Independence

Something maybe sort of for a holiday.

It’s been a crazy sort of week.  Work – yeah, I sort of have a day job - has been a little hectic as colleagues and I work to get a new project off the ground (more on that in an upcoming edition).   There’s a holiday coming up and we’ll be traveling.  Oh, and it’s been like a thousand degrees which affects both my rather long bicycle commute and what I want to cook.  It’s too hot to light the oven (I did anyway) and when it’s 90 and humid, it changes what you want to eat anyway.

This week is the week I finally get around to writing up the holiday barbecue food I’ve been failing to cook and write about for the past few weeks.  Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.  I don’t actually know if this meal really counts as a holiday barbecue, or if it’s just a riff on that concept.  There’s barbecue chicken, but it’s a little different.  Green beans. Also a little unusual.  Corn. Different-ish. Ok. If I were in a band I would definitely call this a riff rather than a tribute or a cover.  That’s fine. That means I don’t have to be faithful to some orthodoxy that defines how it’s supposed to be, right?  Or in this case it just means I felt like making all these a little different.  Different than I’ve made them in the past and different than maybe they’re usually made.

There won’t be a new Weekly Menu next week or the week after.  I’ll be traveling for ten days and … well I could use a week or two off. I’m also not good at cooking in the car. Yet. 

I may do another clips show for July 13th, but otherwise, look out for a new edition on July 20th.  For those of you in the states and our neighbors to the north, enjoy the upcoming holiday weekends. 

Eat good things. Have fun.  Don’t melt.

Sweet Corn with Pastrami Butter

I grew up (mostly) in Ohio.  That means I love corn on the cob.  Obviously people from other places also like corn on the cob, but since our home state appears to consist of 88% corn fields, Ohioans don’t really have a choice. We’re required to love corn on the cob.  Otherwise, we would have to 88% hate our home state.  We don’t. Instead, we’re sort of weirdly obsessive about how much we love it.  There are t-shirts and hats and lots of items featuring our very strange flag (it’s called a burgee). I’m wearing a hat with the burgee on it right now.

This is just corn on the cob with a fancy butter on it, but I promise the fancy butter is good.  This fancy butter work the same way that a smear of BBQ sauce that got on the corn because you overloaded your plate works.  That little bit of salt smokey sweet savory sauce somehow makes the buttery corn even sweeter, crisper, more-buttery.   I was regionally thinking of making a BBQ butter, but the more I thought about it the more pastrami spice made sense.  The coriander and mustard work that make pastrami so good, that cut through that deliciously fatty cut of brisket work really well with the rich sweet buttery corn.  Give it a try. You won’t regret it. At least probably not.

8 pieces sweet corn, on the cob
1 stick unsalted butter
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp finely ground black pepper
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp kosher salt
1 tsp light brown sugar
4 drops hickory liquid smoke

Add the butter, coriander, mustard, black pepper, smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt, brown sugar and liquid smoke to the container of a food processor and pulse until completely combined.

Turn this mixture out onto a sheet of plastic wrap and use the wrap to roll it into a log, twisting the ends to seal and shape the butter.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or until ready to use.

Shuck and clean the corn of thin fibers.

Prepare a large pot of salted boiling water.

Boil the corn for 4- 5 minutes.

Serve hot, generously topped with pastrami butter.

Caramelized Onion & Bourbon Green Beans

I won’t claim this is an original recipe.  I’m certain – absolutely certain – that this recipe or something similar appears in numerous spiral bound booster club cookbooks published in the past 50 years all over the south eastern part of the U.S.   Beans, caramelized onions, and bourbon just work together.  I probably should have added bacon to really get the trifecta, but I already use to much bacon in my cooking and this way I can at least claim the dish is vegetarian.

1 lb green beans, fresh
1 large onion
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp bourbon whiskey
½ tsp fresh ground black pepper
½ tsp kosher salt.
¼ cup roasted unsalted peanuts

Prepare a large pot of heavily salted boiling water and an ice bath.

Trim the stems and ends from the green beans.

Blanch the beans in the boiling water for 30 seconds, then shock them in the ice water.

Drain and set aside until almost ready to serve.

Peel, trim, and thinly slice the onion from end to end.

Add ½ the butter to a thick bottomed pan over medium heat. 

Once the butter has stopped foaming, add to the pan, season the onions with kosher salt, and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions begin to caramelize.

Deglaze the pan with a little of the bourbon, and continue cooking until the onions are deeply caramelized.

Remove the onions from the pan and wipe out the pan.

Add the remaining butter to the pan.

One the butter has stopped foaming, add the blanched green beans and sauté until warmed through, but still very crisp – about 1-2 minutes.

Add the caramelized onions, the remaining bourbon, vinegar, and salt and pepper.

Sauté for an additional minute or so and turn out on to a serving plate.

Crush the peanuts with the flat of a knife and top the beans with crushed peanuts.

Smoked German Potato Salad

German potato salad was a holiday staple when I was a kid.  Granted, the holiday it was a staple for wasn’t always Independence day,  but so many of our neighbors were of German descent that … well, there was always German potato salad.  I know it’s a contentious thing.  A lot of my southern friends would tell you that it’s not potato salad but just some sort of warm potato dish with vinegar.  I’ll defer to whatever lable you want to put on it.  Call it extra super delicious potatoes with vinegar, bacon, and onions if you want – because that’s what it is.    The little twist here is that I smoke the potatoes.  It both adds flavor, and changes the texture.  The smoking forms a bit of a crust on the potato pieces, so the have more of an al dente bite to them. 

1 lb fingerling potatoes
4 strips thick cut smokey bacon
1 medium onion
¼ cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp light brown sugar
2 tbsp losel packed chopped parsley

Prepare a large pot of salted boiling water.

Slice the fingerlings in half, lengthwise.

Boil the halved potatoes for 6-7 minutes, or until just barely tender.

Drain the potatoes, and transfer to a small sheet pan lined with a rack.

Place the rack in a smoker and smoke the potatoes over hardwood for 30 minutes to 1  hour.

Remove, and allow to cool.

Peel, trim, and slice the onion from end to end.

Cut the bacon into ¼ inch slices. 

Fry the bacon until crispy.

Remove the bacon, and most of the rendered fat.

Add the onion to the rendered fat still in the pan and cook over high heat until the edges of the onions begin to brown.

Add the sugar, cider vinegar, smoked potatoes, crisped bacon, and parsley to the pan and cook until the potatoes are just warmed through.

Serve warm.

Note:  if you don’t have or are not using a smoker, you can simply add liquid smoke to the water you cook the potatoes in and add an additional 2-3 minutes of cooking time to that step.  The texture will be slightly different (the smoking step dries the potatoes slightly) but the flavor will be similar.

Mustard Brined Smoked Chicken with Maple White BBQ Sauce

This chicken recipe is sort of a riff on Alabama style smoked chicken.  The problem is I’ve only had the authentic item once, so like most of the recipes I do here, this isn’t so much a faithful representation as it is an homage, maybe a sort of soft focus replica, and not an authentic recipe.  The mustard brine adds a nice tang to the chicken itself, and helps keep the meat nice and tender even in a long slow smoke. Because I’m a northernish type, I use maple syrup in it. Also because maple syrup is delicious.  It’s the best thing ever to come from trees, if you ignore apples and guitars.

Yes. The chicken and the potatoes sort of look the same. White fleshed food item cooked in smoker = same. they’re both smokey delicious, and go great together.

1 3-5 lb Chicken
2 qt cold water
¼ cup yellow mustard
1 clove garlic
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp red pepper flake

Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.

Combine mustard, crushed garlic, black pepper, salt, Worcestershire sauce, pepper flake, and water. 

Place the chicken and the bine in a zip top bag or other container large enough to hold both with the chicken completely covered.

Brine for at least 4 hours, and up to 36 hours.

Remove the chicken from the brine, pat dry, and slow smoke over hardwood until the internal temperature reaches 165°F.  With my electric smoker, this takes 3-4 hours.

Cut up the chicken and serve with Maple White BBQ sauce (below).

Maple White BBQ Sauce

¼  cup Mayonnaise
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp prepared horseradish
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp red pepper flakes

Combine all ingredients and whisk well to combine.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

Strawberry Shortbread

If I made this in mid January, I would count this as another one of my lazy desserts. But because it’s the last week in June, this is a  seasonal favorite. There’s nothing fancy here.  Drop biscuit style shortcakes, strawberries macerated in sugar and a little orange liqueur  to amp up the flavor, and topped with whipped cream.  I don’t include a recipe for the whipped cream here, so you can use what you like:  stuff from a can, that not quite a food product stuff from a tub, or  - as I tend to do – simple plain ol’ unsweetened whipping cream beaten to stiff peaks. In my opinion (and I have a lot of opinions about food, obviously) the dessert is sweet enough on it’s own, and the unsweetened whipped cream is a great balance to everything else on the plat.

1 lbs strawberries

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ oz orange liqueur (Cointreau, Grand Marnier, etc)

Remove the hulls – the green parts – from the strawberries and slice them thinly.

Add the strawberries, sugar, and liqueur if using, to a non-reactive bowl.  Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Shortcakes

2 cups AP Flour
1 cup whole milk
4 tbsp cold butter
½ cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 400° F.

Add the flour, sugar, and baking powder to a bowl. 

Cut the butter into very small cubes or use a box grater to grate it into the flour.

Using your fingers or a fork, integrate the butter into the flour until it resembles a very coarse meal.

While mixing with a fork, slowly pour the milk into the mixture, stopping as soon as the ingredients are combined.  Do not over mix.

Spoon four even portions onto a sheet pan lined with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

Bake at 400 until firm and the edges are just beginning to brown – 18-20 minutes.

All to cool completely.

To serve:  Slice each shortcake in half, top with strawberries, the replace the top portion of the cake, and top with unsweetened whipped cream.  Garnish with mint leaves.