Cooking

It’s been a few months, but I’ve finally gotten back to Sloppy Joes. In my earlier attempt, I had a little pantry oversight (I really thought I had tomato sauce in there!) that led to an under sauced meal.  After that tasty, but somewhat failed, attempt I resolved to revisit this messy childhood favorite.

[DDET Click to see the Sloppy Joe Recipe]

Ingredients:

1 pound extra-lean ground beef
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, minced
1 red pepper, diced
1 can small red beans or pinto beans, preferably low sodium drained and rinsed
1 1/2 cups no-salt-added tomato sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon molasses
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon mustard powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
8 burger buns (or bread)

Directions:

Brown the meat and the onion in a large skillet over medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Drain the pan. Add the garlic, jalapeno, and red pepper and cook 5 minutes more, stirring occasionally. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 5 minutes more.

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[/DDET]

This week, the results were much better, though not without a missed step or two.   A proper amount of sauce was a huge improvement. You want the stuff to actually soak into the bun and drip, as well as tumble, out of the sides. However, I was a bit lax in my dicing and ended-up with slightly larger bits of onion and red pepper than I would have liked.  The beans were also a bit on the big side–I only had a can of the large kidney beans about.  As a result of the larger sizes of things, the mixture felt a bit more like chili than Sloppy Joes.  On the next iteration, I’ll spend a bit more time with the knife.  Though I’d like to improve on the sauce as well.

The sauce was present this time and, though good, could be stepped up.  There was mutual agreement at the table that the Sloppy Joe improved with a little dunk in some BBQ sauce.  So why not take the Sloppy Joe sauce a bit more down the road from a chili to a BBQ sauce?  I’m thinking maybe a bit more molasses might do the trick. And maybe, just maybe, a little more heat–though playing with some burn may need to wait until Take 4.

A while back I tried my hand at an apple cobbler.  Having some cranberries in the freezer I decided to give them a try this time around.

The prep was as insanely easy as before and the result was a tart, sweet, doughy goodness that was fantastic with a little ice cream.  I think blueberries could work great as well, when they finally come back in season.

I think next up may be looking at some other cobbler batter recipes to start figuring out the differences how this whole baking thing works.

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Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups cranberries (frozen or fresh)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Melt the butter in a 9 x 9 inch baking dish.  Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and milk. Pour the batter in the baking dish over the butter. Sprinkle cranberries on top of the batter, do not stir. Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

A frosted bowl of garlic butter.

On my way home from watching the glorious Vikings’ victory over the Lions, my mind was on the beef stew simmering away in the slow cooker on the counter at home.

My Saturday idleness meant that I didn’t experiment with baking bread as I had planned–so I picked-up a loaf from a neighborhood bakery on my walk from the train.  There was just one thing missing: butter.

I had butter in the fridge, but I wanted something more.  I wanted garlic butter.

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Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 4 garlic cloves

Directions:

If you have a mortar and pestle, give the fresh garlic a course dice and mash until you have paste.  (If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, dice finely and use the side of a knife to smash out a garlic paste.)  Combine the butter and garlic in a small bowl and microwave for 20 seconds until mostly liquefied   Stir/mash the warm butter garlic mixture.  Set in the freezer for 10 minutes if you want it to harden quickly or place in the fridge until ready to serve.

The Result:

Vampires beware!  Here there be garlic buttered bread that goes great with stew!

I’ve already spent half a post singing the praises of this incredible cookbook so I won’t rehash those details.  Lucky for me, my brother got me this for my birthday over the summer, and I’ve been slowly easing into it. Being a meat-themed cookbook, some of the recipes are not quite so easy to try as they might require you to have access to a meat grinder, if you want to make your own sausage, or to shell out for a lamb roast, but there are definitely approachable recipes in there if that’s what you’re looking for. When I saw this recipe I was immediately intrigued because I love chile spice rubs on grilled steaks, and I also enjoy looking for ways to incorporate the flavor of coffee into cooking.

4 steaks (8-12 oz)

SPICE RUB:

1 tablespoon ancho chili powder

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp EVOO

PAN SAUCE:

¼ tsp ground cloves

1 tbsp ancho chili powder

3 tbsp light brown sugar

3 tbsp honey

2 tbsp bourbon (this is definitely optional, as it’s not in the original recipe)

¼ cup strong black coffee

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp butter, cut into several pieces

For the steaks: Mix the spices and the salt in the first section, rub into the meat, then drizzle the olive oil onto both sides and rub the meat again to evenly distribute. I have seen conflicting opinions regarding whether one should apply a spice rub to a steak dry, or to include olive oil. I’ve tried both methods a fair amount (Grilled steak is probably my favorite food), and I am definitely a pro-oil person. It seems to make a big difference in terms of  getting the best possible crust on the meat, which really enhances both the flavor and the texture of a steak. Of course, the other key to a great crust on your steak is to use charcoal, especially hardwood charcoal. Propane is certainly convenient, but unless you want to spend the same amount on your grill as a used car, you will never be able to get that kind of intense heat. And even if you splurge for the cadillac propane grill, you’re still not going to get that smoky flavor. Either way, get your steaks prepped and grill them medium rare, then let them rest for a few minutes.

