want to get everything prepared beforehand so once you get a rice paper wrapper moistened you can turn it into a spring roll asap. Get the protein cooked and sliced, all the veggies julienned, and the noodles boiled. Then set everything up assembly line style.

Spring roll wrappers start out as very stiff and fragile, and they also curl up on themselves when they hit water, so to soak them you really need a vessel which is wider than the wrapper and fairly shallow so it’s easy to get out of the water. I use a large dinner plate and it’s just big enough for the job. Pour some boiling water in the plate and let it sit for a minute or so until it’s cool enough you can get the wrapper in and out without burning yourself. It only needs 10-20 seconds under the water to get properly moistened, then take it out and try to keep it from a) tearing or b) sticking to itself.  Lay it on a flat surface which is slightly wet, to keep the wrapper from sticking.  Then start adding the ingredients. You will want to make a little pile of the filling about a third of the way up the wrapper, not right in the middle.

The order of how to place the filling doesn’t really matter, but whatever you want to show through the rice paper is what should go down first. If you’re using shrimp, they look good on the outside, otherwise maybe start with the herbs. You really don’t want to overfill these or it will be close to impossible to wrap them. After rolling a few of them you will get a good idea of the appropriate amount of filling.

Once you have everything piled up, take that bit of wrapper closest to you and start to roll that up on top of the filling. Once you have basically covered the filling with that piece of wrapper, fold in the two sides kind of like a burrito. After that, finish rolling the whole thing up and you are good to go. The wrapper will stick to itself so no need to use any kind of food adhesive to close it up. I know these are served as appetizers at most restaurants, but these things are so good I usually just end up making a meal out of them. One last thing to consider: the wrappers will dry out slowly if left in the open air. Usually when I’m making these for other people I try to finish making them as close as possible to when they will be eaten. Otherwise you could try keeping them in a tupperware with a moistened paper towel draped over them, that would probably help them keep for another hour or two.

The only other thing to figure out is what you’ll be dipping them in. Peanut sauce is a good choice, as is sweet and sour sauce.  The Food Network has some good recipes for dipping sauces. Or if you happen to live with someone who makes a killer jalapeno jelly/syrup concoction, use that. That’s what I did.

I’m glad to report that I’m alive and well after Irene blew through.  Nick and I prepared for the storm the only way we know how to do things: in excess; and invited over some friends from low lying areas.  With 6 people, one dog, one bird, and one hurricane turned tropical storm it was more party than shelter.

The Gumbo

Staring down the risk of a multi-day power outage our brilliant idea was to make gumbo.  An insane amount of very perishable seafood gumbo. Nick had picked-up sausage and shrimp so, in Irene’s first burst of rain to hit Brooklyn, I made an 11th hour run to Union Market.  After trying to shop through the chaos for 5 minutes I realized that the line snaked through the whole New York sized store (aka small and cramped compared to anything in MN).  So I got in line and shopped the shelves around me as the line inched forward.  A pound of okra here, some canned clams there, a little ahi tuna jerky because the guy behind the fish counter was MIA, some seafood stock, and over 3 lbs of bone in chicken legs and and thighs.

The thing about gumbo is that there really isn’t a “right way” to make it.   The stuff basically came about when people started throwing whatever was around into a pot before it could spoil.  So I scoured the fridge, freezer, and cabinets and found some great additions.  There was the frozen chicken stock I had made a while back.  Some lamb bones that I have had sitting in the freezer forever waiting for a chance to turn them into stock.  Some onions.  Some cherry tomatoes.    A bunch of mushrooms.  It was time to get things rolling.

Oh, one other thing.  Two visitors, who will remain nameless to protect their shameful tastes, don’t like strong seafood flavors and said they won’t be able handle the clams or the other fishy goodness–despite my assurances that the gumbo would be more savory than seafoody.  The solution: two pots; one purely chicken and sausage based the second having chicken, sausage, and the seafood elements.

To start the gumbo, cook the sausage (cut into circles)  in a big pot using a little oil.  Once the sausage is done, pull it out of the pot, set it aside and give the chicken (you should really be only using bone in dark meat here) a solid little fry in the oil. Once the chicken is done or doneish pull it out and set it aside.  Now make a little rue with the oil in the bottom of the pan.  It’s the rue and the okra that thicken the  gumbo.  Once the rue has cooked nicely (maybe 5 minutes or so), add some stock, whatever kind works.  Or just use water, there are plenty of flavors coming to go around.  In this case, I used a mix of the seafood broth I picked-up in my shopping adventure, chicken broth, and some water.  Next add a bunch of Orka, cut into about half to quarter inch pieces–don’t bother being delicate, they completely vanish after a few hours of cooking.  Oh, and don’t forget to put all that meat back in along with whatever else you’ve found laying around.

Then you let it cook and cook and cook.  As the rain fell and we tapped into the large provisions of beer the gumbo cooked away.  Every 15 minutes or so it’s important to stop by and give it a good stir and scrape the bottom of the pot.  Slowly but surely everything in the pot becomes one.  First the okra just vanishes.  Then you notice the shrimps have gone and some meat is falling off the chicken bones.  Suddenly there is no more meat on the chicken bones.  The main solids left are the sausage chunks and what looks like pulled chicken.  This is one of the reasons I highly recommend having a little crab or something to throw on top before eating.  Another, as of yet untested, thought I have is to retain another batch of shrimp and fish to put in for the last 30-45 minutes of cooking–that way after the base has it’s amazing flavor from the disintegration of ingredients there’ll still chunks of those delicious ingredients to be had.

The Cornbread

Of course, with all of these hours of simmering the gumbo, it would be wrong to not make a little corn bread and rice to go along with the meal.   Personally, I’m not a fan of really dry cornbread.  Some would say that means I’m not really a fan of cornbread.  I’m okay with that, but here is how you make the stuff the way I like it:

Ingredients:

•  1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 3 eggs (most would have use only 2)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 can of creamed corn
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar

Directions

First, in a medium bowl whisk the eggs so that you get some air bubbles in the mix.  Next add some buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk around you can make a good substitute by mixing one cup milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice).   Let that mixture get up to room temperature.  Next, melt the butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar.  Then add the sugar butter to the room temperature egg/buttermilk bowl.   (Note: if you didn’t let your eggs and buttermilk get up to room temperature everything will fail here, the sugar and butter will get cold and start turning back into a solid.)  Whisk the liquid for a bit.  Combine the dry ingredients in their own bowl.  Now slowly whisk in large handfuls of the dry ingredients into the liquid and keep whisking until there are little or no lumps.  Then put the batter into a greased baking pan.  Spoon a smattering of creamed corn onto/into the batter.  Finally, sprinkle the sharp cheddar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 375 (or until it browns and a toothpick comes out clean).

I wish I had a picture of all of this, but, alas, I didn’t have the foresight.   Though, with my freezer full of gumbo, a photo op of the gumbo in a bowl, over rice, with a nice slice of cornbread siting on top is sure to be coming soon.