Simple easy pizza dough

Got this from my sister.  I'm not sure whence she acquired it.

Preheat your oven to 200F and turn off when it reaches temp.

1.5 c of water at a temperature appropriate for proofing yeast
One packet of yeast

1 T sugar
2 T olive oil
1.5 t salt
flour (see below)

Proof that yeast in the warm water and add flour slowly, kneading/mixing as you go until it's the right consistency.  It'll probably be 3.5c or so before it starts pulling cleanly away from the side of the mixing bowl.

Put the dough in a  well oiled glass bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap, then place in that warm-but-off oven for at least 45 minutes.  Then remove it, punch it down, and roll out on a well floured surface.

Bake at 425F for 15 minutes for a softer crust, 450F for 15 minutes for a little crispier.

Halloween pasta

I meant to post this last year but time got away from me. Good thing dry pasta keeps. Behold:

Butternut squash sauce over squid ink spaghetti.  Nothing world-redefining, but it suits the season.  And the squid ink isn't bad at all.  Smells a little earthy, but not to an "Is this still fit for human consumption?" degree.

And I have reason to suspect that squid ink isn't fully digestible, but not because of any experiences that I would go so far as to label "traumatic."  So dig in!

Maybe don't serve it to trick or treaters.  But dig in!

Brownie chocolate chip cookies

After I brought some chocolate chip cookie Oreos to work, one of the foodies I work with inspired me to try baking chocolate chip cookies and brownies together.  It was so awesome idea I couldn't resist.

Even if it would have been disappointing.  The planning was harder than stir-fry, trying to find a brownie recipe with baking conditions close enough to those required for the cookie that I would have some grounds for hoping for success.

But, I was lazy and used the break-apart square cookie dough things just to keep things simple.  I guess we'll see if I ended up saving time in the long run or if I just created more work for myself.

Anyway, we'll get back to the cookie dough, but here's what I put into the brownie batter:

• 1/2 c AP flour
• 1 1/4 c sugar
• 65g Dutch cocoa powder (sorry about switching units here; I wanted to use my scale)
• 1 t salt (I had kosher on hand, so that's a slightly heaping spoon full there)
• 1 large eggs
• 1/2 T vanilla
• 10 T butter
• 1/4 c chopped walnuts

I started by mixing the cocoa, sugar, butter, and salt over a double boiler on medium heat, stirring

occasionally.  I actually had a little more butter than I needed according to the recipe I was cribbing from, 1 stick and then 3 tablespoons left from another stick, so I took a pat and greased an 8"x8" pan and then tossed the rest back into the mix.  It never quite got smooth, but once it was at least uniformly grainy, I took the top pot off the heat to let it cool until it was just warm.

At this point I added the eggs and vanilla.  The original recipe said to add the vanilla, then one cold egg, then the second cold egg, but since I didn't anticipate any mixing problems I scrambled both eggs with the vanilla in advance, stuck it back in the fridge, and then stirred half of the mix at a time into the chocolate.

At this point, if you want something more like fudge, you can forget to add the flour.  I did that once.  It still tasted good.

I had half a cup of finely chopped walnuts but that just seemed like too much, so I added maybe a third of that to the batter along with the flour.  When it was all pretty even, I poured it over--wait, interlude for a cookie:

Okay, so buttered 8"x8" pan and prefab cookie squares.  Left them on the counter just long enough to get soft so I could press them more easily into the pan.  You don't want to let it warm up too much or it will start sticking to whatever you use to press it.  I ended up using the glass I had already employed to hold my premeasured flour and walnuts.  It worked pretty well because I could twist the glass when I lifted it from the dough and there was no pullout.  I put the mass of cookie squares in the middle of the pan and pressed it toward the corners, but in retrospect it might have been easier to put it at one edge of the pan and then work my way across.  Well, it wasn't exactly a Herculean task either way.

