Crouton's Kitchen

Looks more yellow than red, doesn’t it?  Maybe I didn’t use the right curry paste.  Well.  The Thai adventure continues, this time with a recipe from the 1970 Time-Life Pacific & Southeast Asia Cookbook, modified by yours truly.

Ingredients

• 3 cups coconut milk
• 2 tbsp red curry paste
• 2 chicken breasts, skinned, boned, cut into bite-size pieces
• 2 small potatoes, peeled & chopped into bite-size pieces
• 6 thin slices from a hot green chili pepper (don’t overdo)
• 12 Chinese snow peas (cut off ends & remove the stringy fiber)
• 2 small red salad peppers, sliced into strips, pulp & seeds removed
• 1/2 can Japanese straw mushrooms, drained
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 fresh basil leaves, chopped

Directions

Pour 1 cup coconut milk into a saucepot.  Bring to boil, reduce heat to low, stir until the liquid reduces somewhat.  Add curry paste and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until coconut milk/curry paste mixture reduces somewhat.  Add chicken and potatoes and cook over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until chicken is tender and potatoes are cooked.

Now add remaining 2 cups of coconut milk, chili pepper, snow peas, and salad peppers.  Cook over low heat until the peas and peppers are just tender.  Add mushrooms and fish sauce and allow to simmer for a couple of minutes.  Serve with boiled rice and garnish the curry with chopped basil leaves (which I forgot to do in the photo above).

Notes

The Time-Life recipe does not include vegetables.  I thought the curry would be better with them, and it was.  I used canned coconut milk from the Asian section of the supermarket (where I also found the canned Japanese mushrooms) and prepared curry paste (which I found at Sunflower Market).

Tasty?  Yes, indeedy!

I recently dug out Keo’s Thai Cuisine, a cookbook that’s been sitting on our shelf, unopened, since 1992.  What got me off my ass, Thai-cooking-wise?  Shame.

You see, I admitted on Facebook to making Pad Thai from a package, and one of my friends called me out on it: “You didn’t make it from scratch?”  I responded by whining “It’s haaaaaard,” by which I meant that it’s difficult to find the right ingredients in Tucson, Arizona.

But is it really?  I began to wonder, and pretty soon I’d dusted off Keo’s cookbook and started writing grocery lists.  So here we are, my first attempt, truth be told probably not a real Thai recipe at all, just some Americanized concoction Keo whips up for the haoles in Waikiki.  Still . . . I present my version (modified for southwestern desert denizens of the USA) of Keo’s Evil Jungle Prince with Chicken (& Shrimp):

Ingredients

• 2-3 chicken breasts, skin removed
• 6-8 large shrimp (21/25 count), deveined, peeled, tail on
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 2-6 small red chile peppers
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• 1/2 stalk fresh lemon grass
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 10-15 basil leaves
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup chopped cabbage

Directions

Cut chicken into thin 2-inch strips. Grind together red chili peppers, lemon grass, and kaffir lime leaves in a food processor or pound in a mortar. Heat oil to medium high and sauté pepper mixture for three minutes. Stir in coconut milk and cook for two minutes. Add chicken and shrimp and cook for five minutes or until cooked. Reduce heat to medium low. Stir in fish sauce, salt, and basil. Serve on a bed of chopped cabbage.

Notes

I wasn’t able to find everything:

• For kaffir lime leaves, I zested a lime
• For the red chili peppers, I used half a small serrano pepper, thinly sliced

I didn’t expect to find lemon grass, but Sunflower Market has it (and, I would guess, Whole Foods). If you can’t find lemon grass where you are, you can zest a lemon.  Most supermarkets carry coconut milk; it comes in cans and is shelved with Oriental foods.  Fish sauce is an Oriental cooking staple; you should be able to find it anywhere.  Using peanut oil is my idea . . . Keo just says “oil” but I use peanut oil for anything Oriental.  Adding shrimp was also my idea; Keo’s recipe calls for chicken only.

I ground up the peppers, lemon grass, and zested lime with mortar & pestle, but next time I’ll use the food processor.  Lemon grass is hard and woody, and mortar & pestle doesn’t really do the job.

I wasn’t sure this one dish would be enough, so I picked up a package of frozen potstickers at Sunflower (it came with the packet of sweet dipping sauce you see in the photo). Not exactly Thai, but it went well with the Evil Jungle Prince.

Last but not least, the little bit of serrano pepper I used was way too much. If I can’t find a milder pepper next time, I’ll cut the amount of serrano pepper in half, maybe more.

Very tasty and Thai-like.  I am emboldened now, and working my way up to some Thai curry dishes.  Hence the new recipe category added to this blog today: Thai.

This is a standard recipe for buffalo wings, and very simple. But I’ve found that if you stick with the standards and keep things simple, your wings will turn out fine every time!

Ingredients

• 2-3 dozen chicken wings
• 1 12-oz bottle Texas Pete or Franks’ Hot Sauce
• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• a few grindings of black pepper
• peanut oil
• bleu cheese dressing
• celery sticks

Directions

Cut tips off the wings and discard. Cut each wing at the joint. Rinse and let dry on paper towels.

Prepare hot sauce by melting butter in a bowl, then adding hot sauce, pepper flakes, and ground pepper.

Deep fry wings in peanut oil, six minutes per batch at about 360 degrees. Dump fried wings onto paper towels to soak up oil. Immerse each batch of wings in hot sauce and let sit for at least a minute (they longer they sit in the hot sauce, the hotter they’ll be . . . I give them two minutes). Remove wings from sauce with tongs, shake off excess sauce, place in a casserole dish. Between frying & soaking new batches, keep already-prepared wings warm in oven.

Wings and hot sauce

Deep fryer in action

When ready, serve with celery sticks and bleu cheese dressing for dipping.

Ever wonder how they prepare that tender pulled pork they serve at barbecue restaurants?  This is one way to do it.  You’ll need three to four days prep time and room in your refrigerator for a large bowl of marinating pork shoulder.

Ingredients

• 5-lb pork shoulder
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• marinade au vin (from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 1 cup dry white wine (or 2/3 cup dry white vermouth)
  • 1/2 cup wine vinegar
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 halved cloves garlic
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced carrots
  • 1/2 cup thinly sliced onions
  • 1/2 tsp peppercorns
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp thyme

Directions

To prepare the marinade, slowly cook carrots, onions, and garlic in olive oil.  Mix other ingredients (less the salt) in a bowl large enough to hold the pork shoulder.  Add the cooked carrots, onions, garlic, and oil to the marinade.

Rinse pork shoulder and pat dry.  Rub the salt into the pork.  Place the pork shoulder in the bowl and baste it with the marinade.  The shoulder should marinate for three to four days, turning the meat and rebasting with the marinade twice a day.

The pork shoulder

Preparing the marinade

In the marinade

When ready, rinse the pork shoulder and discard the marinade.  Place the meat in a roasting pan, fat side up, with about half a cup of chicken stock.  Cook in a moderate oven (300 degrees) for six to eight hours.  You can also use a slow cooker/crock pot if you have one large enough.

Notes

Serve with boiled new potatoes (skin on) and green beans.

The marinade, as noted, is a Julia Child recipe.  It’s meant to give the pork a wild boar flavor.  Having never tasted wild boar, I can’t attest to its success, but will note that it tasted great.

Unless you’re feeding eight people at the first sitting, there’ll be a lot of pork left over.  We made pulled pork from our leftovers, cutting away all the fat, discarding the bones, and shredding the meat to serve on buns with barbecue sauce.  This is an economical cut of meat that will give you two or three meals, easily.

The proper name is Chicken Tajine, but Ditalini has always called it Rotten Chicken, and that’s what kids and company ask for when they want a special dinner. We call it that because it’s prepared with preserved lemons, which soften the meat to the point where the chicken literally falls apart when cooked. Which is how it’s supposed to be; it’s a Moroccan dish meant to be served with couscous and eaten with the fingers.

Ditalini learned the basic recipe years ago from a friend, and I’m going to lay it out just as it’s written: ancient and stained (well, okay, I can’t duplicate that), geared to serve twelve (six chickens in all). Ditalini normally serves six with two chickens; last night we served three with one chicken and there’s some left over. You’ll have to size the recipe down depending on the number of chickens you plan to cook, as we do.

Note: you should use a tajine pot for cooking but a heavy enameled covered pot does well too. Serve with couscous if you prefer; we like it with saffron rice and boiled carrots.

Ditalini’s recipe? Here it is:

Prepare preserved lemons at least 4 weeks ahead. Cut in wedges 6-12 lemons. Fill w/salt, put in fruit jar & add more salt, press down and add more salt.

Clean & dry 6 whole chickens.

Prepare & blend 6-8 garlic cloves, onions, ½ cup parsley, 1 ½ tsp saffron. 1/8 tsp cumin, ½ tsp pepper, enough olive oil to make paste – do not add salt.  Rub mixture inside & outside chickens.

Brown chickens in 2 tbsp butter or olive oil drizzled in bottom of heavy cooking pot.  Add preserved lemons (approx 1-1 ½ lemons per chicken) and a little water.  Cover pot and cook in moderate oven (350 deg) approx 1 ½ hrs.

If eaten w/fingers take out at least ½ hr before serving.

Critical information is missing, so here are some additional notes from Ditalini:

• When preparing the lemons, cut them as if you’re going to make four wedges, but don’t cut all the way through.  The lemon should fan out like a four-leaf clover.  Pack the salt inside & outside, press the lemons down hard in the jar so that the juice squeezes out, add more salt, cover and store.
• Use a blender to prepare the garlic/onion/saffron coating.
• Thoroughly rinse the salt off the preserved lemons before adding them to the chicken
• After the chicken is cooked, discard the lemons
• As the chicken cooks it produces a tasty broth.  Before serving, extract the broth from the pot with a baster (avoiding the grease on top) and serve broth in individual bowls for dipping.  We serve the chicken with crusty rolls, dipping both chicken and rolls in the broth.

Reference the photos (click to enlarge):

Ditalini's preserved lemons	Ready for oven
Extracting broth	Serving

• First photo shows Ditalini’s ever-present jar of preserved lemons
• Second photo shows the browned chicken with preserved lemons (there are two more wedges inside the cavity), just prior to covering and placing in oven
• Third photo shows the baked chicken (you can see how it’s already falling off the bone) and Ditalini extracting broth from the pot
• Fourth photo: ready to eat, with saffron rice, carrots, bread, and broth for dipping

This really is a spectacular meal and company will rave about it.  The chicken is tender, tangy, and incredibly tasty.  Starting a month ahead sounds like a bit of work, but it really isn’t.  As you can see from the photo, Ditalini prepares a large enough jar of preserved lemons to make this dish two or three times; the lemons will keep for about six months.

I felt like making soup tonight.  I had hamburger and a bottle of Mr. & Mrs. T’s Bloody Mary Mix.  Thus the inspiration for this easy, homey, tasty soup:

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 med onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced
• 2 cups Mr. & Mrs. T’s Bloody Mary Mix
• 2 cans beef stock
• 2 or 3 small potatoes, peeled and cut into 1″ cubes
• 2 or three carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 can red kidney beans, drained
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Brown the beef & onion in a stockpot, drain if necessary.  Add garlic, bloody mary mix, and beef stock.  Bring to a low boil.  Add potatoes & carrots.  Let soup cook, covered, on low for about an hour.  Add kidney beans, simmer uncovered for another 20 minutes or so.  Serve with crusty bread.

Coming soon, a section on breakfast. We’ll start with Eggs Benedict, Dutch Baby, and SOS (using a Julia Child recipe for the bechamel sauce). Click any image to enlarge. Recipes soon.

Stay tuned, Croutonettes!

We invited all our single friends over to help us decorate our tree on Christmas Eve. Of course one has to give in order to receive, so we lured them over with promises of food. Our traditional Christmas Eve feast is seafood, and this year was no exception. We served boiled shrimp as an appetizer. The main course was clam chowder, a calamari salad with tomatoes and capers, and a rich and luscious seafood casserole with shrimp, halibut, lobster, and a Japanese panko bread crust. Click on any photo to enlarge:

Boiled Shrimp	Clam Chowder
Calamari Salad	Seafood Gratin

Recipes? Sure!

Ditalini used Food Network recipes for her calamari salad and seafood casserole, so to ensure credit goes where it is due, I’ll just post the recipe links:

• Calamari, Tomato and Caper Salad
• Seafood Gratin

My clam chowder recipe comes from my father and has been a deMenthe family Christmas tradition for nearly 30 years. I posted the recipe last year, and here’s the link.

The boiled shrimp are so easy. Just buy a a pound of jumbo (21/25 count) shrimp, the kind that are already shelled and deveined. Tail on or tail off, your choice (I used tail off this time, only because people never know what to do with the tails after they pull them off the shrimp — on the other hand, tails do give people who are squeamish about finger food something to hold onto). If you buy the shrimp frozen, thaw them out in water first, then drain. Pour one or two beers into a pot, add two tablespoons of Old Bay Seasoning, and bring to a boil. Add the shrimp and boil them for two to three minutes, until nice and pink. Serve with cocktail sauce and lemon slices. There’s nothing to it, and it’s a great appetizer.

Seafood and Christmas Eve . . . it’s a match made in heaven!

I felt like cooking last night, and I also felt like something new, so I decided to marinate pork medallions in jerk sauce and grill them. Potatoes and Brussels sprouts sounded like the perfect side dishes. It wasn’t too hard, it was fun to cook, and best of all it was a really great meal.

Ingredients

• Pork Medallions
  • 1 pork tenderloin, sliced into 1″ thick medallions
  • 1/4 cup jerk marinade
  • 1 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1/2 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp allspice
• Potatoes
  • 4-5 small potatoes or 6-8 new potatoes
  • 1/3 stick butter
  • 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 tbsp dry parsley flakes
• Brussels sprouts
  • 1-2 dozen Brussels sprouts
  • 3 slices bacon, chopped

Marinating	Grilling
Potatoes	Sprouts

Directions

Preparation: mix brown sugar and spices into jerk marinade, pour over pork medallions and allow to marinate for 2-3 hours, turning occasionally. Clean the potatoes and boil them for 30 minutes; set aside.  Rinse the Brussels sprouts and slice each sprout in half; set aside.

Cooking: preheat a gas grill so that it’s hot, or prepare a charcoal grill.  Sear the pork medallions for 1-2 minutes per side, then reduce gas heat to medium or move medallions to a cooler place on the charcoal grill and cook for another 10 minutes, turning once.

Sauté bacon slices until nearly done, pour off most of the bacon fat but leave some.  Sauté the Brussel sprouts in the remaining bacon and bacon fat for 10-12 minutes, until done.

Melt butter with garlic and parsley flakes, pour over potatoes and toss.

It’s cold and rainy, a perfect day to reattack Uncle Art’s Beans. This time I’m making them with chuck roast, so at the risk of offending chili purists (and Uncle Art’s family), I’m calling it Uncle Art’s Chili Beans con Carne!

Ingredients

• 1 lb dried pinto beans
• garlic
• onion
• 1-oz pkg hot New Mexico chili pepper
• 28-oz can Las Palmas Red Chili Sauce
• 1 can water
• 2-3 tbsp flour or polenta to thicken*
• 1 ham hock or small piece salt pork
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 1/2 lb cut up beef chuck roast
• flour seasoned w/salt & pepper

Directions

Prepare the beans by soaking them in water overnight. In the morning, rinse the beans, place in pot, cover with can of red chile sauce and equal amount of water, add chopped onion, 4-5 cloves chopped garlic, package of chili pepper. Add smoked ham hock or salt pork. Bring the pot of beans to a low boil.

While the beans are coming to a low boil, heat oil in a frying pan. Dredge the beef in flour and brown it in the frying pan. When the meat is browned add it to the beans.

* I skip the extra flour/polenta, since the meat is already coated with flour.

When beans & meat reach a low boil, reduce heat and let simmer, partially covered, for 2-3 hours.

Note: serve with corn bread.

Update (12/8/09): As I explained in my first Uncle Art’s Beans entry, the actual recipe is a closely-guarded secret and my version is an approximation at best.  But I must be getting closer, as evidenced by this note from a member of la famiglia:

Looks delicious.The pic for this batch looks spot on. According to Uncle Art’s three daughters (the three D’s), Uncle Art used chuck (or other suitable stew meat) and smoked pork shank. The shank is boiled for a few hours till off the bone tender and then meticulously defatted. It is then added to the cauldron. He never added flour or polenta. I used to follow this recipe until I wanted a pure homemade chili beans. I skip the (beloved) canned Las Palmas. Instead I go to the Mexican market and purchase dried New Mexico chilis. Toast them in a bit of oil, soak in water for a few minutes, then pulverize in a blender. Food processors are too weak for this. Strain through a fine mesh strainer. Bam. Chili sauce, homemade. I’m hungry, when’s the cook-off?

Cabbage & hamburger soup? That sounds pretty, ah, pedestrian, doesn’t it?  Friends, take my word for it, this is great soup, especially if you serve it with crusty bread.  Easy to make, too.

Ingredients

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2-3 minced garlic cloves
• 1 lb ground beef
• 2 15-oz can beef or chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• 2 15-oz cans diced tomatoes
• 1 15-oz can tomato sauce
• 1 small green cabbage, chopped
• 2 carrots, diced
• 1 stalk celery, sliced thin, w/leaves
• pinch of oregano
• pinch of parsley

Directions

In large pot, sauté onions and garlic (do not brown).  Add ground beef and break it up as it cooks.  Add all other ingredients.  Bring to a light boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for 1 to 1 ½ hours.

Notes

When you add the cabbage it’ll really fill the pot, but don’t worry, it’ll cook down.  Having tried both, we think it’s better with beef broth, but if you’re looking for a lighter flavor use chicken broth.

Try it . . . you’ll be glad you did!

What, more turkey?

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was going to smoke a turkey breast Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  Since I still had a good bed of charcoal going after the turkey breast was done, I decided to throw some brats in the smoker.

Turkey Breast Preparation

I brined the turkey breast overnight (about 8 hours for a 7-pound breast), rinsed it off, patted it dry, and rubbed it with salt & pepper.

Turkey Breast Smoking

I set up my smoker just as I always do, then let the breast smoke for about five hours.  I used hickory this time, rather than mesquite.  I started checking the internal temperature at about the four-hour mark, and took it off the smoker when it reached 170 degrees F.

Brat Preparation

You don’t want to smoke raw sausage, so I boiled the brats in beer first to thoroughly cook them.

Brat Smoking

Once the brats were cooked, I put them on the smoker, placed a few hickory chips on top of the coals, and let them smoke for an hour.

The turkey breast was fantastic — moist and flavorful.  The brats were okay but nothing to write home about.  Next time I decide to smoke sausage I’ll probably try hot Italian sausage (boiled in water first).

Our friend Pomodoro Calde invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner.  We’d originally planned a DeMenthe family dinner at home, since our daughter Escargot was flying in from Las Vegas . . . but Pomodoro is a good friend and she promised an interesting selection of guests, so we went to her house instead.

Here’s Pomodoro’s groaning Thanksgiving board, approximately one second before we and the other interesting guests devoured everything in sight:

Today, the day after Thanksgiving, I’m feeling a trace of Puritan guilt.  Thanksgiving dinner is supposed to be a communal effort, no?  Yesterday I received . . . and received, and received . . . and gaveth not.

So today I’m putting a brined turkey breast (the one we’d originally planned to eat yesterday) on the smoker.  My guilt will be assuaged by nothing less, even if it means eating Thanksgiving dinner two days in a row.

And yes, I will photoblog it, so expect more anent that turkey breast!

Our gang got together at a friend’s house last night for a potluck dinner.  My share of the division of labor was to grill lamb chops, with the help of our host, Guido Trattoria.

Ditalini and I prepped the lamb chops as described in the linked recipe, marinating them in red wine and sprinkling them with dried rosemary.  Smiles all around, and a great dinner with friends.

Originally a Food Channel recipe, modified by Ditalini.  Some nights we feel like something light, easy, and hearty . . . yeah, I can hear you saying “hearty doesn’t go with light & easy,” but trust me, in this case it does.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup minced onion
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 4-6 cups broth (chicken or vegetable, or both)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 pkg cheese tortellini, fresh or dried
• kosher salt & ground black pepper
• spinach (see photo below; we use it all)
• Parmesan cheese

Directions

Sauté onion & garlic in olive oil in a 3-quart pot.  Add broth and tomatoes, bring to a boil.  Add tottellini and cook according to package instructions.  When toretllini is almost done, add spinach, salt, and pepper.  Serve with fresh grated Parmesan and crusty French bread.

Notes

This soup takes just 20 minutes to prepare, and the recipe serves four; double or triple the ingredients for more.  You can use meat-filled tortellini, but we prefer four-cheese tortellini.