Tonight, I was going to cook a recipe for my other project, Cooking my way through Nicholas - The Cookbook. In the grocery store, we started thinking about tomorrows lunch and dinner and since I had made some homemade chili powder, my wife said 'we should just make some chicken taco's tomorrow with your chili powder'. That turned into 'we should make it shredded chicken, and braise it!' (Oh, the life of a foodie). I had everything, but the chicken, so the plan was to make the chicken tonight, and then reheat it for tomorrow. Well, the dish smelled so good, that we scrapped making anything else, and ate it tonight.

We recently took a trip to Chicago, on a purely culinary getaway. Our only goal was to eat at every single Rick Bayless place, and we did. Awesome. Food. Pictures of the trip can be found here. I've been inspired by Diane Kennedy and Rick Bayless since I started learning how to cook a few years ago. Mexican flavors (side by side with Indian) are my absolute favorite.

This is one of the few recipes I can say that I 'created' myself, and I'm proud of it. I can't think of a name for it, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open. For now I'll call it...

'Wish I was in Oaxaca' Chicken

Ingredients - Serves 4

4 chicken breasts, on the one, skin on
2 Tablespoons of Chili Powder, divided (I made my own, I use Alton Browns recipe believe it or not!)
1 Bottle of Beer (Tecate)
2 Jalapeno Peppers, sliced with seeds
1 White Onion, sliced
3 Cloves of garlic, sliced
2 Chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped
1 7oz can of Chipotle Sauce
2 14.5oz Cans of Hunts Fire Roasted Tomatoes
3 cups of Chicken Stock
1 Pinch of Mexican Oregano
3 Tablespoons of Grape seed (or vegetable oil)
Corn Torillas
Cilantro
Maggi Seasoning 
Salt and Pepper

1. Preheat oven to 325. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper, and a sprinkle of chili powder. In a dutch oven or large, oven safe pot, heat oil on Medium High and Brown chicken. Approximately 3 minutes each side. Remove chicken and set aside.

2. With pot still on medium high, throw onion, garlic and jalapeno in and cook for approximately 5 minutes.

3. Deglaze with 6oz of beer, scraping up all the brown bits from the pan, and drink the rest,

4. Combine the rest of the ingredients + the rest of the Chili Powder, with the onions, peppers and garlic and place the chicken in. Pour in chicken stock to just cover the chicken, if necessary, and bring to a simmer. Tear up 2-3 corn tortillas and toss into pot.

 

 

5. Cover, and place pot in oven for 2.5 hours or until chicken is fork tender.

6. Remove chicken from the pot and set aside. Use an immersion blender, or carefully pour braising liquid into a blender and blend until smooth. Taste. Season with Maggi seasoning and pepper to taste.

 

(Maggi seasoning, is like mexican soy sauce. It's awesome)

7. Plate chicken in a shallow bowl, ladle over a spoonful of sauce, and garnish with cilantro to taste. Serve with corn tortillas.

That's it.

My wife says - 'I'd serve this dish to Rick Bayless if we had him over for dinner!'...and she's damn picky. That was enough to satisfy me! It makes up for my debacle of a dinner last week where I had thought through this lamb loin dish for hours, everynight before I went to bed, only to completely fail at the dish, throw it out, and ended up going to Stage Left in New Brunswick, NJ for a burger.

As I publish this post, I just received a message from Rick Bayless. His response? "Looks Beautiful!".

I think I'll sleep good tonight...


...Knowing I have some left over for lunch tomorrow...

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This post is WAAAY late. I thought I had posted it already, but....I didn't. I've been too occupied with our other project. 

Some background. My Wife's friend from Montana flew in for our 'wedding' (aka very very small dinner >25 people), as a gift, she gave us a basket of some stuff from the farm she works on. best. gift. ever.

She gave us some:
Garlic
Mint tea
Lemon Balm tea
Raspberry Jam
Redcurrant Jam
really good Honey
Oregano

So, we decided to invite her over for dinner, and use the ingredients in a dinner for her.

Well, dinner was had on Friday to MUCH success...perhaps it was that false sense of "because I made it" but our guest loved it, and we chalked it up to one of the best dinners we've ever made!

Here was the 'fancy' tongue-in-cheek menu...


Garlic Honey lollipops, were really, good. Stole the idea from Pegu Club







Apologize for the not so great pictures, didn't wanna be that 'guy' snapping photos while the guest is thinking, 'i just want to fsking eat'

then we did the salad...the vinegairette was fantastic...really really surprisingly good. We used the red currant jam, some really good red wine vinegar we brought back from Italy (from Volpaia) and some really good Olive oil we have from Nice. No pictures though....sorry. Wife did the recipe, she just mixed like 4:1 oil with vinegar and red currant jam to taste, and a fresh cracked pepper.

Then we did the lemon balm and honey granita.....again, surprisingly simple and good.



For the main, I did the Mint 'tea' risotto with Lamb




chocolate mousse.



The mint risotto with the lamb was just awesome. Mint goes awesome with lamb, and well, I like risotto. It's no big deal to I'm sure most of you guys, but this is the first dinner I didn't go off any recipes....I patted myself on the back all night!

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I never finished putting up my Italy trip report. I probably never will. Just too busy to do it justice. If you wanna hear about it, email me, this is an open invite for dinner at my house.

I've been suffering from a crazy migraine post running the NYC Marathon (oh yeah, I ran the NYC marathon), and still have it...but needed some comfort food if I wasn't hitting the cocktail bar tonight. So, in Top Chef style, we raided the fridge-freezer-cabinets for some ingredients to throw something together. I'm the self proclaimed risotto king, and we had some sweet italian sausage in the freezer...some San Marzano cherry tomatoes we bought by accident collecting dust in the cabinet...and enough vermouth left for a martini, and for some risotto. The basil plant will likely die in the frost tonight too. Here's my recipe. It came out awesome. I don't know why more restaurants don't serve food like this.

