Fleisch Salat

Fleisch Salat

I thought this was a cool blog idea, which it is, but turns out it will be really short as there isn't a lot you can say about it, other than it's good and you should try it.  Anyway...

Leave it to the Germans to have a "meat salad".  And, I say that with the utmost respect and admiration, I mean, what a great idea.  We ate this frequently during the summer and it always hit the spot, but it was even better the next day,  The concept couldn't be simpler.  Meat (typically deli ham), onion, bell pepper, dill pickle, and a nice vinegar and oil.  Mom like to use Italian dressing.  What?  Italy is fairly close to Germany, so we will go with it.  Basically almost any vinegar and oil dressing can work.  I suppose you could go nuts and add lots of other things into this salad, but I like to stick with what I grew up with.  The only real advice I have is to stay with deli ham and dill pickles the first time you make it.  Then if you like the concept, go crazy and make it with whatever you want.  It is a great lunch or light dinner for a hot day.  Enjoy.

Bialetti Moka Express

Bialetti Moka Express 9 Cup

I had seen the Bialetti Moka Express many times when shopping for coffee accouterments but never gave it much thought.  To be honest, it looked antiquated and kind of cheep at first glance.  It lacked the shine of stainless or the rich glossy finish of enamel.  Yes, we have all succumbed to marketing at one point or another.  But recently I found myself on the market for an espresso machine.  I had a small one for years and don't really remember what happened to it.  I couldn't find it anywhere, so I finally gave up and started looking for a replacement.  Then sticker shock set in and I looked around my kitchen and remembered that I don't have any spare counter space to devote to a unitasker like an espresso machine.  What to do.  Then I noticed the Moka Express sitting there quietly in the list of search results and I clicked on it.  I learned a lot that day.  Mainly, don't dismiss things by how they look, and the Moka Express has an almost cult-like following.  People not only use these things, but they collect them for seemingly no other reason than they are cool.  And they are cool.  I also feel I should mention that the following may seem like I am promoting the product.  I am, but only because it is cool and I want everyone to have happy coffee time whenever they want, not because I am getting anything from anyone, monetarily or otherwise, to do so.  When I find something that I really like, I tend to share it with people that I think would also like it.  I digress.

I didn't realize the history behind the Moka Express.  These things have been around for a long time.  I'm not going to regurgitate it here since you are only a couple clicks away from tons of info on it, but I will say that it is one of the coolest gadgets I have ever owned.  Is it an espresso maker?  Not really.  Is it a coffee maker?  Also, not really.  It is kind of like an espresso maker and a coffee maker got together and had a baby.  It works on the principle of using steam pressure to push water through coffee and makes a rich rocket fuel type of coffee that is neither coffee nor espresso.  That being said, it can be used much in the same way as espresso.

The concept is simple.  Reservoir A is filled with water.  Filter funnel B is filled with coffee.  The funnel B is placed in reservoir A and pot C is screwed onto reservoir A with a gasket sealing the seam where the funnel B and reservoir A meet.  Then heat is applied, the water heats up, pressure builds and pushes the hot water through the bottom of the funnel, up through the coffee, and up further through the riser tube in the pot on top.  The riser tube is hollow and has two holes on either side of the small part on top of the tube, thus stopping coffee from draining back into the reservoir.  So, everything from the bottom to the top of the riser tube is a sealed unit and steam pressure does the work.  In case you are wondering, yes there is a pressure release valve on the reservoir just in case.

Image linked from wikiHow.com

The process is pretty simple and I have summarized it for you here:

• Fill the reservoir with very hot water up to the bottom of the safety valve.  I have an instant hot water system in my kitchen so the water comes out just under boiling.  The idea is to give it a head start so the grounds don't get too hot during the heating process, which negatively affects the coffee flavor.  Personally, I have used both hot and cold water and didn't notice much, if any difference in flavor.  I mainly use the hot water to move things along so I can be drinking coffee sooner. :-)
• Fill the filter funnel with coffee that is a bit more course than espresso but finer than a drip grind.  Do not pack it down like you would for espresso, but feel free to level it out with your finger.  The main reason is that you want the water to be able to push through without popping the safety valve.  To be honest, I have tamped it down with a spoon with no ill effects, but again, it was just a gentle tamp, not anywhere near 30 pounds like you would use for espresso.  We are talking mere ounces.
• Place the funnel into the reservoir, making sure there are no grounds on the lip where the gasket seals.
• If you used hot water to fill it, remember to use a towel to hold the bottom while you thread the top on, and firmly snug it up.  No need to gorilla tighten it.  You just want the gasket to seal without damaging it.
• Put it on medium low heat.  Lower heat works best.  It takes some time to dial it in.  In my kitchen, I use my smallest gas burner on medium-low and it is enough to gently push the water through.  Too much heat and it will sputter and the coffee flavor will suffer.  I like to leave the lid up until the coffee starts to flow, then I close it.
• Once it starts to gently push steam without any gurgling, it is done.  That this point, remove it from the heat and pour cool water on the reservoir using your sink faucet.  This will shut down the process so it isn't steaming all over the place.
• Serve your coffee.  It is way to strong to drink on its own, for my taste.  I like to put a couple teaspoons of sugar in my cup, with about 3-4 ounces of half and half, then give it a quick froth with my Bodum milk frother until it doubles in volume, then hit it with some rocket fuel.

I started out with a 3 cup Moka and fell in love with it.  While it was fine to make one beverage with, it sucked when you had guests, so I bought the 9 cup.  I may even consider the 12 at some point.  All that said, the 3 cup worked like a charm right out of the box.  First try and I had delicious coffee.  Not the 9 cup.  No matter what I did, it sputtered and never made a full batch.  After doing a bit of searching, I learned that it was not an uncommon problem.  The solutions were don't use so much heat, make sure your gasket is clean, tighten it up more, etc.  I had tried all those.  Then I stopped for a second and thought, "This is a basic steam system.  This concept has been around for hundreds of years.  I should be able to figure this out!"  And, the only reason I bring this up is because if you have tried the basic stuff and still have a problem, this may be the fix.

Let's dissect the concept a bit.  In a good Moka, the water comes in from the bottom of the funnel.  Meaning, there should be mainly water coming up the funnel and maybe a bit of air bubbles from the heating process.  The only way to get the amount of air sputtering that I was getting was if the steam was somehow getting around the filter.  Since the gasket was brand new and looked good under inspection, it had to be coming from the seal between the filter and the reservoir.  Upon closer inspection, bingo, the basket sat too far down into the reservoir.  It appeared as though it hadn't been properly finished.  On my 3 cup unit that worked great, the basket and top of the reservoir were flush at the top.  On my malfunctioning 9 cup until, the lip of the reservoir was sitting higher than the filter. Now, I suppose that if I gorilla tightened it, it would probably have worked, as the higher part of the reservoir would have sunk into the gasket until it met the filter.  But my gasket would have been shredded in a couple of days.  So, I took it to my shop and touched up the top of the reservoir, without the filter, with a random orbit sander with 220 grit paper.  Slowly and carefully, testing the fit of the filter along the way until the top was flush.  I washed the parts up and tried it again.  Success!

I am not sure if I just got a lemon, or if it is a more common problem.  To be fair, the overall quality of the product is very good and this experience has not soured me in any way.  I love my Moka Express and would gladly buy another one.  I get my "espresso" fix and it easily fits in my cupboard for storage so it doesn't take up valuable counter space.  If you are in the boat I was in, wanting espresso, but not wanting to spend the money or give up the counter space, I highly recommend this product.  I think I spent about $45 on the 9 cup unit plus about $9 on the frother.  A far cry from a descent espresso machine.

Olive Oil Poached Eggs

One of my favorite ways to eat eggs

Greetings egg lovers. For the record, these are not poached as much as they are deep fried on olive oil, but in a similar technique to poached eggs.  I forget where I learned about these, but I think it is Spanish in origin.  To date I have yet to meet anyone who knows about this method for cooking eggs.  Too bad, too, as this is one of my favorite ways because it combines fresh eggs and extra virgin olive oil and a bit of sea salt which leaves you with a very simple but amazing symphony of flavors.  Although good quality market eggs would be good as well, I prefer using fresh farm eggs.  One typically assumes chicken eggs, but I have made these with duck eggs with even better results.  But, duck eggs are really hard to find unless you know someone that raises them.  They are impossible to find in a regular grocery store.

