Chili Part II - Chili Mac,

I have something of a habit of wanting to try every item on the menu of restaurants I enjoy.  This has landed me in a few unfortunate situations throughout my years but my introduction to Chili-Mac made any failed experimentation worth while.  

Steak-n-Shake was the first (and only) establishment at which I have ordered this dish (the reason for the 'only' qualifier being that I've never seen it offered elsewhere).  While I would normally have gotten a burger, in the interest of expanding my horizons, I ordered the disorderly looking dish.  In what way the combination of flavors makes the chili-mac such a masterpiece I could not tell you and as such those of you who have not partaken will have to take it on faith.  

The recipe itself is nothing challenging, so long as you have chili laying around, which I do.  And I must note - I never make chili-mac with fresh made chili.  The chili at that point has not aged enough and as such the flavors have not combined properly.  Such an unflavored chili would be an insult to the mac with which it would be coupled.  That said - given the chili - the recipe consists of spaghetti noodles, topped with ketchup, topped with chili, topped with fresh diced onion, topped with cheddar cheese (and, if you please, topped with more ketchup).  That is all, and yet, that cosmic concoction has only one descriptor, ambrosia. 

Not much to look at, but what it lacks in physical attractiveness it makes up for in culinary excellence

If you've never partaken before, I suggest ordering the dish at a Steak-n-Shake before venturing out on your own.

Another note - I mark this post as gluten-free simply, because I used gluten-free pasta.  If you do not have an aversion to gluten, I suggest wheat pasta.  Tonight's was rice.  My co-workers had suggested quinoa, however I was not able to find any at Whole Foods, though the reason for that may have been, because I thought it was spelled with a "K" until 2 minutes ago.

DnL8tar

-PCM-

Mostly Meat Chili

I do not make chili nearly as often as I ought, though the reason may be that I do not know how often that is. Seeing as how I received a new pot from my parents for Christmas perfect for chili preparation, I saw no excuse outside of laziness to not shut myself in on this snow covered day and prepare a pot of chili.
The weekend exposes a fine opportunity to make large quantities of freezable food, facilitating quick meals throughout the week. Chili sets me up especially well for chili-mac, a favorite of mine since our first encounter at Steak n Shake.  My chili however typically falls short of expectations leaving me continuously searching for innovations in the recipe. Today, my root recipe consisted largely of meat which was a departure from the norm as I am used to beans in my chili.  I have however heard rumor that proper chili goes without.

Browning in the new pot

The recipe started with ground beef and sausage, two and one pounds respectively.  Both browned and set aside.  Next a white onion, finely chopped, was also browned to an extent. Interestingly it was not long ago that I was rather timid about my browning. Fearing overcooking I would stir too often and pull food from the heat before the fruits of the act could ripen. It was not until I saw an episode of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef concerning the subject that I realized the loss of flavor I had brought upon myself.

Once the onions were done, all other ingredients were added. This included a bottle of beer, a cup of water, beef bouillon, four cloves of garlic, an 8oz can tomato sauce, half a can of tomato paste, 3T chili powder, 2T cumin, 2t paprika, 2t oregano, 2t sugar, 1t coriander, 1t unsweetened cocoa, and a few spritzes of Louisiana hot sauce.

Tonight's beer of choice

Cooking sealed over low heat I checked in on things every thirty minutes to make sure matters were not progressing too rapidly while ensuring they were in fact progressing at all.  Two hours in I removed the lid and added a water, cornmeal, and flour (gluten free flour) mixture to thicken things up.  I'm not sure if this was necessary and I've never added a thickener like this to chili before, but the root recipe called for it and I figured I would see what difference it made, though, not having made this recipe without the addition I do not have a basis for comparison.

Regardless, another 30 minutes of cooking uncovered resulted in an incredibly rich and flavorful dish.  The meat, when originally served, was still in chunks larger than I like to see in a bowl of chili.  This I remedied with a potato masher.  Normally when making chili I add spice throughout the process (a trick I learned watching some chili cookoffs on Food Network) however this time I am glad I didn't, because the heat and spice rendered quite adequately.  All in all, reasonable success, though I'm still convinced I could do better.  We will see how it fairs in the context of mac later this week.

The finished product

DnL8Tar

-PCM-

Fried Chicken Revisited

Tonight I revisited my Fried Chicken post.  Since the initial post I've found some reasonable gluten free flour so now I toss the legs in a flour spice mix.  To date however I've been working primarily with rosemary and thyme.  Today I wanted to take a stab at the "11 herbs and spices" variation on fried chicken and thus used a little more than the two spices. 

I was actually going to count out 11, but around 6 I forgot to continue counting, because I was yelling about something ridiculous happening on The Bachelor in the other room.  Some of the spice highlights are:

• Cinnamon
• Cayenne
• Paprika
• Sage
• Basil
• Oregano
• Thyme

The chicken did not turn out tasting like KFC, but it did turn out quite nice.  

I've read that many chickens are rushed to market, a scant 20-some days after hatching, which evidently is too short a time for them to develop full flavor.  This being said I have no idea how to find more mature chickens, but if I do find out I would love to do a side-by-side comparison.

Chicken Scaloppine W/ White Wine Sauce

Chicken or Veal Scaloppine w/ a White Wine Sauce is what I would consider one of my staple recipes.  However since learning that my wife has celiac making it has become problematic. After searching for some time I was finally able to find a grocer who carried rice flour as a fungible commodity.  Said grocer also had a wide variety of rice pasta, though this I had previously acquired at other establishments.

The basic recipe is extremely simple and is essentially the same whether you are cooking chicken or veal (though for veal I shorten cooking times).  The first step is to get the water on to boil.  I've found that making this the first step is of particular import when cooking with an electric oven.  Back in the day when I had a gas stove to work with, heating up water still took time, but not nearly as much... man I miss that stove.  Next you have to get your chicken / veal into scaloppine form.  A scaloppine is actually a thin cut of meat.  For some reason, probably based on the Olive Garden menu, people have formed the notion that chicken or veal scaloppine refers to a particular recipe.  This is actually not the case, it only refers to the size and thickness of the cut of meat.  If you are working with veal you want to find veal that's already prepared as scaloppine.  If working with chicken you can either do the same or just buy (take out of the freezer) some chicken breasts (skinless & boneless).  Take these and pound the heck out of them until you're working with a 1/3 - 1/4 " thick piece.

Once you've pounded the chicken thin enough, slice it up into little scaloppine.  The actual size of the scaloppine doesn't matter as much as the thickness.  I like mine slightly larger than a silver dollar but heck, you can just cook up the whole breast thin if you want.

Dredge the scaloppine in flour (rice flour in this instance due to the gluten free requirement) salt and pepper.  Heat over high heat a tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons EVOO.  Once that's slightly brown and smelling fantastic throw some chicken in there (as all the cook books say, don't crowd the pan).  Normally I pre-heat the oven to something in the 200 range, because I normally have to cook at least two batches in the frying pan (now would be a good time to mention that you want to cook the chicken in a frying pan).  About a minute per side is what I do for chicken, a shorter time frame is used for veal.

With cooked chicken removed from the pan and sitting in the heated oven I dump some dry white wine (pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc) into the pan to deglaze it... scraping up all the "brown bits" as every cooking show will mention.  I add to that diced mushrooms and drained capers and let that simmer for 5 minutes (I threw in some thyme as well though I don't always do that).  To this I add salt, pepper, chopped fresh Italian parsley, and the chicken.

And that's it.  Stir that all together and throw it on some angle hair pasta with a lemon wedge and a glass of the same wine used for deglazing and you have yourself a meal fit for a hungry person.

Sorry, no pic this time.  I was too hungry to artistically present the dish.

Meat Sauce v1.0

Being of at least 50% Italian decent (100% on my fathers side, ?% on my mothers side) I grew up treated to my Nonna's meat sauce on holidays.  Often imitated but never recreated, to my memory, this was the best meat sauce ever paired with pasta (though my memory of the sauce is fuzzy at best at this point in my life).  Years ago I was given my mothers meat sauce recipe which I believe was adapted from my Nonna's recipe.  Over the subsequent years I've abstracted from that recipe my own meat sauce style.

