OK, so this is the part where we finally get to the Wackers, who came over for dinner last night, and were guinea pigs on not one but 2 dishes: chicken with dumplings, and apple upside down cake.  Chicken with dumplings was fun - brown chicken, brown veggies, dump everything back into a big pot and boil for 45 minutes.  Take chicken out and pull all the meat off the bones.  Throw meat back in to boiling pot and then drop dumpling dough on top.  In all, it worked well because the Wacker kids and parents helped pull the chicken off the bones.  In the end, I thought the taste was pretty darn good - chicken bones and thigh meat tend to have that effect.  I liked the dumplings too - plenty of bready-goodness on the inside. 5 out of 5 salt cellars.  One thing we learned - it doesn't have to be done in a dutch oven.  We have a heavy steel pot, in which made another batch, and it also worked well. 

The last dish was apple upside-down cake.  The middle of the cake was a little under-done, so I'll probably cook it for 5 ot 10 minutes longer next time.  I'll call it 4 out of 5 salt cellars - pretty tasty, but not as good as Alton's super apple pie.  

 

I have been cooking a little bit recently, and wanted to blog a little on it.  It may or may not be interesting - you'll just have to avert your eyes if this sort of thing is boring.  I took some pictures a long time ago on the first thing I'll post on - pulled-pork sandwiches.  This is probably one of my favorite dishes of all time because I love pork and I love north carolina bbq sauce - I don't know why  took me so long to discover both of them.  One of my problems with regular pulled pork sandwiches, is that the regular bbq sauce overwhelms the flavor and texture of the pork, turning the sandwich into a mushy, sticky, sloppy joe kind of thing.  Not so in north carolina, which uses a cider vinegar-based sauce with spectacular results.  This recipe is pretty straight forward - smoke a pork shoulder roast, or boston butt (which Alton points out isn't a butt at all) for about 4 hours, keeping coals and smoke going strong.  Most of the meat is falling apart at that point, but even the leaner portions taste good.  The smoke penetrates about a quarter inch into the meat and it is amazing.  Although this isn't an alton recipe (it comes out of Steven Raichlen's "how to grill") I have to give it 5 salt cellars out of 5.  If I were to cook it again (which I have since then) I really wouldn't do anything differently.  Putting the carolina cole slaw on top was a bit strong at first, but now I really like it.

More recently, I have started to take a magazine called cook's illustrated (an offshoot of Amerca's Test Kitchen).  Having secured the first 2 issues, I have started through a number of recipes, and am duly impressed.  They take a lot of time to explain what is going on, and their recipes have all been spot on so far.  The first one I tried was grilled flank steak w/provolone and proscuitto.  It turned out to be a crowd pleaser and tasty at the same time.  It's not every day you see meat lollipops on the grill - the kids liked how it looked and tasted a lot.  The prep was easier than it might seem.  After butterflying the flank steak and pounding it, I put the provolone and proscuitto on the sheet and rolled it up.  After binding it with grill-proof rubber bands and poking

 skewers every inch, I sliced up into lollipops - voila!  Easy-peasy.  Grilling was also easy, although the skewers were incinerated.  Taste-wise, this dish scored very well.  Flank steak is flavorful but not too tough, and plays well with the cheese and pork tastes in the dish.  I would score it a 4 out of 5 salt cellars - the cheese makes things a little greasy for me, but overall, very good.  A couple of things I would do differently are: 1 - tenderize the meat with one of those retracting 80 blade meat tenderizers before pounding, and 2 - soak skewers for a couple of hours so they don't burn.  

Another recipe from the cooking mag was spanish tortillas.  Stu will be very happy to see this one since he has an aversion to anything that is assumed to be spanish that is actually from mexico.  Look, Stu, this one really is from spain.  It really just an omelet that is heavy on olive oil and potatoes.  It was very easy to make - just cook potatoes & onions in some olive oil until tender, then add eggs and other ingredients.  

