Fat, Glorious Fat

From: Chuck: Making it tonight. In the oven.
Received Wed. March 23 6:15 p.m.

From: Chuck: O.K. That was absurd. Though I fear I feel a stroke coming on….
Received: Wed. March 23 8:13 p.m.

To: Chuck: Like absurd good or absurd you hated it?
Sent: Wed. March 23 8:15 p.m.

From: Chuck: Good of course. How could you not like that?
Received: Wed. March 23 8:16 p.m.

To: Chuck: It’s probably not any worse than a ribeye.
Sent: Wed. March 23 8:16 p.m.

From: Chuck: I did not have the breast but will tomoro. I cannot imagine it will be as good as the dark meat though. I think next time I would just do thighs.
Received: Wed. March 23 8:17 p.m.

To: Chuck: Me too. No reason to do anything but thighs. Was the bread crispy on the bottom?
Sent: Wed. March 23 8:17 p.m.

From: Chuck: Totally. And this is waaaaay worse than a ribeye. With steak you don’t cook with a sponge to cook up all the rendered fat.
Received: Wed. March 23 8:27 p.m.

To: Chuck: LOL. Seriously, it’s the best thing I’ve eaten all week. My blog post will be all about fat!
Sent: Wed. March 23 8:27 p.m.

From: Chuck: We just realized: What this is, is a recipe for deep fat frying bread in chicken fat. I’ll let you ponder that for a minute.
Received: Wed. March 23 8:30 p.m

To: Chuck: Yeah....So? How is this any different than spreading schmaltz on bread….or Italian lardo? I know. It’s pretty decadent but you have to admit it’s really good.
Sent: Wed. March 23 8:31 p.m.

From: Chuck: I admit it. Totally. But certainly not a weekly dinner.
Received: Wed. March 23 8:31 p.m.

O.K. So I’ve managed to turn chicken into a guilty pleasure thanks to this recipe from Melissa Clark. So sue me. But I dare you to say this isn't the best thing you've eaten all week.



MY MOTHER'S GARLIC AND THYME-ROASTED CHICKEN PARTS
WITH MUSTARD CROUTONS
By Melissa Clark from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite
Recipe adapted slightly.

You must use a shiny heavy metal roasting pan for this recipe, hopefully not too dark in color. I used a very heavy duty aluminum one and it worked great. Clark advises that the bread can burn if the pan is too dark.

Time: 1 hour and 10 minutes
Serves 4
One Loaf of Italian country bread, ciabatta, or other study bread, preferably stale and sliced ½ inch to ¾ inch thick. If the bread isn’t stale, bake the slices in a low oven (about 275) for about 15 minutes, flipping once, until it’s a bit dried out.

Dijon Mustard, as needed
Extra-virgin olive oil, as needed
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, more as needed
Fresh cracked black pepper.
6 skin on, bone in chicken thighs
2 skin on, bone in chicken breasts
1 head garlic, separated into cloves
1 bay leaf, torn into pieces
1/2 bunch thyme sprigs

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Lay the bread slices in the bottom of a heavy-duty roasting pan in one layer. Brush with mustard, drizzle liberally with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.



2. Season the chicken all over with salt and pepper and place the pieces on the bread, arranging the white meat in the center and the thighs around the sides. Scatter the garlic cloves, bay leaf, and thyme over the chicken and drizzle everything with more oil (take care to drizzle the garlic cloves with lots of oil).



3. Roast the chicken until it's lightly browned and the thigh juices run clear when pricked with a knife, about 50 minutes. If you like, you can crisp the skin by running the pan under the broiler for a minute, though you might want to rescue the garlic cloves before you do so they don't burn (if you don't plan to eat them, it doesn't matter so much). Serve the chicken with pieces of bread from the pan.

To serve, squeeze a garlic clove out on to a bread slice, spreading it over the crouton. Top the crouton with a chicken piece. Enjoy.

Trusting your taste buds

My father was an excellent cook and my siblings and I all owe our culinary prowess to him. He imbued us each with a deep appreciation for a good meal and to treasure time spent in the kitchen cooking side by side with loved ones.

That said, we were occasionally served up some pretty unappealing looking meals at our family dinner table. A few of the more memorable dishes include boiled tongue, creamed tuna on toast and stuffed sauerkraut. The latter is a bit of a misnomer as it’s impossible to stuff sauerkraut. Rather, it was a concoction my dad invented that involved cooking the fermented cabbage for hours and hours on the stovetop with white rice and ground pork. These meals, I now suspect, were an attempt to stretch the food budget. They had one other thing in common: they were colorless, drab and completely unexciting visually. Yet they suited my childish palate perfectly and I loved them all even if they did look like something you’d be forced to eat in a prison cafeteria.

Now, as an adult, my quest for great meals is driven by the need to satisfy multiple senses. On our annual trip to Santa Fe, for instance, we’re left breathless sometimes by the works of art on our plates. It’s as if the chefs have gathered every color of the New Mexico desert and sprinkled those hues like fairy dust over their creations. This dish, a quinoa stuffed relleno from santacafe, illustrates my point perfectly.



Recently, Kathy and I both test drove a recipe for another childhood favorite: Corned Beef. The recipe looked too good to be true. A simple brine, five days in the fridge, and voila! Corned beef sans chemicals. These days, we’re a bit more mindful of what we ingest so we both decided to forgo the pink salt, otherwise known as curing salt, because it contains sodium nitrite. Neither of us realized the consequence that would have on the look of the finished product.

Unfortunately the end result was about as visually stunning as the boiled tongue referenced above. I didn’t help matters by serving my dreary looking brown beef on a brown plate. However, comparing notes today, Kathy and I both agree that the taste won us over. This is delicious corned beef and as my 19 year old son remarked as he was gobbling it up, it doesn’t have that overwhelming processed taste that pre-brined ones can have.

We’ll leave it up to you as to whether to omit the pink salt or not. If you choose to make it without, just remind your guests that sometimes looks aren’t everything.

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Adapted from Saveur Magazine
SERVES 10



1 tbsp. allspice
1 tbsp. cloves
1 tbsp. coriander
1 tbsp. crushed red chile flakes
1 tbsp. mustard seeds
1 tbsp. whole black peppercorns
5 bay leaves, crumbled
1 1/4 cups kosher salt, plus more to taste
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp. pink salt (Curing salt)
1 5-lb. first-cut beef brisket
4 cloves garlic
1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
3 lbs. small new potatoes, peeled
1 head green or Savoy cabbage, cored and shredded
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice



Combine spices and 3 bay leaves in a 12″ skillet over medium heat. Cook, swirling pan constantly, until spices are toasted and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Transfer 3/4 of the mixture (reserving the rest in a covered jar) to a 5-qt. pot and add 8 cups water, kosher salt, sugar, and pink salt. Bring to a simmer; remove pot from heat and let cool to room temperature. Refrigerate brine until chilled. Add brisket and weigh it down with a plate so brisket is submerged. Refrigerate for 5 days.

Drain corned beef and rinse. Transfer beef to a 5-qt. pot along with the reserved pickling spices, garlic, and onion. Cover corned beef with cold water. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and simmer until corned beef is tender, about 2 1/2 hours. Remove pot from heat and set aside.



Meanwhile, put potatoes into a 4-qt. pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until potatoes are tender; drain. Put cabbage into a 3-qt. pot over medium-low heat, season with salt, add lemon juice and 1/2 cup water, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is tender, about 30 minutes. To serve, transfer potatoes and cabbage to a large serving platter. Transfer corned beef to a cutting board, thinly slice beef across the grain, and transfer to the platter. Spoon some of the cooking liquid over the beef and serve warm.

Drowning your Sorrows in Dulce de Leche

Ok, so while our daughter was running around Patagonia recently with our good friends Kelly and Arent, I was left behind to drown my sorrows. Rather than turn to Malbec at 10:00 in the morning, I turned to dulce de leche instead. Hayley had sent us a jar during her first months in Buenos Aires. I'd opened it, tasted it, and then set it aside for a special occasion. Well, being left behind on a blustery winter day while they enjoyed a beautiful South American summer day was occasion enough for me break out that creamy and delicious jar of "sweets made of milk".

I remembered seeing a recipe in the holiday issue of Saveur magazine. Thankfully I didn't even have to venture out of the house as I had all of the ingredients in the pantry. While I used my jar of dulce de leche, lots of people claim that you can boil a can of condensed milk for 3 or 4 hours and find dulce de leche inside when the can is opened. I have nightmares about the can exploding in my kitchen every time I consider trying it. If you want to try it, let me know how it goes…otherwise I think you can buy it in the Latin food section of your grocery store.

This recipe makes about 20 cookies. They were just complicated enough to take my mind off the wanderings of my loved ones but not so hard that they frustrated me. Thankfully I only needed one to mend my lonely soul. The rest were divided among other loved ones who have supported our family through the trauma of sending a child abroad for a year.

The only changes I made to the recipe were to roll the cookie edges in shredded unsweetened coconut after they were assembled and sprinkled them with a light dusting of powdered sugar. I'd seen another recipe that suggested it. Tasted good and helped manage the sticky dulce de leche when it seeps out from between the 2 cookies.

Alfajores

1 2/3 cups cornstarch
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
2/3 cup sugar
10 tbsp. unsalted butter,
softened
1 tbsp. cognac or brandy
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
4 egg yolks
Canned dulce de leche, for filling
cookies

Heat oven to 350°. In a bowl, sift together cornstarch, flour, and baking powder; set aside. In a mixer fitted with a paddle, beat together sugar and butter until fluffy. Add cognac and zest; beat. Add yolks one at a time; beat. Add dry ingredients; mix. Transfer dough to a floured surface, knead briefly; divide into 3 pieces. Working with 1 dough piece at a time, roll dough to 1/4" thickness. Using a 2 1/2" round cookie cutter, cut out cookies; transfer to parchment paper—lined baking sheets, spaced 1" apart. Reroll scraps and repeat. Bake until golden, 12–15 minutes. Let cool. Flip half the cookies over; top each with 1 heaping tsp. dulce de leche. Top with remaining cookies.