Hominy

Hominy is corn that has first been dried, then soaked in lye in order to remove the bran and the germ. germ? bran? lye? The germ is the part that grows into the baby, the bran is essentially the hull of the kernel. I've never noticed the corn germ, personally, I'm too busy stealing its food. Lye is sodium hydroxide, sometimes known as Drain-O, other times known as Liquid Plummer. Now, don't ask me why lye doesn't kill us, I would assume that one uses a very dilute solution of NaOH in food preparation. (kids, don't try this at home, even if you use a diluted liquid plummer to soak your corn in, you'll probably end up dead, by and large). I know what you're thinking, this is some new fad food, or it was created by a biofuels manufacturer that is foisting some gasoline byproduct on an unsuspecting public. Nope. The Guatemalans have been making Hominy in this manner for over 3,300 years. You want fad-food? Try foam.

At least, this is what a little web research has taught me, because until yesterday I had no idea what Hominy was until I prepared it from scratch by opening some canned Hominy and stuffing it into my piehole. Believe me you, Hominy is good stuff, and so I will capitalize it all day long.

Hominy is famous, too, kind of. Remember Menudo? Ever wonder where they got their name? Menudo is a Mexican soup of tripe and hominy. Tripe, as you probably know, is the lining of a cow's stomach. It seems like a bad name for a band, truthfully, I guess they thought that we would like the sound of it. Menudo. Maybe we should take a lesson in marketing. What's the grossest thing we eat? Let's all move to Spain and start a band called The Hot Dogs.

Last night we had Corn & Hominy chowder. It tasted great, and the combination of Hominy with its progenitor, corn, is so wrong that its brilliant. Be sure to use fresh corn. There is no (good) substitute for corn you have removed from the cob yourself.  It was a very easy chowder to make, just chop everything and boil it gently for 15 minutes. We also made corn bread from a box. This is a meal that should be served at the Corn Palace.

Leftovers!

Tonight we had leftovers. Leftovers don't have to be dull! The best advice that I have ever heard about leftovers is don't simply reheat them, use them as ingredients in a new dish.

I got this recipe from Jacques Pépin's Encore with Claudine, which probably the best book of his to buy if you don't have any at all. (It is currently available for <$1 used on Amazon.) The leftovers featured here are the leftover baguette and lamb from two nights ago, but you can use any leftover meat that you have. I hollowed out some tomatoes, made a stuffing out of the meat, the leftover bread, green onions, white onion, garlic, and mushrooms. I used the insides of the tomatoes as a sauce.

For 4 tomatoes which weight about 1.5lbs total, use 4 oz leftover meat and chop it up, 3 oz dried bread chopped into 1/2" pieces, 4 green onions coarsely chopped, 1/3 C chopped white onion, 1/3 C chopped mushrooms, and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped. Combine these ingredients in a bowl along with some salt and pepper, 1/3 C water, and 1 egg. Mix it all together. Cut of the tops off the tomato, and hollow out the insides, reserving the insides for the sauce. Coarsely chop the insides and place them in your baking dish, along with some salt. Fill the tomatoes with the meat-mixture, place the caps on, place them on the sauce in the baking dish and cook them for 45 minutes at 400F, or until the tomatoes are nicely browned.

An important lesson here is that you don't need to use precisely this list of ingredients. You could use chopped leek instead of the onions, or put a T of capers or a few anchovy fillets in there. If I did it again I might use bulgar wheat instead of bread, although Elyse liked the bread. I think that I would also add some olive oil to the tomato innards.

Serve one per person as an appetizer, or two each along with another dish for a light dinner. We began the meal with a turnip, sweet potato, white potato and leek soup, from the same book. It helped that I had some stock on hand for a tasty, hearty soup base! The soup, along with 2 stuffed tomatoes each made for a nice, light, nearly vegetarian dinner.

(Of course, if you really are a vegetarian the chopped lamb in the tomatoes and beef stock in the soup would disqualify this meal as truly vegetarian, but for the rest of us, its a little peak into the world of vegetarianism, sort of like how you can watch a movie about war, without actually having to risk your life.)

Salt-Baked Red Snapper.

Every once in a while I see a dish that blows my mind and I HAVE TO MAKE it. The first time that ever happened was when I saw Jacques Pépin bone out a chicken. I would have thought that if you removed the bones from an animal that you would have a pile of bones over here, and a pile of flesh over there. Nope! Now I can remove the bones from the chicken, and stuff it, and you can't even tell that the bones are gone. It just looks like a plump chicken.

I haven't been obsessed with a dish in a while, until last week when I was streaming José Andrés Made in Spain on Netflix's Watch Instantly.

This dish uses Red Snapper. That alone had me hooked. I have always wanted to cook Snapper, probably because its red. I think that this is the first red thing I have ever cooked, aside from members of the plant kingdom. I haven't worked with fish very much, because getting a whole, fresh fish around here is a nuisance. Its possible, but you need to spend some time in traffic if you want one for dinner tonight because there are only a handful of places in this city which stock a selection of beautifully fresh fish. Getting a fish with scales is what makes this a hassle. Most grocery store fish are already cleaned and de-scaled. This fish, by the way, had beautiful eyes. The picture makes the eyes look cloudy, but they were as clear as the ocean

Here's the list of ingredients:
a 2.5 lb Red Snapper, cleaned, but scales left on.
3 bay leaves
3 lbs kosher salt.

That's the whole list. There are no typos, that's 3 pounds of salt, and you really need the scales of the fish.

Put the bay leaves into the body cavity of the Snapper. Dump the salt into a bowl, and add water until its pasty. Put a layer of salt onto an oven safe dish, put the Snapper on the salt, and cover the Snapper with the rest of the salt. Bake for 30 minutes at 375F.

When you are done, the salt comes off easily in large chunks, and the scales come off easily with a fork. It'll be the tiniest bit salty, but those layers of scales and salt will prevent any moisture or flavor from escaping the fish! The fish will be perfect.

By the way, cooking times will vary with different ovens. I jabbed a digital thermometer through the salt and scales and into the fish at around 25 minutes, and then cooked it for about 5 more. It didn't hurt.

This dish captured my imagination; it looks impressive coming out of the oven, and it will leave you wondering 'what the hell is going on' while it is cooking. This is the only time that I have ever seen food used for something other than eating. The salt is used partly to keep the flavor of the fish in, and its thermal properties affect the cooking as well. But you don't use it for its flavor! And you throw it away in the end! That's why you need to leave the scales on, otherwise the fish will be very, very, salty. Yes, you throw away the bay leaves, too, but they leave their flavor behind.

I like to make an entire meal from one chef, so I found another of José's dish on Food & Wine, Leeks Two Ways with Morel Mushrooms. He used a different mushroom, but use whatever you can find. The Morels were $28/lb, but I only needed $3 worth for two people.

I like José a lot, by the way. My favorite quote from his show is, "Everywhere you go in Spain you find the perfect combination between tradition and innovation." That's quite a statement! There are no qualifiers, it wasn't even clear that he was talking about the food in Spain. Everywhere the combination is perfect? Well, I've never been so Spain, so how can I argue.? I am going to assume that its true! I never do that! Go José!

A Quickie

I really wanted to start this blog off with a really flashy meal but let’s face it- on a Monday night sometimes you just want to make something quick and dirty. These days I’m really trying to build my “weeknight meal” repertoire- you know what I mean- the type of food where you get maximum bang from minimal effort. My trick lately is to choose a recipe like this one, where a simply prepared meat is served with an easy sauce made from a few zingy ingredients (GINGER! JALAPENO!) simmered in an effortless base (Crushed tomatoes! Coconut milk!
We come in cans!). The original recipe calls for grilled chicken but this would also be delicious with fish or tofu (SEE? My cooking blog is totally inclusive). This is also a great little dish to whip up when you live in a freaky part of the country where it’s been in the low 50s and constantly drizzling despite the fact that it’s mid June. I felt like I was in sunny Brazil for a few seconds. I have a great imagination. (the unappetizing looking pile of brown glop on the plate is refried beans. Shuttup- I love things that come in cans.)

I also wanted to quickly mention the wine that we had with this meal: L'Ecuyer de Couronneau 2005 Bordeaux Supérieur (the one with the horsey head guy on the front). This has been a recent favorite of ours since Wade picked up a bottle ($13) at Market Time several months ago- it was so peppery and delightful that we bought 3 more bottles, even though we knew that they all had moldy corks. Yeccchh. (EDIT: Wade wants me to let you guys know that the outside of the cork was moldy- not the inside. Never drink moldy wine, kids!!!!).But seriously- if you like spicy earthy reds without too much fruit this is the wine for you. Also it's organic so now I feel like a big fat jerk for announcing at the lunch table in my office that there are no good organic wines (that's what I get for parroting everything that Wade reads to me). And if you know what Bordeaux Supérieur means, let me know.

Thoughtless meals

We all have a repertoire of meals we can make that require no thought at all. For many people their repertoire is a source of deep embarrassment because it doesn't extend much beyond cold cereal, roasted squash, or a can of soup. Expanding this repertoire expand your enjoyment of cooking. linearly.

The first step in expanding your repertoire beyond frozen Trader Joe's could be roasted chicken. Imagine a drug dealer who doesn't own a gun, said "dealer" would be almost as feckless as the home cook who can't work with chicken. Now imagine a drug dealer with a gun. ooooo! scary drug dealer! Now imagine a home cook who is comfortable with roasting a chicken. That's not a cook, that's a chef! That's a chef who will get laid tonight.

Roasting a chicken is easier than you think. Preheat the oven to 425F. You'll have nice, crispy skin because you roasted at a high temperature. Pat salt and pepper all over the inside and outside of the chicken. Place the chicken on its side in your roasting pan. You will get good results roasting on anything made of metal that is oven safe, even non-stick cookware will work fine. After 20 minutes flip it to the other side. After 20 more minutes flip it onto its back. Take it out of the oven after 10 more minutes, and let it rest 10 minutes. Thats 50 minutes in the oven for a 3-4 lb bird, you may need to adjust if your bird is much bigger or smaller. I bet that you already have this recipe memorized!

You know, there's a lot of extra space in that roasting pan, why don't you add some vegetables? Cut a potato and an onion each in half without peeling either of them. Cut the onion at its widest part, so the root is entirely on one half, trust me, roasted onions are good. The first time you flip the chicken, add the potatoes and onions to the pan, cut side down. They'll absorb some fat! You'll be roasting them for 30 minutes. (If your potatoes are big you might want to start them when you start the chicken) If you want to be really fancy, keep some tapenade on hand to spread on the potatoes when they are done. Serve 1 onion and 1/2 potato per person.

Learning to work with chicken is empowering. There are fantastic things you can do with chicken, a lot of fantastic things! Keep an eye out for meals that you can make that require little thought and effort, yet will get you laid.