What's Cookin' Now!

May audio is up!

Jonathan — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:36:36 +0000

Head over to the WMMT blog, where they’ve got the audio from the May show posted! I say it every time, but I really think this is one of the best shows we’ve done.

And thanks to everyone who donated during our Spring Fund Drive–we’ll be drawing soon for the contest winners, so check back soon!

Buffet ethics: a quandary

Jonathan — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:40:58 +0000

An ethical minefield

I like to eat vegetables at lunchtime. Ideally I like to go as healthy as possible for breakfast and lunch to leave more leeway for dinner, but laziness and lack of preparation often leave me grabbing what I can at those times.

It’s no surprise that lunch options are limited in the bustling megalopolis of Hazard, KY. Aside from some sad salads and a few side dishes that could possibly be assembled into a meal, finding a good plant-based lunch can be difficult if not impossible. But I have found an option that can be both tasty and relatively healthy right in the middle of one of the unhealthiest places you can eat–the Chinese buffet.

China King, a buffet that opened last year not far from my office, is actually pretty good overall. They have great gyoza and even some sushi that isn’t Sugano but satisfies the craving. And for my veggie-seeking purposes, they often have green beans stir-fried with garlic, and they always have a simple chicken and broccoli stir-fry.

And in that dish lies my quandary. The broccoli in said stir-fry is delicious and perfectly cooked, but the chicken is painfully dull. If I’m going to add a tiny bit of meat to my veggies for flavor (as I usually do), I want to go with something far more flavorful than that (which they have). But that means I’m going through that dish and picking out the broccoli. And since this is the primary component of my meal, I’m often picking out a lot of it–sometimes all of it.

And thus, my dilemma: is this cool, according to the canon of buffet ethics?

On the one hand, I’d be perfectly justified in taking the equivalent amount of chicken along with the broccoli. I certainly don’t think I’m wronging the restaurant here, especially since I’m getting this to go and paying by the pound, and taking the cheaper broccoli rather than the more expensive chicken. But on the other hand, this is a dish that they composed, and I’m messing with the ratio that’s being presented. Unless they want to offer the chicken without the broccoli (or with much less), they’re going to have to cook up separate broccoli and add it back to the dish, or that chicken will end up as waste. And if a buffet-goer behind me is also attempting to up his veggie intake, I may be shutting him out, and it may be a while before that dish gets replaced since its primary component (the chicken) is still there.

I could ask them to prepare some broccoli for me without the chicken, and they probably would. (They’re nice people.) But that seems to defeat the whole idea of the buffet, and may represent a more significant ethical lapse.

So I pose it to our readers: is it OK to cherry-pick a single component from a buffet dish? Does taking some vs. all of that component make a difference? Does it matter if you’re paying the single price for dine-in vs. paying by the pound to go?

(Note: I will pose this question via email to two of our nation’s pre-eminent scholars of buffet ethics and technique: Mark and Dan from The Sporkful. Hopefully they’ll weigh in in the comments.)

WCN! May 2012: And They’re Off! (Very Off!)

Jonathan — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:52:00 +0000

Kentucky! Home of beautiful horses and fast women, or maybe it’s the other way around. People from other places think we all get up on the first Saturday in May and go to Churchill Downs, but in the WCN! crew’s collective 80-odd years we’ve never been there in person on Derby Day. Like most Kentuckians, we try to find our way to a Derby party, where we are probably statistically more likely to see a horse.

So join us on The World’s Only LIVE Radio Cooking Show (That We Know Of) as we dish up some Kentucky favorites for your Derby bash! We’ll have Kentucky-inspired dips and spreads, a Derby dessert that takes advantage of its fortuitous date, and completely unsurprisingly, Jonathan has a few opinions on the subject of the mint julep. (Don’t worry: he’s fer it.)

And this is our Pledge Drive Show, so we’re hoping you’ll call in and make your pledge to support Mountain Community Radio! Pledge $25 and you’ll be entered to win fabulous prizes!

That’s Wednesday, May 2, 6-7PM, on 88.7 WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, KY, or stream it online. Don’t miss it!

Spring Fund Drive! Support WCN! and win!

Jonathan — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:00:03 +0000

UPDATE: We have extended the deadline to make your pledge and get entered for the drawing to Thursday 5/3 at 9PM! Pledge your support for Mountain Community Radio and win!

