Well, that was my reaction prior to consuming it -- after that point, I really, really liked it. If you forced me to choose between this, and a Texas style chili, for the rest of my life, I'd pick the latter -- but as anyone who likes food, I like diversity. And this is a great take on a chili. It's also a great piece of the tapestry that makes up American multi-cultural, culinary history. It was created by Greek immigrants. Good on 'em. Damn nice job.
And doing Cincinnati chili with America's Test Kitchen's method is to proper Texas style chili what putting a pop-tart in the toaster is to Julia Child's 48 billion-step method of making toast.
Also, the spaghetti stretches the meal out like nothing else... As you can see, I opted out of the kidney beans and crackers, so this was just a three way. With the beans, you could stretch this meal out to feed a lot of people.
Still, I had originally intended to blacken the salmon before adding it to the sauce -- I just ran out of time -- so I might yet have another attempt at this.
The chicken wasn't much better, to be honest.
I'm pleased that my home-made Hollandaise tastes that much better -- yet a bit distraught that the packaged, commercial stuff can be that damn bad.
And I need to stop watching Jeeves and Wooster. It's affecting my accent.
There's just nothing better than collective cooking... When friends get together and cook together, that's the ticket, in my opinion. And if your friends happens to be better cooks than yourself, well, that doesn't hurt, either, heheheh.
This was another naan attempt by me. And they were quite decent. It seems that every time I make naan, I make some sort of mistake -- which is a good thing, since you only learn from mistakes. Like chess. But nevermind about the naan; the kebabs were the showpiece of this meal. These kind of minced meat kebabs are amazing. I encountered them first at Abdul's Takeaway in Manchester; as Seekh Kebabs -- that is, lamb.
Essentially, seekh kebabs are the equivalent of hamburgers -- uncomplicated, ground meat products. The only reason why us Westerners end up adoring foods like this, is because the equivalent food in our culture has become so commercialized, homogenized, trivialized and generally bastardized, that they no longer taste very good. (I mean, hell, I make hamburgers, and I'd put 'em up against any McTurdburger, any day of the week -- and I don't even think my burgers are all that spectacular, to be honest.)
The naan was -- as always -- very interesting. They tasted great. But the damn tile shattered. I initially did my naan on a pizza stone, in the weber kettle grill, but the poor ol' pizza stone eventually cracked. So I started doing them in the oven (on a much better pizza stone, that I didn't dare risk using on the grill). But as good as I thought my naan got in the oven, I still thought it'd be better over a genuine charcoal grill. So I went back to the grill, but using some cheap tiles.
The problem with a grill and a pizza stone/tile is, it heats up too fast, and cools down too fast -- and there's nothing much you can do about it. Or at least nothing that I've thought of, so far. I heat the coals up in a chimney, so when I spread those out and put the griddle on, and the tile/pizza stone, things get very hot, very fast. In an oven, the heating up process would be a lot slower. After the naan is cooked, I'd remove the tile/stone -- and that'd cool it down very rapidly also; much faster than what you'd get in an oven (the reason why I'd normally remove them, is because I'd cook something else on the grill, after the naan were done).
This time around, I learned two things about naan: you've gotta oil the dough before you rest it in the fridge. I read that the dough should be covered with oil so that it could expand without getting stuck to anything, but this sounded kinda dumb to me. I was right. But there is another reason why the dough should be covered with oil -- so that it won't develop a "skin." I rest my dough in a "tupperware" type container, which I figured would eliminate any coagulated skin problem -- I was wrong. Covering the dough with oil is important.
The second thing I learned was, there really is no need to do any fancy-pants hand-stretched forming of the dough. Roll the stuff out with a standard rolling-pin (or a freakin' wine bottle -- it makes no nevermind) -- if your dough is good, and it has had time to do its magic, you can roll it hard and rough, and it'll expand and puff up wonderfully. Even on shattered tiles. I'm getting a hang on this whole naan business, methinks. :)
Another great recipe from America's Test Kitchen. It's very similar to a quiche, but it's less "eggy" -- and it holds a helluva lot of caramelized onions, which really makes a difference. I'm not sure if the crust is all that different though -- I'd better go check my recipes, I guess. Mind you, the way America's Test Kitchen works, there probably is no difference, and French Tart is merely America's Test Kitchenise for quiche.
Was seriously considering adding some of that salmon that I smoked (well, really just slow cooked), but I'd done eated it all, I did. Oh well.
