The Blue Plate: Twice Baked Cakes of the Beornings

I'm currently engaged in a food exchange on a blue plate. When the blue plate comes to me it has food on it. It cannot leave my house until I have cleared it and put new food on it. It came with Kaluah brownies (delicious) and now it is leaving with the Twice Baked Cakes of the Beornings.

… twice-baked cakes that would keep good a long time, and on a little of which they could march far. The making of these was one of his secrets; but honey was in them, as in most of his foods, and they were good to eat, though they made one thirsty….

-The Hobbit

This was the description of the cakes given to Thorin and company in the Hobbit. I decided to either find or invent a recipe based on this description, so it must meet 4 criteria: they must be baked twice, keep well, contain a significant amount of honey, and make one thirsty.

So what is a twice-baked cake? No recipe exists that meets all of my criteria, so I decided to invent one. From a little bit of research I have decided that a twice-baked cake is most similar to a biscotti, so I started with a biscotti recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (note; this may change to 325 next time I try this, the insides have not cooked properly at 350)

Cream together (beat the hell out of, for normal people)

¼ cup butter (room temp is best)

½ cup sugar

½ cup honey

2 eggs

Once creamed, add

1-2 teaspoons lavender water (there are a few ways to make this, you can use 2 tablespoons of water and a drop of essential oils, or steep lavender flowers in water like tea; check your local hippie-food store for lavender)

as well as

Zest of one orange

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon clove

slowly stir in

2 ¾ cups all purpose flower

4 oz dried cherries.

Separate into 5 or 6 discs on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and throw in the oven for 20 minutes (25-30 if you lower the temp to 225).

Remove from oven and lower temperature to 225 (210 if you were cooking at 225).

While still hot, cut into halves or quarters and throw back in oven for 20 minutes, or until crunchy.

Boo-Ya!

P.S. I said I would cook Friday, I didn't say I would Post.

Large specialty pizza with extra self loathing.

I've been quiet as of late. Part of the reason for that is the fact that 80% of what I have eaten in the last 3 weeks has been subway, and there just isn't anything at all to say about subway. But tonight I finally have something to say.

Part of the problem with actually being an adult and having a realish job is that I don't have any time to cook (hence the subway) so guess what I had for dinner?

Self loathing. Five eighths of a pizza, and I feel nauseous, greasy... Shameful.

The part that gets me is that it took 45 minutes to get here, and cost $14. I could have easily made dinner for 4 for that price and in that time and it would have been healthier and tasted better.

So it is my goal to cook as much as possible in the coming weeks, and post as much of it here as possible. Payday is Friday, I'm cooking Friday... Game face, bro.

You know what the worst part is? Guess what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow:

Chef Pants: Pajamas of the Gods

I don't cook professionally anymore, but when I did I learned some very useful things. The most useful among them was this; chef pants are the greatest pajamas in the world. I am sitting here comfortably in my chefjamas with my second favorite pair of flannel pajamas next to me, and I can't help but think that there is really no comparison.

Fit – advantage chef pants. To put it plainly, my flannel pajamas look more like a flannel potato sack. After years of wear they are stretched and baggy. My chef pants, on the other hand, look just about the same as the day I bought them, despite the long hours in the kitchen, getting food and hot grease splattered on them. The fit is as baggy as the jeans you wore in the 90's, or before your gastric bypass, and the rugged canvas doesn't stretch and washes easily, but that does – unfortunately – bring me to their one disadvantage.

Fabric comfort – advantage flannel. I'm not saying that the canvas chef pants are uncomfortable, far from it. After 2 or 3 trips through the laundry they're softer than khakis or jeans, but you can't beat flannel for softness. But that softness comes with a price.

Pockets – advantage chefjamas. If I order a pizza at eleven o'clock in the evening – don't judge me – and I put my cell phone in one pocket of my flannel pajamas and my wallet in the other, when I get up to answer the door when the delivery man arrives my pants are not coming with me. My trou will be fully dropped. The pockets in flannel pants are not designed to hold anything heavier than their own lint. Not only do my chef pants have proper pockets that can actually hold things like keys, cell phone, spice grinder, raw meat, discrete plastic bag of what I can only assume is oregano... etc. they also have rear pockets for your wallet, and whatever other unsavory things chefs keep... probably drugs. And if I continue to use the example of ordering a pizza at eleven PM, you wont even want to. Once you put on your chefjamas you will be filled with a magical chefs-light. Ordering food someone else made will be unthinkable. You've got chef pants on. You can make your own damn pizza! Who needs that nasty cardboard grease pile? You're going to make the greatest pizza the world has ever tasted!

Practicality – advantage chefjamas. Despite their comfort and their supreme lounge-ability, these are work pants and as such you may wear them in public, the same as you would a pair of Dickies. And speaking of; unlike traditional pajama pants chef pants don't have a fly. You can wear them to class and rest one leg on the seat in front of you without... trying to say this diplomatically – looking like a hot dog salesman.

Style – tie. You can get pajamas with just about anything you want on them. My favorite pair have blue polar bears on them, but you can get them in tartan, covered in bottles of Tabasco sauce, polka-dotted, solid pink with “juicy” written on the bottom or solid blue with “pink” written the same. Chef pants are available in nearly as wide a range of styles (including the Tabasco bottles, but minus the “pink” and “juicy”), but if chef pants have one tiny stylistic advantage it is this – Houndstooth.

So there you have it. Chef pants are the ultimate in lounge-wear. Appropriate inside and out, from the kitchen to the bedroom. However, my brother works in a hospital and claims that I am wrong. He says that scrubs are the best pajamas. They're appropriate inside and out, they are rugged, easy to wash, have pockets, and are made of soft cotton, but he says that they have one major advantage; scrubs don't have a front or a back, some of them don't have an inside or an outside because doctors can be called into emergency surgery at any time and they need to get dressed for it as quickly as possible without getting tangled up putting their pants on the wrong way around, so scrubs are as easy to put on as humanly possible, and I will admit that there is something to be said for that. But think about this; chefs are in near-constant danger of being set on fire or splashed with hot oil, and when that happens the best way to avoid serious injury is to remove the flaming article of clothing. So while your fancy symmetrical scrubs may be designed to go on faster, my chef pants are designed to come off.

Better.

Photo credit; your imagination.

Indiana has good food.

I just had the most incredible croissant in the world. I know that it is the most incredible croissant in the world, because I am full. Let me repeat that; I had one croissant, and I'm full. I could not eat another bite, not even one wafer thin mint. I'm stuffed. And I am pretty sure that is how I am supposed to feel after eating a croissant, but no one ever told the bakers. For ages bakers have been baking croissants to be light, fluffy, airy and light. No one ever told them that what they should have been baking was chewy, dense, flavorful and, most surprisingly, crunchy. No one ever thought to have a croissant that went "crunch" when you bit into it... until Honey on the Table opened in Fort Wayne, Indian, on the corner of State and Hobson.
I've been to Paris, London, New York City, all over the US, Ireland, Germany and more, and I can say - with absolute certainty - that the best croissant in the world is right here in Indiana, and I'm not just saying that because I'm full and happy. Take the best croissant you've ever had, turn it up to eleven and you still wont be close to the flavor. I can still taste in on my lips and it brings me fond memories. It was so good that a light shone down from the heavens and the angels of mercy and baked goods came down from their lofty seats and sang to me, and the song they sang was of the wonderful food to be found all around me.

Ok, it might not have been that dramatic, but I did have an epiphany. For all the moaning and wailing I hear about the supposed lack of culture in the Midwest, we really do have some spectacular food. Off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen eateries that rival just about anything I've had abroad, but it isn't the restaurants that make our food great, its the ingredients.
For a city as small as Fort Wayne, we have an absurd number of specialty grocery stores. We have Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese, Thai, Mexican, Caribbean, Croatian, Greek, and Halal grocery stores, not to mention Georges International Grocery, the co-op or the farmers markets. If you are a home chef, this is the place to be. You can find local produce for at least 6 months of the year, and we have bakeries, breweries, coffee roasters, tea importers, fish mongers, butchers (Jameson's Meats, I love you) and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Take a drive out in the country and you will find farm stands selling anything you want and more (more being zucchini. No matter how many ways you find to use zucchini, you will always have too much.), pick-your-own orchards, Amish stores, back-woods moonshine distilleries, amateur taxidermists, survivalist militia, men that think you have a pretty mouth... what was I talking about? Right, food. Well if you want to avoid all that; the ground is fertile and growing your own food is no problem at all.
So the next time I hear you say that there isn't anything good to eat in this town I will hit you repeatedly with a spoon until you realize that not having anything good to eat is nobody's fault but your own.

Make food that looks like food.

When I was a kid my parents took me to a seafood restaurant and ordered something called “calamari.” Knowing I would never eat it if I knew what calamari meant (“and an order of the fish-sticks for the little one,” oh my how things change) they simply dipped a deep fried chunk of calamari in marinara sauce and put it in the vicinity of my face. When I bit into that rubbery ring of awesome, my brain exploded. “What did you call this?” I asked, “calamari,” my mom said, but I was not to be fooled, “what IS calamari?” I asked “...” pause, “squid.”

I don't know when I learned the phrase “fuck it” but that's exactly the thought that went through my 8 year-old, cephalopod-addled mind, and I finished half the plate.

Fast forward seventeen years and there isn't much food I wont try - Offal? Been there, ate that. Escargot? One of my favorites. Snapping turtle? It ate one of my fingers, but I got my revenge. Goat anus? Can I get that with hot sauce? Fugu? Gimme! You know that's poison right? Stab the adrenalin needle into my heart and lets do this! - so it pisses me off when Michelin-bedazzled chefs serve things that look like this:

What are you trying to hide? Where is my food? Is this food? Out of all those dishes I can only definitively identify three things as edible. It all looks like modern art.

I hate modern art.

You can take this with a grain of salt. Maybe I'm just bitching because I'm poor and I doubt if I will ever get the chance to eat even one of those dishes, which I am sure are delicious beyond my reckoning. But I still cant help but wonder; how much of that Lego brick in the middle is actual food, and how much is just the chef's gentleman gravy? And the same goes for the pile of vomit in the bottom left corner. When I sit down to a plate of food I want a plate of food. I don't want this:

What the hell is that?

My point is this; I'm grateful to my parents for concealing the exact nature of a dish which has become one of my favorite comfort foods, but I trust my parents. I know my parents would never intentionally feed me something that would harm me in anyway. I'm not so trusting of everyone else. For all I know, that thing next to the Lego brick is made of people.

And another thing! Don't think that giving these dishes humble names makes them less pretentious. You could call it “pretty good fish on a plate” but if it came to me like that I would still call you an asshole. And while we're on the subject; Micro Gastronomy. Either make me a cheese burger or kill yourself. I am so not interested in a foam made from whale blubber adorning a sponge made from gunk you scraped off the bathroom floor. Get a real job. And speaking of people who need real jobs; sommeliers. Don't think you're a better person just because you get to look disapprovingly at me over a wine list. From where I'm sitting, your groin is at perfect punching height. And don't think I can be fooled into pretending I know anything about wine. I know your game, you manipulative little ferret. You get middle aged dentists to buy the third most expensive wine on your list when you say, conspiratorially, “honestly, sir, it is a seriously undervalued vintage.” And then smile inwardly when he sniffs the cork of your fetid grape rot and says “oh yes, very good.” And I bet you can barely contain your laughter after you pour the first glass, and he holds it up to his nose, and he breathes deep its noxious aroma. And I can see the malicious glint in your eye as he sips gingerly the pool of filth from the bowels of hell, and swirls it thoroughly around his flawless teeth. And I know you have to change your pants after the game is through, and your victory announced when he says “yes, we'll have this one.” Well I wont be fooled! I'm going to finish my beer and then I'm going to FEED YOU THE BOTTLE! AND I WILL LAUGH AS YOU CHOKE ON- HEY! WHATS GOING ON?! I'M NOT DONE YET! … aw... this is bullshit.

Image credit; I stole the top one from Wikipedia, the bottom one is from the brilliant Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video (Second Attempt)

I would like to order the cock-meat sandwich... for the table next to me.

I love food. Obviously I do, I write a blog about it, but I hate restaurants. One of the biggest things I hate about restaurants is... everyone else in them. I've worked in restaurants - in the front and back of the house - for years, and the thing that finally drove me out was the customer. I'm not talking about bad tippers, or mildly rude jerkfaces. I'm talking about creatures that I can barely stand to call human. Women who toast their infidelities. Men who disdain the qualities of women in the company of men, but whisper sweet sugar in their ears in mixed company. People who tell the kind of racist jokes that make you ashamed just for hearing them.

I had an experience tonight that reminded me of those dark days behind the bar; listening to whatever opinion blew through the door, holding my tongue and drowning my hatred with strong drink nightly. some people have no concept of what appropriate conversation is, and the people sitting at the table next to me needed to be reminded. I am not, by nature, a violent man, but this individual was beginning to say things that were very offensive to myself and my friends, and just as I was going to unleash the anger - built up over years of impotently listening as people spouted the kind of hatred and bigotry that would make Adolf Hitler say "I think that may be going a bit far."  - and kick seven shades of shit out of him, my friend had an idea.

"there should be a sandwich..."

... A chicken sandwich that you can only order for the table adjacent to you. A dish that says in no uncertain terms - "you are a complete and utter dick-head." A Cock-Meat Sandwich. Nothing fancy, no sauces, no garnish - they don't deserve it - just cock meat in a bun. When the waiter or waitress serves it he or she should say politely "your Cock-Meat Sandwich, sir, complements of the house."

So the next time you are sitting in your favorite restaurant explaining how you are better than anyone of a different race, religion, gender, nationality or political party, you may receive, quite unexpectedly, a hot, steaming, juicy Cock-Meat Sandwich. If they don't serve that at your favorite restaurant; the Knuckle Sandwich is always on the menu.

Chicken part 2: Electric Coo-Coo-Katchoo

Last post I went on a bit of a rant about boneless skinless chicken breast, and had some very choice words for several daytime food network hosts. Well I am happy to say that the rant continues!

If you are buying boneless skinless chicken breasts then you are basically saying that you don't love your family, and rather than spend money on them you would like to flush it all down the toilet.

I buy whole chicken at 89 cents per pound at the grocery store. Even if you buy bone-in, skin on-thighs, it will cost you nearly twice as much, boneless skinless breasts cost over 3 times as much, and that's the store brand! The brand name “premium” chicken tenders cost $5.39 per pound, that's six times as much!

I cook an - approximately - 5lb chicken once a week. That works out to between $4 and $5 ever week, so lets say (for simplicity) $4.50 times 52 weeks in a year and that works out to an annual chicken budget of $234.00. If I was cooking the “premium” brand chicken tenders that works out to $1401.40 per year; and if I'm going to spend that much on meat, I'm going to upgrade to something that goes “moo.”

Maybe you don't want to cook your chicken whole, I don't blame you. Cooking a chicken whole does yield (in my opinion) the best flavor, however it does take a fairly long time and can be frustrating. You obviously want to save money, but you might want to save some time as well. Here is the solution; even if you don't cook whole, always buy whole.

And prepare to get your hands dirty.

To begin dismantling your chicken; grasp the drumstick firmly in your hand and begin to cut the skin connecting the thigh to the rest of the carcass. Once you have done this, put your hands underneath the hips and feel for the joint connecting the leg. Push upward on the joint while pulling downward on the leg until you hear a sickening “pop!” and then you may proceed to cut the leg away from the body. Repeat on the other side.

Once your bird looks like this, turn your attention to the wings. Similar procedure; just pop them out of joint and cut them away, no need to be super precise.

Now that the bird looks like this, turn your attention to a set of kitchen shears and – if you are disturbed by the sounds of bones cracking – some ear plugs, because this is the part where it goes a bit Dexter. Use your shears to cut from the back of the ribs, up to the wish-bone, underneath the wing-joint. Once the breasts are separated from the spine, use the shears again to cut down the keel bone and when you are done it should look like this:

Hungry yet?

Good. Because I want to take my money saving point even farther. I bought this chicken and enough vegetables to make a meal for just over $12, but I'm not going to make a meal out of it. I'm going to make 3.

First I seared and roasted the chicken, like this:

Or like this if you're not into food that looks like a spider:

And we ate both legs and half a breast. So the next day, I took the spine and both wings to make stock, which looks like this:

(Tip for making stock; you could make 2 quarts of stock out of one chicken spine and 2 wings and a handful of vegetables, OR you could walk away to go help a friend with a project, get horribly injured, pack your wound with cayenne pepper and go to Redimed; where you will spend several hours waiting to be treated in a supply closet by people who don't understand how health insurance works only to come home -hours later- to find 1 quart of perfect, clear, rich, beautifully reduced chicken stock. Either way, its cool.)

Finally, the day after that, I made soup using everything that was left of the chicken and vegetables I bought 3 days previously.

That soup will make 4 meals for me, but I didn't want to brag and say I could make 5 meals for $12, so I'll eat 2 servings and freeze the rest for a time when I'm hungry and lazy and not desperate to make content for my food blog.

Join us next week when we save even more money by slaughtering our own chicken!

TL;DNR? Have it shouted at you on Twitter.
Image Credit: good pictures by Thomas Seabold and Aisha Malik-Seabold, bad pictures by Colin Gray.

Chicken OR: why I hate the Food Network

If you watch cable in the middle of the day - and you've seen every episode of every Star Trek series on Spike TV, you know every answer on every rerun of Jeopardy and the soaps have strangled all but the last glimmer of hope from your life - you are probably going to find yourself watching the Food Network. And if you are watching the Food Network in the middle of the day, you are going to start getting some very bad ideas regarding chicken.

If you mixed yourself a strong cocktail, and took a drink every time some bleach-blond, suburbanite, wanna-be chef said “boneless, skinless chicken breast,” you would be dead from alcohol poisoning before Rachel Ray got the chance to smother you with American cheese and blandness. And that would still be better than getting off the couch, brushing the Cheeto dust from your bathrobe and actually cooking a boneless, skinless chicken breast in your non-stick pan with a tablespoon of E.V.O.O. With just a pinch of salt and a little freshly ground black pepper to make you go “hmm” and a pint of your own tears born from the pain and misery of your horrible, lonely existence.

