Amateurs with Knives

Since Miss Macchiato already stole all the good recipes from this issue I settled on this one, which I was pretty excited about.  Smoked salmon, gorgonzola, capers and dill, what’s not to love?  Here is the recipe all typed out in long-hand because they aren’t on their website meh!

Bowtie Pasta with Smoked Salmon and Gorgonzola
1/2 lb bowtie pasta
3 T oilve oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
12 oz diced smoked salmon
1/2 cup brandy
1/4 cup capers
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup gorgonzola
2 T chopped walnuts
1 t lemon zest
1/4 cup fresh dill

Directions: Drain the pasta, then add it back to the cooking pot, combining with the sauce and reserved 1/2 cup water.   Cook gently on medium 3 to 4 minutes or until water is absorbed and sauce is creamy.  Remove, add lemon zest, dill and salt and pepper to taste.

To make sauce, heat olive oil in a large skillet on medium-high.  Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes.   Add salmon, brandy, capers and tomato sauce and cook for 3 minutes.  Stir in cheese and walnuts and cook for 1 minute.   Remove from heat.

Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente.  Remove 1/2 cup water from pasta when done and set aside.  

So here is the money shot of the ingredients:

You’ll notice those are real smoked salmon pieces there, not that lousy pink stuff!  You’ll also notice there is a bottle of port there and no brandy.  I personally hate buying booze for recipes, and since I rarely drink I decided to use port instead.  Which I think was a fine substitution since port is a fortified wine and has brandy in it.  Or maybe I’m making that part up.  I just like port.

Could have stopped right there and just sat down with a fork, but that is probably because the salmon at this point looks like ham.  Which would have probably made it turn out better, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Next I put in the walnuts and the lovely lovely cheese.

The sauce at this point was getting nice and creamy, and I was excited to see that the pasta cooks with the sauce for a bit to bind it up.  And the final product:

Got to be a winner, right?  I mean just look at that!  Well no.  There was something wrong in this dish, something horribly wrong.  Well ok maybe not horribly  wrong because we ate all of it.  But there was something in this dish that really clashed with the rich earthiness of the gorgonzola sauce.  That’s right, it was the dill.  Maybe it would have worked better if I had used a “lesser” smoked salmon (perish the thought!) but as it was the dill just smashed it’s way all over everything WHICH IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS DILL!!

“I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out. They sold their soul to the devil, and the devil was dill.” -Mitch Hedberg

~Citizen Chef

Recently I had a shindig to attend, and I wanted to bring a little something to share. I opted for something out of this month’s magazine selection, Tastes of Italia. It was met with overall acceptance: Those who love the pungent flavor of Gorgonzola loved it, while those who weren’t sure what they were getting into were a bit conflicted.

I was surprised at how many people had never eaten Gorgonzola cheese before. In case you happen to be one of them, let’s get nerdy with some Gorgonzola cheese facts from Wikipedia.

Gorgonzola is a veined Italian blue cheese, made from unskimmed cow’s milk. It can be buttery or firm, crumbly and quite salty, with a ‘bite’ from its blue veining. It has been made since the early Middle Ages, but only became marbled with greenish-blue mold in the eleventh century. It is frequently used in Italian cooking. The name comes from Gorgonzola, a small town near Milan, Italy, where the cheese was reportedly first made in 879; however, this claim of geographical origin is disputed by other towns.

If you live in a town that avidly disputes the origin of a cheese, you’re hard up for a good time. Anyway, it’s like a creamy blue cheese except a bit more pungent in your mouth. If you enjoy that sort of a tart flavor, you’re in for a treat with Gorgonzola. If you aren’t a big fan, then this probably isn’t for you - grab another cheese that is good with walnuts and sundried tomatoes and use that instead.

First, we have to start out with the dough.

You didn’t think we were going to buy that in a grocery store did you?

That’s good. This is one of the easier pizza doughs I’ve ever had to make, not to mention it’s also the quickest and most forgiving dough I’ve made.

Basic Pizza Dough
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups lukewarm water, divided
3 1/2 cups flour, plus additional for handling
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a large bowl, combine yeast, sugar and 1/2 cup of water. Stir with a fork until mixed. Cover with a dry towel and let sit for 30 minutes. If the yeast is foamy (like the picture above) continue; if not, throw out the mixture and start over.

