Food, Drink and Tomfoolery

Yes, this is a recipe for my (now sort of famous) bacon apple pie, which premiered at the Quelab grand opening. I don’t think it needs much explanation, so here it is.

First, amazing pie crust. This is really difficult, so if you don’t want to mess around making pie crust, then just go buy a frozen pie shell. Not a cheap Kroger pie shell, but a tasty one.

First, get a stick of butter and cut it into 1/2 inch cubes. Put the cubes in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Sift 1 1/8 cups flour, a pinch of salt, and about a tablespoon of white sugar into a bowl. Throw in  your frozen butter, and work that shit. You want to end up with a bowl of flour with pea-sized butter chunks fully incorporated. Don’t overwork it, or you’ll develop too much gluten, and your flaky pie crust will end up all chewy and gross. Trust me, I know. Get a cup of ice water, and throw in a couple spoonfuls at a time, while working the dough  into a ball. Once you have a nice solid ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, flatten it out a bit, and put it in the fridge. You want it to chill for at least an hour. Then, using a bit of flour for dusting, roll that dough out and put it in a pie plate. Press the edges with a fork, and stick it in the freezer until you’re ready to fill it with delicious apple filling.

This brings us to our filling. Pick out about 5 or 6 apples. I used gala apples, because they were on sale that week. You can use any sweet apple. I’m told Macintoshes work well (at least, that’s what Paul says). Peel and core your apples, then cut them into 1/4-1/2 inch slices. Toss them in a bowl with the juice from 1/2 lemon. Use the other 1/2 lemon to flavor your gin and tonic or something. Add 1/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar (or more depending on how sweet your apples are). I like to throw in a whole crapload of cinnamon, because that’s how I like my apple pie. Add a teaspoon of nutmeg in there too, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch to thicken the filling. It would also be delicious to add some chopped pecans or walnuts.

Now, it’s time for the bacon. I used some awesome smoky bacon from Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams. It was delicious. Seriously, don’t make this pie if you don’t have good bacon. None of that Oscar Mayer shit. Take 6 thick delicious strips of bacon and arrange them in a lattice on a cookie sheet.

Preheat your oven to 450. Pop in the bacon lattice and let it cook for about 5 minutes. You don’t want it crispy, you just want to render out excess fat. While that’s cooking, get your pie crust out of the freezer and fill it with the apples. Brush the edges of the crust with a little milk, and sprinkle some white sugar on it. This will help it brown, and keep it from drying out. Get the bacon out of the oven, get a big ass spatula, and lay your bacon lattice on top of the pie. Perfect. Now put that pie in the oven. Lower the temperature to 350 and bake for 40-50 minutes, until the crust is nice and brown. Let it cool until you can put it in your mouth. Then eat that shit. And enjoy your gin and tonic.

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a breakfasty carbohydrate with my morning tea. Or perhaps I want to make a full-on Eggs Benedict. Well, I’m gonna need some English goddamn muffins, aren’t I? And of course, being the foodie douchebag that I am, I’m too good for those plebian store-bought kind that come in a cardboard box and some plastic. So, I make my own. Like Christ fucking intended.

There are basically two different methods of making English muffins. There’s the Alton Brown method, which is almost a quickbread and more similar to the store-bought variety and then there’s the more traditional method, which is more like an actual bread than a muffin. I prefer the latter.

Here’s what you’re gonna need.

• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• 3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 2 cups bread flour
• 1/4 tsp salt

Most recipes start with scalding the milk. However, it’s already pasteurized so I usually ignore that. There’s some speculation about how scalding may alter particular proteins in milk, but I’m pretty sure that would have already taken place in the pasteurization process. I do still proof my yeast sometimes, it seems to help a bit. So, heat your water to about 110F and combine that with the yeast and sugar.

In a large bowl, combine the milk, yeast mixture, butter and most of the flour, leaving about a half cup. Beat until smooth. Add salt and enough of the remaining flour to get it to the ‘soft dough’ stage. It should be tacky, but not sticky. The exact amount of flour will vary based on how dense your flour is and what the humidity is like in your house. Knead or toss in a Kitchenaide if you’ve got one for about 10 minutes. Place in greased bowl and either let it rise for a couple hours, or overnight in the fridge.

Punch down. Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter, drinking glass, empty cat food tin or something. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal and set the rounds on this to rise. Dust tops of muffins with cornmeal also. Cover and let rise for about 45 minutes.

Cook muffins on a griddle about 15 minutes on each side on medium-low heat. If you have an electric griddle, set it to 300F. Keep baked muffins in a warm oven until all have been cooked. Allow to cool and place in plastic bags for storage. Split and toast them as you usually would. They’re awesome with butter and jam, sometimes butter and Marmite.

So, I recently picked up this book.

I’m pretty obsessed. David Chang is pretty much a genius. This dovetails nicely with my recent explorations into Japanese and Vietnamese cuisine. Chang does some really interesting stuff, taking a lot of traditional concepts in cooking and turning them on their heads. His methods are complex and daunting, often requiring many hours of preparation days or weeks in advance. The results, however, are immensely impressive.

The first recipe I tried was this one for fried chicken, one of the least complex recipes in the
book. It resulted in some of the best fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. I plan to do some further experimentation in that direction, possibly adapting it to a more Cajun style.

So I’m thinking I want to take on a full-fledged Momofuku entree. Clearly, dude knows his chicken. So, I decided to try Chicken and Egg, his take on oyako-don. Traditional oyako-don consists of chicken and onions stewed in dashi, mirin and soy sauce. Lightly beaten eggs are added to the mix until just cooked then you dump the whole mess on a bowl of rice. It’s tasty, but most of the time kind of poorly executed. Chang deconstructs this.

Let’s start with the chicken. You’re gonna debone some chicken legs, drumsticks or thighs (in order of preference). Save those bones! You’re gonna need them later. Then, make a brine with one part sugar, one part sea salt to six parts water. Brine your chicken for one hour in the fridge. Take it out, pat it dry.

Decision time. To cold-smoke or not? I cold-smoked mine and it was amazing. It’s up to you, if you decide not to cold-smoke your chicken, at least add some smokey bacon to the confit.

Next you’re gonna confit that chicken. Melt duckfat or lard, I used a 50/50 mix of both and pour enough into the pot to cover the chicken completely. It helps to arrange the pieces such that they are pretty tight, that way you don’t have to use as much fat. Put it in an oven at 180F. Now here is where Mr. Chang and I have a small difference of opinion. The recipe calls for only 50 minutes of cooking time. That is not enough time to fully cook a confit. I wanted mine to be almost but not quite fully cooked, so I left mine in the oven for 3 hours, which was perfect. Remove from the oven, chill and let it rest in your fridge immersed in fat overnight.

The next day when you’re ready to eat, heat the pot of chicken confit just enough to take the chicken out of the pot and place them directly into a hot cast iron pan. You won’t need to add any extra oil, the fat they’re coated in should be sufficient. Crisp up those skins until they’re perfectly browned, then set aside to rest for about ten minutes before you slice them up.

Back up for a second. The other components of the dish are slow-poached eggs, pickled vegetables, thin-chopped scallions and some short-grain white rice. I’ll assume you know how to make rice. I use a Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic rice cooker because they are fucking amazing. I’ll dedicate another post to pickling, but the recipe calls for quick-pickled Kirby cucumbers- just toss with a tablespoon of sugar, tablespoon of salt, let it sit for half an hour or so. Bam. Instead, I used pickled shittakes and carrots. One more deviation, I made his recipe for tare and brushed the rice in the bowl with it before assembling everything. Remember those chicken bones you saved? Brown them in a saucepan in an oven at 450F for about 45 minutes. Don’t burn them. Add 1 part mirin, 1 part sake, 2 parts usukuchi, simmer for an hour and then strain out the solids.

Last but certainly not least, slow-poached eggs. Basically, just put whole eggs in a bath of water at 145F for about 50 minutes. I used hot water from my tap and an insulated container. Your stovetop might work. Definitely use a thermometer. Alternately, because this is a lot of work you could just poach the eggs like you normally would.

Finally, time to assemble it all! Pile some rice in the middle of the bowl. Make a little divot for the egg. Brush with the tare. Crack the egg into its spot, add another drop or two of tare. Top with sliced scallions. Arrange the cut pieces of chicken, pickled veggies. I added some fresh cilantro. Fuck yeah, cilantro.

Oh hell yes. This is a much larger pile of food than it looks like, it is just in an enormous bowl. Just mix the egg into the rice, and alternate bites of crispy, salty, unctuous chicken with the crispy tang of the pickled bits. Mmm. It’s like fucking alchemy, the base chicken skin tastes like it has been transmuted into crisp, smokey bacon. This, my friends, is what cooking is all about.

Okay, let’s talk about canned tuna. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s pretty tasty and it’s full of things that are pretty good for you. But, it’s kind of boring a lot of the time. Let’s fix that.

First off, let’s talk about the tuna itself. Canned tuna varies in quality greatly. You’ve got your standard Bumblebee and Chicken of the Sea shit, but that’s the McDonalds of the canned tuna world. You should be able to find stuff like Dave’s Albacore at your local Whole Foods and that’s definitely better. Hell, even the oil-packed Bumblebee is better than that waterlogged crap. But if you want to jump directly to the best fucking canned tuna available, look no further than Ortiz Bonito del Norte. This shit is amazing. Don’t even bother with anything else. And I don’t just say that because I happen to share the surname. Find some, eat it, you will never look back.

With that said, now let’s talk about tuna salad and related matters. You’re gonna need some kind of oil and you’re gonna need some kind of acid. This is the essence of any dressing. Olive oil is great, lemon or lime juice is also fantastic. A good balsamic vinegar is also quite tasty. Balsamic vinegar is yet another thing I can go on about for hours, but I’ll save that for later. If you’re itching for a dressing that’s a little creamier, just put a raw egg yolk in. It sounds scary, but it won’t kill you. Call it an aioli if it makes you feel better.

Next, you’re gonna want some vegetables up in that bitch. I like pimentos asados when I can get them. That’s Spanish roasted red peppers for all you gringos. You can get them canned and packed in oil. They’re fucking delicious. A little bit of minced shallots and/or celery provides a perfect crunch. Sometimes I just use some chopped pickles, tomatoes, even carrots. Go nuts.

Last but certainly not least, you’ll want some spices and maybe a little grated cheese. I really like a little basil, fresh if I can get it, and maybe a dash of cayenne, paprika and ground dehydrated garlic. It’s really up to you. Oregano is nice if you’re feeling saucy. Cheese-wise I like Romano, Parmesan or aged Manchego. You’re looking for a hard dry-aged cheese here. Salt and pepper is of course always called for, season it up as you like it.

And there you have it, make some toast, spread it on some crackers. It’s an excellent meal or snack.

Yeah, you heard me. SPAM. Normally I don’t fuck with canned meat products, but this is a special case, and I’ll go into why after I lay out this recipe.You’re going to need 1 can of spam, some good teriyaki sauce (or make your own), some sushi rice (about 3/4 cup uncooked), and optionally, some furikake of your choice.First, free the SPAM from it’s coffin, and give it a light rinse under cold water to get that disgusting aspic off of it. Next, slice it into slices about 1/4″ thick – you should get about 6-8 from a single can. Place into a piece of tupperware, then cover with teriyaki and marinade overnight.The next morning, make your sushi rice but don’t use vinegar, though – use salt instead). Take the marinated spam out of it’s teriyaki bath and fry it in a non-greased pan until it’s browned a bit. Reduce the heat to very low, add the teriyaki sauce to the pan, and let that simmer for 20 minutes or so.Take your sushi rice and form it into compressed patties about the same size as your SPAM slices, but a little thicker in height. Place a SPAM slice onto each patty, and wrap with a wide strip of nori. If you’d like, sprinkle some furikake onto the rice before you add the patty. Wrap each up in plastic wrap individually. Serve at room temperature.Now, you’re probably wondering “what the fuck, b? SPAM?” and I’ll explain. The salty SPAM mingles with the sweet & savory flavor of the teriyaki, and you’ve got a lot of nori covering those bits of rice and meat – and if you’re paying attention, you know that’s some japanese Umami flavor we’re talking about. Anyway, it’s an amazingly easy, delicious, and portable lunch snack – perfect for air travel or hiking or work, since the rice is filling, the seaweed is nutritious, and the marinated & fried SPAM adds some complexity. Best of all – no refrigeration required! They’ll be awesome for about a day, and slightly less awesome the next day (but still very edible).I know it sounds crazy, but these things are all over hawaii. Apparently in the middle of the Pacific, SPAM is a local favorite of everyone.