What's Cooking (Take Two!)

Had the last of the goose today for brunch: I pulled the skin off the wings and sizzled it for 'bacon'. Then I warmed up the last bits of meat in a little goose fat, added two eggs and gave it a quick scramble (soft set). What yum!

We had a fair amount of the chile cream sauce as well as some of the chicken left over from our New Year's Eve dinner. I pulled the chicken out of the sauce, heated the sauce, and simmered potato cubes and green beans in it. Once the potatoes and beans were done, I shredded the chicken and threw it in the sauce just until it heated up. The resulting stew was served over rice and it was really good. Very much like a Mexican version of a Thai curry.

The really good thing about this is that it pretty much finished up the cream sauce. Given its calorie content, we don't need to eat any more for a long time to come!

[Jenise]

Mike, as you were describing it but before you said so, "Thai curry" was exactly the picture that was forming in my mind.

Last night was the first meal I cooked at home in days, and the menu was happily built around having picked up some nice Chilean sea bass in Seattle (fresh fish in Bellingham is hopeless, as I've complained before). We started with a salad of mache rosettes, sliced raw mushrooms and marigold petals dressed with a light drizzle of a porcini mushroom vinaigrette. The sea bass followed, pan fried (in black truffle butter) to get that amazing crisp exterior that no other fish does as well, and served with coins of carrots lightly steam-fried with a handful of snow peas. Accompanied by a delicious $15 Chablis that we were pained to not be able to remember where we bought it, as we would repurchase, the whole meal was the maximum of food finery for the least amount of effort possible.

Tonight I'm doing the Cornell Chicken recipe in Saveur's latest Top 100. Will report back!

...Tonight I'm doing the Cornell Chicken recipe in Saveur's latest Top 100. Will report back!

I've had a recipe for Cornell Chicken since the late 1970s and used it many times. It was given to me by the local Cornell U. Co-Op Agricultural agent, a good friend. It's very good. Your post made me look up Saveur's recipe. The only thing I see different is nutmeg. However, a local chicken BBQ caterer (Chiavetta) sells their own marinade in local store. I have been using it instead for the past 20 years, as I like it better. A few years ago, I reverse engineered the Chiavetta's marinade and posted both recipes here:
http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38487&p=363023
Let me know how it was.

[Jenise]

Howie, I remembered your discussing a similar recipe, a conversation that Jeff Grossman also participated in. I was too lazy to look them up to compare prior to cooking last night's chicken but I see you've posted it so I'll gladly read through it. But how did we like this? Well, the recipe said marinate two hours. Me, I like a really infused flavor and since I was going to oven broil a whole spatchcocked bird if the rain didn't let up (it didn't), I decided to marinate for about six hours though I was concerned about that quantity of acid pre-cooking the bird.

Result? Skin was incredible. But the bird didn't absorb that much flavor, especially the breast meat. Wings were the best part. Can't say I'd be tempted to repeat the recipe as written.

I have had the same experience regarding the marinade getting past the skin and into the meat.
From the cooling instructions in my link:
Cooking

Place chicken pieces in ziplock bag. I like to use leg quarters, back removed (save backs for soup), and pull the skin down around the “ankle?” while marinating and then pull the skin back up over the meat before cooking. Shake the marinade bottle vigorously and add enough of the marinade to generously cover the chicken pieces, squeeze as much air out of the bag as you can, close it and marinate in the fridge for 3-6 hours.

With breast sections, it's difficult to separate the skin from the meat and re-attach it, that's why I use leg quarters.

[Jenise]

I did use a Ziploc for marination, so there was lots of contact, and I pierced the inner skin to allow a lot of entry points beyond exterior saturation, but still, it didn't take like a brine does and I fear that's the vinegar.

[Jenise]

Tonight: dinner party for ten.

Amuse: rectangle of duck mousse pate on toast, candied nicoise olive.
First: mache rosettes, flower petals, raw mushrooms, porcini vinaigrette
Main: Sliced roast prime rib of pork over a mound of leek and mushroom bread pudding, vermouth gravy, broccolini spear on top
Last: composed cheese plates of soumantrain cheese, poached pears, strawberries and grapes

Your dinner party should be a great success Jenise, sounds lovely!

At our house tonight is a Frenched rack of lamb, rubbed with fresh rosemary leaves, garlic, Dijon mustard, and a local fig balsamic. Also, Tomato Rice Pilaf made with basmati rice, home made chicken stock, saffron, garlic, plum tomatoes, parsley and Parmesan cheese. Vegetable is young green beans, with pancetta, cremini mushrooms, shallots fresh sage leaves, sherry vinegar and Dijon. Pancetta is served as a garnish over the pilaf.

Great menu, Jenise!

My dinner tonight will be much more mundane: Chinese stir-fried beef with snow pea pods.

-Paul W.

Playoff football day, so we had grilled sausages, tortilla chips and guacamole, German potato salad, several cheeses, and homemade butterscotch pudding for dessert.

