Dateline: August 19, 2020 Preserved Lemon Chicken Thighs, Roasted Potatoes, and Zesty Collards

It was a whirlwind of a Saturday.  I had to run into see my GP for a pulmonary test.  Nothing horrid, just a routine test or blowing into things and trying not to pass out.  Which almost happened twice!  Then race home for a zoom call and prepare dinner.  Only after the call was over did I think about eating dinner.

I basically made the usual preserved lemon marinade, lemon, garlic, hot peppers, and olive oil.  I smeared the tights with this and put them on a sheet pan.  I also added some small white potatoes, for Bill, and I put some sweet potatoes on for me.  Into the oven it went, and we sat down to our zoom call.

What I Learned From This

1.  If you are going to be busy and cannot attend to the cooking process, use a lower oven temp.  By the time the call was over, the thighs were just short of shoe leather!  Tasty shoe leather, but not what I had hoped for.  The potatoes were perfect.  Add with the collards and we were set for a great dinner.  

2.  If you are going to have a drink, made sure that you have prepared everything ahead of time.  Trying to clear your head and chop a salad, not a great combo.

Dateline: September 18, 2020 Trying out Beyond Meat Burgers with Gazpacho

I am so curious about these meatless burgers.  From reading the package, I have to be extra careful not to overcook, but at the same time it needs to be brought to temp....conundrum!

In these waning days of summer, we want to spend as much time eating outside as we can.  Pretty soon, it will be either too cool, too windy, or both.  And then, the idyllic days of summer are over and we will be hunkering down until spring.  Given this covid situation, it may be spring 2022 before we emerge from this world wide nightmare.

I am going to forage through the veggie bin to see if there are veggies that can be grilled along with the burgers for a little more heft on the plate!

Ok, my opining begins:  They nailed the texture.  The color was not very appetizing, however that may have been due to the grill not being sufficiently hot to char-broil them on the outside.  The flavor was meh.  Don't know if I will ever purchase again as this was an experiment.  But, if someone comes for dinner and we are eating burger and they are vegan or vegetarian, then I will go with them.  Personally, I find the veggie burgers on the market that are grain based much more satisfying than these were.

Didn't take photos as they were quite unappetizing.  

However, the gazpacho was great!

 

Dateline: September 17, 2020 Sorta Hot Italian Sausages and Delicata Squash

Hot Italian Sausages, homemade grilled.  What could be better?  I can't think of anything right now!  The smell of the smoke, the smell of grilling meat, and the sizzle of the fat hitting the hot coals...  Quintessential Summer.

I made the sausages using Hank Shaw's recipe for hot italian sausages.  I didn't have the type of pimenton that he suggested, so I googled swaps and came up with gochugaru, korean hot pepper flakes that are used to make kim chee.  I know, I have these in the pantry.  Come on, don't be a hater!

They turned out not to be fiery enough.  I will either get the hot paprika called for in the recipe, or gerry-rig using gochugaru and cayenne.  To the left, are the finished sausages, drying out a bit before I cut them apart and bag them up.

To the left are the grilled sausages and the delicata squash.  All I did to the squash was to spray it with coconut oil cooking spray and then salt and pepper and then grill.  The delight of the squash is that Bill ate it!  No really, he ate it.  He 'hates' squash.  I think is it just a fear of starchy vegetables, but can't swear to that!  

Below is the happy meal, the sausage was moist, and flavorful and as mentioned, the squash was a keeper.  

Nota Bene:  As my technique making sausages improves, I am finding that I am getting a better sense of when or if the meat is going to bind well.  The smoked sweet italians did not bind well because I did not really spend enough time squishing the ground meat through gloved hands.  That emulsification process (the technical term for squishing), is more important than I originally thought.  I now know that no matter how coarse or fine the grind on the meat, I have to put in the time to squish it around and get it to stick to itself well.  The rule of hand is that if you grab a handful of the meat, squeeze it slightly, and then open your hand palm down, if the meat is emulsified, it will just stick and hang there, if it needs more work, it will fall off and not cling to itself.  

