Elote Pilsner Creamy Polenta with Grilled Tajin Lime Shrimp and Halloumi
Sometimes it feels as if my recipes are just a long string of predictive text that I figure out how to make into a meal. Or I keep trying to one-up myself until I can’t fit anything else in a bowl, but it’s how I like to cook. Layers of things on top of layers of other things. Lots of things crammed into a bowl.
Maybe I’m a bit too much for you, this wouldn’t be an odd thing to think and you wouldn’t be the first one. But I will tell you that you should try, at least once, to be too much. Because we all need to be just a little sick of censoring ourselves for the sake of other people. You should also make some food that is a bit much, just to try it on for size. Maybe you’re like me, and you’ll actually really like a big 'ole layered bowl of too much. It’s fun, you might just want to do it again.
Elote Pilsner Creamy Polenta with Grilled Tajin Lime Shrimp and Halloumi
Add the vegetable broth and beer to a saucepan, bring to a boil then reduce to a low simmer.
Add the grits and salt, simmer, stirring occasionally until the grits have softened.
Stir in the half and half, salt, and garlic powder.
Preheat the grill to medium-high.
Brush the corn on all sides with oil, set aside.
Add the shrimp to a bowl, squeeze half of the lime over the shrimp, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon Tajin, toss to coat. Thread onto skewers.
Slice the Halloumi into ½ inch slices, sprinkle on all sides with the remaining Tajin.
Add the corn, shrimp, and Halloumi to the grill, grilling on all sides until shrimp is cooked through and grill marks appear on all.
Cut the kernels of the corn, add to a bowl along with the cilantro, and cotija, toss to combine.
Divide the polenta between 4 bowls, top with corn mixture, crema, tomatoes, shrimp skewers and Halloumi.
Notes
If you don't have Tajin, mix together 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoon chili powder, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper and 1/2 teaspoon cumin.
Burrata Burrito with Smoked Salmon and Creamy Beer Pesto
Let’s do something fun, something that doesn’t require a face mask and hand sanitizer. Find your quarantine person and somehow bring up that you want to do a cooking challenge, you against them. But, there are some rules of course.
Rule 1: The dish can’t take more than 15 minutes.
Rule 2: The dish can’t require any cooking.
Rule 3: You have to make at least one element of the dish from scratch.
Impossible! They will say. Ask them how scared they are to lose to you and if there should be some sort of wager involved. As in: the loser has to do all the {insert least favorite chore here} for the next week. This may get them to accept your challenge.
Then, let them go first. They will probably make a salad because it’s obvious and basic. You are NOT obvious or basic. But you’ll eat the salad and pretend as if this will be difficult to beat. But the following night, you will serve them this. This no-cooking-full-of-yum-and-happiness burrito. And they will lay the golden fiddle at your feet because they’ll know that they’ve been beat.
It’ll be fun. You should try it.
Burrata Burritos with Smoked Salmon and Creamy Beer Pesto
Huli Huli Beer Chicken, the best chicken marinade!
This is the front runner in my quest to grill all the things. Meaning, it is my current absolute-without-question-totally-serious favorite grilled thing. And I have grilled ALL THE THINGS, as in, I’ve grilled cake and garlic. Not at the same time, that would just be mean to the cake consumption person.
When I say this is the best grilled chicken recipe, I’m putting it up against a huge crowd of great chicken. I’m not saying it’s the prettiest girl in the room, I’m saying it’s the prettiest girl in the state. I could say WORLD, but I’m trying to be realistic, I haven’t actually had ALL the chicken in the world, just a lot of it.
Grilling is keeping me sane this month. It’s my favorite summer activity that’s not canceled, its how I trick myself into thinking the world is normal, even if just for a second. Try it, open a beer, grill some things, and for a few minutes, you’ll feel normal. Even if you don’t, you’ll still have beer and chicken so things could be way worse.
In a large mixing bowl stir together the soy sauce, brown sugar, beer, pineapple juice, tomato paste, vinegar, ginger, and garlic. Remove 1/3 cup of the mixture, cover, and set aside.
Sprinkle the chicken on all sides with salt.
Add the chicken to the mixing bowl with the marinade (or add it all to a large ziplock bag), cover, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 6.
Preheat the grill to medium-high.
Add the chicken and pineapple.
Brush the chicken with the reserved 1/3 cup marinade and turn every few minutes until cooked through about 8 minutes.
Remove the chicken and pineapple from the grill, add to a serving platter.