Add the salt, olive oil and remaining water. Stir in flour 1/2 cup at a time. Dust your hands with flour and knead the dough 5 - 7 minutes or until dough is no longer sticky.

This is where I started to have problems. Earlier I said this is the most “forgiving” dough I’ve made - let me explain. While I was putting this together, I was doing other stuff at the same time. So I thought I had counted my 1/2 cups, but even though I swear I put 3 cups in, the dough was still extremely sticky - so much that kneading it wasn’t going to help. I don’t know how much more flour I added, but it had to be like another cup or cup and a half. When it was somewhat less tacky, I then stuck even more flour on the board, floured up my hands and started to knead. It never became non-sticky as the instructions say, so when I could at least handle it without half of it being stuck to my hands in a goopy mess, I called it good and moved on to the next step. Regardless of this, the dough still came out amazing, so I’m not really sure what happened there.

Form the dough into a ball and coat it with olive oil. Place the dough in a bowl, cover with a towel and set it in a warm place. Let the dough rise for 1 hour or longer.

After the dough rises, dust your hands with flour and re-knead the dough for about 2 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 equal parts and, using your hands, shape each into a flat disk. Cover and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Using flour-covered hands, flatten disk further by pressing outward until you reach your desired thickness and circumference.

At this point, the dough will be really pliable and somewhat delicate. When you start to roll it out, it will firm up and become more difficult to shape. I had a hard time getting this to go into the shape I wanted. After my first attempt it was too hard to reshape, so I stuck it back into the bowl and let it rise again. After it had another 30 minutes to rise, it was back to the delicateness it was when I took it out of the bowl the first time.

Unfortunately, even after my second attempt, I was unable to shape it into a circle, so I made it oblong… sort of.

So with my awesome oblong-inspired pizza crust completed, I moved on to the actual pizza.

Pizza with Gorgonzola, Sundried Tomatoes, and Walnuts
Cornmeal or parchment paper
2 tablespoons olive oil
Pinch of Kosher Salt
4 ounces Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
1/2 cup walnuts
1/3 cup sliced sundried tomatoes
Black Pepper, to taste
1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced

Preheat oven to 500-degrees F. Place pizza crust on baking sheet lightly covered in cornmeal or covered in parchment paper. Brush olive oil over pizza crust. Add salt, then cheese, walnuts and tomatoes. Add pepper and parsley and bake for 7 - 8 minutes. Remove and serve.

Because my pizza was an odd shape, I disguised it by cutting it into rectangles. The weird corners were eaten by me. I liked this a lot, as did other Gorgonzola lovers. It was gone by the end of the night.

Scroll back to the top if you wanted to see the finished product on the cover of the Tastes of Italia magazine.

As promised, we are going to kick off this month’s Magazine of the Month, the August ‘08 edition of Tastes of Italia, with Chocolate Almond Gelato.

“Gelato?” You say. “That’s just ice cream, right?”

Oh, no. And I wouldn’t say that out loud either because among certain circles you’re bound to stir up trouble. Gelato connoisseurs feel just as strongly about the dessert as New Yorkers feel about the Yankees: It’s a religion unto itself.

Gelato, the Italian version of ice cream, is different. Made with the basics of milk and sugar, just like our beloved ice cream, gelato typically calls for more egg yolks and is lower in fat. It also has a lot less air, making it much more dense than ice cream. Gelato needs to be served at a warmer temperature, so it can soften for scooping. Here’s a blurb from the World of Ice Cream comparing gelato and ice cream (their misspellings are fixed for your reading satisfaction):

GELATO: less fat + no air added = richer, creamier taste

Premium ice creams are made with fresh cream (not condensed or powdered milk), real eggs, and natural flavorings. Quality ingredients aside, lesser ice creams also have more air whipped in. As much as half the carton may be air, in fact. More air–or “overrun”–means softer ice cream that scoops more easily and melts more quickly. Premium ice creams have very little air added; gelato has no air added at all. (There’s a minimal amount of air that’s incorporated naturally because of the churning process.)

