Amateurs with Knives

As was promised here,  I now have Chef Tory’s permission to post recipes on the world wide intarweb!  His actual quote was “if somebody wants to take my job, they can be my guest!”  So here now is his recipe for Buttermilk Ice Cream, but first . . . a dissertation!

I have been a fan of the food at L’etoile for many years now.  In fact on a dish-by-dish basis, I would put the food there up against the French Laundry which was the premier dining experience of my life.  There is good food, and great food.  And then there is that other thing.  If you are a foodie you know what I’m talking about.  The foodgasm.  That swooning moment when you put it in your mouth and you melt a little bit, and you swoon.  And you curse the fact that you only have one tounge.  And your brain shuts down completely and you just swear over and over again until you can remember all the other words in the english language that this tiny little package of bliss had obliterated from your memory.  So I find out that there are cooking classes available, yeah I guess I might be interested in that.

I have since taken 5 or 6 classes, on subjects ranging from summer seafood to french classics.  They have all been varying degrees of awesome.  But my concern was, could these recipes be duplicated at home?  By that I don’t mean could a home cook acquire the ingredients and tools necessary to complete these dishes. I mean could I make something as good as Chef Tory?  Could I cook something foodgasmic??  The short answer is yes.  I have a small and slowly increasing stable of recipes that are that good.  But I have stated in the past that cooking is as easy as following directions.  Why then don’t all of these recipes turn out as good as Chef Tory makes them? 

Well as much as I hate disagreeing with myself, I am in fact wrong.  Or I was, but I’m not now.  Wrong that is.  Or I mean wrong that was.  I do still contend that you can get to journeyman-level cooking just by following instructions, buying good ingredients and not screwing them up.  But there is another level that great chefs are at, that I can obtain only infrequently and often by accident.  I think the difference is those chefs have an ingrained knowledge of what is actually happening when they are cooking that I lack.  I am not damning myself with faint praise, I fully admit that I am pretty damn good.  I have the basic chops, and more importantly a passion for cooking.  I’m down with the maillard reaction, I know why dijon mustard is in so many emulsified dressings.  I watch Good Eats.  But there are still machinations happening that are a mystery to me.  I can’t tell you why one of my dishes failed, or partially failed, but a real chef can.

That brings me to why I blog under the name Citizen Chef, or why I blog at all.  I know, you were hoping that would bring me to the recipe.  HAH!  One more paragraph to sit through, assuming you haven’t zipped to the bottom of the article three paragraphs ago. 

When Miss Macchiato approached me to start a food blog, I was reticent.  I consider myself a good writer.  Ok a very good writer.  And a good cook.  But there are much better writers out there, who are also real chefs.  Bourdain,  Ruhlman, Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot.  And on the amateur front, French Laundry at Home.  Why add to this cacophony with my lesser opinions?  Then I realized the true value of the foodie movement.  Each one of us who cares about food raises the bar just a little bit.  We all elevate the conversation simply by having the conversation.  Eating is the ultimate shared expierience.  It is the only thing that each and every one of us is doing, and will continue to do until the day we die.  All other artistic endevors are optional.  Eating is mandatory.  Eating well should be mandatory.  Citizen Chef symbolizes to me, the theory that we are all of value.  

Buttermilk Ice Cream

• 2 cups cream
• 1 cup half and half
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup sugar
• 10 egg yolks

  Heat cream, half and half, buttermilk and sugar to a simmer.  Temper in the egg yolks.  Chill mixture and freeze.

This is a very simple recipe that has been just as good as Chef Tory makes it every time.  I do put it in an ice cream maker to keep the crystals small, but that is optional.  Mix some blueberries with lemon juice and honey and let them maccerate for a while and put them on top of the ice cream and it is out of this world.  I would suggest eating the ice cream the day you make it or the day after.  Any longer than that and it loses some of its’ buttermilk twang.

~Citizen Chef

Ok I realize we are rapidly running out of summer, so I wanted to post this now before it seemed silly.  If it is not still hot and sunny where you live, find a Miami Vice rerun and play along.  I also won’t be listing any specific recipes in this article, because it’s really more about technique and for the collard greens, I used a method from one of Chef Tory’s cooking classes and I haven’t got his express written permission to post his recipes.  Miss Macchiato has assured me it’s fine, but I have a heavy case of idol worship going on here, and the thought of angering him fills me with dread.  Also if I have to ask him if I can post his recipes online, it’s a very cheesy way to let him know that I am writing for a food blog.  So more on that later!

I can tell you that for the collard greens I blanched them, then made some bacon stock to cook them in.  This is the start of the bacon stock:

So which is sexier, that pot o’ love, or my smiley face jammies?  Tied at meow!

For the cornbread, and the pork for that matter, I followed the basic recipes from Cook’s Illustrated.  The cornbread had buttermilk in it, which was a winner.  I also used that to make buttermilk ice cream with maccerated blueberries, but that’s another Chef Tory thing, so you’ll have to wait on that one too. 

On to the main event!  This was yet another attempt on my part to get the whole smoking thing to work.  I had gotten close before but not what I would consider a win.  The main change in the technique for this recipe was using a center-cut pork chop and standing it on it’s side, which allows for even cooking without opening the grill to turn it over, which would release all the smoke.  I did take out some insurance and brined the pork, just in case the smoking thing was a bust.