So, let's go over the technique:

• Place a ramekin in a warm, but not hot, oven.
• Crack an egg into a small dish.
• Heat about an inch of extra virgin olive oil in a small sauce pan to almost smoking.
• Tip the pan up on an edge so that there is a deep well of oil on one side.
• Gently slide the egg from the dish into the oil.  It will bubble and pop a bit.  BE CAREFUL!
• Once the egg white is set, which takes a matter of a few seconds, gently remove the egg with a slotted spoon and place it into the warm ramekin.
• Repeat one or two more times or more if you are hungry.
• Sprinkle the eggs with some sea salt or kosher salt.
• Enjoy your fantastic "poached" eggs.

Believe me when I tell you that these are delicious.  They are good for a light weekend breakfast, or as a meal course.

Gnocchi

Hay smoked potato gnocchi.

As far as I know, I am German and French Canadian, not Italian, which means that I can't say that I make authentic Italian food.  On the other hand, it gives me license to not abide by any rules of Italian cooking.  But, that is the fun of cooking.  I have always been a bit perturbed when people get up in your grill about how something should be cooked.  Like how spaghetti carbonara should be made with guanciale and not pancetta like many people use. I say, if you can get guanciale, use it, but if you can't, or would rather use pancetta, or bacon for that matter, do it.  There's no such thing as pasta police.  At least, I hope there isn't.

So, what is gnocchi, besides awesome?  In a nutshell, it is a dumpling.  It is commonly made with potatoes, but can be made with semolina, flour, etc.  It seems like every culture has a dumpling.  I grew up eating spaetzle, which is a small, German drop dumpling.

As I have mentioned before, my goal is not to have a recipe blog.  They are dime a dozen.  Rather, I want to share ideas and techniques to help you become a better home cook and is aimed at an intermediate audience.  One way to do that is to think outside the box, so to speak.  For the dish above, it came to be due to having about two pounds of hay smoked potatoes that I had prepared for a dinner engagement with a dear friend.  The engagement ended up getting rescheduled, so my first thought was of me eating hay smoked mashed potatoes for the next few days.  Normally, not a bad deal, but I had just gotten done eating hay smoked mashed potatoes the previous few days before.  So, I kind of had enough of them for a week or so.  So, what to do with the smoked potatoes.  Chips, maybe.  Fries, even better idea.  Fried, maybe not today.  Then it hit me, gnocchi.  As I am no stranger to making gnocchi, it seemed like a good idea and was punctuated with the fact the potatoes were hay smoked.  Bonus.

Again, there are tons of recipes already posted about gnocchi, but just to summarize at high level:

• Boil your potatoes
• When done, drain and let cool
• Put them through a ricer.  It makes for an easier time mixing the ingredients.
• Add flour, and egg yolk or two, an salt to taste.  I used 1 kg or potatoes, 150 g flour, two yolks, and salt to taste.
• Mix the dough until it forms a ball
• Kneed the dough on a floured cutting board
• Cut the dough in about 8 pieces
• Roll the dough into a "rope" about the diameter of your thumb
• Cut the "rope" into 1/2" pieces
• Use your finger to dent each one
• Put in simmering water until they float

At this point, they can be served with some sauce of your choice, or you can brown them in some olive oil, then finish with some butter, herbs, or a sauce.  If you don't plan to consume them right away, they can be placed on a non-stick cookie sheet and refrigerated for a couple hours until dinner, or frozen, then placed in a plastic bag and kept in the freezer for a couple weeks.

