→ November 24, 2009
→ By

And a Bottle of Rum.

Wayne Curtis tries to downplay the ambitions set in the title of his book And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, implying that he’s not going to credit human existence or history to rum the way other authors have to cod or salt or other mundane foodstuffs. That’s all to the good in my opinion, as he sticks mostly to the history of rum and various people and products associated with its rise from “the distilled essence of industrial waste” to a top-shelf liquor commanding premium prices for aged varieties as you might pay for whiskey or brandy. (It’s also available on iBooks.)

Rum is, of course, distilled from molasses (or, rarely, sugar cane juice), which was originally discarded by plantation owners as the unwanted, unsaleable waste product of sugar production and refining. It gained popularity among sailors, even becoming part of a daily grog ration for members of the Royal Navy (a practice that was only discontinued in 1970), and then became the main liquor in colonial America, first as an import from the Caribbean and later as a homemade product, playing a role along the way in the Sugar and Stamp Acts. (Curtis also attempts to dispel the myth of the triangle trade, with a few references, saying that there’s no evidence any ship actually sailed those three legs or that the trade was as simple as the middle-school story indicates.) Rum faded from view in the U.S. only to regain popularity during and after Prohibition through Cuba tourism, the song “Rum and Coca-Cola,” and the rise of the tiki bar. It is a tumultuous history with plenty of associations with major world events, even if rum itself wasn’t always the cause of them.

Along the way, Curtis provides digressions about the real Captain Morgan and his namesake rum (which wasn’t always spiced), the American temperance movement against “demon rum” even though rum was rarely consumed at the time, the history of the mai tai and the tiki bar trend, Coca-Cola (and the Andrews Sisters’ song about the two), and Paul Revere’s ride with its possibly-apocryphal stop for a dram of rum. He weaves these stories into ten chapters, each covering a specific drink, including planter’s punch, the daiquiri – not the frozen sickly-sweet concoction, but the original rum-lime-sugar-crushed ice beverage that was the libation of choice of Ernest Hemingway – and the mojito. To his credit, he has proper scorn for flavored rums, pina coladas, and Coca-Cola, since all of the three take the focus of the drink off rum by inserting a dominant alternate flavor.*

*Curtis hits on a distinction I’ve been thinking about between cocktails and mixed drinks. If you read about the history of alcoholic drinks, you’ll come across two kinds – those that try to enhance the flavor of the central liquor or push it to the front of the drink, and those that cover it up because the liquor is of low quality or because the drinker can’t abide the taste of alcohol. The former group, what I think of as cocktails, comprised drinks that were seen as masculine, like you might find a Bertie Wooster drinking at the club, while the latter, simply mixed drinks, were seen as either girly or just déclassé. Curtis even mentions the rise of vodka, a liquor devoid of character and nearly devoid of taste, and its rise as younger male drinkers in the 1950s refused to acquire the taste for strong drink. A true daiquiri remains an acceptable drink in this dichotomy, as the rum is the star ingredient with the rum and sugar as supporting players. A pina colada isn’t, as Curtis explains, because “pineapple and coconut are the linebackers of the taste world,” obliterating any indication that there’s rum in the beverage. A dark-and-stormy (dark rum and ginger beer) works because ginger and rum are complementary flavors, much like mushrooms and onions or haricots verts and almonds, but a Cuba Libre doesn’t work because it’s just a Coke with a higher proof content. I’m not quite sure how a mai tai passes muster with Curtis – I think that’s only an acceptable drink if you’re on a tropical island, and even so, there are likely better options – but in general he’s pretty consistent.

Curtis also includes recipes for modern drinks as well as brief recipes for ten classic (or just old) drinks that lead into the ten chapters. One of them, just called “punch,” looked familiar, and after making it I realized it’s the drink called “planter’s punch” in Bermuda, where my wife and I honeymooned and to which we returned for our fifth and tenth anniversaries. It’s strong and the predominant flavor is rum (Gosling’s Black Seal in Bermuda), and while you can garnish it with all manner of garbage, at its heart it’s a daiquiri with some water and maybe a pinch of nutmeg, the latter a nod to the classic punches of Britain. And it’s very easy to assemble:

Juice half a lime into a glass. Add one tablespoon of sugar, simple syrup, or agave nectar; 1 1/2 ounces of rum; and two ounces of water. Mix well and add ice.

The end of the book has a brief selection listing Curtis’ favorite rums from a cross-section of countries and multiple price ranges. I found most of them at a nearby liquor store (the one at Fresh Pond next to Whole Foods, for those of you who live around here). They’re sipping rums rather than mixing rums, for more serious drinkers than myself.

Next up: Booth Tarkington’s 1921 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Alice Adams.

Filed Under: Food, Nonfiction Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
→ November 23, 2009
→ By

Macaroni & Cheese with Gruyère and Thyme.

Before I get to the recipe, I wanted to point out that Amazon.com is selling a one-year subscription to ESPN the Magazine for $5 this week. I believe that this will also get you a year of Insider.

—

This is my reboot of this recipe; since I can’t abide cheddar cheese, I decided to make it with Gruyère, a milder cheese that’s also one of the best melting cheeses I’ve ever used.

Gruyère also happens to be the classic cheese at the heart of a sauce mornay, and mac and cheese is little more than cooked pasta covered in a sauce mornay with extra cheese and baked till semi-firm and golden brown on down. A sauce mornay is built on a sauce Béchamel*, one of the “mother sauces” and a somewhat secret ingredient in dishes like lasagna. A Béchamel starts with a flour-butter roux to which one adds milk (the traditional method is to steep an onion studded with a bay leaf and a few cloves in the milk first) and then simmers very gently until thickened. Add Gruyère and Parmiggiano-Reggiano to a Béchamel and you have a mornay.

*So one of the Food and Wine pavilions at Epcot this year had some dish served in a Béchamel sauce, and while I was walking by, I overheard a female tourist from somewhere in the northeast yell to her family that the dish was in a “buh-KAM-el” sauce. Granted, not everyone knows what a Béchamel is or how to say it, but if you saw that word and didn’t know it, how far down the list of potential pronunciations would “buh-KAM-el” be? Twentieth? Eightieth? A hundred and twelfth?

Since Gruyère is a French and Swiss-French cheese I went for one of the Frenchiest herbs I could think of, thyme, which pairs very well with Gruyère, and added parsley for some background music. Tarragon is probably the other herb I most associate with French cooking, but it’s too assertive for this dish in my opinion, and it’s more of a spring herb than a fall/winter comfort food flavor. Chives might work. I guess what I’m saying is that you can and should play with the herbs in this dish, just bearing in mind that the cheese flavor is on the soft side and you don’t want the finished product to taste like grass or licorice.

I’ve tried the dish with and without bread crumbs in the topping and I prefer it without, but it’s just a matter of taste. I also cut the mustard (!) in half to keep it in the background; it’s also a very French flavor but not everyone likes a mustardy smack in the mouth.

Whole Foods has organic whole wheat elbows under the 365 label for $1.99. I found a Swiss Gruyère at Trader Joes for $9.99 a pound; a roughly 10-11 ounce brick should give you enough for two batches.

