Crouton’s Kitchen

Party Food

We hosted a birthday party last night.  The friend whose birthday it was requested we serve our salad with grilled salmon.  We also had steamed vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, snap peas, and carrots), roasted chicken, and a corn casserole.  Here’s the spread, with the first of our guests attacking:

Closest to the camera is the salad with grilled salmon (and a platter of puu puus from earlier), the the corn casserole, steamed veggies, and chicken.  There’s a green salad hidden in the background.  Fantastic party; fantastic food!

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Crouton’s Easy Dry-Rubbed Ribs

Ingredients

• pork spareribs (St Louis style or baby back)
• dry rub (Corky’s, Rendevous, or home made)
• barbecue sauce (whatever kind you like)

Directions

With this recipe, you basically prepare and cook the ribs first, then finish them off on a gas or charcoal-fired grill.

Leave ribs as they come from the package, in a slab — do not cut. Pull the membrane from the back side of each slab (hint: lift up a corner of the membrane with a sharp knife, then grab it with a dry paper towel and firmly pull it away).  Liberally coat both sides with dry rub (we use Corky’s).  Wrap the slab in aluminum foil and place on a cookie sheet with the seam of the foil wrap facing up.  Bake at 325 degrees for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Peel back an end of the foil and take a peek: the ribs are cooked when the meat begins to pull away from the bones. Remove from oven.

Remove foil from ribs and barbecue them on a gas or charcoal-fired grill.  Remember, the ribs are already cooked, so you just want to get them nice and hot and make grill marks on the meat.  Serve with barbecue sauce on the side (some people will like the dry-rubbed ribs as they are, some will want sauce in addition to the dry rub).

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Holiday Cooking

In keeping with DeMenthe family tradition, we’ve invited friends and family over for Christmas Eve.  We’ll serve them boiled shrimp, clam chowder, and cheddar cheese biscuits.  They’ll bring appetizers and desserts.  In a break with tradition, Ditalini decided this year to decorate the tree early; we started hanging ornaments last night.  Normally we enlist our friends to help trim the tree; this year they can just enjoy clam chowder and good company.

We’re getting a break as well.  We’ve been invited to a friend’s house for Christmas dinner, so apart from whatever small thing we prepare to contribute to our friend’s holiday table, we’re going to take it easy and enjoy.  I can’t remember the last time we haven’t slaved over a Christmas day feast!

Whatever you’re doing this holiday season — cooking, eating out, visiting friends or family, or just hunkering down until the economy recovers — Ditalini and I wish you happiness and comfort.

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Crouton’s Easy Split Pea Soup

Relatively easy, that is!  You can prepare it in the morning or early afternoon, then reheat and serve for dinner.  Actual kitchen prep time is about half an hour; cooking time is less than two hours.

Ingredients

• 1 pkg dry split peas (w/flavor packet, if included)
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 3 or 4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
• 2 medium carrots, peeled & sliced
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 cans vegetable stock
• 2 cups water (more if needed)
• 1 small ham steak, cut up
• salt & pepper to taste
• 2 tbsp butter

Directions

Rinse the peas and place in a heavy pot with chopped onion, garlic, carrots, bay leaf, vegetable stock, and water. Bring to a medium boil and let boil for 20-30 minutes, occasionally stirring.  You may need to add another cup or two of water while boiling to keep it from getting too thick.  Reduce heat to simmer, add ham, butter, salt & pepper.  Add the flavor packet if desired (many brands of dried green peas come with a packet of ham flavoring — if you use it, you probably won’t need any salt).  Stir all, cover the pot, let simmer about an hour.

Serve with crusty bread.  Serves six.

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Thanksgiving Dinner with Crouton & Ditalini

As always, Crouton and Ditalini had a big crowd over for Thanksgiving.  We had traditional turkey, smoked turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, Waldorf salad, and apple and pumpkin pie.

Everything was from traditional recipes, so I won’t go into details here, but I did want to say a little about smoking a turkey breast for those of you who are into smoking.

