Hasenpfeffer

So if any of you are like me you remember watching Bugs Bunny during Saturday morning cartoons. In one of my favorite vignettes, Yosemite Sam is the cook for a king who has a hankering for hasenpfeffer. Sam, of course, is out of rabbit and spends the cartoon trying to capture Bugs Bunny in order to give the king what he wants. And, of course, comedy ensues resulting in the king eating carrots and being told it was hasenpfeffer.


Well, as a kid I never knew if hasenpfeffer was a real thing or just some fun word the Loony Tune writers came up with. I also thought that if it was real, then it must be great since a king desired it so strongly. Such is the mind of a 6 year old.

For some reason I was reminded of that cartoon recently and wondered how the dish would taste. As it happened,  this past weekend was Easter and friends of mine wanted to have a potluck during our weekly meetup. I thought that it was finally time to try to make the dish myself. I mean the Easter bunny would have already delivered me my Starburst Jelly beans so I saw nothing to lose.

I learned a lot with this cooking experiment. First, Hasenpfeffer is a very very German dish. I knew it was German in origin, but to me the taste of the sauce declares the dish to be unabashedly German. I think if you want, in one bite, to have and idea what traditional German cooking tastes like...Hasenpfeffer sauce will show you. It is a thick and creamy sauce that, far from the mildness of white gravy one might run across in a standard American stew, has a bite to it from the use of vinegar and sour cream; I don't usually expect that sort of tang from such a friendly looking light brown gravy. This tang, arrived at both due to the gravy and the 2 days of marinating, helped off set any gaminess the rabbit might have had. For me the dish really woke up my taste-buds with a great big "GutenTag"!

Rabbit is an interesting meat to prepare and while my skills at taking apart a chicken did help, a rabbit is, obviously, a whole different beast. The tenderloins were especially hard to clean as a rabbits backbone is very complex as opposed to a chicken and one has to deal with "silverskin" removal which is not something you run into with a chicken. If you do not have much practice breaking down a chicken, or don't feel adventurous I would recommend getting a butcher to take care of breaking down your rabbit. If you don't feel like rabbit is quite your thing, i think this dish could be made quite well with chicken, though i would probably stick to legs and thighs as the breast meat would not have the strength of flavor to hold up against the sauce.

There is one step in the recipe that you may be tempted to skip, but i would recommend against that. You will be making a roux in order to thicken your stew and you are told to take the roux out of the pan and let it cool.  You may think that this is a silly thing to do as you will turn around in a few minutes and add the roux to the hot stew.  But this cooling down time is important. In order to maximize the thickening power of a roux, the proteins will need to relax a little in order to better disperse in your cooking liquid. Yes, a hot roux will thicken a stew, but a cooled roux will incorporate easier and therefore tighten the sauce more efficiently. Ain't science weird and cool?

Hasenpfeffer Ingredients

5-6 lbs of rabbit

4 slices of bacon (Diced medium)
2 tablespoons butter
four tablespoons AP flour
3 cups red wine (I used a Sangiovesse)
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 whole onion (roughly chopped)
4 whole cloves
6 bay leaves
10 peppercorns (lightly crushed)
4 Juniper Berries (lightly crushed)
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sour cream

Hasenpfeffer Procedure

Mix red wine, red wine vinegar, onion, cloves, bay leaves, peppercorns, and juniper berries into a sauce pan and bring up to a simmer for 5 minutes.  Take marinade off the heat and let cool to room temperature. Meanwhile, breakdown your rabbits. I break mine down into two back leg/thighs and two front legs both on the bone and the four tenderloins off the bone and cleaned of silver skin.

Once marinade has cooled, place both it and your rabbit pieces into a non metal

bowl and place in the refrigerator for 36 to 48 hours. Reposition you pieces of rabbit in the marinade twice a day  in order to ensure all pieces get to soak.

Once rabbit has finished marinating, place a 5 quart dutch over on a burner and saute the bacon till it renders its fat. Remove and reserve the crispy bacon. Add butter to bacon fat and still till it melts. Meanwhile remove rabbit pieces from the marinade and pat all the pieces dry. Salt and pepper the rabbit. Once the butter has melted into the bacon fat, brown all sides of your rabbit meat in the dutch oven.  This is best done in batches with the browned pieces of meat placed on its own plate to help collect any runoff juices that may come from the meat.

