Jambalaya Party

We've been wanting to have these folks over for a while; we finally found a weekend when we could do it. Herb and Dianne; Jay and Mary Ann, and John and Karen joined us for dinner and a game of Mexican Train dominoes (which we learned at Dianne and Herb's).

Jambalaya is one of the first recipes I made when I started cooking. It's a crowd pleaser and fairly easy to prepare. If you are looking for something easy to start cooking; this is as good a place as any. It came from Recipezar and is now on food.com. My version is here.

Ingredients. That's andouille sausage

Second set of ingredients ready for the pan. First set is the chicken

Andouille, and the holy trinity of cajun cooking  (onion, celery, and bell pepper) getting a sauté.

 You can see how easy this recipe is. You can prep everything ahead of time, leaving you time to have a clean kitchen when company comes over.

Hors d' oeuvres.

Karen brought an apple cake with salted caramel topping

Dianne's cornbread, jambalaya, and Mary Ann's salad. A great dinner

 I suck at people pictures. The only semi-usable one is this of Jay, Dianne, and Herb

Jay, Dianne, and Herb

 John won at dominoes, there may be a rematch in the future.

Burger Project Summary

I had a great time this past year investigating hamburger joints with my good friends Jay, John, Norm, and Ray. It all started in November 2011 when I read an article in the Oregonian on The Top 10 Classic Burgers in the Portland Area.  My immediate thought was; "what a great job to have: eating burgers and writing about it. I like to eat and I like to write about stuff." My second thought was "hey I could go eat burgers and compare my experience". That was quickly followed by "I bet I've got some buds who would could occasionally escape the food police (aka spousal units) and do this with me." 

I have a great affinity for spreadsheets (just ask my co-workers) and I wanted to get an experience working with Google Docs. With just a few minutes thinking I had many itches I could scratch with just one effort

• Hang out with friends semi-regularly
• Eat great hamburgers (come to find they wouldn't all be great)
• Learn how to use Google Docs and use a shared form to populate a spreadsheet
• Blog about the adventure.

At first it was Jay, John and myself. After a couple of trips we recruited Norm and Ray. We took turns picking and made our way to some interesting places and some not so much. We used a 5 point scale  to rate 6 categories:

Rating system

1. Horrible
2. Not the worst ever
3. Average
4. Pretty darn good
5. Epic

Rating categories

• Hamburger
• Side
• Drink
• Atmosphere and ambience
• Service
• Overall

I learned subsequently through a project at work that an odd number rating system isn't preferred in this type of work because it's too easy to choose "average" thus avoiding a real decision. But it worked pretty well for us. I think we could identify the difference between a 2, 3, and a 4.  We were pretty tough judges. We didn't hand out 5's right and left; neither did we hand out many 1's.  I think the only item that averaged below a 2 are the fries at Stanich's. They were truly awful (gray, limp, greasy, AND cool) in most everyone's opinion. Three of us gave them a 1; 1 person a 2; but Jay gave them a 4. We looked at him like he was crazy, but didn't pressure him to change his score.

Here is our week-by-week tally.

Week-by-week comparison

A burger joint has got to have a great burger; here is the ranking of the burgers in order of preference.

Hamburger Ratings

The overall rating ranking shown here is the based on the average "overall" rating by each member. The "overall" is not an average of the other categories but rather the raters overall rating of the place. As such it is subjective and will weight the different categories in different ways week-to-week. Confusing? Don't over-think it.

Overall ratings in best-to-worst order

My biggest reaction to our ranking is that Dea's In n Out is rated way, way to low in my opinion. When people heard I was doing this project they's ask "where should I go?" Dea's was always very high on my list. 

I think the (well at least "a") reason for this is that it was our first visit and we were cognizant of the fact we were setting a standard. It's like judging figure skating or gymnastics. If you give a top score to the first contestant, you've cut off your ceiling for the rest. Also, since it is way over in Gresham (about an hour away from our homes in Beaverton) we had to make a pit stop in their bathroom before we left. Not pleasant. That dinged their atmosphere and overall points I'm sure.  We didn't include bathroom status in the other places so that could be a bit unfair. On the other hand, maybe it is just average. 

