Artichokes

I love artichokes. I stuff them the way mom always did: equal parts bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, and a couple of cloves of minced garlic. I use Progresso seasoned bread crumbs (it's good enough for mom, so it's good enough for me), so there's no need for additional seasoning.

1. Cut off the stems so the artichokes sit flat, and trim the sharp points off the larger leaves.
2. Wash in cold water, and open up the leaves a little to make room for the stuffing.
3. Stuff each artichoke, and drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil.
4. Cook in 1/2" of water in a large pot for about 30 - 45 minutes, or until the a bottom leave comes off easily.

Chicken Parmesan

This is a relatively simple meal to make, since I always have tomato sauce in the freezer. Simple tomato sauce is good, but I usually have Sunday sauce on hand, so I use that.

1. Pound the chicken breasts flat for even cooking.
2. Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper.
   
3. Prepare 3 pie plates, one with flour, one with 3 eggs (scrambled), and one with bread crumbs.
4. Dredge each chicken breast in the flour, shaking off the excess, then the egg, then the bread crumbs.
5. Fry in olive oil over medium heat until nicely brown. The chicken will not be fully cooked at this point.
6. Cover the bottom of a glass baking dish with tomato sauce.
7. Add the chicken in one layer.
8. Spoon tomato sauce over each breast.
9. Pile mozzarella and Parmesan on each breast. I use 2 parts mozzarella to one part Parmesan.
   
10. Bake at 350F for 1/2 hour.

Serve with linguine or any other pasta.

Pomelos: Who knew?

We have lots of citrus this time of year, but this is the first time we've seen pomelos (they're the big yellow-green ones; the others are grapefruit and lemons). We've always had the tree, but this is the first year it's born fruit.

Pomelos are similar to grapefruit, but milder, and they have a much thicker pith. I love them peeled and sliced with a little salt.

We picked at least 3 dozen grapefruit, pomelos, and lemons yesterday, most of which we gave away to friends and family. This time of year we have far more than we can eat; in a month the season's over, and we'll have to wait for next year.

Where Pork Comes From

We eat a lot of pork between and during Christmas and Three Kings day, and we get our pork from my wife's cousins, who live a bit up the mountain from us. Juan and Jose raise a few dozen pigs a year, and during the holiday season, they will butcher a dozen or more. We witnessed this one from start to finish, and it wasn't nearly as grizzly has I feared. It didn't even smell that bad. I'll spare you the actual dispatching of the pig, and if you're squeamish, you won't want to watch these videos.



The beautiful young lady in the video is 12 years old, and all the family's children participate.



Practically no part of the pig is wasted. Here, Juan is preparing the intestines for morcilla: sausage made of pig blood and rice. I never developed a taste for this particular delicacy. Juan's wife will finish cleaning the intestines, and make the morcilla.



And here, Jose is remove the meat from the head, which will be smoked.

Wordle

I found this today on A Hunger Artist (Bob always finds the good stuff).

From the Wordle website:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.

Hours of fun for the whole family. Here's a word cloud of this very website.
I suppose I'm a little fixated on bread. Click the image to enlarge it.

Hell's Kitchen: Spanish TV

I live in Puerto Rico, so I get Spanish TV. They broadcast in English,
with Spanish subtitles. They do not censor.

I watched Hell's Kitchen last night.

I've seen this episode before on American TV; but there it was:

"You <bleep> idiot. I'm not serving this <bleep>".

On Spanish TV it's the much more refreshing:

"You fucking idiot. I'm not serving this shit".

I can take this language. I worked in a factory.

Calzones

Calzones are the original Hot Pockets®, only not as crappy, and certainly no where near as crappy as Lean Pockets®.

A calzone is stuffed pizza dough. You can put whatever you want in a calzone, but I like any salume (Italian cold cuts) and cheese (usually mozzarella and parmigiano or pecorino). A little simple tomato sauce is optional, but tasty. However, putting tomato sauce in a calzone is tricky at best. It's probably better to leave it out and use the sauce on top of the calzone after it's cooked.

1. Preheat your oven to 425F. I use a baking stone, but you can also use a lightly oiled sheet pan dusted with a little coarse corn meal, or a sheet pan covered with parchment paper.
   
