Food, Drink and Tomfoolery

I’ve had a bit of a domino effect week and it turned out really good so I figured I would post about it.

It all began last week when I was looking around for a recipe with barely so I could get rid of my extra. I found one, but it required turkey. Therein it began.

Sunday I purchased myself a 7 lbs bone-in turkey breast at the local Dominick’s (that’s a Chicago grocer if you’re not aware.)

Sunday’s menu was:
Herb roasted turkey breast and three cheese and garlic ogratin potatoes.

#1 Herb roasted turkey breast (ruthlessly stolen and modified from Allrecipes.com)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 (5 1/2 pound 7lbs) turkey breast, fresh or frozen, thawed
• 4 teaspoons McCormick® Italian Seasoning (fuck that, just grab a bunch of herbs)
• 2 teaspoons McCormick® Season-All® Seasoned Salt (all I had was generic seasoned salt, but it worked)
• 3/4 teaspoon McCormick® Ground Black Pepper (I didn’t use McCromick and it fucked everything up)
• Who doest put garlic and olive oil in everything? I added a couple cloves minced garlic and two fingers of oil
• Some butter
• 1 cup water

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place turkey breast on rack in shallow roasting pan. Combine seasonings/butter/OO/garlic. Spread that shit under skin and over entire surface of turkey breast.
2. Roast 2 – 2 1/2 hours or until internal temperature reaches 170 degrees F. Loosely tent with foil for first hour. Remove foil; add water to pan. Baste occasionally with pan juices.
3. Remove turkey breast from oven. Let stand, loosely covered with foil for 15 minutes. Transfer to platter or carving board.

This recipe produced a damn good roasted bird. Onto the side

#2 Three cheese and Garlic Ogratin Potatoes

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, thinly sliced (I used russets, which could account for time/temp discrepancies)
• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 1 pint heavy cream
• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
• 4 slices provolone cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a 1 1/2 quart or larger casserole dish with butter or nonstick spray.
2. Layer half of the potato slices in the bottom of the casserole dish. Dot with half of the butter cut or pinched into small pieces. Arrange half of the garlic slices over the potatoes, then pour half of the heavy cream over. Sprinkle one cup of Cheddar cheese over the layer, and season with salt and pepper. Repeat layering of potatoes, garlic, cream and Cheddar cheese, then top with the slices of provolone cheese. Season again with salt and pepper.
3. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven, then sprinkle the Parmesan or Romano cheese over the top. This will create a semi-hard cheese crust. Continue baking uncovered for another 30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender when tested with a fork.

Stolen again from Allrecipes.com but the woman who wrote it must live in some sort of timewarp and/or slice her potatoes paper fuckin’ thin, because she says 325 for an hour which results in very undercooked potatoes. I’ve made the changes necessary and it’s closer to 350 for 1.5-2hrs.

Anyway, that dinner was excellent. Rave reviews, if I had a girlfriend I would probably have been repaid with fellatio.

Wake up Monday morning and what do I do? I make fuckin’ turkey stock that’s what I do.

See stock recipe from a few weeks ago, only use the bones/meat from the leftover roasted turkey. It made amazing stock.

Now the coup de gras

#3 Turkey Mushroom Barley Soup

In a large pan, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Saute onion, celery, carrots, and mushrooms until tender. Add in split chiles, thyme and parsley and cook for a few more minutes. Pour in broth and add barley. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer, uncovered, 45 minutes; then add in cooked turkey. In a small saucepan, melt remaining butter (3 tablespoons). Add flour and cook 3 minutes, stirring constantly to make a roux.. Whisk roux into soup if making a creamless version. Bring soup to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer 10 minutes.

To make a light cream version, slowly whisk milk into roux to blend; then add this to soup. Heat for 10 min but do not boil.

I just finished eating this and it was pretty fucking excellent. Best soup I’ve ever made, but it didn’t use all of my barley. So I guess I’ll have to find something else to use barley in.

At any rate, I certainly recommend all of these dishes and really encourage you to make turkey stock if you haven’t. It’s like chicken stock on crack.

I also made a simple salad, but that was mostly just to round out the meals. Nothing to show off on that one.

I’ve begun down a long road from which I might well never recover. The road of stock.

At present I have a chicken stock in the earliest of stages. I plan to turn it, eventually, into chicken noodle soup. Perhaps if I share the methods someone will follow.

*1 whole chicken 3-4 lbs.
*1 large onion
*1-2 cloves garlic
*some celery
*some carrots
*some thyme
*some parsley
*1 bay leaf
*some salt
*16 cups of water
*1 big ole fucking pot.

Cut everything up. Don’t worry about peeling the onion or garlic. Put it into a pot and bring it just about to a boil. Adjust the heat so it’s only putting up a few bubbles at a time. Partially cover and let it simmer until the meat falls off the bones and the bones begin to separate. 2+ hours.

Strain the stock, pressing on the meat to get all the juices out, refrigerate it. Once the fat has congealed on top skim it off, and you’re done. It keeps in the fridge for couple of days. Otherwise freeze it or take it out and boil it every few days.

See The Book, for more information.

This is my first stock, so I have no idea what to expect, but I’m expecting damn good soup.