Dateline: September 16, 2020 Pork Puttanesca Sauce in the Instant Pot

 I had a pork shoulder defrosting on the counter.  Yes, it seems I always have a pork shoulder defrosting.  It was too large a hunk for the 2 of us, so I split it into two pieces.  One piece I ground to make hot italian sausages, and the other, I chunked up for this pork puttanesca recipe that I found on NYT Cooking site.

It came out better than I thought it would.  Comparing it to a long simmering ragu, it is not that.  But as a quick-ish nice sauce for pasta or polenta, it works.

What would I do differently next time?  I would use less tomato paste, it made the final product too sweet for my taste.  Comparing it to my regular puttanesca, I would give it an 8.  I really love my puttanesca sauce.  The olives and capers were lost as was the garlicky goodness.  I am supposing that that is a result of the pressure cooking.  So, next time, I would halve the tomato paste, halve the pork, double the garlic, olives, and capers, as well as the vinegar and sub another cup of wine for one of the 2 cups of water. 

As one of the comments stated, perhaps the dish would have benefited from searing the pork prior to cooking.  That may be another option going forward.  

Of course, I have no photos, naturally, because I had a margarita, and that was the end of thinking!  Photo on NYT site is exactly what it looked like, minus the polenta!  Took a picture the next day.  Horrors!  I was eating day old pasta!

Dateline: September 15, 2020 Lamb Keema and Roti

  

I had one pound of ground lamb that needed to be used in the fridge.  I was torn between lamb burgers or keema.  Keema won!  I decided to use Tejal Rao's recipe for roti.    I  happened to have the atta flour!  I know, I know, my pantry is not like many others.  I have tons of esoteric ingredients for the off chance that I want to make something Asian, or Mexican, or, Indian, or or or.... I am guessing that if you have whole wheat pastry flour that would work fine.  

I also used Tejal Rao's recipe for keema.  I used the lamb, mentioned above, but the recipe calls for ground beef.  I suppose you could use anything ground or minced up and it would still be delicious.  I used kashmiri red chili pepper instead of cayenne, and I could have easily used much more of it.  The dish did not have the zip that I wanted it to.  That's on me, not the recipe!

   

Onions waiting to get brown and crispy, and the blender waiting for tomatoes, ginger, and onions.

The sauce of tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, and hot pepper coming to the boil and waiting for the lamb to be added.

Lamb added and cooked until most of the sauce evaporates, and the oil comes to the surface.  I added peas, well, because it's customary, but the recipe does not call for them.  I also liked the added green.  I did use the mint and cilantro mix as well as a few chives from the garden.

The roti were fun and easy to make.  I used my tortilla press, I know, and made 16 balls instead of the suggested 12.  Why, because it was easier to create equal sized balls by dividing things in half over and over.  After the balls sat, I used pieces of parchment paper to sandwich them between the top and bottom of the press.  I found that the press made one section quite thin, so I rotated the pancake 1/4 turn and pressed it each rotation.  That way the edges were somewhat uniform.

As suggested in the recipe, I did lightly glaze one side with ghee, I know.  These were pretty darn good.  I think next time I will add a bit more salt to the dough and take it out of the bowl and knead it to create more layers.  They got somewhat puffy and when torn, showed the layers.  But, I want more layers!

Dateline: September 10, 2020 Shrimp and Scallop Kebabs, Kinda

FreshDirect delivered lovely shrimp and scallops that I wanted to grill.  The weather, was not on the same page as I was.  So out came the cast iron grill pan, which I used on the griddle side, and I set about skewering all of the items.  Green peppers, red onions, scallions, shrimp, scallops with lovely cherry tomato tops.  I just didn't think it through thoroughly.  I threaded everything onto 2 skewers to keep the twirling down, and failed to take into account that the skewers would not lie flat on the griddle because things were different depths.  Sigh.  Halfway through the grilling, I took everything off of the skewer and just seared them on the griddle pan.  The shrimp and scallops got a lovely sear and the veggies did eventually as well.

Let me back up, I marinaded the kebabs in a lovely sauce gotten from NYT Cooking  by David Tanis.  The sauce was excellent, and that is the crux of the dish.

As usual, I took liberties with the recipe, I added into the basil and parsley some chives and scallion tops.  I think it was the scallion tops that made the sauce a little bit bitter.  I didn't taste it before so if I had, I would have added a couple of drops of agave syrup.  

After the shrimp and scallops were finished cooking, I loaded up the griddle with some asparagus.  I grilled them until they were a little charry on the outside and a bit wobbly.  

Ingredients for the sauce, basil, parsley, garlic, chives, and scallion tops.  Veggies for kebabs

Grilled up shrimp, scallops, and veggies removed from sticks.  Grilling asparagus.

  

Finished sauce, which is FABULOUS on EVERYTHING.  Crunchy salad.

Dateline: September 9, 2020 Chicken, but which side of the road????

 I have a lovely whole chicken that I intend to either grill or rotisserie.  Which will be dependent on the weather.  Right now, it is clouding over and looking quite gray.  Last thing I want to be doing in a down pour is pulling a half cooked chicken off the grill.  It is not supposed to rain, but there is a 50% chance.  That has sealed it.  Rotisseried in the oven it is.  

I am thinking a reprieve of the preserved lemon rub and sliced taters below to roast along with the chicken drippings and lemony goodness.  I think I will also make some lemony wilted greens with garlic to finish off the plan.

Ingredients

Lemon Paste Marinade

1-2 preserved lemons

1/2 seeded jalapeno or calabrian hot pepper paste

1 garlic clove, peeled 

olive oil

Blitz everything together and if necessary, thin with more olive oil.  Reserve about 2 T for the greens, the rest can be schmeered all over the chicken and potatoes.

1 roasting chicken, rinsed, patted dry and rubbed inside and out with the lemon paste

5 or 6 small potatoes, cut in half or quarters, depending on size.  You want sort of uniform pieces

1/2 head of cabbage, sliced into thin ribbons

1 bunch tuscan kale, stripped and sliced into thin ribbons

1 small onion, chopped

lemon paste

olive oil

1/1 cup water or chicken stock

Method

1.  Rub the chicken inside and out with the lemon paste.  Set aside.  Save some to rub on the potatoes and about 2T for the greens.  Spit the chicken and truss if necessary to the spit.

2.   Prepare the potatoes by rubbing them with some of the lemon paste and a small douse of olive oil, pepper, and place in the bottom of a roasting pan that will sit under the rotating chicken to catch all of the goodness that drips from the chicken on to the taters.  

3.  Set oven to 325° F.  My rotisserie spit is difficult to work with and needs to be played with to make it fit into the particular slot it needs to be in.  This is why I am not preheating the oven.  I have spent too much time on my hands and knees in front of a hot oven, cursing the damn spit, to even recount.  Now I spit it, THEN heat the oven.  Roast for an hour, checking on everything to make sure that nothing is getting too dark or burned.  When chicken thighs have gotten to 175-180 and breast near the wing bone is about the same temp, AND the juices in the cavity are brown, THEN she is done.  Remove chicken to a cutting board and scrape up the taters into a serving bowl.  You can pour the chicken juices over the taters before carving it up into pieces.  Or use the chicken juice over the greens for some extra flavor.

4.  For the greens, heat a pan over medium heat and add olive oil and onions.  Saute until they soften a bit.   When fragrant, add the ribbons of greens.  Stir to coat liberally with the flavorful oil and lid the pan.  Turn the heat to low and let the greens steam for a while.  Check on the greens and if they are getting dry, add water or chicken stock about 1/4 c at a time.  Lid the pan again and continue checking in on the greens.  When they are wilted and almost tender, add the lemon paste and stir well.  Turn off the burner, cover the pan and let the greens hang out until the chicken is finished.

