Breakfast with Gordon Ramsey

The other day I was looking for a new breakfast item to try. I found an old favorite, but with a nice twist. Gordon Ramsey's perfect breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, mushroom caps and tomatoes. The breakfast of champions.

See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_B3QNu_Ks

Servings: 1

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 piece of toast
2 button mushrooms
a few tiny on the vine tomatoes
1 teaspoon chopped chives
1/2 tablespoon creme fraiche
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

1.Make a piece of toast. As Ramsey says use some decent bread for this so it doesn't fall apart.
2. Heat the olive oil in the pan on medium low heat. Add the mushrooms and tomatoes. Salt and pepper. Then put a lid on the pan. Ramsey doesn't do this, but I found it very helpful in making sure the mushrooms in particular get cooked all the way through. They are whole after all. If your mushrooms are really big you may need a little more olive oil. Make sure you flip the mushrooms halfway through cooking. Tomatoes and mushrooms are done when they have a nice brown sear and when the mushrooms look cooked through.
3. Put pan on medium heat (best to use a non-stick skillet or pan for this). Add three eggs to the pan and start stirring immediately. Add butter. Keep stirring to combine butter. Just as Ramsey does in the video, pull them on and off the heat so that the eggs cook slowly. They will eventually start to come together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add creme fraiche, and fully incorporate. 30 seconds or so before they are cooked to your liking add the chives and stir to incorporate. Then spoon the eggs out onto your toast.
4. Make enough for two and invite me over.

Result:

Booze? Yes Please.

Yesterday evening I went to the Farm in Bloomington for drinks. My first drink of the evening was a Sazerac, a drink I had never tried before. I like it.

This evening, while watching the Colts bring it, I decided a winner's drink was in order, and I turned to my new friend the Sazerac. I didn't know what was in a Sazerac, but I have amassed a nice little bar since moving to Bloomington. Luckily, I had everything I needed. Pardon me as I digress. Go to the end of this post if you just want a Sazerac now.

I think this is a good time for me to mention this: you should stock a bar. And by stocking a bar I don't mean you should have a bottle of Smirnoff in your freezer. You should have real hard alcohol, of several varieties, along with the necessary mixers ready for when you need it.

I (sadly) have little time for the drinking of my college days, but when I do have the time for a cocktail – damn it – it ought to be delicious. And there is no reason why cocktail bars should have a monopoly on delicious drinks. If you do any amount of entertaining at your house I particularly think my advice is salient. Even if it's usually just you and your favorite soon to be national champion football team, it's still important to drink like an adult. Do you really want to be the guy that offers your guests the choice between Icehouse or shots of Popov? ... I thought not.

The other nice thing about stocking a bar is that you'll never have to run to the liquor store if you are in need of liquor for the dinner you're making. Vodka sauce anyone? Perhaps some Irish Cream Cake? Or maybe some sauteed mushrooms with a little cognac to finish it off? You will appreciate the convenience of having these things around. I promise.

I regularly keep on hand the following:

Vodka, Bourbon, Gin, Cognac, Rum, Tequila, Angostura Bitters, Simple Syrup (aka Bar Syrup), Grenadine, Vermouth, a 1 liter bottle of tonic, a 1 liter bottle of seltzer and of course at least a bottle of red and white wine. I also have found it easy to keep on hand some olives for martinis and bottled organic lime juice and lemon juice. You can get great not-from-concentrated bottled juice at most groceries these days. I will of course admit that the fresh stuff is better, but who are we kidding? Often the bottled stuff is all that I have on hand. Better that than nothing.

A few extras I keep around are:
Rye whiskey, absinthe, one higher grade vodka for martinis (use the cheap stuff for everything else), marsala, baileys, and lemoncello (admittedly I keep this in the freezer).

Consider stocking these things. Your guests will thank you.

Anyway, on to the Sazerac.

Here is how I made mine. I'd love to see your own recipes.

Ingredients:

• 3 oz rye whiskey - Rittenhouse Rye is good and somewhat ubiquitous in the south and midwest, but I got a bottle of Rendezvous Rye from High West Distillery in Park City, Utah that is amazing. You can order it online. I recommend it highly.
  
• 3/4 oz simple syrup
• Peychaud bitters to taste (2 dashes)
• Angostura bitters (1 dash)
  
• 1/4 oz absinthe -I used Lucid Absinthe, very good stuff
  
• lemon twist for garnish

Steps:

1. Fill an Old Fashioned glass with ice and a little water.
   
2. Put the simple syrup in a second Old Fashioned glass.
3. Add the rye, the two bitters, and a few cubes of ice to the glass with the simple syrup, and stir.
   
