Sunday, November 28, 2010

Dumpling Soup - November 28 ,2010

I recently subscribed to Food Network magazine. Perusing my first copy I realized how spoiled I've become with Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country. I think the Food Network magazine is more than half advertising. But I persevered and found a few recipes to try. This  week we tried the dumpling soup (my version of the recipe is here); later in the week we'll have the Cantonese chicken.

The dumpling recipe promised to be a 30 minute dinner. We'll see.

Carla went to see the new Harry Potter movie and it was a quick prep so I thought I'd take some extra time to do a complete prep. Here are the ingredients. We'll take 4 3-inch strips of the orange skin for some citrus zest.

I'm a slow prepper; 20-30 minutes later everything is ready

 Everything is staged. Waiting for Carla to get back from the movie

It definitely cooks up quick; about 20 minutes.

We liked the broth; very nice for such a quick simmer. Next time I'll use Trader Joe's pot stickers or dumplings. The ones I picked up at New Season's market were too big and too doughy.

Thanksgiving 2010

We had a great Thanksgiving; with quite and adventure with one of the turkeys.

We figured we'd have about 16 people this year; which is pretty typical. But the good news is I'd have some of the extended Thompson clan to give a little balance to the Austin crowd. My nephew Carr came down and stayed with us and made a terrific pumpkin roll. His brother Christopher took plenty of pictures, but hasn't sent them to me yet.

I don't like Thanksgiving food much and maybe as a result I haven't found a perfect Turkey recipe yet. Last year I tried to make a "rub" of butter and herbs but the turkey was too wet and I had more globs of butter on my hands than on the turkey. This year, just a little oil and salt and pepper. My focus was going to be on the gravy so I didn't want to brine the turkey which ends up with drippings way too salty for gravy. Another option was a dry-brined turkey which I read about in The Oregonian FoodDay where they compared two methods of brining.

 Also, I didn't want to spend a fortune on a turkey; so, I took a look at the Cook's Illustrated site to see what their taste test results said about turkeys. They agreed with me that you don't need to spend a fortune on a turkey; they felt (like me) that heritage birds end up tough without enough of the breast meat that people crave. They did recommend a kosher turkey so I thought I'd start there. A kosher turkey is packed in salt so I could save myself the effort of dry brining (maybe next year).

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving I dropped by Haggens to inquire about kosher turkeys. I threw them for a loop; the guy I talked to wasn't the butcher and told me to call back on Monday or Tuesday. When I called back, the guy was in a meeting; I told the receptionist what I wanted and she knew all about it: "we've called Corporate to try to find kosher turkeys". Wow, I thought they are going out of their way. Finally I got ahold of the butcher and told him what I wanted. He said he'd get in a couple of cases and he'd hold one back for me. He warned me that they'd be frozen and to be prepared.

So, on Friday before Thanksgiving he called to tell me they were in. "Did they give you a price?" he asked. Uh oh. "No; what's the damage". Turns out they go for $3.99 a pound (compared to free ones if you spend enough on groceries). A 20 pound turkey checked in at just under $80. Yikes; so much for the idea of not spending a fortune. But I had specifically asked for a kosher bird and they really went all out for me, so broke out the debit card.

They were right; it was frozen absolutely solid. I put it in the garage refrigerator to let the defrosting begin. It was still pretty firm on Wednesday night so I took it out for an hour and put it under some running cold water.

Thanksgiving day everything went according to plan with just a couple of hiccups. It took about 45 minutes longer to cook than I expected. I should have started earlier in any case so it was a bit of  a last minute sweat to get it all done.

My brother-in-law Jim bought a new deep fryer this year to replace his old one and he deep fried another turkey as usual. It was delicious.

The pan dripping gravy came out well; I used a recipe from Alton Brown. His recipe was for drippings from a 14 pound turkey; I had too much drippings from my 20 pounder to fit in my large fat separator. No big deal, I improvised. I started things and Carla's brother Glenn took it from there while I carved the turkeys. I used the new method I had seen on Cook's Country where you take the whole breast off in one piece and cut it across the grain. I described the technique in my posting on the French Chicken in a Pot post. 

Everybody loves gravy and I wanted to make sure I had plenty; so I also tried to make another gravy based on a roux I used for Gumbo.  I figured I'd add some herbs, chicken stock, and wine to the roux. I had made the roux ahead of time and had it waiting. In short, it was an unmitigated failure. I had used oil for the roux when I should have used some sort of fat like butter or other saved drippings. Oh well, at least I experimented, which I don't do nearly enough of.

Dinner itself was fantastic. We had quite a few new dishes. I've read about Susan Stamberg's cranberry relish for the last 30 years. I thought I'd make it myself for the first time. Raw cranberries, onion, horseradish, sour cream and sugar. It was, um, interesting. Some people professed to like it but we sure had a lot of it left over at the end of the day. I was impressed with the power of my new KitchenAid food processor which ground it up to a nice chunk in about 5 seconds. I found out why later as I was cleaning up; the blades is heckuv sharp. I put a nice little divot in my thumb.

A great green bean with vinaigrette replaced the venerable green bean casserole. Carla's mashed potatoes were wonderful. We had two great dressings and a bunch of killer desserts courtesy of Glenn, his wife Carolyn and her daughter Stella.

For dessert, I busted out the new KitchenAid food processor to make the whipped cream. I'm used to spending a few minutes whipping up the cream with a hand mixer, so I put in the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla; turned it on and took my eyes off it. It would have been ready in about 20 seconds I think; I didn't bother turning around to look until over a minute passed. Soft peaks, it was not. Very dense; about the look of mashed potatoes. Well, it still tasted okay.

I'll get some pictures from Thanksgiving posted as soon as I get them from Christopher.

French Chicken in a Pot - November 14, 2010

I ran across this Cook's Illustrated recipe a couple of times and thought it held a lot of promise. I first was intrigued when I saw the recipe in the January 2008 copy of the magazine. Then a month or so ago I watched them make it on America's Test Kitchen.

 It looked to be very simple to prepare giving me plenty of time to do other things while the chicken cooks. The basic plan is to take a whole chicken, give it a rub, sear it for a few minutes with some vegetables and then pop in the oven for an hour or so. It would result in a tender, tasty chicken with some delicious jous. Can you hear a big "but" coming?

My copy of the recipe can be found here.

The ingredients are simplicity itself: a chicken with nice fresh vegetables and aromatics

Prepped and ready for the pot

Break out Old Blue for a quick sear with the onion and celery

Cover the pot with aluminum foil and then the lid to make sure none of the steam escapes

All done! The sauce is strained and fat removed; then the resulting jous goes into a pan for a quick simmer
 The finished product. Just carve and serve

Looks wonderful. I learned a new way to carve which is a plus. Remove the leg and wing. Then take the breast off in one piece and slice against the grain. I used the same technique on the turkey at Thanksgiving with success. Carla made cornbread and a broccoli slaw.

It looked good. But the flavor was very bland. The rub on the skin all ended up in the jous making it too salty. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll put the rub under the skin; and go with a smaller chicken. This specimen was about 5 pounds.. All in all it really was kind of dry and bland. It made good chicken salad for lunch the following week!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Posole

My best friend in junior high school was Bob Newlon (Bobby where are you?).  We also were good friends all through high school. We lived maybe 4 miles apart; in junior high and would trek through the desert to one another's houses. The trip was much easier in high school on our motorcycles. I had a Honda 305 scrambler; he had a Honda 350 road bike. After high school, I went off to college and Bob and some other of our friends moved in together down in Los Angeles. I'm sure all my Palmdale High School friends out on the interweb know or remember Bob; if any of you know how to contact him, let me know.

Anyway, one of my favorite meals growing up was burritos at his house. His mother made a terrific red pork stew in one big pot and pinto beans in another. Spreading them on a flour tortilla and enjoying them with his folks and two sisters was always a pleasure. Now every time I see a recipe for red pork I try it out to see if it can touch Mrs. Newlon's. Nothing has come close.

This month's Cook's Country has a recipe for Posole, a New Mexico red pork "stew" with hominy. It ended up being much more soup like than stew. It also features hominy which I've never cooked with. I was a little trepidacious (sp) but thought I'd push ahead. This recipe is not close to Mrs. Newlon's, but is good in its own right.

My transcription of the recipe can be found here

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/636560/Recipes/New%20Mexican%20Pork%20Stew%20-%20Cooks%20Country.pdf).

We start with the traditional meet-and-greet for the ingredients:


One of the things I like about Cook's Country recipes is the building of flavor upon flavor; this recipe is an example of that. Our first step is to take a couple of dried ancho chiles and roast them for about 5 minutes at 350*; then they are cored and seeded, mixed with some chicken stock and boiled in the microwave for a couple of minutes. This results in a great rich sauce. Next time I have a recipe calling for enchilada sauce I may just use this instead.


While the chiles steep, we fry the pork.


The pork is removed and we give the hominy a quick saute'.  The hominy then comes out and put in a bowl for later use. I munched some of it during the cooking process. It was delicious


Next step was to saute' chopped onions in the pan with 5 cloves of garlic added for the last 30 seconds. The onion and the chile/chicken stock go in the blender for a nice sauce. Then back into the pot with more chicken stock and the pork to simmer for 90 minutes.  Then the pork comes out to be shredded and the hominy goes in for 30 minutes. Finally after 2 hours all the ingredients are together as the pork is added.


As I mentioned earlier; it was thinner than I expected; a problem with my expectation, not the recipe. Denise and Mary say that radishes and cabbage make great toppings for the servings. I planned that, but we got carried away making the cole slaw and all the cabbage ended up there. We did chop up an avocado. 



Look at that; I even wiped up a couple of splashes from the side of the bowl before getting the last picture.

We'll be eating this for lunch and dinner a few more days. I rate it as 3 stars; worthy of making for guests but not in the regular rotation.

Next week I'll be making roast chicken in a pot. I saw it on America's Test Kitchen and it looks simple and delicious.



After lunch, I'll be mixing up some home-made vanilla ice cream for our church group's Dinners-For-Eight. We have dessert duty; Carla whipped up the pumpkin squares and it's all I can do not to go sample them.

In the meantime, Bobby if you are out there, let me hear from you!