RogueChef

Grilled Pineapple

Pineapple is basically made up of water and sugar and by grilling it you can concentrate the flavors by reducing the water and caramelizing the natural sugars, making it perfect for the grill.

Preparation is very simple, just sliced fruit, water, and butter to make the most basic grilled fruit as an appetizer, main course, side dish, or dessert.

A grilled fruit kabob can make an excellent side dish to chicken, pork or seafood. Rings of grilled pineapple stacked together can make a wonderful presentation for ice creams. Simple stonefruit, (peaches, nectarines, plums), split, pitted, and grilled, then stuffed with berries, (strawberry, blueberry, rasberry) or cherries are a desert by them selves. Peaches grilled with pork and tarragon become much more than the sum of the parts, the play of sweet, sour, bitter, salty mixed with the smokiness from the grill transcends all expectations

In the gallery shown here, I have a pineapple, that I have peeled and macerated in bourbon and spices, it is then grilled on a extremely hot griddle with butter. A shot of bourbon is added to flambe, (TAKE EXTRA CARE HERE), and produce a crisp glaze on the fruit.

It is then cored, sliced and served over frozen yogurt, for a no added sugar desert.

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Meatless Monday – Gourmet Pizza

As I have spoken prior:

Some basic ideas, (stolen from may people and paraphrased), that I am sure will drive everyone crazy…

……..

Weekly:

• One day meatless

No, I’ve not gone total treehugger, but dropping the meat consumption by 15% (going meatless once a week) may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.

Beans, peas, lentils, nuts and seeds contain little to no saturated fats. Reducing your intake of saturated fats can help keep your cholesterol low and reduce your risk of heart disease. A plant-based diet is a great source of fiber, which is absent in animal products.

Foods rich in fiber make you feel full with fewer calories, resulting in lower calorie intake and less overeating. On average, Americans get less than half the recommended daily quantity of fiber. Consuming dry beans or peas results in higher intakes of fiber, protein, folate, zinc, iron and magnesium with lower intakes of saturated fat and total fat.

So why not join the movement, it really has little or no impact on your tastebuds, had a great impact on your weight, which will be compensated for by the increase of money in your wallet.

From gourmet pizza, to a Pasta Primavea, to an mid eastern mezza, to a large number of Indian dishes, the options to have a hearty, tasty meal without animal fat are boundless.

Today I’ll use a whole wheat flour for the crust, some nice plum tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, aged cheddar, sea salt, some fresh garlic, fresh basil, oregano, parsley.

Plus my massive 3/4″ think pizza stones, one on a rack at the top of the oven, and one resting on some terra cotta saucers at the bottom of the oven. A good stone, properly heated is very key to a crisp crust, and a well browned toppings.

I’ll start by preheating the oven to it’s max, and let it sit there warming the stones, while I make the pizza dough.

If you’ve ever made French bread at home, you’ve made pizza dough. Traditional, pizza dough in Italy contains nothing but flour, salt, water, and yeast.

This dough contains a few more ingredients, fat in the guise of olive oil is added to make the dough more supple, (and to help satisfy the craving my craving for fat) and honey is added to feed the yeast and give the bread a touch of sweetness. I like a simple, versatile pizza dough recipe for home baking. After mastering this simple dough, I can feel free to experiment with extra add ins.

NOTE: A gallery is to be appended later tonight.

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Early Spring Salad – Asian Fusion Slaw

As spoken prior :

As I am in the north today, and will be preparing dinner for the Lady of my house, I am looking for different items to produce for her pleasure. As I have stated prior, my diet needs to be changed a bit, and I will go Asian this weekend say a nice sushi / sashimi (actually sashimi is a kind of sushi), dinner menu. A soup, a salad, some fish, either raw or grilled, and a rice dish.

I’ll review the salad, I had considered a more traditional lettuce salad, with maybe a thai style dressing of ginger, orange, sesame, and rice vinegar, but I am always so disappointed with the end result. Then I considered my prior post of :

As an example a Vietnamese cole slaw with shredded chicken, say 2 cups of shredded bok choy as the slaw and 1 skinless chicken breast dry roasted and shredded into it

So why not have a Asian fusion slaw. The lowly, plain, boring cabbage gets rave reviews from the world of nutritionists. Cabbage is relatively cheap yet one of the richest when it comes to protective vitamins. One cup of cabbage contains only around 15 calories and is rich in the following:

• Vitamin A: responsible for the protection of your skin and eyes.
• Vitamin C: an all important anti-oxidant and helps the mitochondria to burn fat.
• Vitamin E: a fat soluble anti-oxidant which plays a role in skin integrity.
• Vitamin B: helps maintain integrity of nerve endings and boosts energy metabolism.

The health benefits of cabbage, which also plays a role in the inhibition of infections and ulcers, are a proven fact. Cabbage extracts have been proven to kill certain viruses and bacteria in the laboratory setting. Cabbage boosts the immune system’s ability to produce more antibodies. Cabbage provides high levels of iron and sulfur, minerals that work in part as cleansing agents for the digestive system.

I’ll take nappa cabbage, roasted red peppers, red onion, carrot, along with a dressing of high pulp orange juice, soy sauce, fresh ground ginger, finely minced garlic, sesame oil, brown sugar, and rice vinegar, toss all to coat and rest in the fridge to meld flavors for at least an hour.

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Early Spring Soup – Basic Miso

As I am headed north today, and will be preparing dinner for the Lady of my house, I am looking for different items to produce for her pleasure. As I have stated prior, my diet needs to be changed a bit, and I will go Asian this weekend say a nice sushi / sashimi (actually sashimi is a kind of sushi), dinner menu. A soup, a salad, some fish, either raw or grilled, and a rice dish.

Let’s look at the soup, the tradition is Miso soup. A dashi broth, some miso paste, with seaweed, some tofu and scallions. Perhaps a rogue chef twist with a hint of ginger, garlic and chili’s.

The most common form of dashi is a simple broth or stock made by boiling edible seaweed and shavings of dried tuna and then straining. Fresh dashi is rare today, even in Japan. Most people now use granulated or liquid instant substitutes. Other kinds of dashi stock are made by soaking kelp, and shittake in water for many hours or by heating them in water nearly to boiling and straining.

Dashi powder is also available at stores. It’s quick to use dashi powder to make dashi stock. Usually, ~1 tsp of dashi powder is used for 3 to 5 cups of water. Follow the instructions in the packages. Dashi powder does include salt, so be forewarned and prepare to adjust the flavor of dishes as needed.

I’ll consult the packages, (salt, salt, salt) and find a prepared or instant dashi broth and then soak some shittake mushrooms in that to make my broth.

Miso is a Japanese seasoning produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, the most typical miso being made with soy. The result is a thick paste used for sauces and spreads, pickling vegetables or meats, and mixing with dashi soup stock to serve as miso, a Japanese culinary staple. High in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals, miso played an important nutritional role in feudal Japan. Miso is still very widely used in Japan, both in traditional and modern cooking, and has been gaining world-wide interest.

Miso is typically salty, but its flavor and aroma depend on various factors in the ingredients and fermentation process. Different varieties of miso have been described as salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savory, and there is an extremely wide variety of miso available.

The most common flavor categories of miso are:

• Shiromiso, “white miso”
• Akamiso, “red miso”
• Awasemiso, “mixed miso”

Miso typically comes as a paste in a sealed container requiring refrigeration after opening. Natural miso (similar to yogurt) is a living food containing many beneficial microorganisms which can be killed by over-cooking. It is recommended for miso to be added to soups or other foods being prepared just before they are removed from the heat, or better use miso without any cooking.

This leads to a popular practice is to only add miso to foods that have cooled in order to preserve cultures in miso. Nonetheless miso and soy foods play a large role in the Japanese diet and many cooked miso dishes are popularly consumed.

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Eat Sh*t and Die…

Image replaced due to 4 fat women threatening to sit on me

Yet another of my associates succumbs to the grips of the medical profession. So many syndromes, diseases, conditions, cancers, etc, etc, etc. The real pity is that a goodly number of these can be traced back to what one of other foodies (Ren over at EdibleAria), calls the Standard American Diet, or SAD for short.

I am not as deep into this as a lot of people, or in as deep as I should be, I do tend towards fresh food, cooked at the lair, with a minimum of prepared food. Fresh meats, fresh veggies, cereals and grains, all prepared in fairly simple ways. But then again I ALWAYS have the roguechef twist…

I’ve rambled on about this before, in my posts about controlling sodium, but I need to start laying out some ways to work tasty healthy food into the diet of the denizens. I suppose the real galvanizing event was watching one of the lair, who has diabetes and high blood pressure, produce a can of prepared pasta crap by “famous” chief with an Italian / french name, and have that for dinner, turning down a Chicken stew over pasta meal.

My concept cuisine would be a Asian / Mediterranean fusion with a bit of vegan thrown in. If we look at both Asian and Mediterranean cuisines, we find that meat is a flavor or a side dish. ~50% of the dishes are vegetarian or very close to it, and another %25 use meat, not as a main course but as a flavor boost to the main dish. (I do speak of authentic dishes, not AmerAsian or some such fusion.) As an example a Vietnamese cole slaw with shredded chicken, say 2 cups of shredded bok choy as the slaw and 1 skinless chicken breast dry roasted and shredded into it. Or perhaps a Arabic Mezze of humus, baba ganoush, pita, and a small grilled kabob.

As I said “Eat Sh*t and Die…”
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