Tag Archives: cooking with da fat man

August 27, 2011 · 7:09 pm

Cook’n wit da fat man- Welcome Home edition

Mrs S returned home this afternoon, hopefully this time for a spell.

Things in Cali are going better than we could have hoped for. Things in Houghon Michigan are worse than we expected, but frankly we don’t give a shit about how the kid gets off to his Jr. Year. All focus now, middle kid and his College admissions BTW, Auburn still his top ranked school.

So this evening we, Mrs S andI, find ourselves in an empty house. Girlfriend is off to see Big Time Rush at the State Fair. Middle son is working at Andy’s Grille at the State Fair and we’re all alone, or as I like to to say, Camp Clothing Optional.

Mrs S does not say that in case you were keeping score.

But, a fella has to try.. as I tell her, when I stop trying, then you should start worrying. So to what could welcome home my long absent bride than a special home cooked meal? In my mind, and if I had a wife who cooked, nada.

Chez Sank

Yesterday I bought a pound and a half of locally produced America Lamb at the Co-Op. Practically soiled myself in excitement just thinking about fresh lamb. These came home and went into a marinade of olive oil, fresh thyme, garlic, House Seasoning, and a few pepper flakes. Let that sit overnight. This weekend I actually hung out around the house, my first weekend at home in no less than 8 weeks. Being home meant I could head over to the Apple Valley Farmers Market.. man I wish we had something like that near the lake place.

I purchased a basket of green beans, aka haricort verts. These I sauteed these with some garlic, shallots and red and purple bell peppers. Here’s the method, heat a couple times round the pan of olive oil in a skillet, one that you have a good top for, that’s a challenge around here. Add the peppers, garlic and shallots and saute until fragrant. Add a pinch or two of pepper and garlic salt. Add the beans and mix around as they cook a bit. Add about a 1/4 cup of chicken broth and cover. Turn down the heat to simmer.

Rice- I really like the Royal Blend brand, especially their wild rice/brown rice mix. For this I toast some almonds in a skillet, about a handful will do. Then a few tbl spoons of olive oil into a deep pot. Heat on med-high. Add half a diced onion then add the rice. Saute the rice for a few minutes, stirring the whole time. Add a just short of 2 cups of chicken broth, if th

e rice is hot enough it will boil instantly. Cover with a tight lid and turn down to simmer. Let it cook for about 15 minutes. At 15, add the nuts and a hand full of dried cranberries, stir well and recover and let it simmer for another 5 minutes or so. When the rice is fully cooked remove from the heat.

For the lamb- grill on a high flame, about 6 minutes a side.

If I don’t mind saying so myself, this was a pretty damned good welcome home. Just to show what a decent husband I am.. add a very nice bouquet of flowers, also fresh from the farmers market. Make the daughter add a “welcome home Mom” hand made card and a bottle of Mouton Cadet and I’m thinking I’ve done everything I can to impress my bride.

And while she liked the meal and commented so, after dinner she thought the best way to celebrate our first empty nest experience in 4 years would be to go out and weed the yard.

Back to the drawing board.

 

2 Comments

Filed under Cook'n Wit Da Fat Man

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 11, 2011 · 5:37 pm

Shamless Plug- Chef Earl’s BBQ

The Fat Man here doesn’t usually plug food from other folks, but in this case I’m going to make an exception.
Thursday’s from May to October Nicollet Mall in MPLS becomes a mile long farmers market. Actually, it’s really grown over the years and now, between the normal farmers market stuff, the several food trucks, crafty stuff, political booths, musicians, performers, and street preachers (My favorite today the guy screaming the gospel wearing a “Cover Your Breasts” hat, I mean come on, who’s offending who here”), not to mention 1000′s of office workers, tourists and Twins fans it’s quite the sensual and tactical affair.
And I usually like to drop a few quid on some veggies while I’m there, especially later in the season when you’re actually buying stuff from Minnesota.

Anyway, I happened to stop while working my way thought the crowd in front of a booth where a certain Chef Earl happened to be selling a line of BBQ Sauces. This weekend at the lake I’m doing up ribs on the BBQ, daughters been asking. Sad thing is no one is going to be there, and I do make some good ribs.

Anyway, BBQ sauce was on my mind when I happened to find myself face to face with Chef Earl, turns out he’s not only a good cook, he’s a good salesman as well. Before I had a chance to say no I was tasting his many sauces:
Sweet Hickory, Golden Honey Hickory, Mesquite D Lite, Somewhat Spicy, Stupid Hot, That’s Hot and Extreme.

Holy cow, they were excellent, way better than store bought and waaaay better than the stuff I’ve been making this summer. Wayy.
Personal favorite- Stupid Hot. Sweet, tangy, not particularly hot to be honest but for Minnesota standards, it had a bit of kick. The balance of flavors was what had me hooked. Awesome.
I bought a bottle of the Sweet Hickory and will be using it on the ribs this weekend EXCEPT.. kids found it and tried on the burgers I made for dinner tonight. Might need to get another bottle, they drained about a 1/3 of it they liked it so much.
I suggested that they just skip the meat and pour it into a glass over ice. Might have done it too had I now intervened.

I don’t know the story behind Chef Earl… need to learn more. I do know that ffor the moment the only place you can get this stuff is directly from him, either contact him or hit one the Farmers Markets.
There is a website and maybe someday soon you’ll be able to order from there.
Remember, Sank only plugs what he himself loves.

Here ya go-

http://www.chefearlsbbq.com/

BTW, looks like they’re just getting started and there is no contact info on the website yet. More to come I’m sure.

3 Comments

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

April 20, 2011 · 8:21 pm

Cook’n Wit Da Fat Man- Passover Edition

“This dessert is fantastic.. for a Passover dessert” The big asterisk “Passover”.

Passover is not a holiday associated with great deserts. Matter of fact they kinda suck.

