So. What would we like to do in 2009, culinary-wise?

Set aside some time to collect and index favorite recipes. Many have been the occasions when I would stare blankly at the collection of Fine Cooking and EatingWell magazines, unable to remember just which issue had the recipe I wanted to make for dinner. That’s silly; I should have a handy index.

Learn to make real vanilla extract at home, as demonstrated by the awesome Elise Bauer:

Why make your own vanilla extract? Well let’s see. It’s easy to make. You’ll never run out of vanilla again. It might even be economical, given that you’ll never run out of it. It’s fun to watch the extract change colors? I don’t know. Sometimes we just make things for the heck of it.

Similarly: Try flavoring olive oils.

Grill more. And by “grill,” I mean cooking over charcoal, of course.

Read Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here for the Food from start to finish. This was the first cooking reference title I’ve purchased, and while I’ve dipped into chapters here and there, I really need to just sit and absorb through his descriptions of various cooking techniques. Only once I’ve done that should I consider buying other cookbooks.

Make soups. And stews. I haven’t done that in a while, and consider this absence of practice a regrettable lack. We’re just now heading into colder weather, which means the time is right for such hearty fare.

Learn to cook smarter in terms of my schedule. Cooking takes a lot of time; cooking dinner after work every day takes too much precious evening time, especially if you’re one of the Olds and need to get to sleep at a decent hour. More dinners that allow for leftovers the next day; that’s the ticket.

Get coached up on technique. I’m thinking that this may mean taking a cooking class or two. Of course, there are things I can learn on my own, via books and websites and such, before/in addition to shelling out bucks for classes. Still, I’m liking the idea of taking a class more and more.

Read more Sauce Magazine, a monthly read on the local restaurant scene, food trends, and the like. The magazine is rather interesting; the website, less so, visually speaking…though I understand that the site will soon be revised.

I’m sure I’ll think of other things to add to the list.

• Short rib succulence
• Meals for the work week
• Secret sauce, continued
• Secret sauce
• Toolin’ up in the kitchen

As is often the case after positive dining experiences, I wondered if I could manage the same level of deliciousness with such an entree at home. I have indeed prepared short ribs myself in the past; the result was prrrrretty good, but still this side of great. I can do better, I thought, and set about looking for a recipe.

Once again, the good folks at Fine Cooking came to my rescue with a little recipe they like to call “Succulent Braised Short Ribs.” This came from their Comfort Food collection. I am a big fan of comfort food: savory, rich, good for the soul, and perfect for these cooler months.

Sadly, FC does not publish this recipe on the web. I feel the need to restate here my policy about publishing magazine recipes that have not been made publicly available and free-as-in-beer: I don’t like to do that. It bugs me on some quasi-moral level. However, I have found a quasi-loophole: the recipe has already been posted at The Jetsetting Fool Cooks (and Eats!). Like the blog author, I cut the amount of ribs from eight pounds to four, which still results in more than enough for four hungry people. Other ingredients were deployed as prescribed. Unlike the blog author, I did salt the ribs the day before and allowed them to sit overnight per the recipe. If I had it to do over again - as I’m sure I will - I would cut the amount of salt in half. Otherwise, proceed as instructed.

Yeah, buddy. The plated result:

My verdict, and M’s: Very, very good. I think a little less salt would have made the ribs perfect; still, we kept eating them just the same. The sauce described in the recipe really adds something, too, but eating the ribs without sauce is far from a hardship.

The ribs are accompanied by long-cooked green beans with fresh oregano, also from the FC Comfort Food collection, and homemade toasted garlic cheese bread prepared according to Elise Bauer, who is as great a master of cookery as she is of Movable Type.

• Doing the Dutch
• Meals for the work week
• Take-out at The Pitted Olive
• Secret sauce
• The mystery and sublimity of SPAM

At home, I dutifully diced the SPAM into half-inch cubes, prepared the creamy Mac ‘n Cheese, combined the two discrete elements, and tucked in. Now for a singular flavor experience!

It was dreadful. Singularly so.

I was shattered, and said as much to my wife. I felt betrayed. How could a combination of SPAM and Mac ‘n Cheese…fail?

