Calle's Cooking

Mussels steamed in chipotle salsa-like broth

2010-11-24T13:52:00.002-05:00

Mussels are a favourite of mine in many ways. They're super healthy, cheap, and not least really tasty with all the different flavours you can cook them in. This is the most recent way I cooked mussels, very fresh with a bit of a bite from chipotles in adobo. I also thought it was interesting with red wine in the broth since you usually use white wine with any kind of seafood, but this really works. Makes about 3-4 servings

Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup finely diced onion
1 can (28oz - 796ml) diced tomatoes, well drained
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced
1/8 tsp allspice (no, not an all-purpose rub)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
4 slices lime
4 lbs fresh mussels
(a baguette)

Go through the mussels and see if there are any bad ones - any that are open and won't close at all after tapping the shells a few times might be bad and should be thrown out. Also check for "beards", kind of small threads coming out the side - just pull those off either with your hands or small pliers.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat. Add the cumin seeds and stir frequently until it's fragrant and the seeds have gone a shade darker. Add the garlic and onion and cook until the onion is lightly browned, stirring often. Then add the tomatoes, wine, chiles and allspice, wait until it bubbles then turn down the heat to simmer for 10 minutes. Then bring the mixture to a full boil, add the mussels and cover the pot. Shake it occasionally or open once after a couple of minutes and redistribute the mussels with a large spoon to cook evenly. Once they've opened, they're done. Take off the heat and add the chopped cilantro and lime slices, stir with a large spoon so the cilantro is evenly distributed. Serve the mussels in bowls and use the shells to catch the broth. I also recommend a baguette to use for dipping and soaking up the broth.

Yummy Cornbread

2010-11-15T15:59:00.000-05:00

Last night my wife made a south-western stew and we decided that a good side to go with it would be corn bread. This is the recipe I used, and it turned out great.

Ingredients
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Mix the butter, sour cream and egg in a medium bowl. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients until moistened - try not to overwork it. Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan and pour the batter into it, smooth it out with a spatula. Put it into the oven and bake until risen and a toothpick comes out dry - about 20 minutes. Let it cool for a couple of minutes, cut into squares and serve with butter.

Next time I might try mixing in some minced jalapeno to give it some kick.

The Kick-Ass-est Hot Chicken Wings Ever

2010-11-02T13:59:00.002-04:00

On the weekend I had a craving for chicken wings. I like my wings hot, and I came across a recipe in King of the Q's Blue Plate BBQ that had Sriracha in it and some other spicy Asian goodies, so I went ahead with it, and this is now my new favorite. Plenty of heat, but amazing flavors too that most hot wings usually lack. I think it would go well as a glaze for pork chops or chicken skewers too.

Ingredients
1/2 cup Sriracha
1/2 cup sweet chili sauce
1/4 cup sambal oelek (easily found in the Asian/international section of most grocery stores)
1/4 cup tomato ketchup
3 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp mirin (usually found where you can find sushi ingredients, or use Chinese cooking wine or sake)
2 tbsp fish sauce (again easily found in the Asian section of most grocery stores)
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 chopped green onion

(4-5 lbs cooked chicken wings)

Just mix the ingredients together in a bowl and toss the cooked chicken wings in it when you're ready to serve. A suggestion is to not include the cilantro and green onion, then you can put it in the fridge and it will last for weeks - in that case, add the fresh stuff when serving.

Porked Shrimp Balls with Peanut Sauce

2010-08-30T13:45:00.001-04:00

This is a delicious and quick dish for days when you'd rather spend a day out in the sun instead of in the kitchen. The size of the shrimp doesn't matter since they will get ground up. This will serve 4.

Porked Shrimp Balls Ingredients
1 lb ground pork
3/4 lbs peeled and deveined raw shrimp
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup vegetable oil
Thin lettuce leaves (Boston, iceberg - about 30 leaves)
Skewers

Put all the ingredients except the oil in a food processor. Pulse it until all the ingredients have been blended into a coarse paste. Pour the oil onto a baking sheet, making sure it covers the bottom. Take a heaping scoop of the shrimp mix in a regular eating spoon, then use another on top to shape it into kind of a flat oval shape - do this a couple of times to make the shape nice and smooth. Put the "ball" onto the oiled baking sheet. Repeat until all balls have been made. When they're all on the sheet, turn them upside down so they're covered in oil. Put the sheet into the refrigerator for about a half hour or more to firm up a little. Meanwhile, start the coals (if using charcoal) then make the sauce.

Basic peanut dipping sauce
1 cup thick coconut milk
1/3 cup pure smooth peanut butter
1 tsp finely grated lime zest
3 tbsp fresh lime juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp Sriracha (hot chili garlic sauce) - or more to taste
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger

Put all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly until the sauce is evenly smooth and almost hot enough to start to simmer. Then take it off the heat and let it sit.

Cooking the balls
Your grill should be prepared for a direct hot fire. Skewer the balls - either one by one onto bamboo skewers that have been soaked in cold water for at least a half hour, or thread a few of them onto a metal skewer. Put them directly over the fire, turn after about 3 minutes or so for a total cooking time of about 6 minutes. It depends a little on how thick they are. They should have a solid color throughout and have kind of a springy consistency.

When you eat, put a ball on a lettuce leaf, top with some peanut sauce and wrap the lettuce around it. Feel free to dip in more sauce. Serve with rice noodles on the side and a vegetable such as steamed baby bok choy or broccoli.

The Steak - the true Mount Everest of grilling

2010-08-27T20:49:00.000-04:00

Grilled beef steak is at the top of my death row list - the meal I'd choose to be my last. It's also the most frustrating piece of meat there is to grill. Sometimes I get it close to perfect, sometimes far from it. The times I get it pretty much the way I want it, I try to retrace the steps to figure out what I did right and repeat it the next time. That hardly ever works.
The thing is that it could be up to timing, just a minute's difference. Or the meat itself - a quarter of an inch difference in the thickness of the steak, or how much fat there is in the cut and how well the fat has been dispersed throughout the meat. It could be the temperature, a fifty degree difference in temperature over the coals that makes all the difference.

So in the end - there is no formula to get it right. You look at your meat and make an estimate. Then you look at your fire and adjust that estimate. Then you look at the meat (and maybe touch it) on the fire and re-estimate. Perfect example of how practice makes perfect. I need more practice, but just so you need less than me, here I go on another one of my "findings" rants. I'll start with the cut of beef, then the fire, then putting the meat to the fire. I'll finish off with my favorite flavorings for steak.

"My" cut of steak
With all kinds of meat, there are two things that determine flavour more than the flesh itself: fat and bone. I find that the (prime) rib steak, aka cowboy steak or club steak, has a lot of good fat dispersed throughout the meat and has a bone attached. Yes yes, you can get a T-Bone too, but you'll pay almost twice as much for a cut with a cooler name and has two sections of meat that should be cooked differently.

With regards to thickness - it doesn't really matter if you adjust your cooking method accordingly. I'd say that most f the steaks you by already cut are somewhere in the 1 inch/2.5 cm thick range, probably slightly less, and those are the ones I buy. If I want to cook a 2-3" thick Bistecca Alla Fiorentina, I won't look for a regular steak cooking guideline such as this one.

And by all means, try to get steak from grass fed beef. Anything you might have heard about grass fed beef being much tougher than grain fed, is all bull (read more about the benefits of grass fed here). A common "side-effect" of getting grass fed beef is that it turns out to be Angus, and organic, and all those other things that are good. If you also do a bit of research, I bet that there's a farmer less than an hour's drive away from you that has it available to you at a reasonable price instead of the robbery prices at health food stores.

The fire
Number one - use charcoal. It brings a dimension to steak you can't get from propane. I'd even go so far as to advising against briquettes, which I use a lot myself. I don't find that using wood chips make a difference, but if you do, go ahead and use them.

Put the charcoal on from your chimney starter when they're screaming hot, put the grate on top and leave it there for 5 minutes WITH THE LID OFF so the metal grill gets nice and hot too. Then lubricate the grate with a paper towel soaked in vegetable oil, holding it with tongs. By this time, the fire should be so hot that you can barely move those tongs over the fire.

Cook 'em
Put the steak(s) on directly over the coals - AND DON'T CLOSE THE LID. The lid would strangle the air supply and make the fire less hot. After two minutes, lift up each "corner" of the steak a little to see how things are going. "Twist" it a quarter turn horizontally if you wanna get potentially fancy grill marks or if one side of the steak seems to be getting more cooked than the other, or one side is thicker you might want to adjust the position. Then leave them on for another two. That's the time you flip. That's also the only time you flip. The side that is now up should have a good char on it. Maybe even so charred that your intended criss-cross charmarks aren't there. Oh well. Are you going for looks or flavour? The crunch of a charred steak is insanely tasty and welcome when paired with a rare-ish middle.

This is when your experience and personal taste comes into play. This is when you go by look, feel and/or stopwatch to get your steak just right. I can't tell you how you want it cooked. I just know that after about another two minutes or so on that scorching hot fire, it seems good to me. Adjusted of course depending on the thickness of the steak.

After you take the steak off the fire, let it rest for about 5 minutes - no less. This makes the steak juicier because the juices have a chance to get redistributed throughout the meat.

"My" flavorings
I am often a purist, and I really like the pure flavor of good beef. For the longest time, I only put salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil on my steak. That is really, really yummy. But I was convinced after a slight tweaking of a Ted Reader steak rub (from the book King of the Q's Blue Plate BBQ) that it could be topped.

This is the rub I use (of course not all at once on a steak - this is about a season's rations):

1/2 cup coarse salt
1/4 cup coarsely ground pepper
1/4 cup coarsely ground Szechuan pepper
1/4 cup mustard seeds
1/4 cup coriander seeds coarsely crushed in a mortar with a pestle
1/4 cup garlic powder
1/4 cup onion powder
1/4 cup dried red chili flakes

Before you put the steak on the fire, Just lightly sprinkle some extra virgin olive oil on both sides of the steak, rub it in, then sprinkle this rub on top on both sides.

After the steak is taken off the fire, spread a thin layer of butter on top, just like you would a sandwich, then let it rest for at least 5 minutes. And there you go. No need for a steak sauce.

What to serve it with
If it's in season, nothing beats grilled garlic scapes with steaks. Sauteed mushrooms are always a winner, and so are asparagus. I prefer raw-fried potatoes too, but that's just me. A good mayo-based potato salad is also awesome. I'll probably post the recipe of my favorite tater salad soon.

Cheers!

Grilled Schweinshaxe - Rotisseried Pork Hocks

2010-07-26T10:49:00.001-04:00

When I was 16 or so, I was in Dusseldorf, Germany and had this magnificent piece of pork that was tender and had the manliest appearance ever. Huge piece of meat on a big bone, tender and juicy. It's called "Schweinshaxe", and just the name reeks of testosterone.

