Lundi Gras

Fat Monday. Had an educational weekend that included learning about canning and preserves, jams and pickling (free class at Surfas in Culver City, was actually pretty interesting, and it's way easier to make jam and pickle stuff than you'd think). Pretty mellow otherwise, except for getting back on the bike for the first time in months and taking a good 20 mile loop down the PCH from Long Beach to Bolsa Chica Beach, through Seal Beach and Sunset Beach - there's a lot to see and do around those areas that you don't catch whizzing by in a car, and riding a bike down the coast with wetlands preserve on your left and some of California's best surf on your right is just plain spiritual. No less, it left me a with sweet farmer's tan on the arms - summer must be just around the corner.

So tonight, I was feeling kinda religious. Quizzically, I have been jonesin' to get in touch w/ da spirit. The trinity. I said The HOLY trinity! Ok ok, hold your horses ye followers of tasty tabernacle. I'm referring to the holy trinity of flavor. N'awlins style. In the name of the celery, the onion and the green pepper.

I'm calling this my Blind Chicken Mumbo Gumbo. "Blind", because I did not follow any recipe or use any measurements. This was completely winged. "Mumbo", cuz I'm not really sure if this was a true gumbo per se, but gumbo was kinda what I was going for - and I think if I added a few things, say like some ochra or potatoes, it may have been a little more legit. HOWever, it came out pretty dang good.

Started off prepping: four celery sticks, a medium diced onion, one diced green bell pepper. Also prepped two big cloves of chopped garlic, 3 diced carrots, and about 12 small crimini mushrooms quartered.

Chicken: chicken "tenders", about a pound and a half of chicken breast cut into 2x4 inch strips. Good for quick cooking. Seasoned, pan seared, slightly browned, but just enough to keep them maybe slightly undercooked (they're going to cook more in the gumbo, don't wanna overcook). Took em off the heat, let rest for a few minutes, and chopped them into half inch cubes.

Dumped celery, onion, bell peppers, carrots, into a pot w/ a little bit of olive oil and a dribble of chicken broth. Let that cook down, then added 24 oz. of canned diced tomato (unsalted). Brought that to a slow simmer, added the chicken (actually only about half the chicken - saving the rest for maybe some tacos or fajitas tomorrow - gotta use up that giant bag of tortillas!), then added the mushrooms. Added probably 2-3 tablespoons of sliced jalepeno, a tablespoon (?) of red pepper flakes, some cumin, 2 bay leaves, few sprigs worth of thyme, and an additional, let's say 1/2 a cup of chicken broth and another dash of salt. Stirred, let it simmer for about 20 mins.

Ladeled the final product into a bowl, topped with some cilantro and squeeze o' lime... and there's your Blind Chicken Mumbo Gumbo. This was very good, the lime actually kicked up and kinda cleaned up the flavor in the end. The second bowl was even better, after it had stewed with the lid on the pot for a while longer, and I also added some shaved grana padano parm to that bowl. So I'm willing to bet it's just gonna taste better over the next day or two.

The fun thing about this is that it's my first foray into this kind of cooking and I know I am just barely scratching the surface here. Sooo many rivers to cross to find gumbo Zen. Ideas abound while cooking this stuff, like a giant pot o' dancing skeletons, tossing voodoo flavor profiles at your spoon, taunting you to dare try this again.

And during this proceess, jammin a little of New Orleans' own Stanton Moore (one of my favorite drummers), ain't just dumpster dish funk-o-phonic, it's straight up N'awlins inspiration. Eh, La Bas!

May fourth and prosper

Did I just say I was getting tired of chicken? I was wrong. . .

Wandering around Trader Joe's, I had no idea what I was going to make tonight. To be honest, I didn't even feel much like cooking; I was thinking of picking up a few necessities and maybe ordering out. Wellll. . I picked up a little of this and a little of that, still nothing really in mind... although this baby sweet corn for 59 cents a piece was inspiring. Hmmm. . .

