Catching Up

Catching up with a few things while wondering what could be better than the crispy wing tips off a just-roasted chicken...

The beautifully roasted chicken seen here came out perfectly - VERY juicy white meat, buttery dark meat, and yummy crispy skin. We are on the constant hunt for recipes that turn out the perfect roast chicken - as you can see from all our previous attempts. The latest recipe we tried - with much success - was this one from... Molecular Solutions? The recipe is from 1967 Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and it involved cooking the chicken on it's sides - which I still can't figure out. However, as they say on their site, if you follow the recipe "the chicken will, indeed, be perfect."

WE WON! WE WON! We won the Cool Beans contest over at Just Braise! We beat the 1-in-8 odds (a 12.5% chance!) and received our prize of a shipment of Cool Beans Dips at our doorstep this week! As you might expect, these were opened immediately and enjoyed with some chips and crackers. These blended, flavored Northern Beans-and-olive oil dips are delicious, they taste just like something we'd blend up in the food processor ourselves. The Hot and Spicy was just that - with a nice spicy kick. The Roasted Garlic had a great mellow roasted garlic and a little salt and lemon flavor - we had this spread on a ham sandwich with yummy results. The Carmelized Onion is the only one we've yet to crack - I don't think we'll hold out long. THANKS to Stacey at Just Braise and the Cool Beans Guys. We see that you can get them at our old grocery store - Foodie's Urban Market - in the South End of Boston on Washington, in addition to many other locations...

We received an email from old friend Jaye at Butta Buns letting us know that there is a Dessert Tasting Fundraiser being held on Saturday, March 29th at the Vietnamese American Community Center in Fields Corner, Dorchester. How can you go wrong when you're raising funds AND having dessert??? Check out her Attention Boston Area Bakers and Dessert Lovers post for more details - we may have to take the T over for some of those Bacon Peanut Butter Muffins she's making!

Finally, we were away for a while in Sunny Rochester, NY visiting with the Brother and Sister-in-Law of Boston Chef. While there, Brother Chef made a yummy Texas-style (no beans!) chili that had great smokey ancho flavor - which we ate over some cornbread. He ALSO made a very nice shrimp-and-chicken pad thai...

But the REAL reason we went was to hang out with our little nephews! Jack made a visit to Boston back in May of 2006, but - as you can see below - he's grown up a little since then. Here he is enjoying his 3rd Birthday Cake!


Plus, he's got a new little brother who ALSO enjoys cake - perhaps even moreso!!!


Happy Birthday, Jack!

Wonton Soup

These wontons were delicious and the soup was JUST what the doctor ordered on a cold New England night... plus, we were able to freeze a few dozen wontons for later consumption! We were inspired after seeing the Wonton Soup over at Just Braise.

For the wontons, we cut a wedge of cabbage (maybe 1/8th of the head), about six baby bella mushrooms, 1 peeled carrot, 4 stalks of scallion/green onion, two cloves of garlic, and an inch-long wedge of fresh ginger.... and threw ALL of that into our little mini food processor and chopped them up good.



Then, we added those diced veggies to 1lb of ground pork and threw in a couple tablespoons of soy sauce and some liberal sprinkles of crushed red pepper. We folded all of that together until combined.

To make the wontons, we had our refrigerated wonton wrappers, a small bowl of water, a plastic cutting board, and our mixture. Take a wrapper, dip your finger in the water and moisten the four edges, scoop a spoonful of mixture into the middle of the wrapper, fold over and press to seal the edges. Then, indent the bottom and twist around to pinch the edges together with a little more water.

Or, just watch this!



Repeat 50 times.



Steam these for 6 minutes and set aside. Then, you can add them back to your near-finished soup to reheat. Next time, we'll probably just boil them in with the soup. Later, dethaw some of the wontons that you froze and pan-fry them!



For the soup, we brought about 10cups of chicken and veggie broth to a slow boil and further flavored it with 1tsp dried basil, 1 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce, 1 tsp Penzey’s Lemon Pepper, 1/8 tsp Chinese 5 Spice, juice of 1 lime and 1 tsp Sriracha. To the broth, I added half a head of shredded green cabbage, 1 bunch of scallions sliced on the diagonal and 7 sliced baby bella mushrooms.



As soon as the cabbage was wilted, and we had added the already cooked wontons to the soup to let them heat through and that was it! Wonderful, and - as usual - even better reheated the next day!

Braised Beef Roast with Puréed Veggie Gravy

This puréed veggie gravy - sweet and tangy, thick and flavorful - MADE this dish. The "gravy" is really nothing more than the veggies that cooked with the beef roast - red peppers, carrots, and onion - blended with the roast beef juice and deglaze sauce from the roasting dish. So easy and SO delicious.

First, season a 4lb beef/pot roast with black pepper and smoked paprika (save the salt for now, it'll dry out the meat) and brown on high heat in a big, oiled skillet on all sides. When all sides are browned, move to your roasting/braising dish or slow cooker. Also, get that oven to 300 degrees if you plan on cooking everything in there...



Have your sous chef cut up a big red bell pepper, a couple of carrots, and a nice-sized onion in to chunks of ~1 inch - and just peel and barely break-up a few cloves of garlic. Add those raw veggies to your roasting dish. If you do not have a sous chef, give us a call and we'll come over to help you make - and eat - this meal.



Pour one cup of red wine - along with two tablespoons of red wine vinegar - into the skillet you used to brown the beef and deglaze, stirring up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Add 1 can (8oz) of tomato sauce, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and a good amount of salt and pepper. Continue to stir and bring up to a nice hot temperature.



Pour that mixture all over the meat and veggies, cover tightly, and add to the oven. You're going to be looking at ~45 minutes/pound of slow and low cooking, and probably 3 hours in an actual slow cooker. This cooking length will cook the meat thoroughly - we're going for a real braised, pull-apart doneness with this one - but you could certainly go for ~20 minutes/pound for a more medium-rare doneness, remove the beef, and then keep cooking the veggies...

Take out your roast and set aside, covered. Next - if you have a hand blender, remove half of the veggies AND half of the liquid from the pan and add to a smaller saucepan and give those veggies a whir until they are combined. If you don't have a hand blender, you could do this in a food processor. Or, you could get that sous chef to mash everything up with a potato ricer and combine!



Taste the "gravy" for seasoning and add more of your liquid if too thick, more veggies if too thin. Pour over some of your beef roast and add some of the other half of veggies and enjoy! We also had boiled some turnip and cabbage to have along with the beef and veggies.

Ours came out great - the veggie sauce/gravy was sweet from the peppers and carrots and tangy from the vinegar and delicious. Where this REALLY shined was the next day, when we sliced some of the beef real thin and warmed it up on the stovetop IN the gravy.... then we plated it on a piece of bread, open-faced sandwich style! Yum!

Buttermilk Bacon Skillet Cornbread

Our first attempt at cornbread came out tasting unfamiliar to us - it was dry, it wasn't sweet, it was crumbly... we were like eh? what happened to this?

Little did we know - there is a difference between Northern (where we're from) and Southern (where we're not) cornbread. Unfortunately, we only discovered this AFTER we got our cornbread recipe out of the otherwise-fantastic Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. This invaluable recipe resource was a wedding gift to us from my cousin Emily and her family - and it's been used quite a bit.

However, this Southern cornbread recipe - one tablespoon sugar? Shortening, not butter? We gave it a shot and later - through online research - learned that Southern cornbread is more of an everyday bread so it's less sweet and more like actual bread. The cornbread WE were looking for was the denser, sweeter cornbread we were used to - being, youknow, from the North and all...

So we gave it a second shot and scored a homerun with this Northern Bacon Skillet Cornbread... It was sweet and smokey and delicious.

• 4 bacon slices, cooked and bacon fat preserved
  
• 1 cups corn meal
  
• 1 cups all purpose flour
  
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
  
• 1/4 cup sugar
  
• 2 large eggs
  
• 1 cups buttermilk
  
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, softened

Preheat your oven to 425 and cook up your bacon. Drain the bacon pieces on paper towels and pour out the bacon drippings into a small bowl. When cooled, break up the bacon into ~1/4 inch chunks.

Take your cast-iron skillet and pour in the ~2 tablespoons bacon drippings (or just use a 13x9x2-inch metal or glass baking pan). Tilt skillet to coat bottom and sides of pan with bacon drippings. (Or, if cooked earlier and the bacon drippings have congealed, you can use a paper towel and just "grease" the skillet as you would with shortening.) Place skillet in oven until bacon drippings are hot, about 6 minutes.

While that's heating, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt into large bowl - and add the cornmeal. Stir in sugar. Whisk eggs and softened butter in another bowl to blend, then add to dry ingredients along with the buttermilk. Stir - "creaming" the butter in with a fork - just until blended. Before your very last stir, throw in the bacon chunks and perform the final stir...

Transfer batter to that prepared hot baking pan - batter should sizzle when it hits the pan. Bake corn bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean and top is golden brown, about 25 minutes. Cool as long as you can stand, but best warm! Cut corn bread into wedges - or squares - and enjoy.



Dense, smokey, sweet, crispy edges, cakey inside... We enjoyed ours with a great field greens salad with beets and oranges, and a nice piece of one of two chickens - hot off the grill outside! Grilled chickens, cornbread, and salad - our own version of Southern Cooking!