iamaneviltaco

Time to step back from the "crap you can cook on a bbq" and switch over to "crap you can cook on an open fire". I'm not only an evil taco, I'm also an equal opportunity taco.

This is a classic chili, I pulled it out of a cook book from 1957 and the only changes I made to it are things like translating "no. 2 can" to something that will actually make sense, and adding an ingredient or 2 that it actually made me violently angry the original author omitted.

Ingredients
1 large sweet onion, medium chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tblsp olive oil
1 lb beef tips (pre cut for braising, ground beef will work in a pinch but I prefer the texture of the beef tips)
1 green bell pepper, deseeded and chopped small
2 cups chopped tomatoes (can be canned)
2 cups kidney beans (drained)
1/4 cup corn
2 tblsp cumin
2 tblsp oregano (fresh will make this a lot better)
1 tblsp chili powder
1 tblsp cayenne pepper
optional: 2 shots of whiskey
salt and pepper to taste (I use a tblsp)

Sautee the onion and garlic in the oil for about 5 minutes, until the onion starts to go clear. Add the meat and stir, until the meat is no longer pink, then 2 minutes past that. Add all of the rest of the stuff. Cover, and cook slowly for 45 minutes or so. Taste it, and mess with the seasoning however you want. If it's too runny, uncover it and raise the heat a bit. Serve either by itself or over rice. Garnish with cheddar cheese.

To do this on a fire, what you want to do is throw the pot on the fire when the fire's built a good ember, and the base of the fire is a bright red, but the flames have died off a tiny bit. You're probably going to have to throw at least 1 more log on the fire while cooking this. My recommendation is use smaller sticks so you can control the temperature better. You'll have to fiddle with it more often, but you'll get a lot more of an even temperature that way.

This chili is like crack, possibly the best I've ever tasted that didn't involve 3 hours of cooking and all fresh chili spices. The whiskey really does jack up (heh.) the flavor a lot. It's optional, but I strongly suggest it.

This dish, more than ANY, I suggest messing with. The type of meat, take out the meat, add some carrots, use red onions, try some chipotle pepper, substitute black beans for the kidney beans, etc.... Chili really is a standard. Every chef should know how to make it, and make it well. Every chef, as well, should have their own chili recipe. Just don't be one of those secret ingredient douchebags. Good food exists to be shared.

Dolma are a Turkish dish, primarily, although regional varieties exist throughout the mediterranean. They are stuffed vegetables, usually filled with rice and a form of meat. The vegetable (or fruit) varies wildly as well. Common veggies to stuff are peppers, egg plants, zucchino, grape leaves, and cabbage leaves. There are dozens of things to fill these with, but really the only limit is your imagination. Interesting bit of trivia: Cook them without meat and they're called yalanci dolma, which literally means fake or liar dolma. I guess the turkish don't think very highly of vegetarians.

These are great bbq food, and are pretty well guaranteed to surprise guests, since they're pretty far above the typical meat and corn fare you usually find at a bbq. The variation we're working with today, because I feel playful, is an italian dolma.

Stuffing:
1 lb ground beef
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp fresh chopped oregano
1 tsp fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup uncooked rice (not the minute kind)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together in a large mixing bowl.

Cut into the top of a tomato (the bigger the better, here), being careful to leave the top still attached, and scoop out all of the seeds. Stuff, and add 2 tblsp of water, about 1/4-1/2 tsp of butter on top of the stuffing, under the cap. Put the cap back in place, and brush the whole thing with olive oil.

On the grill, or in the oven, use medium heat and cook these for about a half hour. In the oven, cook them on a greased baking sheet at about 400 degrees. On the grill? Top rack is better. Open these things up about halfway through cooking. If they look a bit dry, add some more water.

Your humble taco is about to be featured on a cooking website. I posted a few recipes, and now when I get the digicam back and a few volunteers to eat some yumminess (and photograph it) I'm one step closer to the cookbook.

The taco is pleased.

I suppose this was unavoidable. Grill or stove, searing and cooking a steak is exactly the same. Same temperature range, cooking style, rest period, and seasoning.

This tutorial neglects the finer points of braising, slow roasting, stewing, and a lot of other techniques. We're working on a grilled steak, these tips are only valid for that style.

*Selecting a steak

Key. Overall, the first thing you want to see is marbling. Streaks of white through the fiber of the meat. Lots of them, well distributed. The fat will render as the meat cooks, and leave an amazing flavor. There is debate about the health aspects, but we're mainly concerned with taste.

The meat should be vibrantly red, with no grey on it AT ALL. Firm to the touch. Not slimy. It should smell slightly sweet. For fatty cuts like a porterhouse, you want to look for a good chunk of fat on the outer wall of the steak. Cook it with the fat, then cut off the fat if it bothers you.

Bone in steaks should have marrow, and fat deposits outside of the main matrix of the meat. Glob of fat on the outside of a t-bone is good. Near the bone is good. In the middle of the cut? Less good. Marrow is flavor, so the center of the bone should have some room to it and a good bit of marrow.

*Seasoning

Simple is good. Use an herb or 2 to bring out the flavor, rosemary and garlic are neat, as are roasted red peppers and sweet onions. Let the meat shine, however. Don't overseason. Throw the spice mixes out of your window.

Pepper the steak, as a rule, but salt? I'll cover that in a bit.

*Cooking

So that salt? Leave it out of the initial rub. This is why we avoid the pre-packaged seasonings.Salt on a steak, before cooking, retards the sealing process of the meat. Salt water boils at a different temperature than normal water, and we want the searing process to be a slow one. Salt water boils a bit faster, and burns hotter. So will your steak. That extra heat transfer will make the steak tough, with a tender core. We want a tender steak with a firm shell. Every drop of salt you add  pre-sear leads to a nastier steak.

Rule 1: Don't touch the freaking steak.

Seriously. Put the tongs down. Flip the steak twice. Once, when the cook line (look at the side of the beef. See the color creeping up? That is your friend. There is a line. Watch it.) Reaches just past halfway up the steak. Salt the steak after the flip. Again, when the cook line disappears and the steak is a uniform color. A third time, after 2 minutes, flip it onto a plate. This is a perfect medium steak, seasoned side up.

I refuse to teach a rare steak. Med. rare is a minute less. Well done? add 2 more minutes to the final flip. *Always* cut open a steak before you eat it until you learn to touch it and feel when it's done.

Rule 2: It's more cooked than you think.

The steak may feel a bit too rare when you take it off the fire, but if you're cooking for a group or waiting to serve it the cooking process continues. What was rare, 4 minutes ago, is now racing toward medium. Meat fibers continue to expand long after they've been removed from heat, and they are sensitive. Hence: don't touch the freaking meat until it needs to be flipped.

Let the meat sit for 3 minutes after leaving the grill before you serve it. The heat cooks off and the fibers of the meat can breathe a bit, making it more tender.

Rule 3: Turn the heat down.

You're not godzilla, and you're not trying to burn down Tokyo with your radiation breath. The fire? Doesn't need to be so high. With coals you want a bit of ash, and a good ember. With a gas grill or stove? medium heat. Meat fibers, again, are sensitive creatures. You want a sizzle to your steak, if it doesn't hiss when it hits the fire take it off and make the fire bigger, but after the meat is sealed the rest of the cooking doesn't need to be so intense. Many chefs advocate a quick sear, removal from the fire, then cooking at a lower heat to bring out the juices, since they can't escape the outer wall of the steak. I fully agree.

A 2 parter for this one. Great bbq food, and it's easy to feed an army with this.

part 1: Salsa Verde


Salsa verde is a tangy, sweet, flavorful salsa. It's a lot more mild than traditional salsa, by default, but it's incarnations are as varied as it's more famous counterpart.

Ingredients:
about 15 tomatillos, quartered (mexican food section, unless you're in the southwest you're buying canned. If you find fresh, husk them)
1/2 cup chopped green chiles (if fresh, de-skin and de-seed. ancho or poblano preferred. if fresh, roast them in the oven on about 300 until they start to get soft and peel them.)
1 medim white onion, chopped
1 bundle of cilantro
1 tsp light oil. sesame preferred
1 tblsp lime juice
1 deseeded, peeled jalapeno (I use the jarred kind)
1 shallot, cut in quarters
salt to taste (I use 1/2 tsp)

Put the tomatillos, onions, jalapeno, shallot in food processor and pulse 5 times. add in the rest and chop until slightly chunky but mostly smooth. Refridgerate for at least 2 hours, but better overnight.

part 2: Chicken Skewers



some chicken tenderloins
some wooden skewers
the salsa verde

Scale this as needed, plan on about 2 skewers per person. Thread the chicken, 1 tenderloin per skewer, through the skewers. Take the skewers and marinade them for at least 4 hours in the salsa verde. Put them in a zip lock bag, add marinade, shake them once an hour and flip them over. You want to use about 1/4-1/2 of the verde on the chicken, so you have some left to top these later.

Grill them for about 5 minutes a side on a medium heat. ONLY TOUCH THE SKEWERS TO FLIP THEM. Don't keep messing with them and moving them around, we're looking for scoremarks and meat cooks better if you don't screw with it and just let the fibers break up.

To serve, just top them with a small spoonful of the verde.

Summertime is coming! With it comes the necessary bbq food / pot luck tastiness. I'm going to start with something a bit unorthodox. I figure everyone would expect me to start off with a post about how to properly grill a steak. Well, that's coming. First, though, I'm going to give you something easy and tasty, as well as refreshing, to take out to that first bbq. Gazpacho.


Gazpacho is a cold soup. Think of it more as a very wet salad. It's cool, refreshing, and takes full advantage of all of those amazing vegetables that are just coming into season. Also, it's a great vegan food, so it's safe to bring no matter where you're going.

ingredients
4 cups tomato juice
1 small red onion, minched
1/2 green bell pepper, deseeded and minced
1/2 red bell pepper, deseeded and minced
1 cucumber, chopped
2 cups chopped tomatoes
2 green onions, chopped
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh is better)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried cumin
1 teaspoon basil (fresh preferred, if fresh use 3 tsp and chop it up)
salt and pepper to taste

optional:
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp (or thereabout) lemon zest (take a fine grater to the outside of the lemon and grate off the yellow part until you've got about a pinch.)

This one's easy. Put it all in a blender or food processor and blend until it's well mixed but still a bit chunky. Refridgerate for at least 2-3 hours before you eat it. Overnight is better. The longer it sits the more the flavors mix.

Serve it cold. For bbqs or picnics? Keep it in the cooler under the beer or something.

Mousetrap here. Today I'm going to talk about something that divides people so easily that I firmly believe that one day it'll cause a global war. Pizza. Now this isn't exactly a recipe. Today we're going to discuss the methods one should use when making a pizza. First, and I should mention this for the sake of my good friend who's already tried to beat this over your head, a pizza stone is cheap, and a very, very good investment. Ovens work on cycles, meaning the heat pulses, it waxes and wanes. A stone stores heat and keeps it always at a constant temperature. First the crust. I don't care if you make your own or cheat, like me, and buy prepackaged shells, just be sure its large enough for what you want. The more in the way of toppings you'd like, the larger and thicker the crust should be. Also, don't overdo it with flavor in this step. Mild garlic or other background flavors are fine, but remember this is the foundation, not the star. Thin, Thick, hand-tossed, deep-dish, pan or sicilian, it's all just personal preference.

Well, before you do anything else, you'll be putting down some sauce. If you skip this step, well, you're making cheese bread. There's the traditional pizza sauce, or you might use alfredo, ranch, barbecue, or do what I do, olive oil and chopped herbs. It's okay to like a lot of sauce, but remember to balance it.

Next comes a hotly debated topic. Some people would tell you that the toppings go on the pizza right now. Some would say cheese does. Well, there's advantages and disadvantages to each of these, but the  the truth is without an anchor, everything will slide off your pizza when your friends try to eat it. Assuming this isn't your goal, a very thin layer of cheese goes on the pizza at this point. Normally one would use a Mozzarella, Romano, and Parmesan blend, but nobody's set this in stone. Experiment to find the taste you prefer. Next, select your toppings, preferrably the smaller, thinner ones, and lay about a third to a half. Next, another layer of cheese. Yes, in the debate of "toppings on bottom versus toppings on top" I'm telling you to be conservative and go for "both". Next lay your thicker toppings like chicken or ham, and for god's sake balance them evenly across the whole pizza. Afterward, another thin layer of cheese to secure the meat or veggies while you're slicing or eating.

I've mentioned balance a lot today. That's because a good pizza -is- balanced, flavor, size, cheese, and topping. It may sound stupid or corny, but for inspiration, look to other foods and try to turn them into a pizza. Big pizza conglomerates do this constantly, so there's no debate as to whether this works or not. Cheeseburger pizza, with cheddar cheese, cooked ground beef, and a hint of bacon, is one of my favorites.

Time for some authentic tacos. The stuff we call a taco here, while yummy as hell, is so far from the real deal it's like using ketchup on spaghetti and calling it italian. The ingredients for this are moderately low priced, but can feed an army for what you spend and last forever. Also, since it's an assembly line, you can fire off dozens of these for a big party with no issues.

ingredients
my chorizo
coarse chopped cilantro
diced tomatoes
diced red onion
small soft taco shells
grated hard, bitter cheese like parmesan or asadero, must be fresh and not pre-grated.

The equation here is simple. first, one round tblsp of chorizo as a mound in the middle of the shell. Then, 1 tsp of cilantro. 1 tsp of the shredded cheese. Top it off with a tsp of combined chopped onion and tomato.

Authentic mexican uses cilantro like we use lettuce. Lettuce is more expensive there, because of poor growing conditions. Also, I have, in my travels, NEVER seen cheddar on a taco in mexico. Even jack is cut down heavily with a firm bitter cheese, since jack needs to be refrigerated and the firm cheeses can be stored on a shelf for a lot longer than jack can be kept, even cold.