I make a good saag chicken.

If you love mango try: Spinach, mango, avacado, asian-sesame dressing and feta cheese for a salad. Yummy!

I am late to this thread, but I am slowly making my way through all the back-threads that were posted while I was absent from the board. Jonathan, would you be willing to share your pesto recipe with me? I have an herb garden and have discovered that basil likes to dominate the place. I'd love to have something yummy to do with all my leaves. Also, have you read The Soul of a Chef? I think you'd like it. It has three sections, one of which is the author participating in the Culinary Institute certification program. The second two sections are his experiences "hanging out" with two premier chefs (the second is Thomas Keller).

Ruth, just remember, your body and brain need dietary fat EVERY DAY for proper functioning. Embrace fat. There's my rationalization for blue cheese, Gruyere, olives, avocado, cream, etc. And a good rationalization it is.

Theresa, I copied your mango sticky rice recipe. We get mangoes here in Phoenix all the time, and I know my girls & I would love this recipe. Thanks.

Yum, fresh cut ginger! The scent of fresh basil is right up there for me too.

Theresa

Ginger is a common flavor at gelato establishments, at least around here. I like to pair it with a fruit flavor, otherwise it can be a bit strong.

Ginger orange marmalade... mmmmm....

The Moosewood cookbook has a recipe for a ginger cake that is out of this world!

Ginger ice cream? I've never seen it, but it sounds wonderful.

My latest ginger discovery is Ginger Orange Marmalade from Cost Plus. Yum.

I'm with you Ruth. Ginger is one of my favorite flavors/aromas.

Last summer I was at a beach place with some friends. We stopped off for an ice cream and I saw ginger. Wow... so I had three flavors - in Italy you don't get scoops of icecream flavors, but a small blob of each ... so three flavors is still a small cone, just so everyone doesn't think I'm the gluttonous thing that I really am ; ) as you will see in a second!

It was so good, and reminded me so much of the ginger ice cream from Webster's in Newburyport Massachusetts where we went every summer when I was a kid, that I finished the cone, turned around and went back and bought another, just ginger this time!

Gad that sounds delicious, Theresa. I came to a love of mango late in life, but now I'm nuts about it. Enough coconut fat to choke a horse's arteries, tho.

You love the smell of mango. I love the smell of fresh ginger when you slice into it. It makes me want to take it and rub it behind my ears.

Sibyl, apple and walnut with witlof sounds great.

Ruth, I made both of those recipes I linked below, and neither really did it for me. I think me winning this ham is like a fish winning a bicylce - I am entirely the wrong recipient!

I do want to share with you a recipe for my new favorite dish - Mango Sticky Rice. So good, so easy to make!

Take one cup sushi rice (really short grain white rice) and soak it for an hour in one cup of water. Add 3/4 cup water and 1/4 cup good quality coconut milk, pinch of salt and 1 TB sugar, stir it up, bring to a low boil, turn it down to low, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Let it sit for a while with the lid on.

Take the rest of the can of coconut milk (I'd use full strengtht, not light), pinch of salt, 1/4 cup sugar (I use demarara), 1 tsp vanilla and heat gently. Dissolve couple tsp corn starch in couple tsp water, and add to the sauce and continue heating until it thickens a bit. Don't let it boil.

Cut up a mango (I can't imagine a better smell than the smell when you just cut into a mango - unlike most food smells, to me it is not really related to the flavor, it's like the scent has it's own separate existence.) Put a big scoop of rice in a bowl, pour on some sauce, add some mango and eat up. This will make 3-4 servings. It's dangerous to make unless one has at least that many people in the house to eat it.

Theresa

That's a great article... and now I must try bacon-and-brown-sugar ice cream!

Everyone who has been enjoying this thread, I thought might enjoy this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/dining...

It seems this trend is sweeping the country!

Oh, no - pictures, too. Jonathan, you are beyond the best!

