Comfort Food

Terrible quality on that photo, I know. I was hungry. Sorry.

It's been one of "those" weeks this week and it's barely half over. Kevin's been fighting a cold and the weather has been just unbearable. One of several lingering fallouts of my former pro wrestling career is a ruined lower back, hip and knee. Usually I can manage pretty well, but when the weather is this cold it's real hard for me to move around.

So. Comfort food has been on the menu.

Monday, Kevin chased me out of the kitchen so he could cook us up some yummy dinner. Hooray! When the table was laid out, I discovered fried chicken and other stuff. A mustard sauce on the chicken - I tasted that first. In fact, I tasted that before I took the photo, and you can see where I stuck my finger if you look close.

After a few bites I figured out I had me a plate of fried chicken breast stuffed with bacon, onions & cheese. YUM!! Then there was the mustard sauce on top, and some chicken Ramen with the overly-salty liquid drained away. And, look, fancy sprinkles on the plate all decorative and pretty - parsley and paprika, I believe.
Not pictured: some macaroni salad and lightly toasted slices of the Saffron & Tomato bread.

It was goooooood. Hearty and tasty and fairly simple, and it was just right for the weather and our moods.

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Tonight we had dinner at a friend's house and it was, again, comfort food. We all sat at the table to ground turkey tacos with your usual toppings - lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream, and salsa. Nothing fancy - our friend isn't much of a foodie type, really. The taco seasoning came from a packet, the salsa was from a jar, the cheese was a regular ol' bag of shredded Kraft. It was exactly what I ate frequently growing up; it was good then and it's still good now.

Sure, you can make your own taco meat seasoning. You can whip up some fresh salsa easily. You can get queso fresco instead of the Kraft cheese. But, really, who cares sometimes, y'know?

First and foremost, the fact that someone took the time to invite us to dinner and prepare food for us completely negates any ideas about fresh salsa or hand-mixed spice blends. Some people just don't cook, and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'd much rather have a simple meal like this where you can spill and laugh and talk loudly than a gourmet meal at a restaurant alone.

Second - we've all got our guilty pleasures, our junk food that we don't always blog about. I like the packaged taco seasoning because it reminds me of my childhood. Sometimes I like mac & cheese from a box, complete with nuclear-orange cheeselike powder.
I like Manwich. From a can. I may eat it on homemade rolls, but I like Manwich.

I'm not the only one with guilty pleasures as comfort food, am I?

Technorati: comfort food : chicken : The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

Saffron & Tomato Bread

So when's the last time you spent a thousand bucks or more to season your food?
Probably never, I'd wager. Even the most intrepid foodie isn't quite that crazy to buy a pound of saffron at a time. But if you ever wanted to, y'know, splurge a bit, you'd be looking at 4 figures to get 16 ounces of these teeny threads.

Okay, I don't need to tell you that saffron is the most expensive spice in the world; everyone who's spent some time in a kitchen knows that already.


The photo above is a more reasonable amount for the home kitchen. That's about half a gram of Spanish Coupé, which I carefully extracted from the darkest corner of our spice cabinet. At $10-15 a gram or more, it gets coddled like a baby - I keep it in a glass vial with a tight fitting cork, then it's wrapped in foil, then that bundle is stored in a sturdy zip-top bag. After all that, I drag out a chair to stand on and tuck it all the way in a back corner of the topmost shelf where no light or heat or draft can reach it.
(Most people have a spice rack. We have an entire cabinet for our spices/herbs/etc which makes dish storage a challenge. But, c'mon, priorities!!)

After watching this season of Top Chef, it was next to impossible not to have saffron on the mind (heh heh heh). Unfortunately I don't have Bravo's budget, so my use of saffron had to be calculated and judicious. Fortunately saffron has a strong, distinct enough flavor that a little bit goes a long way.
(*cough*cough*)

When saffron is paired with tomatoes and baked into bread, your loaves wind up with a beautiful orange color, a moist crumb, and a wonderfully complex flavor that doesn't need much more than a bit of butter or a hint peppery salami to enjoy.


Saffron & Tomato Bread
adapted from Fairholme Manor
makes 2 loaves

1 T active dry yeast
1/2 cup water, divided
about 8 saffron threads
1 1/2 cups crushed, seeded tomatoes
3 T honey
3 T olive oil
5 1/2 - 6 cups bread flour
1 T salt


About 1 hour before starting, steep saffron threads in 1/4 cup hot water. You can also do this the night before and hold in the refrigerator overnight.

Heat the remaining 1/4 cup water to 105* - 115*, or until it feels warm against the inside of your wrist. Mix in the yeast and the honey. In a large mixing bowl, or in the bowl of your stand mixer, allow to sit until frothy, about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, warm the tomatoes and olive oil slightly.

Strain the threads from the saffron & water "tea" and discard threads. Add the 'tea' to the yeast mixture. Add the tomatoes and olive oil. Mix well.

Add 2 cups of flour and mix until incorporated. Let stand for 10 minutes.

Add the salt and 2 more cups of bread flour. Mix well.
Continue adding flour, 1/4 cup at a time, until the dough holds its shape and is soft and slightly sticky.
Knead the dough for 5 minutes in a mixer or 10 minutes by hand, adding a sprinkle of flour if needed, until it's supple, smooth, and moist but not sticky.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap. Let rise until doubled in bulk, 30-40 minutes. While they rise, preheat the oven to 375*.

Gently deflate the dough and divide in half. Form into two loaves - either in loaf pans or freeform rounds. Sprinkle tops with flour and let rise again, covered, until doubled in bulk.
When the loaves have risen, gently slash the tops with a razor or a sharp knife about 1/4" deep.

Bake at 375* for 40-45 minutes, or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped. Cool on wire racks before slicing.

Technorati: bread : The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

The Taste of Red

In my random food-related perusings this evening, I came across an interesting question that got me all sorts of thinking; to paraphrase: How does a chef with a food allergy handle the preparation of a dish containing a potentially fatal (to them) ingredient? Given how important the process of tasting along the way, how does an allergic chef create a dish that they can't taste?

The answer, in my experience, is they have someone whose palate they trust do the tasting for them.
Kevin has a pretty severe allergy to shellfish; if he has a small cut on his hand that isn't even visible to the naked eye and he deveins shrimp, his fingers swell. If, god forbid, he eats shellfish, his throat swells and he can't breathe.



It's only fitting, of course, that one of his specialties at the restaurant is lobster bisque. No one else there can make it quite as good as he does, and by this point he can use his eyes and nose in the cooking process just as effectively as his tastebuds.
Except when they run out of one of the components.
Usually he has one of the other guys in the kitchen do the tasting for him if needed - if he's handling a new recipe containing shellfish, or if he gets a hankering to add some more complexity to a recipe he already knows by sight & smell.

A few weeks back, he ran into a bit of a situation. The restaurant closes for a couple hours between lunch and dinner, and those hours are spent prepping for dinner service. The other sous was off somewhere running errands and Chef C. was out for the day, leaving Kevin to handle his prep with only the garde manger and the dishwashers as company.
He was getting the bisque ready when he discovered there was no cognac in the restaurant. No time to go on an excursion for more, so he subbed in sherry and threw some in a small bowl; he ran it home so I could be his palate for him. I know how the stuff is supposed to taste, and I suppose I'm a better stand-in than the dishwasher. (*grins*)

I dutifully taste-tested (OH NOEZ! I have to eat lobster bisque, life is unfair!!) and after a moment I realized I couldn't keep my palate's secret any longer. I didn't have time.
"It needs...it needs something...it needs, ummm...it needs something brown!" I blurted. He looked at me funny, and I flailed about trying to explain.

You see, the taste of food registers as colors in my brain.
Oh sure, I can eat food and identify that there's basil in it, or fish sauce, or whatever. It's the categories of taste that I interpret as various colors, and I can only translate that into specific ingredients or classes of ingredient when I have time to sort it out in my head.

When I said the bisque needed something "brown," I meant that it was missing a certain earthiness - a murky pungency that came from the cognac. That flavor category registers as the color brown to me. Other brown tastes are cumin and chipotle.
The color green means a bright, but not citrus-acidic, flavor. Herbs like dill and basil are obvious "greens" to me, but so too are some vinegars, and buttermilk & yogurt.
Reds are thick, sharp, and sometimes spicy. Tomatoes, bell peppers, cured sausages, and wine taste red.
Orange is mellow and mild, but with a substantial mouthfeel. Orange is my umami.
Yellow is a sharp, bright taste - often different from green but sometimes the two shade together. The "tang" in blue cheese tastes yellow to me, as does ginger and most citrus.
It goes on and on.

When I examine a recipe and think about how its components work together, it's almost like a painting of sorts. The handy image up at the top of this post pretty accurately illustrates what baked manicotti "looks like" in my mind as I prepare it. (do you like my masterful Photoshopping or what?)

My internal monologue as I cook would probably be pretty interesting if others could hear it. I taste the food, and I think "Hm, this needs more green. What kind of green do I want...." Then I decide if basil is green enough, or if I want something really bright green like a sharp vinegar - or do I want a greenish-yellow?

I know most people don't experience food like I do, with the colors and all. It makes it really difficult to explain how I put together a recipe sometimes, or how I decide what flavors to pair with others. You can't just tell someone that you added enough red until it tasted right, or that their bisque needs something brown, ya know? You get some funny looks that way.

But honestly, I wouldn't want it any different.
It seems like it wouldn't be quite as interesting if food didn't taste like a rainbow.

Technorati: The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

Food and W(h)ine Tries Damage Control; Plus: Leftovers

So.
After the kerfluffle yesterday over the Top Chef spoilers, Food & Wine today tried to do some damage control.

Yesterday, an intrepid reality tv fan found a Top Chef story on Food & Wine's server. Food & Wine prepared profiles of both Top Chef finalists in advance of the last episode so that we had a story on the winner ready to publish immediately after the season finale.
Food & Wine online

And with that, they linked the original article on (the apparent winner) as well as a questionable article on (the finalist who didn't have an article anywhere on F&W yesterday).
I won't comment on the questionable article save to say that a twelve year old could have come up with something more convincing for a creative writing class.

I will say that the the telling point here is the original URL of yesterdays "oops" article;
http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/bravos-new-top-chef-tells-all

Not bravos-new-top-chef-tells-all1 or bravos-new-top-chef-tells-all-(finalistname).
Just plain ol' bravos-new-top-chef-tells-all.
If F&W had prepared two stories ahead of time, the leaked one yesterday would have been named in such a way to differentiate between the two supposed stories.

Poor form, Food & Wine. Poor form. You should have just ignored the whole thing.

I guess we'll see what happens on Wednesday, but it isn't looking so good for one of the two youngsters.

(By this point, I'm sure everyone's already heard the news cuz this thing is everywhere now. Still, I omitted names in case anyone is actively trying to avoid any potential spoilers.)

---

In other news,
with all the tasty ricotta cheese leftover from the weekend, I wanted to be sure to use it up before it went off. Considering the lack of preservatives and all, I wasn't sure how long it would last. And I didn't want to futz around too much in the kitchen, seeing as I was in the middle of cleaning it around dinnertime yesterday.

While I washed dishes, I put a stockpot on to boil and threw together a quick sauce of crushed tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, garlic, basil, oregano, a pinch of nutmeg, a bit of sugar, and some salt & pepper.
Then I mixed the remaining ricotta with a small handful of shredded parmesan, some basil and black pepper, and an egg.
When the water hit a boil, I tossed in a pack of manicotti tubes and let them go for 7-ish minutes. A quick bath in cold water stopped the cooking so I didn't get gummy pasta.

After that, it was just a matter of putting some of the sauce in the bottom of my baking dish, filling the manicotti with the cheese mixture, plopping them in the dish, topping with sauce and cheese, and baking them for about half an hour.

I felt the dish came out perfectly, to be honest. It was what it was - a simple, quick meal that required little effort but delivered lots of taste. The pasta was firm enough to hold its shape, just barely on the soft side of al dente. Kevin said he would have preferred the pasta boiled a minute longer, but I think he's crazy; I personally wouldn't have boiled it a second longer than I did.
Maybe I'll do an extra 30 seconds next time as a sort of compromise.

Still. He did lick his plate clean, which I took as a good sign.

Technorati: top chef : pasta : entree : The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

Whoops. F&W Spoils Top Chef

Today, a short comment on delicious irony:
Technology spoiled by technology.

If you're a fan of Bravo's Top Chef - like I am - you've had your winner picked for weeks, maybe months.
(for the record, I choose my top 3 within the first couple shows: Sam, Ilan, and Cliff)
Now that we're down to the final two, speculation is running hot and loud in the blogosphere as to which cool 'do will prevail. Bets have been placed, potential spoilers tossed about, and interesting pick-apart frame by frame discussions on which way Padma is looking in the previews when she congratulates the winner are being had.

It seems wholly ironic that as we watch a television show on cable, possibly on fancy HDTVs with DVRs wirring and all manner of other technological wonders bringing us entertainment, that a dumb mistake on the internet brings the speculation to a screeching halt just two days before the show's finale airs.

Food and Wine magazine messed up bad.
This afternoon, for about 15 minutes, an article appeared on foodandwine.com. Scheduled for print in the March 2007 edition and probably intended for online publication on Feb 1st, it was aptly titled Bravo's New Top Chef Tells All.

And tell all is exactly what it did, as the article by Adam Sachs interviews the winner who won't be "officially" crowned for two more days. Right there, in black and white, the winner's name screamed out to anyone fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Oh man, Food & Wine website people.
You screwed up good. Bravo isn't going to be pleased.

Lucky for me, I saw the article. I've never been a patient sort, so I don't mind knowing who wins...I'm the kind of person who shakes all her Christmas presents trying to figure out what's inside.
I also saved the article once I saw what it was, because I knew F&W would pull it as soon as they figured out what they'd done.

So if you, like me, want to know who wins Top Chef before the show airs,
feel free to view the article via either the messily-formatted HTML file HERE, which will open in your browser,
or the slightly-less-messily -formated PDF file HERE which will open with Adobe Reader.

THESE LINKS OPEN BIGHUGE TOP CHEF SPOILERS!!! Don't blame me if you didn't want to know and you open them anyway, mmkay?

Technorati: top chef : The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

Wow, you CAN make cheese at home...

So the other day I was perusing my ever-growing list of food blogs that I read regularly. I drooled over some gorgeous photos, I lamented that I'd never be able to make that recipe, and then I stopped and blinked.

DIY: Homemade Ricotta Cheese.

Whoa, wait a second. Homemade cheese? Surely The Foodie Bride wasn't serious, was she?





I kept reading. She was serious, and the method she presented looked too simple to believe.
A gallon of milk, 5 cups of buttermilk and a little salt?
Just heat it to 170* F while stirring, then stop stirring until it hits 190*?

And as I stood there over the stove, Munchkin at my side, I inadvertently did a Keanu Reeves-esque "Whoa."
Cheese was appearing, and it was gathering fast.

I didn't have any cheesecloth as recommended - and couldn't find any at the store - so I took a moment before we started to line my colander with a double layer of coffee filters. I scooped the cheese from the stockpot into the lined colander and watched the extra whey drip out from the mound of ricotta. Neither of us could believe what we were seeing.

Somehow we managed to let it finish draining before we added some salt and dove in to try a bite.
Whoa. Dude, we totally just made ricotta cheese.

I boiled some water, threw in some cellentani pasta, and chased Munchkin away from the cheese so she didn't eat it all before dinner. When the pasta was done I made a quick sauce of butter, a small splash of pasta water, garlic and herbs. The pasta went into the sauce, I added a nice sprinkle of our homemade ricotta, and served with cheesy garlic bread.

Thank you, Foodie Bride. Our dinner was amazing.

Technorati: The Bizarre Kitchen Incident

Cinnamon Swirl Breakfast Quickbread

It was a dark and stormy night...

Wait, no. It wasn't stormy. But it was dark and it was nighttime...and I had a lovely container of fresh, spicy cinnamon that had been calling to me all day. It was all "Hey! You! Yeah you there! Bake with me!!"

And it was 10pm when that cinnamon reeled me in. I love cooking and all, but I wasn't about to stay up past midnight to scratch that kitchen itch.

Enter the quickbread.



Cinnamon Swirl Breakfast Quickbread
makes: 1 loaf

Batter:
1 cup sugar
2 cups AP flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 t vanilla

Cinnamon swirl:
1/3 cup sugar
1 T cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350* and lightly grease a 9"x5" loaf pan
In a small bowl, mix the cinnamon and sugar for the swirl. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
In another small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and oil.
Add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Mix gently until just moistened. Do not overmix!

Pour half the batter into your prepared pan. Sprinkle 1/2 the cinnamon-sugar mixture on the batter. Add the rest of the batter and top with the last of the cinnamon-sugar.
Run a knife or a skewer through the bread to create a swirl effect.
Bake at 350* for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Let cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack.


Simple. Quick. Crumbly and moist. Perfect with a hot cup of tea or coffee.
Yum.

Technorati: breakfast : cinnamon : The Bizarre Kitchen Incident