It's Turkey Time

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. It is probably my favorite eating event of the year. Turkey, potatoes, and stuffing as the basics. Then there are all of the different sides. It's really interesting having experienced Thanksgiving at various people's houses over the years and seeing the variety of sides that are served. One of my favorites, and one that I do often, not just at Thanksgiving is Baked Macaroni.

This is not a heart healthy dish. I do have some of them lying around. I remember having this on thanksgiving at a friend's house, and it was the best thing in the world. As I got older, I asked his mom for the recipe, and it really is just an amazing and simple thing to make.

1 pound of pasta cooked (bucatini rigati-if you can find it, otherwise penne or rigatoni works great)
8 oz velveeta (is it cheese? who knows, but it's good in this dish)
1 stick of butter
Grated cheese blend (Mexican blend, cheddar, whatever you like)

Cook the pasta. In a sauce pot, add cubed velveeta and butter and stir on medium low. This probably takes about 10 minutes, but it will eventually get to the consistency of nacho cheese. Throw pasta into a pyrex or corningware. Put sauce in and toss to blend. Layer with the shredded cheese and cook in the oven at 375 until the cheese starts to burn a bit. I like the edges to get crispy.

This is absolutely one of my favorite sides with thanksgiving. What are some of your favorites?

Coffee

I love Coffee. I love Espresso, straight up, I love Cuban coffee, I love Italian Espresso (Cinque Terre--Vernazza had the best), Lattes, Iced Coffee, regular drip coffee. You name it, I will drink it.

When we lived in Albany, I bought an espresso machine, a little cheap 200 dollar one, and a bean grinder. I was able to put out some good espresso and drinks. Once kids came along the daily 15 minute ritual turned into coming into the kitchen of a preprogrammed pot of drip coffee.

I am a New Orleans guy, and Community Coffee with Chicory is my coffee of choice. It's expensive here in Atlanta. In Albany I found a couple of local roasters and would grind those beans myself. They were really good.

So a couple of tips for the best coffee you can have.

A good grinder. My grinder was about a 160 bucks and it really doesn't do the job that is required to make all types of coffee. For drip it is fine, but it cannot grind the bean sufficiently fine enough for espresso. A good grinder will cost between 350-500 bucks, but if you are serious about coffee, that is your most important piece of equipment.

Fresh Beans. You want the freshest beans you can get. Local is even better. The quality of the bean makes all the difference in the world. Running to Wally World or Target and buying Starbucks (gross) that has been sitting there for 3 months isn't the way to go.

Equipment---For an espresso machine, you can get a quality machine for about 500 bucks. I was eyeing one up at one point that cost 1,100 but it never happened. But if you have a good grinder and good beans, you can pull a very good shot with a 200 machine. For drip coffee, I've owned a bunch and can't tell the difference. For cold drip, this system is a must. It takes the acidity out of the coffee and provides a smooth refreshing taste.

So what is your favorite coffee? And please don't let it be Folgers.

It's Cold Outside....That Means Soup

So this past weekend it's gotten a bit chilly. It has been getting into the low 40s overnight. I figure in the next month or two I will be making Chili, more Chicken Soup, some Roasted Tomato Soup, Gumbo, etc.

Yesterday morning my wife said it was cold and when was she getting some potato soup. So I whipped up a batch for her. Every time I make it, it seems I make it differently. I never write it down so it is from memory, a memory that seems to be steadily going away. This was one of my better versions, and one of the healthier versions too. Is it healthy? No, of course not. A dish that has bacon, cheese, butter, and cream is not healthy. But it's damn good. Now onto the boring list.

Potato Soup

6 large baking potatoes
1 large yellow onion
4 stalks of celery
1 can cream of celery
1 stick of butter
half n half
1 pound of bacon
cheese
salt
pepper


Sometimes I get elaborate and use sour cream, green onions, and a bunch of other stuff. I used what I had in my kitchen, and it came out excellent.

Peel the potatoes, dice them up, stick them in a large pot and boil. In a separate pan, cook the bacon. Make sure you dice it up. I usually do maybe half an inch dicing on the bacon. You want it brown and crispy, none of that soft stuff.

Now here is where we go into heart failure. Pull out bacon. Finely chop onion and celery. Throw into bacon grease and saute. For the ultimate artery clogger, throw in a stick of butter. Cook until veggies are soft. After, add to the potatoes which should be getting somewhat soft. I was good this time, and used a slotted spoon to get my veggies out of the pan, instead of dumping everything in. Throw in the can of cream of celery, add kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, and stir to mix in the cream of celery. Let cook on medium low for a while. I think I did about 1-1.5 hours. I wanted the flavors to meld together, and it to thicken a bit.

After that time, I pulled out my trusty stick blender. If you don't have one get one. I have a simple kitchen aid corded one that I got at Target for 50 bucks or so. One of the best investments I've made for the kitchen. Blend the ingredients in the pot to a nice smooth consistency. That will thicken the soup nicely. Then I add the Half n Half. I eyeball it until I get a nice creamy white-yellow look. Then I threw in about 1 cup of cheese and let it cook a little more.

To serve, ladle into a soup bowl. Top with cheese and bacon. Next time I am going to do 2 pounds of bacon, because we have a ton of soup left but no bacon.

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

There is a local restaurant in New Orleans called Semolina. At one point they had 4 of them. I think they are down to two or three. It is an Italian restaurant with a Louisiana flair. They have shrimp pasta dishes, crawfish pasta dishes, etc.

There is a chicken enchilada pasta dish that my wife gets every single time we would go there. When we ever go to visit and we eat there, that is what she is getting.

Earlier this year I was in Trader Joe's and I found this awesome packet in the freezer section. It's a Chicken Fajita packet. Basically it has onions, green and red bell peppers diced, fajita spices in a separate package, and cooked chicken in a separate package. With a new baby at the time, I thought this would be a quick and easy dish. Heat everything up for 5-7 minutes, and eat with tortillas and toppings. It's really good and for 2.99, it's worth it not to have to deal with chicken, dicing etc.

So one day I was inspired to try to recreate the dish by Semolina. After 2 or 3 times, it's almost perfect.

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

1 onion
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
chicken
1 pound of pasta--I use penne
jalapenos
cheese
Taco Seasoning--this is the best recipe and stores easily(no more Taco Bell seasoning)
cream/half n half/milk

You can sub and do varieties. For example I use a Trader Joe's bag for my veggies, but you could just as easily dice what I have in the ingredients. The best chicken to use for this dish is a rotisserie chicken. Get one from Publix or Costco or wherever you shop. They are already cooked, they are juicy, and they taste delicious.

I toss some olive oil in the bottom of a pot, throw the veggies in and let cook. Use the taco seasoning liberally. In the meantime, I cook up my pasta. Easy thing to miss, but when cooking pasta, undercook by a minute on package since it is going to get heated in the dish. Also, add kosher salt to the pot. Once veggies are soft, I throw in the chicken, and heat everything up. Then I add the cream, I just ballpark it until it looks like a good amount. Heat that up stirring. Then throw in jalapenos (the ones in jar work great), and cheese to get a decently thick sauce. Add the cooked pasta and stir. You should be good on salt if you salted your pasta correctly. But you might want some extra seasoning. The more seasoning, the more kick. I might add some more cream if it is too thick, because the penne really soaks up the sauce. Heat through for a couple of minutes, then serve and top with cheese. Any mexican/chedder type blend will work. I bet a blend with some pepper jack would work really well also.

Serve and enjoy. This dish is great for leftovers also. Doesn't get oily like a fettuccine.

Crock Pot Update

The dish came out great. Needed more salt. Interesting find though. The broth would make a great soup. Next time, I am going to do it, and try to make a modified french onion soup. Get some spanish onions and add them and then add a can of beef broth. Put some cheese on top once it is ladled out, make a few crispy croutons out of sourdough bread, and we'll see what happens.

The Crock Pot

Has there ever been a niftier kitchen invention. You throw a bunch of stuff in, let it sit in there for 8 or 10 hours and then wait to see what comes out. Is it gourmet cooking? No. Is it cooking? I don't know. Is it easy and are the dishes that can be created using a crockpot awesome? Absolutely. It's like being in chemisty class. You throw a ton of stuff together and see what happens.


Today I was deciding what I wanted to cook, but I didn't feel like putting a ton of effort into the dish. So out pops the trusty crockpot. I look through the pantry and fridge to see what I have. Okay let's try something new. Onion, check. Minced garlic, sure why not. Oooh, a heinz bottle of chili sauce, let's see how that will do. Bottle of beer. Three bone-in chicken breasts. Chicken, basil, that sounds like a good combo. Salt, pepper. Hey it sounds good. And about 5 hours into the cooking process it smells pretty good too. We'll find out tonight if it actually tastes good.

Breakfast

I am a breakfast guy. I could eat breakfast for every meal. Whether it's bacon and eggs, sausage, pancakes, omelettes, biscuits, french toast, grits, or even some chicken fried steak, hey I could eat it all.

