Sep 30
2010

This past week, I had the privilege of constructing a birthday menu for my fabulous friend Jen, over at A Modern Hypatia. She’s turning 35 (happy birthday, Jen!), and wanted a party menu inspired by the Divine Comedy. Specifically, she was looking at the beginning of the Divine Comedy, in which we are introduced to Dante, who has found himself lost in the “gloomy woods” on his thirty-fifth birthday.

I love this concept! What can I say? We’re both medieval/Renaissance geeks. (; But aside from that, I love the vast potential in the image — that there are many paths you can take out of the gloomy woods, some good, some not so good, but there is always guidance to lead you.

She also requested that the menu contain bread (Jen makes fabulous bread) and tasty things to put on bread, and that if I could, to choose dishes from Tuscany and Emilia-Romana. Already planned were olives, ossi dei morti (“bones of the dead” cookies) and a chocolate dessert. Fortunately, my handy-dandy La Cucina (as previously discussed) kindly lists the region each recipe comes from, so constructing with regional preferences in mind was actually pretty easy. The party will be between 10 and 20 people, and there were some limitations on kitchen space and stove/oven access.

I put together two menus, so she’d have a choice, or could mix-and-match between the two as she saw fit, eliminating dishes that would be too difficult or time-consuming to prepare under her constraints, and to give her a wide variety to suit her guests. Here are the two menus:

Dante’s Woods 1:

And up the sun was mounting with those stars

Antipasti

Spiced Olives

Pickled Mushrooms

Dried Fruit (pears, prunes, and apricots)

Crostini

Prosciutto Cotto Mousse

(ham, cream, eggs – Emilia Romagna)

Spicy Tomato Sauce

(tomatoes, garlic, hot chile – Puglia)

Spicy Cheese Spread

(ricotta, capers, onion, caraway, chives, mustard, butter, anchovy, paprika – Friuli-Venezia Giulia)

Verdure

Bitter Greens Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing

(radicchio, speck or pancetta – Alto Adige)

Vegetable Tart

(zucchini, eggs, onions – Toscana)

Secondi Piatti

served with bread

Fish Soup Ravenna-Style

(mixed fish, white wine, garlic, tomatoes – Emilia Romagna . Note: according to La Cucina, this was one of Dante’s favorite dishes)

Pan-Cooked Rabbit

(rabbit, white wine, bay and rosemary, meat broth – Toscana)

Layered Polenta with Sausage and Mushrooms

(sausage, polenta, dried mushrooms, tomatoes, pecorino – Toscana)

Dolci

Ossi dei Morti

Coffee and Chocolate Pie

(almonds, chocolate, coffee, eggs – Emilia Romagna)

I went for a lighter theme with the first menu, trying to select foods that were golden, light, and bright — a warmer and more cheery woods, perhaps a late summer. For the second menu, I went for a darker feel, with heartier, more autumnal foods. And yes, I know that gnocchi is typically a primo piatto, not a secondo piatto, but I wanted the menu to fit on one page! (:

Dante’s Woods 2:

I found myself within a forest dark

Antipasti

Assorted Olives and Cheeses

Gorgonzola-Stuffed Celery

(celery, gorgonzola, mascarpone – Piemonte)

Crostini

Al Mirto

(butter, myrtle berries, garlic – Toscana)

Funghi Con Pomodori

(mushrooms, tomatoes, onion, hot chile, basil – Calabria)

Mocetta

(honey butter and prosciutto – Valle d’Aosta)

Verdure

Marinated Lettuce

(crisp lettuce, garlic, hot chile or olives – Calabria)

Grilled Radicchio, Treviso Style

(radicchio, olive oil – Veneto)

Secondi Piatti

Chestnut-Flour Gnocchi

(chestnut flour, wheat flour, olive oil, pecorino – Toscana)

Trout in Red Wine

(trout, butter, onion, sage, rosemary, red wine – Valle d’Aosta)

Scottiglia – Mixed Braised Meats

(chicken, duck, rabbit, lamb, tomatoes, onions, basil, red wine – Toscana. May be served over bread)

Dolci

Ossi dei Morti

Chocolate Salami with Frutti di Bosco Puree

(chocolate, crisp cookies, egg, pureed berries)

In the end, she decided to go with a wide range of antipasti and crostini, the scottiglia, and the torta nera. And I got a good chance to read through the 2000+ recipes in my book, plus some other books, and pick out some dishes that looked absolutely amazing. I’m looking forward to making some that I haven’t made myself, as well. It was a lot of fun to do!

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Sep 28
2010

I’m in the middle of taking a ServSafe class, since my food manager’s certification has lapsed. (Test is tomorrow — wish me luck!) To that end, I thought it’d be a good idea to relay to you folks the basics that you can easily do to ensure better food safety at home.

There’s a lot to say about food safety, so I’m going to break it down into manageable chunks and just hit one point per post. There will be further Food Safety 101 posts as we go along.

Today’s topic is:

Wash your hands.

And rinsing doesn’t cut it. You need to use soap and scrub up. Why? Because it’s not the water that gets rid of the bacteria and viruses. It’s actually the slipperiness of the soap and the rubbing motion that dislodges the contaminants from your hands.

There are a handful of causes of food-borne illness, but the single most common is dirty hands. Viruses and bacteria easily travel from your hands to your cutting surface, to your tools, and to your food. Cooking kills some of them, but not all of them, and it doesn’t eliminate any toxins the bacteria might produce. So your best bet is to try to prevent their presence in the first place.

You should wash your hands:

Before you start to cook

If there is anything on your hands from previous activities, it can be transferred to the food. Consider all the things you might do in a day: clean up after your dog, change your baby’s diaper, work on your car, work in your garden, clean your house, work out — just to name a few. Now consider that anything you’ve come in contact with could be getting in your food. Not really a pleasant thought, is it?

Any time you change tasks

Most frequently, this will be when you’re changing from working on one type of food to another. Say you’re making a stir-fry — you should wash your hands after you cut the produce, before and after you handle whatever meat is going into your stir-fry, and after you handle the rice or noodles or whatever you’re serving it with. If some of your produce is particularly messy, you may want to wash up and clean up your cutting board after working with it and before switching to new produce.

However, it’s also important to wash up if you’re switching from cooking to setting the table, or sweeping up a mess, or any other number of tasks. The important part is that you don’t want the food (and its accompanying contaminants) getting all over your kitchen.

Before and after handling raw meat

Raw meat, whether it’s poultry, red meat, or fish, is one of the biggest contamination hazards in your kitchen. It provides an ideal surface for bacteria to grow on. It’s pretty obvious why you want to wash up after you handle raw meat — you’ve got meat juices on your hands, knife, cutting board, whatever you’ve used. If you leave it be, it’ll get spread around and potentially get onto food that you’re not planning to cook. Not tasty.

Why wash before handling raw meat? You’re just going to cook it anyway, right? Well, because raw meat is an ideal surface for bacterial growth, and by limiting the number of bacteria it comes in contact with, you limit the potential danger.

After you touch anything that is potentially contaminated

Used cutting boards, used utensils and knives, the paper your meat came wrapped in, your trash can, dirty plates and glasses … you get the idea. The idea here is to prevent any contamination from used or dirty items from getting on your fresh food. Remember to wash your hands after you take out the trash, too.


After you go to the bathroom

This is a big duh, right? Didn’t your mom always tell you to wash up after using the bathroom? Well, she had a good reason, aside from the sheer grossness factor. Human feces is a transmitter of E. coli, hepatitis A, norovirus, and other diseases. And yes, you can give people E. coli even if you don’t have a case of it yourself — E. coli bacteria occur normally in the human digestive system. It’s when they escape the intestines and find their way into other parts of the body that they start causing problems.

In other words: please don’t feed people your poop because you didn’t wash your hands. Not only is it disgusting, it’s just plain unsafe.

After you touch your face, hair, or skin, and after you sneeze or cough

The sneezing and coughing thing is pretty obvious — you don’t want to transmit a virus you might have. What about touching your skin and hair?

Did you know that 30% of all humans are carriers — that means they’re totally unaffected by, but still are carrying — staphylococcus bacteria? Yeah. Staph is carried in your nose, in your throat, and on your skin. And like any other bacteria, it can be easily transmitted to food by touching it. Staph is a nasty, nasty disease and you do not want it. (By the way, if you regularly use sporting gear, like shin guards or chest protectors, you’re also putting staph on it. Get your gear cleaned!)

After you’ve handled any chemicals

Dishwasher detergent and dish soap are not things you want in your food, even if you are using biodegradable ones. Not tasty, right? Bleah. This goes double for things like oven cleaner and ant poison.
When you’re done cooking and before you eat

You’ve just made a fabulous dinner, right? Chicken, salad, rolls … the last thing you want to do is put a raw-chickeny hand on that dinner roll. Your hands might very well come into contact with your food while you’re cooking it, and it might not be totally done. Best to be safe.

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Sep 18
2010

Uncle Pasto and I are in the process of trying to get the garden rearranged for fall and winter. This is kind of … well, it’s complicated, because neither of us are experienced with turning over the garden for a new season. So it’s all kind of an experiment. Right now, we’re still getting plenty of veggies out of the three 4×8′ boxes that we have, though it’s slowed down from the massive summer bounty we were getting for a while. So it’s kind of hard to justify ripping things out to plant new things, even though we probably should. I’ve taken out some of the things that are done, like the melons, and a couple of the tomatoes that weren’t doing so well, and some of the bush beans, but pretty much everything else is still growing and providing.

The problem as I see it with using the square-foot-garden method (aside from the fact that things grow WAY BIGGER than Mel claims) is that the box isn’t all done at once. This makes it trickier to add sufficient compost and replace the mulch and theoretically add row covers if needed — which I’m expecting will be likely for the root-and-leaf crops of winter.

So for now, we’re adding another small box, to get some of our winter stuff started, and we’ll be able to turn over the other boxes a bit more at our leisure, I hope. Uncle Pasto spent most of today getting that put together. We just made this one a 4×4′, because the other side of our yard is a little more cramped, and we wanted to keep it easier to navigate.

.4x4 Kitchen Box

While he was building, I did the digging and leveling, and continued on my ongoing mission to Rid My Yard Of The Plastic. The previous homeowners designed the backyard to be very low-maintenance and low-water-usage. We’ll get to that water bit later, but in terms of the low-maintenance, they basically covered the entire yard with plastic except for a double-handful of junipers and two carrotwood trees, and then dumped a couple loads of decorative rock on it.

This would be OK if they actually used landscape cloth, but they didn’t. As far as I can tell, they used whatever plastic bags they had at hand. This means that I’m finding trash bags, landscape bags, grocery bags, and even the bags those loads of rocks came in. This also means that the ground underneath those exceptionally non-porous bags has been smothered for about thirty years, and the minimal compost our land has managed to generate is all mixed in with the decorative rock and isn’t getting into the rest of our minerally-rich but dense and heavy clay soil.

So today I moved a big pile of rocks and ripped out more plastic. It’s taking a while, because there’s a lot of rock to move. We have plastic bits sticking up here and there in our yard in the spots I haven’t gotten to yet.

The other thing I did today was remove more tree roots. We had the carrotwood trees removed last year. Remember I said it was a low-water-use yard? Well, let’s put it this way: there were no sprinklers in the backyard until we installed them. In other parts of the country, this is no big deal, but in southern California, it basically means that only very well-adapted stuff will grow well.

Carrotwood trees survive without water, but they have the same problem any other tree typically has in that case: thick, aggressive surface roots. We had the trees removed last year because the roots were cracking our patio, and threatening to get under our house and crack the concrete slab. No bueno. But just because you’ve gotten rid of the trees doesn’t mean that the roots stop growing. Carrotwood trees can and do regrow from the roots. I know, ’cause I spent today taking out a pile of roots with fresh green sprouts on them.

The pile of roots

Our hatchet is included for size comparison’s sake. That thick root in the upper-right corner is as thick as my upper arm.

There are some things I was not able to take out. Like this:

Part of the stump

I’m pretty sure this is attached to what was the tree stump before they ground it out — you can see a huge thick flat edge in there to the right of the hatchet. It’s really thick, and really dense. I’m not going to be getting it out any time soon, so I chopped up the top a bit and left it exposed to the weather. I’m likely to go in there with the drill at a slightly later date and drill holes in it to get it to decay faster. Just didn’t get that far today.

This, I think, is a more graphical way to show off just how much I dragged out of our dirt:

Can o' roots

I’ve got a long way to go.

This is what the current veggie boxes look like. We’re definitely going to try a different method of staking next year.

Garden Today

Everything’s getting a little tired … soon it will be time to turn things over. (:

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Sep 18
2010

September 16's CSA

This is our last CSA box … at least until we decide we’re not getting enough veggies out of the yard. Somehow I suspect that’s going to be a while.

I promptly snitched the leeks and added them to a cheese-and-vegetable pie which was our dinner last night. I got the idea from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, but it got totally rearranged to be gluten-free because Kristina was over — and then further rearranged because I was using veggies that I had, not the veggies that they called for. {: It was pretty good, I thought, but I continue to think that I like things spicier than the folks at Moosewood. If I make it again, the cheese sauce is getting kicked up a couple notches. Maybe a couple-dozen notches.

By the way, as a general rule of thumb, if you’re making a roux and you need it to be gluten-free, you can substitute rice flour for regular flour just fine. But be aware that rice flour tends to thicken more than wheat flour, so you may need to cut the amount of flour somewhat.

Aside from the leeks, we ended up with the carrots, zephyr squash (yum!) which I traded Kristina some of our home-grown zucchini for, half of the cantaloupe, the peaches, the apples (ooh, I need to make applesauce. Like, now), and the lettuce. I sent the herbs, tomatoes, and Swiss chard with Kristina. Also sent her home with strawberries. We’re still getting about a quart of strawberries every couple of days out of our front yard.

Not sure what I’m doing with yet, besides eating the lettuce and melon just plain, and making applesauce. Might eat the peaches plain too. Must plan for those carrots and squashes …

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Sep 14
2010

Two things:

One, I’m a dork and forgot to take pictures of dinner while I was making it. Sorry. Two: dinner was so good I totally forgot to take pictures of it before it was gone. Hee.

Which is a long way of saying: no pictures today, sorry. But you want to try this, pictures or no. This is fabulous stuff.

Our recipes today hail from La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy. And while this book hasn’t quite yet hit the status of “cookbook I can’t live without”, it’s rapidly heading that direction.  While there are some flaws in the book’s construction, I have nothing but positive words for the recipes so far.

One of the things about Italian cooking is how absurdly simple it can be sometimes. It can be so simple that sometimes you just sort of sit there and go … “wait, why didn’t I think of that?”. But simple recipes demand the best ingredients you can get your hands on, because the recipe relies on the strength of the ingredients, not how well you can whip your materials into shape. Fortunately for us and our fabulous dinner today, I had a plethora of delicious zephyr squash and green-leaf lettuce from my CSA box, and baby onions and “hottie” peppers from my yard.

Marinated Lettuce Salad

This salad is a lot like one my family make s for Christmas Eve, with sliced olives and garlic powder. But we don’t usually marinate that one. La Cucina recommends  a frisee (also known as curly endive or escarole), but notes that you can make it with Romaine or green leaf lettuce. I can state for a fact that it’s delicious with green leaf. Yum.

  • 1 head of firm lettuce, torn into pieces
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 1 small mildly hot pepper, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil (use the best you have)
  • salt (use the best you have)

Tear the lettuce and place in a large bowl. Mince the garlic and add to the lettuce.

For the pepper:  I used a “Hottie” pepper which is substantially hotter than “mildly hot” (to the tune of “habanero hybrid”), so I used only half of one, seeded it, and removed the membranes, then minced it. The pepper you choose will have a strong effect on the flavor of the salad, so plan accordingly. Hotties are fruity-hot like habaneros, which was pretty darn delicious. Mince the pepper, removing seeds and membranes if you desire, and add to the salad. If you’re sensitive to capsaicin on your fingers, remember to wear gloves when working with hot peppers.

Toss the salad with the olive oil and salt to taste. Find a plate that fits inside your bowl and place it over the lettuce. Weight it down with a can or Mason jar or something else similarly heavy, and cover the salad if you can. Place the whole thing in the fridge and let it rest for at least half an hour, preferably up to a couple of hours. Toss the salad again before serving.

Vegetable Tart (Scarpaccia)

Adapted from La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy

  • extra-virgin olive oil
  • 3/4 lb. small zucchini, preferably with blossoms attached (I used zephyr squash … and probably more like a pound’s worth), sliced into thin rounds. You can use pretty much any summer squash you’d like.
  • 2 large eggs, beaten
  • 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
  • 1/3 c. milk mixed with 1/3 c. water
  • 3 baby onions (not green onions/scallions) thinly sliced into rings (about 3/4 of a small regular onion)
  • 1/4 c. Parmesan cheese
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 425F. Spray a tart pan or baking dish with spray oil or lightly coat with olive oil. Slice the zucchini into rounds, place in a large colander, and sprinkle generously with salt. Allow the zucchini to rest for 20 minutes and let the salt pull some of the liquid out.

Meanwhile, prepare the rest of the tart filling: beat the two eggs together, add the milk and water, and add the flour. Beat well to combine and season with salt and pepper. Slice the onions and mince the garlic. You can also start the Marinated Lettuce Salad now, if you didn’t start it earlier.

When the zucchini is ready, rinse it thoroughly to remove the salt, drain well, and pat it dry. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a cast-iron skillet or large frying pan, and saute the zucchini until it’s a nice golden brown. Don’t stir too much — it takes a while for that golden crust to form. Just toss the zucchini with the hot oil and let it cook undisturbed for a few minutes, then stir and turn the pieces over to cook the other side. If there are small pieces that look done, fish them out and put them in your greased baking dish while you wait for the rest to finish.

Scoop the zucchini out of the skillet and layer it in the bottom of the greased baking dish. Layer the sliced onions on top of the zucchini, and sprinkle with the minced garlic and Parmesan. Stir up the egg mixture (it’s probably settled a bit) and pour it all around and over the zucchini-onion mixture. Drizzle the tart with 2-3 Tbsp. of olive oil. The tart will be about 1/2-inch thick. Pop it in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

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Sep 11
2010

Harvest 9-10-10

From left to right: a mountain of basil, a bowl of onions, a mountain of lemon cucumbers, three zucchini and a patty pan squash, a couple of “Hottie” peppers,  a fairytale eggplant, a handful of green beans, a pile of 4th of July tomatoes, a few Rainbow Blend tomatoes (one’s green and will go on the counter), yellow pear cherry tomatoes, black pearl cherry tomatoes, a small handful of scarlet runner beans (some dry, some fresh), a couple of San Diego tomatoes, and a couple of Pineapple tomatoes.

OK, so I didn’t manage to pick stuff since Labor Day. This is about four day’s accumulation, and I haven’t picked strawberries or blueberries yet. I’ll probably do that tomorrow.

This doesn’t include bell peppers, and only a couple of the hot peppers. They store neatly on the plant until I need them while they’re green. Most of them are still green, so that’s convenient. Ditto on the white eggplants — I’ve got like five on the plants, but none of them need to be picked right this second.

I gotta figure out how to dry that basil, now. Or make pesto. Pronto.

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Sep 8
2010

I’ll admit, I crashed out over the weekend. I was so tired. I took naps. Repeatedly. I don’t do that.

But when Labor Day itself finally rolled around, I had enough energy and to spare, so while Uncle Pasto was barbecuing some fabulous smoked brisket, I spent most of the day working on the garden. I picked a huge bowlful of veggies, a half-cup of blueberries, and a bowlful of strawberries. I pulled out the watermelon vines and one of the tomatoes, and the tomatillo, which was pretty much dead. And then I transplanted my basil.

Y’see, a while back I found out that one of the basil plants I picked up turned out to be one of those designer perennial basils. This was totally by accident — I was just grabbing stuff that looked good when I went shopping, and didn’t realize that I’d gotten something like that. I’m squidgy about plants that have been patented, mostly because I’m not into subsidizing some of the large seed companies out there, and it’s hard as an average gardener to find out who originally bred your plant. (I’m perfectly willing to pay for peoples’ skill in plant-breeding; I just would rather my money go to small breeders.)

But I paid good money for it, and it’s tasty, and it’s absolutely huge — and in southern California, I’m not even sure I’ll need to overwinter it. I had no problems with my basil last year until frost struck hard. So it got transplanted from one of the veggie boxes out to the strawberry bed, and I set up some drip line for it. Not sure if it’ll survive the shock; if it lasts a week, I’m going to go chop a bunch of it back anyway, as it’s rather floppy without the tomatoes to lean on. So there’s that.

Then I started working on chopping back the lavender in the front yard. I took off a full trashcan’s worth from the two bushes in front. They’re starting to look a little peaked — sections are dying. It’s not really surprising; they’re supposed to live about seven years, and I think that’s about how long we’ve had them. We’ve been talking about a front yard makeover for a couple of months … it’s on the list of things to do at some point, but it probably won’t be any time soon.

After that, I crashed for about half an hour, and then started up some wing sauce out of the Ball yellow book. I had pretty much everything I needed to make it from the garden boxes. Wow. It’s pretty good, too — kinda tastes like tonkatsu sauce. Barely put a dent in my tomatoes, though. I’ve got at least as much as I used for the sauce left over! I’d initially planned to grow enough tomatoes that I could can if I wanted. I wasn’t intending on getting so many that I had to can or else! Notes made for next year in the garden binder.

And somewhere in there was noshing on brisket, and cucumber-jicama salad, and a little playing of Glory To Rome, which is a spiffy little card game that I enjoy very much. And dishes. Lots of dishes.

I had a good time. But I also have another date with my canner later this week! Overrun by tomatoes … send help!

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Sep 6
2010

At least for the foreseeable future, my barbecue posts will probably reference Mike Mills’ book, Peace, Love, and Barbecue; and generally without using any of his recipes directly. That’s because the book’s strength is its cooking tips: Mike spends many pages discussing barbecue techniques, and the recipes are simply examples. The book might be a little weak handling fish, but for the other meats, it is the only barbecue book you’ll ever need.

With that, I’ll start with the template of this recipe, which was inspired by the Super Smokers’ Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings, which can be found on page 199:

  • Wood chips for smoking poultry;
  • Roughly three-and-a-half tablespoons of salt-based barbecue rub;
  • A half cup of fruity barbecue sauce; and
  • About two pounds of chicken parts.

You’ll also need a disposable aluminum pan for this recipe, about 9 by 13 inches.

The basic recipe is simple: start by covering your chicken with your barbecue rub, and let it marinate in your fridge for at least an hour. More is better; you could let the chicken sit overnight. Then, heat your barbecue up to 250 degrees (Fahrenheit), and add the wood chips and the chicken. You’re not placing the chicken directly over the coals; you’re smoking with indirect heat.

(I’ve got a barrel-style grill. The fire goes on one side of the grill, and the meat goes on the other.)

After about a half an hour, open up your grill and add more wood chips. At this point, you’ll want to rotate the hot side of each of the pieces away from your fire. To be clear, this rotation is not about the usual axis that you’re used to — this isn’t turning the chicken over. You can turn the chicken over, too, but that’s not as important as getting an even heat through the whole piece of chicken.

About a half an hour later, pour that cup of barbecue sauce into a sauce pan and heat it up. All you’re doing is breaking down the sauce’s viscosity, so that it’ll coat evenly for the next step. It shouldn’t take that long.

At this point, you want to get that disposable aluminum pan. Take the chicken from the grill and place it in the pan. Pour the sauce over the chicken pieces, then turn over the pieces with your tongs until the sauce coats the chicken.

Then take the pan and put it back on the grill. Add some more smoke, wait 30 to 45 minutes, and you’re done.

That’s the template. Here’s what I use:

Wood Chips. Because I’m using a sweet barbecue sauce, I like balancing it with the robust flavor of mesquite.

Salt-based Rub. I use my own blend, dubbed Texas Skeeter Dust. It’s got a zillion ingredients, so will get an entry all its own. I used a slight modification of the Super Smokers’ the first time I made this, and it worked out fine:

  • 1.25 tablespoons ground black pepper
  • 0.5 tablespoons onion powder
  • 0.5 tablespoons chili powder
  • 0.5 tablespoons garlic powder
  • 0.25 tablespoons kosher sea salt

Fruity Barbecue Sauce. Here’s where being married to Auntie Pasto gives me an advantage. In June, she made a Zesty Peach Barbecue Sauce using the recipe from the yellow book (also known as the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving). As you can probably guess from the sauce’s name, it’s sweet and fruity, but it’s also mildly spicy.

Well, mild for me, anyway.

If you don’t have access to this sauce, you can try getting an off-the-shelf substitute with the same sort of flavor profile. (Like, say, “Jalapeño Peach”.) The Super Smokers don’t even go that far, though — instead this sauce, they take one part hot barbecue sauce, and mix it with two parts honey. (I haven’t tried that; they’re going for a super-sweet profile on their wings, so it’s probably too much honey for the taste I’m going for.)

About the only warning I have for selecting your barbecue sauce is to avoid one that’s “smoky”. The whole point of the grill is to add real smoke, and you don’t need to screw that up by adding a conflicting liquid smoke in your sauce.

Chicken. Well, given the name of the recipe, it should come as no surprise that I work with chicken thighs. What might be surprising is that I use organic bone-in, skin-on thighs. The “skin-on” part should be obvious: the fat from the skin helps keep the chicken from drying out while you’re smoking it. Once you go skin-on, there’s no cheap reason to avoid the bone.

The “organic” part deserves a little bit more discussion. The industrial processes that are used to cut and clean “normal” chicken tend to spread diseases across the whole batch of chicken, rather than just one or two pieces. As a result, you should really follow the USDA recommendation, and cook your chicken to 170 degrees (again, Fahrenheit). Organic chicken, on the other hand, tends to be cleaner; you can usually get away with cooking your chicken ten degrees cooler.

(If you want to follow up on the subject, Robb Walsh spends a few pages talking about this in The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook.)

Finally, I should mention a great advantage to this recipe: because the chicken finishes cooking in that disposable pan, you can move it from your charcoal-powered grill to a gas-powered one (I’ve got the Brinkmann two-chambered grill), or inside to finish in your oven. While this move runs counter to the Zen of Barbecuing, it does mean that you can maintain a schedule with this dish even when your grill is running a bit cool.

Makes 4 to 8 servings.

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Sep 2
2010

Uncle Pasto (that’s me) now has an account. Auntie Pasto will still be doing most of the publishing, but she’s given me clearance to post my better barbecue recipes. First in the queue is my recipe for chicken thighs, which should go up sometime during the four-day weekend.



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Sep 2
2010

No, not any graphics updates … I wish! {: One of these days I’ll get my act together enough to get that done.

I run an instance of RecipeShelf in the back end where you folks can’t see it yet. I’m doing an update to that tonight. I’m looking forward to some of the updated features, especially the offline mode for the iPod. It’s still not at the point where recipes can be automagically imported into WordPress, so you won’t be seeing any of that for a while, but here’s hoping it will be done at some point.

Anyway, I provide you the link because I think RecipeShelf is super-cool and I really like using it. I’m extremely satisfied with it — it does everything I want it to do, plus a few extra things I don’t really need it to do, but they’re nice widgets. I’m fully intending to make a donation to support it, and want more people to be aware that it exists. (: I’ve looked a long time for what I’d consider “decent” recipe software, and this is the first thing I’ve been seriously happy with. Check it out!

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