The Martes Chronicles: In Queso You Were Wondering

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Headchef

It’s a fact repeated so often that it’s become slightly cliche: that great cuisines are forged in poverty. It’s no secret that people who are forced to do more with less every day tend to get really good at that thing. It’s easy to forget that throughout human history, and for much of the world population now, the ingredients you had at hand were first of all dictated by geography and climate and secondly by your level of poverty. Cooking processes all developed in the various regions of the world in order to maximize limited fuel resources. Dishes that we often call ‘comfort food’ are enjoyed because they underwent a process of refinement through being cooked and served to hungry people almost every day of the week, generation after generation.

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Homemade Focaccia

A look at any high-end restaurant menu will show that many of the dishes and ingredients we celebrate now as ‘gourmet’ were once considered subsistence food for the poor people of the world. Polenta is just a simple mush that has fed Northern Italians since Roman times (when it was usually made from chestnuts; corn didn’t arrive until the colonization of the Americas). Lobster used to be fed to French prisoners. Slow-food staples like Pot-au-feu are all about stretching a few simple ingredients into something otherworldly.

I bring this up because I’ve been poor as shit lately. Not to the point where I’m eating clay in order to gain nutrients, but certainly at a point of more limited resources than I’ve been since I was much younger. Fortunately I know way more about food and cooking than I did in my teens and early twenties, so my lack of disposable income (especially when it comes to food) has become a really excellent opportunity to stretch my skills to the limit.

From-Scratch Neapolitan Pizza

Because of this I’ve been cooking a lot of Italian food. Making bread and pasta completely from scratch is something I’ve dabbled in from time to time, but having to make it day in and day out in order to have a meal outside of work has been a crash course in developing technique. I’ve extended the noodle making to Chinese food as well; rolling out hand-cut noodles and stir-frying them with ginger, garlic, scallions and soy.

I feel I’ve been eating better than when I had a hundred extra bucks every month to have someone else bake my bread, make my pasta or roast my chickens. The money I save is nice, but what really feels great is the calorie burn. When you spend the better part of the day putting serious energy into what you cook; you can go a little heavier on the extra bread and butter.

Chicken Cacciatore with Homemade Pappardelle

I’d like to give you a recipe for some of these things I’ve been working on, but the truth is I’m still trying to formulate a system for myself. Plus, I’m not eating like this every day. Sometime I just want something kind of terrible to eat while I watch another terrible Cowboys game.

I want Queso Dip. So I make it myself from scratch without any processed cheese. Here’s the trick:

You will need:

2 Cups Whole Milk
3 Tablespoons Butter
3 Tablespoons Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Cups Cheddar Cheese* (shredded)
1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese (shredded or grated)
1/4 Cup Chili Garlic Sauce or Sriracha

*I used a red-wine cheddar from Tratante Jose’s and I highly recommend you find something similar. It may sound weird, but the red wine note with the sharp cheddar does a pretty good job of imitating Velveeta’s sharpness without the nasty chemical components.

Here’s what you do:

In a medium sauce pan; melt the butter over medium-high heat.
As soon as it’s melted; whisk in the flour and salt.
Keep whisking until the flour is lightly toasted; about three minutes.
Add the milk and whisk constantly over high heat until it begins to boil.

Turn down the heat to a simmer and whisk it every minute or so till it reduces by a quarter and begins to thicken up.

At the point where it’s roughly gravy-consistency; begin whisking in the cheese a couple tablespoons at a time; make sure each batch you throw in melts completely before you add the next.

Once all the cheese is melted in, quickly whisk in the chili sauce/siriacha and remove from the heat. Pour into a bowl (or even a small slow-cooker set to low), dip some chips in that sucker and wonder aloud to a compassionless universe why Dallas can’t beat Eli Manning at home.

Huevos Fritos with Homemade Garlic Toast and Sauteed Arugula

So as I progress with my experimenting; I’ll keep you updated. If you’re curious about specific dishes that you want me to write up in the future; let me know in the talkbacks.

The Martes Chronicles: Moves Like Nikujaga

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Headchef

I’m busy and it’s cold, cold, cold outside. Let’s cook up some meat and potatoes, Japanese style. Nikujaga (pronounced like Mick-oo Jagga) is Japan’s answer to the pot roasts and beef stews of the western world. In fact, it was developed by Japanese naval chefs in imitation of the beef stew the British navy served to its sailors. I’m sure you’re at a loss to come up with a finer culinary pedigree than “British Military Cuisine“, but bear with me for a moment. In order to understand why the Japanese would adopt something so seemingly mundane with, as it turns out, a great deal of enthusiasm, we must step into the WABAC Machine for a moment. For the better part of three centuries, Japan experienced a period of self-imposed isolation from external cultural influence. From 1603 to 1853 Japan experienced minimal contact with foreigners beyond their archipelago; limited mostly to Dutch trading ships allowed in once a year and private Chinese vessels. This isolation was in direct resistance to European (particularly Portuguese) attempts at colonization. By avoiding the economic and religious domination from foreign powers experienced by so many of the neighboring countries in East Asia, Japan underwent a cultural refinement almost unprecedented in world history. Despite (or possibly because of) near-constant civil warfare; the Japanese took a culture and cuisine largely borrowed from China and Korea and created something wholly unique. In the 1850′s; American gunboats forced the Japanese to open their harbors to foreign trade. The rapid mixing of modern industrial society with that of a country sequestered within an idiosyncratic feudal culture had longstanding historical and cultural ramifications ranging from World War II to tentacle rape. Free trade brought in new dishes which the Japanese began to develop a taste for like curry, spaghetti and tomato sauce and breaded pork cutlets. These days Japanese cuisine is loaded with borrowed dishes that, while only about a century and a half old, are intrinsic comfort food to the Japanese.

Nikujaga is one of the most accessible examples of this kind of proto-fusion cuisine. Literally meaning “meat and potatoes”; nikujaga is simple to make, delicious on a cold day and easily adaptable to whatever variations you feel like making.

Here’s what you need to serve about 8 people:

1 1/2 LBS Short Ribs, Bones removed (Sliced or Ground Beef will suffice)
2 large White Onions (sliced into rings)
4 large Baking Potatoes (Peeled and cut into large chunks)
1/2 LB Carrots (scrubbed and sliced into 1″ lengths)
1 oz Dried Shitake Mushrooms (rinsed)
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Mirin*
3/4 Cup Tamari or Light Soy Sauce
1/2 Cup Dark Soy Sauce
Short Grain Japanese Rice
Sliced Scallions
Shichimi Togarashi (optional)

*If you don’t have any Mirin sub 3/4 cup of Rice Wine (can be found at most asian markets) and 1/2 cup honey.

Steep dried mushrooms in 2 cups boiling water for ten minutes. Strain and reserve the broth. Once mushrooms cool; remove and discard the stems and slice the caps in half.

In a large pot; brown your meat in batches so that it looks good and you have a decent amount of rendered beef fat in your pot.

Add a little extra vegetable oil to the pot if need be and throw your Mushrooms, Onions and Carrots into the medium-hot (but not smoking) beef fat. Saute them until the onions and carrots begin to soften, about ten minutes.

Deglaze the pot with your reserved mushroom stock. Add the beef, sugar, soy sauces and mirin to the pot along with enough water to comfortably cover everything and bring to a boil. Skim the fat from the top using a ladle or the “traditional Japanese method” I learned from the person who taught me how to cook nikujaga; using a paper towel. Once skimmed, simmer on low with a lid on for about an hour. Add the potatoes and simmer with the lid on for another hour.

Check and see how the broth tastes. Too salty? Add more sugar. Too sweet? Add some salt. Too bland? More soy sauce. Meanwhile, drink some sake.
You should be all set. Is your rice cooked? The short-grain sushi rice?
You better get on that.

Ladle the stew into bowls. Top with a big scoop of rice. Garnish with the scallions and if you want some spice; the Shichimi Togarashi.

Enjoy the benefits of cultural apropriation.

The Martes Chronicles: Cholent Eruption

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Headchef

Jewish law requires that I eat a hot meal for lunch on Shabbat, but also that I not do any cooking. This has been the case for my people for roughly 3,000 years and in that time there has been very little advancement in how that meal is prepared.

Sure, there are regional variations from around the world that seem to originate with the slow-simmered sabbath soups of the Jews. Cholent and Hamin, the two most well known, seem to have inpspired the French cassoulet, Spanish Fabada and the Portuguese Feijoada. All of them have the following in common: Beans, meat and slow cooking. All other differences are a matter of what ingredients are available on hand.

The other week I had some beans, pearl barley and some beef soup bones that, despite their meager origins, turned into an unctuous and satisfying dish after a long, slow cook in the crock pot. Here’s what I did:

I browned a bunch of soup bones in a heavy dutch oven until much of the fat had rendered out. I set the bones aside, keeping the fat in the pan so that I could…

Sweat some onions and garlic in the beef fat. Never ever, ever, ever put uncooked onions into a slow cooker unless you want your food to be inedible and your kitchen overwhelmed with noxious onion gasses. Science!

Once your onions are nice and golden, de-glaze the pan with a couple cups water and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all that nice beefy fond you’ve built up in the pan.

Put your washed and sorted beans in the bottom of the cooker.

Follow that with the onion/garlic/pan-drippings and a half cup of pearl barley.
Throw in maybe a tablespoon of salt. DO NOT OVER SALT THIS!
You can always salt it to taste when you serve it.

Add some potatoes and carrots, a squirt of ketchup (seriously) and cover the whole thing with water.

Set it on Low and don’t touch it for about 12 to 16 hours. That’s it.

I don’t have a picture of the finished product because I don’t take photos on shabbos, but even so, it’s not the most visually appealing dish. This is where having some chopped parsley on hand can really dress things up.

Those are the basics, but the possibilities are limitless. The following week I used just pinto beans, various chili seasonings, browned some chuck roast instead of soup bones and used canned, drained hominy in place of pearl barley for a sort of Tex-Mex cholent (garnished with sliced radishes and avocado).

Guess what? It was AMAZING.

Pretty much any meat or bean combo is a good one, all you need is time, patience and a judicious hand with the salting (nothing is worse than over-salted cholent). By no means should you limit this dish to Jewish holidays you don’t celebrate. You could easily use the outline of this recipie to make a duck and white bean cassoulet for a dinner party, or make something resembling chili (because chili has no beans) for a football game or potluck.

Go nuts. It’s practically idiot-proof.

The Martes Chronicles: Challah! Challah!

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Headchef

Challah is the cornerstone of almost every festive Jewish meal. Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, in particular has a great deal of symbolism related to the forming, baking and serving of this bread. Outside of Jewish practice, challah is beginning to be embraced by chefs from all over the world as a unique alternative to other enriched breads like brioche or pão doce.

I spend the bulk of my Fridays preparing for Shabbat. Cleaning the house, setting up food for the evening (and the next day), making sure the DVR records Saturday’s Longhorns game and most importantly- baking bread.

Depending on what kind of food I’m making for Shabbat; I’ll either hand-make some tortillas or bake a pair of challot for the weekend. I used to just buy my challah from a kosher baker, but distance and money often conspire so that baking it myself is the cheaper/easier option. In truth, home-made challah just plain tastes better, and can be modified to suit the taste of the baker.

That’s what I ended up doing with my grandmother’s recipe (passed to me from my mother). It was just fine how it is, but because I have to tinker with every recipe I use, I ended up creating a recipe that’s a little fluffier and sweeter than the original.
Also I knew I’d be posting it here, and it struck me as kind of wrong to give a family recipe away without charging anything for it.

The recipe as it stands is basically fool-proof. I don’t consider myself a terrific baker, but I have yet to produce a loaf using this formula that wasn’t delicious and beautiful to look at. I’m not sure what more you could ask for.

You will need:

6 cups All-Purpose Flour (Plus extra for dusting)
2 packages Dry Yeast
2 cups Warm Water
4 Eggs
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
Teaspoon of Salt
(Don’t use Kosher Salt or the bread won’t rise as well!)

Start by adding the Sugar and Yeast to the warm water, let it sit for about ten minutes.

Mix 4 cups of the flour with three of the beaten eggs, the oil, salt and the water mixture until you have a uniform consistency.
Add the other 2 cups of flour and work it until you have a knead-able dough.

Knead the dough for 10 to 20 minutes until you develop strong gluten, meaning the dough stretches when you pull it instead of breaking.

Place in a large, lightly greased bowl with a dry towel to cover it.
Put it in a warm part of the kitchen for 1 to 3 hours or until it doubles in size.

Go work on your Cholent.

Once your dough has doubled, punch it down and do the following:

Do this with both halves and then pinch the little braids securely to the top of the larger braids like so:

Place these on a floured or parchment papered cookie sheet, cover and let rise for another 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350º.

Beat your one remaining egg and thouroughly brush the surfaces of both loaves, making sure to get in all the nooks and crannies.
You can leave the challot unadorned, or you can sprinkle them with sesame or poppy seeds.

Place them in the oven for 45 minutes, and there you have it.

If the braiding seems a little too advanced, you can always make round challah (usually served for Rosh Hashana with an extra 1/2 cup of honey and a cup of raisins in the initial dough) which just requires that you divide the risen dough in half and elongate each half to about 12″ with one end larger then the other.

Roll that up with the big end in the middle, proof and bake the same way and you’ll get this crowd-pleaser:

The Martes Chronicles: I’d Gladly Brisket All

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Headchef

The Aftermath.

It’s the best time of the year.
Football is on, the leaves are changing and hoodie-weather is in full swing. Work and the constant tumult of the High Holy Days make my off-time all the more special. This is one of the reasons I prefer this time of year for barbecuing; even more so than in the summer.

Granted, nothing says summer like firing up the grill, throwing a few burgers and hot dogs on the flames and drinking yourself into oblivion. The emphasis with summer barbecuing is typically on the social aspect, with the food you grill being simple enough for a drunk person to handle. With the onset of autumn, the chillier weather combined with the need to sustain oneself through 4 to 16 hours of football watching over the course weekend create a perfect storm for big-project grilling scenarios.

The NFL Kickoff earlier this month happened to be a matchup between the New York Football Giants of East Rutherford, New Jersey and the Dallas Cowboys (SPOILER ALERT! It was probably the best game Dallas will have all year). Because I am an unapolgetic slurper of all things Texas (that don’t come from Houston) and a lifelong Cowboys fan I hosted a party for the viewing of said game.

