2013 Christmas Recap

As promised, we've got a recap of our culinary adventures over this past Christmas.  Like most trips back to southern California, we hit up some of our favorite spots; El Burrito Jr., In-n-Out, and P.V. Palace Seafood for dim sum.  We also headed to Santa Monica to check out Josie.

In addition to all the meals we ate out, we also enjoyed some delicious home cooked meals, including some dishes we prepared during the cook off.  Justin and I faced off against my cousin, Lauren, and her husband, Gregor.  We were given 6 mystery ingredients and had to create an appetizer and a side dish.  We had access to everything in my aunt & uncle's pantry, and if we needed to go to the grocery store, we could only spend $25.

The mystery ingredients were sweet potatoes, mangoes, head-on prawns, bacon, kimchi, and turnips.  As soon as we saw kimchi and bacon, it took us a split second to decide on our kimchi brussels sprouts for our side dish.  Since turnips were a mystery ingredient, we just used those as the garnish in place of carrots.  That left us with mangoes, prawns and sweet potatoes.  We kept things light and went with a grilled prawn over mango salsa with a sweet potato chip.  Lauren and Gregor whipped up a delicious salad of apples, turnips, bacon, egg, and a mango kimchi  dressing to start.  For their side, they poached their shrimp in butter and lime with sweet potato shoestring fries.

It was a close competition, but we came out on top by 1 vote!  Both teams rose to the occasion and produced some delicious food. It was as close as possible, but we had a slight edge.  It was a huge hit with the whole family, and I think this will become an annual throwdown!

The day after Christmas, we gathered in Grandma's kitchen again to make joong ( 粽子) again.  It was a long day, but we ended up wrapping over 200 joong, and we now have a few bags in our freezer.  They're the perfect, cold-weather comfort food, full of delicious pork.

We also spent some time checking out the craft breweries around Torrance.  We ended up visiting Strand Brewing Co., Smog City Brewing Company, and Monkish Brewing Company.  All three offered delicious beers in a variety of styles.  Smog City was our overall favorite, and reminded us of some of the local breweries here in DC.

Overall, it was another wonderful trip to California.  Lots of food, lots of beer, and lots of family.  What more could you ask for over the holidays?

Beets & Meats

Today's post is brought to you by the letter 'B'.  Brats. Beer. Beets. Bacon.  What more could you ask for?

You could easily just throw the brats on the grill and call it a day, but we cooked at my place tonight, and I don't have a grill.  Instead, we gave the brats a quick sear on each side in a skillet, and then dropped in some  sliced yellow onions and a bottle of Red Hook Pilsner to finish cooking.

While the brats were steaming away, we got to work on the beets, which were the star of the show. Start by peeling and quartering your beets, and dropping them into some salted, boiling water until tender.  Though the recipe called for bibb lettuce, we just used the beet greens, so make sure to give them a good rinse and reserve them.  While the beets are boiling, crisp up some bacon.

You can set the bacon aside, but keep the fat in the pan to cook up the red onion, and wilt down your greens.  We then added in some balsamic, brown sugar, and fennel seed.  I only had the star anise pods on hand, so we substituted the fennel seed.  Let the brown sugar melt down, and then toss in your beets and coat them in the sauce.  Once they're coated, just sprinkle the bacon on top, and you're ready to serve.  Though the recipe calls for more of a salad, ours turned into more of a side dish since we wilted down the beet greens.

The beets, brown sugar and reduced balsamic made for a pretty sweet combination, but the greens and the bacon helped balance it out.  It really could've used the dark beer to cut the sweetness...we just didn't have any we were willing to sacrifice.

It was a quick, tasty summery meal; perfect for a Friday night.

Beer Can Chicken

Ah the infamous beer can chicken, AKA redneck duck confit.  Legend has it that at a BBQ competition some guy was waiting for brisket to cook overnight. He grew hungry while drinking some brews, and decided to cook himself up a chicken to snack on.  In his drunken state he accidentally set the chicken on his beer, and the beer can chicken was born.  Contrary to popular belief, the reason the chicken is so moist and delicious isn't from alcohol vapors or anything like that.  Sitting upright lets all that tasty skin fat render down the breast meat making it all tender and delicious!

After patiently waiting 3 whole days for our chicken to defrost, we were FINALLY able to cook it.  And with the weather warming up, we've been using the grill a lot more lately, so we decided to try out some beer can chicken.  This isn't a quick meal, like our last few have been, but it's totally worth the wait.

Start by procuring a can of beer.  We used Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout, since we had it on hand, but you can use whatever you want.  Reserve about 1/4 of the can for your rub, drink about 1/4, and leave the other half in the can.  Then we chopped up some garlic, rosemary, and oregano, and added that to the can with a bit of your dry rub ingredients.

For the rub, we used that 1/4 can of beer we reserved, some grapeseed oil (or whatever oil you have on hand), paprika, cayenne, cumin, dried sage, dried thyme, salt, pepper, and some secret hobo spices (we can't tell you ALL of our secrets!).  Before mixing the wet and dry ingredients, we put some of the spice mixture into the beer can (mentioned above), and saved some to sprinkle on the bird before we put him on the grill.  Then just get your hands dirty and rub your mixture all over the chicken, making sure to get into all the nooks and crannies.

Then you'll want to carefully insert the beer can into the cavity of the chicken, and stand him upright in a foil roasting pan.  You'll want to pull his legs forward and tuck his wings forward.  This will help him balance and sit upright.  Just like roasting a chicken in the oven, filling the cavity will help keep the breast meat moist and juicy, and having the metal can inside helps cook the bird from the inside out.

The most important part of the process is to use indirect heat, cooking him low, and slow.  For our grill, we only turned on the outer burners, and placed our chicken in the middle.  The other tray you see in the picture is filled with some water to help evenly distribute the heat.  If you own a fancy grill with a built-in thermometer, you'll want it to heat up to 225-245 degrees.  If your grill doesn't have a thermometer like ours, you can just wing it! (pun intended).

While the bird was cooking, we sat back, relaxed, and patiently waited.  We were starting to get anxious so we made our side dishes.  We made some sweet potato fries, and butter braised radishes.  Both sides were extremely simple.

For the radishes, cut off the ends, and quarter them.  And you can slice up your sorrel.

Then melt some butter in a pan with some stock.  We used all the stock we had for our risotto, so we just used some water.  Once it's melted, toss in your radishes, season with salt and pepper, and just let them cook.

Once the butter sauce thickens, you can take them off the heat.  This took about 15 minutes.  Then just toss them with the sorrel.   I never would have thought about eating warm, cooked radishes, but they were surprisingly tasty.  Obviously the butter helped in the taste department, but warming them also took some of the spicy bite out of them.  They were still on the crunchy side, which I liked, and the sorrel gave it back some of the freshness that the cooking process removed.

It ended up taking about 2 hours to cook our bird.  But it was well worth the wait.  The skin came out nice and crispy, the meat and juicy and tender, and there were plenty of drippings to make a delicious pan sauce.

We poured the drippings from the pan, and whatever beer was left in the can into a little skillet, added some cream, and whipped up a tasty little gravy.

Our beer can chicken dinner wouldn't be complete without a beer to drink, so we cracked open a bottle of Taster's Choice, a collaboration brew between DC Brau (our local brewery) and Ska Brewing, from CO.  They teamed up the ska band, The Pietasters, to make a coffee doppleback brew.  It was a delicious pairing to our chicken.


Overall, the meal came out delicious, it was a hearty and rustic meal, that packed a flavorful punch.  This is a great meal for summer get togethers because it starts with cracking open a beer and the grill does all the work while you continue the drinking and merriment with your friends.

Super Bowl Spread

We've had our fair share of sports this weekend...a Wake/Maryland basketball game yesterday, the Caps/Pens game this afternoon, and the Super Bowl to round things out.  So what better way to cap off the weekend than with a proper spread of delicious bar food?  On the menu tonight were some wings, buffalo chicken dip, and "crack bread".

So let's start with the wings...a bar/sports staple.  We seasoned the wings with a little roasted garlic salt and some pepper, and placed them on a cooling rack, on top of a baking sheet.  This helps get all sides of the chicken crispy, and lets some of the fat drip off.  After about 10 minutes, we flipped the wings to make sure all sides were equally crispy.

 

While the chicken baked, we mixed together the sauce for our wings.  We went with a coriander chutney for some spice, and mixed it with Greek yogurt for a little extra tang.  Once the chicken was cooked through, we dunked them in the chutney/yogurt mixture.  Back into the oven they went to crisp up again.  Think of it like tandoori chicken...the yogurt and chutney bake into the chicken, the outside is nice and crispy, while the meat stays really juicy.

The wings cooked for another 15 minutes on each side.  To the leftover sauce, we added a little cilantro, lime zest and lime juice to use as a dipping sauce for the wings.  Once the wings came out of the oven, they got a sprinkling of cilantro and squeeze of lime juice.

Dish 1 down.  Now on to dish 2...the "crack bread".  Its basically a pull-apart bread with cheese and bacon.  Think of it as an alternative to loaded potato skins.  We started with a loaf of sourdough, cutting it horizontally and vertically, but not all the way through.  You're making nooks for all the cheese and bacon to go.  Rather than using bacon bits, we cooked up our own bacon.  And the secret to it all is the melted butter mixed with a little bit of ranch dressing mix that gets drizzled over the entire loaf.

The recipe calls for slices of cheese, but I've found that shredded cheese is easier to sprinkle into all the nooks and crannies.  Its best if you can have one person spread the bread apart while someone else sprinkles the cheese.  Once you've distributed the cheese evenly, do the same with the bacon.  Then you drizzle the butter/ranch mixture over the entire loaf.  Pop it in the oven, wrapped in foil for about 15 minutes, and then another 10 minutes uncovered.  What you're left with is a crusty, melty, savory finger food.

 

And last but not least...buffalo chicken dip.  If you haven't had the fortune of experiencing this delightful treat, you should go ahead and make this right now.  We seasoned 2 chicken breasts with salt and pepper and popped them in the oven to cook for about 20 minutes.  While those cooked, we fired up the crock pot and threw in a brick of neufchatel cheese to soften up.  You can use cream cheese instead, if you want.  Because we had some extra yogurt and ranch dressing mix, we threw them together and added that to the crock pot as well, in place of the blue cheese dressing.  Its our slightly healthier spin on the dip...I mean, it was 0% fat greek yogurt ;)  For the blue cheese part, we added in blue cheese crumbles.  And to top it off, add in buffalo sauce.  We went with Frank's.  Once the chicken is cooked, shred it up and add it to the pot.  Then sprinkle a bit of shredded cheese on top and let it heat up and melt together.  What you're left with is a delicious dip that you can serve with chips, celery and carrots.

All 3 dishes came together rather quickly and with few dishes to clean up (my favorite kind of dishes!).  Throw in a few beers, and you have the makings of a great Super Bowl spread!