Robilar's Gambit

Photo by Paul Bratcher, from flickr.

Combining strong liquors is a bit like putting on flashy pants with a flashy shirt. Often, it's just going to clash, but every once in a while it can really come together nicely. For some reason, I was inspired to try mixing Cherry Heering with Green Chartreuse, a recipe that sounds destined to taste like some sort of Lovecraftian cough syrup. But it ended up turning out smooth.
I started by just tasting the Chartreuse and the Cherry Herring together, to get some feeling for what I was working with. It didn't taste great, but it gave me hope that if it was chilled and mixed with a base spirit, it wouldn't be too bad. My first try involved scotch. I thought that scotch would be strong enough to stand up to the other ingredients in the mix. It's not, really, but mezcal wasn't either. A really peaty scotch might be the way to go here. Alternatively, if it doesn't really matter, maybe just a cheapish whiskey.

The result was pretty good. I added some Boker's Bitters, because it needed something else, and I wanted to let the other ingredients shine through. But they're probably strong enough that you could use something like Hellfire bitters and get a totally different drink. The cherry ends up balancing the Chartreuse quite well, so that the final result is pretty understated. Ironically, it might make a good winter warming drink. Recipe after the jump.

Pork Chops with 'Leeks' in Mustard Sauce

Photo by Jake Chessum.

One of the fun parts of joining a CSA is figuring out what to do with all the crazy vegetables you get. Sometimes, especially on weeks when you're going out of town, that's the frustrating part as well. This week, we found ourselves with extra thyme and spring onions, and I was feeling pork chops, so I pulled this recipe up off of Epicurious. It's supposed to use leeks, but the spring onions appeared similar enough that I figured I could get away with using them instead. My wife put the spice rub on the meat about three or four hours before I got home, and we were ready to go.

I followed the recipe pretty closely for the most part, though I rounded the cooking time up a little. I neglected to boil off the liquid at the end, before adding the mustard and the sour cream, but I let the sauce reduce a bit after that, without letting it boil, and was able to get a pretty good thickness to it. My wife made some mustard cabbage to go with the pork chops, which was a lot tastier than it sounds, and the chops themselves were excellent, juicy and tender.

Marinated Hanger Steak

One of our favorite cuts of beef is the Hanger Steak, so-called because it 'hangs' from the diaphragm. It has all of the beefiness of rib-eye at a much lower price. Due to the coarser structure of the meat, it also takes well to marinades, and that's what we decided to do this past weekend. I used a recipe from Serious Eats as a baseline, but I added some Arbol peppers, since that's apparently what I was doing that weekend.

One of the reasons hanger steaks are as cheap as they are is that they're a bit of a pain to trim. There's typically a lot of excess fat and silverskin you need to remove before cooking. And you need to remove it! I tried it without once, and it wasn't nearly as good. Not to mention that if you're grilling, all that fat will cause massive flare-ups. After trimming, you'll see a thick sinew running down the middle of the steak. You need to cut the steak in half to remove; it's too tough to eat. I always recommend cooking steaks medium rare, but with hanger, it's almost a necessity. Any less, and it'll taste mushy.

I enjoyed the recipe below. I marinated for about four hours, and that probably wasn't quite enough. There was some spiciness from the pepper, for example, but with a few more hours, there could have been a better level. Also, I should have used some indirect heat to finish up the thicker bits. But it was still really good, and I look forward to cooking more hanger in the future. Recipe after the jump.

Pancetta Peppers and Eggs

Photo by Amber De Grace on flickr.

Normally, we go out to brunch on the weekend. (Protip: go to Mintwood Place.) But this weekend, we felt like we needed showers after our strength training class, and so we bought some eggs and pancetta, and I raided the pantry. I was looking for a bag of dried Guajillo peppers, but apparently I used them up the last time I made adobo sauce. I did have some Arbol peppers, however, so I got three of those soaking while I prepped the rest of the ingredients. I chopped up a shallot and a couple of plum tomatoes, and grabbed a bit of fresh thyme, mint, and rosemary. I also whipped the eggs with a bit of milk, and I was ready to go.

I let the shallots stew in a tablespoon of butter for a good twenty minutes before adding the peppers (deseeded), the herbs, and a handful of pancetta. Once those had cooked for a while, I took out the herbs, chopped them, and added them back in, along with the eggs. One of the tricks to scrambled eggs is to just let them sit for a while without stirring them. It helps keep them quite creamy. After they had mostly set, I stirred them up and let them finish. Some queso or feta would have been great to add at this point, but since we did not have any, I went without. The second trick to scrambled eggs is to remove them from heat just before they're quite done. I don't do so well at this, usually removing them a little early. But since they keep cooking after you plate them, it's important to make sure they don't overcook.

They turned out well. I was a bit nervous about the peppers, as I'm not used to working with peppers that are that hot. Three, deseeded, seemed to be a good number to give the finish eggs a medium to hot level of spiciness. I'm not sure the mint added much, but both the thyme and the rosemary gave the dish a bit of depth, while the tomato helped keep it fairly light. Definitely a keeper.

The Frisco

Golden Gate Bridge. Photo by Niall Kennedy, on flickr.

One of the features of the craft cocktail revolution that is intriguing to me is the search for the original recipe of a cocktail. Now, I'm not a fetishist for authenticity, either in my cocktails or elsewhere, so it's all a bit mysterious to me. But I admire their enthusiasm and dedication to tracking down the One True Recipe. This New York Times article actually provides a good example of trying to balance the quest for authenticity with the quest for a tasty beverage. Unlike noir classics, which start with a girl, this starts with a drink:

Last month I dined in a Los Angeles restaurant called Test Kitchen, which provides space for chefs from other establishments to try out new menus or put dishes through trial runs. On the night I was there the proprietors of Red Medicine, a progressive Vietnamese place that was getting ready to open, were introducing their food and cocktails, including a drink identified as the No. 15 and described as a mix of rye, Bénédictine and lemon. I had a No. 15 early in the seven-course dinner and several more as the meal unfolded because the drink so nicely matched the food and so beautifully hit the spot.

Of course, like any good journalist, Bruni needs to get to the bottom of this cocktail. He quickly found out that the No. 15 was a Frisco. Or like a Frisco. After a bit of research, he finds that the Frisco is spoken of in a variety of ways. The principal question is whether it's made from bourbon or rye.

The answer is vague and depends on how far you travel back in time. This I learned from Jim Meehan, a cocktail sage at PDT in the East Village. When I called him about the Frisco, he was immediately familiar with it, though like Ms. Saunders he went through a moment of rye-bourbon befuddlement, which he was determined to resolve.
“Call me back in 45 minutes,” he said.
That was all the time he needed to riffle through his research books and place a few strategic calls of his own. He said that a Frisco recipe from the early part of the 20th century mentioned whiskey without specifying what type, and Bénédictine. Frisco recipes from the 1940s, he said, specifically call for bourbon.

But it doesn't end there! Bruni tries a number of combinations of rye, bourbon, Bénédictine, and lemon juice,  and in his opinion, it's 1.5 oz of rye, 1/4 oz Bénédictine, and 1/2 oz lemon juice. Just for the ease of measuring (really!), I'm going to try the second suggested recipe of 2 oz rye, 1/2 oz Bénédictine, and 1/2 oz lemon juice.

What a great drink! The lemon juice, Bénédictine, and rye all blend together really well, with the lemon juice removing the sweetness of the Bénédictine, and the rye providing an excellent base. If I had any complaints, it would be that this drink is a bit acerbic. When I try it again, I might use Bruni's recipe, but switch the proportion of the Bénédictine and the lemon juice. Alternatively, you could try using Meyer lemons in place of the lemon juice.

Fall-ing for Hemmingway

Now that I finally have some homemade Orgeat, I figured I should use it in a cocktail. There are lots of options. I wanted to save the traditional Mai Tai for when my wife was around, and for some reason, a lot of the other recipes I have laying around call for obscene amount of Angostura bitters. But the Plate recently posted a recipe that called for a reasonable amount of Angostura bitters. I still don't have any, but I'm more willing to substitute when an ingredient isn't a full ounce.

The first thing I noticed about this drink is how sweet it is. It's very good, and the lime juice helps balance it out, but between the rum and the orgeat, it's really sweet. After the sweetness, the main flavor I get is the allspice dram. I think I can take some nuts between the sweetness and the allspice, but that could just be my imagination. If I make this again, I'll probably up the lime juice to an ounce, or perhaps add more bitters. Recipe after the jump.

Beer-braised Scallops

I was going to eat dinner at Elephant & Castle, because that's where I was doing trivia, but it seemed like a bad idea. So I poked around Yes! Organic Market, and found a lovely looking package of scallops. Not only that, but I also found a nice large-format beer, Brooklyn Sorachi Ace, so I figured, let's do some beer-braised scallops.

My first step is browning the scallops, since this isn't going to happen once there is liquid in the pan. I put in about 1 tbsp of butter, and browned them for about a minute on each side, give or take. Then I added some beer, turned down the heat, and let the scallops simmer for 2 minutes. After the scallops were done, I took them out and added some more beer and some garlic, as well as some fresh oregano, since I got some from the CSA. I figured I might as well throw in some savory and some fennel, because it's basically like mussels, right? I reduced it a bit, and it was ready!

The scallops turned out great. The sauce actually tasted a bit like a beef broth, despite the absence of any sort of meat in it. It was not as reduced as I had hoped, but that describes just about all of my sauces. I should perhaps have added some butter after removing the scallops. The scallops themselves were nice and tender with just the right amount of give to them. This is what I like about scallops, their flexibility, and these certainly didn't disappoint.

Pork Tenderloin with Ginger-Rum Marinade

We bought some pork tenderloin earlier this week, with which my wife made a lovely meal, but there was too much for just one meal, so we froze half of it. Now that the weekend has arrived, it's time to grill, and I figured I'd try my hand at grilling this great cut of meat. Now, I also bought some rum a few days ago. After poking around the internet for a while, I found a great recipe for a Ginger-Rum Marinade.

I'm not sure what type of rum would be best in this recipe, but I just bought some Kraken dark spiced rum, so that's what went into it. Rum always has me thinking of the Carribean, and the pineapple juice just encourages those sorts of thoughts, so I added some Allspice to the marinade. I also added some smoked sea salt, just to help the marinade penetrate and maybe give it a bit more smokiness. My little grill could use all the help it can get! So I let it sit for a few hours, then got ready to grill.

Once the grill heated up, I put the tenderloin on for four minutes a side. I'd grill a steak of similar thickness for about 12 to 13 minutes, and pork should be cooked a bit longer than steak, so 16 minutes seems about right. I also made sure to baste it at regular intervals with the remainder of the marinade. It turned out perhaps a trifle overcooked, but was still really juicy. You could definitely taste the pineapple, but it was more refreshing than overpowering. A very good marinade. Recipe after the jump:

Whiskey Sour

The Whiskey Sour is a drink I didn't try for a long time. Not for any good reason, but because I thought it was a girly drink. (Says something about the girls I typically drink with). But I picked up some egg whites, and to me, the whiskey sour is a good drink to add them to. So I tried it, and it tasted pretty good! The lemon transforms the whiskey into a much more refreshing drink, great for summertime. It's not something I drink a lot, but I've experimented with it a bit since then, and found that I really like using Meyer lemons instead of normal lemons for a little extra sweetness. If you only have normal lemons, just add a bit more simple syrup. Without the syrup, it's quite sour. The egg whites give it a smoother mouthfeel, which is a nice counter-balance to the tartness of the lemon, but they aren't actually essential to the flavor. Recipe after the jump.

Braised Chicken with Dates and Moroccan Spices

For some reason, when I started looking for a recipe to cook for dinner tonight, I had harissa on the brain. Probably because of the harissa spiked mussels my wife had at Bistro la Bonne last night. (They have a new mussel menu. You should go.) Searching for recipes involving harissa, I was tripped up by my desire to avoid red meat for once, especially after having spicy beef stew for lunch. There weren't that many chicken recipes that involve harissa, and most weren't braised. But I did find a recipe for braised chicken with "moroccan spices" and decided to go with that.

The recipe I ended up cooking involved a lot of substitutions. The grocery store was out of dates, so I threw in some raisins instead. I also wanted it to be a bit spicy, so I roasted some red chili peppers to saute with the shallots. I used veal stock to make it a bit richer. And I added some Urfa pepper flakes to give it a bit more smokiness and tie in the red chili peppers.

