Category: Main Courses & Meals

If y’all are anything like me, you like a party now and then, but once push comes to shove, you’re probably more jazzed about a party at somebody else’s house, right?

Imagine then, my trepidation when M announced that we were going to host a surprise birthday party for her pal Deb and that roughly 30 folks would attend… Oh, and of course, we’d be cooking! So we got to work and made plans and a menu.

Needless to say, ya don’t celebrate the Big Six Oh without proper fanfare. I did the shopping while M put the final touches on the yard…

We went with pulled pork sandwiches, roasted chicken with a southwest flair, an incredible wild rice salad, coleslaw, killer shrimp hors d’oeuvers, (AKA horse doovers), and called it good.

The pork got a rub of black pepper, brown sugar, cumin, sea salt, garlic, onion and powdered hickory smoke powder, (From Butcher and Packer, just smoke essence mixed with dextrose – Amazing stuff!) It went low and slow, (275 F), for most of the day and came out, well, real good let’s just say!

The chickens were done up with a green chile and herb rub, (Dried Hatch chile powder, dried orange and lemon peel, Mexican oregano, sea salt and pepper), and stuffed with oranges, onion, cilantro, and olive oil.

M did the wild rice salad – Minnesota wild rice, dried cranberries, apples, red onion, toasted pine nuts, red bell pepper, and a white balsamic vinaigrette – It was incredible!

Coleslaw was green cabbage with shaved carrot, garlic chive and cilantro from the garden, and our semi-homemade dressing, (Mayo, sugar, apple cider vinegar, creamed horseradish, celery seed, salt and Pepper.)

Then there were M’s bacon and pineapple wrapped shrimp with a citrus chile glaze…

M outdid her self in the house and yard, I must say…

We had plenty of libations, both leaded and un…

And check it out; the cake mirrored the invites!

The guest of honor was completely surprised and everyone had a great time, us included!

Are there burgers in Heaven? Well, if not, then we got a problem…

What American comfort food is rootsier than Da Boigah? After a particularly grueling week at the café, and for quite literally the first night I’d be able to cook for in something like a week, I ad killer burgers on the brain. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, my absolute Job #1 reason for cooking is to make great things that Monica loves: There are lots of reasons to cook; love is the best one there is, hands down, end of story… (And M knows and loves a good burger!)

Now, as soon as I knew that’s where I was goin’ for dinner, I started thinking sides; naturally, my first inclination was to pull out the deep fryer and go for classic, twice-fried frites, but… Well, we are getting older and we do have to nod to the 21st Century and maybe at least try to be a bit healthier than that, right? That said, spuds not being part of the side was not an option, so I decided to go with a nice, fresh spud salad; we’ll do this one with olive oil, fresh citrus and vinegar, so we’ve got a lighter take on potato salad we’ll amp up with some fresh herbs. Ready? Let’s rock!

If you’ve ever had a truly amazing burger at a local joint, I’ll bet you 10 to 1 that they either grind their own beef, or have their regular supplier do that for them: Custom ground and seasoned burger, done fresh, is what separates Holy Crud from Ho Hum in Burgerland.

So off I went to the market, where I found nice chuck steaks for $4 a pound, (They were marked ‘For marinating’); that’ll be the heart and soul of our burgers. The relatively high fat content coupled with nice big chunks of meat is gonna be great, but it does need a little help to put it over the top; I went with aged, Choice Tenderloin, which I found for $9 and change a pound, which ain’t bad, (And we’re only buying a half pound so…). I ended up with a mix of roughly 2:1 Chuck to Tenderloin.

I found fresh baked onion rolls for buns, and more of that really nice medley of red, white, and blue potatoes we had a little while back; they’re not only pretty, they’re real tasty; I can quickly become a creature of habit when I find something really good out there…

A quick note on shopping and hunting; our closest market happens to be an Albertsons; don’t discount a chain store just because it’s a chain store. This one, and many like it, are more often than not staffed by professionals with years of experience; yes, their bakery mostly does stuff I don’t want, but there’re real bakers back there, believe me; the quality and variety of fresh bread and rolls they put out daily is really quite good; you may need to dig around a bit to find something great, but often enough, you will. Likewise, their meat department may not be as good as some of the artisan solo outfits and Carnicerias we enjoy here, but they usually have good stuff and those folks behind the counter are real butchers; they love to have you ask for something special, believe me! We can’t go for the high end every day, and nor should we; find what’s good, close at hand and go with it.

OK, so once we get home, I stuck the beef into the freezer for a little bit. Any time you’re grinding meat, making sausage, etc, you want your protein as cold as you can get it; this will help keep the fat and meat in a proper matrix while you work with it, thereby avoiding mushy, unpleasant results; more importantly, cold keeps your food out of the temperature danger zone, thereby avoiding making you and your loved ones sick; always a plus, that, eh?

I set up the grinder attachment on the ol’ KitchenAid, cut the beef up into strips manageable for the hopper and got to seasoning. As with sausage making, you can season ground meat before or after you grind it, of course; I prefer doing so before, because you get a more even distribution of spice as the meat is grinding. For these burgers, I went with Hawaiian flaked salt, fresh ground pepper blend, (Black, red, white, green; our go-to mix), onion powder, celery seed, granulated garlic, smoked paprika, and a dash of Worcestershire. I seasoned with a fairly light hand, because we just want to accent the meat’s great flavor, not blow it out of the water… So into the grinder she goes, using the coarser of the two plates I have available. I gave the freshly ground burger a few tosses to make sure everything was well blended, then covered it and stuck it in the fridge to think about things for a while.

While the burger was incorporating all those flavors, I put the spuds on to boil. Just a note on water; it’s sad to say that not all tap water is created equally these days, (Especially coming from a kid who grew up drinking from streams and lakes and even garden hoses!) My bottom line on cooking with stuff is simple; if it does not look, taste, feel and smell right, do not cook with it! The concept of taking, say, a nasty bottle of wine and cooking with it because it wasn’t good enough to drink: Negative, Ghost Rider; that’s a no-no! Same goes for a thing as elemental as water. If yours doesn’t taste good to drink, do what we did and get a decent filter for your kitchen tap; from home brewed coffee to things you boil for dinner, everything will taste better; you can thank me later…

A trip out to the herb garden found Garlic Chives and Cilantro looking very nice indeed, so I took some of those, then added fine diced green onion, red bell pepper, and fresh tomato: All that, plus a few pieces of great Apple smoked bacon, will go into our spud salad.

For the salad dressing, I squeezed the juice from one lime and one lemon, and then added a couple tablespoons of grapefruit juice; I whisked some nice extra virgin olive oil into that at a roughly 2:1 ratio, added a dash of sal de mere, fresh ground pepper, and celery seed, and there you have it. I quartered the spuds, put everything into a stainless bowl to mix and then into a ceramic bowl, covered in the fridge, for a good hour to allow everything to blend: As M rightly points out, stuff like this salad are gonna be great tonight but much better tomorrow; like good soup or stew, salads marrying a bunch of wonderful flavors are gonna be at their prime round about 24 hours later…

OK, back to the burgers and the fun part. I formed four thin, wide patties, then cut up some of my stash of 2 year old WSU Creamery White Gold Cheddar and placed a nice layer of that in the middle of one patty. Then we assemble; a layer of burger, then cheese, then burger, seal and plump up the edges of each so we have a nice round patty of uniform thickness throughout. I let them hang in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to marry flavors further.

And that’s that; the burgers hit the grill over nicely glowing coals for about 4 minutes each side, with the cover on and vents wide open. I put the buns in a warm oven with a little dish of water to get nice, moist heat going. Finally, I sliced onion, tomato and pulled some lettuce leaves. M got condiments out and we were good to go.

At the point that she turned to me, burger in hand, with that serious knit-brow look and said, “This is, without a doubt, the best burger you’ve ever made; seriously…” I considered my mission a success…

Spring done sprung down here and so has our cilantro; not where we planted it last year, interestingly enough, but in a bed where it hung out 2 years back – What they hey, never look gift herbs in the mouth, right?  We’ve been using at best we can, but as you can see, it’s gotten really leggy and flowered out, so what to do with it?

A recon trip by M to the freezer found some nice skinned chicken boobs that need to get used, so how about a shotgun wedding for those two?  Pesto it is, then!

Pesto? You say; I thought pesto was made with basil?

It is, I nod sagely, (Pun intended),  but that’s only one popular permutation, truth be told:  Let us consult our handy pocket dictionary where we find, and I quote:

“A sauce typically made with basil, pine nuts, olive oil, and grated Parmesan blended together and served hot or cold over pasta, fish, or meat. Origin: 1935–40; upper Italian, (compare Genoese dialect pésto):  noun derivative of pestare; to pound, crush.”  (Notice how close the root sound of the word is to pestle, as in mortar and?)

There you have it; think of pesto as a combination of veg, something from the Alliaceae family, (AKA garlic, shallot, onion), a hard cheese, a nut, an oil and a little salt and you’re there.   Basil pesto is wonderful, as is cilantro; hey… Cilantro!  We’ll do a nice cilantro pesto sauce for the chicken, and marry that with some beautiful Asparagus M found at the market, and we’re talkin’ serious bounty – So let’s!

Cilantro Pesto

1 bunch fresh cilantro, (roughly 2 lightly packed cups)

1-2 cloves garlic, minced, (And you can roast them first if you like a milder, smokier taste!)

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼ teaspoon ground chile (I like Tabasco for this)

½ cup pine nuts, (Sub Hazelnuts for a very cool taste)

½ cup olive oil

salt to taste

Add everything but the oil to quisinart or blender and zap it all into a nice dry paste.  Slowly add up to ½ cup of olive oil, while blending constantly, until you get the thickness you like for pesto.

Store pesto in a sealed glass container in the fridge for at least 20 minutes to allow all those flavors to get to know one another:  You can store it long term in the freezer in an airtight container for a few months without losing much flavor.  When you’re ready to use it, you can either add it to, say, pasta that you’ve tossed into a medium sauté pan until well coated and serve right away, garnished with a little more cheese and a cilantro sprig, or, for what we’re gonna do, just pull it out of the fridge, stir it a bit to re-blend and top a piping hot chicken breast with it just like that.

We’re gonna braise our chicken, so we get nice, juicy meat for that cilantro to land on:  We rinsed and patted dry two nice breasts, then threw them into a sauté pan on medium high with a couple shots of olive oil therein; we seared the breasts on both sides, then tossed ‘em into a glass baking pan and added;

½ cup white wine

½ cup chicken stock

A shake or two of salt, pepper, and ground Tabasco chiles.

We put the ol’ temp probe equipped thermometer to use and shoved that into a preheated oven at 350º F; we’ll cook that, (I’ve said it before and I’m fixin’ to say it again), to temperature, not time – Done chicken breasts should reach 170º F, then be pulled and allowed to rest for 5 minutes or so; they’ll continue to cook and seal in all those juices so they don’t bleed out when you cut ‘em, leaving you with nasty, dry chicken jerky, (Which nobody wants, right?  Right!) Let me point out at this juncture that this recipe will work GREAT for any poultry, including wild game; as Pheasant, Grouse, Dove, etc are all quite lean, searing and braising as we have seals in moisture and delivers very tender, juicy birds indeed.

Our Asparagus was hand chosen by M at the market; as you can see, it’s beautiful stuff, indeed!  She did the standard test; choose firm, smooth stalks with nice tight flower heads.  Give the bunch you like a sniff, it should smell lightly of fresh veggies, nothing funky or heavy.  Don’t wash your asparagus, or soak it:  If you’re not going to use it right away, trim the ends and stand the bunch upright in a glass or dish with enough water to cover the freshly cut ends, and don’t wait too long to enjoy it!  The sugars in Asparagus convert pretty quickly to starch after it’s been harvested, the results being woody stalks and accompanying lousy flavor… When you’re ready to cook, pull out and quickly rinse the bunch. Gently bend each stalk and allow it to snap where it will; toss the ends and cook the good stuff. You want to cook Asparagus pretty quickly to a slightly al dente consistency; just a bit of snap to the bite, and certainly not mushy! We chose to roast ours, so we gave it a light coating of olive oil with a splash of white balsamic vinegar, then added freshly chopped rosemary, thyme, and salt. We roasted for 10 minutes in a 400º oven, and since we had that, we decided that there should be some nice buttermilk biscuits to keep ‘em company, (Another time for that recipe, honest!).

All that went nicely onto the plates and voila, dinner fit for a queen!