The pork hock is the piece above the pig's foot, also called "shank" or "knuckle". Incredibly cheap, they can usually be found smoked, but for this they need to be fresh. I ordered mine from Stemmler's Meat and Cheese and cooked it like this:

Ingredients:
4 fresh pork hocks, skin on
2 tablespoons juniper berries
2 tablespoons coarse salt
2 tablespoons dried marjoram
1 tablespoon rubbed sage
1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper

Method
In the morning, crush the juniper berries between your fingers to release the juices, then mix them up with the rest of the spices. Rub the mixture all over the pork and put in a roasting pan uncovered in the fridge. This will cure the meat somewhat.

Prepare your grill for rotisserie grilling at 350 degrees F. You could potentially use indirect cooking too, but the rotisserie will keep the meat juicier. Stick the spit through the hocks lengthwise along the bone. My Weber 22.5" grill's rotisserie didn't fit all four hocks in a row, so I tied two together and it worked just fine. Then it was just to put it on, start checking the meat temp after about an hour and a half, but it will probably take you more like 2 hours to cook it. You want the meat to be at least 180 degrees F before you take it off. The skin will be nice and crackling crisp, and the meat tender and juicy.

That's really all there's to it. Very simple, but very delicious. Serve it with sauerkraut, rye bread, some potatoes (I made a potato salad) and some veggies and you'll have a great meal. I think apple sauce would be a great addition too.

Tandoori chicken wings with coriander walnut sauce

2010-06-19T23:06:00.006-04:00

One of my favorite foods is chicken wings. You get both crispiness from the skin and fatty juiciness from the meat, flavored with whatever you choose to put on it and you can use so many different types of flavorings without ruining that taste of the meat. The ones you buy at a pub is usually battered and deep fried, and compared to grilling, that's child's play from a cooking perspective and nutritionally the deep fried stuff doesn't even come close (now get that thought out of your mind that "full fat" equals "bad" - IT DOES NOT). Grilling wings on high heat is stressful business, but you get truly rewarded.

This recipe is a combo of a pretty traditional Indian tandoori marinade (actually kind of two marinades), grilled on high heat under high stress, served with an Afghan coriander walnut sauce that truly blows your mind. Preparing the marinade takes about 4 hours, and it should marinate for at least another 4, so get going on this first thing in the morning.

I used about 5 lbs of free-range drug-free chicken wings from The Poultry Place. Maybe they're a bit smaller than what you'd get from elsewhere, but I like to eat chickens I think had a smile on their beaks before they got their heads chopped off to be eaten by people like me.

Chicken marinade #1

1 1/2 cups full fat yoghurt
1/4 tsp saffron threads
3 tbsp warm water
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2 inch piece of fresh ginger, chopped
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup full fat sour cream
1 tsp garam masala

Chicken marinade #2

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tsp cayenne pepper if you'd like some bite

Coriander Walnut sauce

1 bunch fresh coriander, stemmed (about 1 cup of leaves)
4 cloves garlic
1 jalapeno chile
1/2 cup walnut pieces
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp salt or more to taste
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cumin
2 - 4 tbsp water

Method

First, strain the yoghurt by putting it in a coffee filter placed in a strainer over a bowl and putting it in the fridge for 4 hours. So wait for about 3 and a half hours before you continue.

Mix the salt, pepper and maybe cayenne in chicken marinade #2 in a small bowl until well blended. Take out your chicken wings and cut a couple of slits on the fleshy (not skin) side on each piece. Put in a baking dish or two (keep them in a single layer), spread the dry spices all over and rub them in good. Pour fresh lemon juice on top, turn the pieces to coat and leave with skin side up to marinate in room temperature for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, do the next steps.

Crush the saffron threads into a powder and soak in the 3 tbsp of warm water for a couple of minutes in a small blender or food processing container. Then add the garlic and ginger and process until it's like a paste. Mix this paste in with the yoghurt that's left in the coffee filter (just get rid of the liquid in the bowl below). Also put in the salt, pepper, sour cream and garam masala until well mixed in a large bowl - this is the bowl where the wings will go next.

Take the wings out of the lemon marinade - leaving the marinade behind - and put the pieces into the yogurt mixture.Toss them to coat thoroughly, cover and put them in the fridge for at least 4 hours.

After about 3 hours, you can make the coriander walnut sauce. It relies on its freshness so you don't wanna make it any sooner. And it won't be very good tomorrow either. Basically, all you need to do is to put all the stuff into a blender or food processor and turn it into a smooth paste/sauce. You can add water to change the consistency to what you prefer.

Close to the end of the marinating time, start up your barbecue for at least medium-high heat. I used high heat. As in at least 600 degrees F. But then you have to be prepared for constant turning and serious sweatin' from not being able to leave the grill for a minute and keepping track of what you turned and when. Lower heat will buy you a bit of time, but you'll get less of the crispy that high heat produces. Really, all there's to it and where the entire challenge lies, is to put the wings on the grate and PAY ATTENTION. Wings can handle frequent turning. Look where the hot spots are. Crisp caramelization is great, but burning is not. Take note of where the cooler spots are and put the wings that seem to be going a little too fast there. Close the lid and vents if you're worried the outside will get burnt before the meat next to the bone is done.

It takes a bit of practice. And most of the time you think you're close to a disaster. But just stay patient, confident and observant, and it will turn out just great. The wings should be done after perhaps 20 minutes, but make sure that they're well done before you bite into one.

Put the darlings on a plate and spoon the coriander sauce on top. Better than Buffalo wings to me. And to my 2-yearold son as well as you can see below.

Grilled Curry-Spiced Arctic Char with Creamy Shallot Sauce

2010-06-07T09:02:00.000-04:00

This fish recipe is excellent, and I got the basic recipe from Planet Barbecue!, which called for skinless salmon fillets. I used arctic char fillets with skin on instead because it was available at a good price, and I like the crispiness of grilled fish skin. So use salmon if you'd like, or trout would be awesome too.

Ingredients
For the fish rub:
4 tsp curry powder (I used Madras style)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground pepper (I used a 4-peppercorn blend)
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

For the sauce:
1/2 cup minced shallots
1 cup dry white wine (I used chardonnay)
1 cup whipping cream
6 tbsp cold butter cut into 1/2"/1cm cubes
Salt and pepper

Chives (or green/spring onion) for garnish
2 large skin-on fillets of arctic char (or trout, or salmon - adjust cooking times according to thickness)

Mix the fish rub ingredients together in a small bowl, except the olive oil. Sprinkle it on the flesh side of the fish and rub it a bit to get it to stick nicely. Sprinkle extra-virgin olive oil on top, rub it in also, and place the fish in a baking dish or on a plate and put in the refigerator to marinate while you prepare the sauce and set up the grill.

If you're using a charcoal grill, start up the coals and prepare for a direct medium-high hot fire.

Put the shallots and wine in a saucepan on high heat and boil until the wine has reduced to about 1/4 cup. Add the cream and whisk to incorporate, then let it boil until it's reduced by half. You probably have to turn the heat down a little to keep the cream from boiling over. When reduced properly, remove the pan from the heat and add the butter while stirring until melted. The residual heat should keep the sauce warm while you grill the fish, or you can keep the pan on a different hot plate set to low - don't let the sauce boil though after you add the butter because it can curdle.

When your grill is ready with a medium-hot fire, lubricate the grate a bit to prevent the fish from sticking (I use a paper towel dipped in vegetable oil, hold it with tongs and sweep it over the grate). Place the fish skin side down directly over the coals/flame. Close the lid and let it cook without flipping the fillets. Cooking times depend a bit on the thickness of the fish, so poke it every once in a while with your finger to see if it starts to flake nicely with some moisture inside. That's when it's done. Mine was excellent after 5 minutes.

Place the fish on a serving platter and scatter some fresh chives (or green onion) on top. Serve with the sauce, boiled new potatoes and vegetables of your choice - asparagus is a great fit.

Simple cottage grilling with bocconcini, basil, prosciutto and olive oil

2010-05-26T12:05:00.003-04:00

I recently went to my inlaws' cottage, and I usually grill something there. My mother-in-law is a bit possessive about her fridge though, so we have to try to keep the number of ingredients to a minimum so we don't fill it up too much. So what I came up with was a bocconcini (basically fresh "water packed" mozzarella but shaped into smaller balls than mozza) and basil-stuffed pork tenderloin wrapped with prosciutto, and I had a bocconcini and basil burger for lunch the next day. The pictures were taken with my 6-yearold kid's camera, hence the poor quality.

Bocconcini and basil-stuffed pork tenderloin wrapped in prosciutto

Ingredients (serves 4-5):
2 pork tenderloins
10 slices prosciutto
1 bunch fresh basil
1 container bocconcini

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

Some string

Butterfly the pork tenderloins by cutting them lengthwise, but not the whole way through, so you can open them like a book. Place each piece of meat between two sheets of plastic wrap and pound them as thin as you'd like. To make the wrapping as easy as possible, cut about 5 footlong (30 cm) pieces of string, lay them on a cutting board perpendicular to your shoulders. Lay a slice of prosciutto on each piece of string, and on top of those, place a tenderloin, cut side up. Sprinkle the inside with extra virgin olive oil and rub it in a bit. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cut 2 or 3 bocconcini balls in half and place parallel to the cut, leaving a bit of space on each left/right. Place some basil leaves on top. Roll up the meat, and if you pounded it thin enough, fold in the sides kind of like a burrito to keep the cheese from melting out the sides during cooking. Lift up each slice of prosciutto with string, and tie a good knot to secure. Repeat with the second tenderloin.

Pre-heat the grill for direct medium to medium-hot grilling. Place the tenderloins directly over the fire, seam side down and close the lid. Turn the tenderloins a quarter turn each 4-5 minutes until the prosciutto is nicely crisp done, a total of about 20 minutes, give or take. Let it sit for a minute or two, then slice and perhaps drizzle a bit more extra virgin olive oil on top.

Bocconcini and basil "burger"

I had some left over bocconcini and basil from the pork above, so I made myself this burger for lunch the next day.

Ingredients (for 1 burger)

1 beef burger

3 halves of bocconcini

Fresh basil

Extra virgin olive oil

Two thick slices of white bread

Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the grill to medium-hot to hot for direct grilling. Put the burger on the grill for 3-4 minutes or so until done on one side, then flip it and place the bocconcini halves on top and close the lid. Grill until the cheese has melted nicely and put on a plate. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil on each side of each slice of bread (gently rub it in too) and season to taste with salt and pepper. Grill the bread on each side until you get nice char marks. Put the burger on top of one slice, top with some fresh basil leaves and the second slice of bread. Yum.

