;)
After gathering your favorite collection of peppers, give them a rough dice, and then throw into your favorite mortar. Sprinkle in course salt, and get your Hulk on. After a hard grind, add the juice of a lime, honey, and nam pla to taste.
]]>The idea of making a potato carbonara came to me the first time I made spaghetti alla carbonara. It's a soul satisfying combination of cheese, bacon, and egg -- all of which play wonderfully with the humble potato. Unfortunately, there's a lot of awful carbonara out there, despite its simplicity.
The trick to making a simple dish really good, is to use really good ingredients. If you have the finest Idahoan, a wonderful slab of guanciale, the freshest of farm eggs, and then add pre-shredded parmesan cheese from a green cylinder, your dish can't do any better than 75%, a 'C.' A 'C' as in, your guests will be left wondering what the dish Could have been. Similarly, a poor substitution not only brings zero points, but can take away from the dish. So if you have the finest Idahoan, the freshest of farm eggs, the most exquisitely aged, salty parmesan, and then substitute tofu or turkey bacon for the protein, the dish sinks to 50%, an 'F.' An 'F' as in, you Fucked up.
The first step is to prepare the sauce. Create lardons out of a couple ounces of bacon in a couple tablespoons of butter. Remove the bacon from the pan, and leave on a paper towel to drain. Use the pan drippings to make garlic chips, from 1 large or 2 small cloves. I like to tilt the pan during this process, as a way to do a mock shallow fry of the chips. Don't brown them too much, or you'll get a 'B.' A 'B' as in, really Bitter. Put the garlic chips aside on a paper towel.
Next, dice some fingerling potatoes into coins, and place as many as you can flat-side down in the pan, which is now home to some amazing garlicky butter-bacon drippings. Put this in a 400 Dg oven, for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are properly browned. Flip them over, and put in for another 20 minutes, or until you deem them done.
Toss the hot potatoes with pepper, the bacon, garlic chips, a beaten egg, and 1/4 cup [sum] of Parmesan and romano cheeses. Mix in another 1/4 [sum] of the cheeses (mixing too much cheese at once can yield undesirable results). If you're a lush for lactose, finish the dish with another snowfall of Parmesan.
Other Stash Notes:
The recommended beverage pairing is determined by when the dish is served. If you're making this in the morning to aid a dehydrated loved one in bed, pair it with an extra pulpy screwdriver. If it's really late at night, pair with a pickleback, since you'll probably already have one handy anyway.
If you're a vegetarian, omit the pork and garlic chips, and finish the dish with shaved truffle at the end. Since the dish won't be a carbonara anymore, you'll have to rename it 'A Big Plate of Happiness.'
]]>When figuring out what to make, my first requirement was that I wouldn't have to leave the house, and that it wouldn't be labor intensive. Rummaging through my freezer I found a huge smoked ham hock, and immediately knew that soup was going to be the main course. Dried split peas in the pantry followed, and the last thing I had to make sure of was that the couch be ready for me.
]]>Baba Ganoush is one of my favorite eggplant dishes, so it didn't take long for my mind to arrive at the idea of smoking it. After all, the eggplant is supposed to be cooked over an open flame to get a smoky flavor, so why not just smoke it to begin with?
]]>Strudel is an ancient Austrian pastry most commonly filled with apples, making Fall a great time to eat it. The key is to make a very elastic dough that can be stretched so thin a love letter can be read through it (I must assume all Austrian love letters are written in a size 100 bold font). Onto the process.
]]>To achieve the color, I decided to develop the same kind of chile paste that is used for fresh, Mexican chorizo sausage. Don't let the dried chiles be intimidating, they're already dead.
]]>Luckily for me, for the second week in a row, I got the one lamb neck in stock at my local butcher. This is a great piece of meat for making rillettes, since it's very flavorful and tender. Due to the uniqueness of the cut of meat, I salted the neck then slow roasted it in a 200 Dg oven over-night while I slept. This allowed for the fat to slowly seep out of the meat and essentially baste itself while roasting. Once morning came, the meat was easily shreddable. Traditionally, the cooking process for rillettes would take place in a covered pot with simmering liquid, but that's another post.
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After gathering your favorite collection of peppers, give them a rough dice, and then throw into your favorite mortar. Sprinkle in course salt, and get your Hulk on. After a hard grind, add the juice of a lime, honey, and nam pla to taste.
]]>The farmers didn't label any of their peppers, but promised they all shared a spicy genus. I didn't see this as a problem since there are so many different chili pastes. There are over 300 different varieties just in Indonesia; so no one can give me much grief about authenticity. This will just be another variety to add to the chili paste census.
]]>First of all, it should taste pretty good. If it doesn't, you can chug it with cinnamon gum and still get a good buzz. Second, the fruit should look like it's seen a ghost. This is due to diffusion, as molecules of a greater concentration move to an area of lesser concentration. This also means that the fruit is tasteless, as its soul essentially jumped ship to drown in the liquor. Same thing happens whenever making stock, so just filter the aquavit and discard anything that gets caught.
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