Category — Recipes

This year was our first Valentine’s Day as parents which, contrary to what most would believe, was actually quite liberating.  Instead of trying to nail down reservations for dinner at one of the few establishments that don’t mandate the selection of a “Valentine’s Day Menu”, we had made absolutely no plans up until Friday night, two days before the actual day.  I knew that we were going to stay home and that I was going to cook a nice meal – I just hadn’t really given thought to what I was going to make.  For inspiration, I had to reach back into my memory, and ended up completing a circle that had started quite a long time ago.

Almost sixteen years ago, I took my wife (who, at that moment, went by the title of ‘long distance girlfriend’) to New York City for the first time.  I remember that it was still cold, so it may have been this time of year, and it may, in fact, have been a Valentine’s Day trip.

Wanting very badly to make a good impression, I sought out a place for dinner that was, by reputation, romantic, and after some degree of research, decided on One If By Land, Two If By Sea in Greenwich Village.  After breezing right past it, we fumbled around looking for the door, until finally the piano player motioned at us through the bay window and pointed at the entrance.

The setting, an 18th century carriage house, was warm and inviting, with darkly wooded dining rooms lit by the soft glow of vintage chandeliers.  It was the perfect date restaurant, made even more so by the fact that we were seated at a table that overlooked the garden outside, coated white by a layer of freshly fallen snow.  We both ordered the Beef Wellington, a decadent concoction of medium-rare filet mignon, foie gras, and mushrooms, served wrapped in a golden puff pastry crust.  At that time, One If By Land had been known as one of the few dining establishments that served Wellington as an individually wrapped serving of filet.  The meal was excellent from beginning to end, with course after course of outstanding food, attentive service, and all of the pomp and circumstance of an evening that was slightly out of a college student’s budget range.  But it was worth every cent.

At some point after that experience, after we had gotten married, I had tried my hand at making my own Beef Wellington.  The fact that I don’t really remember how it turned out, though, means that it must not have been very well executed.  But, years later, having accrued a bit more kitchen wisdom and experience, I decided, quite on a whim, that I’d try revisiting the recipe, this time as a Valentine’s Day dinner at home.

A classic dilemma facing every cook who attempts a Beef Wellington is timing.  The pastry crust must be baked to a perfect crispy brown, yet the beef must not be allowed to cook much further than medium-rare.  If I remember correctly, this was my downfall on my first attempt – while the pastry had turned out perfectly, cutting into the serving yielded gray, overcooked filet.

To prepare, I reviewed quite a few recipes for Beef Wellington.  Some of them only required you to pan-sear the filet mignon, to develop a crust on all sides, before wrapping it in pastry and popping it into the oven.  Others, though, had you precooking the filet mignon to very nearly serving temperature, so that you would end up wrapping a near-presentation worthy log of beef in pastry, with only the required amount of time in the oven to ensure that the pastry was fully baked.  I ended up taking methods and ingredients from one recipe and melding them with techniques from another.  For the preparation of the beef, I decided to go with the latter method, and roasted the tied bundle until an internal probe thermometer had registered the meat as rare, around 125 degrees, then cooled it down to room temperature with a quick stint out on the deck, covered by foil.  This is the only legitimate use for a deck in winter – as a large walk-out cooler.

Having no foie gras on hand, I instead crafted a mushroom duxelle, which was as simple as spinning some mushrooms, shallots, and thyme in a food processor, then sauteing the mixture in olive oil until most of the moisture has cooked out of it.  It takes about ten minutes, after which you set the duxelle mixture into a fine sieve to allow even more liquid to escape, and to let it cool to room temperature.

Using store-bought puff pastry, I laid a frozen sheet on a plastic mat that we use for rolling and measuring pie dough and waited for it to thaw.  Once I could easily unfold it without risk of breaking it, I rolled it to about half of its original thickness.  Assembly was fun – wielding a rubber spatula, I smeared a small bed of duxelle onto the pastry, arranged the filet mignon on top, topped it with Dijon mustard and more duxelle, then carefully enclosed the puff pastry around it, sealing the seams with beaten egg.  Carefully sliding the probe thermometer into the center of the Wellington, I popped it into the oven, set my timer, and waited.

Since I had already precooked the beef, there was no guesswork involved as to when the Wellington was ready.  I only had to wait until the internal temperature of the meat had risen to my desired measure of doneness, about 130 degrees or so for medium-rare, and by that time the crust had puffed and turned golden brown.  Still, even with all of these safeguards, I was nervous slicing into the finished product.

