Chicken marinated in tandoori style spices (mixed some commercial stuff I still have, along with my own curry powder) and grilled them on the Weber, over indirect heat. This was done after I made naan, over a tile, over extremely hot coals.
Aloo mutter isn't as well known as aloo gobi, but this version, I like even better. For this one though, I added carrots also. Worked out quite well, in spite of me being a bit nervous about what the sweetness of the carrots might do to the flavor balance of it all.
But I'm seriously thinking about doing a really bare-bones, no yeast, just chemical leavener style naan one of these days, thought.
I'm reminded of the time when I first got into cooking. Well, until I got into French cookery. And I then discovered that this whole a la meuniere thing — I knew how to do that all along; I just didn't know what it was. There's nothing fancy-pantsy about it at all: catch a trout, prep it and dust some flour on it, and fry (ah — sauté it!), and Bob's yer mother's brother.
One of the culinary goals I set for myself this summer, was cold soups. Gazpacho is obvious. But then there's Vichyssouise — much harder to spell, and pronounce. But hey, it's a fancy-pants French thing, so hey, lets try that.
Well, I've apparently done vichyssouise soups before. It's just leeks and potatoes. And I've done that before — both cold and warm.
I love this. I'm all like, fucking cultured and shit, and I didn't even know it. Yeehaw. I love me some culture.
No, really, I do.
This simple salad caught my eye, but it was a tad too simplistic for me: Mixed greens and chunks of plain cooked chicken breast, tossed in blue cheese dressing and topped with sliced pears...
Plain chicken breast is just about the lowest form of meat. In "Marcella says..." Marcella Hazan — the queen of Italian cook books — decided to do chicken breasts in the style of veal saltimbocca. Her logic was that the reason why the veal is enhanced with prosciutto and basil is simply because the veal itself doesn't actually have much of a taste of its own. And what meat has less taste than chicken breasts? Great argument.
So I decided to cut them into strips, bread them and bake them. It worked a treat. Then, when I realized that hey — with the blue cheese dressing, this is almost like a Buffalo chicken strip thing. So I added some cayenne pepper to the breading for a bit of heat. This worked very well. The only thing I'd do differently, would be to quickly sauté the pear slices in a little butter and a few grains of sugar. Oh and of course, I added some homegrown tomatoes — those bastards have to be used, lest we'll be completely overrun.
Speaking ill of chicken breasts, I'd like to share something from Julia Child's "My life in France," where she describes her feelings about French, German, Dutch, and American chickens: "The German birds didn't taste as good as their French cousins, nor did the frozen Dutch chickens we bought in the local supermarkets. The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but the no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear." Bwahahah! Awesome. Damn good book — highly recommended.
The seemingly weird combination of apricot and curry caught my eye the other day. It was ment as a dipping sauce for coconut shrimp, but I decided to swap out the shrimp for fish fillets, and panko for the coconut (which isn't popular in this household). The breading method used for the coconut shrimp was interesting: dry the shrimp thoroughly, dip them in gently whisked egg whites, and finally in a mixture of shredded, unsweetened coconut, sugar, salt and corn starch. I've not seen this before.
It didn't work too well, because the breading wouldn't darken, since it was dry (coconut on the other hand, has enough moisture to brown quite nicely). So I had to add some oil, and increase the cooking temperature, and time. In retrospect this seems completely obvious, considering how fast shrimp cooks.
It turned out great, though. But the real star was the "sauce" (should it be called something else, when it's this thick?). It was dead simple: mayo, apricot preserve and curry powder. This seems frighteningly "Semi Home Made" I know, but at least I did make my own curry powder, from my own recipe.
This sauce would be great for dipping with coconut shrimp of course, but if I could just find something else that would go with this, I think I'd be onto something really nice.
Roma, Early Girl, Better Boy, Heirloomy stripey Petes and what have you; oh yeah. They're not all equally fantastic, but I know thing fer sure: every single one of 'em is better than anything I've ever had in a supermarket. And that includes the yuppie, fancy-pants hippy marts and all.
I just wish cilantro and chili peppers grew as easily as tomatoes.
