Beef Stew

Stews are one of those foods that I have always admired.  I love big pots full of slowly simmering food whose aroma fills the whole house.  Stew is easy, affordable, and feeds the whole house; it is really just a matter of tossing things in a pot and giving them time to mellow together.

I don’t recall really caring for stew as a child.  I imagine I ate the beef out of it, maybe the potatoes, and then tried to ignore any of the vegetables that may have ended up in my bowl.  I do remember liking the smell.

As a child I couldn’t appreciate that the aroma of stew is the result of all of the ingredients coming together.  I couldn’t appreciate that the flavor of the beef or the potatoes was really determined by all of those vegetables I was dutifully ignoring.

In my opinion, stew is really a food for a brisk fall or cold winter.  The steaming bowl helps warm you inside and makes you feel cozy even as it pours or gusts outside.  So the weather in Hawaii is pretty terrible; at least as it relates to stew.

Hawaii tends to be pretty sunny, warm, and generally pleasant for most of the year.  This gives us a really limited window with which to enjoy stews and other cold weather foods.  It is really hard to enjoy a hot bowl of beef stew when it is bright and sunny outside.

With that said, we are getting into the colder months here (relatively speaking).  It gets cold enough for blankets at night, hoodies appear in the mornings, rain comes more frequently and energetically, and we can finally enjoy a warm cup of stew, a glass of wine, and feel cozy inside our homes buttressed against the weather.

Stew is really just about tossing stuff in a pot and letting it have plenty of time to simmer.  Everything starts with a mirepoix- celery, carrots, onions and butter all go in low heat and have plenty of time to soften.

After the mirepoix has had some time the mushrooms go in and the heat goes up, they cook for a little bit, and wine joins the party.  As the wine begins to simmer or boil a couple cups of beef broth follow.

Once the beef broth begins to simmer the potatoes can go in the pot, they need to be submerged so they can cook thoroughly and get to that point where they just about fall apart.  Toss in a bay leaf, some pepper, some salt, and let the flavors mingle.

The beef I like to do separately.  Take a pan and turn the heat up high.  Add a little oil and then toss in the beef to the preheated pan.  The beef just needs to brown on each side.  Before it is done I like to add a cup of wine and braise the beef in that for a little bit before dumping the whole pan into the stew.

Now everything can just simmer together for a few hours, or even longer.  Sometimes I will add a quick roux (an equal parts fat (butter) and flour mixture that is done on low heat) to the pot to help things thicken up a little bit.  Otherwise the stew is ready when you are; I like having it over a bed of rice or bread, but it is just fine all by itself!

Stuffed Red Peppers and Broccoli Risotto

Sometimes you know what you want to cook; sometimes you haven’t got a clue.  This is the result of one of those clueless occasions.  Sometimes you know what to write; sometimes you type, delete, type, delete, and give up.

When you write on paper people can see your eraser marks, see where you crossed things out; on the computer there is no record of the different directions you started going and walked back.  You don’t get a feel for how long I stared at a word and wondered if I should change it, nor can you see the times when the words flew down my finger tips faster than I could type them.

I always wondered if teachers could tell the papers I loved writing from those that I labored over.  How much of that enthusiasm bleeds onto the page?  Do I have better grammar when I struggle over every sentence, rereading, and rewriting them; or do I make too many little mistakes when I burn through writing a paper I genuinely enjoy?

I guess a meal is a similar thing.  Sometimes you labor over them for long periods of time, first figuring out what you are going to cook, collecting ingredients, prepping them, the actual cooking, plating, and then dishes; yet sometimes you know what you want to do and none of those steps seems so arduous.

I have no idea how much my frustration, joy, or mix of both come across on the plate.  Some meals take forever to cook, but only minutes to consume; you have to wonder what kinds of pay off you are really getting there.

I guess really it is the satisfied tummy pats, the sighs, the kanak attacks, and the ‘you should cook this again.’  After all, every Thursday night for over a year now I have been cooking these diners, I don’t think me or anyone else would keep doing this if it weren’t fun.

As to the Stuffed Peppers… In the past I have always stuffed Peppers with rice or Couscous, some kind of starch.  This time I really didn’t want to do that, it always sounds like a way better idea to me than it really is.  So, I went for what I figured would be a savory, spicy beef mixture.  I couldn’t just do beef though.  I needed vegetables and peppers.

It all started with some diced celery, garlic, and onion cooking in a bit of butter on low heat.  Once they were all nice and soft I tossed in some diced, de-seeded tomatoes, and finally the diced sweet chili peppers.  Once those are nice and cooked I put dumped it out of the pan into a big bowl to relax for a minute.  Then the heat in the pan went way up and the beef went in, along with some choice spices; pepper, salt, and a little paprika.

