So What Was THAT All About?

Especially if you're a new subscriber to Be A Better Cook, you might be wondering what those last two articles were about. Ironically, after last week's newsletter about making mistakes, they were.....mistakes.

What you saw about Chicago Style Pizza and Smoked Turkey were the shorthand notes that I take for most anything I cook. I post these notes to a different blog, called "What Tom Cooked", which can be found at http://www.whattomcooked.blogspot.com/.

I use that blog as essentially a recipe box. Almost all the dishes I cook get entered there, unless it's recipe I've made before. Mostly, it's so I can either have the full recipe at my fingertips, or at least have a shortcut to remind me where it came from. For example, which issue of Cook's Illustrated had the pizza recipe? I don't buy the indices that Cook's sells, so I need a better system.

About those two.....the pizza was great. Cook's used an approach in which the dough is made with the same technique as for fresh puff pastry dough. Multiple rises, layers of butter folded in. Delicious. The other notes refer to my own choices of product and proportion. Central Market is a high end grocer in Houston. Their bulk Italian sausage is just about as good as from the local Italian markets in Chicago. Unfortunately it's an hour drive from my house.

Smoked Turkey. Who knew? I bought an extra frozen turkey at holiday sale prices last winter, and kept in the garage fridge til now. Tropical Storm Alex is now in the gulf, so my timing to reduce the freezer stock a little bit last week was good. But once I had a thawed turkey on a 100 degree heat index weekend, I wasn't so sure what I'd do with it.

So I cut the turkey into 6 parts, and flavored half with barbecue flavors, the other half with Herbs de Provence, to be a little closer to "traditional" turkey flavors. I added some fresh herbs and garlic to the second half.

Smoking was done over charcoal and soaked wood chips for about 60 minutes or so. 160 degrees temperature in the leg joints. With resting time, everything was cooked well.

I like it it, it was easy, and that much turkey lasts a long time for a family of 5. The surprise to me was that my 15 year old daughter has been eating smoked turkey sandwiches for lunch AND dinner for days now, and wants smoked turkey this Thanksgiving.

So.....at the expense of a little confusion, you get a few random extra cooking comments this week, and a little insight into how I cook on a regular basis.

Smoked Turkey

Whole smoked tukey, cut into 6 parts.

3 parts - 1-2 T Williams Sonoma Herbs de Provence + garlic, oil, S & P

3 parts - commerical BBQ dry rub, garlic, oil. Mix in same bowl after above, added a little extra leftover herbs.

Smoked 60-70 minutes. 160+ in joints and most of breast, which reached temp while resting.

Chicago Sytle Pizza on Father's Day

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated - Issue 102, Jan/Feb 2010
Bulk sausage from Central Market
- One pizza made with mild
- One made with hot
Sauce from the Batali recipe (thyme/carrot)
Mid-scale mozzarella - brand = Precious (I think)
Asiago - 10% of total cheese - mid-scale brand.
Cheese on TOP of sausage, instead as middle layer.

Unbelievable. Best homemade ever, better than most restaurant versions in Chicago.

Grilled Pork Loin Stuffed with Homemade Sausage

This is a great recipe, with just one tricky step – tying the roast. Instead of making the sausage stuffing you could just use bulk sausage and add sautéed onion and fennel.

Grilled Pork Roast a la Porchetta A 4-5 pound pork loin, butterflied. The meat counter can do this for you. 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 fennel bulb, white part only, chopped medium. Finely chop soft green fronds to make ½ cup. 1 large onion, chopped medium --- Sauté onion and fennel in oil over medium heat until soft, about 8 minutes 2 pounds ground pork 2 tablespoons fennel seeds 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped finely 6 garlic cloves, sliced 1 to 2 tablespoons ground black pepper 1 tablespoon kosher salt ½ cup fennel fronds --- Add all ingredients and sauté until pork loses pink color. Remove from heat and let cool. Turn gas grill burners to high and cover. For charcoal grill, light coals until white ash, then pour onto one side of grill. Spread sausage mixture and additional fennel fronds (if desired) over pork loin, leaving a one inch border around all sides. Roll up from longest end and close tightly. Tie the roast with kitchen string. For gas grill, turn center burner off, turn other burners to low. Place roast on coolest section of grill. Cover and cook up to an hour. You want to see 135 degrees on an instant read thermometer placed into the center. You might want to place a few quarters of red onion or yellow peppers on the grill while the meat cooks, along with a foil packet of potatoes with olive oil, S&P and a few whole garlic cloves (skin on). As the pork rests for about 10 minutes, throw some zucchini slices on the grill for two minutes (turn heat back up to high).

