Green Onion Tamales

Christmas 2012 was the first year that my family didn't go to my dad's side for Christmas.  My Grandad had passed away 3 1/2 years earlier and my Grandma was no longer capable of taking care of herself and wasn't in the house anymore. 

Therefore, my parents were trying to figure out how we were going spend the day.  They decided to make tamales.  I had never had a tamale before, I think I've tried to make them before and failed horribly.  That afternoon, though convinced me that I really liked tamales. 

Today, I got a chance to make tamales for myself.  This version was green onion based and the recipe was from Bobby Flay.

The condiment for the tamales, green onion butter.  I brought a stick of butter to room temperature and mixed it with sliced green onions.

This recipe surprised me a bit in that I didn't realize that I was going to make my own masa, and not use corn flour and water.  For the masa though it's pretty simple, corn, shortening, butter, green onions, onions, chicken broth, corn meal, sugar, salt and pepper.  The corn husks are what you pack and cook the dough in.

The dough started by taking the corn onion and chicken broth and putting it into the food processor until the mixture was smooth.  I then combined the corn meal, sugar, salt, pepper until the dough formed and then I cut in the butter and shortening along with sliced green onions.  This is what the dough looked like before going into the corn husks.

The hardest part of the tamales was filling and tying the corn husks to make sure the dough cooked properly.  To prep the corn husks they soaked in water for a couple of hours and then were filled with a couple spoonfuls of dough.  I then folded them up into little pouches and tied them off with butcher's string.  Once All tied up, they went into a pan to steam for about an hour.

Once the tamales had steamed I removed them from the corn husks where they unfortunately kind of fell apart, which is a sign that they hadn't cooked quite enough.  I unpacked them and put them onto a baking sheet and finished them in the oven long enough to melt the butter.

Overall, delicious, I'd need to make little tweaks here and there but overall a fun dish, that wasn't nearly as complicated as I thought.

Cornish Game Hen with Bacon and Onions

So as a cook, fiance, and full time employee there are always going to be times where you need a really simple.  Something, as Anthony Bourdain once said, can be made with one had tied behind my back, standing on my head and with a bong in my mouth.  This is one of those dishes.  Cornish game hen (baby chicken), bacon and onions, can't get any easier and cheap than that.

Here's everything you need for the entire dish.  A cornish game hen, bacon and onions.  Cornish game hens are easily available at any grocery store.  Typically they come frozen in packs of two.  At Meijer there are stashed with the frozen turkey breasts.

This is the picture of the everything cooked, except for the bacon.  You'll just have to believe me when I describe how I cooked it. 

I first cut the bacon up into little slices and cooked that off to render the fat.  Once the bacon was cooked I pulled it out of the pan and put the split chicken in.  The chicken then cooked skin side down in a 500 degree oven with the onions for about 15 minutes. Seriously, that's it.

Once cooked I plated everything up.  Wham bam, thank you ma'am and you have a wonderful dinner.

Alinea: Anniversary Dinner

I'm not one for new years resolutions.  I find them petty and patronizing.  If you've known me is recent years you know that I'm not a big fan of going with the flow and doing everything that everyone else does.  However, if there would be a resolution I'd make it would be to do more blogging this year.

January 3 was the first anniversary of the first date I had with my wonderful fiance.  To celebrate, I made a reservation at Alinea a few months back.  Sam isn't the nearly the foodie that  I am so I take these opportunities to enlighten her about the food opportunities out there.

This was my second trip to Alinea, the first being 15 months ago.  My excitement was probably dampened a bit because I was going to spend time with the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with rather than to satisfy the food nerd in me. 

Anyway on to the food.  First indication that something was up, 13 courses instead of 21.  Given that the price of admission was equal to if not more than the first time around I was skeptical.  But hell, it's Grant Achatz, as long as I get my Hot Potato, Cold Potato and Black Truffle Explosion I'll be happy.

Course #1 was Artic Char roe with banana, ginger and passion fruit.  It was a fantastic way to start the meal.  The saltiness of the fish roe was a perfect counterpoint to all of the fruit in the dish.