WCN! is a public radio production, which means that we must, as it has been since the dawn of time, come to you twice a year to ask for support.

WMMT-FM is a true community radio station, broadcasting real people who want to share what they love with everybody who wants to listen. There aren’t many stations in the world that would take a chance on putting a bunch of chatty and irreverent foodies in the kitchen for an hour every month and turning on the microphones, but WMMT is just that insane, and we like to think the world is a little better for their insanity.

So why not support the insane and make a pledge to WMMT and WCN! today?

If you need another reason, everyone who pledges $25 or more before the end of Wednesday’s show (and lists WCN! as a favorite) will be entered for one of four fabulous prizes!

Two winners will receive a Fourth of July picnic for four! Jenny and I will be doing the show on that day and we’ll be preparing your lunch on the air. You’re welcome to come watch us do the show and see it being prepared, or you can pick it up at the Appalshop afterwards. (We will attempt to deliver within a reasonable distance.)
Two winners will receive fabulous cookbooks! We have a copy of My New Orleans by John Besh, a beautiful volume of absolutely delicious NOLA cuisine written by one of its masters.
We also have a copy of Good Eats: The Early Years by WCN! patron saint Alton Brown, the first in a three-volume set compiling all the recipes and wisdom from the essential TV show. The books can also be picked up at the Appalshop, or will be shipped to the winners wherever they are.

Of course, everybody wins when you support public radio! You can make your pledge online, or call 606-633-1208 or 888-396-1208. Tell them WCN! sent you to be eligible for the drawing.

Thanks in advance! And as always, thanks for reading and listening.

(Note: to be clear, your pledge will go entirely to WMMT-FM and doesn’t put any money in our pockets, personally. Like all WMMT programmers, we are volunteers.)

WCN! April audio available!

Jonathan — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:41:34 +0000

Visit the WMMT web site to read Parker’s excellent wrapup of our April episode and stream the audio! I know I say this a lot, but it really is one of my favorite eps we’ve done–good food, good times, and a little learning to boot.

(And it’s pledge drive time, so it wouldn’t be a bad time to drop a few coins in the slot. Stay tuned for next week when we’ll be announcing a very special contest for WCN! fans who pledge!)

The Barbecue Joint Scoring System

Jonathan — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:08:50 +0000

Archibald & Woodrow's, Tuscaloosa, AL

One of my favorite quests when I’m on the road is trying to find great barbecue, since it’s one of the few foods that really changes from place to place and it’s always a chance to get a bite of local culture. Fortunately there are terrific barbecue joints just about anywhere you go.

Unfortunately, there are also lousy ones. Bad barbecue is generally still perfectly edible, but the good stuff can be transcendent. Who wants to pass up a chance at transcendence?

Thus, I’d like to propose a scoring system for barbecue joints, combining criteria that are correlated (or anti-correlated) with quality barbecue into a convenient score. This is a collaborative, so please feel free to offer up modifications or additional criteria.

(I’ll add that there are certainly low-scoring joints that have terrific barbecue and high-scorers with crap. But if you’re a betting person, this is the way to bet.)

+2 if the building is made of unadorned concrete blocks. (Paint is OK.)

+3 if you can smell hickory smoke. +2 if there’s a visible pile of wood.

+2 if the name of the place is the possessive form of someone’s name. +1 if that person is on the premises; +2 if that person is dead. (+10 if that person is dead and on the premises.)

Leonard's Pit Barbecue, Memphis, TN. Photo courtesy Southern Foodways Alliance.

+2 if there’s a pig on the sign, +1 for each of the following: the pig is wearing an amusing outfit; the pig is doing a little dance; the pig has eating utensils; the pig is far happier than he should be given his role in the proceedings.

Snead's Bar-B-Q, Kansas City. Photo from roadfood.com.

+1 if there is a vintage Pepsi or Coke logo on the sign.

Miss Myra's Pit Bar-B-Q, Birmingham, AL. Photo courtesy of gas•tron•o•my.

If you’re in the state of Alabama, -4 if there isn’t a picture of Bear Bryant prominently displayed, +2 if there are four or more. (You would think that this would extend to Kentucky and its basketball heroes, but it doesn’t.)

+2 if the restaurant sponsors a local Little League team.

+1 if the restaurant is cooled by a window unit air conditioner, +1 if it isn’t actually situated in a window.

