Cajun chicken stew

You know how sometimes things get away from you, and even though a task is in your To Do pile, you still lose track of it, and then you see it again months later and think, "oh, shit! I really wish I'd fed the dog!"

Then you're a terrible person. Take better care of your dog.

But if your forgotten task is typing up recipes, then yeah, I totally get that.

Dad likes to plant a garden in the summer. Two years ago, I helped with the planting. That time, it was entirely peppers and tomatoes, salvaged/rescued by my brother from an employer who was discarding the plants. Dad had so many that we started new rows in between the original rows, and his garden was so crowded that we lost track of what each individual plant was. The best we managed was a "hot" area and a "sweet" area for the peppers. Dad gave me almost all of the hot peppers. I think he was afraid they would be too hot, but I made good use of them.

This year's harvest yielded some bell peppers, and some peppers Dad didn't want to use. I don't even know why he planted them, but I appreciate the produce, and I'm entertained by using peppers of unknown ferocity when I cook. These turned out to be pretty mild, but the results were excellent. I used this recipe as my base, but I'm retyping it here FOR YOUR BENEFIT! ALL FOR YOU! because I hate the ads on that website.

Cajun chicken stew
3-6 T vegetable oil
3 to 3.5 pounds chicken. I used skinless, boneless thighs, didn't cut a damn thing, and let the cooking and stirring break it into smaller chunks.
2.5 t salt
1/2 C flour
1 medium onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
if you like, add a Mystery Pepper or two
2 celery ribs, chopped (I used more than they did. Who buys just one stalk of celery, anyway??)
3 C water
1/4 t cayenne
3/4 C thinly sliced green onion
cook some rice, too.

• heat the oil in a big damn pot (do you have cast iron? use that. Chicken is happier in cast iron), season the chicken with salt, and brown in the oil. Move browned pieces to a bowl somewhere.
• Add enough oil to get about 1/4 C of juices in the skillet/pot, then stir in the the flour and cook over low-moderate heat until the roux (flour-fat mix) is dark. Think coffee-dark, but with just a little milk in the coffee. As it cooks, scrape the roux back and forth with a metal spatula to keep it mixed, and to prevent it sticking to the pan. Add onion, bell pepper, and celery, and keep scraping and cooking until onion has softened and starts to look translucent.
• Add water and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to get the water-roux mix homogeneous. Return the chicken (and any tasty juices that may have run off the chicken) to the pot and simmer, partially covered, 30-35 minutes. Stir int he cayenne and green onions. Serve over rice.

Some day I may write up my love letter to Slap Ya Mama. For now, I'll just add that the Chief Taster has also come to love this all-purpose seasoning, and liberally dosed her stew with it. The stew itself is rich, thick, flavorful, and looks nothing like what is pictured in the link above. Enjoy!

coal miner's dinner

I usually have a pattern in these posts: I tell you what the cookbook said, and then I tell you what I did instead (intentionally or, as is more often the case, because I messed something up). Maybe that's a dumb idea.

I often tell you what cookbook I use, and if it's not a cookbook I recommend, I just don't post anything out of it. I mean, if a cookbook can't justify its existence with at least one good recipe, then what's the point? Besides food porn, anyway, and I'm not reposting that, because showing you someone else's photography is copyright infringement, and as someone who repeatedly (unsuccessfully) hopes to make money from his works, I have to respect copyrights. You want food porn, buy your own damn books. It's certainly less embarrassing than buying the other kind. I assume.

Getting back to food, if you've found that one recipe that justifies the book's inclusion in your collection, and you're comfortable making it, there's one of two reasons. First: it is easy, straightforward, and you have managed to never mess it up so badly that the results are inedible, toxic, or otherwise ill-advised. Second: you have made it "wrong" nearly every single time, but you're still so happy with the results that you don't care, and may have even reached a point where you open the book only to see the name of the recipe, or the pretty food porn, and then mostly ignore it for the rest of the process. Congratulations: you're a cook!

Dad likes to tell the story of something he was making to feed a Boy Scout troop on a campout. One of the moms looked over his shoulder and observed, "that's not what the recipe says." I don't remember what Dad actually responded, because by this point in the story, we're usually both laughing, but it boiled down to: "the recipe is wrong." This is also the point in his story when I often interrupt him by quoting the first time he told me the story: "perfect is not an exact science." I knew that his words had tripped over one another on delivery, but I still teased him by countering that's exactly what perfect means.

Anyway.

Does anyone ever really make a recipe by exactly following the recipe? From now on, I'm just going to tell you what I did, unless something went so terribly wrong that my way was a mistake. Maybe I just won't tell you about those times.

The Chief Taster found a couple recipes recently for pasta carbonara, picked her favorite, and made her dinner request. I glanced at the page, found that the only thing I still needed to buy was the pasta and some bacon, and later got worried at the grocery when I told the lady pouring wine samples what I was making for dinner, and she gleefully told me how she made it; her version had cream. I was fairly certain my book didn't show cream in the ingredient list. Should I buy some cream? I had milk. Maybe that would do? We were heading out of town that weekend, so I didn't want to buy cream unless I knew I needed it; I was already worried I'd have to dump some milk, because there's only so much I can reasonably consume in three days. Dammit. OK, I'll risk not getting cream. Fingers crossed.

I didn't need any cream. Which is the other funny thing about recipes: you can find about 639 different versions for whatever the hell you want to make. I had even spoken with the wine lady about how there are different versions of carbonara, and she said that it's supposed to be a simple dish (the name refers to the coal miners who ate it), but the kind you get in restaurants is all... [hand waving]. "Tarted up?" I suggested. "Yes!" She insisted that her way was the right way, and warned me not to let the cream and eggs curdle.

If she's to be believed, here is the wrong way--or one of them--which is still damn tasty, and probably easier, once I figure the timing a little better.

Pasta Carbonara
1 lb fettucini
3/4 pound bacon, cut hacked torn shredded into 1/2 chunks. I have a lot of trouble cooking raw, unfrozen bacon. The Chief Taster suggested scissors, but she didn't suggest it until I was almost done, and by then I was already frustrated and swearing a lot.
5-6 minced cloves garlic
ground black pepper (the book said "at least 1.5 t." I didn't measure mine, but I used that as a guideline)
6 large eggs, beaten
1.5 C (ish) parmesan cheese. I didn't measure this, either.
salt? (I forgot. Whatever. People salt the hell out of their own servings, anyway.)
chopped fresh parsley

• Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp, or you're happy with it. I was a little frustrated because my pasta water was boiling WAY before I was ready for it, and I was keeping one eye on my popovers, which were also ahead of schedule, because the bacon wasn't cooking fast enough, and was still sticking to the skillet a little.
• At some point, you'll need cooked pasta. I had trouble getting things coordinated, so you're on your own figuring out the timing on that. I also can't help you with stringy pasta sticking together (this is why I almost never use spaghetti or fettucini). I need to work on that.
• Remove the bacon and drain all but 2-3 T grease. Cook the garlic and pepper in the grease for about a minute, stirring frequently. A normal person will smell this. I did not.
• Toss the bacon back in there, give it a stir, and turn off the heat. Dump in the cooked pasta, stir well, and cook for about a minute. If your skillet is too small for this, dump the bacon mix into the pasta. Just so everything's in the same place, warm and cozy.
• You should have your beaten eggs gathered in a separate bowl so you can dump them all in at once. Do that now. Stir it all up, then ignore for a minute or two (remember that the heat is off. Between the skillet and the pasta, there's enough heat to cook the eggs when they're spread all over the pasta like that). Stir in the cheese. That last part was easy for me, because the Chief Taster was ravenous, and hovering over the stove waiting for dinner, so she stirred while dumped what I thought was probably the right amount of cheese into the noodles.
• Top servings with parsley. Or not. I don't care. It's only a recipe, after all.

Serve with warning labels

Remember our good friend the Model Bakery Cookbook?

We do. The Chief Taster now tells people about running the Napa Valley Marathon not because she got her best time there, but because the next day we bought this cookbook, and she wants everyone to know about this cookbook. Seems weird, coming from someone who loves to brag about herself, but maybe it's her way of bragging about what she gets to eat.

