Kitchen Math

This



Plus, this



Equals this



Roast Beef Panini

Technorati: Food | photo | kevin d weeks | seriously good | sandwich | panini

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Roast Pork Sandwich

Magical Sandwich



For the most part I'm a fairly laid-back guy — calm and collected with a light Southern drawl (actually, an Appalachian mountain drawl). Not real excitable. At both meetings and parties I spend more time observing than talking. And so it sometimes surprises people when I get off on one of my passions, because I do have passions.

I can rant for hours on software quality and the value of proper software testing. The same when it comes to software design. And don't get me started on the importance of editors for producing quality written work — this blog really suffers from not having a second pair of eyes approve each post before it goes online.

My friend, Kitchen Mage, calls me "Pig, Sandwich Boy," reflecting my passion for pork, sandwiches, and pork sandwiches.

I have culinary passions too. My friend, Kitchen Mage, calls me "Pig, Sandwich Boy," reflecting my passion for pork, sandwiches, and pork sandwiches. Get me started on a food passion and I'll go a mile-a-minute, my words spilling over each other like ping-pong balls cascading down a stair-well. Witness this podcast on NPR.

One would think that having just completed an article on sandwiches that I'd be sandwiched out, but in fact I was inspired to come up with something new. So I bought a pork sirloin roast.

I cut slits in the roast and stuffed them with slivers of garlic and fresh rosemary leaves and seasoned it with salt and pepper. Then I browned the roast in a skillet before slow-roasting it at 225F to medium. I knew going in that the strong garlic/rosemary flavors would make selecting other ingredients for a sandwich tough, but I like a challenge.

I selected Kaiser rolls for the bread, picking up a package at Fresh Market (the local equivalent of Whole Foods). I wanted the thin but crackly crust and dry, spongy crumb of a good Kaiser roll. The first sandwich was the roll with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard for condiments, provolone cheese, lettuce, and sliced tomatoes. In short, nothing out of the ordinary but I wanted a base line.

The cheese was completely wrong. I'd had smoked cheddar in the back of my head, but although smoked cheese seemed like a good bet, cheddar didn't and neither did smoked swiss. Rummaging through the cheese case at the market I found some sliced smoked gouda. Milder and more creamy than cheddar or swiss I figured it was worth a try. Bingo!

The tomato and lettuce didn't really contribute anything either. So I dumped them and went with very thin (1/8-inch) slices of red onion. The sweetness of the onion was a perfect foil to the garlic slivers.

Sandwich two was better, but still not there. Not enough cheese and the condiments weren't working. For sandwich three I pan-roasted some cloves of garlic, pureed them and added them to the mayo, then I stirred in some whole grain mustard. This too was a winner. I now had the right bread, the right cheese, the right condiment, and the right veggie. But something was still needed. Thinking back over the sandwiches I'd recently written about I suddenly had it. I'd quick-pickled some daikon for the bhan mi and that combination of slightly spicy/hot, sweet, and tart would be perfect on this sandwich. It was. Over the top.

I think, in honor of my friend, I'll call this a Kitchen Mage.

Kitchen Mage Sandwich
Makes 1

6 oz garlic/rosemary roasted pork (recipe here)
Kaiser roll
Garlic/mustard mayonnaise (see below)
Red onion — sliced 1/8" thick
Smoked gouda — 1/4" thick, at room temperature
Pickled daikon (see below)

The pork should be sliced very thin, the more flesh exposed to air the better the flavor.

Kaiser rolls tend to be thick, so I cut out a center slice to reduce the amount of bread.

Spread both halves of the roll lightly with the garlic/mustard/mayo. Layer on remaining ingredients.

Garlic/Mustard Mayonnaise

4 large garlic cloves
1/4 c mayonnaise
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp whole-seed Dijon mustard

Roast whole, unpeeled garlic cloves in a small skillet over medium heat until soft — about 15 minutes. Turn garlic frequently to avoid burning. Peel garlic and puree garlic in a mini food processor, add remaining ingredients and pulse several times to blend.

Pickled Daikon

1/4 c rice vinegar
1/4 c granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c daikon strips

Whisk together vinegar, sugar, and salt until dissolved.

Peel 3 inches of daikon, then use peeler to make strips of daikon. Soak in vinegar solution for at least 30 minutes. Drain before using.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | sandwich | pork

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Kitchen Window: The Art of Sandwich Making

In theory, a perfectly balanced meal includes some protein, but not too much; a vegetable or two; some fruit and a carbohydrate. Such a meal also should balance tastes — savory, a little sour or bitter maybe, perhaps some sweet and salt — and textures, from chewy to succulent to crisp. Let's go a step further and propose that this meal also can conveniently be eaten while playing cards.

