sausage & fennel bread pudding

It's Spring, yes. However, this weekend decided to be cold and rainy. It sleeted, even! Luckily, Jack had found a recipe that was perfect for such dreariness. So yes, this is yet another entry about something Jack, not Iron Stef, made. And this time, it's not a sandwich...although it does involve bread...


Sausage & Fennel bread pudding. Comforting and flavorful, this bread pudding had a tender middle with bits of browned toasty bread sticking out. Fennel and Salsiccia are a match made in heaven, to be sure, the bread and custard mixture their celestial cloud in which to float about and frolic like delicious angels. Divine.


Here's the recipe:

Fennel and sausage bread pudding

2 tablespoons butter, plus more for buttering the pan

3 cups whole milk

1/2 teaspoon fennel seed

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 links mild Italian sausage (about 15 to 18 ounces total)

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 large fennel bulbs, trimmed, cored and thinly sliced crosswise (about 4 cups)

1 tablespoon minced shallots

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

5 eggs

8 cups stale sourdough bread, crust on, cut or torn into about 1/2 -inch pieces (about a 1-pound loaf)

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

1. Heat the oven to 375 degrees and butter a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. In a medium saucepan, combine the milk, fennel seeds and black pepper. Heat over high heat until just before the milk reaches a simmer. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

2. Remove the sausage from its casings and break apart into small pieces in a medium sauté pan. Cook over medium heat until the sausage is thoroughly cooked and beginning to brown. Remove the sausage from the pan and set aside on a plate covered with a paper towel to absorb excess oil.

3. Wipe out the pan and heat the 2 tablespoons of butter and the olive oil over medium heat until frothy. Add the fennel and cook until caramelized, about 20 to 25 minutes. Add the shallots and salt and cook for an additional 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and set aside.

4. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs. Whisk in the cooled milk and then stir in the bread, sausage, fennel mixture and parsley until well combined. Pour the mixture into the baking dish, pressing down to make sure the bread is submerged (Jack ended up adding about a cup more milk at this point, because the bread didn't seem submerged...). Let the mixture sit for about 15 minutes while the bread absorbs the liquid.

5. Bake for 35 minutes, until golden brown, rotating once for even cooking. Serve immediately.

jack's sandwich of awesome

This is a sandwich I've decided to call "Jack's Sandwich of Awesome." He's made it quite a few times, but I've never bothered to give it a name. I just bothered to eat the heck out of it because it's so...awesome.


Here's the low-down on Jack's Sandwich of Awesome: blend up some fresh rosemary, fresh garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper to form kind of a paste. Rub it all over a flank steak. Grill flank steak until it is rare to medium rare. Slice steak against the grain into thin strips. Put it on some good crusty bread (here we used ciabatta rolls), top it with gorgonzola cheese and mixed greens that have been tossed with balsamic vinegar & olive oil. Pass out cold from the awesomeness.

Shrimp & Polenta vs. Shrimp and Polenta

I had a roll of store-bought. I had some shrimp. I wanted them to unite, but I wasn't exactly sure what direction to go. Jack suggested a Shrimp Polenta Battle! We've done something similar with shrimp before, but not for the same night! Sounded fun to me.

Allez Cuisine!

Ironstef's dish:

Pepperoncini Shrimp with Pancetta and
a Balsamic Reduction over Polenta

-1/4 olive oil
-3 tablespoons minced pepperoncini
-4 cloves garlic-minced

-1/2 bag frozen shrimp (medium), thawed.

-4 slices pancetta.

-2 1/2 inch slices of polenta from a pre-made roll.

-Reduced balsamic vinegar: heat 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar and 1 tsp. honey in sauce pan over med/high heat until reduced by more than half. It should be a syrup consistency.

1. Cook pepperoncini and garlic in olive oil for about 6 or 7 minutes. Taste and adjust flavor using salt and pepper. Set aside while you cook polenta and pancetta, to let the flavors infuse into the oil a bit more.

2. Cook Pancetta in a skillet until crispy. Remove pancetta and add the slices of polenta to the skillet (add some oilve oil to the pan if the drippings from the pancetta don't seem like enough to cook the polenta). Cook until well browned on both sides.

3. Add shrimp to pepperoncini oil and just heat through. Spoon shrimp and sauce over fried polenta disc, drizzle with balsamic reduction and garnish with the pancetta.

Challenger Jack's dish:

Honey Chipotle Shrimp
over Polenta
-2 tbsp minced garlic
-2 tbsp minced shallot
-1/3 cup red bell pepper, diced fine
-1/3 cup green bell pepper, diced fine
-2 tbsp olive oil
-1/2 chipotle pepper, seeds removed, minced
-1 tbsp adobo sauce
-Honey to taste (a teaspoon or 2)
-1/2 package frozen shrimp (medium)
-Salt

Sautee garlic and shallots in olive oil with a pinch of salt for 30-45 seconds. Add the chipotle pepper and adobo sauce. Add honey until you reach desired sweetness. Stir until heated through. Add frozen shrimp and cook until heated through. Remove shrimp and reduce remaining liquid until slightly thick. Return shrimp to heat and toss with the diced bell peppers. Heat through and serve on 1/2 inch polenta slices that have been fried in skillet with butter.

So who's cuisine reigned supreme? Well, we didn't actually score them or pick a winner. It was all in fun, and both were really really tasty. Next time, though, I'm springing for better shrimp. Frozen medium cooked shrimp are cheap for a REASON!

What would you do with the secret ingredients?

Chicken Strips and 5 Dips!

Friday Night was chicken strip night! I made a bunch of Ellie Krieger's chicken strips again, and Jack made a variety of sauces for dipping them in. He also made some awesome Bloody Marys, and we watched movies. It was a nice night!


The dips, from top to bottom:
Sweet Baby Rays Barbecue Sauce, Horseradish Honey Mustard Sauce, Sweet & Sour Sauce, Chipotle Yogurt Sauce, Cocktail Sauce.

Here are the dip recipes, via Jack, minus the chipotle yogurt sauce, which was just Greek yogurt with finely chopped chipotles in adobo sauce mixed in to taste, and the Sweet Baby Rays, which is from a bottle:

Horseradish Honey Mustard Sauce
Ingredients
¼ cup Greek yogurt (or drained yogurt)
¼ cup yellow, Dijon , or stone-ground mustard (or mixture)
¼ cup honey
1 tbsp. prepared horseradish
¼ tsp. white pepper

Mix all ingredients. Adjust for heat and/or sweetness as desired. Cool and serve.


Sweet and Sour Sauce
Ingredients
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup pineapple juice
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 tbsp corn starch
Cayenne or ground red pepper (optional)

In a small container, mix the corn starch with enough pineapple juice to dissolve. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar, brown sugar, and the rest of the pineapple juice. Add the ginger, garlic and cayenne (optional) and boil for up to 2-3 minutes. While boiling, add the corn starch/juice mixture and stir until thickened. Cool and serve.


Cocktail Sauce
Ingredients
½ cup catsup (ketchup works just as well)
1 tbsp prepared horseradish
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp hot pepper sauce

Mix all ingredients. Adjust flavor as desired. Cool and serve.

As for the Bloody Marys...


Jack garnished them with a rim of celery salt and green olives skewered won a thin spear of celery. Yum! If only we had known about Brownie Points' bacon vodka (thanks Alanna!). That would have made a great addition to this cocktail. Oh well. Here is the Bloody Mary recipe:

Jack's Bloody Mary Mix
Ingredients
4 cups vegetable juice (V-8 or equivalent)
2 tbsp prepared horseradish
4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
hot pepper sauce to taste
1 tsp white pepper
1 tsp celery salt

Mix all ingredients. Adjust flavor as desired. (and add vodka to your taste, of course. We added 2 oz. of vodka to drinking glasses filled a little more than halfway with ice, then filled the rest with the Bloody Mary mix and stirred. You could also shake it and strain out the ice.)

Now THAT's a good Friday night, people!

new years fish tacos

Instead of braving the cold, windy, impaired driver-filled streets, Jack and I stayed home for New Years Eve. We're both a little under the weather, so it was for the best. We made fish tacos and watched the No Reservations marathon. It was nice. And the tacos were amazing.

Here is the spread:

For the tacos I made jalapeno cilantro rice, which is basically white rice mixed with almost a whole bunch of chopped cilantro and 4 jalapeno peppers chopped fine, moistened with a bit of lime juice. Jack made a simple guacamole with2 avocados, 1 clove of grated garlic and one finely chopped shallot, along with salt, pepper and lime juice. We also had some black beans, from a can, and flavored with cumin, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. For accompaniments We had julienned jicama, green salsa, cilantro and limes.


Jack cooked the fish, two salmon steaks and two tuna steaks, with the following blend of spices:
1/2 tsp. granulated garlic
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. Mexican oregano (measured then ground)
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp. white pepper
He cooked them in a 400 degree oven for approx. 5 minutes, then placed them under the broiler for another few minutes.


The guac.


mmmmmm...fish tacos!!

a great way to usher out the year and welcome the new one. Have a great New Year, everybody!

jack takes on onion butter

Remember my attempt at onion butter? It ended up okay, but it bothered Jack to the point of obsession. He found the recipe I used (put cut up onions in a vessel, add heat, and ignore until they are a sticky dark mess...that's it) to be lazy and incomplete. There were lots of burnt onions and bitterness. So he took on the challenge of making better onion butter. And he succeeded. Big time. I asked him to write down the recipe and process he used to make the glorious sweet spread...

Ingredients:
4-4.5 pounds yellow onion, sliced thin
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tsp kosher salt

I divided the onion between two baking dishes, tossed them with the olive oil and salt, and put them in a 350° oven for 45-60 minutes, taking care not to over-brown (burn) the onions on the edges of the pan.

On the stove over high/medium-high heat, I melted 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. After the butter stopped foaming and just before browning, I transferred the onions from the baking dishes to the pan and cooked on medium high, stirring occasionally. Once the onions began to brown, I turned the heat to medium and continued to cook (stirring occasionally) until the onions turned to a rich, dark brown (1 1/2 to 2 hours).

Here's the part I'm unsure of it's necessity...

I tested the onions at this point and found that, while sweet, I could still
feel the onion slices between my teeth so I added between 2-3 tablespoons of
water and stirred the mixture. After 15-20 minutes of cooking, I tested again and repeated the procedure. Once the mixture thickened, I turned off the heat and allowed the now caramelized onions to cool to room temperature.

I put batches of the onion in a small, hand-held food processor and processed the batch, resulting in a smooth, dark brown, sweet/savory paste.





soooo good on sliced bread with a sharp cheese.


Or without cheese...


Or as a spread on a pot roast and provolone sandwich...

Yup. He done it right. It's simple and delicious. An onion masterpiece.

UPDATE on Dec. 17, 2007: Over the weekend Jack made a he-yooge batch of this, and I was able to get photos of the process...

roughly 12 pounds of onions. He got all squatty (technical term!) shaped ones, because he heard from several people that they are sweeter...anyone heard this theory?

12 lbs. of onions chopped up and occupying every baking dish we own:

After hours of cooking in the oven (with occasional stirring to avoid burnt bitter bits), he was able to move everything to just one large baking dish:

At about that stage of brown-ness you see above, the onions were moved to a large soup pot on the stovetop and cooked, stirring often, until a nice dark brown like this:

Then they were blended to a spread in the food processor:


and that, folks is how you make 12 pounds of onions fit into a 48 oz. container (with room to spare!).

biscuits and gravy and eggs oh my

I'm not a huge breakfast eater. I mean I eat breakfast every morning, but big breakfasts are reserved for lazy days, because they make me sleepy. Jack makes AWESOME breakfasts. So this was our Saturday morning...


Biscuits and Gravy, Poached eggs and blueberry-maple chicken sausage.

onion soup-er

So, the whole reason I made beef stock (besides needing the practice), was so that Jack could make some French onion soup.

He started with about 5 pounds of onions, both red and yellow. 5 POUNDS!! There were lots of tears shed by both of us. More by me, probably because I have the wimpiest eyeballs ever, and even though I stayed out of the kitchen while he cut the onions up, I still got verklempt.



The onions took forever to caramelize. Not forever, but, what, like an hour? Once they were just translucent, he took half of the onions out, and caramelized the other half. Then he added the rest back in and continued caramelizing everything. This gave a nice variance in the onions' textures. Some of the onions melt in your mouth and some still have a little bite to them.



Once they were nice and brown and sweet, he added a bottle of beer and my beef stock, some herbs (dried thyme (2 tsp.) and dried basil (2 tsp.) crumbled and ground with hands) and some salt and pepper.



And from there, it was just a matter of heating everything through.



For the whole crouton/cheese aspect, we sliced up a baguette, topped it with slices of aged provolone, broiled it until the cheese was bubbly and the edges of the crust were brown, and dropped 'em on top of the soup! Voila! Bon Appetit!



So my stock, although weaker than I would've liked, worked out well for this, because it let the flavor of the onions shine through, while still lending some nice savory warmth and a nice touch of richness.

There is a nice thorough article here about the layers of French onion soup, and some of the secrets and tips. And here's the Onion soup recipe from Tony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook. He uses bacon!

All in all, the soup is not exactly hard to make. It takes time, and some patience, but is not complicated. Simple yet so very very satisfying. And better the next day!

it's bananas!

Last night Jack decided to make bananas foster. I didn't help much...just took pictures and ate it. Mmmmmmm...

cooking away in butter, brown sugar and cinnamon:


WHOOSH! (Dark Rum and a flame were added)

After the exciting firey part, he took the bananas out and reduced the sauce a bit and added some walnuts to it. The walnuts got the slightest bit crunchy and candy-like. Awesome!

With cinnamon ice cream:


With Black Walnut ice cream:

autumn falls

The weather has cooled down considerably in the past two days, and I've been roasting like a maniac. Roasted stuff is some of my favorite cookin' during the fall and winter. Last night it was potatoes, fennel, onion, garlic cloves and butternut squash roasted with chicken drumsticks flavored only with fresh thyme, salt and pepper and olive oil. A simple, warming, comforting meal.





For dessert, Jack whipped up his newest creation...he makes a peanut butter and honey sandwich on some good whole wheat bread and grills it in a frying pan with a generous amount of butter until the outside is crispy and brown and the inside is sweet and gooey. Served with vanilla ice cream, drizzled with more honey and dusted with cinnamon? It's my new favorite thing.



This weather changes has me wanting to try out all kinds of new cool-weather recipes. Here's a few I've collected:
• toasted pumpkin seeds 3 ways
• potato focaccia
• braised chicken with prunes, olives and capers
• spiced celery root soup with bacon and honey
• boiled egg with gooey center to go with a bowl of noodles

ain't no need to go outside

Sunday morning, after sleeping in, Jack made banana pancakes. It was a rainy, lazy, late weekend morning and they were perfect. He simply added 3 mashed up bananas and some cinnamon to the plain Bisquick pancake recipe. The best part was the sauce. One part peanut butter to two parts honey and a pinch of salt, all heated up in the microwave and mixed together. Peanut butter, honey and banana is one of my all-time favorite flavor combos, so eating these was heaven.



One of my favorite food-songs is "Banana Pancakes" by Jack Johnson.

Pretend like there’s no world outside
And we could pretend it all the time
Can’t you see that it’s just raining
There ain’t no need to go outside

You can listen to a sample on Amazon. It just captures that certain mood.... Mellow, warm and yummy. Yup, that was our Sunday morning.

Country-fied weekend

I spent Memorial weekend out at my aunt and uncle's property in the country. It was a nice time with family, lots of dogs and puppies, music, campfire, pond swimming, volleyball and all that good stuff.

Jack was in heaven because he got to fish. I hardly saw him Saturday evening or most of the day Sunday except through my zoom lens. He caught a bunch of blue gills and bass:

Which he filleted and fried up along with some hush puppies for a fantastic Monday morning brunch.


here is the frying set up. Fish, cornmeal and Hush Puppy Batter.


Mmmm...finished hush puppy. He based the batter off this recipe on the back of the Martha White bag. He added fresh peppers from my uncle's garden. He seemed suprised how easy hush puppies were to make. They were delicious. The potatoes were added to the frying oil for the stray cornmeal to stick too. Neat tip!


Fried fish and hush puppies. We had some homemade cocktail sauce, but I ate mine with Malt Vinegar.


Fried whole fish. Well, minus head, guts and scales...These were a bit too small for filleting, and my uncle said he often fries 'em up like this. I had one and it was fun to eat. The very tip of the tail and the fins were really crunchy like potato chips.

Sunday I put together a campfire fondue. I was inspired by this campfire Brie on CHOW. I had some Raclette at home, though, so I used that, some Brie and some Emmenthaler. I added a little beer to aid in melting and through the whole foil package on the grill (Couldn't find good embers in the fire...)


It's not very pretty. I probably should have taken the brie rind off, but it tasted really good. We served it with crusty bread, and after awhile it became more of a thick spread than a dipping fondue.


Sunday night we had a big bonfire which of course meant s'mores. S'mores are probably one of my top 10 favorite foods. It's just a perfect combination. My cousin came up with R'morses, which were s'mores made with reeses peanut butter cups instead of plain hershey's chocolate bars. They were good, of course, but I prefer the old school classic.


My uncle has this new fancy garden set up. We were eating the romaine lettuce and spinach all weekend. Unbelievably better than store-bought. We took some home. I can't wait til he starts getting the tomatoes and asparagus and zucchini and chili peppers in.


I made last night's dinner with the fresh lettuce and spinach...a huge salad with blue cheese, bacon and black olives dressed with olive oil and black pepper, with a small crusty baguette, some asparagus brie soup and a couple glasses of Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon. So good and springy. The tomatoes are actually from the supermarket, and were suprisingly good. Thaey are a special variety from the Santa Sweets brand called Uglyripe tomatoes. Still not as good as homegrown, but leaps and bounds better than the tomatoes you usually find at grocery stores.


I also made today's bento with that lettuce and spinach. I went with a much more western bento this time, a simple sald of greens, cucumbers and tomatoes with canned tuna seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder. The top teir is mini charleston chews, some sandwich cookies and my last two Botan rice candies.

So basically, a great weekend with my loved ones and some very fresh and tasty food. How were your memorial weekend eats?