Recipes: All-American Bangers and Smash

A few years ago, I wanted to cook up some different dishes from around the world and decided to try my luck at the English delicacy Bangers and Mash.  It turned out decent, but nothing earth-shattering or memorable.  Then we hit an obstacle with ever wanting to try it again when my wife my daughter and I all got a mild case of food poisoning from trying “authentic” Bangers at the United Kingdom exhibit in Epcot Center at Disney World.  I finally got a chance to tweak my recipe in early July using my boys as the Guinea pigs (my wife and daughter were in Chicago that weekend).  I believe I came up with a winner, and no one got sick!

The Bangers part is easy…1 package of Stadium Brats, figure two brats per serving.  Grill them to desired state…some like them burnt, others not so much!

For the potatoes, I absolutely love redskin potatoes.  I would figure on 4 potatoes per serving, so on this occasion I boiled 12 with the skins on until they were soft enough to smash, which takes a good 20 minutes.  Dump them into a colander and put them back in the pot, roughly smashing them…hence where I got the name.

The trick to making Bangers and Smash is definitely in the gravy.  Here is what I used:

1 large Vidalia onion

4 Tbsp light salted butter

2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

2 cups chicken stock

2 tsp champagne mustard

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

And the secret ingredient… 4 fluid Oz raspberry wine

Caramelize those onions!

The only reason I used raspberry wine is it was a gift from my brother-in-law and I decided to wing it instead of going out for a malbec.  Slice the onion thinly, melt the butter in a medium pan, then cook the onions till they soften, lowering the heat to a simmer and covering with a lid for ten minutes to get the onions good and caramelized, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the flour for about a minute, and add the chicken stock, wine, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce.  Simmer and stir to thicken.  Plate with the potatoes in the center.  Add a bratwurst on each side, then pour a generous amount of gravy over everything…done!

All-American Bangers and Smash

As with any of my recipes, if you try them leave me a comment, tweet, or email letting me know what you thought, and I will try to post more on this blog in the future.

Recipes: Chile Relleno Pizza

One night while I was on lunch at work, I got a huge craving for Chile Rellenos.  The craving then started morphing into a plan…how could I put all the wonderful flavors of this great Mexican dish into one masterpiece.  I was thinking of a casserole, but after bouncing the idea off my wife, she said “You know what would be good?  Incorporate it into a pizza using sweet Mexican corn cake as the crust.”  And so, our Chile Relleno Pizza recipe was born!  The ingredients are:

1 pkg Chi Chi’s corn cake mix

1 can sweet creamed corn

1 can refried beans

3 servings of minute rice

1 1/2 cups salsa

4 Oz ground turkey

1 poblano pepper

1/2 pkg taco seasoning

2 cups Mexican shredded cheese blend

The first thing you are going to have to do is roast the poblano.  My method is to raise the top rack close to the broiler, and blister the skin of the pepper until it chars, which takes around five to ten minutes.  Put the poblano in a brown lunch bag, seal it, and let it set for 30 minutes.  The skin will peel off easily.

After taking the poblano out of the oven, lower the temperature to 400 degrees and mix the corn cake batter together.  We have a nice deep dish pizza stone that we use, so pour the mixture into the stone and pop it in the oven for 40 minutes.

While the corn cake is baking, make the rice on the stove top, brown and season the turkey, and if you care to make the salsa instead of using a jar, I will add my easy salsa recipe at the end.  Otherwise, your favorite store-bought salsa will work.  When the rice is ready and fluffed, add 1 cup of salsa to it and fold it together…quick and easy Spanish rice!

When the corn cake is done, remove it from the oven and start layering your pizza.  First the refried beans, followed by some Spanish rice, then sprinkle the seasoned turkey.  After peeling the poblano, dice it and spread it evenly across the top.  Take a half cup of the salsa and swirl it over the top, add the cheese, put the stone back in the oven for ten minutes and you are ready to enjoy this sweet and savory concoction!

