HIP HIP HOORAY! HUZZAH! CHEERS! OLE'!: LET THE CELEBRATION BEGIN!

Hi folks, Chef G. here for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very special edition of my wonderful cooking blog.  As the title suggests, today's post is a major milestone for the Chef G. Cooking Channel.  Incredibly, I've reached episode #40 and the network hasn't even suggested cancelling my program yet.

As usual I'm ready to once again fulfill all of your reading and cooking dreams, but I'll be doing it a little differently this time.

That's because I sent out surveys to my many, MANY followers from all over the world.  I asked them to vote for which one of the following recipes they most wanted to see for this auspicious occasion:

1)  Honey and soy glazed salmon

2)  Stir fried broccoli

3)  Corned beef & hash

4)  Hearty beef & barley soup

5)  Louisiana Gumbo

All nine of my rabid fans exclaimed, "ALL OF THEM!!!"

I aim to please, but I don't have enough time in my busy schedule to write up FIVE detailed recipes in one day.  Plus, I'm a little lazy.  Therefore, I'm going to be using the art of photography instead of the arts of chefery and bloggery and recipe-ery.  And I gotta tell ya, you are in store for some pretty amazing food photography.  GET READY!

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Honey& Soy Glazed Salmon fresh out of the oven.  DELICIOUS

Served with Minnesota wild rice, it's even DELICIOUSER.

Stir Fried Broccoli.  I was going to add it to another dish, but I couldn't wait.  So I ate it all by itself.

I planned to cook a corned beef brisket for Mrs. Chef G. and me on St. Patrick's Day, but we got a last minute invitation from our next door neighbors to join them for--you guessed it--an Irish corned beef and cabbage dinner.  We ate our own corned beef brisket a couple weeks later.  The next day, I made corned beef hash from the leftovers.  DELICIOUS!

The best corned beef hash ever made by anyone!

'Twas even better with a dollop of perfectly cooked scrambled eggs and a slice of cheese.

One day I made a beef pot roast.  It was delicious, of course.  The next day, I put the fat, the juices, the bone, and some onions, garlic, carrots & celery in a soup pot with water and boiled it.  Four hours later, I strained all the solids out of the beautiful broth.  The day after that, I sauted some fresh carrots, celery & onions in butter, then added the beautiful broth and shredded leftover beef.  After that simmered for an hour, I added barley and let it simmer another hour.  With five minutes left to go, I added frozen peas.

DELICIOUS beyond belief.

Somewhere along the line I discovered my new favorite cheese.  When I bought it, I thought the label said "Le Gregyere" which would have been appropriately cheesy.

Cajun food is one of my favorite ethnic styles.  I featured a jambalaya back in the early days of the Chef G. Cooking Channel, but I've never ventured into the world of Gumbo.  I'm glad I tried it out on this particular day.

Ladle it onto some perfectly cooked rice, and you would not believe the DELICIOUSNESS.

BONUS COVERAGE: 

Once in a while, it's nice to go to a restaurant--even when your own cooking is so much better.  I just thought I'd share a couple memorable restaurant experiences to help celebrate my 40th episode.

Every five or ten years, some old college buddies and I get together for lunch at The Monte Carlo--a retro cool restaurant in Minneapolis.  Look how much more hair those other guys have on their heads than Chef G. has on his head.

Every once in a while, Mrs. Chef G. and I go out for a restaurant meal.  Recently, we tried a new Thai place in town.  She really liked whatever this was called.

  

I liked my Mussels Karapoa better.  I MUST bribe the restaurant owners for their recipe.

Thank you, everyone, for your incredible support through 40 wonderful episodes.  That's what keeps me publishing this stuff.

PATTY MELT & GREEN SALAD: A ST. PATRICK'S DAY CELEBRATION

Hi folks, Chef G. here and, by golly gosh, I sure am on a roll here on the Chef G. Cooking Channel.  This will be the third consecutive month I've posted this year, which is a big improvement over my performance in 2023.  I think I might have been spurred by seeing some of my celebrity chef competitors posting their crap on cooking shows almost every day.  Sometimes they shuffle from burner to burner to oven to oven in order to cook several dishes at the same time.  Those dorks might be onto something:  When it comes to being a social media influencer, maybe quantity really is better than quality.  