When I was a kid, my four best friends and I would alternate who would host the sleepover night on Friday night. It was pretty cool, because all the parents were really close, so we'd all do something then the kids would go to one family's house and spend the night. All of my friends always wanted to sleep at our house, because of the infamous (what's infamous, "it's MORE than famous") "big breakfast." As a kid my dad would cook a big breakfast every Saturday and Sunday morning. My mom is the cook but she couldn't touch my dad when it came to breakfast. We would wake up to the smell of fried bacon. Then I'd have eggs usually, and english muffins to make a bacon sandwich. Wash it down with a nice tall glass of milk, and there was nothing better.

Last weekend, one of our close friends watched the kids, because I had a tennis match and my wife was working the weekend. When I brought the kids over, I had a kid moment. I walked into her house, smelled the bacon frying, the biscuits going, and it reminded me of my childhood. Not many families I now take the time to have breakfast on the weekends. Everyone is so "busy" that they don't take the time to do it. But I knew the minute I walked in that this is a weekly ritual, something that happens every Saturday and Sunday. It's nice to know that some things never really disappear. My wife and I have big breakfasts every once in a while, but I think it's something that has to be done more often in our household.

Here is an easy breakfast dish that can be made for a brunch or for a bunch of kids.

Breakfast Casserole

2 packs of crescent rolls
1 pound of breakfast sausage(the kind in a roll, spicy or mild)
5 or 6 eggs
cheese

Brown the sausage in a pan until cooked and crispy then drain. Heat oven to 350. In a 9x13 pyrex dish, assemble as follows:

Pam bottom and sides of dish. Take crescent roll dough and put on bottom of pan to cover. I don't remember if it is one can of rolls or two, so I put two to err on the side of caution. You put the dough so that it covers bottom completely. Next whisk eggs and add some salt and pepper. Pour into dish. Put cooked sausage in the eggs and spread. Top with cheese. Bake until eggs are cooked and the cheese is melted. Serve. I've done it with bacon before and it's worked really well. I've also added canned chilis, and some salsa at the end to make kind of a mexican version and that came out really well too. It's a nice base dish that you can fool around with and modify. Again it's a great dish for a group of kids, and it's an easy dish

Gumbo

I love Gumbo. For you northerners, it's similar to a winter stew, only it's about a million times better. My friend's mom used to make the absolute best chicken and sausage Gumbo. I watched her cook it thousands of times, and I think every time she cooked it, she was able to skim off about 4 cups of fat from the top. If there is a dish that can yield that much fat it has to be good in my book. In the next month I will be making turkey gumbo. Friday after thanksgiving it's turkey gumbo time. I can't make seafood gumbo here, because seafood are not fresh and are too expensive.

So invariably, I go back to my staple, chicken and sausage gumbo. All chicken and sausage gumbos are similar----you start with a roux (a what? we'll get to that in a minute), then comes the holy trinity (and I'm not talking about the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost), chicken stock, chicken, sausage and love.

Now I just mentioned roux. What is a roux? The uninformed will tell you it's a thickener. That is in part true. Most kids think a roux smells terrible when it is cooking. It is however, essential to gumbo. A lot of care and time go into a roux. There are different colors of roux, blonde, medium brown (peanut butter looking), chocolate, and millions of variations in between. For chicken gumbo I use a chocolate roux, because it gives a nice smoky flavor to the dish.

So I guess like a good cook I should list the ingredients.

whole chicken, cut up
1 lb smoked sausage
2 large onions
1 large bell pepper
4 stalks of celery
4 cloves of garlic
chicken stock
salt
bay leaf
bayou bang


For you southerners, you thought the first step would be what. Of course, make a roux. But through trial and error I've shaken things up and done it differently. I used to boil my fryer, then I have my stock and my chicken for the gumbo. But the chicken was just kind of blah in the gumbo, so I've changed things up. Take your big pot that you are going to cook the gumbo in. Put vegetable oil in and heat on medium (DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT USE OLIVE OIL). Throw the fryer in, skin and all, and brown on all sides. By browning the chicken I've done two things. Some of the skin carmelizes into the pot which helps once the roux and veggies get going. Second thing is, the chicken actually has some nice flavor instead of just the bland white boiled look. Once you are good and browned on all sides remove chicken.

Now you make a roux. Now a roux is basically one part flour to one part oil or butter. For this dish I use oil. Use vegetable oil. Olive oil burns way to easily, and it does not make a good roux at all. It is actually quite repugnant. I usually do a cup and a half of each for this dish. However, since I already have the oil from the fryer browning and the juices, I do 1.5 cups of flour and about 3/4 cup of oil. Put it in the pot on medium high heat. Now here is the tricky, tedious part. The pot needs your undivided attention, or the roux will burn. You need to stir that roux, and keep stirring, and keep stirring. If the phone rings, let the machine get it. If your kid needs a diaper change it can wait. If your house is on fire, hopefully the kitchen is the last thing to go. Do not leave the roux. If you burn it (there will be black in the roux), you have to start over. A burnt roux is disastrous. So keep stirring that roux until you get the color of chocolate, milk chocolate, because it will carry over to dark chocolate. Depending on your pot, your stove, your climate, this could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.

Once your roux is done, in goes the sausage, cut up. I let the sausage brown for about 5 minutes. I want my sausage to get carmelized before I add the stock so that goes in first. After five minutes add the holy trinity. The holy trinity is Onions, Bell Pepper, and Celery. When that magical combination hits the pot with the sausage and the roux, it smells like heaven. I think Yankee Candle needs to make a holy trinity scent. I cook that until the veggies start to get tender. Then you add the garlic. I always add the garlic later. If you overcook the garlic, it will burn, and burnt garlic is almost as bad as burnt roux.

When the garlic is soft, in goes the chicken stock and the chicken. Put the fryer back in. Then I throw in my bay leaf and my Bayou Bang. What is Bayou bang. It's like Tony Chachere, but it's no salt, and it's better. Listed ingredients include garlic, onions, paprika, black and white pepper, cayenne, and then the "special herbs and spices." It's really a great thing to have in your kitchen. If you don't then add cayenne, pepper, little garlic powder, little onion powder, white pepper, and a dash of paprika.

After all that goes in, all you have is time on your side. The longer a gumbo cooks the better it is. In fact the next day it's better than the day you cook it. Just cook and stir occasionally on medium low. It will thicken up nicely. All the chicken will fall off the bones, and you'll be able to scoop most of them out. I sometimes let it cook for 4 hours, but 2 will do it.

Once it is done, you serve with rice. Traditional is white rice. I use either jasmine or basmati. Jasmine has a great aroma, and the dirty basmati adds a nice rustic touch to this very rustic dish. So put in a scoop or two of rice, throw the gumbo on top and add the hot sauce. I am a Crystal fan.

There are a ton of variations, but this one is mine. It does take some time to make, but it is well worth it. And make a nice huge pot, it freezes great.

A Little Bit About Me

I was born a northerner. My parents are from the North. We moved to the south when I was very young, but I was indoctrinated with northern ways of cooking. Rice with a meal? Seafood that wasn't steamed? I can remember going over to a friend's house in New Orleans, and eating rice with chicken. It was such a foreign concept. I grew up eating potatoes. Potatoes with everything. When I finally became a teenager, I really began to appreciate Louisiana cuisine.

I feel fortunate, because I've been exposed to a variety of styles. In my cooking I pull from all of those areas.

Going back to my birth roots, this is a simple yet tasty recipe passed down from my mom and her mom before her. I think my great-grandmother made it too. My mom's and grandmother's versions varied slightly but the core of it is the same. Mine is almost an exact replica of my mother's.

It's starting to get cold, so what can be better than chicken soup. Chicken can be boring, and soup can be boring, but this soup packed with veggies, is a great dish on cold days. It's the perfect comfort food.

Mom's Chicken Soup

5 skinless, bone chicken breasts
1 yellow onion
celery, enough to equal the onion
carrots, any variety, I'll cut my own, or use shredded or sliced
potatoes, yellow
cream of celery, 2 cans

This is a really simple dish. Put the chicken breasts in a pot of water, and boil for about an hour. Remove chicken breasts. Add cream of celery and all veggies, diced up into pot, stir on medium heat. Once chicken is cool enough to handle, remove from bone and shred or roughly chop. Add back to pot. Cook on medium low until potatoes and other veggies soften. I cook it usually for at least a couple of hours. If soup is too thick add some water. If to thin, add half a can of cream of celery. I use no seasoning in this dish when I make it. Once I ladle out a portion I will add salt and pepper.

My mom, dad, and wife, prefer to add egg noodles to their soup. I am not a fan. I like it as is. Again, a great comfort food from my childhood days. Hopefully my daughter will grow to like it, but when I tried to feed it to her the other day, she spit it out. One of the first foods she hasn't liked Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, but what does a two year old know. If she had her way she'd eat Oreos all day. My wife would too.

Hello

Greetings. I am probably person number 6,453,956 starting a blog about cooking or food. But I love to cook, and just want to share with the blogging world my take on cooking. The title of the blog? Well I love food, and I am insane, and my cooking is insane. Friends love my food, but they say when I give them recipes it makes them itch trying to follow what to do. It all makes sense in my head though.

I am not an elitist "foodie." I cook, plain and simple. I love it, I love cooking for my family and my friends. I do it for me. I love trying new things. I have more kitchen crap than tools. So that's it in a nutshell. Stayed tuned for the insanity to begin.