I think we may have to go back and see how it fares now that we have a body of work to base it on.

The initial goal was to visit the same ten places the Oregonian wrote about; we then were having so much fun we added others. It looked like it could be the never-ending project so I corralled us a bit at the end to finish off the original comparison.

Head-to-head comparison with The Oregonian

 We were in agreement about Helvetia Tavern being a great burger place and that there are better places to spend your burger money than Humdinger. But that's about all we could agree on. Their #2 was Skyline and we rated that dead last. Other big disparities were Dea's and Stanich's.

Let's give my fellow team members space for their opinions.

Jay

The yearlong Burger Research Project was a blast.  It was fun to get together with friends and sample hamburgers, fries and milkshakes.  I think BBQ or Thai should be our next research project and should be limited to ten independent restaurants.

Basic research principles applied to this project.  If the subjects know you are evaluating them, they act differently.  For example, when we told the servers/owners what we were up to, they were on their best behavior – we got their best burgers and not their average burgers.  Sometimes we even got a free dessert.

The data, as presented in the summary tables, seems to support several conclusions.

Norm and Ray are easy graders and you don’t want to be evaluated by Howard.

The Oregonian told the businesses they were being evaluated.

The Oregonian’s burger wonks don’t have a clue as to what a good burger tastes like.

It pays to do your own homework.

John

The experience: Going in: I never thought there would be such differences between burger joints. Who knew? As it turns out, these differences can be vast and, with our criteria, varied. 

We all had fun being almost serious 'burger joint' critics.
Where should I go to get a burger? An age-old question that has finally been answered. With the work recently been done in this field by our crack research team, we have now determined that the finest burger joint burger available in the Portland metro area is ...
well, see for yourself in the attached results of our efforts. 

My personal overall favorite burger place is Helvetia Tavern. They offer a consistently great burger, good fries and onion rings, and the drink choice for me is usually (always) a pint of IPA.
Service is generally friendly and efficient.
Their choices in decor pretty unique with just the right balance of post-tornado salvage and man cave chic. Always comfortable and funky. I love this place.

 Ray

This project was a lot of fun. It was great to eat good food in good company. I particularly liked the structured method of evaluating experiences. Without a discrete scoring system it would have been hard to compare one place to another. It was also interesting to see how our ratings and rankings varied from those of the Oregonian. Maybe the burger quality varies from time to time or maybe our tastes and methods are different from their reviewers.

For me, the best burger I found was at Rock Creek Corner. Helvatia Tavern was a close second. When you include the other factors such as sides, service, atmosphere, drinks, etc. I think the Helvatia Tavern was the best. 

Unfortunately, I did not participate in outings to some of the other top spots, such as Killer Burger and Red Coach. Based on my fellow researcher's ratings, I will surely check them out on my own. Big thanks to Howard for organizing this caper and for doing such a great job with the web publishing.

Final Words

To read the results of all our places, simply go to the blog home page and click on the "Burger Project" category toward the top. Or click on one of the links here (sorted in our overall rank). A "*" indicates it was part of the Oregonians list.

• Dea's In n Out*
• Skyline Restaurant*
• Killer Burger
• Mike's Drive-In*
• Dickie Jo's
• Fresh Grill
• Canyon Grill*
• Stanich's*
• Helvetia Tavern*
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries
• Rock Creek Corner
• Humdinger Drive-In*
• George's Giant Hamburgers*
• Red Coach
• Giant Drive-In*
• Roake's*

and honorable mention for my burger trip in South Africa this summer:

• Ed's in Pretoria, South Africa. 

