Chicken Cacciatore

I threw together this chicken cacciatore with polenta. It had a bunch of stuff in it..capers, canned plum tomatoes, mashed anchovies, basil, garlic, roasted red pepper, and a few other things I threw in there that I can't really remember at this point. The secret seasoning? My own blood. Indeed...no longer just an expression about putting hard work into something...I actually cut my index finger while slicing the garlic and I'm pretty sure the knife didn't stop until it hit bone. Salty!

Pyromaniacal tendencies

Despite never being in the Boy Scouts, I do enjoy fire, which is why I pulled out the old torch. My friend Narae has returned for the year and we went to Costco, where she got some strawberries. I had some left in my fridge, and since these were kind of the sour ones, so I had an idea. First I set up a little suspended cooling rack contraption to hold strawberries with toothpicks stuck in them. I rolled the strawberries in sugar then torched 'em. Then I added a second coat of sugar and torched them again. This results in a little shell of just about the best tasting strawberry hard candy you'll ever taste.


I then decided to use some of the leftover chocolate from the 1 pound bar I used for the cookies. I melted this up with a bit of balsamic vinegar, ginger juice, and a bit of oil (so that it would actually melt) to dip the strawberries.

Cookie Monster

I made a batch of some dark chocolate chunk cookies. Only slightly sweet, buttery and a tiny bit salty on the crispy edge, soft in the middle. After baking two batches of 6, I had more batter than two cookies, but not enough for three. The solution? One gigantic cookie as an affront to God.

I've included a quarter for scale comparison...

I can't even palm it.

Ahh the sweet smell of deep fried (sort of) success

Mmm...cast iron skillet fried chicken. So it's not technically deep fried, but it certainly was mostly submerged in...wait for it...shortening. That's right...shortening...the abomination against nature of the frying fats. But damn it makes for some delicious fried chicken.

Hmm...

So, do you think I can turn this thing into fried chicken tomorrow? We'll see.

Butchering a chicken is really pretty tough...especially if your knife is duller than you thought it'd be. Also it doesn't help to have warm hands. Is there any part of cooking that doesn't punish you for having good circulation?

Stuff

So I took the plunge and bought a chimney starter for my meager little grill, and I tested it out by grilling up some pork loin, which i basically threw a bunch of stuff in my pantry on and grilled up. It was pretty good, especially with rosemary roasted potatoes and avocado butter (ah Good Eats, permanent resident of my DVR).


With that cast iron pan I got, I made some cornbread, with bacon, chives, and chipotle peper. The bottom is fried in rendered bacon fat! The first batch I made was horribly dry (very unfortunate since it was for guests). But I fixed that problem by adding half a stick of melted butter. Melted butter pretty much fixes everything that duct tape can't.


And yes...here it is...the legendary Global fluted Santoku knife. I never thought I'd hold this box in my hands, but here it is. Actually I'm selling it to my sister, for the price of 1 penny. Korean superstition forbids giving knives or blades of any kind as gifts, because it means your cutting off all ties/relations with that person so I have to sell it to her.

The benefits of living alone

Rice krispies treats anytime.
The fluffernutter sandwich seems to be the official food of Massachusetts, so marshmallow creme is available everywhere. So why not have rice krispies treats all the time?
Other things in my fridge/pantry that wouldn't normally be at home:
Ice cream
Oreos
Carbs...delicious carbs

I also got some new kitchen toys including a microplane, a mini food processor, a probe thermometer, a propane torch (on sale at ACE hardware), and a 12" cast iron pan, which I'm not sure why we don't have at home, because it was only 15 bucks on Amazon.com

Snacks

There's nothing like watching Fresh Prince and Saved by the Bell reruns on the DVR with a snack.


Grilled chicken, bacon, aioli, arugula, grilled scallion, grilled jalapeno, sourdough toasted with roasted garlic paste and gorgonzola.


Mmm...ramen. This is only marginally harder to make than instant ramen, and a billion times better.