Chile Relleno Pizza..my comfort food!

My salsa is super easy to make.  I chop up 4 scallions, 1/2 a green bell pepper, 1 medium jalapeno pepper and sweat them in a medium sauce pan until soft.  I then put a tablespoon of diced garlic in before turning the heat down.  Put in a 28 Oz can of crushed tomatoes and simmer on low heat, adding a squeeze from half a lime and stirring occasionally.

This is a very tasty dish that I hope you all will try when you get a chance.  This is one of my absolute favorites!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way Home One Day

Due to circumstances beyond my control back in 2000, I took a job that was an hour drive one way from my house.  My youngest son had just been born and the shop that I had worked at for fifteen years abruptly closed its doors.  I worked at this new location for seven years, so needless to say, I spent a LOT of time in the car commuting back and forth.  I experienced many interesting trips over that span, including one four hour ride home in the snow during a rough winter, but there was one traveling experience that happened that I will never forget.

It was one of those irritating rush hours where the accidents were all on the other side of the freeway, but everyone heading westbound had to make sure they slowed down to take a peek at what was going on.  After sitting in stop-and-go traffic for well over an hour, there appeared to be a break on the horizon as people finally started locating their gas pedals…except for one car…in the fast lane…directly in front of yours truly.  I am a very patient man and I don’t like tailgating people, so being that it was now dusk I simply moved over enough to where my headlights were shining in this guys drivers side mirror.  After another five painfully slow miles, the right turn signal finally came on and he eased out of the left lane.  As I began to accelerate up to the posted speed limit, my eyes were glued to the window of the “slow poke”.  Suddenly, a head reared around with glaring, angry eyes towards my direction.  I was getting ready to release the bird with no wings into his general field of vision when I realized who was staring back at me…none other than Michigan’s own Jeff Daniels!

I quickly stopped the gesture by grabbing the steering wheel and as I passed, all I could manage was a smile and a wave.  He was not amused.  As I carefully monitored my rear view mirror, I thought about what had just occurred.  I had listened to his interview that morning on the Drew and Mike radio show, so I knew he was in town promoting a concert and the release of a new CD.  He had mentioned that he was going to be signing copies that evening at the Brighton Borders location.  I figured that buying his CD was the least I could do after pissing him off on the freeway,so I went home, got my two boys in case I needed backup, and headed over to the book store.

After purchasing the CD and taking my place in a very long line, it was announced that Jeff Daniels was in the building.  He walked to the back of the store where they had a table set up looking extremely tired from what had to have been an exhausting day…or was he still fuming over the jack bag he encountered a few hours earlier (raises hand slowly).  As I got closer and closer, I watched nervously as he politely went through the motions of signing autographs.  I started thinking about what I should say when I got up to the table.  “Loved you in ‘Dumb and Dumber'”?  That’s what EVERYONE else appeared to be saying.  “Hi, I am the asshole from the freeway today”?  Not a chance!  I held out my CD towards him and squeaked out “I loved you in ‘Bloodwork'”.  Apparently this was THE thing to say!  He looked up at me, grabbed the CD box out if my hand, and excitedly told me “Hey, I wrote a song about that!  It’s called ‘Dirty Harry Blues’!  It is every actors dream to get killed in a movie by Clint Eastwood!  Make sure you check the song out!”  I had gone from pissing off Jeff Daniels to making his day in a matter of hours.  He was obviously proud of his work in that movie, and was excited that someone, luckily me, had mentioned it.

Catch Jeff Daniels in the new HBO hit “The Newsroom”

Two things happened after this encounter.  The first was to change the name of the headlights-in-the-mirror move to the “Jeff Daniels”.  The second is to tell people when the subject of movies is approached to make sure, if they haven’t already done so, to watch the movie “Bloodwork”.  It is a GREAT flick, and his performance was first class all the way!  Oh, and by the way…sorry about the whole freeway thing…if that ever happens again I promise to pull off to the side and kick my own ass!