Quick n' Dirty Kung Pao Chicken

I threw this together as a part of my week-long Chicken Experiment (inspired by this blog): roast a chicken on Sunday, and then make cheap, experimental meals throughout the week.

I never made kung pao chicken before, so I started with a roux, some oil and butter, and onions and garlic. I added a tablespoon of peanut butter, about a teaspoon of sugar, and a few pinches of kosher salt. Then I splashed in some soy sauce, added a cup of water, reduced, then tossed in the chicken and vegetables. It came out pretty well.

Pseudo-Pulled-Pork BBQ Sandwiches!

Pseudo-Pulled-Pork BBQ Sandwiches, starring Spaghetti Squash

File this under my growing list of "interesting things to make with squash." Spaghetti squash has a stringy consistency and sweet, subtle flavor that makes it a nice substitute for pork for all you vegans and followers of Abrahamic faiths.

Here's what you need to do:

* Get yourself a normal sized spaghetti squash, pretty easy to find these
days at your local supermarket.
* You'll need an onion, either an entire yellow onion or half of one,
depending on the size, chopped.
* A couple of cloves of garlic.
* Salt and pepper, to taste.
* Some potato buns, or the bread of your choice.
* Dill pickles!
* And then, the barbeque sauce of your choice. I used Hot n' Spicy Bill Johnson's Big Apple Bar-B-Que Sauce, a long-time local favorite, but you can feel free to substitute or make your own.

First, the squash.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and slice the spaghetti squash in half, lengthwise. De-seed, pull out the guts, and cover each half in oil. Cover a baking pan in oil as well. Put the two halves in the oven and roast for about 45 minutes, flipping once. Pull out of the oven and peel off the skin. The water in the squash should have dried up, leaving the squash loose and stringy and easy to peel apart. Peel off the squashy spaghetti strands and put them on a plate. (Roast the seeds as a snack, if you feel so inclined.)

Now, heat up a saute pan to medium and pour a tablespoon of oil. Toss the diced onions in a saute pan and cook until transparent, about 2-3 minutes. Toss in the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Now mix in the spaghetti squash and turn the heat down to about 3. Pour in about 3-4 tablespoons of barbeque sauce. Cover and simmer, mixing occasionally, adding salt and pepper, for about 20 minutes.

Then just pile the squash on your buns and eat! Put some dill pickle slices on top. Serves 6-8.

Great Moments in Sandwiches vol. IV

Bacon spam on rustic sourdough with mustard greens, sea salt, cracked pepper, egg over easy, onions, and jalapenos.

Bacon-wrapped Matzoh Balls

A friend tipped me off to this sacril-icious culinary fad. Former Top Chef Ilan Hall is an advocate:

“The bacon-wrapped matzah ball thing was a little bit of a joke — a tongue-in-cheek thing I did for a friend’s birthday party in New York,” said the loquacious chef, sporting his signature dark-rimmed glasses as he sat at the restaurant’s wooden communal table, his design. “He was a fellow Jew and not kosher at all, and I thought it would be kind of funny to do. I tried it and loved it. It came out really nice. Pork fat does something magical to matzah meal.”

I am no stranger to mixing the sacred and the profane. At this year's seder, an intrepid guest proposed the open-faced bacon matzoh sandwich which turned out quite well:

Winter Green Season Is Fast Approaching!

...and the best thing I can say about it is that many delicious sandwiches shall be made.

Pictures of said sandwiches shall follow.

But otherwise, I will struggle once again with the difficult task of preparing the bushels of greens I will receive from my CSA share. Ideas, tips, throw 'em my way.

Great Moments in Sandwiches, Vol. III

Open-faced whitefish BLT with Lake Superior whitefish, toasted baguette, sweet potato chips, and homemade tartar sauce. From the lunch menu at Harvest Restaurant in Oro Valley. Mini-review to follow.

Great Moments in Sandwiches Vol. II

Jalapeno bacon, lettuce, and tomato with ancho chili sauce on foccacia. Found at the Bisbee Coffee Company, which also makes excellent soup.

Great Moments in Sandwiches

Ham, arugula, tomato, fried egg, salt, and pepper on sourdough. It's the simple additions that enhance a sandwich, I think, like good greens and pepper. No need for heavy condiments.

Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Soup

I put this together from some odds and ends in the refrigerator, including the red peppers I acquired in Bisbee.

