Feelin' Jamaican, Mon

I was excited about today because I could actually use a recipe that requires a marinating time of over four hours.  Since today was the second day of summer, I went with an island theme, picking out the Kingston Jerk Chicken on page 241 and to go along with it, the Sweet Potatoes With Cinnamon Butter on page 342.  This morning (during halftime of the first World Cup games) I set about making the paste for the chicken.

I did make some substitutions that I probably should make mention of in the interest of what I am doing.  The first substition was to replace the habenero with a serrano pepper.  As much as I like spicy food, the habenero just has a flavor that I really don't prefer.  That, and it's f'n hot.  Second, I replaced canola oil with olive oil.  I recently acquired some nice Greek olive oil from my friend, Sean, and was eager to use it.  Upon making the paste in my food processor, I used a large bowl to cover all parts of the chicken.  There was no getting around it; I had to get a little messy.  The olive oil, I must say, worked quite well.  It retained its flavor amongst all of the other ingredients, which in a jerk sauce/marinade is quite a feat.  I would like to take a minute to say that within the last year I have discovered that I like Greek olive oil much more than the Italian varieties.  The stuff from The Boot can be too delicate and easily overwhelmed by other ingredients.  Sometimes it just downright lacks actual flavor.  The Greek olive oils have a much more interesting flavor and make the dishes you cook all the more interesting. 

I set the chicken parts in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, and turned the bag about every two hours during the course of the day.  When it came time to actually cook dinner this evening, I prepared the potatoes.

With everything in order, I needed to make my plan of attack.  I had The Forge up and ready to go, and I read through the instructions for both recipes a couple of times. 

If you look in the lower left-hand corner, you can actually see my plan written out.

I don't expect you to make much of my chicken scratchings, but I still think it's a good idea to set your course of events in writing when you have a lot going on.  It really helps me remain calm when there is a lot going on, and things tend to go better when I am calm.  The first thing to come off the grill was the chicken.

 

Then came the sweet potatoes six minutes later.  This allowed the chicken to rest (juices redistribute) while the potatoes finished.

Finally, it was time to plate and go about eating my meal.  I gave the potatoes and my bread (more on that later) a final basting of cinnamon butter, and I was ready to go!

I liked this recipe because it was the first time I tried cooking a whole chicken that was cut into parts.  To be honest, I would combine this recipe with the Chicken Under Bricks technique and cook it whole instead of in parts.  Tonight I learned that when Weber says to cook for five to ten minutes over direct heat at the end to crisp up the skin that I should lean towards the shorter end of the time spectrum.  There was a little too much carbon for my liking.  Luckily, it was the paste that burned, and the chicken underneath was pust plain perfect.  The sweet potatoes would have been terrific, but next time I will either cut the slices a little thinner or cook the slices a little longer.  They were just barely underdone, but overall I like the recipe.  It is another way to eat sweet potatoes, which previously I have never truly enjoyed.  The bread in the pic is Anadama bread, which is a bread that uses molasses as the sweetener.  I thought that it would go well with the whole Jamaican theme.  I was in the mood to bake today, it was a bread that I had never made before, and I needed to step outside of my box.  It turned out really well, and even The Bride liked it.

I Smell A Rat

Great lunch today...Spice-Rubbed Halibut With Grilled Vegetable Ratatouille from page 308. 

Speaking of ratatouille, I can't help but think of watching a recent episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.  In it, he traveled to Provence, and agreed to make dinner for some locals.  Big mistake.  He went to all of the local shops, sampled cuisine, and set about making dinner.  I love Anthony Bourdain, and would anything he cooked any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but he attempted to make ratatouille for the locals, which was hilarious.  The locals thanked him for dinner, and when Anthony Bourdain pressed them for their opinion on his ratatouille, they all agreed that he made very good vegetables.  He laughed it off and I laughed my rear end off.  Okay, so I prepped my ratatouille that I would never serve to a Frenchman.

While the grill was warming up, I also made the rub and coated the fish.

Of course I sampled the rub and agreed that Weber apparently knows a thing or two about rubs.  Well done again, my good sirs. 

All of the vegetables had different cooking times, so I took a minute and mapped out on paper when each would be flipped and then removed from the grill.  I took my digital timer (yes, I'm a dork) outside and when I had placed all of the vegetables on the grill I started my timer.  When all was said and done, I had nicely grilled vegetables for my ratatouille.

The next thing to do was allow them to cool and then cut into half-inch bits.  In the meantime I placed the fish on the grill.  I then warmed some olive oil in my sautee pan, added the garlic for a bit, and then added my grilled vegetables along with the basil and balsamic vinegar.  I then had what the people in Provence would call nice vegetables.  :)  The fish came off of the grill and I was ready to plate!

