Coming Soon to a Kitchen Near You

Soon I will share with everyone how this recipe was made...

Michelin Stars

Michelin Stars. I don't know what makes a guy from Lafayette, Indiana by way of Toronto, Ontario think so much about winning one. Recently it's all I can think about. I go to sleep thinking about them and when I wake up my first thought is what can I cook someday to earn myself one.

While I am at work all day cleaning trash, and fryers I make recipes in my imagination. I prep them and season them and then I imagine how I would cook them. I come home and talk to my wife about my new ideas, and I call my Mom and tell her too.

I tell the people at work of the things I've created, and show them pictures. Either they don't understand it or they just don't care. It is probably the latter of the two. Maybe I have led a misspent life... Maybe I am good at this. Maybe I can do good work in the kitchen... I hope everyone will eat it and fall in love with the food...

Candied Pork... AkA The One I Protect the Most

Everyone, or at least everyone with a food centric family has a recipe that was handed down to them from their parents or grandparents. This recipe was handed to my mother from my grandmother, and to her most likely from her's. I have loved this dish my whole life and as a child it was prepared for me on special occasions or on the rare occasion that I did something right. Here is my recipe for Candied Pork, or Pork Loin in Caramel Butter Sauce, depending on how fancy you want to be.

You are going to start with room temperature boneless pork loin chops, ad pretty and nicely cut as you can find them. I recommend you use about an inch to an inch and a half thick. Get your pan really hot over high heat with some butter, salt and pepper your loins nicely and seal them in the pan briefly. Then immediately add some warm water and light brown sugar and make sure you let the water come to a boil first (shouldn't take longer than a few seconds). One might ask "how much water and how much light brown sugar?" well the answer to that is less easy than I would like. I have never actually measured the water or sugar, but what I can tell you is that you want a super saturated solution. If you took science class you know that this means that the water and sugar have reached a point where absolutely no more sugar can be dissolved in the solution.

Once you have added your water and sugar and it starts to bubble get it moving IMMEDIATELY you don't want the sugar to burn in the bottom of the pan before it dissolves. When it is completely dissolved lower your heat to a nice simmer, cover your pan, and let it reduce. You need to watch it and flip your chops about half way through. You will know its done when the level of sauce in your pan is around 1/3 to 1/2 what it was to begin with.

When your sauce is fully reduced your chops will be done. You need to remove the pan from the stove and leave it covered off the heat to let the sauce rest. It will thicken as it stands. Once it has sat for about five minutes plate your chops, cover them with sauce and serve. I recommend saving the left over sauce for other things... it is super tasty. Candied Pork Chops... Done.

Spicy BBQ Chicken

Last night I found myself in a familiar situation. I had very little money, only a few ingredients, and I was exhausted. The resulting meal was spicy BBQ chicken with sweet baby carrots as a side dish.

I must first admit that I did not make the BBQ sauce from scratch. I honestly feel bad about that but unfortunately it was more cost effective to start with a good sauce as a base and improve it. In this posting we will make the chicken and in a future posting we will make the baby carrots, the reasoning behind me holding out on you is you first need to know how to make a nice little caramel sauce a la Brad.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and oil up your shallow baking pan with some olive oil. Then trim your breasts nicely and place them in the pan... now let them sit for a minute while you get your sauce ready.

This is a super easy way to make a sweet spicy sauce... are you ready? You are? OK then here we go. Get a bowl and squeeze in some Sweet Baby Ray's (tm) Honey BBQ sauce. Now get yourself some red Tabasco (tm) sauce and add some (to taste). Stir it up and you're done. Honestly I think it is a nice little sauce, and for the price of a bottle of BBQ and some Tabasco you can't do much better without making it yourself from scratch.

Now that your oven is hot, and your sauce is ready you can season your chicken. First drizzle some olive oil over the top of your chicken and rub it all over. Then a splash of salt and fresh ground pepper, and finish it with a nice layer of paprika.

Put your pan in the oven and bake it for 25 minutes... I'll wait... OK now brush on a nice layer of your sauce, and replace it in the over for about five to ten more minutes. Once it comes out of the oven brush on a little bit more sauce, let it rest and serve. Spicy BBQ chicken on the cheap... DONE.

I Cleaned a Deep Fryer Today

The zen art of focused attention is not appreciated in our want it now commercialized consumer society. I was at work today (at a fast food restaurant) and like every one else in the world, or at least the rest of the people like me I was working hard at finishing my job as fast as possible while achieving the best end result I am capable of.

We have four very large deep fryers and part of my job is to filter or change the oil daily. I have only recently been given this position (kitchen porter) and the fryers had been neglected in the area of deep cleaning. In the defense of the restaurant the oil is always clean and by no means does what I am talking about effect the quality or safety of the food. That having been said they were caked with congealed orange-ish greasy sticky fat, and in addition to that there was plenty of charred baked on carbon.

I have been in my position as kitchen porter for exactly one week and I have an entire restaurant to bring up to my admittedly high standards, so I had not yet gotten to the arduous task of really bringing these fryers back to life. I have however managed to get the dumpster area so clean I would honestly eat off the concrete directly next to either of the bins. I have also given that treatment to the back area, the walk in freezer, the walk in cooler, the dry stock area, and the sidewalks outside. In my opinion this is an impressive amount of progress in one week.

