Recipe: Spiced Boiled Peanuts

Again, credit where credit is due, this recipe is adapted from the one within the pages of the stellar publication, Saveur Magazine.

Also, I think Boiled Peanuts are something that allow for great creativity, so do whatever you want and see how it goes.  Any kind of spice would work (mustard seeds, cardamom, etc.) and I think the boiling liquid could be altered in lots of interesting ways (soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, maybe even some red wine, etc.).  The one thing to keep an eye on would be the salt since you don't want to go too heavy on it.  That being said, boiled peanuts are kind of a salty snack, so be aware of that going in!  Also, these are called out as "Spiced", but they're certainly not overly hot.  To read all I had to say about these, you can go here.

Paprika, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, crushed red pepper, cinnamon, bay leaves and garlic do a spicy peanut make.

Ingredients:

2 lb. raw peanuts

1/2 to 1 cup kosher salt (depending on how salty you want them)

¼ cup sugar

1 tbsp. coriander seeds

1 tbsp. fennel seeds

1 tbsp. whole black peppercorns

1 tbsp. crushed red chile flakes

1 tbsp. hot or mild paprika

2 bay leaves

2 cloves garlic, lightly crushed

1 stick cinnamon

1. Rinse the peanuts in a colander thoroughly as they are often dusty.  I've seen some recipes that recommend soaking the peanuts for a bit before boiling, but I did not opt to do that.  It may cut down on cooking time, I suppose.

2. Throw everything you have into an 8 quart pot with a gallon of water and bring it all to a boil.  As you can see in that top photo, the peanuts will be floating, which might cause you to be somewhat distressed, but fear not, they'll eventually get saturated a bit and will settle in to the water (see below).

  

3. Once you reach a boil, turn the heat down to medium-low in order to maintain a good simmer and get ready to wait...for quite a while.  You'll want to stir the peanuts and move them around fairly regularly, but know that you've got a minimum of 4 hours before they're ready and it might be as much as 6 hours.  The longer you cook them, the softer they'll get, but I felt they were good around the 5-1/2 hour mark.  You'll also want to keep adding in water as it boils away and the level drops.  You might be able to prevent this by covering, but I just maintained the level by adding in more water.

4. Sample the peanuts after 4 hours by dipping one out, letting it cool and then cracking it open.  Once you have the texture you like, shut off the heat and let the peanuts cool down IN the liquid.  This is an important step since that when a lot of that brine and the flavor it brings gets into the shell.  You might also want to put a lid on the pot that's slightly too small in order to keep the peanuts submerged.  Let them cool for at least an hour.

5. That's it!  You can eat them warm right from the pot or store them in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.  I'd drain the liquid off before refrigerating.  If you like them warm, you can always reheat in the evil microwave or something like that.  Enjoy and, as I said, you can make adjustments as you see fit (less salt, more spice/heat, etc.).

Recipe: Glazed Donut Grilled Cheese Sandwich

OK, let's be honest, you can probably figure this recipe out for yourselves, but here's the original blog where I described all this and below is what I did!

Ingredients:

1 Glazed Donut (whatever brand you like)
2 slices of Kraft American Cheese
2 tbsp butter, softened

Yes, you only need one donut and there are two here.  I had to do a quality check, didn't I?!?!

1. Slice the donut in half like it's a bagel.  This is a sticky affair, but you're not making this sandwich to stay clean dammit.

2. Spread a tablespoon of butter on the cut side of each half OR you can do it on one side, put that down in the pan and then spread the other tbsp on the exposed side.

3. Make a sandwich with the 2 slices of cheese between the donut halves.  Remember, you're putting the sticky, glazed side against the cheese and buttering the more bread-like interior of the donut.

4. Preheat a small frying pan over medium heat and then put the sandwich in there, butter-side down.  Keep an eye on it, but it'll probably brown up nicely in a minute or two.  Once it does, flip it over and let it cook for that same amount of time on the other side.

Your finger in the corner is optional.

5. That's pretty much it!  Get it out of there and put it on the plate.  It'll be hot and the cheese should be nicely melted.  You might want to let it sit and cool down for a minute, but it'll be a long minute.

Enjoy your next EKG on me!

Recipe: The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World

Go check out the blog here if you missed all the ever-so-exciting information I provided you with earlier!  If you can't be bothered to go read that over and you want to get right to the ice creamy deliciousness, just know that this is a slightly modified version (2% milk instead of whole milk, half-and-half instead of heavy cream) of Jeni's Ice Cream's Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World.  Also, you'll see that I've broken it up a bit between the ice cream base and the chocolate component.  After you have the base, you can pretty much take it anywhere you want as far as flavors go.