The answer, I came to realize, was simple: Some foods, each enjoyable by itself, are meant to never, ever be married. There are combinations of flavors that work due to complementarity, each providing something that the other does not, each supporting the strengths of the other, and so blending into a new, third flavor. SPAM and Kraft Mac do not play well together. The food products have saltiness in common, but the underlying elements of each - sweet, not-quite-textured meat versus sort-of-kind-of powdered milk cheesiness - make for a vicious flavor knifefight, with your poor palate as the dank, dimly-lit back alley of battle. Oh, the humanity.

So: SPAM and Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese = FAIL. I’ve never tried SPAM with naked macaroni - no cheese, maybe a touch of unsalted butter - but believe that this combination would be much more successful and more peaceable on the tongue. I will have to test this sometime.

It goes to show that SPAM is not fully understood even by the keepers of its brand. Fortunately, the good folks at Hormel have met with better luck on other occasions. The legendary preparation from years ago - known these days as Baked SPAM Classic - remains a recipe to savor. I defy anyone to resist a loaf of the good stuff, studded with cloves and baked, then coated with a tangy-sweet brown sugar-mustard sauce. You see how the elements involved work together toward a common end, rather than against each other.

Still, I’ve found that the homely application of SPAM to bread is my favorite recipe for the fabled metafood. Perhaps you have tried the following approach at home; if not, prepare for joy! I think it works best if you use brand name ingredients, and dispense with any notions of healthful eating:

Two slices SPAM (a quarter-inch thick)
Two slices Wonder Classic bread
Two tablespoons Kraft mayonnaise
One tablespoon Land O’Lakes butter (salted)

Spread bread slices with mayonnaise.
Heat pan over medium flame.
Melt butter.
Place SPAM slices in butter; fry until lightly browned on one side. Flip slices and brown other side.
Place SPAM slices on one slice of bread; cover with the other bread slice.

Enjoy for breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner, paired with a suitable vegetable. I suggest briefly-boiled (3 minutes) green beans, coated with a little olive oil and sea salt. Mmm. That’s good eatin’.

• Secret sauce, continued
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Short rib succulence
• Egg in bread, eh?
• Meals for the work week

So: collards! Eight fairly large leaves’ worth, about six cups shredded. What to do this time?

Well, if you’re Phil Barron, you weigh out a pound of partially cooked smoked pork neck bones. Mmmm. Say it again: smoked pork neck bones.

You tear or cut away chunks of pork from the bone. Don’t worry; it’s all going into the pot.

Ingredients assembled. You smash the garlic cloves with the flat of a chef’s knife. You’ve been into smashing garlic rather than chopping or mincing because you’re lazy and impatient, and because you just like smashing things. You do chop up half of an onion. Also on hand: olive oil, flaked red pepper, a couple of cans of low-sodium chicken broth (not pictured, oddly).

You pull out your beloved Dutch oven. In goes three tablespoons of oil, the garlic, the onions, the pork and bones. Saute for five minutes or so over medium-ish heat. Then you add the collards and stir it up in the oil and stuff. Then add the broth and an eighth of a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Also a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of black pepper. You consider adding more red pepper, but you’re kind of gutless.

You put the lid on the Dutch oven and let it all simmer for forty minutes. In the meantime, you cook up some arborio rice and grill a couple of pork steaks.

This next photo is not the full fully cooked dish, because you’ve already eaten some and you forgot to take a picture earlier. That’s the problem with photo-documenting your own cooking; you start thinking of the food instead of the camera. Anyway, take a look at that luscious pot liquor!

Before the verdict, things I would have done differently:

• I would have struggled to make myself use less than a pound of neck bones, but I could easily have doubled the amount of collards to accompany it.
• Smoked, partially cooked pork neck bones = a plentiful amount of sodium before you even add one grain of salt. I didn’t have a problem with the amount of saltiness in the dish - takes a lot of sodium to turn me off -but your mileage may vary. I might suggest using no-sodium broth. (Is there such a thing, canned? You could always make your own broth, but isn’t that like making your own clothes? Heh. I kid.) At the least, no need at all to add kosher salt.
• Not as much heat as I’d thought. Next time, I’ll add more red pepper flakes.

