Black Truffle and Shiitake Mushroom Fettuccine [Zack]

It happened folks.  Lauren and I bought a truffle slicer.  There’s a great mushroom stand at the Antwerp Saturday market and they had some “early season” truffles that were surprisingly not expensive.  The best truffles cost more than cocaine by weight, but we paid a total of around $7 for the amount we used to top our pasta (still was great).  And of course, we needed a truffle slicer to shave the truffle.

Truffles are a weird ingredient.  The biggest impact to your final dish is the funky aroma that they add when the plate is placed in front of you. In terms of value add:  the order is smell > texture > flavor.  Freshly shaved truffles are nice, but if you are in the mood for a mushroom extravaganza, you’ll have to add something else to further boost the mushroom flavors.

Hence, we made a pasta with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, pecorino cheese, parmesan cheese, and some freshly shaved truffle on top.  It was heaven.

Process: 

Start by slicing your shiitake mushrooms and mincing your garlic.  Also, grate both cheeses.  Get a pot of salted water boiling.

Start up a sautee pan over medium heat, large enough to hold both the mushrooms and the pasta (later on).  Add the 3T of butter and 2T of olive oil when the pan is hot.  Toss in the mushrooms and sautee until they are browned.  Add the garlic to the pan and immediately take off the heat so the garlic doesn't brown.

Boil your pasta per the instructions for al dente on the package.  Grab a coffee mug and reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water.

Add the pan with the mushrooms back to the stove over medium heat.  Strain the pasta and add it in with the mushrooms and garlic. Toss the cheese, cream, and pasta water in with the pasta.  The liquids will combine with the cheese to make an awesome sauce.  Crack lots of black pepper on top.

To serve, go crazy with the truffle!  

Ingredients:

½ pound fettuccini pasta

~15 medium shiitake mushrooms, sliced

3T butter

2T olive oil (or you can get crazy and use half truffle oil!)

2 fat cloves garlic, minced

2T cream (to taste)
1/2 cup pasta water

1/3 cup finely grated pecorino romano cheese

1/3 cup finely grated parm reggiano

freshly cracked black pepper

freshly-shaved truffle

Song:  ZHU - Faded

Pork Belly Confit with Truffle Honey [Zack]

Confit pork belly is one of the best things you can make in your kitchen.  The belly of a pig is what is commonly used to make bacon.  Instead of the usual curing and smoking process to make bacon, you should try confit. 

When you look at the cross-section of pork belly, you’ll see alternating layers of meat and fat.  The confit process transforms the meat part into a delicate pulled pork-type texture and the fat becomes soft and creamy.  When you want to serve the belly, cut it into cubes, sprinkle with a bit of sea salt, and crisp the outside.  You can choose to top it with a sauce or glaze, or just eat it right out of the pan.  I chose to drizzle the crispy belly with truffle honey.  That was a good decision.

This is a 5-ingredient recipe: pork belly, some type of cooking fat, salt, pepper, and truffle honey.  It takes a bit of time to make, but it’s all idle time, not hard work.

Process:

Ask your butcher for as much pork belly as you’d like to cook (a.k.a. how big is your pot?)  Make sure they take the bones out of the underside so you don’t have to deal with those later.  The more square the cut is from the butcher, the better your outcome will be in the end.  But I never bother with a square cut – I consider the extra scraps I cut off bonus nibbles.

Take the belly home and cure it.  I covered it with a generous amount of sea salt and black pepper and put it in a covered container in my fridge.

After about 2 days, take the belly out and wipe off the excess salt.  Place the belly in an oven-proof pot and submerge it completely in fat.  I used a combination of pork fat and canola oil, but any non-flavored oil will suit.  Bring the pot to a gentle simmer.

Cover the pot and place it in an oven at 300F/150C.  The cooking time will vary depending on how thick the belly is.  Mine took around 5.5 hours.  You know it’s finished when a knife slides into the meat side easily (similar to ribs). 

Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool off.  Place the belly in the fridge – it will keep for a week or so.  Theoretically it should not spoil as long as it’s submerged in fat and you discard the meat juice. 

The belly is easier to slice if it’s straight out of the fridge.  Remove the skin.

Cut the pork belly into cubes or strips.

Place it into a cold frying pan with a little bit of the confit fat and crisp all of the sides over medium heat.

If you’re using a glaze, pour off the excess fat and gently coat all sides of the belly.  If you can find some truffle honey, use that.

Drizzle the honey over the pork belly when it's still hot.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Pork belly (skin on or off, up to you)

Sea salt

Black pepper

Pork fat or other type of non-flavored oil

Truffle honey

Glaze ideas:
A sticky hoisin sauce glaze (from this recipe)
Roasted red pepper puree and honey
Honey with rosemary and garlic

Song: Paolo Nutini - Let Me Down Easy 

Spaghetti Carbonara [Zack]

Carbonara is a pasta dish originating from Rome and is my favorite thing to eat. When we visited Rome, I was on a mission to find the best rendition so I could try to recreate it at home. This is pretty darn close. The ingredient list is extremely short and therefore relies on the quality of the inputs. If you can’t find guanciale (bacon made from pig’s jaw), use pancetta or lightly smoked bacon. If you can’t find a good pecorino romano, use parmesan reggiano.

The recipe has 3 steps: 1. Slowly render the bacon until it becomes crispy 2. Cook the pasta 3. Remove the bacon pan from the heat, add the noodles, and toss the pasta in the rest of the ingredients. The sauce becomes surprisingly creamy due to a combination of eggs, bacon fat, reserved pasta cooking water, and pecorino romano cheese. It’s bliss.

Process:

Slice the guancaile into match sticks and place into a cold frying pan. Turn the heat on medium, and let the fat render out of the bacon until it’s crispy and brown. Pour off the fat until about 1T remains and set the pan aside.

Prep your ingredients in advance because the last steps happen quickly. Crack the eggs into a bowl and lightly scramble them. Grate the cheese.

Salt a big pot of water until it tastes like the sea and bring to a boil. Cook your spaghetti until al dente. A few minutes before the pasta is finished, return your frying pan with the bacon to medium heat. Grab a coffee mug and scoop out a cup of the boiling pasta water to use for the sauce later. Strain the noodles.

Take the bacon pan off the heat. Bacon pan, I like the sound of that! Add the spaghetti, pasta water, and cheese, tossing vigorously with tongs to mix. You don’t want the eggs to curdle, which is why you remove the pan from the heat and mix quickly. Crack black pepper until your arm hurts, and serve immediately with a glass of nice Italian wine.

Ingredients:
Makes 2 big bowls -
½ lb spaghetti noodles
2 whole eggs, beaten
2T-3T of pasta water

¾ cup Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated
100 grams guanciale chooped in matchsticks (this was about 3 thick slices for me)
freshly ground black pepper

optional:  chopped spring onions or 1 large clove of garlic

Song:  Missy Elliott - Hot Boyz

Spinach Fettuccine w/ Seared Scallops [Matt]

I've never attempted to measure my ingredients for making pasta. Half the fun comes from getting your hands into the dough and adding pinches of things as you go along. Here's my best attempt at the process of making fettuccine (supplement with YouTube videos if you're more of a visual learner).

Fettuccine Ingredients:

4 Whole Eggs

3 Additional Egg Yolks

3 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil

1/3 Cup Half-&-Half

1 Teaspoon Sea Salt

(For Spinach variation, food process 2 cups spinach into a minced consistency and add to the bowl)

Since I have no one to impress with fancy cooking antics, I mix my dough in a large mixing bowl. This saves me from dealing with the mess of yolks ingrained into my counter top and keeps flour from going in every direction.

Dump the 3~ cups flour into the large mixing bowl. Make a divot in the center of the flour to put your eggs. Add in the 4 whole eggs and 3 additional yolks (please, do yourself a favor and splurge on the 'cage-free organic'. It REALLY does make a difference with end pasta texture). Add the olive oil, half-&-half, sea salt and spinach (if you're swinging that way).

I use a solid-state whisk to slowly start blending the eggs together. You want to gradually start pulling in flour until it clumps to the point where you wonder why I told you to use a whisk in the first place. Scrape the dough off the whisk with your fingers. Start mashing the dough together in the bowl with your hands until it doesn't really seem like any more flour is getting added to your ball. 

Remove the semi-dough ball from the bowl, flour your counter, and pretend your dough ball is a Bop-It (twist-it, turn-it, mash-it, press-it, etc?). Once your dough ball has reached the strange state of firming up, yet a bit smooth when pulled, put the ball aside under a damp dish towel. Let it rest while you set up your pasta crank.

Once your pasta crank is together, make sure you have some place to rack your pasta. I use pasta rack trees. They're dope.

Take a pinch of dough, you'll really have to eyeball it, and run through the crank in descending numerical order. Fold the dough over a few times when putting it through the initial notch 8, eventually progressing down to notch 2 (second to last as far as thickness).

I recommend dusting your counter / the bottom of the rolled pasta sheet with flour. This will help prevent the pasta sheet from sticking as it slides through the machine.

Run the sheet of dough through the fettuccine crank attachment. Take the shaped pasta and hang it on your drying rack(s). Do this until you're out of dough. 

Scallop Ingredients: 

1 lb Large Bay Scallops

Butter

Salt

Pepper 

Get a big pot of water boiling - add in a splash of olive oil and pinch of salt. This helps the pasta from sticking to itself and raises boiling point. 

Take out your favorite large searing pan. Lightly coat the bottom with melted butter as you bring the heat up to med-high. Lightly dust both sides of the scallops with salt and pepper, then plop them onto the pan. It's key not to shift their position or turn them over until the bottom of scallops have a proper light brown sear, otherwise the meat will tear. The sear will take around 2 - 3 minutes on each side pending heat. The key is to get that golden brown without over cooking the scallops. 

When you are about to turn your scallops over, add your pasta to the boiling water. The pasta, since it's fresh, should only take 2 - 4 minutes to cook (depends on thickness of pasta vs. water temp). Pull out a strand or two and be sure to try it before dumping it into the sieve. 

Time to multi-task. Flip your scallop, then start to heat up a third pan. Add in a splash of olive oil on medium heat to the fresh pan. When your pasta finishes boiling, sieve it, then shake it to get any remaining water out. Dump the pasta into the heated oil. Sauté the pasta for about a minute and a half, then plate. Your scallops will probably finish cooking before the pasta, so put them to the side to rest.

To go next-level, like the dish below, you can sauté onion, asparagus and prosciutto before adding in you pasta. This will take a bit more planning and should be started right around when you dump you pasta in to begin boiling.

Finish with some fresh grated lemon zest and parmesan reggiano.

Best of luck and feel free to experiment once you get the hang of it!

Smokey Chipotle Chicken Tacos [Zack]

If you have ever played a video game system such as SNES or Sega Genesis, you will undoubtedly know about the Game Genie.  For the un-anointed, it’s a cartridge that you can plug into the gaming system that allows you to use cheat codes to make the games a lot easier.  As a child, it was fun to totally dominate a game every once in a while.  As this website progresses, I’m going to start including cooking tips that I consider a “Game Genie” cheat for cooking.  These will be simple items that you can add to your dish that will make it fail-proof and amazing.

I consider canned Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce a “Game Genie” for grilling and Mexican cooking.  The addition of a few peppers to your recipe adds depth, spice, and a smoky note to your dish.   I have used these peppers with great success in marinades for many grilled items: steak, shrimp, and sometimes a whole chicken.  You can even add the chopped chipotle peppers to salsas for a nice smoky kick. 

Most major grocery stores are starting to carry the peppers now, but if you can’t find them, try to find a Spanish or Mexican supermarket.  They don’t have the cans in Europe, so I have guests smuggle them in when they come to visit as "payment" for room and board.

Below is my favorite recipe for chicken tacos.  Instead of using the Taco Bell spice mix from your grocery store, you should try this recipe.  It’s not much harder to pull off, but is miles better in my opinion.

Process:

Dice the pancetta, onions, and cube the chicken thighs and add it all to a bowl.  

Add in 3 chopped chipotle peppers.

Add your dry spices: cumin powder, coriander powder, garlic powder, black pepper, and Adobo seasoning.  Stir to combine everything and let it marinade in your fridge for 30 minutes up to a few days.

Make your guacamole.   Prep the other taco ingredients - this is as simple as dicing an onion, dicing the cilantro, and cutting a lime or two into wedges.

Start a frying pan on medium-high heat and let it heat up.  While it is heating up dice a red onion, some cilantro, and slice up a lime for garnishing.  Add in olive oil or canola oil (your choice) and then saute your chicken until it is cooked through.  It should take about 6 minutes.

To assemble your tacos, warm up the soft taco shells, add the chicken, diced onion, cilantro, and guacamole.  Squeeze a lime wedge on top, grab a cold beer, and enjoy!   

Ingredients:

3 chipotle in adobo peppers finely chopped plus sauce from the can

1 small red onion

10 slices pancetta or 3 slices bacon

4 chicken thighs (or 2 breasts) chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 T cumin powder

1 T corriander powder

1 T garlic powder

1 T adobo seasoning (or seasoned salt)

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Garnishes:

Handful of chopped cilantro
1/2 diced red onion
a few limes cut into wedges

Guacamole

A good taco-cookin song:  D’angelo – Spanish Joint

Pressure Cooker Chicken Stock [Zack]

Chicken stock is a really special thing to make in the kitchen.  It costs you next to no money to make, but once you have it on hand, it feels as precious as gold.  I never would have imagined that I would become "stingy" with such an inexpensive ingredient, carefully apportioning and rationing the stock to each dish I make - it's not like it's black truffle.

Something funny occurred to me while writing this post: in the past very poor people used to use the carcasses of their chickens to stretch out their food and stay alive.  They would make stews to squeeze out the last nutrients from the animals they had raised.  These days, it's used as a flavor booster or a sauce enhancer in the fanciest of restaurants.  It seems like the "from scratch" cooking went from being necessary and entirely common, to a rare luxury.

Personally, one reason I love this ingredient because I got to (finally) teach my mom something in the kitchen.  I learned most of my cooking growing up in the family kitchen, doing small tasks and observing.  But making chicken stock as part of my cooking routine is something that I got to share with my mom.  Each time we talked, I would go on and on about how great making stock was, but she had a bad experience when she started cooking it.  I finally convinced her to make the stock again, and now we talk about different ways to use the stock in almost every conversation we have.

I've been experimenting with my pressure cooker because it seems to greatly speed up cooking times.  I looked online and using a pressure cooker didn't seem like a very popular method to make stock, so naturally I gave it a shot.  It amazed me that this method produced a really deep and dark stock in 1/3 of the time.  If you don't have a pressure cooker, just simmer the whole shebang for 3 hours, then strain.  Michael Ruhlman also has thought up a really creative shortcut to making a carefree stock that I will post on later.

Process:

Gather all of the bones and whatever is left over from your roasted chicken.  You can either save the bones in the freezer like I do, or you can make the stock right after dinner.

Place them in your pressure cooker and add the carrots, celery, garlic, black peppercorns, and onions.

Pour water over the bones, put the pressure cooker on high heat to let it come to an easy boil.  Let it go for 5 minutes and then skim off any funky looking foam and fat.  You can do this by dipping the edge of the spoon against the side of the pot.  To make it even easier, you can move the pot so only one corner is over the heat source.  All of the undesirables will appear on the opposite side of the pot.

(Notice that I have a mix of raw and cooked chicken parts - I had saved the backbones from my spatchcocked chickens.  If you use all unroasted bones, it's called a white stock.  I suggest using whatever you have on hand.)

Place the lid of the pressure cooker on and make sure it seals.  Add the pressure regulator cap and turn the heat down to medium-low.  Let it hiss for 45 minutes and then take it off the heat.  Let the pressure reduce naturally (should take about 15 minutes).

Make sure the cooker is de-pressurized before you open the lid.  The stock should smell like an intense chicken noodle soup.

Pick out the big bones and veggies with tongs and then strain the stock into another pot.  Rinse your pressure cooker and then strain the stock back into it.  For the second strain, you can use cheesecloth in the strainer if you have some, but my fine mesh strainer works well enough for me.

Reduce the stock down until it’s concentrated.  I suggest not adding any salt since you don’t know how you are going to use the ingredient in the future.  Unless you are using it within a few days and want to keep it in the fridge, you can freeze it in a few ways.  My mom loves freezing it in ice cube trays and then keeping the cubes in the freezer in ziplock bags.  I just pour the finished product into jars and place them in the freezer.  Don’t overfill the jars with the stock – the liquid will expand when you freeze it.

If you let it defrost after a few hours it will become just like Jell-o (because of the collagen in the bones) and the fat will solidify on the top.  This makes it easier to remove the fat – just scrape it off with a spoon. 

Ingredients:

Roasted bones of 2 chicken carcasses
1 medium onion
1 large carrot
1 stick celery
Small handful of black peppercorns
Water to cover the bones

Hopefully all of that rambling convinced you to try to make stock.  It's almost free and I can gaurentee it will elevate your cooking game.  It makes amazing soups, great fancy French sauces, and adds depth so you can swap out some of the heavy cream required for sauces.  Plus it's totally badass when you can say you made a soup totally from scratch.

Song to jam to:  George Michael - Careless Whisper