Thanks! The korokke had sauteed onions and ground beef filling (but mostly mashed potatoes). I mixed pecan bits into the panko bread crumbs for the breading, since I had a lot of pecans leftover from my pesto. The sauce is extremely easy to make, and it could work for many dishes. Just combine one small bottle of ketchup with one small jar of grape jelly (not jam, it won't be a smooth) and stir for a while over low heat. You can also slow cook the sauce; my family uses it for cocktail weenies. I added soy sauce in this version for more Japanese flavor.

boy, those Korokke sure look good!

thanks for the link Ruth. Will go look this afternoon when I have a moment.

They all look good, Jonathan.

And I found the videos on Facebook. What fun to see you live and walking and talking in full color, after all these years.

Anyone else want to see?

http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video....

And here are my dishes from Battle Potato:


Korokke with Fusion Sauce


Gnocchi with Pecan & Potato Skin Pesto


Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

Some photos from Battle Beer... I will add more from Battle Potato once they are posted on Facebook.


Beer-Infused Risotto


Beer-Battered Fried Chicken with Beer Gravy


Beer-Infused Quiche Lorraine

I'm not the biggest fan of ham, but I know that it can taste great with sweet sauces, which isn't always the case with meat. Honey mustard on a ham sandwich = awesome. You could probably make an easy glaze or sweet reduction and just serve it over a plate of sliced ham... I know it would be a winner at my family reunion. If you can slice the ham thinly enough, you can also make Chicken Cordon Bleu quite easily. (I like it breaded and fried, but I'm a bad boy when it comes to food!)

Al, thanks for asking about an update. There was indeed a new competition yesterday. I'm good friends with the host and expected her to select potatoes or eggs as the secret ingredient. I'm pretty handy with eggs, but not so much with potatoes, so I definitely needed to practice this week. I made two practice dinners for friends, one Japanese-style and one Southern-style. The former included udon noodle soup, potato croquettes ("korokke"), and curry rice. Japanese-style curry is dark brown, very savory, and often sweet. This time, I chose House Vermont Curry, which is widely available in Asian groceries. The "hot" mix was not very spicy at all, but it was considerably more delicious than the other common brand, S&B's Golden Curry.

For the Southern-style dinner, I went with many favorite dishes from my childhood in Alabama. The boiled peanuts were a big hit -- easy to make in a slow cooker, but you have to start with raw peanuts, which are not easy to find outside the Black Belt. (I brought back a bag from my recent trip home.) I also brewed sweet tea; the secret is to add the sugar to the hot tea concentrate, mix well, and then dilute with cold water. I use 1 1/3 cups of sugar for a pitcher that holds about 1.5 gallons total. It is very, very sweet, so I told guests to drink it like they would a soda (or "Coke" as I grew up calling them). Other dishes included cornbread, creamy grits, fried okra, and deviled eggs.

The competition finally came on Sunday. I was honorary Iron Chef, and my challenger was a friend named Katya who is originally from Russia. The host unveiled the secret ingredient, and as I expected, it was potatoes! She had russets, reds, Yukon golds, and sweet potatoes.

(Pardon the formatting below; it was pasted from an email I wrote to a friend, as I didn't want to rewrite the story.)

Battle Potato was a lot of fun, and I had more than enough ideas. The
bigger problem was timing, as it takes a while to peel, cut, and boil
large potatoes... and that was only the preparation part of two of my
dishes. It was a good ingredient for Katya, as she makes a lot of
traditional Russian food, in which potatoes are a major ingredient.
However, I thought her food was pretty bland (also very Russian),
despite the lovely presentation.

I made Japanese korokke with a Southern-style sauce, gnocchi with my
pecan pesto enhanced by dried potato skin bits, and twice-baked sweet
potatoes for dessert. There were some fun risks with flavor-mixing,
like my ketchup/grape jelly/soy sauce mixture and the combination of
cinnamon and curry with the sweet potato filling, but in the end, I
was very happy with how everything tasted. Unfortunately, my
recollection of the gnocchi recipe was way too low on flour, so the
dough came out far too sticky. It cooked forever and still didn't
have the right consistency for pasta. I cooked well past the two-hour
mark, hoping to boil the pasta into shape, and it got sort of decent
after some twenty minutes. So while I probably saved the dish, the
extra time penalty hurt my score badly. I would have beaten Katya by
a few points based on judging alone, but she easily won after my
penalty was applied. It's okay though -- I couldn't defend anyway
because of my summer internship in Houston, so I was more concerned with making good food than
with winning the contest.

