Jalapeno Mashed Potatoes

Obvi, gentle reader, there ain’t nothing wrong with straight-up meat and potatoes. But sometimes you just wanna switch things up a bit. Especially when you’re using a cheapo cut of beef, as I did the other night. I was grilling some none-too-tender, none-too-flavorful “steaks” (this is what I get for cheating on my Key Foods with a slightly closer, vastly inferior market) that had been halfheartedly rubbed in prepared churrasco seasoning, and figured that adding a spicy kick of jalapeno to the mashed potatoes would up the meal’s flavor profile—or simply sear our taste buds so that each gruelingly chewed bite of the meat would seem like a relief and not a letdown. Win-win, amirite?

I used 2 large new (purple) potatoes, peeling just enough to carve out any pockmarks and brown spots but leaving most of the skin on. For expediency and consistency’s sake, I roughly chopped them into cube-ish (not to be confused with Cubist) pieces and added them to a pot of salted water that I brought to a boil, then lowered to a vigorous simmer until the potatoes were fork-tender, maybe 15 minutes. (For mashed potatoes, I would always err on the side of cooking longer; it’s pretty hard to overcook them, but devastating if you undercook them.)

All These and a Bag of Chips

Welcome to some more amateur sandwich porn.

The lunch I packed for my man tonight included (clockwise from top left): (1) turkey and ham with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and mustard; (2) baby-back rib meat and American cheese with iceberg lime-mayo slaw; (3) roast beef, mozzarella, and tomato with sriracha-mayo-mustard spread; and (4) turkey, cream cheese, and lettuce.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, gentle reader, this lunch was accompanied by some barbecue-flavored potato chips, or “crisps” as Davy's people call them. There was also a can of Red Bull, because for some reason he enjoys Red Bull when vodka is not involved, which is weird. Actually, it’s weird to like Red Bull even when vodka is involved. But there is nothing at all weird about liking 4 different sandwiches, and a bag of chips.

Leftovers Love: Beef-Vegetable Soup

Gentle reader, as I have previously expressed, I am very grateful for the fact that I met the man of my dreams in an otherwise dismal 2016. I am also grateful that my mother gladly welcomed him into our family Chrismukkah celebration and gifted him with much-needed cold-weather items such as warm socks, a sweater ... and a lovely metal thermos (below) whose surface proudly declares “The adventure begins!” (It appears from the graphic that the purveyors expect you to paddle a canoe through the thermos, but I'm not buying it.)

Anyhoo. Christmas morning. “For soup, Davy!” my mother crowed. “Katherine will make you soup for lunch! The soup will stay warm!” And my man was all like, “Great! I can dip the sandwiches she makes me into the soup!” And I was all like, uh, whuuut? I did not sign off on this.

Mind you, he gets up before 5 AM to go to work, God love him, and in January it is pitch-dark and damn cold. I am happy to make the effort to pack him a sandwich and chips the night before, then go to bed exhausted from the effort, eventually rising at the crack of noon.

But soup? Dude. Even if I make that the night before, I have to heat it up in real time. As far as I could tell on Christmas morning, that was the true adventure of which the thermos spoke. And it was now my conscripted duty to embark on it.

I mean, I do like a good adventure—as long as it involves food, and not getting up before noon...

Adventures in Slow Cooking Part IV: Pot Roast

I feel like pot roast is the ultimate slow-cooker meal, even though the method of cooking means it is technically not a roast, and arguably not in a pot. On Wednesday, I decided to go super-old-school and combine in my slow cooker (as seen above) ...

Short Ribs With Kielbasa and Polenta: A Dish to Die For

I love short ribs over polenta. As previously noted, I like to slow-and-low-cook short ribs in the oven the night before and then reheat, for 3 reasons: (1) You can prep them while you make a quicker meal for that night; (2) You can skim off a congealed layer of grease when you take them out of the fridge so you don’t hate yourself as much; and (3) My kitchen does not have space for a slow cooker, are you kidding me. Barbie’s Dream House seriously has more kitchen square footage than mine, and I am not adjusting for scale here, people.

Anyway, the other week, I preheated the oven to 250° or so; dredged my short ribs in garlic powder, kosher salt, and paprika; and browned them in olive oil in my Creuset saucepot before adding an 8-oz. can of tomato sauce, some chicken stock prepared from the carcasses of recently documented roast chickens, and the remains of a bottle of red wine I had in the fridge. Then I put the covered pan in the oven for a few hours.

It was only later that it occurred to me that the fact that the wine bottle’s cork had a festive Santa hat topper meant that it had been sitting in the fridge for almost exactly one year, since my holiday party was scheduled for that coming Sunday. This concerned me. Actually, my immediate thought was OH MY GOD I’M NOT READY TO DIE OF FOOD POISONING, I HAVE SO MANY THINGS LEFT TO EAT, BUT IF MY DEMISE IS AT THE HANDS OF SHORT RIBS AT LEAST MY LOVED ONES CAN CONSOLE THEMSELVES BY REMINDING THEMSELVES THAT I DIED DOING WHAT I LOVED.

So anyway, the polenta recipe...

Leftovers Love: Brisket and Black Beans Over Farfalle With Avocado

Oftentimes, the thought of reheating an unfinished restaurant meal at home is only slightly more appetizing the thought of than regurgitating the part you did finish. Sloshing around in its to-go container, your perfectly plated entrée invariably gets caught in a landslide of crap and is no longer enticing. But I’m a believer in extricating the protein from said landslide and giving it a new life as a supporting player in a whole new dish.

This simple meal is effectively just a pseudo-Mexican spin on pork and beans, but I think it’s worth chronicling because it’s a good illustration of two of our core BGC philosophies: (1) There’s always a good meal waiting in your kitchen if you keep the right staples on hand, and (2) There’s always something interesting to do with leftovers. Also, it was really quite delicious. And it cost just $1 in new ingredients—for the bunch of cilantro, which I actually used only a fraction of, so it was more like 25 cents of new ingredients. As per (2) above, it behooves you to always keep on hand onions, garlic, pasta, and tomatoes in fresh or canned form.

First I sautéed some sliced red onion over medium-low heat in butter and a bit of olive oil. Then I tossed/mixed in a bunch of minced garlic, followed by some quartered grape tomatoes and a rinsed/drained can of black beans. While this cooked for a few minutes, I took a brick of brisket left over from a recent excellent dinner at Watty & Meg and shredded it into strips.

7 Layers of Kevin Bacon Dip

I’ve already expressed how much I enjoy the Super Bowl from a food perspective despite my utter apathy about football. But this year, with the big rematch between the Pats and the Giants, I have a real reason to actually get excited about the game itself…yes, MADONNA is performing!!! (Hehehe, I can’t wait to hear what Alyce has to say about that one… No, but seriously, I'm pretty excited about Madonna.)

For this year’s Super Bowl party at Fredna’s place (that would be Rob’s Aunt Edna and Uncle Fred, who are kind of like the Brangelina of Super Bowl parties), I’m planning to bring a mash-up between seven-layer dip and the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, and make a contest out of it—since it's a day for betting, after all.

The game plan (see what I did there?): I printed up sheets with a multiple-choice quiz, and everyone who ponies up $1 fills out a sheet matching the layers of the dip to the movies they represent. Either one person will get the most answers correct, or we do a random drawing from the entries tied for most correct (even if that number is zero). Surely this will be a fun gaming alternative for people who don’t care/know enough to bet on the actual football game. Download the quiz to play at your own Super Bowl party!

Here are the dip layers (in top-down order, 1-7), which, in a nod to the original “degrees” game, symbolize six of his movies, plus a bonus layer honoring Kevin himself. Can you match up which layer symbolizes which movie?

Quiz answers and explanations, as well as dip assembly instructions, after the jump.

7 Degrees of Kevin Bacon Dip (layers in top-down order)
1. Bacon
2. Spicy cheese
3. Corn
4. Sour cream
5. Ground beef
6. Salsa
7. Navy beans

And, emphatically not in order, since that is the whole point, the movies those layers represent:

a. Footloose
b. Diner
c. Friday the 13th
d. Kevin himself (seriously, if you don’t get this one…)
e. A Few Good Men
f. Wild Things
g. Apollo 13

---

Answers, in top-down order:

Double Leftovers Love: Baked Stuffed Potato & “Taco Shells” Pasta

My two-prong 2012 resolution was to do more cooking at home, and to end up throwing out fewer leftovers by repurposing them for future dinners and/or work lunches. This resolution seemed like a manageable, money-saving one that will yield some good meals and blogging inspiration. Plus, I figured, if the world is going to end this coming December, there’s no point in resolving to exercise, eat healthy, or quit smoking—amirite, gentle reader?

Anyhoo, I have done pretty well thus far—I've brought lunch to work more days than not, and managed to make some creative use of leftovers. The Taco Night I recently blogged about actually occurred twice over the course of a few weeks—once with corn tortillas, once with flour. And following both occasions, I came up with excellent ways to use up the leftover ground beef filling.

Taco Night!

As countless NYC food carts have proved, there are an infinite ways to make tacos—with a matrix of practically every meat/fish/veggie/legume you can think of, tons of topping combos, and of course, soft vs. hard/corn vs. flour tortilla. I grew up with Taco Night starring the classic American incarnation of ground beef/hard corn shell, but I have no use for the hard shells, which invariably shatter as soon as you take a bite if they haven’t already shattered in the box (plus they’re overpriced and a huge waste of packaging). So, this is my alternate take on the ground beef taco using soft tortillas.

When I made this recently, I heated some bacon fat—but you could use a couple tablespoons of olive oil—to brown 1.5 pounds ground beef over medium-high heat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (you could use a cast iron skillet or a non-nonstick frying pan; nonstick doesn’t brown the meat properly).

Sprinkle kosher salt, ground cumin, chili powder, and paprika over the meat before using a wooden spoon to break it up so it crumbles as it cooks.

Christmas Dinner 2011: Beef Tenderloin and Nostalgia

Christmas Day, we drove up to my grandmother’s house in Western Massachusetts—where she always cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family when I was growing up—and my mom, the Beez, and I cooked Christmas dinner for the whole family. Though I have fond childhood memories of making E-Z-Bake Oven mini-cakes and baking cookies with my grandmother (I was particularly excited by her pizzelle press), this was the first time I’ve ever actually prepared a meal in her kitchen.

Our mission was to update some family Christmas classics, which include a hodgepodge of Middle Eastern influences (we’re of Assyrian descent—look it up) and 1950s Americana. So, on the appetizer table was pre-cooked shrimp with cocktail sauce straight from the jar, alongside stuffed grape leaves and spinach-feta-phyllo triangles. However, we skipped the canned-peas-with-meatballs-in-tomato sauce that was a vile annual staple of the holiday dinner table, and the Kool-Whip-and-God-knows-what-else-based frozen green pie for dessert. And since Aunty Olga was out of town, there were no Tollhouse cookies for the first time in my memory.

As is customary, we overdid appetizers—but this year we were shockingly conservative on desserts, with only two for seven people (compare with Thanksgiving). For the main course, we eschewed my grandmother’s usual entrée excess (we’re talking a roast turkey, a ham, roast beef, and maybe a lasagna thrown in for good measure) for a single beef tenderloin.

The tenderloin was cooked to perfection (we cut it with butter knives) but a little overwhelmed by the flavor of the smoked paprika I had carelessly overused in the dry rub. Everyone assured me it was good, but I imagine Tom and Padma might have sent me packing for that paprika-palooza.

In any case, here is our Christmas Day menu:

Smoking Is Addictive: Brisket

Gentle reader, between the 100-plus-degree temps afflicting Brooklyn this summer and the fact that I have a new new job, my commitment to cooking at home has kind of fallen by the BQE-side. In fact, I have barely set foot in my kitchen in weeks, other than to deposit cold beers in the fridge and then take them out. (Mad props to Alyce for picking up my posting slack and then some!)

However, thanks to our friend Lawyer Mike, I do have some food news to report. You see, it turns out that smoking meat is every bit as addictive as smoking cigarettes or crack, though perhaps slightly less carcinogenic.

You may recall that on Memorial Day weekend, I smoked a pork shoulder at a friend’s place. This experiment gave rise to a weekend-ly smoking ritual: Since then, that friend, Lawyer Mike, has regularly embarked on meat-smoking projects—including ribs, pastrami, pork butt, and brisket—on pretty much every subsequent Saturday this summer (with The Rob's sporadic assistance). While all of these endeavors have yielded results ranging from "pret-tay, pret-tay good" to "nomnomnomnom," Mike's second take on brisket was a serious case of practice makes perfect—OMG, it was fantastic.

Now, I'm not gonna lie: Apart from repeatedly whining "When is it gonna be readyyyyyy?!", my only involvement in this meatsterpiece was slicing it up (which busted open the preexisting chopping callous at the base of my right index finger, causing a blister—does that count as a sports injury? Because I've never had one otherwise...) and subsequently eating it. But I feel that you, gentle reader, should nonetheless reap the benefits of this triumph of smokeration.

Thus, I grilled Lawyer Mike (get it? Because a smoker has a grill, and also he is a lawyer—see what I did there???) on the steps he took to create this unbelievably tasty and tender hunk of meat. (Caveat eater: This will take time, and lots of it.) Here’s what he told me:

Coffee-Beer-Braised Short Ribs

Gentle reader, read this recipe quickly, as it might soon be illegal. Since NYC has banned sales of Four Loko, that can of pure vile that equates to the alcohol of three beers and the caffeine of three cups of coffee, there could be trouble if the authorities get wind of this short-rib braise consisting of near-equal parts—you guessed it—beer and coffee.

Short ribs are a wonderfully rich and flavorful cut of beef; they’re inexpensive, though there is a fair amount of bone and fat going on in the cut, so I recommend buying a bit more weightwise per person than you would of a steak-type cut of beef. This is a great comforting winter dish to feed (and impress) a crowd, for waaay less money than a tenderloin or rack of what-have-you.

Although short ribs do need to be slow-cooked for a long time, they need no maintenance while they’re in the oven. I recommend cooking them a night or two in advance (I often multitask by browning and braising the ribs while I whip up a quick meal for that night). Another advantage of advance cooking is that once you put the dish in the fridge, the fat from the short ribs forms a solid layer on top of the liquid, which you can then skim off before reheating and serving.

Beef and Noodle Soup

There is a category of my cooking I refer to as “Ignorant American Fusion”: basically, it involves dilettante-y co-opting of other cultures’ cuisines much as Madonna does to their fashion, religion, and dancing styles. This dish (much like the Hoisin Pork with Scallion Crepes) falls into that category, since it derives inspiration from American Chinese food but in no way is an attempt to reproduce it authentically. Hell, that would involve actual research, as opposed to just throwing something together!

This noodle soup came to mind as a cheap way to eat beef, because you can get a tough cut that will tenderize in the broth. (I ended up spending about $2 on the chuck beef, which was $3.99 a pound at my Met Foods. You could also slice up leftover steak to do this.) I also had half a package of mushrooms that were on track to go bad, plus it occurred to me that The Rob’s favorite meals are steak with mushrooms, spaghetti, and soup, so he would probably be really excited if all those things became as one.

This dish is a one-pot stovetop meal/one-bowl dinner and can be done in 30-45 minutes. It’s pretty balanced and pretty healthy, more so if you want to use buckwheat (soba) or whole wheat noodles. These proportions served two very generously (all we had on the side was diced cucumber and diced red onion in a rice-vinegar vinaigrette), but this would easily multiply, and would freeze and/or microwave well if you want to make extra. Though I don’t have rugrats, I would think this would make for a pretty good family meal for all ages.

Burger Time

Summer is burger season! But please don’t show up at a cookout with those hockey-puck-shaped premade patties, which have no flavor. The best burgers are made with a big old package of ground beef that has been seasoned and molded into patties by hand. The burger pictured was made in my grill pan, but might’ve been even better on an outdoor grill, if I had one.

We will now walk through the two stages of making a good burger: prepping the meat, and grilling the patty. You could also do your burgers in a skillet with a lid on the stovetop, and the same cooking tips will apply.

Chili Cheese Pie

Among the joyful signs that summer has arrived in Brooklyn are the appearance of Mr. Softee trucks, Red Hook taco vendors, and stoop sales. It is a triumph to score a $50 hardcover coffee-table cookbook that was hardly, if ever, even cracked open, for a few bucks.

A few weekends ago at a BK stoop sale, I acquired Alfred Portale’s Gotham Bar and Grill Cookbook ($5), plus a vintage original 1984 edition of Martha Stewart’s Hors d’Oeuvres ($1), both utterly pristine (except for a super-endearing inscription in the Portale, “Merry Christmas '97, Handsome”--which led to a whole discussion speculating about whether one of the guys I bought it from had written it to the other and they were just clearing house, or if the current boyfriend had demanded that the cookbook inscribed by the ex be put out at the stoop sale. Being a romantic, I assumed the former and was crestfallen when someone to whom I was eagerly showing my finds pointed out the possibility of the latter. But I digress).

Flipping through the Martha book, I instantly fixated on a recipe for Corn Cups Filled With Beef Chili, and decided to adapt it into a full-size entree pie.

This recipe can be done in under an hour -- you just add the hot filling to the baked pie crust (which is REALLY EASY TO MAKE, I SWEAR), so you can make your filling as the crust bakes. (Of course I felt the need to top the whole thing with cheese, requiring a few more minutes of oven time, but that’s your call.)

This would be a great meal for a family with kids; it looks like a cross between hamburger, pizza, and pie, and feeds plenty of people with one big dish. It can include a variety of veggies and could be done with ground turkey or chicken, or just beans if your fam is vegetarian.