Pineapple-habañero salsa

I love hot food.  And habaneros are hot.  Hot hot hot!  The first time I read a recipe with habañeros, it warned "Wear gloves when handling habañeros".  Bah.  I figured, just don't touch my eyes or lick my fingers until after I've washed my hands.  How hot could they be?  So I chopped and seeded the habañeros, and vigorously washed my hands.  I did some more work in the kitchen, washed my hands.  Cleaned the dishes, washed my hands.  And then I wiped my nose.  HOLY SWEET FRACKING BURNING BLAZE OF NOSTRIL DEATH!!!  It took over an hour for the burn to subside.  Due to the magnitude of the burn, and its oil-solubility means that it hangs around for a while, and it is quite unpleasant.  If you don't have gloves, keep your hands off of your eyes, nose, children, small pets...  Just use gloves.  Really.

This salsa is very tasty.  Sweet.  Bright.  A tiny bit of a burn.  I dialed up the heat from the original version, from Gourmet (back when they liked food).

1/2 pineapple, peeled and coarsely chopped (2 cups)

2 tbsp fresh pineapple juice

2 tbsp fresh lime juice

1 tbsp mild molasses

3 scallions, finely chopped

1 minced seeded habañero

1 tsp chopped fresh thyme

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground allspice

Chop, mix, and let sit for at least an hour to let the flavours blend.  Enjoy with chips while cooking.

An open letter to Gourmet

Dear Gourmet Magazine:

I'm writing this letter to thank you for the years of excellent articles and fabulous recipes.  You made me a better cook.  You inspired me to try to cook more difficult things, and you introduced me to the wider world of cuisine.  You helped me woo my wife.  I still cook things from your magazine.  Like that yummy scallop thing.  Or that yummy rib recipe.  

It's because of our great past together that it pains me to write this.  I'm leaving you.  After 12 years, I won't be renewing my subscription.  It's not me, it's you.  Really.  Really.

You no longer seem interested in good food.  For several years now I've suspected that you were phoning it in, putting in recipes that you knew no one would actually cook - better ones could be found elsewhere anyway.  Did you think the internet made you superfluous?  I didn't think so.  Not at first, anyway.

I've been feeling like we weren't good for each other anymore for a while, but I wasn't sure.  I felt loyal to you, to my own detriment, perhaps.  I had a lot of happy memories.  But did you honestly think that anyone would want to even open the magazine when you sent the March 2009 issue with this nasty-looking sandwich on the front?  It might be delicious.  It might be the best thing on earth, but it looks, well... limp.  Let's be honest.  You even think that's one raunchy-looking sandwich.

And what about the most recent issue - May 2009.  You put a few French fries on there.  Sure, you arted them up a bit, by wrapping them in wax paper, but they still look kinda dry and stale.  Your magazine is entitled "Gourmet".  While I agree that a good french fry can be a gourmet item, these ain't that.

It seems that the main things you're interested in are travel and cooking gear.  May I suggest a new name for your publication?  Like "Travel"?  Or "Cooking Gear"?

While we won't have any new experiences together, we'll always have Paris.

Hugs and kisses,

Bbq Dude.

Scallops & fishy pepper sauce

I wooed my wife by cooking for her.  There are about half a dozen recipes that I have that I am quite certain are responsible for my happy home life.  This is one of them.  The bright side is, it's fast, it's easy, and it can be prepared as an appetizer or as main course, depending on how many scallops you want to make.

The secret to scallops is ensuring they're cooked properly.  Most restaurants do dreadful things to scallops, overcooking them to the point where they're rubbery and disgusting.  I'm quite convinced that anyone who thinks that scallops aren't heaven hasn't had scallops cooked properly.  Really, scallops aren't that hard, you just have to pay attention to them.

We start with a sauce (this one is from the May 2001 issue of Gourmet back when Gourmet didn't suck).  This one is a fish sauce/vinegar sauce.  I love the flavour of fish sauce, and this spicy, fishy mess is very tasty.  Here's your ingredient list:

1 small garlic clove
1 small jalapeno
2¼ tsp sugar
2 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
2 tbsp Asian fish sauce
1½ tbsp water
1 tbsp fresh lime juice

as many large scallops as you want to eat (for appetizers, 1-2 each, for main course 4-6 each)

Grind up the jalapeno, garlic and sugar into a nice, hot, sugary paste.  Add vinegar, fish sauce, water and lime juice, blend until you get a nice, green, frothy fishy sauce.  Yum!

Now, pat dry your scallops, season liberally with salt and pepper, and heat a pan over high heat until the oil is screaming hot but not smoking.  Put your scallops into the screaming hot oil.  If you're a pan-fidgeter, you're gonna want to stir the scallops and move 'em around.  Don't.  Scallops are fragile, and you don't want to tear the beautiful surface of the scallops.  Fry 'em for 3 1/2 minutes per side.  Flip once, and don't pan-fidget.

