How To Cook Like Your Grandmother

How To Make Meatloaf

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:40:00 +0000

Since I asked people for suggestions of what to make next, I've seen a bunch of requests for things that people remember from their childhoods. Things that nobody makes any more. Some of them sound really good, though, so I'm going to have to do some research and give it a shot.

Dave, on the other hand, went for the sure thing when he suggested meatloaf. That's almost cheating. You just know I had to do meatloaf eventually. And here it is.

Ingredients

2 pounds ground meat (see below)
2 large eggs
2 cups bread crumbs
1 large carrot
1/2 medium onion (about a cup diced, use your leftovers)
1/4 cup buttermilk (not pictured)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

The first rule of meatloaf is: don't talk about ... no wait, that's not it. The first rule of meatloaf is: there are no rules for meatloaf. There are some guidelines, but there's no one true perfect meatloaf. (That's not entirely true. The perfect meatloaf is always the next one.)

This starts from the meat. You can buy packs of "meatloaf mix" at the grocery store. It will usually be a combination of ground beef, ground pork and ground veal. But I'll put my all-beef loaf up against anything made with the mix.

Historically, the reason meatloaf was made from multiple kinds of meat was that people tended to buy whole cuts of meat. After trimming and cooking the "good" cuts, you'd put the bits and pieces left over through the grinder and make meatloaf.

As for guidelines, one of the biggest is to not treat it like you're just making a big hamburger. If you want hamburgers, then make those instead. Since you won't be grilling or frying, you can't count on the Maillard reaction for your flavor. You'll have to add it yourself. And because it will take longer to cook, you have to do something to keep it moist.

I get the flavor from onion, and the moistness from carrot. Carrots hold onto their moisture really well when you bake with them. Trim the veggies into pieces that will fit in your food processor and go to town on them.

Put the chopped veggies, along with all the other ingredients except the meat, into a large bowl. Really, don't try to do this in the smallest bowl you think it will fit in. Unless you've got some really oversized thing from a restaurant supply store, odds are you should use your largest bowl.

Now before you get your hands into the wet ingredients, pre-heat the oven to 350°.

Mix all the ingredients together really well. You want to do this before adding the meat, otherwise you'll end up working the meat way longer than you want to. I'm not so worried about making the meatloaf tougher -- you can make tough hamburgers if you over-work the beef. It's just that the longer I work ground beef, the more of the fat melts and gets gummy all over my hands. (Take your rings off when working ground beef. It's a nightmare cleaning fat out of the crevices.)

You might be wondering, "So what about the bread crumbs and eggs? What's that about?" Good questions. The bread crumbs make the texture more crumbly than hamburgers, and also help hold in moisture. And if you make your breadcrumbs from the chewy crust of good garlic bread, it adds more flavor, too. And the egg helps hold everything together, so it doesn't get too crumbly.

Once you've got the meat and other ingredients well mixed, form it into a loaf on a flat baking sheet.

I've lined the pan with foil in the past, to make cleanup easier. If the meatloaf sticks at all, not only do you end up cleaning the pan anyway when you rip the foil, you end up having to dig pieces of foil out of the bottom of your meatloaf. With good stainless steel baking pans, cleanup only takes a few minutes anyway. Non-stick is evil for meat, you can't scrub it with a Brillo™ pad.

There aren't any pictures of the mixing and forming process, because once I get my hands into ground beef I don't touch anything else until I'm done and I've washed up. Besides being unsanitary and completely gross, you'll make everything you touch all slippery. Eww.

Stick the probe from your digital thermometer into the loaf at an angle. You want the tip as close to the center as possible. Set it for 135° so you get a heads-up when it's nearly done. When it goes off, re-set the alarm for 140° and start on your side dishes. You'll have about 5-10 more minutes until the it's done cooking, and 5-10 minutes that it should rest before you slice it.

When the second alarm goes off, remove the pan from the oven, but leave the thermometer probe in. If you pull it out, a whole lot of juice will come out with it. When you let it rest, you give the juice time to redistribute throughout the loaf.

Instead of timing how long it rests, I like to leave the thermometer in after turning off the alarm. You'll be amazed how much the internal temperature will keep going up after taking a large piece of meat out of the oven. If you wait until the temperature peaks and starts coming back down, it's ready to carve.

Transfer the meatloaf to a cutting board and slice 3/4-inch pieces, as many as you think you'll need for the first meal. The leftovers keep better if the loaf hasn't been sliced yet.

Serve with potatoes (mashed, baked, au gratin, whatever) and/or green beans or peas. Let your kids put ketchup on it, but if you're a grown-up, please at least taste your food before covering it with ketchup and salt.

And that's it.

I've always though of meatloaf as a cold-weather meal. Turns out I was very wrong. Thanks to Dave for prompting me to give it a try. He will have his copy of the cookbook in his email tonight.

If you want a free eBook copy of the cookbook, go over to this thread and leave me a suggestion. If I make it, and you've sent me an email so I can contact you, you'll get your copy when I post the recipe.

How To Make Bread Crumbs

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:38:00 +0000

I would describe myself as frugal. Some people might prefer the term "cheap". I'm okay with that. Especially when it leads to better food than if I had bought it pre-made.

When I was making the herbed croutons I had to cut the crust off the bread.

Some people (I'm looking at you, Kristin) would just give the crusts to their dog. But I'm cheap, remember? So I said to myself, "So, self, what can we do with these crusts? Oh I know, I'm going to need bread crumbs for the [MAIN COURSE]." No, I didn't shout "main course" in brackets in my head. I'm being coy about the next recipe. Tee-hee.

So I ripped the crust into pieces that would fit in my mini food processor and gave them a good spin.

Once they had reduced a bit, I ripped some pieces a little smaller so I could add them to the other crumbs.

When the processor is nearly empty, it just tosses the pieces around without really chopping them. It has to be slightly full to really do a good chop.

It took me two batches to finish everything, and I still ended up with some slightly large chunks. (This bread has a very chewy crust.)

To separate the ones that need more processing, pick the bowl up and rap it several times with the heel of your other hand. The small crumbs will settle to the bottom, and the big ones float to the top.

Scoop the top layer back into the processor and give it another spin.

And that's it.

I've got a much better picture of the finished product, but it's in the middle of the other ingredients for the main course recipe that's coming up. You'll just have to come back and see it there.

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How To Make Wedge Salad

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:30:00 +0000

Lots of food trends involve expensive or hard-to-find ingredients, complicated preparation or some other reason to not try it at home. But one thing I never saw until a couple of years ago, and have since seen it dozens of places -- a pretty good definition for "trendy" -- is the wedge salad. This is the exception that proves all the rules for trendy foods: It's actually easier than a "regular" salad.

Ingredients

iceberg lettuce (yes, it has to be iceberg)
tomatoes
cucumbers
red bell peppers
bacon bits
herbed croutons
creamy Italian dressing
parmesan cheese

Directions

This is a really short one, only one step that I haven't already written up. Prep all the toppings first. Core and quarter the tomatoes. You can core it first, or cut the stem out after you quarter it. Then slice the bell pepper, and peel the cucumber.

Finally, core and quarter the lettuce.

See those pieces? That shape is called ... umm ... let's see, it was right on the tip of my tongue ... oh yeah! Wedges. That's what makes it a wedge salad. Just take an entire quarter -- one wedge -- and put it in your salad bowl. If you really want to extend the theme, cut the cucumber and tomato into wedges too.

Add the rest of the toppings, and that's it.

Coming up is the dinner that went along with this salad. I went trendy with the salad, so the dinner is about as traditional as you can get. Sign up using the form to the right to make sure you don't miss it.

How To Make Herbed Croutons

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:01:00 +0000

I love croutons, but not those pre-made rock-like nuggets covered with artificial flavors and colors that you find in the grocery store. I've done plain garlic croutons once before, to go with the pizza soup. (And yes, garlic croutons are "plain" croutons. If you're not going to at least use some garlic you might as well put some toast on your salad.)

This time I did garlic and herbs. But no salt. Nearly everything needs some salt, but these do okay without it.

Ingredients

garlic bread (see below)
butter
olive oil
parsley, dried flakes
basil, dried flakes

Directions

This fall I plan to start baking my own bread. I haven't started yet because a) I'm not generally a baker, and b) it's hot out. If I'm going to be experimenting with the oven, I'd rather do it when I won't mind having it on half the day. But once I get fast at it, I don't ever want to buy another pre-made bread that has corn syrup in it. Check yours, if you buy bread. Odds are it's in there.

Until then, I really like the bread they have at my grocery store. Check out these ingredients.

I can live with that. Their sourdough is great, but for today's croutons I got the garlic. Nice chunks of garlic throughout the loaf. Really nice.

To start, trim the crust off the bread. I like to stand it on end and trim from top to bottom all the way around, sort of like how you'd peel a cucumber without a vegetable peeler.

Once it's crustless, cut the bread into bite-sized cubes and melt some butter in a pan, with an equal amount of olive oil.

How much butter? That really depends on how much bread you're doing. This was about two tablespoons of butter, and two tablespoons of olive oil. Add the bread cubes.

So how big is "bite-sized" anyway? For soup, I like nice big chunks. For salad I like them smaller. Smaller ones get more crunchy, bigger ones can be crispy outside and soft inside.

Toss the bread around to make sure it gets a good coat of butter/olive oil all the way around. If it all gets soaked up and lots of the bread is still dry, push the bread to one side and melt some more butter and olive oil.

Add enough of the herbs to make sure each piece of bread has several bits of the herbs. But you don't want green croutons. (Unless you do. But that would be strange.)

Once all the bread has a nice coating of butter, olive oil and herbs, transfer to a baking pan, large enough that the bread is all in one layer.

Bake at 400° for about 10 minutes, turning the cubes once with tongs at about 8 minutes. Remove when they are golden all the way around.

And that's it.

Let's see, creamy Italian dressing, bacon bits, and now herbed croutons. What ever could this be leading up to?

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How To Make Bacon Bits

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:14:00 +0000

Everything's better with bacon. Everything. But there's a better bacon than bacon ...

Wait! Come back, I'm not crazy!

Okay, now what I was trying to say before you started laughing and walking away, is that there's a better bacon than bacon ... for making bacon bits.

Ingredients

prosciutto

(Good ingredient list, huh?)

Directions

If you're familiar with your meat maps and your various cuts and preparations, you know that bacon is smoked pork belly while prosciutto is dry cured ham. Prosciutto is normally sliced very thin, and eaten raw or wrapped around other foods and baked.

The other thing to know about prosciutto is that it tends to cost anywhere from $10-$18 per pound. So am I completely crazy making bacon bits out of it? Nope, because I buy the prosciutto ends. That's the pieces from the end that are too small to slice well. That one-pound chunk you see above was about $3.

Making bacon bits is juts a matter of grinding it and frying it. Unless you've got a large, heavy-duty grinder, that's a lot easier if you slice it into small chunks and freeze it first. So, cut about an inch thick, turn 90 degrees and cut again, then one more turn and cut the third way.

That's so the pieces will get pulled into the screw on the grinder.

Then spread the chunks out on wax paper on a baking sheet and put it in the freezer for an hour or so.

Frozen meat slices easier, rather than squishing around and extruding out the end.

Once it's frozen, feed it through the grinder.

It will look like long strands of meat, but it's actually lots of little bits that are slightly stuck to each other.

Once they hit the frying pan they'll separate without any special effort, as you can see in the next photo.

Or you would see it if the battery in my camera hadn't died right then. That's what I get for trying to cook the night after my daughter does a sleep-over for her birthday. (Happy birthday honey!) My wife and I were shooting pictures of that until about a half-hour before I started working on dinner. Apparently that's not enough recharge time. Oops. So I'll just describe it.

Get a plain, uncoated pan really hot and add the ground-up prosciutto. No oil, no butter, no fat, nothing. There's enough fat on the prosciutto. Leave it alone until you hear it start to sizzle then give it a stir. Now stay with it and stir every minute or so until everything is crispy.

If you get a really close trim, like this one, there might not be very much melted fat left at all. If yours has a bit too much grease when it's done cooking, turn it out into a plate with two paper towels on it to drain for a minute. Then transfer to a serving bowl and set out with the other salad toppings.

And that's it.

Still to come this week, more toppings, a trendy presentation, and a very classic dinner to go with it. Sign up with the form at the top right to get everything as soon as it's posted.

How To Make Creamy Italian Dressing

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:46:00 +0000

If you have a bottle of store-bought creamy Italian dressing in your fridge or pantry, go take a look at the ingredients. In fact, just grab the bottle and bring it back to the computer. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now, here's how to tell if you've got a good brand. What's the first ingredient? Is it hydrogenated vegetable oil? (Corn and soy are both vegetables, so they both count.) Minus 50 points. Or maybe it's corn syrup? Also minus 50. Is either one of these ingredients in the top three? Minus 25 points. There's a really good chance you're at minus 75 already.

Now, look for any dairy product, such as cream, or sour cream. You know, like in "creamy Italian". Is there any at all? Plus 10. Is it the top ingredient? Plus 50.

I hope you haven't been writing down your score, because I'm just making a point here: The #1 ingredient in a prepared food ought to be something in the name of the product. That's why my buttmilk ranch dressing is buttermilk. And creamy Italian dressing should have cream. In this case, it's sour cream. And buttermilk. You'll see both of these a lot in creamy salad dressings. Good ones anyway.

And you won't see hydrogenated vegetable oil or corn syrup. Those aren't even food.

Ingredients

1/2 cup sour cream
1/3 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons shredded fresh Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon crushed dried basil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper, coarsely ground

Directions

This one's really simple. Put the sour cream and buttermilk in a bowl.

Mince the garlic and add that.

Grate the cheese. Use a really good one. It's a bit more expensive, but the flavor will be much stronger so you don't need as much.

Add the salt, pepper and basil.

Mix well ...

... and pour into an air-tight container and store in the fridge for at least an hour to let the flavors combine.

And that can be it ... if you want it to. But here's the thing about this recipe: You can extend it however you want. Do you like oregano? Add some. Parsley, onion, chive? Go for it. Or go with some wine vinegar -- red or white -- or lemon if you like some bite. Double (or triple) the garlic.

You could keep adding things bit by bit until you've got nearly the same ingredients as the buttermilk ranch. That's okay. What's more important, how it tastes or what you call it? I vote taste. How about you?

If you want to see what I put this on, along with how to do some ludicrously good bacon bits, sign up using the form at the top-right of this page. You'll get every post as soon as it comes out.

How (Not) To Make Onion Dip

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:47:00 +0000

I love onion dip made with sour cream and onion soup mix. Love it. Loooooooooove it. But the ingredients scare me. Have you ever read that package?

So I decided to make my own. Of course I looked online for ideas first. Almost everything I saw included beef bouillon cubes. Oh yeah, that's so much better.

What you see here is a first try. It's pretty good as a dip, but really fabulous for ... well, I'll tell you down at the bottom.

Ingredients

1-1/2 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic
16 ounces sour cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon bacon fat
1 teaspoon secret ingredient, optional (see below)

Directions

I'll assume you've already got some diced onion left from making something else.

You don't? Oh, okay, I'll wait while you go dice some.

You're back? Okay, good. Now melt the bacon fat over medium heat and add the diced onion.

While that's starting to cook, mince the garlic. Add the garlic and salt to the onion.

Cook the onions until they are caramelized, about 15-20 minutes. Keep stirring so it doesn't burn.

Once the onion is caramelized, scoop it into a food processor. For a small amount like this, a mini-processor is actually better.

Process until it is fairly smooth, but don't obsess over it. Some lumps are good.

Then add about a quarter-cup of sour cream. No, don't measure it. Didn't I say not to obsess over it?

That step was mostly to make sure all the oniony goodness got into the dip, instead of staying stuck to the insides of the food processor. If you're using a large one, you might need to add all the sour cream. Process again.

Scoop everything out into a bowl about a size larger then what will just hold the dip. You need a little room to mix.

Add the rest of the sour cream, if you didn't already add it in the processor, and mix.

Here's the secret ingredient: Worcestershire sauce. Yeah, I know, sounds strange doesn't it?

After mixing in the Worcestershire, I tasted it and it was too smooth. I like it thick and ... well, not quite chunky, but I like bits of onion in it. And I had over-processed it. So I minced up some fresh onion and added that.

One last mix, let it sit in the fridge for an hour for all the flavors to integrate, and that's it.

I mentioned up top that it was good as a dip but great for something else. I already tweaked the amounts of ingredients listed above to make a better dip next time. I only used about one cup of onion, so I upped that to 1-1/2. And I used nearly a tablespoon of the Worcestershire, which was a bit much, so I listed a teaspoon. I also cut the bacon fat in half, because I didn't need nearly as much in the non-stick pan as you see in the photos.

So what was this really good for? Hamburgers, believe it or not. I've seen meatloaf recipes that call for a couple pieces of bread, ripped up and soaked in milk. Milk ... sour cream ... that's pretty much the same thing, right? And onion, garlic, Worcestershire, all stuff that I put in burgers already.

So I took half of the dip (about 8 ounces) and mixed it with two pounds of ground beef, a cup of bread crumbs and two eggs. Made burgers and grilled them up. They were unbelievably moist, and so flavorful you almost didn't need any condiments on them. I didn't bother to photograph them because I didn't realize they'd be worth telling anybody about.

I love happy accidents.

How To Make Macaroni Salad, Take 2

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:10:00 +0000

UPDATE: Oops! I forgot to add the vinegar in the ingredients list, so I'm re-sending this one.

The last time I made macaroni salad my wife and her father commented on how dry it was. I don't like it runny, like it usually is when you buy pre-made macaroni salad at the grocery store. I might have over-reacted a little and gone a bit drier than I needed to. (Not that I'm the kind of person to over-react. Oh no, not at all.)

So this time I made it a bit more like they're used to. About twice the mayo as last time, though still not as runny as the pre-made stuff. I've got to admit, this was pretty good, too. Of course that might be because I've finally got the hang of how to make mayonnaise from scratch.

Ingredients

1 pound uncooked macaroni
2 cups mayonnaise

Mayonnaise
3 large egg yolks
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1-1/2 cups olive pomace oil
2 teaspoons mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup diced sweet onion
1/4 cup diced chives
3 large hard-boiled eggs
1 teaspoon celery seed

Directions

Set a large pot of water on high heat for the macaroni, and a smaller pot with the three eggs to hard-boil.

The eggs will take longer than the macaroni, so you might want to do them in advance. In fact, do a whole pot of them and keep the hard-boiled eggs in the fridge. That way you can decide you want deviled eggs for dinner and not have a half-hour wait ahead of you.

While you wait for the water to boil, dice the onion and chives.

Yes, the onions were the pieces that were too small for the beer-batter onion rings. Use your leftovers.

When the pasta is done, strain it in a colander and rinse with cold water until it is completely cooled off. Get in there and stir it up with your hand. That's the easiest way to know when it's all cooled off.

Make the mayonnaise and add it to the macaroni.

You don't have to make your own, but please at least use real mayonnaise. "Bread spread" or "salad dressing" or "lite low-fat almost-tastes-like-real-food white goo" don't count. I've heard of people adding sour cream or yogurt to the mix. As long as it's real sour cream and real yogurt, that could be good, too.

Add the vinegar and stir.

Add the celery seed, onion and chives.

Dirty little secret: I don't measure the celery seed. I just add enough to cover the top layer pretty well, like you see in the picture above.

And here's my rule of thumb for celery, onion and chives. Celery adds crunch and color. Onion adds flavor and crunch. Chives add color and flavor. You need all three elements, so at least two of these three ingredients. Uh oh, my geek side is insisting on a chart.

	Celery	Onion	Chives
Color	X		X
Crunch	X	X
Flavor		X	X

Mix again.

You might wonder why I keep adding a few things and mixing instead of adding it all at once. If you let the pasta drain well, it can be pretty sticky by the time you start adding ingredients. So I like to get the mayo and vinegar in first to lube it up before adding the dry ingredients. But I hold off on the egg until the very end so I don't crush the little pieces of hard-boiled yolk. So that's next, dice the egg into the pasta and mix gently one last time.

Serve with corn on the cob slathered with cultured butter and kosher salt, and baked chicken.

And that's it.

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How To Make Beer Batter Onion Rings

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:42:00 +0000

After I made the tempura onion rings a bunch of people asked about doing a beer batter. I finally got around to it, and the result is what you see here. Tasty? Absolutely. Better than the tempura? Hard to say without a back-to-back comparison. But I will say this one is more work.

If you've done beer-battered onion rings before, I'd be happy to hear any tips you've got to offer.

Ingredients

2 medium onions
12 ounces beer (one can)
1 cup white flour
2 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1-2 cups buttermilk

Directions

Peel the onions and slice into rings about a half-inch thick. Spread them in a pan or baking dish, and add enough buttermilk to nearly cover the onions. Toss to coat, and set them aside to soak for at least an hour before cooking.

Mince the garlic, then add the salt and pepper and mince everything together.

Add the garlic/salt/pepper mixture to the flour and combine, then add the beer.

Mix until there are no lumps of flour left.

Now comes the part where I need some tips. The basic process is to take each onion and shake off the buttermilk, dredge it in the flour mixture, then dip it in the batter, and finally into the hot oil.

After each dip, shake off the excess. You don't want to get the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients or vice-versa. Fry on the first side until the edges are golden brown, then turn over and fry for another minute.

And that's it.

You can do the horseradish-based dipping sauce or, like I did this time, the buttermilk ranch dressing. Tangy, zesty, thick and creamy. Perfect with the hot, sweet onion rings.

You hungry yet?

How about now?

I only did two medium onions, but by the time I was done the flour was getting pretty sticky from the buttermilk, and the batter was getting thick from all the flour. The last few rings I did were pretty thick with batter. Which was good, mind you, but I was going for onion rings, not fried dough.

