What's for Dinner?

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Pro tip: When making Chicken Under a Brick (Pollo al Mattone), do NOT brine your chicken. Sigh.....

I have become enamored of the benefits of brining chicken, with wonderful, tasty bits ranging from whole roasts to just breasts. I decided to combine this technique with my normal recipe for Chicken Under a Brick. Mistake.

I brined tonights roaster for only ~2 hours in salt/spice solution. I spatchcocked the bird (love that word!), then roasted, skin down, in a preheated cast-iron pan at 500F with another heavy cast-iron pan weighing it down. This has (in the past) produced a wonderful crispy skin and quick-cooking, flavorful chicken. However, when I went to flip the bird after ~20 minutes, I found that it was stewing in an inch of liquid! What the heck? So I transferred it to the dry, 500F cast iron pan that had been serving as the weight, and popped it back in the oven. When I took THAT out, 15 minutes later, it had produced ANOTHER 1/4-inch of water. WTF!? I flipped it over, skin side up, into yet another cast-iron pan and cranked on the convection fan to try to dry/crisp the bird. This was more or less successful, but not exactly what I had anticipated when I started this effort!

On the plus side, the chicken was tasty, if not nicely browned. On the down side, my side dishes of roasted potato slices and tomato-braised green beans were done way before the chicken, and suffered from that poor timing.
 
Red Wine-Braised Flank Steak with Roasted Peppers, Onions & Gruyere

Looks like some good meals were had this weekend! We had a killer one as well last night. We used the Dutch Oven instead of crock pot. Seems to put out a much better product with the Dutch Oven. I posted the recipe for this to the WMT Recipe Forum if anyone is interested.

In the cookbook "Witchcfraft" that this recipe is from they claim they had to take this sandwich off the menu as it was jut TOO popular. I have made it several times and I have to agree. Its one of the best things I have ever eaten and pretty easy to prepare really.

attachment.php
 
A couple of recent Thai inspired dishes. The first is pizza with Thai peanut sauce and the second is a spicy peanut soba noodle dish with baked tofu.

ImageUploadedByWine Making1461862834.929914.jpg

ImageUploadedByWine Making1461862848.364166.jpg
 
Got home from Harford Vineyards, no wifey at home. Cracked a beer after unloading juice buckets etc, de-stemmed some grapes, made some pizza dough, did some laundry, then made a few pizzas. Was thinking about one possible topping, but decided it would make the pizza a bit mushy.

BTW, "dad's" pizza had 5 cloves of garlic, 1/2 an onion, and 4oz of sliced portabella mushrooms. No vampires expected in the house tonight (also not expecting the wife to sleep in the master suite tonight either).

4-29-16_pizza1.jpg

4-29-16_pizza2.jpg

4-29-16_pizza-topping.jpg
 
Oh, were you running short? I hate when I run out of garlic like that. I try to keep a few extra heads around just in case.... ::

Paul, you are bad (in a good way).

I had purchased a rather large sock of garlic at one of our local farmers market, and know it will start growing if I don't use it soon. I eyed another whole bulb and decided I'd give my wife a break for once.

It was actually quite flavorful, and the mushrooms really added to the overall flavor. The test will be for breakfast tomorrow morning!
 
It was actually quite flavorful, and the mushrooms really added to the overall flavor.

The picture looked wonderful. I had a spectacular dinner, and yet your pizza had me salivating!:HB

BTW, my dinner tonight was gulf shrimp, broiled with butter/lemon/cumin/turmeric/coriander. Delish. And, I bought the shrimp fresh from JamesnGalveston's old company, which trucks gulf shrimp up here to the midwest frequently. Remember good ol' James?
 
Simple Sunday. As you know I have four kids, so I need to make dishes that will be acceptable from 8 up to 53. The 53 end doesn't always get what he prefers, but it is all edible, though at times not very exciting. I've been told time and time again that I will miss them when they are gone, so I have to have faith that the saying has some truth to it. I just know I love it when they are all away for dinner (which is extremely rare) and I can experiment.

Pork loins, marinated in soy and ginger. Seared on the grill and finished in the convection oven. Giant Foods corn and some smashed taters with sour cream and parmesean. Nothing green tonight, will have to make up for it tomorrow night.

5-01-16_pork-loins.jpg

5-01-16_karn.jpg

5-01-16_smashed-taters.jpg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top