Once the beef was nice and browned, I drained off most of the fat and tossed it into the big bowl with the vegetables so that could mix together and mingle and then back into the pan altogether with the heat on very low.

As to the peppers, they were halved, roasted face down for seven or eight minutes, and then turned over and stuffed with the beef mixture, topped with a bit of parmesan cheese and then popped back in for another seven or eight minutes.

They turned out nicely.  The beef was spicy and sweet, from both the peppers and the vegetable mixture, the peppers were sweet and tender, mixing in with the stuffing as they were cut.  Definitely a recipe to do again sometime.

So... what about the risotto?  I think we will save that for another time.  Risotto is wonderful and easy, if not a little time consuming.  It is certainly worth highlighting alone as it makes a great starch, as seen used it here, or makes for a fantastic meal by itself.

Paella - Chicken & Sausage

Sometimes I do watch cooking shows.  One of my favorites was always the “Naked Chef”, which Food Network used to play at one or two in the morning after a few episodes of the original Iron Chef.  I don’t think they play either of those any more, but they both left lasting impressions on me.  I always wanted to have the creativity of the Iron Chefs, but cook with the ease and simplicity of ingredients of Jamie Oliver, aka The Naked Chef  (known as such for simple obvious ingredients and not food cooking naked; that would have been dangerous…)

So when Netflix put up a bunch of Jamie Oliver’s other TV show Oliver’s Twist, I started watching them every once in a while.  Mostly when I am looking for something new to cook.  I was already aware of Paellas and thought they looked absolutely delectable, but just figured they were something else that was too complicated for my amateur kitchen skills.

After seeing Jamie Oliver make Paella, I realized how easy it really was, and thus grabbed my giant recipe book, found a good recipe, made a few changes to the ingredients.  I honestly don’t know where to buy rabbit, nor am I certain that my roommates and friends would even eat rabbit, but I do know where to buy Portuguese Sausage!  Also, being a poor post secondary degree college student, spices like saffron are out of my price range.  So changes were made.

Paella, like most things I like cook is simple and delicious.  The only draw back, is the time it takes to make.  Usually cooking time doesn’t bother me too much, in fact the longer something takes, often times the better, more complex the flavors will be, but other meals you just don’t have the time for a dish to take hours to come together.

Paella starts off quickly, browning chicken and sausage in pan, then taking them out and setting them aside to rest.  Using all that delicious fat left in the pan you then cook the peeled, de-seeded, and diced tomatoes and onions on low heat for a half hour.  This is where things slow down a little.

After those have cooked down, thus becoming soft and translucent, the chicken and sausage come back, everything gets stirred together, nicely mixed, then the heat goes back up and in goes the chicken stock for ten minutes or so.

The beans go in next for a spell, followed by the rice.  At this point, once everything is stirred together, you are no longer allowed to touch the Paella, with the exception of maybe adding a little bit more more hot chicken stock if it is boiling out of the pan before the rice is done.  You don’t want to move anything around because you are looking for the rice at the bottom to brown and form a nice crust.  If you start stirring you are going to end up with something that it half Paella, half Risotto.  This waiting game takes anywhere from 25-40 minutes depends on the size of Paella and amount of rice.

The first time I made Paella, my roommate and I ate the whole thing within twenty-four hours.  It does make great leftovers.  Otherwise I find it usually serves 7-8, with a little bit left over for seconds; which everyone always wants.

Probably the most important thing I have learned cooking, is that nothing is ever quite as hard or intimidating as it seems at first.  Paella is one of those nice, forgiving foods.

Kalua Pork

Smokey, salty, sweet; there is nothing not to love about Kalua pork.  It doesn’t need a lot of attention, it is ridiculously easy to make, it makes great left overs, and it is downright delicious.  It also shares well with a big group of friends!

Now traditional kalua pork involves building (digging mostly) an imu, which for those of you who don’t know an imu is; simply put it is an in-ground oven lined with heated lava rocks.  Drop a whole pig in it, bury it, and eventually you have some kalua pork.  There is a bit more too it than that, but that’s the gist of it.

However, I have never lived in a place where I could dig out an imu, nor do I know where to buy a whole pig.  So like many others I cheat and use some pork butt (shoulder) and a slow cooker.

