What did I cook this weekend.....

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Jamaican Beef patties with a hint of naga jolokia powder.

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Boston baked beans, Boston brown bread, and Boars Head franks.

Rancho Gordo beans.

Man that brings back childhood memories - B & M baked beans, spiced up with bacon and whatever else my mother put in them, B & M canned brown bread - open up both ends, push the bread "loaf" out of the can, slice into 1" thick rounds, and hot dogs, cut up just like that! Yum!
 
1 can Cream of ,chicken, celery or onion
1 can of no salt added chicken stock. (use the "cream of" can size amount)
1 package Williams chicken chilli mix
Mexican oregano, white pepper and cumin powder to taste
1 can of whatever white beans you like. I used cannellini beans. (DONT DRAIN IT)
About 10-16oz of chicken. I used a 10oz can and 1 roasted leg quarter leftover
1 small yellow onion
1-2 stalks celery
Handful of frozen corn. I used a white yellow mix.

Tiny can of diced jalapeno or mild green chiles (optional) DONT GET ONES WITH VINEGAR ADDED

Soften the chopped onion and celery with about 3 tbs of the fat/oil of your choice
Add the chicken stock and bring up to temp (good simmer)
Add the "Cream of --------_ and whisk it in good
Add any additional seasonings but its gunna need some cumin and oregano in my book
Add the chicken, beans and corn. The starch in the bean liquid should thicken it up nice.

This wont need to cook very long. Its a simple version but be careful not to get it too hot or the beans turn to mush. If your can beans have salt added you probably wont need to salt it either. The canned chicken is also high in salt. If you want to reduce salt even more....Skip the "Cream Of" Use a mix of heavy cream or Half&Half and additional chicken stock but add the cream near the end. I keep heavy cream powder around for stuff like this too. Works great.
 
Made a full sheet pan of nachos on parchment. Got this pulled smoked chicken from sams that is really good. Not pictured 505 green chilli, sour cream, salsa, homemade hot sauce, and refried beans. Would have been so much better with doritos and needed lettuce.
 
Flatbread Pizza with ricotta-alfredo sauce, fresh mozzarella, parm, roasted artichoke hearts, broccoli, fed onion, tomato, and bacon
 
So my wife and I have been working on cacio e pepe for a LONG time now. We've tried probably at least half a dozen recipes online, and found all of them to be inconsistent. With the exception of one attempt that hit the perfect consistency [cooked after some wine so we were perhaps a little tipsy], it's been all over the map.

But I think we've nailed it. We started with a recipe from Serious Eats (note: it's not 100% "traditional" in that it uses some olive oil and butter, not just water/pasta/cheese/pepper), but their method seemed to be a bit hit or miss regarding the creaminess. But just recently we found a recipe from Geoffrey Zakarian that had a perfect and easily-repeatable method--but the ratios were off.

So we basically combined them, tweaked the ratios to our liking, and it's damn perfect.

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I don't know whether I've mentioned it on this site, but my wife has a poultry allergy. Oddly the egg portion of it (which affected her as a child) is no longer an issue, but any grown bird protein will cause her major issues.

Now, normally that's not a problem. While chicken is in a LOT of things, and it cuts out many restaurant soup dishes made with chicken stock, I generally find that chicken is used as a protein in a lot of recipes because it's bland [particularly white meat] and because it's cheap. And vegetable stock is an excellent substitute for chicken stock in soup, risotto, etc.

So missing out on chicken really isn't missing much. Except, of course, for fried chicken. Fried chicken is its own little bit of heaven, and she has never had it.

So I made it for her! Everything about the method, the breading, the frying, etc was exactly as one would do for fried chicken, except the chicken. I used 1.5" thick medallions of pork tenderloin instead. Recipe was Serious Eats Southern Fried Chicken.

And it worked! What I ended up with was capturing the essence of what makes fried chicken wonderful, but without the use of any bird. It wasn't a perfect attempt (the pork itself bordered on overcooked), yet it was still freakin' delicious. Definitely going to be made again.

Pork tenderloin is more akin to the dark meat of the fried chicken, of course... But I prefer the dark meat pieces anyway.

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