1 1/2 cups elbow-shaped pasta (whole wheat works fine; you can try other shapes but it may alter the cooking time in the oven)
3 T unsalted butter
3 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp dry mustard
2 cups milk, anything but skim
1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 Tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 cups (about 5 ounces) grated Gruyère cheese (nothing too fancy like “cave aged for 20 years” or anything)
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp Parmiggiano-Reggiano
salt/pepper to tastes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a saucier (if you have one) or deep skillet or sauté pan, melt the butter and allow to foam but not brown. Add the flour and whisk constantly until a small paste forms. Add the mustard.
3. Gradually add the milk (you may choose to heat it first for faster cooking), still whisking constantly to create a smooth liquid.
4. Allow the mixture to simmer gently for 5-7 minutes until it’s visibly thickened and coats the back of a spoon. Add the herbs, then begin adding the Gruyère in small handfuls, whisking each addition into the sauce until it’s fully integrated. (If you add it all at once and whisk, you will end up with a big congealed clump in the center of your whisk – a hot mess if ever there was one.) Add 1/2 cup of the Parmiggiano-Reggiano and kill the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper (white pepper works well here for aesthetic reasons).
5. Cook the pasta in several quarts of salted water and drain. You don’t want the pasta sitting and waiting for the sauce, so I usually put a small pot of water on high heat when I start the roux.
6. Grease a casserole dish and add the pasta. Pour the sauce over the pasta and toss to coat. Spread the remaining Parmiggiano-Reggiano over the top and bake until the top is golden, brown, and delicious and the center is slightly firm, 20-25 minutes, 30 if you want to be able to cut firm, stable wedges of the dish.

UPDATE: Reader Steve asked about adding leeks and/or bacon. I haven’t tried this variation, but here’s how I’d approach it:
* Chop the bacon finely and crisp in a skillet, rendering out as much fat as possible. Remove the bacon to a paper towel, then add to the casserole right before it goes in the oven.
* Pour out all but maybe 1 Tbsp of the fat from the skillet and use that to sweat the leeks. Slightly browning them is optional but would add more flavor – just don’t burn them. Add with the bacon to the mix right before baking.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
→ October 29, 2009
→ By

Sear-roasted chicken breasts with orange-brandy sauce.

Chat today at 1 pm. Yesterday’s hit on the Herd is now online (and already out of date!).

—

I’ve adapted this recipe from the February 2009 issue of Fine Cooking – my favorite cooking magazine, and the only one I’ve received over the last five years – with a few tweaks and fixes, although the core concept is the same. It helps to brine the chicken ahead of time, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary, since the sauce itself has so much flavor. The dish is excellent over couscous (we use whole wheat), which soaks up any excess sauce on the chicken. With about five minutes to go in the oven, I’ll throw some asparagus spears, sliced into two-inch lengths, into the pan and toss to coat in the pan juices and rendered chicken fat, then let the asparagus finish roasting with the chicken.

The recipe would also work great with salmon; skip the brine, sear 3 minutes on the flesh side, then flip and roast until cooked through.

1 whole bone-in, skin-on chicken breast, split into two halves*
1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (navel or Valencia)
3 Tbsp salt
1 cup water

1 medium shallot, minced (about 1/4 cup total)
3 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp brandy or cognac
1 (more) cup orange juice
1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 orange, peeled and sliced into segments

*Yes, your butcher can split this for you, but if you own a chef’s knife, just flip the whole breast over and do it yourself to save a few dimes.

1. Combine 1 cup orange juice, 1 cup water, and salt, stirring until dissolved. (You can also heat 1/2 cup of water, dissolve the salt in it, then cool it down with ice to end up with a cup of water.) Place the chicken breasts in the brine for one to two hours.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the chicken breasts from the brine and pat dry. Season with salt and black pepper. In an oven-safe skillet or saute pan, heat about 1 Tbsp olive oil until hot but not smoking, and sear the chicken, skin side down, until well browned, 4-5 minutes. Flip and sear on the second side until lightly browned, 2-3 minutes. Place entire skillet in the oven and roast until 160 degrees in the center, 15-20 minutes.

3. Remove the skillet from the oven and place on a stove burner. Take the chicken out of the pan and place on a plate, under tented foil, to rest. Drain all fat from the pan and add 2 Tbsp butter and the shallot to the pan. Cook over medium heat, scraping the bottom of the pan (I use a wooden spatula) to remove all browned bits.

4. When the shallots have softened, turn off the heat and add the brandy. Return to medium heat and cook until most of the brandy has disappeared from the pan. Add 1 cup orange juice and cook over medium-high at a brisk simmer until thickened and reduced by half, then add the chicken broth and cook until thickened again.