Anyone who has worked in a restaurant or one of those snack trailers at a fair has done these by the bushel load. What do you do differently so you don't gum up all the ingredients going from one kind to the next? I suspect it's just a matter of using much larger quantities of everything. I'd like to do these again, but if I don't get any better ideas for it, I'm going to leave out the flour dredge next time.

How To Make Mayonnaise

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:07:00 +0000

I've been making mayonnaise for a while now. I've used it for buttermilk ranch dressing, macroni salad, horseradish sauce, onion ring sauce, thousand island dressing and deviled eggs. A couple of times I said that it didn't come out as thick as I would have wanted, but that was okay since it was an ingredient in a sauce.

Well, after enough trial and error I think I can finally explain how to do it consistently.

Ingredients

2 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1-1/2 cups olive pomace oil
1-2 teaspoons mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

The key to making mayonnaise is to get a good emulsion going. That means droplets of the yolks are suspended in the oil. Do it wrong and you get greasy, oily yolk. Do it right and you get thick, rich mayonnaise.

First step is to separate the yolks.

Put them in the narrowest vessel your immersion blender fits in. I'm lucky that mine came with a cup made to fit it. Add two tablespoons of vinegar.

Here's where the trial and error starts to pay off. When I first went looking for directions I found a video where a guy added the oil right after the vinegar. The idea was to add the oil gently so the vinegar and yolks stay together. They have to form the emulsion before the oil starts getting incorporated.

Don't try that. It potentially saves you maybe 30 seconds, and makes it really easy to screw up. Just hit the vinegar and yolks with the blender for 15-20 seconds and you'll have a good emulsion going.

Then add about a quarter-cup of the oil and blend again.

If you've got a good emulsion it should look sort of like instant pudding at this point. Thicker than cream, but not completely mayo-thick yet.

You'll notice my mayo has a slightly odd color. That's not bad color in the photo, it's because I'm using the olive oil which is pretty green. Add the mustard and salt and another quarter-cup of the oil.

Each time you add oil and blend again it should get thicker. If it suddenly gets thinner, you just "broke" the emulsion. Don't worry, just pour out what you've got so far into a separate cup, and start over with another yolk and tablespoon of vinegar. Once you get the emulsion going again, start adding the first batch back in a little at a time.

Keep adding the oil a quarter cup at a time. Toward the end, you can't just leave the blender in and expect everything to mix. You'll need to keep going top to bottom and clearing the edges of the cup. Like this:

And that's it.

Stay tuned for more summer junk food. This batch of mayo, along with the buttermilk, went into some ranch dressing. Not for salad. For dipping yummy fried stuff. (Onions, but don't tell anyone. It's a surprise.)

How To Make Garlic Salt

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:51:00 +0000

When you start cooking from scratch, one of the first stumbling blocks is that every single recipe seems to call for some kind of spice or seasoning that you don't have. So you start buying those little plastic jars with the red caps and get cooking. Then one day you notice how many recipes list two different amounts, one for fresh herbs and spices and one for dry. "Hmm ..." you think to yourself, "I wonder if the fresh stuff is really that different."

So you start small. Maybe you go look at peppercorns and a pepper mill. By the time you use up the peppercorns the money you save will have paid for the pepper mill. Cool! This is a money saver. Then it happens: You taste it. Wow, so that's what pepper is supposed to taste like. Suddenly steak au poivre starts sounding like a good idea. From there it's a short step to trying some fresh garlic. That's when you're really hooked.

All of which is a long way of getting to the point that it's not really cooking "from scratch" until you start preparing your own herbs and spices. The easiest one, I've already mentioned: Pepper. That's the no-brainer. Cheaper, better tasting, and lasts just about forever. It's so durable it used to be used for currency.

If you could only have salt, pepper and one other seasoning, next best would probably be garlic salt. So let's go ahead and make some.

Ingredients

garlic
salt

Yeah, garlic and salt in garlic salt. Who would've guessed? Check the ingredients on yours. Does it list anything else?

Directions

Start with two cloves of garlic, peeled and minced.

Add two teaspoons of coarse kosher salt and mince it into the garlic.

The coarse salt crystals will grind the garlic even smaller, while the juice from the garlic is absorbed into the salt.

You can speed up the process a little bit if you have a mortar and pestle. Or go for the really old school method and use a kuzavi or a ural. I'm not so committed to grinding spices that I'm going to design my kitchen around it.