I took my sharpest blade and held the golden package with one hand as I took one sure swipe down the center of the Wellington.  Seeing the rosy red interior of the beef, I knew that I had found my new Beef Wellington recipe.  I sliced the Wellington into thick slices, about an inch, letting them fall forward onto a spatula like a Stonehenge of culinary goodness.  A quick pan sauce of capers, cream, mustard, and brandy was just enough to send the dish into overdrive.

So that night, with the baby napping on the couch beside us and with a bottle of red wine to celebrate the occasion, my wife and I celebrated our first Valentine’s Day as a threesome.  And you know what?  I think I enjoyed it even more than an evening in New York City.

(Note: I need time to write up this recipe, since it’s a hybrid of a bunch of different sources, but as soon as I do, I will update this post.  Promise.)

There are times when you just impulsively pick up ingredients with no plan whatsoever for how to use them, just because they are intriguing or exceptionally fresh and inviting.  At $20 each, I had already made the decision not to pick up the emu egg, and, feeling particularly good about myself for avoiding the temptation of that purchase, was completely blindsided by the sack of Meyer lemons.  At the bargain price of $1.99, it was a risk well worth taking.

We had taken an evening to go visit the stupefyingly immense Whole Foods that had recently opened in Plymouth Meeting, PA.  At 65,000 square feet, the store sits above a parking garage with enough room for 345 cars.  Pulling into the space, you feel as if you should be checking airline arrival and departure times, and the escalator ride up from the garage feels like an ascent into hippie heaven.

Back to the lemons.  I had heard of Meyer lemons, and had the occasion to sample them as an ingredient in some courses here and there, but never has a star component of any dish.  Having only seen them once in my local market years ago, I did not take the opportunity to try them at that time, mainly because they were considered to be such an exotic item that the price was a deterrent.  So, having run into them again, and at half the price, I just had to pick them up, plan or no.

The mesh bag of golden orbs sat on our kitchen counter for a few days as I looked for an appropriate way to inaugurate my taste buds to the wonders of the Meyer lemon.  There were, to be honest, many more applications than I could ever have hoped to find – Meyer lemon sorbets, granitas, and savory dishes.  Ultimately, I decided on a very straightforward pots de creme, which beckoned with its simplicity – just a mixture of one egg, egg yolks (4), sugar (2/3C), lemon juice (1/2C), cream (1.25C), and zest.  Whipped up in a single bowl, then baked in a water bath (425 degrees) for about a half hour, there seemed to be no more straightforward way to experiment with the fruit.

The Meyer lemons actually looked nothing like lemons at all.  Instead of bumpy skin, these lemons were smooth, and instead of being bright yellow, they trended more towards orange and, in truth, looked like tangerines.  Cutting into them yielded a lot of juice, and tasting it off of my fingers, I noted that Meyer lemons are sweeter and less tart than traditional lemons – think of a cross between lemon and tangerine.  Having zested the lemons and juiced them with a reamer, I was satisfied that I had extracted as much flavor out of each of them that I possibly could have.

The Meyer lemon pots de creme turned out to be a test of willpower.  After cooking, they needed to be cooled to room temperature, covered in plastic wrap, then chilled overnight.  But the next night, after a trying day at work and a challenging commute through the cold, dark early evening of January, there was no brighter end to the day than the spoonful of pure sunshine that the pot de creme provided.

It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time when granola was healthy.  It was just a few years ago that granola was regarded as a “weird” food, one that was shunned by the mainstream masses.  If you wanted to buy some, you’d have to go into a natural foods store to find it – one of those places that also sells healing crystals, vegetarian dog food, and bread products with as much umami as styrofoam.  Granola was seen as “just” health food, or at the very least something that only people from California would eat.

At some point, the Powers That Be seized upon the realization that they could sell granola bars at the supermarket if they made a few special additions here and there – you know, to make granola more compatible with the average customer’s palate.  Shoppers would perceive that they were engaged in a healthy diet choice (it is granola, after all) but in order to get them truly on board with the concept, the brands started adding chocolate, and additional sugar, and all manner of preservatives.  Some preservatives were added to keep chewy granola soft, others to keep crunchy granola from going stale.  The end result?  You can’t find a mass-marketed granola bar that’s truly healthy.  In fact, if you check the nutritional panel on a typical box of granola bars, you’ll find that some brands are really no better for you than most candy bars.  If truly healthy granola is Anakin, then the bars that contain chocolate chips, added sugar, and overly-sweetened yogurt fillings are Darth Vader – twisted, evil, and full of empty calories.