Grilled Stout Brined Sirloin and Corn Salad with Tahini Pale Ale Dressing
I want to tell you a story, one about myself, because it’s all I have to offer right now. Growing up, things were exactly easy. Here are the CliffsNotes: Dead dad, disjointed family, moved a lot, hardly enough money to feed us all. Because of this, I had this idea that racism wasn’t really a thing anymore and even if it was I discriminated against too, since I was poor. Then I moved to LA, and I became a social worker for gang kids, most of whom were on probation, and I realized how stupid I was. It happened slowly, realizations that came over the course of a few years, small incidents that amounted to a huge global shift in who I was and what I believed, something I’ll never stop being thankful for.
The first came as I sat on a folding chair in a rec room with a group of other social workers, I was the only white girl. One of them joked about how dangerous it was for a 20-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl to go running around Compton. Another social worker, a large black guy who had an M.A. in Psychology and had been a bit of a rowdy teenager, replied, “She’s safe. If a pretty white girl gets shot in the ghetto, everyone in the world will know about it by morning. Every kid and cop knows it. If I get shot, no one will give a shit. I’m a target for the cops and the kids. She’s safer than I am.” He was right and everyone in the room knew it. He had a gun pulled on him three times that year, twice by cops and once by a kid. I never had any problems, not one issue, not one gun.
Part of my job was to work with the older kids to help them find employment. I wrote their resumes, taught them how to fill out job applications, dressed them from a donation closet of interview clothes, and taught them how to answer interview questions. I had applications for 6 nearby businesses, mostly fast food joints, none of the business knew about the program, all they saw was a local kid interviewing for a job. Over three years I could plot on a timeline how long it would take each kid to get a job based on their skin color. At first, I figured it was a fluke, but it was such a lasting trend, not one kid was an exception. I worked with three white kids, each of them scared me, the probation sentence they had were earned several times over and they all had sociopathic tendencies. None of them had a work history. They all got jobs in the first two weeks. I wouldn’t have trusted any of them to wash my car, and they were handed over the ability to work a cash register in just one meeting. The lighter-skinned-non-white kids took about a month, and the darkest skinned kids took the longest. They all had the same clothes, the same answers on their applications (I helped fill them all out) and they all answered the questions at the interviews exactly the same. The only difference was their appearance. My favorite kid was smart, he had a solid work history, a calming spirit, and he was so kind. He was living proof that some souls are old, he just saw things in a bigger way than most people did. He also had incredibly dark skin. It took me 8 months to get him a job.
There were more, lots of constant reminders that although my life wasn’t easy, it was not made harder by the color of my skin. And even the most privileged black person would have an easier life in this country if they had been born with white skin. This is not ok, it’s not right, but it’s the truth. I had to open myself up to the idea that it was arrogant of me to ever think that just because I personally hadn’t seen or experienced racism that it didn’t exist. I had to accept that I did not know what it was like to live in this world as a black person, no matter how much I thought I knew, or what my experiences where.
The two major changes that came from that seem small, but were actually huge. First, I realized that I do have bias, racist thoughts, and prejudgments. Everyone does, it’s how our brains work, we categorize things and form instant thoughts about everything the moment we see them. We see a dog, we know it’s a dog. We see a chair, we know it’s a chair. Have you ever been surprised to touch something and realize it was much colder than it looked? Because you had already formed an opinion about it. This is normal. BUT I decided that when I had a judgmental thought, I would acknowledge it and correct it. I wanted to have a mind that didn’t prejudge people any more than it had to.
Second, I encouraged people around me to correct me if I said something that was offensive or prejudged someone, and I learned the phrase: “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Thank you for saying something.” I decided that even if I didn’t know WHY it was offensive, it was enough for me to know THAT it was offensive, and I needed to change the way I thought or talked, even if that change was small.
I still have work to do, we all do, but the choice you have is this: do you want to make the world a little bit better, or do you want to fight to keep it harder for anyone who isn’t you. It’s not a hard choice, even if it can be a hard process.
So, here is a salad that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. Other than the fact that we all have to eat, food is a great equalizer. Let’s sit down, eat some food, and just listen to each other for a second.
Grilled Stout Brined Sirloin and Corn Salad with Tahini Pale Ale Dressing
Add the steak to a bowl or a bag, sprinkle on all sides with salt, cover with beer. Cover the bowl (or seal the bag) and refrigerate for 12 hours and up to 24. Remove from marinade, dry well, and allow to come to room temperate (about 30 minutes).