Hey! Chicken legs! Let's give them a try. I know I had a few things already in the fridge, what could I do with chicken legs. Alright, I must admit I did have one thing on my mind: Mark Bittman's recipe for a simple chicken pot pie. I caught a video of Mr. Bittman making, basically a chicken pot pop tart - more of a biscuit baked on top of pot pie ingredients - he made it look very easy to make and very good to eat. So I guess I'm subliminally gathering pot pie ingredients at Trader Joe's...

Anyway, when I get home I realize I'm missing a few key ingredients to make a biscuit pot pie topping, and a few other things too. So I just started gathering things that might be good together. Boiled the corn on the cob. Cut the corn off the cob. Cut up some carrots, some celery, diced a medium sized onion. Sliced some crimini mushrooms. I'm literally just winging it at this point.

Cut to the chase: I ended up making really awesome roasted chicken legs and deeeep roasted vegetables, with a light corn tomato salad. As such:

Chicken drumsticks - 6 pieces, seasoned w/ salt/pepper/garlic. Pan seared. Added chopped carrots, celery, onion, garlic. Seared both sides of the chicken. Once the chicken was browned, jammed everything in the oven at 425 with some rosemary and thyme sprigs tossed throughout.

Corn salad: Cut corn off the cob (2 small cobs), diced 2 vine ripe tomatoes, diced avocado, half a small onion - diced, chopped garlic, chopped cilantro, diced cucumber, salt, pepper, few dashes of rice vinegar, one squeezed lime. Stir, let it marinade in itself.

Chicken cooks for 25 mins, then it's out of the oven. Pulled the chicken out of the pan (meat temp about 170), let it rest for 8-10 mins. Added 1/4 cup of chicken broth to the very cooked down, very roastedly awesome pan vegetables and herbs... scraping the bottom goodies of the pan, cooking this all down - kicking myself that I don't have some white wine around to add to this, but the broth did the trick in it's own way. This cooked down into roasted vegetable magic. See pics, and imagine deep roasted flavor.

I plated everything separately, more for the visual appreciation, but if I had guests, I would've put the vegetables on top of the chicken and eaten it all together w/ a fork and knife. But when I'm home alone, I tend to eat like a viking. I'll eventually get to taste everything together, but not in the most refined manner.

Overall, this had that autumn-y, Ye-Waverly-Inn-reminiscent, intense, roasted, browned, chicken/vegetable stewyness - just awesome. In major CONTRAST to all of that was the fresh, clean, summery corn salad. This was definitely a Clash of the Titans. But a clash in the same way of going from the jacuzzi, to the pool, to the jacuzzi, to the pool. . . you're loving the alternation, and how one makes you feel after being steeped in the other for a minute. Undecidedly indulgent. Freedom from the constraints of the seasons. Like wearing white after Labor Day and corduroy in July. Or eating heirloom tomatoes in . . . well you can pretty much get them all year round now, but that don't make it right!!

Zut Alors, c'est le appetit d'une homme content.

I Just Made Some Kick Ass Fish Tacos

The title of this post should be I Just Made Some Kick Ass Fish Tacos. It's Wednesday, kinda late in the week for me to be cooking as I've found that Mondays and Tuesdays seem to be the nights I typically have the urge to fire something up. But I've kind of spent the past two days recouping (from healthy stuff for once) from a really awesome weekend. Started off Friday morning with the Ragnar Relay - a 200 mile relay footrace mostly along the coast from Ventura (just south of Santa Barbara) to Dana Point (just south of Newport Beach). Teams of 12 people (over 200 teams!), each runner has three legs to run ranging anywhere from 5-10 miles a run, and the race is non-stop over about 24 hours. I ended up running the equivalent of half-a-marathon (4 miler at 10AM thru Oxnard, then 5 miles thru Van Nuys at 10PM, then 4 very surreal miles past power plants, strip clubs, and nothing, over a few bridges and thru a remote industrial area of Long Beach at 5AM). I'm not someone that usually does these kind of extreme events, but I had a ton of

fun, and was quite proud of myself when it was over. I'm still in shape from all the training and running, so I'm gonna try to keep that up for as long as I can.

Anyway, picking up a few things at the fresh market down the street, I saw some tilapia behind the fish counter - perfect - I've been getting a little tired of chicken and have been looking to make something new... like fish tacos. This ended up being really really good and simple and quick...I shall be goin fishin for more very soon.

Fish, sa sa simple: Season the fish with salt, pepper, cumin, chili, garlic powder (ran outta fresh garlic). Sear in a hot pan with some diced onion. Only takes about a minute on each side before it's nice and brown and smelling all kinds of good. Put that to the side.

Salsa: Diced onion, diced tomato, diced ripe avocado, chopped cilantro, juice from half a lime, salt pepper, garlic powder. Mix it all up. You can seriously just eat it straight up with a spoon and nothing else its so good.

Heat up some tortillas flat on a hot, lightly oiled pan. . . then make yo'self some tacos fool! Extra squeeze o' lime, and voila. Chowwwww time! Dee. Lish. Us.

Actually I think next time I will add some cabbage or cole slaw . . . so there will be a next time.

FYI - my Ragnar team, the Silent But Deadly Fartleks (har har, a Fartlek is a type of training run), came in SEVENTH out of over 200 teams. Extreeeeeme duuuude! Must've been all that Mountain Dew...

(Above Video courtesy of Munir Haddad, fellow Fartlek, and all around swell guy)

Tuesday's Gone, With Chick-In

Tuesday: and it's good to be back in the kitchen. After a long weekend with 2 of my old roommates from NY in town, it was good to detox for a few days and get back to some home-cooking. (Highlights of that weekend at the end of this post). I started the week off with some later than usual nights at work, but still got back in time tonight to cram in a run - 3 miles up the beach and down Belmont pier during sunset (really man). But it's April and it has yet to really warm up here, and it's still a little chilly at night... so a nice dish of roasted chicken and potatoes can still give a house that nice warm glow.

I must admit, I knew as soon as I started tonight that most of what I was making wasn't going to make it to the plate. That run made me hungry. So I started off just boiling some baby broccoli sprouts.

Shocked em with cold water when they were cooked - and seriously you don't have to do ANYthing to organic baby broccoli. It's kinda sweet and green and just straight up good with nothing on it. So I couldn't stop picking at it while the fingerling potatoes were roasting in the oven and the chicken was defrosting under the faucet. Hence, tonight's pics are more about the product and the process than the plating.

Halfway through I put a little soy sauce and lemon on the broccoli which turned out to be an interesting combo - kinda salty and tangy and tart all at the same time.

Chicken seared on the range and then stuck into the oven - unfortunately I think I over cooked the chicken a bit tonight - it can get a little tricky when it's coming straight from the freezer.

Flavor though, was still good and crispy.

And how bout dem roasted fingaling budayduhs. Fuggedaboutit! Roasted quite nicely, a little oil, vinegar, garlic/salt/pepper marinade. Sprinkled with a little extra salt at the finish. Can't go wrong there.

And (jeez I really had an appetite tonight) last minute, I put a fresh salad on the roster at clean up. Sometimes, when I get that tangy dressing just right, damn it's so good.

So let's see, a quarter chicken, a bushel of baby broccoli, roasted potatoes, salad, and I still have leftovers for lunch. But it's all good stuff, and I'm still training for the Ragnar Relay (week and a half from now, yikes) so I'm working it off.

Speaking of working it off - some highlights from this weekend:

- biking in Venice, jamming with a blues band on Venice Beach (me on drums)

- Father's Office lunch, then hiking at Runyon Canyon (not sure I'd recommend a hike with a belly full of burger, but like I said, workin it off...)

- Drift Car (Formula D) racing in downtown Long Beach - absolutely insane. These guys drive with a death wish, burning rubber and fishtailing along the entire track, engines screaming!! Nice precursor to Formula 1 w/ Danica Patrick coming up this weekend

- And last but not least: The Light Beer Blind Taste Test Challenge. Now, it's no secret I've drank my fair share of crappy light beer over the years. Being such a connoisseur, I bet my friends that I could identify through a blind taste test, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Light. EASY. Well it's not as easy as I thought! I got all three wrong and they each got 1 correct (they both identified the Miller - dumb luck). They're really all closer in taste than I thought - I think we just learned a little something about the power of persuasion and advertising. Although I still think I can tell the difference.

Yeah, well, dinner was on me that night.

Goy Meets Dill

This is why you should do this cooking thing. It's too easy, too good.

Monday morning I moved some chicken from the freezer to the fridge figuring it would defrost while I'm at work, and when I get home, well ... well I'll do something with it. Maybe roast it, maybe stick it in a sauce. But later in the day, the idea of chicken soup came to mind.

And I swear I didn't know it's Passover.

Anyway, as it turns out, Monday night I did not make it home in time to cook. Instead I was invited to a party at one of East Hollywood's newest and most happenest rum bars - La Descarga. What a great space! And Steve Livigni and Daniel Nelson were making, literally, some of the coolest - and hottest -cocktails I've ever tasted. Smooth way to end a Monday.

So to-night, chicken still in fridge - must be utilized! Chicken soup still on the brain. I looked up a few recipes for some guidance - and this one sounded like it used the least ingredients in the least time. But being from New York and having had lived or worked at one time or another within a block of Carnegie Deli, Sarge's, and/or Mendy's, I know chicken rice soup with a lil' dill can taste simply delicious.

Here it go:

Chop up 4 medium carrots and 4 medium sized stalks of celery, roughly chop half an onion. Season one pound of chicken thighs/legs (on the bone). Pan sear the chicken and saute everything in a lightly oiled pan, enough to brown the chicken a bit, cook down the vegetables to that awesome scent of chicken/carrot/celery/onions in a pan, while kind of basting the chicken with the vegetables at the same time. Soup secret: sauteing everything before adding to the soup actually locks in the flavor of the individual ingredients, making them much tastier before and after you combine them.

While this is going on, I prepared a cup of rice (thai jasmine) in the rice cooker - this will be added towards the end.

Heat up half a container of unsalted chicken broth and about a pint of water to a simmer. Add the chicken and vegetables. Simmer it all for 30 mins. Taste along the way and season appropriately, lightly. In particular be sure not to add too much salt while you're simmering - as everything cooks down, saltiness in particular will strengthen, and you can always add more salt n pepper later if you need to. Better to add a little salt later than have to water down your broth cuz you over-salted early on. Take out the chicken (make sure it's cooked, 175-180 degrees), and cut off the bone. Return cut chicken to the simmering soup. Add a few sprigs of dill about 60 seconds before turning off the heat.

To prep for eating - take a good heaping spoonful of rice to your soup bowl. Ladle the soup over the rice. Mix, serve, spoon to lips... blow to cool, aaaand ohh yes, that is chicken soup for the soul.

My Shrimp Hand is Strong

It's Tuesday night, after yet another weekend of overindulging in some sheer tom-foodery around LA with my buddy Daniel, which included: splitting a Father's Office (Santa Monica) burger and a Pliney the Elder; splitting a Let's Be Frank "Hot" dog - this is an awesome hot dog trailer parked outside of Father's Office in Culver City (yes, we patronized both F.O.'s on Saturday) the Hot Dog is a delicious spicey dog with onions and a special sauce (harissa?) on a great chewy toasted bun; sharing a plate of potato hash from The Grill on the Alley in 90210 (not heart friendly); LIVE, still squirming baby octopus at Ma San in Koreatown - the tentacle parts crawl up your chopsticks and suck on your cheeks as you chew 'em; and finally, Animal on Fairfax - for desert. Well, it was supposed to be desert (some great maple bacon biscuit they have) but turned out to be oxtail fries, and about 4 other Animal-istic dishes that put us all down for the count.

So tonight, after a just totally awesome 2 mile run into the sunset along Belmont Beach and a quick shower, I needed something a little cleaner. And although shrimp isn't necessarily a cholesterol blocker, it's gotta be better than oxtail fries.

I found myself wandering the isles of Whole Foods feeling kinda like Abbey. Abbey who? Abbey ehhh Normal. (!!) Shrimp was on the brain, but prepared with ... hmmm. Risotto? Don't think so (not yet). Linguini? Nahhh, too much. After a few strange picks that eventually went back to the bins they came from (cauliflower, brussel sprouts), I recalled my new rice cooker that I've been wanting to break in (a take-away gift from going to see the Ellen DeGeneres show a few months back - that's right dude, Ellen - a friend had free tix, whaddyagonnado). Sooooo.. . Thai Jasmine rice.... asparagus...shiitake mushrooms... here we go!

Home.

Half a pound of peeled shrimp, marinating in oil, vinegar, dijon, garlic powder, salt pepper. Put the rice in the rice cooker, one cup of rice to one cup of water, hit the "on" button - dun't git much simpler than that. Boiled some asparagus, al dente. Sauteed some garlic and onion til soft.. added some chopped shiitakes, cooked em all down... added the shrimp, cooked that for about 90 seconds until they were cooked. Chopped up the asparagus and diced a tomato - used a spoon to turn them in with the rice..plated the rice/asparagus/tomato, dished the shrimp/shiitake saute on top... a little salt/pepper/lemon..voila! REALLY tasty and clean dish.

By the time I actually got to eating I was pretty hungry, and since it was so good, I just devoured it, barely giving myself time to really enjoy, but ohhh I still enjoyed it, a lot. I would've finished the whole thing, but I was determined to have some left over for lunch tomorrow.

Tomorrow's Lunch - It ain't Subway:

Stir It Up... Lil' Dahlin, Stir It Up

Stir fry looks really simple to make. You throw a bunch of veggies in a pan, maybe add in some chicken, beef, or tofu, perhaps some noodles, no problem. I remember the first time I tried to make chicken stir fry, maybe 2 years ago, and it came out one grey, bland, flavorless, steamed waste of time.

That was then, and I'm a bit wiser now, but I think you could spend a long time and a lot of practice trying to get an intense stir fry flavor just right. So I wasn't sure how this was going to come out.

It's Monday. Good night to get back in the kitchen after another weekend of eating out and about in LA. Briefly, this included: some grilled bacon-burgers that I seasoned with egg, onion powder, cumin, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and grilled with a little Roaring 40's Blue Cheese inside the burger - try it, you'll like it; Chicken and Fries from Dino's on Pico - this place, this chicken leaves your fingers orange from the spicy, vinegary marinade that the fries soak in during and afterwards to become, well, it is totally unlike anything else and only 5 bucks; and Vito's Pizza on La Cienega - Vito is from New Jersey, n'uff said. So tonight (after a serious run by the marina and along the beach - daylight savings time!!) I had a whole plan of going to Trader Joe's to get a bunch of broccoli, snow peas, peppers, etc. to chop up with some flank steak and stir fry. But wouldn't ya know it, they not only had bags of pre-chopped stir fry veggies, but pre-cut steak tips too, "guaranteed tender". For a second I'm thinking this is kinda cheating, but eh, I'm really only trying to impress myself at this point so I got over that guilt fast.

Seasoned the meat, tossed in a hot pan - took it out of the pan after about 60 seconds, a nice sear. Sauteed some onion and garlic, added the bag-o-veggies and then my sauce: chicken stock, rice vinegar, soy sauce, chili sauce, salt. A lot of recipes call for sesame oil and cornstarch that might make it thicker - I'm fresh out of both - so this sauce was gonna be more juicy than saucy. ("Don't get saucy with me, Bernaise".... movie?).

Added the meat back to the pan when the veggies seemed almost cooked. I wasn't too worried about overcooking them, cuz if anything, they'd just soak up the sauce better that way, but I did want to make sure the beef did not overcook after having had seared it to a nice sub-medium rare and letting it rest.

All in all - the dish was tasty. It needed a dash of soy sauce after plating, but the vegetables were actually a mix of cooked and slightly crunchy, since I added half of them late into the process (actually a rookie mistake that ended up working out). The beef stayed tender and pink inside, and the sauce had a great brown/tangy/lite-spice thing going on. And I saved a nice portion for lunch tomorrow that I bet will taste even better by then - just like Chinese stir fry is supposed to. Kinda like my old favorite take out from Joy Hing in Jersey. Minus the MSG of course. . . .