Read the complete article at Kitchen Window.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | Kitchen Window | sandwiches

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Lamb Burgers

Stuffed to Perfection



This is grilling season and, so, I taught a class on hamburgers the other night. The class was roughly based on this article I wrote for NPR's Kitchen Window last year. The topic may not sound worthy of a class, but as in all cooking there are issues of combining and maximizing flavors, food safety, techniques, and other bits and pieces that apply not just to burgers but to cooking in general. It was a good class and enjoyed by all.

It almost goes without saying that when I teach a class I enjoy the compliments I receive on both my cooking and on my overall knowledge of cooking. When someone asked about eating rare hamburgers I was able to explain the issues of level of heat, duration of heat, and the heat-resistance of the most common biological contaminants. Such explanations engender confidence in the students — at least that's what the forms they fill out at the end of each class say.

Serve these in pita rounds, they're really juicy and you won't want to lose a drop.

Among the burgers I offered was a lamb burger stuffed with blue cheese and mint. The recipe that produced this result was an adaptation of a stuffed roast leg of lamb recipe that I sometimes fix on special occasions. The combination of blue cheese and fresh mint with lamb is a major winner. And if you like the burgers, try the roast this Easter for a more elegant take.

Stuffed Lamb Burgers
Serves 4.

1 1/2 pounds ground lamb
4 ounces blue cheese (I recommend Point Reyes if you can find it) — at room temperature
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
3/4 teaspoon ground pepper
3/4 teaspoon salt

Divide the cheese into 4 pieces and form each into a 2-inch round.

Thoroughly combine remaining ingredients in a bowl. Divide the lamb into 4 portions and flatten into patties about 5 inches in diameter. Place a piece of cheese in the center and fold the edges of the patty up over the cheese, pressing to seal. You should end up with a patty that's about 4 inches in diameter and 3/4 of an inch high. Place patties on a baking sheet or plate, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour to allow burgers to set up.

Grill over medium heat for 5 - 6 minutes per side.

Serve these in pita rounds, they're really juicy and you won't want to lose a drop. And if you're curious about the other recipes check out the Kitchen Window article.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | lamb | lamb burger | sandwich

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The Deadly Reuben

The Deadly Reuben



Ed Levine isn't the only foodie trying to lose weight. As he notes in this post referring to an NY Times article, even Mario Batali is trying to lose weight. Me? Been there, done that, eventually and inevitably outgrew the new slimmer t-shirt.

Around 1988 I decided I simply was a short, balding, fat guy and quit worrying about it. I was never going to be slim for long. I had engaged in a number of highly successful diets, but always gained the weight back. So screw it. And when I finally said screw it, I not only eliminated the anxiety, but lost 10 pounds. I was still a short, balding, fat guy but 10 pounds lighter. And for the next decade and a half I hovered within 10 pounds, plus and minus, of that weight.

Frankly, I'm probably engaged in a Quixote-esc battle.

Then, two years ago I decided to lose weight again. Admittedly my weight had gone up significantly from the set-point it had hovered around, but still the diet was a mistake. I proceeded to lose 75 pounds in about six months and got down to what the weight police say I should weigh. I relaxed. I now weigh more than I ever have. I would have been better off happily remaining a short, fat, balding guy. Eventually I would have returned to my set point.

So I'm trying to find that equilibrium I once had, it's like a word on the tip of my tongue, but I haven't recaptured that state of mind yet. In the meantime, out of pure evilness and because I needed a new project this year, I'm attempting to kill Ed Levine by posting sandwiches.

This is not your ordinary Reuben.

I made the bread. I made the corned beef (from raw brisket). I made the sauerkraut. I even made the 1000 Island dressing (although I confess to using commercial mayo, ketchup, and relish in it).

Frankly, I'm probably engaged in a Quixote-esc battle. Would Levine go to the trouble of making a Reuben completely from scratch? I suspect not. He'd buy the bread, maybe use a commercial corned beef, certainly not wait three weeks for the kraut to ferment. Hell, Levine lives in New York, he'd just head for the nearest deli. But that sandwich wouldn't be nearly as good as this one was.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin d weeks | seriously good | reuben | sandwich

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Teriyaki Turkey Burgers

Seriously Healthy



A few months back I wrote an article on burgers for NPR's Kitchen Window and the editor, Bonny North, balked when I wanted to include my Bacon/Parmesan Pork Burger because it seemed so gratuitously high in fat and calories. She was partially correct, it is high in fat and calories, but not gratuitously — that's purely a side-effect of producing an extraordinarily flavorful meat patty.

