136. Quick Tomato Sauce for Pizza

Date Cooked: June 13, 2010
Page: 669
Rating: B+

I cooked this almost 5 months ago and I am going to admit my memory is pretty awful about my experience cooking this… but fortunately this wasn’t an awful recipe. As I had said in previous posts I really wanted to bake some homemade pizzas. I figured that if I was going to make dough from scratch I should also make the pizza sauce from scratch. So while the dough was relaxing I set about making the sauce.

Are you ready for a long post delving into the adventure that is quick tomato sauce for pizza? Well too bad… this was simple. I sauteed a little bit of garlic, added a can of crushed tomatoes and seasoned with salt and pepper. I simmered it until it thickened. That really could not have been easier. It barely qualifies as a recipe.

Rating: B+ The end result though was a simple sauce for the pizza which tasted good. The kids ate it on their pizza without complaint.

134. Crispy Fried Chicken

Date Cooked: April 18, 2010
Page: 330
Rating: B

I was watching the Next Food Network Star last night, a show my wife and I love, and some of the contestants had to make fried chicken. It made me think back to the fried chicken I cooked back in April… yes April, I am that negligent with my blog these days. Too many things on the go I guess. Well the chicken I made didn’t turn out as nice as that the Next Food Network Stars made but it was still a great learning experience in the kitchen.

The first thing that I needed to do was brine the chicken in buttermilk, seven cups of it. I think the only reason I even decided to cook this recipe was that fact that I had a carton of buttermilk that was approaching it’s expiration date. I had defrosted a whole chicken and then cut it up into 8 parts… it was supposed to be ten parts… I’ll get to that in a moment when it becomes somewhat humorous. The buttermilk brine contained salt, sugar, paprika, garlic and bay leaves all smashed together before being mixed with the buttermilk. The chicken pieces were then submerged and the bowl set in the fridge.

The chicken breast pieces were really large compared to the rest of the chicken and I was wondering why so I re-read the book. The breasts were supposed to be cut in half which would have provided two similar sized pieces to the rest of the batch. Now what should I do, since the chicken was brining in the fridge. I thought about it carefully and then realized the larger breasts probably wouldn’t deep fry well so I took out the bowl, reached into the brine and pulled out the dripping chicken pieces and sliced through them. Buttermilk brine was dripping everywhere, even though I tried my best to contain the mess. In my mind I was imagining little Salmonella bacterium colonizing every corner of my kitchen, ready to declare war on my family. So I put the four chicken breast pieces back in the brine and then scrubbed my kitchen counters.

Once the chicken had soaked in buttermilk long enough I removed it and prepared for the next phase of the operation. A dish of flour was prepared along with a mixture of baking powder, baking soda, egg and buttermilk for battering. I used my deep fryer instead of oil in a pan because it was cleaner and less risk to me. The chicken was deep fried until golden brown and then left drain on a paper towel lined plate before drying on a wire rack.

Rating: B. The skin was nice and crispy but the chicken as a whole was just a little too greasy. That said the kids loved it but they do tend to eat anything deep-fried. I don’t know if I would go through this whole mess again but I might adapt this to home-made chicken strips. I still have to try oven-fried chicken which might be better… I hope.

132. Spiral-Sliced Ham

Date Cooked: April 4, 2010
Page: 478
Rating: B-

I cooked this recipe almost 2 months ago. Time is flying by with another little one in the house. Definitely takes another chunk of time out of my already precious little time. In addition a few other changes have altered our dietary eating habits so the truth is trying to cook through this book has gotten a little more difficult. But I forge on anyway.

Nothing screams Easter like a 10lb. ham for two. Well actually it wasn’t really two, I have two little eaters as well so I guess it was more like two and a half. This year was a quiet Easter for us but we still wanted a nice family dinner and there is one thing we don’t eat a lot of in our house. Ham. We don’t dislike it but never really seem to want to cook one. Easter is a good excuse to cook one. The book is full of little articles on the best kitchen equipment or brands of product that taster’s recommend. Often this is useless to me because many brands aren’t sold in Canada or they are but are sold under different names. In this case the book recommended Cook’s Spiral-Sliced Smoked Ham. Just so happens that my preferred supermarket had them on sale. 10lbs. of ham is relatively inexpensive ($17) … compared to the 4 lbs of lamb shoulder chops I am looking for ($80).

Easter Sunday was time to get this big guy in the oven. I made some drastic miscalculations with regards to the timing of my meal. Between cooking time and resting time I underestimated by almost 2 hours. This probably would have been okay if it wasn’t for the fact that I was planning on dinner being at 6pm. By time 8pm rolled around we were famished.

Cooking a spiral sliced ham is not exactly rocket science, although I still struggled. In essence you are merely reheating a previously cooked product. The real learning for me was carving the ham. If done right you get a lot of meat with very few cuts. The book nicely outlined how to do this. I will say that I have become rather good at carving turkey, chicken and ham.

Rating: B-. I still can’t say I get overly excited about ham. It is a fine product but I would rather eat a good pork roast over a ham. This was served with a sauce which was rather tasty. Both of my eating children enjoyed the ham which always makes it a winner.

130. Gas-Grilled Bone-In Chicken Breasts

Date Cooked: March 16, 2010
Page: 609
Rating: B

Ever since we won our grill last summer I have been a lot more enthused about grilling, and now that winter was beginning to close I figured I should fire it up and make sure it was ready for a new season. Grilled chicken sounded like a reasonably simple meal and I figured a rub or paste would spice things up.

Preparation for this meal was not exactly tough. I didn’t brine the chicken due to time constraints and the paste was pretty quick to throw together, so this recipe was all about the grill. I will confess. I am not a griller. While I have made big strides in the kitchen I still struggle on the grill, constantly double guessing myself and prone to burn food. I wouldn’t call what I do grilling… I’d probably call it arson. Isn’t grilling supposed to be buried deep in the male DNA? Or is it buried so deep in mine it got lost? Anyway let’s see how this first foray into grilling for the season turned out.

I spread the Asian spice paste on the skin side of the chicken breasts before placing them on the hot grill skin side down. While the skin side seared I spread the paste on the chicken’s other side. Once the skin side had sufficiently burned, I flipped it to burn the other side. I suppose referring to it as burning isn’t to promising is it. After searing both sides I moved the chicken to the cooler side of the grill to finish cooking. After several minutes I returned to a hot smoking grill to remove the charred poultry remains.

Rating: B-. I didn’t hate this recipe but I need to figure out how to better understand my grill temperature. The chicken wasn’t overcooked except for the outside of it which was well beyond overcooked. I wish I could really comment on the taste of the Asian spice paste but I have no idea what it really tasted like since it was pretty much burned off. I really must not skip brining, but it is so hard to find that hour to brine when I get home from work.

125. Beef Chili with Kidney Beans

Date Cooked: February 7, 2010
Page: 443
Rating: B+

I’m going to start this post with a disclaimer. I am not a sports fan, a fact which has earned me a fair share of jokes from my family. That being said I don’t dislike sports, I just don’t have any real interest in watching them on TV. The Super Bowl and Stanley Cup finals are the exception of course. I can’t think of a single Super Bowl I have not watched since I was a child. So this year would be no different. I would sit down and watch the game whether anyone else cared to join me or not. And to enjoy the game I needed some good food. I figured chili was a good traditional Super Bowl choice.

If I had known how easy it would be to make this chili I would have done it much sooner. I made a quick trip to the overcrowded grocery store to pick up the fresh produce and meat needed. Apparently food and the Super Bowl go well together. The canned beans were completely gone (I’m guessing chili is a really common Super Bowl dish) so it was fortunate I didn’t need those. The chili powder was sold out, once again I already had that, and the ground meat was left to slim pickings. I was lucky there. With the ingredients I needed (plus some extra snacks), I headed home.

I figured it would probably be a wise idea to gather all the ingredients first and then prep them before cooking. I don’t do this often enough but I am glad I did because it really does speed up the cooking process. So with a pile of chopped onions and red pepper, a bowl of various spices (chili powder, cayenne, cumin, salt, oregano, coriander) and some garlic ready for the press I heated some oil in my dutch oven. With the oil nice and hot I threw in the vegetables, garlic and spices. I love the smell of cumin! I realize that it is the scent in southwest cuisine that make my mouth water! Anyway the mixture was nice and fragrant. Once the onions and peppers had softened I added the ground beef and cooked until the pink was gone (a tough task because the spices immediately make everything look brown).

When the beef was no longer pink I added the beans, diced tomatoes and crushed tomatoes. This simmered covered for an hour and then a further hour uncovered. That was it. Ready to serve with a little shredded cheese.

Rating: B+. It was easy and both my children ate some of it which was a real bonus. I found that the flavor profile was good but it did need more salt to round it out. It wasn’t overly spicy either which was great for the kids. My youngest mentioned that his mouth was sore but he kept eating anyway. Getting him used to spicy! My brother-in-law and his girlfriend came by to watch the game and they both enjoyed it. The recipe made quite a lot but by the end of the night there wasn’t even any left for me to take for lunch the next day. Guess I need to make more soon!

119. Broiled Chicken Breasts

Date Cooked: November 30, 2009
Page: 327
Rating: B+

I had already done broiled chicken thighs and those turned out nice. This wasn’t much different except I decided to use a rub. As mentioned in the previous post, a rub was added between the skin and meat and then a mixture of oil and lemon juice was added just before finishing.

For those that care. The chicken was broiled on the bottom oven rack for about 7 minutes a side, starting skin side down, then a minute on the top rack to crisp the skin. My top rack left very little clearance between the chicken and the element and I had to watch it like a hawk lest my chicken go up in flames.

Rating: B+. The chicken turned out nicely done, maybe a little overcooked but brining allows for a little more leniency with cooking time. The chicken maintained its flavor and juiciness. The rub was a little too heavy on the rosemary and detracted a bit from the garlic and lemon flavors which were much more subtle.

114. Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Date Cooked: October 28, 2009
Page: 315
Rating: A-

Whenever I imagined this recipe I always thought it was a whole roasted chicken. If I had known it was a chicken broken down into parts I may have actually cooked this one sooner. There was a time that the mere name of this dish would have turned my stomach. Garlic was not something I loved, but I honestly cannot remember when that changed. Today I put garlic in a lot of my cooking and I am liberal with it. In fact most of the recipes that call for a clove of garlic get two or three.

This recipe starts with the roasting of 3 heads of garlic, broken out into their cloves, and some chopped shallots. Actually the recipe starts with brining chicken but that is becoming routine so we’ll move onto the more exciting aspects of this dish. The garlic and shallots were tossed with oil, salt and pepper and then roasted for almost 40 minutes. At the end of the 40 minutes the garlic was starting to smell nice.

The chicken pieces were removed from the brine, rinsed, dried and then seasoned with pepper. In an ovenproof skillet they were browned in oil until both sides had crisped nicely. The chicken was set aside and the pan was deglazed with chicken broth and dry vermouth before some rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf were added. I was supposed to tie the sprigs of rosemary, thyme and the bay leaf together but I don’t have any kitchen twine. So I prepared myself for the inevitable fishing expedition required to get them out later. I added the garlic and shallots before reintroducing the chicken. The skillet went into the oven to roast for about 15 minutes.

Once done in the oven, the chicken was plated and most of the garlic and shallots were plated with it. The herbs were fished out and discarded, then some of the garlic was squeezed through a sieve and whisked into the pan sauce with some butter. The sauce was served over the chicken.

Rating: A-. This turned out really nice. The chicken was full of flavor and felt very comforting and satisfying. I think I ate 75% of the chicken myself. I will be making this again.

113. Grilled Flank Steak Rubbed with Latin Spices

Date Cooked: October 25, 2009
Page: 574
Rating: A-

Flank steak is an easy meal. We decided to have some fajitas at home and this time I figured I would use one of the variations for the flank steak since I had already prepared Classic Fajitas before. This was a very simple recipe to throw together. A mixture of cumin, chili powder, ground coriander, salt, black pepper, cinnamon and red pepper flakes was rubbed on the flank steak before grilling.

The flank steak was grilled for about 5 minutes a side. The steak was then tented with foil and allowed to rest for 10 minutes.

Rating: A-. The spice rub really added some nice flavor to the meat. And this meal was on the table in under 30 minutes! I wish I had more to say about this but it was so easy. I just need to make sure I always have these spices on hand.

106. Pasta with Quick Tomato Sauce

Date Cooked: September 27, 2009
Page: 245
Rating: B

I have really begun to think more about the processed food that we buy and while I am not against pre-packaged food for convenience I do find myself frequently asking whether or not I could make it at home. The answer is usually a resounding YES followed by lots of cursing and frustration and questioning of why I didn’t just buy that damn package of frozen food.

While my attempt at hummus is what started me on this journey and actually got me thinking more about the food I buy, it was an attempt to make homemade chicken strips (which I hope to post sometime soon) that made me look at the food in stores differently.

We had some fresh pasta that needed to be used and I figured I would make a quick pasta sauce to go with it. I have learned from both the Chicken Parmesan and the Spaghetti and Meatballs that a simple pasta sauce is easy to make and as good as any store bought pasta sauce. The sauce takes about as long to cook as the pasta does. While this is a quick plain tomato sauce you can easily add to this mix to make it really delicious.

I deviated from the recipe almost immediately but I was certain that the change would not really alter the results in any significant way… I’m quite certain based on some of my exploits that I should refrain from allowing these kinds of ideas from taking hold. Since we were also going to be having some sausage I cooked them first and then used the grease from the sausage to sautee the garlic instead of starting with fresh oil. No need to dirty another pan right? I’m sure all you dish cleaning haters out there can agree. Once the garlic was fragrant, then I added a canned of diced tomatoes to begin reducing them.

In previous ‘quick’ sauce recipes I would use crushed tomatoes so when I dumped in the can of diced tomatoes I was thinking this was going to be a little chunkier than I would like… or actually my wife indicated how displeased she would be if this was chunkier than she liked. I’m married so we like the same things  As the tomatoes reduced and broke down though they became a nice paste and I figured if they didn’t it was nothing the immersion blender couldn’t solve.

As the sauce approached its final minutes of cooking I added some fresh basil, a little sugar and some salt. I drained the pasta which had been cooking during this time, being careful to reserve some pasta water. A tip I picked up somewhere suggested putting the measuring cup in the colander so you don’t forget to take some water before dumping. It has stopped me from forgetting a few times already.

I put the drained pasta back into its warm pot and introduced it to the sauce along with the reserved water and some oil. The mixture was heated through for a few minutes and then plated to serve. Actually it was then plated to take a picture and then I mixed the cooked sausage into the pasta and served that.

Rating: B. It was simple and delicious. Nothing spectacular mind you but it definitely was no more difficult than using store bought pasta sauce, well actually it was a little more difficult but I think instead of keeping pasta sauces on hand I will start keep cans of diced and crushed tomatoes on hand. I also learned that my children love cheese… except for the cheese that we grated to garnish this. My oldest decided that it smelt like vomit. I believe it was either Swiss or Asiago. Don’t know because we just grated the small amount we had left in the fridge. That should instill confidence for those that visit to eat. I’m not always sure what I am feeding you.

105. Chicken Pot Pie with Corn and Bacon

Date Cooked: September 26, 2009
Page: 352
Rating: A-

So we all know how the Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuit Topping turned out but what about the rest of the dish. Well creating this pot pie was very similar to my previous attempt with only mild modifications and deviations from that event.

It really is a simple process to create a delicious chicken pot pie (which I have to admit is a dish I am really beginning to enjoy). Same as before, chicken breasts were poached in stock and both the chicken and stock were set aside. This time though both of my chicken breasts were of similar size so they both cooked nice and juicy around the same time. Next in this version, the bacon was cooked until crispy and then the rendered fat was used to sauté the vegetables (carrots, onions and celery). While the vegetables cooked I shredded the chicken (while my youngest kept trying to steal pieces of it). Once the carrots, onions and celery was done I added it to the bowl of chicken along with the bacon.

In the now empty dutch oven, I whisked together some butter and flour before adding the reserved poaching stock, milk and thyme. I simmered this until it thickened, and this time I let it really thicken, before seasoning it with salt and pepper and some sherry. This was mixed with the chicken, vegetables and bacon along with a can of corn… I really, truly thought I had frozen corn but I didn’t so I had to use canned corn. I don’t know about the rest of you but canned vegetables are low on my list of preferred food items. This mixture was transferred to a baking dish and topped with the Fluffy Buttermilk Biscuit Topping. Into the oven it went for longer than the book suggested. The book suggested 30 minutes but I needed almost 40 minutes for it to be hot and bubbly.

Rating: A-. I love a good chicken pot pie and this was no exception. This time around I felt a lot more confident putting it together, and other than the biscuit topping, it turned out great. Of course this time around my oldest didn’t like it very much, but his preference in food these days is more about mood than taste. I think I may have ended up eating half of this myself. I will absolutely cook more pot pies not simply because there are two more variations left in the book but because I want to try individual sized ones next!

103. Spaghetti and Meatballs

Date Cooked: September 23, 2009
Page: 253
Rating: B+

Spaghetti and Meatballs! A quintessential Italian pasta dish that I truly cannot remember the last time I had eaten it. I’ve had spaghetti and sauce before, but big delicious meatballs were never on top of the spaghetti, all covered in cheese. And I never lost my poor meatballs, when somebody sneezed. I’ll probably be humming that children’s song for the rest of the day… I wonder if I can even remember the whole thing…

Anyway, let’s talk about some massive meaty balls. That probably sounds rather bad but I mean I seriously made some meaty balls. The first step in creating what the book calls the ‘Best’ meatballs is to make a paste out of buttermilk and bread. This is called a panade for those that didn’t know, which included myself until just a few minutes ago when I looked it up. Apparently this is the secret to keeping them moist. I’ll be honest, bread soaked and mashed into buttermilk looks really gross, something like what a newborn would spit up. But I put those thoughts aside and started getting the rest of this meal together.

I started with a pound of ground meat, in this case ¾ pound of ground beef and ¼ pound of ground pork. Mixed into this I added parmesan cheese, parsley, garlic, an egg yolk and salt and pepper to season. I added the baby vomit… I mean the panade, and mixed everything until just combined to prevent the meatballs from getting too dense from over working. From this mixture I rolled out 12 large meatballs. The recipe says I should get about 14 and I don’t doubt if I had been a little more conservative I would have had that many.

I’d like to look back to when I started this blog and look at the recipe for Corn Fritters. I was terrified of cooking in oil a year ago. Since then I have gotten quite used to it and I know this sounds ridiculous but I am proud of my basic cooking techniques. I also realize I wasn’t unique and I wonder how many people today in their early thirties haven’t learned the basics for cooking.

Anyway I carefully placed the meatballs into my pan of oil. I made sure not to crowd them and as such I did them in two batches. I turned them frequently to brown them on all sides and this took some delicate work for the first few turns as my meatballs definitely were not dense. Once browned, they were set aside and the oil was removed, and then some more oil was added, this time olive oil. Some garlic was sautéed before a can of crushed tomatoes was added. This was left to simmer until it thickened up before I finally added some chopped fresh basil (from my basil plant which is still growing nicely), along with some salt and pepper to taste. I added the meatballs to the sauce to keep everything warm while the pasta finished cooking.

Simple things the book has taught me are that ample water and salt are required for cooking pasta. I’m sure lots of people have their own beliefs but I am now firmly entrenched with the books ideology. Now I must confess one teeny, tiny deviation from the book here. The recipe is for spaghetti and meatballs but I found out that I didn’t have spaghetti after coming home from shopping and I didn’t feel like running back out when I had an abundance of linguini and I figure it was close enough. Once the pasta was drained I returned it to the pot and added in several spoonfuls of the sauce, sans meatballs, and tossed to coat.

Each plate was set with pasta, topped with some meatballs and then topped with more sauce and some parmesan. Well actually my wife and sons were plated. I ended up having to cook more pasta for myself because I had once again misjudged how much pasta I needed to feed my family.

Rating: B+. This was a good and satisfying meal. The meatballs were delicious and the sauce was easy to make. Everyone enjoyed the meal including my traditionally picky eaters. In fact we had to fight over the last meatballs.

In case you were wondering what nursery rhyme was stuck in my head, it was On Top of Spaghetti.

98. Gas-Grilled Pork Tenderloin

Date Cooked: August 22, 2009
Page: 586
Rating: A

Pork tenderloin is one of those cuts of meat I was always intimidated by. I felt it was a high quality cut and therefore difficult to prepare well. I am slowly realizing how much of an idiot I am. I am spending too much time letting perceptions of food interfere with cooking and enjoying it. One thing I have absolutely learned from this project is that my perceptions are faulty and I need to discard them. Pork tenderloin on a grill could not be easier.

I started by brining the pork tenderloins in salt and sugar for an hour. During this brine process I prepared the Asian Wet Rub and then fired the grill. Once the tenderloins had been rinsed and patted dry I coated them in the rub and set them on the grill. The sizzle as they hit the hot grill was a beautiful sound.

They were grilled for 2 minutes a side at high heat and then I let them cook over low heat for a few more minutes until the internal temperature reached 145. I then removed them and let them rest. I’ve done a fair bit of reading with regards to the internal temperature of pork and have come to the conclusion that when 145-150 is reached and then left to rest I get a much nicer meal. When the temperature reaches too high I might as well cook the plastic tray the pork came in.

Rating: A. I like pork so I am a little biased. I was surprised at how easy it was to prepare and cook this meal and the pork was moist and full of flavor and the rub was delicious on it. I will definitely be cooking much more pork tenderloin in the future.

93. Grilled Hamburgers with Garlic, Chipotles, and Scallions

Date Cooked: August 7, 2009
Page: 449
Rating: B+

I’m still on a grilling kick and I have been trying to use my grill a lot more this summer, especially since I won the new one. I figured I would try my hand at burgers again considering my previous failure with them. I am not as dense as those previous burgers were though and this time I picked up ground beef that had a higher fat content. I will spoil the ending by saying that it changed things greatly.

I might have deviated a little from this recipe. I’m supposed to start with 1 ½ pounds of ground beef but once I had measured it out I felt it looked a bit... weak? I figured I would just add the rest of the package since I wasn’t really going to freeze a ½ pound. So I am already courting failure but increasing the amount of prime ingredients. The next step was to mix in minced scallions, chipotle chile in adobo sauce and garlic… okay I need to back up a step.

Let’s talk about garlic. Ladies and Gentleman, this was my very first attempt at dry roasting garlic (not counting roasting it in the oven with other foods), and since I had never done it before I didn’t quite know what to expect. After toasting them on the stove I removed them and was marveled at how soft they become and how much more fragrant, as well as the fact that the bitterness mellows out completely. I loved it! So they were minced and thrown into the ground beef.

Some salt and pepper added to season and then I got my hands dirty. There is a relaxing aspect to working the ground beef with bare hands. The only problem is you have to be careful not to overwork it so the relaxation needs to end. Once everything was mixed I left my math and reading skills behind and began to form the patties. Somewhere in my mind I thought the book wanted six patties (from an initial 1 ½ pounds) meaning scrawny little 4oz patties. This was unacceptable so I made fewer of them but larger. I ended up with 5 of them from the two pounds I used, around 6.5 oz each. Turns out that as I review the recipe while typing this that I was illiterate. The original amounts were supposed to make 4 patties not the 6 I had assumed. If you are as confused about this paragraph as I am then don’t worry. I’ll summarize it as follows. It all worked out in the end.

Once the patties were formed with their little divot in the middle (to help them cook up a more uniform thickness), I prepped the grill which had been heating up nicely. The burgers only took a few minutes on each side to cook through nicely. They were removed and left to rest for a few minutes while I grilled up a side dish.

Rating: B+. Definitely getting better. The chile came through nicely but I felt that the garlic and scallions were lost in the burger. The burger definitely turned out moist although a little smaller than I would have liked. I can see myself practicing many burger variations in the coming weeks. I am having my doubts that these burger recipes are the “best” though.

91. Gas-Grilled Strip Steaks

Date Cooked: August 6, 2009
Page: 564
Rating: A

A few weeks ago my wife and I spent some time at our bank taking advantage of the excellent mortgage rates and doing a little adjusting of our finances. In the process we put our names in for a draw for a new grill. Well it turns out we won it! I was very happy especially since we were looking to buy a new grill at the end of the summer season and now I can put that money towards something else! So of course there is only one thing to do with a new grill and that is to try it out.

To break in the grill I figured nothing was better than a good steak. So a quick trip to the store and I picked up a nice strip steak. As my wife is still away, I picked up just a small one for myself. I notice that I tend to eat a lot of strip steaks and need to start trying the different cuts to determine if I can tell and appreciate the difference.

I fired up the grill with ease. My old grilled had the electric starter break on it so I was constantly sticking matches in to light it. The problem was one side would light while the other burner would take a bit to get going. I frequently had mini explosions when lighting the grill. I would literally have to take a few steps back to avoid facial hair loss. This new one seems so much safer!

While the grill was heating up I seasoned the steak with just salt and pepper. Once the grill was hot enough I placed the steak on the grills and listened to it sizzle. 2 minutes per side and then I moved it over to the cooler side to finish cooking for another 6 minutes. I like my steaks more on the rare side.

I am pretty proud of the grill marks on the steak, something my old grill never seemed able to produce. On a side note I did singe the hairs on my arm without realizing it. The grill can throw off some serious heat!

Rating: A. The steak turned out great although it was a little more on the well-done side of medium than I would have liked. That is simply learning the new grill and I am excited to learn!

89. Gas-Grilled Pork Chops

Date Cooked: July 31, 2009
Page: 583
Rating: A

I am a fan of pork. It is a meat that I thoroughly enjoy the taste and texture of. When cooked properly. Nothing can be worse than a dry pork chop. So I was happy to see that this recipe starts with brining the pork chops in a mixture of salt and sugar. The brining is meant to help keep the pork chops juicy and boost their flavor. The book recommends rib or center-cut loin chops and while at the grocery store I picked up center-cut loin chops because they were thicker. Pork chops should be about 1 ½ inches thick and maintain a uniform thickness. My chops weren’t that thick unfortunately. I am still searching for a local butcher that can provide me with my meat needs without paying a hefty premium for the service. Until I do I will be reduced to the supermarket offerings.

The chops brined for a little over an hour while I prepped the rest of the meal. Once the brining was complete I patted them dry and seasoned them liberally with the spice rub from the previous post. When I say liberally I mean they were encrusted with the rub.

I am getting better at grilling. Or more importantly I am getting more confident on the grill. I had one side of the grill set to high and the other side to medium. The pork chops were grilled about 3 minutes per side over the hot section of the grill before being cooked for another 7 minutes over the cooler section. When they were done the chops looked and smelled great.

They were served with a peach salsa (covered in the next post but you can see from the picture above).

Rating: A. The only real improvement I could have made to these chops would have been to get thicker ones. These chops were delicious with the rub really accenting the juicy and flavorful pork. I am craving these again as I type this. I might need to make some pork chops tonight!

84. Gas-Grilled Bone-In Chicken Thighs

Dated Cooked: July 7, 2009
Page: 608
Rating: A-

Its summer grilling season and I intend to make good use of the grill this year. I figured chicken should be easy enough and something can only be stored in the freezer for so long. Once the chicken thighs had thawed I brined them.

** Please hold for this important culinary announcement. The night before I had cooked some chicken without brining it and I must say it just shouldn’t be done. I know, you are probably tired of me praising the virtues of brined poultry so I promise to make this my last tirade. Brine your chicken! DO IT! No excuses! Your chicken will be better for it. Okay done. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. **

When the grill was hot enough I removed the chicken from the brine, patted it dry and then seasoned it with salt and pepper. The chicken was grilled on high heat to give a nice crust before cooking it over lower heat to cook through. I am one of those people always scared to undercook chicken but I am beginning to trust myself a little more and rely on the meat thermometer to tell me when it’s done. Although I need that less and less all the time. When the chicken was done it was plated to eat.

Rating: A-. Simple and delicious chicken that was juicy and full of flavor with a nice crispy skin. Couldn’t ask for more… well actually I could ask for more since chicken thighs aren’t that big.

82. Turkey Tetrazzini

Date Cooked: June 8, 2009
Page: 292
Rating: A

I didn’t plan to make this dish but the circumstances surrounding a thawed turkey left me with a whole roast turkey and no dinner for it. My mother-in-law picked up a frozen turkey because it was on sale and it was left to thaw in my fridge with the intention of having it roasted for a family dinner. Life is hectic and dinner plans were cancelled but I still had thawed 15lb turkey that needed to be cooked. So I roasted it.

Now the last time I roasted a turkey it tasted great and the picture was horrible… The picture actually scares me to look at. This time around the turkey looked golden brown and just delicious. Of course I never thought to take a picture of it because it wasn’t for the book. Anyway I carved it up, we ate some and I figured I didn’t mind having turkey sandwiches for the next week or two (I love turkey sandwiches!). The next day though I was lamenting the fact I had not really cooked anything from the book in a long time when I realized that there was a recipe that required cooked turkey meat! I couldn’t think of a better way to utilize the turkey, not to mention when else was I going to have 4 cups of cooked turkey meat available.

This recipe was a vicious reminder of all my poor cooking habits that I had been trying to change. What a month of cooking familiar recipes can do to a sense of organization. Let’s just say that prepping the onions and mushrooms and turkey was easy. Everything after that was a near disaster. Basically three things needed to be on the go at once since I was trying to get dinner ready quickly. This was the first indicator of impending disaster. I was boiling water for the pasta, cooking down onions and mushrooms and trying to prepare the sauce which starts with a roux. Since I had decided that getting everything together first was somehow a waste of time I came very close to destroying the roux (but didn’t)… Let me stop for a second. This post is becoming as chaotic as my cooking techniques.

Okay, so cooking down the onions and mushrooms in butter was easy and once they had sufficiently released themselves of moisture I set them aside. The pasta I stopped cooking at al dente but since nothing else was ready it sat in the pot with a small amount of reserved pasta water. The sauce eventually came together with the only deviation from the recipe coming at the sacrifice of dried thyme instead of fresh thyme, I thought I had some (and I did), but it was a touch… aged, and not it the fine wine sense but more the backyard compost way. This is a common trend for me and fresh herbs. I always think I have them only to realize it wasn’t last week I bought them but several weeks ago. My sense of timing these days is a touch off.

So once everything was done the pasta and reserved water was mixed with the sauce, onions and mushrooms and turkey, oh yeah and some frozen peas. This entire mixture was placed into a baking dish and baked for about 30 minutes. I also forgot that I sprinkled the top with fresh breadcrumbs and parmesan.

When this dish was done and I pulled it from the oven, the whole ordeal was worth it.

Rating: A. This dish reminded me of the chicken pot pie. It was a stick to your ribs comforting meal. My wife loved it and both the kids ate it (although one decided that since I put the peas in it that I should take them out so he could eat it!). Next time I’m faced with four cups of chopped poultry I will try this again.

78. Chicken Piccata with Prosciutto

Date Cooked: April 30, 2009
Page: 341
Rating: C+

I’ve been working hard through the poultry section of the book because it seems to have the most recipes that can be thrown together quickly. While I am approaching 10% complete the poultry section is now just over 20% done.

The recipe starts off simply by prepping the chicken breasts into cutlets and then coating them in flour. These where quickly cooked in oil and then set aside and kept warm. Then the fun part began. Shallots, garlic and the prosciutto were sautéed until the prosciutto was lightly crisped. Some lemon slices and chicken stock were added and reduced. Once reduced, some lemon juice and capers were added and reduced further. Finally some butter and parsley were added before the sauce was spooned over the chicken and served.

