Hey! Those burgers are stuffed!

Well, it's been a heck of a long time since I last blogged and even longer since I last blogged food. I hope to change that. Meanwhile I'm on a new diet based on Tim Ferris's book the 4-Hour Body. If you don't know Ferris and his books, you're missing out. He is all about hacking everything, from lifestyles to bodies to sleeping patterns. In any event, the short summary of the diet is that there are no carbohydrates, milk or fruit allowed during the week, but all the protein and fat your can stomach. I've been on it for close to 3 weeks and I'm losing an average of more than 3 lbs. a week. The only issue is coming up with what to eat. So, I hope to bring a few easy, and tasty, recipes for you to add to your repertoire. Unlike most of my other recipes these are generally for one or two people and not scaled up to my usual family sized, so keep that in mind if you're going to be cooking for a crowd. I'll also be doing whole meals, not just single dishes. As a side note all of the recipes will be sugar, dairy and gluten free, so if you're into that stuff you'll rock these recipes.

The first meal is Burgers stuffed with onion jam, grilled tomatoes and cabbage and almond slaw.
You'll need:
8 oz. ground beef
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup stock (or water if stock isn't available)
1/4 cup red wine
Kosher Salt
Pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp red chili flakes (optional)
1 medium tomato
1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
1/8 cup almond slivers
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

Toss the shredded cabbage and vinegar in a bowl and set aside.
Dice the onion and drop it in a frying pan with a bit of oil and start sauteing them, chop the garlic and toss that in too. When they become translucent add half the stock and keep cooking them until all the liquid is gone, then add the rest of it. Cook until it's gone then add the wine, letting that reduce down. This should all take about half an hour. The truth is, it would probably be good to quadruple the amount of onions and double the liquid measures, setting 3/4 of it aside for later use. What you'll have left is a dark onion-y sludge with the consistency close to marmalade or jam. 

Next, add a teaspoon of salt, pepper and garlic powder to your ground beef, mixing it through. Then you'll want to separate it into two equal sized portion and pat them down to form two, well, patties. Make them about 1/4 of an inch thick because we're going to fold them up on themselves.

Place a heaping spoon of the onion jam in the middle of each patty and bring up the sides to engulf the filing, mush closed. Don't worry if it doesn't close all the way, close is good enough.

Now comes cooking time. I have a grill pan, but you can do all this in a regular frying pan without a problem. If you're using a flat bottomed pan add a touch of oil or non-stick spray when the pan is hot and then add the burgers. Make sure you put the top side down, that is the side you attempted to close. This will seal it so the onions don't all leak out. I'd say cook 5 minutes on each side, twice. For a total of 20 minutes in the pan.
Right after the first flip, cut your tomato into three even rounds, so two slices, one on either side of the stem. Add them to the pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper. When you flip your burgers, flip the tomatoes.

Almost done! Put the burgers on your plate, then the sprinkle the extra onions over both. Get your cabbage slaw that was set aside and mix in the almond slivers. Add that to the plate. Pour yourself tall glass of ice water and maybe add a lemon twist. Eat!

Live Blogging Thai Cooking with my girls

This is mostly a place holder until about 7 PM Israel time. (Noon Eastern)
We're making Thai food.
On the menu Ho Mok Pla, Sate with crispy rice noodles and Khao niao mamuang!

7:15 PM Israel Time
We're just getting things together!

Here's the rice for the Khao niao mamnaug, it's been soaking for the last few hours.

 7:45 PM Here are our rice noodles! They're going to be the crispy base for the sate.

 The girls are helping, clean the fish and prepare the mixture for the Ho Mok Pla.

8:00 The fish is being finely diced. It will get mixed with eggs, coconut milk, green curry paste, red chili, and some lime zest as well as a squeeze of lime. That's being done by Aderet (a.k.a. #2of8)

8:25 The sate sauce is put mixed up and Emunah (a.k.a. #3of8) is cutting up the chicken to be marinated. The sweetened coconut milk is done for the dessert. I'm heating the oil for crisping the noodles.

8:45 The first test batch of Ho Mok Pla (not a Klingon name) is out! A smashing success for those who like their food extra spicy. Which is everyone except my wife. Really tasty with a nice hot finish.

 

9:45 Sorry for no updates. Blogspot isn't behaving.  

Okay, it's the next morning. Blogger kept crashing Firefox, I even tried Chrome and it wasn't working. 

Here are the pictures from the rest of the evening.

Here's the sate grilling away. The chicken ended up beautifully moist and the peanut sauce had a nice tang with out undertones of coconut. The peanut flavor was also wonderfully subtle. I forgot to scatter crushed peanuts on top which would have given it a nice textural crunch though.

