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.

Eggplant Parmesan Pizza

This was lunch yesterday.  I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of eggplant and I've never had a memorable eggplant parmesan dish so the thought of putting it in pizza kind of weirded me out.  I'll save you the pictures of the dough preparation but I will say I successfully made dough for the second time in a row, so go me.

 All the stuff for the filling.  Tomatoes, eggplant, eggs, mozzarella, parmesan, and flour.

The sliced and seasoned eggplants waiting for the oil.

 The completed eggplant.

 The pizza ready to go into the oven.

 The finished pizza

The final plate, yeah the crust broke a bit, but it was actually really delicious.

Chicken, carrot salad

I was doing so well with blogging on the same day as I cooked, but I fell off the wagon on Thursday.  Unfortunately for you, a lot of what I'm actually supposed to be cooking are side dishes which means the main part of the meal is either grilled steak or chicken.  This one was no different.  The primary recipe was a carrot salad, which was delicious but what you'll see a lot of is the chicken I grilled with it.  I did change it up a little bit from the standard salt and pepper and went with an ad hoc rub for this chicken.

All the stuff you need, green onions, pistachios, chicken breasts, carrots, salt, lemon, paprika, parsley, cinnamon, cumin, and brown sugar and the final ingredient which my sister will be really proud of me for trying for the first time, dates.  I hate to admit it, but at the end I actually forgot to put the pistachios in the salad. 

 The chicken got rubbed with a rub of cinnamon, salt, pepper, brown sugar, cumin and paprika.  It was an excellent example of you can make a great rub with a lot of pretty random ingredients.

 The completed chicken.  You can see the wonderful carmelization of the sugar and paprika.

The final plate.

Steak, Cilantro Risotto Cakes

I know, I know steak again.  What can I say, it's a noble beast that blesses us with delicious delicious steaks.  Risotto cakes on the other hand are a bit more of a delicacy, they can be pretty labor intensive and are notoriously finicky once you try to fry them up.  I had two fall apart on me before I got them right.

Everything you need, butter, salt, cilantro, chicken broth, a gorgeous New York Strip steak, onion, arborio rice, pepper, and garlic.

A couple tablespoons of the onion and the garlic got sweated off in the butter first.

Then the rice went in.

This is the completed risotto before it went into the fridge to cool for about an hour.  To get to this point a couple of cups of the chicken broth went into the rice about 1/2 cup at a time and reduced down until it was almost gone.

Here are the cakes after being coated in a bit of panko bread crumbs waiting for the oil to heat up.

The cakes being fried off in a bit of olive oil.

The completed cakes.

The finished grilled steak.

The final plate.

Coq au Vin

The last time I made this it was out of the Good Eats cookbook, and in that episode There was a chicken that kept making noises at convenient times and whenever I think about this dish I think of that.  I know I'm weird.

On another note, we're just two weeks away from a huge project and potentially a new direction for the blog.  I'm going to begin cooking my way through the Alinea cookbook.  Alinea is Grant Achatz's other restaurant in Chicago.  It has three Michelin Stars and was voted the 7th best restaurant in the world this year.  Oh and by the way, I have a reservation there in about 6 weeks.

On to the Chicken.

 Looks complicated but it's really simple.  Here we have chicken broth, chicken legs, butter, salt, pepper, mushrooms, flour, thyme, leeks, carrots, tomato paste, peanut oil and white wine.

 On the side I made chive mashed potatoes.  Milk, butter, potatoes and chives fresh from the garden (what's left of it anyway after Tropical Depression Issac made that part of my yard a river on Friday and Saturday).

 Seasoned chicken legs.  Unfortunately I had to use regular table salt in the seasoning because I ran out of kosher salt.  Lord, have I come to loathe table salt. 

 Halfway through the searing process.  I heated a bit of the oil and then put in the chicken.  That crust is why buying a gas stove was the easiest decision I've ever made.

 The completed seared off chicken waiting for the final braise.

 After the chicken finished and most of the oil was poured off the vegetable medley went into the pan.

 After a few minutes of sauteeing, in went garlic and tomato paste.

 Then a quick deglaze with white wine.  The white wine is the classic wine pairing for chicken dishes but ironically enough is a bit unusual in Coq au Vin.  This dish is usually made with red wine.

 After the wine pretty much reduced out the broth and thyme went in along with the seared chicken to braise for a bit.

 The cooked potatoes.

 The final plate.  The potatoes are underneath and the top is the sauteed vegetables.

Deep Dish Pizza

What good midwestern native doesn't love Chicago style deep dish pizza.  I know that I love it, but it's primarily a delicacy reserved for delivery.  Though if you're in Champaign you have to get Papa Dells, especially on an Illinois game day.  Doesn't matter that you'll wait up to 90 minutes for a table, though you can probably get in faster if you commit sacrilege and go to the off campus location.

I'd like to think that I could have made a better Chicago style deep dish at home, but who was I kidding, especially when the gold standard for me is the Dells.  Oh Papa Dells how I wish you were in Bloomington Normal.

 The stuff for the dough, now my last couple attempts at making dough of any kind have been MASSIVE FAILS so I was kind of leary of doing it here.  Thankfully, it worked out just the way it should have but still.  Here we have flour, salt, sugar, yeast, cornmeal, water and oil.

The flour, cornmeal and salt got mixed in a stand mixer, just waiting for the wet ingredients.

Here we have the yeast, water, oil and sugar.  The liquid was then poured into the moving mixer.

The completed dough, getting ready to sit around and rise up.

The dough after an hour, hallelujiah it actually worked.  Doubled in size just like it was supposed to.  From here I punched it down and let it sit around for about another hour.

Holy crap, it's still doing what it's supposed to.  From here I actually put it in the fridge to get it to slow down a bit until I was ready to cook with it.

Here's all the ingredients for the topping part of the pizza.  Onions, mushrooms, red pepper flakes, sausage, tomatoes, garlic, mozzarella, basil, pepperoni, and ham.

The dough got rolled out to about a 1/4 inch.

Time to blind bake the dough.  The purpose behind this is to make sure the dough will be cooked through at the same time as the casserole level of fillings.  You can actually purchase pie weights for this purpose if you do this enough.  But for the every day cook dry beans are perfect and they are a whole lot cheaper.

Here is the sausage browning off in a saute pan.

 I removed the sausage from the pan and sauteed the mushrooms.

Time for the onions to join in.

It wasn't in the original picture, but the red peppers went in next.

After a couple minutes I pulled the dough out of the oven and removed the foil and then baked off what was left.  This is the result after about 5 or 6 minutes in the oven.

I added the sausage back to the vegetable mixture just to heat everything through.

The stuffed pizza ready to go into the oven.

Yeah I probably should have covered the edge of that crust with foil, but holy crap was this thing delicious.

Stuffed pizza isn't meant to plate well.  One of the few exceptions to the eat with your eyes rule.