Very yummy, and not too heavy.

Best lemon pound cake I’ve ever had, and just brilliant. Not too hard either. Maybe I should post the recipe?

And also, some toying with flavored liquors that I’ve been working on. In this case, a chai tea vodka:

There’s also a ginger-vanilla rum and a vodka flavored with both Sichuan peppercorns, and some Sarawak peppercorns.

Here’s the recipe I’ve used, and hopefully it will be of interest to others. Please make sure that your paprika is of a high quality. If you open it and it doesn’t smell so much like ground peppers, but instead sawdust, throw it out and find something fresh. Please stick to Hungarian paprika though, as the Californian varieties are dreadfully dull.

This should be made in a heavy Dutch oven. I use an 8 quart Le Creuset model, which while not inexpensive is indestructible and will last a lifetime.

1. Preheat oven to 300F. Position a rack in the bottom 3rd of the oven.
2. Pat dry and sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper.
3. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium-high heat until almost smoking.
4. Add 4 chicken thighs, skin side down, and cook for approximately 5 minutes or until crispy and well browned. Flip and cook another 5 minutes.
5. Pull the chicken and place on a plate to rest and add the remaining chicken to the Dutch oven.
6. When finished, remove all by 2Tbsp of fat from the pan. Remove the skin from the chicken if you wish.
7. Cook onion, stirring occasionally, over medium heat until softened.
8. Add red and green peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are browned and peppers are softened.
10. Add 3 tablespoon of paprika, flour and marjoram and cook for about 1 minute, or until fragrant.
11. Add stock, scraping pot bottom with wooden spoon to loosen browned bits.
12. Add tomatoes and about 1 teaspoon salt, and return the chicken and accumulated juices, submerging them in vegetables.
13. Bring to a simmer, then cover and place pot in oven.
14. Cook until chicken is 170F, about 30 minutes.
15. Remove from oven.
16. Combine crème fraîche and remaining tablespoon of paprika in small bowl, then stir back into sauce in pot.
17. Spoon enriched sauce and peppers over chicken, and serve over egg noodles.

So how was it? It was excellent, but not what you would normally expect from a hard cider. It was substantially more complex and darker in flavor. There was definitely some mustiness, but not in a bad way, and it went well with the food and the cold evening. If you can find it, it only comes in 750mL bottles, and nothing smaller.

Not a problem for me, I finished it all.

In this case, a roast that was cut into 1/2” chunks. These are tossed with a bit of flour. Then, they’re added to a pot that I’ve rendered down about 3-4oz of salt pork and browned thoroughly. This is an absolutely critical step, and no substitution of ground meat is acceptable. You will probably need to do this in a few batches.

Then, in a blender, I combine a small can of whole peeled tomatoes, 1/3C of good chili powder, a tablespoon of toasted cumin seeds (ground in a mortar), a table spoon of oregano and 3-4 chipotle peppers packed in adobo sauce. Give it a whirl for 15-30 seconds and it should come out as a very thick slush. Set aside.

Once you’ve browned all the meat, you should have a good bit of fat in the pan. This is when I add 2 medium onions, chopped up and some salt to cook them down a bit. Once they’re starting to get translucent, in goes the tomato/chile mixture and the browned meat. Bring back to a simmer and reduce to the barest heat that will cause a few bubbles to break here and there. I then add about 1oz of unsweetened Mexican chocolate for flavor, which brings somewhat of a mole-complexity to the whole thing. It can be skipped, or even substituted with regular baking chocolate (no sugar!). Cook for 2-3 hours.

If you like beans, and I’m someone who does, then about 30 minutes before everything is done, I add either reconstituted (or canned if I’m in a hurry) kidney or pinto beans and allow them to finish off. If the thickness isn’t enough—and the flour will help with that—then I add a slurry of masa harina and water or beer and allow to cook another 15-20 minutes.

The end result is dark, rich and complicated. Serve with good cornbread. This is not something you’ll want gigantic amounts of, as it’s a very dense satisfying flavor.

Someday, I mean to write down an actual recipe, but I don’t know that I’ve ever made the same chili twice. It’s a technique, not a recipe to me.

• Safeway
• Giant
• Harris-Teeter
• Whole Foods

The first two are sad places, full of decaying produce and empty shelves. Today, wandering through the Giant to get a few very simple things for dinner, I noticed that approximately 10% of the store’s selection, if one can be so generous as to use that word, was out-of-stock. I understand this is holiday season, but that just means you should be on top of things more.

The Harris-Teeter is passable as a grocery store, with a tolerable selection of produce, but a still horrible butcher’s department. Don’t even bother to ask them about special ordering anything, as they’ll glaze over and continue on with their grinding of random bits of animal.

The Whole Foods is decent, and contains a good selection of produce, but the prices are absurd, and often there’s strange choices made on what to stock. Obviously, politics is often winning over flavor.

None of these are fit to push the shopping cart of the two stars of the market world: Wegman’s and H-E-B’s Central Market. There is nothing like wandering into Central Market in Austin, not far from my mom’s house, during fall apple season and having not 3 or 4 choices, but 2 dozen, many in either organic or conventional form. Not only that, but they are carefully stacked, arranged and protected from damage. Kafir limes? No problem. Curry leaves? Got it. Want a custom cut of meat? Happy to oblige!

Alas, H-E-B doesn’t leave Texas, and Wegman’s won’t come anywhere near densely populated areas, so either I have to waste a lot of gas driving out, or I have to endure the depressing nature of the stores near me. Fortunately, there’s a few farmer’s markets in Arlington which are decent when in season. I’m also looking into a CSA, now that my travel is reduced.

• Roasted turkey w/gravy
• Cornbread and sausage dressing
• Slow-cooked glazed carrots
• Mashed potatoes
• Lemon-thyme green beans
• Cinnamon apples
• Cranberry relish
• Brioche dinner rolls

Of course my mom had an opinion about the crispiness requirements for the turkey’s skin, and then didn’t eat any turkey. Some things never change.

Best wishes to all, and never forget what you’re thankful for, 365-days a year.

OK, childish, but sometimes I get a bit wistfull for food of my childhood. Inspired by a homesick Texan, I decided to make a dinner of pinto beans (frijoles a la charra). The recipe I’ve always used is a bit different than hers, but they’re quite similar.

Frijoles a la charra

1. Rinse and sort beans
2. Allow the beans to soak overnight, or quick soak them by bringing them up to boil and then allowing to set for at least 90 minutes
3. Drain beans and set aside in collander
4. In heavy dutch oven, render down salt pork over medium heat.
5. Once rendered, add onion and cook for 1 minute, then add garlic and cook an additional 1 minute
6. Return beans to the dutch oven and cover with 5 cups of water.
7. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a bare simmer, stirring occasionally. Add 1/4 cup of water at a time if needed to ensure the beans don’t dry out.
8. After about an hour beans should be almost tender enough to eat. If not tender enough, continue cooking, checking every 15 minutes.
9. In a small saute pan over medium heat, fry the bacon until crispy.
10. Add the minced chipotle and tomatoes, crushing in the pan. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
11. Transfer bacon, chipotle and tomato mixture to a blender and puree. Add to beans
12. Serve

Note that some people like to remove the salt pork, but not me. I find the texture, when cut into lardons, adds a lovely creamy addition to the beans. Serve with cornbread.

¹ A lardon is a strip about 1/4” wide, 1/4” thick and 1” long.

I know my chocolate chip cookies, which are a third each fat, sugar and flour (not counting the chocolate chips and egg) would not pass those guidelines. Are we going to say, “Yes! buy that garbage from Kraft, like Snackwells”—are we really this stupid?! Yes, we are!—and forgo making our own? How about banning processed food from our schools, and allowing the handmade stuff, no matter its fat content?

Between that and the skyrocketing insanity around “food allergies”, I just don’t know what’s wrong with Americans. When I was in school peanut butter was king, and I don’t recall any kids dying randomly in unexplained ways. We coddle our children too much, and treat them like Fabergé eggs, in the process creating fragile creatures who can’t deal with anything without a pill.

I’m not saying there aren’t food allergies. I’m just saying that 99% of the people claiming them are liars and disguising their dislike of something in some amoral bullshit of allergies. I know people with real allergies and trust me, you don’t want that.

So, shut up and eat the cupcake you whiner.

Mix everything together. For a “mug”, I generally use 5-6Tbsp of the mix and add hot water to the top. This will keep through the winter in an airtight storage container.

¹ I often don’t have powdered (confectioner’s sugar) in the house. You can make it by taking 1C of granulated white sugar for a spin in a blender or food processor until fine, and then mixing in 2Tbsp of cornstarch.

² I use pickling salt.

Recently, however, I came across a website for Big Tex, the Texas State Fair. While I will always maintain a warm spot for the food options at Salem, it is painfully clear that Southwest Virginia’s yearly orgy of deep-fried wonders pales in comparison to the pure, unrestrained genius of Texas’ chefs. With items like “Chicken Fried Bacon,” “Texas Fried Jelly Belly Beans,” and “Fried Pop Rocks Fundae,” the Lone Star state has staked an unquestionable claim to national fryolator dominance. I was particularly impressed by “Fire and Ice,” a battered, deep-fried pinapple ring that is covered in banana-flavored whipped cream that has been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Liquid nitrogen? These guys are GODS.

Need I say more? I went once many years ago, and haven’t been since the Bacon Renaissance began.

Alas, the LED lighting under my cabinets interfered with the photo a bit.

Beware some of the language, but damn. This is the kind of cooking show we need. Once you’ve mastered that, try his Puerco Pibil.

Tempting, but I’m not ready to die yet.

With the absurd travel schedule I keep, and the fact that I get tired of the same routine over and over and over and over again, I have had ample moments to dine alone. Now, I could certainly order in to my room and hide, but that just seems pathetic. Instead, I try to go out some and I realize that there’s some deep seated aversion to sitting alone in a restaurant. Perhaps it’s the fact that generally, I’m the only “single” person in the restaurant. Perhaps it is, as the original author opines, the look of sad pity from the server. Perhaps, however, it’s all me and not anyone else.

As Americans, we pride ourselves on talking about how independent we are, and yet, we fear being alone with nothing but our own thoughts to entertain us. Even when I do go out alone, and I never take a book, I find myself fiddling with my iPhone—reading blogs primarily—or staring out the window; anything to avoid what I perceive is the icy glare of those who aren’t alone.

This is not something that is limited to eating out, but also going to movies alone, etc. Some places, it seems, are more attune to the needs of the solo traveler, but most are not. Even when I’m home and want to try a new restaurant, I will ring up a friend to invite them to join me. If they are busy, rather than going it alone, I’ll reverse course and choose something less intimidating.

I don’t have an answer, but I do share the feeling, and wonder what we can do to better deal with it.

Note that this is a much wetter dough than many people are used to, but the biscuits are very light when done.

1. Preheat the oven to 425F and spray a 9” round cake pan with non-stick spray.
2. Combine the self-rising flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. With a pastry cutter (or your fingers), work in the shortening until there are no pieces bigger than a big pea. It will look like course gravel.
3. Stir in the half-and-half and buttermilk and let stand for 2-3 minutes. This dough is very wet and after 2-3 minutes it will look like cottage cheese.
4. Pour the cup of flour onto a pie tin. Flour your hands well. Spoon biscuit-sized lumps of wet dough into the flour and sprink some more on the outside. Pick up the dough and shape it roughly into a soft round.
5. Shake off the excess flour and place into the pan, pushing slightly against each other.
6. Repeat until all dough is used (about 10 biscuits).
7. Bake just above the center of the oven until lightly brown (approximately 15-20 minutes), then brush with melted butter.
8. Cool for 1-2 minutes in the pan, then dump them out and eat them all.

¹ I use White Lily.

² I use Crisco.

³ The original recipe calls for heavy cream, but I didn’t like the texture, so I’ve shifted to half-and-half.

⁴ I use spray-dried buttermilk that I mix with water per the instructions on the container.

So in my continuing saga of cooking for myself again, I bring you … breakfast.

My mom is from Kentucky, and for those without a bit of history, Kentucky is most certainly the South. As such, any weekend breakfast invariably involved biscuits and something. There was never a question about the biscuits; forgetting the biscuits would be no better than forgetting your manners. Now that I am back home more, I intend to get back into making biscuits more regularly, and eating at home more. For me, nothing could go better with biscuits than sawmill gravy. A simple thing, but ladled over fresh biscuits and you can just see the result:

Little more than the result of sausage, flour, milk and a hefty amount of fresh pepper. If you can make a roux, you can make sawmill gravy. And, since you can’t make just 2 biscuits, I had to have a little something sweet:

The world’s best apricot jam on some pretty decent biscuits. I’ll post the biscuit recipe in another post.

Breakfast is served.

After eating a few (dozen) it dawned on me that as summer draws to a close, and the weather has already shifted to fall, what could be more perfect than a bowl of peach ice cream? Drawing out the bible of ice cream, David Lebovitz’ The Perfect Scoop, I found a wonderful recipe of peach ice cream, but made with some sour cream. Approximately 24 hours later, this was the result:

What’s on top? A bit of molasses whipped cream. Yum! My only complaint, if one can have a complaint about peach ice cream, is that the texture is a bit crumbly. I am not sure whether it’s an artifact of the recipe, or my freezer. Regardless, given a minute to soften, it’s lovely, and the tang of the sour cream really offsets the natural sweetness of the peach.

Given my travel schedule, it’s been hard to cook, so I’ve not delved into the technique until today. Since I don’t know whether I’ll follow through, investing substantial sums in an immersion circulator seemed silly. By focusing on things that are cooked in relatively short periods (under 30 minutes), I could instead wing it using a Reynolds Handi-Vac kit, a very heavy enameled iron pot and some careful attention.

First, I prepared the “packet” to go into the water. I put some huge Gulf shrimp, a few lumps of butter, crushed garlic and some rosemary into a quart vacuum bag and sealed it:

That, then went into the water at approximately 138F (59C) and was held as close to that temperature (give or take 2-3F) for 25 minutes. During that time, I carefully monitored the temperature of the water and kept it moving so that no hot spots would develop.

At the same time, I brought 2 gallons of water up to boil for pasta, and placed another clove of crushed garlic and some crushed red chilis into a 1qt sauce pan with some olive oil and put it over low heat to sit for 25 minutes. This would steep the garlic and chilis and draw out their flavor and color.

Once the shrimp were done—their color had changed to a beautiful translucent white after 15 minutes or so—and the pasta was ready, I plated:

So how was it? The shrimp were amazing, juicy and fragrant with the garlic and rosemary. The pasta had a hint of heat and matched well. Overall, a rounding success. A few more attempts, though, before I invest (or build) any contraptions.