Some people like using a small coffee grinder for processing their spices. (Which just may be coming full circle, since it's possible coffee was first ground using tools built for grinding spices.) I don't like having to clean tiny little pieces like that. Especially when some of those pieces are razor-sharp little blades. I make an exception for my immersion blender, because there are some things I just can't make the same without it.

If you like having a single spice blend that you can take with you to the grill, you can add the black pepper at this point and do some more mincing.

When I go on vacation later this summer, I might make up a jar of this. But since I generally only cook on the weekends I'd rather grind the pepper right onto the meat. The flavor in pepper is carried in its oils, and as soon as you grind it the oils start to dry out. The right combination of fat and heat when you cook can bring most of the flavor back, but I don't like to count on it.

If the girls haven't already finished the cultured butter, I'm going to take some of that and some garlic salt and make a spread. Hmm, that would probably work really well on the grill. I wonder if my wife has planned tomorrow's dinner yet ...

Keep adding salt and chopping until the salt isn't clumping together any more.

And that's it.

How To Make Peach Cobbler

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:08:00 +0000

Got cherries? Make cobbler. Got strawberries? Make cobbler. Got apples? Blueberries? Peaches? Cobbler, cobbler, cobbler.

I guess what I'm saying here is ... man I like cobbler. It's even fun to say. Cobbler cobbler cobbler cobbler. Whoa, I'm sounding like a turkey in my head. Okay, here's the recipe. This works for whatever fruit you want.

Ingredients

six peaches (see note below)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter

Batter

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt

Directions

Whatever fruit you decide to use, you should have enough to fill a 9x9 baking dish before you start peeling and slicing.

Some fruits will need to be peeled, some won't. Peaches do. My wife was making the cobbler, and she wanted to peel them with a knife. I wanted to try something I'd read about: If you put peaches or other fruit in boiling water for about a minute then plunge it into cold water, the skin will just slide off. We decided she would start peeling by hand while I put the water on to boil and see who finished first.

She had five of them done before the water started to boil. So she was right, just grabbing a knife and doing it is faster. I kept the last one to try the boiling water trick.

And did it work?

Wow, that's easy.

Slice the peaches all the way around, twist the two halves to separate them from the pit, and pop the pit out.

Slice everything into bite-sized pieces. (Be careful, peeled peaches are very slippery.)

Add 3/4 cup of sugar and mix.

Batter

The batter couldn't be simpler. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and milk and stir it all together.

Assembly

Melt the butter in the baking dish. Put the butter in the dish and put it in the oven while you pre-heat it to 350°. By the time you're done prepping the fruit and batter the butter should be melted.

Add the fruit and distribute it evenly.

Pour the batter over the fruit but don't stir it.

Bake at 350° for 40-50 minutes, until the batter is golden brown and developing cracks in the surface.

Serve with fresh whipped cream, or ice cream.

If you serve it while it's still warm, the whipped cream will melt into the fruit. Mmm, peaches and cream.

And that's it.

If you like snack food be sure to sign up to get future posts by email. I'll be spending this holiday weekend making and eating junk food. From scratch. Does that make it good food? I'm not sure I care.

UPDATE: Sweet Bird at From Whence The Sweet Bird Sang did this with cherry and it looks great. Go take a look.

My First Experiment Making Sausage

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:02:00 +0000

This post was supposed to be called How To Make Sausage, but I'm not really happy with it yet. It's good, but it's not right. If I had spent a half-hour working on this I wouldn't have been so disappointed. But I didn't spend a half-hour. I spent ... more.

So if you've made sausage before and want to see a newbie mess it up, read on.

(PS: My wife is making me point out that she liked it. She just needed to add salt. Apparently I didn't follow my own advice.)

Ingredients

Pork Rolls

2lb pork (various bits the butcher had in the back after trimming chops and bacon and such)
1 inch ginger root
1 large carrot
leaves from 2 heads bok choy
salt and pepper

Apricot Ginger Sauce

7-8 apricots
1 inch ginger root
3-4 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2-3 scallions

Directions

The Prep

Oh my God, the prep. This is what took so much time that, by the time I was done, I had such unreasonable expectations. Anything that requires this much work better be amazing.

So start by cutting the roots off the scallions and slicing them on an extreme bias (angle) until well into the green part. The white has better texture, the green looks nicer.

Then peel the carrot -- or carrots if you can't find a monster like this -- and cut into pieces about the length of your index finger.

