Gyros

I'll be honest, for as much as I love to cook I eat my fair share of fast food, and as long as I prepared to deal with the consequences and in good enough shape to drive I love gyros.  When I'm in the mood for gyros I usually hit up Super Gyros here in Bloomington.  But every time I eat there it makes me miss Zorbas in Champaign which is the gold standard when it comes to gyros. 

Anyway, this meal was the first time I tried it at home and it still makes me miss Zorbas.  On a side note, given the way Green Street is develping in Champaign I'm so glad that the owners of Zorba's vowed to come back after a fire destroyed their place about 18 months ago.  If they hadn't, about the only remaining block of Green Street that hadn't been redeveloped with an 8 story luxury apartment that costs twice as much as I ever paid even just 6 years ago, along with another chain fast food place would have replaced a U of I institution.

 Everything you need for the meat, onions, salt, pepper, ground lamb, garlic, rosemary and marjoram.

 The onions went into the food processor first, which were then drained briefly.  Then the rest of the ingredients went in until the mixture formed a paste.

 A gyro isn't complete without a tzatsiki sauce which is a yogurt cucumber sauce.  In addition to the cucumber and yogurt there's olive oil, garlic and red wine vinegar.

 This is the completed meatloaf.

The finished dish.  I also can't talk about gyros without thanking my dad.  He introduced me to them when I was 14 years old at a place on State Street in Madison after a ski trip with the high school youth group.  So thanks Dad and happy birthday.

Seared Flank Steak

So I've got so much frozen meat in my freezer that I decided to spend the next at least 6 weeks by just pulling something out and figuring out what to cook with it.  These dishes will most likely be simple but hopefully delicious.

This first one was a seared flank steak with a little soy based sauce.  Simple yet delicious.

 I marinated the flank steak in a bit of soy, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil.  This was the steak after it spent two hours in the marinated.

 The remaining marinade went into a  sauce pan and reduced for a few minutes.

 The flank steak halfway through the cooking.

The completed plate.

Braised Short Ribs

As much as I detest the weather getting colder I do tend to enjoy the heartier stews and braises that generally come along with it in my cookbooks.  This one was the first of the year and is a version of a dish you don't see too often, short ribs.  Now the cooking of short ribs has nothing to do with the fact that it's cooler outside and everything to do with the fact that you can't eat them unless they are braised.

 A whole mess of stuff went into this dish, but again there is a lot of inactive cooking time.

 The short ribs were seasoned with salt, pepper, a bit of cayenne and then were coated in flour.  They were then seared off in some oil.

 Once the ribs were seared I put onions, carrots, celery, tomato paste and bay leaf went in.

After the vegetables were cooked, beef broth, red wine, marsala and worcestshire sauce went in.  I brought the mixture to a simmer before putting the ribs back in.  Once the ribs were in, the whole pot went into a 350 degree oven for 2 hours.

 While the beef was cooking I prepped the ingredients for the pasta.  Here we have fettuccine, parmesan, parsley, garlic, lemon and olive oil.

 After the beef had cooked for two hours I added the mushrooms to the pot and braised for another 15 minutes.  This is the final result. 

The final step to the sauce was to simmer the broccoli which went until the broccoli was tender.

These are the completed ribs.

The final plate.

Potato Leek Soup

I don't generally crave soups and when I make them I don't end up eating very much of it, I guess it has something to do with the fact there's just not generally anything there to chew.  Maybe I'm just weird though.

There is, however, one soup out there that I love every time I make it, Potato Leek soup.  This version from Good Eat was particularly good.

The stuff, vegetable broth, butter, salt, potatoes, chives, buttermilk, pepper, cream and leeks.

I cut the leeks into half moons and then cooked them in the butter for about 25 minutes.

After the leeks had cook, the potatoes went in along with the vegetable broth and then simmered for about 45 minutes.  Once the cooking had completed I took my stick blender to the veg and this was the result.

The finished soup, this is after the cream, buttermilk, salt, pepper and chives were added.

Alinea at Home: Pheasant, Apple, Shallot, Burning Oak

So this is the start of what is going to be a very long series that I teased a while back.  I'm going to cook my way through the Alinea cookbook.  I'm planning on doing one dish per month so all told this is going to take me a little over 2 years, but if the first attempt was any indication of what this is going to be like, oh boy, the next two years are going to be a blast.  Alinea is a restaurant in Chicago that is owned by Grant Achatz who also owns Next.

I didn't get as many photos of this dish as I would have liked because it got worked into a six course meal that I made for some friends Friday night, so the final prep was done while trying to maintain a sense of timing for the entire meal.

 The first step was to roast the shallots,  here we have the shallots, salt and grape seed oil.  The shallots went into the oven for about 45 minutes or and hour, basically until they were soft. 

 The second component of the dish was the apple gel.  This is the start of it, apple cider, granny smith apples salt and agar agar.

 All the ingredients went into a pot and simmered until the apples got soft.  The agar agar is a modified starch and actually started working while the mixture was still in the pot. 

 After simmering, the mixture went into a blender.

