I realize that there are a bunch of marinates out there, and I’ve tried more than a few. Recently, I’ve cut back on the complex stuff and let the veggies and meat stand on their own more. More of tasting the nicely charred food and less burnt spices.

This is an easy “middle Eastern” one that goes well with a side of couscous.

1/4 cup good olive oil
1/4 cup parsley, minced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed/minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice, sometimes I use Ship Curry Powder instead
1/4 teaspoon cayenne

In a small bowl, mix together above marinate ingredients. Make sure they are well combined. Don’t bother with measuring spoons, just do it by palm & eye.

Cut up a chicken breast into chunks. Cut up red (or white/yellow) onions into quartered chunks. Cut up some peppers (bell, or whatever you have) into quartered chunks. If you have other kebab type veggies, do some of those. Everything should be about the same size, and big enough to put on a wooden skewer.

Put the meat and veggies in a airtight container, pour marinate over, shake around so everything is well coated. Let sit while the grill heats up. (Since there are no acids in here, you can keep overnight without “cold cooking” the chicken).

Alternating veggies and meat, thread onto wooden skewers. Cook on a hot covered grill, turning every couple of minutes, until charred and cooked through. You know your grill best, so just keep an eye on them and keep turning until they look delicious.

Serve with a bed of couscous.

I usually like a little sauce on my eggs. Tabasco or Frank’s Red Hot are both good, but sometimes a little to vinegary for me.

On the recommendation of our acquaintance who runs Say Hi, we picked up a bottle of Mae Ploy “Sweet Chili Sauce” — he was raving about it — “great on eggs!”

Was he right? Absolutely. You can tell by how empty the bottle is (it’s the size of a wine bottle). We pour it over scrambled or over-easy eggs, served over some hash brown patties (frozen are fine — easy in the morning). And don’t forget the side of bacon.

What makes this sauce neat is that it’s sweet. You get some heat, but mostly sweet. Now remember a key cooking concept: Sweet + Savory + Salty = Really Fucking Good. The saltiness of the bacon, the savory eggy eggs, the foundation of the potatoes, and the sweet sauce. It’s a potent combination.

If you are looking for a new topping for eggs, and are tired of savory salsa or ketchup or whatever, try and find a bottle. Even if you don’t use it on eggs, you can use it as a dipping sauce for chicken nuggets or something.

I admit, I was skeptical at first, but was quickly won over.

I’ve talked about no knead bread before, but it’s only now that I’ve taken a reasonable photo of a complete loaf. This one just came out of the oven.

I’ve been interested in cooking for a long time. For a long while it was a study of the cuisines of China (with all their varieties). There was a foray into classical (French and Italian), traditional Mexican, and some Japanese for good measure.

While all of these have been fun, my daily life prevents me from doing a proper job of any one of those cuisines. At the end of the day, I need three meals on the table, none of which come from a box or take-out. That’s my goal.

And, honestly, I’m a fan of the jumbled world of American Comfort Food. Cooking fish inside 5 pounds of kosher salt might be cool, but I just want some roasted chicken thighs with a potato side. Some home made Sloppy Joes. A quick and easy Kung Pao Chicken (Chinese, like just about every other “ethnic” dish you eat here, is heavily Westernized).

There are three books I go to time and time again. The first is Bittman’s “How To Cook Everything”. I go to this book for technique. The hows and the whys. Plus, it has an excellent range of recipes. Need to learn how to roast chicken? Go here. Need a bread stick recipe? Go here. What’s a good simple red sauce? Go here. This is my “Joy of Cooking”.

How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition), Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food

A runner-up for this role is the gigantic America’s Test Kitchen “The New Best Recipe”. I’m a big fan of Test Kitchen, and Cook’s Country, because they mash the food science of McGee with traditional American recipes. An excellent source for “why we do things this way” — it takes the magic out of cooking and replaces it with science. If you like the show, get the book.

The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition

When I want to try something new, I reach for my copy of Rosengarten’s “It’s All American Food”. Rosengarten dives deeper into the different cuisines that make up American cooking. You get closer to true Japanese, without having to invest heavily into it. You learn how to make an “all day” red sauce. And he has some complicated stuff (as does Bittman and America’s) which can challenge you without frustration. His chatty and honest style help to welcome you into the different kitchens. Unlike most cookbooks, you can read this as a book and not just a collection of recipes.