And now, the verdict: Dee. Lish. Us. My God, it was good. Savory, mouth-filling flavor, the greens done just so - cooked, tender, but not overly done. Damn, I thought, this is real food. I was afraid that my wife might find it a little salty, but when I saw M go back for seconds on the collards and rice, I knew it was all good. Finished it up the next day; it’s even better, somehow, as leftovers.

My mother would be So. Proud. Of. Me.

• Egg in bread, eh?
• What to do with collard greens?
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Secret sauce, continued
• Doing the Dutch

This past weekend, M and I were watching an episode of our beloved Midsomer Murders - “Market for Murder,” specifically - and at one point a character asked her husband if he wanted her to make him an “egg in bread.”

“Eh?” I sat up, intrigued. Brit cuisine! And an appealing homely-sounding dish at that. “Egg in bread.” I had a pretty good idea what it entailed, and soon found verification on the intertubes.

Having found one recipe, I didn’t bother to search for others, but tried it the very next morning. Wheat bread instead of white, and I neglected to cut away the crusts (which I always resist, as it seems extravagantly wasteful to me). Used a glass to cut away the hole in the bread (ate the excised portion). Fried it up using, as the recipe says, “a glug of olive oil and a knob of butter.” I should have followed the recommendation of a commenter on the recipe page and allowed the egg to warm to room temperature before pouring it into the circle, but I was able to get the top of the egg to just set by spooning hot oil/butter from the pan over it.

No, it ain’t health food. Yes, it was delicious. Lots of rich yolk to be sopped up and just enough texture to the bread. By the time I finished, I wished that I had made more.

I tried to raise the recipe’s health quotient this morning, but with mixed results. I replaced the glug of olive oil with a shot of Pam, and applied the barest smear of butter directly on the bread in the style of a grilled cheese sandwich. Because of the lack of hot spoonable oil or butter in the pan, I had to flip the bread/egg complex in order to get the top set, and it cooked a little longer than I would have liked. Worse than that, however, was the marked flavor deficit in the “healthier” version. The lack of oil and (more) butter was keenly felt, or rather, tasted.

Some dishes are best left unreconstructed. Next time out, it’s the traditional egg in bread approach for me…but I’m keeping the whole wheat bread, which I think stands up better to the egg than white bread might. No promises about the crust.

• Again with the collards
• The mystery and sublimity of SPAM
• Pearls of great price
• Short rib succulence
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.

When in doubt, as I have said before, turn to trusted sources: in this case, the recipe database at the website for the magazine Eating Well. Love the magazine, love the site. Some stumbling around produced an intriguing recipe for something called “Spicy Potato and Kale Soup.” Collards could easily substitute for the kale, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to use chorizo. The easy recipe guided me in turning these ingredients…

…into this surprisingly delicious and hearty soup:

At the risk of boasting, let me reiterate: This is delicious. Even with the potatoes, it’s not too heavy for warm weather. Great flavor, just enough spice. You will go back for seconds.

The recipe is below, or you can fetch it from the Eating Well site. If using collards, please remember that they cook more slowly than kale, so you will need to give the greens a little more time in the pot. Ten Twenty minutes for sure - I used heat closer to “medium” than “simmer” - then check.

Spicy Potato & Kale Soup
Makes 2 servings, 1 1/2 cups each

Ingredients

¼ cup halved and sliced chorizo sausage (see Note)
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 14-ounce can reduced-sodium chicken broth
⅓ cup water
1 small russet potato, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
4 cups kale, ribs removed, thinly sliced
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground pepper, or to taste

Instructions

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add chorizo and cook, stirring, until browned, about 2 minutes. Transfer the chorizo to a paper towel-lined plate; wipe out the pot.
2. Heat oil in the pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 2 minutes. Add broth, water, potato and garlic; increase the heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the potato is tender, 6 to 9 minutes. Lightly mash the potato with a wooden spoon. Add kale, a handful at a time, waiting until it has wilted before adding more. Adjust heat to maintain a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the kale is tender, about 5 minutes. Add the reserved chorizo and season with pepper.

• Again with the collards
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Secret sauce, continued
• Meals for the work week
• Short rib succulence

Perhaps you have a spouse or partner or an uncharacteristically committed roommate? Good for you, but that’s hardly a guarantee of timely home cooking. Sometimes they’re running on empty themselves. Makes for a tragic situation.

The thing is, you can’t go to Applebee’s every night. A better option is to have a repertoire of reliable recipes - something a step or two above open, heat, and eat - that are tested and ready. You don’t have to think. All you have to do is cook. You take thinking out of a situation, and all manner of things become possible.

So two such standbys from the past week:

Cornish hen prepared according to the roasted apricot-ginger glazed game hen recipe from Fine Cooking (please search, as their search results can’t be reliably permalinked), except that I exchange a simple basting with bottled orange glaze for the fancier apricot-ginger route. Paired that with Israeli - slash - pearl couscous prepared with butter (salted, for taste) and chicken broth (low-sodium, for control) and diagonally-sliced asparagus sauteed in unsalted butter with a dash of kosher salt and ground black pepper until just tender, then served with grated parmesan cheese. That asparagus recipe is straight outta Fine Cooking as well, but you have to subscribe to either the magazine or the website to get it. You can ballpark it, though, right?

And:

Inside-out cheeseburgers - twin thin patties that sandwich a blend of hard and semi-hard cheese, in this case white cheddar and parmesan; crimp the edges; four minutes each side makes it medium-well - and zucchini slices and chopped rosemary sauteed in garlic-flavored olive oil, which is precisely as tasty as it sounds. How lucky for you that both recipes are available in full, for free, online - the burger recipe from Eating Well, and the zucchini recipe from Domino.

Well, that’s two days out of the work week covered. The other three you can handle yourself, I’ll bet.

• What to do with collard greens?
• Again with the collards
• Short rib succulence
• The mystery and sublimity of SPAM
• Secret sauce, continued

So. What to eat?

My first and most important question upon calling the restaurant involved an item not on the take-out menu. I was rewarded with a positive reply: yes, garlic frites were available to go. Their garlic & parmesan dusted fries are utterly addicting.

Moving on. M chose the Classic Meat Lasagna and the Pitted Olive Greek salad minus the olives. I opted for the Market Bacon Sirloin Burger with bleu cheese, medium rare, side of potato salad, and mixed greens with creamy balsamic. The whole thing came to a long drive (well, three and a half miles, but that’s long when it’s during rush hour and you’re hungry), a solid bag o’ food, and a $40 tab.

Worth it? Oh, yeah. I had planned on getting two orders of frites but only got one; good choice! They are quite filling. Everything was delicious. I’m not really a salad guy, but that creamy balsamic was luscious. Homemade? Dunno. Hope so. M remarked favorably on her salad as well, and enjoyed the lasagna. The burger was all I could ask, flavorful and huge. The potato salad - garlic in there somewhere? Very tasty. We were stuffed and happy when all was done.

So big props to The Pitted Olive. Check it out sometime. Parking is at a premium out front (and don’t park at the adjacent businesses if you don’t enjoy having your vehicle towed to East Jesus). Park on the street and enjoy your meal.

Note: Apologies to those who clicked on the links to the meatball and fettuccine recipes only to be confronted by the main Taunton Press website. Taunton publishes Fine Cooking, whence came those recipes, and apparently search links don’t last long there. You should be able to Google those dishes and find the recipes, however. If not, let me know and I’ll just send them to you.

• Mangosteen?
• Short rib succulence
• Meals for the work week
• Snickers
• Secret sauce, continued

When in doubt, turn to trusted sources. In this case, that meant my copy of Stephen Raichlen’s How to Grill and his recipe for Basic Barbecue Sauce. Prudence dictated that I prepare the sauce as directed, and wait until later to experiment, but I disregarded that. Even with a formula from a respected guide in hand, some petulant part of me wouldn’t let me follow the directions without variation. I wanted to put some kind of personal stamp on the concoction. The Third Important Thing About Barbecue Sauce, learned just last week, still resonated with me:

Say that there is a “secret” ingredient in it, then tell no one, even upon threat of bodily injury.

And so I combined my ingredients, including my secret ingredient, and cooked it down.

