The Best Meal Foodgoat Forgot About

Memorial Day weekend! The start of grilling season!

Foodgoat got a head start - making this delicious brisket. However, it didn't quite go as planned.

The original plan: put a dry rub on the brisket overnight, smoke it slowly outside for several hours, and enjoy a nice piece of well-cooked meat for dinner.

It started off right - he got a nice piece of brisket, covered it with spicy dry rub (mostly paprika, but with lots of other spices) he made himself, and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, he took it out and put in the grill with a not too hot fire to smoke. In the meantime, he got out the brand new rototiller to prepare the garden patch.

And that's when the plan veered off course.

Because ripping up dirt with a gas motor and fierce blades is FUN.

He not only got our regular garden tilled and turned and ready for planting, he expanded it by about 60%!

He had so much fun, he took the rototiller to Culturefilter's house to till away the afternoon there too.

A couple of tilled plots and several beers later, Foodgoat realized he had left the brisket at home, still smoking away five hours later. So he went back, pulled the still warm brisket off, and popped it in the fridge.

The next day, the brisket went into the crock pot with barbeque sauce, gin, and a couple of other things that he happened to have on hand, and there it cooked for another couple of hours.

The results though were yummy - smoky, flavorful, and very tender and just perfect for sandwiches.



So the actual process turned out to be: put a dry rub on a brisket overnight, smoke for a couple of hours, get drunk on power tools and beer, forget about the brisket, put brisket in fridge, cook brisket in crock pot for several more hours.

Lessons in Chestnuts: If It Looks Like A Brain, It's Good

Foodgoat doesn't usually go in much for desserts ... except when it comes to his grandmother's chestnut rum puree. When made into a torte or eaten straight up with a scoop of whipped cream, the chestnut puree is a delicious yet not too sweet treat and a Foodgoat favorite.

We have just heard rumors about the difficulty and labor involved in cooking fresh chestnuts, so when we came upon a technique of cooking chestnuts using a slow cooker, one of Foodgoat's favorite and most used small appliance, and then found piles of fresh chestnuts at the local grocery store, we decided it was time for a new Foodgoat adventure.

First, we picked up about 3 lbs of chestnuts. We introduced them to GoatSpawn, who was not particularly interested.

Next, with a sharp heavy knife, Foodgoat scored the rounded side of each chestnut about halfway through. In they went into the slow cooker, with enough boiling water to cover them. Turn the slow cooker on high for 2.5 to 5 hours, until the skins peel back.









Once done, Foodgoat excitely took a knife and cut a still very hot chestnut in half, peeled the outer shell and inner skin away, and popped the highly anticipated meat into his mouth. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a moldy one. A moldy, gross-tasting chestnut.








In fact, many of the chestnuts turned out to be moldy. About 30% of them. At first, we weren't sure what a good or bad chestnut looked like, so Foodgoat was doing a taste test on them all. He soon discovered that a good chestnut looks like a brain, and tastes delicious. A bad chestnut does not, and tastes totally disgusting.

Having never purchased chestnuts before, we weren't sure if that 30% failure rate was par for the chestnut course, or a reflection on the poor produce standards at the grocery store. But either way, it almost wasn't worth it. Almost. Because the fresh chestnut did taste very good.

Two Appliances for Slow Cooking Meat

A few months ago, everyone at work was suddenly mad for the Farberware Open Hearth Smokeless Broiler, an electric rotating meat rotisserie thing-y that was apparently the wedding gift of choice during the 1960's. The succulence of meats (so juicy! so tender!) slow cooked over a bottom heating element for four hours, has been so celebrated, I find myself eying them on eBay.

What stops me? In a word, storage: our teensy 1925 kitchen barely has the counterspace for the coffee grinder, much less a large single-use appliance.

Especially when the slow cooker, the multi-tasking Crock Pot, is working out so well. Just last week Foodgoat discovered yet another tasty thing it can do: it can make corned beef.

The nearby deli makes a decent corned beef sandwich - for $8. We can pick up a corned beef package from the grocery store for less than that, plop it (fat meticulously trimmed off, as per Foodgoat standard policy) into the slow cooker at night with water and the packet of herbs that it comes with, and in the morning ...

A muy delicioso pile of corned beef, tender and juicy, ready for several day's worth of personalized and yummy (and inexpensive) sandwiches for lunch.

But I still want to try a Farberware Open Hearth Smokeless Broiler, storage and possible fire hazard be damned. Because then I could put on a very large chunk of pork, or possibly a very tiny whole pig. Because roasting for hours and turning on a spit is the how lechon (tasty, tasty lechon) is made.

