Advertisement 2

Turned 50 the other day and still not surprised.  Not by life, and certainly not by birthdays.  You see, my lovely wife had been planning a surprise trip for my half a hundred, and for six weeks she kept it under wrap.  Then, some ten days out from the big one, while driving into town together, she has a Lucille Ball moment and in mid thought from the passenger seat comes this “….da da da, and while we’re in New Orleans…..da da da”.

My head turned to her at about the same speed as the Carousel Bar downstairs at the Monteleone, “Did you really just tell me where we’re going for my birthday?"

It was a great time.  Except for my little run in with the boys. 

The day after my birthday we were strolling the Quarter.  As I was trying hard not to peer into something called the Stiletto Lounge, I got bum rushed into the back of a van, and minutes later I’m hanging upside down from a third floor balcony as some bald headed hatchet man is shaking me by my ankles. 

“Let me guess,” I said, “it’s time for a blog about the Space Downtown.”  The big guy concurred.  And minutes later I was back on the street, no worse for wear, hugging a hurricane and contemplating how many quarters of a Muffaletta I could throw back.

So if you can wait a week, we’ll talk Gumbo, but for now, let’s look at some photos.

All photo credits to my daughter, Devan Burgess , who will be going off to college soon and leaving this blog in ruins.

We recently did a wine dinner with noted wine maker Randall Grahm, of Bonny Doon winery.  We love these events because the winemaker brings the wine and we have creative freedom with the food. Hold my hand and I'll step you through the process of how we put together this meal.

We start with some passed apps. Here are prosciutto wrapped local spring asparagus. 

another look

miniature pizzas ( actually puff pastry dough )

Here is our smoked salmon martini.  Vincent smokes it in house, using Walnut dust from some trees he had cut from his property.  How's that for recycling? Also there is a green olive cracker (of course we make it!), vodka cream, and some micro greens.

and finally tempura soft shell crabs with an avocado caper salsa

Getting hungry?  Good, it's time for the first course.  This is confit red and yellow tomatoes, a goat's cheese panna cota with chives, and a pan roasted artichoke heart.

another look

The next course starts with a smoked eggplant puree.  I had this a couple years ago in Florence and set forth to duplicate it from that moment on.  I'll save those details for a later blog.

That's a little arugula oil for an accent.  Next comes a red quinoa with garden zucchini and basil.

A

And finally, the Halibut.

For the next course, we chose some local dry aged beef from Sherwood Farm.. Here it is seared and resting.

Staying with the season, we garnish the beef with a pea puree and roasted purple potato.

Not one to ever throw anything away, Vincent came up with this little smoked bacon wrapped pea pod filled with ricotta.

 I think I ate about ten of those.  Finally, here's the beef.

another look.

For the final course, they asked for cheese instead of sweets.

That's Tarentaise Spring Brook, Spanish Goat's Cheese, and Gruyere Emmi for those keeping score.

Here's the cheese plate, we added some sweet almonds and house made pineapple sage jam.

Proud papa 1                                                               



    and 2

Miss this dinner?  Don't worry, they'll be more coming.  Oh yeah, here's a little secret between the three of us.  Ever heard of a pop up?  It's a restaurant that only opens to the public every now and then, and yeah, you guessed it, we're going there. Stay tuned to the face book page and our soon to be redesigned website for more details.

Until then,

Salute

Fried Chicken

“Do you mean to tell me a white man fried this chicken?”

Compliment of the year as far as I’m concerned.  You see, we did a UVA graduation party a couple weeks back and we cooked our Southern Buffet which features

Pulled Pork Barbecue link

Homemade Buns

Creamy Wasabi Slaw

Tomato, Basil and House made Mozzarella

Tangy Haricots Vert

Caesar

Scallion Biscuits

Black Pepper Cornbread

and last but not least

Fried Chicken

Safe to say the Fried Chicken was a hit.  I sure hope so.  I don't think there is a single food I take more pride in preparing.

So when my own daughter and step daughter graduated high school last weekend, I figured I best once again bring the love. The love being, fried chicken.  You see, I was expecting up to 40 people, and it wasn’t exactly a nuclear family type of gathering.

Here were the cast of characters

My wife

My ex, four of my kids

My wife’s ex, his wife, their four kids, her parents, his sister and husband, her 2 sisters and husbands

My mother

My mother in law and boyfriend

Add a host of other graduating teens and a smattering of kids who I had no idea who the hell belonged to who and a handful of other adults with no relation to any of us and we had ourselves all the ingredients for a powder keg.  One in which I was more or less bear hugging. Luckily for me I brought the love.

You see, no one is going to argue when there’s fried chicken around.  When Jimmy Carter got Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin to shake hands and sign that treaty in 78, I bet you there was fried chicken involved.  Jimmy was from the south.  I’m certain that’s why there is so much tension in the Middle East, they don’t have it.  We need to stop wasting time with traditional ambassadors for that area and send some cooks to teach those folks how to fry some chicken.  Soon enough they’ll all be eating chicken and breaking biscuits together not giving a toss about the Gaza Strip.

I might be reaching a bit but maybe not.  Above all the Tiger Woods/Fried Chicken slurs one thing remains constant, everyone loves Fried Chicken. So race, creed, gender here, is not an issue.

Its all about love.

Let get to making some love, I mean, Fried Chicken.  I cut up my own bird but you can probably buy the chicken already cut.  You may have to do some additional cuts get the 12 pieces I like.  Oh yeah, no chickens over three and a half pounds!  The pieces are too big and we lose the balance of meat to crust.  

I cut each breast into two, separate the wings, cut the thighs from the drumstick. Twelve pieces.

It all starts with the brine.  It is the key to making the meat flavorful and juicy.  In a saucepan, bring to a boil the following.

1 gallon water

1 cup kosher salt

2 lemons

1/3 cup honey

10 bay leaves

3 large sprigs rosemary

5 cloves garlic

Allow the brine to cool.  Then add the chicken.

 

 Place in the fridge overnight or for at least 6 hours.  Now remove the chicken and discard the brine.  Put the chicken in a container and cover with 2 cups of buttermilk.  Let it sit in the buttermilk for a couple hours.

 Now prepare the flour mix.

5 cups flour

¼ cup garlic powder

¼ cup onion powder

2 T salt

2 T black Pepper

2 T paprika

1 T cumin

1 T cayenne

 Here's another key step.  Ladle some of the buttermilk into the seasoned flour and mix until it resembles course sand.  This will give the fried chicken that "extra crispy" crust.  

 Now take the chicken from the buttermilk and roll in the flour until well coated.

 Do this for all 12 pieces. They should look something like this.

 Now for the frying.  At work, I have the luxury of a deep fryer which none of you have.  A fry daddy type of gadget will mimic it okay, but for this session I'm going old school and using a cast iron skillet. Grandma Elva would be so proud.

Fill the skillet with a half an inch of Canola Oil and turn the heat to medium.  We are looking for a temperature of 325 so if you have a kitchen thermometer use it here. Heat the oil to around or about 375.  Once we add the chicken, the temperature of the oil should drop to where we want it.

Pay attention to the oil because

1) oil can catch fire

2) which could in turn burn down your house

3) And I don't need that on my conscious

4) most importantly, you'll ruin the fried chicken

Here goes. With your oil now at temperature, slip the chicken pieces into the skillet. Give them room, no crowding the love making here.  No shaking the skillet, no going off to do laundry, and no watching the Mad Men episode you DVR'd Sunday.  Just let them fry slowly. When the bottom is nice and brown, carefully flip the pieces over until everything is nice and brown.  We are not cooking  the chicken through here, just getting them nice and crispy.

If you have to do the chicken in batches, so be it. We're only halfway through the process.  When the pieces are nice and brown, transfer to a baking rack over a sheet pan like this

Your oven should be at 325. Once the chicken is done browning, place them all on this rack and place in the oven for about 45 minutes.  

Its helps to have a themometer at hand to check the donesess.  We're looking for 160  degrees for the pieces to be done. 

Once you are there, drop the oven to low low and allow the chicken to rest.  This gives you time to prep the rest of the meal. Make some yeast biscuits, whipped potatoes (blog coming), kale, green beans, whatever your fancy.  Your love is in the oven and just getting better with time so enjoy your time with the fixings.

 And oh yeah, if you have leftovers, cold fried chicken for lunch is money.

Enjoy!

Pan Roasted Artichokes

The other morning I noticed a very long text message on my wife’s phone. 

“Is that a text or did she cut and paste the first chapter to Richard Ford latest novel?  You know we have that book.” It was a text.  Women do that. Write long messages using their finest prose, while expressing their innermost  feelings, even writing in complete sentences. 

Men don’t.  If the text requires more than five words we’re hitting the call button.  Why waste the time? When we do text it’s usually in a caveman dialect, “can’t find wallet” or “eat out 2nite”. 

Not my wife. She holds her phone and works her thumb back and forth the mini keyboard, like a peach colored cobra striking with deadly accuracy.  Why she doesn’t send an email I’ll never know, at least she’d have 9 more digits on payroll helping to get the message across.

How about those texting arguments? That’s a one way street.  Hey guys, ever get a text that makes you cock your head, squint your eyes and mutter, “did she really write that?” Somewhere around the fourth or fifth unanswered texts you’ll get the patented “So you’re not going to respond?”

Respond to what? It’s not a fair fight.  It’s like Russian cage match between a lion and a groundhog.  A bloodbath. We men just lie on the ropes, waiting for Georgette to punch herself out (that’s a boxing reference, girls. You tube Ali-Foreman, it’ll go along way explaining how men argue).

I do like texting pictures of food. 

I did that last week.  What do you call that?  Not that, that is pan roasted artichokes and I’ll get to that in a minute.  I mean texting food pics.  When Congressman Weiner was texting photos of his, well, surname (oh the irony) to his mistress, we called that sexting. We need a name.

In the meantime let me show how to cook artichoke hearts.

There's the line up.  Artichokes, lemon, and fresh thyme.  You'll also need a couple cloves of garlic and a little white wine.   First, prepare some lemon water. Cut one lemon in half and juice it into
water, like so. Slice another into thin slices and set aside.

This keeps the hearts from browning.  Let's back up a bit and get to the heart of the matter. Ha. Start by cutting off the stem.

And then the outer leaves.

Continue cutting

Lop off the top

Finally, this is what we are looking for

We still have one more thing to do.  See the fuzzy center there, we'll need to take that out. Cut the heart into quarter, then take your knife and scrap out that center fuzziness.

Once all your hearts are ready, remove them from the lemon water and pat dry.  Line a saute pan with olive oil and add the hearts.

(We're putting a lot of heart into this cooking blog) The corn meter is red lining. Now add the garlic and lemon slices

Add the thyme ( we're putting a lot of thyme into this.....) 

Let them get nice and brown

Splash some white wine in and scrap up all those tasty bits.  The artichoke hearts are ready when you insert a knife and it goes through without resistance.  You can add a little  water to help them about, but by no means have them simmering in water.  You want the flavor of these little gems to be concentrated.

Oh my. Artichoke hearts are like crack, addicting and expensive (that shit will make you broke). Every now and then you have to pony up and buy these.  Serve like that or with a nice piece of fish on top.  I like them with fresh white anchovies

Enjoy these while you try to come up with a name for texting food photos.

Salute.

Garlicky Shrimp

As most of you know, the Cicadas are back which means I’m saving money on dog food.  Really.  Who needs to scoop dried morsels of organic lamb, sweet potato, chickpea, white truffle, whatever is in that 50 dollar bag of guilt when there is a seemingly infinite supply  of cicadas in the field. My wife commented on how soft the dog’s coat is. Of course it is, that’s what a couple thousand grams of protein each morning will do for a dog.

So as I listen to the drone coming from the trees, I can’t help being fascinated by the plight of the cicada.  I mean, 17 years underground and then just two weeks on shore to do one thing, the nasty.  I get it. I mean, if I was down under for that long and got a 14 day furlough I would do as the cicadas do and start rubbing my abdomen hoping to attract the attention of this gorgeous bug.

That’s my wife. Beauty.   

The second thing I’d be getting busy with would be cooking, and soon after eating.  That is assuming I had acquired the same skill set I have now while sucking sap from roots of trees for the past 17 years. I can’t imagine it’s easy to use a cleaver underground.

If I only have 14 days then I’m having my 14 favorite meals.  I’m not breaking it down into breakfast, lunch, dinner. No one wants to look at 42 item list (can you even come up with 14 different breakfast items?), no, I am eating one meal each day.  Remember, I’ve been underground for 17 years so my metabolism is a bit sluggish..

So here goes. From bottom to top.

Cuban Sandwich

Fresh Fish (and I will compliment someway)

Guinea Hen 

Kale Frittata 

Crusty Bread, EVOO, Sea Salt, Prosciutto

Large Salad, Bacon Dressing, Poached Egg

Garlicky Shrimp, Pasta

French Onion Soup

Artichokes, pan roasted with garlic and lemon(and grilled octopus)

Chicken Pot Pie (my kids will be there helping to destroy it)

Pizza (homemade, of course, blog forthcoming)

BLT

Fried Chicken( it's coming,too)

Over easy eggs (Farm eggs please)

One and two are close. I can eat fried chicken until I explode.  Over easy eggs are like an epiphany in food in my opinion. Crispy whites, runny yolks….ahhhhh, worth the 17 year wait.

Cicadas are not on the list. A buddy of mine took his dog’s advice and tried one last week, said it tasted like a peanut cracker.  No wonder my dog is happier than a garden tethered goat.

Their cousins of the sea, however Garlicky Shrimp are on.  Hang with me and I’ll show you how to make them sweet and tender.

 24 medium shrimp

 5 T butter

 1 T garlic pasted

 1 cup parsley chopped

 3 roma tomatoes diced

 ½ cup basil chopped

First, peel and devein your shrimp and then cut it in half length wise.  This is important.

Chop, dice and paste your parsley, basil, tomatoes and garlic. 

 In a saucepan melt your butter, turn the heat to LOW, and add the garlic.  We’re going to slowly cook the garlic in the butter while whisking the whole time.  

Take your time here, it should be five minutes before your butter foams like this.

Add the shrimp and continue cooking on low heat. This is the key.  I’ve seen so many cooks sear or grill shrimp on high heat. The result? Rubber. Not mine.  Slow she goes is the money here.

The shrimp will begin to turn opaque.

And almost done.

And ready. Now and the tomatoes, parsley basil and a splash of white wine. Remove it from the heat. 

See that?

Pour this goodness over some noodles and enjoy.