Month: March 2019

Smoke at 275 for 6 hours until the internal temperature of 203 at the point.

• 2 tbsp EVoo
• 5 Jalapeños (2 ribs included)
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup heavy cream

Sweat the onion in the oil, then add the garlic and sweat for a few minutes (don’t brown). Next add and sweat the jalapeño for 5 additional minutes.

Using the butter and flour create a roux, add the salt, chicken stock, and onion/garlic/jalapeño mixture. Bring to a boil and thicken. Remove from heat and blend then put back into the original pot and add the dairy until fully thickened.

• Preheat oven to 375.
• 2lbs pork loin with a good looking fat cap and minimal tendon appearance. Cross stitch the fat cap to allow for rub & garlic penetration.
• 4 cloves of garlic mashed into paste (no salt), pressed into fat cap gaps.
• Salt, pepper, brown sugar & coffee rub mixed and used to season the top and bottom.
• Depending on size, cook for approximately 50 minutes to 1 hour until center is 145 degrees.
• Serve with sour cream + salt + horseradish.

What good is a good Friday night meal without a good Friday night drink?

This drink is dedicated to growing up on the border of Mexico, while at the same time recognizing that I had no idea what a good drink tasted like back then. Scotch and apple soda? Sure. Dr. Pepper and Malibu Rum? Obviously.

Nowadays I’d like to think I’ve got a bit more sense. Or at least I’ve gotten better at my hobbies. So without further delay here’s a mezcal drink that will earn you some points and make you think you’re a better salsa dancer than you really are.

Ingredients:

• Mezcal (For the price, I like Vida)
• Fresh lime wedges
• Fresh orange/tangerine wedges
• Agave syrup
• Topo Chico
• Mexican powdered spice (Trechas, Tajin, etc)

I think a mason jar is the perfect size for this drink. In a pinch you can also use a small glass cup. Let’s just say keep it between 8-12oz.

Rim the glass using an orange wedge and the mexican powdered spice. Peel the orange or tangerine and drop it in. Fill it up with ice about 3/4 of the way. Pour in about a tablespoon of agave. A little more if you like sweet drinks, a little less if you like mezcal. Pour in 1.5 oz of mezcal (aka either one big shot or a shot and a half).

Fill with Topo Chico.

Pinch in the lime juice from a small lime wedge. Stir it up. Surprise your friends with how much they actually like Mezcal, and at how well you dance.

Note from the editor:

I’m actually not a huge fan of dropping my lime wedge into the drink. On a pretentious cooking note – there’s a ton of bitterness in the white part of the rind. Also, you can’t control how much lime juice gets into the drink if you just dump the whole wedge in. On a “oh come on man” note – I worked as a bartender growing up, believe me, you don’t want the lime dropped in there.

This stuff is delicious and the story behind it is even better.

I got this recipe from a ship captain while living on a sailboat off the coast of Thailand. No….seriously.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons Massaman curry paste
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 -2 cartons Coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon Palm sugar
• 1-2 Chicken breasts
• 1 Sweet onion
• 6 (ish) small organic yellow potatoes
• Roasted peanuts (unsalted)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 head of Cauliflower
• Salt, pepper, paprika

The cauliflower is my own personal addition. It adds flavor, depth, and a sweet and salty bit. Let’s go ahead and knock it out. It’s 5 extra minutes of work and you’ll be thankful later.

First, turn your oven onto broil. Roughly chop and dice half a head of cauliflower. Turn it into small cubes and spread it evenly across a a cookie sheet. Toss some olive oil, salt and pepper on top of the cauliflower. Once the broiler is going strong, throw the pan in. That’s it. Done is 15 or so minutes (you want the edges to have browned and crisped.

Onto the curry:

Fry 3 tablespoons of the curry paste in 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Get this going really well and keep mixing. You want to combine the paste with the olive oil so it doesn’t separate or break down the line. Once they’ve become friends, add in a drop (about 2 tablespoons if you’re being exact) of coconut milk and a tablespoon of thai palm sugar. Bring all of this to heat.

Once this comes to heat drop in your cubed/sliced chicken. Keep mixing, stirring, and cooking the chicken with all of the flavors of the curry you’ve developed. Once the chicken is 70% cooked pour in the rest of the coconut milk.

Once this is all brought up to heat, drop in the small yellow potatoes (roughly chopped), followed by the quartered sweet onion and a handful (1/4 to 1/3 cup) of unsalted roasted peanuts.

Slow cook this. You’re guide here is the potatoes, once they’re done you’re good to go. Add in the roasted cauliflower at the last minute. Combine, salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice with a slice of lemon on the side.

Aka Lyon-Style Soup au Gratin, aka Gratinée lyonnaise.

How long it’s supposed to take: 20 prepping, 40 cooking.

How long it really takes: 2 or so hours.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4lb yellow onions (about 2 large ones)
• 1 1/3 stick unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 11 cups water
• 1 small bouquet garni (I used 2 bay leaves, 4 sprigs of chervil, and 3 sprigs of thyme bound by string)
• 1 baguette
• 9 oz of grated Gruyere cheese
• 4 egg yolks
• 1 small glass of Madeira wine (I didn’t have any Madeira wine, and my local store was all out as well so I used a Malbec from the South of France instead. I’m sure it altered the flavor a bit, since Madeira is a fortified wine with a sweet mouthfeel and a French Malbec is dry with a punch of fruit)
• Salt & Pepper

Get your oven really hot. It’s suggested to put it at 450F, but I think it’s better served set to a broil since you’re going to be using it to create a crust on the top of the soup.

Dice the onions as small as possible and sauteé them in the butter. Patience pays off here. Wait until they have a nice brown color to them. Once achieved, add in the flour and make a roux. I’ve rushed this step before because the onions take an annoyingly long time. Really brown the onions and really brown the flour once you get your roux going. This is where your depth of flavor starts.

In a big pot filled with the water, carefully spoon in your onion mixture. Add some salt and pepper (generously), and your bouquet garni. Bring this whole thing to a boil, then knock it down to a simmer and let it hang out for 30 minutes.

Remove the bouquet garni and work the onions through a sieve. Hopefully you’ve cooked them hard enough to where they easily turn into a sort of paste. I’ve messed this part up before and it’s a pain trying to get the whole pot down to a smooth consistency.

Finely slice the bread (about half a baguette), throw it in your oven for 1 minute to get some of the moisture out. Spread the bread across the bottom of an oven proof pot. Sprinkle some cheese on top.

Here’s where it all happens.

Throw the onion mixture into the oven proof pot, put some more bread on top and sprinkle the remaining cheese. Put all of this into your hot oven. Give it about 5-10 minutes – you’re looking for a pretty brown crust on top.

While the soup is getting its “gratin” on, get one small glass of your wine and mix it with 4 egg yolks. Pull the soup out, show off to your guests how fancy and sophisticated you are, then crack the top and pour in your egg mixture slowly – make sure to continuously stir nobody wants French onion egg drop soup.

Congrats, you’ve just accomplished touiller. Get a couple of bowls ready and serve.

Aioli…one of the great mysteries of the modern world. Or, a fancy way of saying dressed up mayonnaise. No matter how you view it, stuff is delicious.

Ingredients

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Salt (1/2 tbps..ish)
• Pepper (1/2 tbps…ish)
• Juice of 3-4 lemons
• 2 tbps Louisiana hot sauce
• 2 diced fresh garlic cloves
• Dash of paprika

Mix all of the ingredients other than the mayonnaise. Once they are combined and happy scoop in your mayo. Mix it really well, the mayo is going to want to have small clumps in the mix. Take an extra minute or two to break up even the smallest of clumps and end up with a very smooth mixture.

Take a taste of it. The true test is that if it’s good on it’s own, then it’s going to be good on everything (especially boiled/steamed artichokes and cold hangover pizza). If it’s a bit too salty, or too “mayo-y” then look to adjust by adding in more oil/mayo to tame the salt, or more lemon juice and pepper and knock down the mayo flavor.

It doesn’t get any better than this.

Let’s get to it.

Ingredients:

• Corn, the sweeter the better. One corn for every 3lbs of crawfish
• Tony Chachere’s. Get the biggest can they’ll sell you.
• Butter. One stick for every 15 lbs of crawfish
• Honey. One bottle for every 15 lbs of crawfish
• Onions. One onion for every 6 lbs of crawfish
• Garlic. One garlic head for every 9 lbs of crawfish
• Oranges. I like small tangerines. One tangerine for every 3lbs of crawfish
• Bay Leaves. One bay leaf for every 9 lbs of crawfish
• Liquid Crab boil. This stuff is potent. One bottle for every 32ish lbs of crawfish
• Bag of traditional Crawfish boil seasoning powder. 2/3 bag for every 32ish lbs of crawfish
• Lemons. One lemon for every 3 lbs of crawfish
• Crawfish. Duh. A typical sack is 32 lbs and a typical person eats around 3 lbs
• Artichoke. One artichoke for every 9 lbs
• Louisiana hot sauce. Same principle as the Tony Chachere’s. Get the biggest bottle they’ll sell you
• Mushrooms. One box for every 9 lbs
• Sausage. You can get creative here. My preference is one two-link package of traditional andouille for every 9lbs of crawfish and one “wild card” package for every boil. Trust me on this, after 3 beers, and a bunch of crawfish, few things are as good as pulling out a piece of wild card jalapeño and cheddar sausage from the mix.
• One sack of small red potatoes for every sack. I’m not a huge potato guy. If you wanna throw in an extra sack more power to you. Just don’t blame me when no one compliments you on it.

