Culinary Side Effects

Some dishes have side effects that impact different people differently. My last blog was about a wonderful ham and bean soup. My wife Susan reminded me that while she loves bean soup, it doesn’t love her. There is that wonderful rhyme from our youth:

Beans, Beans good for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart!

For Susan this is the truth, fortunately for me, not so much.

There is the wonderful campfire scene from the movie Blazing Saddles. The cowboys are sitting around the campfire eating their plate of beans for dinner and soon break out in a chorus…

Blazing Saddles Campfire Scene.

I was once driving from Frankfurt Germany to Paris with two business associates. One was from east Texas and the other, the South of France. It was a long drive and as we started to get sleepy. I decided to ask questions to keep the conversation flowing and keep me awake. I asked what were the standard meals that your mother made for you growing up? The Frenchman started out explaining that every day started with a croissant and confiture and he went on from there. The Texan countered with: “We were poor and we had beans for breakfast, beans for lunch and if we were lucky, beans for dinner”. All I could think of was the scene from Blazing Saddles. In the closed environment of that car, I was just glad the Texan’s dietary fare had evolved.

Beans are not the only cause of a certain unwanted culinary side effect. Back in the 1990’s the food industry went to great lengths to develop fat replacers. A few of these replacers had the same effect of those good old beans. Olestra was the branded sucrose polyester that the FDA required a warning on the label that said: “Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and or loose bowels”. It didn’t have the same marketing impact as the warning on Viagra.

At Kraft we had a friend that worked for a company in Germany that had developed a polyol based fat replacer. My friend had an array of baked goods made with his miracle fat replacer that we sampled during a morning session. That afternoon we had a meeting in the R&D lab. I noticed that one by one the Kraft people kept walking away from the meeting table. Again, it was like that scene from Blazing Saddles. I finally confronted my German friend telling him what the rest of the group was too polite to say. To which he responded: “You Americans are too sensitive, you need to be strong…” Strong or not, there certain culinary side effects that some of us need to avoid.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Leftovers Inspiration

It is the week after Thanksgiving and you have a gift: LEFTOVERS. There gets to be a point where you get a little tired of the goodies in their original form. What I usually do is get creative. My creations can make a great item for a Supper Club dinner party, or MORE LEFTOVERS!

One of the cornerstones of the Kenny family Thanksgiving is my Char Roasted Ham.. The original dish falls into the category of:

Looks Like Hell, Tastes Like Heaven.

I char roast the ham in a cast iron skillet on a gas grill. Some would say, the ham looks awful because a good coating of char. Scrape off the outside char bits and you get a wonderful char roasted flavor throughout the ham. I once made this ham at my sisters and my doubtful nephew kept coming up to me saying: Uncle Paul, your ham is burning. I kept explaining that it is supposed to cook that way and he kept coming back to me complaining that I was burning the ham. My fondest memories of that Thanksgiving was my nephew and his brother fighting over the leftover charred ham bits after the meal. Leftover Char Roasted Ham makes a wonderful starter for a bean soup. I use the ham bone and a healthy portion of chopped ham as the cornerstone of the dish.

My gold standard for bean soup goes back to the soup I had at Firestone Country Club in Akron Ohio. My buddy Len Lewin used to be a member there. A few years back, Len took a group of us to Akron to play the iconic golf courses. As we finished our first nine holes, Len asked me if I liked bean soup. I responded that I did, but that it wasn’t my favorite. He told me that I had to try the Firestone CC bean soup. He was right, it was better than any bean soup I have ever had and it has become the cornerstone of my bean soup recipe.

LEFTOVER HAM AND BEAN SOUP RECIPE

With the wonders of the Internet, I was able to find two recipes for Firestone CC bean soup. I have used these as a base with a few of my own variations. The biggest differences are that I use my leftover ham bone and a healthy portion of leftover char roasted ham. I also double up on the roux using a butter based roux (as called for in the FCC recipe) and a bacon fat based roux. This combination gives the soup added flavor and texture.

The recipe is great for 3 reasons:

It makes a wonderful first course or even a meal
It uses a lot of leftovers
It makes a dish with leftovers that can be re-gifted.

An item based in leftovers has to be pretty good to be re-gifted. Trust me, this one will be well received by the lucky beneficiary. The beauty of this leftover-based dish is that it is a real crowd pleaser and because you can give it away, there is no problem with additional leftovers.

Thanksgiving Stress

This blog is from my “Best of” or Worst of” list as it is a repeat of a blog that is a few years old. Jenn is well past her “first holiday meal” jitters. Now she has to handle keeping an eye on Max (5) and Dylan (19 months) as well as last minute Kraft Mac & Cheese prep for the boys. Enjoy!

Cooking your first holiday meal for the family involves a lot of stress. The key to success is the same as preparing for a large supper club gathering. Get as much prepared in advance as possible. Or as a well-trained chef’s would say: “Have your Mise En Place ready”.

Check out the blog on Mise En Place

When my daughter cooked her first Thanksgiving meal for her in-laws Helene and Rick she was definitely stressed. She wanted it to be perfect. Jenn also wanted all traditional dishes she had grown up with. She had watched the meal made lots of times, but to it all herself was a different challenge.

The other key is to use an external read thermometer. The biggest challenge is to get the turkey (or other protein) cooked on time and not overcooked. My father claimed that my mother would intentionally keep the family waiting because by the time she served the holiday dinner everyone was so hungry even shoe leather would taste good.

The beauty of external read thermometers is that you can monitor the progress of your roast without opening the oven every 15 minutes. Opening the oven basically shuts down the cooking process as it lets the heat out of the oven. So if you are anxious for the roast to get cooked, by opening the oven to check a traditional thermometer you are delaying when you can serve your meal.

The most common failure for a holiday meal is to overcook the roast. The classic example of that is depicted perfectly in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The scene where Clark slices the overcooked turkey is classic. Again the answer is an external read thermometer

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

The reality is that most of the holiday meal can be cooked in advance and just warmed up at the last minute. Our family has come up another way to insure that you are in no hurry for the main course to be served. We have a New England Clam Chowder as a first course. This chowder is fantastic. It is also fantastically filling. A serving of this and you are in no rush for the rest of the meal.

Jenn’s first holiday meal on her own was a big success. She got an “A” for Mise En Place (See her notes below) and use of an external read thermometer. She wowed Helene and Rick with her New England Clam chowder. Getting the gravy to thicken presented a bit if a challenge, but with Helene’s help and a few glasses of red wine even that turned out fine. And, besides after the chowder no one was going to starve to death.

These are Jenn’s notes posted on the refrigerator as a reminder. There is something about “apples and trees”, as this is something her father would do. I always make notes as it works like a security blanket. If I have it written down, I don’t need to worry about forgetting it.