Gelato and some premium ice creams are so dense that they require a slightly higher serving temperature, a perfect point where your scoop is firm but not hard and not so soft that it melts immediately. Gelato recipes usually include more egg yolks, more milk and less cream. It actually has less fat than regular ice cream, but gelato’s low overrun makes for an extremely dense, rich and creamy treat.

Anyway, so there you have it. Gelato, the lesser fat, creamier and tastier version of ice cream. You know, for a website that’s all about ice cream, they sound pretty sold on gelato being superior. Maybe they should change their name to World of Gelato.

But I digress.

Chocolate Almond Gelato
3 cups milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup ultrafine sugar
1/4 cup chopped toasted almonds
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup chopped toasted almonds (reserved for topping)

Overall I was really shocked at how fast this dessert came together. First that quick and snazzy Granita, now this! The Italians are on to something here…

I started off toasting the almonds. Years ago I would have been way too lazy to do this, and then in the end I would have been terribly disappointed: Toasted almonds change in texture to a version that is softer in nature, even after they are refrozen in the final product. When you bite down on the toasted version, I don’t get a sense of “crunch” so much as I do a “pop” and then a spongy feel that goes really well with the gelato. An untoasted crunch would be way too distracting and unsettling - as if there was something in your gelato that should not be.

So toast them.

Place milk, eggs, chocolate, sugar and 1/4 cup of toasted almonds in a saucepan and whisk until the sugar and chocolate dissolves. Simmer until mixture thickens and begins to boil.

You will note in the picture below we aren’t getting a full boil as you would with water. It’s more like the molten effect of a chocolaty hot tub.

Once it boils, remove from the burner and add vanilla. Place in refrigerator for 2 hours or until completely cold. If the mixture thickens too much in the refrigerator, thin with a little milk to get a looser consistency before pouring this into the ice cream machine.

Place in a frozen dessert machine and make according to instructions. Top with remaining almonds.

Unfortunately I don’t have any personal finished product pictures, as I couldn’t stop eating it while it was churning around in the ice cream maker.

My bad.

August is here and we’re kicking off another Magazine of the Month adventure with Tastes of Italia!

And yes, that thing of beauty on the cover is Pizza with Gorzonzola, Sundried Tomatoes and Walnuts and we will be making it!

Our previous magazines all had websites where their recipes were published, however ToI does not, so be sure to run out to your local grocery store or bookstore and pick up a copy. The reason we went for this magazine is because there are a ton of amazing and diverse Italian recipes in here, and because Citizen Chef is a slacker and didn’t propose any magazines to review. So this month it’s my choice!

If you need more motivation, here’s a teaser of what we’ll be working on next week:

Photo courtesy of Tastes of Italia Magazine

We’ll be reviewing a variety of recipes including this Chocolate Almond Gelato you see above, and we’ll also be exploring risotto! For you vegetarians out there, you’re in luck as this mag usually has a lot of delicious and fun dishes that will suit you. Run out and pick up a copy this weekend!

That’s right, getting in just under the wire for our Magazine of the Month, it’s the cover recipe.  

Photo Courtesy of Bon Appetit

Not sure where the bullet went but I suppose when this is your 9 gazillionth BBQ issue, somebody tells the photographer to do whatever the hell they want, just get it on my desk by Friday.

Ingredients
Onions:
1 pound red onions, cut crosswise into 1/3- to 1/2-inch-thick rounds
Olive oil
3/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Chipotle ketchup:
1 cup ketchup
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped chipotle chiles from canned chipotles in adobo* plus
2 tablespoons adobo sauce from can
2 teaspoons (or more) balsamic vinegar

Burgers:
2 1/4 pounds ground beef (15% to 20% fat)
Coarse kosher salt
6 thick slices sharp cheddar cheese
6 large English muffins or hamburger buns, split, cut sides grilled
6 tomato slices (optional)
2 cups fresh spinach leaves

Preparation

For onions:
Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat): Arrange onion rounds on baking sheet. Brush with oil; sprinkle with 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt and pepper. Transfer onion rounds (still intact) to grill rack; close cover. Cook until grill marks appear, about 4 minutes per side. Reduce heat or move onions to cooler part of grill. Close cover; cook until onions are tender, about 10 minutes. Transfer to medium bowl. Toss with vinegar. DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Cover; chill.