I decided to try the Poor Man's Sous Vide last night. Got a cheap cut of beef shoulder steak, salt and peppered it, then placed it inside 2 Zip-Lok gallon baggies. That went into an insulated plastic cooler, along with a couple quarts of 130-ish-degree water. I kept it in there for about 3 1/2 hours, checking the water once an hour and adding more hot water if needed. Then I seared it, sliced it, and topped it with a mushroom sauce.

It worked really, really well. The plastic cooler held the temperature much better than I expected, losing less than 5 degrees per hour. A little water did get through the baggies though, so next time I'm duct taping them shut. Good to know I can stop saving up for a home unit!

I've used one of these for doing sous vide - works great. Rival Roaster Oven

I've used one of these for doing sous vide - works great. Rival Roaster Oven

Pretty cool. I see the description says its thermostat's low end is 150-degrees. Is that the lowest you went, or did you manually keep track of the temp if you wanted it below 150?

Actually, it can be set to below 150. I place a long dial thermometer in it and have been able to maintain about 140 or so, maybe 135. Here's a link from last year: http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=46115

So...it can be set below 150? I wonder why the product description say otherwise, then. Huh. Truth in advertising - go figure. (Pretty great sirloin tip description, btw.)

[Jenise]

I would love to participate in eating a sous vide prime rib. A friend's son did one for the holidays, and it took two or three days to reach rare. I wonder how one calculates how long to 'cook' it?

[Jenise]

In spired by some really perfect, thin-walled green bell peppers I could smell from an aisle away this morning, I'm making stuffed bell peppers with ground turkey. The seasoning will be toward Turkish/Armenian, with a lot of mint, garlic, allspice and the like in a tomato-paprika broth.

In spired by some really perfect, thin-walled green bell peppers I could smell from an aisle away this morning, I'm making stuffed bell peppers with ground turkey. The seasoning will be toward Turkish/Armenian, with a lot of mint, garlic, allspice and the like in a tomato-paprika broth.

This sounds great...write it down, please, so you can share with us. I love the idea of a tomato-paprika broth.

[Jenise]

In spired by some really perfect, thin-walled green bell peppers I could smell from an aisle away this morning, I'm making stuffed bell peppers with ground turkey. The seasoning will be toward Turkish/Armenian, with a lot of mint, garlic, allspice and the like in a tomato-paprika broth.

This sounds great...write it down, please, so you can share with us. I love the idea of a tomato-paprika broth.

Oh, I didn't see this until too late! But here's what I did: cut up about 8 Campari tomatoes and tossed them in a pot just big enough for the two stuffed peppers with two smashed cloves of garlic, sautéed them until the tomatoes sweated, then added chicken broth and couple dried red chiles. Made sure I had enough broth that when the peppers went in, would be about 2/3 of the way up for braising. Then in went the peppers, which I had stuffed with ground turkey to which I had added bread crumb and rice, and seasoned generously with salt, dried mint, ras el hanout, allspice and white and black peppers. That was it. I simmered them for about 45 minutes with the lid only about half way on so that the broth would reduce by half while the peppers braised. I served them in a bowl, with the remaining broth.

Dinner tonight is my adaptation of Bon Appetite's (posted by Mike) braised Spareribs with Rigatoni. I used beef back ribs cause I liked the looks of them and they were very meaty. Instead of crushed red pepper, I used Long Hot Chilis in olive oil and vinegar. 2 cans (instead of three) of whole tomatoes (crushed in my hand) plus a home made rich tomato paste, and 1/2 tsp of anchovy paste. Ribs were sprinkled with Worcestershire Sauce during browning, and the onions were sprinkled with smoked paprika during the sauté. Rest of recipe remained the same for the ingredients. I will cook them off in the oven, then add the Rigatoni. A big salad with various lettuces, Treviso leaves,Sugar Plum tomatoes, celery heart, plus leaves, a few garbanzo beans that I needed to use up, red onion, all dressed with Orange Muscat Champagne Vinaigrette. Need to pick a bunch of Italian parsley from the garden for both the pasta dish and salad.

[Jenise]

We're having the Spohns and another couple over for dinner tonight. Menu's been tailored to suit Northern Rhone wines. Bob requested I make last weekend's pork roast again, so that's on the menu but with some modifications. The menu:

lobster salad in endive leaves
smoked trout with leek mousse and bull's blood microgreens
mache salad with watermelon radish slices, pansies, raw mushrooms and porcini vinaigrette
tomato-roasted fennel bisque
roast pork on fennel bread pudding with dry vermouth gravy and green olive gremolata
poached pears and cheeses

Menu's been tailored to suit Northern Rhone wines.

That looks great. Love the accompaniments to the pork especially. And I served stuffed endive leaves to great effect on Xmas (with Roquefort and toasted walnuts).

[ I simmered them for about 45 minutes with the lid only about half way on so that the broth would reduce by half while the peppers braised. I served them in a bowl, with the remaining broth.

Well this was interesting....I have never heard of or seen stuffed peppers cooked with this method. Oven cooking is how I do mine, and all of the recipes I've seen call for that. I bet they were delicious.