A Dish So Good Even Applebee's Can't Get It Wrong

I can already hear the chain restaurant fans in my family complaining, but I'm not trying to dig on Applebees. The point is that certain dishes make it into the American culinary language and, even when they morph in ways to fit our taste for fat, remind us that not everything goes good with ketchup. Mexican food as filtered through Texas and covered with sour cream has made it's way onto the menus of countless "American food" restaurants, and the high end dish, from Miami to Seattle, is always the same.

Fajitas

This longstanding trend started sometime in the late 80's as far as I can remember. My grandfather Art always wanted to eat at a place in Wichita called Amarillo Grill. He liked the shrimp, but even at 12 I always got the fajitas. They came with the kind of dramatic flair and D-I-Y construction requirements that appealed to a pyromaniac busybody like myself. If I was into knives instead of fire things might have been different.

It wasn't long before my mother figured out she could cook chicken strips and serve them with lettuce and tomato as well as anybody. It was always one of my favorite meals and to this day I make them all the time. I'm a little looser with the ingredients these days but the fundamental concept of rolling meat and vegetables in a small warmed tortilla has served me very well.

The Basic Fajita has few requirements:

Tortilla - a small one, warmed
Meat - usually chicken or steak, always in strips
Grilled Onions - sometimes they grill green peppers too, but there are always onions
Cheddar Cheese - shredded
Sour Cream

The Advanced Fajita comes with more options, but don't forget that you're working with a small tortilla:

Guacamole - I'm a big fan, but not everybody likes avocado
Refried Beans - Spread directly onto the tortilla, they make a great foundation for the rest of your goodies
Grilled Red Bell Peppers - I don't like the green, but I cook up slices of red bell pepper with the onions every time
Lettuce and Tomato - Hold overs from tacos, they get hot too quick for me
Cilantro - What Mexicans use instead of lettuce. A much better choice, cilantro contributes a fresh, green flavor that stands out on it's own

Okay, this is all well and good, but it's hardly a recipe for fajitas. Even though I eat this meal all the time, I never thought to do a posting on it because it's such a simple concept. But I was digging through the cookbook pile a few months ago and came across a recipe in Cook's Illustrated magazine that promised to reveal the 'Secrets of Marinating' for chicken fajitas.

Their recipe calls for grilling the meat and vegetables, a fine idea if you've got a quickie gas joint on the back patio. I have to leave the state to light anything on fire, so if I'm grilling it's not chicken strips. But their marinade theory was intriguing.

From page 6 of the September/October 2005 edition of Cook's Illustrated:

Grilling the chicken plain and tossing the cooked strips into the marinade (now really a sauce) left the chicken with only superficial flavor. Brining - soaking in a saltwater - seasoned the chicken and kept it juicy, but tasters found the meat too moist - waterlogged, even...Making a "brinerade" (a cross between a brine and a marinade) by adding the marinade to a concentrated 2-cup brine only weakened the final flavors. Up to this point, soaking the chicken breasts directly in the marinade yielded the best results: tender browned chicken with bright unadulterated tang. The high-acid mixture (1/3 cup lime juice and 4 tablespoons oil) not only added fresh citrus flavor notes but also reduced the marinating time to a mere 15 minutes - any longer and the meat started to "cook" in the acid, like a "chicken ceviche" of sorts.

Italics mine.

15 minutes? That's crazy talk. Most marinade plans call for at least an hour, even for chicken. Somewhere on this blog I'm pretty sure I've suggested you could get away with marinating chicken overnight. 15 minutes?

They do qualify it by talking about the high-acid content of the marinade, leaving a little wiggle room. In the end, this is a fantastic marinade that makes bright, tasty, but very specific chicken. It will overwhelm the more bland ingredients, making refried beans, sour cream and cheddar cheese kind of pointless.

Which isn't all bad. I don't use this recipe every time I make fajitas now, but this chicken mixed with grilled onions and bell peppers, guacamole, slices of fresh or grilled jalapeño and chopped cilantro is both delicious and a nice detour from the dairy-heavy standard version.

Ingredients

1/3 cup juice from 2 to 3 limes
6 tbl vegetable oil
3 medium garlic cloves minced
1 tbl Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1 jalapeño
1 1/2 tbl minced fresh cilantro leaves
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp ground black pepper

You mix all of this together, take out 1/4 cup to toss the finished chicken with and add 1 tsp salt to the rest of the marinade.

