Categories
Poultry The Book

114. Foolproof Grilled Chicken p.363


The recipe

The blurb before the recipe says that the secret to perfect grilled chicken is to brine it then toss it in a vinaigrette once it’s done. I’ve never really had a problem with my non-brined, non-dressed grilled chicken, but this version does have its charms. Brining makes things taste good by saturating them with salt, sugar, and extra liquid. They remain moist and get the flavour enhancing goodness of salt all the way through the meat. Unfortunately that means brined dishes are really salty. If it’s done right it doesn’t taste all that salty at the time, but I inevitably wake up parched in the night after a dish like this.

We made this dish for some friends we were visiting. They live near San Francisco, which means I got to have my first Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s experiences. Other than amazingly priced wine I didn’t really get what the big deal about TJs was, Whole Foods really was worth they hype though. On the one hand it’s just like every other megalomart, only expensive. On the other good quality organic stuff was everywhere. We just don’t have an equivalent in Montreal, and one opening here would be a big deal for me. We’re taking a mini-break and visiting different friends in Brooklyn this weekend, I’m anxious to get back to a Whole Foods and do a little exploring. Incidentally that means I’ll be away tomorrow through Sunday, so no updates ’till Monday.

I picked up the chicken and herbs for this dish at Whole Foods, and most of the rest of the ingredients for dinner from a cute farmer’s market in Palo Alto. I brined the chicken for three hours instead of the recommended six. I also misread the recipe and added a bunch of lime juice to the brining liquid, it didn’t seem to affect anything, so no harm done. I then made a Thai style vinaigrette of lime juice, garlic, cilantro, mint, red pepper flakes, salt, and oil. I left out the two tablespoons of fish sauce, which the recipe promises won’t make the dish taste in the least fishy. My dining companion’s superpower is detecting fermented fish at even the lowest concentrations, so I decided not to include it.

The Book offers extravagantly detailed instructions on how to grill the chicken. It comes down to searing it for a few minutes, then moving it to indirect heat and letting it cook slowly until it’s done. The breasts will take longer than the leg pieces. Once the chicken is done you remove it and toss it in the vinaigrette. You then put halved limes cut side down over the hottest part of the grill for a few minutes to develop some grill lines. I’m not sure that the grilling of the limes served any purpose, but they did look cool. You can imagine that heating them makes them easier to juice, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a gimmick.

This method did produce a very fine grilled chicken, I’m not sure it was worth the extra effort though. The vinaigrette worked wonderfully, and I’d be happy to try it again as well as the alternate Mediterranean vinaigrette it gives as an option. The brining enhanced the flavour of the chicken, but it really was quite salty. I have a hard time deciding how much the brine actually improved the chicken, because I rarely buy organic, which is naturally more flavourful. I was a very poor scientist to vary both my ingredients and methods at the same time, I’ll need to do some control experiments to figure this out.

I’ve never found grilling chicken to be all that error prone or difficult, so I think I’ll skip the brining step in future. The vinaigrette added nice acidity, and aromatics to the chicken. It was simple to prepare and fragrant, a definite keeper. I liked serving grilled limes with the chicken, they were fun, looked cool, and I liked being given the option of adding as much or as little acidity as I’d like. This was a fairly good grilled chicken recipe, but I don’t think I’ll give up my home-brewed technique.

Categories
Food Blogs The Project

New Kid On The Block

I’m pleased to introduce a new food and wine blog to the web. My dining companion has started writing about the restaurants we visit, the wines we drink, the products we love, and her experiences as devotee of the good life in Montreal. I look forward to her lessons in leisure, and invite you all to follow along.

I’ve added her new site to the blogroll, along with a few other food sites I’ve been reading. I’m loving Carol’s The French Laundry at Home. She’s cooking her way through Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook. When I complain about convoluted and arduous recipes in The Book, I just think of poor Carol.

I get a real kick out of gamecakes‘ pictures of video-game themed confections. High-tech gadgets are designed to look edible, and this takes it to the logical conclusion.

I’ve only recently tuned in to two of the bigger group authored food blogs on the web, Slashfood and Serious Eats. They’ve earned their reputations and then some.

So, what else should I be following along with? I’m always interested in great food blogs, particularly people doing similar projects to mine. If there’s something I should check out, by all means let me know in the comments.

And now for a minor update on the state of The Project. The most recent recipe posted was #113. This summer I challenged myself to write 60 posts in 60 days, and get #113 posted by September 14th. I failed miserably in that challenge, my two month project took three-and-a-half. I’ve been pretty good about keeping a steady ground-eating pace to my write-ups though. I’m catching up on my backlog, and I’m happy to say I’m only 32 recipes behind. The day that I have to go to the kitchen and cook something before I can write my next review is within sight.

