Month: May 2014

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mashed ripe (black skin) plantain (two medium size plantains)
• 4 tbsps sweet cream butter (salted)
• 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking powder.

Set the butter out to soften about 2 hours before you start.

Slice off the ends of the plantain. Use a sharp knife to slit the skin from end to end. Peel the skin sideways in one piece (like you are unwrapping it). Slice into 1/2″ slices and cook in boiling salted (2 tsps) water over medium-high heat, until a fork inserts easily all the way through a slice (maybe 10 minutes or so). Remove the slices with a slotted spoon and place in a bowl. Mash with a fork, or a potato masher, leaving some texture to the mash.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, and vanilla thoroughly with a mixer (medium speed).

With a pastry cutter or 2 forks, cut the plantain mash into the other dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and baking powder). It should result in a crumbly dough. Add the plantain mixture to the liquid ingredients and mix moderately with the mixer.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour the mixture into a greased and floured 9″x5″x3″ non-stick loaf pan. Bake for approximately 1 hour. Check with a wooden toothpick in the center of the loaf. When it comes out clean, the bread is done. If you have an instant read thermometer (like a Thermapen), look for 200ºF in the middle of the loaf.

Set the pan on a cooling rack and let it cool for 15 minutes. Place the cooling rack on top of the loaf pan, hold the pan against the rack and invert them so the loaf comes out of the pan onto the cooling rack. If you buttered/floured the pan properly, the loaf should come right out.

Let it cool completely before slicing. Tastes great, if you want a little more decadence, you can add about 1/4 cup of crushed/chopped walnuts, pecans or cashews to the batter.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2  cups  water
• 1 1/4  cups  sugar
• 1/2  cup  unsweetened cocoa
• 3  ounces  bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 2  teaspoons  vanilla extract

Preparation

Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Stir in sugar and cocoa; reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat; add chocolate and vanilla, stirring until chocolate melts. Cover and chill completely.

Pour chocolate mixture into the freezer can of an ice-cream freezer; freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Spoon sorbet into a freezer-safe container; cover and freeze 1 hour or until firm.

Almond Mascarpone

Ingredients

• 1 pound mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 ounce almond liqueur, such as Amaretto or 1/4 ounce Almond Extract
• 1/2 cup heavy cream, softly whipped

Preparation

Beat mascarpone cheese, 1/4 cup of the sugar and almond liqueur/extract at high speed until smooth.

Whip heavy cream and remaining sugar until you get soft peaks.

Add the whipped cream to the mascarpone mixture and beat at high speed for another 20 to 30 seconds.

Set aside if plating within a hour or so. Refrigerate if prepping for next day.

Ginger Almond Phyllo Crisps

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup almonds, ground
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger, ground
• 6 sheets of phyllo dough, thawed
• 1/2 cup melted salted butter

Preparation

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Spread sliced almonds on a sheet pan or cookie sheet and toast for about 10 minutes. The almonds should turn a light golden color and smell very nutty. Be careful to not let them burn.

Remove from oven and transfer to a cool sheet pan. Let them cool to room temperature.

Process crystallized ginger in a food processor until it looks like sand.

Use the food processor and process the almonds until they are finely chopped.

In small bowl, combine almonds, sugar and ginger. Set aside.

Place the phyllo dough between pieces of wax paper and cover with a lightly dampened kitchen towel. If you do not do this, the dough will dry out very quickly and become brittle and unusable.

Arrange 1 piece of parchment paper to line a baking sheet.

Arrange 1 piece of parchment paper on your counter top. Arrange 1 piece of phyllo on that parchment paper and brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with sugar mix. Lay another piece of phyllo on top, repeat the process, use the brush to gently press the sheet down onto the previous sheet. Top with a third piece of phyllo, pressing down gently, and brush with butter.

Chill stack 10 minutes.

Using a very sharp knife or a rolling pizza cutter, carefully cut the phyllo into 3 lengthwise strips; cut each strip into triangles about an inch and a half on a side.

Carefully transfer half of the rectangles to the prepared baking sheet with a large metal spatula.

Bake until crisp and golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes at 375ºF. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Bake the remaining rectangles in the same manner.

 Plating

 You can follow the example in my photo, which is a bed of the Almond Mascarpone cradling a scoop of sorbet, a small pinch of toasted almonds on top of the sorbet, and the Phyllo Crisp beside. Or… just use your imagination!

Boston Butt also known as pork shoulder is the top portion of the front leg of the hog. The terminology for pork shoulder can vary widely depending on the region. However, the upper part of the shoulder, commonly known as Boston Butt, or just Butt, comes from the area near the loin and contains the shoulder blade bone. The lower part of the leg is most commonly called the Arm Picnic, or simply Picnic.

 Buying Your Butt

Butt comes packaged many different ways. If you buy it at a supermarket or a big box store, you’ll most likely see it vacuum wrapped, called cryowrapping.

Look at the packaging carefully, often cryowrapped pork comes with an injected preservative liquid, sometimes labeled as “Enhanced”. This essentially triples its shelf life in the store.This is something to watch out for, check the dates very carefully before you buy. You may have heard of “Wet-Aging” beef in vacuum pack. Pork DOES NOT dry age, it simply goes bad, by which I mean it will smell bad and the liquids will become gooey. This is undesirable and unacceptable. If you have no choice but to buy one like this, I would recommend that you carry a sharp pocket knife with you. After you have paid for the meat, BEFORE you have left the cashier, cut the plastic open and smell the pork. It should smell fresh, if it doesn’t, have them replace it. There is no down side to this. You can tape it shut when you get home, place it in a two gallon zip-lock bag and freeze it, or cook it.

The ideal, of course, is to find a meat market that sells fresh butt that has no injected liquid, no brine and no preservatives. Ask for it untrimmed (Packer), bone in, you can do the trimming at home and it’ll cost less.

 Rub, Brine, Inject or Mop????

There are a dozen different ways to approach enhancing the flavor of this already flavorful cut. I’ll address a few more popular here so you’ll be familiar with them and maybe do your own experimenting with them later.

 Aye, that’s the Rub

This is a very popular way to get flavor into the meat. I’ve included the recipe for my Butt Rub here because I’ve had great results with it.

 Brining the Beast

Brining was originally developed to preserve meats when there was no refrigeration. Corned Beef and Pastrami are two meats that started out life as Brisket and became very different flavors after preservation. This led over time to experimenting with brining to change or enhance the flavor of a meat. Flavor Brining meats has become all the rage these days, however pork butt is not commonly brined because of its naturally high fat content, yet there are some recipes that do so. One of the common complaints about brine pork butt is that it now just tastes like ham. You’ve brined away all the natural sweetness of the butt when you brined it.

 This Won’t Hurt A Bit

Injection is commonly used to add moisture and flavor into meats that may tend to become dry during the long, slow cooking process. Injections can be as simple as apple juice to as complex as any marinade you can dream up. Pork but does not normally need to be injected, but when it is, it’s usually injected with apple juice. This results in a super moist pork that has a bit of sweetness from the sugars in the apple juice.

 Cleanup On Aisle 3, Bring The Mop!!

Mopping is another method commonly used to add flavor and moisture. Once again, a pork butt generally doesn’t need to be mopped with anything unless you’re just doing it to add flavor. The big drawback to mopping is that you have to open your smoking compartment to mop. Every time you open it, you extend the cooking time by 5 to 10 minutes because you lose a lot of your heat.

 OK, let’s get your butt in the smoker!!

You need a 7 to 8 lb Boston Butt – Bone In and about 8 to 16 hours…. so plan ahead!

 Matt’s Butt Rub

 Ingredients

• 1 cup turbinado sugar (sold as Sugar in the Raw)
• 1 cup smoked paprika (or regular if you don’t have smoked)
• 2/3 cup dark brown sugar
• 2/3 cup powdered or granulated garlic
• 2/3 cup kosher salt
• 2 tablespoon ancho chili powder
• 3 teaspoons ground oregano leaves
• 3 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

 Pour all the ingredients into a Ziploc bag, seal it and massage and shake to mix.

 Trimming And Preparation

The butt is the one piece of meat you need to trim the least. Trim virtually all the fat off the fat side of the butt. There is quite a lot of internal fat in the but, so there shouldn’t be an issue with moistness. Removing the fat exposes more meat to the rub and creates more crunchy crust.

After trimming the fat, Lightly oil the pork butt with canola oil, apply rub liberally and pat/massage into the surface. Some BBQ cooks say that you should use mustard, but a lot of the herbs and spices are soluble in oil and penetrate the surface of the meat better with oil than with mustard, Besides, after 10 to 12 hours in the cooker (for a typical 8 lb butt), there’s absolutely nothing left of the mustard.

Most recipes say to leave the pork butt in the refrigerator overnight to let the rub sink in. Tests have shown that even in 48 hours the rub still only gets in about 1/4″. I generally apply the rub after the butt has been out of the fridge for an hour or so. This lets the meat warm up a bit so the smoker doesn’t have a huge thermal deficit to overcome.

 Rule of Thumb is No More Than 4 hours Over 40º

The colder the center is, the longer it will take to reach 190º. (Warming up the core faster could be one benefit to injecting room temperature apple juice.)

When ready to smoke, get your fire going and let the smoker come up to temperature and stabilize before you put the meat in.

This cook started with a couple ounces of pecan wood, after 1 hour I added about 2 ounces of apple wood, then after a third hour passed I added 2 ounces of cherry wood. Once the cherry was gone I did not add any more smoking wood.

 If It Were Up To Me…

The best way to get wonderfully tender and juicy butt is:

• run the smoker at 225 degrees Fahrenheit
  
• keep the smoke going for the first 4 hours and then just monitor the cooking temperature
• don’t open the smoke compartment until your instant meat thermometer tells you the butt is at 190ºF degrees inside. If yer lookin’, ye ain’t cookin’!!

How Long Do I Cook It???

Truthful answer… UNTIL IT’S DONE! It’s very difficult to predict exact cooking times. There are so many variables…. How cold is it outside? Is it raining? Is your smoker insulated, or is it thin steel and a victim of temperature changes? How cold was your butt when you put it in the smoker? Have you opened the smoke cabinet to “peek” at your wonderful creation? (Remember? If yer lookin’, ye ain’t cookin’!!) Have you successfully maintained the temperature at 225ºF? All these come into play.

My best advice is start two hours earlier on your first butt. If it’s done before your guests arrive, double wrap it in heavy aluminum foil, wrap several layers of bath towels around it and close it up in an ice chest (no ice) until the guests arrive. Believe me, that butt will stay hot for quite a long time this way.

The Finish Line

After the butt reaches 190 take the butt out, double wrap it in heavy aluminum foil, wrap several layers of bath towels around it and close it up in an ice chest (no ice).

When you unwrap it, be careful to catch any juices in the baking dish. You can pour these juices over your pork after it’s been pulled, chopped or sliced.

For Sliced Pork Butt

If you want to slice the pork butt instead of pulling or chopping, take it out at 185ºF, and wrap it like above.

Serving Suggestions

Serve with Matt’s North Carolina BBQ Sauce or Matt’s Sweet & Spicy BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 8 oz containers of Baby Portobello Mushrooms
• 4 Tbsps. salted butter
• 1 Tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 Cup Burgundy Wine (I use Pinot Noir)
• 1 Tsp. Freshly Ground Black Pepper
• 1 Cup Beef Stock
• 5 cloves Garlic, Peeled/Smashed
• Salt to taste

Directions:

Wash the mushrooms put them in a stock pot with everything except the salt.

Bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat.

Transfer to a crock pot on low for 6 hours.

After 6 hours, move the mushrooms and liquid to a chef’s pan or deep skillet and simmer uncovered until the liquid is reduced by 3/4, this could take 1 to 3 hours depending on how high you have the burner.

Add salt to taste, if needed,

The mushrooms will be dark reddish, almost black.

Serve as a side or on top of a steak, pour some of the liquid over it as well.

Carne Asada

 Enough for about 8 over-loaded tacos, or 16 normal tacos!

 Ingredients:

• 2 2 lb. flank steaks

• 1 cup orange juice
• 1 tsps cayenne pepper
• 2 tsps ground black pepper
• 1 cup olive oil

Preparing the Flank Steak

Place the flank steak flat on a cutting board. Place one hand FLAT on the top surface of the meat. With your other hand, hold a long, sharp knife with its blade parallel to the counter, and very carefully slice the flank steak into 2 thin sheets of meat.

This works best when the meat has just come out of the refrigerator. If it’s too warm it will be more difficult to slice. If needed, place the meat in the freezer for about twenty minutes and then slice it. Set aside for half an hour or so to let it come to room temperature.

Preparing the Marinade

Prepare the marinade by mixing together the orange juice, cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, and olive oil. Combine by whisking with a whisk. Thirty minutes before grilling the meat, tenderize the flank steak by using a needle tenderizer like a Jacard, then immerse both pieces in the marinade.

 The Grilling Technique

Equipment:

• Cast Iron Hibachi Grill (Amazon – Marsh Allen 30052 Cast Iron Hibachi 10 by 18-Inch Charcoal Grill)

You can use other grills, but make sure they can handle burning wood and high temps. The goal here is to get crazy hot temps extremely close to the meat to get a crisp exterior on the meat with a medium rare juicy inside. The hardwood lump charcoal and wood chunks impart the very high heat and add very important flavors to the meat. Your carne asada will not taste the same if you try to cook it on a gas grill or use charcoal briquettes. With the Hibachi you can get the grilling surface to within an inch of the hot coals. You can even set the grates right on top of the coals for maximum heat.

The blazing hot Hibachi grill.

• Hardwood Lump Charcoal (Home Depot 8lb bag $4.97)
• Hickory wood chunks and chips
• Charcoal starter chimney
• Covered Chef’s pan or other container than can keep the cooked meat warm. I put my Food Network Covered Chef’s Pan in my gas grill, heated it up to about 300º F then turned the grill off and closed the lid to retain the residual heat.
• Heavy, heat resistant glove to handle the starter chimney and the hot chef’s pan.
• Long metal tongs to turn the meat. Silicone tongs may not stand up to the very high heat.

NOTE: Do Not Use Charcoal Lighter Fluid To Start Your Charcoal! It will make the meat taste bad!

 Preparing the Grill

Open the bottom vents on the charcoal grill wide open. Drizzle a little olive oil on some crumpled up black & white newspaper. Put it in the bottom end of the starter chimney. Set the chimney on the fire grate of the grill and fill it about 3/4 full with the lump charcoal. Put a few chunks of the hickory on top of the charcoal. Light the newspaper and sit back and wait. When the charcoal is ready you should see a steady column of heat coming out the top of the chimney and maybe a little smoke from the hardwood chunks. If you peer carefully down inside you should see white ash on the charcoal and some very hot flames roaring up through the lumps of charcoal. Very carefully pour the wood chunks and hot coals onto the fire grate and spread evenly. Put your cooking grates as close to the coals as possible and let them get wicked hot.

 Grilling the Flank Steak

Remove one flank steak from the marinade and let the marinade drain off. Place the steak in the center of the highest heat. Cook for no more than three minutes so that the meat is well browned, crisp and maybe even charred in places, flip and cook for a couple minutes more until the bottom side matches the top. If your grill is hot enough, you may find that two minutes per side is enough. When ready, put the steak in your pan or pot, add two pats (2 tbsps) of butter and sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt or kosher salt. Repeat for the second piece. Discard leftover marinade.

Serving the Flank Steak

After the meat has rested about ten minutes, use a very sharp knife and slice each piece into 1/4 inch or thinner strips across the grain. Then chop the strips into small chunks with a maximum dimension of 1/4 inch. Some juices will have collected in the pan. Put the chopped meat back in the juices and toss to coat the meat in the juices. Put the lid back on until ready to serve.

Serve on warm corn or flour tortillas. Place a generous amount of chopped grilled beef on the tortilla,  put 1 tbsp. of Salsa Ranchera, 1 teaspoon of Salsa Roja, and 2 teaspoons of Guacamole. Sprinkle it with salt and generous squeezes of lime, and wrap it for eating.

 Quacamole

• 1 1/4 lbs. Haas avocados
• 1/2 small (2-inch diameter) white onion, cut into chunks
• 5 sprigs cilantro
• 3 tbsps. fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup water
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Peel, pit, and mash the avocados in a large bowl. Finely mince the onion & cilantro, add to avocados. Add lime juice and stir the guacamole thoroughly. Add water a bit at a time to create a soft, spreadable paste.

Yield: about 2 cups.

 Salsa Ranchera

• 1/2 lb. white onions, peeled
• 1/2 lb. ripe, red tomatoes, unpeeled but halved
• 6 sprigs cilantro
• 2 tbsps. fresh lime juice
• 1/4 tsp. freshly grated lime zest
• 1 tsp. salt

Dice the onions and tomatoes into roughly1/4 inch cubes. You should wind up with about a cup of each. Chop the cilantro leaves into fine pieces. In a bowl, combine the onions, tomatoes, cilantro, salt, lime juice and zest.

Yield: about 2 cups.

 Salsa Roja

• 1/4 cup dried chiles de árbol
• 1 small tomato (2 1/2-inch diameter), trimmed and halved
• 1/4 tsp. salt

Snap off the stems or tail ends of the chiles, remove as many seeds as possible and toast them in a dry, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until they are dark but not black. (If any remaining seeds fall out of the chiles as you toast them, just discard them. Those that remain in the toasted chiles are included in the sauce.)

NOTE: The vapors from this toasting process can be pretty potent! Make sure you have good ventilation.

Cut 1 small (2 1/2-inch) tomato in half, place in a small saucepan, cover with water, bring to a boil, and cook until it gives off an orange foam.

Put the toasted chiles in a blender, just cover with tomato cooking water, add the tomato halves and the salt, and puree until the only solids remaining in the sauce are the chile seeds.

Yield: about 1/2 cup.