This is the suggested amount for 3 boneless, skinless breasts cut into slices (about 1 1/2 lbs).

Toss the chicken with the marinade in a bowl, cover and put it in the fridge for 15 minutes. As always, throw away any used marinade that doesn't get cooked with the chicken.

This is my version, piled high for the photo, before I forked half of the shit out and tossed a handful of cilantro on top:

Homemade guac too, but that's for another post.

One last thing on fajitas - they're the perfect 'quick dinner for unexpected guests' meal. The last time I made this dish was in under an hour, for six people. I made a quick variety of fillings and laid them all out on one table. Something for meat eaters, veggies, cheese heads and the lactose intolerant. Each person got their own custom creations, everybody was well fed and I was out of the kitchen. I suppose a vegan would have felt left out, but they deserve only ridicule, not tasty fajitas.

Perfect Summer Mediterranean

The family gathered at Tom's house over the weekend for a Mediterranean meal. The meal was damn near perfect and it speaks for itself, so I will step out and let it do just that. Needless to say, each of these dishes is recommended. My favorite was the Nicoise salad, Tom's favorite was the eggplant, and JosiKS enjoyed a shrimp dish for the first time in her life. All in all, a hit.

All recipes and preparation notes provided by Tom.

Caponata: Sweet-and-Sour Eggplant

Locale: Italy [Sicily]

Source: Joyce Goldstein, Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook [p. 47]

Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

2 eggplants
salt
2 tbs + 1.5 c olive oil
1 c diced celery
3 onions, chopped or sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 c tomato purée
3 tbs capers, rinsed and drained
12 black (and/or green) olives, pitted, coarsely chopped
0.25 c pine nuts (or slivered almonds), toasted
0.5 c red wine vinegar
2 tbs sugar
chopped fresh basil or fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
3 tbs raisins, plumped in hot water and drained (optional)
fresh ground pepper

Steps
1. Eggplants can be peeled or left unpeeled. Cut into 1-inch dice. Sprinkle with salt and place in colander 1 hour to drain. Rinse and pat dry.
2. In small sauté pan over medium heat, heat 2 tbs olive oil. Add celery and sauté briefly; it should still be crisp. Set aside.
3. In wide sauté pan over medium-high heat, warm 1 c olive oil. Add eggplant and sauté, turning often, until golden and cooked through, 15-20 minutes. Do not undercook. Using a slotted spoon, remove to paper towels to drain.
4. In same sauté pan, warm remaining 0.5 c olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until tender and translucent, about 8-10 minutes. Add reserved celery and tomato purée and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add cooked eggplant, capers, olives, nuts, vinegar, sugar, basil or parsley, and raisins (if using). Stir well and simmer, uncovered, over low heat for 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. Transfer to serving bowl and serve at room temperature.

Notes
I made a half-recipe, given that I only had one eggplant. I omitted celery and raisins, and substituted tomato paste for tomato purée (can't tell you how much, but less than half as much). I used pine nuts and Italian parsley. Possibly the best eggplant dish I have ever made, and that's saying something. [Rachel: Yes, it is!]

Shrimp Bittman

Locale: USA

Source: Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything [p. 325]

Serves: 4

Ingredients

0.5 c extra-virgin olive oil
3 or 4 big cloves garlic, cut into slivers
1.5 to 2 lbs shrimp, in 20-30/lb range, peeled, rinsed, dried
salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
1 tsp ground cumin
1.5 tsp fresh spicy paprika
minced fresh parsley leaves for garnish

Steps
1.Preheat broiler and adjust rack so it is as close to heat source as possible.
2. Very gently, in a large, broad ovenproof skillet or baking pan, warm olive oil over low heat. There should be enough olive oil to cover the bottom of pan; don't skimp. Put garlic in oil and cook for a few minutes, still over low heat, until it turns golden.
3. Raise heat to medium-high, and add shrimp, salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika. Stir to blend and immediately place under broiler. Cook, shaking pan once or twice and stirring if necessary, but generally leaving shrimp undisturbed, until they are pink all over and mixture is bubbly. This will take from 5 to 10 minutes, depending on broiler heat. Garnish and serve immediately.

Notes
I changed the title: Bittman calls this recipe: Shrimp, My Way. He also provides a "Scampi" variation (his quotes), which doesn't use the broiler, omits the cumin and paprika, and adds 1 tbs lemon juice, dry sherry, vinegar, or white wine 30 seconds before the end. Another variation follows the Scampi version but adds a couple small dried chilies, roughly chopped peel of one orange, and orange juice instead of lemon juice or whatever.

I just sauté the garlic and shrimp, not bothering with the broiler. (My oven/broiler is rarely worth the trouble, anyway.) It may be better his way, but it's very good my way, almost no work, and easier to make sure you don't overcook the shrimp.

Mzoura: Carrot Salad

Locale: Tunisia

Source: Joyce Goldstein, Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook [p. 36]

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

1 lb carrots, peeled and thinly sliced or julienned
5 tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tsp harissa mixed with 6 tbs water
1 tsp ground caraway
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt
1/4 c wine vinegar
chopped fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley or fresh cilantro

Steps
1. Bring a saucepan three-fourths full of salted water to a boil. Add carrots and boil until tender, 5-8 minutes. Drain well.
2. In sauté pan over low heat, warm olive oil. Add garlic, diluted harissa, caraway, cumin, salt and vinegar. Stir for 2 minutes.

3. Add drained carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until most liquid is absorbed, 5-8 minutes. 4. Transfer to serving dish and garnish with parsley or cilantro. Serve at room temperature.

Nicoise Salad

Locale: France [Provence]

Source: Joyce Goldstein, Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook [p. 42]

Serves: 6

Ingredients

salt
6 tomatoes, quartered
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced
2 green bell peppers, seeded, deribbed, sliced crosswise
2 small bulbs fennel, cored and sliced crosswise (optional)
6 green onions, trimmed but left whole, or 1 small onion, thinly spiced
6 small artichokes, trimmed, cooked, and quartered, or 12 tiny artichokes, trimmed and cooked
0.5 lb shelled young, tender fresh fava or lima beans, cooked briefly
3 hard-cooked eggs, quartered lengthwise
12 anchovy fillets in olive oil, drained and cut into thin strips, or 2 6-oz cans tuna in olive oil, broken into large flakes
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
0.25 c red wine vinegar
0.5 c olive oil
12 fresh basil leaves, chopped
fresh ground pepper
0.25 c black olives

Steps
1. Salt the tomato quarters.

2. Combine on six individual plates (or one large shallow bowl) tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, fennel, onions, artichokes, beans, eggs, anchovies or tuna.
3. Crush garlic with a little salt, then whisk in vinegar, oil, basil, and ground pepper to taste.

4. Pour the dressing evenly over salad. Garnish with olives and serve.

Notes

There are many variations on this salad, with tomatoes, cucumber, and anchovies or tuna the common denominators. I just happened to pick this recipe, then made many changes to it: omitted the fennel; cut tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, and green onions into smaller chunks (although larger than dice); used canned butter beans instead of favas or limas; used marinated artichokes; added the olives early; didn't have fresh basil so sprinkled a little dried in; forgot the garlic entirely. I won't claim those changes improve the recipe, although the butter beans were nice, and the artichokes saved a lot of work. The recipe is pretty flexible.

Most recipes call for potatoes and green beans. They require cooking ahead of time. With potatoes and green beans I think of this as more of a main dish; without them, it works nicely as a substantial side salad.

I never make this without tuna, which for me is the defining ingredient. I always use canned tuna packed in olive oil. (I've used a can in a lemon-dill-olive oil marinade, which doesn't hurt.) Sometimes I've used anchovies in addition to the tuna.

Djej M'chermel: Chicken with Lemon and Olives

Locale: Morocco

Source: Joyce Goldstein, Mediterranean: The Beautiful Cookbook [p. 177]

Serves: 4

Ingredients

1 chicken, 3-3.5 lb, cut into 8 pieces, plus liver and giblets
1.5 c finely chopped onions
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
0.5 tsp ground cumin
0.25 tsp ground turmeric or saffron threads crused
4 tbs chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp fresh ground pepper
0.25 c olive oil
4 tbs chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
peel from 1 preserved lemon, cut into long, narrow strips
1 c green olives, pitted

Steps
1. In large saucepan over medium-low heat, combine chicken pieces, liver, giblets, onion, garlic, paprika, ginger, cumin, turmeric or saffron, parsley, salt, pepper and oil.

