The House of Marinara

This is the first year that I will actually be cooking a Thanksgiving Dinner. As such, I want to buy a decent turkey. So my question is:

Where will you be buying your turkey this year?

As you may know, Mrs. Marinara does the baking in our household. Other than that, it is only warming things up for the little Marinara. So when friends have babies, I have the pleasure of preparing a meal for them. Well, this latest meal was tricky because I am friends with the guy but have only met his wife in passing. On top of that, he is an Italian from Upstate NY, so my basic Italian meals might be considered rubbish. On top of that, people have built up my skills much further than they really deserve. So I have this pressure to deliver.

I decided to stay simple because simple works. I knew I wanted to grill steak (flat iron beauty from Belmont Butchery) and asparagus. For the starch, I was leaning towards a pesto farafelle when it occurred to me that pesto is out of season. Most people wouldn’t care, but that stuff bothers me. So my buddy, The Sausage King of RVA, gave me his take on mashed potatoes.

His advice was to boil the potatoes until they fall off the knife when you poke them. In the meantime, heat up ungodly amounts of butter with some heavy cream. He had me dry the potatoes, then break them up using a potatoe ricer, and add the butter/ cream mixture in slow intervals, while stirring slowly. He said moving to fast would release the gluten and mess them up. He then told me to add salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

So I followed the recipe, except that I had no nutmeg. Oh yeah, I also added some crumbled bacon (with just a tad of bacon grease). In reality, I used 2.5 pounds of potatoes and melted 3 sticks of butter into a pint of heavy cream. I only ended up using 1/2 of the mixture because I thought you can only make mashed potatoes so liquidy before they turn into soup.

Anyway, they rocked. They could have killed a small child, but they were so good. I would rather have 3 tablespoons of amazing food than a full serving of anything average.

I completed the meal by sending over a loaf of flour garden bread, 2 large Ghiradelli mix brownies, and a pint of Bev’s ice cream (espresso oreo and dirty chocolate). I hope they enjoyed it, I sure did with all the leftovers!

A nice dry-aged strip from Whole Foods.

Romaine lettuce, roasted peppers, cucumbers, manouri cheese, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

I have made several valiant attempts at smoking briskets, and all to often I can’t seem to get over the hump from good to really good. There are probably several reasons why I seem to be OK at this exercise including quality of beef, use of an electric smoker, spice combinations, wood usage.

This time I tried the following preparation.

*Injected the briskets with Creole Butter
*Rubbed it with yellow mustard
*Combined various amounts of Lawry’s Seasoning Salt, sugar, brown sugar, paprika, cumin, chili powder, and cayenne pepper
*Soaked Hickory and Cherry wood chips
*Used water and pomegranate juice in the basin

So it’s been in the smoker for about 5.5 hours. A few more hours and we will be in business.

About 4 years ago, I had a pretty good chili recipe that included corn, kielbasa, and sugar. People loved it, but I gave it up because it wasn’t real chili. It wasn’t Texas chili.

So took a few years off and decided that I needed to start over with chili. I have had several chili’s that I liked. Most of them fall into the category of hot dog chili, but from everything I can tell, hot dog chili and Texas chili are the same thing. Some of these chili’s are made at places like Jimmy’s in the West End, Jess’ Quick Lunch in Harrisonburg, Texas Tavern in Roanoke, and Ben’s Chili Bowl in DC. They all seem to have that addictive combination of meat, grease, and spice.

My first attempt at a Texas chili was an accident. I made taco meat, but I decided to break up the ground beef in water and then boil it. After cooking and adding the spices, I realized I had found the consistency that I would need for my chili. But that was all the success I had. Since then, I have tried three different times to start concocting the perfect recipe. Each time I could never get the spices right. It always seemed to lack that spark. So desperate times called for desperate measures. I decided to cheat and use the chili seasoning packet that my mom used. It is called Caroll Shelby’s Chili Kit and it comes in the brown paper bag. I cooked up the chili and still it didn’t do it for me. So now, I am at a loss. I need to figure out how some of these places do it. I know it would be too much to ask if anyone would mind sharing their secret with me

So I was asked to make a meal for a family that just brought in two teenaagers from Haiti. My thought process was as follows: