Piña Ahumada

I found this draft that was never published when I was still in New Orleans! This one was a hit. Charred pineapple purée + Smoked tequila + Ancho Chile Liqueur + Lime = Piña Ahumada.

For this cocktail, I took some time at home the day before to prep the charred pineapple purée. After completing that bit of prep work, the drink itself is simple to make. The spiciness of the Ancho Chile liqueur is balanced by the smoky-sweet pineapple and a little fresh lime. It would be great to make a whole pitcher or two for a party at home, but here I will give you the proportions for one cocktail.

CHARRED PINEAPPLE 

Peel pineapple and cut into chunks, making sure to discard core. Save the leaves for the garnish. Now, if this cocktail didn't already call for the chile liqueur I might rub the pineapple with ancho chile powder or cayenne pepper. You could do this if you don't have the chile liqueur or if you want extra heat.

You can grill or roast the pineapple. I roasted it in the oven on a rack set over a foil-lined baking sheet/tray at 425 for about 10 minutes. Crank the broiler at the end to get it just a bit charred, or set a rack over your gas burners and light them for a few seconds (I tried both.)

Next, let the pineapple cool. Reserve a handful of pineapple chunks for the garnish. Once it has cooled down, transfer to a blender or food processor--be sure to scrape up any pineapple drippings--the caramalized pineapple sugar is a special kind of gold that will add depth to the purée. Then blend the pineapple till smooth. Transfer to squeeze bottle.

Now we're ready to build the cocktail.  

PIÑA AHUMADA

1.5 oz Maestro Dobel Humito Smoked Tequila

.5 oz Ancho Reyes Chile Liqueur

3 oz Charred pineapple puree

.5 oz fresh lime juice

Combine all ingredients in shaker with ice, and shake vigorously. Double strain over fresh ice and garnish with a skewered charred pineapple chunk and leaf.  

MIAMI

The morning after Mardi Gras day I woke up with the urge to book a quick trip out of town. It had been a month of busy shifts at the bar and it wasn't over--St Patrick's Day was still to come. I had the thought of Miami; I had never been there, it's close, and I'd be sure to eat and drink well. As luck would have it my parents had planned a trip there too so I decided to fly out and meet them after St Patrick's day.

My parents picked me up from the airport and we headed straight to Yambo, a Nicaraguan takeout spot with plentiful portions.  We ordered lengua (beef tongue) and chicken on a big pile of rice and beans, both served with a hefty slab of fried cheese. 

We went back to the house, located just south of Little Havana, and got ready to head to the beach. It was super windy but we finally found a good spot.

I’d scoped out the neighborhood ahead of time and noticed a bar called The Mighty that looked local and cool, so we decided to check it out. It was exactly what we wanted: low-key with a friendly vibe, reasonable prices and great service. The specialty was housemade sausages so we ordered one along with some croquettes to go with our drinks. I had also made a run to the closest gas station to purchase a lotto ticket, so we discussed our plans for our imminent fortune over our drinks.

The next morning my dad and I headed to Cafe Versailles for some coffee and breakfast. We ordered cortaditos (strong coffee and steamed milk with sugar), a ham and cheese empanda, and a slice of tortilla. 

That afternoon we explored another beach, then headed to Joe's Stone Crab in South Beach. I'd never had stone crabs before and they were delicious, served with a mustard sauce. We also ordered conch fritters and shared a steak and grilled branzino.

Friday morning I woke up early and took a solo walk down Calle Ocho in Little Havana. I stopped into Los Pinarenos Fruteria for some more Cuban coffee and fresh coconut water.  

My mom met up with me and to do some thrift shopping and wander.

More beach time in Key Biscane. This was the best beach day and we found a nice secluded spot for my mom and I to read our books while Dad snorkeled.

Next we stopped at the Rusty Pelican for a cocktail overlooking the water. My dad got the most attractive one, a rum-based drink with a floral garnish.