Long before the sauce had thickened, I knew I had a success on my hands. Sweet yet smoky, deliberately not tangy (not a vinegar lover) but instead infused with a salt-slash-savour imparted by my secret ingredient. This will sound like beginner’s braggadocio, but I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a bottled sauce as good as the stuff I made. Behold - my creation:

Immediately upon completion of the sauce, I put it to work with the spareribs. I had intended to grill out with the Weber, but the day was so windy that I opted for oven-simmered ribs.

Beforehand, I cut the ribs into two sections so they would easily fit a 13-inch long glass baking dish. I coated both sides of the both portions with my homemade barbecue rub (based on Raichlen’s basic but tasty recipe) then lightly covered them with plastic wrap and put them in the fridge.

I set the oven to 300° F. Low and slow cooking was the plan.

I poured all of the sauce (alas!) into the baking dish. I put the rib portions in the dish, turning them to coat both sides, placing the meaty side of the slabs down in the sauce. I then tightly covered the dish with foil and put the pan in the oven. After an hour, I turned the slab-lets over, recovered them in foil, let them go for another hour.

I next removed the foil altogether, turned the ribs again and let them cook further for fifteen minutes uncovered. Then I turned them again - meaty side up - to cook uncovered for another fifteen minutes uncovered.

So: two and a half hours altogether, and it could have gone a bit longer. The meat was tender - not quite falling off the bone, but tender enough and delicious, full of flavor. The sauce complemented the pork wonderfully, if I say so myself.

And now I have to make some more. This won’t be a chore. I’m looking forward to using this with chicken, and to trying a variation or two on the sauce. Now that I have a base from which to work, the prospect is a pleasure.

.

.

Oh. Some (few) of you may be interested in the actual recipe I used, including my secret ingredient. Well, jeez, if I divulged that, it wouldn’t be very secret, now would it?

Just kidding. I’m a kidder. Here ’tis (annotated where it varies from the original Raichlen recipe):

1 1/2 cups ketchup
1/2 cup hoisin sauce (secret ingredient!)
1/4 cup cider vinegar (none used)
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (not yellow)
1 tablespoon Tabasco Sweet & Spicy sauce (not regular Tabasco)
1 tablespoon of your favorite barbecue rub (as mentioned above, Raichlen’s Basic Barbecue Rub)
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

As Raichlen says, combine and bring to boil in non-reactive sauce pan. Reduce heat to medium and gently simmer “until dark, thick, and richly flavored, 10 to 15 minutes.” You don’t really need to be told to put the sauce in a clean jar, do you? Nah.

• Secret sauce
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• What to do with collard greens?
• Again with the collards
• The mystery and sublimity of SPAM

I’m no food snob. I don’t know enough to be quite so high-falutin’. And yet, I have been unable to bring myself to purchase a bottle of ready-made barbecue sauce for months now. This wasn’t always the case. Back in the day, I was quite happy to use Country Bob Edson’s All-Purpose Sauce for all my barbeque needs. That was long ago, however, and far away. Now…well, I seem to feel the way this foodie does:

I learned three important things about barbecue sauce:

1. Never buy bottled sauce.
2. If you do, lie and say it was homemade.
3. Say that there is a “secret” ingredient in it, then tell no one, even upon threat of bodily injury.

The drawback is that preparing homemade sauce is a pain in the ass. I don’t often have cause to use it, but when I do I need to have it ready-to-hand, and that means making it up in advance. You see? A pain.

Another problem: what kind of sauce do I actually want? Sweet? Smoky? A bit of a vinegary tang? You’d think you could have two of the three qualities, right? The Web is replete with recipes from enthusiastic cooks, but which to employ?

Not terribly long ago, I made up a sauce based on a recipe offered up by grill guru Steven Raichlen - with a Coca-Cola base, no less. It was…okay. Not bad, but not wow, either. I was left to wonder if I possessed the necessary spirit of experimentation. I’m still wondering.

Well, I need to decide soon, because the BBQ months are upon us. Time to consider this vital topic in earnest.

• Secret sauce, continued
• Short rib succulence
• Ribeyes. Broccoli. Oh, yeah.
• Meals for the work week
• The kitchen list