Theresa said: I tend to prefer it uncooked, though - I like the bitterness, and it tends to disappear or get toned down with cooking.

Witlof salad is great. With carrot, apple, pine apple, raisins and cashew nuts. Or with radishes, apple, orange, raisins and walnuts (the ones that look like brains are called walnuts right?) You get different sweets, bitter, sour etc. and different textures because of the nuts. No ham there though.

Susanna said: Split pea soup (from the bone).
Hmm, split pea soup. We call it 'snert', it's a very thick soup with a lot of meat in it, including an Unox sausage, carrots and other vegetables and potatoes to get it nice and thick. Served with Maggi on the side, and an optional 'roggebrood' with bacon. Perfect winterfood. Takes a while to cook though.

Thanks, Theresa. I've never made jambalaya. I do like these one-pot meals, so I should try this.

And that salad sounds very, very good. I'm going to go light on the honey tho, and taste as I go. I'm not much for salad dressings that are too sweet. Otherwise the combo of ingredients looks good.

Let's see if this works:

Jambalaya:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/v...

Asparagus, Ham, Potato salad:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Spring-Asparag...

Theresa, your links have delinked. Can't find the recipes.

I don't care much for mayo on potato salad either. I make mine with the standard garlic vinagrette. Pour it on while the potatoes slices/cubes are still hot so they absorb it well.

Sandy, that Dorothy Parker quote is perfect(ly apropos)!

Hayes, a little piece for flavoring is how I typically use ham too. I'll bet you get better ham in Italy than we can get here, though.

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Lima bean soup is definitely on the agenda. I hadn't thought of jambalaya, and I appear to have all the ingredients on hand for this recipe http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/v... I guess that's dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, plus I can freeze half for later. I think I need to spice it up a bit though, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper for a recipe that makes six servings is not my idea of proper heat!

Al, your salad sounds delicious. Very inventive too - I've never had mango and fennel together, but it seems to me it would make an excellent combination.

Dottie, I had that casserole when I was working in Holland but I've never tried to make it. I mentioned that endive was a delicacy in the US, and after that people kept feeding me witlopf in various forms. I tend to prefer it uncooked, though - I like the bitterness, and it tends to disappear or get toned down with cooking.

I also found this recipe for Asparagus, Ham and Potato salad that looks good - made with vinaigrette rather than mayonnaise (I loathe mayonnaise in potato salad). http://www.recipezaar.com/Spring-Asparag...

Theresa

Lots of good ham suggestions here already, but I'll add my two cents anyway: remember it is great to throw chopped ham pieces into salads - I made a big salad on Friday that I am still eating with Canadian bacon (ham), cauliflower (that I blanched and then roasted), mango slices, celery, romaine and red leaf lettuce and roasted fennel. It has been delicious.
Happy Eating!
And I have really been enjoying this thread - I'm a self-taught cook and have been doing some freelance work as a private chef which has been great fun. I'm even teaching a class next weekend for people who want to learn some new recipes and ideas for less expensive, but still healthful eating. I love introducing people to a lot of the tasty and affordable leafy greens like collards, kale, dandelion greens, swiss chard, etc.

And if I read Jonathan's earlier post correctly I think he has a rematch today in Denver while his last opponent is out of town. I'm sure I am not the only one looking forward to hearing about it.

Standard ham and eggs. But I love my Belgian casserole -- half a dozen witloof (Belgian endive) cooked to just tender, then wrap each in a slice of ham put into a buttered casserole and surround with med chumkls of potato. Piour over a medium cream sauce, sprinkle with some pannemeal and bake till golden. 350-ish.

What we usually do when we have a ton of ham (still have some left over from Easter - he was a big boy), is make ham jumbalaya. Denver omelets. Ham and potato and cheese casserole. Ham fried rice. Lasagna with ham and cheese (and mushrooms if you like). Croque monsieur. Split pea soup (from the bone).

And we are all encouraged to eat as many ham sandwiches as we like, or is humanly possible, whichever comes first!

I've not had luck with freezing ham too long. It gets old-tasting.

