Bye bye blogger

Hello followers,
I realize that this blog has been left for all but dead. I've decided to leave Blogger and start a Word Press blog -- follow the GTK going-ons here.
Peace,
Marcelle

GTK 1 photos!

Photobucket Album

GTK 2: Ire and brimstone

The second GTK test kitchen featured a menu that, in hindsight, I decided to name "Ire and Brimstone" because it featured recipes that were 1. hot as hell and/or 2. sinfully rich. That, and I decided to make the dinner a theme party: dress as your alter ego of ill repute, which seemed to make the menu's name an appropriate fit.
Here's what I made:
Buffalo Mac n' Cheese
Seitan Pepper Steak Roll-Up
Tutu's Butterleaf Salad with Mustard Vinaigrette
Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Pudding with Nutella and Hazelnuts

I'll post the entirety of the above recipes soon...for now, here's a nibble...

Buffalo Mac n' Cheese
This is "buffalo" in two senses -- I use buffalo mozzarella and buffalo sauce. I've always liked the combination of blue cheese and hot wings, so I decided to make a mac n' cheese heavily studded with gorgonzola and bathed in the kicky goodness of homemade buffalo sauce, cooled by buffalo Mozzarella and cream cheese. I'm spoiled, since I live in Wiscosin, and I even found a Buffalo Jack cheese, which I also added to the pot. If you don't have the luxury of a Woodman's dairy aisle near you, you can use whatever you'd like -- muenster, fontina, gruyere and provolone would be nice alternatives.

1.5 lb pasta (macaroni, or your favorite variety)
3 c. half and half
2 eggs
1 lb gorgonzola
24 oz cream cheese, softened
1 lb buffalo mozzarella (cube half, cut other half into rounds 1/4" thick)
8 oz Buffalo Jack, shredded
salt to taste
dash paprika and cayenne

Buffalo sauce:
3 sticks butter, melted
8 oz. Louisiana hot sauce

Pre-heat oven to 375 degress. Parboil pasta (aboot 4 minutes, not quite al dente). Make buffalo sauce by melting butter and mixing in hot sauce. Blend cream cheese withabout 3/4 of the buffalo sauce. Reserve rest of sauce to spread on top of mac n' cheese.

Beat eggs, stir in half and half, blend in cream cheese mixture. Stir in cubed mozzarella and jack. Combine cheese mixture with pasta in a casserole dish or cast iron skillet. Salt to taste and sprinkle top with paprika and cayenne. Spread remaining half of mozzarella (rounds) on top of pasta, cover top with remaining buffalo sauce.

Bake until bubbly and slightly crusted, about 40 min.


Tutu's Butterleaf Salad
This is the salad that my gradmother used to make for us when we visited her. I've made some slight adjustments, but it's hers in spirit.

2 heads butterleaf lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1/2 red only, thinly sliced into half-moons
8 boiled eggs, sliced

Dressing:
1/4 c. red wine vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
1 TBS fresh ground pepper
1 tbs dry mustard
salt to taste

The seitan pepper steak roll-up needs some tweaking. It looked great but it was way undercooked when served.
The banana bread pudding recipe will be posted shortly.

GTK 1: "Eat Your Soul Food" recipes,recap, and review

Here is a run down of the first GTK menu, selected recipes in progress, back-stories, and self-assessment notes.

Waffle-Battered Fried Chicken:
This recipe was inspired by Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles in LA. I used to go to the location on Olympic, and it took just one look at those flickering hot pink neon lights and the bouncer at the door to know that it was love at first sight. I would probably do morally compromising acts to bring the chain to the Midwest. My twist on the chicken and waffles paradigm is recombination. You can use your favorite waffle recipe -- I'm not going to fix what's not broken, but I am insisting that it is possible to make chicken and waffles even better...roll it all up into one delightful fried explosion in your mouth.

• 6-7 lbs bone-in chicken pieces -- breasts, drumsticks, whatever you like
  
• half gallon buttermilk
• half gallon oil, or enough to fill your favorite pot 2-3" deep
• 2 cups all purpose flour, for dredging
  
• Waffle recipe of your choice. The one I used was published in Gourmet magazine (1996):

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 large eggs, beaten lightly
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a small bowl, melt and cool butter and whisk in eggs and buttermilk. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir until just combined. Set aside waffle batter until chicken is ready to be fried.

The night before, rinse chicken and brine in buttermilk: place the chicken pieces in a strong ziplock bag or tupperware container and cover with buttermilk. Let it sit in the fridge for 12-24 hours. Ready to make some fried chicken? Heat oil over med-high heat. You can test to see if it's hot enough by sprinkling a few drops of water in the oil -- it should pop. Drain off the buttermilk and put brined chicken in a bowl. Put flour in a separate bowl and dredge chicken pieces in flour. Here's where I had to toy with cooking methods. I originally single-dipped the waffle-battered chicken and fried it. The batter fell off the first time because the oil wasn't quite hot enough. Once the oil was good to go, I had a problem getting the chicken to cook all the way through without the batter burning, particularly breast pieces. One way around this would be to bake or fry the chicken first until slightly undercooked. Breasts will take about 7 minutes on each side to cook by deep frying, small pieces a few minutes less. I served the finished product with maple syrup and a country style sausage gravy. Again, you can use your favorite recipe -- the key is to double-dip in syrup and gray. Trust me.
Tokyokel Greens
This dish was inspired by a Japanese spinach salad called goma ae, which is traditionally made with sesame oil and sesame seeds. I wanted to go for a southern-inspired menu, and so I decided to modify the salad by using peanuts and peanut oil, while keeping some of the Asian flavors present to make this into a fusion dish.

• 4 bunches of fresh spinach
• 1/4 c seasoned rice vinegar
  
• 2 TBS peanut oil
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 2 tsp Tabasco
• 1/2 c. chopped raw white onion
• 2 TBS sesame seeds, toasted
• 1/4 c. crushed peanuts, toasted

Rinse and chop ends off of spinach. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Boil spinach for 3-4 minutes, until wilted (may need to do a few batches, or two pots of water). Remove spinach and shock in a large bowl of ice water. Drain thoroughly -- squeeze out as much excess water as possible when cool enough. Set aside. Put peanuts in a ziplock bag and squeeze out the air. Seal and gently crush peanuts with a rolling pin or something heavy. Heat a dry skillet over med-high heat. Dry roast seeds and peanuts for a few minutes, stirring frequently -- about 2-3 minutes -- until golden and fragrant. In a bowl, mix Tabasco, oils, and vinegar together. Add spinach, seeds, peanuts and chopped onion. Mix thoroughly with your hands. Serve chilled or room temperature.

When I made this the first time, I forgot to shock the spinach. The big reason for shocking the spinach (aside from the fact that it sounds kind of cool) is that the spinach will keep cooking and what you'll end up with is a drab mushy lump of green stuff. Shocking the spinach preserves the bright green color and keeps the spinach from cooking beyond the point at which you remove it from the boiling water. I also could've drained the spinach more. The water in the spinach really diluted the dressing, and so I wound up redraining it and reapplying the dressing. You can press the spinach with some paper towels against a collander, or work with small handfuls and squeeze the living daylights out of it.

Ba'can Pie
This started off as the recipe that scared me the most. I came up with it out of the blue. No particular inspiration except for the fact that I've been following some of the bacon desserts that have been popping up and coninced myself that combining bacon, bourbon and pecan pie would be amazing. Or a disaster. It turned out to be a favorite on both nights despite the potentially odd combination of ingredients. I used a nitrite-free bacon (Wellshire dry-rubbed center cut bacon).

Filling:

• 4-5 slices of bacon, slightly undercooked and chopped; reserve bacon grease
  
• 1 1/2 c. pecans
• 1/2 c. maple syrup, plus 2 TBS
  
• 1/2 c. light corn syrup
• 1 c. sugar
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 TBS bourbon (I used Maker's Mark)
• 2 TBS warm bacon grease
  

Cook bacon in skillet until slightly underdone. Chop into small pieces and set aside. Drain bacon fat and reserve 2 TBS (warm) and chill the rest to use in the crust.
In the same pan, add pecans, bacon pieces and maple syrup. Heat over med until toasted and slightly candied (3-5 minutes). Stir constantly to keep from burning.
In a bowl, beat eggs, and other liquid componants. Stir in bacon and pecans. Pour into crust and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes, until crust is golden and filling is firm. Half-way through, brush with equal parts maple and bourbon.


Crust:

• 1 1/4 c flour
• 6 TBS chilled butter, cubed
• 2 TBS chilled reserved bacon grease
• 3 TBS ice water

Put flour in a bowl. Add butter and bacon grease and mix with hands until crumbly and fat is well distributed. Slowly mix in water. Do not overwork. Shape dough into a small disk, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Roll out dough between sheets of wax paper -- should be about 1/8" thick. Carefully lift off of wax paper and place into a 9" pie pan. Crimp edges and add filling.

Grand Opening of the GTK

The first GTK event was held on Th. Feb. 12 -- Linda Falkenstein of the Isthmus was kind enough to give it some press. Thanks to Linda for attending and withstanding our crazy kitchen antics. Check out her article here.
I featured waffle-battered fried chicken with maple-sausage gravy, grits, "Tokyokel greens", and ba'can pie; the same menu was repeated on Sun. Feb. 15.
My next (private) test kitchen will be Sat. Feb. 21. I'll be dipping into the frozen lake for the polar plunge that morning (if you're so inclined, you can support my team, "No Riff-Raff") and coming home to make buffalo mac n' cheese with buffalo mozzarella and a hot-wingsesque fire sauce.
The first public test kitchen will be a Sunday brunch on March 15 at the Wil-Mar Center, 11am. I'll be featuring hot pastrami eggs benedict on rye English muffins with Colman's mustard bearnaise sauce. $10 at the door, seating limited to 15 people. Email me at gastropacalypse@gmail.com to reserve your spot!
I will be posting recipes, self-assessments, and photos soon. Work calls.
Special thanks to my guests, who doubled as guinea pigs and rockstar workhorses: Jen Clausen (menu art -- see Isthmus link for photos); Vivian Lin (host on Feb. 12), Bri Deyo (camerawoman/health inspector), Katie Lynch (muscle queen of set-up), and Sid Heezen, Sarah McCoy, Annafuckinwyatt, Jason Kauffold, Mel Mossing, and Samaa Abdurraquib for providing feedback and helping with all the little things that made the kitchen happen.

Blob, blob, blob, pecan pie

My "art director/quality control officer" called me today about what exactly a ba'can pie looks like. The answer is, I don't really know. And that's what is going to make this dinner so much fun. I won't know until the day of. But I know it will look vaguely like a pecan pie. With bacon.
What will the rest look like? Fried chicken: crunchy brown blob, spinach: wilted green blob, grits: mushy white blob.
Summary of illustrations (which are going to rock, btw!): blob, blob, blob, pecan pie. I have given explicit instructions that I better be able to see the finger prints on the thumb-pressed pie crust and that each and every line in the pecans should be rendered with staggering detail or the little children will pay.
Please don't call child services, I am only kidding.:) The menu design is in the works and we're serving up a little dark humor as the amuse bouche.
Today I am creating the recipe mock ups. It's a bit like trying to design a science experiment in the sense that there is a desired outcome but I am only making educated guesses about how to best produce them. I'm also going to conduct some "research" on techniques and variations associated with the ingredients I'm using. More to follow.

Menu: Grand Opening on Feb. 12

This is eat-your-soul-food, kids. In all seriousness, I LOVE regional US cooking and southern/soul food is pretty high on my list of favorites. There was a chain that I used to go to in LA called "Roscoes Chicken and Waffles". I still dream about that place and if I could manage it, I would hire Big Mama to come to my opening to tell people to get their elbows off the table and finish their food. Roscoes is great. I love chicken. I love waffles. And then I thought, they'd be a superfood if I could only combine them. And that's what I'm going to do.

Entree:
Waffle-battered fried chicken with big bird gravy
Double fried chicken smothered in maple-emu sausage gravy

Sides:
Grits n' Sass
Grits. And sass.

Tokyokel greens
Japenese-southern style spinach salad with peanut dressing

Dessert:
Ba'can pie
Pecan pie with bacon and bourbon