Tinga On Toast

Chicken Tinga is a spicy slow-cooked chicken thigh, broth, onion, and chipotle pepper-sauce and a can of tomatoes. You first cook the broth, onion, and chicken together for an hour. I suspect more than an hour would be even better. Then you shred the chicken with forks and set aside. Then you take the tomatoes, chipotle pepper-goo, and a cup of broth in a blender and puree. Sautee another finely diced onion, add the spicy sauce and broth and chicken, then slow simmer for about 90 minutes so it all soaks in, with the lid off so it reduces. Be sure to stir every so often to prevent burning. Serve in a tortilla, sort of like a buritto or enchilada with cheddar cheese and top with sour cream and more sauce.

On the second day, take a half cup of this spicy tinga sauce and simmer in a pan with one raw egg, heating slowly and scrape bottom and sides until noticeably thickens. Remove from heat. You just made a savory and spicy custard from that egg. Serve over English muffin or toast, with your choice of meat. I suggest a chorizo or sausage patty with more cheddar cheese. This is healthier than Eggs Benedict, and tastes exquisite.

Split Pea Soup

Traditionally, split pea soup is made with a ham hock or ham bone, cooked until the marrow leaks out and provides flavor to the broth. I used three spicy sausages, sauteed to get the fat rendered out, poured off the fat and set them aside to drain in a bowl. I then diced 3 onions, 3 celery stalks, a carrot, and sautéed them 15 minutes in the same pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Leave the lid on so it sweats and deglazes the spices off the pan. This helps later.

Then I added 2 cups beef broth, a bag of split peas (8 oz) dried, and returned the drained sausage slices back into the pot with two cups water and simmered for 90 minutes until the peas swelled and broke down to thicken the soup. You should stir with a ladle every 30 minutes and mind it simmers without boiling over.

I did not have to add additional seasonings or salt since both were in the sausage and broth already, and the onions are fantastic, almost disappearing into the soup they are so clear by this point. The soup is very healthy, low fat thanks to pouring off what came out of the sausage, and sticks to your ribs. It has less than half the salt of store bought. I had mine plain but many people like sourdough bread or fresh biscuits with butter and honey, and dark beer or hot tea works well with this dish. Makes about 10 servings.

RECIPE: Summer Mint Iced Tea

Iced tea is traditional in America as the predecessor of soda pop, back before we had bubbles, and when those seeking refreshment didn't want to get silly drunk on ale or mint juleps. My mother was from The South, in the boonies no less. I have a second cousin who plays banjo and is famous. He only has the normal number of fingers.

Most people who do iced tea do it wrong. Powder tastes horrible. Its also, unfortunately, too strong. The best way is sun tea, where you hang tea bags in a gallon jug of water in the sun for a few hours on a warm day, then chill the jug a few more hours in the icebox before serving. And I do mean icebox as opposed to the Spring House, which my grandmother used to use for keeping things cold. Iced tea done right is cheap enough that no matter how poor you are, you can afford to make it.

My own preference for iced tea begins with English Breakfast tea, as it is just sharp enough and its black tea, which is far better tasting than green. It has been roasted or fermented. I also use mint. Many people put spearmint in their tea. Others put lemon, to counteract the acid of the tea. I don't like it. This is almost the base of a mojito, only its caffeinated rather than hoochified with rum.

I prefer peppermint in my tea. The best tasting and strongest peppermint tea I can buy commercially is Celestial Seasonings Peppermint. Stash mint tastes stale and not strong enough. A proper peppermint tea bag should be just short of stained with the oil. The kind I buy comes in bags without strings.

1. So boil 2 cups of water in a pyrex measuring cup, in the microwave. It takes around 4 minutes.
2. Add 2 bags of mint, 3 bags of black tea.
3. Steep for at least 20 minutes to get every last bit of flavor and caffeine out of it.
4. Pour tea into nearly a gallon of water, less the pint, into which you've placed 3 or 4 packets of sweetener. I went with Stevia. It doesn't screw with my bloodsugar so this is a free food.
5. Pour tea into jug, pour jug into measuring cup, repeat a couple times. 
6. Cap the jug and place into the fridge a few hours before serving.