For chipotle ketchup: Mix ketchup, chiles, adobo sauce, and 2 teaspoons vinegar in small bowl. Season with salt and more vinegar, if desired. do a h e a d Can be made 3 days ahead. Cover and chill.

For burgers: Shape beef into six 1/2-inch thick patties. Sprinkle patties on both sides with coarse salt and pepper.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Place burgers on grill. Close cover; cook burgers until bottoms start to darken and juices rise to surface, about 3 minutes. Turn burgers; cook to desired doneness, about 3 minutes longer for medium-rare. Top with onions and cheese. Close cover; cook until cheese melts. Place muffin bottoms on plates; spread with ketchup. Top with burgers, tomatoes, if desired, spinach, and muffin tops. Serve, passing remaining ketchup separately.

*Dried, smoked jalapeños in a spicy tomato sauce called adobo; available at some supermarkets and at specialty foods stores and Latin markets.

I’ll tip my hand a bit here and say this turned out almost really good.  Piece by piece then, the burger was a burger.  The cheddar could have been smoked because as it was it just was kinda there.  The spinach was fine and a nice contrast to the richness of the rest of it.  The chipotle ketchup, while making me cringe and want to babble about tablescapes, was really good.  I’m a sucker for adobo sauce, but as I was halfing the recipe and didn’t quite half the amount of chipotles I put in, it came out a little hot.  I also forgot that Mrs. Citizen Chef had sunburned lips.  Ahem.

The onions though, were awesome.  Nothing revolutionary in the prep here, but the dash of balsamic at the end really brought out the flavor.  And honestly, I haven’t found the food that doesn’t get better with a little balsamic.

The english muffin.  This is where it fell down a bit for me.  You know how in almost every sci fi movie, they run around with a different kind of flashlight?  Like it’s mounted on their hands, or their heads, or on their waist or something?  Like it must be the future because they’ve progressed so far beyond the antiquated hand-held flashlight.  That always bugs me because the future versions aren’t really any better than the normal version.  They are trying to improve something that doesn’t need improving just to be different.  The english muffin.  No I didn’t forget what I was talking about.  As you will see from the upcoming pic, I neglected to toast mine and that might have helped, but in the end the english muffin bun on this was just a flashlight tied to a small pony.

~Citizen Chef

Editors Note: From our Magazine of the Month, the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, comes the Mixed Grill with Cherry Cola BBQ Sauce.

Photo Courtesy of Bon Appetit

To date, I have had less than impressive results from any kind of smoking or wood plank cooking.  And yet I am drawn to this sisyphean task not through some macho sense of “if it aint bar-bee-qew it aint man cookin!” but because… uhm… because it’s cool.  Ok I kind of petered out at the end there, didn’t I?  Damn.  Started real strong too with the Sisyphus reference.  Ok fine, here’s the recipe:

Spice rub:
2 tablespoons smoked paprika or hot smoked Spanish paprika
2 1/2 teaspoons dried basil
2 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Mixed grill:
1 13×9x2-inch disposable aluminum pan (to catch drips)
4 to 4 1/2 pounds baby back pork ribs, cut into 4 slabs
2 cups (or more) wood chips (cherry, alder, apple, or hickory), soaked in water 1 hour
4 6×31/4×2-inch disposable mini loaf pans (for wood chips if using gas grill)
Vegetable oil (for brushing)
4 skinless boneless chicken breast halves, pounded with mallet to 3/4-inch thickness
8 fully cooked smoked sausages (such as chicken-apple), pierced in several places with fork

Cherry Cola BBQ Sauce
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cups chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 12-ounce bottles (ketchup-style) chili sauce
1 12- to 13-ounce jar cherry preserves or jam
1 cup cherry cola (regular, not diet)
1/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon (or more) hot pepper sauce

For spice rub: Mix all ingredients in small bowl to blend. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 weeks ahead. Store in airtight container at cool room temperature.

