Chicken Adobo

Ok, so I've made my friend Mike's pork adobo before and it is addicting and porky and salty and sweet and all the bad things for you in life. I'm actually making it right now using the excuse that the oven will help keep the house warm in this unseasonable Texan cold snap.

But the NY Times posts this article about the ADOBO WARS and publishes a chicken adobo recipe. This recipe is amazing. It winds up tasting like a clean curry. The sugar caramelizes slightly on the chicken skin. I just poured the left over sauce on leftover rice and ate it alone, but it also goes well with other meats. If it makes it that far.

So I took one camera phone picture of my bowl before I devoured it and most of the rest of the chicken. I made this recipe with a whole butchered chicken (thighs, drums, tenderloins, breast, wings) and it worked fine. It's not going to be as sinful as an all dark meat version, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Served with stir fried bok choy.



Also yes. This is the only pretty set of bowls in the house. Stephanie bought them for me years ago and they are still trucking as the happy part of my odds and ends plate collection.

28 oz Wine Glass 40 oz Whisky Shot

A Very Special guest post by Ender

Hey, look at this, it’s an update! And one by a sane person at that! (Ed.--At this time we have not received documentation of the author's sanity from any licensed medical or psychiatric professional.) This post contains no ham cakes, cake hams, spatchcocks, or Chinese rocks that appear to be meat but are in fact rocks. This post is about ribs and beer. Specifically, the combining of the two into Guinness braised ribs. Do I have your attention there? I thought so. Let us begin the lesson.

What do you need for this party? Ribs and Guinness obviously, but you need a bit more than that. Let’s try:

- 4 lbs of ribs (I used boneless pork ribs because they were cheap)
- 1 Guinness bottle (drink the rest while waiting for it to cook or while eating)
- 1 cup low sodium beef broth
- Plenty of kosher sea salt
- Plenty of fresh ground pepper
- 2 diced carrots
- 2 diced celery stalks
- 1 diced onion (I used yellow)
- 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
- 2 teaspoons dried thyme
- 1 overloaded tablespoon of tomato paste
- 4 cloves worth of minced garlic (or spoonfuls to taste if using pre-minced stuf)
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 bay leaf


Crank your oven to 325 F and we’ll get started cooking.

First up is the meat.



I got a pretty decent cut of it here, but the nice thing about the recipe is that you can swap out the meat with other kinds and just adjust cooking time accordingly. Take it, cut it into manageable pieces and thoroughly coat it in ground pepper and kosher sea salt



Now I know what you are thinking- why kosher salt if you are using pork ribs? The answer is a religious joke that I’m pretty sure they won’t let me get away with on their blog. (Ed.--Probably not, but we'd enjoy hearing it for ourselves.) So let’s go with a scientific explanation.

Salt is hygroscopic, that is it attracts water molecules. This is why it used to be used as a desiccant. For our purposes here we want that, it draws out the water molecules from the meat. This is why it is kosher incidentally; it was used to draw out blood in the act of koshering meat. Thanks for the history lesson Dan, but how does this relate to cooking me delicious ribs? Well now that the water has been drawn out, osmosis will bring it back in, along with it some of the dissolved salt. The salt denatures the protein, making the meat extra tender, and leaving behind any additional minerals brought in giving it a bit of flavor, hence why we used sea salt. Now you have established a low level fluid flow in the meat. If you were doing anything else you would want to wipe off the salt now, but this stuff is going to be submerged shortly so don’t worry about it. You want the process to continue to really inject the flavor into the meat and the low sodium beef broth will ensure the end result isn’t too salty.

This concludes the unnecessary detour. Hopefully you didn’t waste time and coated the rest of your meat while reading this. Take the meat and set it to the side.



Now get out a large pot and put the olive oil in it. Get it hot and put the meat in.



Thoroughly brown the meat on all sides.



Once you’ve gotten it all browned, take the meat out and set it to the side. Toss your diced carots, celery and onion in the same pot with the hot and now flavored olive oil and sauté them until they are soft. This should take maybe 10 minutes depending on your stove and heat.



Add the garlic, rosemary, and thyme, continue to sauté until the garlic is mixed in (you can tell because the garlic smell overpowers the others)



Now add the tomato paste, and mix it thoroughly. I sent with about a tablespoon here, but adding more will increase the richness, color, and thickness of the final sauce. This could be desirable depending on your personal tastes. In the future I’m personally going to go with more.



In goes 1 cup of beef broth, 1 bay leaf, and finally…



1 cup of Guinness. Drink the rest of it you wasteful savage.



This should be your sauce. Mix well over low heat, then add in the ribs.



While stirring to keep the meat coated, bring it all to a boil. Look at it boil:




Now at this point I made an error. The pot I had been working in had plastic coated handles, so it couldn’t go into the oven. That was mistake #1. I transferred it to a large disposable foil tray, which was mistake #2. In the future, I will use something with a smaller surface area and greater volume. That way the meat is more immersed in the sauce and there is less chance of it drying out. They still ended up really juicy, but they could have been even better. Take your pan/oven safe pot full of boiling ribs and sauce and cover it and put it in the oven:



Braising gives you some leeway in cook time, I just kept checking with a meat thermometer until it was done. I’d estimate it took about 90 minutes though.

Boomshakalaka



Serve with the sauce drenched on it like gravy. It goes well with mashed potatoes or rolls to sop up the extra juice. And more Guinness to drink .

Enjoy!

And now for something completely different.

Remember the ham cake? I made another one, but in reverse. It's a ham shaped like a cake, instead of cake shaped like a ham, because Matt requested it for his birthday.

I bought a ham and baked it according to the package instructions, with a little Grade B maple syrup and water in the bottom of the baking dish.

Then I hacked it to bits.



I trimmed the biggest ham steaks into rectangles roughly the same size. There was some patchwork involved.

Behold, my tower of ham.



Potatoes were set to boil.



Glaze. Those pre-glazed spiral-sliced hams annoy me because the inside of the ham doesn't get glazed, just the outside. So I decided to do something about it by glazing the entire cut face of each layer of ham.



Contents of glaze: grade B maple syrup, ketchup, brown mustard, brown sugar, mushroom salt, balsamic vinegar, paprika, ginger, garlic granules, and possibly some other stuff.

Glazed.



Put under the broiler for a few minutes:



It turned out all runny and juicy. I was going more for a creme brulee type crust, so next time I will pat the meat dry and use a completely dry phase glaze mix. If there is ever a next time.



Mashed potatoes, made with heavy cream and cream cheese instead of milk and butter. I thought to myself, "how can I make the potatoes stiff enough to support ham slices, but still creamy?" This is how. We are all going to die of fattiness because of those potatoes.

Assembly was your standard stack-and-frost affair, which proceeded smoothly after an emergency run to the store to get MORE POTATOES. I got a can of French's fried onions to use as "nuts" on the sides of the cake (which worked well to disguise the rough frosting job on the sides). I used a sandwich bag with the corner cut off to write a message using the leftover ham glaze. I am pretty darn proud of my piping job.



Aaaand the money shot:

Ikeaaaa meatballs, tasty

Steph and I made our quarterly trip to Ikea to check out the new catalog stuff and wander the store and pretty much be terrible people. I'm trying to outfit an office out of a spare room and wanted to test drive their sofa bed stuff.

ANYWAY, these trips always wind up with us taking home a bag of meatballs.

I suck, once more, at the picture taking before devouring food - but this recipe is for the cream gravy. Not the packet from Ikea.


You need:

1 tablespoon of oil
1 bag of Ikea Meatballs
1 onion - chopped
garlic - however much you like. start with two cloves minced
1 T butter
1/2 cup of flour
2 or so cups of milk
beef bouillon cubes to taste, start with one or two
1 T dill
pinch coriander
salt pepper

Take large pan. Add a tablespoon of oil. Heat. Add meatballs, frozen is okay. Brown.

As they brown, juices come out. Add a chopped up onion.

Add a few chopped up cloves of garlic. Fry till onion translucent.

Add a tablespoon of butter and half a cup of flour.

stir until everything is pretty much covered in buttery flour.

Add two cups of milk. Maybe 2 and a half. depending on how thick you like your gravy. Sometimes I want gravy. Sometimes I want sauce. Stir and bring just to a boil

I add a couple of beef bouillon cubes and a tablespoon of dill and salt and pepper and a little coriander.

simmer until everyone's ready to eat. Honestly, you can just kind of let this one sit around a bit and the sauce gets beefier. Serve over pasta or rice or with potatoes or you know. Whatever. And of course you can do this with homemade meatballs, but it's Ikea day.

Maybe I will take a picture of the leftovers if I remember before I eat them.

Chicken Kentuckily Fried

It all started with this article which is very charmingly British about the entire concept of deep fried chicken. But it also has the breakdown of the ELEVEN SECRET HERBS AND SPICES

"1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons Accent (MSG)"

MSG is not an herb. nor a spice. But okay whatever.

For perspective's sake, when I make fried chicken, I marinate in buttermilk for 24 hours, I salt and pepper the flour, and if I'm feeling REALLY WILD I add a tablespoon of paprika. But like, hoo, I'd have to sit down after that.

So for this project I quested and procured these SECRET HERBS AND SPICES.



Please note the giant mound of MSG. This is probably the dirtiest thing I've done in a while.

Ground it all up and you get this



Which I mixed with two cups of flour. Then realized it was still REALLY FFING SALTY. And added another cup of flour.

The chicken strips have been patiently bathing in buttermilk, a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar and some pepper.



They've been there for about a day, but as long as they marinate for a couple of hours, you're good. It's small strips of meat, they absorb flavor quickly.

Highly recommend double dipping these. Straight out of the buttermilk into the flour, back in buttermilk, flour. Deep fry.



Incredibly sinful. The buttermilk makes them tangy, tender and juicy. The msg makes them a shock to the system. Like the article states, it's like the crystal meth of chicken. And granted, I'm not convinced that the exact herb and spice combination make that huge of a difference. The biggest difference is that if you fry properly, you get a good shattering crust without the crazy flour tumors that come with commercial KFC. Eaten with Bob's cornbread recipe.

If I were to make the recipe again, I'd add more paprika and some coriander and reduce the msg to a teaspoon if not eliminating it all together. Though, granted, if you're eating fried chicken, there's not really a reason to not make it completely naughty.

Chili

The power of suggestion is exponentially so for me when it comes to food. Sometimes it's that Sonic commercial with the chili cheese tater tots that just sound like a really good idea at 2 in the morning. For me, it's usually something I've read - the stews and breads in the accursed Wheel of Time Series, butter or candy making from Little House or the Thai food and such from every damn chapter of Time Traveler's Wife. The point to this, is that I never really cared for or really wanted to make chili until I read this:

Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot peppers. She would let the chili cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon juice and a pinch of fresh dill, and finally, measure out and add her chili powders."
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman

It goes on, but I think that's about the limits of fair use. And it's basically a passage that is burned into my mind and my ideas of making chili all derive from that one paragraph.

So here's the gist of my chili. I'm a spice wimp, but I love the flavors of different peppers. I refuse to thicken with anything but tomato paste and ground meat. I prefer a deep and smokey but slightly sweet chili. I prefer beans, but I make them separately and add them in to my own dish since there's the GREAT CHILI DEBATE and I'm motherflippin Roger Sherman.



Both ground meat and cubed meat. I used lamb and ground beef and some leftover pot roast chuck cut into quarter inch pieces. The cubed meat is for chewing and the ground meat is to add texture and thickness. Yes, you're thickening the tomato meat stew with more meat. Brown the cubed meat first, remove it, and then cook the ground meat in the released fat. Drain ground meat and set aside with the cubed.



Peppers. I used poblanos and fresnos. I seed these and put the seeds aside for those who can eat a much spicier chili than I can.



The poblanos and one of the bell peppers get roasted at 450 degrees while the meat cooks, or about 20 minutes. They should look like this when done



Back to the meat pot. Mirepoix time!



Have you had enough pictures of mirepoix to get the point? I used two onions, three stalks of celery and two large carrots. Sweat for about 10 minutes. To this you add the seeded and diced fresnos (or whatever you want to use), the poblanos and bell peppers.

And then this.



No. This ALL goes in the chili. Don't balk, it's delicious. Chop roughly and add to the sweating mess. Salt a little here to help release moisture.

Add the meat back to the vegetable mixture. Add two 14 oz cans of tomatoes, juice and all, and a beer. I use Shiner Bock, but use any beer you like to drink. Because I add a beer and a splash and proceed to drink the rest.