Categories
The Project

Tags

I’ve decided that in addition to the chapter categories we’ve already got, I’m going to go back and add free-form tags to my posts thus far, and to use them for posts going forward. I suspect that this is going to drive people who follow The Project through RSS nuts, as every item will show up as new. My apologies. But, if we don’t train the semantic web, how will Skynet become self aware? It’ll also allow fun features like tag clouds, and browsing by tags (not yet implemented).

edit: Seems like I can implement the tags totally behind the scenes, so much the better.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

113. Rosemary Focaccia p.606


The recipe is the same as this one, but linked recipe forgets to list the water and salt for the dough in the ingredient list (they are in the recipe description).

I should start off by saying that this was absolutely delicious. It didn’t rely on rare ingredients or novel taste experiences to get there. It went with the straightforward combination of fresh baked bread, so much olive oil that drizzling is not an option, and enough salt to make it crunchy. This is the same tried and true combination that keeps the deep-dish pizza places of the world in business. You know that this is a Gourmet recipe and not a special from Pizza Hut because the focaccia doesn’t have a ring of cheese baked into the crust.

The recipe starts with a simple yeast dough, with some olive oil added in. It’s mostly kneaded in a stand mixer, then finished kneading by hand. Once the dough is coated in more oil and it’s been left to rise for 1 1/2 hours, it’s pressed into a baking sheet, covered with plastic wrap, and allowed a second rise. Obviously this second rise requires the addition of more oil, but this time it’s used to lubricate the baking sheet and plastic wrap. After the second rise it’s time for, you guessed it, more oil. This time the oil is mixed with chopped rosemary, and poured over the bread. There is so much oil at this point that the recipe directs you to make indentations in the bread for the oil to pool. Then the bread is sprinkled with sea salt, and baked at 425 ’till it’s golden. When it’s ready the bread needs to be inverted to get it out of the baking sheet. I’d do this over some paper towel because even the absorbent power of bread is overwhelmed by the amount of oil in this dish.

The focaccia was excellent, the bread was moist, with some chewiness, but a nice crumb and texture. The crust, both top and bottom, were wonderfully golden. The rosemary was fantastic, and really allowed to shine as the sole aromatic. If you serve this to friends they’ll beg you for the recipe, don’t give it to them. It would be like telling a kid about Santa. The bread doesn’t hold up well overnight. It’s not great cold, microwaving killed everything good about it, and rewarming in the oven didn’t to it justice. It’s best to get a crowd together and polish the whole thing off in one go.

The recipe uses a truly unconscionable amount of olive oil. The ingredient list calls for just under 1/2 a cup (7 tablespoons) of oil, to 5 cups of flour. But that doesn’t count the “generous” lubrication of the dough ball during the fist rise, or the baking sheet and plastic wrap during the second. I suspect the total is closer to 3/4 of a cup. That’s 1400 calories at 120 cal/tablespoon. We had the focaccia along with yesterday’s kale and chroizo soup for dinner, and certainly didn’t feel like we’d eaten lightly.

Categories
Soups The Book

112. Portugese Kale Soup with Chorizo (Caldo Verde) p.109


The recipe on epicurious calls this Tuscan kale soup. Tuscany and Portugal aren’t next door to one another, and their food traditions aren’t all that similar, but I’m willing to forgive The Book. In exchange I’ll ask you to forgive me for not using kale at all. Normally my grocery store is overflowing with kale to be bought up by chic urban moms, who only wear clothes by designers who don’t go past size four. This season’s infatuation with the skinny jean must have caused a run on kale, and left none for me. I had my heart set on this soup, and decided I didn’t feel bad at all about subbing in rapini. They’re not particularly close cousins in the plant world, but they’re both bitter greens, and both great in soup.

I still can’t get over how delicious this soup was. There’s absolutely nothing to it, you start by softening some onions in olive oil, then add sliced potatoes and cook for a few minutes. Water is added, and the potatoes are left to cook. Meanwhile the chorizo is browned up in a pan. When the potatoes are done they’re mashed a bit, and the chorizo and “kale” are added in. It’s left to cook for a few more minutes, and that’s it. A huge amount of the flavour comes from the chorizo, so make sure to buy the good stuff.

Montreal has a thriving Portuguese community, and the chouriço sausage that is traditionally used in this dish is practically easier to find than the Spanish chorizo. I had to go out of my way to get the non-traditional ingredient, which The Book called for in an attempt to make my life easier. Sometimes this project is weird.

