Finally did that steak....

So, I finally made my ribeye....it turned out quite good. Not much to say about it other than that I am accustom to having the oven and stove fan vent outside. This particular method presents a difficulty in that it smokes something fierce.

The alarm went off.

The problem with this little inconvenience is that everyone in the three apartments around me KNOW now, that I have done something wrong with the stove. In reality, it is just the way this cooks.

This steak is done in a 500 degree oven for two minutes per side for medium rare. Needless to say, I chose the 1 minute per side for a rare steak. So - cast iron pan into the oven to get to 500 degrees and once there, the pan comes out to the stove which should be on the highest setting. 30-45 seconds per side to give it a good crust and then into the oven for the 2 minutes (or one if you like steak done right!) and then flip and your second time. Once it's done, out of the oven and into a wrapping of foil to rest and finish cooking.

The preview pictures are small since the post is small, but remember that when you click on them, you get the full size.

















Enjoy!

This Friday, I am making my award winning chili. Yay!

Not my normal spaghetti...

While it may not look like much to you, it is a big step for me....just spaghetti, right? I have been making my own sauces for a long time and playing with the software to come up with different textures and flavors. This sauce is a spicy sauce which I am pleased with....but the real pleasure is underneath. It's just pasta, right?

I made it.

My very first batch ever.

Hand kneaded and rolled with a real live Italian pasta rolling machine.

I am actually pretty happy with it. I know that it wasn't the best ever, but it really did the trick. Held onto the sauce and everything pasta is supposed to do. It won't win prizes, but for a first effort, all in all good.

Things I will note:

Mixing it: The dough really needed to be more elastic. I am not sure if it wasn't so due to lack of proper moisture or due to not kneading it enough.

Rolling it: Once it gets down to a 5, it gets long. I'll make the knobs a little smaller next time. That way when they elongate with the rolling, it won't be hard to manage.

Cool thing though...and easier to make than I thought. That's all for now. More to come later. Maybe.

Almost kinda food-ish

Well - today I planted what I hope to be the start of a nice container garden. I figure that since it is mostly going to be herbs and a couple tomatoes, that qualifies as food and therefore I can yammer about it here. I hope to keep the herbs going through the winter and get enough tomatoes to can.

Here's what it looks like today:














Peat pots in a plastic container on a spare chair. Gonna get a grow light to help them and keep them warm and feeling loved. I plan to make friends with a botanist or something!

What you see there are three tomato varieties, cilantro, sage, rosemary and two basil varieties. Yes I know which is where. The notch you see denotes the front and I have made a map of the seedlings. Yeah - that's right. I am not as dumb as you like to think!

So, when we get sprouts, I will begin to get them sun and then harden them off. Then they will get transplanted into their permanent homes and hopefully I will have some continuous growth. Woo hoo!

This weekend, I hope to make pasta and basil pesto. We will see.

Baa Baa Black Sheep....

So, I made the shepherd's pie tonight. After receiving some not so good advice from one relative (who will remain nameless) about just tossing in some ground beef, green beans and mashers on top (you know who you are!) I took to the kitchen and made my dinner. I was very pleased with the results and would only know if I did something wrong if I had someone familiar with the dish to point things out to me. I started at the butcher this morning. I went in and asked for lamb and all they had were lamb chops (Yes - I heard Sheri Lewis' song in my head...kinda weird) and so I ordered up enough to come up with 1/2 lb ground. Remember, get to know your butcher. My butcher at home is so cool, that I was able to get sausage and corned beef sent to me. Love that Brackett's team! Anyway, I walked out of the store with my just over 1/2 pound of lamb ground up form and let it relax on the counter while I got everything together.

This dinner was really easy and even with cutting everything in half, I got plenty of food to include enough for a lunch this week. One thing to remember is that you are putting the mashers on top of the meat before it hits the heat in the oven, so get those going first. Peel and cut the potatoes up and into salted water to bring to a boil while you are preparing the meat and sauce.

The meat goes into the pan first - with a little oil - and you will cook it through before adding the shredded carrot, onion and garlic. Let these cook in quite well. You want them to be very soft and kinda start to disappear into the meat. Then you add the herbs and the Worcestershire letting them go for a few minutes, stirring all the while. (You will notice the Worcestershire is not in the Mis en Plac picture. This is because I am a dork and forgot to pull it out for the photo. It is in the dish though.)You want to stir the whole time for a very important reason: you don't want the herbs (you DO have fresh, right???) to burn or the meat to stick to the pan. Notice that I am once again using a cast iron skillet. If I was making the whole recipe rather than half, I could leave the meat in this, put the potatoes on top and into the oven with the whole works. Handy stuff, this. Then add the wine, letting it reduce to nearly gone and then the stock. That stock will add character and a little depth to the dish, so don't leave it out. If you don't know how to make stock, HERE is the recipe I use and it is VERY good. Makes great soup too. If you don't want to make stock, that's cool - just DON'T use broth. Stock and broth are different. Stock is simmered and reduced over time to extract collagen from bones and will be used as a base for soups and sauces. The bones may or may not have meat on them. Herbs and spices are involved as well as vegetables. Broth is made with viable portions of meat and usually is simmered with veggies and grains. Usually stock is an ingredient while broth is a finished product, so you can use stock to make broth. Get it? Ok - back to the Shepherd's Pie. Once you get the stock in and simmering down, you can turn your attention to the potatoes again.

By now, they should be ready for the ricer or the masher, whichever you have. Important: once you drain the water, put them back into the pan and let them dry out. It will make your dish less watery. Once dry, run them through the masher and then add the egg yolk, Parmesan and some additional salt if there was not enough in the water. - you DID salt the water right? Anyone know why you salt the water when cooking potatoes?

After the mashers are made, the meat should be ready. If you halved the recipe like I did, then you can use a couple small oven dishes to make two single servings. If not, you will want a larger casserole or something like it to put the food into. Meat in the bottom, potatoes spread nicely on top and then add some more of the Parmesan and fluff with a fork. Into the hot box for 20 minutes at 350. Once it is done, pull it out and let it rest about five minutes to settle. Trust me, the thing isn't gonna get cold.

While the baking is happening, make some pan roasted carrots. They went very well with the shepherds pie and were not at all difficult either. Peel, cut and boil the carrots for three minutes in water at a rolling boil to which you have already added some rosemary, thyme and garlic. The herbs work well with the carrots and compliment the main dish as well. After a swim of three minutes, they go into a hot fry pan with a little oil to get them just browned and then add a bit of butter and plate.








Serve with your Shepherd's pie and enjoy. If you want the recipe, let me know. I'll send it along.

Ok - nothing new tonight...

I was going to do the blackened catfish tonight but am missing some of the required spices for the blackening shake. They are supposed to be here tomorrow since I ordered what I needed last week. Fresh spices, pretty good prices. http://www.thespicehouse.com is where I get my stuff.

I made a Jalapeno cornbread tonight though. It was a good thing to test. Muffin method for this bread and I need a more accurate scale. It was alright, but I wasn't happy with the flavor or the texture. It was too...cake-ish and needs to be less so. The flavor was bland. I could taste the jalapenos, but after that it was not impressive. More work to do there before I share with everyone.

I learned how to make pasta from an Italian chef tonight. I want a pasta machine. Now. Yesterday in fact. That and basil pesto...fresh, that stuff is amazing. I will never buy a jar again.

I am out. Thanks for the comments to those stopping in.

New Things A-Comin'!

So, no foodie stuff today except to say that I am preparing to do a couple new things with ideas I have gleaned from reading and listening and one recipe that I received from a friend from HS. (Yes there are people in my HS Class that actually still talk to me. Deal!)

So what are these two lovelies? One is a rib steak and the other is a catfish fillet.

This week I am going to try something I have never done - BLACKENED Catfish. I normally fry it breaded but I have decided that since I have a cast iron skillet, it is time for me to attempt a blackened version.I don't know how it will come out since I will have to assemble the blackening seasoning myself (No pre-bought) and with it I will make a small jalapeno cornbread loaf and make a small batch of beans.

The rib steak is based on a recipe given me by my HS friend and since she was kind enough to share, I was willing to try...problem...I have no bourbon in the house. Funny - I live on bourbon st and yet have none! It is part of her recipe but I have none...but what I DO have is Hefeweissen. SO...a little adjustment here and there and a marinade that tasted good in the bowl and I hope goes well with the steak. Oh - the other thing I didn't have was Tabasco - go fig - so instead, some hot curry. D - I will let you know how it goes!

Keep an eye out!

Saturday night kitchen follies...although Chef Ramsay might call it a nightmare.

I wonder if i had a cuss jar in Hell's Kitchen, would he pay it? Anyway...

I had half a chicken left over from my Sticky Lemon Chicken the other night and I needed to use it or run the risk of my fridge getting a visit from the EPA. Not many things worse in the fridge than an old decaying bird in a bag. My head hurts thinking about it...BUT enough.

I had a very nice day in DC today. I was only in for a couple hours but it was nice to walk around. One of these times I will get into DC when the sky is blue and I can get nice pictures. I am definitely going to go in on a nice day for cherry blossom time. More on that later...this is a food thing.

As I try to do, I got all things together for my mis en plac and as silly as it sounds (it is after all, French), it really helps things move along. In case you wonder why those TV guys get things done so quickly (besides having a staff and tons of money) they have all the software and hardware squared away prior to the start of cooking. Sure, it might take only 30 minutes to make, but often there is at least 15-20 minutes of prep for a 30 minute dinner. Here's how things looked after prep.Please note that the potatoes are not cubed. I should have done that before getting started.

The total dish has several parts to it, but if you have three burners, one small sauce pan and three skillets you can do it all without washing a pan. I used my cast iron skillet for the fowl since it was going into an oven, my non-stick for the potatoes and the small fry pan that came with the apartment for the sauce. The only real hassle I had was lack of decent counter space. {Another rant...I hate cooking on electric. Have I said that yet? You will likely read it again. It's a real pain to get used to after having the luxury of gas for all these years! /rant}

So, away we go with a couple pictures of the bird frying up. Included with the disassembled chicken are olive oil and a couple sprigs of fresh thyme and after the flip, a couple bits of butter go in. You can see how nice and crispy the skin gets after being on the heat for a little bit. Hint for the skin...pat it quite dry with a towel and it will crisp up nicely and without burning.


After about three to five minutes on each side, into a 325 degree oven to finish off. This takes about 20 minutes. During this time, you start the sauce and while the sauce is building, back and forth between the potatoes and the sauce. The asparagus is last and takes only a few moments, so nothing needs to be done right away.

The sauce is built in a couple stages. While the chicken was being prepped and seared, the Morels were re-hydrating in hot water. I wound up having to get those at Whole Foods in Silver Spring because the mega-marts around here are like many others and don't have out of band stuff. Nice store, high $$. Anyway...

The morels will absorb some water and also leech out into the water they are soaking in flavor that you will want to recapture, so don't throw the bathwater out after getting the babies. Medium high heat in a good pan for the sauce and you heat some olive oil and toss in garlic, shallots and thyme for just long enough to get some color on them. Then you will add the morels with a little more oil and some S/P and cook for about another five and then pour in most of the soaking liquid that you held in reserve as well as some dry white wine.

While this is cooking down to almost totally reduced, you can get a start on the potatoes. They are in a small pan which is brought to a boil and they cook for only about 4-5 minutes and then drained and into a skillet. You will cook these with garlic and thyme. Occasionally toss them about to get them brown on all sides. Don't forget the sauce. It reduces down and you add some chicken stock, reduce some more and then add heavy cream. I screwed up at this part. The cream didn't break, (it was out long enough to warm up to room temp so it didn't freak out at the heat) but I got impatient and didn't let it reduce enough so the sauce wasn't as thick as it should have been. It isn't supposed to be anywhere at gravy consistency, but it should coat the back of a spoon. Anyway, it was still good. The whole works goes into a sieve/strainer and you mash on the bits to get all the goodness out and into the sauce.

