Yaka Mein!

It's no secret I adore New Orleans.  So when i came across an article where Big Freedia* shares her momma's recipe for Yaka Mein, I had to drop everything and try it out.  For more information on what the hell Yaka Mein is, go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaka_mein .

Anyway, the vegetables, as one might expect: Onion, bell pepper, celery, green onion, garlic, serrano, parsley.

Sear some cubed chuck.  Doesn't need to be cooked through, just browned.

Remove the beef, lower the heat, add onion, peppers, and celery.  Cook down for about five minutes.

Raise the heat, throw in the rest of the veggies, sauté for about 30 seconds.

Toss the beef back in, and add a heap of cajun seasoning (shown: Joe's Stuff).

Add beer, chicken stock, water (or some combination of the three) until the beef is covered.  Stir, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover for about 2 hours, or until the beef is tender.

Remove the beef, and shred it.  Return it to the pot.

Cook some noodles, put into a bowl.

Ladle the beef mixture over top, garnish with more green onions and a hard-boiled egg.

Tasting notes: OHMYGAWD SO GOOD.











*The queen diva, you best-a believe-a, girl down, you already knooooow!

One-Pot-Pasta?

I caught wind of that "9-minute linguine" recipe that was floating around recently, and decided to see what was up.  It looked pretty basic, so I jazzed it up a bit.  Let's see if it's all it's cracked up to be.

First off, I browned some mushrooms.

Then I grabbed some orecchiette, chopped up some tomatoes, sliced onion and garlic, and picked a bit of basil.

Then I put it all in a pan with some water.  I know.  I know.  I also added salt, and crushed red pepper.

Bring it to a boil, and let the water cook out.  Stir well.

When it's about halfway down, I tossed in some roast chicken I had lying around.  Check the pasta to see if it's done, and adjust for flavor.  If it's not done, add a little more water, and then check again.

Amazingly, it does seem to be creating its own sauce.  Because I gotta be me, I threw in some shredded kale.  Because health.  Or trend.  Or something.

When the pasta's done, and the sauce is as thick as you want it to be, spoon it into a bowl, add lemon and parmesan cheese, and have at it.  Total time: 20 minutes from browning the mushrooms to plate.

Tasting notes: It's supposed to be a sauce, sure, but even so the flavors seemed a bit muddled together.  Plus, the tomatoes never really broke down enough to change their character.  I think I may try this again, but simply cook down the pasta by itself, then toss it with fresh ingredients.  A noble experiment, nonetheless.

Thai Grilled Chicken

We all have a mental picture of American Thai food: It’s either some sort of stir-fried rice or noodle, maybe a curry, and while there’s a nod towards the idea of “all five flavors” being balanced, the general result is, well, “bland with peanuts” or “incredibly freaking hot, with peanuts”.  But surely that’s not all, is it?  I mean, what about…

…Roast chicken?

I mean, you may not see it on menus here in the states, but surely the concept of “put a whole bird over a fire” is rather ubiquitous.  So let’s see how they might do it in Thailand.

(This recipe, and more or less any other Thai recipe on this blog, is from Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok, which is as close as I can get to knowing how they’d do it in Thailand.)

Anyway, let’s get to it.  We need a brine.  We’ll take sugar, and pound garlic (sure, leave the skins on), ginger, lemongrass, and white peppercorns together, then throw it all into a bucket with cilantro stems and roots, green onion, and top it off with water.

                                                  

We’re going to use Cornish game hens.  Completely submerge in the brine, and let sit overnight.

Remove, and stand it up on a rack so it can drain.  Place, uncovered, in the fridge for a few hours so it can dry out (OMG.  RAW CHICKEN EXPOSED IN THE FRIDGE.  CALL THE AUTHORITIES.)

For the stuffing, we’re going to smash more lemongrass, garlic, and cilantro stems together.  Fill the birds, and stand them up in a container.

Make a marinade using fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, black pepper, and a bit of water.  Brush all over the birds, and let it sit for a couple of hours more.  Hey, no one said this would be quick.  Halfway through, flip birds over and re-apply marinade.

Fire up the grill, and using indirect heat, grill the birds for about 30 minutes or until cooked through.  In the last five or ten minutes, baste with a combination of honey, shallot oil, and water.  Flip birds more often in the last part of cooking to get the skin brown.

For a dipping sauce, combine sugar, water, vinegar, and Thai chilies.  Cook until slightly syrupy.  Congrats, you just made the ubiquitous hot and sweet dipping sauce.

Chop the bird into pieces, and serve with the stuffing and dipping sauce.  Some sticky rice would compliment the stuffing, as well.

It’s worth the wait.

Trotters a la Icarus (or, Pig's Feet Flying Too Close to the Sun)

Heard about a new butcher recently, won a Best of Boston award (fine, I'll drop a plug: M.F. Dulock in Somerville).  Good place, lots of interesting cuts, and high quality.  Feeling fairly confident in myself, I decided to grab some trotters.  How hard could it be to debone them and stuff them full of spiced groung pork?  I should have noticed that the term for the stuffing on these things is "farce".  But never mind!  First, we debone a pork shoulder.

Grind up a combination of white and black peppercorns, nutmeg, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, and allspice.

Combine with chopped pork, garlic, and salt, and let hang out in the fridge while you deal with the feet.

OK.  So, error the first: This recipe calls for a lot more shank than I bought.  Mine are more up-to-the-ankle.  No matter!  We soldier on.

How to skin this?  It's mostly bone.  Some French chefs can slip their knives between skin and bone and remove it like a sock, but nuh-uh.  Let's just take our time.

Note: Don't do it like this.

Better.  Also note: Soon after this, I bought a real boning knife.  

Yeah, that took about 15 minutes, and lot of effort.  No lost fingers, though.  Only three more to go.

To complete the farce, throw the pork and any odd foot scraps through the grinder.

Stuff each foot, and tie it up to keep everything together.

Bring chicken stock to a simmer with bay leaf and garlic cloves.

Lay out some cheesecloth, and roll up the feet.  Then tie it up like a roast.

Place into the pot, and simmer for upwards of four hours.

Or, you could put everything into a slow cooker.

Remove from the liquid, and unwrap.  Don't discard that liquid!  There's so much collagen in there, you've just made pork jello! Keep that around for your next noodle soup.  It can be frozen.  Anyway, place the feet in a roasting pan.

Still needs more flavor. Combine whole grain mustard with beer.

Brush over feet, and roast.

Roast, basting throughout, until the skin gets crispy.  Note: The skin never got crispy.

Sigh, shrug your shoulders, and serve it anyway garnished with sea salt.  

Tasting notes -- The flavors are good, but the texture was really, really soft.  I suppose that's what it was supposed to be like, but it was personally unappealing.  And rich.  Really, really rich.  I was looking for crispy skin, with an intense sausage bite.  If I ever do this again, I might make a more chorizo-like sausage (or maybe merguez), and skip the poaching, going straight to a low-and-slow oven, like a barbecue.  Live and learn, I suppose.  On the plus side, I've got all that pork jello....