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