5. Turn off the heat and add the parsley, 1 Tbsp butter, and orange segments, swirling to mount the butter in the sauce. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve sauce over sliced chicken.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , ,
→ June 21, 2009
→ By

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp.

I’ve got a short piece up on Georgia Tech infielder Derek Dietrich, who’ll be a consideration for the first round next year..

My recipes are usually precise based on multiple attempts to make a dish, but this one is an exception, since I threw it together based in part on what I had left of ten pounds of strawberries and about a pound of rhubarb. The amounts in the fruit base are approximate, and the quantity of sugar you use is going to depend on how sweet your strawberries are. The result was a huge hit, and I thought it was better than the damn good strawberry-rhubarb pie I made on Thursday morning. Next time I do this, I’ll weigh the topping ingredients and I’ll revise it.

Fruit base:
1 pound strawberries, hulled and sliced in half
1/3-1/2 pound rhubarb, chopped into inch-long pieces
Roughly 1/2 cup sugar, depending on the sweetness of your strawberries
1 Tbsp rum, preferably black or dark
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
3-4 tsp arrowroot or corn starch
Pinch salt

Crisp topping:
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, softened
3/4 cups flour
3/4 cups dark brown sugar, packed*
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp rolled oats
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch freshly ground cloves
1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable/canola oil**
1/4 tsp salt

* I used half muscovado, a natural dark brown sugar that has a pronounced molasses taste, and half standard brown sugar.
** Anything that’s neutral in flavor would work here. Ergo, not olive oil.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

1. Toss all fruit base ingredients together in a large bowl or directly in the baking dish and set aside for 10-15 minutes. This is really a pie filling, although most strawberry-rhubarb pies go for a 1:1 ratio of fruits, while I prefer a 3:1 ratio here, so that the strawberries are the star and the rhubarb is justa backup player.

2. Cut the butter into 1/2″ pieces and combine all crisp topping ingredients together in a large bowl. With your fingertips – or, if you’re a complete wuss, a pastry-cutter or two knives – work the butter into the remaining ingredients until it’s combined but not homogenous, with large clumps of dry ingredients around pieces of butter.

3. Move the fruit mixture into the baking dish of your choice – I used an 11x9x2 corningware dish – and top with the crumb mixture, covering the entire surface. (The fruit mixture will bubble through and submerge parts of the topping, creating a pan-dowdy-like effect.) Bake for about 30 minutes and check the dish. You’re looking for a nicely browned top and thick juices bubbling up from the fruit mixture. If you don’t have those two things happening, drop the temperature to 325 degrees and bake until it’s done. (Mine was done at 30 minutes.) Allow to cool to room temperature or close to it so that the starch/liquid mixture can set, after which you can reheat it if you want to eat it warm.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , ,
→ April 29, 2009
→ By

Brown rice pilaf.

I don’t consider myself a healthy eater per se, since I tend to choose foods for taste first rather than nutritional benefits. One exception to that rule is rice – I’ve switched almost completely* from white rice to brown. White rice packs very little nutritional punch, while brown rice has fiber and nutrients that are removed with the outer husk, although for a whole grain it’s still on the light side nutritionally. (Barley, which can be roughly substituted in almost any rice recipe as long as you increase the liquid content, is significantly better for you, but in my opinion doesn’t play quite as nicely with other ingredients in a pilaf.)

*The exception to the exception here is in risotto, which must be made with white rice. Most risotto recipes call for arborio rice, although I’ve had excellent results with carnaroli, a slightly more expensive variety that I think produces a creamier finished product. If there is such a thing as brown arborio rice, I haven’t seen it, and I’d rather not know about it.

