BBQ…to the Bone!

Ask anyone that has known me a while and they will tell you one of the first things I learned to do as a child was to man a BBQ pit. In fact, to my Dad and his buddies I was known as the "D.C." aka "Designated Cooker". My dad had designed and built a nice size pit on the back of a little old trailer my grandpa gave to him since it was in disrepair. The pit, now on its third or fourth fire box, is still active and used to this day about twenty years later. It was here my passion for food was literally forged in the fires of the mesquite lit BBQ pit. I spent many hours sitting diligently next to the pit ensuring it stay as close to the coveted 225F mark. Many hours were spent on fair grounds for competitions, and many hours in my drive way just getting ready for other events. To say that my passion for food originated in BBQ is an understatement. I was helping to cook competition level BBQ and cater parties of a hundred plus people when I was 12 years old.

It was here that I was bonded, not only to my father and his love of cooking, but to cooking and my own love of cooking that has only increased with age and experience. I learned from him that there is an order of things to prepare a meal with such high regard (at least if you're from where I'm from). I also learned my passion for entertaining and making the meal a total experience.

Here in SE Texas we have started to meld many cultures into our love for outdoor cooking. My family, due to our Cajun roots and my father's Louisiana connections, were hosting crawfish boils decades before you could even find crawfish in Texas. Frying turkeys has caught on and is now a Thanksgiving tradition here in the Lone Star State as well. There are many other examples on how food brings us Texans together, which I have mentioned in other blogs, but here in Texas beef based BBQ still reigns supreme.

It is these types of meals I love. Huge portions of slow cooked goodness all cooked in one big apparatus that will bring people together in a culmination of everything that represents us and our true culture. The meal will bring out the best in everything and everybody. People will listen/play music, dance, sing, eat, drink, and tell stories, older generations connecting to younger, and vice-versa. This is the type of thing that drives me and my passion for cooking.

Lately my role as a chef has taken a strange turn. I don't do so much entertaining and catering as I used to, and my days as restaurant chef are probably over. However, I still drive from this passion because I get to teach others to cook. Everyday simple Joe Smo's that have never attempted a dish are cooking for their families. Even if it is only one time, if a father cooks a meal for his family that I taught him to cook, then that makes it worth it. I know that sounds awfully romantic coming from a guy like me, but it's true. I have people come back to me all the time smiling from ear to ear telling me about how they made that dish and it came out perfect and the whole family loved it. These are the moments that bring me back to my learned love and passion and how it was my family and friends that have driven all of my cooking experiences. Those are also the moments that I can think about how that one dish these families took with them might drive similar passions within the family and someday might have a son or daughter ready to take my place in the world as an advocate of good food, family, and friends.

 

Smokey Spicy BBQ Sauce

3 Cups Ketchup

1/3 Cup Brown Sugar

1 TSP White Sugar

1 Can Dark Beer

¼ Cup Butter (unsalted)

1 Large Sweet Yellow Onion (diced)

2 TBSP Dijon Mustard

1 TBSP Sea Salt

1 TBSP Black Pepper

1 Can Chipotle Pepper in Adobo Sauce (puree in food-pro or blender)

1 TBSP White Vinegar

1 Garlic Powder

½ TSP Cayenne

 

1. In a sauce pot on med. heat, add onions and butter to sweat.
   
2. 4-5 min. later add all dry seasonings.
   
3. When onions are completely translucent add the remaining ingredients.
   
4. Bring to a bubble and simmer for 20-30 min. stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
   

 

 

 

Grilled Pineapple Mahi Mahi

Ingredients:

4-5    Fresh Pineapple Rings

5-6    Mahi Mahi Filets

1. TBSP Grapeseed Oil
   

1-2    TBSP Adams Reserve Rub: Kicked Up Chicken (only at HEB)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat grill or cast iron skillet to med-hi.
   
2. Season both fish and pineapple pieces and coat with oil.
   
3. Grill pineapple first for only 2-3 min. per side, set aside and let cool slightly, then dice into medium sized pieces.
   
4. Grill fish 4-5 min. /side, for thicker filets move to low side of grill and close the lid for 5 minutes, if cooking on cast iron place in oven at 400F for 5 min.
   
5. Serve fish with pineapple over the top to give it some over the top flavor!
   

   
    

 

 

Jamie Oliver-The Dietician?

