Tomatillo salsa

Tomatillos look like unripe green tomatoes with a crunchy paper-like wrapper. When I’ve made salsa in the past, I just cut up the tomatillos (after removing their papery exterior) and ran them through the food processor. This makes for a pretty tart salsa.

Following this tomatillo salsa  recipe, I roasted the tomatillos first and the roasting produced a much superior salsa. Give it a try.

The cost of Costco

Costco and I were very friendly for awhile.

But after a few years, we grew tired of each other and I decided that we needed to take a break.

I needed some space. There were too many $350.00 totals at the checkout and no calls from Costco on my birthday.

Addicted to Costco showed me the error of my ways.

In a well written post that must have taken a lot of time and effort, this blog compares the costs of 39 items at Costco, Walmart and two grocery stores. It’s summarized here in a beautiful google docs spreadsheet. Which store had the lowest prices? Click over and see.

(Lesson learned: No more buying chicken breasts at the big C for me.)

The “new” vodka

In a Wall Street Journal story about how vodka is “dead,” I read this line trumpeting vodka‘s replacement:

“But the go-to cordial of the day is St-Germain elderflower liqueur, used in as many of the new Food & Wine book drinks as vodka is.”

The book that Eric Felten of Wall St. Journal was referring to is Food and Wine Magazine’s “Cocktail’s 09” that will come out soon.

I rarely make mixed drinks.

But I was intrigued by elderflower and needed a cocktail for my wife Anne’s 49th birthday celebration, so I bought a bottle of “St. Germain” at Dobby’s Worldwide in Palatine for about $25 (on sale, which was cool).

Europeans have used the elderflower leaves and blossoms for years in folk medicine as a cure-all.  The blossoms of the elderflower, which is a small perennial tree, are picked in the French Alps and are combined with sugar and citrus to make a liqueur that’s 20% alcohol (40 proof) and tastes light, sweet and kind of floral. The St. Germain brand comes in a sleek looking tall bottle.

We made the Pear Tree Martini drink below (from the St. Germain site) using pear vodka, St. Germain and lime juice. I added more lime juice and less St. Germain, so that it tasted less sweet.  It was great and a big birthday hit.

There are drink recipes for elderflower on the St. Germain site and a bunch more here.

First pork shoulder of the year

Pork shoulder (also known as pork butt or Boston butt) is an inexpensive, fatty cut of meat. But when it’s cooked right it becomes a thing of beauty. I bought some at Eurofresh in Palatine for $1.99 per pound this week.

Pork shoulder needs a rub applied to it. The rub I used was a mixture of Chinese Five Spice Powder and a curry powder that I had left over. I added some ground Szechuan pepper and some salt.

I’ve cooked pork shoulder many times. At first, I was freaked out by how long it takes. For the pork shoulder to turn out well, (i.e. falling off the bone so it can be “pulled”),  it has to be cooked to an internal temperature of about 190 degrees.  I first thought this could be done in a few hours, but after trial and error I found it takes the better part of 10 hours to make it right.

I use a Weber Smokey Mountain grill/smoker to cook the meat. You can use any grill with indirect heat and a cover. The smokey mountain is good because it holds a consistent heat level and does not require much tending. Over 10 hours, I checked it about 5 times to refill the water pan or put in more charcoal.

What tends to happen is that it reaches 170 internal pretty easily, but then it takes FOREVER to get to 190 degrees. Be patient and it will work out fine. You can always take it off of the grill, wrap it in foil and throw it in the oven. This seems to drain a lot of the juice out of the meat, but it will get up to 190 pretty easily in the oven.  It takes about 10 hours on the grill to cook to perfection.

Tracking the termperature of the grill is a waste of time. I used to track it with great precision. I have old time logs that track every rise and fall of the temp. But, it’s too time consuming. I would say the temperature averages about 250 during the 10 hours. It’s best to use an instant read thermometer to test the internal meat temperature after about 8 hours of cooking.

I add a few chunks of hickory wood and use regular Kingsford charcoal. Start with 1 chimney starter of charcoal and dump it in. Replenish the coals as needed.

The best source for recipes for pork shoulder is the weber smokey mountain web site.

Let the pork rest for an hour after it’s done and then shred it as best you can with two forks. It reheats well and can be used in fried rice and a million other dishes.

New carry-out Indian place in Palatine

There are Indian restaurants popping up all over. New India is a small, strictly carry-out and catering Indian place in Palatine at Quentin and Northwest Hwy. (The other new places are Indian Bistro in Palatine and Vishnu Vilas in Schaumburg in the old Sizzle India )

We have ordered from New India several times and the food is nicely spiced and reasonably priced. The owners must do quite a bit of catering, because when ordering they will suggest that a certain dish was made for catering that day and that it might be a good idea to order that dish. We had a nice okra dish that was suggested in this way.

Here is the partial menu. Give it a try.

Minced lamb for weeknights

My lamb experience, as a wee lad, was limited to one awful day per year. We were forced to eat lamb/mutton/some sort of smelly meat once a year on New Year’s Day at my aunt Glad’s 88-degree apartment in Oak Park in celebration of my Grandma‘s birthday. I think all of the adults were hung over and we kids were dehydrated from the summer-like indoor temps. This was in the days before chicken nuggets and mac and cheese at every meal for kids, so we had to try the lamb or starve.

The poor, leg of lamb was a burnt offering by the time dinner began, done to a “golden turn” as they say. This stuff tasted gamier than hell to my 10 year old palate and I hated it.

Fast forward 40 years. For my 50th birthday, I got an interesting cookbook titled “Healthy Indian Cooking” from our good friends Ritu and Shailu This is a great cookbook of Indian recipes that dispenses with the heavy butter and cream that some Indian recipes contain. There were several recipes that called for “minced lamb.” Basically, minced lamb is just ground leg of lamb. Using that cookbook as inspiration, I bought a 4 pound boneless leg of lamb at Costco for about $14. Then I ran in through my trusty meat grinder that hooks on as an attachment to the Kitchenaid mixer. Add salt, pepper and ground fennel seed and form it into 1/3 pound patties and they freeze well. I did not cut off any of the fat.

I made the following recipe from the minced lamb and I have gone back to it many times and now include in the weeknight rotation because it’s so easy to defrost a few patties and make a main lamb dish.

Sauce

3T hoisin sauce
1T sesame oil
4T soy sauce

Ingredients

2 Patties of minced lamb defrosted
Salt and pepper to taste
Large handful of spinach leaves
Large handful of cherry tomatoes
Two cloves of garlic, large knob of ginger, both chopped and combined with a little olive oil using an immersion blender to make a rough liquid

Brown lamb in non stick frying pan. Add garlic and ginger mixture when lamb is starting to brown.

When lamb is nicely browned, add sauce and cook for about 1 minutes

Add spinach, cherry tomatoes and any other vegetable.

Serve over rice.

Tasty Japanese food in Elk Grove

Kurumaya is a great casual Japanese restaurant in Elk Grove Village. We went there again last night for dinner. Here’s a prior review on Kurumaya. I really like this place because it has reasonably priced sushi, tempura and other traditional Japanese dishes.

We had two sets of maki rolls as an appetizer, one of which had cilantro, jalapeno and avocado.  Then we ordered a third appetizer, fried oysters that were served with a Japanese hot mustard. The oysters were lightly breaded, but moist and flavorful inside. Really good. For entrees we had udon noodles and soba noodles in a flavorful broth along with some tempura ($11). It was not too crowded on a Saturday night, maybe half full. This place continues to be one of my favorites.

New Schaumburg Indian restaurant Vishnu Vilas

Vishnu Foods opened in 2002 in Schaumburg near Motorola. They sell Indian food ingredients and prepared foods like samosasdosas.

Recently, the owners of  Vishnu Foods opened a restaurant next door to their retail store in the space formerly occupied by “Sizzle India.” I stopped in to Vishnu Foods a few weeks ago and the owner said they were thinking of opening up a restaurant to serve good Southern Indian food with “some healthier options,” but he added that he was afraid of the economy (wise man) . He forged ahead and Vishnu Villas is now open. Review will be forthcoming.

Avoiding bricks with whole wheat bread

Whole wheat bread is good for you, but often tastes like horse-feed and feels as heavy as a brick.

I searched everywhere online and tried many different recipes, baking many inedible doorstops.

I finally found this recipe that uses vital wheat gluten to light up the dough. This works well with muffins, bread or flatbread. 

Changes I made to this recipe are:

1. Use white whole wheat flour rather than regular whole wheat.
2. I use a mixer with dough hook to prepare the dough
3. Let it rise twice, once for about 1.5 hours and the second time for about 30 minutes.

Ingredients

3 cups 100% King Arthur white whole wheat flour

1 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 packet active yeast
3 tbsp vital wheat gluten
1 – 1.5 cups warm water (about 100F)

Method

Warm flour in microwave for 30 seconds. Mix dough in food processor or mixer, knead dough for about 10 minutes in mixer or by hand for 15 minutes. Can’t really use food processor to knead dough (just to put dough together)

Transfer the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a wet towel and place it in a warm place for 1.5 hours

Transfer to muffin tins if making muffins or bread pan or if making flat bread just form dough and put it on a piece of parchment paper. Let rise for another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400F. Bake for about 15-20 minutes . Baking time for muffins will be a little less.

What’s Your Workout column in WSJ online

I love this column, in the online edition of Wall St. Journal, because it provides an interesting look at the diets and workout patterns of those profiled.  Here a 70-year-old runner enters the stair climbing race up the Empire State Building. She only eats salads for dinner.