The flavours here were just perfect, with the rapini and sausage dominating. The spiciness and richness of the chorizo contrasted with the clean bitter flavours of the rapini. The potatoes thickened the soup and added a lovely earthy undertone. It was a very restrained dish, with clean individual flavours that just worked. I ate a gigantic bowl without stopping to breathe, and went back for seconds. I’m not normally a huge soup person, but I can’t wait to make this one again.

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

111. Wild Rice and Toasted Almond Pilaf p.262

The recipe

I messed this dish up quite badly, so badly I’m not sure it’s fair to count it. The main ingredient is 2 cups of wild rice, without further specification. I’m not a big rice eater, and I’d never cooked wild rice before. I went to the health food store and got two cups of the stuff in the bin labeled wild rice (riz sauvage). What I got was a mixture of rices, including wild. The wild rice grains are the long dark ones in the picture above, and the recipe should have been made entirely of those grains.

The rice is added to a pot of onions sautéed in olive oil, and left to toast for a few minutes. You then add chicken stock and water and simmer it for 1 – 1 1/4 hours. When the rice is ready you stir in some sliced almonds toasted with butter, as well as some salt and pepper. The flavours were pretty good here, nice standard pilaf fare. I like pilaf a lot, and make it often. I usually add mushrooms and diced red pepper, but the pilaf base was solid and tasty. The real problem was the rice. I followed the wild rice instructions with my non-wild rice mixutre and when I checked it after 45 minutes it had turned to gooey gummy mush. It was rice pilaf pudding. That’s to be expected given that I blatantly ignored the instructions, but I’ve decided to include the recipe as an honest mistake rather than a re-do. There are potentially many products labeled wild rice out there, and The Book didn’t help me to clarify the issue. It looks like Teena at the other gourmet project also used a wild rice mix (although she knew what she was doing and cooked it for less time) so I’m not alone in this.

If I’d cooked things properly it would have been a fairly tasty side. It quite subtly flavoured as it was, and the wild rice has a much more pronounced flavour than the other types. I worry that the flavour of the wild rice might have overwhelmed the dish, but I’m not really in a position to make that judgment. My version was mushy and bad, but that’s probably not the recipe’s fault.

Categories
Poultry The Book

110. Moroccan-Style Roast Cornish Hens with Vegetables p.392

The recipe

This was my first experiment with Cornish hens, and I think I’m in love. I watched an episode of Freaks and Geeks the other night. In one scene the mother roasts Cornish hens, and serves them to her skeptical family, who use the hens as puppets for a dance routine, and complain that they want normal food, like chicken. Two things, 1) Cornish hens are chickens, and 2) that show was awesome, it really bugged me when they canceled it. That episode was poking fun at the status of little birds as icons of the ’70’s and 80’s food revolution, for both good and ill. My dining companion’s mother talks about fancy dinner parties in the early 80’s where the women wore long gloves, and were asked to pick apart quail with a knife and fork. She remembers going home hungry a lot. Game birds are often considered exotic or fancy food, but at least for Cornish hens, they’re just conveniently sized chickens.

This dish emphasized how casual and delicious a Cornish hen can be. You start by making a spice mixture of caraway, salt, garlic, honey, lemon juice, olive oil, paprika, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, and pepper. Then you cube zucchini, turnips, red peppers, butternut squash, and onions, toss them in with half the spice mix, chopped tomatoes, and chicken stock. You then take the backbones out of the hens and halve them, toss them in the spice mix, and lay them in a roasting pan on top of the vegetables. The whole thing goes into a 425 oven covered in foil for an hour, then uncovered for the last half hour to let the birds brown up.

There were a lot of ingredients to the dish, but most of them were in the cupboard. There was a good deal of prep work to be done, particularly taking a rock-hard butternut squash apart, and peeling turnip, but nothing too complicated. The results were absolutely fantastic. The use of smaller Cornish hens makes this dish possible. A full sized chicken might not get cooked through before the veg turned to mush, but with little birds everything comes out together. The juices drip off the birds and flavour the vegetables, which in turn perfume the hens.

I’ve been pretty harsh to the middle eastern / north African dishes I’ve made thus far. I just can’t get behind sweetened meat dishes. This one however, had dollop of honey, carefully balanced with lots of spice and some more harshly flavoured vegetables like the turnips. The little sweet note of honey was much appreciated, it was present but not too assertive.