After they've seared 3 1/2 minutes/side, test to see they're slightly flakish on the surface.  Serve with the dipping sauce.  YUM!

Served with a nice sauvignon blanc: 

Smokin' pizza.

I'm one of those foreigners your mother warned you about.  Stealing your jobs, and stealing your women.  (No seriously, I work in America, and married an American - I guess I'm a bad one).  So I confess, most American holidays don't mean much to me.  So I tend to celebrate Memorial Day as a bbq weekend. Not that different from most Americans, but I have an excuse.

This year, the Memorial Day weekend is a low key event here.  Our first night is a grilled pizza night, which takes advantage of the direct and indirect heat of a large grill.  Smoked pizza is the shiz-nit.  Really.  Everyone loves it (cause who doesn't love pizza??), but at the same time, if done properly, it adds the exotic flavour of smoke and all the fun cheeses you can get your hands on, which makes me very happy. 

This makes 4 largish, individual pizzas:

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 C water, room temperature

2 C bread flour, plus more for work surface

1 tbsp whole wheat flour

2 tsp sugar

1¼ tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

Mix the yeast, sugar and water, and let the yeast bloom a moment.  I just like to watch the yeast hydrate and get all fired up (I'm a microbiologist - sue me).  Add oil, flours and salt (in that order) and mix (or knead) until the dough starts to feel a tiny bit dry.  As with all bread doughs, you may need to add a little more flour to get the right consistency.

Put into an oiled bowl, cover and let rise for 1-2 hours.  

While it's rising, prep the toppings.  First you'll want an oil.  This pizza isn't tomato-sauce based.  It's not easy to do a tomato-based pizza on the grill.  Too heavy, and too wet.  So we do an oil based pizza (who doesn't love oil?).  Heat:

4 medium garlic cloves, minced

½ tsp red pepper flakes

⅓ C extra-virgin olive oil

until they start to bubble.  Pull them off the stove and pour into a bowl to cool.  You're gonna use this yummy stuff later (and any leftovers goes great on sandwiches).

Also, prep the toppings.  We like tomato on our pizza, so we get the moisture out of some tomatoes by chopping them up, pulling out the seedy, messy gunk, and salting the remaining flesh liberally.  Leave it in a colander over the sink, and shake it every once in a while to get the water out.  You'll be left with a nice, drier, salty tomato chunks.  

For this batch of pizza, we also prepped some pepperoni, shredded fresh basil leaves, fresh pineapple, shallots, leftover smoked brisket chunks and orange peppers.

For cheese?  You can use the standard pizza cheeses, of course, but I prefer a mixture of mozzarella (of course), parmesan and fontina.  Fontina gives that nice odour of dirty feet - but in a good way.  Nice and sweet and fragrant.  It mixes with the flavour of the smoke beautifully.  But of course, it's pizza.  So how can you go wrong?

After rising, cut the dough into four parts, roll into small balls (with a bit of flour, to keep your fingers and the surfaces dry), and cover.  Let rise 15ish minutes.  Roll out with a rolling pin.  This dough is NOT like a regular pizza dough.  You want it to be thinner, so you really need a rolling pin to get the thinness required.  Roll out gently once, let rest 15 minutes, then roll again to get a nice pizza size.  While the dough is resting, get the grill started, get the charcoal to be nice and white hot.  Ultimately you'll want a nice hot fire on only half of your grill surface.

Here's where the trickiness starts - when the fire gets to the right level - transfer the rolled-out dough to the grill.  If you haven't properly floured the surface of the dough, this part will be a TOTAL disaster.  Sticky dough, flames, death.  You listening to me?  So make sure the dough is properly floured.  And make sure the fire isn't too hot.  You want it hot, but no open flame, or you'll singe the dough rather than cook it.

So set the dough on the fire, and let it cook.  Not too long.  DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THE FIRE.  This part is done really, really fast.  I have entirely too many scorched pizza doughs waiting for me in pizza hell, and we don't need to send any more there.  So really, keep an eye on that dough.  It takes only 45-90 seconds to properly cook the dough.  It'll bubble up on the top - go ahead and pop those bubbles, and pull that pizza dough off when the underside is nicely browned.  It'll look pretty yummy at this point.

Flip it over.  You're going to dress the browned side.  Brush on garlic pepper oil.  Then dress the pizza with the ingredients listed above (when we serve these at a party, we'll let our guests dress their own pizzas).  Just make sure it's not too heavy, otherwise it becomes unwieldy on the grill.  Slide the pizza back onto the grill, away from the fire.  Close up the grill, and smoke it long enough to melt the cheese, generally 5-10 minutes.  When the cheese is melted to your satisfaction, move back over the fire and brown the underside of the dough.  You'll see the cheeze bubble, and it'll be done in less than a minute.  Remove from heat, chop, serve, and bask in smoked pizza glory.

Truly, this is a crowd-pleaser.  You'll never make people happier than serving them something they already love, but in a way they never expected.

Happy long weekend.