Risk it for Brisket

"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted"

-J Lennon

**(It's taken me far too long to post this summer meal. Summer was just too nice.)**

There are few more enjoyable 'wasting' time activities than cooking something for hours on a smoker. It takes time, patience, beer, and a decent amount of attention. Watching something cook in a smoker for 10 hours might be like watching the grass grow. Or it might be like watching an entire season of Breaking Bad in a day, with a slow build to an exciting climax that leaves you wanting more. But unlike your favorite TV show, you will not be left looking for another serving that doesn't exist. 

Anyone that reads this that owns a smoker probably won't need much convincing here. Unfortunately I can't find space in my front "yard" in Brooklyn for a smoker, amidst the concrete and garbage cans, but in Cape Cod backyard, space is plentiful. But you don't necessarily need a smoker to cook a brisket, you could cook in the oven on low and use a little liquid smoke to get the flavor. As to how to get the charred outside in an oven, I am not much help there. Flamethrower?

We started off by ordering a full size brisket from a local store. You don't usually see the full brisket at grocery stores, they cut it up into pieces or into 2 as the "point" and the "flat". The point cut is more fatty, typically the grocery will only carry the flat. If you are interested, you can read more about these 2 differences here:  http://amazingribs.com/recipes/beef/texas_brisket.html

Next step was to create a rub. You could probably use just about anything as long as you use plenty of SALT, and it will be good. With little regard for teaspoons or amounts, I recommend some combination of the following:

 - Paprika
 - Chili powder
 - Garlic powder
 - Onion powder
 - Brown sugar
 - Salt!
 - Black pepper


Before you coat this sucker good in your rub you want to score the meat. Not the Beavis and Butthead 'Scoring' like here, but almost as exciting. You want to slice into the meat through the fat cap layer so that your rub can get deeper into the brisket and give it flavor.

Save some of the rub to mix with apple cider vinegar to make a mop sauce if you so desire. Some people say you have to mop the meat while it's cooking, others say it makes no difference. But if you're someone who likes to watch over things while they cook anyways, I figure might as well be basting meat in vinegar and it's own juices.

As far as the actual cooking process, they say a good way to estimate is an hour per pound of meat, cooked between 200-225 on a smoker. The key with the smoker is sustaining the temperature by adding wood and coals. For this brisket I used a mixture of applewood and mesquite. Apple gives a sweeter flavor while the mesquite is more of that smoky barbecue taste, like a barbecue chip. You can use whatever you want, but you're going to want to mix with charcoal to keep the heat going. As far as knowing when it's done, you can take a temperature reading and wait for it to hit about 180-190F. But even without a temperature gauge, there's a certain look to it that will tell you it's ready for prime time. It should have a kind of wiggle to it when you poke it, as the fat can just fall right off.

After taking the brisket off the smoker, wrapping in tin foil is a good idea to hold in moisture and let it rest for a good while. Open up another beer, get out all your sides, and get ready to begin your brisket assault. You can also use the juices from the pan to create a sauce, but you might want to consider skimming the fat off, as you can see below it's some serious separation!

Linguica-dilla with a Side of Summer

As a longtime New Englander, I've always had a heavy feeling for the change of seasons. It always seems like just when you are tired of one season, the switch hits. Until this winter of course. Day after day people had the same conversation about polar vortexes, when will it get warm, and are we really just living on set for The Day After Tomorrow. Luckily (unless you can't get enough Emmy Rossum) the winter has passed, and summer is here to stay a while.

With the changing weather we naturally start to crave different foods. Out go the slow roasted oven cooked meats and stews and in come the fresh cold veggies and grilled everything. As a relatively new resident of Brooklyn I'm still working out how I'll go about street side grilling without being one of these guys, but I'm staying hopeful. In the meantime, I made up a weird summertime snack that felt like a good transition from the cold winter to the brutally hot NYC summer.

Bean salads are something I've been a fan of ever since making one several years ago for a summertime BBQ. They're so simple but perfect with just about anything. You can really use just about anything here and it will workout great, depending on what kind of flavor you want. Fruits (A+ for mangoes) are great for some extra sweetness, tomatoes would give it more of a salsa feel, avocado gives you the creamy richness that only an avocado knows how. But for this, I wanted to focus more on the seasonings than the items involved. Red wine vinegar is the only liquid you need, and if you don't have this you can use rice vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or lime juice for a similar effect.

For those who are unfamiliar with linguica (pronounced lin-GWEE-sah) I can almost promise you will like it if you like any kind of sausage. It's similar to Chorizo, but a little different seasonings and usually less greasy (though not by much). Linguica is a Portuguese sausage that I have to give credit to my home town of Cape Cod for the introduction. You know, Cape Cod, where the beaches stretch for miles and the linguica run wild. Maybe not the last part, but a true Cape kid knows linguica as the sausage that can dominate a pizza or a bowl of Portuguese Kale soup. 

For the bean salad:

- 1 Green Pepper

- 1 Orange Pepper

- 1 can black beans

- 1/2 Red onion

- About the nail of your thumbs worth of fresh ginger

- 1 clove of garlic

- Pickled jalapenos if you got 'em

- A few sprigs of cilantro

- A few leaves of fresh mint

- 1/4 to 1/2 cup Red Wine vinegar

- Salt & Pepper, to taste

- Kimchi (optional, I like the extra funk)

 For the linguicadilla
- 1 package linguica sausage (about 12 oz.)
- Flour tortillas
- Shredded pepper jack cheese
- Your favorite brand of Mexican or Spanish seasoned rice



 1. Chop up your veggies and rinse beans for salad. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Mix in red wine vinegar and salt and pepper. Cover this for about half hour and place in the fridge. When you take it out again, you will see your red onions are nice and pink and pickled.

 2. Chop up your linguica. Heat up some olive oil and saute these little circles of heaven. They will brown up and be good to go in less than 10 minutes. Once they're done, remove to a plate and let them hangout.

 3. Throw down your tortilla and cover with as much cheese as your heart contends. Once your tortilla is getting brown, add in some linguica and top off with rice. Close it up and you're good to chow down. You can add in some bean salad, or just have separate, they go really well together.

You Drive Me Curr(az)y

I just can't sleep. I'm so excited, I'm in to deep.

Yes Britney, I share this feeling you have for boys with a feeling for some curry chicken. But curry is an endless category, with so many types. The word curry doesn't really mean much, just that is something prepared in a sauce, typically with lots of spices. But for purposes of this, we're just talking about a kind of Thai curry, with some spicy curry paste and sweet coconut milk.

I set out to find my favorite go-to method for making a curry chicken. Chicken over rice is something that can be so simple but so satisfying, with white rice soaking up the flavor of the sauce. You can eat this for lunch, dinner, or at 2am after a night out. White sauce? Red sauce? You name it, chicken over rice is tough to beat.

After extensive reading and trying of different curry pastes, I decided on my favorite brand from a can, Maesri. The flavor and cheap cost of this paste in a can make it unbeatable. You might not find these cans everywhere, but plenty of supermarkets have them, and if not you can order them off Amazon. If you feel like taking the time to make your own curry paste please do, but this is a more than reasonable substitute. You really don't have to add much besides a can of coconut milk and you have a great mix. Maesri makes several kinds, so I decided to try the yellow, green, and red varieties. These are curries that I saw a lot of traveling in Southeast Asia and have wanted to find a way to re-create in spirit.


                                                                              Yellow

                                                                               Green

Red

After several Sunday afternoon curry making explorations, I found the yellow to be the one I couldn't stop eating, with the best balance of flavor and spice. Red was great, but the spice seemed to overpower the rest. The green paste, while still spicy, had more of a herbal/earthy flavor that I didn't find worked as well with the coconut milk. But the yellow fit perfectly with everything else and had a richness about it that the others lacked.

For all 3, I followed the same recipe. I marinated chicken thighs in some basic seasonings that I thought would complement and increase the flavor of the curry paste. I made this chicken alongside white rice and stir fried vegetables with a soy/rice wine/sesame oil sauce. Below is the recipe I used, with the variation being the curry paste each time.

For the Marinade:
- 2 lbs. Chicken thighs
- 1 lime
- 3 Tbsp. fish sauce
- 3 Tbsp. soy sauce
- 1 Tbsp. rice wine
- 2 Tbsp. chili garlic paste
- 2 Tbsp. curry powder
- Chopped scallions
- Salt & Pepper

For the veggies:
- Whatever you want in your veggie mix. But here's what I usedL
- Garlic/Ginger/Scallions
- String bean
- Snap peas
- Red bell pepper
- Brocolli

Veggie sauce:
- Soy sauce
- Rice wine
- Sesame oil
- Sriracha


 

1. Marinate chopped chicken thighs in sauce for 1-2 hours, or however long you have.

2. Brown chicken in wok or heavy pan. Remove the chicken and add about half can of curry paste to hot pan. Stir for a minute so that it doesn't burn. Add in full can of coconut milk and put chicken back in. Get this to a simmer and add more curry paste as you go, depending on how much flavor/spice you want. Cook this for another 5-10 minutes for the coconut milk to slightly thicken.