-3 if the place has a full bar. -2 if they serve salads. +1 if they serve catfish.

+1 if the menu is a single sheet of cheaply-laminated paper 8.5×11″ or less. +1 if the menu is on one of those signs with the plastic letters and a Coke or Pepsi logo. +2 if it’s just painted on the wall.

-1 for every barbecue sauce they have available over two. (Two is iffy, but a lot of good places have a regular and a spicy version.)

+1 if they sell mildly offensive t-shirts. (Such as “Get Porked at Billy’s” or “You Can Smell Our Butts for Miles”.)

-1 if they take credit cards. +1 if they have bounced checks taped to the side of the cash register. +1 if there are business cards for unrelated local services available next to the register.

(To be updated as new suggestions pour in….)

WCN! makes the Herald-Leader!

Jonathan — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:33:44 +0000

The WCN! blog was featured this morning in a story by Sharon Thompson at the Herald-Leader about Kentucky food bloggers. (You should definitely check out the other excellent blogs that were profiled.)

If you’re finding your way here from the H-L story, welcome! Here’s the post I mentioned about rotating your vermouth, and here’s a synopsis of the talk I gave at the blogging conference.

Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!

Recipe: Chicken Kiev (WCN! April 2012)

Jonathan — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 02:42:22 +0000

Where this dish did not come from

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about food lore, it’s that whenever a food is named after a place there’s a good chance it has nothing whatsoever to do with that place. Chicken Kiev comes closer than most with some roots in Moscow, but as you’d expect it has nothing to do with the capital of the Ukraine.

Way back in the 1700s French cuisine worked its way into the aristocracy in Moscow, as it has in so many places in the world. (Mostly for the better, I think.) The dish we know as Chicken Kiev was created by a chef in Moscow in the early 1800s but was known as Chicken Supreme. When it started showing up in New York City restaurants the chefs wanted to highlight its Russian roots and appeal to the growing population of Russian immigrants, so they renamed it Chicken Kiev. (Why not Chicken Moscow? Who knows? People drank a lot back then.) These details are all pretty fuzzy and change from one account to the next, but that seems to be the gist.

The idea is pretty simple–pound a chicken breast flat, wrap it around a finger of compound butter, then bread it and deep fry it. Obviously this predates the discovery of the cholesterol molecule, but it shows us some mid-century wisdom that we managed to forget sometime in the 80s and 90s–if you start with a boneless and skinless chicken breast, you have to add tons of fat and flavor to it if you want it to be good. (See also Chicken Cordon Bleu, which replaces the compound butter with ham and cheese.)

Much of my method here came, as it often does, from Alton Brown. Here’s his recipe, and here’s the Good Eats episode where he goes over the dish and its origins (starts at 4:24). Variants are limited only by your imagination and what you can put in your compound butter; I used a fairly simple hotel butter, but I think my favorite mix–sun dried tomato, garlic, and aleppo pepper butter–would be spectacular. Like Alton, I used panko bread crumbs, which aren’t authentic to the 60s but provide a beautiful crunchy exterior that you can’t quite get with regular crumbs.

Chicken Kiev

For the Butter:
2 sticks butter (I used one package Plugra), softened
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped fine
3 small cloves or 2 big cloves garlic, minced fine
Zest and juice of about 1/2 a lemon
Salt, pepper

Mix up all of the above; you can use a stand mixer, a food processor, or even a bowl and a silicone spatula. Lay this out into the middle of a big piece of parchment, fold it over, and press the butter into a log with a bench scraper or flat turner. Roll it up and twist the ends like a Tootsie Roll. Stash this in the fridge for at least an hour or so. (You can also label and freeze it just like that.) Meanwhile, prepare your chicken.

For the Chicken:
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
Salt, pepper
4 eggs, beaten
1 can panko bread crumbs
Oil for frying

Pound your chicken breasts flat. The usual meat hammer/”tenderizer” might be the worst tool for this, since it flattens unevenly and tends to tear the meat, but the traditional pounding with a skillet doesn’t really get it flat enough. I had good luck with a combination of the two. Put the breast in a gallon Ziploc, rub a little water on the breast and on the outside of the bag, and pound away, starting at the center and sort of striking outwards. Every now and then, hit it with a heavy pot or skillet to even it out. Make sure to pound the edges fairly flat, since it will make it much easier to roll these up later. You want to be able to see some light through them.

When they’re all flat and the butter is cold, lay out a breast on some plastic wrap and season it with salt and pepper. Add a finger (the recipes I’ve read invariably describe the amount as a “finger”) of butter to the breast, parallel with the longest side of it. Starting with the longest side, roll the breast over the butter, fold in the sides, and continue to roll, using the plastic wrap to keep it tight. You want the butter sealed in there, but if there are some little holes don’t get too worked up about it. Wrap it in the plastic wrap and repeat with the rest of the breasts, then stash them in the fridge for at least a couple of hours or overnight. The cold rest is very important for keeping it together–otherwise you’re going to have to tie it up.

Heat a half-inch of oil to 375 degrees in a deep skillet. Remove each breast from the plastic wrap, dip in the egg, then roll in the panko. Let these rest on a rack for a few minutes before transferring them to the hot oil. (You may not be able to do all four at once.) Five minutes on each side should do it, or check the temperature and pull it out at 165 degrees. (The butter keeps the meat moist enough that, unlike 99.99% of preparations involving BSCBs, it’s not a big deal to overcook it a little.)

Rest for five minutes and then either slice into coins or serve whole. One breast will make two reasonable portions or one gut-busting one. Serve with something green and a really acidic white wine.

(Pics of my actual dish coming soon)

WCN! April 2012: Mad Men!

Jonathan — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:09:33 +0000

AMC’s Mad Men captures a really fascinating time in America–the bridge between the prosperity and conformity of the 50s and the style and individuality of the late 60s. Grey flannel suits to go-go boots. Frilly aprons to beaded jackets. And plenty of liquor.

The crew of the World’s Only Live Radio Cooking Show (That We Know Of) are big fans of the show, so we thought we’d celebrate its fifth season premiere with a tribute to the foods of the era. We’ll make some iconic 60s dishes for the dinner table and the cocktail party, and some cocktails to help get you through the work day.

That’s Wednesday, April 4, 6-7PM, on 88.7 WMMT-FM, or stream it LIVE at wmmtfm.org. Don’t miss it!

WCN! March 2012: The Recap! (and Audio!)

Jonathan — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:38:53 +0000

Visit the WMMT web site to stream the March edition of What’s Cookin’ Now!

Sorry it’s taken me this long to get the recap up of the show; the big dose of early spring we’ve been treated to has had me out in the yard doing more manual labor than I’m used to–that is, any manual labor at all–and it has tuckered me out. Plus I’ve been on call, precluding the nice glass of Elmer T. Lee that makes the blog posts come so much more easily.

This month we had an extra-special guest–Will Bowling of Old Homeplace Farm, a fan of the show and friend of the station who provided us with some beautiful cuts of meat and showed up to talk about his farm and about raising meat responsibly. It was a treat all around. As Wendell Berry said in the poem that Jenny read, we could only hope to be worthy of our meat.

We were also visited by another member of the 606 food media (possibly the only other member), Joyce Pinson of Friends Drift Inn. Typically used to a more spacious and controlled setting, she watched our chaotic rampage the way one might watch a bull charging straight in one’ s direction. When you ride with What’s Cookin’ Now!, you strap in and feel the Gs.

Jenny used some “alternative cuts” to make some tasty dishes. She started with some beef tongue tacos, showing up early to simmer the tongue before letting it cool in the “spit”, or broth. Folded into a tortilla, it was a delicious bite of beef. She also made a simple dish of lamb liver pate, keeping it simple to show off the beautiful and unusual meat.

Jonathan started with a couple of nice fatty lamb roasts and, adding some pork belly for extra fat, made a Moroccan-style sausage called merguez. He tried to stuff this into links but it was going very slowly; rather than give it a rest and some extra mixing–a luxury a one-hour show doesn’t allow–he did it in patties instead. The delicious meat was kicked up a little bit with plenty of Spanish paprika and garlic, and made for a tasty sausage.

He kept it much simpler with two very opposite cuts of steak–fillet mingon and skirt steak. He prepared these the same way–cooked nice and rare (rarer than he meant, really, but he was grilling in the dark) and topped with a simple blue cheese butter. It was nice to contrast the buttery, super-tender texture of the fillet with the chewier but beefier skirt.

Thanks to everyone who came out or tuned in! Recipes are coming soon.