 

“What's wrong with boneless skinless chicken breast?” You might ask, “chicken is chicken, right?” If you are asking questions like this, reading food blogs might not be for you. You may go back to enjoying your mechanically separated, extrusion-molded, deep-fried not-chicken snack from McDonald’s and let the grown-ups talk.

Chicken is not just chicken. What I mean to say is that each cut of chicken – the legs, the breasts, the wings and the offal – have a distinct, but harmonious flavor. The thighs and drumsticks, being the darkest pieces, have the strongest flavor. The wings are milder, but have an excellent flavor because of their higher fat content. Finally, the breast - the most fought-over cut in many families - is prized for it's moisture and subtle, delicate flavor, and therein lies the problem. The moment you overcook your chicken breast it's game over, you might as well make chicken jerky.

If you're one of those people who likes to eat “exotic” meat and then say “why, this tastes just like chicken!” Then chances are you have been eating over-cooked, bone-dry, skinless, boneless chicken breast for your entire life, and you don't actually know what chicken tastes like. Let me help you find out.

Most chefs will extoll the virtues of cooking your chicken whole, and I wouldn't dare to argue with them. Indeed, cooking a chicken whole requires almost as little thought and effort as buying a rotisserie chicken at the super market, and the result is infinitely better. Start by preheating your oven (almost any temperature between 350 and 450 will do). Next, tie the ends of the drumsticks together with cotton twine, and fold the tips of the wings under the breast (you can also tie the wings to the rest of the bird with a big loop of twine, but I've never seen the point). Last, put your bird in a heavy lidded roasting pan (or large casserole), surround it with aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery and onions spring to mind) season with salt, pepper, herbs and spices (there are about a billion ways to do this, I'll get to some of them later) and throw it in the oven. Cook until done. I'm not going to tell you when that is, but according to the USDA; chicken is safe to eat at 165 degrees F, and that wont be dry if your roasting pan has a nice, heavy lid. If you want an exact time when your chicken will be done, every cook book I own has a cooking time based on weight, and they are all wrong. Use some common sense; This isn't a 30 minute meal. Check the meat after an hour, it wont be done but it will tell you when you need to start working on your side-dishes.

Tune in next time and learn about the economics of buying whole chicken.

TL;DNR?Get the Readers Digest version at Twitter.

Soup of the Day: Whiskey.

What you need:
1 glass
1 hand-full ice
whiskey to taste.

A cold soup for any occasion, and it's practically made for you, this semi-homemade meal will pair with almost any entree.

Now that you've saved some effort on the appetizer, lets think about a main course that will really satisfy. A few months ago I had occasion to entertain, so I challenged my friends to feast upon the cute and fluffy and got my hands on two rabbits. if you cant find rabbit (or similar cute, fluffy mammal), or have some problem with eating something adorable (no one will blame you... probably) then the leg quarters of a roaster, or stewing chicken would substitute well.

If you want to eat soon (maybe you only want 2 second helpings of soup) then preheat your oven to 375F. If you want a more tender rabbit, or you want to take your time to enjoy your soup (or aren't interested in left-overs) then preheat to 275 and place your cast iron frying pan on a hot burner.

You don't have a cast  iron frying pan? Get out. No, seriously, I don't even want to look at you. Call your grandmother, tell her that you're sorry for studying fine art and being such a disappointment, and ask her if she has an old cast iron pan you could borrow.

Back yet? Okay, lets get started. Put your cast iron pan on the burner and pour in enough olive oil to coat the bottom. While it is heating, rub your rabbit quarters with good salt, pepper, garlic and herbs (any herbs that work well with poultry will do, try chives and rosemary). Once the pan is hot, sear your rabbit quarters on one side, then flip them over and deglaze the pan with one and a quarter cup good vinegar, and two cups water (I used a raspberry white balsamic, which is about 7% acidity, if you use a lower acid vinegar then adjust your ratio accordingly).

Cover your pan and chuck it in the oven. If you set your oven to 375, then check your rabbit after 20 minutes. If you set the oven to 275 then let it cook low and slow for a couple hours and enjoy your soup, but it should be good to eat after an hour and twenty minutes.

it should look something like this:

especially if you cooked it with carrots and celery... I told you to do that right?

This is some good soup.

anyway, it looks like this on a plate with rye bread:

Enjoy with soup.


This recipe was developed with the help of my friend, Executive Chef Will Passino, of J.K. O'Donnell's Irish Ale House, Fort Wayne, IN.