Archive for the 'good eatin'' Category

November 10, 2007 | Filed under: NaVloPloMo 2007, good eatin'

Aloha, NaVloPoMo-ers! This is just about the coolest thing ever invented. Good old-fashioned hardware. No plastic, here!

(sorry, I’ll add the Flash version tomorrow. I’m late for work. No time for encoding!) 

October 28, 2007 | Filed under: Holiday! Celebrate!, good eatin'

Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble! Just in time for Halloween!

Mmmm…creamy, buttery soft caramels…so easy and sooooooo good! Here’s the recipe!

October 16, 2007 | Filed under: loves, good eatin'

I present to you the simple and humble meatloaf. Nothing fancy-schmancy; merely a loaf made of meat. Nothing but the most basic of kitchen staples — egg, onion, bread and meat — brought together to create something greater…something more alive. I posit that meatloaf is the Frankenstein’s Monster of foodstuffs. Just in time for Halloween.

The folks at Serious Eats have declared October 18th to be National Meatloaf Appreciation Day. Well, it’s about time! Think about it, if there’s a whole day devoted to talking like a Pirate, then surely meatloaf deserves its own day, too. Hell, I think we should go for a whole week! That’s how much I love the stuff.

So here it is, my MegaLoaf. This recipe has evolved over the years, but it is essentially a tweaking of The Dream Loaf recipe from Michael McLaughlin’s 52 Meat Loaves. There are some terrific loaves in there, some traditional like the Dream Loaf, and some less so like the Shrimp & Chicken Loaf with Pink Tomato Cream. There are some fabulous side dish recipes, too. The book is sadly out of print, but there are still copies floating around on ebay and biblio.com. It’s a must-have for all meatloaf lovers and cookbook freaks. And without further ado, I give you The MegaLoaf.

The MegaLoaf

I like to make one regular-sized loaf for immediate eating, and three mini-loaves for freezing to be eaten later. For a single loaf, cut this recipe in half.

• 2 lb ground beef
• 1  lb ground pork
• 1 lb ground veal. I used to make this loaf all the time with a 50/50 mix of either pork and turkey or pork and beef because even though I’m a carnivore, the idea of veal completely freaks me out and I never, ever eat it. Fully aware of my hypocrisy, now I just go for the pre-packaged beef/pork/veal meatloaf mix that is in my grocery meat department. I don’t know the proportions, but I suspect it’s an equal 33/33/33 mix. Whatever it is, it works and it’s already sized for your loaf pan. I highly recommend it.
• 1 stick of butter. Yes, you can (and probably should) get away with half that amount. But why would you?
• 3 cups of chopped onions. Make ‘em small!
• 1 large red, yellow or orange bell pepper chopped up small, too.
• 3 scallions chopped with the green bits, too.
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
• 4 tbsp minced garlic
• 4 large eggs, beaten
• 1/2 can beef consomme (you can substitute beef broth here, but consomme is richer)
• 1 tbsp Nance’s Sharp and Creamy Mustard (or Durkee’s Famous or some other mild yet zingy mustard)
• 2 tbsp hot pepper sauce (I prefer Trappey’s)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Worchestershire sauce
• 1 cup shredded mild cheddar or Colby cheese
• 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese + a slice or two of cheese chopped into small chunks instead of shredded. I like to do this because they don’t entirely dissolve. There are some melted cheesey bits in the loaf that you can see.
• 1 3/4 cups of crushed crackers (saltines work best but Sociables work fine, too)
• Ketchup
• 8 slices of bacon, cut in half shortways

* In a large pan, melt the butter on medium heat. Once foamy, add the onions, scallions, pepper and garlic. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring often until they are soft and slightly browned. Remove from heat

* Set oven to 350F with one rack in the middle and one directly below it.

* In a bowl, mix the eggs, consomme, Nance’s, Trappey’s, Worchestershire and soy sauces together until well blended. Set aside.

*In a really big bowl, combine the meat, the onion/pepper/butter mixture, the cheeses and the cracker crumbs. Using your CLEAN hands, mix thoroughly, but lightly. An over-mixed meatloaf is a tough meatloaf. Transfer the meatmix to your loaf pans, making certain that they are solid forms but don’t pack then down. You can mound them slightly in the centers if there seems to be a lot of meatmix.

