Archives for the 'grilling' Category
Grilled chocolate sandwiches
I love chocolate combined with bread. Pain au chocolat, chocolate chip bagels, toast with nutella…all have the soulful bread texture combined with the dark splendor of chocolate. A good pain au chocolat will have a chocolate center that is still warm and pliable…but how often do you find one of those? Usually the whole thing is stone cold and the chocolate is hard as a rock. If I had the time and the will power I could bring it home and gently warm it in the toaster oven. But let’s face it…that has never, ever, happened. For my money a good chocolate chip bagel is a delight. I love the crunchy chocolate chips offset by the chewiness of the bagel, plus the bagel’s robust breadiness really does play quite nicely with the chocolate chips.
When I made my first brioche for World Bread Day I knew it wouldn’t be my last. Over the past few weeks I’ve thought about how best to combine brioche with chocolate…and then I was making grilled cheese sandwiches and it came to me. I told the guys I was making grilled brioche and chocolate sandwiches and Alex said, “A chocolate sandwich?!!? You can’t do that…it’s crazy!!”. Oh yes I can you silly boy…just watch me! After the brioche came out of the oven and cooled I sliced the loaf in two and gave half of it up to the guys…it was gone in minutes. The other half I hid for another day…I wanted it to be slightly stale when I grilled it up.
These little babies couldn’t be simpler and really pack a huge “WOW” factor. Slice the brioche, butter it, put your favorite chocolate in the center, top it with another buttered slice of brioche and grill it to a golden brown. My only tip is to grate the chocolate in the food processor to ensure it will melt all the way through. The finished product was a magnificent combination of chocolate and tender, stretchy brioche. Everyone loved it. I’m content for now but I bet there are other chocolate and bread combinations I need to try. Do you know of any?
BBQ spare ribs and more
It’s that time again…time to clear the digital desktop of its clutter. These are all interesting dishes that I’ve made over the summer and for whatever reason I just never got around to giving them their own posts. Lucky you…think of it as an all you can eat buffet that’s actually worth eating…dig in!
Mmmmmm…..they were delicious. Spare ribs are one item that can be hard to source around here. My favorite pork producer sells their spare ribs to a Madison restaurant…and let’s face it, a pig only has two racks of ribs…but these came from my good friends at Jordandal Farm and they were perfect. My version may lack authenticity, smoky and otherwise, but they certainly do not lack flavor.
Instructions: Rub the ribs down with a mixture of minced onion, garlic, paprika, brown sugar, cayenne, and salt and pepper. Then before you stick them in the oven drizzle them with cider vinegar. Cover them with foil and bake at 300F for 2 hours. Then take them out, uncover them and baste them with your favorite BBQ sauce…we like Sweet Baby Ray’s Original, Then drop them onto a hot grill for a quick char on each side and you’re good to go. Now I told you they weren’t authentic, and I know it all seems wrong but they really were the best.
These were the season’s first new potatoes and I went with a technique gleaned from a Patricia Well’s cookbook (I can’t remember which one). They were soft and creamy in some places and crunchy and crisp in others…a textural delight from a simple spud.
Instructions: Gently boil a bunch of new potatoes. Let them cool down. Arrange the potatoes on a cookie sheet and using a meat tenderizer mallet smash each potato. Drizzle the whole mess with olive oil and salt and pepper and bake at 400F until golden and crunchy to your liking. I think the next time I make them I’ll cook them a little longer to get more crunch.
This is a chard gratin that I made from a recipe in Deborah Madison’s recipe book Local Flavors. It was okay but I won’t make it again. I’m showing it because it was an instance where I followed the recipe word for word (you know I never do that) and when I was done I had a mess of pots and pans and a “meah” dish. I didn’t read through the recipe until I was standing at the stove…I’d checked the ingredients and saw that I had everything and dove in. But the recipe was written step by step and instead of saying “you are now going to make a bechamel sauce” it just stepped you through the making of the sauce…so it was that I began making the roue when I realized what was up. It really was my fault but it still ticked me off and poor GH had to deal with the mountain of pans. But don’t get me wrong, I love Deborah Madison and when I first dined at Greens at Fort Mason in SF it was the moment I saw food differently. I just don’t want to eat bechamel in the middle of the summer.
This has to be the ugliest salad on earth. But take my word, and Sam’s…it is the bomb (is it OK to say that or is it really uncool now…whatever!). It’s a Mario Batali, Food TV recipe. Go there, print it, make it, and love it.
Ever since I got my pasta machine I’ve been experimenting. These are my first, sad attempt at ravioli. Do any of my local readers want to come over and teach me how to make ravioli? Is there a good book on the subject? I’m even stumped about what to fill them with. Come on readers, you’re going to have to pitch in and take pity on me.
David Lebovitz improves my life almost weekly…that’s how often I’ve been making ice cream this summer. The cream from Blue Marble Dairy lands on my front doorstep on Thursday afternoon and by Friday evening I’ve got a new batch to dish out for dessert. Strawberry has been our favorite flavor so far but this was a plain vanilla batch that I cradled with rhubarb goo…it was so good that I can still taste it…the sweet, cold, cream and the tart, tangy, goo. I want more please.
Lastly we have this delectable morsel. A cherry scone. Instructions: take one of my many scone recipes…frankly I can’t remember which one was the best or what one I used for this batch…their all good…and add cherries. Mmmmmmmm
New York strip tease
Very little cooking has taken place around here lately. Mostly because it is really hot, but also because I’ve been working on home repair projects. But on Saturday morning I was at the 
Westside Market to pickup these steaks from Eric of Jordandal Farm. Yup, that’s Eric…click on him and you’ll go to the Jordandal website…take a look at those cattle, woooweee they are cute! Anyway…I could attempt to to wax poetic about those steaks…but it’s too damn hot. Suffice to say, they were superb. I trimmed them up, salted them, and grilled one side until the grill released them, flipped them, and grilled them until my Thermapen said 125F. After they rested for 10 minutes we ate them with corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes. Another perfect market meal. BTW…the Thermapen is fabulous…I love it.
These are the first “out-of-hand” eating apples of the season and they are crisp, tart, slightly sweet and perfect. I bought some Transparents a few weeks ago and made a galette with them, but they were way to tart for “reading a book and eating apple” and that’s my favorite kind.
Today I lazed about the house all day…no projects, no work, just dabbling in this and that, here and there. I made lemon chicken for dinner which I always think of as Nora Ephron’s recipe for lemon chicken from her book Heartburn. This book came out in 1983 and I probably read it around 1987 and while I remember nothing else about the book I have always remembered the lemon chicken and always made it. It is quick, easy, foolproof, and delicious. Plus it goes perfectly with mashed potatoes and coleslaw…two of my all-time favorite side dishes.
Nora Ephron’s Lemon Chicken
Boneless, skinless chicken breast
milk
flour
salt
pepper
Italian seasoning
olive oil
lemon juice
Slice the breasts into pieces about the same size as the tenderloin…usually about 1″ thick by the length of the breast. Place the chicken in a dish with the milk and mix up the flour, salt, pepper, and a dash of Italian seasoning in a plastic bag, shake it about to mix it up.
Take 2 pieces of chicken from the milk bath and put them into the bag and shake to coat them with the flour.Remove them and place them on a clean dry surface near your stove. Continue to do this until all your chicken is coated.
Heat a large skillet on medium heat for a minute or two. Add olive oil until it is about 1/3 of an inch deep in the skillet. Let it heat but keep your eye on it. You don’t want it to overheat and smoke. Test to see if its ready by sticking the tip of a piece of chicken in it. If it sizzles and bubbles, it’s ready.
Using tongs gently place the chicken in the pan. Let them cook on one side until golden brown and then gently turn them and continue to cook. Once they are completely golden brown pour the lemon juice. I use about 1 lemon per breast. The chicken may spatter so if you have a spatter screen you should use it. Let it cook down for 3 to 5 minutes and then serve.
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