The Lascivious Snape vs. Alton Brown: EveryDayCook

Unless the Mrs. or Baby Snape got to them, I think I have 3 overripe bananas at the homestead right now. I feel this recipe calling my name. (no chocolate chips for me though. Nuts, though. Maybe nuts.)

I made the banana bread on a bit of a whim on Friday. I had a previous go-to recipe that was just fine, but I think I'll make this one again.

The oatmeal was a nice addition, though I'm not 100% sure how much of a difference toasting it made? Though it wasn't a huge pain. Didn't really dirty my mini food chopper too much.

I lack a stand mixer. I have a decent but old hand mixer and an arm. So I did the heavier-duty mixing with the hand mixer and the rest by hand. The bread turned out dense but not too heavy with a nice crumb and a pleasant oaty taste. I also added chocolate chunks, and it was splendid.

LazBro my slices held together pretty well; I actually turned the oven off a hair early (around 45 minutes) and let it sit in there, cooling, while I took the dog out.

Also, I blitzed my oats in my mini food chopper, since I do not own a proper food processor; it worked fine. I'm betting an old blade coffee grinder would work too.

It does irritate me to dirty extra bowls unnecessarily, but I don't bake a ton, so it's OK.

Growing up, one of my all time favorite meals was stroganoff over egg noodles. My mom would use either meatballs or strips of beef as the meat. Glazed carrots on the side were a must. I had one of those moments in the past few years of "Hey, I also cook now, so why not make that?" and the wave of nostalgia that hit me on that first bite. It's turned into a favorite family meal; the kids will even eat the mushrooms in there (won't be adding goat cheese since my wife hates it).

#19 - Grilled Grilled Cheese

Alton Brown first introduced this recipe to the world on his woefully under-delivering YouTube channel (which for a brief stretch in 2014 was actually a promising successor to his TV show - now he mostly uses it to plug his tours). It's a cute idea: as we all know, grilled cheese sandwiches are not actually grilled. They're griddled. So why not make a grilled cheese that's actually grilled? And while you're at it, why stop at grilling the sandwich when you could actually grill the cheese?!  A truly grilled, grilled cheese. 

See ... cute. But it's also finicky as hell. As written the recipe calls for a full charcoal grill setup, which strikes me as excessive for the recipe's 10 minutes of total cook time, and also for the cook to fashion two cheese-grilling vessels out of long metal spatulas and wasteful lengths of aluminum foil. Here's how it goes in the book: set up the grill for two-zone cooking (direct and indirect). Through a combination of folds, jigger a high-walled aluminum boat around the business end of a metal diner-style spatula - and actually, this recipe makes two sandwiches, so go ahead and make two boats. Spray them down with oil. Load up the spatula/boat things with a combination of cheddar, gruyere, smoked paprika and mustard powder and grill over indirect heat until melty, being careful not to overheat and break the cheese. Butter some good bread and grill it on the direct heat to crusty. When the cheese is good and melted, shlorp the cheese onto the toast, cover to make a sandwich, wrap in foil and give it a last couple minutes on indirect heat. Eat.

Well, I don't have the right kind of spatula for this endeavor, much less two of them (and actually I'm feeding three, so...), and I don't particularly want to get a charcoal setup going with no others uses planned for it. Here's what I did: I grated up a bunch of cheese, close to the recipe's recommendations, and I loaded up my 10-inch cast iron skillet. Got a propane grill going for two-zone cooking and loaded in the skillet. While the cheese got melty, I grilled off the bread as intended. Once it was good and bubbly, I scooped the cheese from skillet to bread, lidded it, did the final cook through in the foil per the recipe, and served.

What is good? Of course it was good! It's grilled cheese! Was it the worth the methodology? Absolutely not.

I don't know ... maybe the charcoal or the foil boats really would have made a flavor difference, but for me the end result is no different than I would have achieved in a pan, and for less work. I guess one upside is that because it's grilled, there's very little clean up. No grease spatters on the counter. 

My estimation is that it's a perfectly fine recipe that makes a perfectly fine sandwich, but at its heart it's more clever than practical. It fails the "everyday" approach of the book by being nominally more difficult than making a grilled cheese the traditional way.

No image of mine, but here's the video:

#20 - Greek Chicken Salad
I've been cooking a lot heavy stuff lately, so when I saw an opportunity to whip up a healthy version of chicken salad and finally return to my project, I had to go for it. Plus, I had half a block of feta on hand - it's one of the few "fancy" cheeses we like that Mrs. Snape can eat right now - so really any recipe that uses feta is a winner for me.

And a winner it is. Alton Brown's Greek chicken salad ditches the mayonnaise in favor of plain Greek yogurt, which is a tactic I've declared to be unsatisfactory in the past. But here the base is amped up with so many strong secondary flavors that it really delivers. Take your base of yogurt and add chunks of white meat chicken (or leftover rotisserie chicken), chopped red onion, chopped kalamata olives, chunked feta cheese, chopped tomatoes, chopped flat leaf parsley, lemon juice, salt, pepper and thyme. The recipe also calls for chopped celery, because for some reason people like to ruin meat salads with celery ... I dunno, I left it out.

Give'er a mix then let sit in the fridge for at least an hour and up to 3 days. The recipe calls for it to be served in warm pita pockets, but I already had loaf bread on hand and didn't want to buy yet another type of bread, so instead I sliced up and toasted some bread and made fancy toasts. A little peppery arugula to give it some more nutrition. 

If you like that pungent, acidic punch of ingredients like feta, kalamata olives, and lemon juice, then this salad is for you. Bright and light, but satisfying too. I served 3 toasts each for Mrs. Snape and me, and I probably could have doubled my own order. They were great. Image below.

On the side...

#21 - Savory Greek Yogurt Dip
So the recipe above was Greek, because of the flavors. For this one the Greek refers only to the style of the yogurt. Real simple, mix plain Greek yogurt with lemon zest, flat leaf parsley, salt, pepper and either cumin or smoked paprika. I went with the smoked paprika, and then served it with carrot sticks, raw red and yellow bell peppers and raw cauliflower. I dunno. It's fine, but for me it lacked either a sweet element or a fat. It tasted good, but it wasn't satisfying. As I lamented in my link above, it tasted hollow. Honestly I just made this because so many ingredients overlapped with the recipe above, and I saw an easy opportunity to goose my numbers.

I admit my project has hit the skids. It's not that I don't like doing it - I do! - but when I return to the book to plan my next adventure, I find myself flipping idly through the pages, unimpressed by what I see. Tossing out the stuff I'm unlikely to ever make, such as seafood, cocktails and "snack" type food, I'm not left with many recipes that inspire me. Now challenged to avoid bread or unneeded carbs, the selection pool dwindles further. I've still got 3-4 I really should try, but I'm now wondering if I shouldn't change books and start again. Do something more focused and thematic. Anyway...

#22 - Salisbury Steak
Salisbury steak is not a hip dish. I'm not sure I've ever had it, or even seen it, outside of a school cafeteria or frozen dinner. But in its provenance it's surprisingly on trend. Invented by physician James Henry Salisbury in the late 1800's, salisbury steak is one of the earliest dishes specifically engineered to promote a high-protein, low-carb diet for weight management. The dude might have been a cuckoo clock (what 1800's doctor wasn't?), but he beat Dr. Atkins by a full 70 years. (Though, ironically, the archetypal salisbury steak side dishes are mashed potatoes and pasta, which piss all over the good doctor's intentions).

To modern palates, salisbury steak carries the reputation of cheap, unrefined, low-class food. It's something you pull from the freezer after a hard day, not something you spend an hour of chopping, mixing, dredging, sauteeing and reducing to create. But Alton Brown asks, what if? What if you used high-quality meat, rethought the sauce and upped the vegetation (if only slightly)? What if you made it something to look forward to all day?

Well ... I couldn't tell you, because I failed. Or the recipe failed. I'm not sure. Alright, enough delay, let's talk about this thing:

Mix and season the highest quality 90/10 ground beef you can get, then form oblong patties and coat them in a thin dredge of AP flour and milk powder. Yep, I had to buy milk powder for this. Meanwhile, sautee diced onions in clarified butter. Once brown, bring on chopped cremini mushrooms, again cooking to brown and reduce. Remove the veg, add more butter, and sautee the beef patties on both sides until browned. You can go hot, because the goal is not to cook them through, just brown them off. Once brown, add the veg back to the pan, and then add a liquid base of milk, red wine and the flavoring packet from a package of beef ramen. Yep. Cover and cook on medium to thicken the sauce and cook the steaks through. That's it. 