To make kalua pork all you need is 4-6 lbs of pork, 1 ½-2 tablespoons Hawaiian Sea Salt, and an optional tablespoon of liquid smoke.  Drop all of that in a slow cooker.  Maybe stab the pork a few times and massage some of that salt and smoke in it, turn the slow cooker on to slow, and wait 16-20 hours!  So plan in advance, Kalua Pork is not something you cook for instant gratification.  The only attention the pork requires is a quick turn halfway through and then a few hours before it finishes go ahead and shred the pork with a fork.

The pork can be eaten simply with rice, or turned into sandwiches using either hamburger buns or even better- sweet bread rolls!  If you are intrigued read on…

I am not traditional, so I like BBQ sauce with my kalua pork.  Head Country BBQ Sauce is my favorite, but if you can’t import it from Oklahoma then go ahead and use whatever sauce you like.

I go even further afield by making a blue cheese sauce to go on the sandwiches as well!  Giving the whole package a salty pork, sweet bbq, tangy blue cheese taste.  Nothing could be more amazing and nothing disappears quite as fast off the plate.
           

The blue cheese sauce I make a couple different ways depending on how ambitious I feel.  But the most successful involves making a béchamel sauce; fancy French for a sauce made from butter, flour, and milk, and then dumping in blue cheese to melt on down.

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Mini-Cheesecakes

This may sound familiar, but I never cared to eat cheesecake until baking it for myself.  As a young lad, the idea that cheese and cake could taste good together was as foreign as carrots and cake tasting good together.  One of these I have accepted; as to carrots, I’m still not sold.

Cheesecake is great.  It is one of those dishes that you can proudly claim as American.  Which for some reason seems to confuse and fascinate people.  How could something so elegant, creamy, and delicious, come a country whose chief export we sometimes assume to be fast food?

When I teach French inevitably when doing food vocabulary a student will ask about cheesecake, wanting to know what fancy word the French have for it.  Cheesecake just seems to exude the qualities we associate with French or Italian; richness, refinement, decadence.  Students always seem to have a hard time accepting that really there is no good or special word for cheesecake because it really is a uniquely American dish.

Now that’s not to say in the 21^st century that could not go to Europe and find cheesecake.  I think I even remember seeing it at McDonald’s McCafé, “Real New York Cheesecake!”  But it is an obvious import; there is no tradition of cheesecake.  Shocking?  Maybe.  But the reason is simple.  The base for cheesecake is cream cheese, something that is very American and was in fact created during the 1880’s in New England.  There are a few similar-ish soft cheeses in Europe, like Ricotta; but nothing quite like our homegrown variety.

Cheesecake is easy.  Really it’s just eggs, cream cheese, sugar, pinch of salt maybe, some vanilla, and you’re done!  These Peanut Butter and Chocolate ones are maybe a little bit more complicated, but not by much!

Oreos and some butter went into the food processor to make a chocolaty crust, and then I took that basic cheesecake recipe, took out the salt since peanut butter already has some, and added in peanut butter.  The chocolate frosting, which I didn’t make nearly enough of; I forgot how much more surface area I have to frost when converting a big cheesecake to twenty little ones, is just sour cream, sugar, vanilla, and cocoa powder.

Considering it has been a while since I made cheesecake, everything turned out pretty well.  I maybe baked them a little bit long, but I couldn’t remember exactly how long I had baked my mini-cheesecakes before.  That’s what I get for not taking notes.  I also didn’t move my oven racks around in order to get the cakes in the center, which let the tops of a few get slightly extra toasty from the heat… though some of that was just the peanut butter.

Next time I do cheesecake I will hopefully be making Pumpkin Cheesecake!  I wanted to this time, but couldn’t find good canned pumpkin anywhere.  With Thanksgiving approaching that should change!

Chili Rice

I have been a long time fan of chili rice.  My first experience with it was late at night, off the suggestion of a friend.  The steaming bowl was accompanied by a chocolate milk shake, and I was sold for life.

Chili Rice is a very alien concept to an Okie (person from Oklahoma… though don’t you say it if you’re not from there).  Chili is usually served in a bowl with crackers on the side, or served on top of a hot dog, or even better, served on a bed of Fritos- ala Frito Chili Pie. 

I am afraid my friends who have lived in Hawaii a long time will think me a little funny.  How could rice not go good with something?  Why would I think putting rice in a bowl and covering it with chili was strange?  Trust me I’m converted now, but people in Oklahoma don’t usually assume rice goes with everything.

Though how peculiar did you think it was when I said we put chili on top of Fritos?  It all makes perfect sense really, in fact it’s pretty much the same thing; a bed of starch plus a delicious spicy chili.