As far as the ones picture above, I just fried them and hit them with a bit of basil and arugula pesto.  They were very delicious, and I thought the smoke flavor was very subtle.  It is also worth mentioning that I ate them several times this week, since I had two pounds of them.  In total, I had them with:

• Pork ragu
• Butter and sage
• Pesto
• Sausage and arugula

Each arrangement was fantastic.  Gnocchi are only limited by your imagination. It also seems prudent to mention that although it seems like quite a bit of work at first glance, once you get the dough made, you can be rolling, cutting, and denting while the previous batch of gnocchi simmers, and before you know it, you are done.  These are a definite "must try" recipe.

Hay Smoked Mashed Potatoes

Hay smoked mashed potatoes.

Let's face it, I'm by no means avant garde with most of my cooking.  Rene Redzepi is.  He has arguably the best restaurant in the world with a large staff and they spend their days inventing new flavors and techniques.  But I was bored.  So very bored.  Winter stared in November and has not let up for months.  Just snow, ice, and cold.  This is something out of research not my brain.  But like most of my posts, I am trying to sum stuff up from my research.  For starters, smoking or cooking in hay is not a new thing.  People have been doing it for years in the old world.  It is not a technique that you stumble across in day to day "let see what Pinterest thinks I should have for dinner" surfing.

So, where did I find this idea and why did I try it?  I heard about it at some point and kind of put it away in the back of my mind.  Finally, I decided to try it just for kicks, but mostly out of boredom.  One of the things I noticed in my research was how the definition of hay was not defined.  It was just referred to as hay, like you could go to your local market and pick up a bag of it.  It would be hanging there with the word "Hay" on the bag.  I spent enough time in the Midwest bailing the stuff to understand is a general term.  Basically, hay is dried forage.  Meaning food for animals.  Hay can be any edible grass or plant that animals can eat that can be cut, dried, and stored.  If you mow the ditch around a highway, rake it into a wind row, let it dry, and bail it, you have hay.  It may contain many different plants, but mostly grass.  Now, if you bail dried stalks of wheat or oats, you have straw.  That is used for bedding for animals and is not the same as hay.  So, hay goes in the feeder and straw goes on the floor.  Hay is green, straw is yellow or gold in color.

That being said, hay can be made up of many different things.  Where I grew up, alfalfa is the main type of hay.  For this recipe, we will be using alfalfa and Timothy hay made from Timothy grass.  So, you may be thinking that you really enjoy sitting next to a wood fire roasting marshmallows and hot dogs.  The smell bring many people back to a camping trip of fireplace during a cold winter.  A grass fire does not bring about those memories.  We associate grass fires with smoke and stink.  Not something we would put in a fire pit and cook hot dogs over.  So why would this be any good.  To be honest, I really don't know, but it is.  In fact, it works so well with potatoes that it is now my favorite type of mashed potato.  You just need to try it for yourself.

Hay Smoked Potatoes

What you will need:

• A good vent hood, or do this outside on a grill side burner.
• A pot that you don't mind making smell like smoke for the rest of its life.  It should have a heavy bottom to disperse the heat.
• Aluminum foil
• Timothy hay
• Alfalfa hay
• Some Russet potatoes.  I hear you can use just about any kind, but I have used Russets because that is what I had on hand at the time and they worked out swimmingly.
• Your normal mashed potato ingredients like butter, milk, half and half, salt, pepper, etc.  I would keep it simple and not go crazy with anything else until you try them this way first.

The process:

• Place a piece of foil on the bottom of the pot.
• Put about 1 C of Timothy hay and 2 C of alfalfa hay uniformly on the foil.  Hay can be purchased at most pet stores and is relatively inexpensive.
• Place another piece of foil over the hay.
• Arrange the potatoes (unpeeled, raw) on the foil.
• Cover and place on the stove.
• Turn the stove to high and wait until you see smoke.  Let it smoke for 5 minutes.
• Reduce heat to low and cook for 50 minutes.
• Remove the potatoes to a plate and let cool
• Once they are cool enough to handle, peel and make mashed potatoes like normal.  

Reserve some boiling water if you want to add more smoky
flavor to your mashed potatoes.

What struck me was how pungent the potatoes were after smoking them.  And to be honest, it was not the most appetizing smell.  However, once the skins are peeled off and they are boiled and turned into mashed potatoes, they are mildly smoky.  The smoke flavor is sweet and melds well with the potatoes.  So far, they have been a huge hit an I am glad to have tried them.  I guess that maybe being housebound, in the dead of what I can only describe as one of the seemingly longest winters ever, can yield some rewards. 

Home Coffee Roasting

Frankenroaster.

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted.  Sometimes life gets in the way.  It shouldn't, but it does.  I guess that is the price we pay for being human.  It kind of puts it in perspective when you think about the human sitting on a bench with his dog.  The human is thinking about work, money, relationships, politics, world events, taxes, etc.  And the dog is just thinking about his human.  It takes a lot of work to shut that other crap off.  One way I try to do that, with varying degrees of success, is to be mindful.  Basically, getting lost in the moment and thinking about only that one thing, whatever it is.

Which leads me to this topic.  The kitchen is one place where, if I make an effort, I can get lost in the moment.  Become mindful.  Get into the flow.  Whatever you want to call it.  I tend to make things in the kitchen that most people just buy.  Some things are because of how sick I am of the ingredients in store bought products, like pickles.  It is getting hard to find any without preservatives or artificial colors.  So, I tend to make my own.  But other things I do, because it tastes better and/or I want to understand the process.  Enter the crazy contraption above.  I called it Frankenroaster for lack of a  better term, but I think it is a apt name.  This all started because I love coffee and finding really good coffee is difficult in my small town.  So, I started doing some research into roasting my own coffee and found that it isn't really that difficult.  You can roast coffee just like they used to do many years ago and use a frying pan.  So, I scoured the internet and found that people did one of the following:

• Paid a crap ton of money and bought a small commercial roaster.  We are talking at least 4 digits for one of these.  Too rich for my blood.  I would rather have a new motorcycle for that money.
• Bought a home use roaster.  These go for around $200 for a cheap one, to a few hundred.  Still a pretty big investment for a first time roaster not knowing if it is worth the effort or not.
• Used a popcorn popper.  Either an air popper or the one with the hotplate, dome, and arms that agitate the beans.  This is actually a pretty good way to go.  We will talk more about this in a bit.
• Used a frying pan, although, you hear a lot of comments that you "can" use a pan, but not much about people actually using one.
• Since most of the posts were by guys, there were also a lot of massively over-engineered DIY roasters.  Ingenious and worthy of bragging rights, but I want something I can store in a cupboard and can set up in about 2 seconds.

So, popcorn popper it is.  Now, there are a few considerations for roasting your own coffee:

• You need something hot enough to roast the beans.  We have already established that a popcorn popper will work.  A hot air popper will get up to around 450 F.
• It makes a lot of smoke.  And to answer your follow up question, no, it does not smell awesome like fresh roasted coffee.  It smells like burnt coffee and will quickly set off your smoke detectors unless you have a good vent hood, or do it outside.
• Depending on the type of coffee/supplier, there can be a lot of chaff that comes off the bean that needs to be separated.  A hot air popper will do that automatically for you, but unless you have a way to catch it, it ends up all over your kitchen.  A regular hotplate style popper won't do that for you, so you need to take care of that during the cooling process.
• And, finally, you need to cool the beans to stop the roasting process.  So, in the case of either popcorn popper, you need to dump the beans into a sieve, or on a screen and hit it with a fan.  In the case of the hotplate style popper, now is when the chaff will blow off, and cause the same issue we talked about in the bullet above.

So, given all this information, I decided on the hot air approach.  It is worth noting that there is a roaster or two on the market that are based on the hot air approach.  Both ratings and price turned me off.  One that had decent ratings (except for the person who had one start on fire) was still close to $200.  I really didn't want to risk that money for something I didn't fully understand yet.  So, I found a Poplite air popper on Amazon for $16.  Not much to spend if things don't work out.  So, this was the method:

• Place 1/2 cup of green coffee in the popper
• Put the cover on
• Set up my small clip on fan nearby for cooling
• Place it on my cook top with the vent hood at full bore
• Plug it in
• Place mesh strainer over the output to catch the chaff
• Roast the coffee through first crack and into second and catch about 30% of the chaff while the rest goes all over the place and also losing quite a few coffee beans because they blow out way more than popcorn.  I assume it has something to do with the larger surface area of the coffee bean.
• Once roasted, unplug the popper, blow out the strainer in the sink, again, making a mess, and pour the beans into the strainer
• Hold over the fan and stir with a spoon until cool enough to handle

The result was a decent batch of coffee.  A messy cook top.  My clothes and hair smelled like burnt coffee.  And it was kind of a pain in the ass.  But, the final product was good enough to merit another round.

Fast forward to Frankenroaster.  This design was based on the hot air roaster I talked about above, because it made sense to me, although I still didn't want to shell out $200.  I ended up making mine for under $40 and the only part that can go bad is the popper, and I can replace that for about $20.  What I used to build it:

• 1 - Poplite popcorn popper
• 2 - single-pole toggle switches (120V of course)
• 1 - 15 oz food can with both ends removed.  It fits nice and snug into the throat of the popper.  I could have used a piece of 3" aluminum duct, but I thought the reducer (next bullet) would fit right into the popper.  It did, but has a lot of gap which beans got caught in, so not wanting to go back out in the dead of winter to get a piece of duct, I was resourceful and found that a 15 oz can works.
• 1 - 4" to 3" aluminum duct reducer
• 1 - 4" piece of aluminum duct about 8"-10" long.  Mine was an adjustable bend as I was experimenting with the design.  In the end, straight up works the best in my opinion.
• 1 - 4" dryer vent clamp
• 1 - piece of single layer cheese cloth for the chaff catcher
• A drill, drill bits, screw driver, utility knife, pop rivets, and a couple wire nuts.

Warning:  If you are not handy and understand electricity and wiring, don't attempt this.

The method:

• Open the popcorn popper by removing the screws on the bottom of the case.  You will end up with the bottom of the case, three screws, a fan/heat source, a metal throat, and the main case.
• Remove every other vent rib on the bottom of the case to increase air flow.
• Figure out which wire is the main power and which one leads to the main heat coil.
• Drill two holes the same size as the toggle switches.
• Wire up one switch for the main power and one for the heat source.
• Mount the switches and reassemble the popper.
• Test it to make sure your switches are correct.  I found that the main heat switch, when off, still produce a small amount of heat, but only slightly higher than room temperature.  Still enough to cool the beans and I didn't want to get to in-depth on rewiring it.  Simple is always better.
• Since the reducer duct didn't fit into the can very well, I chose to push the can through from the 4" side.  Since the can was steel and the duct was aluminum, I forced it through fairly easily.  Wear leather gloves, this is just an emergency room visit waiting to happen if you don't.
• Add the 4" duct and secure all pieces with a few pop rivets.  This is what I will refer to as the chimney assembly, for lack of a better term.
• Clamp the piece of cheese cloth on the top.
• Remove the Poplite label and make your own label, plus one for the main power switch and one for the heat switch.
• You have a coffee roaster!

Now that the hard work is done, what is my new and improved method for roasting coffee?

• Take roaster out of cupboard and place on cook top.
• Turn on vent hood.
• Remove the chimney assembly.
• Dump in 1/2 cup of green coffee beans.
• Replace chimney assembly.
• Plug it in.
• Turn on the master power to make sure the beans are moving around freely.
• Turn on the heat.
• Sip a cup of coffee an listen.
• First crack will sound like popcorn popping.  Pretty loud.  You need to go through this stage in order for the beans to be roasted.
• Once it is done with the first crack, it will quiet down, but soon will start the second crack.  Second crack sounds like Rice Krispies.  Once it starts second crack, you have a light roast and the further through you go, you get a darker roast.  You will need to experiment to find what you like, but since this device can only do about 1/2 cup at a time, it is easy to do.
• When it is roasted just about to where you think you want it, turn off the heat and let the fan cool the beans.  This is the beauty of the air popper.  I find that 2-3 minutes is about enough.  You can always use an infrared thermometer to monitor things.  I got mine on Amazon for about $16.  I love Amazon.
• Turn off the roaster while removing the chimney assembly at about the same time.  It will keep the chaff at the top on the cheese cloth.  Use a towel or pot holder because the metal will still be too hot to handle with bare hands.
• Pour the coffee in a container.  Depending the type of beans you use, it will be ready to grind in 1-4 days.  Don't grind it right away.  It is not ready and you will be disappointed in the result.

