Piave Cheese (.9, .9, ?)

Best hard cheese I have found. The section toward the rind are distinctly nutty while those toward the center are more sharp.

Best stuffing ever

Left over bacon grease goes a long way!

.9

.9

Great wine but fell over when I saw the price difference between what the restaurant charged vs online

Paella (.9, .9, .8)

Fortunately for me I am better cook than photographer. The picture does not do the meal justice. Paella has a lore surrounding the proper technique like any cuisine. The basic idea is that one should cook this in a large shallow dish, it usually involves seafood, and the dominate spice is saffron.
Well so much for tradition. I don't have a paella dish, and saffron is not my favorite herb. In my original recipe I used chicken, next time I will forgo the chicken and add in shrimp at the last minute. While the recipes all have a central theme, to us the winning moves were the artichoke hearts, lots of fresh parsley and the grilled lemons.

1 lbs kielbasa sausage (you could use any I guess)
1 large sweet onion
Bunch fresh parsley
20 oz Contadina crushed tomatoes with roasted garlic (about 3/4 of a big can)
2 cups medium grain rice
1 Can brined artichoke hearts
4 cups water or chicken broth
12 Large shrimp.
Red pepper
Salt
Pepper
Lemons

Clean the shrimp. Coat with salt and pepper and put in fridge for an hour or so.
Cook thinly sliced sausage till dark. Remove from pan. Add in diced onions, and 1/2 bunch chopped fresh parsley. Cook till wilted. add back sausage. Add in tomatoes. Add in rice. Cook for a few minutes. Add 3-4 cups of water or broth.  Add artichoke hearts. Add in salt/pepper/red pepper. Keep an eye on it. Add more water if necessary. At the end add in the shrimp on top. The rice should be sticking to the bottom, but everything should otherwise be soft and not overcooked.

Serve with more fresh parsley, and grilled lemons.
Its a one pot wonder.

Shut Out Zucchini Fries with Pesto Sauce (.9, .8, .9)

I've decided that after coaching at a few National Championships, Liz should open up a sports theme restaurant called Shut Outs. Cin came up with the name when she announced the Zucchini Fries were a "home run", then decided that it was more appropriate for a goalie to call them Shut Out.

The center piece was supposed to be garlic burgers with a pesto sauce, but in actuality the pesto sauce worked equally as well if not better as a dipping sauce for the zucchini fries.

Pesto Sauce
Blend the following into a slurry.
2 tbl pine nuts
1/3 cup fresh basil
4 large garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil

For the Zucchini fries make a batter of beer and flour. It should resemble a light pancake batter.
Dip slivers of Zucchini in the batter, and fry in small batches. Salt just after coming out of the fryer.

Chef in action...

BBQ Beef

Wish I took a picture. Wish I could replay the smell emanating from the pot. This is a great way to feed a lot of people without taking out a loan.

I strayed from the original directions by grilling the chuck steaks first. The original recipe called for browning them in the pot. I like to put a good scald on the meat first with the grill.

Basically the beef simmers for a long time in a home made BBQ sauce. You shred the beef and cook a bit more. Think pulled pork, only beef with lots of good sauce, can be served alone or on a roll.

2-3 lbs boneless chuck roast trimmed of extra fat
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 TBL Vegetable Oil

2 TBL Lemon Juice
2 TBL Apple Cider Vinegar
3/4 Cup Water
2 Cups Ketchup
3 TBL Worcester Sauce
2 TBL Brown Sugar
1 to 2 TBL Chili Powder
1 TBL Prepared Mustard
salt/pepper

Brown Meat.
While browning in a large sauce pan that is big enough to hold meat and sauce, saute the onion and celery in oil. Add remaining ingredients. Add Meat to Pot. Simmer for 3 hours. Remove meat, shred, and simmer for another 2 hours in sauce.

Beans and Greens (.9, .9, .9)

An elegant simple one pot  meal.

Saute 6 cloves of minced garlic in 1/4 cup olive oil. To this add 1 lbs of good quality Italian sausage, sliced in 1 inch pieces. Cook until browned. Add a few red pepper flakes and black pepper. Add one bag of chopped escarole. Cook until limp. Add one can of Cannellini  beans.  Cook until warmed through. Add salt to taste. Garnish with grated cheese or toasted, seasoned breadcrumbs. Great served with fresh Italian bread to soak up the juices.