Think about it, what sort of delicious desserts would you create given the restrictions of not being able to use leavening agents or flour. Makes for some flat desserts.

Which is why this is also why eggs are so popular this time of the year. While my Christian friends are all buying up eggs by the dozen to color up and toss around their yards, we Jews are buying them up to bake with. The typical Passover dessert recipe;

I cup sugar

Some quantity of matzoh cake meal, which is nothing more than matzoh ground to flour consistency.

Some quantity of potato starch, since the matzoh wouldn’t have any natural gluten left.

And 8 dozen eggs, separated. Kidding on 8 dz, but 6-10 isn’t out of the question. The whites and starch create the illusion of raised bread and cakes but allowing the batter to hold some air when it’s baking. The problem is.. it tastes terrible.

Terrible might be to harsh. Tastes like a Passover dessert.

Some options available, ice cream- who doesn’t like it and it’s Kosher for Passover.. as long as you didn’t serve brisket for dinner. Damn.

Um.. Fruit. Everyone loves fruit. To a point. Case in point, put a bowl of fruit and a bowl of donuts in an office meeting and see what the natural demand for the two are.

I tried fruit. We ate some. Some. And dumped a lot.

You can make an angel food cake that’s pretty close to the real thing using matzoh flour and lots of eggs.

Flourless tortes.. those should work, as long as you look out for baking powder.

I found one that I really liked and I made it on Monday night. I was pretty good. In this version the flour is replaced by homemade almond flour and the starch is left off, all of which makes it KforP. Added bonus it’s Gluten Free as well.

1 ½ cups silvered blanched almonds
8 oz Semi-sweet chololate
1 stick, softened butter
2/3 cup sugar
½ tsp almond extract
1 tsp finely chopped lemon zest.
6 eggs separated

Set the oven to 350.

In a food processor, process the almonds until they’re powder, put them in a bowl.

Refill the food processor with the chocolate, process until it’s granules, not powder. Dump the chocolate into the bowl with the almonds and add 1/3 cup of sugar. Mix together well.

In a mixer add the whites from the six eggs and 1/3 cup of sugar. Beat well until the whites are stiff.

Add almond extract and lemon zest, then fold in the almond/chocolate/sugar mix.

Spray coat a springform pan.  Pour the mixture into the pan and back for 40 minutes. Test with a toothpick.

3 Comments

Filed under Life

Tagged as , ,

April 14, 2011 · 4:53 am

Cook’n Wit Da Fat Man- My Kitchen Basics

Kitchen Basics-

I had a chance to update my assortment of cooking stuff recently and wanted to share what I came up with, and how I’m using them. Now, I’m not quite starting from scratch, but close enough. My collection of pots and pans and utilities consisted of the remnants of a few different sets of pots that we’ve purchased over the years, dregs and survivors mostly.

So off I went to restock my kitchen the way I like it.

Things I had to have-

New Garlic Press- Now, I’ve had some good ones and I’ve had some bad ones. Since I was at Target, I opted for the Michael Graves version. Michael Graves is one of Target’s designer partners who have put together some very cool and very functional items, matching design and usability. Neat stuff, especially the coffee maker and the teapot. I wanna like all his stuff, but, sorry to say, on this item.. total fail. The Graves press is difficult to use because 1) the square shape doesn’t hold a large garlic clove very well, and 2) when I pressed down on a particularly big clove.. the handles bent. FAIL. So, I got to find one like the one I had a few years ago, one piece of steel. with oversized old guy handles well equipped for someone who’s got arthritis. I loved that one until some jackass in the family took my suggestion and used it to strain ginger through it and subsequently broke both handles off. Not so good for ginger, great for garlic.

Cutting board- I’ve had a couple over the years and tend to go with the thick white plastic versions. DO NOT like the thin ones that kind of fold up.. we have a couple of those at the lake. They’re at the lake because I cut them from the prime time team at home. The one I found had black plastic handles that helped “stick” it to the counter. Handy. I bought two, one for meat and one for veggies and dairy. It’s made by Oneida and runs about $25.00, worth the extra.

Knives – I’ve spent a stimulus package of cash on kitchen knives in the last 30 years I’ve had a kitchen of my own. Not including wedding presents from a quarter century ago, we’ve had Wustoff, Chicago Cutlery, ceramic, steel, Cutco, ronko, Buck and OldTimer knives. Common theme, they all cut stuff. They do it better when you first buy, crappier after several years.  Chicago Cutlery in particular didn’t even cut stuff well when I first bought them. A few years ago I had a big epiphany in the knife department.

While at a fishing/outdoor show thing many many years ago, I got suckered into the ginsu demo and bought a couple ginsu all purpose bread like serrated knives. Bought one for the lake and one home, I think it was a BOGO deal. Well, guess what. After a few months I found that I was going to my ginsu’s almost exclusively, cheapest knives in the drawer got the most use. I’m never spending $700 on a knife again. I picked up a set of Henckel Santoku knives, came in pack of two, for about $20.00. These were very decent knives, stainless, one piece of steel, through the handle..

Two years later I couldn’t be happier with them. Also, they’re still sharp, my left thumb is about 1/16” inch shorter now they’re so sharp. And after a couple years the handle on one is getting lose, and rather than fret about it.. I’ll toss it and get a new one. I’m only out $15.00.

Pots and Pans

Here we go, where the rubber hits the road.

First up- fry pan: At the lake I have a lodge logic cast iron fry pan that like more than two of my kids. The thing is perfectly seasoned after 10 years of use and never having washed it. The patina makes it the finest non-stick surface on the planet. I do everything from eggs and pancakes to deep fried bluegill in it. And, never clean it, other than a quick hot water wash. When you borrow my cabin, you get a  welcome packet that talks about how to use the appliances, entertainment stuff, well and potties, and.. starts with the admonition “DO NOT WASH THE FRY PAN”. Just say’n.