Cook, flip and cook, and you're done.  The flip part didn't work so well for me, but we have solved that by getting a different pan.  Overall, this might work better as a breakfast, but I liked it for dinner too.  Marie made some garlic mayo to go on top, and the whole thing was delectable.  5 out of 5 salt cellars.  It is so straightforward that I wouldn't do anything different next time

.  

Ok - I admit this isn't as good as the Ohki reunion video from last year, but it's the best I can do on short notice. Watching this makes us pine for Hawaii, and remember how much fun it is to spend time with the Ohkis and Gma Ohki in the Aloha State.



I also realize this is my first blog post in 5 months. Needless to say, my idea of turning my blog into a cooking thingy has been unsuccessful. I still cook - I'm just not religious about getting the pics and story onto the blog. Maybe next week.

This week, I'll catch up with a couple of recipes that I have done recently.  One is from the book, and one is from the online Good Eats archive.  The first is blackened tuna.  I was interested to see the difference between cooking the tuna steak on top of a chimney starter (as recommended in the Good Eats episode on tuna).  The other major difference is that instead of sesame seeds and a wasabi-soy sauce glaze, the book version of tuna calls for a spicy rub.  This is where the "blackened" part comes in, since the rub turns black when seared.  This recipe is so straight forward that I'm just going to put the pics on and say a few words.  

This is the Tuna pre-sear.  The rub is all over the place.  It is mostly paprika, but includes enough cayenne pepper to make the kids say "too spicy".  They ended up just scraping the rub off, and liked the nice tuna that was left.

Right after going in, the tuna has begun to smoke.  

This is a view of the side of the tuna steak right after flipping.  You can see that the first side has a fair amount of cooked tuna that has penetrated the profile, while the pan-side is just starting.  You can also see some of the black that makes this "blackened tuna".  

The finished product, sliced and ready to serve.  We all liked the amount that the tuna had been cooked (inside was just warm).  Overall, this was a three salt cellars out of five recipe, though, because the level of spice was just a little too high.  Also, since we've had the sesame type before, we know that this dish can be 5 out of 5.  The thing I liked about the cast iron pan was that it cooked everything evenly, which is a challenge on a grill.  I think I'll try the sesame seed preparation on a cast iron pan next time - should work nicely.  

This is the other recipe we've done recently - spicy beef kebabs.  These were very easy to prepare, and cooked up very nicely.  They are also a great way to use a cheaper cut of beef (sirloin).  They had great smoky, spicy taste, and the kids loved them too, especially since they were served over a bed of cous-cous.  These really are a 5 out of 5, partially because it's not often that a so-so cut of meat tastes really good.  

The other thing that happened this week is that we bought a new bathroom scale.  Besides the fact that it measures our weight out to tenths of a lb., it also shows that we weigh 10 lbs more than the scale we used to own.  Needless to say, I'm going to drop some weight.  I hereby resolve to become Colin-sized within the next two months.  

The idea of going through Alton's cook book in order seemed like a good idea at the time. More or less, it will still be in order, but today I just couldn't keep it up. It was Mari's birthday, and rack of lamb seemed a better choice than seared tuna, although we'll do that soon. Anyway, this recipe is "Liz and Dick Rack of Lamb". It's name comes from the on-again, off-again romance of Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, which apparently garnered enough attention from Alton that he applies it to any recipe that requires various levels of heat. The lamb is cooked over direct heat for about 10 minutes, and then another 8 minutes on the half of the grill that's not as hot (the spot below where the aluminum pan can be seen)

As you can see, the first (and only) problem I encountered was flare-ups from grease dripping off the lamb. This was remedied by a squirt bottle and then putting the lid on the grill. The meat surface did get a little black, but that didn't hurt the flavor at all.

After flipping over, the other side cooks for 5 minutes. I like a smoky flavor beyond what the charcoal itself provides, so I usually throw some wet hickory chips on a lonely corner of the coals.

