I realized the other day that my last two recipe posts involved massive amounts of prep work and dedication to a meal, so I decided to throw you guys a proverbial meatball. This recipe is super easy, super tasty and can be prepared from start to finish in less than 20 minutes.

Here’s your stock list:

4 Chicken Breasts (boneless, skinless)
1 Large Onion
4 – 5 Garlic Cloves
2 Cups Minute Rice (uncooked)
2 Cups Snow Peas (whole)
2 Tbsp Oil (Vegetable, Canola or Peanut… NOT olive)
1 Cup Chicken Broth
3 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Hoisin Sauce
1 Tsp Garlic Powder
1 Tsp Red Pepper
2 Tsp Ground Ginger
3 Tbsp Sugar
3 Tbsp Cornstarch
Salt
Pepper

Gather your tools and ingredients, and then go ahead and get your rice and your snow peas steaming. You wanna start these first, because the rest of the cooking will happen pretty quickly.

Give your garlic a quick chop. I like to leave the chunks of garlic fairly large in a dish like this, but if you prefer to mince it up, that’s your call. I won’t hate you. Chop up the onion as well. Again, I like some larger pieces, as it adds to the look and feel of the final dish.

Next you’ll want to slice your chicken breasts into strips. The thinner the better, really, as they will cook faster, which is what you want in a stir-fry.

Now let’s start your sauce. It is my ever-so-humble opinion that your stir-fry sauce is the most important aspect of this dish, as the rest is really just sautéed meat and veggies, so there are a few important things that have to happen here.

You want your sauce to be JUST sweet enough, but still carry just a pinch of spiciness. Also, you want a sauce that’s nice and thick, so it sticks to everything else in the dish. What you DON’T want is lumps. I’ve found that the best way to be assured that your sauce will be lump free is to pre-mix your sugar and cornstarch. The sugar helps to break up the consistency of the cornstarch and makes it much, much easier to mix it smoothly into a slurry.

Start off with your chicken broth, and add the soy and the hoisin. Give it a solid beating with a fork to break up the hoisin and make sure it’s not laying in clumps at the bottom of your sauce.

Add your spices to the mix, and feel free to adjust the amounts to your tastes. I’m not the boss here, you are. But usually, I’m the boss. Don’t forget it.

Now you’ll add your cornstarch/sugar mixture a bit at a time, beating it with a fork to disperse all the ingredients evenly. If you DO happen to run into a few lumps of cornstarch, just keep stirring… they’ll break up.

Now it’s time for some heat. Set your wok (or your frying pan, I’m not picky) over a med-hi burner. Once the cooking surface is good and hot, add your oil.

A quick note here, you’ll notice I specified that you should NOT use olive oil. The reason is, olive oil has a much lower “smoke-point” than vegetable, canola or peanut oil. That means that when you crank up the heat on this dish, your oil would start smoking, filling your house with the unpleasant aroma of hot oil… and guess what your food will taste like? That’s right, smart-guy… burning oil. Not good.

So, yeah… now you’ve got your oil nice and hot in your wok, right? Toss in your aromatics (that’s garlic and onion for those of you who need a little hand-holding). Don’t let them just sit there. There’s a reason they call it a STIR-fry, right? You don’t want your garlic to burn, because that’s just nasty.

Once the onions have started to become nicely translucent, go ahead and crank the heat on that burner up to high and drop in the chicken pieces.

Toss in a little salt and pepper for good measure. Stir those bad-boys around and make sure that every piece is getting heat. Things should be sizzling pretty well at this point.

Strain your now-steamed snow peas and have them ready to go into the wok. As soon as you can’t see any more pink on any of your chickeny bits, add the snow peas. Again… stir, stir, stir. A note here: you don’t HAVE to use snow peas. I know some people out there don’t like them. I like to call those people “the crazy ones.” Feel free to use broccoli, or mushrooms, or… hell, you get the drift. Just add a veggie already.

Everything looking cooked and well stirred? Good. Give your sauce a last-minute thrashing with your fork to pull the cornstarch solids off the bottom of the bowl and then pour the sauce into the wok. Stir, stir, stir.

Keep stirring. Make sure that every square millimeter of food in that wok is covered with tasty, tasty sauce. As you stir, your sauce should thicken nicely. Ah, the wonders of cornstarch.

Yep. Looks done to me. Grab a bowl, and serve this awesome concoction over rice.

As it stands, this recipe should feed about 4 people. Or two of me. Use your best judgment. If you’re cooking for two, cut the ingredient amounts in half. Cooking for one? Cut it in fourths. Either way, this dish should get you out of the kitchen and filling your belly in very short order.

I’d love to hear everyone else’s take on “stir-fry sauce.” Everyone seems to do it a little differently, so speak up! Tell us your tricks!

Now that you’re well fed, and your kitchen is a mess, I’d like to take a few moments and introduce you all to a couple of other blogs that I follow intently.

First, there’s Red Left Hand. This blog belongs to my good friend James, who is slaving away over a hot computer every day to bring us what I’m sure will be some of the greatest fiction of our generation. Check him out. Share in his wit. Tell him Hooligan sent’cha.

Second, I’ve stumbled across The Teen Cook. This is another recipe page from a 15-year-old fellow from down under. He comes up with some truly clever dishes that you should really try.

That’s all for now, kids. I’m pooped. Special thanks go out to my sweetie for photogging this one, and many, many others. I’m very lucky to have her around, and I love to feed her the best of everything that comes out of our kitchen.

Enjoy this recipe. We sure did.

Now, go cook something!

-Hooligan

So, let’s get this out of the way right off the bat:

When many, especially those outside of Louisiana, think of gumbo, they think of something brothy, hearty, dark brown and more than likely, shell-fishy. While this is not incorrect, it must be pointed out that there’s more than one way to skin this proverbial cat. What you’re thinking of is CAJUN gumbo. We all love Cajun gumbo, don’t we? Flavors that make you want to jump up and slap a ‘gator. Warms you up right down to that funky yellow toenail that keeps you from wearing flip-flops in the summer.

What I’m here to talk about today is the flip side of that coin. This is CREOLE gumbo.

“But what’s the difference, Hooligan? I always thought that gumbo was gumbo was gumbo.”

No. Put down the banjo and listen.

The difference between Cajun and Creole gumbo, as I understand it, is in the roux. While Cajun gumbo roux is made from oil and flour, cooked low and slow for a long long time to give it that dark brown color and flavor, Creole gumbo is made from oil or butter that hasn’t been cooked nearly as long. This gives the gumbo a lighter, “blond” color and, in my opinion, gives some of the more subtle flavors of the gumbo to shine through. As anyone that knows me can attest, I’m a huge butter slut. Butter makes everything better. Of COURSE I’m using butter in my gumbo!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the recipe itself.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

1 Whole Chicken
2 Large Onions (rough chopped)
1 Large Green Pepper (rough chopped)
2 Stalks Celery (rough chopped)
3 – 4 Garlic Cloves (chopped)
1 Cup Okra (chopped)
2 Carrots (rough chopped)
4 Links Andouille Sausage
¼ Cup Creole Seasoning (I recommend Tony Chachere’s)
1 Tbsp Cayenne Pepper
2 – 4 Bay leaves
Kosher Salt
Ground Black Pepper
4 oz Salted Butter
2 oz AP Flour
2 Cups Rice

Now, some of you are already thinking, but where’s the gumbo filé seasoning? Don’t you need that to make it “gumbo?” Well, no. As I understand it, traditional gumbo will contain filé or okra, but seldom or never both. If anyone has an argument to that point, I’d love to hear it, as (I’m mature enough to admit this) I may be mistaken. I opted here for the okra. Slimy, awesome okra.

For this recipe, I opted to make my own chicken broth. For best results, start this process at least 8 hours before you’re ready to make the gumbo. You can even make the broth the day before.

Put 5 – 6 quarts of water on some heat. While that’s warming up, you’ll want to chop up your chicken. For anyone who hasn’t parted out a whole bird before, don’t worry about it. I’ll be covering the finer points of bird discombobulation in a future post, but for now, it doesn’t have to be that pretty, seeing as eventually you’re going to be shredding all the meat off of the bones anyway. Just take off the legs, then cut them in half (drumstick and thigh), then take off the wings and cut them in half also (drumettes and flats). Cut through the ribs on either side of the spine (this might take some work) and then cut through the keel of the bird (the middle of the chest) to finish halving the body. Now cut each half into halves again, and you’re ready to go.

Once your water has come up to a boil, toss in the chicken parts (spine and all, don’t be shy) one chopped up onion, 2 chopped up carrots and 2 chopped up celery stalks. Add a couple teaspoons of salt, and of pepper, and if you’re feeling adventurous, go ahead and add some cayenne now. It’ll just add to the overall spicy goodness of the final product. You’ll want to let that bad boy simmer, stirring it occasionally, for hours and hours. By the time it’s ready, the broth should be a sweet golden color, your whole house should smell like the very breath of heaven, and the chicken should be falling off the bone.

Once the broth is done, pull all the chicken parts out and strain out the boiled down veggies. It’s okay if you don’t quite get them all. Using a couple of forks, shred as much meat off of the bones as you can. If you’re Chuck Norris, feel free to just roundhouse kick the bones out of the chicken. I generally prefer to leave the wing parts whole. I think of it as a nice little surprise you can find in your bowl later. “Mmm… gumbo. Hey! Free chicken wing!”

Moving on…

Let’s start out with the roux, and let me preface this by saying the following: use a nice, big pot. I ran out of big pots so, as you can see in the pictures below, I had to use a medium sized saucepan for the bulk of this recipe. It sucked, and I don’t recommend it. Bigger is better. You get extra points if you just thought, “shyeah, that’s what SHE said!”

So, you drop a stick of butter into your pot over low/medium heat. Once it melts down, use a spoon and scrape as much of the fat as you can off the top. Then, you add the flour, a bit at a time, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. I realize that we’ve covered this before, but that’s okay. We’ll probably cover it a time or two more, because it’s important.

Let the roux cook awhile, stirring very frequently, if not constantly. You want it to darken a little, but you must not let it burn. A burnt roux will ruin your dish, and your day. If you see so much as a single black speck in your roux while you’re stirring, it’s too late. Start over.

Next, you’ll add the “holy trinity.” The trinity is your onions, peppers and celery. Stir it into the roux and allow it all to continue to cook.

The next step is to add the sausage and the garlic. Again, stir it all in, and let it cook awhile.

Now, you’ll combine the roux mixture with the broth you made before. It’s important to bring the broth up to a good simmering temperature before you add it to the roux… and you MUST add it to the roux, not the other way around. If you try to add a big slop of roux to a pot of broth, you’ll end up with untasty lumps of roux floating around in your improperly thickened broth. Nobody wants that. So you pour a ladle full of broth into your roux and stir like crazy, making sure to bring the entire roux to a uniform consistency. Then add another ladle of broth and stir stir stir. Repeat this, adding the broth a ladle at a time, until you either run out of broth, or until you achieve the level of thickness you want in your gumbo. You know… not too thick, not too thin.

Now, add in the chicken meat from before, as well as your bay leaves, the Creole seasoning, the cayenne and a little salt and pepper.

Let it simmer awhile before you add the okra, as you don’t want the okra to break down too much in the simmering process. Just let it simmer and bubble awhile.

After the okra goes in, you can again, just walk away from it and let it simmer for some time. Stir it and taste it from time to time, adjusting it with salt, pepper or other spices as you see fit. Not hot enough, tough guy? Add more cayenne. You get the picture. While it’s simmering away, go ahead and prepare your rice. Just follow the directions on the package. Seriously, you don’t need my help with this one.

Once you’re satisfied with the flavors in your pot, serve it on up. Put a scoop of rice in a bowl and smother it with your awesome Creole gumbo. That’s it! Easy as pie, and twice as tasty. Remember also, you can never go wrong with a big ol’ hunk of oven fresh, warm cornbread on the side.

Now I know there are those of you out there who are true gumbo traditionalists, and/or aficionados, so I’m fully expecting some discourse on the nature of gumbo and its finer points. I welcome it.

One last thing to add here…

I’ve been sitting on this post for some time now. When I cooked this, and we took these pictures, it was the middle of December and this is what it looked like outside our window…

One big bowl of this delicious gumbo, and we weren’t feeling the chill anymore.

Hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope you make this dish for your family and friends over this coming holiday weekend. They’ll love you for it!

Go on, now… get to cookin’.

Cheers!

-Hooligan

Howdy, kids! It occurred to me that I haven’t done a big, pretty recipe post in quite some time, so I figured I owed this one to my few faithful readers. It’s quite a lot of work, but if you attempt it in your own kitchen, it’ll blow you away.

Some time back, my buddy and occasional “sous chef” Ian challenged me to craft a truly excellent and from-scratch potpie. So that’s what I did.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 Large Chicken Breasts (boneless, skinless)
2 Carrots (washed, peeled, rough chopped)
2 Celery Stalks (washed, rough chopped)
1 Large Onion (rough chopped)
1 Cup Leeks (rough chopped)
1 Bunch Fresh Thyme
1 Bunch Fresh Sage
2 – 3 Bay Leaves
2 Cups Chicken Stock
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
Black Pepper
1 Stick Salted Butter
4 Oz. AP Flour
White Wine (to deglaze)

And for the crust:

12 Oz. AP Flour
½ Lb. Unsalted Butter (Cold)
¼ Oz. Salt
4 Oz. Water (Ice cold)
1 Lg. Egg

So, let’s start out with the dough for the crust. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But, Hooligan, I can save myself a bunch of time and trouble by just buying a pre-made pie crust at the store!” This is true. You can do exactly that, if you’re a bloody coward. Trust me… even if you’ve never done it before, making a simple dough like this is easy and fun. Well, messy… but messy is fun, right?

First thing’s first, you want to make sure that your butter is nice and cold, and that your water is ICE cold. The reason is: you don’t want the butter to melt and blend in with the flour in this dough. You want it to remain intact, in little “pebbles” throughout the dough. That way, as the dough cooks and starts to solidify, the butter melts down creating flaky layer after flaky layer of crust. So now that we’ve got that settled:

Use your fingers to mix the salt into the flour. Don’t get too intense about it; just give it a good toss.

Cut your butter up into little chunks… about the size of dice. Yahtzee!

Dump the butter into the flour, and get ready to get your hands messy. The goal here is to disperse the butter evenly throughout the flour, all the while pinching the chunks of butter into smaller chunks, about the size of a pea. The trick is to work quickly, so as to not melt the butter too much with the heat from your hands.

Once the butter is pinched into submission, start adding your ice-cold water a little bit at a time. Use your hands to knead the water into the flour until you’ve got a good, consistent dough. Roll your dough into a single ball, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for now. We’ll get back to it.

You probably want to leave your dough in the fridge for at least an hour. After it’s been in there awhile, you’re ready to start the rest of the process. I recommend filling the down time with beer and/or video games.

First, we’ll deal with the chicken. Set your pan over a med-hot burner. Once the pan is hot, pour in your olive oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and get it into the pan. It ought to sizzle nicely. The goal here is not to cook it all the way through, but to give it a nice, flavorful sear on both sides. As such, once the first side is a nice golden brown give it a flip.

Once you’ve got that nice sear on, pull the chicken from the pan and set it aside for now. Toss your onions into the pan and stir them around a bit. Once they begin to turn translucent, go ahead and add the rest of your veggies, or your “mirepoix” to the pan. Sautee the mirepoix this way until everything starts to soften a bit. Now you want to pour a quarter cup or so of the white wine into the pan to deglaze it. As always, the deglaze is my favorite part. I love the cloud of steam and that SHHHHHHHHHH that fills the whole house with sound and smell. You’ll want to make sure that your deglaze pulls all those tasty brown bits of chicken from the bottom of the pan. That stuff (called fond) is pure, excellent flavor, and you want it in your dish.

The next step is to add your chicken stock to the pan, along with your fresh herbs, the sage, thyme and bay leaves. Your best bet here is to tie the thyme and sage up with a bit of twine, so that when it comes time to pull them from the pan, you don’t have to go hunting for little green bits. Trust me, that’s a time-wasting pain in the ass.

Now add your chicken back to the pan, and bring the whole thing to a nice, bubbly simmer.

While your pan is simmering away, we’re going to get back to the dough.

Take it out of the fridge and unwrap it. It should be nice and cold by now, and ready to work with. Cut it into four relatively equal sized portions and fetch your rolling pin. You want to dust both your working surface and your pin with a bit of flour to keep the dough from sticking. I usually dust my hands as well. Always work your dough from the center outwards. Work in one direction for a few strokes, then flip-over and turn the dough to work the other direction. Try to get it flat and super thin. You don’t want it to be much thicker than about 1/8 of an inch. If at any point it starts to stick, just re-dust with flour.

Now you’ll take your oven safe potpie dishes and give them a slight dusting of flour also. Lay one of your flat dough pieces into the bottom of each dish, gently pressing the dough into all the nooks and crannies. If you rolled your dough out properly, you should have plenty of extra dough “overhang” around the edges of your dish. This is a good thing, because that’s what you’re going to use to attach the top portion of the dough. At this point, you should be looking at something like this:

Now, for the roux. In a small saucepan, melt your stick of butter. Once it’s all ooey, gooey and liquefied, use a spoon to scrape as much of the floating fat from your butter as you can. Don’t fret if you don’t get it all. Now, add your flour about a tablespoon at a time, mixing it to a not too firm paste.

Back to your chicken pan now, you’ll want to remove the chicken (to a cutting board) and strain your mirepoix from the remaining stock. Slowly add your hot stock to the roux you just made, stirring it constantly to avoid lumps. Once all your stock has been stirred into the roux, you should have a nice, thick “gravy” bubbling away. You’ll want to go ahead and either chop or shred your chicken breasts, whichever you prefer.

Start layering tasty goodness into your crusts. Chicken, veggies (minus the herbs, of course), layer after layer. Then fill the crust up with yummy yummy gravy.

At this point, crack your egg into a bowl and beat the hell out of it with a little bit of water to make an egg wash. Brush the wash over the lip of the bottom crust, where it will meet your top crust. Once this is done, you can gently lay on your top crust, using your fingers to mold it to the filling and the lip of the dish. Press the top crust into the egg washed portion of the bottom crust to get a good seal.

Run a knife around the outside of the dish, about a half-inch below the top lip to cut off the excess dough. Now, and this is VERY important, use the back of your knife-tip to poke five or six holes in the top of your dough. If you skip this step, you will likely end up with something in your oven that looks like a crusty hot air balloon. Not good.

Crispy Christ in a sidecar, this is turning into a long damned blog post. Whew.

Sorry, where was I?

Right, okay… egg wash the top of your potpies and get them onto a baking sheet and into a 350 degree F oven.

It should really only take about 25 – 30 minutes to get your crust to a beautiful golden brown. When it’s all said and done, it should look something like this:

And now, the fun part…

So that’s the Smokin’ Potpie, ala Hooligan. Like I said, it’s work, but well worth it. As a side note, I’m well aware that the classic potpie is filled with more “pot-roasty” veggies, and béchamel sauce, but I wanted to try something a bit different. I wanted GRAVY, dammit. Don’t like it? Go order a pizza. Kidding…

Special thanks to “Sous Chef” Ian for iPhoning the photos for this one.

If any of you decide to try this one out on your own, it would be a special joy for me to see some pictures and hear what you thought of the recipe. I personally can’t wait to try it again myself.

As always, I am Hooligan, and you should be cooking. Get on that.

Cheers!

Just a quickie:

Got a yen to make some homemade BBQ sauce tonight. I’ve always loved the kick that a good slug o’ whiskey gives a sauce, so I reached for my trusty bottle of Jameson’s.

Here’s what I did:

1 Cup Ketchup
½ Cup Jameson’s Irish Whiskey
½ Cup White Vinegar
1 Tbsp Spicy Mustard
½ Tbsp Ground Mustard
½ Tbsp Garlic Powder
1 Tsp Kosher Salt
1 Tsp Black Pepper
1 Tbsp Dried Onion Flakes
3 Tbsp Light Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Granulated Sugar

Combine all ingredients in a medium saucepan, bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Reduce heat to low, simmer for about an hour, stirring frequently to thicken and reduce.

That’s it. Piece of cake.

I slathered this over some chicken breasts and did them up on the grill. Very nice. The sauce came out spicy and sweet, just like it should have been. The Jameson’s flavor was apparent in the smokiness of the sauce, but wasn’t overpowering. As far as my experiments go, this one was pretty damned successful.

The next time I make this sauce, I’m going to change up the vinegar a little. Probably go with apple cider vinegar instead of the white. Also, I was planning to add a little Worcestershire to the mix, but dammit, I opened the fridge to find that our Lea & Perrins supply had run dry. Next time, I plan to have some on hand.

Do you have a favorite homemade BBQ sauce recipe? I’d love to hear about it! If not, give this one a try, you won’t be sorry you did.

Now, go grill something. It’s summer!

Cheers!

-Hooligan

Ah, those fateful words, “figure out something for dinner.” I’m sure she was expecting some simple baked chicken, or maybe even some tasty pork chops. Nay. NAY I say. Not when I have lamb shanks at my disposal! Here’s what I did:

2 Lamb Shanks
1 Small Onion, chopped
2 Carrots, chopped
2 Celery Stalks, chopped
1 Med Tomato, chopped
1 15 oz can Tomato Sauce
1 15 oz can Beef Stock
Kosher Salt
Black Pepper
Olive Oil
Sage
Savory
4 Small Russet Potatoes, chopped
1 15 oz can Chicken Stock
Chives
2 Tbsp Salted Butter
¼ Cup Milk
½ lb fresh Asparagus
4 Tbsp A.P. Flour
8 Cloves of Garlic, minced
¼ Cup Red Wine
Garlic Powder

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Season lamb with salt and pepper, then dredge with flour, shaking off any excess.

Pour about 2 Tbsp olive oil into a preheated (medium heat) large OVEN SAFE sauté pan or other deep pan.

Sear both sides of the lamb in the hot pan. Remove lamb from pan and set aside.

In the same pan, sauté your onions until they’re translucent. Add minced garlic, carrots and celery and sauté.

Deglaze pan with red wine to loosen all the tasty lamb bits from the bottom.

Add tomatoes, beef stock, and tomato sauce. Simmer for about 15 minutes.

Add savory and sage, salt and pepper to taste. Reintroduce the lamb.

Cover pan tightly and put it in the oven. Braise for about 90 minutes, or until the lamb is “fork tender.”

Remove the lamb and put the pan liquid and veggies into a blender. Do this in small batches to keep your blender from “popping” on you.

Once sauce is pureed, pour it back into the pan and bring it back to a simmer. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Boil potatoes in chicken stock until tender, mash with garlic powder, salt, pepper, chives, butter and milk.

Blanch and shock the asparagus, and then sauté lightly to bring it back up to temperature.

I used a pastry bag with large star tip to pipe the potatoes onto the plate, lined up some asparagus and placed a shank on top with a healthy dollop of the sauce to cover. You may want to serve yours differently. For instance, you may want to bone out the shank for ease of eating. I personally liked the look of the big “lamb drumstick” on the plate. Kinda made me feel like a Flintstone.

This dish went over REALLY well, and we both ate until we were fit to burst. Try this one out and let me know what you think, or share with me YOUR osso bucco recipes.

Now, seriously… go cook something.