About now, the chicken is done and out of the hot box it comes to relax for a few while you make the asparagus. When you get the asparagus on you should throw the pancetta into the potatoes to cook in and it crisps up very nicely. A little salt and pepper now on the tubers as well. The asparagus is quick and if you have a griddle pan use that. If not a regular skillet or fry pan will do. Cook it in olive oil and with some salt and pepper and it doesn't take long.

The recipe calls for all breasts. I used the rest of the other bird as I said before, so there is dark meat in there too. If you are like me and appreciate looking at a nicely plated meal, even if for yourself, you can do this with it, set it up and nom nom nom. It was very good.

This isn't a "walk in the park" since there are a lot of variables. I reduced the recipe in my head to make half and it turned out ok. Gotta remember to let that sauce reduce and keep an eye on all the elements. The recipe calls for fresh morel mushrooms to be sauteed and placed on the chicken, but I had a difficult enough time finding the dried ones that I decided I could fore-go them without seriously compromising the dish. I suspect that makes me a donkey to its creator, but hey - I'll do it right next time if he complains directly to me and gives me a budget!


By the way - I am sorry for how the photos and text are all dorked up. The editor I am using isn't very friendly and I am struggling. Any suggestions for a good blog editor would be nice.

Friday night baking...

I had some starter left over from my last effort. Today was day 10. I had to make it. Had to. It's a rule...when you have starter at 10 days you have to make the bread. I love this stuff. So, I decided to take pictures while I did it. Why not. Even though a lot of people know how to make this (and it isn't that hard) there are those for whom even something this simple, just isn't.

So here's the thing - "Amish Friendship Bread" ISN'T. For more information, read here and don't blame me.

Once you get the stuff in and do the whole 10 day thing, it's nothing more than a matter of mixing it together and baking it.

Back to the 10 day thing. I don't know how others feel about this, but I am occasionally hesitant to give someone a bag of this stuff. It isn't because the starter is terribly expensive or that I have a great deal of emotional attachment to it. I worry that people will take it out of obligation and then just toss it. That's waste. I loathe waste. (I loathe my waist too!) So here's a rule for anyone actually reading this - if I offer you a bread and a bag and you don't want the bag, take the bread and tell me you don't want to make it yourself. No problem. I'll give it to someone else. If you do want to try but are really unsure - keep reading.

Ok, so at day five you added the flour, sugar and milk keeping those hungry little bacteria eating and belching until day ten when you fed them again and did the whole day ten thing of adding more flour, sugar and milk and making new starter bags, etc. You have a setup like this:

Please note the metal. Yes, I use non-reactive metal bowls and a number of non-reactive metal tools. There are some instructions out there that foist off the idea that you must use a wooden bowl and wooden spoon. I am sure that there are some purists who will absolutely refuse to believe that this isn't an Amish thing and will use a wood fired oven and mix by hand. Yeah. Not me. I have Georgette and I love her. So, into the bowl - add in the day ten flour, sugar and milk and mix.

I love a whisk for this since the resulting concoction is more a batter than a dough and the whisk helps break up the flour a bit. Don't whisk with power or so fast that you insert air. This is meant to be a dense sweet bread not fluffy stuff. Also, over mixing will cause the gluten in the flour to really wake up and the resulting bread will be more tough than you would like for this.

Once I have my one cup of starter in Georgie's bowl, into the stand it goes and I add the wet team, of which sugar is a part. If you use a hand mixer, LOWEST speed in a deep bowl to prevent splatters and to help combine the liquids.

Now your batter/dough is quite mixed and time to add the dry team. This while thing CAN be done in one step, but I find getting the wet team together first helps the flour incorporate a lot easier with less mixing..remember we like lots of gluten in a baguette, not in Amish Friendship Bread.

I run the dry team (minus the pudding mix) through a wire sifter once just to break it up and to help combine the ingredients before they meet the wetness. Once combined, into the bowl and on low to get them together until mixed enough to kick up the speed to the next to lowest while adding the pudding mix.

I let this go for about a minute and a half on low speed to get everything nice and happy, scrape the bowl once and go again for about 15-20 seconds. Good enough and the resulting dough is now VERY sticky and needs some encouragement to come out of the bowl into the bread pans.

A note about bread pans. In the photos I am using the little ones with 4 small loaf sizes and those are fine, but you can also use two regular 9" pans. They should be sprayed with non-stick spray (over the sink please. That stuff is even more slippery on the floor...get it?) and then coated with the cinnamon sugar mix. I would do this over the sink as well. Sugar crystals make kitchen floors a lot more crunchy and sticky then they are meant to be.

Be careful adding this glue-like dough to the pans. It will kind of fall off of the spoon you use in sheets and once it hits, it's there. Once in the pans, sprinkle the top with more cinnamon sugar mix - it's sweet bread people! Make it with love and don't hate the cinnamon sugar! Then, into the hot box for the prescribed time. My recipe calls for 60 minutes but I am down to about 40 for the smaller loafs. While the bread is fairly forgiving, I wouldn't go much longer than an hour under the heat, so set a timer and stay home.

You will love the way this stuff makes the house smell. I know that the walls in this apt are thin enough (trust me - I know) that the neighbors are likely to smell this too!

Once they are done, out to cool long enough for the loaf to pull away from the side of the pan and then out onto a cooling rack. About getting them out - use the back of knife to run around the edges to help loosen before you turn these out. You are using the BACK of the knife so you don't dork up the sides of your pans. Turn them out onto a cooling rack and let them mellow out for a few hours. You know what to do from here. See the paper under my rack? Easy clean up baby! No crumbs all over.





Now it's a matter of trying not to shove an entire loaf down your face in one sitting.














Have fun. Tomorrow I am making another chicken dish and will post results here.

People who teach...

It's no wonder that I get bored in classes easily. Now, this isn't a self-righteous patting myself on the back, but I tend to compare instructors that I am supposed to be learning from, to people that know how to give good, concise, clear instruction on a subject. Believe me, I have had some good teachers and some not so good. I have had really bad ones as well. Today was one of the top of the worst.

The thing is that there is absolutely no excuse to be a bad instructor in the military. They require a school to learn to be in front of a class, they teach you how to talk and work on avoiding bad habits that distract students, they make you get up over and over to force you to learn not to look at the stinking board that has your slides...it's all there. The one thing that they can't overcome is lack of subject knowledge. That is what frustrated the fer-schnockers out of me today. I am not sure that this guy knows anything beyond his script and he spent so much time looking at his own power points that I am convinced he had not seen the material until today. BUT he said that he has been doing this or a while. Yikes.

This frustrates me because he seems to be a decent guy and as a result of today's debacle, I am afraid that he has totally jacked up his chances of being viewed as someone who knows what they are doing. There were several people in the class looking utterly lost because he was all over the place, consistently not finishing sentences and failing to answer questions. The topper was when he tried to talk about a subject off the cuff which he was totally unprepared to do (or was totally clueless about). It really was sad.

I know I have this thing about instructing. I have dorked it often enough in my early years that I am willing to be a bit more patient, but it makes me realize all the more what needs to happen before you have a class full of people looking at you.

I want to take this guy aside and encourage him to get someone else to do this until he is better! I know, I know...you only get better by doing. Yeah - true. BUT you do in small portions until you can do the whole thing. You don't take on an entire course of instruction and "umm" and "uhh" your way through it while people are getting lost and you are missing entire segments that are KEY to the future parts of the class!!! {pant gasp wheeze}

I AM breathing!!! Ok. Enough. I'll deal, but I hope this pulls through. I need the information that this class is supposed to put out and if I have to sit through a few weeks of this, I'm gonna have to shove a pencil in my ear.

That'll hurt.

{/rant}

Worth the price of admission....

Well, after much putting off and meandering about in the apartment, I finally threw on a movie to listen to (I need to get some music in the living room..not just the TV) and started in on something that I watch Ramsay make on his show, "The F Word". The show is about making good food and making it fast, thereby avoiding Fast Food (which is the F word). Tonight, I made a dish he calls Sticky Lemon Chicken with Champ. As it turns out, champ is an English rendition of mashers with scallions. And it is yum.

Starting with the basic ingredients in a mis en plac, I felt ready to tackle the dish. It isn't exactly hard, which is the point of the food on this show. I realized one thing that I will change for the next time I make this: I will de-bone the breast...it was done at the end no problem, BUT was a pain to deal with on the plate.

(I just turned on my iTunes and hit the play - go fig it started off with the theme from the show! I crack myself up!!)

The addition to my kitchen of a splatter screen to cover the pan is coming SOON...I had to scrub every surface of the room.

Get the oil hot - but not smoking - and don't be afraid of the thyme. It adds great flavor to the food as well as smelling great. Fresh is imperative. USE FRESH - yes you have to pick the leaves and stems a bit but it makes a big difference!

Once the chicken was browning, I was able to start peeling the potato. I only needed one since it is just me. If making this for four, I would use two or three med-large tubers. I used Russet since that is what I have on hand, but the recipe calls for King Edward potatoes. Look here if you want to know what it is, but it seems to be close to what we call a red potato. Get it cubed and into the water to bring to a boil. Don't forget the kosher salt!

You put thyme and fresh garlic into hot oil and pop goes everything...you can't see it in the picture, but that stuff was having a day. Ah well, clean up is worth the happy of good food.

After the meat is nice and brown, crank the heat down

(aside) I hate cooking with electric. It is so stinking painful to adjust heat and get temps right. I want my gas stove back, but I also want an electric

convection oven. Yeah. (/aside)

and you add the sherry vinegar and reduce until you add the soy sauce and the honey. It really starts to take on some color and a new (and splendid) smell fills the air. The recipe calls for a "Good splash of hot water" at this point and I was a bit unsure of how to handle that. I put in roughly 2 oz and I think it was a bit much. I would add less next time and also the lemons go in at this point. You cook this over med-low heat to reduce to a really nice syrupy sauce consistency during which time it's time to get the champ done.

I had the milk and cream in a small sauce pan so that once the potatoes came off the heat, I could get them warmed up and ready after the spuds were run through the ricer. I have always wanted a ricer and now I have one. I love the thing. Easy to use and the texture of the potatoes was still very good even with no hand mixer involved. Once the potatoes were abused, they were mixed together with a couple "knobs" of butter.

(aside) It is fun to see different terminology in food. What we call a "pat" of butter, the British call a "knob" and there are of course differences in temps and measurements...I used a total of 50ml of "double cream", which I interpreted as heavy cream, and 50ml of milk. It turns out to be just under 1/2 a cup. (3.38 for those that might be counting). Of course I didn't use the oven with this meal, but I have found that 200C is going to be the temp for another one of Ramsay's recipes that I will try. (/aside)

Then I added the "Spring Onions" aka scallions and the hot cream/milk and mixed it up. Still needed a bit more salt and I like pepper so in some went. After mixing, the champ was at a consistency I really like, so I didn't add any more liquid.

What you don't see in the pictures is that I steamed some uncut green beans and they were on the side. The whole thing took less than 45 minutes to put together, start to finish: that is prepping the ingredients and cooking. It really was quite good and apart from watering down the sauce a bit too much, I think it turned out pretty good.

Here's the final product.















I really enjoyed making it and eating it was definitely not a chore. Worth the time. Try it. Now.