I love soup made from dried limas, carrots, onions, ham bone. Throw in a bay leaf. Add pieces of ham late in the process so they don't get all cooked out.

A 12 lb ham. Wow. Gives life to Dorothy Parker's definition of eternity. "Two people and a ham."

I would slice off two or three pieces portons and freeze them and use for breakfast or ham-steak dinners. Then use the bone and lots of the meat to make soup. You can freeze those portions, too. There are two of us, and I manage to get rid of a ham that way.

I'm not a vegetarian either, but 12 pounds sounds like a lot to me too! I usually use a little bit of ham for adding a little flavor to something else, a risotto or a soup. Good luck!

(How many casseroles and mac and cheese and ham can you make with 12 lbs. Egads!!)

Jonathan, here is a contest idea for you.

I just won a 12 pound spiral cut ham at Trader Joe's. This thing is huge! I'm not a vegetarian, but rarely eat meat. I could use this as an excuse for a party, but more than half of my friends are vegetarians, and many others are averse to "real meat", though they might eat fish or chicken.

I should have just taken it directly to a shelter, but made the mistake of opening the packaging and doubt a shelter would take it in this condition. I've never bought a ham before, I wanted to see what it looked like, I guess. I don't even know how long it lasts, or if I can freeze it? It's fully cooked, bone in, spiral cut . . . TJ's is about a mile from my place, so I walk there. I lugged this thing all the way home along with the rest of my week's groceries.

Opening the floor for suggestions - what the heck does one do with 12 POUNDS of ham? Maybe I should have asked for equivalent value of something I normally eat (Fage yogurts? Wine?)

Theresa

Jonathan,

It would be fun to watch a competition like that. I don't watch Iron Chef America, but I do watch a number of other shows on the Food Network. One of my favorites is The Next Food Network Star.

Jane

Thanks for the comments, everyone! John, I appreciate the ideas and will check out your blog when I get home from traveling.

Jane, the competition is just inspired by the Iron Chef TV show. (I personally am a fan of the original, Japanese version -- not so much the American one.) There aren't any prizes involved beyond prestige and the $15 collected from judges, but maybe we'll have a special tournament of champions sometime with more at stake.

Jonathan,

Thanks for telling us about the competition. Your food sounds wonderful. Is there a tie-in with The Food Network Iron Chef? Is there a grand prize?

Jane

John is living with us for a while while he finishes his degree and we've been enjoying his cooking. I came home from exercising at the gym the night he made those tacos and could barely keep myself from pigging out. He likes to be funny on his blog, but he's very serious when he's cooking.

Coming back to say those tacos look darn good. I haven't been able to find a place that sells good tortillas since I moved. I'm sure there must be one near here. After all this is So Cal.

Hi John. I didn't know you were a cooking guy. I'll check out the blog.

I've never eaten bratwurst. They look good. I love sausages. But every time I read the fat content I sigh and put them back in the meat case.

Jonathon,

This is John, Barb's son. She had me read your post and I found it very interesting. I have been wanting to compete in this style of competition for some time now, but havne't been able to find others who are interested.

Beer is a rough ingredient to cook with and I was very impressed with what you came up with in such a short amount of time especially with the budget you had. I would have gone with a Guiness stew. Guiness is a great beer to cook with and goes well with almost anything you can add to it. Also, you can throw cheaper ingredients together to create a stew. The cook time might have been a bit of an issue, but that was the first thing I could think of. Also a pale ale can be made into a very nice cheese sauce for your chicken tenders, possibly creating an additional dish with your already purchased ingredient.

My favorite dish to make with beer are bratwursts soaked in a dark beer with onions, garlic and brown sugar. Those take a long amount of time to marinate so that idea would have been out!

If you are bored sometime, I run a cooking/food blog at http://www.epicportions.com.

I have made stew with beer and onions - it came out very well.

Congrats on being a guest Iron Chef!

Thanks for sharing your wonderful story Jonathan! Keep us informed!

I really enjoyed reading about this, Jonathan. It sounds like a stressful but fun time.

In Italy a risotto variation calls for the use of Prosecco (an Italian sparkling wine, very dry, from the north), which I have never had (the risotto, I mean; I love the wine), but beer sounds like a good variation (and cheaper too!).

(We regularly eat risotto in a million different variations. Last night we had risi e bisi, northern italian dialect for rice and peas. Comfort food, easy and good.)

Great story!! and congratulations. Half a point, wow. I would love to try all your dishes!

Let us know how it works out on the 10th of May!! I wish I could see the program... Is it "youtubed"?

The beer in the gravy was a great inspiration. I'll bet it was really good. I've never cooked with beer. Wine yes, beer no. Maybe I should try it.

Thanks for taking the time to give us a blow by blow account. I loved following you through the whole experience.

Are you doing anything special to warm up for May?

Oh Jonathan, you just make me hungry! I would love to host such an event, as I wouldn't trust myself in the cooking side of the competition.

When I was a student, chicken cooked in beer and bacon was my roomate's specialty. I never though of it in years, but I may try to cook it again just for the memories.

Please let us know how the next event goes. I am already wondering what the secret ingredient might be.

Great story Jonathan! Love the rush to the store etc. Fun idea!

Jonathan, this is a great story! And I love that you get to be temporary champion. I admire your creativity and talent, even though I have never tasted your creations.

Epilogue: The winner, our reigning Iron Chef Boulder, is out of town during May. Therefore, I have been asked to take his place as the temporary champion in the next contest, which is on May 10th. And as I will be out of town for the rest of summer, there is less pressure this time. (I can't continue, whether I win or lose.) But we are already planning a rematch from the Beer Battle when everyone is back in town this fall -- there'll be a new secret ingredient, of course!

Sorry if this wasn't clear earlier, but the contest already took place on April 19th. I just haven't gotten to that part in my story, but I will do so now!

My goals in cooking all these different things were to practice my specialties (eggs, frying, bachelor foods), fill in some large gaps in my cooking experience, and discover quick, modular dishes that could possibly be used in the competition. Since you can't take recipes with you to Iron Chef, I also wanted to cement some of the procedures and ingredients into my memory.

On the 19th, we all arrived at the host's condo, and she revealed the secret ingredient: beer. She had a couple bottles each of amber, pale ale, and porter. The reigning Iron Chef and I both requested a couple more types (lager and stout), which she graciously purchased while we were grocery shopping. We immediately carpooled to the supermarket; I rode in the back seat and furiously scribbled down ideas and ingredients to make a shopping list. The store was nearby, so I only had five minutes or so to brainstorm my dishes before the shopping spree began.

I had never cooked with beer before that day, so the ingredient made me quite nervous. Immediately, I knew that I wanted to beer batter some fried entree. It could be almost anything, but chicken would speak to the judges and wouldn't need a lot of preparation. This led to my problems with gravy -- could I make one worth presenting with the chicken? My concerns had to be put aside until later.

The next dish idea was to make a risotto; the recipe was fresh in my mind, as I'd made some the previous day. I could easily replace soup stock with a light beer, allowing it to slowly cook off, leaving the flavors in the rice. The main question was what else to put in the risotto to make it interesting and satisfying as its own dish.

My third and final dish was very cloudy in my head until I was actually shopping. I wanted to try mixing beer with cheese, in the spirit of fondue but not in that form. This led me to two options, both dishes I felt comfortable with: macaroni & cheese, and quiche. The macaroni was hard to justify, as I typically make it in a slow cooker that takes four hours. I didn't feel confident adapting the recipe to a faster cooking method. That left me with quiche, but would the acidic beer cooperate with eggs and cream? It seemed worth the risk, but I would have to cook very quickly to make a crust and bake the quiche within my two-hour limit.

In the store, I began with chicken tenders, which would be my most expensive ingredient. They took $10 out of my $25 budget, but I felt strongly that I should go with high quality, all-natural chicken since I couldn't do much to improve the taste of the meat itself. A pint of heavy cream was next, along with a package of bacon, some rice, Parmesan cheese for the risotto, and a half-dozen eggs (which turned out to be not enough). I quickly settled on tomatoes for the risotto filling, since they were very cheap and would add some freshness to my otherwise heavy dishes. A cheese for the quiche was my final conundrum, as the store's only gruyere was prohibitively expensive. I had to settle for plain Swiss instead, and had the deli employee custom-cut a block of it. Everything came in at ~$24.50 before tax, so I just barely made it work!