4. Discard the ice from the first glass, and pour in the absinthe.
5. Turn the glass to coat the sides with the absinthe; then pour out the excess. Strain the rye mixture into the absinthe-coated glass. Twist and squeeze a lemon peel over the glass. Rub the rim of the glass with the peel.
6. Set the peel on the rim of the glass and serve.
   

Poh-tat-O Leek Soup (With New Indie Rock Pairings!)

First, let me say I'm sorry for the lack of pictures on this one. My camera was dead. However, I promise to bombard you with excellent descriptions!

Today's issue of williameatseverything is called Poh-tat-O Leek Soup; or Why southerner's think a little pork makes everything taste better.

This recipe is modified from two stellar recipes from Mr. Alton Brown and Mr. Emeril Lagasse. As it is bitterly cold here in Bloomington, I made a LOT of this stuff. Feel free to cut the recipe in half. My recipe yields like 10 good sized servings I think.

Ingredients

• 2 pound leeks, cleaned and dark green sections removed
  
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 slices thinly diced bacon
  
• Heavy pinch kosher salt, plus additional for seasoning
• 2 lb. potatoes, peeled and diced small
• 7 cups chicken broth
• 1 and 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon white pepper (or black pepper but white looks prettier I suppose)
  
• 2 tablespoon snipped chives (garnish; optional but yummy)
  

How you does it:

Chop the leeks into small pieces. (Often I wash, bag, and freeze the tough green leaves to add when I make chicken or veggie stock like once a month. I assume you do make your own stock. Right?? Maybe I need an entry on that next time around.)

In a 6-quart pot (I used a big dutch oven. Basically use the biggest pot you have. That way you will be certain to avoid splashing.) over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the bacon and render fat (5 minutes?). Add the leeks and a heavy pinch of salt and sweat for 5 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium-low and cook until the leeks are tender, approximately 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the potatoes and the chicken broth, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and gently simmer until the potatoes are soft, approximately 45 minutes.

Turn off the heat and puree the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth. ( I used a food processor. Just ladle the stuff into the food processor, and then put the pureed soup into a different pot as you go until you have it all pureed.) This step is important because you can choose here how you want your soup to look. Personally totally pureed soup looks like baby food to me. I like some chunks. If you are like me, you can just process 2/3 of the soup and let the other 1/3 stay as is. I think it looks more rustic, which I like, but to each his own.

Stir in the heavy cream, and white pepper (And don't accidentally drop the pepper mill into the soup and have to find and fish it out...Not that that happened to me or anything). Taste and adjust seasoning. You will almost invariably need more salt, but it is important to wait until this point to salt. A lot of canned stock has sodium in it, so if you are using store bought stock you need to wait until you are close to the end to finish salting. If it has been off the heat a while during the food processing part you my need to reheat it for just a minute or two. Sprinkle with chives and serve immediately.

Some recipes suggest serving it cold, but who the hell eats cold soup when its 19º outside? Just reheat the leftovers for a few minutes over low heat in a sauce pot.

This recipe goes particularly well with a side of cheddar cheese toast and the new Vampire Weekend album Contra. You can listen for free at http://www.vampireweekend.com/.

Enjoy!

w

Ichi the Killer Chicken Fingers

If you haven't been following fried chicken closely these days you might be surprised at what you find. It's the Asians you see. First they take our jobs. Then they take...other stuff, like...rice noodles. Yea. Then they take our rice noodles. But this! THIS! This is the last draw. They have taken our fried chicken (!!!) AND made it taste...better? Damn. They make rice noodles and cars better too. We are screwed America. If we can't beat the world in fried chicken, let's just call it quits and enroll our sons and daughters in Mandarin lessons.

Anyway, I think it started with momofuku and things just haven't been the same since. Korean chicken joints are popping up all over the place. At least momofuku stills pays homage to southern style chicken. Anyway, I was having a hankering for some chicken and thought I would play around with some stuff. It's no momofuku, but I like the recipe I made up. Momofuku's recipe is also much more complicated, so you are probably more likely to make this one. Perhaps over winter break I will try the real deal.

In the meantime, try these Asian style chicken tender I made. They are super easy, and you can make a yummy dipping sauce with only 3 ingredients!

Alright here's the recipe. I call it:

"Ichi the Killer Chicken Fingers"

or for short

"Asian Style Chicken Fingers"

Ingredients:

1 lb. boneless skin chicken breast. pounded and cut into chicken strip size pieces
Veggie Oil
1 box panko bread crumbs (find in the Asian cuisine aisle of your local grocer)
2 tbps sesame seeds
1 tbps Chinese 5 spice
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. curry powder
cayenne pepper to taste (I used about 1 tsp.)
black pepper and salt to taste!
have good taste!

