What's For Dinner?

Pollo Asado

As my wife will roll her eyes and tell you, if I could, I'd eat some kind of taco pretty much every night of the week. Here's my recipe for pollo asado. It is, needless to say, simple and fresh, and it reminds me of the things my mom would make when I was boy growing up in Tuscany. 

Pollo Asado
4 or 5 chicken thighs, bones removed, cut into cubes
6 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
juice of 1 large orange
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup smokey mezcal (optional, you could sub in wine, water, or even beer if you crazy like that.)
1 squeeze of honey
hot pepper flakes to taste
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Squeeze your citrus into a large bowl, add mezcal (or don't,) garlic, hot pepper, black pepper, um, basically, everything except salt. (Why no salt? Because eventually, you're going to reduce this marinade into a sauce and I always find it hard to manage the saltiness in reduced sauces.) Let that sucker sit for about 1/2 an hour. (There's no point to a long marinade because of the sauce.) Heat up a wide skillet (I use a wok) and cook the chicken in the marinade/sauce over gentle heat until chicken is just short of cooked. It should be, basically, poached, at this point. Fish out the chicken and set it aside in a covered vessle. Now turn the heat to medium and reduce the remaining liquid by about 1/2. What you're eventually trying to create is a sour/sweet glaze for the chicken chunks. Once the sauce is busily reducing, start adjusting sweetness and sourness and saltiness to taste. When the mixture is just short of true, jammy glaze-ness, toss the chicken back in, turn up the heat, and cook until the citrus sugars and honey carmelize on the chicken chunks. I serve this with guacamole, sauteed peppers and onions, fresh cilantro, lime and plenty of warm tortillas.

Knock Off Taco Bell Taquitos and a Hearty Salad

What is it with me suddenly trying to recreate fast food products at home? A few weeks ago we were out for a drive and the kids were starving. We were looking for something they could eat without turning the whole backseat into a compost pile and we finally settled on a couple taquitos from Taco Bell. These were a BIG hit and so I thought I'd see if I could recreate them.

The taquitos I made featured ground beef sauteed with heaps of chopped scallions and melted meunster cheese and they were excellent. The kids loved them, but to be honest, I think I loved them even more. The crisp, buttery outside is a great match with the creamy, savory filling, and if you only have a couple, and you pair them with a robust, high-fiber salad, you're probably not taking too many years off your life.

The trickiest part was getting the rolled tortilla to crisp up. I believe at Taco Bell they must use some kind of press, so I simulated this by packing the taquitos into one hot pan, then heating the bottom of a second pan and putting it on top. I then placed a heavy pot atop the second pan and slid the whole cockamamie assemblage into a 350 degree oven. It's a little labor intensive, but I'm definitely going to try more taquito combinations in the future.

In case you're wondering, the salad consists of butter lettuce, shaved cabbage, chopped parsley, garbanzo beans, radishes and chopped radish leaves dressed in a pomegranate vinegarette with a spoonfull of blue cheese dressing mixed in.

Taquitos:
garlic, sliced
scallions, chopped
ground beef, ground
cheese
tortillas
Olive oil
butter
s
p

Heat oven to 350 and place a stack of tortillas inside to warm. Chop up a lot of scallions and brown them slighty in olive oil over medium high heat. When they begin to take on color add the garlic and sautee for about 30 seconds. Add ground beef to the vegetables and brown fully. Add salt and pepper to taste. Slice or shred your cheese of choice. Working quickly to preserve tortilla pliabillity, heap a modest spoonful of filling onto each tortilla, top with cheese and roll. Place the rolled taquitos in a large buttered skillet. (The taquitos should be touching shoulder to shoulder. This way, the tops and bottoms will get crusty, but the sides will remain soft and add textural contrast.) Place the skillet over low heat and also heat up a second skillet and place it on top. Weigh down the top skillet with something and place the whole contraption in the oven for about 10 minutes. (You could butter the bottom of the second skillet, but for my money, it's easier and less fattening just to flip the taquitos over and serve them with the buttery side up.) Top with salsa, sour cream or guac and enjoy!

(Oh, and if you make this salad, you will be heartily rewarded the next day, um... right after you have your coffee, if you get my drift.)

Knock Off Jack in the Box Ciabatta Burgers

I see no reason to lie. When I made these what I was really trying to do was recreate the ciabatta burgers from Jack in the Box. Sadly, now that I live in the Midwest, I don't have access to Jack in the Box so I have to try to make my own versions of their products. (And, like Jack in the Box, I'll make myself a goddamn breakfast sandwich any time of the day or night.) I first developed my appreciation for Jack in the Box when I'd just started cooking. I used to screw things up so badly that I didn't dare serve them to my family, and Jack in the Box always provided reliable replacement dinners.

I'd say this flier at the ciabatta burger was a middling success. The patties didn't really fill out the bun the way I'd have liked and the whole conglomeration didn't taste like a solid hunk of fatty, soft beefiness in the mouth the way the JITB burgers do. The most successful part of the whole meal, I'd say, was the blood orange vinaigrette I used to dress the salad. The kids thought it was really cool and they actually ate their salads for once. They're pretty good about vegetables, but they don't really understand salads as yet. Usually, I just plunk it on their plates as a show of good will.

Incidentally, while I miss Jack in the Box, what I miss even more is In-N-Out Burger. But I wouldn't even try to recreate an In-N-Out Burger. That's just flying too close to the sun.

Long Pizza

 

I found this cool long bread at the grocery store the other day so I used it to make a pizza.The toppings here were riccota cheese, chicken apple sausage (de-cased and pan fried,) red peppers (fried with the sausage,) mozzarella, cheddar and Parmesean shavings added at the very end. I didn't put any sauce on at all other than a brushing of olive oil at the beginning.

I don't know why, but I love it when a pizza deviates from roundness. It somehow suggests to me "rustic-ness" and "peasant-ness" and even, dare I say it, "Tuscan-ness." The current reigning food joke at our house (Yes. We have food jokes.) is that I call everything "Tuscan." Like the subject of this Onion article, I think everything tastes better if you give it name that includes the "region-specific culinary modifier" Tuscan, so I whenever I bring anything to the table, be it pasta, pizza, hot dogs, or the hoisin-glazed chicken wings below I will say something like, "Ah! This is justa likea my mama useda to makea when I was a boy in Tuscana!" 

The other culinary joke, while we're on the subject, that we are very fond of making around here is refering to everything, everything! as "Simple. Fresh." This is motivated by the chefs on cooking shows who insist that everything they do is simple and fresh. They talk about their incredibly complex, nuanced preparations as if they were just tossing some salt and lemon juice on a peeled carrot. "Oh, I just took 90 pounds of lump crabmeat, formed it into a stunning replica of the wine god Baccus, then I glazed it with white truffle oil and baked in at 127 degrees for six days in an underground oven the size of a schoolbus that's made of Lebanese clay soaked in the blood of virigin goats. I used dates for the eyes. You know, just simple, fresh home cooking."

If you were planning to watch any of the many sporting events on the docket today and this evening, either the pizza, or the wings would be good snakin'. The pizza's pretty self explanitory. (Simple. Fresh.) And the wings recipe came from here. Go Heels. Go Yanks.

Mind Blowing Hot Dog Innovation!

Are you ready to have your brain shoot out the back of your head? Are you prepared to, all at once, feel like a total ass, but also feel extraordinarily happy about the rest of your life? If so, then sit down, put on a helmet, place a stick under your tongue and read on!

Okay, here goes: Next time you have a hotdog with saurkraut and mustard, put the kraut and mustard under the hot dog!

Allow me to illustrate.

NO:

YES!

I know! It's so simple right? But it'll also change your whole god damn world! It's such a simple little rethinking of the hot dog, and yet, it's probably about the most important discovery in hot dog science since the banning of ketchup. This discovery reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons which depicts a band of pirates burying some treasure. One of the pirates off to the side says, "Hey fellows! Maybe this time, instead of burying the treasure, we could use it to buy things. Things we like." Of course, everyone ignores this pirate, but really, that's a pretty good idea.

I think this is one of those seachange discoveries that will define a whole era, to wit: The Underkraut and Overkraut eras. It's kind of like back in the middle ages when painters hadn't figured out perspective yet. One day everything in a painting--trees, knights, castles, horses--was all the same height; then some clever fellow figured out that the closer something is to you, the larger it looks and... PRESTO! That was that. You don't need to take any classes or compare a whole series of perspective-proper paintings to realize it's the way to do things. You see your first one and you know it's the real deal.

It's kind of the same way with the Connolly Theory of Hot Dog Reversal. You try one toppings on the bottom dog, and that's that. You'll never go back. You'll never again find your mound of kraut falling all over the place. You'll never again find yourself gulping down mouthfulls of pure kraut just to stabilze the structure of your dog. All you'll be doing is enjoying a better balanced, neater hot dog experience every time you have a hot dog for the rest of your life, and personally, I couldn't be happier for you.