Variations on a Theme

My first official restaurant review. Our latest date was to The Next Door Bar and Grill, Wegman's latest out of the grocery store restaurant.  The best way to describe the experience was like listening to Jazz for the the first time. I want to like it, but I keep telling myself I am not experienced enough to understand the sophistication. The restaurant was an eclectic mix of food and decoration. Most of the food has an oriental accent to it, but the appetizers begin with Tuscan French Fries. Its not just tapas either as there are plenty of large entrees to chose from. There are several rooms centered around a large center room with a sushi bar like feel. Our room had odd lighting, and sort of cheap like ivy arbors on the wall. Decorated by a new graduate from the Italio-Americo-Japanese Interior Decorators Correspondent School. The ceiling was painted with faux clouds and reminded me of the an upscale dentist office. Other rooms seemed far more charming and could be rented out for private affairs.

The food was quite good with a few home runs and a few doubles. 

Cindy started out with grilled eggplant (.8, .7, .7), and I had the mussels with french fries and herbed mayo (.9, .9, .9). Id go back just for the mussels and a few beers. The eggplant had no distinct grill flavor,  but rather extruded tubes of eggplant marinated in oriental flavors.

For dinner Cindy had the Halibut (.9, .8, .85), and I had the duck breast (.9, .8, .7). The Halibut was very good as was the duck. The duck came with a side of  more eggplant, which was a let down.

We were on the tail end of the bell curve of age in the restaurant. There were few couples, and mainly groups of 4 or more. It was loud but you could still hear a conversation at your table.

I felt that people were there to be seen, not to enjoy a good meal.  Cindy was seduced into ordering a cocktail by the waiter. He suggested a foo foo drink with the word seagull in it. It came in a martini glass and was light blue. It tasted like blue gatorade and vodka, actually I think blue gatorade and vodka would have been better. I asked for a bitter beer. I got something from California that was good, but obviously not memorable. You know Dundees makes a great Pale Ale, if you tout you are using local ingredients, don't hand me some California beer.


Personally I think the restaurant needs to pick a theme and do something really well. It borders on weird. Next time I will ask to sit at the sushi bar and have a salad (some interesting choices) and the mussels. Perhaps a glass of wine.

Great family table wine (.85)

Will satisfy both liberals and conservatives

Fried chicken (.7, .8, .8)

Attempting to cook fried chicken can only be done in a secluded environment, where no one can witness the probable failure. I chose an evening where only I would experience the upcoming culinary tragedy.

My mother is a women of few words, and has had 80 years to form some opinions based on her experience. So I don't take her comments lightly. According to her; "Only black people can make fried chicken". I had no counter example since I had failed, and never witnessed any other white person able to compete with gold standard of fried chicken at Mary Macs Tea Room in Atlanta.

I was not able to sneak into the kitchen to watch the magic on our last visit Atlanta, but I was able to buy the cookbook. Usually I think cookbooks just describe in vague details how to prepare their star dish. I have always suspected they have left out some key ingredient or process. Restaurants have little motivation to describe how you can recreate something at home, rather they want you to feel some how inadequate when your version does not match up. Thus you keep coming back.  In fact selling a cook book with mistakes is a wonderful plot to increase customers.

Like all beginning cooks, I followed the recipe as best I could, and hopefully I could change the recipe next time to make perfection.

The resulting chicken was very good. Not great, but good. The meat was juicy, the coating was crisp, and plentiful. The biggest issue was that it lacked salt or spice. My brother has since suggested I add some Franks hot sauce to the batter. Oh Lordy, I can see my father shaking his head.

Roasted red peppers (.99, .8, .8)

There is nothing like the aroma of roasted red peppers being brought back into the kitchen from the fire. Like everything else I have tried, it's all better cooked over a wood fire. At first I did it quickly in a hot fire, Ive since gone the low and slow route.

Basically I core the peppers first. My thought is that if they are hollow and open, the inside will develop the wood fire taste as well. Its like seasoning both sides of the product.

I leave them on the edge of the oven for about an hour. They are not completely black when done, just charred about 50 percent. They will be fully cooked and dehydrated a bit. Once brought in and cooled, the skin will just come off. I then slice them and keep them in the fridge. They are wonderful on sandwiches and as little buds of flavor for a soup.

Culinary Calculus

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail

For those confused about the word calculus, don't fear, there will be no math here. The definition of calculus (from Wikipedia)

To modern theoreticians the answer to the question "what is a calculus?" is: any systematic way of reasoning.

The problem with knowing a subject too well is that everything else in life is somehow defined in those familiar terms. Recipes are really instructions. The world of software has a rich technology base for describing instructions. Ergo, this post.

For some time now I have been struggling with a format to best express recipes. The current format is usually a list of ingredients, followed by paragraphs of procedure. While this works, its lacks of rigor is distasteful in many ways. The biggest problem is that natural language (english being one), is a terrible choice for describing operations that can happen in parallel. Cooking if done efficiently is an exercice in concurrent operations. Rarely is there just one thing on the stove, and even one pot meals are best done if while one thing is cooking, others are being prepared. 

My father loved cooking and was a great cook. As he got older he became a slower chef. Not because he couldn't chop as fast, or because his stove was not as hot, it was because he lost the ability to consider what operations can be done in parallel.

My first inclination was to express a recipe in some grammer that was not only human readable but also compter readable. The benefit of the latter is because once a language is  computer readable it can easily be formated in any desired way, units, proportions can all be altered with ease.

Not everyone can just read a recipe and get an idea of how much time will this take me. Sure there are cooking durations, but more often than not, you don't have to stand attention the entire time. I want to know a) what I have to have and b) how long do I need to do this and not do something else. Cooking itself is something that can be done in parallel with other life activities. 

So I have tried my hand at a format, its a spreadsheet of sorts. Time goes to the right. Any task that is in the same column can be done in parallel. For example while something is browning, you can be dicing vegetables for the next step. As the number of dishes increases, so does the things that can be done in parallel. 

The term mise en place is a french colloquium for getting everything ready before you start. That process is a specific instance of this general idea. Also the french notion of four mother sauces, is really just what we software call base classes that are later instantiated, or you use them to derive even more specific sauces.

Its not rocket science, but I do think that the recipe world needs a more formal methodology for expressing the process. 

Pizza dough (.9, .8, .8)

Combine 2 cups warm water, and one packet of bread yeast, 2 tbs flour and a dash of sugar. Stir and let sit in a warm spot for 30 minutes. The mixture should begin to foam as the yeast begins to party.

In a mixer combine 4 cups unbleached bread flour with 2 tsp salt. Mix slow to combine.

Slowly add yeast mixture while mixer is on very low.

Mix for 5 minutes. The dough should be very wet and sticky.

Remove dough from bowl, form into a ball. Oil sides of bowl and replace dough back to mixing bowl. Spray a little oil on top and cover with a towel. Let dough rise for 2 hours in a warm place. Remove ball from bowl, and form 4 equal sized balls. Flour and oil each dough ball and cover. Let rise another 1/2 hour or so, then form pizzas by hand.

Pizza sauce (.8, .8, .8)

In a saucepan combine

8 oz can tomato paste

14.5 oz canned diced tomatoes

1/4 red wine

2 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp red pepper flakes

salt, pepper.

warm on stove for a 10 minutes to incorporate.

Osso buco (.99, .99, .9)

Best meal I ever made. Perhaps it was the day, the mood, or whatever. But I don't recall having a better meal from our kitchen. The last time I prepared Osso buco I fell for the saffron trap. Use a spice that is super expensive, and it must be good. Sorry, I didn't like it. Think of the money will save! I plated the veal shank on its cooking liquid, and this on risotto that had been cooked with chicken stock.

Dust veal with flour and brown on both sides in a bit of oil. Remove veal. To this add 3-4 shaved carrots, an onion, and either celery or fennel chopped. Cook this on medium for a few minutes. Add One 12 oz can of Del Monte diced tomatoes. 1 cup of sweet marsala wine, 1/2 cup red wine. 1/2 orange juice. Add back the veal and cook for 2.4 hours.

To make the risotto, start by simmering 4 cups of chicken broth. Add a cup at a time to the risotta until it can not absorb any more. Keep stirring. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete.

A Classic Batter For Fried Fish

My Mother in law found this hand written recipe from my wife. There is no date (children, always date your writings). Anyway it was full of fish with smiles, a creepy finger testing the depth of hot oil, and potential other things that could be fried using the same recipe. 

I will soon try. Perhaps hand writing recipes with chef comments and animated fish is the way to go. 

Perfect Schnitzel

Nothing like getting a recipe from your daughter to motivate you to update the blog. Lizzy never met a Schnitzel she didn't like. We both enjoy a local German restaurant that makes a perfect dish of Schnitzel, noodles, and sauerkraut.

The trouble with making any Schnitzel is getting the breading to stick while frying. I think she has a home run here with flavor and process. The secret is a combination of Wegman's lemon garlic marinade and Wegman's roasted garlic breadcrumbs.


Ingredients-

Boneless thin cut pork chops - they're pre-packaged from weggies (6 per package) near the boneless chicken breasts

Saurkraut

Egg noodles

Instructions -

Take pork chops and individually pound out. They're already thin so not much work is needed. Marinate in Wegmans' lemon and garlic marinade for 20 minutes.

Slow cook saurkraut as desired.

Take marinated pork and bread with garlic seasoned bread crumbs from wegmans. Make sure bread crumbs are secure on pork, the more the better.

When ready, boil water and begin to cook noodles when you begin cooking the pork. To cook the pork, simply add a little oil to a frying pan and sauté.

Pork is done when browned on both sides and cooked thoroughly. Should be right around when noodles are finished. With extra time that you may have before the pork is finished, drain noodles and mix a little butter for flavor.

Plate the Pork, kraut and noodles and enjoy!

Wood Fired Steak Toscano

It seems as though the evolution of cooking meat has gone backwards. We started out grunting over a wood fire as our fatty wooly mammoth roast sizzled. This progressed through outdoor gas BBQs and now we have cooking shows demonstrating how to apply grill marks on tasteless lean tenderloins from an aluminum pan, over an electric range.  We have sacrificed taste for convenience.

My daughter gave me this book for christmas. To be honest I had forgotten how good sizzling meat over a wood fire smells. Deep in my reptilian brain, synapses fired and I was soon salivating over something Neanderthals would have related to. 

I don't consider myself a chef, but I do enjoy cooking. This was the best thing I have ever cooked, and probably in the top 10 of things I have ever eaten. That says a lot, because I have enjoyed a diversity of food.

Basically this is a butterflied flank steak , that is stuffed with savory herbs and roasted peppers, cooked over a wood fire then finished in the oven. I served this over Hogie's Tomato Sauce. The addition of few gnocchi would have nocked this out of the park. Part of the beauty is that I was not a slave to the kitchen, and because it can be finished in the oven, it has wonderful party potential. Not to mention flank steak will not break the bank.

Process
Butterfly a 2-3 pound flank steak.
Season the inside with kosher salt and cracked pepper.
Fill with Gremolata and roasted red peppers. Roll up, and tie.
Grill over a wood fire for 10-20 minutes.
Finish in oven until internal temperature reaches 130 F.
Slice into 1 inch slices, and plate over Hogie's Tomato Sauce.
Top with more stuffing

Ingredients
2-3 pound Flank Steak
Kosher Salt
Cracked Pepper
Roasted Red Peppers
Gremolata Stuffing
Hogies Tomato Sauce

Roasted Red Pepper 
Wash 3 Red Peppers. Place In oven until all sides are charred. Let cool, remove skin and slice into 1 inch wide slices. You might as well do more, and just save the ones you don't use.

Gremolata Stuffing 
1 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup chopped basil
6 crushed garlic cloves
Zest of 1 Lemon
1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs (looks like grated parmesan)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt
1/3 cup olive oil
Mix all ingredients

Hogies Tomato Sauce
1/3 cup sliced greek olives
4 anchovy fillets (don't worry, it won't taste like fish)
4 crushed garlic cloves
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup good red wine
28 oz Contadina Crushed Tomatoes (with Italian Herbs)
1 cup stale bread pieces

Saute olives, anchovies, garlic in olive oil. Add wine, reduce for a few minutes. Add tomatoes, bread. Let simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, until bread has dissolved. The sauce may be cooked more to thicken or add more wine to thin.


The book is a great ressource. I look forward to many more wood fired items. The original recipe called for cheese and spinach. 

.88

At $8.99 a bottle, this is hard to beat. I've come to the conclusion that all wine reviews are crap (except this one of course). My father introduced me to Los Vascos years ago, and he was seduced by the low cost and the relation to Lafite. For a quick history lesson of great wines go here.

Osso Buco (.8, .9, .9)

Osso Buco is braised veal shanks. Lots of meat that just falls off the bone. I followed this recipe. The meat was very good. I did not like the saffron flavored rice. I was thinking this was peasant food until I had to actually buy it. Veal shanks are $9 a pound. 3 servings was $20. Safron was $14 for a container that I will probably get 4 dinners out of. By the way if you do the math saffron is like $1000 a pound.

Wegman's Turkey Chili (.85, .6, 9)

I thought I would concentrate this week's menu to Wegman's dishes from their latest Menu magazine. The Turkey Chili was a let down. It was more like warm gazpacho with some meat product. For the full recipe go here

I guess if I made these small changes as one reader suggested, it would have been better

My turkey chili is similar to this except I use white kidney beans and no bell peppers. I use jalapeno, anaheim, & fresno chilies. I like my chili on the spicy side and use my own blend of cayenne and cumin. It is similar to most of the commercial "mexican style" chili powder. The other difference is that I smoke my ground turkey with mesquite before I use it in the chili and I do my beans in a separate pot and ladle the chili over the beans before topping with some grated Smoked Chihuahua cheese. My recipe also uses smoked dried tomatoes so I get the intensity of flavor with less sugar.

Wegman

Dry but great .83

Undrinkable 0

My momma said if you can't say anything nice about something, don't
say anything at all

Wine Costs

I was able to use my Red Laser program on the iphone to take a picture of the bar code on the bottle of wine,and look up the price. I understand there are similar apps that recognize the bottle and give you a link to popular ratings

Great .9

A present from a friend of k8. If you are willing to spend $30 for a bottle of wine, this is the one

Average .7

From the Wall Street Journal box of wines

Perfect .85

Never heard of malbec, but just go get one. K8 picked this up at my favorite pford wine store.