Once all the meat has browned, all the four to the remaining fat and stir to make a roux. After flour has lightly browned, remove roux from dutch oven and allow to cool. Immediately strain your marinade into the dutch and place the browned rabbit meat plus any accumulated juices into the marinade. Bring up to a light simmer. This will cook for around 30-45 minutes or until the meat is tender.  Around 5-10 minutes into the simmering your roux should be cooled. Add the roux into the meat marinade mixture at this point and stir till it is incorporated.

After the 30-45 min cook time, stir in the sour cream (if using) and the reserved bacon then let the stew warm for a 2 minutes on the burner being careful to not let it boil.  Serve immediately.

Chicago Style Pizza

So as I mentioned in last weeks blog, the wife and I are prepping for a move. As such, I am putting up a recipe from my archives of dishes I love to make.

In general I am not happy with pizza in the D.C. area. There are a couple places that one can grab a good slice, but in general I've been impressed. As such I have been playing around with lots of pizza recipes in order to be able to occasionally have a slice of pizza in a style that is just not available. The Chicago style is one such pie.

As my wife grew up in New Jersey, we have had many conversations concerning the merits of different styles of pizza. And yes we have had the old "New York style vs. Chicago style" pizza debate. After our chats we realized that comparing the two styles really doesn't make sense. Yes they are combinations of crust, cheese, and sauce, but really they are two different foods. Like comparing a pop-tart to a strawberry pie; kinda the same ingredients, but a craving for one doesn't mean a craving for he other.

So this recipe can be a little bit intense, I mean you get to laminate dough which is a kinda cool thing but is definitely not just popping a frozen pizza in the oven. This recipe also uses what is basically my quick tomato sauce for pasta, though when making it as a pizza sauce you let it simmer for an extra 5-7 minutes to make it nice and thick.

A couple notes about some of the ingredients for this. After trying several brands of canned crushed tomatoes, I find that Tuttorosso Brand crushed tomatoes have the best tomato flavor and they are generally easy to find in supermarkets. And yes, the brand of tomatoes you use do make quite a difference in the sauce. As you are reducing the sauce, all the flavors, good or bad, get amplified so use some crushed tomatoes that you like.

Secondly I can hear some of you out there saying "Shred my own cheese when i can just by shredded cheese? are you insane man"? And yes I would highly recommend shredding your own cheese for this recipe. Pre-shreaded cheeses have stabilizers added to them which keep them from melting well. If you get your own block of cheese and shred it yourself you end us saving a bit of money and getting a better melting in your final dish.

So while all my readers in Chicago can just go down the road and get a nice pie, the recipe is for all those out there who have a craving for a pie but live where there is none to be had. I am also including a variant recipe which turns this recipe into a Chicago Style Stuffed pizza as well. Slight differance in procedure, but so yum!

Chicago Style Pizza Ingredients

Dough

3 1/4 cups (16 1/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (2 3/4 ounces) yellow cornmeal
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 1/4 cups water (10 ounces), room temperature
3 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted, plus 4 tablespoons, softened
1 teaspoon plus 4 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup grated onion , from 1 medium onion
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
Table salt
2 medium garlic cloves , minced or pressed through garlic press (about 2 teaspoons)
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Ground black pepper

Toppings

1 pound mozzarella cheese , shredded (about 4 cups)
1/2 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/4 cup)


Music: The Drovers - Kill Mice Elf

Procedure for Chicago Style Pizza

1. FOR THE DOUGH: Mix flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, and yeast in bowl of stand mixer fitted with dough hook on low speed until incorporated, about 1 minute. Add water and melted butter and mix on low speed until fully combined, 1 to 2 minutes, scraping sides and bottom of bowl occasionally. Increase speed to medium and knead until dough is glossy and smooth and pulls away from sides of bowl, 4 to 5 minutes. (Dough will only pull away from sides while mixer is on. When mixer is off, dough will fall back to sides.)

2. Using fingers, coat large bowl with 1 teaspoon olive oil, rubbing excess oil from fingers onto blade of rubber spatula. Using oiled spatula, transfer dough to bowl, turning once to oil top; cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature until nearly doubled in volume, 45 to 60 minutes.

3. FOR THE SAUCE: While dough rises, heat butter in medium saucepan over medium heat until melted. Add onion, oregano, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated and onion is golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Stir in tomatoes and sugar, increase heat to high, and bring to simmer. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced to 2 1/2 cups, 25 to 30 minutes. Off heat, stir in basil and oil, then season with salt and pepper. (If I was making a quick red sauce for pasta, I would stop simmering after 18-20 minutes).

4. TO LAMINATE THE DOUGH: Adjust oven rack to lower position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Using rubber spatula, turn dough out onto dry work surface and roll into 15- by 12-inch rec-tangle. Using offset spatula, spread softened butter over surface of dough, leaving 1/2-inch border along edges. Starting at short end, roll dough into tight cylinder. With seam side down, flatten cylinder into 18- by 4-inch rectangle. Cut rectangle in half crosswise. Working with 1 half, fold into thirds like business letter; pinch seams together to form ball. Repeat with remaining half. Return balls to oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise in refrigerator until nearly doubled in volume, 40 to 50 minutes.

5. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with 2 tablespoons olive oil each. Transfer 1 dough ball to dry work surface and roll out into 15-16 inch disk about 1/4 inch thick. Transfer dough to pan by rolling dough loosely around rolling pin and unrolling into pan. Lightly press dough into pan, working into corners and 1 inch up sides. If dough resists stretching, let it relax 5 minutes before trying again. Repeat with remaining dough ball.

6. Sprinkle all the mozzarella evenly over surface of dough. Roll the smaller dough portion into a 12 inch disk. Transfer dough to pan by rolling dough loosely around rolling pin and unrolling into pan. Spread 1 1/4 cups tomato sauce over cheese and sprinkle 2 tablespoons Parmesan over sauce. Bake until crust is golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove pizza from oven and let rest 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Procedure for Chicago Style Stuffed Pizza

For a stuffed pizza follow the above instructions till you have made the flattened cylinder in step 4. Instead of cutting it in half cut the dough in two pieces at the 2/3rds point and roll out. The larger piece becomes the bottom crust while the smaller will be the top crust.

5. Coat one 12-inch round cake pans with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Transfer dough to pan by rolling dough loosely around rolling pin and unrolling into pan. Lightly press dough into pan, working into corners and 1 inch up sides. If dough resists stretching, let it relax 5 minutes before trying again.

6. For each pizza, sprinkle 2 cups mozzarella evenly over surface of dough. Spread 1 1/4 cups tomato sauce over cheese and sprinkle 2 tablespoons Parmesan over sauce. Bake until crust is golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove pizza from oven and let rest 10 minutes before slicing and serving.


For either of these versions you can add "toppings". The toppings are mixed in with the mozzarella cheese and are under the sauce. If you are making peperoni pizzas I recommend placing the peperoni on a paper towel lined plate and microwave it for about 20 seconds before adding it to the pizza. This will remove some of the grease and make for a less oily end product.


Music-The Drovers

Since today's recipe is from Chicago, I would feel bad about not talking about a local Chicago band. This week we get to chat about The Drovers. While they no longer, to my knowledge, are producing music, I listened to this band all the time back in the day. And with the current popularity of Celtic Punk, I think this might be a band many would like to take a listen to. They are not Celtic punk though, instead I like to describe them as what would happen if Celtic folk music had a lovechild with The Doors.

I used to go to their show every time they made it to Eastern Illinois University. they would often play at a small club called "The Dungeon". They were a great live show alternating between driving rhythms and dreamlike soundscapes. The would sometimes perform a great cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" which I have unfortunately not been able to track down.

"Kill Mice Elf" is an EP with only 4 tracks on it, but they are all great tracks, showing the range of the band, though all their albums are good in my opinion. With "Kill Mice Elf" you get the love balled with "Thanks for the Ring" and then move on to the very rhythmic, dark, and "trippy" "Kill Mice Elf".

If you like what you hear I recommend listening to their other albums "World of Monsters" and "Little High Sky Show". Especially tracks such as "The Boys and the Babies", "When Fortune Turns Her Wheel", "Singlewing", and "If You Cry Elizabeta". Good stuff, and if you listen to it while eating your pizza it will be like you are in Chicago in the late 1990s.

No Knead Bread

So it turns out that my wife and I had our application for a new apartment accepted. Its in the same complex that we currently live but its a floor up and is renovated. Yey! The kitchen has all new appliances so cooking will be awesome and I'm looking forward to setting up the new food prep area. From what little I have seen I think its going to be awesome.  If I am correct we will actually have a vent over our stove which is much needed whenever I fry something or grill meat on the stove.

For all my readers that also means that I most likely will not be doing any cooking projects for the next couple weeks. Now don't worry, I'll still be putting up recipes, but I will likely just dive into my recipe box and chat about some of my favorite dishes. Think of it as if the blog is one of those episodes of Family Ties where Alex, Mallory and the rest sit on their couch looking at a photo album and have all those flashbacks to earlier episodes. If you were a regular viewer of Family Ties you would be all "Hey I remember that one".  But if you never saw the show you got an idea of how much Mallory loved clothes and how much Alex loved Nixon.

Anywho... this week I was still able to play around in the old kitchen and make a couple of loaves of No Knead Bread that everyone is talking about.  I have made the basic recipe several times before, so this week I went a little more complicated and made some Boule au Fromage.  That's fancy talk for cheesy bread.  The only difference between this recipe and the basic recipe is the addition of 200 grams of cheese in the bread and some grated Parmesan-Reggiano on top.

There is one difficult with this Cheese filled version of the Boule, the cheese cements itself to the sides of the Dutch over you cook the bread in .  You can get the bread out, but it takes a little doing as you need to break the places where the cheese has adheres to the side of the pan.  The second time I made this bread this weekend I did try to add some oil to the dutch over just before placing the bread into it, but as the oven and pan were preheated to 475 degrees, I got a little oil smoke during the cooking time.  The bread didn't burn, though it smelled a little as though it might have, and the oil did not solve the sticky cheese problem.  I imagine with a little patience one can make sure all the cheese is deep enough in the dough so that it would not touch the sides of the pan, but that is something I will have to work on.

Aside from the removal of the bread from the pan, this bread rocks.  Its super easy to make and its an easily recipe to play around with.  So ill include the recipe for both the basic No Knead Bread and the Au Fromage version as well.

Some people out there might wonder "What is the deal is no knead bread anyway?". "What makes it so special?"  Well I can provide a little bit of an answer in regards to the way that I have been doing it.  This version is based upon a traditinoal french style of making bread.  And that means no additives to the basic things needed for bread.  The basic recipe has just flour, water, salt, and yeast.  That's it. no special leveners, no preservatives. Just the four ingredients.  And when it comes to your most famous french breads, such a baguettes, that is how bread is done.

Traditionally, though, bread must be kneaded in order to mix all the ingredients so that gluten strands form. Yes Gluten, the bane of Celiacs everywhere, but the most important feature of bread development.  Gluten, in part, gives the bread its structure and its chew. Traditionally bakers would beat the hell out of their dough in order to develop the right amount of gluten. the stretching and folding aligned the gluten so that it could capture the escaping co2 your yeast creates as it is doing its thing.

The No Knead method is basically does the same thing but instead of giving the chef a workout, all one does is mixes the four basic ingredients and lets it sit for 12 - 24 hours.  During this time the bread slowly develops its gluten stands on its own. And, as you let your dough sit out on the counter during this time, your bread will invite local yeast in your environment to join the party which means you use less of your store bought yeast and your bread gains a flavor that is particular to your own region of the world.  I think that's cool.

This particular method also makes use of a dutch oven instead of any of the other tricks you might have read about when it comes to baking bread.  When making bread it is important for its baking environment to be moist as well as hot.  One thing this moisture does is it keep the outer crust that forms while baking to remain soft for the first part of the baking time.  Now a bread will rise one final time while you are baking it sometimes even doubling in size. This "oven spring"  as it is called is desirable in most breads that you will make. It gives a bread a lighter texture and develops all those cool holes and spaces within a bread.  Without this moisture, the crust of the bread would develop too quickly and the crisp crust would stop and oven spring from occurring. This will result in a dense and small bread...not usually ones goal.

Lots of people will put either a pan of hot water in the bottom of their oven, or drop a couple ice cubes onto their over floor in order to create this steam within the oven.  These techniques work fine, but after years the ice cube method could start your oven bottom rusting, and I hate messing around with transporting hot water to and from an over so I have always disliked the water pan method.

The dutch over method removes the need for doing either of these as it uses the moisture already found in the dough to create steam.  As the dutch oven traps the moisture that is released from the dough during cooking, and it has a smaller internal area as opposed to the inside of your oven, it creates a nice steamy environment for the bread to do its thing in without the need of you really doing anything.  Yay!

So anywho...enough blabbering and on to the recipe.

Ingredients for No Knead Boule Bread

400 grams bread flour
1 Tsp salt
3/4 Tsp yeast
300 grams cool water

for cheese bread add:
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
200 grams soft or semi-soft cheese of your choice cubed in 1/2" squares (I used a white sharp chedder and Fontina)
A couple Tsp of freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese for top of bread.

Music addition: Kimya Dawson's album Hidden Vagenda

Process for No Knead Boule Bread
1. Mix the flour salt and yeast together in a bowl.  If making the cheese version of this bread also add the cheese cubes and the pepper as well.

2. Add the water to the flour mixture and stir with a spoon till most the flour is incorporated and wet. This should take about 30 seconds to a minute.

3. Place plastic wrap over the bowl and let the bowl sit on your kitchen counter for 12-24 hours.  If your kitchen is cool or you like your bread to have something similar to a sourdough tang, let it sit more on the longer side.  If your kitchen is warm or you would like less of a "tang" let it set more towards the lower end of the time frame.

4. After the 12 - 24 hour rest period your dough will have darkened a little in color and will have a slightly sharp smell to it.  Lightly flour a countertop and scrape the dough out into the surface. Lightly press the dough into something resembling a square probably about 6" by 6". It's not too important to be exact here size wise.  Fold the top edge fo the square to the middle of the dough. Then fold the bottom edge to meet the top edge. You should now have something looking a little like a rectangle. Fold the two short edges of the rectangle to the middle of the dough and press the edges together.  After you have done this you can turn the dough over and you will have a fairly roundish ball of dough cover dough with a light dusting of flour and place a towel over it. LEt rest for 1-2 hours till it has doubled in size.

5. While dough is resting, place your 4-5 quart dutch oven in the the bottom third of your oven and preheat your oven at 475 degrees for at lest 45 minutes.

6. After dough has risen, take dutch oven out and place dough inside. If you wish make a couple 1"2 inch deep cuts along the top of the dough. Place the lid on and put the dutch oven back in the over for 30 minutes.

7. After 30 minutes take the lid off the dutch over and sprinkle the Parmesan over the top of the bread. Place it back in the oven without the lid for 15-30 mintues. When the bread looks nice and medium brown it is done.  Take the bread out of the dutch over and cool on a cooling rack for at least an hour.


Music

While I was waiting on baking the second loaf of this bread I was with some friends chating before we sat down to play some games. We started talking about old cartoons from the 80s andthat reminded me of one of my favorite artists, Kimya Dawson.  Most of you might have heard her music for the movie Juno, but she has a huge collection of songs from solo work and as part of the New York duo the Moldy Peaches.

When I hear her music I think that it is what folk music would sound like if it grew up in "the city" as opposed to on some mountain with some hippys. Now don't get me wrong I love my hippy folk music too, but there is something raw about Kimyas style.  She takes themes as unrelated as 9/11, or video games, or 80s cartoons, or the death of her cat, and created low-fi ballads that get stuck in your head while showing raw emotion.  Her album "Hidden Vagenda" is a great place to start if you are being introduced to her work.  There really isnt a bad track on this album. Highlights I recommend listening to are "Anthrax" (about 9/11), "Parade", and "Fire", but really just choose a random cut and you got a great tune to listen to.  Some are sad, some are fun, you get the whole range of emotion on this album.

Jambalaya

If there is one food that I love to eat it is Jambalaya. It's like a ricey pork laden plate of total goodness that is never out of season.  The problem was that I had been trying to find or paste together a recipe that would be my "go to". Now I'm not too proud to admit that for a long time when I made Jambalaya, I would just head to the Safeway and grab me a box of Zatarain's Jambalaya in a box, pick up some chicken breast and Andouille sausage and call it a day.  And it was actually pretty good. But I started to add more and more fresh stuff to the mix; fresh herbs, different meats, some hot sauce, and it just started to seem silly that I was still using the box. So the search for a Jambalaya recipe began.

I tried lots and lot of different recipes. From quick recipes with few ingredients and no spice to complex mixtures calling for clam juice and crawdad heads.  But there was always something that didn't quite taste like my first Jambalaya.  They all tasted dark, and the ingredient list got huge and expensive.

But this weekend I came across a chef stating that there are at least two kinds of Jambalya out there: Traditional and Creole.  With the Creole, he said, tomatoes are added to the party.  And that's when I felt like an idiot. Duh, a little acid from the tomato would brighten up the dish considerably.  And when I saw him add three kinds of pork added to the chicken and shrimp, I thought, here is a Jambalaya base that I can work with.  So it was time to play some Zydeco and get to work.

In this version I opted to use drummettes as part of the chicken, and I think it was a good move.  As the Drumettes were on the bone, more flavor ends up being imparted into the dish. Very important is you are using store bought stock.  I also love to serve this with a little Lousisana Hot Sauce. Now I really love these sauce as it imparts what I can only describe as a more "creamy" heat to what you add it to than many others. Unlike the label says, I use more than just a drop, but a few drops would be fine for most people.  I just happen to love really spicy foods.

Now as I said this version uses tons of pork; "healthy" and "kosher" are definitely not words I'd use to describe it...but delicious is.

Ingredients for Jambalaya

11/2 pounds andouille sausage, diced
1 pound fresh pork sausage or ground pork
1 pound bacon, diced
4 chicken thighs cut in half
8 chicken drumettes
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
5 celery stalks, diced
3 large onions, diced
2 green peppers, diced
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried thyme
1 dried bay leaf
11/2 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
1/2 Tbsp celery salt 
4 cups long grain rice
3 cups crushed tomatoes
3 cups rich chicken broth
1pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 bunch green onions, chopped



Music: Buckwheat Zydeco's album "Five Card Stud"

Process for Jambalaya

1. Put the bacon, ground pork, and andouille sausage into a very big pot or dutch oven. I used a 9 quart dutch over and this dish came 3/4 the way to the top. you could probably make due with a 5-6 quart though. Cook over medium high heat till you start to get some brown on the meat and the fat has rendered.


2.While browning meat add a little salt, pepper, and half the Paprika to the chicken and rub the seasonings in.  Once the pork had rendered and browned, add the chicken to the pot and cook till it browns.

3. Once the chicken has browned a bit add the onions, peppers, garlic and celery to the pot and stir occationally. Let the veggies cook until they start to get a little brown. Since there is alot of veggies, this could take 10-15 minutes.

4. Once veggies have softened and browned, add the thyme, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, celery salt, remaining paprika and the rice.  Stir in the pot to open up the spices and toast the rice.  There will be some liquid from the veggies and the rice will start to soak that up a little. Let the pot cook for 5-7 minutes, stir once or twice.

5. Add the Chicken broth and crushed tomatoes and stir. Bring the pot to a boil then lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. I stir it occasionally so that the rice on the bottom doesn't burn.

6. After cooking for 15 mintues, uncover and add the shrimp and green onions. Bury the shrimp down in the rice so its totally covered, put the lid on the pot, and cook for another 5-7 minutes till the shrimp is cooked through.


So what music goes well with a good Jambalaya? The answer for me is Zydeco. Its been around since the 1800's and as it is also a Creole invention, I think it goes well with the creole version of this dish. When it comes to Zydeco I think that Buckwheat Zydeco does it right.

I was introduced to Buckwheat Zydeco by my friend Jason who also introduced me to Zatarain's.  He borrowed Buckwheat's album "Five Card Stud" from our university library and loved the energy of the music.  This is not a music to relax to, its a music to drink beer with friends to.

My favorite cuts of this album are a cover of "Hey Baby", "Man with the Blues", and "I.R.S.".  These tracks really show the mixture of culture that is Creole.  To me it feels like blues being performed by happy people with a touch of jazz tossed in. And its another reason why the accordion is cool.

Key Lime Ice Cream

The heat has still not left the Washington D.C. area...and that means more cool food.

This is one of my favorite homemade ice cream recipes. I found the base for this recipe in a cookbook my wife gave me as a gift a couple years ago, but have been tinkering with it to make it even better. One of the great things about this ice cream is that it is one of those desserts that you don't need to have alot of in order to feel like you have enjoyed it. The tartness of the key lime juice mixed with he sweetness of the graham crackers allows you to be satisfied with only a scoop or two (unlike fresh berries which I will continue to eat till they are all gone).

I made this dessert for a little dinner some friends made for me and my wife. They made a great chicken curry along side some kebobs. Talk about good food, I need to get the recipes. The meal had both spice and heat to it and, though I love food with a lot of kick to it the wife and I were glad to find that yogurt was included to temper the heat when it got a little much. It took a bit of thinking to come up with a dessert that could go along with such strong flavors and I think this ice cream held up well.

Ingredients for Key Lime Ice Cream

3 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup key lime juice
4 graham crackers, broken into small pieces

Music: Ladytron's following albums. "Witching Hour" and "Light and Magic"

Process for Key Lime Ice Cream

In a bowl, whisk eggs with sugar until thickened and pale yellow

In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, bring milk and cream to a simmer. Gradually whisk into the egg mixture

Return entire mixture to the saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not let it boil. Strain into a clean large bowl and let cool to room temperature.

Stir in lime juice. Cover and refrigerate until its completely cool

Stir cream cream mixture. Transfer to Ice cream mixer and freeze according to your mixers instructions.

Add graham crackers in the last five minutes of mixing and let the machine stir them in.


So what music goes well with Key Lime Ice Cream? For me that would be the band Ladytron. Hailing from Liverpool, Ladytron has been around for a long time. I didn't find out about them till 2003 with their album "Light and Magic". This was followed up with their album "Witching Hour". Ever since I first heard them they have had a solid place in my playlists. Now you may not be fans of Electronica, I don't think I really was till I heard them. If you have the chance check out the cuts "Seventeen", "International Dateline" and "Destroy Everything You Touch". These tracks contrast energetic and upbeat synth tracks with more dark lyrics. They are firmly entrenched in the Synthpop genre but they combine this with New Wave sensibilities. Musically they are definitely the children of 80s.

Chilled Melon Soup - Two Styles

So I don't need to tell you that it has been hot this past week. The air conditioning has been on all week and I've been trying to avoid using the oven. One has to love D.C. summers.

As it is so freaking hot I decided to try my hand at a cool recipe this week. Something chilled and that does not use the stove. I decided it was time that I try a melon soup.

When I first moved to DC in 2003, I lived on Capitol Hill. On the hill, a few blocks from where I lived, is a pretty good German restaurant/bar called Cafe Berlin. It was here that I first encountered melon soup. I would walk the two blocks there on Saturdays, and during the summer I would eat outside on the patio. This soup was a great way to cool down a bit and its lightness was very refreshing. And let me tell you, you don't often think of the word "refreshing" with much of what one can get at an American German restaurant.

It was also a fun recipe to do as I tested my chef knives out against each other. Every now and then it still surprises me the difference a good tool can make in the kitchen. So I will just throw a little recommendation out there. When cutting up lots of melons my favorite knife is the 8" Shun Premier chef knife. The knife feels really light in the hand and it goes through an 8 inch thick melon without you needing to use any muscle at all. Lots of people use the phrase "cut through it like it was butter" and that is exactly what this knife did. And not hard just out of the fridge butter either. More like cutting through butter that has been sitting in the sun for an hour and your knife is actually a lightsaber.

Music: John Williams - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (OMPS)

Ingredients for Chilled Melon Soup

• 1 ripe Honeydew or Cantaloupe, about 3 pounds, inner flesh cut into 1-inch pieces (about 5 cups)

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint

• 3 tablespoons melon liqueur or Grand Marnier (recommended: Midori)

• 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice, or more if desired

• 2 tablespoons super fine sugar

• 2 tablespoons creme fraiche or yogurt, garnish

• Mint, for garnishing

Process for Chilled Melon Soup

In 2 batches in a food processor, puree the melon, mint, 2 1/2 tablespoons of the liquer, lime juice and sugar. Taste for acidity, you may add more lime juice here if desired. Place in a pitcher or bowl and refrigerate until well chilled.

To serve, ladle the soup into 4 shallow bowls. Swirl 1 1/2 teaspoons of the crème fraiche into the center of each serving. Garnish with fresh mint springs.

Yeah, I know, the Star Wars prequels sucked. But they did do one thing, they gave us one great cut off this album, "Dual of Fates". And let me tell you, its exciting to test out knives on melons listening to Dual of Fates. It makes everything more dramatic. And that is just what you need in a kitchen on a hot day...drama.

Four Cheese Barquettes

Ahh...the barquette... A wonderful way to move tasty bits of food from a plate to your mouth. And since it is also a "tiny food", and as my wife can attest I love tiny food; I had to give it a whirl. The cool thing is that if you can make a pie dough, you can make a barquette.

These tasty morsels are great for an appetizer or finger food for a cocktail party. One nice thing is that you can make the shells ahead of time and save them for a few days before your hip get together. Barquettes can be savory or sweet, but as this was my first try at making them I decided to go with the four cheese savoy barquette. I mean who doesn't like cheese? Well aside from my lactose intolerant friends out there.

This project can be thought of as three separate recipes, the first two of which are great to learn as they can be used in many different applications. For instance the shells, called Pate Brisee, use pie making skills as you are basically making small pie shells. For the end result you also get to make a Bechamel sauce, one of the mother sauces which, once you learn how to make it, it will open up the world of sauce making for you. Yey mother sauces!

Music: Carla Bruni's Queleu'un M'a Dit

Ingredients Pate Brisee

2 1/2 Cups AP Flour
3/4 cup butter (diced and chilled in freezer for 20 minutes)
1 egg, lightly beaten
salt

Process Pate Brisee
1. Sift flour and salt together into a food processor or bowl. Add the chilled butter. If using food processor , process till flour/butter combination looks like bread crumbs. If not using a food processor, blend the butter into the flour/salt mixture using a pastry blender.

2. Once the butter is blended into the flour/salt mixture place mixture on your counter and make a well in the center so your mixture looks like a volcano. Add the beaten egg and 2 tsp of cold water into the well. With two fingers, slowly incorporate the wet into the dry turning your ingredients into a wet dough. Knead this dough lightly. Split dough in half and form each half into a flat round about 4 inches in diameter. Cover these rounds with plastic wrap and place int eh refrigerator for around an hour. This resting time allows for the dough to adsorb the moisture in the dough more fully and all for it to relax, making it easier to roll out later.

3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. After an hour, roll out the dough to about 1/8th inch and line your tartlette or Barquette molds with the dough. fill the pastry lined molds with beans or pie weights and bake in over for ~15 minutes. When slightly browned take out of the over and remove beans from the shell and the shell from the mold. Let the shells cool before adding filling. Shells will last 2-3 days in the refrigerator or up to a month inf the freezer. if you want to make these ahead of time.

Ingredients for Bechamel

1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup AP flour
2 1/2 cups milk
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (optional)
Salt and pepper

Process for Bechamel
1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and let it cook for a minute or so. Pour in all the milk, whisking constantly until mixture starts to boil. Season with salt and lower the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 20 minutes stiring occasionally. Remove from heat and season with more salt if needed. Add pepper and nutmeg if using. The bachamel should not taste floury at this point. If it is too think, add more milk and butter and return to heat till it reaches the thickness you like.

Ingrediants for Four Cheese Barquetes
1 1/2 cups ditalini pasta
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup Fontina cheese, grated
1/2 cup Emmenthal cheese, grated
1/2 cup Caciotta cheese, grated (or MonterreyJack)
1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese, grated
35-50 Pate Brisee Barquettes (pretty much what is made from the above recipe)
1 Quantity Bechamel Sauce
Grape tomatoes, thinly sliced
Salt

Process for Four Cheese Barquetes

Cook the pasts in salted boiling water for 8-12 minutes, unitil al dente. Drain and stir in all the cheeses and the butter. Place cheese pasta mixture into pastry shells and add 1-2 tablespoons bechamel sauce to each. Top with one or two thin slices of grape tomato. Place on a cookie sheet an bake in a 400degree preheated over till golden and bubbling.



With this weeks appetizer I listened to Carla Bruni's album entitled Quelqu'un M'a Dit. You may know her as the first lady of France but I really dig her first album. Most tracks simply her vocals with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. When I listen to this album I am transported to a 1960's era Paris France cafe. I sip some coffee, wear my black turtleneck, and take on a partially pretentious but very romantic air. As such, I think it goes well with the Barquettes. Sure these are basically mac and cheese on a cracker, but hell doesn't Four Cheese Barquettes with a Bachemel sauce sound so much cooler? Anyway, a couple of great cuts from the album are the title track, Raphael, and L'Amour. Just don't forget your turtleneck while you are listening to them.