Course #2 was scallop, citrus aroma and fourteen textures.  Probably the most visually appealing dish of the night.  A clay pot was brought to the table that had a bed of seaweed in it.  The seaweek was topped with a scallop shell (which is damn near impossible to get.).  The shell was filled with the dish and everything topped off with some dry ice which provided the smoke effect.  The dish was delicious and the effects even better.

Course #3 started with a little campfire in the middle of the table.

The actual third course was called Dugeness Crab, Squash Blossom, Cardamom and saffron.  The crag was cooked confit (in fat) and served with a fried sliced thin squash blossom leaf.  The white stuff is a cauliflower puree.  Overall, this dish disappoiinted.

Course #4, finally resulted in the the playfulness that I know Grant Achatz to undertake.  You remember that fire from the last course.  Well in those coals was a piece of charred parsnip and a piece of high test wagyu beef that went into this course.  Grant, you're my hero.  Please make future Alinea meals like this all the time.  The wait staff disassembled the fire and pulled out the components of this dish and sliced table side.  Absolutely delicious, which should be expected when dealing with beef that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $100/pound.

Course #5, veal might be one of my biggest guilty pleasures.  Especially since I shouldn't feel guilty about eating it.  It's beef and it's tasty granted it's young and hasn't had the pleasure of living a bit longer like it's steak bound brethren.  But still delicious.  This was veal cheeks, lapsong souchong, pine, blackberry.  Everything worked well together, just not a mind blowing dish.

Now into the classics, course #6, the Hot Potato, Cold Potato soup.  The bowl is a restaurant made parafin wax bowl.  The soup inside is a cold potato soup.  On the pin is a small chunk of butter, a butter poached potato ball and a gratuitous slice of truffle.   You each it within about 30 second of it coming out because the hot potato is finished in hot butter right as the dish is plated.  An absolute homerun.  I noted to Sam that tables around us ruined the dish because they were at Alinea to say they were there and couldn't follow simple instructions on how to eat the dish.

A portion of Course #7, Duck ???  This was the duck portion, duck prepared four different ways and then a just for the hell of it foie gras torchon thrown in. 

The components for the duck dish, 60 various condiments that go nicely with duck.  The idea was to split the cooked duck and sample as much of the condiments as possible. 

Course #8 and the second dish that if they every took off the menu there would be riots on the streets of Chicago.  Black Truffle Expolsion.  This is a raviol that is filled with a black truffle puree and topped with a slick of black truffle.  You take everything down in one bite and you get a mouthful of black truffle goodness.

Course #9 was the trasitional course, Ginger, Five Flavors.  Little cubes of ginger with different flavors.  Some spicy some sweet. 

Another sort of transitional course for #10, Pumpkin, smoldering cinnamon, maple and pumpkin seed.  All the components except for the cinnamon stick were tempura fried.

Course #11, the first of the truly sweet courses.  Corn, White Chocolate, Honey and Mango.  This was a freeze dried corn cake with a white chocolate cup and chopped mango with honey sauce.  This was one of my favorites.

The messiest dish of the night.  You can see Sam doing her thing on hers in the lower right of the pic.  This is a green apple taffy filled with real helium to form a balloon.  You give the balloon a kiss and inhale and you sound like a little person for about 45 seconds.  Fun dish.

Final course, this is a classic Alinea presentation.  Full table plating for the final desert.  All of those swirls were done with nothing but a spoon.  Normally, Grant Achatz himself does this, but we were there on Saturday, four days before the next menu at Next opens, which means Chef Achatz was at Next for a friends and family preview (I have got to become friends with a staff member at Next).  One of the sous chefs did the presentation for the night, this is a chocolate tart with sweetened cream being the white stuff, violet sauce being the purple and a couple other things.  Again delicious.

Overall, I hate to say it, but I prefer Next.  This was my second trip to Alinea and they are rightfully one of the best restaurants in the world.  But in a 15 month increment I had three out of thirteen courses that were the same as my first trip and another three that were a version of what I had before.  That means over 50% of the meal I had experienced before.  I hate to say it but for $1,000 plus I expect a bit more variety.  Next provides me with a similar level of execution with the added level of completely different meals.  I love you Chef Achatz, but it will probably be several years before I'm back to Alinea.