Category Archives: Recipes

Meatballs

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Meatballs that were convection roasted first are now in italian sauce

Here’s my tip for meatballs – and, yes, it is my tip because I have been doing this for years even if others, like America’s Test Kitchen, only figured it out recently:  Don’t fry them before they go into the sauce.  Roast them in a hot (400-425 deg. F.) convection oven on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.  They will brown and firm up this way and you won’t have a big mess in your kitchen.  My meatball recipe is simple in that you combine, but do not overwork, good ground meat that is no leaner than 90%, a little bread that has been softened in water, an egg or two, a bit of grated parmesan, a little Best Foods/Hellmann’s mayonnaise, a smidgen each of Dijon mustard and Worcestershire, and salt and pepper.  Form big meatballs and brown in oven as described above.  Just keep an eye on them and take them out when they have browned to your liking.  Allow to cool a bit and carefully transfer to hot sauce and simmer for an hour.  Your sauce need be nothing more than a #10 can of crushed tomatoes (buy at Costco) with whatever you have on hand to liven it up, but certainly some Italian spice mix, fresh garlic, a little olive oil, a dash of red wine and a bit of sugar to cut the acidity.  Simmer all this together for 45 minutes before you add the meatballs.

Roasted peppers

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roasted tricolor peppers 5-18-08

I promised to provide a good recipe for roasted peppers, so here you go.  I use the pack of 2 red, 2 yellow and 2 orange from Costco, since they provide a pretty result with different flavors.  Jack up your oven to 400 F. convection, if you have it.  Place your peppers on a sheet pan and slide into oven.  Using long tongs, turn them over now and again (like every few minutes) so they darken and cook evenly.  When they are nice and brown — and they don’t need to be a solid brown, rather they should have lots of brown spots that are evenly distributed — take them out and pop into a couple of large Ziploc bags that are completely sealed.  You are harnessing moist heat here to cause the skins to pull away from the flesh.  Put the bags in bowls in case the heat causes them to open a bit, which happens often, so that you catch the natural juices, which you want to reserve for the final preparation.  After about an hour, take out the peppers, one by one, and slip the skins (which should be loose) off.  Pull the stems off and gently tear the pepper to open it and push out the seeds with your fingers.  Don’t rinse them, rather use your fingers to get all the “bad” things off.  If you rinse them, you’ll ruin the flavor and texture.  I never cut these peppers, just tear them into large strips and arrange them on a plate right then and there.  When all arranged on a serving plate go ahead and pour the pepper juices over the top.  Sprinkle some sea salt and black pepper over the top.  Finish with a drizzle of excellent olive oil.  What you don’t eat just save in a plastic container for sandwiches.

Chicken al mattone, or “under a brick”

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Mattone in action

Mattone in action

The most delicious chicken dish in the universe is chicken al mattone, or chicken under a brick.  If you cook lots of chicken then I would purchase a mattone, which is a two-piece affair:  a shallow terracotta dish – kind of like a cazuela, but with shorter, straight sides and glaze on the inside only.  Piece #2 is a teardrop-shaped terracotta weight.  You use this contraption on the stovetop to cook a butterflied, oiled and seasoned bird by pressing it into the shallow pan with the heated weight.  You will wind up with highly flavored meat and crispy skin.  Honestly, you won’t believe how good this chicken turns out.  Clearly there is something to cooking in clay that is more than the sum of its parts.

Chicken in a mattone ready to cook

I honed a recipe that works with pieces and uses only a few ingredients.  Here’s what you do:  Wash and dry a whole butterflied chicken or pieces and set aside.  Put the mattone press (the top part) into a cold oven and set the heat to 375 F.  Wait about 10 minutes.  Place the mattone base on your burner with medium heat.  No need to use a flame tamer, but I guess you can if you want to.  Immediately pour in about 1/3 cup of good olive oil and sprinkle in a handful of dried oregano, some ground black pepper and kosher salt.   No need to use fresh oregano because the cooking method opens up the dried version fine.  When the oil is hot, put in the chicken – skin side down.  If you have a whole chicken you’ll crowd the pan, which is fine.  Strew some oregano and S & P on top of the chicken and drizzle on a bit of olive oil.  Remove the press from the oven with a good mitt and place directly on top of chicken, pressing down firmly but not with enough force to knock your range over.  You get the idea.  Turn down the flame so you maintain a little sizzle but not too much; a smidgen over low should work.  When it comes time to take the chicken out of the pan, first remove the press and set it on a wooden board or some other surface that is not cold.  Remember, a rapid temperature change will cause clay cookware to crack!  Test the temperature of each chicken piece with an instant-read thermometer to make sure it is done.  As of this entry you want 165 F., but be sure to check current requirements with the USDA often, since they change.  The chicken will stick to the bottom of the pan, so use a straight-sided spatula of some ilk to loosen it before you scoop it out.  This process can be fairly intense but if you are patient and work under the skin with some oomph and a slight back-and-forth motion, you’ll get it out intact.  I place the pieces on a huge platter of spring mix and then spoon the drippings, which are so good this dish should be illegal, over the top.  The warm “dressing” is all that is needed on the salad.  I serve this with some rice and roasted peppers, which I’ll give you the recipe for tomorrow, I promise.  Notes:  If you want to butterfly a chicken, take a good set of kitchen shears and make one continuous cut along each side of the backbone starting at the pope’s nose and ending at the top.  Then open the chicken up and press it down (with the skin side facing up).  Plunk that long backbone in the freezer for congee or stock.  If you don’t want to get a mattone, use any clay dish (glazed on the inside) with sides that may be used on the stovetop as the base, and a few clean bricks for the press.  Some people wrap the bricks in foil, but I do not.  When I first buy the bricks I wash them well and then bake for quite some time to clean and sterilize, and then wash them thoroughly after each use.  You won’t get the same results but the dish will still be tasty.  If I don’t want a mess, I crimp foil under the base of the mattone all the way around as I place it on the stovetop so I have a “wall of foil” around the whole setup.  When I have the press on, I then tent the affair by placing a sheet of foil on top.  The cooking chicken can still breathe (you don’t want it airtight) but it provides a little more heat for the chicken to cook through while keeping all the spritzing oil at bay.

Chicken cooked in a mattone - under a brick

Rainbow trout

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The troops have been hankering for rainbow trout, so we had them today.  I picked up four fish (cleaned) at Costco and served them whole.  This is an easy dish to make and delicious but it can be a mess if you don’t have a large griddle or sauté pan since the head and tail will hang over the edges and flour will get all over.  Wash and dry the fish well on the outside but only slightly on the outside, salt the inside and then dredge in salt and peppered flour.  I use a half sheet pan for this and leave them on there until they go into the pan.  Get out your largest stick-free sauté pan and heat up some olive oil.  When it’s nice and hot but not an inferno, put in a knob of butter.  Gently lay in a fish and brown it — watching the heat so it does not burn.  Turn it over with long tongs after about 5 minutes and brown the other side.  Slide a large spatula (a commercial one is good for this kind of thing) under the fish and move to an oiled sheet pan, leaving room for any others you want to put on there.  Do not use the tongs to take the fish out of the sauté pan because it will break.  Before you fry another fish make sure the oil in the sauté pan is not burned.  If it is, pour it out and wipe with a paper towel when cool enough and start with fresh oil and butter.  When you have all your fish on the sheet pan place in a 375 F. convection oven and bake for 15 minutes – if you have fish that are about a pound or so each.  If you have small fish you’ll need very little bake time.  Apply good judgment here.  If you have a sauté pan that is able to house a couple of fish with no overhang, there is no reason to finish them in the oven.  After you turn the fish over and brown side #2, simply turn down the heat, tent some foil over the pan, and cook for 10 minutes or so and serve.  I  find this recipe the best since this is a mild fish and you want to bring out its goodness without a lot of overpowering ingredients.  We eat them with a squeeze of lemon.  The bones are not too bad on a rainbow trout, but try to eat any whole fish by sliding the meat down from the backbone on the side facing you.  When done with that side, pull off the entire backbone and eat the side left on your plate.  There is a little meat you can get from the tail, and be sure to eat the cheek meat and whatever else you can find in the head before you discard it.  The skin is the best part of a fried trout – enjoy it!  Debone meat for your smaller kids, but know that if you get them used to this kind of preparation they won’t know from a fish stick and this is what they’ll want when they get older.  While there is no one, but no one, who is as good with fish bones as my mother, my son, Matthew, now 21, can hold his own because he has been eating whole fish all his life.

Tie-dye glaze for cakes

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bundt cake with tie-dye glaze

Steven’s birthday and Mother’s Day today, resulting in efficiency or someone being “screwed,” and I would say that this is Steven, since he has to share his special day with a lesser event.  He requested some sort of pound cake so I made that with strawberries and whipped cream.  I gave the cake a tie-dye glaze, in honor of Steve’s childhood in the 60’s and 70’s.  This is easy.  You need:  food coloring kit; lemon juice; confectioner’s sugar; 6 glass custard cups (or other cups that won’t absorb the colors); a fully cooled pound cake.  Place your cake on a large piece of foil or a sheet pan.  Mix 2 cups of confectioner’s sugar with a little lemon juice.  Add more lemon juice until you have a very thick glaze.  If the glaze is too thin it will dry transparently on the cake and all this will have been for naught.  Divide your glaze evenly among the custard cups.  Make red, yellow, blue and green, which are the colors that come with basic food coloring sets, by adding a couple of drops of color to each cup of glaze and then mixing with a teaspoon.  Make orange with some red and yellow.  Make purple (and this is a must) from red and green.  Using a clean spoon, spoon the purple glaze on the top of the cake, at intervals, so it runs down both sides and so you wind up with four or five strips of purple.  Do this with the other colors, one at a time, on the clean parts of the cake, overlapping now and again for a tie-dye effect.  Allow icing to harden completely before moving.  Cakes like this are good served with basic strawberry topping, which you can make by washing, stemming and cutting up strawberries (to your liking, i.e., sliced or quartered), and tossing with a good dose of sugar and a few drops of lemon juice.  Cover with plastic wrap, pop in fridge, and in a few hours you’ll have strawberries in syrup to serve over cake slices.   The cake and fixin’s were a big hit – especially with Berry, who kept a close eye on the operation.

Berry the akita wanting cake on Steve's birthday