Preheat the grill to medium-high.
Drizzle the bell pepper and corn with oil.
Add the pepper and the corn to the grill, turning and grilling until grill marks appear.
Add the steak to the grill, cooking on both sides until medium-rare, 4-6 minutes per side.
Remove from grill, slice the pepper, and cut the kernels off the corn.
Allow the steak to rest for 5 minutes before slicing.
Add all of the dressing ingredients to a small blender, blend until smooth. Add additional beer or water to thin to desired consistency.
Add all of the remaining salad ingredients to a bowl (along with the sliced pepper and corn kernels), toss to combine. Drizzle with desired amount of dressing, top with steak.
Grilled Beer Chicken Legs with Caramelized Yakitori Glaze
I served this with homemade biscuits, is that weird? Yes, the answer is yes. I suppose that you should serve it with something vegetal, or salad-adjacent, but I needed a big 'ole plate o’carbs. Because biscuits are just better with dinner than with breakfast, there I said it and I’m not taking it back.
Oh, you want to know what biscuit recipe I used? Of course you do, but I’m not telling. Not yet, because they were amazing and I’m bringing them to a face near you later in the week. Stay tuned, the recipe will be up in a matter of days.
Normal people will go ahead and serve this beer chicken with something more conventional, like grilled corn, and this would be a good idea. But I can be a go-against-the-grain (pun intended, corn is a grain, GET IT?!) type of person for better or for worse.
But maybe you’re both and you will serve this with corn AND biscuits and then you will win. I’ll pour you a beer and give you a crown, it’ll be fun.
Grilled Beer Chicken Legs with Caramelized Yakitori Glaze
1teaspoon(4g) fresh ginger, grated with a Microplane
Chopped chivesor green onions
Instructions
Sprinkle the chicken legs on all sides with salt, add to a large bowl or Ziploc bag. Stir together the soy sauce, vinegar, beer, cornstarch, brown sugar, garlic, and ginger until well combined.
Pour over the chicken. Cover (or seal) and refrigerate for 3 to 24 hours.
Preheat the grill to medium-high.
Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil, place the chicken on the prepared sheet pan.
Pour the marinade into a pot, boil until thickened, about 9 minutes.
Add the chicken to the grill. Once the chicken is on the grill, remove and discard the aluminum foil leaving the sheet pan to be a clean place to put your chicken once it’s cooked. Do not put cooked chicken back on a plate or pan that once held raw chicken or you will risk bacteria contamination.
Brush the chicken with glaze every time you turn the chicken. Allow the chicken to cook until the juices run clear and chicken is cooked through. If the chicken starts to burn before cooked through, lower grill temp or move chicken to the upper rack of the grill.
Thai Chili Beer Chicken in Spicy Peanut Satay Sauce
This is 100% because I’m clumsy. You’d think that an actual grown-up human person would be able to eat chicken off stabby things, I mean SKEWERS, without actually stabbing themselves. But you would be wrong. I have several stabby thing related injuries and I’m trying not to add to this list while in the midst of a global pandemic.
Normal people would just avoid eating things off tiny swords, but I have instead modified dishes that involve swords like utensils to remove them from the equation. Because I need to not joust with my face right now.
If you don’t have the issues with inept fine motor skills that I do, I hope you still like this dish. It’s all the good stuff about chicken satay without the risk of injury, however low that might be in your house. it’s low-risk chicken and I really just need that right now.
Thai Chili Beer Chicken in Spicy Peanut Satay Sauce
1tablespoon(14g) sriracha (plus additional to taste)
2large cloves garlicgrated with a Microplane
2tablespoonsbeerpale ale, IPA, pilsner
3tablespoonlime juice
1red chilithinly sliced
¼cupcilantrochopped
Rice for serving
Instructions
Add beer, chili powder, soy sauce, and curry paste to a large Ziploc bag or a resealable container.
Sprinkle the chicken on all sides with salt, add them to the marinade. Seal and refrigerate for one hour and up to 12.
Remove from the marinade, pat dry.
Heat the oil in a large cast-iron skillet until thin and shimmery, add the chicken, searing on both sides until cooked through.
While the chicken cooks, make the sauce.
Add the coconut milk, peanut butter, fish sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, curry paste, vinegar, sriracha, garlic, and beer to a pot over medium-high heat. Cook until slightly thickened, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in the lime juice.
Pour the sauce over the chicken, allow to simmer for about a minute, then remove from heat.
