Sowing My Wild Irish Oats.

"What you sow, you shall reap." So says the proverb, and tonight in my kitchen, proved quite true, at least partially. When I saw "Irish Oats" at the store, I could not resist picking up a big can. The basic cooking instructions were simple enough, requireing that the cook combine oats, water, and salt if desired in a specific proportion and let it cook for some time. Basically just like any dried pasta recipe you've ever seen on the side of a box.

Figuring my self as a budding epicurist, I foresaw tonights dinner being a butterflied roast chicken, with some braised red cabbage and an artful rendition of Irish oats. Luckily, before I began prepping my bird and cabbage cabesa, I decided to make a quick test batch of these oats.

Following the directions exactly (admittedly a trait I notoriously lack), I cooked my "Irish Oats" according to package directions. I am convinced it was this dish that drove Irish immigrants to America, not a potato blight. Truly a horrid porridge of sticky, tasteless mush. I do believe this has all the flavor of kindergarten sticky paste glue, and probably twice the sticking power.

So bland was this concoction that it did indeed kill my appetite for the evening. Nevertheless, in the aftertaste, once I "glorped" down the stuff, there did emerge a slight nuttiness. A subtle hint of a flavor that had been abused by cooking instructions on the side of a box.

It then dawned on me that just as is the case with dried pasta, only a madman would "follow the directions". Doing so would yield an end product that was more mush than pasta, and would leave an insipid flavor that no sauce could mass. Real pasta makers know it's done by sight, taste and texture. I decided to treat these oats the same way I would treat my pasta. I am going to cook it how I want to, not how the good people at the Irish Oats Company told me to.

But alas, it is too late to continue my gastronomic experimentation this evening. My dreams of culinary grandeur shall remain in my dreams for tonight. But tomorrow, I intend to reap what I have sown! Not a bowl of mush, but a wondrous and savory harvest featuring the flavor of these Irish "steel cut" oats as I believe they were meant to be. So tonight, sleep well everyone! I bid you all, "Good Eating". =)

Brunch Anyone?

The best part of not having to set my alarm clock is the mystery of "When will I get up?" Today, that was a bright and early 9:08 am. A bit late for breakfast, too early for lunch, therefore it was BRUNCH time!

Scouring my cooking technique book, I came across something I've always wanted to try, but have never attempted. A real, honest to goodness French Omelette. And I didn't want plain, I wanted CHEESE. I had some smoked provelone left, so that was my choice. Some green onions wouldn't hurt either. I wanted chives, but hey I didn't have any and it's too rainy for my lazy ass to wander to the store to get some, so green onions it was.

Let me say this, Omelettes are amazing. I was worried that the inside was going to be undercooked, thus summoning the infamous food police and CDC for salmonella control. But it turned out only slightly runny and deliciously moist inside. The beauty of it is that it made its own cheese sauce on the inside.

Now I can't have eggs without bacon, so naturally I cooked some up. I didn't want it too crispy (I like mine with some "give" to it for breakfast). This time I also did a new technique. I cooked the bacon in the oven, and it was great. It didn't get all rippled up and half burnt. It rendered out some good drippings, which I mournfully threw away...into a bowl...to make a vinagrette for my salad.

Since we are talking brunch here, I got out some baby greens and a fresh vine-ripened tomato, some kalamata olives, and some cheese. Tossed together and used a little bacon drippings to whip up a simple balsamic dressing.

The whole meal was wonderful! The sheer creaminess of the inside of that omlette was pure magic, I really could have just eaten that and been happy, but coupled with the bite of the baby greens and tomatoes and the smokiness of the bacon, it was truly a brunch to remember. These two recipes (the omelette and the bacon/side salad) make such a filling and tasty combination (though I'll probably get a letter from the surgeon general about it). Nevertheless, perhaps tonight I'll stay up a little later than usual, so I can wake up tomorrow, hopefully just a little too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

New book and baked apples!

All day I was agonizing over what to cook. I wanted payback for my Johnny Cakes disaster, so I went looking for a good cooking technique book. Not one that just had a bunch of “how to make such and such”, but literally “How to… sauté, make stock, bake, braise, you name it.” I found what I was looking for at Borders, and what a find I made! Le Cordon Bleu’s own “Complete Cooking Techniques”. Oh yeah, it’s on now babe!
The rest of my day was spent pouring over the possibilities. Blessings really do sometimes come disguised as mis-made Johnny Cakes.

Before I knew it, it was 11:00pm and I had nothing going on. So I put down my new treatise on culinary technique mastery, and wandered into the kitchen, somewhat aimlessly.

