The inspiration for my recent making-bacon-at-home fascination comes from this "My BLT From Scratch" post on Michael Ruhlman's blog. Last summer Ruhlman challenged his readers to create and submit their own interpretations of a completely homemade BTL. This included baking the bread, making the mayo, preferably growing the lettuce and tomatoes, and of course, making the bacon.
No ingredient makes people lose their minds like bacon, so let me be clear right from the start, this is not technically "bacon," so save the "this is not technically bacon" emails. My only goal here was to establish a homemade bacon baseline. Instead of trying to paint a masterpiece on my first attempt, I thought I'd start with a simple charcoal sketch.
The technique shown herein is very straightforward, and could be easily mimicked by anyone able to get their hands on pork belly. The idea was to rub the meat with smoked paprika, salt and cracked black pepper, before slowly roasting until tender. After an overnight chill, the belly would be sliced and fried crisp.
For a first attempt, I was very happy with the results. The texture produced by this approach was very bacon-like, although I sliced it too thick for it to get truly "crisp." Above and beyond textural considerations, it needed more salt. Next time I'd be much more aggressive during the dry rub application.
Stay tuned for upcoming versions, which will include brining, curing, and some kind of smoking. In addition to better flavor and texture, these future attempts will also be much more exciting as we substantially increase the odds for some type of serious food borne illness.
By the way, since this wasn't "real" bacon, I decided to show it as humble breakfast meat, and not displayed in its most glorious form, the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Enjoy!
Ingredients (what I used here): 3 pound piece pork belly 1 tablespoon smoked paprika 1 tablespoon kosher salt 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
When people ask me if I'm ever afraid of running out of recipes to film, I usually joke that new recipes aren't the problem, it's running out of things to call them that's the real fear. Take this horribly named Spanish mustard beef for example. Least poetic name, ever.
Despite the awkward name, this fast and user-friendly wet rub did a fine job flavoring some carne asada I grilled recently (yes, that was redundant). I'm calling it Spanish mustard since I spiked the Dijon with a couple of my favorite ingredients of all time – smoked paprika and sherry vinegar.
Be sure to go find the real stuff (that it comes from Spain is one clue). If your marinade is only going to have a couple ingredients, you better make sure you're using top shelf stuff. The other two keys to this recipe are as follows: only let the meat marinate for about an hour, otherwise it may start to "cook" in the acid; and be sure to build a very hot fire.
Since this is a wet rub, we need the meat to sear and caramelize, not to steam in its own juices. After successfully grilling and slicing thin, against the grain, this can be eaten in hundreds of ways; all delicious. You'll see my tortilla delivery system, but everything from paper-thin rice paper wrappers to thick slices of grilled bread would be perfect.
This is also a fantastic marinade for thin-cut pork shoulder chops, or any of your favorite chicken parts. By the way, while you're grilling, sipping on a cold beer, or sangria, try and think of a better name. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 2 pounds thin sliced beef (any thin flap meat, skirt steak, flank steak, round steak, etc. 2 tablespoons Dijon 2 tablespoons smoked paprika 4 cloves minced, crushed garlic, optional 1/4 cup sherry vinegar 1/4 cup light olive oil salt and freshly ground black pepper to tastes
Anyone that grew-up in an Italian-American family can tell you about Sunday dinner, where someone just like the adorable woman in this video cooks an old family favorite, after which the family gathers around to eat, drink, and talk way too loud.
I've wanted to film a version of Steak Pizzaiola for a while now, but can't decide which version to do; the quickly seared, pan sauce style, or the long, slow-cooked recipe seen here. Maybe I'll try and combine the best of both. Thanks to fellow YouTube foodie, Foxbytes, for this tasty-looking clip. If you have a favorite recipe for this Italian-American classic, please send it my way. Enjoy!
Chicken French has everything I love in a recipe. It's delicious and easy, frugal, yet fancy, and everyone loves it. Better yet, it has a vague, confusing history and completely preposterous name.
This not-French recipe hails from the Rochester area of New York State, where it's a staple on virtually every Italian-American restaurant menu. It's something of a mystery why this recipe would have exploded in popularity in this one city in particular, but that's exactly what happened.
The origins of the recipe go something like this. Italian cooks in northern Italy have a sautéed veal dish called vitello francese, which uses a wine/lemon/butter pan sauce similar to ones used in France. The recipe comes to New York City with the first wave of Italian-American immigrants, where it becomes known by the locals as "Veal French."
Eventually, the recipe migrates to Rochester's large Italian-American community, where chicken is substituted for the more expensive and harder to find veal. The rest, as they say, is history – delicious, tender, moist, buttery history.