HAH!  Incredibly, some of those "chefs" really seem to believe that.  (Yeah, I'm talking about YOU, Guy Fieri, Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray, and all the other showoffs on PBS, CBS, FOX, the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, etc.)  It's kind of sad to see them making a mockery of the profession I love so much.  Cookery is a serious art--not a vehicle for attracting the highest number of "LIKES" and "VIEWS."     

Yet, here I am today, vacillating between quantity and quality.  Those celebrity chefs have gotten into my head, but their evil ways have not overtaken me.  I'll stick to one high quality dish.  A delicious dish.  A dish for the common man like me.  And a salad.

Let the festivities begin!

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Indeed, it is a festive occasion.  This is the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day.  Irish people all over the U.S. and many other countries--including Ireland--will be wearing green clothing, eating corned beef & cabbage, drinking green beer and/or Guinness and/or Irish Whiskey, and singing drinking songs and sea shanties well into the night.

I'm not Irish, but I've done all that festive stuff in the past.  Well, not ALL of them.  I've avoided the singing thing because my voice isn't all that great.  But I've been practicing, and today I'm ready to flaunt my Irish tenor.  I even recruited the Irish Rovers to accompany me in the video you'll be seeing below. 

 

One or two years ago, I posted a St. Patrick's Day Reuben Sandwich recipe.  It was, as always, SUPER DELICIOUS.  I wasn't sure how to reproduce that excellence this year.  A corned beef and cabbage dinner was my first thought, but that seemed too cliche.  Instead, I came up with a Patty Melt.  I thought it was named after St. Patty.  Much too late, I realized my mistake.  A hamburger patty with cheese and grilled onion between two pieces of bread has nothing to do with St. Patty.

Undeterred, I made a patty melt anyway.  I tossed four thin quarter-pounders over hot coals.  While they cooked, I sauteed onions to carmelized perfection.

The tricky part was spreading a little mayo on both sides of two slices of sourdough bread, toasting them in a pan, and then transferring the burger and onions, along with a nice slice of cheese onto the bread.  I flipped the sandwich back and forth on the pan until it achieved a nice golden-brown hue.  It was like the same excellent technique I use when making a grilled cheese sandwich.

NICE

MMMMMM

I

Serve with a Green salad.  (This picture was taken before I poured a huge amount of orange French salad dressing on it.)

Chef G. approves.

Chef G. is now aware that his Patty Melt wasn't Irish.  He also knows his beer is neither green nor Irish.  It was still pretty tasty. 

COFFEE = PEACE AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Hi folks, and welcome back to the Chef G. Cooking Channel.  I'm your host, Chef G., and I cannot wait to get this show underway.  That's because, for the first time ever, it'll be all about food of the liquid kind.

Indeed, I plan to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about my weird relationship with coffee.  And before I'm done telling you everything you've ever wanted to know about my weird ralationship with coffee, you'll probably wish there was even MORE to know than everything you ever wanted to know about my weird relationship with coffee.  That's how good of a celebrity chef blogger I am, and that's how fascinating this essay will be.

You can expect to read some fascinating personal history, super-hilarious anecdotes, amazing travel stories, deep philosophical insights, and truly heartfelt poetry--all related to that wonderful brown beverage.  Are you ready for this?

Let's begin at the beginning.

HISTORY

My coffee curiosity began when I was approximately 9-years old.  Whenever my family visited my grandparent's house, I'd get up early to have breakfast with them before my grandpa went to work. I watched with longing eyes as they drank coffee every single morning.  "What," I wondered, "could be so special about something that had to be slurped?"  

One day, I mustered the courage to ask for a cup, even though I knew it would be highly unlikely I'd get one.  In my mind, coffee was an adult beverage.  I might as well have asked for a shot of whiskey.  Imagine my amazement when Grandma & Grandpa Maggie (Magnuson) accommodated my request.  

[Years later, I learned Scandinavians are the biggest per-capita coffee drinkers in the world.  That revelation explained a lot about my coffee-loving heritage.  My maternal grandparents were 100% Swedish, and my dad's mother was Finnish.  Additionally, my dad's father was French, and France is no slouch in the coffee department.  In other words, I was genetically destined to become a coffee freak.]

Anyway, Grandma & Grandpa Maggie put some sugar and a little half & half in there for me.  Looking back, I assume they did so to make it more palatable to a little kid.  I pretended to like it, but I didn't REALLY like it.  I didn't touch the stuff again for almost a decade.