Tools

• I use an 80 quart pot with a fitted strainer
• Standard outdoor burner
• Propane tank. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten everything prepared…then realized I had forgotten to get a full tank

Tips

• Rinds tend to be bitter. Many people will just chop the lemons in half (and oranges in this case) and toss them in. I’m not the biggest fan of this since it opens up the risk of a bitter taste getting into the food. Just juice them and pour the juice in.
• Do two batches per sack.
• Double cook the artichokes. Meaning put em back into the boil after the first batch.
• Use Louisiana original hot sauce. The one with the red cap and red dot on the label.
• When in doubt, under-season the first batch. You can always add spice, but you can’t remove it.
• Taste your broth before putting anything in. No seriously. Get brave and taste the water that you’re about to cook everything in. This step alone will improve your cooking ten fold. You’d be surprised how many people don’t do it.
• Purge your crawfish. Whether or not this really does a great deal of importance well…is besides the point. The purging process forces you to clean their bodies with salt which in a requirement. I purge twice. All this mean is fill your ice chest with water, pour a bunch of cheap table salt in the water, let sit for 5 minutes and drain. Twice.
• Make a Creole Aioli. Trust me. This stuff is perfect for the artichokes and offers a good dipping sauce if you’re looking for a flavor change of pace when pushing past the 3 lbs mark.

Steps

Crawfish boils are 90% prep work, 10% drinking beer. The instructions below are based on one 32ish lbs sack of crawfish cooked in two batches. If you’re going for more than one sack, be prepared to re-season your water after the second batch.

Fill your pot just over halfway full of water. Add in all of the seasoning powder and all of the liquid boil. Chop the oranges and lemons in half (all of them) and juice them into the water as well. Add in about 1/3 of a cup of Louisiana hot sauce to the water. Take half of your onions, chop off the ends, chop the remaining onion in half and peel away the inedible skins. Add em to the water. Add in all of your bay leaves. For the garlic, leave the head intact but peel away as much of the garlic paper as possible. Best case scenario is you expose the cloves but they remain attached to the base of the head. Drop in 2 garlic heads after cleaning them. I like dropping in my sausage from the get go, so add in half of your allotted sausage at this point.

Once you have the water prepped, light up the burner and get the water boiling. This will take longer than you expect it to. To speed things up place a lid on the pot to retain heat and open a beer.

Every now and then check on your water, once you see some steam/heat coming off of it feel free to drop in half of your potatoes, half of your corn, and all of your artichokes. Don’t do this to early, wait until the water is “imminently” about to boil.

Once the water is boiling you’ve got a good thing going on. Check the potatoes every 10 or so minutes to see how things are coming along. They take longer than corn, so they’re your best barometer. Here’s where buying the smallest red potatoes possible is important. If the potatoes are too large, their cook time will be too different than the corn cook time and you’ll end up having to stress about turning your corn into mush while waiting for the potatoes to finish. Don’t be that stressed out boiler, no one likes that guy.

Also, I like the way mushrooms taste. Some people put mushrooms in at the beginning with the potatoes and corn. I prefer to put the mushrooms in when the potatoes are about halfway done. They still retain their natural flavor while picking up some of the boil seasoning rather than just being a big splash of boil.

Every burner is different – potatoes usually take somewhere in the 20-25 min range but don’t stress out if they’re just not their yet. If you go past 30 minutes, consider pulling out the corn early and feeding people an “appetizer” as opposed to overcooking them. Pull out a potato in that 20ish minute range, cool it off, and eat it. If it’s done (or super close) than you’re ready.

Drop in your purged crawfish. Put the lid on and finish your beer. Should be about 5 minutes if your boil is rolling well. Take a peek after 5 minutes, if they’re floating and ruby red then their done. Kill the flame on the burner, put the lid back on, and let em rest for 10 or so minutes in the water.

Here’s where everyone does something different. Some serve directly after letting them rest in the water, some put them in a cooler, and some put them in a cooler and sprinkle some seasoning on top. Mine fall into a 4th category.

Pull up your strainer, drain the crawfish as best as possible (doesn’t need to be perfect) and dump into an empty ice chest. Drop in a roughly chopped up stick of butter, 2/3 a bottle of honey, and a generous amount of tony chachere’s. Shake the crap out of the ice chest.

Let it rest for 5 more minutes.

Dump on the table, find the artichokes, place the artichokes back into the pot, and eat everything else immediately.

Reignite the burner, throw in the rest of your veggies/sausage and repeat the steps. Usually batch 2 finishes cooking a little bit faster than batch 1 so keep an eye out.

And there you have it! You’ve made crawfish, probably hi-fived some people, probably told some exaggerated stories, and hopefully crushed it.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 lbs potatoes. I used little dutch yellow potatoes
• 3 cups whole milk
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 1/4 cups gruyere cheese
• 3 tbs heavy whipping cream
• 2 tbs butter
• dash of nutmeg
• Salt & Pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice all of the potatoes. You don’t want to go paper thin or else they’ll desintegrate but you also don’t want too thick or it’ll affect the cook time. I’d like to say “slice to an 8th of an inch” but that would assume that I actually measured that perfectly. Rough guess though is stick to around 1/8th of an inch if you’re looking for thickness direction.

Bring the milk to a boil in a pot (keep an eye on it since it may start to foam up to the point of boiling over). Toss in a heavy dash of nutmeg – this will help bring through some of that potato flavor. I know you’re thinking “dude it’ll taste like Christmas”, trust me it won’t. As soon as the milk comes to a boil toss in all of your potatoes and a heavy dose of salt and pepper. When it comes to leveling things out you want to make sure that the milk just covers the potatoes. If need be add a little water (my preference here is to actually just remove some potatoes). Let that simmer uncovered for 25 mins.

While that’s simmering smash and dice 2 garlic cloves and spread evenly on the bottom of a baking dish. Also during this break go ahead and grate all of your cheese – 1 1/4 cup is nice, more is even better. Set the cheese to the side.

Once the 25 minutes are up start layering the potatoes. One layer of potatoes, one layer of cheese, one layer of potatoes, one layer of…you get the point. After all of the layers have been set, pour your 3 tablespoons of heavy cream over the top and dollop the butter evenly. Also, grab about 2/3 of a cup of the seasoned milk you cooked the potatoes in and pour over the top.

Put in the over for 25 minutes, bake, good god it’s good.

Ingredients:

• Flour
• Eggs
• Salt & Pepper

There’s almost as many ways to make pasta as their is ways to cook it. Here’s a foolproof method that with a little TLC will get you there every time.

Two whole eggs for every one and 1/8th cup flour. Teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of pepper. You’ll for sure need more flour than one cup, but play that part by ear. Have about a quarter cup off to the side to tag into the ring whenever the time comes.

Think one egg per person also, so this batch makes enough pasta for two.

Pour the flour into a pyramid on the middle of a cutting board. Using two fingers make a hole down the middle in order to create a well. Crack both eggs and drop into the well. Also, go ahead and drop your S & P right into the well also. Start with a fork to “pierce” both eggs a couple of times, trust me, this will make the next step a whole lot easier and will help combine ingredients.

At this point, you’re ready to party. Using your fingers (or if you’re a delicate flower keep using the fork) being to whisk the eggs, seasoning, and flour together. What you really want to do is start small, get the eggs properly combined and slowly begin to incorporate the flour from the inner walls of the well.

Tip: Before you begin combining the flour really get the eggs going, you want the yolk and the egg white to combine into one. If you begin incorporating the flour before the eggs have had a chance to combine you’ll end up working the flour a little longer because you’re having to both incorporate a new ingredient (flour) and evenly distribute both parts of the egg.

Knead the dough until it’s a proper ball, if it’s really sticking to your fingers and you’ve already incorporated the flour from the walls go ahead and grab some extra flour from your reserve stash. When it’s done, you’ll have a silky dough ball that’s pillowy to the touch.

Let it rest for an hour in a bowl covered by a towel. You’ll probably need to sprinkle a little bit more flour on the dough ball at the end of the hour when you’re removing it from the bowl and getting ready to roll it into whatever weird shape your heart desires.