2. Roll out each ball to about 6 - 7" and add filling to cover one half, leaving enough on the edge of the dough so you can make a good seal. This doesn't look like it's going to work, but it does. When you pull the dough up and over the filling, you stretch it to match the other edge.
   

1. Fold over the dough and seal by going around the calzone folding and pinching a bit of the edge. Cut a small hole in the top of the calzone so it doesn't explode.

1. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes, or until golden.
2. Remove to a cooling rack for 10 minutes before serving.

One of these is plenty for one person. I always make more than we can eat; they freeze beautifully.

Don Luis Returns

Regular readers of this blog (and there must be one or two of you) probably noticed that I haven't posted in many months. That's because an old friend a college talked me out of retirement for a 1 month technical writing gig. Ten months later, I'm still working.

Now, I want to return to cooking for my extended live-in family. My mother-in-law cooks Puerto Rican, and I cook Italian-American and American. Together, we make a lot of great home-style food.

I intend to blog more often, and if no-one reads it, so be it. Since I started this blog, I've found hundreds of other food blogs that are simply better than mine. I simply do this for my own amusement, and as a way to log my cooking experiences and thoughts.

Bacalao Guisado

Last night, we had one of my favorites, bacalao guisado. Guisado is Spanish for stew.

For a picture and recipe, see Rican Recipies. What my mother-in-law makes is very similar to this, except that she serves avocado and panas (both from our finca) on the side instead of tostones, and she used canned tomatoes.

A similar dish is pollo guisado, made with chicken instead of fish, with the addition of potatoes and sometimes bell peppers and a beer. Here's mama's:

Pan de Luis Redux

After exchanging email with my online buddy, Chef Bob del Grosso, I modified the first attempt at Pan de Luis to incorporate some of his advice. I got some vital wheat gluten from Hodgson Mill to make up for the fact that I can't get bread flour here. Bread flour contains more gluten than AP flour, so adding gluten helps. Since I bought the gluten online, I wanted to get enough to justify the shipping cost. My wife thinks I went a little overboard, as I now have enough for about 170 loaves of bread. I also bought some instant yeast from Hodgson, since I can't get that here either.

I'm sure Bob's recipe is better than this one, but I decided to keep it simple. I'll get to his at some point.

Since my last attempt, I bought a scale; I now measure dry ingredients by weight. Since I bake more often these days, I've switched from kneeding the dough by hand to doing it in my KitchenAid stand mixer using the dough hook.

Click on the image to see it full size.

Here is the modified recipe. It makes two 2 pound (900 gram) loaves.

• 1 kilogram AP flour
• 30 grams vital wheat gluten
• 9 grams salt
• 26 ounces room-temperature water
• 8.75 grams instant yeast

First make a poolish:

• 340 grams AP flour
• 3 grams gluten
• 13 ounces room-temperature water
• 1.5 grams instant yeast

1. Combine the gluten, yeast, and flour in the KitchenAid work bowl and mix.
   
2. Add the water, mix well.
3. Cover with a towel, and let sit at room temperature for 5 hours
4. Stir well and refrigerate overnight

The next day, I make the dough:

• 660 grams AP flour
• 33 grams gluten
• 9 grams salt
• 13 ounces room-temperature water
• the remaining yeast

1. Bring the poolish back to room temperature.
2. Mix the yeast, gluten, salt, and flour.
3. Add 26 ounces room-temperature water and the flour mixture to the work bowl with the biga.
4. Kneed on medium speed for 10 minutes.
5. Let rise in a slightly oiled bowl for 1 ½ hours, or until doubled in volume.
6. Punch down, and fold on itself several times to redistribute the yeast.
7. Let rise another hour, or until doubled in volume.
   
8. Divide into 2 equal parts, and shape into loaves, and transfer to a lightly-oiled sheet pan that's dusted with corn meal.
9. Let rise another hour covered with a towel.
   
10. Preheat the oven to 500°F with an empty oven-proof pan in the oven.
    
11. When the oven reaches 500°F, pour a cup of hot water in the pan, and close the oven door.
    
12. Slash the top of each loaf several times and put the baking sheet in the oven
13. After 10 minutes, lower the temperature to 475°F.
14. Bake for 30 minutes more, or to an internal temperature of 200°F.
15. Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour.

Click on the image to see it full size.

This bread freezes very well.

Lest you worry, I vacuum-bagged the rest of the gluten, so it should keep for a long time.