RogueChef
“It IS all about the TASTE”
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Meatless Monday – Smashed Roasted Reds
While in the farmer’s market this weekend, I happened upon a table of new (small) red potatoes. Once again these are memories from my youth. Usually boiled and prepped in a milk sauce, these are truly good, but I want a bit more flavor, and a lot more texture.
Suppose I dice / boil them in a veggie stock, and roast garlic, onions, perhaps a carrot or two, and then mash with a fresh cream, to form a a dish similar to roasted bubble and squeak. But just so people do not think I’ve gone totally health nut, I’ll grate Parmesan cheese over and finish with a drizzle melted butter.
A little trick I picked up on my last trip to the U.K, was to roast a medley of vegetables, and then mashed them with potatoes for a variety of textures and tastes. This will make a side dish that will compete with the main course for the dinner’s attention, they are just that good.
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Grilled HedgeHogs
No, not real hedgehogs, but hedgehog potatoes. These potatoes are sliced crosswise like hard-boiled eggs, but without quite cutting them apart, so they fan out when cooked.
We will reinforce the fanning, by inserting slices of red onion and bacon into the slits. The slow indirect cooking, will soften the interior of the potatoes, crisp the outside, (see my post on ultimate baked potatoes), the onions will caramelize and add a sweetness, and the bacon … Well, bacon makes everything taste good. For an extra flavor boost I’ll dash on some herbes de provence, and a dash of salt.
As said prior :
Potato Secret #1
Choose your potato wisely! In baking a potato, it is best to use starchy potatoes. These tubers are white and starchy and do not have a sweet or strong taste to them.- They should be firm
- They should be smooth skinned and free of sprouts.
- Use medium-sized potatoes
Potato Secret #2
Scrub, scrub, scrub… Make sure the potato is clean, as with all vegetables, potatoes grow in the ground and as such are quite dirty. (Besides grit between the teeth adds sooo much to the meal…)Potato Secret #3
Oil them there spuds… Use oil (canola or olive oil). Oil your potatoes generously by tossing in a bowl with several tablespoons of oil in it. They should be shiny, but not dripping wet.Potato Secret #4
Salt, Kosher salt. Lightly coat the oiled potato with salt.Potato Secret #6
Preheat the Grill! Preheat the oven to a temperature of 400 degrees. (Indirect heat with the hood closed) Your potatoes should be ready in 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Deposit the potatoes directly on the rack. A potato is fully cooked when its internal temperature reaches 99 °C (210 °F) -
Buffalo Chicken Tenders
It’s hot, it’s muggy, and I really do not want to stand over the stove.. Now tossing stuff into the fryalator is quite a different thing. I’ve written before about Chicken Rib Meat, and I have this fondness for buffalo wings, but HATE the bones…
Maybe chicken breast cut into tenders, seasoned, fried and, finished in a buffalo style..
Background
A Buffalo wing, hot wing, chicken wing or wing is a chicken wing section (drumette or flat) that is traditionally fried unbreaded and then coated in sauce. Classic Buffalo-style chicken wing sauce is composed of a vinegar-based cayenne pepper, hot sauce and butter. Buffalo wings are traditionally served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing.
Cayenne pepper hot sauce and melted butter or margarine are the basis of the sauce. Buffalo wing sauce can be made with a variable amount of heat/spiciness, with the names of these sauces generally corresponding to the level of heat, such as mild, medium, or hot. Typically, the wings are deep-fried (although they are sometimes grilled or baked), drained, placed in a bowl with the sauce, tightly covered, and shaken until the wings are evenly coated. Plain wings can also be served.
In most cases, each contains the same base sauce but varies in the amount of butter or margarine and hot sauce used. Wings can also be served dry with the sauce on the side.
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Hamburglery in the Second Degree
There are few dishes as versatile as the hamburger and it has made it’s way into trendy restaurants under the guise of gourmet food. These once noble burgers are showing up on menus pimped out with blue cheese dressing, pineapple, chilies, goat cheese, caviar, mushrooms and pesto.