The Naples Style Pizza - Conclusion on Pizza "Pi" day - 3.14...

2010-03-14T00:05:00.022-05:00

For the last little while, I've dedicated most of my cooking explorations to getting a Naples style pizza done in a regular oven to be as good as it can get. I've tried and tested a lot, read even more, and I'm now at a point where I believe I can share the best results so far, and if you trust my research and try what I've discovered, you'll end up with a good pizza, hopefully one of the better ones you've ever had. And no shortcuts please, or I can't make the same promise. But I want to be up front and say that without the intense heat of an 800 degree wood fired oven- you will not get the amazing blistered crust that you may be used to, but the taste will still be great.

The making of a true Naples style pizza is highly regulated and I'm not going to get into those details too much (but by all means go here if you want to know more), and I can't follow them precisely but I have adapted them somewhat to make it all workable in a normal home kitchen. But in essence, don't use any mechanical equipment (including rolling pins - there is ONE certified mixer and it's not KitchenAid) and use the ingredients specified below and we're pretty close.

Also, from start to finish, this is about a 6-8 hour process, but not in constant work because there's resting time for the dough involved. You'll spend probably about an hour preparing the dough, so if you're looking at having this for dinner at 5-6pm, start preparing the dough around 10am.

Ingredients/Shopping List
Go to your local specialty grocer - mine is definitely Vincenzo's which is a well stocked place with very helpful staff. The list of essential ingredients you need are as follows, and the prices displayed are the ones from Vincenzo's in Canadian dollars, and the volumes are based on 4 personal sized pizzas.

RECIPE FOR 4 PIZZAS

Dough:

600g Italian Tipo 00-based pizza flour, Vincenzo's have Molini Pizzuto Farina di Pizza ($2.49/kg (1000 g))
1/4 tsp instant yeast (I use Fleischmann's)
3/4 tsp fine sea salt (a 750g Baleine brand at Vincenzo's costs $4.99)
350 g water (Brita filtered tap water works fine, or any bottled non-carbonized water would work)

Sauce:

1 28oz can San Marzano tomatoes ($4.99 per can. You will throw up when you remember that your local supermarket has canned tomatoes for $0.99 per can or maybe less - but trust me on this, the difference is HUGE. I'll get more into this later below)
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried oregano (remember to rub the oregano before you add it to release the oil to get as much flavour out of it as possible)

Take the tomatoes out of the can without the canning juices. Mash them with a potato masher or just your hands for a while to make it a pretty consistent... uhm... consistency... Then add the spices and oregano.

TRUST ME ON THIS ONE!!!! Do NOT buy already made pizza sauce - even from Vincenzo's. San Marzano tomatoes are from the home of pizza (check this out), and the main idea is that the tomatoes get cooked with the rest of it. So any tomato sauce or pizza sauce you might buy instead - it will not be as good.. I even doubt that the gourmet flame roasted tomatoes will measure up because they've been cooked prior to when the pie goes in the oven. Pizza was designed to be done in a certain way to boast about that particular region of Italy, and San Marzano tomatoes are unique to the area so that's what's ultimately supposed to be there.

Toppings:

Cheese - There are options here:

To be authentic, get the Mozzarella di Bufala ($6.99/container) which will give you enough for maybe two pizzas if you're a little stingy - it's the luxurious choice and it really is the difference between lobster and shrimp.
You can also get fresh mozzarella (that means the softer water packed stuff, also known as "fiore di latte") for $8.99/450g, which will be enough for this dough batch and have enough left for a panini the day after - this would be the option for if you're not that picky, on more of a budget or you're not having guests over to impress. Honestly, to use the lobster/shrimp comparison here again, lobster is for special occasions... Fresh mozzarella will do you just fine.
I personally also really like to shred smoked Caciocavallo ($8.99 for a pack will be enough for this dough recipe too) if you think mozzarella doesn't have enough flavour for your taste.
Fresh basil - just a must. $1.39 for a pack.
Extra virgin olive oil. I can't give you a price on this. There are so many varieties on it that I'm not the one to ask. But generally you get what you pay for. At Vinny's, you can go from "regular pedestrian" to "Dom-Perignon-of-olive-oils" and pay accordingly. And that's what you get in flavour.
The rest: Technically, a Naples style pizza only has tomatoes, cheese and basil on it. Maybe some garlic slivers on it to make it really edgy. For me, I like to put on other stuff too, such as blue cheese (which has become almost indispensible on mine by now), prosciutto, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, red pepper, red onion, cooked shrimp or sausage (of course not all at once), and all of them can usually be found at the same store. Remember though what pizza is supposed to be, and don't ruin it by overcrowding it with too many toppings. As you keep making them, you'll probably find yourself reducing the amount of toppings.

Preparation #1 - Mixing the Dough
The art of pizza is in the dough. This is where it all begins and ends. It's like the bone structure of a top model - if you don't have the base to work with, you can't create a thing of beauty no matter how hard you try to disguise it if it's not perfect. A perfect pizza dough should be thin and tender, you bit through it without much resistance, and it's not "crunchy" enough to break, but you can bend it double. You can try your shortcuts as much as you want, and if they succeed without cutting back on quality, by all means let me know. But first...:

BE EXACT!!! MEASURE BY WEIGHT!!!

Baking is finicky. Flour can be packed differently, so if you measure by the cup, you might end up with different amounts because the second cup below your first was packed more densely, and you won't end up with the same amount. And call me a nerd, but even water has different weight - depending on what altitude you're at. A gallon of water (by volume) in Denver isn't exactly the same as a gallon of water in Los Angeles... It might be a tiny difference, but it's still a difference. Don't call me fanatic about this. The Italians measure their dough resting times depending on the humidity in the air, and I didn't even mention that.

Okay, I kind of but not really digress...

Start with warming the water to about 100 degrees F. This will make the salt dissolve quicker and also kickstart the yeast to start working actively a bit. So - when the water is warm enough, add the salt and yeast, mix with your fingers until it's all dissolved, and let it stand for maybe 5 minutes to ensure it's all dissolved.

Start adding the flour, very little at a time to start off while stirring with your fingers. There will be lumps in the water, and work those out before you add more flour. Little by little, with the adding of flour incrementally with small amounts at a time, and keeping it as smooth as you can while mixing with one or two hands, the substance will go from watery to gruel-like to sticky to annoying to kind of a dough that you kind of like but it sticks to your fingers too much. Just stay patient and try to work in the flour as much as you can, squeezing the dough and forcing the flour in. When the bowl you have the mixture in is starting to get clean and your fingers let go of the dough that's stuck on them, then you're pretty much done with the mixing. Make it into a ball, cover with a damp cloth and let the dough rest for about 5 minutes.

Preparation #2 - Kneading the dough
You will think this part is stupid. I will ask you to knead the dough for a half hour. I don't want you to use a mixer. Why? Okay. Did you ever make pizza before? Did the dough stretch out and then bounced right back? Did you end up using a rolling pin and your crust didn't "bubble up" as you wanted it to? Did you always wonder how those fancy pizza guys could do what they do and make it look so easy? Much has to do with the dough. Stretch, and stretch, and stretch the gluten in the dough until it can handle a lot. So for the next half hour you'll be stretching the gluten while your mixer would probably just be moving it around. And this, my friend, will make a difference.

Prepare a lightly floured workplace. Not much flour at all because your purpose is not to mix in more flour into the dough, it's just so it won't stick. Capice? Okay. Slam the dough ball down on the surface a few times to turn the ball into more of a loaf shape, the put that loaf down with one of the end sides towards you. Forms your hands into fists. Starting at one of the ends of the loaf, move your fist in from the side so your pinky knuckle is kind of below it. Then roll your fist up and above the loaf - and lean into it, don't be a sissy when you do this. Then do the same thing with your other fist from the other side, but a bit lower or higher up on the loaf depending on what end you started on. Keep "walking" up and down the loaf with alternating fists: Move from side, roll up and over, next fist a little further up or down. The initial loaf gets thinner and longer. Continue until it feels like you've done what you can do and the loaf is either too thin or too long to make it comfortable. At this point, roll it up like a jelly roll from one of the short ends to the other. Pat it a bit to solidify it a little, then grab it so the open rolled side is facing your belly. Shake and pound it again against your work surface to make it more elongated, such as kind of a loaf shape (imagine!) and start the fist rolling procedure all over again.

Do this for a half hour. Honestly. Rest for a minute every 5 minutes or so, but you wanna get it done with the yeast and all doing its thing. When you're done, form the dough into a large ball, cover with a damp cloth and let it rest for 15 minutes.

Preparation #3 - Shaping the pizza balls
Again, you'll think this part is stupid. But again, this makes a difference in how the dough handles in the end when it matters. What you want to do now is to form your dough into balls that will later turn into the bases of your pizza, the stuff that you will want to make wafer thin without the use of a rolling pin. So to be able to do that easily, you need this process. The secret is in creating surface tension, something like a "skin" if you will.

Take your large dough ball and divide it into 4 pieces. If you followed my ingredients list, that will turn into pieces around 220g a piece. That's about the right weight for creating a 12-13" pizza in the end. So I would imagine you cut the large dough ball in half at first, and then those halves in half to get four equal pieces. Technically, these are triangles with two cut sides, and one untouched side. Okay, let's make some balls.

Put your index and thumb together to form a circle. Place the dough piece on top with the "uncut" side down against your fingers. Start pushing the dough through the hole with two fingers of your opposite hand to create what seems like a drop. When it's all starting to go through, move the index finger on top of your thumb to pinch it. The better you pinch this, the smaller the hole will be and the better the integrity of your dough will be when you turn it into a base. To improve this even more, roll your final ball around a bit on your lightly floured work space to get rid of the seam as much as you can. Then put your balls in an airtight container with plenty of room between them - I recommend about 4 inches of space between each ball, because they will rise quite a bit - and leave them there at room temperature for 4 -8 hours to rise and mature.

Cooking #1 - The Stove and Cooking Environment
Yes, there are many pizza snobs. Just like there are barbecue snobs, gourmet snobs, wine snobs, whathaveyou... And they are usually right, but it's not common for all of us to enjoy their standards. So, in terms of pizza, I anticipate you have a regular oven and not a domed wood fired one. I doubt you've invested time or money into assembling a couple of levels of ceramic tiles into your oven either. If you did, awesome! I didn't. So what's here is what I've concluded what to do in a regular oven with as little special equipment as possible.

