Recently in flavor Category

out for my friday walk, i pondered what i would do with the skinless chicken thighs in the fridge. i decided i wanted a sticky sweet glaze. i had lemons. so i figured i'd to a sweet/sour thing with lemons and honey. unfortunately, i didn't know if i had honey. and the lemons are meyers. and i have no idea how to do a fry-pan glaze.

but that didn't stop me. i thought a little more and realized i had, if not honey, then cane syrup. and while meyers are too sweet, i had a lime. and if i'm gonna use 2/3 the ingredients of a ti' punch, why not just make a ti' punch in the pan?

so that's what i did. i cubed the chicken thighs, did my best (not good enough) to sear them in hot butter/corn oil. then i deglazed the pan with a double shot of rhum blanc de martinique. it wasn't boiling off quickly enough for me so i set it on fire. twice. on purpose! then i squeezed a couple of lime wedges into the pan, and dropped them in (ti' punch style). at last, i doused everything with some cane syrup and stirred it a bit to caramelize things. salt, pepper, finishing salt, and that was it.

we both agreed the chicken itself wasn't great, and the sauce didn't work at all once it cooled. but while it was hot? it was like a chickeny ti' punch. a total success. i won't say i'd make this recipe this way again, but it MIGHT make both a good marinade and a good barbecue sauce for grilled chicken. it's not often i make a sauce that comes out exactly as i was hoping. this time, i surely did.

my personality, like frank's black, is my gift, and my curse.

i am not satisfied with "it basically works" or "good enough". i crave perfection. it is why i enjoy video games like "demons souls", and my all-time favorite, "planescape: torment". both games are the D&D video game equivalent of "groundhog day": you die, and die, and die again until you get things just perfect, then you win.

knowing about my quest for perfection, I gave away Silvia, my espresso machine, a while ago. silvia offered endless opportunity for the quest to perfection. i could play with her all day long and occasionally get the perfect cup of coffee -- the legendary God Shot. but as my hobbies multiplied, i found that i didn't want to spend all day chasing a shot. i wanted to have the shot and get on with things. that just wasn't happening with silvia, and also, espresso makes an unbelievable mess in the kitchen.

but i missed having espresso. so i decided that in 2012 i'd get a new machine. i did my research last year: what was the state of the art? it turned out, to my surprise, that the most excellent machine for me was the same machine I was lusting after in 2006 and 2007: the Quick Mill Andreja Premium. In 2011 my espresso knowledge was woefully out of date, but I did a smart thing: I remembered that I knew everything there was to know back in 2007, and if Andreja was my choice then, and there wasn't anything new on the market, then Andreja was the machine for me. So I ordered it. It arrived yesterday.

I went out and bought some beans at my local coffee shop, because I was woefully underprepared -- I did not have fresh espresso beans ready. That turned out to be a good thing: I wasted a half pound of commercial beans getting my grinder "dialed in" -- that is, adjusted so that it produced the proper size coffee grounds for my purposes. And then, just when I got the grind to the point where Andreja produced the proper 2oz shot in about 25 seconds, I tasted the coffee.

Man, did it suck. Bleh!

Fortunately, last night, I roasted a half pound of Sweet Maria's Moka Kadir blend, to about a Full City+, a little light for espresso, maybe. Certainly, way too fresh for espresso. Coffee, after roasting, gives off CO2 for a couple of days. If you put really fresh coffee into an espresso machine, it tends to gush out uncontrollably as the gas release is accelerated by the brew process. But I was desperate for a decent shot out of my shiney new toy. So I went for it.

The first two shots choked the poor dear. I had ground the beans too fine, and no water was able to get through. Still, Andreja handled it like a champ, and didn't complain. I apologized and adjusted my grind. This was the sort of thing I hated about espresso: always adjusting, never tasting.

Then I pulled the third shot. Third time's the charm. Holy cow.

I did almost everything wrong that third time: my grind was still too fine, my tamp wasn't level (I have a single spout portafilter handle, and the spout is off-center, making it very difficult to get a level tamp. fortunately, my new tamp stand will be here soon :D), likely the machine wasn't at the optimal temperature.

None of that mattered. Good beans + reasonable approximation of good technique + Andreja = awesome shot. Perhaps not a God Shot, but so close to a Silvia god shot, with so many screwups, that my mind was blown. I'm still shocked at how great that shot was, with so many errors on my part.

I think I'm on to something here. I wanted effortlessness, and I've got it. It still makes an unbelievable mess (in the very literal sense of the word, unbelievable) and exposes all sorts of problems in my kitchen layout and lighting. But with very little effort, my coffee knowledge is rewarded with amazing espresso, and not endless tweaking frustration (this is, of course, making the big assumption that my next shot will be as good as the one I'm blabbing about now!)

For your viewing pleasure, meet Andreja:

andreja and her support crew have taken over part of the kitchen. hops hasn't complained yet, and once she starts steaming milk, and eventually, i bet, making americanos, she'll be happy for the coffee bar.

i wanted shiney. andreja is shiney. good thing i had a shirt on when i took this picture

andreja is ridiculously large. i thought silvia was large, andreja is way bigger. forget about under-cabinet. t-mobile G2 for scale.

ingredients:
large chicken breast, pounded
extra virgin olive oil
butter, don't skimp
3 hearty sprigs of fresh rosemary
fresh cracked pepper
(optional) aleppo pepper flakes
salt
finishing salt

in a heavy bottomed uncoated pan over medium heat, melt the butter and mix in the olive oil. fry a sprig of rosemary, add the pepper and the pepper. remove rosemary, turn the heat up to high, add the chicken breast. bring the breast up to temperature, lower heat back to medium. once the breast has formed a delicious heavy maillard crust, turn the breast. salt and pepper and pepper the chicken. lay remaining rosemary upon the breast, cover and cook till finished.

halve the breast, plate with the rosemary, sprinkle with finishing salt. pair with a carneros pinot noir and fresh broccoli.

serves TWO, if you know what i mean.

pics and recollections from guadeloupe and marie galante, updated sporadically and without fanfare.

yesterday, as fate would have it, i had my usual breakfast, and drove to mt. tam to meet with friends for a hike. through the magic of miscommunication, the friends showed up to meet us for breakfast and a hike.

not wanting to be the guy who sits at the table making everyone else feel nervous and fat because he's not eating, i politely ordered a full breakfast, which i ate, even the crumbs. that puts my total breakfasts consumed yesterday at two, a personal best.

later that day, inspired by my dual breakfasts, dinner became an event with such poorly defined boundaries that i think i am still in the process of its execution.

over the weekend in MO, we had a couple of martinis. we found a bar called "the drink" that had a martini glass on the logo, and sure enough, they had two whole different gins to choose from! both choices sucked.

tonight i made some at home, using a mixture of leftover north shore 11, leftover blade, and dolin blanc vermouth.

holy cow this tastes delicious, so very unlike the rubbing alcohol we drank in waynesville.

yum.

courtesy of france, dragers, california, and very likely mexico.

standing in line at mr. pickles, i overheard a conversation (not with difficulty) between the sandwich artisans and a guy who was probably a regional manager. the large menu has 25 numbered sandwiches, but the paper to-go menus are already showing #26, a not-yet-launched addition to the lineup. the artisans were lamenting that people were already ordering the 26, only to be let down when they discovered it couldn't yet be made.

so of course, as soon as it was my turn to order, i put on my poker face and ordered a #26. the poor dude was of course thrown for a loop, but i didn't leave him hanging long before admitting i was kidding. we all thought it was a pretty good joke. as he made my #19, i looked at the paper menu. #26 is to be a pulled pork sandwich. they all said it was great when they tried the samples, and i bet it was. i paid for my sandwich and drove to work.

in the elevator, with nothing else to look at, i looked at my sandwich. on the paper was a big =), and above that, it said "#26".

i laughed out loud in the elevator, har har har! fortunately, i had tipped well. =)

lost another pound this week. if i'd had a bag of doritos last sunday, it coulda been 3. took the bro out for french/moroccan food last night. i've decided that that place is better for lunch than dinner. at lunch they have the greatest croque madame i've ever had, though i haven't been to france. at dinner, they have some really good fois gras (growing up i never would have guessed i'd eat so much fois gras...) and some very interesting moroccan wine, but their lamb tagine was unbalanced and chewy, and their chicken couscous looked bland.

still, we're likely going back, and one of these times we're going to let on that we kinda speak french.

trying out my cowon, who knew that pink floyd went so well with coffee and bananas?