Red Beans, Almost the Classic Way (FM)

• 1 1/2 cup dried kidney, pinto, or other red beans, rinsed, picked over, and soaked if you like
• 1 meaty smoked ham hock or ham  bone or 4-ounce chunk of bacon or pancetta
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 andouille or hot Italian sausage in casings [andouille]
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 green and 1 red bell pepper, chopped [I think my green bell pepper was too far gone to make it in this recipe so I skipped it.]
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 or 3 sprigs fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• Pinch of cayenne
• 1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes (canned are fine; include their juice)
• 2 large sweet potatoes, cubed
•  Salt and black pepper
• Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish [nope]
• Hot sauce, optional

Ah, one my last uses of my home-cured, home-smoked almost bacon.  I'm humble enough to admit my failures.

I threw the bacon and beans before I completed any of the other prep.  Since I guess these beans cooked super quickly (I also wasn't around to pull it off the boil immediately), they were overdone at the end.  Oh well.

 

Mise en place at this stage.  I figured I'd have time enough to prep the sweet potatoes during the next few steps.

Browning the sausage.

Cook onions, bell pepper and garlic until the peppers have softened.

Slice sausage and add back in to pot along with everything but the sweet potatoes.  Cook until beans begin to get tender.

That or until I realize they're totally blown out by the time the sweet potato cooks through.


The dish was fine but had a lot of pitfalls similar to many of my experiences with Food Matters.  I mean I'm not always disappointed by the overly healthful recipes, but sometimes it's pretty hard for me to eat too much of them.  I did wind up throwing a bit of this out.

Charcoal-Grilled Thai-Style Chicken with Spicy Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce (CI)

This is completely unrelated to the recipe I'm featuring in this blog entry, but I didn't exactly want to do a full travel blog entry about the food I ate while on vacation in NYC a couple weeks ago.  Especially now since I have a smartphone and can post pictures and updates right to Facebook these days.
However, for the people I'm not Facebook friends with, this was hands-down the most amazing meal I had in the city that week and also representative of my NEW FAVORITE RESTAURANT: Mission Chinese Food at 154 Orchard St in the Lower East Side.

Picture here is the Beef Heart & Hokkaido Scallop Sashimi (sublime), the ridiculously popular Thrice-Cooked Bacon (ooh, spicy!), and some rye-based cocktail with a name riffing on Twin Peaks.  I assume that's what I had to drink.  They don't list their cocktail menu on the internet.

In other food related ventures over the course of the handful of days I spent in NYC, I ate at Acme, Fatty Crab, M Wells, Hide-Chan Ramen, Tacos Matamoros, and Crif Dogs.  I sipped a few cocktails at PDT and a soju slushie and Momofuku Noodle Bar.  Also drinks at less notable bars.
Anyway, the entry on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010 issue.

Chicken and Brine

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup table salt [I don't really believe in plain-Jane iodized salt.  I know that kosher salt is not at all a one-to-one swap with table salt, but I use it anyway in brines.]
• 4 split bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, about 12 ounces each
• Disposable aluminum roasting pan   

Dipping Sauce

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 limes
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 3 small garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (1 1/2 teaspoons)
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Rub

• 2/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 1/4 cup juice from 2 to 3 limes
• 12 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 1/4 cup)
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for cooking grate.

Brand new grill, brand new chimney starter, and natural hardwood charcoal briquettes.

Sorry, folks, starter fluid and gas grills are for sissies.

The dipping sauce resembles the condiment my parents perpetually make and have on hand in the fridge.  Except instead of red pepper flakes, they use fresh Thai chiles.

I had my parents take home a piece of each part of the resulting food I made, but I figured they didn't have to take any of this sauce home with them.

The rub involved a stupid amount of prep.  I'm really not sure how long exactly it took me to microplane all that garlic, but it was a long-ass time on top of everything else.  Plus I was grill-roasting sweet potatoes in the meantime which meant I dash up and down two flights of stairs every 15 minutes.  Christ, what a pain in the ass.

Brine the breasts for at least 30 minutes but no more than 1 hour.  I've read about the science of brining several times by now, but all I can tell without looking shit up is that there's some sort of hocus-pocus that's provides additional protection against dry poultry or pork.  However, proteins should only be brined for an appropriate amount of time.

A modified two-level fire means that the coals are banked to one half of the grill.  The chicken's first browned on the hot side and ideally left to finish cooking on the cooler side.
The retarded amount of prep and the fact that I had pretty much completely cooked the sweet potatoes by the time I was ready to grill the chicken and also that I have a baby rather than full-size Weber means I was eventually tempted to cook shit on the "hot" side (the coals being pretty spent).  Even taking this short cut, it took much longer than stated in the recipe to get the breasts to register 160 degrees.

It was about 9:30 PM on Saturday night when I was finally ready to eat my first goddamn meal of the day.  I'm sure anything would've tasted terrific after running around all afternoon on empty, but this was really insanely good.  The chicken was so moist and flavorful.
I ate this and subsequent leftovers using only my hands.  So primal.