For mixed grill: Remove top rack from grill. Place foil drip pan in center of bottom rack; fill halfway with water (if using 2-burner gas grill, place drip pan on 1 unlit burner).

Prepare barbecue (medium heat). Sprinkle ribs with salt and 3 tablespoons spice rub. If using charcoal grill, light briquettes in chimney and pour half onto rack on each side of drip pan (you’ll need to light more briquettes in chimney to replenish 1 or more times during grilling). If using 3-burner gas grill, light burners on left and right, leaving center burner off. If using 2-burner gas grill, light burner on side opposite drip pan.

Drain wood chips. If using gas grill, stack 2 mini loaf pans and fill with 1 cup drained wood chips. Stack remaining 2 mini pans and fill with 1 cup drained wood chips. Place pans on flame. If using charcoal, scatter 2 cups drained chips over coals. Brush top grill rack with oil; return to barbecue.

Place ribs on grill rack over drip pan. Cover barbecue; grill until meat is coming away from bones, turning and repositioning every 30 minutes and adding more wood chips to pans as needed, about 1 1/2 hours. Maintain barbecue temperature at 350°F, opening vents wider for more heat or partially closing for less heat. Transfer ribs to rimmed baking sheet; cool.

DO AHEAD: Ribs can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill. Remove drip pan from barbecue.

Lightly brush grill racks with oil. Prepare barbecue (medium heat). Sprinkle chicken with salt and remaining spice rub. Place chicken, sausages, and ribs on grill racks; cover and grill 7 minutes, turning occasionally. Brush ribs with 1 cup cherry cola sauce; cover and grill until chicken is cooked through and ribs are glazed, turning frequently, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer sausages to platter; transfer ribs and chicken to cutting board. Cut pork between bones; cut chicken crosswise into 3/4-inch-wide strips. Transfer to platter with sausages. Serve with remaining cherry cola sauce.

Ok here is the rig I came up with to smoke this thing:

I set it up to as close to 350 as I could get, and let it go for a while.  Then I realized I was reading the temperature gauge wrong and was cooking it at 300 instead of 350.  Which is why I wasn’t seeing the billowing plumes of smoke I was hoping for.  So I cranked on another burner, and low and behold:  Smoke!!

Ok, well it was smoke RIGHT before I took this picture, I swear it.  There seems, as David St. Hubbins once noted, to be a fine line between stupid and clever.  As well as nice wafting smoke, and “Bunny, can you come out here and extinguish the dog, please?”  The best smoke I got was, ironically enough, when I turned off all the burners to take the ribs off.  Then it was smoking like crazy.  So I left it out there for a while.

I won’t go into a step by step on this one, but I will say that the sauce was nice and balanced, and got better as it cooked.  The spice rub is very nice, and pounding the chicken flat is a great way to make sure it’s cooked before the outside is all dry and horrible.  And I don’t know who out there pokes holes in their sausages before they cook them, but that kinda crap don’t fly ’round these parts, Buck-o.

The completed dish, sans flambe:

~Citizen Chef

Last week, I shared one of Jeni Britton’s frozen yogurts that was featured in the June 2008 Food & Wine Magazine. The article contains recipes of two ice creams, two frozen yogurts, and two sorbets - and these are actually basic recipes you can change to accommodate many other flavors. The Lemon-Blueberry Frozen Yogurt was so delicious that I absolutely had to try one of her ice creams, so this weekend I stepped back into the kitchen for her Vanilla Bean Ice Cream.

Photo courtesy of Food & Wine

Unlike most ice creams, this one is exceptionally creamy, as it does not call for egg yolks. Britton doesn’t like the way the taste of yolks interfere with cream. I wasn’t really sure what she meant, as I had always made ice cream with egg yolks, and this dessert opened my eyes. It’s rich and delicious, and unlike any other ice cream I’ve made before.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/2 ounces cream cheese, softened (3 tablespoons)
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Fill a large bowl with ice water. In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of the milk with the cornstarch. In another large bowl, whisk the cream cheese until smooth.

In a large saucepan, combine the remaining milk with the heavy cream, sugar, corn syrup and vanilla bean and seeds.