I had a blast doing this. One of the best things is it's a great conversation starter. a lot of people share their opinions on where to go to get a good burger. There are many, many options in Portland. Heck, I have scouts doing research for great places to go during our upcoming trip to Arizona and Idaho I have

There are lots of other cuisines to be explored. I love barbecue and there are some good joints in town so that may be it. I don't know that I'll set it up quite as formal. The ranking and rating was fun, but to be really dedicated to it would require setting up a database and a system that would allow publishing results a bit more easily. But, that doesn't mean you won't find write ups on good places to eat here on the blog from time to time.

How not to make Pinto Beans

I should share my failures as well as my successes. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, I've discovered a way not to make tasty beans in the pressure cooker.

I have a tried and true home made recipe for pinto beans I've perfected over the years. You can find the recipe here.

I'm working on converting it to cooking in a pressure cooker. My notes in the recipe said "adjustments may need to be made".  That's putting it mildly. I should have been thinking more clearly; the pressure cooker requires much less water. My old school recipe cooks them for 2 to 3 hours counting on the evaporation to reduce the liquid content. There isn't nearly as much evaporation from the pressure cooker. My second problem was timing. I wanted to cook them for 15 minutes. Well, I had the timer set to 15 minutes but forgot to start it. I guessed how much time I lost but evidently under-estimated. The beans were much too mushy.

Oh well. Live and learn.

Simple line-up

Chopping the onions

Mis en place

Everything is in; give it a good stir and put the cover on

 The ring is up on the cooker indicating it's almost at high pressure. I should have started the timer....

Starting to come to pressure

Here is the result: watery beans. 

Watery beans

I strained the beans and left back almost a full quart of bean broth. I don't think we'll be able to use them as base for tostados or burritos, but they'll be good as side dishes.

Here they are after removing excess bean broth

Excess broth removed

I've adjusted my recipe which you can find here. I haven't cooked the beans with this adjusted recipe so beware.
Or try Dad Cook's Dinner variety here. He uses 7 cups of liquid as well.

 I've only given this recipe 2 stars. I hope to get it back up to 5 with some adjustments. After all it took over two years to get my original recipe where I want it.

Super Bowl Party and El Cid Chili

I've made El Cid Chili many times in the past few years; it was one of the first things I learned to cook. I've made it at my work's winter holiday party every year and it disappears quickly so I'll take that as a good rating. But I've never blogged about the process; that was about to change. After a two year hiatus when my man card was revoked because we went to the opera on Superbowl Sunday instead of watching the game, we threw a pot luck party. Everyone brought something. We had olive tapenade spread, little crab and cheese bruschetta, wings, chips and dip, Cheetos  and M&Ms. I made El Cid chili for half time eats.

 I found an original link years ago; there are many links now as it has spawned across the interweb. I've adjusted the recipe over the years and made quite a few adjustments this year. You can find my recipe here (PDF) or here (Google Docs). I timed the steps so you can tell what you are in for. It takes some time but I hope you'll be pleased with the results.

First line up all the ingredients for the feast. This is everything you'l need:

The line up.

What's that you say? "Why aren't there beans?" 

BECAUSE THERE ARE NO BEANS IN CHILI!

The International Chili Society is very clear on the subject. 

1.  Traditional Red Chili is defined by the International Chili Society as any kind of meat or combination of meats, cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden.

If you have beans in your pot you have stew or pork and beans or something; but you do not have chili.

It took 54 minutes from the time I walked into the kitchen until I had everything in place. Now that is quite a bit longer than it would really take you because I posed the pictures and did all the mis en place before starting the cooking. In reality you can cut the mean and onion and prep the later parts once you get things sautéing.

Prepped and ready to go

The basic recipe calls for sautéing the top sirloin in oil for 6 minutes in small batches so you get good browning and not just braise the meat. Try cooking the bacon bits first and using the bacon fat. It's really interesting to watch the liquid foam up and then evaporate leaving beautiful browned meat from the Maillard reaction. Check out that beautiful fond which we'll deglaze later with beer. Seriously do NOT overcrowd the pan; you can do this in 2 batches but 3 is better. 