After cooking the lamb for a while longer over that little round pan you can see above (indirect heat), internal temperature registered well over 138 degrees, so I pulled them off and let them rest for a while. The fuzzyness of the picture isn't due to a filter - it's just a large spot that was on the camera lens.

Overall I have to give this 4 salt cellars out of 5. The only thing I would do a little differently is perhaps pull them off a little sooner. The inside was still a little pink, but it was medium well, when medium or medium rare probably would've tasted a little better. Still, I loved the lamb flavor combined with the smoke. No special spices - just salt, pepper, and olive oil.

First things first - my wife planned and executed some excellent "Good Eats" meatballs this week.  They are part lamb, part pork, part beef, and all good.  

Above, you can see them cooking in a mini-muffin tin.  This keeps the meatball from wallowing in its own fat, and lets it drain while it cooks. The texture was great (not too dense), the breading was crispy, and the flavor didn't disappoint.  I'll call this 4 salt cellars out of 5, but note that I'm not a meatball fanatic.  My beautiful wife did a great job on these, and they are certainly the best meatballs I've ever had.  I'm still on "I'm Just Here for the Food" hiatus, since the next recipe calls for Tuna steak.  I love tuna steak, but can only get it at Costco, and we haven't been for a while.  Add that to the fact that I've already made that recipe, and it's hard to want to continue on.  I'll get there, just not this week.  Instead, I asked Mari to pick up some pork chops.  I have been wanting to try brining chops for some time now, but just never got around to it.  We've brined turkeys before, but not chops.    

Here are our pork chops, relaxed and having a good time in a solution with 1 cup of salt, 2 cups cider vinegar, and 1 cup brown sugar.  Brining isn't marinading - things happen a lot faster with brining as I soon found out.  Alton says to brine for 2 hours, but I pulled the chops out about 20 minutes early.  After eating the chops, I can say this was a good move.  Any saltier would have been too much - also, the online recipe gets dinged by quite a few people who say the chops are too salty.  One step you won't see here was cutting a pocket into the pork chops and filling each with a cornbread, raisin, buttermilk, sage mixture.  That's why the chops appear kind of plump. 

I filled the chops with the buttermilk mixture, and stuck them on the grill.  An "attractive crosshatch" was achieved on only one of the chops, and even that doesn't look that good.  I put a wet chunk of hickory wood on the coals to produce a little smoke.  In all, the chops cooked in about 12 minutes.   
The above is what the chops looked like after they came off the grill.  The closest chop is out of focus (sorry) so you can't see very well that the stuffing is coming out of the slit in the side of the pork chop.  The "pocket" inside the pork chop is made by poking a small knife through the side of the chop, and then sweeping the knife one direction, and then the other so that the entry point is small, but there's a big envelope to put the stuffing into. 

This is what the chops look like when sliced in half.  The great thing about them is that I could distinctly taste each of the following: pork, salt, vinegar, smoke, sage, and raisin, but they all worked together.  I was glad that I did them on the grill, because there was a nice crunch on the outside even though the chops themselves weren't dried out.  Alton does them on a gas grill - an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement.  I'm a hard core charcoal grill adherent, partially because I started cooking when Mari bought me Steven Raichlen's "How to Grill".  In the book, Steven points out the many virtues of the charcoal approach.  I don't see the point of grilling on gas when I can do the same thing upside down in the oven by broiling.  

Anyway, the chops were a definite 5 salt cellars out of 5.  The balance of the sweet stuffing with the salty pork was undeniably good. This is a recipe we will get out again soon.  There isn't anything particularly tricky about this recipe, so I wouldn't do anything different next time.  Just be careful not to over-brine the chops. 

Laden down by what can only be described as an uninspiring start to my attempt at the recipes in "I'm Just Here for the Food", I broke down and made a recipe from Good Eats.  The difference in results between Good Eats (the TV show) and the book is beginning to worry me.  The stuff I've done from the show is pretty much totally solid.  As I've mentioned before, I can count the unsuccessful recipes on 2 fingers.  Anyway, I decided to break out the apple pie for two reasons.  First, I was in a slump.  Second, Marie had given me a tart pan for Christmas for the sole purpose of making apple pie.  The purpose of the tart pan was to have something deep enough to house lots of apples, and because the bottom comes out,  you can remove the sides and slice up the pie with ease.  

A few words on the use of spirits in cooking:  I do it.  I totally respect those who don't, and think it's a matter of personal choice based on your interpretation of the Word of Wisdom (assuming you're LDS - if you're not, please feel free to return to your game of beer pong).  I'm not interested in getting buzzed on a batch of uncooked chocolate rum balls, and I've never made anything that tasted (to me) like it had alcohol in it.  I just think there are some things that do better if treated with ethanol - fish, for instance.  This pie crust has some applejack in it - a spirit made from distilling apples.   The pie itself was straight-forward.  Make the crust dough and chill.  Chop up the apples, coat with sugar and let sit for 1.5 hrs.  Roll out dough for crust, toss other ingredients with apples, and put into pan.  Cover w/dough and make a hole for the pie bird - I didn't have one  so I made one out of tin foil.

  

The pie was absolutely amazing.  First, the crust was flaky without being weak.  Whole idea of this recipe is that you've got to taste apples when you make apple pie.  The only spice that's supposed to be added is grains of paradise, which is obscure enough that I couldn't buy any at the store.  I just put in a little cardamom instead.  I also had to substitute lemon curd for apple jelly, which safeway also does not sell. Straight out of the oven, the pie looked amazing.  It was so late when we got it out that we had not will-power to wait the 4 hours required to completely cool and set.  By the way, we could see that the "pie bird" was working overtime when we got the pie out of the oven - steam was shooting its "beak".  

So we dug in.  As I mentioned, the crust was flaky and the apples were cooked to goey perfection.  The whole thing was not too sweet, and loaded with unadulterated apple flavor.  The running filling you see in the picture was something we expected since we didn't even wait an hour to dig in.  The half of the pie we didn't eat was left to set overnight.

The next day (today) the pie tasted even better, and had set up completely.  Needless to say, the rest didn't last long.  We probably would have made another one today if we owned enough apples.  

Overall Rating: 5 salt cellars out of 5 - a home run.

What I would do differently next time: First, start with the apples first, since they have to sit for 1.5 hrs, and the dough only needs an hour in the fridge.  Second, split the dough 60-40 for the top and bottom crust.  The bottom crust needs substantially more dough than the top, and splitting the dough in half (as Alton directs) leaves too much for the top and not enough for the bottom.  Lastly, I would have waited for the pie to set up, but I probably won't be able to wait next time, either.  Waiting is a common theme in Alton's recipes: many times you have to start a recipe days in advance in order to be able to execute it.  For example, corned beef needs 10 days, and sauerbrauten needs 3.  All in all, a great recipe, and one we'll probably make again soon.

The next recipe in Alton's book is Bar-be-Fu.  It's a seared tofu steak that's put on some bread for a barbeque sandwich.  I'll admit this process is getting a bit scary since I was 0-2 going into battle Bar-be-fu.  Let me just take the suspense out of this post: I am now 0-3.  The first order of business in making the tofu steaks is to get as much water out of them as possible by putting them between 2 cookie sheets while wrapped in paper towels.  This is actually a great method since it does take lots of water out and make the tofu "thirsty" for tasty stuff to go into them.  Then, I added the steaks and the marinade to a zip lock bag.  

After a day of leisurely soaking in the bbq sauce/cider vinegar marinade, the tofu is supposed to be seared in a hot, non-stick pan for maybe 3 minutes each side.  This part also went off without a hitch.

Problem one with this dish is that the sugar in the bbq sauce makes it hard to get a good crust on the tofu.  Mari has made tofu before that is seared in a little oil, which makes a rough exterior that is a little crisp.  The bbq sauce just burns if left unattended.  Here, you can see the first side seared, and the second getting that way. The other issue with the marinade is that it didn't add a lot of flavor.  

