Using reduced fat cheese in an egg white omelet doesn’t mean you should use three times as much.
Archive for the ‘Food’ Category
Note to self.
May 15, 2008A Pickled Chicken.
May 12, 2008Meat contains three layers of water. There’s free water, which is the stuff running out of the raw meat. There’s intermediate water, loosely bound to the tissue. Lastly, there’s bound moisture which is essentially the water chemically bound tightly to the cell walls of the muscle. This water is unable to exit the meat during cooking. By brining, it is possible to build a salt bridge via a positively charged sodium molecule between the water in the intermediate layer and the water in the bound layer since water has a net negative charge. The end result is the retention of the intermediate layer of moisture within the meat and a nice juicy meal. The salt also adds flavor. I could go on about how the difference in osmolarity between the salt water (high) and the bird (low) causes a migration of salt molecules (and whatever other flavorings you might add) into the meat, but that would just be nerdy of me.
This weekend we smoked a chicken I had brined with the solution below. I’ll grant that it was a tad salty because of the additional salt from the pickle juice, but the flavor was fantastic, and this was maybe the juiciest bird I’ve ever made over dry heat. We smoked it on the trusty Big Green Egg, sitting up on a half empty beer can. Before cooking I coated the bird lightly in olive oil, salt, and pepper. I’ve cut the salt back a little in the recipe, so this should be a sure fire brine. It’s what I’ll be using next Thanksgiving…. and I take my Thanksgiving turkey very seriously.
Brine:
¾ cup kosher salt
¾ cup pickle juice (I had Valasic kosher dill)
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tsp red pepper flakes
5-10 black peppercorns
2 quarts warm water
4 quarts (aprox) cold water
Mix dry ingredients in a large stock pot. Add warm water and stir to dissolve. Add cold water. Submerse cleaned bird. Add more water as needed to cover the bird. Refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
Note: When brining a turkey, I usually use about 2 cups of kosher salt, dissolve it in a small amount of warm water, then dilute with half cool water, half ice in an ice chest. Then I sink the turkey and add more water to cover. As long as the lid is tight on the cooler, the ice will easily last over night, so I don’t have to find room in the packed fridge.
Ricotta Cheesecake
May 11, 2008This was an invention of mine for Valentines Day. It’s a compilation of many recipes I found. I’m told an actual graham cracker crust would make it better.
Softened butter, for pan
Graham cracker crumbs, for pan
32 oz ricotta cheese
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tbs orange liquor
Zest of one orange
1 bar dark chocolate, melted w/ 2 tbs heavy cream or milk
Butter 9 1/2 inch spring form pan. Coat bottom and sides of pan w/ graham cracker crumbs. Tap out excess. In mixer: soften ricotta cheese, add sugar, flour, and salt until combined. Add eggs one at a time. Add flavorings and orange zest. Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 300F for 1 1/4 hours until light brown. Cool completely. Top w/ melted chocolate.
Tilapia Veracruz
May 7, 20082 tbs olive oil
1 white onion, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bell pepper, seeded and sliced (I had orange laying around)
1 jalepeno, seeded and diced (I ran out and used hot pepper paste)
½ cup red wine
28 oz can of whole tomato, strained
12 large olives, pitted and sliced
1 tbs capers
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp cumin
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
zest of one lime (sorry…. I’m obsessed with zests)
1 tbs butter
2 fillets tilapia- coated in olive oil, salt, and pepper
Heat large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add onion slices, stirring occasionally, until just soft. Add garlic and pepper slices to soften. Deglaze pan with red wine. Crush tomatoes into pan. Add seasonings, olives, capers, and butter. Simmer to reduce liquid by not quite half. Sink prepared fish fillets into the mixture, making sure to spoon some of the liquid and vegetables on top of the fish. Cover pan and simmer on low until fish begins to flake. Serve with corn tortillas or over rice (or quinoa!)
No cheating this time. Mopping Sauce
May 3, 2008I felt like using bottled BBQ sauce in my mopping sauce was cheating, so I came up with a bonafide homemade version. Here it is:
1 stick butter, melted
½ white onion, minced
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup ketchup
1 cup white vinegar
2 cups strong black coffee
3 tbs cumin
½ tbs kosher salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
zest of one lime
juice of one lime
tomato juice to thin
Melt butter in a heavy sauce pan. Saute onions and garlic in butter until tender. Add remaining ingredients, using tomato juice (or bloody mary mix) to thin to desired consistency.
Grilled Pizza Dough
April 27, 20083 cups all purpose flour
1 cup warm water
1 tbs honey
1 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp dried Italian herbs
Fresh cracked pepper
Corn meal
Combine water, honey, and yeast to dissolve. Add flour, and herbs to liquid and work for 10 minutes. Work in extra flour as needed to form a slightly stretchy, smooth dough. Allow to rise at room temperature for 3 hours. Refrigerate in an air tight bag coated internally with olive oil for up to two days. Cut off required amount of dough and stretch by hand to desired size. Place on a peel or back of a cookie sheet dusted w/ corn meal. Build pizza on top of sheet or peel. Slide on to pizza stone in grill or oven preheated to 400F. Bake for around 10 minutes until top side of crust begins to brown.
Mopping Sauce
April 27, 2008Andy and I spent yesterday smoking our first brisket. We brined in a salt water solution, and smoked for about 8 hours over chunk charcoal and mesquite on his Big Green Egg. http://www.biggreenegg.com The results were extremely tasty, if a little bit dry. We used a mopping sauce I made up from bottled BBQ sauce and ingredients we had hanging around. Very good flavor. I started with Stubbs Spicey Sauce. My favorite.
http://www.stubbsbbq.com/
Mopping Sauce:
1 stick of butter
½ white onion, minced
8 cloves garlic, minced
18 oz BBQ sauce
1 cup white vinegar
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce
1 tbs cumin
1/2 cup black coffee
zest of 2 limes
Melt butter in a sauce pan. Cook onions and garlic in the butter until soft. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Use as a sop on grilling meat.
Definitive Recipe for Hard Cooked Eggs
April 26, 2008Back in my grad school days at Texas A&M, I was a teaching assistant for a class called Poultry Processing. The students probably remember the time they spent dressing out chickens to be used for the remainder of the labs. I think some of the best parts involved teaching a class comprised largely of cowboys to bake Angle Food Cake as a measure of egg functionality. One of the groups my first year accidentally substituted dry mustard for cream of tartar and were so pleased with themselves that they convinced me to taste it. They’d never baked so much as a tube of cookies before, so I obliged.
One of the most useful pieces of info I picked up for myself however, was how to make the perfect hard cooked egg. This will give you perfectly done, non-green, non-runny, non-rubbery eggs, with no chunks out of the albumen every single time.
The key to making sure the peels come off easily is by starting with slightly older eggs. I actually prefer eggs that I have been sitting in my fridge for at least a week. When eggs are first laid, they have a pH around neutrality. As the egg ages; however, it picks up carbon dioxide through its pores. Eventually, the bicarbonate buffer system in the egg is overwhelmed, and the egg can no longer hold a pH of 7. The egg becomes more alkaline (basic), eventually getting to a pH of around 9. The protein which initially holds the albumen firmly to the shell membrane becomes denatured and stops working. So when you cook the slightly older egg, the peel will come away without clinging to the egg white. Get the eggs too old, and you’ll have yolks that have drifted in the albumen, and won’t be centered when you split them. And of course, you are going to fully cook these eggs to kill off whatever bacteria may be growing in them.
Hard Cooked Eggs:
Place desired number of eggs in a pan. Add enough cold water to just cover the eggs. Bring water to a full rolling boil, place the lid on firmly, and remove from heat. Steep the eggs for exactly 15 minutes, and then plunge them in ice water. Tap the eggs lightly against the side of your sink to break up the shell, and roll them between your palms to loosen. Peel and use. Perfect. Every. Time.
Smashed Potato Salad
April 26, 20086 medium Yukon Gold Potatoes, chopped
¼ cup cider vinegar
½ cup mayo
¼ brown mustard
Juice of one lime
½ small red onion, chopped
2 large pickles, chopped
1 ½ hard-boiled egg yolks, chopped
3 hard-boiled egg whites, chopped
3 tbs dill, chopped
3 tbs chives, chopped
Zest of one lime
Kosher salt
Fresh cracked pepper
Boil potatoes in heavily salted water until barely fork tender. Drain potatoes and place in large mixing boil. Smash with hand held potato masher. Leave as many or as few potato chunks as desired. While potatoes are still steaming hot, add mayo, mustard, vinegar, and lime juice. Mix lightly. Add remaining ingredients and stir lightly to combine. Add extra mayo if the mixture is too dry. Refrigerate before serving.
*Personal Bias Alert* I personally think that the large chunks of potato in most potato salads are flavorless wads of congealed library paste. But: If leaving the potatoes fairly chunky, add mayo, vinegar, mustard, and herbs to the hot potatoes. Allow them to cool fully before adding the other veg. This will help the flavor penetrate the chunks a bit more. Usually I smash my potatoes but good.
Not The Knowing One 