 

To butterfly and tie a roast: Learn the technique here

Just One Little Problem

Earlier this week I made just one little mistake on a recipe I've made before. Sure it was edible, the flavors robust, but it just wasn't cooked right. This experience reminds us that just one misstep can greatly affect the outcome of a recipe:

• One missing ingredient
• One poorly conceived substitution of an ingredient
• One missed or misunderstood cooking step
• In my case, it was one gas grill burner left on low, instead of turned off

So I ended up with a grilled, stuffed pork roast that was a kind of dry on the outside, a little more charred in one place than browned, and just barely cooked enough on the inside. Not a dish I'd want to be served at a restaurant, or to serve to anyone but my closest friends. They could tolerate the letdown. The family made do.

Grilled Pork Roast a la Porchetta If you've read this newsletter for a while you might remember "A Tale of Two Pork Roasts", in which a simple sausage stuffed pork loin from Mario Batali was more flavorful and moist than a somewhat sophisticated recipe that used Mortadella and Provolone. Even 4 star reviews on epicurious.com were misleading, showing how internet searches for recipes are often less reliable than a few very high quality cookbooks or magazines. This week we found a 4-5 pound pork loin in our freezer and wanted to use it before we get deeper into Hurricane season (gotta keep the freezer a little sparse this time of year). So I decided to make the Batali pork roast, but grill it instead of heating up the kitchen. Sounds simple enough. The stuffing is a mixture of ground pork, fresh fennel, onion, fennel seeds, garlic, fresh rosemary and lots of black pepper. Combining these ingredients actually results in a homemade sausage – and you get to control the flavors. This time I decided to grind up two pounds of whole pork shoulder in the food processor instead of using store-bought ground pork. I thought it might make a better sausage and it did. To transfer this recipe from the oven to the grill, I planned to get the grill good and hot (about15 minutes on high), then use indirect heat. On a gas grill, turn off the middle burner and set the other two to their lowest setting. On charcoal, pile all the coals on one side of the grill. Because the grill is so hot at first, you'll get a nice char, then after 10 minutes, turn the roast over and let it cook amidst the indirect heat for up to an hour. You want to see 135 degrees on an instant read thermometer placed into the center. You might want to place a few quarters for red onion or yellow peppers on the grill while the meat cooks, along with a foil packet of potatoes with olive oil, S&P and a few whole garlic cloves (skin on). As the pork rests for about 10 minutes, throw some zucchini slices on the grill for two minutes (turn heat back up to high). The full recipe will be in the next post.

Oh…..and Another Little Problem Margie and I had already decided that this week's newsletter would be called "Just One Little Problem". But there's more. After we ate this delicious but slightly dry pork we were watching a couple episodes of Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen. At some point toward the end of the second episode someone said "potato". I leapt to my feet and gasped aloud. Margie says the look on my face was priceless. I realized that I had left two foil packets of potato and garlic on the grill…..for the last two and a half hours. After opening the back door, I wondered what had kept the neighbors from calling the fire department. The smell was awful. The grill was pumping out smoke like a burning oil well. We turned everything off and decided to inspect the damage in the morning. So many good things can come from unexpected developments in our lives. We didn't destroy our grill. There are no lasting odors. I was worried that since the potatoes cooked with the top down they might have left some horrible-carbonized smell. And best of all, we learned how to make homemade potato charcoal. Take a look: