Oysters Florentine(ish) Linguine

Oysters Florentine As Prepared for Pasta:

• Chop up a couple of slices of bacon into little bits.  I always remove the biggest chunks of fat on the ends.
• Sauté them in a pan with tall sides.  (You need the tall sides to hold in the spinach until it wilts down.)
• When they’re a little brown and not too crispy yet, add some butter and a little olive oil.
• Toss in some finely chopped garlic, 2 or 3 cloves.
• Goldenbrownify.
• Add some red pepper flakes.
• Add a hefty dose of moderately chopped spinach.
• Stir.
• Salt.
• Now, you’ve already thawed out the frozen oysters that you bought last week.
• Because you thawed them in a bowl of water, you have some oyster water in a bowl.
• Pour just a little of that water into the sautéing spinach.  Don’t put in too much, just help it get some steam going and deglaze the crud that the bacon left on the bottom of the pan.
• Dump in your thawed oysters.
• Sauté for a minute or so.
• Pour in heavy cream.
• Stir.
• A squeeze of lemon juice would be good.  But, the closest thing I had was rice vinegar, and it was good.  Just don’t overdo it.
• Now, I’m pretty sure Oysters Florentine should properly have a Swiss sort of cheese, Gruyère or something.
• I didn’t have that.
• I did, however, have some really fantastic cheddar so good you’d never guess it’s related to “cheddar”, as in the orange stuff that covers “taco dip”.
• So, I grated in a little of that (white) cheddar.
• I also grated in some cheap Parmesan, as in not-very-pungent Parmesan, about double the amount of the chichi cheddar.
• Stir in a small dose of hot sauce, as in Co-op Image Hot Sauce.
• Simmer until you get an Alfredo-like consistency.
• Stir in a bunch of dried parsley.  Fresh if you’ve got it…
• Season.

Apple & Sage Roast Chicken, Ceasar Salad, Mashed Sweet Potatoes

The Chicken:

• I brined my chicken for a few hours.  I’ve been taken in by too many crappy supermarket chickens.  If you have a fresh chicken, however, brining isn’t necessary before roasting.
• Preheat the Oven to 325°F.
• Dry your chicken.
• Run your hand under the skin to separate it from the meat.  You may need to trim some of the skin around the bottom end opening in order to get in to the area around the thighs.  But, you should be able to separate skin on the front, back, and even the drumsticks without tearing or removing anything else.
• Sweat a hefty amount of finely chopped sage and some garlic in olive oil.
• When the sage and garlic are sufficiently cooked, melt about a 1/3 of a stick of butter into it.
• When the butter is melted strain it into a small bowl.
• Take the garlic and sage from the strainer and rub it all into the meat under the skin, all over the chicken.
• Dice up some apples, enough to stuff the chicken with.  I have some type of baking apples I’d never heard of until I went to a pick-your-own orchard last weekend.
• Stuff the apples into the chicken.  (You’re not going to eat them.  And if you try to, make sure they’ve been heated well enough to kill anything the chicken juices may add to them).
• Brush the outside of the entire chicken with the butter.
• Put the chicken in a pan with a rack.  (I don’t own a rack, I use the burner grates from my stove top.)
• Start with the breast up.  Well, you’re going to flip the bird a few times.  All that matters is to finish breast up because that’s where it’s best to have the crispiest skin.
• Roast for a half of an hour.
• Then flip your bird.
• Roast for another half of an hour.
• Flip your bird again and raise the oven temperature to 400°F.
• The bird should be breast up now.  That helps it self baste while the raised temperature renders the fat.
• After about 20 minutes (I stopped watching the clock), flip the bird breast down.
• Baste.
• Roast until the skin looks brown enough to be good.
• Baste as often as you can be bothered to do so.
• After another 20 minutes or so, flip the chicken breast up.
• Continue basting until a thermometer thrust into the chicken’s breast as if you were trying to stab it in the heart reads 160°F.
• Take the chicken out of the oven and let it rest until you’re too hungry to care about “resting” any more.
• Remove the apples and carve away.

Caesar Dressing:

• Put two egg yolks in a blender.
• Add two small garlic cloves, pre-chopped sufficiently to allow your blender to deal with it.
• Add a splash of hot sauce.  I use Co-op Image Hot Sauce, it’s smoky and delicious.
  
• Squirt in two teaspoons or so’s worth of mustard.
  
• Also add a ½ teaspoon or so of Worcestershire sauce.
• Put in 4 or 5 anchovy fillets, such as those that come in a jar packed with oil.
• Crank up the blender until everything is liquefied.
• Keep the blender running on a speed that won’t throw up a huge mess during the next few steps.
• Very slowly drizzle in about a ½ a cup of olive oil.
• Assuming everything has remained emulsified, continue…  (if not, panic, add more egg yolk, and whisk in a bowl.)
  
• Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon.
• Add about a tablespoon of wine vinegar.
• Add a teaspoon or two of balsamic vinegar.
• Sprinkle in a double handful of grated Parmesan cheese.
• Grind in some black pepper.
• Turn off the blender.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes:

• I would like to hereby make a culinary stand to say that the only time sweet potatoes are better with sugar in them is when they’re served for dessert.  They’re already called “sweet”, you know?
• Peel and chop up your sweet potatoes.
• Put them in a pot with just a little bit of water.  The truth is that they already have plenty of water in them.  But, adding a little to the pot helps the sweet potatoes get started cooking without the ones on the bottom of the pot burning.
• Cover the pot and turn the heat on medium.
• Once things come to a boil, stir the sweet potatoes every few minutes to prevent burning on the bottom.
• When they readily fall apart while your stirring, they’re done.
• Mash them.
• Add salt, pepper, and ground ancho chile flakes.
• Stir in some milk, to whatever consistency you like.

Pork Tongue Tacos, Jicama Salad

The Pork:

• Rinse the pork tongues.
• Place them in a large pot of boiling water with enough vinegar to make a noticeable vinegar aroma.  This is for the likelihood that you bought the tongues in a place that doesn’t sell much of them, and that they’re kind of stinky – which is no big deal.  But, fresher tongues don’t have any funky smell.
• Boil them for 15 minutes.
• Remove the tongues and dump out the water.
• Put the tongues back in the pot and cover them with salted water.
• Bring the water back to a boil.
• Simmer for a really long time, until the tongues seem relatively tender.
• Take the tongues out and allow them to cool to a temperature you can tolerate touching.
• Trim off the rough skin on top, especially at the back end, and remove the junk from the bottom.
• Cut the tongues into small cubes.
• Place in a bowl and marinate them with salsa, tasty salsa.

The Salsa:

• Go to a Latino market or into the “ethnic” section of your local big box grocery, assuming it carries Mexican items other than those by Ortega and Mission.
• Buy one small can, not jar, never jar, of salsa in a green can.
• Buy one small can, never a jar, of salsa in a red can.
• Stir the contents of those cans together.
• I promise you that it will taste better than any “white people’s” jar of salsa you’ve ever dipped Tostitos into.

Making Tacos:

• Dice a tomato.
• Finely chop some cilantro.
• Dice a little bit of onion.
• Crumble some hard, crumbly Mexican cheese, such as that which comes in a package labeled “queso duro”.
• Heat your tortillas thoroughly.  In case you’re from the Midwest and not Chicago, I’m here to tell you that burned tortillas are better than raw ones.  I don’t know why so many of my Caucasian peers seem to like doughy tasting tortillas.
• Oh, and if you buy Mission or remotely big brand looking tortillas in a non Hispanic market, they’re going to taste doughy no matter what you do.  Rule of thumb: buy tortillas in a store that caters to Central Americans.  If you live in an area with a lot of Hispanics, and there are tortillas in more than one section of your supermarket, the cheaper ones will be better.  Also, if you buy tortillas and they don’t go bad within a few days, even in the refrigerator, the kind you bought weren’t very good.
• By now, your tongue meat is probably cold.  Reheat it in a frying pan as if you were cooking raw beef stir fry.
• Put everything on top of the tortillas.  It looks better if you add the cheese last.

Jicama Salad:

• Put a some olive oil in a bowl.
• Add a moderate dose of finely chopped cilantro.
• Drizzle in some white wine vinegar.
• And a big spoonful of honey too.
• Plus some ground cumin.
• Salt.
• Pepper.
• Red pepper flakes.
• Stir.
• Peel and julienne some jicama.  Put it in the bowl.
• Slice up a few radishes and throw them in too.
• Mix in some greens.  I used the leaves from the radishes, which have a strong flavor that can fill up the blandness of jicama.
• Toast some crumbled up almond slices.  Mix them in with the salad.  Actually, you could use any nut or any kind of squash seed.  Almonds are what I had.