Buffalo meat is very lean, so I decided to grate some yellow onions into the mix. I had to dry the grated onion out a lot, since it is so moist, and tends to ruin the (uh, sorry to get all Star Trek Next Generation here, but) structural integrity of the burger patty. Thus, I got some breadcrumbs, and shifted it through a fine sieve, so that only the smallest, most dust-like bread particles came through — to bind things together. I lucked out, and got just the right amount (eg., not enough to dilute the taste of the meat itself, but enough to keep it together). I didn't properly season the burger patties though. They needed a little salt and pepper.
Then, there's the buns... Bread making is magic. Black magic; the dark arts. I don't think Alton Brown could make sense of this stuff.
Making your own bread is kinda like Linux: it's okay for the newbie, and for the expert — but a real struggle for anyone in between. The newbie (or in the parlance of our times, the grandma user) is the primitive user, who checks emails, browses and buys things on ebay. Her mistakes are obvious, and easy to rectify. The expert nerd can make Linux do almost anything. But the dudes in between — well, they just might be better off with some off-the-shelves Microsoft or Apple product.
The whole bread vis-à-vis computer operating systems is like this:
Windows: Buying supermarket garbage wonder breads.
Apple: Buying pretentious, overpriced "artisan breads."
Linux: Baking your own breads. These users, in turn, can be segmented into three further factions: the novice (ie., bread machine), the intermediate, and the expert. I'm barely above the bread machine people. But dammit, I'm gonna keep trying.
Finally, there's the fries. A good burger deserves good fries. Deep frying is impractical — you have to cool the oil down, and then you have to dispose of it properly (you should never pour that stuff down your drain). So I go for oven fries. And they're good. Except I have a really hard time getting a crispy texture.
Pasta sauces belong in a sort of a culinary "family" that I think logically, should include other very slowly simmered things like chilies and certain curries. I worship Indian food, and have had a fantastic time exploring it. But I've had a really hard time with chilies. Pasta sauces, well, I've never even bothered trying that. But well, first time for everything.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, what set me off on this trail was an irrational desire to roast bell peppers on the stove. When you have an electric stove top, it's kinda frustrating to see cooks on TV roast bell peppers over their fancy-pants gas cookers. Well, I've got one of them now. And it finally occurred to me that well, lets have a go at that.
I mean, just roasting bell peppers. I had no idea what to do after that point. So I did a few searches and found a few things. Roasted bell peppers, basil, garlic, loads of onions (used my mandolin for that — which I normally avoid in lieu of practicing my knife skills), and who the hell knows what else. It ended up being too sweet, though. I used some apple cider and brown sugar, in addition to a whole roasted garlic clove — and some basil and parm on top, of course. But overall, I'm pleased as punch.
This is a dish I've made before, but this time around, I decided to add some cabbage that we had left over. It was a good idea — one that I'll definitely try again — but in this case, I cooked the cabbage a little too much, and the potatoes a little too little.
Prior to growing (or attempting to, as it were) chili peppers, I thought jalapeños were green. I mean, that's what they looked like, in the supermarket. But yeah, they go green, and then red. Never thought much about that. I mean, there are red apples and green apples. They don't change color as they mature. Peppers aren't growing that well this year though. Tomatoes are going wild, but for some reason, the peppers are having a hard time.
Once upon a time, I joked about how I could make procure great bread by ambushing customers who emerged from a bakery, beating them over the head with my stone-hard, inedible, home-cooked bread, and then stealing whatever they'd just purchased. That was a joke.
These baguettes aren't. I don't think I could actually knock someone out with them, but these suckers could definitely give you a black eye. Really.
The saddest bit about it is, this is the first time I've properly followed the instructions from that bible of breadmaking: The Bread Maker's Apprentice. I've learned a lot of things from it, that has helped me make better naan and burger buns. But I never did try to properly do a verbatim recipe from the book.
The book recommends a steam tray, which I've used before. But the pictures shows the steam tray on a higher rack in the oven, than the bread — as opposed to putting it underneath the bread. As much attention that is given in this book, to the differences between professional and home equipment, I find it hard to believe that this was the only thing that ruined my baguettes, but damnit, next time I'll put the steam tray underneath.