It turned out fairly well. It was definitely good, and the sauce had a nice savory/sweetness to it. But I was hoping for a bit more spicy/smokiness along with it, from the roasted peppers and the urfa. I have to say, thought, that while I normally don't like the vegetable medley that goes along with this sort of dish -- I often feel like once it's given it's flavor to the meat, it's done and should be discarded -- in this case, I ate it up. The shallots were just melt on the tongue delicious, and that counts for something.

Corpse Reviver

One of the best categories of cocktail is the 'hair of the dog': a cocktail designed for the morning after conspicuous consumption of alcohol. Most popular these days seems to be the Bloody Mary and its variants. I'm not sure Mimosas count as hair of the dog, but they're also very popular in the morning. Fans of older cocktails tend to turn to either the Zombie or the Corpse Reviver #2. Less well known is the Corpse Reviver #1.

The Corpse Reviver is composed of two parts cognac, one part Calvados, and one part sweet vermouth. At the moment, I have neither Calvados, nor its rustic cousin Applejack. What I do have is crabapple infused vodka. A while back I accidentally bought crabapples, thinking they were kumquats. (Don't ask. I was tired.) Looking around the internets for something to do with crabapples, I found a recipe for crabapple schnapps, and so there we were.

The drink has a nice, subtle apple flavor from the crabapple vodka, but it's by no means overwhelming. There's a fair amount of sweetness in the drink, but it's more than balanced out by the cognac. Some form of bitters wouldn't hurt; I've been increasingly using burlesque bitters in everything but Peychaud's might be a better choice in this. A lemon twist would not be out of place.

Pre-Race Carb Loading with Homemade Pasta Sauce

Photo by Nadi0, from flickr.

Chris and I have the Cherry Blossom 10 miler coming up tomorrow morning, which means an excuse for carb loading! And if there's anything I love as much as pasta, it's making pasta sauce. Now, I'm not generally opposed to buying prepared foods, but one thing I've never understood is the point of pasta sauce out of a jar. Homemade pasta sauce is so easy, almost as fast, fun to experiment with, and always so much tastier. It's also really forgiving; the recipe I'm about to post isn't really a recipe, as I didn't measure anything, and did quite a bit of improvising. These are the ingredients that ended up going into the sauce:

Several garlic cloves, sliced
Part of an onion, diced,
One Habanero pepper, de-seeded and diced
One pint of grape tomatoes
Chicken broth
Dry vermouth (white wine would also work, but we didn't have any)
Fresh rosemary
Fresh mint
Dried basil (fresh would be better, but I forgot to pick some up at the store)
Sliced olives
Couple pinches of sugar

I started by sauteing the garlic, onion, and habanero over medium heat until everything was soft, about 5 minutes or so. I then dumped in the grape tomatoes, and let them sit until the outsides started to caramelize and they started to burst. This takes about 10-12 minutes, and I stirred occasionally to keep the onions and garlic from burning. You don't want to stir too often though, or you'll keep the tomatoes from charring. Once a few had burst on their own, I used a potato masher to mash the rest of them just a bit. I prefer a chunky sauce, so I still wanted some large tomato chunks. I mixed in a bit of sugar to balance the acidity of the tomatoes, and then I added some chicken broth and dry vermouth, along with the herbs and olives. I kept the heat pretty high to reduce the liquid, and once the liquid was an appropriate consistency, I reduced the heat to low until I was ready to use it. As simple as can be!

This is a great base recipe, because it's so easy to adjust. The addition of olives was a last-second decision because I thought they sounded good, but they could easily be left out. Chicken broth could be replaced with vegetable broth, water, or extra wine, though you'd want to add a bit of salt if you don't use any broth. Mint could be left out, oregano could be added. I also think roasted red peppers would be a nice addition, for a bit of smokey flavor. I strongly prefer bite-sized tomatoes, such as grape or cherry, because keeping them whole for a bit allows the outside to get a bit caramelized, but if that doesn't matter to you, then a can of diced tomatoes would do. For a smooth sauce, you could run everything in the blender before adding to pasta. The list of possible additions or substitutions goes on and on; pasta sauce is extremely forgiving, so it's a great way for both new and experienced cooks to get some practice improvising in the kitchen.