2. Warm gradually, turning the ingredients in the oil for a few minutes, then add the water to cover.

3. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer uncovered, occasionally turning the chicken in the sauce, until almost tender, 30-40 minutes.
4. Remove chicken liver and giblets and mash them well, then return them to the sauce.

5. Add the preserved lemon peel, olives and lemon juice and continue tocook until the chicken is very tender, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings, adding more lemon juice if you like. Transfer to a platter. If the sauce istoo thin, remove only the chicken to the platter and reduce the sauce over high heat. Then spoon the sauce, olivers and lemon strips over the chicken. Serve at once.

Notes
This is traditionally served with couscous, which I made straight out of the Near East box, with dashes of cumin and cinnamon.

I scaled this up by half. Chicken didn't come with liver/giblets, which are used here to thicken the sauce. I tried reducing the sauce, but there was too much liquid and too little time, so I wound up with quite a bit. I browned the chicken first, then set it aside and sautéed the onions 8-10 minutes, until translucent. Those are typical approaches in similar dishes, and certainly didn't hurt here. I didn't have cilantro, so put a little extra parsley in. It would have been better to reduce the flavorful sauce futher, which would have bound it to the chicken better. As it was, the chicken by itself was a little bland, but the couscous readily soaked up the sauce and was delicious.

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A photo of the complete meal, without the chicken - it was piled on top of the couscous shortly after this was taken. Delicious.

They don't call it bacon, but you can't fool me

My uncle Tom got me two books for Xmas last year and I've been making my way through them a little bit at a time. These aren't beginner books, it took me six months to find the right oregano for a dish from one of them. That's good though, kind of a sign of respect, right?

Anyway, one of them is called Charcuterie, subtitled The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing and it's no joke. Although it seems like an art practiced long before refrigerators and the internet should be easy by now, what I'm learning is that doing anything 'authentically' means one thing: work. I like the work, that's why I do this, but looking at a recipe that takes three weeks to prep can be daunting.

One of the things I made on my first attempt at curing was pancetta, an Italian bacon that is cured with savory spices and used as a flavor additive to pastas and chicken, like sausage only better.

I don't know, it's hard to describe. Pancetta is made of pork belly so it has a bacon flavor, but the curing spices remind me of sausage made with a vintner's eye to complexity. I'm going to do a whole post on curing, for now we'll stick to the dish pancetta is best known for in America.

Pasta Carbonara

Carbonara was a dish American soldiers ran into in Italy after World War II. The original Roman dish was made with eggs, butter, parmigiana and romano as the base. Somehow when it made it across the lake we added cream to the mix. Most of the recipes I found had a heavy cream sauce that seemed like it would overwhelm the pancetta and the cheese, something I viewed as a tragedy.

I ended up using a recipe from a book my Mom got me a few years back, Pasta and Italian by Fiona Biggs. I haven't cracked this book many times, and I'm not sure why. Every time I do it works out good, but then I forget about it. The dishes are all pretty basic, boiled down versions usually, but she never seems to leave out the good parts.

Ingredients:

1 tbl olive oil
3 tbl butter
3 1/2 oz pancetta or unsmoked bacon, diced
3 eggs, beaten
2 tbl milk
1 tbl thyme, leaves pulled from stems
1 1/2 lb fresh or 12 oz dried conchigoni rigati (shells)
1 3/4 oz parmigian cheese, grated
salt and pepper to taste

Couple things about this list. First, I had plenty of pancetta, so I used a little extra, salud. Second, I saw enough recipes including romano to take that step myself, I'd guess I used about an ounce of each kind of cheese but it was by eyeball, probably leaning heavy rather than light. As if it would be any other way.

First heat the oil and butter together in a skillet until it's just beginning to froth. Add the diced pancetta and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until browned all over. Eat a piece because you won't be able to stand it after smelling it for five minutes.

Mix together the eggs, milk, thyme, salt and pepper in a small bowl.

Cook the pasta until it's tender and drain it thoroughly. Add the cooked pasta to the skillet with the eggs and cook over high heat for about 30 seconds, just until the eggs begin to set. Remember eggs keep cooking after you take them off the heat and if they overcook they'll become rubbery.

Add half the cheese, stirring to combine. Transfer the pasta to a serving plate, pour any liquid over and toss it once to mix it up. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top and serve.

This dish was fantastic. The eggs and butter coated everything, the salt from the pancetta mixing with the body of the cheeses, wow. It was so rich, I can't imagine what you'd want with the sweetness of the heavy cream. There are quite a few Italian meats in the curing book, which will lead me to more of their dishes. That's good, I don't know much about continental European cooking and I'm not about to start with France.

Beach Food, Coney Island Style

Mac's son Liam has been in New York all summer, trying to wrap his young mind around the idea of minding your own business in the face of a homeless crackhead tranny making bird noises in the middle of 7th Avenue. We talked about going to Coney Island all summer and finally made it on his last day in town, a sunny Friday that was a perfect day for the beach. We gathered a small group and hopped on an F train for the long ride to far Brooklyn.

As for food, Coney Island is one of the few good excuses to eat funnel cake. Everybody raves about the Nathan's hot dogs, which are fine, but it's the fried garbage that stands out in my mind, much more related to the carnival section behind the boardwalk than the ocean it faces.

Corn Dogs and Jalepeño Poppers

The problem is that if you're going to eat deep fried foods you should at least have them right out of the fryer. That's rarely the case, unfortunately, and wasn't the day we were there. Our sampler plate tasted good, even if it was a bit soggy.

The best thing we had that day was the sausage and peppers, but the corn dog is what stuck in my mind. I don't know why, but damn I love a corn dog, have for as long as I can remember. The Coney Island corn dogs are your basic frozen grocery store kind but they have the advantage of big deep fryers full of used oil, which gives them that perfect cholesterol flavor everyone loves.

As I was diving into the tide later I was still fixated on my mediocre corn dog. By the time I came up I knew I had a mission.

I tried two different recipes, both from the FoodTV website. One of them didn't have a specific chef named, but the other one came from Alton Brown, who I like a lot. I'll start with Alton's.

Ingredients:

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbl jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely minced
1 can cream corn, 8.5 ounce
1/3 cup finely grated onion
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
4 tbl cornstarch, for dredging
8 beef hot dogs
Oil for frying

You combine the dry ingredients in one bowl, the wet ingredients in another bowl and then pour the wet ones into the dry ones, turn over a couple of times and set to the side for 10 minutes. I had to add a little extra milk to make it more of a batter than a dough and it didn't hurt anything that I could tell.

The methods for both are the same, I'll get into that in a minute. This batter was good, but it was too lumpy and had too much going on. I was going for a basic corn dog, and this wasn't it. However, dipped out in balls and fried up like a Mexican hush puppy, it was great.

But for all things corn dog related, this basic batter was perfect.

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2 tbl sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
Oil for frying

Heat your oil in a deep, heavy pan to 350 degrees. You need oil to about 1 1/2 inches deep, so you don't have to use too big of a pan. But, the deeper the pan the less you're going to get popped by the hot oil, so use your discretion.

Combine the dry ingredients, then add the egg and half of the milk. Continue adding milk until you have a good batter consistency, thick but stirable.

Dredge your hot dog in flour, toss it in the batter and make sure it gets covered completely.

I started out shoving skewers into the dogs so they'd have proper sticks, but it ended up being easier to get into the pan without burning my fingers to forget the sticks. I'd use a skewer on one end, just poked in a little bit, and a fork on the other. That way it was easy to support both ends of the dog but they could be dropped without getting my hands near the oil.

I also found that it helped a lot having a second pair of hands to run the tongs. She handled the tongs, turning the dogs and pulling them out. The oil was so hot I didn't have time to dip another dog before the first one was burned, so we lost a couple in the beginning.

They turned out great after a few tries, easily the best corn dogs I've ever had.

This is the whole plate cooling by my window, corn dogs on the bottom.

The other grand success of the day was a handful of freakin' delicious jalapeño poppers. The basic corn dog recipe suggested a bunch of other things you could dip in batter and fry, apple slices and hard boiled eggs among them. I couldn't go along with either of those, but it did make me think of the preserved cherry peppers and jalapeños I had in the fridge.

I also had a piece of Vermont cheddar lounging around, so I chopped off a few good chunks about the size of one of those miniature candy bars. I sliced the side of a pepper, maneuvered the cheese into the hole and dipped the whole thing in the batter. They turned out great, with much hotter, fresher pepper taste than you get from the ubiquitous frozen nuggets. The cheese was all melted inside. Damn. I have some leftover batter, I may just have talked myself into a popper.