For some reason I was nervous about the vanilla beans, and I don’t know why. I’ve split open a vanilla bean before, but it’s not something I’ve often done. In case you’re new at this or feeling a little awkward about it, a vanilla bean looks like a gnarled little twig. Take your knife and cut it in half, lengthwise. Then scrape out the insides with your knife point. I tried taking pictures, but my camera isn’t so great for close-ups. Instead, I had to search around to see if I could get some decent pictures.

This photograph was borrowed from Carobe’s flikr page.

The photostream actually reflects them making a Guinness Ice Cream - it’s a little hard to see inside of the vanilla bean, but once you get it split open, you’ll see some dark fuzzy stuff. That’s the vanilla bean part to scrape out. In the photo above, the inside is actually goopy because that person keeps their vanilla beans in vanilla extract. I don’t know why anyone would want to do that, and I don’t want to give anyone the misconception that they should be squeezing out some goo, so below is one of my blurry photos where I’m scraping out the inside of a vanilla bean with the tip of my knife.

You can see on the tip of my knife where I have gathered a clump of slightly moist vanilla beans. Add that to your pot of milk.

Bring the milk mixture to a boil and cook over moderate heat until the sugar dissolves and the vanilla flavors the milk, about 4 minutes. Off the heat, gradually whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Return to a boil and cook over moderately high heat until the mixture is slightly thickened, about 1 minute.

Gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the cream cheese until smooth. Now, I hadn’t whisked my cream cheese beforehand, so I had to do some extra whisking in order to get the lumps out. Next time I will whisk to avoid the extra work.

Whisk in the salt. Set the bowl in the ice water bath and let stand, stirring occasionally, until cold, about 20 minutes.

Strain the ice cream base into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the ice cream into a plastic container. Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the ice cream and close with an airtight lid. Freeze the vanilla ice cream until firm, about 4 hours.

Pig out.

I do a lot of grilling in the summer. For small parties, I don’t mind going “all out” with elaborate dishes and desserts. When it comes to a larger group with diverse dietary requests, sometimes it’s better to simplify. June 2008 Food & Wine Magazine has a great idea that I tried out this weekend with tasty success: A DIY Kebab Party.

Photo courtesy of Food & Wine Magazine

The article provides you with three different tastes for kebabs: Mediterranean, Mexican and Asian. Each flavor has an accompanying basting sauce and dipping sauce. For my party, I chose the Mexican flavors for a little spicy excitement.

In putting together the actual kebobs, I provided a variety of items placed like an assembly line. If you’re short on ideas, the magazine provides some creative combinations:

Shrimp + Chorizo + Zucchini
Pork + Pineapple + Pickled Jalapeños
Chicken + Yellow Squash + Poblanos
Tuna + Okra + Cherry Tomatoes
Beef + Red Onions + Red Peppers
Scallops + Okra + Tomatoes

My kebab party was a little simpler and included: Beef, Tofu (very firm), chicken, shrimp, zucchini, baby corn, pineapple, grape tomatoes, red pepper, green pepper, mushrooms - and a couple of others that I can’t think of off the top of my head. Let your guests load up their kebobs with any combination they choose. When they get to the grilling station, baste the kebobs with Cumin-Adobo Oil:

Cumin-Adobo Oil
Ingredients
1/2 cup olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh oregano, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons adobo sauce (from a can of chipotles)
Salt

Directions
Combine the olive oil with the ground cumin, oregano, garlic clove and adobo sauce. Season the oil with salt.

That’s really all there is to it — take your ingredients, put them in a bowl, stir them around. That’s it. Nothing more. When the kebab goes down on the grill, baste it with a bit of the oil. The result is absolutely delicious: the basting oil gives the kebabs a very delicious flavor with a slight spicy kick. For the spice-wimps out there (like me), it is not overpowering at all. I was actually really surprised at how good the basting oil tasted.

The article also provides a dipping sauce, but to be honest, it wasn’t really used. The basting oil tasted so wonderful, no one really wanted the dipping sauce to muck it up. If you do like dipping sauces, it’s a very spicy mayo dip that did have a good flavor to it, but because the Cumin-Adobo Oil was so good, the Chipotle-Citrus Mayonnaise was barely touched.

