January 20th, 2012
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Chili relleno may sound like a foreign and difficult dish to prepare for dinner, but it is really quite straight forward and somewhat simple to make. There are many variations of this dish ranging from pepper stuffed with garlic and diced pork shoulder to the basic recipe which is just a poblano pepper stuffed with cheese.
In our kitchen back home we tend to twist old recipes around and so our version of the chili relleno is served draped with a bernaise sauce which not only utilizes the egg yolks but also brings a little added tang to the entree. You take your poblano pepper (and again once you know what you are doing you can use whatever pepper your palate desires) scorch it and sweat it and peel the shiny outer peel off. Lay the pepper to the side.
The simplest form of chili relleno is to merely dredge the stuffed chili in flour and fry it. The more popular recipe includes covering the chili in egg batter and then frying it. At duckspoon.com my dad separates the egg yolks from the whites and then whips the egg whites into a froth. That foamy egg mix becomes the outer coating of the flour dredged chili which is then tossed into the frying pan.
Chili relleno can be served with any sauce you desire or no sauce at all. Many variations are served with a spicy tomato sauce. This can range from a simple marinara sauce with added jalepenos to a basic pico de gallo that will give the chili relleno some bright citrus and spicy hot notes.
Come visit duckspoon.com and watch my dad make his version of chili relleno. Sure it is a tad lavish to cover it in bernaise sauce…French/Mexican fusion? and it might not be to everyone’s taste. The basic recipe for the chili relleno is at duckspoon and if you find a recipe that you like better then please load it up and share with us.
Cheers!
December 20th, 2011
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A pork shoulder recipe is exactly what I am looking for if I am being extremely budget conscious, but still need to feed a few people and have some left overs to last my sporadic foraging through the fridge. Chicken is another go-to meat if I am wanting to serve a seemingly lavish dinner for pennies, but chicken can sometimes be a tad over served, if you get my meaning.
White fish is generally inexpensive, but you there’s only so much you can do with white fish, and I try to avoid creating a weeks worth of left overs from fish. A pork shoulder recipe can be cheap. That particular cut of meat is on sale at the grocery store on Burnside quite often: $.99 a lb is a good price. Four bucks is enough to have dinner with a buddy and have leftovers for the week.
I am just beginning my journey into the realm of cured meats, but the pork shoulder recipe that I am shaping inside my mind is something braised, roasted or barbecued. In short, I want the meat cooked thouroughly, but in a form that is somewhat flexible to work with when creating left over concoctions. A few different options spring to mind.
The pork shoulder recipe that I love the most both for its flavor and relative ease of preparation is the dry rubbed, barbecued recipe. I picked up a dry rub in Mexico for about a buck ten that I like a lot. This is just a “common sense” pork shoulder recipe, but you pat the moisture from the shoulder and smear the dry rub over every surface of the pork. Allow that to stand (refridgerated of course) for a few hours and then throw that hunk of pork on the BBQ using indirect heat.
My second favorite pork shoulder recipe is the one I started my pork shoulder collection on duckspoon.com with. I brine the pork shoulder over night with whatever salts and seasonings grab my attention (using the basic brining principle that is) and then braise it for a few hours in chicken stock and carmelized mirepoix. Come visit duckspoon.com and check out my pork shoulder recipe collection and maybe even add your own.
October 26th, 2011
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The consumption of grits is a long standing tradition of Southern Cuisine. The culinary ritual of grinding corn by a stone meal comes to us from the Native Americans and thrives today all over the south and anywhere else that is influenced by regional American cuisine. Southern food, someone said, is the only uniquely American of foods.
There exists a passionate streak in every southerner when it comes to the proper cooking, holding and consumption of grits. Every man and woman in the south has at one point or another eaten a bowl full of the milled corn and has an opinion on it. Salt, butter and time on low heat suffices for the preparation of this meal.
When people ask me what grits are and their faces remain blank after I have replied ”milled corn” I go on to explain that they are similiar to polenta. That inevitably receives an “ahh” of recognition and we continue on with the conversation.
Grits at the restaurant come from South Carolina. I tell folks that Adam polled the confederate states to find out which had the finest product. South Carolina won. Every once in a while someone asks us to add cheese to it, and occasionally a variation of cheese grits becomes the bed for some charred, sweat protein appetizer.
The preparation of corn grits is such a fundamental part of our American cuisine and really an extremely economic method of feeding the family that everyone should know how to make them. It is really quite easy, and if you come check us out at duckspoon.com you can find out how to make corn grits and how to braise a hog shoulder and put yourself a pretty inexpensive but very tasty dinner for the family.
Cheers!
October 24th, 2011
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Razor clams are by far my favorite mollusk. Sure there are the ubiquitous manila clams in some sort of broth with toast points or some other form of bready dipping instrument. Mussels I generally only enjoy if I have pulled them off the rock myself and cooked them shortly thereafter. I am unfortunate enough to being at odds withe the royal mollusk, the oyster.
There is a hunting season up and down the Pacific coast, and one should check with the locals to find the best clamming spots. Razor clams are an ellusive find and even though they are legless and inert by the time they get to your plate, they can motivate some speed when they are in their element (sand) and sense the intruding cleave of the hunting shovel digging into their space.
Proper gait must be adorned (the Oregon coast is notoriously wet), sufficient lighting gathered (for the early morning hunting of razor clams), and the tools must be aqcuired. Now one can hunt with the humble shovel, but must be quicker than a snake to reach into the freshly excavated whole to capture the prize. The fastest, easiest way to claim the fifteen clams allotted to you by law is to use a clam gun.
Razor clams will attempt to flee if they sense any movement in the sand around them. The clam gun is a cyclindrical tube that plunges down around the blow hole of the clam and, before they can dig deeper, pulls up the vertical column of sand it is loitering in. A little bit of cleaning and a little bit of shucking and the razor clams are ready to enter the kitchen.
Like I said, I love razor clams and will eat these fresh mollusks above almost any other seafood (I come near to fainting in pleasure when I can eat fresh sea urchin). The frozen clams are really very good as well. Order some up, come visit duckspoon.com and see how we cook ‘em fried in butter, and see whether you too fall in love with razor clams.
October 19th, 2011
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The vegetarian video recipes category in duckspoon.com is in dire need of sustenance. Until relatively recently there were no vegetarians in Germany where my mother came from. My dad, of Missouri stock, grew up in Eastern Washington on a farm with a meager food budget: food was something to be endured until he escaped into military service and the tradition of real food was revealed to him during his service in Western Germany.
Duckspoon.com is emphatically desirious of all kinds of food information, but is sorely lacking contributions from the vegetarian side of the woods. There is vegan salad dressing, balsamic soaked tomatoes, aspargus draped with hollandaise, but there are virtually no vegetariaon video recipes with the main course consisting of vegetarian fare. My history and that of my family comes from western culture and so I have little experience with any other. I could take Ayervedic cooking classes, and vegan cheese making courses, but that’s not what I am trying to do with duckspoon.
Once someone learns to cook, to break free of the corporate food complex, they could expand their horizons by watching vegetarian food recipes, ayurvedic food recipes, or even tips on weight loss all withought sensationalism and intrusive advertising. My whole goal with this food/education/business project has been to supply education for free, but get paid a enough to stay in business. I need folks who have history in vegetarian culture to help me spread the knowledge of food.
Vegetarian video recipes is not the only catagory that I need help populating: vegan recipes, dairy recipes, sugar free recipes are all areas that require attention. My team (a buddy with camera and me) will continue to pursue recipes to fill the site, but we are still prying recipes out of my father’s mental recipe book. I have a few ideas for vegetarian video recipes, andI have friends whom have more. My buddy with the camera grew up seventh day adventist and I would love to get some time filming a few of his grandmother’s recipes.
Although I am striving to include more vegetarian video recipes in my collection, I have to be honest and admit that while recipes from my father’s repertoir are yet unfilmed I will endeavor to get those locked down first. Which is where you come in. Please help me grow duckspoon; help me teach folks how to cook; please help me increase the vegetarian video recipes on duckspoon.com.
October 12th, 2011
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The basic pork brine is merely a ratio of salt to sugar to water. From there one may add the chili flakes, the dark rum, the thyme and whatever other herbs happen to catch your fancy at the time of brining. Simple cuts of pork, such as the loin or the chop, do not require as long a brine as say the chunky shoulder or the burly ham, but the brine ratio remains the same.
At the Country Cat the guys brine the chicken, cure and smoke both our bacon and our country ham, and even give the steelhead a light brine. The pork brine is basic: 4 cups water to 1 cup brown sugar to 3/4 cup salt (there are of course some spice and herb additions but I will keep secret about those in an effort to not tarnish the mystique of our little diner). Go sample the bacon and tell me if you have had better.
I frequently roll into work with food questions on my mind. The pork brine is kind of an old hat (the restaurant has been open 4 years and so I have had more than sufficient time to cross examine everyone in the kitchen as to the secrets of the brining recipe) and my question generally change with the seasons and with the seasonal produce that comes through the back door.
The pork brine basic guideline is one which I was able to take home and adjust it and tinker with it to match whatever I happen to be cooking. A lot of the times pork is on the menu, because of its relatively low cost, and because of what I have learned at the Country Cat. The most basic and cost effective use of the pork brine is to take a bone in pork shoulder (frequently $.99 a lb at the local grocery store) brine it over night and braise it.
On duckspoon.com I have filmed the pork brine and the braising of the already brined pork shoulder. It becomes an extremely tasty and cost effective way to feed the family and still have left overs that may last a few days. Once you have the basic brining system down then you can whip up your own version of the pork brine, depending on how spicy or herbal you want it and enjoy.
Come check out the simple and cost effective way to do a pork brine at duckspoon.com!
October 6th, 2011
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Chorizo and eggs is a spicy, heart warming, belly filling breakfast that, along with some black coffee, is meant to get you up and working a good long day. Chorizo is a Spanish/Portuguese/Mexican/ Latin American sausage that varies depending on which country and which region you are tasting it at. Although I have enjoyed chorizo tapas in Spain, chorizo burritos in mexico, I was first introduced to this cured pork sausage in Alaska. Food experiences are only sometimes limited by geography.
I was 17 years old, cooking during the day at the Cookhouse in the Red Dog Saloon in Juneau, and Jose, the chef who had emigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico would make chorizo and eggs for the kitchen crew for breakfast. That breakfast was meant to last us through a very busy lunch rush as the hordes of tourist from the three cruise ships rampaged around the small town and packed our tiny restaurant.
We served fresh caught salmon and crab and halibut, so to begin the morning with some spicy chorizo and eggs was a treat and definitely kept the motors revving as we decapitated dungeness crabs and flipped one pound burger patties for hours: our burgers were big enough for a family of four to fill up on. My dad had hung a noose from the rafters and a sign behind it reading “Hang the cook if it don’t taste right”…no one was hanged while I was there.
Chorizo and eggs wasn’t the only Mexican breakfast that we had at the Cookhouse, but it was the most memorable…even though we were knee deep in some of the best and freshest seafood in the world and cooking quality steaks served with crab meat and Bearnaise sauce. No, the chorizo and eggs elicited the spice, flavor, allure and charm of warm Mexico in a cold climate where folks worked eighteen hours a day when there was light.
Chorizo and eggs is really a very simple recipe and I filmed Adam, my dad’s one time student, cooking it for breakfast for the family one blustery January day. So come visit duckspoon.com, check out our version of this timeless classic, go to your local latino market to pick up some chorizo, take it home and cook it. See if you don’t perhaps fall in love with chorizo and eggs too.
October 4th, 2011
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“The lentil soup recipe,” he says, as I am pacing up and down the kitchen with my phone’s ear piece in.
“But Pete,” I interject,” I have all kinds of soups frozen right now, chicken and grilled corn, roast squash and garlic, gazpacho…none of it? Just that one soup? You are telling me that your broke butt is so flush that you don’t need some of these freshly frozen, hand made soups for free?”
Pete is my dad’s best friend and he lives up on the mountain and doesn’t get down very much to buy food, and generally buys processed food. I had just made a big batch of soup from duckspoon’s lentil soup recipe and frozen it in single-serve, quart size bags. Soups can be very economical to prepare and freeze for use, and I generally keep a stack of frozen soups on hand.
As much as I love cream soups, they don’t freeze well. Sometimes it would be nice to whip out a crab bisque instead of whipping out the lentil soup recipe or the chicken chowder. Chowders don’t freeze well with the potatoes in them either. The potatoes break down and make the soup kinda starchy. It’s best to freeze just the basic soups and add what you need to as you reheat them.
My dad’s lentil soup recipe is by far one of the most economical, healthy and easy soups to keep on hand in the freezer. I use the freezer because I don’t often get a chance to spend an hour or two in front of the stove preparing dinner. Instead I prepare it in advance, a cooking binge I guess. Pork shoulder, whole chickens, bags freshly made from the lentil soup recipe all inhabit my freezer out in the garage…all at my disposal.
The lentil soup recipe is a symbol of duckspoon.com’s mission statement: to teach folks how to cook good, inexpensive food and feed their family healthy meals. You can learn to fabricate a turkey out, or butcher a whole hog, or even how to 5$ dinners to feed a family of four. My dad’s lentil recipe soup is a perfect example of that.
September 22nd, 2011
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What can beat home made gravy? Nothing! Whether it be a simple pork sausage gravy to cover flaky biscuits just out of the oven or a morel mushroom gravy to top a fresh grilled New York steak the taste and cost benefits of whipping up this humble sauce at home far outweigh the store bought packages which are filled with who knows what kind of additives and chemicals.
The ingredients required to make gravy are really pretty mundane and are bound to be around any well stocked kitchen. Flour, butter, bacon or sausage, if it is the pork inspired version of home made gravy, beef and chicken stock, and a little corn starch to tighten it up when all is said and done. The process is rather simple and doesn’t vary too much depending on what variety you are whipping up.
For example, if it is breakfast time, then the home made gravy that generally ought to be used is the pork sausage variety. Render some pork sausage, remove the sausage and add flour to the pork fat to make a roux. Cook that roux until it is a nice golden color and has a little nutty taste, and then add the cold milk slowly…steadily whisking the milk and the roux together. Reduce this down a bit until the flavor is where you want it and then add the corn starch slurry to thicken it more.
Home made gravy doesn’t need to be packed with meat to be a lovely addition to the dinner table. Make the roux with butter and flour and add a cold vegetable stock that you have made from vegetable trimmings and scraps and whisk this together and finish with a little cream if you like. In fact you can make the home made gravy vegan if you use olive oil instead of butter and keep the cream away from the process.
I have to admit that I have a bias for meat laden, home made gravy. This doesn’t mean that I am not interested in vegetable gravies or am unable to whip one up if need be, but only means that my history is that of pork sausage gravy, and brown sauces augmented with veal stock. Come visit duckspoon and check out our selection of gravies and brown sauces and see how easy it is to make a quality home made gravy for yourself and your family.
Cheers!
September 16th, 2011
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The butcher didn’t speak english and I don’t speak french so the beginning of my first pate making experience did not look particularly auspicious. He had agreed to coach me on the fine points of french butchery as a favor to one of his very good clients: my long time friend whom I was visiting after not seeing him for seventeen years. I had mentioned that I was interested in french butchery and he had arranged this experience for me.
Nikki, the butcher, placed a hotel pan in front of me filled with pork neck, slivers of pork belly and livers. The initial feelings of discomfort on both our sides evaporated after I dug my hands into the meat pile and started grinding it up in the first step of making pate. I ground up two kilos of liver and two kilos of neck and two kilos of belly. I also added garlic, onions sauteed until they were blond, shallots, parsley and chives.
Nikki then added salt, curing salt, pepper and mustard seed and then poured a little cold water and 6 eggs into the mixer: one per kilo, he said. After the ingredients were ground up, I scraped the ingredients into the mixer. After a few minutes in the mixer the ingredients had begun to look like pate. With a baking spatula I scraped the bowl of the mixer, making sure that no remains were left clinging to the sides of the bowl.
I next placed pig belly skin (fat back) in the bottom of the terrine casserole dish and heaped the pate in up to the rim of the dish. Nikki brought the caul fat out, asked me if I knew it (with gestures and broken english), and when I nodded, proceeded to lay it out over the terrine of pate. Caul fat is the intestine of a cow, similar to thick spider webs in appearance. I patted the air bubbles out and then we put the terrines in hotel pans and then put them in the oven at 200 degrees for 2 hours.
After the time had elapsed we pulled the pate terrines from the oven, and then, leaving them in the hotel pans, added water to the hotel pans so that the terrines were in an inch of water. We then placed the hotel pans back in the oven at 145 degrees and slowly cooked them until they had reached 70 degrees celsius in the middle. We made quite a few other different kinds of pate, but this one stands out in my head as my very first experience with french butchery.