And now that I think about it, there is always room for lechon.

Is My Blog Burning? 11: Black Bean-Mushroom Chili

What says beans more than chili?

And what warms you more on a cold, cold January weekend than slow-cooker chili?

And what could be tastier than a vegetarian slow-cooker chili?

Well, maybe an extra-meaty chili, I admit. But this chili was remarkably full, delicious (not that much different from carnivorous versions), and probably much healthier. It tastes like chili, which is to say, yummy, and not some bland knockoff like so many healthy versions of recipes tend to taste like.

Things I learned while making this:

1) The bread knife chops tomatoes better than all the other knives.

2) Tomatillos can be substituted with regular tomatoes with a dash of lemon juice

3) Tomato paste can be substituted with twice the volume of tomato puree

4) Not even the prospect of chili can get me out of the house in a snowstorm just to pick up a few missing ingredients.


BLACK-BEAN-MUSHROOM CHILI
(Eating Well, Winter 2004, p. 57)

1 lb (2 1/2 cups) dried back beans
1 T olive oil
1/4 c mustard seeds
2 T chili powder
1.5 t cumin seeds
1/2 t cardamon seeds
2 med onions, chopped
1 lb mushrooms, sliced
1/2 lb tomatillos, chopped
1/4 c water
5.5 c broth
1 can tomato paste
2 T minced canned chipotle peppers
1.25 c grated Monteray Jack cheese
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c chopped cilantro
2 limes, in wedges

1. Soak beans overnight in 2 qts water. Drain.
2. Combine oil, mustard seeds, chili powder, cumin and cardamon in a big pot. Place over high heat and still until spices sizzle, about 30 sec. Add onions, mushrooms, tomatillos and water. Cover & cook, stir occasionally, until veggies are juicy (5-7 minutes). Uncover and stir until juices evaporate and veggies are lightly browned (10-15 min).
3. Places beans in the slow cooker. Pour the veggies over the beans, add broth, tomato paste and chipotles and mix well. Turn heat onto high, cover and cook 5-8 hours.
4. Serve it up with a topping of cheese, sour cream and cilantro and a couple of lime wedges.

Winter chili

Okay, so I had some French fries for lunch, along with my carrot and my cucumber. They count as fresh vegetables, right?

Meanwhile, Foodgoat's adventures continue unabated. Imitiation being the sincerest form of flattery, he was inspired by Igor's chili to try and recreate it. He's made chili many times, but this time he was inspired by Igor's version, and, imitiation being the sincerest form of flattery, this time he used baked beans, an entire can of hot banana peppers, ginger, and roasted peppers. After a whole day of simmering in the slow cooker, Foodgoat also threw in peas and corn for good measure. The result was hot, spicy, and good. Different, filling, and perfect for a cool November night. Chili is never the same dish twice, and yet it's almost always good.



As if that wasn't enough, Foodgoat later broke open a box of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Pistachio, if you must know. A previous pistachio doubter, he was pretty enthusiatic about this one, reporting it to be not too sweet, incredibly earthy, and a meal unto itself, which may be why he never liked it as a kid.

I never met a sweet potato I didn't like
Summertime, when the living is easy and the cooking is hot. Too hot. Which makes the cooking not so easy. With the temperature close to 90 degrees, turning on the oven or the gas range, even for a little while, makes the kitchen pretty much unbearable. So I've been scouting out recipes for the handy-dandy slow-cookin' Crock Pot, poring over Judith Finlayson's Delicious and Dependable Slow Cooker Recipes. As it turns out, the first recipe we tried was a big winner. Simple, tasty, and I suspect, even healthy. Definitely will be worth repeat showings.



SANTA FE SWEET POTATO SOUP

Soak 2 dried New Mexico chili peppers in boiling water for half an hour. Drain, discarding the water and the stems. Pat dry and chop up.

Heat 1 T. of oil over medium heat. Add 2 finely chopped onions and cook until softened. Add 4 minced garlic cloves, 1 chopped jalapeno pepper, 1 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of dried oregano, and the New Mexico chilis. Cook for 1 minute and dump it all into the slow cooker, along with 4 cups of peeled and cubed sweet potatoes and 6 cups of chicken broth.

Cover and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, until sweet potatoes are tender. Puree the soup with your ever-useful immersion blender. Add 2 cups of frozen corn kernels and the zest and juice of one lime. Cover and cook on high for 20 minutes. In the meantime, have a frosty root beer and sit in another room under a ceiling fan (optional).

When ready to serve, garnish with strips of roasted red peppers and chopped cilantro, and crumble in cold corn muffins.