For the sauce: Mix everything but the butter in a sauce pan, and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. As soon as the liquid boils,  immediately lower the heat and simmer on your stove’s lowest setting until the liquid has reduced by about half. Cover and keep warm. There is a little bit of flexibility here in regards to timing, in that you can cover the  pan and keep the sauce warm for a bit while you wait for the steaks to get off the grill, or for your side dish to cook. HOWEVER, do not allow this to fully cool and congeal. It might not completely ruin it, but it definitely won’t get restored to its ideal version.

When the steaks are ready, bring the liquid back to a simmer and whisk in the butter until thoroughly incorporated. Drizzle the sauce over the steaks, and whatever else you want to taste amazing. Seriously, the combination of the sweet, sour, smoky and spicy notes of the sauce make for a very interesting steak accompaniment, and was so addictive that I was trying to think of other things this sauce would go with. I’m thinking it would be good with vanilla ice cream, or on top of some kind of pastry like coffee cake or a german chocolate cake. What I think would be a truly intriguing application for it would be in a tiramisu. More to come on this later.

Look at that CRUST!

Few things hit the spot on a tipsy Saturday night better than a spicy pork and noodle dish with just the right amount of grease. This recipe doesn’t take a lot of planning either, as its short on unique ingredients and, once your mise en place is done, everything comes together in 15 minutes or so.

Stir together well in a small bowl:

• 1/2 cup chicken stock or broth
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons black bean garlic sauce
• 2 teaspoons sugar

Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat, when it is hot pour in 2 tablespoons of peanut oil, swirl around the pan until very hot but not smoking.  Add and stir fry very briefly until the garlic is slightly brown:

• 2 tablespoons finely minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon finely minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced chile peppers (I used seeded serrano peppers)
• 1/4 cup coarsely chopped canned bamboo shoots

Add 1 lb ground pork and stir fry the meat, breaking it up, until it is no longer pink but not yet browned. Meanwhile, cook in a large pot of boiling unsalted water, 1 pound chinese egg noodles (or spaghetti, if you must).

Add the stock mixture to the pork, stir well and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. Add and stir fry briefly 1/2 cup of 2 inch scallion pieces, cut on the bias.  Remove the pan from the heat, drain the noodles (they should only take 2-3 minutes), add to the pan and toss with the pork and sauce.  Season with 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, stir well, and garnish with 1/4 cup finely chopped scallions.

As I was getting into the final stretch of putting this together, I was really wondering if it was going well. As you can see above, the recipe (from Joy of Cooking) makes repeated references to stir frying, even after adding the pork. For me, as soon as I added the pork, there was way too much liquid coming out of the meat to do any stir frying, from there on out everything was being simmered in a sauce, especially once the brother mixture was added. Typically when that happens it means that your pan isn’t big enough to allow the liquid to evaporate as it comes out of the meat, or you don’t have the pan on high enough heat. In this case, I was using my widest pan and had the heat on the highest setting. Absent using a wok and a commercial grade heat source like on the badass mofos below, I’m not sure how I could solve this problem although I will be experimenting with using chicken thigh pieces rather than a ground meat to see if it releases less moisture.  Either way, by adding the noodles to the pan it helped soak up some of the additional moisture and the end result was fantastic, with a soy-ish sauce, with just the right amount of spice and fresh ginger, and enough fat from the pork to coat the noodles.

I love a good cook.  A well contemplated meal to share with friends made over hours.  But on a weeknight, after a long day, I sometimes can’t just make it happen.  And, despite having roomies, I often find myself cooking for one at 9 o’clock in the evening.  And I end-up eating some wacky dinners.

Tonight, my roomies ordered Thai.  But, in the name of frugality and trying to reduce my weeknight dinner sizes, I was bent on making my own a meal.  With my mind sluggish from a day of learning my new job, I wandered Union Market after running a few errands.  After five minutes I still couldn’t form a meal.  I decided to keep it simple and roll with an old favorite: eggs and black beans.

