Kevin in the Kitchen

After two years of living with my roommate, Kevin has decided that he wants to do some of the cooking. I still have some dry rub left over that I was hoping to use on a pork shoulder, but I figured I'd take the opportunity to back away. Kevin has been watching me cook for most of the two years that we've been living together, and now that I'm leaving, he's taking up cooking.

So today he made chicken. He put about 1/2 a cup of onions on the stove with olive oil and while preparing two breasts of boneless chicken. While that was sauteing , he sprinkled chili flakes and chili powder on both sides of the chicken, then chopped the chicken into one inch cubes. These got thrown in with the onions for about 15 minutes total, and mushrooms were thrown in about 5 minutes into the cooking,

For my part I cooked up 1.5 cups rice rice. Half a jalapeno and clove of garlic went in with a little bit of olive oil and I also threw in the rice for about five minutes to toast it. I'm not sure what this does, but I read about it in a Spanish rice cookbook, and the results seems good...

After five minutes I poured in a can of chicken stock and another half can of water. I added tomatoes, tomato paste and a few slices of lemon and a bay leaf and simmered it covered until the rice was done.

Finally we steamed up some broccoli and half a red pepper. The meal was pretty good, a little too much chili powder on the chicken left us feeling like there were a few too many flavors floating around, but the meal was filling and sure felt healthy. That was until we had dessert: homemade vanilla iced cream with dark Swiss chocolate fudge from sanders....

edit: after reading through the post I realized that a little context is in order. For example: Kevin also made breakfast this morning: Krusteaz blueberry pancake mix (just add water -- now with artificial blueberries). I think this is a major step forward.

Ribs on the third of july

(Should I back date a blog?)

I had set my alarm for 5am. Anything worth BBQing is worth cooking for 7 hours, and Silas's flight to Basel was going to be at 7pm, so we were planning on eating a little after 12. 7 hours had sounded right the night before, but at 5am, and with the alarm going off, well, it was easy to convince myself that ribs were thinner than pork shoulder and should thus be cooked for less time. Snooze it was until 8am.

Like all BBQ recipes the story really begins the day before. I put together some cole slaw and Keri was in charge of making her family recipe for potato salad. I'm pretty sure French's yellow mustard is the main ingredient, but Keri's usually refined palette has a soft spot for a few recipes she grew up with. But this blog is about the meat, and all meat starts with a rub.

I found this nifty site online and decided to go for the following dry rub:

Kansas City Rib Rub

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup paprika

1 tablespoon black pepper

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 teaspoon cayenne

I had picked up two slabs of St Louis style ribs from whole foods. The butcher explained that these were a deeper cut than the traditional baby-back ribs (which were twice the price!) and that they would be a little fattier. This didn't bother us one bit.

I brought the ribs home and slathered on the rub, I made sure to coat the entire ribs, but in retrospect, I could have gone a little heavier. I still have plenty of the rub left over.

Fast forward to 8 am. I put the ribs in the oven at 250. I know, I know, what am I doing using an oven? Well, my landlady confiscated my grill, so this is what I have to deal with. Someday I'll buy a smoker. I went back to bed until 10.

Around 10 I started making the BBQ sauce. Last fourth of July I was not impressed with my Memphis style sauce, so I figured I'd try a little North Carolina style. My only problem, I didn't have a recipe I liked, so I looked over the web and decided to wing it. The white vinegar was done because I know Keri hates cider vinegar. Who knows if it did anything.

Impromptu Carolina Sauce

One cup full of apple cider vinegar

A splash of white vinegar

Dried Chili flakes

Cayenne Pepper

Salt and Pepper to taste

I let that sit, stirring it every time I walked by. My oven was busy, so I didn't have any space to bake beans, but I had dried red beans that I had soaked overnight. I used my old standby baked beans recipe

Baked Beans

8 slices bacon, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
3/4 cup ketchup
3/4 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

This makes the sauce. Add it to the beans. bake. Only i couldn't bake, so I put them on low on the stove for about an hour. In retrospect, I probably should have boiled the beans with the onion but I'll do that another time. It probably doesn't matter though. anything that starts off with 8 slices of bacon is bound to taste pretty good. I would like to find a slightly better baked beans recipe though, so if anyone reads this and has suggestions, I'm all ears.

The one big mistake with the meat. I took it out around 1. It was a little overdone, but the big problem was that we were all starving and dove right into it. We should have let it sit about 20-30 minutes to let the flavor really soak in. The Carolina BBQ sauce went very well with the Kansas city rib rub. Hope they don't mind the cross-pollination.

Robert McNamara Chili

I got inspired to write a blog after making a large pot of chili. It turned out better than I expected and so I wanted a place that I could write it down and have access to from anywhere. My newfound love of google reader suggested that I make a blog of it. I figure, if I can keep it going, I will at worst have a place I can go to remember some of my favorite recipes, what worked well and what didn't. At best, some of my culinarily minded friends might offer up comments and suggestions about what I might try differently. That's my hope at least.

So today, I bring you my first recipe. Nothing fancy. I freely admit the McNamara name is really just a transparent way to include the fact that I was really impressed with him in a rebroadcast of a 1995 interview that he had with Terry Gross on fresh air today. Enough so that I stopped by the Borders in the Century City mall on my way home to try to pick up a copy of his memoirs. It's a stupid time to buy a book though what with moving across the country and all. Dammit, I'm going to have to work on my brevity.

Robert McNamara Chili

2 lbs Choice Chuck (I used a cut called under blade for pot roasting)

2 28oz cans whole tomatoes

1 28oz can crushed tomatoes

2 30oz cans kidney beans

2 jalapeno peppers

2 Serrano chili peppers

1 large white onion

2 red bell peppers

2 cloves garlic

~ Tbsp cumin

~ 10 Tbsp Chili Powder

Salt and Pepper to taste

To prepare:

Slice the meat into small 1 inch squares, about 1/3 inch thick. I got them pretty uniform in thickness, but the sizes were kind of all over the place. I cut out the really thick fat veins.

Coarsely dice the onion and red peppers. Finely chop the jalapeno, chili peppers, and garlic.

In a large pot, brown the meat over medium heat. I added a little chili powder, coarsely ground black pepper, and salt at this point so that the meat would brown with some flavor to it, stirring consistently. When the meat was about 50% brown, so I could still see plenty of red, I threw in the veggies. Over low heat I cooked this about 10 minutes, until the meat was clearly brown all over and the veggies were cooked through.

Then I added the three cans of tomatoes, brought it all to a boil and let it cook uncovered about three hours on the lowest heat I could possibly get out of my stove, stirring every 30-40 mins. The trick I've found with all meat and tomato sauces is that there is a point where the sauce changes. I don't know what happens, but it's pretty severe transition where the sauce becomes at once more liquidy on top and thicker down in the bottom. Once you're there, the sauce starts tasting like a sauce instead of a bunch of tomatoes.

At this point I added the kidney beans, a little cumin, and enough chili powder to put a thin layer over all of the chili. I mixed all of this in and then let it keep cooking.

The meat was still a little tough at this point, so I knew it needed longer to get to that tender point. I had it on low for about 3 hours more.

Slow cook is the key with these meats, but once it was done, the meat was tender, the red pepper was sweet, and it still had a strong kick to it from all the chillies. Definitely my best chili, and the beginning of what I hope is a successful blog.