Uncles and Salsa

Not all of you are lucky enough to have an uncle who sends you suprise food packages at the begining of your week. Over the years I have been the recipient of some extremely cool and widely varied gifts from my food loving uncle, who hasn't wanted me to miss out on some of the more exotic and unique food stuffs he has stumbled across.

Today's gift box contained fresh salsa and chips from Arizona. The minute I stepped in the door from work this evening I was handed my gifts and immediately opened both taking a huge bite of perfectly spicy, deliciously smokey salsa. How did he know we were eating fish tacos for dinner? The pairing was perfect. 

Ok, so on to the chips and salsa.

Chips from Alejandro's Tortilla and Bakora

Salsa: Coffee Infused Chipotle Salsa from Burnt Orange Gourmet Foods.

The reason for the gift? As my uncle put it "where else you gonna find coffee infused salsa!" Ok, my Minnesota foodies. I have a challenge for you! What mid-west food should I send back to Arizona? (Penzy's and Tea Source have already been emissaries of our great land.)

Book of the Month: Goat Song by Brad Kessler

Over the last few years I have found myself enjoying books written about food, but my favorites talk about the animals that produce food or who become the food we eat. Today I finished a book, Goat Song, my fabulous neighbor Alison lent me. It is a self acclaimed "short history of herding and the art of making cheese." And true to its book flap, I learned how a New York couple uprooted their lives to raise goats in Vermont and become cheese makers.

What I LOVED about this book was how it was written. Kessler entwined Jewish ancestry, Buddhism, Christianity, ancient history and his deep love of entomology into his treatise on goat rearing and cheese making. For example, he frequently pointed out similarities between cheese making and other things, such as the relation of the word for book (a tome) to a tomme, or wheel of cheese. He also chronicled a step by step comparison of the Passion of Christ with cheese making.

I think what made this book so powerful were all the parallels drawn between working the earth, the art of cheese making and the stories of historical animal tending through the ages. I was drawn in to the history and richness described.

In one chapter, Kessler is concerned about coyotes nearby and the impact they could have on his herd. I learned that female coyotes can decide how many cubs to bear when they mate and all can literally follow in each others tracks leaving only set of prints. Brilliant animals and they way he scared them away...inspired. He and his dog Lola would find fresh scat and both "mark" it. The coyotes took the hint and beat it.

Not only will you learn about coyotes but quite a bit about goats. In fact, much more than you probably ever wanted to know...some of which will be burned into my brain forever. Suffice it to say that male goats are just absolutely disgusting.

The book was full of sage sayings interwoven through, my favorite by Basho: "what is important is to keep mind high in the world of mere understanding, then, returning to daily experience, seek there in the true and beautiful". Kessler's thoughts on this which resonate with me still "we live in exile, not from Paradise but from the present. How often do we dwell here?"

Meditative and full of introspection, it is Discovery Channel meets Eat, Pray, Love written in a Michael Pollen tone but with no judgment, simply a love of the land and the milk and cheese produced there. Unlike many sensationalistic or shocking books on food, Kesslar simply shares why he has chosen the life of a cheese maker and what it has taught him. I highly, highly recommend it.

Spring Cooking Classes

My classes for the spring are out. Don't see something you like? Send me an email, I love to teach personal cooking classes.

How to Boil Water - Full

Soups from Scratch
Saturday, March 27, 2:00 PM-5:00 PM, $65
Rachael Rydbeck

This is the ideal class for aspiring home chefs who want to expand their repertoire. We'll split into groups and start with stocks, then chop, measure and work our way to stellar flavor combinations. Join us at Cooks and go home with the skills you need to make delicious gourmet soups all your own.

Menu: Homemade Stock; Mulligatawny Soup with Lamb; West African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup; Creole-Style Shrimp Gumbo.


Rents and Runts: Play with Your Food
Tuesday, March 30, 6:00 PM-9:00 PM, $55
Rachael Rydbeck

Prepare to get your hands -- and pretty much everything else -- dirty! Rachael has put together a menu that's chock full of gooey, sticky fun. Parents and kids will learn some basic cooking techniques for making peanut butter, pasta and some of the best chocolate chip cookies you've ever had. You'll even whip up a batch of play-dough to take home. This class is intended for 'rent and runt pairs: one 6-12 year old child and one adult. Though the 'rents come into the kitchen too, the runts do most of the "work." Join Chef Rachael to play with your food, then let us clean up the mess! Price is per person attending the class

Menu: Play-Dough; Mini Peanut Butter and Marshmallow-Chocolate Snacks; Homemade Pasta with Meatballs; the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever.

3-30 Minute Meals for May
Saturday, May 1, 1:00 PM-4:00 PM, $65
Rachael Rydbeck

"Not enough time" is just an empty excuse. If you have time to watch "Wheel of Fortune," you have time to whip up a well-balanced meal. Rachael is here to share some of her secrets to fitting a delicious dinner into your busy life.

Menu: Meal One: Slow-Roasted Salmon with Horseradish Sauce and Four-Bean Salad. Meal Two: Bacon-Wrapped Tenderloin and Brussels Sprouts in Browned Butter and Prosciutto; Shrimp Fra Diavolo with Linguine and Sauteed Green Beans.All classes are at Cooks of Crocus Hill.

Roasting vs Deep Frying

After brining my birds overnight (see Brining the Turkey), I washed off the brine and let them air dry in my fridge. Thanksgiving morning we roasted one bird and deep-fried the other. As I have never deep-fried a turkey I read many different perspectives on the topic online, arriving at my own method of cooking. Luckily, one of our guests had cooked a turkey this way many times and knew what to expect in case things went awol.

Early in the morning I thoroughly dried off the bird destined for the deep-fryer hoping to wick off as much water as possible. To test out the fryer, I loaded it with oil and turned it on high. I fried a batch of sweet potato fries to go with a paprika aoili and felt comfortable with my control of the temperature (only after burning the crap out of the first two batches).

It was then I stumbled across a truly exceptional tip online. Put your turkey in the deep-fryer when it is empty. Fill the fryer with water so you can see how much oil you need. Pull out the turkey and look at the water line. That is how much oil you need. Oops. Instead we bailed lava hot oil out of the fryer and into a pot...and eye-balled it.

Deep Fried Turkey

When it was fryin' time, Dave put on some thick rubber gloves, grabbed the12 pound turkey by its legs and centimeter by centimeter lowered that fowl into the oil. We were extremely careful to go slow enough that the water left in the bird didn't cause an eruption in the oil, which leads to bubbling over and all kinds of nastiness. We also took care not to deep fry in the garage, which apparently is a leading cause in fires over Thanksgiving.

Roasted Turkey

That said after about 40 minutes in 325 degree oil, we ended up with a very dark brown beautiful turkey. Side by side both birds were lovely, but in a blind taste test, the roasted bird was our favorite.

One site I referenced, should you decide to try your hand at frying next year.

Brining the Turkey

The week of Thanksgiving, Tuesday night is brining night. Tonight I picked up my birds from Whole Foods...yes, I said birds...and brought them home to soak in the simple tangyness of a salt/sugar/spice/water blend. I picked up two birds this year so I could try my hand at deep frying a turkey, something I have always wanted to do. And on the off chance it blows up...I will have my backup turkey in the oven slowly roasting.

I am sitting in my kitchen staring at my freshly made gallon and a half of homemade chicken stock and smiling at the thought of my two little birds marinating away. Generally, a brine is used to help pull extra moisture out of meat and replace it with salt through osmosis. For a better description than I can hope to give, I refer you to the expert in all things food science, Harold McGee.So as not to confuse you, I should point out that this year, McGee is decidedly anti-brine. Whatever.

For a two gallon brine, here is what I did:

1. In a saucepan, dissolve 2 cups of salt in 2 quarts of water. Add 1 cup of brown sugar and most of the hard round spices you have such as peppercorns, juniper berries, cloves, etc. I threw in some poultry seasoning and bay leaves this year. And in one batch I added cidar instead of brown sugar.
   
   
2. After the mixture is dissolved, pour into a container (I use a hunter orange Home Depot bucket when the weather is cold enough to store the turkey in the garage over night) and add ice and cold water until you have two gallons cold brine water.
   
   
3. Rinse off turkey (always rinse meat before you use it as bacteria grows on the outside) and submerge in container. I use the vegetable drawer in my fridge when the weather is warm...as you can see in pics.

Before making my brine tonight I surfed in the internet for new ideas. I didn't find any that I liked, but I did stumble across someone's technique for making sure you have enough salt in your water. They claim that you can tell you brine is salty enough if a raw egg (still in shell) floats in the water.

I tried this in extremely salty water and my egg fell right to the bottom. For my second batch of brine, I tried floating the egg before diluting the water all the way and it still didn't float. I was really hoping to have fun little trick to share with you...but alas, I don't. Unless you wanted to know a trick that doesn't work.

My chickens aren't fully submerged in my fridge drawers as that much water weight would surely do damage, so I will flip the birds occasionally Tomorrow night I rinse them off and leave them in the empty bins to air dry a bit...further evaporating more water and condensing that salt.

For more tips on my turkey roasting and deep frying...check back with me.

On Food in Spain...Pineapple Carpaccio and Galatian Octopus

Those of you who know me, know that I am married to a man who wanders the globe. When Joel is gone we do our best to stay in touch via phone messages, text messaging, email, online chatting and of course...photo sharing. If he is traveling within the US we will even watch a show on Hulu together.

One of my favorite things about his travels are all of the food pictures he sends me. As he is in Spain this week, they have been particularly fun. And of course, I wanted to share a few with you. The first is a pineapple carpaccio. Joel said the pineapple was raw and served with ice cream and a special sweet sauce.

The second just cracks me up as it came with directions:

Galatian Octopus
Bake in oven
Boil coper coin in water
Take octopus out of oven and dip in boiling water 3 times

Top Chef Night: Arctic Char with Salsa Verde of Turnips

A friend of mine loves Top Chef and has invited me to join her in the weekly ritual of watching people cook on tv. I have joined a couple of times...and while I can't say I am adicted, it is a lot of fun to see the creativity expressed by some of these cooks/chefs. I for one am disappointed that the show seems to be more about the end product and less about the process. So, I decided to recreate one of the winning meals for my friends, to see what really goes into a Top Chef dish.

The winning dish a couple of weeks ago was Arctic Char with Salsa Verde of Turnips. And you can find the complete recipe here, though after attempting to recreate it myself, I doubt it was tested. I can just image some poor intern who had to watch footage of all the chefs scrambling to meet their deadline and then attempting to recreate the winning recipe...but I could be wrong.

Anywho, the recipe is full of techniques I have absolutely never tried before and doubt will try again. The only thing I skipped was to dust the char in fennel pollen. I called 12 local stores to see if they had fennel pollen and only one (Kitchen Window) had just over an ounce for $20. Nope. Golden Fig was most helpful and even offered me the name of a farmer they work closely with who could track it down.

One element of the dish required me to melt a pound of butter into some water and then add a juiced cucumber (cucumber pulp pictured). Into this mixture I cooked romaine lettuce. Gross to look at, but it was pretty tasty...and um, low calorie. Cooking the char was most interesting as I let olive oil infused with thyme and garlic heat in the oven at 180 for 45 minutes before removing it and allowing the fish to "baste" in the oil until cooked through. Didn't quite work, but turned out fine.

I dirtied almost every pot and pan in my kitchen and ended up with small lovely little plates of food that my guests assured me were tasty. I also served a bruschetta and ratatouille as I wasn't sure how much food would be edible. Totally fun and a great experience!!

Have you ever cooked a meal you saw on food tv? Tell me!