For this party I decided to smoke some meat. Texas style.

Central Texas barbecue is very specific regional style notable for its Bohemian origins, spartan side dishes and an aversion to spoiling good meat with cloying sauces. Throughout Texas, beef is king, but in Central Texas the most popular cuts are shoulder (or Clod) and that cut beloved to Jews and Texans alike- the brisket.

This required a great deal of preparation, planning and a a fair amount of good luck. I used a Webber charcoal grill that’s older than I am and a few handfuls of charcoal briquettes. The only temperature gauge I had was a meat thermometer that topped at 190°, so most of the cooking I had to do between 225° and 250° involved me guessing based on time spent in front of ovens.

The result was the juciest, best tasting meat I’ve ever cooked. The 20 odd people who watched the game with me agreed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First of all I had a great recipe to work with. It’s from my dog-eared copy of Saveur’s Texas issue. I’d already read that recipe a few times before I attempted it. I’d cooked plenty of brisket in the meantime, mostly oven-braised for various Jewish holidays, but never attempted smoking anything more time-consuming than a three-hour chicken.

My Passover Brisket.

With this attempt I re-read that recipe three or four times in the week leading up to the party and constantly referred back to it during the process. Part of that was due to the steady stream of alcohol I began imbibing the morning of the party when I was up early stoking the grill; tailgating the television. The recipe seems simple with its nine steps, but it’s essentially a 20 hour process that requires a lot more guesswork and improvisation then is immediately apparent. Getting really familiar on paper with what you’re doing is recommended.

I bought two 3.25 lb briskets because I expected to feed a lot of people. It wasn’t cheap, but this is NFL Kickoff. And a Cowboys game. I mean… c’mon. Anyway, the night before the party I mixed up a dry rub of certain proportions and ingredients which I am not interested in sharing with you. I will tell you what kinds of things I put in it, and trust you’ll have the good judgement to formulate your own blend.
In no particular order:

Brown or Raw Sugar
Salt (Kosher or Seasoned)
Dry Mustard Powder
Paprika (Sweet, Smoked, Hot)
Black Pepper
Ground Chile Peppers (Cayenne, Pequin, Chipotle)

My only further reccomendation with a rub is not to go too heavy on the salt, sugar or chiles as they could overpower or toughen the meat. And don’t use Chili Powder, which usually contains oregano and cumin and will drastically change the flavor profile of your meat.

After rinsing the meat under cold water and patting it dry with paper towells; I rubbed the meat down with a solid coat of dry rub and left them covered in the fridge all night.
While the fat-soluable chile powders soaked into the meat I poured three quarters of a bottle of Everclear into a large mason jar and threw eight black tea bags into the jar. After an hour I strained the dark-brown concentrate back into the original Everclear bottle.

Concentrate.

The next day mixed 1 part Black Tea Everclear with 4 parts good Lemonade over lots of ice. It was a taste sensation. I should know; I drank four of them that day.

So, 10 in the morning the day of the party I start a football-size pile of charcoal in one corner of my grill. After about an hour (once the coals had burned down to gray) I topped them with two cups of soaked mesquite chips and let them burn down until they produced white smoke.

I placed a pan of water next to them and set the briskets over the water and as far away from the heat as possible, covering with both vents oven and the top vent over the meat.

At the start.

I pretty much followed the Saveur recipe as it’s written for the rest of the afternoon, substituting my own judgement for the temps in the grill and the meat. I recommend you get a good digital thermometer for your first attempt at any barbecuing. You might not be as lucky as I was and end up with, at best, something resembling jerky.

Hour 4.

In order to pad people’s stomachs I made a bunch of sides. A homemade barbecue sauce to be added only as a condiment for cooked meat. In the Central Texas style, it was a vinegar and ketchup-based sauce with Dr. Pepper for a touch of sweetness. I made a pot of vegetarian pinto beans disguised as chili. I braised and pulled apart a bunch of chicken thighs in a sauce made mostly of reconstituted, pureed chipotle chiles, garlic and chicken stock.

For the brisket I put out the classic sides of Bimbo white bread and saltine crackers (I think I was too drunk to open the sweet pickle jar at this point). Close to the end of the first quarter; I pulled the foil-wrapped briskets off the cold grill they had been resting on for the last hour.

When I took my first slice (AGAINST THE GRAIN!) I had a moment of panic, as it appeared a little dry to me. As I continued slicing away, the grayish end closest to the heat gave way to perfect, pink-ringed slices of juicy smoked meat.

This was the only picture taken before the feeding frenzy.

It was unbelievable. People devoured it. I threw a few choice (read: gristly and fatty) pieces in a white bread taco and switched to beer for the remainder of the game. I ended up not really getting to pig out on it until I finished the leftovers the following day; this time with all the proper accouterments.

I also needed to whip up some mashed potatoes for all that jus.

I can’t describe how good it was. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted barbecue brisket this good outside of Texas, and yet I did it with minimal experience and tools and a head full of pure grain alchohol. You could do it too. Heck, you don’t even have to be watching a Cowboys game.

Take it through the fire; for a chance to brisket all. You’ll be happy you did.

The Martes Chronicles: Sometimes Everyone Needs A Bimbo

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Headchef

SafeSearch: Moderate.

I don’t eat a lot of white bread, but when I do, I eat Bimbo.

These days I don’t eat a ton of bread in general. When I was a younger man I would subsist mainly on baguettes (the Wonder Bread of the pretentious) or, failing that, on some kind of mid-range bagged white bread like Pepperidge Farm. Then I got older and lazier and my metabolism slowed down. Suddenly scarfing down so much bleached flour every day didn’t seem like such a great idea, so I switched the core source of my nutrition from bread to Bourbon and Rye whiskeys.

As I’ve become more stringent in my observation of Jewish dietary laws, I’ve had to cut out a lot of the processed foods I used to indulge in on big-spending visits to the convenience store. Cheetos contain non-kosher rennet in the cheese powder. Same with Doritos (which I don’t really miss that much). Most supermarket breads are not certified kosher either, especially hot dog and hamburger buns.

This has created a few problems for me when grilling burgers or hot dogs over the last few years. If I’m going through the trouble of grilling beef; I want to have a platform for it that doesn’t render the burger unkosher. With their milk additives, pork enzymes and random bits of sheetrock: many supermarket breads aren’t fit for my picky, superstitious ways.

Más pelusa!

Thankfully; there is Bimbo.
BIMBO displays and products have been a common sight in the convenience stores and supermarkets of the border states for decades. With their eye-punishingly loud packaging and soulless bear mascot they can be a little intimidating to shoppers who are unfamiliar with the brand. You might recognize it as the Bizzaro Mexican Hostess you see when you shop in a neighborhood with a sizable Latino population.

In the last few years more and more Bimbo products have been showing up in suburban big box stores and even upscale markets. I thought this was just a result of the slow diversification of the suburbs, which has something to do with it, but the main reason lies with Bimbo straight up owning Brownberry and a mind-numbing assortment of other well-known brands. That’s correct. Grupo Bimbo is the world’s largest baking company. And they’re based in Mexico City.

Okay, why am I using up your valuable time slurping a processed white bread made by a multinational corporation? Beyond the interesting trivia factor?
Because sometimes you can only afford enough for grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes you’ve got a fussy child who refuses to eat anything but PB&J. Sometimes a loaf of white bread is a necessity dictated by time and place. I’d absolutely love to spend hours each day lovingly crafting loaves of sourdough bread in a hand-built brick oven. But that isn’t possible for me right now. Maybe I’ll blog about it in 15 years.

If I have to eat white bread, or feed it to those I care about, it might as well be of a good quality. That is the reason Bimbo bread gets my ringing endorsement. It’s kosher, non-dairy, free of corn syrup and artificial colors and flavors. Don’t get me wrong. Despite being “packed with yum” (seriously) it’s still white bread and you shouldn’t consider it health food. But if you’re making grilled cheese sandwiches for kindergartners, you need a vehicle for Nutella first thing in the morning or you insist on having only the best ghetto-ass hot dog buns- Bimbo bread is a great way to do a bad thing right.

That’s why it’s the preferred sandwich bread of ninja assassins the world over.

Como un jefe.

The bear is pretty scary too.

The Martes Chronicles: A Word From The Editor…

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Headchef

Publisher & Editor In Chief Joseph Price

Publisher & Editor-In-Chief J. Simon Price in a quiet moment.

This is easily the least favorite part of my job. Not the sitting down at my keyboard and typing. That’s the fun part. No, this is the part where I glumly apologize for the lack of content over the past few months(!) and fill you, the readers, head with false hopes and empty promises. Save for a couple of fantastic podcasts, there’s been very little content in 2012, and as Publisher and Editor of this critically acclaimed blog, I have only myself to blame.

I’ve been deliberately vague about the personal and medical drama I’ve been dealing with for the last year. Anyone who reads our regular articles or listens to the podcast might be somewhat familiar with the life-changing bullshit I’ve had to endure. They may also not be. It’s only important because I don’t have a crack staff of assistant-editors and food bloggers to pick up the slack for me when everything goes to hell for me.
I’d like to some day, but for the moment it’s just General BBQ, myself and the reanimated corpse of Jawn Fulla running this thing, and it’s safe to say they’ve got their hands full with plenty of things beyond mocking Minnesotans and sarcastic taco recipes.

How did I lose 40 lbs eating food like this?

It’s not like I haven’t been cooking (just not eating). I’ve been cooking up a storm for myself and friends all throughout the last year, always taking multiple pictures of the process and final results with the intent of posting them into articles. Up until a little over a month ago; I was splitting my work schedule between (at least) two jobs and spending what little remaining energy I had on cooking at home. That left me with zero energy to take care of the (admittedly not difficult) task of hammering out a few snarky paragraphs and uploading those pics onto WordPress.

And, you know, depression and stuff.

Happily; I’ve steered my life into some semblance of order. At least enough that I can manage to crank out a couple of articles every week without going completely nuts.
It’s good for me to write for this blog. It keeps me sharp. It doesn’t hurt that some people think I’m a pretty good writer (mostly my mom). If I ever want to make this a thing I do full time; it’s going to require that I do it consistently and for free for a long time before anyone ever decides to pay me for it.

So consider this a soft re-opening for The Reducer Network. Tuesdays will once again have a regular post unless we tweet otherwise. Other semi-regular articles will follow and possibly even another regular column on Thursdays or early Fridays.
We’ll continue putting out our acclaimed podcast (NOW AVAILABLE ON iTUNES!), most likely once a month, but we’ll also have minicasts and video segments posted more and more regularly as we get into the rhythm of it.

So you can learn stuff like this.

Again, this is a small operation, and in order to expand our audience, we’re going to have to push the content to the point where we’re posting multiple times a day, five days a week. While we all have day jobs, this is pretty much impossible. But when I founded this site I always had the intention that we would recruit anyone who wanted to submit any content pertaining to food and drink; especially if it was different then what Brian and I were putting on the page. This is a Network, after all, and was never meant to be a 24-hour Texas and dick joke slurpfest.
I’d like to think that there’s somebody out there reading this that posts pictures of their breakfast on Instagram and writes about meals they ate on Facebook. You’re already food blogging. Perhaps you’d like a platform to disseminate your various culinary passions without dealing with the considerable daily upkeep that even running a simple blog requires. Especially once you start pulling in readers.

Who’s going to cover gay cakes for us? Not Fulla.

Consider that an open invitation to anyone looking to dabble in food blogging without having to do much more than take pictures and/or write.

In the meantime follow us on Twitter and Facebook, keep coming back every Tuesday for actual food-related columns, and (re)enjoy these classic recipes and articles that should give you johnny-come-lately’s a taste of what we’re all about.

-Headchef

A recipe for Menudo

Rice Pilaf made interesting

A seafood stew that seems to exist everywhere

Food Porn

An argument for hot summer soups

A cruel excoriation of the “Walk-a-Taco”

How to stir-fry noodles like you know what you’re doing

A curry recipe that any idiot can do

Jerusalem Mixed Grill is not grilled

And, of course, The Greatest Episode of the Podcast we ever did.

The Martes Chronicles: Talking Turkey Day Part Two: Postmortem

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Headchef

Turkey Duck ATM

Editors Note: Late again. Blame my computer this time. You’ll still get two more THMQB this week. By Sunday at the latest.

If you read last weeks installment of The Martes Chronicles; you were no doubt waiting with baited breath to find out how our M*A*S*HGiving Korean-American mash-up meal. went. In a word: Awesome.

Fridge Full of Prep

What started with a dream and the above fridge filled with ingredients turned into a massively successful undertaking. Don’t believe me? Here are the highlights.

Kimchi...spread it all over yo body

Here’s the quick kimchi General BBQ banged out with just salt, Korean Chili powder and Napa Cabbage. He sealed it in a cryovac bag for about 36 hours and damned if it didn’t taste like kimchi, minus the usual fermented aftertaste. Great stuff.

Crank dat Soju Boy.

And what goes better with kimchi than bottle after bottle of Korean rice whiskey?
A nap. That’s what.

Gib-Chi Prep

Gib-Chi on the wok

We decided to stuff our turkey with sauteed giblets and kimchi (which Brian named “Gib-Chi”) and do a regular (albeit Asian inspired) bread stuffing outside the bird.
Good call. Plus, “gib-chi” makes me giggle like a schoolgirl every time I hear it.

Here was our appetizer/banchan assortment at the begining of the night.
Curious what we ate?

Various rice crackers.
Edamame and the remains of a scallion sallad.
Tsukemono (Japanese rice bran pickles) and Brian’s homemade garlic pickle.
Store Bough kimchi, white kimchi, lettuce with chili-beanpaste.
Homemade kimchi.
Blanched beansprouts dressed in sesame oil and seasalt.
Korean Nori.
My homegirl Kelly made both a cucumber and beansprout kimchi. Awesomesauce.

And now for the entrees:

Ginger-brined, Gib-Chi stuffed, plum and shoyu glazed turkey.
Short grain rice, and not a mashed potato to be seen.
Turkey gravy.
Mushroom gravy.
Sweet potatoes with miso butter and curry powder.
Brined, roasted whole duck.
Bread stuffing with ginger, scallions and water chestnuts.
Scallion and Beansprout pancakes with dipping sauces.
Duck jus.

In this picture you can see we also had cranberry sauce.

Yeah, the cranberry sauce was just cranberries stewed in a little orange and pomegranate juice with some ginger and sugar. THAT was pretty good too.

When the meal was over, and we had eaten Titus’ Sweet Potato Cheesecake for dessert, we did the responsible thing and continued drinking and chucking the football around in the dark until the wee hours.
The dishes had to wait for about 12 hours…

But we DID clean the kitchen.

Thanks to everyone who participated, especially the hosts. Looks like if I’m not in the Twin Cities a year from now, y’all are ordering pizza next Thanksgiving.

If you have any questions about how we made stuff, hit us up in the comments.

The Martes Chronicles: Talking Turkey Day

Posted on November 22, 2011 by Headchef

In no particular order; my three favorite holidays are Passover, The Super Bowl and Thanksgiving. They all revolve around large meals in some way. Passover’s complicated restrictions on ingredients and Super Bowl Sundays inherit trashiness require a somewhat stifling framework, but Thanksgiving is where I go completely balls-out with the menu.

I’ve always loved the flavors of the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Turkey; stuffing; gravy; yams; mashed potatoes. As I grew up and more frequently ended up eating the meal at other people’s houses; other dishes moved into the regular rotation like macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole and collard greens. I always enjoyed the food, the atmosphere, getting up early in the morning to cook, the drinking and, especially, the guarantee of a Cowboys football game on TV. Even while homeless or among complete strangers I still managed to find comfort in the holiday. That whole time though, very little changed as far as the menu was concerned.

About seven years ago I went with my family to a large Thanksgiving meal held at the home of an acquaintance of my mom. It was a large, informal gathering with a buffet set up and everyone eating off picnic plates wherever they could sit. The family hosting the meal happened to be Laotian, and as such, had a huge spread set up, pretty much 50/50, with traditional American Thanksgiving fare and homemade Laotian food. Cranberry sauce, candied yams and turkey next to Pad Lao, papaya salad and spring rolls.

It was awesome.

I found the whole setup to be inspiring. Not just because of the unconventional (and delicious) food, but the informality of it made for a more hospitable (and football-watching friendly) environment. The next year I ended up at the Thanksgiving dinner of my cousins ex-husband, who happened to be a professional chef and my first kitchen boss. He made a gigantic and delicious spread of soul food, but the thing that i remember the most about that Thanksgiving was the sizable assortment of, for lack of a better term, castoffs from my family who (through divorce mostly) hadn’t been invited to the “main” family meals or just didn’t feel comfortable there.

It was a great meal, but it also reinforced a genuine feeling of family that transcended the typical definitions. My brother and I were reflecting on what a good time we had a couple weeks later when I referred to it as an “Orphans Thanksgiving” as a way of describing the brief community of outcasts we had created for the holiday.

The name stuck, and in four out of the last five years, we’ve held an Orphans Thanksgiving at one of my friends homes. The minimum requirement for admittance is being acquainted, and the theme has shifted every year depending on what my mood is in the month leading up to the holiday. The cast of attendees is always changing. Some years we party hard, some years we follow up football with sitting around the couch and watching movies.

The first year my theme was “First Thanksgiving”; where I only used ingredients the pilgrims ate, like rabbit and goose. The next year we did Northern Italian food; for no reason other than that it sounded good.

Rabbit again that year.

Year after that was Tex-Mex; where I crafted a vegetarian pumpkin mole sauce to serve over roasted pecan tamales. Last year I had Thanksgiving dinner with inlaws, but my wife and I put so much thought and effort into the the menu that it’s worth mentioning for the glazed turkey and duck confit Brussels sprouts alone.
This year the theme is M*A*S*H-Giving; combining traditional American Thanksgiving fare with Korean flavors and ingredients. General BBQ (who is hosting this year) and I did the grocery shopping this morning and it’s gonna be freaking amazing.
We’ll tweet on it all day Thursday and deliver a postmortem for next Tuesday’s post.

You probably already have a plan in place for this Thanksgiving, but regardless of that, you should keep in mind that despite the many traditions associated with this holiday, the only one that really matters is celebrating the abundance we have in this country with people we care about. You can strip away the turkey, all the traditional sides, the football games, the stupid parade- you can even remove your family from the equation and spend it with your friends if you would prefer- the thing that makes Thanksgiving so great is pigging out on what you want to eat and taking a moment to reflect on how good you have it.

Everything else is just trimmings.

Although; if they did get rid of the football I’d enjoy it less.

The Martes Chronicles: Pilaf And Go

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Headchef

Moghul Style rice Pilaf with Curried Chicken and Grilled Tomato

Few dishes span geography and history in as grand a manner as rice pilaf. Or pilau. or palov. Or palau. Or pulao. Or sopa seca, if you will. How the did rice cooked in broth become a common dish stretching from Asia to the Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central America?

It starts with the Persians (that’s what Iranians used to call themselves), and their neighbors in Central Asia, who were some of the first rice cultivators in the world. Having rice (typically of a long grain Basmati-style variety) as your staple food can get boring very fast, so the Persians developed multiple preparations for their rice, each producing a very different result based on the steaming/boiling/par-cooking methods used.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that cooking the rice in a seasoned broth would be considered both highly nutritious and a little luxurious, what with broth being relatively more expensive than plain water. When Alexander the Great encountered the Persian Empire; he was fed a variant of pilaf by the locals; enjoying the dish so much that he brought the recipe back to Macedonia where it was in turn spread throughout Eastern Europe.

The story of pilaf is the story of the rise and fall of empires. The Persians spread the dish through Afghanistan, Central Asia, Turkey and the Arabian peninsula. The Turks brought it with them into their conquered territories, including parts of Europe and Asia Alexander never reached. During the course of the geopolitical rise of Islam the Arabs spread it throughout their domain, from the Middle East and North Africa all the way into Spain and Southern Italy.

The Spanish dishes of Arroz con Pollo and Paella and the basic methods behind Italian Risotto all stem from that Arab/Persian legacy. More on Spain in a moment.

The dish also spread eastward. The Mughal rulers of Northern India (and modern day Bangladesh, Kashmir and Pakistan) brought Islamic culture and religion to the subcontinent, and with it a variety of pilaf variations, such as Briyani and Pilau. In the parts of Southeast Asia where ethnic Indian communities traveled to (Burma and Indonesia especially) they brought variants of pilaf with them. Visitors to Singapore and Malaysia will find the same cooking style for pilaf utilizing Southeast Asian ingredients and flavors.

Over on the Iberian peninsula; the Spaniards reconquered their country after almost 800 years of Muslim rule. In 1492 they began both a campaign of ethnically cleansing Spain and Portugal of Jews and Muslims, as well as their exploration and colonization of the New World. Rice came with them, as well as refugee communities of Sephardi Jews who brought the Middle Eastern style rice, noodle and broth preparations. The descendants of those dishes can be seen on the everyday Mexican table in the Sopa Secas (literally “dry soups”) served with all main meals.

Rice pilaf has even become a staple in the US. What did you think Rice-a-Roni was?

Sopa Seca con Fideos

The running current of all these dishes, beyond being rice cooked in broth, is that they lend themselves to being served to large groups. Pilaf isn’t something you throw together for yourself, it’s a dish representative of hospitality traditions spanning the globe. From the breaking of a Ramadan fast in Jakarta, an upscale hotel in India, a Bedouin tent or a Quinceañera in El Paso- the presence of a rice pilaf transforms a meal into a feast.

So how the hell do you make it?

At it’s most basic; all you’ll need is long grain rice and good flavorful stock. The rest is a matter of plugging in different savories, spices, meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts and noodles to customize it to whatever framework you want it to fit in. Below is the basic technique, along with a few different variations you can try. Mix and match them. Experiment. That’s how we got the wealth of pilaf recipes we have now.

Your basic ratio should be 1 part rice; 2 parts stock.
Any long grain rice will do, but Indian Basmati rice is ideal for fluffy pilafs where the grains are separate. I recommend rinsing and draining the rice three times, making sure it’s not too damp when you’re ready to cook.

The flavor of the stock is up to you. Neutral stocks like chicken and vegetable tend to be flavorful without overpowering the other components. If you’re serving lamb with your pilaf, then use lamb stock, and so on. Make a little more than you need, just in case, and have your stock just short of boiling when you’re ready to cook.

Before you heat up your cooking fat in a heavy bottomed pan with a tight fitting lid; you’re going to need to consider a few things. Namely; which of the following ingredients you care to incorporate:

Cooking Fat:
Vegetable oil, Olive oil, Grapeseed oil or Ghee (clarified butter)
Starches:
Rice (rinsed), dry toasted noodles (like fideos)
Savories
Onion, Garlic, Carrot, Chopped Peppers, Ginger, Mushrooms.
Spices
Curry or Cardamon and Fennel Seed (for Indian-style), Cinnamon and Cardamon (Turkish/Persian), Saffron, Cumin and Cardamon (Middle Eastern).
Veggies, Fruit & Nuts:
Peas, Tomatoes, Raisins, Grapes, Cashews, Slivered Almonds, Sultanas, Chopped Dates, Apples.

So you heat your fat in the pan to medium high. Throw in your onions and saute until translucent (or brown them if you prefer a stronger flavor).
Toss in your rice and stir constantly until each grain is lightly toasted.
If you’re using toasted noodles; throw them in now.
Add your spices and remaining savories and stir until lightly toasted.
Add your stock and any fruits, veggies or nuts you plan on adding. Stir well.
Bring to a boil and cover. Immediately bring to a low simmer.

That’s it! It should take about 35-45 minutes to cook.
DO NOT OPEN THE POT BEFORE THAT!

Once all the liquid is absorbed; fluff with a fork and serve immediately. If you don’t open it too many times; you can keep it warm in the oven with the lid tightly sealed.