Ingredients:

Ice Cream Base:

2 c. milk (I used 2%)

4 tsp. cornstarch

1 c. half-and-half (or heavy cream if you want)

1/2 c. sugar

2 tbsp. light corn syrup

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

3 tbsp. cream cheese, softened

Chocolatey Goodness:

1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa

1/2 c. brewed coffee

1/2 c. sugar

1-1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate (I used semi-sweet, but I'd go with a higher percentage, darker chocolate the next time)

1. Make the ice cream base first: In a small bowl, stir together 1/4 cup milk and the cornstarch; set the slurry aside, but don't forget where you put it...you'll need it later. In a 4-qt. saucepan, whisk together the remaining milk, the half-and-half (or heavy cream), sugar, syrup, and salt; bring to a boil over medium-high heat and then cook for 4 minutes. Give the slurry another stir (the cornstarch tends to settle pretty quickly) and then whisk the slurry into the hot milk mixture. Return to a boil and cook, stirring, until thickened...shouldn't take more than around 2 minutes.

2. Place cream cheese in a decent-sized bowl and pour in about 1/4 cup hot milk mixture; whisk until smooth and then whisk in remaining milk mixture and let it all cool off a bit.

(Note: what you now have is your standard ice cream base. With this, you can add in all kinds of crazy stuff and make whatever kind of ice cream you want.)

3. Onward to the chocolate sauce: Bring the cocoa, brewed coffee, and sugar to a boil in a 2-qt. saucepan over high heat; cook for 30 seconds. Remove from heat and stir in the bittersweet chocolate until the whole thing is smooth.

Look how happy the towel is at the thought of the pending merger!

4. Let the sauce cool down a bit and then stir it into the ice cream base. You can try to ice the bowl down and get this chilled quickly, but your best bet is to just put the whole thing into the refrigerator. Several hours would work, but overnight would be ideal. The colder the mixture is when you put it into your ice cream machine, the better off you'll be.

5. Pour the well-chilled mixture into an ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer's instructions. I find it's usually pretty much ready to go after about 20 minutes, but just keep your ears open. When it starts to slow down and struggle a bit to turn, that means you're ready.

6. I know you want to just start eating this now like soft-serve, which you are more than welcome to do, but, ideally, you'll pack it into a container and put it into the freezer for a few hours. It'll set up that much better and you'll get nice scoops out of it after that. Again, you'll be happy to see that it's nice and soft and creamy and not at all ice-crystal-laden!

Note: Ice cream does not have to be stored next to a piece of frozen ahi tuna, but we highly recommend it...or not.

Makes approximately 1 quart of ice cream.

Recipe: Deviled Crabs from the Seabreeze Restaraunt

Disclaimer: This is not my recipe.  This is the way the Seabreeze did it for many years and this is the way I did it using the recipe from their cookbook.  I'm tweaking some amounts, but it's essentially the same.  The original recipe calls for FOUR POUNDS of crab claw meat, which makes more than most people would want, I'd think, so I'm going to cut that in half (as I did when I made them), but you could probably even cut it in half again if you wanted.  That being said, if you're going to go through all the trouble, you might as well make plenty, right?

Ingredients:

1 c. finely diced onion
1/2 c. finely diced green or red pepper
1/2 to 2 tbsp minced garlic (the original calls for 1/2 tbsp, but I think a bit more would be good)
1/2 c. finely diced celery
1/8 c. olive oil (I always vote for extra virgin)
1/4 c. water (I always vote for extra virgin...or tap, I guess)


Approx. 7oz. tomato puree (I just went with pure tomato sauce for this; no additional ingredients)
Approx. 7oz. tomato paste
1 to 2 tbsp crushed red pepper, according to heat tolerance
1/2 tbsp dried oregano


2 pounds of blue crab claw meat, fresh or frozen or, if you have it available, go with refrigerated and canned, which works great

OK, we'll stop there on the ingredients and come back for the dough.

1. Coarsely mix the onion, pepper, garlic and celery in a blender or food processor to make it small, but don't turn it into a paste.  If you have good knife skills, you could probably pull this off with fine chopping, but it's convenient to use the blender or a food processor, so it's really up to you.

