Corned Beef on Rye

We were at our butcher, Pete`s Mountain Meats in Port Alberni, last Saturday.  He tossed us a brisket flat he had cured for corned beef and we went to town.  If you`re ever in Port, stop by, he makes incredible products, all of the sausages and pastries are exceptionaly incredible.

After much debate on what we wanted to do with the corned beef we came to a consensus.  First a sandwich.....We made our own rye bread, coated the pieces with an asiago cheese spread, pile on some kraut, smoked corned beef, and jarlsberg cheese.  Finally we coated the bread in butter and fried it all up like a grilled cheese sandwich.  Then we made a has out of the rest, check it out and enjoy! 

First up the rye bread.  I`ve been making a lot of breads out of the Artisan Breads In Five Minutes A Day cook book.  While the breads are not 100% as good as ``traditional`` breads I find that if you increase the hydration a bit it comes very close and you have fresh bread whenever you need.  Definately a good plan.

2.25 Cups Water
.75 Tablespoon Yeast
.75 Tablespoon Kosher Salt
0.5 Cups Rye Flour
2.75 Cups Bread Flour

Working the dough as little as possible mix all of the ingredients together, it should come together like this.  Then let it sit at room temp for a couple of hours, covered, and put it into the fridge over night.

In the morning take it out of the fridge, handling as little as possible shape into a ball, coat in flour, and proof at room temp for a couple of hours, in the mean time pre heat the oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone in place and a pan below to catch water.

Place a few slashes in the bread before baking it....

Place it on the stone in the oven, immediately dump one cup of cold water into the pan below the baking stone and close the oven door.  Bake for about half an hour.

Now to make the cheese spread.

1 Cup Mayo
0.5 Cup Diced Green Onions
0.35 Cups Asiago Cheese
0.25 Cups Diced Mushrooms
8 Ounces Sour Cream

Mix together all the ingredients in a pie pan

Top with more asiago cheese

Bake in a 350 degree oven for half an hour

Now it`s time for the main event....the corned beef!

We tossed it on the smoker with a little cherry wood, bringing the temperature up slowly to 350 degrees

After about an hour a half the brisket flat was at about 155 internal and looked like this

We tossed it in a pot with a little beef broth until it was tender, about another hour

The corned beef is all done!

Now to assemble the sandwich.  First asiago cheese spread on each slice of bread along with kraut on one side

Added on a pile of smoked corn beef and jarlsberg cheese

Now it is time to sautee it like a grilled cheese and end up with one wicked sandwich!

The leftover corned beef was turned into one wicked has the next day.  We started by shredding, soaking, drying and frying a few potatoes with salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and thyme.

In the mean time we sauteed jalapenos, zuchinni, orange peppers and onions

Added mushrooms

Corned Beef

Cooked it down

Finished the potatoes

And assembled one hell of a wicked meal!

Butter Chicken and Naan

Some friends were getting together for an Indian themed party the other night. They asked if I would make butter chicken and naan. Figured what the hell and went for it (although I much much much prefer vindaloo!). This is based off a recipe by Julie Sahini in Classic Indian Cooking, it is changed a fair bit, I just had to pull out the grill! Anyways.... Butter Chicken Sauce 3 Cups strained tomatoes 4 Jalapenos Tablespoon ginger 10 Tablespoons Butter 4 Teaspoons Cumin 1 Tablespoon Paprika 2 Teaspoons Kosher Salt 1.5 Cups Heavy Cream 2 Teaspoons Garam Masala 0.25 Cups Cilantro Garam Masala 4 Teaspoons Fennel Seeds 2.5 Teaspoons Cinnamon 2.5 Teaspoons Caraway Seeds 0.5 Teaspoons Black Pepper 0.5 Teaspoons Cloves 0.5 Teaspoons Green Cardamom Seeds First make the garam masala ingredients and grind them up for use later Start by melting 8 tablespoons of butter, let it go until the foam subsides While the butter is going make your chile paste. Take 4 jalapenos and the ginger and puree to a paste (you may need to add a few of the strained tomatoes to puree properly)

The paste should look like this

Mix the chile paste with the strained tomatoes

Add the cumin and the paprika to the butter (I should have let the butter go a little further until more of the foam was gone, I was in a bit of a hurry).

Stir it around for a few seconds and it should look like this

Add the tomato and chile mixture and let it cook for about 10 minutes at a simmer

Now mix in the cream and the salt and let simmer 10 more minutes

Time to stir in the garam marsalla and the rest of the butter. Take off the heat and let sit half an hour

Now I grilled 21 chicken thighs, removed the skin and used for something else, then pulled off all the meat

Mixed in the cilantro and the chicken

The Naan bread was ripped off from Peter Reinharts book Crust and Crumb

Start by making a poolish - mix 1.35 Cups bread flour, 1.35 Cups cool water and .25 teaspoon of yeast. Let it sit at room temp for 4 hours until foamy and bubbly, then place in the fridge over night

For the rest of the naan you need:

3.5 Cups Bread Flour

2 Teaspoons Salt

1 Teaspoon Instant Yeast

4 Tablespoon Vegetable Oil

0.5 Cup Yogurt (full fat)

Poolish

Water as needed

0.5 Cups Butter and Kosher Salt for topping

Combine the flour, salt, yeast, oil, yogurt, and poolish and knead until a gluten window forms about 10 - 15 minutes. The dough should be soft and sticky but not stick too much to the counter, add flour or water as needed. Place the dough in an oiled covered bowl and let rise and hour. Divide it into 8 balls, cover and fridge for an hour.

Pre heat the oven to 550 with a baking stone for an hour. Shape the dough like you would a pizza stretching as far as you can without breaking and bake for 4 minutes on the stone. Coat with melted butter and kosher salt out of the oven.

For serving the butter chicken we sauteed zuchinni, mushrooms, onions, and juliened orange peppers and stirred them in to the sauce. All served over rice.

The Worlds Greatest Biscuits

We can't take credit for this recipe, it comes from the book "Baking From My Home To Yours" by Dorie Greenspan. I have to say that these are the easiest and the best biscuits I have ever tasted. They contain no butter at all yet are still the super flaky and just all around superb. They are actualy supposed to be sweet cream biscuits but we do them savory. The batch below has garlic and rosemary in the batter and are topped with sea salt and smoked paprika and finally cheese before baking. We've done them with pretty much every spice imaginable though and they are always super fast and great. You can actually make the batter before and have them on the sheet pan before the oven is up to temp!

Sweet Cream Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
2 Teaspoons Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Cups Heavy Cream

Preheat the oven to 425. Mix the dry ingredients (adding any spices you like), add the heavy cream working as little as possible but incorporating fully. Shape into a disk about half an inch high on a sheet pan. Top with kosher salt and cheese and any more spices you choose. Bake about 15 minutes.

Red Wine And Mushroom Hamburgers On Foccacia Bread

At the Canadian National BBQ Championships in Whistler this summer they held a hamburger competition with no restrictions. After much thought and a couple drams we came up with our solution. Our absolute favorite flavor with beef is red wine. Whether as a braise for short ribs or a sauce for tenderloin, we enjoy nothing more. This led us to the red wine burger. In order to keep with our braise flavors we thought we would add in onions and garlic, both of which are traditional. Then we spiked them with one of our favorite ingredients wild mushrooms! In this case we used chantrelles.

Now one of the most important aspects of a burger is the bun. Unfortunately, like a pizza crust, sometimes this aspect gets over looked. Not by us! We decided to make a loaf of foccacia bread, that we allowed to rise higher than normal, slice it in half and use it for the bun. We topped it with pecorino romano cheese, jalapeno's, and black olives.

Now the funny part of this whole experiment is that we never turned them in at the competition. We got a late start and ended up going for the chili and king of the grill competition instead. So we gave all of these wonderful burgers away to the crowd, not that they seemed to mind! We ended up with a real nice line up!

Anyways here is our method!

Red Wine and Mushroom Hamburgers

I make all my burgers into 1/2 pound burgers

5 Pounds of fresh ground sirloin tip
Loaf of fresh white bread
1 cup of red wine
3 cups of mushrooms diced
1 cup of onions
6 cloves garlic
Brie cheese (or any cheese)
Jarlsberg Cheese

- Grind the beef (or just use ground)
- Take the unsliced loaf of bread and rip the inside (leaving the crust) into small pieces pour the red wine into the mixture and mash with a fork. Do so until you have a saturated paste. (depending on the size of the loaf you may need a little more wine)
- Mix all of the ingredients aside from the cheeses with the paste and form the burgers, placing a piece of brie into the middle of each burger
- Top with Jarlsberg cheese and grill! (Although these we're done high heat on the Weber Smokey Mountain)
Foccacia

The base of this recipe came from Peter Rhineharts a Bread Bakers Apprentice. This is a truely excellent book that I would recomend to everyone.

2 1/2 C Unbleached bread flour
1 1/2 C Water room temp
1/4 t instant yeast

combine and ferment for three or four hours at room temp. You can use then or put in the fridge for up to three days. Make sure to take out at least an hour before you use it, if you do refridgerate it.

2 2/3 C bread flour
2 t salt
1 1/2 t instant yeast
6 T olive oil
3/4 C water lukewarm

Mix dry ingredients, add wet and first mix. form a ball. Knead the dough until it is smooth. This is a wet dough so it is easiest to do this with a wooden spoon and moving the bowl around (I personally do it by hand wetting my hands from time to time which serves two purposes, it keeps your hands clean and increases the doughs hydration). Or else just use a stand mixer. I do it by hand and it usually takes about 6 or 7 minutes of good kneeding. If using a stand mixer mix until the dough is about 80 degrees on an instant read thermometer.

Press into a rectangle and fold three ways like an envelope, flip seam side down. Do this every thirty minutes 5 times. Pour 1/4 cup or so of herb oil on a cookie sheet. Put the dough in cookie sheet covered with parchment and shape to size of the cookie sheet using only your finger tips. Also pour half of the herb oil on it. Let sit 2 hours. Then reshape with fingertips and add the remaining oil, cheeses and any other toppings (olives, jalapenos etc....). Heat oven to 500 F Put in pan and lower to 450. Bake 10 minutes rotate pan and bake 5 - 10 minutes more,

To make the herb oil take about 1/2 c of dried herbs ( I typically use herbes de provence with lavander) or a cup of fresh with 2 cups of olive oil heat in pan to no more than 100 degrees and let sit.