Kicking off Grilling Season. Photo courtesy of Christina Dugan

Grilling season is back. Despite the spring rain, and the near-constant threat of afternoon storms, the smell of smoke and the char of seasoned steel grates is just too strong to deny.

I love to grill. So much that each season, when winter truly sets in, I go through a little of what I call OSGD, or off-season grilling depression. It’s like seasonal affective disorder, but you’re also hungry for foods you can’t have.

To show you how much I hate NOT grilling, I’ve taken the liberty of altering, ever so slightly, the great B.B. King song, The Thrill is Gone. B.B., plucking away at his guitar as though they were my heartstrings, couldn’t have said it better. Unless, of course, he was singing about Grilling.

The GRILL is gone
The GRILL is gone away
The GRILL is gone baby
The GRILLis gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sorry someday

The GRILL is gone
It’s gone away from me
The GRILL is gone baby
The GRILL is gone away from me
Although I’ll still live on
But so lonely I’ll be

The GRILL is gone
It’s gone away for good
Oh, the GRILL is gone baby
Baby its gone away for good
Someday I know I’ll be over it all baby
Just like I know a man should

You know I’m free, free now baby
I’m free from your spell (Okay, not true)
I’m free, free now (ditto)
I’m free from your spell (double ditto)
And now that it’s over
All I can do is wish you well

Thankfully, the grill is NOW BACK. And last weekend, to kick of the grilling season, I went with perhaps my favorite grilled chicken dish of all time: Brined Chicken Thighs with Chimichurri.

Although I added in a few breasts for people who don’t like chicken bones (yes, they exist), I LOVE cooking with thighs for a few reasons:

1. They hold up well. The bone inside the chicken acts as a natural conductor of heat, but also helps to keep the flesh moist. So, if you’re distracted, or playing badminton, or whatever, you don’t have to be quite as watchful of the grill in worrying that you’ll make chicken beef jerky.

2. They are CHEAP. I bought what amounted to 34 pieces of chicken thigh for 11 bucks. These were all natural, hormone free birds, too. Not these roid freak water beasts you so often find at grocery stores. So, when you’re cooking for a lot of people, thighs go a long, long way.

3. They are kind of like the mullet of chicken – business in the front, party in the back. In other words, they are like a wing, in that you can serve them and eat them as finger foods (great for a cookout), but those that want to sit down and use a fork and knife will also find enjoyment in the meal.

So, next time you’re grilling, pay special attention to the great grill equalizer that is the chicken thigh.

On to brining.

Brining is something everyone should learn, and a basic brine is a beautiful thing. And, once you’ve found a basic recipe that you like it’s easy to expand on it using different spices. For instance, using Lapsang Souchong, I developed what I believe is the best smoked brine on the planet. Have I tasted all the brines on the planet? No. Which is why I think mine is the best. You can find the recipe, as well as the basic brine recipe for chicken (minus the tea) in my Lapsang Souchong Brine post.

Using the brine recipe, or one that you prefer, brine the chicken for at least 8-10 hours in a large container or cooler surrounded with ice, or in your fridge. A full day is preferable to allow the salt-sugar solution to permeate the chicken meat.

When the chicken is ready, fire up your grill. I add a little veg. oil to the grill when it’s hot and then take the chicken directly out of the brine and place it on the grill. I actually don’t like to rinse the brine from the chicken. But, you should at least pat the pieces dry before placing them on the heat so that you’ll get a nice char on the flesh and won’t cool the surface heat of the grill too much.

I’m always a bit hesitant to provide cooking times, especially for grilling. I can’t possibly know if you’re the slow and steady, indirect charcoal kind of person, or the “I make bullets over my 40,000 BTU gas grill on off days” type. So, I’ll go with a basic recommendation that for bone in thighs, cook the chicken about 15 minutes per side, moving often to avoid flare ups from skin fat dripping into the fire.

On to the Chimichurri. This is a sauce of Argentinean origin, which gauchos favor for use on the country’s beautiful grass fed beef. It’s also quite amenable to sausage – namely chorizo – and chicken.

My favorite thing about this sauce is that you don’t really need a recipe. Below are the base elements, but you should experiment with cumin, curries, red onion, fresh oregano (gorgeous) and other spices. As I know you’ll need at least some place to start, below are the approximations I used to pull it together.

• 2 cups fresh Italian parsley (remove stems)
• 1 cup fresh cilantro (stems removed)
• 1.5 cups extra virgin olive oil
• 1 whole head of garlic (I like a LOT of garlic)
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Just throw all this into a food processor and blend up to a level of your own comfort. I like mine just a little chunky, but also love the fully emulsified sauce.

For this dish, I used the Chimichurri as my grilling sauce, but it’s often reserved for the table, where you spoon it directly onto finished meats. As I use quite a lot of garlic, I like to apply just a bit of heat to it as the chicken nears its final turns on the grill. I find this tempers the heat of the garlic without burning, too much, the parsley and cilantro. I brush the Chimichurri sauce onto the chicken with about 5-8 minutes remaining per side, and, when using a gas grill, turn off one whole side to place the brushed pieces upon so that they don’t burn.

Lastly, I place the finished pieces on a cookie sheet, cover with foil and place into a 350 degree oven. This gives the bone-in pieces a little more time to loosen up and also allows me to move on to more time sensitive dishes for the grill such as vegetables.

Serve with cold beer, grilled asparagus and grilled zucchini.

Enjoy.

If you look closely, you'll see a King Cobra

I don’t really know, is the simple answer. I suppose I simply had to have it.

And I suppose it makes me feel better, in that way that four deadbolts and a weapon might make someone feel better when living in a deadly neighborhood.

This, you see, is no ordinary pepper. The Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia pepper is the Guinness Book of Records world-record holder for the hottest pepper in the world. It’s name, in Sanskrit, means King Cobra as people who’d eaten it said it’s bite was akin to being struck by a deadly snake. This, of course, caused people around the world to immediately seek it out for all manner of ingestion.

But what measurement scale, you might ask, do world-record pepper judges use to measure heat – to measure the venom of this snake-bite pepper? It’s called the Scoville scale. Let’s take a moment to talk about it.

Wilbur Scoville invented his scale in 1912 as a measure of heat in peppers accounting for the amount of capsaicin they contain. Capsaicin is the chemical compound that stimulate nerve endings in our skin and taste buds.

To provide some perspective for the insanity of owning, and considering the use of such a pepper, let’s provide some perspective.

Jalapeno = 2500 – 8000 rating

Habanero = 100,000 – 300,000

Bhut Jolokia = 855,000 – 1,050,000

Law enforcement grade pepper spray = 500,000 to 5,300,000

Re-read that for a moment and consider your experiences eating, at the very least, Jalapenos and Habaneros, peppers that most people have had exposure to and that, given your sensitivity to capsaicin, may have caused you extreme discomfort.

Now consider that the Bhut Jolokia is likely 5 times hotter than your hottest-ever pepper experience.

As Wikipedia says on the matter, they are often used to develop smoke bombs that keep elephants at a distance. Ummm, and I’m thinking of eating this?!

When I first bought these, Dan Hayward, the knowledgeable Co-Owner of the Savory Spice Shop in Denver, Boulder and Littleton, Colorado, opened the bottle for me and told me to hover my nose just above the opening. “Smell that,” he said with a wicked grin, “You can tell something crazy is going on with these things.” Dan’s explanation is probably the better than any I can provide. Even as I sit here writing, I can smell their “craziness” through the two casings of plastic bags in which they reside (I store them inside a jar, as well, in my cupboard.) My nose is twitching slightly and my eyes have the faintest itch. Paint thinner doesn’t have this effect on me at distance.

So, what am I going to do with these – besides turning them into the police? I’d love for you, oh great sages of food-o-sphere, to share some ideas. As Dan said, you’d probably need to make an inordinate amount of curry, and then shave a small bit into the batch to create some seriously deadly heat. I’m not sure I’m up for that. I’m looking for non-curry interpretations, something that will sustain some heat, but not kill me or cause the neighbors to go into convulsions.

So, any ideas that don’t involve wearing a hazmat suit? Fortunately, I don’t have any immediate need to keep elephants at bay, but I would like to try to use these as some sort of harissa maybe in the next few weeks – if it keeps large, stampeding animals from my home, all the better.

I’ve said it before: I’m through with winter. But as my budget won’t quite allow for that trip to the Caribbean, I have to find my escape to warmer places in the kitchen. This past weekend, I wanted smoke. Endless varieties of delicious foods simmering over a low charcoal fire. I had to have it. Problem is, I don’t own a grill or, being a city dweller, have access to safe place to store a grill even if I did own one. And, I’m not a big fan of those stovetop smokers, despite what friends tell me. The smoke has to go somewhere, and in my small kitchen, somewhere invariably means out into the rest of the house. So, what do to? I had 6 pork chops in the freezer that we’re calling my name and begging that I didn’t even approach the store again until I’d considered there plight.

