Potlucky

Potlucky. Adjective. The quality of having inadvertently succeeded in one's duty to a potluck.

I got potlucky. This time.

You see, I consider a potluck to be a form of verbal contract in which individuals entering into a potluck agreement (via RSVP) must bring some food or drink item to fulfill their obligation. I attended a work potluck last week; indeed, I organized it (if sending a confusingly worded Microsoft Outlook calendar invite counts as "organizing"). In doing so, and particularly because I was the "organizer," it was incumbent upon me to bring something.

Except it was a LONG four day week. Prepping for some intense work stuff had gotten the better of me, and I arrived home at 10:30 PM on Thursday night after work and a quick grocery store run, pretty beat, with nary a bit of cooking already done.

Fortunately, I got potlucky.

You see, the dish I was making was nothing more than my own attempt and take on something I saw my French uncle's French mother make the previous weekend. The dish, an onion, cheese, and potato tart, was simple in its essentials, but I had no specifics for quantity, spices, etc. I'd asked her, but I speak minimal French (Bonjour! Alouette!) and she speaks minimal English. Whatever.

Before I started the crust, I preheated my oven to 350 degree, started diced onion sauteeing in butter and set two large red potatoes to a boil in salted water. I began to make a fillo crust as fillo should be prepped, layering it in a 9" pyrex pie dish and brushing melted butter between each layer, trying to tuck the rectangular sheets into something resembling an ovoid. It's cool stuff, fillo; doesn't really look edible when you play with it uncooked. And yes, I consciously chose the spelling "fillo" over phyllo. Deal with it.

I continued to cook my onions until they'd caramelized to light brown and become quite sweet, grated up a bunch of cheddar cheese, and made sure to pull the potatoes out of the boiling water right before they finished cooking. Once I had enough layers of fillo -- again, no rhyme or reason, just a wild guess! -- I filled the bottom of the crust with the caramelized onions and covered them with a layer of cheese. On went a layer of potatoes, thinly sliced, another layer of cheese, and another of potatoes. I reserved a little cheese to be added later in the baking process (no burned cheese, please).

Now, I vaguely recalled my uncle's mother using a bit of ground cloves, and so I followed suit, sprinkling a small amount, less than a 1/4 teaspoon, between layers. Just a sniff of the proceedings informed me the cloves were a good call. Finally, I painted the edges with more melted butter and set the whole thing to bake for about 15-20 minutes. Five minutes before it finished I added the final layer of cheese.

The dish came out nicely. Well, it looked nice. I'd experimented too much to have much of an idea of what it would actually taste like. I went to sleep, finally, ready to try the damn thing just to see if it was any good.

Kinda looks like I have a heavy hand with the cloves. I promise I didn't.

The next day was go time. Now, the crust had gotten a little soggy spending the night in the fridge, as is liable to happen, so a brief reheat in the oven at work was necessary as we approached lunchtime. Good thing, too; the crust ended up as flaky and delicate as only fillo can be, so I imagine that the last minute stint in the oven had been necessary. I think the tart came out was pretty tasty -- the crust was golden brown, the filling was savory, rustic, even earthy, and the folks at work ate it (so it can't have been that bad!). The bottom crust was a bit of a pain to cut through, but other than that, no complaints. It seems, despite no real recipe, too little sleep and barely enough time, I'd gotten potlucky.

If I have a real complaint, it's frustration at myself that I didn't photograph the other dishes my coworkers made. There was Vermont-style baked beans (in a special baked beans crock!!!), a broccoli salad, beets, eggplant punjabi, cookies, chips and guac -- definitely a fun way to liven up lunch.

Here again, the money closeup:

Homemade Buffalo Wings: TWO Recipes

Well, if Dougie and I were going to watch some six hours of playoff football today, we were going to need some buffalo wings. Yet, Buffalo is so far away.

So we decided to make some. Which is pretty much my solution to every food-related quandary (although in this case it was Dougie's idea).

Really good, crispy, savory, moist wings are deep-fried, which was out because a) I have NO experience deep-frying and b) why add epic fat calories when you can oven-bake them? And although I'd never made oven-baked wings before, I'd seen recipes. I knew our goal was achievable.

In terms of starting inspiration, Doug had about half a bottle of Original Anchor Bar Buffalo Wing Sauce. (Anchor Bar is the restaurant in Buffalo which purportedly invented Buffalo-style hot wings; however, the debate continues to rage as to whether or not the have the BEST wings.) I was also craving a chipotle-spiced hot wing (Are we sensing a pattern? [You can't tell but each of the words in the preceding query is a separate link to a chipotle dish!]) so we decided to make two batches in different styles.