Pizza stone vs the rest
Pizza stones are supposed to imitate a true wood fired stone pizza oven made from brick/stone. When you think about it, are the most important parts the building materials? Not in this case, I don't think... While the stone is important, when making a real Naples style pizza, it's more about temperature. It's supposed to take 60-90 seconds to cook a pizza in an 8-900 degree oven. You put the pizza inside the oven, made from stone or brick, and that stone will be close to that temp too after the wood burns for a couple of hours. Your home oven can probably get to 550 degrees. That's nowhere close to 900. Sure you can get a stone. Or a perforated pizza rack. Does it matter which? To me, the difference is negligible.

I have used a pizza stone. I did was I was supposed to do, and the second time, it cracked, a well known phenomenon with pizza stones. The pizzas I made successfully with it intact were really good. But the perforated pizza plate I used later from Baker's Choice was just as good.

I have read that if you have the width of your oven covered with a layer of untreated stone or ceramic on two racks, you have replicated a true pizza stone oven as well as you can in a regular oven. I have a problem with it though, and that is that the oven needs to be heated for an hour cranked up at maximum heat before you put your first pizza in. I'm kind of a green guy that likes energy conservation, so I have nothing against wood fired ovens, but running an electrical or gas oven at full tilt for an hour before you can even start cooking sounds like an awful waste to me. Also, you'd need to leave the tiles in at all times, so you'd have to either make your base on a pizza peel (kind of a huge wooden spatula), or manage to slide your assembled pizza onto a peel, then slide it off the peel onto the tile in your oven, and very quickly too because you don't want to lose any heat. It's not often I skip things because it's a hassle, but this time I do...

So I recommend a perforated pizza rack for regular home oven use.

As ovens go, they are different. Mine has a "bake" setting and a "broil" setting. Bake means only the bottom burner is going, broil means only the top. I wish I could use both. I can't. So for me, I turn on my oven at the maximum for bake and put the grate on the bottom-most level and the pizza rack on top of that when all preparations have been done including putting the toppings on.

Cooking #2 - Shaping the pizza base
Most of the pizza doughs you may have worked with in the past turned out to be difficult to work with - they "bounce back", they don't stretch properly, you had to make them thick to avoid holes, etc. Well, if you followed the instructions above, that will not happen, and a rolling pin would actually slow down the process and create a base that would be too dense...

When you're ready for your dinner and it's been at least 4 hours since you put your pizza balls for rising, you're good to go. Here's how to shape them easily like a professional - I managed to make them into pretty good circles with my second batch.

Put the pizza ball down on a lightly floured work space
Push 8 fingers down on the dough, no thumbs, leaving 1/2" around the edge, going from top to bottom twice
Flip the dough over and turn it 90 degrees and push with the 8 fingers again, from top to bottom twice, except over the 1/2" edge.
Pick up the dough and start throwing it from one palm to the other, spinning the dough perhaps 45 to 90 degrees each time. Be fairly forceful, the dough strecthes as you throw it.

Once your dough is wide enough, place it on the perforated pizza rack and start putting on the toppings before you put the thing in the oven.

Cooking #3 - The toppings
So toppings.They do make a difference. They're what you eat. Technically, if you want a true Neopolitan pizza, all you'd put on it would be tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and basil (red tomatoes, white cheese, green basil - figured it out yet? Hint: flag). Maybe garlic. But as you know, this is the beauty of pizza. You can put whatever you want on it that makes you feel good. Lately, I like less than more, but I really enjoy blue cheese sprinkled on top, which I'm sure Italians would frown upon. Do what you like. Nobody will yell at you for it.

The first thing you put on is the tomato sauce. Leave at least 1/2" of an ege to allow the dough to rise there. It's an important part of making it look impressive and also making sure that patrons know that the dough has been done right. Don't put on too much sauce - you should still be able to see the dough through it. Too much could also make the dough soggy.

Then put on your cheese. Cut it into pieces - with the fresh mozzarella, I use 5 slices about 1/4" thick, 4 around about 2 inches from the edge, and one in the middle. The cheese will melt and get distributed pretty evenly, so no need to try to shred it.

Then put on the rest of your toppings, ending with some basil leaves.

One thing that is essential is that the extra virgin olive oil you invested in - well now is when it is supposed to shine. You put the goodness of it on top of the pizza in a spiraling motion (think the number "9") and there we go.

Cooking #4 - Uhm, cooking...
Just get your oven cranked up as high as it can go. Mine goes to 550 degrees and I make sure it's there before I put each pizza rack in there. I use two so I can prepare one pizza while the other is cooking.

In terms of timing, at 550 degrees, 10 minutes gets you really nice and tender melted cheese but the dough might be slightly underdone and sloppy. At 12 minutes, your dough is nice and crispy but the cheese might be slightly browned which it really shoudn't be.

If you ask me though, I'd rather have a dough done well at 11-12 minutes and the cheese a bit overdone. If it would have been a wood fired pizza oven things would be different, but that's as close as I can get at home.

Conclusion
This is what I've concluded as the best pizza at home without specialty equipment. If you can do better or have improvements, I would LOVE to know. Send me an email at cjohannesson (at) quarry.com to tell me about it.

These are two of the ones I made tonight:

Cheers and have fun.

-- Calle.

The Quest for Perfect Pizza - Part Deux

2010-02-24T23:40:00.014-05:00

Time again to attempt a pizza dough. I've done some more research, and I think I've found a good recipe to follow, so I will start off with some of my research and then get to the recipe. So feel free to skip the research part. The recipe is short and sweet, but might make more sense if you read some of the research as well. I know, I know, impossibly long posting about pizza again... But here goes.

Flour
If you want to make real Naples style pizza, consensus seems to be that nothing beats Italian "Tipo 00" flour. The most popular brand among pizza bakers appears to be Caputo, but my local gourmet/specialty shop Vincenzo's were kind enough to order some and brought home Molini Pizzuti Tipo 00 flour.

I found out later that not all Tipo 00 flours are created equal. Both Caputo and Molini Pizzuti make their special pizza flour, and the main difference between those and their "regular" Tipo 00 is that the pizza flour has higher protein content, and the more protein, the more suitable the dough will be for pizza.

Fairly interesting fact: North American wheat flour is made from wheat that has been genetically engineered to better suit the tastes and needs of North Americans. This means that your regular all-purpose or best for bread flour isn't necessarily interchangeable with Tipo 00 flour. If you find a recipe that calls for Tipo 00 flour, use that and not Robin Hood or whatever if you can, or the results may not be as described no matter how hard you work on getting it right.

Measuring flour should be done by weight. It's a substance that can be packed or fluffy. So it's unlikely that your first cup of flour will weigh exactly the same as your second. And in baking, things need to be exact.

Yeast
There are basically three types of yeast - fresh (wet) yeast, active dry yeast, and instant dry yeast. I grew up with wet yeast in Sweden, but here in Ontario it's definitely not easy to come by. So I don't know how to use it for pizza. For one of my initial attempts, I used active dry yeast that was dissolved just before I put it in the dough, a later one I had the active dry yeast in water overnight. The dough I'm working on right now uses instant dry yeast, which was dissolved in warm water and "proofed" for 20 minutes. The overnight soaked yeast I thought didn't have enough rise in the dough, so I have a feeling that the overnight proofing of the yeast did more damage than good. I have pretty high hopes for the instant yeast I'm working with now. It's more convenient if nothing else.

Water
You might find recipes that calls for "Italian Spring Water" or similar to use for your dough. The water actually doesn't matter. I can't find a link to the study right now, but some scientists apparently tested everything from "Italian Spring Water" to regular bottled water to water straight out of a tap in Brooklyn. The result: no difference.

Water to flour ratio
Pizza dough is wet compared to regular bread dough. It seems through my research that people that really know what they're talking about agree that the amount of water in the dough should be at about 55-60% of the flour weight. That means that if you use 1000 grams of flour, you should add about 550-600 grams of water (luckily, 1 ml of water weighs 1 gram at sea level, so that conversion is easy). The exactness of that is up for debate, and is one of the things I'm trying to figure out what my preference is. The 50 gram difference from the lower to the higher end really does make a difference in the consistency of the dough.

How long does it take to make the dough?
The first "Swedish Ghetto Pizza" attempt I made was a quick thing. Make the simple dough, let it rise for an hour or so, then roll out the balls to pizzas and into the oven it goes. It was delicious. Imagine then how much better if it's done the right way. Well, the first next attempt after took half a day, the next one was overnight, and what I'm doing now takes a full 48 hours (actually if I did it right it would be 56 or so, but I honestly don't have the extra 6 hours this weekend). I didn't notice much difference between the half-day and the overnight ones, so I have high hopes for this one. Being a barbecue guy, I instinctively think that slower is the way to go.

Shaping the dough balls
This might sound silly, but it makes a difference. Before you shape your round pizza base, you should have shaped your dough into portion sized balls first. These balls should be smooth with kind of a "skin" on them that creates tension. This is what prevents your thin crust pizza from getting holes in it while being stretched to be a couple of millimeters thin without using a rolling pin.

This is the method of shaping balls that I find easiest and kind of neat too: Cut the initial dough into portion sized pieces. Put some flour on your hands. Put the tip of your index finger against the tip of your thumb to create a circle with your fingers. Put the piece of dough on top and start pushing it through the hole until it is all the way through (gravity will help towards the end). Pinch the last of the dough together, and you've got a pretty tight ball. Roll it gently (don't press on it as if you were making a snow ball, be gentle to maintain a certain fluffiness to the dough) on a lightly floured surface to get rid of that "pinch" you created and get a little bit more of surface tension as well. Presto. Let it rest for an hour or so before you roll it out to a pizza. If it will take longer before you want to cook it, put your balls in a plastic container with a lid and put it in the fridge until you need it. Or freeze it at this point.

Shaping the pizza base
I can't tell you what the easiest or best way of doing this is for a beginner. I'm still trying to work that out. What I do know is that using a rolling pin is a big no-no! The experts say that that would counteract all the effort and time you put into getting the right dough consistency by pushing out those tiny littly bubbles that makes the perfect dough so nice and tender.

I'm told that you should start with flattening the dough ball with your hands, then toss it a few times between the palms of your hands to expand it, then put it down on a floured surface (only enough flour to keep the dough from sticking, you don't want to work in more of it into the dough) and start stretching it with 8 fingers (no thumbs, buddy) to get a pizza about 13 inches (30 cm) in diameter. Some say keep the dough in the air as long as possible and push the dough between your palms and spin a little bit at a time to have gravity help you out, some say "hang it off your fist", some say do all the stretching on a bench, some say let it hang off the edge of your work surface (gravity in action), and another theory for beginners is to shape the base on a lightly oiled upside down bowl (again to have gravity help you out a bit). It's difficult stuff but I hope it will become easy after more practice. But try to not overwork the dough - again, you want to keep those tiny air bubbles.

Don't worry if you're not getting a perfect circle. The key is in consistent thickness (or thinness, if you will). If you happen to make a hole in the dough, all is not lost, just stretch one side of the hole over to the other side and pat it down to seal, then leave that part alone.

Toppings
The art is in the dough, the toppings are as good as the stuff you buy. Very few rights or wrongs here. If you want to make the tomato sauce authentic, then some canned San Marzano tomatoes squeezed (not run in a food processor - it's said that if the tomato seeds are ground in the food processor, it brings a bitter taste to the sauce) to a saucy consistency, add some fresh basil, salt and pepper, maybe some oregano, and there you go. As for the cheese - I have yet to try real buffalo mozzarella, but I intend to real soon. But regular shredded stuff works too - as long as it's pretty fatty cheese, like - surprise surprise - mozzarella.

Don't put toppings all the way out to the edge, properly made dough will puff up and keep the toppings from melting off the side.

Baking
You want an oven as hot as possible. That's the main thing. Crank it up to however hot it goes. You also need something to put the pizza on. If you want to go the pizza stone route, remember to put the stone in before you turn on the oven, or the stone will crack. You should also leave the stone in the hot oven for about an hour before baking to ensure it gets piping hot. Do not turn on the broiler, or the stone might crack. Don't put it too close to the elements in the oven, or it might crack. I had a stone. It cracked. I've also tried a perforated pizza rack and a regular cookie sheet. It's been a tossup between the perforated rack and the stone, but the rack won't crack. Can I trademark "the rack won't crack"?

I find using a perforated pizza rack is the easiest way to go. Shape the base, then transfer it to the rack and then start putting your toppings on. When you're done, you can shove the whole thing into the oven without having to worry about fussing with flouring pizza peels. I find the end results in a home oven are so close that it's one headache you can skip without giving up good results. Now, if you had a domed wood fired pizza oven, I'd tell you otherwise.

Where to put it in the oven is apparently very different from oven to oven. Start in the middle and experiment from there to get the best results.

The pizza is done when the cheese has completely melted and you have a nice blistered edge that's risen about a half an inch or more. The time depends on your oven, so keep an eye on it without opening the oven - you don't want the heat to escape.

Eating
To eat a pizza, you need to figure it out yourself cuz I ain't gonna tell ya how...

And now... ratatata...:

*** A PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE ***

This makes 3-4 pizzas, depending on how big you want to make them.

485 g Tipo 00 Pizza Flour
275 g water
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp instant dry yeast

Warm the water to about 100 degrees F, then put in the yeast and oil for 20 minutes, stir a bit to help the yeast to start to dissolve. Add the flour and salt and start to mix. I don't have a stand mixer, so I used a wooden spoon for the first while, and when it was dry enough to use my hands, I started kneading vigorously and kept going for maybe 15 minutes - it felt like the dough was nice and smooth at that point after having been quite tough for the better part of the kneading process. If you have a mixer, I'd say put it on low and let it go maybe 10 minutes. You tell me. Or not. I won't buy a mixer anyway.

Put a damp dish towel on top of the bowl to cover and let the dough rise until it's tripled in size - perhaps about 3 hours or so. Then punch the dough to get out the big air bubbles created by the yeast, triple fold the dough as if you were folding a letter to fit into an envelope. Cover lightly with flour on both sides and put the dough back in the bowl with the seam down, cover and put in the fridge for 48 hours.

Divide into equal sizes, shape into balls (following the keyhole method above, perhaps?), let the balls rest for up to 6 hours in a cool place, then using your hands, shape the balls into rounds as thin as you want to go, but definitely no thicker than 5 mm (3/16"), and place your toppings of choice on top and cook in a scorching hot oven on a perforated pizza rack or pizza stone. The pizza is done when the edge has puffed up and is blistered, the cheese is completely melted and preferably the underside of the pizza has some darker spots on it as well. A perfectly cooked pizza should be tender and not crack - you should be able to fold it without breaking the base.

Rendang - Indonesian beef slow cooked in coconut milk.

2010-02-15T19:49:00.001-05:00

Rendang is a strange dish. During its approximately 4 hours of cooking, it goes from boiling to frying. The end result is a very rich and tender beef dish, and it's easy on the wallet too. This is my adaption of the recipe in Indonesian Regional Food and Cookeryby Sri Owen. It's not difficult, but it takes a long time and requires a bit of attenion towards the end - take my time measurements as approximate and rather observe how your stuff is going. This should make enough for 6-8 people, but it reheats well so it's a good one to keep in the freezer.

Ingredients
3.5 lbs/1.5 kg of beef that stands up to many hours of cooking, so pot roast, brisket, etc.
6 shallots, peeled and chopped
5 cloves garlic. peeled and pretty finely chopped
1.5cm/1 inch fresh ginger, roughly chopped
1 tsp turmeric powder
3 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp galangal (sometimes also called laos powder)
2 tsp salt (or more to taste)
1 bay leaf
1 stem lemongrass
6 cans coconut milk (about 2.4 liters, or 4 pints)

Cut the beef into 2 cm (3/4") cubes. Put the shallots and ginger in a blender with 1/4 cup of the coconut milk and blend until smooth. Pour in all the coconut milk, the beef, the shallot/ginger mixture and all other ingredients in a large saucepan. The coconut milk should cover all the beef, and I have a hard time seeing that it wouldn't. You'll probably need to bend the lemongrass stem to make it fit in, but that's a good thing because breaking it releases the aromatic juices from it.

Turn the stove on at medium heat and wait for it to start boiling gently. Keep the pot uncovered at all times - the idea is that all of this coconut milk is going to reduce to basically nothing. My stove boiled over after about a half hour when I had it on the 6 setting, but after turning it down to 4, I got it to the gentle continuous bubbling you're looking for. Whatever your setting is to reach that most likely varies, but that's the setting you will keep for the entire cooking process.

Stir the pot every once in a while. As it reduces more and more and gets thicker and thicker, the more often you should stir it. When the liquid has reduced to fit in a wok, transfer all of the mixture to it. For me it took about 2.5 hours to get to that point. The mixture gets darker and thicker, and remember to sort of scrape the bottom of the wok too.

After about 3 to 3.5 hours of cooking, it gets to a point when you think it can't get much thicker, and then the coconut milk separates, and there's a layer of oil on top, and the boiling bubbles get smaller. Keep stirring - at this point frequently - for another 10-15 minutes or so.

Then comes a bit of work, because you need to stir continuously for the next 15 minutes or so to finish it off. This is the point where the boiling transforms into frying. Fold the beef from bottom to top, move it around continuously so the meat absorbs the remaining liquids. The meat is done when it looks moist with the remaining mixture, but there's no oil left on the bottom of the wok or other excess liquid. When done, remove the lemongrass and bay leaf.

I served this with plain rice and some spinach cooked in a frying pan with a bit of butter and lemon.

Perfect microwaved rice

2010-02-13T23:14:00.001-05:00

Here's the quickest and easiest way to get perfect basmati rice:

Ingredients:
1 cup basmati rice
2 cups water
1 tbsp veg oil (I use olive - not extra virgin)
1 tsp salt

Put the ingredients in a glass bowl that has a lid in the microwave and turn on at maximum for 10 minutes. Then on defrost for another 10 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes in the microwave before you take it out (or longer - I've had it rest for 15 mins and it was still nice and hot), then fluff with a fork. Perfect every time for me.

A Favorite Lamb Recipe - Moroccan Kebabs

2010-02-13T22:49:00.006-05:00

My wife is currently doing a cleanse that requires no vinegar, no yeast (so basically no bread), no sugar and not much else. Not many options around... She wanted to eat lamb though, and luckily, one of my favorite and pretty economical lamb recipes fit the bill. Keep in mind that you prepare this thing in the morning on the same day before you cook it since it needs 6-8 hours to marinate.

HUGE NOTE: Charcoal fire makes a BIG difference here. I have cooked this lamb on charcoal, gas alone, and gas with wood chips. Nothing comes close to the charcoal, so if you have anything (including a hole in the ground) that can use charcoal as the heat source, use it. By all means, use gas if that's what you've got and it will still be tasty, but the end result will not be anyhere what you'd get with charcoal. Coals will just give you this particular char to the flavor that you can't get anywhere else.

I have a limited budget. Good quality fresh lamb is usually really expensive. Lucky me, this recipe works really well with lamb shoulder, which is one of the cheaper cuts, and i got mine from The Bauer Butcher that have a section of Vincenzo's in Waterloo. Use a leg if you want, but I kind of like the extra fat you get from the shoulder meat and the money saved doesn't hurt either. This recipe is based on another from The Barbecue! Bible.

Ingredients:
1 regular yellow onion, grated on the roughest grate of a grater
Chopped parsley, curly works just as well as flat, somewhere around a quarter cup or so will do fine
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika (and again, the good Hungarian stuff makes a big difference for the better)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1-2 tbsp olive oil
About 1.5 lbs (700g or so) of lamb shoulder - no need to spend the extra money on leg meat. Cut into about 1 inch/2.5 cm cubes -- and don't you dare trim off the fat!
Cilantro to taste as garnish on top (optional)

Method:
Mix everything except the lamb in a bowl to mix, then add the lamb pieces and toss to cover. Put in a container or plastic bag to marinate for 6-8 hours. I find (for more methods than this one) that putting meat and marinade in a resealable plastic bag, closing it almost all the way to the end and then push the bag to remove as much air as possible, produces the best marinade coverage and demands less tossing and turning of the contents if it goes on for an extended period of time.

Start a charcoal fire and make it hot - at least 500 degrees F. Put the meat on skewers and put it right on top of the fire when it's ready. Cook for about 10-12 minutes while turning every couple of minutes (if the meat is stuck to the grate - don't force it to turn quite yet, wait another minute or two until it lets go without an argument) until the meat has nice charred marks on it - you don't want burns, but you do want some char. Feel free to sprinkle some freshly chopped cilantro on top if you want when you serve.

I served these with grilled green peppers (cut into squares, sprinkled with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper) which were put on at the same time as the meat, and perfect microwaved rice on the side along with some tzatziki my wife had made.

Cheers,

-- Calle.

Fire roasted tomato pasta sauce

2010-01-25T13:53:00.006-05:00

When I was going to do my pizza adventure on Saturday, I anticipated making my own sauce for it. It's winter, and high quality fresh tomatoes are extremely difficult to find. Even when you can find good fresh ones during the in-season, I'm told they are rarely as good as canned tomatoes that were picked at their absolute finest. So I went to get some nice canned ones.

I was recommended to get some Muir Glen organic fire roasted tomatoes from Vincenzo's. Very pricey at $6 per 28oz can, but I was told it would be worth it. I later found the pizza sauce recipe that called for canned San Marzano tomatoes and used those instead (Muir Glen are Californian, true San Marzano tomatoes are harvested in Italy on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius as far as I understand), but now I had $18 worth of fire roasted deliciousness without a recipe. So I looked in my cookbooks and decided that the pasta sauce from Patsy's Cookbook: Classic Italian Recipes from a New York City Landmark Restaurant should be worthy. I changed the recipe slightly after a bit of tasting (especially since the cookbook called for fresh tomatoes), and it turned out really well. Here's how it goes, and it makes about 6 cups or so (I didn't measure the yield at the end):

Ingredients
3 28oz (796 ml) cans of Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted Tomatoes (I had bought them whole, but chopped or crushed should work just fine)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup minced yellow onion
3 garlic cloves, quartered
3 tablespoons red wine, I used a Baco Noir
2 whole dried bay leaves
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3/4 tablespoon salt (that's a lot - start with less and season to taste)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon finely chopped Italian parsley

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, and saute the onion and garlic until soft and golden, about 3-4 minutes. Empty the cans of tomato into the pan, add the wine, increase the temp to max and bring to a boil while you crush the tomatoes with a wooden spoon to get more of a consisent sauce consistency, mine was a little chunky but I kind of enjoyed that. You can buy the Muir Glen tomatoes already crushed or chopped, so if you get those I imagine you can skip this step. When the tomatoes are boiling, add the bay leaves, cover, and lower the heat to low and simmer for 35 minutes, stirring occasionally and try to find any tomato chunks you need to mash a bit more. Then remove the bay leaves, take the lid off and simmer for another 25 minutes. Add the tomato paste, salt and pepper, parsley and basil and cook for another 5 minutes. Remove the garlic pieces.

Done. Very very tasty. Now I just have to figure out what to put it on.

-- Calle.

My new obsession: Perfecting Neopolitan pizza in a regular home oven

2010-01-24T00:34:00.003-05:00

When I get into something, I get into it. I might get a little more obsessive about some things than your regular person. I really admire chefs and whoever that get really into their cooking and think it should be done properly to make it just right. That's one reason why I like getting obsessed by cooking so much - there are so many others like that, people spending so much time figuring out how to make the ultimate this or that, and it's up to you to agree or not. And they do this without any aspiration to make money, they do it because of the passion to reach "it", just because they think "it" should be done a certain way - or they want to make "it" go where they want it to, and they want to share "it" with the rest of the planet thinking that truly everyone will see the same light as soon as they get a taste of the true "it".

There's so much detail you can take into account in a recipe or a method. For example in barbecue - there's the rub, the mustard slather, the choice of wood on what brand of coals, how long to cook the roast, what to baste it with, what temperature to cook it in and to what internal temperature of the meat, etc. I have learned a lot from it, and yes, obsessed about it too. But now, I think I can make a mean pulled pork or spare ribs, the likes of which I haven't tasted anywhere. I never order pulled pork or ribs anymore, unless it's just to check to see if they're better than mine. Most of the time, it's fantastic. Just not quite as good as my home smoked stuff.

So you might think I'm a jerk and high on myself. Well that may be, but I usually try to be humble about anything I do, and some call me overly self critical. But I also try to stay honest. If I like my own pulled pork better than any other, then I've achieved something. Honestly, I wouldn't stop until I could make the best pulled pork I ever tasted. So yeah I get obsessed too, and I think it took me somewhere just because I cared a little bit more.

So. Now it's winter in Canada, and I don't feel like being outside to cook very often, so we get a break from the barbecue. Well, seems like I got a new obsession. Pizza.

I still stand by this: the best pizza on the planet I ever tasted is in Sweden. No kidding. Every single neighborhood corner pizza joint beats the crap out of pretty much any other I've ever tasted. Okay Andrew, I confess, Terroni make a damn fine one. but it's not quite the same. Swedish pizza has a lot in common with Neopolitan ones because it's really really thin, but it's also greasy, sloppy and tender - there's no way you can break apart any of the crust that has toppings on it. You pretty much have to use a knife and fork to eat it rather than the North American stiff slice that you can hold horizontally and it will keep its shape. If you don't want to use cutlery, well, you could tear it up and use both hands to be able to slide it down - but with something to wash your hands with shortly after.

Recently, I read up a bit more on how to make a good thin crust pizza, and I tried it. Oh man, it was so close to the beloved Swedish pizza that miss so much, and I could hardly wait to eat some more. So I did some more reading to learn more. I started to obsess. Uh oh, here we go.

After going to a whole bunch of websites, several Swedish ones to capture the essence, and reading recipes for dough and toppings, and watching this video of a guy who obsesses over how to make the perfect pizza, I realized that the ultimate pizza must come somewhere inbetween the puritan Neopolitan pizza of Italy and the greasy joy of Swedish "ghetto" pizza. So, to get to "it" this time, I have to figure out the secret to both.

This blog posting is sooooooo loooooong.... And I'm only halfway through...

Secret number 1: Swedish pizza. Check. Done. Superthin crust, high heat, cheese with high fat content, with any toppings you can think of. Really, you can make a decent Swedish pizza at home with a fairly easy dough recipe as long as you make the dough yourself, with yeast and all, and you use fresh (and real) cheese that you shred yourself on top, and bake it in your oven as hot as it will go. I found that I got a pretty good crust done with a perforated pizza pan after I used a rolling pin to make it credit card thin.

Secret number 2: Naples style pizza. Unchecked. Nuh uh. Will take a lot of practice... I tried this tonight. This is when you will understand that I've started to obsess. It started with a 55-page manual (available for free here) from Forno Bravo who build pizza ovens. Not the electric Swedish ghetto ovens, but the carefully designed domed Italian brick stone ovens that are basically made for one purpose: to make the best pizza (just so happens that it can cook good bread and stuff too, but it's really made for pizza). They seem obsessed by it too - how else could you write about how to make the right pizza and have it take up 55 pages? I love that.

I spent most of today thinking about, shopping for and preparing this pizza. I bought a new pizza stone that was big enough, a pizza peel (the large spatula to put the pizza in the oven), a huge metal spatula to get it off the stone, I had bought the recommended San Marzano canned tomatoes from Vincenzo's yesterday, and toppings. I started making the dough around 1:30pm, anticipating a 6pm dinner with 3 pizzas made.

I love the fact that there's so much science put into the dough. I proofed the yeast overnight. I followed the instructions to make the dough wet enough, rise enough, and stretch the "skin" enough when it's turned into a ball. That was fairly easy enough. It takes patience, but I think I got it done right - it never felt like things were going wrong. I put the new stone in when I started to preheat the oven to its maximum - 550 degrees F - and floured the pizza peel.

Now, here's the thing. The 4 hours you've spent making and waiting for the dough to be just right - it can turn into disappointment quickly. According to the Neopolitan restrictions on how a pizza base should be made, rolling pins or any kind of mechanical equipment are not allowed. The manual I downloaded also said that it makes for a tough crust if you use a rolling pin. So I did my best to only use my hands. It sounded easy enough in the manual. Just hold the pizza ball, pat it into a disc, then pull it in the air, going around the circl elittle by little, until you can't get it any thinner without getting holes in it, then put it on the floured peel and just press out the thicker parts until you have a credit card thin crust to put the toppings on.

I realized I was a first timer and didn't expect to get it right the first time. But I thought I got it done pretty well, it seemed fairly uniform and I didn't have to do much work after to feel good about the base. It wasn't very round, it was more kidney shaped, but I thought of that as being just a rookie thing that I could live with. And I never took out the rolling pin. Yay, proudness.

Okay. Taking the topped pizzas off the peel turned into a real ordeal. What's worse is that I lost critical heat keeping the oven door open while trying to get the pizza off the peel. Several times, I had to close the oven, try to get a bit more flour under the pizza base on the peel until I finally got it off.

12 minutes later, I thought it looked okay. I took it out and let it cool off a little for a while before slicing into it. Uh oh, the crust was too tough. The knife didn't slide through it the way it should. I made another bigger slice from the middle, and looking at a crossection of the dough, it was very uneven. Thick in the middle, probably about a 1/4". Unacceptable. I hadn't flattened out the middle enough when I went through the disc, but probably I also put too many toppings on that prevented the dough from being cooked from the top. Or maybe I placed the stone too high up, or too far down. The unevenness of the thickness of the dough is something I will fix with experience, the others with experimentation.

What I know going from here, is that I think I've got the dough down okay, I just need to practice my ability to turn it into a super thin even base, and place it on a peel that is floured enough to have the topped pizza slide off right away so I won't lose precious heat.

If I manage to get that done okay, and mix it with the Swedish style of mixing toppings, I think I've got the ultimate pizza on my hands.

I know this was a long and tedious one. Thank you if you managed to stay with me to the end. I will keep you posted on my progress. All those postings will be much shorter, I promise.

Cheers,

-- Calle.

Grilled Muscovy Duck Breast with Grape Jelly Sauce

2009-10-21T11:51:00.003-04:00

It was my wife's birthday recently, so we decided to cook something extravagant for it. She had also made some grape jelly from our vines in the backyard, so this recipe turned out to be perfect. I bought two Muscovy duck breasts, anticipating we'd have one each and give a bit to the kids, but one would be sufficient for two people. We'd never cooked duck before, so it was truly a taste experience at the end - it is nothing like chicken.

Ingredients:
For the duck:

Muscovy duck breast(s), skin and fat still on
Melted butter
Garlic salt
Freshly ground pepper

For the sauce:

1/2 cup grape jelly (or currant or any other jelly you might think will go well)
1/2 cup raspberry preserves or jam, preferably seedless
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tbsp orange liqueur (I used Triple Sec)
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp mustard powder
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp fine sea salt

Preparation
Start the barbecue and prepare for a target temp of 350 degrees F. You will want to have a fairly low temperature when cooking this duck because of the skin and fat is still on - when it drips down on the coals the juices will cause flare-ups that can be too much to handle if the temperature is too high.

The sauce can be prepared earlier if you wish. Just put all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer while stirring over medium-low heat until the jelly has melted, then let it simmer until it has reduced to a light syrupy consistency. It boils over very easily though, so keep an eye on it.

To prepare the duck breast(s), score the skin pretty deeply in a criss-cross pattern. Try not to cut all the way into the meat though. Brush on the melted butter with a basting brush, and then season with garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Once the fire has settled in at 350 degrees or close to it, you can put on the duck - but to be safe, bring out a spray bottle with water in case you get flare-ups. Place the breast(s) skin side down directly over the coals and close the lid. Closing the lid will help to control the flare-ups, I managed to avoid them altogether.
To get nice grill marks, turn the duck 45 degrees after about 3-4 minutes, still with the skin side down. Lift a "corner" of the breast gently after a while too to see if the skin gets a nice golden brown color - that's when you want to turn the duck upside down to cook the other side. Cook for another 3 minutes or so, lift them gently again to see if the breast is being cooked evenly - adjust its position if it's not.

Duck is not like chicken - it is not supposed to get cooked until well done. I managed to get mine to a perfect medium-rare after about 8 minutes per side. But start to poke the breast with a finger or squeeze the sides before it's done, and if it's not soft and not very firm, there's a good chance you've got a delicious duck breast to enjoy.

Serving
Slice the duck breast thinly kind of diagonally vertically, about 1/4" slices, and spoon the sauce on top. We had this with brussels sprouts and buttered baguette slices, but I think sweet potatoes would go well with it, or even mashed potatoes. I'll let you improvise on the side dishes.

Top Sirloin Beef Roast on the Rotisserie

2009-10-05T09:52:00.002-04:00

A little while ago, I found a AAA top sirloin beef roast on sale at a local supermarket. I usually don't go for supermarket meat, but I make exceptions when the price is right and the meat looks good. This roast was just over 1.5 kg (almost 3.5 lbs), had a nice red color and there was enough fat on and in it for me to think that it would make for a nice juicy roast. I figured the best way to cook it would be on the rotisserie over a charcoal fire. If you have one, please use it, if not then a plain old indirect fire should work just fine, keeping in mind that you might have to turn it to have it cook evenly.

With most meat you put on the grill or barbecue, you'll want to bring it up to room temperature before you put it over the fire. So the first thing I did was to take it out while I proceeded with the rest of the preparations.

I started the coals using a chimney starter, and while the coals were getting lit I prepared the roast. The first thing to do was to mix the rub.

A Great Beef Rub
1/4 cup coarse sea salt
3 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp white pepper
2 tbsp whole mustard seeds
2 tbsp cracked coriander seeds
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp onion powder
2 tbsp red pepper (chili) flakes

Just mix the ingredients together in a bowl and you're good to go. This stuff is great on steaks too.

Preparing the Roast
First, paint on some Dijon mustard all over the roast. Then proceed to put on the rub - I like to put on a lot of it. After that, tie up the roast with string in several places so the roast will stay compact and cook evenly throughout the cooking process.

If you use a rotisserie, get a large skewer and push it through the roast lengthwise and wiggle it to make a good starter hole to shove the spit through. Secure the roast tightly.

On the Fire
The roast is cooked over indirect heat, so don't have any fire directly below the meat. You'll want a temperature around 350-375 degrees when you cook this roast. Remember to put a drip pan underneath, although my roast didn't drip all that much. Better safe than sorry though. Expect a cooking time of between an hour and fifteen minutes to an hour and a half for rare to medium rare.

My wife doesn't like smoke flavor with beef, so I didn't use any wood chips. I would have though if it was just for me, and I would have used a handful of hickory or apple chips that had been soaked for at least an hour in water.

About halfway through, you baste the roast with some softened butter using a basting brush.

Take It Off
It all depends on how you like your beef - if you like it like me, take it off the fire when a meat thermometer shows about 130 degrees. Take it off when it's 5 degrees F lower than what you want, because it will keep cooking during the required 15 minute resting period, during which the juices will get redistributed throughout the meat. I like to rest a roast on something that will catch the juices so I can just pour that goodness on top.

Serving
After the 15 minutes of resting, slice the roast and pour any of the juices on top. We had it with steamed cauliflower, baked sweet potato fries and homemade hollandaise sauce. Delicious. We're having leftovers tonight.

The Best Fuckin' Chicken You Ever Had

2009-09-18T11:49:00.003-04:00

Alright, so let's get into some cooking. After all this talk about low-and-slow, this first recipe is actually a grilling one. Whenever I cook this whole chicken, people say that it's the best chicken they ever had, and I tend to agree. This one is what made me stop ordering roasted chickens at restaurants.

I think the main secret to getting this chicken incredibly juicy is to use a rotisserie over a charcoal fire. If you don't have a charcoal grill or a rotisserie, it will still turn out great, and I suggest the beer can method for you. I'll explain the techniques more in detail below, but the beer can method in case you've never heard of it, is basically that you shove a beer can up the chicken's butt so it stands on it, balanced by the can and the legs in kind of a tripod stance.

What You'll Need
You'll need a whole chicken. It depends a bit on your method of choice (and size of your grill) how big it could be - the main thing is that it fits under the lid. If you'll use a rotisserie, which again is my recommended method, you can get a big roaster chicken, or maybe two regular sized ones (shred the leftovers and you'll have great chicken for quesadillas, enchiladas, salads, etc.). For a beer can chicken, get one that fits standing up under the lid. If you can fit in a roaster sized one, a tallboy (half liter can) of unopened beer should be used, otherwise use a regular (again, unopened) sized can of beer.

You also need to get some wood chips and soak them. I like mesquite wood for this chicken, but use what you have - hickory, oak, apple, cherry - I've tried them all and it's still amazing. Put about two handfuls of wood chips in a bowl and cover with water. Let them soak for at least an hour before you put the chicken on the grill.

You'll also need a drip pan. This is to catch the juices dripping off the chicken during cooking. You can get aluminum pans from a grocery store, or make your own with two layers of aluminum foil with the edges folded up so the juices are contained.

An ingredient you'll need is mustard. Plain old prepared mustard will do just fine, but if you wanna go fancier, feel free and experiment. Don't worry - the finished product won't taste like it.

The Rub
Then you can prepare the rub. The ingredients are as follows (this will make more than you need, but it's a good one to keep in the cupboard - its' great on pork chops too):

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup onion salt
1/2 cup garlic salt
1/2 cup sweet paprika (it really makes a difference to get the good Hungarian stuff)
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon pepper
1 tablespoon chipotle powder
1 tablespoon dried sage
1 tablespoon basil
1 teaspoon crushed dried rosemary

Just pour all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. If you can't find chipotle powder, then cayenne will do fine.

Prepare the Fire

Now it's time to start the fire. You will cook this chicken over indirect heat, meaning that it won't be directly over the heat source. Anticipate that you'll want a target temperature between 375 and 400 degrees F (190 to 205 C).

For charcoal, it depends a little on the size of your grill. If you have enough room, after you've lit the coals, place the drip pan in the center with two mounds of coals beside it. If you have a smaller grill, place the drip pan on one side, and the lit coals beside it.

If you're using a gas grill, it depends on your equipment. On ones with three or more burners, you can place the drip pan in the center below where you intend to place the chicken, and then turn on the side or front and back burners, and leave the middle one(s) unlit. For ones with two burners, place the drip pan over one of them and light the other. It depends on your equipment what you crank it up to, but generally I think it would be on "high" - but check the temp to hit the target.

Prepare the Chicken
If you've stored the chicken in the fridge, it's a good idea to take it out a little earlier to have it at room temperature by the time you prepare it. It's just so you won't waste time and fuel on warming it up and get headaches when you first put the chicken on and see the temp drop like a rock. Rinse it if you want and blot dry with paper towels. Make sure you remove any pieces of fat by the "tail".

With a basting brush, paint on the mustard all over the chicken. Just a thin layer. This is a bit for flavor, but also to have the rub stick better to the chicken. Don't skip this step, it really makes a difference.

Time to put the rub on it. Since you're dealing with raw chicken here, and if you made a full batch of the rub above, put some of it in a smaller bowl so you won't contaminate the rest of it. You'll want lots of rub on this baby. I like to have it covered with the stuff, not just sprinkled. Also put some inside the cavity.

The next step depends on your method of choice:

For the rotisserie: Truss the chicken. This basically means to tie the legs together and tie the wings tightly to the body of the chicken. Put one of the forks on the rotisserie spit and fasten it, then shove the spit through the chicken's cavity so the fork is stuck well inside it. Then slip on the second fork and stick it into the chicken and fasten. You want it to be well balanced on the spit so you won't exhaust the motor.
Beer can method: With the beer can method, your chicken is basted/steamed on the inside while it's cooking and you'll get an end result almost as juicy as with a rotisserie. Get your can of beer. Open it and drink half of it. Make a few holes in the top of the can, and put a few tablespoons of the remaining rub inside. Take the chicken and put it so the big cavity slides right on top of the can as far as it can go. Pull the legs so you get kind of a tripod stance so it is balanced well standing up. When you move the chicken to the grill, remember to hold on to the bottom of the can so it won't slide out.

Start to Cook
So finally, it's time to put it on. But first, drain the wood chips that have been soaking. If you're using charcoal, toss the wood chips right on the coals. If you're using gas, put them in a smoker box if you have one. If not, put the chips on a piece of aluminum foil, wrap the foil around them so they're covered, and then punch a bunch of holes in it so the smoke can escape. On the gas, put the wood chip package or smoker box on one of the lit burners and wait for the smoke to start before you put the chicken on. No need to wait if you're using charcoal.

Place the chicken over the drip pan, and if you're using a rotisserie, start the motor. Close the lid, and throughout the cooking process, keep it closed as much as possible and try to resist the urge to check on it too often - temp will fluctuate and smoke will escape. The temperature will drop when you first put the chicken on, but after a while try to maintain it steady around 375-400 degrees F. Now have another beer while you're waiting for the goodness to get done. It depends a bit on the size of the chicken, but a small one usually takes about an hour and 15 minutes, while a roaster can take between an hour and a half up to 2 hours.

If you are using the beer can method, you may have to turn it after a while to have it cook evenly. It depends on your setup. Just check it after about 45 minutes and turn if it looks like it's getting uneven heat.

I usually don't baste this chicken, but if you want you can spray it with apple juice. Brushing it with butter also works, but I find that a lot of the rub can run off with the melting butter.

When It's Done
It might look like it's a little burnt at the end, but it's not, there's just a lot of sugar in the rub that caramelizes. The chicken is done when you poke a hole and the juices run clear, or a thermometer shows that deep in the thigh, it's 180 degrees F or 82 degrees C.

Take it off the fire. If you're using the beer can method, remember to put a spatula under the chicken so the can won't fall out - the can will be insanely hot and you can seriously burn yourself. Now let it rest for a while before you cut into it. If you used a rotisserie, remove the forks and slide the chicken off the spit and have it rest on its back, covered with foil if you wish. On the beer can, just place the whole thing on a tray that won't burn or melt, and just let it rest standing up - but still be careful not to knock the can over when you "dismount" the chicken.

Enjoy!
Nothing left but the eatin'. This chicken will be slightly spicy and juicy beyond belief.

Thanks for your time.

What Smoker Should You Get?

2009-09-17T13:23:00.009-04:00

So you've had a couple of good pulled pork sandwiches, maybe brisket or smoked ribs and want to try to give this low-and-slow barbecue thing a shot. While you could use a regular gas or charcoal grill theoretically, you'll be better off with an honest smoker - you'll have fewer headaches for sure. But which one should you choose? There are lots of different types of smokers in as many price ranges, so some research to find the one that works for you is in order.

My guess is though that you're like me - money is a bit of an issue, patio space is not abundant, but you still want to get the best results you possibly can and be able to get a good night's sleep instead of tending to your coals all night during an 18-hour cooking session.

The main thing your smoker should be good at is temperature control. We can talk about rubs and sauces and mops and mustard slathers all we want, but if your meat doesn't cook at a steady temperature, it won't turn out as great as it could. Temperature is controlled with air vents - the more oxygen the fire can access, the hotter the fire. If you can control the air flow efficiently, you can control the temperature better as well. An extension of that is you want it to be as air tight as possible so wind won't be a factor, or rain water seeping in in case it starts to pour. You also want the metal to be fairly thick - you don't want to waste your fuel heating up metal that keeps getting cooled off by the elements on the outside.

I definitely recommend the Weber Smokey Mountain 18 1/2" cooker. It's the only one I've ever used, but I did my homework as well as talked to people with other kinds, and tasted meat cooked on others as well, and I'm still convinced that this is the perfect smoker for any backyard barbecuer. Here's why.

WSM overview
The WSM is what's generally called a "bullet", "upright" or "water" smoker. The coals are placed in a kind of bowl at the bottom, which has a "water pan" that covers it, and then two layers of grates to place your meat on, and then a dome for a lid. The bottom bowl where you place the coals also have three vents that you control the air flow with, and the top lid has an exhaust vent. The main cylinder also has a door you use to shovel in fresh coals through.

It's not that expensive. You can probably find one somewhere in the $300-350 range depending on the store. It doesn't take up more space than its 18 1/2" diameter. It's tightly built, and the three air vents makes controlling the air flow easy and exact. The bowl can hold a full bag of briquettes or tightly packed charcoal, and especially with the briquettes if you just light 25 or so on top of the rest unlit coals, you won't need to worry about adding any more coals for about 12 hours.

Now there is a 22 1/2" model as well, but since it has more volume, it requires more coals to maintain the target temperature. Honestly, I've never felt like I needed more room with my 18 1/2" WSM.

I just want to take time to mention that while the pan is supposed to have water in it in order to control the heat better, and presumably have the evaporating water (or whatever liquid you choose to put in it) baste the meat while cooking. The basting part of it is something I've never noticed making any sort of difference. Many have had the same experience, and instead put sand in the pan. That just sounds silly to me. I just cover the pan with foil to use it as a pan that catches the drippings from the meat, and the foil makes for quick and easy cleanup. For temperature control, just get to know the WSM without the water and you'll be just fine.

Also, most of the cheap charcoal smokers you can find out there are of this "water smoker" or "bullet" kind. They are cheap for a reason though - you aren't likely to get as good temperature control with the cheaper units, and your results will reflect that, unless you're a much more patient person than me.

Now let's get into more details about what I like about it compared to other types of smokers.

Offset smokers
Most offset smokers look like a barrel with a chimney attached to the one side and a smaller cylinder attached to the other (have a look at this example). You put your coals in the smaller cylinder, control the temperature with a vent on its side, you put the meat in the main barrel portion, and off you go.

The offset smokers by design take up more room than a WSM. Also, unless you get a really big one, the box for the charcoal will not have room for enough coals to keep smoldering while you're getting your beauty sleep. So if you're thinking about cooking brisket or pulled pork, this one will get you some nice bags under your eyes by the end of the session.

Another reason is that the side of the meat you put closer to the firebox will cook quicker since it's closer to the heat source, and I don't feel like going through the hassle of turning the meat every once in a while to make it cook evenly.

But they look really cool.

Big Drum smokers
I haven't tried one of these, but would like to - they seem promising for sure. They are also upright, made from a regular (unused, rest assured) steel barrel. Coals at the bottom, meat at the top, and there you go. But it doesn't have a drip pan. That means that its principle is exactly what I found with my WSM without water in the pan.

I have one major concern with these though: I don't want to get cancer.

You may have heard that cooking with charcoal or briquettes produces carcinogens. Well, true, and not true, from what I hear. From what I have learned, the carcinogens are produced when the drippings from the meat hits the burning/glowing coals (or if you really burn your meat, but who'd eat that anyway?) - they're not from the coals themselves. I guess you can always put in a drip pan in these yourself to avoid that, but the WSM has one already built in, so...

They look even cooler though.

The Big Green Egg
I'm not gonna lie. I'd like one of these. But they are way too pricey for me.

Electric smokers
These can come in all sorts of shapes. But do you call someone that paints by numbers an artist? I don't think so. Do you want to be a barbecuer? Lay off the electricity.

Pellet smokers
Those puppies are electric. What did I tell you about electric smokers? These guys even make you buy really expensive proprietary wood pellets instead of using honest wood chunks.

Conclusion
So for cost efficiency, easy of use, dependability and top notch end results, go with the WSM. If you have the cash and want oohs and aahs for the equipment in your backyard, get the Big Green Egg. If you're not likely to cook roasts that need 12+ hours to get done, you can get an offset smoker.

Thanks for your time.

How I Got Into Barbecuing

2009-09-15T10:25:00.014-04:00

So to start this off, I figured a good beginning to this blogging stuff would be to write about how I got into barbecuing and what equipment I use. I'm really bad at making long stories short, so bear with me.

I'm originally from Sweden, where barbecuing is much less of an art form than in most of the rest of the world. At least in my family and circle of friends. We're talking hot dogs and burgers, or the occasional kebobs with cubed beef, pickled pearl onions, peppers, cherry tomatoes, perhaps marinated for a while and cooked quickly over the fire. Wherever there are outdoor activity facilities, especially for winter fun, there are usually barrels with a burning wood fire and a grate on top where you can grill a snack while warming your ice cold fingers and toes. Some that have caught fish like to wrap that in foil with butter as well and put it over the fire, and a kids' favorite is a banana in the peel with a slit cut which is stuffed with chocolate, wrapped in foil and gets sort of steam grilled.

That's not to say that grilling isn't in the Swedish psyche. There are plenty of hot dog stands and kiosks all over the place where you can get a nice big burger with all kinds of fixins, a good selection of great sausages from the grill (or boiled, but let's not go there), with the highlight being the "tunnbrodsrulle" which is a hot dog or brat wrapped in a tortilla-like thin bread with mashed potatoes, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and maybe a shrimp salad (salad shrimp mixed in with a mayo/cream mixture) - you can watch Anthony Bourdain enjoy the goodness here (fast forward to the 5:45 mark). But in terms of variety, there's not a whole hell of a lot to brag about in Swedish mainstream grilling.

I got my first grill from my father-in-law when me and my wife bought our first house in 2002. It was a propane Broil King, and I was very nervous about cooking on it the first time. First of all, I hadn't done much cooking at all before then, and secondly, gas barbecues didn't really exist in Sweden when I was there, so I didn't have much of an idea how to use it. The first thing I cooked was a great marinated steak from a local butcher/deli store called Brady's, and it turned out really well. That got me hooked, and I wanted to cook more on the thing - honestly, I wanted to cook more, period. So off I went to the bookstore to find myself a barbecuing cookbook, and decided on Steven Raichlen's The Barbecue Bible!. This fantastic book opened my eyes not only to barbecuing and grilling, but also to be more daring with international cuisines. The first thing I made from that book were some extremely good Indonesian coconut beef satays that are still a favorite.

Jump forward a year or two, and it was time for me to get myself another cookbook. I decided on Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue at the bookstore, and when I got home and started to read it, I found that many recipes were for "low and slow" barbecue as opposed to quicker grilling. I had heard about it before, but was discouraged because of the long cooking times and extra equipment needed. Soon after, I went to a favorite bar/restaurant called Ethel's Lounge in Waterloo, ON, and they served pulled pork, which I had read about in the book. It was absolutely amazing. Shredded pork so tender it melted in the mouth, drenched in a deliciously spicy barbecue sauce, served on a bun. I'd never had anything like it. My next restaurant visit was to a place called Lucy's Seafood Kitchen, who also served pulled pork. I tried it there, it was extremely tasty there too, so I was really getting convinced that this low-and-slow thing actually was something special that deserved the effort. With my wife's permission, I started to look around for suitable equipment so I could try it for myself.

I was still a bit worried about the long cooking times and not sure if it would be something I'd want to keep doing it after the first try. What if it was really boring? What if you screw up somewhere in the middle, is the whole thing ruined? Do I really want to cook all day with all the other chores I need to do on the weekend? With this in mind, I didn't want to spend much money on equipment in case it would only be used once or twice. I found two options at a local Canadian Tire under $100CDN, and posted questions on barbecue forums online about which one would be the best one to pick. Well, consensus was to get none of them. The reasoning was that those cheap things would be difficult to handle and weren't likely to produce great results, which in the end would cause the very discouragement I was worried about. I was recommended to get the Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM). It was a little more expensive than what I had in mind, but again with the approval of my wife, I took that leap of faith and ordered it for $329CDN.

While I waited for it to arrive, I read up on how best to use it on a site dedicated to WSM users called The Virtual Weber Bullet. It seemed like art more than science, with lots of different details and different approaches that all seemed to work well - like art, it's personal preference with some basic principles applied to get the results you want. I decided on my approach (which I will write more about in following postings on here) and was going to smoke my first pork butt to make pulled pork. I followed Paul Kirk's method in terms of trimming and used his recipes for a mustard slather, rub and mop, and followed the preferred cooking method I found online. I started in the evening, set my alarm clock to wake me up every two hours all night so I could check on the temperature, panicked from time to time because things weren't going as planned but I managed to correct things, and in the end (about 20 hours after I started), I had a fully smoked pork roast that shredded well into the deliciousness called pulled pork. Served with a sauce from Kirk's book and a Haitian slaw my wife made from Raichlen's, it turned out better than what I'd had at the restaurants, and I was extremely pleased and wanted to do more. My money was well spent.

Since then, I've cooked many pork butts, smoked ribs, brisket and turkey on the WSM. The old propane barbecue was tossed out in favour of a Weber 22 1/2" kettle charcoal grill because I became more of a coal purist, and I have cooked all sorts of fantastic things on it. Later, I also purchased a Weber Q-100 for weeknight grilling - it just takes a while for coals to get lit and settle in, and often that would make for a dinner that would be too late. Sometimes you just have to make concessions - food grilled over a gas flame is better than not having it grilled at all.

So now you know where I come from and what I use. From now on, I will focus more on my findings. Thanks for your time.