So I made this recipe tonight: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/cornish-game-hen-with-bacon-and-onions-recipe/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alto ... index.html</a> I made it a few years ago in my inadequate Ikea cast iron frying pan, that wasn't nearly deep enough. Now I made it in my nice enamelled cast iron dutch oven. I unfortunately don't have a brick; I mostly followed the directions, but I threw the onions and bacon on top of the birds after they were done searing as they went into the oven. I also only used six pearl onions, rather than 24, because 24 is just ridiculous. I just tried some of the liquid that collected at the bottom of the pot: holy shit. I wish I had some provisions for gravy. As it stands, I've got some carrots simmering in the liquid, and might pour it into my mashed potatoes. Pardon me, I'm waiting for my girlfriend to come over so I can melt her panties off with this broth. Bonus: save the giblets and back of the game hens and freeze them for making stock out of later
I've yet to try eating them this way, Mostly because I'm such a fat kid when it comes to chicken wings that I just dive right in and eat them as fast as I can. But I have seen this video before, and it led me to watch more of this guy's stuff. Most notably, This recipe for oven-fried chicken wings: I made mine just like this, but without the sauce (I think I mentioned earlier that I'm more of a fan of dry breaded wings. I also seasoned my flour, because why the eff not?), and they were pretty damn good. I want to try them again soon, though this time I will shake off a bit more of the excess flour (mine ended up kind of grainy), as well as try the sauce (or any sauce- that might help with the graininess too, I'm guessing).
That wing video has been around for awhile, but I wouldn't say it's a common way to eat wings. If you watch the video he basically molests the entire wing to get the bones out. Just imagine what that would look like if it was covered in sauce. Unless you eat your wings with sauce on the side, you are going to look like a 1st grader after art time finger painting. A much easier way to eat flats is to basically shove the whole wing into your mouth and try to drag all the outside meat off first with your teeth. Once you get the majority of it off, twist the bones a little and the middle meat part should lift up enough to bite it out without getting sauce on your face. I eat them this way and I usually only have the two fingers I'm using to pick up the wings with sauce on them and I have a free hand that's clean to hold my blue cheese. People that use two hands to eat chicken wings are hysterical to watch.
Made this recipe for The Wife on Saturday night (pasta is her favorite food, so I gave in even though the name made me cringe), and I'll be damned if it wasn't pretty friggin' good: Spoiler Just like the recipe in the link says, brown all of your stuff in butter and olive oil and set aside (make sure the chicken is cooked almost to a crisp on all sides- don't worry about overcooking or drying out. Trust me). I also added mushrooms and green onions to the mix Remove everything and deglaze with white wine and chicken stock, reduce by half, and add your cream. Bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes, then add everything back Cook your pasta to al dente, drain and add to the sauce to cook for a few minutes 'til everything thickens up to where you want it
I made this for my wife and her parents last night and it came out great. Thanks Blue Dog. The only thing I really substituted was the type of spice I used on the chicken and veggies. I went with a Jamaican Jerk instead of the Cajun because her parents don't do heat very well.(Read: at all.) I used a pre-made Jerk rub from RL Shriber who we use for most of our spices at the restaurant. There's not a lot of heat but a really nice flavor. I think if I were to make this for just the wife and I, I would go heavier on the jerk spice and probably dice up some fresh habeneros. Oh, I almost forgot, I also added some andouille sausage to add a little more flavor since we didn't have the heat that the dish required.
I tried my hand at that pasta as well, nice job guys. Picture with wine in spoiler: I could have used more onion and cooked the vegetables less, but all in all it turned out quite tasty. And I split it into three meals, so I had it for dinner today and will have the rest for lunch in two days.
I made this last night as well. The sauce didn't thicken quite as much as I would have liked so I made a little roux and added it in. Most likely an error on my end, but it was simply fixed. Had a great taste and I will be eating it as well for a few days. Thanks for sharing.
I repped this to BlueDog, but since the rest of you are getting in on the action, I'll post it here as well. I highly recommend switching out the wine and replacing it with brandy. The spirit gives the spicy sauce a little more fire, and blends beautifully with the cream. Also gets rid of that slightly sour taste that wine-based sauces have. /2c.
Vegetable Tart 1 Pie Crust 1/2 Sweet Potato 1/2 Eggplant 1 Red bell pepper 1 Small zucchini 1 Large onion 2 Cloves garlic, minced 3 Eggs 1 Cup heavy cream Handful of halved cherry tomatoes Handful of Feta, goat cheese, or Ricotta cheese or all three 1. Cube first 4 vegetables. About the size of your thumbnail. Toss with oil, salt, pepper in a roasting pan and roast about 20 minutes until soft. 350F. 2. While the vegetables roast, slice the onion thinly, salt them, then saute in oil until soft, brown, sweet. Final two minutes of cooking, throw in the garlic to become fragrant. 3. Remove the roasting vegetables from the oven. Lay the pie crust in a greased pie pan or tart pan, score with a fork. Pre-bake it for 5 minutes. Take it out, layer the onion mixture on the bottom, then lay on as much of the vegetable mixture as you want. Now is the time to throw in thyme or oregano if you have it. 4. Beat 3 eggs with the 1 cup of cream. Lightly salt and pepper it. Pour mixture over the vegetables. Toss in Feta or several Ricotta globs (they sink a bit). Layer several halved cherry tomatoes over the top. Cook the tart in the oven for 35-45 minutes until the top is browned and it is set. Trim off excess crust.
Well I joined the club and made that cajun chicken pasta as well. It's actually not bad. I can understand why the name makes Blue Dog cringe; my last name ends in a vowel and pasta shouldn't normally be combined with "cajun" or "chicken". But Blue Dog has never let me down before, and the recipe has turned out pretty interesting. My piece of advice? Follow the directions in the recipe and don't skimp the cayenne pepper. Keeps everything interesting. Also, take it easy with the stock and wine, or do something (make a roux, add cheese, let it reduce for a long time) to make sure that the sauce is thick enough. Nobody likes thin, watery cream sauce at the bottom of a pot.
Man, yall liked that one a little bit, huh? Ha! I'm telling yall, and the ones who cooked it were able to see this- it looks pretty simple and plain-jane, but it was really a lot better than I expected. And more importantly, The Wife friggin' loved it, and demanded that I cook the version with brandy when I mentioned it to her. So thanks for that tip. Ghetto- I would try reducing the wine/broth down a little bit more, or adding a bit more cream. And I hear ya- my name ends with an "-aux". I hate when shit has a little bit of Tony's or red pepper in it, and all of a sudden its Cajun. Its like saying anything with pasta is Italian- its retarded. But I'll try anything smothered with peppers, so there you go. I've looked through the Pioneer Women site a bunch, and I'm liking a lot of stuff there. So much so in fact that I'm making this short rib recipe for my entire family tonight. I'm probably going to have to double everything up, and instead of serving it over the mushrooms, I'm going to roast them like it says and throw them in the sauce towards the end. then I'm thinking that I'm going to serve everything over either a mushroom ravioli or mashed turnips. Maybe parsnips, I haven't decided yet. Anyway, I'll post pics of the results.
I wondered why he goes through the trouble of pulling the bigger of the two bones out. Chew off the skin on the small side, remove the small bone and proceed to eat the rest like you describe. I'd have to imagine, you're right about his way being messy, and that trying to dip a deboned wing is as futile and messy as you'd think it would be. I have a friend who swears by his one hand wing eating method, I forget his wing technique but he sure as hell keeps a tighty eating space during football games.
I hopped on the Cajun Chicken Pasta bandwagon last night. I encountered the same problem as FarSide with a somewhat thin sauce, so I followed one of Ghetto's suggestions and added 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese which is a "grate" thickening agent, and it turned out wonderful. Next time, I'll add the cheese again, but I'll also cut back on the amount of broth, too. Overall though, a great recipe. Easy and fast enough for a weeknight dinner. I would have added sliced, smoked andouille sausage to it, too, but the store was out of it.
In light of hunting season heating up and me needing more freezer space, I thawed out the rest of the venison and pheasants I had in the freezer yesterday. All in all it was about 3-4 lbs. of venison chops and 3 whole pheasants and eight legs. I put the venison in a crock pot, covered it in beer, and dumped in some Cavendar's and Adobo seasoning and let it stew on low heat while I was out chasing more game. After five hours, the meat was breaking down and tender already. I chopped a yellow onion into chunks and a handful of mushrooms and threw them in and let them cook down for a couple hours. It turned out extremely well, and the meat was fall apart tender and juicy. The birds and bits were put into plastic bags and have been brining in a mix of beer, water, soy sauce, brown sugar, and assorted seasonings. I'm gonna crock pot them tonight, pick the bones out when the meat starts falling off, then put some cream of mushroom soup in with more freshly chopped mushrooms. Should be good later tonight. I figured out one more good cooking thing last night, and that is substituting butter or oil in scalloped potatoes with bacon grease. In other words, I cooked up half a dozen slices of bacon and removed them from the pan before starting up the taters. I deglazed the pan with hot water while getting the potatoes going so there were no bits of flavor stuck to the pan- all in the potatoes. Tasted great.
For anyone looking to diet to lose weight that doesn't want to sacrifice taste: I've lost about 10 pounds in the past 6 weeks from the gf and I switching to a mostly Indian food diet. And I use the word diet loosely because we haven't even tried considering what the healthiest meals are, we just pick random shit from the books, make naan with reckless abandon and go with it, but most of the food just happens to be packed with flavor without being loaded with fat or sugar. It's been fantastic, I almost feel like I'm getting away with something illegal here, it's healthy, tastes like magic and relatively cheap. The only books we've been pulling from so far are Cooking with My Indian Mother-in-Law and How to Cook Indian. The taste is phenomenal and supposedly eating spicy food speeds your metabolism. I highly recommend trying it.
You're going to have to be much more specific on the meals here. Most of the popular dished are loaded with gallons of butter and oils topped with rice and naan. Are you sure you haven't just shit out more water weight because you are eating super colon blow cuisine?
Should have definitely mentioned this in my first post, but I avoid rice since I get more than enough carbohydrates from the naan. As for the dishes we pick, we probably tend to more of the chicken and vegetarian dishes, but we've done a few of the greasy lamb dishes as well. The good thing about the two books I listed though is they aren't nearly as trigger happy with oil (1-3 tablespoons for a dish that says will serve 4, but we get six meals out of) and are mostly devoid of butter, not bad for something that tastes like a cheat meal. As for water weight over fat, it's possible, but I feel like I have pretty good grasp on my body and having lost/gained weight more times than I'd like to think about in the past I'm fairly confident I know the difference. Also, I haven't been shitting any more than usual.