It’s All American Food: The Best Recipes for More than 400 New American Classics

One thing I should point out is that “How To Cook” and “New Best” are big books with almost no photography. I’ve always been leery of “picture book” cookbooks. I’ve gotten the most use, and best recipes from, the big tomes.

The executive summary: If you want to learn more about good cooking, get a copy of the “How To Cook Everything” or “New Best Recipe”. To expand your knowledge, and pick up some neat new recipes, augment with “It’s All American Food”. If you like American food, you’ll like these books.

I’ve made these a couple of times and they have always come out well. Very soft — perfect of dipping into soup (reminds me of that a French Dip, in a way).

I just wish baking didn’t take so darn long. Two to three hours of work, and you devour the results in a couple of minutes. (You can see I’ve already scarfed down three of them.)

If you are around a Puerto Rican for any length of time you realize something pretty quickly: they love pork. Which is good, because I love pork.

You’ll often find Mofongo (mashed and formed and cooked plantains) served with chunks of crispy pork. Sometimes the pork is mixed with the plantains. Sometimes the pork is served on the side. The problem is, in my experience, the pork is almost always cooked badly.

What’s bad about it? Well, it’s almost never tender enough. You’ll get a wonderful brown and crispy crust on the chunks, but then you need a chainsaw to cut them. Tough, tough, tough.

My goal was to come up with a way of having a crispy pork exterior with a perfectly tender interior. Luckily I found a recipe for Mexican Pork Tostadas (Tingas) which gave me the technique I was missing.

Note that the meat I’m using should be inexpensive. Get yourself a big (18-20 pound) bone-in Boston Butt (at 99 cents a pound) and cut it up into pieces. I spend an hour or so doing this, wrap up the pieces, and freeze. I freeze 1/2 the butt for slow cooker BBQ. The other half I break into chunks and 1 1/2 pound packets (each packet for 1 meal). I get about 8 meals for two people out of $20 worth of pork. Doing all the work at once saves time during the weeknight meals. Boston Butt / Pork Shoulder is magical pork. It’s very fatty and a pain when its raw, but if slow cooked it turns magically tender and very flavorful. It’s the basis for most pork BBQ.

Crispy & Tender Pork Chunks

• 1 to 2 lb pork butt (or Boston butt) trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1 inch chunks. There should be some fat in the meat, but trim off excess with kitchen shears.
• Water (about 6 cups)
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp thyme (dried is fine, 2 sprigs of fresh better)
• 1 Tbl salt

Put the pork chunks into a large (3 quart or more) pot and cover with water. The pot should be almost filled to the top with water (at least 2″ above the chunks). Start heating to a boil.

While the pork is heating up you’ll start seeing foam / scum rising to the top. Take a large spoon and start skimming. You’ll have to keep doing this for a while. Skim. Wait for more foam to appear. Skim. It’s a bit tedious, but will remove the gross/greasy parts. After a couple minutes of skimming the water will be nearly to a boil and you’ll get no more foam.

Once skimming is complete and water at/near boiling, add the garlic cloves, thyme, and salt. Stir.

Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and keep at a rapid simmer (active motion–the chunks should be moving about).

Let simmer for about 60 to 90 minutes (less for smaller chunks, longer for big/fatty chunks).

Drain the pork. You may wish to reserve the cooking liquid — it’s very tasty and can be used as a soup base. Discard the garlic (will be mushy) and thyme (if you used fresh sprigs).

At this point you have very tender pork chunks. You have two choices. Make Tinga, where you’d shred and season the meat, or go with the fried chunks. I’m doing fried here.

In a large (12+”) non-stick skillet (frying pan) add about 2 Tbl oil or bacon drippings. I highly recommend that you use bacon drippings. You do save your drippings, don’t you? Heat over medium high heat until just about smoking.

Add pork to hot oil/pan. Stir often, until pork is well browned and crisp. This will take about 8 to 10 minutes.

Drain on paper towels / newspaper and serve. I usually serve them with simple sides, like mashed potatoes, baked beans, or whatever. They are also good with Mofongo, Tostones, or Surullitos. I usually go with potatoes or beans, as the other stuff might be too greasy for one meal. Rice and beans would be an excellent side, too.

If you like eating crispy chunks of pork, but have always hated the toughness, give this a try. I’ve made it many times with excellent results.

I’m bemused by the community of hard-core home coffee roasters. Here, for example, is a roaster using an air-type popcorn maker.