Here we go!

DOH!  I forgot the lemons!  Each plate was supposed to have half a lemon to squeeze onto the fish; which, believe me, it could have used.  The fish was cooked perfectly, but there was a small problem.   The diet that I have been mentioning recently involves eating an oily fish at least three times a week.  Thus, I have become quite used to oily fish.  Halibit is quite dry, and I felt like it needed a sauce or something as I was eating it.  It was nice, but still required something to take it to the next level.  The squeeze of lemon would have sufficed, but if I use this again, I would use some sort of basil-tomato salsa for the fish, which would match nicely with the ratatouille.  As for the ratatouille, all I have to say is that company will be seeing this as a side in the very near future.  T'was awesome.   As a side note, the white Chateauneuf-du-Pape that I had along side it paired BEAUTIFULLY with the meal.  I highly recommend anyone else do the same.

Stuffed Chicken For The Week

As we picked out our meals for the week, we knew that we needed chicken early in the week to use as leftovers for lunches.  With this mind we picked out Artichoke-Stuffed Chicken Breasts on page 250.

As always, the first thing to do was to prepare my mis en place.  I grouped the bowls by ingredients that would be added at the same time.

Overall, the stuffing is rather easy to bring together in the sautee pan.  I think it took longer to prep than to cook.

Now it was time to prepare the chicken breasts.  Because I like to learn and share techniques, I'll show another favorite tool set of mine in the kitchen:

I don't like metal "tenderizer" hammers as there is little forgiveness.  The dead-blow hammer from my carpentry shop works much better.  Okay, so step one is to butterfly the breast open.

Then put the breast between two sheets of saran wrap.

Then go to town with your dead-blow hammer.  Remember to show some restraint, but make that chicken respect your authori-tah!

Because it is recommended that the stuffing cool completely, you can take your time and prepare all of your chicken breasts in this manner, doing your best to achieve uniformity.

Then lay in the stuffing!

You will need something to hold the breasts together on the grill, and I used toothpicks.  If you have the means, in the past I have used sprigs of thyme to sew the seam, but toothpicks work in a pinch.

For the meals for the week, I actually prepared six breasts.

I grilled in two stages because I didn't want to use a whole lot of coal just to cook six breasts all at once.  This also gave me the time to clean up the kitchen.

I had already eaten a large amount of vegetables as a snack while watching the World Cup, so the plating will only show the breast.  Otherwise, I would recommend some sort of Tuscan vegetable arrangement.

This was delicious.  The goat cheese melted and integrated itself throughout the stuffing, and the sun-dried tomatoes lended a nice intense flavor.  The artichoke hearts were supple and juicy, the garlic was only in the background, and the heat from the red pepper flakes (even though I was little heavy-handed with the stuff) remained subtle.  In short, I liked it!

Corey Heads East

Tuesday for The Bride and I has been Shellfish Tuesday for quite a bit, but now has expanded to Seafood Tuesday.  This week I picked out Seared Ahi With Thai Dipping Sauce on page 305.

To go along with that I wanted some vegetables, but The Guide was a little lacking on something to go along with Asian cuisine.  It did, however, have a few Asian-influenced marinades, which I used for some green beans, mushrooms, and red bell pepper.  I picked out the Sweet Soy Marinade on page 50.  

This is where things got interesting.  One of the ingredients was Mirin, which I had never heard of.  I looked it up and it is basically a sweet rice wine similar to sake and is often used to temper the smell of fish.  It contains a large amount of sugar and is lower in alcohol than sake, and was more difficult to find than I thought.  Long story short, I had to do something a little dirty and purchase it at The Party Source. 

I put everything together, soaked the veggies for about fifteen minutes, rubbed the tuna, and set The Forge for "Surface Of The Sun."  

The grilling was quick as the tuna steak only takes about four minutes.  I then scattered the coals and quick-grilled the vegetable mix. 

A quick peak at the tuna as I plated revealed that I had done good job...much better than last time.  At the fishmonger I remembered that thickness was much more important than mass when trying to just sear the outside and leave the inside intact.

Perfect.  

I plated dinner, called The Bride, and we set about feasting. 

The tuna was, again, perfect.  The white pepper in the rub added a hint of sweetness and a nice intensity and texture.  The dipping sauce was a lot of fun - I even dipped the veggies in it even though they had a great flavor on their own - and gave a pleasant combination of saltiness, citrus, and heat.  As for the veggies, the mushrooms soaked up the marinade the best, the red bell pepper tasted the best, and I didn't quite cook the green beans long enough but I think they would have been quite nice.  The marinade will be used again, as will the Grilled Ahi.  I still think I will tinker with the dipping sauce a little, but it is an excellent starting point. 

