Heavy Cookin'

These last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of heavy cooking.  By “heavy cooking” I mean, “a lot of dishes being prepared and cooked all at once, that need to all turn out really really well”.  High-pressure stuff.

Two weeks ago, some good folks from Cedar Fort came out to take some pictures for the cover of the first book.  I had to prepare some wonderful dishes for them to take pictures of, dishes drawn directly from the recipes in the first book.

The night before, I toasted up a sweet pumpkin and made some puree.  That morning, I started the day out mixing and kneading the dough for some butter rolls. Then, I did a couple of chicken roasts, side-by-side in my 14”-er, using the basic herbal poultry recipe and the spicy paste turkey rub. While that was cooking, I made the pumpkin pie and got that on to bake.  Brendon came to my aid and made his world-renowned Dutch oven baked ziti, and my old standard chicken and potatoes rounded out the collection.

They were wonderful folks, and after quite a while of primping and photographing the food, we all sat down and feasted.

A few days later, I got to see a preliminary layout of the cover, and I’m very excited.  Since it’s not a final, they won’t let me post it here, yet, but as soon as they do, it’ll be on the blog!

Then, this last weekend, our family went up to Bear Lake to spend some time with other families with children with special medical needs.  The group we went up with is called Hope Kids, and they sponsor family activities, mostly donated. Once a year, at the very end of the season, they get a bunch of cabins at the Bear Lake KOA campground for a weekend.  It’s amazing fun.  Even Brendon had a blast being able to connect with other siblings of special needs kids in a completely non-contrived way.

Well, I brought up my two 14” deep dutch ovens, at the request of the organizer.  Those were added to a larger collection of Dutch ovens in various sizes,  and Brendon and I helped them cook up Mountain Man Breakfast for the entire gathering.  We had them all stacked as many as three high, cooking along.

After resting a while, I cooked up the Nouveau Mexican Cafe pulled pork with beans and rice and we had a few of the neighboring families over for a bit more feasting.

When it was all done, I collapsed into a heap.  I slept really, really well that night.

Next Sunday, I’m going to do my Apples and Oranges challenge dish, and NOTHING ELSE!  Just a simple dish and call it good.

I mean, it feels good to cook all that food for all those people, and it feels really good to hear them enjoying it and telling me how great it tastes.  And after it’s all done, it’s time to simplify...







Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

Dutch Oven Baked Ziti (Penne)

A few weeks ago, as we were preparing for the dutch oven gathering, Brendon and I began searching for dishes to cook.  He and I had been watching America's Test Kitchen, and they had a recipe for a baked ziti pasta dish that you made in one skillet. 

Welllllll, then, we can do it in a dutch oven, right?  That was Brendon's choice. So, we figured out how to turn it into a dutch oven recipe of the highest caliber!

If you've watched the video in yesterday's entry, you saw Brendon working on it, and you saw the results. 

We made it again yesterday, but we did it in the regular oven, indoors.  So, this time, I'm going to give you a combination of the two recipes.  The changes we did for the indoor version, with the instructions for doing it as a dutch oven recipe.  The description is sort of a combination of what Brendon did both days.  I served primarily in an advisory role.  Really.

Dutch Oven Baked Ziti

12" dutch oven

15-20 coals below, then
8-10 coals below, and 18-22 above

• 1 Tsp oil
• 6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper  (We actually went more toward the 1 tsp...)
• 1 lb ground meat (we used turkey)
  

• 1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes
• 3 Cups water
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 lb ziti pasta (we actually cheated and used penne)
• juice of 1 lemon

• 1 pint carton cream
• 1/2 cup parmesan
• liberal doses of basil, oregano, parsley
• liberal dose of black pepper
• 1 medium package of shredded mozarella
  

• Feta, crumbled, for serving

First of all, Brendon got some coals going, and then chopped up the garlic and the onion.  While that was happening, the oil was getting hot in the dutch oven.  When he dropped in the onions and garlic, we could hear the sizzle, and smell the aroma!  The red peppers went in, too.  Those got sauteed.  When done, we added the meat to brown.

Once the meat had browned, Brendon opened up the can of tomatoes, and poured them in (you can see him doing that at the start of the video).  He added the other ingredients.  It looks like it will be really runny with all that water, but that and the tomato juice cooks the pasta.  And honestly, we wanted to be authentic and use ziti pasta, but the penne was just sitting there.  And I'll always pick up a penne...

Ok, sorry about that...

He closed the lid, and still using bottom heat, cooked the pasta for about 20 minutes, until it was "al dente".  It was yummy to taste test, too.  Just like it said on the show, cooking the pasta in the sauce does two things:  One, it infuses the pasta with the tomato and onion/garlic flavors, and Two, the starch from the pasta thickens the sauce just a little.  It's got this symbiotic thing goin' on...

Once the pasta was cooked, we pulled it off the coals.  Brendon added the ingredients of the third set, and stirred it, and then smothered it in mozarella.  At that point, we put it back on a ring of coals.  It wasn't that cold out, so we kept the bottom coals pretty few.  Remember that the ingredients are already cooked.  We want the cream to come up to temperature, and the herbs to spread the flavor, but mostly we want the mozarella to melt and brown.  So, that's why we went so heavy on top coals.

That baked for about another 20 minutes or so, just to get a good bronze goin' on the cheese.  Then he pulled it off, let it cool a bit, and served it with crumbled feta.  Yum, yum, yum...

...And I've gotta say, I'm proud of the little man for trying such a challenging dutch oven recipe and pulling it off so well. 




Mark has discovered a love of Dutch Oven Cooking. Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his MoBoy blog.

A Taste of Dutch, 2009

(Written Sunday, the 19th)

It's finally spring, here in Utah. It's been a wet and cold month so far, with winter hanging on and blasting us from time to time. But today, I'm sitting on my back porch, watching the coals burn down under a pot of split pea soup with a meaty ham bone. Every once in a while, the breeze will hit me just right and waft the smell of ham, herbs, and veggies past me. It's gonna be good, here, in about an hour.

Yesterday, I had an amazing opportunity. I got to cook for the Taste of Dutch again at the Spring Convention of the IDOS. It was a lot of fun this year, just like it was last year, but this time there were some very special moments involved for me.

One was getting closer to a new friend. I've known this guy, Steve, for about a year or so. We'd bump into each other at church and talk dutch ovening a little bit. He's been really excited about it, but hasn't had a lot of experience so far. He and Brendon and I did a dutch oven demonstration for our ward's scout troop. He did the dump cake/cobbler, and Brendon and I did pizza.

So, about a week ago, we decided to go to the Taste of Dutch as a team. We spent a couple of days figuring out our menu. We would start by hybriding a traditional mountain man breakfast recipe with quiche-like ingredients, to make our own new recipe. Then, for the lunch crowd, he would make a Dutch Oven chicken soup, Brendon would make dutch oven pizza, and I would do some bread.


(Written on Wed, the 22nd)

So, we started Saturday morning very early. I'd been up late the night before getting all of our ingredients and equipment gathered. Steve arrived and we loaded up and piled in. After a short stop for a fillup (Donuts and Diet Coke*), we were on our way.

The Davis County Fairgrounds were easy enough to find, thanks to Google Maps, and setup was pretty quick. I could tell right away that it wasn't as big of an event as last year. There were fewer cooks. I heard later from Omar (the Chairman this year) that four teams had cancelled at the last minute. Many other traditional participants in the Taste of Dutch were involved in other ways, and unable to participate. Still, there were some good folks cooking and we joined in.

Setup went pretty quick, and we got started right away making our "Mountain Man Quiche" (recipe to come). All three of us joined in on that game. It went pretty well, and we had fun cooking and prepping together. I was honestly surprised how focused and involved Brendon was. When he cooks at home, it's easy for him to get distracted by friends, TV, the Wii...

The Taste of Dutch works like this: A lot of dutch oven cooks each occupy a booth around the perimeter of this big expo building on the fairgrounds. Then, people who are visiting wander around and watch the cooks prepare the food. Then, when it's ready, they get little sample cups of what each person is cooking. It was open to the public at about 9:00, but it didn't really get busy until about 10:00 or so.

Once we were serving up the quiche, Brendon decided to get started on his pizza (recipe here). I offered to help a couple of times, but he wouldn't have it. He wanted to do it completely on his own.

In the meantime, Steve started on his Chicken and Rice Soup, and I started on my Dutch Oven Sourdough Bread. I had started the sponge for the bread the night before, and it had risen well, but I was more than a little nervous that the bread and the pizza dough wouldn't rise right, since it was about 60-65 degrees out or so. Then I came up with the idea of putting the dough in the car, where it was quite warmer.

Brendon kept arguing with me. "The dough is ready!", he'd insist. "A little longer," I'd reply. "Who's the pizza chef, here?" Finally, he prevailed, and he brought in the dough.

We got it stretched in the dutch ovens, and put on the toppings. All morning, Brendon and I had been telling people to come back for the pizza, so they were pretty excited to try it. When it was finally done, and we started slicing it up, I tapped Brendon on the shoulder and pointed to our left. He looked up and saw a line, no lie, three full booths long waiting for his pizza. He felt ten feet tall. But at the moment, there was no time to gloat, because we had to get busy serving it up.

Before long, Steve's soup was ready, and it was delicious. He didn't have quite the line that Brendon had, but he still had no problems giving it away. Right after that, the sourdough came out, and it tasted great. It was a bit too crusty on the bottom, and I had forgotten my bread knife, so it was tricky to cut it up with a chef's knife, especially one that's not that great to begin with.

Steve had also gotten a bit of notoriety there for his homemade chimney. A lot of people came by to look just at it and talk to him about how he made it.

Then we packed it up and came home. Actually, we met up with my wife and went to an afternoon easter party, and Steve went home. It was a pretty full, fun day. Brendon has decided that he wants to participate in the youth cookoff next year, too.

And at the end of it all, I got to take no pictures, and I only got to taste Steve's soup. Here's a link, however, to the IDOS page with some great pictures of the whole event.

See you next year!



*The Breakfast of Champions. It contains elements from all of the four fundamental food groups necessary for sustaining modern life: Chocolate, sugar, caffiene, and preservatives.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

A Fun Dutch Oven Demo!

Tonight, Brendon and I did a demo for our ward's Relief Society Enrichment Night. If you don't know what that is, then you're probably not Mormon and it doesn't really matter. Suffice it to say it's the women's organization of the church. And they asked me to come demonstrate Dutch Oven cooking. I did my old standby of chicken, onions, and potatoes.

I asked if Brendon could come along, and he did. So, we did a short 20 minute demo where we poured all the ingredients into a 12" deep dutch oven while we joked back and forth, and then while the ladies went to some other classes, we put it on the coals to cook. After the evening was done, they all came back and sampled.

I prepared a handout with the recipe and instructions, which I just thought I'd include here:

Dutch Oven Potatoes and Chicken

This is one of the most flexible meals you could ever cook. The ingredients can adjust to whatever you have on hand, and that can include the spices and flavorings. You can prepare it in stages or you can do it as a “dump meal”, where you just dump everything in the dutch oven and cook it. It's kinda like a good jazz tune. It comes out different every time I cook it.

Today, we're going herbal, and we're going to make it simple. The recipe here is made for about 4-6 people, and can be done in a standard 12” dutch Oven

Basic Meats and Veggies:

• A few tablespoons of olive oil
• 2-3 medium to large onions, sliced
• 3-4 boneless chicken breasts, cubed
• 3-4 potatoes, quartered and sliced
• 2-3 carrots, sliced
• 3-4 stalks of celery, sliced
• 2-3 sweet peppers, sliced
• About a half pound of bacon, cooked crispy

Flavorings (herbal-style):

• 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
• Liberal shakes of:
• Parsley
• Rosemary
• Oregano
• A few shakes (about a teaspoon or so) balsamic vinegar.
• And, of course, salt and pepper

Process:

Start by lighting about 25-30 coals. While those are getting glowing and hot, you can slice up your ingredients. Put everything into the dutch oven, and put on the lid. Make a ring of about 8-10 coals and set the dutch oven on top. Put about 16-18 coals on top. Leave a few coals aside. After about 10-15 minutes, put about ten or so fresh coals on those. They'll get lit, and by the time the coals on the dutch oven have burned down, they'll be ready to be replenished. Cook for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so, until the chicken and the veggies are done.