2. Add the vegetables to a large saute pan with the oil and the water and cook over very  low heat for 1 to 2 hours.  Now, as I said in the writeup for this recipe, you could probably put your heat to medium and cut that time down considerably, but...well, this is how they originally did it.

3. Add in the tomato puree or sauce, tomato paste and red pepper flake and cook on low heat for an additional hour, stirring often.  Add the oregano and cook for 5 more minutes.  Turn off the heat and let it cool.  The sauce will be pretty thick by this point.

4. Flake the crab meat into a large bowl and make sure to pick it over for any small pieces of shell.  Gradually add in the sauce and mix until the meat is moist and holds together nicely.  Refrigerate the mixture until you're ready to fry.

1 loaf of white bread (I used a baguette-style Italian loaf)
1 loaf of Cuban bread (won't be as long as a baguette, but should be broader)
Bread crumbs
2 to 3 tbsp crushed red pepper


So that's it for the breading.  I know it's a little vague, but you kind of just have to get in there and see how it goes.  As I mentioned in the writeup, I would probably take the crust off the bread when doing this as it doesn't seem to incorporate as well as the interior bread (but it worked fine with it, so it's up to you).

5. Tear the bread up and put it all into a big bowl.  Add enough water to moisten the bread (it took more than I figured it would, but you just have to go until you feel you're at the right spot) and then mash it all together until it has a loose, doughy consistency.

6. Add in the red pepper and then add in enough bread crumbs to get to a biscuit-dough-like consistency.  Again, I know this is vague, but I don't think you can mess this up too badly.  Just get it to where it holds itself together decently and it isn't a gloppy mess.  If it gets too dry while you're building the deviled crabs, just add in a little more water and mix it well.

Safflower or Vegetable oil for frying

7. OK, now you're ready to put all of this together.  At this point, you'll probably want to put your oil on the fire.  You'll want a deep-fry thermometer to be sure you're right at 330 degrees.  Use a neutral oil like safflower or just vegetable oil.  I had around 2-inches of oil in my cast iron dutch oven, which worked just fine.  Keep an eye on the temperature, but be sure to just give it time to get to 330 degrees and then make adjustments as needed to maintain that.

8. Construction: you'll want 3 vessels here; 1 for the dough, 1 for the crab mixture and then a plate for bread crumbs.  Actually, one more plate will be required as you'll need somewhere to keep the finished deviled crabs while you make the others.

9. Grab a handful of dough and drop it into the crumbs for a quick roll just to minimize stickiness.  You also might want to get a little bread crumb on your hands if you can in order to help, but, no matter what, this is a mildly sticky affair, so just embrace that reality and get to it.

10. Mash the dough in the palm of your hand into somewhat of a round shape around 4-inches in diameter and about 3/8-inch thick.  Place a heaping tablespoon of crab filling right in the center and then bring the edges up and around it.  Pinch it off at the top and remove excess dough from the top if you have any. Just do your best to get all of the filling surrounded and close up the seams.  Roll the deviled crab in bread crumbs again and then move it to the plate.  What you're looking for is something about the size of a baseball, but oval-shaped.

11. Cue up "The Final Countdown" by Europe because you're almost done!  Fry these in batches at 330 degrees for around 7 minutes total.  I typically got 3 to 4 of them in at a time and turned them over at 3-1/2 minutes for even browning.  Once they have been in for 7 minutes and are nice and golden brown, remove them to drain.  I use an inverted cooling rack over some newspaper, which works perfectly (credit to Alton Brown for that technique).  If you put them on paper towels, they'll just sit in the oil that drains off and you'll lose the crunchy exterior you just spent all that time creating.

12. You might let them sit for 5 minutes or so, but serve immediately with hot sauce (I prefer Frank's Red Hot for these).  If you want to do a bunch in advance, they should keep just fine in a low oven while you fry the rest.  They reheated pretty decently after 10 to 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven, as well.

Makes 16-20 Deviled Crabs

A Friend of the Deviled Crab is a Friend of Mine

If you grew up in the Tampa Bay area, as I did, at some point, you likely crossed paths with some sort of Cuban or Spanish food since the area is well known for it.  Obviously, Miami has the lock on Cuban cuisine, but Tampa more than holds its own in this respect thanks to an influx of Cuban, Spanish and Italian immigrants in the early part of the 20th Century.  Tampa's popular Ybor City district originated in the late 1800's around the highly Cuban product of cigars, so, really, this all makes a great of sense, now doesn't it?  Just say, "Yes" and we'll move on.