Fast forward past nine-years of coffee-lessness . . .

It was 1976 and I was a naive college freshman on a work-study program that required me to get up at the un-godly hour of 6:30 every morning to get to my job of doing pretty much nothing.  My boss did even LESS than pretty much nothing.  It seemed like his entire workday involved sitting in the break room drinking coffee and entertaining other members of the college's union of maintenance workers, and a few music & theatrical arts professors.  THAT was the setting in which I really learned to enjoy coffee like a real adult.  Often, there was some pretty interesting conversation.  I drank cup after cup after cup because there was nothing else to do but join in on the coffee drinking camaraderie. 

Coffee was only my second favorite beverage in those college years, but it served an important purpose in keeping me awake at work--and in class--after nights of imbibing in my first favorite beverage.

Fast forward another four years . . .

Soon after college graduation, I got a job that was much different than my cushy job on campus.   The main difference is that I actually had to work most of the time.  Yet, the job was the same in two significant ways:  a pot of coffee was always readily available, and I always had a cup near at hand.  The further my career advanced (which wasn't all that far), the more coffee I consumed.  I sipped coffee all morning and well into the afternoon.  I swear, I got up to at least ten to twelve cups per day.

The 10 to 12 cups of coffee wasn't due to a caffeine addiction though.  I never ever felt the need for any kind of caffeine rush.  In fact, I can't remember feeling any kind of caffeine rush--EVER.  Coffee had no physical effect on me.  As proof, I can honestly say I rarely drank coffee on my days off, yet I suffered no negative effects.  But, damn, I sure liked the stuff.

Fast forward another 30 years

After I retired from my career in the paint business, I discovered the joys of GOOD coffee.  I sourced coffee beans from reputable retailers who favored the fair-trade ethic.  I tried beans from many coffee growing countries.  (The best I ever had was from Jamaica--a gift from my parents who picked up a bag while on a Carribean cruise.) 

I learned to grind the beans myself.  I experimented every which way from a course grind to a fine powder.  I also experimented with various ways to brew the ground beans.  I'll get to one of those ways at the end of this post.

Yes, I became an insufferable coffee snob.  I'm happy to report that I am less so now.  Sometimes I even bring out my inner Mrs. Olson and drink Folger's.  After all, "it's the richest kind."

TRAVELS

I admit it, I drink coffee when I travel.  I've had a few good cups of coffee in both small town diners and big city restaurants--a lot of unremarkable cups too.  I had a strangely interesting cup of Turkish coffee in, of all places, Houghton, Michigan.  I had the best cup in recent memory at a Dunkin' Donuts in Frederick, Maryland.  (I have been unable to repeat that excellence at any other Dunkin' Donuts since then.)

I've had coffee from most of the big chain coffee shops all over North America.  Other than that singular Dunkin' Donuts in Maryland, none of the chain shops have impressed me much--not Starbucks, not Peet's, not Caribou, not Dunn Brothers, not Dutch Brothers, not Tim Hortons, not nobody.  It's true!

Maybe that's 'cuz coffee shops lack atmosphere. Sure, there are a few cool hipsters looking at their phones and/or conversing with other hipsters, but that's not enough for me. The absolute best cups of coffee I've ever tasted were made by me--Chef G.--at campsites all over the U.S.  Those places ooze with atmosphere.  I've brewed coffee while car camping at lakeside campsites, while backpacking at 10,000 feet of elevation, while canoeing on Ozark Mountain rivers, while on bicycle trips in the Great Plains, the desert southwest, the deep south, the northern forests and a lot of other places too.  Campsite coffee is the best.  To me, there is nothing so sublime as sitting on a flat rock while sipping coffee, breathing in the air, watching the sun rise, and observing birds & squirrels as they flit around from tree to tree.  Once in a while, a deer or coyote passes by.  That's a bonus.

Nobody takes more pictures of his coffee than I do.  NOBODY!

VARIATIONS

"Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline--the first often tasting like the second."  -Edward Abbey

Strong, black coffee is the best.  Espresso is very good too.  Turkish coffee is interesting.  That's about it.  I have no appreciation for any of the European variations that include milk or cream such as Cafe au laits, Cappucinos, Machiatos, mochas, frappacinos, etc.  Worse than those things are the big money makers at the American coffee shops in which they add stuff like chocolate or caramel or pumpkin spice or other strange flavorizers.  Worst of all, in my opinion, is any kind of coffee that has ice in it.  Given the choice between two evils, I'd rather drink a Coke.  All of the gods in the world agree: "We made coffee to be consumed HOT!"