Here are a few other suggestions for flavoring combinations:

Some Like it Hot

• 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
• 1-2 jalapeno peppers, sliced. If you don't like it really hot, you can seed and core them first, or use less
• A few shakes of cayenne pepper, chili powder, or Louisiana-style hot sauce (tabasco)
• A few shakes of paprika
• About ½ of fresh chopped cilantro
• Juice of 1-2 limes
• And, of course, salt and pepper

Or, just pour in your favorite salsa

Springtime Lemon

• 1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
• ½ cup fresh chopped parsley
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Juice of 1-2 lemons
• And, of course, salt and pepper

Kick it Up a Notch

Some suggestions: Cook the bacon in the dutch oven over 15-20 coals, then remove most of the grease. Sauté the onions and garlic first in the bacon grease, until they're translucent and sweet. Then add the remaining ingredients, and cook as above.

After you take the dutch oven off the coals, but a few minutes before serving, coat the food with a layer of appropriate shredded cheese. Let the dutch oven's residual heat melt it. For the herbal flavorings, I'd choose a mozarella. For the hot version, cheddar or colby jack. With the lemon style, I'd crumble up a handful of feta onto the plate as it's being served.

Dutch Oven Mongolian Stir Fry

There are some local Chinese restaurants here in Salt Lake City that do something called “Mongolian Stir Fry" (sometimes: "Barbecue”). You get a bowl and you go through this line like a buffet. First you pass the meats. There’s all these meats that are sliced really thin, almost like potato chips. Beef, pork, chicken, and others are all there. Then you go past noodles and vegetables. You get to choose what you want, and you put it all in your bowl. Then you get to pour in all kinds of sauces, and add garlic and hot sauce if you like.

Then you hand it off to a chef (who, in Salt Lake City, is usually Mexican, it seems. Go figure…), and they put it on this big round metal disc like a table, heated with gas from below. They flip it and toss it. If you’re lucky, you get a chef who’s a bit showy about it. Finally, in a whoosh, they scrap the cooked food off the cooking table and onto your plate and hand it to you, ready to eat.

I love it. It’s great food, and fun to watch. One thing I love about it is, like wokked stir fry, the veggies are cooked, but still crisp.

So, I got to thinking that I could do that, too, in my dutch oven. And today, I tried it.

Dutch Oven Mongolian Stir Fry

8” Dutch Oven
12” Dutch Oven

8-10 coals each above and below 8” dutch oven
20+ coals below 12” dutch oven

In the 8”

• 2 cups chicken Broth
• 1 cup rice
• salt

The Mongolian Stir Fry line

• Chicken, sliced thin
• Beef, sliced thin
• Pork, sliced thin
• Shrimp
• Mushrooms, sliced
• Celery, sliced
• Onions, sliced
• Bean sprouts
• Snow peas
• And any other veggie you care to add

The Sauces

• Minced garlic
• Soy sauce
• Vineagar
• Teriyaki
• Hot Sauce
• Salt
• Pepper
• Other herbs and spices
• Any other oriental market sauces you care to add

I started out by lighting and heating up the coals for the 8” dutch oven. Light extras, because you’ll be using more for the 12” and you’ll need them to keep the fires going. While those were getting hot and white, I sliced up the meat and the veggies.

I put the rice and the stock into the small dutch oven and put it on the coals. The way I cook rice is to simply watch it for steam venting. That tells me that it’s been boiling for a bit at that point, and I just keep it on for about another 10 minutes. Then I pull the coals off, and just let it sit for a while longer with the lid on. The less you remove the lid, the better. If you can cook it completely without ever lifting the lid, you’ve perfected the art of cooking rice in a dutch oven!

Once the rice is on the coals, I set up the side fire with more coals. By the time the rice is almost done, those coals are ready. I put those coals on the little dutch oven table and put the 12” dutch oven on them, no lid, with a couple of shakes of olive oil on the bottom. Then I called the family dinner!

They picked up bowls in the kitchen, and filled them with the ingredients they wanted in their stir fries, and poured on the sauces they wanted, as well as the spices they wanted. They brought these to me, the chef!

By this time, the dutch oven and the oil was heated, and I just took the first bowl and poured it in. I had a couple of wooden spoons and I used them to stir the food as it was cooking. At first, I just did a quick stir to make sure it all got coated with the oil, then kept it cooking, stirring and tossing it every few minutes.

While it was cooking, I put rice in the bottom of their bowl, and when it was all done (I might have added a little salt, pepper, and garlic occasionally), I scooped it out with the spoons and put it onto the rice. Maybe 3-5 minutes tops, dinner DONE!

This would be a great way to host a party. You'd just have to make sure that you had enough ingredients and rice for everyone. You could even have 2-3 dutch ovens going, each cooking the stir fry.

Bonus note!

This morning, before church, Brendon was going to make his famous Pizza for his visiting grandpa. He asked me if he could do it in the dutch ovens. Duh! Of course!

So, this turned into a full dutch oven weekend. Three whole meals cooked in the black pots!

Dutch Oven Chicken Enchilada Soup

So much stuff to write about! Good news and bad news.

First the bad news. As is my tradition, I tried to make sweet rolls for conference. They bombed. Badly. I could NOT get them to rise, and they ended up baking up as inedible bricks. Bleah. I double-checked my recipe, and I’d followed it right. I also checked it against some other recipes in books and it seemed reasonable to work. So, I have no idea why it flopped.

:-(

But, later that day, I made a chicken enchilada soup, sort of in the style of chili’s restaurant. THAT turned out GREAT!

Here’s the recipe:

Dutch Oven Chicken Enchilada Soup

12” Dutch Oven
20+ coals underneath

½ c vegetable oil
1 chicken bullion cube
2 medium onions, diced
2 t minced garlic
1-3 lbs boneles chicken, cubed or cut into small chunks
2 t ground cumin
2 t chili powder
½ t cayenne pepper
1 jalapeno, sliced thin
Liberal pour lemon juice

2 C Masa harina
1 quart water

2-3 more quarts water
2-3 chopped tomatoes
½ lb processed American cheese, cubed

I started out by putting my 12” dutch oven on a lot of coals, about 20 or so. I put in some oil and let it heat a little while I gathered all the ingredients in the first list. Once assembled, I dumped them in and started them sautéing in the oil.

The next step is to prep the masa. This is corn masa, the same stuff used to make tamales and things. I mixed the two cups with a quart of water, and stirred out all the lumps. Actually, I got out my pastry cutter and used that for a while, too. Once the lumps were out, I added that to the pot. I’m keeping the pot covered this whole time, opening it up only to stir, because it’s cold out, and I’ve found I can keep it hotter inside if I do it that way.

Once that was bubbling, I added more water. I don’t really know how much, I just added enough to fill the dutch oven. Not to the brim, but close. I also wanted it to have the texture of a really thick soup, not a paste.

Finally, I added the tomatoes and the plastic cheese. I really don’t like using velveeta. I shudder even to type that. My wife insisted that it was the only way it would melt smoothly. Later, a friend of mine said that there was probably enough masa to keep the cheese smooth. I don’t know. I just have this aversion to “pasteurized process American cheese food substitute”. I mean, how far from “cheese” can you get?

But in the end, the result was what I was looking for. It tasted great!

As it was simmering, I put another 15-20 coals under an upturned dutch oven lid, and I heated up a stack of flour tortillas. The way I love eating this soup is to scoop it up in a torn tortilla and eat them both.

Now, this recipe makes a LOT of soup. And, it’s also VERY filling, so unless you’re feeding an army, there will be lots left over for lunches. I’ve found that when I reheat it, I need to mix in some more water to get it back to the consistency of a soup, and not so much of a gel.

Oh! And I promised another bit of good news…

Brendon, my budding chef, made fruit smoothies tonight. Ice, milk, grapes, sugar, all like he likes it, but he couldn’t find the cinnamon to spice it up. So, on a whim, he tries ground dried mint leaves. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe the taste! It had a delicious, and almost indescribable aftertaste. A bit minty, yes, but with the grapes very different! It has made me start to rethink all of my rules regarding “sweet” herbs and spices.

He’s good, that one…