Timko's Tomato Sausage Risotto

1 cup of arborio rice
1 quart or so of chicken stock (I used beef, its all I had, better than bouillon to be exact)
2 big links of sausage (whatever that equates to weightwise)
14oz can of peeled tomatoes, with the juices
1 cup of vermouth (or white, or red wine)
1 onion - minced
3 cloves of garlic - minced
1tblspn tomato paste
Some fresh Basil
1 cup or so of fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
some olive oil
Some oregano


1. Heat up the stock to a simmer. Put some oil in a pan on mid-high, and crumple the sausage in and brown it good. Take sausage out.

2. Throw onion in, and cook it down but down let it turn brown, when it's about to, toss in the garlic.

3. Throw in the rice and 'toast' the rice for a few minutes, it should smell, nutty.

4. Toss in the tablespoon of tomato paste and mix it all in, for about a minute or two then deglaze with the vermouth/wine being sure to scrap up any crispy bits from the sausage browning.

5. Toss can of tomatoes in with the juices, and if you want, the sausage (I did, or you can throw it in at the end too) and a ladel full of the hot stock in, stir and wait until the rice drinks it all up...then keep repeating adding ladelfuls until rice is how you like it, keep heat at a low simmer. I tossed in about half a teaspoon of oregano too and some S&P to taste.

6. Take off heat and Toss in the cheese and stir.

7. Serve with some fresh basil on top.

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Still on my Mexican kick, I made Pollo en Salsa de Fresadilla Y Chipotle from Diana Kennedy's cookbook. Fan-fucking-tastic. Just with whatever leftover corn and flour tortillas I had in the house. Dinner for 2 total+lunch tomorrow for 2....7$ and I that's because I had to buy Mexican bay leafs and a bunch of extra garlic.

Tomatillos? 2lbs for 99cents and I needed only 1.5lbs.

Limes? 10cents at the Bravo Supermarket.

Chicken? 3.5lbs? 3.50.

I swear, next week, I'll attempt my own tortillas.

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Alright, I'm obsessed with Mexican food/cooking. I'm not good at it...yet, but damnit I'm trying. I think I like it because I like the Mexican grocers in town.

I wanted something simple/basic to make last night so whipped up Diana Kennedy's recipe for simple Mexican Rice. Arroz a la Mexicana. Threw some left over grilled chicken in there too. Came out awesome. Could have maybe used some more tomato flavor, but I followed the recipe, and used fresh tomato over a can, and maybe the tomatoes just weren't the best.

She sure does use a blender a lot in her recipes...I can't imagine this is really that traditional? maybe I'm wrong. Either way it worked out.

Sorry for the bad cell phone picture.



Tonight, some chicken in a salsa of Tomatillos and Chipotle.

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Risotto is usually pretty heavy...but I craved it last week and whipped up a modified recipe I found on the web (I'll find it again, and post a link, I promise) made with summer squash, some fava beans, and fresh ricotta topped with some basil from the garden (by garden, I mean the pot of basil I try to prevent the neighborhood cat from pissing on!) It wasn't much less "heavier" but....it was my justification from gorging on it in the summer!

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Dipping my toe into wanting to learn Mexican a little more, I went to the bookstore and stole a few recipes...made Salpicon De Res from The Art of Mexican Cooking tonight.

came out good.






I'm not making my own tortillas yet....




....but that's just because I haven't picked up a press. ;)

Been really interested in Mexican cooking lately...if you follow my blog you might remember my Caldo de Pollo post.

I have some great Mexican markets near me...should be fun.

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From THIS recipe....and they were great.

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house was too clean today, so rather than mess it up so soon, decided to cook outside.

Grilled up the chicken sausage, threw some rough chopped peppers in a pan (1 yellow, 1 orange, 1 jalapeno) with some evoo and 2 cloves of garlic just smushed for flavor. Cooked on high for a few minutes, then threw in some Sherry wine and cooked on medium low for about 7 minutes, salt pepper.... while the bread toasted on the grill. Comfort food perfect in under 20 minutes.







casings were PERFECT, perfect snap. I was a little nervous as I hear some horror stories about chewy, nasty casings. Thanks to someone on a message board I frequent for the suggestion of airing them dry after stuffing.

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Had one of those nights....went for a run, came home and dinner was spot on and super simple. Preheated the grill to incinerate, which on my propane grill isn't that high (about 700) unfortunately, I'm way too lazy to charcoal it for a Tuesday night. Aside from sourcing the morel mushrooms...(which I got at Whole Foods in Princeton for 39.99/lb....5 bucks worth was more than enough for a cup of risotto/4 servings)

Morel mushroom risotto




Marinated some lamb T-bones in red wine (shiraz)




served the rest with dinner

Grilled up some asparagus and topped with an egg.






perfect.

Such a simple quick dinner, and so damn good. Only prep in this dinner is dicing a shallot and rinsing some mushrooms for risotto really.

sneak preview for tomorrow...

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baked some babka coffee can style for the family for easter last night till about 1:30...yeah, my family requests the sprinkles...heh.



woke up, did all the "first nice day of spring" yard work and cleaning out of the garage....for about 7 hours.


backyard is grass looking good so far...




Then went grocery shopping, then...for 6.25 mile run.

tonight, experimented with the KA meat grinder and some chuck...came out good for a first time. Some margaritas. Ended up using some Patron silver I had leftover as I want it out of my cabinet already. Didn't wanna ruin the good stuff. Just didn't feel right...

click the READ MORE for pics...











I think maybe a little too fatty?





and a not-as-good-as-daniels money shot.

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