Food for thought

Homemade Chicken, Vegetable, Rice & Pasta Soup (8 oz) vs. Campbell's Chunky Chicken, Vegetable & Pasta Soup (8 oz)*
	Homemade	Campbell's
Protein (g)	10.9	6
Carbohydrate (g)	24.2	14
Fat (g)	3.9	2.5
Calories	178	120
Unpronounceable ingredients	0	6
Time until hungry again (hr)	3	0.5

*Not a scientific study.

More about Tuesday's dinner

When the Wing Symbol was shined on the clouds, I clearly knew what I had to do. Wings from the Wing Dome are delicious, of course, but I wouldn't feel right not at least trying to cook them. I have made them on several occasions, and they're really pretty easy. I don't bother deep frying them - that's fantastic deep fried, don't get me wrong, but deep frying at home is such a hassle and the oven really does just fine. The skin isn't as crispy, which is a loss, but they're still delicious and I don't have to do something with 8 hojillion gallons of chicken-y oil afterward.

So, on Monday, I started to do as much of the cooking as I could, since I'd be hauling it all up to Heidi's place. First on the agenda was some homemade teriyaki sauce. There are a few folks in our group that aren't huge spicy food fans, so I wanted some alternative sauces on hand. I knew that I'd be handing the Buffalo duties over to the outstanding Defcon 2 that I had in the fridge, so I'd just need some other stuff. Saska was going to bring along her "meat sauce" (not a euphamism), so I figured some teriyaki would round things out. Homemade teriyaki is dirt simple: 1 part each of soy sauce, mirin and sake, a couple tablespoons of sugar and some powdered ginger. Just boil it down until it's a nice syrupy consistency, and it's ready to go.

Next step for make ahead was the blue cheese dressing. Equal parts sour cream and mayonnaise, with plenty of crumbled blue cheese, some salt and pepper and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice just to brighten it up. If you have some scallions on hand, chop those up into it. I did not. Taste to adjust seasonings and into the fridge with it as well.

Carrots and celery didn't need any prep, so it was on to the next thing: cole slaw. Mmm, cole slaw. For a full head of cabbage, I did about 1 1/3 c. of mayo, 2/3 c. of sour cream, a decent shot of apple cider vinegar and salt and pepper. Those were the basics. I usually use a 2:1 ratio of mayo and sour cream for cole slaw, and then whatever else seems right. I almost always put in celery seeds, and I did this time as well, along with caraway. I decided to use cumin as well, and it worked out rather nicely, I thought. I rounded it out with some Dijon mustard, and the dressing was done. Along with the cabbage, shredded on my mandoline, I used three carrots and a small jicima, also shredded using the julienne blade. That too went in the fridge to meld overnight.

On Tuesday, since I had everything else put together, I just had to load up the car. Teriyaki, Defcon, cole slaw, dressing, carrots, celery, chicken wings and breasts, garlic, 3 kinds of beer, a diaper bag and some games. Oh yes, and the girl. Once at Heidi's place, I had to prep the wings. Which reminded me why I don't make wings that often. Separating the upper part from the lower part is relatively easy - just hold it with the bend away from you, slice through the skin until you hit bone, bend it all the way back to dislocate the joint, and then slice through the rest of the way. No, it's the stupid wing tips that are a hassle. Leave 'em on and they just burn, but taking them off requires aiming for this impossible to find joint or possibly just leaving little chips of bone in the wings if you just cut through anywhere. For the eight of us, I guesstimated about five pounds of wings and three pounds of chicken breasts (for the folks who don't appreciate bones), and that turned out to be about right. But it meant I had to butcher five pounds of those stupid things. Once they were done, everything got coated in some grapeseed oil (any high heat oil will do), plenty of garlic and salt and pepper, and into a 425 degree oven.

After about ten minutes I tossed everything around, and about every five minutes after that, until things had some nice color. I goosed the heat up to 450 about 20 minutes in, and I should have done that earlier, because the chicken breasts got a little overdone. I separated them into four bowls, one for each of the three sauces and the fourth as a reserve for people to dress however they wanted. Just toss them with the sauce and serve right away. The beers I brought were a six of Smithwick's, an eight of Guinness (it was St. Patrick's day) and that bottle of Duchess de Bourgogne, which is a beer that our friend Marc found which is amazing. It has that sour lambic thing going on, but balanced with a lovely amount of sweetness and just tons of character. Fantastic stuff. I thought everything came out pretty well, and I'll do wings again soon.

Dan's Lucky Day

Dan likes to say he's naturally lucky because he was born on St. Patrick's Day. Based on observation, I suspect this is true -- and this year he was doubly lucky, because his birthday fell on a Tuesday. Since we were staying in rather than going out, it only seemed right to do things up properly, home-cooking style.

Dan is a fan of the wings. Josh is a master of the wings. This resulted in deliciousness.







The wings (in Teriyaki, Meat, and Defcon 2 sauce) were accompanied by carrots and celery with a homemade blue cheese dipping sauce, coleslaw, an enormous tub of cheese balls,



and homemade yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting.



The cake recipe came straight out of The Mixer Bible, a cookbook I have found to be indispensable ever since Dan bought me Fat Man (my KitchenAid stand mixer) for Christmas. Made entirely of Real Food, it was moist, fluffy, and divine. I also realized that this was the first time I'd made a traditional layer cake from scratch, ever. I guess I should make them more often.

Rounding out the menu was a phenomenal beer (more lambic than beer) that Josh will have to post the name of so you can run out and buy it by the case, and chocolate chip mint and peanut butter cookies by Katy (of which Eli has promised he took good pictures).

Happy birthday, Dan!

Pi(e) Day

On 3/14 at 1:59, the Tuesday Night Supper Club was invited to attend Pi(e) Day at Chris and George's house.







Megan and Josh brought Shoo-Fly Pie and something else they will have to remind me of in comments. I made Bacon Cheeseburger Pie.

tuesrpg

tuesrpg
Originally uploaded by meganursula

yet another introduction to the group.

Our Tuesdays nights pretty much always have a delicious and home cooked meal. They almost as often have some wine, and we do share some good bottles with each other. Less frequently they involve more serious drinks.

Serious, here, refers to the fact that they are designed and mixed up. Not to any sort of mood associated with them.

In fact, usually when these drinks get made it is the result of 'I wonder what happens if we put ingredient A with ingredient B'? The results are just as likely to be horrible as they are to be delicious.

The drink here is one of the brilliant successes. This is an 'Almond Joy' drink, made with Godiva Liquor, Amaretto, and Coconut Cream. In some examples we added shavings of a nice chocolate bar. One of the great things about it was the wonderful job that Sheryl did floating one ingredient on the other. It was also just plain yummy and decadent.

Plus, check the glasses - we don't do things half way, this group!

the cheese I'd be remembered by

In the intro photo post I'm represented by what looks like it might be a chocolate-covered cheesecake. It's actually a homebrew cheese, and if I recall which cheese it was, it was scary bad. Scary because you put it inside your mouth and it reminds you, cheese is a microbiological experiment. Dear heavens what organism tastes like that. Bitter, foul, and lingering, hard to wash out.

That was supposed to be a Gouda.

Want to know the big trick I've learned so far in cheesemaking? Don't age them in wax. I know people do it and make them work, but I haven't. At best, my waxed cheeses end up vaguely cheddary, nothing much going for them. The unwaxed ones, though, have been cheeses I'd really want to eat, not just in the spirit of science.

Here's a cheese that was supposed to be a miniature Emmenthaler-style: a thermophilic culture, and Propionibacterium shermanii. It didn't end up much like Emmenthal at all (no eyes, aged harder), but it was good stuff. "Hard but cuttable, yellow to amber, has small air pockets, tastes meaty, aged-Gouda butterscotchy." Made 2008-01-20, eaten 2008-08-19.

From 2008-08-19 cheese

Scotchmallows

As we sat around the other day, Saska was telling a story that involved a marshmallow shooter, and the Homer-esque thought popped into several brains at once: marshmallow shooter could easily have another meaning. Would a marshmallow shooter be booze with a float of Marshmallow Fluff? A marshmallow soaked in booze and lit on fire? A hollowed-out Jet Puffed filled with hooch? Hopefully, the answer is yes to all of these. We immediately resolved to give it a try.

I volunteered to make marshmallows for our experiment. I mean, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. I also wanted to find out if you can make marshmallows with booze inside of them, providing a kind of all-in-one marshmallow shooter. Jello shots basically work, after all. So this past Monday, after getting home from work, I decided to give it a whirl. The recipe I used is this one, which looked straightforward enough to me. The question became: what kind of booze should I put into a marshmallow?

Vodka would have been the safe choice, I think. But I felt like I could do better. Amaretto? Maybe. Chambord? That would probably be very tasty. Megan suggested Irish cream, which I suspect is an outstanding call that I'll probably have to have a go at at some point. You could do something like Grand Marnier as well. So many good choices. At this point, it's worth mentioning that somehow we decided that the right taste for a marshmallow shooter is to have it taste like a s'more. What goes into a s'more? Marshmallows, obviously, along with grahams and chocolate. But what else is an essential component? The campfire. Well, hell, I've got something in my liquor cabinet that's pretty much a campfire in a bottle. A campfire of band-aids. Delicious band-aids.



That is a half cup of Lagavulin and three packets of gelatin in my stand mixer. This was either going to be unspeakably awesome or system-cleaningly revolting. Possibly both. By the time I'd prepped the syrup, the gelatin had pretty much solidified the Scotch into what might have been the greatest Jello shot ever. I was seriously tempted to just eat it and call it a night, but science must be served. In went the syrup, around and around went the mixer, and into the pan the whole sticky mess went to cure overnight.



How were they? Pretty successful, I'd say. The texture was kind of gooey, but I suspect that may have been a little bit of overwhipping on my part, and not due to the booze. They were very recognizable as marshmallows. The flavor was very, very Scotchy, full of all that "band-aid factory on fire in a peat bog" flavor that Megan and I love and the rest of the group mostly finds gross. They're not Scotch haters, it's just those smoky Islays that they mostly don't like. I found the Scotchmallows delicious, and have been snacking on them ever since. I don't know if you could get loaded off of them, but I suspect the sugar overload would get you before you could catch a decent buzz. At any rate, as a proof of concept, it was dead on, and I'm going to make Chambord marshmallows next.

Home-Corned Beef

Corned beef is one of those foods that is synonymous with delicatessens, cans, and vacuum-sealed prepared meat products. I knew it primarily from the little cubes in a can of Hormel Mary Kitchen Corned Beef Hash (and I loved it).

But last year home-preserved meats became a subject of some fascination, and I'm not entirely sure why or how, but we got it into our heads that we should be able to corn our own beef.

Dan and I have done four of them now, and I am happy to report that we are able to replicate success. Each has been delicious, and each a bit different because we've experimented with preparation methods.



Our most recent brisket was a flat (or first) cut with a really nice vein of fat through the center and some fantastic marbling. I trimmed all of the external fat from it so that the dry rub could work its magic. We grilled this one over low heat (around 300 degrees) in a kettle drum smoker with some hickory chunks on the coals, fat side down first and then turning it after the fat side was seared. It came out the consistency of prime rib.



You'll note that aside from the medium-rare inside, the meat is a more traditional gray-brown and not the bright pink often associated with corned beef. My son has a friend who can't eat nitrates, and so one of the first things I did was look for a recipe that didn't include the saltpetre. Saltpetre is what gives the corned beef its unnaturally pink color, and believe me, you don't miss the flavor one bit.

Here's the corned beef recipe. We served the grilled brisket with my Meat Sauce, and after first helpings of just meat with sauce, we all went back for sandwiches on artisan rolls with provolone and whole-grain mustard.

For a more traditional preparation method:

Peel and quarter 4 red potatoes (waxy potatoes only!)