French Onion Soup

I spent Sunday making French Onion Soup. It wasn't all active time, of course, but I started at 1, and we ate at 8, and even then I had to speed the recipe up. How did it come to this? Well, I follow Michael Ruhlman's blog, over at Ruhlman.com, and a while back he posted a recipe for French Onion Soup. I love French Onion Soup, but rarely get it at restaurants since I rarely get an appetizer of any sort at restaurants. So I was pretty excited by the recipe. Unfortunately, it calls for sweating the onions over several hours, so it took a while for me to get around to it. But I'm glad I did!

The broth was great; rich and oniony. I had intended to add a bit of bourbon to each bowl, but it slipped my mind. I was out of sherry, so I used a mixture of vermouth and sherry vinegar. The crusty bread eagerly soaked up the broth, almost to the extent there was none left, and the Emmentaler cheese provided a great nutty edge to the dish. When I had it again two days later, the flavors were quite a bit more subtle. In general, it was an improvement, but the sweetness of the onions was overwhelming. They were so sweet, they tasted almost like apples! I'm glad I added beef broth to it. Ruhlman is adamantly against it, but I feel like the ratio of two parts water to one part broth gave it a lot more depth than it would have had otherwise, while still allowing the onion flavor to shine through.

If I had to do it again, I'd have the temperature a bit higher when sweating the onions. I had it almost all the way down, and it still wasn't done by the time we were starving at 8 o'clock. I think I could have dialed it up a bit higher, and not risked burning the onions. That would have meant dinner at a reasonable hour. Given the tendency of the bread to soak up the broth, I need either more liquid or thinner bread. I worry that thinner bread might just lose to much of the crunch. Recipe is after the jump.

Candied Walnuts!

Typically, when I want a snack, I'll just munch on some cheese or crackers, maybe some chips. But lately, I've been trying to cook more snacks, just to get a bit more variety. Today, I noticed a bag of walnuts laying around in the kitchen. So I decided to make walnuts!

The kind folks at California Walnuts have a bunch of recipes on their website. I figured candied walnuts sounded pretty tasty, and even better, their recipe uses maple syrup. After tossing the walnuts in syrup and sesame seeds, I put them in the oven at 325 degrees for 25 minutes, and stirred them once. They came out tasty, though perhaps slightly overdone. Recipe after the jump.

Mussels are hard

The hard part of mussels is the cooking. My wife and I both love mussels, and are fortunate to live in a town that features many excellent places to eat them. But until last year, we had never tried to make them ourselves. Then I happened on a recipe for grilled mussels, which sounded really interesting, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The results were not good. The recipe was fine, but at least half of the mussels were undercooked, most of them severely. The problem is, mussels are pretty finicky. It takes about 5 minutes to grill them (8 to steam), but that's an average. You mostly have to watch them, and wait for them to open. And by open, I mean open wide. So the second time I grilled mussels, I was a lot more patient, and they turned out a lot better.

Recently, we've been craving seafood again, and scallops are just a bit more expensive than we really want. So my wife picked up some mussels, I sent her a recipe from Serious Eats, and she cooked them up for me (I have a really great wife!) She mostly followed the recipe, just adding rosemary, shallots, and leeks. The broth was really flavorful, and went great with the baguette she picked up, but the mussels, as a rule, were very underdone. I don't think we ate more than half of them. So, as a gentle reminder, when you cook mussels, cook them well! They should be open wide. Recipe after the jump.

Lamb Chops with Tomato Butter

When we're looking for a recipe, I usually turn to Epicurious for ideas. Their browse feature is great, allowing you to page through recipes with as broad or narrow criteria as you might wish, and their community is really great. Thanks to the reviews, I've only rarely had something from them that wasn't above average. (Though, on the other hand, the cooking times are also generally above average.) The last time I was on there, I was looking for something quick and easy to prepare after my run. I found three recipes, and my wife picked out the lamb chops with sun-dried tomato butter.

I don't normally like lamb as much as steak, due mostly to its gaminess, but these were great! The walnuts and tomatoes in the butter helped balance out the gaminess of the lamb, and the cayenne pepper added a subtle spiciness. Unlike a lot of epicurious recipes, this one really was quick and easy. Recipe after the jump.