Rating: C+. I guess if I had very weak taste buds that were immune to lemon then this dish could have scored higher but it was intensely lemon flavored. In fact it was so over-powering that it was a little challenging to eat. This would probably be a delicious dish with a little less lemon flavor. I thought it looked really good and anything with prosciutto can’t be bad… unless it was this dish.

77. Simplest Brined Roast Chicken

Date Cooked: April 19, 2009
Page: 307
Rating: B+

Well I am back in true form. The term simplest would imply to most people a simple dish to prepare but yet again I amaze myself with my complete lack of consistency when it comes to cooking. The recipe was a rather standard one. First off as the title implies the whole chicken was brined. I won’t go into detail but brining chicken has become a must for all my chicken cooking needs. Simply cannot be skipped (unless you are using a kosher chicken).

After the allotted time immersed in it’s salty bath I rinsed it off and patted it dry. I hate drying poultry. It is messy as I try to balance the chicken and dry it off and not contaminate the entire kitchen. No sooner do I touch the chicken than I inevitably forgot to grab something and must now was hands or spread possible salmonella bacteria everywhere. I must learn to be more prepared. Anyway once dry the chicken was coated liberally with butter, salt and pepper.

It roasts in a V-Rack on one side before being flipped to the other side. Once both sides have been exposed to cook the oven is supposed to be turned up in heat for the remainder of the cooking time. I forgot to turn up the heat. So when I took the chicken out the breast meat was cooked to the proper temperature but lets just say s the thighs might have been a bit pink… okay the juices were bright red. I cooked the chicken a bit longer before taking it out and checking the temperature again. Much better but the thighs still weren’t done to my liking so once I finished carving the chicken all the pieces spent a few more minutes in the oven just to be sure.

This is why I like brining. The chicken, even with the extra oven time, came out juicy.

Rating: B+ This rating is due to my misstep with the oven temperature. The skin could have been crispier and I am certain the thighs might have cooked better if I had had the chicken at a higher temperature. Still a good, simple, weekday meal.

73. Pan-Roasted Halibut Steaks

Date Cooked: February 14, 2009
Page: 505
Rating: A

Fish is not something that I cook often. I am intimidated by fish for some reason. I think part of it is that I am terrified that my house will reek of bad fish for days. The other part is that I am unfamiliar with the basic of fish preparation. So I figured if I was going to try cooking fish I should jump in with some expensive fish steaks. Let’s talk about the purchasing portion of this recipe.

The ingredients for this recipe are pretty straight-forward, halibut steaks, oil, salt and pepper. So, on a trip to the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto I decided to pick up some fresh halibut steaks. No wait… I was actually looking for fresh Tuna Steaks. After scouring the various fish market vendors and having them all tell me the exact same thing, that they were out of tuna for the day (which I have found to actually mean that they won’t pull anymore from the freezer), I started thinking of a plan B. I remembered the recipe for Halibut steaks and I figured that would be a good alternative to the tuna I was hoping to cook. So I once again made the rounds at the fish vendors, lots of filets but no steaks. Although one guy said they could cut me some to order.

I thought about it and said sure. I figured that the halibut filets were going for around 8-9 dollars a pound and I only needed two pounds for the recipe. So the fish monger pulled out this beautiful whole halibut from the ‘fresh’ stock (fresh equals defrosted recently) and slid it through the bandsaw. I always get queasy when I see industrial power tools used to handle food. Something just screams unsanitary. Anyway, as I always say, that is for the government to worry about, I’ll trust they are doing there job. In front of me he presented four lovely looking halibut steaks. And weighed them for just over two pounds, and then slapped a $60 price sticker on them. I was a tad shocked. I froze with panic and looked at my wife, she didn’t say anything and I knew this decision was on me. I was a little embarrassed to say the least. Here I am custom ordering this fish and gleefully doing so without even considering the price. Lesson has been learned. My biggest fear was less the money I had spent and more that I was going to try to cook fish for the first time with $15 dollar halibut steaks.

At home I began the dinner preparations. The fish was generously sprinkled with salt and pepper and left while the oil heated in the pan and the oven preheated for roasting. The steaks were seared in the pan for about 4 minutes and then carefully flipped and placed in the oven for about 9 minutes. The cooking times were straight from the book and I had no previous experience to base adjustments on. I didn’t know if I had thinner or thicker steaks.

Once out of the oven I plated the fish and pried the skin off carefully from around the edges and removed as many of the bones as I could. I dropped some of the Chipotle Butter with Lime and Cilantro on it and watched as it melted beautifully.

Rating: A. I was very surprised and proud on how the fish turned out. It was flaky and still moist and had great fish flavor. Halibut is a milder fish which I like and it was delicious. Will I make this again? Absolutely! Of course I will be careful to look for deals on the fish.