The rule of thumb for brown rice is that there is no rule of thumb, really. Rice is idiosyncratic, and each variety has to be treated differently. I work primarily with two varieties: long-grain American, and short-grain. (Short-grain is sometimes labelled “sushi rice,” although they’re not the same thing, and supposedly the Japanese hoard all the real sushi rice for themselves, just like they buy up the world’s best coffee and control the world banking market. Or maybe I’m confusing my conspiracy theories again.) Long-grain American brown rice (“LGA”) requires two parts liquid to one part rice; short-grain requires only about 1.5 parts liquid to 1 part rice. LGA has an earthier flavor; short-grain is “sweeter,” although it’s not higher in sugar. LGA is ideal for under-dishes – the rice you serve under gumbo or red beans. It also works well in soups, although I always cook the rice separately from the soup and add it at the end so that I have more control over how much liquid is in the finished product. For pilaf, however, I prefer short-grain.

Cooking brown rice on the stovetop* is simple, but brown rice pilaf is only a little more time-consuming, and if you know how to dice an onion, you have the requisite skills.

*We got a rice steamer as a wedding gift and gave it away when we moved to Pittsburgh two years later and were trying to reduce how much crap we were toting to a small apartment with a tiny basement storage space. Therefore, I’ve been steamer-less for over a decade and am not sure that I’ll switch. Besides, I like pilaf, and you can’t make that in a rice steamer.

Brown rice pilaf with shiitake mushrooms

1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 small/medium onion, diced
1/2 poblano pepper, minced*
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
4-5 ounces shiitake mushrooms, washed, stems removed, sliced into 1/4″ strips
1 cup short-grain brown rice
1.5 cups low-sodium chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp minced fresh thyme
1/2 cup toasted pecans (optional)

*Poblanos aren’t that hot to begin with and the cooking process will eliminate much of what’s left, leaving you lots of flavor without a kick. If you want a moderate kick, feel free to substitute 3 habaneros, seeds included.

1. Heat the oil and butter together in a medium saucepan until the butter starts foaming. Add the onion and pepper and a pinch of salt and sweat until translucent, 5-7 minutes.
2. Add the mushrooms and raise the heat slightly, cooking until they have released their liquid and the bottom of the pan has only fat and not water.
3. Add the garlic and saute for one minute until the garlic is fragrant.
4. Add the rice and stir on and off for three minutes to toast the rice and coat it with a small layer of fat. If your pan is dry after the last step, add a teaspoon or two of additional fat and wait for it to heat up before adding the rice. This is a good time to pop the chicken broth in the microwave for two minutes so that it’s hot when you add it to the pan.
5. Add the chicken broth to the saucepan and stir once to make sure all ingredients are submerged in the liquid. Add salt and pepper to taste – 1/2 tsp of salt is a good start; stir it to dissolve and taste the liquid to adjust.
6. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce to a mild simmer, and cook covered on medium-low heat for 40-45 minutes until all the liquid is absorbed. You can also finish it for the same amount of time in a 350 degree oven.
7. Let the rice sit for ten minutes off heat before uncovering. Add the thyme and pecans if desired and stir to fluff.

Substitutions: You can make the same dish with LGA brown rice or pearled barley by increasing the liquid to two cups for LGA and two to two and a half cups for pearled barley.

The basic formula here is 2 Tbsp fat, sweat the onions, toast the rice, add liquid, boil-cover-simmer, let rest, fluff. It’s extensible; for example, you can also add more mushrooms of any variety, but should add at least a teaspoon of fat for every additional handful of fungus. You can add peas, dried fruit, different nuts (walnuts are also popular) or herbs, or other vegetables, but when to add them is the key – anything you add at the beginning is going to cook in liquid for 40-45 minute and could become soggy. Some vegetables, like bell peppers or asparagus, are better cooked separately in a sauté pan or skillet and added after the rice is cooked.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , ,
→ April 21, 2009
→ By

Grilled steak tips.

This is going to be a little quicker and dirtier than most of my other recipes, but it really wasn’t planned – I just bought the steak tips on a whim and made up a recipe the next day, so I’ve made this a grand total of once. Reviews were positive, though.

Whole Foods (at least the ones around here) currently has sirloin steak tips on sale for $4 a pound, which is a steal for some pretty good quality beef; using a marinade and rub based on stuff you probably have in the house and a simple side or two like a rice pilaf, you’ve got dinner for 3-4 adults for under $10. The store at which I usually shop has them in packages of 1.5-1.75 pounds; this marinade will take care of the lower end of that range but you may want to boost the juice and olive oil for the higher end.

Marinade:
Juice of one small lemon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
1 small dried chile pepper (e.g., arbol), crumbled
Pinch of salt
Ground black pepper
Roughly 1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients but the oil in a measuring cup, and add enough oil to double the total amount of marinade. Cut the steak into skewerable chunks and place in the marinade in a ziploc bag or other sealed container. Refrigerate at least four hours and up to 24 hours.

Heat your grill and about five minutes before it’s ready for the meat, remove the beef from the marinade and rinse briefly under cool water. Pat with paper towels until thoroughly try. Rub the outside with a mixture of kosher or coarse sea salt (2 parts), ancho chile powder (1 part), and cumin (1 part). Grill over direct heat until the outside is well browned and the inside has reached the desired degree of doneness.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , ,
→ April 3, 2009
→ By

Friday nonsense.

And we have our first malcontent in response to my decision to stop accepting Facebook friend requests from total strangers. Kevin R.’s response to my message asking him to follow the fan page instead:

omg, that is so pretentious…have a lovely day…

After which he promptly blocked me from even responding to him.

Speaking of Facebook, Slate’s Big Money site has an op ed on why Facebook’s current model won’t work. It’s interesting – I’ve said before that I don’t know how Facebook thinks it’s going to make money off of me – but I don’t know that I was convinced of anything. I guess it’s better than this travesty, an article that trashes MBA educations, written by a guy who hasn’t actually been to business school but appears to know all about what’s taught there. (For the record, I’ve said before I’m not sure that business school is a good financial decision for most people, and it certainly wasn’t for me given the career change I made after attending.)

This weekend doesn’t just mark Opening Day in MLB, but in baseball leagues all over the world. Japan’s NPB started up last night; Korea and Germany start tonight; and France and Sweden (yes, Sweden) start along with MLB on Sunday. The Dutch Honkbal Hoofdklasse starts next Saturday.

A simple recipe for lemon squares. Not quite my cup of tea – where’s the chocolate, dude? – but the picture is appealing.

Links over at the Four-Letter: Yesterday’s chat, my Wednesday hit on The Herd (around 6:20), my Thursday hit on First Take (and no, that’s not my photo), and our MLB preview package, with two sentences from me on each team covering one rookie hitter and one rookie pitcher who could make an impact in 2009.

Filed Under: Appearances, Chat, Cooking, Food, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ February 16, 2009
→ By

Cocoa-Guinness cupcakes.

This recipe is adapted from one at smitten kitchen, which is the best-looking food blog I’ve ever seen. The photographs are simply amazing. The recipes are nearly all taken from well-known magazines and cookbooks, slightly modified and rewritten. (This, by the way, is completely legal; you can’t copyright a recipe, although you can copyright the specific text used to describe a recipe.) She does do some things that make me nuts, like measuring baking ingredients by volume rather than weight or “discovering” something that’s not that new (as with the rebrowning step in her short ribs recipe, describing a technique that’s been in Joy of Cooking for at least ten years), but it’s one of only four or five food blogs in my RSS reader because the photos inspire me and every once in a while there’s a recipe I want to make. Like these cupcakes.

I made the cupcakes for company this weekend, skipping the ganache filling step because of time constraints and using a Kahlua/cream blend in lieu of Bailey’s in the frosting (which isn’t actually buttercream since it lacks eggs). The results were very, very good – dark, moist chocolate cakes with that intense flavor you only really get from cocoa, cut nicely by the coolness of the frosting. I’m probably going to experiment with this further, but for those who saw my twitter about these cupcakes and asked for the recipe, here you go. I’ve rewritten this to measure the dry ingredients by weight, added vanilla extract to the cupcakes, and made the aforementioned change to the frosting. Oh, and I don’t use cupcake-pan liners. Who the hell uses liners? It’s 2009. Buy a nonstick pan and some baking spray.

For the cupcakes:

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup neutral-flavored oil (such as canola)
80 g (about 3/4 cup) unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
300 g (about 2 cups) all purpose flour
400 g (about 2 cups) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F (about 175 C). Prepare two 12-slot cupcake pans with baking spray or with nonstick spray and cocoa powder*.
2. Combine the butter and stout in a medium saucepan and bring to a bare simmer over medium heat. The goal is to melt the butter, work the carbonation out of the stout (we’ll add lift chemically), and combine the two. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cocoa powder and oil until smooth. Set aside to cool until just warm to the touch.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.
4. In the work bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large bowl suitable for a hand mixer), combine the eggs and sour cream and beat with the whisk attachment until more or less blended. Add the vanilla and sugar and blend further.
5. With the beater(s) running on low speed, slowly pour in the warm cocoa-stout-butter mixture. Increase the speed and whisk for thirty to sixty seconds until combined.
6. Add the flour in two to three installments, beating thoroughly after each addition until the mixture is homogeneous.
7. Pour or scoop the mixture into the prepared pans, filling each compartment about ¾ full. A #20 disher gave me 20 cupcakes.
8. Bake 15-17 minutes, switching and rotating the trays at the eight-minute mark. Remove them from the oven when a toothpick inserted into the middle of a cupcake (not one on the edge of the oven) comes out just barely clean. A few crumbs clinging to the toothpick would be ideal. Cool thoroughly on a rack before frosting.

* Baking spray is regular spray oil with flour mixed into it. If you don’t have it, spray the pan with regular canola-oil or vegetable-oil spray, and put a little cocoa powder in each compartment, tilting the pan to cover the bottom and sides of each compartment. Yes, a nonstick pan should release the cupcakes anyway, but why take chances?

For the pseudo-buttercream frosting:

About 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperatue
1 Tbsp heavy cream
2 Tbsp Kahlúa® or other coffee-flavored liqueur

1. Combine the cream and liqueur in a small measuring cup and set aside.
2. Using the paddle attachment on your stand mixer, beat the butter for about two minutes or until thoroughly broken down into a smooth paste.
3. Add the sugar one heaping tablespoon at a time, allowing each to be mostly integrated before adding the next spoonful.
4. When the mixture starts to stiffen, add about half of the liqueur/cream mixture and beat in on low speed. If the frosting is still too stiff to spread or pipe, add the remaining liquid until you reach the desired consistency. Use immediately, because it gets stiff quickly even at room temperature.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ January 20, 2009
→ By

Tuesday links.

I’m not huge on brownies with nuts, but this “luxury brownies” recipe, from a woman who sells them in a London market stall, looks amazing. (Hat tip to Chocolate & Zucchini.)

It Is About the Money, Stupid’s series on “Commissioner for a day” ideas starts with one from yours truly about territorial rights.

I’m mildly hooked on Mental Floss quizzes, and today’s is appropriate: Can you name all of the U.S. Presidents in under eight minutes?

My friends at River Ave Blues join the chorus of proposals to alter free agent compensation.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,
→ December 5, 2008
→ By

Chicken stock.

A couple of weeks ago, Whole Foods ran a two-week special, selling entire broiler-fryer chickens for 99 cents a pound, which amounted to roughly $4 for an entire bird. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts typically cost at least $4.49 a pound, and since the entire breast of one bird usually runs 1 to 1.5 pounds, it was cheaper to buy the entire bird and butcher it myself than to just buy those boneless, skinless, tasteless breasts anyway.

Of course, when you buy the whole bird, you get the thighs, legs, and wings, all of which have more flavor than the breasts do. You get the giblets, most of which I just put down the disposal, but I suppose you could use them for gravy if you’re so inclined. But the best part of buying and butchering your own chicken is what you get after all of that other stuff is gone: The bones, and bones mean stock.

