Perpetual "What's for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner Today" thread

[Darb]

I decided to splurge a little tonite, and grabbed a bone-in rib loin of veal ($6/lb USD is a good price, for an uncut cryovac primal). I frenched it, cut it into "tomahawk" chops, seasoned it with oil, salt, pepper and ground rosemary, seared them on the cast iron flat top, then finished them on edge over indirect heat until rosy med-rare.





And here's my new granite slab in my garage, which I'll use for bread and pasta. I snagged it for a mere $100. At 55" x 25" x 1.25" (roughly 11 sq ft) and around 160 lbs, that's a spectacular price (aside: as of this writing, finished granite typically runs $40-56/sqft). Great deal. All I gotta do is locate some sealant.

[Darb]

This past weekend, my wife helped me fire up the smoker. I did a cola-brined pork shoulder and a pan of doctored baked beans. This photo was taken 2 hours into a 6 hours smoke using hardwood charcoal and apple wood scraps. After smoking, I transferred the shoulder to a slow cooker, for a four-hour sweat with a cup of hard cider, after which it finally got tender enough to slip the bones out.



p.s. Interesting how the grain of the meat in the foreground looks a bit like a coriolis storm on Jupiter.

[laurie]

Looks yummy


Me thinks 10 hours to make a simple pork & beans meal is very funny.

[E Pericoloso Sporgersi]

... p.s. Interesting how the grain of the meat in the foreground looks a bit like a coriolis storm on Jupiter.

Do you call it "Coriolis ham" or "Red Spot Ham" or just plain "Jovian Ham"?

[Darb]

Me thinks 10 hours to make a simple pork & beans meal is very funny.

You are obviously not a follower of the sacred faith of slow food and "true barbeque".

In the spirit of Christmas, I forgive you ... you poor misguided culinarily ignorant heathen.

[Darb]

My wife is dragging me to the inlaws for a dinner of (if past experience is any guide) previously frozen, PSE and sadly overcooked pork, with uninspired pre-packaged sides. My prior offer to bring fresh artichoke dip and maple-roasted winter squash was deemed insufficiently child-friendly by the resident philistines, so I'll be bringing some honeyed cornbread, brownies from scratch, low-key alcoholic beverages, and a few small bottles of homemade vanilla extract instead.

[Kvetch]

Poor Brad. I'm rather looking forward for my next few meals myself (my immediate family turn the days around Christmas into a kind of competative cook-off. I just enjoy the results. It's great.)


I had meant to recount the Christmas dinner my housemates and I prepared a week or so back*, but forgot. For lack of anything else to do with my evening, I'll give you a quick summary now.

To contextualise, I live with a group of students, the majority who were out on the actual day of the dinner at the London SantaCon (for those of you not in the know, for our purposes this translates as 'getting roaring drunk'), so I did most of the on-the-day preparation.

One of my housemates did a rough-cut cream of tomato and cucumber soup as the starter the night before - it was very pleasant, but suprisingly spicy (he'd cooked it with chillis). I very nearly served it as gazpacho, but opted for hot in the end, which was a good choice with the hidden spiciness.

I did a nut roast for myself (based on Rose Elliots' recipe) - it was pleasant, but not spectacular. My (drunken) housemates returned in time to cook a leg of lamb, which despite their incapaciation, turned out very nicely (or so I am told). That was accompanied by lemon roast potatos, fried parsnips, mashed sweet potatos, boiled carrots and french beans in garlic butter (that last was really nice!). I experiemented with skillet cooking portobello muchrooms in garlic butter - while the dish was well recieved, it only confirms my persoanl opinion, which is that I don't like muchrooms.

We finished with an apple tart from the supermarket (or would have, had anyone beeen able to eat it).

For only the second time in my nearly two years of living in that house I remembered that we have a large rosemary bush in our front garden, and actually cooked the potatos (and lamb) with rosemary. My oil-and-lemon juice baste for the potatoes went a little wrong because I rather overcooked the potaotes at the parboiling stage. Still, they were perfectly pleasant to eat.

*It was the closes we could get to Christmas while still having the majority of us in the house not at family gatherigns

[Darb]

Sounds great, Kvetch.

[mccormack44]

We are very untraditional in this household; with just the two of us eating dinner today, the menu is grilled steak, baked potato, and frozen commercial spinach soufflé (Stouffer's does it better than I have learned out to, the portions are smaller and I don't have to work so hard!).

[Darb]

Experimenting with “Gallina India” Fowl (chicken).

Ok, so there I was in one of my favorite hispanic supermarkets, looking (as I often do) for something new and different to play with in the kitchen. On this occasion I was in the mood for chicken, so I headed over to the poultry section … and next to the obligatory pile of boring supermarket chickens, I saw a variety marked “Gallina India”. The chickens were noticeably different, in both build and coloration. In contrast, the standard mass-market supermarket chickens that most of us here in America are familiar with (aka “battery chickens” intensively produced in the millions by companies like purdue, tyson, etc.), have abnormally large breasts, bloated and watery/exudative flesh, a generally weak flavor, a somewhat weak bone structure (fractures are commonplace), and often the skin has a yellowish tinge (from being fed marigold petals just prior to slaughter). In contrast, the skin of the Gallina Indias had a bluish-white tinge, reminiscent of young turkey. Also, the flesh felt very dense, lean, and compact, with very little excess moisture and no visible fat. Also, the breasts were noticeably smaller … sized more like nature intended.

Anyway, I brought one home, got it out of its packaging, rinsed it and patted it dry. Damn, that bird was DENSE … like it was raised on the planet Krypton, in super gravity. Anyway, given it’s density, I suspected it would only be good for long slow stewing, but just to experiment I seasoned it, shoved it on a vertical stand, and roasted it to a perfect 165F, just to see how it came out. The bird shed very little juice and virtually no fat during cooking, and boy it was TOUGH … so tough that even my well honed knives had trouble cutting it into pieces, and the flesh was like a truck tire. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, all the references to using a “tough old rooster” for coq au vin suddenly came to life … here was a bird that I’d roasted perfectly, yet was inedibly tough. By the way, the dark meat was also noticeably darker than a typical chicken … darker even than duck legs. The dark meat was a reddish brown when cooked.

Anyway, I finished hacking it up into pieces, and tossed it into the slow cooker with some mirepoix, for a six hour simmer while I did some reading. It turns out “Sopa de Gallina India” is a rustic el salvadorian chicken broth with vegetables (the meat is served on the side). Translated directly, “gallina” means “hen” and “india” loosely translates as freshly killed, ranch style. Less literal but more common meanings seem to have overtones of the chicken being either wild or at the very least free range, and being from a brown breed … the brown seeming to refer to either the feathers, the extra dark shade of the dark meat, or both. The overall effect is that of a lean, tough, gamey, small-breasted farmhouse (or wild) chicken that’s useless for frying or roasting, but which is ideally suited to making delicious broth … and sure enough, after six hours, the broth was very good, and so lean it didn’t even need defatting, just straining. The slow-braised flesh was lean, dry and stringy … too dry to put back in the soup, so I decided to let the broth shine though unopposed and just chunk in some zucchini and something starchy, and keep the meat on the side, per native tradition.

The bottom line is that I’d unwittingly reverse-engineered one of the classic antique dishes of El Salvador.

I'll try to post a picture or two tomorrow.

[voralfred]

This is certainly curious.
I have two questions: I did look up Mirepoix on Wikipedia (both in french and english) but the definition vary. Did you add initially raw vegetables (exacly which ones, and in what proportion?) to the already roasted chicken meat?
And after six hours of simmering, inedibly tough roasted meat gave its delicious taste to a broth, but was too dry to put back in the soup... so what did you do with it? Eat it as a side dish? Did it still have taste? How could it be more edible as a side dish than in the soup?
A third question: since the meat was so tough your well-honed knives had trouble dealing with it, why didn't you put the whole thing into your slow-cooker till the meat fell off the bones? Couldn't it fit?

Somehow it seems to me that taking all the trouble of raising free-range chicken to get a beast that cannot be roasted but only gives broth and stringy meat that is eaten as a side dish because the broth is better "unopposed" seems to me somehow to defeat the entire purpose.

[Darb]

I took the liberty of inserting numbers to the questions ...

This is certainly curious.

1) I have two questions: I did look up Mirepoix on Wikipedia (both in french and english) but the definition vary. Did you add initially raw vegetables (exacly which ones, and in what proportion?) to the already roasted chicken meat?

2) And after six hours of simmering, inedibly tough roasted meat gave its delicious taste to a broth, but was too dry to put back in the soup... so what did you do with it? Eat it as a side dish? Did it still have taste? How could it be more edible as a side dish than in the soup?

3) A third question: since the meat was so tough your well-honed knives had trouble dealing with it, why didn't you put the whole thing into your slow-cooker till the meat fell off the bones? Couldn't it fit?

4) Somehow it seems to me that taking all the trouble of raising free-range chicken to get a beast that cannot be roasted but only gives broth and stringy meat that is eaten as a side dish because the broth is better "unopposed" seems to me somehow to defeat the entire purpose.

1) You are correct in pointing out that mirepoix varys from country to country and application to application. However, for making poultry stock, it's generally chopped onion, celery and carrot in a roughly 3:2:1 ratio (ratios vary from household to household, and also day to day preferences). For seafood stock, the carrot is typically omitted and part of the celery is sometimes replaced with fennel bulb. In cajun cuisine, the carrot is replaced with bell pepper. Ok, and since the chicken was already roasted and enroute to a slow cooker for stock, I skipped the usual step of sweating the mirepoix in oil on the stove, and used added them raw to the water.

2) If I were a far less frugal person than I am, I’d probably have tossed the meat with the bones. However, as indicated near the bottom of my post, I left the boiled meat on the side - although it was no longer inedibly tough, it was still dryish and somewhat washed out in flavor, and didn’t seem to fit well with the otherwise successful broth. Most of it is still in the fridge - I may dress it with some mayo … haven’t decided yet.

3) Carcasses are always chopped into smaller pieces when making stock … it enables better circulation of liquid and ingredients during stirring/simmering, better extraction of flavor and collagen from the joints (which slow cooking converts into gelatin, giving boths their rich mouthfeel), faster cooking overall, and more room for mirepoix.

4) Stock-based rustic dishes like sopa de gallina india (salvadorean), coq au vin (france), and even boullibaise (extending the analogy to fish) evolved in order to turn rough, tough, indelicate, or otherwise sub-premium carcasses and scraps into delicious broths, which are then finished into very passable (if rustic) broth-based dishes. The gallina india, although inedibly tough when roasted, makes a both that is noticeably better to one made from a “battery” chicken … stronger flavor, more collagen/gelatin (richer mouthfeel and a firmer set when chilled), and a greater yeild of broth for the amount of carcass used. Given the tradeoff between better broth on one hand, and more useable meat (and more cooking options) on the other, I’d say it’s a tossup as to which is better. To extend the analogy to beef, I'll take a broth made from ox-tails over that made freom stewing chuck - the tougher product with more connective tissue makes the better broth.

[voralfred]

4) Stock-based rustic dishes like sopa de gallina india (salvadorean), coq au vin (france), and even boullibaise (extending the analogy to fish) evolved in order to turn rough, tough, indelicate, or otherwise sub-premium carcasses and scraps into delicious broths, which are then finished into very passable (if rustic) broth-based dishes. The gallina india, although inedibly tough when roasted, makes a both that is noticeably better to one made from a “battery” chicken … stronger flavor, more collagen/gelatin (richer mouthfeel and a firmer set when chilled), and a greater yeild of broth for the amount of carcass used. Given the tradeoff between better broth on one hand, and more useable meat (and more cooking options) on the other, I’d say it’s a tossup as to which is better. To extend the analogy to beef, I'll take a broth made from ox-tails over that made freom stewing chuck - the tougher product with more connective tissue makes the better broth.

Well, clearly every ox that is killed for rumsteak and faux-filet has a tail, some fish that get caught are not premium, and many poor salvadorean peasants have a tough brown chicken in their backyard, so it makes sense to find some use for that when you have it at hand. Making a great broth, and broth-based dish, out of it, is the best idea. But the gallina india you bought, I suppose it was not bought from a poor salvadorean peasant, was it? It was raised free-range either in the US or maybe in Salvador (but you have to add the price of transportation), on purpose, and I am pretty sure that you paid more, by pound, than for a battery chicken, didn't you? Well, however excellent the broth was, it still seems bizarre to my eyes to pay more per pound (unless I am mistaken) for great broth and unedible meat than for meat. Carcasses and scraps would make much cheaper and almost as good broth, wouldn't they?

[Darb]

Numbered bullets added ...

1) the gallina india you bought, I suppose it was not bought from a poor salvadorean peasant, was it?

2) It was raised free-range either in the US or maybe in Salvador (but you have to add the price of transportation), on purpose, and I am pretty sure that you paid more, by pound, than for a battery chicken, didn't you?

3) Well, however excellent the broth was, it still seems bizarre to my eyes to pay more per pound (unless I am mistaken) for great broth and unedible meat than for meat.

4) Carcasses and scraps would make much cheaper and almost as good broth, wouldn't they?

1) I can only speculate, but tempering what I observed regarding anatomical differences against the hypothetical cost of shipping something from el salvador, I suspect (a) it was not flown in fresh from el salvador, (b) it definitely was very athletic and probably free range prior to slaughter, (c) it was VERY fresh - fresher than the pile of pale, bloated, watery and exudative purdues laying next to it, and (d) it was probably from a variety bred specifically for laying eggs and making soup rather than for roasting/frying ... which is a perfectly viable breeding strategy.

2) If I recall, the bird I grabbed was roughly 3.1 lbs, and $1.56 USD/lb ... which, given it's notably superior broth (in both flavor and quantity) is perfectly competitive with the $0.99 USD/lb laying next to it. Given the pleasure I had from learning something new, plus the fact that it made more & better tasting broth, I think the $1.74 USD difference in total cost was well worth it. The $1.56 is also very competitive with other premium varieties of poultry I've seen on sale, so it's economically viable for it's niche.

3) Reread my post. I said the meat was only inedible after the initial roasting ... it became edible after prolonged simmering, albeit somewhat tough and washed out (as most poultry tends to get when simmered that long).

4) Yes, but the whole point of my grabbing the gallina india, rather than the usual battery chicken, was to learn the nuances of something new and different. Mission accomplished.

Anyway, picking up the story where I left off ...

After letting the broth chill overnight in the fridge, I scooped away the solidified traces of fat (not very much). The both was well gelled and flavorful, and even though I'd skipped doing a remoulage, the yeild was fairly impressive (roughly 1qt/lb poultry). Anyway, to finish the soup, I brought it back to a simmer. Since I didn't have a driving need for alternate use for the boiled meat, I wound up adding it back to the soup (if I were having guests over I probably would have instead obtained, deboned and diced in some fresh chicken thigh meat during the last few minutes of the simmer, or stirred in a few beaten eggs at the last second). As for starch a veg - a traditional hispanic finish would have been to add something like diced yuca, some chunks of corn on the cob, and perhaps some carrot or chayote, but not having any of those handy I added orzo pasta, followed several minutes later with large bias dice of 2 medium zucchini, and then some cilantro at the last minute. Came out great.

[Terry]

Sorry to hear about your cold, Terry.

I made a nice sopa de gallina india for you over in the what's for dinner thread in the tap room.

That broth sounds very good about now.

Terry

[Darb]

Breakfast was a large matzoh-brei with sauteed onion & jalapeno, minced ham, parsley and orange zest. The 12" pan took 6 matzohs and I used the lid of a stock pot for the invert+slide maneuver when it was ready to flip. Plenty of leftovers for breakfast tomorrow too.

Then our furnace kicked out for half a day ... while trying to keep the place warm while we waited for repairs, I made a pair of homemade pizzas. Crust was rosemary-herb, cheese was a blend of mozz parm and romano, and toppings were canned tomato puree, some thin-sliced sopressatta and some halved cherry tomatoes. Bake twice on a pizza stone at 550F for 7 + 3 mins ... came out good.

[Darb]

Followup to my "Sopa de Gallina India" posts from last week:

I normally keep my freezer stocked up with certain regularly used homemade staples, like unsliced lox, pizza dough, homemade stock, etc. Anyway, I was out of stock recently, and when I was at the store, I decided to compare my recent gallina india broth with my classic homemade brown chicken stock, so I grabbed a bunch of chicken backs, and a flat iron steak.

I lightly browned off the chicken backs in stages in a stainless steel pan, along with mirepoix, and slipped it into my slow cooker. The flat iron steak got butterflied and put in a marinade for seperate use ... but the big lovely inedible interior tendon, and the silver skin trimmings from the exterior (which 99% of people and even most professional chefs throw away) got slipped into the slow cooker, because as any serious follower of the SlowFoods movement knows (as do people who regularly cook things like lamb shanks and osso bucco), tendons are made of collagen, and collagen transforms into unctuous GELATIN during long slow cooking.

Anyway, the flat iron steak got grilled off for dinner, while the slow cooker worked its slow inexorable magic overnight. In the morning, the contents were transferred into a large collander nestled snugly in a large workbowl, which caught all the stock. The brown chicken stock was subsequently fine-strained, defatted, and set aside (in my 34F garage) to cool. After par cooling, I removed and reserved most of the edible meat from the chicken backs. Unlike the gallina india, which was overlean and somewhat dry and washed out after prolonged simmering, the meat from the "battery" chicken backs (mostly hip abductor "oyster" meat, and bits of meat from the loin and upper thigh) was tender and still had plenty of flavor and some residual fat/unctuousness. All the bones and tendons went back into the slow cooker, for a 4 hour remoulage, which was subsequently fine strained, defatted, and reduced before being blended back into the first stock (which had already begun to form a stiff gel. The result was a very intense, full bodied, slightly over-strength brown chicken stock, or what I sometimes call "super stock". A chef instructor might have faulted me for not having clarified it into a consumme, but the flavor was good enough to cause jewish grandmothers to rise from the dead and begin cooing uncontrollably.



So, was my classic stock (made from browned chicken backs & beef tendon and a concentrated remoulage) better than the single 'first' broth made from a gallina india ? Hell yeah.

The bottom line is that a whole roast gallina india will yeild noticeably more, and tastier, 'first' broth than from a comparable sized whole "battery" chicken, and if you're a soup aficianando, it's worth the slightly higher price. However, if you have the time and skill to make a classic professional stock exclusively from backs, necks and tendons, the results are significantly better (no surprise there). In any case, gallina india definitely has its uses ... albeit a somewhat narrow niche.

[Darb]

Further followup: I used up 2 quarts of my stock last night, whipping up a pot of one of my favorite Southern-style wintertime comfort food recipes ...

Darb's Chicken Stew with Dumplings (yeilds approx 4 qts)
I basically sweat 1 cup each of 1/4" diced onion, and 1/2" bias-diced celery and carrot in a little oil until tender but not colored, add 1 tsp ea poultry seasoning & celery seed (and a pinch of saffron), followed by 2 qts of strong (fully gelled) homemade chicken stock. Simmer 10 mins, skim off any excess oil/fat along with the spent dried spices (for appearance), add the flaked chicken meat (reserved from making the stock), adjust for salt, then shake together (in a small jar) 1/2 cup flour with 1 cup milk (my wife's partially lactose intolerant, so I sometimes have to use water here) and stir into the soup, which will begin slowly thickening into a stew. While the stew simmers (stir periodically), whip up a quick biscuit dough (whisk together 1 1/2 cups AP flour, 3 tsp double acting baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, then fork in 2/3 cup hot milk & 1/4 cup melted butter until batter just comes together) and spoon it into quenelles (using a pair of spoons coated with spray oil) atop the slowly simmering stew, forming a raft dumplings. Then it's just cover, simmer 8-10 mins, gently nudge the dumplings over to cook on their other sides, cover and simmer 8-10 mins more, and serve.



It's a very old fashioned dish - you dont see biscuit dumplings very often in my part of the country, so it rarely fails to impress, despite being dirt simple.

[Darb]

For lunch today my wife took me to a nautical pub for some fried seafood and a pint of draft hardcore cider ... most of the food was ok, but the big plump sweet fried oysters in particular were a close second to the best I've ever had. Oooh la la.

For dinner I sliced some local lox (Acme) I'd thawed & sliced, which got nestled atop a toasted piece of multi-grain bread slathered with some homemade lox-creamcheese. A glass of chilled organic momokawa nigori (a steal at $12/btl) went swimmingly.

[Darb]

Photos for chicken stew with dumplings, and brown chicken stock, added below.

[Darb]

Lunch today was a grated beet salad (dressed with a little simple syrup, lime juice, a little salt, and canola oil), and some homemade artichoke dip on 12 grain bread.

For dinner I threw together a soup: sauteed onion, ginger and minced jalapeno, followed by thick chinese rice noodles (which took 20 minutes to cook, rather than the 8-10 that the poorly written 'engrish' on the back indicated), bias sliced asparagus, chicken stock, and then finessed with a little egg, miso paste, and a palmful of frozen bay scallops from the freezer.

For tomorrow, I have a large head of cauliflour in the fridge. Haven't decided yet whether or not to roast it, make another soup, or perhaps do a southern indian curry.

[voralfred]

For tomorrow, I have a large head of cauliflour in the fridge. Haven't decided yet whether or not to roast it, make another soup, or perhaps do a southern indian curry.

How do you roast a haed of cauliflour? Just whole? I don't remember ever having roasted cauliflour.

[Darb]

I'll let you know when I learn myself.

[Terry]

Wow Darb

Did you go to culinary school?

Terry

[Darb]

No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express.