You've Been Chopped

After a couple of simply lovely days here on the east coast, we were treated to a spectacular thunderstorm Friday around sundown. I turned off all the lights, opened all the blinds and watched the pyrotechnics - red wine at the ready - well away from any electrical appliances. But with the light show and canon reports came hot & steamy weather that has pressed down us ever since.

As most of you know, I'm a California boy. I consider 45% relative humidity as redlining it. I start losing alarming amounts of water weight at anything over fifty percent. Rapidly. And embarrassingly. On the un-air-conditioned NYC subway platforms I look like the proverbial cat that fell into a well and is none too happy about it. Therefore, my Saturday shopping was simply out of the question; I would have to make do with whatever was in the cupboards. So I decided to make a game out of it, my own version of the Food Network's "Chopped". I did have some frozen chicken legs and thighs to act as a starting point. The test would be to come up with something besides the predictable and predictably boring grilled meat.

So get a load of this.

Balsamic & Dried Fruit Glaze - by Blog O. Food

¾ cup dried mixed fruit, roughly chopped* ¼ cup balsamic vinegar ¾ cup dry white wine 1 Tbsp raw cane sugar 1 tsp Ancho chili powder 1 tsp ground cinnamon ½ tsp ground nutmeg ½ tsp ground allspice ⅛ tsp ground white pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Mix thoroughly, reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered - stirring occasionally - for 30 minutes, or until the cooking liquid has reduced to a thick syrup.

Meanwhile, rinse and thoroughly dry the chicken, season liberally with salt and pepper, then brown on both sides (3-4 minutes per side) in a little olive oil in a large sauté pan with a tight-fitting lid, over medium-high heat. Once the poultry has some good color, turn heat up to high and add some Marsala wine, between half and a full cup. Just enough to come up about a quarter of the way on the chicken pieces. Bring to a boil. Cover the pan with the lid, and place in a 375°F pre-heated oven. Roast for about 20 minutes. Just long enough to cook the chicken through.

As an accompaniment, I toyed with rice, beans, noodles, even some grits in the larder before spying orzo behind some dried chilies. Perfect for standing up to, and soaking up juices and sauce. Just follow the cooking directions on the package. Arrange cooked chicken atop a big mound of stuff, and spoon the glaze and syrup artfully over everything. The money shot will take care of itself.

Seeing as their was only one contestant in my Chopped challenge, I had a 50/50 chance of walking away with the crown, but the whole exercise coulda blown up in my face as well. I'm happy to report it did not. You try this dish, and I guarantee you'll win top honors with your own judging panel at home.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

*Dried apricots, cranberries, golden raisins, cherries, and blueberries.

Balsamic Honey Glaze...

...wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.

Back in cooking mode, but single in NYC for the weekend. Takeout? A cheese pie from the corner pizza joint? Not on your life! I have to bring my A-game to the table from here on out. So it's practice, practice, practice. Down to the local butcher shop I go for some chicken breasts on the bone and a scavenger hunt through the cupboards.

Balsamic Honey Glazed Chicken - by Blog O. Food

3 chicken breasts, bone in 3 lemons, juiced 4 Tbsp olive oil Fresh herbs (tarragon and/or thyme) finely chopped ⅓ cup balsamic vinegar 2 Tbsp honey 1 Tbsp water 2 cloves garlic, chopped

I marinated my chicken breasts in the lemon juice, oil, herbs and some salt & pepper for a couple hours in the refrigerator.

Start your glaze. Combine the balsamic vinegar, honey, water and garlic in a small sauce pan, bring to a boil, then simmer to reduce by one half.

Meanwhile, grill your chicken 7-8 minutes per side. It's my untried theory suspicion that a boneless chicken breast is easy prey to drying out when grilling. I believe that keeping the bone in when cooking helps the meat retain a little more flavor and moisture. But what do I know? Anyway, my breasts got the indoor grilling treatment on my double-sided cast iron grill from Lodge*. If you live in an apartment, or don't have an outdoor grill, this one will be in heavy rotation in your kitchen. I leave mine out on the stovetop.  It's heavy duty, versatile and needs little care aside from a good scrubbing after each use. (No soap! That'll remove the coveted seasoning you're looking to achieve with cast iron. Just use a good nylon pad and some elbow grease.)

How about a side dish? I did a quasi-Mediterranean variation on my hurry-up-and-eat couscous.

1 medium yellow onion, chopped 2 Tbsp roasted red peppers, chopped 1½ tsp capers 6 oz black olives, sliced 2 scallions (green or spring onions), sliced 1 cup whole wheat couscous ½ cup whole wheat couscous ½ water or chicken stock Salt & black pepper

Couscous basics:

1-1 ratio of couscous to cooking liquid. 1 pat of butter (½ Tbsp) and a pinch of salt per ½ cup of couscous. Always bring liquid, butter and salt to a boil before adding couscous. Remove saucepan from heat once couscous is thoroughly stirred in. Allow to rest, covered, for 5 minutes, and always fluff with a fork before serving.

In a small sauté pan over medium heat, sweat the onions with some salt and freshly ground black pepper in hot olive oil until the onions become translucent. Add the red peppers and cook to heat through, about 2 minutes. Add the capers and heat through. Finally toss in the olives, cover, and keep warm over low heat until the couscous is done. Add the cooked medley and the sliced scallions to the couscous, toss ingredients to combine and serve immediately.

Not bad, BOF, not bad. The sweet and tangy glaze had a gentle garlic kick. It clung to my sliced chicken breast splendidly and brought the white meat to life. The breast itself was moist and tender. Maybe I do know what I'm talking about! I'll be using the Lone Ranger as my laboratory rat with this recipe. Try it out on a loved one of your own tonight!