                                      Yellow                                                                   Green

Red

3. Remove chicken and cook vegetables. Start with garli, ginger, and scallions for a minute before adding in veggies. Sprinkle in salt and cover. (NOTE: adding a little salt before covering helps keep your veggies GREEN. We like green veggies, so try this.)

4. Get some white rice on your plate and let it rain curry chicken on down. You will have plenty of curry coconut milk sauce to soak up with your rice, so be liberal.

Yellow

 

Green

Red

Taco Time

Tacos have been a long time favorite, ever since my first hard shell from an Ortega taco kit somewhere circa '94 (it was a good year for music, too). For a long time I didn't know the expansiveness of the taco game, a game which I fall happily into on a repeated basis. I relied heavily on the idea that a taco consisted of ground beef, seasoned with a salty/spicy mixture, then covered in lettuce, tomato,  cheese, and some hot sauce from a jar (or packet if you're really cheap). Nested between a hard shell corn tortilla and I was hooked. Something about the refrigerated hot sauce and warm ground beef combo sucked me in, and I proceeded to far exceed the suggested serving size of tacos per human.

Since progressing past Ortega taco kits, the alluring part has been the endless possibilities of items you can put between a tortilla. Different meats, salsas, vegetables, hot sauces, cheeses, potatoes, eggs. The list never ends, and why should it? You can make a taco out of just about anything. A proper taco allows you to taste all these components both on their own and in conjuction with each other. I've searched far and wide in my travels to find the best taco, and while I can't say I have a definitive answer, I've learned a thing or two about what makes one good, and what makes one just ok. It's always fun when you can play off your glutinous eating habits by saying it's for research purposes, so do it when you can. I can't really remember ever having a horrible taco. I'm sure I have at some 3am food desperation, but I guess the good ones have far outweighed the bad in my taco remembering cortex.

This "recipe" is kind of a collection of recipes/ideas for you, taco lover. It starts with a meat that during my relatively young taco eating career I have decided is the ultimate flavor delivery vehicle. That item would be pork, or in this case, CARNITAS. Carnitas offer the best of both worlds: slowly roasting pork followed by frying it in its own fat. Just think about that for a second without drooling.

I topped off these tacos with black beans, cheese, fresh salsas, pickled onions and kimchi, but you can try anything.

What you will need:

- 1 3-5 lb. pork butt, depending on how many heads you got to feed. Or if you just want leftovers go big. The recipe here was used on a 3 lb. piece
- 1 bottle of beer
- Salt & Pepper
- 2 Tbsp. Sugar
- 3 or 4 dried chilis, ancho or guajillo
- 2 Limes
- 1 Orange
- 2 Tbsp. Mexican Oregano
- 1 Tbsp. Cumin
- 1 or 2 Tbsp. chili powder
- 1 Bay Leaf (used to never waste my time with these, but just buy a bunch you'll be surprised how many things you can use them in)


Marinate
1. Boil some hot water and put in your dried chilis. There's really no limit here for how many you use, but I think a few should do. You can try different ones you can find, I used mainly guajillo and ancho here. Ancho are smoky, guajillo a little more sweet. Simmer for about 20 mins just to bring them back to life before shredding away in your food processor. Add to your food processor, along with lime juice, sugar, fresh squeezed orange juice, and some of the remaining water from boiling the chiles. You want this to be somewhat paste like, so don't use too much water.

2. Saute onions and garlic in the pot that you will be cooking your pork in, something with a heavy bottom is best. Add in your mexican oregano, cumin, bay leaf, and chili powder. Add in a bottle of beer, something like a Pacifico or Modelo. Let this simmer and place your marinaded pork in the pot. Cover and find something to keep you occupied for a few hours so you are not tempted to remove the pork too early. Your patience will be rewarded.

3. Once the pork is done (approx 3 hours for a 3 lb piece of pork), you want to let it chill for a few minutes with no heat. Once it starts to cool you can shred it and remove it from the pot. In theory you are done, but there's one final step that takes these tacos to another level. Heat up the liquid that the pork was cooking in and mix it in with your shredded pork. It's a little messy, but you don't want to lose all that flavor (aka fat). Then heat up a frying pan to hot and throw batches of your pork on. In just a minute or two it will blacken and crisp up the pork, and who doesn't like crispy pork?

The final steps are completely up to you. It's your taco, do what you please. Everyone likes different things on their tacos, so go wild. For these I went with homemade pickled onions and fresh salsa verde. The recipe I used for salsa can be found here:
http://gdonheiser.blogspot.com/2013/11/green-salsas-are-salsas-too-ok.html