I had a roommate in college who ate fried sausage 3X a day for the 4 years. BTW, he is still alive, a testament to being German and predisposed to sausage. He didn’t clean his sausage fry pan the entire two years I knew him. He’d cook the meat, wipe it down with a paper towel and toss it back in the cupboard. At the time I thought it was kinda disgusting. Then again I came from a household where everything was polished and shined to with in an inch of it’s life.

AN INCH.

Even the only cast iron thing we had.. a small pan that was constantly scrubbed until it was shiny and, as I’ve learned now.. useless.

Turns out, the roommate was a genius. Actually pre-genius, his true genius would come out later, and people pay him a couple hundred large every time he speaks, in my book, that’s a genius.

I get told to shut the hell up. That, is being a moron. But I am comfy with it.

Anyway.. Here’s the deal on fry pans, in my experience.

1)     Cast Iron forever. The beauty of a dirty cast iron pan.. not dirty but seasoned, is that they are essentially non-stick, and as we’re learning, non-stick with no carcinogens spreading coatings. And while that’s nice and convenient and all, seasoned cast iron allows food, and specifically meats, to char a bit with out foaming up, which adds lots of flavors. And for breakfasts.. they can’t be beat. Oh.. Lodge Logic is the cast iron of choice at Casa Del Sankary.. it’s sturdy as hell, maybe a week bit too sturdy as it’s heavy as heck and inexpensive. $20.00 for a 12” pan at Target.

2)     There is a role for non-stick pans. You don’t need the best of the best.. but don’t go totally cheap either. The cheapo pans lose their coating quickly, and stuff sticks to them and who knows what you’re ingesting. I like the T-Fal pans I found, they were pretty inexpensive, but the coatings were quality and pans were decent. Plus the had a little red spot in the middle that changes shape when heated to let you know that the pan is ready to go. I know a little water does the same thing. One more thing, I knew I liked them, but when America’s Test kitchen rated them as a best buy I figured I had good taste.

3)     Stainless. I have one deep-dish stainless pan that I use for curries and paella and such. It’s from Cuisinart. I like it.. I use it, but you really have to watch the heat on it or you’re going to burn stuff and, permanently stick them to the bottom of the pan. Which is a bitch. You wind up soaking it, heating it up, soaking it some more.. The thing that keeps s me coming back to it over and over again; the tight fitting top that holds in steam. A great one-pot meal thing.

Dutch Oven

-        My Martha Stewart Cast Iron enameled Dutch Oven, and this was from Macy’s, which knocks off the LeCruscent cookware that’s about 4X the price, is the single most useful cooking pot in my kitchen, BAR NONE. Kid you not. I use it for more things than any other pot or pan I own.

The beauty of the thing.. you can brown meats and onions in the thing, add ingredients and liquids, cook stove top, cover and put in the oven.. chili, soup, rice dishes, deep fryer, roaster, pot roast, coq au vin, Moroccan Chicken, beef stew, it’s all there, in one pot, no muss no fuss. If you get nothing else on this list, get one of these.

Sautee

-        Allclad. Well the Cuisinart knockoff that’s made the same way. Allclad is a stainless pot that comes come 3, 5 and 12-quart sizes I think. It’s basically a copper pot inside a stainless pot, which means the heat is even distributed throughout the ENTIRE pot, not just the bottom. Since a real Allclad 5 quart pot goes for about $200.00 I looked for a reasonable knock off. T-fal makes a lookalike, but it’s only got the copper on the bottom. Cuisinart has a real knockoff that uses an aluminum core that heats uniformly across the sides and so forth. Same principal only at $60.00 or so at Macy’s, a much better deal.

-        I also keep a small 1-quart pan to heat butter, olive oil.. basics for adding ingredients to other stuff. Mine is a Target T-Fal.

Wok

-        I did replace my wok, my original stainless wok from San Francisco that I got at a Chinese restaurant supply. Ya must have a decent wok to make any kind of Asian food, and since we tend to like Korean, especially Bimbim Bop.. had to have one.

-        Problem with a wok, as I’ve noted here, you can’t really get them hot enough on a home stove, especially a home stove with glass top. Never going to happen. I bought a green version from Target, $30.00.. sits on the glass with a flat bottom, important to help get the heat required. BTW, used it recently to make beef with broccoli, fantastic.

And that, is how I retooled my kitchen. The rest of the stuff, measuring cups, spatulas, etc.. get what ever you like, just do yourself a favor and actually pick the utensil up and get a feel for it in your hands. I bought a peeler a while back that I didn’t do that with, thing was a piece of crap that actually hurt my hands to use. In cooking gadgets, a test drive goes a long way.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 23, 2011 · 8:04 pm

Cook’n Wit Da Fat Man- Breakfast

Breakfast- Haven’t dealt with breakfasts yet..

Lemmie start by saying I’m not a big breakfast guy. I don’t particularly like the choices for breakfast. I don’t like eating that early in the morning to be honest.  My favorite breakfast is about 4 cups of coffee and a bowl of cereal. That’ll do me. My current favorite cereal BTW, Weetabix.. It’s an English cereal that you can get a Trader Joes. Comes in biscuit sized pieces, about 24 to a box, I usually break up 3 of them in the morning, add some dried blueberries and call it good.

9 mornings out of 10 that’s about all the effort I can muster for breakfast.

But once in a while…

Mrs S and the kids have two favorite egg dishes that are known to make appearances on weekends, especially at the Cabin.

First dish, one I stole from Good Earth in Cupertino CA. I think they called it Eggs Lorraine or something like that. Pretty simple- Scrambled eggs with diced scallions and chunks of smoked salmon added, then, just before its done, add small chunks of cream cheese and season with House Seasoning.

Even I like it, and I typically wouldn’t eat eggs unless there’s nothing else on the menu.

BTW I don’t have to tell you to cut your eggs with a bit water before you scramble the right? You know not to use milk right? You all cook, you know that water makes them fluffier. Good, glad we didn’t have to cover that.