This summer, we went to a friend's birthday cookout. They requested that I bring "something yummy for dessert." I didn't get any further clarification except "brownies?" I couldn't remember ever baking brownies that weren't from a mix (when I want hand-edible sweet treats, I usually bake cookies), but as the Chief Taster tells everyone, "everything from that book is amazing," so I checked the Model Bakery index.

There was one little problem: the book calls for an 8x8 pan, and I was serving around 20 people (plus some smallish humans I hadn't anticipated), so I first made a test batch of the prescribed size, then increased the recipe to fit in a 9x13 for the actual party. Both batches happened in the same week, and by the time we got to the actual party, I was already saturated with brownie, and couldn't bring myself to eat them anymore.

Which isn't to say they weren't good.

I was a little thrown by the texture; it wasn't what I had expected, and maybe wasn't what I had in mind, but they were ridiculously popular, possibly for the same reason. These aren't your usual box-mix, flaky-topped brownies. These are more like fudge and brownies had a baby, and it ate all your chocolate chips. They are thick, rich, a little dense, and as we learned after the cookout, should not be fed to gremlins after 7 PM. I called them:

Weapons-Grade Brownies

3/4 C plus 1 T unsalted butter, plus more for the pan
unbleached all-purpose flour for the pan
1 C cake flour (I used all-purpose)
3/4 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
10 oz semisweet chocolate, finely chopped (the book says "no more than 55% cacao," and wants you to buy a bar and chop it up. I just bought a bag of chips. Their cacao rating was not labeled. I live dangerously.)
1 C sugar
3 T espresso (in my case, 1 1/2 t instant espresso dissolved in 3 T boiling water)
1 t vanilla
3 large eggs
1 1/3 C semisweet chocolate chips

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Butter an 8 inch square pan. Dust with flour, shake to coat, and dump the excess. The book said to line the bottom with parchment paper, but I can't think of any reason to do that.
• Put the the chopped chocolate (or 10 oz of chips, you dangerous rebel!) into a large mixing bowl. We're going to do a slow melt in it later, so make sure the bowl has plenty of room above the chips for stirring.
• Heat the butter, coffee, and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring often. When the butter is melted and everything has blended, pour it over the chocolate and let it set for a minute or so until the chocolate has softened. Add the vanilla and mix until the chocolate has melted.
• Beat the eggs into the chocolate. Mix in the flour, powder, and salt. Make sure you get the bits that stick to the bowl; we want it all blended. Fold in the chips. Spread batter evenly in the pan.
• This is where I ran into problems with my test batch. The book said to bake for 35 minutes. I did. I even did the toothpick test. Everything looked fine until I tried to serve myself a delicious, oven-warm brownie, and a thick, muddy landslide oozed into the space I had opened (see bottom left corner of picture). The "brownie" I tried to pull from the pan was a formless glob of (delicious, decadent, dangerous) goo which flopped wetly from the spatula and onto the counter, plate, and my hand. It was far too warm for my hand, but that's another issue. The pan had been out of the oven 15 minutes by then, but I stuck it back in and waited patiently. I really don't remember how long it finally baked. but I let it cool until after dinner (a few hours) before trying to serve more.
• Since this was my test batch, I was concerned about the "real" batch I was going to make later, by doubling the batch size and using a larger pan. I baked that one for 55 minutes, and didn't touch it until hours later, at the party, giving it plenty of time to finish setting outside the oven and cool to a more cohesive temperature.
• How long should you bake it? Hell if I know. Figure it out. Worst case, cover it with ice cream.

I mentioned that they are unusually thick, rich brownies. On the email chain about food people were bringing to the cookout, I labeled my contribution "Weapons-Grade Brownies," and this naturally invited some questions. Hours after the party, I got this email from a mother of three who attended with her husband and gremlins:

I now understand that "weapons-grade," when used in reference to brownies means "one twin will be so wound up she will throw her bottle on the floor and have pretend conversations on her lego car/telephone, while the other twin will throw her arm around your shoulder and sing ribald songs of the sea while kicking twin #1 and fending off random hits from the car/telephone."  One of them is still talking.  I'm not going in there to find out which.

 In case you are wondering, this was the ribald song of the sea. I did not teach it.