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

*BOF receives no financial remuneration when endorsing products.

Can I Cook Or What?

Ironic that it takes a tropical storm to usher in Autumn, but here we are: rainy, damp, foggy, cold. Perfect weather for comfort food. Should my truly misanthropic behavior ever become a criminal offense, I request as my last meal pork tenderloin. There is no meat, fish or foul as enticing to me as a perfectly roasted piece of pork. Keep your prime rib, coq au vin, lobster Thermidor; me and my house shall have the other white meat.

I bought a beautiful piece of pork from my butcher just a day earlier and now had an excuse to roast it. I'll usually brine a tenderloin overnight with bay leaves, peppercorns, bourbon, water and lots of salt, but was impatient to get my roast in the oven, so decided on a glazed crust instead. You can find dozens of recipes for glazes and rubs in cook books and on the Internet. But one of my goals as a food blogger is to nudge my readers toward exercising their own artistic muscle by experimenting and creating a cooking style all their own. Pork takes to almost any herb or spice. The challenge is to find combinations that appeal to your tastes and wed compatibly. Here's a short list of ingredients that compliment a roast tenderloin: Fresh or dried fruit and preserves Mustards Sugars Curry Cinnamon All spice Garlic Rosemary I checked the cupboards for glaze fixings and chose the  "less is more" path. I dug out olive oil, honey, Dijon mustard, red pepper flake and fresh garlic. Honey and chilies go together in a most Yin & Yang sort of way. Think of jalapeño jellies and you'll get the idea. The mustard and garlic add acidic complexity and the oil is my binder and meat tenderizer.

This is an easy glaze, a paste really, that you slather on to the pork roast and then blast in a hot oven for a few minutes to form a crust. 1 Tbs olive oil 1 Tbs honey 1 Tbs mustard 2 cloves garlic, finely crushed ½ tsp red pepper flake Salt & pepper to taste Combine all ingredients in a small bowl to form a thick paste. You can adjust the viscosity with more or less oil. With your tenderloin in a shallow baking dish, fat side up, spread the honey mustard glaze all over the meat. Place in a 450º pre-heated oven and set a timer for 10 minutes. Once the timer sounds, reduce the heat to 250º and continue to slow roast the tenderloin an additional 20-25 minutes per pound. The initial blast of heat seals the crust and helps to keep moisture in the meat as it continues to cook.

After reducing the temperature on the pork, it was time to think about a side dish. I guess I could have gone the lazy route and just wrapped shredded pork in a tortilla, splashed some hot sauce on it and called it a game, but this was gonna be my first comfort meal of the season, so shortcuts - while tempting - were out of the question. But that left the issue of what to prepare. I had some beautiful green and yellow squash from the farmers market. Kinda banal though. Egg noodles? Rice? Boring! A starch, though, seemed to offer the most possibilities. As my eyes skimmed over dried cranberries, it came to me. Couscous with red onion, cranberries and slivered almonds.

Tyler Florence had done a similar couscous as a side dish on one of his shows. I tried it a few days later, and afterwards gave Tyler a lot more credit for his acting skills. His recipe fell flat, but he sure looked like he was enjoying it on that particular episode. I figured I could do better. I liked the idea of a hot onion and a sweet component. I substituted dried cranberries for whatever it was Tyler had used, knowing they could make red onions sing in a dish. The toasted almonds added a crunchy quality, and while I was at it, how 'bout some garlic, just because I could. So, while the pork was roasting, I toasted about ¼ cup raw, slivered almonds in a dry pan, gave a small red onion a very rough chop, and added another ¼ cup of dried cranberries to my trusty food processor. Once the almonds were toasted they went into the food processor along with the onion and a couple of cloves of garlic. I gave the dry compote a few short pulses. I didn't want a puree, but something with some texture that would add interest to plain couscous. After pulsing, I transferred the mixture to a skillet with 2 Tbs of olive oil and sautéed over low heat.

Once my tenderloin registered an internal temperature of 150º (about 50 minutes into the roasting), I removed it from the oven and set it, tented with aluminum foil, on a cutting board to rest for 15 minutes. As it rest, I brought 1 cup vegetable stock, ½ tsp salt and 2 Tbs of butter to boil in a large sauce pan. Once the liquid was boiling, I removed the pan from the heat and stirred in 1 cup couscous and my cranberry onion mixture, covered the pan and let the ingredients set for 5 minutes.

The results speak for themselves. The pork was perfectly done. Juicy and just barely pink inside with a sweet, spicy caramelized crust. The couscous was the ideal foil with the tangy cranberry heightening the sweet heat of the onion. An '06 Storrs Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir sent me over the edge. A distinctive over-ripe plumy nose with hints of bicycle inner tube (I don't know why I always pick that up with good Pinots!). One is reminded of the beach tar that used to bubble up along the sands of Huntington. If tar were to percolate beneath a picnic blanket where peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches were lying in the sun, that would be the nose of this wine. Supple, velvety mouth-feel, and, again, ripe plums but with what tasted like precisely 2 drops of walnut oil added just before serving. There was just enough alcohol for that classic subtle finish that one expects from a good Pinot.

I don't know about you, but cooking is my religion and the kitchen my sanctuary. The desire to nurture is satisfied in feeding people. I experience an almost catholic ritualism in it. Every once in a great while, I'll prepare something so supremely satisfying that it brings me one step closer to the divine. On this gray soggy night, I took another stride.

Bon appetit - Blog O. Food