Since I'm from the Rochester, NY area, it's a little surprising I haven’t done this one already. Thankfully, a wonderful dinner at my Aunt Joyce's on a recent trip home caused me to realize I hadn’t yet immortalized this hometown favorite. I really hope you give it a try. Enjoy!
Ingredients for about 4-6 portions: 1 1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast 4 eggs, plus 2 tablespoon milk, beaten 1 cup flour 1 tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepper cayenne to taste 2 tablespoon olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon butter for sautéing
For the sauce: Juice of 2 lemons 1/2 cup good white wine or dry sherry 1 cup vegetable broth or chicken stock 4 tablespoon cold butter, cut in cubes 1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
Very soon, if not already, you're going to be faced with one of summer's great dilemmas; what the hell am I going to do with all these zucchini?
Maybe they're from your garden, or possibly some sadistic neighbor's, but regardless of where they came from, there they sit on the counter, taunting you with their size and numbers.
While it will probably only put a small dent in your cache of courgettes, this recipe I posted last year is very simple and quite tasty. Enjoy! Tuna Zucchini Elbow Pasta - It's Just Dinner
I almost didn't film this meal. Initially, it struck me as so mundane and unimpressive that I wasn't sure it would make a worthwhile video recipe. Then I remembered I'm an atypical Food Wishes fan. While it's getting harder and harder for me to impress myself, thankfully most of you remain fairly easy to impress.
I don't say that with condescension, but with envy. I have to remind myself that not everything I make has to be a "special." That it's okay to just cook, film, and post without a point, or an angle, or even a reason.
This recipe is not impressive, it's not interesting, there are no new techniques, it doesn't remind me of any funny stories, and it certainly isn't going to win any beauty contests. I promised myself to never use the phrase, "it is what it is," but here, I really have no choice. It is what it is, and that's just dinner. Enjoy!
1 lb elbow macaroni olive oil 3 cloves garlic, minced 6 large zucchini, 1/2-inch cubes 1 tsp salt 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes 1 tsp dried Italian herbs (oregano, rosemary, thyme, etc., the usual suspects) 3 1/2 cups marinara sauce 1 1/2 cups water 12 oz tuna Parmesan cheese
Hello from steamy western New York! I just celebrated my 47th birthday with the family yesterday, and we had one of my favorite childhood meals; scalloped potatoes and ham. While that's not a classic hot-weather meal, this grilled shrimp with cured lemon aioli certainly is.
You'll notice a glaring lack of ingredients in this video recipe. Thanks to the intensely flavored cured lemons, the aioli sauce needs little more than some fresh tarragon to reach its full potential. Having said that, you are well within your rights to toss in some garlic or hot pepper if you're in the mood.
The shrimp prep is just as minimalist. A little oil, smoked paprika, and salt is all that's needed to coax out the shellfish's natural sweetness.
By the way, as I mention in the video, when I grill a relatively small amount of shrimp, I skip the skewering step. It only takes a couple minutes to grill shrimp over hot coals, and I can easily turn them one by one.
Skewers do make for a nice presentation, and for a large group it makes the turning much faster, but when I'm just doing enough for the two of us, I have no trouble keeping up. Whether you skewer or not, I hope you give this super-easy seafood recipe a try. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 pound shrimp 2 teaspoon olive oil (not extra virgin) 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt For the aioli: 1/2 cup mayo 1 1/2 tablespoon minced cured lemons 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon minced fresh tarragon
While I do think this penne pasta with beef neck sauce would be an amusing and delicious dish to serve at a vampire-themed dinner party, I'll admit my real motive was to attract some new visitors to the site using some of these extremely popular search engine key words.
Thanks to True Blood and the Twilight movies, America is vampire-crazy, and associated word searches on Google are very popular. So if you are reading this post because you thought it was going to be about vampires, or vampire movies, or vampire television shows, or vampire fashion, or vampire games, well, it's not. (See what I did there?)
This recipe does take a long time, but requires very little effort, and you'll be rewarded with a wonderful, richly-flavored sauce. The hardest thing will be getting some neck bones, but a quick conversation with your friendly neighborhood butcher should be all you need. Just be careful. For whatever reason many real-life werewolves actually make their livings as butchers. Look for the unusually thick ear hair.
By the way, speaking of search engine key words, I can't say for sure, but I think Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston, and LeBron James would really love this pasta recipe. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 3 pounds beef neck bones (ones with some meat on them!) 1 onion 3-4 cups tomato sauce (a prepared pasta sauce would be the best choice) 1 cup water, plus more as needed salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste red chili flakes 2 tablespoon chopped fresh green herbs penne pasta and cheese
Hopefully you’ve been playing along at home, and now have a nice batch of cured lemons to start experimenting with. If not, you can catch-up in no time – just check out this video recipe for Thomas Keller’s cured lemons posted last week.