I offered a compromise: If I could keep the pork burger I'd develop a turkey burger to balance it out. That task proved more difficult than I'd anticipated. In my world "healthy" is never a substitute for "good."

"Viola," I had a low-fat, low-cal burger with plenty of flavor

I began with plain ground turkey to which I added an egg for binding because I knew before I started it would be inclined to fall apart. Even with salt and pepper it was bland and dry. I decided to move on to ingredients that emulated roast turkey by adding cornbread crumbs for additional binding, sage, and other typical turkey dinner seasonings. No joy. Edible, but by no means seriously good. Tweaking didn't help.

I tried a couple of other ideas that were equally bad and then remembered a dish I make for clients on occasion — teriyaki-marinated turkey breasts. I'd already learned with my Marinated Greek Burgers that actually marinating the meat and then grinding it didn't work. So I adjusted the marinade ingredients to make a seasoning to mix into the ground turkey. It was still a tad dry, so I added some zucchini for additional moisture, and, "viola," I had a low-fat, low-cal burger with plenty of flavor. I found that onion rolls made a great bun (to keep the amount of bread reasonable I sliced out the middle third of the roll and saved it to make croutons).

Teriyaki Turkey Burger
Serves 4.

1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
1/4 cup grated zucchini
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons frozen orange juice concentrate, melted
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons five-spice powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1 egg

Thoroughly combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl. Form into 4 patties about 1/2-inch thick. Place patties on a baking sheet or plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour to allow burgers to set so they'll hold together while cooking.

Cook in a non-stick pan over medium high heat.

Note: Even with the bread crumbs and egg for binding, these burgers tend to fall apart on a grill, so I recommend cooking them in a non-stick pan with a little bit of oil.

I'd still pick a Bacon/Parmesan Pork Burger, Greek Burger, or Lamb Burger Stuffed with Blue Cheese over this one if given a choice, but it's not bad at all, in fact it's actually good. But seriously good, according to my tastes, it's not.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | burger | sandwich | turkey

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Kill Ed Levine

Death by Sandwich



As a rule I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but that's me. If a foolish promise turns you on then fine. But as I sat down this evening to eat supper I happened to think of Ed Levine and his resolution to lose weight this year and found myself overcome with contrariness. "Bullshit!" I thought, and "la te da."

I've long harbored a grudge against Serious Eats. How dare they? I started publishing Seriously Good in 2003 and then this little upstart blog comes along and steals my good name? Sorta. Kinda. It's just not right that Serious Eats has a number of amusing writers working in concert to steal the word "serious" from me. And it seems to me that Ed Levine is behind it all. I don’t know if that's true — but I don't care. I'm holding him responsible.

It was a sandwich that prompted this psychic break — a simple grilled cheese sandwich. Simple yes, but by no means plebian. This sandwich began with a locally-baked Pan de Mie which provided an important sweet note. The cheese was Kraft Extra-sharp Cheddar, which I think is a perfect grilled cheese, smooth and tangy when melted and also unexceptual — leaving room for other flavors. Then I added paper-thin slices of pork confit, not enough to overpower the cheese or bread, simply a deep background note of pork and spice. Lastly I grilled the sandwich in duck fat -- making the flavor all sparkly. (I wish the photo showed the cheese, but the bread sucked it up like a sponge.) A small bowl of clam chowder on the side wound up the meal.

So, over the next 12 months I will tempt Mister Ed Levine with sandwiches. Sandwiches he, the fancy New Yorker, can’t possibly duplicate or, if he does, will be bad for his health. I, too, am risking my health in this culinary Russian Roulette, but I'm confident that I will prevail and at the end of 2008 we will see that Ed Levine really isn't that serious about eating — or sandwiches.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | sandwich | grilled cheese | ed levine

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Kitchen Window: Building a Better Burger

Burgers are the ultimate American food. Not those stale, thin, tasteless patties found on every corner in every city. No, the true burger is thick, full of flavor, the meat just ground, the buns fresh.

A great burger offers simple but powerful flavors. It's hot and easy to chew, and the juices drip down your chin, sending an atavistic memory of primal feasts racing through your nerves.

You can read the complete article at NPR's Kitchen Window.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | kitchen window | burgers | sandwiches

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Mortadella Sandwich

Bourdain Bites



I'm not a regular watcher of Tony Bourdain's No Reservations. I think Bourdain's a better writer than TV host, and his show is agonizingly predictable: he eats some weird stuff, talks about how great all the native people are, gets drunk, eats some more weird stuff, and talks again about how great the natives are. Most of what he eats can only be found in Tahiti or Outer Mongolia so trying it myself isn't even an option.

Nevertheless, sometimes I do watch it, usually in reruns on the weekend, and a week or so ago he was in Sao Paulo. He spent most of his time with some pretty young women, which was a nice change from the toothless peasants he usually hangs out with (not that I object to toothless peasants, they just aren't much fun to watch — at least compared to pretty young women) and he ate a Mortadella sandwich. Now this was something I could try.

He spent most of his time with some pretty young women, which was a nice change from the toothless peasants he usually hangs out with.

Mortadella is a form of bologna, a cooked emulsified meat sausage. But comparing Mortadella to ordinary American bologna is like comparing a minute steak with a filet mignon. The sausage is typically about 8 inches in diameter and contains large pockets of fat, whole pepper corns, and pistachios strewn through it. It's seriously good eating.

So I did a little research and although I couldn't find much information on the Sao Paulo sandwich I found enough to gather that the Mortadella is usually grilled and the preferred cheese is provolone. I didn't find any information on condiments or the bread used, although one picture I found showed what appeared to be a long bun with cheese baked on top.

I've eaten Mortadella sandwiches before, but it never occurred to me to grill the sausage so I headed out to the local Fresh Market and bought some Mortadella, provolone, and buns. Then I pulled out my grill pan (the only thing I have that largest enough to cook to slices of Mortadella at once) and heated it up.

Two minutes later I had a sandwich that beat the hell out of those fried bologna sandwiches my friends' mothers made when I was visiting. But although good, it's not in the same class as a mufaletta, cubano, or even a Litton hamburger. On the other hand, it's a hell of a lot easier to make.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | mortadella | sandwich | Sao Paulo | Brazil

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Gyros

Across the Sea



I think it was in 1971 that I drove, with one of my father's students, from Cairo to Alexandria. We were taking my family's VW minivan to Alexandria to load on a boat for the journey to Greece. The plan was for me to accompany the van to Greece while the rest of my family flew to Athens. I've no idea why I was going with the van, and in a recent conversation, neither do my parents. Apparently it seemed like a good thing to do at the time.

We do remember that the student was with me to handle language issues (I didn’t speak Arabic, a notoriously difficult language for Westerners) and probably also to keep me from doing anything terminally stupid. At any rate, we apparently arrived in Alexandria and got the van loaded without incident. I don't particularly recall the drive so I was either stoned (not likely), sleeping, or being a stupid mindless teenager. The latter gets my vote. But I do remember the boat journey.

The sun was already hot in June, but the breeze was cool, the smell of the sea innervating, and the water a blue so intense it made your teeth hurt.

The boat hauled freight, passengers were very much a sideline. I had a berth in steerage. It was a cabin about nine feet wide with six bunks in it, three per side. That was it. The head was down a passageway and was the sort of place one visited only when one's bowels were near the bursting point. There was no toilet, only a hole in the deck one squatted or stood over. Hitting the hole was apparently optional.

Steerage was not a pleasant place. Especially once we were out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and some folks started getting sea-sick.

I was lucky, I had a few qualms the first day but nothing serious and was fine thereafter. And the weather was magnificent (more luck) so I stayed on the top deck. The sun was already hot in June, but the breeze was cool, the smell of the sea innervating, and the water a blue so intense it made your teeth hurt.

A half dozen or so of us quickly formed a clique and played cards, mainly Spades, for most of the trip. There was a middle-aged Greek guy with a quick smile and no teeth, a couple of young Danes traveling together who shared my berth, and a couple of others I don’t recall except as splashes of color. We'd sit in the mess playing cards, drinking beer, and smoking. When someone got tired they'd wander outside to stretch and breath and someone else would take their place.

And so we proceeded for three days from Alexandria, Egypt to Piraeus, Greece where I met my family and we offloaded the van.

We had dinner in Piraeus and to begin ordered a plate of fried calamari, the first I'd ever had and they were extraordinarily good, like eating candy. We polished off a huge platter and ordered a second one.

The next day we did the tourist thing and stopped in a taverna for lunch where I ate my first gyro — another amazing food experience and one I've tried on occasion to recreate here at home. Last week I came very close, close enough that I'm willing to publish the recipe, an honor none of my previous efforts earned. The texture isn't quite right, but that's a minor issue.

Gyros
Serves 4.