Chipotle-Citrus Mayonnaise
Ingredients
1/2 cup mayonnaise
3 chipotles in adobo, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
3/4 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
1 tablespoon minced red onion
1 tablespoon minced cilantro
Salt

Directions
In a small bowl, combine all of the ingredients and mix well. Season the sauce with salt.

Overall, this was a huge success. It was the fastest prep I ever had for a large BBQ and, from a clean-up point of view, the basting oil and kebobs did not make a huge, disgusting mess inside my grill. (Admittedly, the ease of clean up was probably one of my most favorite things about the experience.) I’ve made a few kebabs before, but this DIY has to be one of my favorites to date. Independence Day and Canada Day are coming up fast - this would be a great idea for any event. Everyone at our BBQ who had the kebobs appreciated the fact that they could pick what ingredients they liked. The hardest part, of course, was remembering who had which kebab.

Last time I mentioned that we might be open to friendly offers from magazine editors to facilitate a favorable AwK review of your product. Since we had no takers, I can only blame myself for not communicating our intentions clearly: WE CAN BE BOUGHT.

Ok, on to another (regrettably) payola-free review of one of the recipes in the latest issue of Food & Wine:

Ginger-Garlic Shrimp with Tangy Tomato Sauce

Ingredients: Shrimp

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped basil
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 2 1/2 pounds large shrimp, shelled and deveined

Ingredients: Dipping Sauce

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
• 1 large garlic clove, minced
• 3 stalks of fresh lemongrass, tender inner bulb only, minced
• 1 1/2 pounds tomatoes—peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
• Kosher salt

Directions:

1. Marinate the shrimp: In a large bowl, mix the vegetable oil with the parsley, garlic, basil, ginger, lemon juice, salt and crushed red pepper. Add the shrimp and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 4 hours.
2. Meanwhile, make the sauce: In a medium saucepan, heat the vegetable oil. Stir in the ginger, garlic and lemongrass and cook over moderate heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes. Let cool to room temperature, then stir in the lime juice and cilantro. Season with salt. Transfer the sauce to ramekins.
3. Light a grill. Loosely thread the shrimp onto 10 skewers. Grill over moderately high heat, turning once, until lightly charred and cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer the shrimp to plates and serve with the tomato sauce.

Again with the no pictures of the cooking. Yes I will stop sucking soon, I promise. This is a pretty standard marinated shrimp dish, but while the grill did nothing for the clams, they did a ton for the shrimp. Oh man, this was amazing. I had forgotten what a potent combination ginger and shrimp were. I don’t need to comment too much on the mechanics of the dish, it’s pretty straightforward. But, man, THIS I will make again.

The part I was a lot less impressed with was the tomato sauce. I think the main problem here was I couldn’t find lemongrass so I had to use powdered. I know, normally lemongrass is pretty easy to find, a lot easier than finding powdered lemongrass, that’s for sure. But this particular day, no soap. Add to that some fairly flavorless tomatoes and this sauce didnt even make it on the plates. Luckily it didn’t need to since the shrimp were so good. And I am willing to call this part user error. Most of the time the “Citizen” in “Citizen Chef” stands for “Normal Guy Who Really Screws Up Simple Dishes And Should Shut Up And Watch The Food Channel Instead Of Writing Things For People To Read”

So make these shrimp, grill some bread and put the horseradish butter from the Pop Open Clams with Horseradish-Tabasco Sauce on it, and enjoy!

~Citizen Chef

As Citizen Chef pointed out in the Magazine of the Month debut post, every month, AwK will pick out one culinary magazine to feature and show you some highlights. This month, we’ve chosen the June 2008 edition of Food and Wine.

This magazine is a new one for me. I started receiving it a few months ago as a complimentary gift for something I purchased. When I told Citizen Chef about it, he was interested to know how good the magazine was. Every month when a new publication was released, we would find ourselves discussing whether or not it was worth buying.

That’s basically how the idea for this recurring article came to be. There are plenty of websites that feature books, but that can be a very expensive venture and, if you’re anything like me, you already have two shelves’ worth of cookbooks that have barely been touched. Magazines are a much cheaper option and can contain lots of good advice.

