Roasted Mediterranean Lake Trout and Shepard's Pie Potato

Alas! I've been wanting to cook a whole fish since we ordered a whole Mackerel on my birthday compliments of Publican. Cleaned and gutted whole lake trout, oiled and salted on the outside and inside. Stuffed with garlic, rosemary, and lemon slices. Bake at 450 for 20 minutes. The skin peels easily off and you have much meat on the fish. This is a dish that I would only serve with close friends and family because it requires a bit of picking at the fish. It is so much tastier and you get a lot more than if it were just a fillet or steak.

For the Shepard's Pie Potato I started with what would be a twice baked potato (see previous posts), but filled the boat part with a little sausage made up of ground beef, corn, chopped green pepper and spices. I liked it so much that I want to do more work with the meat stuffing next time. Topped it off with the removed and jazzed up filling.

Flair

More than one piece of flair can easily make it look like you're trying too hard, but just one can give a dish a little personality. Carrot flowers are easy to do (or in this case carrot snow flakes as it is December). Oh yeah, and I made a quick change of the background for the season.

I found a nice instructional video online that shows the method better than I can explain it in text and the guy took it a few steps further. http://youtu.be/PdIyyKiWsqI

As for the dish, it was just a chicken rice curry.

Chicken... Again

Super easy salad to start. Looks impressive and tastes even better. And as a bonus, it takes no time to make. You have nothing to lose to try it. Peeled carrot on a cucumber slice next to a basil leaf. Add a couple lines of honey (get the good stuff, not the cheap stuff), and put a couple of drops of balsamic vinegar on top and you will have the easiest and freshest salad you've ever tasted. 

Tried something a little different with the chicken. Marinated a chopped chicken breast in fresh squeezed lime juice (2 limes) with salt/pepper for 20 minutes. Added 2 Tbs of butter to a pan with onions, fresh green beans, and zucchini with the chicken and lime juice for a delightfully tasty dinner. Next time I think I will grill the whole chicken breast (butterflied) after the marinate (similar to the grapefruit chicken post) because the color was not spectacular and grill marks would of helped make it look more appetizing (that said I'd lose some lime flavor because it wouldn't actually be cooked in the lime juice). 

For the baked potato: poke holes in the potato, season with olive oil and salt, wrap in foil, bake at 375 for 1 hour. Remove top layer of potato and carve out a boat. Take the filling (remove skin first) and mash it with cheese, paprika, garlic, mayo (or sour cream), a small amount of butter, salt, pepper, and stick back in the oven for 30 minutes. 

Bacon-Wrapped Chicken

• We needed to clear our refrigerator before vacation. We had 1 chicken breast, 6 strips of bacon, 4 potatoes and fresh green beans that needed to be eaten. 
• Cut chicken into 6 pieces and wrapped each piece with a strip of bacon. Baked on a foiled pan at 425 for about 40 minutes. 
• Mashed potatoes with about 6 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and about a half a stick of butter (YIKES! but delicious).
•  Green beans with a little butter and 1 squeezed lime (lime rind cooked in the pan but removed before being served), sauteed in a pan. 

Hearty Meal

This one filled us up. Lots of starches. The meal should of been better balanced, but we didn't have a whole lot of ingredients available. The mushroom gravy was the fun here. Butter in pan with whole mushrooms, onions, radishes, add red wine and spices (including a bit mustard) and reduce for about an hour.

Squash Ravioli in Saffron sauce via wife

I cannot recall if she has made ravioli before, but for not having a noodle machine she did a fantastic job. I cannot tell you what she did with the squash because I didn't make it, but it was very tasty. I'm interested in applying her recipe for the squash in a different area, but I do not know what that dish is just yet.

Tackling Bread Making

I've never been much of a baker. Too much of an exact science and following recipes has not always been my thing. However, you cannot beat fresh bread so I tried my best to simplify more complicated recipes. I never have yeast in the house so I've tried everything from self rising flour to flat breads. Some attempts were ok, but everything was mostly unimpressive. I caved and started using yeast. The importance of yeast is immeasurable in beer making and I now concede that it is very important in bread making. On a side note: Yeast is expensive in the grocery store. Three small packets will cost you close to $3.00. Making your own bread is supposed to be cheap! A quick search on Amazon will yield (pun intended) something like 2 pounds of the same yeast you find in the grocery store, but not in packet form for like $8-$10. This is the way to go.

For the Bread bowl, I spit a regular loaf in two and instead of letting it rise in a bread pan, I let it rise in a ball. Cut it as pictured and you have yourself an edible bowl to serve soup or chili in. Only mystery I have yet to solve is how to make the bowls smaller. The bowl is essentially a half a loaf of bread which is way too much for consumption during one meal. I might try cutting the dough into thirds or quarter it instead next time.

Anyway, here is the current status of my bread recipe:

3c flour
1/2 milk
1 Tbsp of olive oil
2 Tbsp of sugar
1 tsp of salt
1 package of yeast

Mix in Kitchen Aid or like machine, and add a 1/2 cup of warm water. Check the dough, sometimes more water is needed, but you do not want too much water so be careful. Place dough in oiled bread pan and let it rise for 30 minutes to an hour. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

I've also been trying to double this recipe and freezing half of it for an easy bake the next day. Only problem is the dough doesn't rise nearly as much after being frozen. I'm working on this, but it may simply be a matter of science that I cannot fix. Regardless, it still tastes great.

Lunch! Wife Style

My wife made a delicious lunch the other day. She kept it classic and simple. The rustic tomato soup is about the healthiest thing on the blog to date. It is literally the freshest of vegetables chopped and thrown into vegetable stock with salt, pepper, and spices. Done. Delicious. Add to that a simple grilled cheese on wheat bread and that's a meal. She also tried an apple bake that turned out pretty well for her first try. Next time around I think she will remove the skin of the apple. Only thing to really note here is to make sure the apples are cooked long enough.



Happy cooking.

Evolution

Recipes build off one another. Lack of ingredients often leads to invention, or better known as, necessity is the mother of invention (cited from my Father). I very much agree this is a truth in cooking. Knowing how to do one thing can serve as a launching point to something new. In a previous post I discussed simple syrup for a mixed drink. While I'm still not too fond of the mixed drink (though I'm still working on it), the syrup served as a launching point for a missing sauce to a batch of Asian noodles I was making. The sauce was fantastic, but the dish looked anything but appetizing. It was missing color and crunch. It was an incomplete dish (that said, I cooked only with what I had on hand). What I would of done differently is added many more colorful and tasty vegetables and either ditched the chicken or marinated it in the sauce well in advance. The chicken was much too bland and didn't soak up the sauce. But I learned and I moved on.

I stuck with the chicken, but this time I delightfully breaded and fried it so it could soak up sauce. And a new instant favorite was created. While I believe the chicken was perfectly breaded, the sauce is the star here. I want to revisit my first dish attempted with this sauce, because rice noodles compliment the sauce so well, and perhaps better than breaded chicken.



Accompanying the chicken was chips from a previous post and a lovely corn based salsa my wife made (lack of ingredients driving the recipe yet again). Recipe is as pictured. Simple as that.

 

The sauce recipe is a very simple one and without knowing it, I recreated something I've tried to create in the past. My good friend once took my to a Filipino restaurant where I was very impressed with the sauce served with a fish served split open and fried. I never got it down after a couple of attempts and I forgot about it. After making this sauce, I was instantly brought back to that Filipino meal and I knew I had accidentally recreated the sauce I once tried to make. I have not nailed down the proportions yet, but the ingredients are:

simple syrup (half water, half sugar)

soy sauce

lime juice

I know that recipe is very vague, but I've only made it to taste so far, not paying attention to proportions just yet.

Saturday Morning Breakfast

We are a very young family, but traditions have already started. Every Saturday morning either my wife or I cook a variation on this classic American breakfast dish. The dog is even in on this tradition too. We do not feed our dog people food, but we break every Saturday morning and save a piece of bacon for him (but we only give it to him in his bowl when he is not looking so he does not start begging).

There isn't much to say about a recipe but I suppose after much trial and error I could offer some tips:

For the potatoes, whether you grate them to hash browns or cut them homestyle (pictured), make sure they are cooked long enough. It isn't so pleasant to bite into a raw potato during breakfast. Additionally, use lots of your favorite seasonings. We have come to a consensus that Tony's Creole seasoning is best for these potatoes.

As for the bacon, I grew up with my mother always frying the bacon in a pan, and I did it this way for many years too. This method is messy and the bacon often comes out cooked unevenly. One day I tried cooking the bacon in the oven. It came out perfectly and there was no mess! Lay down a piece of foil over a cookie sheet for even less clean up and preheat the oven between 400-450, and cook to the desired crispiness. I now know that most restaurants cook bacon this way, but I was in the dark for many years.

Things don't always work out.

So, I tried a Bacon Popcorn recipe of Christopher J. Ciesiel (found here) and it turned out well, though he is probably right to suggest that I should of added more bacon fat. All bacon lovers should give this recipe a try as it is fun to watch the kernels pop and it is tasty. (The picture to the left is Ciesiel's and the one below is NOT his recipe).

I liked his recipe so much that I tried to make a caramel/kettle corn version of this without the bacon fat (just butter) and brown sugar. If you take a gander below, you can see that things did not work out. I have not given up on expanding flavored popcorn beyond this recipe, but I remain defeated thus far. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of my success in following his recipe, I only have one of my defeat. That said, if you take a walk over to his blog (link posted above), he has detailed pictures and explanation on how to make a good bacon flavored popcorn.

Nachos!

I was not going to post this meal because it is embarrassingly simple. My wife loves nachos and she usually makes them, but I had some time on my hands before she came home from work so I prepared some for her for when she got home (hold the jokes please). We didn't have any chips in the house, but we had white corn tortillas which i cut and fried. There were two things that made this dish and it had everything to do with their freshness. The chips and avocado are proof that simple and fresh can make anything work.










Awhile back I purchased a giant spice container labeled taco seasoning which I used in the taco meat, but it is a little bland so in addition I spiced it up with garlic, red pepper flakes, and chili powder. I've made my own taco seasoning before and it turned out very well but I had taco seasoning on hand so I used it. To make your own add your favorite spices with a kick (mainly paprika) and the secret is to add a little flour which helps thicken up the meat and helps the seasoning stick. I threw in some black beans with the meat and called it a day. All other ingredients are pictured.

Big Boi: Belgian Golden(ish) Strong Ale

I set out to do something I've never done before on a few fronts. I wanted to make a pseudo hybrid between a Victory: Golden Monkey,  Stone: Old Guardian Belgo Barley Wine, and Bells: Hopslam. These are big beers and absolutely remarkable ones too. I was shooting for the distinct Belgian Strong Ale yeast from Golden Monkey, the candy delivery and punch from Old Guardian Belgo, and the hop profile and honey flair from Hopslam (which is surprisingly only around 60 IBUs).

I've helped out on all-grain beers before, but I've never made one that I could call my own. So forever away with extract! It is a hell of a lot more work than brewing extract, but it is also way more satisfying and you definitely have more control over your final product. All that said, I don't really have the proper equipment to brew all-grain, but I made do with what I have and I got a little inventive. Because I do not have a false bottom on my brew pot, I had to sock my grains which prevented me from getting their full sugar potential. I only received about 62% mash efficiency vs the standard 75% mash efficiency. This is not a deal breaker, but it will take away from some of the punch I was going for from the Old Guardian Belgo. I was shooting for a starting gravity of 1.11+ but I ended up with a starting gravity of 1.088 which is respectable and well within the boundaries of a Belgian Golden Strong Ale.

During the sparging process, I had to modify my spout with a cheese cloth filter so I could get more sugars out of the grain. I couldn't believe how wonderfully it worked! If I had not done that and allowed the grains to be freed from the sock, I would of ended up with much less than 62% mash efficiency.

I don't want to say too much more about it because I still have a long road ahead of me in the fermenter. I'm sure I'll check back in with progress reports and finished product details and photos. I'm not sold on Big Boi being the name of the beer, but at least for now it is the project name.

Jambalaya

Jambalaya is one of those dishes where just about anything works. I hate the use of "comfort food" but it is a dish that easily fills me up to satisfaction. I'd say this dish has evolved over the years for me, but it simply depends on what I have around. When I first started making Jambalaya I used a Red Beans and Rice package. I added a sausage and called it a day. It has a smokey taste and it was great.

However, with a little more experience and time I have a more complex dish. I start with white rice and dirty it up with spices I like (paprika, chili powder, garlic, and/or any Cajun mix). I find that for one cup of white rice just a little bit more than 1 1/2cups of water is needed. Additionally, I add a beef bouillon cube to the rice. Cook as normal.

I love shrimp and I normally have it in this dish with crayfish, but I didn't have any in the house (I'll have to post this one at a later time). Pictured is sausage and chicken (chicken prepared the day before). Do not use chicken breast. Use a whole chicken, or in my case I used 3 Little Dragon Roasted Chickens, skin removed. My wife prefers chorizo sausage, but pictured is 2 hot Italian links. With the chicken and sausage is diced tomatoes, black beans and a bit of water and good ole' spiciness. I didn't have any tomato paste, but sometimes a throw a couple of scoops in for added thickness and taste. I also throw the other half of the bouillon cube in.  Reduce the water a bit on the stove and serve with rice.

Banana Walnut Pancakes with Plum Grapefruit syrup

1 tbsp    baking powder
1/2 tsp   baking soda
1/2 tsp   salt
5 tbsp    sugar
1 c         flour
2 tbsp    olive oil
1            egg




Add chopped bananas and crumpled walnuts to pancake immediately after forming in pan. Serves 2-4.

Plum Grapefruit syrup. Blend 4 plums and 1 grapefruit (no skin just pulp and juice) and add simple syrup (see previous post) and a few pinches of brown sugar to taste. Chill and serve.

Little Dragon Roasted Chicken

Tarragon is probably the herb I like to cook with most. It smells so wonderful and adds such a unique taste. Most famously (within my small family) it is used in our favorite dish: Little Dragon Roasted Chicken. The word tarragon (according to the internet) means dragon or little dragon. While I believe tarragon to be a powerful herb, I would associate spicy foods with dragons, but I didn't make it up so I just go with it and call the dish Little Dragon Roasted Chicken. I love the herb so much that I even use it when brewing beer! If you're not overly familiar with the herb, give it a whirl. It is great.

Pictured is Little Dragon Roasted Chicken with Garlic Mashed Rustic Potatoes. Preheat the oven to 425 and pat down the chicken so that it is very dry. The reason why this dish is a family favorite is because the skin of the chicken is so crispy. So patting it down with a paper towel until it is dry is very important. Additionally, I have noticed that this cut of chicken is often cut a bit too big, leaving in organ remnants near the long end of the chicken. This is due to either a careless butcher or a machine. I either cut the unpleasantries off or I just pull out whatever is not wanted. I proceed with a small bit of ground pepper and garlic. Then I use a good amount of salt and tarragon. Roast the chicken for 1 hour (or longer) at 425. Due to a hungry family, I pulled this one out of the oven an hour in (the chicken was cooked, but looks and tastes a bit different when pulled out as pictured). Ideally, I like to wait until the skin starts to pull away from the bone, showing the tip of the bone (not pictured). 


Potatoes are simple enough. Chop and boil potatoes and garlic (1 clove for each potato). Strain and mash with butter, salt, pepper. Mashed potatoes are easy and make for a great addition to many of my dishes (and yours?).

Bears Win & Pasta!

I drove in few miles in to meet up with a good friend to watch the Bears home opener against Atlanta. What a game. I cannot recall the Bears ever winning so decisively. They usually play up or down to their opponent's level, always making for a close game. That being said, a 30-12 Bears win was nothing but cause for celebration. We celebrated and the group I was with went out to celebrate more, but I'm an old married man these days and I called it. I went home to cook a meal for my wife and I.


I needed to use some ingredients from the pizza post before they went bad so I combined most everything into a pasta sauce. The pasta sauce had stewed tomatoes, clams, mushrooms, oil, and meatballs. I have to say that sauce was hella tasty and it helped soak up a few beers.

Additionally, I rolled out (without the help of flour) the rest of the pizza dough and fried them up with a little bit of oil and tossed a pinch of salt on top. That was surprisingly good too. It tasted like a cross between flat bread you might get at Flat Top Grill and Naan, an Indian bread. Great win, Great weekend.

Chicago Thinner Crust Pizza

 

There is a lot of good pizza in Chicago. I'm not trying to compete with those guys. In fact, when I have a craving for a good pie, I usually order it. However, I have found that while I love the thin crust pizza we can get around here, I always feel like it could be thinner. Ergo today's post.

Thinner Crust:
3 cups flour
1/3 cup olive oil
2 pinches of salt
1 cup of warm water




It makes enough for two big pies (plus left over dough for tomorrow's use). Use a rolling pin with plenty of flour and roll that bad boy out into whatever thin shape your heart desires.

Red Sauce Pizza: Some like to buy pizza sauce or make it, but I find it too thin. I prefer the sweetness and texture of tomato paste as the base sauce. I throw down a thin layer of garlic powder and pasta sprinkle over it and proceed with toppings. Pictured is half of a hamburger from the Bad Ass Burger recipe, pulled apart into small sausages with stewed tomatoes and extra sharp cheddar cheese.

White Sauce Pizza: Homemade white sauce (small amount of roux, mixed with milk, parmesan cheese, garlic, and salt). The toppings are mushrooms, clams, and mozzarella cheese.

The pies are baked at 425 until they are done. Use your eyeball to tell when they are done.

The same crust can be made on a grill for an Italian style pizza. I didn't believe you could simply throw an uncooked crust on the grill (no stone) until I visited a friend of mine. He took me to a dinner party where the host prepared pizzas on the grill. They came out tasting like the pizza I had in Italy. Whenever I make pizzas now, I tend to make them on the grill. However, this time around I was wanting more of a Chicago thin crust pizza. Perhaps the grilled pizzas will be featured in a future post.

Bad Ass Burgers and Grilled Fries. Don't be shy.

There are a lot of burgers out there that suck, and I'm pretty sure I know why too. They are trying to please everyone and by trying to please everyone, they please no one. My wife and I are fans of extreme, bold, pungent, and spicy flavors. Anything that is not such, probably could of been done better.


As for Bad Ass Burgers. First things first, if you want the best possible tasting burger, you are going to want to get around 75% lean beef. I am well aware that it is not very healthy, but it provides a dripping "to die for" burger. Unload the usual suspects on the counter and throw everything you have in the bowl. Don't be shy either. If you are not sure if you added enough spices to the bowl, you probably didn't. You can literally use just about everything on your spice rack. The only dish I can think of that I use more ingredients in, is chili. The only way I could really see this going wrong is if you over salt it -so use at your own discretion. The spices pictured and used in the burgers are garlic, paprika, red pepper, salt, pepper, pasta herbs, and chili powder. I actually added more to the bowl than what is pictured, so seriously don't be shy.

To get continuity out of all the burgers, I take measuring cup (1/2 cup) and separate the meat (I had enough for 9 burgers). I freeze what I do not plan to cook that night in individual baggies for quick meals (must be defrosted before use). By measuring out each burger, when one is done, they all are. There are no guessing games.

I never would of thought potatoes would cook up well on the grill, let alone quickly. I tried it as an experiment and it went so well I rarely ever use the fryer anymore. Slice potatoes as pictured, combine in a bowl with olive oil, salt, pepper, and whatever else you want and grill on high heat until they look done or as pictured.

Leftovers be gone. Baked Tomato Chicken and Baked Shells and Cheese.

There are days when I forget to defrost something from the freezer for dinner and we must scramble for dinner that night. A piece of grilled chicken was left over from a previous glazed chicken post. Refrigerated grilled chicken quite honestly does not look appetizing. Instead of throwing the chicken in the microwave simply for substance for our stomachs, I livened it up a bit with some canned tomatoes and spices (mainly garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of chilies). I pre-sliced the chicken for easy serving. It turned out looking and most importantly tasting better than microwaved chicken.

Additionally, a side dish was needed. I found some shells and cheese in the cabinet, and cooked them as the label instructed, then I mixed in some extra Parmesan cheese and topped it off with Parmesan and bread crumb crust. Voila!