“Chile’s Angels”

Anyone who knows me knows I like spicy food.  Capsaicin and I are good friends.  I’ve been on record as saying spicy food isn’t hot enough if it doesn’t make my scalp sweat.  It wasn’t always like this, though.  I think like most children, I didn’t care for spicy food much.  I didn’t like the pain, and I eschewed condiments like Tobasco for safer ones, like ketchup.  I think my sea change came after I ordered some General Tso’s chicken from a Chinese takeout.  It was spicy, sure, but boy, the flavors were unlike anything I’d had.  It was like I discovered a whole new wing to a house that I’d lived in for years.

These days, I’ve discovered my tolerances.  Habaneros are about as hot as I go, and even then I have to be careful.  While I enjoy my chicken wings hot, I don’t understand people that insist on buying and eating ridiculously hot wings – there’s a certain point where the heat just turns into pain.  Ghost peppers make no bloody sense to me, and neither do any of the superpeppers that have been cultivated since then.  Still, if people enjoy that sort of pain, then who am I to stop them?  This chapter would utilize chile peppers in two salsas, one traditional, and one more dessert oriented.

The regular salsa is pretty standard fare, truth be told.  The recipe calls for half of a red onion, and it made no sense to me to use half an onion when I could just double the recipe and have twice as much salsa.  I used four jalapenos in this salsa, two of which were raw, and two were roasted.  Two pounds of Roma tomatoes, eight cloves of minced garlic, two red bell peppers, the aforementioned red onion, two dried anchos, some olive oil, some lime juice, salt, pepper, chili powder, cilantro, and scallions.  All of this was chopped and made a mighty fine pico de gallo if I do say so myself.  My only complaint is that there was too much water in the salsa, and I figured out how to handle that – strain out the water and blend it with some of the pico, making a smooth, thick sauce to coat chips.

As for the dessert option, it’s a very simple recipe, using only three ingredients: canned crushed pineapple, habanero pepper, and fresh mint.  I wasn’t sure whether to use pineapple in natural juice or pineapple in syrup, and since the recipes were so simple, I decided to make it both ways.  From my estimation, I couldn’t find a difference between the two, so I ended up mixing them together.  The resulting salsa was definitely hot, but it’s not designed to be served straight.   It’s designed as an ice cream topping, and the ice cream cuts through the heat.  Also, I served some corn chips dusted with cinnamon and sugar atop the ice cream.  This dessert was amazing, and I definitely plan on making this again.  Oh, did I mention I made the Good Eats vanilla ice cream for this?

And so ends Season 4 of Good Eats.  In the history of the show, this marked the end of the show’s beginning, and Season 5 would introduce things that would stay with the show until its end.  More on that later, though.  Before I go, though, a taste of things to come.  Season 5 of this blog will see easily the most expensive recipe in the entirety of the first book, the recipe that has eluded me more often than any other, and the most infamous recipe in Good Eats history.  See you back here at the end of October, food fans.

Recipes:

Salsa

Spicy Pineapple Sauce

The Other Half of “Salad Daze,” “A Bird in the Pan,” and “Churn, Baby, Churn”

Has it really been this long? Well, I’ve got a good excuse for once – moving tends to set a man back a bit. Of course, I didn’t let a little thing like moving everything I own from one location to another stop me from my mission – so on we go!

When last we left Our Intrepid Culinary Explorer, he was searching for the rarest of balms – key lime preserves. Having discovered that such a beast went by another, more common name – that of marmalade – he employed both his own meager resources, as well as that of the mysterious stranger known only as “The Cuban.” Through a strange turn of events, both our hero and the Cuban found a jar of this mysterious elixir, giving our hero more marmalade than he would need for the creation of the sorbet! (So, once again, thanks, Arthur!)

The acquisition of the marmalade marked the last ingredient I would need to make my sorbet – I’d already found the lime seltzer that AB calls for in a local grocery store, and the rest of the software was easily found as well. This led me to the last part of the equation – the ice cream machine. I was able to source one from a friend’s wife, with the express permission that they get some of the sorbet. I was more than willing to oblige.

What did I discover about making sorbet? Well, for starters, it’s really very simple. Sugar, water and preserves are turned into a syrup over low heat, and chilled. Everything is put into the churn, and layers of ice and salt are added. (Why? Well, for the same reason that there’s an active ocean in parts of the Arctic – salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water, so the mixture in the churn will freeze faster, which means tiny little ice crystals, which means a superior product.) Once frozen, it’s put back into a container and frozen until ready for service. The only complicated bit is understanding how your ice cream machine works – once you master that, it’s child’s play.

Of course, I had to sample the frosty fruits of my labor, and, as I was at this friend’s home learning how to use the machine from his wife, I gave them both a taste as well. The response was positive, to say the least. It was a very clean-tasting ice, perfect for exactly what sorbets were intended for – cleansing the palate between courses. This would, in fact, be what I would use it for down the road.

With the knowledge on how to use the machine fresh in my mind, I moved onto the other half of this episode: fresh vanilla ice cream. There are some very similar steps in this as there were in the sorbet – cook a liquid to blossom the flavors, chill to let them get cold and marry, then churn. The only additional complications here were that cream has to be watched far more carefully than water. After all, water doesn’t have solids that can coagulate on the bottom of a pan and scorch. Brown’s recipe is a bit unorthodox, as he adds a spoonful of peach preserves to the cream. He claims this is because adding the jam adds pectin to the ice cream, which helps slow the inevitable melting as well as accentuate the vanilla’s floral notes.

So, I had my dessert and sorbet finished – all that remained was to cook the bird at my friends’ home for the meal I promised them. I decided I’d only use recipes I’d already conquered, which gave me a rather impressive-sounding meal: a green salad with homemade viniagrette, key lime sorbet, roast chicken with jus, garlic mashed potatoes, and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Two of the recipes were already finished, of course, and the viniagrette would not take any time at all. Mix together wine vinegar (red preferred), extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, mustard and smashed garlic until an emulsion is created. Let stand for an hour or so. Remove the garlic, and return to an emulsion by shaking. It makes far more dressing than you should use at once, so get yourself a bottle and put the rest in there. The only other thing to remember about salads – don’t dress them until immediately before service. Otherwise, they will wilt.

So, finally, we have the star of the show – the roast chicken. There’s a few steps to this one – make the gremolata, butterfly the bird, and make the jus. Of these three, only the middle part had me worried. The word ‘gremolata’ sound intimidating, but it’s really nothing more than a garlicky, lemony paste, seasoned with salt, pepper and brought together with olive oil. This gets ground in a mortar and pestle and stuffed under the skin of the bird. Of course, before we do that, we need to butterfly it, which is thankfully a rather simple procedure if you’ve got cooking shears. After snipping away the backbone and removing the keelbone, you’ve got a flat bird which will take the heat far better than if you’d left it intact.

The bird itself gets roasted on a rack of aromatics – carrots, celery, onion – and flipped halfway through. After cooked through, it’s removed and the pan is deglazed with red wine and chicken broth. The veggies are discarded, since they’ve already given all they’ve got flavor-wise, and the wine and broth are reduced, making a delicious sauce.

The garlic mashed potatoes I’ve already covered in a previous blog – go back and read that one on how it’s made!

So, how did it all turn out? Well, there were a few accidental substitutions along the way. First off, I added too much salt to the gremolata. The recipe calls for 1 tsp., but it’s divided between the gremolata and the bird itself. As a result, it was a bit saltier than it needed. I just neglected to salt the bird. Also, I let both the potatoes and the chicken cook a bit longer than they should have – as a result, the meat was a bit dry, and the potatoes were a bit gummy. Still, everything tasted good, so I count it a success! (My friend’s wife, however, wasn’t as sure, since I managed to dirty nearly every pot and pan they had. I cleaned what I could, though!)

So, my most ambitious project so far down! Next time: Easter dinner and I meet for dessert.