Recipe: Texas-Style Potato Salad

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers

Texas-Style Potato Salad

A Texas-style potato salad is definitely going to have eggs and yellow mustard in there, and probably some chopped up pimentos. Tastes better the next day, so plan ahead. Makes enough for a neighborhood barbecue (around 12 servings).

Ingredients:
3 lb potatoes, not russets
1 c celery, chopped
½ c onion, chopped
¾ c chopped dill pickle or dill relish
¼ c chopped pimento or roasted red pepper
2 eggs
1 T yellow mustard (a generous squirt)
1 t-1 T cider vinegar (start with a teaspoon, taste and add more if you like)
4 T mayo (or more if you like)
¼ t celery seed
1 t Kosher salt (you may want to add more after tasting the final product)
¼ t ground pepper
1 t sugar
Paprika (optional)

Method: Peel the potatoes*, place in cold water to cover with the raw eggs in their shells** on top, bring to a boil. After potatoes have been boiling 5 minutes remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and transfer to a bowl of cold water. Peel and chop eggs and place in the bottom of a big bowl with everything except the potatoes. When potatoes are just beginning to soften (and not quite fork tender), drain and cool to handling temperature. Cut into large chunks and mix thoroughly with other ingredients. Cool at least 2 hours then correct the seasoning, adding a shake of paprika on top if you like. Tastes better the next day.

*Recently I’ve taken to washing the potatoes but leaving the peels on for extra taste and nutrition. The dressing coats the potatoes pretty well, so picky eaters probably won’t notice.
**The purpose of this operation is to avoid a separate pot for the eggs. If you have hardboiled eggs already, you can use those.

Posted in Recipes, Sides | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Recipe: Dr. Pepper Rice

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Dr. Pepper Rice

Dr. Pepper Rice

Not that you would, but you could. Dr. Pepper Rice is from Gerald Ramsey’s “Morning, Noon and Night Cookbook” (1963) and it is reminiscent of wild rice. 8 servings.

Ingredients:
2 c long grain white rice
3 c Dr. Pepper, flat (I use Diet or Dr. Pepper Ten)
¾ t kosher salt
½ t curry powder
2 T butter
½ c chopped pecans

Method: toast the pecans in a non stick skillet, carefully, until they are just beginning to color and give off aroma; don’t let them burn. Wash and rinse rice according to your preferred method. Combine rice, Dr. Pepper, butter, salt and curry powder in a saucepan and bring to a boil; reduce to a very low simmer and cover; cook 20 minutes. Turn off heat and steam another 15 minutes; toss with toasted pecans and serve.

Note: Gerald Ramsey was the chef at the Southern Methodist University tearoom, a favorite birthday spot for proper young ladies in Dallas. This rice isn’t as weird as you might think; goes nicely with grilled chicken.

Posted in Recipes, Sides | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Recipe: Monterey Tuna Salad

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
MontereyTunaSalad

Monterey Tuna Salad, as sandwich and on a tomato

My best recollection of the sweet tuna salad served at the Fountain Court Café in the Monterey, CA Community Hospital. This cafeteria is so popular that perfectly healthy people from nearby communities flock to eat here; priority seating is given to those who can prove they have a family member in the hospital.

Ingredients:
1 5-oz can tuna
1 T Miracle Whip OR 1 T mayonnaise plus ½ t sugar
2 t sweet relish OR 2 t chopped dill pickles plus ¼ t sugar
¼ t celery seed
1 T chopped onion (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste (just a little)
Beau Monde seasoning (optional)

Method: drain tuna and mix with other ingredients. Serve on sandwich bread or a quartered tomato. (To quarter tomato as shown, cut from the end opposite the stem almost all the way through; unfold flower-style and remove loose seeds and membrane. Down south, we would traditionally add a shake of Spice Islands Beau Monde seasoning on top.)

UPDATE: concerned about mercury levels in tuna? I’m not because I don’t eat it all that often. But as an easy hack, my wife has started making “tuna salad” out of canned salmon–not the bright pink stuff but the paler kind found in natural food aisles. Once the condiments are added, the kids can’t taste the difference.

Posted in Mains, Recipes | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Corned Beef Barbecue!

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Corned Beef Smoke Results

Clockwise from top: smoked corned beef, smoked dills, smoked full sours, smoked Vidalia onion

In honor of my late dad, a WWII vet who loved outdoor cookery, I spent Memorial Day smoking up some truly strange stuff for a corned beef barbecue. Here are the results, on a scale of 5=oh, yeah! To 1=are you kidding me?

Smoked Corned Beef. In my part of the country, brisket can be criminally expensive… often over $5 per pound. Yet that same brisket makes an appearance as corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day at $2 a pound or less. Why not take a corned beef brisket… and cook it on the smoker?

Smoked Corned Beef

Smoked corned beef

I did just that except with an eye of round (making do with what was available out of season). Used my standard brisket method with a brown sugar and black pepper rub (no need for salt obviously), 3 hours in the smoker followed by 3 hours tightly wrapped in foil in a 325 degree oven until falling apart.  Result was tender meat, pink like corned beef, lacking the smoke ring and crust found on a great Texas brisket. As corned beef it was excellent, as a smokehouse product pretty good, I’m giving it a 4=I’d do that again.

Corned Beef Burger

Corned beef burger

Corned Beef Burger. While prepping the meat it occurred to me to cut off a ¼ pound chunk and grind it into a burger which was then pan-fried and served on a bun with cheese and condiments. The taste was ok. The appearance, not so much. Couldn’t get it to brown and the crust had a pink hue even after cooking. 3=one and done.

Smoked pickles. Pickles go with corned beef, right? So let’s smoke them too! A full sour and a kosher dill were placed side by side on the top rack and smoked for 1 ½ hr. They both shriveled noticeably and maybe picked up a bit of smoke flavor, but not worth the bother. Ok for a sandwich, but 2=not gonna do that again.

Vidalia Onion and Pickles, Smoked

Smoked Vidalia onion

Smoked onion. At the very end of the smoke I took an unpeeled Vidalia onion and just tossed it onto the lower rack where I’d just taken out the meat, then added a couple chunks of wood to keep the fire going. 2 hours or so later I had a perfectly steamed onion that fell apart into graceful and delicately smoke-flavored petals when I cut it. No reason not to make one of these every time I smoke. 5=oh, yeah!

Smoked Pickles and Mozzarella

Smoked mozzarella

Smoked mozzarella. This one’s a ringer because I nearly always cut up a pound of cheap mozzarella, toss it into a well-used oven-safe bowl, and let it melt and absorb flavor at the top of the smoker for 1 ½ hours. Today’s was as good as ever, transforming a brick of supermarket cheese into a gourmet item. 5=oh, yeah!

Posted in Something Else | Tagged , | Leave a comment

House brand taste test… cider vinegar!

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Cider Vinegar Samples

The contenders, left to right: Great Value, Heinz, Bragg’s Organic

My last batch of sour slaw looked a little off-white and I realized it must be the cider vinegar: I was near the bottom of a jug of Bragg’s Organic, which not only is unfiltered but comes “with the mother” in case you want to make your own. I’ve always known Mrs. Dewey Goodman would not use such an eco-friendly and probably left-wing product, so it was off to the store for a gallon of good old Heinz.

However, a tour of several local markets turned up no Heinz cider vinegar gallons. White vinegar, yes, but for cider a quart is the largest size. So I bought it but couldn’t resist the gallon of Great Value sitting next to it at Walmart and costing just a few cents more. (As I recall the quart of Heinz was $2.99 and the gallon of Great Value was $3.99.)

Cider Vinegar jugs

Bragg’s Organic, Heinz, Clear Value in retail packaging

It was now time for a taste test. Samples of Bragg’s, Heinz and Great Value were placed side by side and tasters were asked to provide a combined score rating aroma, taste and acidity. This needed to be literally a blind tasting because the vinegars looked different—the unfiltered Bragg’s was muddy as one might expect, and the Heinz was noticeably paler than the Great Value. Since all three had only apples as their ingredient, no added color, this was an ominous sign suggesting more processing of fewer apples.

One taster liked the Heinz the best, the other two placed it at the bottom. We found it astringent and coarse though it did have an apple aroma. The Bragg’s had the best apple aroma and a pleasant taste but was judged overly mild as an acidic ingredient. I voted Great Value at the top and the other two placed it in the middle, making it our overall winner. Nothing special but nothing not to like and the value is undeniable.

Posted in Cooking, Eating, Something Else | Leave a comment

My visit with master baker Jeffrey Hamelman

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Shaping two boules at one time

Jeffrey Hamelman demonstrates his virtuosity shaping two boules at the same time.

Last month I journeyed to the bucolic village of Norwich, VT to attend a workshop at the King Arthur Flour Education Center. The town itself is worth a visit… a peaceful hamlet across the Connecticut River from the beehive of activity at Dartmouth College, with a centuries-old inn (that has a good microbrewery on the premises) and a general store with creaking floorboards once trod by Calvin Coolidge, who lived nearby after his presidency.

prepping wood fired oven

Prepping the wood fired oven we used throughout the class

But I was here for the bread. Specifically, a workshop taught by Jeffrey Hamelman (author of Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes
and one of my general heroes) on baking in a wood fired oven. Among the dozen students I was the only one with no serious plans to build or use a WFO, but no matter. There was plenty of general baking knowledge to be had.

All the students were either professional bakers or serious home bakers, and Hamelman and one of the students had scary looking burns on their arms to

Pizzas baked in the WFO

Pizzas baked in the Wood Fired Oven

prove it. As a result the class moved quickly. We baked a multi-grain sourdough, a flatbread turnover, a magnificent miche and an overnight-retarded pizza dough in the course of a day and a half and we ate as much as we wanted… our own creations as well as delicious pastries brought in from the store/bakery next door.

Slashing diagram for bread

There are many ways to slash a loaf before baking.

I got reinforced on some handling and shaping techniques, and learned some new ones: how to throw a pizza (it’s like tossing a Frisbee straight up in the air using both your hands, then catching it) and a better way of shaping my boules (keep rounding and tightening the ball of dough till bubbles from the fermentation appear on the surface, eager to burst through). I also learned that I am fortunate to have the northeastern supplier of King Arthur Flours in bulk (including some very esoteric varieties) right in my little town of Saratoga Springs, New York.

By bulk, I mean 50# bags. I can see lots of baking in my future, and will write about it here. Meanwhile, here’s the overnight pizza dough recipe.

Posted in Food Heroes | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Recipe: Overnight Pizza Dough

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Pizza made in KAF WFO class, using this dough

Pie made with overnight pizza dough in Jeffrey Hamelman’s Wood Fired Oven class

Adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman at King Arthur Flour. Unlike Pizza D’oh, overnight pizza dough a classic Neapolitan crust with nothing but flour, water, salt and leavening. Makes four individual pizzas (approximately 8 inch diameter).

Ingredients:
500 g all-purpose flour
340 ml water at 75 degrees F
1 t salt
½ t active dry yeast

Method (using Kitchenaid or other planetary mixer; the dough is a bit gloppy to mix by hand): Add all ingredients to bowl. Mix on first speed 3 minutes, scraping down the sides as needed to incorporate all the flour. Rest (autolyse) 20-30 minutes. Mix on second speed 5 minutes until gluten is moderately developed.

Bulk ferment one hour. Preshape lightly into a ball and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

One hour before final shaping, remove the dough from refrigerator and divide into four balls. To form each pizza press with the heel of your hand to make a disk approximately 4” across then expand this either by pressing outward on the edges or by tossing the pizza (or a combination) to a finished diameter of 8” or so. The thinner the better, but don’t make it so thin that holes appear. (If they do, patch them with dough from a thicker part of the pizza.)

Place the pizza dough directly on a silicon baking pad, add toppings as desired, then transfer the pizza on its pad to a preheated pizza stone or cookie sheet up to 500 degrees (easy safe way). Or, form the pizza on a peel with lots of cornmeal underneath, add toppings as desired, slide back and forth to test; if there are any sticky spots lift the edge of the pizza and toss more cornmeal underneath; transfer by sliding from the peel directly onto a pizza stone or grill (living dangerously but professional way).

NOTE: “moderately developed gluten” means that you can pull on the dough and it will thin out to the point that you can see light through it (“gluten window”) rather than tearing. If it tears at this stage it is likely to tear when you stretch it into pizza so give it more kneading/development time.

Posted in Baking and Baked Goods, Mains, Recipes, Something Else | Tagged | Leave a comment

Recipe: Sautéed Fiddleheads

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Sauteed Fiddleheads

Sautéed fiddleheads

I ran into some nice fiddleheads last weekend at a local market in Vermont. I used a few on a pizza and sautéed the rest. Serves 4 as a vegetable side dish.

Ingredients:
1 lb fiddleheads
2 T butter or olive oil
1 T chopped garlic
Kosher salt to taste

Method: Boil unwashed fiddleheads 10 minutes, drain and cool with cold water. Cut off any brown ends and remove brown papery bits that may cling to the heads. Saute garlic in butter or olive oil till just beginning to color, add fiddleheads, cook until heated through, add salt to taste.

Comment: Fiddleheads are the tightly curled ends of ferns before they unfurl. You want heads that are tight with a minimum of brown stuff. Most recipes say they “taste like asparagus” which isn’t true. The texture is kind of like asparagus but the flavor is a simpler green chlorophyll taste which feels and looks like springtime. Also, if you’re harvesting yourself (and know which kind to look for, with the big single violin-scroll heads like the picture) the top parts of the stem are just as good.

The harvester advised me to boil them 10 minutes to get rid of unspecified bad chemicals. That’s way too long. If you’re going to use them in another prep, just bring them to the boil, blanch one minute, drain. To cook through, 5 minutes will do it. Further research suggests a toxin called ptaquiloside is responsible for the occasional reports of gastric distress after eating fiddleheads, but it dissipates in the presence of heat. So go ahead and give them that 10 minutes, or 5 if you want to live dangerously.

Posted in Recipes, Sides | Leave a comment

Taste Test: In-N-Out Animal Style vs Texas Burger

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Two Burgers

Texas Style on the left, Animal Style on the right

As a native Texan, I believe two things about a burger. #1, it has to have mustard. #2, it’s all about the vegetables. A generous amount of properly prepped lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle will compensate for a thin leathery patty, but a juicy and oversize patty will never make up for measly condiments no matter how good the meat. And it does not have Thousand Island dressing which makes the burger a gooey mess.

I went to school in California’s San Gabriel Valley, near In-N-Out’s original location, so I was exposed to this now-iconic burger earlier than most folks. (A colleague had a meeting at In-N-Out’s corporate headquarters, in Azusa, and reported that their “that’s what a hamburger is all about” theme music was piped into the board room.) I found the burger was pretty good, but it needed some tweaks. The Thousand Island dressing had to be replaced with mustard, we needed pickles, and some extra onion wouldn’t hurt. Luckily, the In-N-Out folks are very tolerant of mods like this.

Well, the other day I mentioned to my friend and fellow blogger Daniel Berman that I was headed to San Francisco and my first gustatory stop would be the In-N-Out on Fisherman’s Wharf. He asked me if I would be ordering Animal Style and I explained my preference. But it occurred to me I really should do a taste test.

Animal Style halfway done

Animal Style, halfway eaten

Animal Style is one of those urban legends which really does exist… the not-so-secret “secret menu” which were requested by at least half the diners on this foggy night. You can’t find it on their website (the many food articles that give a link now come up with dead air) but it’s programmed into the cash registers. An Animal Style cheeseburger specifically has grilled onions, pickles, and a patty that’s been exposed to some mustard on the griddle. (They squirt it on top as it’s grilling.) It also has Thousand Island dressing.

Texas style, halfway done

Halfway through my Texas style, still crisp and good!

The result? Absolutely no question my version is better though I encourage you to do your own test. Putting the mustard right on the bun (which has been lightly toasted) allows the flavor to develop. And the onions have to be raw and plentiful. You need that crunch and that jolt of the sulfur compounds to set off the coolness of the tomato and the crisp of the lettuce. Sauteed/grilled onions lose their edge in taste and weigh down the burger; I want it light and crisp so I can eat several of them.

My “in progress” photographs say it all. Halfway through, the Animal has devolved into a mélange, its individual components no longer distinguishable. While the Texas style remains a symphony of tastes and components including crisp, spicy and fatty.

So order it this way: “extra onions, pickles, mustard instead”. You will thank me. Bonus tip: In-N-Out now has packets of hot pickled peppers under the counter. Ask them to toss in a couple with your order.

Posted in Eating | Leave a comment

Recipe: Peanut Butter Sandwich with Cheese and Onion

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Burnt My Fingers
Peanut butter, cheese and onion sandwich

Peanut butter, cheese and onion sandwich

Bored with PBJ? Try this peanut butter, cheese and onion concoction that was introduced to me by my college roommate Elliot. It’s filling, gives you lots of protein and fiber, and the tastes complement each other surprisingly well.

Ingredients:
2 slices whole grain bread
Peanut butter, good quality not Skippy
2 or 3 slices of sweet onion such as Vidalia
2 or 3 slices sharp cheddar cheese

Method: spread peanut butter thinly on both slices of bread, add cheese and onion, eat.

Posted in Mains, Recipes | 1 Comment