Now, the next version is less of a recipe than a menu. Referred to in the family as “Israeli Breakfast”. Israel is one place that I think, gets breakfast right. Seriously when I’m there, the best part of the trip is the breakfasts. Contrast this with visits to England where typically the worst part of the trip are the “English cooked breakfast”, especially when beans are involved.

No one should eat baked beans at 7:30 in the morning, especially when they’re going to be spending the rest of the day in an office working. That’s my experience anyway.

Back to the Israeli Breakfast-

All good Israeli breakfasts start with the breakfast salad. The key to a good breakfast salad, chop every thing as fine as you can. Typically I make my breakfast salad with;

-        Spinach

-        Seedless cucumbers

-        Tomatos- lots of tomatos

-        Carrots, and really chop these very very fine. BTW if you can find them, red carrots are really good and sort of attractive in the mix.

-        Parsley

-        Scallions

Chop all the above very fine. In a bowl rub the sides of the bowl with a garlic clove. You don’t want a ton of garlic at 7:30, almost as bad as beans. Add the greens. The dressing is 35% Olive Oil and 65% lemon juice with a bit of salt added. Make just enough to lightly toss in the salad.

Bread- good pita bread is ideal, but you can also use good dense whole wheat bread.

Sour cream or plain yogurt.

Zatar- If you can find it, try Middle Eastern groceries or spice shops. Zatar is a middles eastern green herb that looks kind of like oregano. Mix a bit into the sour cream or yogurt. Just enough to add a little more flavor.

Scrambled eggs- Typically for this I’d use basic no frills scrambled eggs, mixed with a bit of water for fluffiness.

Assembly- Start with the pita or bread. Smear on the sour cream or yogurt, add some eggs and top with the salad. Fold it up into a sandwich and enjoy. My daughter in particular can eat about 4 helpings of this, keeps her from asking for snacks until about dinner. If you really wanna go Israel on this one, serve with some pickled herring, maybe a side of humus. We typically don’t add the fish. Little early to be wrecking your breath for the rest of the day.

What I really like about this breakfast.. make lunch irrelevant. Mmmmm.

 

 

1 Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 16, 2011 · 6:43 pm

Cook’n Wit Da Fat Man- Crispy Stuff

After eating fry bread taco’s last Friday, I’ve been sort of on a bad food bender. BAAD food. Fried stuff that’s going to shorten my life and sabotage my Weight Watchers subscription.

If it wasn’t that it was so delicious I might even resist eating it.

But I can’t because I am weak. That’s the first thing I learned at weight watchers, I am weak. Accepted. Next. Weight watchers for men, really isn’t. Matter of fact I’m pretty certain that many of the “men” staking the WW FOR MEN boards are in fact women who think they’re helping.

Example, no one supports my saving up all my weekly “extra” points for the weekend to use on alcohol. The idea that a good substitute for a pint or two of Summit Ale is a Miller Light, 1 mind you because beer has a lot of empty calories. I get that, I think a better substitute is scotch which has less calories but more alcohol. However, the idea that I would save up 30 points or so in order to drink 7 scotches seems alien to the WW folks. I thought it was a nice compromise.

They weren’t impressed with my breakfast either. Bowl of Weetabix (Man do I love me some Weetabix and keep your anglophile comments to yourself. It’s even more delicious on Saturday morning when eaten whilst watching EPL Soccer on the Dish for some reason.) Whoops I digress. Breakfast- Weekdays, A bowl of Weetabix and 6 cups of coffee. Black. No points in coffee. And still they frown on it. Clearly there’s a Mars/Venus thing going on over at the WW’s site. Not sure I have the energy to point out that out them.

But the fact is, every once in a while you want something crispy. Frying is great for crispy, but not the only option. So here’s a couple quick things this week that weren’t on the WW list of great food, but which the kids effectively inhaled.

 

Turkey Tenderloins.

No such thing as a tenderloin on a bird. When you buy a turkey tenderloin from the mad scientists at Jenny-O you have to ask, exactly what part of the bird did this come from? Especially when there’s two of them in a package. So.. here’s how to make them work.

Slice the loins into ½” thick slices.

Put several slices of crusty French bread in a food processor and process them to crumbs.

Three shallow pans- Flower, Eggs beaten, bread crumbs. Heat up a pan, add some canola.. olive doesn’t seem to work for this. Run the slices through the flower, eggs and bread crumbs, in that order and fry’m up. 2-4 minutes a side.

Baked Crispy Chicken Breasts

The other version, a bit healthier.  This one works great for those disgusting bagged chicken breasts you get in the frozen section. The ones they add salt water too in order to add taste to what would otherwise be tasteless chicken flesh.

In this version swap the breadcrumbs for corn flakes. Put a cup or so of cornflakes into the processer and grind them down. Swap the eggs for 1 cup mayo, 4 tbl Dijon mustard, handful of grated parmesan cheese. This time start with the mayo mixture, then the cornflakes.

Instead of frying them, put the coated breasts in the oven at 400 for about 20-25 minutes until done.

Both of these methods add a nice crispy coating to the meat, adding great texture and taste.

 

1 Comment

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 9, 2011 · 9:16 pm

Cook’n With Da Fat Man- Bimbimbop Korean Mix Bowl

Wok Trouble.

I like cooking Asian food. I love the spices and flavors, I like to think that you can make it pretty healthy without compromising taste or texture, which is actually pretty easy if you avoid a few things like those deep fried chicken nuggets that seem to be the base of all the fast food Chinese places out there. Healthy gets easier when you try cuisines that aren’t as well known or commercialized. Korean for example, Vietnamese, Japanese as well.

Up until recently, I didn’t do as much Asian cooking as I’d like because I was having so many issues with my wok, one of the main tools of the Asian kitchen. Here’s the problem, it’s almost impossible to get a wok as hot as it needs to be to really make it effective in the home kitchen. In Chinese restaurants the woks are usually heated on commercial grade gas stoves, turned up to high. The heat allows the food the be seared and this bit of burning that goes on carmalizes the sugars in the food, while cooking it very fast, preserving flavor. You’ll also notice in these restaurants that the chefs’ look like their throwing food around the pot, this is key to keep it from burning. It also allows you to cook with less oil.

Bottom line however, with a glass top stove I have no chance of getting my wok hot enough to cook properly. Even an electric range is going to have issues. The cap in space between the wok ring that goes over the burner allows the heat to dissipate too much.

Enter my cast iron Lodge Logic fry pan.

No one says you have to stirfry in a wok. True, the shape of the pan, the round bottom and such make it easy to stir fry, but as I’ve learned, it’s more about the heat than the shape of the pan. My cast iron pan, the one I’ve used for three weeks, has quickly become the pan of choice for much of my cooking, I love the way it holds the heat and how it’s become virtually non-stick now that it’s good and seasoned.

One of the families favorite meals is Bimbimbop, a Korean version of mixed grill so to speak. It typically has some form of bulgogi or marinated beef, veggies and eggs. It’s a great weeknight dinner because it comes together fast. Sometimes too fast so you it’s good prep and be ready. Once the skillet is fired up, things happen fast.

If you plan to try this one, my suggestion is to go out and buy a set of Oriental bowls, big ones. Makes the recipe easier to fix.

To do this right, you need to start the night before with the marinade. Typically I use rib eye steaks for the meat. Figure about half a streak per person. (like many Asian dishes meat is a condiment here and not the main course ingredient)

For my marinade I use:

-        1 cup soy sauce

-        Handful or ½ cup of brown sugar

-        2 tble chopped and crushed ginger

-        3 tble mashed garlic

-        4-6 chopped scallions

-        1 tble red pepper flakes

Mix the ingredients in a big bowl. Slice the steaks into thin strips and put in the marinade and refrigerate over night.

Cook’n time-

Start two cups of jewel rice on stove. Jewel rice can be found in the Asian section at Super Target, that’s where I get it, in your store you’ll want to look in the Asian section.

Turn the oven on to 200 degrees.

Assemble the following, keeping everything in little separate piles.

-        Cooking oil for the pan

-        Fresh spinach, chopped well.

-        4-6 scallions, julienned.

-        1 cup or so shitake mushrooms, sliced thin.

-        1 red pepper, sliced thin

3 carrots, shredded

-        Bean sprouts

-        1 English cucumber, julienned

-        2 tbs of Chili Paste from the Asian food store. AKA Gochujang, the Korean term for it.

Once the ingredients are prepped, fire up the pan. It’s got to be hot, hot enough that the oil is just smoking. Cook the meat first. You could grill it as well, but since winter is never going to end this year, I have no hope that my grill will be accessible ever again.  Besides, when you cook the meat you’re going to want to keep some of the fat for the next steps.

Start with the meat. Brown the meat until it’s well done. I like it a bit charred, adds to the taste, usually about 5 minutes should do it, more than that you haven’t cut the meat thin enough. When the meat is done take it out of the pan and set it aside.

Next up, scallions, carrots and peppers. Put them right in the hot pan and stir briskly. Add the Chili paste and stir it in. Cook until the veggies look a bit roasted. Remove from the pan.

Next, mushrooms. Cook the mushrooms about 2 minutes, until they’re just getting a bit soft. Toss them around a bit, then remove from the pan.

Next, spinach. Cook the spinach for about 1 minute, just until it’s wilted then remove.

Turn down the heat on the pan.

Assemble each bowl as follows. ½ cup or more of rice, portion of meat, then onions/carrots mix, followed by mushrooms and then spinach. Put the bowls on a cookie sheet in put in the oven. The bowls should be big and you should have about ½ the bowl filled at this point. You want room.

Re-grease the pan and start frying eggs. 1 egg for each bowl, sunny side up. You want the eggs to be just this side of runny, they’re going to be mixed in the food later.

As the eggs start coming done, remove the bowls from the warm oven and place the 1 egg on each bowl. Add the sprouts and cucumbers, sprinkle some sesame seeds on it and serve. It looks really good if it’s done right, and it tastes fantastic. We serve with soy sauce on the table.

For a variation you can add kimche to the bowls as well. For more heat, Siriacha pepper sauce is delish.

 

 

 

 

3 Comments

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 23, 2011 · 9:06 pm

Cooking Wit Da Fat Man- Special Occasion Dinner

This last weekend was our monthly Dinner Club. The Dinner Club we belong too has been a huge part of our life for over 14 years. The friends we’ve made there are closer than family to Mrs S and I, and we have looked forward to these dinners with great pleasure since the second one we ever had.

The first one didn’t go so well.

We didn’t drink at the first one, we were all too nervous.

We got collectively and individually plastered at the third one. They’ve gone swimmingly since. More than swimmingly. However, not so swimmingly that we’ve been getting together on a monthly basis like we used to, this last one was the first one since Christmas. OK that’s not so bad, Christmas however was the first one since uh.. October maybe? And before that it was last Spring as far as I could remember.

While this isn’t a “gourmet” club, I do like to make something a little special for the event. And, I like to find things that aren’t that complicated. This weekend, while I was special, I failed on the complicated thing.. went very complicated on the side dish.

Because this is sort of a special occasion, I wanted to make something that we don’t have often, Mrs S had a great suggestion; lamb.

I love lamb, a lot. A good roasted leg of lamb is a great fancy company dish that doesn’t require a ton of work to get right. It does require a ton of money mind you.. The recipe that I used for this was one from Mrs S’s mother.

I have had some bad experiences with lamb from my childhood. Over-cooked tough lamb smothered in some nasty mint jelly. If you roast lamb at too high a temperature it gets tough and dry. The secret is low temps and some DO NOT overcook. Shoot for an in internal temp of about 150 degrees. If you have a decent leg this will give you a nice mix of meat that’s well done, medium and rare.