* Spread ketchup evenly over the loaves and lay the bacon slices across the tops. You can overlap the bacon or you can tuck the ends into the sides a little. Expect them to curl up a lot.

* Place loaves on the center rack. I place a pyrex baking dish 1/2 filled with water on the rack underneath. Makes a nice steamy moist-making environment for loaves. Bake until a meat thermometer reads 160F. For the mini-loaves this is around 45″-1 hour. For the regular loaf it’s about 1 hr. Drain off the excess fat, if that’s your thing (it ain’t mine) and let the loaves stand for 10 minutes before slicing. let loaves cool completely before freezing. This stuff is amazing for freezing.

“Meat Coma” by Rahne Alexander courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network.

August 20, 2007 | Filed under: good eatin'

I was about to start making a loaf of fresh bread for a dinner party and I thought “This is such a terrific recipe, I should vlog it!”; then I realized “waitaminute…I already have!”.

I taped this last winter soon after we started settling into the new house, which is why I’m wearing my old glasses, footy pajamas, and the kitchen looks halfway done. I’m happy to say that those faux bricks are bright white now, as are the cabinet doors, which are back up where they belong. I’m still wearing those Dr. Denton’s, though, because we’re going through a chilly spell here. More like October than August.

The beauty of this recipe lies in it’s simplicity; a short list of ingredients and a little bit of patience is all that is required. When it was first published back in November of 2006 it spread like wildfire; it was on the top of the New York Times most-blogged and most-emailed list for a long while — it even has it’s own Flickr group — and this was well-deserved. Anyone can make this bread, and I do mean anyone, even if you’ve never baked bread before. No machine, no hassle, no guess-work and, perhaps most-importantly, no-kneading. And, oh, that crust. Man alive, what a crust.

So here it is: Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery’s (as told to Mark Bittman, as printed in the New York Times as baked by yours truly) fantastical, magical, out-of-this-world no-knead bread.

*******************************************************************

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour***, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 350ml + 7tsp water*, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic)** in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. For the love of all that is holy, use good pot holders. Preferably the kind that look like big mitts. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

5. Once cooled, hack yourself off a chunk and slather it with honey. Enjoy!

*I had to figure this out on my own because none of my measurement tools could supply me with the 1 5/8 cups of water the recipe called for. So I did some math, and 350ml + 7 tsp works out fine. Jim Lahey’s original recipe calls for 12 oz, but I believe that recipe was for a commercial oven, as seen in his video. Hence Bittman’s home-baking adaptaion.

** I’ve made this in three different pots: one ceramic, which is seen in the video, one lightweight 5-qt. enameled cheapie I got at a dollar store in Queens, and one 6-qt. stainless All-Clad casserole. The ceramic pot made the better bread, by far. In Mark Bittman’s video Jim Lahey uses a Le Crueset, which is an awesome cooking line. in blogville there was some worry as to whether the pot handles could withstand the 450F heat. I wouldn’t risk a pot that expensive. The bread I made in the $7 enameled pot was still pretty damn good.

*** A little aside about flour. I’ve made this with Gold Medal All-Purpose flour, Gold Medal Unbleached, King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour and King Arthur Whole Wheat. The loaves in the video were both 1/2 wheat, 1/2 white. They were totally tasty, but not the Ultimate Fantasy Bread-Of-Your-Dreams that resulted from the K.A.U. Bread Flour. The one I have rising right now in the laundry room is K.A.U.B.F. with chopped prosciutto and cracked black pepper. I plan to dust the top with cornmeal and shredded fresh parmesean. I’ll let you know how that goes.

“Bread” by the Foundation
Courtesy of PodSafe music Network

July 5, 2007 | Filed under: good eatin'

Click Here for Cookin’ in Quicktime

or Click here for Feedin’ in Flash!

Instant noodles are magical. You can sit down and slurp them up and feel good knowing that you just ate a 33 cent meal (with no nutritional value whatsoever, so remember to take your vitamins if you are subsisting on Top Ramen) or, you can dress them up and take them to a whole new level. Turn them into haute cuisine!

I like to Pygmalionize my ramen.

Carl Weaver, this one’s for you.