Reubenesque

New recipe for the new year. Perhaps I will get around to writing up more recipes per month this year.

So, here is my Reubenesque. Essentially just a ham melt with sauerkraut, it’s definitely tasty.

What you need:

• Two pieces of bread. I prefer white, but rye and marbled rye are excellent as well
• Deli sliced ham. I like smoked ham. Honey ham is too sweet
• One sandwich slice of pepperjack cheese
• Enough sauerkraut to top the ham
• A little bit of Caesar dressing. Or if you prefer, Italian and Thousand Island also work.

Make a sandwich layered bread->dressing->ham->sauerkraut->cheese->bread. Bonus points for additional toppings. Black olive slices are good, as are lettuce and tomato slices topped with some Italian herbs.

Now put the sandwich in a panini press. Don’t want to shell out bucks for a panini press? Do it with a Foreman grill. Don’t have one of those either? Put it on a cookie sheet under a broiler for a few minutes, then flip and toast a few more minutes. Don’t have an oven? Well, you’re pretty much screwed unless you want to sacrifice a toaster (which I don’t recommend).

Take the now hot and steaming sandwich out and eat. Toasty tasty eh?

For my own records: Pie Crust

I suck at baking breads and pastries. I can make fillings well, and can do meat pretty tasty to boot (though not lately, my last brisket was far too seared, still good for sandwiches!). However, I suck at making any type of bread. I can hardly even remember a simple pie crust recipe. So, for my own benefit, and yours as well if you really want, a pie crust: simple and easy…

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup cold butter
4 to 5 tablespoons cold water

Step 1: Mix everything together
Step 2: There is no step 2, pie crust is simple!

Nisu…Robert needs to make more

Nisu bread is apparently Finnish. Something I was completely off on. I thought it was actually an Asian bread, based on the word. I was confusing it entirely with Miso, which is not a bread at all!

Nisu is a pulla, which according to wikipedia is a full range of desert breads. Tasty, soft, almost a juicy bread in fact!

So, from various sites across the internetz, this is the closest thing I came up with that sounds like Robert’s recipe:

2       packages   active dry yeast
3/4     cup warm water
1 (13     ounce) can undiluted evaporated milk, heated to 110 degrees
1/2-1     cup sugar
2     teaspoons salt
1     teaspoon crushed cardamom, seed
4     eggs, beaten
1/2     cup softened butter
8-9     cups all-purpose flour
eggs, mixed with
milk, for glaze

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.
2. Stir in the milk, sugar, salt, cardamon, eggs and enough flour to make a batter (approx. 2 cups).
3. Beat until dough is smooth and elastic.
4. Add about 3 cups of flour and beat well.
5. Dough should be smooth and glossy in appearance.
6. Add remaining flour 1 cup at a time until dough is stiff.
7. Add the butter; beat until dough looks glossy again.
8. Turn out onto floured board, cover with inverted bowl.
9. Let rest for 15 minutes.
10. Knead until smooth and satiny.
11. Place in lightly greased bowl, turn dough to grease top, cover lightly and let rise in warm place- until doubled in size.
12. Punch down; let rise again.
13. Turn out onton a lightly floured board, divide into 3 parts, and divide each part into 3.
14. Shape each piece of dough into a strip 16 inches long by rolling between palms and board.
15. Braid 3 strips together into a straight loaf and pinch ends together and tuck under.
16. Repeat for second and third loafs.
17. Place on lightly greased baking sheets.
18. Let rise until puffy (1/2 to 1 hour).
19. Glaze loaves with a mixture of beaten egg and milk.
20. Sprinkle with sugar and sliced almonds.
21. Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.
22. Do not overbake- or bread will be dry.

Robert does the glaze a bit differently, I think he adds sugar in to it and then ads some crushed cardamine/cardamom.

Melon Shrimp

Cooked this a while back, at the beginning of summer and it turned out pretty tasty.

1. Clean/devein/de-tail shrimp
2. In frying pan, put in chunks of honeydew/cantaloupe on medium heat. Add a little bit of water (enough to cover pan) and brown sugar. Cook this down until it smells and tastes delicious
3. Add shrimp to the pan. Simmer.
4. Add a sprinkling of brown sugar over the shrimp.
5. Put in two slices of lime, or spritz in a bit of lime juice
6. Cook until shrimp have absorbed some of the flavor, then remove from heat.
7. Serve warm or chilled. Chilled tastes much better.

Chic-fil-A

From the intarwebs:

Chick-Fil-A Chicken Sandwich OR CHICKEN NUGGETS

**Note- This was written by someone as a recipe they found comparable to Chick-Fil-A. As their lawyers have reminded me- Chick-Fil_A does not share their recipe and this is not THE recipe***

3 cups Peanut oil
1 Egg
1 cup Milk
1 cup Flour
2-1/2 Teaspoons Powdered sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Pepper
2 Tablespoons Salt
2 Skinless, boneless chicken breasts, halved
4 Plain hamburger buns
2 Tablespoons Melted butter
8 Dill pickle slices

Mix together the egg and milk. Place the filets in this mixture, and let
sit for at least an hour.
While the breasts are sitting, mix together the Flour, Sugar, Pepper, and
Salt.
Once the sitting is done, dredge in the flour. (For ourselves and our
favourite customers, after the first dredging, we would put them back in the
milk bath for a few seconds, and re-dredge! This is not company policy,
however!)
Place the Peanut oil in a deep fat fryer, and bring up to a high heat.
Once up to 375 F., gently drop into the oil, and let cook until golden
brown. (This is for those of us who do not have a pressure cooker. If you
do, follow the note below!)

Note: Chick-Fil-A actually uses a Pressure Cooker to cook the Filets in. If
you have one, use the peanut oil according to the instructions for frying in
it. Desired heat is 400 F. Once steam starts shooting through, cook for
about 4 Minutes.
Lightly butter the buns, and grill until heated through. Place two
pickles on each bun, and place a hot breast on each!
Servings: 4

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Fried Sweet Potatoes

Allow me to get all Alton Brown up in the hizouse.

…Ahem…

Sweet potatoes, scientifically known as Ipomoea batatas, are a wonderful vegetable, but do not confuse what most Americans would call a sweet potato for a yam. The two, while being very similar in usage, are drastically different by nature. True yams have a scaly skin and an off white flesh with tinges of pink and red. What you most likely will find at your local supermarket is a sweet potato merely labeled as a yam. This mix up possibly dates back to the days of slave trade, when the sweet potato was first introduced to America. The word for what we now call a sweet potato was possibly “nyamis” (a Fulani word for “eat”) or maybe the Twi word “anyinam.” Regardless of how it came to be, we now have a misconception that sweet potatoes are yams. Not so. Repeat after me:

“Sweet potatoes are not yams.”

Now that that is out of the way, a bit on the sweet potato itself. Not only do they serve a variety of culinary uses, but they also are related to quite a few beautiful flowers and several staple foods such as water spinach. The leaves of the sweet potato plant can be boiled in to a tasty greens dish, and even the pigments in the flesh can be extracted and used as dye, adding further value to the plant as a whole.

Sadly, most folks, when asked to think about sweet potatoes will respond with visions of a candied delectable, piled with marshmallows, brown sugar and butter. Sweet potato pie dances over the tastebuds of the mind; salivation begins. True, these types of dishes are quite appetizing, but there are so many aspects of the tuber that you are missing out on.

My personal favorite sweet potato dish: Fried sweet potato

It’s extremely simple, and if you can cook them up faster than they are getting consumed, make a great party dish or complement any main dish well.

1. Clean and peel all of the sweet potatoes you wish to fry
2. In a good sized frying pan, put some canola oil down and bring it up to medium-high heat. Get it nice and sizzling.
3. Slice up your sweet potatoes about 1/8″ thick. You will end up with varying diameters of “chips” but that is perfectly okay.
4. Put the chips in to the oil now, and reduce the heat to medium. If you feel confident in your flipping timing, keep it on med-high
5. Let the chips sizzle and fry for a while on the first side. Occasionally flip one chip over to see how progress is coming along. I personally prefer a little bit of char on mine, you might prefer a softer feel. It takes some getting used to.
6. Once you have one side of the chip fried, it’s time to flip and get the other side. You know the drill here.
7. When the chips have cooked all the way through to the desired “doneness” take them out and put them on a plate lined with paper towels.
8. Take a small amount of butter and spread it on the potatoes while still hot. You don’t need too much, and you might could get away with none at all.
9. Salt to taste
10. Repeat

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Chili of Doom (aka Ridiculous Chili)

Ridiculous Chili

(For “base”)
1 5-12oz bottle chili powder
3 tbsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp salt
3 tbsp cumin
7 tbsp hot sauce

(For meat)
2 tbsp cayenne pepper/2lb meat
2 tbsp salt/2lb meat
5 tbsp chili powder/2lb meat
3 tbsp/2lbs of meat Dales sauce (or soy sauce)

Lots of pounds of ground beef
Lots of pounds of ground venison
Some sausage

2-4 pounds of frozen fried okra
2-6 cans of corn
10-20 cans of dark red kidney beans
3 cans light red kidney beans
0 cans of teal kidney beans (that’d just be messed up)
Whatever other vegetable you like, in whatever quantity you like.

Some peppers. Ya know, jalepenos, bell, habenero, whatever you have lyin around. Personally, I think chili peppers go well with chili…

5 pounds of tomatoes

Blend tomatoes in to a paste in blender. Put paste in to a large pot, place on stove. Dice a few tomatoes, throw them in there as well. Throw in the chili powder, cayenne pepper, salt and hot sauce, and mix well. Drain and throw in the canned vegetables as well, and mix them up. Don’t cook the frozen fried okra, it will cook on its own in the tomatoes. Add in the kidney beans. It’s up to you whether you want to drain them or not, I prefer draining them. Slice up the peppers, put em in.

Now cook that meat up. Throw in the spices about halfway through cooking, so they don’t get cooked off, but also so they get cooked in to the meat well. Throw everything in to the big giant pot, and start cooking. It could take a few hours to get everything cooked nice and well, so plan ahead. Cook initially on high heat, until you start to smell the chili from the other room. Mix the chili up quite a bit to make sure everything is getting heated evenly. When you can smell the concoction breweing in the other room, turn the heat down to low or low/Medium. Let it simmer for a while. Go read a book. Once you’re through two chapters, stir the chili, put the heat up to medium. Finish three or four pages, and come back and….

SUPRISE STEP!!!

Add crushed red pepper to the chili. A fair amount at that!

Taste the chili. Can you still feel your tongue? Yes? Then add more chili powder and crushed red pepper.

Mix everything up, make sure its all nice and warm, and serve with shredded cheddar and crackers.

Have fun the next day.

Red Lobster Biscuits

If you ever find yourself Jonesin’ for Red Lobster biscuits in the middle of the night, just whip up a batch of your own. It is extremely easy.

2 c. Bisquick
2/3 c. milk
1/2 c. grated cheddar cheese
1/2 c. melted butter
1/4 tsp. garlic salt

Mix Bisquick, milk and cheddar until you get a nice, doughy ball. Drop dough in little balls onto an ungreased baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes. Mix butter and garlic salt and brush on rolls while still on the pan and hot.

Now how hard was that?

Chicken Enchilada Soup

I threw this together using what I remember about how my mom makes this, and it turned out great:

Chicken Enchilada Soup

• Put a few cans of chicken broth in a large pot and bring to a simmer, adding pepper and cumin to taste
• Grab a rotisserie chicken and get as much good meat as you can off of it. Put the meat in a bad, and coat it with chili powder/pepper
• Put the coated chicken in a frying pan with some olive oil and some liquid to season (I use brisket sauce) and work the chili powder in to the chicken
• Once the chicken is nice and spicy, transfer all the chicken in to the broth. A fair amount of the chili powder will end up coming off the chicken to flavor the broth. That’s a good thing.
• Bring the entire soup up to heat, and then add the piece de resistance: pour in tortilla chips. I love the way they taste in this soup, so I put in a lot of them. They don’t need to be in the soup for long before they start to soak up the flavor and get soggy (soggy is good in this case, they’re like dumplings).
• As an added bonus, you can cook the entire soup down into something that can only be described as a chicken enchilada salad. When all of the liquid is gone, man it tastes great!
• Top the bowl of soup off with some pepper-jack cheese, or even just regular cheddar!

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