One of my earliest and (eventually) fondest memories of my Dad coming back from daily business trips or whatnot to Tampa was a brown paper bag, usually with more-than-a-few grease spots on it, filled with Deviled Crabs from the Seabreeze Restaurant.  When I was quite young, I always thought they looked and smelled pretty good, but I knew they had a little kick to them and they were filled with crab meat, which wasn't something I was at all interested in as a kid.  Like I said though, I eventually became a fan of crab and, even more than that, I became a fan of Deviled Crabs - essentially, a crab croquette filled with peppers, onions and lots of crab claw meat before being breaded with Cuban bread (not Cuban bread crumbs!) and deep fried.  Last, but not least, it is pretty much required that they be served with a side of hot sauce.

Now let's get the disclaimer out of the way right now: you'll not be seeing an authentic recipe for this on Rachel Ray's Half Hour Dinnertime Spectacular of Quickness anytime soon.  The end result is pretty outstanding, but you definitely have to work for it.

So my plan for posts like this will be to just post the recipe in its entirety separately since you don't necessarily need to read all of my ramblings when you simply want to cook something.  That being said, I will try to put some information in here that might be helpful to read ahead of time, so, by all means, read on...

The ingredient list for Deviled Crabs is none-too-outlandish, but there are a few things on there that might require some searching.  Obviously, your Deviled Crabs are only going to be as good as the crab you use, so that's a pretty important ingredient.  I am lucky enough to be near Trader Joe's and they carry nice refrigerated cans of crab claw meat (one pound of meat per can) at the fairly reasonable price of around $9 per pound.  I will say though that I struck out finding something similar at Ralph's where I was told that they typically only carried things like that around the holidays.  Of course, fresh crab from your local fish monger would be great and I know you can find good seafood at Whole Foods and similar stores, but you'll not find it priced this well and, for an application like Deviled Crabs, I don't know that you'll truly taste the difference.  I would avoid canned/non-refrigerated crab for this.

The only other ingredient that might not be readily available everywhere would be Cuban bread.  If you're in Miami or Tampa (or most major cities), you'll be fine.  Regardless of your location, just track down a local Cuban grocery or bakery and they'll have what you need.  If you don't seem to have a local Cuban grocery or bakery, you can get away with using all French or Italian bread.  Cuban bread is great and there are subtle differences between it and French or Italian, but not enough to bail out on making these if you can't find it!

For the most part, this is a pretty straight-forward recipe/procedure, it just takes some time and has one step in it that, to me, was pretty atypical.  You start out with coarsely chopped vegetables and aromatics including the Cajun trinity of peppers, onions and celery, so it really does seem to be a multi-cultural affair.  Interestingly, the recipe calls for these to cook over low heat for one to two hours(!).  Would you see a marked difference if you turned the heat up a bit and did this for 20 minutes?  My guess would be that you would not, but I also know this is how they made them at the restaurant all those years ago and they were damn good, so best not to mess with what works.

You then add in the tomato ingredients (paste and puree) and some herbs and spices before cooking further...for another hour.  Again, I'd imagine you could get away with a little less time, but, well, you know.

So you finally add the sauce to the crab meat (which you really should pick through a bit beforehand because tiny pieces of shell do indeed make their way in there on occasion) and you have a gloppy mess of tastiness that will eventually be the filling to your Deviled Crabs.  I will confess, my breading-to-filling ratio didn't go exactly as I had planned, so I had some of this leftover, but it made for a lovely Sloppy Crabby Joe or two later on.

Now for the weird part.  The breading for the Deviled Crabs consists of, well...dismantled bread?  You take your loaves of bread and wet them down with water to turn them into a kind of "dough", which you season a bit and then add in bread crumbs to make it tighten up again.  I tore up the bread before doing this and, though I failed to do so, I would also recommend going crustless on this step since the crust doesn't really get as mushy as the interior bread.  It's an odd move and one that I had never heard of or seen done before, but it did work.  I'm guessing this was put into practice as a way to utilize day-old or slightly stale bread in order to prevent waste.

Final steps include assembly and frying, both of which are pretty standard.  It is a bit odd to turn your "dough" into a thick pancake that you then wrap around the filling, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and it does work surprisingly well.  I'd say to just be careful that you don't get too much dough around them, but they shouldn't be like egg rolls either.  It's all about the juxtaposition of breading and filling and hot sauce.

Click here for the recipe!