Then the seasonings. Teaspoon of cumin, coriander, hot paprika, oregano, touch of dill, chipotle and red chili, salt and pepper and a little bay. Let this simmer for a bit, the peppers in the chili will start integrating and the liquids will keep releasing and it will get very meaty. Taste again after half an hour and adjust your spices accordingly.

At this point, I thicken with tomato paste. And then taste again. And again. And again. Right before serving, I add the juice of a small lemon to brighten the flavor.



As with all things, use the peppers you like the flavors of. I'm not a huge fan of jalapenos, so I tend to avoid them and my wimpy spice tolerance prevents me from using more robust peppers. Same with chili powders. I obviously trend towards the smoky and the sweet, but there's a whole wide world of tasty out there.

HAM CAKE

So. Friend Lauren dislikes ham due to having an overabundance of it in her childhood. Upon hearing this, I immediately decided to be an ass about it and told her that I would make her a cake shaped like a ham for her birthday.

I am a man of my word. A figurative man.

Months went by and I didn't think much about how to make ham cake a reality. Then I drew up a schematic two weeks before the birthday and then didn't use the schematic at all. Just as Michelangelo saw an angel in the block of marble and used his chisel to free it, I saw a ham in the pile of cake and used a bread knife. Yeah what, I just compared myself to Renaissance master, whatcha gonna do?

The cake itself was red velvet cake, which I baked the night before assembling (so the cake would be cold and easier to work with).
Red velvet cake is a buttermilk cake that has a little cocoa powder and a ton of red food coloring in it. I used up all of Emily's red food coloring which she had bought for making fake blood for zombie movies a few years ago. We do not anticipate needing a lot of fake blood for zombie movies anytime soon.



I had originally planned on making a full-size ham cake, but then I realized that is a shit ton of cake and we don't have enough people to eat it all. So instead I made a half-size one using a half-sheet of cake (one 9x13 pan's worth).

First, I cut the rectangle of cake in half, then split the layers.



Never done that before. I like the way split-layer cakes look when cut, though, because the insides are that much more intricate.

Protip: Whenever you frost a cake, always lay down strips of wax paper or foil around the perimeter of the plate, then stack the cake on top of it. The foil will catch all that frosting you smear around and after you're done, you pull the strips out from under the cake and get a pristine presentation plate.



Boiled milk frosting(aka butter roux frosting):



The internet told me this is the traditional frosting for a red velvet cake. The process intrigued me so I gave it a shot, and now I am in love with this frosting. It's very light, silky smooth like a buttercream but not as oily, and easier to make.

I proceeded to cut the split half-rectangles into rough triangles, and stacked up a roughly triangular shape that got smaller higher up.





Then I took my really big bread knife and roughed out a ham shape.



It looks very pointy from the back.



Then came time for the crumb coat. Doing a crumb coat greatly improves the appearance of a frosted cake. Prior to doing your final coat of frosting, you smear on a thin layer that covers every square inch and seals in all the cake crumbs that would otherwise mar the outer surface if you tried frosting it in one go. You put the cake in the fridge for 30 minutes so the crumb coat sets up, then you do the real decorating.





At this point I had to go to Emily's to get my gel icing colors and run back and color the frosting. By then the crumb coat had set up, and I was ready to frost the outside for reals. I probably should have colored the frosting initially and had the whole crumb coat be colored too, because white frosting started peeking out when I spread the colored stuff too thin.

I don't have pictures of the rough job, but I do have pics of the cake after hot-knifing.

Hot knifing is when you take a metal spatula (or butter knife), dip it in hot/boiling water, wipe it on a clean towel and then use the hot knife to smooth out frosting. It gets rid of all the spatula marks that usually come from frosting a cake, and makes an uncanny smooth fondant-like finish.

Like this.





It's lucky that I used some cocoa powder to deepen the frosting color, because I'm pretty sure that's why there's so much depth to the color after hot-knifing. It really resembled the browning patterns you get from roasted meat.

I used dental floss to make the crosshatch pattern, then piped on tiny cloves with a ziploc bag with the corner snipped off.

Emily had the brilliant idea of styling the cake with some broccoli:



The inside:



Lauren almost didn't want to cut into the cake, it looked so good. But it was made of cake and it was meant to be eaten.