For each bird, I’d keep the carcass (the bones and bits of meat after all of the “parts” are removed), the wings (not enough meat to worry about and very good for stock-making), and the neck (the one part of the giblets packet that I don’t toss) and stick them in the freezer for the next stock-making day. I also keep parts of various vegetables in a bag in the freezer – the top rings (not stems) and bottom bits of peppers, the white parts of celery stalks, etc. – that are all also stock-worthy. This avoids the expense of buying lots of vegetables just to put them into stock.

(If you’re wondering about that whole butchering-the-chicken part, I’d eventually like to shoot a video I can use here to demonstrate how easy it is. I’ve done it with a timer and I can butcher a chicken into its eight pieces – two each of breasts, thighs, legs, and wings – in about four and a half minutes. That’s under five minutes to get parts that would easily cost you $10 more if you bought them already butchered, plus you get the bones.)

Making stock requires no cooking skill at all other than patience and the ability to not turn your damn stove knobs up to 11. Dump everything in a pot, throw an upside-down steamer basket (preferably a crappy old one – I have one that’s just for making stock now) on top, skim a few times, wait 5-6 hours, cool and store. Nothing in there you can’t do if you have the time.

Anything frozen can go right in the pot without defrosting.

Chicken stock

6 quarts water (the better the water, the better the stock – I buy spring water for this)
1 chicken carcass, including wings and neck
2 ribs celery, cleaned and snapped in half
1-2 carrots, washed well (or just peeled) and cut in half
1 red or green bell pepper, seeded and stemmed, or just various pepper parts
(You can use pieces of hot peppers too. I’ve used jalapeño and poblano pieces before.)
1 medium onion, halved, or half a large onion
2 peeled garlic cloves
A few sprigs of parsley and thyme
2-3 sage leaves
1 bay leaf
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1 pinch celery seeds
1. Put everything in a stockpot or other large pot capable of holding at least 10-12 quarts. Place a steamer basket upside-down on top of the contents to hold everything under the surface of the water. Bring to a simmer – not a boil, but a gentle simmer – and cook for at least four hours, skimming any scum off the top (every half hour should work). Overcooking it will prevent the liquid from dissolving the collagen in the bones, so take it easy on the heat.
2. When you start to see a thin, clear film on the surface, congratulations – you’ve made stock. That’s gelatin, the thing that distinguishes stock from broth and makes soups taste like soup instead of flavored water. The film will usually appear sometime between the fourth and fifth hours of cooking. I usually let my stock go for another hour or so to make sure I’ve leached all of the collagen out of the bones. Six hours is about the max time you need to do this; if you’re nearing that point and don’t see any gelatin, you probably have your heat on too low.
3. You need to cool your stock quickly. Empty and clean your sink, close up the drain, fill it with ice (two bags should do the trick) and add cold water to fill the sink about halfway. Place a pot or bowl capable of holding at least six quarts in the sink and strain the contents of your stockpot through a fine-meshed strainer into the empty pot. Chill in the ice-water bath until the temperature of the stock drops enough for it to go into the fridge – at least to 60 degrees, and preferably all the way to 40.
4. Chill several hours of overnight. Remove any fat that has congealed at the surface (but don’t discard it – you can cook with it!), portion the remaining stock into containers and refrigerate or freeze. It’ll last in the fridge a few days, but you can keep it for months in the freezer.

You may want to use a bit of damp cheesecloth to strain the last of the stock and remove any dirt or off bits that have settled at the bottom of the pot while it chilled.

You may also notice the absence of one ingredient: Salt. Don’t salt your stock – add salt when you cook with it. If it’s salted, and you reduce it as part of any recipe, you’ll end up with an overly salty finished product. You can add many different herbs, spices, and vegetables, but avoid any members of the cabbage family (including broccoli), which will give the stock a strong and not-desirable flavor. I’ve used mustard seed, cloves, tarragon, and leeks, among other items. Think “aromatics” and you’ve got the idea.

I’ll post some recipes using chicken stock over the next few weeks, but it’s great for basic soups, for moistening stuffing at Thanksgiving, and for reducing and using to thicken some sauces. Any decent cookbook should have soup recipes that start with chicken or some other stock as their bases.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , ,