Pepper Jack Mac

A word of warning before we begin:  Consuming a generous helping of Pepper Jack Mac can induce feelings of Euphoria after the fact.  This one was baked up in a nice Emile Hendry Burgundy-clay pie plate, preheated in a 400 degree oven.

So what is Pepper Jack Mac?  It's Mac-N-Cheese made with Habanero pepper Jack cheese rather than cheddar.  Vermont Sharp Cheddar is the type Thomas Jefferson (a Libra) chose to make his famous american original.  It's very nice, but not particularly sharp.  A great deal of flavor can be injected by selecting Habanero Pepper Jack cheese over cheddar.  You might try them in a 50/50 combo blend to see if you like it.

I do not recommend Jalapeño Jack because the Jalapeño has a nasty, bitter flavor.  The pain you experience eating a Jalapeño does not come from any capsaicin burn.  Rather, it is your taste-buds rejecting that acrid and bitter flavor that is very unnatural on the pallet.

Contrary to some popular opinion, the Jalapeño is not a hot pepper.  It scores only a 1,000 on the Scoville rating system.  The Habenero is 10x hotter, scoring a 10,000, and it is still not that hot.  The notorious Ghost Chili (Bhut Jolokia) is a really hot pepper.  It scores 1,000,000 (one million) on the Scoville scale.  The Jalapeño also suffers greatly from quality control issues.  Some have no flavor at all.  Some will blow your mouth out, and not in a good way.  Avoid the Jalapeño.  It's fairly worthless and useless.

No friends, the Habanero is the real chili pepper.  It has a very nice and sweet flavor after a decent capsaicin burn.  This is the chili as mother nature intended.  That is why this pepper is the foundation of the entire Jamaican culinary tradition.  Incidentally, Jerk Chicken and Pepper Pot are absolutely delicious.  If you haven't tried them, you are truly missing out on the finest thing in life.

Habanero Jack Cheese is outstanding in every respect.  It has enough sting to make it interesting, but the milk protein and fat both cut the effect down so that anyone can enjoy the sweet tangy flavor the Habenero injects into (what is otherwise) a very dull cheese.

Baking this cheese into a Mac-N-Cheese, concentrates all these flavors by removing water, carmelizing,  and adding salt to the equation.  What you get is a pretty powerful culinary experience.  We're talking about flavors that explode in your mouth.  It's a big-bang experience, and not in a bad way.  It also leaves you with a very nice after-glow.

Biologists who have studied why humans seem to like capsaicin-tinged foods have come to the conclusion that capsaicin stimulates the pleasure regions of the Limbic system.  Eat enough capsaicin, and you will encounter feelings of euphoria not unlike those experienced after a tremendous workout.   These feelings are usually encountered no more than 15-20 minutes later.  The net effect is that we walk away from the table with a feeling we had a heck of a meal.

The recipe I used was essentially the one Alton Brown cooked up in "For Whom the Cheese Melts II".  This  was the episode where he taught little Alton how to make a Mac-N-Cheese.  You can see it here:



I made a few simple modifications.  The recipe is simple:

• 1 ounce flour
• 1 ounce butter
• 16 ounces of heavy cream
• 8 ounces skim milk
• 8 ounces Habanero Pepper Jack
• 8 ounces Super-Sharp Cheddar
• 2 ounces Panko bread crumbs
• table spoon dry mustard powder
• half-teaspoon paprika
• 4 ounces diced onions
• 1 bay leaf
• salt
• pepper
• 1 stick of Rosemary
• 3 twigs of thyme
• 2 eggs

The prep and cooking technique was the same.  I used fresh herbs in this case, and they brought a ton of flavor to the party.  This one really popped.

The worst aspect of the entire procedure is grinding the cheese, but this need not be an issue if you have a decent food processor.  I have one of the best, and it made very short work out of 16 ounces of cheese.  Two grinds and I was done.

98321

998321 is the formula for super-premium ice cream... at least the base of super-premium ice cream. This according to Alton Brown, in his now famous Churn Baby Churn II episode of Good Eats. The Food Network first aired this episode some two years ago, so this is not new information, but it is new to me.

Just what the hell does 98321 mean?

• 9 ounces of sugar by weight. Preferably vanilla sugar. More on this later.
• 8 egg yolks, separated from their whites, naturally.
• 3 cups of half & half
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 1 cup of heavy whipping cream

I would add to that a shake or two of sea salt and a couple of grinds of white pepper. I also chopped half a vanilla bean, gutted it, and tossed it in.

Last night I used this formula to brew up some super-premium chocolate ice cream for the first time. I think the results are going to be pretty spectacular. The process is fairly long, but extremely interesting.

I am not one for separating egg yolks, and have never really done it before in my cooking. I disdain recipes that call for this process. I think the egg is pretty well perfect as-is, and fucking around with it is usually outside the pale of any acceptable human conduct. Yet, the lure of super-premium chocolate ice cream was strong enough to bait me into this immoral conduct.

It turns out separating eggs and yolks is trivial. My first go at the shell method worked fine. The only minor problem was that I could only go from shell to shell about 4 times before the yolk would pop. No big deal, as the white had already been separated pretty well. Who cares if the yolk pops? You are going to whip it anyway?

I found the hand method is a heck of a lot better. More egg white comes off, and the yolk does not pop. Also, health advocates now say that using your hand--if it is even moderately washed--introduces less bacteria than going shell to shell. I found that surprising. Most great chefs will admit that they have seen this health-presentation more than once, but they dislike the notion of changing techniques.

Anyhow, it is the hand method for me.

Whipping the sugar into the yolk was a really interesting experience. I would have used my stand mixer, but it was dirty from the meat loaf I had just made. I did not want to risk that kind of cross-contamination, and I didn't want to wash the mixer bowl with bleach and reuse it immediately for ice cream. Therefore, I whipped it by hand with a nice whisk from Ikea. That was some work, but the results were pretty damn close to perfect. The custard gets incredibly thick. It is almost like wet concrete.

Now for the interesting part: Brewing the chocolate base.

I placed 8 ounces of half & half in my favorite 4.5 quart Le Creuset pot, and tossed in 2 ounces (by weight) of Hersey's dark chocolate powder. It turns out that chocolate powder has a low mass density, about half that of sugar. Two ounces by weight fills about half a cup of volume. I whisked that over low heat for about 6 or 7 minutes until it turned smooth. Then I began slowly adding the rest of the half & half and heavy cream. Once all that was mixed in smoothly, I raised the temperature to 170F. I confirmed that temp with two different thermometers.

I took the pot off the stove, moved it next to my big (8 cup) measuring cup containing the custard (sugar and yolk). I began ladling in the chocolate cream into the custard slowly whisking it pretty hard. The concrete loosened up pretty quick. Before you knew it, I had the whole thing mixed smooth. I took that big measuring cup of chocolate custard, and poured it right back into the Le Creuset pot.

The pot went back on top of the stove where I heated it again to 170 F. I whisked hard the entire time. There were little problems as bits of skin did form on the base of the pot. Overall, there was no real problem. It was during this heating that I threw in the vanilla bean, the salt and the fresh ground white pepper corns. I have a nice Vic Firth grinder for this purpose

I used to use Vic Firth drum sticks when I was a kid playing the drums. Now I have Vic Firth maple rolling pins, cutting boards, and pepper grinders.

After the mixture reached 170F, it went right back into the 2 quart measuring cup. My nice rubber seal went over the top of the 2 quart measuring cup, and it went into the frige over-night. Of course, there was chocolate ice cream batter residue on my Le Creuset pot. I had to clean it some out.

I got to lick the pot, with the help of my fingers. It was good. Damn good. I could tell already that this was going to be one hell of an ice cream.

This morning, I churned the mixture before going to work. That was some of the hardest and firmest soft-serve I have ever seen. Just about all of it went into a nice rubber-made container and into the freezer. Of course, there was soft-serve ice cream residue lining my ice cream churn. I had to clean it out some how.

I got to lick the pot, with the help of a butter knife. Don't use your fingers. You will get frostbite. It was good. Damn good. It was already one hell of an ice cream. I wonder what it is going to taste like tonight, after it has hardened for about 9 hours?

Stunning stuff. I would like to invite Katy Perry over for a scoop of my ultra-premium Hersey's dark chocolate ice cream. Knowing the character of the Capricorn, she probably wouldn't leave the apartment for a week.

That would be just fine with me. I would not have a problem with that.

Alton's Pilaf methodology works extremely well

So, I checked out an old episode of Good Eats, dating all the way back to Season 1, I believe. It was titled Pilaf to the People. You can see the condensed presentation right here.

So, I thought I knew a hell of a lot about rice, and I thought I had made Pilaf about a hundred thousand times. It turns out that I was not quite correct. Close, but no cigar. First the summary.

Pilaf is not a recipe. Pilaf is not a list of ingredients. It is a cooking methodology. Even though the word literally means "rice dish", it should mean, cooking method for rice. You can do a lot of different ingredients. Add a few, throw a few away, change these, bring in some others. This doesn't determine whether you have a Pilaf. The approach to heating defines Pilaf.

According to Alton, the cooking process runs through Seven simple stages.

1. Sweat your vegetable soffritto in butter.
2. Add the rice and sauté until you have a strong nutty aroma.
3. Add the liquid--substantially less than normal for rice--stir it up, and discard your stirring spoon or utensil.
4. Cover with a lid. Bolster the seal with a wet dish rag, which forms a gasket.
5. Place in an oven at 350F degrees for 15 minutes.
6. Remove and let it sit for 15 minutes.
7. Pour the rice out on a serving dish. Flatter is better. Taller is worse.

Notice that this approach only presumes you have some aromatic vegetables, rice, butter and fluid. What those ingredients are is open to your own creative imagination. We are talking about approach to cooking, not a list of ingredients, per se. The absolute key is that you sauté first, use less water, and then finish in the oven. That is the definition of the Pilaf method: Sauté first, use less water, finish in the oven.

This doesn't mean everybody follows the rules or even knows what they are. Certainly, I was not aware of the rules as I broke them 300,000 times. I thought you simply sauté first, then cover and boil. I also used too much water.

Alton's approach was fascinating for several reasons.

1. It seems to be the perfect case for a Lodge 5 quart cast iron Dutch oven.
2. I have never seen anyone stick a dish rag in the oven.
3. I recently had an experience with rice in a pressure cooker that suggested some cooking methods require less water.
4. I have recently had many experiences with Paella which indicate that more water is necessary for this cooking method.
5. The list of ingredients Alton used, including fruits and nuts was quite intriguing. This is a very interesting counter-point to Paella, which never includes any fruits or nuts.
6. Another important difference between Paella and Pilaf is that Paella includes various types of meats. Pilaf does not include any meat. Pilaf is a side dish for meat.

So I chose the following list of ingredients.

Soffritto

1. Carrot
2. Celery
3. Shallots
4. Yellow bell pepper
5. Red Bell pepper
6. Garlic
7. Ginger coins.

Ingredients

1. 3 cups of Sona Massouri rice from India
2. 18 oz of Chicken broth
3. 12 oz of hot water

Spices

1. 1 table spoon of Kosher salt
2. 1 teaspoon of Turmeric
3. couple of grinds of fresh cracked white pepper corns
4. 1 ounce of California extra virgin olive oil
5. 1 tablespoon butter.
6. Way too damn much Spanish Saffron

The cooking approach was interesting.