Alton suggested this dish be served on really tasty hoagies.  He even said that having tasty hoagies was perhaps the most important thing for this dish.  My suggestion: forget the bar-be-fu and just munch on some good-tasting hoagies.  Even when we doused the sandwiches with a healthy portion of the reduction/sauce that Alton suggests, they didn't taste that good.  Not bad, just not good.  I made some bread from a recipe Adrianne shared with us some time ago, and it was excellent as usual.  

If we had just put butter and jam on the bread, I would have given it 5 salt cellars out of 5 - Truly superb.  Considering that we instead slapped tofu and bbq sauce on the bread and ate it, I'd give this recipe a 2 salt cellars out of 5 - no better or worse than the other things we've made.  

 

Because Monday was a holiday, I decided to cook the next 2 recipes in the book. Also, the man Alton said the Red Flannel Hash and Cast Iron Duck should be made together since duck fat can come in handy for the hash. I had bought a frozen duck a while ago with the intention of cooking it a la Good Eats, but this is the next recipe, so I changed plans. The first thing that was a little confusing was timing. I decided I had to have everything ready to go into the pan for the hash before I put the duck on so I could toss everything into the pan once the duck came off. That meant I needed to roast the beet and boil the potatoes prior to putting the duck on.

The first problem with the duck recipe is that we live in Pullman, and I don't know of any place that I can just pick up 4 duck breasts. I had to buy the duck whole and break it down - pretty much the same as a chicken but the wishbone was a little funky. That left me with the breasts and the thigh/drumstick sections. I decided to just do the thigh/drumsticks like the breasts - mistake 1. Turns out that thigh/drumsticks from duck doesn't like being done like its friend the chicken.





This is the stuff for the red flannel hash - beet, potatoes, onions, chives, garlic, and duck fat.














So when I started searing the duck, it was looking good, but I could have let it cook longer - mistake 2. The book said 3 minutes, and the cast iron skillet was plenty hot, but this skin could have gone darker. That had 2 effects: the skin wasn't as crispy as it could have been, and the center of the breast wasn't done when I pulled the duck off.







You can see here - center still pretty pink. Looks like tuna steak, but it's duck. It really wasn't ok to eat like that, so I nuked it for around a minute until it was at least a very light pink. The taste was superb, though, and the kids couldn't get enough of it. The thighs were a different story - totally inedible when they came off the cast iron. I kind of expected that, though, and put them into the oven at 400 until the internal temp was in the 170 range. Especially for that end of the duck, I bet you've got to follow the recipe that cooks the heck out of it until all the connective tissue is broken down. Alton has a good eats recipe that does just that.

I got the hash going right after taking the duck off the skillet. I thought it would be great, but the skillet, even at medium heat, seemed pretty hot, and the garlic, and then the onions got real dark real fast (mistake 3). I tossed the rest of the ingredients in, and hoped that the tasty fatty crust on the potatoes would materialize soon - the one that Dad achieved on those rare occasions when he was pressed into service on Saturday nights. Also, this is the crust that Gpa Harris created when cooking potatoes on the cast iron griddle. Alas, no such crust appeared, and in my zeal to find said crust, the chives, onions, and garlic went from "ok" to "totally burnt" in maybe a minute. Alton suggests cracking an egg over it, which I did in hopes that it would soften the blow of the crispy bits.

In all, the duck and the hash had amazing flavor - both tasted amazing at one level or another. For the hash, the part that tasted good was the salty beets coated with duck fat that I had to pick out of the otherwise disappointing scramble. On the duck, it was the pieces on the ends of the breasts that had been cooked perfectly, and didn't need to be nuked. You'd think that I'd know not to undercook after what happened with the skirt steak - alas, not so. The kids still loved it, but the overall experience wasn't that great. Because I hadn't made it before it took way too long to make, and if I'm going to cook for that long, I need a better result.

Overall rating: 2 salt cellars out of 5

What I would do differently next time: Let the duck breast cook a really long time on the skin side, and skip the red flannel hash all together.

Next dish: Bar-be-fu Sandwiches - I think I will err on the side of over-cooking barbeque flavored tofu steaks, if only to make up for the skirt steak and duck.

Ok - this is a last-ditch effort to revive the blog.  On that subject, I will now take a question from an imaginary reader.  

Dear Campbelloki.blogspot.com:  Seeing pictures of food on your blog so often is beginning to weird me out.  I mean, come on.  Are you going to turn your blog into one of those lame blogs where hopeless culinary fanboys cook every recipe from a particular cook book in order from beginning to end so as to show unparalleled devotion to a cooking icon who doesn't even know you exist and wouldn't like you that much if he/she actually knew you?

Me: Yes.

(Q&A now over) There are a couple of things I hope to accomplish in this effort.  First, I want to get some basic cooking skills.  Second, I want to use cooking as a device to keep writing in this blog.  I sometimes wonder whether Alton loves cinematography or cooking more.  I think sometimes that cooking is just a means to an end.  It doesn't make him any less stupendous - quite the opposite.  Because he's actually trying to make a TV show rather than just have a studio audience clap and scream when he trots on stage (take that, Emeril), he's done something unique.  The reason I need to re-start the blog is obvious.  Now that I live in Pullman, there's a lot less material that can safely and appropriately be shared with the world.  Writing about work in San Diego was fun, but if I did that here, I'd probably offend the last 3 people at work that still think I'm an ok guy.  

The first recipe in Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food - Version 2.0" is Skirt Steak - The Master Recipe.  This is part of the first section of the book which is on searing stuff.    I sear stuff a lot with our cast iron skillet.  Mostly ham/lamb-burgers and sirloin steak. Appropriately for the first recipe in the book, it was really straightforward.  Get slab of meat, lube, season, heat cast iron, and cook on both sides.  

The first issue was the piece of meat.  I'm sure every butcher cuts stuff a little different.  The skirt steak cut I got was pretty long - maybe 2 feet - and had trouble fitting into the pan even after being cut in half.  The nice thing about this recipe, though, is that since the meat is already flat, there is a good chance it will get cooked properly without much fussing around.  

Once the pan was hot, I slapped the meat down and it started to hiss and smoke appropriately.  This usually means I have to send Asha upstairs to shut the bedroom doors so we don't go to sleep to the sweet smells of a yakiniku joint. 

Per instructions, I cooked the meat for 3 minutes each side.  As you can see from the picture, it got pretty smoky.  It always does - sometimes I sear outside.

A couple of observations - first, it's really helpful to get the meat out of the fridge and let it sit for a long time so that the inside isn't still 40 degrees when you slap it on the pan.  If it is, you will likely get the warm pink center of the rare-medium rare.  I thought this wouldn't happen with such a thin cut, but it did (see pic below where one piece is just a litte pink and the other is dark red).  The steak I had was only about 3/4 inch thick.  The other thing is that the cut I had was of variable thickness.  I thought this would be good, though, because I like rarer meat, and Mari and the kids tend to like less rare.  

Anyway, I took it off the pan and it looked like the below picture.  Per instructions, I cut against the meat grain.  This was also a nice thing about skirt steak.  Unlike some other cuts where the grain changes a lot, and is sometimes hard to nail down, cutting across the grain on skirt steak is super easy.  I whipped up a pan sauce with low expectations since I hadn't planned on doing that.  I ended up with something that looked like engine sludge - low expectations were met.  

The meat itself was o.k.  The rarer parts were pretty much inedible, though.  Everything on the thin end that was medium well tasted good and everyone liked.  Does make a guy pine for finer cuts of meat, though.

Overall score (note I'm not scoring the recipe but rather what happened when I tried to make it): 2 salt cellars out of 5

What I'd do differently next time: Cook the meat a little longer at a little lower temperature, and make sure the center isn't cold when it goes in the skillet.  

Next Recipe: Cast-Iron Duck