Instead of feeling down about this whole corrupted granola scenario, I decided to make my own.  It is incredibly easy, and the best part about making your own granola is the fact that you know everything that goes into them.  The base ingredients are cheap, widely available, and good for you.  If you want to tart them up with less-than-healthy components, or go completely overboard with additional healthy ingredients, it’s completely up to you.  The important thing is this – you have full control over what you’re eating.

The basic concept of any granola bar recipe involves mixing a combination of dry ingredients (primarily oats) with some form of gooey liquid sweetener to bind it all together (without the binding, you just have granola, no bar).  Press the mess into a dish, bake until set, then store in an airtight container.  I am presenting the master recipe here, but I hope to experiment a little more and come up with some truly unique combinations later.  I’m still tinkering – the bars are not as soft as I would like, and maybe this can be resolved just by dialing back how much time they spend in the oven.

The Best Food Blog Ever Master Granola Bar Recipe uses a combination of oats, nuts, and dried coconut for the dry ingredients, and honey, peanut butter, and brown rice syrup for the wet.  One of the things that you’ll notice about this recipe is that there is no white sugar – by using honey and brown rice syrup, you still achieve the desired sweetness but in a way that is slowly digested and avoids sugar crash.  Also, the ingredients are very forgiving, so long as you maintain approximately the same volumes – if all that you have on hand are raisins, you can use all raisins.

The Best Food Blog Ever Master Granola Bar Recipe

2 cups oats
1 cup mixed nuts, chopped (see note about salt, below)
1 1/2 cup raisins, dried cranberries, and dried cherries
1 cup shredded coconut (low fat version, if available)
1/2 cup wheat germ or flax seeds

1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/4 cup peanut butter (natural, if available)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted nuts)

Set your oven to 350°F. Line a baking dish (a square one for thicker bars, or a rectangle for thinner ones) with foil or parchment paper.  Get a rubber spatula ready.

Bake the oatmeal, coconut, and nuts together on a sheet pan for 15 minutes, until visibly browned.  You’ll know by the toasty smell that’s coming from your oven.

While the dry ingredients are toasting, mix the wet ingredients in a measuring cup, making sure to stir thoroughly to incorporate the vanilla and salt throughout.  Set aside.

This next step is best done in a stand mixer, but if you don’t have one you can also use a handheld mixer or a quick stirring arm.

Transfer the hot mixture to a bowl and stir in the wheat germ or flax seeds.  Pour the wet ingredients over the warm dry ingredients and mix together, then add the dried fruit and mix for a few seconds more.  Using the rubber spatula, press the mixture into the pan.

Bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes.  I am still tinkering with the baking time – I have been baking the bars for 30 minutes, which yields a harder texture than what I would like.

Lift the granola slab out of the pan and let cool completely, then cut into bars and store in an airtight container.

I used to dream about San Marzano tomatoes, gladly shelling out three times the cost of a can of “regular” plum tomatoes for 28 ounces of pure Italian summer joy.  The low acid San Marzano variety is less sweet than other tomatoes, yielding an absolute superior flavor when used as the base for sauce.  They grow only in the small town of San Marzano, near Naples, and they are subject to the strict regulations of Denominazione di origine controllata that are used to certify authenticity of origin.

With all of this in mind, I was excited to be able to order San Marzano tomato plants for the garden this year.  They’ve provided a steady crop of plump roma fruit throughout the summer, and last weekend I harvested the last of the ripe tomatoes from the plants, along with a handful of basil.  The tomatoes sat on the kitchen island for a few days while I devised a proper way to say goodbye to summer.

As it turns out, the best use of San Marzano tomatoes will always be as the primary ingredient in sauce.  Since they are less sweet, and carry less moisture than other tomatoes, they’re not really the best thing to slice and eat like their larger beefsteak cousins.

I started by peeling the tomatoes (cut an ‘X’ into the base of each, place into boiling water for about 30-45 seconds, then hold under cold running water and strip the skin), slicing them in half to let the seeds drop into the sink.  I placed a generous mound of chopped garlic into a puddle of olive oil in a saucepan, letting that heat gently as I roughly chopped the tomatoes, tossing them into the pan once the garlic turned golden and aromatic.  A splash of white wine to the pan, then I let the whole thing cook slowly, breaking the tomatoes up with a spoon.

When we were ready to eat, I adjusted the seasoning of the sauce with sea salt, then added about a 1/4 cup of half and half.  It’s amazing to see and taste the differences between a plain tomato sauce and one that’s had a little dairy added to it.  Slivers of basil, stirred into the sauce at the very last minute, provided the perfect herbal companion.

And, at the time of this writing, it’s only three months before I can place my order for next summer’s tomato plants.  Until then, I’ll have to make do with what we’ve canned.

The weather has taken a definitive turn towards autumn in our neck of the woods.  Even though there are still a few tomatoes on the vine, and the basil plants have not yet succumbed to the first frost, the chill in the air makes me crave something that would usher in the change of season – but gently, gradually, not like those garish displays of animated Christmas decorations in the supermarket.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve never posted anything about cookies here.  It’s not that I don’t like cookies (really, quite the opposite), but more because our house has always pledged allegiance to the chocolate chip cookie, with the occasional nod to a bittersweet chocolate drop cookie.  A couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves in a bakery/cafe for brunch, and I had the most wonderful ginger cookie which left such an impression, evoked such a timely feeling of seasonality, that it sent me on a quest to find a way to enjoy that same feeling at home.

There are a lot of ginger cookie recipes out there, and I ultimately decided on this one, from Epicurious.  If you do the research, you’ll find that ginger cookie recipes all have some basic ingredients in common, and already I am feeling confident enough to start experimenting with variations on this recipe.  In fact, I’m looking to translate the core flavors of this cookie, along with some special modifications, to a cake or loaf pan recipe.

A proper ginger cookie recipe is loaded to bear with all manner of fall weather spices – besides the obvious ginger, there’s clove and cinnamon.  To have the cookies turn out as chewy as possible, the primary sweetener is dark brown sugar, along with the addition of molasses to add another depth of flavor.  My favorite thing about this particular recipe, though, is the inclusion of chopped candied ginger.  If you’ve never worked with candied ginger before, let me warn you that it is an addictive ingredient – you can eat the chunks like candy, and each bite is a tiny explosion of intense ginger flavor, offset by the sweet coating of sugar.  It’s no wonder that candied ginger works so well in baking.  Whatever remains after you’ve assembled the cookies will probably be gone by the time they’re done baking.

Besides the brown sugar, the balls of dough are rolled in white sugar right before baking.  As they cook, the cookies will spread out and crack, but remain soft.  I actually should have abided by the recipe’s instructions to the letter – at 12 minutes, the cookies still seemed a bit underdone, so I let them go for another three or four minutes, which turned out to be a mistake.  That quality that I perceived to be underdone was actually the star attribute of a ginger cookie, since it will remain soft and chewy for several days if you keep them in an airtight container.

Some time last year, I purchased a food grinder attachment for our KitchenAid stand mixer, with visions of homemade sausage and burger patties dancing in my head.  Soon after it arrived, we threw a grilling party and invited some friends over to try out some freshly ground burgers.  This was probably the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in the kitchen as I had violated the cardinal rule of cooking for guests: never serve anything you haven’t successfully made before.

When I passed the chunks of beef through the grinder, some fat and gristle hit the grinder blade and clogged up the works.  The meat that did make it through the grinder into the bowl was devoid of fat and flavor, which resulted in horribly compact, dried out pucks of grilled meat.  I was not pleased, and I expressed my great displeasure by banishing the grinder attachment to the dark recesses of our kitchen cabinet, never to be used again.  Having missed a routine fly ball, was I blaming the glove?  In hindsight, yes.

Time, as the saying goes, heals all wounds.  So, like finding an old college buddy on Facebook, the craving to explore uncharted waters made me reconnect with my grinder attachment after nearly a year of exile.  The mission: homemade sausage.  The unavoidable challenge – I would have to try my hand at grinding meat again.  I was hoping that my grinder would not turn out to be the Kobayashi Maru of meat.