I ended up using these lovely lemons in a super-simple, but really gorgeous roast quail recipe. This would make a great special occasion first course, and really shows off the unique flavor of the preserved lemons. The recipe is stark, because I really wanted to taste what the lemons could do.
I usually don't tell you how to eat, but here I'm going to. You want to make sure each bite of quail has at least a tiny piece of the preserved lemon mashed on to it.
You can gauge your own personal tolerance for how much of the condiment to use, but it totally makes the bite. The way just a little bit draws out the flavors of the meat is a lot of fun.
I know many of you will ask, so I'll tell you right up front, you can find quail. Higher-end stores like Whole Foods will carry them frozen, and any decent poultry purveyor can find some for you. If all else fails, you can simply order them online.
If you can’t find quail, you can easily adjust this for game hens, or even chicken breasts (using the slice of cured lemon under the skin). By the way, I was thrilled with how my lemons turned out, especially in this recipe, and would love to hear what your experiences are. Enjoy! Bonus Coverage: If you're as big a Thomas Keller fan as I am, check out this great post by YumSugar about the chef's demo, "The World's Best Preserves," from the 2010 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. That's where this whole cured lemons obsession started for me.
Ingredients: 4 whole quail salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 teaspoon cumin 1/4 teaspoon coriander pinch cayenne, optional 1 cup chicken broth 1 slice cured lemon, minced fine
So, you know how I'm always saving you time and money by designing these video recipes with a minimum number of steps?
This time we're going the other way. I'm taking a perfectly good roasted potato recipe and adding another procedure.
The secret to these deliciously crusty potatoes is the pre-oven boiling in a salted and seasoned liquid. The potatoes not only absorb flavor and salt, but more importantly the surface of the potato cooks, which is what forms the great crunchy texture in the oven.
This is sort of the same idea behind the twice-fried French fries we featured in a video last year. By the way, it's very important to let the potatoes really dry well before coating with the oil. This will ensure a great crusty skin.
You can use this same technique, and flavor the cooking liquid any number of ways. If you like this recipe, you'll have lots of experimenting to do.
I hope you all have a fun Fourth of July planned! I'm almost done with the cured lemon quail recipe, so stay tuned for that soon. Have a safe and fabulous rest of the weekend, and as always, enjoy!
Ingredients: 2 pounds new yellow potatoes 3 sprigs rosemary 3 cloves garlic, whole, peeled, bruised 2 bay leaves 2 tablespoon salt 2 tablespoon olive oil pinch of cayenne
I've received what I consider to be an inordinate number of emails requesting sandwich videos. A sandwich video? Why would anyone want to watch a sandwich video?" Since the bread for my sandwiches is earned in large part from video views, these things have to be considered.
Well, a few things have changed my attitude towards doing a sandwich video. One would be the shocking success of the inside-out grilled cheese sandwich video (done mostly as a goof), which showed me that these things could put butts in the seats.
Secondly, I received a panini press from IMUSA that I really wanted to try out. I decided to create a sandwich worthy of such a test, and what you see here is the delicious result – a ham, cheese and peach panini, or as I now call it, my new favorite sandwich.
The lightly smoked ham, sharp white cheddar, and sweet/tart peach preserves pressed between the crunchy, buttery bread was an absolutely stunning combination. I know I say this all the time, but I really hope you give this a try. Enjoy!
About the IMUSA Panini Press Grill
You know I don't do a lot of product endorsements, but once in a while I get to test something that I really like, and when that happens I like to share the info. For the record, IMUSA sent me this press free of charge, so you can take that for what it's worth. By the way, the letters going around the grill don't relate to anything, I just thought they looked cool.
This grill heats up quickly. It was ready to go in just a few minutes. There are no controls. It's on or off, so there's no guesswork with temperatures. Just put in the sandwich and check back in 5 minutes. That was it.
I also like that it's a flat, not grooved grill. You can argue the grooves make for a better appearance, but this model is clearly easier to clean (I just used a paper towel).
I don't like to look at product reviews until I've formed my own opinion, so after I finished the video I popped over to Amazon and saw that this model was very well received. That's what I expected, but it's nice to have my findings corroborated. For more info, here's a link to the product page.
The inspiration for my recent making-bacon-at-home fascination comes from this "My BLT From Scratch" post on Michael Ruhlman's blog. Last summer Ruhlman challenged his readers to create and submit their own interpretations of a completely homemade BTL. This included baking the bread, making the mayo, preferably growing the lettuce and tomatoes, and of course, making the bacon.
For a first attempt, I was very happy with the results. The texture produced by this approach was very bacon-like, although I sliced it too thick for it to get truly "crisp." Above and beyond textural considerations, it needed more salt. Next time I'd be much more aggressive during the dry rub application.