Then we decided to return to The Mighty for a few more drinks and snacks. This time it was in full swing for Friday happy hour. We had the same server who immediately remembered our orders from two nights prior and we felt right at home. I ordered a kale salad to round out the other indulgences of the trip.

We called it another early night because my dad and I had committed to a 7:30 am Outrigger Canoe outing the next morning! Unfortunately I couldn't bring my phone and therefore have no pictures to prove I did such a thing.

The trip was short but sweet, and I can't wait to go back! This trip was more beach time than exploring the city, which was just what I needed. But I'm looking forward to returning and checking out more bars, restaurants and music! 

GATEAU BRETON

As much as I love cooking, baking has never been a big passion of mine. But as I've become more of a homebody in the last year and cut back on cocktails, I've developed a new love for it. It started around Christmas time when I recreated my childhood tradition of baking gingerbread and "rich roll" sugar cookies from the Joy of Cooking and hosted a cookie-painting party with some friends. Then when I arrived home in Connecticut for the holidays, my brother and his fiancé were in the middle of making Gateau Breton.

This cake is dense and buttery, almost like a shortbread with a inner layer of a sweet and tart apricot filling. You could use preserves but I'll tell you that the filling is very easy to make. The traditional method for making this cake is to make a dense dough, divide into discs and chill for a few hours. This is the method Brian and Carolyn used with a recipe from New York Times Cooking. However, I tried a different method from Cook's Illustrated in which you make a batter rather than a dough and freeze for 10 minutes in between layers. It turned out great!  You need an account to access this recipe, and I'd encourage you to subscribe to their website because it's full of great recipes and tips. So please head over to their website for the full recipe and then follow along with me as I walk you through it!

First, make the filling.  Puree dried apricots and water in a blender. In a nonstick pan, combine puree with sugar and stir together over medium heat for about 12 minutes until the mixture has thickened and darkened. Transfer to a bowl and stir in lemon juice. Let cool and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes or up to a few days. (I made mine two days before I made the cake.)

Now make the batter. Disclaimer: I softened my butter in the microwave and let it go just a tad too long, so it had begun to melt. Rather than toss it I decided to hope for the best and the cake still turned out fabulous. So try NOT to do that, but I wanted to let you know exactly what I was working with. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9 inch cake pan with butter. 

Beat butter on medium-high speed until smooth. I used a hand-mixer. If you have a stand mixer, wonderful. If you have neither you'll still be fine--Brian and Carolyn mixed everything by hand. As Brian pointed out, people have been making this for hundreds of years without electric appliances. He's a smart guy, that brother of mine.

Add the sugar and continue to mix/beat. 

Add 5 egg yolks, one at a time. 

Add dark rum and vanilla and keep mixing. Then add flour and salt and beat on low speed just long enough for everything to come together. You don't want to mix too long or your cake will be more airy than dense, and dense is the goal here.

Now scoop half the batter and spread in an even layer across the bottom of your prepared cake pan. The recipe suggests a small offset spatula, a tool I do not possess. I found a flat-bottomed pho ladle did the trick. Let's make it work, people! 

Freeze for 10 minutes. Then remove from freezer and spread a layer of apricot filling across the batter, leaving a 3/4 inch border around the edge.  

I'm aware my cake is messy. Still working on the patience and delicate touch that makes a great baker. Those two qualities do not come naturally to me.

After you've spread the filling, freeze pan for another 10 minutes. 

Take pan out of freezer and spread remaining batter over filling. Make an egg yolk wash with 1 yolk and 1 tsp water. Brush top off cake with wash. 

Using tines of a fork, make a crosshatch pattern across the surface of the cake.

Bake until golden brown, about 45-50 minutes. Let cake cool in pan for 30 minutes, then use knife to gently remove cake from sides of pan and continue cooling for another hour on a wire rack. 

Isn't it pretty?  

Serve in wedges, preferably with coffee. I brought the cake into the pub the next day and shared with regulars. 

