Chicken Adobo

CHICKEN ADOBO

How do you say delicious in Tagalog?  ADOBO!  If you’ve ever been to a Filipino restaurant, you’ve noticed the unusual use of vinegar in the dishes.  Very inventive, very cool.  Adobo is a classic, traditional dish and there are thousands of different ways to make it.  Here’s mine.  Ordinarily I’d pump up the flavors with rice or coconut vinegar, but I wanted to use plain old generic and boring white vinegar here just to show that it too has culinary use!  And there’s not excuses, anyone can get white vinegar.

2 lbs chicken pieces
1 1/2 C white vinegar
1 C water
1/2 TBS peppercorns, whole
4 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly smashed
2 bay leaves
3/4 C soy sauce

In a big pot add your chicken pieces, vinegar, water, peppercorns, garlic cloves and bay leaves.  Turn on the heat and bring it up to a boil.  Cover with a lid, turn the heat down to low and let simmer for 20 minutes.  Add the soy sauce and continue simmering, lid on, for another 20 minutes.

At this stage you could eat the chicken.  It will be delicious.  But to take it a step further I love to brown the braised meat and reduce the sauce further.  Remove the chicken pieces from the pan and set aside.  Turn the heat on the pan to medium and let the sauce reduce and thicken.

While the sauce is reducing Heat up a sauté pan over medium high heat and add a couple tablespoons of oil (canola, peanut or my personal favorite OLIVE).  When hot, add the chicken pieces and brown each side well.

Hopefully you’ll time it all just right and you’ll have reduced the sauce by half just as you finish browning all the chicken.  Serve the chicken and the sauce together over rice and go crazy!

Balsamic Vinegar Reduction Watermelon and Feta

Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

Reducing balsamic vinegar is easy to make and delicious too.  I’ve seen it for sale at many gourmet shops and just laugh!  Use a cheap bottle of balsamic for this, certainly not a good quality aged one!

1 Cup of  balsamic vinegar

Put the vinegar in a non reactive pan and set on medium-high heat.  When it begins to boil, turn the heat down to medium so it’s a simmering.  The fumes coming off of the pot will be quite intense, so don’t take a big breath…might want to crack a window or turn on your oven’s vent fan.  Keep an eye on it, you don’t want it to burn.  After about 15 or 20 minutes the vinegar will have reduced significantly and it’ll be a thick and gooey syrup.

You can flavor this as you go.  Some folks throw in some orange or lemon peel, figs make a nice addition, even aromatic herbs like rosemary do the trick.  I usually keep it plain. If I decide I want a sweeter syrup I might add a little honey to thin it out after I’m done reducing it.

Using a whole cup will give you a pretty good amount of balsamic reduction.  It’ll keep for a LONG TIME covered in your refrigerator.  Cut the recipe in half if you just need a little.  It’s quite powerful and intense stuff–a little goes a long way.  It’s a real treat!  Add this to fruit salad, on top of strawberries, on roasted veggies or meats or salads…vanilla ice cream.  You can’t go wrong.

Upside Down Apple Cake

UPSIDE DOWN APPLE CAKE

Great fun here.  Upside down cakes are simple and impressive at the same time.  It’s really cool to make this for a dinner party and bring the dish out to your waiting guests and do the big reveal live at the dinner table.  You’ll be a hero!  Feel free to switch this up, you can use any fruit you wish…even pineapple, but get a fresh one please!

I highly recommend using a cast-iron skillet for this recipe.  You can make the caramel in it on the stovetop; bake the cake in it in the oven, and doing the big reveal in it is easier too.  Plus it’s traditional.  But if you don’t have a cast-iron skillet, any oven safe pan will work.  You could even use a cake pan or a pie plate, just make the caramel in another pan first and pour it in to coat the bottom.

CARAMEL

3 TBS butter
3/4 C light brown sugar
1 lb apples, sliced
2 TBS walnuts

Melt the butter in your pan on medium-low heat and stir in the sugar.  Keep stirring while the sugar begins to melt and turn into caramel.  BE CAREFUL!!!  Melted sugar is hotter than lava and will give you a severe burn (trust me), so do not touch it; be super careful.  Don’t worry if it’s not 100% perfectly smooth; you’ll be cooking this in the oven with the cake, right?  Right.  Turn off the heat and let the lava cool…now’s a good time to prep the fruit.

Take your apples and slice them.  You can go as thin as you want, but I kept mine a little chunky, maybe 1/4” slices or so…  When the caramel is cool and safe to handle (it will have hardened up a good bit too) place your apples on top of it. You can be random and sprinkle the slices all over or do a spiral like I did creating a whole in the middle.  I like filling that center with a small handful of walnuts, but that’s totally optional…you can add more fruit or something else like berries if you wish.  Just remember that this will be the top of the cake; everyone is going to see the pattern you make with your apples so…make it pretty!

CAKE BATTER

1 C sifted cake flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter (1/2 a cup), softened
3/4 C sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 C sour cream

PREHEAT your oven to 350° Fahrenheit

Add the flour, the baking powder and soda and the salt together in a bowl and give them a real good stir to mix thoroughly.  Please note that you need to sift that cake flour BEFORE you measure it out.

In a large bowl add the butter and the sugar and use an eggbeater or electric mixer (or standing mixer is best if you’ve got one) to beat until creamy for a few minutes.  Keep beating and add your egg until combined, add your vanilla and finally the sour cream.  Keep on beating and add the dry mixtures by thirds until combined.

Add the cake batter to the pan with the apples and caramel.  This batter is very thick and it’ll need some elbow grease to spread it out.  One of my tricks is to lightly wet my fingers and use them to help spread the batter…you can press it into the nooks and crannies of the apples.  The goal is to even it out, spreading all over the pan.  Got it?  Good.  Now bake it!

After about 25 to 30 minutes at 350° the “top” surface should be golden and an inserted toothpick will come out cleanly with no crumbs attached.  It’s done.  You can let this cool in the pan till you are ready to serve it up or just go for it, but be careful ‘coz that caramel is still as HOT AS HELL!  Don’t burn yourself…especially on the big reveal, which can get a little messy with all the hot caramel threads.

When you are ready to serve, run a butter knife around the edges and cover the skillet with a giant plate.  In one fast motion, flip the pan and tamp on the back of the skillet.  You should feel the cake drop.  If not TAMP it some more till you do.  Mentally cross your fingers and pull the skillet up and off and voila…UPSIDE DOWN CAKE!

Umami Roasted Tomato Pasta

UMAMI ROASTED TOMATOES

Easy!  Delicious!  Fun!  I love making this dish, it’s comfort food for me.  I usually take the recipe a step further than I did on the video and turn these tomatoes into a sauce all their own.  See below for that extra step.

Somewhere between the tomato, the soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and the charred flesh of the tomatoes and intense and deep umami flavor comes through!

2 lbs Roma tomatoes
2 TBS olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
1 tsp brown sugar
1 TBS balsamic vinegar
1 TBS soy sauce
Zest of a lemon

TURN YOUR BROILER ON!  If you don’t have a broiler (which would really stink) just put your oven on the highest heat.

Wash and quarter your tomatoes.  In bowl toss the tomatoes with all of the other ingredients.  Mix it up with you hands.  It’ll taste like a really good, funky salad dressing.  If you like to bring the heat, add a teaspoon of crushed chili flakes.

Put all of this in an oven safe pan and broil them for about 15 minutes.  Keep an eye on it though.  IF you have an adjustable broiler, keep the tomatoes a few inches away from the heat source.  You want for the tomatoes to cook in the juices AND brown (and even blacken) a little.  Roast them!

These tomatoes are great on their own, on top of pasta, on a pizza, on toasts, in a salad.  Shoot, anywhere you’d normally use a good tomato.  BUT they also make a great sauce and here’s my recipe for that:

UMAMI ROASTED TOMATO SAUCE

1 Batch of Umami Roasted Tomatoes
2TBS olive oil
2 cloves of crushed garlic
1/2 C minced shallots (or red onion)
1/4 C torn basil or arugula
1/2 C dry white wine
1/4 C halved brine cured olives like Kalamatas

Heat up a sauté pan over medium high heat, add the olive oil and when it’s heated chuck in the garlic and the shallots.  Use a wooden spoon to move things around and scrape the bottom of the pan.  Let these sweat and brown a little for about 3 minutes or so and add the torn herbs and the entire pan of the Umami Roasted Tomatoes, juice and all.  Pour in the white wine, stir and let all of the liquid reduce by about half.  Add the olives, stir it up and toss on a pound of cooked pasta–think penne.  I’d drizzle a little extra finishing olive oil and add some shavings of a nice pecorino cheese to this.  EAT IT UP!

Serves four.

Salmorejo – Gazpacho in Cordova

GAZPACHO

Can you say SUMMER?  Hell yes!  This is it, a cup of sunshine in a bowl!  Gazpacho is a  classic, Spanish tomato soup served cold.  It’s incredibly refreshing, raw, easy as pie and amazingly delicious.

Before old man Columbus brought the tomato back to Europe, Gazpacho was made with its other staple ingredients:  crusty old bread, olive oil, garlic, salt and vinegar.  Hmmm…maybe Columbus did some good after all?

My mother always added ice cubes to her gazpacho and I continue that tradition today.  I don’t know if I even have an exact recipe, this is a bit like making salsa…every time I do it, it’s a little bit different but always rocking good!

5 C of quartered fresh tomatoes
2-4 ice cubes
1/2 C stale, crusty bread crumbs
1 clove garlic
1 TBS sherry vinegar
1/2 C cucumbers, diced
1/2 C bell peppers, diced
1/2 C onions, diced
Extra virgin olive oil (LOTS–use more than you think you should!)
Salt and Pepper

Grab a blender or a food processor and put the first five ingredients in it and pulse it up.  I know some chefs who like to really puree this.  Me?  I like it to remain a bit of it’s chunkiness like a medium-ground salsa.

I love using heirloom tomatoes but anything will work…just as long as they are mega tasty!  As for the ice, if you have big honking cube you’ll only need 2 but if you’ve got smaller sized ice I’d jack it up to 4 cubes.  If you are opposed to ice, you can use a couple tablespoons of water.

Give this a taste.  You digging it?  I usually add the juice of a half a lemon and a generous amount of olive oil…I dunno, maybe a half cup?  If I’m feeling really Spanish I’ll go with a full cup or even more–yes, the Spanish really do LOVE the oliva. and some big pinches of salt and pepper.  I’m putting my trust and faith in you to taste this and adjust the seasonings your way.  You can do it!

My favorite way to serve gazpacho is to have little bowls of the diced cucumbers, bell peppers (use red or yellow ones) and onions.  I’ll also pass around a bottle of good finishing olive oil.  My guests can then choose how much or how little they want to float on top…you know, there’s always someone who doesn’t like raw onions!  Doing this makes the food and the meal more interactive, more hands on and fun.  I love it when people play with their food!

Hopefully you’ll love this so much it’ll become part of your summer repertoire.  It’s like the first snow of the season for me…every summer I celebrate the first gazpacho of the year and then I cry over my bowl of the last one in the autumn.

Serves six, with leftovers!