Coffee Philosophy 

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee."  -Albert Camus

"Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical."  -Jonathon Swift

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Philosophically speaking, there is nothing that stimulates deep thought like starting one's day with hot liquid flowing over the tongue, continuing down the gullet, and providing an indescribable inner warmth in the gut.  I like that it's a drink I have to sip and savor, as opposed to all the other beverages I tend to gulp--like water, milk, fruit juices, beer, and the occasional soda pop.

Some people get the same inner warmth and enlightenment from a cup of hot tea.  The last time I drank a cup of hot tea, I vomited.  Seriously, five minutes after finishing it, I started feeling feverish and nauseous, and then the tea came back out of my mouth looking just the same as when it entered my mouth.  Then I felt fine once again.

That happened while backpacking in Isle Royale National Park.  The atmosphere was perfect.  The only philosophical conclusion I can come up with is that tea is inferior to coffee.  (I might add that Philosophy is not an exact science.   Competing philosophers might point out that I threw up because I dipped TWO tea bags, instead of one, into my cup of hot water.)

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I also have a philosophy regarding the meal known as breakfast.  I don't like eating early--with the exception of an occasional camping breakfast made by my egg guru, Bob. [See the last Chef G. Cooks post.]  Aside from that, breakfast makes me feel bloated and lethargic for the rest of the morning.

COFFEE, and nothing but coffee, is my normal breakfast.  Coffee is all I want.  It's all I need.  It provides for all of my physical, metaphysical, intellectual, psychological, spiritual and goofilogical needs.  But once in a while, I like to supplement my coffee breakfast with a treat that can only be described as "magically delicious."

Coffee is the best thing for breakfast.  Marshmallowy charms are a close second.  Sugary bits of oats are a distant third.

Coffee Poetry

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." -T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot wasn't the only great poet who was inspired by coffee.  I am another one.

What?  You didn't know I was a great poet?  As proof of my poetic genius, I submit the following screen shot of a poem I wrote in my journal of a bicycle tour in 2016.  I hope your phone or laptop can zoom in on it.  

As I re-read the poem eight years later, I notice it has a few words I didn't think I even knew back then.  It also has nice rhythm, and nice rhymes too.  I give the poem a rating of 6 on a scale of 1 to 5.

 

Chef G. Attempts to Make a Good Cup of Cowboy Coffee

As I said, I've had many more cups of ordinary cups of coffee than extraordinary cups of coffee.  That's okay.  Ordinary coffee is still pretty darn good.  The only time I ever had to pour out an undrinkable cup was because it was 50% chicory.  Yuck.

I've made coffee using a variety of methods:  drip, press, percolate, steep, instant, Keurig, etc.  Today, I'm going to show you how to make it by one of the rarest methods.  That would be pouring the ground coffee beans directly into boiling water.  I'm not saying it's the BEST way to brew coffee, but it's probably the most unusual way.  (Unless you're a cowboy from the 1800's.)

So here, in the format of a photo-documentary, is how I made Cowboy Coffee this morning.

The first step is to pour some whole coffee beans into your coffee grinder.  The second step is to grind them--not too course, not too fine, but just right.

The second step is to light your camp stove.

The third step is to place a pot with 12 oz. of water on the hot stove.

When the water comes to a rolling boil, turn off the heat.

Then put a couple tablespoons of ground coffee into the hot water, cover, and let the grounds soak (and settle) for about five to ten minutes.

The final step is to pour the beautiful liquid into your coffee cup and enjoy.

The smile on my face says it all about my enjoyment.


I'm man enough to admit that my cowboy coffee wasn't the best
cup of coffee I've ever had, but even so, it was surprisingly good.  My only warning is that you should probably avoid drinking cowboy coffee down to the bottom of the cup unless you like to have a bunch of coffee grounds all over your mouth.

EGGS, THREE WAYS

 

Hi folks!  Chef G. here, and I'm back from another long absence.  Too long.  Ridiculously long.  So long that I'm probably happier to see me producing another episode of The Chef G. Cooking Channel than you are . . .  and that's saying something.  The highlight of my return is that I'm dedicating today's episode to a group of viewers that, heretofore, has been wrongly neglected in my amazing blog.  You guessed it, I'm talking about the vegetarian crowd.