   

The potatoes were addictive, what's not to love about crusty potatoes!  The greens were quite good, even Bill took a second helping!  The chicken was quite moist and perfectly cooked.  The skin was not as crispy as I like, in fact, it wasn't crispy at all, just browned.  I think a blast at the beginning of 400-450° F heat for 15 minutes and then back it down to 325° would solve the problem.

Dateline: September 7, 2020 Boar Sweet Italian Sausage and Gazpacho

Today was the day that I am making boar sausage.  I used a conglomeration of recipes so I will provide links and details below.

I ordered the boar from D'artagnan and got 2 shoulder roasts each about 3 lbs.  I cut them up into 1 inch cubes and I also added 1.5 lbs of salt pork for the fat.  This was an experiment in terms of using the salt pork rather than the fat back.  Why I wanted to save the fat back is a mystery to me at this moment!

I had 2 very fatty packages of salt pork and decided that they would be the best.  I soaked them for about an hour to cancel some of the salinity.  I cut a thin piece and fried it up to gauge the salt level, and it was about the same as bacon, maybe even less.  I cut the salt back by half until I tasted a patty.  It needed the rest of the salt.  In it went in the emulsifying stage, along with chopped parsley and sage.

Sweet Italian Sausage, from Hank Shaw, was the major recipe of choice, and I used a bit of cure #1 because I am going to smoke them.

My additions to his excellent recipe was the chopped sage leaves, 1 tsp instacure #1, only used a coarse grind, and about 1 cup of chilled white wine.

Here they are resting to dry the casings a bit.  The 5.5 lbs of meat and 1.5 lbs of fat yielded 24 nice sausages.

They smoked up beautifully.  They actually smell more like kielbasa than italian sweets!  They are on the menu tonight!

Grilled it up last night.  Delicious.  A wonderful cross pollination between kielbasa and sweet italian.  The texture was very coarse and crumbly.  I think that was because I didn't have enough fat, or didn't emulsify it long enough by hand.  The flavor was good, it was the texture that was ok, but was looking for something less crumbly.  It is a learning process.

Served it with crispy grilled okra and a fantastic gazpacho.  This is truly a fabulous recipe.  I did make some alterations, of course!  I used some bread soaked in the vinegar, as per a suggestion from another user, added a handful of mixed herbs, parsley, chives, basil, and did not strain.  Used the vitamix and the texture was like a mousse, velvety and smooth without a trace of any fibrous bits.  Garnished with some chopped veggies, a lovely end of summer slice of heaven this meal was.

Dateline: September 5, 2020 DERBY DAY Brisket and Juleps

Bill owns a race horse that is running in the Derby.  Authentic is its name and it is trained by Bob Baffert.  Now, before your head blows completely off your shoulders, he owns just a small piece of this said horse, in fact, 100,000th of it.  If you are horse curious, then visit www.myracehorse.com and see how you too can be a stake holder.

Nothing screams out on this Labor Day Weekend like a brisket.  I got one from D'Artagnan along with some boar, which will become sausages.  I got up at 3 am and prepped the meat.  Salt and pepper only a la Franklin BBQ in Austin.  My brain does not work very well at that hour, and I prepped the meat before lighting the smoker.  

I start the smoker, and it goes through its start up cycle and says it's at 69°F.  Ok, that seemed reasonable.  Again, let me remind you, it's 3:30 in the morning.  I go back into the house, clean up, finish packing up the brisket trimmings for sausages in the future and grab the meat and head back out to the deck.  WTF the smoker is still at 69°.  

The smoker wouldn't light.  It's 3:40 in the am, and pitch dark and I have to troubleshoot the f-ing smoker.  I know that you are on the edge of your seats trying to figure out was I successful at this.  The answer is yes.  I had to pull out the grates, the grease trays, the baffle and get down to the fire pot.  After rooting around in there for a while, I reset the smoker to go back to its start up cycle, and suddenly there was a ton of smoke pouring out.  Now I had to put it back together with smoke billowing out into my eyes!  I got it done, smelling of smoke I went back to bed around 4:15.

I got up again at 7:30 and took this picture:

The internal temp was about 149° with target temp in the mid 190's.  I will probably have to wrap this in butcher's paper to help it get through the stall.  I am spraying it down with white wine mixed with water.  Brisket temp at this moment 10:20 am is in the mid 150's.  

Mint has been cut, washed, and bagged for Juleps later on.

So, it was a very exciting day yesterday!  The brisket came out lovely, albeit, a bit too salty on the top, which can be scraped off, but it was tender and luscious.  It came off the smoker around 4 PM, which made the cook about 12 hours.  I wrapped it, and put it into a cooler until 7:30, when a friend came over for a socially distant dinner on the deck.

The more exciting news was that Bill's horse in the Derby won the race!!!!!  That means he is going to be in the stud fee pool and will make back his investment and a little bit more, God willing, over the course of the horse's, ahem, ability to perform.

Dinner also included a farro and vegetable salad and a crunchy salad.  I definitely decided that I am not a fan of diet juleps.  The after taste of the diet soda is just terrible.  I made a mint simple syrup, and then forgot to put it into my julep.  Sort of describes how yesterday afternoon into the evening went.  

Dateline: September 4, 2020 Pasta Norma, Sorta

I had 3 big eggplants that needed to be cooked.  I didn't want babaganoush, or curry, I wanted pasta.  I checked out a couple of recipes on NYT Cooking website, and combined the best aspects of 2 or 3 and came up with a very satisfying dish.

Ingredients

3 eggplants, cut into about 3/4 to 1 inch crosswise slices

1 onion, minced

3 sprigs of thyme

a HUGE mess of cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 jalapeno, seeded and minced

olive oil

salt and pepper

3 cloves of garlic, smashed

4 oz pancetta

1 14 oz can diced tomatoes, drained and juice reserved

1 T calabrian pepper paste, optional

1 lb pasta of your choice, I used farfalle

Large handfuls of mixed herbage, I used basil, parsley, mint and chives

1/4 lb ricotta salata, cut into small cubes

Method

1.  Light a grill and let it get quite hot.

2.  Heat the oven to 300°F and on a sheet pan pile the onions.  Coat with a bit of olive oil, top with salt and pepper and the thyme sprigs.  On top of that pile the halved cherry tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper and if necessary add a little olive oil.  Into the oven they go for about 1 hour.  Check on them, you want them to start to shrivel and give up some of their juices.  Adjust temp accordingly.

3.  While grill is heating, brush, or use your fingers, the eggplant slices with some olive oil.  Hold until grill is hot.

4.  Grill the eggplant until the slices are deep brown on both sides.  Cool them for a bit and then dice into 1/2 cubes and hold.  

5.  In a pan large enough to hold the tomatoes and eggplant comfortable, heat some olive oil and add pancetta.  Saute until the pancetta gives up most of its fat and is just starting to brown.  Add drained cubed tomatoes, pepper paste, and garlic.

6.  Set up a big pot of salted water for the pasta.  Bring to a boil and cook pasta when sauce is just about finished for the recommended al dente time.

7.  When tomatoes have shriveled and the edges browning a bit, dump the entire sheet pan of stuff into the pan with the pancetta.  If more liquid is needed add some, or all, of the reserved tomato juices.

8.  Chop the herbs and hold.

9.  In a bowl large enough to the pasta and the sauce, put 1/2 the sauce, 1/2 the herbs, and 1/2 the ricotta salata, top with the pasta, on top of the pasta add the balance of the sauce, herbs, and diced cheese.

10.  Serve immediately

Of course, guess who forgot to take a photo of the finished product, this gal!  This was very tasty.  The grilling of the eggplant added a nice flavor profile, and the pepper paste a necessary kick.  The layering in the serving bowl works well because this is not a "saucy" dish.  All things are about the same size and blend together nicely.  You could use cubed mozzarella, or grated romano cheese, but the ricotta salata was perfect in its saltiness.  

Even Bill, who really does not like eggplant, enjoyed it and grew to like the contrast of the charred thicker skin on the eggplant cubes.  It was given 2 thumbs up!