Sauté the steak in small batches

As the beef batches are done move the bits to the Dutch oven or large cast iron pot. Then add a bit more oil or fat if necessary and brown the chorizo, hamburger and chopped onion for about 8 minutes. 

Chorizo, hamburger and onion

After 8 minutes create a hole in the middle of the tasty bits in the skillet and add spice set 1 to the empty space, stir everything up for 30 seconds to a minute until the aroma fills the kitchen. Add it all to the Dutch oven. Deglaze the pan with 1/2 bottle of beer and add the sauce to the Dutch oven. It took about 40 minutes from the start of the sauté to the end of deglazing.

Add the cinnamon stick, bay leaves, cilantro, jalapeños, beef broth, tomatoes and a little salt. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 2 hours; you don't want big chunks of tomato in the chili so take time every once in a while to smash the tomato bits against the side of the pan. Do not taste it yet; you'l be disappointed; it needs a couple of hours to turn into chili.

Start of the simmering.

You can do a couple of things with the corn meal. You can add it with the liquids at the beginning of the simmer, Or , after simmering for 2 hours, make a loose paste of the corn meal, spice set 2 and a bit of water. Stir that into the chili along with lime juice and a bit more salt if needed. Simmer for another 30 minutes. It will really thicken and turn a dark brick red. 

A bowl of red.

Remove the bay leaves, jalapeños, and cinnamon stick. Serve with cheese and/or sour cream. The dairy will help tame the heat. Some cornbread on the side would be fantastic. Dianne made a great Tex-Mex cornbread that set off the chili perfectly.

I think chili is one of those dishes every man should be able to cook. If this recipe doesn't suit your fancy, to to the ICS web site and pick from one of the award winners. Or you can check out Dad Cook's Dinner for his recipe.

As the chili was simmering folks started showing up for the party.

Mark prepared his crab and cheese bruschetta. Delicious.

Mark prepping the crab and cheese bruschetta for the broiler

Carla finished a needle point project a couple of months ago and Dianne helped her turn it into a pillow. Here they show the finished product to Christie and Kim.

Carla, Kim (standing) Christie, and Dianne

Pillow that Dianne and Carla made from Carla's needlepoint.

 Some of the treats. I didn't get Herb's wings in the picture. He made a delicious home made barbecue sauce to simmer them in. They were just right; bite down and give a bit of a tug and you are rewarded with a fantastic bit of wing and sauce.

Some of the snacks

I didn't get a good picture of either Dianne or Herb, but you can see Herb's foot in this picture.

Mark, Bud, and Herb awaiting kick off.

Superbowl Lemonade

February 3, 2013

Earlier in the week we thought Carla might be coming down with the flu; she's been dealing with a lot of sick kids at Whitford. Looking ahead to her recuperation I bought about 1/2 dozen beautiful lemons at Uwajimaya, our local Asian super store. Well thank goodness she only had a little cold. Now I was faced with a bunch of lemons; what to do, what to do. We were having some friends over to watch the Superbowl and figured lemonade might be in order. Mission accepted. I've used this nice recipe from Simply Recipes before to great sucess. It's very simple: to make lemonade for 1 cup lemon juice make a simple syrup of 1 cup each sugar and water. My recipe is here

Simple ingredients; tasty results

1 1/2 cup sugar & 1 1/2 cup water.

Luscious lemons

The secret of this lemonade is steeping lemon peel in the syrup for a few minutes. Make sure you don't include any pith (the bitter white stuff between he peel and the fruit)

Nice juicy lemons; we got 1 1/2 cups juice from them.

Mix the lemon juice and simple syrup then add 3+ cups of cold water until it tastest just right

We made some bubbly mixed drinks by mixing this with some San Pellegrino. If I knew we were going to do that, I wouldn't have diluted the juice as much.