Fourth o' July

You're supposed to eat ridiculously too much...because overconsumption is what America is all about (did you see the nathan's hot dog contest?). Anywho, I made gorgonzola, roasted garlic, and bacon stuffed burgers. The meat itself was seasoned with some green onions sauteed in the bacon drippings, ketchup, worcestershire, granulated garlic, and paprika. Here's what the inside looks like:

A few friends came over and brought corn on the cob and Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat beer.

For dessert, they brought some strawberries and blueberries. I used 'em to whip up a compote with orange juice, lime juice, a jalapeno pepper, and some balsamic vinegar (though after I sent them out for sugar...seeing as I had absolutely none in the apartment). I topped an ice cream sandwich with the compote, then put a toasted marshmallow on top. Look how it ended up being patriotic!

Aioli

To use up some of that garlic I roasted yesterday, and to go on tomorrow's burgers, I made some Aioli (from the Provencal verb "aioler" meaning "to charge Americans more for mayonnaise"). I made it with egg yolks, sea salt, pepper, paprika, mustard powder, lemon juice, roasted garlic, a bit of olive oil and a crapload of canola oil. Here's the result:

After furious hand whisking for a while, the aioli started to get thick and I switched over to an electric beater...this also illustrates my desperate need for an apron or something...as demonstrated by my shirt:

First Post From the new Apartment

So I'm settling in to my new apartment, and my fridge/pantry finally have some stuff inside. For the fourth, I'm gonna make some gorgonzola, bacon, roasted garlic stuffed burgers. I roasted up a bunch of garlic today, and I thought "Man I shouldn't waste the olive oil that ran out into the roasting pan." So I sliced up some tomatoes, brushed them with the oil, and broiled them and topped 'em with some cheese and an anchovy fillet. I took the same roasting pan and then added some white wine and roasted garlic. I tossed some fettucine in there and then plated it with the tomatoes on top. Here's how it looked:

More blogginess!

Watch this space...New posts about food are coming. It's been quite a while since I've written anything. I've been terribly busy with my mustache competition, thesis, graduating, etc. But the good news is I've been officially offered a job by the college as the concert manager. I'll be in an apartment and cooking for myself, which means I'll be eating instant Ramen 6 nights out of 7...but on that 7th night, i'll hopefully have some blog-worthy material. I just have to get through finals, graduation, job training, etc. before I can get back to the things that REALLY matter...food, and making fun of waste-of-planet-space idiots.

Super Bowl Party

I've always thrown a Super Bowl party for the people I live with/around. This year, I made:

Guacamole with plenty of cilantro, garlic, habanero and jalapeno peppers.


Tuscan white bean dip with roasted garlic and rosemary olive oil. I roasted garlic in a toaster oven with some rosemary and thyme, then blended it up with cannelini beans and the rosemary infused olive oil. Served it up with some bruschetta (which is pronounced BrusKEtta...none of that "shh" shit). Also, bruschetta can simply be toast rubbed with garlic...it doesn't have to have a bunch of stuff piled on it. It's a subset of a larger category of crostini. Right then...

I also made a cream cheese and chili dip and spinach and mushroom quesadillas.

Christmas Rib Roast

Yeah I know...Christmas was a really freaking long time ago, but I've been too busy with my new mustache growing contest to put up any pictures.

My sister and I made a rib roast, which basically involves sticking meat into an oven.

Here are pictures.

Bûche de noël

This thing took all day, would've taken two if it weren't for our kitchenaid stand mixer. The cake was an orange-almond spongecake. The frosting was made with whipped cream, italian merengue, chocolate, and coffee. The mushrooms were piped Italian merengue dried on a silpat for a couple hours. The cake ended up being ridiculously sweet. Oh well, at least it looked nice.

Adventures in Not Food

Don't really know how to explain this one.
Swallowing a magic grow capsule

Turkey Day Pictures

Out of extreme laziness, I haven't posted any Thanksgiving related stuff yet. I had to mention, however, a commercial for "Bob's Discount Furniture," involving two computer animated turkeys that had Bob and his wife's heads superimposed on them. They sang a song where the only words were "gobble gobble gobble gobble" and some little snippets about the furniture they were selling, e.g. "gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble There's a Bar that Hides AWAAAY!" Classic.
On to the pictures:
The night before Thaksgiving I made the desserts, starting with Madeleienes. I tested out new silicon madeleine molds versus my traditional metal one. The silicon mold smelled terrible as it was baking, overbrowned the edges of the shell and didn't brown the body of the shell at all. There was also no hump on the back of the madeleine, which is just (picture a french dude saying this...) OUTREEEGEOUS! So, silicon madeleine molds are REJECTED. Somewhere, a curmudgeony old French luddite is saying "Roh ho ho ho hoooo." New for 2005 to the madeleines was chocolate. Using Trader Joe's Belgian Pound plus 70% dark, melted over a makeshift double boiler and tempered (by stirring in unmelted pieces off the heat), I dipped or decorated about half of the madeleines I had made. Tempering the chocolate ensures the chocolate adheres, makes for a nice smooth look, and ensures the chocolate doesn't crumble when bitten into.




While preparing the madeleines, I decided that they wouldn't be enough as a dessert, so I decided to make something else. At first I thought "Tiramisu," which I make for any occasion, and also "pumpkin pie," in honor of Thanksgiving. Combining the two ideas gave me the idea for a mascarpone pumpkin cheesecake. I had no idea how I was going to make a cheesecake or what you have to do to make cheesecake, but I consulted some basic recipes online and went from there. I made the cheesecake's crust out of Trader Joe's Triple Ginger Snaps and melted butter. The filling was half mascarpone, half regular cream cheese (due to mascarpone's different texture and high cost), eggs, brown sugar, pumpkin, flour, heavy cream, and some spices. I garnished it with heavy cream whipped up with a bit of superfine sugar and brandy.

The cheesecake was rather light, wasn't too sweet, and had a slightly stronger flavor of cheese than a regular cheesecake.

Here are a few pictures of what my sister made (I did most of the grunt work), because she's even lazier about posting pictures than I am.

The turkey, brined overnight and (almost) completely cooked. The beautiful skin was achieved by not being afraid to massage and coat the entire turkey in a layer of butter.


A beet and fennel salad with citrus vinaigrette a la Thomas Keller. Finished with gorgonzola and orange zest. I call this one "mastercard salad."


Mixed vegetables in some sort of Asian-y dressing in a kabocha squash bowl. Eat the bowl...go on I dare ya.


The wine, a 1987 Chateau Duhart-Milon Rothschild Pauillac. It's no Charles Shaw, but it was still good.


This table is much too small to hold all of the food we made, so it was served up buffet style in the kitchen.

Kalbi

My parents brought me 30 pieces of kalbi over family weekend. All I had to do was microwave it, cook up some rice, wash some lettuce, buy some chili paste, and slice up some green onions and a feast ensued. Check out Owen's (upper left of the picture) chopstick technique. If it doesn't impress you, what if I told you that he's white? Oh yeah...now you're impressed.

Happy Halloween Everybody!

Yup...that's about all there is to that post. Eat a caramel apple. Pumpkin seeds too.

Distributing smallpox infested blankets to natives...followed by tea

Amherst College and the town of Amherst is named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the British forces during the French and Indian wars, pioneer of germ warfare, and securer of Canada for England. Although the college has long since put away the china depicting mounted Englishmen chasing Natives, and has substituted smallpox infested blankets with cod nuggets in Valentine to make people sick, the British tradition of tea time lives on right here in the first floor suite of Jenkins dormitory. Thanks to my suitemate Katie spending her summer in London, and the fact that all of us are terrible snobs (and face it...if you're reading this shit, so are you) we have a fine assortment of teas to enjoy each day. Today was Twining's reserve afternoon tea, which is described as a traditional tasting tea ("traditional" of course joining "umami" as one of the lesser known taste receptors in the tongue). I decided to make a special plate of snacks today, for no other reason than the fact that I went to Trader Joe's yesterday.
Clockwise from the "top" of the plate: Pumpernickel cocktail square with manchego cheese and pumpkin butter, Grilled brie finger sandiwch, Rice cracker with roasted red pepper tapenade, almond biscotti, macadamia lacey.
Notice the extra fancy, scallop shell design plate, made of what the French call papier.