These days I don't follow a recipe when I make this type of sauce.  That being the case, I inevitably end up making each batch differently.  My basic preparation tact is throwing together good ingredients until the sauce looks and tastes right.  There are a few rules I tend to stick to but I typically ad lib the rest.  This being the case I'm calling this post v1.0.  I'll be posting subsequent sauce adventures as well, not that I ever plan on re-using any of the recipes, but it should make for decent reading and who knows, maybe I'll learn something by going back and reading over them (and I'm sure I can definitely pick up something via any user comments / suggestions).

In making the sauce I realized I didn't have any ground beef sitting about so the meat in the sauce ended up being bacon and sausage (not exactly healthy, but tasty... everybody loves bacon).  This batch started with a caramelized onion (ie, I started by caramelizing an onion).  To that I added four large celery stalks, one large green pepper, and 3 decent sized carrots, all diced.  I call this drop 1.

Drop 2 consisted of diced portabello mushrooms and more EVOO, of greatest import.

With drop 3 we reintroduce the meat.  Looking above I think I forgot to mention that I cooked the meat separately from the rest of the sauce.  Thus I will mention it now.  I cooked both the sausage and bacon in cast iron as I am want to do.  I did not completely cook them through though since they would cook more in the sauce and I did not want them to be a mess.  Everything that goes into the sauce, including the meat, gets a rough chop, and only a rough chop.  This ends up making the result pretty rustic in texture.  A few crushed garlic cloves go into D3 as well.

Drop 4 is all the liquid and spice content.  I went with fresh tomatoes, which is not always the case.  8 roma tomatoes diced to be exact ( seeds and juice included ).  To that I added a little over half a 7oz can of chicken broth, some more EVOO, some bacon grease, and 4oz tomato paste.

As far as spices go, here's a list, it's extensive and ordered by quantity.

• Basil
• Salt
• Thyme
• Oregano
• Fennel seed
• sage
• pepper
• 2 bay leaves 

I simmered this down for two hours.  About 30 minutes deep I realized it was too thick and threw in 15oz tomato sauce to add some more liquid content.  One thing to note concerning liquid is that I NEVER add water to my sauce.  My mothers recipe called for water, but as far as I can discern, watter serves no purpose other than watering down the sauce.  Better to add a liquid which brings with it some flavor component.  

30 minutes before the end of cooking, add one good glass of red wine (good red wine, something you're going to drink with the meal, none of this cooking wine nonsense).  This is also an ideal time to start thinking about getting your water on to boil.  

The pasta in and of itself requires some technique.  I cook it slightly below al-dente.  After that I throw the sauce in with it and cook it all together.  This seems to help the pasta soak in the sauce.  I dump some parmigiano reggiano on top of that as well just to add a salt component to the table.

Plating comes paired with green onion and parsley. 

the finished product

Fried Chicken Sans Flour

It's not often that I get around to frying chicken... or really frying much of anything for that matter.  I thought about it and I can't come up with a particularly good reason why it's a rarity.  Perhaps it's, because the process is something of a mess... or perhaps it's, because I don't always have enough oil laying around.

Whatever the reason is, said reason did not hinder me from setting out to fry up some chicken legs a couple days ago.

I'm a big advocate of dark meat.  Not only does it have more natural flavor, it's a lot easier to cook, because you don't need to worry as much about it drying out.  You can cook the heck out of a chicken leg (or thigh) and it's still going to be juicy, where as, with a breast, you have a window of approximately 45 seconds between underdone and sawdust.  There's also the advantage of cost.  Since Americans demographically are not as fond of dark meat as they are of white meat, you can get a huge sack of chicken legs for half the price you would pay for a handful of breasts.

Your standard fried chicken recipe involves you dredging the chicken in some sort of flour and spice mixture (or shaking it up in a paper bag).  My wife however has recently learned that she is gluten sensitive so for her sake I decided to try a non-flour approach.  Another change I made from my standard frying technique is using shortening instead of peanut oil.  I've never done this before but a lot of websites claimed that it added a punch of flavor ... and I had shortening sitting around from when I made cookies or something a while back so I figured, what the heck.

