Extra Credit

Last Sunday I had the opportunity to cook for the USO at the Atlanta airport for soldiers passing through the airport on the way home or way out.

Well, not exactly.

A year ago in my first class with the teenyboppers, Chef explained his expectations for the class. Besides the mundane like being there on time and every day and wearing your uniform, one of the expectations he mentioned was being involved in extracurricular activities. Chef said from time to time he will organize trips to ACF meetings or host ACF meetings. Also he will volunteer us to cook for various projects. We don't have to be involved in all of these activities but he does expect us to be involved to some extent and our participation is taken into consideration for our grade. A year ago he said that he had signed us up to cook for soldiers at the Atlanta airport, Labor Day 2009. But that was all the detail he knew at the time.

The original plan was to go down to Atlanta, cook in a real kitchen, and then serve the soldiers as they went through the line. That didn't happen. Instead we were going to prep the food in our kitchen and then Chef was going to deliver the food on Monday, Labor Day. Chef said it was strictly voluntary, I saw it as extra credit, so I showed up at 3:00pm on Sunday. No one else from my class showed. Another girl showed up about twenty minutes after me. Coincidentally she was in my first class. Another guy showed up about an hour later. He's finished the program and works for Chef at his restaurant. That was it.

Our menu was roast chicken, barbecue pork loin that Chef had smoked at his restaurant, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, roast potatoes, corn, and more of that key lime pie. I started in on the chicken. I think there were two cases worth, about 200 pieces. I filled five sheet pans. It took some time only because I had to wash the chicken, separate out the wings and pop out the bone in the thighs. I brushed the chicken with olive oil and seasoned the pieces with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, salt, pepper, and tarragon. Chef reported back no complaints.

Pizza Girl worked on chopping up vegetables to jazz up the canned beans. All of the food that we were cooking was donated by Chef's vendors. He was pretty disappointed with his vendors' contributions. Apparently they don't donate any more. A sign of the economic times I suppose but but pretty sad given the cause. Just goes to show you where loyalties really lie.

Sous Chef sliced the pork loin on the big meat slicer. I think there were seven loins. I have a really hard time remember meat cuts. It would help to learn the why they have the names they do. One would assume that pork loin comes from the leg or thigh area of the pig but it comes from the back. The barbecue sauce was a combination of two sauces. One was Bulls Eye but I don't know what the other one was.

Imoved onto the potatoes. This was basically the same as what we had done on Tuesday, except I think I had sixty pounds of potatoes! I filled a huge roasting pan with about forty pounds and then Pizza Girl started a second roasting pan. I seasoned both pans just like we had on Tuesday. Again, no disgruntled eaters reported by Chef.

Meanwhile, Chef made the macaroni and cheese. It was canned cheese sauce. Chef put some other stuff in it but I'm not sure what.

The last dish was the corn. Pizza Girl set out three large aluminum foil pans and filled them with the cooked frozen corn. The corn was pretty tasteless. We hit it hard with salt and a pound of butter in each pan!

We were done around 6:30. It was hard work but it was fun. And there was a nice warm fuzzy feeling for doing something good for these soldiers. Chef's plan was to come back in at 3:00AM! and cook everything, load the van up and head to the airport at 7:00AM. Chef said it was a tiny kitchen when he got there. He was worried that he had too much food, only enough for 200 but was told that was great, they were expecting 300-350 soldiers passing through. I'm sure each one of them loaded their plates up too. They had USO volunteers serving but Chef, his wife and Sous Chef also served. Chef said they announced each of our names over the PA system thanking us. And each of us received a flag patch from Operation Chefs Unite that we are supposed to iron onto our jackets. How cool is that!

Cajun Bobs

So Tuesday in class all we had to do was make our dirty rice and grill our kebabs. Easy peasy. I has asked MILF if she had taken Professionalism which was the first class I had taken, first quarter. Yes. Did you cook much? No. Ah ha! That explains a lot. I've been through all of this before. When I took Professionalism we cooked everyday, she said they maybe cooked a total of ten days. SO I know the routine for the day. Groups of two, make three to four servings, then we divide each plate up and everyone samples everything. I'm very relaxed.

Dirty rice appears to be easy. Our recipe called for chopped pork and chicken livers, sauteed and then added to cooked white rice with some chicken stock and a spice mix that was nearly the same as our Cajun spice mix. The danger here was cooking too fast.

Rather than letting MILF dive in, I suggested we prep everything first. We chopped the meats, the veggies, putting them in separate pans for separate additions. She divvied up the spices and I measured out a cup of rice. MILF has to constantly be moving. I think at times she spent more effort fetching than prepping but what can you do.

We got the rice cooking and started sauteing up the meat. We were running about an hour ahead of schedule but as I told MILF, we can hold the rice. As we got closer I told MILF it was time to skewer. I taught her the little trick of soaking the skewers in water so they don't burn. She was impressed. I learned it my first quarter in Professionalism so that is the kind of edge I have. MILF wanted to know how we were going to do this. You go first and I'll watch. Huh?

I said I like to cap the ends with meat to hold the vegetables on but there are no rules to making kebabs. Only thing is to get four pieces of meat on each one because that is what we prepped. Which goes next? Doesn't matter? How many mushrooms? Doesn't matter. Jalapeno next? Doesn't matter? How many tomatoes did you put on? Doesn't matter. I could tell that she struggled with the unstructured method here but it's good for her, most cooking really is unstructured. It's just application of basic fundamentals. Relax and enjoy.

The kebabs grilled fine, maybe a little over done. I had not planned on having to hold in the warmer so long while we waited for everyone else. I think we had one of the better dishes. MILF insisted on a piece of fruit for garnish and more stock in the rice. She likes "wet" food. Not my cup of tea, but fine, like it matters to me.

Mouth had a glazed pork chop with honey glazed carrots. The pork was excellent though I could have done without the carrots. Her wild rice had sweetness to it that I really did not like and I think it was undercooked.

Bar Code, Ridges and Hottie #3 made a seafood stuffed pork loin with twice baked potatoes and stuffed mushroom caps. Chef told them next time they stuffed such large caps make sure you cooked them first. After the first bite I understood, the caps were not cooked all the way through. Otherwise they were good. Their pork roulade was OK but their twice baked potatoes were awesome.

SloMo made a pathetic Caesar salad. No cheese, no anchovies. I didn't touch his pork since it wasn't cooked all the way through. There was another stuffed pork dish but by the time I got to the plate all the portions were gone. They did make excellent steak fries though. I can't remember the other dishes.

I have no idea what we are doing this coming week.

Stir Crazy

Tonight I made a simple pork-mushroom-snow pea stir fry. Of course I got the recipe out of my magazine, I'm maximizing my subscription fee, but I would not say that it is authentic anything. There's really no point in writing this up as stir fry is quite simple and like I said, it's not like this was an authentic dish of any type, but I thought I'd relate a few notes I made along the way.

I haven't made any stir fry in over ten years. I debated about getting my wok out for this or not. Maybe I'd use the electric wok? I got that from my parents. They were going to throw it out. I bet they got it as a wedding gift. No. Maybe I'd just use a big skillet. My low sided non-stick pan actually works pretty good for this. No. I'll get the wok out. I mean, I bought a real hammered steel wok all those years ago for a reason.

I used a little more than a pound of pork. This is either the third or fourth recipe I've gotten out of that big pork loin that I bought, capitalizing in buying when things are on sale. I trimmed the fat of with my petty knife, saving it for something else. Man I NEED to sharpen my knives. I have a super-duper salmon slicer so I sliced the pork down very, very thin with ease.

The recipe called for a 1/2 pound of snow peas. No problem they come in an 8 ounce bag. I buy them all the time because I snack on them like other people eat chips or popcorn. The recipe called to remove the strings from the snow peas. Hmmm, never heard of that with snow peas. OK. I ended up doing about half. It doesn't work very well, especially not like string beans. Sometimes the strings came off, sometimes not. Like I said, I eat snow peas all the time and the strings have never bothered me. And as I said, I left half of the peas with strings intact. I couldn't tell a difference when cooked.

I don't think I had enough oil for the garlic and I should have added it after the peas not before. I think I burned some of it though I never noticed any bitterness in the dish from burnt garlic. What I did notice was that the three cloves of garlic seemed to be about six cloves too few. I couldn't taste any.

Same with the teriyaki sauce. When it comes to Asian food I do prefer to buy from Asian groceries rather than from the regular grocery store because I want something authentic and I'm not always sure that the Kikkoman brand or La Choy brand are really the real thing or Americanized. Besides there's the extra excitement of buying something with a label you can't read. I avoided the two popular brand and bought the one other one that Ingles had, a Korean teriyaki. It was good but the two tablespoons seemed like I should have at least tripled it.

Also any recipe that calls for crimini mushrooms I just buy baby portobello mushrooms. I'm pretty sure they are the same thing. That and I can buy an 8 ounce container of baby bellas already sliced, just what the recipe calls for. Perfect. Done!

Maybe this recipe was written for the wusses out there who don't like much flavor, are afraid of anything ethnic or need the "intro" version to get started. It was really a great dish, just a little on the bland side. Didn't stop me from eating until I was full though.

One other note, I certainly didn't use an appropriate rice. I used Texas basmati rice, a brown rice because it is a healthier option. I've been using it for awhile now for any dish that calls for rice. It is interesting because it has a very creamy texture. Not correct but it was tasty.