I picked up my roast at Von Hansen’s in Apple Valley. A shameless plug, I have never been disappointed with meat I’ve purchased there, the staff is beyond helpful as well. When I called to order the lamb they had it defrosted and ready to go for me two days after I ordered it. 8.5 lb leg of lamb was about $70.00 I don’t by it often enough to know if this was a good price or not, but for quality I figured it was worth it, plus it’s not all that easy to find leg of lamb this time of year.

So, here’s what I did with it-

The recipe was a mustard glaze. For an 8lb roast:

1 cup Dijon mustard

3 crushed garlic cloves

½ cup olive oil

2 tsp dried rosemary

2 tbl soy sauce

1 tsp ginger

To prepare-

Slice the garlic into thin chunks. Imagining Janet Leigh in the shower, do your best Norman Bates and stab the hunk of meat with a steak knife. Don’t go postal on it, more the Death of 1000 Cuts style slice. You want to torture lamikins not kill her.

Yet.

Insert the garlic slices into the cuts to season the meat. Kidding aside, spread your cuts out a bit.

Place the lambs leg upside down on a shallow roasting dish. Using a brush, coat the meat with the mustard mixture, completely covering it. Turn it over and do the same on the top. The lambs leg should be completely yellow.

Let the meat sit out at room temperature for 1 hour. Yes, 1 hour. Time it.

After an hour put the meat in a 325 oven for 25 minutes per pound. YOU WILL NEED TO CHECK IT with a decent meat thermometer. Don’t rely on the timer, you want to be accurate.

When the meat is done, remove from the oven and rest for about 20 minutes.

Here’s a crisis averted.. when I made this on Saturday, I was shooting for it to come out of the oven at 6:45 thinking we’d eat at 7:30ish. Based on the above I had about a 200 minutes or a bit over 3 hours. So, put her in at 3:30ish. With the large bone.. she cooked faster than I thought. At 5:45 the temp hit 140. Daddy was a little worried. I tented it with foil and put it aside. Good news the meat held the temp and at 7:00 we were still at 130 degrees. Dodged one there.

In addition to lamb I made a potato galette.

Galettes are usually made with apples, it’s a crusty sort of French cake. To make a savory one I used potato’s and thyme. The recipe came from Cook’s Illustrated. It’s very short on ingredients but super long on technique.

2 ½ lbs Yukon Gold spuds

1 stick unsalted butter

1 tbl cornstarch

1 ½ tbl house seasoning

1 ½ tsp chopped rosemary

With this recipe you’re shooting for a layer like cake. The potatoes need to be sliced into 1/8” thick slices, something a mandolin would come very handy for, if I had one. Just a note, Cooks Illustrated recommends OXO Good Grips V-Blade Mandolin Slicer as best pick. Target has them for $39.00.

To prepare-

Put the oven rack to middle and fire that bitch up to a scorching 450 degrees. Before you start, make sure you have skillet that can handle 450 degrees, I did not. Instead I purchased a Lodge Logic cast iron 9” skillet at Target. Pre-seasoned.. which is code for NOT seasoned. But never mind it will be soon enough.

You’ll also need to make sure you have a 9” metal cake pan, foil and one of the above- pie weights, rice or coins. In that order.

One more note, at the lake I have several cast iron skillets and they are by far, some of my favorite cooking pans. Once they’ve been seasoned and have the patina on them they are truly non-stick, they heat fast and evenly, and are super easy to clean. Only down side, they weigh about 50lbs so if you drop them.. broken kitchen tile. And toe if you’re lucky.

Back to the galette.

Slice the potatoes. My cooking mentor and hero, Toni from the next door is a former pampered chef rep and has a lot of cool toys. One of them is the apple peeler and slicer thingie. She suggested we try it. I ran a couple spuds through it and it didn’t work so well, the corer piece took much out of the middle of the slices. I wound up using my Cuisinart instead. Sadly it cut the slices a wee bit too thick me thinks.

Here’s what you do.

When the potatoes are sliced, wash them in a colander to remove the excess starch and the dry them thoroughly. I used paper towels placed all over the counters. While they’re drying whisk up 5 tbl butter with the cornstarch and rosemary and place in a big bowl.

Thoroughly spray the skillet with cooking spray. You want NO sticking.

Coat the slices of potato with the butter mixture then… place 1 slice in the middle of the pan. Overlapping the slices in a circle cover the bottom of the pan, then do the same creating layers of potatoes until you’ve come to the top of the pan or you run out of potatoes. Make sure the top is even.

Put the pan on the stove and heat on medium high until sizzling and the edges of the potatoes are translucent. About 10 minutes for me.

Peel off a 12” piece of foil, spray it with cooking spray and, spray side down, cover the potatoes. Using a metal pie pan press the tin down on the foil and potatoes, compress as hard as you can. Fill the pie tin with 2 cups of pie weights (something else I didn’t have) or rice or beans. Remember you have to use a lot of rice.. I think I was a bit lite on the weight.

Put the skillet and cake pan into the 450 degree oven for 20 minutes. Using your best oven mitts remove and take off the foil and pan. Put it back in the oven for another 25 minutes until a paring knife easily pierces the middle potatoes.

Double up on the oven mitts and, using a wooden cutting board, cover the skillet and do the flipsky. The potatoes are supposed fall out like a tart which you can slice and serve.

Mine, alas, did not. It didn’t stick so well. Some of the slices on top, which had been on the bottom, slid off. However, what it lacked in attractiveness it made up for in taste. However, I needed a save for the table.

We had some asparagus in the fridge I was going to make for the next night.

I turned the oven to low broil, broke off the hard ends of the asparagus by hand (always by hand never by knife. That the veggie naturally breaks on it’s toughest part) tossed it in olive oil, sprinkled house seasoning on it and put it under the broiler, 5 minutes one side, then shook the pan, 5 minutes on the other.