Back when I dated Meg, and right before I started this blog, we did a month challenge of a $30 a week food budget (#missedblogpost).  One of our cheap meals was black beans, rice, and diced tomatoes (canned or fresh).  I now often add an egg for a quick savory breakfast.

Tonight, I wasn’t ready make rice.  I only had brown rice with an hour cook time.  I was too hungry to wait.  And, well, to be honest, I don’t like making rice (it’s the folding laundry of kitchen work).  So I decided to forgo the starch.

I mixed a medium can of black beans and a small can of tomatoes in a pot.  As the beans and tomatoes heated I cooked two sunny side up eggs.  In under 10 minutes I had my bastardized breakfast/dinner.  Mmmmm…. I’m satisfied with my crazy mid-week dinner.

A couple weekends back, when my fall mood inspired a chili and corn bread dinner, I decided I needed something sweet to pull the meal together. Last Thanksgiving, Iggy made an apple pie. Having way more apple filling than pie crust and pie dishes we froze a big bag of it.  It seemed time to put that to use.

Cobbler offers a easy, forgiving, and flexible dessert.  In this case I had apple pie filling around, but any fruit filling would have worked just as well.  I have a bag of cranberries in the freeze that may next in line.

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Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sliced apples seasoned for pie (I might have actually had somewhere between three and four, but it seemed to work well)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Melt the butter in a 9 x 9 inch baking dish.  Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and milk. Pour the batter in the baking dish over the butter. Sprinkle fruit on top of the batter, do not stir. Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.

I’m not much of a baker. In fact, I probably owe readers a report of some epic fails on a couple of bread baking attempts over the last year.  And cakes have been off my radar for years. But, I like eating baked things, especially freshly baked things, so lately I’ve been trying more simple baking recipes.  Ones that even I can’t mess-up.  Ones that allow you to play with them a little.

For last weekend’s chili cook, I baked-up a batch of corn bread.  I’ve posted this recipe before, but it’s a bit buried and corn bread is an easy bake that can go with a range of fall eats.  Plus, I’ve been told recycling is good for the environment.

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I know true corn bread is supposed to be dry.  But I’m not particularly a fan of the dry stuff.  To get past this dryness, Mike and I developed the below in some long ago gumbo cooks.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 3 eggs (most would have use only 2)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 can of creamed corn
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar

Directions

Combine the dry ingredients in their own bowl.

In a separate medium bowl whisk the eggs.  Next, whisk in the buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk around you can make a good substitute by mixing one cup milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice).   Let that mixture get up to room temperature.  Next, melt the butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar.  Then add the sugar and butter mix to the room temperature egg/buttermilk bowl.   (Note: if you didn’t let your eggs and buttermilk get up to room temperature everything will fail here, the sugar and butter will get cold and start turning back into a solid.)  Whisk the liquid for a bit.

Now slowly whisk in large handfuls of the dry ingredients into the liquid and keep whisking until there are little or no lumps.  Next, put the batter into a greased baking pan.  Spoon a smattering of creamed corn onto/into the batter.  Finally, sprinkle the sharp cheddar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 375 (or until it browns and a toothpick comes out clean).

It’s fall.  You can feel it in the cool air.  See it the color and angle of shadows in the late afternoon.  Smell it.  It’s time for fall comfort food.  On weekend football days (college or pro) I love one pot meals that fill the house with great smells.   Meals I can cook as I can tend to other chores and watch NFL games or half watch college games.  And last weekend I was in the mood for chili.

This is one of those dishes created more from whim than recipe.  Do I want this one to be more meaty?  Heavy on the beans?  Loaded with tomatoes?  Spicy? There are so many variables to play with, but chili is forgiving. As long as the broad basics are there you’re likely to end-up with a satisfying dish.  The following is roughly what I did:

• 2 medium onions (on the bigger side of medium)
• 3 celery sticks (Now I can hear some of you say “I don’t like celery.”  Fair.  But included it anyway.  By the end of the dish you won’t know it’s there, but it’s inclusion adds critical flavors.)
• Four jalapeños
• 2 or 3 pounds of ground beef (just took a bit chuck out of a family sized pack)
• A large can of tomato pure
• A can of stewed tomatoes
• A large can or two of whole pealed tomatoes.
• A large can of dark kidney beans, drained
• A can of white beans, drained  (To some this might be chili blasphemy, but I think adding this bean breaks-up the color leading to a more aesthetic outcome.)

Before doing anything else, I fire roasted the jalapeños by sticking each with a kebab skewer and roasting slowly over the stove’s gas burner until blackened. It may be my imagination, but I fee this process adds just a bit of smoky flavor.