  Here is the smoking rig I uh rigged up.  I did go buy a cast-iron smoke box which has a thing underneath to catch the ashes, which was optomistic on my part and I almost did away with it to get the wood chips more fire contact, but it turns out I needn’t have worried because I HAVE MADE SMOKE!!!

I know it’s a little hard to tell in that pic, but it did actually smoke a ton.  I wish I could accurately describe how I got it to work, but I can’t.  I discovered last time that the indirect method didn’t seem to generate enough heat to get the wood smoking.  So this time I cranked all the burners (before putting the pork on of course) and sat there and stared at it waiting for it to smoke.  Then I tried turning the burners off suddenly, since that seemed to work last time as well.  Meaning that the only time I got smoke last time was when the thing was done cooking.  I even tried setting the damn things on fire with a grill lighter, but no go.  Then all of a sudden it caught on fire, I blew it out and I had smoke!  I even restocked the wood chips after the first batch burned through and it kept smoking.  Sooner or later, I had this:

 ~Citizen Chef

As you know, July is AwK’s BBQ month! It’s that special time of year when we get to talk about the things that are near and dear to my stomach:

Summer food.

I’m talking BBQ, Potlucks, Picnics, Family Gatherings, Friendly Get-Togethers, anything at all that requires getting outdoors and heating up the grill.

Or, at the very least, plugging your George Foreman into the socket on the back deck.

I’ve talked about the Build A Better Burger book before when I reviewed my 4th of July burger, Tuscan Burger Bruschetta. Now it’s time to talk about one of my absolute favorite burgers in the book: Napa Valley Basil-Smoked Burgers

The combination of fresh basil, minced red onion and sun dried tomatoes with a little pesto mayonnaise — It is so savory. And yes, when it’s the middle of winter and I’m jonesing for a delicious, flavor-packed burger, I have broken out the George Foreman. I have no shame in admitting it!

Burger Patties
2 pounds ground sirloin
1/4 cup Zinfandel
1/4 cup lightly packed minced fresh basil
1/4 cup minced fresh onion
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
8 sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil, finely chopped
2 teaspoons garlic salt

This burger won the Grand Prize in 1990. I have made it repeatedly and always with fantastic results.

Light some fire - preferrably in a grill with a cover. If you don’t have fire or you aren’t allowed to be anywhere near it, try for a stove or the George Foreman grill. If using a gas grill, preheat to medium-high.

The recipe tells you to mince the onions and basil, and finely chop the sun-dried tomatoes. Instead, I just toss those into my food processor and give it a whirl. It saves time and minces things beautifully — this is an especially good trick if you’re serving this dish to someone who doesn’t like to feel an onion in their mouth. The onion is minced up finely so that it lends to the flavor, but isn’t obtrusive.

Take the minced mixture out of your processor and put it in a bowl with the rest of the patty ingredients. Handling the meat as little as possible to avoid compacting it, mix well. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions and form the portions into patties to fit the rolls.

When the grill is ready, brush the rack with vegetable oil. If you’re using a George, you don’t have to do this because the George is perfect in every way. The Foreman Grill is like the Fifth Element, but of food.

Too much?

Okay anyway. Moisten 8 large basil sprigs with water, then put them directly onto the fire - this is the basil smoked part. I don’t do this because there’s already basil in the burger, and I’m fine without going through the trouble of adding basil smoke. Also, it’s pretty pointless if you’re cooking on the George because there is no fire. Same thing with pan cooking the patties — there’s no point. Place the patties on the rack, cover and cook, turning once, until done to preference (5 to 7 minutes on each side for medium). During the last couple minutes of cooking, place some large sandwich rolls, cut side down, on the rack to toast lightly. During the last minute of cooking, top each patty with a slide of Monterey Jack cheese.

To assemble the burgers, use some pesto mayonnaise:

Pesto Mayonnaise
2/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons prepared basil pesto

You can see where we’re going with this. Put the pesto mayonnaise ingredients into a bowl and mix. I really do like the taste of this, and it does add some complementary flavor to the burger. Do NOT use Miracle Whip. I wouldn’t anyway but in case you were thinking about it, I really just don’t think the sweetness of the Miracle Whip can do anything other than obliterate the pesto, much less the savory flavors of the burger.

To assemble: Spread the mayonnaise over the cut side of the rolls. On each roll bottom, place a lettuce leaf, a patty, a tomato slide, an onion slice and a basil sprig. Add the roll tops and serve.

Amazing.

July is grilling month here at Amateurs with Knives, and I’m going to kick it off by reviewing what went on my Weber this past Independence Day.

These babies:

Photo courtesy of Sutter Home

A couple of years ago I received a book called “Build a Better Burger”. The book is a compilation of the winning burgers from Sutter Home Winery’s Build a Better Burger Contest.

This is a pretty nifty book to have. If you like to grill and you like burgers in a wide, creative variety of proteins, this is definitely one to have on your shelf. Each burger has a photograph (ok, I like pictures in my books - go ahead and make jokes) and the instructions are very simply laid out so as not to intimidate even the most novice chef. Each burger also has a wine pairing listed.

Each BBB contestant must be an amateur, otherwise they are not eligible to win the prize. Still, that doesn’t stop professional chefs from entering, and the published book does note some of the professional burgers, even though they were not prize winners. Still, the most exciting and creative awards have gone to the amateurs. This is one of them.