And chop/slice it into long skinny pieces, AKA matchsticks.

Cut the root end off the bok choy, separate all the stalks, and rinse well in cold water.

Slice the main leaf off carefully. You want to get as much of the leaf in one large piece as possible, but with small enough veins that it will roll up without cracking and falling apart.

Slice/chop the bok choy stems the same way as the carrot until you have an equal amount of each.

The Grind

The directions for my grinder said it's best to grind meat that is nearly frozen. Guess when I read the directions?

No, not after it didn't work. But I waited until I had finished prepping everything and it was time to start grinding. So of course I'd had the meat out for more than a half hour so it could come up to room temperature before I cooked it. Oops.

So after putting the meat back in the freezer for a half-hour (which barely made a difference) I ran it through the grinder

Next I put the carrot and bok choy pieces through, along with half the ginger.

Then mixed it all together.

The Roll

Lay a bok choy leaf flat with the cut end away from you. Cross the cut ends over each other, and put a handful of the filling on the edge.

Roll the leaf up, tucking the edges in as you go.

The Oriental Golumpki

The first way I prepared them was like Polish stuffed cabbage. I filled a small casserole dish with pork rolls ...

... then filled it halfway with chicken broth.Cover tightly with aluminum foil and cook at 350° for 45 minutes.

These came out exactly like I remember several grandmothers making at various family gatherings growing up. High in nostalgia value, not so much in flavor.

The Sauce

For the second preparation I was going to need a dipping sauce. Split the apricots in half, pop out the pit, cut out the stem, and cut the halves in half again.

Run the apricots through the food chopper -- can you tell I was having fun with my new toy? -- and put them in a saucepan over medium heat with the melted butter. Add the remaining ginger and the brown sugar and simmer until it starts to bubble then remove from heat.

I left the sauce chunky. Next time I would puree it when it was done cooking.

The Fried Dumpling

Melt a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat over high heat in a wok or frying pan. Add two or three dumplings at a time, working in batches so the pan isn't crowded.

Cover with a lid so the top of the dumpling steams while the bottom fries.

Turn the dumplings over several times, making sure they are fried on all sides, then remove to a plate covered with a paper towel to absorb excess grease. Once the last batch is done, transfer them to serving plates.

They're done when an instant-read thermometer shows 160°, or the filling doesn't have any pink left when you cut it open.

Serve with the apricot dipping sauce garnished with scallions.

The Meatball

Since I ran out of bok choy leaves, I decided to just make meatballs out of the remaining pork and fry them up in the wok.

These turned out to be the tastiest version, since the pork got nice and browned from the frying. They were good with scallions and salt ...

... or topped with the apricot sauce. (And salt.)

And that, finally, is it.

If I had thought about it a bit, I would have realized sausage needs to be seasoned more than what I did. I ended up with something that would probably be familiar to lots of people whose mothers and grandmothers never had anything but salt in their spice rack. Of course, that's not the kind of grandmother I'm trying to cook like.

So this was a valuable learning experience for me. I still had fun playing with the meat grinder, and will be using it again soon.

Come back tomorrow for the dessert my wife made that was way better than anything I made here.

How To Peel and Chop Ginger

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:44:00 +0000

Break off as much ginger as you'll need. Lots of recipes that call for fresh ginger will specify the amount in inches. Just break off a piece about that long.

Peel it with a vegetable peeler.

Because of the odd shape, you may end up with spots where the peeler won't fit.

For those spots just use a paring knife, or whichever of your knives has the narrowest blade.

It should be clean when you're done.

Slice the root into thin slices lengthwise.

Yes, it's easier to do the first slice across, but then the second slice is much harder. So now that you have long, thin slices, turn it a quarter turn and slice again in the other direction.

And that's it. Unless you need it minced, in which case you just go back through it again.

A Great Find

noreply@blogger.com (Drew Kime) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:01:00 +0000

I love it when people don't know what they've got. Or at least they don't value it the same way I do. Take this little sauce pan for example.

Nothing spectacular, right? The handle looks a little grungy, but the sides screw on so I can disassemble and clean it.

Nice multiple-point riveted construction.

And you can't beat the price.

But what's that toward the bottom of those last two pictures. It looks like another kind of metal. Really dirty and nasty but ... could it be? For three bucks?

Yup, copper clad stainless steel. I found this exact pan on eBay for about 10 bucks, plus another 8-and-change for shipping. I've already used it and it's great for sauces. I'm going back to the thrift store next Monday. They're having a 50% off sale. Cool.