You can see my cake isn't perfectly uniform, likely due to how soft my butter was. That being said, it was delicious! I'd like to try a side-by-side comparison of a Gateau Breton made with dough and one made with batter like this. Next time I'm home, I'm summoning Brian and Carolyn to a bake-off!

Bon appetit! 

INSTANT POT LAMB CHICKPEA STEW

My Mondays are more like Sundays. Sunday I work a busy day shift and then might have some drinks with coworkers or my roommate, or like last night, get in my bed super early and watch one of the Fyre Festival documentaries. Then Monday I'm off, and I try to get organized for the week ahead. Cooking-wise, that often translates to some big batch of healthy-while-satisfying soup or stew.

And while I love the ritual of slow-cooking something all afternoon on a day off, there's no denying the convenience of the pressure cooker. Enter the Instant Pot, which I received from my mother for Christmas. The ability to sautée, sear, and brown meats and vegetables before the pressure-cooking makes it so easy and clean-up minimal. This recipe is warm, earthy and comforting, not to mention pretty healthy. I tried it a variety of ways throughout the week; once with steamed cauliflower, another time with Israeli couscous and wilted baby spinach, a third time just with crusty bread. Every time with a dollop of full-fat Greek yogurt. It's kind of in between a Mediterranean-flavored lamb bolognese and a chickpea stew. Whatever you want to call it, do yourself a favor and make it soon.

• 1 lb Ground lamb

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 2 cloves garlic, smashed

• 1/2 a large or 1 small red onion, diced

• 1 yellow or red bell pepper, diced

• 1 15 oz can whole peeled tomatoes

• 1 Cup chicken stock

• 1 cup crushed tomatoes

• 1 15 oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar

• 1 tsp cumin

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 1 tsp coriander

• Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Turn your Instant Pot to the Sautée setting on Medium heat. Add olive oil, diced onion and peppers. Cook for about 4 minutes and add garlic.

Let garlic cook for another minute and add lamb. Brown lamb, breaking up with a wooden spoon, for about 5 minutes. Add spices in as your brown the meat. Using a ladle, scoop up and discard some of the cooking liquid if it seems quite fatty, it will reduce how much fat you'll need to skim off at the end.

Now add your drained and rinsed chickpeas, whole and crushed tomatoes, vinegar, and chicken stock.

Those tomatoes add so much, just you wait.

Now cover and set your Instant Pot to high pressure for 40 minutes.  Let the pressure realease naturally for about 20 minutes and then you can release the rest. 

Break up the tomatoes with a spoon and stir to incorporate. Skim fat from top and you're done!

Serve with Greek yogurt over rice, cauliflower, potatoes or with bread. 

Happy Monday! 

CATCH UP

In between bigger cooking and cocktail projects I’m always snapping photos of what I’m making and eating. I thought I’d take a moment to share a few from the past month. 

These are “Snickerdoodle Party Cookies” that were featured in Bon Appetit’s holiday cookie issue. I subbed Chinese five spice for the Cardamom and they were amazing. The cornflakes added great texture.

That’s breakfast sausage, black pudding and white pudding. I got in on an order my friends Pauline and Stephen placed for the good stuff back in December. A bunch of us were eating Irish Breakfast all week. I had to freeze half of mine out of respect for my heart.

Lobster, broccolini and roasted potatoes. My first meal when I got home to Connecticut for the holidays. Followed by...

Gateu Bretôn!

Courtesy of my brother Brian and his fiancé Carolyn. It’s a dense and rich cake with an apricot filling. They used this recipe from NYT Cooking.

A lobster shack near my parents’ house. They moved to the shore last year and the area is beautiful, even in the winter.

Dim Sum with my friend Tony at Panda King. Located in the same shopping plaza as Hong Kong Market on the Westbank, this restaurant offers an authentic experience with dishes rolling by your table on carts. Pictured here are tofu fish cakes and spicy tripe. We were full and paid our check before steaming trays of snails and clams started entering the dining room. We decided we need to return next time with a bigger group.

