Lobster Rolls

Lobsters are in season! Yay! I managed to score lobsters at the 99 Ranch Market for $5.99 a lb.... so I decided to make Lobster Rolls. Truth be told, I've never had a lobster roll before. So I don't know what they are supposed to taste like. All I can say was this sandwich was the best sandwich I've ever made. Hands down.
This recipe calls for pickled red onions.  Like all Mr. Keller's recipes. There's always something in the ingredients that has to made a day before.  I made the pickled red onions a few hours before... and they still tasted great. Next, I decided to boil the lobsters. All other times I've made lobster, I've just steamed them.  But after this, I might change the way I make lobsters all the time.  In ad hoc, Mr. Keller has you make a broth bath full.  I also noticed that most of the recipes on the internet don't include this step.  Not sure why, I think it made the lobster meat taste extra juicy.

So in the broth I chopped up leeks, fennel, onions, celery, thyme, tarragon, water and salt... I got the water warm, but not boiling. I added the lobsters head first and then said good bye and shut the lid. I'm always sad when I have to kill living animals... at least this time they didn't fight back.  I brought the brine up to a boil. Then removed the pot from heat and let the lobsters sit in the bath for about 15 minutes. then when I opened the top - voila! cooked lobsters.  Mr.keller has some directions on how to extract the meat.  He even had a helpful tip on how to get the meat out of the little legs.  By the time I was done picking these bad boys meat out, my hands felt raw and soggy.  Soooo over picking lobster meat.

The rest of the recipe was easy.  I chopped up all the ingredients and then mixed it with some olive oil mayo from the store.  For the buns I followed the directions by spreading butter on the buns and pan frying them.  That made the buns almost crispy and strong enough to hold the lobster fixings.

I also added some cherry tomatoes to the recipe. (Only because I like tomatoes in sandwiches).  Then while eating the sandwich I realized that the pickled red onions really went well with the lobster.... so then I added a ton more to my sandwich.

Will I ever make this again? Probably not. Even thought I scored lobsters for $5.99, I spent even more buying all the ingredients to just make the broth to cook them in... I think each sandwich came out to $10-14 each.  dang, imagine if you bought it at  a restaurant?? yikes!

Here is the recipe from ad hoc (that I copied from the internet.... because i'm too lazy to copy from the book)

Lobster Rolls

from Ad Hoc at Home

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs (about 4 cups) cooked lobster
• 3 to 4 tbs mayonnaise
• 2 tbs minced red onion
• 2 tbs finely chopped peeled celery
• 2 teas finely chopped tarragon
• 2 teas finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 2 teas finely chipped chives
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 lime
• 6 New England-style (top-split) hot dog buns or other hot dog buns
• 4 tbs unsalted butter, melted
• 1 celery stalk
• 1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated, rinsed, drained, and torn into pieces
• Pickled red onions

Preparation:

Put the lobster meat in a large bowl, add the mayonnaise, and stir gently to coat. Add the onion, celery, tarragon, parsley, chives, and salt and pepper to taste and stir gently to mix. Squeeze the lime over the salad and fold in the juice. Cover and refrigerate.

If using top-slit buns, brush butter on both outer sides of each bun. If using unsliced buns, slit them open from the top, then trim each long side to create a flat surface and brush with melted butter. If using regular hot dog buns, open the buns and brush with butter. Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat. Just before serving, put the rolls in the pan and brown the buttered sides.

To serve, peel the strings from the celery with a vegetable peeler. Using a Japanese mandolin or other vegetable slicer, or a sharp knife, slice the celery lengthwise into thin ribbons. Line each bun with a couple of small pieces of lettuce. Mound the lobster salad in the buns and garnish with the celery and picked red onions.

Hung Over Pan Roasted Chicken and Sweet Sausage

While shopping at whole foods this weekend, I noticed they had air chilled whole chicken for only 99 cents a lb and also sweet sausage for $2.99 a lb. I guess it was fate that I could make the Pan Roasted Chicken and Sweet Sausage recipe. In addition, I also had some light green bell peppers left over from my farm fresh delivery that I hadn't figured out how to use... so i figured i could use those instead of buying more red and yellow peppers.

Day one- I got the whole fryer chicken from whole foods, but this time I asked them to chop it up into 10 pieces for me. saved me about 15 minutes.  also, i think they did a better job than i would have done. i placed both the chicken and the sausage into the fridge. then I made the brine. the good news is that i have been cooking so many things out of ad hoc- that i didnt have to go out and buy anything to make the brine. yay! i also had replenished my salt source, so i was able to put exactly 5 oz of salt to get the right salty water mixture.   While that was cooling done, I decided to go to back to whole foods and do the wine tasting.
Fast forward a few hours, I came home with some new wines and a happy buzz. Saturday night was fun.  Before I went to sleep... I made sure I dumped the raw chicken into into its nice chilled brine bath. in 12 hours the bird would be ready.

Day Two, Sunday morning. Disaster. I woke up sooooo dehydrated that i really wanted to scrap the entire recipe. but i persevered and got the bird out of its bath and ready for its next phase " layout and air dry." After that was done, I started to roast the bell peppers. 30 minutes in the oven, and then into a bowl to cool.

Then i went out for brunch.

When i got home I was still feeling lazy and tired. Reading the recipe more coherently I realized that I also had to make a 1/2 cup of soffrito. wtf! so then I flip to the soffrito page and then realize its a homemade tomato sauce that takes about about 3 hours to make. oh my god. really? for a 1/2cup?!?!

So then i made a decision to deviate from the recipe. i blame it on my hang over. i feel actually really bad about it. but really, last week i made a home made tomato sauce with onions, tomatoes, and butter. so at least its similar to the soffrito recipe.
i peel and tear the bell peppers and then mix them into my own "soffrito" tomato sauce. let that stew for 30 mins.
Then i get some oil and start pan frying the chicken. about an hour later the chicken and sausages are done. i cut the sausages into 4 parts. i decided to wash the dutch oven i was using because the bottom was all black and looked gross.
Once semi clean i added my sauce, then chicken pieces and sausages pieces. i threw the dutch oven into the oven for about 10 minutes and viola- it was done!
The meal was delicious. the chicken was really juicy and the sausage was sweet. the only thing was that my bell peppers almost disintegrated into the sauce. i cant even really taste them. all that work... not sure if i had made the real soffrito, if it would have tasted better.
here is a zoomed pic (too bad the lighting sucks)

Too much chicken

Ok- so really I made the chicken September 16th.... but I didnt have time until now to start blogging about it. This next post is my horrible decision to make this ad hoc chicken for a fundraiser.

After patting myself on the back for being the most awesome fried chicken maker ever.... i decided that i would donate my time and energy to a fundraiser. I would make the fried chicken.  In the beginning the idea sounded great. easy peasy, japanesy. wrong, wrong, wrong.  The fundraiser was for about 20-25 people; about 60 pieces of chicken. omg.

This time I cheated, I decided that I wasn't going to buy whole chickens. Instead, I would by precut chickens.  next bad decision- buying chicken on sale..."griller packs". Griller packs included leg/thigh pieces as one, and also one whole breast piece.  It took me forever to slice out the drumstick from the thigh. then I had to de-bone the rib cage from the breast. The skin on the breast also didn't want to stay on... which sucks for fried chicken. The griller packs also had chickens that must have been on steroids... the drum sticks were huge! uh oh... the ad hoc recipe book has cooking times based on small pieces... not crazy overweight super sized pieces. this caused me to start stressing on cooking times. 12 mins? more? 15 mins?

brine time. the good news is that I made the brine ahead of time so that it would be cooled before i finished chopping the chicken. the bad news is that i ran out of mortons salt and had to use my sea salt. this goes back to page 55 (i think) where Mr. Keller talks about how salt is different. I started to get scared that I added too much salt. So the next batch of brine didn't have enough salt. I over analyzed the salting and then decided that the soak for the brine should be 8 hours instead of 12.  In the end, i think i should have left the chicken longer, but oh well, its a fundraiser, not a real restaurant.

the morning of the fundraiser i started to get worried that I would be able to fry all the chicken in time before the luncheon. when the oil went to 350 (yup! i went and bought a real candy thermometer) - i threw about 6 pieces of chicken into the oil. bad news. the temp went down to about 270. the batter started to come off because the chicken were too crowded. oh darn. it became an oily nightmare. i set these chicken to the side and then ended up re-battering them and frying them again before we left for the luncheon.

for the second batch (for frying), i only put in 3 pieces. the chicken looked great. about after 3 different batches, i had to switch out the oil. it had this awful dark color and looked gross. kinda reminded me of when i get my oil changed in the car. blegh.
30 mins go by while the new clean oil heats up. i try to clean the massacre in the kitchen... so far its batter, flour and oil - everywhere.

about 2 1/12 hours later all the chicken is cooked. i try to cover the ugly burnt looking ones on the bottom. i swear to myself.... i will never fry chicken again. ever. this recipe needs to be crossed out of my  book. i think i went overboard on this fundraiser. never again. never forget. 

the good news? everyone loved the chicken. or at least thats what they told me. i thought they were too oily, but i'm probably my own worst critic.

And then there was chicken

About a month or so ago, I decided to purchase Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc Recipe book.  I loved everything about this cookbook. I loved reading it, and imagining how everything I was going to make was going to turn out so fantastic. I'm salivating again right now just thinking about all the food.

So... the first thing I tried to make was the fried chicken. its all over google. You don't really need to buy the actual cookbook for this recipe. I liked looking over the internet recipes because they had more photos on the step by step process. I also noticed that their portions were a little different than the book.
the chicken.  I decided that I wasn't going to go the easy route. I followed Mr. Keller's instructions and bought a bird about 3.5 lbs. Then I went home and looked at it in disgust. It was gross just thinking about hacking this thing into 10 pieces.

With my scissors I started to snip down the middle of the chicken. I bet this is where an experienced chef would have a kitchen shearer... I managed ... Then I began hacking the legs/thighs/wings/breast apart. When I finished, I had 10 pieces of chicken and a neck/spine piece.  Mr. Keller says the extra piece is good for a stock. I wrapped the sucker up and threw it in my freezer. Some day that neck will come to use.

Next up - the brine. his recipe makes 2 gallons or something crazy. I made half the amount. it smelled great.  then i realized it needed to be cooled. ugh- there goes another few hours.

While making the brine, I learned that salts are different. who knew?! he recommends using dixie crystal salt, but all I had was morton's.   it started to make me paranoid that i was over salting everything. every other cookbook i've ever used... says 1 teaspoon... blah blah blah.  Now Mr. Keller is saying i have to weigh it? its in ounces? the stress! no wonder my stuff is always too salty.

after a nice 12 hour soak- my lil chicadees were ready for a bath. I poured out the brine and then rinsed all the pieces.  I laid everything out and pat them down to dry. thats when i noticed... 9 pieces. dang. one must of jumped ship while i was pouring out the brine. :(

fry time. I must not have properly prepared. the recipe calls for the oil to be at 350 degrees. my thermometer only went up to 220. so i waited till it hit 220- then wait a while longer. I threw in the first piece and it looked great. 3 minutes later i took it out. then i realized that i read the directions wrong. its supposed to be turn after 2-3 minutes, not remove. then i put it back for another 10 minutes.  Each piece looked great. a little dark compared to popeye's fried chicken... but still good.

It took me almost an hour to fry all the pieces. by the time i finished the entire apartment felt like it was 120 degrees. i was hot, sweaty, and shiny from all the oil.

the chicken was served outside on the patio... in the nice cool night.  the entire process took me the entire weekend. friday- but the stuff . Saturday make the brine, let it cool. throw the chicken in the brine for 12 hours. take out- dry and let the chicken rest. ...

totally worth it. but super tiring.