Baking Techniques: Rounding

My rounding method with tonight's dough


Final Pie (with my homemade sausage)

Beef

Brisket and fixings

While Andrew, Jim, Zach and myself try to settle on a date for a winter grilling podcast, I thought I'd show you a meal I prepped in a few minutes the other night while preparing another meal.

I bought a 1.5 lb of brisket (don't know if it was the point or flat), put it fat side up in a large cast iron pan, added a bunch of shrooms, carrots, bay leaves, 1/4 cup water, salt, pepper, rosemary and left it out until I went to bed. Then, I set the pan with a snug lid on in a 225 degree oven overnight (7-8 hours). The house smelled pretty special during the night. Next morning, I didn't even peek at it. Tossed it in the fridge. Later that night, I warmed it up and roasted some taters and asparagus.

The brisket was fork tender - it did not fall apart. VERY nice texture. Surprisingly the carrots were soft but far from mush. The next time I do it, potatoes go in with the meat. Low 'n slow - not with smoke - but not too bad. Give this one a shot!

Cafe Bella, 2593 N High St,. 267-1998

I've never done a restaurant review in this space and I'm not going to start. I don't want the responsibility of damaging a restaurant's chance of success in a brutally competitive business. I would like to offer my observations on a pleasant experience we had the other night at Cafe Bella on N. High. It's currently situated in the middle of Columbus' Big Dig. This city project is endangering a number of businesses from Lane to Arcadia.

We got there on a Tuesday night after Frankie's soccer practice. We were all pretty hungry and it smelled wonderful. Cafe Bella is a casual Italian diner. To me, Italian comes in two flavors. Authentic and Boston/American Style. The latter has lots of red sauces and lots of pasta and bread; what I grew up eating. I make this distinction cautiously and not to sound like a snob. The difference is regional and the regions are very far apart. I absolutely love any Italian cuisine. Cafe Bella is the American style, but a little lighter. The tomato sauce is nice and fresh, just lovely.

Our genial host (owner too?) pulled up a chair, chatted a while and told us what he had to offer. We decided on two pasta dishes, one with breaded eggplant and one with meatballs. The pasta was spaghetti and we all decided to serve them in one dish, family style. He had many other offerings and would've cooked us anything; his display case was filled with fruit and vegetables. To this point, the only difference between visiting Cafe Bella and going to my mother's is I didn't get a hug before sitting down. It was special. No menus, plates like we'd have at home, talking to another couple down a table, and everyone enjoying themselves.

Having taken our order, our host and chef zipped up quickly and purposefully to get to work on our dinner. Eating with a child is tricky. We'd all like to dine for hours and relax. However, if that relaxation extends beyond 6-7 minutes, we're considering the takeout containers, starting the "1 ... 2 ... ", you know. Fortunately, we were served with time to spare. A big plate of pasta topped with breaded, sliced eggplant and meatballs in tomato sauce.

As I mentioned earlier, I was in heaven with the tomato sauce (I just finished my leftovers yesterday - right out of the fridge - cold, yum). The eggplant was thinly sliced, not oily (baked?), flavorful with a tenacious coating of light crispy breading and oh, sooo, ... I'm salivating excessively. Hey, where's Frankie? NO whining. The meatballs could be seen atop her fork, one by one being eaten as excitedly as if each were a sucker. She's five. This was a big deal. She nibbled them dutifully until they were finished. I think she ate about 3% of her body weight in meatballs alone. Trish and I dispensed with the small talk and got busy. I rarely get pasta outside because it's often over or undercooked. I believe there is no absolute specification when it comes to cooking pasta. It's perfect when it tastes good. The spaghetti was cooked exactly as I would cook it. Not too hard or soft.

I left feeling so damn satisfied and happy. Not because the meal was perfect, it was awesome, but it wasn't the familiar feeling of leaving a restaurant. It was like we had visited a friend and had dinner. The staff gave of themselves for our comfort.

Note: There is parking in back and can be accessed by High St (by Shreiner's) or up an alley from Neil.

Panini Press (for the frugal)

Cooking on cast iron with a cast iron press

My mother made us "grilled" cheese sandwiches using Velveeta, Italian bread and pressed it between sheets of foil using a hot iron. The same iron used for clothes. They were sublime - Velveeta and all. Since my wife started hiding the iron when I used this method, I had to find an alternative.