Serve in a tall glass with ice. I find it lasts me several days and exactly hits the spot when I'm dehydrated and tired from shelving books for hours. Works a treat.

Cheers.

Breaded Pan-Fried Chicken

2 boneless chicken breasts, thighs, or tenders
1 egg, beaten in a bowl
1 T poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup panko bread crumbs

Mix bread crumbs and seasonings into a salad bowl.
Dip chicken first into egg, coating all sides, then dip into breadcrumbs, coating all surfaces. Set onto cookie sheet and let rest at least 20 minutes. This is important. Otherwise the breadcrumbs will fall off when you cook them.

In a frying pan, add 2 T. olive oil over medium low heat and fry the chicken, face down for 5 minutes, then flip and reduce heat to low for 15 minutes until done and bread crumbs browned. This should be enough. The thinner the chicken is, the quicker it cooks. A thick piece needs lower heat and longer time.

Serve with rice and either zucchini or yellow squash or steamed broccoli and a chefs green salad. White wine is appropriate with this dish, as well, a chenin blanc or cabernet blanc. A chardonnay or pinot grigio is probably too strongly flavored for this dish, which is pretty light and delicate.

Kitchen Generation

I grew up in Santa Rosa, California. It is the wine country. I was half a mile from Matanzas Creek Winery, at the foot of an extinct volcano that loomed overhead. It was a weird place to grow up. The days would get hot, then the fog would surge in from the Pacific, roiling over the hills, ushered by the icy breeze. Temperatures would drop from 85'F down to 55'F in about an hour, sometimes less. If you went to the movies in an afternoon, you came out into fog that clung to your eyelashes and dropped visibility to a mere 200 feet. It was mystical and awesome and I miss it. I don't miss all the jerks who lived there, however, which is why I don't. If there's a plague and they die off? I'd move back.

 

Growing up in foodie heaven, surrounded by wine, excellent bakeries, and the world's highest density of restaurants, one for every 40 people, being familiar with the very best food would easily lead to preparing it. I got good in the kitchen, between natural interest and exposure. When I finally married, I thought I'd found someone who shared my passion, but not so much. Since I am single again, and in a dateless zone of meth junkies, potheads, and creepy cougars, I feel like reminiscing on what I can no longer find.

 

Know what would be awesome? A wife who cooks better than I do. That's asking a lot, since I'm nearly to restaurant quality. Still, a wife who could genuinely and seriously cook, likes it, and shows off because she's just that awesome a chef? That would impress me.

 

An Italian or French woman, skilled and happy in her kitchen the way I am? That would be something. I would marry a woman like that. In my first marriage, I cooked most of the meals. I got good at it. I got better since cooking for my aging parents. I've learned how to time meals, and cooking appropriate portions and including the necessary nutrition.

A pity that real cooking is astonishingly rare in my generation. Few women my age or younger actually cook anymore. In the last 20 years I've met ONE serious female cook from my generation. And none in the younger generations (Y and Millenials). Lots of women barely know how to heat food, or even know that microwaves have more settings than "TIME". Most women consider cooking a massive chore and refuse to be good at it as a sign of contempt for men, which they often are barely familiar with. Strange, these same women believe men should be able to tear down and rebuild an engine in a weekend, or build an entire house in a month in chiseled and sculpted bodies they saw in a magazine this one time. Sigh. Men and women both have real issues with expectations. Most women get pretty frosty at my ability to cook. There's unspoken outrage.

Our culture is so broken. Women are taught by their teachers are role models to hate men, resent men. They have the same opportunities but insist that simply isn't enough and they deserve to have EVERYTHING, a fulfilling career AND children they somehow have time to raise, and a nanny and a driver, and a limo, and a Versacchi pantsuit that looks slimming and the fatty desert and a stairmaster and .... yeah. Insane stuff. Yet, they won't go into a kitchen and learn to cook unless they have children of their own, and only to assert their babies are getting the best care, those times when they remember they are supposed to be good mothers rather than neurotic. Sigh. I would hope this isn't true for my entire generation, but that's what I've seen. And evidence trumps beliefs and wishful thinking.

I've never met a woman who liked engines enough to take them apart and fix them. Or cared about performance of her car enough to do the research herself. Most women I've met would use the wrong tool and utterly wrecked the thing they were trying to fix. So pathetic, and vicious, and deliberately hateful. Mechanical Sympathy is a thing ascribed to men for good reason. There seems to be real differences in Gender that seriously matter and aren't talked about.

If I had an Italian wife, who liked to cook, I suspect we'd spend a lot of time together, stuffing pasta, roasting peppers and meats, creating dishes and handing them out to the little old ladies as "cooked too much to finish". I would need a kitchen with two working stations in it, same sized, so we'd have room to work and not accidentally drop things or cut ourselves being jostled. Finding out that the actress who played the sex droid Seven of Nine would come home from the job of looking statuesque in her fetish costume, strip the silly things off, put on her apron and whites, and get to work cooking meals at her restaurant in LA? I really respected that. It's endearing, too. For a foodie like me, who started learning to cook at age 4? Sounds like the perfect woman. So perfect she married a French chef herself and they are happily married. Good for them both.

 

If a lady mechanical engineer working on optimized and balanced engines for ultralight cars strips off her coveralls, scrubs off all the grease and swaps for whites, and takes up a long knife in order to build a complex meal? That's even better. There would be conversation and laughter and sketches and solutions. Good times could be had. A pity such people are rare enough to be nearly mythical.  

This being California, there's a lot of tasty fishes worth cooking with. Sea Bass, Rock Cod, Red Snapper, Salmon, Halibut, even Anchovies can be turned into delicious dishes. You have to be an unfussy eater. Our Pacific waters produce excellent fish for the table. They need a couple years break to get their numbers back, and once oil is too valuable to waste on powering trawlers crossing oceans for fish, we'll be in good shape minding our OWN fish on our OWN coast, thanks much. I could see myself living in a stepped community like Bodega Bay, despite the faultline running there, since it would allow me daily access to fresh fish. And the tourists would know that, if I ran a B&B, for example. I expect to live another 50 years, possibly more. Plenty of time to take the windtorn and ragged Bodega Bay and convert that hillside into something resembling one of those tidy provincial towns people drive 1000 miles to see in person. And yes, it will fall down in the earthquakes, but it will be rebuilt, too. The locals are hardy folk. They don't whine about how hard it is. They just pick sweep up the mess, and build again. A woman who can do that is worth something. No histrionics, no drama. Just sweep up the mess and get on with it. That's what I want in a wife.

 

I wonder what a woman like that wants in a husband?

Midsommer Murders Recipes: Parachute Pie

A few nights ago, my Dad watched an episode of Midsommer Murders with a sort of meat pie that the patron referred to as a parachute, but turned out to be agreeable despite its looks. I recreated the recipe and served it last evening. It was tasty. Here is how to make it.

1 strip bacon
1 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots peeled and diced
3 potatoes, peeled and diced 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 cup peas
1 cup beef broth
1 steak, diced
1 T. Worchestershire (Wooster) Sauce
pepper to taste

Directions:
Marinade cubed beef in Wooster sauce for 1 hour. In skillet or large sauce pan Slow cook bacon until grease rendered into pan. Add onions, celery and carrot over low heat, cover 10 minutes, stir until onions clarified and starting to carmelize. Cut up bacon with kitchen shears. Shift veggies to side, add marinaded beef and cook slowly for 10 minutes, stirring to flip. Mix veggies and beef, add potatoes and beef broth, peas, fresh ground black pepper, and simmer covered with lid for 20 minutes or until potatoes are cooked.

Gravy
1 T olive oil
2 T flour
2 T broth
1/2 cup milk

In separate sauce pan, add flour to olive oil, mix, then heat gently until mix bubbles. Add 1/4 tsp cumin and pepper. Mix, simmer bubbles for about 5 minutes over low heat. Add a pat of butter then milk, lower heat. Sauce will thicken rapidly. Stir continuously to avoid lumps. Turn off heat. Salt as needed. Add broth from stew to sauce to expand and flavor brown gravy.

Note: this is actually a white sauce. This is not they way they teach it in cooking school, but this is the right way to make it in the real world.

Once stew potatoes are done, add gravy and stir. Liquid will thin sauce, coating all vegetables and meat. Remove from heat and spoon stew into oven safe serving bowls until 1 inch from rim.

Parachute
2 cups biscuit mix
1 cup water

Fill space in bowl to rim with biscuit. Preheat oven to 415'F, bake for 20 minutes, or until the biscuit covering has risen and browned slightly. Wait 15 minutes to serve as contents will be hot enough to burn your mouth. Very tasty though.

Serve with ale, porter, stout, Pale Ale, IPA, or red wine, as per your tastes. Would be good pub food. Sticks to your ribs.

Auto-Bio

When I was four years old my mom lifted me onto the kitchen counter, handed me the old measuring spoons, pointed at the various spices and told me to measure them out while she rolled the pie dough. I could read so this was certainly possible and I, with lots of help from Mom, helped make my first pumpkin pie. This continued with apples (peeling and coring them at age 5 using a peeler and a small knife), to making the crust by age 6. By the time I was 10 I'd perfected most sorts of baking I'd attempted, including solo chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, and even made the perfect copy of McDonalds french fries. I needed help dealing with the hot oil. I should point out that I've always been "bright" and while I was pretty retarded in some social skills areas I was always way ahead of my peers at these sorts of scientific experiments (cooking is chemistry, after all). I kept cooking every once in a while, when I felt like it. As a latch-key kid my brother and I ended up cooking for ourselves more often than not, particularly since Mom's cooking wasn't always to our taste. At age 11 I was in the boy scouts and learning to cook over camp stoves, over and in camp fires, and learning all the skills necessary to manage natural heat (fires are a skillset all by themselves) and as the years passed I learned more and more, perfecting recipes of old standards like Cornbread. By the time I was in college and cooking on our geology field trips I learned how to bake in a dutch oven, from chocolate or lemon cake to pineapple upside-down cake (a true accomplishment in the desert, let me tell you!). When I finally moved out of the parental domicile I was a fully capable amateur chef able to make anything I saw on TV or read in a recipe or tasted in a restaurant. Once I met my wife and we moved in together I was accomplished enough to make multiple meals from raw materials which baffled her. I love her dearly but when we moved in she'd claimed to be a good cook herself and when I handed her a whole, plucked chicken and said "roast this" she looked completely lost. I had to show her and she understood what I was going on about the very first time, a fact pointing to a high intelligence despite her dishonesty. She still tries new things or pushes me to make stuff she read about somewhere, often dozens of things I'm not particularly enthusiastic about, usually because they require exotic expensive ingredients, won't keep at all, and make more than we want to eat in one sitting. There is such a thing as too many olives and pickles in the fridge, after all! Ahem.

Anyway, at this point in my life, finally owning a proper kitchen scale, I am now able to work my way through the CIA Cookbook, which is highly detailed and LONG. Lots of fun stuff I've never played with because well, you just don't wake up one day with 5 pounds of sweetmeats you plan to eat and go to the trouble of turning them into food instead of broth or toss them into the trash. That's an extreme example, however. I'll be cooking more stuff, using spices more effectively, working out all sorts of technical problems that would make even Alton Brown pause to consider.