Back to the brownies!  I poured the batter over the cookie substrate until there was little enough batter left in the pot that I wouldn't feel ashamed licking it clean.  I sprinkled half the remaining walnuts over the top--really, it seemed like there was plenty to go around--and put it in a 330° oven.  Seemed like a reasonable compromise between the chocolate chip cookie and brownie recipes.

This was really the toughest part.  Everything's going to cook more slowly with the extra mass.  My instinct is to go with longer times at lower temperatures, so the thermal gradient in the food is flatter, but you can't just lower the temperature arbitrarily or nothing gets cooked.

I originally had it in for 25 minutes, but a toothpick in the middle wasn't coming out clean.  I put it in for another ten minutes, and then ten more minutes again.  Toothpick still came out wet.  Okay, ten more minutes, but at 320° this time.  Still a little wet at the bottom, but starting to look done in the middle:  fifteen minutes at 300°, and the toothpick finally comes out clean.

The hard part here is all these door openings coupled with the fact that I can't turn off the oven timer without turning the oven itself off, so trying to coordinate the time is a hassle; I was probably only getting 7-9 minutes at temperature, but maybe that's close enough.  Now that I've extended the time thrice, it occurs to me I could use the timer on my microwave instead.  Oh well; good reason not to drink Coke and vanilla vodka while I'm doing science.  Maybe next time.

Oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookie

This recipe was another case of "I must experience this for myself now that I've heard about it."  Since I was a little impatient, I tried using cookie dough from the store instead of making it from scratch.

I actually made two attempts.  The very first was with storebought dough and I tried completely encasing the Oreo with it.  Unfortunately, the normal cookie dough is so fluid at baking temperatures, before it starts to set, that I ended up with chocolate chip saucers with an Oreo island in the middle.  Fortunately, short of burning the cookies entirely, it's still delicious.

My second time, I thought I'd leave the cookie dough as thick dollops above and below the Oreo, so as it settled during baking, it would, I hoped, just encase the Oreo.

Nope.  Close, but no cigar.

Obviously the storebought dough just isn't firm enough.  I'd have to do something like try making it by hand.  Adding extra flour might work, or substituting a fraction of AP flour for something with higher gluten like bread flour, but since I knew someone has already figured all these details out to have posted this idea online in the first place, I thought I'd see what they had to suggest.

The original recipe apparently comes from here.

After all that hassle, I came up with a workable, if inelegant, compromise:  muffin tins.

I overdid it, but it worked:  two cookie dough squares in the bottom of each depression of the muffin tin, then the Oreo, then two more squares.  It was almost too much cookie, but it held together and baked up just fine.

Big hit with my coworkers, even the diabetic one.  I just wish I'd made more to share.

I tried it again using a mini muffin tin and one square each on top and bottom (and mini Reese's peanut butter cups--I thought they'd melt and fall apart without the support of the tin--but let's not get distracted), but that didn't turn out as well.  The top squares spread out during baking and all touched, so I couldn't twist them out one at a time like I could with the regular size muffin tin.  They did bake up fine and were delicious, but I had a lot of cookie shrapnel piled up by the time I got all the cookies extracted.  But that's an adventure for a later time.

Avocado-quinoa dip

This dish was adapted from a salad recipe I got at Wegmans.com.  I like avocado more for its versatility, especially its capacity for becoming guacamole, so I thought this one might work better as a sort of dip.

The main cast:

• 10 oz red quinoa, cooked
• 12 oz frozen whole corn, thawed (or fresh, whatever)
• 1 c sliced green onions
• 2 plum tomatoes, diced
• 2 avocados, mashed
• 1 t minced garlic
• thyme, coriander, cilantro, and celery salt to taste
• 1/2 T lime juice
• 1 T sesame oil

The quinoa I cooked per the directions on the bag, except I added some chicken bullion after adding the water.  I should have added it to the water first, but I had been trying to redeem some vile s'mores vodka, and it didn't occur to me until it was too late.