Yes, that sounds delicious, and it is.

You’ll need:

• 18-20 Pitted Dates (Medjool if you can, but others will work also. Just make sure they’re fresh!)
• 4-6 slices of Prosciutto (sliced thin)
• Soft herbed goat cheese (I like the Chavrie brand in the little pyramid shaped container)
• Fresh Basil
• Toothpicks (soaked in cold water for at least 20 minutes prior)

So here’s the plan of attack:

1.  Trim your slices of prosciutto into vertical strips approx. the width of the dates
2. Stuff the dates with the herbed goat cheese – I found this to be nearly impossible, so I simply sliced open the dates and spooned enough cheese in there to where it almost, but not quite, could close again
3. Wrap your stuffed dates with a nice large basil leaf
4. Wrap the basil/date combo with a trimming of the prosciutto
5. Stabby time! Stab them with a toothpick to hold it together.
6. Arrange the dates on a cookie tray
7. Broil the stabbed dates for 2-3 minutes – just long enough for the proscuitto to lightly begin browning
8. Pull from the oven, and let them cool for 3-5 minutes if you can wait that long.

Enjoy!

PS – you might be thinking “eww! I hate dates! Nasty little slimy things!” but I assure you – you’re wrong. Fix yourself a small batch of these beforehand if you’re unsure, but you will come out a changed individual – in love with the world, and with dates. And thinly sliced fatty ham products. And basil. And goat cheese. Maybe not so much with toothpicks.

While Gabe and Brandon may be the virtuosi of our little band, I have a trump card I can play whenever I need to impress someone: Pasta. It’s very easy to make, but be forewarned: Once you start making pasta at home, from scratch, it’s pretty difficult to go back to the old stuff.

You’ll need a pasta machine. They run about 50 bucks, and are worth every penny.

My recipe is:

* 3 cups flour
* 4 large eggs
* 1 teaspoon salt (I never measure, though, I just throw a little in)
* 2 tablespoons olive oil (Similarly, I go by dough feel rather than measurement)

I made pasta by hand for a long time, then switched to the food processor. I recently switched back, because the time saved with the food processor is negligible, and it’s just more badass and satisfying to do things by hand.

First, get all your ingredients out, opened and ready, because you’re going to get your hands messy and you’re not going to want to go digging for your olive oil with egg all over your hands.

Next, sift the three cups of flour onto a nice clean countertop, forming a pile. Be conservative — make it three scant cups; you can always add more later. The sifting is worthwhile, and helps your dough become smoother faster.

Form a hollow in the pile of flour, and crack an egg into it. Work the egg in by hand until it’s pretty well combined with the flour. You can throw your salt in at this point too.

Repeat this procedure with each subsequent egg. With the last egg, add the olive oil.

What you’re going to wind up with will still probably be crumbly, but don’t worry. Mash it up into a ball and begin to knead it as best you can. If it’s not coming together, feel free to add a bit of water or more oil at this point.

You shouldn’t have to knead for more than about 7 minutes before you have a nice, consistent, non-crumbly lump of dough. At this point, cover it with plastic wrap (or seal it in some tupperware) and let it rest for an hour.

Once an hour is up, quarter the dough. One quarter makes one large serving of pasta. You can freeze these for weeks, incidentally.

When you go to roll it out, start on the largest roller setting and work your way down, flouring the dough fairly thoroughly at each step. For angel-hair pasta, I typically go down to 5, or the second-narrowest setting. 6 is usually too thin and makes the resulting noodles pretty hard to handle, but this will all depend on your pasta machine.

Keep at it — once you get the process down, it’s really easy and the results are vastly superior to store-bought noodles, which I never buy anymore.

The dough cooks very quickly; a minute or two in salted, boiling water is plenty of time. Add your favorite sauce and enjoy.

It has come to my attention that many people I know are unfamiliar with one of the best and simplest ways to prepare any sort of meat: oven-roasting. This is a situation which requires immediate attention. This is the first in a series, especially appropriate for the approaching winter season.

So, without further ado, I present one of life’s simple joys: a roast chicken.

Find yourself a young bird, maybe three or four pounds. Nothing too large, it’s easiest when you’ve got a generous skin-to-meat ratio. Rinse, discard the piece of fat hanging out there next to the gizzards. I usually roast the neck inside of my chicken and discard the rest of the gizzards, though you’re free to do whatever you’d like. Pat dry, you don’t want it to spend most of its time steaming rather than crisping that delicious skin. Next, take a couple of tablespoons of room-temperature butter and mix in some herbs and optionally, minced garlic. I like rosemary, sage and a bit of thyme. Fresh, if I can get it. Then, cut a few slits into the thickest parts of the breast and thighs and stuff them with herbed butter. Finally, rub the entire bird inside and out with a fairly generous amount of sea salt and pepper. I usually sprinkle a little rosemary on top as well.

Heat your oven to about 425F and put the chicken in a shallow roasting dish. To keep everything appropriately moist I usually add about 4-5 ounces of beer to the pan, but then I live in a very dry climate. This may not really be necessary for you. Then, roast for about forty-five minutes to an hour depending on the size of your bird. The juices will run clear when it’s done and internal temperature should reach about 180F. Carve and serve!