No, Jamie Oliver is not a dietician. However, he is a chef, and a chef always has an intimate relationship with food. A chef is an expert of food, and from many angles and aspects of food. But does that make him an expert on the field of food in relation to health? Well I say it does, but only if that chef has done his homework. Recently I watched a speech Chef Jamie Oliver gave on obesity in this country. I have always viewed Jamie Oliver as a bit a goofball and I don't watch almost any TV at all so I certainly haven't seen much of his food. Therefore, I have never really formed much of an opinion of him. However, I have always taken my role as a chef to coincide with the role of an educator very seriously, at least on the subject of food. In this way, after having watched his speech, I was completely impressed with him and his message. The speech was on "TED Talks: Chew on This", a series of speeches with very interesting food type people.

    I have known for quite some time now that he has taken on the role as a spokesperson for healthier school lunches and anti-obesity campaigns, but after watching his speech I realize that he has done his homework and is delivering an astoundingly good message. It is hard to deliver such a message without sounding like a pious ass, which is what I imagine I sound like most of the time, but when you are passionate about something like this, you don't stop. You don't stop because you are saying something that people don't want to hear, you don't stop when it is a message as important as his.

    We have known for a while now that the reason for almost everyone dying in the last 40 years is all diet related. We know now which foods cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and much, much more. However, the message has fallen on deaf ears. We know that the key to good health is diet and exercise, and we now have hundreds of venues and avenues to get us in the right direction. The truth is though, we don't use them.

    The fast food companies are thriving. The first class gyms are popping up everywhere, but we are staying fat. Why, because we buy memberships justifying the cost by the results of a healthier life, but very few people have a healthy plan or goal they stick with. I hear every day about a new diet that guarantees to be healthy while letting you lose an obscene amount of weight. Or what about the fitness programs that are geared for pro athletes? P90 Cross-X Fit 2000 or whatever it is. We are willing to try small spurts of these extremes, but not willing to do the right thing on the day to day. Funniest part about those workouts is that at the bottom of the screen in the commercial. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. It says, in very small print, "results not typical". Even the commercials tell you that stuff doesn't work, but we still buy and try these things. When will we understand that the key to our destiny is so easy, so simple, that it is much easier than trying these extremes?

    By not first understanding, preparing, and cooking our food properly we our robbing ourselves of the most basic means of human survival, and this is what is happening all the time. We do not provide any education for food in our schools; in fact, we feed our kids the worst foods possible while they are at school. People are amazed that I'm a chef and I can prepare meals from scratch, I'm amazed that people can't. In fact, if school is to teach us to grow up and have applicable survival skills for the real world, don't you think this should be part of a regular curriculum?

    I think Jamie Oliver said it best in his speech. Roughly put, he said that if he was standing up on stage with the cure to AIDS or cancer in a vial, the world would be clawing at him to get it. However, he wasn't. He was standing up there with a cure to the leading cause of death in this country, and an end to 10% of American health care costs. He was standing up there with an idea, the idea to end heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other completely preventable diseases.

    I will take this idea a step further. I believe in his message. I am by no means a health nut, but I do try to eat well and exercise, and I think that I am in great shape for being 30 years old and aging. I believe that we all have the means to do this to some extent. I believe that by dedicating ourselves to living healthier and eating right we can bring back a sense of community to the world. Not only will we be healthier, but we will be at the dinner table again. We will be at the table eating right and setting the example for our children, who in turn will grow up demanding that their food, be of quality, unprocessed, and actually grown from this Earth. I believe that food is the common thread that binds all man and civilization. In fact, it is how and why we became civilized in the first place, which brings me back to the point that the preparation of food is the most basic human survival skill. Not only is it a basic skill that we are missing out on, but it is a critical skill that gone without could lead to our demise.

Passion for Food

As with all art, there has to be a certain amount of passion when you are a chef. Certainly nobody goes into cooking for money or fame, and if they do, they will find themselves in another industry really quick. Everyone wants to create dishes and be "THE" chef, but it takes quite a few years before you even get a shot at that, and in the meantime, you will prepare someone else's dishes over and over again. I had to work a fryer first. Then they gave me the grill. Then I ran sauté. Eventually, my chef would let me cook the family meal (meal for workers during the service break). It wasn't until I worked on my first line for a year before my chef finally let me write a recipe for the nightly special, and that was probably a fast track to get to do your first real chef work, especially for someone that hasn't gone to school.

So it seems if you are really willing to go through all that; and you have a love, knack, and a little luck, you can get to a point where you are doing real chef work. However, there has to be a driving force, a true reason behind the passion. For me it is very simple. I grew up with food; I helped my father cater events from a young age. In fact, my first catering gig was when I was about 12 or 13 and my dad had got called offshore with his normal job, and asked the client if they minded his son do it. I don't know if he told them my age, but probably not. My father, by no means a chef, is an excellent cook on a pit, or fryer, or a boil pot, and he is an awesome organizer. Still to this day, if there is BBQ-ing to be done, my family usually asks him first, then me if he can't do it.