Okay, so:  Cook the quinoa, chop up all the vegetables as you see fit, mash the avocados, and mix it all together.  The original recipe said to let the quinoa chill for 20 minutes first but I got impatient, and it didn't seem to hurt not to wait.  As for the herbs and spices, you can adjust those however you see fit; the original recipe called for a cup of chopped fresh cilantro but I only had dried, and it's not my favorite, so I thought I'd throw in the other things to bring it more to my wavelength.  Maybe subconsciously I was trying to make it more like guacamole but with corn and quinoa in it.  And tomato.  Well, whatever.

I thought it was phenomenal.  I got full on it and still wanted to keep eating the stuff.  Seemed to go better with tortilla chips than water crackers.  Probably could have used a third avocado and/or tomato, though.  Maybe a little sour cream would make it more dippy, but I might still have guacamole on the brain.

I really need to get a better way to present these dishes.  Sometimes the big red plastic bowl is just not amenable to presentation.  

Bailey's Mousse

Went to a shindig at a former coworker's farm last summer and he pulled this out at the end of dinner. It's pretty strong, for pie.

• 3 T water
• 1 package unflavored gelatin
• 2 c whipping cream
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/2 Bailey's Irish cream

Dissolve gelatin in water, heating as necessary.
Chill whipping cream and bowl, then beat to firm peaks.
Add gelatin solution and whip back to firm peaks.
Mix in sugar, then fold in liquor.

You can substitute Kahlua or Buttershots for the Irish cream. Other substitutions can probably also be made, but I haven't tried them.

As-is, serves 4. Doubled, it should fill a pie crust. Make sure you bake the crust first, if you're supposed to. I forgot to do that on the last chocolate mousse pie I made so I had to run back to the store at midnight before Thanksgiving and pick up all the ingredients I'd just wasted.

Orange cranberry relish

My sister makes this at holidays sometimes.  It's delicious; tangy without being overly tart.

1 bag of cranberries
1 entire navel orange, in chunks but not peeled
Sugar

Wash the fruit and put it in a blender until the consistency is even (not smooth...unless that's what you like).  Add sugar to taste.  Easy, tasty, festive.

Hi, sorry about the hiatus.  I took a new job in Rochester, NY where some of the ideas I thought were so original have cropped up in local stores.  Oh well.  The hours haven't been conducive to experimenting in the kitchen, and I'm still not even fully unpacked, but I plan on changing that, so there will be more to come in the near future.  Thanks for sticking around!

Pretentious tuna salad

I mentioned some pinot noir vinegar in my post on bread and butter jalepenos, but I didn't say much more about it other than how good it was.  I'll tell you right now, the brand is Lucini, and I don't know how it compares to the stuff Alton Brown keeps under lock and key in his cellar (if I am to believe the "Good Wine Gone Bad" episode of Good Eats), but I'm really starting to understand where he's coming from.  But growing up, all I knew were white and apple cider vinegar.  Now?  Now...I'm even starting to appreciate those more.  But I digress.

I'm not a huge seafood fan.  Tuna I mainly use to add protein to the mayo and relish I spread on a piece of bread at lunch, and even then more often these days I fall back on salmon.  However, in recent months I've found myself acquiring through no fault of my own some cans of tuna packed in oil, and I had to do something with them eventually.

The idea was really borne of a comment made by my boss.  I'd mentioned having them and how I tended to prefer water-packed tuna because it didn't have all that fat, even if the oil does taste a little better straight up.  He said "Well, if you just dump the whole can over a salad, you just need to add some vinegar for your dressing!"  So obviously true, it was, that I hadn't thought of it that way.

I thought it would be pretty good, too, since the cans I had contained garlic-infused olive oil, so it should be tasty and heart-healthful anyway; but I never got around to make a regular bowl-of-greens salad with the stuff.  My mom did, however--actually she didn't.  She started with water-packed tuna over lettuce and then made a vinaigrette with the Lucini's vinegar and the juice from one lemon wedge.  I'm not normally a fan of fruit in a non-fruit salad but this sounded delicious to me, even factoring in the fact that when she told me about it I hadn't eaten all day.