We hunted around to get the basic process of oven-baking hot wings and found two VERY different techniques. One, which was set to be used with the Buffalo sauce, entails dredging wings in flour and spices before dunking in sauce and baking; the other called for an olive oil/garlic/more garlic/MORE garlic/chili sauce, used as a marinade. Recipes below! And so we began:

We started with 26 chicken pieces -- about 18 drumettes and 8 full wings (wingtips trimmed), washed and patted dry. Dougie pulled together the first recipe, mixing flour, cayenne, and salt, and dredging half the chicken in the mixture. I whipped up the chipotle-garlic sauce, whisking olive oil mixed with about the same amount of minced garlic (note: that's a HELL of a lot of garlic), THEN some garlic powder, salt, pepper, and a solid few tablespoons of ground chipotle peppers. Wowza. 

The smell hurt a little. That's how you know it's gonna be good. Chicken in the bag, sauce -- refrigerator.

See the tiny chunks in the lefthand bag? THOSE ARE ALL PIECES OF GARLIC.

While the chicken absorbed their respective peppery goodness, I chopped sweet potatoes into wedges and tossed them in a plastic bag with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and thyme -- a variation on my cinnamon-chipotle oven-baked sweet potato fries. (To make, just swap the cinnamon and chipotle in the linked recipe for about 1 T. dried thyme.)

After an hour, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees. The chipotle wings were good to go, as were the fries -- I spread both on pans covered with greased parchment paper. Meanwhile, Dougie dunked the flour-dredged wings in the Buffalo sauce before spreading them out on the pan, and we set the whole shebang to baking, about 45 minutes.

Dougie, Kev (who'd joined us by now, probably able to smell the wings from Columbia Heights), and I were all salivating within 10 minutes. The air was filled with the sweet, spicy, almost acrid aroma of high-heat chilis, and when I pulled the wings out to flip halfway through, a whiff almost made me keel over. This chicken smelled HOT. I was a tad concerned; I like my hot wings with a kick, but come on -- we wanted to be able to taste these things. 

By the time the wings were ready to come out, we were cruising toward the end of the second football game (Packers were still embarrassing the Eagles. Really, Vick?). BEHOLD:

Chipotle-garlic!

AND:

Buffalo!

And on a plate:

On a plate! With thyme sweet potato wedges!

Wow. These wings were knock-down, drop-dead delicious. Neither recipe was painfully spicy -- the bouquet was worse than the bite (heheh). The reviews:

The Buffalo-style chicken wings had the most immediate kick and much more sweetness to them. The flavor was right on, but hadn't penetrated as deep into the actual meat of the wings. They were, however, reminiscent of college years in upstate New York, and dipped in ranch dressing, we successfully lightened up classic sports bar wings. Mission accomplished.

The chipotle-garlic wings were much more complex. Just an hour of marinating had helped the intense smokiness of the chipotles and the sweet bite of the garlic penetrate deep into the meat, right down next to the bone. They actually were spicier, but not in the blindingly simple Frank's Red Hot sort of way. I think the three of us preferred this approach, less traditional though it may be, but all decided it could use some honey or brown sugar. 

All in all, a big success. And yeah, I know, I need to start taking better pictures. More experimentation to come as the playoffs continue. GO PATRIOTS!

Recipes:

Chipotle-Garlic Wings

6 T. olive oil

6 cloves minced garlic

4 t. ground chipotle chilis

2 t. garlic powder

Salt and pepper

12-20 wings, depending on size.

• 
  

Whisk ingredients, toss over chicken in a sealed plastic bag, and massage into chicken. Refrigerate at least an hour, up to a day. Bake, on a greased surface, at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes (depending on size of chicken pieces), flipping once, halfway through. Serve with honey for dipping.

Buffalo-Style Hot Wings

3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 t. cayenne pepper

1/2 t. garlic powder

1/2 t. salt

1 c. buffalo sauce -- Anchor Bar being among the best

12-20 wings depending on size

Mix dry ingredients and toss over chicken in a sealed plastic bag. Dredge chicken in the flour mixture extremely well. Feel free to refrigerate! Right before baking, dunk in buffalo sauce, ensuring good coverage. Bake, on a greased surface, at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes (depending on size of chicken pieces), flipping once, halfway through. Serve with bleu cheese or ranch dressing.

Clementines: Nature's Tangerine-Flavored Candy

I forgot to tell everyone on Wednesday, but on Wednesday, Hungry Sam turned one. Which in blog years, means that Hungry Sam is a cranky and stressed out teenager. Or something!

To reward you all, I'm going to talk about clementine oranges. Which I LOVE.

Not true size. Or maybe, depending on the size of your computer screen.

Clementines are little oranges about the size of a large donut hole (or if you're from Canada, a large "Timbit"). They are easy to peel, generally seedless (although clementine FAILS occur; see below), extremely sweet, sold by the 5-lb. box, and are at their best in December, January, and February. I like them so much I may have eaten a whole box in 24 hours a week ago (although to be fair, I was doing the 13-hour drive from Maine to D.C. at the time).

I WIN

The best part about eating a clementine is peeling them (which I promise I wasn't doing while driving, mostly). It's like a challenge each time to see if you can remove the rind intact. I mean, it's not hard, so you mostly just feel like a failure when you can't, but there it is.

The second best thing about clementines is that they're wicked healthy, so I don't feel bad about about bringing six of them to work with me as snacks. Also, now my office smells GREAT.

The third best thing about clementines is that they essentially taste like candy.

The worst thing about clementines is clementine FAILS. These occur when the clementine isn't sweet enough, is too firm (and thus IMPOSSIBLE to peel in one piece), or when there are seeds. I mean, really -- I eat these little babies instead of giant citrus because they're so easy. But when each of the eight segments or whatever has like three seeds, that's the opposite of easy. It's hard.

OK, that's all I have to say about that. Go buy yourself a box of clementines -- you won't be disappointed, unless you are!

A Few Good Sandwiches

OK, cooking is all well and good, but sometimes, you really just want a sandwich.

Making a sandwich is an art form -- don't try to deny it. Why else would Subway call them "Sandwich Artists"? But I digress.

I don't always keep sandwichy things around my house -- after all, lettuce, tomato and other sandwich accoutrement often go bad faster than I can eat them. But seized as I was by a craving the other night, I constructed a pretty tasty sandwich:

Sandwich dominated.

We're talking about some honey-roasted turkey, thick-sliced on toasted nine grain bread with romaine lettuce, swiss cheese, tomato, red onion, and stone-ground maple mustard. The sandwich is pictured here with my signature chipotle-cinnamon baked sweet potato fries (recipe at the bottom of the post).

I have an identical sandwich for lunch today. I combat the all-too-frequent soggifying of the bread by the tomato by ensuring a protecting layer of turkey AND lettuce rests between the bread and tomato.

If you like looking at pictures of sandwiches I have eaten (and why wouldn't you?) hit up some blasts from the Hungry Sam past discussing sandwiches!

• Potbelly's Breakfast Sandwich
• Chicken Salad, Apple, and Cheddar Panini
• Amazing Turkey Club at Lawson's (z"l)
• PB&B&J Awesomeness

And as promised, a recipe:

Chipotle-Cinnamon Baked Sweet Potato Fries

-One sweet potato per person
-Olive oil
-Ground Chipotle Peppers
-Cinnamon
-Salt and Pepper

1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2) Using a sharp knife, cut sweet potatoes into wedges. The goal is to cut them into as similar a size as possible so they cook at the same rate.
3) In a large bowl or plastic bag, toss potatoes with olive oil (about 1 tsp/potato), chipotle (about 1/2 tsp/potato or to taste), cinnamon (1 tsp/person), salt and pepper (just eyeball it).  Make sure wedges are coated thoroughly.
4) Grease a baking sheet and spread the wedges out so they're just one layer deep.
5) Bake 30 minutes or until wedges reach desired doneness (crispy, soft, whatever you like). It helps is at some point you flip them.
6) Enjoy!

Holidays in Maine Means Lobster and Tree-Shaped Cake

Without addressing the theological and cultural implications of a Jewish person doing Christmas -- I do Christmas.

Rather, my family does (and always has); my mother is Christian and doing Christmas (having a tree, exchanging presents, eating special dishes) is one of the many ways we have integrated the traditions and memories with which my mom grew up into our family's life. Plus, Chanukah is kind of a stupid holiday.

BUT that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is that Jen and I hit up my home in Maine for Christmas. A total of five cancelled flights led to two extra days in Maine for me and four for Jen -- and a number of extra meals with the family.

Highlights!

My mom made her EPIC lobster stew on Christmas Eve. This is truly epic -- NUMEROUS lobsters, picked and cooked in a rich but loose tinned milk-based stew. My mom's famous for this stuff -- just don't ask her about the time TWO consecutive batches were ruined due to the tendency of regular milk to curdle when interacting with the residue from the rubber bands around lobster claws. Don't ask my dad, either; he was the one who picked all those damn lobsters. Now, however, my parents have perfected the process; the result is a tangy, savory stew bursting with claw and tail meat.

SO MUCH LOBSTER MEAT!

My mom also whipped up a pretty super roasted beet, walnut, and goat cheese salad with the meal, one totally worth mentioning:

That morning, we feasted on an incredible french toast souffle, one which had sat and soaked in its batter in the fridge overnight. It souffled so much that we couldn't get it out of the oven without the peaks scraping the heating elements on the oven's roof -- and though this photo came after the souffle began to fall, I think it captures how buttery and airy the dish finished. It looks a little weird, but at the end of the day, this is the fluffiest, well-spiced, mouth-wateringest french toast EVAH.

Finally, the last few years I've been the one to make our family's traditional Christmas tree coffee cake. You roll out your refrigerated-rised pastry dough into a 10" by 16" rectangle and cover it in a mixture of pecans, dates, sugar, melted butter, and cinnamon. The dough is then rolled (hotdog direction) and cut into 16 even rolls. These are then arranged on a cookie sheet in the shape of an evergreen tree, painted with a little more butter, and are allowed to rise for a while before baking. We always frost with a little green vanilla frosting, like so:

This is a coffee cake in only the loosest of senses, for in truth, it's essentially an arrangement of sticky buns with a Christmas flair. So damn good.

In my house, Christmas isn't a religious event -- after all, my brothers and I are Jewish. But the Christmas foods are a touchstone, one that helps to make Christmas real and traditional and meaningful for my mother. Giving my mom the chance to be drawn back into wonderful memories from her childhood and to continue to make memories with her family (and this time around, with Jen too) is what it's all about.

Do any of you have interesting Christmas/holiday traditions and foods? Share in the comments section!

Chocolate Destruction!

I have...destructive...tendancies. My brothers and I would build then, more importantly, destroy Lego cities; I have a weird unconscious habit of tearing apart my dinner napkins and shredding paper in my hands; and I have the same fascination with knives, axes, fire, and small- to mid- range explosives as do many boys.

Given all this, the thought of a food the preparation of which entails a little physical violence inspires in me no small amount of glee.

Faced with this prospect, I may have overdone the chocolate orange.

I have, for years, seen Ferrara Chocolate Oranges in stores and chocolate shops, yet never have I tried one. So when my parents threw one into my Christmas stocking, I was delighted. Here was chocolate that didn't just benefit from, but straight-up required, the application of directed force.

Yet when the time came, and I slammed it once -- twice -- three times -- four times into surfaces of increasing hardness (wood to granite) -- the orange, wrapped in its foil, barely seemed to feel it.

Then I opened it -- I'd shattered half into tiny slivers and chunks, and maybe half had split into the desired wedges. Good enough!

Coming soon: Marination clarification and pictures/recipe for my family's Christmas Tree Coffee Cake!

I Love Chipotle and Other Thoughts

I received a poorly spelled anonymous comment on my last post about what happens when I go grocery shopping hungry:

"i aspect a food blaggor too be eatign the fansy stakes nd potaytoes nd vegatabels not the leen packest and soops why do yo thnk yo are a godo food blaggor if yo eet these bad fodos." 

Translated into English, the comment reads:

"How dare you, sir, call yourself a food blogger! This sacred art is sullied by your boxed-rice buying proclivities, your preference for pre-made bread crumbs, and your insistence upon purchasing peanut butter! It is unacceptable that you should have anything in your freezer at all, in fact. I deride you and your affront in the strongest of terms!"

Now, I assume this is one of my wonderful friends having a little fun. (Because God help us all if public schooling has failed some poor soul so thoroughly). But a good point is raised -- isn't the point of food blogging to share exotic recipes and demonstrate a thoroughly epicurean lifestyle?

I say no. At least not at Hungry Sam. I eat like a normal person. Sure, maybe I have an absurd food-oriented enthusiasm streak, and maybe I do cook more than the average 24 year-old D.C. professional, and maybe I'm a tad adventurous (I ate alligator last week!) -- but ultimately, it's silly to think even foodies never eat a frozen pre-made meal.

The fact is, this blog is not about food elitism. If that's what it means to be a food blogger, I don't want any of it. My sole purpose is to share my love of food and the enjoyment I get from it, whether I'm roasting a chicken with some exotic technique, grilling a bizarre meat like buffalo, or chomping on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I'm an advocate for cooking food from scratch because I think it's a good, healthy way to enrich a part of life that so many people see as a chore. But fatigue hits us all, snowstorms spank Districts of Columbia and having some frozen or easy-to make mixes in the pantry is smart.

So, anonymous commenter, prepare to be outraged by today's food fun: I love Chipotle burritos.

Stolen from somewhere.

I've been sick and in a lousy mood, so I went out and bought a fast food burrito for lunch. AND IT WAS AWESOME. It was perhaps the best thing I could have done for my mental health. From the bland, luke-warm tortilla to the greasy yet savory chicken chunks to the diced up lettuce (iceberg!), this burrito was exactly what I wanted to eat and it made me happy and full. I believe in healthy food, home-cooking, and the benefit of kitchen creativity, and yet sometime, you just want a fast food Chipotle burrito.