Prepare a corned beef according to the recipe, but omit the final overnight soaking step. In a stockpot large enough to hold the entire brisket, brown 4 slices of bacon cut into 1-inch pieces until the fat has rendered out. To the bacon fat, add one large coarsely chopped yellow onion and four smashed cloves of garlic and sweat until the onions are translucent. Put the brisket in the pot and then cover with dark beer (cheap dark beer like Michelob Dark will do, but I used Redhook Copperhook). Add a bay leaf, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Check every 30 minutes or so and add boiling water if the liquid level is getting too far below the meat. After the pot has boiled for a minimum of two hours, check the meat for doneness. If it's falling apart, remove it to a large serving dish (it's okay if chunks stay in the liquid).

Increase the heat to high, add the potatoes, and boil the liquid until it reduces by about one third and the potatoes are soft (about 20 minutes). Taste a spoonful and add salt and pepper to taste. Do not salt the liquid until this point! You have no idea just how much salt a dry-cured brisket will give up during cooking. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon and add to the beef in the serving dish.

Next, ladle about 1 C of the pan liquid into a bowl, chill with an ice cube, and then stir in 1/3 C flour. When the flour is dissolved, pour the flour mixture back into the pan liquid and whisk until the mixture thickens. Finally, apply your stick blender to the pan liquid until you have a slightly chunky gravy. Garnish with parsley or other appropriate fresh herbs and serve over your brisket.

Who We Are (non picture version)

Some four or five years ago, I decided that I wanted to put together another role-playing group. I already had one group that met pretty regularly for a fantasy RPG, the kind of classic hacking-monsters-to-bits-while-eating-Cheetos group that everybody reading this pictured when they read "role-playing group". The only difference between us and a bunch of disaffected youths was that we were less crippled by angst and had mortgages. Anyway, I decided that one giant batch of nerdery in my life was insufficient, so it was time to get some more rolling. Only this time around, I wanted to pull in an entirely different group just to get a different feel to the gathering. Changing up the atmosphere would allow me to try and recruit some folks who might not otherwise consider joining in.

Saska was an obvious choice, an old friend of mine from way, way back that I didn't get to see nearly as much as I liked. Megan and Heidi I wanted in the group because they were interested in trying RPGs, but didn't feel very comfortable in the other hacking-and-Cheetos based game. I invited Eli because I again didn't get to see him much, and I knew that he'd be up for trying some of the oddball games that I wanted to try. Cory is the only crossover from the other game that I play in, again someone willing to try out any RPG. Katy joined us later mainly to hang out, and Dan is the most recent addition to the group.

Well, things worked out great. We started meeting on Tuesday evenings, which was the only hole in everybody's schedule, and thanks to everybody taking it seriously, it has become a permanent fixture. We probably only miss four or so Tuesdays a year, and we always have a fantastic time. We played through the entirety of Beyond the Mountains of Madness, which was awesome, and have played stuff like Deadlands, Amber, Paranoia, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen and other stuff. But the other interesting thing going on has been the food.

Since we were meeting on a weekday, we really needed to feed people dinner to have a chance of getting any gaming done. If everybody ate at their own place and then came over, it would be tough to make it happen. Well, Megan and I have always taken pride in hosting things properly, so we did our best to make the food a real enticement. Lots of cheese and good bread ahead of time, nice wine, quality desserts and something good to eat for dinner became part of the usual routine. And as we started to have other folks host, they took up the challenge of making it a real event. These days, people pull out the stops - homemade cheese, ice cream, bread, baked goods, great wines, lots of fun snacks and a nice meal usually from scratch. We're still playing RPGs and having a great time with them, but I'm actually pretty convinced at this point we'd get together every Tuesday anyway just to eat ourselves into an ecstatic torpor. Heck, Katy is a regular, and she usually skips the RPGs. It finally occurred to us the other night that it might be fun to share all this with the rest of the world, because sometimes our experiments are pretty spectacular. So that's our story: an RPG and foodie get together.

Meet your contributors

Saska:

Megan:

Josh:

Eli:

Heidi:

Cory:

Dan: