After last week’s black bean adventures, I got an itching to clean out my pantry and maybe draw some inspiration from what I”d have lying around. I had two cans of tahini that i’d been meaning to make hummus out of and a whole bunch of cannelini beans. I thought to myself “I bet Guy has a recipe for an italian-style hummus” and what do you know!
Our Farm share began this week, and while we got some cool stuff (Kholrabi! Strawberries) it seems that we’ve got some winter holdovers, including dried beans (lame!) While I have big non-Guy plans for the spring vegetables (sous vide spring vegetable risotto!) I felt the need to cook the beans before they languish forever in my cupboard.
Bora and I bought a free range organic chicken at the farmer’s market and it was kind of languishing in our freezer. I didn’t have a particular favorite chicken recipe so I figured I’d go with one of the most Guy-sounding recipes I could find: Big Bud’s Beer Can Chicken. You take a chicken, rub the inside with a spice rub, pour out half the beer, put in a couple crushed garlic cloves,put the bird on it, toothpick some bacon onto the bird, roast on hot, then cool until done.
So in 27 years of life and somehow I’ve never had an artichoke. I’ve had artichoke dip, which I’m not a fan of, so i guess I just mistakenly thought I had tried artichokes and disliked them.
Anyway, roasted artichoke hearts were being served in my work cafeteria as part of a roasted veggie mix, and it turns out they’re delicious!
There are a lot of ways to prepare artichokes, but i figured I’d see how Guy does it.
I had some Ansom Mills cornmeal and figured I’d check out if Guy had a recipe for cornbread. Between roasted poblanos and pepperjack cheese, this recipe has quite a bit of a kick, which offset the richness of the cheese and buttermilk rather nicely. It’d also be pretty good with a sharp cheddar and a mix of peppers. However, I wouldn’t bother using fancy cornmeal with this recipe, as the cheese and peppers are pretty strong.
Up until this point I really only cooked fish using fairly minimal techniques–pan sear, make a sauce, put over some grains and maybe a vegetable. In contrast, this recipe had quite a bit going on! The nutty flavor of the sesame seeds and the heat from the wasabi/sriracha/chili powder played off really nicely against the sweetness from the salad.
Besides a few ingredient substitutions to take advantage of what i have on hand (or maybe use different fruit for the salad depending on what’s available/the fact that i’m actually allergic to mangoes, raw carrots and green apples and had my serving sans-fruit), this recipe is pretty great as-is.
Plus, as someone who makes their own chilli powder, it’s nice to use it in something besides yet another batch of stewed meat. Also I’ve also never used agave nectar and it makes a really great sweetener for the dressing. Another win for Guy (and me!)
This burger was surprisingly involved (will make a process post later) but also pretty good!. The patty was 8 oz of chuck that I sous vided and then pan fried (my preferred burger method) The bacon (that you pre-boil for 2 hours!) was supposed to be in a pressed “pig patty” that you put on top of the burger but something about that technique didn’t work for me, but bacon crumbles actually work out pretty good with the melty cheese.