Lunch with some friends from Eat Well at Pythian Market. Pythian market is an “urban food collective” located in the Central Business District. Vendors include Middle-Eastern, Cajun, Mexican, Caribbean, Vietnamese and Italian cuisine as well as a coffee stall and a bar. We went for Vietnamese at Eat Well. Eat Well has been a local favorite of mine for awhile with a location in a convenience mart at the intersection of Canal St and Broad in Midcity. Their pho is always spot on and the portions plentiful, so I’m glad they’ve expanded and more people can experience their food! I went with my go-to beef pho and my friend Kristin ordered a phoritto: “a perfect bowl of pho stuffed inside a tortilla.” I stuck around after for a coffee before I hit the library across the street. Definitely will be back to try the other vendors and a cocktail! 

Doodling noodles as I’ve been home sick. This lingering cold just hasn’t gone away. Finally buckled down and went to the doctor so I’m hoping to knock it out soon. Meanwhile, I’ll be continuing a steady diet of tea and soup. Hope you all are staying healthy! 

ITALIAN SAUSAGE PT. 2

When I last left you I was celebrating success of my first sausage making experience. Within twenty minutes of leaving my friend's house I had distributed several parcels to hungry friends at the pub as impromptu Christmas gifts. The next night I was ready to cook my own. I wanted to pair the sausage with something different from a typical red sauce or peppers and onions. I found this recipe for sausage with roasted cabbage and apples but opted to do the whole thing on the stovetop in my cast iron skillet. The tartness of the apples and acidity of the red wine vingegar offered a lovely balance to the richness of the sausage. I also used some fennel that I had sitting in the fridge, a nice addition. 

ITALIAN SAUSAGE WITH BRAISED CABBAGE, APPLES AND FENNEL 

• 4 Italian sausage links

• 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

• 1 Granny Smith apple, sliced

• 1 head red cabbage, thinly sliced

• 1 head fennel, thinly sliced

• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• Kosher salt and ground black pepper to taste

• Crusty bread for serving

Heat olive oil in cast iron skillet over medium heat. Brown sausages and cook through, about 10-15 minutes. 

Meanwhile, slice your apples, cabbage, onion and fennel. 

Once the sausage is cooked through, remove from skillet and set aside. Discard all but about 1.5 tbsp of fat leftover from cooking sausage, then throw in the apples, onions and fennel. Cook until onion and fennel have browned and softened slightly.

Then add the cabbage.

Stir cabbage and toss with other vegetables as it wilts. Sprinkle in some kosher salt and ground pepper, then add red wine vinegar and 1/4 cup water. Turn heat down to medium-low and let simmer, partially covered, until cabbage is soft, about 15 minutes.

Look at that color! 

Toss sausages back in skillet with cabbage to heat up, then serve with buttered bread. 

This was a very hearty and satisfying meal, enhanced by the knowledge that the sausages were made from scratch and with love. Over the next few days I received texts from the friends who received sausage gifts and everyone did something different; one person did sausage and peppers, another with pretzel buns. The rest are in the freezer waiting for future enjoyment. 

I hope everyone had the happiest holidays and is ready for an exciting new year! If you have any suggestions for cooking projects I should try, please leave them in the comments. I'd love some inspiration for new challenges!

ITALIAN SAUSAGE PT. 1

For some reason the idiom “how the sausage gets made” has a negative connotation. It’s used to refer to unpleasant processes that we would rather not witness. But I’m here to tell you: don’t be afraid! This was my first time making sausage and there was nothing unpleasant about it. It is time-consuming (give yourself about 4 hours) and requires some slightly strenuous labor, but it’s fun and so gratifying. It’s definitely a team sport so call over a buddy or two and make an afternoon of it. 

If you have a KitchenAid you can buy a grinder attatchment, or you may choose to invest in a heavy duty meat grinder. We used one from Cabela’s. Make sure to look over the manual for your machine as the functions and parts may be different.