Brioche French Toast with Beer Caramelized Peaches
Breakfast is my favorite meal. Mostly because I get to make and eat it in my pajamas without judgment, but also because most of it is basically dessert we eat as an entree. We should do this with more meals, dinner cake should be a thing. Lunch brownies, too.
French toast has always been my favorite, and it should always be made with brioche. It’s really the best bread for French toasting and all other breads are vastly inferior. This is a fact. Challah will also work but don’t, even for a second, think you can make this with presliced bread and get away with it, I’ll know and I’ll be sad.
Just get yourself a loaf of brioche and slice it yourself, you’ll be glad you did. Because I certainly won’t judge you for drinking beer at breakfast but I won’t make the same promise if you break out the sandwich bread to make French Toast. Just trust me.
Brioche French Toast with Beer Caramelized Peaches
3tablespoonsbeerBelgian, wheat beer, pilsner, pale lager
For the French toast:
1large loaf Brioche(or Challah)
2eggs
½cup(120g) heavy cream
¾cup(180g) beerBelgian, wheat beer, pilsner, pale lager
1teaspoonvanilla
1/3 cup(66g) granulated sugar
½teaspoonsalt
3tablespoonsbutter
Whipped cream for serving
Instructions
Add the peaches, lemon juice, brown sugar, and salt to a bowl, toss to combine.
Add the butter to a large skillet over medium-high heat until melted, add the peaches and lower the heat to medium-low.
Pour in the beer and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the peaches have started to brown and caramelize, about 15 minutes.
Slice the bread into thick slices about 1 to 2 inches in width.
In a bowl whisk together the eggs, cream, beer, vanilla, sugar, and salt until well combined.
Add the bread slices, a few at a time, allowing to soak for about a minute or until the bread is fully saturated.
Heat a skillet or griddle to medium-high, add the butter, allowing to melt and coat the surface. Add the slices of bread a few at a time, cooking on both sides until golden brown.
Add a few slices to a serving plate, top with peaches, and whipped cream.
Black Bean and Grilled Poblano Elote Enchiladas with Chipotle Stout Red Sauce
Ok, so I didn’t exactly grill the enchiladas, but I did think about grilling the enchiladas. I only grilled a few ingredients in the enchiladas instead of the entire dish, but I wanted to throw the entire thing on the grates. Next time maybe, it’s an experiment for another day.
If you want to throw in some chicken, or some pulled pork, or maybe grilled portobello mushrooms, you should totally do that, it’s your world. I really just kept it to things I already had to avoid the general public during a pandemic, but other than the sauce the rest is fully optional.
If you want to shove a bunch of cheese or leftover rotisserie chicken in these puppies, go for it. This is a big pan of spicy customizable goodness. To be honest, I sorta want you to mix it up and see how it goes, just report back. I love the elote topping, so if you can do that, you should. But adding stuff to the filling is a great idea, do your worst.
Black Bean and Grilled Poblano Elote Enchiladas with Chipotle Stout Red Sauce
Add the torn pieces of the guajillo peppers to a pan over medium heat. Cook until softened and fragrant, about 4 minutes, add to a small blender.
Add the remainder of the sauce ingredients to the blender, blend on high until well combined.
Add to a shallow bowl.
Preheat a grill to medium-high.
Drizzle the corn and poblanos with olive oil. Add to the grill, cooking until the pepper has blackened and the corn has grill marks on all sides, remove from the grill (this can be done a few days in advance if needed, just store in an airtight container in the fridge until ready to use).
Rub the skin off the pepper, remove the seeds and then chop the remaining meat of the pepper.
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Cut the kernels off the corn and to a bowl along with the cilantro, cotija, crema, lime juice, paprika, chili powder, and salt, stir to combine.
One at a time dip the tortillas in the enchilada sauce and add to an 8x8 pan, fill with beans, chopped poblano, and elote corn mixture, roll up and press into one side of the pan. Repeat until the pan is filled with tightly packed rolled tortillas. If any sauce remains, drizzle it on top of the pan.
Reserve the remaining elote mixture for a garnish.
Top the pan with mozzarella cheese, bake for 15 minutes or until the enchiladas are warmed through and the cheese has melted.
Top with remaining elote mixture, chopped avocado, and drizzle with crema.
Crispy Sweet Potato and Mushroom Confit Tacos with Smoky Crema
Hey, friend. How are you?
It’s getting harder and harder to stay positive these days, but I think it’s rather imperative to our emotional wellbeing to at least try to hold onto the good stuff longer than the bad. Not reading the bad news, and ordering take-out, these are helping with the sanity portion of this epidemic.
I am either only interested in really involved cooking projects, or all I want to do is hide under a blanket and order pizza, there is no in between. I want to confit something, or slow cook a brisket, or make pasta from scratch, or I want none of it, and I’d rather just eat toast over the sink and ignore the rest of the kitchen.
Add the mushrooms to a small baking dish or loaf pan, toss with salt. Add the sprigs of rosemary, oregano, and thyme. Drizzle with oil until about halfway covered (mushrooms will shrink as they cook).
Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Stir and continue to cook for 45 more minutes. Remove and discard the sprigs of herbs. Remove the mushrooms from the oil.
Peel the potatoes and cut into ½ inch wide strips.
Stir together the cornstarch and beer into a slurry mixture. Add the sweet potatoes into the mixture, toss to coat.
Heat about 1 inch of oil in a wide pan until a drop of water pops, lower heat to just higher than medium.
Add the potatoes a few at a time making sure they aren’t touching. Turn over with tongs, cooking on all sides until browned and crisp, remove and allow to drain on a stack of paper towels.
Stir together the crema, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and salt.
Fill the tortillas with sweet potatoes and mushrooms, drizzle with sauce, top with green onions.
Do you remember parties? The kind you went to in-person and didn’t involve internet access and a Zoom account? Yeah, me too, just barely. Do you remember being in a group of strangers, standing close, and even letting them taste your beer? Now that idea is slightly horrifying but also rebelliously exciting.
The last time someone made waffles for me was the morning after one of these…what did we call them again?….parties? Yes, one of those.
Even before I left my place to join a party at my friend Linda’s house, I planned not to return until the next morning. Late that night, before we all went to bed, we drunk-mathed her sourdough starter into a bowl with a handful of other ingredients, pretty unsure how it was going to work out the next morning.
A handful of hours later a scraggly, slightly hungover group of morning after party-goers sat at her kitchen island as she made us all sourdough waffles. They were amazing, and I suspect at least half the reason most of the people there had stayed the night in the first place.
I texted her a few days ago, I needed to make the waffles again. She sent me her recipe, which I obviously updated with beer because I do that sort of thing. It’s one of the best things I’ve made in a while, but I’m certain it will taste even better the next time I am actually allowed to have humans over to help me partake, hungover or not.
1cup(228g) beer* (sour ale works best, Lambic, Gose, Kriek)
½cup(114g) milk
½cup(113g) sourdough starter, (unfed and active)
3tablespoons(42g) brown sugar
2 ½cups(240g) all-purpose flour
Next morning:
1teaspoonsalt
1largeegg
½teaspoonbaking soda
Instructions
In a large bowl stir together the butter, beer, milk, starter, brown sugar, and flour. Cover tightly and leave at room temperature overnight, at least 14 hours and up to 20 hours.
In the morning, preheat the waffle iron.
Add the salt, egg, and baking soda, whisk to combine.
Cook in your waffle iron according to the manufactures specifications.
Serve warm with syrup, jam, or whipped cream.
Notes
*Sour or wild fermented ales are similar to sourdough starters, they are made using wild yeast and bacteria to get their signature sour flavors. Often (but not always), those yeast and bacteria strains are the same: lactobacillus, Saccharomyces or Brettanomyces. If you find a beer that has those, it will help to make your waffle sponge even more active.
I forgot about meatballs. For years I failed to realize that meatballs do not necessitate a bed of pasta. I love pasta, this you know, and I love meatballs, but in my brain, the two are not a match. Meatballs and pasta are like that couple you know that should absolutely break up already but they are just too comfortable to realize how miserable they are. They are both just better apart.
This made me forget about meatballs. Until I was challenged to make the best ever meatball sandwich to add to my first cookbook and this changed everything. You can totally be a meatballs plus pasta person, just not near me, I’ll politely ask you to sperate these foods and eat one at a later date. Meatballs are just better over rice or in a sandwich, this is a true fact.
I am apparently also trying to tandoori all the things. I’m not sure what will be next but it’s currently the most exciting thing in my life.
2lbspre-made meatballsany meat or vegetarian will do
For the Riata:
½cup(45g) English hothouse cucumber, finely grated
½cup(113g) plain yogurt
2tablespoons(6g) chopped fresh cilantro
1tablespoon(3g) chopped green onions
¼teaspoonground coriander
¼teaspoonground cumin
1teaspoonsalt
2garlic clovesgrated with a Microplane
For the sandwich:
6sub rollssplit
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
In a large bowl stir together the yogurt, coriander, cumin, turmeric, garlic powder, cayenne, garam masala, paprika, lemon juice, ginger, salt, and beer.