For dippin sauce:

2 tbps Plum Sauce
1 teaspoon chili paste
1 teaspoon soy sauce

Directions:

*Pour veggie oil about 4 fingers tall in your pot. How much you use depends on how large a pot you use. You don't need a huge pot though as you can cook these in batches. Turn on the heat, and put in a your thermometer. You want to heat the oil to 350ºF.

*Combine these in a bowl:
2 tbps sesame seeds
1 tbps Chinese 5 spice
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. curry powder
cayenne pepper to taste (I used about 1 tsp.)
black pepper and salt to taste!

* Combine these in another bowl:
1 box panko bread crumbs
2 tbps sesame seeds

*In another bowl whisk the eggs.

* Put the flour in another bowl (You use a lot of bowls in this one.)

*Lay out the chicken and season on both sides with the spice mixture.

* Dip the chicken flour, then in the egg, then in the panko crumbs. Make sure you coat each piece fully in each step, but knock off the excess.

*After coat each piece you are ready for frying. Keep in mind that whenever you add cold chicken to hot oil you are going to decrease the temp. You want to try to keep it as close to 350 as you can. That will ensure you don't burn the panko, and that the chicken gets fully cooked.

*So. Add the chicken like the pic below in batches. Cook for two minutes, flipping the pieces halfway through.



Set the cooked pieces on a baking sheet lined with paper towels. Cook all the pieces this way. Just make sure as you are cooking you adjust the temperature to try and stay as close as possible to 350.

While you are giving the chicken fingers a minute to rest, make the sauce.

All you need to do is take all 3 ingredient and whisk them together. Garnish with a sprig of parsley or better yet some diced green onion. I only had parsley.


Alright. Next time I'll work on momofuku's recipe. In the meantime these are easy and delicious. Oh! One last quick tip. You can save the oil and reuse it a few more times (maybe 2?). Wait for the oil to cool completely. Then strain it into a tupperware container. Put the tupperware container in the freezer. Next time you need to deep fry something, just pop the frozen oil out. Freezing it will keep it from going rancid and get you more for your $.

Best,

Will

Coleslaw With a License to Kill

Hey there,

This evening I put my taste buds in the hands of an old friend, Mr. Jamie Oliver, aka the Nude Chef, the Foe of Fat and the Londoner of Lore. Mr. Oliver's favorite nickname of mine for him is the second.

Tonight I made coleslaw a la Jamie, and now I really want a damn pulled pork sandwich. Poor planning on my part. Anyway, this blog can't always be about my feelings–my needs. Sometimes it has to be about your needs o' reader. Let this be a lesson to you. Before you make this recipe get some pulled pork barbecue.

Also, you might be wondering about the name of today's entry. Apparently my Father has applied for gun carry permit. Now, I would by no means say I am anti-gun. In fact, I fully support the shooting and sausage making of animals, so long as I am given some of the sausage. However, guns make me nervous, and my Father is not getting a license to carry so he can kill deer and mail me backstraps on ice from Tennessee. He has a different quarry in mind: the crackheads that hang out behind his office.

Kidding. He isn't hunting crackheads. That would be wrong, and this blog does not support that. However, there are crackheads behind his office, and they freak me out too. Apparently, he says having a gun makes him feel more safe from the crackheads. Well, ok. Not my cup of tea, but I guess it works for him.

Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I think he has a different motive in mind. I think he just wants a new hobby. He has a 357 sitting around from his Army days, and he got bored and wanted to shoot the gun. This got me thinking. My hobbies are pretty...pretty...pretty tame in comparison. I run, and I make coleslaw. That's about it. None of my hobbies involve doing something overtly manly and dangerous. I don't tackle quarterbacks or throw logs. I don't wrestle alligators or blow anything up. What, dear reader, is wrong with me?

I have decided that sometime soon I am going to do a feature only on dishes that might kill or harm me, i.e. fugu pufferfish or perhaps the mushrooms I found in the alley behind Poolside. So in honor of my new decision to cook and eat highly deadly foods, I renamed Jamie's rather innocuous recipe.

Coleslaw With a License to Kill.

Recipes as follows:

Ingredients:
• 2 carrots, different colours if you can find them, peeled
• 1 bulb fennel, trimmed
Use at least 2 of the following:
• 3-4 radishes
• 1 light-coloured beetroot, peeled
• ½ a small celeriac, peeled
• 400g red and white cabbage, outer leaves removed (14 oz)
• ½ red onion, peeled
• 1 shallot, peeled
• 1 lemon
• Extra virgin olive oil ( 2 tbs)
• A handful of fresh soft herbs (use mint, fennel, dill, parsley and chervil), leaves picked and chopped
• 250ml yoghurt (8.5 oz, but just approximate it. I think I used 12 oz actually.)
• 2 tablespoons mustard
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper


Instructions:

Shred the carrots, fennel, and your choice of radishes, beetroot, turnip or celeriac on a mandoline, or use the julienne slicer in your food processor. Put the veg into a mixing bowl. Slice the cabbage, onion and shallot as finely as you can and add to the bowl. In a separate bowl, mix half the lemon juice, a glug of extra virgin olive oil, the chopped herbs, yoghurt and mustard. Pour this dressing over the veg and mix well to coat everything. Season to taste with salt and pepper and the rest of the lemon juice if you like.

Serve with pulled pork sandwiches. Mail a sandwich to William also.

For my version I used everything but the celeriac and the beet. If I had to do it again I would definitely add some beet. The flavor would have gone very well with the fennel. For the "soft herbs" I used fennel and flat leaf parsley. I think dill would have been nice, but the grocery was out. Also, if you don't have a mandoline or food processor with julienne slicer you can of course cut it by hand. Just takes a few minutes longer.

Here is Jamie's Pic:


Here's mine (His is prettier than mine. Jerk.):


Alright. Enjoy. It's quite a good recipe. Also, please check out my future posts this week on Shepard's pie and my new pizza stone (pizza probably included)!

-Will

Currywurst of yore

Hi!

I have some interesting old food pics from Europe that I never shared on here. Maybe they will give me some ideas. Maybe they will give you some ideas. What's for certain is that as long as I am typing on my blog I don't have to write my client memo. Yes! Anyway, I just put up a few that I thought were particularly tasty or funny or pretty. Enjoy!



Currywurst!



La Boqueria!

Meats and Eggs and Squid oh my!



Jamon



As a side note, has anyone noticed that Egg salespeople are usually a little weird. The guy who sold me eggs in DC was a little strange. This lady was even more strange. She sold ostrich eggs. Those are the big ones in the picture.



Squid! This is from a bar I would go to a lot in the market. The only way to stomach Spanish beer is to eat Spanish food.

Just for funzies here are a few more from the market.



Strawberries




Candy

Here are some oranges in Majorca. I thought they looked pretty, so I took a picture. I was feeling homesick, and then I drank the oranges' succulent juice. Then I realized I didn't want to go home. Ever. But I did.



Last, but certainly not least, is a pic from my fish monger in Barce. This place was about four or five doors down from my apartment. For a boy raised in landlocked Tennessee, where the closest thing you could get to fresh fish was popcorn shrimp at Shoney's, this was the most amazing discovery in the world. It was absolutely tiny inside, but they had the most bizarre types of fish and shellfish. Once, I tried to purchase these huge bright pink prawns, like fuchsia colored prawns. The lady rang me up. I kept trying to pay her, but she wouldn't give me the shrimp or take my money! Apparently, I had misheard 8 euros a kilo and it was 88 euros a kilo. And by misheard I mostly mean that my Spanish is terrible.

Anyway! Every night when I would walk home after drinking at the bars I would walk past this sign and know I was home. All fish mongers should have such a sign. I demand it. Also, I want to look like that when I am and old man/sea captain.



Ciao,

W

Ratemaking and Green Beans

Energy law devolved into beers with the Prof and the Guest Speaker. Not a bad way to end the class though. Anyway, little time for dinner tonight because I'm crazy busy, but fortunately I had dinner cut washed and marinating over night.

Dinner was pan seared Italian chicken and green beans w/ balsamic and shallots

I wish I wrote down the marinade for the chicken. It was boss. Would have been even better grilled. Basically I made my own Italian dressing to marinade the chicken in. Except it was very spicy. And better. I'll try to remember what I did and tell you one of these days.

G-Beans were a recipe I got from a friend. They were good, but I would make some changes if I did it again.

Here is the recipe she gave me:

Green Beans (trimmed)
Olive Oil (just a drizzle)
Shallots (thinly sliced)
Balsamic Vinegar (however much you want; I add a whole lot)
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 400°

In a large mixing bowl add beans and drizzle olive oil, stir to coat.
Add shallots, balsamic, pinch of salt, and a few turns of fresh ground
pepper. Pour everything onto a baking sheet and spread out. Bake for
about 20 minutes.

The only difference I made was to marinate everything over night. I think this was a very good idea as I think it really intensified the flavors. I think used a 1 lb. of g-beans before trimming and I used one large shallot very thinly sliced. Good chance to practice knife skills. Also, don't skimp on the oil or else your shallots will BURN! I used more than a drizzle.

I think the beans started to look a little pale after that long with that heat. If I did it again I would parboil the beans, cool them down, marinate like I did, and then heat the same way but for like 10 minutes at the most. I will try this recipe again with the necessary changes and get back to you.

Alright. I have a client memo to do. Holla at ya boy.

-w