So, where's my tuna salad idea?  Okay:  start with your oil packed can of tuna, preferably infused with garlic or whatever other flavors you can get.  You don't need all the oil, but don't try to drain it first.  Spread it all over the inside of a submarine sandwich bun.  I managed to find some that weren't spit and cut a longitudinal v-notch to help hold everything in place, like Subway used to do back in the '80s.  Over the top of that I poured a few tablespoons of Lucini's pinot noir vinegar and pressed the v-wedge of bread back on top to start soaking it up so everything didn't fall apart on the plate.

Man, that was good.  Garlic, a little oil, the pungency of a rich vinegar to offset the fish...I could eat this stuff every day and twice on Friday.  Maybe not, but maybe. I tried it both with and without relish (on separate occasions, of course--what kind of enlightened philosopher would I have to be to have relish and no relish at the same time?), and either way is pretty good; whatever your druthers are.

Oh, did you want some bullet items so it looks like a recipe?  Let me sum up:

• 1 can tuna packed in oil (preferably garlic infused)
• 1 submarine sandwich bun
• A richly flavored vinegar, such as Lucini's pinot noir

Split the bread however you want, if it's not already. Apply the tuna; don't drain the oil, but you don't have to sop it all up with the bread, either. Pour vinegar over the top as you see fit, then put the top of the bun on to help soak some of it up.

That wasn't bad, was it?

Lucini's also has a pinot grigio vinegar, which I found at The Savory Swine down in Columbus over the weekend, but I haven't tried that yet.  I'll keep you posted.

Bread 'n' butter jalepeños

Bread 'n' butter pickles were always my dad's favorite, and while I was partial to dill growing up, I've more recently developed an appreciation for things more amenable to his palate.

Last fall a coworker of mine had a get-together out at his farm and, also being a fan of chiles, had some of these goodies out to go with his stewed beans and cornbread and what-all that everyone else brought  (I made butterscotch chip oatmeal cookies).

Fortunately for me, my coworker had a load of fresh jalepeños that were going to go bad before he could eat them all, and knowing I was the biggest aficionado of fiery comestibles there after himself, he let me take them home.

Fresh peppers are great, but there were a lot, and I had to try my hand at bread 'n' butter peppers.

Fortunately I currently reside near Muncie, Indiana, so canning supplies are still relatively easy to find.  I didn't do a real canning job on the peppers, the directions I was given by my coworker started with "You don't actually have to can the peppers," but it was as close to my memories of my mom making pickles and grape juice and chile sauce as I could get without deliberately going all-out.

I started with 1-2 quarts of whole, fresh peppers; most still green, some obviously ripe.  I chopped off the stems and ran them through my food processor with the coarsest slicing blade.  From what I recall of Alton Brown's lesson on the subject, the capsaicin glands tend to be up at the stem end of the inside of the pepper, and I wanted to preserve those while eliminating the stemmy woodiness endemic to most fruits.

As you know now, I'll generally err on the side of convenience when trying something new, and then compare it afterwards to a more old fashioned or purist or honest method of preparation.  The same holds here:  I got some Ball bread & butter pickle mix and followed the instructions.  Much easier than finding a recipe for the brine, making sure I had all the ingredients, and then doing research on canning or hoping to find a close-enough procedure already published somewhere.  Since I knew I didn't have to go through all that trouble anyway, I just followed a rough outline of the instructions on the mix jar.  I won't give you a blow by blow, but here's the rundown:

1. Place a half gallon jar in a stock pot and fill with water until the jar is full and the stock pot is as close to full as you dare. Put on high heat until it boils. Mainly I wanted to reduce thermal shock at step 4.
2. Combine white vinegar, the mix, but no sugar (the mix has dextrose and there's enough sugar in today's foods anyway--but if you like 'em sweet, don't let me stop you) in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. When everything's boiling, find a way to safely drain the jar, and then fill it with the sliced peppers.
4. Pour the boiling acid-brine over the peppers, close the lid, and let it steep. At first some of the peppers will not want to submerge, so after the jar cooled a bit (let it cool on the kitchen counter for a while--don't put hot food in your refrigerator), I inverted the jar for a few hours a couple times. I probably didn't need to, the peppers "cooked" and settled well enough on their own in a day or so, but it didn't seem like it would have hurt.

If I were making pickled eggs I'd leave them alone for a few more weeks, but since the peppers already have a lot of flavor and a much higher surface area to volume ratio, they looked ready to eat inside of a week.  Oh yes, they were, gloriously so.

Tangy, sweet, still hot but not rudely so.  Yum!  Great as a condiment on hamburgers, or as a side with beans or in soup.

But I had an epiphany or two while I was waiting for the water to boil.  I'll get back to you when I've had a chance to do some research, but let me give you a preview.

First, why are we only using white vinegar?  Acetic acid has a tangy sourness and a pungency that aren't objectionable, at least at culinary concentrations, but that's like saying sugar is sweet--it's nothing else, and most people with sweet teeth would prefer some kind of candy with particular flavors to spoonfuls of table sugar or prescription strength fructose.

I sometimes use a malt or red wine vinegar as part of a marinade, or a sauce or fond, and it's an important part of vinaigrette dressings.  I'm finding more canned tuna packed in olive oil and even infused with garlic, so I could empty a can of that stuff over a bed of lettuce and be halfway to salad dressing; so why not put some veggies I might have in the pickled condition into a salad, that have been macerated with a nice pinot noir vinegar instead of some corporate brine?  I'll let you know.

I've gotta tell you, though, that pinot noir vinegar?  I could drink that like scotch.  Brilliant.

Second, why use only bread 'n' butter mix, or sugar for sweet pickles, or dill and garlic for dill pickles? I'm using "pickles" as shorthand for any pickled vegetables at this point, natch.  I'm looking at the ingredients on this jar and it's basically salt, spices, and sugar.  Oh, lookee at this other jar also containing salt, "spices," and sugar...maybe, with a respectable dry barbecue rub like this one and perhaps a hit of Liquid Smoke, we could have some barbecue pickles.... I'll let you know.

Pecan pie muffins

Someone at work brings these in for a birthday/holiday treat once or twice a year.  When I asked for the recipe, she said she'd have to get me a copy later; she always brings in the recipe to share because people are always asking, but she'd already run out.  Fortunately she made more copies and got one to me by the end of the day.

Here it is:

• 1 C packed brown sugar
• 1/2 C flour
• 1 C chopped pecans
• 2/3 C melted butter
• 2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine sugar, flour, and pecans.

Combine butter and eggs, and mix well; then add to the dry mixture.

Fill either paper lined or greased mini muffin tins to the top.  

Bake 20-25" or until they test done.

Pumpkin brownies

This comes by way of a human interest-type internal newsletter from what we call a "defense and aerospace prime" I was supercontracted to one summer.  Don't worry, this recipe isn't ITAR-controlled, so foreign nationals are welcome to try it.

Ingredients:

• Nonstick cooking spray
• 1/2 C canned pumpkin
• 1/3 C brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• Whites of 2 additional large eggs
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1 C all-purpose flour
• 1 t baking powder
• 1 t cocoa powder
• 1/2 t ground cinnamon
• 1/2 ground allspice
• 1/4 t salt
• 1/4 t ground nutmeg
• 1/3 C mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Spray 8" or 9" square baking pan with nonstick spray.

Mix wet ingredients--pumpkin, brown sugar, egg and whites, and oil-in a large mixing bowl.  Beat on medium speed until blended.  

Add the dry ingredients (you're not sure about the chocolate chips at this point, right?  Good--hold off on them) and beat on low speed until the batter is smooth.

Now you can stir in the chocolate chips, and then spread evenly in to the pan.

Bake 25-30" or until a toothpick comes out of the center clean.  When cool, cut into squares.

Because it's pumpkin, the expected time of year to have this would be fall, but it's good all the time.  Despite the cocoa, they almost come out more like blondies, but really, I'm not going to argue about it.

Breakfast in a glass

Not a weekday breakfast, though.  Treat this one like a mimosa.

Pour into a tumbler:

6-8 ounces of orange juice

Add a shot of:

chilled bacon vodka

Mix well and serve.

I had some Bakon from Kahn's Fine Wines in Naptown, but you can also make your own--thanks to the Pinterest board from Lindsay Allen at the Editor's Taste Buds.

You can drink it on the rocks, but I always keep my fruit juice chilled and my booze in the freezer, so it didn't need it.

My experience was like first drinking a swig of orange juice to wash down some bacon, followed by the taste of having eaten some bacon after drinking orange juice, accompanied by a shot of vodka.

Eventually I will try a bloody Mary with the Bakon (also from Lindsay's Pinterest board).  Not a huge fan of tomato juice, but I like BLTs and I actually had a pretty good bloody Mary at a barbecue joint in Champaign once that was saved through the liberal use of black and hot peppers.

Colorado bulldog

I learned this one from my brother in law, who was a showtender in a previous life; alas, it was at a now-defunct barbecue joint, and I didn't know him then.  Still, he can show me a thing or two.

He actually introduced it to me and my sister at a cousin's wedding, or rather, the reception.  The bartender there didn't know it but he had all the ingredients and was amenable to learning new recipes; once we had three bulldogs in our hands, the people in line behind us immediately said "Ooh, what's that?"

It is, as they say, or at least as I like to say, dangerously smooth.

Start with two shots or a larger one to one mix of vodka and kahlua.  Standard black Russian so far, right?
Top off with cream, or milk if it's all you got:  white Russian territory now.

The thing that sets it apart is now you add a splash or so of Coke.  I've heard root beer works but I haven't tried it yet.

It's not a radically different drink, and there's not enough Coke to curdle the dairy component unless you let it sit there for a while, but the bubbly sweetness lightens the drink up so it's no longer obvious that you're drinking something that's half liquor.

When we went back up for refills, everybody was ordering them; when we went back again, the bartenders were out.

So I'm in the grocery store and I see one of those little cotton candy machines...

...the ones that are also supposed to take hard candy and spin that out into dulcet, not-just-pink gossamer whenever you feel like having some.

I'm not a huge cotton candy fan, I like it but it's so insubstantial that I feel like I'd have to eat about two cubic feet of it to reach that happy place between sated and ill.  Oh, I've got quite the sweet tooth, but I also like eating to be an experience, and cotton candy generally doesn't do that for me.

Spun out hard candy, though?  Maybe we can do business after all.

Still, I didn't buy the thing.  I'm intrigued but I'm already way out of counter space.

I'll keep it in mind, maybe there's a place for incorporating it into cake batter or frosting or something else clever, but I had another idea.

What's stopping us from using something else than can be melted and spun into thin fibers?  Practically speaking I'm expecting it to be mostly a question of melting point and aperture size; chocolate or cheese might be good, but if the melting unit gets too hot and the stuff might burn or clog the thing up.  Heck, even scrambled eggs might be interesting, if we want to cross over into savory territory.  I'm not sure what for, but...hey, actually, I'm not sure it would be practical to do egg and cheese together, but do them separately and then spool them together for a cotton omelette.

Now that might be something.

Adulterated piri piri turkey

I'm not sure where I first read about piri piri chicken, but I'm cribbing from Epicurious.com for the overall experience, and for the sauce, About.com for piri piri fish.  It was described as having Portuguese and African roots, and I haven't had much experience with southern/western Mediterranean cuisine, so I thought the time was ripe.

I happened to have dried herbs on hand and a bottle of lemon juice, but except for the fresh lemon juice, the sauce recipe didn't specify.

My approximation of piri piri sauce:
1 T Sriracha chile sauce
5 dried de arbol chile peppers
1/2 c lemon juice
5 garlic cloves
2 T cilantro
1 T parsley
1/2 T salt
1/2 c olive oil

I should have added far less salt, like half a teaspoon, especially considering my choice of chile sauce (original recipe actually called for paste), but live and learn.

I put everything but the oil in my food processor, and when it started to look smooth, I drizzled in the oil while it was still running and let it go until it looked like it wasn't going to get any smoother.

I scooped out a couple tablespoons and put them in a zip-top bag with a turkey breast, not having a whole chicken, squeezed out the air and massaged it a bit, then put it back in the fridge.  The original recipe called for four hours, some of the reviews suggested overnight.  There seem to be different schools of thought on marinating; some say that that there's no point in trying to go past half an hour or a couple hours because the diffusion of the marinade drops off exponentially (more or less--don't ask), others say that you can achieve arbitrarily thorough marinating depending on food preparation and the spoilage horizon.  Whether it's more effective than a couple hours or not, overnight in the fridge is going to be pretty safe unless the meat's already microbially compromised.  So, I left the turkey breast whole and cut it up after marinading overnight.

You know what?  The original recipe called to have a whole chicken marinated, then barbecued, and then glazed with the following:

3 T butter
3 T chopped fresh cilantro
2 minced garlic cloves
2 T piri piri sauce
2 T fresh lemon juice

I don't have a grill available currently, and I don't feel like baking this turkey breast in the oven like it's a whole chicken, so I'm not bothering with that.  Here's what I'm doing instead:

After marinading adequately (or before, if you don't want to wait so long), cut the turkey into pieces convenient for stir frying.  Cook in an oiled wok on high heat.  I fried one serving spoonful of meat at a time to reduce the thermal load on the stove.  When it got about medium well I took it off and put on more meat, until everything was equally cooked.

Then I put all the meat back in with the following and let it stew, rapidly stirring and scraping the bottom of the wok, until I was darn well satisfied:

1/2 c piri piri sauce
3 chopped garlic cloves
1 sliced shallot
1 t white pepper
1 2-inch chunk of ginger root, scraped with a spoon and grated

I let it go for a while, continuing to stir over high heat until everything was just about where I wanted it, and added a sliced red bell pepper.

When it's had enough in your estimation, take it off the heat and serve with as much of the remaining piri piri sauce on top or on the side as you wish.  If you want to be faithful to the idea of barbecuing the meat, you can leave it in until the sauce and solids start to carbonize.  If that's not your thing, the shallot and bell pepper should reach the cooked-yet-firm stage between 2 and 5 minutes, depending on how hot your stove gets.  I like barbecue, so I tried to push it to the far end of the Maillard regime before adding the bell pepper, but not into "bark is just burnt rub, isn't it?"  After I started cooking, it occurred to me to worry about the low smoke point of the olive oil in the sauce, but it was obviously far too late, and didn't end up being a problem.

Yes, I know, stir fry is just about the antithesis to barbecue, but barbecue technically isn't just cooking in your back yard, either, and like I said, I don't have a grill.

Result?  Tangy, and...distinctively bright.  The salt was a bit excessive, as I feared, but it didn't so much taste too salty as it made the ginger and pepper come across as perhaps too citrusy.  Maybe one teaspoon of salt would have been a good balance.  I might have tried serving it over rice with the remainder of the sauce, instead of just drizzling a bit over the top of the meat.  The rice would have taken up the sauce well and might have taken the edge off the salt's effects.

It's a little prettier in person, but more importantly it's delicious.  Change your room lighting if it bothers you.

Labeling this as "proof of concept" since I took so many liberties from the original recipe.  Apologies to any purists still reading.

Tomato-tapenade hors d'oeuvre

I reverse engineered, or closely enough, this snack I first experienced at the wedding reception of a buddy of mine from grad school.

Start with sourdough bread medallions or cut a baguette into approximately 1/4" thick slices.  You can also try cocktail bread; rye or multigrain might be best, but as usual, whatever your druthers.

