Hard Cider - Our new tradition

We set out with the idea of grabbing enough apples from the farmers market to make a gallon or so of hard cider. We planned to use our Acme juicer which if you have one of these juicers you know that even a gallon is pushing it. After just a few minutes at the farmers market it was clear that we would have to rent a real press. We ended up with ~60 lbs of random seconds and a press from Bob's Homebrew.

Pressing the apples was a bunch of fun and Ana, David, Nora and Natalie all helped out. It came out to be a perfect 5 gallons; just right for a carboy. I used some sulfite on it and pitched champaign yeast in the morning.

I'm pleasantly surprised just how well it turned out. (I just got around to posting about this but we made it in the fall.)

Ridiculous Overkill; Stainless Steel Tamper

My brother-in-law Brandt has gone nuts over coffee. He got himself a crazy fancy home espresso machine and an equally nice burr grinder. For a while he was using sub par beans but recently a roaster opened up just across the street from him. After chatting with the owner/roaster and beginning to buy his beans, Brandt has started pulling some creamy delicious shots.

So the other day Brandt was preparing to pull me a show and I noticed that the tamper that came with his fancy machine was far less than fancy. It was totally out of place with all the cool equipment so I decided to machine him a new one. I got a 5" long 2.5" diameter cylinder of solid stainless steel. I've never worked with stainless steel before but I got lots of advise from my machinist friend at work and just started cutting.

The final product is ridiculously heavy and a gross overkill but also so fricking cool that you can barely even believe it. I took it to my neighborhood coffee shop, Tougo, and had Dannel my favorite barista make me a shot with it before I gave it to Brandt.

Gourmet Club - November 2009

Well that didn't go so well.

Tarah and I are part of a Gourmet Club that meets every few months. It's really just 4 couples of self proclaimed foodies that come up with a theme and have a ball eating great food and getting drunk. The meals usually consist of 5 courses with the host making the appetizer and the main dish. Comfort Food was the theme this time, leaving it basically wide open for interpretation. Tarah and I have been having so much fun with the busiati pasta that we wanted to do that for the club; plus it's standard that a dish is practiced and perfected before the club dinner which we've already done with this dish. "We'll just make a couple of small changes so it's more traditional" we said, "we're good at pasta, what could go wrong" we said. So instead of my normal pasta recipe we used a traditional Sicilian recipe with only semolina flour and water. And instead of the cheater method for making the shape we followed the video that I mentioned in my last posting.

The dough felt great and actually the new method of shaping the pasta worked well and was really fun. We learned in the past that the pasta needs to dry out in order to hold its shape during cooking; so we dried the pasta overnight.

After a delicious appetizer of polenta stars toped with a tangy chutney, and an exquisite example of what may be the embodied definition of comfort food, french onion soup, came our dish. We planned ahead and had the water heating before we sat down to the soup. After the soup we salted the water and through in the pasta. 2 minutes "no, I think it's basically dry pasta, it'll probably take just a bit longer" 5 minutes "no sorry it's still hard" 10 minutes then 15 minutes "what the fuck." Finally after 20 minutes in boiling water we removed and served the pasta. Everyone was polite as they discretely curled their tongs back to removed hard bits of pasta from their molars. The reality is I don't know if it would have ever fully cooked. The braised meaty main dish was another out of this world example of comfort food and what better way to end the theme but with warm molten chocolate toped with whipped cream. Overall the meal was great and we ended the night by having a cocktail at Boka (the bar on the first floor of their building).

Paella with Xavi

Our very good friend Xavi from Spain visited us this weekend and we had an incredible time showing him around Seattle. We went out to see Eldridge Gravy - which was a kick ass energy packed show - on Friday night. On Saturday we went to Theo Chocolate in Fremont and down to the Pike Place Market for groceries and to have lunch at Uli's Sausage. I'll digress for just a minute to give a little plug for Uli's. If you haven't checked out Uli's for a while you may not know that they turned what used to be the sausage factory into a nice little eating area where you can get grilled sausages and have beer from the Alpine Brewing Co. Uli's is so fricking great; actually the whole market is just amazing. On a different path of digression; I get annoyed when Seattleites dismiss the Market and proclaim it to be for tourists. I love the market. It is touristy, but that's because it's great. It's one of the last of its kind in the US and a true treasure. I try to walk down to the Market at least a couple times a month. OK enough of my digressions. We got what we needed and headed home to cook up one of the gastronomic highlights of the weekend, seafood and chicken paella. It was done with a lot of Spanish intuition so I tried to take notes as Xavi cooked but this is kind of a rough recipe.


Paella Recipe

ingredients

• Olive oil
  
• 2 dried ancho chilies - with the stem and seeds removed
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 chicken - pieced
  
• ~20 shrimp, shells left on
  
• ~20 calamari, cut into rings
  
• ~20 mussels
• 1 tsp of Chiquilin Food Colourant (optional)
  
• 28 oz can whole tomatoes - lightly puree in blender
• 1 bag of frozen peas
  
• ~3.5 cups paella rice
• ~10 cups of 50/50 chicken stock and water
  

This recipe if for a 22 paella pan. This is the size that conveniently fits on a Weber BBQ. Starting inside on the stove add ~ 1 cup of olive oil to a large frying pan and fry the dried anchos over medium heat until almost burnt. They have done their job and imparted the oil with the necessary flavor so just discard them at this point (keep some that aren't blackened if you want a stronger chili flavor). Next, with the skins still on, fry the garlic cloves until very cooked and starting to blacken. Reserve these. Then fry the bell pepper until it's well cooked and reserve. Now on med-high, fry the chicken with the intention of browning it. It's not necessary to fully cook the chicken since it can finish cooking in the paella pan. The pan is nice and hot now and you can cook the shrimp - with their shells still on - very fast and finally the calamari rings will cook in literally just a flash. Add your canned tomatoes and fry untill reduced and thick. OK now your done inside.

You will have to work out the timing but meanwhile you will have started a nice hot charcoal fire. I used one full chimney of mesquite charcoal plus a couple extra pieces to fill out the grill. Set your paella pan over the fire and add ~ 1/2 cup olive oil and all of your rice. Stir it making a nice even layer over the pan and cook stiring frequently untill the rice begins to smell nice and sweet, a little popcorney. Make a nice uniform layer with the rice; at this point you will not stirr the rice again. Place on top of the rice your chicken pieces and all of the other fried yummies except for the tomatoes. Carefully, but quickly taking care not to burn your rice, add half the stock water mixture. In the remaining stock mixture stir in the tomatoe sauce and add to the paella. Finally add the muscles to the paella pushing then down into the liquid. Now all you have to do is make sure you have an even fire and rotate the pan if necessary and wait. DO NOT STIR. If you are running out of water and the rice is still not done you may need to add a small amount. You want to run out of water just as the rice is finishing and then leave it on the heat for a little while longer to brown the bottom. This crackly bottom is extra yummy.

I hope this is clear enough. If you have questions feel free to ask me.

Kobe Beef Sliders

This is the first time that I've grilled up little sliders. For some reason little sliders are just more fun to eat than regular sized burgers. It's like the sandwich that your mom cut into bite sized triangles when you were a kid. After our sliders we headed over to Gasworks Park for the fireworks. This year there was only the show at Gasworks Park so we worried it would be even more crowded than normal but actually I think there were fewer people this year. The show was great and we had a nice 4th of July.

Pizza Party

We had a successful oven firing and an incredibly good time on the 3rd. The 20 of us made short work of 23 pizzas. After the pizzas I baked 6 baguettes and finally a puffy pancake (Dutch baby) with raspberries.

You can see plans and other details of the oven at the following.
http://farsi-una-pizza.blogspot.com/search/label/Horno

Chinese Onion Pancakes and Strawberry Tart

Dinner tonight was simply excellent. I made Chinese onion pancakes but with a selection of different herbs rather than onions - chives, oregano, sage and rosemary. The recipe came from Jerry Traunfeld's book The Herbal Kitchen. Tarah made a strawberry tart that was described by Steven as possibly the best dessert that Tarah has made. It included a nutty crust, cream and Mascarpone with shaving of chocolate as the center, and fresh strawberries from the farmers' market on top. I love summer and eating outside with our friends.