Lemon-Blueberry Frozen Yogurt

Making frozen yogurt was another first for me. I would have shied away from this one as well, had not the creator, Jeni Britton, been quoted as saying, “I never make frozen yogurt as a low-fat replacement for ice cream.” I was sold. The outcome was a very rich and delicious dessert. You may feel compelled to not include the blueberry sauce but I must warn you: the blueberry sauce is what makes it amazing! If you don’t include the sauce, you’ll get this overly rich and tart frozen yogurt that is lacking a balance. The sweetness of the blueberry gives this what it needs. You’ll notice there isn’t a lot of blueberry sauce being made and that’s fine - it’s so sweet that the amount that comes out is perfect. If you double the sauce it will be way too sweet and you’ll lose the tartness of the lemon.

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, plus 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
One 1/4-ounce package unflavored powdered gelatin
2/3 cup plus 6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 cups plain whole-milk yogurt
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup blueberries
2 teaspoons water

There are a couple of different steps to this dessert and, unfortunately, it’s not one that you can just toss into your ice cream maker and forget about. However, don’t let that stop you. It’s relatively quick and simple, and you can end up with a delicious and beautiful dessert.

Step 1: Fill a large bowl about half way with ice water. Pour 2 tablespoons of the lemon juice into a small bowl. (Note: I used about three lemons and, unlike Citizen Chef, I remembered that I needed zest before tossing it into my garbage bowl - ha!) Sprinkle the gelatin over the lemon juice and let stand for 5 minutes.

Step 2: Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, whisk the remaining 6 tablespoons of lemon juice with 2/3 cup of the sugar and the corn syrup. Bring to a boil and cook over moderate heat until the sugar dissolves, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon gelatin mixture you made in step 1.

Step 3: In a medium bowl, mix the yogurt with the zest. Stir in the lemon juice mixture, then whisk in the cream. Set the yogurt base in the ice water bath and let stand, stirring occasionally, until cold, 20 minutes.

Note: This is why I said in step 1 to only fill the bowl half way up with ice water - if you fill it up all the way, once you put your frozen yogurt bowl into the ice water bath, the water will overflow all over the counter and you will get it all over your cats who are sitting at your feet in the hopes of you spilling some of the sweet, dairy creation onto the floor, only you don’t and instead they get an ice water bath and are quite unhappy with you and go running across the house, splashing and spreading more water. If that ever happened, and I’m not saying it did, that would be unfortunate for both you and your cats.

Step 4: Meanwhile, in a saucepan, mix the blueberries with the remaining 6 tablespoons of sugar and the water. Simmer over moderate heat, until saucy, 4 minutes. Let cool.

Note: Remember what I said above about the blueberry sauce! It is a must have for this yogurt! I actually let this cook for a long time because I was confused about how the consistency was supposed to be. For some reason I thought the blueberries would totally break down and I would end up with a very smooth sauce. I didn’t. There was a lot of smoothness to it, but the blueberries don’t completely dissolve.

Step 5: Pour the lemon yogurt into an ice cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Basically, I tossed this into my ice cream maker and forgot about it for a couple of hours. When the consistency looked good to me (like a soft-serve ice cream) I took it out.

Step 6: Scoop alternating spoonfuls of the yogurt and blueberry sauce into a plastic container. This is where I got a little nervous. I was looking at the photo and looking at my plastic container, and I couldn’t figure out how to layer this so that it came out looking just as beautiful as the picture. In the end, I just went for it. Using small spoonfuls, I just made little swipes and stripes over the frozen yogurt and made about three layers.

For further illustration, here is a little something I put together to show off my stunning paint skills:

Now that’s definitely something you won’t see on a Fark photoshop contest, lemme tell ya.

Anyway, when you’re done with the layering process, press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface and close with an airtight lid. Freeze until firm, about 4 hours.

When scooping this with a rounded ice cream scooper, I was really pleased that the little ribbons of blueberry came out looking just like the photograph. This dessert was taken to a BBQ and devoured in the first 20 minutes.

So yeah, pick up a copy of Food & Wine’s June 2008 - there are plenty of other good reasons to buy one, and we’ll be talking more about it all month.