Regardless of the equipment you use, I recommend watching this video before beginning. It will give you a good idea of how the grinding and stuffing functions should look in action. 

We decided to go big so this recipe calls for 10 lbs of meat, but you can scale down of course.

ITALIAN SAUSAGE 

• 10 lb Boston Butt cut off the bone
• 1 lb beef ribeye trimmings, mostly fat (you can subsitute additional pork fat) 
• Hog casings, cleaned (ask for natural casing for sausage from your butcher. Ours were cleaned but be sure to ask if you need to soak or rinse yours.) 
• 2 cups finely chopped white onion
• 2 cups finely chopped celery
• 1 cup finely chopped green onion
• 1 bunch finely chopped Italian parsley
• 6 tbsp kosher salt (start with half and test a batch before adding more)
• 2 tbsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup + 4 tbsp Italian spice blend (ours contained fennel seed, chili flakes, basil, coriander, oregano, paprika, parsley, black pepper, thyme, garlic, onion and Himalayan Pink salt) 
• 3 tbsp fennel seed  
• 4 tbsp minced garlic
• 2 tbsp red pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup dry red wine

Cut your pork butt up into pieces that will fit through the hole in the feeding tray into the grinder.

Place a large bowl under the grinder to catch the meat. Turn grinder on and start feeding pork through.

Add in the beef fat or additional pork fat intermittently. 

Mince your garlic. Chop up green onion and parsley. Chop celery and onion, ideally in a food processor; you want it to be super fine. Drain the celery and onion on paper towels to remove excesss moisture.

With your hands, mix vegetables, spices and red wine into ground meat. I noted in the ingredients list to start with half the salt I've called for and add more to taste.

Make sure to mix it well so the spices are evenly distributed.  

Now you're going to test your meat mixture. Scoop enough to form a small patty and fry.

Once cooked through, taste the sausage. Now you can decide how much more salt to add and if you'd like to add more of any particular spice. Through a few test batches, we decided to add more garlic, fennel seeds and crushed red pepper. Once you're satisfied with your sausage mixture let it sit in refrigerator for 30 minutes. You want the meat to be quite cold and firm as this will make stuffing the sausage exponentially easier. If you're working with a large quantity of meat like we were, keep half of the meat mixture in the fridge while you stuff one batch, then repeat.

Okay, ready for an arm workout? It's time to stuff the sausage! Make sure the grinder head is cleaned from the meat-grinding step and attach stuffing funnel.

Feed hog casing onto stuffing funnel so it bunches up like pictured. Keep sliding more of the casing on, as much as you can fit. Make sure you leave enough hanging off the end to tie off after the first bit of meat comes through.

Here's where the teamwork comes in. One person will start feeding handfuls of the meat into the tray, pushing down with the meat-pusher tool (I was wondering if this tool had a less obvious name but apparently it does not!). As the meat comes out, the other person will help guide it into the casing. Right after it starts coming through, turn machine off and tie a knot right at the end to contain the sausage. Then, continue stuffing, pulling on casing when more meat is coming through and holding it tight against funnel when there is a break in the flow.

Either your meat or casing will run out first, but make sure if the casing is getting low to stop--you need enough to tie another knot. Don't tie the knot yet though, just cut the casing off the funnel with a few inches trailing behind the sausage.

Now, take a paper clip, safety pin or better yet, sausage pricker if you happen to own that specific tool and start piercing the sausage to release air bubbles. Poke all along both sides. 

To form individual sausages, pinch casing where you want the first link to end. Roll sausage so the casing twists. Flip next section in opposite direction. The video I linked to will come in handy here. You can see how you can kind of "twirl" the sausage back and forth to divide up the links. 

Once finished, tie a knot at the end of the last link. Let the sausages sit for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight to let casings harden before you cut the links apart.

And there you have it! That's how the sausage is made.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we actually get to cook and EAT the fruits of our labor!