Fully convinced of their worthiness, I considered the preparation. Being that I don’t like to over season pork, but I like it to have depth of flavor, I knew I was going to have to prepare a simple brine. Where to get the smoke, though. Then it hit me: Tea. And to be more specific, smoky tea. Long ago, a friend prepared a steaming cup of Lapsang Souchong for me. It smelled like liquid campfire, and I couldn’t quite make it through the entire cup. But work for flavoring meat; providing smoke without actually using wood or any sort of fire? I had to find out.

I went to a great local tea store here in D.C. called  Teaism and picked up a small bag of Organic Lapsang Souchong loose leaf tea.

When I arrived home, I prepared the simple brine and then added 3 heaping teaspoons of the tea. after about thirty seconds, I took the brine off the heat and let it cool on the stove top.

Two hours later, or so, I added about 8 ice cubes to the brine to completely cool it, and then added my pork chops and let them sit in the brine overnight (though I think 5 hours, or so, would do if you made the brine in the morning and wanted the chops for dinner).

This afternoon, I tried one of the chops and they indeed tasted smoky, but without any of the associated tanins one finds in many teas.They also had the savory, slightly sweet and herbal properties of the brine.

The experiment was a huge success. If you live in the city, in a small apartment, and want to bring a smoky, grilled flavor to your dishes, I highly recommend you check this out.

Check back in the coming days as I’ll have the full recipe for tea-brined pork chops with sauteed apples in a balsamic glaze.

Lapsang Souchong Brine (makes enough brine for three whole pork tenderloins and about 30 pieces of chicken. Reduce accordingly depending on amount you need)

• 10 cups of water
• 1 cup of kosher salt
• 1 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1 whole head of garlic, mash the cloves with the flat side of a knife
• 4 crushed bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon of whole black peppercorns
• 3 heaping teaspoons of Lapsang Souchon loose leaf tea (don’t add if just making the basic brine)

Sweet potato adds a nice twist to an old favorite

This time of year, the local organic delivery service brings a predictable bounty: squash, apples, squash, sweet potatoes, squash, kale, Squash, SWEET POTATOES – AHHH!

I’m not one to complain, because eating locally and seasonally is important. It’s just that in the middle of winter, one starts to run out of ideas for how to create new flavors and dishes out of the same ole’ ingredients.

Why moreovers: because they aren’t leftover from anything: I simply have more of them than I need.

Finding myself with an abundance of sweet potatoes, a baked off 5 or 6, ate a few with dinner and pondered what to do with the rest. The result, sweet potato gnocchi. I’d never made gnocchi before, so I’m not sure what caused me to venture into these tenuous waters with sweets. The process was somewhat arduous. However, the end result was rewarding: It made me feel as though I’d broken through a barrier of sweet potato and squash dishes. It’s also encouraged me to be a lot more adventurous with these ingredients in the future (though, let’s face it, I’m a bit impatient for spring’s bounty).

For those of you who’ve made Gnocchi before and feel comfortable with the ratios, you’ll know how best to proceed for the Gnocchi you prefer.

Here are a few great links with instructions for pulling together Potato Gnocchi:

Anna Maria Volpi’s fabulous pictorial Gnocchi Recipe

About.Com’s Easy Gnocchi

My recipe is as follows:

Scoop out the flesh from 4-5 medium sized sweet potatoes

Puree the flesh in a food processor to establish a base consistency. Above is a picture of my blended sweets prior to adding the other ingredients.

Place in a bowl and add 1.5 cups of flour, 1 egg (beaten) and 1 cup of Parmesan cheese. Don’t forget Mrs S. and Mr. P.

Mix together until it starts to become a dough (this can be quite messy…just warning you). Once the “dough” has come together, put a sheet of parchment down on a cutting board and on a flat cookie sheet. Sprinkle some flour on each.

Remove a palm-sized ball of dough from the mixture and roll it out on the floured cookie sheet by hand, until it starts to take the shape of a long, thin, baton. When its approximately the size of your index finger, begin to cut into half inch pieces with a knife. Now, one of the common methods for shaping gnocchi involves rolling the small pieces over the tines of a fork. I had no patience for this. I gave each piece a quick roll in my hand, dropped onto the floured sheet and pressed lightly into the center with my thumb.

After I’d filled the tray with gnocchi, I covered them with plastic wrap and put them into the fridge for a few hours. Don’t know why. I just did.

Boil water with salt. Cook gnocchi about 7 minutes. They’ll start to float on the top, at which time i gave them a couple more minutes. Turned out it was 7 in total.

While they’re in the pot, boiling away, add a half a stick of butter, a half a cup of chicken stock, white pepper and a glug of wine to the pan. Cook down until the sauce starts to bubble and reduce. Then, add your pieces of sage, probably 8-10 sprigs, torn and bruised, to the pan.

Cook on medium until you smell the sage and the mixture starts to brown. This should coincide with the finished gnocchi. Drain the little suckers, but reserve some water for the butter sauce.

Add your gnocchi and a half a ladle of the pasta water to the pan and cook on hight until the mixture begins to thicken.

Plate, add a few of the moreover pieces of fresh sage and the remainder of the parm (less, of course, if it’s only you). It should look roughly like the photo above (which look different from each other because I’m still messing around with the best indoor settings on my camera. It’s a never-ending struggle).

This recipe isn’t perfect. If you have one using sweet potatoes that you prefer, I’d love to hear about it.

More later,

Will

For those of you out there struggling with pastry, read the post, print it out and tape it to your kitchen well.

Pie Crust Primer

Here’s the instructions as related to me regarding the Rib Eye Recipe:

“Build traffic to your blog. Add a link on Foodista to your post about: Rib Eye Roast.

Just Copy and Paste the following code in your post, we’ll automatically link from the Rib Eye Roast page to your post. Foodista users will be able to read a couple of sentences of your post and follow the link to your blog.

Note: This a new feature and every blog is a bit different, if you have any trouble getting the links to work, please let us know .

Rib Eye Roast on Foodista

So, start linking your recipes!

Yep, you read it correctly: Butter…Poached..Rib Roast. Eight pounds of butter to be exact. In the pictures above, you’ll see the proof, including what 8 pounds of reducing butter looks like in a large pot, as well as the clarified remnants.

The first few people to whom I mentioned this laughed nervously before questioning if they’d indeed heard me correctly.

I wanted to post the pictures today and get to the recipe and my analysis of it in the next few days. On paper, this was quite simple. But, it did include quite a lot of prep time that I wasn’t aware of when I’d read through it the initial few times. Furthermore, my uncle pulled this from the paper and neglected to mention that there was a larger article with the recipe that contained some guidance about trimming the roast.

So, for the most part, I flew blind in pulling this together. But, after the prep, and despite the lack of trimming some key areas, this was quite easy.

Here is the initial recipe from the Washington Post

The roast turned out, as you can imagine, incredibly tender and not at all greasy. Once our group overcame the fears of what might happen to our arteries, we immersed fully into this must-eat-only-once-per-year indulgence.

The crispy potatoes that I served with this are definitely a keeper. Basically, you peel the skin from Yukon Gold potatoes, cut off the ends, and then chuff all sides with a fork (basically, drag the fork across all sides of the potato, leaving the little channels in its wake).

I recommend cooking these for about 45 minutes to an hour; 30 or so minutes at 375 and then the remaining time about about 475. Baste the potatoes every so often with butter and beef stock (or with any fat you have from what you’re cooking) and don’t season with salt until they come out of the oven as you don’t want to draw any water toward the surface.

Okay, more to come later. I have several comments about what I did differently and what you might consider if you decide to try this. For all you Roast Beast fans out there, it’s a must.

Here’s the link to the Rib Eye Recipe on Foodista

The site’s library of cooking techniques is quite good.

As it’s often difficult to read about cooking techniques, I hope this visual description of a basic, but often intimidating, topic would be useful to you.

In these tough economic times, you have to save money where you’re able. Buying whole chickens, and then de-boning and cooking or freezing at home will most certainly save you money. As you’ll see in this video, it takes about five minutes. Probably about the same time it takes to unwrap separated chicken pieces, wash and re-bag. Plus, you’re helping the environment by not immediately discarding that Styrofoam and plastic wrap.

In the next few days, I’ll add a recipe that uses a fully broken down chicken. Next week, I hope to share with you a great recipe for butterflying a chicken breast, and then stuffing it. Works easily as well with Turkey and saves you tons of mess usually accompanying the carving process.

In any case, enjoy the video, brought to you by Lori Schneider of Figs Catering in Austin, Texas.