Today, I made a light lunch of small sandwiches with various meats and cheese. I lightly oiled a cast iron skillet (on bottom) and placed another cast iron pan on top. In this case, I used a dutch oven because it was pretty heavy. While a true panini press would have a heated top element, I can simply turn the sandwiches and cook them one side at a time. The top weight is nice because it insures the sandwiches make good contact with the bottom skillet and get nice and crisp. The whole sandwich melds together physically as flavorfully (I know it's not a word). They were very nice. A nice variation on this would be to use a ribbed cast iron pan to give the nice looking grill marks; they're cheap too.

Finished product - one mortadella, one ham, one salami and one turkey - yum

happy bday to me

Just when I thought I knew absolutely everything about my wife, she surprised me with an instrument capable of grinding 176 pounds of meat per hour. I am without words and am a rich man.

Thanks my love (and thanks Andrew). Sniff.

Just pasta, tomatoes and basil.

One of our favorite, yet simplest meals of the Summer uses lots of basil and tomatoes. I take a bowl of chopped fresh tomatoes, a couple slivers of garlic, toasted pinenuts, lots of basil, s+p, and a good slosh of olive oil. While that sits a bit, I cook some pasta and toss the hot pasta over this mixture. The heat of the cooked pasta warms up and gently cooks the tomatoes. Once the mixture cools a bit, the flavors have mixed and we eat a wonderfully simple meal.

We usually use a macaroni of some kind for the pasta. When I got home the other night, I had an itch for some fresh pasta. 2 C flour (1 wheat, 1 white), pinch of salt, olive oil (1T) and 3 eggs later (and the use of my trusty spackle knife) I had these noodles for the dish.

A very nice pasta option for this dish.

weber_cam: School Lunch Edition (part 1)

This past weekend was good to catch up with friends and share school lunch suggestions. We never had to pack lunch when Frankie was in daycare, now we're faced with trying to make something interesting a few times a week. She actually likes mini corn dog day.

This takes a little thought, but I'm enjoying finding variety in the supermarket for her lunch. Tomorrow's main course is a couple romain leaves wrapped around smoked turkey and provolone. With this is a couple sides of grapes, tomatoes and a little dessert of cantuccini. The cold cut rolls were suggested by Christa (thanks!). I think they're a nifty alternative to a sandwich.

I'll be listing various options we learn of on the sidebar under "Plat du Jour" for you parents.

To bed with me - school night.

Sweet Italian Sausage

Sweet Italian sausage about to be tied off.

I think I know what Cliff Clavin felt like walking into Cheers. When I walk in to Weiland's Gourmet Market, I shoot the breeze with the butcher. He told me the other day of the US's problems with hog casings. They're really expensive these days. The pork's stable, but the casing's have doubled in the past year. I've told them of my recent sausage making endeavors and they share my enthusiasm. They make Weilands for me.

This was my first pork sausage attempt. Fresh ground pork butt (4 lbs), some garlic, smoked sweet Spanish paprika, fresh basil and some other spices. The critical spice was salt. If you add too much, too bad, batch ruined. Too little, still a problem. Incorporating more involves additional mixing and maybe overmixing. This one, I just followed the recipe and hoped for the best. The sample quenelle (alright, it was a good sized patty), I just cooked was fabulous. I'll be carting these off to our cookouts this weekend. Recipe by Ruhlman, followed to the letter with the addition of chopped fresh basil.

If you have a Kitchen Aid, the attachments are cheap (or get a dedicated grinder/stuffer under $100) and get into this hobby. It's fun and the final product is quite simply better than you can find anywhere.

Tilapia on a bed of ratatouille

The other night I was roasting cauliflower for one of our favorite dishes. While the cauliflower roasted, I tossed in a few more pans to roast zucchini, green peppers, and eggplant chunks. I tossed the latter 3 roasted veggies/fruits into a large bowl for the next night and went on to prep the cauliflower dish.

roasting up a storm

The next night, I took all the roasted veggies and simmered them with some garlic, basil and tomatoes for about a half hour. Nice and soft, I took the mixture and ladled it into a shallow bake pan and place a few tilapia fillets on top. The entire mixture was baked with the fillets getting a small squirt of lemon juice and olive oil half way through the 20 minute bake at 350°F.