As you are probably aware, vegetarians eat food too.  It's different food than animals like me, lions, wolves, owls, sharks, rattlesnakes, and Venus flytraps generally eat, but it IS food nevertheless.

I'm not talking about vegetables though.  (I already starred in an episode dedicated to the tastiest vegetable on earth--corn on the cob--a couple years ago.)  No, I'm talking about a vegetarian-approved source of protein.  Yes, I'm talking about eggs.  Like corn on the cob, eggs can be prepared in many fine ways.  And I'm going to teach you some of them.  As a celebrity chef, that's my job.

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Some vegetarians eat fish for protein.  Others eat insects.  In my opinion, salmon & crickets & such are still meat, but I'm not going to get into a big debate about that.  Nor will I argue with anybody who says eggs are the meat of unborn birds.  This blog is not the place for such philosophical disputes.  It's a place for peaceful food harmony.

Anyway, there is another group of vegetarians who eat neither fish nor insects nor eggs for their protein.  They are called vegans.  I respect their dietary discipline, but this post is for non-vegan vegetarians.  Rest assured, though, that I will do a show for my vegan fans sometime in the future. 

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I have an egg guru.  His name is Bob.  He makes perfect over-easy fried eggs.  After years of trying, and failing, to cook my own perfect over-easy fried eggs, I began to study Bob's technique on our annual guys' trips to campgrounds and cabins all over northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.  It was ingenious.  In a cast iron pan, he cracked open a few eggs into hot bacon grease and let them simmer for a couple of minutes.  He basted them with the bacon fat a few times, carefully flipped them over, cooked them for a few more seconds, and transferred them onto plates for a trio of hungry friends.  As one of those friends, I can tell you we were REALLY hungry in the mornings after long days of outdoor adventure and long nights of beer drinking.  Bob's bacon and egg meals were easily the best breakfasts I've ever eaten.

As I said, I'm going vegetarian for this post, so bacon fat is out.  I'll try to duplicate Bob's over-easy egg excellence by substituting bacon grease with the next best thing--butter. 

More recently, in an e-mail exchange, Bob shared his secret to great scrambled eggs.  Crack them into a bowl, add a little cream, whisk, throw them into a hot pan with butter and, here's the kicker, don't stir them.  FOLD them for extra tenderness.

Bob didn't tell me anything about boiling eggs.  Maybe he was holding out on me.  That's okay.  After many weeks of intense research at egg libraries around the world, I created the perfect boiled egg recipe.

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There you go:  Today, I'm going to cook eggs--three ways--four simple ingredients--one meal--one plate.

The four simple ingredients preclude other delicious egg preparations such as omelets, quiches, and deviled eggs.  I could have made poached eggs, but they're gross.

I started with a boiled egg.  I put one egg into a pan, added water, brought the egg & water to a boil, turned off the heat, and let the egg cook for 18 minutes in the hot water.  Less time than that might result in a runny yolk. To be clear, runny yolks are great in fried eggs, but in boiled eggs they're sickening.  That's my opinion anyway.

Egg in hot water

After 18 minutes in hot water, put the egg in ice water.  Crack the shell slightly to make it easier to peel, return it to the ice water for an hour.

During the one hour waiting time, you can crack another egg into a bowl.  Then add a tablespoon of cream, whisk like crazy, and set aside.

You'll need this after the over-easy fried eggs are done cooking.

Prepare for frying by melting a healthy amount of butter into a fry pan.  When fully melted and bubbling, add an egg.

As the egg cooks, scoop up some melted butter and pour it onto the yolk.  Repeat two or three times.  Add salt and pepper.  Flip the thing over for five seconds and, voila, a perfect over-easy egg.

Now it's time for the scrambled egg.  All you have to do is pour the previously prepared mixture into the butter fat leftover from the fried egg.  Let it coagulate for a minute or two, and fold it over a few times with a spatula.  Add salt and pepper.  Then divide it up a little bit with the spatula.  I could FEEL the tenderness and could not wait to CHEW it.

Folding the egg

The only thing I could think of that might be more unique than cooking three different egg dishes was to serve them all on one plate.  What I came up with was a thing of eggalicious beauty.  I hope you agree.

Enjoy your meal with a hot cup of strong coffee.