Xan: Chicken, and family! (allegedly)

We had Melanie, Kelvin, Chelsea and Nick over this summer, and I did chicken on the grill with my rotisserie-style rub.  It was a hit!  I thoroughly regret that we did not take a single picture for Vongsafood, given that it was a family food occasion, but I guess we were too distracted by our hosting duties.  It happened, I promise!  

Maybe we can all just pretend this is a picture of the chicken we ate?  Wait, let me try that again.   

Maybe we can all just pretend this is a picture of the chicken that Nick ate?  There was a second chicken too, for those of us who don't play football, but I'm sure it's just out of the frame...

Did I post this recipe before?

For the rub, mix together 1 TBS brown sugar, 1 TBS paprika, 1 TBS chili powder, 1 TBS kosher salt (or 2 tsp table salt), and some ground pepper.

Coat the surface of the chicken with a little oil, and sprinkle the rub on all surfaces. 

Roast chicken in the oven at 400 degrees until done. (I use a thermometer and take it out when the breast reaches 147 degrees and the thigh reaches 165).

 

Xan: More pizza

I liked this shot so I am sharing it.

Xan: Ribeye Cap!

Catherine's grandpa gave us a gift certificate to Publican Quality Meats.  So we put it to good use!  Here is a ribeye cap steak, spinach with slab bacon, and olive bread:

Oh, ribeye cap, how I love you.

Actually the beef, bacon and bread are all from Publican.  The lamb in the last post was also Quality Meat.  We really enjoyed all our meats.

Also, the butcher at Publican had a tattoo of a cow on his forearm, with the different cuts of beef.  If a customer wants to know where a cut is from, he can just point at his handy diagram.  That's dedication!

Catherine: Pie tips

For those of you considering the pie recipe in my last post, Catherine shares a couple pie tips:

• When I'm done with the food processor part, my "dough" looks nothing like dough.  It looks like vaguely chunky powder.  (I mention this is because I thought I did it wrong the first few times and potentially over-processed it.)

• It makes a really big difference to weigh the flour (instead of using measurements by volume).

Catherine says this crust is one of Kenji's best recipes.  Since we are fans in general, that is high praise.  I mean, our Thanksgiving is like 50% Kenji recipes.  Ooh, Thanksgiving...it's coming up!  

Gobble, gobble!

Xan, Catherine, Ryan, Kris, Cammy: Apple-picking!

Folks, it's apple-picking season!

Last year, apple picking was a bust.  An early warm-spell/frost killed off all the apples in the midwest.  Instead, County Line orchard hung up miles of rain gutters and stocked them with pre-picked apples flown in from Washington.  They helpfully decided to inform us by advertising on their website not only that they were open for picking, but furthermore that it was in fact "raining apples."

Needless to say, we showed up at the orchard excited and left disappointed.

Despite their devious lies, we returned to the orchard last weekend, after verifying that it actually had apple-picking, of course.  

Gala, McIntosh, Jonathan, Golden Delicious, and Jonagold.  Here's the haul:

As you know, I like climbing trees.  It's kind of the main point of apple picking for me, actually.  But I haven't been able to find any orchards around Chicago with big trees.  All the places that offer apple picking were planted in the last 25 years and the trees just aren't that large.  I think it's actually becoming more usual to plant trees closer together and keep them smaller because it makes picking easier, but even the "old-style" trees they have just aren't big like the ones we grew up with in the DC area.  "Climbing" a tree at most consists of taking 1 to 3 steps up the tree.  What?  Moreover, they are mildly annoying steps, because small trees have lots of leafy shoots everywhere, because even the "interior" gets sunlight.  Nevertheless, I enjoy it because it is my natural habitat.  And I think the trees enjoy being inhabited by a native as well.

A farmer guy yelled at me for climbing a tree.  He said I would break the tree and then break myself.  It's not his fault; the tractor is his natural habitat, and he does not recognize his agile woodland kin.  I continued to climb trees away from the farmers, because it is socially optimal to break rules that are not designed for you, so long as you can avoid getting caught.

The farmer reminds me of a particular security guard at Pomona.  The golf cart was her natural habitat, and she had it out for the parkourists.  However, golf carts cannot do parkour, so she only ever caught up with us when we weren't doing parkour.  A catch-22, or perhaps a not-catch-4.  In exchange for her hypothetical lectures, let us say a prayer for our pathbound kin, it is not their fault.

Anyway, where was I?  Oh yes, pie!  We converted our bounty into an apple pie and applesauce:

8 apples each

The crust was really good, which was Catherine's doing.  She has made Kenji's recipe a few times now and is getting it down pretty well.

Recipes for crust and filling:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/07/easy-pie-dough-recipe.html
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/perfect-apple-pie-recipe-double-crusted-thanksgiving-dessert.html 

Or for the science behind those recipes:
http://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/07/the-food-lab-the-science-of-pie-how-to-make-pie-crust-easy-recipe.htmlhttp://sweets.seriouseats.com/2011/10/the-food-labs-apple-pie-part-2-how-to-make-perfect-apple-pie-filling.html

I know some of you like the vodka pie crust method.  That was also developed by Kenji (during his time at Cooks Illustrated).

If you are having problems with your apples turning too soft, this pie recipe with fix that.  Before filling the pie, you soak the apple slices in hot water for a few minutes.  This gives the pectin time to convert into a heat-stable form that won't break down at higher temperatures in the oven.

For the applesauce, I used this recipe:

http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/

I put in 2 cinnamon sticks instead of 1, because Catherine specifically likes cinnamon applesauce.  It was delicious, and so easy!  In fact it was so good that we just bought more apples at the grocery store and made another batch of applesauce.  I guess we did not pick enough!

Ryan, on the other hand, picked a lot of apples.  He walked away with a couple bags, and a pumpkin too!  Doesn't this baked apple look delicious?

Unfortunately that only gets rid of one apple...

And here is his pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce:

Apple sauce, that's more like it!

And here is our parallel dinner:

You might think that's a pork chop, given that it looks like one and is served with applesauce.  But actually it is lamb!  I do not regret this, although I do wish we had included peas, and put the applesauce in its own bowl.

Xan and Catherine: Beef Empanadas

We had extra pie crust and made beef empanadas!

They were delicious, especially because the pie crust recipe is amazing (link forthcoming, requires a food processor).

The recipe did not call for cheese inside, but Catherine wanted cheese, but then we forgot, so we just sprinkled cheese on a few and cooked it that way.

A good idea in theory, but a bad idea in practice.  The crust was much better on the cheeseless ones, and now we have cheese stuck to our baking sheet.

Xan: It's scallop time!

I came home rather tired from work but mom was thawing scallops on the counter so I could not resist cooking them:

Delicious despite lame cell phone camera.

Because I never cooked scallops before, that's why.  Of course I looked up doneness temperatures on the interwebs and used a meat thermometer, which is how come they came out perfect despite the fact that I never cooked scallops before and have no idea what I'm doing.  I love the 21st century!

This was really easy.  Also I managed to make this using only ingredients I could find in my parents' kitchen.  You should be very impressed, as I am a bad finder and I didn't get any help from mom.  The only thing she told me was that we didn't have any spinach, which wasn't even true.

I chopped up some bacon and rendered out the fat, which I then seared the scallops in.  I deglazed the pan with white wine vinegar and a bit of lemon juice.  Because that was the first vinegar I found, that's why.  Also it is the obvious choice according to xan's cooking heuristics.  I then added some garlic and crispy bacon bits and wilted the spinach and that was it really.

The spinach was really good, even though I don't usually enjoy cooked spinach from my parents' kitchen, but that is probably because they don't cook it properly, i.e. with bacon.

By the way, let me just say that cooking with bacon is not the same as cooking with an unhealthy amount of bacon.  A little bacon can go a long way!

Provocative Claim: It is self-defeating to force feed your children steamed vegetables when you could simultaneously increase their vegetable intake (and hence overall health!) while decreasing your eternal efforts to police their vegetable intake, simply by making vegetables a little less healthy and a lot more delicious by adding some bacon.  It is probably even better to just get some browning going, but surely we can at least say that bacon trumps steam.

(Discuss).