The entire dish rested and 3 portions were served up. I saw this pairing in a magazine the other day and couldn't imagine the ratatouille would be good with the fish, but it was wonderful ... and fast. Definite new favorite for us.

Tilapia on ratatouille

mmm ... kielbasa in the making

mmm ... kielbasa in the making, originally uploaded by Seligmans Dog.

The gang bought me all the stuff for kielbasa for Father's day: stew beef, fat back, spices, hog casings. The works!

A few weeks back, I diced the beef and fat and got it ready. Doing this on a parental time scale in which weeks pass between steps, I finally got to break into action yesterday. I ground the beef and fat coarse, added spices, mixed and stuffed. A few complications during stuffing, but nothing big (I assembled the stuffer incorrectly which caused a delay), but the product never suffered.

I took a sample of a quunelle and a short kielbasa and smoked them to "take a peek" at the batch. Smoked kielbasa is from the gods. This discipline is amazing. Stew meat (cheap) and pork fat (usually free) combined to give a delicacy. The fresh sausage is a great deal of fun and a lot more fun than the dry-cured effort because of the immediate feedback.

Next? Sweet/hot Italian sausage.

No Knead Focaccia

I couldn't seem to get another Weber Stephens commercial, so I had to do the production myself. Here's a quick kneadless focaccia. REMEMBER - the camera adds 10 lbs (seriously, I need to drop a few - I look like a slob).

And, here's a sample of one of these type of focaccias using 1 C unbleached white and 1 C King Arthur's White whole wheat.

The soup that saved the ribs

This is about a thimbulfull of soup. I hate keeping leftovers because of their inevitable death via bacterial attack. This soup will not go to waste. I yearn for the time before dinner when I have the munchies and toss it down on a taco chip. mmmmm.

A short while back I had a rib malfunction. I had a ton of rib meat left over. I hesitantly vacuum wrapped them all and took a break to think about what to do with the leftovers.

I took one of the many half-racks hanging out in the freezer, and tossed it in a mixture of black beans (canned, Goya, 2 x 15 oz with liquid), onions, garlic, olive oil, fresh ground cumin, dry oregano, salt and pepper and let the mixture barely perk a couple hours.

If I could package the smell of this simmering pot, I could sell it as an air freshener. I pulled the half rack out, let it cool, pulled the meat off and tossed it back in and we ate it the next night. Frankie's big on the bean thing, but hates soups. She ate this and was darn happy about it. Pleasing the capricious palate of the 5-year old is no small trick. It was a nice save from a mediocre bbq run. I will probably always cook a few extra half racks just for this soup.

Chef's first soup, I was her sous chef

According to the movie Ratatouille, a chef is judged by her ability to make a soup.

This is Frankie's first soup. It's local, organic and has lots of sprinkles in it. It has been put in the fridge for Mom's lunch for tomorrow. She cut the basil and chives fresh tonight for it. Our good friends gave us some very nice tomatoes from their garden. A few of those were used in it too. For color and texture, various colored and flavored sprinkles - LOTS of sprinkles, were added as needed.

From what I observed the recipe is as follows (she did this entirely on her own).

Soup
add in order:
water, 1/2C
basil, scissored-chiffonade, 3-4 leaves
chives, scissor-chopped finely
tomatoes, small diameter, 2, crushed
mini marshmallows, about 10
flower shaped candies, 10-20 shakes
green tiny sprinkles, 20 shakes
red sprinkles, ca. 20 shakes
taste, add more sprinkles if necessary,
garnish with additional sprinkles
Mix vigorously,
Chill in fridge until tomorrow.

dueling Webers

behold the beauty (click through for annotations on image)

Been a couple days now and I'm still hanging my head in shame.

I don't know exactly what happened, but the ribs sucked. They cooked a long time, but they tasted a bit tough and a bit underdone - even though it would be impossible for them to underdone. Temps never got better 270 and hung about 240 most of the 6 hour cook. I'm thinking I stacked the grill too much. Not enough room between the half racks to properly render while cooking.

On the other side, the pork shoulder and chicken were fine. Just tainted from the bad rib run.

Agony of defeat.