I had been considering making my own sausage for several months, but out of the universe of food, sausage is one of those items with a greater  potential ick factor.  It’s not so much the grinding of the meat, really, than the average person’s unfamiliarity with sausage casings.  Having never worked with casings before, I had this nightmarish vision of cracking open a tub of tubes, getting hit full-on in the face with an odor that would confirm that, yes, these are organic casings that were once piggy parts, then losing my nerve to make sausage forevermore.  Sure, I could just form the loose sausage mixture into patties and fry them, but that’s not REAL sausage.  Real sausage comes in links.  Real sausage is measured using the length of your arm.

To my great and welcome surprise, and as a reassurance to all of you, there was no odor at all, and working with the casings is actually quite easy.  They come packed in coarse salt to keep them dry, and prepping them is as easy as dumping the whole lot into a pot of cool water, using your fingers to separate them, then running cool water through them.  While I initially regarded $7 as a bit on the pricey side for casings, I didn’t realize that the plastic tub contains quite a few casings, and you’re only going to need one or two per batch of sausages.  In other words, so long as you repack your leftover casings in salt and keep them in the fridge, you shouldn’t need to buy more casings for quite a while.

The sausage turned out unexpectedly well, and the grinding went without a hitch, thanks to a few very critical tips that I did not have the benefit of knowing the first time around.

First, it’s important to keep everything as cold as possible – that means freezing your cubes of meat and fat until they are slightly firm, and refrigerating the various parts of your grinder attachment.  The semi-frozen fat, when it hits the grinder blade, will be ground up and passed through to the bowl because it is too firm to melt, smear, and clog the disk.

Secondly, you must always maintain a fairly high ratio of fat to meat in your grind mixture.  If you think about this, we already take this into account when we buy ground beef from the market – we know that the 80/20 mixture makes the tastiest burgers because a full fifth of the weight of that package is fat.  The reason why my first attempt at grinding meat for burgers was such a miserable failure is because I had not ground enough fat into the mix.

Those two rules of thumb are really all that separates success from failure when it comes to making your own sausage.  Because of the abundance of sage in the garden this year, I decided that my inaugural attempt at sausagemaking would be the Sage and Red Wine Sausage recipe in Fine Cooking magazine.

All sausage recipes follow the same basic pattern.  You grind the meat, mix in your seasonings, and then allow the mixture to cure in your refrigerator for a little bit, so that the flavors will meld.  After at least an hour, or preferably the next day, you stuff the mixture into casings, and you’re done.  The whole process took far less time than I anticipated.

Following the recipe, I cut about four pounds of pork shoulder and one pound of fatback into small cubes, then froze them on a cookie sheet for about an hour.  While waiting for the meat to firm up, I picked about 30 sage leaves from the garden (which, by the way, didn’t make a dent in the plant at all) and chopped those finely, along with about four times the amount of garlic that the recipe requires.

The moment of truth came quickly – I assembled the grinder attachment, powered up the KitchenAid, and started feeding the chunks of meat and fat into the hopper.  Immediately, I was struck at how different this grinding session felt from my first one, how the fat extruded itself in neat spaghetti-like strands like a Play-Doh barber shop set.  Compared to the stop, start, stop process of my first grinding attempt, this time everything went smoothly, and within fifteen minutes all of the meat and fat had been ground.  I sifted my fingers through the pile a bit to evenly distribute the fat, but had to switch to a spoon when my fingers grew too cold.  I tossed in the sage, garlic, some salt and pepper, then added the 1/2 cup of red wine from a previously-opened bottle that we keep on the kitchen counter.  A small test patty was incredibly flavorful, so I was hopeful for a good outcome.

Having overcome my fear of grinding, I then faced a new moment of truth when it came time to place the sausage into casings.  I assembled the sausage stuffer (a small conical tube with a silly price of $9) onto the KitchenAid, then fumbled around with a sausage casing, trying not to let the slippery string tumble down into the garbage disposal.  Eventually, I was able to wrestle an open end of the casing onto the stuffer attachment, working the rest of it onto the cone in an accordian-like bunch, with about five inches left to hang.  I tied a knot into the free end, retrieved the sausage mix from the refrigerator, and set to work.

It’s important to work as quickly as you can when stuffing sausage, because the risk of bacterial contamination increases as your sausage mix gets warmer.  I used a rubber spatula to load the hopper with sausage, then a food pusher to shove it down into the grinder, maintaining one hand on the feeder cone to regulate the casing as it filled.  There’s no getting around the fact that this step can become extremely messy, so it’s a good idea to line the area underneath your KitchenAid with foil or parchment.  By tightening and loosening my grip on the casing, I could control the thickness of the end product.  Occasionally, I would have to stop and reload the hopper, or take a toothpick to burst the pockets of air that would become trapped in the casing.  When I was done, I twisted the sausage into links, managing to only break two because I twisted one way when I should have twisted the other.

Ultimately, this recipe produced nearly four feet of sausage at a cost of $7 for the casings (enough for several batches, though), $8 for the pork shoulder, and about $4 for the fatback.  Presuming you store the remainder of the casings for future use, each subsequent batch of sausage would run around $12, which is an incredible savings over the typical $5 per pound that most markets charge for premade sausages.  As an added bonus, the sausages freeze extremely well, making for even more options when you need quick dinner ideas.

There’s something quite primal about cooking over fire – tossing something raw over smoldering coals, hearing the fat sizzle as it melts and drips into the flames, the smell of wood and meat and smoke comingling briefly before being carried off by the breeze of a slightly chilly spring evening.  Three years ago, one of the deciding factors in our electing to purchase our first home was our leasing company’s ludicrous prohibition on outdoor grilling – those were dark years, and I swore to never go that long without grilling ever again.

I now have my own deck, and on it sits a steel monstrosity forged in the very bowels of Amish country, three hundred pounds of black metal that serves as my mechanism for transforming meats into meals.  My name has become a grilling word.

I used to think that everyone knew how to grill, but now I’ve come to reconsider my presumption after having witnessed the embarrassingly cringe-worthy performance of someone who was unfamiliar with charcoal and afraid of fire.  I’ve never seen a situation where more food ended up under the grate, withering away on the coals, than on the grate where it belonged.

So, with that, I’m presenting a short primer on how to grill chicken -  specifically, chicken thighs.  For newcomers to the thrills of outdoor cooking, chicken thighs are fairly forgiving, because their uniform size and shape, combined with the amount of fat that is laden throughout the meat, means that there is a very low likelihood of ruining dinner.  And with the long Memorial Day weekend coming up, there’s a good chance that more than a few of you will be grilling for a crowd.

When you’re shopping for chicken thighs, try to select pieces of poultry that are roughly the same size, to ensure that they will all cook at the same rate.  When you get them home, rinse each piece under cool running water, then pat dry with a paper towel, season with salt and pepper, and transfer to a plate for transport to the grill.  Pick up a nice bottle of barbecue sauce, one that’s hopefully not too sweet and not packed with corn syrup, or make your own.

About an hour and a half before you plan on eating, start your coals, preferably in a chimney starter (which allows for the preparation of coals without the chemicals of a liquid starter – hover over the link for a picture).  I presume you are cooking with charcoal – if you aren’t, I can offer no guidance, since I’ve never used propane.  Once the coals have turned ashen, about 20 minutes, spread them in your grill, mounding slightly on one side, and set your grate into place.

Now comes the part of grilling that’s filled with fun and danger.  Using tongs, place your chicken thighs, skin down, on the grate over the higher portion of the charcoal mound.  Squeal with delight as the fat from the chicken skin drips into the fire, causing massive flareups!  Don’t panic – just take your tongs and move the chicken pieces that are over the flareups to the side of the grill that contains fewer pieces of charcoal, and wait for the flames to die down.  Every so often, move the chicken pieces around and flip them over – your goal is to achieve a nice char on both sides of each thigh.  Treat it like a big game – the fire wants to eat your chicken, and you have to play keep-away.

Once all of your chicken is browned, with a nice, crisp skin, move the thighs to the cooler part of the grill (skin up) and close the grill by setting the cover on it.  Open the vents slightly to let air through.  During this time, the grill will act as an oven, roasting each chicken thigh to doneness.  Since the thighs are dark meat, they will remain moist even if left in the grill for a few minutes longer than needed.

You’ll notice that I haven’t yet called for barbecue sauce.  A lot of novice grillers make the mistake of putting their barbecue sauce on their chicken/ribs/whatever too early, which only serves to insulate the chicken from browning properly.  It also guarantees that the high heat of grilling burns the sugars in the sauce, resulting in a carbonized, blackened mess.

After about 35 minutes, pour some barbecue sauce into a small bowl and equip yourself with either a large spoon or, preferably, a basting brush.  Take the lid off of the grill, flip each chicken thigh over, and splash a dollop of sauce on each piece, using either the spoon or brush to coat each chicken thigh evenly with sauce.  Flip each thigh over, so that the skin faces up, and repeat.  Replace the cover, cook for 10 to 15 minutes more, then serve.