If you like it crispy, put the bread slices on a cookie sheet and bake in a 300°F oven for five or ten minutes.  The idea is to get them crispy around the edges but still have them chewy enough that it doesn't just shatter when you take a bite.  I've skipped this step and it turns out okay.

Take some tapenade/olive salad mix, either prefab or made yourself, and mix in shredded sun dried tomatoes.  I had whole tomatoes and they were just a little too dry for my taste so I put them in my food processor, first, with a little sesame oil until the chunks were more or less even and fine.  Add the tapenade until your olive:tomato ratio is between 2:1 and 1:1, then blend a little more until the mixing and texture are even.  It should be a little pasty but you should still be able to distinguish some individual tomato and olive bits.

Mix in a finely graded hard cheese like Parmesan or Asiago (preferably without anti-caking agents, but it's tolerable with that cheese in a canister, although then it won't melt), about the same volume you used for the tomatoes.

Smear onto the bread and put back into the oven for five minutes, or eat cold.  Since this time I didn't pretoast the bread, I did seven minutes.  You may want to do the same if your ingredients aren't at room temperature.

I found some sun dried tomato tapenade at the store recently so I tried it to see if it would be a grave miscarriage of justice not to do the tomatoes myself.  Turned out fine, although I think next time I would try holding the baking time down to five minutes and boosting the temperature to 400°F.

A 3.5 oz bottle of the tomato tapenade got me this far.  Turns out it already had a little goat cheese in it, but oh well.

Next time I might try adding finely diced chicken, or prosciutto or bacon chunks, since everything goes better with cured pork.

The dregs of Christmas

Was in the grocery store on Tuesday--yes, the 27th of December--to do the usual shopping and pick over the reduced price seasonal items that didn't find a happy home before Christmas.  I didn't find much of interest, except this:

Note the expiration date on the jug.  Fully twenty days ago.

Yeah, I don't think so.

I don't care how yummy an idea pumpkin egg nog is, unless I know it's been in the freezer for most of that time, I'm not buying a dairy product that's almost three weeks old unless it's billing itself as cheese.  Okay, or yogurt or sour cream.

I've had stuff last in the fridge well past the expiration date--and, I know, it's a "do not sell after" date as much as anything--but ain't no way I'm going to attempt going through that much nog that late in the game.

I was kind of surprised there wasn't a "last minute manager's special, one dollar off!" sticker on the thing, but maybe they were afraid it would just draw attention.

Maybe there was already enough brandy in the nog to stave off lactobacillus and I missed my chance, but then, why wouldn't they have moved the date out?

Modified unnamed drink recipe

Yes, I still have nothing to call this drink.  My brother in law came up with a salutatory modification at Christmas.  Start, as before, with a 2:1:1 mix of ginger ale, chocolate vodka, and Chambourd.

Then, toss in a shot of sours.

Shake and serve on the rocks.

The sour addition brightens up the flavor respectably.  Depending on how thoroughly it's mixed and how exact your ratios are, the chocolate may become a subtone or the sour may just enhance the fruitiness of the raspberry liqueur.  It's all good.

I don't have a name for this drink, but a coworker came up with it while traveling for business.   I'm guessing a bit at the proportions so if anyone tries this and has a better idea, please let me know.

Pour into a tumbler with ice:

4 oz. chocolate vodka
4 oz. Chambourd

Top off with ginger ale.  I recommend Vernor's, just on principle.

The amount of alcohol might be off.  It was about a 50/50 mix but my original impression was of a slightly taller glass, and she held her fingers 3-4" apart and said "about this much alcohol" total.  Could be four ounces total, could be somewhere in between.

Actually, let me amend what I said above.  If anyone who has a good sense for the balance of ingredients in a cocktail, with or without tasting one, please let me know.   Maybe someday I'll tell you about the dangers of empirical reverse engineering of cocktails, but for now just trust me and don't try too hard to find the flaws unless you've got a knack for it.