Sweet Potato Enchiladas with Red Mole (HCEV)

• 12 to 15 mild to medium dried chiles, like New Mexico, mulatto, pasilla, guajillo, or ancho (or a combination), toasted, soaked, and cleaned [Pretty sure I picked up some damn expensive New Mexican's at Whole Foods. Now that I've discovered this wonderful bodega in East Boston, I'm never spending that much on dried chiles again.]
• 2 cups assorted nuts, like peanuts, almonds, pecans, walnut, pine nuts, and hazelnuts [Used the remainder of the unshelled peanuts I used for Peanut Soup, Senegalese Style. Plus I topped it off with a cup of sunflower seeds.]
• 1/4 cup tahini or sesame seeds [Used sesame seeds I had on hand rather than buying tahini]
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder or chopped unsweetened chocolate [I used cocoa powder here. I thought it odd that Bittman didn't suggest buying Mexican chocolate. Trying to make it easy for the plebs?]
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 1 head garlic, peeled
• 4 plum tomatoes, cored (canned are fine)
• 2 thick slices white bread (stale is fine)
• 1 quarter vegetable stock or water, plus more as needed [Hmm, again I de-vegetarianised the dish with boxed chicken stock.]
• 1/4 cup neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, plus more for frying
• 3 or 4 bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon ground allspice
• 2 teaspoons anise seeds [I swear that I have a distinct memory of buying this at Harvest in Central Square, but it certainly wasn't on my overstocked spice shelf or logged in the list I keep in my planner.]
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Brown sugar as needed (optional)
• 24 small corn tortillas, plus more if any break
• 4 cups sweet potatoes, cooked, mashed, and seasoned
• 1/2 cup crumbed queso fresco for garnish
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion or scallion for garnish [I used radishes instead since they are my favorite with Mexican food and already had some on hand.]
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro for garnish
• Lime wedges for garnish [Didn't use the last two ingredients.]

Toasting the dried peppers.


A couple of them blew up like a balloon.


Covered the peppers with hot water. I put a plate on top to keep them submerged and let them soften until I was ready to deal with them.


I would've have saved me some prep I realize if I had used shelled nuts, but these were around.


First batch in the blender: nuts, onion, garlic, and bread.


The debris after peeling a whole head of garlic.


First batch blended.


Peppers, tomatoes, and cocoa powder. Why bother washing out the blender container when it's all going in the same place?


Second batch blended.


Cook over largely low heat for 20 minutes until deeply browned and softened.


Add the broth. I probably should've kept the pepper soaking liquid and used that.


An hour of simmering.


Boil sweet potatoes until tender.


Mashed with my brand new potato masher (No food mill yet).


Frying the tortillas in oil until softened and pliable.


On a pile of paper towels. Maybe I should've layered them a bit more, but I patted the tortillas dry as I worked.


Filling the enchiladas with 2 tablespoons of the sweet potatoes.


Ran out of sweet potatoes and used straight up scrambled eggs after. Bittman includes eggs as a variation but only as an addition to the cheese.
Unsurprisingly I was happier with the sweet potato enchiladas than the egg ones.


Covering the bottom with a thin layer of mole.


Enchiladas filled and rolled with half the casserole covered with sauce.


The remaining sauce. After nearly finishing the enchiladas by the time I write this entry, I'm contemplating thinning the sauce out a bit and braising chicken tenders in it.


Already sprinkled some of the queso fresco on before I remembered to take a photo.


Queso fresco and radishes.


Smothered in some of the extra mole.
I thought the mole was really bitching until I gradually worked my was through the leftovers. Nearly worth the enormous amount of prep that went into it.

Peanut Soup, Senegalese Style (HCEV)

• 3/4 cup roasted and shelled peanuts
• 2 tablespoons peanut or neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn
• 1 medium red onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon peeled and minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• Pinch cayenne or more or less to taste
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 6 cups vegetable stock or water [I had 3 cups of chicken stock that was about to go bad]
• 2 (about 1 pound) sweet potatoes or yams, peeled and cut into thick slices
• 8 to 12 plum tomatoes, cored and halved (canned are fine; drain and reserve liquid for another use)
• 1/2 pound collards or kale, washed thoroughly and cut into wide ribbons
• 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter
  

Figured it was worth shelling the peanuts myself instead of buying canned ones. I apologize for the Yankees logo on the bag.


Roughly chopped in my mini food processor.


Mise en place.


Onion, ginger, and garlic sauteed until stuff.


Add 2/3's of the peanuts. The rest will be employed as garnish.
The seasonings also come into play here.


3 cups chicken broth I had open in the fridge and 3 cups water.


Tomato, peanut butter, and kale filled the pot to the very brim. Ooh, Mark Bittman, we're playing a risky business with this medium saucepan you said was sufficient.


Filling, warm, colorful. I doubt I'll come back to it again but I don't regret making it.