Meat mixture:
1 lb ground lamb
1/4 c minced red onion
2 cloves garlic — minced
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
Tzaztiki:
1 c Greek-style yogurt
2 cloves garlic — crushed
1 8-inch cucumber — peeled, seeded, and finely diced
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
Sandwich:
4 rounds of flat bread or pita.
lettuce
tomato — seeded and diced

Tzaziki:
If you can't find Greek yogurt, use ordinary yogurt but remove excess liquid from it by dumping it in a sieve lined with cheesecloth and letting it drain over a bowl for 4 hours.

Add remaining tzatziki ingredients, mix, and chill for an hour or so.

Meat mixture:
Thoroughly combine all ingredients in a bowl. Divide into four equal portions and shape into oblong patties about 3" wide, 6" long, 1/2" thick. Refrigerate for an hour.

Sandwich:
Grill patties over a hot fire for 3 - 4 minutes per side. Spread tzatziki sauce down the center of a flat bread round, add a lettuce leaf, add some diced tomato. Add the patty, fold the bread over the lamb, and enjoy. Note: wrapping in foil helps hold things together.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | gyros | greece | sandwich | greek

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Reuben Braid

Waiter! There's Something in My Bread!



We have been amazed at the response to A Year in Bread, the blog Farmgirl Susan, kitchenMage, and I started a month ago. We seem to have tapped into a deeply pent-up desire to learn how to make bread — witnessed by the number of comments each post generates. But it's not just newbies to the bread world, old hands at the baking game are also logging on and offering their thoughts, insights, and tips. I confess that the three of us feel like proud parents.

About the time it started up, I got a press release on About Professional Baking: The Essentials by Gail Sokol. The timing was propitious so I asked them to send me a review copy (albeit with no promise to review it, or that the review would be positive if I did). The PR agency decided to take a chance and sent me a copy.

Note: this is not the review I didn't promise to write. Instead, as I paged through the book I found a recipe for something called a Reuben Braid that captivated me. It consisted of rye bread dough, rolled out, and then folded over the standard Reuben sandwich ingredients. This I had to try. Then Andrew at Spittoon Extra announced that the next "Waiter, there's something in my..." would be about bread. Clearly the planets were aligned and a couple of days ago I made it.

It's good. Not great, the buttery crunchiness of a properly grilled Reuben is impossible to beat, but this would be a great sandwich at some sort of sporting event party such as the Superbowl. It's easy to make and one sandwich will feed six big appetites. Making two of them wouldn't be much harder.

I may yet review the book, and my impressions of it are fairly positive so far, but I need to make another two or three recipes first. In the meantime, here's the Reuben recipe.

Rueben Braid
Adapted from About Professional Baking.

Bread:
2 1/4 c warm water
3 tbsp olive oil
22 oz (4 1/2 c) bread flour
5 oz (1 c) rye flour
1 3/4 tsp instant yeast
2 1/4 tsp kosher salt
Filling:
1/3 c mayonnaise
3 tbsp ketchup
2 tbsp finely minced onion
2 tbsp sweet pickle relish
8 oz thinly sliced corned beef
4 oz sliced Swiss cheese
1 c well-drained sauerkraut
Egg Wash:
1 egg
1 tbsp milk

In a medium bowl mix together 18 ounces of the bread flour, all the rye flour, and the yeast.

Combine water and oil in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, run the mixer at low and gradually add flour mixture until blended. Switch to dough hook and continue mixing, adding up to another 4 ounces of the bread flour until a soft dough forms. Cover the bowl and allow to rest for 10 minutes, then uncover, add salt, and knead at medium speed to incorporate salt. Continue kneading for a total of about 6 minutes.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead a few more times. The dough should be smooth and elastic, but not sticky. Form into a ball.

Clean and dry the mixing bowl. Spray lightly with cooking spray, set the dough in the bowl, seam-side down, and lightly spray with cooking spray. Cover and allow to rise until doubled in bulk — about 1 hour. Heat oven to 375F.

Punch the dough down, re-cover the bowl, and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Turn a half sheet pan upside down and coat the bottom with cooking spray. Turn dough out onto pan and roll out to a 15 x 10 inch rectangle.

Mix together the mayonnaise, ketchup, onion, and relish. Spread on dough lengthwise leaving 2.5 inches uncovered. Layer dressing with corned beef, cheese, and sauerkraut. Using kitchen shears, cut uncovered edges into 3/4 x 1 inch wide strips. Fold edges over the filling and braid together the strips. Slide bread onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Mix together egg and milk and brush on bread. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until nicely browned.

Technorati: Food | recipe | bread | reuben | sandwich | baking

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