The real secret to ascending above the mediocrity of the masses, and delivering a truly divine burger is the same secret as all true gourmet dishes. Fresh, Simple, Splendid.
Use the freshest ingredients, prepare them simply, for a splendid experience.
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Ultimate Grilled Cheese
It’s much cooler upstate, but the several hours long trek to get there and then the inevitable traffic jam to get to the grocery store and then to my house on the hill has left me rather ravenous.
Food is called for and it is needed quickly, but I just refuse to do one more set of hot dogs on the grill, I want something with a bit more taste, almost like comfort food.
Classic comfort food is grilled cheese and soup, I’ll pass the soup today, but a good grilled cheese sandwich is a work of art.
Considering the construction of a perfect grilled cheese, I turn to my trusty chill box, where I found sour dough bread, Munster cheese, bacon, Prosciutto, bacon drippings, pickles, and of course butter… This looks like heart attack al la grilled cheese…
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Croque Madam, Ham and Cheese Sandwich with Egg
A lovely bistro style brunch sandwich.. Perfect to serve on a lazy weekend morning…. (like we ever have any of those, but this is still great as late morning dish to delight my wife)
According to About.com the word croque comes from the verb croquer or “to crunch”. So a Croque-Monsieur roughly translates to “Mister Crunchy”. The feminine version, a “Croque Madam”, includes a fried egg. This classic French bistro sandwich is a great way to use up leftover ham.
In this I use focaccia for my bread as it already has a mixture of cheese and herbs, I thin sliced / shaved some ham, sliced some Gruyère, and made a basic béchamel sauce. (Read the latter as a sawmill gravy minus the sausage).
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Chili (Meat) Enchiladas
As I have spoken prior :It seems to have decided to become early spring / late fall again, windy, rainy, cool / cold. In short, glorious weather for pneumonia, which really is just not my cup of tea.
All that and my recent medical exploits that have left me dry, drained, and damaged, it is time to fight back with things to build the blood, fill the gut, and add a fire to the eye, lead to the pencil and a purpose to the step ..
Now, what if I took some of that wonderful texas red, rolled it up in a corn or flour tortilla with a bit of cheese and some onion, then baked bunch of them off in our chili gravy..
Chili gravy is a cross-breed of flour-based gravy and chile sauce. It’s a smooth and silky substance, with lots of cumin, smoky chiles and pungent garlic. It’s not horribly hot, but it does have flavor. Traditionally, there’s no meat in chili gravy—it’s just fat, flour, chicken broth and spices. I’ve gone round and round trying to put this together, I had to call my sister to get my mothers recipe.
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Texas Red – Chili
It seems to have decided to become early spring / late fall again, windy, rainy, cool / cold. In short, glorious weather for pneumonia, which really is just not my cup of tea.
All that and my recent medical exploits that have left me dry, drained, and damaged, it is time to fight back with things to build the blood, fill the gut, and add a fire to the eye, lead to the pencil and a purpose to the step ..
From way back in my youth, these are the days my mother made chili, or Texas Red, no beans, no tomatoes, no mushrooms, no tofu, absolutely nothing fancy, just beef, stock, Allium, and capsicums, and perhaps some cumin, oregano, salt, pepper and other trace element style spices. (Alliums are the onion family, onion, garlic, etc, and capsicums are peppers.)
To quote a description:
Texas red if it walks the thin line just this side of indigestibility: damning the mouth that eats it and defying the stomach to digest it, the ingredients are hardly willing to lie in the same pot together.
If one looks at all the legends of how chili was discovered, there is one thing in common…. ABJECT POVERTY, so the meat involved is not going to be the best, but since it will be close to the horn or the hoof, I am sure it will have flavor beyond compare, and collagen beyond believe. (And this is a good thing….)
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