This all started because I had a nostalgic craving for macaroni and cheese mixed with cut-up hot dogs. By the time I was finished, I had created an original recipe, which I now present to you here as Kitchen Sink Mac and Cheese.

This preparation was largely driven by what was available in my refrigerator, and, as with any Mac and Cheese recipe, you are more than welcome to take liberties with ingredients and amounts. I had put a lot of thought into what types of cheese to use, and ultimately decided on a majority of sharp cheddar, a little bit of bleu cheese to add tang, and a small mound of grated romano cheese. We had some cherry tomatoes sitting on the kitchen island that we like to snack on, and I picked out a handful of those to add a little bit of flavor and color. Then, feeling guilty about the overly indulgent aspects of a dish that involves pasta wallowing in a slurry of melted cheese, I opted to add some chopped kale to the mix, just so that I could say that it’s got a serving of vegetables in there.

Oh yes, the hot dog aspect. I didn’t have any hot dogs, but I did have some turkey kielbasa, so I took about half of a package, diced it, and folded it into the mixture just before putting the casserole into the oven.

Kitchen Sink Mac and Cheese, as with every recipe of this type, starts with a bechamel sauce, into which the cheeses are melted until you have a nice, thick, satin-smooth sauce. Toss with boiled pasta, add your supplemental ingredients, top with bread crumbs, and set into the oven for about 30 minutes.

The results of my hodgepodge approach were surprisingly tasty, and quite photogenic. The sauce was far from bland, which avoided the cardinal sin of most single-cheese preparations – the bleu cheese added sharpness, the cheddar contributed body, and the romano possessed a salty aspect that brought out the best in everything else. The rest of the ingredients presented a nice contrast of textures – kale holds up well under cooking, so it doesn’t disintegrate into nothingness like spinach and still retains some crunch, and kale’s bitterness presents a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes, which were little mini-explosions of fresh tomato flavor whenever you encountered them on a fork. Plus, hey, kielbasa chunks!

Kitchen Sink Mac and Cheese

4 Tbs butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk

Splash of hot sauce
4oz sharp cheddar, cubed
Small bit of bleu cheese, about 3 or 4 Tbs
1 cup grated romano cheese

16oz penne, rigatoni, or some other tube-shaped pasta

16oz kale, washed and chopped (available in bags for convenience)

8oz kielbasa, cubed

Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

Bread crumbs (two slices of bread spun in a food processor)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, set out a casserole dish, and boil and drain your pasta according to the directions on the box.

Make the sauce by melting the butter in a large pot over medium heat. When the butter has fully melted, add the flour and whisk continuously. You’ll begin with a thick flour-butter paste that will loosen as it cooks. Continue to cook the roux until it toasts to a light brown color, then whisk in the milk until the sauce is smooth and uniform. Bring the mixture to a simmer, then add the cheeses, whisking until everything has melted. Splash in the hot sauce, then taste and adjust with salt, pepper, and more hot sauce.

Add the chopped kale to the sauce – it will look like a lot of kale, but it will wilt quickly as you fold it in. Once the kale has been incorporated, add the cherry tomatoes and the kielbasa, then fold in the pasta.

Turn the mixture into the casserole, then top with bread crumbs. Set the casserole dish on a cookie sheet (to catch spillage) and bake on the center rack of the oven for thirty minutes. Let sit for ten minutes before serving.

The gnocchi post really hit a nerve – apparently the Internet loves gnocchi!  So, in celebration of our shared adoration of this versatile dish, today I am announcing the Best Food Blog Ever Gnocchi Challenge.

The rules, much like gnocchi, are simple: over the next two weeks, develop a gnocchi recipe and post it to your own blog during the week of May 5th, and send me a link to it at ddl(at)bestfoodblogever.com.  Over the weekend of May 11-12, I will post the results of the Gnocchi Challenge here, with links to all of your recipes.  With any luck, and a good level of participation, we’ll be able to collect a goldmine of gnocchi recipes in one spot.

Your gnocchi recipe can be as simple or as complex as you wish, and you can use any combination of flour, potato, and ricotta as you please.  You should strive to keep your sauces simple – the showcase of your Gnocchi Challenge recipe should be the gnocchi themselves.

Now go crazy with your gnocchi-making self.