The cooking itself was hectic, and much of it is a blur in my memory. I know that I started with the pie crust, forming a dough and putting it away to rest. I put the chicken in the egg/lager wash to marinate. The risotto was my "middle" dish for cooking, as it had no urgent steps and could be kept warm through the final minutes as I finished other tasks. The tomatoes were chunked and marinated in stout, to be added at the end. My risotto burned just slightly on the bottom, as I couldn't stir it often enough while juggling a frying pan full of bacon and rolling the dough so it could be pre-crisped. Overall, I used two full bottles of lager to cook the risotto over a period of perhaps 45 minutes; the Parmesan and tomatoes were added after all that. The host didn't have pie weights, so for crisping the empty quiche crust, I covered it with foil and poured dry rice from the pantry over the foil. (This was later retrieved and put back in the box.) I like bacon to be crispy and evenly cooked, but it was very difficult to watch over it with so much action in the kitchen.

To stress how crazy those two hours were, I should point out that both chefs were sharing the kitchen space and equipment. Thankfully, it was a very friendly rivalry, and we were always polite and helpful with each other. We discussed the sharing of cutting boards, mixing bowls, and stove space. It helped a lot that he didn't need the oven, because I had something in there for most of the cooking period. My competitor also gave me two of his extra eggs, when I came up short late in the game, and he graciously allowed me to use cooking wine that I'd brought from home. (This kind of ingredient is borderline acceptable -- it's not provided by the host, but we're allowed to bring our own "standard" ingredients and spices if they are made available to both chefs.) So yes, my risotto was made with both wine and beer!

The final thirty minutes of cooking were particularly wild. I had put my quiche in the oven, which was a relief unto itself, but I was also nervous that it may not cook all the way through before the clock ran out. I had to plate my risotto and somehow keep it warm (the oven was too hot at that time), so I crowded the dishes into the center area of the stove. And it was finally time to fry the chicken -- I wanted to do it late so the dish would be fresh for the judges. I pulled out the "marinated" chicken and started the incredibly messy process of dipping it into flour (with some extra spices mixed in). Between hand-washings and batches of chicken, I had brief spurts of free time, so I came back to the gravy idea, as it seemed like a bad idea to plate chicken by itself. But I hadn't bought any milk... So, I dropped in some butter and flour, and used the remainder of my heavy cream instead of milk. This created a thick, white paste -- too thick for any gravy! That's when inspiration struck: I could use beer to thin out the gravy. It worked perfectly and gave it a wonderful flavor as well.

As the final seconds ticked off, I was scooping out slices of my quiche, which appeared to have cooked perfectly. The judges tasted my food first, giving comments like "the risotto has a strong beer flavor", "the chicken is a bit dry", "I don't normally like gravy, but I could eat more of this", and "how did you use beer in this quiche?" It was hard to tell how they could rate me. Then my competitor presented his dishes: a beer stew flavored with thyme, pork chops with beer-simmered onions, and a porter-flavored chocolate mousse. It was fun for me to finally sit down and taste the competing food, which was interesting and tasty.

After several minutes of deliberation and scoring (it seemed to take longer than in past competitions), the two chefs were lined up to hear the results. I lost -- by only half a point. It was by far the closest result yet, assuring an eventual rematch. Judges later told me that I might have won if the quiche was less salty (excessive bacon?) and had more beer flavor. I think it's a fair take on the dish, but I personally loved it and ate most of the leftovers. It was easy for me to taste the beer flavor, but then I have a baseline for what my quiche usually tastes like. The chicken and that crazy, afterthought gravy were extremely popular, and the risotto got points for creativity and its bold use of the beer. Overall, I'm proud of what I cooked under such conditions, and I'm a little surprised that everything turned out so well. I fully expected to lose the competition, so it was nice to do so well in the judging.

Yes, and very good. (click on link to Camilleri... good description and links to books, etc.)

EDIT (breakfast/school prep drill interrupts my morning socializing!): Jonathon... congratulations on your list of recipes. Everything sound yummy! When's your debut?