An hour or so later I started cooking the chopped onions and celery. After the onions and celery start to get translucent, I put in the meat. Breaking the beef apart with a spoon as it browned, I added some chili powder and red pepper flakes.  Once the meat was browned, it was time for the canned ingredients.  As the mixture heated, I chopped the now cooled jalapeños (chopping while hot can be a bit painful) and added them to the mixture.  I covered the pot and brought to a simmer.

Then it’s time for football and an occasional stir.  Taste and season as needed.  Don’t worry about breaking down those whole tomatoes.  Over the next three and a half hours they’ll break apart with the just the occasional stirs.

With a little homemade corn bread, this was the perfect fall weather meal.

For years I’ve near heard Nick’s stories of epic crab feasts. Mountains of Maryland’s best eaten outdoors with an endless flow of beer.  Unable to make it last year, I jumped at the invitation to join this early September.

I love the Midwest, but there are some joys that my blessed heritage simply could not provide.  Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes lay far from the oceans and their briny bounty.  Eating decent seafood in my home state means a visit to a specialty store or a high end restaurant.  Only on moving to the East Coast did I find high quality seafood at a price that doesn’t break the bank.

The crab feast efforts are led by Nick’s long time friend, Tom.  Tom’s recent purchase of a house with his fiancé Teresa put this years feast in jeopardy.  But Nick’s tenacity came through and Tom and Teresa were convinced to open the doors of their new home to a hungry hoard. Nick, Becca, and I were tasked with bringing two things: beer and butter.  After picking-up two cases of light beer we swung by the super market to grab the butter.  We grabbed two pounds of butter and, with a joke in mind, an I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter olive oil based spray.  Tom feigned calmness as Nick told him that the store was out of butter, but the spray should be good enough.  But, when Becca finally broke the really butter out of her purse Tom literally breathed a sigh of relief.  He had exercised immense restrain by not belittling Nick (“for fuck-sake Nick, you’re from MarylandII!”).   A few laughs later we were off to see the crabs.

The crabs were in a true bushel.  For the Midwestern, think a bushel of apples but replace the apples with crabs.  Dozens of crabs.  Crabs with bright blue claws and legs protruding from a gray shell and white underbelly.  Crazy little arachnid-like creatures who appear asleep but, when prodded, wake-up and spray a bit of water before snapping their muscular pinchers or scurrying about.

Tom set-up a giant steamer with water, cider vinegar, and a mixture of seasoning.  The smell was fantastic as it heated-up.  Two dozen or so crabs were layered in the bottom and covered with a layer of Tom’s secret spice mixture (old bay plus…).  More layers were added until the steamer was full and half the bushel empty.

As the crabs cooked the picnic table on the back deck was prepared: newspapers laid, hammers and knives piled, dishes of melted butter, and cups of cider vinegar.  You don’t need no plates for a crab feast!  And finally the first batch was ready.

The veterans helped us newbies through the crab eating process.  How to start with the claws and get at the meat in the middle of the small beasts.  I was a mess.  I covered myself and everyone near me in a spray of crab juice.   It was ugly.   But, I got at the meat with little waste leaving no tasty morsel behind.

To my surprise I loved the rich meat dipped in the cider vinegar.  The acidity balanced the crabs’ decadence. Though a dunk or butter now and then didn’t hurt either.  I ate and ate and ate, taking down five of ’em.

Just in case crabs weren’t enough, Tom also slow smoked a beautiful slab of meat to make a mound of pulled pork.  At 1:30 a.m., as I was leaving the bar the night before, Tom was firing up his smoker.  The slow cook paid off and the pork was delicious, but I focused my stomach space on the piles of crabs.

A final surprise for me was how happy I was to be drinking Miller Lite as I took down crab after crab.  As readers of this blog might have gathered, I can be a bit of a beer snob.  Maybe a Pilsner could have stepped in, but an American light beer was just what this crab feast called for.  Something to wash everything down while keeping its place in the background.

After eating, and as a torrential down pour started, the 15 or so guests retired inside to the living room.  More beer was drank over conversation and stories about the “old days” while the couple’s bulldog scramble for attention.  For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, this was one the most adult feeling dinner experience I’ve had.  It was chill, not fancy.  Calm, but not boring.  Just a feeling of being older–in a good way.  Maybe it’s because I’ve turned 30.  Maybe it was similar to what I remember as a child when my parents would bring me along to get-togethers with their friends.  Maybe it was the couple’s “real” home.  It was comfortable.  I can’t thank Tom and his fiancé enough.