As I read through the recipe, I looked for a catch. I thought ... acid from the wine, not a lot of fat, relatively high heat ... the milk could break. The milk did break. Instead of the luscious, burgundy red sauce I saw in the book, I had a broken oil slick with a few chop steaks swimming in it. But what's done is done, and dinner needs serving, so I moved forward. I dished up the steaks using a slotted spatula to get the mushrooms and onions while leaving the sauce behind.

And you know what? They were good. Despite the simple ingredient list, the steaks did take on some flavor beyond ground beef. Earthiness from the mushrooms and red wine, sweetness from the onion, and an immense beefiness maybe nudged along by the flavor packet. It was a failure - without the gravy can you even call it salisbury steak? - but it was surprisingly good eating. I'd like to try the recipe again with maybe a little cream subbing in for the milk. The extra fat should help keep things together. I'd probably also bring on some more flavor: herbs, Worcestershire, garlic, lots of options.

No picture this time. 

Yep. It instructs the cook to mix the milk, wine and ramen packet together and add all at once.

I'm not a cooking expert, but I knew enough to look at this recipe and realize that it lived on a razor's edge. This time, I got cut. I mean conceptually I love this: steak covered in a creamy red wine and mushroom sauce. Yes please. But I think if I'd just conceived of the idea and set about making it from scratch, I would have been more successful. Irony.

#23 - General's Fried Chicken

(Because generals are better than colonels ... right? I mean, you get it? I wonder if Alton is even aware he's borrowing a joke from the iconic 2002 Eddie Griffin vehicle Undercover Brother.)

I rarely deep fry chicken. I love deep fried chicken, because who doesn't, and I can deep fry a mean bird. But it's a mess, and it's a hassle, and it stinks, and the reasons not to really stack up. Further exacerbating my hesitation is the fact that I live 20 minutes away from some of the best fried chicken you or me or anyone will ever eat. But these last months I've felt bad about letting my column fall into disrepair, especially when there are still plenty of recipes in this book I'd like to make.

How'd we do this time?

Good. Very good. General's Fried Chicken differs from your standard fried chicken recipe in a couple ways: 1) no extended buttermilk soak, and 2) very few spices. Alton uses nothing more than salt, garlic powder and sumac, which he sprinkles on the chicken before treating it to an 8 hour air dry in the fridge. No 24-hour buttermilk bath. After the dry brine, buttermilk finally enters the party, but he adds a single egg and ... good southern boy that he is ... bourbon to the soak. Dip in the liquid mix, then immediately into a combo of AP flour and corn starch. He takes this step to task. The typical shake or dredge is not enough. Instead he demands you get both hands in there and really "jujj" the flour onto the chicken, really work it in. Then, lay it out on a rack and give it at least a 15 minute rest (and up to an hour!) before hitting the fryer.

The rest is standard fried chicken procedure: don't over stuff the fryer, and don't let your temp get too low.

For all its idiosyncrasies, the ultimate result was ... fried chicken. Beautifully crunchy and moist, if maybe a bit lacking in salt, but definitely satisfying. If there's a difference between a 24-hour soak in buttermilk, and a 10-second skinny dip in it, I suddenly don't know what it is.

Will I make it this way again? Eh, maybe, but even if it's not worse, it's not better either. Instead I'll probably do what I've always done when it comes to fried chicken: whatever I want. Whatever spices look good at the time, whatever brine I have to drop it in, whatever parts I have on hand, that's the fried chicken I'll make. Fried chicken isn't a recipe, it's an ethos.

(No image)

It's so true. Except for that rare craving to make my own traditional fried chicken, I'll pretty much stick to only doing it when I've got sauce in mind. Like Nashville Hot ... can't get that near my house outside of a KFC, and the one time I made it myself was pretty transcendent (if I do say so myself).

I just saw the discussion of salisbury steak - I also think the recipe is super fucking weird. Believe it or not, Rachael Ray's version is the one my mom uses and it's pretty good. I do believe Mom cuts the beef stock with red wine, though. There's no milk anywhere. It's simple, but surprisingly delicious.

I don't eat a lot of fried stuff in general, but we have Royal Farms in the Delmarva area and they're known for their fried chicken - but I think it's overpriced and not as good as Popeye's. At least it's on a lot of restaurant menus in Maryland, though, so you're likely to get good stuff when out and about.