om nom nom » Experiments

Pão de queijo (Brazilian cheesebread)

George — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:21:29 +0000

Last night for dinner I attempted to make those cheesebreads we get at Chima (the Brazilian steakhouse in Tysons). Whenever I go to Chima I have often wondered (as I gorge myself on cheesebreads and roasted leg o’ lamb) how these wonderful little things are made (are they essentially soufflés? is it dark magic?). The answer is “tapioca flour.”

The recipe I used couldn’t be simpler: Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, grease a mini-muffin tin (we only had a muffin tin; this works too, though your cheesebreads will come out “larger and in charger”). Then in a blender, blend the following until very smooth:

1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil (not too strong tasting, but use your own taste!)
2/3 cup milk (I used skim and everything was fine)
a scant 1 1/2 cups tapioca flour
1/2 cup grated cheese of your choice (I used as the recipe recommends, a Mexican queso fresco, but I imagine other things are good too)
1 tsp salt
other herbs/spices you might want in your cheesebread such as thyme, oregano, or red chili flakes!

Pour the resulting batter into your muffin tins about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up, then pop them in the oven. They will get EXTREMELY POOFY. You should take them out after they look nice and golden brown (this took me somewhere between 18-25 minutes?). Cool them on racks and eat them once they’re cool enough to touch… or immediately—steam burns be damned! The texture is just what you remember from Chima: toothsome on the outside, almost mochi-like on the inside.

N.B. If you’re the type of guy or gal who tastes batter even if there’s raw egg in it (such as myself), you may think the batter is somewhat salty. Do not be alarmed: the salt is much less concentrated in the final product.

Served it up with flank steak rubbed with salt, pepper, minced garlic, and olive oil, then broiled on each side until there was no pink on the surface of the meat. The meat rested while I baked the cheesebreads, and it came out somewhere between medium and medium-rare. Juicy and delicious! :3 Michael took a picture of our “Brazilian Steakhouse Night” plates but I do not have it.

Chicken and Fruity Goop

Q. R. Murphy — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:00:56 +0000

Luscious.

Hi all, here is a recipe I made up somewhat on the fly recently, using a Googled recipe for some Carribean fruit-covered chicken as a foundation. My measurements will not be exact, as I more or less tossed shit in the sauce and kept tasting until it tasted the way I wanted. It ended up really awesomely.

Though not this awesomely.

This recipe comes in two parts: the chicken and the fruity goo you coat the chicken in. Let’s get started!

The Chicken

Ingredients:

Chicken (pounded somewhat flat. Not super thin, but you want the pieces to be of mostly uniform thickness)
Flour
Salt
Pepper
White Pepper
Garlic or Onion Powder
1 Egg
Oil of any sort

Unsurprisingly, you’ll be using the flour to make a dredge for the chicken. Pour some in a mixing bowl, then add in the salt, pepper, and other spices to taste. Feel free to experiment: I added some smoked paprika and chili powder to nice effect. Ground mustard can be nice too. Mix up your coating.

Next, break an egg into a deep bowl and whisk it until it is smoooooth like butter. Depending on the amount of chicken you are using, add more eggs as needed.

Take each chicken piece, and dredge it through the flour, then the egg coating, and then the flour again. As you do this, allow about 4 tablespoons or so of your chosen oil heat up in a wok or wok-like structure. Once it is nice and hot and you are finished dredging your chicken, toss the meat in the oil. Yes, you’re doing some quick frying. It won’t take very long, depending on how thin you pounded your chicken. Keep poking the meat with a fork, and when your fork slides in and out cleanly, take the meat off the heat. If you want to be more sure, then slice the chicken in half when you think it is done. You want to take the chicken off when the middle has just the barest hint of pink, as once you take it off, the absorbed heat will cook it the rest of the way. Any later, and the chicken will overcook itself.

You did it!

Meanwhile, this guy won the World Series after his rock gig. Feel free to feel bad.

Goop de Froot

Ingredients:

2/3 cup some sort of fruit paste or jelly. Not the stuff from a jar that is sugar and artificial flavoring, some honest-to-God fruit baste in pseudo-bar form. I used guava paste, but I am confident some other fruit selections would work just as well
2 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons vinegar (of choice: I used rice wine vinegar this time and plain vinegar another and both worked fine. Choose your favorite vinegar flavor)
1-2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water

The measurements are baselines, upon tasting during the cooking process add more of whichever flavors you need.

In a saucepan, combine the water, jelly, soy sauce, and vinegar and bring to a boil. Stir and make sure the jelly breaks down and incorporates into everything else. When it reaches a boil, lower heat and simmer 2 minutes.

Mix 1-2 tablespoons of cornstarch into 2 tablespoons water. Check your sauce’s consistency. If it is too watery, add small amounts of your cornstarch/water mixture and stir until the desired thickness is obtained.

Saute chopped garlic in your wok, and when it is nicely browned add your whole thickened sauce to it. Add your chicken pieces and cover thoroughly, mix, and then pull chicken out onto a plate. Serve with rice, veggies, whatever you like. Enjoy it thoroughly, for given the chance, the chickens will do the same.

To be fair, it looks like a delicious baby.

Sandwich bread: take two

Ellen — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:32:41 +0000

Well then. On only my second try, I’m pretty happy with my white sandwich bread. It’ll soon be time to branch out. This time I got a lighter, fluffier, still delicious loaf; still on the short side, but if I make more dough that should solve that problem.

Here’s what I did:

Decreased flour a bit. The recipe I quoted last time called for three and a half cups of flour, but I added a bit more to make the dough firmer. This time I did not add a teaspoon about three and a half cups, which made for a sticky and difficult-to-work with dough, but it seems to have worked.
Let it rise longer. In this particular case, I let it rise in the fridge for about ten hours, then out of the fridge for another hour. After I shaped it into a loaf, it was another hour and a half before it reached the top of the loaf pan, and that’s when it went in the oven.
Warmed the milk. Hard to tell how much of an effect this had compared to the other two, but I warmed up the milk in the microwave before adding the yeast. The yeast did seem a bit bubblier.

Adventures in veganism (part 1 of… 1?)

George — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:26:01 +0000

For the next couple of days I’m staying with my college friend Ryan in the Chicago “gayborhood” (god I hate portmanteaux). He’s a lactose-intolerant vegetarian, which means he’s a vegan most of the time. I thought it would be nice to thank him for letting me stay at his place by trying my hand at vegan cooking. The meal was something of a disaster, though the entrée turned out quite well!

Here are some ingredient notes: If you’ve never had quinoa, it is an experience I highly recommend! In addition to being tasty (something like ever-so-slightly bitter couscous) it’s also obscenely nutritious. Tamari is a gift from god. Carménère is one of my favorite kinds of wine, and the particular label I used (Chono) is Chilean and I think the grapes are grown organically, since they serve it at Yield. The flavor notes include “roasted red peppers,” “dark chocolate,” and “leather.” So… heh. I got it for $14.99 at a nearby “under $15 per bottle” store. :q

There are obviously many variations you can make on this recipe. For example, you could use a wine other than carménère; my opinion on the “cooking wine” issue is that you should use a good wine but hey, you only need a cup and you can drink the rest! Couscous would be a worthy (yet somewhat less nutritious) substitute for the quinoa. If you can’t find nori, but have fresh sage in spades, then you can replace the nori with sage leaves fried in olive oil or browned butter (not as vegan). Finally, ignoring the vegan theme, this would be an excellent side for a roast chicken. PS I totally made the whole thing up, so if you think it’s missing something, please let me know (also, please come up with a shorter name).

[This is a fairly "easy" vegan recipe because the ingredients are widely available. It doesn't have agave syrup or arrowroot or seitan or "nutritional yeast flakes" (shudder).]

Quinoa with mushrooms, nori, pinenuts, and a carménère-tamari reduction

1 cup quinoa, rinsed and drained
2 cups water
olive oil
1 shallot, finely minced
1 1/2 cups roughly chopped mushrooms (I used some mix of gourmet kinds from Green Giant)
2 sheets nori (toasted), crumbled
1/2 cup pinenuts (not toasted)
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce, plus extra to taste
1/2 tablespoon white rice vinegar
1 cup carménère (or other spicy red wine)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
salt and pepper

1. Prepare the quinoa: It’s basically prepared the same way rice is prepared. You put 1 part quinoa 2 parts water into a pot, then bring it to a boil, cover it, and bring the heat down to “negligible.” Do this *while* you make the stuff that goes into it (as opposed to right before or after).

2. Sauté the shallot on medium in olive oil until translucent, then add the mushrooms, a dash of tamari, and half the crumbled nori. Sauté until the mushrooms have rendered all their liquid, then bring the heat up to medium-high to burn off said liquid and (ideally) char the shallots a little. Remove to a bowl and cover with a paper towel.

3. Wipe the saucepan from the previous step dry, but leave any traces of shallot or nori that got singed to the pan if you can (we want them in the sauce). Toast the pine nuts briefly on high heat until they’re fragrant and they’ve rendered some of their oils. Remove to a bowl.

4. Reduce heat to medium, and immediately deglaze the still-hot pan with the wine. Reduce the wine by a little less than a half, then add the rice vinegar, tamari, and brown sugar. Reduce slightly, until flavors have combined. Reduce heat to low, add the thyme, then taste and adjust for sugar, tamari, salt, and pepper.

5. Mix the mushrooms and pinenut mixtures into the quinoa (now done and hopefully still quite hot). Serve drizzled with the wine-tamari sauce and garnish with remaining nori.

I served this up with Henry/Rachel Ray’s famous roast broccoli (which came out mostly wrong because I did it wrong), and Smitten Kitchen’s strawberry-rhubarb crumble. As for the latter, I totally skipped over “butter” the first time I read the ingredients, so I ended up substituting vegetable shortening, which is less good.* Definitely a winner, though, so I’m looking forward to making it again. :v

The reason dinner was something of a failure was that I totally forgot that Ryan doesn’t really eat at all. XD So I ate most of it myself, though he sampled everything and approved. Also, he took a tylenol and could only have a touch of wine, so I ended up drinking nearly the entire bottle myself, but hey… it helped me sleep!

* By the way, Crisco has trans fats in it as does anything with “partially hydrogenated” whatever-the-fuck. They can say it contains zero grams, so long as it has less than one gram. Thanks FDA and food industry lobbyists!

beefs

Sophie — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:28:30 +0000

In case you were wondering, Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon IS that complicated. Spelling it right is, too. Kim and I set out to recreate this epic dish and, even starting as a two-person team, it was still about a six-hour process. I also don’t know how Amy Adams had time to fall asleep, because there was no point at which I got to stop doing things. On the other hand, it was awesome.

You can find a pretty good transcript of the recipe here (but not quite complete, annoyingly), if you don’t have the cookbook. Note that you will also need her instructions on sauteing mushrooms (this one is a direct, complete copy) and brown-braising pearl onions (close enough), even if you think you know how to do these things.

Some notes:

One of the best things about the original recipe is the detailed information on wine. It recommends pairing with “a fairly full-bodied, young red wine, such as Beaujolais, Côtes du Rhône, Bordeaux-St. Émilion, or Burgundy,” and using any of those or a Chianti to go into the stew.
3 cups of wine = 1 bottle. I doubled the recipe. Whoo!
I bought pre-cut-up stew meat, some of which was cut a lot finer than the other, and on the whole big chunks worked a lot better for drying and browning.
Conversely, I couldn’t find an unsliced chunk of bacon anywhere, and regular old thick-sliced seemed to work okay.
I over-salted because I forgot, as always, to account for the massive amounts of salt in bouillon cubes. Use caution, or perhaps better beef stock.
Blanching helps when you realize you have to peel 48 pearl onions.
I couldn’t really get the sauce to thicken in the end, but it seemed to end up okay just letting it reduce a lot even if it never really reached light-spoon-coating consistency. =/

For extras, here is the rosemary bread recipe I have been fussing with of late. It’s sort of long but that’s because the procedure is the complicated part; sorry. Start this ~3 hrs before you want to eat it.

2 1/2 tsp yeast, which is~1 packet
2 c. warm water, ~110-115 F, which is warm but just shy of scalding
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
4 c. flour. Bread flour is nice if you can get it, and if you do not consider extra gluten cheating.
2 tsp. minced fresh rosemary plus more for topping. Fresh is important! You can sub out some for fresh thyme.
olive oil, corn meal, sea salt

Dissolve yeast in the warm water and sugar. If it’s NOT instant/fast-acting/bread-machine yeast, give it <5 min to froth up. Otherwise, immediately add flour, salt, and 2 tsp rosemary and stir until blended. Do not knead! Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until double in size; bonus points for putting it someplace slightly warm and moist.

Oil a baking sheet and sprinkle with corn meal. Perhaps try oiling your hands instead of flouring them, as the dough is super sticky, then divide it in half, shape each half quickly and loosely into a round by tucking the edges under, and place on the baking sheet. Cover and let rise another hour. The stickiness is again a problem; cooking-sprayed plastic wrap is the only thing I’ve managed to use that DIDN’T stick horribly and make the top of my loaves lumpy.

With bread, some last-minute rising happens in the oven and for that you want things hot and steamy (har). Start heating your oven early, maybe half an hour into the second rise, to 450 or “lots.” My oven here has no numbers on the dial between 350 and 500 so I use my imagination, but I don’t think getting it too hot is a possibility. If you have a pizza stone, put it in now. Also put a cast-iron skillet in the bottom of the oven (or something else which can be raised to high temps empty, then have cool water thrown in it without exploding).

When bread is again about doubled in size, brush with olive oil and top with more rosemary and plentiful crushed sea salt. Get yourself some water, maybe 1/4 cup, on hand near your oven as now you must act quickly! Put the bread in (just stick the pan on the pizza stone if using one, unless you want to get fancy and try to slide the bread onto the stone directly), dump the water on your previously-heated skillet or whatever where it will send up exciting clouds of steam, and close the oven door quickly. Bake 10 min, adding more water for steam if it runs out. Then turn the oven down to 375 and bake another 20 min or so until it’s golden-browny.

I just ate the worst fucking cookies

Jophine — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:13:59 +0000

My stomach burns with the fire of a thousand pissed off suns.

This happens only rarely, because of my health nut CEO, but every once in a while, a vendor will send someone in the company baked goods, which are then scavenged ruthlessly by the flocks of office women. So when I see an alert from my boss entitled “cookies,” I tend to jump on that joy train and ride it ’til it stops.

Today, however, this preemptive strike has proven itself a horrible decision, and I blame you, Cheryl & Co. Collection, Finer Baked Goods.

From the variety box in my boss’ office, I selected two: famous buttercream cut-out cookie, and Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. The other two I saw were Triple Chocolate Frosted Cookie and something white with a pumpkin iced onto it, both of which had obvious dietary danger peeking through the label. So I chose the two which looked safer, but in this case, fortune probably favored the bold. Or the ignorant. I wish to god that I had not put either of those cookies in my mouth.

The so-called Famous Buttercream Cut-out Cookie was white with white buttercream on it. My MO with buttercream is to have Gloria slather it on in a super-thin layer, or to scrape it off a cake entirely. As I went for the scrape, the cookie started falling apart in my hand. “Oh,” I thought. “A delicate, lady of a cookie. Well, one bite can’t hurt.” I should’ve known. The structural integrity of that cookie was so unsound that it melted, literally, in my mouth, leaving only the fossilized layer of buttercream and a hint of PTSD. I should’ve just spit it out, but it literally disintegrated.

Despite this foreshadowing, I abandoned the remainder of the white cookie and went for the second, the Frosted Caramel Pecan Chocolate Cookie. This one had real pecans on a sticky icing, which despite some crumble, could actually be scraped off. So carefully I scraped, but the caramel made the icing so furiously sticky that I ended up using a kind of fork-finger-and-napkin resolution, which actually grossed me out a little. “Ahh,” I thought, “this is what performing surgery on a zombie is like.” Things are falling apart, the center isn’t holding, and so as soon as a quorum of icing and pecans were off, I bit into the cookie.

