Week of 4 Apr, 2010

A new week a new trend.

This week I've been thinking ginger. I'm not sure where the inspiration came from, but it's at least related to my secret (well not so secret) desire to make my own ginger beer. Some of this was also started when some friends and I decided to make our own drink mixers (including tonic water).

After a little trip to the grocery store last Tuesday, I was a little richer in ginger, and did not yet have a mechanism to turn it into ginger beer, so I took the middle road and started to put it into other things.

I started a little early on this weeks theme actually doing the first thing with it on Thursday. Currently I'm on a lowered carbohydrate diet which really means that trying to do something with ginger and chicken (the first thing I found in our freezer) becomes much more challenging when you can't whip up a simple teriyaki style ginger-soy marinade.

Thursday:

Ginger-soy chicken

3 cloves garlic minced
1 tbsp chopped ginger
1/4 C soy
1/4 C olive oil
1/4 C Port wine
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast meat

I marinaded the chicken briefly (about 10 minutes) and then lightly fried this (in a few tablespoons of olive oil, so not too hot).

The upshot was that it was very tender and had okay flavor, but was just a little too salty without the sugar to mediate. I wanted to add some sesame oil and seed which I think might have added more flavor with less salt, but didn't have it on hand ... so yeah, no great shakes.

Sunday

What is more traditional than Adobo on Easter Sunday? Um .. okay, probably lots of things, but it's what I had, and so it's what I made.

I had read a little bit about braising recently in this month's Cook's Illustrated, and so I wanted to go in that direction, but I also had a bunch of leftover chopped ginger and garlic that needed to be used, and that didn't jive with the light sage butter sauce that they were trying to do so I went off in a slightly different direction.

Impromptu Adobo

4 Chicken thighs, skin-on, bone-in, trimmed (but not aggressively so) to remove excess skin
2 tbsp minced ginger
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tsp (or more) crushed red pepper
1 C low-sodium soy sauce
1 C vermouth
2 C vegetable stock
1/2 C rice vinegar (augmented with balsamic, since I ran out)'
1/4 C canola oil for frying

Preheat the oven to 325

I fried the chicken thighs skin down in very hot canola oil until they were nicely browned (about 5 minutesish). I then turned them over to start the cooking on the bottom as best as possible, and cooked them there for about 4-5 minutes as well.

I removed the chicken from the skillet, and drained off all but enough oil to cover the bottom, and then cooked the ginger, garlic, and crushed red pepper in that until the garlic started to brown. I then added the vermouth to deglaze the pan, stirring to get all the browned bits unstuck from the bottom.

I added the chicken back to the pan, skin side up, and then added the rest of the liquids essentially until most of the thigh was under liquid, but the skin was still above the surface.

I then put the whole thing in the over for a little less than an hour.

It came out quite nice, although I was impatient, so I didn't reduce the liquid as much as I might have once I took it out of the oven. I did add a little cornstarch to thicken the pan liquid and then served that over the thighs, but I think that I could have reduced it by half or more so that it took less sauce to give the final dish the punch I was looking for.

Anyway, that's it for now, perhaps I'll augment this post in a bit.

Week of Mar 21st 2010

Okay, since I'm doing this as a bit of a retrospective, I'll see what I can do to get it all right.

This weeks theme:

Overwhelmingly, this weeks theme was Tik N Chik.

What is that? Tik N Chik is a style of cooking a whole fish in an Achiote marinade created (I think) on Isla Mujeres in the Yucatan in Mexico.

What is Achiote?

Achiote is commonly called Annatto, and used primarily for color in American and European cuisine. It's made from the crushed seeds of the Bixa Orellana bush.

The taste I can best describe as kind of smokey/earthy/savory. It's really fantastic in this recipe.

Quick Achiote marinade/rub for fish and chicken in the style of Tik n Chik:

1 Tbsp Achiote paste
Juice of 1 orange and/or 1 lime
2-3 cloves garlic minced
1/4 C olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste

Sunday:

I used this marinade/rub once with orange and once with lime juice. I tried the orange version on Arctic Char. I rubbed it first with salt and pepper and then basted with the marinade.

I was able to try out the new cedar planks that were given to me for my birthday for the first time. The goal of these is to simulate a more smokey, charcoal grill flavor on the gas grill.

I grilled the Char skin down on the grill on the boards basting the Char one time about halfway through the cooking. I think that it probably cooked all the way through in about 15 minutes.

Monday:

I ended up dropping by Costco and picking up a nice pair of thick Ahi filets which I tried an impromptu pistachio crust on.

I didn't do anything particularly interesting or smart to make the crust or to get the pistachios to stick. I just crushed them in a mortar and pestle and stuck them on with some salt and pepper. I then seared the whole thing in a medium-hot skillet with a small amount of olive oil.

The filet was thick enough that I had to slice them in half to about 3/4 of an inch so that they could cook almost through, creating a nice medium-rare steak without burning the nuts.

The result was quite tasty, the pistachios caramelized nicely, and created some extra interest. I'm sure that if I try this again, I'll actually look for a recipe first. I might try to use something sticky (like egg?) to adhere the crust since there's a lot of collateral loss during the frying process.

Tuesday:

I revisited the Tik n Chik, this time with lime and on Tilapia. I pan fried the result rather than grilling, and it was nice. Tilapia has a muddy catfish-like flavor which is not as complementary with the savory smokey Achiote, as Snapper (which is what we had in Mexico,) but it's not an awful way to go.

Wednesday:

I tried to go ahead and marinate the Tilapia overnight from Tuesday, and then grilled it in the same fashion as the Char.

It was okay, but not great. I much preferred (to my surprise) the pan-fried version.


Summary:

I honestly I can't recall the rest of the week. So that's all I got for now.

So yeah, that's the first week. Last week was pretty boring, but I'll see if I can get this next week off to a good start.

Why Am I Doing This

So it turns out that I like to cook. I was raised in a family where it was just second nature to throw together another creative meal and to involve the kids. Now my family wants something back. I've been constantly asked by siblings and siblings-by-marriage for recipes.

I grew up mostly without recipes, so it's always a little hard for me to get in the habit of writing anything down, but, since I've been cooking more than usual recently, I figgered I'd attempt to log what I've eaten in the last week and how I made it. You know, for posterity or somepin'

Hope it is useful to the few that I'm writing it for, and perhaps the wider world in general.