I did shake up the chicken legs with some salt, pepper, thyme, and rosemary to give it a little punch of flavor.  May have used a little too much salt, but the wife enjoys her sodium so it was fine by her.  After a good shake I heated my shortening to 325 degrees in preparation for frying.  I only used somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 inch of shortening in my trusty cast-iron pan.  I've seen some recipes calling for legitimate deep frying, actually dunking the whole think in a vat of peanut oil.  Where's the love?  If the literature is to be believed, proper fried chicken is done in shallow oil by turning the chicken every few minutes.

Timing for me worked out to about 20 minutes total.  I would turn in 5 minute increments, treating the chicken as though it had 4 sides, and then doing a quick minute or so on each side at the end just to give it a final crisp.  Unfortunately I ended up sitting by the pan the whole time carefully monitoring the temperature.  It fluctuated a lot as I turned the chicken and such and I had to keep finking with it to keep it right around 325.

Surprisingly (to me at least) it turned out great.  You'll find a picture of the finished product below (served with some wild rice) but that doesn't do it justice.  The dark meat allowed  for some pretty heavy cooking without drying out at all, and a little squeeze of lemon over the top at the end added some nice flavor.  I definitely noticed the absence of flour in the crust but it didn't really take anything away from the dish.  The skin provided enough flavor and texture to stand on it's own.

Starting Simple - Cast Iron Pan Fried Ribeye

I'm going to wade into this endeavour with a dish that I'm fairly comfortable with, which should allow me to focus on giving the reader the flavor (heh, flavor, food page... we're off to a good start here) of the site content.

This is a dish which I believe I saw on Food Network at some point ... let me see if I can find it ... no, can't find it.  Anyway, the idea here is that you're pan frying this steak over very-high heat very quickly.  There's a couple things going on here.  First you're getting a real nice seer on the outside, and while the myth that this seals in the juices has been widely debunked at this juncture, it still adds a flavor that no amount of salt can replicate.  Second the meat just doesn't have time to dry out.

Boneless ribeye is the cut that I'm working with here.  I go about an inch and a half thick on it which typically works out well.  Thinner and you run the risk of just burning the whole thing to a crisp which isn't even particularly good as dog food.

My pan of choice is cast iron and this pan I've been using for a good 6 years now.  It was handed down to me by my Mom and I have no idea how long she used it.  Needless to say it's well seasoned.  It's definitely seen its fare share of bacon during it's tenure with me so the whole thing is pretty well imbued with fatty (note, with an f, not a ph) flavor.

Interestingly I can't cook this meal without setting off the smoke detector.  I suspect the reason for this is the proximity of the smoke detector to the kitchen, and the fact that I fill the apartment with smoke...  So, that stands as a warning I suppose.  Open a window.  The smoke comes from the fact that you cook this in a 500 degree oven.  The pan should be in the oven when you pre-heat.  I'm not sure if this does anything other than save time, but it was in the recipe when I read it and I always do it.  Once the oven's heated the pan goes on the burner at high heat.  This is when the meat gets added.

Seasoning for the meat is simply.  A little oil (I like EVOO, the recipe suggested Canola, use whatever you want), LOTS of salt, and LOTS of pepper.  That's it.  There's an odd habit among people who are just starting to cook steaks, myself included in my youth, to load the steak with a ton of seasoning beforehand.  McCormick makes a fortune off this inclination but it's totally unnecessary.  Especially if you're working with a good cut like a ribeye, anything beyond salt and pepper just takes away from the meat.

But I digress...

Throw the meat on the pan for 30 seconds a side.  Once the second side finishes the pan goes in the oven (still 500 degrees).  Now, if something is going to go wrong with this recipe here's where it's going to happen. I do two minutes a side in my oven, but that's my oven and the doneness to which I enjoy my meat.  The first time you try to make this you're probably going to end up with overdone or underdone steak.  To get it right I had to make it about 3 times in my current oven, taking notes on thickness, time, and doneness each round.  When I move I'll probably need to do that again.

And that's it.  After that second side's done, take the pan out of the oven, move the steak to a plate, cover it with tin foil, and let it rest for 5-7 minutes so the juice doesn't just go squirting everywhere when you cut into it.  I typically serve it with asparagus or Brussels sprouts on the side (the wife has a real affinity for Brussels sprouts for some reason) but I'm not opposed to mixing it up with some potatoes or a salad.


DnL8Tar
~PCM~