My mother would like me to warn people that my chili is hardly traditional chili.  Which I accept.  I have never made “real” chili.  Mine is some strange hybrid of some of my favorite chili components with a few extras.  So here is quick rundown of how it works:

It all starts with another fancy mirepoix- but this time no butter, I like to render some bacon in the pot first- then dump in a few chopped celery stalks, a diced onion, and let all that cook down while I prep the rest.

I load the chili with ground beef, though I love bison when I can find it cheap, and spicy turkey sausage; this way I can call it healthy.  Give those a good sprinkle of Black Pepper, Garlic Powder, Hawaiian Sea Salt, Chili Powder, Cayenne, Red Pepper Flakes, Cinnamon, and Basil.

I love roasted vegetables, so my chili gets a nice portion of some toasty diced Eggplant, a couple roasted Red Peppers, and a couple little roasted peppers.

Once everything is happy in its pot, I toss in the crushed tomatoes and sometimes a few ripe tomatoes cut into nice big chunks.  Lastly, in goes the corn- which is a good substitute in terms of mouth feel for the beans since no one seems to care much for beans anyway.

When feeling more traditional I add some beer before letting it simmer down for a few hours- when feeling untraditional I add red wine. 

Voila!  Delicious Matt-kine Chili.  It may not be like that of my homeland- but my roommate says its better than Zippy’s and that’s good enough for me.

Stuffed Tomatoes and Roasted Chicken

I was going to start this post off all about  Chicken… but I realized a few people out there might be a bit squeamish reading about a dead bird.  So let’s begin with the tomatoes!

The idea to make Stuffed Tomatoes came to me while I was wandering around the grocery store trying to figure out what I could fix to go with the Roasted Chicken.  Often times I pair it with a potato dish, or sauté some vegetables, but this time I wanted to make something a little different, a bit fancier.

Seeing some nice big red tomatoes, I thought how delicious they would be stuffed with even more goodness.  Deciding what that goodness should be was the easy part; what better to pair with big red tomatoes than something green!  Spinach!  And what goes best with spinach?  Mushrooms!  And what goes best with mushrooms?  Bacon!

That was pretty easy.  I just grabbed some fresh mozzarella to stuff inside and top it off with- and that was that!

The stuffing was easy.  Just rendered some bacon in a pan, tossed in the sliced mushrooms to suck up all that yummy bacon fat, then tossed in some spinach to cook down, a little salt, a little pepper, and it was done.

Next the tomatoes needed to be hollowed out a bit.  This is the part I was less sure about.  Tomatoes do like to fall apart on me when I get try to be fancy cutting them.  Fortunately this time there were zero problems.  I decapitated them, cored them out, got all the seeds and gunk out, and then added some mozzarella, the spinach mixture, and a little more cheese on top.

The whole pan just took twenty five minutes or so in the oven and it was that easy!

Five, six ingredients total?  Definitely worth it.  I’ll make a few changes next time… but let’s say Stuffed Tomatoes are here to stay and have been roommate approved!

As to the flightless fowl…

I hardly ever cook chicken.  I don’t like messing things up and chicken always seemed a bit too fussy to me.  I don’t want dried up tough chicken, nor do I want salmonella poisoning.  Not to mention chicken, is well, chicken.  Not really the most exciting animal.

That is until I realized a chicken is really just a small turkey.

I can feel you shaking or head or smirking at me.  But seriously, I never really thought about them as being more or less the same, until I was really craving some oven baked turkey- think Thanksgiving, and realized I could just do a chicken the same way and that it didn't have to be any more complicated than that.

So while I still don’t like cooking chicken; I can at least enjoy roasting a chicken.

If you are squeamish about touching dead animals, sticking your hand up one, or loosing its skin from its body; then maybe making Roast Chicken isn’t for you…

If all that still sounds fun, then the rest is pretty easy.  All we need to do is give the chicken a good rinse, get the innards out, and pat the sucker dry.  I love crispy skin and moist meat- the best way to guarantee this in my experience is to stuff a bit of butter between the skin and breast meat.  Yum!

I keep my chicken spiced pretty simply.  The breast gets a good dose of Hawaiian Sea Salt, Pepper, and some Brown Sugar… and maybe some more butter.  The extremities get the same, but with some Garlic, Cayenne, Smoked Paprica, and more butter.  Tie the bird together (to help cook it evenly)- or since I don’t have any string I stab my chicken together.

Hide the chicken in the oven for an hour and forget about it!  The smell will remind you when it is almost done!  Though I suggest using an oven timer too.  When it’s done, the chicken just needs a quick rest and is ready to be carved and devoured!

Roasted Squash and Red Pepper Soup

Do you have any idea how to make soup?  It seems like it should be easy.  Just throw some things in a pot and presto- soup!  At least that’s how it always seemed to me.  Why should soup be any more difficult?  After all, I’ve seen dozens of soups blended to victory on Iron Chef.

Perhaps that is why my first foray into soup making went poorly.  Though that might be generous; more honest would be to say it went nowhere.  I thought I could make a beef soup without a recipe.  I was so sure of myself after watching Iron Chef and having learned to make steak and potatoes.

Well, tossing some spices, some steak, and some water in a pot, does not soup produce.  Just some weakly flavored water and boiled meat.

Though I have always been interested in soup, for some reason I never bothered seriously looking at a recipe.  When I did, I often thought, ‘too complicated’ and surrendered to store bought soup again. 

This recipe isn’t very hard at all.  It is loaded with delicious vegetables and could just as easily be made vegetarian by dropping out the bacon and switching from Chicken Stock to Vegetable.

It all starts with a mirepoix- a fancy French word for chopped carrots, celery, and onion (green onion is this case) sautéed with butter.  Throwing this in a pot on low heat, giving it a quick stir every so often, allows the vegetables to cook without caramelizing and gives them a chance to release lots of natural sugars and other tasty things.

The squash, the headliner of the recipe, gets whacked in half, deseeded, and thrown in the oven and forgotten about for an hour.  For being a star the squash is very undemanding.

Eventually the fancy pancy mirepoix is looking translucent and ready for the next stage.  The party expands with the introduction of some bright red roasted peppers, a nice ripe tomato, and chicken stock.  Just scoop in the squash afterwards and everything is ready!

The soup just needs a quick blend and some salt and maybe a few herbs if they are handy.

But why stop there?!?  What the soup really needs is some heat, a little spice to warm the tummy and make you smile.  So here is where I add some spicy Cayenne Pepper, Smoked Paprika, a dash of Red Pepper Flakes, Hawaiian Sea Salt, good heap of Pepper, dash of Ginger, and a good shake of Cinnamon.  – If the soup is still missing something I turn to my friends Tabasco, Tapatio, or Sour Cream.

Now, blend it all together till smooth.  Put some in a mug.  Sprinkle some cheese.  And eat!

Blueberry Lemon Scones

So why start with Blueberry Lemon Scones you may ask? Simple! Blueberry Lemon Scones are by far the most requested and rerequested pastry I have ever made. I have baked batches and double batches for everything from birthdays, to post break-up blues, and even just because blueberries were on sale.

They were one of the very first pastries I ever baked completely from scratch.  The scones turned out so amazing that very first time, that I have left their recipe almost completely unaltered since that first batch.

But what makes the scones so delicious? The Butter! After all, scones are not really that complicated in terms of ingredients; Eggs, Blueberries, Flour, Butter, Sugar, and Cream. Just toss in a pinch of baking powder, some salt, and presto! Scones.

However, the butter is key. Not just the slightly obscene amount of butter, but the way it is mixed into the flour. The more care and attention that is paid the butter- the better the scones will be. Unfortunately and somewhat annoyingly, you cannot toss the butter into a blender and watch from the sidelines, even a pastry mixer can be a bit dubious.

The Butter needs to be cut or mixed into pea sized morsels and cannot melt while you are doing it. Using a whisk works, cutting the butter into smaller chunks before adding it to the flour helps, but best may be grabbing two knives and cutting through the flour, sifting every once in a while checking to make sure the butter is small enough, but still big enough. If it sounds like a lot of work, it can be, but the results speak for themselves.

The butter matters because of the way it melts inside of the scone while baking. As the baking powder reacts releasing carbon dioxide and the water in the cream turns to steam and evaporates the scone begins to rise; and as the butter melts within, it leaves little pockets of buttery goodness behind in the scone.

If the butter has been done properly the scone should be light, buttery, and moist. If done wrong the scone can be heavy, dense, and dry.

All this goes to explain why I never liked scones before I decided to try making them myself. I always loved the idea of scones, but never cared for the hard, dry variations that I sampled in the coffee shops at which I worked.

The only change I have ever made to the scones has been the addition of a lemon icing. The scones themselves are light and flaky, but not too sweet. The Lemon icing takes them up one more notch and makes them perfect for dipping into coffee or snacking on at any time of the day.

Freshly Iced Lemon Blueberry Scones!

As to the recipe; I would highly recommend taking a look at the scones in Joy of Cooking. That is where I started and I cannot think of any better place to find very basic, easily adaptable recipes.

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