Those little cherry tomatoes look great, with the green inside 'em. Should have added some sour cream alongside it, with the scallions.
The Test Kitchen's advice is to not to attempt this dish inside, since the required heat tends to set off smoke alarms and generally make things unpleasant.
So it's a good excuse to grill...
The peculiar thing though, is that I basically screwed it up -- yet it turned out great. I didn't get quite enough heat, and/or I didn't use enough spices to properly blacken the fish.
I just need to think this thing through a little more, and come up with some suitable sides, that can be done on the grill... It's not that I'm stingy, but I think it's a sad waste to just do one item on the grill, and then let the charcoal burn out with no purpose (in this case, I smoked, or slow-cooked some salmon after I did the tilapia). Next time around, I might actually cook this on the chimney, which I'm pretty sure would get that whole blackened business sorted.
Oh now I've got it! I'll do this with shrimp -- on the chimney. That'll surely blacken things properly. Shrimps cook very quickly so it'll be a perfect match. Oh hell yeah, that should work quite nicely. Blackened shrimp -- with uh, something else, done on the grill. The cucumber salad was actually a very good match for this, so I might do that again.
It was just a matter of convenience, but I was curious to see how the dough would react to being put back in the fridge for storage, after the whole proofing process.
One noticeable difference was that the -- oh, I'm not sure what the word is, elasticity or whatnot -- of the dough was such that it tore a lot easier. It wasn't as sturdy. So I got some holes -- you can see the hole at the top there, with the two, charred bits on either side. But below it, there is another "tear," except it doesn't go all the way through the naan. The rest of the naan is also marked by a lot of similar, irregular tears all over its surface. It seems the integrity, or sturdiness (or whatever the right culinary term is) was adversely affected by this prolonged storage. This had no negative affect on the taste of the naan though. And it actually had a positive affect on the surface texture -- I like a slight crust on my naans, and a variation in thickness of the bread itself, as well as an irregular surface texture is really very nice.
Well, this bread was anything but deflated and dense. In fact, it was far airier and fluffy than the one I stretched. It didn't have the interesting, pock-parked crust -- but then again, it didn't have holes surrounded by carbonized dough, either.
This was extremely interesting to me, since shaping the dough with a rolling pin is FAR easier than stretching it by hand. I rolled it out fairly thinly, but I didn't want to take it too far, in case it would burn. Turns out I was too timid -- this naan actually ended up fluffing up and becoming far thicker than the stretched naan. Also, it developed some of those typical bubble puff-ups that restaurant naans have.
I guess I'll go back to rolling them again next time around -- and I'll try not to be timid about rolling them really thin.
Man, you learn something every time you cook. Unless you're smart enough to get it right the first time around of course, but what fun is that? :)
I wasn't paying much attention to this poor aloo gobi, because I was completely preoccupied with my naan (I've been on a roll with those suckers lately).
Oh well, they can't all be Cadillacs.
So when I told him about this Korean soup made from dog meat, called Boshingtang, he was pretty conflicted. I would talk to this guy about food whenever I saw him (mind you, I talk to everybody about food), and he'd always be fascinated by it although he never cooks, himself. He just loved the idea that I'd eaten things like snails, pickled eggs and whale meat. The fact that he lives in a trailor park and is unemployed (and that the local vet apparently charges $50 for that sort of things, while I offered to compensate him $20 for the same service) probably affected his decision more than me talking about the food, mind you...
It's a pretty simple recipe, but some of the items aren't easily available in the US. Hell, I tried asking for some of them in various Asian markets, and was met with nothing but cold stares -- some of them even cussed at me.
But this is the recipe I ended up with:
Prep:
2 lb dog meat
2 quarts of water
3 lemongrass stalks
1/2 cup soy sauce
Soup:
1 quart of water
2 lb sliced onions
10 cloves
3" cinnamon stick
16 cloves of garlic
4" stick of ginger
4 sliced Serrano chilies
1 lb. small red potatoes
4 tbsp coarsley ground black pepper
2 tbsp salt
2. Bring a saucepan with water to a simmer, and add the dog carcass, lemongrass stalks and soy sauce, for 3 hours.
3. Remove meat from carcass (it's no different from a chicken) and set aside.
4. Combine the ingredients from the soup in another saucepan and simmer, while skimming, for 1 hour.
5. Add the dog meat to the soup saucepan, let simmer for 1/2 hours. Serve.