This is a pretty common technique, and the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist (great kits!) developed some sort of bean cooler. Being engineers, they went pretty hard-core. Check it out here: EMS Bean Cooler.

I started saying I was bemused, because this is the coffee roaster I used in Puerto Rico:

That’s right.: A wood fire. Cans with rocks. A pot. And a stick.

Sometimes you have to take off that over-engineering hat and just start a fire.

Evelyn and I have had a pretty busy week and weren’t in the mood for a big complicated meal today. Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, I went with something simple: A Japanese Curry mix.

These are boxes of sauce mix that you can buy at Asian markets. To them you add meat and vegetables, simmer for a bit, then serve over some rice. Here is what you start with:

It’s really pretty simple: take two large onions, two medium potatoes, and about 4 medium-small carrots. (I weigh everything, according to the box, since sizes vary.) You clean the veggies and chop into bite sized pieces. Do the same for the meat, ending up with about a pound of bite-sized chicken breast.

Take a large skillet and saute everything in some oil/butter until browned a bit. Then you pour in about three cups of water, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes (until carrots and potatoes are soft–the onions will have softened during the browning process).

Once the veggies are softened, the magic begins. There are two packets of curry mix in the box, individually portioned. I use 1/2 a box (one packet) for the above amount of veggies and meat. You break the curry into pieces (it’s already scored) and stir it in. After about 10 minutes on low heat the sauce will be thickened and you’ll have a delicious curry smell in the house.

The box indicates using the above quantities of veggies and meat with one whole box of curry mix and 5 cups of water. I modified this so that I use the full box quantity of veggies and meat, but about half the water and 1/2 box of the curry mix. This gives a good curry to veggie/meat ratio and a meal for four people (or two meals for 2).

The end result is a big skillet full of warm delicious stew-like smooth curry:

Again, remember that I do a full batch of veggies. This means that you need to do this is a large 12-14″ skillet. It almost overflows my pan (and I have a large commercial 12″ which is a true 12″ across the bottom). If in doubt, cook everything in a Dutch oven, where the chances of overflowing will disappear.

Everything comes together very quickly. If you put your rice in the cooker when you start you’ll have the rice and curry done at the same time (about an hour, including cutting). The curry reheats well. We end up having at least two meals out of the 1/2 box of mix.

A note about the heat level: We have tried the “Medium Hot” and the “Hot”. Unless our taste buds are burned out, we found that neither is hot at all. I couldn’t tell any difference at all between the two heat levels and would consider it mild.

I’d recommend this dish to someone who wants a little variety in their dinner meal, but doesn’t want to go too far off the deep end. Picky traditional people will like it’s stew-like presentation (served over rice). People looking for a new flavor will enjoy the mild curry flavor. Well worth trying out.

[I think that I'm going to start a new ongoing series of blog posts: Things I Don't Understand. Nothing too exciting, just stuff rattling around my brain, which I can't find sufficient answers for on the Internet.]

The Hamburger Bun

I would like to know why most store bought Hamburger Buns are thicker on the top than the bottom. Whether I’m loading the bun with a big burger, sloppy joe mix, or an egg, I always have the same problem. The bottom bun just isn’t thick/strong enough to hold the contents. Much of the time I end up flipping the whole thing upside down to eat, as the top is much more robust.

Any idea why they do this? I think that either a more robust bottom is needed (more fully browned, to make it firmer), or the bottoms should be thicker.

Most recipes using canned tomatoes call for you to fully drain all the juices. I used to just drain these into the sink, until I learned better. Now I save the juices.

I pour the can into a mesh sieve placed over a bowl, give the tomatoes a couple of minutes to drain, use them, and store the leftover juices in the refrigerator.

After you have a good quantity, all you have to do is boil it down. I put a little olive oil in a saucepan over low heat, add a clove or two of minced/pressed garlic, and cook slightly (less than a minute). Then I pour in the juice, stir, and bring to a boil.

Once it is boiling, reduce the heat so you maintain a good boil without overflowing the pan. Keep boiling. Boil boil boil. You’ll keep boiling until it reaches the consistency you want — something like tomato soup.

If you continue boiling, it becomes syrup-like, so you can use it for dipping breadsticks in. Or, as I found out yesterday, it can turn into the worlds easiest tomato soup. Just garlic, oil, and leftover juices — boiled down to the essence of the tomato. You end up with a surprisingly bright strong tomato flavor. I have never been a tomato soup eater, but I would certainly eat this simple mixture.