 From the blender into a plastic wrap lined baking dish and then into the fridge to set.  The recipe said it would take two hours to set, mine took about 10 minutes, which was awesome.

 The completed apple gel, for some reason it didn't have the kick of apple flavor I thought would be there but still delicious.

 These are the completed shallots.

 I left work early on Friday to finish the prep and apparently in my frenzied pace for 3 and a half hours before my friends came over, a pace which included two trips to Meijer to get ingredients, I forgot to get any pictures of the pheasant.

The pheasant though was pretty easy, I took the breast of the bird and put it into a vacuum bag with salt, pepper, thyme and butter.  The whole bag went into a 160 degree water bath for about 25 minutes.  Then it sat in an ice water bath for a bit to cool down.  I then cubed the breasts and a piece is on the end of the skewer here with several slices of apple gel and a piece of shallot.

 I again forgot to get pictures of the batter.  I mixed together a dough of flour, baking powder, corn starch, and club soda, coated the skewers and then deep fried them.  I'll tell you what, deep frying is no fun when you gotta stand there holding the skewer getting splattered with hot oil.  The picture above is the skewers after they came out of the oil.

At the actual restaurant they served this dish in a squid dish, it has little wire tentacles and the skewers are actually oak leaves which they then set on fire and blow out quickly to give off an oak scent at the table.  Well, the leaves here haven't started to turn and I decided not to gross out my guests by using actual oak leaves.  So instead I filled a bowl with oak smoking chips for barbecue and lit that on fire, covered the bowl with foil, poked some hole and served the pheasant on top.  It actually worked wonderfully.

Overall, this was a pretty big favorite of the group, none of us had ever had pheasant before and after having this dish I'm looking forward to doing something with the left over legs that I have in the freezer right now. 

Chicken Caserole

So last week was kind of busy, and I didn't make it to the store until Friday.  So Friday night I made a chicken casserole dish from Cuisine magazine.  This was a really outstanding dish.

 Here's the stuff for the casserole, chicken broth, goat cheese, red pepper flakes, white wine, chicken apple sausage, bay leaves, chicken thighs, white beans, white wine vinegar, rosemary, tomato paste, celery, salt pepper, carrots and garlic.  Sounds like a lot but there's a fair amount of inctive cooking time that makes it pretty easy.

 The seared chicken sausage.  Normally, I prefer pork sausages like brats etc but these were outstanding.  Chicken sausage, mixed with apple and a touch of maple syrup.

 The chicken thighs.

 After the chicken was cooked, a mixture of the onions, carrots and celery goes into the pot to sautee for a bit.

 Next the wine and chicken broth goes in.

 Now it's time for the tomatoes, beans and spices.

 Here are the completed casseroles ready to go int a 375 degree oven for about an h

 Doesn't that look awesome.

The final plating.

Steak and Fries

I just can't help doing a steak and potato combination, though I didn't pull this one off as successfully as I have some others.  I cooked the steak pretty well and I learned that when a steak is cut slightly unevenly I'd rather sacrifice undercooked on the thicker end than to over cook the thinner end.  I also learned that there is a reason that if you're going to fry your fries twice there is a reason you're supposed to let them cool completely after the first fry.

 Everything  you need, potatoes, sugar, salt, pepper, steak, cayenne, ancho chile pepper.

 Here are the fries after they came out of a fry at about 325.  The reason I didn't let them cool completely because it was 9 PM and I was hungry.

 I was looking to change things up so rather than a regular salt and pepper seasoning I did an ancho chile rub that included ancho chile pepper, salt, pepper, cayenne, and sugar.

 The steak halfway through the searing process.

 The fries in the oil for the final fry.

 The completed steak.

The completed fries, they look crispy, but because they were still hot when they went into the higher temperature oil they were kind of soggy.

Pulled Chicken

This one was unfortunate.  The food was delicious, but the chicken I bought wasn't cleaned as well as they are normally and there were visible feather fibers still on the skin and being a barbecue dish the skin is kind of important.  I made it but I couldn't past those hairs and I didn't eat very much.  Such is life I guess.

 The stuff for the chicken.  No fancy rubs here, just wood chips, salt and pepper. 

The barbecue sauce was a bit more complicated.  Onion, water, garlic, molasses, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, apple cider, pepper, hot sauce, olive oil, liquid smoke (as a substitute for worcestshire sauce, since I dropped and broke the bottle I had about 10 days ago and haven't replaced it), chilli powder and ketchup.  The onion and water went into the food processor to extract the water and then was mixed with all the ingredients except the oil, garlic and spices.

 The garlic and spices sauteed for a minute or so until fragrant.

 The liquid went in and simmered away for about 15 minutes.

 The ingredients for a cabbage, apple fennel slaw.  Red cabbage, dried tarragon, apple, mustard, fennel, pepper, rice vinegar and olive oil.

 I sliced up the cabbage and tossed it with a bit of salt to bring out some of the water.

 The completed chicken after about an hour on the grill.

The finished dish.  Nothing fancy to this plate, and I really really wish I wouldn't have been grossed out by the chicken because that sauce was outstanding.