Tuscan Burgers Bruschetta

Tomato Topping
1 ripe tomato, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons minced fresh basil
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Patties
1 scant cup loosely packed crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
2 tablespoons finely minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons chopped onion
2 pounds ground round
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Vegetable oil, for brushing on the grill rack
4 thin slices prosciutto or unsmoked ham slices
1/2 pound coarsely grated Fontina cheese

Bruschetta
1 oblong loaf crusty Italian bread, sliced diagonally into 12 (1/2 to 3/4 inch thick) slices
Extra virgin olive oil, for brushing on the bread

This particular burger won third prize in 1993, and is paired with Shiraz (Syrah).

There’s really not much to making a burger. Fire up your grill, mix up your burger stuff and throw that sucker on the fire!

Instruction #1: “Prepare a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill with a cover, or preheat a gas grill to medium-high.”

I love these sorts of instructions because the whole “medium-hot fire” thing sort of makes me laugh. It’s fire. Fire hot! I really can’t set it to anything other than flaming inferno. Maybe this is why the AwK admin does all of our grilling…

To make the topping, combine all of the ingredients, including salt and pepper to taste, in a bowl and mix well. Set aside.

The topping rocked. In fact, I had some leftover so the next day so I stuck it on top of a piece of ciabatta and ate it. All that was missing was a glass of wine. True story.

To make the patties, combine the Gorgonzola, parsley and onion in a large bowl. Add the beef and season with salt and pepper. Handling the meat as little as possible to avoid compacting it, mix well. Divide the mixture into 6 equal portions and form the portions into patties to fit the bread slices.

When the grill is ready, brush the grill rack with vegetable oil. Place the patties on the rack, cover and cook for 5 minutes. Turn the patties and cook 4 minutes. Place a slice of proscuitto on each patty and top with Fontina, dividing equally. Cover the grill and continue cooking the patties until done to preference, 1 to 4 minutes longer for medium.

To make the bruschetta, while the patties are cooking, brush the bread slices on each side with olive oil. Place on the outer edges of the grill rack, turning once, to toast lightly.

Yes! A photograph that didn’t come out blurry!

To assemble the burgers, spoon half of the tomato topping on 6 of the bruschetta slices, then top with the patties, the remaining tomato topping, and the remaining bruschetta.

Dig in!

Preface

Whenever I watch Anthony Bourdain or Alton Brown go to a new and exciting place that they have never been to and eat the foods there, they are always quick with a pithy saying or have the perfect adjective for describing how something tastes. I realize that the reason for this is often editing; and in many cases, long nights with a writer. But I can not help but feel inferior when I go on a great culinary journey as I did this year and am stuck without the right words to say to express exactly how good the food really was. I am still going to give it a try here, so sit back and try to enjoy the trip. It should be somewhat shorter than my trip and hopefully you will hear a perfect adjective somewhere in here. Without further ado, here is my take on the foods of Malaysia.

A year in the planning and several thousands of dollars spent; on Monday, June 9th (around 11am) my wife and I found ourselves being picked up by an old friend of mine at the Kuala Lumpur Budget Airline Terminal in Malaysia. For me, it was a culmination in a five year wait to introduce the women I love to the food I grew to love while working overseas many years ago. Let me just add that if one is interested in going to Malaysia to experience all of these great flavors, one should be prepared to spend A LOT of time in an airplane (and in our case, an airport). The flight that took us from Minneapolis to Tokyo (2/3 of the way to Malaysia) was 12 hours in the air. (Not overall time with boarding and taxing and stuff… No sir. This was from wheels up to wheels down!) I should also add that my wife and I had to spend 5 hours sitting in the Bangkok International Airport with all of our luggage while we waited for the airline check-in to open (due to a bonehead move on my part). But forget all of that, forget the smell of my unwashed (for almost 2 days) feet. Forget that my wife and I barely had 4 hours of sleep between the two of us in the past 36. We were at our travel destination, at last!

A brief background interjection here: In 2001, I began a 3 year working relationship with a certain Mr. Eng Keong How starting in Singapore and then over the years, moving to Malaysia. I did Linux training for him and helped him arrange train the trainer courses in Singapore, and all over Malaysia. One of the first students of these classes was William (more about both of these guys later in the articles). After four visits to these guys in their home court, I knew what to expect food-wise, and though I tried to verbally prepare my wife for the onslaught, she was not ready for the mass of food that my old friends threw at her.

Day 1 in Kuala Lumpur

So Mr. How picked us up at the airport. I should mention that Mr. How used to be a tour guide and he is very passionately in love with his country. He is (and should be) very proud of almost everything Malaysians have done and knows where to go to show them off. We started with a short tour of the policital center (where they had just recently moved the Prime Minister’s palace) and Technology center (where the Dell/Microsoft/HP/etc buildings are all congragated). But enough up the touristy stuff.. Where’s the food? You may be asking yourself. Actually, I was surprised that we didn’t get food stuffed into our face from the moment we arrived, but we actually waited at least an hour after our plane touched down. Mr. How took us some place he hadn’t even taken his family to yet, so this was a new find for him. We had some nice dishes at a local hawker (think Mom and Pop food court as it is the closest thing we have here) place. Chicken Feet soup anyone? Actually.. It was pretty good, though the bones in the feet make it a little difficult as a first dish to really get into using chopsticks. The broth was perfect though. Very clear and quite tasty. The rest of that first meal was all things fish paste related. Far be it for me to complain, since I love fish paste, as does my wife. Fishballs, stuffed squash blossoms, and everything else was pretty good except this one plate which had something really, REALLY sour in it and it messed up any of the oral Feng Shui I had going on with all of the other good food. My wife and I were so out of it from dehydration, tiredness and jet lag that we didn’t remember to get a picture of this meal.

That night, after a much needed 4 hour rest and showers; we got to meet an old food favorite of mine, Bakut Teh (pronouced BAKUTAY). Roughly translated, it means “Meat and Bones with Tea” and it is a wonderful dish of long slow braised pork with Chinese herbal “Medicines” - the Chinese believe just about every herb and aromatic is a medicine, which works for me! It is a simple dish and it is simply served with rice and tea and these wonderful little soft croutons for sopping up the gravy. Unless you have A) smelled this dish, or B) tasted it; you simply have no idea how good pork can be, even in a ramshackle makeshift restaurant.

This particular batch was made with ribmeat, which was a different consistency than the shoulder meat that I am used to in this dish. There is a reason that after two solo visits and this joint visit with my wife that this is my second favorite dish in all of Malaysia. The pork is “falling off the bones” done and the braising liquid as you can see in the picture, is full of the oils and fats from the pork.

You can also see in the picture a plate of our usual veggie which was just lightly stir-fried with sesame oil and some soy and then sprinkled with some crunchy bits. Notice near the top of the picture, the big bowls of garlic and chilies? The smaller white dipping bowls with a combo of those chilies, that garlic, and some soy (and sometimes a vinegary sauce too!); that’s your basic Malaysian condiment selection. You dip everything into that custom-made mixture and enjoy! With a nod toward Rachel Ray, Yummo! (Sorry, it really describes that dipping sauce.) The green bowl contains soft croutons and the blue bowl has some of the “gravy” with some croutons soaking in it. My wife interrupted me mid-dunking. The two brown pots contain the actual dish and the smaller of the two actually has some organ meats in it, I think you can make out some stomach on top on the right hand side. Thanks to my seriously messed up cropping, you can only see part of the teapot (Tea is a very important part of this meal!) but you can see that we were drinking tea with this meal out of little glasses, though you can’t see the ice that we used to keep it cool. If you look to the very left of the picture, you will see something I thought was interesting. You can see the white spoon handle, and next to it on the table are the remnants of some of the ribs. It is common practice, if the restaurant doesn’t provide a bone bowl, to simply use the table to get rid of parts you can’t eat. It is really too bad that they haven’t developed a way for smell or taste to be captured into a picture, because this really is great food. Later in the trip, we were given the special Chinese herbal “sactchels” for making Bakut Teh at home. I will keep you posted on how it turns out.

After some more touristy stuff (like visiting the KL Tower - think Space Needle in the middle of a city in the middle of a jungle), we stopped off at a stall which served shaved ice with syrup called Aic Kachang and it was declared “a very cooling thing”. The Malaysians are very concerned about the body staying cool, which for someone of my size is virtually impossible if I venture outside at all. The tempurature when we touched down was about 90 with about 70% humidity, at about 9pm when we were eating this dish, it was about 85 and 80% humidity. Again, my wife and I were fading fast and we didn’t think to take any pictures. I have had numerous deserts like this all over the pacific, but this was the first one with a “surprise” in the bottom. Apparently, they put a hollowed out section of the ice first and then fill it with sweet beans, jellies (think thin strips of finger jello), and beyond all food common sense, kernels of corn. Then they pile the shaved ice on top and put two different kinds of syrup on it. One was a fruit syrup, my wife thought it was maybe lychee, and the other was a condensed milk (or perhaps coconut milk, there were “discussions” about this between me and my wife, but it was never discovered and every food vendor does it differently). It was almost a sweet and savory kind of ice cream dish. Especially when you bit into a red bean and jelly at the same time. This wasn’t our first exposure to corn overseas. In fact, earlier in the night, we saw a food cart with a blazingly sign selling cups of corn, with or without butter. Nothing else.. Just corn. I am from the midwest, and I didn’t have to travel over a day in the air to eat something I could have at home, so I avoided most of it. But the sweet corn kernels in the shaved ice, which quickly turns to a sweetly flavored soup in the Malaysian heat (even at night), was actually pretty good. I wouldn’t make it at home, except to freak out my friends, but it wasn’t bad. Of course, Mr How could never let us survive with just some shaved ice, so along with that, we had some satay…

I have a couple of comments about satay and I want to air them out right now. On a recent episode of Top Chef, they served something called satay and I didn’t understand it. It did have “satay-like” elements, but there are a couple of specifics to satay. 1) It has to be grilled, usually slow grilled and fanned so that the coals don’t burn the meat. And 2) It must have a peanut sauce! This is where Top Chef confused me, as almond butter doesn’t come close to a spicy peanut sauce except, of course that it is also a nut well sort of. We won’t even get into the whole “peanuts are not nuts” thing. Satay is usually the name of the sauce, often a closely guarded secret like rib rubs. And it is ALWAYS peanut-based. In fact, many Malaysians often refer to satay sauce as peanut gravy. Even vegetarians like satay, as they (as do I) consider the sauce the satay, not the meat or style of cooking, and they will dunk small bits of red onion and cucumber into the sauce and gnosh away happy as can be without a single grilled thing in their mouths. SO, grilled meat with some sort of ground nut mixture does NOT equal a satay. Ok?!? Rant over.

… All of that being said, the stall that was open at the time that we went, was middle of the road on their sauce. The two different grilled meats (chicken and port) were good. But it wasn’t great. The sauce was peanuty, but not very spicy. A quick dose of chilies brought the heat up for me a little. Keep in mind that the grilled meats of a satay don’t really have the smokiness of a normal US grilling as they don’t let the charcoal smoke much and the meat is more slow cooked over the fire than quick roasted.

One more side note, the BEST satay I have ever had was in Singapore. THEY know satay! I have had my fair share of satay in Malaysia and while it is usually good, it has never been as good as the stuff I had in Singapore. The funny thing is that in the states, the most common type of restaurant to serve Satay is a Thai restaurant. But we didn’t have any satay or see any satay hawkers in Thailand. (More about this later when we get to the Thailand part of the trip).

After our first day and some great foods, it was off to a very hard (the Malaysians believe in extra firm mattresses), but needed, bed for me and the Misses and a sense of wonder as to what the next day would bring.

Look for Part 2 soon(tm)

I’m probably the last person who should give eating advice: An amateur cook who dislikes sushi. However, the other day I had an interesting thought and I wanted to share it with the hope that it might actually help someone.

For my birthday, I received a copy of Ellie Krieger’s cookbook, The Food You Crave. (Thanks, Mom!)

In case you’ve not heard of her, Ellie Krieger is a dietitian who specializes in nutrition and has a successful show on the Food Network called Healthy Appetite. Her recipes are all about healthier living without forcing you into a rabbit hole with a leaf of lettuce and a tablespoon of low-fat vinaigrette.

I, for one, would starve.

In the first ten minutes of having the book, I was so excited that I immediately set to work on writing down the recipes I wanted to make and the list of ingredients I’d need. While I was flipping through the book, a strange thought came to me: Five years ago I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near a “healthy eating” recipe book. “Healthy” food wasn’t what my body wanted.

Five years ago I ate heavy food. If I wanted to make a meal, which wasn’t often, I would turn to Americanized Italian dishes with a lot of meat topped with heavy sauces and a lot of cheese. If I ate lighter foods I was still hungry or, in some cases, actually felt sick. I never resorted to boxed or frozen foods, but what I did eat was heavy.

When I got engaged, I decided I should find some meals to cook but had no idea where to start. My repertoire consisted entirely of cookbooks for fancy desserts or Americanized Italian, and a two years’ supply of Bon Appetit magazines whose recipes really intimidated me. Even if I could cook Bon Appetit caliber, I wouldn’t have eaten most of it anyway.

At Christmas, my future mother-in-law gave me a subscription to Taste of Home, a magazine that publishes “down home” recipes from its readers. The skill level of these recipes starts at about a Sandra Lee and goes up to about a Giada DeLaurentiis and, for most of them, the nutritional value is around a Paula Deen. Even Citizen Chef has taken a few cheap shots at the magazine for its lack of culinary savoir faire.

But this was where I was as a new cook, and it was what my body was used to eating. I cooked these meals, quite happily, for a couple of years. Eventually I became slightly more adventurous and curious about other food, and ventured (timidly) into other ingredients, styles, and flavors. One day I was ready for the next step: RecipeZaar.

Recipezaar is the same principle behind Taste of Home, except online and free. A community of cooks share their recipes that run the same skill level as ToH does and, with the recipe sifter tool, it’s possible to get specific lists of the kind of food you’re looking for. A nutritional calculator is a big perk for the site, as this way I know what I’m putting into my body before I make it. I have noticed that, just like Taste of Home, the highest rated meals are very Paula Deen. In fact, the highest rated chicken one-dish meal calls for an entire block of cream cheese.

Although I snubbed the cream cheese chicken, there were plenty of other dishes I made that were just as bad. I moved into stir fry dishes with chicken and steamed veggies — and the sauces called for 1/4 cup soy sauce and 1/4 cup of brown sugar.

That’s a whole lotta salt and sugar, folks.

But back then, it was a staple that I made about once a week, and it was indicative of the type of food we ate for quite a while. Eventually, we moved away from it and migrated to healthier territory — not necessarily because we were aiming to eat healthier, but because the cooking adventure I had started caused my palette and my body to change. It wasn’t an overnight change where suddenly I wanted to eat nothing but tofu and salad while wearing Birkenstocks, because I didn’t. For the record, I’ve never owned a pair of Birkenstocks despite growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I can’t stand tofu, and I’m still not a salad person.

The other day I came across that sugary soy teriyaki chicken sitting in my recipe box, and looking at the ingredients almost made me laugh. Today, I wouldn’t consider making it, but back then it was gold. It’s funny how we can change over time.

The point is, the road to better cooking, whether it’s healthier eating or finer dining, doesn’t happen overnight. If where you’re at right now is chicken breasts with a block of cream cheese or a teriyaki recipe that calls for a lot of sugar and soy — that’s OK. Remember when I said I use minced garlic from a jar? I don’t do that anymore. My palette has changed and I don’t like what pre-minced garlic does to a dish containing fresh ingredients. Everybody has to start somewhere and, if you aren’t in a medical position where your eating habits need to change overnight, I would encourage you to start now. Who knows what things you’ll love to eat in a year? Two years? Five? Ten?

Start your journey today.

So true, xkcd…

Tea has many important benefits, such as the ability to grant superpowers and correct the mistakes you make in your daily diet. Speaking seriously, I drink 4-10 cups of tea each day. I keep a stash of tea at work and a smaller stash at home, since I don’t want to drink too much at night. I have no interest in being a snob about tea, first because I could get schooled by someone who really knows their stuff and second because that’s useless. I want more people drinking tea for their enjoyment, not less.

For those of you who think “I don’t like tea”, I can think of two reasons why. One, you simply never will like tea and that’s ok. Two, the tea you’ve had to date is bagged. There’s nothing inherently wrong with bagged tea except that so much of it contains little tea, mostly twigs and leaves, and is usually too black if its black tea and a total lie if it claims to be green or white tea. I’m going to try to organize this post by your familiarity level with tea.

1. Tea Equipment (the boring part)

If you’re at home, a boiling pot will do just fine. You can buy a metal infuser at most grocery stores, near the tea and coffee, or in any shop selling tea.

For work purposes, I microwave a cup of water. You’ll have to do a bit of experimentation since all microwaves differ. If you have bottled water, use that, otherwise try to use filtered water. If you have to use tap water, use cold water and simply microwave it longer at lower power. For most tea, you don’t want the water boiling anyway, if its letting off steam it’s fine.

1. Beginner: You’ve had the occasional cup of tea, but you don’t like it much. I can fix that.  Let me try to guess what you might like:

Iced Tea: Since summer is approaching, this is a great idea.  Use a Lipton bagged tea, and buy a lemon or two.  If Lipton has some new brand specially made for iced tea then use that, otherwise normal bagged Lipton is from Sri Lanka, the stuff they use is usually sold loose as Orange Pekoe or Ceylon Orange Pekoe or something similar.  It’s not orange flavored or anything like that, the name refers to the color.  The term “pekoe” describes the two-leaves-and-a-bud pick from the tea plant.  Put enough ice in a pitcher to make yourself happy, some sliced lemons, and use two bags for every 8 oz cup of brewed tea you use.  If you prefer sweetener, add it to the iced tea hours later.  If you prefer sugar, put about 8 oz of water in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of sugar, stir that up and get it boiling to make a nice syrup for the iced tea.  Let it cool a bit and dump it in the pitcher.

Hot tea, something to wake you up:  If you’d like to try loose, I recommend an oolong.  Go to a place where you can see the tea leaves, you want a green looking oolong. If it smells like grass, fantastic.  If you’re using bagged tea, the important part of oolong (and anything green or black) is to take the bag out after the steeping time on the bag.  If you leave it in you’ve got a bitter-tastic cup of fail.

Hot tea, something at night to calm you down:  I highly recommend rooibos.  If you’re getting bagged rooibos, try to find one that isn’t too expensive (it’s generally not) and isn’t flavored.  Regular rooibos is just great, the trick is to use a lot.  Use twice as many bags as the box recommends, more rooibos is always always better.  Plus when you make it stronger (no caffeine at all, relax) you can add cream and sugar and you’ve got yourself what they call in South Africa a “red latte”.

2.  Intermediate:  You drink tea a few times a week, and you’d to try some more.

Iced Tea:  You might be ready to try something a little fancy.  Flavored green teas make great iced tea.  If you can go to a place with loose tea then try to get something that looks green and smells nice, if you can’t, go online or go to the store and get a green flavored with a citrus, or a regular green and add plenty of lemon.  If you’re going to the store, Rishi makes some good loose teas, if you’re going online, try Teavana or Adagio or Stash Tea, all are great.  Follow the same directions as above, except this time try to steep something loose or a good bagged green with orange flavoring.

Hot tea, something to wake you up:  Some good black teas are Keemum, anything with the word “Imperial” (trust me, its a form of black) or an oolong.  If you’d like to use an english or irish breakfast tea, or anything with the word “breakfast” or “grey”, keep in mind that these teas are designed to be swamped with cream and sugar or sweetener.  They are teas blended to be very, very strong and bitter by themselves.  They can be great with a hearty breakfast with milk and sugar.

Hot tea, something for the afternoon:  Again, an oolong is great in the afternoon.  If you’re using bagged tea, another thing to remember is that cloudiness is bad.  It either means something is in your water or more likely, something is in your tea, like twigs and bits of non-tea that got in there.  Switch to another brand.  If you get to smell the oolong, fresh and grassy smelling means its nice and green and mellow, otherwise it should have a clear reddish color.

Hot tea, something to relax with:  You can try some lightly flavored rooibos if you like, I also recommend a cup of white tea.  Two or three cups of white tea and you’re back up again, but one cup doesn’t have enough caffeine.  White tea is nice in that you can let it steep as long as you want.   It should be a clear yellow color.

3.  Advanced: You have a few cups of tea per week, you’ve tried a few different teas and you generally like tea:

Hot tea, something to wake you up:  You’re used enough to tea to try the subsitution of 3-4 cups of green instead of your morning coffee/caffeine drink.  A few cups of green tea doesn’t give you the instant jolt coffee does, it ramps up and keeps you perked for a couple hours.  It’s great.  You also don’t get jittery, like you can from coffee/espresso.  I recommend trying some loose, unflavored green teas until you find something you like.  A favorite of mine is Dragon Well, aka liongjin (spelling may differ).  The risk with unflavored green tea is that you may find you want to change the brand/store you buy green from.  A lot of brands and stores will use lower quality green (or black/oolong) teas and mask the quality change with extra heavy flavorings.  Again, the key here is fresh and grassy.  When you finally open the package, it should smell like nature.  It should have a clear yellow to orange/reddish color.  You may need to buy a few small samples until you find the thing you like, but when you do, you won’t switch from it.  I buy dragon well by the pound now.

You may have noticed a few things from reading this.  For one, I don’t recommend any “decaffeinated” teas.  This is because unfortunately in tea, they still haven’t found a way to remove caffeine from tea without also removing much of the flavor.  You may also have noticed I specify a clear color to any tea.  This is because many bagged teas are in fact leftovers from the loose tea.  This isn’t bad in itself, but sometimes bagged tea brands will allow twigs and other bits into the tea, and you’ll get cloudiness when you steep the bag.  You shouldn’t settle for that. If you’d like a nice breakfast tea and don’t like english breakfast, irish breakfast, or earl grey (or lady grey or any other “grey”), try a darjeeling.  They can be quite nice.  Again, english teas, darjeelings, and chais are meant for cream and sugar, not by themselves.  They’ll either be bitter or spicy.

And if you find yourself with leftover steeped tea in a pot or cup, get in the habit of keeping a pitcher or bottle around you can throw the remaining tea water into.  You’ll find it makes a nice iced tea, this “leftover pitcher”.  I keep one in my fridge and dump all sorts of leftover tea pots in there, I get some interesting blends.

If you have specific questions I’d love to address them further!

I am not, and will probably never be, a “hey let’s see what we have in the fridge and throw something together” kind of cook. I recognize and appreciate the talent that takes, but I just don’t have it. I cook almost exclusively from recipes. So whenever my cooking receives accolades “It was my honor to cook for you your majesty” or “I’m glad you enjoyed the risotto Ms. Alba, but I am a happily married man, please put your clothes back on” I usually say something like “hey i just picked a good recipe and didn’t screw it up.” So, how do you pick a good recipe? You cook it in your head.

Professional chefs do this all the time, in fact Chef Thomas Keller’s damn near signature dish “Oysters and Pearls” he’s never tasted. Which is too bad, because it’s awesome and he could probably get a reservation pretty easy. Now there are going to be plenty of recipes with unfamiliar ingredients or techniques, or even familiar-looking ones that surprise you with the synergistic alchemy that is great cooking. Yeah I really wanted to shoehorn “synergistic alchemy” in here somewhere, sorry. But the first step to picking a good recipe, is figuring out what you want to eat.

The example we will be using for this series is chili. I made a New Year’s resolution a few years back, to go on a year-long search for the “Citizen Chef family chili recipe”, to cook one recipe a month to find the best of the best, that would be passed down to future generations of Citizen Chefs. I never really found one I liked, but I never really stopped looking either. So let’s figure out what we’re looking for here. I’m looking for a chili with some heat to it, but a nice smoky heat with some flavor to back it up. I’m a big sausage fan, but I find that it can overwhelm a chili with grease, so we’ll stick to mostly beef meat-wise. Beans or no beans? Well I want a nice thick chili, and CASI would say that a chili with beans isn’t really a chili at all. But I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now I live in Wisconsin, so I can’t say I would be offended if my bowl o’ red had beans in it.

Throwing our net out into the wide intarweb, we have this as a first contestant:

Winter Chili Recipe

• 1 finely chopped onion
• 3 finely chopped garlic cloves
• 2 piece of bacon cut crosswise into pieces
• 2 tablespoons of chili powder
• 2 cans of cannelloni, pinto or red kidney beans
• 1 ½ teaspoons of dried crushed oregano
• 1 ½ teaspoons of paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
• 3 cups of water
• Coarse salt
• 3/4 cup of Monterey Jack Cheese or cheddar (shredded)
• 2 tablespoons of fine cornmeal
• 1 ½ cups of chopped winter squash or zucchini
• 1 ½ cups of frozen or fresh kernel corn (whole)

Ok, we have bacon, that’s a good start. But there’s no other meat? Not a good sign. Beans, ok I can be talked into beans. 3 cups of water? I am suspicious of any recipe that calls for this much liquid and chooses water, when there are so many other options that provide flavor. Zucchini? Frozen corn?? I don’t have to actually cook this to see it’s not what I’m looking for. NEXT!!

Chili 1 (ooh catchy name!)

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 pound ground beef
• 3/4 pound beef sirloin, cubed
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes with juice
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle dark beer
• 1 cup strong brewed coffee
• 2 (6 ounce) cans tomato paste
• 1 (14 ounce) can beef broth
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin seeds
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans
• 4 fresh hot chile peppers, seeded and chopped

Ok this is better, we have cubed sirloin, and ground beef. We got beer. We got coffee. Winter chili recipe, are you seeing this? Peeled and diced tomatoes, hmm. Tomato paste is good, but relying on diced tomatoes in my opinion doesn’t lead to a cohesive sauce. Cocoa powder. Ooh yes how mole of you, eponymous chili recipe! Fresh hot chile peppers. Ok there’s only like a million kinds of chile pepper, and if you don’t care enough to specify, then we’re gonna take a pass on this one too.

