Smoked Chicken Thighs. Potato Leek Mash.

It is mash potato weather outside, and the atmashphere is doing, wacky, nutty things today. Sometimes, I just want to eat mash potatoes. They make us feel less miserable and cold, as we begrudgingly plod toward winter. Acorn squash serves a similar purpose. I had that special feeling this week, arriving with the early onslaught of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). I used to think it was depression, the normal kind. Predictably, the doctor prescribed heavy intake of mashed potato, a known cure for SAD, and chicken noodle soup. But I had a serious hankering to do some else with chicken, ever since I purchased the smoker. And my flatmate (that's what the British say!) recently retrieved me a lovely gift from Kansas, a bottle of pleasure sauce. There are so many power ingredients listed in the pleasure sauce, that perhaps it should have a more aggressive name, like steven segal sauce, or charles norris catsup, or deranged grizzly bear saliva, or beast essence. Simple math really. Smoker, plus chicken thighs plus pleasure paste = off the bone.

I found some spuds from across the state, near home. They were irish yellow potatoes, from the potato belt of washington, with exactly nothing irish about them. I purchased some organic leeks, because I love the earth, myself, and sasquatch. Leeks are doing it for me lately. So a leek and potato mash is not a new concept, but I wanted make this a food you might serve to visiting alien ambassadors, so I added a bunch of other stuff that make me feel warm, secure, and optimistic about life and the future of the human race. So I added some butter, some heavy cream, some Parmesan cheese, some rosemary, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper and more butter, and then some brie that was hiding in the refrigerators cheese enclave. It was a stick and a half of the butter, and the entire pint of cream. The whole dish was excessive, but if you are going to take the time to boil, saute, and mash, you might as well go over the top, just snapping arms off at the elbow, and adding garlic repeatedly, as if it simply disappears. And I used the whole bag of spuds, but it was still barely a balanced ratio of potato to everything else. Perfect, in other words. Filthy rich, whole ingredients, plenty of dairy, a three headed hydra of dairy products. The whole thing was satisfying, if not embarrassing, to eat. I made so much that I have had many subsequent bowlfuls, two days out. The leeks saute in the butter forever, then the velvety yellow potatoes (skin on) get a rough mashing before the cream and the oil is added. Then the cheese and the salt and pepper get mashed in. The core of the potatoes is still warm enough to integrate the shaved parmesan and the dollops of brie quickly into mixture. And it is a lot of smashing after that. The leeks provide what they normally provide, making this simple potato mash so much better and more interesting that it would have been without them. They are not very egalitarian. A dish without discrimination, traditionally served to the common folk, available to all, cheap, fortifying, and delicious, everyone in this country eats them on holiday (i think the british say that too, say holiday. Ha.) The ingredients for this mash remove it from the lower rung of the socio-gastronomic-economic strata. Brie? Leeks? The luxury of butter, heavy cream, and parmesan arregiano? Well, nearly all of these can be found on a farm, I suppose. They are fantastic, and have a tang from the leeks, which also adds to the naturally rich yellow of the potato.

The chicken was brined in brown sugar and salt for around four and a half hours. I buy thighs because they have the softest, tastiest meat. Thighs are the yin and yang of chicken meat, not quite dark meat, not quite white meat. Basically grey meat. They are also great for stock because they drip so much of themselves when cooked. The thigh meat is secretful, full of chicken flavor secrets. These came from local chickens. After the quick brine, I put them in the preheated smoker, for the ceremonial sweatlodge visit, during which they have a savory revelation, and the future of they're bleak yet delicious afterlife is foretold. I used three pans of cherrywood chips, enough to slightly color, not nearly enough to cook or preserve. Then, they went into the preheated oven, on 325 degrees. I drizzled the pleasure sauce all over them, until they were blanketed in love and fear. I gradually increased the heat over about 45 minutes, hoping to crisp up the skin. The aroma of smoke and bird juices permeates the kitchen, and my clothes. When they looked like the picture on this post, I shut off the oven and let them sit in the chicken thigh's own precious juices, to continue cooking. I made sure to add more pleasure sauce before closing the oven. So wise.

The smokey flavor was perfect, not overwhelming, just a nice complement. The bones fell right out of the bird legs, effortlessly. The baked-in, glazed pleasure sauce was all these delites would ever need. The gustatory experience was religious, as each thigh represented a sacrifice to my own exalted happiness and gluttony. It was also very powerful in that the combination of flavors and spices, the taste of concentrated effort, was all over my fingers and clothes, and mustache. To whom much is given, much is expected. Supply me with chicken thighs and have great expectations. I would not have cooked these differently. It was a testament to time, process, and faith, and I lead a richer spiritual life because of this meal. Hyperbole. But, there were some radical moments of savoriness. Slow cooked meat worship. It was an excellent, insightful dinner, and the perfect cure for barbecue lust, seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, an acronym for gustatory ambivalence.

Anchovies. Jon Bon Jovies.

I read about a recipe the other day involving popeye, superheated olive oil, garlic, and anchovies. It is for bread. It was a snack for early morning harvesters of grapes, a dip or sauce type condiment. The hot olive oil, over time, dissovles the anchovies and melts the mashed garlic. Why don't I ever think about anchovies? This is something that had to get done. I went searching for anchovies. I bought a brand packed in oil, sold by a regional importer whose goods I have trusted. Curious micro filets, pinkish. Not necessarily cheap either. This was all very exciting for me. Trying new ingredients is essential to the gustatory journey. For me, that is also partially how entertainment is derived from cooking. Also useful for expanding the culinary repetoire, unlocking the flavor secrets.

Precisely al dente linguine is a significant pleasure to consume, and a frquent and favorite pasta of mine. I wanted to recreate a dish I watched Giada prepare some months ago, but I wanted to use the anchovies. Pasta is easy, so I went mostly from memory.

Linguine
Lemon
butter
garlic
bon jovies
parsely
salt
pepper
parmesan
shrimp
scallions
capers (why wouldn't you)

I heated the olive about medium, and added the garlic and the anchovies. I turned down after stirring. I chopped the garlic extra fine (Goodfellas style), to speed up the process. Turning the heat down slightly, I added about half of the parsely and scallions, and later, some real lemon juice, about 3/4 of a small lemon.
Then I added a small amount of butter, two or three thin pads off of the knife. By this time, the garlic and the anchovies had completely infused the oil; lemon, light butter sauce.

I added the shrimp last, ensuring that they were relatively dry and completely thawed. They cooked quickly, and lent a distinct shellfish taste to counter the smokey, dense, intense, flavor of the anchovies, and what been a sizable quantity of freshly chopped garlic. Just before the perfectly cooked pasta was going into the pan, I seasoned it heavy with black pepper and very light on the salt.

Having already shaved and showered the parmesan, making it rain all over the place, like I didn't even care, like a sultan, like Edward Scissorhands sculpting cheese, I added the pasta to the moongravy, and turned off the heat. I added capers, parm, and the remainder of the parsely and scallions and very small amount of fresh garlic, and squeezed the quarter of lemon leftover directly onto the mixture. I then mixed it up as thouroughly as possible. Had to ensure that there would no naked strands of linguine. I wanted everything coated, or ensconced in velvety moongravy.

The smell of the pasta was unquestionably funky, distinct, but not necessarily unpleasant, as the garlic remains the heaviest smell, the goliath of kitchen of smells, andre the giant of food perfumes (r.i.p. 'dre; sweet lou). It smelled like something I wanted to enjoy.

The gustatory gospel was again revealed to me, and the prophet was anchovies. If this dish had four ingredients, and those ingredients were linguine, olive oil, anchovies, and garlic, it would still be fantaste-ic. The anchovies give the pasta what pasta needs, what pasta has been missing, a reunion of sorts, with flavors that kick ass. They provide a very deep and heavy flavor, but this sauce is still as light as you want it to be. I didn't really need capers or scallions, or lemon juice for matter, or butter. I would say it didn't need cheese, but that's sacriligious here. And the decisions to include these items have seen no regret. I could not stop eating the stuff, and tried unsuccesfully to graft a fork onto my person just to make things more convenient. Really very delicious, and something that will be revised many times in the near future. I am going to try spinning off of that base sauce of anchovy and garlic.

Anchovies rock and bon jovi also still does something like that, I suppose. Bon jovies. I like the theme from young guns deux. This is the ingredient that, if wielded correctly, has the capacity to create joy. I am looking forward to seeing where the bon jovies will take me in the future. Moongravy is off of the bone delectable.

Chicken Stock, Cold Soup of Potato & Leek, with bacon crumble

Leeks are our friends more often than not. There was a time when I had no notion of leeks whatsoever, who they were, or what they were about. I am not too far removed from that time. But, this year I tried to grow my own, with some success. My dietary habits have drastically changed.
I was thinking about how much fast food I used to eat. In college, I would eat hamburgers from the all-night Zip's, evading what could be have quickly become a series of DUI related incidents, to secure a bathtub of french fries and world renown tarter sauce, and a bag of five cheese burgers. More often than not I was soomehow able to consume the entire purchse, and usually did, with the gnashing nirvana of starving serengeti jackals. For lunch the next day, if I wasn't asleep, I would reinvent the experience at Jerk in the Box with a double jalapeno cheeseburger. These were dark and boring times. But given the chance, I passed on the vernerable Big Tom cheeseburger the other night. This is to say that I have traveled some distance from where I used to be in terms of important health decisions. Not that far. It is both bittersweet & bittersour and sadly, as I age further away from the undergraduate days, though dark and boring they were at times, I will mourn the absence of hamburgers in my life just as I would mourn the death of a well loved family pet. I've almost forgotten about them, as they have been replaced by so many elevated gustatory delights (I'm brining all night with the young Amercians, and cherrywood smoking chicken drumlets and spider pig cutlets tomorrow morning) that I think of burgers now as pedestrian, boring, and daresay it...kind of nasty. I used to enjoy them as the food of the everyman, the people's sandwich, and they are. But even the everyman should not be eating burgers everyday. But, isn't that part of what makes the everyman the everyman, and not the extrodinary man? If I can eat fewer hamburgers, anything is possible. We live in exciting times. The White House lawn has a kitchen garden now that actually gets incorporated into the foodstream. People are hoping stuff and changing things, and I count myself amongst them now. The Dill Clinton hamburger fast is a progressive reversal of policy, yet I still have mustard on my face. I'll give you irreverent:



The picture of chickenstock on this post is included simply to show that I actually made chickenstock just for the potato leek soup. But it was off of the bone, and eventually became the risotto that dares not speak its name. Chickenstock requires another posting altogether.

Well, I saw a recipe whilst trolling the web for recipes, and I saw several interesting meal ideas, but none more so than this potato & leek soup. It was the color of the soup that caught my eye, a bright light green that reminded my of glo-sticks, the contents of which I believe to be poisonous. Bright colors are a defense mechanism in some of nature's creatures, a warning sign to would-be predators, usually saying that yes, I am quite a poisonous thing, and you would not be well served by ingesting me. But, instead of being repelled I took a closer look (another natural impulse), and after examining the ingredients and the instructions, I set about the day's hunting and gathering, and bartering.

After becoming quickly aquainted and subsequently enamored with leeks, each leek is a personal hero of mine, a martyr of flavor, and I respect them. They are all that is right about all things onionesque, a true gift to us all. I shouldn't have to sell it, but it seems to me that leeks are grossly underrated. Leeks are great with anything. Peanut butter & leek sandwich? Perhaps not. Leeks & potato cakes? Served on another planet, absolutely wild. They do what shallots do to food, neatly underlining and creatively supprting ingredients, making a dish stand out. It is that certain something you've been missing in your life. And potatos? What do I know about those potatoes. I am potatoes. I put them in lamb fat. I mash them up with butter and rosemary and heavy cream and salt and pepper, and I always try and use russets from eastern washington. I did for this soup along with big organic leeks from the grocer.
This recipe is not mine, but not really anyone's. I never really measure anyway, and this soup is a forgotten classic. Which partially explains why it takes me so long to make stuff. 'Cause I dropped this, and I dropped that.

The soup is off the bone:

2 cups finely diced raw potatoes
4 tablespoons butter (the real stuff)
6 leeks, cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces (it all gets blended anyway)
3 cups chicken bouillon (so insulted, I made stock)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshy ground black pepper
a dash of nutmeg
11/2 to 2 cups sour cream or heavy cream (sour cream would dominate this. I tried. No. Better still, do 1/2 & 1/2 if worried about about the richness. But that's dumb, why deny the richness?)
Chopped chives (or whatever. I put parsely in the soup when I blended it, and used green onion for garnish. Maybe dill would be right for this too, or tarragon)

Then something like this, but really all you have to do is not burn anything in the pan. Again, not my recipe, but:

Cook the potatoes in salted water to cover until just tender. Melt the butter in a skillet and cool the leeks gently, tossing them lightly, for a few minutes. Add the chicken bouillon and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer the leeks until tender. Add the potatoes to the leeks and the broth and season to taste with salt, papper and nutmeg. Put this mixture in the blender (you will need to blend it in two lots) and blend for 1 minute, or until smooth. Chill. When ready to serve, mix in sour cream or heavy cream. Garnish with chopped chives.

It says chill, but I tried it warm first out of my hungerlust. Incredible. It is a cold soup and a hot soup, and it tastes lusterous no matter how you enoy it. Imagine a seasonal harvest unraveling its collective bounty on your tastebuds. It has a smoove and excellent mouthfeel, thick, a definite moustache painter. The nutmeg extracts the sweetness of the leek, and does wonderous things for the potato, manufacturing a happyness that would be less evident without it. The most appealing aspect is the color, and if ever the was a testament to a less is more appraoch, a call for simpler cuisine, this is the phone ringing. Entirely french in the classic celebrated style; the bright alfalfa color green, the flavor, the pairings of the ingredients are perfect and undisputed. The cream and butter provide the soul, and the simplicity make this dish the most logical soup, the only soup that matters. Or whatever...its just soup, I don't know.

And the following clip is very important. This is youtube's, this is not mine, this is totally random and this explains...so...much...except for why his acting hasn't improved. He's a nebulous emotionless neverbeing from history's chaotic birth. Perhaps he is the cause of history's birth, godfather of time, midwife to the cosmos:

In Praise of Stallone Cuts & Power Cheeses...

The origin of Stallone Cuts:



October 31st Feastival. Lost my mind and my stomach at Trader Joe's, bought an irresponsible quantity of mediterranean delites. The place was so packed, I shared empathy with the peppers forced into the jar of roasted red peppers that I was holding. It reminded me of why I enjoy shopping late at night, in secret, when I make the best decisions and harness the creativity of the night, in a frosty dairy section somewhere at some local food purveyor. Or not. They don't seem keep the vampire business hours I am accustomed to. Does anything good ever happen to anyone between the hours of nine am and five pm?

I was preparing an appetizer of prosciutto, herb'ed groat cheese, roasted red peppers, basil, and capers. These are the modfied Stallone Cuts. They looked fantastic and tasted of what Italy must taste like. Every single one of them was consumed. The pairing of goat cheese and prosciutto was the perfect contrast. Goat cheese is a power cheese, grassy, brite, and generally overwhelming. Can't get enough of it myself. I am not going to stop eating goat cheese until I get enough of it. But, the sweet and subtle, salty prosciutto countered and deliciously subdued the power cheese, the ideal counterpart. Add the capers and fresh basil and roasted pepper, subtract weakness, and you have the simple equation for a unique and ponderous gustatory experience. It left me stammering foodcentric haiku all evening long, dumbstruck. But it was a large affluvial spectrum of flavors, big and expansive, and thus the modified Stallone Cuts seemed to catch people by surprise...methinks it was the goat cheese awakening the non-believers. Cheesus flavor riot. The best part is that the prosciutto is self-adhesive, so there is no need to harpoon the Stallone Cuts with dangerous and wildly expensive toothpicks, the scourge of finger foods, friend of gums.

While I refer to my pesto as

pesto deluxe de speciale

my pesto is always a little different, but still very basic and rudimentary. There are of course the requisite pesto ingredients, namely basil, usually Thai basil. This is an asian deli classic good buy, and tastes more of basil than basil, out basiling other basils. Cheapest pinenuts I can find. I figure little is won or lost on the battlefieled of love and pinenuts. Olive oil, usualy takes me twenty minutes to select a bottle, because is it such an important ingredient in my diet. Salt,cracked pepper (heavy on both), and some parmesan areggiano, best I can afford. From here, I have a list of additonal participants that I usually invite:

--Roasted Red Pepper.
--Sundried tomatoes. Because they are amazing, and taste of the sun.
--Parsely, the original.
--Italian parsely, chopped rough and and thrown in
--Feta cheese. Another power cheese. It is such a strong complement with the herb
flavors, and very satisfying contrast to the basil.
--Scallions provide an undeniable freshness, and another shade of green.
--Shallots. Nothing is too onionesque for me, but I do one or the other (shallots).
--Jalapeno, seeded. Haven't tried that, but why not? Especially with some feta.
--Extra parmesan shaved on top. So nice.
--Cilantro. Undoubtedly my favoite herb. Cilantro makes any pasta better tasting
and more dynamic.
--Little rosemary.
--Kale, thin chop. A greatway to add a crisp to balance the pasta, which should not
be crisp.

I grow parsely, scallions, rosemary, cilantro, kale (pictured above), and basil, all growing adjacent to my taco plantation. An herb garden is an absolute necessity for a gustatory jedi. Herb gardens are culinary tool sheds, and pesto is a prime example of why they exist. Classic is great for basil. I like it simple too. But any of these premutations added at the end of the show are sure to provide you with the change we can believe in feeling.

The last item is hard to even discuss. It reflects my willingness to expand or broaden my skill set, and my mission of administering relentless beatdowns to bland meals. It is all about having an intersting diet where I am more familiar and in control of the food I consume, ideally making my life and diet more interesting, and thus transorming my life and mind into more pleasureable places to inhabit. This dish is very emblematic of why I enjoy doing what I do. Born out of necessity for another pasta dish for the feastival, I recalled how much I enjoy my cousin's wife's baked ziti, and decide to give it a chance with a different approach. Feeling cavalier, I made a power cheese sauce of gorgonzola, half & half, butter and flour and minced garlic. Melting and stirring, smooving, repeatedly, I had it where I wanted it after about thirty minutes. I had placed the drained al dente ziti in a large dish for mixing, along with olive oil, mozzarella cheese, plenty of spicy italian sausage (half cooked, drained mostly), rosemary, salt, cracked pepper, chopped purple kale and parsely from the garden, and some basil, mixing all thoroughly. AT a bubbling temperture, with the sauce at the right consistentcy, it leaves the stove and is poured atop of the pasta. Th intention is to evenly coat each piece of the ziti, but not so that the sauce ends up pooled in the bottom of the dish. If anything, more on top means that a fine, bubbling golden crust can develop on the top of the dish, a dome of power cheese.

Because all of the ingredient are partially cooked, I slow baked it at about 325 to 350 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour, or until the cheese dome forms. It was one of the better dishes I have ever served to anyone. There is a strong gustatory portfolio in this dish. Blue cheese power cheese sauce, smokey and deep, with a cache of tanginess. Off of the bone. Copious amount of rosemary, blue cheese, and savory italian sausage, proved to be an irresistable siren song. It was loud, large, mouthwatering and indulgent, filthy rich and flagrant with flavor. I would not have changed anything. The leftovers were decimated because of the magnetism of the combination of flavors, which pulled me back to the refrigerator repeatedly and with invisible, unsettling force. I'm thinking about how I want more of that and need to make it this weekend. But I have a great recipe for a roasted red pepper soups, and some fresh tomatoes resembling lemons (panzanella), and I wanted to brine and smoked some pork chops. And make pork stock.

All told, there was an interesting tapestry of flavors woven into my moustache.