Monthly Archive for June, 2007

Marlowe on Coffee

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chrisandcamri
on June 30, 2007
in Food
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Coffee and brass knuckles.

Coffee and brass knuckles.

You’d think a hard-boiled guy like Philip Marlowe would drink his coffee as is, that he’d not fuss over the intricacies of getting a good brew, that he’d just put a slug of rye in it and drink.

Nope.

It turns out, Philip Marlowe, the character that made Humphrey Bogart…Humphrey Bogart, is sort of a coffee dandy. In the following excerpt from The Long Goodbye, we get a detailed peek into Marlowe’s coffee making process, as well as how a real coffee connoisseur would have made coffee at home for himself and a gun wielding alcoholic house guest in 1953:

I turned the hot water on and got the coffee-maker down off the shelf. I wet the rod and measured the stuff into the top and b that time the water was steaming. I filled the lower half of the dingus and set it on the flame. I set the upper part on top and gave it a twist so it would bind. The coffee maker was almost ready to bubble. I turned the flame low and watched the water rise. It hung a little at the bottom of the glass tube. I turned the flame up just enough to get it over the hump and then turned it low again quickly. I stirred the coffee and covered it. I set my timer for three minutes. Very methodical guy, Marlowe. Nothing must interfere with his coffee technique. Not even a gun in the hand of a desperate character. The coffee was all down and the air rushed in with its usual fuss and the coffee bubbled and then became quiet. I removed the top of the maker and set it on the drainboard in the socket of the cover. I poured two cups and added a slug to his.

See? Even tough guys take special care of their coffee.

Cook’s Country

Published
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chrisandcamri
on June 23, 2007
in Home
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A friend at work lent us a few issues of Cook’s Country by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated. We’d seen the magazine on the newsstand before, but never bought it. Cook’s Illustrated is a pretty distinctive magazine, completely illustrated and ad free, with lots of good cooking tips. Cook’s Country is pretty similar, except they have full color photography, still no ads though. While Cook’s Illustrated focuses on cooking in general, Cook’s Country specifically covers American comfort food. Chicken pot pie, bread pudding, king ranch chicken, hot dog taste tests, it’s like having Aunt Bea in magazine form.

The recipes are great, as is the overall design and feel of the magazine. That said, it’s also sort of a heart-attack magazine. They don’t pull any butter-punches. This is a macaroni and cheese magazine folks, expect to put on a few pounds just by looking at it. All in all though, it’s pretty great. We highly recommend it.

Kool Aid Pickles

Published
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chrisandcamri
on June 16, 2007
in Food
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A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran an article on kool aid pickles, which pretty much blew our minds. We thought they sounded like a yummy summer treat, so we tried them out this week. Here’s our recipe:

1/2 jar of mini dill pickles
1 packet of cherry kool aid
1/4 cup of sugar

Add the sugar and kool aid to a quart jar filled
with the pickles.  Don't worry if the jar has some pickle
juice in it.  Our jar had a bunch of chopped onions
floating in it, and it went just fine.  Fill the jar to the top
with water, cap it and shake.  Leave the pickles in
your fridge for a week.  Then eat them. 

They're crazy.

Folks, we were skeptical. These things are crazy good though, jump right in. Don’t be afraid of the red pickles. The red pickles are there to freak out the squares. You’re not a square, right? You’re a cool dude. The kind of cool dude that wants to eat a crazy red pickle. Get out there red pickle eater…face the world…proclaim your love of oddly colored foods!

Pizza on the Grill

Published
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chrisandcamri
on June 10, 2007
in Food
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Yes, it's pizza...on the grill.

Yes, it's pizza...on the grill.

We went to our friends Amy and Marshall’s house this week so they could show us how to cook pizza on the grill. “Pizza on the grill!” you exclaim, “that’s impossible! Dogs and cats! Living together! Mass hysteria!” We interrupt your wild raving, and point to a picture, which clearly shows pizza being made on a grill. “Oh man!” you further exclaim, “this is mind blowing!” We snatch the picture out of your hand (seriously, you’re crunching it), and get on with the story.

Amy and Marshall made the pizza grilling technique up themselves, with no help from any recipe books. We were pretty surprised, “weren’t you scared? The first time you put the dough on the grill?” Amy says no, she’s clearly way tougher than us. “She also doesn’t follow recipes,” Marshall tells us. Amy is the Evil Knievel of food, just without the jump suit.

They learn a lot from the Food Network. Their favorite food to cook (other than grilled pizza) is enchiladas. They like to make big batches of them, and freeze left overs. We ask them what their favorite kitchen utensil is, because readers of Tastebud Chicago want to know this kind of stuff. The answer is a big metal bowl. It’s funny, because that’s one of the answers Brett gave us when we interviewed him about Panade. We’re also fans of our big metal bowl. Bowls are pretty great, reader. Go out and get yourself a bowl.

Grilling pizza is shockingly easy, so easy that Amy makes pizza a lot after work. She buys the dough from Trader Joe’s, and keeps it on hand. “The secret,” she says, “is to add a handful of flour. The dough comes too wet. You need to dry it out a bit.” She presses the dough out into a rough square, “tell people that I don’t use a rolling pin, I just press it out by hand.” The square looks rustic to the max, which is the goal.

She puts a teeny coating of olive oil on the dough, and then slides it onto the hot grill. No toppings are on the pizza just yet, you have to get the crust a little crusty before that. When one side is done, she flips the half cooked pizza onto a cookie sheet (cooked side up), and starts to put the ingredients on. For one pizza, she puts homemade pesto made from home grown basil, feta cheese, and roasted pine nuts, for the other she uses fresh tomatoes, more home grown basil, and fresh mozzarella balls.

Then the pizzas slide right back onto the grill where they cook for another few minutes until the crust is nice and brown. For the feta pizza, she used a whole wheat dough, which was our favorite. The white dough was great as well, but we have a thing for whole wheat.

Pulled Pork

Published
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chrisandcamri
on June 3, 2007
in Food
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The Pork on the grill.

The Pork on the grill.

I already wrote about the pork meat buying adventure on Lake Street, as promised here’s the write up of the actual cooking of the meat. Things turned out really well. This is the second time we’ve made pulled pork this way, both times turned out great. We followed the recipe for North Carolina style pulled pork from Steven Raichlen’s "How to Grill", one of our favorite grilling books.

The recipe takes a little bit of time to prepare, but is much easier than you’d think. Prep-wise, you need to pull together a bunch of spices for a basic BBQ rub and a vinegar sauce for the sandwiches. We’re fans of vinegar based pork sandwiches, instead of traditional BBQ sauce sandwiches. Once the rub and sauce are made, the rest is pretty easy. Pat the meat with the rub and put it on a grill set up for indirect grilling. Add some soaked wood chips to a grill bag (or directly on the coals) for smoke flavor, mop the meat with your sauce every hour or so, then wait six hours, or until the meat reaches 195 degrees.

Let the meat rest for ten minutes, and then start pulling it apart. Add a cup of the sauce, mix it all up in a bowl, put some of the meat on a bun with some coleslaw and you’re all set. Although it’s time consuming, the recipe is really pretty straight forward. It impresses the heck out of guests.