Add the meatballs, toss to coat.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray or grease well with olive oil.
Add the meatballs.
Bake until cooked through, about 10-15 minutes (cooking time will depend on the size of your meatballs, as well as how cold they are).
Add the cucumber to the center of a few paper towels or a clean kitchen towel. Squeeze to remove excess liquid. Add the cucumber to a bowl along with the yogurt, cilantro, green onion, coriander, cumin, salt, and garlic.
Add the meatballs and riata to the rolls, serve immediately.
Sriracha Stout Braised Beef Shanks over Gouda Polenta
Slow cooking things helps in times of crisis, this is a true fact. It reminds us that everything changes and good things are ahead, we just have to be patient. We have to sit back and let the things work, even if we can’t see the things work, they are working.
My favorite things to make are things that take time: short ribs, sourdough, ice cream, kimchi, beer, shanks. All these things need time, you can’t rush them. We have a time frame for them, which makes it so much different than the "when will this be over?" feeling of our current world. But the first guy to make sourdough bread had no idea, he just had to wait and hope it would turn into something great, and it did. Eventually.
We just have to remember that this is the same, it just takes time. Humans are incredibly adaptable, we’ve adapted to so much over the course of history and this won’t be any different. We will adapt to this, too.
Until then, I’m fixing all minor emotional trauma with slow-cooking things*. It helps, try it. (*advice most successful when paired with beer).
Sriracha Stout Braised Beef Shanks over Gouda Polenta
Grilled Harissa Sesame Beer Chicken with Lemon Cilantro Tahini
Remember when I had you buy tahini to make this Beer Chicken Shwarma with Tahini Aoili? Well, that jar of tahini is about to get another workout. I COULD sit here and tell you it’s because I think you already have some and I don’t want you to have to go to the store for ingredients, but you would see right through that. Really, it’s because I didn’t want to go to the store for new ingredients so I’m just using what I have. Like that Harissa I bought for this.
If nothing else positive comes out of this pandemic, I hope the fact that we are becoming far creative with our cooking is something that sticks. Bright side, right? Yes, we’ve gotta bright side as much as we can.
Another bright side is the grill. I can grill all the things again!! Which is hard to do in the midst of Seattle rain, but these quarantine days have been glorious, necessitating grilling all the things. My entire plan for the upcoming weekend has to do with what I can grill that I haven’t already grilled. It’s very exciting.
Beer is a big part of the weekends these days, please try to hide your shock at this revelation. I had a Medusa DIPA from Anchorage brewing a few days ago and loved it. I am usually shy about the higher ABV beers (I’m a total lightweight, don’t tell) but it was fantastic. If I have some sun, a grill, and a good beer, the weekend will be still be something I’ll look forward too, even in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
Grilled Harissa Sesame Beer Chicken with Lemon Cilantro Tahini
In a large bowl stir together the green onions, garlic, ginger, harissa paste, soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, sesame oil, and beer.
Sprinkle the chicken on all sides with salt. Add the chicken to the marinade, cover, and refrigerate for at least two hours and up to 24.
In a blender, add the ingredients for the sauce, blend on high until well combined. Add additional beer or water to thin to desired consistency.
Preheat the grill to medium-high.
Add the chicken to the grill, brushing with marinade after turning, grilling until cooked through (do not brush with marinade after removing from grill, the heat of the grill will kill harmful bacteria from the raw chicken juices that are still in the marinade but brushing after removing from the grill won’t).
Sprinkle with sesame seeds after removing from the grill.
Drizzle with sauce prior to serving.
Notes
* Harissa is a North African hot chili pepper paste, usually found near the Moroccan food in the grocery store. You can also make it yourself, link below.**I love sumac, but if you don’t have it on hand don’t feel the need to run out and find it. This sauce is great even without it.
I tried to make this as easy as possible for you. Because I know that although I really like to spend all day in the kitchen, you probably don’t. The first run-through I tried a blender because it’s how I make crepes. I was hoping the blade would blend the egg whites enough to be fluffy. It doesn’t, don’t try it. But the blender batter rose really well and the pancakes were beautiful, but they were tough. You don’t need that.
Then I wondered if I really need to make you whip the egg whites. How necessary is it in this recipe? SO I just mixed all the ingredients in a bowl and hoped it would be fine. And they were. The were just…fine. Better than the blender method but not as good as they could be. You don’t need that either.
On round three, I made them with meringue whites and they were by far the best version. I know you might be looking at this recipe thinking, "but do I really NEED to whip the egg whites? Like, how much does it matter?" a lot. A. Lot. Trust me, I’m as lazy as the next guy and I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it didn’t matter. Who needs more work and more dishes? Only a person who wants really good pancakes.
I even tested ring-mold-alternatives because I wasn’t sure if you owned a ring mold. Most people don’t, honestly. And I have some options for you. Biscuit cutters will work, and so will all-metal cookie cutters. The only one I had was in the shape of a gingerbread man, and it was unseasonably adorable. A mason jar lid will work, but it’s not ideal, you will have short pancakes. But you will have pancakes, and as they say, short pancakes are better than no pancakes. They say that, I swear.
In one bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, cornstarch, and ¼ cup sugar.
In the other bowl add the egg whites. Put the yolks into the bowl with the flour.
Add the milk, beer, and vanilla extract into the flour/yolk bowl. Stir until just combined.
Add the salt and cream of tartar to the egg whites and beat on high with a hand mixer until stiff peaks form. Add the remaining tablespoon sugar and beat until well combined (adding sugar to the egg whites makes them more stable and able to hold up to being folded into the batter).
Fold the egg whites into the flour mixture.
Spray the inside of a round ring mold* with cooking spray, add to a skillet over medium/low heat or a griddle set at 275°F.
Pour the batter into the mold until it’s 2/3 full. Cook until the batter on top looks mostly dry. Flip while still in the mold until the bottom is golden brown. Remove from heat, remove mold.
Re-spray the mold with cooking spray and repeat until all batter is used.
Notes
*If you don’t have a ring mold, try a biscuit cutter, a metal cookie cutter, or even a mason jar lid. A mason jar lid is short and the pancakes won’t be as tall but it can work if you have nothing else to use.These need to be cooked slow and low or the bottom will burn before they are cooked through.
I don’t want to tell you how to live your quarantine life, but you should make this. It’s a huge step up from just eating a package of store-bought ramen, which, let’s be honest, we all want to do right now. It makes you feel like you’ve actually accomplished something, you made carbonara! You so fancy!
But in reality, it only takes about 20 minutes. It’s the positive news we all need right now. Are you gravitating towards the good news these days or the bad? It seems as though we are all either bad-news-seekers or give-me-the-good-stuff-readers. I’m in the second camp.
Knowing how bad things are, or could potentially get, is too hard of a burden to carry on a daily basis. But hearing about how people are helping, caring, and coping, lifts the weight just a little. It reminds me that we are all in this together, that although we have spent the better part of the last few years more divided than ever, this reminds us that we are all human, we are all more good than bad, we mostly all want the same things. Most people are basically good and we will get through this. Maybe just have a beer and some fancy ramen and wait it out with me.
½cup(1oz) pecorino cheese grated with a microplane
1teaspoonfresh cracked pepper
9ounces(3 (3oz) packages) ramen noodles
2tablespoonschopped chivesoptional
Instructions
Chop the bacon and add to a large skillet off heat. Add to a pan over medium heat, cooking until the bacon has crisped and the fat has rendered (putting the bacon in a cold pan, then cooking over medium heat takes longer but renders fat much better ).
While the bacon cooks, cook the noodles. Add the ramen to a pot of heavily salted, boiling water. Cook for one minute or until just before al dente (almost cooked but still a little crunchy) drain but reserve ¼ cup of pasta cooking water. Add noodles to a colander or strainer to allow to dry (sauce clings better to noodles that are not wet).
In a bowl whisk together the egg plus 2 yolks (if not plating each bowl with its own yolk, use all 6 yolks for this step), beer, cheese, and pepper.
Once the bacon has crisped, remove from heat, and scoop out or pour off about half of the bacon grease. Add the garlic to the pan, stirring until the garlic is fragrant (this should be able to be done off-heat, the bacon grease should still be hot enough to cook the garlic, if not add the pan back to heat for a few seconds).
Add the noodles to the bacon pan (off heat), stirring until the noodles are coated in the bacon and garlic grease.
Add the egg sauce, stirring to coat the noodles. Add the reserved pasta water a tablespoon at a time to thin if the mixture is too thick (you may only need a little bit).
Divide the noodles between four bowls, top each bowl with an egg yolk.
Garnish with additional cheese and chives if desired.
There is a lot of uncertainty right now, but let’s talk about what is certain. Yoga pants and pajamas are socially acceptable all day. Cake can now be eaten at all meals without guilt. And the government has officially declared brewery staff to be considered essential during the shelter in place lockdown. But we already knew that, you didn’t have to tell us that they’re essential.
So you’re cooking all day, wearing pajamas until noon, and drinking probably more beer than you should. You’re officially living my life right now. Not as glamourous as you thought? I know, I know. But there are worse things. And I made you some chicken.
I realize that for me, this list of ingredients is all "pantry staples" and that might not be the case for everyone. But also, the grocery store is one of the only places you CAN go right now so maybe put on a dress and some heels and make an event out of it. I didn’t think so, pajamas with boots and messy bun? That sounds more like it.
We’ll get through this, you know that right?
And when we do we will appreciate traffic, coworkers, crowded bars and long waits to be seated at restaurants so much more. Maybe we all just needed to take a step back and remember that the small stuff is really big stuff if you don’t have it, and once we get it back we won’t forget that. For now, we still have beer and pajamas and those are pretty good right now.
In a mixing bowl stir together the shallots, beer, coconut milk, curry paste, sriracha, and fish sauce.
In a 9x13 baking dish add the chard (or kale or spinach) in an even layer. Add the chicken thighs on top, skin side up. Drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle evenly with salt, pepper, basil and garlic powder.
Pour the coconut milk around the chicken, avoiding the top of the chicken thighs.
Bake, uncovered for 30 minutes. Rotate the pan and continue to cook until skin has browned and the chicken is cooked through, about another 15 minutes.
If you’re like me, and I kind of think you are, you have two opposite feelings, nearly back to back, and it’s unsettling.
My thoughts jump from "Everyone needs to settle down, you are all overreacting!" to "Are we all going to die and is our society going to collapse and I need to form a post-apocalypse tribe immediately,"
and
"Self-quarantine is great, and my neighbors are the best and I want to stay like this forever," and then the next minute: "Will I ever travel again, I need to be on a virus-free plane immediately or I’ll die because my wanderlust is killing me, and I need my local bars and restaurants to re-open soon, I miss them so much,"
It’s all so disorienting. Just know that you’re not alone, we are all in this together even if it feels lonely.
My favorite part of pre-apocalypse grocery shopping is the "weird" ingredients are always left. The chicken breast and pork chops are long gone but the more obscure meat is in abundance and on sale. My particular grocery store had rows and rows of oxtails, shanks, and boneless pork ribs, and I’m hoping yours does too. So I made you something. It’s easy and since you’ll be home all day, you should make it. It’s really good and you’ll only want coconut rice from now on, so make sure to add cans and cans of coconut milk to your next venture out in your hazmat suit.
3lbsboneless country pork ribs or pork shoulder cut into chunks
1tablespoonsaltkosher
4clovesof garlic
¼cup(62g) low sodium soy sauce
¼cup(66g) hoisin sauce
2teaspoons(10g) sriracha
2tablespoons(25g) brown sugar
2cup(310g) pineapple chunksdrained if using canned
1cup(8oz) beerstout, porter, brown ale
For the rice:
1(14oz) can full-fat coconut milk
1 ¼cup(10oz) water
1 ½cupslong-grain or jasmine rice
1teaspoonsalt
2tablespoonslime juice
3tablespoonsgreen onionchopped
Instructions
To make the pork:
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
Sprinkle the pork on all sides with salt, add to a large Dutch oven or covered baking dish.
Add the remaining ingredients (from the pork list) to a blender, blend on high until well combined. Pour the liquid over the pork. Cover and bake for one hour.
Remove the lid, turn the pork over, then continue to bake, uncovered, for 2 ½ more hours, turning the pork every 30 minutes or so until the pork is fork-tender (total of 3 1/2 hours of cooking time).
Remove the pork from the pot, set aside.
Place the pot over a burner over high heat (if you used a baking dish, transfer the remaining liquid to a pot), boil, stirring frequently, until thickened.
Pour the thickened glaze over the pork.
To make the rice:
Add the coconut milk, water, rice, and salt to a large pot, stirring to combine.
Add to a burner over medium-high heat, bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to low for 18 minutes. Once the 18 minutes is up, remove from heat but allow to sit for 2 minutes.
Remove the lid and stir in the lime juice and green onions.