This dish was just delicious, I couldn’t get enough of it. I couldn’t wait for lunch time, so I had some left-overs for breakfast. The Hens were perfectly roasted with an amazingly crisp skin and juicy tender inside. They were dense and meaty, with a deep chicken flavour. The vegetables roasted wonderfully, and the spice mix was an excellent compliment to all the flavours in this dish. I’d happily make this again and again. Moroccan-style roast Cornish hens with vegetables, you’ve earned your five mushroom rating.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

109. Strawberry Shortcake p.813

The recipe is a variation on this one from epicurious. The main difference is that the linked recipe uses buttermilk biscuits, while The Book calls for the cream biscuits I wrote about the other day.

It starts with three pints of strawberries, hulled and quartered. This is the kind of recipe instruction that I consistently underestimate. I figure this job will take in around 5 minutes, but it’s really more like 20. I’m a chronic under-estimator of time in all areas of life, so I don’t foresee this changing any time soon. Once the strawberries are quartered they’re mixed with sugar, and lightly mashed with a potato masher. The idea is to get them to release their juices without destroying them. I managed to squish out a good deal of juice without breaking more than a few of them. The strawberries are then left to macerate for an hour on the counter.

When the strawberries are swimming in their own juices it’s time to whip the creams. Heavy cream and sour cream are beaten together with some confectioner’s sugar to the soft peak stage. Then the shortcakes are assembled.

The word cake has a specific and circumscribed definition, a biscuit casually topped with whipped cream and fruit doesn’t really fit it. If the biscuits were covered in whipped cream, decoratively layered with strawberries and allowed to set up in the fridge for a while, I’d buy the argument that these are individual serving cakes. As the recipe reads this is no more a cake than a meatloaf sandwich is a hamburger.

Still, this did taste pretty darn good, and it reeked of summer. Our strawberry shortcake growing up had a very similarly textured cake, but it was a large layered affair cut into slices. I fondly remember the adventure of trying to get the slices out in one piece, and the hilarity of mom’s face as strawberries and cream plummeted toward the dining room rug. I missed that in these neat little biscuits, but as I value the carpet in my dining room maybe it’s a compromise I can live with.

As with all deserts in the book, it was too sweet. I even cut back on the recommended amount of sugar on the strawberries because they were naturally sweet and perfectly ripe. 1/3 of a cup was way too much, I should have gone with a couple of tablespoons. The extra sugar helps to pull juice out of the fruit, but it was a bit much. I really liked the sour cream tang in with the whipped cream, which acted as a nice counterpoint to all the sugar on the berries. It worked in the same way the sweet acidity of good balsamic goes with strawberries.

As I said the other day, the biscuits were a great base for this dish. The whipped creams were a winner, and you can’t go wrong with summer fresh strawberries. The Book tried to mess with the perfection of July berries, and ended up taking away from their natural goodness. Summer just wouldn’t be summer without strawberry shortcake, and this version was certainly good enough to fulfill my seasonal need.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

108. Cream Biscuits p.814

This recipe is word for word identical to the recipe for cream biscuits that appears on p.596. Whether this is a printing error, or an easter egg in The Book, it’s the easiest recipe write-up ever.

Categories
Breads and Crackers The Book

107. Cream Biscuits p.596

No, recipe appears on line, and that’s a shame.

I really enjoyed these biscuits. They’re light but not too fluffy, nicely moist, and just crumbly enough. The recipe is simplicity itself, it’s just flour, baking powder, and salt, mixed with whipping cream. After kneading it for a few seconds it’s patted into a 1/2 inch thick round, and cut into ~3 inch rounds. Then they’re transferred to a baking sheet, brushed with a bit more cream, and popped into a 425 oven for 12-15 minutes.

Early on in the history of Good Eats, Alton Brown had a biscuit episode where his grandmother (mee-maw) came on to show him the proper technique. The recipes there were buttermilk based, but the principles still hold. He emphasized that the most important thing was to use a very sharp cookie cutter, with a decisive push through the dough to avoid compressing the biscuits, and to ensure a good rise. I took that advice to heart, and then completely ignored it when the moment came. I used the dull edge of a drinking glass to cut them out (the recipe calls for a cookie cutter), and my biscuits didn’t rise nearly as much as I’d hoped they would.

The recipe calls for White Lily flour, which that same Good Eats episode tells me is commonly available in the American South, but as far as I know it’s not to be had here. Standard AP flour was given as an alternative, and it worked just fine, these were still absolutely delicious biscuits.

These are probably best suited to sweet applications, because of the straightforward richness of the cream. If I was going to cover biscuits in gravy I’d want the tang of buttermilk to help balance things. The Book uses these as the basis for its strawberry shortcake recipe, and I think they were perfectly suited to the task. I ate some leftovers with some of my homemade strawberry jam and a bit of sharp cheddar, which may have been even better.