I use a Weber Smoky Mountain cooker, which is a wet smoker: it has a water reservoir between the hot coals and the cooking racks.  When the coals were ready, I half-filled the reservoir with boiling water, placed a throwaway aluminum drip pan on the lower cooking rack, placed the turkey breast side up on the top cooking rack, covered the smoker, tossed wet wood chips onto the coals, then closed the access door.  I used mesquite chips, though I’ve always used hickory in the past.  About every 45 minutes, I added a dozen briquettes to the coals and tossed in more wood chips.  It took about four hours for the turkey breast to come up to an internal temperature of 165 degrees (I was careful to always insert the meat thermometer in the same place so as not to poke holes in the breast and drain out all the moisture).

There is the turkey breast on the smoker, about half-way through the smoking process.  You can see the drip pan on the lower cooking rack; the water reservoir and hot coals are down below.  Normally you would never take the cover off, but I wanted to take this photo for you.

The smoked turkey has a tendency to upstage the traditional turkey, and for that reason I usually smoke something else to serve with traditional turkey.  In past years I’ve smoked duck and goose.  We’re looking forward to Christmas, when I plan to smoke a brisket of beef . . . which I’ll be writing about here, so check back.

Happy Thanksgiving from Crouton & Ditalini deMenthe!

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A Birthday Dinner with Friends

In these recessionary times, sharing dinner at home with friends is becoming a larger part of our social life.  If it’s a friend’s birthday, so much the better.  Our buddy Rudy from Las Vegas came to visit this weekend; since his birthday is Monday we invited our posse over to celebrate.

Mary Anne, Lorri, Darrell, Rudy, Gail, Ed, Ditalini

Ah, but what was on the table?  Salad, green beans with bacon and onion, seasoned new potatoes, and grilled lamb chops.  Ditalini prepared the salad, beans, and potatoes; I was in charge of the lamb.  Since we prepared everything using the TLAR method (that looks about right), I’ll give you the TLAR version of the recipes:

Salad: Ditalini used a package of mixed greens from the corner Safeway, a small can of mandarin oranges, drained, and a sweet & sour dressing she made from olive oil, vinegar, and sugar.

Green beans with bacon and onion: Ditalini sautéed crumbled bacon and chopped onions in a frying pan.  She boiled the beans until just done, drained them, then tossed them with the bacon and onion.

Ditalini’s beans, just before serving

Seasoned new potatoes: the seasoning was butter with thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and a little pepper, lightly sautéed in a small frying pan.  Ditalini boiled the potatoes (skin on), then mixed them with the seasoning.

Ditalini’s potatoes, just before serving

Lamb chops: I marinated the chops for three or four hours in cheap red wine with some dried rosemary.  I cooked them on a gas grill, about five minutes on each side.

Crouton’s chops, marinating

Mary Anne and Lorri brought a carrot cake from Costco, Darrell brought wine, Gail and Ed brought appetizers, and Rudy had a great birthday dinner.  What a great evening!

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Work Less, Cook More

I retired a few days ago, so Ditalini has put me in charge of the kitchen.  We fend for ourselves at breakfast and lunch but I’ve been cooking dinner at night.  Readers of this blog, if there are any, will have noted my preference for one-dish meals, so this week’s menu should come as no surprise:

• Monday, chicken noodle soup
• Tuesday, pad thai with chicken and shrimp
• Wednesday, 15-bean soup with ham
• Thursday, leftover sauce with pasta
• Friday, roast Rudy

Monday’s chicken noodle soup was easy and good.  Ditalina made her little chicken dinner a couple of weeks ago.  Since she had to boil a chicken, she made stock and saved it.  I used two cups of Ditalini’s stock, two cans of store-bought chicken stock, chopped onion, celery, and garlic, two cut-up chicken breasts, and a pinch of salt.  It all went into the pot together.  I brought the soup to a boil, then put it on simmer, covered, for a couple of hours.  For the noodles, I used campanelle, tossing in about half a pound for the last 30 minutes of simmering.  Mmm, comfort food!

Tuesday.  I wish I knew how to make pad thai from scratch.  There’s a Thai cookbook somewhere in the house, so I’ll put that on my to-do list.  For Tuesday’s meal I used a package, which provided the rice noodles and sauce.  I supplemented that with chopped scallions, half a thinly-sliced serrano pepper, a handful of snow peas, chopped cooked chicken from Ditalini’s freezer stash, a dozen peeled shrimp, one scrambled egg, some bean sprouts, and dry roasted peanuts.  I stir-fried the veggies, chicken, and shrimp in a wok, added the cooked noodles and sauce and stir-fried a little more, then added the scrambled egg (cut into squares) and bean sprouts.  We sprinkled peanuts on top and served it with lime wedges, and it was pretty damned good, even if it did come out of a package.  If I do this again, though, I won’t used cooked chicken, because it breaks up quickly when you stir fry it.

As a side dish, I sliced a little red onion, one whole cucumber, and the other half of that serrano pepper.  I put it in a bowl and let it soak all day in the fridge in an equal-parts mixture of sugar, vinegar, and water.

Wednesday.  After dinner last night I put the dried beans in a pot and let them soak while we slept.  This morning I chopped up an onion and three cloves of garlic, drained and rinsed the beans, and put everything back in the pot with two cans of vegetable stock and a little water (enough to cover the beans).  I added a smoked ham hock, five or six whole black peppercorns, and a bay leaf.  I threw away the packet of chili seasoning that came with the beans.  I brought the beans to a rolling boil, reduced the heat to low, and covered the pot.  I’ll let the beans cook a few hours, then add the slice of ham Ditalini has in the fridge, cut into small squares.  That’ll be tonight’s dinner, and there’ll be leftovers.

Thursday — tomorrow — it’s leftover sauce with whatever pasta is handy.  Ditalini’s meat sauce gets better the longer it sits in the fridge or the freezer.

Friday our friend Rudy arrives for the weekend.  He’s taking us out to dinner, so I’m off the hook.  This weekend?  Don’t ask me to think that far ahead!

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Hallowe’en Dinner

Who ever heard of a Hallowe’en dinner?  It’s not that kind of day . . . unless it’s your birthday, and also the day you retire from the 9 to 5 grind.  We fed ten or so guests last night, and I thought I would post a photo or two for you to enjoy.  The menu?  Ditalini’s meat sauce, ravioli, salad, garlic bread, and chocolate pumpkin cake with eyeballs.

Ditalini in her lair.

Crouton blowing out the candle on our friend Mary Anne’s brilliant chocolate pumpkin cake (served with the lychee nut/raspberry “eyeballs” in the foreground).

Note: Crouton and Ditalini sometimes shift their shapes to resemble humans.  A perfect Hallowe’en disguise!

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Pressure Cooker Pot Roast

Ingredients

• 1 tbs olive or vegetable oil
• 3 lb pot roast
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 3 cups beef stock
• 12 small redskin potatoes (cleaned but not peeled)
• 2 medium carrots, cut into 2-inch lengths
• 1 medium parsnip or turnip, cut into cubes
• 1/2 cup small pasta, cooked
• 2 tbs parsley, chopped
• fresh grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Season the pot roast with salt and pepper. Heat oil in your pressure cooker (lid off), then brown the pot roast on all sides. Put the roast on a plate and drain the oil from the pressure cooker. Put the pot roast back into the pressure cooker and add the beef stock.

Lock the pressure cooker lid, heat to high pressure, then reduce heat to maintain pressure. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Remove pressure cooker from heat, release pressure, and open lid (follow all your pressure cooker safety instructions). Transfer the pot roast and one ladle of stock to a deep casserole dish. Cover with foil and place in oven.

Skim fat from top of stock in pressure cooker. Add vegetables to stock. Lock lid, bring to high pressure, adjust heat to maintain, cook for 4-5 minutes. Remove pressure cooker from heat, release pressure, open lid, and transfer the vegetables to the casserole, placing them around the pot roast. Return casserole dish to oven.

Boil the pasta, drain, add to the stock remaining in the pressure cooker. Add parsley and stir, season with salt & pepper.

Serve the pot roast and vegetables in the casserole dish. The pot roast will carve easily with nothing more than a serving fork. Serve the broth separately in small bowls, with grated Parmesan cheese.

So you’re saying to yourself, “Who has a pressure cooker?”  You know what?  This dish alone justifies buying one!

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Food Channel’s Got Nothin’ on My Friends

Look at this cake my friend Mary Anne baked today:

Happy Hallowe’en!

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Ditalini’s Little Chicken Dinner

This is a one-dish casserole dinner that’s been a deMenthe family favorite for years.

Casserole Ingredients

• 1/4 lb bulk sausage, crumbled
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• home-made or purchased pie crust
• 2 cups cooked chicken, cut up
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup light cream
• 1 3-oz can mushrooms (with liquid from can)
• 1 8-oz can peas & carrots (drained)

Pie Crust Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup shortening (+ 1 tbsp)
• 2 tbsp water

Directions

Casserole: boil a chicken.  Remove skin, bones; cut up meat.  Cook sausage, drain fat.  Melt butter and stir in flour and salt until mixture is bubbly.  Remove from heat.  Stir in broth, cream, and mushrooms (with liquid from can).  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.  Boil and stir one minute.  Add peas & carrots.  Add sausage and chicken.  Pour into an ungreased rectangular casserole pan (13½” X 8¾” X 1¾”).

Pie crust: mix flour & salt in bowl.  Cut in shortening with pastry blender until particles are the size of peas.  Sprinkle with water, 1 tbsp at a time, mixing with fork, until flour is moistened.  Make a ball of the flour, place on lightly-floured cloth-covered board. Roll flat with rolling pin.  Cut to shape and cover casserole, folding sides under.  Cut slits on top.  Or just buy a prepared crust.

Cover casserole with foil, bake 20 minutes at 425º.  Take foil off and cook another 10-15 minutes or until brown on top.

Credits

This recipe originally appeared in a fighter squadron cookbook (the Bulldog Cookbook II, by Linda Tkacs).  It was given to Ditalini by Donna Bruce in Anchorage, Alaska, in October 1983.

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Crouton’s Chili Beans

You can serve these beans by themselves, or with chili con carne.

Ingredients

• 1 bag dried pinto beans
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 smoked ham hock
• 2 cans vegetable or chicken stock
• 1-2 cups water
• 2-3 tbsp chili powder
• a few peppercorns
• red pepper flakes

Directions

Preparation: soak the beans in water overnight.  Drain and rinse before cooking.

Place beans in heavy pot.  Add chopped garlic and onion.  Add ham hock.  Cover with vegetable or chicken stock and 1 or two cups water.  Add chili powder, peppercorns, and red pepper flakes (to taste).  Bring to low boil, then reduce to simmer and cover pot.  Cook 2-3 hours.

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Crouton’s Chili con Carne

Over the years I’ve tried chili recipe after chili recipe.  This is the one I finally settled on.

Ingredients

• olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 4 or 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 lb chuck roast or top round steak
• flour, salt, pepper
• 1 small can tomato paste
• chili powder
• cumin
• 2 cans beef stock
• 1 can beer
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 small piece baker’s chocolate (optional)
• 3 cans of beans (optional — see notes below)

Directions

Pour a tablespoon of olive oil into a heavy pot; pour another into a large frying pan. Brown the onions and garlic in the pot. Cut the meat into 1-inch cubes and coat in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. Brown the meat in the frying pan. You can use ground beef (in which case forget the flour), but chili con carne is much better with chunks of meat.

Add the tomato paste, 4 tablespoons chili powder, and ½ teaspoon cumin to the browned onions and garlic in the pot. Stir until the mixture forms a roux or paste. Add 1 can of beef stock and the beer. Add the browned meat. Pour your other can of beef stock into the frying pan, scrape in any bits of beef and flour sticking to the pan, then pour into the pot. Add the bay leaf. Add the chocolate or not, as you prefer. Stir, bring to a light boil, then reduce heat to low. Partially cover and cook slowly for 2 to 4 hours.

Serve with grated cheddar cheese and corn bread.

Notes

Chili con carne purists eschew beans.  I like them.  Here are two compromises for bean lovers:

The easy way: add canned beans to the chili con carne about an hour before serving. I dump my beans into a colander and rinse off the thick canning liquid before adding them to the pot. I use a mixture of kidney, pinto, and black beans.

The hard way: make a pot of dried pinto beans from scratch and serve them, in separate bowls, with the chili con carne. Click here for the recipe.

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A Meme for Breakfast

I love a good meme, and here’s one about food! It’s simple: copy it to your own blog, highlight the things you’ve tried, and pass it on.

Here’s my list:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

And who could resist improving his score by adding to the list?

1. Kangaroo
2. Alligator
3. Camel
4. Kouskous
5. Crawdads
6. Artichoke
7. Poi
8. Sashimi
9. Kim chee
10. Bulgogi
11. Gopher
12. Collard greens
13. Dog (in Korea once, I’m almost certain)
14. Saladitos
15. Lutefisk
16. Callos
17. Other than chicken eggs
18. Ostrich

I have a feeling this second part is going to grow.

Credit where credit’s due: spotted at John McKay’s blog.

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A Different Kind of Barbecue

We were having company Sunday.  I wanted to barbecue, but Ditalini wanted Italian food.  So we compromised by having an Italian barbecue.  Here’s the menu:

Grilled Artichokes

We prepped the artichokes a couple of hours before the party by cutting the spiny tips off the leaves, then boiling them until tender.  After taking them out of the water and letting them drain and cool down, I quartered each artichoke and removed the choke with a spoon.  Next I brushed each quarter artichoke with olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, making sure I got all sides.

When it was time to barbecue, I used a spatula to place the artichokes on the grill.  The artichokes, already cooked, were tender and fragile, so I was gentle with the spatula, turning them to grill all sides.  When the artichokes were nicely marked from the grill, I put them on a platter and kept them warm in the oven.  Ideally, you should serve them right away as appetizers, but our friends brought several different appetizers, so we served the artichokes with dinner.

Grilled Italian Sausage & Polenta

First, we boiled the polenta . . . as with the artichokes, this was part of our prep routine, a couple of hours before company was due to arrive.  When the polenta was cooked, Ditalini put it in bread pans and let it cool.  While I was grilling artichokes, she inverted the bread pans over a cutting board so that the polenta came out in loaves, then cut the polenta into half-inch slices.  I grilled it, using a spatula to turn the slices.  Since the polenta was already cooked, all I needed to do was make the outside surfaces crispy.

But before putting the polenta slices on the grill, I grilled the sausage.  We used mild and sweet Italian sausage.  I cut each sausage lengthwise, as you can see in the photo, so that they would lay flat on the polenta when served and also because the oil in the sausage drains out faster that way.  I was careful to keep the sweet sausage on one side of the grill and the hot on the other, and later, when the sausage was grilled, I kept the two kinds of sausage separate on the platter, as in the photo.

Grilled Vegetables

When I’m grilling for the two of us, I use an old pan with a metal handle on the grill to keep the vegetables from falling through the grating, but since we were preparing a lot of veggies for a lot of people (and since I was hogging the entire surface of the grill with sausage & polenta), Ditalini decided to roast them in the oven instead.

Either way, what we do is cut up some good looking vegetables — onions, whole garlic cloves, sliced & seeded red, yellow, and green bell pepper — drizzle a little olive oil on them, then sprinkle with salt & pepper.  Ditalini, as you can see, added zucchini and white asparagus.  When I grill veggies, they cook fast, and I have to keep an eye on them lest they burn.  Roasting took about 20 minutes at 425 degrees.

Note

How to serve grilled sausage & polenta: place a slice of polenta on your plate, then a slice of mozzarella cheese, then a sausage, then a little parmesan cheese.  If you have leftover polenta, fry it in a little butter and have it with your eggs for breakfast.

If all this doesn’t have you humming “funiculi, funicula,” come back and read this entry when you’re hungry.

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