Stuff I have learned along the way:

• Coffee doesn't smell wonderful when you are roasting it.  It stinks.  So will your house if you don't have a good vent.
• Coffee needs to out-gas before you should use it. 
• Some coffee has very little chaff and others have copious amounts.
• Some coffee is very noisy during first crack and some is not.
• Some coffee is very noisy during second crack and some is not.
• Some coffee, such as my personal favorite Papua New Guinea, goes through a huge flavor profile change over 4-5 days.  It starts out, as all do, burnt smelling, then after a couple hours have huge caramel tones.  This starts to fade over 3-4 days, but the flavor becomes more complex.  Experiment with it.  It's fun.
• I may not be a world class coffee roaster, but it tastes better than most anything I can find from a coffee shop.  You simply can't beat small batch roasting.  This is the coffee equivalent of home brewing.
• Amazon is a great place to buy green beans.  Even better if you are a Prime member.

Well, there you have it.  Anyone can roast coffee at home.  I roast about 2-3 time per week and is quick to do.  For 1/2 cup, you are talking around 10-15 minutes, of which you spend most time just listening, and hopefully, relaxing and dreaming about drinking it.  I hope you find this article interesting and useful.  I didn't really find anything like this when I was researching, so I wanted to help people who, like me, want to take the time to roast their own coffee and don't mind spending about 30 minutes total to build a cool roaster that I don't feel is over-engineered.  I am an engineer by profession, and we like simple, elegant solutions.  Well, one out of two isn't bad.

Making Chicken More Interesting

Chicken Ballotine.  Photo by Rob Robitaille

I love chicken, but let's face it, chicken can be very boring.  My wife has a peculiar digestive system where she finds that she can no loner tolerate mammal meat. So, that just makes my life as the cook a bit more difficult as it cuts out many delicious options.  So, instead of viewing it as a problem, I am choosing to view it as a challenge.  After all, the French love their chicken.  So much so, that they made it their national bird.  Okay, it's the Gallic Rooster, but it is still a chicken.  And being lover of French food that I am, I have started looking that direction for help.  One thing that I have been meaning to try is a chicken ballotine.  A ballotine is meat fish or fowl that has been boned, stuffed, tied into a bundle, and roasted or braised, and served hot.  Often confused with galantine, which is similar, but poached and served cold.  You are probably thinking, as I did, that boning a whole chicken is difficult, but it is not.  If you don't mind handling chicken and have some basic knife skills, it is actually pretty easy.  My first time only took about ten minutes start to finish.  I am not going to describe how to do it, because there are tons of videos and instructions all over the web.  However, as I have probably stated before, Jacques Pepin is an absolute technical specialist with this, as he is with pretty much everything in the kitchen.  Just head to YouTube and search for "chicken ballotine" and it will probably be the first hit or just click here.  The video is only 10 minutes long.  He says that it should only take around a minute to bone out a chicken.  Yeah, maybe for a chef that does it all the time, but I think five minutes would be achievable for the amateur cook.  Mine didn't look as nice as Jacques', but all the mistakes are on the inside, so don't worry about it.

I made a simple stuffing of sauteed mushrooms with a shallot in butter.  Once the mushrooms had cooked down a bit, I added chicken stock, a bit of salt, and white pepper.  Once most of the liquid had been cooked away, I removed it from the heat and let it cool.  Once cool, I added some grated Swiss cheese and some bread crumbs.  Then I stuffed the bird, tied it up, and roasted it at 425 for about an hour.  A simple pan sauce made with the fond from the roasting pan completes the dish.  Relatively easy and very delicious, I know I will be making this for guests in the future.