On a serving plate I separated the potatoes in half, to piles if you will and put the asparagus down the middle. Honestly, it looked really good, and tasted better.

Add my version of fatoush, the Egyptian salad my mother makes. Finley chopped spinach, English cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, carrots and some parsley. Garnish with toasted pita bread crumbled on top and a lemon juice/olive oil dressing. Very fresh and bright and a nice compliment to the meat.

Served with a nice Spanish Rioja.

One of my best efforts in a long time. Delicious.

2 Comments

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

February 16, 2011 · 10:19 pm

Cooking w/the fat man- Weekend Stews w/Herbs De Provence

This has been a pretty light cooking couple’a weeks at the Casa, my week nights have been occupied with no end of highly engaging and fun activities. I’m growing every day, an not always in the way I want to be growing. IE I’d be a lot better off of I could just shut my mouth once in a while, or as my Dad would say, time for the pushitaway diet.

Here here.

But, it’s still winter here. It’s still cold and the family (Wife) still asks for some hearty dishes that have enough leftovers to keep people in lunches the following week.  A favorite, my beef stew. What makes mine a bit different, I think anyway, is the addition of one of my favorite “secret” ingredients, herbs de province.

I like French cooking. A lot. I like the high comfort factor I get from la belle cuisine. My own families cooking when I was growing up was somewhat inspired by French cooking. It’s hearty and delicious, especially if you get away from haute cuisine. I’m thinking more southern France, maybe it appeals to me because the earliest ancestors I’ve been able to trace back to my birth mother hailed from the Dauphene region, the area around Grenoble, aka the French Alps. Romantic notion except herbs de province I’ve learned was more or less invented in the 1970’s.

Never mind, good food is good food and if I used all food I like as a genetic marker I’d be a Korean-Chinese guy from Venice. AKA Marco Polo.

One of, if not my most favorite kitchen item is a heavyweight enameled 5qt Dutch oven. In the winter time this thing is THE go-to pot for winter cooking. Stews, chili, soups, all come out of this stove top crock pot. The beauty of this thing is that I can brown and cook meats and veggies all in the same pot. You can heat it up to fry temps, and the lower it to simmer allowing you leave all the flavors where they belong, in the pot.

Beef stew obviously starts with good beef. You can buy it already cut up as stew meat if you’re lazy or you can buy your own butt or sirloin and cut it yourself. I don’t how that works because I’ve never bothered to cut it. Yeah I’m lazy. For this recipe about 2lbs of stew meat should do it for a family of 5. That will leave some leftovers.

Other ingredients-

3-4 carrots, peeled and sliced.

3-4 celery stocks cut in half the long way then sliced into chunks.

2 yellow onions diced fine. There’s a technique for this that works pretty well, saves you from getting teared up and insures even small pieces. It’s slick and can be found here.

4-5 cloves of garlic minced through the press.

1 red pepper sliced and chopped

5-7 small gold potatoes, quartered.

Do all the prep work up front, saves time.

In addition make sure you have olive oil, House Seasoning, bay leaves, red wine and of course, herbs de province. Archer Farms has a decent version of you can’t find the little earthenware pot the gourmet places sell.

Like anything good, some assembly is required.

Heat up the Dutch oven to med-high.

Swirl a generous amount of olive oil in the bottom of your Dutch oven. Amount? Cover the bottom with a thin coating. As the oil starts to smoke a bit, which for olive oil is a low temperature, add the meat. Using a wooden spatula stir meat to keep it moving a bit. Add palmfull of house seasoning as the meat is cooking and keep stirring. BTW, a palmfull is about 2 tablespoons or so.

Keep stirring. When the meat is browned on the sides, but not done mind you, remove it from the pot with a spoon or tongs and set aside. To the hot beef drippings and oil add the onions and garlic. Using the wooden spatula keep scraping the black bits off the bottom of the pan.. those are the flavor bombs. When the onions are translucent add a good palmfull of herbs de province  and 2 bay leafs. Stir well.

Add the rest of the chopped veggies and a cup of water. Allow the mix to come to a boil, add the meat back into the pot. Add a cup of dry red wine and another cup of water and bring to a boil.

After boiling, reduce heat to low, cover the pot and allow it simmer for at least an hour. At an hour check on the liquid levels in the pot. You might need to add a bit of water or beef broth depending on how much liquid you like in your stew. Personally I like mine a little more hearty and less moist.

Serve the stew with a crusty baguette fresh out of the oven for the ultimate French country experience.

This also works served over a good wild rice/white rice mixture.

You can also do the same thing with chicken. In the chicken version, use a cut up fryer. For leftovers I add a couple extra chicken breasts as well. Dust the chicken with house seasoning, brown in the bottom of the pot.. cook about 5 minutes or until the skin is browned. Remove from pot and repeat using chicken broth instead of water in the pot.

With chicken I’ll often substitute leeks for onions. Seems to go together better.

Enjoy.

3 Comments

Filed under Life

Tagged as , , ,

February 9, 2011 · 10:33 pm

Cooking wit da fat man- Cooking vs. Making Stuff

Wednesday folks, another edition of Cooking wit da fat man.

Dare I say that I can call myself a cook, as opposed to a guy who does the cooking? A guy who does the cooking, in my view, is that guy or gal, who can follow a recipe with good results, but takes no joy from the experience. These folks never deviate, lacking the essential quality of a true cook, culinary curiosity.

I like to think that I’m cook because I do have that curiosity. One of the reasons that I love Iron Chef on the Food Network, putting up with the lame ass chairman and stupid commentary , is that the chefs go into each episode with no recipes and no idea of what they’re going to make, they let the ingredients spark their ideas. Now, I realize that when you’ve cooked as long and as well as a Bobby Flay or Mario Batalli it doesn’t take much to inspire you, and lets be serious, you’ve probably worked with any of the ingredients that the chairman can come up with. The deck being a bit stacked after all.

My Iron Chef challenge, what to cook when I haven’t really planned to cook and therefore need to scrape something together.  How do you approach the question “what should I fix” when you have to deal with what’s in front of you?

That is exactly the situation I found myself in on Saturday night. Dinner time was coming and I knew two things 1) I didn’t want to go out, either to a restaurant or to the grocery store. What ever I made would have to come from things we already had. 2) It couldn’t be pre-packaged stuff, we’ve completely cut that out of the diet and I just never buy stuff that comes in a box. It also had to be kinda quick, Mrs S and I were hungry.

So, how do you do it?

For me I start with a good rummage through the pantry looking for things to build on. We’re blessed and I mean this most sincerely, with a pretty well stocked pantry most of the time, we don’t ever have to worry about food.

My pantry presents more of a challenge actually.  I’m currently in a mode where I’m trying to move through some things as we’re overstocked in a few categories due my compulsive hording when it comes to things I need. For example, if the weeks recipes call for a can of tomato paste, get three, ‘cause you always should have some of that stuff on hand. This explains why we have no less than 3 cans of Libby’s pumpkin filling, every Thanksgiving I think we’re going to make a pie and that I’m going to need some pumpkin filling. Every year our guests bring pies. This has been the situation for like 10 years. And still, I go to the store, see the endcap of filling and think… .69 cents? Better get one. Just in case.

Tomato sauce, chicken broth, rice, pasta, ketchup, packaged tofu, frozen orange juice, frozen chicken breasts..seem to be things I think we need regardless of what we have at home. I’ve been challenged to work through some of what we have before I buy more, in other words, “Check the damn cupboard before you go to the store please.” Legitimate challenge, and I’ve been doing much better, many of those items I can now say, we’re down to one week of supply or less.

For me basic building block usually starts with pasta. Do we have any pasta? If we have pasta I have something to make. In this case we did, we had a year old bag of Trader Joes rigatoni in the back of the pantry. BINGO.

Next up, the sauce. In the days before I would have called myself a cook, I might have just cracked opened a jar of Newman’s sauce and poured it over the pasta, maybe, just maybe added some ground beef and called it done. I try not buy jars of pasta sauce anymore, my one exception, I use Ragu when I make my meatless lasagna simply because it’s easy and I’m usually in a hurry when I’m making it.

Since I make my own sauces now I had to check out the fridge and pantry to see what I could throw together. In my mind I was looking for peppers, onions, some kind of meat and any tomatoes. I struck out on the peppers, but I did find a container of cherry tomatoes I was going to use for a salad that I never got around to making. I also found a stick of smoked deer sausage, half a tub of smoked “deli style” turkey slices and some feta cheese.

SHAZAM- it was all clear now. A Mediterranean thing was coming together in my head.

A little more digging found a jar of olive tapenade I had bought for a dinner party last summer. Quick sniff said it was still fine. A little more digging in the produce drawer, and I came up with some basil, a bit wilted but we could use it, and half a bag of spinach.

Now, we were good.

I put the water on for the pasta and heated up my favorite stainless steel skillet. When I was in New York a few years ago I had lunch at an Italian deli that felt like it was right out of the 1930’s. The women in charge, when I ordered the gnocchi told me, like a good New Yorker that “she wasn’t interested in making what I had ordered” and I should choose something else. I told her to pick, which lit up her eyes in a big way. I then watched as she poured about half a bottle of olive oil into a skillet and started adding all sorts of stuff. I’ve been doing that ever since.

So, while the pan was heating up I started in on chopping the onions, garlic (we ALWAYS have garlic on hand) basil and spinach. I cubed the deer sausage and the turkey. Since the turkey was sliced wafer thin like I hate, I rolled it up, cut the roll in half long ways, then chopped the two sections. They would fall apart in the pan, but it made handling it for the prep easy.

When the pan was hot I poured in the olive oil, another staple we always have on hand, and here, I was super generous, like 1/3 cup. Olive oil would be the base of the sauce, not tomato sauce. As the oil heated  I added the onions and the garlic and let it cook until it was fragrant and the onions translucent.

A few weeks ago I made a chiliquillies that’s supposed to have sautéed onions. I forgot to cook them and added them raw to the bake. Many family members had issues with heart burn and I’ve had to promise to be more careful with my onions. Please be careful people, you could hurt someone you love.

While the onions were cooking I sliced the tomatoes into quarters. I added a handful of Italian Seasoning, half a palm of pepper, and a light tablespoon of Archer Farms Chipolte Pepper powder to the skillet, stirred it, and then added the meat. Both meats were already cooked but I wanted a little maillard reaction on the meat, or slight charring.

By now the pasta was ready to go into the pot. I can’t say this enough, key to good pasta is a good timer. Rigatoni from bag to al dente is about an 8 minute boil.

Meanwhile, back on the skillet I added the olive mix,  basil and spinach, I let spinach cook down then added the tomatoes. About now things were starting to smell pretty good. Covered the skillet, turned it to low, and waited on the noodles. When the noodles were done I added the feta to the skillet, stirred it in and removed it from the heat. I was trying to keep the tomatoes from over cooking, the only really tricky part of this thing. I wanted them warm cooked, but still with a bit of texture and crispness.

I added the contents of the skillet to the pasta and tossed it well.

The results were excellent. The smokiness of the sausage and the pepper powder played off the feta very nicely, the olives added just a bit of sour and the tomatoes were sweet, perfect consistency. That was luck BTW, more than skill.

I was especially excited about this dish as 20 minutes before I made it, it didn’t exist. Like all improv kitchen experiences, pieces of it existed in recipes I’d made in the past, things I’d eaten at restaurants, things I seen on TV. But until I got in the kitchen and rolled up my sleeves to make it happen I had no idea where it was going.

I’m thinking some of the best recipes come from playing around like this.

3 Comments

Filed under Cook'n Wit Da Fat Man

Tagged as , , , ,