1 red pepper, chopped
1-2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 white onion, chopped
1 butternut squash, peeled and roasted
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. oil
1 tsp. paprika
salt and pepper
chopped parsley or cilantro

Roast the butternut squash at 375 degrees, peel, and chop into cubes. Set aside. Pour the oil into a large saucepan and turn heat to medium. Throw in the onions, carrots, and celery and sweat them for a few minutes. Add the butternut squash and the paprika and cook for another few minutes. Add the chicken stock and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the red pepper, milk, and butter, cover, and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Scoop the vegetables into a blender and puree. Return to the saucepan and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately and garnish with parsley or cilantro.

Secret Aardvark

My sister surprised me with this hot sauce. It's fucking awesome.

I love habanero sauces. But one of the problems with habanero is that, as good as it is, it's hard to shovel down large quantities without suffering extreme consequences to one's immediate well-being. But Secret Aardvark isn't like that. It's got a mean kick, but it's light enough so you can apply it liberally to your food without fear of, say, negative bowel implications. Check it out.

Squash Discoveries in Bisbee

Here's the Bisbee Food Co-Op, a wonderful grocery just south of the Old Town. If you're passing through Bisbee, you can find it by following the Route 80 South sign (to Douglas), on your right past the old mine. If you hit the roundabout, you went too far.

There you'll find some excellent, cheap produce, much of it locally grown in nearby Willcox. I picked up some great red bell peppers for $1.79/lb, as well as this little gem:

That's a roasted delicata squash stuffed with wild rice, scallions, roasted red bell peppers, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and more. It tasted as good as it looks: fresh and sweet, with just a hint of savoriness for balance. It's given me a great idea for the massive cushaw squash sitting on my kitchen table.

Shrimp Toast

This was Christmas Eve dinner at Cafe Pacific, my favorite Chinese place in Tucson. Near as I can tell, Cafe Pacific is run by two people, and they run it like clockwork. This is one of their unique concoctions, a delightful appetizer that combines two of my favorite things into one delicious, tasty morsel. It is a fusion of fish and bread that looks both adorable on the place and yet slightly unnatural, like a specially bred fish you might find in Willy Wonka's artificial sea.



om nom nom nom

CSA Winter Blues

If you're considering joining a community supported agriculture (CSA) group, here's a tip: don't join in the winter. That's because winter is green season. As usual, I've been inundated with tokyo bekana, bok choy, kale, rapini, turnip greens, kolrabi greens, and every other type of green you can imagine. If you're new to CSA cooking, you'll hate it because if you're like most people, you won't know what to do with all that green, it'll go to waste, you'll feel guilty, and cancel your CSA membership next quarter. I've been doing it for years and I'm still learning how to cook all this stuff. But in the spirit of helpfulness, I will be experimenting and posting recipes that use these greens in the hopes that others will get more out of their CSA experience.

Pad Thai with Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti Squash and I still aren't friendly, but we're speaking. I tried this out tonight and it tasted pretty good. Give it a whirl next time you find yourself staring at one of these peculiar cylindrical plants.

one half spaghetti squash, roasted and peeled (see below)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, diced and chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. ginger
1 tbsp. red pepper
1 tsp. lime juice
a few sprigs of cilantro (optional)
1/2-1/4 lb. chicken (or miscellaneous chopped vegetables)
salt, to taste

To prepare the spaghetti squash, slice it in half, rip out the guts (save the seeds if you like), rub the outside of both sides with vegetable oil, line a tray with oil, and preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Cook the squash until it's soft and yields easily to a fork, flipping each side once (usually about 45 minutes). Remove from the oven, peel off the skin, and then loosely push apart the squash into pasta-like strands with a fork. This can be done ahead of time.

For the main meal, grab a wok or large saute pan and line it with vegetable oil. Turn heat on medium and let the pan heat up for 2 minutes or so. Drop the onions in the pan and cook until fragrant and slightly translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the chicken (or vegetables), ginger, and half a tablespoon of red pepper and cook for another few minutes (or longer, if the chicken isn't precooked). Now turn the heat up to medium-high and add the squash. Toss it around, and add the remaining red pepper, plus a little oil if needed. Cook for another 6-8 minutes. Add salt, lime juice, and cilantro. Serves 3-4.

Spaghetti Squash

Since joining the Tucson CSA I have developed a deep love for all things squash -- expect for spaghetti squash, that is. No matter what I try to do with these things, nothing seems to work: roasting them, breaking them into strips and serve them spaghetti-style with marinara sauce, putting them in stews, all failures. I've got an entire roasted and chopped spaghetti squash sitting in my fridge just waiting to become another disappointment. Can anyone help me out here?

Eggy breakfasts in Tel Aviv

The Hilton in Tel Aviv serves a wonderful casserole in their breakfast smorgasboard. It consists of a layer of what appears to be hard-boiled eggs that covers a warm interior of tomatoes, onions, and peppers, stewed in cumin and black pepper.

They also served an eggs florentine that was different from what I was used to. It consisted of, once again, hard-boiled eggs in a creamy bechamel-type sauce with thyme -- no olive oil. It's not bad, but I think I prefer it over easy with copious fresh thyme and olive oil.

I'm looking forward to experimenting with the casserole concept. I'm a huge fan of cumin.

The Perfect Ribeye

I've been trying to master it since I saw Gordon Ramsay's video. After a little practice, and a better understanding of how basting works, I think I've got it down.



Don't be fooled by the video's title; it takes far longer than one minute to cook, more like 8-9 minutes.

Pour a tablespoon or so of olive oil into the pan. Turn the heat up to medium or just beyond medium, depending on your stove. Let the heat build up for a good minute or two.

Drop the ribeye on the pan (don't forget to season both sides with salt and ground black pepper), and listen for the sizzle. Brown each side for one minute. Then, cook one side for about three minutes. Now drop the butter in the pan, about 2 and 1/2 tablespoons (just cut it like Ramsay does in the video), along with the rosemary and crushed garlic. Swish around the butter and oil, and baste the meat every thirty seconds or so. After about one minute, pick up the rosemary and garlic and place it on top of the steak so it doesn't burn. Continue for another three minutes. Flip the steak again, and cook and baste for another minute or so. Check the temp, it should be about medium rare (130 deg. F).

Very juicy, very delicious.

Also, I think the distinction between prime and choice is pretty overrated, at least to my untrained eye. At A.J.'s, the prime cuts were larger, but only slightly more marbled than the choice cuts. The steak I picked was both thick and lusciously marbled, and about $12 less than its prime equivalent.

Potato Ricer, cont.

Tried the ricer with the apples last night, and, well, it didn't work that well. Perhaps the apples were too small and didn't allow me to get enough torque on the handles. I popped in a few slices and only a trickle of apple juice came out. So I threw them in my Magic Bullet instead.

The curry came out great, though. These days, I start with mirepoix and sweat it in the pan, like I were starting a sauce. I added the apples with water and reduced, then added white chicken stock and reduced again. I strained that and used the resulting sauce as the liquid base for the curry. The result: just the right hint of appley sweetness.

Potato Ricers

Devoted Cirroc reader David bought me a potato ricer a few weeks ago. He and I were talking about cooking, as we are wont to do, and he mentioned his love for the peculiar device. To his surprise, I was completely ignorant of its charms. Shocked, he left immediately and returned with a brand-new ricer.

I admit I was skeptical of the device initially. But when I received a bounty of potatoes from the CSA last week, I decided to try it out. (A word of warning: be sure to boil the potatoes to a near soup-like consistency before inserting them in the ricer or risk shoulder dislocation.) The ricer produced a fine stream of potato which produced the lightest, most delicious hash browns I have ever tasted. I tend to prefer home fries over hash browns, but the potato ricer may turn me into a hash brown convert.

Tonight I'll integrate the ricer into the curry-making process, as an apple mincer. We'll see how it goes.

Potato Bacon Bombs

In honor of the inimitable Patton Oswalt, I created these delicious appetizers for last night's dinner party.

(I'm such a bad Jew.)



8-12 Red La Soda potatoes
24 uncooked shrimp
12 strips of bacon
1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Pour in the potatoes and boil them till they're al dente (stick a fork in them and check; the fork should pass easily through the potato without tearing it apart). Remove the potatoes and let them cool off, 5-10 minutes.

While you're waiting, take this opportunity to shred about 1 1/2 cup of cheddar cheese, or more if that's your thing. Then, pour the olive oil into a small bowl and mix in the rosemary, salt, and pepper. Set aside.

Now chop the potatoes in half. Carefully dig out the insides with a spoon using a circular drilling motion; set aside the insides for mashed potatoes or something. Bring some more water to a boil and cook the shrimp (tails removed) for about a minute.

Slice the bacon in half. Wrap each piece of shrimp in one half-slice of bacon, and place it in a potato-half. Do this for the remaining bacon, shrimp, and potatoes. Brush the bottom of each potato with the olive oil mixture and place each on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Top each potato bacon bomb with shredded cheddar cheese. Place the sheet in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Let sit, covered, for about 15 minutes before serving. Be careful when eating the potato bacon bombs; fatty juices tend to accumulate inside the bombs as they cook.