However, I took that solid base of food and event planning to another level. My passion for food increased as I traveled and ate more and more foods. Twenty years ago in Katy, TX there were not a whole lot of options. Cucos, Jill's, Midway BBQ, and that was about it. So it wasn't until later that I started getting diverse food in my diet. As I traveled, ate, experienced culture, I realized that we are all basically the same, and one of the main things that binds us is food. Every culture has food that is stapled into their society, and if you observe the food, you can observe the culture.

Almost every culture has traditions of large slow roasted meats that bring everyone together to do one thing. EAT! In Texas we do BBQ. Nowadays you can expand that (in SE TX at least) to frying turkeys, or boiling crawfish, thanks to our Cajun neighbors. In Hawaii, they roast whole pigs. Coastal places have great seafood dishes, like Norway and sturgeon, or New England and clam chowder, or Baltimore and crabs. Italians have lots of dishes like that depending on what region you're from.

Wherever the culture is from, these traditions remain the same. Not to mention the everyday family meals, that believe it or not, some cultures still have. It is not just the food though. It is the spirit of it all. It's the everyone being together, eating and drinking, laughing, arguing, celebrating, mourning. We eat when there is a special occasion like a birth or wedding. We eat when there is a funeral or when someone is ill we bring them soup. Food always helps to ease the transition no matter what the situation.

This weekend my sister is getting married. We are eating, wait for it, BBQ. We are drinking, wait for it, beer, and lots of it. I am looking forward to this a lot. I won't have seen this much of my family together since my last sister's wedding. I will feed off of this event, not on the food, but on the life surrounding me. We will all forget about the recession, the tsunamis, the fighting in the Mid-East and SE Asia. We will only focus on one thing, having a good time, eating good food, and being with great people. Congrats Mikey!!! This one is for you.

 

EZ Roasted Potatoes

Here is a potato recipe that requires no smashing, and absolutely no box of ingredients.

1 ½ lbs. Red Potatoes- quartered or wedged

Salt and Pepper to taste

3-4 Cloves fresh garlic- chopped

2 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2-3 Sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 ½ tbsp dry rosemary

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
   
2. In a large mixing bowl toss together potatoes, garlic, oil, herbs, and s&p.
   
3. Spread mixture over a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil down.
   
4. Bake in oven for approx. 40 min. or until potatoes are fork tender and golden brown.
   

   
    

   Garnish with fresh parmesan for a nice touch!

Raw Food

As a chef, the questions I am constantly being asked is," What culinary school I went to, or what restaurants have you worked at?" I oblige such questions with cheesy answers like, "I studied at KU, Kitchen University." I know the people asking, without knowing the full meaning behind the real answers, are doing so to give them an idea as to how good a chef I really am. The reason I say that they never know the full meanings behind the real answers because most average people have only heard of a few culinary schools, and have no real idea of their prestige, or are only impressed if you tell them that you worked at Spago or The French Laundry. I have met a handful of people in the industry who have either attended really good cooking schools or have worked in the high end famous restaurants (or claimed they have at least) and have learned that if this is the measuring stick in which chefs are judged, the marks are being missed most of the time.

I could go into detail about my opinions on why this is not a good measuring stick, but that is not my point. My point is to provide the public with my ideas about food and how it should be prepared, and let that at least be a theoretical guide as to what kind of chef I am. The only thing left is to taste my food, but hopefully this will be an introduction as to why it is imperative that you do so.

First of all, food should be as fresh as possible, with few exceptions. Canned foods are a no-no most of the time, there are much better ways of preserving our food this day in age. Fresh-frozen vegetables are much better for you, and usually just as easy if not easier to cook than canned. Plus, it always tastes better. If you are going to go through the trouble of cooking, why not get the best return on investment? There are times when canned is unavoidable. I am rarely stewing my own tomatoes and it is hard to just whip out a bean dish, so those are a few of my exceptions, but I even soak beans or stew tomatoes if I have enough planning time to do so. Obviously, I use fresh vegetables whenever possible, but fresh-frozen when need be. People always think that cooking is harder when you use fresh items, but to me it is easier than cooking out of a box because I don't have to follow directions and figure out what the hell this little packet of orange powder is that came in that box.