While in a time trial, this one didn’t dissolve as quickly as the white cookie, it did have that rancid “melt in your mouth” feeling that I associate with THINGS THAT AREN’T A GODDAMN COOKIE. Moreover, the caramel flavor left a persistent stickiness in my mouth and I felt it going all the way down into my gut, where it is sitting there, brick-like, waiting to strike (with early-onset diabetes.) But this isn’t even the punchline.

Here’s the punchline: after my gag reflex kicked in from the second cookie, I disposed of them immediately in my trashcan, four feet away and behind me. I can STILL smell the fucking cookie. These cookies need a kind of ghostbusters-esque elimination process where you carefully seal the soul of the cookie in a nuclear-powered death trap.

This is what happens when you cross the streams, people.

I think I’m going to be sick now.

My stomach burns with the fire of a thousand pissed off suns.

Today, however, this preemptive strike has proven itself a horrible decision, and I blame you, Cheryl & Co. Collection, Finer Baked Goods.

This is what happens when you cross the streams, people.

Moral: Don’t fuck up a cookie.

apple cake in a skillet, or, how not to set your kitchen on fire

Sophie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:50:04 +0000

Not long ago, a bunch of medievalists I know went apple-picking, as you do here in the city named after unusually large fruit, resulting in 15 lbs of apples sitting on my kitchen floor. I did what one naturally does under these circumstances while avoiding paper-writing, and baked: first whole-wheat apple muffins with brown sugar, which I thought I posted about here but my only comments are (1) don’t bother peeling the apples & chop smallish and messily, which will cut your prep time down lots and also taste good, and (2) bake these; and then last night, apple cake in a skillet, because I like food with prepositions (cf. anything on a stick).

The Pioneer Woman’s pictures are much better than mine so you should go look at them, but here are some Things I Learned, or changed when I made it, or WOULD change were I to make it again (sadly, the rest of the apples are fated for apple butter so that cannot be just yet):

It says 9-10″ cast-iron skillet. I used a 10″. It overflowed while baking, and the cake came out thicker, compared to the apple layer, than I would have liked. I should’ve used the 12″ skillet!
Cut down the initial butter melting in the skillet to 10 Tbs (4 Tbs less) and this was PLENTY – although don’t get me wrong, the butter/caramelized sugar/apples slow-cooked in same are still the point of this thing.
Also sliced the apples thinner, into twelfths not sixths. This was preferable, I think, as thin apples = fitting more in the pan = yes. Also, better distribution of apple-to-cake.
The spices were a little blah even though I threw in more cinnamon. Could probably take some allspice, cloves, etc. – it’s super sweet and I think a little more of a kick would compliment that.
My fatal error: put this on a baking sheet when you stick it in the oven! Slightly over-crowded 10″ skillet + bubbling-over caramelizing sugar and butter + floor of gas oven = smoke-filled kitchen.

In conclusion, you should probably be smarter than me when it comes to setting sugar on fire, but this cake is still delicious.

The secret ingredient is a lot more meat.

Frazier — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:24:58 +0000

So by popular request (i.e. harassment from Jo) here is the recipe for the illustrious winner of Chef’s Choice at the chili cook-off.

Ingredients:

2 Green Bell Peppers
3-4 Jalapeño Peppers
1-2 White Onions
1 Large Can Tomato Sauce (~29 oz)
1 Can Tomato Paste (~12 oz)
1 Bottle of Beer
3 Cans of Beans (16 oz each)
1 Pound Ground Chicken
1 Pound Ground Turkey
1 Pound Thick Cut Bacon
Seasoning Mix (described below)

Seasoning Mix:

2 tbsp. Chili Powder
1 tbsp. Seasoned Salt
1 tsp. Onion Powder
1 tsp. Garlic Powder
2 tsp. Cumin
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/2 tsp. Oregano
1/2 tsp. Paprika

Finely chop onions and peppers into ~1/4″ pieces. Put peppers, onions and beer into a large pot or slow cooker. I used a bottle of Yeungling Lager, but most beers should work and will add their own unique flavors. For stove-top cooking set to medium heat, or for slow cooker set to highest setting.
In a large frying pan cook the bacon. Remove from heat when the strips are a dark pink. Even if you like to go whole-hog and get your bacon super crispy keep in mind these will be in the chili for a very long time so getting them just-done is the way to go. Set aside the strips on a plate between paper towels to absorb excess grease. When all the bacon has been cooked pour out excess grease from the pan into a metal or glass container, leaving about 2-3 tbsp. in the pan.
In the same pan cook the ground chicken with about 1 tbsp. of the seasoning mix. When the chicken is fully cooked, drain and add to the pot or slow cooker with the vegetables. Repeat the process for the ground turkey with 1 tbsp. of the seasoning mix and 1-2 tbsp. of bacon grease. After the chicken and turkey have been added to the mix reduce heat to low.
Pat excess grease off of the bacon with a paper towel and slice the bacon into small pieces (about 1/4-1/2″ wide). Add bacon to the pot.
Strain all liquid from the beans and add to the pot. I used a combination of kidney beans, black beans and navy beans. Add tomato sauce, tomato paste and remainder of seasoning mix to the pot and stir thoroughly. Fresh tomatoes could be used but I like to keep the tomato as a liquid base for the other ingredients. If fresh tomatoes are used you should finely chop enough tomatoes to constitute about 1-1.5 quarts (32-48 oz).
Allow to simmer for 3-4 hours or longer if possible, stirring occasionally. I ended up cooking the chili overnight for a total of about 12 hours. This allowed a richer flavor to develop which I think worked out well. However it did end up burning slightly on the bottom which ended up making the flavor a little smokier, but unfortunately also caused the bottom quarter or so of the pot to be thrown out. In general it would be best to cook this throughout the day so as to keep an eye on it at all times.

This makes I believe about 6 quarts of chili. Serve with shredded cheddar cheese and sour cream or ranch dressing.

Rectum? Damn Near Killed ‘im!: A Chili Retrospective

Jophine — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:45:59 +0000

I am the precisely wrong person to write about the 1st Annual Gloria Huang Birthday Chili Cook-Off, considering that hours after my first-prize triumph, I had to be generously driven by the 3rd placeman to the hospital to ease my insufferable stomach flu symptoms. (Full disclosure, none of these chilis cause spontaneous stomach flu, but I would not be surprised if a jealous runner-up had spiked my hotdog with malaise to show me what for. You know who you are. Lefkowitz.) Anyhow, I am now fully recovered and ready to blog about chili.

This bean-and-meat bacchanal happened mostly because our benefactress Miss Huang loves chili. I love chili. It’s the greatest food on earth, and an elegant metaphor for personal philosophy. You start out life eating other peoples’ chili, sampling what each household has to offer. You train yourself to accept spiciness, or you eat chili without. Then you learn, develop your own. We had six positively beautiful chilis, variant in texture, taste, and originality, which were ranked only by the cruel whim of a discerning populace.

A. Jo: I have a hard time with beans–the outer skin throws off a chili for me, and I know that Ima have to pick that crud out of my teeth later on. I made a lady’s chili, light in flavor and spiciness, creamy texture, with turkey meat, corn, and red peppers as the highlight. I suggested and Mr. Q. R. Murphy agreed that perhaps my chili won because it was the sweetest.

B. Cara: This chili was my personal favorite. Reduced to the point of unpourability, it sat upon my hotdog and sagging bun like a great brooding titan, holding up the world on strength alone. Dark and filling, it had a cloying aroma, which according to the lady herself, was cumin. More cumin than imaginable. If you think you’ve used enough cumin, you haven’t.

C. Frazier: Frazier’s chili won the Maker’s Prize, for which there shall certainly be an actual, tangible prize at the 2nd Annual Chili Cook-off. Three meats (chicken, turkey, and bacon) and three beans were lovingly slow-cooked with his favored element: beer. (It’s super effective!)

D. Q. R. Murphy: Mr. Murphy’s chili was the most daring and perhaps the most distinctive of the six. Spurning both spiciness and traditional meats, he opted for a difficult-to-obtain ground venison and used, if I recall correctly, a metric ton of cinnamon. The spice and fragrance of the cinnamon seesawed with the gamey flavor of the deer meat.

E. Ryan: Having stolen my recipe partially from Ryan’s, I feel as if his suffered from placement, especially after the powerhouse of Q. R. Murphy’s. Loaded up with a ton of veggies and beef, the secret ingredient was sofrito, a soup base that is used a lot south of the border. Also distinctive: Ryan’s chili was the most watery.

F. Paul: Paul’s chili was a strong contender for favorite, having ranked both in the maker’s vote and the popular. He took second place by a nose, after the discerning (and tie-breaking) vote of our benefactress pushed his upwards. Paul’s meats were ground chicken and turkey, but the most distinctive facet of his recipe were liquid smoke (which you can find at your local supermarket, also apparently referenced in The Simpsons) and vinegar, which gave it a sour tang that fought off the spicy kick admirably. – Wait, something’s coming in. I’m being reminded that the secret ingredient of Paul’s chili is actually the essence of testicle, as demonstrated in the origin of his recipe.

With ample sampling cups and plastic spoons, Gloria’s guests sampled the chilis at hand and debated the merits of both. Corn: pros and cons. What beans? Would Donnie need a gastric bypass in order to survive another year? But in the end, there could be only one, and girly or not, I won that. See you next year, ladies.

Ingredients:

1 white onion
1 tbs vegetable oil
1 14 oz can chicken broth
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 tbs sofrito (you can find it in the ethnic food aisle of your crappy grocery store most of the time)
1/2 lb of red lentils
1 lb of ground turkey (I like 97% fat free for this)
1 14 oz can tomato soup (I like Campbell’s!)
1 red onion
1 green onion
Jalapeno peppers to your heart’s content
1 4 oz can chili peppers
Frozen corn
1 lb ground turkey
Worchestershire sauce
Spices: Salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper

Heat up the vegetable oil in the heaviest pot you have over medium heat. You want the heavy pot so you can retain heat in your chili–the more it cooks, the more its components love each other. Who the hell are you to deny love? Throw in your onions and sweat them.
(Sweating, you say? You’re trying to get the moisture out of the onions and soften them up without browning them. You can help this along by tossing some salt in there, but you’re eating chili, dude. You know sodium will propose to you by the end of the night; you don’t need to push your case right just now.)
Toss in your broth, the tomatoes (juice and all) and the sofrito. Pour in a half pound of the lentils. You could probably sub in green lentils, but definitely not French lentils. Red lentils give you the right, yellow-orange color. Bring this mess to a boil, then lower the heat and cover for 30 minutes. The lentils will get nice a mushy: if you can smash some on the side of a pot with a fork, you’re done.
While this is happening, get a nice non-stick pan and cook your turkey meat. Cook it on medium-high until the last bit of pink vanishes, then get it out of the pan immediately. I like seasoning the meat with your worchestershire sauce and some salt and pepper at this stage. The meat will cook through thoroughly in the stewpot.
In the hot pan, cook up your veggies. I usually don’t worry about the size of the chunks: I cut them big enough so that someone who doesn’t want them can pick them out. The jalapenos you prepare the way you want. I figure no one wants seeds, but the spiciness will come from the veins. I love the flavor more than the spice, so I usually devein my peppers pretty well, then cut them into chunks small enough so you wouldn’t know they were even there. They impart the flavor without the raw, unbridled terror of the elder gods. Again, cook until they’re just soft–they’ll stew a little as well.
Your chili base should be done by now. Most of the moisture will have come out of them, so you can just stir around the stuff and break up some of the lentils. Add another cup of chicken broth, or a cup of water and a bouillon cube. You’ll have to strain the base later, but it’ll ease your conscience about the amount of fluids. At this point, I like to use my immersion blender to smooth out the base. To add to the smoothness, throw in your can of tomato soup.
MONEY SHOT! Toss in all your stuff together, the meat, the veg, and the little can of chilis and the frozen corn.
Spice that shit. I do salt first, then chili powder, then cumin, then chili powder, then cumin (you have to make sure it’s balanced, so do this as long as you like), then cayenne pepper to taste. I don’t have exact numbers for you, just whatever you like.
This is the part where you let the chili cook, lid half-on, half-off. Let it chill out for however long you like. You can do as little as thirty minutes, or two hours. But you already thickened up the base, so as long as you get the stuff-to-liquid ratio right (I strained out some of the liquid into the sink), you’re golden. It doesn’t even have to reduce.
You’re done! Go off and win a fucking chili contest!

Well, there you go. Frazier has promised his chili recipe as well, and with all luck, so will a couple of the other kids. But like I said earlier, chili is a matter of personality and love, so I highly recommend you crafting your own. Good luck!

Risotto… it takes forever, but it is delicious!

George — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 07:44:31 +0000

The last few items in our weekly CSA box were cherry tomatoes, canteloupe, and some summer squash. Summer squashes are the ones that you can eat basically fresh, like zucchini and crookneck squash. All you need to do is cut ‘em up, add salt, and maybe toss them in a pan with olive oil for a little. Winter squash, like pumpkins, acorn squash, and butternut squash, are best suited for roasting and mashing and making into delicious snowy day soups (it doesn’t snow here though…). Anyway, we got one zucchini and a couple of crookneck squash in our box, and since the next box is coming fairly soon I thought it was high time to get the squash ball rolling.

So what do you do with summer squash? Probably the most delicious thing to do is to bread it and fry it and eat it with marinara, but that’s not really very “health conscious.” Instead, I decided to make risotto, because I’ve never done it before (GASP, I know rite? D:). The roommates were all down in Santa Cruz at the beach, so I decided to invite my friend Morgan over to be my guinea pig, and for company!

Summer squash risotto

About 8 summer squash, chopped into 1/4 inch cubes
[unqualified] olive oil or vegetable oil (for frying)
Salt and black pepper
1 medium onion, chopped very fine (almost minced)
3 large cloves garlic, minced
2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup sherry or white wine
(at least) 5 cups warm chicken or vegetable broth, plus 1 cup more
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil or butter (for flavor)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, grated
2 tbsp dried thyme leaves (or to taste)… oregano and rosemary also probably work nicely
If you’ve got them, roasted pumpkin seeds or sunflower seed kernels would probably be a delicious addition

So yah, risotto takes a fairly long time to make, it turns out (and I was going to do work today… maybe). It’s not very difficult, but there are a few steps:

Heat about a tbsp of oil in a large sautée pan (I used a wok, actually) on medium-low. Toss squash until well coated and cook to desired level of tenderness, add salt if desired. I didn’t cook it too much because I wanted a little resistance to the bite and the fresh, squashy flavor to stand out because it tastes like summer.

Remove squash and set aside. Pour oil into your cooking thing until the entire bottom has a shallow coat of oil. Add the onions and cook on medium-low, stirring occasionally, for 15 freaking minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 2 more minutes.
Add the rice and toss until the onions, garlic, and rice are mixed, and the rice is coated with oil.
Turn the heat up to medium, and immediately add the booze, mixing well for 1 minute.
And now for the fun part! Add broth one cup at a time to the pan, cooking until the liquid has evaporated/been absorbed by the rice. Do this forever, or at least until the rice is done. It can be a little al dente, that’s okay. If you run out of broth (as I did), water works fine (though you might need to adjust the salt later), also you can add a little more booze if you want. Make sure to save at least one cup of broth for the last part! The goal here is just to make sure the rice doesn’t dry out during cooking, so you have to be mixing it CONSTANTLY. You cannot stop. No exceptions.
By the end it should have approximately the consistency of well, risotto, or maybe sticky rice if you are more familiar with that. Really, it doesn’t matter an awful lot so long as it tastes grrreat! When it’s reached the desired consistency and rice-cookedness, move it to a large serving/mixing bowl, fold the squash into the risotto, and then add the extra cup of broth, the parmesan, the thyme, and the tasty olive oil or butter (if you’re cheating). Salt and pepper to taste, and voilà: risotto!

Morgan and I ate it with fresh, unadorned cherry tomatoes and—more importantly—wine glasses filled with milk, because we’re classy dudes!