So I was done with three out of four fryers, and my manager tells me as I am draining the fourth that she wants one of them to shine today. This will be my "task" for today. I found her wording to be rather condescending, but hey, she is the boss. So I say to her that I don't have a putty knife to scrape the crap off of them and at this point of decay a steel wool pad is a preferred scrubbing tool. She responds that I have everything I need and the job should only take five or ten minutes.

I proceed to collect all the materials required to complete my mission. Here is a complete list of what I had.

1. A green scratch pad
2. Husky (kind of like Ajax but for carbon on stainless steel)
3. A pairing knife
4. Latex gloves

An hour of sweating, scrubbing, burning the shit out of myself, and cursing loudly exactly two times the fryer were clean. I found myself more than a few times completely lost in the painstaking task of carefully removing the carbon and grease build up with the flat bit of a paring knife. During those times I thought to myself about pride and making sure that your work is the best work you can do regardless of what it is that you do. When the day comes I own my own restaurant and I require my brigade to deep clean the kitchen every night after service I can tell them honestly that I did what they are doing but it was worse.

I came home today with water blisters from 360 degree stainless steal, but more importantly I walked out of work today knowing that I did good honest work with improvised tools. I relaized today that I can be a real chef because I can do the work. And even if I am the only one willing to do it I can trust myself to do it right.

I hope no matter who you are or what you do that you will be or have been asked to do a ridiculous task at an insane time with no tools. There is no better feeling than walking away knowing you did the fucking job and you did it well.

I would like to take this chance to share a very basic recipe with you. I have used my own marinara and you can check out that recipe on this blog. I highly recommend you only use sauce you make yourself. First thing to do as usual... preheat your oven, 350 degrees this time. Let it get good and hot like you always should. Get out your shallow baking pan and rub it down with olive oil and then take your room temp boneless skinless chicken breast and trim then up nicely and rub them down with olive oil. Once your chicken is good and oily start seasoning it. I like to do basil, parsley, orgeno, bay leaves, a little salt and a touch of course black pepper.

Now that you have your chicken all prepped just give it a little drizzle of olive oil and place it in the oven for twenty minutes.

When the chicken comes out take your homemade marinara and spoon it over the top of the chicken still in the pan. Then add some mozzarella (fresh preffered) and some Parmesan (freshly grated) and return the pan to the hot oven for about ten more minutes. Longer if the sauce wasn't hot. After ten minutes or so take it out, plate it, garnish it... Chicken Parmesan.... Done

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Do you love cookies? I know I do and I am very particular about what cookies I will eat. These chocolate chip cookies, are in my opinion... Amazing. If you have ever been subjected to eating hard or cakey choc chip cookies than you know exactly how frustrating shit cookies can be. In that light I worked for two days on perfecting a recipe that produces chewy, flavorful, beautiful cookies. I hope you enjoy them. This recipe should yield about 18-24 cookies.

Two Sticks of Thoroughly Softened Butter
1 Cup of Regular Granulated Sugar
1 Cup of Light Brown Sugar (packed into cup)
2 Large Eggs
2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract
2 1/2 Cups of All Purpose Flour (Approximately)
2 Teaspoons Very Hot Water from the Tap
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2-3/4 Teaspoon of Salt
Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips (As much as you want)

Start off by preheating your oven to 350 degrees. It needs to be completely heated to get a good bake.

Get a large mixing bowl and put in your very (very) soft butter, sugar, and light brown sugar and mix it until it is smooth. You should use a spoon for this part because I find folding and mixing is the best method. It is important that you get it nice and creamy. If you don't do a good job on this step your cookies are fucked.

Now, beat in your eggs one at a time, and by one at a time I mean one egg completely beat in and then the other one. I find that a hand mixer on the first or second speed setting does a good job here.

Now take a clean measuring cup and dissolve your baking soda into your hot water and add it to the batter. Also at this point add your vanilla extract, and salt. Give it a few good stirs before you add your flour.

At this point we are going to add the flour. I add my flour one cup at a time. mixing it in completely between cups. After the second cup is added you need to add more a little bit at a time. If you add to much you will get cakey, hard cookies, and we don't want that. You're looking for a smooth texture which is loose but not runny, it should stick to the bowl when its held upside down, BUT it should not be to thick to comfortably stir by hand. I find the right amount is between two and a quarter and two and a half cups. Once you have your flour nicely mixed in add your chocolate chips and stir them in thoroughly.

Portion your cookies onto a cookie sheet (don't grease the pan!) using a tablespoon measuring spoon. You want the portions to be a heaping tablespoon. You don't need to flatten the cookies because they will spread out while they bake so just leave them in balls on the tray.

Everyone's oven is different so this step is kind of touchy. You need to bake the cookies until they are golden brown around the edges. Start by setting your timer for ten minutes, but your bake time could be between ten and fifteen minutes. My oven bakes them nicely in fourteen minutes. Check them in ten and then every minute after ten and keep track. I know I tell you not to check things in the oven to much but if you pay attention on the first batch then you won't even need to look at them until the timer dings on the rest of them.

Now you have awesome cookies. They will harden as they sit but put them in the microwave for about fifteen seconds, and you can enjoy soft chewy cookies anytime you want!