That actually brings me to point number two. Never cook boxed food. Mashed potatoes must be one of the first dishes every kid learns growing up, usually via some older sibling or cousin's Tom Sawyer style trickery out of spite for mashing potatoes. It only takes roughly four steps to make them. Cut, boil, add ingredients, and mash. That is it. So, why in the hell are we making something called instant potatoes out of a box??? I have been accused of being a food snob when people hear me say things like, "Eww, boxed potatoes, gross." That is only because in about 15 more minute's time we could be eating real potatoes that taste so much better. So if that makes me a food snob, than I think we all need to be a little more food-snobby.

It is actually very apparent when we see more and more fast food and counter service places popping up. We don't care what we are eating, so as long as it is edible and available to go from purchase to mouth shoveling as fast as possible. The evidence is in our hands every time we receive our foods delivered in the same device we are using as a plate, a paper wrapper. Someone once told me, if you are going to do something, do it right. That is the underlying theme. There is a right way, and a wrong way to do everything, preparing food is no different. Sure McDonalds is quick and easy, and gets the kids quiet, and is on the way home, and you don't even have to get out of the car, and etc. However, how long does it take to throw a couple of patties in a skillet, flip, and serve? How hard is it to cut and boil the potatoes instead of pouring the powder into boiling water? Can we not really spare the 15 minutes?

In the military we have lots of stupid sayings. They are all usually pretty useful, because they are meant to guide mass quantities of men through stressful situations. The one I find myself using the most in my life is the 6 P's. Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. This holds true in almost everything in life. While I am not exactly the most organized person on the day-to-day, I don't have to be. I am nobody's life-coach over here. I am a chef and budding writer. My responsibility to my readers, customers, and guests is food and all things food related. With that being said, this is my philosophy in the kitchen whether at work or at my own home. I run my house kitchen the exact same way I do a commercial kitchen. Start with an inventory. If you keep an inventory of items at home you are more likely to stick to a structured diet. You will be less likely to buy things you don't need at the grocery store, and it will be easy to make lists before you go. Also, you can plan out your meals like a restaurant menu. Make your ingredient lists, and then you will set yourself up for success. This is how I treat each and every meal I eat or cook.

My approach to my food is simple. I use foods we are used to eating and try and push the envelope on flavors and textures. I do not usually cook with foods that are uber-expensive, and I do not usually use ingredients that are next to impossible to find. I have read books on theories about why chefs make small bite sized plates with lots of flavors. They are trying to confuse your pallet, and while it is whimsical and most of the time delicious, that is not how we usually eat. So my philosophy is to make the food so good, you don't want anything else. I want you coming back for seconds, and thirds. I have cooked mixed cuisines, and so I try not to keyhole myself that way. Whatever style or cuisine I am using, however, I am dedicated to getting it right or as close to right as possible with my own Chef Andy flare.

As my chef told me, "Don't forget to breathe." He would tell me that when the kitchen got popping and the tickets were not only across the window, but dragging the floor, hanging 6 feet from the printer. When a kitchen is that busy, mistakes are costly, and remakes are next to impossible so food has to be perfect. I worked broil, so all things grilled. Good thing Texans aren't picky about their steak, ha. However, mis-steaks do happen (realized I needed a food pun). Med-rare accidently goes to medium. A piece of salmon sticks to the grill and falls apart. So remember, it is just food guys, don't be afraid. My point is, let cooking be fun. If you make a mistake, eat it, and try it again.

Pan-Seared Chicken with Pasta Fresco

Pan-Seared Chicken with Pasta Fresco

Cooking Time: 20-30 Minutes

Serves: 4-6

 

4-6 pieces boneless, skinless chicken breasts

¼ cup green bell pepper diced

¼ cup white onion diced

2 tbsp black olives diced

1 tsp fresh garlic minced

¼ cup white wine

2 cups ripe tomatoes-medium dice

4-5 leaves fresh basil diced or chiffonade

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tsp grapeseed oil

1 bag pasta of choice- I like whole wheat cappelini!!!

 

1. Start the water for pasta first- should be salted and at a rolling boil with plenty of water! In a pre-heated (med-high) stainless or non-stick pan add 1 tsp of oil.
   
2. Pan sear seasoned chicken in hot oil 4-5 minutes on each side- finish for ten minutes in a 400 degree oven.
   
3. Do not clean pan and begin the vegetable sauté adding remaining oil and vegetables in order as listed on the ingredient list, making sure not to burn garlic, only slightly toast.
   
4. Increase heat and add wine to deglaze pan- add tomatoes and let juices reduce for a couple of minutes. This is not a thick sauce, so no need to add thickener.
   
5. Drain pasta and toss in sauce with basil in the heated pan for a minute. Plate and serve with chicken breasts on top. Enjoy!