Rose threw a temper tantrum of grand proportions this evening unlike any we have seen before. It started during dinner and continued well past until we said enough, you're going to bed. That's when she took it to another level. Then she tantrumed until she puked. Now THAT'S a temper tantrum!

Back to the Food

Yesterday's return to food was simple, pork steaks and tater tots. And while I was at it I made a butternut squash soup for Dinah to take to work.

As you may or may not remember back in December I started using coupons in earnest and buying in bulk at my local grocery store (which by the way I learned yesterday sucks. They don't have the same stuff or as much stuff as the neighboring towns' Ingles do. I'm switching to the Ingles in Murphy). On one of my trips I bought a fifteen pound bone-in Boston butt. I have no idea what to do with a fifteen pound pork shoulder, especially one with a huge bone in it. I could smoke it and make BBQ, but that was way more effort than I wanted to put into it.

For those of you not of the Southern persuasion, the Boston butt is THE cut for pork barbecue which is THE main food group here below the Mason-Dixon Line (really lower than that). As much as I may whine about down here, it is also one of my favorite food groups, so for me it is a perk of living here. I did start early in life. My Dad was born in Louisiana of Hoosier stock and grew up in Houston. My Grandpa used to barbecue HUGE amounts of chicken with his own secret sauce, hot not sweet. And I grew up with that, but I prefer pork. And truth be told the best of all options is a Texas Plate, preferably somewhere in Texas, of smoked sausage, brisket and chopped or sliced pork with beans and fries and a sweet tea (all my trips to Texas, I ate it almost every day). I love it so much that someday I hope to complete the NC BBQ Trail. So far I've got Murphy and Shelby under my belt. But I'm getting way off topic here.

Boston butt is a pork shoulder and is quite tough. But it is well marbled with fat and so when it is cooked "low and slow" like in a smoker it basically self bastes and the meat comes out soft and tender and very moist, a la perfect barbecue. I cut out six pork steaks from the shoulder. The rest was pretty fatty with some meat and of course the bone. That I broke down and froze for a later day, maybe I'll smoke it, more than likely I'll make chorizo with it.

The meat was interesting. The steaks looked exactly like NY strips except with the marbling you typically associate with a rib-eye. Even the meat looked like beef rather than pork, deep red in color. I grilled up two about a month or so ago. Didn't pay attention and over cooked them, well they were perfect for those of you who grew up with pork that had to be cooked dry to prevent trichinosis, but I like mine just at done. And sure enough they were tough, just like the pork I grew up with, needed a lot of bottled barbecue sauce to get down.

THIS time I planned ahead. Two hours before I was planning on grilling I tossed two steaks in a gallon sized Ziploc bag and covered them with some Fat Bastard Shiraz we had laying around that was old but had not gone bad. Put them in the fridge and flipped them over every half hour or so. The marinating did the trick. I cooked the steaks perfectly through and they were still tender and moist. There was an ever faint but pleasant taste of the wine, matter of fact it may have even made the meat taste more like beef than pork. It was an excellent little technique tenderizing tough meat and shows you why you should do it BEFORE you cook it rather than after.

As for the soup, I don't eat it nor do I eat squash though I did the last time. So I can't say much about it, yet. The recipe is here. When Dinah reports back, if there are positive reviews, I will write up how I made it and post it here. It looked right, just like the picture.

Rôti de Porc au Lait

I'm sitting here listening to Mozart in Egypt and thought that I would take the time to revisit my Christmas dish and write up the recipe for it.

While this dish is from my idol Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, I don't think there is any special relationship between this recipe and him. I think it is just part of any classically trained chef's repertoire. Julia Child has a very similar recipe in her cookbook.

I'm a technique guy. This is probably why I enjoy target shooting more than I do deer hunting (that's not to say that I don't enjoy hunting). Or why at the gym I concentrate on trying to achieve perfect form rather than how much weight I can lift. It is coming out in my cooking and for the better. For years I would have shortcutted a recipe like this. Too often in the past, if a recipe called for browning the meat, I just made sure it was cooked. Now I actually BROWN the meat, not just turn it gray in the pan. It is a significant difference. I must not have been the only one because I heard a student reminded of the same point in my first quarter cooking class. So if you want to take your cooking to another level, remember a little detail like that.

This isn't a food magazine quality photo of the dish, but here is how my Rôti de Porc au Lait turned out:

On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day

I am exhausted.

We had a wonderful Christmas. Rose being only 2 1/2 did not get up at o-dark-early but her usual time of 7:15. Rose was thrilled that Santa ate the cookies and drank the milk set out and that the reindeer ate the carrot. And she wanted more cookies. Our modest Christmas was done by 9:00. Rose wanted pancakes for breakfast so I whipped some up. Maybe this will be a Christmas tradition?

The rest of the day I spent cooking. While the pancakes were cooking I made homemade rolls for dinner and a loaf of white bread. They came out spectacular. One of the few times I use bleached flour but I wanted that vibrant white for the rolls.

Then I started the green beans. The beans were from by garden this summer. I froze quart bags as I picked them. I always loved my Grandmother's green beans growing up. Green Beans and Shellies (canned). She always made them with an onion and a ham hock and cooked them a-l-l day. I do the same except I have to leave out the shellies since Dinah is allergic to pinto beans, much to her dismay as they are one of her favorite foods. The beans were excellent but needed more salt.

I overdid it on the mashed potatoes. Probably making up for Thanksgiving. I bet I made enough for a dozen people, we had three and a half. I went old school and boiled the spuds with the skins on. I don't really know why but that's how my Grandmother did it. Then I pressed them through a potato ricer before beating them smooth in my stand mixer. I love and prefer homemade mashed potatoes but I hate lumps. The mashed potatoes were good but could have used more butter and salt but that is easily fixed at the dinner table.



My coup de grace though was my rôti de porc au lait, pork roast with a milk sauce. It was so, so good. Maybe a tad too much thyme, maybe. Twice as much as I needed to make but we've got good leftovers. I almost pulled it off without a hitch but as my wife said, if I had, I wouldn't have had anything to write about. My thermometer let me down. I don't know why but when I started slicing the pork, it was still rare in the middle. Bummer. So I had to finish it in the microwave. Oh well, at least I didn't loose my cool. Now I have a good excuse to get that super fancy thermometer I've had my eye on!

If it wasn't so late I'd take the bike for a spin. Fifty degrees here in the mountains, no snow, but a lovely Christmas day nonetheless. Might be about time for a sweet snack.

And Iran, Iran is Far Away

Sing it out loud and you'll get it.

Tonight I made an Iranian dish, Persian if you would like to be more romantic. Yes I know it is Christmas Eve. Doesn't mean anything, it just fell in the cooking schedule that way. My apologies to my Muslim friends, I made my Khoresht-e Gheimeh Sabzi with pork not lamb. Not very Halal of me, but it is what I had on hand. Try to find lamb here at Ingles.

Here is where I get to be a little elitist. Dinah took the leftover Curry Chicken Casserole to work and her boss complained about the smell. Apparently made some Indian crack too. Ya know, there is more to like than meat and potatoes and the international flavor is broader than the aisle of pasta, tacos and soy sauce at the grocery. People who aren't willing to challenge their taste buds, eat something they can't pronounce or is just foreign really irk me. Yes, I look upon ye of bland palette with disdain. Live a little!

When I was working this month, my friend asked if I had liked the travel to Germany. I'm like, HELL YEAH, I wish it had been more often! "Yeah, well you're a foodie," he said. YES I AM. The more exotic, the more I want to try it. The whole reason we went to Montreal for vacation last year was so I could eat at Au Pied du Cochon. I did indeed plan a vacation around a restaurant and my wonderful wife allowed it.

Khoresht-e Gheimeh Sabzi (lamb and herb stew) would be extremely popular here in the South, in my opinion. It is essentially hunks of meat simmered in wilted spinach and parsley, a la greens, with cannellini beans. Unfortunately I erred on the beans tonight. I did not grow up eating beans, being a Yankee. Never had them, never cooked them. So I don't know how. The last time I made this dish I used a can of beans. This time I used dried beans. I soaked them. I didn't know I had to cook them first. They were like slivered almonds. Ah well, live and learn.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all and to all a good night!!!

Schnitzel Holstein

Yesterday I found three boneless pork chops tucked in the freezer. Trying to figure out what to do with them I thumbed through my German cookbook and hit on schnitzel. Ok, schnitzel is supposed to be veal but I didn't have any and heck, my grocery doesn't sell it either, so pork schnitzel it was. I saw a variation called Schnitzel a la Holstein which involved topping the schnitzel with a fried egg, anchovies and capers. Hey, I had that in Germany once. I don't remember the anchovies but since I like them and had a can, why not.

The cool thing was that the baguette I had bought for serving with the fondue had gone rock hard before I got around to making the fondue. Rather than throwing it out like I normally would I decided to grind it up in a my food processor and make home made bread crumbs. And lo and behold I was able to use those very same bread crumbs to make the schnitzel. Cool.

Funny, up until a few years ago I was revolted by runny eggs. That yolk had to be fried hard and stiff for me to eat it. I don't know what changed, maybe the business trips to Germany, I don't know. But I do enjoy them over medium now. I'm still not a sunny side up kind of guy, I like the yolk kind of thick, but loose. As I told my wife last night, just mentally tell yourself it's gravy and you'll have no problem.

Buy that's an awkward paragraph. Anyway if you would like to try your hand at schnitzel, here's my version of Schnitzel Holstein.