It was too late to bake anything really (the mixer would probably wake up the building), Or was it? Everything I’ve done so far has been a main dish, savory and usually somewhat involved. I wanted something sweet, comforting and easy. Baked apples to the rescue! I tossed some fresh grated nutmeg and a cinnamon stick into my coffee-mill turned spice grinder, and made enough noise to only wake up three or four neighbors, instead of the entire city block. A few chefish-like ninja moves with a couple knives, and halved apples, chopped toasted pecans and raisins, some brown sugar and butter had made a nice little flavor bomb for my apples. Into the oven they went.

Apples went in, bliss came out. Pure, sugary, nutty, tangy bliss. The apples were still a bit firm, not puddles of mush, and the skin had a nice tartness to complement the sweetness of the filling. Next time, I’ll dress it up with some Ice cream!
I’m glad I got another dish done. But I’m so excited about this book, I wonder if I’ll sleep (?). If I do though, I’ll be headed to my dream kitchen anyhow, so for now, all is good and right in the world.
494 to go.

A virgin sacrifice to the food gods

I got in pretty late this evening, and I didn't want to go back out to the store. So, thinking about the meager ingredients left in my fridge...Hmmm..Corn meal, celery, 1/2 a carrot, mustard..Flour, eggs, milk, butter, frozen blueberries,....cookies? Nah, too late at night.... Pancakes? DEFINATELY too late at night. I'm not much of a baker (yet), but Cornbread is kind of a hybrid of baking and cooking. And I remember having some corn-meal johnny cakes back in a former life when I was in the Marines and stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There was a place there called the "Da Jerk House" (It should have been called "2 jamaicans and a grill"). They used to make these things called "Johnny Cakes". So I looked up some basic ratios of various cornbread concoctions, and it seems to be that a fairly simple 2 cups liquid to 1 cup dry ingredients is pretty common. So I went with it...

Reaching deep into my cabinets, I retrieved a brand new Lodge Deep Sided Cast Iron Skillet. Tossed in some oil, stoked a sapphire-clue propane flame to "medium high", and combined a basic batter of milk, cornmeal, salt and some honey (and frozen blueberries, just to see what would happen).

At first, I was optimistic. The batter hit the pan with the riveting music of hot oil meeting the mash. Sparing you a description of flipping an object with a spatula, suffice it to say that I finished my "cakes", and ended up with....well...a medium-rare batch of corn meal. Well seared on the outside, and "grainy" in the middle.

Normally I would get all butt-hurt over something like this, but since I'm learning, I am really looking forward to finding out what went wrong, and how I can fix it! No pictures of these horrors this time, and no recipe count. But tomorrow is another day, and I think it's time to try my hand at this baking business... =)
still 494 recipes to go.

The slow-cooked calamari experiment

Now I've had rubbery, overcooked, gross calamari in restaurants before. After all, everyone knows that squid are best when cooked, hot, fast, and not too much, or they become little marine-based chunks of tire rubber. But I had heard somewhere that if you cook them low and slow, they will become very tender again and delicious. I had to try this. So I made up a nice quick tomato sauce of carrot, onion and garlic, a little white wine, some tomatos and tomato paste, some dried herbs, and a pinch of both salt, pepper, and suger (to cut the acidity from the tomatos and the wine a bit).

I let that dutch oven simmer over the lowest flame my stovetop could muster. Since it took 3 hours to cook, I took the liberty of roasting a little garlic, smearing it on some bread with some pecorino and olive oil, adding a few freshly torn basil leaves, and having a snack. Simple garlic bread? Yes, I know it's not too creative, and I don't really count it as a recipe quite yet, since it was basically just a sauce and roasted garlic delivery device (for me, garlic bread is more of an eating utinsil than aside dish!) Of course I made enough for dipping in my squiddy-masterpiece haha.

Well, after 3 hours for a project I thought at first might just take 1 or 2 tops, I dished out a bit of the calamari tomato sauce, topped it with some fresh herbs and pecroino and took a big bit of my squid sauce (technically, a mariner's sauce or marinara? I'll look into that hehe). Wow. I must say this is probably my favorite way to eat squid now. It was almost as soft and tender as cheese! The acidity balance I had been so concerned about earlier was perfectly balanced with the taste of fresh herbs, cheese, and the subtle hints of clean ocean in the sauce, as though it had been flavored by the Mediterranean breeze itself. It's a simple dish, with no real accompaniment aside from some simple and crusty garlic bread, and to be quite honest, that's all this dish really needs...aside from a nice glass of wine of course!
1 more dish down, 494 to go!

Lentil Soup and Spaghetti with herbs

After a grueling day of classes, I came home and before I even thought about dinner, food, or cooking, I thought about how comfortable my bed was….four hours later, I woke up from a hearty nap, and I was hungry. It’s been a bit chilly lately, so I wanted something warm and comforting, and for me, that (usually) means pasta and some sort of soup.

Tonight, it was spaghetti and lentil soup. I kept the pasta fresh, and clean tasting with just some nice handfuls of chopped fresh parsley and basil, a little black pepper, a pat of butter, and of course, the king of cheeses, Pecorino Romano. I did learn this. Bacon is not always the best thing to add to spaghetti! A first for me, since I’ve been known to eat bacon with anything (Bacon with beef, bacon with jello, bacon with bacon, (you get the picture). The problem was the texture. The bacon overshadowed the fresh parsley and basil with its smokiness. Next time I’ll put the bacon in the lentil soup. Ohhhh yeah babe.

The lentil soup was simple. Celery, carrot, onions and garlic, coriander, black pepper, bay leaf tomato paste and some salt. Mixed together in one of my favorite solvents (chicken broth), it took about half an hour to bring this meal together. A little smoked provolone right at the end gave this dish a nice smoky introduction to the palate , which was followed with the wonderful earthiness of the lentils. However, when I make this dish again, I’ll swap the smoked provolone of the lentil soup with the bacon I put in the pasta.

I am really learning the value of sweating some lardons before cooking a dish. I used to think “How come these chefs use so little bacon for such a huge dish? There’s not even enough to SEE the bacon in the end!” Now I realize that the flavor of that bacon just blends so well with the other ingredients throughout the cooking process, that the cooked bacon is just an added bonus at the end. I learned that using a gallon of water or more (ata minimum) is an absolute MUST for the pasta, since it gives the strands plenty of room to dance in their vigorous water bath without being crowded.

The biggest lesson I take away from preparing this meal is that sometimes fresh herbs, a little butter, and some cheese on spaghetti really can be a simple comfort food, and that man cannot live on bacon bits alone. 5 recipes down, 495 to go.

REAL Lemon-Garlic and herb chicken.

So what's for dinner? I muttered to myself as I packed up my stuff and readied to leave my school internship for the day.

Pot Roast? Too long to cook. Potatoes Au gratin, too complicated sounding. Beans, Too “musical”. Ahh. CHICKEN! I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight!
I decided that tonight I wanted to do a lemon and herb chicken. But I didn’t want to just sprinkle on some of Larry’s Lemon Seasoning and be done with it. I wanted the real thing. Plus if I researched this right, it would teach me how to really get golden and delicious chicken every time.

The technique was pretty much similar to a pot roast I suppose. Brown chicken in pan, braise, and chomp. What did I learn? Well I’m glad I did a little bit of reading on How to get a nice brown chicken skin. Because I found out I have been doing things wrong. First is to make sure the chicken is dry going into the pan, or else it just steams instead of browns. Second is do not crowd the pan, or else the chicken steams, and doesn’t brown. Since browning is what I wanted, I followed both these bits of wisdom to see what would happen. Alos I figured out that blasting the chicken under the broiler for a few minutes before serving made the skin nice and crispy in addition to being brown. (after sitting in the braising steam and liquid, the skin was a bit...flabby).

I stuffed some lemon slices, rosemary, thyme, salt, black pepper, and one diced red chile UNDER the skin of my chicken. I figure that skin is supposed to keep things OUT of a critter, and I wanted to flavor the meat, not just the skin.
Then I dried off my pretty chicken legs and thighs, and put them in my hot pan with butter and oil, where a symphony of sizzling sounds, aromas and little steam vapors wisped from the pan.
It was not long before my entire apartment smelled like chickeny-goodness! I still had a bit of time before the stuff was done so what do I do? I looked in my fridge and I had some mustard greens I wanted to try out. Since they cook fast, I decided to go with it!
I sweated some garlic in butter and olive oil, then sauteed the greens over high heat until they got nice and wilty. A dash of minced garlic near the end and some salt and pepper really gave the greens some extra bite!
When the chicken was ready, I took it one step further. I broiled the chicken for 5 minutes just to crisp the already browned skin a bit.
I made a quick white wine pan sauce (thank god for the gravy seperator!) and soon I was digging into a piece of poultry heaven, Lemon, herbs, and garlic leapt from the chicken straight to my taste buds. I served the mustard greens below, and it was a beautiful mix of bitter and a little sour, yet buttery garlic was in every bite. Along with a little pinot grigio, which added a mellow sweetness, I was in culinary heaven. I am so glad I wrote this recipe down. I’ll be making it again in the future, the very very near future.
So that’s 2 more recipes in one day. 497 to go!