Episode 6 Putting your stock in Chicken (or Beef or Vegetables)

I got a bit of a blessing last week and so I was able to come up with something to celebrate Fat Tuesday. After trolling the internet for ideas I decided to do a jambalaya.  Now I will tell you that in this last year I have taken up self education myself about the goings on in the kitchen I will admit a large part of what kept me out of the kitchen was the illusion that cooking is hard. What I have discovered is that cooking is a lot easier when you approach it the same way you should approach everything else, with a plan.

Now I am not saying that cooking does not take skill, everything in this world takes skill from pole dancing to picking up loose men on the street (or women for that matter) so some will naturally be better than others but most folks get just a little intimidated at the idea of messing up a recipe. Well I have succeeded as many ties as something has gone wrong and look I am still here to type about it.

But back to Jambalaya and things I have learned. Before you pull out a pot or turn on the stove you need to do your prep work. Prep work as I discovered from watching Chef Conway can take a couple hours to a whole day depending on your menu. I have taken this lesson the heart to the point where I try to have everything prepared ahead of time including spices. Luckily we have enough bowls and containers and such in the house that everything can go in something.

So first you need 4 cups of chopped onions, 2 cups of chopped celery, 2 cups of chopped green onions, 2 cups of green bell peppers, Chop up 1 ½ pounds of chicken breast and 1 ½ to 2 pounds of sausage.   Trust me having all this chopped and ready makes cooking so much easier not just in cooking but in clean up. So go ahead and chop, I will wait here til you get back……

All Done? Good ok let’s begin. First you need a big old pot, one of those granny pots that she threw everything in that looked like you could stick your whole arm in and not hit the bottom. Into that big ole pot pour in ½ cup of vegetable oil and let it warm up on med high heat. Now while that oil is warming up season your chicken pieces with salt, pepper, ½ tsp of garlic powder and ½ tsp of onion powder then  add your chicken to the pot and brown it up. This should take no longer than 8 to 10 minutes but make sure you flip those pieces to make sure it’s all brown. Then add the sausage and let it all cook for about 6 minutes. After six minutes pour all that meat in a bowl. I know it smells great but fight the urge to sample I SAID FIGHT IT!!!!!!

Staying with that med high heat add a drop more oil, really just enough to cover the bottom of the pot to prevent scorching and add your onions, celery, green peppers, and 1 tbsp of minced garlic (see you didn’t have enough time to do all that chopping once we started) and stir in the pot for 7 to 10 minutes. Everything should have a bit of a tint to it at this point now you add 5 cups of chicken or vegetable stock.

I got to stop the recipe at this point and talk about stock hence the name of this entry. Every Saturday or Sunday morning Reggie gets up and makes chicken stock. We have a bag we keep in the freezer that gets all the left over vegetable bits that don’t get used in the food over the course of the week along with any chicken bones from chicken we had over the course of the week (we eat a LOT of chicken). I will get if not his, a simple stock recipe and post it. You can get stock from the store but I am just gonna be honest it just aint the same. First the store stuff is LOADED with salt. I think the last stock I bought to augment what we had in the house had a count of 510 mg of sodium and that was one of the lowest I could find. Now as anyone who has read more than two entries knows I am not all about the health, but that is a lot of salt! Yes making your own is a little time consuming but well worth it taste wise and just cause Damn that is a lot of salt!

Ok so add the 5 cups of homemade stock all those meats you have been fighting from sampling...ok go ahead you deserve it one piece of each….

A Tbs. of the following Season Salt, Oregano, & Thyme

2 Tbs. of Italian Seasoning, and Old Bay.  Ok for those of you not near the water, Old Bay is a seasoning used in the south. I have yet to go in a house in Baltimore that didn’t have it. I am not even sure what the equivalent of it is anywhere else cause I never saw it in Chicago. I will put that on my too do list.

Anyway put the lid on and bring to a boil.

Once she has a good angry boil going on add 5 cups of rice to the pot replace the lid and reduce the heat so you get a slow simmer. After about 10 minutes take a long handle spoon and turn the rice. Get down in the bottom and bring all that up to the top. Cook for another 15 minutes. Uncover stir in green onions and sprinkle with parsley.

That is it! Your done. Now if it’s just one ore two of you, well you got good eating for a few days, you can even freeze some. My pot lasted about 12 hours but there are four healthy grown men up in here.

Episode 5 Your sweetness is my weakness!

Sorry for the delay, my HP computer turned out to be defective. HP is selling bad juju. Anyway we are here to celebrate the love and the food.
I have been experementing with different flavors of biscuits. A friend suggested I try Sweet Potato flavored biscuits. Well I did not get to make them for an ONYX meeting I was going to but the day I got home, armed with my new rollling pin, I went at it.

First you buy a couple of nice sized Sweet Potatoes for mashing. now for the record I had never made mashed potatoes from scratch before. Any mashed I made before came from a box or premade ( which I am quickly taking a dislike to when it comes to everything). So for those who like me are new to this, DO NOT THROW THE WHOLE POTATO INTO THE POT!!!! Which I did before deciding to check a few recipes. First wash the potato off then peel it then cut it into small pieces. Throw the pieces into a pot and let boil for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes drain the pot and put it back on the stove. Then you add one whole stick of butter (YES!!!) and you take a spoon and you mash! MASH like you have never mashed before. In about 5 minutes you wil have a good sweet potato mash going.

When you taste it you will get a hint of sweetness but if you need a little more you can add honey or syrup. Then give it about a hour to cool off. I know I know it smells great and you want to dive in but sometimes the main ingredient of alchemy is patience.

Set your oven to 350 and let it heat up. Mix 1 cup of flour with 1/4 tsp of salt and 11/2 tsp of baking powder. As always when I am working with flour I like to run a wire whisk thru it a few times. Get a little air in there and it combines all the dry ingredients a lot better. Then add 3 tbsp of vegetable oil, 1/3 cup of milk. I like to use buttermilk when making biscuits but whole milk works just as well. It does not taste that different. Give everything a quick turn around stir with a spoon, literally just one quick turn, then add 3/4 of a cup of mashed sweet potatoes. Now stir it all together into a dough.

OK now here is where we go in two different directions..do you want the traditonal round biscuit or do you want to drop it like it is hot?

For the regular round toss the dough out onto a floured surface and take a rolling pan to it. Take out your biscuit cutter and you should get 10 good rounds out of it. Now until two days ago I did not have a rolling pan and I still don't have biscuit cutter so I use a plastic cup with a little flour on it to roll and I use a drinking glass to cut the rounds out. Toss em on a baking tray for about 10-12 minutes and your good to go.

Now what I have recently discovered is the love of the drop biscuit. instead of rolling the dough out I just take a large spoon and scoop up some dough and drop it on the cookie sheet. You don't get the traditional round that your use to but you get biscuits with a lot of character. This is actually how Red lobster makes those addictive cheddar biscuits.

With both for a little extra kick sprinkle just a little cinnamon on top of the biscuits before you shove them in the oven.

Now that I am a little more computer stable is there anything anyone wants to see me try?