Ding Dong Eight-Alarm Chili

• 2 oz dried ancho chiles (4 large), stemmed and seeded
• 6 large garlic cloves, 3 of them finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder (not pure chile)
• 4 lb well-marbled beef brisket or boneless chuck, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2- to 2-inch pieces
• 3 to 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 (28- to 32-oz) can whole tomatoes in juice
• 1/4 cup canned chipotle chiles in adobo
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 1/2 lb white onions, chopped (4 cups)
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican), crumbled
• 1 to 4 fresh serrano or other small green chiles, finely chopped, including seeds (1 is fine for most tastes; 4 is the eight-alarm version)
• 1 (12-oz) bottle beer (not dark)
• 2 cups water
• 2 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans (optional; 30 oz), rinsed if canned

Beef brisket in cubes, good start. Also a huge plus for this recipe is that the beef is seasoned with cumin and chili powder before browning, a step too often missed in chilis. Whole tomatoes, but also in the directions (omitted here for space, but we’ll get to them soon) they are pureed with some of the chiles, the cilantro and garlic. See that’s the kind of flavor fusion from the get-go that we’re looking for. We got beer. We got some water but not too much, and not just water. And we got chiles. Oh we gots us some chilis. We got anchos, chipotles and serranos. That is going to give us the depth of flavor behind the heat that we need. Beans optional, and enough onions to probably not need the beans. Also, the beef gets shredded. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

Next time, hold on to your hats… Citizen Chef actually cooks something.

~Citizen Chef

Seafood (especially scallops), when prepared properly, can be some of the tastiest morsels you have ever eaten without a lot of time consuming preparation. However, done improperly, words like “rubbery”, “fishy” and “icky” spring to mind.

With that said, I live in Wisconsin. You know, “Frozen Tundra”? “The Great Northwoods”? Pretty far from an ocean in any direction. Which means that the seafood that I can get my hands on typically comes from a freezer section. Up until a few years ago, my typical seafood purchase had the name of a certain lady on it. I have moved up since then to whole shell-on prawns and frozen crab. Hey… Alton says frozen crab is “okay!”

Scallops, on the other hand, are a very recent addition to my culinary skillset. I have made HUGE scallops even for fancy dinner parties and close friends thinking that the size was important to correct cooking methods. Boy was I wrong. If you haven’t heard of the difference between “Dry” and “Wet” scallops, here’s the scoop:

“Wet scallops are commonly treated with Phosphates which is a preservative. When scallops are soaked in phosphates, they absorb water making them weigh more and thereby costing you more. (Take in mind, that you are paying for added water.) The absorbed water evaporates during cooking and, in turn, shrinks your scallops leaving them smaller, dry and somewhat tasteless. Furthermore, the added water does not let scallops brown properly during cooking. It is generally easy to discern treated scallops as they will usually appear snow-white in color.

Dry scallops are all wild and natural. They are not treated with any chemicals whatsoever. They are harvested directly from the ocean, shucked on deck, then immediately frozen on the boat to capture their quality. Dry scallops caramelize naturally during cooking to a golden brown color that is very attractive when serving. And, as you might have guessed, there is no cost-added water weight with dry scallops. Dry scallops generally have a natural vanilla color. ” - Taken from http://www.fishex.com/seafood/scallops/scallops-dry-vs-wet.html

“Pishaw,” says I! “I am going to take whatever scallops are the biggest and best bang for the buck.” Without knowing it, I was setting myself up to make not only sub-par scallops but also making more work for myself.

Here’s the deal when you buy frozen scallops or “fresh” scallops from a grocery store counter; they are almost always “wet” scallops. Dry scallops will almost always be labeled “dry” in some way on the packaging. It isn’t a requirement, but even frozen dry scallops usually specify it on the package. Now… If you are doing some small bay scallops in a cream sauce to throw on top of some pasta, you aren’t going to notice any appreciable difference (other than texture) between wet or dry. However, if you are going to try to sear a scallop, please learn from my mistakes and only get dry scallops! A fishmonger or good butcher with seafood connections should be able to get you dry scallops without breaking the bank.

I managed to find a small handwrapped package in frozen seafood section of the local “mega-mart” and it was labeled “Dry” right on the sticker. There wasn’t a drastic price difference between it and the jumbo scallops in a commerical package right next to it. But scallops have never been a cheap purchase. I think the package of seven very large dry scallops went for $10. And they may have been re-frozen.

Now I have made a number of what I thought were seared scallops before. But before I used the dry scallops, I hadn’t really done it successfully. These scallops seared beautifully, and the smaller of them were done perfectly in the middle at the same time as a golden sear was finished on the outside (about 2 minutes per side). If you get a package of widely different sizes, like I did; I discovered something else that was kind of handy. Once properly seared, if the center still feels too raw, place a single scallop on a microwave safe dish and cook it in the “nuker” for a max of 30 seconds. It doesn’t seem to change the flavor and for those who really can’t appreciate semi-raw scallops, it makes a big difference in the texture of the center.

So, standard searing practices (really high heat, stainless or cast iron, high smoke point oil, don’t over-crowd the pan, rotate once only, etc), a bit of sea salt for each scallop, a very light pinch of extra fine sugar over all of them and using dry scallops will lead you to a very happy place. Please note: Even dry scallops will need to be wiped off with paper towels before cooking in order for the sear to take. If you see any funny looking white liquid in the pan around the outside of the scallops, more than likely, they have been treated and will not really sear.

Pepper, especially white pepper, should be added to the top of the scallops only after they are rotated once. If you are going to want a buttery flavor -and let’s face it… Who isn’t going to want some buttery goodness? - wait until the very end and add room temperature (or melted) better to the pan right before you are going to remove the scallops. Lemon should be squeezed on by the taster, or for purists, left off completely. Serve the scallops with some cous cous or rice pilaf and sit back and enjoy.