Category Archives: Reno

07.23.13
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BEER BUTT CHICKEN

You’ve all heard of Beer Can Chicken — probably cooked it. Insert a half-full beer can up a chicken’s keister, put that assembly on the grill and wait for the yummy, moist chicken dinner.

Well, if you happen to own a Big Green Egg — or even if you don’t — BGE is happy to sell you a ceramic conical device called Sittin’ Chicken in which to place six ounces of beer and shove up the aforementioned keister. In this case, you call it Beer Butt Chicken.

Here’s how it goes…

First of all, buy an organic, free-range chicken. I got mine at the Farmers Market, and I’ve visited the farm where it was raised, so I know its a swell bird. Mine was a tad over five pounds.

 

My chicken listed a bit to the right, but did not fall over.

Chicken is on the EGG. The white thing is a “Ceramic Platesetter” and makes the EGG a roaster or smoker.

The chicken is roasted at 375°F and sprayed from time to time with a beer and cider and oil and vinegar mixture. Helps it brown and flavors up the skin.

Here’s my chicken after 40 minutes.

Here’s my chicken after 70 minutes. I took its thigh temperature and called it done.

Here we are, rested and ready to carve.

We invited son Brian and Natasza over for Sunday Dinner and to watch the British Open Golf Championship from Muirfield Scotland that I had taped. It is live at 5am PDT, not a good time for Sunday Dinner. Phil Mickelson — long one of my favorites — came from five strokes back to win. We were all very happy about that, and I won a couple of coin, as well.

Carved. Carcass in the background.

Brian made Vichyssoise for a first course. Its chilled creaminess welcome as it has been very hot in Reno.

And here is our table.

Later in the evening, golf over, guests gone and a cooling breeze on the front porch, Carol and I watched the moonrise.

07.19.13
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ORANGE SUMMER

So many orange things are around in the summer. I’ve been eating some orange and yellow things for my breakfast and lunch. You’ll see:

Orange and Yellow Lunch
Melon
Canned pineapple chunks
A very fine cheese on crackers:

Fat Bottomed Girl, Bleeting Heart CA
Pasteurized Sheep’s Milk
Peter, at Wedge: A Cheese Shop got this cheese in for the first time recently when I was in the shop. He gave me a taste and I was hooked. Has a cool name, too.

Orange Breakfast
Hard cooked egg
Melon
Peach
I don’t know how you do your peaches, but I peel mine with a vegetable peeler, then cut it off the pit in wedge sections. Be sure and do all this peeling and cutting over your plate so you capture all the juices.

Another Orange Breakfast of melon and peach layered over thin sliced baked ham.
We get both our melons and peaches at the same farm stand at the Saturday Farmer’s Market on California Avenue near Keystone. I don’t remember the name of the stand, but I’ll look when I’m there tomorrow. Minton Family Farm, Yuba City CA

Here’s melon and a hard cooked egg accompanied by home made pimento cheese spread on crackers.

And finally, for now:
Ambrosia melon, “yellow” watermelon, and peach for breakfast…
More cut up peach soaking in rum for dessert tonight.
My peaches went beyond ripe, so I had to peel two at once. Turns out that’s not such a bad thing. Sadly, the “yellow” watermelon had almost no flavor (the rum-soaked peaches had lots of flavor).

07.16.13
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EGGstatic

I’m so excited,
I just can’t hide it,
Got ourselves a BIG GREEN EGG
And I think I like it…

Big Green Egg

It all started seriously when we visited Carol’s brother Mark in September 2012. They’ve had a Big Green Egg (EGG) for years and always cooked on it when we made our annual visit. The first time we ate from their EGG was the summer of 2010 where Jannie cooked salmon, zucchini, tomatoes and corn all at once. That planted the EGG seed in my brain. By September ’12 we had already moved from San Francisco to Reno, so we were about ready to rock n roll.

And why had we wanted to move from the beautiful San Francisco after 20 years?
Reason No. 1, the hills and steps.

Count the steps.

Reason No. 2, we liked the idea of walking out the back door and throwing something on the grill without the hassle of walking through the entire house and out onto the tiny back deck.

Our back “deck” off the second bedroom

Oh yes, before we left Ohio, Mark and I happened to make a small wager…

Mark’s Cincinnati Reds and my Giants are both in NL playoffs. Mark wants to bet.
I said, “I’ll bet the Reds don’t win the NL championship.”
He said he’d take that for $10.
I said, “If you lose, you have to give me my ten dollar bill in Reno.”
He said, “Only if you cook in Reno on a Green Egg.”
We shook on it. Jannie and Carol hooted.

We were outta there for the airport at noon. Continue reading →

06.13.13
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LUNCH :: Double Header

In Michael Pollan’s book Food Rules: An Eaters Manual, “Eat until you’re 80% full,” is one rule that I must pay attention to, especially in Reno. Serving portions are most often outsized, to the point where they make a dinner, a take-home lunch and a half-lunch — the subject of the day.

Even cooking at home for two, things are not often easily divisible and savable; an ear of corn, a tomato, a potato, a quart of home made tomato sauce, a can of almost anything. The point is, we’ll probably cook more than we can — or want to — eat.

So I developed the half-lunch. I use glass storage containers and my favorites — from Crate and Barrel — are a 2-cup bowl and an almost-cup bowl. The former is probably a lunch, the latter a half-lunch.

the two-cup and almost-cup containers

Today, I dined on two half-lunches:

TOMATO SAUCE with SAUSAGE and NOODLES

Pedigree:

  1. A quart of Cherokee Purple Georgiana Brennan Roasted tomato sauce made and canned in September 2011. Used to make a dinner of spaghetti with sausage.
  2. Sort of hot Italian sausage. We skinned and mixed 3 links of hot sausage with 1 link of mild sausage. (Also the reverse for Carol’s taste.) This was used with the sauce for the spaghetti dinner.
  3. Some of each of the sauce and sausage constituted the leftover parts of the full lunch.
  4. A ball of dried Kamfen Hong Kong Style Egg Noodles. Cooked and added to the sauce and sausage.
  5. Since a ball of dried noodles is a finite thing, I added compatible portions of sauce and sausage.

Viola! I had a half-lunch left over.

the noodles

BEANS and TOMATO and KNOCKWURST and CELERY

Pedigree:

  1. One tomato. The first fresh tomato of the season from the California Ave. Farmers Market. Peeled and chunked.
  2. Some Prim Manteca beans cooked in the previous days to use in many ways. (I love beans.)
  3. Some celery sliced off an almost used up head… the lovely solid whitish part near the root end.
  4. A splash of chicken broth to keep everything wet.
  5. One Hebrew National knockwurst, cooked in the midst of that stuff.

That was my full lunch. By the time I was 80% full, I had a half-lunch left over. (I ate all the knockwurst.)

When I made my half lunch, I added some grilled green beans that accompanied grilled fish a day or so ago.

And there you have a lunch double-header. I’ll do it again sometime.

05.29.13
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Freezer up!

We moved into our swell flat on Russian Hill in San Francisco in 1992. It was built in 1935, the last on the west side of Russian Hill after the earthquake and fire. Swell in every way — including a parking space in the garage — but the refrigerator in the remodeled kitchen was 30 inches wide with a freezer on top. Not swell.

We lived with that until 2003. Enough. No space to put away tomato sauce and other stuff I make in season to enjoy later. I went out and bought an “undercounter” freezer at Sears. Carried it home in the back of the SAAB. We didn’t really install it under the counter, but beside the counter with a microwave on top. That was a huge improvement, quadrupling our freezer space.

There’s the freezer on the left.

Last year we moved to Reno and bought a six-year old house. Wow. The space provided for the refrigerator was big enough for a double door refrigerator with a freezer drawer under. We went out and bought one of those puppies, relegating our “undercounter” freezer — still useful — to the garage.

Our new Reno fridge.

Undercounter freezer in garage with car.

Trouble is, it got so we dreaded using it. It was on the rather cold garage floor and we had to get on hands and knees to look in and get stuff out. And if the car was in the garage, the open freezer door just scraped by the front bumper — unless we parked an inch or two too far in.

One day, on my knee trying to fish out some sausages, a pound of ground beef and a ham steak came sliding out and rattled onto the floor; the ham steak slid under the car. Damn!! (I might have said.) Frustrated, I rolled back my head and gazed skyward… nothing up there but the garage ceiling. But wait, there’s nothing above the “undercounter” freezer. Why not lift the sucker up??? I can put it at eye level. Sounds like a plan.

Freezer up!!!

Hey… frozen food at eye level. What a concept.

05.20.13
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QUAIL

California Quail

I can’t believe I haven’t written about Fatted Calf Fig and Sausage Stuffed Quail. I first made it in September of 2010 and have cooked it one or more times a year since. It is so good and rich and well, different. Here’s the way Fatted Calf announced it:

Finally Figs
Finally, figs!  Beautiful, fat, dusky figs oozing with droplets of ambrosial sap from nearby Capay valley! That means, finally, fig and sausage stuffed quail.   And not just any quail but beautiful, plump, naturally raised Wolfe Ranch (http://wolfequail.com/) quail from Vacaville.
Farmer Brent Wolfe has been raising quail and other poultry his entire life and has developed his own breeding stock.  That means that the quail spend their entire lives on Brent’s Vacaville Ranch.  And Brent’s quail grow big, much bigger than your average quail, making them just perfect for stuffing.
The quail come straight from the farm to the Fatted Calf kitchen where they take a brief bath in brine that keeps them moist and delicious.  They are then stuffed with perfectly ripe figs encased in a blanket of lemon and herb sausage.   Roast in a hot oven or on the grill and as the skin turns golden brown and the sausage juices baste the quail internally, the fig becomes molten caramel.  Savor the first bite, finally!

I’d have to say that the quail was every bit as good as it sounds

A little research told me that less than a week after we dined on the Fatted Calf Quail, we left for Kyiv, Ukriane to attend son Brian’s wedding service and meet Natasza’s parents. Quail seemed to slip down the list of writing subjects.

In any case, we took pictures the first time and again when we grilled it last week, so here’s making up for lost time.

Could not be simpler to prepare:
• Brown the quail.
• Roast the quail.
• Make some elegant accompaniments.

Naked Quail stuffed with sausage and a fat fig

Brown the quail; roast the quail

It took about 8 minutes to brown the quail on all sides, then another 12 minutes or so to get it to an internal  temperature of 160°F; a total of 20 minutes. Continue reading →

04.21.13
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How beautiful izzat?

That’s what I call Sunday Breakfast.

Eggs from Hadji Paul at Garden Shop Sunday Farmers Market (Outdoors today!!)

Radishes from Garden Shop Sunday Farmers Market.

Pickled Golden Beets from Great Basin Coop, roasted and pickled by yours truly.

Sugar Snap Peas from Safeway inna bag. (Oh, well.)

Yum.

04.09.13
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Good Mother Sierra Chili

Sierra Canyon Chili Cookoff

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 27, 2013 5:00 – 7:00 PM – “GREAT BOWLS OF FIRE” ANNUAL CHILI COOKOFF – $5.00 PER PERSON
A Sierra Canyon tradition……homemade chili tasting!! Taste your way through 9 different chili’s…and prepare to be dazzled! Our contestants plan to tantalize your taste buds with their favorite Chili recipes. Your $5 Tasting Fee includes a salad station, tasting of all entries, soda, beer, water and a small bowl of “non-contestant” Chili prepared by Sierra Canyon’s own Don Chess. Sign up at the front desk today!

Number 2 in your program, Number 1 in your mouth.

Goodness gracious…!!! I happened to read that just after I made Southwestern Black Beans with Chicken Soup; a recipe I got from the Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) By Nancy Horn, chef, co-owner of Dish Cafe. That was good; used a tablespoon of Chili Powder and other interesting spices. I thought that with subtractions and additions this could make a fine chili.

Out with the potatoes, out with the chicken, in with some cubed beef, in with some spicy Italian sausage. Out with the onion/celery/carrot mirepoix, in with a chili friendly onion/celery/green bell pepper mirepoix. Interesting that her soup used no tomatoes, but tomatillos. I went with that.

I’m not new to the chili game. It’s one of my favorite soups — and I’m a soup guy. Back in Ought-Seven, about this time of year, I posted an essay called CHILI: My Top Five.

Since then, I’ve found a couple others that I like a lot, but — feeling in an adventurous mood — I wanted to go with this whole new concoction.

I did a test recipe, ate it, then tried it on son Brian and his wife. It was a few days old by then, but with chili, that’s a good thing. I liked it a lot for the second time. Brian observed that it had good chili flavor and was spiced just right — both of our sons are “supertasters” — but the meat chunks were too big… they shouldn’t be much bigger than the beans.

some ingredients: mirepoix, cubed chuck steak, Spicy Italian Sausages

my test batch with cilantro

carol’s serving gussied up with cilantro, grated cheese, and sour cream

That was good stuff as noted, and passed the Brian test a few days later.

I had some Whole Food Spicy Italian Sausage left over, so I experimented with lil-tiny meatballs.

making lil-tiny meatballs out of spicy italian sausage

Take a sausage, remove the casing, cut in half lengthwise, cut each half into rough cubes and roll between your thumb and forefinger to get a lil-tiny meatball.

browning the balls

Not so hard, and they browned nicely. (I ate my test samples with some leftover roasted celery soup. Yum.) Continue reading →

02.24.13
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Oven Bacon

I hold a pack of bacon in my hand, but don’t feel like going through the rigor of frying it. “Carol, isn’t there a way to cook bacon in the oven?” She was at the breakfast table reading from the SF Chronicle on her iPad.

She made a few taps. “This guy on his blog says to line a pan with foil, put on the bacon and put it in a COLD oven. Bake at 400°F for 17 minutes, but WATCH. Bacon thickness, your oven behavior and so on and can vary the timing.”

I put the bacon in our Countertop Convection Oven, set it for 400, turned it on and set my timer for 8 minutes. It took 5 minutes for the oven to tell me its at 400. The bacon started to sizzle at that point. I took a peek and it was all wrinkley and sizzling. By the time my timer dinged, it looked nice and soft done, but not crispy. I turned off the oven and put the bacon on paper towels on a plate. Put those back in the warm oven, poured the bacon fat in my frying pan to cook four slices of apple and two slices of baked potato.

 

Bacon is cooked.

Apple and potato cook. (That’s a really swell OrGREENiC non-stick skillet we got at Bed Bath Beyond.)

Served.

Breakfast! Yum.

This is not news… just the first time for me.