So, it has been a while. And what have I been doing with this while? Well, last fall, after many moons of faithful service, my old grill died. I decided to get serious about the new one. Specifically, I had one made by Klose. I dub it "The Beast":

Anyway, it took me a while to get the back ready to receive The Beast, but I have now been happily grilling for around a month (well, less than cooperative weather permitting). I am still at the stage of getting the feel for the beast, but yesterday I landed a dish which is the subject of this post.

The dish for today is Tandoori chicken wings. Yesterday's try was the second iteration, and my description of the dish will include lessons learned from the first effort.

To begin with, you have to make Tandoori sauce. To do this, rough chop a medium onion, two inches of ginger, and 4 garlic cloves. Toss in a food processor with:

-the zest of 1 lemon;
-1 cup of plain (no need for Greek) yogurt;
-1/2 cup of vegetable oil (and don't be afraid to splash a little);
-1 Tablespoon of ground coriander;
-1 teaspoon of ground cumin;
-1 teaspoon of turmeric;
-1 teaspoon of gram masala;
-1/2 teaspoon nutmeg;
-1/2 teaspoon cinnamon;
-1/4 teaspoon of fresh, and finely, cracked black pepper.

Blend all of these ingredients together in a food processor to make the smoothest Tandoori sauce possible (maybe 3-5 minutes in low pulse). Two notes about this:

One thing I love about fall (OK, one of the hundreds of things I love about fall) is the brief season of sugar pumpkins. I love fresh, farm to fork sugar pumpkins from my CSA or local farmer's markets. I really don't care for canned pumpkin, which in any case is often actually blue hubbard squash, and not real pumpkin.

So at this time of year I get to do a lot of neat things with some wonderful tasting pumpkin.* One of my favorites is a simple pumpkin polenta.

Here is how it works:

Take a sugar pumpkin, remove the stem and bore a hole from the stem area to the core, then puncture the upper half of the pumpkin with a pairing knife in 6-7 places, making sure the puncture reaches the core. It is extremely important that you bore this hole and make the cuts, and do so correctly: if you do not the pumpkin could explode on you!

Make a little aluminum foil base for the pumpkin and place in a 375° F (190.6° C) oven. Roast for about 1.5 hours, until an instant read thermometer inserted well into the flesh near the base of the pumpkin reads 180° F (82.2° C)

Remove the pumpkin and let cool to the point where you can handle it. Then slice the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds and pulp at the center.

Scoop out the flesh and run through a food mill. Add a dash of cinnamon and let fully cool and then mix in ricotta (about 1/4-1/3. depending on taste, of your volume of pumpkin).

Then, basically, make polenta for around 5-6 people and, when you are done with the polenta, mix in a dab of butter and then the pumpkin-ricotta mix. Mix through thoroughly. It makes a great base for things like rich fall braises.

On the left is a Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, on the right is a basic sugar/pie pumpkin.

* I have been told that the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin is a very good substitute for the basic sugar/pie pumpkin. I will be experimenting with them as the winter roles on because a major advantage of the Long Island Cheese is that it is available here in the Southern Part of Heaven much deeper into the cold months than the pie pumpkin.

This is a recipe that I developed from the starting point of one provided in the New York Times by Sam Kass, President Obama's personal chef in the White House. I found the original to be somewhat half-hearted (i.e. mute flavors) but also maybe a touch too acidic. I re-worked it slightly to turn it into a fall classic in our household. It has a kind of creamy, squashy nuttiness braced by cider that, to me, is somehow just evocative of autumn. It is autumnal, you could say.

Anyway, the basic ingredients:

-Butternut Squash (I usually do 3-4 big ones or 4-5 medium ones);

-4-5 Apples. Kass used Granny Smiths, which I felt created too acidic a final product. I tend to use sweeter red apples, like Fuji's, Macs, Winesaps, etc.;

-Apple Cider (30-40 ounces, depending on your taste for acidity). Use real, pressed fall apple cider, not dressed up apple juice;

-14 ounces of chicken stock (I use Swanson's canned; I don't care for the taste of many of the fancier, pricier ones I've tried; I'll make my stock again someday, when I no longer have a 2 year old child);

-Salt, pepper, cinnamon;

-Nutmeg (buy 'em whole and grate them in with a Microplane-type grater);

-Dried cherries (if you have a choice, tarter cherries are better than sweet ones for this dish);

-Pumpkinseed oil (I use Styrian pumpkinseed oil from Austria; my favorite to date is from Castelmuro, but I plan to try La Tourangelle's take at some point);

-Crème fraîche (a tub that will be used for whopping dollops down on the soup just before serving).

-Any neutral oil (like grapeseed).

And now for the show:

This is an adaptation of a recipe from Chef Charlie Palmer's Great American Food (a classic New American Cuisine cookbook). It basically marries the sweetness of a sweet Riesling with the sweetness of a fall squash (butternut is my favorite but he uses pumpkin) with the richness of duck confit and a creamy risotto. Its a great dish for a crisp fall weeknight evening: quick and hearty.

To serve around 2:

The topic du jour is duck breast. Duck breast is a staple of our household from the fall to late spring. There is something about the suite of duck, turnips, roast pumpkin, butternut squash soups, apples, bacon, cinnamon, curry, ... that just signals "fall" to me.

Let me begin with the basic steps:
1. Let the duck breast sit in the fridge (outside of any packaging) for days;
2. Sous vide the duck breast at 130°F (54°C) to 134°F (56.7°C) for hours (at least three);
3. Remove the duck from the water bath and vacuum seal;
4. Score the fat;
5. Place it fat side down in a frying pan (non-stick not necessary) and sautee until brown;
6. Flip over to given the non-fat parts heat for 3-4 seconds;
7. Remove from the frying pan and let rest fat side up for 10 minutes;
8. Heat up the duck fat in the frying pan and spoon some over the fat side of the duck breast;
9. Salt and pepper the fat side of the breast;
10. Let sit 1 minute on a cutting board;
11. Slice;
12. Transfer to a cooling rack over a flat pan for 2 minutes; hold reserve duck on rack;
12, part deux. A little holy smoke, perhaps?;
13. Plate with the remaining components and reserve the rest.

Fall is here .... and (channeling Game of Thrones) winter is coming.

And tonight came a sure sign: we broke out the Brick Walls.

This cocktail is one of our fall favorites at Magnolia Grill, and it is one you can easily pour at home. (But do try it at Magnolia Grill as well, as a prelude or postscript to one of the best meals you have had in a long, long time.) A perfect marriage of bourbon, cider and autumnal spiciness, many an October evening we and our guests have enjoyed a couple of these on the porch after dinner. They are really a magical note for the season.

To begin with, make the syrup, which is easy enough. Combine:
2 cups apple cider
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 inch ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
5 allspice berries, cracked
4 whole cloves

in a sauce pot. Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Steep off heat for 1 1/2 hours. Strain and retain liquid (discard solids). We usually keep the liquid in a glass jar and often make several portions of syrup (it will last for a couple of weeks in the fridge).

To make the cocktail:

Combine 2 parts syrup to 2 parts Woodford Reserve Bourbon in a glass. Fill with ice, top with gingerale (perhaps 1-1.5 parts) and garnish with a lime wedge and a thin granny smith apple slice.

Note: The recipe, as originally explained to me by the bartender at Magnolia Grill, proposed so many ounces of bourbon, syrup, etc. I give these proportions because I don't know how big your glasses are. The syrup is enough for perhaps 8-10 brick walls in the glasses shown above. I would not make vast amounts of syrup. It often does not taste as good after a few weeks. And besides, it is easy to make.

One of the things I really dislike about the South's long, hot and hazy summers (this week is, so far, conforming to the template) is that Calvados seems so out of place in the midst of it. Calvados is an apple-based brandy from Normandy (the best of it still comes from there) that on the nose and palate delivers complex layers of apple (unsurprisingly, and ranging-even in the same bottle-from fresh Granny Smith to apple pie to something more cidery), accompanied by, variously, vanilla, almond, cinnamon, butter, caramel, etc., often with underlying smoke or spiciness. It should be self-evident why anyone would love it for slow sippin' on the back porch, especially in the fall.

It also has the power to transport. When I drink it I get the most powerful memories of visiting Indian Ladder Farms (the landscape of which is pictured), a really magical place near Albany that was a favorite fall haunt as a child. We would visit several times every fall for fresh-pressed cider (they have an honest to goodness, and operational, old-fashioned cider press), fresh sugar donuts (among connoisseurs it is well known that Indian Ladder Farms makes the single best donut on Earth), pick your own apples, pumpkins, etc. etc. We would also simply wander around the farm and stare up at the turning leaves along the Indian Ladder cliffs, through which Mohawk Iroquois trade routes had operated since the Dream Time of upstate New York. The air was crisp; the world was at once very new and ancient. It felt perfectly autumnal.

On days like this I really miss Indian Ladder Farms in the fall.

On days like this I really miss upstate New York.

I have had no time to reflect much on it, but two initial thoughts:

1. It is really, really heavy (close to 50lbs!). The UPS guy looked at me in disbelief when I told him that the package contained a cookbook!

2. This is one of the best packaged products I have ever received. It is perfectly contained, well protected, there isn't a lot of crap in the box and it is easy to extract the books! They weren't kidding:

Two thumbs up. An (unsurprinsgly) more European flavor profile, but nicely put together. I would buy it again.

(Pictured Above: A Basic Thick-cut Pork Chop With No Accompaniement)

Today the subject is pork chops, and like so many other steaks, chops, etc. type proteins, my basic approach is as follows:

1. Cook it in a water bath en sous vide to achieve a perfect internal temperature;

2. Remove from the water and vacuum pouch and let it sit for 10-15 minutes (I have found that immediately finishing it off per the methods below sometimes leads to overcooking in the middle);

3. Finish, preferably over a grill with hardwod charcoal and flavoring woods (like apple, hickory, mesquite, etc.) but certainly over some kind of high heat.

Ah, you might ask, but what heat for the water bath? Well, as always, there are two considerations: safety and taste.

First, let's consider safety. Along with all of the other nasties associated with proteins, pork is particularly prone toward parasites that you do not want to eat alive. Chief among these is Trichinella spiralis (i.e. trichinosis). Trichinosis is said not to be that common in today's pork, but even if this is true it is not a guarantee and is just about probabilities. Why needlessly take a chance with it?

You will read on the internet about various temperatures required to kill trichinosis (e.g. 138°F (58.9° C) is frequently suggested). My understanding, however, is that it is a question of temperature and time.

Wikipedia mentions (or at least at one point mentioned) USDA Title 9 section 318.10 Table, which provides the following temperature/time combos for beatin' this little worm:

The second consideration is taste, and in this case I think the main concern is achieving maximum juiciness. Visually, I am looking for a faint, haunting pink to the meat; if it is white I find that it is overdone. You could shoot for a more rosy pink (in which case you would set your water bath below the temperature I use) but in my experience this involves a potential cost (many of your friends/guests/family might be off-put by really pink pork since there is a deep, instinctive human fear of under-done pork) for little gain (it really is not much juicier unless it is basically rare).

This calls for a relatively, but not ridiculously, low heat for the water bath.

Now, all this being said, I am not going to tell you what is safe, only what I do myself (so, no guarantees of safety implied):

I tend to cook my pork chops en sous vide in a water bath heated to 133-134°F (56.1-56.7° C) (specifically, 133.5° F (56.4° C) is where I typically set my circulator). And I cook it thus for at least 3-4 hours (because my chops are always thick cut; if they were thin cut I might go only 2 hours, though I have never tried this).

The result of my process is pictured above. This chop is unadorned by anything and was finished with a grill over simple Whole Foods real wood chunk charcoal (with no added wood for a particular flavor) for about 90-120 seconds per side. I could have finished it more or less intensely on the grill (that is a matter of personal preference; I usually do look for a bit more carmelization). If you do want to experiment with different levels of grill finishing just do so by altering the heat. So, for instance, if you want more char and grill hash, do so by building a hotter fire, and not by lengthening grill time: whatever degree of finish you prefer, you do not want this to spend a long time on the grill since it will start to undue that magic of sous vide by cooking it internally.

Below, you see the same chop with a piece cut out. Notice the perfect internal faint pinkness of this chop. It was very juicy. It could have been made even more so by brining, which was not done in this case but is generally recommended.

Here is a close-up that captures the faint pinkness:

If you want it just a shade more or less pink, adjust the temperature of the water bath, respectively, down to 132.5° F (55.83° C) or up to 134.5° F (56.9° C). (Note: Use a Polyscience emersion circulator for this kind of edgework: it is a little too tight in terms of temperature tolerance for the Sous Vide Supreme (SVS). The SVS is better for less lean cuts of meat, like ribeye steak, that are slightly more forgiving of 1° F fluctuations.)

This is a perfect pasta for the months when cherry tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash are at their zenith (roughly mid-July through mid-September here in the Great Southland). It is light but very filling. As such it does very nicely in the heat.

Basic Ingredients:
-1 lb of dried pasta (could be penne, but look for something more interesting, like fusilli)
-Olive oil
-2 heads of garlic, peeled and chopped fine
-Some basil (at least 20 leaves) chopped into thin ribbons
-3.75 cups of halved yellow tomatoes
-2 cups of halved grape or cherry tomatoes
-2.5 cups thinly (1/8 inch or so) sliced zucchini*
-2.5 cups thinly (1/8 inch or so) sliced yellow squash*
-1 cup or so of toasted pine nuts**
-salt and pepper
-around 15 ounces of chicken stock
-parmiggiano-reggiano cheese.

* I use a mandolin for these.

**Always toast pine nuts at high heat. This requires more attention (there is a fine-and quickly crossed-line between toasted and burned) but is worth it since the nuts retain much more of their moisture, oil and integrity (and, therefore, taste and texture) that with "low and slow" toasting. I toast pine nuts in a non-stick saute pan.

(If the tomatoes are a bit large, you can quarter them but it is better to avoid doing this if possible since the halved tomatoes hold their shape and tooth feel better.)

Now, to get down to brass tacks:

Bring generously salted water to a boil. Just before you feel ready to throw in the pasta put a big saute pan over medium heat. As you throw in the pasta put some olive oil in the pan and toss in some finely chopped (or thin sliced, depending on your preference) garlic. Tip the pan to pool the olive oil in one end and then stew the garlic in the oil for 2-3 minutes.

Put the pan back down and raise the temperature to high as you throw in around 15 ounces of chicken stock and 1.75 cups of halved yellow cherry tomatoes. Thoroughly mash the tomatoes (I literally use a potato masher) into the stock as it reduces somewhat. This sauce should quickly look like this:

A few points about this step:

-If the pan becomes too illiquid, toss in some more chicken stock.

-These two components-the stock and this first infusion of yellow tomatoes-form the yellow tomato sauce that is the base of this pasta. If you want a more saucy pasta, just add a bit more of each of these.

-You could strain out the tomato skins and garlic chunks or puree them into the sauce. For instance, you could send the sauce through a food mill (if you go this route you might need to add in a few tablespoons more chicken stock). I actually prefer the texture these solids help build when they are just left alone (no straining, no pureeing, just keep cookin'). But the tradeoff is this: straining will lead to a more elegant, silky kind of expression, while not doing so preserves a kind of rustic integrity. Or some such big words.

As the tomato/chicken stock/garlic mixture is coming to a high simmer/low boil, add in some salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (I don't use much salt because the pasta is already cooking in very salty water and parmiggiano-reggiano cheese will be added later).

After a minute or two toss in 2.5 cups each of thinly sliced zucchini and yellow squash. Add salt and pepper. Allow this to cook for 5 or so minutes, tossing often and gradually reducing heat to medium. The zucchini cooking:

On this occasion I actually went slightly overboard on the zucchini and yellow squash, so I should have either added a bit less of these or a bit more chicken stock/yellow tomato mash to achieve a little bit better sauce coverage for the zucchini and yellow squash. But this pan is a bit too crowded.

By the end of that time that zucchini and squash should have softened but still retain some faint bite and the first batch of yellow tomatoes should have formed a golden broth with the stock. When the pasta is nearly done, toss in 2 cups of halved grape or red cherry tomatoes and 2 cups of halved yellow cherry tomatoes. As the pasta finsihes, toss it in as well and allow the elements to just mingle for a minute or two. As you remove the pan from the heat toss through some toasted pine nuts and freshly chopped basil. Serve in bowls topped with some more toasted pine nuts and the undisputed king of cheeses. Make sure that each bowl has a half to three quarter inch base of the tomato broth before shovelling solids into it.

A few final notes:

-For the gluten intolerant, you could just forgo the pasta. Then, to serve, spoon some sauce into the base of a shallow bowl and pile (as artfully as you can) the mixture onto the center of the bowl, sprinkle with some remaining toasted pine nuts and shave on some Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese.

-Never grate any cheese into this dish as it cooks: that will give it a creamy character that detracts from its freshness. The cheese should be a final note with its own integrity and not wholly integrated into the sauce.

-The pasta will look more elegant if you can center the solid components in the bowl and leave a margin of the golden broth all around (obviously I was not aiming for elegance with the shot above).

Update:

I re-made the dish the next day. Here is a marginally better plating of it:

Update: I actually sous vide cooked the corned beef at two different temperatures: 130.5° F (54.7° C) and 138° F (58.9° C). The riff I had heard was that the lower temps would give a juicier corned beef but the higher one would get you closer to a classic corned beef texture. I have to say that, were I to do it again, I would go for the lower temprature: I felt the texture was just right at either temperature, but that the lower temperature definitely yielded the juicier result. So why was the texture good at 130.5° F (54.7° C)? Probably because of the length of time I cooked it en sous vide: 48 hours.

That said, I made a major mistake: there were pockets of extreme, over the top flavor on the beef. The reason was flecks of things like peppercorns and bay leaves on the surface of the corned beef. Sous vide tends to intensify herb and spice flavors and can essentially scorch with flavor any surface a piece of the herb or spice was touching. You often need to put herbs and spices in some kind of sachet and avoid direct contact with the meat surface in order to avoid these spice and herb "hot spots". So, in future, I need to pick off these flecks, particularly the bay leaves, before putting the meat under vacuum seal.

And I do like to cook.

And eat. And I mean really eat.

The food fight will begin soon. Stay tuned.