Back On The Wagon Again

After spending a whole week pretty much cheating on the diet, The Bride and I resumed the awesomeness (there REALLY does need to be a sarcasm font) today.  The Bride wanted chicken today, so while I was home during the day I prepared Honey-Mustard Chicken Breasts from page 249.

I made the marinade and then went about making the sauce.  It was easy, tasty, but a little lumpy.

It is here where I introduce another fun toy of mine...the immersion blender!

It made the sauce a little smoother and helped to combine the flavors.  This was a good move on my behalf.

With everything in order for the chicken, I prepped the side I had choosen, Stuffed Zucchini on page 373.

In making my mise en place, I remembered to take pictures of a technique I picked up recently: the chiffonade.  It starts by separating the leaves from the stem:

Then stack the leaves in a neat pile:

The tricky part is to roll the leaves tightly and then use your knife to cut "ribbons" of herbs.

From the chiffonade it becomes rather easy to finely mince the herbs.

Okay...I know this is a lot of pictures, but hey, I'm on vacation!  I have the time!  My mise en place was now complete:

As a side note, I used a melon baller to scoop out the flesh of the zucchini with pretty good success.  I made the stuffing, and the following picture is with half of the stuffed zucchini covered in the final layer of cheese, and the other half about to be so that you could see what it looked like.

I pulled the breasts from the Ziploc bags, and was ready to grill.

It was a beautiful day and the grilling experience was quite enjoyable. 

Did you notice something?  Take a quick look at the two most recent pictures...something is missing.  Can you find it?  Here's a hint:

Oh well.  I plated and we were done!

This was a nice meal.  What I really liked was the two-flavor depth to the chicken.  As soon as you bite into the bird, the immediate flavor is, of course, the honey-mustard notes.  However, as you chew for a few seconds, the second level of flavors arrive that are derived from the mint and lemon marinade.  It keeps the meal interesting.  The zucchini was also a surprise.  I had choosen this side because it contained mint, just like the chicken which created a nicely themed meal.  What was most surprising about the stuffing was the toasty flavor from the bread crumbs.  The cheese was a fun element as well.  In summation, I would say that I liked meal, but it's not high on the list to be repeated.  It served its purpose in keeping things different every day while we are on the diet, because I doubt I could stay on the diet otherwise. 

My Decade Steak

Yesterday I completed my 10th year of teaching.  To celebrate a decade of teaching, I wanted a large piece of cow.  I selected the Dry-Rubbed Porterhouse With Barbecue Steak Sauce on page 103.  After receiving some minor heckling from The Bride about the price of my piece of beef, I set about my business.

The first thing to do was to create the rub.  Long story short: Weber strikes again.  This rub was really nice, and a pleasant surprise.  It wasn't quite Southwest in flavor, but it was close.  I'm starting to really like the freshly ground mustard and black pepper combination that keeps appearing in the many rubs listed in The Guide.  Once again, I used my dedicated spice grinder and shaker to apply the rub.

While the coals were readying themselves, the sauce needed preparation.  Overall, I'm not a fan of using a steak sauce.  In fact, I'm pretty much of the opinion that if you need a steak sauce (except the French au pouvoir sauce), you messed up your steak.  The Bride knows that it's a bad sign at a restaurant when I reach for the steak sauce.  However, in the spirit of following the recipe, I went ahead with creating the sauce.  Upon finishing it, my initial taste test revealed that this sauce was a little on the sweet side, but still had a nice tang to it. 

Once the coals were ready, it was searing time!  This used fair amount of direct heat, but the finishing touch was the indirect heat so that the rub did not burn, which is a key element as I seriously dislike "blackened" meat.

After adding some herbed potatoes and cucumber salad, the plating was complete.

Sweet Baby Jesus, I love porterhouse steaks.  I began with the side that has the filet...t'was like butter.  I've had filet mignon before, but never one that came attached to a bone.  The rub played off of the delicateness of the filet beautifully, and the sauce was not needed.  At most I could only place a small dab on each piece of steak.  Like I said, if you need a steak sauce you made a mistake in the first place.  The strip side was also cooked magnificently.  Its texture appreciated the sauce a little more, but again, I thought that it was just fine without it.  The Bride enjoyed some modest thievery from both sides of the bone.  The sauce did have a nice application, though...it worked rather well with the potatoes. 

Teaching a decade...truly worthy of a silly meal.  This fit the bill.