Mmmm, Ham

It's been entirely too long and I have no excuse other than apathy and while a deadline for the day job approaches there won't be much more coming. While I'm not a New Year's resolution guy maybe I should have resolved for a post a week, maybe I can make up for it a little coming up.

I did quite a bit of cooking over the holidays. We had Turducken (pics to follow) with more than 20 people and then we had my mom's family over for the holidays with about 24 people attending. Above is a picture of my first ham, a 25+ pound spectacular example of smoked pork goodness. I did very little to it, just adding some cloves and a brown sugar/mustard glaze for the last hour.

But this is an example of the product being great. My dad has been getting these has from "Bert's" a place at Green and Lake streets in Chicago. They only sell commercially a couple of weeks a year and we make sure to always get one for Christmas.

I also did a potato gratin for that party and found an interesting recipe that worked out quite well. I used half gruyère and half swiss to save some money and it turned out quite well. I also doubled (tripled?) the recipe for the crowd we had.

Notes on poor recipe writing

I can't believe it's been seven weeks since I've posted, time flies when you're on deadline. Sadly I won't be getting any better the next couple of weeks.

I have been cooking but nothing too exciting. The main reason for this post is annoyance. I've been in a cooking rut lately and when I had a few minutes I was looking through the Savuer site to see if there's anything new and exciting when I saw the recipe for a chocolate truffle cake.

A post on my to do list has been my eternal search for a good chocolate cake recipe so this one intrigued me. So I was sad to find it horribly written. But maybe you guys can help me be the judge, maybe I'm n a bad mood or feeling the deadline pressure but I found this recipe really though to get through.

I'm still going to try and make it but come on, writing a recipe isn't that difficult.

Porchetta

Savuer posted it's porchetta recipe from the magazine, you can find the link here.

It's an intimidating recipe. Leaving the plastic wrap on and the baking soda to crisp the skin, a lot of techniques I've never used before.

I haven't ruled it out though, I need to swing by the Peoria Meat Market to see what the pork belly will cost me before I make a final decision.

A pork aside, had brunch at the Publican Sunday and was very impressed. The maple braised bacon was a dream, a nice salty/sweet bite of porky goodness. And they made a mimosa with a heffe weiss and OJ that really blew me away as well. I've been for dinner too and while the Publican isn't cheap it's worth a try, great beer and excellent food.

Struggling with Porchetta

Last spring I was lucky to attend Cochon 555 where I for the first time had porchetta. This lovely pork tenderloin wrapped in pork belly was a first for me. Also around the same time a friend of a friend made one and documented it with pictures on Facebook.

I've been mulling making my own ever since and then I get the latest copy of Savuer and it is listed in the magazine's top 100 along with a recipe.

Now the assemble of this doesn't scare me, not after putting together my own turducken, it's more the cost and size or the beast. The recipe, not available online, calls for 12 to 14 pounds of pork belly and says it feeds 10 to 12.

I'm still considering it for my mom's birthday at the end of February. It's going to be a fun meal, I'm making my own ravioli for a pasta course and am still considering the porchetta, any thoughts?

On tap

Neither of these recipes are strictly South Beach but they are healthier than the alternative, except for maybe the bechamel.

The Super Bowl calls for chicken wings and when Bittman posted these recipes I felt like it was a no brainer. The flavors intrigue me and should really pop. Plus they are baked and not deep fried so that should be something.

This vegetable lasagne from Savuer is the other I'm going to make, but this is dependent on me finding some whole wheat lasagna noodles. I am a little skeptical about not cooking the noodles first, it's a fairly complex recipe and I would hate for it to not turn out for that reason alone. Not sure when I'm going to make this one, since it is involved, and we have a busy weekend ahead of us.

Bacon fat

I got the latest issue of Savuer in the mail today, which makes me sad because I won't be able to cook anything from it for awhile.

There was one particular article that resonated with me, cooking with bacon fat. Sadly, the article isn't posted online. It talked about how bacon fat was used by the poor in the south and frowned upon by others in the 1800s.

I'm guilty of using bacon fat probably a bit too often (hence the South Beach diet now). If I would cook up bacon in the morning and forget to clean my cast iron skillet I'm not above using some of that fat to cook whatever I may be making that evening. It adds a flavor like nothing other than duck fat.

If you have a chance pick up this issue of Savuer, it's a good one aimed at the home cook. I really enjoyed the article on essential pots and pans too.

Apple Pie

I realized one of my bad cooking habits this week. When looking for a recipe I tend to look at the ingredients and not read the instructions. It's a habit I need to get out of because it sometimes gets me in trouble, such as with the apple pie recipe.

My main criteria when looking for this recipe were simple ingredients. I didn't want to half a dozen obscure spices or liquids (Sorry Alton, your apple pie recipe looked great, but I didn't feel like buying Apple Jack, four different type of apples and other ingredients I would have a hard time using in the future).

So when I saw the recipe at Savuer I was psyched, seemed pretty simple, and since I was making my first pie simple is what I wanted. I went out and bought all the ingredients and was exited at the prospect of putting it all together.

Saturday morning I look at the recipe and realize that I'm making a hell of a big pie. instead of using your typical pie plate I was using a 9 by 13 inch pan. Don't ask me why the dozen apples and six lemons didn't tip me off, but they didn't. I can be a bit slow sometimes. The main problem being that I was cooking this for five and thought it would mostly be gone and now I still half a pan of apple pie.

So I started out making the pie dough and it went well at the start. I cut the shortening into the dough and added the milk. All seemed well as I put it in the fridge to rest.

Next up were the apples. Since I am forbidden to buy any kitchen gear until after the wedding I was on my own peeling, slicing and coring the apples. This was quite a bit of work.

I let the dough rest for about 90 minutes. I started rolling it out and had some issued, it was too dry and crumbly. Rory suggested adding milk, which worked perfectly. Since I don't own a rolling pin I used a wine bottle to roll the dough. Again, kind of a pain in the ass. Also, getting the dough into the big pan was a challenge, but with Rory's help we got through it.

The end result was good, a bit too lemony, so the vanilla ice cream worked well at cutting the acidity. I will make this recipe again, but not until after I have the proper equipment. A real rolling pin and apple corer/slicer would have cut the prep time in half.

Breakfast

My very first cooking memory is standing on a step stool cooking a fried egg over easy with my dad standing next to me. I don't know how old I was, maybe around five but it's hard to say for sure. I also remember I mangled that egg, and sadly I still mangle one every once in awhile, but far fewer than I did back in the day.

Breakfast is a great meal to go out for but I really do enjoy cooking it. Since I work from home I will fry up a couple of eggs most days, but I have a decent breakfast repertoire beyond eggs, including french toast and pancakes.

Breakfast can be an impressive thing, especially when you cook it for a guest. We're heading down to U of I in a couple of weeks and will probably be making breakfast for her friends.

I was reminded of the whole wonders of cooking breakfast thing when I received the latest issue of Savuer in the mail, it was a breakfast issue. It's a good issue, though there aren't too many things in there that I haven't made.

There was one interesting recipe in there, cornflake-crusted brioche french toast. I took some liberties with this recipe, but will go back and make it closer to how they have it listed. It turned out well, but I wasn't completely happy with it.

My Dominick's didn't have brioche so I was left with the choice of french bread or sourdough. For some reason I went with sourdough instead of French bread, this was a mistake. The sourdough was great, but the sour flavor overpowered the rest of the dish. Rory enjoyed it but I didn't care for it. Also, I left the crust on and didn't cut squares as they did in the recipe.

As for the custard/dipping, I used my own family recipe:

Four eggs
1/4 cup of milk
1 TBLSP cinnamon
1 TSP freshly grated nutmeg
dash of salt
1 TBLSP honey
1 TBLSP vanilla extract

Just whisk this all together and place in a pie pan or shallow dish. Coat the bread in the mixture and the coat with the crushed cornflakes. Cook in a over medium-high heat with some neutral oil and golden and delicious.

It turned out well, and I will make again, of you guys try it with the traditional ingredients let me know how it turns out.

Chicken, chorizo and brown rice

This recipe was right up my alley. Chicken thighs, chorizo and brown rice to put a slightly healthy spin on it. Yes, I know chicken thighs are more fatty than breasts, but they actually taste like chicken and have a much better flavor.

As for the chorizo, I was disapointed that I couldn't find any of the smoked, dried variety at my local store and what I ended up with was a bit greasy, but the flavor couldn't be beat. Rory found it a bit spicy, and it did have somewhat of a kick, but I enjoyed thoroughly. The flavors really popped.

I didn't use the peas, I just don't care for the texture, even though the color would have been nice. This was my first time cooking with brown rice as well and it had a nice texture. I'm going to try cooking with it again.

And yes, I've been forgetting to take pictures, I will do my best to remedy coming up.

Zack recommends: Saveur

For my birthday this year my parents got me a subscription to Saveur. My buddy Jay recommended it and said it was better than most of the other ones out there and more up my alley.

And he was right, it's blowing me away. The theme of the first issue I received was butter. The Second issue was pasta, more specifically Bolognese, a sauce I love to cook. Some of the recipes are very complex, other are simple, but it's the writing that blows me away.

The feature on the City of Ragu and Bologna was some of the best food writing I've seen. Sadly, it's not online, but I felt as if I could almost smell the city and the foods. At some point I will make all the Bolognese recipes feature in the issue, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

The one recipe I did make is this pound cake recipe, which was a bit of an adventure. It just looked too good to pass up. Now I don't own a tube pan and when I went to buy one all they had were silicon bundt pans. I know silicon is supposed to be great to bake with, but I wasn't feeling good about it.

The assembling of ingredients went fine. I places the bundt pan on a cookie sheet I let it cook for an hour and it wasn't done. Ten minutes late I checked it again and the toothpick came out clean. I let it rest for 15 or 20 minutes and removed it without an issue.

The pound cake was going to be the case for strawberry shortcake, which I soaked in a little balsamic. Time was growing short and we needed to be out the door in a bit so I was trying to figure out how to transport it when I noticed the center was all gooey. The middle hadn't cooked all the way. I blamed placing it on the cookie sheet because the heat didn't have a chance to cook through the center of the pan.

So what did I do? I cut it out. I took a knife and cut out the portion that was gooey and sliced up the rest of the cake. It worked and what we had was quite excellent. Though I didn't tell my friends what happened. I told them I had trouble getting it out of the pan.