1. Place the dutch oven on the stove top and cranked up to high. This is only 8,000 btu on my stove, so don't be impressed by the heat.
2. Drop my 1 teaspoon of turmeric on the dry iron and heat it up. This is what all the Indians do. You wake the turmeric by heating it on dry iron.
3. Drop the butter on top of the turmeric and melt it. This forms a type of rue.
4. Dropped the soffritto on into the rue of turmeric and butter.
5. Sweat the vegetables.
6. Drop in the rice, and stir. Continue until the rice begins to brown a bit, and you get a strong nutty aroma.
7. I poured about 4 ounces of hot water into a ramekin, I tried to pull out a few threads and place them in the ramekin. A tumble weed of saffron fell in the ramekin. Lesson learned: extract your saffron with a pair of tweezers. Do it over a very dry surface. Let the saffron diffuse and turn the water golden yellow.
8. Drop the Saffron water in the pot first. Rinse out the ramekin with the remaining water and chicken broth, as you pour them on the rice. Don't loose any saffron goodness.
9. Stir it up, and discard your stirring utensil
10. Wet down a dish rag.
11. Place the rag over the mouth of the Dutch oven.
12. Seal with the lid. Rotate the lid about 5 or 10 degrees to make sure you have a tight gasket.
13. Place in the oven for 15 minutes.
14. Remove and let it sit for 15 minutes.
15. Dump it on a large serving tray, and spread it out.
16. I added dried black currants (from my Spotted Dick episode) and Golden Raisins (Sultanas--also from the Spotted Dick episode). I mixed those in thoroughly.
17. I drizzled with California Extra Virgin olive oil
18. I sprinkled with a little Kosher Salt
19. I cracked a little more white pepper over the top.

I was pissed off over the fact that I used too much saffron and forgot the bay leaves, and the pistachios, but the rest of the process was surprisingly golden for a first run. The results were not only edible, not only delicious, but damn near perfect. My guests were left wondering why I didn't consider this a perfect run. I have to say, I wondered to myself how bay leaf would improve the situation. I believe Pistachios would help. Nuts are great.

I have to say that the Sona Massouri rice was perfectly cooked. It was not to dry, not too wet, not sticky, not too soft, not too hard. It was perfectly done. Whilst I can tinker with the list of ingredients, the methodology is essentially perfect. No adjustments in the cooking process are necessary or beneficial.

I tinkered with the notion of sweating the vegetables in the oil, removing them, then sauté the rice in butter, put them back together and go. This would allow me to brown the rice a bit more. Still, I am not sure this would be a better approach. I am uncertain whether this would yield a better product.

It's hard to improve on Alton's method here. I highly recommend it.

Apple Pie

So last night I took my second swing at the Alton Brown version of the good 'ole American apple pie. The results look good. I don't yet know how they taste. Why is that, you ask? Well let me tell you about it.

The fully-authentic American apple pie is not fast food. I now scoff at the Bullet Express infomericials which seem to indicate that you can whip-up an apple pie quickly. Bullshit! You may get some crust with some apple in it, but this is hardly a classic american apple pie. The real thing takes time. Considerable amounts of time. What does the time table look like?

1. After whipping up the crust dough, you need to put it in the frige for two hours. I do mine over night in the frige. It turns out much better that way.
2. You need to peel and slice your 3.5 pounds of apples. This is a laborious process. You can get a partial short-cut by using a good apple slicer which automatically cuts the apple into 12 equal slices, however, this doesn't really save that much labor. Slicing apple is the easiest part anyhow. The apple slicer is mostly used for consistency of thickness, not time savings.
3. You have to place your apple wedges in a colander, sprinkle 2 or 3 ounces of sugar on them, and allow 1.5 hours for "apple collapse". The sugar basically sucks large amounts of apple juice out of the slices. This juice should be allowed to drain into a mixing bowl... you'll need it later. If you skip this step, the wedges will expand like crazy in the heat of the oven. The result will be the dreaded pie-dome, which is not good eats.
4. An absolute minimum of 2 hours after start-time, you can begin assembly. Believe me, it will take longer than that. If you are assembling anything short of 3 hours after start-time, you probably skipped a step or did something wrong.
5. The next step is to roll out your dough. For me, this has been the most challenging portion of the show. I hate wax paper. I haven't owned any in 20 years. Believe me, you need wax paper. Next time, I am buying wax paper. Pie dough is not like pasta dough. It does not hold together well. There isn't much gluten there to hold it together. If you glutenize your flour, you will get tough--not flaky--pie crust. That ain't good eats. The problem is that good pie dough, rips and tears and falls apart under little stress. The answer is rolling in wax paper... that has been flowered... in rice flour... not wheat.
6. Then you must assemble the ingredient for the filling. Alton Brown recommends your sugared, collapsed apple wedges, apple jelly, apple cider, salt, tapioca, lime juice, more sugar, and the Grains of Paradise. More about that later. No fucking Nutmeg. No fucking cinnamon. No fucking cloves. No fucking Allspice. You may use Caraway as an alternative, but this is not recommended. Toss it all together in another mixing bowl, stick your Pie Bird dead-center, and pack your filling into your pie crusted-tart pan. More about the Pie Bird later. More about the Tart Pan later.
7. Slap your wax-paper cover of pie crust over the top, poking the Pie Bird's little head out of the middle, seal it good.
8. You need to reduce the apple juice you got from your "apple collapse" in a sauce pan--or plain pan--down to a jelly glaze. This takes 10 or 15 minutes under low heat. Get out a nice barbecue brush, and brush that glaze onto your pie crust. This sugar will caramelize on your crust, and give you some nice brown flavors.
9. The first time I did pie, I used my regular gas-oven. I set the temp at 400 degrees, extra-high because my oven sucks, and cooked it for 50 minutes. It didn't work out so well. The whole pie was under-done. My regular oven does not hit or maintain its target temperatures well at all. This is why I bought a NewWave Oven Pro in the first place. Last night, I dropped my loaded tart-pan inside my NuWaveOven Pro for 50 minutes at 90% power. It looks like it worked out extremely well. The crust seems very flaky and I got a very nice browning effect. Remember color = flavor. You want lots of nice brown caramel flavors. I should have known a convection infrared oven would kick-ass in this application. A lot of bakers absolutely demand convection ovens.
10. Once you do that, you set the pie out to cool for no less than four (4) hours. If you skip this step, the whole frickin' thing will fall apart into rubbish as you slice it. It will still taste good, but you will be eating hot apple cobbler. They call it apple cobbler because to you cobbled it down before it was ready. As Alton says, your patients will be rewarded.

So reckon 3 hours before you can begin assembling. One hour to assemble, if you are fast. One hour to cook. Four hours to cool. We're talking about a 9 hour project to make just one fucking pie. Better make two while you're at it. Now I remember vividly how my grandmother used to get up early on Thanks Giving day and start the pies. I know why she did this now.

I made my pie last night. I let it cool over night. It got more than 4 hours of cooling. It was ready to eat this morning, but I didn't want to slice into it. Apple pie for breakfast just doesn't seem right to me. I want steak and eggs. I put my pie in the frige to cool some more. It's going to be great tonight.

So I deviated from Alton's program in a couple of key ways:

1. I put some poppy seeds in the pie crust mix. Poppy seeds are good. They add a lot of flavor, and they do contain those narcotic opiod alkaloids known as morphine, codeine, thebaine, and papaverine. That is not a joke. They really do. Old people eat poppy seed baked goods all the time. They do so for because of their arthritis. I have advanced osteo-arthritis in my knees. You don't get much of the good stuff in poppy seeds, but every little bit helps.
2. I refused to settle for just the Grains of Paradise in my pie. I like a little cinnamon, Allspice and Caraway in my apple pie. I hate cloves. No cloves. I therefore ground up a blend of these spices in my Magic Bullet. It worked like a sonofabitch the first time. The pie was very fragrant, and it had a lot of flavor. I was a bit more conservative with the dosage this time. I wanted subtly. There is a synergistic effect here. Be cautious.
3. I cannot find Apple Jelly anywhere on the frickin' local market. This really pisses me off. No, Whole Foods does not have it. Trader Joe's doesn't either. Neither does Gelson's. Neither Sur Le Table. Neither does Bristol Farms. If you want Apple Jelly, you can make it yourself. Therefore, I substituted Apple Butter instead. There doesn't appear to be any negative consequences from this substitution. It works fine.
4. I like a mixture of corn starch and tapioca as my thickening ingredients. Maybe I am just a poor-boy, but I was raised on corn starch, and it tastes better to me. Tapioca is a bit funky.
5. Of course, the NuWaveOven Pro is not precisely as per the SOP. We'll see how it works out. It looked great.
6. I did not like the size of the full apple wedges. I cut them in half. A little smaller is a little better. You can pack more weight in there that way.

Otherwise, I did it the Alton Brown way. So now for a few of those key items Alton insisted on, and which I have never seen before:

1. The tart pan. This is a special pan with a wrinkly outer wall and false bottom. It has to be 10 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep. That is not easy to find. Sur Le Table came close, but no cigar. I had to order a pair of these items through Amazon.com. Both turned out to be different and excellent. One was aluminum and the other was titanium.
2. A Pie Bird is a ceramic (usually porcelain) little bird with his head stuck high in the air. It looks like something you might hang on a Christmas tree. The correct term in engineering vernacular is a steam vent. It belongs to a bygone era when people used to make everything ornate. I think it is a pretty cool throwback. If you don't use a Pie Bird, steam pressure will build inside your pie, and you will get either a pie dome, or a dripping mess. Sing a song of six-pence. Four and twenty black birds baked in a pie.
3. Grains of Paradise is a very strange little spice I never heard of before. Shortly after seeing the apple pie episode of Good Eats, I noticed Samuel Adams is brewing a beer with Grains of Paradise. It is also known as Melegueta pepper and Alligator pepper. It looks like pepper and tastes like pepper to me. I got mine from Whole Foods. I think Caraway tastes better. There is something a bit weird about pepper in an apple pie. I am a major fan of heat also. I am currently growing Naga Jolokia and Bhut Jolokia in my hydroponic garden. It doesn't get hotter than that. Even so, I find pepper in my apple pie weird.

About the Pie Crust

For me the most surprising and amazing aspect of the Alton Brown apple pie is the crust formula. Alton gave us the following items:

1. 12 oz (by weight) white flour.
2. 1 Tablespoon of sugar
3. 1 teaspoon of salt
4. 6 oz (by weight) of unsalted butter (1.5 sticks of Challenge)
5. 2 oz (by weight) of vegetable shortening (Crisco)
6. 3 oz of Apple Jack.

No water. No egg. Little gluten. That's the objective. You mix the dry ingrediants in your food processor. I have a KitchenAid which is decent. You add the butter slowly as it blends. You add the vegetable shorting. Finally, you pour in the Apple Jack. Your food processor will turn it into a dough ball.

As noted above, I added some Poppy Seeds.

Just what the hell is Apple Jack? It's not your childhood cereal, that is for sure. It is the original, and most preferred, alcoholic beverage of the founding fathers. George Washington used to brew it. Abe Lincoln used to sell it in his Tavern in Springfield. It doesn't get more American than that.

Apple Jack is basically Apple Brandy. It is mostly ethyl alcohol. Ethyl Alcohol does not combine with wheat protein to form glutens. There is still some water in that Apple Jack, but not much. Apple Jack adds apple flavor to the crust, and makes it light and flaky. This is the secret ingredient, the quintessential element, the missing 5th element of the apple pie.

The 6th Element

I put the 6th element into the crust with the Poppy Seeds. Ethyl alcohol has some interesting interaction effects with Opiates. Some fools crush Vicodin tablets and drink them with Scotch Whiskey. The ethyl alcohol is an accelerator of the hydrocodone. They call this "dose dumping". This puts all of the hydrocodone into your blood stream immediately, triggering a bigger reaction.

I'll tell you what happens when you bake Poppy Seeds in a pie crust with Apple Jack tomorrow. You see, Alton Brown is not the only sonofabitch around here who knows something about chemistry. I am perfectly capable of adding some wrinkles here you just can't and won't believe.

You see! This is how I stay out of trouble. There are no Kevin Ellison stories with me because I stay home and bake apple pie. There are no Sean Payton stories with me, because I am busy baking apple pies. There are no Gloria James Delonte West stories with me, because I am home in the evenings baking apple pie.

Now I just need to invite Eva Mendez and/or Paz Vega over for a slice.