All in all it was pretty successful. I need to work on the crispy fried rice noodles, they were a bit too oily. I should make them in advance next time so they have more time drain. Also, we were using the Wok to steam the fish custard, so I used a flat bottomed sauce pan, so I don't know if that was an issue.

The dessert was pretty delicious.  Khao niao mamuang was wonderful, the rice wasn't overly sweet and the coconut came through, the mango really matched up with, complimenting the flavor. I think the only thing I changed would have been to chop up some mint and fold it through the rice just before serving.

Here's how we made the Ho Mok Pla:

8 oz of a delicate white fish fillet. We used St. Peter's fish, but sole or flounder should be good.

1/2 cup coconut milk

2 eggs

2 Tbsp green Thai curry (good especially if you can't find Kaffir lime leaves)

1 Lime, both the zest and the juice

10 Basil leaves. (If you can get Thai basil, that's best. You can also use Coriander/Cilantro or regular fresh basil leaves)

Something to steam it all in. We used baking parchment, but it should be done in banana leaves. You can also use shot glasses or ramekins.

Make sure there is no skin or bones left on the fish, then dice it finely. In a separate bowl mix all the other ingredients together. I'd say taste it first. If you like it hotter dice up a couple red chilies and add them in. These will also add nice red flecks which will look nice. Mix the egg stuff into the fish. If you're going to do it in banana leaves or parchment, take a circle, put a large dollop in the middle, put a basil leaf or sprig of cilantro on top, fold over and staple it shut. Or use toothpicks. Or pins. The other option is to fill shot glasses or ramekins. 

You'll need a steamer at this point. If you don't have a one then you can improvise, a wok with a wire trivet worked for us. Fill with water to an inch or two bellow the bottom of what ever you're using and cover, bring to a fast boil. Put the packages or cups on the rack and let steam for 5 minutes. 

If you've done it in cups then just let them cool down, garnish with a fresh bit of basil/cilantro and serve with a spoon. If you've gone the package route then open up and plate it. Be careful, these things have a powerful kick. I ate a half dozen they were that good. Wonderful lime flavor, soft custardy texture, a hint of coconut and basil all tied together with the heat. We plated it with a few slices of home made pickled cucumber to add some acidity to the mix and help cool the heat.

Enjoy!

The Thor's Thunderberg Failure

So. I had this cookbook growing up. I love my comic books, as anyone who reads my blog knows. But this is the Might Marvel Superheroes Comic Book. It's one of the ways I got my start in cooking. Which is my other passion. Anyway, there was one recipe that I tried from this way back when that just didn't work out for me. I've been thinking about it and thinking about it but for some reason I didn't know why it went wrong.
It was for Thor's Thunderburg hamburgers. Went off and found a copy. Here are the ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 can kernel corn
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons pickle relish
1 tablespoon mustard
buns

Obviously, mix together, make patties, add to frying pan etc. etc.

My 7-year old self thought he need POPPING corn. No wonder it was really crunchy.

Smoke. Lemon. Chicken. Tasty.

We had a big family gathering this Shabbos. My In-Laws have been her for the last week and a half so my Sister-In-Law and family joined us for the weekend. We had, baby included, 21 people and one dog in attendance. I'm happy that I had most of the week off and was able to do some serious cooking. I normally do some chicken roasting for Shabbos but I wanted to try something a bit different to wow the crowd. The Lemon burgers were such a hit that I thought I'd do another simple lemon recipe. This one needs a grill though. You can probably do it with a gas grill as well, but I have a charcoal grill so that's what I used.

You'll need:
A grill
Charcoal (not a lot, I used about half of what I'd normally use when grilling, since you want a lower heat)
Wood chips (I took from our apple tree, but hickory or oak would be fine)
Fresh rosemary

2 whole chickens (or one or more depending on how many people you want to feed and size of grill)
3 large lemons ( 1 and 1/2 per chicken)
Handful of Kosher salt

Salt the outside and inside of the chickens and slice two of the lemons thinly and one lemon cut in half. The lemon that you've cut in half squeeze into the cavity of the chicken and then stuff it inside.

Now, out to the grill. Lay out your coals and light them, when the flames have gone down and the coals are glowing take a piece of foil and lay it over the top.

Place your wood chips and rosemary on the foil.

Replace the grill and cover it with lemon slices.

Place the chickens on the lemons. I did one breast down and one back down. I think the breast down came out a bit better. So, that's what I'll suggest. Cover the chickens with the remaining lemon slices.

Put the cover on the grill and come back an hour later to make sure that it's not too hot and things aren't burning. Otherwise cover it back up for another 2 hours. Check again, then give it another hour until the coals are cool.

Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes before serving. Take the lemon out of the cavity, it should be soft enough to spread like butter. After you've carved the birds, squeeze the lemon out over it for some extra zing. Hand out chunks of rind on the plates as well. Revel in the adoration of your Mother-in-Law. Smoking the chicken at a low heat keeps it very moist and you get a nice smokey flavor to counter the acidic zing of the lemon.

The Now Famous Lemon Burgers

So, yesterday was Israeli Independence Day. We, as is the national tradition, grilled. I actually had a great day in the kitchen. It started out with waffles and strawberry syrup from scratch, followed by an interview on the Stage Right show. I then made pie crust dough for the eventual apple pie as well as mixed up a batch of pizza crust dough for foccacia.

We were having a bunch of guests over in the afternoon so I needed to start getting the meat situation worked out. That brings us to the main reason for this blog entry. A while back I had seen a cooking show where someone stuffed lemons with cheese and veggies, so I figured I'd make a bit of a change and make Lemon Burgers. I don't have pictures of the process since I was kind of busy all day. It's pretty simple though.

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef (1/2 kg)
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
3 cloves of garlic thinly diced
1 tbsp coarse ground pepper
3-4 large lemons

Mix the ground beef, barbecue sauce, garlic and pepper together. Slice the lemons into inch thick rounds and cut out the centers. Make sure you leave a small amount of pulp attached to the inside of the rind. Take the pulp from one of the lemons, cut out chunks so you don't get the white connective fibers and mix that in with the beef. Then stuff the lemon rinds with the ground beef.

I like to put it in the refrigerator for an hour or two so the meat sets. Then it's off to the gril.

Meanwhile, it was foccacia time! Rolled out, a bit of olive oil, coarse salt and fresh rosemary, then into the oven. When they were finished, I made a compound oil with some more olive oil and fire roasted garlic, which I spread on the bottom of the foccacia before putting it on the coals.

Anyway, back to the burgers...
Lay them out on the grill, spread evenly.

Depending how you like yours done, 6 minutes, then flipped, then again and once more.

That should get them to a nice medium. More importantly, the whole neighborhood should smell like lemons and the rinds should be nice and sweet. Eat the whole thing as is. Totally gluten free and exploding with flavor. Though you can put it on a bun if you want, go light on the condiments.
Enjoy!

A block of Potatoes - The One about the Kugel

You may remember my post from yesterday about Gribenes. Well, one of the byproducts of making Gribenes is the rendered chicken fat, a.k.a. schmaltz. If you didn't know, that stuff is also darn tasty and gives a fine, fine flavor to whatever it's used in. So, since we had some schmaltz left over we're going to use it to add some flavor to the potato kugel. A bit of a historical note on the term, in Yiddish it means square, though the original German is more like ball. The dish, at one time was round, but these days, with some exceptions, are mostly made in square/rectangular pans. On a side note, the game Knucklebones in Yiddish is called Kugelach, and is played with 5 bronze cubes. Well, enough with the history and on to the food.

You'll need:
6 good sized potatoes
1 large onion
1/2 cup oil
2 Tablespoons salt
1 Tablespoon crushed black pepper
2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 375F (190C)

Peel them!

Then grate them. I do it with a hand grater and half on the thick grate and half on the thin.
Now, the trick to making a good potato kugel, and latkes for that matter is to squeeze out all the liquid from the grated potatoes. This is a bit messy, so do it over the sink.

Now, chop your onion, not to finely and saute it in the schmaltz from the gribenes. I told you we'd be using it, now's your chance to kick this up a notch. If you haven't got spare schmaltz, use olive oil, or if you want to make it dairy some butter.

When the onions are translucent and starting to brown dump them into the grated potatoes and mix in the oil.

Add the salt.

And the pepper. I'd personally add more, since I like mine really sharp, but I've been out voted.

Now, add the eggs.

Make sure to remove the shells before doing so, beating and then adding to the mix.

Make sure it's well incorporated and dump into an oiled casserole dish and into the oven. It should be about two inches thick.

 

Let it cook about 50 minutes at 375F (190C) uncovered until deep golden brown.

Enjoy!

You Brade Runnah? Yes, it's the Fried Rice episode

Yes, it was the quintessential Asian joke of the 80s. Can't say Rs or Ls correctly. I think Lethal Weapon 4 even made fun of people making fun of it. With all that, Fried Rice is pretty darn tasty. It's the kind of dish that can be as easy or as complex as you want. One thing it isn't is out of reach of the home cook. So, here you go. Easy, hearty fried rice.

2 Cups of cooked rice. (can be left overs, better cold)
One Chicken breast (both halves)
2 cloves garlic
1 inch fresh ginger root
1/3 cup of soy sauce
1/2 onion
1 cup chicken stock
2 eggs

Optional veggies:
4 celery stalks
1 carrot
1 cup mushrooms
2 red peppers

One of the best things I ever brought back from a work related trip abroad was the rice cooker I got in Tokyo, Japan. It can make WAAAY more rice than we'd ever need, up to 10 cups I think, which, considering we're 10 people and 2 cups is generally enough, is pretty massive. But it's set and forget, can keep it hot and fresh for a couple days and can be set on a timer. It also can make sticky sushi rice, whole grain rice and porridge with aplomb. It can also steam veggies for that matter. Excellent investment if you can find one. So, I cooked up my rice and while it was on I got to the chicken.

First of all, I made a marinate. Finely chop the garlic, ginger and onions and mix with the Soy Sauce.

Then take the chicken breast and cut it into chunks. This part you can play with. If you're more interested in a side dish, cut it into smaller pieces, maybe the size of the last digit of your pinkie. I was aiming for something a bit more hearty, so I used bigger chunks.

 

Then dump them all into the marinate, cover and set in the fridge for 30-40 minutes. Meanwhile you can prep your veggies. I put them as optional. Some people like more or less in their fried rice, again, depending if it's a side or a main. If it's a side, some julienne of carrots (that's cutting 'em into matchsticks) and maybe some red or green peppers should be sufficient. I used celery, peppers, carrots and mushrooms and another clove of garlic, rough cut. 

Get your handy dandy wok out, add a bit of oil and get it nice and hot. Drop the garlic in first, stir a minute, then add the other vegetables, cook for a couple minutes between adding each one. Celery, peppers, carrots and then mushrooms last. Take a big splash of the marinate from the chicken, and stirring add it into the wok and cook for another couple minutes.

When that's done, dump it all into another bowl and now it's time to do the chicken. Don't wash out the wok, just add another splash of oil and put the chicken in, a bit at a time. I think I put in about 1/6th at a time, cook for about 3 minutes then the next bit until it's all done. This is probably the longest step, since you want the chicken to be well cooked. Add a bit of marinate to make sure it stays moist and try to scoop out as much of the onion, garlic and ginger as possible to get that cooked with the meat. When it's done, take it out of the wok and set aside. Now comes the secret to fried rice. The egg. Take your two eggs and beat them. I know, they don't deserve it, but think of it as if they were the out going Press Secretary. Anyway, get your rice ready and drop the beaten egg into the hot wok and stir, like you're making scrambled eggs. When it's about 2/3 of the way done, dump in the rice and start stirring and mixing the rice and eggs. You'll want the stock handy since the rice might start sticking, a bit of liquid keeps it from clumping on the sides. 

When it's well mixed, maybe two minutes, start adding the chicken and vegetables. Keep stirring until you get a nice brown color on the rice and it's well mixed. You will probably have to add more stock while doing this. 

That's really about it. Put it all into a big bowl. Serve hot. These amounts should probably make enough to serve 8-10 people. I'd say about an hour and fifteen minutes not including the time the rice takes to cook and chicken to marinate.

Chicken for People Who Burn Water

I have my mother in law to thank for this recipe. Not that she needs to use it, since she's an awesome cook. Also she reads this blog so I will reiterate that the food she makes is universally delicious. This one is mindlessly easy. I give it out to friends whose wives have just given birth and have to be home with the kids and actually need to serve a meal. It's also easy to tweak if you want to change the flavors a bit.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
4 potatoes
1/4 cup Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp honey
5 peeled garlic cloves
4 shallots or one onion quartered
1 roasting bag

As I said, it's pretty simple. You cut up the potatoes into wedges.

 

Then put them in the bag.

Peel the Garlic. And into the bag.

 Shallots the same thing.

Add the honey and soy sauce.

Then stuff the chicken into the bag. Tie it off and shake it up, getting the honey and sauce all over everything.

 You can substitute wine instead of the soy sauce, but you'll need to put in a few teaspoons of salt to make sure it's well seasoned. Try adding a big sprig of rosemary or a teaspoon of dried oregano and basil to change it up. Also, ginger is a good addition.

Preheat your oven to 375F (175C). Put the bagged chicken on a baking tray, I like to line it with parchment to make cleanup easier. Poke a hole in the top of the bag to let steam escape. This is another recipe that you don't really need to worry about over cooking it, since it will stay moist. As a matter of fact, the longer it cooks the better. It should be ready after about an hour and a half, but give it an extra hour and the meat will melt in your mouth. The garlic and potatoes will be able to be used as a spread. We were a bit rushed this time, so the shallots weren't as soft as I would have liked.

The kids and guests finished it up right quick though. Really, this is a total no brainer. Even JayZ can make it.